Cometh the Hour..... a general in the White House. (But NOT A Barracks Emporer!)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT | BY HAROLD BLOOM

[.cnI redruM]

Lincoln, confronting the South's rebellion, first established our imperial presidency. Since then we have become increasingly a plutocracy. Like such precursors as Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley and Warren Harding, the current possessor of the White House sincerely believes in making the rich richer, while expressing the hope that somehow all of his constituents must eventually benefit from this benign process. Our nation has long invested in this hope, with our territorial expansion (mostly at the expense of Mexico, and of the Native Americans) and also overseas extensions fueling the investment. At this time, we occupy all of Iraq, and rather less of Afghanistan. These irrealistic adventures, while expensive in money and in blood, are more venturesome than most of our past incursions, but otherwise not radically new. What is different are the provocations. Fundamentalist Islam conducts a world-wide terror onslaught, much of it financed by Saudi Arabia. Israel and the Arabs continue to fight a Hundred Years War, going back to the earliest Zionist emigrants, and we are now well along in the first decade of a religious war that could endure for another century. All this is piously denied by nearly everyone, yet all the deniers know better. The American Empire, like the Roman before it, seeks to impose a Roman peace upon the world.

[.cnI redruM]

>>>>>I have been rereading Edmund Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,"

But haven't reached the part where Commodus gets deposed and the Romans have 70 years of corrupt leadership from former generals known as BARRACKS EMPORERS until Diocletian gets power.

>>>>>We have no option except imposing a Roman peace. The question I bring forward is: What is the proper training for our imperial presidents?

When the going gets tough, Barracks EMporer Wastely Clark gets on the cell phone and says "Mary...Help!!!" Not exactly Pax Americanum material there.....

>>>>>His leadership of international forces is Bosnia and Kosovo was precisely calibrated.....

Just ask The Chinese embassy staff in Belgrade. They'll tell you he's focused in like a smart bomb. The British and Russians have experienced that measured brilliance as well. Let's see now, other than France, that's three votes against us on the UN Security Council right there.

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[ClearCase_guy]

I haven't read Bloom's stuff -- didn't he write "The Closing of the Amrican Mind"? I was under the impression that he was a cultural conservative who bemoaned the way this country was going. Turns out he's just an idiot.

[gaspar]

Bloom should stick to poetry, which, ostensibly, is his forte. His mention of the "irrealistic [sic] adventures" in Iraq and Afghanistan is a meaningless statement from which to construct a "paradigm". The guy is scarey..., but par for the course at Yale.

[gaspar]

You are thinking of Allan Bloom, who as I recall, is at the U. of Chicago. This guy is Harold "Bloomsday" Bloom.

[KC Burke]

gaspar is correct. You are thinking of Allan. Knowing he passed away some time ago, I looked it up.

Bloom died October 7, 1992 while being hospitalized for peptic ulcer bleeding complicated by liver failure. At the time of his death he was co-director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy.

Harold, on the other hand, is an equally well known academic, but almost a leftist's dream. He is a self appointed custodian of the enlightenment canon and "if he is for it, I must be agin it" fellow in my book.

[.cnI redruM]

>>>>He is a self appointed custodian of the enlightenment canon.

These guys make me laugh. Is the inverse relation of professor IQ and university academic reputation a new physical law?

[KC Burke]

Actually, he (Harold) earned some praise from some conservatives or post-modernists for his book The Western Canon as he avoided some of the left's more extreme thoughts on the things that should and shouldn't be included. However, his decades long assault on the New Criticism of Elliot, and by implication Babbitt, sets him far from the conservative sentiment in my unschooled opinion.

He has been at Yale for five dacades and while I have close ties to some who have studied there and survived without becoming "educated beyond their intelligence" it is obvious that such a petrie dish can grow some strange products in such isolation from reality.

Perhaps someone with more then my slight schooling can shed some light on ol' Harold.

[x]

Bloom is a rather eccentric fellow. Seen from within the academy Bloom looks rather conservative, as his assaults on the "School of Resentment" that dominates modern universities, but that doesn't mean that political conservatives in the wider would recognize him as one of their own.

I don't know any more about him than you do, but he seems to be one of those "Yellow Dog" Democrats not uncommon in the academic and literary world. That is to say, he counts as pretty conservative in his millieu, but would sooner die rather than vote for or say anything favorable about a Republican.

Bloom's relationship to organized Christian churches is somewhat similar. He doesn't seem to be hostile to the general idea, but the organization doesn't appeal to him. I'd imagine that his enthusiasm for Romanticism has a lot to do with his views of Christianity, political conservatism and classicism, though such views are found among many Jews and intellectuals who aren't particularly radical. His book on "American Religion" is probably worth a look, though.

Bloom aside, there is to be a sizable constituency in the country that isn't radical or conventionally liberal, but that can't stand the Bushes or religious conservatives. It's the Perot-McCain camp. They seem to have a thing for uniforms. Clark looks like the natural candidate for these people, even though he's otherwise not particularly qualified for the Presidency. If you know some old Perot or McCain voters keep your ears open and see if I'm right.

[cornelis]

Bloom classifies himself as "an unbelieving Jew of strong Gnostic tendencies."

His Western Canon is hailed because it argues against the politicization of literature, something that rubs Harold the wrong way. Politicization, however, is in no small part the result of a peripheralization of literature through criticism. And criticism is Bloom's department. The theoretical depths of erudite knowledge as Bloom recognizes in himself is not for general education. It is hieratic. Here is the irony: a certain political consituency in our country believes in the general education of all, yet it cannot commit to a general of understanding of literature to make this dream come true. Literature is historical and according to the modern canon, the past is obsolete. And if it isn't impotent to answer to our quest for humanity, it must be rendered so. One may ask why Bloom reveals such chinks at the end of his life, rather than during his flowering. I suppose because a perceived success keeps one situated like a throne.

But what I know is very little. I ran into Bloom from a college course. The Oxford Anthology had the editors listen: Bloom, Hollander, Trilling. I looked them up. That was the last of Bloom, except for occasional run-ins which corroborated my first suspicions. Incidentally Trilling has also warmed the pages of conservative easteners. It appears that both Bloom and Trilling have at some point in time felt the first flickers of dissent.

I suppose it's easier to leave the Soviet Union with the Berlin Wall down. Thanks for the ping KC.