Korea vs. Spanky

It’s none of my business, of course, if the two Koreas decide to meet and cooperate in some changes. I am concerned, however, about the dictator of North Korea signing a treaty with President Spanky. For one thing, you can’t believe a word North Korea says, which makes a treaty North Korea signs worthless. And you can’t believe anything Spanky says—he’s so addled, he’s threatening to revoke treaties America and our allies are already committed to. So what you have is two undependables making a treaty. The North Korean leadership is probably three times as smart as the White House but not smarter than the South Koreans. Let the Koreas work things out. Spanky should run away from Asia and maybe invent another fake university without accreditation and lose another 25 million dollar lawsuit.   

Free Yourself

The other day I listened to an entertaining historian who concluded with his view that statues of Confederate luminaries should not be removed from public sites. They illustrate our warped view of history at the time when they were erected, often in the 1920s, according to this Texan.

Ramesses II erected quite a few statues of himself in Egypt about 3,000 years ago (and added to them by having his name carved into statues of his predecessors). He probably still holds the record. There are giant statues of the Egyptian, much larger than those of slave-whippers like Jeff Davis or Bobby Lee, but they have the same function. It isn’t to illustrate history. In most cases, statues of leaders are erected to scare folks in lesser castes. Statues of Ramesses, Davis, Lee, Saddam and Buddha were created to reinforce the power of one group over others. They demand obedience. Free yourself. Topple them.

Old Age

My wife’s younger sister died recently. That did not surprise my wife, who saw that her sister was not taking care of herself. I was surprised because I don’t often think in those terms. My view is that longevity is determined by genes and good luck. Yet I attempt to eat vegetables, which I don’t always like, and I ride my bike, which I enjoy. I suppose that’s my version of Pascal’s wager. 

As you age, people fall away. Eventually everyone you grew up with vanishes. I had a friend, Lucy, who lived to be over 100. That must be strange. Your contemporary kith and contemporary are entirely gone except in dreams. Where did they go? You know what happened and yet you don’t. These absences don’t feel right. There are questions you forgot to ask and things you might have done.

Four Hats

It’s odd how different hats produce different effects. My brother gave me a roll-up Panama hat he brought back from Central America, good for hot weather. Of course, I might be taken for a dastardly plantation owner—that happened to me once when I was wearing a $5 straw bracero hat. 

I have an SF Giants baseball cap that makes me more likable on sight, especially in grocery stores. Clerks smile when they see me.  I also own a luminescent orange cap that I wear when walking along and crossing streets. It’s hugely visible, but people have mistaken me for a hunter. And I have an army fatigue cap that gets me an occasional free soda (from vendors who like soldiers) and a bit of respect from veterans. If I could wear all four hats at once, I'd run for office.

Shame

According to the NY Times, 700 children were taken from adults crossing the Mexican border in the last six months. About 100 of these children were under the age of 4. Homeland Security claims that it is doing this to protect the children from danger in cases where the adult involved cannot prove to the satisfaction of Homeland Security that the child was her own. 

The children can, in some cases, be institutionalized indefinitely. There is no process set up to return infants to their mothers. The ACLU has launched a lawsuit. 

The cruelty to the children and parents involved is staggering, Kafka-like. The separating is being done in our name, under the leadership of Donald Trump. This is a price children pay for our elevating a malevolent narcissist to the Presidency. Trump and Pence must go.

The Innocent

I’d like to make the following claim: Donald Trump is not a crook, and there is nothing fixer Michael Cohen can say that will harm the President. 

I’m making this claim because no one else has. I'm the first. Pence, Ryan, McConnell, Spanky himself—no one is saying that Trump and Cohen are innocent. Instead they are openly  attempting to stop the process that may force Cohen to go public. But there is no reason to stop the process if Spanky is clean. 

Horror

When Daisy, my granddaughter, was tiny, she was a successful model, and while she was doing that (too young to be competitive) she became friends in San Francisco with another successful model, Lulu Krim. Their mothers became friends. Daisy decided she didn't like modeling, and Lulu and her family moved to New York, where Lulu (6) and her younger brother Leo (2) were killed by their nanny. 

Lulu and Leo have not been forgotten. The Krim family confronted horror by founding a charity, the Lulu and Leo Fund, with a large, active membership, a charity that funds art activities for 2,000 children in often underserved communities. In a situation that might have crushed them, the Krims and the people who've joined in are actively committed to children, year after year. 

The Lulu and Leo Fund is on Facebook.

Yesterday, five years later, the nanny was found guilty of murder. 

The Big Price

President Spanky said last week that Russia would pay "a big price" for its support of Assad in Syria. Yesterday that price was announced. It's no new sanctions. Take that, Putin. And thank you, sir.


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I admit to having a small measure of admiration for American figures like Ma Barker and Barbara Bush.  

New Delusions

Natural selection shaped us into family animals. We tend to live in small cooperative groups. When we form larger groups, which are less reinforced by our basic makeup, we depend on less-binding factors to hold us together, among them ideologies, metaphors, legalities and group-shared delusions. In short, we make stuff up, so that America becomes in theory a gigantic family with a President as our Super-Father.

When the Super-Father's swivel chair is sat in by someone Black or a woman or someone gay, the claim that America is a super-family needs an adjustment, and that comes hard for families wedded strongly to White male macho supremacy. 

When I was in the military (in the era of universal military training), I learned that officers were required to attend religious services. Officers need not believe in God, just go to church, because it set an example for enlisted men. They were all men in those days. The military reasoning was explicit. Religion might or might not be a delusion--not the point--but it added cohesion to a nearly random group of young men pledged to fix bayonets and charge machine-guns.

Today many of our key national delusions are fading. Only 12% of millennials describe themselves as patriotic. I'd guess there was nearly universal patriotism in my grandfather's generation. Now we're skeptics. Some of my friends are so skeptical they turn their backs to science and scorn the World Health Organization and so on. Beliefs like "America is a democracy" are hard to sustain when second place wins the Presidency. "We're a country of laws" is less impressive once you realize that there are different applications of the laws depending on your race.  

This country needs new and more compelling beliefs. It's time to make up something new.  

  

Human Error

Less than 3% of the people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge survive. Those who end up being pulled from the water by the Coast Guard get interviewed, and it turns out that nearly all of them changed their minds while in mid-air. These people may not be a random sample, but given the physics of the situation, I think they'll do. The evidence indicates that jumping off the bridge may be an error. 

The Old and the Feckless

We are watching the Republicant Party shatter into fragments, mainly the Wall Street Money Grubber Cartel  vs. the White Male Supremacy posse. But what about the Democrats? 

The Democrats are seen by most voters as feckless (someone said). Where the Republicants offer a racist, misogynist, anti-gay future, the Democrats offer very little  Their main claim is that they aren't Republicants. 

How do we know that voters are fed up with the feckless Democratic Party?  In the last Presidential primary season, about 45% of the Democrats cast ballots for a candidate who wasn't a Democrat. Wake up, party leaders. 

Good Riddance

Paul Ryan's decision not to seek re-election isn't surprising. He was about to get swept from office by a strong candidate and a Democratic wave, and Ryan dislikes being Speaker and detests Trump. 

Ryan is not the sort of Republican who caters to angry, stupid, white men. He's always served Wall Street. He believes in money. Now it's Wall Street's turn  to make him rich.

Ryan's main legacy will the a gigantic tax gift he gave the super-rich. He managed to shift money away from the poor and middle class and hand billions out to the grabbing hands of the 1%.  

The man has been devoted to Ayn Rand, an inch-deep, heartless nutter. I suppose that's better than having no belief system at all (President Spanky). Ryan's delusions are the kind we are used to among Republicans and sometimes share. He's bone ignorant, kind of dumb, but recognizably a standard human type. Now, at last, he's departing. Good riddance.

I'm Ignorant

I have opinions on foreign policy, although I know little about it. Or, let’s say, I have opinions about tariff wars like the one President Spanky is bumbling us into, although I understand nothing about the complexities of international trade. Nor does Spanky.  

I attempt to keep my views informed by consulting my wife, history books, the Internet, documentaries, television news, newspapers and magazines. I participate in a weekly discussion group made up of people like myself. 

Because I get to vote, I think I should have informed views on complicated issues. Of course, some political issues are matters of common sense. It is a  simple fact that in American states where guns abound, a higher percentage of people die of gunshot wounds, but whether one believes facts or not often depends on whether the facts support one’s preconceptions.

What is actually going on is that my views largely depend on the news sources and leaders I trust. That’s a choice. But I want to admit to myself how ignorant I am. There are people in the state assembly, for example, who have actually taken the time to become experts on how to deliver health care. It’s hard to know which representatives to trust, but that is the real decision a voter, who is living the usual busy life,  has to make: which experts to trust.

(Also I will never again vote for someone who fails to support attempts to control guns, no matter how small or symbolic.)   

Hippies

Last week Daisy, my granddaughter, in the sixth grade, was asked by a friend if I had served in the army. He probably asked because I sometimes wear an old army fatigue cap. Daisy told her friend, “No. He wasn’t in the army. He was a hippie.”

Actually, like most men in my age group, I’d been in the army (universal military training). Af few years later, in 1968, I entered graduate school. Those were the days, right? I’d already sampled peyote and Chuck Berry. Thai stick, LSD and The Holy Modal Rounders came next. I helped swell the march on Washington to end a war. But my wife and I never considered ourselves hippies, who were okay but insufficiently versed in radical political theory. And that’s the truth.

(Note: my wife objects and claims she was a hippie.)

(also on Facebook)

Spanky

Eugene Robinson, seldom the most trenchant of commentators, this morning suggested that  President Spanky lives at the intersection of venality and senility.

Delusions

Long ago I realized that global warming was going to change our climate and make the sea rise, but I found no way to stop it. Our economic system, devoted to short term profit, could not be budged. 

Fifteen years ago I recognized that it was now too late. The planet will get hotter and the seas will rise. What’s left is to try to slow things a little and search for ways to address the problems. But the money-grubbers are still hard at work, slowing planning, preventing mitigation. 

More recently I understood that science was saying that the changes might come in surges. For example, there is in Antarctica one giant glacier that, when it collapses, will raise the sea level ten feet in a few years. And there is nothing I can do to stop it. 

I can suggest that my grandchild live on high ground.

The Worst Cause

During and after the Civil War, there were many stories about divided families where one brother joined the Union Army and the other brother joined the Confederates. Maybe the highly honorable Union guy shoots and kills his highly honorable brother, a tragedy. The family must reunite. The nation must be made whole again and so on.

Family stories often have a mundane purpose. 

The divided families story is true enough. It happened, but it happened to White families, not families of color. Left out of the story is Gen. Grant’s observation that the Confederates had fought well but that no one had ever fought for a worse cause. 

That remained true until the 20th century.