DANTE’S INFERNO, Illustrated by DORE

PLATE 44

CANTO XIX

“They come to the third gulf, wherein are punished those who have been guilty of simony. These are fixed with the head downwards in certain apertures, so that no more of them than the legs appears without, and on the soles of their feet are seen burning flames.”

Dante Inferno Illustrated by Gustave Dore,Paddington Press (New York: 1996). First published in 1890? ed. Divine Comedy A.L. Burt, New York.

“Honest, Intelligent and Courageous Government Can Solve Many Problems:” F.D. Roosevelt Address

“Today there is emerging a real and forceful belief on the part of the great masses of the people that the honest, intelligent and courageous government can solve many problems which the average individual cannot face alone in a world where there are no longer one hundred and twenty acres of good free land for everybody.”

F.D. Roosevelt, addressing the Jackson Day Dinner in 1939.

Cited in Milton Metzer, Brother Can You Spare A Dime? The Great Depression 1929 / 1933 1991: Facts On File New York (1991). (Originally published in a different form by Knopf, 1969.) Pp 117

“The Money-changers Have Fled From The Temple Of Our Civilization:” F.D. Roosevelt Inaugural Address

“Many of the of the most sensational exposures of the Pecora investigation would come later, but by early March, 1933, enough had been revealed for the American people to recoil indignantly from the evidence of chicanery, greed and simplemindedness among the nation’s largest bankers. And the failure of the banks, which had wiped out untold millions in life savings, seemed a final indictment on the private banking system. Roosevelt himself had declared in his inaugural address that

“…the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated… The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.”"

F.D. Roosevelt, Inaugural address, cited in Goldston. March 04, 1933.

Cited in Robert Goldston, The Great Depression: The United States In The Thirties (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968) Pp 114

Drawing by Heinrich Kley. The Drawings Of Heinrich Kley, Dover Publications Inc. (New York: 1969) pp. 92

KEEP YOUR HANDS AND ARMS AWAY FROM THE AISLE; Stay Inside The Vehicle.

The notion of “reaching across” some “aisle” is nonsense.

It is nothing more than notional, really, isn’t it. It is metaphor. It is an abstraction of an abstraction. Go ahead; extend the metaphor. Try to complete it so it actually makes sense: I’ll be reaching across (this) aisle and… what? Furtively handing across a tight roll of large bills? Agreeing to disagree? 

This acknowledges no relationship to real, particular issues, differences, interests or money at stake. Nothing to do with judgments about policies by people in real circumstances. 

There is an aisle, somewhere, we are told, but there sure as shit isn’t anyone reaching across it, especially at this hour of the night. Unless, we hope, it is the brown-skinned Cleaning Staff, reaching for the wet end of a blunt. I suppose there is some kind of “gallery” somewhere, though I suspect it is place where schoolteachers make public school children be quiet. There may be homeless people and stranded travelers sleeping there now…

 The Aisle is something that we will all use to elbow our way to the Exits, when the shit comes down. We’ve all seen it, haven’t we? Isn’t it always in the aisles that people are trampled to death? And they plunge, from the balconies… into the aisles.

 What is intended by saying “reaching across the aisle” makes more vivid sense to me as reaching from the rail of the cacophanous, tumultuous deck of one hideous, crowded ideological ship to the deck rail of another.

 The very image suggests people who have crowded their way on to these particular vessels like sheep or ungulates elbowing their way to perceived safety in the center of a herd. If agitated by rabble-rousers, cows and sheep will shove and crowd and elbow their way onto a Stock Trailer of Doom- or the deck of a ship, for that matter, I suppose. It’s just a degree of stampede, really. Fires will get these started really well, sure thing. And so, it will be one deck or another, we suppose…

 So be careful reaching across this particular imaginary “aisle.” It is a canonical rule of boatsmanship in moving water- never end up standing downstream from a broadside hull- and never, never end up getting pulled into the gap between two heaving, rolling hulls. If there is a sure way to get mashed into a thick, splintery, salty paste, this is it.

We have been fooled enough times to be skeptical that those people reaching across that “aisle” want us over there, on that side of the “aisle,” anyway. We think they may want us down there, between the hulls, as they roll and buck and grind and slam together. Doesn’t it make you a bit nauseous?

“These Clothes Were Both Splendid And Invisible:” Eric Hobsbawm

“As always, it was not the sophisticated intelligences which were prepared to recognize that the emperor wore no clothes; they spent their time inventing theories to explain why these clothes were both splendid and invisible.”

Eric Hobsbawm: The Age Of Empire. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London: 1987. Pp 250