THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE

THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi is a book about a serial killer in Italy (the prototype for Hannibal the Cannibal)--or rather the true story of conspiracy theories about the Monster and how they ruined many lives. Innocent people went to prison. It's a vividly written book, and near the end the two journalists get accused of related crimes and wrapped into the conspiracy theories by certain balmy police and prosecuters. In Italy people get convicted and sentenced to long terms in prison on the bases of conspiracy theories (and no evidence). That is what happened recently to a young American woman, Amanda Knox, and her boyfriend.

Of course that sort of thing can occur in America, too. The McMartin preschool witch hunt, part of the Satanic-ritual/recovered memory hysteria in our own recent past, lasted for six years before the accused were finally exonerated and released. Let's hope that Amanda Knox gets that lucky.

Meanwhile I read on the net that President Obama is responsible for the internal unrest in Iran. I am getting used to nutty conspiracy theories about Obama from the Right, but this one comes from the Left, from people who claim that Obama is "worse than Bush" and call the President a "scumbag." This sort of thing is not harmless. Conspiracy theories--whether about FDR or Bush or Obama--harm everyone, harm their victims and harm the causes of the delusional people who promote them.

Gary Goss

Joe Woods

This time of year I like to spend some time thinking about kith or kin who are gone.

Joe Woods came from a family of interest. His father, also Joseph Woods, was a former FBI agent who served as the Sheriff of Cook County from 1966 to 1970, during which time he jailed the Chicago Seven (or Eight) and made them cut their hair. The Sheriff's sister was Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's secretary, the one who erased a crucial tape. Sheriff Woods was known for, among other things, wearing President Nixon's discarded suits around town.

My friend Joe Woods reacted to this--and to his education in German at a Jesuit boarding school--by becoming a Marxist (in theory) and buying an Uzi, which he sometimes fired into the ground on the Fourth of July. Like me, Joe raised wolves for the joy of it. But to get at what Joe was like, well, he as a good-looking Irish American of steelly intelligence, great warmth and integrity, and totally a family man. He made a living by writing about cars, but his focus was on his wife and daughters. ABD in philosophy from the University of Chicago, Joe loved discussion and argument. He didn't watch television. Joe was always interesting, always right there. Right there. He was strong as a bull. He did everything too hard, I guess, and one day he went out and ran too hard, maybe, and now I miss him.

American Exceptionalism

Is America the best country in the world? It is for me, because it's my country, and I'm at home here. But is America--objectively--the best country in the world? What do the French, Germans and Japanese think?

One thing I learned from philosophy is that if a question or statement is hard to respond to, it might not be meaningful. We hear from conservative and liberal politicians that America is exceptional, the best country in the world, better than all the other countries, which is like saying, "My father can beat up your father." There are no accepted criteria to be used in establishing which of the roughly 200 countries is best. There is, in fact, no such thing as an objectively best or worst country.

When I hear a President claim that America is the best country, I'm troubled by the vacant thinking behind the assertion. Is that what voters want to hear? Childish nonsense?

OBAMA'S HOUSE

When Obama moved into his new house, he had to take it "as is." The prior occupant had left dried vomit in every room, and in several rooms the walls were stained with blood. Obama was faced with a laborious cleanup. The puke was a major problem, but the blood-stained walls--in rooms already suffering from dry rot--have been far worse. Obama had a choice. He could spend several years scrubbing down the rotten and stained walls, or he could paint the rooms, close them off and get on with things. Obama has chosen to scrub the walls.

So much for the extended metaphor.

I think that Obama, someone I root for, has made a mistake in not leaving Afghanistan immediately. He could have said that in our current situation, we need every penny to help get our economy moving and so he intends to adjust the national budget. We cannot afford a war. I believe he could have sold that concept.

There is one positive aspect to all this. The conversation about Iraq and Afghanistan has changed markedly under Obama. The United States has a long history of invading countries and building permanent bases and staying. Our military are still in Germany, Japan, Korea, etc. Bush planned to stay in Iraq. Today the arguments about Iraq and Afghanistan are about how soon we can leave, immediately or in two years. Obama has not commited to nation building or democracy building in Afghanistan. He's set a low bar: control of some major areas and then a turnover to the locals in 18 months.

Speaking as a former enlisted man, I would not want to be the last American killed in Afghanistan. Propping up Afghanistan in order to prop up the nuclear-armed Pakistan strikes me as too indirect to be good strategy. But at least we and the people of Afghanistan have a time line, and it is significant to note that the American military now support eventual withdrawal, in part because our military needs to be rebuilt.

Being Careful Is the Key

During the eight years of the Cheney administration, the American Constitution nearly died. The current administration is attempting to revive the rule of law by bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial in New York, and the Republican leadership is terrified. They are always terrified.

The other night I was watching David Brooks on TV explaining why the world's most powerful nation could not safely try al Qaida members in public. Meanwhile wingnut Pat Buchanan was wetting himself on MSNBC from concern that at the trial the judge and prosecutors would not be able to cope with propaganda efforts made by cave-dwelling 15th century Moslem fundamentalists on Twitter.

I don't recall exactly what Brooks and Buchanan said, but they were quick to dismiss the Constitution of the United States, which they explained represented "9/10 thinking." That is, the Constitution related to events that had happened before 9/11. After 9/11, in which 3,000 people died, America could no longer afford the basic human rights we had retained after two world wars.

While Brooks and Buchanan were fearfully blubbering on, I tried to imagine them explaining their position to Ben Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Hancock and a few others. These men had risked being hanged by the British King for treason. Some had come under musket fire in an attempt to defend inalienable rights. I imagine they would have heard Buchanan and Brooks out, and then they would have used their hickory walking sticks to cane the rich and flabby legs of two cowards, giving them some experience.

Meanwhile, John McCain was welcoming guests to The Hall of Heroes, as he called his eighth home, which is plated with gold and located at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, according to Wanda Sykes. Sergeants Alvin York and Audie Murphy had arrived with their resignations from the Hall in hand. McCain tried to talk them out of quitting, but Audie Murphy only shook his head ruefully. "You were right, John. I fought through an entire world war and was never captured once. I'm no hero." Sgt. York smiled in an embarrassed way.
"Same here, John. Heck, I was so mixed up I thought I was supposed to do the capturing."

McCain sighed and watched them leave, then looked at his list of revoked memberships to see who was next. JFK, of course. In his favor he had lost his ship in the Pacific, but then he swam for miles and saved his crew from drowning. Not one man captured. "This could be a lot easier," McCain said to the club chairman, George Herbert Bush, a pilot who had bailed out of a flaming plane in World War Two, leaving his crew to auger in. "We wouldn't have to kick people out if we were more careful who we admitted in the first place."

The Dead

About 44,000 Americans will die this year because they lack health care. My sister, Shannon Goss, is one of them. She died in February. She was 15 years my junior.

The arguments against providing government health care to the poor strike me as nonsensical. We know that it works in Europe. We know that it saves money. We know that people who have single payer like it. The arguments that government health care doesn't work, that it costs more and that people hate it have proved so false that we seldom hear them repeated now, except from Senator Lieberman, who has lost his mind. At the moment the main health care argument seems to be about religious positions on abortion.

One real problem, of course, is that the health insurance industry's huge profits might be cut back a little by the current bills in congress. Industrial greed is the motive for the massive media campaign. The Republican Party will hitch its broken wagon to any protest group with legs. But why are so many ordinary Americans frantically opposing health care for the poor? My guess is that they have their eyes on the future.

Albert Camus broke with Sartre and the French existentialists because they supported Stalin, who was murdering millions of people on the grounds that it would help working class people some time in the future. Camus' position was that you don't murder people in the name of an unforeseeable future, whether your goal is a workers' paradise, a seat in Heaven or a Christian nation in which businesses are totally unregulated--this last seems to be the genuine aim of the teabaggers.

That pipe dream is unworthy of 44,000 deaths per year, especially when the future seems to include rampant global warming and its impact on business. We are looking at total folly.

Please Start without Facts

"Politics is right in rejecting benevolence to the extent that the latter thoughtlessly sacrifices the future to the present." ---Simone de Beauvoir

"On the other hand, a city council can't possibly be too benevolent to a rich developer--the future be hanged." ---a voter watching a recent council meeting.

***

No one can predict the future with certainty, but it seems likely that rapid climate change will lead, in fairly short order, to a major die-off among human beings. The world economy will be badly disrupted. Probably North America will survive better than poorer regions, but planning, even on the Healdsburg level, is going to grow more difficult in the years ahead. The town should prepare for uncertainty.

***

The Healdsburg City Council has been asked to consider requiring some short reports on the possible impacts on the community of any new large developments. That would be a modest step, but it is also a symbolic issue in the sense that some people want to prepare for the rapid onslaught of global warming by shrinking government. Let me be blunt: that's unlikely to happen. It's too dumb.

At Monday's city council meeting only council members Jim Wood and Mike McGuire supported looking into whether we should ask experts to gather facts at the start of the planning process. One member opposed the process, one asked for more information, and the mayor looked for a solution most council members could agree to.

The arguments made against gathering facts fell into two categories. (1) We already get all the facts we need, so we shouldn't ask if the process might be improved; and (2) requesting a 30 page report would "add a new layer of government."

I'll tell you what will add a new layer of government: "The road to Bodega Head has gone under water."

The council, led by Mayor Eric Ziedrich, who commented that the system does need improvement, may eventually set up a subcommittee. We should keep trying to get what we need. Remember that the far-right Party of No is less than half the size of the Democrats in Healdsburg. Many centrist Republican voters now support green solutions. We must keep asking our city council to represent the actual voters.

What's coming in the next 50 years is serious business that will need to be addressed without 19th century ideological restrictions. We must start to plan now as best we can. We need council members who can see ahead and cope with developing changes.

Gary Goss

Lies and Group Polarization

In the November 2 NEW YORKER, Elizabeth Kolbert discusses group polarization, the tendency to become more extreme after discussing something with like minded people. After many experiments, the tendency is well documented. Doves grouped with doves become more dovish. Birthers grouped with birthers become more adamant that Obama was not born in the United States. They begin to exaggerate.
They lie to themselves and to each other. No one in the like-minded group challenges them.

Some see the internet as a breeding ground for extremism. If you live in the Haight and have trouble finding a fellow birther to reinforce your conspiracy theory, you can easily reach a support system on the 'net. But, as I see it, there have long been networks of conspiracy theorists using pamphlets, books, clubs, phone trees, movements, etc. Computers and the internet have made some of the contact work easier, but the birthers I've watched on television don't always strike me as computer literate.

The problem with fantasies, whether about Obama or Bush, is that a society cannot flourish if it is infected with mistaken beliefs. To prosper we need truths. When we walk into a drugstore we need to know which sunblocks are safe and which are dangerous. Our ability to handle life's hazards depends on our ability to recognize them.

"Lies are designed to damage our grasp of reality," Harry Frankfurt wrote. "They are intended . . . to make us crazy." And the liar, Adrienne Rich wrote, "lives an existence of unutterable loneliness."

The liar has to pretend to believe what he doesn't believe. As a consequence no one really knows him. He's alone. He can't tell anyone the truth about himself. He's falsity personified. He's Richard Nixon. Or--a sympathetic version--he's the unutterably lonely progressive telling me it doesn't matter whether Bush or Gore wins the Presidential election. He's manipulating me, of course. On some level I grasp that he's lying, but I can't admit it because it calls my own judgment of people into question. I believed in this progressive. If I admit he lied, I admit I am too easily fooled.

If you are interested, read ON TRUTH by Harry G. Frankfurt, a retired philosophy professor from Princeton.

David Brooks Fails Willful Stupidity Test

Yesterday David Brooks published a column in which he questioned President Obama's ability to stand by (stubbornly) a decision to fight on in Afghanistan. Nowhere in the article does Brooks mention that our generals agree that this struggle will take another ten years, which adds up to an 18 year war to control a mountainous desert of no value to anyone. And climate change is not going to make Afghanistan more habitable.

Afghanistan has never been conquered because the place is useless and almost no one wants to live there. It's like the old daoist maxim: the useless tree lives the longest. No one wants its wood or fruit. It doesn't repay cutting down.

Obama probably understands that ten more years of war there (and another 50,000 American casualties) makes no sense, but can he block the massive current momentum and the self-willed stupidity represented by an otherwise B student like David Brooks?

Afghanistan, Mexico or Canada?

Somewhere recently I read an article in which the author wrote that if our goal is to build a sound democratic nation, gain access to oil reserves, fight narco-terrorists and free women from an extremely dominating male culture, we should pull out of Afghanistan and invade Mexico. I see a problem with that: global warming. Leaving Afghanistan is a good idea--in decades to come the deserts of the Middle East will likely be uninhabitable and no Israeli or Palestinian will want to live there. But invade Mexico? How bad will the climate be in Mexico? Meanwhile the San Joaquin Valley, the vegetable garden of the USA, is already drying up. Obviously we need to invade and annex Canada, where they have plenty of oil, a balmy climate (in the decades to come) and the Okanagan to grow our grapes. Also they have single payer health care. We'll need to adjust to people saying things like "hoser" and ending sentences with "eh?" but that's a small price to pay given the superb Chinese food available Richmond. (If you've never eaten Chinese food in Richmond, make it a point to visit.)

Willful Stupidity

The most powerful determinant of human destiny is stupidity, someone said, meaning willful stupidity. He was teaching one of those newfangled courses in stupidity at a university down south--I forget which one. When I heard about our destiny I immediately sent away for a book on stupidity, and it should come soon. Meanwhile I'm on my own.

Let's look at one issue. On a scale of 1 to 10, Mexicans give the problem of climate change a rank of 9. Citizens of the United States give it a rank of 4.7. That's willful stupidity. For example, take Senator James Inhofe (please) who announced that global warming had ended when a snowstorm hit Oklahoma: "You know God's still up there. We're now going through a cooling spell."

I don't believe that Inhofe is that stupid naturally. His kind of stupidity is an act of will. He prefers to believe that we will be saved by a very large Person up in the sky. Inhofe himself need do nothing.

Inhofe also believes that the world's scientists have joined the liberals in a conspiracy of enormous size in order to do something bad, although what that bad thing might be remains hidden.

I have figured out what it is Inhofe should fear, although I have to give most of the credit to Steven Stoll in the latest HARPER'S. Stoll's theory is that the Little Ice Age that began about 1350 was caused by the partial disappearance of humans from the planet, brought on by the black plague. So much human activity ceased that the planet cooled off.

Stoll points out that global warming by humans began 8,000 years ago.

There are no good estimates yet about how many people will die in the coming climate wobble, but it may be as much as several billion. That's Mother Nature's way of cooling Oklahoma.

One result of the Little Ice Age was, after centuries of acute human pain, a massive shift occurred in the value of the ordinary worker--workers became scarce. The old social order crumbled. Forests sprouted around vacant homes. The surviving serfs demanded and won freedoms.

I don't suppose the specific changes were inevitable, but in this instance, centuries of economic catastrophe yielded the Renaissance, a social revolution. That's what Inhofe fears, a revolution that alters the system, perhaps ending the monopoly capitalism he serves, but he's too willfully stupid to help head off climate change. He's joined in this willed stupidity--to a lesser degree--by world leaders in general. We do know how to stop climate change, but China, the United States, India and the Palestinians aren't doing it. Too bad.

Gary Goss

Victim vs. Volunteer

About a month ago I overheard some conspiracy theorists complaining that people mocked them. This brought to mind Christine Lavin's old song "Victim/Volunteer." Lavin is better known for writing and singing the funniest song of the 20th century, "Sensitive New Age Guys," but "Victim/Volunteer" has its own profundity. (You can find Lavin's songs on Amazon.com.)

The basic idea is that if you date only people who treat you badly, you aren't a victim of unpleasant people, you're a volunteer. And so on. If you go about claiming that FDR aided the Japanese attack on our fleet at Pearl Harbor or that Clinton murdered Vince Foster or that Obama was born in Kenya or that George W. Bush ordered the destruction of the Twin Towers, you are volunteering for ridicule. You aren't a victim.

It's easy for those of us on the Left to see the damage done to conservative credibility when conservatives pretend that it is sensible for their fringe groups to inquire again and again into Obama's birthplace. The credibility of the Left becomes equally suspect when people like me are silent about our own subculture of fringe ideas. Serious people on the Left have issues they would like the Middle to consider. Credibility is central to the discussion.

The Press Democrat Publishes Something Stupid

This morning's paper has a letter in it from Bill Konrad of Healdsburg in which he asks "what part of the 63,000 residents (of Sonoma County) with no access to health care are legal citizens."

I know that my sister, who died in February, descended from two families that came to America before the Revolution. She died from skin cancer because she could not afford an annual checkup. That reduces Konrad's number to 62,999.

My hope is that people who deny health care to the poor will rot in Hell.

Senators for Sale

A recent poll showed that by a narrow margin Republican voters support a public option in the health care bill. Overall the poll shows that voters in general prefer the public option by much better than 2-1.

Senators must decide whether they represent their constituents or the insurance industry. We are about to find out exactly which senators the insurance industry has bought.

Gary Goss

Democrats and Bailouts

We've watched the Democrats and many progressives in congress passively or actively support vastly expensive bailouts of financial giants, automobile manufacturers, huge banks, etc. I've gone along with most of it without being able to put my finger on exactly why. The reason suddenly came clear for me when I read "To Each According To His Greed" by Slavoj Zezek in HARPER'S, October 2009.

We and most of the world, including China, now live in a capitalist system. That is a fact of life. In a capitalist system, who gets hurt the most when a part of the system breaks down? If "X" breaks down in a capitalist system, the rich often get richer. The middleclass gets hurt. The poor suffer intensely.

I understand little about economics, but its obvious that when a capitalist system fails, the poor absorb the pain. Once you see that the poor get hurt the most, the efforts by FDR and Obama to rescue key but failing elements in the system make sense.

As long as we remain in a capitalist system, punishing Wall Street will harm the poor. This, as Zezek points out, is blackmail. We are trapped. For those of us on the Left, the major problem is that we have not come up with a viable worldwide alternative to the capitalist system. And that is what the Left needs to invent.

Gary Goss

Most Loved Canadians

An old friend of mine who is now a citizen of Canada told me about a recent poll there to find out which person Canadians " most revered." The results:

1. Wayne Gretsky (hockey star)

2. Pierre Trudeau (former prime minister from about 30 years ago)

3. Tommy Douglas. You might not have heard of him. He was a Saskatchewan Socialist and the man who started the Canadian Health Plan.

Birthers and 9/11

In THE FAMILY, author Jeff Sharlet discusses the long history of fundamentalism in the United States, focusing in part on "the family," a secret organization in D.C. that preaches the love of power to the elite and provides venues for deals to be brokered. There are many other kinds of fundamentalists, of course, including some who do admirable work with the needy; but what struck me most was this: the megachurch type of fundamentalists constitute a separate culture.

What I mean is that they have their own very different history books, magazines, music, sciences, candidates, belief systems, social lives, movies, novels and so forth. In their written history of America, for example, Thomas Jefferson was a devout Christian who helped found a nation dedicated to Christ and personal salvation. They home-school their children with these texts, then send the children to a fundamentalist college for more of the same.

Fundamentalists have their own separate facts, which is why Barney Franks found that talking to them is like talking to a kitchen table. Where people can't agree on basic facts, no discussion is possible. There is no way to convince a birther that Obama was born in Hawaii. If you produce a document, he will tell you it's forged.

Before we condemn fundamentalists we should admit (if we can) that the Left has a similar problem in our conspiracy theorists, who are still fixated on the assassination of JFK and 9/11. They also have their own facts, their own books, their own films. There is no way to convince them that the Twin Towers were destroyed by aircraft, although we watched it happen. This is a classic case of "are you going to believe my explanation or your own lying eyes?"

One difference I see between the two groups is that the fundamentalists have done harm to themselves and others, while the conspiracy theorists harm no one, although they do divert energy away from pressing problems like health care.

As for the great middle of the United States, with its set of high school facts and history, which might omit women, people of color, class structures and so on, that's a narrative for another day. See Howard Zinn.

Gary Goss

A Lion Departs

About 45 years ago, with JFK making his Presidential run, Ted Kennedy was in charge of the campaign in the western states. That was a fascinating campaign. It was the first campaign to exploit TV coverage. JFK was genuinely charismatic, cool, sure of himself and actually funny. The three Kennedy brothers were obviously intelligent and secure in their own persons, unlike the paranoid Richard Nixon, their opponent. As in Obama's last election, the Democrats had the support of young, who didn't buy into anti-Catholic rhetoric.

When Ted Kennedy barnstormed through Los Angeles and Orange Counties, I was given the unpaid job of driving his advance vehicle, a caliope, from site to site, helping to build a crowd for each of Ted Kennedy's arrivals. They crowds proved huge, and Ted fed on that. He was only a few years older than I was, maybe in his early thirties, handsome as the Devil, full of energy, rich and famous. He'd bound onto the stage surrounded by the beautiful young women--the sort who always accompanied Kennedys--we called "Kennedy girls." Then he'd give a rip-roaring speech that ended with a chant: "Let's put Jack in the White Shack!" The crowd would go nuts.

Ted Kennedy, the least of the brothers, soldiered on, his life on the line, after seeing Martin, Robert and John assassinated--deaths that altered the curve of American history, sending us Nixon, the Southern Strategy, and the rise of empty Presidents of no substance: Reagan and two Bushes. Ted Kennedy became a major factor in just about every piece of progressive legislation passed in forty years, pushing voting rights for Blacks and equal rights for gays and women. Right to the end he was the best voice the Democrats on the Left had. This would have been true at any time, but in fact Ted Kennedy has died just when we need him most.

So it goes. Ted Kennedy, well done.

Somewhere There's Music

While my wife and I were living Back East, we learned that Les Paul, then in his 80s, still had a gig, Monday nights, at the Iridium Jazz Club in Manhattan. Our son-in-law, Mark, expert on the metal guitar, was coming to visit, so we took him and our daughter into Manhattan, where we had a few drinks in a crowded bar and listened to Les Paul play and then talk a bit about Mary Ford between songs. I suspect that one day Mark and Sarah will be telling their grandchildren, "Yes, we heard Les Paul live."

Les Paul was one of the inventors of the solid body electric guitar. In a sense, this made rock music possible. The various Les Paul guitars produced by Gibson have been central to the lives of major rock musicians. Paul invented the home studio. He was one of the inventors of overdubbing, multi-track recording and many guitar licks.

Les Paul and his wife, Mary Ford, made a string of mega-hits at home on which he provided the guitar and she did the voice: "Lover," "How High the Moon," "Bye Bye Blues, "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise" and "Vaya Con Dios." Earlier Paul had recorded a major hit with the Andrews Sisters, "It's Been A Long Long Time."

Les Paul is dead at 94. Somewhere there's music/ how faint the tune. . . .

"I want my country back!"

When I was about 30, my brother and I were pawing through dusty cardboard boxes our grandparents had left to my father, and we came across a photograph of our grandfather in a KKK sheet. Astonished we approached our father, who told us that his dad had heard that the KKK served free beer, so he had joined. No beer materialized, so the misinformed Cal Goss had dropped out after one year.

These events had taken place somewhere near Sanger in the Big Valley more than 100 years ago.

Recently, while I was watching an obviously misinformed woman in a spotted house dress sobbing hysterically at a town forum on TV, saying, "I want my country back," I thought of my grandpa. What the woman meant was that she wanted her white male country back. She was totally scared. Suddenly her straight white country had a Black President, a sharp-tongued woman in a suit as secretary of state, a stout Latina on the Supreme Court, and grey-haired gays in the Episcopal establishment. This could not, from her perspective, be America.

Of course the tea-baggers and birthers contain many fake members of the working class, Republican functionaries who found some bib overalls at Goodwill and attend public meetings pretending that their soft hands are the hands of hard workers. But there are also genuinely terrified haters in the mix, not descendents of the Nazi party but descendents of the Whiskey Rebellion, the vigilantes, the lynch mobs, the KKK, the Know Nothings. They are part of us. They have always been with us, and we owe them something: an attempt to calm them down and convince them that they are not in danger.

The Republicans, who manipulate and use these terrified people, deserve to drop out of history and be replaced by an honest conservative party that is dedicated to conserving what is best in our country. No true conservative encourages mob rule--the idea is ridiculous.

Peace Project Attacked

Last night the Healdsburg Peace Vigil came under attack from a group of tourists or perhaps organized tea-baggers. The vigil has been treated well through the years by local people and by the police. Incidents have occurred before, mostly with visitors. These particular visitors commented inaccurately on the sizes of the folks' asses, their sexual orientations, their employment status, and so on. When it looked as if violence might start, a vigil leader called the police, and the small mob left.

The incident was witnessed by a Santa Rosa blogger, in town for dinner. Perhaps I shouldn't name her. She wrote the following:

Thursday night was my husband's birthday. I took him to dinner in Healdsburg, California. Healdsburg is what is known as a destination town in Sonoma County. People come for the Michelin rated restaurants, the wonderful square with shops and for the surrounding wineries. It's a short drive from our house, so off we were to a lovely evening.

Every Thursday, the Healdsburg Peace project holds a vigil for peace on the square. People drive by and honk and many just walk by. This Thursday there were about ten people, with signs supporting single payer insurance, a "never again Hiroshima", Pace flags, American flags and some Green flags. This group has been holding the vigil since before the Iraq war, every Thursday evening.

I had seen this group before, but I am from Berkeley where there has been a peace vigil for over thirty plus years on the western side of the campus at UC Berkeley. It's a peace vigil, you would think it's not anything controversial. If you don't agree, you walk by. But, not tonight.

A group of wine country tourists, in the 35 year old range, was walking by across the street and we hear some screaming, I don't know how it started. I am getting used to boisterous "wine tasters". The shouters were wearing an assortment of t-shirts with Philladelphia teams, bars. Maybe they were from there, maybe not. But clearly, they were not locals.

We heard some bits of the shouting, repetitive shouting at the vigil holders:

"Get a job"

" We pay our way, we pay our taxes"

"Get off the streets"

" Fucking socialists"

Men, women, shaking their fists, turning red and screaming at these folks who are doing something that is legal and in their town. The vigil holders were quite restrained. The mob crossed the street and went into their faces.

The vigil holders stood up to them and one of the mob guys, pulled away a woman who was the most aggressive and they walked away shaking their heads and fists. Their faces were contorted from anger.

The bullies had this look on their face of having done something virtuous -- a gleeful, high five we kicked their butts look. I had my phone, but did not think of taking pictures of the brutish expressions on their faces. I cussed at them as they walked by and glared at them. There were not enough people on the square to shame them.

There was something grotesque about them calling the man holding the "Hiroshima, Never Again" sign all kinds of vulgar names in the name of patriotism and America.

Is this an outcome of the sanctioned RNC mob tactics? Or, is this particular group not related? Am I making a connection where there is none? I don't think I am. There was something evocative of the tone in those televised meetings.

When they left, I was disturbed and agitated. My husband tried to calm me to consider who they were, just a hodge podge, probably drunk, bunch of people that have no political consciousness. But I don't think so, I think they are emboldened by Rush and the others who are pushing them. They are the by product of the fanaticism.

I was shocked at their collective lack of shame. The fact that they had no internal control, that some smaller contingent of their group did not try to pull the main culprits away earlier.

I am convinced that people have no respect for the social rules of behavior in a democracy. The rules that give the people of the "peace vigil" the right to hold a peace vigil without being bullied and threatened, were of no importance to the mob. It was as if I was watching a live flame war.

I have heard people say that commentors on the internet are rude because they are anonymous, that most people would not act like that in public. Well, today from what I saw, those barriers of behavior are gone. They do act that way.

The same applies to the mobs opposing health care reform that are attending the town hall meetings and turning them to town hells. Joan Walsh asks who are the real brownshirts?

A moonlit August night, turned into an ugly shouting match by a group emboldened by the likes of Rush and other propagandists. Who will stop them? The culture wars are not finished, they are here, and they are gonna get uglier because people benefit from the artificial divisions.

On the drive home I was thinking of the movie Cabaret, the summer scene where the brownshirts start singing and Michael York asks the following question to one of the men in uniform: "Do you still think you can control them?"

Once you start a mob, once you fuel a mob, feed a mob, embolden a mob, how can you control them?

Anyone Can Be President

For years I have been trying to remember the name of the President of Israel who, in his memoir, describes being left alone in a room with President Reagan, who is obviously senile. I've come up with the name: Chiam Herzog--whose father was the Chief Rabbi of Ireland.

Mary in a Tree Stump

In today's paper I read that "thousands of Irish Catholics have flocked this week to a County Limerick church to pray at the stump of a recently cut willow that many observers say has the silhouette of the Virgin Mary." As someone of mostly Irish descent, I wish I could join them.

I know that some sceptics will be asking how Irish Catholics can identify the silhouette of the Virgin Mary when no photographs or genuine portraits of Mary exist. People say that we can't know what Mary looked like, but in fact we have obvious clues. We know Mary was dark and very short,* for example. Jews 2000 years ago had black hair, olive skin and dark eyes. We know that her son, Jesus, was charismatic, and it's likely he inherited his mother's attractive features--she, after all, drew the attentions of what might modestly be called the All-Time-Consort. It seems entirely likely that Mary had roughly the same astonishing silhouette as Selma Hayek, recently seen on TV in the show 30 ROCK.

* We learned from ancient writings that Moses was quite tall for a Jew of his era, standing approximately 5'4" in height. Jesus was, according to tradition, slightly shorter, and John the Baptist reportedly stood a full head shorter than Jesus. Mary's eyes came to the shoulder of John the Baptist, which would have made her (in contemporary terms) well over 44 inches in stature.

Blog Banned in China by Mistake

Chris O'Sullivan, traveling in the Far East, reports that my blog has been banned in China and partly translated in Japan. I have no idea why they bothered--it must be some automatic stuff performed by computers with a lot of time on their software.

Actually I have great respect for China and Japan, particularly for ancient rebels like Zhuangzi.

The Somali Pirates

When a country has a fragile economy and an unprotected coastline (and seamen out of work), the result can be piracy--with the pirates sponsored by powerful leaders in the port cities. Nearly everyone in port will profit from the unregulated black-market profits. The pirates deliver cheap goods and money to the power elite and spend money (like drunken sailors?) in the local hotels, cafes, bars and bordellos. This is, more of less, the story of the Somali pirates, Blackbeard and Captain Kidd.

During the heyday of the Caribbean pirates (1660 to 1725), nearly all of them had close ties to top government officials on land, who, for a fee, commissioned them to plunder. Following the earlier example of Francis Drake, some pirates/privateers achieved knighthoods. The murderous Blackbeard, Edward Teach, was sponsored by Governor Charles Eden of His Majesty's Colony of North Carolina, who kept the "privateer" informed of attempts to capture him. Captain Kidd was the protege (even the creation) of Lord Bellomont, governor of Massachusetts.

My favorite sponsor, though, was Sir John Killigrew, vice admiral of the English navy and holder of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall. "Given his position in local affairs it was only natural that the crown would confer upon him the singular honor of leading the commission to catalog and capture pirates along the English coast. Sir John didn't have to look far: his son earned a living from the pirate trade, his grandfather had been a notorious old pirate in Suffolk, and his own mother was alleged once to have led a boarding party" (see: THE PIRATES PACT by Douglas Burgress, Jr., McGraw Hill).

Captured pirates were usually found innocent by juries made up the tradesmen who serviced the pirate fleets.

I have nothing good to say about pirates, but I do marvel at the misfortune of the single Somali pirate captured by a country that has had no share in his profits.

thinking clearly on global warming

As Stephen Colbert put it, Michael Jackson has just died and no one is thinking clearly. Nevertheless . . . .

A friend recently directed me to a vegan web site that claimed that cattle are the main source of global warming. If that is the case, then our duty is clear. We must eat these dangerous cows as quickly as possible. Six billion people eating beef twice a day would, by my count, eliminate all cattle within 17 months, solving half the global warming problem.

The other half could be handled by not eating plant life. Vegetables, it is well established, pull destructive elements out of the air and store it safely in roots. Every time we pull up a carrot and chew on it, we begin a process that ends in releasing methane into the night sky.

I'm reminded of an environmental slogan from the 1960s: "Help Save the Planet--Kill Yourself."

Pete Golis, Spokesperson

No one I know in my children's generation reads a newspaper or watches CBS News.
They get their news from the net and Jon Stewart. You can tell them than no one fact-checks the net, and they will tell you that no one fact-checks the newspapers. The days when newspapers were careful about what they printed are long gone. The NY Times took us into a war against Iraq while verifying nothing.

One thing young people don't like about a newspaper is that it is top-down in approach. Some wise man writes a column and tells you what to think. In turn you can write a letter-to-the editor that will probably be shortened, changed or (most likely) not published. Instead, trying to stir up readership, the paper will publish a letter from some nutter calling for the return of slavery.

Newspapers are not interactive.

Pete Golis, in many ways the political decider at the Press-Democrat in Santa Rosa, had a column in the Sunday paper (June 21, 2009) in which he mocked environmental activists for turning out in large numbers and changing the minds of the Board of Supervisors about a proposed new asphalt plant. They now seem likely to oppose the plant. Golis doesn't like that, of course. He's employed by a corporation and has devoted his working life to speaking out bravely on behalf of corporate interests. What is odd, in fact breathtaking, is that Golis goes on to chastise local people for caring about a new asphalt plant when they should care more about climate change, the current depression, health care and so on.

My guess is that local people do care about the asphalt plant, health care, climate change and the current depression. The local issue (asphalt plant) is the only one that local people can have much impact on. Look--polls show that the American people support a single payer system for health care, but that could not matter less. Our elected representatives, who will decide the matter, run for office with money from hugely profitable health care corporations. Most of the representatives could not care less what voters in Petaluma want. For heath care reform, we have to rely on a few progressives, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders and Ted Kennedy. Individual American voters have little impact on the health care issue. But locals can, perhaps, stop a new asphalt plant from being built.

Of course Pete Golis and the man who cuts his check will be irrate.

COLIN POWELL (book review)

book/mark April 2009


The Man who Might Have Been Obama

Book Review by Gary Goss

COLIN POWELL: American Power and Intervention from Vietnam to Iraq by Christopher D. O'Sullivan

Rowman & Littlefield, 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
(www. rowmanlittlefield.com)
218 pp., Hardcover

Chris O'Sullivan, the author of this analysis of Colin Powell's long sojourn in well-polished corridors of power, is a writer with serious credentials. He teaches history at the University of San Francisco, is a fellow at the Center for International Studies at the London School of Economics and was a recent Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Jordan, Amman. (He has also been named "The Smartest Man in Healdsburg," an honor not listed, for some reason, on the book jacket.)

O'Sullivan has published two earlier books, THE UNITED NATIONS: A CONCISE HISTORY and SUMNER WELLES, POSTWAR PLANNING, AND THE QUEST FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER. The second book won an American Historical Association Gutenberg-e Prize in 2003. He served as the keynote speaker at the United Nation's sixtieth anniversary celebrations in 2005.

The author began well situated to examine Colin Powell's career. While O'Sullivan's politics tend to be realistic and progressive, his father and grandfather were generals; he's familiar with military culture and its strengths and weaknesses. O'Sullivan brings a balanced approach to his subject, backed by an unusual memory--his conversation is marked by his command of historical data, examples, anecdotes and parallels. His book on Powell, although documented, is quick and entertaining. It's written in straightforward prose that deepens our grasp of Powell's life and clarifies Powell's interactions with Reagan, Shultz, Clinton, Cheney, Rumsfeld and George W. Bush.

Powell himself seems engaging on television. I think of him as the man who might have been Obama, except that he lacked Obama's hope and audacity. (Also Powell is a member of a political party that seldom nominates moderates.) Powell is impressive, the sort of man that many people like and respect almost instinctively, in a way that might be only partly earned.

Colin Powell worked under ten Presidents, was the first black chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first black Secretary of State, yet many consider him a failure. On occasion he challenged power--he opposed Clinton's war in Bosnia, where Serbs had murdered 200,000 Moslems. But, as O'Sullivan points out, much of the time Powell served power rather than spoke truth to Presidents, even when he understood that Presidents were wrong. As a young officer Powell had aided in the cover up of the My Lai massacre. Powell's first loyalty then was to an institution, the army, not to the truth. As Secretary of State Powell could have stopped or slowed the rush into the second war against Iraq. He could have resigned. Instead he finally went along, supporting disastrous choices, stooping to lie.

One of the striking things about this short biography is the range of people briefly portrayed in it, the power brokers with whom Powell interacted. This book is good place, for example, to catch up on what it was like, existentially, to have worked with President Ronald Reagan.

Ten years years ago I read an autobiography by the President of Israel, who described being left alone in a room with an addled President Reagan. Reagan's mind had begun to fail, yet today Reagan is frequently portrayed in the popular media as a superb President.

For an early look at the President's decline in short term memory (an symptom of Alzheimer's), you might read PRESIDENT REAGAN: THE POWER OF IMAGINATION by Richard Reeves. Toward the end of his second term, Reeve reports, Reagan had to be led into a room by a young press assistant, who said to him, "You're in the Oval Office, Mister President. These people are British, and they will ask you for a short comment about Prime Minister Thatcher."

About four years after leaving office, Reagan was diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease, a terrible neurological disorder. He lived for another ten years, the last four of which, according to Nancy Reagan, he did not open his eyes.

Reagan's incapacity in office may not be acknowledged in public for another 100 years. As you may know, each state in our union is entitled to two statues to represent it in Washington's Statuary Hall. In June of this year, California will replace one of its two exhibits with a seven foot bronze of an Alzheimer's victim in a business suit. Republican party leaders simply don't care that for many years the United States was governed by a man incapable of making informed decisions. Facts don't matter. If the current Republican party had to face facts, it would no longer exist.

Fortunately, as O'Sullivan points out, during the Cold War end game with Mikhail Gorbachev, Reagan was guided by a competent staff, including George Shultz and Colin Powell, who, in effect, made decisions for him.

As National Security Adviser, Powell had to work with Ronald Reagan's failing mental powers. O'Sullivan writes: "Reagan had his own private version of reality, which frequently conflicted with the reality around him. Powell revealed that Reagan saw Chernobyl as 'a biblical warning to mankind,' and Reagan's frequent comments about possible invasions from outer space made Powell particularly uneasy."

Concern that we would be invaded by little green fellows from distant galaxies was a frequent Reagan theme toward the end of his Presidency. This, O'Sullivan points out, provided some of the motivation for the President's insistence on building the useless Star Wars defense system.

The wooden-brained George W. Bush, the neo-cons, cowardly Dick Cheney, little Rumsfeld--O'Sullivan's brief analyses of this collection of creeps is an education in how things can go wrong. Working with merchants of death could not end well; it led to Powell's good reputation running through his fingers like plasma.

Gary Goss