Poison ivy

Everyone who lives in the northeast learns the little rhyme, “Leaves be three, let it be.”  Poison ivy, which is increasing in potency, is a vine with clusters of three shiny leaves, and if you have ever encountered its effects, you become very wary.  

As a public service announcement, I will tell you that it doesn’t need to have leaves to to cause red swellings and incredible itching.  If you are cleaning up brush in the spring before the leaves appear, you can get it even if the vines have no leaves.  

The good news is that after a steroid shot and something called a Z-Pack of pills, it goes away.  Or at least I hope so.

Everybody counts or nobody counts

That’s the mantra of Detective Harry Bosch in the crime novels by Michael Connelly.  I thought about that when I read about El Fasher, the last city in Darfur in Sudan that is still controlled by the military.  The city is surrounded by the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group that is brutal and already responsible for the deaths of thousands.

El Fasher currently has about 1.3 million people, including hundreds of thousands who fled there to escape the violence.  A U.S. envoy to the U.N. said the city was on the precipice of a massacre.

I have yet to hear of a campus protest about this.  I have yet to hear about this on MSNBC or CNN, although I have heard much about a rather meaningless trial in Manhattan.  In fact, I have only read one article about El Fasher, and that was three days ago on page A9 of the New York Times.  

I’ll admit I could have missed something.  Maybe Truth Social or Fox have been reporting on El Fasher.  Maybe there have been posts on Facebook or X.

The Enigma Girls

About a month ago I read a review of a book by Candace Fleming about the young women who helped break the German and Italian military codes during World War II.  They worked at Bletchley Park; the most famous of the code breakers was Alan Turing.  It sounded like a good book, so I asked the Palmerton Library to order it.  

Yesterday they told me it had arrived.  They also told me it was a “young adult” book, and did I want to read it anyway.  I hadn’t known that, but I thought why not.

I finished it last night.  I learned there were far more women than men working on the project, and a majority of the women were 20 and under.  They worked in difficult conditions with bad food and sketchy housing, they were forbidden to talk about their work until the 1980s, and they were instrumental in a number of important victories by allied forces.  An amazing story. 

Kristi Noem shoots a dog

The Governor of South Dakota evidently noted in her memoir that when she was younger she shot a dog that she and her family no longer wanted.  The meme universe is going nuts about this.

You should know that in some cultures in the United States, shooting a dog is not that big a deal.  Years ago my grandfather bought a dog he was told was a “Russian wolfhound.”  I don’t know if that is even a breed, but the dog was fast and big and chased a deer.  My grandfather thought that was not good, so he shot the dog.  I’ll bet there are many farmers in South Dakota who aren’t willing to pay a hefty fee to a vet to “put a dog to sleep.”  (That means kill the dog).

So give Kristi Noel some slack on the dog.  Go after her because she is basically a fascist who would outlaw abortion, deny a legitimate election, and sucks up to Donald Trump because she wants to be his Vice President.  Actually, if you want to go after her for the dog, go ahead.  

So called "originalists" are anything but

The question before the Court on presidential immunity can be answered quickly and clearly.  No. The President does not have immunity for criminal acts.  Period.  The Magna Carta proclaimed in 2015 that even the King is not above the law.  The Supreme Court justices should not have even heard this case.  A first year law student knows that.

Fifteen leading historians submitted an amicus brief showing that the Founding Fathers were well aware of the need to control the President.  The silliness about private vs. “official “ acts that some members of the Court brought up is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, in Madison’s notes, in the Federalist Papers, or in previous cases.  

James Iredell, an early justice on the Supreme Court, told the North Carolina ratification convention that if the President commits a crime, “he is punishable by the laws of his country and in capital cases may be deprived of his life.”

Now there is a Supreme Court Justice.  Let’s go back to the original.

I learned about the Iredell quotation and the 15 historians in Jamelle Bouie, “This Whole King Trump Thing Is Getting Awfully Literal,” New York Times, (28 Apr. 2024), p. SR3. 

Preparing for nuclear war

In the last few months two serious studies have been published on the possibility of nuclear war.  While there are all kinds of plans and contingencies, the “fog of war” will be far worse in a nuclear “exchange,” with communications disrupted, panic everywhere, and the end of civilization as we know it.  

Is nuclear war likely?  Nine governments now possess nukes, including North Korea (Kim Jong-un), Russia (Putin), Israel (Netanyahu), India (Modi), the U.S. (maybe Trump after January), and Pakistan  (I have no idea who the current ruler of Pakistan is right now.)

I don’t know how we have gone this long without a nuclear war, but I agree with Nikita Khrushchev who said that in the aftermath of nuclear war, the living would envy the dead.

The Quest for Community

Sociologist Robert A. Nisbet, usually labeled a conservative, believed that our emphasis on individual freedom ignored the human need for connections, for community.  His most famous book, first published in 1953, was entitled The Quest for Community.  I’m currently discarding many of my books.  When I pulled that one out of the shelf, I wondered if it was as good as I remembered it.  I’m re-reading it.  

In 1953, of course, the major fear was Communism.  World War II had ended eight years earlier, and Fascism was also on peoples’ minds.  Nisbet wrote about how the “communal state” was attempting to control people’s lives.  And above all other forms of political association it is the totalitarian Communist party that most successfully exploits the craving for moral certainty and communal membership.  In it we find states of mind and intensities of fanaticism heretofore known only in certain types of religious cult.

We don’t worry so much about Communism.  What I’d like you to do is where Nesbit wrote “Communist party,”  substitute “MAGA movement.”  

Look at the people at a Trump rally.  Look at the way they hang on to his words.  People who attend those rallies talk about how unified the people are, how happy, how connected.  I believe most of them are people who lacked ties, who felt alienated.  Now they have a purpose, and they have a community.  You can’t compete with that using logic and facts.