Dan Riley's Blog, page 18

Question Marks & the Mysterians

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This is my second new year’s blog post where the most powerful piece of punctuation in the  English language takes center stage as the subject. Lots of people of course think it’s the ubiquitous period and are fond of saying things like, “And that’s the way it is. Period”—as if putting a period down settled all further discussion. And then there are the hysterics among us who are extravagant with exclamation points and will pepper their prose with them like a bad chef trying to exalt a weak soup with salt. But sophisticated writers...and thinkers...and serious citizens...know there’s no more useful and provocative punctuation than the serpentine question mark. The reason I find myself writing about the question mark again is because it was much in the news as the bloodied old year limped into the emergency room of the new one, and the esteemed New York Times published a notable interview with the alleged President of the United States...notable for its absence of questions...or at least questions of the substance and character one would associate with as august an institution as The New York Times. 
Rather than the probing and clarifying questions of the inquiring mind...the journalist’s stock and trade...Times reporter Michael Schmidt merely lobbed up softballs, like a batting practice pitcher, allowing Donald Trump to swing away for 30 minutes without fear of ever confronting a curveball or high hard one. There was nothing particularly unusual about this indulgence. Indeed Donald Trump owes his presidency to the fact that the media treated his every appearance before them as an entertainment...a fan dance...a gurgling newborn. It was all novel and marvel. The most marvelous being the infamous town hall hosted by now disgraced “news man” Matt Lauer, where Lauer treated Hillary Clinton as a sinner woman dragged before the Spanish Inquisition and treated Trump like a Miss America contestant. In retrospect it’s easy and not unreasonable to attribute Lauer’s disgraceful treatment of Hillary to his denigrating view of women in general. I won’t argue against that, but I also believe that Lauer’s distinctive bias between what he said and what she said had much to do with the media’s view generally that Trump was the show and no one...not Hillary nor any journalist should interrupt that show in any way for fear of enraging and losing the audience that had tuned in strictly for the show. (Poor Hillary....the only way she could ever become show worthy in their eyes would be to debase herself in apologies or break down before their cameras in tears.) One can easily imagine a producer at NBC or an editor at the New York Times warning their employees with just these words, “Remember the audience has tuned in to watch him not you. Don’t ruin it for us.”

As happens, it’s a strategy that has ruined it for the whole damn country by saddling it with a flim-flam man as president. The media elite try to justify this strategy...just as the Times recently did over its pathetic Trump interview...by claiming that if they didn’t allow Trump to be Trump we wouldn’t all know how truly dreadful he is...that under more probing...more professional questioning....he might skitter away like a rat suddenly aware that there’s a spring-loaded trap just beyond the cheese. This is self-induced nonsense...Exclamation Point! Trump’s record as consummate bullshit artist has been well-establisehd for any sentient being to see for decades. We don’t need the New York Times to expose more of it...the nation stinks to high heaven with it already. What we need from the New York Times...from its highly paid reporter Michael Schmidt...is that it does its damn job when Donald Trump says something as manifestly false and threatening to democracy as this:

“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,” he said, echoing claims by his supporters that as president he has the power to open or end an investigation. “But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.” 

Put a period on it right there, and then hit him with a barrage of pertinent, substative questions, such as: Where in the Constitution do you derive this power? If such power exists, doesn’t it put the President above the law? If a President is above the law, what makes our democracy any different from an authoritarian state? Speaking of authoritarian states, what do you see as the difference between Putin’s power and Kim Jung Un’s? If such power exists, why didn't it help Richard Nixon avoid resignation? If this is not truly a power of the President, would you like to see it become one? Would you consider asking your Republican Congress to push through such power for you? Does being treated fairly mean being cleared of all accusations against you? And is being cleared the standard for fairness that should be applied to everyone accused of wrong-doing? When you ban Muslims and demand that protesting players be run out of the NFL, is that your idea of fairness? Are judges with Mexican surnames capable of fairness? Would you like to see Congress pass a law which gives you sole power to decide what is fair and what is not? If you don’t deem Robert Mueller’s findings as fair, what exactly do you plan to do about it? 

Forcing Trump to confront even one of those questions would seem to be a far more worthwhile exercise of journalistic skill than sitting there taking dictation as Trump blathers on more about things he doesn’t know, believe, understand or care about. Journalists flatter themselves into thinking that they’re employing some variation on Muhammed Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy. But Ali’s strategy involved eventually throwing a punch...even a battery of them. A journalist going into an interview with any authority figure unarmed with questions or unwilling to ask them is as egregious a professional failure as a cop shooting an unarmed man. There’s no excuse for it.
But it’s not just a journalistic failing...American society as a whole views the question  mark with suspicion...as a symbol of impertinence, rudeness, doubt, or stupidity. The Nob has visited this phenomenon before in a post called The Emperor’s Newer Clothes. It’s a freakin’ children’s story, which grown adults workng for the esteemed New York Times have faild to learn...asking embarrassing questions of authority is not a breach of etiquette...it’s a failure of good journalism and good citizenship. And who are these Mysterians of which we speak? They are those who betray us, our country, and themselves by failing to perform the simplest act of bravery when called upon: asking good, hard questions of authority. 

Trump's New Year's Resolutions

Through a Freedom of Information request, The Nob has obtained a preview look at Donald Trump’s New Year’s resolutions and presents them herewith as a Nobby Works exclusive:

I resolve to admit that my popular vote total was smaller than Hillary Clinton’s and it had nothing to do with voter fraud

I resolve to admit that the crowd at my inaguration was puny compared to the one at Barak Obama’s

Through a Freedom of Information request, The Nob has obtained a preview look at Donald Trump’s New Year’s resolutions and presents them herewith as a Nobby Works exclusive:

I resolve to show my tax returns to the American people

I resolve to tell coal miners that their jobs are vanishing and I have no way of stopping that

I resolve to admit that I fired James Comey to obstruct the FBI’s Russia probe (oops... already admitted that)

I resolve to show as much respect to former Presidents of the US as I do to Vladimir Putin

I resolve to show as much tolerance for immigrants, racial minorities and the poor as I have for white supremicists and American Nazis

I resolve to stop lavishing praise on authoritarian regimes in Russia, the Phillipines, Turkey and China

I resolve to stop taking credit for economic growth which was well under way long before I was elected

I resolve to stop pretending that being an insulting bully is like taking a brave stand against political correctness

I resolve to honor the First Amendment’s grant of freedom of the press

I resolve to stop watching cable TV that merely props up my presidency and ravages my enemies rather than informing its viewers with gethe pressing issues of the day

I resolve to stop Tweeting about every petty thing that crosses my mind

I resolve to stop strutting and mugging my way over the world stage like a rich man’s Mussolini

I resolve to admit that Mike Pence makes my skin crawl

I resolve to admit that my cabinet and administrative choices has been chock full of swamp creatures with reptillian ethics, appetites, and intelligence

I resolve to throw Jared Kushner under the bus at the most opportune moment (and to comfort Ivanka in her moment of need with a shoulder to cry on and a lap to sit on)

I resolve to allow Robert Mueller to continue his investigations to the end without further interference or ratfucking from me and my minions

I resolve to stop telling lies

I resolve to play less golf and spend more time doing my job

I resolve to make up to my working class voters for the tax cut scam I just pulled on them

I resolve to work with Chuck and Nancy to enact at least one piece of legislation in 2018 based on fairness and decency

I resolve to keep my distance from the New England Patriots and never again try to ensnare their players, coaches or ownership in my deplorable behavior

I resolve to just shut up about football in general since I’ve failed to master it as both owner and fan

I resolve to come clean about all my dealings with Russian oligarchs

I resolve to treat all my employees better than I treated those illegals who helped build and serve my hotels

I resolve to stop keeping phony issues alive like Obama’s birth certificate just for the sake of stoking empty anger and divisions

I resolve to stop making assinine claims like how I made it safe for Americans to say Merry Christmas again

In fact I resolve to stop being an ass. Period.

I resolve to resign the Presidency if I break even one of these resolutions

The Trump New Year Resolutions

I resolve to admit that my popular vote total was smaller than Hillary Clinton’s and it had nothing to do with voter fraud

I resolve to admit that the crowd at my inaguration was puny compared to the one at Barak Obama’s

I resolve to show my tax returns to the American people

I resolve to tell coal miners that their jobs are vanishing and I have no way of stopping that

I resolve to admit that I fired James Comey to obstruct the FBI’s Russia probe (oops... already admitted that)

I resolve to show as much respect to former Presidents of the US as I do to Vladimir Putin

I resolve to show as much tolerance for immigrants, racial minorities and the poor as I have for white supremicists and American Nazis

I resolve to stop lavishing praise on authoritarian regimes in Russia, the Phillipines, Turkey and China

I resolve to stop taking credit for economic growth which was well under way long before I was elected

I resolve to stop pretending that being an insulting bully is like taking a brave stand against political correctness

I resolve to honor the First Amendment’s grant of freedom of the press

I resolve to stop watching cable TV that merely props up my presidency and ravages my enemies rather than informing its viewers with gethe pressing issues of the day

I resolve to stop Tweeting about every petty thing that crosses my mind

I resolve to stop strutting and mugging my way over the world stage like a rich man’s Mussolini

I resolve to admit that Mike Pence makes my skin crawl

I resolve to admit that my cabinet and administrative choices has been chock full of swamp creatures with reptillian ethics, appetites, and intelligence

I resolve to throw Jared Kushner under the bus at the most opportune moment (and to comfort Ivanka in her moment of need with a shoulder to cry on and a lap to sit on)

I resolve to allow Robert Mueller to continue his investigations to the end without further interference or ratfucking from me and my minions

I resolve to stop telling lies

I resolve to play less golf and spend more time doing my job

I resolve to make up to my working class voters for the tax cut scam I just pulled on them

I resolve to work with Chuck and Nancy to enact at least one piece of legislation in 2018 based on fairness and decency

I resolve to keep my distance from the New England Patriots and never again try to ensnare their players, coaches or ownership in my deplorable behavior

I resolve to just shut up about football in general since I’ve failed to master it as both owner and fan

I resolve to come clean about all my dealings with Russian oligarchs

I resolve to treat all my employees better than I treated those illegals who helped build and serve my hotels

I resolve to stop keeping phony issues alive like Obama’s birth certificate just for the sake of stoking empty anger and divisions

I resolve to stop making assinine claims like how I made it safe for Americans to say Merry Christmas again

In fact I resolve to stop being an ass. Period.

I resolve to resign the Presidency if I break even one of these resolutions

My Year in Springfield

Not Springfield, Massachusetts, where I was born and partly raised and where I spent more time than I would've liked this past year due to the passing of my mom...but rather THE Springfield...the most famous Springfield of all, located in an anonymous state and home of America's First Family, The Simpsons:
Homer—head of the family, the unleashed id, driven to satisfy his every want and need and never coming to his senses until calamity strikes
Marge—good hearted and nurturing, but a fool for love for Homer so she sublimates all her best instincts to his worst and forgives him way past forgiveness, thus enabling and encouraging him to continue behaving as a child
Bart—the boy as mischief incarnate, forever scheming and flaunting authority, painfully funny at everyone else’s expense
Lisa—conscientious and sensitive with an appreciation of art, music, and science and thus friendless and alienated
Maggie—the baby...the future...wide-eyed and speechless at the world happening all around her and thus rightly addicted to her pacifier

As I announced early in the year, I was going to trade the time I used to spend watching cable news in for watching The Simpsons. With more than 600 episodes in the can spread over the past 30 years, it seemed a good bet that there would always be something if not exactly fresh, at least re-heatable in the offing. It turned out to be much more than that. The Simpson re-runs that became my morning viewing fare (replacing Stephen Colbert) actually transcended freshness to achieve a level of prescience that would've been impressive enough for a so-called trend expert, but for a cartoon show it's positively astonishing. I haven't re-watched every single Simpsons' episode, but it's hard to imagine any other one of them could so capture the trajectory of the Trump Presidency from beginning to the current moment as Trash of the Titans. Check out the 4-minute excerpt below, and marvel as I did at how well the creators anticipated the rudeness, recklessness, and overall wretchedness in utterly uncanny detail. And think hard on this: the Simpson creators did not put this show together after a months or a year of watching Trump in the news...this show was first broadcast in 1998!

"Trash of the Titans" excerpt:

Sweet Home Alabama, Take 2

Big wheels keep on turningCarry me home to save my kinSinging songs about the southlandRemiss Alabamy at long lastGonna wash away its sins
Well I heard Mister Trump lyin’ round herWell I heard ole Donald con the rubesWell, I hope Donald Trump will rememberA southern gal don't want him round her pubes
Sweet home AlabamaWhere they vote reddish hueSweet home AlabamaJones, we’re goin’ blue for you
In Alabam they got this nut case, boo-hoo-hooRoy Moore’s not the best we can doNow Russiagate may not bother usBut stalking young girls is where we draw the line
Sweet home AlabamaWhere they vote reddish hueSweet home AlabamaJones, we’re goin’ blue for you
Now Washington DC got them SwampersAnd they've been known to pick our pockets clean (yes they do)Lord they get me down so muchThey pissed me off so I'm voting blue, now how bout you?
Sweet home AlabamaWhere they vote reddish hueSweet home AlabamaJones, we’re goin’ blue for you
Sweet home Alabama, oh sweet homeWhere the voting is now so blue and the new solon’s trueSweet home Alabama
Lordy smiling down on you

The Cognitive Dissonance Papers

cognitive dissonancenounPsychologythe state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.
Cognitive dissonance is our modern, high falutin’ expression for hypocrisy, which was cause for considerably more damnation in the Bible than abortion and gay sex. Cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy in our times as in Biblical times is a scourge, so here’s a series of papers to help recognize and thus avoid it. 

Alcatraz

Grafiitti from Indian protests at Alcatraz, 1969-1971, preserved by US National Park Service
along with other signs. A video offered to tourists fairly documents the occupation
and includes interviews with participants. 
Visiting Alcatraz was never a bucket list item of mine, but Lorna and I had some time to kill on a recent trip to San Francisco and what better place to kill time than a prison? It actually turned out to be a considerably more interesting and educational visit than I had expected. Like most Americans, I knew of Alcatraz primarily as a prison. I had no idea that it started out as a Federal garrison, which in combination with two other strategic points around San Francisco Bay formed a triangular defense against foreign invasion…by sea! The absence of a credible threat led to its obsolescence for this purpose and eventually its cannons passed their “use by” date. It was then converted to a prison for traitors in the Confederate cause, captured Indians, and others deemed enemies of the state.
It didn’t become the prison of Hollywood legend until the 1930s, when an auspicious stream of criminals began taking the short ferry ride over the Bay’s strong, swift current to their new home behind iron bars: Al Capone…Mickey Cohen…Machine Gun Kelly…Creepy  Karpis…Robert Stroud (the “Birdman of Alcatraz”).  Their photos proudly line the walls of the current tourist site, much like paintings of past presidents line the White House. And like those White House images, most all of the Alcatraz faces are of white men. The only black face on display in fact is that of a former prison guard. That’s the first thing that’s striking about Alcatraz in this time of mass incarceration of black men…the overwhelming sight of white-faced criminals. And it’s not just superficial…it’s factual. 
Makes one wonder: when did the face of American crime go from white to black? As I mentioned a few posts ago, one of the curious things about the classic 1940s film His Girl Friday is that the murder case that drives the plot is of a white man killing a black cop. Growing up in the 50s, the killer who kept me awake at night was Charles Starkweather, the gangs that terrorized my TV and movie screens were led by Edward G. Robinson, Bruce Gordon, Sterling Hayden…and a host of other mean looking white guys. The coach of our little league team worked at the local prison farm and arranged for our team and another to play an exhibition game for the prisoners who feted and cheered us…and only one black face among them. So why do so many Americans nowadays associate crime with black faces? The US prison population still consists of a large number of white criminals, but as a proportion of the entire white population, it’s no where near as suspiciously excessive as that of the black prison population as a proportion of the general black population:

Lots of analyses of why that is so… the most common and logical is that the “war on drugs” has been a de facto war on black people. I’ll leave it at that because I didn’t intend this post as examination of such a very big and important question. It’s just that Alcatraz got me wondering if white folks had gotten better behaved since its heyday or did black folks just get badder?  
Aside from its pre-prison history and prison demographics, another very conspicuous feature of Alcatraz is how openly, honestly, and fairly the US National Park Service has embraced its Native American protest past. After the prison was shut down because it was too expensive to maintain and the island was virtually abandoned, a broad coalition of Indian tribes occupied it for two years, making a number of not so unreasonable demands. Among them was that the US government honor some of the treaties it had signed with tribes in the past and that the island be returned to Native Americans who essentially owned it for thousands of years before white men “discovered” it.  They didn’t get all their demands, but their protest drew national attention to the sorry state of Indian affairs and the government did negotiate with them for remedies to some of their grievances. Chief among them was termination of the Indian termination policy, which had allowed the government to withdraw recognition of tribes, thereby cancelling certain hard-won tribal privileges. A new policy of Indian self-determination was announced by the US President with these words:  

"It is long past time that the Indian policies of the Federal government began to recognize and build upon the capacities and insights of the Indian people. Both as a matter of Justice and as a matter of enlightened social policy, we must begin to act on the basis of what the Indians themselves have long been telling us. The time has come to break decisively with the past and to create the conditions for a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian acts and Indian decisions."

That president was Richard M. Nixon. And in this time when there is so much discussion about the comparison between Nixon and Donald Trump regarding their corresponding awfulness as Presidents, one must marvel at the level of intelligence, compassion, and leadership Nixon brought to that statement. It is so far beyond anything in Trump’s short-fingered reach. In a similar situation, Trump no doubt would send in the marines to end that Indian occupation as soon as it started with orders to shoot to kill…and all to the rapturous cheers of his white-hot angry base.  Indeed, I suspect if Trump were not so distracted by the many other trivial matters that occupy his tiny mind, he would order the removal of all signs of the Indian occupation, such as the graffiti painted on the water tower above.
As it stands now, Alcatraz actually enshrines our nation’s protest tradition and demonstrates that a large, diverse, free and self-assured country can listen and learn from its most discontented citizens. Coincidently, the day after our visit, controversial Colin Kaepernick showed up at Alcatraz to join the Indians gathered there to mark the anniversary of their protest. His appearance was further evidence that Kaepernick is not a one-trick pony when it comes to protest of conscience. He’s rather dedicated to social justice in the broadest possible sense. In fact, looking at the history of Alcatraz frees one to imagine a day when the NFL might unveil a statue of  Colin Kaepernick at its hall of fame in Canton. We always have escape from the prison of the mind. 

Blown Deadline

One of the great things about being retired is that fear of missing deadlines that haunts us through school exams to tax dates to job assigments and anniversaries is pretty much a thing of the past. Once you sign up for Social Security, Medicare and pass your 25th wedding anniversary, you’re fairly well home free. But I was reminded of the curse of deadlines this past week when my dear friend Ginny Bromage invited me to participate in a modest history-writing contest sponsored by her hometown newspaper The Suffield Observer.
Although I’ve never lived in Suffield myself, it was the town across the river from my hometown of Enfield, Connecticut; my mom’s family lived there for many years; and just about a year ago Suffield became the subject of one of the most mind-blowing historical facts I’d mysteriously never heard of before. By virtue of a grant from King Charles II, Colonial Connecticut extended in a narrow strip clear from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which if it had endured would’ve made tiny Connecticut if not the largest state in the union, surely the longest state most resembling a transcontinental anaconda. To settle its Revolutionary War debt the state ceded most of those lands to the newly formed nation, but held on to considerable pieces in Ohio in what became known as the Western Reserve. For some time those distant lands were controlled by six investors in Suffield through their company. They dispatched Moses Cleaveland (sic) and a team of surveyors to divide up the land into attractive sales lots, summarily canceled all Indian claims to the same lands, and as they say…the rest is history. There’s now a baseball team in Cleveland called the Indians and a whole lot of people who can’t understand what’s wrong with that.
Such historical stories always make me think that Thanksgiving is the best season of all to take stock of American history…mostly because, in spite of itself, Thanksgiving calls attention to the many paradoxes at the core of our national soul. We have the Pilgrims…refugees from religious persecution…immigrants from a land where adherence to a specific religion was law…transplanted to what they perceived as a gift outright from God where they could freely impose their own religious views despite the presence of previous occupants whose help they would need in surviving this paradise and whose cultures their descendents would systematically seek to destroy.
Speaking of those descendents…and speaking of Connecticut…that brings to mind Laura Ingraham, who in full disclosure I must admit ranks high at the top of my list of Most Loathsome Living Americans. Nonetheless Laura and I share Connecticut as our native state, which makes her recent claim that bringing down memorials to Confederate war heroes is a frontal assault on “our heritage”. Our heritage…curious that. I don’t have a Dartmouth education like Laura does, but I do recall from my high school American history that Connecticut fought on the Union side in the Civil War…and not only did it contribute a lot of blood to that conflict, but Powder Hollow in Hazardville, where I played a lot of baseball in my youth, was the main supplier of munitions for the Union Army. So how is it that a born and bred Connecticut Yankee like Laura Ingraham comes to claim the Confederacy as her heritage? She’s descended from Polish immigrants for crying out loud, who probably didn’t know cotton from kielbasa in 1861.  
Here’s how: Laura Ingraham’s moral tribe is the Confederacy…as well as all others who believe that what’s mine is mine no matter how I came by it or maintained it, even to the extent of selling off members of  human families you "own" for profit.  She first exhibited this moral allegiance as an undergrad at Dartmouth College when she, with her partner in political crime Dinesh D’Souza, waged an editorial war against Native American activists at Dartmouth College who were protesting over their historically shabby treatment by that esteemed monument to white male privilege. And while I'm at it, let me underscore the fact that this was a modern woman and a Bombay-born person of color taking to the barricades for white male privilege…thus proving, as an elementary understanding of conflicts throughout the globe plainly reveals, that tribal identity trumps racial and gender identity most every time. For Laura, siding with oppressor over oppressed is in her moral worldview only right because the oppressors would not be in their lofty position if they were not in so many ways superior to those who can’t take care of and defend themselves. It really is, in the worst possible sense, a Darwinian survival of the fittest morality.   
In The Undoing Project , Michael Lewis’s superb account of the relationship between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (“a friendship that changed our minds”), Lewis tells us that one of the many things undone by these two master paradigm shifters is George Santayana’s hoary chestnut: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Indeed, Tversky and Kahneman go contrary to Santayana (with their usual degree of meticulous evidence) to argue that we are often doomed by adhering too closely and ardently to history’s lessons. We become so myopic about our history that we lose sight of the fact that circumstances that might have paved the way for any one monumental historical event may have profoundly changed over time. And that even the simplest of changes—the so-called butterfly effect—can alter the course of history.  
A “lesson” of history for some people, for example, may be that compromise is a bad thing. There was after all the string of compromises over slavery that failed to avert our bloody Civil War. Starting with the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise and then through the Compromise of 1850, the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the US Congress persisted in trying to finesse the issue to the satisfaction of no one. Ultimately there was a war…it was fought and won…terms of surrender were agreed upon. But here we are over a century later still arguing over the cause of the war, whether the symbol of the vanquished in that war should be flown in the face of the victors, and whether public money and lands should be set aside to honor the antagonists in that war. Perhaps history’s lesson is that war, not compromise, is the bad thing.

But that’s the thing with history…to use a newly minted cliché: It’s complicated. Santayana can be as right as he ever was. But Tversky and Khaneman can be right too. Because we cherry pick history to fit our favorite narratives…our moral worldview…there really is no one, neat axiom or aphorism to cover it all.  History at best can provide us with data points: unregulated markets lead to greed and corruption; invading Moscow in winter never goes well for invaders; oppression, colonialism, slavery, genocide are black marks on most any culture and will continue to haunt long after no matter how many statues are built in honor or how many turkeys are slaughtered in memory. 

Since this is the season for history and prayer, let us pray: Let us pray that we don't blow the deadline on the promise we made to ourselves long ago when we were a serious country determined to form a more perfect union. 


  

The Desert Island Game, Rev. Edition

Kostis...so close to paradise and yet so far
You know the game…I even posted about it five years ago. I must say, however, that my critical thinking always gets in the way of fully enjoying it. I mean if it’s a desert island, where’s the electricity come from? And even if my CD player is solar or water powered, do I really want to sit baking in the sun listening to Dylan, no matter how much I love and honor the guy? So I got to thinking…how can we mix up the parameters of the game to overcome such objections…like what if instead of music you had to choose what skills you would bring to the desert island. Coincidently, Lorna recently exercised that uncanny knack she has for asking me profound questions in the most mundane moments (I believe I was trying to unplug a toilet this time). She asked me if I had any superpowers and what I thought they were. I admitted to not having superpowers, but thought I could lay claim to certain strengths. To her inquiry I responded:A preternatural ability to listen to both sides, honed at the kitchen table as a child forced to arbitrate my parents’ ongoing debate over dad’s drinking routineA natural narrative voice in my head, which came from where I do not knowAn instinct for teaching…with emphasis on bringing out the best in my students rather than impressing them with the best in meIn assessing all those worthy skills, I realized every one of them would be useless on a desert island with no one to listen to, no one to write to, and no one to teach. So what I would really need are skills I don’t have: to build a lean-to, to start a fire from scratch and to tell the difference between the good purple berries and the poison ones. Changing the game from music to skills doesn’t make the game any more fun for me, but it does make it more clarifying. After all, what’s it really matter if you forget to bring that Country Joe and the Fish album with you? But arrive on a desert island without knowing how to fish, and now you’ve got problems.
The Robinson Crusoe/Cast Away survivalist scenario is an ever-popular one. Less so, though perhaps more compelling, are the tales detailing a character struggle for survival, such as in the recent film we watched called Suntan. It’s about a doctor who arrives on a near-idyllic Greek island to make a new start. The island is already equipped with the basics: electricity…fresh water, indoor plumbing, cafes, grocery stores, motorized transportation…lots of other people. It even has a fully equipped clinic for him to pursue his profession. He doesn’t have to deal with the usual desert island hardships, but instead can get right down to a real do-over in life. And Kostis, the doctor, really seems in need of a do-over when he first arrives on the island. In this he is reminiscent of the main character in one of my all time favorite books, The Magus . In channeling his character, Nicholas Urfe, author John Fowles writes:

But then one bleak March Sunday, the scales dropped from my eyes. I read [my] Greek poems and saw them for what they were: undergraduate pieces, without rhythm, without structure, their banalities of perception clumsily concealed under an impasto of lush rhetoric. In horror, I turned to other poems I had written. They were no better; even worse…The truth rushed down on me like a burying avalanche. I was not a poet...Poetry had always seemed something I could turn to in need—an emergency exit, a lifebuoy, as well as justification. Now I was in the sea, and the lifebuoy had sunk, like lead. It was an effort not to cry tears of self-pity…For days after, I felt filled with nothingness; with something more than the old physical and social loneliness—a metaphysical sense of being marooned. It was something almost tangible, like cancer or tuberculosis.

We don’t get as literal a picture of Kostis’s pain in Suntan. He never articulates the personal or professional failure that sends him to the island in search of refuge. Because it’s a movie, his forlorn status is seen, not read, in his pitiful stares, his lumpy body, and his pasty white complexion that wards off a golden Greek tan as if he’s encased in a sausage skin. Like Nicholas in The Magus, the warmth, the adventure, the hedonism he encounters on his island paradise only serves to tease and alienate him even more. Kostis has brought his skill as a doctor; Nicholas has brought his skill as a writer…both to begin anew. But in the end, both are doomed by whatever it was that undid them before they ever got to the island. It all serves to underscore the truth of the old adage: Wherever you go, there you are. You can bring all the records you want to your desert island, but if who you are is a broken record, it’s not going to be any fun at all.

Hope is on the Clock

Photoshop treatment of original art by Ayça Alkoç

Daughter Gillian sent me a link to an NPR TED Talks podcast on the subject of Dialog and Exchange, a driving obsession of hers. It’s full of the paradigm shifting insights we come to expect from TED and well-worth a listen. It starts with the granddaughter of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps telling how she came to reject her family’s hateful mission after getting into a dialog with someone on Twitter...of all places. Then a Stanford University researcher reports on how by simply reframing issues to accommodate the moral view of people can change their minds on certain political issues (for example, there’s evidence that stressing the pursuit of purity in discussing environmental policy actually moves climate change deniers to acceptance). Finally, a rabbi recounts a career of seeking out encounters with people with opposing views for the sake of both teaching them and learning from them. 
Coincidental to the title of this blog post, the rabbi, Jonathan Sacks of Great Britain, ends his talk on his distinction between optimism and hope. Optimism, he says, is the belief that things will get better; hope is the belief that we can make things better by working together. That very belief is what’s on the clock here. I think we’re likely in the 59th second of the 11th hour of any hope we have of coming together and saving our country from falling irrevocably into an authoritarian state. And I say this as someone who often draws his optimism from history…as in: we endured the Civil War; we beat back Hitler; we won the Cold War. How bad can this be?
This is how bad it be: what we face today combines the worst elements of all those devastating national trials-- sharp, irreconcilable division as in the Civil War; the emergence of an irrational autocrat as in World War II; the imposition of totalitarian rule over our freedoms of press, speech, assembly, due process, voting rights, as well as justice and equality before the law as practiced in the Soviet Union during the Cold War…and since.  
In the TED talk Gillian linked me to most of the focus is on the importance of dialog between those who disagree with each other in order to reach compromises to avoid social disaster. Pollyanna, however, is not a Ted talker. One who is, the researcher who advocated the moral reframing approach, admits that there are times when the other side does not have a moral leg to stand on and it’s necessary take a firm stand and flat out call them on theirs. We have clearly reached that stage in regards to Donald Trump. As much print space as the New York Times has invested this past year in trying to understand Trump supporters, the fact is that these people have wholly embraced his well-documented vulgarity, flimflammery, dishonesty, incompetence, racism, nativism, corruption,  boorishness, ignorance, narcissism, and authoritarianism. Normally I would take time to link to the evidence that abounds on all those scores, but really? After two years of having him flaunt his trespasses in plain sight, those who can see them, do. Those who can’t, don’t want to. There is no seeing eye-to-eye with such people. There is no moral middle ground between us. These are people who have as little regard for the traditions, institutions, responsibilities, and legacy of this country as the man they elected to uproot and trash it all. It’s time to move past dialog and exchange (and this includes you, batty Old Grey Lady).  
When the first celebrity to support him, Tom Brady, calls him “divisive”, when one of the first national politicians to support him calls him unfit for office, when a Republican Senator who voted with him 85% of the time says nine months of him is enough, when an army of bona fide conservative champions such as Jennifer Rubin, David Frum, Charlie Sykes, Rick Wilson and George Will forcefully and persistently call for the Republican Party to separate from him, we know that all the persuadables who are coming aboard are on board. All the people with the conscience, intelligence, and patriotic fervor to see what’s at stake are now gathered together on this hallowed common ground. This is the alliance.
Of the 37% who tell pollsters they still support him, another 10% will probably turn after all the indictments come out (even Richard Nixon left office with 24% approval…and this was afterthe tapes, the courts and his party went against him). That 10% will be meaningless to the struggle ahead to save the country, except to the degree that it pushes the craven Republican leadership to assume its Constitutional duty.
It will be for the rest of us to stay strong, focused and committed to taking our support for Special Counsel (Republican) Robert Mueller to the streets. This will be our High Noon ; RepublicanMueller will be our Gary Cooper. But unlike the cowardly citizens of Hadleyville in that classic American Western, we cannot remain huddled and quaking behind closed doors. At this point it’s at best a 50-50 proposition that when the Trump indictments come down Republican leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will at long last put country above party. It’s probably less than 50% that Democrats will be in charge at any time soon to make a difference. And we can pretty much count on the extreme right and left to go after Republican Mueller with a renewed and vicious vengeance…the right because of its vested interest in authoritarianism…the left because of its interest in pulling all vestiges of the establishment down.
So it will be up to the reluctant patriots among us to join those not so reluctant who marched multiple times in 2017 in political and moral outrage at what’s being done to our country. It’ll be up to all of us to strike with a ferocity not seen since the Vietnam War protest era when Republican Mueller walks down that dusty, dirty main street alone with his indictments in hand. High Noon famously ends with Cooper’s Marshall Will Kane throwing his badge into the street in disgust. If Republican Mueller is put in the same position because his brave, diligent, honest work is ignored or dismissed or perverted, this country will have faced its high noon and died a coward’s death.


The Mueller time we don't want to see