Theft of confederate flags

I sent in the following letter to the editor of the Times News:

Dear Editor,

I read recently that someone had two confederate flags stolen from the porch.  I’ll be happy to buy two American flags to replace them.

Will it be printed?

Muslim and Hindu lions

This past Saturday a high-ranking forestry official who oversaw two lions in the West Bengal captive lion breeding program was fired.  The lions had been living together for years, but the male lion was given the name Akbar after a medieval Muslim emperor.  The lioness was given the name Sita, after a Hindu goddess.

This was considered “blasphemy” by a leader of a far right Hindu political party.  He called it an “assault on religious beliefs of millions of Hindus.”

The lion and lioness did not comment.

Aren’t you happy that the U.S. isn’t the only country with crazy religious fanatics?

Info for this post was taken from Sameer Yasir, “Lion’s Name Draws Anger From Hindus,” New York Times, (Feb. 28, 2024), p. A9

When they go low, we go high

Michelle Obama famously said that.  Cynics have made up their own comebacks:  When they go low, we stomp on them; or, When they go low, we go lower.  I’m generally a fan of Michelle Obama’s moral philosophy, but....

I worked very hard a few years ago on the effort to adopt a non-partisan approach to drawing district lines in Pennsylvania.  As it turned out, the appellate courts took care of the problem.  The court-ordered Congressional reapportionment resulted in eight Democratic wins and eight Republican wins.  That’s about right.

New York state also came up with a bipartisan redistricting committee that has drawn congressional lines.  Now the NY Democrats have rejected their map and propose to gerrymander the districts.  In principle I think this is wrong, since the Republicans always claim, “Well, the Democrats do it when they get a chance.”  It is this kind of thing that makes people register independent because they think both parties are crooked.

On the other hand, some N.Y. Democrats are proposing a gerrymander that would create as many new districts as the North Carolina Republicans have created with their gerrymander.  At a time when the Congressional Republicans talk about shutting down the government, misuse the impeachment process, refuse to deal with the border issue, talk about a national abortion ban, and back Russia over the Ukraine, I think I have to say, “Sorry Ms. Obama.  When they go low, they deserve what they get.”  Or I can even get Biblical:  “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”  Hosea 8:7.

General James Longstreet

Longstreet was second in command to Robert E. Lee who called him his “old war horse.”  In the North, Longstreet was regarded as Confederate Number three after Davis and Lee.  He was the hero of Chickamauga, one of the South’s biggest victories.  And yet, no southern city boasts a statue of Longstreet.

Why was he denied a place of honor in the Confederate Pantheon?  Because he accepted the defeat of the South.  He was with Lee at Appomattox and was impressed by Grant’s generous terms of surrender.  Unlike other southern leaders, he accepted the defeat of the South and took no part in the supporting the “Myth of the Lost Cause.”  He thought the myth was detrimental in that it led southerners to cling to the past and old ways of thinking.  He supported Reconstruction.  And even though he was a slave owner before the war he accepted that former slaves deserved full citizenship as the price of the southern defeat.  He was appalled by the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups and led a mixed race militia in battles against the violence.  He believed that full acceptance of the southern defeat was the only way back for the South.  

So-–if you believe that the statues of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate heroes are simply historic, you are wrong.  Those statues are a tribute to the myth of the lost cause and all that it implies.  Otherwise, how do you explain the absence of Longstreet, one of the south’s most effective generals?

This has been a guest post.  

The Herbarium at Duke University

Duke University has a collection of 825,000 plants, fungi, and algae.  The collection was started over 100 years ago.  It is one of the largest such collections in the country, and it helps scientists track the impact of humans on the environment.  It allow researchers to extract DNA material from plant specimens.  It permits all kinds of studies.  Duke wants to now close it down, but has no destination in mind.  A warehouse? 

Duke is not the first to do this.  Some years ago the University of Louisiana Monroe “deaccessioned” a half a million specimens to make way for  a new sports facility.

What a short-sighted and shameful decision.

Info for this post is from Carl Zimmer, “Duke University Prunes Century-Old Herbarium,” New York Times, (22 Feb. 2024), p. A16.

Cliche about South Carolina

While I have not seen the results, nor do I want too, I’m sure South Carolina Republican voters went for Trump.  The state has always been a pimple on the butt of America.  It was South Carolina Senator Sen. John C. Calhoun who came up with the discredited doctrine of “nullification,” whereby a state could “nullify” a law of the federal government.  

South Carolina was the first state to secede, and its attack on Fort Sumter made the Civil War inevitable.

Then we had Lindsey Graham, supposed friend of John McCain who, after McCain died, showed his true colors by sucking up to Trump.

Now the state is about as pro-Trump as it can get, even though its former governor was in the running for delegates.  Loyalty has never been a virtue in that state.

The cliche I’m referring to became popular some years back:  “South Carolina:  too small to be a country; too large to be an insane asylum.”

Books for American Soldiers

Sometimes I learn things that astound me.  During World War II the U.S. government provided books to American soldiers.  The program started out with 50,000 copies of each of 30 titles.  As the war continued, hundreds of titles were added.  The books included mysteries, classics, plays, poetry, humor, biographies, science.  Books were flown to the Anzio beachhead, dropped on remote Pacific islands, shipped to staging grounds for D-Day.  

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was one of the most popular.  Plato’s Republic was one.  The Grapes of Wrath was one.  Oliver Twist was one.

I cannot imagine a program like this today.  I think we were once a far better country than we have become.

I leaned about this in a review article entitled “Torn Pages” by Claudia Roth Pierpont in The New Yorker, (Feb. 26, 2024), pp. 68-73.

Frozen embryos are children in Alabama

Can they be baptized?  Where do you put the water?  Does the priest come into the freezer?  Won’t the water freeze?  Are they named at that point?  Suppose we get the gender wrong?  What are their pronouns?  

 

Tainted Hugo Awards

Every year the Hugo Awards are given to top science fiction writers.  The awards are given in different cities; last year they were handed out in Chengdu, China.  Members of the World Science Fiction Society can nominate up to five works in different categories.  The six works with the most nominations are finalists.  Unfortunately a number of authors nominated were marked as “not eligible” by the administrators.

It turns out that those ineligible authors were of Chinese descent.  They had left China, and the administrators were afraid the Chinese government would take offense, especially since some of the authors had mentioned Tibet or Taiwan.

Note that this was not done on the behest of China.  It was done by people who were afraid of China.  The awards for 2023 missed some great science fiction, including Babel by R. F. Kuang, which I must ask my library to purchase if they haven’t already.

See Alexandra Alter, “Fear of China Taints Literary Prize, Leaked Emails Show,” New York Times, (Feb. 21, 2024) p. C3.

Bombing Cambodia

The House Judiciary Committee brought five articles of impeachment against President Nixon.  Three were approved; two were rejected.  One of the rejected articles accused Nixon of launching a war in Cambodia without telling Congress.  All through the impeachment process, Nixon argued that he had only done what other presidents had done.  In the case of the Cambodia article, many House members thought he might be right.  Earlier Presidents had launched similar attacks.

I thought this was a bogus argument.  Nixon didn’t even tell his Secretary of State about the bombing of Cambodia.  It was not just bombing; American troops were sent into Cambodia to guide the planes to targets.  I believed at the time that adopting this article might dissuade future presidents from similar actions.

I was reminded of all this when I read the obituary of William Beecher, a reporter from the New York Times and the man who revealed the Cambodia bombing.  Nixon asked the F.B.I to wiretap Beecher to find out who leaked the material.  He also wiretapped 16 other journalists and government officials.  This happened in 1969 but was a precursor to Nixon’s later illegalities.   

Grow or Swell? The Heffley case.

In Mr. Texas, a novel by Lawrence Wright (Knopf, 2023), a Speaker of the Texas House is giving advice to a newly elected member.  He says:

”Behave yourself.  Pay attention.  And don’t believe in fairies.  Good things only come to those who earn them.....Let me offer you a word of advice something a wise man said. ‘In politics some folks grow, others swell.’  Learn to tell the difference and you’ll be all right.”

It occurred to me that he might have been talking about my own state representative Doyle Heffley, who has been in office for over a decade.  He does not grow in office.  He simply swells. 

You can't learn from history if it isn't taught

In Poland two historians of the Holocaust were sued when they violated a law in Poland which makes it a crime to suggest that Poles were complicit in the murder of Jews in World War II.  

That sounds vaguely familiar to laws regarding the teaching of slavery in a number of U.S. states.

see the review of The Holocaust:  An Unfinished History by Dan Stone in today’s New York Times, p. 11.

Go to Hell Money

When we discussed political morality in my classes, I always explained the need to have “go to hell” money.  I learned that expression from Linda.  What you should do is have enough savings so that if your boss or supervisor ever asks you to do something you know is immoral or illegal, you can say with conviction “go to hell” and walk out.  While I never felt the need to do that in all of my various jobs, it was something I was prepared for.

I thought about that often in the last few months when I read about Republican politicians sucking up to Trump.  Men and women in Congress whom I assumed had some integrity are selling their souls to a man who cares nothing for morals, decency, or the Constitutional order.  

These Republican leaders aren’t living on the margins of American society.  They need not worry about paying the mortgage or putting their kids through college or becoming homeless.  Even if they lost the next election, they have connections, big houses, expensive clothes. 

Does power mean that much to them?  It’s not that they will be incarcerated or poisoned or exiled.  And yet they lie and grovel for Trump.  It’s pathetic.

Putin kills Navalny

One of the most courageous people in the world was killed today.  Mr. Navalny paid the ultimate price for opposing a dictator who has shown again and again that he has no respect for human rights, international boundaries, or human decency.  

In the United States people like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump suck up to Putin.  Carlson goes to Russia and interviews Putin, pretending to be a journalist while Putin is holding a real American journalist in prison.  And then there is Trump, who said it would be fine if Putin attacked our allies.  It is not just Trump and Carlson; Trump was cheered recently in South Carolina when he again attacked NATO.

Already a Republican congressman from New York has compared Navalny’s death to Trump being tried for fraud.  You will find people like this throughout history.  In the American Revolution they were the Tories.  In France in WWII they were Vichy.  In Norway in WWII they were Quislings.  They are willing to suck up to enemies for personal or political gain.  

I had not realized there were so many in our country, in charge of X, running for President, sitting in the House of Representatives.  It is both disgusting and frightening.

Elon Musk is an amazing guy

The “social media” [that should always have quotation marks around it] platform X is now accepting payments from terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, the Hothis, Iran, and Russia.  Since Musk laid off 80% of the staff, checks and verifications of users are no longer in place on X.

I have never understood why people continue to cooperate with such entities as X.   Aren’t there other ways to communicate?  It’s like patronizing Hobby Lobby or voting for Ted Cruz or buying an assault rifle.  None of those things are necessary, so why do them?  I don’t get it.

For the info on X see Kate Conger, “Terrorists Are Paying for Check Marks on X, Report Says,” New York Times, 2/14/2024.

Gun culture in the U.S.

The book review section of the most recent Sunday New York Times contained two reviews of books about our gun culture.  One Nation Under Guns:  How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy by Dominic Erdozain (Crown, $28) discusses how the courts and popular opinion have misinterpreted the 2nd Amendment.  

The second book by Jonathan M. Metzi entitled What We’ve Become:  Living and Dying in a Country of Arms  (Norton: $29.99) looks at the gun culture as a public health issue.  

The typical answer to the gun problem is the U.S. is that people should arm themselves to protect themselves.  By now it should be fairly obvious that that solution isn’t working.  One definition of insanity is that you do the same thing over and over, but you expect different results.  

Learning Black history

I graduated from high school in 1960.  I did not know that the Union Army had Black troops.  I was taught that Reconstruction was a disaster for the south.  I remember the words “scalawags” (Southerners who helped the North) and “carpetbaggers” (Northerners who came south to use Blacks to run Southern affairs).  The “Radical Republicans” like Thaddeus Stevens from Pennsylvania were presented not as people interested in equality, but as fanatics bent on unfairly punishing the South.  Robert E. Lee was a wonderful man.  Lynching was never mentioned.  

Luckily I had a mother who taught me that Americans were equal no matter what their race.  Luckily I was instinctively on the right side of the Civil Rights movement.  Luckily I read James Baldwin in high school.

I sure didn’t learn that in grade school or high school.  And that is why we need Black History month.  And why we need to teach the history of all Americans, no matter what the so-called “Mothers for Liberty” or Ron DeSantis might say.

Mitch McConnell reappraised

When President Roosevelt launched the program to lend Britain destroyers in return for bases, he wasn’t wasn’t just being benevolent.  He realized that Britain was the only nation standing against a Europe dominated by the Fascist governments of Germany and Italy.  Many isolationist Americans and some pro-German Americans opposed Roosevelt’s moves, asking what a conflict in Europe had to do with America.  We were just coming out of the Depression–better to spend money at home.

Now we are facing a somewhat similar situation with Ukraine.  If Putin takes Ukraine, what is to stop him from expanding, with moving into other former members of the USSR.  To many Americans (I’m looking at you Tucker Carlson, and you, Donald Trump, and you, Republican House members), this doesn’t matter.  After all, it is all the way over there in Europe.  Not our problem.

Someone who does get it is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.  He said, “Today it’s no exaggeration to say that the eyes of the world are on the United States Senate.  Our allies and partners are hoping that the indispensable nation, the leader of the free world, has the resolve to continue.”  

In the meantime Trump continues to denigrate NATO, even suggesting that Russia may want to attack members who, in Trump’s eyes, aren’t contributing enough.  In 1940 most Americans instinctively understood what FDR was attempting.  I’m not sure in 2024 most Americans understand our policy, but at least McConnell does.

The Presidential Superbowl Interview

President Obama started it–an interview with a major network on Superbowl Sunday.  Trump skipped at least one, and Biden didn’t do one last year.  This year is a presidential election year.  Think about that.  Huge audience.  Millions of people.  A way to reach voters who might not ordinarily see Biden.

Why would Biden turn it down?  I’m guessing either he or his staff lacked the confidence that he wouldn’t blow the interview, would stumble over something, would forget something.  

It seems to me the question now is how can he leave the stage gracefully without blowing the chances of a Democratic candidate winning in November.  

Collecting petition signatures

Today was the deadline to turn in nominating petitions in Pennsylvania.  To get on the ballot in Pennsylvania to run for U.S. Senator you need a thousand signatures from members of your party.  For State Senate and State House of Representatives you need 300 signatures.  Today signature gatherers had a “party” in Lehighton where we could turn in our completed petitions and sign others we hadn’t yet signed.

I did not do well this year; I only had nine signature on each of two petitions.  Part of the problem was that for most of the days allotted I either had Covid or was still contagious.  The other problem was that this time I went to people I knew.  When you stop by friends, you need to chit chat.  It’s rude to ask them sign and then immediately leave.  

If you really need a pile of names quickly, you get a list of your party members in “walk order” and go down the street knocking on doors.  The “ring doorbells” can be a problem; many people don’t open the doors for people they don’t know.  If thy do open the door, however, I have found that most people are willing to sign one or two petitions to get a candidate on the ballot.  Two years ago I did that and managed to get over 100 signatures in a two-week period.

When things started to go wrong

In 1971 more U.S. graduates earned bachelor’s degrees in the social sciences than in the business categories.  Between 1972 and 1985, while degrees in English dropped by 54% and history diplomas by 63% and sociology degrees by 61%, business degrees jumped upward by 92%.

In 1969 82% of incoming freshmen said it was very important to “develop a meaningful philosophy of life.”  By 1985 that had dropped to 42%.  During that same time period incoming students who thought it was important to be “very well-off financially” jumped from 40% to 71%.

When I was in college a common philosophy of life was “weed will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no weed.”  It might not be a great philosophy, but it beats the kind of money-grubbing automatons who came later.

The statistics are from Will Bunch, After the Ivory Tower Falls.  (N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2022), pp. 97-98.