Pun Salad

Spoiler: the continuation of the book's title is: "… that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently."

Since I am still about 25% conservative, I would amend that: history is replete with various bands of "we"s imagining they could "just as easily" impose their vision of utopia on their obviously flawed world. The results are usually poor, and sometimes blood-soaked.

Fortunately, there are some nuggets of truth in this posthumous book of essays by anthropologist David Graeber. He seems like a nice enough guy. (How can you despise anyone who would title one of his essays "What's the Point If We Can't Have Fun?") He is an anarchist, of the left-wing variety. He was heavily involved in the "Occupy" movement; I think it's fair to say it's in the dustbin of history. Activists these days seem more into freelance window-smashing, looting, arson, and murder.

But he's right (of course) to observe that the modern state ultimately rests on its monopolization of legitimatized coercion and (sometimes necessary) violence. I'm a little less enamored of his characterization of police: "bureaucrats with guns." But that's the conservative talking, I guess.

His method of opposition: "direct action", which (in theory) stops short of actual violence, and often involves big-ass puppets.

(I'm not kidding. One of the essays here is devoted to those puppets, and why they tend to disturb/offend the gun-toting bureaucrats sent out to do crowd control.)

Graebar's prose is not always punchy; in fact it becomes downright impenetrable here and there. It might be possible to unwind the densest paragraphs to find what he's actually saying, but as the kids ask these days: "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" I have to admit most times I assumed the answer was "Probably not." In general, when he's at his clearest, his assertions are simplistic, wrong-headed, and occasionally totally misguided.

I was a little surprised to find this book owned by Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, where I looked after reading a largely positive review by Anthony Comegna in a recent issue of Reason. I've had poor luck lately trusting them.

I was a latecomer to the "Slow Horses" series on AppleTV+, but once I got into it, I gobbled up all four seasons pretty quickly. So now I'm awaiting season five, and started in on Mick Herron's book series. This one was the basis of the TV show's second season.

The plot is decidedly twisty. Dickie Bow, an ex-MI5 spy catches sight of an old ex-Soviet nemesis, decides to tail him, and… winds up dead. The official story is "heart attack", but Jackson Lamb is suspicious enough to track Dickie's last moments, finding a phone Dickie (apparently) stashed, which contains the text "CICADAS".

Which indicates, possibly, the presence of a Soviet "sleeper cell" somewhere in England. But where, and who?

No big surprises, though, if you've watched the show. Mick Herron continues to impress with his prose: very observant, often hilarious, sometimes poignant. Sometimes I get put off by what I call "Look, Mom, I'm writing!" unnecessarily florid style. But Herron pulls it off.