We constantly hear how divided we are as a nation. Why? It seems to have no relation to reality. The idea of division implies a persistent ambivalence and lack of some sort of majority opinion. That's just not what's happening.
If you go back to the 2016 election and look at the real numbers for and against you find a persistent majority opinion. Certainly, Mrs Clinton polled almost 3 million more votes than Donald Trump head to head. However, if you look at all the votes cast you find that nearly 12 million more people voted against Donald Trump than voted for him. There is no reason to believe, had the election been head to head, Trump versus Clinton, that Trump would have garnered any additional support and he certainly would have lost in the Electoral College.
The Trump supporters like to point out the inaccurate pre-election polling. That's not true. The polls were accurate to the decimal point. The pollsters just didn't dig deep enough into the distribution of those votes and they failed to account for the Electoral College. Yeah, we know all that, why bring it up? Because that supposed inaccuracy is used to spread an almost subliminal distrust of polling in general. That distrust opens the door to some bad conclusions about circumstances in general.
If you look at the Congressional elections of 2016, you notice something else that's never discussed. The party with the successful presidential candidate actually lost seats in both houses of Congress. That never happens. The 2018, House elections were a rout for the republicans. There doesn't seem to be any reason to think 2020 will be any different no matter what party you support except the republicans seem to have many more vulnerable Senate seats.
Except for the months coming up to election day, presidential polling is confined to and judged by job approval numbers. Usually, those numbers are all over the map, driven by current events. Rapid shifts of 20-30 points aren't unusual no matter the President. Not this time.
For nearly 3 years Donald Trump's approval numbers have remained persistently dismal. People just don't like this guy. A continuing, solid majority are, in fact, united in their opinion of this guy. I've never seen anything like this kind of solidarity. I've never seen anything like this kind of unity. If I were an establishment republican I certainly would be more worried every day. The truth is, it takes a lot of time to establish a non-encumbent presidential candidate and they are rapidly running out of that time.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Sunday, September 15, 2019
The Dismal Science
I was going to start by saying something like: We all know Malthus. Nah, no you don't. Thomas Robert Malthus. Oxford educated, English cleric and seminal economist. 1766-1834. Look it up. That'll bore hell outta ya.
His thoughts on political economy, economics and demographics are the reason Economics has been called the dismal science. He postulated that any advance in technology or productivity would result in an increase in population that would always outstrip productivity and create and reinforce poverty. Yeah, that's pretty dismal. Put him together with Thomas Hobbes and ya got a real laugh riot. Hobbes is the guy that said, for most, life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutal and short.
His thoughts on productivity and poverty are what most people who have ever heard of Malthus remember about him but what stuck in my mind was something different he said and definitely more pertinent to our current debates. Malthus said there were things that needed to be done that could never be done for a profit and those things fell into the purview of government. Now, remember, this guy died more than a decade before Marx and Engles wrote. He was no socialist. He was actually an observer of and a contributor to the ideas and ideals of capitalism. I'd be willing to bet Marx and Engles had read his works. If you don't know and I'd be willing to bet you don't, Marx and Engels wrote the "Communist Manifesto". I've read it. That'll put your ass to sleep. If you want, I can also tell you a bedtime story about the Hegelian Dialectic.
The reason I mention this is because for no rational reason I can think of, Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have decided to proclaim themselves Democratic Socialists. In reality, they're New Deal Democrats. That opened the door for republicans to scream, SOCIALISM like they were yelling FIRE in a crowded theater. Why start a debate with a bunch of ignoramuses? I dunno.
So we got the republicans saying, socialist this and socialist that because they hope you're stupid and we have the Democrats trying to say the police and fire departments, the military, public water and sewer, public health, snow plows and so on are all socialist ideas, apparently, because they're stupid. Nonsense.
These are all parts of the Malthusian Equation and both sides had better stop talking like idiots or we're gonna end up with even more Reality TV personalities posing as leaders. Across the political spectrum, no one is proposing socialism in the United States and our major corporations and the rich, in general, sure aren't proposing capitalism. You can make the case Dr King was right when he said, we have socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else. That's pretty dismal and needs to stop.
His thoughts on political economy, economics and demographics are the reason Economics has been called the dismal science. He postulated that any advance in technology or productivity would result in an increase in population that would always outstrip productivity and create and reinforce poverty. Yeah, that's pretty dismal. Put him together with Thomas Hobbes and ya got a real laugh riot. Hobbes is the guy that said, for most, life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutal and short.
His thoughts on productivity and poverty are what most people who have ever heard of Malthus remember about him but what stuck in my mind was something different he said and definitely more pertinent to our current debates. Malthus said there were things that needed to be done that could never be done for a profit and those things fell into the purview of government. Now, remember, this guy died more than a decade before Marx and Engles wrote. He was no socialist. He was actually an observer of and a contributor to the ideas and ideals of capitalism. I'd be willing to bet Marx and Engles had read his works. If you don't know and I'd be willing to bet you don't, Marx and Engels wrote the "Communist Manifesto". I've read it. That'll put your ass to sleep. If you want, I can also tell you a bedtime story about the Hegelian Dialectic.
The reason I mention this is because for no rational reason I can think of, Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have decided to proclaim themselves Democratic Socialists. In reality, they're New Deal Democrats. That opened the door for republicans to scream, SOCIALISM like they were yelling FIRE in a crowded theater. Why start a debate with a bunch of ignoramuses? I dunno.
So we got the republicans saying, socialist this and socialist that because they hope you're stupid and we have the Democrats trying to say the police and fire departments, the military, public water and sewer, public health, snow plows and so on are all socialist ideas, apparently, because they're stupid. Nonsense.
These are all parts of the Malthusian Equation and both sides had better stop talking like idiots or we're gonna end up with even more Reality TV personalities posing as leaders. Across the political spectrum, no one is proposing socialism in the United States and our major corporations and the rich, in general, sure aren't proposing capitalism. You can make the case Dr King was right when he said, we have socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else. That's pretty dismal and needs to stop.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Kintsukuroi
It is the practice of repairing valued if not valuable objects with precious metals. It's also known as Kintsugi. It preserves the functionality and immeasurably enhances the beauty and ultimately the value of the repaired object. It has become the symbol of philosophies that, if understood, make my banal thoughts inadequate at best.
Stumbling on this concept made me think of people I've known all my life and people I've known all of their lives. We all have known people who, after some shaking misfortune, have been discarded, sometimes by even themselves, like so much broken crockery. A tragedy and a failure of faith. A failure of faith in themselves and others. Failure of belief in a future.
We've also seen victories if not triumphs of faith in individuals both great and small. Witnessing the damage done by mere circumstance or even malice can break our own hearts. Witnessing the precious repair can also repair and advance our own hearts. In a large way that can become the basis of faith and we see it all around us day after day.
I'm reminded of the story of a little girl with two apples. Her mother asked if she could have one. The little girl bit into one and then, immediately, the other. In that moment the mother's faith collapsed in herself and in her daughter. The mother's faith collapsed in all she had tried to do. Then the little girl held out an apple and said, " Take this one, it's sweeter." In an instant, the mother's humble bowl was repaired and made more precious than imaginable.
Then I saw this example of persistence meeting resistance. Someone planted a tree. Fifty or so years later, someone cut down that tree. Then ten or so years later, someone cut down the volunteer offshoots from the stump. Somehow the two photographic images became related in my mind. The sap and sinew of all life. Regrowth, renewal and restoration. I'll be by in the spring just to see that long story continue to work itself out. Repair can be an instant, a season or a lifetime.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Well, Maybe
I often think about and sometimes write about things we should do and obviously won't do.
For example: https://stillpittsburgh.blogspot.com/2017/02/walk-like-athenian.html. Boy, I was kinda proud of that. It's the idea called sortition. It turns out lots of people have written about that and done a much better job than I did. It confirms my suspicion I have never actually had an original idea. Oh well.
People want to abolish the Electoral College. It's understandable. The idea was to avoid the "tyranny of the majority". That's a real thing and certainly can be a real problem. The Founding Fathers were right to consider the concept. I don't think they ever considered their creation made an opportunity for a "tyranny of the minority", like we're seeing now. I know they never thought that minority would be composed of every poorly informed lout, led by a poorly informed lout. I don't think it ever occurred to the Founding Fathers someone might, rather than try to elevate the poorly informed, forge them into a voting block. Didn't see that coming.
In the last 20 years we've seen that "tyranny of the minority" produce disastrous results. Jesus! Nearly a million innocent people are dead. Al Gore never would have invaded the wrong country or mis-waged a war in the right country, the only goal of which turned out to be consolidation of the international trade in heroin. The whole thing is irrational and was easily avoidable.
By the same token, Hillary Clinton never would have reinstated Bush's laughable tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor would she have immersed the Pentagon in a hot tub full of borrowed money. That's a financial disaster we're going to wear like an albatross for generations. There's a lot of things being done Mrs Clinton wouldn't have done because she knows better. She doesn't seem to listen to AM radio much. I suspect she reads.
The Electoral College has been called racist in conception. That's outright bullshit. The idea is tangentially related to the idea of slaves being 3/5ths of a person but just not the same thing. Both concepts addressed the reality at the time. The concept of crying 'racist' just proves a little racism goes a long way. People don't like racism much. You don't have to endorse or tolerate much to earn a life-long label. That's as it should be. Even racists don't like being called racist because they know racism is wrong.
However, the Electoral College is not what we don't like much. We don't like the asymmetrical outcomes. Since 2000, the Green Party has thrown the elections to the republicans a couple notable times. If you look at their party principles, that's an unintended consequence. We'd like to avoid that and we're searching for ways to not do that.
We have a dyed in the wool, two-party system but third party candidates have a habit of emerging in and twisting the results of presidential elections. You could say Teddy Roosevelt made Woodrow Wilson President. Wallace made Nixon President and certainly, Ross Perot made Clinton President. Following that reasoning, Nader made GW President and Jill Stein made Trump president. That's a little simplistic but it does make the point. We don't like the Electoral College much but what we really don't like is the effects of these 'stalking horses'.
My idea to deal with that is to just hold run-off elections. It's not new or unusual. Over 30 countries do it worldwide. When Trump seemed to have won, about 60% of the population said, " I'll be damned." Had a run-off been held a week, month or year later, excluding the 3rd party candidates, Mrs Clinton would have won in a walk-over. Hell, Donald Duck would have won in a walk-over. We're not going to do that. It would involve amending the Constitution and that's just not going to happen.
Maine has what seems to be a better idea. They have voted in 'Ranked Choice". You simply vote for your first and second choice. If no one reaches a simple majority the least popular are eliminated and the second choices are counted until someone does reach a majority.
My first thought about that was, 'That's a good idea'. My second thought was, 'Boy are they gonna get sued.' It seems to be holding up in court.
So, is it something we should do but won't do or is it a good idea that will gain traction over time.
We'll see. It is better than my idea.
Until we reach a long term solution we have to avoid the effects of these 'stalking horse' candidates. That starts with acknowledging that, at least for now, we are most certainly a two-party system.
My idea to deal with that is to just hold run-off elections. It's not new or unusual. Over 30 countries do it worldwide. When Trump seemed to have won, about 60% of the population said, " I'll be damned." Had a run-off been held a week, month or year later, excluding the 3rd party candidates, Mrs Clinton would have won in a walk-over. Hell, Donald Duck would have won in a walk-over. We're not going to do that. It would involve amending the Constitution and that's just not going to happen.
Maine has what seems to be a better idea. They have voted in 'Ranked Choice". You simply vote for your first and second choice. If no one reaches a simple majority the least popular are eliminated and the second choices are counted until someone does reach a majority.
My first thought about that was, 'That's a good idea'. My second thought was, 'Boy are they gonna get sued.' It seems to be holding up in court.
So, is it something we should do but won't do or is it a good idea that will gain traction over time.
We'll see. It is better than my idea.
Until we reach a long term solution we have to avoid the effects of these 'stalking horse' candidates. That starts with acknowledging that, at least for now, we are most certainly a two-party system.
Friday, July 26, 2019
Let's Talk About It
There's an old joke about racism. How does every racist joke start? Then the person who intends to tell the joke gets up and looks around to make sure there are no people who might be offended, meaning minorities. That, of course, doesn't take into account an awful lot of white folks are offended by racism and racist jokes. It does take into account the teller knows what he's about to say is offensive to his neighbors and even his friends. It's a joke. Sometimes we're not bad people, just thoughtless. Some people are just bad. Rotted to the core for whatever reason.
Earl Butz was a Secretary of Agriculture. In 1976, he told an incredibly offensive racist joke while aboard a commercial flight with other officials. He was surprised to find out some in his audience were offended. After all, he'd taken a long look around before he told the joke. It took overcoming 246 years of slavery and another hundred years of Jim Crow to make it no real surprise Butz was immediately fired and fired by a Republican President in the final month of a campaign.
Let's talk about that overcoming and human progress. To be sure, there were heroic and extremely articulate figures among the oppressed races. So many come to mind. But Dr King always stays in mind. He admonished us that not only should we be judged on the content of our character but we most certainly always are so judged in the end.
It's that content of character that's made all the difference. It's what makes the idiot with his racist joke look around. I'm sure it's what made Butz, in his tightly laced brogans, look around.
Content of character. None of the slow, incremental progress made in race relations over the long years would have been possible without informing and strengthening good character on all sides. It is well we study and are informed by the minority members of our society. It is good to hold dear and honor their contributions to the common good. However, we can't ignore the fact that none of the progress could have been made without people of good character on all sides.
Now, as white people, we are confronted by people in positions of leadership who don't bother to look around before they say or do something offensive. These people seem delighted they can display and employ elements of their lesser character. As Earl Butz illustrates, people of lesser character have always been with us, limited only by social convention; that pressure that makes them look around before doing or saying something even they know is offensive. We can't allow that kind of backsliding; that kind of coarsening of our society and our future as neighbors and friends. We have to always respond. It's our duty to ourselves, our future and our past.
Earl Butz was a Secretary of Agriculture. In 1976, he told an incredibly offensive racist joke while aboard a commercial flight with other officials. He was surprised to find out some in his audience were offended. After all, he'd taken a long look around before he told the joke. It took overcoming 246 years of slavery and another hundred years of Jim Crow to make it no real surprise Butz was immediately fired and fired by a Republican President in the final month of a campaign.
Let's talk about that overcoming and human progress. To be sure, there were heroic and extremely articulate figures among the oppressed races. So many come to mind. But Dr King always stays in mind. He admonished us that not only should we be judged on the content of our character but we most certainly always are so judged in the end.
It's that content of character that's made all the difference. It's what makes the idiot with his racist joke look around. I'm sure it's what made Butz, in his tightly laced brogans, look around.
Content of character. None of the slow, incremental progress made in race relations over the long years would have been possible without informing and strengthening good character on all sides. It is well we study and are informed by the minority members of our society. It is good to hold dear and honor their contributions to the common good. However, we can't ignore the fact that none of the progress could have been made without people of good character on all sides.
Now, as white people, we are confronted by people in positions of leadership who don't bother to look around before they say or do something offensive. These people seem delighted they can display and employ elements of their lesser character. As Earl Butz illustrates, people of lesser character have always been with us, limited only by social convention; that pressure that makes them look around before doing or saying something even they know is offensive. We can't allow that kind of backsliding; that kind of coarsening of our society and our future as neighbors and friends. We have to always respond. It's our duty to ourselves, our future and our past.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
Terms of Endearment
That movie is coming on again, in just a few minutes. I really like that movie. I saw it, in the theater, when it came out. I always sit down-front in theaters. Not sure why. I can see and hear fine. I just do.
I remember being embarrassed to get up to leave when that movie was over because I was bawling like a baby. So was my date and the 75 or so other people in the theater. Buncha tough guys.
I don't think, after 36 years, I'm givin much away. You sit there for 2 hours or so and are thoroughly entertained. It's funny, emotionally affecting, all that stuff but you do begin to wonder where they're going with this. Then they show you exactly what they had in mind.
Then, of course, the stand-ins for the cast of the "Road Warrior" leave in tears. I don't plan to watch it again.
Two years after my initial viewing, I noticed "Terms of Endearment" was being shown on HBO. I was living with a wonderful girl and my best friend was there. The movie is just as good on a TV as it is in a theater.
It was being shown about 3 in the afternoon. We sat down to watch what I had assured them was a movie not to be missed. They trusted my judgment and I think I even made popcorn. We settled in. After about an hour and 3/4s, I said, " Oh, I forgot, I have to meet a guy about a job. I've seen this before and it'll be on again." I left.
I went over to a local bar, where I knew anything would be on the TV other than the end of that movie. I had a beer and a little bullshit and looked at my watch and went home.
" You son of a bitch! You left on purpose.!"
Yes, I did.
I remember being embarrassed to get up to leave when that movie was over because I was bawling like a baby. So was my date and the 75 or so other people in the theater. Buncha tough guys.
I don't think, after 36 years, I'm givin much away. You sit there for 2 hours or so and are thoroughly entertained. It's funny, emotionally affecting, all that stuff but you do begin to wonder where they're going with this. Then they show you exactly what they had in mind.
Then, of course, the stand-ins for the cast of the "Road Warrior" leave in tears. I don't plan to watch it again.
Two years after my initial viewing, I noticed "Terms of Endearment" was being shown on HBO. I was living with a wonderful girl and my best friend was there. The movie is just as good on a TV as it is in a theater.
It was being shown about 3 in the afternoon. We sat down to watch what I had assured them was a movie not to be missed. They trusted my judgment and I think I even made popcorn. We settled in. After about an hour and 3/4s, I said, " Oh, I forgot, I have to meet a guy about a job. I've seen this before and it'll be on again." I left.
I went over to a local bar, where I knew anything would be on the TV other than the end of that movie. I had a beer and a little bullshit and looked at my watch and went home.
" You son of a bitch! You left on purpose.!"
Yes, I did.
My love to you, Aurora.
Saturday, June 22, 2019
Migration
I was reading about how the first humans developed in Africa and proceeded to travel to Asia Minor, Asia, Europe. Eventually populating the most remote of the Pacific islands and even the Arctic Circle. I think Antartica was missed only because it isn't on the way to somewhere.
I read about the travels of the Vidic Aryans and the rampages of the Golden Horde. The Huns becoming Hungarians and some Romans becoming Romanians. Caesars becoming Tzars. I thought about some Chinese becoming Japanese and Korean, becoming the various tribes of the Asian South East. I wondered, along with everyone else, how the Abos got to Australia in a past so removed and dim no one remembers. The same is true of the Polynesians. They don't know how they got there. They found it so pleasant they didn't bother to remember? Maybe. Maybe when we (academics with a mania for such questions) asked, we dismissed the answers or garbled the intent. That happens often enough.
That got me to thinking of Thor Hyerdahl and the Kon Tiki and the almost bizarre connection of Jacquline Beer and "77 Sunset Strip". A pulled thread that begins in the Great Rift Valley and ends with Edd (Kookie) Byrnes? The spread and interconnectivity of people, ideas and concepts. That brings up Salman Rushdie and "The Satanic Verses" as a thorough examination of that cultural phenomenon and idea.
Tribal migration as a continuous condition of the human experience. Endless comingling. It's interesting that in the case of the Americas, the north was primarily resettled by the restless, northern European tribes and the south by the tribes of the Iberian peninsula. Settlement determined by the Atlantic Trade Winds The fascinating introduction of dominant language and ethnic groups and pushing aside the discovered, established societies of an earlier wave of migration.
I could go on and on. Believe me, if I had more whiskey, I would. Rushdie pushed it to over 500 pages just examining a few aspects, mainly culture and religion but there is always that one underlying concept: Migration. We can talk about the migration of concepts, ideas and values but ultimately people are the carriers of these conditions. We find that the underlying feature is endless movement. It's fundamental and as a result, migration is a fundamental human right. As such, attempts to oppose that right are useless and doomed to ultimate failure. We've seen that failure over the last four years.
I read about the travels of the Vidic Aryans and the rampages of the Golden Horde. The Huns becoming Hungarians and some Romans becoming Romanians. Caesars becoming Tzars. I thought about some Chinese becoming Japanese and Korean, becoming the various tribes of the Asian South East. I wondered, along with everyone else, how the Abos got to Australia in a past so removed and dim no one remembers. The same is true of the Polynesians. They don't know how they got there. They found it so pleasant they didn't bother to remember? Maybe. Maybe when we (academics with a mania for such questions) asked, we dismissed the answers or garbled the intent. That happens often enough.
That got me to thinking of Thor Hyerdahl and the Kon Tiki and the almost bizarre connection of Jacquline Beer and "77 Sunset Strip". A pulled thread that begins in the Great Rift Valley and ends with Edd (Kookie) Byrnes? The spread and interconnectivity of people, ideas and concepts. That brings up Salman Rushdie and "The Satanic Verses" as a thorough examination of that cultural phenomenon and idea.
Tribal migration as a continuous condition of the human experience. Endless comingling. It's interesting that in the case of the Americas, the north was primarily resettled by the restless, northern European tribes and the south by the tribes of the Iberian peninsula. Settlement determined by the Atlantic Trade Winds The fascinating introduction of dominant language and ethnic groups and pushing aside the discovered, established societies of an earlier wave of migration.
I could go on and on. Believe me, if I had more whiskey, I would. Rushdie pushed it to over 500 pages just examining a few aspects, mainly culture and religion but there is always that one underlying concept: Migration. We can talk about the migration of concepts, ideas and values but ultimately people are the carriers of these conditions. We find that the underlying feature is endless movement. It's fundamental and as a result, migration is a fundamental human right. As such, attempts to oppose that right are useless and doomed to ultimate failure. We've seen that failure over the last four years.
If you liked that try this: https://bit.ly/JimRetzerBook
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