Are We Driven?

    I was half watching a documentary the other day concerning the idea of ancient extraterrestrial contact. Judging by the presenter's haircut,  I would say it was made in the late '90s or early 2000s.  Erich Von Daniken made a brief appearance.  He seemed to be about 70 so, that timing seems right. The presenter seemed to be about 25. The hair.

    The documentary was funny.  It was built on the same misunderstandings of physical artifacts and unwarranted assumptions and assertions Von Daniken is known for. Those things aren't unusual in the UFO cottage industry and its subsets such as Ancient Astronauts.

    As an almost throwaway thought, this guy tried to portray the pantheon of Greek Gods as a group of space-faring genetic engineers. His idea was, they manipulated the DNA of ancient hominids to create the Human Race, to be used as servants and slaves. He thought, one feature such genetic engineers would incorporate was the drive to worship. 

    Yes, yes they would. What better way to incorporate subservience?

    There are several lists of the drives or instincts ranging in number from 3 to 18. They really boil down to fuck, fight or footrace. The innate will to anthropomorphize and then worship what we don't understand is very rarely mentioned. Is it really a universal drive such as 'fight or flight' or procreation?  I happen to think it is. In an almost perverse way, I think it explains the drive of archeologists to ascribe religious significance to almost any example of monumental architecture but there are better examples just about everywhere. 

    'Just about everywhere'.  That seems to make my point. The drive to experience transcendence and divinity is everywhere. As we grow in knowledge of our surrounding environment, so too do our gods. It stands to reason our gods would be as well-informed as we are. That's if, you believe that man creates our gods. If each person creates their own gods, it's little surprise so many gods are found wanting. 

    This guy believes the pantheon created urges and a narrative to spread a desired feature in those created. There's a thought. Not just genetic engineers but social engineers as well.  If you've read much mythology, that seems like a stretch. Given 13.7 billion years and hundreds of millions of generations, Darwin starts to look like more of a sure thing than a bet made tens of thousands of years ago. Remember, evolution doesn't predict any outcome.  Evolution observes concrete outcomes already extant. Darwin asks: What must have happened to produce what we can observe? Darwin doesn't ask, "What comes next?"  Darwin  does not even ask, "How come?" Does the sheer weight of time and mathematics allow for anything else short of supernatural intervention? Dispassionately, you have to believe something very like evolution is what must have occurred. Yet, we still don't want to.

    Why not?  Why the drive to have been contrived by something, anything greater than ourselves? We insist we are created in our god's image and then endow that image with a list of qualities no mortal could possibly share.  Why?

    Why this constant driving and striving for divinity? If there is something essential about it that makes it so ubiquitous and evolutionarily necessary,  what could that possibly be? Unanswered questions that remain unanswered because not much thought has been devoted to them.  

    Oh, is that all?

    

For This Day

I want to go the bar

but not how you would think.

I really want to go to the bar,

Ten years ago.

I don't want to go for the first time

or the second time

but for the umpteenth time.

I want to slide on to my stool and

have my drink in front of me

with that familiar smile

or even scowl

from the bartender's day.

Events I would know all about,

except for the very latest.

I don't want to make friends.... 

today.

I want the comfort of easy,

long acquaintance.

I miss that old habit.

November 9th

    I don't like predictions committed to print. We have a problem looming that we should be prepared to meet. It's a problem for all of us, no matter our political persuasion. To be prepared, some small prediction is necessary.

    We can safely ignore what the chattering class is saying about the coming elections.  Without some sort of horse race,  there is really noting to write about and these people have regular deadlines. There are very few actual contests this time around.  The republicans are about to do something they haven't done since, 1998, when they paid the price for impeachment. They, as the opposition, are about to lose seats, in both houses of Congress, in a midterm election, without even a kiss.  Unlike ,1998, they will lose seats in the first set of midterms of a new presidency. That's completely unheard of.

    There are two ways they have accomplished this. First: They personalized and motivated the opposition by allowing Trump to shoulder himself on to every ballot in the country. Trump may generate a lot of cash and attract vocal support but it has never been more than a shrill minority and he generates coherent opposition just by speaking out. Secondly:  The Dobbs decision is a millstone around their waists that will pin them to the bottom and hold them there. Those things have left them incapable of generating any coherent initiative. 

    Here's the problem we all share.  The losers, no matter how much they lose by, are prepared to scream bloody murder in a coordinated, cookie cutter, nationwide attack on the integrity of the vote itself.  That is an attack on our country by witting and unwitting enemies that has to be met and roundly defeated. The people leading it need to be confronted immediately and dealt with severely. They are not prepared to abandon the assault on our society, even if this year is a setback. They will need firm correction. 

    This is what i think will happen.  The early and mail-in vote is outstripping 2020 and 2018, to this point.  That means the 'blue wave' is a crushing reality for our republican friends.  The political landscape is going to be grimmer than they can currently imagine.  I, personally, think the republican establishment will deal with their 'Trump' problem by the Ides of November.  It will be interesting to see how all that money will be dealt with. Women's empowerment will take a major stride forward and that's a good thing. It's all well and good for a liberal man such as myself to be alive to the positive things women bring to the table. It will be more useful to have republican men have to not just give a nod to women's concerns but be actually conversant.  That's how consensus is reached and progress made. 

    Now, we wait and now the fun part starts; where I get to see just how outré my politics really are. Well, fun to me.

    2006 was probably the most pivotal midterm of this century, at least.  GW was rendered totally irrelevant. Iraq was codified as the serious mistake it had been.  2010, in one way, marked the acceptance of the crypto-racist backlash that Trump and others have been riding ever since. 2018 merely reinforced the total rejection of Trump which had been underway since November 9th, 2016. This election gives the opportunity to cripple Trumpism and change the way things are viewed and quantified.  It's an opportunity for great progress. How we respond on the ninth and the following days is very important and an opportunity to see a very significant few days in real time and close up. That'll be fun too.

    How should we respond?   I'd like to see people spontaneously, in the streets in opposition to the attacks on our election systems. Just as the attacks on simple fairness and decency were met in response to the murder of George Floyd. We've done every reasoned and orderly thing possible to respond to the Big Lie. They keep coming in waves of coordinated attacks. It's time that was met forcefully and dealt with severely.

    Will that happen?  It's too soon to tell. 

    

In Russia

    There is no point in attempting to predict how things will work out with this invasion of Ukraine.  However, we can look at the existing dynamics without too much speculation.

    It is reasonable to observe that the Europeans and the world have had the better part of a century to think about what should have been done by the Democracies in the middle and late, 1930s. They are not reacting to the invasion of Ukraine as though it's the, 1939, invasion of Poland. In the last few years the Democracies have reacted much like they did in response to the partition of  Czechoslovakia and Anschluss. In, 1939, they declared ineffectual war.  They were unprepared.  This is not the case now.  We've armed NATO to the teeth in addition to direct aid to Ukraine.  It certainly appears as though the Russians are the least well equipped and the least cohesive force. We seem to be seeing a lot of Soviet Era rolling stock and hardware.  The Soviet Era was a very long time ago. The Russians seem to be falling victim to asymmetrical warfare. They certainly haven't won any hearts and minds. Morale has been reported to be a problem.

    Hearts and Minds. Russia is certainly suffering on the international stage for having no real engagement with the various Western media; social and traditional.  Sure, they have their bots and almost sleeper cells scattered around but that's nothing compared to a Zoom meeting with the U S Congress or appearances at the Oscars and Grammy Awards.  I can't remember anything like that before. It seems to be a new feature of that asymmetrical warfare. Zelensky is becoming a household name in the West. That adds to the unity of the Western Democracies. Hopefully, it makes him safer.

      By all accounts, the Russians have been decimated. At least, their initial committed forces.  That's interesting but Putin is kinda stuck now. 

   There doesn't seem to be any way to gauge sentiment among the Russians. In the ruling class and power elite, Putin really has no choice but to persevere.  Taken as individuals, the people surrounding Putin seem to be less than scrupulous, potentially violent people.  They make our malefactors of great wealth look like Boy Scouts. As these people's world shrinks and their fortunes are affected,  they well could reach the conclusion Putin has to go, in order to show a more benign face to the West and regain access to funds laundered in the West and the ability to travel beyond Russia.  Recently, there has been a wave of brutal murders of oligarchs. These murders do bear the brutish marks of Putin. There seem to be tensions there more significant than we might think. It could be that internal struggle will be more significant than Ukraine.  As for the average Russian?  Who knows?

    Russia will not invade a NATO country.  Russia is no match for NATO.  Putin has threatened nuclear war.  The truth is the Russians don't have the financial wherewithal or expertise to maintain a credible nuclear attack force. Even the Soviet arsenal was highly suspect.  It no longer exists.

    So, to this point, it's a series of unanswerable questions. It's reasonable to believe things will deteriorate. However, through the fog of war and bluster, we can see broad outlines. NATO will not attack but may well intervene just short of overt acts of war in Ukraine to tip the scales. In the long term, Russia has sustained lasting and severe damage. It's hard to see how any gain in Ukraine can be worth the consequences. That makes for a very weak negotiating position.

    

Cross Creek

     We were going to Pennsylvania for Christmas in just a day. They had built a new mall in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Cross Creek. It was very festive and very busy. I was filling our Christmas List as just one more chore before our planned departure. It must have been the 22nd but might have been the 21st. Nearly fifty years later I'm just not sure.

     That Christmas List was a thing of pride for my wife and myself.  It was the first year, in our young family, we could be generous, without worry, to those who had always been generous to us. We choose those gifts with care and pleasure. I don't remember what any of them might have been.

    I do remember, I was annoyed and impatient with the crowd and the long line I was in.

    My Dad bought the most wonderful Christmas gifts. He would watch and remember and then buy a, usually, simple thing, that you had needed, denied yourself and would use nearly every day. He was Greek Orthodox and born on January 6th. His Christmas Eve. As I get older, I've come to believe the accident of his birthdate had more to do with who he was than we ever realized. Love you Dad. 

    By example, as with most things I learned from him, he was a remarkably patient man. He was also very thoughtful, always with an inner dialogue that rarely left him without something apt to say in small matters and larger matters.  He would sit quietly with his coffee and then he would say, "Well." as he rose to do some small chore or go somewhere and you knew he had been in deep thought about some thing or other. 

    Like all boys, I loved snow and always rooted for a major snowfall. Looking out the window together  I would say, "I hope it keeps up." and he would say, " No you don't.  You want it to come down." It was his playful way of reminding me to be careful about what I was really wishing for. He is long gone and like most children, I sometimes regret I didn't make more plain to him how much I really noticed what he thought and said. I suppose we all do from time to time. 

    I was in my line with other adults and parents with children, all with purchases for the season. My schedule for the day was full and I was growing more impatient. Finally, among my 'humbug thoughts',  'I can't wait to be done here'. That triggered my Dad's voice in my mind.

    I can't wait. "I bet you can."  You're going to wait no matter what.  It's up to you how you do it. Who needs the negative energy of impatience?  Sure, there was a problem with the crowd, the delay, the growing lateness of the hour.  That problem was me. When I came into that moment of being, on the right foot, it all changed. The single shoppers, the parents, the children, the purchases waiting to be tallied, almost became parts of a Christmas display. My impatience started to become anticipation. I began to notice impatience and anticipation are really two sides of the same coin. That's a gift in and of itself.

    For years after, I would deliberately leave a gift or two unpurchased just to have an excuse to go to a mall or department store on Christmas Eve. Just to enjoy the crowds and atmosphere and remember a Christmas of long, long ago and my Dad.

    It's just one small thing, really.  When my eldest daughter was in college, I was single but I would hold a trim-a- tree party and decorate and really kinda make a big deal out of the whole thing. People to the house and so forth. She asked me, "Dad, why make such a fuss?"  I said that I had spent some Christmases alone in an unfamiliar city and the thing that comforted me was remembering Christmases Past. So, I decided that given the opportunity, we should make memories to sustain us when things couldn't be quite as we would hope.

    The years have gone by.  So many friends and loved ones are only still with us in our hearts, others are scattered.  It is time to be comforted and grateful for lessons well learned in the past so that these Christmases can be bright and cheerful as well.  I hope these little memories add to your joy.  Merry Christmas and Cheer to you and yours for the New Year! 

    

If I Should Die Before I Wake

    I was taught my Even Prayers by my beloved grandmother.  Now I lay me down to sleep.  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take…. Wait! What?  What was that middle thing again?

    It was right then I started looking for a way out.

    A way out. I’m going to draw a distinction between thought and belief. What we know intellectually is different from what comes to us as belief.  Intellectually, it becomes obvious that every system of belief that posits some continuation of an individual identity or soul is really just an effort at denial. Denial of the finite nature of our existence. No hell below us, above us only sky. 

    Well, that got outta hand pretty quick.  Did you follow that?  There may be a quiz later.

    All I’m trying to say is, I think when I die, I’ll be dead.  It’ll be just like before I was born but when I think of others,  I irresistibly imagine them in Heaven.  Not just any Heaven but Thorton Wilder’s Heaven from “Our Town”.  Having just rewatched “Our Town”,  I’m tempted to open another can of worms by saying, "White People’s Heaven"  but I won’t. 

    I think that the idea of coincidence plays a bigger role in life than we think.  I also think that the idea of synchronicity explains an awful lot but then the idea of ‘mystic cords’ begins to build a bridge from intellect to belief. Beyond even synchronicity, at times there seems to be an almost mystic connection between us one to the other.

    How do you explain this?  Out of the blue, I emailed my eldest daughter with an innocent question:  Were her grandmother, and two aunts sisters?  They were. It was an idle question on something I never really had clear. I was surprised to have an immediate, terse answer. “Yes”.  I was working on something and never expected my middle-of-the-night email to be answered until the next day. That caused me to respond with a recounting of these feminine familial connections even to my daughter’s great-grandmother.  I was just thinking out loud, kinda half connected to the thought I was working on about the one extraordinary aunt. 

    My daughter responded that the reason she was up in the middle of the night was her daughter, my granddaughter had just had a daughter of her own.  I was a great grandfather.  That’s way cool.  It’s something I would have discovered the following day in the normal course of things.  What was it that told me to insert myself in that moment? It was a feeling of presque vu.

    That whole thing is a bit much to be explained by coincidence or synchronicity, especially the recounting of the female lines in the family before knowing the lines had been extended.  Then, to top the whole thing off, I said, to a friend of mine, the first friend I told about the new arrival, that Penny and I were great-grandparents.  Penny and I certainly are my daughter’s parents but we haven’t been together in over 40 years.  Hell, the woman has been dead for 15 years,  apparently occupying a ladder-back chair in Thorton Wilder’s Heaven. Did she rise from that chair, break the quiet contemplation of eternity to whisper in my ear that something important was afoot?

    I don’t know what I think of that idea and I don’t know what I believe about that idea.

    That’s a selfish thought.  Is there something beyond my sphere that’s important about the arrival of that beautiful child? Something that warranted a general announcement thru the ether or is it just the way things work, if we can listen?

https://bit.ly/JimRetzerBook 

How Stupid Do You Want Me To Think You Think I am?

     Oh for God's sake!  Trump started the litany of "voter fraud" in the spring of 2020 because even the dumbest member of the republican elite had realized by then there was no chance he would ever be elected. What no one mentions is, it wasn't the Russians in 2016.  It was the voting machines that had been abused since 2004. The ones that hadn't been replaced in a nationwide initiative, had been repaired. That's what the Stein Audits were about, to force repair of the highly suspect machines.  Until those machines were replaced and repaired rural republican candidates had been spotted a 7 to 10 percentage point lead in any election, nationwide.  That included all statewide candidates. The idea of the perennial attempts at "Russian interference"  was tossed out as a fig leaf to help preserve faith in our elections.  Even I was surprised when the Russian "fig leaf" actually showed Trump really had committed treason. The Russians and others have always been knocking at the door.  Until Trump, no one had treasonously answered the knock. The FBI wasn't spying on Trump.  They were spying on the Russians like they always do.  They just caught Trump. Now, the machine advantage was gone and with it the swing states. Working with that advantage, if you count 3rd party votes, Trump failed at majority election, in '16, by 12 million votes. Even with Russian connivance there was never reason to believe he would fare any better in '20.

    The decision was taken that a coup would have to be staged to keep their collective snouts in the public trough and planning began in earnest. They doubled down on vote suppression tactics that had produced guys like Johnson, Cruz, DeSantis, Kemp. They cemented further, the Feral American/Duck Dynasty Base with the usual, baseless smear campaigns. They hoped that the Duck Dynasty boys would be adequate shock troops. Can you imagine what these jokers must have thought when the guy in the headdress showed up leading the Gravy Seals? The plan was to take several members of Congress hostage and the ensuing situation would give justification for declaring martial law. Then the confusion would allow a rejection of the election results. These guys actually thought the murder of Mike Pence (whom they all considered hapless) would really give punch to the impetus for overwhelming authority. One of the funniest things is Pence acting like he doesn't understand this.  Maybe he doesn't.  Either way, it's hilarious.

    Part of this "plan" that the Duck Dynasty troops kept referring to on January 6th, was the reconnoiter tours sedition friendly members of Congress had staged in the days leading up to the attack, to familiarize useful idiots with the layout of the Capitol. I don't think they realized how resilient building security really is.  No one was put in zip-ties, no one was assassinated. No "high value" target was even allowed to be approached. They were outmaneuvered at every turn because they just weren't very bright.

    Another part of the plan was to have local, useful idiots, abuse their campaign funds to charter buses to bring potential rioters to the Capitol. These boys bear watching. They're the same ones encouraging turning school board meetings into rathole radio zombie rallies.

    Oh dear!  This is a conspiracy!  No, no, it's not.  It's the usual confederacy of dunces. The way you can tell it was Trump's idea is: It didn't fuckin' work!  The guy's a train wreck.  I can't wait for him to screw up a one-car funeral.

    Seriously, try to keep your eye on the ball.  These people literally tried to steal our government and think they should be given a walk for no other reason than they failed.  

    I don't think I'm in the minority when I say, "I don't like having my intelligence insulted." That has been a major component of republican tactics since Reagan. As the passage of time has conclusively shown, Reagan didn't belong in the same room with Jimmy Carter.  Particularly thru rathole radio and then Fox News, there has been a concerted effort to make stupidity fashionable.  That's not new. It's always been a component of the various Nativist and Know Nothing movements. They always try to galvanize the feral elements of the population.  It's just never been this prolonged or sophisticated before.

    Here's something no one has commented on.  As a racist, "law and order" trope, republicans love citing the nationwide demonstrations for social justice triggered by the death of George Floyd. Republicans never mention the spontaneous, nationwide celebrations when it was confirmed Trump had lost. People realized they could unite and insist on common decency.  With a minimum of organization, we could easily meet in the streets and demonstrate who we really are as a people. Who we emphatically insist on being as a people.  Can you imagine what would have happened had Trump tried to remain in the White House for so much as a day longer than he had to be allowed to remain?  The obvious truth is, had they attempted to push it, there wouldn't be many voices left to come from the right.

    In other countries, the world over, supporters of failed coups are summarily executed, quietly murdered or simply disappear.  You can hear the panic in the voices and statements of the coup supporters who get that factoid. That's certainly what would have happened to these people in the country they would create. It just reinforces the fact, so-called "conservatives" would create a country,  not worth defending, where they couldn't survive. They would freeze in the winter, swelter in the summer and eventually would drown in puddles of their own shit.

https://bit.ly/JimRetzerBook

 

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Three Score And Ten

    This needs to be said first.  It’s been seventy years.   Inside, I’m still the same Little League, first baseman looking out over the field for the next ground ball or pop-fly or the next play at the plate.  Somewhere, inside, I haven’t changed.  My voice to myself is the same voice I’ve always heard.  That doesn’t seem confusing to me.

    My first thoughts are about privilege.  Living these years is a privilege that has been denied to so many of my friends.  The only tribute I can pay to those who have gone is to live fully, with joy and love.  To never waste a minute I share with them in my heart. That is the nearest remedy to grief I know.

       "We call that person who has lost a father an orphan and a widower a man who has lost his wife.  But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, what do we call him?  Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence." That's just beautiful and you can feel the grief of the 19th-century gentleman who wrote it.

    I've also heard and repeated this quote:  “If our parents are very lucky,

 we are all born to be orphans.”

    The simple and ultimately,, perhaps, the most profound, "You were here and it mattered."

    Every year, no matter our age, gives the opportunity to grow, to become better informed.  The number of the year or the number of years doesn’t change that opportunity. It is a great disappointment, so much of what you learn can’t change the past.

    Change the past.  People often wish they could go back and change one thing or another.  I never think that way.  There has never been a reason to believe, if I had it to do over again, I would be any smarter.  All things considered, I’ve never met anyone who would be smarter.  It just doesn’t work that way.  It’s a useless exercise.

    A few years ago it occurred to me that we should live every day of our lives as though we were going to live a hundred years with only the caveat that, if we would be known for that century by what we did today, what would that be? Not sure where that came from. Had I died a year younger I never would have had that thought.  Privilege.

    I do wish someone had sat me down when I was 20 and told me that and made me sit until I actually understood it.  That would have been a blessing, not a privilege but it didn’t happen.  I had to wait.  I wonder what I’ll learn next year.  At 70, that’s the real trick, isn’t it?  

    The real trick.  Someone said, what we don’t understand tends to look like a conspiracy or a magic trick.  Conspiracies, real or imagined are just confederacies of dunces and, of course, magic is just sleight of hand.  The operative phrase is, “what we don’t understand”.  It’s not some trick to identify what we don’t understand.  It’s a matter of developing a systematic approach to answering our own questions.  I’ve always said, the most valuable thing I learned in college was how to read systematically, no matter the subject.  How to progress from the general to the specific.  A friend of mine refined the idea further by simply saying, they had taught him how to learn.  We tend to think of college like it’s some sort of trade school.  That’s not quite right.  Another friend said college was a way to prove you could be relied on to do your chores on time.  In a way, that’s closer.

    Well,  I’m never going to play in any major league.  I’m never going to be invited to any hall of fame. Neither will you but that’s not why we played little league. That’s not why tomorrow will include at least some small effort at that potential century.

   

    I thought there would be more to this when I sat down but life isn’t about milestones or calendars. It’s not about some biblical allotment we might be granted.  It’s not about the whim of some god hinged to our fate.  It is about our simple faith and expectation in our idea of tomorrow.

I'm Never Goin Back To My Old School

     For this space, this will probably seem a little too personal at first but there are some basic values and common assumptions here. Maybe I can get at them.

    Let's start at the beginning and see if it's too much. My Grandparents owned a farm about 6 miles north of Zelienople, Pennsylvania. While we lived there my Father died.  I was 2 1/2 and I stayed on at the farm for a good while.  Zelienople was our town and the farm, to one so young, was my world. Eventually, Mom remarried and we bought a tract house in Cranberry, about 12 miles away and I became a Fernway kid.

    I have always thought of that combination of farm and town and the people as the orderly backhand of an indifferent God.  It was as if, having set such a salubrious place in motion He said, " That'll do." and turned His attention to where it was needed. We usually gave our God attention out of gratitude rather than need or fear.

    Our differences, though momentarily vexing are trivialities. That, sometimes, makes us careless with facts and vulnerable to embarrassment. It's not like the larger world that demands the fuller attention of our God. 

   In that little 15 mile or so, orderly circle were several elementary schools and two high schools. It was decided this needed expansion and consolidation and the whole, kind of organic system was folded into a single school district with a single high school. Common sense. LOL, in some aspects that's where common sense ended.

    I was the kinda kid that if you handed me a book, I read the thing. Textbooks included. I never waited to be assigned certain sections.  I would read them all at the beginning of the year. That's why I knew something of the history of our native American predecessors in the area. I must have been an annoying little shit.

    They named the new High School,  Seneca Valley. I thought it was odd because the Seneca Tribe never had influence within 80 miles of our little corner of the world.  The controlling tribe in our area had been the Delaware and the local clan were the Lenni Lenape. None of these people were what you'd call, 'murdering savages', no matter what Washington said.  They were mostly interested in commerce. You'd have to think they just weren't very good at hunting. 200 years later, a walk thru a freshly turned field anywhere in the area would yield arrowheads leftover from apparently, thousands of errant shots. By the mid-twentieth century they had either wandered off or been completely assimilated. The closest thing to a major watercourse and valley was the Connoquenessing Creek. Nothing named Seneca or named by the Seneca. So, no Seneca, no Valley.

    Just odd but kinda par for the local course. You have to remember, television was two things in those days. Sitcoms and some dramas honoring post-war, baby boomer America and Westerns. Indians were major supporting characters and any sort of accuracy was lost in the fog.  I assumed they selected Seneca because Delaware would have been confusing. Members of the Seneca Tribe were even involved in the dedication of the new school.  I can't imagine what they must have thought of that collection of bohunks, shit kickers and earnest burghers. I imagine they were compensated and mildly amused.

    That was all fine for 50 years or so. The sports teams were called the Raiders. That didn't really make any sense either. The Seneca had been hunters and fishermen, subsistence farmers and traders. Not a whole lot of ferocity. They certainly never raided anyone. The school team colors of black and blue were kind of appropriate.

    This crop of kids is different. They pretty much insist that when we know something is wrong we should quit doing it. To some people, that's not as refreshing as you might think. Obviously, it's insulting to reduce our Native American friends to caricatures.  The students went to the school board and convinced them to quit mindlessly insulting strangers. The board decided to remove depictions of our Native American friends and (in this case, distant) neighbors but keep the name of the school. They went so far as to contact the actual Seneca Tribal Elders who resisted the urge to say, "What?" and agreed.

    Somehow this got conflated into the current cultural wars. The very straight-faced criticisms run the gamut from the socialist (Puhleess!) plot known as Cancel Culture to an almost reasonable-sounding appeal to continue to honor history so that it might not be lost and we all suffer. (From what?)

    I say we should honor history accurately. Within a few hundred yards of the present-day high school was a settlement of the Delaware-speaking Lenni Lenape clan called Murdering Town.  How's that for ferocity?  I wanna see that mascot. The Murderette Majorettes? Although, I can't imagine the Senecas wanna be drawn into that discussion.

    The Murdering Town solution has the virtue of echoing the inaccuracy of the Seneca naming.  It's doubtful if the Lenni Lenape called the place Murdering Town. The real name was Sakonk.  Just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?  The story goes that George Washington and Christopher Gist stumbled across a little Lenni Lenape settlement where the Breakneck Creek (that's pretty ferocious) joins the Connoquenessing.  When they left, a fellow volunteered to guide them but instead took a shot at them. Gist didn't say it in so many words but his account indicates Washington and Gist could run faster scared than the Delaware could run mad. As a result of that incident, Gist changed the name, in his journal, from Sakonk to Murdering Town. I can't think of another place that was named in a fit of pique. I, personally, think the Harmonists got it right when they gave the area the almost dreamlike name of Eidenau. Now, we just call it Harmony Junction.

If you liked that there's a lot more.

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Minorities. No, Not Those Kind.

    An important tenet of all representative forms of government has been an active concern for legislative and political minorities. The phrase we use and have used is : The tyranny of the majority. It's a useful concept and needs consideration. It's a concept that underlies our form of government. The idea of the Senate,  even the original idea of Senators being appointed rather than chosen by election is a defense against the tyranny of the majority and was actually seen as a bulwark against raw democracy which we still don't like.

    Thirteen, fourteen colonies did run the risk of being dominated by the more populated, coastal areas. I don't think the founders envisioned  50 states, with at least twenty of those states sparsely populated and naturally parochial. I'm sure they didn't see how that block could be wielded as a kind of tyranny of the minority. We have that in the present day.  There doesn't seem to be a practical, structural solution. Open and fair elections with an informed electorate seems to be that fix. That takes time which our system is designed to provide.

    Gawd, I'm boring myself.  Are you still awake?  I'll try to do better.

    Everyone hates the idea of a Member of Congress growing rich in office.  I know I hate it.  Don't you? Well, we can rest easy.  It just doesn't happen that often.  Usually, these guys have built fortunes in the private sector that allow them to go into politics.  For the most part, it's open and above board. By the way, my dentist makes more than my Congressperson. My father-in-law before he retired made 3 times what my Congressperson makes and he's almost painfully honest. He would have considered politics as declasse and underemployment. On the other hand, I don't think he ever had a job he enjoyed. That's too bad.

    That brings me to Mitch McConnell, behind my father-in-law and me, the third whitest man in American. I don't know how honest the guy is but he was a millionaire or near to it, when he went to the Senate and his increase in wealth seems to have to do with marrying well. I don't like the guy's politics but I do think he's doing his job well.  Just like not understanding the idea of the tyranny of the majority,  I don't think people understand that the duty of the opposition is to oppose. Not only do I think people don't get that, I don't think people understand how important that duty is. That's McConnell's job and his duty. One thing he recently got jumped all over about was his statements that he thought Trump was responsible for the Insurrection.  He then stated if Trump happened to be his party's candidate in 2024, he'd support him. The first statement acknowledged an obligation to the truth. The next statement acknowledged his obligation to his party and his responsibility to his constituents. His constituents voted for him and they deserve representation.  They have no fewer rights in their local majorities than those on the left. That's a bedrock principle, too often, partisans don't understand.

    One example my friends on the left might understand. We love the New Deal but the positive things we love were the result of that tension between power and opposition. Here's something people don't get about opposition and majority during the New Deal. An awful lot of the New Dealers were, in fact, outright communists.  The opposition tempered their goals and that benefited us all to this day. That's incredibly simplistic but still true.  In fact, the New Deal fights over the extent and form of public assistance, federal involvement in the economy, packing of the Court and the composition of the courts is a distant mirror of our current debates. It's a useful reflection.

   Joe McCarthy was a part of the Post- Roosevelt reaction and an idiot that bordered on criminality.  I think he went well over the line into criminality but I'll settle for 'idiot'.  There's a recent effort to compare McCarthyism to the current rejection of Trumpism.  It's important to note that it is perfectly legal to be a communist and participate lawfully in our political system. It may not be popular but it certainly isn't un-American. It was noted at the time and needs to be remembered that the most un-American thing about The Un-American Activities Committees were the activities of the committees themselves. So far, the objection to the Trumpers is they are demonstrably incompetent and an awful lot of them have committed crimes. That's quite different from political naivete.  In addition, the naivete involved with Trumpism is clothed in a distasteful kind of viciousness. MAGA.

    It's more than worthy of note we are doing something unique in our approach to the economy and to assistance.  For the first time, we have provided broad financial assistance free of the filters of government involvement. There's no bureaucratic or private layer imposed. No administered block grants or other such to interfere with individual discretion. The effects of that change need close monitoring. I, personally agree that it will speed and broaden the recovery. If it works, it opens the door for the idea of a universal basic income based on our productivity as a culture and society. We've been providing a universal basic income for decades but we set it round with bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo directing and limiting how that money can be spent. It's a shame that's so boring because it's so important. If you consider how the majority of federal revenue has always been generated and look at how the Clinton Budget actually ended up balanced, the deficits generated by the current rescue and recovery should be much smaller than currently predicted.  That remains to be seen. Is Biden right that the economy grows from the bottom up and the middle out? The minority has thought so for decades. We've just empowered those sectors.  It's time to watch this example of tension between majority and minority play out.

    Here's an interesting kinda factoid in that connection.  The second-largest retail shopping season behind Christmas has always been income tax return time. So much so that the EITC, at least in part, is an effort to broaden that economic activity. Who among us hasn't, at some point, waited on our tax return to buy a stereo or tv, a major appliance, a car or some other durable good? The stimulus payments are looking better and better, especially when you consider there has been a spike in savings associated with those universal payments.

   I doubt if this next will get any better on the boring scale but it'll probably start an argument. The idea of enslaved people as three-fifths of a person has been seen as a racist exercise. It was actually just a response to the tyranny of the majority. If you think about it, it was a major stride.  African slavery was based on the idea the enslaved were sub-human. At that point, slavery had been in practice here and debated for at least 2 centuries. It was the first time Africans were acknowledged as something other than livestock. It could be seen as a first step in reforming a major economic and social wrong and I think it was so seen at the time by some. It takes a very long time to reform centuries of practice, perhaps it takes additional centuries. That concept always begs the question:  If not now, when? 

    The tyranny of the majority.  Here's another of the Founder's bulwarks against tyranny we don't like much; the Electoral College.  What we actually don't like is the handful of times that idea has been turned on its head.

    This is what's good and perhaps indispensable in the concept of the Electoral College.  It forces national candidates to leave the coasts and familiarize themselves with the concerns of the entire country.  It doesn't just give an added weight to those few electoral votes to be found in the hinterlands. It makes the concerns that motivate those votes essential.  We like that. The same is true of the partisan primary system.

    Well, that's all a nice rehash of things most people who've read more than comic books already know. Snooze. There won't be a quiz. We like that.

    I don't think we can conceive a social system that can't be corrupted or at least manipulated to give an unintended result.  I think that's what we have fallen victim to in some of the recent electoral cycles. I think the republicans have been deliberately trying to subvert the Electoral College to give us minority results and thru chicanery impose a tyranny of a relatively unpleasant minority. 

    Here's some more chicanery that needs addressed, now. When people think of the filibuster they think of Jimmy Stewart going hoarse defending the Boy Scouts. (About 7 of us know the word 'filibuster' refers to someone who makes a private, non-government sanctioned war.) Jimmy Stewart has been rendered bullshit by collective chicanery. No individual Senator need be willing to take and continuously hold the floor and halt the other business of the Senate in defense of some principle. The minority leader needn't even designate a specific Don Quixote to demand a super-majority to advance the demonstrated will of the people. The rules have been corrupted to the point the Fillibuster has become an off-hand veto. A tool of a tyrannical minority too easily and too frequently used.

    Obviously, the most sophisticated, detailed polling that takes into account every possible variation and eventuality is the election itself. That's what renders the final result. Trump has never come within shouting distance of topping that poll. The attempts to subvert and shake confidence in that final public opinion poll are serious crimes against The United States and should be punished as such. In the end, meticulously considered rights or not, the minority is still the minority.

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Aww, Bull

     Every day sees another article in the clueless media about how Trump is finally done.  These articles are the only thing that's kept this loser in the public eye for years. Donald Trump, thank God, never got started.

    Trump has never been anything or been seen as anything by the majority but a hapless clown. That sure makes the republicans mad when you point that out but when you look at it they haven't advanced anything but hapless clowns since Eisenhower and even he fell victim to the cabal of Sherman Adams and Nixon. (Gee, I guess they thought we forgot.)  Trump is just the most hapless in a growing line of abject failures.

    Here's the truth.  In 2016, if you count 3rd party votes, 12 million more people voted against Trump than voted for him.  They managed to commit enough voter fraud in enough key places to turn the Electoral College into a sort of Special Olympics that awarded the White House as a sad participation trophy. The only thing Trump could do with it is steal.  Thievery is easy, especially with power.  Running the government is hard, especially if your only attainments in life are semi-sophisticated larceny. Trump sure proved that and he proved the majority could see right thru him. Not the kind of transparency you'd expect.

    The voter fraud that was committed by the republicans in 2016, was breathtaking. The nationwide scope of local republican apparatchiks abusing the voting machines was literally astonishing and it had been going on since 2004. The decision was made to quietly replace the abused machines, reform the voting methods and tolerate the truncated, ridiculous Trump attempt at presidency rather than see thousands of local republican officials troop off to prison.  The republicans were thrown a bone of Kremlin interference in the election which they were eager to embrace.  Everyone was amazed when it became apparent the Trump people actually had committed treason.  I was astounded when they tried to get away with it, caught red-handed, by belittling the people who caught them.  How the hell do you maintain unwarranted power by insulting people's intelligence?  It turns out a big part of that escape was by making outright stupidity fashionable. That's what guys like Limbaugh , Hannity,  Carlson and the host of blowhards on rathole radio have been up to for thirty years. Lucky for us that shit doesn't hold-up well even if the Russians did pump, at least, 30 million into the effort thru the NRA which they did.  Who knows how much more cash was laundered into the republican party thru guys like Flynn and Manafort and Trump himself. There's no doubt we've been subjected to a Kremlin driven psy/ops campaign for years which the Sedition Caucus is a demonstrable part of. Bought and paid for in plain sight. An honest republican is one when he's bought he stays bought.

    Let's talk about 2020. If you do simple math, apparently, the electorate grew by 26 million souls.  I'd love to see the demographics that support that. The guy that lost by 12 million votes 4 years earlier, lost by 7 million votes in a head to head contest. That seems wildly improbable when you consider Trump didn't lift one finger to secure so much as one additional supporter.  I'm pretty certain the answer to my questions would be found in scrutinizing the Red State votes as closely as the swing states have been examined.  I think Barr gave away the game when he told Trump there had been fraud but not enough to make him president. That's another thing.  How the hell did Barr become Attorney General at right about the time he should have been getting out of prison for the shit he pulled in '91 and '92?  Incredible.

    Barr further gave the game away when he resigned a month short of the inauguration. He went to Trump, determined Trump was going ahead with the coup attempt and refused to be a part of it.  I assume Barr figured trying to get away with treason twice would be pushing his luck even 30 years apart. Barr also made it plain he knew Trump's idiot attempt wouldn't work.  By this time even the slow ones in the back saw that Trump was in well over his head and destined to drown. Now, we're just watching his hapless ass go down for the third time and he's taking what's left of republican power with him.

    In case there's any doubt left, this is what I think.

    In other countries, supporters of failed coups are summarily executed, quietly murdered or simply disappear. It's rare they only face long prison sentences. Barr seems to have figured that out and Trump is obviously terrified.  He should be.

    Al Qaeda was not given a seat on the 9/11 Commission. It's hard to see why the Sedition Caucus should be invited to the 1/6/2021 Coup Commission.

    Karma grinds slow but exceedingly fine.  If you ignore the media you see Trump has never done anything but stand in line for ridicule and disgrace. 

    Don't be too optimistic. Remember, a washed-up movie actor and a gang of thieves seized power a mere 4 years after Nixon should have gone to prison for life and we're still cleaning the shit off the walls that hit the fan then.

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The Third Way

     We seem to have adopted a 3 pronged approach to dealing with COVID 19. We should examine it,  if for no other reason than because it's so screamingly stupid.  Our Founding Fathers may have hit on something.  They may have found a way for a society to never actually mature.  None of that lugubrious, sober-sided stuff for us. In some way, some have decided we don't have to make sense as long as we make money.

    History going back at least 2000 years shows us the only sure-fire response to an epidemic or a pandemic is quarantine. Give the malady nowhere to go and it dies out. We tried that and within a certain group, it's been very successful. We have found unique and creative ways to deal with the isolation. To a large degree, we have even maintained a sense of humor. 

    Another idea is "herd immunity".  There's no clear explanation of how or why that would actually work but carried to the predicted extreme it would produce in excess of 5 million dead Americans.   'Well, if he dies, he dies. Screw it.  Let's have another beer.'  I can't imagine that as a government policy but a lot of the Trump people still think that's the way to go.

   Another approach is to rely on science and vaccination.  That worked on smallpox, polio, whooping cough and on and on. In the next year or so we will see how that works. The anti-vaxxers have made a contribution to that effort to secure the herd whether they realize it or not. They've managed to start a little backburn of active covid to mop up what the science has missed. It's a good way to cull the stupid ones out and make us all stronger.

    So, this is what we have done. One segment of the population isolated, social distanced, washed hands, wore masks, waited for the vaccine and prayed when appropriate. The other segment said, "Party on Ted."  Freely picked their noses and prayed the vaccine gets here in time for Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and Dad.  There is a portion of that segment that prays at the drop of a hat anyway so, how much that counts I'm not sure but some certainly have made money if that's what they were praying for.

    There is a third prong. Another segment that dealt with the pandemic in a not so unique or creative way. They died.

    They died and there is increasing reason to believe hundreds of thousands of them died needlessly. That IS stupid.

    

Til There Are No Rich No More

    Alexandra Ocasio Cortez is the only public figure I've seen who has even passingly mentioned what needs done about the unsustainable concentrations of wealth we are falling victim to.

    Everyone else has either implied or outright said the beneficiaries of those piles of wealth are bad people.  I can't see that as universally true and I can see why it offends some people.  I don't like having my motives questioned or being called names because I'm poor and I can't imagine I'd like it any better if I were rich. I certainly could stand giving it the old college try.

    Here's the consistent problem.  Industrialization has always and will always create great piles and concentrations of wealth far beyond the needs or even comprehension of any single individual or group.  The question always has been; what do we do about that?  Good, bad it doesn't really matter, it just is. The motives and personal interests of those at the top of that concentration or at the bottom really have no bearing on the actual problem.  That's why class-based solutions and criticisms have very little impact.  It's the wrong approach.  The goal of all successful forms of social organization has always been, "the greatest good for the greatest number". Contrary to what a lot of people would try to convince you of that does not imply or call for some sort of communism or socialism.  It doesn't mean we should eliminate wealth. It does mean we should manage that wealth properly.  Actually, the creation and concentration of wealth is useful and even necessary and should be encouraged.  The trick is to manage it to reduce or eliminate general harm. That's what economists have been observing, commenting on and trying to accomplish since the days of Smith and Malthus on to Marx and Engles, on to the present day.

    We have a perfect example of how and why wealth should have been properly managed close at hand. The undeniable truth is, had we not allowed violence to be done to the tax codes decades ago we would be in a much better position to manage the emergency we face with the pandemic.  Were we not mired in senseless debt already, the borrowing necessary to address this problem would not be the disaster it certainly is going to inevitably become.  Eventually, we are all, including the famous 1%, going to sacrifice to pay back this real money, being borrowed from real people. Real money, real people.  We can't lose sight of that facet and fact. It should be considered at every step as an underlying condition.

    This should be considered too.  I've done the math. If we confiscated every cent in the hands of the famous 1% it wouldn't pay our bills for even a couple years.  Applied another way, it wouldn't make much of a dent in our National Debt. Anyone contemplating that extremity as a solution better start work on a plan B.

    Ocasio-Cortez, contrary to what has been said, has not proposed anything radical or unworkable.  What she and others have done is look at what worked and proposed we return to it.  The post-Great Depression and post-World War Two tax policies and codes were adopted across the Western Democracies to eliminate the seemingly inevitable boom and bust cycles of earlier capitalism that are tied to these concentrations of fantastic wealth.  In comparison, what we have seen over the last 40 years seems to prove those tax codes and reforms worked and eliminating them has failed. It's not radical, it's not rocket science, it's common sense.

    Somehow the idea of a more level playing field has been portrayed as anti-capitalist.  That's not true or even sensible. Every problem presents an opportunity for solutions.  In the face of these serious challenges we have the right time and the right people of goodwill to not just survive but to propel us into a very profitable future for everyone. We have a clear map we have already drawn and followed to success.  We would be fools not to consult it and follow it again and in the process discard that which has clearly failed.

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What Are Ya Doing, Writing A Book?

    I've been asked that a few times as I posted to this blog.  The answer is, yes. Yes, I am.  I'll tell you why.

    As events progressed in 2015, 2016 and inevitably, 2017 I became more and more involved in the politics but not in the day to day events. As I saw simple, basic values and shared conclusions be ignored and trampled I realized those were the things that needed discussed and reinforced, so I set out to do just that. I don't think you have to be oh so serious about things we've all known since we sat at our parent's knee but sometimes we do have to be reminded.

    I'm all but 70 years old.  I've seen a great deal first hand and participated in some of it. In addition, I've habitually and systematically read somewhere around 500 pages a week for well over 45 years. That's a privilege of opportunity not a lot of people have had. I'm not sure what that means other than if I say something is a fact; chances are I can tell you why I think that in detail. It also means I can generally tell you more than the average person would ever want to know and I'm not shy about doing so. Obviously.

    If you'd like to read the book I made out of this just scroll down to January of 2017 and start reading. It's not too bad but doesn't make a lot of sense read that way.  These efforts are much better and more informative if read in some sort of logical (maybe) order.  That's what the book is.  I wrote this stuff as it occurred to me with the intention of organizing it later.  I did. (maybe).

    A little Jim goes a long way. With that in mind, this makes a perfect bathroom or coffee table book.  You can put this book down and I encourage you to.  I also encourage you to wash your hands, maybe light a candle as a courtesy. Thanks to the publisher guy it's also an attractive thing to have laying around. The cover makes me look smarter than I really am and it will do the same for you for a mere 12 bucks.  Can't beat that. 

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Hard Truth

    I try not to comment on day to day affairs in favor of observing underlying values. I try for a light touch and maybe a smile or chuckle.  I try not to change people's minds.  I want people to feel as though, now they know why they have always thought that way. Isn't that nice?
    A few days ago I wrote about how I might feel if I were 30 years younger and confronted with the pandemic. Yeah, screw that. We better get focused.  The truth is, people have known how to effectively deal with this health threat for a century. None of the public health measures urged or imposed in response to this emergency are new, "novel" or less than reasonable.  Been there, done that.  Wash your damned hands,  wear a mask and stay the hell away from me ya stupid snot bubbles.

    Don't tell me about your "freedoms".  Going back to colonial times no one has ever had the right to endanger the public health.  Also, going back to colonial times, you and four or five of your knuckleheaded buddies don't have the power to determine what threatens or serves the public health.  That's the governors. Always has been. Watching these people discuss their rights and freedoms is like watching Chimps sniff a Rubik's Cube. Try not to be one of the chimps. 
    I haven't lost any friends or close associates to the Coronavirus. Wanna know why?  I don't have stupid friends. I have a lifelong habit of keeping ignoramuses at arm's-length.  Six feet hasn't been much of a stretch.
    I'm one of those liberals.  I believe, in almost a spiritual way, in the dignity of my fellow man.  Ya know why? Because that's the best way to have a world where I can survive and prosper and my children and grandchildren can survive and prosper.  It's entirely selfish and the smart bet.  Ya never looked at the Golden Rule that way did ya?  Blaise Pascal and Nietzche hold hands with Jeremy Bentham. I probably just wandered out of your depth. Sorry. Look it up.
   There are two ways to deal with an epidemic or a pandemic.  Stop it in it's tracks by giving it no opportunity to multiply and spread or let it rampage until it carries away all the vulnerable.
    Thinning the herd is a seemingly hard-hearted and kinda mean way to go about things but that's what we've been doing right along.  After the initial shock and false steps of the first wave, the intelligent, viable members of our society have settled into the common-sense measures necessary to preserve our society.  We isolate, wash our hands wear masks and pray when it's appropriate.  Others have not and God bless them.  The truth is, we are now witnessing the weaker members of the herd being swept away. They have dictated their own demise and they are welcome to it.  We should thank them and encourage them.  The hard truth is, there is no reason to believe the family members or close associates of these people (The people they are most likely to infect and kill) are of any more value than they are themselves.  Speaking of useless; there is the fact this would be over by now, like it is in other countries if these people had behaved with common sense. Screw 'em.
    That seems pretty mean but have these people made any other choice?

Hand Baskets and Hard Times

    People will find jokes in just about any circumstance.  It's human nature and people are playful by nature. We've all seen cartoons and skits making fun of ourselves in quarantine.  We've seen the lampoons of our leaders being clueless.  Caricatures of even the most respected still bring a smile and even a chuckle. I remember, years ago, visiting with my uncle and discussing the news of that week, the Challenger disaster.  I said,  everyone would remember where they were when they heard about that and one way to tell how seriously people took it was, there were no jokes about it.  Then, being my uncle, deflating his oh so serious nephew, he proceeded to tell me five or six jokes he'd heard in the last few days. So much for that idea. He also had a theory that the majority of dirty jokes, at least,  came from guys in prison. Mabee so.
    My favorite joke about this current mess is; "I was told there would be a handbasket."  It's just so absurd it makes me laugh. My mother used to say, "The world's been going to Hell in a handbasket since Day One."  She was a shrewd euchre player and a big believer in never getting too excited or too discouraged.
    Excited and discouraged. That certainly describes a lot of what we're seeing but I think fear explains more of what we're seeing than anything else.  I'm old.  There really isn't much you can do to me that would interfere with my plans or aspirations.  A few years ago my doctor was cautioning me about some risk or other.  "Doc, at my age, to hear you tell it, getting out of bed in the morning is like stepping in front of a moving bus."  I think that's when he just gave up. It did make me think about being a younger man with a lot more in front of me, a lot more in my basket.
    I've been taken aback by the outright belligerence we're seeing, torturously dressed in some grotesque form of patriotism or other outright bullshit. Why?
    How would I feel if I were 30 years younger, which most people are.  If I had a family, future expectations that I was responsible for. I'd be worried to death. A cough, a sniffle, a random fever or a summer sneeze would become a major threat.  A threat I would take personally. Throw in the loss of employment, financial ruin, the prospect of homelessness. Frightened people are suspicious, resentful, unreasonable.  If you frighten people for months on end it's understandable some, at least, will become irrational.
    What do we do about that?  I don't think we should belittle our friends and neighbors dealing with those, seemingly unrelenting, very real fears. We can only support them and keep reminding them of the proper response.  Get your shots, limit your contacts, wash your hands, wear a mask and pray when it's appropriate. It's the least we can do and you can usually count on frightened people to do the least.

The Boob's Tube

    Someone mentioned the Challenger Disaster and the events and decisions that led up to it.  Yep, it's still depressing and it still makes me mad.
    The Challenger missed its launch date by a few days because of what sure seemed like a comedy of errors.  One day a wrench that would be laying on a bench in most people's garage couldn't be found in all of Cape Kennedy.  The next day a power drill had to be retrieved from a guy's car in the parking lot because NASA didn't have one.  These things were kind of mirthfully reported on the evening news with a 'meh ', kinda shrug,. Whattaya gonna do?
    The third day was cold for Florida, too cold for the design limitations of the launch rockets and it looked like another scrub. They fatally decided to go.
    The engineers and techies who had traditionally administered NASA had been replaced by the Reagan people with political appointees better suited to projecting image. In an other word; fools.
    It has been reported that the Reagan Oval Office had 3 televisions running all the time to monitor news and projected image.  They thought it made them better informed and more responsive. In fact, it made them more poorly informed and reactionary rather than responsive.  When the blue glow they bathed themselves in began to sting with the comedy of errors at NASA they decided to act decisively.
    Launching a space shuttle is tantamount to hurling a small office building into space. You can see it from over a hundred miles away even in the daytime.  It's spectacular and unbelievably complicated. The engineers at NASA, to a man, rejected the idea of launching in the cold conditions that were outside design limitations.  They were overruled by the Reagan political appointees, seven innocent people were killed and the program was set-back for 3 years.  The design of the booster rockets was declared to be the culprit and they were redesigned.  Thank God that cosmetic redesign didn't turn out to be sabotage in and of itself.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Quietly, the political people were replaced with techies. That was a broken idea that was fixed.
    If the boobs in the Oval Office hadn't been watching television rather than doing their jobs that would not have happened.
    Well, that was long ago and far away.  Certainly, long ago but not as far away as we'd like.  Stupid people tend to repeat mistakes.  We still have the wrong boobs watching the wrong tube.
    Here are two really funny examples of the unintended consequence of essentially mindless television. The phenomenon of bungee jumping comes from a long-forgotten PBS documentary about a rite of passage practiced by some obscure tribe that Boomers were stuck watching on some rainy Sunday or Saturday afternoon. That's just strange. This second one is hilarious.  Most people think  diamonds can be created by subjecting a lump of coal to tremendous pressure.  That's just bullshit.  That's not how diamonds are formed at all but people believe that because we saw Superman do it by squeezing a lump of coal in his Super Hand. The persistence of that idiotic idea illustrates the problem.
    Donald Trump recently tried to hold a political rally in Tulsa.  It was a serious mistake and a serious humiliation founded in completely ridiculous assumptions.  Why?  How was a decision that bad reached?  Trying to spin the facts provided the answer.
    The Trump people said that something like 8 million people had watched the rally on television and online.  They want people to believe that was some sort of victory.  Trump saw a drop in the polls as a result of the failed rally.  He obviously knew it was bad news.  It led him to say that TV ratings were the real polls.  He touted the fact 5.1 million people had tuned into some sort of "town hall" he'd held with Sean Hannity on Fox News. It was pointed out 1.8 million had watched Chris Cuomo and 3.1 million had watched Rachel Maddow instead, at the same time. He saw that as a victory.  Why?
    There are 330 million Americans.  It's reasonable to expect over 130 million of us will vote in November. 10 million people watching a TV no matter the content, is a meaningless drop in a very large bucket.  The ratings of the various "news networks" are meaningless because they are so paltry.  There is nothing of value to be divined from watching the creators of this nonsense or following those who have bothered to view it.  They seem to move further and further from objective reality on a daily basis. None of these programs has ever contributed to a coherent decision nor should they be expected to. Our leaders should know that.  At the very least, it looks like we should stop paying the cable bill for the White House.  Again; a case of the wrong boobs watching the wrong tube.
    One undeniable fact of life is this:  Unless it's currently on fire or being shot into space, television is worthless as a source of information.  Our leaders should know that and you should too.

Covid-19

    I've been doing a lot of reading about COVID-19 and other pandemics and epidemics.  Most of it I think of as "pre-COVID 19 reading" because the things  being written during this emergency are too concerned with this emergency to be objective or particularly informative.  There's nothing new in that.
     The idea of a pandemic is fascinating. How it moves thru the world-wide population.  The idea that as we develop immunity in defense,  the infection mutates to evade our immunity.  How it mutates to survive. In a way, it's natural selection at work in our bloodstream.
    It seems to take a cycle of about ten years of an infection moving thru the world population for it to mutate beyond our defensive "mutation" of  immunity to become a widerspread threat again. That's really interesting, thought of that way. As a side thought, it makes me wonder if the Mayans simply got the flu and it so burdened their economy that their society collapsed. Hopefully, we'll avoid that. Who knows?
    This part is a result of my untutored reading so, again, who knows but I think this is right. It's reasonable to compare our experiences with influenza viruses and this novel virus  because  they act the same. The noted influenzas, H1N1 and so forth are results of that survival of the fittest battle between viruses and our immune systems and novel viruses are just that, novel, new. They act and track the same.  That makes it reasonable and useful to compare them. It particularly makes it useful to look back at what we did before. What worked and what didn't and what we can expect.  That's a little grim.
    What worked and what didn't. A hundred years ago, they kept meticulous records. Just because there wasn't much they could really do doesn't mean they didn't write down what they did do. We know from their records what they tried and what gave better results. The things that have been recommended and in some cases imposed are as a result of consulting those records.  That just makes sense. It's too soon to tell how well we're doing.  Are we making sense?
    Because of the political climate in some states, certain measures were only halfheartedly embraced and then abandoned, probably too soon.  We're seeing those states begin to pay, in illness and death, for those mistakes.  Following on the heels of those premature reopenings we've seen, literally, hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets, abandoning social distancing but usually wearing masks.  We'll see directly how that works out.  If there's no spike in the spread of infection it means we just wasted everybody's time and trillions of dollars.  No reasonable person is stupid enough to root for one outcome or the other.  I would, eventually, like to see other studies investigating what other spreads of infection we might have slowed or stopped along with COVID-19.  Have there been fewer head colds or cases of seasonal flu.  STDs have probably gone down (the bars are closed), things like that.
    Isn't that interesting?  Well, the truth is, most of us aren't going to die and we have to divine lessons both social and economic from these things.  One of the worst lessons is this. We're all in praise of our essential workers.  As this emergency passes, we're going to learn there is a hard-eyed difference between essential and expendable and that difference will be defined in dollars and cents. The minimum wage is going to go up in those businesses that survive and it will probably go up more than it would have otherwise.  The recession will continue.  There just isn't enough government money to make up for shuttering about a third of the economy for a quarter or longer. When times are good or normal we're fantastically productive.  Taxes are going to go up on our famous 1%.  This money has to be paid back and we'll have to go to the people with money to pay it back. Not only that, it has starkly highlighted the mountains of excess wealth and people rightly think that concentration of wealth is unreasonable, unnecessary and unfair. Just as the medical field has looked to the past for answers and solutions, the economic community is going to do the same thing.
    I don't think this is sinking in just yet.  Looking to the past is going to be harder.  The most vulnerable group is older people.  That's getting to be a significant loss of institutional memory.  One example most people can easily understand is, there's not going to be any new John Prine music but across our communities, there's going to be a lot less senior creativity, lost ideas and lost answers. Buh bye Boomer.
    I think this is just sinking in. The quarantine taught us we are together and we can act with common purpose.  We can identify a thing needing done and just do it together.  We can, within reason, bend our government in the desired direction by just sharing agreement of what that direction should be.  We're getting a feeling of 'we the people'. No capitalization. Just, we, the people.
    There's a lot of us and our goals and aspirations are as complex as you might imagine in such a large group of competing and common interests but also common values. People are getting the idea that we can be the change we want,  It will be fascinating to see how that all works out and we have a front-row seat.
    It was said when the cannons went silent in France at the 1918 Armistice, the silence was the last time the Voice of God was heard on the earth.  That's a striking idea. The voice of the Almighty expressed in silence.
    That idea, related by Kurt Vonnegut, connects to this piece of free verse.
 
and then the whole world
walked inside and shut their doors
and said we will stop it all, everything.
to protect our weaker ones
our sicker ones, our older ones.
and nothing, nothing in the history of humankind
ever felt more like love than this
-CD

    Can't we be wonderful when we listen just right?
    That connects to the silence of usually bustling city streets in mid-day.  Have we created enough silence that we can hear the voices of the Angels of Our Better Nature in ourselves?  Mabee so.

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Normal

    A lot of people are talking, kinda nostalgically, about "normal".  I don't know that combination of wage slavery, kleptocracy and inequality is something we really want to return to but there it is.  Be that as it may, that's not the subject here.
    The calls for a return to "normalcy" and the repeated use of that word in respectable publications is one of my pet peeves.  My peevishness isn't rooted in some imagined dedication to the tenets of the King's English. (Technically that should be the Queen's English but what the hell?)  My peeve is rooted in our history and who should know it in detail. "Normalcy" simply is not an English word.  The word is, normality.
    Frederick Lewis Allen was a leading American literary figure and respected historian of the first half of the twentieth century.  As long-time editor of Harper's Magazine, he was a kind of be-all, end-all in journalism circles.  Rightfully so. As a historian, he wrote the very influential and informative, "Only Yesterday".  It's very well written and I guess how interesting it is, is up to you.  I liked it just as a diversion.
    Isn't that nice of me to recommend something written over 85-90 years ago?  Like most things of that era, it is in black and white but I think you'll like it.  Now, here's the hook.  There is a difference between recommended reading and required reading.  If you're a journalist or historian or a public official concerned with making American policy, this is required reading.  If you haven't read Allen you really shouldn't be commenting because your education is incomplete, inadequate.
    "Only Yesterday" is a social and political history of the 1920s.  The first presidential campaign of that decade was,  Harding v Cox.  Harding campaigned on the slogan, "A Return to Normalcy".  That drove the eastern, intellectual establishment wild.  It set off a debate about the fact "normalcy" just isn't a word and Harding's other nostrums and platitudes were so much bullshit of equal, dubious value. The Republicans went to great lengths to prove it was, indeed, a word and cited with straight faces, ridiculous sources going back to, in one laughable case, 1857.  Lewis recounts that all with a straight face.
    Harding won the election with just over 60% of the popular vote.  It did turn out the most polite description of Harding could be, "a real piece of work".  Two confirmed affairs. One, confirmed, illegitimate daughter.  About half his cabinet went to federal prison and the other half probably should have. The one guy, Forbes, yes one of those Forbes, fled to Europe before being apprehended.  It was credibly whispered Harding was assassinated in a sort of palace coup, with the connivance of his wife because he had discussed coming clean about the various scandals with his Vice-President, Coolidge. You can imagine his wife's motives. That's pretty funny and the list of names is a roll-call of FDR's  "malefactors of great wealth".  It's also not my point.
    If you're a journalist or someone involved in public policy in the United States and you don't know the proper word and the anecdote proving the mistake, it means you haven't read Allen's book and screams your education is inadequate and your conclusions half-formed and dismissable.  It really bothers me to see that in the best of circles and on the front pages of national publications. Hopefully, now it will bother you too.

Road Trip!

    As I get older I wonder about us as younger men.  I overheard Kurt, one time, describe me as, "about a half an outlaw motherfucker".   I think he was probably the strongest man I ever met and I considered his comment to be high praise, indeed.  In a way, I still do but 35 years later, I wonder.
    I do know, had I not been that man then  I would not be this man now.  You can make of that what you will but it is true.
    I was driving from my parent's home to where I lived in Phoenix, Arizona.  I was part of the great, unmentioned migration from the Northeast Rustbelt to the Sunbelt in search of employment in the mid-1970s and '80s.  In point of fact, it was a movement of economic refugees that's never been, in my opinion, adequately explored and it won't be here.  I'd been home on vacation from the oppressive summer, desert heat.  My lifelong friend, Joe ( Kurt's older brother) decided to go back with me, mainly because he had nothing better to do.
    To ourselves and those who knew us we were different guys but to the casual, world at large we were pretty much the same guy.  Early thirties, working-class, denim-clad, lean, long-haired, full beards.  Forty years later, kinda scruffy, sorta rough lookin guys. We couldn't have been too bad, we always had good looking girlfriends.  I'm not telling those stories either. Some of them are pretty funny but not today.
    We were serious about the drive.  It would seem scandalous now but we only had a half bag of reefer which we barely touched and only drank 3/4 of a case of beer between us on the 44-hour trip.  The reefer was awful which set off an argument between me and Joe that would go on, half-seriously for a decade. I wanted to kick the guy's ass who had ripped us off.  Joe was like. Oh forget it, he's been a life-long friend.  It was 20 years before I would even speak to the guy again, over 10 dollars.  Joe was right but I don't think I missed anything.
    Serious. To that end, I showed up at Joe's parent's house to pick him up for the trip at about 5:15 in the morning. He was ready and loaded his suitcase and got in.
    Then he said, " Oh wait, I forgot something."  and went back in the house.  After a minute he came back out with a brown paper bag and tossed it in the back seat and off we went. I didn't ask.  It was too early in the morning to care.
     Here's something you don't see anymore but 40 years ago was a commonplace.  On long car trips, the little kids used to just bounce around the back seat and entertain themselves and often entertain the occupants of the cars behind them on the highway with little, improvised Punch and Judy shows.
     Sometime that afternoon or maybe the next afternoon we were following such a family on the interstate. Joe gave that little chuckle he had and reached over the seat for the forgotten paper bag. He withdrew a Grover, from Sesame Street,  hand-puppet he'd brought just for the occasion. 

    I wish I smiled like that more often now.

    Ya see, Joe was wrong.  He did have something better to do and he was doing it.