Plots for and against America

Topical Review

Roth, Philip. The Plot Against America. Vintage International, 2004.

Roth's novel demonstrates the resiliency of the American republic and the inherent decency of "average" Americans, Gentile and Jew alike. It also raises troubling questions for what "best for America" means on the global stage. This tension between pragmatism and ideals is shot through the novel but it is also found in the appended 9/11 (1941!) speech by Charles Lindbergh to an a gathering of America-Firsters. Lindbergh notes that the push for war is backed by three groups: "the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration" (Roth 386).  

At the level of facticity, Lindbergh's claim was certainly true: all three favored military action by the U.S. against the fascists. But it also true that it was deeply naive to think that the USA could be a kind of super-Switzerland that could avoid worldly entanglements outside our borders and shores.

Were the world compartmentalizable to the degree that the America-Firsters envisioned, Lindbergh's splendid isolation could make some sense (political, if not moral). But here Lindbergh suffered from a kind of temporary blindness: his underestimation of the totalitarian threat and its voracious appetite. It is now unimaginable to think that the Axis Powers would have simply stopped at a certain point and "left well enough alone." But Lindbergh's blindness was temporary: after the attack on Pearl Harbor he fully supported the war effort and actively trained pilots and personally participated in combat operations in the South Pacific.

When push came to shove, we could all be Americans: Jew and Gentile, Democrat and Republican, Catholic and Protestant. Yet it is by a slender thread that we have remained one. "Could," not "always will." There is no guarantee in the future that our better angels will succeed. Roth's book illustrates this truth in ways winsome and evocative. 

Of Nazis and Grace - Adam's Apples, Part I (2005)

Of Nazis and Grace – Adam's Apples

Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen's Adam's Apples probably could not have succeeded with admittedly talented directors such as Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers (even though Jensen seems at times to be channeling their respective muses). 

Adam Pedersen (Ulrich Thomsen) is a neo-Nazi released from prison to a Lutheran parish serving both as a small community of faith and halfway house. His tattoos, demeanor, and especially his framed picture of Adolf Hitler demonstrate to the world that this “egg-head” (the derisive term applied to him by the gas station-robbing-Saudi, Khalid) has no use for Jesus, Jews or Muslims. Adam wants to finish his sentence with as little bother as possible so he can get back to the various sorts of business that European skinheads presumably attend to.

Fate or God or the Devil intervene with Adam's simple plan and he soon finds himself on a kind of quest to destroy the faith of the ultra-optimistic pastor, Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen). For Ivan, the glass is not merely half-full, but brimming over. Every difficulty and misfortune is shown in an impossibly positive light: the drunken Gunnar (Nicolas Bro) is “a reformed alcoholic,” Khalid no longer robs gas stations although he still does, and Ivan's son who is bound to a wheel-chair with palsy is constantly active and playing in the yard. Adam sees this obvious disconnect between what Ivan sees and what really exists and it enrages him.

There is a subtle irony here as the Nazis were famous (or infamous) for their inability to see the humanity of their victims even when face-to-face with them or as their remains fell like snow from the crematoria.

Nevertheless, Adam makes it his mission to destroy Ivan. The method seems to be suggested by the Devil who is off-stage throughout the film but quite active. The method is one familiar to readers of the New Testament: Adam will use the, word of God to tempt Ivan to give up his faith. On several occassions the Bible which Ivan has given Adam falls open to the Book of Job. Adam finally takes Lucifer's none too subtle suggestion to read Job and from this Old Testament tale of loss and temptation Adam cobbles a plan to bring down Ivan. 

The plan is startlingly simple: to convince Ivan that all of his misfortunes are the fault not of the Devil but of God Himself “who hates you.” Adams relentlessness finally breaks Adam who begins bleeding from his ears and falls into a coma. If only to avoid a charge of homicide, Adam takes Ivan to the local medical clinic. Ivan recovers from the physical trauma but the spiritual damage is infinitely great: Ivan has completely lost his faith in God and suddenly has no use for the image of God either. And he has a meddlesome brain tumor to contend with, which is on the verge of killing him.

Ivan's change is so radical that it deeply disturbs Adam. He sees that Gunnar and Khalid – whom he has no use for according to the tenets of Nazism for one is a useless drunkard and complete moral degenerate, and the other a subhuman “Paki” Muslim – are distraught and disoriented. His plan has worked too well: he sought to teach Ivan a lesson but suddenly Adam finds his own world is being destroyed as well. Ivan's faith was not reasonable but it was the bedrock of a community of misfits. A community in which Adam too was accepted and loved.

Deciding that he might as well bake the cake that was his community service project, Adam heads to the scorched apple tree that was struck by lightning. He and Khalid attempt to salvage enough apples for a modest pie. Just then Adam's old pals arrive and unleash a train of insults at Adam and question why he would be in the presence of a “sand nigger.” Khalid, who we learned earlier in the film is a decent marksman has no patience with this racists and the gang leaves wounded and angry and humiliated. Later Ivan confronts the same group of neo-Nazis who are causing a ruckus. He says he doesn't care who they kill as long as they give him peace and quiet. In a struggle for one of the Nazi's pistols, Ivan takes a bullet through the eye.

As a result, Ivan does not die but the pistol round instead removes the tumor completely. They don't ALL live happily ever after: the cynical Doctor Kohlberg (who egged-on the egghead Adam to mock Ivan's faith) finds himself leaving his practice at the hospital. He raves:

I am a man of science, I believe in numbers and charts. Goddamnit, I wanna go someplace, where people die when they are sick, and don't sit in the yard eating cowboy toast when they have been shot through the head.

This is not film that helps one understand the relationship between faith and reason, but it does illustrate that God can take our worst intentions and motives, and transform them into something beautiful. If this Adam can become a new Adam, why not us?

On Subbing for the First Time

The first teaching license I obtained was a substitute but heretofore yesterday I had never subbed. When the call came early yesterday morning, every fiber of my being was saying, "No, I don't want to do this..." But it seemed a little absurd to be seeking work and not say Yes to an opportunity to teach for a day at a charter school.

I approached it with this mantra in mind: The human heart is the same everywhere. Meaning, that despite the awkwardness of being an understudy, these students have a human need and I can help them in whatever way I can help them. So help me, God.

It was actually very pleasant if not completely delightful (for when is work ever thus?). I subbed for a History/Government/Economics teacher and that was good because I'm competent in those areas. I did an impromptu "intelligence test" by writing the following quotations on the board and soliciting volunteers to answer the question Who said that?

• A little more than kin, and less than kind.
  

• I want no intellectual education. ... I would prefer them only to learn what they will acquire freely following their play instinct.

One kid identified the first as Hamlet immediately. He said, "Well, somethings you just know." Wow.

The second quotation is more obscure so I had to give the hint "World War 2". We ran through a list of Who's Who until we got to Adolf Hitler. Hitler said it, but John Dewey certainly thought along similar lines (and he would agree with Hitler that this free play must be guided toward a socially desirable end). Those ends are arguable quite different but the means more similar than dissimilar.

I have only one negative comment about the school I subbed at: the darn 55 minute class periods. Too, too short.

Rise and Downfall

Although it is not the longest book I've ever read, it comes close: William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. This is a book I've wanted to read since I was in sixth grade. It was far too daunting for me then, but it was worth the wait.

A mere summary?

I tell people that this book is an interesting summary of Hitler and the rise and fall of Nazism in a "mere" 1143 pages (plus notes). But it is a summary in the sense that one gets a feel for the major players and events but at no point is there a lot of historical depth.

Still, there is enough context and detail that events such as the rescue at Dunkirk are riveting even though one knows the final outcome.

One becomes aware of so many lost opportunities to stop Hitler early on, but one is also left with the sense that he might very well have gotten away with far more than he did and the present world order could be far different. Chilling.

Existential lessons

Perhaps what moved me the most in reading this book was the realization of things I've left undone or unsaid out of fear or of human respect or God-knows-what. I'm thinking of some events in the last few years in my professional life where I was a guilty bystander. Letting the emperor proclaim how great his (or her) new wardrobe was -- knowing all the while it was utter nonsense, or, worse still, harmful nonsense which did sensible and perhaps permanent harm to decent people.

Those omissions of mine - how were they any different from the silences of so many Germans in the 30s and 40s? We are all so ready to declaim, "THEY should have known better," but the plain fact is that they is us: my humanity, their humanity, your humanity - it is the same. Sure, the weight of the situation is different, but that points out the merely obvious by way of evasion.

Enter Downfall

If Shirer's book is a summary of the Nazi period, the same is true of the film Downfall of it's final days. Bruno Ganz is brilliant as Hitler: one gets a sense of his madness for sure, but also his "tenderness" and pockets of humanity that are hidden behind the famous mustache.

The film is based largely on a memoir of one of Hitler's secretaries, Traudl Jung (played by Alexandra Maria Lara) and much of the action is seen from her perspective. In an older documentary, an old Traudl addresses the "how could you?" question. She admits that it seemed to her for many years that she was not culpable for much of anything and then, one day, something happened. She came upon a memorial to Sophie Scholl and the White Rose movement. She saw Sophie's date of birth and realized they were the same age. The same age but such different responses to Nazism! It was there that she realized she could have acted differently.

Adolf or Therese?

One of the joys of taking a sabbatical (of sorts) is the change in routine it provides. A most pleasant change in my life has been decreasing the amount of AM talk radio chatter I listen to. Instead of this chatter, I've been reading more. Currently I'm reading St. Therese's Story of a Soul and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Talk about an odd couple.

Power or Love?

What I've gleaned so far from Therese is an overarching idea (as simple as it is counter-cultural): success doesn't mean very much. As a public school teacher who became immensely bored by both the utilitarian praxis of the "educrats" and mindless slogans such as "every child can succeed," Therese's life is of great interest. She accomplished nothing that changed history, nor was she was responsible for a technological innovation that made life easier; rather, she simply made her entire life an offering to Christ's merciful love. She had one insight and ran with it. Now, she's a Doctor of the Church and her life is a compelling answer to the title of a book by Wendell Berry -- What are People for? Her life indicates that what ultimately matters is love, not the gods of power and success or blood and iron.

Enter Adolf

I've read many books on the Second World War. I even took a course entitled Nazi Germany (the professor was such an expert on the subject that it was no mere academic exercise -- his mannerisms while lecturing mirrored those of Adolf Hitler, which was at once hilarious and eery). But it is reading Shirer's book at this time in our history that I've been truly chilled by Hitler.

As I listen to AM radio (right and left, chocolate and vanilla), I see little corporals running through trench-works; I smell stale beer and acrid cigarette smoke in a beer hall; I hear the thud and scrape of heavy boots on cobblestone streets. Perhaps I have an overactive imagination.

Enter Ideology

What is not imaginary is the delusions of ideology. Not simply the delusions of a particular ideology (be it national socialism or communism), but the fact that ideology is never able to admit its inadequacies. In The Religious Sense, Luigi Giussani notes that ideology takes an aspect of reality and makes it "into an absolute" (p. 95). Herein lies both the appeal of AM radio and its reductionism, which could be fatal to the republic if it were taken seriously.