December 3 2000
Here is some more somewhat self-congratulatory presumption of seeing reality from a biography of Rasputin:
"The tsar said that he did not believe that Kaisar Wilhelm wanted war. 'If you knew him as I do!' he said [to the President of France visiting Russia, after the assassination in Sarajevo but before war started]. "If you knew how much theatricality there is in his posing!"
Through some manipulating, Rasputin had persuaded Alexandra to persuade her husband to sack the Interior Minister and appoint A.K. Khvostov in his place early in World War One. Here is the appraisal of the empress: "Alexandra thought him a 'man without petticoats', a strong figure who she assured the tsar 'is very energetic, fears no one & is colossally devoted to you.' She found 'his body colossal . . but the soul light and clear'." Here is the appraisal of Khvostov's own uncle whose opinion the tsar had requested: "This is a person absolutely inexperienced in this work, one who by character is absolutely unsuitable. This is a man who is very far from stupid, but who cannot be critical of his own instincts and judgments. He is inclined to intrigue . . and in all probability will try to become Premier; in any case all his activities in the office of minister will not be devoted to work, but to considerations that have nothing to do with it. Nothing positive could come from appointing him interior minister. I expect harm." An appraisal that was entirely accurate and ignored, the biographer tells us.
And here's another picture of the tsar's grasp on reality after he'd taken over the control of the armed forces in the middle of WW One, sacking his first cousin, also on Rasputin's prompting through Alexandra. "He did not know that one of his best generals, Brusilov found him unsuited to command 'by reason of his ignorance, inability, utterly flaccid will and lack of stern inner character . ..and those who had urged him to take the command, the empress and Rasputin were 'not better than criminals'. He did not sense that he was awkward with the men nor that he did not know what to say, where to go, what to do.' He believed that he was loved. 'The proof [the tsar exulted] -- the numbers of telegrams which I receive from all sides with the most touching expressions. . The ministers, always living in town, know terribly little of what is happening in the country as a whole. Here I can judge correctly the real mood.'"
Whoa! This illustrates what I have referred to as the circularity of our picture of reality, by which I mean that the existence of a clear picture of the mood becomes its own proof of its validity.
Numbers 20, 38, & 122 are all germane. Number 20 holds that proof is proof only to those who accept it, which can be worded thusly: proof is always subjective. We like it or we don't, but it doesn't exist like a car in the driveway independent of our mentality. Number 38: we select the criteria that prove us right (in spades). Those telegrams were proof of what? Which brings me to number 122: all self-serving statements are suspect. The tsar could do a lot of things for a lot of people, as the any chief of state could, and he thought they loved him? A sad case. And how important was this? Well, let me cite a gentleman very close to events at the time:
Without Rasputin, there could have been no Lenin. -- Alexander Kerensky.
In case anyone doesn't recognize that name, it's the name of the gentleman who formed the government after the Romanovs were overthrown in 1917 in March or thereabouts. No, not Lenin. That was to come later in the year. Kerensky formed a democratic government. It was the October Revolution spearheaded by Lenin that ousted the Kerensky government. So acknowledging that even a man close to events cannot establish with finality how history would have unfolded without Rasputin, I think the cast of mind, the tenuous hold on reality, the flagrant inability to entertain the possibility of being mistaken on the part of the Tsar and Empress was very important.
Well, he must have been a very busy man, to be commander-in-chief of a large army in wartime at the same time he governed a country that stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. I dunno. This is how he is depicted spending his time at the Army base shortly after having named himself C-in-C:
"He rose at nine, had a morning briefing from his chief of staff, Gen. Mikhail Alexeev, and examined the neat flags on the map in the map room. At three he went out for a drive along the river in his Rolls-Royce. After dinner he played dominoes and watched films, romances and American detective serials. It was a pleasant, gentlemanly existence with the occasional echo of war -- he slept on a hard camp bed and reminded himself that he must not complain, for how many 'how many sleep on damp grass and mud!'"
This is disgusting when his soldiers didn't have sufficient ammunition or food. A six-hour workday? At most? One almost gets the impression that when he examined the "neat flags" on the maps that he didn't realize he was a key player, or should have been, in what those flags represented. Absolutely disgusting.
"Phil Rizzuto is the most annoying announcer in all of sports and it's about time that Scooter-lovers everywhere admit it". Letter to newspaper. This is another illustration of the various ways people admit to finding themselves infallible. That's his reality, that Rizzuto was the most annoying, and I don't suppose many people would give a damn, for he doesn't have to listen to him. But to suggest that this opinion, this reaction to Rizzuto is a fact of Rizzuto's personality, rather than his parochial relation to Rizzuto is pure stupidity. Number 14. He clearly projected his view or reality onto not just others, but everybody! Number 1 is relevant of course. Further, there is a bit of a contradiction here. Scooter-lovers? Wait a minute. If they love him, how can one presume that they find him the most annoying announcer etc.? It makes no sense. If there are Scooter-lovers, might we not presume that it's not because they have a vested interest in his career, though they find him annoying, but because they find him fully enjoyable and competent?
Some letterwriters to Newsweek expressed their indignation at one camp or the other in the political fight in Florida. Well, first of all, Number 34: "You'll blame the side you feel like blaming." Both candidates are fighting for that plum of a position. I can't see that either is more reprehensible than the other as they each seek a favorable ruling, and the outrage expressed is pretty close to saying, "I want [the other guy], the one I'm not excoriating." Given that information, one could write their script. But there were a few letters I found worth commenting on.
"Bush should concede the election. He's obviously lost the popular vote and, judging by his vehemence in objecting to Florida recounts, realizes that in reality, he didn't have enough votes there either." That he "lost" the popular vote is not in contention. Yes, he evidently got fewer votes than Gore did, but "lost" is a questionable word, since that doesn't decide anything. I have no objection to such a word by analogy with, "He lost the respect of the country," or "He won their hearts," etc. But in the context of an election that is not decided by popular vote, I find it out of place. You don't win or lose anything by the popular vote, unless it's bragging rights. You learn this in grade school, fella. It has happened 3 times that the winner of the popular vote did not get the majority of the electoral college and so did not win the presidency. You can call it a ridiculous situation, you can agitate to have that method of electing changed by a Constitutional Amendment, and you'd doubtless have plenty of support for such a campaign, especially now. But if the rules of the game at the time of the election were not that the popular vote was the deciding factor, then it makes no sense that G. W. Bush should be guided by that criterion. [After I wrote that, Bush himself addressed that same point by saying that if popular vote carried the day, he would have spent a lot more time in Texas trying to get as big a vote there as possible.
And I'm a little intrigued by two uses of "reality" or a derivative in one sentence. He realizes? Wait a minute now. First, there is obvious projecting of the writer's view onto George W. Bush. (Numbers 14 & 60). There's no evidence that Bush "realizes" this, nor that it's a reality. On the Internet (www.knowpost) one person asked, "If Bush was sworn in as President and then all doubt was removed that Gore had really won the election, would Bush be removed?" I wrote to say that it isn't humanly possible to remove all doubt about that Florida election now and added that if Jesus Christ returned to earth and pronounced Al Gore the winner in Florida, there would still be plenty of doubts. No, it seems to me unlikely that G. W. recognizes what this man alleges, and impossible that this fellow knows what Bush is thinking. I think Bush honestly believes he won fair and square. But I admit I don't really know what he's thinking.
In any event, this was another illustration of a type I'm collecting, which is the various ways people claim they have found reality without realizing that they're substantially claiming infallibilty. "Who, me wrong? No, that cannot be."