Irritating Joseph Stalin

Saturday Santa Rosa opened its new town square, which it built at great cost, after closing the city’s main street permanently. The voters weren’t consulted. As far as I can tell, this project was sold as a helpful change for businesses situated near the square. The idea was to drive away the many homeless and turn the downtown area into an attraction for the few people who could find parking. Three or four businesses, including my favorite restaurant, failed and vanished during the blight of construction.

The end result is a expanse of concrete that would irritate Joseph Stalin. The ugliness of the square might help achieve one of its goals: what homeless teenager  will choose to linger on a block-wide cement field?  What abandoned mental patient will sit on the flat surface in the rain or under a baking sun?

The good town squares (Sonoma, Healdsburg, even Windsor) are solid grass and trees and benches, earthy smells and deep shade. Santa Rosa chose to create a brutal eyesore unfit for human use. And the chuckle-headed city leaders could not be happier. 

The Times Fails Again

There are those who encourage me to subscribe to the New York Times. We did take the paper for about 30 years while we were working Back East, and it had its good side. Unlike the Press Democrat, the Times does not publish letters to the editor written by crackpots. But I quit on the Times when it helped push our country into a pointless war against Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of us. By "us" I mean ordinary people in Iraq and in the armed forces.

This morning I woke to read that the Times has hired a opinion writer who denies, in part, the science of climate change, a dope who compares science to opinion polling. The Times has apparently decided to follow the Press Democrat and widen its potential sales appeal to the lunatic fringe. The next step will be for the Times to print letters to the editor from Holocaust deniers and segregationists.   

Dump Freitas

In Sonoma County you might soon encounter a genuine human being holding a petition to recall Sheriff Steve Freitas. He’s the dunce who promoted a deputy after the deputy lost his head and shot to death a Latino child holding a toy gun. The shooter was training a younger deputy at the time, which gives you an idea of Freitas’s ability to make good personnel decisions. The sheriff is a danger to you and to me. 

We need someone smarter who will do less harm. I’m signing the petition. 

Paul Ryan's Missing Parts

At this point, believe it or not, more than half a million dogs have had their empty ball sacks filled with neuticles (plastic inserts). The size of each neuticle (they are sold separately) will depend on age and weight. If you plan to send a pair of the best (UltraPlus) to Paul Ryan, it may cost you around $1200. 

The Consistent Evangelicals

Many of us wondered why 80% of the evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, a mentally impaired vulgarian with no religious sense, married three times, an unceasing liar, an assaulter of women, etc. Holly Worthen has provided the answer in The Atlantic. From 1776 on, there has been an alliance between evangelical types and the 1%.

If you look back at American political history, what you see is that evangelicals support the rich authoritarian candidate. This isn't something new. Consider who heads evangelical churches, some of which were founded by authoritarians seeking access to sex. In their eyes, God intends that each family, church and nation be headed by a benign dictator who makes his own rules. To them that is the natural order. Jesus, morality, science and justice be damned. To evangelicals the imaginary free market is sacred.

That old American belief in a natural order is fading, and the evangelicals grow afraid.

Colossal

We just saw "Colossal," a truly unpleasant fantasy film about alcoholism and male privilege, starring Anne Hathaway as the drunken victim. Here’s the problem movies have these days. The best things on TV are better written than the best movies. 

Confederate Memorial Day

Yesterday was Confederate Memorial Day, celebrated by two of our fifty states. Last night Trevor Noah asked what black Americans are supposed to do on Confederate Memorial Day. How should they celebrate?  I have a suggestion.

I should pause to admit that Confederate Memorial Day is an insult to my family and any family with ancestors who joined the American army and fought to save the union or free the slaves. 

About 400,000 African-Americans risked their lives in the Union army. My proposal is that 400,000 black people put on replicas of the blue uniform and then march to the grave of our racist attorney general,  Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and urinate on it. 

I know, I know, Sessions isn’t dead yet, and voters may choose to wait to pee on his resting place, but I suspect that he has already purchased a gravesite or a tomb with a statue of this tiny fellow whipping an attractive enslaved woman. Voters could pee there, or they could just wait. Sessions is shriveled and barely alive. The wait won’t be long.

France

I'm going to pretend this is about France.

It seems to me that the rise of right-wing populism in the western democracies springs from two causes. This sort of thing has happened before, and the nations have recovered, but this time it might be more fundamental. I am particularly interested in the Le Pen vote in France, where the Trump-figure drew her support from young voters.

France today is faced with two major problems.  The first is global warming, which has already set in motion civil wars and mass migrations, in which hungry people start to go where the food is. Populists detest immigrants. The second problem is that capitalism, as it replaces workers with robots, can no longer generate enough good jobs to keep people employed. France's standard model, where every adult works and earns a decent living, is starting to fail. Robots are cheaper than employees, and French capitalism works on the principle that cheaper expenses create profits. 

The first step is to admit that France has a problem and that the French need to consider some modifications.

(also on Facebook) 

What We Share With Trump

The political left ignores its connections to Donald Trump. In the April 3rd THE NEW YORKER, Ethan Kuperberg exposes liberal hypocrisy in a brilliant article, “What I Have In Common with Trump.” 

Some things Kuperberg has in common with Trump.

 1.  Melania has shown no interest in having sex with him. 

2,   Kuperberg has never read THE ART OF THE DEAL.

3.   He has never been elected President of the United States.

And so on. You might want to look at this sobering analysis. 

Diverging Paths on Earth Day

I biked west to Juilliard Park in Santa Rosa to join the march for science on Earth Day. My guess is that between 500 and 1.000 people were gathered there, and they weren't the usual folks. This crowd was younger, better dressed and whiter than I'm used to. I spotted maybe two people of color and no one that I recognized, other than Supervisor Linda Hopkins. I was glad we had her support, but why did she build her talk around Dr. Seuss? Why would anyone do that? In the old days, classy speakers built their talks around terrible misreadings of Robert Frost. I biked home on the road not taken.

Leah Gold

For the upcoming city council election in Healdsburg, I support Leah Gold. This is unlikely to make a difference, given that my friends already support Gold and my wife and I no longer live in town. (We do live nearby.)

Gold, a former mayor, faces strong competition from a Republican real estate/property management agent. She is, in some ways, his opposite. Gold led a campaign in 1996 to encircle Healdsburg with a growth boundary. That boundary helped make the town unique, a compact island of people protected by a sea of green, set off like Brigadoon. 

One of the things that I like about Gold is that she gives serious thought to the shape of the town. In my experience the city council tends to think in terms of real estate development without considering how some kinds of development alter the town’s diversity and tone. Gold wants to preserve what makes the town different. She’s an environmental progressive, and, in trying to keep Healdsburg from becoming a Carmel-like destination, populated with giant, empty, second homes, she’s interested in conserving a healthy past (in my view).  Gold supports raising money to build affordable housing, needed to retain the town’s young people and workers. Gold is in step with most local voters, particularly when it comes to housing policies. She’s the right woman for the job.

Or you can vote for a Republican real estate/property management agent. 

The Big March

In Santa Rosa the United People’s March for jobs, justice and climate is set for Saturday, April 29. The march has many sponsors, among them the Healdsburg Peace Project, KBBF, Conservation Action, Indivisible Sonoma and the Santa Rosa Democratic Club. 

The march begins to form at noon at Roseland Plaza, near the Dollar Tree. The address is 675 Sebastopol Road. The actual walking along starts at 2:00. 

Identity Politics vs. Problems of Class

The struggle in the Left between those who favored a class analysis and those who favored identity politics was one I kept returning to because I couldn't resolve it. 

I learned from reading Wittgenstein that if nobody can answer a philosophical question after many years of asking, there’s something wrong with the question. It has been formulated in a way the will forever block a satisfactory response. 

The question here is that which problem matters most: class, race or gender? If you are, like me, a straight white male who grew up in a working class family, your focus may not be on race or gender. I've always been more comfortable with class issues. But that, of course, isn’t the answer. The question sets up a false quandary. I should focus on all three issues, which cannot, in a real society, be disentangled.

Which effective organizations work on class and identity issues at the same time? Some say that they do, but in fact the best effective organizations seem to stress one main issue. NOW, for example, is by reputation focused mainly—but not solely—on how white, educated women get treated. Black Lives Matter, largely led by black lesbians, according to gay literature I’ve read, considers gender and class issues, too, but the core seems to spring from a racial identity that rules out white membership. 

What we need is an effective change organization that addresses class and identity at the same time. (How long have people been saying something so obvious?)

Parking Fees

I listened to a radio program in which brilliant, if mean-spirited, Harvard economists solved our parking problem. They had figured out that the problem was that people wanted free parking (and there is no such thing as free parking, free lunch or free enterprise). Someone has to pay.

Their solution was to charge sliding fees for parking. the lowest charge that would guarantee that at least one parking spot on each block would always be open. If you wanted your driver to park your limo in the middle of San Francisco’s financial district, you would have to pay a zillion dollars per half-hour. Or, if you were poor, you could park your junker at Ocean Beach for pennies and then walk seven miles to get to the same place.

Actually, that’s the system now used in Frisco, as I like to call it. It has the benefit of neatly dividing the 1% from the rest of us, and what could be more American?  

Think Like A Man

By now anyone interested in reality understands that America suffers from voter suppression but almost no voter fraud. Yet the campaign to pass laws preventing voter fraud and suppress minority voting continues. This illustrates that many of us (maybe all of us) will believe anything if it suits our purposes. 

For example, I have friends who believe that the Civil War was not about slavery, although every state that seceded did so in a resolution that named the defense of slavery as the reason. Or so I've been told. 

How do the Republicans justify pushing for voter suppression? Tom Belton pointed out to me that Nebraska State Senator John Murante has the answer.  Murante states clearly that there is no meaningful voter fraud going on, but the perception that there is must be addressed. In short, the Republicans have lied to us about voter fraud for decades, and people now believe it exists. We need to pass laws repressing voters in order to reassure the people who believe the Republican lies. 

The law on this is clear. The very first voting fraud case to reach the Supreme Court, Crawford v. Marion County, acknowledged that there was no evidence of voting fraud in Indiana, but it was okay to block significant numbers of people from voting in an effort to restore confidence in the electoral system.

This is called "the perception argument." The world of alternative facts is legal.

Also the word "alternative" is a noun, not an adjective, unless the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. 

Sitting at the Table with President Xi

SITTING AT THE TABLE WITH PRESIDENT XI

I was sitting at the table.

We had finished dinner—

We’re now having dessert.

And we had the most beautiful

Piece of chocolate cake

You’ve ever seen!

And President Xi was enjoying it!

So what happened is I said,

They have just launched 59

Missiles heading to Iraq.

(Heading to Syria?)

Yes, heading to Syria. 

The Great Generals

These days there is agreement among many historians of the military that Ulysses S. Grant was the greatest general this country has produced.  His innovative campaigns get taught in military schools around the world.  Grant was quick to praise others and never boasted. He fought the Civil War in a private's uniform (with his stars on his shoulders). He looked and behaved like an ordinary man--and he had never wanted to be a career soldier. 

Grant's opinions of the Confederate generals might be of interest to some. I don't recall how Grant rated Longstreet, who was his best man when Grant married.  He  certainly liked Longstreet, and their friendship survived the war. Like other experts, Grant considered Albert Sidney Johnston probably the most promising general in the South, but Johnston was killed at Shiloh. As Grant put it, "he died too soon." Grant thought highly of Stonewall Jackson, who also died before the battle tactics changed.  The general who made Grant most uneasy was Joe Johnson. Grant thought Robert E. Lee "a good man" but of a "slow, conservative, cautious nature, without imagination or humor, always the same, with grave dignity."

When Grant was hailed as the man who won the Civil War, he replied that he was one man among hundreds of thousands who came from their homes and fields to save the union.  He considered Sherman, McPherson and Sheridan excellent leaders, with Thomas and Meade as very good. (McPherson was killed near Atlanta, and somehow never became as famous as the others.)

Who Is God?

From Mark Twain's REVISED CATECHISM

Q. What is the chief end of man?

A. To get rich.

Q. In what way?

A. Dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.

Q. Who is God, the one only and true?

A. Money is God. Gold and greenbacks and stocks.

Integrity

Americans, by and large, do not trust skilled politicians, because career office holders lack ordinary basic integrity. You can’t count on them the way you can count on your family and friends. A leader doesn't get to be a career politician in this country unless he or she becomes skilled at misleading and manipulating voters (who can’t stand the truth) and becomes ready to betray his closest political allies/rivals to advance himself.  

Case in point. About 15 years ago, I attended a small meeting in Healdsburg called by Leah Gold, a Democrat and a progressive member of the city council. She was not a career politician. Most of the time the city council is—like all city councils—dominated by developers and business interests whose true allegiance is to avarice. To be fair, when they aren’t arranging city contracts and ordinances to benefit developers and landlords, they also make sure the garbage is picked up and the poor well-policed. 

Anyway, after one term in office, Leah Gold had decided not to run again. I don’t know why. I only talked with her one time. She had called a meeting, I believe, trying to get herself replaced by another progressive. At the meeting she had introduced a very young Mike McGuire to the Healdsburg Peace Project. Back then the Peace Project could provide a progressive candidate with maybe 30 precinct walkers, a load in a town with about 5,000 voters. Young Mike was very able and progressive (and still is), and we decided to support him for city council, as did many other groups, and today, of course, he’s a state senator and on his way up from there. 

Recently Leah Gold re-emerged, perhaps brought back to politics by recent events. She’s again running for the Healdsburg City Council, and Mike McGuire, Mike Thompson, Jim Wood and other elected progressive  leaders of the Democratic Party have endorsed her opponent, a jack-booted, conservative Republican, a lifelong favorite of the swanky members of our society.

The progressive leaders may explain all of this, but there is no real excuse. 

Local elected Democrats have done this kind of thing before. I don’t know why they endorse Republicans for office. Maybe because campaign funding for both parties flows, in part, from the same greedy interests.  Maybe these elected Democrats intend to lead the resistance to Trump by supporting conservative candidates   Maybe they listen to really bad advice. 

Maybe half our nation is too disgusted to vote.

The official Democratic Party still has a chance to endorse Leah Gold, and I hope they will. But remember this, a career politician is, by necessity, manipulative and self-interested, someone without the integrity you get naturally from kith and kin. He will fail you. That’s built-in.

Support Nepotism

David Brooks recently pointed out the positive role that nepotism plays in the Trump administration.

To date Minority President Trump has filled about 5% of our federal administrative offices that require Senate confirmation. Two or three of the appointments went to people who are functional. The rest have been divided between the mentally  impaired and Trump's family; the two groups now struggle for power.

Root for Trump's family. It is true that Ivanka's expertise, for example, is as a bracelet huckster and tight-dress wearer, but she's a human being. Her husband, who may already be Trump's main advisor, is a very young real estate developer and probably a rotten punk, but he is not obviously deranged. The problem, I suspect, is that even Trump can't stand the rest of the relatives who leach off of him. He's about run out of possibles. 

The Fox Hog Pen

Fox News seems to be in the process of being sued again and again for sexual harassment by the women who work there. Apparently nothing has changed at the network.

The world view of the hogs who work at Fox News is one in which young women are bimbos.  Hogs hire people they consider bimbos to deliver the news on camera.  That attracts certain viewers. The boss hogs, many of whom are strikingly unappealing life forms,  expect sex on demand in return. They punish the well-paid young women who do not comply by replacing them with newcomers. The thing to remember is that hogs see all of this as the natural order, as what Mother Nature requires of women and men. Hogs aren't ashamed.  They are part of a proud subculture that believes whole-heartedly in the inescapable inferiority of women.