By Scott Graber
It is Monday and I’m at the Eclipse Mill in North Adams, Mass. It is early; Susan is still sleeping, I’ve got my coffee.
This morning I have a book review published in The Wall Street Journal called “Enemies of Conversation” by Paula Cohen (Princeton, 215 pages, $24.95.) In her book Ms Cohen takes aim at talk shows, interviews and political “conversation” from today’s political candidates.
Cohen’s criticism resonates because we’ve just entered the season of the televised political debates and some of us watched the Republican hopefuls (sans Trump) shout at each other in Milwaukee.
In Milwaukee, it was clear that these second- string, bench-warming candidates were told to answer any question by repeating four or five bullet points followed by their website address. They were told to use punchy, provocative, well-worn bullets like “runaway Congressional spending” and to go no deeper into any issue or engage in any nuanced reflection suggesting the topic was complicated or subject to compromise. This is especially true as relates to abortion, immigration.
“Just say you will kill any Honduran found north of Eagle Pass and move on to the next topic.”
This kind of mechanical, robot-like phrase-making keeps the candidate away from spontaneity, making it impossible for us to understand his or her ability to apply logic or counter-intuitive thinking to the problems that bedevil us every day. It is also obvious that most of these responses were meant to provoke resentment and suggest relief from that resentment on “day one”.
All of which brings me to Marcus Aurelius.
Marcus Aurelius was 6 years old when he caught the Emperor’s eye. As a member of a patrician family with ties to Hadrian’s Court, Marcus Aurelius was often in the company of the old tyrant. Hadrian — who built a 73-mile long wall in Scotland — found the boy truthful, unpretentious and plain-spoken. He saw something in this boy that was rare; something the Empire needed; something he himself lacked.
At that moment in time there were two competing groups banging around ancient Rome — the Sophists and the Stoics. The Sophists believed in rhetoric — passionate and argumentative — and conspicuously wearing the gold-threaded garments of power. The Stoics believed in simplicity, brevity and the pursuit of wisdom. Importantly Stoics believed in telling the truth even if the truth was painful.
The Stoics also believed in cold showers and swimming in the Tiber in February — training themselves to endure hardship and understand pain. But the most amazing trait of Stoics was their belief that anger was destructive and their ability to recover their equanimity in spite of setback or misfortune.
Stoics also tried to forgive betrayal. Forgiveness was not something that was widely embraced by many Emperors and Hadrian himself was notoriously vindictive.
When Marcus was still a lad, Hadrian gave him a tutor, Cornelius Fronto, who was a Sophist believing in impassioned rhetoric and the notion that an Emperor should wear his purple cloak at all times. But as Marcus aged he moved away from Fronto.
Although Roman emperors were not elected by the Roman people and did not have to speak in bullet points or engage in political campaigning, they did have to remain popular. The formula for popularity in those days was keeping the barbarians on the far side of the Danube, East of the Rhine, and North of Hadrian’s Wall. That effort was all consuming and often required personal participation in the frontier wars.
During his reign there were plagues — probably Smallpox — and there was mutiny by a general named Cassius. But Marcus managed to weather these storms, falling back on his Stoic principles — especially meditation, anger-management, forgiveness. And in his free time he wrote down these lessons learned for posterity. His “Meditations” have been read by countless leaders for more than 1,800 years.
But it is clear “Meditations” is not on Vladimir Putin’s bedside table. Blowing-up Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Embraer jet suggests that Putin has not gotten round to Marcus’ chapter on forgiveness. Nor is likely that Donald Trump has taken a run through the chapters telling one how to avoid anger and accept misfortune with equanimity.
Years ago we had a Master in Equity named Tommy Kemmerlin. He rarely wore a robe, sat at a simple wooden desk and would listen to a closing argument sometimes saying, “That is sophistry, counsel, plain and simple.”
In those days I did not know what “sophistry” was. Based on the debate we saw in August, I know now.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
