Easy To Buy

I clap my hands for the Parkland student who tweeted that assault rifles should be renamed Marco Rubios "because they're so easy to buy."

Democracies Die

In its current form the Republican Party has a vestigial brain. It works just well enough for the party to stumble backwards.

The problem began with President Rutherford Hayes, who traded Black America into Jim Crow, but more recently we should look at Dick Nixon. In Nixon's youth, the openly racist part of our population was divided fairly equally between the two major parties. This division tended to keep institutional racism anchored in place, but it also diluted the openly racist vote by dividing it between Democrats and Republicans. Nixon set out to gather the entire openly racist vote inside his Republican party.  Racism boosted the Wall Street party and gave the 1%  control of regulations and tax cuts--and then racism and nativism got out of hand, producing the Tea Party and Donald Trump and the overthrow of the Wall Street Republican leaders. They became followers. The national party devolved into many stupid local parties, lacking in vision but well stocked with fear and hatred of people of color, immigrants, women, science, the government, education, reality and rational thought. The nativist movement, such as it was, gathered together a range of voters from torch-waving Nazis to defiant child molesters. 

I was reminded recently that so-called democracies have, since the invention of Greek history, failed again and again. They eventually elect an autocrat and become dictatorships. It happened in Germany and Italy 90 years ago. We've seen it happen recently in places like Turkey and Russia. It can happen here. Americans must resist.

Who Am I?

My brother had his DNA tested by 23andMe, and I assume my DNA is similar. 

99.7% European, almost all Irish, British, French and German.

.03% Western Asian

I didn’t know what Western Asian was. It refers to people from the part of Asia that is closest to Europe, perhaps the Middle East. An odd fact is that about a third of the genome of the American Indians comes, unexpectedly, from the ancestors of Western Eurasians. Maybe I do have some Indian in me after all.

It’s good to have a touch of Asian. My granddaughter has a little Nigerian, and I envy her that.

We have at least one Italian name in our line, and perhaps that is the source of the 1% of my brother classified as “Broadly Southern European” about 6 to 8 generations back. In the 18th century we had an ancestor named Elizabeth Gillion or Galliam or Galiano who was reputed to be an Italian bareback rider in a circus. Maybe.

It’s interesting that science can determine where your family came from, but there is no DNA test to establish your race. That’s because race is a fiction. It’s not found in the human genome. There are a few non-racist scientists, however, who argue that race is a real and useful physical reality. These arguments strike most of their scientific peers as unconvincing. For many reasons, the division of people into races based on height, weight, skin color or delightful aromas is arbitrary, a linguistic construct whose meaning differs from one hamlet to the next. 

Death for School Children

I write this as a gun owner. 

America is awash in about 300 million guns, some in the hands of emotionally disturbed killers of school children. The states differ in their gun laws, and the states with stricter laws experience fewer murders. The lesson is clear. 

We need strict gun laws and fewer guns on the street. That will without doubt reduce the number of murdered children. Saving even one life will matter.  

American legislators tend to support lax gun laws because the gun industry (NRA) pays them off with campaign contributions and one-issue voters. To get what country needs, we must do what the teenage survivors of attacks have asked: we must vote out of office every politician who takes money from the gun industry.

I've always opposed one-issue voting, but now I am a one-issue voter for child safety. 

Billy Graham

Now he belongs to the Middle Ages. 

Why Not Vote Republican?

Sometimes I think how nice my life would be if I had no conscience and voted Republican. I'm eligible--I'm old and White. If I were a Republican, I could relax.  

As a Republican I could explain why Black people don't live in mansions--and the answer wouldn't be racism. It might be because they lack the intelligence needed to inherit riches (except, of course, for a few exceptions), but my wife might see that analysis as racist. More likely the explanation is that Black people haven't adopted enough of White culture.  Republicans believe that what holds Black people down is they don't know how to bob for apples. As a Republican I could ignore what is happening to the climate and infrastructure and beaten wives. I could pound beers and let the country be run by the people who own it.

How to Cope with Bill Walton

When I was young, the sports analyst everyone despised/enjoyed was Howard Cosell. This extremely irritating and gangling man endeared himself to me when he somehow became the main defender of Mohammed Ali. Today's version of Cosell is Bill Walton, one of the great centers of the past, comparable in certain ways to Jabbar, Russell, Chamberlain and Shaq. In one NCAA game for the national college championship, Walton made 21 of 22 shots, and the one he missed, he actually made. It was a stuff, outlawed at the time and disallowed.

As a basketball commentator, Walton irritates my wife and most everyone else. His commentary frequently wanders into a stream of consciousness about how well Kevin Durant did on a 60 mile bike ride or how redwoods gather moisture from coastal fogs. He spices  up this stream with somewhat belligerant locker room banter that goes something like this (as the game he is supposedly broadcasting bubbles along).

Walton: Cropulis is a fantastic point guard. He was raised by the finest mother, a grammar school vice-principal.  Her name is Nancy Cropulis, Joe. Is your name Joe? Good. Cropulis grew up in Whitestubble, Nevada. Have you ever spent a night in Whitestubble?"

Joe Broadcaster:  No. Whitestubble?

Walton: Have you ever gone anywhere? Do you travel? I'm just asking if you leave the house.

Joe Broadcaster: Yes, I travel. I broadcast games for MBC.

Walton: But you haven't been to Whitestubble, an all-American town. You've neglected Whitesubble. You should visit. Become a true American. Buy a pork loin and cole slaw sandwich at Minny's eatery on Second Street. You'll love it.  Live a little, Joe. Expand your horizons. Read books. Have you read Plato? Strong rebound there by Jones.

How much Walton's approach to calling a basketball game gets enhanced by herbal supplements only he knows.  He's famously a Grateful Dead fan, and I appreciate him. I do have some advice for Joe Broadcaster, which is not to engage the man. Instead, go with the flow, as people might do in improv classes. Accept and embrace the premise.  

Walton: Have you ever spent a night in Whitesubble?

Joe Broadcaster: Whitestubble? My second wife's maiden name was Whitestubble. Her uncle served two terms as Whitestubble county's state senator. Man, I had the best root-beer float in my life in South Whitestubble. The nettle ice cream alone is worth a plane flight if you don't mind a dirt landing field. 

170 Schools

Since the Columbine massacre there have been 170 mass school shootings in the United States. The way to decrease the murders of our children is to pass gun control legislation. I write this as a gun owner.

In our economic/political system, it has proven difficult in many states and at the federal level to legislate against lunatics owning semi-automatic weapons. We need to regulate a form of capitalism (the manufacturing of firearms) that harms us. We need to limit the ownership of semi-automatic weapons. Locales that have strengthened gun control laws have seen fewer murders. Fewer guns mean fewer school massacres. That's the math of it.

A Black Eye

A Presidential aide who punched his wife in the face, blacking her eye, won praise from Donald Trump last week, giving the Presidency a black eye. Have you noticed that Presidential commentators have stopped suggesting we should respect the office?  

Trump has molested women. Despite that, he won the White women's vote in the last election. Today he no longer has much female support. If you include women of color, he is currently backed by the very special 29% of American women who were born without necks to connect their brains to the fingers they vote with.

Women have turned on Trump. He's become the White man's burden.

The President's many public defenses of rapists, child molesters and now wife-beaters are reflective defenses of his own behavior.  He careens backwards, leading a government with no money. He tossed our money away, giving it to the super rich, who didn't need it. He wanted them to love him. They still think he has cooties. Now he's pushing to rebuild America's aging infrastructure, but he has no cash left for rebuilding. Will Mexico pay for it?

The Arrogance of Knowledge

Susan, my wife,  pointed out that one of the basic assumptions of the more reasonable Trump followers is that it's arrogant to know things. Science is arrogant and evidence-based. Rational thought is a form of elitism, an unAmerican, coastal, prideful activity fostered by radical professors in colleges and universities. Coastal people believe in cultural conventions, mere inventions like facts, logic and evidence. That's not true in Heartland America, the real White America, where people just do what feels right.

If we would stop reasoning, we could admit that we don't know how global warming will turn out. Maybe God wants us to be warm. Is that so bad? There's no way to know, so why try to plan for a future that remains unpredictable? 

Trump's Parade

 Celebrating the military by asking them to put on a parade is like asking your spouse to celebrate her birthday by scrubbing the kitchen floor. 

Trump Orders a Military Parade

I don’t know, but I’ve been told,

Marching on streets is mighty bold.

Bone spurs happen every time;

Five deferments come to mind.

(also on Facebook)

Trump's End Game

Trump has bad options. His best move for the moment is to stall for time. Maybe he will be saved by a World War.  

Option One-A: Stall for time like Mussolini and hope for a miracle.

Option One-B: the best of his remaining options is to fire Bob Mueller and end the investigation. That would bring on an immediate Constitutional crisis and a chance that the Republicans would impeach him. He's afraid of that. Trump is a five-exemption, bone-spur coward.

Option Two: Mueller calls Trump in to testify before his team, and Trump accepts. Trump perjures himself, contradicting what other witnesses have already said. Muller asks the Grand Jury to indict Trump, and the Republicans probably impeach Trump to save themselves.

Option Three: Mueller subpoenas Trump to appear before the Grand Jury. Trump testifies, blusters and lies. The Grand Jury indicts him, a huge majority of people turn against Trump and the Republicans impeach him in order to survive.

Option Four: Trump, before the Grand Jury, takes the fifth. The Republicans impeach him.

Option Five: Trump's attorneys go to the Supreme Court to argue that Trump does not have to honor a subpoena. The Court rules against them. Trump ignores the Court. He gets impeached. 

Option Six: Trump resigns and flees to Brasil, where he cannot be extradited. Paul Ryan's wife is arrested for spousal abuse.

The Deep State

Comrade Nunes has promised to investigate five or six more departments in the federal government, looking for “the deep state,” I suppose. As near as I can tell, the deep state consists of anyone in government who bases her analyses on facts and rational thought. 

Someone once jokingly said that “reality has a liberal bias.”  There’s a sense in which that’s true. Studies have shown that people on the right often tend to regard scientific facts as lies by liberals. The right often (not always) puts its faith in its gut instincts, not reason. People on the left tend to argue in terms of facts, science and logic (not always), which more often correspond to reality than gut intuitions do. 

There are, of course, sensible, intelligent conservatives like David Frum. I don’t want to be too positive about Frum—he apparently invented the bigoted term “axis of evil.” His love of Israel is unconditional, beyond fairness or reason. On the other hand, he absolutely rejected Donald Trump, and Frum is probably more rational than I am. He might (in the big picture) be a kind of right wing liberal, given his fact-based viewpoint. 

Blind Dog

Today the Chaucer Boys (Tim, Dan and I) were biking from Hopland to Talmadge and back when we came across a large blind dog in the road. He was trotting around in circles. We stopped and tried to catch him, but the dog was upset and kept dodging away. This problem attracted maybe 15 people who stopped their cars and got out and tried to help. Finally one guy managed to get a leash on the dog, who immediately calmed down. The dog, whose coat was badly matted, was led away to food and water at a local house, whose owners already had a smaller blind dog. 

Who would abandon a blind dog? It took 15 people to begin to undo the damage, and maybe that says something about how difficult it is to repair the harm done by one malevolent individual. Repairs will require a group working together. 

We finished our ride. 

The Core Beliefs of Congressbrain Nunes

The Nunes report is out, and it’s empty.  This is the second time that Nunes has alarmed the nation, claimed it had cancer and produced proof of a runny nose. Nunes is nothing but transparently incompetent. What he actually believes might as well be top secret—rather than being a radical right nutter, he’s a dope who switches sides effortlessly. Trump is something like that, but Trump does have core commitments. For example, Trump is a lifelong racist. Nunes has no such core. He’s a nasty pudding of a fellow, more like drunken Joe McCarthy than like our Mussolini-like President with the jutting upturned jaw and lips of a fish and tiny hands with tiny fingers pinching the air.