‘Institutions under siege: Donald Trump’s Attack on the Deep State’ , by John Campbell, A review’

‘Institutions under siege: Donald Trump’s Attack on the Deep State’ , by John Campbell, A review’
Prepared by Tudor Rickards’ Monday 14 October, 2024.

The most debated political question of the year is arguably ‘Will Donald Trump win the Presidency of the United States for the Second Time? (Or for the third time, as the question might be posed by Trump’s MAGA supporters).
Let’s stick to ‘for the second time’.
The question has increasingly dominated media attention this year, as the likelihood of a second term grew during polls after the Trump v Biden debate.
Then came the period of increasing pressure on Biden to resign. When reluctantly he did resign, vice President Kamala Harris showed as an initial boost in polling numbers, until around two months before polling day on November 5th.
Then the polls settled into an uncomfortable ‘ too close to ‘measure’ position where it remains to today. The fate of the presidency now seems to be resting on a half dozen swing states, as has been often the case in previous elections.
To an observer outside of the United States. It is difficult to make any sense of the assertions and claims being made through the media and more directly by the candidates and ‘surrogates’ or spokespersons.
A safer assessment might be through a careful examination of the performance of Donald Trump in his presidency. I could have chosen from several candidate analyses, but found one providing a mix of well documented evidence and a developed position. The conclusions seem worth further publicity as the election approaches.
The book ‘Institutions under siege’ written by John Campbell, a professor of sociology at Dartmouth College and published in 2023. His earlier work includes scholarly examinations of Donald Trump, and of great economists of the past.
His analysis comes clearly from the position of someone knowledgeable about the subject. It can hardly be called totally biased. Indeed, it risks dismissal from its stance that Donald Trump has QUOTE done a lot of harm to some of our most valuable political institutions. So this book tackles two questions: how bad was the damage Trump caused and how did he manage to cause it? END QUOTE

With this in mind, the evidence is nevertheless presented in impressive scholarly fashion.
The critical incidents of Trump’s presidency are well known, and described as being at ‘tipping points’ which are prone to interventions by a leader, for better or worse.

As Campbell puts it, QUOTE ‘my intent is to shine a light on tipping points and leadership …the crucial point is to understand institutional change you must pay attention to rules and norms …but also to the people responsible for them and the resources available to them’ END QUOTE

He continues his explanation of tipping points by noting QUOTE we have all heard of the straw that breaks the Kamel back… but the last straw doesn’t put itself on the camels back. That requires a person END QUOTE.

The metaphorical straw is examined with a wealth of examples.
The damage to the US judicial system especially to the membership of the Supreme Court.and the general tenor of politics.
The Big Lie, the general claim of the corruption of political function and his promise to ‘drain the swamp’.
The January 6 insurrection which since the book was written, remains an ongoing set of court proceedings against Trump.
Also too late for inclusion are the felony charges of which he has been found guilty.

The author concludes p212
QUOTE
The institutional siege is not over yet … In Hollywood, The sequel to a movie is worse than the original END QUOTE

It is now less than three weeks from the potential premiership of the sequel ‘return of the President’ We will soon have a chance to witness the accuracy of the predictions made in this thought-provoking book.

I’ve Been Bugged. A Leaders we deserve puzzle

I accidentally bugged myself recently. I interrupted an audio session and the Apple recording device produced a transcript of my conversation. I imagine it could be decoded to make sense by those wire tappers and deciphering experts to be found in many a spy thriller. So here it is. Completely unedited. A modest prize will be awarded to anyone suggesting they have worked out what the conversation was about. Credit to wrong but creative answers:

…hello Charles, I’m doing very well and how are you the same here we played outside this morning and yes, and I’m now sitting staring at a beautiful Kristine set of bookshelves which were a completely filthy mess in the garage, but thanks to Michael with his blowing machine and several sponges and things I know have a very clean box book thing which I will see you as you come up all the weekend you and John roller so I can move it about so it’s a mobile one. It’s somewhere between here and the window at the moment but I’m going to start with a whole pile of books on the floor by the TV so they have to go on and so on shuffle very much so I’m a little things and several things that were able to put. We put in the bins in Somerville quite a lot of stuff in the bins and there’s quite a big space in the garage now for other things I can move into when I need to go to see the difference so yeah I’m very pleased with that indeed and I’m now onto something interesting I’m decide I need to put something in the book about Greta Thunberg and so I started studying that rather thoroughly and I’ve come across a Masters dissertation on it from University Of London in Sweden. I’ve been to that opinion i’m fairly sure that lunch was where oh gosh, that very very famous botanist develop his theory of which we still in linear linear he’s very very very much anyway that’s what I’ve been there. I’ve been to Laurence doing the answer me I’m afraid it’s Sam yeah I think remember to sort of seaside port and search the support which allows all sorts of stuff to go in and out of Sweden to. I can’t even remember which which particular but anyway it’s a it’s a seafood with the charger port where they build ships and things there as well and at the same time he’s got one of the oldest universities in the world university was founded about 1400 so it’s her day with respect Sally, very proud. Where is the biggest apparently so much for teachers University in in Sweden so worth it now know you you’re quite right off Shaw is there as well but I know it may be that up charlottes where I’ve got muddled up with balls but I should remember blonde and if I’m right this is a rather see the show the place were like a lot of support Liverpool yeah yeah yeah yeah that’s very interesting and what they’ve done is connect up a chunk of work that I know about transformational leadership and link it up with moral authority. As far as I’m aware it’s always been looking around the the the leadership feel bad. People always are mentioned it and then Haitian Donna not not spend a lot of time on it but they’ve got entire division in this university looking at ecosystem, so it’s one of this whole division, but yeah that’s right this particular, I think it’s a woman actually a woman has actually done her Masters dissertation on Thunberg and she said don’t what amounts to a very sophisticated. It is a survey and then she is connected up with the five components of moral authority that I’m being told about us the way of thinking about it and four aspects of transformational leadership, which I didn’t know about a new battery, transformational, leadership bit and there’s overlaps in them that it was there and people have really remarked on it, so the things of the transformational leadership is idealise influence and saw this at the Tua little bit more closely connected to be noticed before so I have managed to do it University, emails of the young lady and her supervisor, so I’ve just dropped a line saying …

The Olympic Games begin. What they can teach us about politics, and vice-versa.

The Olympic Games begin. What they can teach us about politics, and vice-versa.

Friday 26 July, 2024

The Olympic Games begin in Paris with a spectacular show. The presidential campaign in America reaches its own climax. The more you think about it, the more similarities you see between the two events.

They are both very expensive if you want to achieve the highest result.

They can only be one winner at any event. Coming second is at best bittersweet..

The general public which has ignored the events for four years suddenly becomes obsessed in supporting their favourites.

Accusations of cheating are made.

TV prepares to show every contest in minute detail

Pundits give their opinions before every event and discuss what happened afterwards.

In moments when nothing is happening, the events are replayed over again.

Favourites withdraw at the last moment giving heartbreaking  interviews

Statistics are collected and discussed in great detail, many irrelevant. This will be the first time an athlete or politician with a P in his name will be taking part during a month without a J in its name. Above all, statistics of records being broken are given great prominence

Winners of heats are interviewed. They either say they expected to win, or they say they never expected to win.

Above all, they emphasise the ultimate importance of winning. Although some repeat the importance of taking part in the interests of democracy or the spirit of sport.

I could go on, but what can sport teach about politics, and politics about sport?

In some ways each knows it is one side of the same coin. Sport is a form of politics.

Politics is a form of sport. I know that’s not terribly new.

Every tennis player is aware of the inscription from Kipling’s poem to be found above Wimbledon’s centre court.

‘If you can keep your head when all about you

are losing theirs and blaming it on you…’

and continues 

‘If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same …

Wise words for Paris as much as for Washington, arriving in the coming weeks.

you can listen to an audio file of this post at

http://buzzsprout.com/1945222/stats

The Coronation of Kamala. ‘Yes she can’

The Coronation of Kamala. ‘Yes she can’ 

Tuesday 23 January 2024

The headline in the Metro newspaper “Yes she can” plays on the “Yes we can” slogan used by former president Barack Obama in 2008 

This has been a week dominated by an upheaval in American politics.

On Sunday, the simmering crisis facing President Biden erupted with the announcement that he would not be seeking a second term as President.

This filled the news channels throughout the American afternoon, spreading around the world. Kamala Harris is expected to step up as the democratic candidate.

Rory Stewart tweets

We live in an anti-incumbency age. The Dem strategy of putting unity above all is understandable. But rushing a coronation of Kamala Harris feels out of step in 24. And it assumes she will inspire swing voters in Michigan, Pensilvania and Wisconsin. Dems risk losing by “playing safe.”

I see the unfolding events more as attempts to deal with a leadership dilemma facing the Democratic Party, partly a consequence of its failure to deal more swiftly with the problems of a frail leader

Money talks

A million dollars raised in one hour by Lindy Lenny, a fund raiser who has worked a 24 stint. She tells the BBC she had been inundated with calls from her contacts  texting her. People were worried about Biden’s fragility in campaigning. Not businesses but personal calls from mostly successful business people. Not all democratic activists. 

The New York Times  report

At her campaign headquarters in Delaware, Vice President Kamala Harris launches a spirited attack on Donald Trump, saying her law enforcement background would help her defeat a rival who is a convicted criminal.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country backwards, to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights,” she said. “But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”

Trump, if elected, would give tax breaks to big corporations, weaken the middle class and reduce access to health care

With high-profile Democrats rapidly lining up behind Harris, the chair of the Democratic National Committee said the party would choose a presidential nominee by Aug. 7, in an online vote before the convention.

CNN’s Meanwhile in America

CNN’s Meanwhile in America was fulsome in its praise:

Kamala Harris has aced her moment. So far.

The vice president has accumulated support from top Democrats, choked off running room for potential rivals for the party nomination, sparked a fundraising bonanza, and alchemized the mood of a party that looked headed for defeat. She rallied campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware, Monday afternoon, with President Joe Biden — still recovering from Covid-19 — calling in to solidify the transition. And in her first public event since Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday, Harris officiated at an event centering her in the imagery of the presidency on the White House south lawn.

Perhaps most significantly, she also notched the endorsement of her fellow Californian, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose backdoor maneuvering was critical to ending Biden’s stalled reelection bid and revealed the 84-year-old is still the nation’s most skilled and influential Democrat. Other congressional leaders then fell into line behind Harris – ready to entrust their party’s hopes to a historic standard bearer who is nevertheless an untested leader at the pinnacle of American politics.

And after the freezing of donor cash helped force Biden out of the race, Democratic wallets were opened big-time in the first 24 hours of the new Harris for president campaign as she pulled in a staggering $81 million dollar haul, according to her team.

The vice president’s swift consolidation of power has been impressive. Her multi-hour phone blitz to Democratic Party power players on Sunday hinted at an operation primed ahead of time but that was kept secret and didn’t leak. 

Early days

Early days. But a near-demoralised party seems to be recovering from a near-death political experience. The Metro headline answers its own question, ‘Can Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump?’

Yes she can

This has been a Dilemmas of Leadership podcast. Plans for a 4th Edition are underway. 

The Odd Couple: A case study of gaslighting?

The Odd Couple: A case study of gaslighting? [script of Buzzsprout podcast]

This podcast summarises a case study of the working relation of a broadcasting team and in particular of its two lead broadcasters whose names I have described as Kenneth and Barbie.
Their story reminds me of examples of teams from real life and fiction, including the one made famous in the film The Odd Couple, brilliantly played by Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

Another humorist and actor Steve Cooghan mocked the morning chat show displays of harmonious teamwork, in his TV series Mid-Morning Matters. He portrayed his fictional persona Alan Partridge as an insensitive male, unaware of the crushing impact he is having on all around him. This piece of comedy brilliance works partly because of its dark undertones.

I became increasingly reminded the Cooghan treatment in the behaviour of a pair of real-life broadcasters sharing a morning programme of news, entertainment, guests and phone-in calls. So much so, that I began to see their developing relationship as a performance concealing those darker elements revealed in Cooghan’s fictional relationships.

Only later did I realise the richness of ideas suggested in the case study also helps throw light on important questions about creativity, social psychology and sociology.

So, I began collecting the evidence, which is the first part of this post. In the second part I turn to those implications.

After some deliberation, I decided to reconstruct my notes from my daily records into an account based on real life, but with modifications to avoid identification of the particular case and individuals represented.

Here we go [notes from TR’s records]:

First, the two central figures, whom I have called Kenneth and Barbie. Barbie is the more senior figure with a reputation as having a warm style and an extensive knowledge of current affairs, sport, and domestic trials of her family life shared with her audience.
Kenneth is a few years younger than Barbie. He has a varied series of professional successes as a broadcaster, author, and actor.

Kenneth joined Barbie in the regular mid-morning show after the departure of Barbie’s previous co-host. Kenneth had arrived after his earlier programme was closed down, a decision he criticised very publicly as a mistake.

He quickly demonstrated technical skills and brought enthusiasm and depth of knowledge in a range of interests.

I noted a critical series of incidents as Christmas approached. Kenneth appeared hasty to correct Barbie in what seemed trivial matters. Barbie tended to avoid reacting, often moving on humorously. Other presenters introduced humorous examples of what became a kind of running joke about Kenneth’s intense competitiveness in office get togethers.

In terms of developing team roles, the gentle interpersonal exchanges continued although Barbie and Kenneth seemed to have moved into a reasonable accommodation.

Kenneth’s career seemed to be on the up. He added more roles to his portfolio. Increased items on these were included in the shared broadcasts. In this respect, the role Kenneth played had become close to that which was found from the contributions of his experienced predecessor. That is to say, the programme appeared to make Kenneth the more interesting member of the team in his career, and even in the revelations of his domestic life.

A few months later I noticed the start of a curious change in discussions between Kenneth and Barbie. I labelled it the hysterical phase, and tried to recapture it at the time.

Later [also from my notes]
The chuckle channel? New young presenter with Kenneth. They chat item on when does middle age start.
Kenneth unable to say anything without bursting into laughter. His laughter is infectious. Young Barbie substitute also laughing helplessly. Kenneth acts as if this is all OK. There’s a kind of theatrical name for breaking out of character. It’s called corpsing. It sometimes works with a live audience which shared hilarity.
Not sure what to make of it.

Barbie returns

A few days later, Barbie is back. As the show gets started, Kenneth starts on a let’s catch up routine involving their movements. But it quickly deteriorates into the same sort of hysteria until Barbie moves them on to their next scripted item.
Not sure what to make of that, either.
This week. Another two incidents I see as related. Kenneth and Barbie are back to work. The hysteria spell seems to have passed. They move to an item which surprises me. Kenneth heaps elaborate praise on Barbie for a special broadcast she hosted last night. She accepts the compliment. Obviously pleased. Then the punch line. ‘I still think you should have used my title. It’s much better than the one you used’. What was that all about?
The programme moved on. Kenneth sounded elated. Welcomed a young female colleague who said she had something to tell him about one of the subjects he likes to expound on.
On hearing her news, he responds dismissively that it’s an old story he’s already spoken about.
Why the reaction? What can we learn from the case study? Case studies are found in courses on topics such as leadership and team dynamics. They help students relate the specific case to personal experiences and which can be studied for more general implications drawing on relevant theoretical ideas.

The researcher, in this case me, tries to capture what has been observed avoiding personal judgement or explanations of what happened. This takes place at the stage of discussion of the case in the classroom, or in the conclusions of a published report.

After some thought, I have decided to leave the listeners with the opportunity to decide what sense they make of the case, and provide my own conclusions later.
Those of you familiar with my newsletters might see it as a TudoRama teaser, setting the questions
What sort of work relationship has developed between Kenneth and Barbie?
What more general ideas about team development can you relate to the case?
What unmentioned factors might be influencing the work performances of Kenneth and Barbie?
Who would you rather work with in your own life, Kenneth or Barbie?

And for the moment, I leave you to decide the answers. For serious study see

The Sociology of Gaslighting, by Professor Paige Sweet of the University of Harvard
American Sociological Review 84(5), 851-875.

Rickards, T and Moger S.T., (1994) Felix and Oscar Revisited: An Exploration of the Dynamics of a Real-Life Odd Couple Work Relationship, J Applied Behavioural Science, vol 30, No 1, 108-133

The Sociology of Gaslighting, by Professor Paige Sweet of the University of Harvard

American Sociological Review 84(5), 851-875.

Corresponding Author:
Paige L. Sweet, Harvard University, 1730 Cambridge Street, CGIS S410, Cambridge, MA 02138
Email: paigesweet@fas.harvard.edu

Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), 357–376. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.2.

Rickards, T and Moger S.T., (1994) Felix and Oscar Revisited: An Exploration of the Dynamics of a Real-Life Odd Couple Work Relationship, J Applied Behavioural Science.

I am possessed. How I became a slave to my new iPhone

A cry from the heart. A short while ago, I was a reasonably functioning human being, capable of independent thought and action.. then I acquired my new iPhone. It replaced my ancient model, which was showing all the functions of a deteriorating piece of hardware. After great hesitation, I plunged into buying the Apple 15 phone, allegedly the much improved version of my existing product.

Easy-peasy?

The transfer was easy-peasy, or so, my fellow members of the Apple cult assured me. Unassured, I took their advice …

I will spare you details of the purchase and transfer of vital information from my old phone.
I now realise I have fallen into a diabolical plot, which renders me helpless against the forces that have ruined my life.
At first, I marvelled at the beauty and enhanced facilities provided by my new phone. But very shortly I became disillusioned.

Too many options
The trap revealed itself after I discovered the world behind the multicoloured Fitness icon.
A touch, and ‘open sesame’ I was through into the dazzling world of health and fitness.
A dazzling array of possibilities opened up before my eyes.
Activity
Active energy
Resting energy
Steps walking and running distance
Double support time,
Walking asymmetry
Walking speed
Walking step length
Flights climbed …

Each possibility had an explanation. Active energy was explained as visualised through an activity ring. a bright red circle which demonstrated a gap between the movements I had made during the day and the movements recommended by the phone for the recommended number of active calories burned.
I will return to the ring activities later. I believe them now to be the most dangerous form of domination by the devilish Demon in the machine.
Resting energy, I am informed is an estimate of the energy used while minimally active,
additional physical activity requires more energy over and above my new enemy active energy.
Then comes some familiar measurements.
Steps. The digital activity tracker counts steps as you go about your daily chores.
Walking and running distance. Another familiar measure. This phone also provides evidence through comparisons of distance averages for the week months and even a year.

A dangerous path

All well and good, before I realised the dangerous path I was taking.

I learn next about double-support time. it is the percentage of time when both feet are on the ground during a typical walk. This measure will fall between 20 and 40% walking require strength and coordination. Changes in these can affect your balance and 2 foot contact time

Walking asymmetry.
This is accompanied by a graph. Walking asymmetry is the percentage of time on the floor measured for each foot. Are you spending more time with one for over the other?

For about a week, my walking asymmetry seem to be very low, far less than 10%

My first shock
Then my first shock. Today, my walking asymmetry has shot up to a massive 35%. Had I suddenly acquired a very serious limp?I didn’t think so…

A few hours later.
One small respite, the daily asymmetry has dropped to 20%. I am still worried.

Then,
delving deeper, I find the astonishing peak is all during my morning visit to the gym, and within it a mere three minutes on the stairs machine. The machine is no doubt accurate in its diabolic measures.

Incidentally this does not figure on my stairs -climbed record.

Other measures included, are

walking speed,

step length, and

flights climbed.
As I don’t expect to change my walking speed or step length without getting very high heels, I turn to flights climbed.

Nothing to do with airplane take offs. It’s how many flights of stairs the programme has deduced that I’ve gone up.
This has been under one a week, a deliberate health measure conducted on the approach to Cheadle railway station once a week, except for inclement conditions.
The programme does set me a target number of flights, but I accept I will struggle, partly because I have no flights of stairs at home.

A painful conclusion

I arrive at a painful conclusion. I have started checking my phone for the health details every time I use it. And I use it too often to count. I am in the grip of a compulsion. Yes, of my own making, but like gambling or drinking, awareness is step one along the painful road back to self control.

The unclosed ring

The most compulsive element is the unclosed ring, urging me to make more steps to achieve closure. I see but remain helpless. It is the need psychological urge for closure which lies at the heart of creativity and the drive to completion. The drive to find out who done it in detective stories, or the answer to a crossword clue. Add to that, finding the right move in a chess game or puzzle.

I am lost

So I am lost. Worse, the computer can set me even sterner challenges to close the daily ring of shame.
There is even a more deadly button I am resisting. It is to share my results with my friends. Now I see who among them has already been sucked into the next circle of hell. Why they tell each other on meeting how many steps they’ve made. Beyond my puny 6000 steps. Even beyond the mythical 10,000 steps, unaware of the wheels beyond wheels of the hell into which they have descended.

iPhone slaves unite

I can only cry into the abyss, iPhone slaves unite. Take one small step at a time towards normality. Ignore the inner urges to beat yesterday’s steps. You have nothing to lose but your addiction.

The God particle and beyond. A tribute to Peter Higgs

The death of Peter Higgs on Tuesday 9 April, 2024, gave rise to attempts to explain his contribution to our understanding of the nature of the fundamental forces of the Universe. The eulogies affirm his status of a giant in the field. The attempts to explain that contribution to the layman have faced considerable difficulties.

I have tried to explain the limits to current understanding, and the need to rethink our deeplyheld assumptions about reality.

I write as one such layman, albeit it one with a PhD in radiation chemistry. In some mitigation, the entire theory of the fundamental building blocks of the Universe has changed dramatically by the work of theoretical and experimental physicists over the last fifty years. I can do no more than to outline how commentators have grappled with communicating the work which earned Peter Higgs his Nobel Prize in 2013. His ideas transformed thinking about how particles acquire mass.

I remembered a popularisation of the subject by Leon Lederman, a contemporary Nobel laureate in the same area of research, Leon Lederman. In his book coauthored by science writer Dick Teresi, The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? he claims he gave the Higgs Boson the lighthearted label of The god particle because
QUOTE This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle partly because the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddamn Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. END QUOTE

Then the Guardian published an obituary for Peter Higgs, on Wednesday 10 April. It gave the expected life story for ann obituary. However, understandably, it offered little insight into that Goddamned particle.
It quoted his Nobel Prize commendation describing how QUOTE the standard model of physics rests on the existence of a special kind of particle the Higgs particle which originates from an invisible field that fills up all space without it we would not exist because it is from contact with the field that particles acquire mass. The theory proposed by by Englert and Higgs describes this process END QUOTE.

Confused? I was. The following day, the Guardian published a second obituary. This was by Francis Close, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and a hugely experienced scientist including time at CERN where the experiments confirming the Higgs’ Boson theory was carried out.

The Professor adds rather more to this reader’s understanding of Peter Higgs and his discovery.
QUOTE The so-called Higgs mechanism controls the rate of thermal nuclear fusion that powers the Sun … The voracity of the mechanism was proved with the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson.
Higgs had justifiable claims because he drew attention to the fact that in certain circumstances the so-called mathematical symmetries required for the standard scientific theory of physics appear to be broken. Furthermore he saw the implication of such proposed behaviours could imply the appearance of a massive particle who is affinity for interacting with all other particles would be in proportion to their masses..END QUOTE

For me, this description adds considerably to the earlier obituary. It suggests in a complicated way the clarification of the great discovery for which Peter Higgs received his Nobel prize.
I returned to other sources of information to help me further in my search for understanding. I began with another book by a distinguished physicist. The author is Carlo Rovelli, and his book is called ‘Reality is not what it seems’.

I have no doubt I need to study Rovelli more carefully even to understand Rovelli. His book takes us beyond even the obituaries in explaining the Higgs mechanism. In the concluding part of the book on quantum space and relational time he points to the difficulties faced in understanding such matters.
“To comprehend what quantum space and quantum time are, we need one more to revise in depth the way we conceive things. We need to rethink the grammar of our understanding of the world.”
And that is where my journey and our journey together have reached at present. To understand more about the Higgs mechanism and the Higgs Boson requires that rethinking of our understanding of the world. I have had a glimpse of the next steps needed to make progress in that understanding.
I hope it has been as useful an exercise to others as it has been to myself.

On dullness and the heritage of punk

My interest in punk in general, and punk chess in particular drew my attention via Dr Google to lines from the great English poet and satirist John Dryden. In his vicious poetic attack on his literary enemy, Shadwell, the poem begins in the tone of an epic masterpiece, presenting Shadwell’s defining characteristic as dullness, [just as every epic hero has a defining characteristic: Odysseus’s is cunning; Achilles’s is wrath; the hero of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is of holiness; whilst Satan in Paradise Lost has the defining characteristic of pride. Thus, Dryden subverts the theme of the defining characteristic by giving Shadwell a negative characteristic as his only virtue].

There is very little ambiguity about it – Dryden uses classic tones is saying that Shadwell and his work are no better than excrement.

The reference to punk can be found in the couplet in the poem about a nursery in the land of NonSense ruled by, who else, Shadwell, crudely throughout disguised as Sh**. Readers would have no doubt about Dryden’s target:

Where infant Punks their tender Voices try,
And little Maximins the Gods defy.

I was well on the way to understanding the origins of the word Punk. But there were more twists to this tale…

First usages of punk

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first recorded usage of the word is in a ballad called ‘Simon The Old Kinge’ composed some time before 1575. It warns men that drinking is a sin akin to keeping prostitutes: ‘Soe fellowes, if you be drunke, of ffrailtye itt is a sinne, as itt is to keepe a puncke’.

Not too long after that, Shakespeare used the word in Measure for Measure in one of his favoured mistaken-identity plots to propose that a character was ‘maybe a punke’

Punk and the Sex Pistols

Fast forward to the twentieth century, and a critical incident from a live performance by the Sex Pistols in London triggered headlines about punk, and the name stuck.

Cultural analysis

Culture critics have identified the adjective, as in punk rock, to characterise an anti-establishment style particularly in music.

Which brings us nicely to Punk Chess

So we have a clue to the rise of punk chess, which is gaining momentum through internet sites in the last few years.

Here’s my earlier podcast examination of Punk Chess

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1945222/14112031-what-is-punk-chess.mp3?download=true

The Politics of Chess.

It should not be a great surprise to learn that top level Chess, like other sports, has its share of politics. A case study is that of the gifted Iranian player Shohreh Bayat.

Shohreh, now domiciled in England fell foul of the chess authorities some years ago, but her case was brought into the headlines recently by an investigatory report by CNN on which I have based this note and accompanying podcast.

In 2020, during the women’s world chess championships Shohreh was criticised in Iran for not wearing the appropriate headscarf.

Enter the Chess Federation President, Arkady Dvorkovich. President Dvorkovich served as Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister between 2012-2018 following a stint as the Kremlin’s top economic adviser. He has always maintained that his political stance does not influence his work for FIDE, the chess organising body. He has also pointed out that he was one of the most senior establishment figures in Russia to question the war in Ukraine…

You can listen to what happened next to Shofreh in my 5 minute podcast

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1945222/14763107-the-politics-of-chess-the-case-of-shohreh-bayat.mp3?download=true

The Porridge Song

Apologies for long absence due to IT problems. I have tried to keep in contact via other sites. I will try to catch up on this site as well.

Here’s my recent attempt to creative a poem, in which the author provides a percussive element. It will also appear with some refinements in my podcast TudoRama Everyday Creativity.

The Porridge song

With acknowledgment to George Gershwin

You say salt

Clap clap

And I say honey

Clap clap

You say Moolah

Clap

And I say Money

Clap

Salt, honey, moolah, money

Clap

Let’s call the whole thing off.

Clap clap

… You say either, I say either

Clap

You say neither

Clap

And I say neither

Clap

Either, either, neither, neither

Let’s call the whole thing off, yes

Clap

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Yes

Let’s call the whole thing off

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