A prayer for 2025

OK it’s not really a prayer.  It’s from a speech by Vaclav Havel, who spent five years in jail when the Communists ruled Czechoslovakia.  Havel later was elected President of Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic.

Let us try in a new time and in a new way to revive this concept of politics.  Let us teach both ourselves and others that politics ought to be a reflection of the aspiration to the happiness of the community and not of the need to deceive or pillage the community.  Let us teach both ourselves and others that politics does not have to be the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculating, calculating, intrigues, secret agreements, and pragmatic maneuvering, but that it can also be the art of the impossible, that is the art of making both ourselves and the world better.

.....

Our worst enemy today is our own bad qualities–indifference to public affairs, conceit, ambition, selfishness, the pursuit of personal advancement and rivalry–and that is the main struggle we are faced with.

Advice for the new Secretary of State

In 1993 President Clinton’s Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, testified before a Senate committee on four tests for the U.S. using force abroad.  The rules make sense.  Here is what Secretary of Christopher said:

1. the goal must be stated clearly to the American people.
2. there must be a strong likelihood of success.
3. there must be an “exit strategy."
4. the action must win sustained public support.

Good advice.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

In 1976 Jimmy Carter was not my favorite Democratic presidential candidate.  I worked very hard for Morris Udall, Carter’s main opponent in the Democratic Party primaries.  I thought Udall was a better environmentalist, and I appreciated his sense of humor.  I was also turned off by Carter’s religiosity.

Carter turned out to be a reasonable President, and I admired him greatly for putting an end to the Army Corps dam building program and for pardoning many Vietnam resisters.  Blamed for high gas prices (sound familiar?) and the Iranian hostage crisis, he failed to counter Reagan and lost badly in 1980, winning only 49 electoral college votes.

With my usual penchant for supporting losers, in the 1980 election I may very well have voted for 3rd party candidate John Anderson.  (That was 44 years ago, and I’m not sure.)

Carter came into his own as an ex-president.  His work as a mediator and a neutral observer in numerous foreign elections, his support for Habitat for Humanity, and his general morality made him the best ex-president in our history.  As President he exhibited a certain naivety and ineptness, but he was never vindictive, never stupid, never mean.  He was a decent human being, and today that is high praise.

The origins of fascism

Walter Laqueur, who died in 2018, fled Nazi Germany when he was a teenager.  He became a respected scholar of the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and other political topics.  He warned in 1996 that fascism could have a second coming in a book entitled, appropriately, Fascism:  Past, Present, Future.  

Laqueur noted that before World War I, no one had heard of fascism.  After World War II it seemed to disappear.  He wrote that fascism seemed to appear out of nowhere.  He said that liberalism and conservatism can trace their roots to the French Revolution.  Western democracy and Marxism had common origins in the European Enlightenment.  Fascism, on the other hand, simply emerged sui generis.

It is composed primarily of negatives.  It is anti-individual, against rational thought, anti-feminist, anti-democratic, anti-scientific.  As an ideology, it pushes grievances, identifies enemies. and in most cases is led by a charismatic leader.

He thought it might re-emerge.  He likened it to staphylococci.  It can come back at any time, and there is no immunity.  

Maybe Hobbes was right

In The Leviathan Thomas Hobbes said that the one thing people demanded of their government was safety.  In the face of anarchy or violence, they would put up with a dictatorial government as long as that government guaranteed their own safety.

John Locke, of course, argued that we needed to be protected from a tyrannical government as well as from bad actors, and the Founding Fathers were obviously Lockian.  

On the other hand, many Americans are now convinced that our governments are not protecting us from wrong doers.  The latest example is in New Mexico, where Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, is calling for a crackdown on drug addicts and homeless encampments.  At one store in Las Cruces there have been seven murders since 2020 and a shootout that injured a policeman.  

Gov. Lujan Grisham has a long personal history of helping homeless people, including bringing them into her own house.  Now she is supporting a program of involuntary commitment for homeless people.  Her own daughter-in-law was attacked by a man with a long criminal record, who hit her daughter-in-law with a rock and “cracked her skull open in several places.”  (The daughter-in-law did recover.)

The governor, of course, is facing some opposition from “progressives.”  If you are wondering why Trump won, this might be a clue.

Info for this post is from Michael Corkery, “In New Mexico, a Liberal Governor Grapples With Rising Crime,” New York Times, (Dec. 27, 2024), p. A11.

America's allies

“We’re being taken of by every country all over the world, including our allies–and in many cases our allies are worse than our so-called enemies.”

Trump, Nov. 2024

“They want us to protect, and they want protection.  They don’t pay us money for the protection you know?  The mob makes you pay money, right?”

Trump speaking on a podcast, Oct. 2024

"The Crazy Ape"

In 1970 Nobel prize winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi published a book aimed at younger readers entitled “The Crazy Ape.”  Dr. Szent-Gyorgyi, a biologist, was rather pessimistic about the future of the planet and the U.S.

American society is death-oriented.  If you watch and if you read the newspapers, a great part of it is taken up by war, by killing, by murder, atomic bombs, MIRVs, gases, bacterial agents, napalm, defoliants asphyxiating agents and we have war.  All our ideas are death-oriented.

You may need a refresher here.  M.I.R.V. is a multiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicle, i.e., a missile that has numerous warheads for many targets.  Defoliants are used to kill vegetation.  The one you may have heard of is Agent Orange, used in Vietnam, and still killing Vietnam vets.  

Dr. Szent-Györgyi died in 1986.  This was before social media. widespread belief in conspiracy theories, and a reluctance to accept scientific reasoning.  Dr. Szent-Gyorgyi thought what might save us was the “youth.”  Yeah, that might work.

Sorry, have to check something

I’ll be back tomorrow.  I just heard some kind of clatter up on the roof, and I gotta go check it out. 

We're #1!

I’m doing some “Swedish death cleaning,” dumping old files and articles.  I came across one from the San Jose Mercury News from April 21, 1991.  That’s 33 years ago.  It was entitled “We’re No. 1!  We’re No. 1!”

The article began with all the ways the U.S. was behind other countries.  For example we were No,. 17 in children immunized against polio.  The article went on to explain that we should not despair; we were still # 1 in many areas.  I’ll quote:

Among Western industrialized nations, we’re No. 1 in percentage of children living below the poverty line, No. 1 in teen pregnancy, No. 1 in murders of males between 15 and 24, No. 1 in murder by handguns for all ages, No. 1 in percentage of population incarcerated, No. 1 in percentage of commuter trips made by private auto rather than public transport, No. 1 in per capita energy consumption and No. 1 in emissions of air pollutants.

I don’t have statistics on where the U.S. stands today, but I’ll bet we are still No. 1 in quite a few of those categories.  Luckily Mr. Musk and Trump will make us great again.

It never happened/They all do it

Fifty years ago, on January 21, 1974,  the lead essay in the New Yorker concerned the Watergate affair.  The anonymous author (at that time “The Talk of the Town” was published without attribution) was discussing lawbreaking.  He noted that for a long time, Nixon denied everything.  It didn’t happen.  When the tapes proved that Nixon and his minions did the things they were accused of, Nixon then switched to “they all do it,” claiming all presidents did illegal things.

This method of dealing with issues is still prevalent 50 years later.  A prisoner from Guantanamo has sketched the various tortures used on prisoners as part of the “War on Terror.”  They are horrendous.  When the Americans were accused of torture they denied it.  When cell phone pictures and testimony by participants and prisoners made the waterboarding and torture public, the response was “They all do it.”  All nations torture.

It strikes me that this is also the reaction of Trump  to crimes and illegalities.  It never happened.  I didn’t pay off porn actresses.  I didn’t rape.  I didn’t cheat on my charities.  I didn’t cheat students at Trump University.  I didn’t lie.  Didn’t steal.  Didn’t break the law.  And when caught, quickly say, “All presidents lie.  All presidents cheat.  All presidents do illegal things.”  

If it never happened, we can’t be held accountable.  If they all do it, we can’t be held accountable.  Bottom line:  We can’t be held accountable. 

How I would teach Bible lessons in Texas schools

Two million elementary kids between kindergarten and 5th grade will be getting lessons based on the Bible.  I am not sure which version, but I am guessing the King James rather than Revised Standard.

I would love to teach that.  I’d talk about how Jesus’s parents were refugees, illegally crossing the border into Egypt and finding refuge there.  I’d tell the kids how the Pharaoh’s daughter rescued a refugee kid against the wishes of the government.  I’d tell them about how God made Eve from a rib of Adam, and then show them pictures of male and female skeletons and ask them to count the ribs.  Whoops.

I might explain that chapter about Sodom and Gomorrah and discuss in detail the “sin” of sodomy.  I think it would be worthwhile also to discuss the wager God makes with Satan and then basically wrecks Job’s life to win the bet.

It would be good to get into the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus fed all those people for free.  They didn’t even need food stamps.  And how he healed the sick and they didn’t even need insurance.  

It would be interesting.

See Troy Closson, “Bible-Based Lessons for Public Schools Get Final Approval in Texas,” New York Times, (Nov. 23, 2024), p. A19.

Internal exile or fighting back

I’ve read two conflicting accounts of how to behave now that Trump will be taking office on Jan. 20.  Miriam Elder, a reporter who covered Russia for eight years, said that after Putin took over, many in the Russian opposition simply retreated into their own lives.  It was too overwhelming, he was too strong, you could be sent to the Gulag.  Some of those people who went into internal exile now are regretting their withdrawal from politics and blame the war on Ukraine on their silence.

On the other hand, New York Times commentator Charles Blow said that after the campaign, the effort, the contributions–it was time to take a rest.  It is too much to ask patriots to keep fighting constantly; we all need a break.  

I find myself torn between those two poles.  On the one hand, I am truly tired and disappointed.  After all, a plurality of my fellow citizens were willing to vote for a man they must have known was a crook, a rapist, a guy who knows so little about governing he doesn’t even understand what a tariff does.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around that.  I don’t watch CNN or MSNBC, although I hardly watched them even before the election.  I don’t want to discuss politics or even be in the same room with people who voted for Trump.

On the other hand, I’m manufacturing buttons on my little button machine that say “Deport Elon Musk and Peter Thiel,” “Don’t blame me; I voted for Kamala,” “Elect a clown–expect a circus,” and “Is It Great Yet?”  I’m still reading the New York Times.  My problems is that I don’t know where to start, even how to oppose Trump when Zuckerberg, ABC, Jeff Bezos, almost every billionaire, and the entire Republican Party are sucking up to this idiot.

I’ll think about it some more. 

Saved from autism

This year in Congo there have been 97,000 cases of measles.  More than 2,100 people, almost all of them children, died from the disease.  Vaccines are not available in Congo.

Robert Kennedy, Jr., was overheard to say, “Well, at least they won’t be autistic.”

The statistics are from Stephanie Nolen and Arlette Bashizi, “A Stubborn Enemy Stalks the Children of Congo,” New York Times, (Dec. 19, 2024), pp. A1, A12.

The Lehighton School Board

I’m clearing out old files, and I came across an article from the May 3, 2016, New York Times entitled “In Schools Nationwide, Money Predicts Success.”  The authors noted that “Children in the school districts with the highest concentration of poverty score an average of more than four grade levels below children in the richest districts.  I doubt if this has changed much in the last eight years.

The authors pointed out some exceptions, but those were districts in which the administrators and teachers launched special programs, hired reading specialists, involved parents, and really worked at boosting the kids’ educations.

In Lehighton, a comparatively low income district near me, school board members seem to worry more about which kids use which bathrooms, whether the kids are reading inappropriate books, and who can play sports.  I suppose board members may have some concerns about reading and math scores, but they certainly don’t talk about those very much. 

Joe Rogan and his followers

I have actually heard of this Joe Rogan and knew he had some sort of podcast, but I have never listened to a podcast and figured he must be some kind of guy like that idiot Alex Jones.

Now I read that Rogan has 14.5 million followers, gets paid an estimated $350 million bucks by Spotify (?) and has hosted both Alex Jones and Donald Trump.  His audience is overwhelmingly young white males, one of the groups that supported Trump in the recent election.  This must be about the dumbest cohort in the U.S.  According to a Pew Research survey, about 37% of 18 to 29-year-olds regularly get their news from social media.

I am so tired of hearing that the older generation has messed things up; the younger generation will fix things.  Fat chance.  To be fair, perhaps young women will fix things.  The “bros” will be on Fanduel or investing in bitcoins and vape stores.

Incidentally, don’t you think that a guy who is getting $350 million for spouting nonsense wants to keep his taxes low?  As Karl Marx said, “Follow the money.”

Some information for this post is from “The Week”, (Dec. 13, 2024), p. 11

No Republic without the peasants–a guest post

A friend of mine who makes his living on a small farm sent me a link to a film showing how robots are used in farming.  The average family farmer, of course, can’t afford these robots, which means that corporate farms will benefit.

Here is what he wrote:

Video link: Next-Level Agricultural Machines for Ultimate Farming | Watch

 

Watch how the strawberries are being picked! Robotic apple harvesters are already in operation on a few enormous orchards in the state of Washington, and drones are doing the spraying.  Large farms are buying drones now.

 

Multi-millionaire and billionaire investors buy up the farmland and take control of food production.  The entire 'free' market for food is being divided between (1) large-scale, extremely high-investment factory farming businesses and (2)  "niche agri-ientertainment" businesses, such as c.s.a.'s, membership pick-your-owns, and boutique wineries that charge high prices and serve the rich.  

 

There will be no room left in this system for poor, small-scale peasant farming that could feed the world most efficiently and with justice and equity.  

 

Remember the old motto of the French revolution: "NO REPUBLIC WITHOUT THE PEASANTS!"  

World Wide Sickness

It is obvious that democracy is in decline around the world.  The few bright spots (South Koreans successfully demonstrating against martial law, the Assad family kicked out of Syria, Kenyans demonstrating against the murders of women, Australia banning “social” media use among children, the Ukrainians continuing their battle for freedom), are overshadowed by developments in the rest of the globe.

“Strong men” have taken over in Argentina, India, Russia, Turkey, the U.S., Hungary, Tunisia, China, and Italy, although the one in Italy is a “strong woman.”  Rightist or nationalist or anti-immigrant parties are gaining in Germany, France, Romania, Indonesia, Netherlands, and Sweden.  Religious fundamentalists are gaining strength in Israel, Iran, India, Tunisia, and much of the America south.  

What you must remember is that just as quickly as these disturbing developments are occurring, events can turn quickly.  Remember what happened in Syria.  While we don’t know the final outcome, we do know that the Assad family, which ruled for 50 years by terror and violence aided by Russian support, fell apart in a ten-day period.  

It is not only pandemics that can spread quickly.  Keep the faith.  Join the resistance.  

P.S.  Hi Kash.  Just add this post to my existing F.B.I. file.

Sucking up to Trump

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s Chief Executive, supported Kamala Harris.  Now that Trump won, he has changed his attitude.  Dimon said that given the Republican Congress and Trump in the White House, his “industry” would be dancing in the street.

Then there’s Mark Zuckerberg, the little weasel.  He’s giving a million dollars for Trump’s inauguration.  

I don’t want to overwhelm readers with too much bad news in one post, so I’ll save Kari Lake’s appointment to run the Voice of American and the North Carolina Republican legislators’ bill to strip the governor, the courts, and state election officials of any meaningful power.  Maybe tomorrow.  

"Rural Perspectives"

Every month I receive a publication entitled “Rural Perspectives” from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.  I don’t remember how I got on their mailing list, nor have I ever been asked to subscribe.  The publication is eight pages long and often compares data from the rural counties (Carbon County is one) to the urban counties.  The latest issue discusses rural county libraries and the services they provide, contains a demographic profile of PA rural families (quick summary–we’re getting older) and information on Christmas tree growers and biosolids disposal.

For your information, Carbon County has 17 Christmas tree farms.  The county with the most is Schuylkill, which has 49.  The number of Christmas tree farms is declining (I assume because people are buying artificial trees) and the most common type sold was Fraser fir (33%).

As for biosolid disposal (i.e., sewage sludge)(a.k.a., human excrement), the sewage treatment plants in Carbon landfill their sludge.  In Northampton County to our south, most of the plants put the sludge on farmers’ fields.  Of course, some of that sludge is trucked into Carbon to spread on farms along with the medicine, chemicals, pathogens, and forever chemicals it contains.  

Drill Baby Drill?

For centuries the tundra with its shrubs and mosses took in carbon dioxide from the air and stored it in their tissues.  When the plants died, the carbon dioxide was kept frozen in the earth’s soil.  

In the last two decades the warmer temperatures are melting the Arctic tundra, releasing more carbon dioxide than the tundra is taking in.  This is a new development, the first of its kind since the last ice age.  So, between 2001 and 2020, with the wild fires and the thawing, the tundra are helping to warm the planet.  If we lowed the temperature, of course, the tundra would again take in carbon dioxide.  

Like that’s gonna happen.

Info for this post is from Raymond Zhong, “Arctic Tundra, Once a Cooling Force, Stokes Heat,” New York Times, (Dec. 11, 2024), p. A5.

Losing Ground

In the past when the Times came out with its list of 100 notable books of the year, I would go down the list and check how many I had read.  The number was usually between 10 and 20.  This year I was down to two books, both fiction and both good.  They were Colored Television by Danzy Senna and The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich.

In the past I also took some pride in averaging more than one book a week.  This year I’m lucky if I hit 40.  I’m thinking for the last two weeks of the year I’ll do nothing but sit at my desk and read.  It’s a personal thing.