It's the anniversary of Hiroshima. More precisely, it's the anniversary of the day on which the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb ("Little Boy") on the "munitions plant surrounded by workers' houses" in Hiroshima. The Little Boy design had never been tested.

I don't have anything new to say, except that this is one of those dates that I just know. So I'm planning to follow ges's example, and offer a reflection of mine, written for a different context, that still seems frightfully pertinent. Besides, despite its flaws, it talks about the public sphere! ;)

“The twilight zone that lies between living memory and written history is one of the favorite breeding places of mythology.” ~C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

“Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.” ~ Ernest Renan

The Enola Gay controversy, a compelling series of events in its own right, calls attention to several intersections between history and theories of history. It illustrates the tension between history and memory, the difficulties of determining what qualifications are necessary to participate in the discussion, and the influence of discursive boundaries on a discussion. It also indicates the enduring contentiousness of the debate surrounding some American foreign policy decisions as well as the persistent and potent dogmatism of the American national mythology.

During the early 1990s, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. planned an exhibit centered around the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that delivered the atomic bomb “Little Boy” to Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. In theory, the exhibit was designed to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the end of World War II. In actuality, however, the exhibit triggered a controversy about the meaning of the recent past.

Veterans wanted the exhibit to celebrate the Enola Gay’s role in the Japanese surrender, thereby preventing a ground invasion of Japan and saving millions of American lives. The initial plans failed to live up to this patriotic vision, triggering protests from the American Legion, the Air Force Association, and the U.S. Senate, among others. Faced with this pressure, the museum postponed the exhibit indefinitely.

When it finally opened to the public after substantial modifications had been made, many historians opposed the changes and objected to the distortion of the past perpetrated by the exhibit’s heroic depiction of the Enola Gay. They argued that the modified exhibit underestimated the number of Japanese casualties, overstated the likelihood of an American invasion, suggested falsely that the citizens of Hiroshima had been encouraged to evacuate, described Hiroshima as an exclusively military target (when multiple documents showed that Hiroshima had been selected as a target because of its low military priority, since the destruction of an undamaged city would most fully demonstrate the powers of the atomic bomb), and oversimplified the causal link between the atomic bomb and the Japanese surrender, neglecting the influence of the Soviet invasion of Japan and the modification of surrender terms to retain Emperor Hirohito.

These criticisms were largely disregarded as an attempt by “narrow-minded representatives of a special-interest and revisionist point of view . . . to appropriate and hollow out a historical event that large numbers of Americans alive at that time . . . had witnessed and understood in a very different—and authentic—way.”[1] Patriotic memory took precedence over historical accounts.

In the United States of the early 1990s, it was widely deemed inappropriate and un-American to cast any doubt on the belief that the atomic bombings were necessary and justified. Yet in late August 1945, several essays highly critical of the atomic bombings were published, not only in left-wing magazines like Dwight Macdonald’s Politics but in the mainstream media.

In 1947, John Hersey’s book Hiroshima generated both substantial backlash against the bombings and widespread public debate. Even stalwart Henry Stimson, former Secretary of War, did not glorify the atomic bombings, instead explaining that the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had been the “least abhorrent choice.” While Stimson publicly defended his actions and the decisions of the Truman administration in an essay in Harper’s Magazine, he did not impugn the integrity or patriotism of those who disagreed. In the United States of the late 1940s, it was politically acceptable to question the necessity of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to suggest that the United States might have sacrificed too much on the altar of expediency, to doubt the patriotic myth.

The Enola Gay controversy throws into relief the “gap” that Pierre Nora described between his lived, political experience as a French citizen and his intellectual, professional experience as a historian. Although Nora emphasized the uniquely French aspects of this “gap,” the tension transcends national borders, as does the reality that political pragmatism and historical findings do not always coincide.

The story also shows that the boundaries of the public discursive space shifted between the late 1940s and the early 1990s. By indicating the influence of the public sphere, it suggests the importance of recognizing the assumptions and restrictions of the available space for discussion in modern America.

Finally, the Enola Gay controversy suggests that the American national mythology has been formed, at least partially, by forgetting.[2] The Japanese casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki have fallen into the same discursive pit of silence that obscures Thomas Jefferson’s slaveholding and the decimation of Native Americans.[3] Yet the national myth endures, beginning with an idealistic founding that promised an ideal and idealistic future. From this pure source, the story goes, the United States draws the strength to shoulder a national burden: the perceived duty to proclaim liberty and equality, to defend human rights and dignity, to preserve the power of democracy.

Notes
1 Editorial published in the Washington Post, 1 February 1995. Although veterans and historians represented the core membership of their respective camps, the debate was much more inclusive and widespread.

2 Friedrich Nietzsche argued that “the ability to forget” was a key ingredient of happiness. It seems that it is also a vital component in the creation of national myths, especially as lugubrious or upsetting stories are unlikely to inspire patriotism. (Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 62.

3 In recent years, historians have brought slavery’s “harsh brutality and its influence front and center,” revealing the clay feet of many of the Founders (Gordon Wood, “Never Forget: They Kept Lots of Slaves,” New York Times, 14 December 2003). Native American history is also on the rise. These aspects of the American past do not, however, feature at all prominently in the hagiographic national narrative.

Voldemort votes Republican.

Aside from "don't drown," what is the basic principle of bathtub use?

Don't allow the tub to overflow.

I think that my upstairs neighbor needs to have that prominently tattooed on his body and emblazoned upon his walls.

Just think -- this man can vote!

"There is a false love of country, born of pride, which blinds one to her faults; and there is a loftier passion which will brave estrangement and denunciation to correct them."

~ G. A. Chadwick, The Book of Exodus, part of The Expositor's Bible series, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, page 38

Here's an article from the Stanford Magazine that includes a bit of background on Zimbardo and an interview with him. Since he's been mentioned a time or two around these parts, I thought it might be of interest.

In a new book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House), Zimbardo makes the case that “bad apples” aren’t to blame for evils at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere: he argues that extreme situations and the systems that create them—“bad barrels”—lead ordinary people to behave in horrid ways.

On March 7, roughly coinciding with his golden teaching anniversary and the publication of the book, the psychology professor gave a farewell Stanford lecture. In the packed auditorium, the veteran showman’s presentation combined psychological research with real-world politics, leavened a heavy message with personal history and popular culture, and elicited both despair and optimism about human nature. The centerpiece: a series of snapshots from Abu Ghraib.

It’s easy to loathe the soldiers gloating over their atrocities—Zimbardo calls the photos “trophy shots,” likening them to fishermen’s poses with their big catch. But when Zimbardo describes the hellish, decrepit prison—in which the guards lived in conditions little better than those for the inmates—the soldiers’ actions gain new context. Under frequent attack by mortar fire, enveloped in desert heat and urine stench, the guards worked 12-hour shifts for weeks without respite, with insistent but vague orders to “soften up” for interrogation their prisoners of war.

 Amazon reviews of the book here.

The Utah Jazz have reached the Western Conference Finals, defeating Golden State 4-1. It's the first time since 1998 that the Jazz have reached the conference finals. This is, of course, delightful -- even if it means that my sleep schedule is slightly skewed by late games.

I do enjoy basketball -- even more so when the good guys win. :)

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over."

Two terms or phrases have struck me recently, in that the implications of them seem worth exploring or that I’ve been puzzled by them.

What makes a strike illegal? There is talk of a potential teachers' strike in Boston this coming Thursday. The city has made plans to close public schools and lengthen hours at libraries, community centers, etc. if that happens. This is always referred to as an "illegal strike." The term, used without explanation, certainly does not do good things for the public’s perception of the teachers.

When did we switch from having "soldiers" to having "troops"? That change seems to minimize the aggressive side of soldiering without adding clarity of meaning. A soldier might kill people, but a troop could be trusted with fluffy bunnies.

It reminds me of the "war story" that Tom Engelhardt discusses in The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (published in 1995). This narrative held that Americans fought only reluctantly and solely in justified battles. Engelhardt sees this war story as present throughout American history, beginning with the terminology of settlement, which discounted the violence of white "settlers" invading Native American lands. Other narratives -- including captivity stories from colonial times, movie Westerns, and cinematic portrayals of the Pacific Front -- all reinforced the "war story’s cleansed contours."[1] Sneak attacks by large hosts of brutal enemies forced the beleaguered settlers, cowboys, and G.I.s to fight for their lives and seemed to validate the strongest possible response from the protagonists. Engelhardt argues that this story "spell[ed] out . . . a framework for the annihilation of a savage enemy," whitewashing American violence and leaving the American sense of self untarnished.[2]

It’s an intriguing book. One image has remained particularly powerful. Engelhardt explains that the "yellow ribbon" entered the American mainstream as a reminder of those held captive during the Iran hostage crisis. He then argues that, when the symbol was revived for the Persian Gulf War I (1991), the yellow ribbon "emphasized the role of U.S. troops as victims."[3] The same could, I believe, be said today.

Engelhardt presents his current musings as an "anecdote to the mainstream media" at his blog. I nonetheless offer one last comment from his book. He’s discussing the U.S. attitude toward communism during the Cold War here, but I think his insight still applies:

[D]efending the credibility of U.S. power or its "reputation" proved a pale substitute for victory. Victory had been a self-evident state. If you looked at your humbled enemy, it was only for confirmation of what you already knew about yourself. Buried in credibility, however, was doubt. You now had to stare into enemy eyes to gauge your success, to see your national self.[4]

Perhaps I'm reading too much into all of this. But words matter. They shape how we understand our world and the stories we tell about events. They even affect the questions that we ask -- maybe even those that we can ask.

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Bushcronium." Bushcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

The symbol for Bushcronium is "W"; Tungsten will receive a new symbol after a sufficient study has been completed.

Bushcronium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons in a Bushcronium molecule, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as "Critical Morass."

When catalyzed with money, Bushcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has 1/2 as many peons but twice as many morons.

Note: I cannot claim authorship of this, but thought it deserved to be circulated as more than just an email forward.

A bunch of Harvard undergrads selling red T-shirts for $10.  The shirts feature an outline sketch of George W. Bush.  Emblazoned across the top: Blame Yale.

Michael Kimmel, "A War Against Boys?" Dissent, Fall 2006.

If boys are doing worse, whose fault is it? To many of the current critics, it’s women’s fault, either as feminists, as mothers, or as both. Feminists, we read, have been so successful that the earlier “chilly classroom climate” has now become overheated to the detriment of boys. Feminist-inspired programs have enabled a whole generation of girls to enter the sciences, medicine, law, and the professions; to continue their education; to imagine careers outside the home. But in so doing, these same feminists have pathologized boyhood. Elementary schools are, we read, “anti-boy”—emphasizing reading and restricting the movements of young boys. They “feminize” boys, forcing active, healthy, and naturally exuberant boys to conform to a regime of obedience, “pathologizing what is simply normal for boys,” as one psychologist puts it. Schools are an “inhospitable” environment for boys, writes Christina Hoff Sommers, where their natural propensities for rough-and-tumble play, competition, aggression, and rambunctious violence are cast as social problems in the making. Michael Gurian argues in The Wonder of Boys, that, with testosterone surging through their little limbs, we demand that they sit still, raise their hands, and take naps. We’re giving them the message, he says, that “boyhood is defective.” By the time they get to college, they’ve been steeped in anti-male propaganda. “Why would any self-respecting boy want to attend one of America’s increasingly feminized universities?” asks George Gilder in National Review. The American university is now a “fluffy pink playpen of feminist studies and agitprop ‘herstory,’ taught amid a green goo of eco-motherism . . . ” ...

Gender stereotyping hurts both boys and girls. If there is a zero-sum game, it’s not because of some putative feminization of the classroom. The net effect of the No Child Left Behind Act has been zero-sum competition, as school districts scramble to stretch inadequate funding, leaving them little choice but to cut noncurricular programs so as to ensure that curricular mandates are followed. This disadvantages “rambunctious” boys, because many of these programs are after-school athletics, gym, and recess. And cutting “unnecessary” school counselors and other remedial programs also disadvantages boys, who compose the majority of children in behavioral and remedial educational programs. The problem of inadequate school funding lies not at feminists’ door, but in the halls of Congress. This is further compounded by changes in the insurance industry, which often pressure therapists to put children on medication for ADHD rather than pay for expensive therapy.

Another problem is that the frequently cited numbers are misleading. More people—that is, males and females—are going to college than ever before. In 1960, 54 percent of boys and 38 percent of girls went directly to college; today the numbers are 64 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls. It is true that the rate of increase among girls is higher than the rate of increase among boys, but the numbers are increasing for both.

The gender imbalance does not obtain at the nation’s most elite colleges and universities, where percentages for men and women are, and have remained, similar. Of the top colleges and universities in the nation, only Stanford sports a fifty-fifty gender balance. Harvard and Amherst enroll 56 percent men, Princeton and Chicago 54 percent men, Duke and Berkeley 52 percent, and Yale 51 percent. In science and engineering, the gender imbalance still tilts decidedly toward men: Cal Tech is 65 percent male and 35 percent female; MIT is 62 percent male, 38 percent female.

And the imbalance is not uniform across class and race. It remains the case that far more working-class women—of all races—go to college than do working-class men. Part of this is a seemingly rational individual decision: a college-educated woman still earns about the same as a high-school educated man, $35,000 to $31,000. By race, the disparities are more starkly drawn. Among middle-class, white, high school graduates going to college this year, half are male and half are female. But only 37 percent of black college students and 45 percent of Hispanic students are male. The numerical imbalance turns out to be more a problem of race and class than gender. It is what Cynthia Fuchs Epstein calls a “deceptive distinction”—a difference that appears to be about gender, but is actually about something else....

[F]eminist women, many of whom are also involved mothers, are seen not as boys’ natural allies in claiming a better education but as their enemies. Fears of “momism”—that peculiar cultural malady that periodically rears its head—have returned. Remember those World War II best sellers, like Philip Wylie’s Generation of Vipers, David Levy’s Maternal Overprotection, and Edward Strecker’s Their Mothers’ Sons that laid men’s problems at the foot of overdominant mothers, who drained their boys of ambition and hardy manliness and led them straight to the summit of Brokeback Mountain?

Well, they’re back. Now the problem with mothers is that they read The Feminine Mystique and ran out to pursue careers, which caused a mass exodus of fathers from the lives of their sons. Feminist women not only promoted girls at the expense of boys, but they kicked dad out of the house and left boys wallowing in an anomic genderless soup. ...

The notion that men should be exempt from mundane housework and child care, which should be left to their wives, is deeply insulting to women. Feminism taught us that. But it’s also deeply insulting to men, because it assumes that the nurturing of life itself cannot be our province; given how clumsy and aggressive we are, it had better be done at a distance. ...

It is not the school experience that “feminizes” boys, but rather the ideology of traditional masculinity that keeps boys from wanting to succeed. “The work you do here is girls’ work,” one boy commented to a researcher. “It’s not real work.”

“Real work” involves a confrontation—not with feminist women, whose sensible educational reforms have opened countless doors to women while closing off none to men—but with an anachronistic definition of masculinity that stresses many of its vices (anti-intellectualism, entitlement, arrogance, and aggression) but few of its virtues. When the self-appointed rescuers demand that we accept boys’ “hardwiring,” could they possibly have such a monochromatic and relentlessly negative view of male biology? Maybe they do. But simply shrugging our collective shoulders in resignation and saying “boys will be boys” sets the bar much too low. Boys can do better than that. They can be men.

Josie Appleton, "What Next, a Tomb of the Unknown Pigeon?" spiked, 10 November 2006.

The Imperial War Museum in London is hosting a new exhibition on animals in war, detailing the feats and sufferings of cavalry horses, carrier pigeons and sniffer dogs. In 2004, a major memorial was unveiled on Park Lane in London dedicated to all the animals that died alongside British troops, including horses, dogs, dolphins, elephants and glow-worms (apparently troops used them as reading lights). ...

Both sides are using animals to make their case. The glory and pity of war alike are seen through animal eyes. It’s apparently only through the experiences of dogs, horses and pigeons that people can explore the heroics and costs of battle. ...

Animal memorials and exhibitions are for a time when everybody wants to talk about war, but nobody wants to talk about the actors in war, only those who are unwillingly tossed and turned in its midst. Thus does the tomb of the unknown pigeon take the place of the unknown soldier.

On a more fanciful level (or perhaps mundane), this reminds me of a Buffy quotation, from a Season 3 episode. The head of the Council of Watchers has come to Sunnydale and is blathering on about the importance of the war against evil they're fighting. Giles retorts, "You're waging it. [Buffy's] fighting it."

Stanley Fish, "The Trouble with Tolerance," The Chronicle Review 53 (10 November 2006).

It's a review of "Wendy Brown's insightful and illuminating new book, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton University Press)." A couple of paragraphs stood out.

Earlier this year, pretty much the same scenario was played out around the publication in Denmark of cartoons poking fun at the person and beliefs of the prophet Muhammad. Many Western commentators were simply unable to see why mere words or pictorial representations could be received as grievously wounding — after all, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but..." — especially given that those who reacted most vehemently (and, on occasion, violently) were not directly the target of the cartoons (they were not being libeled, so what's the big deal?). The idea that you could be so identified with a religious creed that criticisms of it would lead you to actions that might be appropriate if you were being physically assaulted (there is, after all, the speech-action distinction, isn't there?) is simply inconceivable to those who have been taught (by everyone from Locke and Kant to John Rawls) that tolerance of views you oppose is the highest morality. ...

Her critique of tolerance challenges the common assumption that the differences the sharp edges of which tolerance is supposed to blunt "took their shape prior to the discourse called on to broker them." No, she insists, those differences are produced by a regime of tolerance that at the same time produces a status quo politics built on the assumption that difference cannot be negotiated but can only be managed. When difference is naturalized, she explains, it becomes the mark not of an ideological or political divide (in relation to which one might have an argument), but of a cultural divide (in relation to which each party says of the other, "See, that's just the way they are"). If people do the things they do not because of what they believe, but because they are Jews, Muslims, blacks, or gays, it is no use asking them to see the error of their ways, because it is through those same ways — naturally theirs — that they see at all. When President Bush reminds us of '"the nature of our enemy,"' he is, in effect, saying there's no dealing with these people; they are immune to rational appeals; the only language they understand is the language of force.

"This reduction of political motivations and causes to essentialized culture," Brown says, "is mobilized to explain everything from suicide bombers to Osama bin Laden's world designs, mass death in Rwanda and Sudan, and the failure of democracy to take hold in the immediate aftermath of Saddam Hussein's Iraq." ...

In the final paragraph [Brown] declares that "we can contest the depoliticizing, regulatory, and imperial aims of contemporary deployments of tolerance with alternative political speech and practices." Yes, we can. Alternative political practices are always a possibility, but they will not be generated by the realization that the practices you oppose are regulatory and imperial. Rather, they will be generated by the realization that the regulations and the imperialism now in place take forms you dislike; and the alternative practices you urge will bring new regulations that are similarly imperial; the difference is that they will be yours. ...

The board that governs the Boston subway system (the T) has just approved its second fare hike in three years. Of course, these rate increases will affect those who can least afford to pay. But the board estimates that this will increase revenues by $71 million while decreasing ridership by 16.5 million people. Does $1.70 for one subway ride seem reasonable? Or $1.20 for a bus? It strikes me as a bit much.

But there's an added twist, something that hasn't been widely reported and I only discovered through google serendipity. Those prices apply only to people using the "CharlieCard," which is a monthly or weekly pass. Everyone else -- people paying cash or using a stored-value "CharlieTicket" -- will pay more. They will pay $2.00 for a subway ride, an increase of $0.75 from the current rate, and $1.50 for the bus, an increase of $0.60 from the current rate. Right now, a monthly pass for the bus costs $31, the subway $44, and a combination $71.

In all of this, I'm bludgeoned by the irony of the T naming its passes, tickets, and cards after the protagonist of a song written to protest rate hikes. Well, it was written on behalf of a candidate who promised to rollback the rate hikes. It was memorably recorded by the Kingston Trio (which is probably why my dad can recite all of the lyrics, even without a request). And so...

Charlie and the MTA

Let me tell ya of a story 'bout a man named Charlie, on a tragic and faithful day./ He put ten cents in his pocket, kissed his wife and family, went to ride on the M.T.A.

CHORUS:But did he ever return? No, he never returned, and his fate is still unlearned. (Shame and scandal). / He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston, he's the man who never returned.

Charlie handed in his dime at the Kendall Square Station / and he changed for Jamaca Plain. / When he got there the conductor told him, "one more nickel," / Charlie couldn't get off that train.

CHORUS

Well, all night long Charlie rides through the stations, / Saying, "What will become of me? / How can I afford to see my sister in Chelsea / or my cousin or Roxbury?"

CHORUS

Charlie's wife goes down to the Scully Square station, / every day at a quarter past two. / And through the open window, she hands Charlie a sandwich / as the train goes a rumbling through.

CHORUS

Now you citizens of Boston, don't you think it's a scandal /How the people have to pay and pay? / Fight the fare increse, vote for George O'Reilly! /Get poor Charlie off the M.T.A.