Dan Riley's Blog, page 8

Living on Edge Part II

Secular humor or existential threat? 
For those living on the metaphysical edge there is nothing funny 
in this, not just because they lack a sense of humor generally
but because they see everything in this as blasphemy. 
(Thanks to Rob Belgieri)
Most everyone can understand the concept of “living on the edge” in physical or psychological terms. At its best, in both instances living on the edge can create a heightened sense of awareness of being through accepting and meeting physical or mental challenges. At its worst, living on the edge can lead to destruction…usually of the self because it's generally a selfish or at least self-centered choice. Living on the edge metaphysically, however, inevitably brings with it more widespread consequences because that usually involves a mass of people with an intensely shared belief in an imagined order of the universe…a belief to which others, apart from the mass, are expected to adhere...or else. 
A cult is an obvious example. In 1997 the Heaven’s Gate religious cult, for instance, living and breathing on the edge of metaphysical certainty that they were going to hitch a ride on an extraterrestrial spacecraft following in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet committed mass suicide. Thirty-nine people living in luxury in San Diego County killed themselves in pre-determined groups over a span of three days based on a theology cobbled together out of bits and pieces of Biblical writing, secular new ageism, and science fiction. Bizarre as it was, it is a not so fat-fetched foreshadowing of a scenario that is unfolding on a broader national level. Lots of analysis of the clear, sharp partisan divide in the country right now focuses on typical social/political issues: income inequality, racism, taxation, immigration, globalization, social media. Only recently has the metaphysical dimension of this divide gotten the attention it deserves. 
It is altogether fitting that it is Attorney General William Barr’s recent speech at Notre Dame that invited this attention. Barr, both in his actions and now in his unambiguous words, perfectly personifies the nation’s lurch toward the metaphysical edge. When Donald Trump announced Barr as his replacement AG after running unreconstructed Southerner Jeff Sessions out of the office, establishment Washington breathed a collective sigh of relief. Many savvy, fully evolved TV commentators/legal minds described Barr was an “institutionalist”, and predicted that because he knew and honored the American system of justice, would serve it well. To their shock, within weeks of assuming his crucial role in maintaining the rule of law, Barr was perverting it and acting outright as lawyer for the one man at the top rather than the very many below and actively destroying the principle that no one was above the law. Bafflement at this seemingly sudden and sinister turn by someone with a decades’ long reputation to protect banished when Barr, a devout Catholic and member of the zealous Catholic group Opus Dei, clearly spelled out his purposes in his Notre Dame speech:

Today we face something different that may mean that we cannot count on the pendulum swinging back. First is the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religionwe are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.
In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy missionis to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursuing a deific end.They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. …
Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing…conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means. And this is as it should be, but there is no getting around the fact that this puts conservatives at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy war… 

Projection and hypocrisy fairly well reek out of Barr’s mouth. Anyone with even a slight grip on politics--unfiltered through the Fox propaganda apparatus--knows that expansive, intensive conservative attempts to suppress the vote do the exact opposite of “promoting a proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing.” Anyone not blinkered by Third Way accommodation wishfulness realizes that conservatives openly want nothing less than the permanent manifestation of their “earthy paradise,” where planning parenthood is taboo, sexual preference is converted and homogenized, patriarchy rules, and American style Christianity holds pre-eminence over all other religions (and eternal damnation to hell for those with no religion).  There is no room for third way magical thinking, negotiation, compromise. This brand of conservatism has pushed itself to the metaphysical edge where the only choice is all or nothing. 

The reality is that Barr is not only selling traditional values to conservative voters, some of whom are genuinely starved for them, he is also marketing apocalyptic hogwash because, for his boss to get re-elected, Trump’s supporters must continue to believe that liberals and the Democratic Party are the embodiment of evil, determined to destroy the American way of life.

I’ll leave it to others to do the heavy lifting of categorically and substantively make the strong case that liberalism is quite literally improving American life, not destroying it. (“The white working class constituency that would seem to be most immune to the appeal of the cultural left — the very constituency that has moved more decisively than any other to the right — is now succumbing to the centrifugal, even anarchic, forces denounced by Barr and other social conservatives, while more liberal constituencies are moving in the opposite, more socially coherent, rule-following, direction.”) The point of this post is not to provide a counterpoint to religious conservatives’ preposterous claims that they may have more scrupulous plans and policies “for healthy development of natural civil society”. They demonstrably do not. What’s really at issue here is that they have a deep, abiding, sincere belief that not only do they have the answer, but that any answer other than theirs (Trump re-election prospects aside) is apocalyptic. Their blueprint for dealing with existential threats to their worldview lies in plain sight in our history. From the 1620 charter that granted the Puritans dominion over New England:

And also for that We have been further given certainly to knowe, that within these late Yeares there hath by God's Visitation reigned a wonderfull Plague, together with many horrible Slaugthers, and Murders, committed amoungst the Savages and brutish People there, heertofore inhabiting, in a Manner to the utter Destruction, Devastacion, and Depopulacion of that whole Territorye, so that there is not left for many Leagues together in a Manner, any that do claime or challenge any Kind of Interests therein, nor any other Superior Lord or Souveraigne to make Claime "hereunto, whereby We in our Judgment are persuaded and satisfied that the appointed Time is come in which Almighty God in his great Goodness and Bountie towards Us and our People, hath thought fitt and determined, that those large and goodly Territoryes, deserted as it were by their naturall Inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our Subjects and People as heertofore have and hereafter shall by his Mercie and Favour, and by his Powerfull Arme, be directed and conducted thither. 

The enemy—Democrats, liberals, progressive/moderates, even Never Trump Republicans--must be wiped out, confined to reservations, shackled or restricted by law from full participation in American society. That’s how they propose to deal with those who choose a path at odds with theirs. Otherwise they will—to paraphrase a general once mired in a bloody, calamitous military campaign—destroy the village in order to save it.  Thanks to Andy McRory

Living on the Edge, Part I

Welcome to our neighborhood
Lorna and I were once led on a safari in Botswana by a guide with the un-bwanna-like name of Bruce whose stated philosophy of life was, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room”. At first we found it mildly amusing, but it lost its charm when he led us into the bush for the second time and so provoked a white rhino that it charged the jeep where he’d tucked our party away while he moved in for a close-up photo. The rhino, fortunately, had more common sense than Bruce and veered off in another direction in time for us to get out of there. I would never-ever describe myself as someone who lives dangerously, but the sign above marks the entrance to our neighborhood where we’ve lived happily for more than 25 years. It is not a seasonal sign; it’s up all the time (having replaced a billboard-sized sign that was there when we first moved in and…almost as a taunt to nature…was made of wood). And, please note, our neighborhood has not become a fire risk zone as a result of climate change. When we first moved in and attended a neighborhood fire safety meeting, the fire marshal told us that wildfires were cyclical in our area and we were due for one…so it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Still, with open eyes we bought our home here (on Flametree Road no less!) and have made considerable improvements in it over the years under the real threat of it all going up in flames one day pushed to the backs of our minds. Not too far back, mind you: Some of the changes we’ve made have been for the express purpose of mitigating the damage of a wildfire. In this I suspect we’ve been no more or less conscientious than many of our fellow Californians who, alas, still lost their homes to the state’s increasing epidemic of fierce, uncontrolled burns.    Where we live:
During a recent fire scare flames loomed just beyond our
driveway looking like lava spitting up from VesuviusThis enormous gamble that we’ve taken not only with our most valuable material possessions but our lives as well has stoked my nearly lifelong fascination with the doomed city of Pompeii. I don’t give a second’s thought to the notion of reincarnation, but if I did I could be easily convinced that I am the reanimated soul of a body burned and buried there in 79 AD. There’s something about Pompeii that calls to me…and recently inspired me to plug in the earbuds and listen to classicist Mary Beard’s 2008 study, Pompeii, The Fires Of Vesuvius Pompeii Lost and Found. The book begins with the description of a couple who had attempted to escape the city by its eastern gate. Among the couple’s remains found in 1907 was a key, Beard says, that was beautifully molded in the shape of an African’s head. Though its utility is unclear (key to house, hope chest, jewelry box?), Beard tells us it must have been an expensive key--speaking of the couple’s successful past--and its presence in their possession at their dying moments spoke of their hopeful future. The scene resonated with me immediately. On our visit to Pompeii, we made the essential side visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples where many of the artifacts from Pompeii are kept. There we encountered a boxed set of dinnerware stored away by its owners and preserved by Vesuvius’s hardened lava. The label that accompanied the exhibit noted how the care with which the owners stored their belongings reflected their optimism in returning.  
These anecdotes about the fated key and fated dinnerware speak broadly about people who live on the edge. That is, though it takes a certain amount of fatalism to live in a danger zone…be it danger from fire, flood, volcano, what have you…most people do so with a sense of faith that after a cataclysm life will resume. This determination to stare down a potential apocalypse is not wholly admired throughout society, however. Coverage of wildfires in California is inevitably accompanied by stories of those who ignore evacuation orders and refuse to abandon their homes. We see this repeated under threats of hurricane warnings in the Southeast and tornado warnings in the Southwest, so it’s not just a California thing. But wherever it happens it does tend to raise the ire of others who either don’t like the idea of common sense being dismissed or bailing out those who willfully tempt fate. 
Which always seems to raise the unpleasant question: what’s the obligation of the rest of society to people who choose to live close to the edge when disaster strikes? Personally I shake my head in disdain every time a story breaks about some daredevils who decided to challenge nature on a lark against all good advice and ended up draining precious public funds to rescue them. But is what they did any different than the risk we took in moving into this neighborhood? Is it any different from the residents of Pompeii who remained after experiencing a devastating eruption of Vesuvius 17 years before the ultimate one that buried the city for centuries? 
Speaking from my obviously biased position, I think there’s a significant difference. First of all, few people move into danger zones on a lark…for the thrill of it. We’re not living here on the edge of apocalypse for the adrenalin rush…quite the opposite in fact. We’re here for the beauty and tranquility of the place…and the danger, like the mortgage (and the taxes!), is part of the price we have to pay. The same goes for those who live in such places because of their jobs or families. Sometimes danger zones become dangerous after they’ve been settled and people have built a lifestyle and enacted public policies around management of the danger. Most importantly, people who live on the edge, as opposed to those who merely play on the edge, are invested in it. They’re not just waiting to be helicoptered out of harm’s way, but are willing and eager to return after disaster…precious keys in hand…to rebuild. 
Why we live here:
Looking off in the same direction from the driveway,
most days it looks idyllicPeople are not generally existential nihilists about the places they live. We carve out living spaces in inhospitable environments because that’s what we’ve always done as a species…it’s in our nature and it’s what accounts for our ability to flourish all over the globe. In rare instances do we consciously set about turning our habitat into a death trap because we don’t care what happens to it or us. That’s nihilistic behavior. There have always been nihilists among us, but civilized societies have been able to put laws and norms in place to stop them from exerting their self-destructive impulses on the rest of us. What happens, though, when by hook and crook they wrest control from the rest of us? What happens when by dint of fanaticism and intransigence those who believe that human evolution is damnable start pushing us closer and closer to a metaphysical edge? 
Next post: Living on the Edge, Part II

Doping the Vote

Although I’ve been a pretty normal consumer of World War II entertainment fare since my youth--from Battle Cry and Sands of Iwo Jima through A Bridge Too Far and Patton up to Saving Private Ryan and Inglorious Basterds--I’ve never been one of those World War II obsessives who spends hours in front of the History Channel tracking every battle or immersed in Greatest Generation™ literature. So that probably accounts for my shock when I took a flyer on a new Netflix series awkwardly titled The Greatest Events of World War II in Color and learned in episode one what a crucial role drugs played in the Third Reich. Most notable was the drug Pervitin:

Pervitin was the early version of what we know today as crystal meth. And it was fitting that a German soldier would become addicted to the stuff: the drug, Der Spiegel notes, first became popular in Germany, brought to market by the then-Berlin-based drugmaker Temmler Werke. And almost immediately, the German army physiologist Otto Ranke realized its military value: not only could the methamphetamine compound keep fighters…alert on little sleep; it could also keep an entire military force feeling euphoric. Meth, Spiegel puts it, "was the ideal war drug."And it was, as such, put to wide use. The Wehrmacht, Germany's World War II army, ended up distributing millions of the Pervitin tablets to soldiers on the front (they called it "Panzerschokolade," or "tank chocolate"). The air force gave the tablets to its flyers (in this case, it was "pilot's chocolate" or "pilot's salt"). Hitler himself was given intravenous injections of methamphetamine by his personal physician, Theodor Morell. The pill, however, was the more common form of the drug. All told, between April and July of 1940, more than 35 million three-milligram doses of Pervitin were manufactured for the German army and air force.

The Netflix documentary says that the Nazis mass consumption of tank chocolate was largely responsible for their stunning assault on France through the Ardennes Forest in 1940. Due to the drug, they were able to accomplish a two-week goal in three days because they didn’t need sleep and fought with a ferocity that would come to be their brutal calling card in the early years of the war. (I should note, the documentary makes clear that the Germans were also aided in the Battle of France by the arrogance and ignorance of the French high command…whose drug of choice must have been afternoon bottles of Bordeaux).This new addition to my personal databank got my mind thinking along two tracks…one trivial…the other possibly profound. The trivial is: Why hasn’t Hollywood addressed this Nazi drug habit in any of the many films made about the war? (If they have and I missed it, I’d appreciate a heads up from anyone out there with a title or two.) The more profound thought though is this: How many examples do we have from history of mass populations of people reacting in such a uniform way to common drug usage as to majorly alter a society’s behavior? As my mind toyed with the idea, I wondered if such a phenomenon could be at work in the USA today. So I went to two interactive maps on the Internet and began to play amateur sociologist. The first map (shown above) is from the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) tracking prescription drug use by county in the US in 2016. The second (shown below) is from the New York Times tracking US voting by county in the 2016 presidential election. I was looking for correlations between high opioid use (deep purple and red) and political preference (red for Republican/Trump; blue for Democrat/Clinton). What I’ve found in my survey--thus far restricted to just a dozen states—is rather startling in two regards:I have yet to find a deep purple high opioid dependency area that did not go for Trump…and by wide margins.Faint blue areas (Dem/Clinton) in deep red states show a considerable drop off in opioid use compared to the red areas around them.







Someone who really knows this stuff could probably confirm or dismiss these admittedly superficial findings by superimposing the maps over each other. Unfortunately, that’s beyond me, though I would like to use this early exploration of the issue to reach out…
Whoa! Hold everything...stop the music!!! Just as I was about to explain to you, my readers, my humble plan to package my measly research and reach out to some experts in the field, I Googled to find that the experts had already weighed in on the subject. Boy, did they ever. From the Journal of American Medicine:

In examining the maps showing the geographic distribution of the opioid epidemic, several observers have noted the similarity to the results of the 2016 presidential election.13-16 Counties and states with the highest opioid use were often areas carried by the Republican candidate in the election. This is not surprising, because aspects of the narrative analyzing the presidential vote echoed themes that occur in explanations for high opioid use.17,18 

From Newsweek:

However, this did not mean that drugs cause Trump support, or that Trump support causes drug use. Instead, the results could indicate that the socioeconomic factors that may inspire someone to vote for Trump also may increase the likelihood that he or she would depend on opioids. The authors of the study cited feelings of marginalization, economic stress and poverty, lack of employment opportunities and feeling left out.

From the UK:

The study found that Mr Trump received about 39 per cent of the 2016 vote in the 638 counties with the lowest rates of long-term (90-day supply or more) Medicare opioid prescriptions, but about 60 per cent of the vote in the 693 counties with the highest rates of long-term opioid use.These findings dovetail with some other research that's come out since the election. A December 2016 study found, for instance, that "Trump over-performed the most in counties with the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates."

From bloggers (!) who were quicker on the uptake than I was:

It's easy to see similarities between the places hardest hit by the opioid epidemic and a map of Trump strongholds. "When we look at the two maps, there was a clear overlap between counties that had high opioid use ... and the vote for Donald Trump," says Dr. James S. Goodwin, chair of geriatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and the study's lead author. "There were blogs from various people saying there was this overlap. But we had national data."

I find this all somewhat comforting because as we get closer to the end of the Trump Era, my growing concern is with the vast segment of bitter, marginalized, self-loathing, armed and dangerous Trump supporters he will leave behind. It’s hopeful to know that by forcefully and effectively addressing the opioid epidemic, we may actually be able to cure some of these people of their malignant politics. It’s worth noting that once Nazi Germany realized the harmful effects (over aggression, depression, suicide) that the widespread use of Pervitin was having on their military as well as society as a whole, they cut way back on manufacture and distribution of the drug. Of course they then lost the war, but better that, I’d say, than permanent loss of their hearts and minds. By the way, the big takeaway from this blog post? I've still got things to learn...lots of things. 

Look that up in Your Funk & Wagnalls

Goldie Hawn from Laugh-in...though there's nothing funny about this.
The International Vocabulary Preservation Society has announced the nominees for new words to appear in the next edition of Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary. The nominees are:
trump (v)—to make promises with no intention of keeping them. How do you trump charities like that?
trump (n)—a conflation of troll and stump to indicate someone who is both nasty and ignorant. The joint international press conference became an embarrassment when one of the participants turned out to be a real trump.
trump (adj)—with -ploy to indicate false front, back, and everything in between. It was obvious from his body language that he was trump-ploy.
trumpian (adj)--being nasty and ignorant locally rather than globally. Her brother-in-law ruined Thanksgiving by being very trumpian.
trumpy (adj)--dressing like a dork with your tie (usually a red one) hanging down to your belt buckle. The porn actress decided to spend the night with him even though his style of dress was very trumpy.
trumpini (adj)—exceedingly and exceptionally tiny. His brain, his penis and his character were trumpini.
trumpello (adj)—a pale orange hue. After eating bad salmon his projectile vomit was trumpello.
trumpalooza var. trumpaloser (n)—a raucous gathering of red-clad, resentful bigots chanting inanities about locking people up and building walls while listening to blaring music written by people who have not given them the rights to listen to their music because they’re unworthy of it. The trumpalooza was both seductive for the national media and destructive of it.
trumpmania (n)— a synonym for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Most of those in attendance at the trumpalooza suffered from trumpmania.
anti-trump (n)—a person of common sense, average intelligence and a modicum of compassion. Although the anti-trumps were in a decisive majority, they suffered under the rule of a trump. 
pro trump (n)—a person who gets paid to support a trump rather than one who does it for free (i.e. a rube). The pro trump married to an anti-trump was like a political Jack Sprat—Kellyanne could speak no truth; hubby George could tell no lies. 
trumpathy—(n) an inexplicable New York Times editorial position. In yet another show of trumpathy, The New York Times sent a crack team of investigative reporters to interview a Pennsylvania diner full of bitter and bored white people. 
trumpism (n)—the attempt to turn a constitutional democracy into an autocratic kleptocacyThe Party of Lincoln shamelessly bent itself over in the thrall of trumpism.
trumpanzee ((n)—newly discovered subspecies of American citizen thoroughly enamored of someone who lies to their faces, insults veterans, attacks women, avoids responsibility, appears mentally ill, and generally behaves like a first class boor

Off the Reservation

One of my favorite old Dylan lines:Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree 
Me too, Bob. Every once in a while, I just have to take a few steps off the reservation…like that phrase right there: off the reservation. In the view of some that is a certifiably racist expression. Hell, I’ve encountered those in my social media meandering who regard the very word tribe as politically incorrect, regardless of its long-established and scholarly use in anthropology. Under the current regime of “woke” culture, however, almost any utterance is grist for damnation. That’s why I was glad to see Barack Obama call out the limits and presumptions of wokeness this week:

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”

Allow me to connect the dots between that astute observation and what may be the second…or third…or probably fourth biggest political story of the week: the resignation of California Representative Katie Hill after she became embroiled in a sex scandal. Hill’s scandal should actually…and importantly…be divided into two parts. The first involves the intimate photos of her naked and/or with the young woman she shared with her husband in an ongoing threesome. The second involves a recently passed House ethics rule against sexual relations between members of Congress and their subordinates. Hill has denied she did the latter, but owns up to the authenticity of the photos, while condemning the thirst for revenge that led her truly shitty ex-husband to shop them around. Whether she should’ve resigned…either willingly or under pressure…is not where I'm going with this. There are still too many moving pieces on the story to support a sustainable take on that, including the distraction of a sexually-charged House ethics probe during an historic impeachment inquiry as well as the rumored existence of even more titillating Hill photos. Nonetheless woke culture was all over the story, but its typical hang 'em high judgmentalism was not aimed at Hill. Instead it was reserved for the patriarchy because in its view men never suffer the harsh condemnation meted out to women in regards to sexual transgression. It was also reserved for Republicans because in its view the GOP never has to pay for its indiscretions as Democrats do. It was reserved for Baby Boomers, too, because in its view Boomers don’t understand how much of their lives millennials live out in front of smart phones posing for selfies and self-exposure, totally innocent to the consequences of sharing intimate aspects of their lives in such an uncontrollable medium.As the Brits would say, Bollocks to all that.With Al Franken having rather recently been sidelined by sexual misbehavior, it’s hard to take seriously anyone who maintains that no harm would come to Katie Hill if she were a scandalous man instead of a scandalous woman. Furthermore, it's worth noting that Kirsten Gillibrand,  an obvious woman, had her run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination largely cut short because many “woke” Democrats blamed her for Franken’s resignation. She was, of course, just the first of many to call for it...and she was driven to do it in order to be true to her long-established, well-earned reputation as a crusader against workplace sexual harassment. In this instance it was almost impossible to tell who was Obama’s “person with flaws who was doing really good stuff”—Franken or Gillibrand--because uncompromising woke culture leaves little room for fairness or nuance.     As for how unfair the scandal gods treat Dems vis-à-vis Republicans, the historical record would indicate that it’s really pretty damn fair. Democrats Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barney Frank, to name a few, were pretty much able to ride out their respective sexual scandals and maintain office, while Republicans such as Bob Packwood, Mark Foley, and Larry Craig were not. It is unbecoming…and rather Republican…for Democrats/liberals to whine about how only our side has to pay a price for indiscretion.And the victim of new technology defense! That could only be more laughable if Anthony Weiner had used it in arguing that as a Baby Boomer he couldn’t be expected to fully understand the complexity and combustibility of dick pix and texting.You would think that after arch-feminist avenger of sexually harassed women Lisa Bloom was exposed as a double agent for arch-sexual harassing villain Harvey Weinstein, my tribesmen..and women...would be a little more cautious about jumping into relationship controversies fraught with unpleasant surprises, hidden agendas, and sociopathy. But no. Another Dylan verse…from the same time period as the line above:But it grieves my heart, loveTo see you tryin' to be a part ofA world that just don't exist It's all just a dream, babe A vacuum, a scheme, babe That sucks you into feelin' like this
That’s how I feel when I watch members of my tribe twist themselves into pretzel logic whenever a sex scandal tornado blows over the political landscape. Factuality, intellectual consistency, ethical considerations all get tossed to the wind. Instead there’s a checklist posted on the storm cellar door as to who’s worthy of forgiveness and salvation: Women over men, Democrats over Republicans, young over old.  It’s easy to say it’s all just a by-product of our extremely partisan times. But it’s dire than that. Sexual misbehavior…or perceived misbehavior…is utterly bi-partisan. It’s as old as human history and an inescapable part of the human condition. Every effort to nail it to a particular gender, ideology, or generation is another attempt at denying our common humanity…to close our eyes to the essential messiness of our world.  

In Dreams

A candy-colored clown they call the sandmanTiptoes to my room every nightJust to sprinkle stardust and to whisper "Go to sleep. Everything is all right."
A few weeks ago friend Julie Weissman-Markovitz put out a call for anyone who knew anything about dream interpretation. Though not an expert, I answered the call based on my first year back in seminary school when the assignment of one course was to journal your dreams from the night before each day. The course had the rather hokey title of "Life as Personal", but Leighton McCutcheon, the instructor, went way beyond the hokiness to make it one of the best courses in my entire academic life. Leighton, by the way, secured his place in my teacher pantheon by being the one who introduced me to the guru of the Nobby Works, Norman O. Brown. Leighton, like Brown, girded his teaching with a dazzling blend of Christ, Marx and Freud. Needless to say, our dream interpretations relied heavily on reading symbols. Over time one could see the recurrence of symbols--phallic or not--that played a specific part within the context of dreams. We also made note of recurring dreams themselves. I can’t recall how many times a dream would recur to make for a notable pattern, but even 2-3 times in an academic year was something. I had one such recurring dream:

I was waking up in the house we lived in during my boyhood. In the dream I am pre-adolescent and have awakened to the exciting realization that this day is naked day…that everyone is going out into the world without clothes. Fortunately my dream skips over any encounters with my parents that day and takes my onto the street where we lived walking toward the corner of Russell and Main where the Midnight Spa stood. It was a familiar gathering spot for what were called in the day “hoods”—black leather jackets with collars up, greased back hair combed in the back to a DA (duck ass). I am strolling down the street just as proud and liberated as can be in all my splendid nakedness until I get to the corner and see all the hoods there dressed up in their imposing dark finery. They laugh when they see me, form a circle around me, and mock me into shame about my nakedness. End of dream.

I have had that dream or slight variations on it many times since, so I take it as a fairly reliable glimpse into my subconscious view of life, and there are a couple of interpretations. It could speak to my core naiveté…or exhibitionism. It could express a desire to want to go naked…i. e. open and honest…into the world. It could also reflect my strong affinity for the story of Genesis, which climaxes with Adam being shamed by his own body.Although I don’t keep a dream journal any longer, it is not at all unusual for Lorna and me to begin the day discussing my previous night’s dreams. Because she’s been with me and at this for so long, she’s really quite good at reading them. Recently I had four of my more memorable ones. One of them Lorna refused to interpret out of concern that it would be too upsetting for me. I offer it and the others here with an open invitation for readers to join me in interpretation:

In the first I am visiting my mother in a home rather than hospital environment on her deathbed (Mom died in 2017). She has tubes connected to her, but is clearly awake, yet she refuses to acknowledge me. Charlize Theron comes in and invites me into the adjoining room. I follow her into her room. She points to her phone…a landline clunker sitting on an end table…and says that maybe if I call my mother she’ll answer. I call. No answer. I let it ring…and light! The phone blinks red with every ring. Finally I give up and hang up. Charlize pointedly asks, “Why did you do that?” I answer, “Because she wasn’t picking up.” Charlize says, “So how many chances do you think your mother should get to pick up?” My dream moves in for a close-up of Charlize…her face is now painted mime white, her eyes become pinkish with tears, her head is surrounded by a halo of white lilies. End of dream.

A few critical background details are probably necessary for this one. Oldest daughter Meagan once worked with Charlize, and we had somewhat of a social relationship with her, so this is not a case of movie star idolization going on here. It’s more likely, as my reading of dreams has shown over the years, that Charlize is a stand-in for Meagan. I find this often happens in dreams when your subconscious is trying to soften the message. Given that Meagan and her sister Gillian have both communicated recently in their indirect and direct ways respectively that I should be calling them more often, that’s where I go with this one. But this is the one Lorna was protecting me from, so maybe it’s worse.

In the second dream, I’m shopping in Costco, looking over books, when the man next to me has a seizure and dies. I am charged with his murder. The cop making the charge is played by Ryan Rodriquez, our plumber with whom we’ve done a lot of expensive business lately and have more pending. He tells me I have a year to clear my name. In dreamtime, the year quickly passes, and I show up at police headquarters to turn myself in. Ryan is beside himself. He can’t believe I had a year and didn’t come up with any defense for myself. I respond, “No, I didn’t. If you believe I killed that man, then there’s nothing I can do or say to make you see that I’m innocent. You might as well lock me up.” End of dream.

This one cuts to a key character trait of mine…I am usually loathe to explain or defend myself when I believe that my innocence of a wrongdoing should be apparent to anyone who really knows me. Oddly this speaks to my refusal to use emojis when I’m cracking wise on social media. My feeling has always been that if you don’t know me well enough to know when I’m joking then you really don’t know me. It’s a bit arrogant, I know…I’m putting a burden on virtually hundreds of unknown others to know what I refer to as the Gestalt of Dan. 

The third dream occurred when Lorna had gone to spend the night with a friend. I was dreaming that someone had invaded the house. I could hear him making his way through doors, down halls and upstairs. I struggled to overcome my panic and make my way to the door where I had my Second Amendment baseball bat for protection. I took up the bat and made my way out of the bedroom and down the stairs. I saw no one, but heard increasingly loud noise coming from outside. I stepped out where I found our large backyard and swimming pool filled with south of the border immigrants frolicking. A benign Border Patrol agent was there overseeing it all. He turned to me and said, “They’re okay. Just having fun.” I felt an immediate sense of relief and went back inside to bed. End of dream. 

Whoa, baby! Is that not the ultimate liberal dream? I don’t know. I wouldn’t really want my home overrun by immigrants…nor would I want it overrun by hordes of the white privileged…and surely not by mad MAGA hatters. So I’m not entirely sure what to make of this one, except what it might say about the difference between the fear of facing one intruder alone and hosting a party under watchful supervision of lawful authority. My home is probably a stand-in for the country and this is a dreamy projection of my utopia.    

Finally, a classic--oversleeping for the final exam. In this variation on what may be one of the most universal dreams, I’ve been called in to serve as a substitute teacher in a school where daughter Gillian teaches. I spent a few very excruciating years as a sub, so this one is firmly grounded in the reality of my life…though thankfully my past life. My sub schedule begins with a free period, which I spend being really free…reading the news, writing freelance, checking in on the scores. With 10 minutes to go before my first real class, Gillian comes by to see how I’m doing. I tell her I’m doing fine…that I have this handy brochure they gave me to get me through the day. I open it to show her, and the first thing I notice is the name of a sister school where I realize I was also supposed to be subbing that day as well but forgot. Then I see the detailed lesson plans they’ve left for me for the classes to come. They appear in small, dense, italic type. In addition they begin with classes in chemistry and math, my worst areas of proficiency. But even my strengths, history and lit, are threatened. In history I’m supposed to teach about Thomas Hart Benton’s Missouri Mural, and the literature plan is dedicated to an hour on Chaucer, who I neither like nor know well enough to teach for even 5 minutes. I go into full panic mode. I cannot do any of this, I tell my daughter (!!!). I head off to tell the principal that he's going to have to find another sub. But when I see him through a window he’s on the phone where I believe he's just learning that I flaked on another job that very morning. I stand there paralyzed in what is for me the closest my dream life ever gets to a nightmare. And whenever I’m confronted with a nightmare, I usually manage to tell myself, “This is just a dream. Wake up and it’ll all be over.” 

Which is what I did…and it was.Just sprinkle stardust and whisper"Wake up. Everything is all right."

Soundtrack for a Debate

Enough is Enough—Look, I’m an admitted political junkie, but even I can’t take any more of these debates. I understand why the DNC scheduled so many and made rules to allow for so many candidates on the stage…Dems virtually invented the participation trophy. And they would’ve been filleted and grilled by the media, their own leftwing, and even the Republicans had they even hinted on imposing some kind of Hobbesian brute order on their nominee selection process. But these things are ploughing up new levels of redundancy…and if the country doesn’t hear another word about marginally dueling health care plans until the real debate a year from now against the party trying to take all health care away it’ll be a relief.
Easy to be Hard—You could almost hear the associate producer who came up with the Ellen DeGeneres/George W. Bush sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G question…how it was going to hit home with the low information voters begging them to dumb down our politics and make it accessible to every day Americans because…Ellen…television. Aside from the fact that it crowded out space that could’ve been used to raise questions on…I don’t know…climate change…relations with China…it was a trivialization of something that would’ve been a good, worthwhile question. At the Warren rally we attended two weeks ago, one of the questions raised from the audience was what plan did she have for healing the nation’s sharp partisan division after Trump was gone. That’s an important, challenging question all these candidates should have to answer.
I’m Looking Through You—Speaking of Warren, she was under pretty steady attack to join Bernie Sanders in admitting that their semi-co-healthcare plan was going to raise taxes on the middle class. I totally get why she’s refusing to answer the word Yes to that question…she thinks it’s overly responsive to a nagging Republican talking point and will overwhelm their dearly projected fact that overall lowered health care costs will compensate for whatever increase is necessary in middle class taxes. Whether she’ll be able to walk that fine line all the way to election victory, I can’t say. What I can say is that she and her Democratic opponents who are pushing her on the issue are all falling unwittingly in line with Republican anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist’s no taxes pledge. After more than two decades living in an "era of big government is over" stupor, Democrats really have to proudly own their identity as the party of big government. That means start promising voters that they’re going to give them their money’s worth in government services rather than making the cheap, easy and misleading promise that we’re going to get the rich guys to pay for everything.    
Smiling Faces—In the post debate “expert” analysis on MSNBC, smiling, reliably liberal Washington Post columnist Gene Washington on two different occasions described Elizabeth Warren as "petulant" (for the way she handled the night's 16 frontal attacks on her) and "small" (for her refusal to thank Joe Biden for his dubious help in passing legislation to create her pet Consumer Financial Protect Bureau). Under the current reign of the unfit, unhinged con artist in chief, it seems preposterous that anyone would wheel out words like petulant and small to describe Elizabeth Warren or any other candidate. But bank on it. As the election unfolds, any words or actions of the candidate opposing Trump that stray the slightest from pure, premium-grade honesty, decorum, or competence will be put on a scale with the media’s thumb firmly pushing down to achieve gold standard false equivalency. 
People—At the end of the debate there was the news that three of the four so-called members of The Squad would be endorsing Bernie Sanders this weekend. I hate to always be raining on Bernie’s parade, but this seems like real Meh news. It is hard to believe that those endorsements will bring any new voters into the Bernie tent who weren’t already there or on their way. This is hardly the seismic event of the Kennedys endorsing Barack Obama against Hillary in 2008, which had to be soul crushing to her and her supporters and galvanizing to Obama. Overall, I’d say endorsements have an ephemeral quality to them, mostly tied to the who and where of them. For what it’s worth, I can only think of five endorsements that would be significant in this primary:
Stacey Abrams in GeorgiaAndrew Gillum in FloridaSherrod Brown in OhioJohn Lewis at largeBarack Obama at largeI’m guessing all of them (with possible exceptions of Abrams and Gillum who seem to be attracting running mate consideration from Biden and Warren respectively) will hold off on endorsing until after the primary…the surest sign that it’s still anyone’s game (well any one of six anyway).

My Two Cents

Last week Lorna and I attended our first Elizabeth Warren rally with about 8,500 others in San Diego. What was most striking about it was how good the lady is at public speaking. Whether she’s grown in to it on the campaign trail or was always good at it, I’m not entirely sure, though her years as a popular professor at Harvard would suggest she’s been comfortable on stage for some time. And the video that went viral in 2012 of her speaking to a small living room gathering that put her firmly on the national map showed that she was capable of memorable rhetorical flashes. Lorna had a long career in public speaking, and having listened to her often and observed other successful speakers I know that one of the hallmarks of an outstanding presenter is the ability to weave the personal with the impersonal…be it philosophy, policy or politics. I had heard bits and pieces of Warren’s stump speech in various media before the rally, but watching her seamlessly segue from her story about “that dress” to the current economy, from her story of being fired for a pregnancy to the need for structural change in the system is to witness nearly flawless political narrative. It is clear that this gift for communication…personalizing the impersonal…is largely responsible for her steady rise in the presidential polls as more people get to experience her live, and the caricature that the media and the moneyed class created of her crumbles.I have one quibble. A key part of one of her most famous plans is a 2% wealth tax on those making more than $50 million to fund many of her most ambitious programs. She rightly and rather effectively frames this as a tax of 2 cents on each dollar the super rich make after their 50 millionth dollar. As she blithely says, that first 50 million is theirs…which may get her sliding onto “if you like your insurance you can keep it” thin ice. That first 50 million gets taxed too, but separately and differently from her new wealth tax. That’s a quibble, too, I guess, but not my main one. I love the whole 2 cents meme that she builds to a crowd chant at the end of her rally, but I believe it needs some tweaking because it puts her in danger of being accused of magical thinking. The details of the plan are spelled out on her website, as follows:       Married couple with household net worth of $100,000—the median level in the United States·       Pays zero tax because they are below the $50 million thresholdMarried couple with a primary and vacation residence and substantial retirement savings for a household net worth of $20 million·       Pays zero tax because they are below the $50 million thresholdExtremely successful small business owner of a $30 million business as well as additional assets for a household net worth of $40 million·       Pays zero tax because they are below the $50 million thresholdHedge fund manager with a net worth of $500 million·       Pays a 2% tax on the $450 million in net worth above the $50 million threshold, producing a total annual liability of $9 millionHeir with a net worth of $20 billion·       Pays a 2% tax on the $950 million between $50 million and $1 billion, and a 3% tax on the remaining $19 billion, for a total annual liability of $589 million.
(Here, too, she should make clearer that all those people making less than $50 million will still be paying their normal taxes, but zero of the new Wealth Tax.)The potential problem, I believe comes in trying to deliver all that as succinctly and vividly as possible before a large, live audience. In John Allen Paulos’s invaluable book Innumeracy, he discusses at length Americans’ phobia, suspicion and incomprehension in the face of large numbers. I don’t know that even the most dedicated Warren supporter can easily conceive of how that 2 cents eventually becomes the 3 trillion dollars she says it will. There seems to be a plank missing in the bridge she's building, but Paulos may be able to provide it. In his book he writes:

I once wrote to a significant minority of the Forbes 400, a list of the four hundred richest Americans, asking for $25,000 in support of a project I was working on at the time. Since the average wealth of the people I contacted was approximately $400 million…and I was asking for only 1/16,000th of that wealth, I hoped that linear proportionality would hold, reasoning that if some stranger wrote to me asking for support for a worthy project of his and asked me for $25, more than 1/16000th of my own net worth, I would probably comply with his request. Alas, though I received a number of kind responses, I didn’t receive any money.

I think Warren should put her supporters in the position of the super rich in just this way. Ask them to imagine--not as an actual policy, but as a thought experiment--giving up 2 cents for every dollar they make over a thousand, for instance. Take them through how that would add up to $20 if they're making 2000...and then think of multiply that $20 for every additional thousand. That makes their calculation easier and more comprehensible rather than discussing the plan in terms of unimaginable millions and billions. It also makes their buy-in of the idea more tangible and rational than some inchoate desire to just tax the rich. Not to be too classist about this, but I’d bet that people of less lofty incomes would, like Paulos says, express more willingness to give up 2 cents on each of their dollars over a certain amount if it came with the promise to commit it to some worthy cause such as homelessness or health care or gun safety or education.
Perhaps this tweak of mine is not all that necessary. Warren’s Wealth Tax has pretty startling public support, even among Republicans. The enlightened rich have also virtually endorsed it. As for the moral high ground…it doesn’t get much higher. 
So, far be it from me to tell the Ma'm with a Plan how to run for president. She’s doing quite splendidly...as will the country, at long last, if she's elected president in 2020 in the greatest, most sorely needed do-over in world history.



And now a word from our sponsor. 

Uncle Jerry and Uncle Eddie

Uncle Jerry &
Uncle Eddie
All families have stories that get passed down from generation to generation. This is one of my favorites from my family. 
One day my uncle Jerry, one of the oldest of my mom’s nine brothers, came home to find Eddie, the youngest, crying on the front stoop of the house. Jerry asked Eddie what was wrong; Eddie said he had a nickel and he lost it. Jerry pulled a quarter out of his pocket and said, “There, now you have five nickels.” Then Jerry went inside.
When he came out later, Jerry found Eddie still sitting there crying and asked him, “What’s wrong now?”
Eddie whimpered, “If I hadn’t lost my nickel, I’d have six nickels now.”
I used that story in raising both my daughters to teach lessons in logic, greed, and attaining happiness. This week I dedicate this story to all those out there complaining that the House Democrats should have moved to impeach Trump after the Mueller Report and broadened the bill of impeachment to include campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice and breaking the Emoluments Clause. Quarters are raining down on our heads, folks. Stop crying.   

Rubicon Crossing

It was fascinating hearing Adam Schiff, Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, allude to “crossing the Rubicon” after he had first been made aware of the now public and hair-raising whistleblower report that led the Democratic caucus to move aggressively on impeaching Donald Trump. On the one hand it was the first public utterance that indicated that Schiff, a heretofore impeachment skeptic, had had a change of mind on the matter…and that his change of mind was probably reflective of a broader change of mind by the Democratic leadership, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On quite the other hand, it was an utterance that probably left at least half the electorate in this don’t-know-much-about-history nation of ours scratching its collective gourd: “Rubicon? Huh? What’s that?”It was both a classic example of Democratic unconscious elitism as well as being a neat stroke of paradoxical liberal nuance. As our dwindling number of B students in history know, the Rubicon was the river dividing Rome from its provinces. The particular ancient Roman law that has been forever attached to it proclaimed that when Roman generals were returning to the capitol after their foreign ventures they were required to disband their armies before crossing. Famously, Julius Caesar did not, and when he crossed the river with one of his legions he sent the Roman Senate into a full-scale panic, eventuating in his ascension to dictator. The irony in Schiff’s use of the expression crossing the Rubicon (which has come down to us today to mean no turning back) is that it signals a turn against the establishment of an American dictatorship. Again, no need to spell that out to the B students among us--nor even the C students--and no point in spelling it out to the class dummies because if they haven’t recognized the incipient rise of Trumpian authoritarianism by now they’re either never going to see it or don’t ever want to see it…or worse they welcome it. I was in an unusually long refund line at Costco a week ago. A four-year old was swinging on the thick barrier cord that separated the refund area from the store exit area. For symbolism’s sake, let’s call that cord the Rubicon. A store employee came over to the kid and firmly, though politely, told the kid that he could not swing on the cord. The kid stopped, stepped back, and watched the employee walk away. He then looked up at his mother standing in front of me in line—her body language screaming, Not my kid. Then the kid grabbed hold of the cord and started swinging on it again…not for long, but long enough to get all our attention. Once he stopped, he glared at his mom and all the other adults in line with a defiant look that fairly well declared, “What are you going to do about it?”  I couldn’t help but see it as a metaphor for the dynamic that was playing out in Washington between our grown up legislators and the little monster in the White House. I resisted intervening with the mom in front of me, but I haven’t been so patient with the Mom of the House in DC, Nancy Pelosi. As much as I admire and trust her, I have taken over the summer months to sending her nasty tweets, jabbing at her in blog posts and just this week took out a Sharpie to reply to a request from her for money with this: Impeach him and then come ask me for money! Literally the day I dropped that in the mailbox, she made her historic announcement that the House would unambiguously be pursuing impeachment of Trump. I suspect a lot of things contributed to her dramatic change of mind on the matter. The new revelations of Trump’s abuse of power were impossible to mitigate. There was a growing chorus in her caucus to take action. She was not immune or indifferent to the criticism from supporters such as myself. She was never as closed to the idea of impeachment as the media or her public statements on the subject made it appear. Barack Obama called it leading from behind. She had said that Trump impeaches himself every day…and so he did. People can say she just got lucky, and he finally handed her a smoking gun. And now as public opinion swiftly begins to coalesce around impeachment, her reputation for political savvy is reinforced. In the beautiful, living color of hindsight, it seems that if she had given in to the urgent and sometimes hysterical calls for impeachment months ago, it all would’ve all fallen apart by now. Negative public opinion may have hardened against impeachment as convoluted hearings unfolded on TV with all the lugubriousness of Robert Mueller’s legalistic, punctilious testimony. It would’ve rendered the explosive new whistleblower’s complaint dead on arrival…if it had arrived at all (a disastrous impeachment hearing may have been demoralizing for the whistleblower). Well, Nancy Pelosi was lucky…no doubt about it. But let’s also give her credit for being patient and open minded enough (the essence of liberalism) to allow luck to make a play. More importantly, going forward, let’s give the leader who managed the near impossible in passing the ACA (and had the vision to see what a disaster the Iraq War would be) some credit for knowing what she’s doing. Already everyone in the peanut gallery has an opinion about how fast or slow, how broad or focused, how public or closed door this impeachment process should be. That’s fine. That’s democracy. 

But here’s something we (we being mostly the liberal tribe) need to be aware of: We are not like them…behaviorally, not politically, speaking. Unlike that other tribe, we do not respond well to the ceaseless repetition of buzzwords and phrases…Benghazi, No Collusion, Build the Wall, Tax and Spend. Unlike that other tribe, we prefer reasonable appeals to our minds, rather than emotional appeals to our gut.Unlike that other tribe, for better and worse, we do not cohere so easily and too often like to march to the sound of a different drum. These are not differences I’m pulling out of my ass here. These are differences that have been verified by social research and neuroscience. In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt relies a lot on those studies in his examination of what makes some folks liberal and others conservative. He demonstrates through those studies that much of the harsh division in the land is not due to specific policy differences, but to differences in human wiring that merely manifest themselves in political issues. The brief, 2-minute clip from his book below is a good example of this as an explanation why the Democrats in general and Nancy Pelosi in particular tortured themselves over impeachment for the past few months:


It had little to do with being cowering centrists, craven cowards, or tools of Wall Street. It had more to do with having a sense of accountability…knowing that unlike the Buzzword Brigade on the other side, they had constituencies that were rightfully going to demand explanations from them. It’s a world apart from the accountability-free eco system of social media most of us inhabit. We can say most anything we want with all the rage we can muster in our Facebook feeds, Twitter threads, and blogs without ever having to put a big toe in the Rubicon. So perhaps we should have a little more respect and understanding for those who really do have to make that crossing with unpredictable and profound consequences for themselves and the country. They're going to need it in the critical months ahead.