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To Error is Erhman: Randal Ming and Randall Birtell Examine the book Misquoting Jesus
(Originally printed in the Fall 2006 Issue of the MCOI Journal page 16)
Truth and Meaning As It Relates To History Bart Ehrman, in Misquoting Jesus,(( Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus; San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005)) intends to explain New Testament textual criticism. One theme Ehrman uses to explain textual criticism is that the scribes, copyist, and the people of power who controlled the early Church did not preserve the New Testament but slanted the New Testament texts to read as they believed and collected the books that agreed with the theology of the people in power. For Ehrman, there is no true theology and no historically true Christian doctrine. He alleges the New Testament is a collection of books preserved and collected because the group of people who controlled the early Church agreed with the theology in these texts. Ehrman believes the New Testament canonical books are not the work of God and so preserved, distinguished, and used by the early Church because they were true and corresponded with the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ; nor were the writers directed by the Holy Spirit to teach, instruct, and rebuke the Church. According to Ehrman, the Bible is not based in history, because there is no history. The Evangelical world traditionally has held a particular view and understanding about the fact of history. Evangelical understanding is that history is what corresponds to the facts about events of the past. This idea does not rule out people twisting the facts they recorded to make themselves look good or the fact of people being blinded by their sin nature. Most historians would agree that many of the inscriptions made by the Egyptians about their battles and conflicts were intended to make the pharaoh look good even if the pharaoh had lost the battle. But, we must remember that we only can make such a statement about the Egyptians historians if there really are historical facts that do not line up with what the historian has recorded. A true base of what really happened must exist in order to state that people have changed the facts to suit their purpose. History must have a factual foundation before anyone can say recorded history is true or false. Ehrman’s history is defined to be a collection of people’s perspectives about what happened with no foundation for historical truth to say this happened and this did not happen. No truth exists to be recorded about the events of Christ’s earthly ministry. Thus, the Gospels are personal opinions about the events recorded in them and what the Gospel writers thought motivated Jesus to do what he did. As well, any event may be modified to suit the purpose of the writer to build a “moral truth” as they saw it. Ehrman comes to this conclusion because his understanding of meaning and reality has been shaped by agnosticism. Having no basis for truth and meaning, Ehrman’s hermeneutic cannot help but be skewed by postmodern thought.((What if we have to figure out how to live and what to believe on our own, without setting up the Bible as a false idol—or an oracle that gives us a direct line of communication with the Almighty?; Ehrman, 14)) For Ehrman, the only truth is personal belief. Truth must be redefined to what one believes is history rather than what corresponds to the reality of history. In Ehrman’s world, the Bible only can be a collection of religious thoughts about God by various people and at various times. Ehrman explains: Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so to had human authors originally written the texts of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own understandings, their own theologies; and these perspectives, beliefs, views, needs, desires, understandings, and theologies informed everything they said.”(( Ehrman, 11-12)) Any person left to employ personal truth as the gauge for truth will end in relativism. The consequences of this are moral deconstruction, historical deconstruction, literary deconstruction, and biblical deconstruction. Scripture soundly renounces these positions: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). As Creator, Jesus has not only defined the physical world, but He—as the Word—has also defined Scripture. Jesus is the connection between words and actions. Jesus—as Creator—has defined truth and meaning. The philosophical movement—Post structuralism (PS)—has gathered steam over the past 40 years. PS removes any certainty to the reading and meaning of a text. This can be termed the “death of the writer” and “the birth of the reader.” The reasoning is: Time, social situations, and a host of other elements change the meaning of a text. Thus, when a reader comes to the text, they come with a list of their own interpretive ideas. Each reader has a personal hermeneutic. The intent of the author is trumped by the understanding of the reader. Listen to Columbia History of Western Philosophies examination of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida: Given Derrida’s assertion of the radical indeterminacy of all signification that follows from his investigation of language, his proclamations of the inevitable and unavoidable instability of meaning and identity portend the evisceration of metaphysics. He mounts this radical critique of metaphysics, identity, and meaning by pushing it to the very level of signification and challenging the possibility of stable meanings or identities on the basis of their reliance on a metaphysics of presence … “Deconstruction thus purports to expose the problematic nature of any—that is to say, all—discourse that relies on foundational metaphysical ideas such as truth, presence, identity, or origin to center itself.(( Richard H. Popkin, Columbia History of Western Philosophy; Columbia University Press, New York: 1999; 739)) Ehrman’s position is similar: And so to read a text is, necessarily to change a text.((Ehrman, 217)) Ehrman’s problem is, thus, threefold. First, there is no true history to be recorded, so the New Testament is a record of people’s “truths.” Second, the New Testament as we have it today has the theological view of those people and scribes that collected and edited the New Testament. So, orthodoxy is not a reflection of truth. Lastly, were there a true history to be recorded and were that history to be handed down to us in the New Testament, we still would have no idea of what is true because we—the reader—and not the author are lord of the meaning of the text. However, all meaning is lost without God. God has given all men the light of Creation, the light of conscience, and a basis for understanding of truth (moral and otherwise).(( Romans 1)) This allows men to think, make sense of reality, and draw closer to God. Man, in his depravity backs away from this moral calling of God to renew the mind (Romans 12:2) in favor of becoming his own god and having his own truth. Orthodoxy Is there any truth in religion? Is there any truth in Christian orthodoxy? Or, as with “history,” the group who ultimately wins the battle of supremacy gets to define “orthodoxy” as Ehrman explains. The Christian understanding of orthodoxy is no different than her understanding of truth. Orthodoxy must correspond with reality. Orthodoxy is not a matter of taste or feeling. Orthodoxy is the foundational truths of the Christian faith as taught by the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the writers of the New Testament as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit to remember the teaching of Jesus or lead by the Holy Spirit to record the nature of God, man, and the Church. Ehrman contrasts this understanding of truth and orthodoxy: Each and every one of these viewpoints—and many others besides—were topics of constant discussion, dialogue, and debate in the early centuries of the church, while Christians of various persuasions tried to convince others of the truth of their own claims. Only one group eventually ‘won out’ in these debates. It was this group that decided what the Christian creeds would be: the creeds would affirm that there is only one God, the Creator; that Jesus his Son is both human and divine; and that salvation came by his death and resurrection.((Ehrman, 153)) Ehrman also states: The group that established itself as ‘orthodox’ (meaning that it held what it considered to be the ‘right belief’) then determined what future Christian generations would believe and read as scripture.((Ibid. 154)) The idea that there is one God, as Ehrman explains, is not based on what is true but on who won the struggle for power. The ideas recorded in the Christian creeds are not true but are a literary snapshot of the political situation in the late Roman Empire. Orthodox teaching is a record of what group outwitted their rivals for power and in so doing preserved their theological ideas as well. Ehrman’s usage of the word proto-orthodox((Ibid. 169, 171, 173)) helps us to understand his twist or definition of the term orthodoxy. Paul and all the New Testament writers, in the eyes of Ehrman, did not write about truth but about what they believed. This is in complete contradiction to what Scripture has to say about itself. “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” (2 Tim. 3:16) The position of Ehrman and Scripture are in logical opposition to one another—both cannot be true. Inspiration Scripture is authoritative because it is divinely inspired—another idea Ehrman rejects. The ideas found in the pages of the Bible came not from man, but from God. An important point in the orthodox understanding of inspiration is that inspiration refers to the original writings. Manuscripts whether written in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, or any other language are copies of the original inspired works, and as such, most contain minor errors.((It is possible to have a manuscript that is an exact replica of the original. However, we are aware of no current consensus of scholars who claim to have such a copy.)) Ehrman traces his loss of faith in the Bible as he left Wheaton College and began studying at Princeton. His own words speak how his view of inspiration changed: … I began seeing the New Testament as a very human book. The New Testament as we actually have it, I knew, was the product of human hands, the hands of the scribes who transmitted it. Then I began to see that not just the scribal text but the original text itself was a very human book. This stood very much at odds with how I regarded the text in my late teens as a newly minded ‘born-again’ Christian, convinced that the Bible was the inerrant Word of God and that the biblical words themselves had come to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.(( Ehrman, 211)) His critique of the orthodox view of inspiration can be summarized as follows: Meaning only can be found in the original language. (p.7)
We do not have the original manuscripts. (p.7)
We do have “error-ridden copies”. (p.7)
The authors also made errors. (p.11)
The Bible originated in the mind of men. (p.11)
Ehrman hardly gives a logical argument. For instance: In point four, he gives no defense for his conclusion that the original authors made mistakes. How does he know they error when we do not have the original writings—the very thing Ehrman points out again and again! Ehrman suggests that a simple cough during the recitation of the original author to a scribe could have occurred, and thus, a mistake in the original would have resulted. He gives no evidence to support his theory. Ehrman seems to have faith in events for which there is no record. Further, point one is false. Objective meaning is transcendent of any particular language. Language only describes reality; it does not create it. As an example, let’s say my daughter Kayla tells a young Mexican boy, “Jesús te ama.” I turn to ask her what she said to the boy. She tells me she said, “Jesus loves you.” I do not have to understand the originating language to understand what Kayla meant. All I needed was a translator. That is precisely what Hebrew and Greek linguistic scholars aim to do—translate the original language into the common vernacular without losing the meaning. Inerrancy A deduction made by Ehrman, as he looks at the manuscript evidence, is that the Bible is not inerrant. He states that some scholars claim 400,000 or more variants.((Ibid. 89)) He uses this evidence to support his idea that the Bible is error-ridden. But is this the case? It should be noted that when textual critics count errors, they are looking at a multiplicity of manuscripts.((The very thing that brings increasing accuracy to our translations, namely the vast and growing number of manuscripts available, Ehrman uses to point out inconsistency and error)) Drs. Norman Geisler and William Nix note in their book A General Introduction to the Bible that: There is an ambiguity in saying that there are some 200,000 variants in the existing manuscripts of the New Testament because those represent only 10,000 places in the New Testament. If one single word is misspelled in 3,000 different manuscripts, it is counted as 3,000 variants or readings. Once this counting procedure is understood … the remaining significant variants are surprisingly few in number.(( Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 468)) Ehrman, himself, seems to concede this point: To be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.((Ehrman, 207)) However, Ehrman gives many examples of passages that he believes supports his conclusion of an error-filled text. We shall choose three of those passages to examine. First is the passage Luke 11:2-4. Ehrman suggests that this passage was originally truncated and at a later time scribes “harmonized” the passage by adding length and content to make it similar to Matt. 6:9-13.((Ibid. 97)) We shall look at this from two sides of the inerrancy coin. On one side we must ask, “Is inerrancy challenged if Matthew recorded the entire prayer of Jesus and Luke penned only a portion of the prayer? Did Luke make an error?” To suggest that Luke errored in not recording the entire prayer of Jesus would be to misunderstand inerrancy. Inerrancy does not necessitate that all Gospel writers record an event in the exact same words, for to do so would make three of them unnecessary. Inerrancy only necessitates that what is written is true. Authors today have different audiences and themes they write to and about. Take, for example, the topic of steroids in baseball. A sportswriter might focus on whether Barry Bonds should be credited as passing Hank Aaron on the all-time-home-run list if he used steroids. A medical writer would be interested in communicating the details of the different types of steroids Bonds allegedly used. And a legal writer may investigate if Bonds did anything illegal. It was no different for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each had a unique audience and a specific focus for their writings. Matthew may have chosen to include “… Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10), because it was important to Matthew’s goal of explaining the Kingdom of God to his Jewish audience. In particular, His Kingdom has a heavenly aspect and an earthly one. The other side of the inerrancy coin is that not all English versions of the Bible handle this passage in the same manner. The KJV and the NKJV do, indeed, contain the lengthened version. However, the ESV, NASB, and NIV chose the shorter version. This shows that since we have an increasing number of manuscripts our translations are continually improving in their quality. It may be the case that certain scribes—those producing the Majority Text—added to the original writings. But, one does not need to conclude, as Ehrman does, that Scripture is in error. As we have already noted: If Luke did record a few less words of our Lord’s Prayer, it does not make him wrong. Further, if we accept Ehrman’s hypothesis that the Alexandrian manuscripts are more accurate, albeit fewer in number; isn’t it plausible to conclude that the KJV and the NKJV reading is less preferred since they tend to give priority to the Majority Text rather than the Alexandrian texts? Applying textual criticism rules suggested by Professor Gleason Archer further supports the original Lukan reading as to containing the “shortened” version of the Lord’s Prayer. Archer notes that the older and shorter readings are to be preferred.((Geisler and Nix, 478)) Older manuscripts are preferred, because they are closer to the original; and in the case of the Alexandrian manuscripts, they were transcribed by better scribes. The shorter reading is preferred because scribes tend to “add to” the text rather than reduce it. So, Ehrman may be correct when he says that scribes “added to” Luke, but he gives no evidence to support his assertion that Luke made a mistake. Second is the passage Mark 1:2a where Mark writes, “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet … .” Mark has made a mistake according to Ehrman. That mistake is that Isaiah did not write the quoted Old Testament words that follow in Mark 1:2b-3. And according to Ehrman: “… there can be little doubt concerning what Mark originally wrote: the attribution to Isaiah is found in our earliest and best manuscripts.”((Ehrman, 95)) What Ehrman is suggesting is that Mark got it wrong, and the scribes got it right by correcting Mark 1:2 to attribute the Old Testament sayings to “the prophets.” A suggested resolution to this apparent mistake is given by John Grassmick, contributor of the Bible Knowledge Commentary: Mark prefaced this composite quotation from three Old Testament books with the words: It is written in Isaiah the prophet. This illustrates a common practice by New Testament authors in quoting several passages with a unifying theme. The common theme here is the ‘wilderness’ (desert) tradition in Israel’s history. Since Mark was introducing the ministry of John the Baptist in the desert, he cited Isaiah as the source because the Isaiah passage refers to ‘a voice … calling’ in the desert.((Walvoord, John F., Roy B. Zuck, and Dallas Theological Seminary. The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983-c1985; Emphasis in the original.)) It also should be noted that when referencing the thoughts of another individual, ancient writers, as well as modern writers, do not always quote verbatim. Different words may be chosen to convey the same idea. It is a mistake to hold New Testament writers to a standard that was not present then nor today. While it is the case that exact quotes are often used in research work such as what you are presently reading, it is not necessary to do so. Mark need not quote Isaiah verbatim and, yet, still attribute the saying to Isaiah. Concerning this passage, the authors of Hard Sayings of the Bible agree: When we accuse him of inaccuracy, far from pointing out a reality in Mark, we are exposing our own lack of knowledge about how he and other ancient authors used Scripture.(( Walter C. Kaiser and others, eds., Hard Sayings of the Bible Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996, 404)) Third is an apparent discrepancy as to where Paul went after his conversion on his way to Damascus.((Ehrman, 10)) Galatians 1:16-17 tells us that Paul went to Arabia, while Acts 9:26 states that Paul went to Jerusalem. Galatians 1:17 clearly states, “nor did I go up to Jerusalem … ,” but that he went “… to Arabia … .” In contrast, the Acts narrative places Paul in Damascus, and then describes that he “… came to Jerusalem …” in verse 26. However, this is not a contradiction. It is like the husband who tells his wife that he went to the local hardware store after work, and he tells is son that he went to the golf course after work. Do his stories contradict one another? No. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that he stopped by the hardware store to pick up some materials, and then he continued on to play a round of golf. He did both after work. A similar reconciliation can be given to these two passages. Paul went to Arabia and Jerusalem after leaving Damascus. It is important to note that the charge leveled against Scripture by Ehrman is that “the first thing he did after leaving Damascus” was to go to Jerusalem. The narrative of Acts does seem to indicate a quick progression of Paul’s locality from Damascus to Jerusalem. However, in Acts 9:23 Luke uses the phrase, “When many days had elapsed … ,” which indicates a span of time occurred between verses 22 and 26. What happened during those “many days?” Concerning this passage, the late Oxford Professor and Archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsay offers this: Moreover, Luke divided Paul’s stay in Damascus into two periods, a few days’ residence with the disciples (9:19), and a long period of preaching (9:20-23). The quiet residence in the country for a time, recovering from the serious and prostrating effect of his conversion (for a man’s life is not suddenly reversed without serious claim on his physical power) is the dividing fact between the two periods.((William M. Ramsay, St. Paul the Traveler and Roman Citizen, Revised and Updated, ed. Mark Wilson; Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2001, 47)) Paul, himself, gives us some insight in his letter to the Galatian churches. In recounting the days and years after his conversion, he notes that he did not “… go up to Jerusalem …” (Gal. 1:17) but rather he “… went away to Arabia …” (Gal. 1:17) and then “… returned once more to Damascus” (Gal. 1:17). So, it seems a reasonable conclusion to understand Paul’s post-conversion sojourning to include an initial trip to Damascus proclaiming in the Synagogue the identity of Jesus as the Son of God (Acts 9:20). From Damascus he traveled to Arabia (Gal. 1:17) for some unknown amount of time, and then he returned to Damascus for “many days …” (Acts 9:23). His second stay in Damascus ended with him being lowered over the wall in a basket (Acts 9:25). From there, he traveled to Jerusalem (Acts 9:26). So, Luke and Paul were both correct. After his conversion, Paul went to Arabia and Jerusalem. Contrary to Ehrman, this is not a case of a mistaken biblical author. The Bible once again shows that it can be trusted. In Ehrman’s vigor to find errors in the Bible, he overlooks a very plausible explanation to the text. Conclusion While many of the facts Ehrman records are true, it is the conclusions from these facts that we reject. His spiritual situation—agnosticism—causes truth in all forms to cascade into a deconstruction of meaning, history, and orthodoxy. This leaves him with no basis for truth beyond personal experience. This understanding of truth and orthodoxy has modified his ability to look objectively at the text. Commenting on orthodoxy Ehrman writes: Each and every one of these viewpoints—and many others besides—were topics of constant discussion, dialogue, and debate in the early centuries of the church, while Christians of various persuasions tried to convince others of the truth of their own claims. Only one group eventually ‘won out’ in these debates. It was this group that decided what the Christian creeds would be … ((Ehrman, 154)) Commenting on hermeneutics, Ehrman writes: For the more I studied, the more I saw that reading a text necessarily involves interpreting a text. I suppose when I started my studies I had a rather unsophisticated view of reading: that the point of reading a text is simply to let the text ‘speak for itself,’ to uncover the meaning inherent in its words. The reality, I came to see, is that meaning is not inherent, and texts do not speak for themselves. If texts could speak for themselves, then everyone honestly and openly reading a text would agree on what the text says.((Ibid, 216)) Is this how Ehrman wants his reader to approach his text? If Ehrman’s conclusions about text and meaning are to be accepted, then the reader is perfectly justified in concluding Ehrman’s acceptance of orthodoxy to be true and inerrancy of Scripture to be real. But, this is precisely what Ehrman rejects. This view is logically inconsistent. As an example of the incompatibility of Ehrman’s idea, think of the automobile driver. Would we drive our cars if traffic signs were understood at the discretion of the reader? Chaos would most certainly follow. Ehrman’s idea is completely unlivable. Ehrman may confuse the existence of truth with the difficulty of discovery of truth. When looking at a biblical passage, there are possibilities of disagreement. For instance, if person A and B disagree on the understating of a text there are several possibilities. Both A and B are wrong, A is right, and B is wrong, or B is right and A is wrong. What is not possible is that A and B are both right. This goes against the Law of Non-Contradiction. The book does not live up to its billing. Inferred within the title—Misquoting Jesus—is some factual knowledge of Jesus’ own words—the exact idea Ehrman rejects! He cannot consistently claim that Jesus was misquoted and say that we do not have the original text. How can one know that Jesus was misquoted if we do not know what he actually said? There must be a real, objective truth before one can claim something is false. He has rejected the basis necessary to claim that Jesus was misquoted. Something is only false if it does not correspond to reality. Christian orthodoxy was God-inspired and revealed through Jesus. If Jesus is misquoted, there was a truth in what he taught.Ω
Randall Birtell and Randal Ming were the Scranton, KS Branch Directors of MCOI and they also were completing their Master’s Degrees in Apologetics at Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC at the time this article was published. © 2020, Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc All rights reserved. Excerpts and links may be used if full and clear credit is given with specific direction to the original content.
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North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal Threatens China’s Path to Power
By Jane Perlez, NY Times, Sept. 5, 2017
BEIJING--The two men stood together on the reviewing stand in the North Korean capital: a top official in China’s Communist leadership wearing a tailored business suit and a young dictator in a blue jacket buttoned to his chin.
Liu Yunshan, the visiting Chinese dignitary, and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, tried to put on a show of friendship, chatting amiably as the cameras rolled, but just as often they stood silent, staring ahead as a military parade passed before them.
Nearly two years have elapsed since that encounter, the last high-level visit between China and North Korea. The stretch of time is a sign of the distance between two nations with a torturous history: one a rising power seeking regional dominance, the other an unpredictable neighbor with its own ambitions.
China has made little secret of its long-term goal to replace the United States as the major power in Asia and assume what it considers its rightful position at the center of the fastest-growing, most dynamic region in the world.
But North Korea, which defied Beijing by testing a sixth nuclear bomb on Sunday, has emerged as an unexpected and persistent obstacle.
Other major hurdles litter China’s path. Yet North Korea--an outcast of the international order that Beijing hopes to lead, but also a nuclear state in part because of China’s own policies--presents a particularly nettlesome challenge.
China’s path to dominance requires an American withdrawal and a message to American allies that they cannot count on the United States for protection. But North Korea threatens to draw the United States more deeply into the region and complicate China’s effort to diminish its influence and persuade countries to live without its nuclear umbrella.
At the same time, the strategic location of the North--and its advancing nuclear capabilities--make it dangerous for China to restrain it.
“North Korea may not be the biggest problem to China, but it does add a unique and very serious dimension to China’s task of supplanting America in East Asia,” said Hugh White, a former strategist for the Australian Defense Department. “That’s because it is the only East Asian power with nuclear weapons.”
Even if the United States steps back from the region, Mr. White added, “North Korea’s capability means China can never be able to dominate the region as much as its leaders today probably hope.”
The Trump administration has bet on China to stop North Korea’s nuclear program, shunning talks with Mr. Kim and gambling that Beijing can be persuaded to use its economic leverage over the North to rein it in.
But in doing so, the White House may be misreading the complexity of China’s relationship with North Korea, one that successive generations of Chinese leaders have struggled to manage.
There is growing resentment against Mr. Kim inside China, both in the general public and the policy establishment. China keeps North Korea running with oil shipments and accounts for almost all its foreign trade. But to many Chinese, the young leader seems ungrateful.
A three-day academic seminar in Shanghai last month brought together some critics, who question North Korea’s value to Beijing as a strategic buffer against South Korea and Japan--and warn that the North could prompt them to develop nuclear weapons of their own.
“The cost is to continue to alienate Japan, enrage the United States and irritate South Korea,” said Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University. “If Japan and South Korea feel forced to go for radical options like nuclear weapons, it will badly affect regional diplomacy.”
The spread of nuclear weapons, he added, would thrust China into “a new Cold War” in Asia, perhaps with a beefed-up American military presence. That would frustrate Beijing’s ambitions for regional supremacy while also leaving it vulnerable to being labeled an enabler of nuclear proliferation, tarnishing its international reputation.
“A balance of mutually assured destruction in Northeast Asia will not be a satisfactory situation for anyone,” said Bilahari Kausikan, a former foreign secretary for Singapore. “But it will not necessarily be unstable, and it may be of some small consolation to Washington, Tokyo and Seoul that the implications for Beijing are somewhat worse.”
President Xi Jinping is said to be aware of such risks and to have privately expressed disdain for Mr. Kim.
But like his predecessors, he has resisted punishing sanctions that might cause North Korea’s collapse and lead to a destabilizing war on its border, a refugee crisis in China’s economically vulnerable northeast, or a unified Korean Peninsula controlled by American forces.
All these possibilities could pose as much a problem for China’s plans for ascendancy in Asia as an arms race in the region. And if North Korea somehow survived, it would remain on China’s border, angry and aggrieved.
From Mr. Xi’s perspective, a hostile neighbor armed with nuclear weapons may be the worst outcome.
China has more nuclear-armed neighbors than any country in the world: Russia, India, Pakistan and now North Korea. But that situation is partly one of its own making.
The origins of North Korea’s nuclear program can be traced to a deal in 1976 between an ailing Mao Zedong and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then the prime minister of Pakistan.
India had tested its first nuclear bomb two years earlier, and Mr. Bhutto wanted to keep up. China viewed India as a potential threat; the two had fought a brief border war. So it agreed to help.
The particulars were ironed out by Pakistani visitors to Mao’s funeral, according to the account of A. Q. Khan, the nuclear physicist who founded the uranium enrichment program of Pakistan’s bomb project.
In 1982, China shipped weapons-grade uranium to Pakistan. And in 1990, it opened its Lop Nur test site to Pakistan and secretly let the country test its first nuclear bomb there, according to “The Nuclear Express,” a book by two veterans of the American nuclear program.
The United States, upset by China’s behavior, including its sale of missile technology across the developing world, pressed it behind the scenes to stop and persuaded it to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992.
But Beijing’s recognition of the risks of proliferation came slowly, and the genie was already out of the bottle. In 1998, when India conducted five nuclear tests, Pakistan responded with a public test of its own less than three weeks later.
At about the same time, Pakistan was sharing nuclear enrichment technology with North Korea--including centrifuges, parts, designs and fuel essential for its nuclear bombs--in exchange for Korean missile technology and design help. Pakistan later accused Mr. Khan of acting on his own, but he maintains that he had the government’s blessing.
By 2002, the trade was so brazen that Pakistan sent an American-made C-130 cargo plane to North Korea to collect a shipment of ballistic missile parts, a flight that was detected by United States satellites.
While China wanted Pakistan to counterbalance India, it is less clear how it would have benefited from the North’s obtaining nuclear technology. Beijing’s ties with South Korea were improving at the time, but its relationship with the North had hit a rocky patch--again.
Mao is often quoted in the West as saying that North Korea and China are “as close as lips and teeth.” But his actual words, an ancient Chinese idiom, are better translated, “If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold.” He was warning that China would be in danger without North Korea.
In 1950, Mao sent more than one million Chinese soldiers, including his own son, into the Korean War to help the North fight the United States. By the time the armistice was signed three years later, more than 400,000 Chinese troops had been killed and wounded, a sacrifice in blood that one might have expected to forge a lasting loyalty between the two countries.
But there has always been an edge to the relationship, bred at the start by two Communist rivalries--between Mao and North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, and between Mao and Stalin, who both saw themselves as overlords of the new state created after World War II.
Then Kim showed who was in charge, purging a faction of senior leaders with Soviet connections in 1955 and moving the next year against more than a dozen members of an elite North Korean military group with ties to Mao. Several were arrested while a handful escaped to China.
The Soviets urged Mao to join them in retaliating against Kim. Chinese troops had not fully withdrawn from the North yet. But Mao demurred, according to a recent article by Sergey Radchenko, a professor of international studies at Cardiff University, citing newly declassified documents from Russian archives.
For the most part, Mao tolerated North Korea’s displays of disloyalty because he was afraid of losing it to the Soviet Union, which was the North’s main economic benefactor and provided it with aid that Mao could not match.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, though, China enjoyed more room to maneuver. In 1992, seeking trade, it established diplomatic relations with South Korea, infuriating the North, which was suddenly poorer and more isolated than ever.
From then on, according to Shen Zhihua, a historian of Chinese-Korean relations, “The treaty of alliance between China and North Korea became a piece of scrap paper.”
China now imports more goods from South Korea than it does from any other country, while the South counts China as its largest market for both exports and imports. One of President Xi Jinping’s first foreign policy initiatives sought to take advantage of those ties and weaken the South Korean alliance with the United States.
But North Korea got in the way. After the North conducted its fourth nuclear test in early 2016, South Korea’s president at the time, Park Geun-hye, tried to call Mr. Xi to ask for his help in restraining the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
Ms. Park’s aides were unable to arrange the call, according to local news reports. Chinese analysts said Mr. Xi was unwilling to accept Ms. Park’s demand for “the most severe” sanctions against the North.
By refusing to abandon Pyongyang, Mr. Xi lost ground in Seoul.
Ms. Park strengthened relations with Washington and agreed to deploy a missile defense system that Beijing opposed.
For more than a decade, the United States has asked China for talks to discuss what each nation would do if North Korea collapses--but China has resisted, worried that agreeing to do so would be a betrayal.
Among the most pressing questions: Where are the North’s nuclear weapons and who would secure them? How would the two countries’ military forces avoid clashing as they raced to do so? And what should the Korean Peninsula look like afterward?
The Pentagon has asked Beijing to discuss such “contingency plans” since the presidency of George W. Bush, but on each occasion, the Chinese response has been silence, according to a former United States defense official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject.
“The Chinese are concerned about how the North Koreans would react,” said Ralph A. Cossa, the president of the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu. “I think it stops the conversation in the room.”
As tensions have climbed in recent weeks, questions about what China would do in a crisis remain unanswered. But there is a broad understanding that Beijing would be opposed to American forces crossing the 38th parallel that divides North and South Korea.
Global Times, a state-owned tabloid that reflects the opinion of some segments of the party elite, published an editorial last month warning North Korea that China would remain neutral if it attacked the United States.
But the editorial also said that China was prepared to stop any attempt by American and South Korean forces “to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula.”
“The common expectation,” said Yun Sun, a scholar at the Stimson Center in Washington, “is that China is prepared to intervene to preserve a functional North Korean government, as well as the survival of North Korea as a country.”
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Angela eats the egg. We should have seen it coming: After all, we first met Angela cracking an egg into the shape of the iconic Watchmen smiley face. Little did we know in the opening minutes of the first episode that eggs would show up repeatedly in the series, and that the final one, which Angela would consume, might contain god-like powers and possibly make her a deity.
Whether we’re supposed to applaud Angela’s decision to eat the egg or worry over the second coming of Doctor Manhattan is a complicated question.
Even though Watchmen is, in theory, a superhero series, only one character on creator Damon Lindelof’s show has real superpowers: Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Manhattan dies in the final episode of the show, which has become a quiet hit for HBO, but Angela divines that he has transferred his powers to an egg, based on a series of clues he gave her earlier in their relationship.
Some of those clues: The first night they met, Doctor Manhattan told Angela he could transfer his powers into organic matter while holding an egg. When the white supremacists tracked down Doctor Manhattan and Angela woke him up from her husband Cal’s body, Doctor Manhattan immediately moved to the kitchen and removed eggs from the refrigerator. He told Angela to “watch the eggs,” and she smashed them on the ground. Really, it had been a clue. Later, she goes back and realizes that one egg didn’t crack — the egg that, presumably, contains his powers.
The egg was always going to be an important symbol of life throughout the show. Angela cracks eggs in the shape of the iconic smiley face that appears on the cover of the graphic novel when demonstrating how to bake to her children and their classmates in the first episode. Later, Hooded Justice reaches into a boiling pot of water to retrieve an egg with his hand. And in the penultimate episode, Doctor Manhattan discusses the “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” paradox with Angela, explaining that both came to be at the same time.
The series seems decidedly mixed on whether anyone should be endowed with god-like abilities. In the final episode, many characters justifiably point out that Doctor Manhattan should have used his powers to stop global warming or destroy all the nuclear weapons in the world. (Doctor Manhattan’s reasons for not doing so have to do with his ability to see all time, including the future, at once, and can be summed up as: “He doesn’t save the world from evil because in the future he won’t save the world from evil.” His path is predetermined, which is frustrating from a narrative perspective.)
And every character who seeks to steal Doctor Manhattan’s power is ultimately shown to be evil, which complicates the message of the final scene when Angela consumes the egg into which Doctor Manhattan transferred his powers and tests whether she has gained superpowers by preparing to walk on water. (Another clue from Doctor Manhattan: When the two are fighting as the white supremacists approach their house, Doctor Manhattan tells Angela that it’s important “for later” that she see him walk on water now.) Notably, we never see her actually accomplish the Jesus-like feat, suggesting that the egg could have just been a normal egg.
The series certainly seems to believe that those who crave god-like powers do not deserve them, as it punishes them for their hubris. Ozymandias, Lady Trieu and Senator Joe Keane all prove themselves to be egomaniacs who want to rule over others. Ozymandias wants to be worshipped as a god on a planet that Doctor Manhattan created. But he soon finds the place to be a hell and gets his comeuppance by being forced to spend years on a planet with no intellectual equal — and later he’s arrested by Laurie and the FBI for trying to play God during the Cold War and kill millions of people “to save humanity.”
The white supremacists are unceremoniously murdered by Lady Trieu when they try to take Doctor Manhattan’s powers. Senator Keane, specifically, is turned into bloody mush. It’s hard to feel particularly sorry for them, given their belief system and the fact that they were literally trying to leach powers from a black man’s body in order to empower a white man, a plot that played like a sci-fi twist on Get Out.
Lady Trieu, Ozymandias’ daughter, seems to have inherited his megalomaniacal gene. She brings her father back from space to witness her successfully stealing Doctor Manhattan’s powers only to be killed by his inferior technology.
By contrast, the characters who have power foisted upon them seem to do the right thing with that responsibility. Doctor Manhattan, who escaped the Holocaust, is caught up in a horrific scientific accident that imbues him with powers he uses responsibly. Yes, he allows Nixon to use him to win the Vietnam War — and set off a series of events that will lead to horrible consequences, including the death of Angela’s parents. He tells Angela he regrets these actions — again using the “I always did it” explanation as a rationale for his decision to go to Vietnam. But he also has opted out of playing America’s nuclear device since then — for better or worse. Ultimately, he works to save Angela, stop white supremacy and prevent anyone who might not be worthy of holding his power from gaining it. Hooded Justice, perhaps the most noble masked vigilante on the show, deems him “a good man” — or as good as this series may offer.
While he doesn’t gain superpowers, Hooded Justice is pushed to become a masked hero after suffering terrible injustice at the hands of white supremacists, first as a child in Tulsa and then as a cop in New York. And even Laurie, whose mother pushed her to become a masked hero and who must overcome the horrifying revelation that her father sexually assaulted her mother, is made a hero through suffering. Both characters make morally complicated decisions, from killing Judd Crawford — illegally, but again, he was an influential white supremacist — to hiding a mass murderer’s secret for several decades before finally arresting him. Ultimately, though, they make complicated decisions not as a means to seek personal reward or recognition, but to protect their communities.
The unwilling hero isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s a core tenet of stories like Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter where orphans, castaways and seemingly powerless people understand and appreciate the value of their power when it’s unexpectedly forced on them. Think of the difference between a hero constantly dragged, resisting to take on the burden of power like Jon Snow, and those who seek to conquer, like Daenerys. Contrast their fates. (Or, to quote Dumbledore, “Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”)
Watchmen certainly seems to want audiences to cheer Angela on when she eats the egg. But does Angela fit the mold of an unlikely or unwilling hero? Angela has certainly suffered. She watched as her parents were killed in a bombing. She lost her partner in the police force, and almost lost her own life, on the White Night, the coordinated attack on Tulsa cops. But arguably all the Tulsa cops sought out outsized power after that night by donning masks. They use unethical means to interrogate suspects and gain information. It’s not ambiguous how we’re meant to feel about the white supremacists whose doors they knock down. And increasingly, the show moved from morally gray territory — with cops using questionable methods — to clearer black-and-white terms: White supremacists: bad. People who try to stop them: good. The greater the threat — and the further back their terror reached in Angela’s family tree — the more justified Angela’s methods to stop them seemed to be.
But even if we deem Angela a noble character, she chooses to consume the egg. She is not caught in a freak scientific accident nor does she decide to swallow the egg’s contents in a moment of panic and bravery, like when her children are being threatened. She simply realizes the egg’s potential and seizes the moment to eat it. What she will do with Doctor Manhattan’s powers is unclear. Lindelof does not, as of yet, plan to write a second season of Watchmen, so we may have to live with that question.
0 notes
Link
Angela eats the egg. We should have seen it coming: After all, we first met Angela cracking an egg into the shape of the iconic Watchmen smiley face. Little did we know in the opening minutes of the first episode that eggs would show up repeatedly in the series, and that the final one, which Angela would consume, might contain god-like powers and possibly make her a deity.
Whether we’re supposed to applaud Angela’s decision to eat the egg or worry over the second coming of Doctor Manhattan is a complicated question.
Even though Watchmen is, in theory, a superhero series, only one character on creator Damon Lindelof’s show has real superpowers: Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Manhattan dies in the final episode of the show, which has become a quiet hit for HBO, but Angela divines that he has transferred his powers to an egg, based on a series of clues he gave her earlier in their relationship.
Some of those clues: The first night they met, Doctor Manhattan told Angela he could transfer his powers into organic matter while holding an egg. When the white supremacists tracked down Doctor Manhattan and Angela woke him up from her husband Cal’s body, Doctor Manhattan immediately moved to the kitchen and removed eggs from the refrigerator. He told Angela to “watch the eggs,” and she smashed them on the ground. Really, it had been a clue. Later, she goes back and realizes that one egg didn’t crack — the egg that, presumably, contains his powers.
The egg was always going to be an important symbol of life throughout the show. Angela cracks eggs in the shape of the iconic smiley face that appears on the cover of the graphic novel when demonstrating how to bake to her children and their classmates in the first episode. Later, Hooded Justice reaches into a boiling pot of water to retrieve an egg with his hand. And in the penultimate episode, Doctor Manhattan discusses the “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” paradox with Angela, explaining that both came to be at the same time.
The series seems decidedly mixed on whether anyone should be endowed with god-like abilities. In the final episode, many characters justifiably point out that Doctor Manhattan should have used his powers to stop global warming or destroy all the nuclear weapons in the world. (Doctor Manhattan’s reasons for not doing so have to do with his ability to see all time, including the future, at once, and can be summed up as: “He doesn’t save the world from evil because in the future he won’t save the world from evil.” His path is predetermined, which is frustrating from a narrative perspective.)
And every character who seeks to steal Doctor Manhattan’s power is ultimately shown to be evil, which complicates the message of the final scene when Angela consumes the egg into which Doctor Manhattan transferred his powers and tests whether she has gained superpowers by preparing to walk on water. (Another clue from Doctor Manhattan: When the two are fighting as the white supremacists approach their house, Doctor Manhattan tells Angela that it’s important “for later” that she see him walk on water now.) Notably, we never see her actually accomplish the Jesus-like feat, suggesting that the egg could have just been a normal egg.
The series certainly seems to believe that those who crave god-like powers do not deserve them, as it punishes them for their hubris. Ozymandias, Lady Trieu and Senator Joe Keane all prove themselves to be egomaniacs who want to rule over others. Ozymandias wants to be worshipped as a god on a planet that Doctor Manhattan created. But he soon finds the place to be a hell and gets his comeuppance by being forced to spend years on a planet with no intellectual equal — and later he’s arrested by Laurie and the FBI for trying to play God during the Cold War and kill millions of people “to save humanity.”
The white supremacists are unceremoniously murdered by Lady Trieu when they try to take Doctor Manhattan’s powers. Senator Keane, specifically, is turned into bloody mush. It’s hard to feel particularly sorry for them, given their belief system and the fact that they were literally trying to leach powers from a black man’s body in order to empower a white man, a plot that played like a sci-fi twist on Get Out.
Lady Trieu, Ozymandias’ daughter, seems to have inherited his megalomaniacal gene. She brings her father back from space to witness her successfully stealing Doctor Manhattan’s powers only to be killed by his inferior technology.
By contrast, the characters who have power foisted upon them seem to do the right thing with that responsibility. Doctor Manhattan, who escaped the Holocaust, is caught up in a horrific scientific accident that imbues him with powers he uses responsibly. Yes, he allows Nixon to use him to win the Vietnam War — and set off a series of events that will lead to horrible consequences, including the death of Angela’s parents. He tells Angela he regrets these actions — again using the “I always did it” explanation as a rationale for his decision to go to Vietnam. But he also has opted out of playing America’s nuclear device since then — for better or worse. Ultimately, he works to save Angela, stop white supremacy and prevent anyone who might not be worthy of holding his power from gaining it. Hooded Justice, perhaps the most noble masked vigilante on the show, deems him “a good man” — or as good as this series may offer.
While he doesn’t gain superpowers, Hooded Justice is pushed to become a masked hero after suffering terrible injustice at the hands of white supremacists, first as a child in Tulsa and then as a cop in New York. And even Laurie, whose mother pushed her to become a masked hero and who must overcome the horrifying revelation that her father sexually assaulted her mother, is made a hero through suffering. Both characters make morally complicated decisions, from killing Judd Crawford — illegally, but again, he was an influential white supremacist — to hiding a mass murderer’s secret for several decades before finally arresting him. Ultimately, though, they make complicated decisions not as a means to seek personal reward or recognition, but to protect their communities.
The unwilling hero isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s a core tenet of stories like Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter where orphans, castaways and seemingly powerless people understand and appreciate the value of their power when it’s unexpectedly forced on them. Think of the difference between a hero constantly dragged, resisting to take on the burden of power like Jon Snow, and those who seek to conquer, like Daenerys. Contrast their fates. (Or, to quote Dumbledore, “Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”)
Watchmen certainly seems to want audiences to cheer Angela on when she eats the egg. But does Angela fit the mold of an unlikely or unwilling hero? Angela has certainly suffered. She watched as her parents were killed in a bombing. She lost her partner in the police force, and almost lost her own life, on the White Night, the coordinated attack on Tulsa cops. But arguably all the Tulsa cops sought out outsized power after that night by donning masks. They use unethical means to interrogate suspects and gain information. It’s not ambiguous how we’re meant to feel about the white supremacists whose doors they knock down. And increasingly, the show moved from morally gray territory — with cops using questionable methods — to clearer black-and-white terms: White supremacists: bad. People who try to stop them: good. The greater the threat — and the further back their terror reached in Angela’s family tree — the more justified Angela’s methods to stop them seemed to be.
But even if we deem Angela a noble character, she chooses to consume the egg. She is not caught in a freak scientific accident nor does she decide to swallow the egg’s contents in a moment of panic and bravery, like when her children are being threatened. She simply realizes the egg’s potential and seizes the moment to eat it. What she will do with Doctor Manhattan’s powers is unclear. Lindelof does not, as of yet, plan to write a second season of Watchmen, so we may have to live with that question.
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Text
New top story from Time: Let’s Talk About Morality and Superpowers in the Ending of Watchmen
Angela eats the egg. We should have seen it coming: After all, we first met Angela cracking an egg into the shape of the iconic Watchmen smiley face. Little did we know in the opening minutes of the first episode that eggs would show up repeatedly in the series, and that the final one, which Angela would consume, might contain god-like powers and possibly make her a deity.
Whether we’re supposed to applaud Angela’s decision to eat the egg or worry over the second coming of Doctor Manhattan is a complicated question.
Even though Watchmen is, in theory, a superhero series, only one character on creator Damon Lindelof’s show has real superpowers: Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Manhattan dies in the final episode of the show, which has become a quiet hit for HBO, but Angela divines that he has transferred his powers to an egg, based on a series of clues he gave her earlier in their relationship.
Some of those clues: The first night they met, Doctor Manhattan told Angela he could transfer his powers into organic matter while holding an egg. When the white supremacists tracked down Doctor Manhattan and Angela woke him up from her husband Cal’s body, Doctor Manhattan immediately moved to the kitchen and removed eggs from the refrigerator. He told Angela to “watch the eggs,” and she smashed them on the ground. Really, it had been a clue. Later, she goes back and realizes that one egg didn’t crack — the egg that, presumably, contains his powers.
The egg was always going to be an important symbol of life throughout the show. Angela cracks eggs in the shape of the iconic smiley face that appears on the cover of the graphic novel when demonstrating how to bake to her children and their classmates in the first episode. Later, Hooded Justice reaches into a boiling pot of water to retrieve an egg with his hand. And in the penultimate episode, Doctor Manhattan discusses the “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” paradox with Angela, explaining that both came to be at the same time.
The series seems decidedly mixed on whether anyone should be endowed with god-like abilities. In the final episode, many characters justifiably point out that Doctor Manhattan should have used his powers to stop global warming or destroy all the nuclear weapons in the world. (Doctor Manhattan’s reasons for not doing so have to do with his ability to see all time, including the future, at once, and can be summed up as: “He doesn’t save the world from evil because in the future he won’t save the world from evil.” His path is predetermined, which is frustrating from a narrative perspective.)
And every character who seeks to steal Doctor Manhattan’s power is ultimately shown to be evil, which complicates the message of the final scene when Angela consumes the egg into which Doctor Manhattan transferred his powers and tests whether she has gained superpowers by preparing to walk on water. (Another clue from Doctor Manhattan: When the two are fighting as the white supremacists approach their house, Doctor Manhattan tells Angela that it’s important “for later” that she see him walk on water now.) Notably, we never see her actually accomplish the Jesus-like feat, suggesting that the egg could have just been a normal egg.
The series certainly seems to believe that those who crave god-like powers do not deserve them, as it punishes them for their hubris. Ozymandias, Lady Trieu and Senator Joe Keane all prove themselves to be egomaniacs who want to rule over others. Ozymandias wants to be worshipped as a god on a planet that Doctor Manhattan created. But he soon finds the place to be a hell and gets his comeuppance by being forced to spend years on a planet with no intellectual equal — and later he’s arrested by Laurie and the FBI for trying to play God during the Cold War and kill millions of people “to save humanity.”
The white supremacists are unceremoniously murdered by Lady Trieu when they try to take Doctor Manhattan’s powers. Senator Keane, specifically, is turned into bloody mush. It’s hard to feel particularly sorry for them, given their belief system and the fact that they were literally trying to leach powers from a black man’s body in order to empower a white man, a plot that played like a sci-fi twist on Get Out.
Lady Trieu, Ozymandias’ daughter, seems to have inherited his megalomaniacal gene. She brings her father back from space to witness her successfully stealing Doctor Manhattan’s powers only to be killed by his inferior technology.
By contrast, the characters who have power foisted upon them seem to do the right thing with that responsibility. Doctor Manhattan, who escaped the Holocaust, is caught up in a horrific scientific accident that imbues him with powers he uses responsibly. Yes, he allows Nixon to use him to win the Vietnam War — and set off a series of events that will lead to horrible consequences, including the death of Angela’s parents. He tells Angela he regrets these actions — again using the “I always did it” explanation as a rationale for his decision to go to Vietnam. But he also has opted out of playing America’s nuclear device since then — for better or worse. Ultimately, he works to save Angela, stop white supremacy and prevent anyone who might not be worthy of holding his power from gaining it. Hooded Justice, perhaps the most noble masked vigilante on the show, deems him “a good man” — or as good as this series may offer.
While he doesn’t gain superpowers, Hooded Justice is pushed to become a masked hero after suffering terrible injustice at the hands of white supremacists, first as a child in Tulsa and then as a cop in New York. And even Laurie, whose mother pushed her to become a masked hero and who must overcome the horrifying revelation that her father sexually assaulted her mother, is made a hero through suffering. Both characters make morally complicated decisions, from killing Judd Crawford — illegally, but again, he was an influential white supremacist — to hiding a mass murderer’s secret for several decades before finally arresting him. Ultimately, though, they make complicated decisions not as a means to seek personal reward or recognition, but to protect their communities.
The unwilling hero isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s a core tenet of stories like Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter where orphans, castaways and seemingly powerless people understand and appreciate the value of their power when it’s unexpectedly forced on them. Think of the difference between a hero constantly dragged, resisting to take on the burden of power like Jon Snow, and those who seek to conquer, like Daenerys. Contrast their fates. (Or, to quote Dumbledore, “Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”)
Watchmen certainly seems to want audiences to cheer Angela on when she eats the egg. But does Angela fit the mold of an unlikely or unwilling hero? Angela has certainly suffered. She watched as her parents were killed in a bombing. She lost her partner in the police force, and almost lost her own life, on the White Night, the coordinated attack on Tulsa cops. But arguably all the Tulsa cops sought out outsized power after that night by donning masks. They use unethical means to interrogate suspects and gain information. It’s not ambiguous how we’re meant to feel about the white supremacists whose doors they knock down. And increasingly, the show moved from morally gray territory — with cops using questionable methods — to clearer black-and-white terms: White supremacists: bad. People who try to stop them: good. The greater the threat — and the further back their terror reached in Angela’s family tree — the more justified Angela’s methods to stop them seemed to be.
But even if we deem Angela a noble character, she chooses to consume the egg. She is not caught in a freak scientific accident nor does she decide to swallow the egg’s contents in a moment of panic and bravery, like when her children are being threatened. She simply realizes the egg’s potential and seizes the moment to eat it. What she will do with Doctor Manhattan’s powers is unclear. Lindelof does not, as of yet, plan to write a second season of Watchmen, so we may have to live with that question.
via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste
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How Big Is the Alt Right? Inside My Futile Quest to Count https://ift.tt/2vTchfH
How many white nationalists live in the United States? It’s a question I’ve been trying to answer on and off for years. In particular, I’ve tried to quantify the group’s web-based wing—the slippery, meme-slinging trolls who call themselves the alt-right. I’ve worked a lot of angles: totaling the populations of subreddits, counting up the unique visitors to various websites, comparing the number of times Twitter users invoked alt-right hashtags to the times they had more wholesome things to tweet about. (For the record, #dogs beat out #cuck and #whitegenocide every time.) I have squinted at blurry aerial photos of far-right rallies, trying to separate protestor from counterprotester.
None of this produced satisfying answers.
But as we approach the anniversary of the far-right protest that introduced this group to the national conversation, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to the death of anti-racist counterprotester Heather Heyer, it’s again become a question worth asking. This weekend, Washington, DC, will host a second Unite the Right rally, this one nominally in protest of the alleged abuses suffered by far-right activists in Charlottesville. The organizers can call it whatever they like, but in reality this anniversary rally is one thing only: a public exhibition of the state of the movement.
It’s important that we gain a sense of this group’s scale. So much of the alt-right movement takes place online, where a handful of aggressive netizens can have the impact of an army. The alt-right has been been consistently successful in drumming up media attention for its online activity, so when they venture off the web to protests like the Unite the Right rally, it’s easy to project online might onto whatever crowd gathers. But numerically, those offline crowds have been small, and when it comes to voting and purposeful activism—the kind of activities that transform a group of heinous trolls into a political movement, capable of inserting their ideology into laws and elected officials—real-life size matters.
And so I began to count.
Alt-Right Ambiguity
When trying to quantify the members of a movement, the first question is: Who counts? Where the alt-right is concerned, there is no easy answer. So I sat down with a piece of paper and tried to diagram it out. The alt-right includes white supremacists, white nationalists (basically, white supremacists who think white people deserve their own country), neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, neo-reactionaries (who are anti-democracy), neo-fascists, nativists, men’s rights activists and anti-feminists, fundamentalist Christians, nativists and Islamophobes, homophobes, Holocaust deniers and other anti-Semites...the list goes on. But identifying with the alt-right doesn’t necessarily mean you identify with any of those groups, and vice versa. And within the alt-right, there are micro-communities like the alt-lite (who love trolling and hate being called racist). So my diagram—which was starting to look like a Final Fantasy bracket from hell—wasn’t very useful.
I needed a new way to capture what made the alt-right the alt-right, and it couldn’t be these fuzzy ideologies. “These are the same ideas the extremist right has been kicking around for the last 150 years or so,” says Phyllis Gerstenfeld, who teaches courses on online hate crimes and criminology at Cal State Stanislaus. “It’s the methodology that’s changed.” A few decades ago, extremists had to rely on IRL word of mouth to spread their ideas, and some incumbent extremist groups (like militias or the KKK) often still do. Maybe I could get some sense of the alt-right’s scale from measuring their twist on the far-right recruitment strategy: digital savvy.
But the dynamics of the internet make traffic data, tweet impressions, and subscriber counts meaningless. The alt-right has been on the receiving end of a years-long signal boost, even as the media—myself included—struggle to figure out how to cover the activities of these groups without amplifying their message. Yet traffic metrics don’t differentiate between the die-hards, the joiners, the hate-readers, and lurkers like me. Tweets might be coming from bots, or a single human helming dozens of accounts, or a small coordinated group of humans who may or may not be tweeting in earnest. And in our polarized digital culture, all hashtag campaigns are destined to be co-opted by the opposite side, for mockery purposes.
Traffic metrics don’t differentiate between the die-hards, the joiners, the hate-readers, and lurkers like me.
Some researchers overcome these opaque numbers by turning to an unlikely group: anti-fascists, whose databases are brimming with names they’ve hacked or tricked out of white nationalists But that’s hardly a representative (or neutral and unbiased) sample. Back in the day, KKK-style self-reported memberships allowed researchers to roughly track these groups as they would with a voting roll, but today those lists are as outmoded as David Duke. These days, groups form loosely organized local chapters, or stick to private servers: much harder to track, and much harder to quantify. According to Gerstenfeld, your best chance of a solid estimate would be to take a random survey of a representative sample of people and hope they answer your questions honestly. Which is basically setting yourself up to get trolled.
Your best chance at a meaningful sense of scale is at rallies. Meaningful, but not conclusive: Real life gatherings tend to draw out more paramilitary types than meme lords, and because these rallies often turn into riots, crowd estimates are hard to come by. Still, the point of protest is to show your numbers to the world, a kind of head count of those you can count on to support a movement in the open air. In Charlottesville, the best estimates put rally participant numbers between 500 and 600 people. For context, that’s five times as big as any far-right rally in the last decade, but is still only a tiny fraction of what you’d expect from their (inflated) digital footprint.
It’s also two hundred times smaller than 2017’s March for Science, and a thousand times smaller than 2017’s Women’s March. All signs point to an even lower turnout for Unite the Right in DC.
Perhaps Bigger, But Not Bolder
So what’s going on here? Well, there’s little indication that Charlottesville helped recruitment at all. Two major groups involved in the original rally no longer exist: the organizers, Vanguard America, and the Traditionalist Workers Party, which collapsed after some spectacularly silly internal battles. Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says that surviving groups like Identity Evropa and Patriot Front may have increased their numbers when the others collapse, but that’s overflow, not growth.
And that’s big, according to Hankes, because those still left are not down with the rally. Many posts about DC’s Unite the Right rally call it a “lawsuit trap.” Remember, there was a civil rights suit brought against the organizers of Unite the Right, and the has judge issued an opinion that the organizers had conspired to violate the civil rights of Charlottesville citizens, a conspiracy that could legally be tied to the death of Heather Heyer. “If I were the folks thinking about participating, I could be quite worried that my participation could link me to violent activity that violates civil rights,” says Richard Schragger, who specializes in Constitutional and local government law at the University of Virginia School of Law. “Even if you’re exercising your First Amendment rights, you’re responsible for the outcomes.”
The DC Unite the Right rally is shaping up to be a public announcement of a new, more cautious alt-right zeitgeist. It’s fuchsia and teal website looks like an ‘80s video game. The organizer, Jason Kessler—who, according to Hanke, is now something of a pariah—has banned the swastikas and the other symbols of white supremacy that so many objected to at the last rally. Kessler is trying to massage the movement into something (somewhat) more palatable, similar to the surviving organizations Identity Evropa and Patriot Front. Identity Evropa claims to protect cultural heritage, Patriot Front claims their prejudice is patriotism, and Kessler claims to be a civil rights advocate for white people.
All of which are lies that tell the truth: the open racism we all saw at Charlottesville is being slowly pushed underground.
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December 15, 2019 at 10:18PM
Angela eats the egg. We should have seen it coming: After all, we first met Angela cracking an egg into the shape of the iconic Watchmen smiley face. Little did we know in the opening minutes of the first episode that eggs would show up repeatedly in the series, and that the final one, which Angela would consume, might contain god-like powers and possibly make her a deity.
Whether we’re supposed to applaud Angela’s decision to eat the egg or worry over the second coming of Doctor Manhattan is a complicated question.
Even though Watchmen is, in theory, a superhero series, only one character on creator Damon Lindelof’s show has real superpowers: Doctor Manhattan. Doctor Manhattan dies in the final episode of the show, which has become a quiet hit for HBO, but Angela divines that he has transferred his powers to an egg, based on a series of clues he gave her earlier in their relationship.
Some of those clues: The first night they met, Doctor Manhattan told Angela he could transfer his powers into organic matter while holding an egg. When the white supremacists tracked down Doctor Manhattan and Angela woke him up from her husband Cal’s body, Doctor Manhattan immediately moved to the kitchen and removed eggs from the refrigerator. He told Angela to “watch the eggs,” and she smashed them on the ground. Really, it had been a clue. Later, she goes back and realizes that one egg didn’t crack — the egg that, presumably, contains his powers.
The egg was always going to be an important symbol of life throughout the show. Angela cracks eggs in the shape of the iconic smiley face that appears on the cover of the graphic novel when demonstrating how to bake to her children and their classmates in the first episode. Later, Hooded Justice reaches into a boiling pot of water to retrieve an egg with his hand. And in the penultimate episode, Doctor Manhattan discusses the “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” paradox with Angela, explaining that both came to be at the same time.
The series seems decidedly mixed on whether anyone should be endowed with god-like abilities. In the final episode, many characters justifiably point out that Doctor Manhattan should have used his powers to stop global warming or destroy all the nuclear weapons in the world. (Doctor Manhattan’s reasons for not doing so have to do with his ability to see all time, including the future, at once, and can be summed up as: “He doesn’t save the world from evil because in the future he won’t save the world from evil.” His path is predetermined, which is frustrating from a narrative perspective.)
And every character who seeks to steal Doctor Manhattan’s power is ultimately shown to be evil, which complicates the message of the final scene when Angela consumes the egg into which Doctor Manhattan transferred his powers and tests whether she has gained superpowers by preparing to walk on water. (Another clue from Doctor Manhattan: When the two are fighting as the white supremacists approach their house, Doctor Manhattan tells Angela that it’s important “for later” that she see him walk on water now.) Notably, we never see her actually accomplish the Jesus-like feat, suggesting that the egg could have just been a normal egg.
The series certainly seems to believe that those who crave god-like powers do not deserve them, as it punishes them for their hubris. Ozymandias, Lady Trieu and Senator Joe Keane all prove themselves to be egomaniacs who want to rule over others. Ozymandias wants to be worshipped as a god on a planet that Doctor Manhattan created. But he soon finds the place to be a hell and gets his comeuppance by being forced to spend years on a planet with no intellectual equal — and later he’s arrested by Laurie and the FBI for trying to play God during the Cold War and kill millions of people “to save humanity.”
The white supremacists are unceremoniously murdered by Lady Trieu when they try to take Doctor Manhattan’s powers. Senator Keane, specifically, is turned into bloody mush. It’s hard to feel particularly sorry for them, given their belief system and the fact that they were literally trying to leach powers from a black man’s body in order to empower a white man, a plot that played like a sci-fi twist on Get Out.
Lady Trieu, Ozymandias’ daughter, seems to have inherited his megalomaniacal gene. She brings her father back from space to witness her successfully stealing Doctor Manhattan’s powers only to be killed by his inferior technology.
By contrast, the characters who have power foisted upon them seem to do the right thing with that responsibility. Doctor Manhattan, who escaped the Holocaust, is caught up in a horrific scientific accident that imbues him with powers he uses responsibly. Yes, he allows Nixon to use him to win the Vietnam War — and set off a series of events that will lead to horrible consequences, including the death of Angela’s parents. He tells Angela he regrets these actions — again using the “I always did it” explanation as a rationale for his decision to go to Vietnam. But he also has opted out of playing America’s nuclear device since then — for better or worse. Ultimately, he works to save Angela, stop white supremacy and prevent anyone who might not be worthy of holding his power from gaining it. Hooded Justice, perhaps the most noble masked vigilante on the show, deems him “a good man” — or as good as this series may offer.
While he doesn’t gain superpowers, Hooded Justice is pushed to become a masked hero after suffering terrible injustice at the hands of white supremacists, first as a child in Tulsa and then as a cop in New York. And even Laurie, whose mother pushed her to become a masked hero and who must overcome the horrifying revelation that her father sexually assaulted her mother, is made a hero through suffering. Both characters make morally complicated decisions, from killing Judd Crawford — illegally, but again, he was an influential white supremacist — to hiding a mass murderer’s secret for several decades before finally arresting him. Ultimately, though, they make complicated decisions not as a means to seek personal reward or recognition, but to protect their communities.
The unwilling hero isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s a core tenet of stories like Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter where orphans, castaways and seemingly powerless people understand and appreciate the value of their power when it’s unexpectedly forced on them. Think of the difference between a hero constantly dragged, resisting to take on the burden of power like Jon Snow, and those who seek to conquer, like Daenerys. Contrast their fates. (Or, to quote Dumbledore, “Perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”)
Watchmen certainly seems to want audiences to cheer Angela on when she eats the egg. But does Angela fit the mold of an unlikely or unwilling hero? Angela has certainly suffered. She watched as her parents were killed in a bombing. She lost her partner in the police force, and almost lost her own life, on the White Night, the coordinated attack on Tulsa cops. But arguably all the Tulsa cops sought out outsized power after that night by donning masks. They use unethical means to interrogate suspects and gain information. It’s not ambiguous how we’re meant to feel about the white supremacists whose doors they knock down. And increasingly, the show moved from morally gray territory — with cops using questionable methods — to clearer black-and-white terms: White supremacists: bad. People who try to stop them: good. The greater the threat — and the further back their terror reached in Angela’s family tree — the more justified Angela’s methods to stop them seemed to be.
But even if we deem Angela a noble character, she chooses to consume the egg. She is not caught in a freak scientific accident nor does she decide to swallow the egg’s contents in a moment of panic and bravery, like when her children are being threatened. She simply realizes the egg’s potential and seizes the moment to eat it. What she will do with Doctor Manhattan’s powers is unclear. Lindelof does not, as of yet, plan to write a second season of Watchmen, so we may have to live with that question.
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