A Review of 11.22.83 by Stephen King

The fantasy of time travel has always intrigued us. In modern times, perhaps beginning with Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards, to HG Wells’ The Time Machine, on to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, we have read fictions that explore the weird but familiar world of time travel. Similarly, the popular medium of television, through such shows as Star Trek, have explored the imaginative possibilities of this fantasy. Stephen King praises writer Jack Finney for his book Time After Time as an outstanding example of a time travel novel. In 11.22.63, Stephen King tries his hand at the genre with excellent results.

Probably anyone old enough to be in school on November 22, 1963 has indelible images from that day seared into their brain. This is the date that John F Kennedy was assassinated. It was a national trauma in my lifetime matched only by the trauma of 9/11 for traumatizing our collective and individual psyches. I remember vividly my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Handley, coming in and saying to us “I have some bad news. The president has been shot." That was all the information we received at first, and when the bell rang, we were sent to different rooms for our reading groups. Mine was on the main floor of the old fifth and sixth grade building, where a large old-fashioned radio sat in a small room. The volume on the old radio was turned up probably as loud as it could go. I recall the announcer saying “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States is dead." The station then immediately played the national anthem. My own reaction was one of shocked disbelief. Some of my classmates cried. I don't remember if I did, or if I prayed, but probably both. I think all were stunned. The following days were filled with a national grief and a ritual funeral that attempted to grasp the gravity of what happened.

What had happened, was that a lone, misfit of an individual by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, had shot the president with a high-powered rifle. Oswald was later arrested only to be shot and killed himself a couple of days later by another misfit. This account of a lone gunmen acting out a deranged fantasy didn't seem to fit with what ought to have happened, that some deep conspiracy of great power must have been necessary to create so momentous an event. Thus, up sprung conspiracy theories that have spun almost endlessly since that date. Oliver Stone's JFK gave cinematic voice to those theories, but in the end, the conspiracy theories don't jibe with reality.

In an interview about writing this book, Stephen King says he initially started the draft in 1973, ten years after the assassination, but he reports that he put it away because of the demands on his time and the freshness of the wound that he was attempting to address. Now, a couple of years short of the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, he came out with a book that deals with this momentous date, the issues of time travel and what might have been, and the differences between the world of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In it attempting to address all of these different concerns, King has done a masterful job creating a sense of time and place in the recent—and to some of us, remembered—past. King does this in large measure through characters that we come to know and care about. I have to admit this is the first work of fiction by Stephen King that I've read (earlier listened to his book On Writing), and I must say ability as a story teller is well displayed here. (I have seen some movies based on his work, such as The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, and Stand by Me, all of which I found compelling.) I'd avoided King because I had always thought of them as a horror writer, but I see now that this does not do justice to the scope of his abilities.

The conceit of the book surrounds the discovery of a time warp in a small Maine town in 2011. An owner of a diner discovered the time warp some time ago and visited the past (always the same date and time in 1958), going back and forth in time. He eventually decides that his mission should be to avoid the assassination of JFK, and thereby avoid the national trauma that the Vietnam War visited upon the nation. (I think him terribly optimistic about this prospect.) However, he cannot get himself to the time and place necessary to confidently intervene to stop Oswald, so he recruits the main character, Jake Epping, to go back in his place. Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, reluctantly agrees to go back in time to try to derail this horrific event and other tragedies. In doing so, he travels to what in to us is now the strange world of the late 1950s and early 1960s in America. Epping’s self-imposed mission is made much more difficult by the fact that he falls in love with a woman who has her own past to deal with.

King doesn't dwell on weird theories of physics in support of his time travel conceit, but he does provide some common sense observations on what it might be like, such as the conclusion that the past doesn't want to be changed. No doubt true, but that doesn’t stop us from pondering the possibilities. Besides being a topic of interest for fiction writers, the “what if's” of history have tantalized serious historians and social scientists as well as fiction writers. What if Winston Churchill had not become prime minister in Great Britain in 1940? What if Hitler had successfully invaded? The number of possibilities are nearly endless once you crack open the past with an eye to changing it or imagining it happening differently. When we think philosophically and analytically about the past, we come up against the cold fact that the past is closed and fixed, while the future is open and uncertain (at least to some degree). When we try on mentally changing the past, we find, as the protagonist Jake Epping does, that things don't fit easily. The waves of consequence that emanate from any single fact disburse through the past creating a butterfly effect that can have nearly infinite repercussions.

I’m very glad I read this book because I found a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing. As we approach the anniversary of the assassination of JFK, there some other books I want to read as we try (continually, as with all good history) to assess JFK, the man and his presidency. Because his life and presidency were cut short at a time of such great change and trauma that we know came to pass in the United States during the period of about 15 years after his death, we wonder what would have happened had the assassin's bullet not struck. The fact is, we can never know, but we can wonder and ponder and argue these possibilities. It's not something worth doing because we can change anything in the past, but by casting the strongest possible light on the past, we can use the reflection to see a bit further where we might be going—and want to go—in the future.

By the way, if you are interested, the initial character who discovers the time warp and decides to look into the Kennedy assassination in the hope of avoiding it, thought there was a "95% chance" that Oswald acted alone. King, in an interview, opines, after having researched the matter very thoroughly, that that probability is close to 98 or 99%. History sometimes lurches in unforeseeable ways based on the acts of the least formidable of individuals or the random events of nature. This event seems to be such an instance.

A Review of Swag by Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard died about a month ago. I’d never read any of his books. But I’d learned a lot about them after he died. Appreciations of his writing appeared in the New York Times and in the New Yorker. I read these reviews. Based on these comments, I came to the conclusion that Leonard was a writer’s writer. Many people praised his style. His economy of style.

In addition to reading all of these appreciations, I knew Leonard wrote about crime, and there is perhaps no better genre to enjoy than crime, police procedurals, detective novels, and mysteries. You learn a lot about the world, especially the underside. You’re also entertained most of the time. Based on the reviews I read and my appreciation of the genre, I decided to try a Leonard book. I read Swag.

My choice did not disappoint me. Swag is about two guys who decide to go into the business of armed robbery. Leonard’s portrayal of the two main characters is pretty much flawless. Each has about half a set of brains, and together they don’t quite make a whole. But for a while, they’re on a run. Leonards’s spare and direct style works perfectly to portray the mentality of the main protagonists. Complications occur when a bright detective, a bright prosecutor, and a dame get involved in the proceedings. And greed. And love.

Having represented a lot of criminal defendants in my time, I can only think of a couple who were genuinely bright. And at least once I represented a wiseguy and his saner, quieter partner. You can see the trouble that someone is headed toward when bluster and bravado are supposed to replace thought and judgment. Based on my experience, Leonard seems to have encountered these types of guys as well. He captures their character and ethos so well. Leonard doesn’t criticize his characters or paint them to be anything than other than what they are. A pair of guys who generate some sympathy along the way even as you see them blunder deeper down the rabbit hole.

If you enjoy crime writing at all, then I’d have a hard time thinking that you wouldn’t enjoy this Elmore Leonard novel written in the 1970s. Leonard wrote and published up to the time of his death, and there’s a large body of it I’ve yet to read. This work is different from a mystery or detective novel because the main protagonists are the criminals and not the “good guys”. He gets into the heads of these guys as well as I can imagine anyone doing, and that’s no small accomplishment. Good style or not.

Garments of Court & Palace: Machiavelli & the World That He Made by Phillip Bobbitt

We recently toured Rome and Italy, where we viewed many of the splendors of the Italian Renaissance. Works by Michelangelo, Titian, and Rafael were prominent. The spirit of Leonardo da Vinci loomed in the background. These figures and others like them are considered among the glories of the Italian Renaissance. But perhaps the most important person to emerge from the Italian Renaissance was not a painter, sculptor, or poet. He was a Florentine diplomat sent involuntarily into exile from Florence to a country estate, where he took up his pen and began writing. He drew upon his deep knowledge of ancient history and Florentine history. He drew upon his extensive practical experience from many years as a Florentine diplomat. After his death, one of his works, On Principalities, was published. Immediately, it was subject to mistranslation, misunderstanding, and abridgment. It became known as the Courtier's Koran (and this is not a compliment). Who was this person? Niccolò Machiavelli. His name has become familiar through the centuries since the publication of The Prince (as the title was misleadingly translated into English) as a purveyor of sinister political advice. Almost every major commentator addressing all him him him him him him him him the history of political thought has grappled with Machiavelli’s works and wrestled with his legacy. In this book, Philip Bobbitt enters the fray.

Philip Bobbitt is a professor of law at Columbia University with continuing ties to his original teaching position at the University of Texas. In addition, he has served in foreign-policy positions under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Finally, and most recently, he has published two major works on law, strategy, and international relations: The Shield of Achilles and War and Consent. Compared to those two books, his foray into the world of Machiavellian studies is brief and succinct. However, Bobbitt has a compelling hypothesis and makes a strong case in favor of his interpretation.

Bobbitt argues that The Prince is a short detour from Machiavelli's longer work, the Discourses on Livy, which helped create the intellectual climate that allowed the resurgence of Republicanism in the Western world. Bobbitt argues that The Prince and the Discourses should be read as one book on the state (il stato). Instead of Machiavelli writing a “mirror of princes” work like his predecessors, Machiavelli is attempting something else. In The Prince Machiavelli aims to establish a practical ethics for establishing a state (principality). After the establishment of the state, Machiavelli recommends a transition to a republican form of government. Machiavelli undertakes this intellectual project in the hope that Italy will one day unify into a single state under a republican government, a hope that was not realized until several centuries after his death. In forwarding this argument, Bobbitt does not see Machiavelli as a teacher of evil, but as an astute student of political realities that is willing to weigh the consequences of action and not pay mere lip service to ethical guidelines that don't deal with the reality of those grasping for political power.

I found Bobbitt's argument convincing. Most who read Machiavelli have to admit that he has insights into the behavior of those grasping or seeking power (i.e., all of us). His classic query is to whether it is better to be loved or to be hated, a question that has a practical ring to it for personal relations as much as for political rule. Many readers over the centuries have felt that in taking any advice from Machiavelli one was somehow lowering oneself in a dastardly way, but this is not (necessarily) so. Machiavelli tries to establish the guidelines for founding a state (or regime or scheme of power) that can be later transferred into a more stable republic.

Bobbitt's argument about Machiavelli makes a lot of sense, but it also leaves many unanswered questions. The review of the book by Garry Wills in the New York Times suggest that Bobbitt’s book tacitly approves of a powerful state that will limit civil liberties and unduly aggrandize the regime. Wills seems to believe that Bobbitt’s argument grants license to the Dick Cheneys of the world to do as they will in protection of the state. I didn't read Bobbitt as making that argument, although I am curious to go back and look more closely at The Shield of Achilles and especially Terror and Consent to learn how Bobbitt draws these lines. Bobbitt does ignore the question of when Machiavelli’s ethics of The Prince should no longer apply. In other words, a newly formed principality, according to Machiavelli and Bobbitt, must work under different set of guidelines than an established republic. However, to what extent can a republic or should a republic revert to the ethics of a principality when under threat? Indeed, history seems littered with examples of political leaders who grasp for power when external forces threaten. The identification of an external threat is the oldest trick in the playbook for extending political power. According to Machiavelli and Bobbitt, how do we sort out the legitimate expediencies that Machiavelli might consider legitimate from those that would prove harmful to a republic? Our own republic has undergone a serious decline in civil liberties under the terrorist threats of the last 20 years, and before that, under the threat of communism. Despite the warnings of people like George Kennan, throughout the Cold War the US too often mimicked our adversaries in paranoia, state security, and limitations on freethinking. The same thing can be happening in the current age, although Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism don’t pose the ideological threat that Marxism once held as an attractive messianic religion.

For anyone who is remotely interested in Machiavelli and the world in which he lived and acted, I highly recommend Bobbitt's book. Bobbitt is not a Machiavelli scholar, but he has done his homework and marshaled his arguments in a way that is convincing and appealing. I hope his next book will address the application of Machiavelli and Machiavellian principles in today's world and how we can distinguish between the legitimate uses of power and their easy corruption.

Representative Loebsak Replies About Syria

September 11, 2013

Mr. Steve Greenleaf
345 Magowan Avenue
Iowa City, IA 52246-3515

Dear Mr. Greenleaf,

Thank you for contacting me about Syria.  I'm honored to represent you.  Your opinion is very important to me and my priority is to provide Iowa's Second District with the best representation possible.

As soon as discussions about possible use of military force in Syria began, I urged President Obama to make the case directly to the American people for involvement in the conflict and to seek authorization from Congress prior to committing U.S. military assets in Syria.   Any decision to use military force requires the public debate our Founding Fathers wisely prescribed in the Constitution. 

The use of chemical weapons against civilians and the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria is morally reprehensible and should be unequivocally condemned by the international community.  However, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I strongly believe that after more than a decade of war during which time our troops and military families have made great sacrifices on our behalf, we must exercise extreme caution in undertaking any military action.

The President must directly make the case to the American people for why military action in Syria is in our national interest.  This includes laying out the strategic reasoning behind military action, defining the national security reasoning for such action, and establishing an end goal and exit strategy for potential use of force, as well as laying out the broader implications of military action for the region and American interests there.  In a highly unstable area of the world, the implications of U.S. military involvement in the Syrian conflict requires significant debate and the support of the American people.  This is particularly true with our troops still deployed in Afghanistan and after our servicemembers and military families have made incredible sacrifices on our behalf over more than a decade of war.

I have received initial briefings by the White House and will continue to closely engage the Administration and our military, intelligence, and diplomatic leaders on this issue.  However, it is absolutely critical to me to know your thoughts on this issue, and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share them with me. I also have a poll on this issue posted on my website, which I welcome you to take at http://loebsack.house.gov/syria if you have not already.

Please be assured that as a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, I will continue to closely monitor the ongoing situation in Syria and promote extreme caution in the use of military force. 

Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue.  My office is here to assist you with any and all concerns you have, so please do not hesitate to contact me whenever you feel that I can be of assistance.  I encourage you to visit my website at www.loebsack.house.gov and sign up for my e-newsletters to stay informed of the work I'm doing for you.  I am proud to serve the Second District, and I am committed to working hard for Iowans.

Dave Loebsak
Iowa's Second District

JFK’s Secret Doctor: The Remarkable Life of Medical Pioneer and Legendary Rock Climber Hans Kraus by Susan E.B. Schwartz

Two significant anniversaries are coming up soon. This November will mark the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an event that anyone born before 1958 likely remembers. The memory of this shock is seared into the consciousness of millions of Americans with feelings of loss, vulnerability, and thoughts of what might have been if Oswald had failed.

The other anniversary arrives in less than one year from now. In August 1914, triggered by another assassination, that of the Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Hapsburg Empire, the First World War broke out. This marked the beginning of what some have labeled The Long War that ended only in 1989 with the capitulation of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. During this period, the Hapsburg Empire collapsed, Germany suffered defeat, Hitler and National Socialism arose, and Germany suffered another crushing defeat. Meanwhile, millions of lives were lost and many more were displaced.

I mention these two events because of their significance in the life of Dr. Hans Kraus, a medical pioneer previously unknown to me. Kraus came from a wealthy Hapsburg Empire family that moved from Trieste, a multi-ethnic city on the Adriatic, to Vienna, the capital of the Hapsburg Empire, and finally to New York, as refugees from the coming storm led by Hitler. The Kraus family had Jewish forbearers, but­ they had the wealth and foresight to escape the tide of war and genocide that washed over their native lands.

Kraus was born at the beginning of the century, and his youth was marked by his time in the mountains, introduced to him by a domineering and demanding father. Kraus grew strong and developed a true love for the mountains: for climbing, hiking, and skiing, which provided him spiritual sustenance. But while Kraus grew up in a wealthy household, his youth was marked by two significant influences: his demanding father (similar in many ways to JFK’s demanding father) and the death of a friend during a climb they made as impetuous youths. Despite his father’s protests and derision, Kraus became a physician, and specifically, an orthopedist, in part as a way to atone after the shocking death of his friend.

Many an orthopedist that I know were athletes, and Kraus fits the mold, but his mountaineering hobby, which lasted nearly his whole life, provided him with experiences that would help change medical practice. For Kraus learned from the practical persons of the mountains, not fellow Viennese physicians, how to treat traumatic joint and muscle injuries. He learned to treat such injuries not by immobilization and bed rest, but by movement and muscular development. Over the course of a medical career spanning almost six decades, his treatment recommendations put him at odds with the medical establishment.

After emigrating to NYC, Kraus developed a very successful medical practice as well as establishing himself as a premier American rock climber. He developed a set of tests to measure susceptibility to back pain—a growing epidemic in the U.S.—and he pushed for better physical health among American children,  and by his efforts helping to create the President’s Council on Physical Fitness (for what little that was worth). However, his greatest claim to fame came from being asked to treat President John F. Kennedy for his famously bad back. Kennedy had undergone two back surgeries and extended periods of bed rest, and was nearly crippled by his back. Kennedy’s situation was aggravated by his Addison’s disease, a secret guarded as closely, if not closer, than his trysts. Kraus, at the invitation of a couple of JFK’s treating physicians, came in and took control of JFK’s back. Kraus palpated Kennedy’s muscles, tested his strength and flexibility, and then he prescribed the treatment: trigger point therapy, exercise, and relaxation. No surgery, no drugs, and no crutches. (Kraus also opposed JFK’s corset, but JFK held on to its use almost as a psychic crutch, which perhaps cost him his life (read the book).) After a couple of years of the Kraus treatment, people close to him described JFK as his healthiest in memory. JFK continued to have flare-ups of back problems, usually associated with time around family—strong stressors given his domineering father, the competitive family ethos, and his marriage—but his flare-ups were not associated with events like the Cuban missile crisis or other demanding presidential duties. Kraus, making his only exception to requiring patients to come see him in his NYC office, came when needed to help the President. By the time of JFK’s assassination, Kraus had developed a strong relationship with JFK and a high degree of admiration.

Kraus was slow to receive recognition in the medical community for his “old-fashioned” ways of palpating and manipulating patients, usually avoiding surgery, drugs, and hospital stays. In fact, the issue of the reception that Kraus’s insights and treatments received within the medical community is a great issue in this book that the author fails to fully explore. Kraus is quoted as saying “I’d be sued now” for using his ways of diagnosis and treatment, but that suggests that we lawyers are the problem. In fact, lawyers are the least important of three parties to a malpractice claim. The two most important players are patients, who, contrary to myth, are (in my experience) reluctant, frustrated by a lack of candor from treating physicians, and badly injured (or the surviving relatives). The other key players in any malpractice claim are fellow physicians, who offer opinions about the standard of care. Their opinions about the correctness of a course of treatment are the crucial element of any claim.

But step back from any consideration of outright malpractice, because an even greater issue is raised here, that of accepted practice (ortho-practice, if you will) that is actually iatrogenic—injury causing—such as bed rest and immobilization. One AMA president in the 1950s quoted in the book stated that smoking is actually probably good for you! Scientific ignorance, reasoning prejudices and biases, and economic incentives (surgery earns more money than prescribing exercises) all contribute to medical practices that can actually prove harmful, if not fatal. (See Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile for more about this.) I would like the author to have done more with this theme than simply noting Kraus’s battles for acceptance and the intransigence of the medical community toward his insights. I’m not sure that Kraus’s methods have been widely accepted—do you still use RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) for a sprained ankle? If so, read this book and think again!

Finally, this book is worthwhile because it can lead you to a better back. For most readers, this alone would prove the value of the book. A YouTube of a Kraus program can be found @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZziz64PNpY. (Enjoy the vintage workout clothes!)

All in all, an interesting and worthwhile book about a very interesting and little known character. A big shout-out goes to Tanta Rose for bringing this book to my attention.

About Syria & U.S. Intervention

If I’d been in the U.S. on Monday, I would not have attended a rally against U.S. airstrikes on Assad’s regime in Syria. Not because I favor such strikes, but because I don’t want to delude myself or others about what we’re doing or not doing if the U.S. were to act. For instance, the mailer from CREDO stated:

The use of chemical weapons is morally reprehensible, and it should be punished. The International Criminal Court should immediately start war crime tribunals and proceedings against those responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. And the U.S. can take evidence that Assad’s regime used chemical weapons to the UN Security Council and seek a resolution against Syria. Both acts would make it far more difficult for Russia to continue defending the regime and open the door for international action to broker a ceasefire -- the only way we will stop the massacre of civilians.

Gee, why hadn’t anyone thought of these actions before? To call this attitude “spittin’ into the wind” would be an apt cliché, except that we’re talking about life and death here. We’re not talking about a simple choice of war or peace. There is no peace in Syria, nor will there be for some time, regardless of U.S. actions. Whatever we do, let’s not delude ourselves. By not acting, we may embolden the regime to use chemical weapons in the future, assuming the regime—with Assad’s knowledge and consent—did make the decision to deploy the poison gas (a likely but by no means certain proposition). By not acting, we and the rest of the world may have allowed the use of chemical weapons without consequence, to the detriment of a bright line that has for the most part been recognized (although we looked the other way with Iraq when Saddam was our enemy’s enemy in the war with Iran). Finally, the President drew a bright line and if we don’t back up his word, we may reduce the credibility of the U.S. and the Obama administration. While I’m generally an Obama administration supporter, the issue isn’t whether it would hurt him and his administration (the David Gergen argument), but it’s a larger issue, larger than all of the factors that I’ve listed so far: what’s in the vital interest of the U.S. in the long haul?

Based on my perception that we do not have a compelling national interest in acting by direct military attack on Syria, we should not. It will come at a cost, as I hope that I’ve made clear above, but politics always revolves around choices, often tragic choices, life and death choices. The leader of our nation has to decide whether a compelling national interest merits the lives of those in our armed forces, the cost to our treasury, and the effects on our long-term standing in the world. I believe our (sort of) hands-off approach to Syria has been the correct stance, the despicable character of the Assad regime notwithstanding. In fact, it may be a case of the devil we know is better than the one that we don’t. If you think that you can forecast accurately the future of any potential change in regime, then I expect that you forecast the sequence and turn of events in Egypt successfully as well. Please call the President immediately with your credentials! Like Egypt, Syria has no oil and no reason (or ability) at this point to cause its neighbors further harm. The Israelis and Saudis may be nervous, but that should be their problem first and foremost, and a secondary concern (at most) to the U.S. We have to act in our national interest, not in accord with any other nation’s interest except to the extent that it accords with our own.

We have a polity will have and express different ideas about what constitutes a compelling national interest, but to me, we have to have some tangible reason for action, not merely our revulsion of murder and genocide (important as those are) nor some sense of national prestige or credibility.

At this point, I don’t see how our national interest compels us to act. The reasons for action—which I take seriously—do not outweigh the reasons to avoid taking the course of active military intervention. Let’s hope that the Russian proposal, if real, works and saves us from having to make a tough decision.

I’ll be sending this to Congressmen Loebsak and Braley along with Senators Grassley and Harkin. A “no” vote to strikes isn’t a vote against “war” or to “give peace a chance”, but a calculated decision to protect the vital national interests of the U.S. and to commit to making the world a better place in the long run, even when it hurts.  

P.S. Nicholas Kristoff wrote compelling in favor of intervening. Stephen Walt argues articulately (and convincingly, to me) against intervention, and Graham Allison provides some thoughts about alternative courses of action that seek to punish and deter without the use of airstrikes. See my Twitter feed for citations if you care to check these out.