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Glory Days

          She emailed a picture of me and a group of other guys on our last day at Washington Grade School. If Carol had not told me the names of those standing casually in front of a wall, I am not sure that I would have recognized any, even me, although we had all been classmates and would be for four more years in high school.

          I replied to Carol, and we struck up a correspondence. Each time she would attach a picture with me in it and would ask about my memories of some event—the safety patrol picnic, for example—which I hardly remembered at all. Recently she said that she had only one more picture to send, although she had Sheboygan Press clippings that mentioned me. She felt certain that I already had these. I assumed that her assumption was wrong. I don’t dwell much on those “Glory Days.” After all I did not have an outstanding high school speedball, though I did hit a walk-off home run in my first Little League game. But…but…but then I vaguely remembered that I had a file in a rarely-opened drawer labeled “High School.” I dumped its contents onto my desk and a flotilla of faded newspaper clippings floated across it. This unexpected volume of paper was misleading. From handwritten notes I realized that aunts and friends and even the local bank had sometimes sent my parents an article they had clipped out of the evening paper if it mentioned me, so my high school file had many duplicates.

          On the other hand, the Press published articles about high school students that a paper in a larger town (Sheboygan had a population of about 45,000) no doubt would not have, and thus the clippings did contain a fair number of separate stories. Even though I played high school sports, there were no mentions of my athletic accomplishments. There were good reasons for that. My four-point basketball average did not draw much attention. The athletic glory days ended in grade school.

I remembered many of the events chronicled in the clippings, but there was one that surprised me. I did not remember winning the Constitution Contest sponsored by Sheboygan Elks Lodge 299, although I remembered placing third in the state constitution contest sponsored by the Elks. The story said I had won $150. How could I forget such a thing?! That was a significant amount of money to me, and my parents, back then—the equivalent of about $1,300 today. By comparison, I had my first forty-hour-a-week job that summer. I was paid the minimum wage, which was $1.25 an hour. Work a day and get paid ten bucks. Work three weeks and get $150 — the same amount I got for taking a two- or three-hour test. (That $1.25 an hour minimum wage translates to about $11.10 an hour today, a paltry amount but still more than the national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.) I don’t have the vaguest notion of what I did with my $150 largesse.

          What I found most interesting was not reading about me or my classmates, but the stories on the back or surrounding the clippings. They revealed that I did not know as many things about Sheboygan as I thought I did. Growing up, I thought of the area as safe, but there were more hazardous happenings than I was aware of. For example, a driver struck and killed a 500-pound black calf on County Trunk S. “He said that two calves suddenly ran across the road in front of his car and he was unable to avoid striking one of them.” The story did not report any damage to the driver or damage to the vehicle.

Cooking oil on a residential stove ignited and the fire department was called. “The blaze was extinguished by the time firemen arrived, but they used fans to ventilate the home.”

A truck ran into a road barricade, and the driver was charged, but the clipping cut off the rest of the story, so I did not find out with what.

A man not feeling well left his work at a furniture manufacturer. He felt worse as he was headed to the hospital and flagged down a patrol car “to take him the rest of the way. He apparently suffered a slight heart attack.”

A 9-year-old “suffered a bump to the back of the head and bruises to the left arm in a fall from his bicycle.”

A warning went out about a poisonous bean used in necklaces, rosaries, and as dolls’ eyes.

          The town had crime unknown to me. Six weeks after a night of vandalism that included dragging a swing set and garbage cans into the street and opening car doors, twenty boys and girls were apprehended and referred to the juvenile authorities. A Mr. James Prigge discovered that windshield wipers, the radio aerial, horn ring, steering wheel, gas pedal and floorboards were ripped out, a tire was flattened, and the cigar-lighter was missing from his seven-year-old car that had been parked in his company’s parking lot. (A disgruntled employee? General labor trouble? Or just vandalism? I did not have a follow-up story.) An owner of a plumbing supply company reported that in the last two days chrome pipes were stolen from a storage area. “He valued the missing supplies at $4.20.”

“Vickie Fintelmann reported her J.C. Higgins bicycle, valued at $15, stolen from the Kuehne Court playground.” This surprised me. I went to that playground on my bike almost every day during the summer. We left the bikes unattended, and there was no thought in those days of locking them. I had never heard of one being stolen. But perhaps Vickie’s bike was tempting because it was a J.C. Higgins. Almost everyone, both boys and girls, rode a single speed bicycle with wide tires, often with a basket on the front. Then a few people showed up at the bike racks with the fancy “English-style” bicycles with narrow tires and three gears, and I think the J.C. Higgins fell into that category. My memory is that my correspondent Carol, on whom I always had a crush, was the first I knew to have such a bike although hers may have been a Raleigh.

(Continued May 28)

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Snippets

That blue and red produce purple makes sense. That orange comes from yellow and red also seems right. But that green results from mixing blue and yellow always strikes me as an unintuitive miracle.

Why is it that sushi tastes better when eaten with chopsticks than when consumed with fork or fingers?

I never learned a musical instrument. Sometimes I regret that. If I were going to learn one now, I would choose the bagpipes. Listeners can’t tell if it is played well, if notes are missed, or even if it is close to the supposed tune.

A friend told me that he had just talked to his son who had settled in Australia. The son was pleased with his new Sydney apartment, but he told his father that his neighbors were weird. At nine every evening, the attractive, young woman in the next flat started moaning, “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.” The distinguished, elderly gentleman on the other side of the son’s apartment sounded at that time as if he were pounding his head against the wall. The father asked, “What do you do?” The son responded, “I just ignore it and go back to practicing the bagpipes.”

Conservatives in many states have been passing a wide range of election “security” measures including requirements that voters show an identification to cast an in-person ballot. They do this even though instances of voter identity fraud have been shown to be rarer than rare. However, even though fraud problems have been few, showing an identification to vote has intuitive appeal, and polls have shown that voter ID laws are popular among the populace. Those concerned that the real goal of the legislators passing such laws is voter suppression should not spend capital opposing the laws. Instead, they should agree that the legislation could be a good thing as long as acceptable identification documents can be obtained easily and efficiently by all voters. Many forms of government identifications should qualify, such as public housing IDs as well as Medicare and Medicaid cards. (Why would I give you my Medicare card so that you could vote in my name? The card is precious, and normally I would use it myself to vote. What is the likelihood that such cards would be widely forged with fake names, and then people would register under those fake names, and then would vote under those fake names?) In addition, advocate for making it easier to get government IDs. Couldn’t we have mobile DMV offices traversing all parts of the state for the purpose of obtaining identification cards. In addition, college identification, employer identification, health insurance cards should all allow access to the voting booth. Those fervent for voter ID laws often express distrust of the government, and they should agree not to restrict the necessary identification documents to government ones. If you are concerned that voter identification laws will lower the number of voters but you know that the bills are going to pass anyway, support the proposals but advocate for a broad range of appropriate identification methods and find ways to make them easier to get.

“In that moment, silently, we agreed that we were indeed in the presence of an exceptionally delusional white man—which is of course one of the most dangerous things in the world.” Mat Jonson, Pym.

You can’t make some stuff up. Representative Kevin McCarthy who opposes a January 6 commission was a prime mover behind the 432 (or so it seemed) Benghazi hearings.

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Romanian Venice

          We stayed on the Lido across the lagoon from Venice. The spouse was attending a scientific conference there. I would ride the vaporetto to Venice and take long walks through the city while she was at her meetings. I went to the lesser squares and on one of them heard from a church a soloist rehearsing for an evening concert. I stopped at markets and, being without Italian, pointed to foods to try. I saw apparent immigrants selling apparent knock-off goods outside fancy shops. It was late September, and the weather was generally beautiful, but on a few days, I saw some of the rising water which is common in autumn, and it was interesting to see how the Venetians coped. A movie scene with Heath Ledger was being shot next to San Marco, and it was fun to watch it–a rescue from a hanging for the movie Casanova.

          Other times I walked throughout the Lido that was simultaneously part of Venice and separate from it. Here there were cars and buses, a bit of a shock. I went to the aristocratic, but aging hotel of Death in Venice and tried to picture the beach, empty at that time of year, as it was a century ago when Thomas Mann must have studied it.

          Our hotel made good recommendations for restaurants in what were said to be the non-tourist parts of Venice. I doubted non-tourist places existed, but since we often appeared to be the only non-Italians in the restaurants, or at least we heard no English or German, we weren’t in the usual Venetian places.

          But most memorable was a dinner at the end of our stay with other scientists from the conference. My job had been to scout up a restaurant, and I picked a place on a small canal on the Lido. It definitely was not a tourist place. The staff did not speak English. We were outside on a beautiful night and through nods and pointing and much laughter and wine, we selected local fish, which was wonderfully prepared. This was a night for Venetian memories, but the night became more memorable because of the stories of D and M.

          D was a colleague of the spouse and M her husband. M and D were born, raised, and wed in Romania. Romania was still a communist dictatorship when they tried to leave some thirty years before, but permission was denied. They protested; they cited the Helsinki Accords; they spoke on a pirate radio station. The Romanian response was to imprison M. D, now alone with a new baby, had no idea what to do. She did not know how M was being treated or when or whether she would ever see him again. Out of desperation, D contacted the American embassy, and some official there got word back that D should visit the embassy. D was afraid to do that. The embassy was ringed with Romanian security, and she expected to be arrested if seen approaching it. She called the embassy and told an official, whom she had never met, of her fears. The disembodied voice on the phone told her, “Meet me under the street lamp at this intersection at this time. I will be wearing such and such, and I will take you into the embassy. The Romanian military will not arrest you if you are with an American from the embassy.” Not knowing what else to do, D took the leap of faith and did as the voice instructed. The man was there at the appointed place and time. With an American at her side, she walked into the embassy and told her story of how she and her young family just wanted to leave Romania. Apparently American diplomats worked behind the scenes, and after a few months, M was released. Permission to leave, however, was not granted; instead, the Romanians “punished” the couple by expelling them from the country. No punishment was more gladly received.

          It all sounded like cloak and dagger out of a modern Alan Furst novel, but not the way they told it. They wove it into an amusing story, concentrating on how naïve they were and how lucky. They elicited much laughter under the stars by the Lido canal. But surely anyone in a Ceausescu jail had to wonder about the possible fate that awaited the prisoner.

          I thought, once again, whatever my country’s flaws, how lucky I am to be an American. And I wondered how harrowing times should best be preserved. In their memories, was it as humorous as they presented it?

          Their story, of course, had a happy ending. Not only did they get to leave the country as they desired, M made a lifelong friend while in jail. After the conference, he and D were driving up to Austria to see again his cell mate.

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The Wit of JFK

Is wit necessary to be a good president? I thought about that as I read The Kennedy Wit edited by Bill Adler, a book published eight months after the assassination. My paperback copy, which I found in an antique store in a Pennsylvania village, was printed in February 1965. Its cover proclaims:

THE LANDSLIDE NATIONAL BESTSELLER

110,000 COPIES IN PRINT AT $3.00. NOW ONLY 60¢!

 Reading this, I could not remember the last time I saw the cent sign. However, written in pencil on the first page was a three, so I paid the proprietor the cost of the original hardcover. That seller, in handing back a couple singles, said, “He was the last good president they produced.” (An inflation calculator tells me that $3 in 1964 equals $25.84 today, so I guess my purchase was still a bargain for an antique book.)

All presidents try to be witty, but in the age of the speechwriter, it is hard to know how much a president should get credit, or blame, for attempts at wit, which too often fall embarrassingly flat. Perhaps we can only gauge their delivery. E.g., Obama had great timing and Reagan told a good story. Both of them, I suspect, were truly witty, as was President Kennedy. JFK delivered droll, often self-deprecatory one-liners with a confident deadpan, and it was fun to read many of them again. Some of them:

“I do not think it entirely inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.”

To the National Industrial Conference Board: “It would be premature to ask your support in the next election and it would be inaccurate to thank you for it in the past.”

“There is no city in the United States in which I get a warmer welcome and less votes than Columbus, Ohio.”

“Politics is an astonishing profession. It has enabled me to go from being an obscure member of the junior varsity at Harvard to being an honorary member of the Football Hall of Fame.”

“Those of you who regard my profession of political life with some disdain should remember that it made it possible for me to move from being an obscure lieutenant in the United States Navy to Commander-in-Chief in fourteen years with very little technical competence.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I was warned to be out of here in plenty of time to permit those who are going to the Green Bay Packers game to leave. I don’t mind running against Mr. Nixon but I have the good sense not run against the Green Bay Packers.”

“We had an interesting convention at Los Angeles, and we ended with a strong Democratic platform which we call ‘The Rights of Man.’ The Republican platform has also been presented. I do not know its title, but it has been referred to as ‘The Power of Positive Thinking.’”

“Last week a noted clergyman was quoted as saying that our society may survive in the event of my election, but it certainly won’t be what it was. I would like to think he was complimenting me, but I’m not sure he was.”

“You remember the very old story about a citizen of Boston who heard a Texan talking about the glories of Bowie, Davy Crockett, and all the rest, and finally said, ‘Haven’t you heard of Paul Revere?’ To which the Texan answered, ‘Well, he is the man who ran for help.’”

Explaining to a little boy how he became a war hero: “It was absolutely involuntary. They sank my boat.”

“When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.”

“My experience in government is that when things are non-controversial, beautifully coordinated and all the rest, it must be that there is not much going on.”

At the Gridiron dinner before he was elected: “I have just received the following telegram from my generous Daddy. It says, ‘Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.’”

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First Sentences

“Whenever I think of my mother, I picture a queen-sized bed with her lying on it, a practiced stillness filling the room.” Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom.

“I underwent, during that summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis.” James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

“Darkness came on that town like a candle being snuffed.” Jess Walter, The Cold Millions.

“I’m eight years old.” Vivian Gornick, Fierce Attachments.

“The first time they drove by the house Eddie was so scared he ducked his head down.” Delores Hitchens, Fools’ Gold.

“There is a hidden world of design all around you if you look closely enough, but the cacophony of visual noise in our cities can make it hard to notice the key details.” Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt, The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design.

“Su Alteza Isabel II, Reina de España, carried ten relics on her person during her last few weeks of pregnancy.” Chantel Acevedo, The Living Infinite.

“The classical world was far closer to the makers of the American Revolution and the founders of the United States than it is to us today.” Thomas E. Ricks, First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020).

“This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier.

“I am writing a book about war . . .” Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II.

“My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder.” Sarah Waters, Fingersmith.

“The cocktails were typically strong, and tonight they felt like fortification.” Jeff Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court.

“Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy.” Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown.

“Had she grown up in any other part of America, Jennifer Doudna might have felt like a regular kid.” Walter Isaacson, Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.

“It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.” Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence.

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Snippets

I have lived long enough to see what I never thought I would see: professional cornhole players. If I can keep hanging on, perhaps I will eventually see professional axe throwers.

When the game is between two American soccer teams, should the American announcer use the American zero, or is it ok, or merely pretentious, for him to say that the score is “two to nil”?

I read that trees and other vegetation are connected below the ground by fungi. I liked the term used to describe the phenomenon: Wood wide web.

          There is always a loin cloth in the depiction as if nakedness would be a greater indignity and affront to us than being nailed to a cross, but perhaps without this modesty protection there is concern that someone, seeing what had been hidden, would shout, “Oh my God!!!”

          I learned from Richard W. Fox, Jesus in America: Personal Savior, Cultural Hero, National Obsession that many Protestant churches early in America’s history did not publicly display the cross because it was seen as a mere emblem that substituted for the doctrine of Christ crucified and, therefore, was a form of idolatry akin to Catholic practices. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, most Protestant churches had abandoned strictures on the representations of Christ, and crosses and “portraits” of Jesus began appearing in the churches.

“We are commanded to forgive our enemies; but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends.” Sir Francis Bacon.

On a streaming show, when it was asked if a character was involved in the crime, Miranda uttered the cliché, “Oh no, Alex is a Boy Scout.” Are there any data on whether present or past Boy Scouts are more morally and ethically upright than others?

Was it a step on the road to perdition for me that I felt a spark of gladness when I saw the BMW being towed off for illegal parking?

          From her church “she learned that while there was only one road to heaven, there were a great many to hell.” Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story.

          New York City has primary elections for mayor next month. We will use ranked choice voting for the first time. Somewhere, I am sure, there is someone who understands what that means, but that ballot process is only one part of the confusion. There are many candidates, and I’m guessing that most of the electorate could not name them all, much less state what their credentials or policies are. Nevertheless, this election does have what now seems a standard feature—an allegation of sexual harassment that included the claim of abuse of power because the candidate suggested that the woman would get coveted political positions if the two had sex. That made me wonder if we will ever see this: A woman is running for office when an older man comes forward and says, “She and I had sex twenty years ago. I helped her become [pick a position]. But once she got in office, she dumped me. She was just using me to move up. She abused me by using her sexual power over me.”

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From “Socialism” to “Diversity” (concluded)

          Diversity, often paired with “inclusion,” has been a favored word in academia for a long time. My former institution had a policy stating, “We will recruit and retain faculty who will bring their diverse perspectives, experiences, and expertise into the classroom and broaden the intellectual community. Therefore, the recruitment, retention, and promotion of full-time and adjunct faculty who are themselves diverse are essential functions to this Diversity Plan.”

          The full-time faculty at the law school was overwhelmingly white and disproportionately Jewish. I knew of only one colleague who had been raised Catholic, but few regularly attended religious services of any kind. Overwhelmingly this faculty had attended elite law schools. Although many of the graduates would be solo practitioners or practice in small firms, no faculty member had worked in such settings. Almost all the faculty had come from families whose incomes were well above the national median. Their political views were overwhelmingly liberal or further left. All supported LGBTQ rights; none pronounced right-to-life views. One or two may have voted for a Republican, but more likely they supported a libertarian candidate. All the rest supported Democrats. You get the picture.

          In short, there were a lot of ways of enhancing diverse perspectives and experiences within the faculty, but diversity did not mean bringing conservatives or Buddhists or those with varying legal backgrounds into the mix. It primarily meant hiring non-whites. One colleague did tell me that he wanted us to hire a black lesbian even though gays and lesbians were well represented on the faculty. I, too, was in favor of hiring non-whites, for I believed that they could add perspectives and experiences to our faculty. But I objected to the term “diversity,” for it had an Alice-in-Wonderland meaning. Throw out the dictionary; it meant only what we meant it to mean. One of the goals of a law school is to produce graduates who think and therefore write clearly, but I wondered how we could do that if this was our written product. I was embarrassed for our use of the term. (What did it mean to have faculty members “who are themselves diverse”?) It led to some strange conversations. I remember, e.g., the discussion of whether the appointment of a Cuban American from an upper-class family who had practiced in a Wall Street firm would add “diversity” to the faculty because we could check the Hispanic box for her.

          “Diversity” and “inclusiveness” have now become coded terms for the left just as socialism and cancel culture are for conservatives. I was reminded of this last year when a group in my summer community concerned about racial matters after the George Floyd murder convened. They sought a name and accepted the cliché: The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. The community of 300 residences comprises primarily second homes. To maintain and operate the twenty-seven holes of golf, ten tennis courts, two lawn bowling greens, a restaurant, an Olympic-size pool, and miles of trails on over four thousand acres of forestland, we pay more than $15,000 in annual dues. The overwhelmingly white residents have varying political and religious allegiances and in other ways are diverse as long as we count the spectrum from the well-to-do to the very rich as diverse. To talk and strategize about diversity, equity, and inclusion in this community seems ironic. Case in point: the people who are employed by the community to give us this privileged experience are predominantly white, but they make well below the nationwide median income. If we got back to the true meanings of diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, wouldn’t we begin to make plans to pay these people more? We would be concerned about racial justice, but also about income inequality and social mobility. But is this part of the mission of this group? What do we actually mean by diversity, equity, and inclusion? They remain imprecisely defined. Do we want to subsidize low-income people to come into the community? Do we want to recruit nonwhite folks to buy in? Should we encourage Muslims? This is a group of well-meaning individuals, but because of the vagueness of the terminology – its very name — this group is likely to fail in identifying and fulfilling important – as yet undefined — goals.

          The left and the right are alike in many ways. They may use different terms, but often to the same effect. I am a believer in free speech, but I sometimes wish that we could ban the use of all meaningless or ill-defined terms that do not enlighten and cannot persuade but are only coded phrases meant to evoke emotional responses from those who already agree with the speaker.

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From “Socialism” to “Diversity”

          It is hard for people to communicate with each other when they don’t share a common language. But it is equally hard for people who speak the same language to communicate with each other when they use words and terms whose definitions remain vague and amorphous.

          Such words, however, often do have a purpose; the goal is not to communicate meaning but to appeal to emotions. Of course, meaningful language often evokes an emotional response, but meaningless slogans are different; they do not convey content, only emotion. They are code words.

          Not all code words, however, are without content. Take the terms “illegal aliens” and “undocumented migrants.” They have the same meaning and could be part of a sensible discourse, but, of course, they are also codes, partly to evoke an emotional response in the hearer, but more often to tell us about the political sensibilities of the speaker since “illegal aliens” are dangerous while “undocumented migrants” are people in need of help.

However, there are words and phrases widely used in national discourse that look as if they are part of rational communication but don’t convey meaning; instead, they only evoke emotions in a limited group. Common language helps create a community, but emotional code words that elicit a visceral response from some but do not have content for all merely divide. And that happens a lot.

          The right uses such terms. “Socialism,” for example, is thrown about more than beads at Mardi Gras. I know what beads are, but I don’t know what socialism means to the conservatives who breathe it out seemingly on every third or fourth exhalation. I can tell that it is an epithet, but it only seems to mean any government spending or program that the speaker doesn’t like. Merely labeling those disfavored things as “socialism,” however, does not aid my understanding. I would have you explain to me why you oppose the spending or program in language that I share with you so that I can understand your opposition. Only then can you persuade me. But the word “socialism” provokes a negative reaction in a certain cohort of people and stops the conversation thus increasing divisiveness within the community.

          Of course, some on the left proudly proclaim themselves to be socialist or at least democratic socialists, but I don’t know what they mean by that either. It must mean something other than merely liberal or New Deal or Great Society liberal, but it is not clear what the differences are. Instead, the “socialist” tag is used by the left, but in their case the slogan is meant to disparage liberals who are not as far “left” as socialists. Thus AOC and Hannity, although they would never admit it, are linked by their use of that code word. They both use it to disparage their opposition.

          The right is all up in arms about “cancel culture.” But what is that? Another code phrase that seems to excoriate the left for calling out bad behavior. Those who use the term also favor the term “personal responsibility,” but the relationship of the one to the other seems vague. If I get on a soapbox seeking to influence others, I should know that my actions have effects. I should expect to take responsibility for them or at least expect that there can be consequences for them. But when the term “cancel culture” is thrown about, it seems to mean that some people should be excused from personal responsibility for their words or actions. As far as I can tell, however, cancel culture is only something the left does. Removing a writer from a television show for racist and misogynistic statements is considered cancel culture, but censuring Republicans for not toeing the Trump line is not.

          The left also has its catchphrases although one has been largely taken over by the right. “Critical race theory” has been known to legal academics for decades. Like many social theories, it was not defined with precision, but it examined the intersection of race and law to show how law negatively affected non-whites. Its first focus was on criminal justice and illuminated, e.g., that Blacks were disproportionately stopped for speeding on the New Jersey turnpike or that cocaine sentencing laws resulted in much longer sentences for Blacks than whites. CRT expanded into other areas affected by legal institutions, for example, the intersection of law and housing. I don’t know that the author would call himself a critical race theorist, but a powerful book that fits in with the movement is Richard Rothstein’s, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

          This mode of analysis morphed from the intersection of law and race to intersection of race and powerful institutions generally—corporations, labor unions, the healthcare system, churches. Such critiques got little blowback when they were largely confined to universities. This changed when scholars and others contended that American history had too often ignored race and racism in its recounting and that the teaching of American history in grade schools, high schools and universities should change. This seems to have touched a nerve, and “critical race theory” is now often a conservative epithet used to condemn education of a broader American history without reasoned explanations of the flaws in the approach.

          The path started by critical race theory, however, has given us leftist terms: institutional racism and systemic racism. These phrases do have meaning, but often they, too, are presented as conclusory self-evident terms without explanation or evidence. They do not lead to discourse that could inform or persuade but are uttered to end discussions. They, however, are better than the left’s frequent use of “diversity,” which has the barest relationship to a dictionary definition.

(concluded May 12)

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Snippets

It’s my birthday in a few days. It will be celebrated on Sunday along with Mother’s Day and the spouse’s birthday, which is a few days after mine. (Don’t send any presents . . . unless it costs over $99.) Just the NBP, the spouse, and me for a simple dinner and some smiles. But the oncoming birthday had me thinking back to more than a quarter-century ago, when Jeff and I were at the tennis net. He and I were regular doubles partners, and we also played a lot of singles against each other, with him winning at least sixty percent of the time. He is considerably younger than I am, but we had never discussed our ages. For some reason I no longer remember, age came up that day, and he asked, “How old are you?” I replied, “Fifty.” He involuntarily spurted out, “Fifty!!!” Now that he has finally passed that age, we laugh about the interchange. Ah, to be a frivolous fifty again.

          I am not young, and more and more I relate to the wisdom of Woody Allen: “It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

          “No wise man ever wished to be younger.” Jonathan Swift.

          When people refuse to take the Covid-19 vaccine, perhaps they could be persuaded to inject bleach instead.

          Hannity said, “As I have told you repeatedly, you the consumer pay for increased corporate taxes.” He made no mention of another possibility: that corporations would pay lesser dividends. I don’t watch Hannity enough to know who he said paid the tariffs imposed on China and other countries by the previous president, but I doubt he told his viewers that they paid for them. And I wondered, if Hannity were right, why do corporations oppose an increase in their tax rates if they just pass it along? They should then be indifferent to a tax increase, but they don’t seem to be.

          Hector had tracked me down by getting a phone number for me off the internet. His message said that he had found my Covid vaccination card on the subway steps. Sure enough, it was not in my wallet. I had recently shown it to someone a few days earlier who was keeping vaccination records in my Pennsylvania community. It had been hard to get  out where I had put it in my wallet, so I put it back in a more accessible spot. Apparently, it was now so easy to get that it fell out when I took out my subway card. Hector and I arranged to meet at the corner of my block, and he returned it to me. Once again, I was reminded that there are many, many good people in this world, even, maybe especially, in New York City.

As avid readers of this blog know, the spouse did not know who Aaron Rodgers was. Her annual football watching generally consists of half-watching a few plays on one Sunday in hopes that a Super Bowl ad will soon appear. But she does know some players. She went to a doctor for a shoulder problem recently and hanging up in his office is a Brett Favre jersey. Showing off her knowledge, she said, “You’re a Packers fan.” He said no, he had treated Favre when he was with the New York Jets. Even so, he is going to perform on her what we hope is a routine procedure today.

“Today’s Medical Tip: Never undergo any kind of major surgery without first making an appointment.” Dave Barry.

Posted on by rjonakait

Democracy: Indexed and Flawed (Again)

(When I have written longer essays, I have posted segments over multiple days thinking that readers might not read all the way through if it were all posted at once. Followers of the blog can read in its entirety as the essay goes online, but it has been pointed out to me that those who find such postings through a search engine may find only a part of the essay and have difficulty reading the essay from start to finish. Recently when I posted such a multiple-part essay, I have then posted the essay in its entirety after the segments have concluded so that it can be read from start to finish by those wishing to do so in one viewing. Almost always the blog’s content is new, but on occasion when it seems timely, I have repeated a past blog, which I am doing today. When I do so, even if it originally was posted over several days, I will post all of it at once. It is my Again project.)

(With waves passing through the states passing and considering legislation to make voting more difficult in the name of election security, it has made me think again about our “democracy.” As a result I revisited an earlier post not about such legislative activities but about anti-democratic structures built into our system of government.)

(First posted March 4, 6, and 9, 2020)

 I had not heard of the Democracy Index until a friend recently mentioned that the United States was listed on it as a “flawed democracy.” I later learned that the index is produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister to The Economist magazine.

 The EIU bases its report on sixty indicators grouped into five categories (electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties) yielding a numeric score capped at 10.00. Norway, with a score of 9.87, leads the list followed by Iceland (9.58), Sweden (9.39), New Zealand (9.39), and Finland (9.25.) Countries with scores of 8.0 to 6.0 are listed as flawed democracies, and the United States was given a 7.95 score.

This made me wonder about how I or my fellow Americans would define “democracy.” One dictionary said democracy was “government by the people, especially rule of the majority; government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.” Another source said: “a system of government by the whole population of all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.” A third source: “the belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.”

These definitions raised all sorts of questions and thoughts. Democracy was government by “the people,” but what was the definition of “the people”? Is it the same as “the eligible members of a state”? The whole population cannot vote in an election. Ten-year-olds don’t get to cast a ballot. Isn’t it important to define what the “eligible members of a state” ought to be for a democracy? If the franchise is restricted to a tiny part of the society, but the leaders are picked by majority vote of that small group, is it a democracy? I guess it is, at least according to one definition.

 One democracy definition emphasized majority rule, but I have heard of the “tyranny of the majority,” and wondered if we would consider a country democratic that horrendously oppressed all those not in the majority. And, if a system selects representatives with a plurality but not a majority, is it not democratic or is it a lesser form of democracy?

One democracy definition said “free elections.” That is not a self-evident phrase. I was not sure how I would define it, or if it could be defined except by negative examples.

Even though I felt as if I would know a democracy when I saw it, I was not sure that it could be defined. Part of the problem is that the definitions, like most definitions, were binary—something was either this or not this. Something was not “sort of” this or a “better or more complete version” of this. The Democracy Index, however, accepts a more inclusive notion of democracy. Many societies are democratic, but some are more democratic than others, and I probably thought along similar lines.

I did think, however, that the third definition included a component the others did not when it said a democracy was a system of government based on the belief of equality among people. For me, I realized, a facet of a better democracy is that the ability to vote is widespread, indicating equality among the people, and that all voters’ votes count the same, again indicating equality among the people. The elected representatives of the society are chosen by determining who had the most votes cast in an election where all the voters have equal access to cast ballots and all votes carry equal weight.

I also noticed an important absence in all the definitions. They had agreed that a representative democracy had the electorate picking people to represent them in government. But the definitions do not say that the people or the electorate choose the form of government in which their representatives will govern. But surely, the structure of the government has something to do with democracy. And “democratic” countries can be structured in ways that seem to make them more or less democratic. If our government is a flawed democracy as the Democracy Index asserts, part of the reason is that our governmental structure makes votes unequal. Our form of government means that some Americans count much more than others in choosing those who run the country. We are not, and cannot, be equal under our form of government. And the people of today have not chosen the structures causing inequality and a lesser form of democracy. Our forebears did that.

While the Democracy Index lists the United States as a flawed democracy, that categorization will be difficult for many of us to accept. Meanwhile, many who might entertain the idea of that limitation will assume that we are placed in the defective bin because of Trump’s election and his autocratic actions. The Democracy Index, first published in 2006, however, initially listed the United States as a flawed democracy in 2016 before Donald J. Trump became president. Trump may be the result, but he is not the cause, of a flawed democracy.

And although we may mouth those Fourth-of-July words—government of the people, by the people, and for the people—a little reflection shows that we don’t really believe them. Just look at the polls about confidence in Congress, for example. If we thought that government is of, by, and for us, we should have great confidence in our governing officials and bodies. We don’t. If the U.S. were truly a good and strong democracy, would approval polls for Congress hover around the twenty percent mark?

Perhaps the surprising aspect of the Democracy Index is that before 2016 it listed us as fully democratic, but we have always had important problems that conflicted with a fully functioning democracy. We often repeat Lincoln’s of, by, and for formulation, but if our government was so good, how was it that when he uttered them, he was speaking at a cemetery that represented the ongoing slaughter of a civil war? And, of course, the “people” then did not include women, blacks, or Native Americans.

We have progressed, but our democracy has never been even close to perfect. Our Constitution has served us well in many respects. It formed separate states into one nation that has endured, but that does not mean that the Constitution is without flaws. It permits governments to take actions to undercut democratic values, perhaps something that this blog will explore more in the future, but it also created a structure with anti-democratic features, structures that make our country increasingly undemocratic.

We certainly are aware that our method of selecting our president is not fully democratic. If democracy requires that all votes be counted equally and the person with the most votes wins, then the candidate with three million fewer votes than the rival would not become president, but under our semi-democracy, that was the result in 2016. (I have previously written about the electoral college including on April 10, 2019, and on October 28, 2020 https://ajsdad.blog/?s=electoral.)

The electoral college, however, is at least roughly democratic in that each state’s electoral votes roughly mirror its population size. The Senate is another story.

Within each state, the election for Senator is democratic. Every vote in Texas, for example, counts equally in choosing Ted Cruz as Senator, but within the country, votes for Senators are not equal. The Constitution allots Texas two senators. It also gives Wyoming two Senators even though the population of Texas is about fifty times the size of Wyoming’s. In other words, each Wyoming vote for a Senator counts as much as fifty voters in Texas. Hardly democratic.

And the Senate will be increasingly undemocratic. I don’t know the initial source of this statistic, but I have seen it in several publications: By 2040, 70% of the population will live in the fifteen largest states and will, therefore, account for thirty Senators while 30% of Americans will have 70% of the Senate.

Of course, even though an ever-smaller minority of the population will control the Senate, that does not mean that that minority will be able to legislate for the rest of us. The House of Representatives, even with partisan gerrymandering, more accurately reflects the population trends of the country. (Unrestrained gerrymandering is something for future consideration here.) Senators representing a small portion of the population, however, will be able to stop legislation, and that minority will be able to confirm judges, cabinet officers, and other federal officials. The majority of the country will have even less power than it does now as the Senate becomes more skewed, or we might say, the cracks in our democracy will become chasms.

You might question whether the population trends reflected in that 2040 prediction will continue. People are leaving high-cost-of-living states and moving elsewhere. It is true that California out-migration has exceeded its in-migration? That does not mean, however, that its population has declined. Instead, while the rate of its growth has slowed to a trickle, it still grew by 141,300 from 2018 to 2019, a 0.35% growth rate. However, Wyoming, the state with the smallest population, has fewer than 600,000 residents. Even if –miraculously — Wyoming grew by 20%, it would add fewer people to its population than California now does. Wyoming would continue to fall behind in this population race, but it will still have the same senatorial representation as California.

It is true that New York, with the fourth largest state population, has lost residents [and with the results of the 2020 census in, has now lost a seat in the House], but so have the small states of West Virginia and Alaska. The New Yorkers who leave do not get in their modern Conestoga wagons and go to these small states. Significant numbers are not heading to West Virginia, Alaska, or even Nebraska, whose growth rate from 2017 to 2018 was only slightly above California’s at 0.6%.

The population disparities among the states will only increase. At the end of the coming generation perhaps 20% of the population will select the Senate’s majority.

You might also say that the increasingly undemocratic representation in the Senate is what the founders of the country created. Yes, of course, those who wrote and adopted the Constitution mandated that all states, big or small or in between, would get two seats in the upper house. And perhaps that provision was necessary to get the thirteen states to meld into one country, but that, of course, does not mean that it is right for today. Those founders, unless they were on substances much different from the copious amounts of cider they drank, could not have imagined states with populations approaching 40 million.

The Constitutional framers did not create a Senate with hopes that a small portion of the population would control the Senate. A national census had not been undertaken when the Constitution was drafted, but the drafters’ views of the relative populations of the states can be seen in the Constitution’s Section 2 of Article I where the document prescribed the allocation of Representatives for the original House. New Hampshire would have three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three, for a total of sixty-five.

The framers thought that the three largest states (this calculation included the infamous three-fifths clause) would have twenty-six representatives, indicating the belief that Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania had 40% of the population. Both Maryland and New York were allocated six Representatives. These five states, the framers believed, had about 57% of the population. Together, of course, they had ten seats in the twenty-six-person Senate, or about 38% of the Senators, while the states with 43% of the population would have 62% of the Senators. This, of course, was an imbalance, but it was nothing like the coming disparity where 50% of the population is expected to live in just eight states by 2040. They will only have 16% of the Senators, and, thus, a minority of the population will have 84% of the Senators. 

Whether or not two-Senators-per-state is a good provision today, it is what we have because of what happened in 1787. It is not because we today have determined it is the best policy for our governing structure. But even if almost all of us concluded that we should have some other way of allocating Senators, it wouldn’t be changed. Of course, the Constitution can be amended, which requires approval from two-thirds of each house of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. The states are treated equally, and the lack of approval from thirteen states, no matter what portion of the population they contain, would doom an amendment. The amendment process in general is difficult, but in reality it is impossible for changing the Senate’s composition. The Constitution’s amendment provision, Article V, says that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” I don’t think that I am being overly cynical by concluding that Alaska and Wyoming and other states would not willingly give up their “equal” Senatorial representation.

There is another possibility for ameliorating the increasingly undemocratic governmental structure. Large states such as Texas or California could divide themselves into four or six separate states, each with two Senators. The Constitution’s Section 3 of Article IV, however, says that such division can only be done with the consent of Congress. Again, I don’t think that I am being overly cynical by concluding that the Senate, where the overwhelming majority of Senators will come from the smallest states, is not going to approve the admission of such new states into the Union.

So . . . a smaller and smaller minority of the population will select a majority in the Senate. What, if in addition, the electoral college deviates further and further from the majority’s vote? Will “the people” see their government as legitimate? With these governmental structures unchangeable within our Constitutional confines, what will then happen?

The famed philosophers John Lennon and Paul McCartney seemed to advocate a mind change instead of a revolution when change might be desirable but difficult: “You say you want a revolution/ . . . But when you talk about destruction/ Don’t you know that you can count me out/ . . . You say you’ll change the constitution/Well, you know/We all want to change your head/You tell me it’s the institution/Well, you know/You better free your mind instead. . . .” But at least for me, I don’t think I can change my mind so that rule by an increasingly small minority in my country will really be all right. I don’t want to live in the equivalent of a banana republic.

But, then, what’s left? With no constitutional method for change, perhaps only the words of Jefferson show the path to a better democracy: “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. . . . It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

Or perhaps we should contemplate the words of Robert Kennedy: “A revolution is coming—a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough—but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.”

We should start considering the extra-constitutional changes we are assuredly going to face.