New Rationales

Posted on January 7, 2026 by hessd

I am a great fan of Thomas D. Edsall’s columns in the New York Times.  His columns are made up of: a) a good question, b) a collection of interesting and reliable correspondents, and c) a journalistic schema that uses the responses the correspondents gave to his question and formats them as a discussion with various agreements and disagreements among them.

As I said, I am a fan.  This is the first paragraph of today’s (January 6) column.

“While the focus of attention since President Trump retook office has been on his deployment of military force in American cities, Iran and Venezuela; on his abuse of the pardon power; and on his family’s profiteering, his domineering tactics also extend deep into the private sector.”

It is a good introduction to the column, but it sent me off in another direction.  My own principal interest has been in political psychology and I pick up where Edsall leaves off.  He very correctly cites the abuse of our nation’s military capacity, the abuse of the power than inheres in his office, and his family’s economic escapades.  But every one of those has a rationale—usually unacknowledged—which draws my attention and which is more important that we often admit.

A rationale that becomes generally acceptable becomes part of the culture; it is a part of “how we do things here” that we pass on to our children and to our younger colleagues.  

Let’s take an example from Edsall’s column.  Here is Trump on Christmas Day.

“In a Truth Social post on Christmas Day in 2023, Trump wished everyone a Merry Christmas, including ‘World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS’!”

You could look at that as a series of statements about reality.  Certainly it is that; at least—possibly— about Trump’s reality.  He says that there are people in the U. S. Who are “looking to destroy the country”—the “once great USA.”  He says that these people are worse than the bad world leaders, to whom he has just wished Merry Christmas. [1]

People like myself—leftist academics—will be drawn immediately to the palpable inaccuracies.  A scale of badness will be constructed.  The bad world leaders will be placed on this scale along with the people whom Trump has in mind when the uses the word THUGS and it can be shown that it is not true that the THUGS are worse than the people Trump has in mind.  I hope someone does that.  It is worth doing.

But I think it does not respond adequately to the toxic nature of the broadcast slander.  Let’s take the easy one first.  This is a post the announced goal of which is to wish a happy celebration of the birth of Jesus to all the named people.  The roaring discrepancy between the occasion—Merry Christmas—and the language used in the rest of the post violates the generally held convention that language like “this” ought to be kept separate from language like “that.”

There is a common objection to a kind of language often called “locker room talk” when it is used in a setting where it is deemed to be inappropriate.  The rationale is that the guys in the locker room are perfectly free to talk like that among themselves in the locker room, but elsewhere, say at a party where men and women who are friends of the host, it is inappropriate even when these same men are there.  There is, some objector will remark, “A time and a place…” leaving the rest of the sentence dangling.

In Trump’s use, the old separation of polite language and gutter language is violated.  There is no reason he could not have wished everyone a merry Christmas in one post and have lashed out against his domestic enemies in another, but that is not what he is doing and not what he is trying to do.  He is trying to erase the barrier between the two kinds of sentiments.

Another example is his use of the expression “fake news.”  Presumably, he has, or at one time had, in mind news that was inaccurate and/or biased against him.  To use the word “fake,” he really ought to have demonstrable inaccuracies in mind, but I am sure the does not.  It is not a reference to a particular story in the news, but to the news itself.  The news available to everyone is, by definition, “fake.”

This has the natural effect of stimulating his followers to use the same kind of language, referring thoughtlessly to “the news” and “fake news.”  Again, it is not that the charge cannot be shown to be false.  It can.  It is not that the raging ego of the Chief Executive spills over from time to time.  The effect I am pointing to is, in the first instance, that “fake news” becomes a commonplace, rather than an outrageous characterization of the media; and in the second instance, that the otherwise expected tie between what is said and what is meant, is broken.

When that happens, the crucial standard of culture—this is how we do it here—is broken.  It is reset as “people freely express their grievances without and expectation of truth, balance, or proportion.”  No expressions are “out of bounds” any longer if the boundaries are gone. The boundaries are there when they are presupposed and violations are noted.  They are still there when they are violated in ways that cause defenders of the boundaries to rise up and call attention to the violation.  They are no longer there when what is said is no longer seen as a violation.

It is easy to see at this point that examples could be multiplied to book length, but this is a blog.  Let me summarize what has caught my interest here.  The example of language use by Trump and the administration and, inevitably by Trump supporters, simply allows things that have never been allowed in the general population before.  Using words the way Trump uses them has simply disqualified such speakers from the general discourse.  And if he were the only one to do it, that would again be the effect.

If, on the other hand, it is picked up by his followers, and if the followers are then answered in kind by his opponents [2] the culture which has forbidden it will change and at some future time, we will wish to change it back and we will find if very difficult.

So far as language is concerned—and that is the way in which rationales are conveyed—that will be the longest lasting of the Trump distortions.

[1] Some of the leaders are Muslims or Jews, or, in Asia, one a considerable number of non-Christian religions, but let’s not dwell on that.

[2]. Inevitably, references will be made to bringing a knife to a shootout.

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“Unnecessary Videos”

Posted on January 1, 2026 by hessd

The old Soviet joke is that there is no Tass in the Pravda and no Pravda in the Tass.  My Soviet Studies professor at Miami University, who told us that one and who spoke Russian fluently, said that Tass meant “truth” and Pravda, ‘news.”  That made its make perfect sense to us. 

That was in the early 1960s, and I had not thought about it for awhile, but then this paragraph showed up in a new story I read in the Washington Post.

“Specifically, mobile internet — yes, it may be disabled to ensure the safety of our citizens,” Andrey Svintsov, the deputy chairman of the Committee on Information in the State Duma, the country’s lower house of parliament,[1]  said, according to Tass, a state-controlled news agency. “People will finally get a break from the endless viewing of unnecessary videos.”

There are two ideas here.  One is that “the safety of our citizens” is at stake.  A case could be made for

that, if necessary.  The ill effects of the Internet could be cited and could be shown to be inconsistent with “public safety.”  Svintsov does not do that in the quote provided and “safety,” although it could be justified, is not often used in that way. 

The other one is better, to my mind.  It says that a) people will b) finally c) get a break, from the d) endless viewing of e) unnecessary videos.  If it were possible to imagine crowds of Russians locked into large rooms where they are compelled to watch videos they did not choose and do not want to watch, I think “get a break” could be justified.  Chairman Svintsov does not offer such a case, so we are left to understand that the Russian people are going to get a break from watching videos they choose to watch.

“Get a break” is consistent with “endless viewing” only if the viewing is not voluntary.  All you would have to do if you wanted a break is to stop watching.  Apparently that is not available.

Of course, it may well be that the videos that are being watched are “unnecessary,” but it would bring a good deal more clarity to say just why they were unnecessary and to specify exactly what videos or kinds of videos are necessary.  Presumably, people would choose to watch the ones they thought were necessary.

My suspicion, however, since it is Russia, is that Chairman Svintsov has in mind a more state-centered notion of “necessary.”  If there are videos that support the state or that clarify citizen obligations to the state, I suspect that they would not be found unnecessary.

And since this is my first post for the new year, let me wish you a clearer sense of what videos are necessary to you and a more urgent sense of everything that does not involves videos at all.

1]. The upper house is called the Federation Council. Analogous to our Senate.

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Flat Successes

Posted on December 30, 2025 by hessd

You know, when the celebration of your success is just flat. 

Emotionally flat, I mean.  Flat like a carbonated drink that has been opened and allowed to sit for a few days.  That kind of flat.

During this time of the year, I watch a lot of football.  As a rule, I don’t watch whole games.  I check in to see how things are going.  To my mind, it is like checking in every month or so on a TV soap opera to see if Josh is still going out with Sheila or whether he has refocused on his work and his family as he should.  Because I watch all that football, I see a lot of celebrating.  The people who are succeeding are entirely unabashed in letting you know that they have succeeded.  That now includes defensive linemen.  Who would have thought?

But what do you do if your successes—everyone agrees that you have succeeded—leave you feeling emotionally flat, as if there were nothing to celebrate?  It might very well be that you don’t value the task at which you have succeeded.

Does that seem odd?  What if you have a job that pays you a lot of money and which allows you to live a luxurious and much-admired lifestyle?  And you don’t think much of the job.  I recall a job description provided by Irving Goffman as “cooling the mark out.”  The people who run casinos don’t want the big losers to be angry when they leave, so they hire people to sit with them, have a drink with them, console them about their experience so that they are not angry when they leave.  What if you had that job and were really good at it and took no pleasure in your success?  Flat?

What if you are not one of the people who admires your “much-admired life-style?”  You do it. You have the things people admire, but they don’t reflect your own values.  Or maybe you don’t really know what your values are.

I’ve got an idea.  Is there anything in your life that makes you feel really good about yourself.  As I understand it, “who I am” is the residue of “what I do.”  When I do good things, I conclude that I am a good person.  If that is the way it works, would it be worthwhile to do things that matter to you; things that you, yourself, think are significant?

The two enemies of this celebration that come immediately to mind are relying on the standard life menu your setting provides and relying on the celebration by others.

I was struck by the instance of a distraught bride in Arlie Russell Hochschild’s The Managed Heart.  She wasn’t as happy as she thought she ought to be and it brought her to the point of anguish.  She had run the mental checklist: right man, right family, right wedding service, and so on.  Check, check, and check.  Therefore, she ought to be ecstatically happy and she was not. Disaster!

It would have been outside the frame of the story Hochschild was telling, but I kept wondering whether this is something she really wanted or just something she was told that she wanted.  That’s the “standard life menu” I had in mind above.

The other is the celebration by others.  It is natural to feel that when others who ought to know, celebrate your success, then you have achieved something.  And, of course, this might be true if what you are trying to achieve is personally meaningful.  But what if it isn’t?  Then you are relying on the celebration by others to substitute for your own pride in your own achievement.  And when that happens, you don’t get the emotional lift you would get if you had achieved something that really mattered to you, personally.

I spent some years in grad school and even more years as a professor working on the question of what a good problem is.  The tool I used was a record of personal failures that followed a very explicit set of definitions and notations.  This practice enabled two things.  The first is a clear pattern of the elements of the “problem” which the notation involved.  The second is the clear recognition that the “problem” being considered was only one of several that could have been constructed.

The non-question question I often asked was: Is the water too high or is the bridge too low?  My students got tired of it, but I’ll bet they never forgot it.

If “problems,” which we often take in the form then are presented, are really just devices we invent, then we have the opportunity to invent better problems.  A “problem” in this setting (that is the last time I am going to put the word in quotations marks) is a set of elements that presuppose failure.  The elements are a) something you are trying to do, b) your best guess about why you are trying to do it, c) the fact—this is presupposed—that you failed in your attempt to do it, and d) your best guess about why you failed.

Most commonly, the discussions in class focused on the second and fourth elements.  The first had to do with motivation.  Why were you trying to do that?  The second had to do with the reason for failure.  Who or what stopped you from succeeding?

The goal of the exercise was, as I usually put it, “making better problems.”  What would happen if you took a month’s worth of these notations—I called them “journal entries”—and discovered that none of the things you were trying to do, really mattered to you.  All the entries are records of failures because that is what the format requires, but you have here a list of the things you tried to do.  This is worth considering by itself, without reference to whether you succeeded or not.  Why am I trying to do these things?  Is there anything on this list that I think would give me cause for celebration (if you are that kind of person) or for quiet satisfaction (if you are that kind of person).

You know you have celebrated by the effect it has on the next thing you do.  Your success at that put fuel in your tank or recharged your battery or restored the fizz to your carbonated drink.  It isn’t a feeling that makes you want to do that thing again, necessarily; it is a feeling that helps you do whatever is next with more focus and more agency.

Imagine that I have succeeded in making myself a part of a social group and I get no inner celebration from that success?  Need a different group?  Need a goal other than “making yourself a part?”  Need to have your successes recognized by people whose judgment you value?  New problems are available.

The issue here is “no inner celebration” despite recognized success.  If you hold constant the value of “inner celebration”—the kind of thing that re-fizzes your drink—then all the other elements can be swapped out.  I need to be a part of a different group.  I need to reconsider what I mean by “being a part.”  I need to seek the recognition of people whose judgment I admire and to be swayed, if necessary, by their understanding.  Every swap provides you with a new problem.

Imagine that I have taken on a series of tasks and that I do what is necessary to succeed at them and that from those successes, I get no “inner celebration.”  Agency can be assumed here in the task setting as it could not be in the belonging setting above.  I am acting so as to achieve a goal.  But what if it is not a goal that matters to me?  I need different tasks?  I need a different goal with reference to those tasks?  I need to have those “successes” validated or invalidated by people whose judgment I respect.  Every swap provides you with a new problem.

Again, we hold the “inner satisfaction” constant, the “celebration of my success” constant, and change anything else or everything else until I have a problem that matters to me and that I can find a way to achieve.  I know I have succeeded in a meaningful way when I see the effect it has on the next thing I try to do.

It doesn’t have to be an achievement anyone else understands.  I remember vividly a scene from the film The Long Walk Home, which is set in Montgomery, Alabama at the time of the bus boycott.  A black kid is set upon by racist thugs in a public park.  He is rescued shortly by a black chauffeur wielding a tire iron, but afterwards he expresses his pride in how many blows he absorbed before they made him fall down.

You can argue with the merits of his project, but you cannot argue with his pride in what he did.  And he is empowered, afterwards to do things that only his pride could have produced.  His family goes, after this beating in the park, to a church service in which the Christian songs are sung and the plans for the next protest are announced.  The family does not want to be there and they are not singing the hymns…until the kid starts singing them, using his bruised face and his battered lips to form the words of the song. Seeing him do that is too much for his family, who begin, following his example, to sing the songs with him.  Powerful!

What happened?  His “success” in the park—we are taking his definition of what counts as success—enables him to produce a second success as his implacable family finds itself moved to follow his example.

I want to ask about my own choices whether succeeding in the tasks I have chosen will have that kind of effect on my life.  Does my success in Task A generate the resources I need to succeed in Task B?  I have the option of noticing this or not; of understanding it or not; of acting on it or not.  

Accepting the fact that my successes do not move me is not one of the options I am willing to consider.  I really need a better problem.

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“We” are an evangelical nation

Posted on December 28, 2025 by hessd

I would like to share today some thoughts about social and political identity under the Trump administration.  We hear the claim that “we” are “a Christian nation.”  That was prominent in the Christmas messages of the Trump administration according to a very good article in the New York Times by Ashley Ahn. 

Pete Hegseth, for instance, offered this. 

“Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” “May His light bring peace, hope, and joy to you and your families.”

And Marco Rubio, this:

“The joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ,”

And this from the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior,” 

There was also a  video that featured images including the American flag, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, President Trump and a Nativity scene, along with the words “Remember the miracle of Christ’s birth.”

In February, Mr. Trump created a task force at the Justice Department to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society” and “move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.” 

In May, he established the Religious Liberty Commission in the Justice Department.  The website of that Commission lists seven tasks they are interested in.  Here are five of them.

  • The First Amendment rights of teachers, students, military chaplains, service members, employers, and employees
  • Conscience protections in the health care field and concerning vaccine mandates
  • Parents’ authority to direct the care, upbringing, and education of their children, including the right to choose a religious education
  • Permitting time for voluntary prayer and religious instruction at public schools; Government displays with religious imagery
  • The right of all Americans to freely exercise their faith without fear or Government censorship or retaliation

Anyone with a clear memory of recent controversies will see conservative “resolutions” in the first four.  “First Amendment rights for specific categories of people”. Only? 

“Conscience” rather than, say, “law” as protections? 

“Parents’ authority” rather than, say the school board.

“Voluntary prayer and religious instruction,” in a setting where those practices have been set aside in light of the reprisals against those who did not “voluntarily” take part. 

And then that last one, which sounds very general, except that there are no protections for people who, by their own self-identification, have no religious faith at all.

Anyone, I say, who remembers these controversies will see in the Commission’s “tasks” a revolution of practices in favor of the Christian minority.

Then there is the question of “we.”  I offer here an old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, but I want you to remember that this is about what “we’ means in the sentiment “we” are a Christian nation.

The story goes that the Lone Ranger and Tonto are riding somewhere in the wild west and are being pursued by hostile Indians.  The Lone Ranger consults Tonto, “What will we do, Tonto?”  Tonto, who always knows the right answer, responds, “We head west, Kemo Sabe.” [2]. To the west, they encounter more hostile Indians.  The pattern repeats, “What will we do, Tonto?”

In the final stage, there is an impassible canyon in front of them and bands of hostile Indians everywhere else.  The Lone Ranger turns for the final time to his companion and says, “What will we do, Tonto?”  This Tonto responds, “What you mean ‘we,’ Kemo Sabe?”

No story I have ever heard establishes the crucial nature of “we” as well as that one.  It establishes also the consequences of the shift in the reference of the term.  “We” has always before meant the two of them. Now, it instantly draws the line between Indians—of which Tonto is one—and white men, of which the Lone Ranger is one.  “We” has always been what saved them; now it is the certain destruction of one of them and therefore the destruction of that “we.”

“We” are a Christian nation.” What then are the rest of us?  Clearly, we are not part of the “we.”  That makes us part of “them.”  The political rights of “them” are precarious to begin with and internal problems of any sort—inflation, low employment, or racial animosity, for instance—play on that precariousness and bad things happen.

“We” and “They” are a fire hazard.  It wouldn’t take an administration in full courtship of the evangelical right to do it, but that is certainly a tried and true method.

It’s a dicey move on the part of the Trump administration.  I think I will begin now to dread what they might do for Valentine’s Day.

[1] Ms. White-Cain is described as the longtime personal pastor of Mr. Trump.  She takes communion in the office every day.

[2]. A substantial amount of research has gone into determining the source of the title, “Kemo Sabe,” but there has not as yet been agreement among the linguists who are pursuing the question.

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Problems, Solutions, and LKA

Posted on December 24, 2025 by hessd

For many years, in my teaching courses in political psychology, I needed to distinguish how an issue could be described in one way or another.  Very often, the sense of what ought to be done about it would vary with the description.  A question I relied on so often that later in the term it could be referred to by a word or a gesture was this: “Is the water too high or is the bridge too low?”

That was a really good question because it pretended to offer “alternatives” in a setting where it was obvious that both were true.  Should the bridge have been built higher than the water ever got?  Ever?  Should the water level be controlled so as to keep the bridge safe?  How?  Both legitimate questions, but pointing in different directions.

I like very much the pharmacy we use.  Good people; good service.  But, like everyone else, they are gravitating toward an online presence, pre-recorded messages, and phone trees.  So, for example, when I call to renew a prescription, I run into a recorded message that explains that “we are experiencing unusually high call volumes.”  Really?  Do you want to put that on a recorded message and play it over and over, no matter what day or what time of day the call comes in?

Still, given my experience with the water levels and the bridge, it is easy—unavoidable, really—for me to hear the message as a matter of call volume on one side and of phone staffing on the other.  “Inadequate staffing” is the other side of “unusually high call volumes” in exactly the same way that the water is too high or the bridge too low.

If I put more people to work minding the phone calls, the “volume” would not be too high.  Much less would it be “unusually high.”  If there were fewer phone calls, I would not have to put so many people on phone duty.

This is not a matter of business practices to me.  I have no advice to give to the pharmacy.  This is a language matter for me.  I am sure that if the phone service is bad enough for long enough, customers will find a pharmacy that does that job better.  Or, more likely, if all the pharmacies shift to call backs or to online”chats,” we will give up the old idea of “calling the pharmacy” and “talking to someone.”

I got to thinking about this this morning when, in a conversation with my brothers, we referred to “a device” that more recent cars have that “help you” to “keep in your lane.”  The social ramifications of that language are so rich that it will take a deliberate effort to bypass them, but I will.  Just for today.

The name all three of us failed to come up during the call is LKA—“lane keeping assistance.”  That seems to be the general term.  But within that category there are several kinds and as I was reading through them, I got interested in how “they”—each of them—define the problem to be solved.

For most of them, it seems, the issue to be dealt with is that the driver is unaware that the car is moving (has moved?) out of the assigned lane.  The unawareness of the driver is the problem in the same sense that the high water is “the problem.”  The LKA starts beeping and that serves as the notification to the driver and the driver responds in the appropriate way, steering the car back into “the center of the lane.”

Now why on earth is that expression in quotes?  Well, we all know how much wider the lane is than the car.  So you could define the problem, positively as “driving in the center of the lane” or negatively as not driving over the lines on either side.  So long as you are not “over the line” you have met the criterion the system uses, whether or not you are “in the center.”

That came to my mind because several of the LKA devices take action on their own.  This means that they have formulated the problem differently.  Their job is not to notify the driver that the road boundaries have been violated.  The problem now has nothing to do with the driver.  The problem is that the vehicle is not “centered” and the solution is for the device to “center” it.

The site I consulted offered two examples.  One called “Lane-Keep Assist” does something, according to the description: it “recognizes when the vehicle is too close to a lane marker and gently steers it back toward the center.”  IT does the steering.  “Gently,” it says in the description.

The other is called “Lane-Centering Assist” is “a more advanced form” of LKA.  It takes a more active role in keeping your vehicle centered in its lane.  I note that “it” keeps “your vehicle” centered.  Note again the positive criterion rather than the negative criterion the other systems use.  LCA is so active that the description doesn’t even use the word “gently.”  Maybe if you intervene so early in the process that the driver has no sense that the car is being steered at all, there is no need to say that it is being steered “gently.”

Again, the problem in the first instance is that the car has violated the lane markers and the solution is to inform the driver.  The problem in the second instance is that the car in not in the center—I think of expressions like “exact center” in cases like these—and the solution is for IT (the LCA) to steer it back where it (the vehicle) belongs.

Not to allow my paranoia to run free, but I am getting so used to being surveilled that I imagine that the next generation of LKA will monitor the quality of my attention to the road and nudge me in some way or other if my attention is wandering even before my wandering attention allows the car to wander across the lines.  I am reasonably certain that there is a pattern of eye movement that is reliably associated with focused attention and that the new modes of surveillance can tell whether my attention is focused where it ought to be if I am the driver.

The only reason I can think of that such a system would not be next is if it cost the provider too much.  After all, the quality of attention I am paying is a pretty soft target.  How much the device costs is a pretty hard target.  So far.

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Being in Kilter

Posted on December 17, 2025 by hessd

The word for today on my Word-A-Day Calendar is “kilter,” and the author makes the kind of comment I associate with George Carlin, who wondered aloud about what ideas like “chalant,” would do for users of English.  Every use of “kilter” that is familiar is the notion that someone or something is out of it. 

I liked having the word land on my birthday because it gave me a chance to reflect that I am currently in kilter.  “Kilter” is a pretty loose notion.  It doesn’t mean that I can do all the things that I used to do and take pleasure in.  I am not out of kilter because I can no longer do those things.  It doesn’t mean that I still have the same needs I once had, still less that I can meet those needs in the same way I once did.  That doesn’t make me out of kilter, so far as today’s reflection on the word is concerned.

I would say a machine was in kilter if all the parts did what they needed to do, with the result that the machine did what I wanted it to do.  Depending on what kind of machine you would like to imagine, there could be something wrong with the system of imaging, the system of propulsion, or in the way it gets rid of waste products.  But if the thing that is wrong with any of those subsystems does not prevent it from doing what I want it to do, I would declare it to be “in kilter.”

As I think about it, I think of being “in kilter” as a measure of function.  It is not a survey of the subsystems to see if any of them can be improved, but a judgment about the system as a whole and whether it will hold up to the demands I need to place on it.  A bridge that will hold my weight as I cross is, by this measure, “in kilter,” however much may be wrong with it otherwise.

[1] If I owned a grocery, I would let it be known that I stored and sold “kilters,” so that I would put up a sign that we were out of them today.  That would be fun.

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“The good stuff isn’t in the surface reading”

Posted on November 27, 2025 by hessd

I would like to tell you about this picture.  It will take just a little while because each of the elements of the picture—the woman, the hobbit, and the quotation—has a history of its own.  And then there is the small matter of just how and by whom the picture is assembled.

I have just finished studying the book of Ruth with a group of students I first met at Westminster College in Pennsylvania [1] in the late 1970s.  The basic idea of the course is that Ruth was written in Judea during the period of post-Exilic religious reform.  But it was set in Bethlehem hundreds of years before the Exile.  So we studied each element of the plot of this invented story not just at the superficial level of the narrative, but several levels down—down to where the question, “Why did the author put it that way?—lives.

That question goes to the motivation of the author—always a speculative question—and also to the techniques employed by authors.  The author’s goal, as I came to see it with the help of Edward C. Campbell, Jr’s superb study of Ruth, is complex.  He needs to “suggest” the Bethlehem of that era without describing it and to strongly imply God’s care in a situation in which God is mentioned twice (obliquely) in the four chapters.

The best example I know of building a society and an associated culture is what J. R. R. Tolkien did in imagining Middle Earth and the best analysis I know of Tolkien’s work are the books of Tom Shippey. [2]  So I borrowed Shippey’s analysis of Tolkien’s “world construction” to study the “world construction” done by the author of Ruth.  After all, who knows what 11th Century BCE Bethlehem was like?  And spending the time to describe it, even if we knew, would distract from the story.  This version of Bethlehem needs to be “suggested” just as Middle Earth did. Let’s look at some examples.

Shippey points out the use of Tolkien’s phrase, “the famous Belladonna Took,” who was Bilbo’s mother.  All the work that this phrase does is in suggesting that there are many people who know her.  So her “reality” is strengthened by us for all these people (fictitious) who know Belladonna Took (also fictitious).  Similarly, Tolkien not only gives us the name of King Theoden’s horse (Snowmane) but also the names of Snommane’s sire and dam, neither of whom appears otherwise in the story.  Again, as in “the famous Belladonna Took,” reality is “suggested” and “supported” by what seems otherwise a casual phrase.

Tom Bombadil rescues Pippin from the deadly grasp of Willow-man, an angry man-eating tree.  How does it happen that Bombadil arrives in time? Tom Bombadil says, when he rescues the hobbits from Willow-man, “Just chance brought me then, if chance you call it.”  What else would we call it?  Bombadil doesn’t say what he calls it.  He strongly implies that the notion of an ordered universe which contains “chance” is up for grabs.

Finally, to choose just one more of many available examples, Gandalf says after his (lethal?) battle with the Balrog, “Naked I was sent back…”. He does not say where he was sent “back” from.  He does not say who sent him.  Still, Gandalf appears here as the agent of another.  Another what?

It is devices like this that I offered the Westminster group as ways a setting could be “suggested” without being described.  Then we started on how those devices are deployed in Ruth. 

 The story teller also used here a device that Campbell calls “reusing signal words at long range.”  He means that the several episodes are tied together by common references.  On first meeting Ruth, Boaz praises her for choosing to come to Israel with her mother-in-law to be. “May you have a full recompense from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have sought refuge,” he says.  The notion of being “sheltered under God’s wings” is a much used and very familiar expression in the Bible.  More to the point, it would have been familiar to the first hearers of Ruth.

But when Ruth snuggles up to Boaz on the threshing room floor, he wakes up and asks who she is. ” Ruth replies “I am Ruth maid-servant. Now spread your ‘wing’ over your maid-servant, for you are a redeemer.”   From that short exchange, two things can be quickly taken.  The first is that Ruth uses the same notion of “the wing as protection” that Boaz used the day they met.  It doesn’t have the same meaning—God’s care, Boaz’s robe—but it uses the same words and the meanings are at worst congenial.  At best, they mean the same thing.  The second is that Boaz is “a redeemer,” not “Ruth’s redeemer.”

Just exactly what a “redeemer” is in ancient Bethlehem is a matter for speculation and Campbell speculates on it at length.  What it does for us, however is to “reuse signal words at long range” and to suggest meanings that it does not specify.  As readers, we are asked to participate in arranging these meanings and extracting information from what was only suggested.  Like, “if chance you call it.”

These intriguing looks at the story of Ruth are available to anyone who is willing to get below the surface and this Westminster group was more than willing.  They were eager.  And they were willing to pay the price.  These kinds of sustained speculation are work; they cost something.  But if you are willing to do the work, you get to the remark that one of the members made as part of the discussion.  She said, “The good stuff isn’t in the surface reading.”

And Kathy Humphries, my stepdaughter and long a good friend, made several observations on Ruth during the discussion.  Then afterward, she instructed her AI system to create a picture of the two decidedly discrepant figures together and to append to that picture the remark the student had made.  This is the picture that was offered.

Once I gave up trying to see this image of Bilbo as if it were Boaz, I saw the wit in the illustration.  Ruth is the imagined heroine of the imagined Bethlehem.  Bilbo is the imagined hero of the imagined Hobbiton.  Putting them side by side and appending the very perceptive remark of a fellow student simply won my heart,  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did both in turn.

I firmly believe this picture is worth a thousand words because that is what is has taken to set the stage.

[1]. There are a lot of Westminster Colleges.  That is why I paused to specify which one.

[2]. From the Shippey collection, I took J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and The Road to Middle Earth.

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Paying Attention II

Posted on November 17, 2025 by hessd

I ended the precursor blog with this paragraph:

That brings me to the lip of the next topic, which is how to reduce the cost of “paying” attention.  It will require a distinction between attending to and attending for.  The latter is the heart of my solution to the problem.

I am really glad I did because I had a vague intention of coming back and finishing the thoughts I had just introduced; then I forgot what I must have had in mind.  This is it: “to” and “for.”  First, I want to establish the two experiences, then establish the same two as intentions.  Then I would like to argue that they do what I say they do and that it is reasonable to expect them to do that.

Let’s take listening to music as the first example.  You can listen to the Sinfony of Handel’s Messiah and say how beautiful some parts of it are.  Or you can listen just for the string bass part.  It isn’t that you don’t hear the rest of the music; it is, rather, that the rest of the music forms a natural and appropriate background to what you are listening for.  How does that happen? 

It is questions like that that help me keep listening to and listening for separate from each other.  I have regular access to a lot more news sources than I can really pay attention to.  And if reducing the cost—how much I have to pay—is the goal, then I can listen for the things I think are most important–the string bass part is an example– and leave the rest to be there as background.

Maybe a political example.  I pay attention to Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a polling and interpretation service located at the University of Virginia.  When I go to his site, I am looking for demographic and political changes I have learned to care about.  Because I am looking “for,” I skip over everything else.

In his most recent report, he talked about the return toward the left wing of Asians and Hispanics who had moved unexpectedly to the right in 2024.  That is something I care about.  I am willing to invest the time to pay attention to it; it is something I am reading for.  Attending “to” the Chrystal Ball is very inexpensive.  It is well within the limits of what I can pay and it is rich in what I am attending “for.”

I pay attention as much as do partly because I have role to play.  It is a little more than that.  Not quite a commitment, but more than an expectation.  I have been an ardent reader of news since 1960 and a professor of political science and associated disciplines since 1966. So, for the last 60 years. I could reasonably be expected to know some things and, if asked, to give accurate information and plausible explanations.

Part of the definition of what I attend for comes from that social setting.  I did a lot of attending to as a public school teacher, when I was expected to know “what was going on.”  At the national and international levels, mostly.  It was the years of doing that that sharpened my sense of what I wanted to read for and made me willing to scan before I read.

Graduate study sharpened the distinction by requiring me to be familiar with much more than I could attend to.  It is in a setting like that that you learn to look quickly over the introduction, the conclusions, and the methodology.  Then you know whether you want to attend for meaning.  Otherwise, attending to is plenty.

Parenthetically, I once pushed this methodology pretty hard to a class of doctoral students I had in a course called “Institutions.”  Some ate it up; some resisted.  But the woman who stays in my mind, resisted initially, then slowly saw the logic [1] and acquired the skills.  She stands out in my mind because I saw her at an alumni gathering several decades later and she told me how much trouble she had had in getting her son to do any meaningful reading.  She gave him the same stern lecture I had given her, and by her account, it worked like a charm.

When, in grad school, I chose political psychology as the focus of my work, the distance between attending to and attending for became both clearer and greater.  I am often inclined to look at the psychological justification of a public action before I look at the policy effects.  But I can also look at a lot of policy effects before I find a justification that interests me.

And then, politics being the kind of practice it is, I will need to attend to all the justifications looking “for” the one that seems to me to have explanatory power.  I want to spend my time on that one, but I can’t find that one with attending to a lot of other things.

“Politics” was defined very broadly at Oregon when I was there. I have since learned that the definition of the field expands and contracts fairly regularly.  It was expanding when I was there and “politics” was sometimes taken to be “authoritative allocation of goods.” [2]. So we had “the politics of the family” and the “politics of the pub” and other fragments.

Attending for the political meaning of politics so broadly defined provides some unusual looks at what is going on and provides you with unexpected allies and opponents. So, among the people I regularly talk to, I am expected to talk about these unusual looks.  It is an honor to recognize that expectation and a challenge to meet it.

To meet it, I have to attend to a lot of material, always attending for what I will need.  Or as one of my students said, “Thank you, Mother Hubbard”

[1] For that group, the metaphor I used was that each assignment required them to go to the cupboard (the available disciplinary reading) and get the particular question they were dealing with.  Get that, shut the cupboard door and go home.  Do not make a survey of everything in the cupboard.  You will still be there at the next class session and you will not have learned what you were assigned to learn.  Take it and go.

[2]. David Easton was always cited in association with that formula, but I am sure he had colleagues who attached themselves to it in the same way he did.  And then the same way we did.

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Steve says, “Let it go.”

Posted on November 15, 2025 by hessd

I have the chance every now and then to listen to Steve Young, the legendary quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, answer questions for five minutes.  The questions are asked by Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser of the show Pardon the Interruption, but mostly, they just ask interesting questions and listen to what he says.

Recently, they asked him what a starting quarterback should do if he is out with an injury for a while and his replacement is playing better than he did.  There are rumors that the coaching staff is thinking of just keeping the new guy in the interests of, you know, winning more games. 

The tilt of the question had to do with whether that is fair to the starting quarterback.  I’m going to be a little free with my account of what Young said, partly because all three of us—Wilson, Kornheiser and I—were pushed back in our respective chairs by the force of Young’s response.  This was not, apparently, the first time he had had to face the question.

The way I heard the answer is that the quarterback should take full responsibility for the team’s lousy record, even if he was the only player on the team who was playing well.  It doesn’t matter.  Young didn’t go on to make it ridiculous and Wilbon and Kornheiser didn’t push him to do so, but it would not have been out of line with Young’s opening explosion to say that the quarterback should apologize, separately, for the inadequate blocking of the offensive line, the bad choices made by the running backs, and the dropped passes by the wide receivers.

And following that, he should express full support for his replacement, and pledge to do anything he can do to help his replacement succeed, including helping to corral any dissident players in the locker room.

Does this amount, as Young describes it, to agreement with the decision to replace him.  Absolutely not.  Does it require him to say that the coaching staff has treated him fairly.  Absolutely not.  It does not require him to meet any standard you would care to think of in assessing what the owner, the coaching staff, or the other players have done.

Why?

It is not because he could not make any number of good arguments.  It is because playing the victim will destroy him.  That will happen fast, as Young sees it, and it will follow him from team to team.  It will mark the end of his career as a successful quarterback with any team that would have him.  Taking the position I just described—I have been unfaired against—is going to have two really disastrous effects: a) it will direct his attention in the wrong direction and b) it is going to impede all the functions of the quarterback that happen faster than conscious thought.

There is a standard of fairness in the treatment of valuable football players.  It isn’t the same on every team, nor for every player, but everybody knows there is one.  How you have been treated by the team can be assessed with reference to that standard, but Young’s point, if I heard it correctly, is that no matter what judgment comes from assessing those behaviors in the light of that standard, you lose.  You lose because you are paying attention to the wrong thing.  If the weight of the evidence supports you, you lose; if it fails to support you, you also lose.

Nothing Young said had to do with what was fair.  He was concerned only about the costs of paying attention to fairness. You might have picked that up when I extended the quarterback’s apologies to the deficiencies of the offensive line.  It is not about you and imagining that it is about you will make you a poorer quarterback and, very likely, a former quarterback.

I am less sure about the second point.  I have heard Young make this point enough that I might simply have imported it into this argument.  Or maybe he said it the way I heard it.  I have heard him say several times on this show that he studied intensively the defensive alignments of the team they were to play next.  He did that, he said, because in the game, there will be no time to see and decide.  If you wait until you see what they are doing, it will be too late to respond to it.

But if you saturate your brain with that information and tie it to the actions you would have to take if, if, and if—then all the seeing and deciding takes place before you could be consciously aware of it.  You might be able, looking at film of the game, see what you must have seen at the time—two things you did not expect are happening and three things you did expect are not happening—but you were not aware of seeing those things at the time.  He describes a sequence that would have to be ordered like: I saw, then I acted, then I was aware of what I saw.  The awareness comes last and it comes too late to do you any good.  That is what all the study is for.  It is to make you aware of things you have not actually “seen” yet.

You see how delicate it is?  How intuitive it is?  Young’s point about the displaced quarterback is that if he pays any attention to what has been done to him, all that intricate timing will be trashed.  What works, Young says, are the merest spider webs of anticipation and inference.  None of that works if you are distracted by what they have done to you or, much the same thing, what you will have to do to prove them wrong.

That is what I think I heard.  Let me stop for just a moment to disqualify myself.  I was never a football player.  I did try to play basketball for awhile, but this precise skill that Young describes is what I was so bad at.  By the time I SAW the chance of a pass under the basket to a teammate who was cutting through the key, everyone else had already seen it and the chance was gone.  I never learned to sense, then act, then see, as Young describes it.

I am confident, however, that being unable to peel your attention away from the question of whether you have been fairly treated is deadly.  It does bad things to your work—whatever your work is—and it does bad things to you.  Young called it being eaten up from the inside.  That’s what I remember and I hope that is what he said, because that is true and it’s important.

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Caring for the Stranger

Posted on November 9, 2025 by hessd

For me, the dramatic center of Niall Williams’ novel Time of the Child is this confrontation between a doctor and a priest.  This interaction takes place in Faha, a very small and very Catholic town in Ireland.  There is emotional power in the setting, aided and abetted by the amount of whiskey consumed by both parties during the confrontation.  There is emotional power as well in the doctor’s venture out beyond his customary independence and restraint.  

In this scene, he is not so much “the doctor” as the father of a young woman who has fallen hopelessly in love with an infant who was brought to the house where her father and she live by people who thought the baby was dead.  It is this circumstance that has forced Dr. Troy to approach the priest, Father Coffey, to make his case.

This is an away game for Dr. Troy.  All of it will be played on Father Coffey’s home field and by his rules.  This will be a hard argument to win, but the father really has no choice.  This is the theological infrastructure justifying an action both men know is wrong.

Here, I would like to recount the story by steps.  In this game, I am the play by play analyst and I will follow the play as it unfolds.  Williams’ text is in italics; my comments are not.

Here, the Doctor tells as much of the story as we need to know.

‘The child was left at the fair,’ said the doctor, when he had resumed his chair. His voice was even and unchanged by sipping his fourth measure. ‘She was thought dead. She was brought here, she revived. My daughter cared for her, then fell in love with her.’

The priest responds with uncharacteristic candor, having already failed to deal with this matter by establishing the facts.

Father Coffey knew something was being asked of him here. He was moved the same way he always was by the truth, which had an intimacy that was privileged and tender, and in its company something essential and profound was occurring. He took a sip of the brandy. Souled. Then leaned forward towards the doctor who still had his eyes closed and asked, ‘What is it you are trying to do, Jack?

In Williams’ look at Father Coffey, he establishes what “the truth is.”  It is what Dr. Troy has just said.  It is that truth which is said to have “an intimacy that was privileged and tender” and in the presence of which “something essential and profound was occurring.”  We can see that it is the relationship between the priest and the father that is privileged, but it is not yet clear what is being said that is “essential.”  What is “of the essence” of this dispute?  What is it that has been, in a sentence of a single word, “Souled.”

As a way out of the thicket, Father Coffey asks the most direct question available to him.  “What are you trying to do?”  But Dr. Troy’s answer returns both men to the briar patch.  What he is trying to do, Dr. Troy says, is “to be a Christian.”

This is the best case Dr. Troy can make to Father Coffey.  In my role as play by play commentator, I think I will want to say that that the case is not true.  Dr. Troy has experienced some very powerful emotions around the reception of this child into his life and into the life of his daughter who “loves the child.”  To do that, he is willing to play the game the priest must play.  Troy knows that the Coffey does not have choice of what the contest must look like, but he does and he knows it.  He must distort “Christianity” into the single demand that we “care for the stranger.”

This one duty—care for the stranger—is “being a Christian” in the present context.  That and no more.  The obstacles are few and formidable. 

‘Only the Church and the State are in my way.’

The doctor launches the next argument.

My father left the Church, or it left him, I can’t be sure which. He could not stay in an institution that had Father Kelly in it. But one evening after dinner he set me a question. “What if,” he said, “what if it’s the people that have a higher sense of what’s right and wrong than those conscripted to enforce it?”’ The doctor paused. He drew his forefinger across the spittle on his mustache, then asked: ‘To love the stranger, isn’t that what God wanted?’

“What if,” the doctor continues, remembering a question his father had asked him, “it’s the people that have a higher sense of what’s right and wrong than those conscripted to enforce it?”’   Here are the opposing teams as Dr. Troy has named them.

“The church and the state”—that includes, most pointedly, Father Coffey—have been “conscripted” to enforce the official, institutionally determined “sense of what is right and wrong.”  In this new alignment, “the people”—not the conscripts—have the higher sense of “what is right.”  The people—that is the doctor in this scene—are free to know and to do what is right.  They have not been “conscripted” and are therefore “free.”

The particular action that is “right” is keeping the baby his daughter fell in love with. [1]  Furthermore, it is the one divine command that is cited in this conversation.  Father Coffey is now back on defense again.  He tried to move to offense by making the doctor the source of the proposed action.  The doctor, rather than God.

“Jack,” he says, You can’t put yourself on God’s level.”  But Dr. Troy is ready for him. In the argument Father Coffey offers him, it is God who knows and God who has the authority to do.  The bereaved father would lose both of those.  The setting he offers instead in difficulty.  Isn’t it more difficult for me to do the right thing here than it would be for God?

“That would be easy. God knows all the answers. I’m trying something more difficult, the human level.”

The question now moves in the direction of authority.  If we are to care for the stranger because God requires it of Christians, then “the people” are only obeying God and the church is only in the way.  It is not a strong point.  It is, in fact, only an accusation.  But Dr. Troy has much more in mind.  He has laid the groundwork for it by the “difficulty” argument and now he can go on offense again.  To stay with the American football metaphor, the father unveils a triple option.  There are three steps.

The first step is to characterize God as a being who, already knowing all our wrong turns, still loves us.  God loves us not because of all these wrong turns (God is a righteous God), but despite them. Father Coffey cannot object to that.

Dr. Troy deploys the second option; he moves away from God’s nature to God’s direct action.

He has already seen that child and seen to it that she was brought to this house, and seen to it that my daughter would love her. 

God’s foreknowledge has now become God’s active providence.  “He has seen to it…”. It was because of God’s providence that the baby was brought to our house and also God’s providence that the daughter would love it.

It is God’s nature to see, to know, and to do.  But God also has intentions for his human servants.  This brings us back to God’s nature. God is not only loving, but He created us with the intention that we should love.  And he is patient.  We are, after all, human beings and God, who knows everything, knows also that He must be patient with human beings.  Here is the argument.

Because in some part of Him, in some part of Him He remembers that He made us with the intention of love. And that no matter how many times, no matter how many ways we find to defeat that intention, it is still there. Still there. 

The “it” in “it is still there” is God’s intention that we should love.  In the context, that must refer to taking the actions love requires.  In cannot mean only having the feelings that such a love produces.  Otherwise, it would make no sense to say that the state and the church are obstacles.

And now, finally, the third option.  Dr. Troy now asserts that God commanded love and that—Love—is what came into our lives (mine and my daughter’s) on the day the baby was discovered and brought to our house.  And, further, that Love beats any regulation made by human beings—any regulation or ruling or decree or code—because Love predates all those that although it was commanded, it did not really need to be commanded.  It was first.  Here is the text of that last point.

And beats any regulation, ruling, decree or code, is beyond all jurisdiction or legislation made by man, because it pre-dates all, didn’t even need to be commanded. Love. That’s my understanding. And that’s what’s in that kitchen. That’s what came to this house the day of the fair. And that’s what I am going to try and keep alive.

It is in that last sentence that Dr. Troy moves from the nature of God and the plain command of God to the situation God foreknew, and on to the actions that he, himself, in going to take—in order to be a Christian, just in case you have forgotten the doctor’s first move..

He is going to try to keep it—Love—alive.  He says it with the capital letter, but he has a particular lower case love in mind and they have become the same.


Father Coffey would have to be very fast off the mark to interrupt the flow of this play.  Williams says that in the space of two breaths, Dr. Troy starts in again.  This time his topic is forgiveness.

‘What I am doing may be wrong. But’ — the finger was pointing again – what I am going to choose to believe is something I heard in church once. Forgiveness. Forgiveness for mistakes made down here, because we are down here, and can only see what we can see and think. This seems the right thing to do. Forgiveness, which I’m going to say seems to me an essential component of, an outright necessity of,’ — he wet his lower lip — ‘love. And so that’s what I’m going to choose to believe in, and in patience and forgiveness that pass our understanding, except where we get glimpses of them, like I have, in that kitchen. Father…

Here he states that he believes in forgiveness.  It is something he heard in church once.  Under what circumstances might forgiveness be required and while we are at it, who is going to do the forgiving?  The circumstances are: a) that the mistakes are made down here, because b) we are down here.  Therefore c) we can only see what we can see.  This is a recapitulation of his earlier case that what he is doing here is more difficult than what God would have to do because we act in ignorance and God acts in full knowledge.

Forgiveness is something he is going to choose to believe.  The first half of the argument says why such forgiveness will be needed.  The second half says why it is crucial.  It is crucial because it is an essential component of love.  And so—this is the reason he is choosing to believe in it—love is an essential component, an outright necessity for love.  

Dr. Troy is going to believe in patience and forgiveness that “pass our understanding.”  No one will miss the allusion to Ephesians 3:19 in which it is “the love that Christ has” that will pass our understanding.  So on the time Dr. Troy was in church, the time he heard about forgiveness, there may also have been a reading from Ephesians, during which time the “passeth all understanding” phrase attached itself to his consciousness.

Williams may be counting on the readers to catch the source of the reference, but we all know that Father Coffey does.  That means that Dr. Troy’s final step is to establish that God knows what He is doing and the he and Father Coffey do not.  Father Coffey, having been forced to play defense is now told that he does not know enough to do even that if it is God who is on the offense.

[1] Love and Forgiveness are brought into the contest, but God’s only real demand is to “do what is right.”

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