Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
I didn't invent it (I miss paigow, sniff) but he is Lonesome Rhodes, except he already did the thing that took lonesome down (I could shoot someone in 5th Avenue and they'd still support me) and it didn't matter.
There is no actual human as bad as him with anywhere near his power- need to go to fiction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzCQLyNnIg |
That's pretty awesome. How'd I get this far and not see that flick?
Regarding fiction, the argument at hand regarding Trump's "collusion" with Russia seems to be, "It might not have been illegal, but it was morally wrong." Putting aside the facial problems with judging political campaigns on moral bases, the counter to this argument is, "Politics is about winning and losing, and all that you can get away with is fair."
This raises the issue of whether the law is the law or the law is power. a/k/a ability to "just win, baby." In the world of fiction, there's no more concise assessment of how these notions conflict than the Judge's speech on moral law from
Blood Meridian:
This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.
Brown studied the Judge. You’re crazy Holden. Crazy at last.
The judge smiled.
Might does not make right, said Irving. The man that wins in some combat is not vindicated morally.
Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest. Man’s vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgements ultimately he must submit them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural.
The judge searched out the circle for disputants. But what says the priest? he said.
Tobin looked up. The priest does not say.
The priest does not say, said the judge. Nihil dicit.
I've read
Blood Meridian several times now. You can pick it up and reread it endlessly. If you haven't read it, you really ought to do so. It's tough going up front, but once it gains a head of steam, you can't put it down. And if you pay attention to its themes, you'll never forget it.
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