Grant and Women

Somehow I blundered early onto the rehabilitation of the reputation of Ulysses Grant, perhaps because his autobiography is the only President’s book to make it into the American literary canon.  (Maybe Obama will change that.) In recent years Grant has climbed steadily in the retrospective polls. 

Grant was enormously popular in America and around the world while he lived. After his death his reputation was thoroughly trashed by the Eastern elite in his own party—Grant had not been born rich and had not gone to Harvard—and by the Southern historians intent on glorifying a slave-whipping loser named Robert E. Lee.

In some ways Grant was the first modern general, both in tactics and in strategy, and as President he pushed through the 14th Amendment, which made people of color (and every child born here) an American citizen. He crushed the KKK. What I didn’t learn until yesterday, reading Adam Gopnik, was that Grant was the first President to hire in the government large numbers of women, Jews, black people, American Indians and Irish. That was, of course, long before women could vote. 

Trump's Madness

How much does a racist, malignant narcissist value the 3 million Americans who populate Puerto Rico? Many of them, mind you, have brown skins and are not of German descent. 

The island territory has been more or less without water, food and electricity for a week. Most of the hospitals are closed. If you need dialysis, god help you. Aid is slow to arrive in part because of a law that forbids foreign ships from bringing it. Trump waived that law for the whiter parts of Texas but has not done so for Puerto Rico, because, he said, the American shipping industry doesn’t want him to. Meanwhile he’s still tweeting about the NFL, where Trump interprets demonstrations against police brutality as disrespect for American values.  On that last point he may be right, if American values include the right to shoot down unarmed black teenagers. 

I’m assuming that the people around our minority President will become sufficiently shamed by the suffering in Puerto Rico to push the Narcissist into allowing foreign rescue ships to dock. I don’t know what else to add. Trump’s public posture on the shipping industry is madness. He should be confined before he kills. Or is it too late?

Trump and Ball Games

Evolution made us as a species that forms teams. That isn’t always the rational thing for an individual to do, and it has drawbacks (see the team that backed Donald Trump), but it is how we became a dominant mammal. Our brains, developed by natural selection, lead us to form families and other cooperative groups.

When Trump attacked two of our major sports leagues, calling players’ mothers “bitches,” asking owners to fire players, he ran into two rock piles. The first was the pile heaped up by the team players, who instantly united against Trump and supported their own. He should have anticipated that, although Trump never anticipates, having no eye for consequences. 

The second pile was a different matter. Trump ran head on into the tower of stones we call capitalism. Of course the owners backed the teams they owned. The teams make hundreds of millions of dollars each year for the owners. Trump asked about 60 immensely rich capitalists to commit financial idiocy by firing their teams. My grasp of financial concerns is rudimentary, but even I understand that Trump doesn’t know how a capitalist system works, which is why American banks won’t loan him money—but he does know how to imply the N-word and stir a racist base.  

Annihilation

In the morning paper yesterday I read a letter from a male who doesn’t like President Donald Trump but does like the fact that Trump recently threatened all the adults and children who live in North Korean and Iran with nuclear annihilation. 

In history we can study attempts to annihilate entire populations. Attila the Hun used to surround a city state, then give the city folk the choice of surrender or annihilation. Some chose to fight on. In Texas people remember the Alamo. Nazi Germany’s Holocaust was more recent.  What Trump and his follower don’t grasp is that, for unclear reasons, genocidal annihilators are often thought of as waste matter or turds. Annihilation can backfire—it’s bad for multinational businesses. In the end there’s not much about annihilation policy  that creates a positive reaction at the UN. 

Lawbreaking

Decisions like those made by Edward Snowden or members of the black bloc bring up the question of when we are justified in breaking the law. Despite continuing efforts made by males to claim that we are a nation of laws, not of men, we know that we began as a nation by breaking English law and so on. Most of us break the law in small ways every day.  

The black bloc confronts and punches out Nazis. That’s illegal. 

When is lawbreaking justified?

Thoreau wrote that “if a law requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

That seems to be clear but more limited in scope than what I need. I am seldom required to be an agent of injustice. I can think of a time when I was supposed to be an agent of injustice and I broke the law instead, but that's a short list. I have, however, sometimes tried to provide counter friction.  It’s not much. It is something.

Where or When?

The most perfect pop lyrics ever written had a strange topic, deja vu. (I know, this is a matter of opinion.)

The lyrics were written by Lorenz Hart in the late 1930s. The best version of the song, as far as I know, is by Peggy Lee. You may remember the cover by Dion and the Belmonts.

It seems we stood and talked like this before.

We looked at each other in the same way then,

But I can’t remember where or when.

The clothes you’re wearing are the clothes you wore.

The smile you are smiling you were smiling then,

But I can’t remember where or when.

Some things that happen for the first time

Seem to be happening again.

And so it seems that we’ve met before

And laughed before and loved before

But who knows where or when?

Born Yesterday

Hollywood and MSNBC are upset that Sean Spicer was asked to come on stage at the Emmys and make fun of himself. I thought his skit had a lot of funny shock value. The argument against it is that Spicer did a busload of lying for Donald Trump, and allowing Spicer to participate in the Emmy show normalized falsehood.

My response to that argument is: LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. Let's be clear. Presidential lying became normal 50 years ago. They lied us into wars, stirred up the whites to attack people of color and hid adventures with hand maids. What makes Trump a little different is that he doesn't lie about the big things. He lies about everything. He lies about crowd size. No other President has been that stupid. 

Trump Makes a Deal

The Paris Climate Change treaty allows each nation that signs up to set its own goals and enforce them. Trump has withdrawn from the treaty because he wants to negotiate better terms. His counterpart in the new negotiations will be himself. The next move by this babbling idiot will be to sit down across the table from himself (in the Oval Office) and work things out in a way that satisfies both Trumps. If negotiations stall, he can bring in Donald Trump to facilitate. 

Do Demonstrations Matter?

Whether demonstrations matter is a current topic of discussion. In books and articles, experts debate what sort of demonstration works or doesn't work. 

Apparently the famous demonstrations that worked in the past did so in part because they hooked in high ranking members of the American oligarchy. For example, the civil rights demonstrations won over the Kennedys. (My first demonstration was a civil rights picket in Los Angeles.)

The civil rights movement was tightly organized and well planned by highly educated people.

Today's movements tend to be deliberately  leaderless collections of individuals and affinity groups who collect like flash crowds, using the Internet. Everyone from Quakers to the Black Bloc may join in on a given occasion. These protest demonstrations often have unclear agendas. They might be against generalities like police brutality or the deportation of children, but they are not united in how to fix things. They don't have a set program to push in the sense that the civil rights movement had one. 

Is this new kind of undefined demonstration useful? I'd say, Yes.  Politicians have mixed loyalties: to the 1% who fund them, to brainless ideologies, to their home towns, to political parties--and also to the voters, at least to some degree. It's sobering for American politicians to see a hundred thousand angry voters in the street. It matters.

Mike McGuire

Congratulations to California state senator, Mike McGuire, on his bill that will require Presidential candidates in primaries and general elections to publish their latest five years of tax returns. No one is saying that Governor Brown will sign it, and he's unpredictable, but maybe he will. Maybe his successor will. One likely successor is Gavin Newsom, who has said he would sign a single payer health care plan for California, a state the size of Canada in population.

As an independent, I will support McGuire for re-election (because of his work on bills like this one). In the next election I will not vote for a candidate for governor who does not support single payer.

Urban Truths: Quackenbush

The other night, in a border state, a young Ms. Katie Quackenbush parked her Porsche against the curb near a homeless musician sleeping in a parking lot.  It was three A.M.  She and a woman friend were playing music on the car radio, so the homeless man, Gerald Melton, got up and demanded that they move. They argued. The homeless man then returned to his bed of cardboard, he claims, and the young woman got out of her Porsche and shot him twice in the stomach. When arrested for attempted murder, she claimed that she had merely fired warning shots with her eyes closed. Then she had driven away.

Her father is an attorney.

Moral: Never name your daughter Quackenbush. 

Confirmation Bias, Our Foundation

This morning my cousin Dan and I biked over to Chloe’s for lunch. Chloe’s is the best inexpensive cafe in Sonoma County, but I’m not going to tell you where it is or what it’s called. Anyway, on the way back I offered a problem for Dan to consider. He’s an engineer and likes to think about key problems. I figured this one would occupy him for a few days.  (As it turned out, he solved it in ten seconds, but never mind.)

Confirmation bias is a trait built into us by evolution. Evidence that supports one of our beliefs we accept as true.  Evidence that disproves one of our beliefs we ignore. That is why hurricanes don’t change the minds of climate-change deniers or the World Health Organization can’t alter the views of those who fear fluoridated water. 

Confirmation bias is universal. One reason we honor science is that science attempts to control this natural bias in how we think. 

Here’s the problem. If confirmation bias makes us unreasonable, why do we have it? It should have been selected against—but it wasn’t. If Darwin was right, confirmation bias has probably been helping us survive and multiply for 100,000 years, since we developed language and arguments. But how can a bias be helpful?

Dan: It helps us work together as a team. Cooperation may be irrational at times, but it made us dominant. 

My Friend, Irma

Hurricane Irma is providing us with examples to buttress the argument made by cognitive scientists that natural selection did not develop our brains (and linguistic thought) as logic machines. It’s true that we can reason a  bit from time to time, but rational behavior isn’t central in our decision-making process. If reason were central, we would not have elected a string of Presidents who were paranoid, senile, stupid or Donald Trump. 

Governor Rick Scott of Florida made evacuation of southern Florida mandatory several days ago, and he is a climate-change denier. Scott hasn’t noticed yet that hurricanes have, as predicted by science, become enormous. He lacks reason but seems good at what may be basic to the evolution of our brains: warning others of danger and getting them to cooperate. You can see these same primitive virtues among crows and barking dogs. Unfortunately there are usually a few crows who pay no attention or dogs who ignore warnings, so as Irma strikes, we can only hope for the best. 

The Function of Outmoded Statues

Tom Belton, always pragmatic, has come up with a useful place to store outmoded statues of Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis: dog parks. 

A Little Music, Please

Remember “Where or When” sung by Peggy Lee? Or Dion and the Belmonts?  Great lyrics. You can google "Where or When."

What about “Bye Bye Blackbird”? Few songs have been covered more often, everyone from Ringo Starr to Etta James to John Coltrane. The version I bring up on my computer is by Joe Cocker. Watch the backup singers. 

There’s been a lot of speculation about what the song is about. The one that makes the most sense is straight-forward. Someone in the city is fed up, so he or she is headed out and going home. 

If you like guitar you might google “Sharon Isbin - Asturias.”