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The Three Revolutionary Technological Innovations of a Lifetime

From a previous barstool conversation, I knew that he had graduated from the same university as I had, but he also had a Ph.D. in political science from there. I assumed that he was smart, knowledgeable, provocative, witty, charming, a chick-magnet, but, at best, a mediocre dancer. He had recently started to work for Meta, that Facebook company, doing some sort of computer work that I only vaguely understood.

After some catching up (I had not been in the biergarten for months), he said that there had been three revolutionary tech advances in his lifetime (he is 33) — smartphones, the internet, and ChatGPT. I said that I could understand his inclusion of iPhones and the internet, but that I did not know enough about AI to have an opinion about its status on his list. He said that he used it every day at work and pulled out his smartphone to give me an example of ChatGPT’s marvels.

 He asked what the most important technological innovations in my lifetime were. I had not thought about this before. I did not have an immediate answer. Instead, I said that I knew of many things that were better than when I was a kid, but the improvements seemed to have been incremental or evolutionary not some giant leap in technology. Cars, for example, are better than decades ago. Microwave ovens are nice but not transformative, and so on.

Then I did think of a technological change that had big impact on the spouse. She was writing her Ph.D. dissertation. Her writing until then had been done by hand or on a typewriter and drafts were time consuming and often messy. However, she found that she had access to a clunky new machine that was dedicated to a new task, word processing. Her life had changed, and, of course, that made me realize that one of the important innovations during my lifetime has been the personal computer.

The Meta friend said that he had been told that one advance that had been incredibly important during my lifetime was air conditioning. I agreed. While AC was invented before my days, it became widespread after I was born. And it changed this country tremendously. Places that are now heavily populated would not be, and this has had many consequences.

Our conversation continued to resonate after I left the bar. I told some friends about it, and this led to other interesting discussions. I realized that the Meta friend’s three innovations are, in a sense, not three separate advances. They are intertwined. Smartphones are amazing. They do allow for interpersonal communications that did not exist before, but their real power is that they connect to the internet. Without the internet they would not be so revolutionary. I still think it is too early to know the importance of ChatGPT. Many things have been hyped in our lifetimes that within a decade or so are largely forgotten—iPods and CD and DVD players in the entertainment fields, for example. AI was barely mentioned a few years ago, so I hope it is all right for me to keep on open mind about its importance. However, conceding that I know little about it, I believe that its revolutionary power depends on computer programming and the internet. In other words, one technological advance is at the core of all three of his innovations—the internet.

The discussions about these innovations regularly brought up where to draw the line between revolutionary and evolutionary advances. Smartphones have meant that we can bring a personal computer with us wherever we are. Much of what we can do on these devices, however, we could do before on a personal computer, but not as easily or conveniently. So aren’t personal computers the real revolutionary technology and smartphones only an incremental advance on them?  Possibly, but I do believe that smartphones have been transformative. Their impact on society in such a short time is remarkable. It is hard to remember that iPhones only came on the market in 2007. Imagine the effect on society if smartphones were magically banned. And if ChatGPT were banned? I think few of us would know what the consequences would be.

Many conversations on these topics considered advances that were important to this country throughout its history, not just during the most recent decades. Transportation was a frequent theme. For the first quarter of America’s existence, passenger and freight traffic predominantly went by water. Locations not by the coast or near navigable streams were isolated. The Erie Canal was revolutionary by putting water that could bear passengers and freight where it was advantageous. The result changed the country and made New York City the country’s dominant metropolis.

The innovation, however, that truly began to tie the country together geographically was a network of trains. Distances closed and locations without water transportation were settled more often. We have seen many improvements in transportation since the beginning of the train network. If we hold in mind the major impact of trains, are planes revolutionary or evolutionary? Are jet planes revolutionary compared to the previous planes?

We may not agree on those answers, but I think there would be more consensus on the transformative power of automobiles. That leads to the question of whether the interstate highway system built during my lifetime has been revolutionary.

Another frequent theme in my innovation discussions concerned communications. The telegraph, I believe, produced revolutionary changes in the country. It, like the trains, tied the country together on commercial, informational, and personal levels that the nation had not had before. In a museum a few years ago, I saw the many extras that the New York Herald produced after the assassination of Lincoln. Because of the telegraph, news was in readers’ hands only fifteen minutes or so after the event. It seemed only a bit short of the you-are-there television coverage of Kennedy’s assassination.

If the telegraph was revolutionary, how about telephones? Merely evolutionary or something more?

Radio, which directly entered homes unlike the telegraph, also seems revolutionary. Radio did many things, but it tended to give the country a widespread popular culture that it had not had before. Then along came television. And movies. And cameras.

The discussions of revolutionary technological changes were primed with mentions of smartphones, the internet, and ChatGpt, and the conversations naturally tended to center on what we personally use. There could have been revolutionary advances, for example, in the construction industry, and few of us would have been aware of them. If there have been remarkable innovations in the production of concrete and plywood, for example, I and my discussants were not aware of them. Perhaps surprisingly, none of my New York conversants mentioned the modern skyscraper or elevators, which together transformed cities.

No one suggested any advances in military weaponry although there have been many in my lifetime. (Are drones transformative?) Perhaps most surprising, no one mentioned one of the most important advances of the twentieth century—nuclear power. (The first nuclear bombs were dropped while I was in diapers.) And in the discussions about an earlier America, I am surprised that no one mentioned electric lights or indoor plumbing. However, a friend did maintain that a revolutionary advance in our lifetime was transistors, which transformed electronic devices, and led to computer chips. There is clear path from transistors to the internet, smartphones, AI, and so much more.

We all know that there have been important medical advances in our lifetimes. I certainly am a beneficiary with my artificial joints (three), artificial heart valve (one), and stents (lost track). I doubt that anyone of these in isolation is revolutionary, but the spouse had a broader perspective and said that the advances in medical imaging have been revolutionary.

Some revolutionary advances, such as in medicine and war, are not in the daily sight of most of us. Other revolutionary advances have been so incorporated into society and our lives that they seem invisible. None of my discussants mentioned two that transformed the world during my lifetime: the polio vaccine and birth control. Just think of the world before and after them.

The conversation started by my fellow alum has produced much thought about technology, innovations, society, and history. What would you say are the three most important technological innovations during your lifetime?

Whatever you select, important change can come without revolutionary technologies. We, perhaps, should discuss them, too. I know, for example, that I am extremely grateful for the increases in my lifetime of the availability of pizza.

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Snippets

A friend sent me a list of authors and asked me if I knew them since he had heard they were good. I did not, and I was reminded that as a reader, it is sometimes discouraging to learn how many worthwhile books and writers there are. I have been finding it true with mysteries. A few years ago, the Center for Fiction moved into a new building in my neighborhood. It used to be the Mercantile Library located in midtown Manhattan. It’s a subscription library that also supports writers by awarding fellowships and awards. I took out a membership not because I couldn’t find enough to read but to support culture in my neighborhood. Among other things, the CFF is known for its collection of mysteries which they house separately in a rather spooky basement with motion-detector lights that seem to take a bit too long to come on. Before I go, I do internet searches for things like “best mysteries” or “best mysteries of the 1950s”. The CFF won’t have all of them, but they always have some. Whenever I pluck one off the dungeon shelves, I see hundreds of other series I have never heard of. Recently I adopted the practice of taking the classic I was looking for and then taking something from an unknown-to-me mystery author. Often the unknowns have been quite good. E.g, I had never heard of Christobel Kent, but her A Murder in Tuscany held my attention. I realize, however, that even though a book might be unknown to me, that does not mean that it is unknown to others. I had some time to kill waiting for the car to be serviced and went into a coffee shop. The sweet young twenty-something who got me my latte saw that I was carrying Kent’s book and said, “That is excellent.” I consider that yet another startling New York moment. Perhaps it is just Gothamist chauvinism, but I doubt that it would have happened in most other places.

Expectations for home life vary wildly among us. My cardiologist sold the family home a while ago but has now bought a smaller home in the same community. He is an avid golfer, but he said that he was no longer a member of a country club. He said that he had been a member while his kids grew up, and he was lucky. The club was only a few blocks from his home and, therefore, he did not have to install a swimming pool.

Have you ever noticed that when the carton has a screw top, the milk costs a lot more?

I watched Dune: Part One on Netflix so that I might be up to speed if I saw the recent Dune release at my local theater. I enjoyed Part One and I found that I would like to dress like the movie’s characters. I was amused that even though these people of the future have tools and weapons beyond our ken, they still have hand-to-hand combat with knives and swords. As I watched the movie with its royal-type succession issues, seers, overlords, and evildoers, I was reminded again of how much humanity desires myths. However, even though I watched the movie closely, I am not sure that it gave me a leg up on the second part since I had little idea of what was going on.

Notable factoids: Robert Putnam with Shaylan Romney Garrett write in The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020) that the colonial era was not as religiously observant as American myths would have it. At the time of the Revolution only twenty percent of the population were members of a religious body, and only thirty-four percent were by 1850. However, the 1940s through the 1960s was a time of exceptional religious observance. The authors note that as late as the mid-1960s, religiously observant Americans, both black and white, were more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.

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First Sentences

“The story begins with a voice on the radio.” Dan Callahan, Bing and Billie and Frank and Ella and Judy and Barbra.

“Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.” Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone.

“On the edge of a typical Minneapolis coal yard in the 1930s was a wooden shack known as a doghouse.” David Leonhardt, Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.

“When the Toyota Avalon bumped down the dirt road out of the woods and across the railroad tracks, Parker put the Infiniti into low and stepped out onto the gravel.” Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), Dirty Money: A Parker Novel.

“Between Europe and the great, mature civilization of China and India lies a belt of over three thousand miles, dominated by desert and stony tableland, where rainfall is relatively little, frontiers are contested, political unity has rarely existed, and where as the late Princeton historian Bernard Lewis claimed, there has been no historical pattern of authority.” Robert D. Kaplan, The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy from the Mediterranean to China.

“According to legend, the first unethical science experiment in history was designed by none other than Cleopatra.” Sam Kean, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.

“The old man with the droopy right eye sat slumped on the witness chair pretending to be a nobody.” Matt Birkbeck, Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino.

“In the Spring of 1889, when an event whose only comparisons were biblical descriptions of the awful Last Day of Judgment came rushing into Johnstown, few people in the valley knew for certain who belonged to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, the private retreat up the mountain, with its marvelous, sparkling artificial lake.” Al Roker, Ruthless Tide: The Heroes and Villains of the Johnstown Flood, America’s Astonishing Gilded Age Disaster.

“I was quite young the first time I saw the river; it was probably in 1928.” Frank Dale, Delaware Diary: Episodes in the Life of a River.

“The first measurement, like the first word or first melody, is lost to time: impossible to localise and difficult to even imagine.” James Vincent, Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.

“The only impartial witness was the sun.” David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“Reporting, like detective work, is a process of elimination.” David Grann, The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession.

“Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, is known for his resolute personal integrity.” Evan Thomas, Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II.

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Snippets

Trump has not been happy with the Republican National Committee. He proposed a person close to him to be the chief operating officer of the organization. He proposed another man close to him, an election denier, to be a co-chair of the RNC. And he proposed his daughter-in-law to be another co-chair. I wondered why there were two co-chairs, and I learned that the rules of the RNC require one male and one female co-chair. Say, what? I expected conservatives to become vocal, not about Trump’s seeking to control what is supposed to be an independent organization, but about this two-gender requirement. (Of course, the conservatives believe there are only two genders, so I am not surprised that there are not more co-chairs.) This reeks of affirmative action. This is an example of wokeism. Surely the co-chair requirement should be abolished.

What Margot Asquith said about David Lloyd George still applies to some today: “He couldn’t see a belt without hitting below it.”

At this time of year, my local movie theater plays Oscar-Nominated Live Action Shorts and Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts. I try to see these before the awards and make my own judgments about who should win. I recently saw the live action program. These movies are always well made with excellent production values. The credits seem just as long as for a full-length movie. I wonder each year who the audience is for these shorts. I am not aware that such shorts are shown commercially, or at least not enough to make back the amount of money that it must take to make them. Almost uniformly the five or so films are interesting, often with innovative stories. There is, however, one problem with the programs. I used to see movie shorts as a kid, sometimes in a theater as an interlude between the double feature. More often, I saw them on TV as local stations tried to find content to fill out their airtime. Often they were, or at least meant to be, humorous, such as instructional videos by Robert Benchley or The Fatal Glass of Beer featuring W.C. Fields. (Everyone should see The Fatal Glass at least several times in their life.) Humor, however, in the nominated live action shorts is in short supply. I guess to be nominated a film must be serious. The ones I just saw did feature one quirky film, but the others explored grief, tragedy, abortion restrictions, and teenage suicide. Each was remarkably good in writing, directing, and acting. Each was affecting — so much so, that I had troubled sleep the night after I went to the theater. I plan to see the animated shorts. However, to my surprise, some of them are also quite disturbing. One year before the final animated short was shown, a manager of the theater came out and said that all children should be taken out of the auditorium. The film was too disturbing for children. He was right. It had graphic nudity and graphic violence. I hope that is not the case this year.

I seldom believe in censorship, but sometimes a phrase that at initially seems fresh becomes so used that I want to have it banned. First on my list right now is “off ramp.” Second is “soft landing.”

“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. If you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” Don Marquis.

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In the Realm of the Aged

I am a ‘tweener. I am older than Trump and younger than Biden. Knowing how age has affected me, I am concerned about the ages of both presidential candidates.

I, like almost everyone in my age bracket, suffers from the oft embarrassing tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. For example, an actor was in an ad. I tried to name him. I could say he was great in that movie with Jodie Foster, Silence of the Lambs. His name was on the tip of my tongue, but it did not immediately emerge. Of course, something like this happened when I was younger but not as often.

I have a related problem to the answer that won’t quite emerge. Sometimes I hear myself utter X and immediately know that X is not right. In a moment I may know I meant Y, and then I must quickly decide whether correcting myself is worth it.

This disturbs me, perhaps more than most others because I took pride in my trivia abilities. And, while I occasionally used to participate in trivia contests, I have vowed to eschew all future ones since they just make me feel old. Many of the questions have pop culture references that are too recent for me. That makes me feel old. I know I once knew the answer to some questions that I no longer know. That makes me feel old. And other questions produce that tip-of-the-tongue thing where only sometimes the answer emerges quickly enough to be useful. And that makes me feel old. The answers I can contribute to my trivia team do not make up for the inadequate, aged feelings, and I have retired from trivia.

Should these cognitive hiccups, which are normal in the aging process, disqualify me from being president? They should be put into context. I feel many of my cognitive powers are as strong — or at least nearly as strong — as ever, and perhaps some of the time even better now than before. I reason and think as well as any time in my adulthood. Whatever you might think of the quality of this blog, it would not have been better in 1980 or 2000. I no longer practice law, but I believe that I could write a brief of as good quality as I did in the past. I don’t believe that my mind has deteriorated in thinking about all sorts of problems and may even be better now because I bring more experiences and knowledge to bear.

The qualifying cognitive abilities to be president should not be determined by trivia gotcha questions, such as, Who is the leader of Kazakhstan? (Kazakhstan by land mass is one of the world’s ten largest nations. Can you name the other nine?) We should realize considering the magnitude of the job, that no person can know on their own everything they need to know to be an effective president. Instead, in judging a president or candidate, we need to know what kind of advisors he or she is likely to have. Will they be knowledgeable about Kazakhstan or whatever is the immediate matter of concern? Will they be able to present to a president in a comprehensible way what a president should know about the topic? Will they present all the information or only what they think the president will want to hear? If asked for opinions and recommendations, will they give unfiltered ones? Then our attention should turn to the president or presidential candidates. How well can these people absorb new information and analyze it? In other words, how well can the person learn and think?

However, we should remember that the learning and thinking required of a president is different from other successful folk. Generally, those who think and learn well do so only in a narrow path, and it is often embarrassing when they opine outside their lane. We have often seen the truth of what a wise person said: “Every person who has become famous for something ought to pray not to be interviewed on other things.” On the other hand, the president is a generalist. He or she must make decisions that span the globe and span multitudinous areas of expertise. A president must be able to learn and think about not just one subject but a whole world of subjects.

The public seldom gets direct knowledge about the crucial learning and thinking abilities of presidents or would-be presidents. We can only infer from other signals. How much a person does know about a range of topics is an indicator of how well that person has learned and, presumably, can learn. Whether a person indicates curiosity about a range of topics indicates a desire to learn.

There is another factor in this cognitive journey. I was once a trial attorney, and I believe that I could cross-examine and sum up as well as I did in days of yore. But a trial takes a lot of energy. Attention needs to be paid every moment during often long court days. After court ends, the attorney must retreat back to the office for hours of preparation for the next day. It can be exhausting. I know that I do not have the energy I once had, and it is possible, perhaps probable, that days of trial would sap my mental acuity. The energy to be a good president must be exponentially higher. Even if a person is able to think and reason well about a broad range of topics, energy, especially as the person ages, may wane in ways that affect mental acuity.

I am old. I believe that I still have a good mind. Even so, I am concerned about how the age of our candidates affects their mental abilities. However, the mental acuity of our leaders should always concern us. Gaffes in speech are not by themselves important. What truly matters is how well the person can learn, analyze, and make decisions and who the advisors will be.

Now. Examine for yourself the two gentlemen under consideration.

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Snippets

A Congressional hearing found bipartisan agreement in denouncing social media. I am not the first to point out that while conservatives are willing to say that Facebook kills children, they do not believe that guns do. They are consistent, however, in not doing anything about either problem. 

He started at my end of the partially filled subway car asking for money. Occasionally I give panhandlers some money, but for reasons I can’t articulate, almost never on the subway. I, as did the man sitting opposite me, slightly shook our heads indicating no. The beggar moved on, but he may have forgotten that he had already tried his pitch where I sat. He came back. I had my head down reading Dirty Money by Richard Stark. As he approached, he said, “Sir. I don’t mean to disturb your reading. After all, reading is fundamental.” I found myself smiling. 

The news feed offered me a story: “Celebrity divorce attorney Laura Wasser: The No. 1 reason people get divorced.” I didn’t read it. I already know that reason is marriage. 

“I know only one thing for sure. Marriage is definitely the chief cause of divorce.” Kathy Lette. 

I just finished reading Dirty Money by Richard Stark. The cover tells me that is “A Parker Novel.” It is the only Stark book I have read, and it was different from other crime books. It is not a mystery story centered on a detective or a police officer. The main character is not a Robin Hood criminal like Lupin. Instead, Parker is bad guy criminal. He robs and kills. In this book he is trying to dispose of marked money after blowing up an armored car. Other bad guys try to take the money away from him and his accomplices. Parker kills one of the others after they had tortured one of his henchmen. Parker assists his confederate to bed and trusses up one of the other interlopers. Parker is about to leave when the guy on the floor begs not to be left there because, he maintains, Parker’s friend will kill him the morning. The book ends in great hardboiled fashion: “Parker looked at him. ‘So you’ve still got tonight,’ he said.”  

A few weeks before Dirty Money I finished The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler. This, the cover told me, was a Christopher Marlowe Cobb thriller. It was the first in this series. I was not previously aware of it or Butler. However, when I did my extensive Wikipedia research, I found that Butler had won the Pulitzer prize in 1993 for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, a short story collection which I plan to read soon. I was intrigued by Butler’s personal life. The seventy-nine-year-old has been married six times. The last marriage will be two years old this June. The other five all ended in divorce. The penultimate marriage was to a “trans non binary poet.” 

In the early days of football, players had names that exuded toughness. From his name you knew how rugged Bronco Nagurski or Johnny Blood was. Or they had nicknames that helped us see them run down the field, such as the Galloping Ghost or the Gray Ghost of Gonzaga. Or they had a nickname that indicated their broad shoulders and bulging biceps came not out of a posh gym but from manly work, such as the Wheaton Iceman. Or their names conjured black-smudged faces having a shot and a beer in the neighborhood tavern after their coalfield shift ended, men like Ray Nitschke, Mike Ditka, or Chuck Bednarik. And what do we have now?  Brock Purdy. 

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That Colorado Ballot Decision

The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments this week in the case that seeks to exclude Donald Trump from the ballot in Colorado. The constitutional provision at stake is Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was adopted in the shadow of the Civil War and reads: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. 

The Supreme Court has never before considered Section 3. We have a constitutional tabula rasa. This dispute presents an opportunity for each of us to think about how we would interpret the Constitution freed from past decisions.  

I know the answers from many. Some would say it is clear that Trump engaged in an insurrection, and he should be barred from being president again. Others will say that barring him from the ballot harms democracy and will lead to more divisions in the country. It is better that the voters decide whether he should be president again. But, of course, those are conclusions that skip over important interpretive questions that the constitutional provision presents. 

There are different modes of constitutional interpretation, but perhaps all can agree that the start should be the text of the Constitution itself. If the words are clear—Congress shall have two houses, for example—we have no problem, but often a provision is unclear and reasonable people might differ over its interpretation. The Constitution gives no clue how the charter should be interpreted when interpretation is needed. Instead, interpreters make choices for their interpretive methods. And we should be aware that no matter how hard we may try, at least, subconsciously, that choice is unlikely to be a neutral one. We will have the tendency to adopt the interpretive method that reaches the results most pleasing to us. 

Of course, this only matters if Section 3 has parts that aren’t so clear that they need interpretation. Perhaps you noticed what others have: While the provision expressly bars people from certain positions—Senator, Representative, elector—it does not explicitly prohibit anyone from being president. Does Section 3 not cover the presidency? Others reply that “officer of the United States” includes the president, but it is at least curious that “elector of President” is explicitly listed, but not the presidency itself. 

Perhaps you also noticed that the provision only applies to those who have previously taken an oath “to support the Constitution” and know that the Constitution prescribes an oath for the president that does not include the word “support.” Instead, to become president people must swear or affirm to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Does that matter? 

Perhaps most crucial to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section is that a person has to have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the” United States. Of course, we know that the provision was enacted in reaction to the Civil War, and clearly that conflict was considered to be an insurrection or rebellion against the United States. But what else constitutes insurrection? How would you go about finding that meaning? A modern dictionary defines insurrection as “an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.” Another dictionary states that an insurrection is “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.” The two definitions are similar but not the same. Does that matter? 

Or perhaps you feel that we should look at what the terms meant when the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted and adopted. Those nineteenth century folk were probably familiar with Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary, which defines and explains insurrection as “A rising against civil or political authority; the open and active opposition of a number of persons to the execution of a law in a city or state. It is equivalent to sedition, except that sedition expresses a less extensive rising of citizens. It differs from rebellion, for the latter expresses a revolt, or an attempt to overthrow the government, to establish a different one or to place the country under another jurisdiction. It differs from mutiny, as it respects the civil or political government; whereas a mutiny is an open opposition to law in the army or navy. insurrection is however used with such latitude as to comprehend either sedition or rebellion.” 

A good court decision should first determine what “insurrection or rebellion” means. Only after that can it be decided whether January 6 fell within the purview of Section 3. But if you determine that by the definition you accept, January 6 was an insurrection, you should examine what else might be an insurrection to test out your definition. Does a mass movement that refuses to pay federal taxes come within the ambit of Section 3? Or imagine a Black Lives Matter protest that has surrounded a federal office building shoulder to shoulder making entrance into the offices impossible without some sort of force. Is that an insurrection? 

If the behavior at the Capitol was an insurrection, did Trump, who was not on Capitol Hill, participate in the insurrection? He did not do anything violent; as far as I know, he only spoke. The free speech provision of the First Amendment seems to come into play. The Supreme Court has decided cases trying to delineate when speech advocating illegal action is protected free speech and when it is criminal incitement. I’ll spare you the details, but it is hardly clear that Trump’s comments were criminal incitement. A few years ago I was asked to conduct a friend’s college seminar about free speech while he recuperated from Covid. The students had studied the Court’s incitement cases. I had them read Trump’s January 6 address. Putting it mildly, the students were not Trump acolytes, but not one of them thought his remarks fit the Supreme Court definition of criminal incitement. Of course, I am not saying the students’ reactions were right, and I only had the students read the comments. A cold, printed record can, of course, be much less inflammatory than actual oral remarks, but how should the First Amendment come into play in evaluating Section 3?  

Assume, however, that it has been decided that the presidential oath and the office of president fall within the ambit of Section 3. Assume there is a workable definition of insurrection. Still, however, some individual or institution must authoritatively determine whether what happened fit the insurrection definition and, if so, if Trump engaged in it. Section 3, however, does not tell us who or what makes these factual determinations. 

Some contend, including many Republican Senators and Representatives, that Congress must first either make the Section 3 determinations itself or set out the procedures for making the judgments. They get support for this position from an 1869 decision by a Supreme Court justice who was acting not as part of the Supreme Court but as a lone appellate judge. It, however, presented a much different circumstance than whether someone should be kept off the presidential ballot. In this nineteenth century case, a man who had been convicted of a crime in state court maintained that his conviction was faulty because the presiding judge at his trial was disqualified under Section 3. The trial took place after the Fourteenth Amendment had been adopted, but the judge had validly ascended to the bench before Section 3 was in effect. No one contended that the trial was unfair, and the Supreme Court judge upheld the conviction, suggesting that Congress had to act before Section 3 was enabled. 

Perhaps upholding the conviction was right, but the suggestion that Congress must act to make Section 3 operative is bizarre. Perhaps someone can point out an example, but I don’t know of another constitutional provision that is a dead letter unless a majority of Congress acts. Instead, our constitution puts governmental structures and individual rights out of reach of majority control. Concluding that Congress must act first for Section 3 to be enforceable would make that provision different from other parts of the Fourteenth Amendment. For example, the first part of that amendment states that a state shall not “deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The equal protection clause does not say how it should be enforced, but it does not require congressional action to be enforceable. Instead, as in school segregation cases, courts have enforced the equal protection clause without congressional action. And notice that Section 3 says that the section’s disability can be lifted by a two-thirds vote of each congressional house. Why put in that explicit language and not tell us that Congress must act in order for the provision to be enforceable?   

It is not courts, however, that are the primary supervisors of our elections. Instead, state secretaries of states, boards of elections, and the like first determine whether a person is qualified to be on the ballot. However, Section 3 applies equally in all the states, and a person should be a disqualified insurrectionist in all the states or in none. Section 3, when it comes to the president, is akin to the requirements in Article II that says no one can be president who is not a natural born citizen, thirty-five years old, and resident of the country for fourteen years. It would be nonsensical for one state to bar a candidate because he is not thirty-five, while another state determines he is old enough.  

There is yet another wrinkle. A person is entitled to due process in the determination of whether he is disqualified for office. The Supreme Court should rule on what process is due, but to my mind this should include an adversarial trial where our potential candidate should be allowed to cross-examine witnesses and be able to call witnesses. The burden of holding such a proceeding in every state would be overwhelming. Are we really going to say that a bystander witness to the possible insurrection must testify in Arkansas, Utah, Vermont, etc.? And what should the Supreme Court do if there are contradictory findings about whether the person participated in an insurrection? The Supreme Court normally decides issues of law such as what is the definition of “insurrection”; it does not have a mechanism for deciding which findings of fact among competing ones are the ones that control.  

Of course, Congress might act and set out a structure for determining whether Section 3 disqualifies somebody. Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment states that “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” Congress could pass legislation that, for example, says the federal courts in the District of Columbia have the exclusive jurisdiction to try all actions to disqualify any person from office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But we don’t have such legislation, and we won’t any time soon.  

I know how I would answer some, but not all, of the issues raised by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. I have little idea, however, of the reasoning the Supreme Court will use to reach its result. Of course, perhaps most of the country will only be concerned with the outcome, but since this constitutional provision presents a messy situation, I expect the Supreme Court to give us messy opinions.  

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Snippets

I sometimes wonder what we would have done for literary novels, popular fiction, spy and mystery stories, movies, TV programs, and streaming shows had there not been a World War II. 

I bought some whole wheat crackers. The package announced it a plant-based snack. Aren’t all crackers plant-based unless you include in the category buffalo chips? 

Germany’s economy shrunk last year and is not expected to do much better this year. A fact like that is important in assessing our economy, which, of course, grew last year and will this year. The economy is a worldwide one, or, you might say: No country is an island entire unto itself. (Okay, ok, I have to rethink this aphorism because of Australia and some specks here and there.) Assessments of our own economy should consider what’s going on in the world. 

Who coined the phrase “in harm’s way” and why? It is simpler to say “in danger” but the nuance seems to be different. I think of a palpable entity with “harm’s way.” Harm is a large ship and smaller craft must get out of its path. I don’t have those thoughts when someone is in danger. 

Positive consumer sentiment, which dropped precipitately under President Trump, has recently increased at a rate greater than has been seen in the last twenty years. 

Axios: “Your perception of the economy used to influence your political leanings. Nowadays, Americans’ political leanings determine how they perceive the economy.” 

A wise person said: “It is poor economy to cut down on schools, healthcare, jobs, and job training and use the money later on jails.” 

Remember those tax cuts that were passed by Republicans when Trump was president? I thought they were meant to give a permanent boost to the economy. They are still in effect, but conservatives say the economy sucks. I am not holding my breath waiting for them to explain how their tax cuts failed.  

“I have a photographic memory, when it comes to me.” Gary Sheffield. 

Donald Trump is promising that any day now he will produce Biden’s birth certificate proving Joe was born in Kenya. 

I am like some of those treasures on Antique Roadshow: I have conditions issues. 

The street person was waiting for the gym to open. “I am going to get fit,” he announced. Asked if he had paid the dues, he replied, “No, but (holding it up) I have this nice hardback book.” 

As if she is the only one: The kitchen sparkled. The spouse had scrubbed it. Nancy, the cleaning person, was coming the next day. 

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First Sentences

“General Phillip H. Sheridan sat motionless atop his horse as the summer sun beat down upon him.” Sean Mirski, We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and Rise of the American Colossus. 

“My name is Lila Macapagal and my life has become a rom-com cliché.” Mia P. Manansala, Arsenic and Adobo. 

“Sometimes your body is someone else’s haunted house.” Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. 

“I sometimes wonder what was disappeared first—among all the things that have vanished from the island.” Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police. 

“On the morning of August 2, 1973, from his summer cottage in Goose Prairie, Washington, Justice William O. Douglas set in motion one of the strangest proceedings in the history of the United States Supreme Court.” Stephen Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic. 

“They crested the hill to see the winter sun hovering on the far horizon, a wide vista of pale grey hills and leafless woodland ahead and the dark ribbon of a river threading the valley floor below.” Christobel Kent, A Murder in Tuscany. 

“There was once a doe that was portal through time.” Sinclair McKay, The Hidden History of Code-Breaking: The Secret World of Cyphers, Uncrackable Codes, and Elusive Encryptions. 

“It was ten years since Mrs. Bradley had been at the institution known as Shafton.” Gladys Mitchell, When Last I Died. 

“Far below the walkway that circled the top of the Cook County courthouse, Chicago spread itself out beneath Mathias Schaefer, an ordinary fireman in the most fire-prone city in the world.” Scott W. Berg, The Burning of the World: The Great Chicago Fire and the War for a City’s Soul. 

“Bunky Millerman caught me from behind on the first day of Woody Wilson’s little escapade in Vera Cruz.” Robert Olen Butler, The Hot Country. 

“Yes, I do have a Texas connection, but, as we’d say in the Midwest, where I grew up, not so’s you’d know it.” Calvin Trillin, Trillin on Texas. 

“On a warm midsummer’s evening just before the end of the last century, in a book-lined lawyers’ office in the pretty town of Kent, Connecticut, I handed over a check for a moderate sum in dollars to a second-generation Sicilian-American, a plumber named Cesare, who lived in the Bronx but who had driven up in the lush New England countryside especially for the formalities of this day.” Simon Winchester, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. 

“His green-and-vermillion topknot was as colorful as a parrot’s, and in Colleton County’s courtroom that afternoon, with its stripped-down modern light oak benches and pale navy carpet, a cherryhead parrot couldn’t have looked much more exotic than this Michael Czarnecki.” Margaret Maron, Bootlegger’s Daughter: A Deborah Knott Mystery. 

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It Was Evening All Afternoon

         It was evening all afternoon. 

          It was snowing 

          And it was going to snow. 

          The blackbird sat 

          In the cedar-limbs. 

Wallace Stevens 

When I change my opinion, I applaud my open mindedness and willingness and ability to learn from experience. But I realize that sometimes the changed mind has come because I have fallen out of touch with the circumstances that helped create the original opinion. Take winter, for example. 

I only knew Wisconsin winters growing up. The family could not afford to travel to warmer climes for even a break in the January or February weather. (I had only left Wisconsin once before going off to college and that was to some sort of church retreat just barely into Illinois. Three hours each way crammed into the back of a Rambler to see people I did not know in some obscure small town did not give me a taste for travel.) 

Did I regard the Wisconsin winters as harsh? Not really. It was all I knew, and I also knew from looking at the newspaper page that printed the temperatures from around the country that winter was colder elsewhere. Indeed, Lake Michigan, a few blocks away from the house, gave Sheboygan a bit of a maritime climate moderating winter weather. Madison, a few degrees of latitude south but nowhere near the great lake, had colder temperatures. And if I really wanted to cheer myself up, I would look up the weather in Minneapolis or Fargo. Now those places really had winter. 

It was only when I went off to college in New Jersey that I began to realize that the seasons, even in the Northern climes, had different meanings in different places. Spring was a delight in New Jersey. It came weeks earlier than I had experienced. It was not just a time of mud from the remaining melting snowbanks. The snow had disappeared before winter had ended. I was seeing New Jersey flowers when Wisconsin still had slush. 

When I moved to New York City I would hear weather reports that would say a winter cold front was a coming bringing “frigid” or “Arctic” temperatures. They were forecasting temperatures that might be eighteen or even fifteen degrees. And then I would scoff. The historical highs for the coldest times of the year in New York City are about thirty-nine degrees with a low of twenty-seven. By contrast, the average low at the end of January where I grew up was fifteen degrees. What was “Arctic” in NYC was just an ordinary morning in Sheboygan. Thus the scoffing. Since I was only a decade away from those Wisconsin mornings, those reasonably fresh memories made the cold of New York winters easy to endure.  

When it snowed in New York, I again thought of my boyhood. I was raised in a modest house on a modest lot, but that modest lot was sixty feet across. That meant shoveling sixty feet of snow from the front sidewalk. But wait, there was more. There was the walk from that sidewalk to our front door, perhaps ten feet and then the porch had to be cleared. And the walk to the backdoor had to be shoveled. It was narrower than the front sidewalk, but at least as long. Then there was the path from the backdoor to the freestanding garage, perhaps twenty feet. And, of course, the driveway had to be shoveled, and that was wide and might have been eighty feet long. I don’t pretend I ever did this by myself. It was a family affair, but after a heavy snowfall, it seemed also to be an all-day affair.  

It was much easier in Brooklyn. Of course, with the higher average temperatures in New York City, precipitation that would have been Wisconsin snow was Brooklyn rain. In addition, however, our row house is twenty-five feet wide. A front stoop which abuts the front sidewalk also has to be cleared, as does a space, perhaps ten feet square outside the lower door. A relative piece of cake that I actually enjoyed doing because the end point, even with the first couple of shovelfuls, always seemed near. 

The snow not only seemed easy to clear, I loved the aftermath of a snowstorm in New York. Although we live in what I consider to be a quiet neighborhood, heavy snow stopped almost all traffic, and the neighborhood then seemed to belong just to me and the neighbors. After a winter storm, a different kind of light settled over the city than at other times, one that brought on a sense of peacefulness. That light and the absence of traffic caused us few pedestrians to treat each other reverentially as if we were the deepest friends on a meditative retreat. A nippy wind may have made cheeks rosy, but stomping on and over the banks of still pristine snow warmed the body as well as the heart. These were the kind of days where I was thrilled that there was a winter and that I was in it. I could relate to what Alexander Pushkin (James E. Falen, translator) wrote in Eugene Onegin: “And all the hilltops soft and glowing/ With winter’s brilliant rug of snow—/ The world all fresh and white below.” 

I admit, however, that, while I can still appreciate the crystal-clear sky of a winter blue that January can bring, I now simply tolerate it. Life has changed. Over time the spouse became more dependent on car travel for work and pleasure, and we park our car on the street. The car has to be dug out to go anywhere after a heavy snow, and finding a dug-out parking space upon return has become harder and harder with more cars in the neighborhood.  

And I, of course, have gotten further and further away from my childhood experiences. While thirty degrees was a nice winter day and twenty degrees is what I could expect most mornings as a kid, that was a long, long time ago. Now below freezing always seems cold and ten degrees below freezing is frigid to this aged body. And snow shoveling no longer produces the sense of accomplishment it once did. It’s just a chore. 

Even so, I don’t have fantasies of living in a warm climate all the time. I do want, however, what I can’t have. I want winter, but I want it to start the week before Christmas and end January 31. Six weeks of winter with cold clear air and some pristine snow that I know will soon disappear is what I want. 

          One must have a mind of winter 

          To regard the frost and the boughs 

          Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;  . . . 

          For the listener, who listens in the snow, 

          And, nothing himself, beholds 

          Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

Wallace Stevens