Mark W Tiedemann

Category: current affairs

  • Red Queen’s Race

    I was amused this morning listening to the Market Report on NPR when I heard a commentator suggest that it “may be time to dust off the Glass-Steagall Act” to deal with the ongoing banking fiascoes which have caused us naught but grief since…

    Well, this time around since 2008, but frankly since about 1982 when the first of a long series of financial sector deregulatory actions began under the misguided assumptions of Reaganomics and the hypnotic appeal of the Laffer Curve.

    Don’t know what the Laffer Curve is?  Well, it was the brainchild of a man named Arthur Laffer, an economist, who came up with it and presented originally to President Ford.  Basically, he made a graph that showed a line of tax rates between 0 and 100 and how revenues would rise on the left side of the curve as tax rates were lowered in descending order toward zero and would likewise diminish on the right side as tax rates increased.  We’re talking tax revenue, now.  This was the basis for the whole “cut taxes and increase tax revenue” faith that has been the core of conservative policy ever since Reagan adopted it with a convert’s enthusiasm.  This is also what Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, called “Voodoo Economics.”

    Bush Sr. was right.  There is a certain short term applicability to the Curve, but it fails to take into consideration many factors which have all subsequently made it, er, laughable.  After 32 years we can just look at the numbers and see that it flat out does not do what was promised and it has cost us.

    But my word it was appealing!  What politician doesn’t want to be able to run on a lower taxes platform?  And to then assert that lowering taxes will automatically increase government revenues?  Why, that’s just icing on the cake!

    Very simply, in combination with the fervor for deregulation, supply side has cost the working and middle class dearly.  Trickle down economics does not benefit those who cannot afford to play in the big leagues.

    And frankly, I don’t think it works at the top level, either, because, clearly, if it did, the big banks would not have needed bailing out.

    Glass-Steagall was a suite of four laws put in place in the 1930s that, among other things, separated the functions of banking and put a firewall between investment banking and regular, pedestrian commercial banking.  The reasoning was very simple.  Investment banking, no matter how you dress it up, is gambling.  It’s placing a bet on the success of markets and industries.  When things go well, the pay off is huge.  But when they don’t, the cost is equally large.  Glass-Steagall, among other things, said that a bank could gamble, but not with regular client money.  Namely, yours and mine, in a savings or checking account.  They can’t use our money to back their bets.

    That’s how the great stock market crash of ’29 happened which ushered in the Great Depression.  Banks and other institutions gambled with everybody’s money, they had too little in reserve, and there was no safety net to stop their fall.  Everyone paid.

    In the fever to increase profits in the 80s and 90s, Glass-Steagall was repealed, the firewall was taken down, and 2008 happened.

    Except this time the federal government was there to catch the falling banks before they crashed on the pavement.  Everyone is bitching about Obama spending a lot of money, but this is where a lot of it went, and frankly if he had not, we’d be in a worse fix than we are.

    Reinstating Glass-Steagall should have been the first thing Congress proposed.  Instead we have the rather awkward and not nearly as effective Dodd-Frank Bill.  The reason no one proposed reinstating Glass-Steagall is simple—big money doesn’t want it and they’ve spent a lot of money to make sure it doesn’t happen.

    Why? Because they’re high-rollers and the only way for them to sustain themselves is by continuing to play.  Glass-Steagall would remove from their access a huge pool of capital with which to gamble.

    Our capital.

    It amazes me that so many people seem not to grasp this.  We have tried supply-side economics for three decades, both Republican and Democrat (Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall) and the result has been a tremendous boon to people with a lot of money and a slow disaster for everyone else.  We have somehow been convinced that reinstating regulations that worked very well for 60 years will result in people who have lost losing even more.  They’re willing to back the supposed “rights” of people who have been leaching off the common wealth of the United States for thirty years at the expense of workers, the middle class, and the common good, because they’ve been traumatized by slogans which explain nothing.

    I was surprised to hear someone actually say the words, “reinstate Glass-Steagall.”  I agree, it should have been done in 2009 or 2010.  I doubt it will be, at least not in the near future.

    I propose a new slogan.  Back in the 1960s and ’70s there was a popular phrase, a bumper sticker slogan, that declared “Federal Aid Hell, It’s Our Money!”  How about  “Private Capital Hell, It’s Our Money!”

    The banks are too big.  They cannot sustain themselves.  The only way they can is by pillaging the general wealth.  They need to be broken up and the quite different functions of investment and commercial banking need to be separate again.  We’re running faster and faster in a Red Queen’s Race and soon our legs are going to give out.  Stop voting to give all our money to those who have shown repeatedly that they have no interest in the well-being of this country.  Looking out for the needs and desires of shareholders is not the same as looking out for the security of all the people.

  • who did we think we were?

    Jon Lord died yesterday.  He was 71.

    Don’t know who Jon Lord was?  Pity.  But, then, you probably do, even if the name doesn’t evoke anything.

    Jon Lord was the keyboardist for Deep Purple, the hard rock band that made music history in the early 1970s for their loudness, their energy, and their instrumental dexterity, especially Jon Lord’s who regularly threw in passages from Bach or Beethoven or Scarlatti in the middle of heavy, driving blues-based rock tunes.

    Then there were the songs themselves—Hush, Wring That Neck, Kentucky Woman, Child In Time, Highway Star, Space Truckin’, My Woman From Tokyo…and of course Smoke On TheWater.

    But then! Oh, surprise surprise, the man had musical chops that far exceeded what anyone might expect from a rocker.  Concerto For Group and Orchestra was a full-blown orchestral suite with the London Philharmonic and Deep Purple.  Later there was the Gemini Suite which was a similar idea.  Other blends of rock instrumental and orchestral composition followed until, late in his career, Lord retired from the band to do nothing but compose and the results were amazing pieces of late Romantic symphonic work of deep complexity, exuberant melody, and a lush tonal palette.  He was a composer’s composer.

    I will do a longer appreciation of him later.  For now, this is a place marker to note that this was one of the artists who set my aesthetic goals in music, someone I “wanted to be like when I grew up”—at least musically.  He was an amazing talent.  He left behind an incredible body of work.  Go acquaint yourselves.

  • Why I Won’t Be Voting For Romney

    It may come as a shock to some folks, but—

    No, that’s being coy. I don’t think anyone who knows me would be shocked by my admission that I will not be voting for Mr. Romney this fall. What always dismays me, however, is the reaction that gets from some people. They give me a look, an attitude, a combination of disbelief and betrayal, an expression that is the epitome of an exasperated “But…why?” As if I could not possibly have any valid reasons for such a stance.

    Well. I have to say, it’s not because I’m particularly in love with Obama.

    I admit in 2008 I cast my ballot for Mr. Obama with a bit more optimism than my usual cynicism allows. I actually thought there might have been a chance that something new would come out of this one. I wasn’t wholly disappointed, but…

    I also admit that I understand enough about how politics work that the business-as-usual parts of the last three-plus years do not dismay me. Merely disappoint me.

    Obama said he would get us out of Iraq. I approved. As far as I’m concerned, it was a boneheaded act of petty vengeance combined with a big dose of insider opportunism that put us in there in the first place. It provided nothing but an opportunity for Bush to wave the flag and pretend to be Doing Something while Cheney’s cronies dipped their collective beaks in the public trough to drink of billions of still-unaccounted-for money. Even if the nuttiness of the invasion had been handled better, it was clear what was going on when all the people in Iraq who might have made the whole thing work to the benefit of all concerned were summarily pushed aside and pissed on so KBR could get all the no-bid contracts and face absolutely no local resistance to the milking they gave both Iraq and our treasury.

    Obama got us out of Iraq. He did say he’d have us out of Afghanistan by now and that has yet to happen, but we’re drawing down.

    He said he’d go after Osama bin Laden, no matter what. He did that and got him. He pissed off Pakistan. Oh my. Pakistan has been the seething pit of all this nonsense with Al Quida and the Taliban all along, so I’m not inclined to lose any sleep over their hurt feelings, but I am very irritated at our drone program and all the unnecessary and ill-advised killing that has resulted.

    Obama said he would go to bat for the middle class and the working class. He saved the American auto industry. Bush saved the banks that caused the depression. (Yes, I say depression, and I further say we’re not out of it yet. Everyone else is afraid of the D word, but let us face reality. Despite the “official” unemployment rate, actual unemployment is well north of 15%, I suspect close to 25%, but as usual we don’t count actual unemployed, only those still drawing unemployment insurance.) Obama of course is being blamed for TARP, which was a Bush program, and I’m not sure I would not have felt a lot better if he had torpedoed it and let the damn banks flounder. But I am not an economist, so what do I know?

    I am very irritated that he kept many of the same people who put us in this economic fix for his own economic team—Summers, Geitner, et al. (Yes, they were part of Bush’s team, too, and some were on board with Clinton for his ill-considered gutting of our regulatory laws, cheering us on into greater profits for fewer people.)

    He has kept much of the Patriot Act, which I believe to be a wholly unConstitutional infringement on American rights and liberties.

    Yes, he saw a health care reform through, and many of its components are pretty good, but it is not what we really need and he did not, in my opinion, really push for it, but I suppose that’s a quibble.

    There are other things I’m not terribly pleased with about Mr. Obama. But the truth is, much the same can be said by any reasonable person about any president. Still, I would prefer certain priorities to change.

    So with all that I am displeased with my president, why, it may be reasonably asked, would I vote for him again as opposed to Mr. Romney?

    There are very simple reasons.

    Mr. Romney is an advocate of trickle-down economics. He may not call it that, but from everything he has said that’s his focus.

    Top down policies have not worked. We can imagine that by cutting the rich a break and giving tax breaks to large corporations might benefit us all by allowing them more money to invest, and on paper it sounds great. But seriously, look at the last three decades. That is not what has happened and we keep doing the same damn thing. Deregulate, more tax cuts for the top in the hope that they will spend it on this country. We have more unemployment, working and middle class wages have been stagnant for thirty years, our infrastructure is decaying, the bottom half is getting worse off. It simply has not worked. I will not vote for him because he advocates a failed policy. Period.

    Mr. Romney claims he intends to repeal “Obamacare.” He modified this claim by saying he wants it repealed and “something that works” put in its place.

    He has not said what that would be and I find the hypocrisy both unsurprising and galling. Many of the features of the Affordable Healthcare Act are the same as those he signed into law in Massachussetts and now repudiates, including the individual mandate. (As a minor point, I find the Republican harping on “Obamacare” annoying. Technically, Congress wrote that law, if we will all recall, not Mr. Obama.) But more to the point, I simply don’t believe him. Big Pharma and Big Insurance did not want health care reform. They’ve been making plenty of money on things as they were and had absolutely no incentive to change anything. They fought tooth-and-nail against the Affordable Care Act, they torpedoed single payer, they will certainly be right there at the table making sure that nothing gets put in its place if repealed. The GOP has made it clear that they want no government controls over private enterprise whatsoever. So I don’t believe Mr. Romney that he would do anything to put a better, or even a different, law in place. He will sign the repeal, if it happens, and we will revert to accelerating costs and insurance premiums spiraling out of control.

    Mr. Romney is one of a long line of people who claim that having been businessmen makes them ideally—or at least better—suited to run the country. He is, like all of them, wrong. The country is not a business and bottom-line thinking is a good way to hurt, damage, and destroy people through public institutions. Right at the moment, he cannot even give a good account of why he maintains offshore accounts. (This is done to avoid taxes. No matter what else is claimed, offshore accounts that are not simply part of a globally diversified portfolio are there as tax havens. I don’t care how you feel personally about taxes, this is a cheat, and I have no respect for it.)

    The other reasons I do not intend to vote for Mr. Romney have less to do with him than with his party, which I feel is broken. They have come out four-square against compromise. This is insane. This is a country of 300-plus million people, all of whom have needs that are not universal. There is overlap, but not homogeneity. The only way to govern such a country is through compromise. To refuse to consider it is tantamount to saying that differences don’t matter and people who don’t fit in should receive no regard. If such a party ends up in control of Congress—which I think is likely—then I want a Democrat in the White House to at least stick his thumb in the dyke of insanity.

    How can I say that?

    The GOP has conducted a series of campaigns against certain institutions and ideas which I find essential to the kind of country I want to live in. They’re union busters. They’re economic elitists. They’re frankly warmongers and for the worst possible reason—they’re afraid of foreigners. And they have embraced a constraining view of public morality that I find bizarre, one which as a consequence would see gains in equality for women reversed.

    Here and there, but in growing numbers (because moderate Republicans keep leaving the party), they are anti-education. Texas, as one example, is at the forefront of revisionist history and the purging of legitimate science from classrooms. And they are more and more stridently theocratic.

    Now, many people find nothing wrong with any of that. There are many people who cannot stand to hear America criticized, so expunging certain episodes from history books seems like patriotism to them. Many object to the ideas of Darwin, so deleting evolution from science classrooms seems like a good idea. In the same vein, many think our biggest problem is that we as a nation don’t pray enough.

    You are all entitled to your opinion. I happen to believe truth and fact should trump wishful thinking and “belief.”

    But I wanted to explain why I will not be voting for Mr. Romney. The reasons are very simple. I do, in fact, wish I had a better choice who I thought had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. I am very tired of voting against something by voting for something less than I really want. But there it is. Mr. Romney and the GOP have a vision for this country which I believe will be very destructive. It will be very good for certain people, but not for all the people, and the president in particular has to represent All the People. I don’t believe Mr. Romney will do that.

    I don’t think he has any idea who all the people are.

  • Reflections On the 4th of July: A Personal Statement

    I am not given to setting out pronouncements like this very often, but in light of the last several years I thought it might be worthwhile to do so on the occasion of the 236th anniversary of our declared independence.

    I don’t think in terms of demonstrating my love of country. My affection for my home is simply a given, a background hum, a constant, foundational reality that is reflexively true. This is the house in which I grew up. I know its walls, its ceiling, its floors, the steps to the attic, the verge, and every shadow that moves with the sun through all the windows. I live here; its existence contours my thinking, is the starting place of my feelings.

    The house itself is an old friend, a reliable companion, a welcoming space, both mental and physical, that I can no more dislike or reject than I can stop breathing.

    But some of the furniture…that’s different.

     

    I am an American.

    I don’t have to prove that to anyone. I carry it with me, inside, my cells are suffused with it. I do not have to wear a flag on my lapel, hang one in front of my house, or publicly pledge an oath to it for the convenience of those who question my political sentiments. Anyone who says I should or ought or have to does not understand the nature of what they request or the substance of my refusal to accommodate them. They do not understand that public affirmations like that become a fetish and serve only to divide, to make people pass a test they should—because we are free—never have to take.

    I am an American.

    I am not afraid of ideas. My country was born out the embrace of ideas, new ideas, ideas that challenged the right of kings to suppress ideas. Ideas are the bricks that built these halls. I claim as my birthright the freedom to think anything, entertain any notion, weigh the value of any concept or proposition, and to take refuge in the knowledge that wisdom comes from learning and the freedom to learn is among the most hallowed and sacred privileges we have inherited as a country. The greatest enemy of our republic is the fear of ideas, of education, and by extension of truth and fact. Those who see no harm in removing books from libraries or diluting fact with wishful thinking and teaching our children to accept things entirely on faith and never question will weaken the foundations, damage the walls, and corrupt every other freedom they themselves boast about and then fail to defend.

    I am an American.

    I do not need to demonize others to make myself feel safe or superior or even right. I do not need to pretend that I am innately “better” than anyone else to prove my own worth. America was founded on the idea that all of us are equal in potential value. I do not need to oppress, undercut, strike, or otherwise impede others so that I can claim the dubious and ultimately meaningless label of Number One.

    I am an American.

    Sometimes I wear my sentiment on my sleeve, display my emotions at inappropriate times. I often side with unpopular causes, cheer those who aren’t going to win, get unreasonably angry over unfairness. I believe in justice and I don’t have any trouble with the idea of making an extra effort for people who can’t afford it for themselves. Other times I am stoic, even cynical. I accommodate a world-weariness far beyond the scope of my heritage. I do not believe in providence. Things will not just “work out in the long run” and the bad are not always punished and the good too often are crushed. I know the world doesn’t care and has no interest in level playing fields or evening up odds or anything other than its own ravenous acquisitiveness. It’s an uphill battle against impossible odds, but it’s the only one worth fighting, and I have an unreasonable belief that as an American I have a responsibility to help fight it.

    I am an American.

    I take a childish pride in many of the attributes and details of my heritage. We build things, we invent things, we have moved mountains, changed the course of rivers, gone to the moon, created great art, changed the face of the earth, broken tyrants on the wheel, and made the world yield. At the same time I am embarrassed at many of the other details of my heritage. We have hurt people unnecessarily, killed and raped, we have damaged forests, poisoned rivers, waged war when there were other avenues. I like the idea that I can work my way out of poverty here, but I hate the idea that we idolize the rich when they put barriers in the path of those like me just because they can. It’s not the money, it’s the work that counts, but sometimes we forget that and those with less must school those with more. That we have done that and can do that is also part of my heritage and I am glad of it.

    I am an American.

    I am not bound by ritual. Tradition is valuable, history must never be forgotten, but as a starting point not a straitjacket. Those who wish to constrain me according to the incantations, ceremonies, and empty routines of disproven ideologies, debunked beliefs, and discredited authority are not my compatriots, nor do they understand the liberty which comes from an open mind amply armed with knowledge and fueled by a spirit of optimism and a fearless willingness to look into the new and make what is worthy in progress your own.

    I am an American.

    I do not need others to tell me who I am and how I should be what they think I should be. I elect my representatives. They work for me. They are employees. If I criticize them, I am not criticizing my country. If I call their judgment into question, I am not undermining America. If I am angry with the job they do, I do not hate my country. They should take their definition from me, not the other way around.

    I am an American.

    If my so-called leaders send soldiers in my name somewhere to do things of which I do not approve and I voice my disapproval, I am not insulting those soldiers or failing to support them. They did not send themselves to those places or tell themselves to do those things. My country has never asked one of its soldiers to kill innocents, torture people, lay waste to civilians, or otherwise perform illegal, unnecessary, or wrong deeds. Politicians do that and they are employees, they are not My Country. Greedy individuals do that, and they are not My Country. No one has the right to call me unpatriotic because I condemn politicians or businessmen for a war they make that I consider wrong, nor that I am not “supporting out troops” because I want them out of that situation and no longer misused by the narrow, blinkered, and all-too-often secret agendas of functionaries, bureaucrats, and bought stooges.

    I am an American.

    My success is my own, but it is impossible without the work done by my fellow Americans. I acknowledge that we make this country together or not at all and I have no reservations about crediting those whose labor has made my own possible or condemning those who seek to divide us so they can reap the plenty and pretend they made their success all by themselves.

    I am an American.

    Which means that by inheritance I am nearly everyone on this planet. I am not afraid of Others, or of The Other, and those who would seek to deny political and social rights to people who for whatever reason do not fit a particular box simply because they’re afraid of them do not speak for me. I reject superstition and embrace reason and as a child I learned that this is what should be the hallmark of an American, that while we never discard the lessons of the past nor do we let the fears and ignorance of the past dictate our future.

    I am an American.

    I accept the rule of law. This is a founding idea and I live accordingly, even if I dislike or disapprove of a given example. If so, then I embrace my right to try to change the law, but I will not break it thoughtlessly just because it inconveniences me or to simply prove my independence. My independence is likewise, like my Americanness, something I carry with me, inside. The forum of ideas is where we debate the virtues and vices of the framework of our society and I take it as given my right to participate. Cooperation is our strength, not blind commitment to standards poorly explained or half understood. Because we make the law, we determine its shape and limits. The more of us who participate, the better, otherwise we surrender majority rule to minority veto, and law becomes the playground of those who learn how to keep the rest of us out.

    I am an American.

    Such a thing was invented. It came out of change, it encompasses change, it uses change. Change is the only constant and too-tight a grip on that which is no longer meaningful is the beginning of stagnation and the end of that which makes us who we are. Change is annoying, inconvenient, sometimes maddening, but it is the only constant, so I welcome it and understand that the willingness to meet it and work with it defines us as much as our rivers, our mountains, our cities, our art. A fondness for particular times and places and periods is only natural—humans are nostalgic—but to try to freeze us as a people into one shape for all time is the surest way to destroy us.

    I am an American.

    I do not need others to be less so I can be more. I do not need others to lose so that I can win. I do not need to sabotage the success of others to guarantee my own. I do not have to take anything away from someone else in order to have more for myself.

    America is for me—

    My partner, my family, my friends, the books I love, the music I hear, the laughter of my neighbors, the grass and flowers of my garden, the conversations I have, the roads I travel, and the freedom I have to recognize and appreciate and enjoy all these things. I will defend it, I will fight anyone who tries to hurt it, but I will do it my own way, out of my own sentiments, for my own reasons. Others may have their reasons and sentiments, and may beat a different drum. That’s fine. That is their way and we may find common cause in some things. This, too, is America.

    “All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It’s a breed — selected out by accident. And so we’re overbrave and overfearful — we’re kind and cruel as children. We’re overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We’re oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture.”
    John Steinbeck, East of Eden

    “There’s the country of America, which you have to defend, but there’s also the idea of America. America is more than just a country, it’s an idea. An idea that’s supposed to be contagious.”
    Bono

    “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
    John F. Kennedy

    “When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.”
    Adlai Stevenson

  • What Ails Us

    Senator Bernie Sanders is a voice of conscience. When he stands on the floor to tell us what ails us, we should listen. A lot of people won’t—they’re too busy trying to prove Obama is a Muslim or not a citizen or that Obamacare is socialism run rampant or some other absurdity that does nothing but distract from the real problems. We have as a nation become obsessed with sideshows. We seem incapable of coming together to actually solve the problems that we have. It’s easier to bitch about what is unaddressable than to do the hard work to understand real problems and deal with genuine issues. Ahead of our anniversary as a nation, a bit of cold water.

    Stay cool, folks.

  • Education

    We seem to have lost sight of a simple truth of late.  Not all things we do should or ought to be money-making enterprises.  Yet we should do them anyway, because, to put it simply, without them we lose everything that makes making money worth the bother.

     

    A string of university decisions in the last few years—most recently the forced resignation of the president of the University of Virginia and now the announced cutting of the University of Missouri Press— underscore how far we have drifted from this truth.  None of these decisions have been about bad decision-making or scandal or anything that might impair the work of education.  They have all been about bottomlines and making money.

    Basically, the president of the University of Virginia, Teresa Sullivan, was fired over a disagreement with the direction of the university with the board of directors, who wish to see more business courses and fewer liberal arts courses.  But we don’t really know because no cause was ever given.  Inadvertently, a billionaire, Peter Kiernan, admitted to orchestrating her firing behind the scenes, but still never fully explained why.  He has since resigned from the board of directors.

    The elimination of the UM Press is even less explicable other than as a bottomline measure—yet the university recently received thirty million to expand its sports infrastructure.

    Actually, anyone paying attention knows what is going on.  Boards of directors everywhere are trying to turn universities into money machines and anything that doesn’t turn a tidy profit is set to be axed.

    If these were businesses like any other, this is perfectly understandable, even laudable if it means saving the business.  But a university is not a business like any other.  We have forgotten that.

    You do not have a university press to make money.  You have it to make available the materials for learning.  You do not have a university to make money.  You have it to teach.

    And you should not teach the making of money to the exclusion of all else.  Universities should teach in service to truth and knowledge and discovery and the investment of character and soul in people so that they have an idea what to do with money when they make it.  Universities should not have to be held accountable the way a bank or a factory is.  That’s ridiculous.

    Some things should exist because they are beautiful, elegant, meaningful, true, inspirational.  If all of that had to rely on the ability to turn a profit, we would have a civilization of fast-food franchises, malls, comic books movies, bad music, and superficial fashion.

    Oh, wait.  We do have that civilization.

    Teresa Sullivan has been reinstated at the University of Virginia because of an enormous groundswell of student and alumni support.  Someone even suggested that maybe there should be fewer political appointees to university boards.  Hmm.

    I have no such hopes for the survival of the UM Press.  It hasn’t been in the black for years.  In my opinion, that shouldn’t matter.  Important books often do not earn a profit, yet they remain important books.  They should exist, as should presses like UM’s, because they contribute an absolutely vital yet unquantifiable essence to our culture.  They should simply Be.

    We need to get over this nonsense before we lose too much of ourselves.  We’ve been fed a line that capitalism is the essence of America.  That’s as far from true as can be.  The essence of America are the ideas that formed us.  Ideas that came out of scholarship and philosophy and education.  Ideas that have become an inconvenience to certain people who have found a good way to use our own commitment to free enterprise against us to destroy the very things that make us who we are.

    It’s not the money.  It should not be about the money.  It’s about the mind and what’s in it.

     

  • Denying Reality.

    The North Carolina state legislature has adopted new guidelines to address the impact of climate change on their state.  Namely by banning the use of the term “climate change” or the term “sea level rise” unless “authorized.”  In section 2 of their House Bill 819 the prohibitions are laid out very clearly—no state agency is to use those terms when studying, commenting on, or otherwise addressing the impact of…well, you know.

    Virginia is following suit.  At least there an answer as to why is offered.  Supposedly, such terms as climate change and sea level rise are “liberal code.”

    Excuse me?  Code for what?

    The irony astounds.  This is a Republican effort.  For years we have listened to conservatives bitch and complain over P.C. language, as if the prohibition of certain terms was some kind of absurd attempt to pretend a specific reality doesn’t exist.  P.C. has become conservative “code” for liberal bullshit.  But now, conservatives are doing the same damn thing and, I assume, thinking that the elimination from official use of certain objectionable words somehow alters reality.

    The world turns, the circle comes back on itself.

    The entire conservative objection to climate change science is based entirely on a constituent-driven refusal to acknowledge a reality that might require people—mainly people with interests in certain industries—to change the way they do things.  That’s it.  That’s the problem right there.  We—and believe me I do not let moderates or even some liberals off the hook—do not wish to change our lifestyles. *

    The science is in.  Climate change is real.  The oceans are rising (because a lot of well-documented melting is going on in both the Arctic and the Antarctic) and the world is about to look different.  Temperature rise will cause disruption in agriculture, alterations in water table distribution, and weather patterns we are no used to.

    This is a fact.  It is not a liberal plot to undermine free enterprise.

    The much-vaunted pragmatism that has been a hallmark of conservative posturing for decades has apparently failed to serve them.  They seem to be trying to wish reality away instead of “manning-up” and facing the world on its own terms.  I’m sorry, I find this laughable.

    The state legislature of Indiana once attempted to legislate the value of Pi, making it equal to 3 instead of 3.14 etc, claiming the actual value was an affront to nature and god.  The bill didn’t get out of committee, I believe, it never came to a vote, but somebody wrote the damn thing, spending tax-payer money on an attempt to deny reality.  They didn’t succeed.

    This did.  At least, it got out of committee and became law.

    I wonder what they’ll call it when their coastline is erased from “periodic flooding” that doesn’t go away?

    _________________________________________________

    *  I know, the “real” issue is anthropogenic climate change.  They don’t like the idea that “we” have caused this.  But damn, you can argue about where it comes from all you want.  That’s not the same as claiming it’s not happening.

    Personally, while I have no problem accepting that human activity has contributed to the current conditions, I’m not sanguine about our capacity to do anything useful about it.  If we shut every polluting factory down tomorrow, stopped driving cars, and basically ended our industrial civilization, people—all seven billion of us—are still going to burn things to survive.  We have to.  I seriously doubt at this point anything we do will stop the transformations we’re seeing, at least not in time to make any difference to anyone now living.  The fact is there are too many of us and we’re making more.  The sheer consequence of biomass and its activities has an impact.  So I think we should be paying attention to how to live in the world that’s coming.

    I also think we should stop sacrilizing reproduction and making more just for the sake of making more.

  • The Martian Chronicler

    Ray Bradbury died today.

    He hadn’t been well, a stroke many years ago left him damaged, doubtless uncomfortable.  But he hung around, the world gave him a few more awards, celebrated him in the small and varied corners where writers of moment get celebrated.  Some people probably thought he’d died already, years past.

    But, ironically, he published an essay in the New Yorker a few days ago, autobiographical.  I say ironic because of the title.

    I met Ray Bradbury a couple of times.  On neither occasion was it enough to become first-name basis camaraderie.  But he was gracious, friendly, and generous with his time.  The first occasion was at the 1986 World Science Fiction Convention in Atlanta, Confederation, where he was guest of honor.

    The main hotel, the Peachtree Marriott, was something out of Asimov’s Foundation stories, and the entire sixth floor, if I remember right, was an open deck given over to the hospitality suite.  One evening Ray came bounding through, jogging shorts and a t-shirt, grinning, signing autographs, and talking to people.  I ended up in a small group with him.

    One young man wore a dragon on his shoulder.  It was quite a piece of work, with a long neck, all made out of some rubbery material, and he had run tubes through it connected to an air bulb in his pocket.  When he squeezed, the neck stretched and twisted, the little thing looked inquisitive, and Ray was delighted.

    All of a sudden he says, “Did you make that?” When the young man said yes, Ray said, “Do you know Ray Harryhausen?  He’s a friend of mine, he does special effects.  He’s always looking for new talent, an apprentice.  I’m going to tell him about you.  You should call him.  Here.”

    Phone numbers were exchanged.  It was…amazing.  I don’t know if that kid ever followed through, we watched a career in the making.

    Did I say generous?

    I don’t know what to call Ray Bradbury’s fiction.  Except for a few stories, it isn’t science fiction.  Nor is it really fantasy.  Harlan Ellison likes the term fantasist, so I’ll go with that.  Bradbury wrote stories that spun webs in the cracks between categories, filled in the gaps in the mind left by tales too one thing or the other to suffice. His Mars only exists as a metaphor, based on nothing but the childish nightmares, daydreams, and fanciful speculations filtered through a gifted artist.  His rockets weren’t really space worthy, but boy were they voyage worthy.  He was romantic according to some.  He was the lineal descendent of Scheherezade.  As long as he was telling the story, everyone had one more day to live.

    On a more analytic note, he captured mood better than 99% of anyone else.  I don’t even think his midwest ever really existed, except for one day, lazily drifting through the mind of a passerby who thought he saw Camelot in a farmhouse.  But that state of mind…yeah, that was real, that lived.   Despite its elegiac pace, there was an urgency to it.  It said “Don’t waste time—dream!”

    For me it was the Martians that had me.  The Martian Chronicles is one of the few books I’ve read more than once.  It served as the springboard for one of the better homages, Desolation Road, but Ian McDonald did something else with it, unable or unwilling to follow Bradbury.  For Ray, settling Mars was the West, the frontier, and he populated it the way the Rockies stood sentry over the encroachment of the nearer plains.  Only then, everyone left.

    Except the dreamers.  The true Martians.

    Others will write about his life, his views, his other books.  No doubt someone will point out that he wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick.  All I’ll mention is some of my favorite titles, most of which I read between the ages of 12 and 18.

    Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, R Is For Rocket, S Is For Space, Dandelion Wine, I Sing The Body Electric, and of course Fahrenheit 451.

    It’s the words, my friends, the words.

    My original copy, still in hand, price .50

    And then, quite suddenly, summer was over.

    He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dime-store window.  They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there.

    “Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!”

    “Oh, my gosh!”

    “Nickle tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!”

    “Don’t look.  Maybe it’s just a mirage.”

    I wish.

    Quite suddenly, summer is over.

  • Honor and Duty

    They go where they are sent and do what is necessary, so the rest of us don’t have to.  That’s the idea, anyway.  Sometimes they get sent places they shouldn’t be and told to do things that shouldn’t be done, but that’s not their call.  They have promised to be a shield, to stand between us and the dark places.  It’s our job to know where the dark places are and how much a threat they pose.

    It’s our duty to use them wisely so that their honor is our honor.  When it goes well, they return, those that do, and they are admired and we take a collective pride in the job, the sacrifice, the honor which their actions transfer to us.

    Sometimes we get it wrong and they come back having broken things and having been broken.

    We should never blame them or repudiate them or make them feel they are somehow responsible for our lack of judgment.  When they come back from a bad job, one that was poorly chosen and badly planned, the only thing we need to remember is that any shame is entirely on us.  They get to keep their honor.

    I am not a sentimentalist about war.  The world is filled with ugliness and it must be dealt with.  Doing so is not noble work, but those who willing go to do it are themselves noble for the sacrifice.  It’s work no one should have to do.  It is damaging.  It changes people.

    I am not a romantic about military service.  It is something that ought not to be needful.

    I am a realist.  No one should be made to suffer from someone else’s inability to sustain sentiment or the illusions of romantic mythologizing.

    Ugliness and brutality are like cancers and they have to be treated.  Sometimes those who go in to do the surgery get infected with it.  That can’t be helped.  They deserve our support and our help.  They deserve not to be cast aside or forgotten because we are ashamed or embarrassed.  We sent them and if it was to the wrong place for the wrong reason, we should not treat them as if they had the responsibility to say no to us.  They volunteered to do this job, to go where we tell them to go, and do what we tell them to do.

    It is therefore our duty to understand before we act, to know the world, to comprehend, to inform ourselves, to take the responsibility seriously and in hand so we do nothing that will compromise their honor in our eyes.

    Their honor stands when we get it wrong.  We must remember this and behave accordingly.

    It’s Memorial Day.  Remember them.  Remember their sacrifice.  And never, ever blame them for our mistakes.

     

  • For Those Who Think I Have No Problems With Mr. Obama

    This is an article by journalist Christopher Hedges about a historic court case just recently which overturned an egregious and unconstitutional provision of the Defense Authorization Act with which I and anyone with a clue about the nature of abuse of power in this country have had a deep concern since it was initially enacted under President Bush.  I bristled when it was originally enacted, but quite frankly I was unsurprised at the time.

    What offended me was Obama’s reauthorization.  Mr. Obama is a constitutional historian.  He should know better.  Section 1012 of the NDAA effectively suspends habeus corpus.  It is as unAmerican as it is possible to get and still claim rule of law.

    The kicker apparently was during the hearings when the judge, Katherine Forrest, repeatedly asked the government lawyers if they could guarantee that the plaintiffs in this case would not be arrested and detained after the trial.  She asked five times and five times they refused to offer guarantees.  They could not under the act, since apparently writing or speaking in a certain way can be construed as prosecutable under this law.

    The fundamental right of an American to think, read, say, or write whatever he or she wants is foundational to our freedoms.  It is stunning that a president as well-versed in constitutional law as Obama could possibly regard this right as optional.

    Mr. Bush was an expert in nothing other than getting elected.  His vice president, however, should have known better, but was apparently seized by a fit of Us vs. Them McCarthyism.

    I voted for Obama to see the bone-headed practices of the Bush regime overturned, not to see practices continued because, supposedly, they only concerned assumed enemies.

    I will likely vote for Mr. Obama in November, but only because I have less patience with the current GOP program.  But that does not mean I think he walks on water.  Indeed, there are many aspects of Mr. Obama’s administration with which I have serious reservations.

    But let me be clear—I have policy issues with him.  I don’t give a damn where he spends his Christmas vacation or where he went to school as a youngster.  I could care less that he attended a firebreathing church (christian, btw) where the black preacher unleashed anti-white venom.  Who he associated with in Chicago as an up-and-coming activist doesn’t bother me a bit—I hung out with all manner of varied intellectual bohemian as a youth and I’m fairly certain I can think for myself.  Charges that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or isn’t an American citizen I find infantile nonsense.  (Even if he were a Muslim, so what?  This is America—one’s religion is irrelevant to one’s suitability to public office.)

    None of that matters.  What matters is policy.  Reauthorizing this act, especially that part of it, is not policy I can support.  I don’t understand why he did it and I am delighted it has been overturned.

    I really do wish people would understand, especially people who all but worshiped Bush and Reagan: the president may be the most powerful person on the planet, leader of the free world and all that, but he is still just an employee.  The president works for me.  I judge him on the merits of the job he does, not on the mythic proportions of what I think he represents.  I am proud to be an American, I don’t need to draw my pride from an elected official.  It would have been nice if all those flag-addled lapel-pin patriots who backed W. had treated him for what he was—an employee.  I tried to fire him once, in 2004, and some folks thought I was unpatriotic for doing so.  But he wasn’t doing the job well.  He wasn’t looking out for my interests.  Or, for that matter, the country’s.

    I feel the same about Mr. Obama and this particular bit of nastiness.  I hope he chooses not to appeal this decision.  He would be doing the job I elected him to do then.  Not as well as I would like—it would have pleased me better to see this nonsense excised to begin with—but at least better.