Wis[s]e Words

What an asshole

Published on February 23, 2010

Ian McEwan talks about his novel Saturday and the confrontation at the heart of it between his protagonist, nice upper middleclass neurosurgeon Henry Perowne and the villain of the piece, Baxter, which is symbolic of some greater confrontation:

IMcE: Let’s put it this way: I am not writing an allegory here. I am not making Henry stand for something. But, nevertheless, just a little or maybe a lot below the surface in his confrontation with Baxter is an echo of the confrontation of the rich, satisfied, contented West with a demented strand of a major world religion.

As you know Bob, the plot of Saturday takes place on Saturday, 15 Februari 2003, the day two million people marched through London against the War on Iraq, but which none of the characters in the book joined, even the vaguely antiwar ones, because they all had something better to do. The march only features as the catalyst that brings Henry and Baxter together in their not quite symbolic, symbolic confrontation and in several minor encounters which are only there do drive McEwan’s point home that going on an antiwar march is a deeply unserious thing to do. That McEwan indeed intended the confrontation between villain and protagonist to be symbolic — “an echo” — of the War on Terror (as viewed bya a middleaged bedwetting upper middle class writer fearful of the loss of his priviledges) is no more than the rank icing on a rotten cake. Christ, what an asshole.

The Trojans and their Neighbours – Trevor Bryce

Published on February 22, 2010

The Trojans and their Neighbours

The Trojans and their Neighbours
Trevor Bryce
225 pages including index
published in 2006

The cover looks like it should belong on the course book of a not particularly interesting IT certification course, but don’t let that fool you. Behind it hides one of the more engaging and interesting history books I’ve read in the past year or so. Which came as no surprise to me, as I had already read one of Trevor Bryce’s other history books, The Kingdom of the Hittites. The cover therefore couldn’t scare me off…

The subject itself helps as well of course. The story of Troy, the city at the heart of Homer’s Iliad, thought to be no more than a myth until Schliemann actually dug it up remains endlessly fascinating to anybody interested in ancient history. As Bryce mentions, even today the question of whether or not the Troy Schliemann dug up was the “real” Troy, Homer’s Troy is still hotly debated. But as Bryce argues, this is also the least interesting question you can ask about the actually existing Troy. Troy existed for several thousand years and was a flourishing community long before and after the Trojan War supposedly happened. With an emphasis on the Bronze Ages, The Trojans and their Neighbours attempts to put straight the real history and position of Troy — was it as important a city state as you would assume from Homer, or just another smallish Bronze Age settlement, and what were its relations with its neighbours?

Balkenende sees his fourth government fall

Published on February 20, 2010

But still doesn’t think it could be him, not his coalition partners who are to blame. The split that caused his fourth cabinet to finish pre-maturely was the War on Afghanistan. Balkenende and his party, the christian democratic CDA, as well as the junior partner the ChristenUnie wanted to extend the mission for a second time, while the social democratic PvdA wanted to leave Afghanistan this year, as agreed when the mission was extended for the first time. While the PvdA was always conflicted about Afghanistan, it had allowed itself to be won over for extention back in 2007 because of this promise that this would be the last time and the argument that not doing so would lose the Netherlands face in NATO, that Dutch troops were doing good work in the country and it would be a shame to stop this.

With the end of the current mission in sight — August 2010 is the deadline — the same approach was tried again by the CDA but for once Wouter Bos showed he could learn and didn’t fall for Lucy yanking that ol’ footbal back for the second time. Not that there’s much evidence of principles being at stake here, rather than more mundane party political reasons for refusal — local elections are imminent and the PvdA is not doing well. But if this means Dutch troops will finally leave a country they never should have entered in the first place — and fuck NATO.

The talking heads on the television have been having a field day with this. Much of the commentary has been bemoaning the fact that this silly argument is endangering tackling the very real problems facing the country. Why couldn’t the two parties have put aside their differences for the sake of the country as a whole? Which is the sort of recieved wisdom that always makes me want to hurl a shoe at the television. Afghanistan isn’t a trivial issue and neither should the differences between the various parties be. We used to understand that, but thirty years of pretending that political differences are only possible within a narrow neoliberal consensus has left both our politicians and commentators unable to do so. But even to them it must be clear that the “solutions” Balkenende IV offered for the economic crisis –spending cuts on all sorts of social programmes, more freedom for businesses to do what they want — goes directly to the heart of what the social democrats still stand for. Had it not been Afghanistan, something else would probably have shattered this coalition, which never was that strong to begin with.

Sadly, for socialists the outlook is bleak. The 2006 elections delivered the most leftwing parliament in decades, but still only gave us a rightleaning centrist government. With the rise of Wilders, the slow collapse of the PvdA and the Socialist Party, chances are the next parliament and government will once again govern from the right. On the other hand, having a strong, undivided leftwing opposition may be useful too, as we saw between 2002 and 2006, forcing the government on the defensive.

The cost of treatment was never an issue

Published on February 18, 2010

It may be as early as the middle of next week that S. is finally discharged from the hospital and able to come home. It’s been a long and hard road since our operation on 22 December last year and she has stayed in the hospital for the better part of two months… I can’t deny it’s been hard and tiring for the both of us, for me to see her so ill and weak, for her to be the that week, to actually wake up after the first crisis had finally passed and realise that she couldn’t remember anything that had happened since the day before the operation. Worse, like DC Comics in the past few years, she couldn’t stick to one crisis and actually had to go back to the hospital after she was discharged too soon. What she at first thought was some stomach or bowel problems got worse and worse, we went to the emergency department of the hospital, she was taken in again and the next day they had to do an emergency operation, re-opening the wound to drain more than a litre of infected fluid from around the kidney. It was this that had caused the stomach upsets, literally compressing her guts. Awful, awful, stress filled days and sleepless nights, but there was one worry we never had.

Whether we could afford to pay for all this. We will never get the bill for this, never will have to worry whether this emergency operation or the cost of S.’s lifelong immunosuppressant drugs treatment would bankrupt us, never even will have to worry whether it will put our insurance costs up or whether the costs of the transplant will be balanced out by the savings in not having to have dialysis anymore (In case you’re wondering, the NHS thinks the cost of a transplant is only slightly more than half the cost of a year’s worth of dialysis). Never an issue, never even something that entered my head to worry about, though S., who has spent a couple of years in the US, did every now and again. Even associated costs, like the transport to and from the hospital for the trice-weekly dialysis sessions, were never something we had to pay.

Which is an experience that people in most of the richer countries in the world will recognise, and something most citizens and governments in less rich countries want to emulate. Everywhere in the world it is taken for granted that free or cheap healthcare is a Good Thing — except it seems in the US. What everywhere else is seen as a liberation, is sold in the US as slavery, with the very real possibility of either being bankrupted by medical costs or dying because you can’t afford treatment presented as freedom of choice! You have people like Matt Welch opposing public healthcare while knowing it’s superior to the American “health care” system simply because it would put their taxes up sand they’re rich enough to buy what they need and screw everybody else. How shit hasn’t been burned down yet I’ll never know…

Nicotine-Use Disorder .. Wait, what?

Published on February 17, 20103 Comments

Found via Unspeak, from a draft proposal to the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association: nicotine use disorder:

A maladaptive pattern of substance use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by 2 (or more) of the following, occurring within a 12-month period

Which is followed by a list of supposed symptoms of this, including gems like “Craving or a strong desire or urge to use a specific substance” and “there is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control substance use”. All the symptoms are on this “well, duh” level or generic to any sort of addiction, as if the proponents of this addition have just cut and pasted a list of symptoms in under various headers, as indeed somebody has.

Does it matter, this reclassifying of various addictions as “disorders”? I think so, as it’s both offensive and misleading to suggest that somebody who is addicted to cigarettes, booze or drugs is immediately suffering from a disorder. You may have problems, sure, but are they psychiatric problems? Or do you just, engage in behaviour psychiatrists have labeled as such, like homosexuality used to be until surprisingly recent? Attempting to solve such “disorders” with psychiatric methods is liable to cause more damage than do good, while the medicalisation of societal problems does nothing to address their root causes. You can’t solve everything with a little blue pill.