The Question No One Answers

Tom Belton, sage of the Senior Center, left Safeway recently, having purchased a small bag of chips, and found himself near a table in the parking lot. Many of us have seen this table before. It pops up in various sites around the county. The table calls for the impeachment of the President and sports some supportive posters of the President with a Hitler mustache.  Male and female persons stand behind the table, ready to engage the public, which hurries by with faces averted. Tom, of course, stopped to engage in some irony.

I'm not sure where the two people come from, but I suspect that they are followers of Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr., released from prison in 1994. They are the sort of people I like to see keeping busy doing useless work. In any case, the male impeacher told Tom that the President is a Muslim. "Is that right?" Tom asked, very interested. "Is he Shia or Sunni?"

Santa In Chains

Karl Hilgert is a large round man with a white beard, a retired social worker and peaceful activist. For many years he was a regular member of the Healdsburg Peace Project. We all respected him.  A couple of years back, he moved south, only to appear on the Daily Show (Jon Stewart) last night. 

Even in mufti, Karl looks like Santa Claus, and when he puts on the red Santa costume, he's a dead ringer. Stewart ran a clip of Karl dressed as Santa being led away in handcuffs by the police. He had been demonstrating in front of  one of those Wallmart stores that refuses to pay its workers a wage they can live on without adding welfare. At Wallmart they never have a merry Christmas.

The War on the World

It used to be that the worst case of ideology trashing science in my lifetime came out of the USSR. Stalin and Lysenko (a fake biologist) decided, around 1948, that their political doctrines would benefit if plants and animals could inherit acquired characteristics. You could change everything for the better rapidly if that were true. The entire Communist community of leaders around the world was ordered to attack the gene theory of evolution. Some of those leaders were themselves biologists and others were rational. They had a difficult time of it. Around the same time Sartre's version of existentialism became popular--he argued that humans, alone among the mammals, had no essence. If true, then humans could be changed rapidly. As the years went by, the no-essence view was taken up by some feminist factions, looking for quick changes, and some postmodernists. They did not, as far as I know, set out to refute modern gene biology. They ignored it. Science marched on, and you know how all that turned out.

Today we see a related phenomenon at work in the Republican denial of climate change and of the role humans have played in that change. Once again we see ideology triumphing over science in the minds of fanatics. I will quote from a Nobel-winning French biologist, Jacques Monod,  back in 1948, talking about the Communist denial of the gene theory and the practice of severely punishing Russian scientists who disagreed. "All of this is senseless, monstrous, unbelievable. Yet it is true. What has happened?"

Bad Day In Black Rock

 Almost 60 years ago, I attended a talk at UCLA given by the man who had written the movie BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK. It was a classic "rotten town" movie. You know, a stranger comes to town and discovers that all the key leaders are corrupt or cowardly. HIGH NOON might be another example.

In the last 15 years Healdsburg, a small town (12,000), has shifted from being an old isolated farm community (like something you might find on a secondary road in Nebraska) into a world wine destination. That has an upside. The bakeries near the town plaza produce tasty cream puffs. You can buy a monogrammed linen neckerchief for your toy poodle. The city council switched from Republican to Democratic, but like nearly all city councils in this nation, Healdsburg's council continues to bow to developers. The voters, half-submerged in a tide of tourists and wine zombies from Paris and Tulsa, stumbling along the cracking sidewalks with glasses in hand, can hardly find a place to park in town or find a dinner out that costs less that $70 to $300. But the council is intent on converting the few remaining parking lots into new upscale hotels.

The voters want slow growth, but the people they elect unanimously support rapid development, increased property values, more beds, less parking, more wine, more town revenue. Most city fathers are so eager to hand out permits that the developers don't need to bribe them, aside from some campaign contributions and cushy local jobs for relatives. In a way the city is overwhelmed by the development corporations that come here from all over the world--corporations that have 1,000 lawyers for every attorney a small town can afford to hire. 

If a city father becomes a holdout, then he might get a little special attention from the professional permit-buyers, but for the most part the city fathers like to spread their legs and give the town away for free. It's the American Way.   

Totalitarian Regimes

Many of my friends take their vacations in totalitarian regimes, as opposed to Lapland, Tokyo, Dublin or Nigeria. It's hip to visit dictatorships. I'm afraid to ask why. Just asking might reveal something politically stupid about me. I have a bias in favor of democracies--although I'm aware that they aren't all that democratic. The truth is that it wouldn't occur to me to visit a totalitarian country when, for instance, I haven't even been to Peru.

The Odds on Oswald

Back when I first started teaching, I advised a student intent on using his undergraduate education on an investigation of the JFK assassination. In the end he failed to find a convincing conclusion. I was reminded of him today while listening to the radio. One caller asked what were the odds that Oswald would have the perfect job from which to assassinate the President? The answer, not provided by the host, is that the odds were 100%, because Oswald actually did have the job. No one doubts that. What we see in the endless different conspiracy theories is a disbelief that three armed pipsqueaks could wrench JFK, RFK and MLK out of our lives and drastically alter the course of American history. I mean, in the end we had Acting President Reagan. We'd like to believe that something bigger was going on.  But life is subject to all sorts of meaningless changes. (Check this out with Charles Darwin.)

A Losing Candidate

A nice guy named Keith Rhinehart walked into a bar . . . not really. He came to a meeting of the Windsor Democratic Club. He is running for the job of 4th District County Supervisor, along with Deb Fudge, who will win. Keith proved likable and vigorous. He refused to say what party, if any, he belongs to. He seemed to believe that party affiliation doesn't matter to voters. Anyway, Keith insulted no one and came out in favor of nearly everything that candidates favor in Sonoma County. He approves, for example, of agriculture. But I was struck by what he came out against, which was free bicycle riding. Keith believes that too much money has been spent coddling the pedaling class. He wants to license bicycle riders. I suppose children could get learner permits--he didn't say.

Presumably a new ordinance would apply only to county roads, and people could still ride their bikes free in towns. Keith plans to require riders from other counties--the visitors who stay at our hotels and eat in our restaurants--to pay a fee and take out a permit to ride bicycles. In return they would gain the right to use our excellent county roads, which are rated as among the most deteriorated in the state. The ordinance would be enforced by deputy sheriffs like the one who recently shot a 13-year-old seven times. 

Keith did not seem aware that most bicycle riders vote and their families and friends vote. He's kind of stepping on Tarzan's toes.

Deborah Fudge

No one running for office needs my endorsement, but so far I have endorsed Mike McGuire for the state senate and Jim Wood for the state assembly. They are progressive Democrats with common sense, a proved ability to win elective office and a body of  effective work with others. They understand how to govern in a representative way. Now I am going to add Deborah Fudge, running for Mike's seat on the county board of supervisors. She's been mayor of Windsor about four times, she's an expert in environmental planning, and (like Mike and Jim) she is going to win. (This is like shooting fish in a barrel.)

Deborah Fudge has been endorsed by former Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, by Susan Jones, the mayor of Healdsburg, and by many others.

The Basic American Joke

The basic American joke is deadpan. It goes like this. A guy walks into a bar, and the first thing he sees is a horse having a beer and talking with the bartender, and the bartender says, "Why the long face?"

I mention this because Simon Rich has come up with a variation in The New Yorker  (Nov. 18, 2013). I will paraphrase. A guy walks into a bar and the first thing he sees is a tiny man--about a foot high--wearing a tux and playing a miniature piano. So the guy asks the bartender, where on God's earth did you find him?  The bartender replies that a genie has taken up living in the men's room, and he will grant anyone a single wish. The guy immediately walks into the men's room and introduces himself to the genie and asks for his wish. "Okay, what do  you want?" the genie asks. The guy responds, "World Peace," and the room is immediately filled with whirling geese.

The guy returns to the bar and says to the bartender, "That genie must be hard of hearing. What did you ask for?" And the bartender says, "Well, I didn't ask for a twelve inch pianist."

(also on FB)