When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things and a group of people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?”
Objective reality – the existence of things as they are – is obvious to everyone. And so are the values, accumulated over several millennia, of what is true and of what works and what hasn’t. But not everyone accepts the obvious and the values based on time proven objective reality. Some see themselves as Progressive in rejecting both.
Today’s academic, artistic, media, and political elites, a vanguard of Progressive Groupthink, reject the existence of things as they are and do so within the safe space of their ranks thereby creating an illusion of invulnerability and inherent morality. Members of this vanguard suppress dissenting opinions and avoid critically evaluated alternatives so as to maintain the group’s shared illusion of unanimity.
The vanguard’s conformity is maintained with mind guards – the media reports “right thinking” about a matter – and with self-censorship of deviations from shared beliefs and with shared views of the enemy – those who present a reality contrary to the groups’ notion of reality.
When we hear the vanguard’s irrational take on what is going on in the world, its roiling Doublethink, its name calling and shunning of voices outside its collective choir, and its dysfunctional decision-making which objective reality tells us will result in disastrous, dehumanizing, and even deadly outcomes, we ask “Where is this coming from and where is this going?
Those of us who keep an ear to the ground in order to hear what is approaching will answer “History is repeating itself.”
The objective reality of the murderous totalitarian regimes of the last century, which Progressives willfully ignore to promote their glorious future of equality via the same means, will help us understand the denial-of-reality collaboration of today’s intelligentsia – those who hold to one way of thinking – and their quest for total domination of the body, mind, and soul with Progressive Groupthink.
Specifically, Russian Soviet history will help us understand the conformity dynamic behind today’s intelligentsia. For this understanding I turn to one of the most informed scholars of the Russian history of ideas as communicated in its literature: Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson.
He describes Soviet thinking that rejected the realism and the real people depicted in nineteenth-century Russian fiction and required that reality be written to include “not only of the observable present but also the inevitable future in the making” and with Socialist Realist heroes – utopianism made flesh.
Writers of Russian realism – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and others – wrote about what they saw and experienced. They are the “wonder” in the title. They represented the world as it was in their writings about the Gulag, mass starvation, torture, unspeakable violence, about how people thought about and dealt with what was going on, and about how many succumbed to the imposed Soviet mindset.
Russian realist authors confronted those of the “certainty,” those who wrote redefined reality in terms of the “observable present and the inevitable future in the making” and in terms of “positive heroes.”
The “positive hero” was to set an example for the reader’s behavior. A Soviet cosmonaut, for one example, became a “positive hero.” A cosmonaut’s space trip was seen as science, materialism, and atheism triumphing over the transcendent values held in the U.S., the enemy of the Soviet Union.
The “certainty” writers followed the lead of the embodiment of “certainty” – Vladimir Lenin. Lenin mocked his opponents’ self-characterization as ‘seekers’ of truth. He held that dialectical materialists do not seek truth; they already possess it. And so, the party-minded “positive hero” refused dialogue, refused to see any alternatives to the Marxist-Leninist-materialist-atheistic “truth” espoused by the party, the representatives of Karl Marx’s class-struggling proletariat.
From Wonder Confronts Certainty:
“The Soviets would label fidelity to present facts “bourgeois objectivism.” It was the best that could be expected from the age of realism, but must give way to socialist realism, which shows the ideal world inevitably coming. The socialist realist author was expected to focus on the people of the future, “positive heroes” exhibiting complete “Party-mindedness.” True positive heroes do not have bring their thinking into accord with the party, a process requiring effort; they exhibit Party-mindedness so thorough that no effort is required”
“Party-mindedness”, we learn from the writings of Russian realist authors, was propagated through the means of propaganda, show trials, random arrests, and the constant terror that there might be any hint, any innuendo, any false statement that would convict one of not being party-minded.
The “party-mindedness” of the 20th century Russian intelligentsia, its conformity to only one way of thinking, is replicated today.
“I happened to witness two professors waiting for an elevator. To make conversation, one voiced an opinion on some political question to see if the other agreed. When she did, they chattered away on a dozen other topics with perfect assurance that they agreed on those, too. Evidently, their beliefs came as a package. Subsequently I noticed this way of thinking many times, as I imagine many of my readers have.
The process works something like this: a person first chooses the group with whom he wishes to identify and then adopts its opinions. He believes as strongly in gun control, let us say, as he does in supporting Planned Parenthood, defunding the police, and banning fossil fuels. It is evident that no arguments or evidence can shake his opinions on any of these topics because arguments or evidence had nothing to do with why they were adopted.
To be sure, a person who thinks this way can cite facts and reasons to justify his opinion, but they have been acquired in the same way as the opinion itself. They are the same reasons others in the group have learned to give. I used to find it eerie to hear repeatedly the same arguments expressed in the same phrases, as if I were listening to a recording rather than to highly educated people who imagined that, unlike their intellectual inferiors, they had arrived at opinions rationally and would change them as evidence warranted. I thought of Jonathan Swift’s observation that no one was ever talked out of an opinion he was not first talked into.”
***
Reading Morson’s article, I was reminded of the easy-going liberal mindset of the Stiva Oblonsky character in Tolstoy’s Russian realism novel Anna Karenina.
Behind Stiva’s smile, his self-possessed mannerisms and hedonism is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood.”
From the novel:
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
Stiva, we learn in in the novel, does not recognize his conscious when it speaks to him. And that is aided by his living-in-the-moment forgetting. He did not want to remember any unpleasant thing.
Self-deception and romantic ideology play key roles in Anna’s life.
***
Czeslaw Milosz, Polish American poet, novelist, translator, critic, and diplomat, is best known for The Captive Mind (1953). His essay collection focuses on intellectuals, specifically poets and other writers.
As Charles Haywood writes in his 2019 article The Captive Mind (Czeslaw Milosz), [Milosz’s] “book shows how mental gymnastics, rather than coercion, caused writers under Communism to adhere to Communism. Thereby, indirectly, it congratulates writers who believe their minds free from such, or other, contortions.
“The West incorrectly sees “might and coercion” as the reasons those in Eastern Europe submit to Communism. But, rather, unwilling to face either physical or spiritual death, many choose instead to be “reborn” through taking these metaphorical pills, because “[t]here is an internal longing for harmony and happiness that lies deeper than ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” Intellectuals, and artists especially,do not want to be “internal exiles, irreconcilable, non-participating, eroded by hatred.” So they swallow the pills and adopt the “New Faith” (a term Milosz uses throughout the book) which offers the intellectual the certainty he is both correct and virtuous, and therefore gives him a sense of belonging, gives him a feeling of being “warm-hearted and good . . . a friend of mankind—not mankind as it is, but as it should be.”” (Emphasis mine.)
Returning to Morson’s article about package thinking, Morson relates
“What really matters, [Czeslaw} Milosz explains, is “the intellectual’s feeling of belonging.” His defining “characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.” For this reason, as well as to prosper, he must root out all the old ways of thinking. Milosz describes a phenomenon with which university people are all too familiar, the always incomplete process of teaching oneself to say the right things (in the right words), and avoid saying the wrong ones, so that one never makes a slip entailing ostracism or worse. Of course, the best way to do this is to get oneself actually to share the prescribed views. Milosz describes how
after long acquaintance with his role, a man grows into it so closely that he can no longer differentiate his true self from the self he simulates, so that even the most intimate of individuals speak to each other in Party slogans. To identify self with the role one is obliged to play . . . permits a relaxation of one’s vigilance. Proper reflexes at the proper time become truly automatic.”
***
One obvious feature of our culture’s downward trend toward mindless conformity is critical thinking’s easy alternative: clicking on a machine to receive packaged thoughts.
Why think when packaged thoughts are there for the clicking? And why expand one’s personal bandwidth when you can reaffirm your tribal identity with a click?
Why research and consider a range of ideas and thoughts when clicking on machine AI is ready to do away with mystery and your curiosity, wonder, and impatience? And why think outside package thinking when life is short – shortened by every minute clicking on a machine.
Why read classic literature to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding from other people in other places and in other times, when you can click on a remote for package thinking entertainment.
Have you bought into the globalist, academic, secular and progressive (GASP) package (a feature of Wikipedia) that censors alternative views as “extremist” or “fringe theories” or “conspiracy theories” or “racist?”
Did you buy into the globalist open borders “welcoming the stranger” package where millions of unvetted illegal invaders entered the country as simple or criminal or terrorism opportunists? Did you accept the package thinking that allows third world invaders into our country to replace American workers and American values and do all manner of harm to its citizens as empathy, as what Jesus would do? Take a look at the strangers welcomed: Arrested: Worst of the Worst | Homeland Security And, there’s this: They Called It ‘Compassion’ — But it was Child Trafficking – American Thinker
Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package where everyone, except certain individuals who hold more power and privilege, must be made equal no matter the human cost? Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package and willfully forgetting the objective reality of the horrors of socialism/communism? Are you willfully handing over your life, your thoughts, to “Party-mindedness”?
Did you accept the “don’t question the science” COVID package thinking of mandates, masking, social distancing, vaccine passports, isolation camps, vaccine efficacy, and of COVID’s origin lies? America’s COVID Response Was Based on Lies
Likewise, did you not question the package thinking of “climate experts” who announced their verdict that the world would end if we didn’t act now. Not long ago, woven into almost every weather report on local and mainstream media when major weather events (floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires) occurred was the narrative that climate change was behind them – without ever mentioning large-scale natural phenomena such as solar cycles, ocean currents and volcanoes that have been affecting weather for many millennia.
Do you go along with the package thinking of the [John] Rawlsian theory of ad hoc justice that, for example, releases someone arrested 40 times, is not considered a “criminal” because of their minority status, and is released by a judge back onto the street where he sets a woman on fire?
Do you buy philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” – the package thinking that says that people are entirely products of their environment, of their society, of their age, and that’s why they do what they do. Therefore, they are not responsible for what they do because of external influence. That’s the package thinking behind the Rawlsian theory of justice and behind the executions and horrors of the French revolution working to change social environment.
Have you agreed with the insurrection thought package being espoused by The Seditious Six imploring military service members to “refuse illegal orders” thereby implying that orders coming out of the Trump administration are considered illegal by them and therefore military service members should disobey their commanding officer and join the club of the “Party-minded.” Remember, package thinking has only one train of thought – gaining and maintaining power over reality.
Have you agreed with the insurrection package thinking espoused previously by NYT’s op-ed columnist David Brooks? Do the values of your party-minded package thinking allow you to hamstring a DEMOCRACY! elected president with the rulings of party-minded federal court judges that will be overturned. Do the values of your party-minded package thinking justify the deep state, in the labyrinth of government, to sabotage the efforts of a Democratically elected President?
Do the values of your package thinking allow you to call for uprisings by any means necessary, to burn down buildings, to destroy property, to destroy businesses, to steal, do violence on others, to defund the police, to create pipe bombs, to assassinate? To ignore your conscience?
Did you accept the “Danger to our Democracy” thought package the media delivered during the last presidential election cycle? It should be obvious from the likes of David Brooks, that the “guardians of democracy” are the ones who want to tear it down.
Have bought into the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) playbook that conforms and coerces everyone to identify with Soviet style party-mindedness package thinking?
Have bought into viewing everything including humans through the lens of materialism?
Have you bought into package thinking so as to not be considered an outsider? Have you bought into conformity for conformity’s sake?
Is censorship the worst thing that can happen to a people? Or, is it “Party-mindedness?”
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things with the smug air of certainty and people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?” and “Where is this coming from and where is it going?”
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia. And a mind is still a terrible thing to hand over.
You can put your ear to the road and hear what is quickly approaching. Download and listen to the following podcasts:
London is falling – or has it fallen already?
Liz Truss, the 56th prime minister of the United Kingdom, in her very first episode of The Liz Truss Show discusses how bad things are in Britain with a mass migration and economic doom loop – and how to defeat the deep state who have let this happen
Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking
Professor Gary Saul Morson shares his thought-provoking definition of an intellectual—someone who seeks truth independently, values ideas for their own sake, and stands apart from identity-driven thinking. Whether discussing classic Russian Literature or analyzing modern society, Professor Morson is one of the most insightful and consequential scholars of our time. Discover how this interview, and its exploration of timeless topics, can inspire bold, principled leadership and innovation within today’s business environment.
Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking
Vladimir Lenin’s ideas are alive and well today: Party-ness, politics as win-lose, zero-sum game, Who-Whom, rejection of truth, ideology, violence, philosophical materialism, adherence to lying.
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern
~~~~~
Quotes:
In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea … gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage – if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. … No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous. Galileo Galilei
If the Brave New World cannot insert a square peg into a round hole, it will redefine “roundness” until a perfect fit results.
-Jerome Meckier, from Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure
…a sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity. Uniformity, where everyone “belongs”, uses the same cliches, thinks alike and behaves alike, produces a society which seems comfortable at first but is totally lacking in human dignity. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, realizes that it is man’s destiny to unite and not divide… Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life.
-Northrop Frye, from The Bush Garden
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. -Plato
“The past is our always-available counterculture, and it’s a rich one. Every minute you spend attending to something not-immediately-present, you are helping to build a counterculture.” ― Alan Jacobs
~~~~~
Links:
Why are intellectuals — those whose thinking is supposed to be most refined — so susceptible to totalitarianism? Gary Saul Morson offers three explanations from the treasury of Russian literature.
Anti-Communism Week has been marked for November 2025. Writer-producer Julie Behling’s documentary “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing” warns of communism’s devastation: “Globally, communism claimed the lives of approximately 150 million people in the 20th century.”
Totalitarian governments cannot afford that its citizens remain autonomous persons. This poses a threat to their quest to consolidate power. Individual liberty threatens the theoretical, utopian foundations of promising the re-distribution of goods, and equality; communism ultimately fails to re-distribute the essence of human nature.
Brooke was not one to go looking for treasure among the trash, but the sight of a huge yard sale where unwanted items were offered for a second or third chance at redemption, she could not pass up. She parked her car and joined the dozen or so couples walking among the array of tables each presenting a collage of things once valued, then set aside, then remembered and revalued, and now priced for sale. The once attached were up for adoption.
Photo by Greg Ruffing
Atop one table sat a black 1926 electric singer sewing machine. Beneath it, against the leg of the table leaned a B & W photograph – a coastal landscape. Brooke bent down to look at it. The seller, an eighty-something woman got up from her chair and leaned across the table.
“You see something, don’t you dearie? Hang it where you will see it every night.”
The woman went on to say that she was selling her things because her son was putting her in a home “where memories walk the halls.”
A tall man with winsome blue eyes and a half smile walked up to her side. “Mom, that’s not so.” He spoke with a voice that, for some reason, reminded Brooke of a vanilla latte.
The woman grabbed his arm. “This is my son Chet.”
Brooke was curious. “Chet? I’ve not . . .”
“My father liked Chet Baker, you know, the jazz trumpeter and vocalist.” He showed her the Chet Baker Sings and Plays LP also for sale.
“Here,” proposed Chet, “this LP and this book of poetry go with the photograph.” He placed them in front of her.
Brooke held up the framed photograph. Unable to read any signature in the lower right-hand corner, she asked the woman who the photographer was.
“My late husband. Henry took up photography after he retired. He was a romantic soul with a wanderlust about him. He loved to drive back roads to new places and take pictures. This was taken when we were along the coast in northeast England.”
“It has a certain charm to it,” Brooke remarked.
“It has charmed me for years. Looking at it, I hear his sweet husky voice. But you don’t need to know all that. See for yourself.”
This last comment seemed odd to Brooke but it did lend to the photograph a certain mystical attraction. After imagining the photo hanging in her new studio apartment in the city, Brooke paid the woman and brought the three items home.
That afternoon she measured, nailed, and hung the framed 24 X 36 framed photograph in the middle of a white wall that held nothing else. She stood back to look at it.
The shoreline divided the sea on the left and cliff terrain on the right. Above the water, clouds blotted out the sun but rays of light streaked down from their edges. On the beach stood a woman. She was not looking at the water but back toward the land. What she sees is not in view. Her shadow is stretched out before her.
Brooke’s studio apartment was on the fifth floor, above the street lights. At night, the glow of the city, manufactured moonlight, immersed the small studio and the futon where she slept.
~~~
The next weekend, Brooke’s boyfriend Alex arrived to take her to dinner. He sat down on the futon to wait for her as she finished getting ready. On the side table was a book with a worn cover. He picked it up and thumbed through it and put it down.
“You reading poetry now?”
“I got it a yard sale last weekend. I bought the photo on the wall and the woman who sold it to me gave me the book.”
Alex looked over at the photo. “It’s kinda bleak. You know they make color photos these days, don’t you? And what is that woman looking at?”
Alex picked up the book again and turned to one of the dog-eared pages.
“Let’s see what Lord Byron says . . .”
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
“I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”
“Brooke, did I tell you that I wrote limericks when I was a kid?”
No, you didn’t,” Brooke responded from the bathroom.
“There once was a man from Tijuana
Who had a pet Iguana,
He played the trumpet
And so did his pet,
But don’t ask me if I wanna.”
“Want to hear another?
“If you must.”
“There once was a man named Paul
Whose name he couldn’t recall,
When the time came to sign on the old dotted line
The old man just had to stall.”
“Brooke, did I tell you that I’m reading a novel?”
“Oh yeah, which one?” Brooke walked into the living room.
“A Tom Clancy novel.”
“I’m ready. Let’s go.”
That night they dined at Cooper’s Tap, a pub that served beer and sarnies and big screen soccer. Brooke ordered a smoked gouda and apple melt sandwich and Alex a rosemary roast beef and brie sandwich.
During their weekend outings to Cooper’s, Alex, after a few pints, would be outgoing to the point of talking to everyone at the bar. He’d slap a guy on the back and place his hand on the back of the woman next to him, as if old friends. Brooke saw something endearing about that aspect of Alex but also something needy.
The evening ended as it had the last six months of dating – at the door. Brooke was not going to make any overnight commitment until she felt something substantial to hang her heart on.
With the futon opened and the bed made, Brooke nestled in for the night. She grabbed the book from the side table and looked for a poem. She settled on A Daughter of Eve by Christina Rossetti and read it aloud.
“A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
“My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It’s winter now I waken.
“Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warm’d sweet to-morrow:—
Stripp’d bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.”
She put the book down and looked over at the photograph before turning out the light.
~~~
In the coming weeks her father, mother and sister would each make separate visits to see her new apartment, ask about her new job and meet Alex. Her father was the first to visit.
When Roland arrived, he stood in the middle of the 500 square foot studio apartment scratching his head over the amount of rent his daughter paid for such a small place. “You don’t even have room to have people over for a meal.”
Brooke said it was what she could afford and the apartment was just a few blocks from her job. She didn’t have a car payment.
Her father sat down on the futon and asked about her job.
“I’m an ER charge nurse now in the Level 1 trauma center. I oversee 15 nurses. We see about 35 patients a shift.”
“Do you like your job? Are you OK seeing all that gore?” her father asked.
“Well, I never ever get used to seeing someone without a face or massive amounts of hemorrhaging or exposed brain matter. Burns – especially severe ones- are gruesome. But I do what I have to do knowing that those brought in need patching up.”
“What about this Alex guy? You like him?
“He’s nice. He’s kinda like Joey, the guy I was dating in high school. He makes me laugh. But he is a bit too much, dad, so, I dunno. Maybe that will change over time change. You’ll meet him tonight.”
That evening Brooke and her father met up with Alex at Cooper’s. After a few pints and a couple games of darts, the two men wandered around the pub talking up those sitting at the bar. Alex introduced Roland to his bar-mates.
Brooke watched her father in his element. He could read a room and invite himself into it. As a sales rep, he wined and dined many clients. Tonight at Cooper’s, he was her father and someone’s sales rep and his everyman self.
It was her father’s out-of-town trips that were behind Brooke’s mother divorcing her father ten years before. That and the affair she had with Douglas while her father was not around. This, Brooke felt, left her father bitter and anxious to regain what he lost – a major customer.
When the evening ended, Brooke and her father said goodnight to Alex. On the way to the apartment Brooke asked her father what he thought about Alex.
“He’s a good egg. Fun to be around.” He paused. “Is your mother still seeing that creepy sweater-wearing guy?”
“Yes, dad.”
Brooke offered her father the futon for the night. He protested and said the air mattress he brought with would do. He spent a half-hour blowing into it, his face turning beet red. With a sheet, a pillow, and some blankets, he made his bed and settled in.
“Nite Brookes.”
“Nite dad.” Brooke turned off the light. The room took on the city’s silver glow.
“You can sleep with this garish light?”
“Garish? I’ve never heard you use that word before.”
“Janinne used it.”
“Who is Jannine?”
“I met her tonight. She’s a high school English teacher. She gave me her number.”
The next morning, Brooke awoke to find her father sitting in a chair taking antacid pills. His heartburn was bothering him again.
Brooke wanted to sleep longer as her father was up several times to the bathroom and when he was asleep he snored. But she got up to make some coffee for herself and toast for her father.
“I had a dream last night,” her father began. “I saw Janinne on the beach. She was looking for me.”
Brooke pointed to the photograph.
“Yeah, that’s what I saw.” He walked up and looked it over. “That’s what I saw. That is Janinne.”
“C’mon.”
“That’s her.”
“You only met her last night. And how could she be in a photo taken by some guy on a trip to the northern coast of England?”
“That’s her. She told me to come to her on the beach.”
Brooke smiled. “Are you taking anything else besides those antacid tablets?”
“Kismet. I’m taking kismet,” her father replied.
“Is that another word she taught you?”
“Yeah. She knows a lot of fancy words.”
That day Brooke took her father to the hospital where she worked. She introduced him to the RNs on her staff. Later they ate a sandwich at a bistro and then took in a movie her father wanted to see: “a shoot-em-up with car chases and women who liked bad boys.”
That night they returned to Cooper’s. Her father was hoping to see Janinne. He called her earlier that day but had to leave a voice mail. Father and daughter played several games of darts and went home early.
Back at the apartment, Roland sat in the chair feeding himself antacid tablets and looking at the photograph. He called Janinne’s number again and left a message again asking if everything was OK and if she had ever been to England’s northern coast.
“How about a poem dad?”
“Huh? A poem? Do I look like I need a poem?”
“This is Love Sonnet XI by Pablo Neruda.”
“Oh, boy.”
“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
“I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
“I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
“and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.”
“That’s what Kismet does to a person. Makes their stomach ache.”
When Brook turned off the light, the cool reflected light of the city filled the room. Her father complained again about the light and then slept and snored and got up three times. In the morning, he kissed his daughter on the forehead as she lay in the bed and said goodbye.
~~~
Two months later, Brooke’s mother Shirley arrived for the weekend. Douglas stayed home.
Her mother, an interior designer, brought potted chrysanthemums and a bowl of oranges to “feng shui up” the apartment. “The flowers,” she said, “would bring positive energy and the oranges would enhance the level of energy and promote peace, luck, wealth, and prosperity.”
Looking over the studio apartment, Brooke’s mother commented that she liked the space and what her daughter had done with it. She loved the photograph. Brooke told her how she came by it.
“You can find such interesting things at yard sales,” her mother said. “That’s where I met Doug. He was looking for vintage wine glasses.”
In the evening, the pair went to the Hope and Cheese Wine Bar. Shirley talked about Doug’s palate for wine tasting, his love for pinot noir, and his recent divorce. Then she talked about her yoga classes and the clients she meets there. Brooke talked about her job.
“Is your father still belting down the beers and taking those Rolaids?”
“Yes, mom.”
Shirley swirled the wine in her glass, then picked it up and sniffed the aroma. “This wine reminds me of chocolate chip cookies baking.”
When they returned to the apartment, Brooke set up the futon for the night. Her mother would share the bed with her. Before turning out the lights, Brooke showed her mother the book of poems.
“Poems. Oh, how charming.”
“Listen to this, Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe . . .
“For the moon never beams,
without bringing me dreams
of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise,
but I feel the bright eyes
of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide,
I lie down by the side of my darling — my darling —
my life and my bride,
in her sepulchre there by the sea —
in her tomb by the sounding sea.”
“Lovely dear. Please turn off the light.” Her mother turned over and Brooke turned off the light.
That night, rain pelted the large street window. Each droplet became a small rivulet that with the city lights gave the room an animated other world feel.
In the morning, Brooke awoke to find her mother sitting in the chair holding up her phone.
“Listen to this poem Doug sent me . . .
“How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin’s bow, which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song.”
“Who wrote that?”
“Ah,” she scrolled down, “Rilke. Rainer Maria Rilke.”
“I talked to Doug this morning. I told him about your apartment and the wine bar. He said he thought of me last night as he sat drinking a glass of pinot noir. He imagined me standing on a beach waiting for him. Can you believe it. I didn’t even tell him about your photograph. Isn’t that coincidence or karma or whatever they call it?
“Kismet.”
“Yeah. Kissssmet. Dougie made reservations for the two of us at Do Tell Inn. It’s right on the Do Tell Vineyard in California. We will spend the week tasting wines.”
“How nice. I was planning to go to church today. Wanna come?”
“You go to church now?
“Yeah, ever since I moved here. I . . .”
“You need a good man in your life, Brooke. And church. Isn’t that for old folks on their way out. I was hoping to go see that furniture store on fourth avenue.”
“How about we go to church together, then go to the furniture store if it is open on Sunday, then to Hope and Cheese and then later you can meet Alex and booze it up with him.
“Brooke! That’s not me!” she huffed. “Alright, I’ll go to church with you and we’ll do the rest.”
They went to church. The priest gave a sermon about the hope for new creation and hope requiring imagination to see beyond one’s immediate circumstances. He ended by reading a poem.
After the service, Brooke and her mother found the furniture store to be closed so they headed over to Hope and Cheese.
With two Chardonnays poured and a plate of cheese, Brooke asked her mother what she thought about church.
“He’s hot. I love his sweet husky voice.”
Brooke looked at her. “What? You mean the priest?”
“Yeah. Is he married? You should find out.”
“I meant about what was said.”
“Yeah, well, your father could use some of that down-to-earth stuff. Who knows what planet he’s on.”
With that Brooke decided to end that conversation and let her mom go back to talking about Doug. Later, after a nap, the two met Alex for dinner at Cooper’s.
The evening began with introductory conversation and several pints for Alex. Shirley didn’t like the house wine so she began drinking pints with Alex when he showed her how to play darts. Brooke watched Alex and her mother having a good time and couldn’t picture her father and mother ever having fun together.
Later that night back at the apartment, Brooke asked her mother about this.
“Oh yes, we had some good times, but things, things, well, you know, things change. He treated me like equal friends when we began our marriage. I loved that but after I had you and Bailey, I realized that I had different needs. I was taking care of you and your sister and pursuing my interior design business and your father needed to be on the road to sell. Then I met Doug at the 2020 Interior Design Expo and I couldn’t see myself the same way. Things change, Brooke. One day you’re a soccer mom in a van driving kids to activities and the next, kisskarma, someone sees you as a creative artist and drives you to wine tastings.”
The next morning, they got up early, hugged, and said their goodbyes. Brooke had to go to work and her mother had to catch a train.
~~~
A month later, Brooke’s younger sister Bailey arrived at the airport. Before heading to Brooke’s apartment, they drove over to Sense of Bean for coffee.
There, Bailey talked about her job as an HR manager and asked Brooke how it went seeing mom and dad.
“Ah, well, you know them. The same as always. Dad starts conversations with everyone he meets and mom finishes everyone’s conversations. It’s weird seeing them with someone else.” Brooke went on to talk about the time spent with them.
“Are you still seeing Alex?” Balley asked.
“Yeah, we still going out. But . . .”
“Why?”
“I dunno. He’s likable, but . . .”
“Have the two of you . . .?”
“No. I want to see who he is without it.”
After coffee, they walked down the street to Off the Hook clothing resale shop. Bailey bought a plaid flannel shirt and Brooke, a paisley sherpa jacket and a vintage coral bracelet. They headed to the apartment with their purchases.
Inside, Bailey gave the studio a quick look. “It’s small but you don’t need much.” She went over to the large window. “Buildings everywhere you look. And grey everywhere you look.” As she stepped back from the window, a bird glanced off the glass.
“Mom would say that is a sign,” said Bailey. “Some force in the universe is trying to get in touch with you about your future, your romantic future.”
“I think the bird took it as a sign to not fly into a solid wall of glass in the future,” replied Brooke.
Bailey turned and saw the photograph. “That photo. Is that you?” She walked up for a closer look.
“That’s . . . I bought it at a yard sale. Chet . . .”
“Chet? Who’s Chet?”
“He was at the yard sale helping his elderly mother sell her things. He offered me this book of poetry,” she held up the book, “and an LP along with the photograph.” Brooked pulled the LP out from the closet and showed Bailey.
“Is Chet the guy on the album?” Bailey asked.
“No, his father named him Chet after,” she looked at the record jacket, “Chet Baker.”
“Don’t know him or his music.”
“I have no way of playing this.” Brooke replied. “Alex doesn’t either.”
That evening Brooke and Bailey went over to Cooper’s so Bailey could meet “dentist Alex.”
Inside, pints were clinking and conversations thrummed. Alex was standing at a small table talking to someone at the next table. When Brooke and Bailey walked up, he broke off his conversation.
“This must be Bailey.”
“It is,” Brooke replied. “She’s here for the weekend.”
The bar maid walked up, handed them menus and took their drink order.
“So, you’re a dentist Alex,” Bailey asked.
“Yes, I am,” Alex replied. “I help people put their money where their mouth is.”
“How’s that working out for you?” Bailey asked.
“Good. I have a lot of word-of-mouth referrals.” Alex flashed a smile. “Brooke says you are an HR manager. Will you be doing a performance review of me tonight?”
Bailey laughed. “I didn’t bring the forms. And, anyway, before I’d hire you, I would need three references and they can’t be from your mother, your cat or your dental hygienist.”
Alex flashed another smile. “I heard that Victor Frankenstein used human resources. Is that true?”
“He found what he needed on Monster.com,” Bailey shot back.
The back and forth between Alex and Bailey went on all evening. Brooke had never seen this side of either of them before tonight.
Later that night, back at the apartment, Brooke asked Bailey what she thought of Alex.
“Well, he’s kinda nice kinda screwball.”
“Help me make up the futon bed.”
Before turning off the light, Brooke asked, “Are you ready for some poetry?”
“Bring it on,” replied Bailey.
“This is Wild Nights—Wild Nights! by Emily Dickinson
Wild Nights – Wild Nights! Were I with thee Wild Nights should be Our luxury!
Futile – the winds – To a heart in port – Done with the compass – Done with the chart!
Rowing in Eden – Ah, the sea! Might I moor – Tonight – In thee!”
Bailey responded “Ooh la la!”
“Here is some Lord Byron . . . She Walks in Beauty:
She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes”
“Oh boy! He’s so dramatic!” remarked Bailey.
“That photograph, that’s you, isn’t it?”
“How so?”
“You are standing alone on a beach, a vast ocean behind you, and you are looking or waiting for someone on shore.”
“Maybe that’s why I bought it. That and . . .”
“He made an impression on you, didn’t he?
“There was something . . . “
“A book of poems, a Chet LP, and thou beside me is the vibe I’m sensing,” Bailey teased.
“He probably wanted to help his mom get rid of stuff.”
“He probably thought you walk in beauty, like the night. How does the rest of it go?”
“The rest is goodnight, Bailey.” Brooke turned off the light.
~~~
The next day, Saturday, Brooke and Baily returned to Sense of Bean for coffee and a scone. After coffee, the two headed down the street to Bound to Be Bookstore.
After browsing and finding nothing of interest, Bailey asked, “What should I read?”
“Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen,” Brooke replied. “You’ll meet Mr. Darcy and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, and Elizabeth and her sisters Jane, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia.
Bailey flipped through the pages. “I don’t know. Too stuffy.”
“Anna Karenina. You’ll meet Anna, Stiva, Levin, and Dolly. “
“It’s too long and those Russian names.” Bailey left the bookstore with Book Lovers by Emily Henry.
In the early evening, Brooke and Bailey went to Hope and Cheese Wine Bar. The atmosphere was chatty with cool jazz playing in the background. They sat at the counter and ordered chardonnays and a plate of cheese to share.
The wine server talked up the wine, its origin, and its flavor notes. The ladies liked the attention.
At one point, Bailey asked, “Do you know who Chet Baker is? My sister here was given an LP of his music but she doesn’t have any way to play it.”
The server, a short mustachioed man in his sixties, said, “Yes. You’re in luck.” He went behind the wine bar. Moments later, a male voice began singing in a sensual half-whispered way.
“You don’t know what love is ‘Til you’ve learned the meaning of the blues Until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose You don’t know what love is . . .”
The man returned from behind the wine bar. “That’s Chet. You’ll hear his horn in this recording, too. He was part of the West Coast cool jazz sound in the early 1950s. How is your chardonnay, ladies?
“It’s a bit too fruity, “Bailey replied. Brooke nodded.
“I’ll pour you an oak-barreled chard.” He proceeded to pour two glasses. “This has notes of vanilla and butterscotch and a buttery smoothness.”
Brooke, having watched her mother, swirled the wine in her glass, picked up the glass, held it to her nose for a few seconds, took a sip, and said “There was a picture postcard that fell out of the record jacket.” She reached into her purse, pulled it out and handed it to Bailey.
“The postcard is addressed to Chet from his parents in England.” Bailey turned the card over and read the inscription on the B & W photo, “Captain Cook Monument, Whitby.”
“Chet would like his postcard back,” teased Bailey. “It’s destiny. You should go back to the yard sale and hand it to him and find out if he is married.”
Brooke hemmed her response: “The yard sale is every Saturday May through August, but I doubt he’s still there.”
“Go to his house. You have his address. He’s waiting for you to come back. Look, you live the big city by yourself and mister smiley boyfriend – find out what love is.”
Bailey took another sip of wine. “Yum. You could ask Chet about your photograph. You could ask him about Captain Cook.”
Bailey then asked the server for another pour of wine and if he knew who Captain Cook was.
“Is this Trivia night? I . . . I couldn’t guess.”
A man sitting at the bar heard the question. “He was a British naval captain, navigator, and explorer who sailed the Pacific Ocean and expanded the horizons of the known world. How’s that for an answer?”
“You win,” replied Baily. She turned to Brooke. “Expand your horizons, girl.”
At the end of the evening, Brooke and Bailey returned to the apartment and went right to bed. It was planned that early the next morning Brooke would drive Bailey to the airport and hopefully arrive back in time for church.
~~~
On the way to the airport the next morning, Bailey talked about what her husband and two boys were up to. And she talked up Chet. Brooke listened until the last few minutes before arriving. She had hesitated to say anything to her younger sister about the traumatic nature of her job. She didn’t know what Bailey would do with the information. But in the last few moments she felt compelled to say something about her reality.
“Just the other day a woman arrived in the ER with severe burns all over her body. A verbal argument between the woman and a 45-year-old man escalated and the man poured flammable liquid on her and set her on fire. She’s in critical condition at a hospital.”
“Every day EMS brings in patients transfigured by what people do to each other and to themselves. My compassion is wearing thin. I need a life-line of my own. That is why I’m going to church. To find that.”
As the car pulled up to the curb Bailey put away her phone and pulled a plane ticket out of her purse. “Smiley not doing it for you? Call me. I’m having the family over for Thanksgiving. Bring Chet. Thanks.” She got out and headed to check-in.
Driving back from the airport, Brooke had time to reflect: managing life-or-death situations in the ER had become second nature and so did the ritual of going to places like Cooper’s or Hope and Cheese or Sense of Bean. But what was also becoming second nature was accepting that there was nothing more to this life.
If there was more than what she saw every day in the ER – the cruelty and sadness of life, the suffering, and random casualties, what was it? If there was more than what she saw every time in the diversions of city life, what was it? Her full-but-empty life was one-dimensional and lonely. Being alone in the big city didn’t bother her. Being alone in the universe did.
She wondered if the ritual of going to church and connecting with God would add depth to her life and to help her see things differently or would it become another routine. Would that connection help her deal with the impact of her job?
She reflected on the fact that this was her fourth time attending church, beside going with her mother one Sunday and attending a friend’s wedding many years before. During childhood her family never bothered to attend. On Sundays, her father wanted to be home after traveling all week and her mother was busy with friends and interior decorating clients.
Brooke made it to church that morning. She followed the printed liturgy. Someone read scripture about knowing the love of Jesus that no one could begin to fully comprehend and someone read about a shepherd looking for a lost sheep. The priest gave a sermon about the lost sheep that was once attached to the flock being found by the shepherd and brought back into the fold.
After the service, Brooke went over to the flower shop on the main flower of the hospital and bought a Golden Days Basket of fresh cut fall flowers arranged in a wicker basket. She placed the arrangement of sunflowers and asiatic lilies, red roses, gold and burgundy chrysanthemums, solidaster, and brown copper beech on the lamp table next to the futon.
Before turning off the light that night, Brooke thought about the yard sale and Chet and Thanksgiving dinner with mom and Doug and dad and whoever and Bailey and her husband and kids and whether Alex should come with her and tomorrow morning in the ER.
She remembered the insert that came with the church worship guide the day she attended with her mother. It contained a poem by Luci Shaw, The “O” in Hope. She read it.
“Hope has this lovely vowel at its throat. Think how we cry “Oh!” as the sun’s circle clears the ridge above us on the hill. O is the shape of a mouth singing, and of a cherry as it lends its sweetness to the tongue. “Oh!” say the open eyes at unexpected beauty and then, “Wow!” O is endless as a wedding ring, a round pool, the shape of a drop’s widening on the water’s surface. O is the center of love, and O was in the invention of the wheel. It multiplies in the zoo, doubles in a door that opens, grows in the heart of a green wood, in the moon, and in the endless looping circuit of the planets. Mood carries it, and books and holy fools, cotton, a useful tool and knitting wool. I love the doubled O in good and cosmos, and how O revolves, solves, is in itself complete, unbroken, a circle enclosing us, holding us all together, every thing both in center and circumference zeroing in on the Omega that finds its ultimate center in the name of God.”
When she turned off the light, windowlight illuminated the room. The B & W photograph stood out in relief on the white wall. And there was the woman on the beach standing alone and looking at something outside the frame. And Brooke said “Oh!”
“The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse.”
-Guy Montag, Fahrenheit 451
Anyone who has read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 will remember the menacing Mechanical Hound.
In fireman Guy Montag’s world, firemen burn outlawed books and where people hid them. The firehouse ‘dog’, a robotic beast, is an enforcer for the state. If you do not follow society’s rules, the Hound is unleashed. It tracks down and kills book readers using stored information about individuals. The Hound catches its prey and then injects it with lethal drugs.
Though configured as man’s best friend, Montag finds out the true nature of the beast. Being “fascinated as always with the dead beast, the living beast,” he touches the muzzle of the Hound. The Hound growls and Montag recoils.
“The Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him with green-blue neon light flickering in its suddenly activated eye bulbs. It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electric sizzle, a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with suspicion.”
Not long afterward, Montag tells Captain Beatty “It doesn’t like me.” Captain Beatty tells Montag:
“Come off it. It doesn’t like or dislike. It just `functions.’ It’s like a lesson in ballistics. It has a trajectory we decide for it. It follows through. It targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. It’s only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity.”
The Mechanical Hound attacks what it is programmed to attack. And when Montag becomes more and more inquisitive about books and one is found in his possession, the Hound is released to track him down.
~~~
The techno-capitalist-industrialist-open borders system that goes by “Progress” or “Development” or “the Science” or “Fair-Trade” or “Commercialization” or “Globalization” or “Open Society,” is summed into a single descriptor – “the Machine” – by Paul Kingsnorth in his book Against the Machine (See side bar, previous post, and podcasts below for more information.)
In the chapter Come the Black Ships, Kingsnorth describes the process of Machine as being
“a war against all ‘closed’ things; against limits and boundaries of any kind, cultural and ecological; against historical traditions, local economies, trade unions, national economic plans, nations themselves, tribal cultures, religions . . . anything that interferes with the path of commercial expansion and its associated culture of individualist liberalism. Open is good, closed is bad. Why? Because closed things can’t be harvested, exploited or transformed in the image of the new world which the Machine is building. ‘Open’ things, on the other hand; well, they’re easy prey.”
That is our reality today. The West has colonialized itself with what it has colonized other nations – the Machine’s promise of the “open is good” gravy train. The WEF’s mission statement cloaks the Machine in good: “We bring together government, businesses and civil society to improve the state of the world” by “seiz[ing] opportunities for positive change.”
And so it is that the Machine’s process is advertised as that which benefits humanity in various ways. These include “Enhanced Customer Experience”, “Innovation”, “Diversity”, and “Advancements in Medicine, Education, Efficiency, Productivity, and “Sustainability” all while waging “a war against all ‘closed’ things” for the sake of its commercialization, monetization, and control of the process.
For the Machine to wage “war against all ‘closed’ things”, technology is employed to sniff out and snuff out the ‘closed’ – those people and their places unwilling to “be harvested, exploited or transformed in the image of the new world.” This machine I see depicted as Bradbury’s Mechanical Hound.
The Mechanical Hound represents the perversion of technology. Man’s best friend, a creature meant for companionship, aid, and protection, is turned into a technological tool of oppression. Its purpose is to impose order with terror.
With the Mechanical Hound in mind, consider digital technology which can be seen as friendly and helpful but can been programmed to avenge and punish citizens who break society’s rules. See China’s social credit system.
With the Mechanical Hound in mind, see the UK introducing digital ID cards. The UK government claims the system will simplify access to public services such as healthcare, welfare, and childcare, reduce identity fraud, ensure that only those with the right to work can be hired and is expected to minimize identity fraud by linking personal information to a secure digital format. With all these great “benefits” (for the state), what could go wrong? Say, if someone online says something that is considered “hate speech” by the UK government will the Hound be released to track that person down? That is happening today in the UK.
See a cashless society and Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) where purchases are monitored and financial accounts controlled by the government.
See the smartphone that “slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of” your pocket.
Consider the digital contraptions in your home and car that, like the Hound, can track you with information gathered from 5G towers that is downloaded to data centers that consume massive amounts of energy and water and taxpayer money – to monitor your physical and societal whereabouts so it can sell you more of the Machine’s process.
In Montag’s repressed society, books, book holders, and critical thinkers are dealt with. For books hold the experience and wisdom of ‘closed’ things – history, tradition, culture and religion – and must be done away with. And, so must thinking critically. For researching and comprehending what the Machine is doing to humans and their world is a threat. (https://www.thefire.org/news/10-worst-censors-2024)
With this in mind, consider the calls for censorship on our college campuses. In Britain you can go to jail for saying the ‘wrong’ thing.
In Montag’s repressed society, wall screens and pills replace books. The wall screens produce for Montag’s wife, Mildred, her ‘family’. Their home has three wall screens. She wants a fourth wall screen. We learn how depressing life is for Mildred when she attempts to commit suicide with an overdose.
How did we get amenable to the Machine’s control over us and thus take on a mechanized way of seeing and relating to the world? Bradbury provides insight.
Fahrenheit 451 is about more than censorship. It is about conformity to state-imposed uniformity. Books in 451 were seen as creating discord. They had to go. For, with the advent of visual media, TV in particular, people no longer read and didn’t want to hear anything but what they heard on the screens. People wanted censorship and conformity to the screens.
As Captain Beatty tells Montag,
“’The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own. Then–motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.’
“Montag sat in bed, not moving.
“’And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?’”
“’I think so.’”
“Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. ‘Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”
“’Snap ending.’ Mildred nodded.”
Captain Beatty, again:
“You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.”
“Yes.”
Beatty’s Full Speech to Montag is provided below.
~~~~~
This our reality: the Machine and the Mechanical Hound.
Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine– On the Unmaking of Humanity has provided us a prophetic understanding of where we are and where we are headed. The Machine is moving us downstream, displacing us from what we value – in Kingsnorth’s words “the past, people, place, and prayer.”
Various entities participate and promote the Machine.
Mainstream media is run by the Machine. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, WSJ, NYT, WaPo and other outlets are the Machine’s mouthpieces. They talk down the “closed” and proclaim the “open.”
Both political parties promote the Machine. It is “progress” (and control) after all. The biggest threat to democracy is the Machine that consumes culture and churns out cogs.
Now that Mamdani has won the NYC mayor’s race, you can be sure that the Mechanical Hound will be released in NYC to enforce socialist jihad. Neither socialism nor Jihad exists without a Mechanical Hound.
Central planners – The World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Trade Organization – represent the Machine’s values.
It takes no stretch of the imagination to see ourselves in Montag’s society or to see technology as that which mimics the good but is easily programmed to avenge and punish citizens who break society’s rules. The Mechanical Hound can tract us down to dispose of the ‘closed’ and conform us to the “Open is good” of the Machine.
Bradbury said that with Fahrenheit 451 he wasn’t trying to predict the future but to prevent it. He wanted to protect the present.
The terror of the Hound of Hell is becoming a permanent feature of the “open” (closing up) brave new (upside down) world.
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity | Paul Kingsnorth
Demetri Kofinas speaks with Paul Kingsnorth, a novelist, essayist, and former environmental activist who first came on many people’s radars during the Covid-19 pandemic with the publication of his viral three-part series “The Vaccine Moment.” His current work explores the intersection of technology, culture, and the divine. In his latest book, Against the Machine, Kingsnorth examines how our increasingly mechanized way of seeing and relating to the world—and to ourselves—has contributed to the death of Western culture, and what it would take to reclaim our humanity and save our souls.
Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity | Paul Kingsnorth
How We Lost Ourselves to Technology—and How We Can Come Back
Do you feel uneasy? Do you feel a level of ambient anxiety? Do you feel despair, despite the fact that we live in the most luxurious time and place in human history?
The point is, you are not crazy. If you feel these things, you are simply attuned to reality—and it’s not a problem that’s solvable with less screen time or with meditation, red light, or sea moss.
Bari Weiss’ brilliant guest, Paul Kingsnorth, argues that the reason you feel this way is not this or that social media app or algorithm or culture war issue. That these are all superficial expressions of a thousand-year battle with what he calls “the Machine.” What exactly that means, he’ll explain tonight.
How We Lost Ourselves to Technology—and How We Can Come Back
How the KGB’s Playbook Is Destroying the West Today
Yuri Aleksandrovich Bezmenov (1939–1993), also known as Tomas David Schuman, was a Soviet journalist and KGB operative specializing in propaganda and ideological subversion.
Ideological subversion is the process of bending a society’s perception of reality so completely that it destroys itself.
The goal is to demoralize a society by undermining its moral, educational, and cultural foundations, making people unable to recognize or defend against threats.
Demoralization takes 15-20 years, the time needed to educate one generation with subversive ideas.
Five years ago, Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist behind PayPal and Palantir, sent a prescient email to Facebook executives.
“When 70% of millennials say they are pro-socialist,” he wrote, “we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why.”
The email went viral after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory last week in the New York City mayoral race. Thiel then sat down with The Free Press’s Sean Fischer to explain what he saw in 2020 that no one else did.
Capitalism isn’t working for young people, Thiel said, citing burdensome student debt and regulations putting homeownership out of reach for many. “People assume everything still works, but objectively, it doesn’t. . . . If you proletarianize the young people, you shouldn’t be surprised if they eventually become communist.” (Emphasis mine.)
Thiel, who I see as also promoting the Machine, at least sees what the Machine is doing to the young.
And, of course, socialism/communism is a horrifying Machine that revels in terror to replace humanity with ideology.
~~~~~
The Machine’s AI Alchemy
Mary Shelly’s Victor Frankenstein, obsessed with creating a human being, used alchemy and electricity and body parts to create a creature (without woman). . .
A group of Stanford University scientists . . . used artificial intelligence to design new viruses capable of killing bacteria.
In a world where AI keeps creeping in on uniquely human territory by composing sonnets, writing songs or forging friendships, this seemed to be crossing a new Rubicon. Depending on your belief system, AI was doing what evolution, or God, or scientists working with genome-engineering tools aim to do.
“Machines are rethinking what it is to be human, what it is to be alive,” said Michael Hecht, a chemistry professor at Princeton University focused on designing novel proteins and artificial genomes. “I find this very unsettling and staggering. They are devising, coming up with novel life forms. Darwin 2.0.”
Monica Sanders, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, wrote in her August 18, 2025, Oxford American article The Storm that Blew Us Apart recalling Twenty years after Katrina, we’re still living in the space between before and after:
The flood took homes and heirlooms, yes. But it also took the things that don’t have price tags: your grandmother’s pew at St. Peter Claver, the second-line route your cousin danced for the first time, the rhythm of being able to walk next door to ask for a lemon and stay for a two-hour porch talk.
We became refugees in our own country . . .
Some of us never came back.
Those who did found a different city. Not just rebuilt, but rearranged. The neighborhoods we knew—Broadmoor, Gentilly, the Lower Nine—returned with new names, new residents, and new rules. People who knew about noise ordinances but not about king cakes. People who brought nonprofits but not traditions. People who wanted charm but not character. The kind who say “N’Awlins” with a wink, and don’t hear the ghost in that mispronunciation.
Displacement gave way to gentrification. What was affordable became vacation rentals. What was vibrant became boutique. Streets that once held parades now hold pop-ups. We became the entertainment, not the community.
And yet, we remain. . .
All of us carry the “before” with us. . .
We talk about resilience now, but we forget that true resilience is cultural as much as physical. It’s knowing who to call when the lights go out. It’s gathering your neighbors even when there’s no power. Its memory passed like gumbo recipes and Sunday prayers.
Mutual Aid, New Orleans, 2005. Inkjet Print on Canvas, Clarence Williams
~~~
As helicopters rush off with the most desperately ill, throngs trapped for nearly a week in New Orleans climb aboard busses at the intersection of I-10 and Causeway Blvd., Saturday, September, 3, 2005. (Staff photo by Eliot Kamentiz, The Times-Picayune)
I began with Monica’s reflection on the effects of Hurricane Katrina, for order being swallowed up by non-order, an overwhelming flood, parallels the flood of disorder working to decouple us from people, place and the past and to colonize us for its reorganizing purposes which include efficacy, profitability and efficiency. (Order, non-order and disorder are terms coined by Dr. John Walton to describe cosmology in his Job commentary.)
That storm is blowing us apart. And as was experienced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we feel a pervasive sense of displacement, of being refugees in our own country, of living in thespace before and after the imposed transformation of our culture.
The source of dysphoria about our time and place being out of joint may not be readily recognizable. As with the “frog in boiling water”, we steep in its flood waters not recognizing the stew we are in. Screens constantly distract our attention away from what is happening to our existence.
The source: a flood of ideologically progressive technology and globalization that is wiping out our connections to people, place and the past. Its overwhelming force is our unmooring, our unmaking. Its irresistible force is displacing us in place.
I’ve been aware of the source for many years, starting when I bought a 286 computer in the 70s. The machine had an allure that had me come back to it constantly.
I’m becoming a neo-Luddite of sorts. I have a particular dislike for digital technology as it modifies the means of relating to ourselves, to those around us and to our world. Its dissociative medium detaches us from reality, thereby affecting identity, memory, perception, and truth.
The flood waters are rising around us. Look at what is going on with the tech-bro push for AI and transhumanism, with concerns about rare earth minerals, with chips, chips, and more chips, with 5G towers, energy and water consuming data centers, constant surveillance, mandated digital IDs – why do we need any of it?
I recently came across an author that uses “the Machine” as the analogy for the inhuman forces at work to enclose all in its path for Progress. What Kingsnorth writes resonates with everything that I’ve read in dystopian novels: 1984, That Hideous Strength, Brave New World, and Darkness at Noon. Here’s Paul Kingsnorth with “Huxley and the Machine”:
Paul Kingsnorth’s, Against the Machine is “an account of the technological-cultural matrix enveloping all of us. The culmination of two decades of my writing and thinking about technology, culture, spirituality and politics, it seeks to offer an insight into how the techno-industrial culture that I call ‘the Machine’ has choked Western civilisation, is destroying the Earth itself, and is reshaping us all in its image.
From the First Industrial Revolution to the rise of artificial intelligence, this book shows how the hollowing out of humanity has been a long game—and how our very soul is now at stake.
Against the Machine is the spiritual manual for dissidents in the technological age.”
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Per Lewis Fried, Lewis Mumford, author of The Myth of the Machine, “insisted upon the reality of the Megamachine: the convergence of science, economy, technics and political power as a unified community of interpretation rendering useless and eccentric life-enhancing values. Subversion of this authoritarian kingdom begins with that area of human contact with the world that cannot be successfully repressed – one’s feelings about one’s self. “
Mumford:
The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.
Technology, instead of introducing us to freedom, has imposed on us the slavery of the machine.
Modern Man is the victim of the very instruments he values most. Every gain in power, every mastery of natural forces, every scientific addition to knowledge, has proved potentially dangerous, because it has not been accompanied by equal gains in self-understanding and self-discipline.
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Western culture no longer represents man: it is mainly outside him, and in no small measure hostile to his whole self: he cannot take it in. He is like a patient condemned in the interests of X-ray photography to live upon a diet of barium sulphate…In the end, as Samuel Butler satirically prophesied, man may become just a machine’s contrivance for reproducing another machine.
The great gains that were made in technics during the last few centuries were largely offset by a philosophy that either denied the validity of man’s higher needs or that sought to foster only that limited set of interests which enlarged the power of science and gave scope to a power personality. At a moment when a vast surplus was available for the goods of leisure and culture, the very ideals of leisure and culture were cast into disrepute — except when they could be turned to profit. Here lies the core of the inner crisis that has afflicted our civilization for at least two centuries. In the heyday of expansionism, the middle of the nineteenth century, scarcely a single humane voice could be found to defend either the means or the ideals of a power civilization…Blake, Ruskin, Morris, Arnold, Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, Dickens, Howells, Hugo, Zola, Mazzini, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Ibsen…denounced the human results of the whole process of mechanization and physical conquest. As with one voice, they protested against the inhuman sacrifices and brutalizations, the tawdry materialisms, the crass neglect of the human personality.
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The truth is, men have lost their belief in the Invisible, and believe, and hope, and work only in the Visible; or, to speak it in other words: This is not a Religious age. Only the material, the immediately practical, not the divine and spiritual, is important to us. The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable. Worship, indeed, in any sense, is not recognised among us, or is mechanically explained into Fear of pain, or Hope of pleasure. Our true Deity is Mechanism. It has subdued external Nature for us, and we think it will do all other things. We are Giants in physical power: in a deeper than metaphorical sense, we are Titans, that strive, by heaping mountain on mountain, to conquer Heaven also.
Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?
No. This pop-project isn’t satire. The Church of England, so obsessed with its moral performance, really did cover the interior of the oldest cathedral in England in graffiti in order to represent themselves to the world.
The installation created by poet Alex Vellis is designed to contrast with the ancient, traditional architecture in the church to offer new interpretations of faith and worship.
Per the partnered gay priest and dean of Canterbury, David Monteith, “There is a rawness which is magnified by the graffiti style, which is disruptive. There is also an authenticity in what is said because it is unfiltered and not tidied up or sanitised. Above all, this graffiti makes me wonder why I am not always able to be as candid, not least in my prayers.
“This exhibition intentionally builds bridges between cultures, styles and genres and, in particular, allows us to receive the gifts of younger people who have much to say and from whom we need to hear much.”
“Mr Vellis said the language of the graffiti was “of the unheard”.
He added: “By temporarily graffitiing the inside of Canterbury Cathedral, we join a chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous. People who wanted to make their mark, to say ‘I was here’, and to have their etchings carry their voice through the centuries.”
Reading the motivation behind the Church of England’s self-vandalizing approach to empathy, one has to wonder, as with many decisions made in our times, – where are the adults? And what is next on the empathy checklist? Will the CoE leaders, in order build “bridges between cultures, styles and genres” and to “welcome the stranger,” get tattoos and piercings? Hand out drugs and needles? Perform a satanic mass?
The understanding, resonating, and self-differentiating human voices of previous centuries are becoming the “chorus of the forgotten, the lost, and the wondrous,” the voices “of the unheard” in the Church of England, throughout Europe, and the U.S. Those voices are deemed non-empathetic and must be shouted over with graffiti.
Those who, with ancient wisdom, made their mark of truth, beauty, and goodness, must now be overwritten with graffiti.
The desire to look like the world, like walking in another’s shoes, as inclusive and pluralistic, is beneficial for the state and its open borders immigration policies which deface homelands and cultures with graffiti.
“Canterbury Cathedral, a sixth-century English church—making it more than 1,400 years old—has gotten a paint job…in graffiti. And as it turns out, this act of vandalism wasn’t an act of street delinquency, it was actually commissioned by the church’s stewards. . ..”
“Call me crazy, but this seems counterproductive. Real Englanders, Brits by blood and spirit, with an undying love for their culture and home, are beyond fed up with what the Dean of Canterbury calls “marginalized communities.” These “marginalized communities” are parasitic, they’re destroying the cohesion of England and the nation’s society, and they’re given preferential treatment by the government, that’s ostensibly, representing the English people.”
Murray continues:
“Progressives really have an extraordinary ability to turn something unbelievably precious and beautiful into utter trash—how can you make Canterbury Cathedral look like a derelict warehouse in an inner city, or resemble a dirty freight train car?”
~~~
Christian empathy tends to be wayward, moving away from truth, beauty and goodness and toward a seamless identity with what those in the world think they need and want – a trait that Jesus never had.
Christian empathy tends toward a desire to be seen as acceptable to the world so that the world would, by virtue of such, respond – a trait that Jesus never had.
As we read the hymn in Philippians 2, we learn that Jesus made himself accessible to the world.
As we read in gospel according to John 2:13-25, we learn of his distinctiveness from the world, from what those in the world thought they needed and wanted.
When the Court of the Gentiles within the temple ground, the place designated for believing Gentiles to pray and worship became cluttered with the clink of coins, the braying of animals, and the sounds of commerce, Jesus, “Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.
Note in the above accounts of the desecration of the cathedral, the SJW go-to descriptor ‘marginalised communities’. This indicates the current naming convention that paints humans in the Marxist graffiti of “oppressed” and “oppressor” while avoiding terms that speak of repentance and redemption.
~~~
It is easy to snicker in utter disgust at the perversion of an ancient cathedral, but what are Christians doing with what they have been given? Are Christians preserving the good, the true, the beautiful that has been passed down? Are Christians adding or subtracting to what we’ve been given. Are Christians looking at screens all day?
Should Christians continue to build churches that look like commercial buildings? It seems that after the reformation, Protestants decided that beauty wasn’t utilitarian so why bother with it.
Are we composing music that goes beyond the folksy and often cloying church worship music? Are we writing operas, symphonies, fugues, sonatas? Hymns with actual embedded theology?
Are we creating works of art and literature that draw people to them or are we on screens and social media all day looking at and posting pictures? Early Christian art showed the immanence of God—his closeness to us—and his transcendence, his otherness. The Chosen is not art. It is redux sentimentality akin to watching a rerun of a Billy Grahm crusade or using crayons to color a Jesus picture.
Are we writing poetry that examines life – the wounding, the good, the true and the beautiful? Or, is that the purpose of MSM? Knowing God involves both spiritual and sensory engagement. Poetry can express both.
None of the above prompts are utilitarian and instantly beneficial. Hence, some will avoid a second thought about them.
From stained glass to straining for attention, the graffiti installation recognizes the ego in rebellion to the good, the true and the beautiful while virtue signaling empathy. Not only is the installation profane, it is an act of profound laziness. Evil is lazy and does not promote the spiritual growth of another.
The church of England, the dancing daughter of Herodias, offers its beguiling movements to please guests and the reigning authority. This while John the Baptist, who called people from all strata of society including King Herod to repentance, sits tied up in jail, his head to be removed with the axe of “Silence!”
Want to see what Christian empathy tends to look like?
The Brave New World’s Arch-Community Songster of Canterbury
There is an intense irony here that gets to the heart of the self-inflicted problems of the Church of England today. Sarah Mullally has been very clear on the kind of Church she believes in – she’s a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and activism, she has strongly backed asylum and migration, she is a self-declared feminist, and she is both politically and it seems religiously progressive. As Bishop of London, she boasted about representing a diverse and multicultural city, and put her experience in handling diversity as one of the key qualifications and evidence of positive experience she could bring to being the Archbishop of Canterbury. (Emphasis mine.)
Helen [Andrews] argues that the rise of “wokeness” wasn’t born from Marxism, academia, or even Obama-era politics. That in itself had people shocked. Helen theorizes that it actually came from something way simpler… the quiet but steady feminization of America’s most powerful institutions.
“Wokeness is not a new ideology, an outgrowth of Marxism, or a result of post-Obama disillusionment. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently . . .
Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition . . .
“The threat posed by wokeness can be large or small depending on the industry . . . The field that frightens me most is the law. All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.
“The problem is not that women are less talented than men or even that female modes of interaction are inferior in any objective sense. The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.”
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“THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION
1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
4. We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.” ― Paul Kingsnorth, Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto
From St. Augustine’s Confessions (Book 10, Chapter 27). St. Augustine reflects back on his own conversion from a life of profligacy to one of love and intimacy with God.
Chapter XXVII.-He Grieves that He Was So Long Without God.
Too late did I love Thee, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love Thee For behold, Thou wert within, and I without, and there did I seek Thee; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty Thou madest. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Those things kept me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not. Thou calledst, and criedst aloud, and forcedst open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and chase away my blindness. Thou didst exhale odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after Thee. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.
As was often his habit, Arthur Gilbert listened to a recording of his last stage performance from forty years ago. He listened to the lines and the life in his voice, the intensification of vocal tones and articulation. He would also listen to audio books. The susurrant stream of words lulled him to sleep each time. And today. But the sound of a distinct thud roused him and he remembered what brought him into another state of flux – a dream
“Waking up this morning,” Arthur told his best friend, “I had a dream. I was in a large passenger plane that was crashing in slow motion. When it finally landed nose first, I walked out of the cockpit window.”
Hearing this, his friend and fellow actor told Arthur that he saw a ghost of a man just last night on the ramparts. He wanted Arthur to see for himself. Arthur balked at the idea that an image could tell him anything. But his friend convinced him and Arthur said that he would go see “this poor ghost while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe.”
So that night his friend accompanied Arthur to the “parapet.” There, Arthur was beckoned by a voice to follow it to an enclosed space. Once inside, Arthur heard his bulwark being bombarded thud shudder thud. “Sling n arrows outrageous!”
“Are you OK Arthur?”
“To sleep, perchance to dream. I’m shuffling off . . .”
With acoustic script murmuring and a hovering thumping and whirring around his head, Arthur closed his eyes. After some time, he became aware that he was in a dream.
He left his apartment in east central Indiana and was driving to his home town in Illinois for a funeral. Call me when you get there, his friend told him.
Heading west on I-70 dark-bottomed clouds appeared. He heard packing paper being crunched. He became angry. He didn’t like driving in the rain or at night or to funeral. He didn’t like being cooped up for long rides.
His demeanor softened when he saw distant silos along the way. Memories of friends. His demeanor saddened as he drove further away from them.
Restaurant signs began to appear.
Good’s Family Restaurant
It’s All Good at Bob and Martha Good’s
~
A Good Breakfast is not hard to find – Exit ½ Mile
Good’s Family Restaurant
~
One Good Turn Deserves Another-Turn Left After Exit
Good’s Family Restaurant
He took the exit for Good’s Family Restaurant. He saw and heard what happened next.
He entered Good’s. He found a booth next to a window. Across from him sat a plump 30-ish woman with fuchsia streaks of hair, tattoos down both arms, and a face mask. She was wiping the table and menu with disinfectant wipes. The squeaking sound annoyed him.
He looked around the room wondering if there was another pandemic that turned everyone into Karens. He saw no one else wearing a mask. To each their own pandemic he said.
A waitress walked up with a pot of coffee.
Mornin’ Coffee?
Yes ma’am.
She turned over a cup and poured the coffee.
Where you headed?
He took a sip. To a funeral.
Someone close?
An ex.
I’m sorry.
She wasn’t.
Did she know Jesus as her personal savior?
He put the coffee down.
You’d have to ask her.
What about you? Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?
Ma’am my relationship with a personal savior began when I came into God’s good creation seventy-five years ago and when I realized that the fires of creation and apocalypse were inside me, I set out to find out what that meant.
He continued. Say, you remind me of Altar-call Jake with his tracts and the folk gospel road that I’d been on. That road reduced the cosmos to four spiritual laws and a personal tow-truck service ready to remove you from life on earth. Those on that road had a strangely-dim view of the things of earth.
He became unsettled. Doesn’t that machine noise bother you?
The waitress stood looking at him with a hand on her hip. Alrighty then. Do you know what you want to eat apocalypse man?
Yes ma’am. Two eggs over easy with hashbrowns and a side of bacon. He looked up from the menu. Are you Martha, Martha Good?
Yes, and I’m with Bob, the man that’s working the kitchen. She pointed to the opening above the counter where a head with a sports cap moved back and forth.
Ain’t no good flirting with me, Martha said with a twinkle in her eye.
Well, Martha Good, I wasn’ . . . well you do have qualities you don’t find every day on the menu. I’m sure Bob is a lucky man. You bring a lot to the table. He looked over at the woman across from him.
He hit the jackpot with me, Martha teased.
Bonanza Bob? he played along.
Is that your final answer?
Yes ma’am.
Martha finished writing the check. You win the million-dollar breakfast. She grabbed the menu and walked off.
After breakfast he walked to the cash register, told Martha that breakfast was satisfying in a Good’s way and she smiled and said Y’all come back after your funeral.
He was back in the car with the whirring thumping.
The wet putty looking sky above the interstate released its moisture. The pit-pat of rain drops became a steady thudding as he crossed the state line. Washing machine rain slashed his windows. Wipers whirred and thumped. He pulled off the road to wait. He didn’t want another rear end accident, another concussion. When a semi-trailer truck swooshed by his head throbbed.
The pounding rain stopped and he got back on the road.
He passed Danville then Champaign. He hooked up with I-72. He passed Decatur. He passed a Springfield sign. There was a thumping clanking noise. Car trouble? He pulled over into a cul-de-sac.
He suddenly felt cramped stiff panicky. His hands twitched. He couldn’t remember for the life of him why he was in this suffocating machine. He wanted out. He cursed the incessant banging clicking whirring clanging and beeping going on around him. Where was he going anyway?
He turned the car around in the cul-de-sac to retrace his way.
He passed the Decatur sign. The Champaign sign. I-74. He passed the Danville sign and looked for the Indiana sign. He saw a familiar sign.
Your Lookin’ Good at the Next Exit
Good’s Family Restaurant
For Breakfast Lunch and Dinner
He drove to Good’s.
The waitress saw him come through the door, grabbed a menu, and said Welcome back. How was your funeral?
Who died?
No one here.
I can see that. The clanging of dishes and the overhead whirring of the fan bothered him.
The waitress showed him to a booth and handed him the menu.
Coffee?
Yes, and a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.
She wrote the order, grabbed the menu and walked away staring at him.
An ancient scrawny-looking man in a flannel shirt jeans and a Peterbilt hat walked up to the booth across from him. It was the same pipe smoking guy who came out of the rig parked outside his window. It was his Cavendish tobacco father.
The trucker threw down a book on the table with a thud.
What are you reading?
This. The trucker held up the book and then sat down.
The waitress brought coffee, filled his cup and turned to the trucker.
Morning ma’am, the trucker said.
Morning. What y’all reading? She poured him coffee.
The trucker showed her the book.
The Road. Cormac McCarthy. Don’t know it. Is it about trucking?
Well, yeah, in a keep on truckin’ kinda way after an apocalypse with who or what remains.
The waitress looked over at him. You read that, too?
He nodded and said Cannibalism.
Cannibalism? What on earth! The waitress scrunched her face. We don’t serve that here.
What’s left to eat is eaten, the trucker said.
To be eaten or not to be eaten that is the question! Right dad?
The waitress pointed the coffee pot in the trucker’s direction. How about you, fella? Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?
The trucker looked over at him and then at her. Ma’am, I’ve been on the road with him my whole life. But you see this Formula World is in a road race to end things to get on with the next big thing. Escaping the road and getting everyone to heaven before the next big thing, that is one formulation I don’t need. I’m a biker not a passenger in a car being towed off the road.
Uh huh. Just checking your GPS.
I had to break up with my GPS. She kept telling me to take a U-turn in my life!
Some of us need more than one U-turn. The waitress took his lunch order and headed to the kitchen.
What ya hauling?
Motorcycles, parts, manuals.
Where you headed?
Cross country. To the coast. How about you?
Home.
Where’s home?
If I knew that I wouldn’t be here.
What happened, son?
I am being eaten alive on this road. I live by words. I am made of words. And now words are being taken from me.
The trucker leaned over into the aisle Do you know your way home?
I’m seventy-five. I know my way home. What is that high-pitched beeping?
Where is home, Arthur?
Right where I left it.
The waitress brought his soup and sandwich.
Did I order this?
Yes, you did. The waitress put her hands on her hips. It’s not cannibalism but it’ll do.
Then I’ll eat it he snapped back.
The waitress looked over at the trucker and he nodded.
She turned back Everything OK?
Right as rain he replied.
The waitress looked over again at the trucker and then went to the kitchen to retrieve his order.
The trucker leaned over. Arthur, do you have family?
Yes, of course I have family . . . ah, ah . . . ah daughter.
What’s her name?
What’s her name?
Yes.
If I knew that I wouldn’t be here.
Should you call her?
I did. She told me I had an appointment today.
Did you make it to the appointment?
Damn, that whirring is so annoying.
The trucker got up and put a hand on his shoulder.
He looked up. Are we going to be OK?
You’ll be OK. You’re one of the good guys, Arthur. You’re carrying the fire. Swear that you will carry the fire.
I swear.
Come with me.
Where?
He felt himself being pulled from the booth.
“Arthur, the MRI is done. Let’s take off these acoustic tubes.”
Arthur blinked a reset and looked all around.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The supercharged words “by any means necessary” entered popular culture during the civil rights movement with a 1964 Malcolm X speech.
“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”
The phrase is generally considered to mean to leave open the option of all available tactics, strategies or methods for attaining or achieving desired ends, including any form or degree of violence as well as other methods typically considered unethical or immoral. It is part of a broader political idea that radical social change or liberation cannot be obtained by limiting one’s means to that which are considered “acceptable . . . “
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possess rival power.
The title of Brooks’ reckless manifesto: What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.
The title should have been My Ends Justify the Means, as “rival power” could be interpreted by readers in our activist culture as all methods or actions, no matter how extreme or unconventional, should be considered acceptable in order to achieve the goal or objective of stopping Trump.
Should “civil servants”, i.e., the administrative state, overthrow democracy to “save democracy”?
Should radical revolutionary sentiments drive conniving Bolsheviks to overthrow our democratic republic for their definition of normal?
Brooks’ call for revolution ends with a phrase originating from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” How puerile.
See What You See:
Our democracy, our republic and our freedoms were being put in chains during the Obama and Biden regimes. Obama weaponized the government against its citizens. Did Never Trumper David Brooks vote for more of the same with the Harris/Waltz ticket? Does he along with the repugnant Bill Kristol prefer the deep state over Trump? Yes.
The insurrectionist revolution Brooks’ manifesto called for is for a return to deep state “normal” where elites via the administrative state, not we the people, control every aspect of our lives – money, health, associations, thought. One of the reasons I read Russian literature is to understand tyranny. I read Brooks as advocating the use of subversive forces to bring about a return of deep state tyranny – his “normal.”
Intimidation was a key tactic Lenin used during the Red Terror, a campaign aimed at consolidating Bolshevik power through extreme violence against perceived enemies of the state. Intimidation was also used to enforce acceptance of lies.
Remember the lies and enforcement – the intimidation – surrounding COVID? Tyranny was exposed for all who have eyes to see.
We have been told to believe the lies about a “secure” 2020 election, Hunter’s laptop, and Russia Collusion, the latter meant to stop Trump by any lie necessary. Read Mollie Hemingway’s article:
The left has monopolized righteous superiority by painting their opposition as extreme, morally reprehensible, and narrow-minded. Among the most effective tactics of their movement has been storytelling. By controlling the framing of narratives, the left guaranteed that people and groups they scorned were appropriately reviled. – Leslie Corbly, America’s Turning Point
Remember this nightly news misdirection psyop from “on high” meant to distract the public from the lies used to subvert democracy, lies such as the Russia Collusion Hoax?
It should not be lost on anyone that the media, professors, and bi-coastal elites such as Brooks dispense discord and division from ‘on high’ to achieve political goals, radical social change, and power “by any means necessary.” Their framing of narratives is replicated in social media and further replicated into violence.
It should not be lost on anyone that the above never suffer the consequences of what they espouse.
Looking back at the days before the 2024 election, there was a group of Never Trumper Christians who worried out loud through various platforms that Trump, MAGA, and Christian nationalism would destroy democracy. This group included the effete NYT’s columnists David Brooks and David French, the editor-in chief of Christianity Today Russel Moore, and others of their ilk.
Each of them accepted and propagated the lie about democracy being threatened. They went out of their way to scare voters, intimidating them with propaganda posing as superior Christian insight and morality.
Condemning Context:
Consider that Brooks’ April 17th, 2025 column was written a few months after two attempts on Trump’s life during his 2024 presidential campaign (July 13, and September 15, 2024) and three months after Trump’s inauguration (Jan. 20th, 2025). Brooks seems desperate to do away with Trump and the democracy that put him in the White House.
Should his words be considered the words of an insurrectionist as they are an appeal for a group of people to take action against a sitting president and are certainly more provocative than any claim against a J6 defendant?
“by any means necessary” Manifested Motives:
The demonic chain of custody that maintains “by any means necessary” violence goes back to the day when Cain killed his brother Abel.Cain must have thought that’s the only way Abel is going to be stopped from being a living reminder of not getting the approval he thought he should have. Cain would later go off and start his own city outside the garden of Eden to live as he pleased.
Continuing the demonic chain of custody, Luigi Mangione is accused of assassinating Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, on December 4, 2024, in New York City. Mangione was furious at the health care industry so he continued the demonic chain of custody of another before him.
Mangione had an apparent fixation with the “Unabomber,” Ted Kaczynski. Investigators found an online review of his book by Mangione that they say sets out “in his view, violence can be justified to right social wrongs. Kaczynski wrote an anti-technology manifesto titled “Industrial Society and Its Future,” arguing that his violent actions (a bombing campaign) were necessary to draw attention to these issues.
David Brooks also wrote a manifesto, his encouraging an uprising to stop Trump.
Continuing the demonic chain of custody, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old man, has been charged with the murder/assassination of Charlie Kirk. Charlie was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025
Among the details in a 10-page criminal charging document released by Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray, the charges include the allegation that Robinson targeted Kirk because of “Robinson’s belief or perception regarding Charlie Kirk’s political expression.” (His motivation sounds like Brooks’ “The only way he’s going to be stopped.”)
According to the documents Robinson’s mother stated that her son had become more political and had “started to lean more to the left – becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.” About Charlie the man and the message, Tyler Robinson thought that The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.
“Rival power,” David? Do you mean an army of administrative deep state insurrectionaries who will fight against and undermine the administration of the democratically elected president? You mean a legion of federal district court judges that hinder and obstruct the EOs of an elected president? You mean the growing Marxist terrorist network in America who want to carry out a Marxist revolution on American soil?
David, do you mean Armed Queers of Salt Lake City run by Ermiya Fanaeian, the child of Iranian immigrants, whose Instagram account calls for “Revolution + Trans liberation in our lifetime!”? Ermiya openly supports the use of violence to achieve the aims of LGBTQ groups.
Fanaeian also helped launch a student study group for the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), with a curriculum that includes names like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. That study group also introduced students to Marxist revolutionaries like Fidel Castro, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers.
Did you know that
Before the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, Marxist-aligned groups operating across America to subvert the nation and collapse capitalism were already on our radar.
Honestly, for anyone paying attention, the writing was very much on the wall as the Democratic Party normalized assassination culture within part of its unhinged base by labeling political opponents “Fascists” and “Nazis” for a decade. And it wasn’t just leftist politicians; leftist corporate media outlets amplified the dangerous rhetoric, while dark-money billionaire-funded NGOs operated misinformation and disinformation propaganda campaigns in an all-out informational war to label MAGA supporters (more than half the country) as “literal Nazis.”
Apparently, using the “by any means necessary” thinking of David Brooks and Luigi Mangione and Ermiya Fanaeian and Ted Kaczynski and Malcolm X and Black Panthers and Thomas Matthew Crooks and Ryan Wesley Routh, the Socialist Rifle Association, Cain, and a host of others, we can justify anything as long as it serves our ends.
About that time there occurred no small disturbance concerning the Way. Acts 19.23
Charlie Kirk – devoted husband, father, and follower of Jesus – was assassinated. Churches must speak of his faithful, courageous outspoken Christian witness and of his martyrdom.
In loving memory of Charlie Kirk, a fearless patriot & man of unwavering faith who dedicated his life to America.
"It's bigger than you, I want you to remember that… It's bigger than me – you are here to make somebody else's life better, the pursuit of liberty & freedom."❤️ pic.twitter.com/3Xrf5dcFlP
Yet, there will be Christians and churches that will balk at any mention of Charlie Kirk, intimidated by the same silencing forces behind the assassination. They will remain silent while evil celebrates.
There are church leaders who will not talk about Charlie the man. Rather, they will talk about coming together as a people. “Aren’t we supposed to be one?” “Politics divide us.” So, they tiptoe around evil afraid to name it and who is doing it, afraid of division in the ranks and a possible loss of the ministry they created.
But this is not a time for cowering and equivocating. This is not the time to play to Karens, to those who clutch pearls, to those with delicate sensibilities who cluck in disgust at anything they don’t approve of.
This is not a PBS kumbaya moment. This is a time to see what you see, name it, and to gird up your loins to do battle with the reality of evil and that requires naming it.
This is a come to your senses moment. Charlie Kirk was assassinated for speaking the gospel of Jesus Christ. This was not a tragedy, a happenstance, just another act of violence. This was a deliberate act of evil against Charlie, the Church, the Lord and his kingdom on earth.
Jesus spoke of the evil intentions within the human heart. Those included murder. And the Apostle Paul wrote of the outward characteristics of those who defile themselves with evil intentions (2 Tim. 3):
“You need to know this: bad times are coming in the last days. People will be in love with themselves, you see, and with money too. They will be boastful, arrogant, abusive, haters of parents, ungrateful, unholy, unfeeling, implacable, accusing, dissolute, savage, haters of the good, traitors, reckless, puffed up, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding a pattern of godliness but denying its power. Avoid people like that!”
If you need evidence of the above, go on social media.
Many church leaders do not understand that the church is both a ministry of reconciliation and a ministry of the sword and division. Jesus came to reconcile the world to himself, not by generating political peace for a particle group (the Jews) but with a sword that separated truth and error, light and darkness, good and evil (Matt. 10:34).
The ministry of the sword says “Avoid people like that!” The ministry of the sword says that there will be The Great Divorce based on the choices we make.
Unlike the world, with its message of looking for deliverance down and in where evil intentions lie, the ministry of reconciliation is about putting lives and the world to right by looking up and out beyond ourselves for our salvation. And so, the ministry of reconciliation entails reckoning with what Paul said to Timothy: “all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
Jesus’ ministry was one of public and private dialog. Hearing his discourse, some became followers of The Way. They accepted that Jesus was the Way to the Father and the Truth about God, the world and themselves, and the Life that death could not extinguish. And some walked away to become followers of their own dark and vain imaginations.
Charlie Kirk, like Jesus, pursued truth in the public square. And like the Apostle Paul in a public square in Ephesus, he persuaded and drew away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not gods. This was bad for local business (Hence, the epigraph. See Acts 19.)
Some accepted Charlie’s words and joined in the pursuit of truth. Others mocked and protested him and continue to do so after his assassination. Like with Jesus, we see again how much the darkness hates the light and wants to extinguish it (Jn. 3: 19-21).
There are those who think they know Charlie via the main stream media. I’ve heard Christians justify their disdain of Charlie and what he stood for with their moral authority. Clearly invested in their tribal reputation, I heard them spout chapter and verse of their righteous indignation in podcasts and in articles. They say, in effect, “We want nothing to do with him and his ilk.”
But the man’s public life was there for all to see. He aligned it with his understanding of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He refused to call darkness light or exchange reality for comforting illusions. He refused to serve lies, like so many Christians. Charlie was not intimidated by the darkness. He had fortitude. That was his way forward and that is The Way’s forward.
Charlie Kirk reminded us that a life of courage and virtue isn’t easy—but it’s worth living. His example should inspire us all to stand boldly for what’s right. pic.twitter.com/shpQlA9Xkp
The Lord detests the way of the wicked, but he loves those who pursue righteousness. Prov. 15:9
~~~~~
Charlie Kirk appeared on Fox and Friends with his family just weeks before he was shot in Utah. Prayers are continuing to pour in for the Turning Point USA co-founder. pic.twitter.com/DuHDjaHP22
People are mourning Charlie all over the world! He was more important than you may realise , this is just an early clip, later many other European countries joined too and Australia pic.twitter.com/4Vm5eeyvcm
On the left-wing social media app Bluesky, the assassination of Charlie Kirk is being celebrated like a national holiday. The entire site reads like a grotesque party, with users cheering, laughing, and even dancing over the murder of a young husband and father, shot down for the simple crime of thinking differently.
And it doesn’t stop there. The mob on Bluesky is now taking it even further by openly naming other conservatives they want to see assassinated next. Like this is some kind of “Hunger Games” to them.
Go to this link to see screen captures of who they want killed:
Introitus Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ets. Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem. Exaudi orationem meam, ad te omnis caro veniet. Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ets.
Entrance Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine on them. Thou, O God, art praised in Sion, and unto Thee shall the vow be performed in Jerusalem. Hear my prayer, unto Thee shall all flesh come. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine on them.
Gennesaret. The Pharisees, together with legal experts from Jerusalem, were on the scene to investigate Jesus when they witnessed some of his followers eating with unwashed hands – a brazen breach of a long-held practice of ceremonial washings and ritual purity rules.
The Pharisees, as do all Jews, never eat without first washing their hands. This is to maintain the tradition of the elders, who when they come from the marketplace, never eat without first washing. There are other traditions too: the washing of cups, pot, and bronze dishes.
Known for strict Torah observance by way of oral tradition, the Pharisees consider that being ritually impure is to be morally impure. One rabbi described eating with unwashed hands as no different than lying with a harlot.
As our readers are aware, the Pharisees claim that the Law that God gave to Moses consisted of the written Law and the oral traditions of the Jewish people, the oral law being an interpretation of the Torah according to what they believe to be the spirit of the Law. It consists of a collective body of ordinances that have evolved from the Law to regulate religious observances and the daily life and conduct of the Jewish people.
Ritual hand washing is seen as an extension of Moses’ directive to Aaron and his sons for them to wash their hands and feet prior to entering the Tabernacle.
A legal expert described the ritual before partaking of a meal: “First you wash your hands to make them clean, and then perform the ritual to make them spiritually clean. You recite a prayer during the ritual washing: ‘Blessed be Thou, O Lord, King of the universe, who sanctified us by the laws and commanded us to wash the hands.’”
As part of a renewal movement, the Pharisees are working to purify Israel from worldly influence and bring about the conditions for the national restoration of Israel based on the near-at-hand expectations of the prophets.
They instituted synagogues so we could gather locally and not have to travel to the temple and be under literal Torah observance. At the same time, they insist on the binding force of oral tradition and show no mercy towards those that subvert those customs. When Jesus’ followers didn’t wash their hands before eating, they became immediately suspect of breaking oral tradition.
Word here in Jerusalem is that Jesus has been on a whirlwind tour throughout Galilee proclaiming the “good news of the arrival of the kingdom of God.” Religious leaders have taken note and are concerned about anyone claiming to be the revolutionary, as others had failed and have made things worse for the Jews. Pharisees and legal experts went to Gennesaret to look into Jesus.
The Pharisees-from an etching by Friedrich Ludy
When confronted about his disciple’s blatant break with the tradition of the elders (not washing their hands before eating), Jesus clearly took issue with what he considers to be progressive revisionist practices that generate spiritual pretenders. He quoted the words of the prophet Isaiah:
These people make a big show of saying the right thing, but their heart isn’t in it. They act like they’re worshiping me, but they don’t mean it. They just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy.”
He went on to state that the Pharisees were setting aside God’s commands to preserve human tradition. He provided an example, focusing on what he considered to be another application of their revisionist interpretation of the Law with their use of Korban – something to be offered to God or given to the sacred treasury in the temple.
He began by quoting Moses: “Honor your father and mother” and “Anyone who slanders father and mother should die.”
Jesus contended with the Pharisee’s practice of telling people that in lieu of giving to their parents they could redirect their gift by calling it “Korban,” thereby leaving their parents without the help they need. He seems to be implying that instead of honoring parents and thereby God as the Law would have it, this practice is actually an insult to both.
He went on to say that the result of this revisionist interpretation of the Law that they zealously promote and enforce, and others like it, is to nullify God’s word.
It is reported that Jesus then called the crowd together and said this:
“Listen to me, all of you, and get this straight! What goes into someone from outside does not make them unclean. What makes someone unclean is what comes out of them.”
Is Jesus doing away with ritual purity or is he suggesting something else?
Are the Pharisees hypocrites when they show their piety and devotion to God with hand washing?
Is Jesus undermining the Pharisee’s Israel restoration project that is attempting to force into effect an end of history kingdom of God that they approve of?
Here in Jerusalem, the Pharisees are forming councils to censor and block any attempts to circumvent their restoration agenda which includes oral tradition.
(The above is based on the gospel of Mark 7: 1-23.)
~~~~~
Here’s an inciteful take on Deuteronomy that will revise what you thought you knew.
The Gospel According to Moses
For the renowned scholar, Dr. Daniel Block, Deuteronomy is the “Gospel according to Moses.” Moses’ farewell pastoral addresses call God’s people to remember his grace in salvation, covenant relationship with him, and his revelation of a way of blessing in a lost world.
Daniel I. Block, “The Gospel According to Moses: A Commentary on Deuteronomy”
Here’s an excellent April 3, 2025 PBS/Frontline documentary of things you won’t hear from MSM including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Put away political animus to gain insight. (Some coarse language.)
In Western Christianity, Tenebrae occurs in the final days of the Holy Week, and commemorates the sufferings and death of Christ. It involves the gradual extinguishing of candles, leading to a void of darkness.
Metaphorical darkness, light, and space formed the inspiration for Tenebrae, a 2002 chamber work by Argentine composer, Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960).
Ten years ago, a priest took me aside and asked how I was doing. After sharing general things, I confided that I have a deep well of pain inside me and that if any of it was brought to the surface, I don’t know what would happen. A recent reading of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark has me thinking that this was true for Hamlet.
My drama has not been one of ghosts, murder mystery, revenge, poison, war, love, suicide, pirates, and fencing. Not exactly. Yet, like Hamlet, I have dealt with the unresolved past, the uncertain present, the Machiavellian within and without, and loss (Shakespeare’s eleven-year-old son Hamnet died a few years before Hamlet was published.). Dueling deliberations about how to proceed with matters of heaven and earth had my disposition of two minds.
Working through internal and external out-of-whack things, I reacted variously: deliberative, antic, witty, acerbic, warmly caring and steely cold. And the back-and-forth between guilt, perception, and reality had my sick soul grappling with the weight of my actions and their repercussions. Foiled attempts at living a serious and noble life resulted in a profound source of pain.
“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” from William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.
Hamlet, constantly monitored, was deemed uncontrollable and too dangerous to be around. The king tried to exile him. Likewise, there are those who watch me from a distance and keep me at a distance as too unsettling to be around, exiled to their version of purgatory. But after reading Hamlet, I take comfort in this: Man is too complex for any final judgement here on earth.
Below, notes made while reading Hamlet a second and third time and retelling the tragedy in my own words. It’s been my experience that rereading previous works as you get older provides new insights thereby expanding temporal bandwidth. Rereading Hamlet reset my Christian imagination.
This personal exercise, in no wise exhaustive of the depths of Hamlet, was done to understand the prince, the play and the “Who’s there?” persona of my own drama.
Though there is plenty of wit, there are no snappy answers to the existential issues raised in the play. In fact, there is a lot of ambiguity and a lot questions, layers of them. The word “question” is used fifteen times. Hamlet himself is a question mark.
Anyway, that is my prologue to Hamlet.
~~~
You’re a serious young man in your late twenties. You are intellectually curious. You love a good drama. You love to act. You think you’ve got a handle on things. You’re in a good place. But then the order of things is radically altered and you enter uncharted territory. You soon find yourself in a black hole of “to-be-or-not-to-be” despair. You have a lot to come to terms with as heir to the throne of Denmark.
Hamlet, a student of religious and philosophical inquiry at the University of Wittenberg, had to grapple with the major religious reform of medieval Catholic theology. October of 1517, a professor of moral theology at the university posted 95 Theses on a local church. Martin Luther challenged papal policy and stressed the inward nature of the Christian faith over the overt money-laundering indulgences that fed the rich papacy in Rome.
Indulgences were based on a belief in purgatory, a prison of souls in the next life where one could supposedly continue to cancel the accumulated debt of one’s sins. Dante’s 14th century poem “Purgatorio” pictured purgatory as a place of unresolved sin, spiritual anguish, and the quest for redemption. Then, in the late Middle Ages, thinking about the after-life was radically altered. English Protestants rejected the Catholic notion of purgatory.
Beyond theology, the Catholic Church’s traditional geocentric model of the universe was also being rejected for a heliocentric cosmological model. Wittenberg was the center for Copernican cosmology. (See the article below regarding Hamlet as an allegory for the competition between the cosmological models.)
Back in Denmark, potential war with Norway was on the horizon. The Norwegian crown prince’s father was killed in a duel by Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet. Fortinbras was determined to avenge his slain father.
In this setting, Hamlet returns to Denmark for the funeral of his father, King Hamlet. In court he wears black to mourn. His demeanor is somber.
So much for backstory. The unresolved takes over from here.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark opens on the cold and windy ramparts of the royal palace located in the coastal city of Elsinore. As sentinels keep all-night watch for an approaching army, a ghost appears instead. The apparition has shown up a couple of times at the same time of night – the changing of the guard. Two sentinels invite Hamlet’s Wittenberg school buddy, Horatio, to see for himself. He had questioned their report.
The ghost looks like Hamlet’s dead warrior father. The figure seems to only want to speak to his son. So, Horatio decides to bring Hamlet to the ramparts to check it out. But first, Hamlet heads to court.
~~
A1S2: King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, sends two courtiers to Norway hoping to persuade Fortinbras from attacking Denmark. He then addresses Laertes, the son of the Lord Chamberlain Polonius, and his desire to return to school in France. The king then turns to the gloomy Hamlet: “How is it that the clouds still hang over you?”
Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, now married to Claudius, chides Hamlet. She wants him to get rid of the black clothes and to get on with life, saying that death is an everyday event. She wants to know why death “seems” so important to Hamlet.
Hamlet rejects his mother’s understanding of his grief. He wants her to know that the magnitude of his internal grief is greater than what his black clothes and brooding attitude portray.
Claudius, cold and conniving, chimes in. He downplays death as just what happens in the family tree. He then scolds his nephew by saying that he is overdoing his grief and is not acting manly that way. He wants Hamlet to see him as his new father.
Hamlet gets a sense of the dysfunction, of how out of whack things are, in Denmark. He sees that Claudius and his mother are quite a warped pair! He wants to return to an emotionally healthy place -Wittenberg. The King and Queen encourage him to stay in Denmark. At his mother’s request, Hamlet agrees to do so.
(Another level of abnormal, though never mentioned: Claudius has usurped the throne; Hamlet is the rightful heir.)
Claudius and Gertrude leave court. Hamlet sticks around to lament out loud to himself those feelings of anguish that Claudius and Gertrude could not or would not fathom. His return to Denmark has brought him to a place of suicidal despair:
O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter. O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.
Regarding the moral bankruptcy of his mother – she was quick to marry Claudius after her husband’s death – he says “Frailty, thy name is woman!”
Two sentinels and Horatio enter. They describe what they saw on the ramparts: an apparition that looked very much like Hamlet’s dead father in full armor. Hamlet agrees to go see the ghost that night with him. Hamlet, alone, says to himself
My father’s spirit in arms! All is not well; I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes
~~
A1S3: Elsewhere, Laertes, before heading off to France, counsels his sister Ophelia not to fall in love with Hamlet, to consider his prime devotion to his royal responsibilities and his hot bloodedness.
Polonius, their father, enters the scene. He gives fatherly advice to Laertesabout how to conduct himself while at school in France. Educated but not a deep thinker, Polonius repeats common proverbs he learned by rote. These include ‘don’t say what you are thinking, don’t be quick to act, be friendly but don’t overdo it, don’t pick fights’ and “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”
Laertes takes off. Polonius turns to his daughter Ophelia to give her fatherly advice about Hamlet. He cautions her to not believe his vows of love and to guard her affections. This instruction, in political terms, seems odd to me. Hamlet is the rightful heir to the Danish throne. Ophelia could marry Hamlet and Polonius would be in a good position.
~~
A1S4: That night Hamlet waits with Horatio and Marcellus for the ghost to appear. When it does, it motions for Hamlet to come with it. Both the sentinel Marcellus and Horatio are concerned about the harrowing encounter – Hamlet going off with the ghost to hear what it says. Hamlet considers it his destiny to follow the ghost and resolves to do so.
Horatio is uneasy about the appearance of the Ghost and the omen it might represent. Marcellus, a sentinel trained at keeping watch on the castle battlements, senses that something is off. He says, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” A supposed ghost of the late king doesn’t just appear if all is right in the kingdom. Horatio responds to Marcellus, “Heaven will direct it.” They follow Hamlet.
~~
A1S5: The ghost-father, saying he will soon return to purgatory, charges Hamlet to wreak vengeance on his uncle, the one who murdered him before he was able to repent of his sins and receive last rites. He describes how Claudius murdered him and how he seduced Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, with words and gifts. He tells Hamlet to spare his mother Gertrude, to leave her to God to judge. Should Hamlet also do this with Claudius and not get involved in murder?
Hamlet vows to remember his father. The high-minded and contemplative Hamlet is directed to get his hands dirty. Will the unresolved past and the rottenness in Denmark taint his thinking, his morality, his actions?
Horatio and Marcellus come up and want to know what transpired with the ghost. Hamlet gives an oblique answer. Horatio presses and Hamlet won’t say what he was told. Instead, he asks his these two to swear to not say anything about what they saw or heard. The ghost, moving around behind the scenes, shouts “Swear!” four times to Horatio and Marcellus as Hamlet tells them to not to disclose what has happened and to not react not matter how strangely he reacts in the future.
Hamlet then tells the ghost to rest. No one will talk. And tells Marcellus and Horatio to shush up when the three go back to court. And then he gives his perspective on the whole mess and having to deal with it:
The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right. Nay, come, let’s go together.
~~~
A2S1: Elsewhere, Polonius sends his servant with money for his son Laertes who is studying music in France. He tells Reynaldo to check around in a back-handed way (to spy) to get impressions of his son. Is Laertes studying or is he sowing wild oats?
Ophelia shows up in a frazzled state. She tells her father that Hamlet came to her behaving strangely. Polonius attributes Hamlet’s behavior to love madness. He asks Ophelia if she has led him on or pushed him away. She says she has refused his entreaties. Polonius, who loves to give advice, wants to advise Claudius of Hamlet’s craziness.
~~
A2S2: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, school chums of Hamlet, arrive in court. Claudius and Gertrude want both of them to hang around (spy on) Hamlet to find out what’s behind his crazy behavior and perhaps, cheer him up. When they leave court to find Hamlet, Polonius enters court. He wants to tell the king his theory of Hamlet’s madness, but first he wants the king to listen to the report of the Norwegian ambassadors who just arrived. He goes to retrieve the Norwegians.
While gone, Claudius comments to Gertrude that he is eager to hear Polonius’ proposed theory. Gertrude responds by saying Hamlet’s madness is not doubt tied to his father’s death and their quick marriage.
The two ambassadors enter and explain to Claudius that their king has deterred Fortinbras from attacking Denmark. They leave court.
Then the wordy Polonius gets on with his report about Hamlet’s craziness in a long-winded and redundant fashion. Gertrude can’t handle his bloviating and tells him to get to the point: “More matter, with less art.”
Polonius presents Hamlet’s love letter to his daughter Ophelia. He claims that this shows that Hamlet is madly in love and that Ophelia’s rejection of him has made him melancholy and lose his mind.
Claudius wants to know if this is true. Polonius says they can discover whether Hamlet really has gone mad from when he is set up to be alone with Ophelia. He and king will hide and see what happens. Claudius agrees to go along with the scheme.
Hamlet arrives. Polonius tells the king and queen to leave so he can deal with him. The verbose Polonius engages Hamlet in a conversation. Hamlet, in feigned-madness mode, responds to Polonius with witty nonsense. When Hamlet answers off-subject but with wise insights, Polonius takes note and says, “There is a method to his madness.”
Two of Hamlet’s friends from Wittenberg. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, arrive and Polonius takes off. Hamlet is pleased to see his friends. The two share some bawdy banter with their friend Hamlet. And then Hamlet waxes philosophical. He wants to know why the two of them are back in Denmark which he calls a prison. They disagree with his assessment. Hamlet replies “Why, then, tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.”
The two friends ascribe Hamlet’s melancholy as disappointed ambition that wants more. Hamlet ascribes it to bad dreams. He then wants know why they showed up. After some coaxing, they admit they were sent for.
Hamlet explains their being summoned is to cheer him up. But he says that he’s not interested in anything. The world holds nothing for him. But then Rosencrantz wonders if Hamlet would be interested in the drama company coming to entertain him.
Hamlet wants to know all about the troupe, the one that he so enjoyed, and the state of the theater. Trumpets blow announcing the arrival of the actors. Hamlet welcomes them and tells them that his “uncle-father and aunt-mother” have the wrong idea about his madness- it comes and goes at will.
Polonius enters and the players follow him into the room. Hamlet welcomes them and asks one of them to give him a speech about avenging a father’s death. He recites some of the lines himself and then has a player take over. The verbose Polonius comments that the speech is too long and Hamlet replies him with mocking wit.
Hamlet is impressed by the actor’s emotionally charged speech. He tells Polonoius to take them to their rooms and treat them well. As the players leave, he asks if they can perform The Murder of Gonzago the next night. The answer is yes. Hamlet tells them that he will write some additional lines into the play.
Polonius, the actors, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leave. Hamlet is alone with his thoughts.
Having just seen the raw emotion of an actor reciting lines about people who are of no consequence to him, Hamlet belittles himself for not being able to generate any passion to avenge his own father. He scolds himself as one who mopes around and is cowardly. He calls himself an ass. He has been given motive to act and avenge the death of his father and he does not have his act together. But this reflection gives him an idea.
Having just experienced the effect of the actor’s intensity on his own conscience, he knows of others, too, who have had their conscience pricked when art imitates life. Having the acting troupe produce a play that mirrors the murder of his father may just reveal Claudius’s guilt and his own catharsis.
Hamlet, who may have studied Aristotle’s Poetics while at Wittenberg, comes across like a self-styled critic and dramatist of the theater. He knows how he wants the actors to perform and edits and adds to the script, for . . .
The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.
~~~
A3S1: Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern enter court. Claudius questions Hamlet’s two friends about Hamlet’s disposition. They say he’s responsive but difficult to read. They also say that he is excited about a play being put on by a recently arrived troupe. Hamlet wants the king and queen to attend. Polonius, unaware of Hamlet’s Mousetrap, agrees with this invitation. He has a trap of his own.
Polonius, along with Claudius, wants to find out if unrequited love is the reason Hamlet is beside himself. Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest, is instructed by her father Polonius to walk around with a prayer book, look spiritual, and wait for Hamlet. He adds that people often do this – act devoted to God – to mask their bad deeds. Claudius hears this. To himself, he admits that these words have produced a sharp pang of guilt within.
When they hear Hamlet coming, Claudius and Polonius hide to spy on him. Hamlet enters and begins to speak only to himself of things that make his life, this mortal coil, tedious, irritating, and unbearable. His aversion to being contemplates relieving himself of the messiness of life by suicide:
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die—to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d.
Hamlet ponders the well-known tribulations of life and then counters that with the “undiscovered country from whose bourn no travel returns.” From the later he reckons that fear of the unknowns of death, which would include purgatory, makes us all cowards. And too much back-and-forth thinking, he decides, makes one less daring and of no use when things need to get done.
Hamlet then comes across Ophelia reading her prayer book. He greets her and then goes on to speak to her in a cold-hearted way. Has he, because of the moral bankruptcy of his mother, decided to not put any trust in a woman?
He tells her that he never loved her. He bitterly denounces humankind, marriage, and the deceitfulness of beauty and women. He tells her to go to a convent. When he leaves, Ophelia laments the change that has come over the once noble Hamlet.
His intense words with Ophelia suggest that Hamlet has turned from acting mad to acting with madness.
Claudius and Polonius come out of hiding. Claudius is now aware that Hamlet’s behavior is not related to Ophelia but is likely related to something more out-of-control dangerous. He wants to send Hamlet to England (exile him) in hopes of changing his disposition. Is England to be Hamlet’s purgatory?
~~
A3S2: Later, Hamlet is with the actors, advising them how to speak their parts in the play that night. When Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up Hamlet confirms that the king and queen will be attending. They confirm this and leave to help the actors prepare. Horatio enters.
Hamlet expresses his high regard for Horatio and praises Horatio’s self-control. He then asks him to watch his uncle carefully during the play. Claudius’ response will determine whether the ghost was speaking the truth or just being a damned ghost. Hamlet will keep an eye on Claudius too.
Trumpets announce Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. As they take their seats, Hamlet responds with nonsense to Claudius and Polonius. He chooses not to seat next to his mother. He sits with Ophelia and speaks to her in a mischievous way. Ophelia comments that Hamlet seems to be in a good mood tonight.
Hamlet retorts that God is the best comic. And, revealing with spite what truly galls him, he says why shouldn’t he be happy when his mother is so happy just a short time after his father has died. He should get rid of his black clothes and get some new snappy outfit.
Trumpets play and the pantomime show begins as a summary of the spoken drama to follow. The players mime the murder of the king by the same means as Hamlet’s father was murdered and then the queen accepting the murder’s advances.
Ophelia wants to know what it means. Hamlet impishly tells Ophelia “It means mischief.”.
The Prologue speaker enters to introduce the play. Puckish Hamlet tells Ophelia that this guy will explain everything as actors can’t keep things to themselves.
The Prologue actor speaks only three short lines, entreating the audience to watch the tragedy.
Hamlet asks whether that was the prologue or the inscription on a wedding ring? Ophelia replies “Tis brief, my lord.” And Hamlet comes back “As a woman’s love.”
The play begins with actors playing king and queen. They reenact the Murder of Gonzago. The play closely parallels the circumstances of the murder of Hamlet’s father, the king, as told by the ghost and the aftermath of the queen marrying the murderer. In this play the nephew, not the uncle, is the murderer.
The play begins with the king, who is nearing death, recounting his thirty years of marriage to the queen. He says that after he is gone, perhaps she will remarry. The queen protests and speaks of her undying love for him even after his death. If she did remarry, she vows, all of life should turn against her.
Hamlet to Ophelia: “If she should break it now!” – a pointed reference directed at Hamlet’s mother for her being so quick to marry Claudius after the king’s death.
The player king replies from many years of wisdom that things change, that love is unreliable. “Our wills and fates do contrary run.” The king, now tired, falls asleep. The player queen leaves.
On the side, Hamlet throws in clever comments to Gertrude and Claudius that smack of trying to get under the skin of the king and queen. Claudius wants to know what the play is called. Hamlet responds The Mousetrap. He adds that it is a play about a murder in Vienna and no big deal and that it would only bother the guilty.
The player of the king’s nephew enters. Hamlet tells Ophelia who it is Lucianus. Ophelia says that Hamlet is a good commenter. Hamlet, feeling frisky, continues with sarcasm and sexual inuendo.
Lucianus pours poison into the sleeping player king’s ears. Hamlet remarks that he poisoned him to get the kingdom and the king’s wife all to himself. Claudius stands up. He wants the play to stop. He wants to leave. Everyone except Hamlet and Horatio leave.
Hamlet mocks the departure with a few poetic lines and jokes that perhaps he could be an actor if everything else failed. Horatio agrees. And Horatio also agrees that that Claudius did react to the poison scene. Hamlet knows now that the ghost was telling the truth.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up and say that the king is angry and queen is upset. Hamlet’s replies in glib fashion. His two friends want to know what’s up with him. They tell Hamlet that the queen wants to see him.
When the players enter with recorders, Hamlet grabs one and asks if Guildenstern can play it. He says no. Hamlet then calls out his friends – he and Rosencrantz are trying to play him and can’t even play a simple recorder.
Polonius comes around and tells Hamlet that his mother wants to see him right away. Hamlet replies with bits of nonsense and Polonius goes along. Hamlet says he will go see her – soon. By himself he says, it’s the witching hour when really hellish things go on. He could behave like that with his mother but he puts thoughts in check: “I will speak daggers to her and use none.”
~~
A3S3: Claudius, speaking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, says Hamlet is getting crazier by the hour. He doesn’t feel safe. So, he’s going to send them both with Hamlet to England on diplomatic business. They agree to go, with Rosencrantz saying that whatever happens to the king happens to everyone. They leave and Polonius enters.
He tells Claudius that Hamlet is on his way to his mother’s chamber and that he will hide in there and listen to her scolding Hamlet. He leaves.
Claudius, alone in his chamber, admits his crime:
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,— A brother’s murder!
His Cain-like murder of his own brother comes with God’s curse. He’s finding it hard to pray. He’s not ruing what happened. He’s wondering if he can even repent of it, be pardoned of his sin and continue to live with all the gains (the kingdom and queen). He falls to his knees.What is not said is Claudius’ desire to murder again – this time Hamlet is in his sights.
Hamlet enters, intending to kill Claudius. He sees Claudius on his knees and thinks that if that guy dies while praying, he will receive grace, go to heaven, and be forgiven of his sins. Whereas his murdered father, King Hamlet, had no time to repent of his sins. He doesn’t consider it revenge by killing him now and sending him to heaven. Claudius must suffer the same purgatory
Hamlet, who knows that his mother is waiting for him, leaves the room. He says that he’ll wait to kill Claudius when Claudius acts up again in some ungodly way.
Claudius, getting up from his knees, considers his prayers useless.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
What is not said is Claudius’ desire to bring about murder again – this time of Hamlet in England. Hamlet missed his chance for revenge.
~~~
Prior to the Mousetrap play, Hamlet was a mess. Things in his world looked absurd and bleak. He had just returned home from studying in Wittenberg to a dark and vexing situation – something rotten in Denmark.
A ghost, looking like his dead father, appears from somewhere. Hamlet learns from the specter that it had been murdered by his uncle Claudius and that his mother quickly married him. The ghost orders Hamlet to avenge his death and go easy on his mother.
But should Hamlet, a theology and philosophy student, listen to the ghost from somewhere and do something irrevocable – kill Claudius – and end up in purgatory or hell? Is he required to deal with the unresolved past? These questions weigh on him.
In addition to the complex matter handed him, Hamlet, who was in line to be king when his father died, now wonders if those around him in Denmark can be trusted. And, a foreign prince seeking revenge is marching against the Danish kingdom. There’s a lot of vectors to think about.
It’s a situation so messed up that he thought about suicide.
Prior to the Mousetrap play, Hamlet was also very disappointed with himself for not being a man of action, of thinking too much. But with confirmation of Claudius’ guilt via the play, something has stirred in Hamlet. He’s ready, driven with revenge madness, to dispose of Claudius.
Claudius had taken action – murdered King Hamlet – without regard to a common understanding Rosencrantz had stated in obeying Claudius’ own protection order: whatever happens to the king happens to everyone. And now, Claudius is ready to dispose of the rightful heir to the throne to protect himself.
~~~
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark operates in a God-ordered moral universe with heaven, hell, sin, punishment. The undead figure, aware of this, goads Hamlet to commit murder to avenge his death and to also leave Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, to God’s judgement. The undead figure’s goading ultimately leads to many deaths including Hamlet’s.
The opening “Who’s there?” seems to also ask of the living – Hamlet – what kind of actor he is given the ultimate issues he faces. Pushed to the limits, will the center hold?
~~
A3S4: Getrude and Polonius are in the queen’s chamber waiting for Hamlet. Polonius wants Gertude to lay into Hamlet for the trouble he’s caused. When they hear Hamlet approach, Polonius hides behind a tapestry to listen in.
Hamlet, impatient, wants to know what his mother wants. She says that he’s insulted his (step-) father. Hamlet fires back saying that she’s insulted his father. Though he vented privately before, Hamlet is no holding back.
His mother, shocked, wonders if Hamlet has forgotten who she is. Hamlet’s response is pointed:
No, by the rood, not so. You are the Queen, your husband’s brother’s wife, And, would it were not so. You are my mother.
Hearing Hamlet’s denunciation, his mother now wants to bring others in. Hamlet tells her to sit down and not move. For, he wants to expose her true nature. She fears Hamlet will kill her with the sword in his hand. She cries for help. Polonius, from behind the curtain, also cries for help.
Hamlet smells a rat or rather, Claudius. He lunges and stabs the curtain with his weapon. His mother cries, “O me, what hast thou done?”
Hamlet replies, “Nay, I know not. Is it the King?
Gertrude: “Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!”
Hamlet:
A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother, As kill a king and marry with his brother.
Gertrude: “As kill a king?”
Hamlet: Ay, lady, ’twas my word.
Hamlet pulls back the curtain and discovers Polonius, dead. He has nothing good to say about the busybody Polonius who, Hamlet deems, got his just deserts. Hamlet turns to his mother, for her just deserts – wring her heart with words of judgement.
She wants to know what’s she’s done to be treated so badly. Hamlet is ready to tell her – a deed so heinous that its judgement day on earth. She again wants to know what the deed is.
Hamlet then compares her former husband, his noble father to the scum that she hooked up with. He wonders how anyone, even impaired, could make such a decision. Reason has been a slave to desire, he says. She wants him to stop exposing her sin.
O Hamlet, speak no more. Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.
But Hamlet continues.
O speak to me no more; These words like daggers enter in mine ears; No more, sweet Hamlet.
He rails against her going to bed with her villainous husband, a ragtag man who is but a small fraction of his father’s worth and who stole the crown.
The ghost enters. Hamlet sees the ghost. Gertrude does not. When Hamlet speaks to the ghost, Gertrude thinks he’s gone mad.
The ghost spurs Hamlet to back on the revenge track. He also cautions Hamlet not to overdo it with his mother, the weaker sex. The ghost leaves. Gertrude has not heard or seen anything of the ghost. She thinks Hamlet’s madness has him imaging all this.
But Hamlet protests, saying he is of sound mind. He then counsels her to not look at his madness but to look at her heart, to confess her sins, and repent. Her conscience is pricked by his words. Hamlet continues:
O throw away the worser part of it, And live the purer with the other half. Good night. But go not to mine uncle’s bed. Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
Hamlet, who started out virtuous and is now heading to the dark side, wants his mother to be prudent and temperate. He wants her to at least pretend to be virtuous and by this, develop good habits. And that would mean her not having sex with Claudius and letting him deceive her in anyway about her son.
Hamlet then says good night to his mother and sorry about what happened to the dead guy, Polonius. He considers it God’s punishment for himself and Polonius. He
He reminds his mother that he’s off to England with two snakes in the grass, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He’s expecting to see the plan Claudius has in place blow up in his face.
As he leaves, Hamlet drags Polonius body out of the room. He comments that the stiff was babbling politician who has finally shut up.
~~~
A4S1: Claudius enters and wants to know why Gertrude is so upset. She tells him about Hamlet’s “lawless fit” of madness that killed “a rat, a rat.” Polonius was dead. Claudius blames himself for not doing enough to stop the “mad young man.” He tells her that he’ll ship Hamlet off to England and work his magic to explain and excuse what happened.
Gertrude says that Hamlet had dragged the body off somewhere and that she sees a glimmer of good in the mad Hamlet – he weeps for what he has done.
Claudius summons Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and tells them to go look for Hamlet and recover the body. He tells Gertrude that he hopes they can come out of this scandal in good shape.
~~
A4S2: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern come across Hamlet and ask about the body. Hamlet gives no direct answer. He accuses Rosencrantz of being a “sponge” (spy) for Claudius and says “The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is the thing . . .” This last seems to be a riff on “the plays the thing.” Both lines, in Hamlet’s mind, refer to bringing the guilty party to justice.
Guildenstern doesn’t understand. So, Hamlet says the king is of no importance. (The crime is.) He wants to see the king and off they go.
~~
A4S3: Claudius, in the meantime, to his attendants:
I have sent to seek him and to find the body. How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!
Claudius talks to them of being judicious on how Hamlet is handled. He is loved by the people so a fair-minded punishment must be seen by them and not the crime (which might expose more than Claudius wants known). His being sent away to England will look carefully considered. He ends by saying that a cancerous disease must be dealt with in extracting ways.
Rosencrantz enters and tells Claudius that Hamlet has not told him where the body is. Guildenstern brings Hamlet into the room. Claudius presses Hamlet for the location of the body. Hamlet responds with flippant riddles before revealing where the body is. The attendants go and look.
Claudius tells Hamlet that he will leave for England right away – for his own protection. Hamlet is happy about this. Before he leaves, Hamlet calls Claudius his mother – a jab based on Claudius being married – one flesh – with his mother.
Claudius sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to follow Hamlet to make sure he gets on the boat. Alone, he speaks of his hope that the king of England will obey the sealed orders sent with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The orders call for Hamlet to be put to death when he arrives.
~~
A4S4: Fortinbras, the Norwegian prince, arrives in Denmark at the head of his army. He sends his captain to the king of Denmark to ask for permission to cross the land on his way to attacking Poland. On his way the captain runs into Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are on their way to the boat headed for England.
Hamlet asks the captain why Norwegian troops are in Denmark, who’s leading them and what are they after – the heart of Poland or just a outlying region. The captain explain that Fortinbras is leading the army to seize a small scrap of land that has no value to anyone.
Hamlet wonders if the Poles would defend such a target and the captain replies that they will. Before he thanks the captain for the information and says good bye to him, Hamlet stops to think about what he just heard.
He remarks that men are so driven that they will go to war at great cost of blood and treasure for pointless gain.
Rosencrantz wants Hamlet to get a move on. Hamlet says for them to go ahead and he’ll catch up. Hamlet wants some time alone to reflect on his own inaction.
Based on the resoluteness of a foreign prince risking life and limb by attacking something pointless, he realizes that thinking too much about whether to act is more cowardice than wisdom. He likens his inertia to that of being an animal that only eats and sleeps. Yet, he tells himself, he has more motive than Fortinbras – to mete out revenge for the murder of his father, King Hamlet. He determines right then and there:
O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.
~~
A4S5: Gertrude enters the next scene telling a gentleman of the court that she doesn’t want bother with Ophelia’s loopy behavior. But Ophelia insists on being heard, the gentleman tells her. She’s saying all kinds of things related to the death of her father Polonius and conspiracy things that seem to implicate Gertrude. Horatio thinks she should speak to her. Gertrude, to herself, says that because of her nature everything looks like a disaster waiting to happen to expose her:
To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss. So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Ophelia enters and it is evident that the death of her father has affected her sanity (Just as the loss of Hamlet’s father affected his.). She sings nonsense songs and Gertude can’t get her to stop. Claudius enters and asks Ophelia how she is doing. She responds with nonsense that hints at her father’s death. When she leaves the room, Claudius says
O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs All from her father’s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude, When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions.
Claudius tells Gertrude that bad things are piling on. Polonius was killed, Hamlet has sent away for being dangerous, people are spreading rumors of the hasty funeral which looks like a cover up, and Ophelia has lost her mind. And now Laertes has returned from France and wants to the settle score. Claudius tells Gertrude that all this feels like be being murdered over and over again.
Laertes arrives with a raucous crowd shouting “Laertes will be king!” Doors are smashed open and they enter. Laertes wants to know where his father is. Gertrude clings to Laertes, holding him back from attacking Claudius. Laertes wants to know how his father was murdered. Claudius wants to prove to Laertes that he didn’t do it.
Ophelia enters and Laertes witnesses her madness. He vows revenge for the hellish suffering and torment brought upon his sister.
Claudius, to settle things in Laertes’ mind, says that he should bring his trusted friends and listen to the case he makes of his innocence. Laertes agrees and demands to know why his father was buried secretly and ignobly. Claudius says he has a right to know and
So you shall. And where th’offence is let the great axe fall. I pray you go with me.
~~
A4S6: Horatio, elsewhere in the castle, receives two sailors who have a letter from Hamlet. Horatio reads the letter out loud and learns that Hamlet’s ship to England was overtaken by pirates. Hamlet ended a prisoner on the pirate ship.
The pirates want a favor from the King of Denmark. The request is contained in letters the two sailors are holding. Hamlet asks Horatio to bring the sailors to king and then and come to him. He has a lot to tell Horatio about events and about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The sailors will show Horatio the way to where he’s holed up.
~~
A4S7: While this happens, Claudius talks with Laertes. Claudius thinks Laertes should be satisfied with his explanation of his father’s death – by the same man who is trying to kil him. Laertes wants to know why the king didn’t act right away to bring the murderer to justice.
Claudius states that he held back because his mother and the people so love Hamlet. If he acted his wife and the people would turn against him.
Just then a messenger arrives with the sailor’s letters – one for Claudius and one for Gertrude. Claudius reads the letter out loud for Laertes to hear. Hamlet, it says, will return tomorrow and explain his return. Though not mentioned but what must have been on Claudius’s mind – his failed scheme to be rid of Hamlet via the king of England.
Laertes is happy about Hamlet’s return. Now he can face him man to man and avenge his father’s murder. Claudius agrees that Hamlet’s should be disposed of – he’s a threat to his kingdom. He tells Laertes to let him devise a way to do away with Hamlet that will appease even his mother. Laertes agrees to Claudius’s scheme only if it means Hamlet’s demise by his own hand.
Claudius gins up a scheme that involves a duel between Laertes and Hamlet. To set up this scenario, Claudius tells Laertes of a certain Frenchman’s high regard of Laertes’ fencing ability. He adds that Hamlet overheard the compliment and, out of jealousy, wanted to fence Laertes to see who was the better dueler. Is the devious Claudius lying?
After Claudius confirms that Laertes is with him in plan, that Laertes won’t lose the impulse to kill Hamlet, he tells Laertes that he’ll get the people to promote the competition, that there will be bets placed and that Laertes can chose a sharpened sword beforehand to do the deed.
Laertes says he’s gotten ahold of poison oil to put on the tip of his sword. And Claudius speaks of a backup plan: get Hamlet thirsty and he’ll give him a poison drink.
Gertrude enters with terrible news: Laertes’ sister Ophelia has drowned. Gertrude softens the blow for Laertes by implying it was an accident and using imagery of her female connection with nature. (She did not treat her grieving son Hamlet with compassion.)
How did she know the details? Perhaps she witnessed it from a castle window or? Anyway, Laertes is crushed – both father and sister are dead. Claudius, worried that the upset Laertes is beyond his control, follows him with Gertrude.
~~~
A5S1:
Is she to be buried in Christian burial, when she wilfully seeks her own salvation?
So says one gravedigger to another in the graveyard of the church. They are excavating a burial plot for Ophelia and exchange thoughts about whether she should receive a Christian burial. It seems to them that she committed suicide, though the coroner called it self-defense. One gravedigger remarked that it is more like self-offense and goes on to say that the wealthy, who end their lives in unchristian ways, get their way in the end.
As they work, the first gravedigger poses a riddle to the second gravedigger: “What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?” The second gravedigger answers that it must be the gallows-maker, “for his frame outlasts a thousand tenants.”
The first gravedigger agrees that the gallows have a purpose, but then says
Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating; and when you are asked this question next, say ‘a grave-maker’. The houses he makes last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of liquor.
The second gravedigger goes off and the first shovels and sings.
Hamlet and Horatio arrive at the graveyard at a distance from Ophelia’s plot. We don’t know why Hamlet decided to go to the graveyard. Perhaps, to contemplate his own life and death. He’s been away and does not know that Ophelia is dead.
They hear the gravedigger singing while digging a grave. Hamlet notices the dissonance and a skull that the gravedigger throws up from the pit.
Does what follows relate to the opening Who’s there? Hamlet suggests to Horatio whose skull it might be – Cain’s, a courtier, or Lord So-and-So – and says it’s now the property of Lady Worm and quite a reversal of fortune.
The gravedigger, still digging and singing, throws up another skull out of the pit. As before, Hamlet proposes to Horatio whose skull it belongs to – a lawyer or a landowner. For both, their abilities and property are no longer of use to them. They no longer have a share in what is done under the sun.
Hamlet turns from contemplating death and human remains to the gravedigger. He wants to know whose grave he is digging. This begins the jaunty gravedigger’s wordplay in answer to each of Hamlet’s direct questions. Finally, the gravedigger says
One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she’s dead.
Hamlet asks: How long hast thou been a grave-maker? The gravedigger, not knowing who he is talking to, answers that it has been so since Hamlet’s father defeated Fortinbras. Hamlet: How long ago was that? He answers the day that Hamlet, the one who went crazy and was sent to England, was born. He goes on to say that he was sent to England because no one will care: There the men are as mad as he.
The conversation briefly turns to how long a body will live in a grave before it rots. Then the gravedigger pulls up a skull that has been buried for twenty-three years. Turns out that it is the skull of Yorick, the king’s jester. He hands it to Hamlet.
Hamlet reminisces for moment about the goods time he had with Yorick when he was a young boy. Then he turns to Horatio and wonders if Alexander the Great and the emperor Caesar looked like this after they were buried. These great men, he muses on another reversal of fortune, became dust and could be used as mud to plug up holes.
A funeral procession enters the churchyard following a coffin: Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and mourning courtiers. Hamlet wonders who’s in the coffin. He remarks that it’s not much of a procession; someone in a rich family must have taken their own life. He watches the proceedings.
Laertes asks the priest what other rites he can give the girl and the priest answers that he has done as much he could for someone with a suspicious death. Laertes is incensed and lays into the priest about his sister. Hamlet finds out that Ophelia is being buried.
Gertrude throws flowers onto the coffin while ruing that the flowers were not for Hamlet’s wedding to Ophelia.
Laertes curses the man who made her go mad. He jumps into the grave to hold Ophelia once more.
Just moments ago, Hamlet was fondly remembering Yorick. Now he is confronted by the death of Ophelia. He is overwhelmed:
What is he whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wand’ring stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, Hamlet the Dane.
Not to be outdone by Laertes’ grief, Hamlet also jumps into the grave. Laertes tells him to go to hell. The two begin to grapple. Hamlet says that even though he is not quick to anger, he has something dangerous inside him that Laertes should take into account. What could that be?
Claudius and Gertrude have the attendants pull them apart.
Then Hamlet, in his agony, expresses his great love for Ophelia – a love greater than her brother’s affections. He quantifies his ardor in absurd ways. And the King and Queen think he’s insane.
When Hamlet storms off, Claudius tells Gertrude to have the guards keep an eye on him. He tells Laertes to be cool. Hamlet, the problem, will be dealt with soon.
~~
A5S2: Hamlet and Horatio are now alone. Hamlet has walked off his momentary madness and wants to discuss with Horatio his recent journey. He casts the decisions he’s made in terms of a struggle that kept him from sleep.
He then praises impulsiveness as the means to getting things done when one is slow to act. This, he says, shows that God is a work even when our plans are messed up:
Rashly, And prais’d be rashness for it,—let us know, Our indiscretion sometime serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.
This harkens back to Hamlet’s agency in his line The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite That ever I was born to set it right! But is Hamlet trying to force God’s hand with rash actions?
Hamlet goes on to tell Horatio, that while on the ship to England, he found Claudius’ letter to the King of England. It was to be delivered by Hamlet’s close friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The letter contained the usual political courtesies AND a request to cut off Hamlet’s head with a dull axe! Hamlet shows Horatio the document, as he can’t believe it.
Hamlet then reveals that he penned a new letter in the proper script and sealed it with his father’s signet ring still in his possession. The new letter addressed the king of England as if in Claudius’s own words. It requested that the two men who delivered the letter would be put to death at once without time to confess to a priest.
Horatio says that those two are really in for it. Hamlet says he’s not sorry at all for they involved themselves in matters between two worthy opponents. Then he proclaims his moral right to do away with Claudius. He lays out the charges against him:
Does it not, thinks’t thee, stand me now upon,— He that hath kill’d my king, and whor’d my mother, Popp’d in between th’election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage—is’t not perfect conscience To quit him with this arm? And is’t not to be damn’d To let this canker of our nature come In further evil?
Horatio remarks that Claudius will soon find out what happened to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet agrees the time is short but says that in the meantime he has time to work his plan. He then regrets losing control with Laertes – they both grieve the loss of Ophelia, they both want to avenge the death of a loved one. He says he will treat him well from now on.
Hamlet apologizes to Horatio for his over-the-top behavior but not to Laertes. He also blames Laertes for his actions – it was Laertes’ overwhelming show of grief that set him off. And Hamlet never confesses or repents of his cruel behavior with Ophelia, behavior that played a role in her despair and suicide. Has Hamlet stopped listening to his conscience?
With hat in hand, Osric, a young courtier, arrives. He has a message from the king for Hamlet. Hamlet makes snide comments about him to Horatio and toys with Osric about his hat and the weather. You get the idea that Hamlet will not suffer fools. Osric is a toady who agrees with Hamlet about everything including opposites that Hamlet harries him with. The conversation is a duel between a wit and a twit.
Osric goes on blustering about how wonderful Laertes is. Hamlet, not sure where Osric is going with all this, adds his own praise about Laertes and asks why he is being talked about. Horatio also hopes to get the reason Osric is there.
When Osric finally gets to the point, he says that Laertes is unrivaled at fencing and that the king has placed a large bet on a fencing contest between Hamlet and Laertes. Laertes, the better fencer, is given a handicap of three hits to win. He wants to know if Hamlet agrees to the duel. Hamlet says OK.
After Osric leaves to notify the king, Hamlet and Horatio comment on Osric one more time saying, in effect, that he’s a frivolous person and full of hot air.
A lord arrives. He asks if Hamlet is ready to duel or wait till later. Hamlet says he’s ready to duel. The lord says that the queen wants Hamlet to speak to Laertes before the duel in a civil manner. The lord leaves.
Horatio advises Hamlet against dueling – he will lose. Hamlet brushes this off saying that he has been practicing fencing while Laertes has been in France. He thinks he will win and yet something inside tells him it will go the other way. Horatio tells him to trust that feeling. Hamlet brushes off the advice as superstitious and then launches into a “Let be” to-be-or-not-to-be fatalistic take of the situation.
Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Osric, attendants, and lords enter with fanfare. Fencing foils and flasks of wine are brought in with them. Claudius has Hamlet shake Laertes’ hand as a civil gesture.
Hamlet offers an apology to Laertes for his unseemly behavior. But the apology is an insanity defense. Hamlet claims that he was not in his right mind, as everyone knew, and that he was not responsible for any premeditated action against Laertes.
Laertes accepts Hamlet’s show of love but can’t accept forgive him. For him, the death of father and sister warrant further insight as to how honor would avenge them. Laertes, of course, already knows what will happen in the next minutes.
Hamlet and Laertes pick their foils and get ready to fence.
Claudius, the schemer, shows bogus support for Hamlet as he wants Hamlet to not hold back – until his death. If Hamlet strikes first, Claudius will order military salutes. He’ll drink to Hamlet’s health and then drop a very expensive pearl into the glass for Hamlet to drink. What he drops in the glass, of course, is poison. Trumpets sound and the duel begins.
Hamlet and Laertes engage their blades. Hamlet makes the first hit. Drums and trumpets sound, and so does a cannon. Claudius drops a pearl into a goblet and says it’s for Hamlet. He wants him to drink it. Hamlet wants to finish the round first. They continue fencing.
Claudius and Gertrude exchange words about her son Hamlet. Then Gertrude picks up the pearl/poison-laced goblet and drinks to Hamlet’s health. Claudius tells her not to drink it and she does anyway, in an act of defiance toward Claudius. Claudius knows it’s only a matter of time for Gertrude’s demise.
Hamlet defers again from drinking the wine. Gertrude wants to wipe his brow. Hamlet wants Laertes to fence like he means it. They go back at it. This time, Laertes wounds Hamlet and in the scuffle that follows they end up with each other’s sword. Hamlet wounds Laertes.
Gertrude, the poison haven taken hold, falls to the floor. Both fencers are wounded and bleeding. Osric asks Laertes how he feels and he responds that he is like one caught in his own trap: I am justly killed with mine own treachery.
Hamlet asks about his mother. Claudius says she fainted at the sight of blood. Gerturde speaks one last time:
No, no, the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! I am poison’d.
Gertrude dies. Hamlet reacts:
O villany! Ho! Let the door be lock’d: Treachery! Seek it out.
Laertes, dying, tells Hamlet that his sword had a poison tip and that his plan to kill him backfired. He can blame the king for poisoning his mother.
Hamlet takes the poison-tipped sword and wounds Claudius. The court yells “Treason!” Then Hamlet forces Claudius to drink from the poison-laced goblet, saying
Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? Follow my mother.
Claudius drinks and dies. Hamlet achieves his father’s vengeance after seeing his mother poisoned by Claudius’ scheme to do him in.
With his last breath, Laertes tells Hamlet that Claudius deserved what he got – the poisoner poisoned himself. Then, laying all the blame on Claudius, he wants to clear the slate with Hamlet before he dies:
He is justly serv’d. It is a poison temper’d by himself. Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet. Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, Nor thine on me.
Hamlet, dying, replies that heaven will not hold Laertes responsible for his death. He then bids adieu to the Wretched queen and tells those who were watching in horror that, if he had time, he could explain things. He tells Horatio to report what happened. Horatio balks at the suggestion and wants to end his life like an ancient Roman with the remainder of the poisoned drink. Is everyone, as said of Ophelia, seeking their own salvation?
Hamlet says no and takes the cup away from Horatio. Horatio must live to tell Hamlet’s story.
As th’art a man, Give me the cup. Let go; by Heaven, I’ll have’t. O good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me. If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story.
As he is saying this, Hamlet hears the sound of a military march. He asks about it. Osric says that young Fortinbras, returning from his conquest in Poland, is approaching. Hamlet says that prince Fortinbras will likely be chosen for the Danish throne. Hamlet gives his approval and tells Horatio to explain to him what happened. The unresolved recent past can’t stay that way. The rest is silence as Hamlet dies.
Horatio:
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Why does the drum come hither?
Fortinbras and the English Ambassador enter. They look around at the gruesome scene wondering what happened. The English Ambassador says that his king carried out the Danish king’s order – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. He wants to know who will thank the king.
Horatio, pointing to Claudius’ corpse, replies that it won’t be this guy. He never ordered their death. He then requests that these bodies be displayed and that he is given the opportunity to tell
How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forc’d cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall’n on the inventors’ heads. All this can I Truly deliver.
Fortinbras is eager for himself and other noble people to hear what Horatio has to say. He speaks of his opportunity and right to claim the Danish throne. Horatio tells him that Hamlet talked about this. He will tell Fortinbras more later. But first things first.
Fortinbras orders four captains to carry Hamlet and place him on a stage and to give him military honors. He would have been a great king, he says.
Looking at the bodies strewn in the court, he says it’s something one would see on a battlefield but here, something went terribly wrong. (More rottenness in Denmark?)
Fortinbras orders guns and cannons to be fired to honor Hamlet as a great soldier. (Was he a great soldier in the battle of life?)
Afterthoughts
Hamlet starts out as a virtuous young man operating with a deep sense of morality within a Christian cosmology. But grief, the revenge demand placed on him by a supernatural being, betrayal, and existential despair changes him. Listening to a dis-embodied spirit, he ends up a dis-embodied spirit.
What if Hamlet didn’t listen to the ghost? And, what if Hamlet didn’t listen to his pride and end up in a fencing duel with the son of the man he murdered hosted by the man who murdered his father? Did he see it as a way to choose his own salvation?
With the Mousetrap play, Hamlet verified what the ghost said – that Claudius poisoned his father. But Hamlet didn’t act when he heard Claudius confessing his guilt in his chamber. He thought there would be a more opportune, as in no chance for Claudius go to heaven, moment. He dithered and many lives thereafter received a violent death, a death without confession of sins. Death count since: Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern,Laertes, Gertrude, Claudius, and Hamlet.
~~~
Will the two gravediggers reprise their humorous banter while digging the grave of the newly dead? Will they speak of the deceased as they spoke of Ophelia:
Is she to be buried in Christian burial,
when she willfully seeks her own salvation?
Will they ponder the reversal of fortunes as did Hamlet?
~~~
As it was common for royal marriages to create alliances, was Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, a foreigner? Was she perhaps German and the link to Wittenberg?
~~~
There are more ghosts at the end than at the beginning.
~~~~~
The Play’s the Thing
You’ll find excellent discussions on all five acts of Hamlet and a Q&A session podcast at the link below.
It’s finally time to discuss the grandaddy of all of Shakespeare’s plays! That’s right, it’s time for Hamlet and Tim, Heidi, and special guest Andrew Kern are ready to dig deep. In this episode they discuss why this play matters so much, the initial structure of the play, the themes and problems Act I introduces, and much more.
For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire: And we beseech you bend you to remain Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.
-Claudius to Hamlet, A1S2 (emphasis mine.)
A paper read today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Toronto, Canada, offers a new interpretation of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
The paper, by Peter D. Usher, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, presents evidence that Hamlet is “an allegory for the competition between the cosmological models of Thomas Digges of England and Tycho Brahe of Denmark.”
ABSTRACT
A New Reading of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
I argue that Hamlet is an allegory for the competition between the cosmological models of Thomas Digges (1546-1595) of England and Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) of Denmark. Through his acquaintance with Digges, Shakespeare would have known of the essence of the revolutionary model of Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) of Poland, and of Digges’ extension of it. Shakespeare knew of Brahe, and named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for his forebears. I suggest that Claudius is named for Claudius Ptolemy (fl. 140 A.D.) who perfected the geocentric model. It has been suggested that Polonius is named for a Brunian character Pollinio, an Aristotelian pedant and a suitable attendant to Claudius. Hamlet is a student at Wittenberg, a center for Copernican learning, which Brahe attended too. I suggest that the slaying of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is the Bard’s way of killing the Tychonic model, while the death of Claudius signals the end of geocentricism. But the climax of the play is not the death of any of the chief protagonists; it is Fortinbras’ triumphal return from Poland and his salute to the ambassadors from England. Here Shakespeare praises the merits of the Copernican model and its Diggesian extension. Thereby he defines poetically the new universal order and humankind’s position in it. In the talk I present both historical and literary evidence in support of the present interpretation. If it is essentially correct, this reading suggests that Hamlet evinces a scientific cosmology no less magnificent than its literary and philosophical counterparts. While the last year of the sixteenth century saw the martyrdom of Bruno, the first year of the seventeenth century sees the Bard’s magnificent poetic affirmation of the infinite universe of stars.
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
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“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
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“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
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“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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Cindy Wity 
A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Hand Over
December 8, 2025 Leave a comment
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things and a group of people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?”
Objective reality – the existence of things as they are – is obvious to everyone. And so are the values, accumulated over several millennia, of what is true and of what works and what hasn’t. But not everyone accepts the obvious and the values based on time proven objective reality. Some see themselves as Progressive in rejecting both.
Today’s academic, artistic, media, and political elites, a vanguard of Progressive Groupthink, reject the existence of things as they are and do so within the safe space of their ranks thereby creating an illusion of invulnerability and inherent morality. Members of this vanguard suppress dissenting opinions and avoid critically evaluated alternatives so as to maintain the group’s shared illusion of unanimity.
The vanguard’s conformity is maintained with mind guards – the media reports “right thinking” about a matter – and with self-censorship of deviations from shared beliefs and with shared views of the enemy – those who present a reality contrary to the groups’ notion of reality.
When we hear the vanguard’s irrational take on what is going on in the world, its roiling Doublethink, its name calling and shunning of voices outside its collective choir, and its dysfunctional decision-making which objective reality tells us will result in disastrous, dehumanizing, and even deadly outcomes, we ask “Where is this coming from and where is this going?
Those of us who keep an ear to the ground in order to hear what is approaching will answer “History is repeating itself.”
The objective reality of the murderous totalitarian regimes of the last century, which Progressives willfully ignore to promote their glorious future of equality via the same means, will help us understand the denial-of-reality collaboration of today’s intelligentsia – those who hold to one way of thinking – and their quest for total domination of the body, mind, and soul with Progressive Groupthink.
Specifically, Russian Soviet history will help us understand the conformity dynamic behind today’s intelligentsia. For this understanding I turn to one of the most informed scholars of the Russian history of ideas as communicated in its literature: Northwestern Professor Gary Saul Morson.
***
In Morson’s magnum opus Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter Morson details how politics and literature, in the writings of realists, idealists, and revolutionaries, played against each other during the Soviet period.
He describes Soviet thinking that rejected the realism and the real people depicted in nineteenth-century Russian fiction and required that reality be written to include “not only of the observable present but also the inevitable future in the making” and with Socialist Realist heroes – utopianism made flesh.
Writers of Russian realism – Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and others – wrote about what they saw and experienced. They are the “wonder” in the title. They represented the world as it was in their writings about the Gulag, mass starvation, torture, unspeakable violence, about how people thought about and dealt with what was going on, and about how many succumbed to the imposed Soviet mindset.
Russian realist authors confronted those of the “certainty,” those who wrote redefined reality in terms of the “observable present and the inevitable future in the making” and in terms of “positive heroes.”
The “positive hero” was to set an example for the reader’s behavior. A Soviet cosmonaut, for one example, became a “positive hero.” A cosmonaut’s space trip was seen as science, materialism, and atheism triumphing over the transcendent values held in the U.S., the enemy of the Soviet Union.
The “certainty” writers followed the lead of the embodiment of “certainty” – Vladimir Lenin. Lenin mocked his opponents’ self-characterization as ‘seekers’ of truth. He held that dialectical materialists do not seek truth; they already possess it. And so, the party-minded “positive hero” refused dialogue, refused to see any alternatives to the Marxist-Leninist-materialist-atheistic “truth” espoused by the party, the representatives of Karl Marx’s class-struggling proletariat.
From Wonder Confronts Certainty:
“The Soviets would label fidelity to present facts “bourgeois objectivism.” It was the best that could be expected from the age of realism, but must give way to socialist realism, which shows the ideal world inevitably coming. The socialist realist author was expected to focus on the people of the future, “positive heroes” exhibiting complete “Party-mindedness.” True positive heroes do not have bring their thinking into accord with the party, a process requiring effort; they exhibit Party-mindedness so thorough that no effort is required”
“Party-mindedness”, we learn from the writings of Russian realist authors, was propagated through the means of propaganda, show trials, random arrests, and the constant terror that there might be any hint, any innuendo, any false statement that would convict one of not being party-minded.
The “party-mindedness” of the 20th century Russian intelligentsia, its conformity to only one way of thinking, is replicated today.
***
Here’s Morson in his Touchtone article Beyond Belief: Literary Reflections on Thoughtless Conformity:
“I happened to witness two professors waiting for an elevator. To make conversation, one voiced an opinion on some political question to see if the other agreed. When she did, they chattered away on a dozen other topics with perfect assurance that they agreed on those, too. Evidently, their beliefs came as a package. Subsequently I noticed this way of thinking many times, as I imagine many of my readers have.
The process works something like this: a person first chooses the group with whom he wishes to identify and then adopts its opinions. He believes as strongly in gun control, let us say, as he does in supporting Planned Parenthood, defunding the police, and banning fossil fuels. It is evident that no arguments or evidence can shake his opinions on any of these topics because arguments or evidence had nothing to do with why they were adopted.
To be sure, a person who thinks this way can cite facts and reasons to justify his opinion, but they have been acquired in the same way as the opinion itself. They are the same reasons others in the group have learned to give. I used to find it eerie to hear repeatedly the same arguments expressed in the same phrases, as if I were listening to a recording rather than to highly educated people who imagined that, unlike their intellectual inferiors, they had arrived at opinions rationally and would change them as evidence warranted. I thought of Jonathan Swift’s observation that no one was ever talked out of an opinion he was not first talked into.”
***
Reading Morson’s article, I was reminded of the easy-going liberal mindset of the Stiva Oblonsky character in Tolstoy’s Russian realism novel Anna Karenina.
Behind Stiva’s smile, his self-possessed mannerisms and hedonism is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood.”
From the novel:
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
Stiva, we learn in in the novel, does not recognize his conscious when it speaks to him. And that is aided by his living-in-the-moment forgetting. He did not want to remember any unpleasant thing.
Self-deception and romantic ideology play key roles in Anna’s life.
***
Czeslaw Milosz, Polish American poet, novelist, translator, critic, and diplomat, is best known for The Captive Mind (1953). His essay collection focuses on intellectuals, specifically poets and other writers.
As Charles Haywood writes in his 2019 article The Captive Mind (Czeslaw Milosz), [Milosz’s] “book shows how mental gymnastics, rather than coercion, caused writers under Communism to adhere to Communism. Thereby, indirectly, it congratulates writers who believe their minds free from such, or other, contortions.
“The West incorrectly sees “might and coercion” as the reasons those in Eastern Europe submit to Communism. But, rather, unwilling to face either physical or spiritual death, many choose instead to be “reborn” through taking these metaphorical pills, because “[t]here is an internal longing for harmony and happiness that lies deeper than ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.” Intellectuals, and artists especially, do not want to be “internal exiles, irreconcilable, non-participating, eroded by hatred.” So they swallow the pills and adopt the “New Faith” (a term Milosz uses throughout the book) which offers the intellectual the certainty he is both correct and virtuous, and therefore gives him a sense of belonging, gives him a feeling of being “warm-hearted and good . . . a friend of mankind—not mankind as it is, but as it should be.”” (Emphasis mine.)
Returning to Morson’s article about package thinking, Morson relates
“What really matters, [Czeslaw} Milosz explains, is “the intellectual’s feeling of belonging.” His defining “characteristic is his fear of thinking for himself.” For this reason, as well as to prosper, he must root out all the old ways of thinking. Milosz describes a phenomenon with which university people are all too familiar, the always incomplete process of teaching oneself to say the right things (in the right words), and avoid saying the wrong ones, so that one never makes a slip entailing ostracism or worse. Of course, the best way to do this is to get oneself actually to share the prescribed views. Milosz describes how
after long acquaintance with his role, a man grows into it so closely that he can no longer differentiate his true self from the self he simulates, so that even the most intimate of individuals speak to each other in Party slogans. To identify self with the role one is obliged to play . . . permits a relaxation of one’s vigilance. Proper reflexes at the proper time become truly automatic.”
***
One obvious feature of our culture’s downward trend toward mindless conformity is critical thinking’s easy alternative: clicking on a machine to receive packaged thoughts.
Why think when packaged thoughts are there for the clicking? And why expand one’s personal bandwidth when you can reaffirm your tribal identity with a click?
Why research and consider a range of ideas and thoughts when clicking on machine AI is ready to do away with mystery and your curiosity, wonder, and impatience? And why think outside package thinking when life is short – shortened by every minute clicking on a machine.
Why read classic literature to gain wisdom, insight, and understanding from other people in other places and in other times, when you can click on a remote for package thinking entertainment.
Have you bought into the globalist, academic, secular and progressive (GASP) package (a feature of Wikipedia) that censors alternative views as “extremist” or “fringe theories” or “conspiracy theories” or “racist?”
Did you buy into the globalist open borders “welcoming the stranger” package where millions of unvetted illegal invaders entered the country as simple or criminal or terrorism opportunists? Did you accept the package thinking that allows third world invaders into our country to replace American workers and American values and do all manner of harm to its citizens as empathy, as what Jesus would do? Take a look at the strangers welcomed: Arrested: Worst of the Worst | Homeland Security And, there’s this: They Called It ‘Compassion’ — But it was Child Trafficking – American Thinker
Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package where everyone, except certain individuals who hold more power and privilege, must be made equal no matter the human cost? Are you buying into the central planning democratic socialism package and willfully forgetting the objective reality of the horrors of socialism/communism? Are you willfully handing over your life, your thoughts, to “Party-mindedness”?
Did you accept the “don’t question the science” COVID package thinking of mandates, masking, social distancing, vaccine passports, isolation camps, vaccine efficacy, and of COVID’s origin lies? America’s COVID Response Was Based on Lies
Likewise, did you not question the package thinking of “climate experts” who announced their verdict that the world would end if we didn’t act now. Not long ago, woven into almost every weather report on local and mainstream media when major weather events (floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires) occurred was the narrative that climate change was behind them – without ever mentioning large-scale natural phenomena such as solar cycles, ocean currents and volcanoes that have been affecting weather for many millennia.
The Green New scam was behind Biden’s $93 Billion Crony Climate Heist. Will declassifying carbon dioxide (necessary for all of life) as a pollutant and the end of carbon dioxide regulation mean the end of the Green New scam? Are we now seeing The End of the Green New Scam? | The Rude Awakening? Matt Ridely thinks so: The end of the climate cult – The Spectator World
(A climate expert I trust: https://judithcurry.com/about/)
Do you go along with the package thinking of the [John] Rawlsian theory of ad hoc justice that, for example, releases someone arrested 40 times, is not considered a “criminal” because of their minority status, and is released by a judge back onto the street where he sets a woman on fire?
Do you buy philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s notion that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” – the package thinking that says that people are entirely products of their environment, of their society, of their age, and that’s why they do what they do. Therefore, they are not responsible for what they do because of external influence. That’s the package thinking behind the Rawlsian theory of justice and behind the executions and horrors of the French revolution working to change social environment.
Have you agreed with the insurrection thought package being espoused by The Seditious Six imploring military service members to “refuse illegal orders” thereby implying that orders coming out of the Trump administration are considered illegal by them and therefore military service members should disobey their commanding officer and join the club of the “Party-minded.” Remember, package thinking has only one train of thought – gaining and maintaining power over reality.
Have you agreed with the insurrection package thinking espoused previously by NYT’s op-ed columnist David Brooks? Do the values of your party-minded package thinking allow you to hamstring a DEMOCRACY! elected president with the rulings of party-minded federal court judges that will be overturned. Do the values of your party-minded package thinking justify the deep state, in the labyrinth of government, to sabotage the efforts of a Democratically elected President?
Do the values of your package thinking allow you to call for uprisings by any means necessary, to burn down buildings, to destroy property, to destroy businesses, to steal, do violence on others, to defund the police, to create pipe bombs, to assassinate? To ignore your conscience?
Did you accept the “Danger to our Democracy” thought package the media delivered during the last presidential election cycle? It should be obvious from the likes of David Brooks, that the “guardians of democracy” are the ones who want to tear it down.
Have bought into the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) playbook that conforms and coerces everyone to identify with Soviet style party-mindedness package thinking?
Have bought into viewing everything including humans through the lens of materialism?
Have you bought into package thinking so as to not be considered an outsider? Have you bought into conformity for conformity’s sake?
Is censorship the worst thing that can happen to a people? Or, is it “Party-mindedness?”
When we hear someone say crazy things, we might say “Yeah, right” and shrug it off. But when a group of people say crazy things with the smug air of certainty and people agree with said crazy things, we wonder “What in the world is going on?” and “Where is this coming from and where is it going?”
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia. And a mind is still a terrible thing to hand over.
What happened in Russia didn’t stay in Russia . . . Britain Is Lost | ZeroHedge
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You can put your ear to the road and hear what is quickly approaching. Download and listen to the following podcasts:
London is falling – or has it fallen already?
Liz Truss, the 56th prime minister of the United Kingdom, in her very first episode of The Liz Truss Show discusses how bad things are in Britain with a mass migration and economic doom loop – and how to defeat the deep state who have let this happen
https://justthenews.com/podcasts/liz-truss-show/london-falling-or-has-it-fallen-already
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Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, Package Thinking, and The Importance of Critical Thinking
Professor Gary Saul Morson shares his thought-provoking definition of an intellectual—someone who seeks truth independently, values ideas for their own sake, and stands apart from identity-driven thinking. Whether discussing classic Russian Literature or analyzing modern society, Professor Morson is one of the most insightful and consequential scholars of our time. Discover how this interview, and its exploration of timeless topics, can inspire bold, principled leadership and innovation within today’s business environment.
Interview with Professor Gary Saul Morson on Tolstoy, Faith, and The Importance of Critical Thinking – The Profitable Table Fed by Woolco Foods | Acast
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The Moral Imagination – Michael Matheson Miller
Gary Saul Morson Ph.D.: Thinking Like Lenin
Vladimir Lenin’s ideas are alive and well today: Party-ness, politics as win-lose, zero-sum game, Who-Whom, rejection of truth, ideology, violence, philosophical materialism, adherence to lying.
Ep. 15: Thinking Like Lenin, with Gary Saul Morson
Is Hope Naïve in a World Like Ours? | Esau McCaulley & Gary Saul Morson at Northwestern
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Quotes:
In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea … gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage – if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. … No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous. Galileo Galilei
If the Brave New World cannot insert a square peg into a round hole, it will redefine “roundness” until a perfect fit results.
-Jerome Meckier, from Aldous Huxley: Satire and Structure
…a sense of unity is opposite of a sense of uniformity. Uniformity, where everyone “belongs”, uses the same cliches, thinks alike and behaves alike, produces a society which seems comfortable at first but is totally lacking in human dignity. Real unity tolerates dissent and rejoices in variety of outlook and tradition, realizes that it is man’s destiny to unite and not divide… Unity, so understood, is the extra dimension that raises the sense of belonging into genuine human life.
-Northrop Frye, from The Bush Garden
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something. -Plato
“The past is our always-available counterculture, and it’s a rich one. Every minute you spend attending to something not-immediately-present, you are helping to build a counterculture.” ― Alan Jacobs
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Links:
Why are intellectuals — those whose thinking is supposed to be most refined — so susceptible to totalitarianism? Gary Saul Morson offers three explanations from the treasury of Russian literature.
https://tomklingenstein.com/mind-forgd-manacles-why-intellectuals-conform/
The greatest depiction of woke totalitarianism was written 150 years ago in Russia
Anti-Communism Week has been marked for November 2025. Writer-producer Julie Behling’s documentary “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing” warns of communism’s devastation: “Globally, communism claimed the lives of approximately 150 million people in the 20th century.”
‘Beneath Sheep’s Clothing’: Communism’s Capture Of America | ZeroHedge
Totalitarian governments cannot afford that its citizens remain autonomous persons. This poses a threat to their quest to consolidate power. Individual liberty threatens the theoretical, utopian foundations of promising the re-distribution of goods, and equality; communism ultimately fails to re-distribute the essence of human nature.
10 Habits of Mind to Avoid Ideological Thinking
Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology)
Everyday Habits That Reveal a Low IQ (Backed by Psychology) – YouTube
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Added 12-15-2025:
Sam Faddis (formerly with the CIA) sits down to talk about the reality of the ongoing Marxist revolution in America.
The Revolution Right Here At Home – by Sam Faddis
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Filed under 2025 Current Events, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Democracy, History, Political Commentary, Politics, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with Communism, Democracy, groupthink, history, Marxism, mind control, package thinking, party-mindedness, politics, progressivism, russia, Soviet Union, totalitarianism, Valdimir Lenin