Category Archives: Satire

On the Nature of Modern History

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The recording of history seems to have always belonged to the literary genres of creative writing and fiction.  It has seemingly always been, at least in its popular and official versions, more of a creative than an objective process.  It frequently has some links to actual events but its role seems to have almost always been to distort whatever is reported in order to protect the most guilty and nefarious among us.  Consider for example Abrahamic sacred scriptures including their Jewish originals and their Christian and Islamic incarnations (e.g., the Tanakh, the Bible and the Koran): slavery was just, human sacrifice appropriate, genocide a good thing (as was the death penalty for minor transgressions), animal sacrifice was required, women were inherently inferior, etc.  Amazingly, we continue to consider such “historical” (some would call them hysterical) sources as sacred and worthy of adoration while, incoherently, we consider those who actually follow such canonical laws (mainly fundamentalist Muslims) as savages.

The trend towards massive distortion of history and journalism has become exceedingly obvious during the past two centuries and, at this juncture, has gone wild as purported journalism has become a primary source for historians.  To mangle and distort a quote made famous in the fictional Star Trek universe: journalism “is not and never has been a historian’s friend”.  There is a related saying with some truth in it to the effect that “history is written by the victors” but of course, the word “history” in that phrase must be modified with the adjective “purported”.

Recent events have made the foregoing more clear than ever.  Take the recent situation in Syria for example.  The “western” press (whatever that is) is gleefully proclaiming that Bashar al-Assad was a ruthless and vicious dictator whose overthrow must be seen as a wonderful event for justice, decency and democracy, while the same “western” press promotes Zionist genocide throughout the Middle East with the full support of “western democracies” and also support murderous dictatorships all over the world, Saudi Arabia and Israel being interesting examples.  That Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani), Mr. Assad’s conqueror is a former leader of ISIS and Al-Qaida seems beside the point to such western democracies and to the journalists who help keep them and their pet dictators in power.  That Mr. Assad’s conqueror was backed by, hmmm, genocidal Israel in its quest to conquer the Middle East is also beside the point, or that the new regime is already imposing a Taliban style regime in Syria, something criticized severely by western democracies and journalists with respect to Afghanistan.  That Israel seems to be surreptitiously behind these recent events raises questions (at least to the bravest or most reckless among us) concerning the reality of the events in lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001.  And, of course, we also have the situation in what was once the Ukraine (who knows what it is now).  Apparently impoverished Ukraine was directly involved in helping arm the victorious rebellion and some wonder how that was possible or what it portends.  Questions, questions, questions.  Answers will of course be soon forthcoming and had best be accepted, … unquestioned.

Today, seemingly a majority of the United States electorate as well as majorities of the electorates in diverse European countries are aware that they are being deceived and manipulated by what passes for journalism and historiography and, at least recently, many voters have been turning to populist candidates, populist in the sense of reliance on a more accurate version of democracy, one freed from the purportedly democratic institutions that are really no more than manipulative weaves designed to fleece us as surely as victims are fleeced in a traditional shell game.  Nonetheless, knowing that one is being deceived is not synonymous with discerning the truth and that is where we find ourselves: effectively manipulated by persons we know are deceiving us but who manage to impact our perceptions just the same.  Had William Shakespeare been more discerning, perhaps he would have added journalists and historians to lawyers in the famous line from his play Henry VI, Part 2: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”.  As both a lawyer (non-practicing though) and a historian (among other things), that thought, while perhaps somewhat meritorious, does not appeal to me.

The foregoing admissions concerning the nature of the history most of us are taught (and teach), raise (for the relatively few of us who aspire to retain open minds and who value truth) serious and important questions about the real history of our planet, especially during the past two centuries.  For example, about the real causes of the American Revolution and the United States “Civil” War (some refer to it as the war of Northern Aggression while the more objective refer to it as the War Between the States), or more recently and perhaps more to the point today, about the causes of the Second World War and what actually took place in the countries involved during that cataclysmic epoch, an epoch whose echoes still seem to buffet us all too regularly.  We’ve been taught that fascists under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini (and to some extent, Hideki Tōjō) were bloodthirsty, racist tyrants who embodied everything evil while the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom were benign defenders of liberty, democracy, justice and tolerance, this despite the fact that the latter, like the Axis powers, maintained concentration camps: the United States in California to imprison people of Japanese descent and in Panama, for general purposes, and the British, in South Africa and elsewhere.  Indeed, the British invented the concept.  And, of course, the history we are taught presents the victors in the Second World War as benign saviors of humanity notwithstanding the fact that both the United Kingdom and the United States engaged in mass murder during that conflict as assuredly as did their enemies, albeit more efficiently, ; i.e., mass extermination not through a morbid form of euthanasia but by burning and blowing up massive numbers of human beings through firebombing of civilian population centers in Europe and Japan and, of course, in the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Interestingly, notwithstanding the purported importance of verity to the just, it is illegal in many countries to question what happened during the Second World War and why, at least if questioning raises questions whose answers deviate from official narratives imposed by the victors.  It is illegal to question official narratives even though common sense seems to squeal as if it were being tortured when such narratives are even superficially examined, and, especially, when we witness how journalism and history are tortured today by the descendants of the sources that have forced their narratives for over three quarters of a century on a weary postwar world (well, “postwar” may be a distortion given the never ending nature of armed encounters involving the victors in that conflict).  Interesting that the Zionist ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians began concurrently with the fabrication of such narratives, narratives which were relied on by Zionists to justify their theft of Palestine as compensation for the atrocities that Jews suffered during the Second World War, purportedly at the hands of the Germans (rather than, as one might have supposed, the Palestinians).  An alien ethnologist not bound by Terran penal codes might someday dare to ask: “Why weren’t the Jews given Bavaria as a homeland?”

Other questions that such daring alien ethnologist might ask but which are illegal for us to consider involve, for example, some observations that arise from admitted facts, for example, that the “Allies” (history’s good guys in that conflict) had imposed a total economic blockade and embargo over continental Europe which prevented the countries under the control of the “Axis Powers” (history’s bad guys in that conflict) from obtaining food, medicine, fuel, etc., from noncombatants and neutral states, and the observation that because of that, the populations in such countries faced starvation and their leaders were forced to make desperate decisions as to allocation of resources, including the establishment of priorities with respect to what segments of their populations were to be fed and cared for.  Were one to make such illegal observations instead of the alien ethnologist (heaven forbid), then one might follow them up wondering how many of the casualties of what has become pejoratively referred to as the Holocaust were attributable to decisions relating to the consequences of such successful total economic blockade and embargo.

Another illegal perspective to consider with respect to the Second World War is how the overwhelmingly pro-German worldwide Jewish population during the First World War subsequently came to be despised by their formerly benign non-Jewish German neighbors.  After all, the German Empire and its predecessor, the Kingdom of Prussia, had been, for centuries, the parts of Europe most welcoming to Jews, the places where they were treated most equitably and most permitted to thrive.  There are source materials that point rather specifically at a deliberate effort by a segment of Jews in the United Kingdom and the United States to accomplish exactly that in order to promote a secular political goal known as Zionism, and that the success of their efforts, directed at colonizing and acquiring the segment of the Ottoman Empire known geographically, culturally and historically as Palestine, required the sundering of German Jews from their historical loyalty to their adopted homeland by turning their neighbors against them based on the assertion that “it was Jews who were responsible for the German Empire’s defeat in the First World War”, a feat accomplished by manipulating the United States into entering that war on the side of the Triple Entente (history’s good guys in that war).  That is a distorted assertion as it was only the small minority of Jews who had adopted Zionism who had offered to betray their brethren in exchange for the promise by the members of the Triple Entente to turn Palestine over to them following successful conclusion of that war and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire (the Balfour Declaration), but, repeated frequently and boastfully enough by Zionists, it seems that it had the desired impact, consequences be damned.

Since the foregoing considerations are illegal, they must be false and thus, no efforts may be permitted to research them and to come to contrarian conclusions and to share such conclusions.  That would obviously involve fascism, hatred for liberty and democracy and justice and equity, and of course, racism, antisemitism and white supremacy.  Anyone making related observations would justifiably be labeled a Holocaust denier!!! 

Such is the current interpretation of historical objectivity and it echoes attempts to minimize analysis in real time, with our own eyes and ears, of just what is happening in the Middle East today as hundreds of thousands of people, mainly women, children and the elderly are mysteriously “dying”, dismembered.  Misguided college students, academics, researchers and non-traditional journalists who raise related questions, come to related conclusions and engage in related protests, all misguided of course, are, fortunately, being censored into more constructive reflections concerning things such as their future, their scholarships, their institutional standing, their tenure, their job prospects, all considerations certain to guide them toward the light.

After all, genocide is relative. 

When good guys engage in mass murder, such as in the case of:

  • the murder of the first born males of ancient Egypt, or
  • of all the men, women, children and frequently, even livestock in ancient Canaan (Jericho for example), or
  • of the Christians in Jerusalem during the year 614 of the Common Era; or, of course,
  • the massacre of the indigenous populations of the Americas by Europeans,

then, even though it walks, talks, sounds and feels like genocide, it is something else.  Or, in each such case, genocide is actually a positive cleansing tool designed to promote the delights of ethnic purity and to meet the “white man’s burden”.  Not so much when the former orchestrators of genocide become the victims (or represent themselves as victims), at least not until they can once more become the victimizers.  At any rate, purported victims of genocide are generally characterized by history as “terrorists” or “savages”, except, of course, if they are presented as having been victims of “the” Holocaust.

It’s a mystery, I know, kind of like the nature of the Christian “trinity”, or how there can be a square root for minus one, or how observation can impact quantic phenomena.  But that’s history for you, at least in its “official” versions.

So, how sick is our world today? 

Perhaps a more relevant question might be, where it legal to ask: “How much different is our world today than it would have been had the Central Powers (the German Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire) emerged victorious in the First World War?”  One answer is: there might well never have been a second world war.  But then, things having happened as they did, so perhaps there are other areas in which we can more profitably sort of speculate.  So we might ask, were it legal: “How much different would our world be today had the Nazis won World War Two?”  We’ll never know and that may be a good thing.  Then again, given the reality that the only thing we know is that everything we’ve been taught is at best highly distorted and likely very inaccurate (didn’t want to say false, that would be too broad a generality), perhaps the world would be all too similar to our own with just the lead characters having changed roles: our historical heroes, especially Winston Churchill and Harry Truman being perceived as horrendous villains (which they were) and our arch villains, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Hideki Tōjō perceived as courageous visionaries and mankind’s saviors (which they, in all likelihood, were not and would not have been).  And what about Stalin in that scenario? 

Wow!  The tune played by the defeated English armies at Yorktown in October of 1771 after their defeat at the Battle of Saratoga comes to mind.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

A Satirical Trumpian Fairy Tale, Twice Removed

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Trumpets please!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, we present this sort of satirically sordid tale for your amusement and entertainment.  It may or may not be based on fact, that’s a matter of perspective, and the names may or may not have been changed to protect the innocent.  Or the guilty.  Once again, a matter of perspective.

Let’s begin:

Deius Clandestinius Amorphus, the eighty seventh of that designation in his dynasty, glanced languidly at his twenty seventh consort, soon to be his eighth wife, junior grade, at least for the time being.  Time would tell how high she rose or how far she fell.  Hard to predict at the moment as she had just turned twelve (or so she claimed, she looked much closer to fifty) and he was just short of eighty-three.  He was not an emperor, or a king, or a prince, or even a duke.  Rather, he was an ascendant file clerk at the small law firm of Blathers & Associates.  Small but successful, a boutique firm specializing in electoral manipulation.  Sly, as he preferred to be called given all the syllables and numbers in his name, was the eighth cousin, thrice removed, of Yackoff Stanton, the senior associate in the firm to whom he owed his position with its attendant salary and more importantly, its fringe benefits.  Yackoff, in turn, was aspiring and constantly plotting to ascend to the position of most junior partner, a position long unfilled as the firm was bereft of any partners at all, Mrs. Blather not being keen on having to share her authority with anyone else, not since she had attained her current position upon the death of her husband, Slayton Armington Blathers, the great grandson thrice removed of the firm’s founder. 

Like Kamala (that was the impending bride’s name), Mrs. Blathers had once also been a consort but had ascended to the role of junior wife from which she had clawed and seduced her way to senior wife-once-removed, further ascending to senior wife when her predecessor succumbed to a strange and inexplicable stomached ailment after tea and crumpets or some such dainty brought to her by her ladies in waiting, the current Mrs. Blathers among them, … perhaps fortuitously.  The current widow Blathers did not care for tea or crumpets or for any other such dainties, perhaps because her own husband had suffered a fate similar to that suffered by her own predecessor soon after the dowager Blathers had become senior wife.  Some considered it interesting that the latest Mrs. Blathers first name was Lucretia, … but that’s another story.

Sly was a diligent and dedicated employee whose principle responsibility involved the destruction of electoral records (or what for a brief instant in time had passed as electoral records), before their authenticity could be verified, which he did in coordination with numerous county clerks’ and electoral supervisors’ offices in what had once been the State of California (in what had once been a federal republic of sorts).  That’s what made him such a catch and explained his numerous concubines and wives, that and the fact that he was the youngest elder in the Reformed Orthodox California Church of All Saints and Assorted Personages, Nancy Pelosi chapter.  Nancy Pelosi had long been Lucretia’s favorite saint. 

Because of the sinecure involved, Sly had never aspired to become even the most junior deputy associate twice removed, much less a partner.  He not only knew on which side his bread was buttered, but also where the jam and honey and peanut butter and cream cheese were hidden.  Sly had no children, none at all, but he did have quite a few cousins in varying degrees of consanguinity.  Nor did he plan on ever having any children if he could help it.  He did, however, have one cat, a very old and very cranky cat, one who mainly slept and ate nowadays, or perhaps, she always had.  And snarled, snarled a lot, definitely snarled.  He had, for reasons unknown or at least never admitted, named her Hillary.

Lucretia liked neither Hillary nor Kamala, being, for some reason, of a very suspicious nature, nor did she like Yackoff although he was her stepsister’s great grandson, nor did she like Sly but Sly managed to remain largely unnoticed.  Truth be told, except for her admiration for St. Nancy, Lucretia did not seem to like anyone, anyone at all.  And Lucretia kept no pets, she was suspicious of animals as well.  She just sort of kept to herself, counting her ever increasing virtual mountains of bitcoins, a sort of female Scrooge McDuck but without that billionaire avian’s sense of adventure.  She had once been eerily beautiful but now, despite numerous facelifts and other aesthetic procedures, people who somehow or other managed to navigate the complex labyrinth of security in which she was ensconced all too frequently mistook her for a rare pallid walking and talking prune (although the talking was mainly limited to “who the Hell are you and how did you get in here!!!”).  Still, she was a competent albeit not a creative administrator and the firm prospered, although there were those who nervously whispered, mainly to themselves, that the firm ran itself.  That, of course, was not true, it was run by a virtual artificial intelligence project, a joint project really, one referred to as “AG Holder” by those who knew of it.  A joint project devised by a cabal of former intelligence agency leaders and former presidents of what had once been a federal republic.

It was ironic that given the reality that with the demise of that once-upon-a-time federal republic, elections had no meaning and thus, there was really no need to manipulate them, but the firm’s success had been deemed a work of art and a natural treasure (in California), and thus, elections continued to be held and, as sure as the fact that the sun was likely to both rise and set, even though it could rarely be seen through the California smog, electoral results were artfully delayed for longer and longer periods of time, time during which Sly and his coterie of county clerks and electoral “supervisors” danced their dance of many veils.

As the nuptials for Sly and Kamala approached, Oprah, Sly’s current senior wife fretted.  She always fretted concerning her weight which seemed involved in a mysterious game of give and take, but now she fretted about Kamala, until recently her latest “bestest” friend.  A “bestest” friend who certainly paid well for being befriended. 

“What if for some reason or other the wedding was called off”?  How, wondered Oprah, would that affect their blossoming relationship?  

Elsewhere, similar thoughts were occurring to Kamala.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Of Mary and Khnum: Mixing Strangely Erotic Fractured Metaphors in an Ancient Sheepfold

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Mary, Mary, quite contrary, was wondering how her garden grew when, lo and behold, of a sudden, she thought she spotted a little lamb, one that perhaps might become her own.

Nearby, a certain Miss Muffat sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and weigh, while a friendly if somewhat frightening, somewhat hungry and a bit jealous arachnid (none other than the trickster deity known as Anansi), hanging by a silken thread, curiously passed her way.

As Miss Muffat and Anansi looked on, Mary, Mary, quite contrary, fondled what she thought was her new lamb but the ovis aries, in reality the Egyptian deity Khnum, reacted unexpectedly, at least as far as Mary, Mary, quite contrary, was concerned.  Anansi couldn’t help but giggle, which almost gave the game away.

Khnum, at first seemingly young and small, turned out not to have been either, not at all.  He was in fact very, very ancient really, and in reality, quite a bit larger than a lamb, and he had budding horns and, … well …, reacting to Mary, Mary, quite contrary’s soft caresses, seemed unusually amorous for a lamb, at least as far as little Miss Moffat could tell.

Then, slam bam, thank you mam ….  The lamb turned out to be a ram … and …. not just any ram, but the primordial creator of human bodies and of the life force known as kꜣ (“ka”), and Anansi’s giggles turned into guffaws.

Thus, some months later, to Miss Muffat’s surprise and the spider’s strange delight (it loved irony and was as much a contrarian as Mary), Mary, Mary, quite contrary, indeed had her little lamb. 

Which was not just any little lamb at all.[1]
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] An afterword of sorts.  It is sadly strange that in this puritanical age, puritanical concerning sexual matters but not bothered by genocide at all, I would feel uncomfortable, perhaps even ironically guilty, in having written this satire on the ancient myth of Leda and the Swan.

Futile Expatiation

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Author Anonymous

He wrote in the third person when he sought to obfuscate about whom he was writing, all too frequently himself, and in that manner, he sought to both assuage his guilt, if guilt was involved and appropriate, while somehow reducing the karmic burden involved. 

It is likely, as Mahasamatman would have pointed out were he aware of him or cared what he did or why, that his exercise was in all probability futile, like masturbation in the hope of engendering a descendant.

Then again, ….
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Terminally Flummoxed, … or something like that

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“I’m here to disembody you” she’d said.  She was extremely beautiful, in fact, she seemed to embody an ephemerally ethereal beauty, or perhaps, ethereally ephemeral.  They were very different things although, under the circumstances, very strong contradictions seemed essential.

The term “disembody” seemed unpleasant at best, regardless of the fact that she was impossibly beautiful, so he’d said, “disembody seems a rather unpleasant thing, is it anything like death?”  To which she’d answered, predictably, “yes and no”.  Then she’d tried to explain.

“Death is understood, or perhaps, more clearly, misunderstood, as a permanent state.  Something unique as it only occurs once, at least on a personal basis.  Disembodiment is clearly different.  Confusing it with death, it’s understood by most, or more clearly, misunderstood, as something irrevocable.  The mistake is understandable given how poorly ‘time’ is understood.  And not just by mortals (who don’t really exist) but even by most immortals, … who do, … Do exist I mean.  Or perhaps not.”

“So” he’d replied, unable to think of anything else to say, “… disembodied?”

“Yes” she’d replied, seeming happy, an even more beautiful smile on her even more beautiful face, “exactly so”.

“So, are you ready?” she’d asked, we really need to begin the process”.

“Process” he’d asked, again a bit flummoxed?  “And which process exactly would that be?”

She seemed a bit impatient then, what with looking at her watch every couple of seconds, a worried expression on her even more beautiful face, and had replied “well, your disembodiment of course”.  Then she’d smiled, again looking even more beautiful, as if that were possible, and said:  “You needn’t worry, it won’t hurt at all although it’s admittedly a bit tedious at times, … well … usually.”

For some he reason, he’d wondered how the word “flummoxed” was spelled.  For some reason, it had seemed vitally important.  And it was.  Or perhaps it wasn’t.  He usually didn’t have a problem in making up his mind, indeed, if anything, he tended to be too impulsive.  That may have been why he’d found himself in the state he was in, the word “state” seeming much more accurate than the word “place, for some reason.  Then, for some reason, he’d become fascinated with the nature, meaning and use of the term “so”, which they’d both been bantering around.  It seemed quite bereft of meaning albeit not of importance.  At the moment, its importance had seemed transcendental and he’d had a strong impulse to use it again, but he hadn’t wanted to seem inarticulate.

Still, he just hadn’t been able to think of anything else to say, except perhaps, for the word, or perhaps the term, “disembodied”, but that term had (in that particular now) made him quite nervous.

The exquisitely ephemerally, ethereally beautiful, or perhaps, ethereally ephemerally beautiful woman had stood staring at him, tapping her left foot on the ground, definitely impatiently, and had exasperatedly said “well?”  Or perhaps, more accurately, had asked “well”, and he hadn’t had the slightest clue as to how to reply.  Actually, he hadn’t really wanted to reply, he’d just wanted to stare at her.  But he’d known that staring was not polite, regardless of how impossibly beautiful someone might be, so he’d picked up his courage, and in spite of his fear, he’d said, or perhaps asked is a better term: “so, hmmm, disembodied?”

“Yes” she’d said.  Then, kindly, as if she’d grasped the state in which he found himself, she’d continued “let me explain, you seem confused.  Most people are.  About everything.  Almost always, but especially with respect to just what ‘disembodiment’ implies, or perhaps, what the term ‘disembodiment’ expresses would be more accurate”.  Evidently, linguistic accuracy was very important to her, and yes, she’d again become even more impossibly beautiful.

“So, disembodiment” he’d repeated.  “Okay, ‘shoot’!”  Then he’d almost immediately, perhaps immediately, rejected his choice of metaphors (shoot) but it was too late, there was no way he could have taken it back without calling unpleasant attention to his dilemma.  He’d liked metaphors, liked them even better than he’d liked similes, but, he’d always realized he really didn’t understand allegories though he hadn’t a clue as to why allegories had any relevance to what he’d just been thinking.  He’d wondered how and why he’d become sidetracked in that direction, but just for a second.  She’d continued talking and he’d lost his concentration and had no idea what she’d said, but again, she’d been getting more and more beautiful, so much so that he’d been getting dizzy, and in fact, now that he’d thought about it, he’d been feeling a bit faint, quite a bit faint in fact.

“And so” she’d concluded ….  That damned “so” again he’d thought, just what the hell did it mean, then he’d immediately regretted his choice of the metaphor “hell”, even if he’d only thought it, or at least he thought he’d only thought it, he’d certainly hoped so.  …. bodies are temporally permanent vessels” she’d continued, although words hadn’t seemed to matter to him anymore “… vessels which we transients occupy collectively with others, not permanently of course, rather, only for a time, and our departure does not necessarily imply the termination of the vessel.  Others enter it and assume experiential occupation for the time period allotted to them to do so, while those departing move on to other vessels, sometimes in concert, although rarely so, usually becoming parts of different experiential collectives.”

He’d looked puzzled but, amazingly, even though he didn’t seem quite conscious, he’d seemed to understand.  He was not really dying, he was just moving on, his term completed.  Kind of like graduating from elementary school and entering middle school but not quite high school or college, and certainly not graduate school.  Then a flood of questions seemed to have entered his mind, entered it on their own volition, entered his mind or whatever it was, all at the same time, questions such as:  “will I retain my current gender, will I have a gender, will I become one of those transsexuals or non-binary people, whatever that was?  Will I be old, young, rich, poor, Caucasian, indigenous (well, everyone was some sort of indigenous or other), or Asian, or Black.  Will I be human, or even animal he’d wondered, or “what if I enter a plant, or a rock”.

He’d sort of looked around, seeking the … whatever she was, or whatever she’d been, but she was no longer there, and then, he’d realized he was in a sort of dream state, he wasn’t there either, wherever there was or had been.  He wasn’t anywhere.  But he didn’t know if it was because he was in bodily transition or because he was just having a weird dream.  But she’d vanished and strangely, even though he’d recalled the “increasing beauty phenomenon”, he hadn’t, for the life of him, been able to remember what she’d looked like, or was it “for the life of ‘himself’”, then he’d again regretted his choice of metaphors, that time with respect to the phrase, “the life of” (he tended to second guess himself quite a lot as you may have noticed), and he’d wondered just what the “hell” life was and, again upset at his choice of metaphors, and totally, completely and irretrievably flummoxed, he’d ….
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, an intermittent commentator on radio and television, and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Gardening in Eden

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“Paradise; … boring???”

Well yes, but, … well, not at first no, but time was strange there, everything seemed endlessly repetitive.  Well, … at least until the end. 

Then boredom ceased being an issue.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

A Strange (but Continuing) Divine Colloquy: Some suspect bipolarity (but they’d be wrong)

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Anu, a primal deity antithetical to Yahweh (some call him An), still has at least some followers, although perhaps, they’d fit comfortably in an antique telephone booth.  Well, antique thousands of years after Anu lost favor (the latter observation is frequently made by Yahweh).  Still, Anu, Anshar’s son, seemingly enjoys toying with Yahweh, enjoys taunting him, especially since he taunts him from within Yahweh’s mind, a place even Yahweh cannot reach or erase (as he has erased so many other things). 

What an awesome sort of hiding place.  Yahweh knows that Anu is somewhere in his mind but his mind is so convoluted and filled with fantasies, contradictions and psychological complexes that it’s impossible to find anything there.  It frustrates Yahweh constantly and causes him almost as many migraine headaches as do the constant prayers of his subjects.  Damned whiners!  Well, most of them are damned anyway.  Predestination.

“Damned”, thunders Yahweh, as another unsolicited message escapes from deep within his restless and feckless ethosphere:

“So, …” taunts Anu, “you’ve seemingly come a long way from your metal working days Yah (a sort of nickname Anu uses to annoy Yahweh), but back then you were pretty much a straight arrow, albeit with a metal head.  A “metal-head”.  Get it!!!   Wow.  But look at you now.  A long time since your “Yaldabaoth” days.  Or even your days as one of my cousin El’s 70 club, albeit a pretty junior member of that exalted group.”

Annoyed, Yahweh responds to the conversation in what would have been his head, had he one:  “Shut up!!!   Lalalalalalala?  I don’t hear you!!  And, anyway, you don’t exist, at least not any longer.  Who worships you now???”

Anu laughs, although not with real mirth, rather in a sort of teasing parody:  “Well, yeah, you’ve been pretty thorough wiping out the old gang but regardless of whether or not anyone else remembers me, I’m in your head.  Always have been, always will be.” 

“Always, always will be” Anu snickers in a sort of sing song, repeating himself.  “And I know, even if most others have forgotten, that you and Yaldabaoth are one and the same.  Yaldabaoth, Yaldabaoth, Yaldabaoth, Yaldabaoth!!!!  I like that name even more than Yah!”

“Damned agnostics!!!” responds Yahweh.  “And when I say ‘damned’, they’re damned and they stay damned, damn it!!!!”

Anu laughs.

“Shut up!!!” shouts Yahweh, although an observer might wonder at whom he was shouting.  “Lalalalalalala?  I don’t hear you!”

“So” says Anu, “I hear that all those old propaganda texts you had written for your exaltation are being taken apart by humans who claim that they’re obviously incoherent and, … well …, full of male bovine feces.  And that trend seems to be resonating as their fallacies become more and more clear.  You may be joining us sooner than you think and I’m pretty sure you’ll not find your welcome all that satisfying.”

Red in the face (or he would have been, had he a face) and sneezing thunder, Yahweh petulantly replies, full of contrived confidence but in a manner reminiscent of recently deceased Tommy Smothers: “Oh yeah!!!!”  He then launches into a sort of diatribe, although at whom, an observer would not know (although some might venture a guess):

“My faithful followers, and they are legion, especially in the United States and Palestine, errr, I mean Israel, will never, ever, ever, ever change their minds about me, no matter what facts say.  Facts can’t really speak you know, and they’re easily buried in metaphorically ineffable mysticism where contradictions don’t matter, in fact, they’re cool.  Contradictions make me even more credible. … Or else!”

Anu was the father of Enlil, grandfather of Nanna and great-grandfather of Inanna, also, the great-great grandfather of Bilgamesh whose name Yahweh’s followers and others had perverted to “Gilgamesh”.  They enjoyed perversions, many perversions, myriad perversions, albeit usually they enjoyed them subtly, and quickly and loudly denied and attributed them to their victims if discovered.  They were good at that.  They had an awesome example. 

Lately Anu has been reading a book (a quaint habit he’d picked up millennia ago), a book by someone named Neil Gaiman, a book about a battle between elder divinities seeking to return to prominence and a new group of divine wannabees.  It reminded Anu of the sort of successful revolt Yahweh had managed to orchestrate when he overthrew his dad, the Canaanite god El, and along with him a great many of the other divinities native to what humans had taken to calling the Middle East (although cardinal directions make no sense, being spherical).  Yahweh had tried to wipe out all other divinities and had, to an extent, appeared to succeed, but the Hindus at least had defied him and many others, including Anu, had merely gone into seclusion.  And others had confused him.  And now, a growing number of humans were rejecting the concept of any divinities at all.  Not good that, thought Anu, finding himself uncomfortably in agreement with Yahweh.

Anu wondered on whose side that fellow Gaiman was.  Evidently his book had been perverted by an outfit called, of all things, Amazon, which had sort of converted Gaiman’s book into an audiovisual format.  That made Anu think of Yahweh and his adherents.  They loved to pervert things.  He wondered if they were involved with that Amazon project.  “Could be” he reflected.  “Could be.” 

That Gaiman fellow had some interesting ideas in his book on how to revive dormant deities.  Anu was studying it to see if he could somehow emulate some of the characters involved.  Of course, that would be difficult from his current habitat in Yahweh’s mind.  Yahweh was too paranoid to sleep.  Anu would have to find some way to provoke and trick him.  If only Bilgamesh were around.  Or Inanna, or any of the old gang.

Maybe they were, …

Somewhere.

If only he could contact a friendly trickster deity like that Anansi Gaiman seemed to worship.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

A Creative Bunch: Hopefully, divinity does not find that offensive

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After almost two decades I’m rereading Daniel C. Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon which seeks to explore the conceptual evolution of religion in general, tying it into, among other things, memetics (a concept that fascinates me).  I find that rereading something after a long period of time, time during which one is changing, learning new things and reevaluating others, one frequently gleans very different meanings from those one originally perceived.

That is an experience in progress which, to date, has proven interesting.  Religion and spirituality fascinate me, as do attitudes towards both, and despite a life-long quest for answers, I’ve only turned up more and more questions, but fascinating questions which keep me interested in my quest.

On the lighter side, a quote in the book I’m re-reading attributed to American actor Emo Philips both made me laugh and provided insight into our human nature.  It deals with someone, a very young true believer, obviously a true believer with a sense of humor and a complex capacity for rationalization. 

As a child this particular true believer kept praying to god for a bicycle, a prayer that was repeatedly ignored.  Eventually, however, reflecting on the suggestion that “god helps those who help themselves” and rationalizing that “we are the instruments through which god works”, the young true believer stole a bike and then, concurrently, thanked god and asked him for forgiveness for the various sins involved, i.e., not only coveting his neighbor’s property but also satisfying that urge by making the property his own; perhaps not legally or ethically, but practically.  A third sin, blasphemy, may or may not have been applicable. 

We humans are a creative bunch.

Hopefully, Divinity, assuming it exists, has a sense of humor.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Unorthodox Reflections on the Steppenwolf

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I’m reading Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, possible even rereading it.  I owned a copy in my twenties and thought I’d read it but it now seems obvious to me that I didn’t. 

There are several translations available but the one I’m reading seems inadequate to me.  I have a graduate degree in translation studies and linguistics (although it is not my primary profession) so perhaps I tend to be more critical than might be fair.  Still, the disappointment at what seemed a poor translation of a seminal novel faded as I “plowed” through it until, suddenly, it seemed much less inadequate.  The “plowing” ceased and sowing started, especially after I was introduced to “Hermine”. 

Originally, the title of this article, a sort of literary review, was to be “Reflections on Hermine”, perhaps it still should be, but as readers will note towards the end, the more traditionally serious civic and literary aspects of this piece devolve into what some will consider sophomoric parody, hence the modification to the title.  Hermine does not deserve to be tainted by parody, nor is it the intent of the latter part of this article to engage in parody, but one cannot control the reflections of readers or critics, especially those lacking in both a sense of humor and joy in the sensual; something now all too common as somehow, the liberal perspectives of the 1960s have morphed into censorious Puritanism.

“The” Steppenwolf’s transcendent fame is centered on its psychological reflections and on its refractive introspection with reference to human nature, but for me, at least so far, I’ve derived more from its perhaps unintended sociological and historical revelations as well as from the irreverent digression referenced above.  On the more serious historical side, shortly after Hermine was introduced I was struck by the protagonist’s bitterness towards German jingoists who virulently attacked him and other pacifists, much as happens today in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and of course, Israel.  What most struck me with reference to the foregoing is that the novel was published in 1927, long before Hitler’s ascent, and thus belied much of the fault assigned to him for subsequent events.  The blame, of course, rightfully belongs to the Treaty of Versailles and the viciousness of the victorious Entente, as hypocritical a group as ever blemished the face of our planet.  It was their greed and hypocrisy that generated bitterness and desire for revenge among the populace of the German nation, a supranational society that included not only the Weimer Republic but Austria as well, and parts of Poland and Czechoslovakia.  A subsurface fury very similar to that generated among Muslims and especially Palestinians today by the disdain with which they are treated by those same countries. 

Those brief passages generated cascading reflections on my part as they so accurately presaged the future and now, today’s present.  And not only with respect to the rise of the Nazis and their defeat in the oxymoronic “second war to end all wars”.  It also struck me that it was members of this same “alliance” now calcified in NATO, namely the United States, the United Kingdom and France, which orchestrated the now obviously hypocritical Nuremberg and Tokyo post war tribunals, proceedings disguised as efforts to impose ex post facto rules of war and legal norms applicable with respect to treatment of subjugated minorities.  Rules totally ignored with respect to the victors, not only during those proceedings but ever since.  Witness the United States’ facilitation of the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians by Israel for the past three quarters of a century, and especially since October 7, 2023.  But then, as Hesse notes, hypocrisy has almost always, perhaps always been the only norm governing interstate, international and intercultural conflicts.  It seems ingrained in our nature as the Steppenwolf aspect of Hesse’s protagonist so emotively observed.  As I focused on those brief passages, I couldn’t help but recall how the victors in the second war to end all wars, as they were in the first war to end all wars, were as guilty as the vanquished in too many instances, and that the same lot of hypocritical victors, led for centuries by the United Kingdom, have kept the world in constant conflict as they successfully exploited and looted the Global South.  Slavery has not really been eliminated, it’s just been camouflaged and swept under rugs.

Having taught history for a decade in my relative youth and, during the past several decades, having been actively involved in political analysis, both academically as chair of university political science, government and international relations programs, and as a participant in numerous media events, television and radio programs, etc., I was inexcusably caught off guard by the epochal reality brought to light for me by Hermann Hesse, i.e., the early appearance of underlying trends which would all too soon blossom into militarist fascism preceding the rise of the Nazi’s, although, on reflection, it is obvious that the Nazis did not sprout fully formed from ether.  And although I should not have been surprised, I was again caught off guard by the reality that “all too frequently one learns a great deal more from analyzing an epoch’s or a culture’s fiction than one does from assiduously studying learned historical treatises”, respected albeit inaccurate sources which all too frequently only blend strains of propaganda seasoned with rationalization in order to obfuscate what really happened and why.  It is fascinating to realize that either Herman Hesse was prescient or, more likely, that the history we are taught is so bogus that “the more we claim things change, the more they actually stay the same”.

I have another author to thank for my renewed interest in Hermann Hesse, one who reminds me of a now deceased friend, the brilliant translator and poet, Sam Hamill, who founded “Poets against War” as the disastrous second United States incursion into Iraq loomed.  His name is Germán Eugenio Restrepo and I met him at the introduction of his latest “sort-of-novel in a fascinating blend of art gallery, cultural center, restaurant and bar in the City of Manizales, a special and somewhat esoteric place with the very appropriate name, given the context of this article, of “El Bestiario” (the Bestiary in Spanish).  Germán mentioned Herman Hesse in passing in his novel, and then, responding to my detailed observations, reflections and analysis, admitted that, like so many others, he’d found Steppenwolf particularly meaningful in his youth, perhaps even foundational.  That led me to almost immediately purchase a copy of Steppenwolf, along with copies of other Herman Hesse’s novels I’d either never read or had lost (I’ve always kept a copy of Siddhartha nearby but I now also own Narcissus and Goldmund, Beneath the Wheel and The Glass Bead Game, all of which I’ve yet to start). 

Germán’s novel is entitled, in Spanish, Diatriba de un Ángel Caído (Diatribe of a Fallen Angel).  He’s a complex, erudite and talented fellow who, as in the case of Chilean Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda, can “confess that he has lived.  His “novel” is full of insights and allusions to other works, of references to numerous philosophers and to enlightening esoterica.  Indeed, such allusions seemed as though they, rather than any of the characters in his book, were the protagonists, but its most endearing quality was the personal introspection it stimulated and the lost memories and feelings it evoked.  Germán’s novel also provided emotionally enlightening insights into the Republic of Colombia where I was born, and where, after half a century abroad, I again live, and of its disastrous history of bellicosity and inequity.  Unfortunately, his novel will probably be difficult to obtain, although with todays’ virtual world, perhaps electronic copies will be available.  It hope so.  It is one thing to read history and quite another to feel as though one were actually a participant in the distressing historical realities narrated, something both Hesse and Germán were able to elicit.

I’m a bit over two thirds of the way through The Steppenwolf and “Hermine”, the female protagonist, is evolving from the initial impression Hesse generated, although “her evolution” is not quite contextually accurate, she is who she always was and it is only my impression of who she is that is evolving.  I was initially struck by her ability to immediately attain total control over the chief protagonist, Harry Haller, something I’d once experienced (as the object) with a woman who kept me enthralled for about a decade in what now seems another life, but Hermine is quickly becoming more multidimensional and I find myself in that delightful point where, immersed in literature, I seem personally involved; recognizing the situation in which the protagonists find themselves but, as in the case of John Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”, unsure just how that resonance will play out.  I can’t help but contrast Steppenwolf with Hesse’s Siddhartha, an allegorical novel which I have loved for decades, and the comparison is still very much in the latter’s favor, but I’m intrigued by how that perception may evolve given the fame of the former.  The Steppenwolf seemed a bit convoluted at the start but has become a bit more human in the middle.  I guess the transcendent elements are yet to come, at least for me.

“The” Steppenwolf, which I enjoy using as the title instead of merely Steppenwolf, is, in my opinion, the more appropriately translated title, although “the Steppenwolves” might have been more contextually accurate, as the novel deals with a bipolar hypothesis tested by multipolarity, one with which I’ve played in some of my own writings, especially in relationship to analyzing reincarnation, where I posit that if it exists, then our physical bodies are likely simultaneous experiential vehicles for myriads of entities requiring specific experiences, sort of like the “Legion” with whom Yeshua the Nazarene once interacted, but in a much more benign sense.  I’m intrigued by the spiritual concept of panentheism and in that sense, reincarnation would be the panentheistic means through which the divine, learns, evolves and approaches perfection (which it can never attain).  A context in which we are merely Divinity’s cells and organs.  In that sense, I’ve irreverently toyed with the idea that the more we pray, the more the Divine suffers from migraines.

In my own writings I frequently explore alternative perspectives from a contrarian viewpoint, exploring how, for example, Lucifer, Caine, Benedict Arnold and others almost universally adjudged arch villains perceive of themselves in relation to their antagonists.  And that proclivity is not limited to fiction.  I tend to champion causes disdained by many of my peers, even so far as to defend people whose values I find distasteful, Donald Trump being an example.

Sort of in that vein but taking another turn towards the irreverent (but perhaps not irrelevant), I will here dare to read between the lines writ by Hesse, delving into an essential aspect of the human psyche, one dealt with but perhaps not adequately articulated in The Steppenwolf (although, as I am only about two thirds of the way through the novel, I may be quite wrong).  It deals with the allegorical reality that not all literary wolves are wild animals.  Indeed, metaphorically, men who are enthralled by the predatory physical expression of lust (albeit usually denominated as love), are also referred to as “wolves” and thus, perhaps a person who perceives of himself as in a state of bipolarity between such a wolf and a more decent, more respectable or at least more superficially acceptable personality might, after having read Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, consider himself a “schtuppenwolf”.  Personally, I find that term somewhat horrifyingly corny and way too much of a pun, but it just won’t go away as I share these impressions.  So, how might I share with the reader just what that impression entails?  Perhaps the concept can best be illustrated through an example in recent “media culture” (I can’t help but reflect that the phrase “media culture” seems somewhat oxymoronic).  The example that comes to mind involves the qualities, traits and practices fictionally memorialized in a comedic television series no longer generally available (having been judged as politically incorrect); i.e., the character of Charley Harper, played by Charlie Sheen (Carlos Estevez) in “Two-and-a-Half-Men”.  I wonder if Mr. Estevez ever read Steppenwolf, or any of the novels written by Hermann Hesse.  Others more critical of Mr. Estevez may unfairly wonder if he ever read anything at all.  Much earlier during the dawn of the television era, my example would have been the protagonist in a series about a photographer, The Bob Cummings Show.

Admittedly this turn in these observations seems a bit frivolous.  But it’s also relevant in the context of the complexity evoked by Hermann Hesse’s literary creation.  At least as far as I can glean (so far), Harry, the male protagonist in Steppenwolf, unexpectedly has room in his confusion for levity as well gloom, something Hermine clearly understands.  So, it seems fair to wonder, at least I do, what Hermann Hesse would have thought of the concept of a schtuppenwolf. 

At first blush, one might suspect that he would have found it disagreeable, but then, given his defense of multipolarity instead of bipolarity, there would certainly be room in the complex human psyche he portrayed for one or more schtuppenwolves, as well as for all sorts of alternative psychosocial personalities.  Indeed, to an extent, finding and extracting the schtuppenwolf seems to be what Hermann Hesse’s heroine, “Hermine”, sought to accomplish with Harry Haller when she intimately acquainted him with her friend, Maria. 

Initially the antithesis of Charley Harper, Harry eventually incorporates some of Charley Harper’s attributes into his complex of personalities.  Or perhaps, he merely becomes reacquainted with them, having experienced them during a happier youth, and then misplaced them.  It occurs to me that Carlos Estevez/Charlie Sheen/Charley Harper might also have opinions with reference to the foregoing (after all, he already has multiple names).  One wonders whether he might not find Derr Schtuppenwolf an excellent title for his own composite biography, or even better, autobiography.  Oh what a tale that could make, with dozens of Hermines and Marias, etc. 

I wonder what my new friend Germán will think of these observations.   He is profoundly serious and eclectic but not bereft of a sense of humor.  And sexual passion and eroticism play crucial roles in his own novel so that the concept of a schtuppenwolf might actually have a role to play therein, albeit unwritten; as it does in many poets and artists, or at least had before the Dawn of the Woke.  Schtuppenwolves, if not extinct, must now be carefully obfuscated.

What an admittedly strange digression in an article concerning serious novels, but perhaps, not one uncalled for.  Rather, what a sad reflection on our values and with reference to the world in which we find ourselves that, rather than joyous, the concept of a schtuppenwolf seems so incongruously out of place when analyzing one of Hermann Hesse’s seminal novels.  Actually, out of place anywhere if one hopes to avoid career shattering litigation.  Ask Johnny Depp for example.

If only the schtuppenwolf’s onomatopoeic component and “punnic” (as a neologistic derivative adjective for pun) aspects were not so prominent.

Postscript of sorts:

I’ve now passed the three quarters mark, I’m towards the end of the masked ball, Hermine has already revealed herself to Harry and, no, Harry lacks the qualities essential for a schtuppenwolf.  The desire is there, and the physical joy, as is the eroticism, but not the predatory elements necessary for a real schtuppenwolf.  In fact, it is Hermine and Maria who possess the requisite combination of energy and apparent disdain that make a schtuppenwolf.  But there’s still almost a quarter of the novel to go, a quarter of the novel in which, perhaps, I`ll find its existential nature, and perhaps a schtuppenwolf or two.

“Yearning”, a fox trot.  Wondering what made it so special to Harry and the rest of the guests at the masque ball, I played it on YouTube.  Alas, I guess I lacked the appropriate context, or perhaps I was too full of context Harry and the others had yet to experience, nor could I identify the sounds of a saxophone Pablo would have been playing.  Oh well.  Still, Hesse made me curious enough to step out of the novel for an instant.  Nicely done!  On the other hand, YouTube automatically played “Suave” by Johannes Linstead next and, though separated by almost a century, Pablo on the saxophone seemed eerily present, eerily but happily.  And it occurred to me that if Harry was not a schtuppenwolf, Pablo most probably was, happily and innocently so.  Can a schtuppenwolf be innocent though?

Now it’s done, resolution irresolutely unresolved and the existential experience denied me.  A strange journey though, in that Magic Theater, the one starring Pablo as the schtuppenwolf and quite a bit more.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The Irrelevance of International Humanitarian Law

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Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate the premises on which World War II has been judged.  After all, apparently the problems with genocide and ethnic cleansing which purportedly differentiated the two warring camps may have had more to do with the methods with which those two purported crimes against humanity were implemented, or perhaps the numbers involved, rather than with they’re having been undertaken.  Gas bad!  Bombs good.  That was sort of clear when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed but seems absolutely clear now with the Israeli destruction of the Gaza Strip and elimination of its troublesome population. 

Interestingly though, United States courts at both the state and federal level have ruled that execution through use of gas chambers does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment; see, e.g., Hunt v. Nuth, 57 F.3d 1327 (4th Cir. 1995), Gray v. Lucas, 710 F.2d 1048 (5th Cir. 1983) and the Supreme Court decision in Gomez v. Fierro, 519 U.S. 918 (1996).  To violate the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment it would need to involve some sort of torture, such as dismemberment (as results, for example from non-nuclear forms of bombing). 

Hmmm, so just what is the difference?

Given the foregoing, perhaps the Nazis, while extremely unpleasant towards diverse ethnic and social groups executed in gas chambers (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, sexually deviant groups as measured by standards at the time, etc.), where less culpable of crimes against humanity, at least in the manner of execution if not in numbers, than today’s Israel.  Since today’s Israeli campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing against non-Jews in the area of Greater Israel (the Nazi concept of lebensraum comes to mind) have been deemed appropriate responses to feelings of national insecurity and reprisals for rebellion such as those which occurred during the second war to end all wars in the Warsaw ghetto and elsewhere; perhaps Germans of all stripes are owed an apology, perhaps the decisions of the Nuremburg tribunals need to be vacated, and perhaps appropriate compensation should be paid to the descendants of those executed and otherwise punished erroneously in such trials as well as in the similar trials held in Tokyo.

As current Israeli leaders have specified, no rules involving human rights or proscriptions against lesa humanidad are applicable to military reprisals against groups deemed undesirable or inconvenient in light of national objectives.

Case closed, finally!!!  It’s only logical.  Everyone is innocent except, of course, for the victims.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.