Father's Day, Writing Madness, Useful Academics, Roads (Not) Taken
Mid June Dispatch
Greetings, Noble Knights Errant and Ladies on Pilgrimages,
And Salutations to those of you lucky enough to be fathers and grandfathers!
Writing Madness. It’s been a crazed spring. The book I’m calling Quixote’s Dinner Party: Hopes for Social Thought seems to be finished. I cancelled a trip to Europe, let many balls drop, was accidentally offensive, certainly not caring, stopped exercising, ate and drank too much, my sleep schedule fell apart, I kept waking up earlier and earlier . . . but it is done. It’s been hard to finish a book before, and I again forgot just how painful that level of “focus” (the nice word, but it’s obsession), common enough with painful things. And this may have been the worst. I don’t remember.
Of course, Quixote’s Dinner Party is not really finished, a book is never finished. I have let the text sit for a bit, and will reread and revise, but what I can say is that this book pretty much is what it is. The rest is just work, not an interrogation of my worth. I am still in the love/loathe stage, but the weird dreams and the roaring have stopped, mostly, which is good. This was difficult, for reasons somewhat unclear but that have to do with the justification, to myself, of my last few decades of work across disciplines. And I am not sure.
People in my little liberal world like to base things on consent, agency. It’s kind of cute. We say “we make choices,” and even tell children to “make good choices.” Right. We do some things, and not others, often for reasons not understood, opportunities or responsibilities of the moment, much of that luck, some good, some bad, other people do, too, not in our control, unforeseen consequences pile up, and gradually a career, a life, emerges. We marry or not, become fathers and grandfathers or not, books are written, maybe, jobs taken . . .
Since the last Signal, head spinning from Quixote, I had a bunch of ideas for essays – something on language and different modalities of representation, carrying different kinds of truth, in photography, prose, finance and AI. Something on all the overheated talk about the US and revolution/civil war, with special attention to sovereign debt, which even many well-educated people don’t understand very well. Something on “The Juvenile Style in U.S. Politics,” but the title is probably enough. Something on the varying temporalities of diplomacy and military action. If we understand war as politics, those ways of thinking ought to be better integrated, which is difficult. I cannot remember but maybe there were more ideas, maybe they were good ideas. “Just stop,” my wife said, as I laid out yet another argument in the middle of the night. And I simply can’t write those essays, not now. Floating through airworld, looking out windows . . .
Building Audience. Intermittent Signal is steadily building an audience, which is gratifying. I’m still missing a few states. Vermont, anyone? Nebraska? I’ve got most of the big countries, except China. Of course we should force the divestiture of TikTok, at least until the Chinese can read Intermittent Signal, which is a basic human right. Come to think of it, that’s not entirely a joke. Meanwhile, it would be nice to have readers in Egypt, for example. So, please share. It’s free! Plus pictures!
Anything you can do to help is appreciated, both directly and by the Substack folks, who then amplify my Signal, as it were. So please like, comment, share, and so forth.
In the last few days of May, the aspens finally leafed out. The elk winter in big herds out in the flats of the Park. When spring finally comes, the herds break up, and the cows, heavy bellied and voracious, move up into the trees to calve and then nurse their fawns. The cows keep the fawns hidden for bit, until the babies can run. In midsummer, I’ve seen them far above treeline, pretty safe from predators like mountain lions.
Useful Academic Idiots. Matt Stoller is an antitrust activist. He writes a very good substack, Big, about market concentration. Stoller felt compelled to recap a series of careful articles by Brody Mullins in the Wall Street Journal about Josh Wright, who was a law professor and lobbyist who has been extending the pro-big business approach to antitrust whose patron saint is Robert Bork. (The basic idea here is that the mere threat of competition, even without actual competition, is enough to discipline companies so they don’t rip people off. The idea was politically decisive for years, still is in some quarters, but does not appear to be true. Lots of corporations rip lots of people off. Wealth is distributed upward.) Ho hum. Wright has also been charged with being a sexual predator a la Harvey Weinstein. Ok, salacious for sure and bad if true (Wright denies wrongdoing; litigation continues), but maybe not something I need to think about. And then:
Along with the ability to structure law and enforcement priorities came money. Wright had a $1.5 million annual salary from Wilson Sonsini, one of the most important law firms in D.C., [and especially Silicon Valley] which represented Qualcomm, Google, and many other big firms (and where Wright helped place students, and at least one woman he was sleeping with). He was paid $600,000 a year by Amazon, more than any Amazon lobbyist, and George Mason paid him $400,000+ as well. He also worked for Kirkland & Ellis, the most important law firm in the private equity world. Matt Stoller "Big" on Josh Wright
A law professor making $2.5 million/year? That’s an outrage! Here I am, running around, trying to humanize government, reduce the contempt of our elites and the resentment of our demos, and this is the thanks I get? I’m a creative and hard-working member of the loyal opposition, and I’m not screwing the little guy or my students. Don’t I get credit for that? You would think the Republic or some of its business leaders would show me a little more love . . . Mock pique aside, this is disturbing.
I drove out of the high country, losing almost 10,000 feet of altitude, and changing seasons from early spring into high summer. The sudden heat, even the humidity, the sense of it soaking in, blousy linen shirts in bright colors, sweating out the poisons of the last weeks. This will get tiresome soon enough, but the first shock is lovely.
We met family at a wildlife park nestled amongst the giant farms of Southern Illinois, on the edge of a region known as Forgottonia. Really. The plan was to secede, declare war on the US, immediately surrender, and then live on foreign aid. They had a flag, the white flag of surrender, a flower, the forget-me-not . . . ah, Americana. The park featured Western megafauna native to Illinois but most long since hunted out. People came from Chicago or Peoria or Springfield to see buffalo and elk and bears. It was sweet, and maybe a little sad, and reminded me how lucky I am that many of these animals are part of my life.
Speaking of roads not taken: I’m returning from a quick trip to D.C., where I helped out in a strategic leadership course for senior managers in the defense community, colonels up for general, and civilian equivalents, GS 14/15. (Continuing education is often required for advancement; for many this is the academic capstone of their career.) I was a senior mentor, and played a modest role in the final exercise, a rather brilliant multi-day simulation of forging a national response to a disturbingly plausible crisis in the Baltics. Given the difficulty of governing the United States, and the fraught history of our defense policy, I’m really happy to help in any way I can. In a very nice way, not a rah rah way, I feel patriotic. Maybe I can help deepen the thinking of some people who will wield real power? It certainly seems worth taking the opportunity to try.
And still, one wonders. (What the hell is an old man like me doing in Syracuse, thought Plato to himself.) The participants in the course have already had illustrious careers. The speakers, even more so – running intelligence, ambassadors, situation room stories, that sort of thing. Should I have been a man of affairs? Of course one daydreams of prominence, a three-star, a “principal,” a . . . more likely, if I’m honest with myself and even you, gentle reader, I would not have lasted, or just not been that successful, or not successful enough to satisfy myself. Maybe I knew that?
One evening, I walked by the Federal Circuit Courthouse, where I clerked for two years. The Federal Circuit is on Lafayette Square, the little park to the north of the White House. In the evenings, I used to step over the TV camera cables – reporters using that great shot of the back of the White House shining at night as backdrop – on my way to meet my wife in Dupont Circle. We were young, and would have dinner and get a car home, and then the babies, and I finally got a teaching job . . . and next thing you know, you’re a grandfather, nightmarish arguments spinning through your head, and talking to moose. And that, really, is probably how it should have been and indeed came to be.
Strange days, Pilgrims. Rest easy with yourself, enjoy the summer, and safe travels! And Happy Father’s Day.
— David A. Westbrook
Thank you for sharing your pilgrimage with us readers. And happy fathers’ day to you too!
Can your book be pre-ordered?
John, thank you! I am not sure what I am going to do with Quixote's Dinner Party. It's not an academic book, that is, the book is not written in this or that field, although it very much is a book for people who might well be academics. And trade publishing is unbelievably narrow these days, with occasional shooting star exceptions. I may well put the draft, at least, on Substack for paying subscribers (the newsletter will remain free). But I'm not sure. At any rate, I will definitely keep my Intermittent Signal readers informed!