Contra

Contra (pronounced kon-tra)

(1) Against; contrary or opposed to; in opposition or contrast to; against, anti.

(2) An arrangement (usually between companies) whereby they exchange goods and/or services on a basis agreeable to both, often without any exchange of cash.

(3) In politics (sometimes used in a derogatory sense), a conservative; originally tied to Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.

(4) In accounting, as contra-entry or contra-account, an entry or account which cancels another entry or account.

(5) In music, an informal term for any of the musical instruments in the contrabass range (contrabassoon, contrabass clarinet or (especially) double bass).

(6) In dance, a type of country dance most identified with the New England region in the US (mostly obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English contra (against, over against, opposite, on the opposite side; on the contrary, contrariwise) from the Latin contrā.  The Latin contrā (against) meant originally "in comparison with" and was the ablative singular feminine of com-teros, from the Old Latin com (with, together) + -tr, (zero-degree form of the comparative suffix -ter-).  As used as a noun in English, it meant "a thing which is against another" by 1778, an evolution of the earlier sense of "the contrary or opposite" from the 1640s.  English also picked up the practice from Late Latin in using contra as a prefix.  In French, it became contre- which passed into English as counter-, the Old English equivalent of which was wiðer (which survived in dialectical English as withers and in Scottish as widdershins), from wið (with, against).  There was also contraindicate (to indicate the contrary of (a course of treatment, etc)) from the 1660s, an evolution from the 1620s forms contraindicated & contraindication, contra-indicate the rare verb.  The use to describe the forces opposed to the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua since 1979 began in 1981, Contra a shortened form of the Spanish contrarrevolucionario (counter-revolutionary).  Contra is a noun, verb, adjective & adverb; the noun plural is contras.  

The contras and the Sandinistas

Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) Flag.

The contras were active from 1979 to the early 1990s in opposition to the left-wing government in Nicaragua (the Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction).  The term was a short-form of la contrarrevolución (counter-revolution) although there were intellectuals in the movement who disliked the label because they thought it suggested something negative or reactionary.  They preferred comandos (commandos) though peasant sympathizers also called the rebels los primos (the cousins), reflecting in many ways the character of the early movement as one of civilian irregulars.  In the White House, contra wasn’t greatly favored either and by the mid-1980s, marketing types in the Reagan administration (1981-1989) introduced “democratic resistance” to press conferences though it never caught on outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Undeterred, by the press’s scepticism towards newspeak, on the ground, the ever-optimistic CIA liaison operatives encouraged use of la resistencia.

National flag of Nicaragua.

Believing the domino theory applied as much to central America as once it had been applied in east Asia, almost from the beginning the contras received military and financial aid from the US.  Congress cut the appropriations but the White House continued support with funding provided through a variety of imaginative (and covert) money-making schemes and slush funds which culminated in the Iran-Contra affair (Iran-Contragate), the biggest scandal of the Reagan years.  The affair (noted if not openly discussed by the ayatollahs in the Persian ماجرای ایران-کنترا‎ and definitely not by the Contras in the Spanish Caso Irán–Contra) was a back channel CIA (the US Central Intelligence Agency) operation run out of the White House, secretly to sell weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran, then subject to an arms embargo.

The cover story for the operation was the armament shipments were part of an intricate web of deals to free seven American hostages held in Lebanon by the Hezbollah, a paramilitary operation which started as modestly as many others but which would evolve into a something which simultaneously would effectively take over the Lebanese state while acting as the regional proxy of Tehran (or a sub-contractor to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard depending on the interpretation).  The story wasn’t entirely untruthful but the administration arranged the first sales prior to the hostages being seized.

Sandinista graffiti.

Ronald Reagan’s (1911–2004; US president 1981-1989) world view was never as simple as his detractors suggest but it was starker than most of the Washington establishment and he didn’t support the position, which had become predominate during the Cold War and certainly after the Vietnam war, that the geopolitical structure of the world should be thought of as stable and permanent.  That was the view of the power-realists like Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor 1969-1973 & secretary of state 1973-1977), theorists who believed problems needed to be managed over decades whereas Reagan thought problems needed to be solved: the Soviet Union was a problem, Cuba was a problem and the Sandinistas were a problem.  The Congress however had prohibited the provision of aid to the Contras. 

In 1985, the administration began a diversion of the profits the Iran operation to the Contras although it’s still not certain the president authorized this, so many of the supporting documents having been destroyed, the lesson of Nixon’s tapes well-learned: If stuff gets burned it can’t become evidence.  Within a year the story broke and after many denials about many things, Reagan was forced to appear on nationally television, taking “full responsibility” for the affair, suggesting what began with good diplomatic intensions, ran astray in a classic case of mission creep.  A commission was appointed to investigate and concluded no evidence existed to prove the president either knew of or approved the detail of operations.  Although several dozen administration officials were indicted and some were convicted, many were overturned on appeal and while a couple served terms of probation, most of the rest were pardoned by President George HW Bush (1924–2018; George XLI, US President 1989-1993) even before coming to trial, some noting the evidence suggested George XLI had his own reasons for not wishing the some matters to be aired in court although whether that included the role the CIA allegedly played in the distribution of crack cocaine in US cities during the 1980s has never been clear.

Bilateral

Bilateral (pronounced bahy-lat-er-uhl)

(1) Pertaining to, involving, or affecting two or both sides, factions, parties, or the like.

(2) Located on opposite sides of an axis; two-sided, especially when of equal size, value etc.

(3) In anatomy and biology, pertaining to the right and left sides of a structure (especially in the region furthest from the median plane).

(4) In contract law, binding the parties to reciprocal obligations.

(5) In anthropology, relating to descent through both maternal and paternal lineage.

(6) In the British education system, a course combining academic and technical components.

(7) In physics, acting or placed at right angles to a line of motion or strain.

(8) In phonetics and phonology, of a consonant (especially the English clear l), pertaining to sounds generated by partially blocking the egress of the airstream with the tip of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, leaving space on one or both sides of the occlusion for air passage.

1775: The construct is bi + lateral.  Bi-, in the sense of the word-forming element (two, having two, twice, double, doubly, twofold, once every two etc) is from the from Latin bis (twice) or bīnus (double), from the Old Latin which was cognate with the Sanskrit dvi-, the Ancient Greek di- & dis-, the Old English twi- and the German zwei- (twice, double), all from the primitive Indo-European PIE root dwo- (two), ultimate source also of the Modern English duo.  Bilateral is a noun & adjective, bilateralist, bilateralization, bilaterality & bilateralism are nouns and bilaterally is an adverb; the common noun plural is bilaterals.

It may have been in use before but was certainly nativized during the sixteenth century.  The occasionally bin- before vowels was a form which originated in French, not Latin although it’s suggested this may have been influenced by the Latin bini (twofold), the familiar example being “binary”.  In computing, it’s most associated with zero-one distinction in the sense of off-on and in chemistry, it denotes two parts or equivalents of the substance referred to although there are rules and conventions of use to avoid confusion with stuff named using the Greek prefix di- such as carbon dioxide (CO₂).  In general use, words built with bi- prefix can cause confusion.  While biennial (every two years) seems well understood, other constructs probably due to rarity remain, ambiguous: fortnightly is preferable to biweekly and using “every two months” or “twice a month” as required removes all doubt.

Lateral was first adopted as verb in the 1640s from the fourteenth century Old French lateral, directly from Latin laterālis (belonging to the side), a derivation of latus (genitive lateris) (the side, flank of humans or animals, lateral surface) of uncertain origin.  As a noun (and as “bilateral”), the precise definitional meaning "situated on either side of the median vertical longitudinal plane of the body" is from 1722.   Equilateral (all sides equal) was first used in mathematics in the 1560s, a borrowing from the Latin aequilateralis, aequi- being the suffix- meaning “equal”; contra-lateral (occurring on the opposite side) is from 1871; the adjective ipsilateral (on the same side of the body), bolting on the Latin ipse- suffix (self) dates from 1907; the use in US football to describe a lateral pass seems to have appeared in print first in 1934.  Multilateral and trilateral seem to have been seventeenth century inventions from geometry, the more familiar modern applications in international diplomacy not noted until 1802.

Conventions of use

Although one would have to be imaginative, with the Latin, there’s little limit to the compound words one could construct to describe the number of sides of a thing.  The words, being as unique as whole numbers, would also be infinite.  Whether many would be linguistically useful is doubtful; sextilateral may mislead and ūndēquadrāgintālateral (thirty nine sided) seems a complicated solution to a simple problem.

Unilateral             One-sided
Bilateral               Two-sided
Trilateral              Three-sided
Quadrilateral        Four-sided
Quintilateral         Five-sided
Sextilateral          Six-sided
Septilateral          Seven-sided
Octolateral           Eight-sided
Novilateral           Nine-sided
Decilateral           Ten-sided
Centilateral          Hundred-sided
Millelateral           Thousand-sided

The modern convention appears to be to stop at trilateral and thereafter, when describing gatherings of four or more, adopt multilateral or phrases like four-power or six-party.  Trilateral seem still manageable, adopted not only by governmental entities but also by the Trilateral Commission (founded in 1973 with members from Japan, the US, and Europe), a remarkably indiscrete right-wing think-tank.  However, in the organically pragmatic evolution of English, there it tends to stop, quadrilateral now most associated with Euclidean plane geometry (there are seven quadrilateral polygons) and used almost exclusively in that discipline and other strains of mathematics.  Outside of mathematics, it was only in the formal language of diplomacy that quadrilateral was used with any frequency.  The agreement of 15 July 1840, (negotiated between Lord Palmerston (1784-1865; variously UK prime-minister or foreign secretary on several occasions 1830-1865) and Nicholas I (1796–1855; Tsar of Russia 1825-1855) to tidy up things in the Mediterranean) between Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia was formalised as a quadrilateral treaty but the word fell from favour with quadruple alliance preferred for a later European arrangement.

Bilateral diplomacy: Lindsay Lohan meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), Ankara, 27 January 2017.

Although many of the wonks in the foreign policy establishment like to dream of a world in which everything is settled by multi-lateral discussions, in the world of the realists, it's understood the core of conflicts (which are the central dynamic of international relations) are bilateral.  Accordingly, most efforts are devoted to bilateral discussions.  In the business of predictions, it's also the relationships between two states which absorbs most of the thoughts of pundits and the long-term projections of those in the field can make interesting reading, decades later.  In 1988, Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) published 1999: Victory Without War, which with no false modesty he suggested was "...a how-to guide in foreign police for whomever was elected president in November 1988".  Given that, it's not surprising one passage has attracted recent comment: "...in the twenty-first century the Sino-US relationship will be one of the most important, and one of the most mutually beneficial, bilateral relationships in the world."  Things do appear to have worked out differently but there is a school of thought that the leadership of Xi Jinping (b 1953; general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since 2013) is an aberration and that his replacement is likely to be one who pursues a more cooperative foreign and economic policy because that is more likely to be in China's long-term (ie a century ahead) interest.      

Rare too is the more recent diplomatic creation, the pentalateral (five-power) treaty of which there appear to have been but two.  One was signed on 23 December 1950 between the United States, France, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.  It didn’t end well.  The other pentalateral treaty was sealed in Tehran during October 2007 between Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, the littoral countries of the Caspian Sea and was a mechanism to avoid squabbles while carving up resources.  Some assemblies are better described in other ways.  When the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the UK & the US) plus Germany formed a now defunct standing committee to deal with issues raised by Iran’s nuclear programme, although a sextilateral, it was instead dubbed P5+1 although in Brussels, the eurocrats preferred E3+3.

Six men briefing the media about their sextilateral.  The chief negotiators of the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, Daioyutai State Guesthouse, Beijing, 23 December 2006.

Gate

Gate (pronunced geyt)

(1) A movable barrier, usually on hinges, closing an opening in a fence, wall, or other enclosure.

(2) An opening permitting passage through an enclosure.

(3) A tower, architectural setting, etc., for defending or adorning such an opening or for providing a monumental entrance to a street, park etc.

(4) Any means of access or entrance.

(5) A mountain pass.

(6) Any movable barrier, as at a tollbooth or a road or railroad crossing.

(7) A sliding barrier for regulating the passage of water, steam, or the like, as in a dam or pipe; valve.

(8) In skiing, an obstacle in a slalom race, consisting of two upright poles anchored in the snow a certain distance apart.

(9) The total number of persons who pay for admission to an athletic contest, a performance, an exhibition or the total revenue from such admissions.

(10) In cell biology, a temporary channel in a cell membrane through which substances diffuse into or out of a cell; in flow cytometry, a line separating particle type-clusters on two-dimensional dot plots.

(11) A sash or frame for a saw or gang of saws.

(12) In metallurgy, (1) a channel or opening in a mold through which molten metal is poured into the mold cavity (also called ingate) or (2), the waste metal left in such a channel after hardening; (written also as geat and git).

(13) In electronics, a signal that makes an electronic circuit operative or inoperative either for a certain time interval or until another signal is received, also called logic gate; a circuit with one output that is activated only by certain combinations of two or more inputs.

(14) In historic British university use, to punish by confining to the college grounds (largely archaic).

(15) In Scots and northern English use, a habitual manner or way of acting (largely archaic).

(16) A path (largely archaic but endures in historic references).

(17) As a suffix (-gate), a combining form extracted from Watergate, occurring as the final element in journalistic coinages, usually nonce words, that name scandals resulting from concealed crime or other alleged improprieties in government or business.

(18) In cricket, the gap between a batsman's bat and pad, used usually as “bowled through the gate”.

(19) In computing and electronics, a logical pathway made up of switches which turn on or off; the controlling terminal of a field effect transistor (FET).

(20) In airport or seaport design, a (usually numerically differentiated) passageway or assembly point with a physical door or gate through which passengers embark or disembark.

(21) In a lock tumbler, the opening for the stump of the bolt to pass through or into.

(22) In pre-digital cinematography, a mechanism, in a film camera and projector, that holds each frame momentarily stationary behind the aperture.

(23) A tally mark consisting of four vertical bars crossed by a diagonal, representing a count of five.

Pre 900:  From the Middle English gate, gat, ȝate & ȝeat, from the Old English gæt, gat & ġeat (a gate, door), from the Proto-Germanic gatą (hole, opening).  It was cognate with the Low German and Dutch gat (hole or breach), the Low German Gatt, gat & Gööt, the Old Norse gata (path) and was related to the Old High German gazza (road, street).  Yate was a dialectical form which was an alternative spelling until the seventeenth century; the plural is gates.  Many European languages picked up variations of the Old Norse to describe both paths and what is now understood as a gate.  The Old English geat (plural geatu) was used to mean "gate, door, opening, passage, hinged framework barrier", as was Proto-Germanic gatan, and the Dutch gat; in Modern German, it emerged as gasse meaning “street”; the Finnish katu, and the Lettish gatua (street) are Germanic loan-words.  Interestingly, scholars trace the ultimate source as the Primitive European ǵed (to defecate).

The meaning "money from selling tickets" dates from 1896, a contraction of 1820’s gate-money.  The first reference to uninvited gate-crashers is from 1927 and gated community appears in 1989; that was Emerald Bay, Laguna Beach, California although conceptually similar defensive structures had for millennia been built in many places.

G Gordon Liddy (1930–2021) was the CREEP lawyer convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the Watergate Affair.  Receiving a twenty-year sentence, he served over four, paroled after Jimmy Carter (b 1924; US President 1977-1981) commuted the term to eight years.  He was one of the great characters of the affair.

The practice of using -gate as a suffix appended to a word to indicate a "scandal involving," is a use abstracted from Watergate, the building complex in Washington DC, which, in 1972, housed the national headquarters of the Democratic Party.  On 17 June, it was burgled by operatives found later to be associated with Richard Nixon's (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) Campaign to Re-elect the President committee (CREEP).  Since Watergate, there have been at least dozens of –gates.

Notable Post-Watergate Gates

Billygate: In 1980, US President Jimmy Carter's brother, Billy (1937-1988), was found to have represented the Libyan government as a foreign agent.  Cynics noted that, unlike his brother, Billy at least had a foreign policy.

Crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947; US secretary of state 2009-2013) has provided the lexicon many "-gates".  A marvelous linguistic coincidence gave us Whitewatergate, a confusing package of real estate deals later found technically to be lawful and Futuregate was a reference to some still inexplicable (and profitable) dabbles in her name in the futures markets.  Servergate was the mail server affair which featured mutually contradictory defenses to various allegations, the Benghazi affair and more.  There was also a minor matter but one which remains emblematic of character.  Crooked Hillary Clinton, after years of fudging, was forced to admit she “misspoke” when claiming that to avoid sniper-fire, she and her entourage “…just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base” when landing at a Bosnian airport in 1996.  She admitted she “misspoke” only after a video was released of her walking down the airplane’s stairs to be greeted by a little girl who presented her with a bouquet of flowers.  Even her admission was constructed with weasel words: “…if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement”.  That seemed to clear things up and the matter is now recorded in the long history of crooked Hillary Clinton's untruthfulness as Snipergate.  Most bizarre was Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory that circulated during the 2016 US presidential campaign, sparked by WikiLeaks publishing a tranche of emails from within the Democrat Party machine.  According to some, encoded in the text of the emails was a series of messages between highly-placed members of the party who were involved in a pedophile ring, even detailing crooked Hillary Clinton’s part in the ritualistic sexual abuse of children in the basement of a certain pizzeria in Washington DC.  Among the Hillarygates, pizzagate was unusual in that she was innocent of every allegation made; not even the pizzeria's basement existed.

Closetgate: References the controversy following the 2005 South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet", a parody of the Church of Scientology in which the Scientologist film star Tom Cruise (b 1962) refuses to come out of a closet.  Not discouraged by the threat of writs, South Park later featured an episode in which the actor worked in a confectionery factory packing fudge. 

Grangegate: In Australia in 2014, while giving evidence to the state's Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), Barry O'Farrell (b 1959; Premier of New South Wales 2011-2014) forget he’d been given a Aus$3,000 bottle of Penfolds Grange (which he drank without disclosing the gift as the rules required).  He felt compelled to resign.

Perhaps counterintuitively, there seems never to have been a Lindsaygate or Lohangate.  In that sense, Lindsay Lohan may be said to have lived a scandal-free life.

Irangate: Sometimes called contragate, this was the big scandal of Ronald Reagan's (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) second term.  As a back channel operation, the administration had sold weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran and diverted the profits to fund the Contra rebels opposing the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.  Congress had earlier cut the funding.

Nipplegate: Sometimes called boobgate, this was a reaction to singer Janet Jackson’s (b 1966) description of what happened at the conclusion of her 2004 Superbowl performance as a “wardrobe malfunction”.  In Europe, they just didn't get what all the fuss was about.

Monicagate: The most celebrated scandal of President Bill Clinton’s (b 1946; US President 1993-2001) second term.  Named after White House intern Monica Lewinsky (b 1973), with whom the president “…did not have sexual relations…”.

1973 Pontiac Trans-Am SD 455.

Dieselgate: In 2015, Volkswagen was caught cheating on emissions tests used to certify for sale some eleven-million VW diesel vehicles by programming them to enable emissions controls during testing, but not during real-world driving.  Manufacturers had been known to do this.  In 1973 Pontiac tried to certify their 455 Super Duty  engine with a not dissimilar trick but the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) weren’t fooled which is why the production 455SD was rated at 290 horsepower rather than 310.  Later, manufacturers in the Fourth Reich turned out to be just as guilty and, in that handy phrase from German historiography "they all knew".  Including the fines thus far levied, legal fees and the costs associated with product recalls, the affair is estimated so far to have cost VW some US$27 billion but the full accounting won't be complete for some time.  Other German manufacturers were also affected but Daimler (maker of Mercedes-Benz) avoided a penalty by snitching on the others. 

In Australia, Utegate was a 2009 campaign run by opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull (b 1954; prime-minister of Australia 2015-2018) and his then (they're no longer on speaking terms) henchman, Eric Abetz (b 1958, Liberal Party senator for Tasmania, Australia 1994-2022), which accused Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013) of receiving a backhander from a car dealer, the matters in question revolving around an old and battered ute (pick-up).  Based on documents forged by Treasury official Godwin Grech (b 1967), it led to the (first) downfall of Turnbull.  Abetz went on to bigger things but Turnbull neither forgot nor forgave, sacking Abetz during his second coming (which started well but ended badly).  Abetz however proved he still has the numbers which matter, gaining preselection and in 2024 winning a seat in the Tasmanian Legislative Assembly (the state's lower house).  He now serves as minister for business, industry & resources and minister for transport as well as leader of the house in the minority Liberal Party government.  

The first Nutellagate arose at Columbia University early in 2013 with allegations of organized, large-scale theft by students of the Nutella provided in the dining halls. Apparently students, unable to resist the temptation of the newly available nutty spread, were (1) consuming vast quantities, (2) pilfering it using containers secreted in back-packs and (3) actually purloining entire jars from the tables.

In the spirit of the investigative journalism which ultimately brought down President Nixon, the Columbia Daily Spectator, breaking the story, reported that, based on a leak from their deep throat in the catering department, the crime was costing some US$5,000 per week, the hungry students said ravenously to be munching their way through around 100 pounds (37 or 45 KG (deep throat not specific whether the losses were weighed on the avoirdupois or troy scale)) of Nutella every seven days.  The newspaper noted the heist was on such a scale that, unless addressed, the cost to the university would be US$250,000 a year, enough to buy seven jars for every undergraduate student.

The national media picked up the story noting, apart from the criminality, there were concerns about the relationship between the wastage of food, excessively expensive student services, the exorbitant cost of tuition fees and a rampant consumer culture.  It seemed a minor moral panic might ensue until the student newspaper (now a blog) deconstructed the Spectator’s numbers and worked out the caterers must be paying 70% more for Nutella than that quoted by local wholesalers, casting some doubt on the matter.  The university authorities responded within days, issuing a press release headed “Nutellagate Exposed: It's a Smear!"  Their audit revealed that the accounting system had booked US$2,500 against Nutella purchases in the first week of term but that was the usual practice when stocking inventory and that consumption was around the budgeted US$450 in subsequent weeks.  Deep throat (Nutella edition) lost face and was discredited.

Nutellagate II broke in 2017 when a consumer protection organization released a report noting the recipe had, without warning, been changed, the spread now having more sugar and milk powder but less cocoa and, as a result, was now of a lighter hue.  Ferrero’s crisis-management operative responded on twitter, tweeting “our recipe underwent a fine-tuning and continues to deliver the Nutella fans know and love with high quality ingredients,”… adding “…sugar, like other ingredients, can be enjoyed in moderation as part of a balanced diet.”

#Nutellagate soon trended and users expressed displeasure, many invoking the memory of New Coke or the IBM PS/2, two other products which appeared also to try to fix something not broken.  The twitterstorm soon subsided, the speculation being that, because it contained more sugar, consumers would become more addicted and soon forget the fuss.  So it proved, sales remaining strong.  Nutella though remains controversial because of the sugar content and the use of palm oil, a product harvested from vast monocultural plantations and associated with social and environmental damage.  Ferrero has now and again suggested they may be ceasing production but the user base has proved resistant although, recent movements in the hazelnut price may test the elasticity of demand.

Open-Gate Ferraris

The much admired but now almost extinct open-gate shifters were originally purely functional before becoming fetishized.  At a time when more primitive transmissions and shifter assemblies were built with linkages and cables which operated with much less precision than would come later, the open-gates served as a guidance mechanism, making the throws more uniform and ensuring the correct movement of the controlling lever.  Improvements in design actually made open-gates redundant decades ago but they'd become so associated with cars such as Ferraris and Lamborghinis that they'd become part of the expectations of many buyers and it wasn't hard to persuade the engineers to persist, even though the things had descended to be matters purely of style.  A gimmick they may have become but, cut from stainless steel and often secured with exposed screw-heads, they were among the coolest of nostalgia pieces.  

Reality eventually bit when modern, fast electronics meant automatic transmissions both shifted faster and were programmed always to change ratios at the optimal point and no driver however skilled could match that combination.  Once essential to quick, clear shifts, by the late 1990s, the open-gate had actually become a hindrance to the process and while there were a few who still relished the clicky, tactile experience, such folk were slowly dying off and with sales in rapid decline, manufacturers became increasingly unwilling to indulge them with what had become a low-volume, unprofitable option.  

Not all the Ferraris with manual gearboxes used the open-gate fitting, some of the grand-touring cars using concealing leather boots but both are now relics, the factory recently retiring the manual gearbox because of a lack of demand.  The 599 GTB Fiorano was made between 2006-2012 and included the option but of the 3200-odd made, only 30 buyers specified the manual.  That run of 30 was however mass-production compared with the California (2009-2014) which was both the first Ferrari equipped with a dual-clutch transmission and the last to offer a manual, ending the tradition of open gate-shifters which stretched back 65 years.  Testing the market, a six-speed manual option had been added to the hard-top convertible in 2010 and the market spoke, the factory dropping it from the order sheet in 2012 after selling just three cars in three years.  The rarity has however created collectables; on the rare occasions an open gate 599 or California is offered at auction, they attract quite a premium and there's now an after-market converting Ferraris to open gate manuals.  It's said to cost up to US$40,000 depending on the model and, predictably, the most highly regarded are those converted using "verified factory parts".

2012 Ferrari California (top) and 2012 Cadillac CTS-V sedan.

So the last decade at Maranello has been automatic (technically “automated manual transmission”) all the way and although a consequence of the quest for ultimate performance, it wasn’t anything dictatorial and had customer demand existed at a sustainable level, the factory would have continued to supply manual transmissions.  There is however an alternative, Cadillac since 2004 offering some models with manual transmission for the first time since the 1953 Series 75 (among the Cadillac crowd the Cimarron (1982-1988) is never spoken of except in the phrase "the unpleasantness of 1982" ) and by 2013, while one could buy a Cadillac with a clutch pedal, one could not buy such a Ferrari.  For most of the second half of the twentieth century, few would have thought that anything but improbable or unthinkable.

Ferrari open-gate shifter porn 

1965 250 LM

1967 330 GTC

1968 275 GTS/4 NART Spyder

1969 365 GTC

1972 365 GTB/4

1988 Testarossa

1991 Mondial-T Cabriolet

1994 348 Spider

2011 599 GTB Fiorano

2012 California

Surplus

Surplus (pronounced sur-pluhs)

(1) Something that remains above what is used or needed.

(2) In agricultural economics, produce or a quantity of food grown by a nation or area in excess of its needs, especially such a quantity of food purchased and stored by a governmental program of guaranteeing farmers a specific price for certain crops.

(3) In accounting, the excess of assets over liabilities accumulated throughout the existence of a business, excepting assets against which stock certificates have been issued; excess of net worth over capital-stock value.

(4) In public finance, an excess of government revenues over expenditures during a certain financial year.

(5) In international trade, an excess of receipts over payments on the balance of payments.

(6) In economic theory, an unsold quantity of a good resulting from a lack of equilibrium in a market.  For example, if a price is artificially high, sellers will bring more goods to the market than buyers will be willing to buy.  In classical economics, the opposite of shortage.

(7) In Chancery law (and its successor courts), the remainder of a fund appropriated for a particular purpose.

1325–1375: From the Middle English surplus, from the Old French sorplus (remainder, extra), from the Medieval Latin superplūs (excess, surplus), the construct being super (over) + plūs (more).  Surplus in Italian is a borrowing from modern French where surplus has existed since the twelfth century.  In English, surplus has been used as an adjective since the fourteenth century.  Enjoying the same pronunciation, surplice and surplus are often confused.  A surplice is a liturgical vestment of the Christian Church, usually styled as a tunic of white linen or cotton material, with wide sleeves and often some lace embellishment or embroidered edges.  Lengths vary; in medieval times it reached almost to the ground but tends now to be shorter; some still retain the longer garments for the ceremonial.  As surplis, it was a thirteenth century Middle-English borrowing from the Anglo-French surpliz, a syncopated variant of Old French surpeliz, derived from the Medieval Latin superpellīcium (vestīmentum) over-pelt (garment), neuter of superpellīcius.  Construct was super (over) + pellīt(us) (clothed with skins or fur) + -ius (the adjectival suffix).  A clerical surplice is thus a kind of frock; a clerical surplus means too many priests.

Surplus Repression

German-American Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) was a sociologist and philosopher, highly influential in the mid-late twentieth century.  Even today, Marcuse enjoys a cult following.

A critique of capitalism’s culture and economic arrangements, Marcuse's book Eros and Civilization (1655) drew, inter alia, from Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and described an alternative structure for society.  He didn’t reject Freud’s idea that repression of mans’ instinctive desires was necessary for civilization to endure but Marcuse distinguished between basic (or necessary) repression and surplus repression, detailing the differences between the biological vicissitudes of the instincts and the socially imposed.  His construct was that basic repression is that which man suppresses to permit peaceful societies to form; a repression or modification of the instincts being necessary “…for the perpetuation of the human race in civilization.”  Surplus repression meant those “…restrictions necessitated by [the] social domination” of the particular ruling-class or hegemony.  The purpose of surplus repression was to shape the instincts of individuals to conform to the requirements of modern capitalism, a surrender to what Marcuse called the “performance principle”, a construct building on Marx’s theories of alienation and surplus value.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, 2011.

Marcuse's writing did have the attraction of being more accessible than that of Marx or Freud (and certainly that of many neo-Marxists or Freudians) but that also meant it was easier for critics to cherry pick the points they found most objectionable.  For an explanation of why society need to be organized the way it was, conservatives seemed to prefer the rationalization of the "harsh but deliciously clever" English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) best known for his book Leviathan (1651) in which appeared the memorable passage describing the life of man in a world where there existed no restraining authorities forcing people to repress their worst instincts:

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Such a culture Hobbes called the "state of nature" by which he meant not an environmentally sustainable hippie commune but a place in which there was bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all) and murder went unpunished except by another murder.  Although the distinction is now an unfashionable one to draw, conservatives liked the way Hobbes seemed to know not all cultures were civilizations and that a little surplus repression was a small price to pay for for its benefits.  Hobbes lived through troubled times and his views on the importance of stable, strong governance should be understood as the writings of one who had seen what the alternative looks like but as a list of exculpatory bullet-points, it's something which can be ticked off by by the Ayatollahs in Tehran or the Chinese Communist Party.  Marcuse is not so transportable.

Sometimes, it really was read for the articles.  Michael G Horowitz's profile of Marcuse was published in the September 1970 edition of Playboy.

Marcuse’s work was acknowledged as a landmark in the synthetization of Marxist and psychoanalytic theories but was criticized for being just another of the utopian visions written of since antiquity, work cut adrift from the moorings of the political reality which seemed in the 1960s more urgently to demand attention.  Marcuse acknowledged the distance of his work from reality and conceded his theories could reach actualization only by revolution or gradual infiltration of the structures of the power-elite and, after the disappointments of the moments in 1968 when revolution fleeting was in the air, he preferred the latter.  German student activist Rudi Dutschke (1940–1979) had advocated a "…march through the institutions of power", radically to change society from within government and cultural institutions by becoming part of the machinery and structures under which capitalism operated.  This too owed a debt to the theories of hegemony and Marcuse wrote to Dutschke in 1971 saying he “regarded your notion of the "march through the institutions" as the only effective way.”  It all failed.  It was the highly unusual coincidence of circumstances in the post war (1948-1973) Western world which briefly in 1968 made the system seem internally vulnerable and the hegemony learned the lesson: they would control who manned the institutions that matter and the troublemakers could march through things like theatre trusts, literary festivals and art gallery committees.