Horsemanship

Susan and I frequently watch Heather Cox Richardson's daily podcast, in which she explains, as historians will do, the news and its contexts. She's great, but she said something that annoyed me a few weeks back.

Cox claimed that among American presidents, the best horseman was Ronald Reagan!

I don't know how well Reagan stayed in a saddle, but I doubt if he was comparable to the Founding Fathers. Many of them rode horses every day. That's how George Washington got around. 

For best presidential horseman, my candidate is  U.S. Grant. He set a record at West Point for jumping a horse over a  high fence or something, winning him an award. Until the Civil War, that might be what Grant was known for.

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Going With The Flow

Long ago I read an article about which sentence has been read by the most people over the centuries. I don't recall the winning sentence, but I didn't agree with the outcome. 

Probably no one knows the right answer, but I have a candidate for the most-read sentence. I started by assuming the sentence would be in Chinese and be known to every Chinese person and most Asians and some of the rest of us.  

My choice had first been written in ancient Chinese symbols, which lend themselves to multiple meanings and translations. Here is an example:  "The Dao that can be spoken of is not the ever- constant Dao." 

That's the first line of the Dao De Jing.  A variation might be, "The Dao we call the Dao is not the constant Dao." 

What "the Dao" meant 2400 years ago remains uncertain, but in part the sentence is apparently commenting on the nature of language. There is a difference between a process and the name we give the process. 

Consider Rene Magritte's painting of a pipe, called "The Treachery of Images" and also known as "This Is Not A Pipe."

So what does "Dao" mean? It means something that cannot be exactly defined in words, maybe something like "constantly changing natural processes." A central Daoist message might be, "Be spontaneous and don't fight Mother Nature."

Wittgenstein pointed out that words with cloudy meanings have an important role in language. Take the word "love." As a songwriter wrote, "You don't know what love is." 

You can experience love but not define it exactly.

 

Mahler

Do you know what's embarrassing? To discover Mahler when you're 91.

Killing People

As he ages, Donald Trump has been on a killing spree, ranging from schoolgirls in Iran to anyone in a small boat near Venezuela. But recently he signed a tentative peace discussion agreement with the leaders of Iran.

Ronny Cheing has asked us to praise Trump for this act of leadership. Trump lost the war, of course--I can see that--but what he seeks is validation that he is a towering military genius. He would be comparing himself to Robert E. Lee, if Lee had not been such a loser.

If we praise Trump's amazing and total victory in Iran, he may not start bombing again. This would leave quite a few Iranian families intact. 

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Courage

Looking back on nearly 92 years, what am I proud of? Well, one thing is that I had the courage not use chapstick. I toughed it out.

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Tale from Long Ago

A TALE FROM LONG AGO

After two weeks Adam said he felt lonely in the Garden of Eden. It was like being lost in the woods, he said. Everyone used to fear getting lost in the woods. But you aren't lost if someone is with you. So Adam asked El (that was the Creator's original name) if he could have a companion. 

El enjoyed a negotiation. He liked to argue. "So now you are afraid of trees?"

"Not exactly."

"Of  course I can make you a companion," El said, "but it's expensive. If you want something nimble, amiable and female, that will cost you a leg."

"A leg? You want to take off one of my legs? I have to hunt and gather. You made me that way.  I spend my life walking around looking for food."

"Of course. You need the leg. So what can you afford to give up?"

Adam thought for a few minutes and then said. "What can I get for a toe nail?"

"Pete Hegseth."

"That's not right!"

"If you're asking for certain unalienable rights," the Creator said, "you'll have to throw in rapid tooth decay."

"Fine," Adam said. "Fine. What can I get for a rib?" 

                  

 

Graham Platner

In two days, in a primary, the Democrats in Maine will make Graham Platner their candidate for the Senate. They like him.

If Platner wins in November, the Democrats might take control of the Senate and Supreme Court nominees . But some principled out-of-state Democrats are on TV campaigning against Platner. 

Graham Platner is a high-school graduate and combat veteran. He's currently an oyster farmer, a working-class white man, the sort of voter the Democrats lost touch with under the Clintons. 

So far Republicans and some Democrats have accused Platner of being a Communist, a Fascist and a toxic date. He has admitted that he once made failed attempts to cheat on his wife.  

Maine voters are going to choose in November between Platner and Republican Susan Collins, a Phi Beta Kappa supporter of Donald Trump. 

Like many I find some transgressions unforgivable.  If Platner were guilty of hitting a woman, raping someone or persecuting a Jew, I would not vote for him (if I lived in Maine). But he has not been accused of those crimes. He has been accused of troubling unorthodoxy, dating toxicity, a really bad grasp of symbolism and not being upper middle-class. 

Obama (and FDR) drew support from voters like Platner, men who had not attended Yale, men who ate spaghetti without twirling it on a spoon. 

Often voters who work with their hands decide nominations and elections. If I were a Democrat, I would, like FDR, seek their support. But I belong to no party.

Just saying.

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Ozymandias

 

Shelley had Trump's number

"And on the pedestal, these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

The Good Country

There are about 195 countries in the world. Each nation is mostly ruled by a small group that controls a large share of the wealth and power. This description fits dictatorships, Marxist or Fascist regimes, kingdoms, Denmark and capitalist democracies in general. 

In the better nations ordinary people have some power, but there is no country where classes of people share wealth or power evenly. 

All countries protect their ruling class, but some counties are easier than others to live in.

Systematic control is baked-in to 195  nations. In America if a late night comic annoys the 1%, a rich man will buy the corporation that owns the corporation that owns the TV network, then fire the comic. If a news show runs the wrong expose, a billionaire will buy the network and hire a woman to fire any woman who disagrees with plutocrats.  

It's all legal in the system we created. So far it's not up for discussion.