The Lack of Republicans

According to Pete Golis in the Press Democrat, 51.7% of the voters in Sonoma County are Democrats, 21.3% are Decline-to-State (registered independents) and 21.2% are Republicans. The Republican party--a party of voter suppression, racism and anti-science, dedicated to the transfer of money from the poor and middle class to the 1%--deserves to wither away. The county and the country badly need a new party. The new party should be dedicated to genuine service for all Americans and dedicated to caution, another name for the real conservatism found in all of us, even in pragmatic radicals like me.

 

The Collapse of Western Civilization

I was disheartened to learn that Western Civilization had already collapsed twice. I'd heard about the fall of Rome, but I'd missed the first collapse, which happened about 1600 years earlier and was probably caused by a perfect storm of events: earthquakes, climate change and invasions by a ruthless group of predators called the Sea Peoples (who remain unidentified). 

What fell was a huge tangle of nations that had governments, laws, trading routes, writing, bronze swords of mass destruction, and so on. Major parts of the system were the Mycenaeans, Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, even the Israelites (a minor group, to be sure). What followed in the West was a Dark Age, followed by the rise of the Greek and Roman civilization, followed by a fall, followed by a Dark Age, which was followed by our current civilization. Of course, I'm not saying that we need to be on the lookout for earthquakes, climate change or barbarians invading Babylon. As Nefertiti used to say, we enjoy the protection of Aten, the one and only God.  

Bombing Doesn't Work, Probably

I have no idea how to bring peace to the Middle East, but in the interest of clear thinking I want to comment on a comment I often see these days on TV or read in my newspaper.  I quote Michael Kieschnick, the leader of Credo, a progressive group in San Francisco, which initiated an Internet petition demanding that Congress end the attack on ISIS. "Bombing won't work. It never works," Kieschnick said. What he meant, I believe, is that bombing by itself never works. That's the best reading. Kieschnick obviously detests ISIS, but instead of bombing he wants us to negotiate peacefully with ISIS. I doubt if that is going to work--let's keep our heads here. 

By the way, an Internet petition has the same effect on real events as a cough has on a hurricane.

The critique that bombing never works also comes from the Right, and what it means to Righties is that we should ship in a huge land army like the one I served in sixty years ago.

Here's the problem. As far as I can tell, no one is claiming that bombing by itself will work in the Middle East. Kieschnick is refuting a position no one has taken. We all agree that ISIS cannot be defeated by bombing alone. And there's another problem with Kieschnick's claim. Bombing by itself does occasionally work, depending on circumstances. I'm no historian, but I'd guess that there have been many instances when a people or a nation quit  after being bombed. I can think of two examples. One was when Churchill bombed the Kurds in the 1920s. The Kurds dismounted, stabled their horses and gave up. The other one happened in 1945 (it's hard to remember that far back).

BOUVARD ET PECUCHET

1. During the height of the Great American Buffalo Slaughter, 1872 to 1874, the whites killed 3.2 million bison and the Indians killed 1.2 million.

2. Flaubert never finished writing BOUVARD ET PECUCHET, a novel about the gap between how people think and reality, because he found no end to human stupidity.

3. Today we are changing the climate of the world, which already has begun to bring on catastrophes that will attack western civilization in unpredictable and radical ways. Note that western civilization has unfortunately disintegrated twice in the past (a change in climate helped induce the fall of Egypt, Babylon, the Minoan and the early Greek network more than a thousand years before Christ and, much later, we dimly recall the fall of the Roman empire). 

4. Do we care? We are Bouvard and we are Pecuchet.

Weed

The small town of Weed, on Route 5 in Northern California, lost 100 homes and two churches in a forest fire this week. Climate change, drought, many fires have damaged the state this year. For me the town has been a regular stop. Where else can I buy a cap that says "I Love Weed"?

An Open Letter to FDR

Yes, Mr. President, we all agree that December 7th was a day that will live in infamy, but what exactly is our strategy here? The American people want to know. 

No one argues that the leaders of Japan are anything but horrible. We should kill them and punish them. But have you noticed that they have allies? Hitler has declared war against us! We're getting dragged into something we don't understand, and in your speech you haven't spelled out a road to victory. What is our exit plan? What is our long-term strategy? Does it make sense for us to arm a socialist country like Great Britain? And just how "moderate" are these British socialists? 

Britain has attacked us twice in the past--how do we know they won't take our arms and use them against us? Why don't you tell us what our armed forces are going to do next? Where will they invade first? Do you even know?

The New War

The war with ISIS that is forming has laid bare the fecklessness of our useless congress, which has the duty of deciding when we go to war. Congress is letting the President decide what to do (and then be attacked for the consequences, whatever they may be). We've learned to expect that sort of thing. But I'm impressed this time around by the pointless nattering of my own favorite political commentators.

 Like most people, I tend to watch, listen and read political commentary from people I agree with. It's more fun that way. What seems clear in this round of war is that my commentators are striking empty poses. They have many criticisms to level but no useful solutions to offer. Nothing. Nada. Just droning criticism, the establishment liberals quoting one another. Only Rachel Maddow seems to have kept her feet under her (so far). 

The right is calling for American troops to be sent. Forget about that. "Bombing accomplishes nothing." (Actually, bombing is what stopped ISIS in its tracks last month.) The American public has been told that we can only fail, and polls show that Americans believe we will fail. ISIS, we are warned, has developed a conventional army, and if there is one thing no one can cope with it is a conventional army (?). "We should train the moderates in Syria," if there are any. The wily ISIS beheadings, some commentators say, have tricked much of the world into a hatred of ISIS, and this works to the advantage of ISIS because, well, no reason. "They have out-thought us again."

Maybe the problem of ISIS should be solved by the people who live in the area, including Jordan and Iran. America should not lead. We should offer help to moderates when we're asked (the Kurds asked). In a cooperative struggle against the medieval genocide of ISIS, perhaps the Middle East peoples can rearrange the sand into more natural countries that work better for the natives in the long run. Or not. It should be up to them.

How To Help Deb Fudge

When Mike McGuire leaves his job as county supervisor to become a state senator, the progressive majority among supervisors leaves with him, unless we elect Deb Fudge to replace him. Her opponent, James Gore, is a former lobbyist for debt collection agencies, and he has been endorsed by every Republican corporate interest group in the county. 

The public service of Deb Fudge is well-known throughout the county and includes excellent terms as mayor of Windsor. At this stage Fudge is ahead by ten points, but Gore has collected all the money in the world (he knows how to do that), and we can expect to see an expertly polished smear campaign in October. Fudge will need help to counter the attack. In general Internet political comments have no impact on voting, but the 'net is useful in fundraising. You can send Fudge a contribution by googling "deb fudge for supervisor" and then going to her web site. I just did that.

The Video

The leadership of the NFL has denied watching the video of football star Ray Rice punching his fiance unconscious, although we now know that they had a copy of the video for months. NFL stands for National Football Liars. 

Many shallow TV commentators have said, Why would anyone need to see the video of the punch? We already knew what Ray Rice had done. How would a video add anything?

The answer is that we are a visual species.  Of all our senses, seeing is by far the most central. We say that seeing is believing, not that hearing or reading is believing. If we want to indicate that we understand something we've been told, we say, "I see."  We don't say, "I smell." Many people, I suspect, hoped that Ray Rice had only slapped or shoved his bride-to-be. Maybe the whole thing was kind of accidental. But once they saw the video, television viewers faced the facts. That is more than district attorney and NFL officials did when they watched the video and then let Ray Rice off with a pat on the wrist. (Ray Rice sold tickets; he made the Liars a lot of cash.)

The New Intelligent Design

Intelligent design used to be the name of a proof of the existence of God. If you look at a house, you can see it was designed by someone at least marginally competent. It didn't just fall together. The parts of a house function as a unit. By extension if you look at the world, the parts function together, so it also must have been designed by someone intelligent, in this case by God.

This argument begs questions. Who, then, designed God? And why do you think the world is well designed? As a friend of mine said recently, the world is a hard place to live in, and it's even harder if you're dumb. 

Today many people believe that the world was not produced by design but by physics and natural selection, which piled one thing on another. The world is jerry-built, according to science. 

Recently Tom Belton loaned me a review of SAPIENS by Yuval Harari. Harari states that there is no evidence that humans have grown smarter over time. I think what he means is that humans were shaped by natural selection, but for the last 5,000 years we have not evolved into a smarter mammal. This explains, perhaps, why our poets are not better than Homer. Obama is not kinder or more empathic than St. Francis. It explains why masses of people live in misery and 1% eat from silver bowls. Today, Harari writes, we are leaving natural selection behind and redesigning things to suit ourselves. Today intelligent design is in the hands of scientists, and scientists are closely related to Neanderthals. 

The situation has created a backlash. I'm a progressive and live among progressive college graduates who believe that GMO food makes you sick, that vaccinations harm children, that fluoridated water destroys your mind and so on. For no good reason they fear the things we design. And why not fear nuclear weapons and combustion engines? Keep in mind that human intelligent design has doubled our average lifespan. I am 80 and still have my fluoridated teeth. Maybe that's why I remain an optimist.

Ferguson

 I've known and liked and respected a great many police officers. But the country has a problem now. An unarmed black teenager was murdered by a police officer in Ferguson. A year ago a 13-year-old Latino in my county was shot seven times and killed because he was walking along with a toy assault rifle. The boy, Andy Lopez, had the right to bear arms but not toy arms, a death penalty offense. A few years back a white teenager was shot to death here. 

This is what I think--some police officers are trained to use revolvers the way pasta cooks use tongs. You use them to protect your hands. A revolver is a problem solver, and you don't need to exert yourself, maybe pull a muscle or split a knuckle or get your handcuffs dirty. If you beat up a kid, you might get blood on your uniform. Keep well back, shoot from a distance and end your shift looking trim.