… Complete skepticism is an understandable consequence of discovering that one’s enthusiasms are based on illusion. This skepticism leads to a dehumanization of history — a history drifting somewhere above us, taking its own course, having nothing to do with us, trying to cheat us, destroy us, playing out its cruel jokes.
__
But history is not something that takes place elsewhere; it takes place here. We all contribute to making it. If bringing back some human dimension to the world depends on anything, it depends on how we acquit ourselves in the here and now…
__
Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now. In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope.
I do not know enough about this good man to eulogize him properly, but I’m glad someone at Esquire dug this piece by out of their archives and front-paged it. Also, Charlie Pierce:
He was always the most interesting of them, those Eastern European patriots who helped change the world in the late 1980’s. A poet, a playwright, a Washington in a leather jacket and jeans, he was under surveillance by the secret police for 20 goddamn years. Upon being elected president of a free Czechoslovakia, he defined what that meant by comparing it to the deadening regime that had been settled upon the country for the previous 45 years:
“We have become morally ill because we are used to saying one thing and thinking another,” he said. “We have learned not to believe in anything, not to care about each other.”
That applies to allegedly functioning old democracies as well as brand-new ones, by the way.
__
He resigned when it became plain that Czechoslovakia would become two nations, and then came back as president of the Czech Republic. He thought even old Communists had civil liberties, too. He loved the Beatles.
__
In his honor, may I say, as loudly as I can:
__
Ronald Reagan Did Not Win The Cold War.
Omnes Omnibus
Finally. Thank you.
The Ancient Randonneur
I hate to hijack your thread so early (OK, I’m lyin’!) but Charlie Pierce made me smile.
Culture of Truth
Havel was an anti-authortarian hippie
gogol's wife
Rest in peace. I was struck in reading the NYTimes obituary that Havel got some of the same kind of criticism that Obama gets for not taking revenge on the “enemy” (in this case the Communists). He was not all that popular as a president. Somehow his death is making people remember what was great about him.
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: Havel as president was not as important in a way as Havel being the person who could become president following that revolution. He, and people like him, ensured that the change was close to bloodless.
gogol's wife
@Omnes Omnibus:
I remember listening to the radio and hearing that one of the first people who was going to make an official visit was Frank Zappa. As a Slovak (not quite Czech, but close), I was so proud.
Omnes Omnibus
@gogol’s wife: My undergrad advisor was a Czech dissident who had worked for Tomas Masaryk. I was in Germany in 1989; it was fascinating to be there as everything happened.
John M. Burt
Ronald Reagan Did Not Win The Cold War.
Hear flamin’ hear!
Linda Featheringill
Musicians on the street corners. At least some playing ethnic music. And then further down the street, a different king of ethnic music. Genius.
I’ve always thought that these musicians were a very important factor in keeping the violence down.
dedc79
But under Glenn Greenwald’s logic, Havel, by supporting the Iraq War, forfeited any right to a generally positive eulogy
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: Music was very important to the whole Czech dissident movement. Rock Bans like Plastic People of the Universe and its successor, Pulnoc, (who were were strongly influenced by the Velvet Underground) were a huge part of keeping a spirit of rebellion and independent thought alive from 1968 until 1989.
wilfred
Coincidentally enough I came across this article in my papers a couple of days ago. It has an interesting and thoughtful take on Havel – this is when he was at his peak as the go to moralist:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199005–.htm
I wonder if Pierce ever read it.
srv
It was little people like Havel, Walesa and Rust that changed the world.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: I was kinda hoping Tom Stoppard would publish a eulogy…
Trentrunner
@gogol’s wife: Way to straw man, asspuddle. I want Obama to take revenge on conservative IDEAS. (He’s been doing more of this lately, to his great credit.) But you can just fuck right off about the “revenge on his enemies” crap unless you can produce evidence to show that. Cripes.
Argive
I hope that wherever they are, Vaclav Havel is raising a glass with Lech Walesa and George Kennan.
Tehanu
Wish we had an American Havel. If we did, we’d probably assassinate him, though. Sigh.
srv
@Argive: Walesa is still alive!
Argive
@srv:
Gah. That’s what I get for being lazy. Thanks for the correction.
MikeJ
@Trentrunner: Just search any liberal site, even this one, for snide references to “looking forward, not back.”
El Cid
@wilfred: I thought of this quote, too. Most of the time, though, when I heard Chomsky discuss this, his scorn really lay with the imbeciles in Congress applauding phrasing they didn’t understand in the assumption that whatever it meant, it was anti-Communist. Or maybe that’s just the bit which stuck with me.
Spaghetti Lee
@Tehanu:
Eugene Hutz?
russell
Thank you.
Havel wanted to appoint Zappa as his Minister of Culture.
James E. Powell
Ronald Reagan Did Not Win The Cold War.
Blasphemy! Get the pitchforks! Light the torches!
scav
@James E. Powell:
With those really big marshmallows, this sounds like a hell of a party. I’m in.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E. Powell: I won the Cold War. The Army sent me to Germany as a 2LT in January of 1989 and, by the end of the year, it was over. You’re welcome.
Villago Delenda Est
Vaclav Havel was a great man.
The shitty grade Z movie star, not so much.
Sure, it’s utter heresy to state such a thing in this country, fucked up by 30 years of Rethuglican policy choices that have left this country economically, environmentally, and morally bankrupt.
But it’s true.
burnspbesq
The interesting contrast is that while we celebrate Havel’s life as a small-d democrat, right next door the Hungarian people are choosing to live under a totalitarian regime.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/hungarys-constitutional-revolution/
GregB
Enough with this Havel clown.
It is time we focused on what is important.
Like this story from Real Clear Politics stating that Barney Frank wore a revealing shirt on the floor of the House.
Link to this outrage!
I don’t think we can blame this mass retardation on the lead in the aqua ducts.
cmorenc
@dedc79:
Who’s Glenn Greenwald…is he somebody important, like Vaclav Havel?
Spaghetti Lee
@burnspbesq:
That’s…unsettling.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: A song, a well-known one, from Pulnoc.
Cheryl from Maryland
Thank you Anne. He was a great man, first and foremost an artist, whose compassion and devotion to human dignity led him to lead. Havel to the Castle!
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Why am I in moderation?
Omnes Omnibus
I’ll email Cole’s mom if it will help get me out of moderation.
Ming
Thanks for taking the time to put something together on him — I don’t think he really needs us to honor what he did and stood for, but I think we sure do.
Omnes Omnibus
Thanks.
burnspbesq
@Spaghetti Lee:
No kidding.
suzanne
I was in elementary school when all this went down, but I remember reading about Havel in high school and being amazed at his mental and moral discipline, and the size of his heart. What an amazing man.
burnspbesq
What Fidesz is doing in Hungary is pretty much exactly what the Tea Party will do here if they ever get control of the White House and both houses of Congress. If that doesn’t scare the bejeebers out of you, you need a new set of bejeebers.
burnspbesq
Proof that XTC were right (i.e., that God has a sick sense of humor): The Texas Rangers, George Dubya Bush’s favorite ball team, have won the bidding for the right to negotiate with the best player in the Japanese leagues, the pitcher Yu Darvish. Darvish is half-Japanese and half-Iranian.
Suffern ACE
@burnspbesq: Who posed tastefully nude in a magazine. There’s something special about that.
Calouste
@Argive:
I don’t think Walesa would enjoy that much, considering he is still very much alive.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Spaghetti Lee:
He’s Ukrainian.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq:
Wow. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when THAT marriage was negotiated!
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
Depeche Mode, not XTC.
Please Ban Me
Havel was a huge inspiration. He was not the only eloquent writer in Charter 77, but he was the one who was elected by the Communists to take the bulk of the brunt for daring to speak up for civil liberties and decency. As he acknowledged, his political role was an accident, but I wish that we had the benefit of such accidents here. A smoker, a drinker, a womanizer, and a perceptive and compassionate and funny humanist, he would never have passed muster as a politician with the powers that be in the US. I still try to live up to his ideals in my own life, and will miss him.
Schlemizel
@burnspbesq:
OT but did you see the short stop the MN twins got from Japan? Was the batting champ there & highly regarded. Clown has a swing that would vex a 6 and under little league coach. He steps AWAY from the plate as he swings! I think he almost hit his, very inconsiderable, weight. Plus the only way he learned about double plays was by hitting into them.
He should have single-handedly ended interest in Japanese ball players.
Mike G
But Reagan said “Tear down this wall!” in a forceful voice. And wingnut bullies know that saying what you want in a loud and aggressive voice magically makes it happen. Just like Rambo re-won the Vietnam War in 1985, and Bush found Saddam’s scary nook-yu-ler weapons.
So by reiterating decades of American foreign policy in loud comic-book simpleton language, that gave a boner to the kind of Repukes who struggle with the complexity of action-movie dialogue, Reagan single-handedly won the Cold War. Or something.
Personally, I think the release of Billy Ocean’s 1987 adult-contemporary pop album ‘Tear Down These Walls’ caused the disintegration of East Germany.
FlipYrWhig
@Schlemizel: While Hideki Matsui has had his moments, most of the hitter imports since Ichiro have been awful. All I got out of my clever acquisition of Kosuke Fukodome in fantasy baseball was a stern talking-to when I mentioned him in a thread on Shakespeare’s Sister about baseball names that sound like they belong in pr0n.
MikeJ
@FlipYrWhig: Ho’s on first?
patroclus
I loved the story about Havel in the NYTimes when he was first visiting the U.S. after becoming President and he was in a bar in typical NYC with Milos Forman and some young energetic African American male (I suppose on this blog he would be referred to as a strapping young buck) entered the bar and exclaimed that “It’s a war out there!” And Havel took it faux seriously and said that if America was at war, Czechoslovakia would help.
Stacy
We’re living here in Prague and the public service for Havel is Friday. Should be interesting.
Calouste
@burnspbesq:
Hungary is not right next door to the Czech Republic (either Austria or Slovakia are in between), but other than that, scary stuff. The EU/Council of Europe should seriously think about suspending their membership.
JoeShabadoo
@Mike G:
I didn’t know wingnuts liked Skyrim so much.
JPL
George Soros funds did more for democracy abroad than Reagan did.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL: My old cocker spaniel did more for democracy abroad than Reagan did.
schrodinger's cat
@Calouste: Does Hungary have any minorities? How are they reacting?
Tom Hilton
IIRC, he also loved the Velvet Underground. Which is way cooler.
Chris
@burnspbesq:
From the article:
You mean this wasn’t the far right party, and there’s even worse on the landscape? Christ on a crutch.
Chris
@burnspbesq:
From the article:
Meaning this wasn’t the far right party, and there’s an even worse contender on the landscape? Christ on a crutch.
Maym
Pierce quoted an excerpt from Havel’s 1990 New Year’s speech but please follow the link link to read the whole speech. It sends shivers down my spine each time I read it.
Here is one of my favorite excerpts:
You may ask what kind of republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic that serves the individual and that therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because
without such people it is impossible to solve any of our problems –human, economic, ecological, social, or political.
This is my dream for the US.
Argive
@Calouste:
Yeah, srv already corrected me on that score. That’s embarrassing. In fairness, I was not only in a lazy mood (as indicated by my earlier post) but I was also +5 or so. Wasn’t exactly in a fact-checking mood.
Paul in KY
Pres. Havel was a giant of Democracy. One of the great leaders of the 20th Century. They will build statues of him in the Czech Republic.
Someguy
Thank you. For this.
The myth that right wingers and their constant Cold War warmongering had anything to do with ending communist rule in Eastern Europe is something that, like Newt Gingrich’s ego, we just don’t spend enough time puncturing.
burnspbesq
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ethnic minority? Roma. I imagine they’re getting ready to emigrate en masse, if they can find a place to go.
Political minority? The Socialist Party is going to be punished for the sins of the former Communist regime. Expect lots of convictions on trumped-up corruption charges.
El Cid
I think that by spinning up the Cold War again, the US foreign policy establishment aided the Soviet regime’s hold on power, giving it the enemy they needed to aid in their last justifications for power.
Of course, I’m super-crazy, so I think that had ‘we’ chosen to assist the 3rd world in its own liberation — i.e., working with Costa Rica’s liberal reformist democracy instead of overthrowing them for United Fruit and to show the other browns what they can’t have — the USSR would have fallen much sooner.
But the world, of course, doesn’t work as I wish it.