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The Woman Who Laughed Out Loud

          It seems distant because it was before social distancing, but it was only a few weeks ago. I arrived ten minutes before the play was to begin at the 100-seat, historic theater in Greenwich Village. I had to crawl over four or five people to get to my seat. I sat down, but I could feel the eyes of the woman on my left glued to me. Soon, she spoke, starting to ask if I was in show business. I interrupted before she went further. I anticipated that she was going to ask what I have been asked several times—was I certain famous actor. Even though I have encountered this question several times, including being asked by a Brooklyn dentist and a waiter in a Sarasota restaurant, I am nonplussed by it because I don’t see any resemblance between that person and me.  And I wonder what the question means about how I appear to others. The actor asked about is not of the Brad Pitt or George Clooney type, but one best known for many for his portrayals of creepy people.

          I smilingly told the woman on my left, “My only connection to the theater or the movies is to be in the audience.” I settled down and picked up the one-paged credits and realized that I had misspoken. I thought that the only thing I knew about the cast of the play, The Confession of Lily Dare, was that it starred the marvelous Charles Busch, who had also written the play. But then I saw that another actor in the play was HM. I had a connection to him that was more than just being an audience member. I had met him and been in his house.

          When in the first or second grade, the child (the NBP) had play dates with HM’s son at HM’s home. I had met him there. I remembered that going home after one such time I had asked the NBP what Chris’s father did, and I got the response, “Maybe he is an actor or something.” I put it out of my mind—many people in New York want to be actors—until a month or two later the spouse and I went to a highly successful musical at Lincoln Center and discovered that HM was the male lead. He was more than a maybe-actor, but a leading New York theater person. And years later, I heard Jonathan Schwartz playing a song sung by that same man that had been recorded at a cabaret performance. I mentioned some of this to my left-side companion, and when I stumbled a bit on the Lincoln Center production, she immediately furnished the title and mentioned the co-star. My guess is that she knew a lot more about theater than I do.

          It was still a few minutes to the performance. I opened the book that I carried. I read a paragraph or two, and the woman on my right, who was also reading, laughed out loud. I smiled and continued reading. She laughed again, and I asked, “What are you reading that’s so funny.” She held up the cover of the book, but I did not register it for the theater went dark, and the play began.

          At intermission, the woman was again engrossed in her book. When it did not seem too intrusive, I again asked what she was reading. She held it up again, and I saw it was the intriguingly named My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. The author, Fredrick Backman, initially meant nothing to me, but then I saw on the cover that he was the author of A Man Called Ove, a novel I had found charming as I had the movie made from it. My theater neighbor told me how much she was enjoying My Grandmother Asked. . . and how funny parts of it were. (She did ask me about the book I was reading, which was one I picked up on a lark in an upstate junk shop in the fall—Lincoln McKeever. To my surprise, it was pretty good.)

          I thought a book that might make me laugh would be an especially good tonic. The next day I went to Greenlight, my neighborhood bookstore. They had novels by Backman but not My Grandmother. . . . I had liked Ove and the woman in the theater was truly enjoying Grandmother, so I thought I might as well try one of Backman’s books that Greenlight had.

          I bought Beartown and have now read it. It is filled with insights about childhood and parenthood and about individuals and community. It starts out amusing but turns horrifying. And yet it remains insightful and touching. It made me want to cry. It presents the dangers and vulnerabilities of loving and that you can never love enough. It was marvelous. I am glad that I have read it.

          I don’t know your name, but to the woman-who-sat-next-to-me-at-the-theater-and-laughed-out-loud, thank you. Because of you I read Beartown. And I do plan to read My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry. And the sequel to Beartown.

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Snippets

          A friend who spends time in winter in Florida said that he hoped that I could join him next year because there is a trivia night in some establishment where he goes. He is under the mistaken impression that I am still good at answering obscure, meaningless factual questions. I once was, but the times and trivia have changed. The bar I sometimes hang out in has a Tuesday trivia night. Usually I play tennis that night, but occasionally when tennis is cancelled, or I have some injury, I go to the bar and join a trivia team captained by the bartender. But I have become convinced that only those who are under 35 or 40 would know most of the answers. The trivia concerns TV shows or music or celebrities from the last twenty years, and I seldom know the answers. Hell, most of the time I do not even know who the people are being asked about. Almost none of the questions are about history or literature or geography. Occasionally, I do know an answer, but often bartender Brian or another teammate also has it. I consider it a good night if out of fifty questions I can come up with one or two answers they otherwise would not have. Worst of all, however, is when there is a question that an old guy ought to get, and they look at me, and I have that senior moment not being able to come up with something that I know is there, but it stays on the tip of my tongue. I could come up, for example, with “The Teenagers,” but could not retrieve “Frankie Lymon” as the singers of “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” Trivia used to feed my ego because I was better than most. Now it makes me feel not just inept but old and inept. I only want to participate in a trivia contest if there is a chance that the correct answer is Bucephalus, Traveller, or Tony. That’s not the kind of questions that Trivia Joe asks at my local biergarten.

          When I want to feel special, I tell myself that I am one of the few people who knows that Tarzan lived in Wisconsin.

          In absolving himself, President Trump referred to it as a “foreign virus.” Do all viruses have a nationality? Would our government’s response have been different, or would the coronavirus be less threatening if it were an American virus? What kind of walls are being planned to keep out the illegal foreign viruses? Can a foreign virus get a visa to enter the United States? If that virus is here long enough, can it get a teeny, tiny green card? Does a second-generation virus in America get birthright citizenship? And by the way, nuclear bombs and other nuclear weapons were first developed in the United States. Should we refer to all nuclear weapons no matter where manufactured as “American nuclear weapons?”

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.” George Bernard Shaw.

Are you, like me, surprised by how well Vice President Mike Pence has performed at those news conferences? Are you then dismayed by being pleased by a performance that any competent politician—any competent person—ought to be able to do? Are you then shocked, and a little frightened, by how far the competency bar has fallen?

He scowled at the barometer: “Will it rain?”

None heard, with all that pattering on the pane.

John Frederick Nunes

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Sunrise Over Chichen Itza (concluded)

The Mayan ball game, we were told by our guide, often replaced warfare. Instead of battles, the contending societies used the game to settle disputes, with the losing team, or perhaps only the captain, sacrificed. We saw some of the results. We passed a wall of skulls to enter the ball court.

The plate or bowl on the chak mool statue’s tummy, we were told, held the remains of sacrifices, including human ones. The heart is usually mentioned. These sacrifices were to the gods, perhaps as part of regular rituals, such as on an equinox, or as a special pleading as, for example, for rain.

Human sacrifice. That always seems to get the attention, and perhaps the most frequent takeaway from Chichen Itza is that the Mayans sacrificed humans. Our guide, a Mayan, however, quickly and frequently maintained that it was only late in the history of Chichen Itza, which, for mysterious reasons, was abandoned in the 13th century B.C.E., that human sacrifice was instituted. He said that Mayans adopted the practices from the Toltecs, who had come from the north.

The modern reaction to human sacrifice frequently is: How barbaric! How primitive! Really? Are wars that kill and thousands better than a ball game for deciding disputes? Aren’t we moderns more barbaric in this regard?

The guide maintained that the chak mool sacrificees gave themselves up willingly. They believed in the religion that asked for their deaths and believed that they would end up in paradise as a result. The reaction again might be about the barbarism and superstition of the Mayan religion, but how many Christian or Jewish or Muslim martyrs have you been told about? Are these martyrs really so different from the willing Mayan sacrificees? And how much different is it when people volunteer for war or a “suicide” mission in a war? We “civilized” people regularly honor martyrs for various causes. Shouldn’t those Mayans be regarded as martyrs for their religion and society as we honor war heroes and Christian martyrs?

But as I wondered if we modern people were less superstitious or less barbaric than the Mayans, I also wondered about modern American religious claims. Proponents of religious “freedom” often contend that religious people must be exempt from various duties that society imposes on the general populace because following the duty conflicts with their religious principles. An employer, for example, may contend that he does not have to provide birth control coverage for his employees, even though the law mandates such coverage, because his religious principles ban birth control. If these assertions of religious rights become established, must we accept as religious freedom human sacrifice as part of a religion if the sacrificee is willing? Why not? (The United States Supreme Court in 1993 found unconstitutional a Florida ordinance, aimed at Santeria church, which banned religious animal sacrifice. Church of the Lukumi-Babalu Aye v. Hialeah.)

But as we looked at the Mayan sites, I wondered how much we really know about the Mayan culture. Knowledge has come from deciphering surviving hieroglyphs carved into stones, but much we might have known about the Mayans has been lost because of religion—not the Mayan religion, but the Christian one. Diego de Landa was the bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Yucatan is the sixteenth century. Much of what we know about the Mayan peoples, culture, religion, and writing comes from a book de Landa wrote about the Mayans in about 1566. The original is lost, but abridgements were found in the nineteenth century that were valuable in deciphering the Mayan hieroglyphs. But de Landa is widely seen as a villain today in Yucatan. He instituted an inquisition during which many Mayans were brutally tortured, and he destroyed much Mayan culture.

The Mayans had produced many books on paper made from bark. We don’t know the number of these Mayan codices, but Bishop de Landa built a pyre and burned every one he could find. He said, “We found many books with these letters, and because they contained nothing that was free from superstition and the devil’s trickery, we burnt them, which the Indians greatly lamented.” Today only three codices remain. They are in European museums. A fourth, the authenticity of which is in some dispute and is only a fragment, is in a Mexico City museum.

And with that fire ordered by de Landa, much of what we might know about the Mayans became ashes blowing in the wind. We often say that one person can make a difference. Bishop de Landa did make a difference. And he did it in the name of the “one true religion.” And the Mayans were regarded as barbaric primitives?!?

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Sunrise Over Chichen Itza

On a recent trip, we entered Chichen Itza, the most famous Mayan ruins in Yucatan, at 5 A.M. We were there to watch the sun rise over the famous pyramid and other structures. It was still dark in the east, but it was not completely dark. A full moon hung low in the west, giving a lovely glow to the setting. However, it was dim enough for our guide to hold a light pointing at the edge of the pyramid to mimic the sun’s rise at the equinox. The head of a serpent’s head is carved at the bottom of the structure’s steps, and the shadow cast by the guide’s light, and by the sun at the change of the seasons, resembles the lengthy body of a serpent culminating at the carved head. The Mayans knew the placement of the heavenly objects, and the pyramid was carefully constructed to commemorate the snake the Mayans revered.

The Snake. Photo by the BNP.

As the moon set, its light was replaced by a purplish tint to the eastern clouds. Then the rim of the sun pushed its way up from the surrounding jungle. I hadn’t liked getting up in the dark, but this magic was worth it.

Sunrise over the Pyramid. Photo by the BNP.

After the sun rose, our guide, who was necessary for the early morning entry, showed us around the main ruins. The spouse and I immediately recognized a change from our other visit forty years ago—visitors were no longer permitted to climb up the pyramid’s steps as we had once done. We had even walked through an opening and entered the inside of the pyramid, which is really the outer pyramid of a Russian doll nest of structure upon structure built over centuries. Unknown then was the fact that underneath the entire structure is a cenote, an underground freshwater lake.

Even back then we were amazed that clambering over the pyramid was permitted, thinking that thousands going up and down and entering it had to do it harm. We also felt a danger. Climbing up the hundred feet was hard enough, but when I got to the top and looked down, the heart beat faster and sphincters tightened. The steps are steep and narrow, less wide than the length of my foot. It looked more like going down a ten-story ladder than descending steps.  I paused and looked unavailingly to find another way down, but there were only the treacherous steps. I proceeded cautiously, sort of sideways, one slow step at a time, but then as I was crabbing my way downwards, I looked about me and saw teen-age Mexican girls, dressed as if for a date, scampering up and down in high heels. Even so, my deliberate, frightened pace did not increase.

The pyramid dominates the Chichen Itza landscape, but the ball court and chak mool (chakmool, chak-mool) are photographed nearly as much. The main ball court has two parallel walls with a viewing area above. A ring is attached high on the wall. The teams competed by passing a hard, heavy (nine pound) rubber ball through the ring without the use of implements or hands—a hip bump was used to propel the ball. The ring is high, above head height, and I could not imagine ever being able to score.

Chak mool is a statue of a reclining man leaning on his elbows with the head turned ninety degrees, I think always to the right. A plate or bowl is on the stomach of the man. And just as Chichen Itza has more than one ball court, it contains several chak mool statues.

Chak Mool. Photo by BNP.

The ball court and chak mool are linked together by human sacrifices.

(concluded 3/16)

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Snippets

Happy Birthday Doug was written and performed by Drew Droege. Mostly we hear the one side of guests’ conversations with Doug at his celebration in a Los Angeles wine bar. As an actor, Droege was superb in creating the different characters with his body and his intonations. His writing was equally as good. In a few sentences, I could grasp the  essence of each character was. But I was confused by one thing. The credits, of course, listed Droege, a director, a production stage manager, and an assistant stage manager. But the credits also told me there were eight producers and an associate producer. The set was a few tables and glasses, and the play was sixty minutes long. I wonder what the eight producers and an associate actually did. I just don’t understand show business.

 “We all indulged in wine and were soon astonished at our scintillating wit.” Daphne Phelps, A House in Sicily.

Have you wondered what Covid-18, or Covid-12, or especially Covid-7 is?

I increasingly see “survivor” with discussions of sexual assaults. Apparently, this is the politically correct term instead of “victim.” Why?

Spring comes again. I think that’s nice.

It is a season of which I’m fond.

Soon the beer bottles on the ice

Will disappear into the pond.

                   Richard Moore

          In my running days, I ran a lot of races, most often ten kilometers long and more in Central Park than anywhere else. I was running 10K races before I tried marathons. When I started doing those long races, I saw the 10K races as speed workouts for a marathon. My goal was to run the 10K in 6-minute miles, and on good days I accomplished that. 10K was basically one loop around Central Park, but it was a tough 10K because the road went up and down with a big hill on the north end of the park. My indelible memory of that hill came from a couple of winter races.  We ran counterclockwise, starting on the east side of the Park near the Metropolitan Museum.  The hill came fairly soon with the road climbing and turning to the left. I could not see far ahead and was always unsure how much more of the hill was left. As I was struggling during those races, I would smell a cigar up above and around a bend. Then he would appear running against our traffic. He was older than most of the racers, maybe mid-50s. He seemed thirty pounds overweight. This was less of a guess than it might have been because even though it was well below freezing, sometimes in the teens, he was running bare chested.  And he was smoking a big cigar with a grin as he ran.  I saw him at least during two races, and each time I had not yet crested the big hill.  Seeing him made me smile, and somehow made the struggle to the top easier.

          Joseph Chamberlin, the elderly leader of the Opposition in the British House of Commons, supposedly replied when asked how he kept his seeming youth: “Never walk if you can drive; and of two cigars always choose the longest and the strongest.” (He collapsed shortly afterwards, and his health declined rapidly.)

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Democracy Indexed and Flawed (concluded)

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, of course, the 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, not because we of today have determined it is the best policy for our governing structure. But even if almost all of us conclude that we should have some other way of allocating Senators, it won’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, dooms 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 will not give up their “equal” Senatorial representation.

There is another possibility for ameliorating the increasing 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 Bobby 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.

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Democracy Indexed and Flawed (continued)

          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. That is not so. 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 had us in the fully democratic category, for 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 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 increasingly make our country less democratic.

          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. (I previously explored the electoral college on April 10, 2019 on this blog. 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 therefore collectively have 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, 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.

(Concluded March 9, 2020)

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Democracy Indexed and Flawed

          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 that entity? 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 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 the governmental structure we have 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.

(Continued March 6)

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Snippets

I just read Sally Rooney’s first book, Conversations with Friends, and those who told me that it was well written and memorable were right. I thought about self-indulgent whining for days.

Most of my life I have read a lot, but I retain less of those books than I would like. I thought making a list might help me, and I now record every book I finish. I am reading Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie. When I read about the twenty-four-course-minimum banquets it seemed vaguely familiar, but all the rest of the novel seemed fresh. I was glancing over my completed book list yesterday, and I saw that I had read Shalimar the Clown four years ago. Is there a point to my reading so much if I retain so little?

          “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” Dorothy Parker.

          Americans who are following politics should admire how resilient we New Yorkers are. We have survived in succession the mayoralties of Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Bill De Blasio.

          “But politics never ends, because ambition never rests.” Richard Brookhiser, John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court.

President Trump had objections to the South Korean movie Parasite. I assume that with the subtitles his lips got too tired.

I wondered about the line in the program that said the singer was “voted a Downbeat Critics’ Poll Rising Star Vocalist for four consecutive years.” Is there a limit on how long a person is a rising star? Apparently four years of rising is not enough. But Thana Alexa who is that singer was marvelous in the performance I saw at the Birdland Jazz Club the other night as were Caroline Davis, Carolina Calvache, Endea Owens, and Alison Miller on sax, piano, bass, and drums. (But since this performance, I attended a legal conference concerning neuroscience, and I learned that one of the panelists was “recognized as a ‘Rising Star’ Super Lawyer in New York in 2011, 2012, and 2013 and as a Super Lawyer in New York since 2015.” Maybe that is how it should be: three years of Rising, a year off, and then full Super status.)

          I tell myself that I miss running, but I concede that the compulsive running that I did in my thirties and forties gave me aches and pains. I was constantly sore. Unsolicited advice told me to stretch—some said before I set out, others after the run’s completion–but I never did. I thought that an easy pace at the beginning of the run was the best way to loosen up. Over time the soreness, especially in my knees, was constant, and towards the end of my running phase, I realized that I was hanging on tightly to bannisters to descend stairs because of knee problems. I knew that it was time to think about quitting.  When I saw a doctor for a routine physical, he told me that I was running too much. He said, “It just depends at what age you want a knee replacement.” I gave up running a bit later. I had a knee replacement when I was seventy.

          “In a dream you are never eighty.” Anne Sexton.

Posted on by rjonakait

Food Markets and Sidewalks of Merida (concluded)

Not only food but real estate was also inexpensive in Yucatan. Our food tour guide Jose said that a nice, modern, two-bedroom, one bath apartment rented in Merida for about the equivalent of $315 a month. A few days later we met an American couple at the ruins of Uxmal. They had retired to Merida and bought what they described as a nice house with a pool on the outskirts of Merida for $135,000. (The two were gay and had moved from Galveston, Texas. One said that Merida was the most gay-friendly place he had been. Yucatan does not have gay marriage, but it recognizes single-sex marriages from other places.)

Merida is the increasingly sophisticated capital of Yucatan with a population of about one million people. All this seems to indicate that Merida should be a good place to set up a base, but it would not be for me. A desirable city must be good for walking. Many people did walk in Merida. Getting lost was not the issue; the city’s layout is easy to learn. But the sidewalks in central Merida are narrow. Two people could barely pass by each other. I could not linger and look in shop windows or study menus or look at architectural details of buildings because this meant disrupting the pedestrian flow. And nothing separated the sidewalks from the street. Small and large vans and buses zoomed and belched a matter of inches from my shoulders. I did not feel in especial danger, but all that noise and gas fumes left me jangly. I could get around on foot, but it was not an enjoyable activity. I don’t want to spend long times in a place where I don’t enjoy walking.

Merida sidewalk. Photo by the NBP

And the climate is not my cup of tequila either. For me, Merida and Yucatan in general were hot and humid. I could not walk more than a few steps without feeling sticky. As a brief respite from New York’s January, it was fine, but I would not relish that weather on a longer term basis.

Of course, there is the chance that if I regularly encountered the climate, I would adjust. Several Yucatecans said that the weather in January was cool for them. They were bundled up, and I even spotted people with handwarmers. When any found out I was from New York, the first reaction was to mention that it was cold up there. The food tour guide said he thought of living in Canada for a while to improve his English, but he almost immediately said that he was concerned about the weather. (He was also concerned about his ability to learn English in Canada, and not because of the French-speaking areas. He had considered working on a Canadian farm, but then he heard that it was likely that most of the farm workers would be Spanish speakers.) Jose would have preferred to come to the United States to improve his English, but he said that since Trump took office, it had become harder for Yucatecans to get even tourist visas to the U.S. 

This was one of the few political comments that we heard on our trip to Yucatan. I had asked the couple from the Netherlands whom we met on the food tour whether everyone there did, in fact, ice skate. They said yes, and the man smilingly said that speed skating was, of course, the most important all the sports. When I said something about short-track speed skating, he said that the Dutch were getting better at it. I asked if people skated on the canals to work, a practice that seems appealing to me. He laughed as if that had never existed but went on to say that with global warming, the canals often now don’t freeze. I asked whether the Dutch blame America for that, and he quickly said he blamed the whole world for not caring.

The most amusing comment with a political content, however, was said by a man outside of his souvenir shop on the way into the ruins at Tulum. His huckster voice said, “Come into my shop so I can rip you off. We need the money so we can pay for that wall.”