Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

I was walking from the pickup counter to my car with a medium-sized, chocolate-and-vanilla, soft-serve twist cone. A thirteen-year-old boy asked, “Is that good?” “Delicious,” was my response. “This is what I usually get.” He, proudly it seemed, said that he was from Missouri and had never had one. I asked where he was from and he repeated, “Missouri.” I said, “No. Where in Missouri?” “Jeff” came the response from him and his nine-year-old brother. My blank looked elicited from their mother, “Jefferson City.” After the briefest pause the somewhat condescending, “The state capital of Missouri.” After an inquiry, the family said they had relatives in New Jersey and had decided to meet in the Poconos, which is close to the Garden State but not to Jeff. It was not my place to question vacation choices. I went to my car and licked the satisfying twist cone driving to my Poconos home. I decided that if they did not have vanilla-and-chocolate twist cones in Missouri, that was another reason not to live there.

I did not look forward to the history book group’s selection of Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (2018) by Stephen R. Platt. I expected a dry, confusing book, but Platt’s writing was so good that “page turner” came to mind. The book was more about the Chinese British background to the 1839-40 Opium War than about the war itself. I am not sure how much I will retain, but I learned a lot. For example, I had not known that Formosa, now Taiwan, was controlled by the Dutch in the 1660s. China succeed in driving away coastal pirates of that era who then settled in Formosa. After China built up its naval forces, it defeated the pirate armada, and Taiwan was incorporated into the Chinese empire.

Opium was originally an upper-class indulgence in China. Only a small fraction of the country used the drug, and few were debilitated by it. Most of the drug was imported from British India where the opium poppy grew well. The demand for opium increased when it was learned that it could be mixed with tobacco and smoked and not just eaten. The practice started in Java. The Dutch brought opium smoking to Taiwan. From there it spread to mainland China. Smoking, however, used more opium than eating it, and British profits soared.

Not surprisingly, the Brits were incensed when the Chinese official Lin Zexu sought to suppress opium use in the nineteenth century by confiscating the British opium. (Lin Zexu is a hero in Chinese textbooks. His birthday is celebrated in Taiwan, and a statue of him stands in New York City’s Chinatown with the inscription “PIONEER IN THE WAR AGAINST DRUGS.”) Britain then waged a successful war against China to keep open its profitable opium trade. A result was that the opium trade from India to China skyrocketed.

Since silver was the medium of exchange for opium, Chinese silver was draining out of the country. China responded by increasing its domestic production of the poppy, and cheap opium was available by the 1870s. Its use spread to all classes. This was not a happy-ending story with salutary lessons.

However, I was also struck by another fact in the narration. Stephen Platt reported that the Chinese during this time sentenced to death a person for “extreme indecorum.” Although I would not bring back that strict penalty, I would be in favor of that punishing that crime today…but only if I could administer it.

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To Kayfabe or Not to Kayfabe

Hulk Hogan’s death and comments about his cultural significance have inspired me to re-post two previous entries about the connections between professional wrestling and our politics and society. This is the second one. It first appeared on ajsdad.blog on April 22, 2024.

News over the last month has me wondering again about how people in important positions with at least a modicum of intelligence continue to maintain that the 2020 election was stolen. Some do so because they are not concerned with facts. John Eastman, one of Trump’s lawyers, comes to mind. A judge recently ordered the disbarment of John Eastman because, the judge wrote, Eastman, in representing Trump, made “false statements about the 2020 election without conducting any meaningful investigation or verification of the information he was relying upon.” (Emphasis added.) In short, he didn’t seem to care whether his statements were true or false.

Others, whether lawyers or not, do a lawyerly dance. (A bad metaphor; I have seen lawyers dance, and seldom is it a pleasing sight.) For example, news reports state that interviews for positions with the Republican National Committee have included the question: Was the 2020 presidential election stolen? Many have given an answer that does not answer the question by saying that there had been irregularities in that election that had created “cause for concern.” No evidence cited.

Recently that guy whom you would not recognize if you brushed shoulders with him on the street, Mike Johnson (reminder: He is Speaker of the House), met with Trump and issued vague statements about “election integrity.” This was said not with irony even though Johnson tried to undercut election integrity in 2020 by failing to vote to certify the vote, and Trump is the chief underminer of election integrity in our history. No facts were presented to indicate that we have a problem with our elections.

And then there are those who, when it suits them, maintain that they did not really believe their own falsehoods. Ronna McDaniel, after she resigned as co-chair of the Republican National Committee (as an unacknowledged act of “wokeism,” the RNC has both a male and female co-chair), was signed as a political commentator by NBC. A backlash ensued because throughout November and December 2020, McDaniel supported former President Trump’s efforts to throw out the election results. At one point she even called Michigan election officials to ask them to delay certifying the state’s results. As late as 2023 McDaniel said that Biden had not “won it fair.” Now, however, she smiles and says that she was only kidding and indicates that she never believed the election theft claims. “When you’re the R.N.C. chair, you kind of take one for the whole team, right?” Apparently, you “take one for the team” even when the team is trying to overthrow a democratic election.

A common thread through all of this is that Trump supporters feel that they can create their own “reality” (remember “alternative facts”?). Without any sense of irony, they seem to think that they can change “reality” when a such a change suits them. In considering this phenomenon, I did what any deep-thinking political scientist would do: I looked for guidance from pro-wrestling.

Shortly after Trump became president, I wrote that his rallies bore a strong resemblance to the “promos” of pro wrestlers. (See blog post of January 26, 2017, “Shut Up, You Elites.”) In that post I concentrated on the performances of Donald Trump. A wrestling fan since childhood, he sponsored two of the early WrestleManias.

Trump, however, has been more than a fan of pro-wrestling; he was featured in one of the WWE storylines. I don’t remember all the ins and outs of this “drama,” but as I recall, Vince McMahon, then the head of the WWE, backed one wrestler and Trump another. Either Trump or McMahon would have his head shaved depending upon which wrestler lost. The buildup went on for weeks or maybe even months, but, of course, no one could really believe that Trump was going to become bald to further wrestling ratings. The mere thought of it, however, whipped up the crowd, and in the end, Trump helped shave McMahon’s noggin.

The ties between Trump and McMahon are strong. Vince’s wife Linda McMahon donated $7 million to pro-Trump super PACs in 2016 making her one of the largest Republican donors. Trump responded by appointing her Administrator of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term, where she is said to have performed credibly. Now she is Secretary of Education, and I will restrain myself from saying anything further about that. The ties are so close that Abraham Riesman in his recent book RingMaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America reports that Vince McMahon may be Trump’s closest friend. McMahon “is said to be one of the only people whose call Trump takes in private, forcing his retinue to leave the room so the two old chums can chat in confidence.” It comes as no surprise that Trump is a member of WWE Hall of Fame, inducted in 2013.

The recent bits of news, however, made me think not just about the possible connections between Trump’s rally performances and pro-wrestling, but also about the connections between wrestling fans and Trump’s supporters. My cursory internet research found no data about the percentage of Trumpistas who are also devotees of the WWE or similar organizations. I did, however, come across an article by David S. Moon, a Senior Lecturer at the UK’s University of Bath entitled “Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?” Political Studies Review, Volume 20, pp. 47-61 (2020). I am seldom astonished by anything in the academic world, but I was somewhat surprised to learn that there is an academic field of professional wrestling studies, with its own association and journal. However, what most interested me about Moon’s article was what it set out to explore: “How to explain a cynical American electorate’s engagement with and emotional investment in the campaign of such an obvious political fraudster.”

The exploration starts with the historical premise of pro-wrestling captured by the term kayfabe. Abraham Riesman explains: “Kayfabe (rhymes with ‘Hey, babe’) is a term of unclear linguistic origin. It emerged from the worlds of carnivals in the 1800s and, in its original definition, simply denoted the public-facing fictions of professional wrestling. . . . It referred to the business’s central conceit: that it was a legitimate, unscripted athletic competition.” (My understanding is that entire matches are not necessarily scripted but only the beginnings and ends with the middle improvised by the wrestlers.) Reisman further explains that a work was anything that was scripted (kayfabe), and a shoot was anything that was real.

The performers were expected to maintain their characters or storylines even outside the arena. They were “to stay in kayfabe” or “to kayfabe.” If a wrestler was billed as Native American, he couldn’t be known to be Italian. (The real name of Chief Jay Strongbow was Luke Joseph Scarpa.) If two wrestlers were supposed enemies, they could not be seen drinking together in off hours. In a famous incident, the fierce “enemies” “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan (James Edward Duggan, Jr.) and the Iron Sheik (Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri), broke kayfabe when they were caught driving together under the influence of drugs and booze. The WWE fired them not for the drugs and booze but for breaking kayfabe.

Of course, never in the history of wrestling did all the fans believe that the matches were genuine contests. The industry divided its fans into marks who believed wrestling was real and smarts who accepted it was fiction. No one knew how big each category was, but the assumption was that the majority were marks. That may never have been true, but Riesman reports “that wrestlers believed that fans believed it.” (Riesman’s emphasis.) Thus, the pro-wrestling industry thought that breaking kayfabe would undermine the industry.

The WWE itself, however, broke kayfabe. Vince and Linda McMahon did it to avoid regulation. When pretending to be an authentic sporting event, pro-wrestling came under the jurisdiction of state athletic commissions, but the WWE wanted to avoid the health regulations and other measures that were mandated for athletes. The McMahons publicly acknowledged kayfabe, and pro-wrestling now became “sports entertainment.”

The end of the pretense, however, was not the end of pro-wrestling as once feared. It goes suplexing along. Both Moon and Riesman conclude that kayfabe still exists, but in a new form. Moon states, “The term kayfabe has taken on a different meaning. It now describes a new form of audience engagement that involves in the first instance, a willing suspension of disbelief with which performers, promoters and the audience all ‘keep kayfabe’.”  

Might not this also describe much of our modern politics? Surely neither Trump nor his supporters can believe all the things he says — some of which is ignorant blathering and some of which is blatant lying. Some of his supporters now even acknowledge that they did not believe what they said when they echoed Trump. But Trump and his supporters keep kayfabe. They all suspend disbelief in order to act as if what is being said is an authentic reflection of the world. But what is the point to this? In wrestling it is to entertain and be entertained, but while politics may provide entertainment, it is far more serious than that.

Riesman also writes that wrestling fans today know it is fiction, but now there is a new status, which the author calls neokayfabe. Wrestling is a lie, yes, but the fans now believe that “the lie encodes a deeper truth, discernible to those few who know how to look beyond what’s in front of them. To these fans adept in reading the signs, another narrative emerges, and another beyond that. Suddenly, the pleasure of watching a match has less to do with who wins than with the excitement of decoding it.” The smarts now are different. In the past they understood the scripted nature of what they saw, but now smarts want to be insiders, learning the rules of the game, getting smart to how the business works. The audience tries to guess the outcome not from who is the better wrestler but from the promulgated story lines and from guesses or knowledge about who is favored and disfavored by the wrestling bosses and others who create the story lines.

It is a small jump from this to Trump’s politics. Many are convinced that what is said and done on the political surface is not real. It needs to be decoded. Other forces control. Call those forces the “deep state” or “conspirators in our law enforcement and justice system” or “communists” who promulgate environmental regulations. Of course, these political smarts don’t take Trump at his word—who could?—but you can understand the world if Trump’s pronouncements are decoded. It becomes a visceral activity, not a cerebral one. Wrestling is in essence a conspiracy, and so is politics, or at least Trumpian politics.

I thought these insights explained a lot about Trump supporters. They did not believe the fraudster but were operating in a world of neokayfabe where the surface hid the true meanings. However, as I thought more, I doubted my analysis. It butted up against data, information, facts. For example, polls indicate that most Republicans maintain that Trump did not try to undermine the election. Half say that he did not take top secret and classified documents from the White House. My notion was that Trump supporters were, in wrestling terms, smarts, but polling indicates many are not. Perhaps most undercutting my neokayfabe approach is that polls show that the percentage of diehard Trump supporters who believe that the 2020 election was fraudulent and stolen is increasing. In the wrestling world, fans go from marks to smarts, but in the political world, it has been the opposite.

 Of course, it is possible that Trumpistas stay in kayfabe even when responding to a pollster; that is, they don’t believe the election was stolen but will maintain the fiction when asked. But now I feel that I have entered the world of neokayfabe on top of neokayabe. Shouldn’t I take them at their word or are these many, many people also fraudsters? I feel like a cartoon character whose head is about to explode.

It is a strange world where one can make more sense of pro-wrestling than of aspects of the political world.

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Shut Up, You Elites

Hulk Hogan’s death and comments about his cultural significance have inspired me to re-post some previous entries about the connections between professional wrestling and our politics and society. Today’s thoughts originally appeared on ajsdad.blog, July 2017.

His hair is distinctive, one could say impossible, but there it is. A microphone is only a few inches from his lips, but he still leans into it. He does not really yell into the mike, but the voice is certainly not conversational. His words can be adamant; they can be bullying. He denounces enemies, enemies that stand in the way of greatness. He talks about the alliances he has entered or created and how strong they are. He makes promises about how he will perform, performances that he guarantees will be great. There is nothing nuanced in what he says; there are no ambiguities. It is a world of black and white; of good and bad; of greatness or failure. There is not a single shade of gray.

He pauses often, seemingly waiting for his audience to catch up. The audience reacts visibly and audibly. Each denunciation, each bragging claim elicits a hoot and a holler. He encourages the audience to mock his opponents, and the crowd often responds with a sing-song chant. This is an interactive, audience-participation performance. The speaker supplies the initial energy, but he soaks up energy as the frenzied crowd reacts to him.

The audience doesn’t really care about the specifics of his promises. They know that many can’t be kept. Indeed, they won’t be surprised if contradictory promises are made in a week or a month or that the alliances announced today are changed tomorrow or that the enemy previously castigated in absolute terms is now a dear friend with whom he has been secretly colluding. The audience is there not for truth, but for an attitude, and he supplies and feeds that attitude.

This audience seems bound together by something more than what most audiences have. They know that others, “nice” people, “successful” people, “elite” people, not only do not share their enthusiasm, those others, this group knows, think there is something wrong, ludicrous, maybe even shameful or dangerous and low class in what this audience feels. Here, however, together with this crowd and this performer who understands their visceral reactions, each can indulge the passions they all enjoy, and this brings them closer together.

Perhaps this is a Trump rally, but what I was trying to describe is pro wrestling. Since the rise of Trumpism, I have thought that those who are mystified by the appeal of Donald Trump might learn something by trying to understand the allure of professional wrestling.

The theatrics of professional wrestling remain strikingly similar to what they were in my childhood of Verne Gagne with his sleeper hold and his between bout pitches for a nutritional supplement. There were good guys (Wilbur Snyder, for example) and bad guys (definitely Dick the Bruiser) in a simulated reality of pain, danger, and improbable heroics. The business, however, has changed in some important ways.

What I watched growing up was largely regional. Different parts of the country had different wrestling companies. As a friend once said about a wrestler, “He was the world heavyweight champion of the greater Cleveland area.” The spectacle might have been similar everywhere, but the performers changed with the territory.

Vince McMahon of what is now the WWE (World, or maybe Worldwide, Wrestling Entertainment) changed that. His wrestling organization, started in the Northeast by his father, did not respect others’ territories. He drove many regional operations out of business or bought them out as they started to fail. WWE now dominates the business, and wrestling fans today all see pretty much the same product. The rise of cable television, the Internet, and other media has given more choice for news and entertainment and has fragmented popular culture. We don’t share as much in common as we once did.

Professional wrestling, with its nationalization, has gone in the opposite direction. The odds are overwhelming that its fans all know, and probably have opinions about, Kevin Owens, The Undertaker, the New Day, and Triple H. Wrestling is one of the few popular forces that is producing an increasingly unified cultural base, but a base that is out of sight to the rest of America.

The wrestling business has also changed because, while it is not trumpeted, it is not now a secret that the contests are not real sporting events. Back in the day, some fans may have thought that the spectacle was a legitimate sport, but today it is acknowledged that wrestling is “sports entertainment.” All but the most naïve of wrestling fans know that while the wrestlers can be athletic and do take risks, the violence is simulated, and the outcomes follow predetermined story lines. Wrestling’s popularity has fluctuated through the years, but its popularity does not seem to have been harmed because those involved no longer steadfastly maintain that it is “real.” Instead, it has always been a form of reality TV; something that pretends to be real.

The allure of pro wrestling to the outsider is hard to fathom, but it must have something to do with the power of simulated reality, violence, the simplicity of good and evil, outrageous characters, and the continuing tensions of soap opera. As epic poems, sagas, novels and movies show, we want, maybe need, superheroes and supervillains. At least some of the time, we don’t want nuance, caveats, and tough choices. During the wrestling shows, we have those heroes and villains and only easy choices. Who and what is good or bad is crystal clear.

It is not my point and beyond my abilities to analyze the allure of wrestling, and anyway, the appeal may largely be visceral and, thus, cannot be satisfactorily explained to those who don’t feel it. What should be recognized is that the spectacle has had an enduring appeal, and if I am right, that Trump at a rally performs much like a pro wrestler talking to the audience, and that audience responds much as a wrestling crowd does. It may make sense for those who can’t grasp Tumpism to try to grasp pro wrestling.

When Trump was gaining traction in the political arena, this wrestling fan thought back to one of the WWE storylines. It featured Donald Trump. Oh, yes, Trump has been a part of pro wrestling for quite some time. As I recall, Vince McMahon backed one wrestler and Trump another, and Trump and McMahon agreed to have his head shaved depending upon which wrestler lost some big event. This billionaire-baiting went on for weeks or maybe even months, providing us with the recently reprised and altered video of Trump “taking down” Vince McMahon in a moment of made-up macho madness. But of course, no one could really believe that Trump was going to appear bald to further wrestling ratings. The mere thought of it, however, whipped up the crowd. Politicos have studied Trump’s business records and pop culture critics have talked about The Apprentice, but pundits mystified about his appeal should also have been studying Trump on Monday Night Raw and then watching more of the wrestling shows.

Perhaps roots of Trump can be found in Huey Long and William Jennings Bryan, but we should also consider Gorgeous George. Gorgeous George was–perhaps next to Milton Berle–early television’s biggest star. Professional wrestling has always presented itself as what is now called reality TV, and GG was America’s first huge reality TV star. Gorgeous George (George Raymond Wagner), often shortened by TV announcers to Gorgeous or Georgie, was in wrestling parlance a “heel,” a bad guy. (Good guys are “babyfaces” or just “faces.”) But he broke stereotypes. In what was supposedly a testosterone-fueled world, his character displayed effeminacy. Flunkies would precede him up the arena’s aisles spraying perfume in his path. He entered the ring wearing elaborate robes no “man” would have been caught in—festooned with ostrich feathers, for example. No one but his valet was allowed to touch his robe, and the referee in a Chaplinesque routine would be repeatedly blocked from doing so. And he had that hair. It was some sort of yellow or straw color never seen in nature, and it was curled and primped in ways that only permanents and feminine implements could produce. His hair was secured with what otherwise would have been called bobby pins; his were labeled Georgie pins. Before a match, he would elaborately remove and toss them to the crowd. The hair was central to the character. The storylines often said that he would not fight someone unless the opponent contracted not to touch his hair. And late in his career, as other wrestlers were eclipsing him, he fought a match where the loser would have his locks sheared. Gorgeous lost the match and his hair.

There is a line leading from Gorgeous George to Trump. This path meanders with stops for Muhammed Ali and James Brown, both reportedly fans of Gorgeous. It goes through Ric Flair, William Regal, and other wrestlers. But although the line goes to him, Trump in some ways has flipped (piledriven?) the Gorgeous George persona on its head. Gorgeous played the heel to fill the arenas with those who came to jeer him. Trump, too, acts the heel, but not to the faithful in front of him. Trump unites with the audience, and together they act as the heel to all who are not Trump’s fans or are, like Vince McMahon, Trump’s real or imagined nemeses. It provided pleasure akin to that at a wrestling spectacle when he would say–and the crowd would join in denouncing–little Marco, that nasty woman, the lying press. The fantasy of pro wrestling, however, becomes dangerously real when Trump wants the audience to join him in jeering at and taking down legitimate news media. Wrestling stars in the ring have a made up and scripted role, but Trump seems not to realize the President of the United States is not a fictional character.

Gorgeous entered the arena to work and work up the audience. When the crowd frenziedly taunted him, he would shout back, “Shut up, you peasants.” The crowd would roar with delight. Trump’s has shifted the heel’s performance. His audience roars because Trump and his audience together seem to shout to all those that are not enthralled by him, “Shut up, you elites.”

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Snippets

The reports from Texas repeatedly said that it was a girls’ Christian camp. Would the flooding tragedy have been different if it had been a boys’ camp? Or if it had been a Girl Scout camp? Or an unaffiliated camp?

Do the Christian parents who sent their girls to the camp view God differently now?

 Trump was surprised that the President of Liberia spoke English so well. He would no doubt also be surprised that English is an official language of over twenty African countries, including Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

I have been giving inspirational talks to youth groups, and I always tell them not to let others tell you what you can do. I tell them to consider Beethoven. People told him that he could not be a composer because he was deaf. But did he listen?

What is Beethoven doing now? Decomposing.

In his book A Good American Family: The Red Scare and My Father David Maraniss reports that Arthur Miller, who was part of David’s father’s college circle, thought that Americans tended to blame themselves and not the system. Thus, the country had no revolutionary movement even during the Depression. Even if that was true then, it is at best only partially true today. People still don’t blame the system if they are not thriving, but they don’t blame themselves. They blame the “other”—Blacks, browns, immigrants, Jews.

I know that “conservative principles” is an oxymoron. Instead, there is one conservative principle. That is to reduce taxes on the wealthy. To make that palatable the conservatives might also have to reduce taxes on the non-rich, but the goal is to reduce taxes on the rich. Conservatives may talk about other goals. For example, when they are not in power, they are concerned about the deficit and debt. But when given a choice about reducing the debt and reducing taxes on the rich, they always pick the latter. Conservatives also denounce government interference in private and business affairs, but when Trump does it, no conservative seems to point out Trump is acting against basic conservative principles. Although there are many examples, I thought this again when Trump suggested that he would block the construction of a new football stadium if the Washington football team did not change its name back to the Redskins. Apparently the private corporation should not make this decision. The president should.

Perhaps I am wrong about there being only one conservative principle. In Trump’s first term, he was clearly motivated to oppose any policy or initiative if it had been adopted by Obama. Now Trump-led conservatives are opposed to anything that looks like what they think is DEI.

Perhaps, you think, they have another principle: opposition to antisemitism. Although under the banner of antisemitism, Trump is trying to coerce or perhaps destroy various institutions, you should doubt whether antisemitism is the principle driving Trump’s actions. Recently during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing, Rep. Mark Takano asked Education Secretary Linda McMahon whether refusing to hire a Holocaust denier at a university like Harvard would constitute an impermissible ideological litmus test. McMahon deflected by stating that “there should be diversity of viewpoints relative to teachings and opinions on campuses.” The administration’s preferred definition of antisemitism is one promulgated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The IHRA gives examples of contemporary antisemitism. The third example: “Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).” The fourth example: “Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.” So the Trump administration is against antisemitism, but favors “viewpoint diversity.” Apparently hiring the antisemite is ok because it will further viewpoint diversity. On the other hand, the real principle is that Trump wants to control as many elite institutions as he can.

“Times have changed and times are strange/Here I come, but I ain’t the same/Mama, I’m coming home. . . .” R.I.P. Ozzy.

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Cup or Cone

The spouse and I have been together for so long because we are in sync on many of life’s important issues. For example, we agree that in an ice cream shop you should always buy ice cream in a cone and not a cup. (We also agree that you should not even go into a place called a “shoppe.”)

When I ruminate on an ice cream cone, my thoughts naturally turn to the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. Don’t yours? Some may know of this event from the movie Meet Me in St. Louis. That classical musical gave us some standards including “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis,” “The Boy Next Door,” and the melancholy, somewhat disturbing holiday song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The movie is set – don’t be surprised if you haven’t seen it – in St. Louis mostly during the 1903 Christmas season. The planning for next summer’s World’s Fair is underway.

Of course, all musicals are fantasies on some level but Meet Me even more so. The family at the core of the movie learns that the father may have to relocate them all to New York City. I can grasp that the family is upset that it might miss the fair, especially as everyone is abuzz with excitement about it. However, it is hard for me — a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker — to suspend my disbelief so much as to accept that the family would rather stay in St. Louis than move to New York, but, nevertheless, that is the plot. Of course, they stay along the Mississippi. The movie’s last scene is in the summer of 1904 with the cheerful family at the brightly lit World’s Fair. However, that scene is incomplete since no one, as far as I can remember, is holding an ice cream cone.

(Meet Me in St. Louis not only gave us some treasured musical standards, it also in essence gave us Liza. During the filming, its director, Vincente Minnelli, met the movie’s star, Judy Garland. The two would later produce Liza Minnelli. I won’t digress to the time I saw — along with Jackie Kennedy Onassis — Liza Minelli in concert.)

Perhaps when you think of the St. Louis World’s Fair, in addition to ice cream cones you think of Thomas Jefferson and early American history. That Fair was officially the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. It commemorated the centennial of President Jefferson’s purchase from France of what is now the heartland of the United States. Of course, since the Louisiana Purchase occurred in 1803, the centennial celebration should have been before 1904. However, while St. Louis, the Gateway to the West, may have had many go-getters, apparently not all participating in the fair could get going in time for the one-hundred-year mark, and the Exposition was held a year late. St. Louis might not often acknowledge taking inspiration from its rival city, but it did seem to be following Chicago’s calendar. The World’s Columbian Exposition also known as the Chicago World’s Fair commemorated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the new world. However, it was held in 1893, also a year late, as all of us who remember our grade school poetry know.

With the Louisiana Purchase, the size of the United States instantly doubled. That territory encompasses all of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Dakota and portions of nine other states. Many of these places form our conservative heartland, and I wonder, as I am sure you do, too, if the people there reflect on the Louisiana Purchase, to which they are indebted.

France inhabited or held by occupation very little of the land it sold. Governing control of the area was not turned over to the U.S. because France did not in fact govern it. Instead, as a matter of international law — which really meant European law — the Purchase gave America the right to inhabit and control the land and to exclude foreign — meaning European — countries from it. Of course, indigenous Americans were there, but they did not participate in the deal, and their rights were disregarded. Perhaps the Purchase should be seen as a green light (ok, that is anachronistic, so give me something better) for American imperialism.

The Louisiana Purchase provoked one of the country’s first constitutional conflicts. Indeed, Jefferson himself doubted its constitutionality. Nothing in the Constitution authorized the kind of transaction Jefferson made. Those who truly believe that our Constitution sets out a government limited to enumerated powers, as Jefferson supposedly did, have to doubt the Purchase’s legality. As with many Constitutional disputes in our history, however, hypocrisy abounded. Those around Jefferson who believed in a limited government supported the deal while the Federalists, who were the big government folk, opposed it. Apparently, Jefferson was convinced that since nothing in the Constitution prohibited the purchase, it could go forward. That’s a long way, Tom, from maintaining that the government only could exercise powers enumerated in the document.

Something else should be noted. The Purchase occurred only fifteen years after the Constitution was ratified, and the meaning of the document was already unclear even to many who had been active in drafting and adopting it. When they went looking for the original meaning of the Constitution, they could not agree on what it was. Yet today, more than eleven score years later, some with wondrous certitude and amazing hubris will tell us what was originally meant by the fundamental charter.

The Supreme Court these days will resolve constitutional issues much as Jefferson did in 1803. Jefferson accepted the interpretation that allowed him to do what he wanted to do anyway. Similarly, the current conservative members of the Supreme Court will “reason” to a result that fits their philosophy and politics. The desired result drove Jefferson’s reasoning, as it does for a majority of the Supreme Court today.

There is also an irony in the fact that America did not have the money to pay France for the Louisiana Purchase. The United States borrowed the funds from Great Britain, which exacted a hefty 6% interest fee. In other words, the Louisiana Purchase, of suspect constitutionality, depended on deficit financing. Even so, many in today’s Congress from the states whose lands were obtained in the Purchase have supported a balanced budget amendment. I wonder if they ever pause to reflect on the fact that if such a provision had originally been in the Constitution, they might have had to do their grandstanding in French (or some other language), assuming that it were even allowed in whatever country Iowa and Nebraska would now be part of.

So. While some might think of the movie Meet Me in St. Louis when they think of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Others might reflect on the Louisiana Purchase, which the Fair commemorated. Nevertheless, the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 really should be honored for it its role in ice cream history, which is what I’ve been wanting to get to all along.

There may have been something like ice cream cones before 1904, but the Fair made them an American icon. There are competing versions about which vendor started using cones for ice cream at the Fair. (Origin stories are often disputed except by conservative Supreme Court judges who know with precision the original meanings of constitutional provisions.) But thousands upon thousands of ice cream cones were sold in St. Louis that summer. Soon they were appearing everywhere in the United States and new, ingenious machines were made and perfected in the United States for the fabrication of cones. We may say something is “as American as apple pie,” but saying something is “as American as an ice cream cone” would be even more accurate. And that stems from that St. Louis World’s Fair.

In spite of what Heywood Broun said (“I doubt whether the world holds for any one a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream.”), I don’t remember my first taste of ice cream. I do know that I have enjoyed it in many ways. It has given me pleasure on top of a brownie or a slice of cherry pie or chocolate cake or peach cobbler. (The spouse makes a great peach cobbler.) I have loved ice cream in the eponymous ice cream sandwich. I have enjoyed it covered with chocolate or salty caramel sauce or Kahlua. It has been great with strawberries in season and in a banana split. Even though it is stupid, I have had admiration for it in a Baked Alaska. I have enjoyed it straight out of the carton with the light from an open freezer door. (A sage person has said, Never ask a woman who is eating ice cream from a carton how her day was.) I have enjoyed it in many flavors and in soft-serve and hard versions.

And, yes, I have enjoyed ice cream simply spooned out of a bowl. But if you want that, use a real bowl and a real spoon. Ice cream from a disposable cup with a little plastic spoon or worse, one of those wooden paddles, is not the same thing. (Yes, I have had many Dixie Cup ice creams, but they came from convenience stores where an ice cream cone was not an option.) And at home, the bowl and spoon can be washed and used again unlike disposable cups from an ice cream shop. A cone does not contribute to landfill problems. If you want to spoon ice cream into your mouth, buy some, go home, and enjoy it out of a real bowl.

You should buy an ice cream cone when you can, not only because it is the American way (Do Russians stand around the Kremlin with a cone?), but also for the sensory experience. Licking ice cream from a cone is a different sensual pleasure from the other ways to enjoy it, and when a cone is available, take the opportunity. The ice cream cone, not that prissy cardboard cup and plastic spoon, is not only the American way, it affords pleasure in a way other servings of ice cream do not.

I can already imagine the rejoinder. I don’t buy an ice cream cone for my kid because I don’t want my dear little Mackenzie or Madison to experience that feeling when a scoop falls off and splats on the pavement. A kid who has not experienced a skinned knee has not truly experienced childhood. A child who has not suffered the tragedy of melting ice cream on the sidewalk is not ready for adulthood. Your snowflake will suffer worse than an ice cream cone mishap in life. Train them now.

So. Buy yourself an ice cream cone. Buy your kids ice cream cones. Be an American. We all scream for ice cream! Enjoy all that life offers.

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Presidential Rock

No president has performed heavy metal or even any good rock. Or rap. We have had some insipid piano playing, some mediocre saxophone, and a good version of Amazing Grace. But no real rock ‘n’ roll. Or rap. And I believe the country would be better if the president rocked. Or rapped. However, after extensive, made-up research, I have found that many presidents did make music. Some examples:

Of course, the hits began with George Washington and his surprising novelty, Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor in the Dentures Overnight?

This was followed by Thomas Jefferson’s unclassifiable, but revealing, song that was huge in the South, Love in Chains. The third president had a follow-up success in the North, Set My Love Free?  

It was Dolley Madison who had a hit that referred to her husband’s constitutional amendment career with a refrain still resonating today: “Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy Mad, Are those rights just a fad?”

Andrew Jackson sang now forgotten plaintive Appalachian songs accompanying himself on the acoustic dulcimer.

Then there was Millard Fillmore.  No one knew who he was, so no one knew if he sang anything.

Abraham Lincoln accompanied Mary Todd Lincoln on the concertina as she sang, Re-United. Lincoln himself on the late-night tavern circuit tried to set With Malice Toward None to music, but, of course, he never finished it.

Rutherford B. Hayes performed with disastrous consequences still felt today, Reconstruction is for Suckas.

The insomniac William McKinley sang with some success his Mr. Tariffing Man. It was only after the full effects of Smoot-Hawley were seen in the Depression that the lyrics were expanded to include: “that evenings empire has returned into sand/Vanished from my hand/Left me blindly here to stand. . . .”

William Taft, who could not lie, was too obvious when he sang,”I like big butts.” The country back then, however, apparently did not.

Woodrow Wilson seemed convincing when in 1916 he sang “War! What is it good for?” And then he led us into war.

Warren Harding sang old family “darky” songs that would be considered offensive by many today but would be banned by others as DEI.

Calvin Coolidge did not sing but he was a trained mime. He did not get enough recognition for his Man Walking Backwards Against Heavy Wind although he was overpraised for miming handcuffing the Boston Police strikers.

Not surprisingly, FDR could not rock. His only memorable song was The Wheels on the Chair Go ‘Round and ‘Round.

Eisenhower avoided music. He thought that the public would demand from him martial tunes, which he hated.

Kennedy largely spared us those Irish jigs where four or eight bars are endlessly repeated until the fiddler gets tired and stops.

Not many people know that W wrote many lyrics, but they were so filled with malapropisms that no one could understand them.

And now under Trump we have endlessly repeated I Am Just a Fool (in Love) ((with Myself.))

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The Texas Tragedy

Does Trump bear responsibility for deaths in the Texas floods? Do Elon and Doge? They recklessly slashed government, including the National Weather Service. (Funny how Musk was a genius when upending departments, but now, according to Trump, he is off the rails. Mature people don’t change that radically in only a few months.) We do know that the NWS was understaffed in Texas, but we can’t know how results would have been different if positions had not been vacant.

The harm from Trump policies will often be unknowable. How much will farmers and others be hurt by cuts to weather forecasting? We can’t really know.

Trump, Musk, and Kennedy, Jr., have decimated the National Institutes of Health. We can assume discoveries will not be made that would have been made without the chainsaw, but we don’t know what those discoveries would have been.

Trump is transforming FEMA. Will recoveries from natural disasters be…well, more disastrous? That may be almost impossible to measure.

Sometimes we might be able to assess damage. How have telephone wait times increased after cuts to the IRS? But often the measurable harm will not be known for a while. IRS revenue collection may drop but that will take time to learn. Sometimes the harm will happen only after the Trump presidency ends (and IT WILL END). We won’t know about deaths or illnesses from the vaccine and other health policies of the HHS. Already consequential, the full effects of the decimation of USAID will not be known for a long time.

Sometimes the consequences will be hidden from us. Tariffs are akin to a sales tax, but unlike the sales tax, the consumer will not see the explicit cost of tariffs at checkout. We will only see the new list price of the product. And we won’t see some business practices that tariffs encourage. For example: A friend runs an upscale sportswear company. During Trump’s first term, he made shirts in China for the American market. Trump instituted a fifteen percent duty on such goods. The retailer for the friend’s product had been charging $145 for each shirt. A fifteen percent increase would have been $167. The retailer, however, decided to use the tariff to raise the price to $185. That extra $18 is also a consequence of the tariffs, but its cause is invisible to the consumer.

Sometimes trickery is used for dampening negative consequences. So, for example, Trump’s recent legislation is expected to remove many people from Medicaid. Rural hospitals that depend on Medicaid are expected to close, bringing suffering to many small communities. If the cuts to Medicaid are a good idea, they are a good idea now. Nevertheless, that Big (Beautiful? Bullshit?) Bill delays their implementation. The delay is not for any sensible policy reason. Instead, Trump and the Republicans anticipate a backlash, but they hope it won’t peak until after the midterm elections and will have waned by 2028.

This might make you (even more) cynical about Trump and Republicans, but my cynicism extends deeper. We don’t know whether more staffing at the National Weather Service or a different warning system might possibly have lessened the Texas tragedy, but we should find out. This is a job for Congress. Hearings should be held seeking information about what happened and about possible changes going forward. The goal should be to see whether new legislation is warranted. But Republicans who control Congress will not hold such hearings for fear they may suggest that Trump made mistakes. Moreover, if such hearings were held, the Democrats would not seek information but use them to score partisan points. They would be like Jim Jordan in a clip I recently saw. He was questioning New York Governor Kathy Hochul. He asked if she knew how a local sheriff had responded to an immigration issue. She predictably ducked the question, and he predictably insisted that she answer. It was all a charade. Jordan knew the answer to his question. In a real hearing, our congresspeople would be seeking information by asking questions where they did not already know the answer. When was the last time you saw that?

We should be trying to learn from the Texas tragedy, but that won’t come from Congress, for, unfortunately, this Congress is not there to solve problems.

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The Strange Land

Just finished reading the arduous history of Chinese Americans in Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025) by Micheal Luo. Chinese, we learn, started arriving on the West Coast in the1850s during the California gold rush. They continued to come for the construction of the intercontinental and other railroads after the Civil War. Chinese merchants and service workers followed. They did not all come at the same time or for the same reason, but there was a constant influx of Chinese, and a virulent hostility to them accompanied their arrival.

Today many oppose immigrants who are here illegally. They maintain that the “rule of law” requires that the “illegals” be removed from the country. That was not the reason for opposition to Chinese immigration. The Chinese were not in the United States illegally. Although some Eastern seaboard states tried to restrict Irish immigration, the federal government had placed no restrictions on immigration when the first Chinese influx began. Instead, at the time of our founding and beyond, the country welcomed immigrants. Michael Luo writes: “In the beginning the door was open. The Founding Fathers celebrated the multiplicity of difference in their young republic and recognized that filling the country’s vast, open spaces with newcomers was necessary for securing its future.”

Even so, by the 1840s, many did not want Chinese to be those newcomers. Jobs were a major concern. Today some voice a similar concern that the undocumented take work away from lawful residents. However, few leading the present deportation mania are lining up outside Home Depot for the day labor jobs or clamoring for stooped employment in the lettuce fields. In contrast, in the nineteenth century the hostility to the Chinese was led by whites, often immigrants themselves, who did want jobs in the mines or on the railroads or in the fields, and many of these jobs were held by the Chinese. Whites were not only willing to fight to do difficult and dangerous work, they were also willing to commit atrocities. Luo reports not only about unpunished murders of Chinese but unpunished massacres of them. Not only were Chinese homes and establishments burned without punishment, but time and again whole communities were torched. Luo reports so many atrocities that their recitation, a history that seldom gets reported, becomes mind-numbing.

In addition, the Chinese provoked hostility because they were the “other,” just as many immigrants are viewed today. Some Americans from the beginning had conflicting thoughts about immigration. New residents were necessary for a prosperous country, but immigrants with different customs could warp the country. Even Ben Franklin was concerned about the influx of non-English-speaking Germans into Pennsylvania. Less than a century later, it was easy to see the Chinese as “other” who could never become truly American.

The legal landscape changed for the Asian immigrants after the Civil War. The 1790 Naturalization Act restricted naturalization to “free white persons of good moral character,” a provision which was in effect until well into the twentieth century. Although he does not fully explain how, Luo reports that a few Chinese were naturalized despite this provision, but the law prevented almost every Chinese immigrant from becoming a citizen. However, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to all those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. In 1898 the Supreme Court held that a child born in the United States to a non-naturalized Chinese immigrant couple was, nevertheless, a citizen. There was now citizenship for few of the Chinese Americans.

But the group of Chinese Americans, citizen or not, remained small because of the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It prohibited the immigration into the United States of Chinese laborers. For the first time a Chinese immigrant was deemed illegal. Only laborers were excluded, and many seeking entry claimed to be merchants or some other profession that did not require manual labor. Someone had to decide whether the person was excludable under the Exclusion Act, and a new immigration bureaucracy was born. After the Chinese Exclusion Act paved the way, it became easier for the United States to restrict immigration by nationality, restrictions that materialized in the 1920s.

The concern over illegal Chinese immigration widened. The 1790 Naturalization Act stated that children who were born abroad of U.S. citizens were natural-born citizens unless the father had never been an American resident. After the Fourteenth Amendment, the number of Chinese American citizens increased, many of whom returned to China. Chinese, mostly male, started appearing at ports of entry claiming to be citizens as the children of citizens. Government officials often thought that the birth documents showing lineages were fraudulent. The problem of “paper sons” increased after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed birth records. Lengthy, often humiliating detentions, investigations, and interrogations were routine.

The Chinese Exclusion Act remained in effect until World War II when it became an embarrassment since China was an ally in the fight against Japan. Indeed, China had started its war of resistance against Japan in 1937, and Luo reports that 14 to 20 million Chinese were killed in the fighting by World War II’s end.

American immigration laws changed in the 1950s and 1960s, and concern over Chinese immigration morphed into something more modern. With mainland China controlled by Mao, the concern was not about laborers taking jobs away from Americans. Instead, the fear was over communist spies and the stealing of American technology by Chinese students and professionals. A similar rationale fuels many of today’s fears about Chinese immigrants.

On the other hand, many now view Chinese and other Asians as strivers in a traditional American sense, who show that “outsiders” can be successful in the United States. They are a “model minority.” If so, as Strangers in the Land illustrates, that status has been achieved in spite of a tortuous and tortured American history.

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The Inclusive Declaration of Independence and the Founding of America

The Fourth of July celebrates the United States of America and its birth, but with our current mood many only want to point out the country’s current and historical shortcomings. Every Fourth, I urge all to read the Declaration of Independence, and in doing so, it is natural to focus on the multiple ironies of its most famous phrase: “all Men are created equal.” However, as we know, in eighteenth century America, women, Native Americans, and indentured servants were not seen as equal. And, of course, slaves were not equal. Any fair assessment of our history acknowledges, as Thomas E. Ricks states in First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped our Country (2020), that slavery was not a “stain” on the country; it was woven into the original fabric. And that weft and warp made the celebration of liberty painful to many Americans throughout our history, which was perhaps most powerfully stated by Frederic Douglass on July 5, 1852. Just as the Declaration should be regularly read, so too should this speech. (Africans in America/Part 4/Frederick Douglass speech (pbs.org.)

The Fourth of July is our birthday, however. Some might temper a child’s birthday celebration with a discussion of the child’s shortcomings, but I would hope that the major thrust of the party is, in fact, to celebrate the kid. We should be realistic in assessing our country, but there has always been much to celebrate, and the Fourth is a time of celebration. Because it is so easy to mock the Declaration’s equality statement, it is too easy to overlook the many ways that in its founding the country also furthered egalitarianism and inclusiveness.

We know many of the Declaration’s phrases—“When in the Course of human Events”; “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”; and others. But we often miss something about the tenor of the Declaration as a whole. There are no classical allusions or references. By eighteenth century standards, the language is simple. The document was not written for the elite peers of those who signed the document but for a wide swath of what were to become Americans.

Its logic demanded an inclusive appeal. The Declaration asserts that a government derives “their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed” not from the Divine Right of Kings. It declared “the Right of the People” to change government. The Declaration with these contentions could not just be addressed to an elite, aristocratic audience. It +was not directed to the enslaved, but it was seeking the approval of almost everyone else—the farmer, the joiner, the tavern owner, the schoolteacher, the sailors, the ship captain, the log splitter, and yes, the slave owner and trader. For an eighteenth-century document, its intended audience was remarkably inclusive.

The notion of the consent of the governed was a radical, egalitarian break from America’s English roots, and the emerging country’s conception of “the people” was much broader than almost anywhere else in the world. This is reflected in who could vote. Today we note the shortcomings of a franchise limited to propertied white males, but we seldom consider, as Jill Lepore does in These Truths: A History of the United States (2018), that a higher percentage of people could vote in the colonies than in England. The franchise was narrow by modern standards, but it was broad for its time.

Part of the reason for the inclusiveness of the Founding Era’s America was the high rate of literacy among its people, perhaps the highest of any country of its times. The seventeenth-century Pilgrims, Puritans, and others who settled here held beliefs that rejected an authoritarian church. They believed that the eternal truths came from the Bible, not from an authoritarian church, and, therefore, it was important that people could read the Holy Book. Literacy was stressed as well as the ability of each person to reason. Jefferson and the others may have expected that the Declaration would be read out to those assembled in taverns and inns, but they also knew that many people would read it for themselves, and all were expected to think and reason about the document, which led to its inclusive appeal to the people.

The Declaration did mention “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and the signers said that they had acted with “a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence,” but it did not beseech God, a god, or Jesus Christ for independence. Just as some only criticize the Declaration for its hypocrisies without recognizing its advances, some focus on the listing of God and divine providence and conclude erroneously that the Declaration was an act of religious faith, or, more particularly, the signers’ Christianity. But these references, which include the almost pagan formulation of “Nature’s God,” were not invocations of any particular divinity to grant them a new country. Government depended on the consent of the governed, not on divine will, and the appeal was to the people, not to some version of God. The Declaration’s wording was inclusive; it did not exclude any particular believer or any nonbeliever from its ambit. It rejected the too-often divisiveness of religion and relied on the reason of the people.

This lack of a religious appeal is not surprising. Thomas Ricks shows in First Principles that neither Christianity nor any other religious influence was prominent in the Revolutionary period. This only began to change in 1815. He reports that there was one minister for every 1500 people in 1775 America while there was one for every 500 by 1845. Scott L. Malcomson writes in One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventures of Race that in 1790 only one in ten white Americans was a member of a formal church. Jill Lepore in These Truths agrees that the country was founded in one of its most secular eras.

Of course, slavery existed throughout the country when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and we should not forget how that institution shaped our country. Nevertheless, for their time, the Founders also created an egalitarian and inclusive government in ways we now seldom appreciate. For example, unlike many of the state and foreign governments of the time, the United States had no property qualifications to hold office. In an era when they were common, no religious tests were required for holding office. And we seldom notice that the new country paid its officials. Many governments did not, so only the rich who could afford to be uncompensated could hold office. Unlike in other countries, all whites, or at least all white males, could hold office.

The new country also broke from history and the practices of most countries by having no hereditary offices. A formal aristocracy died in the United States. Revolutionary America also moved to a more equal society by repealing primogeniture laws, which dictated that the firstborn male child would inherit his parent’s entire estate. This extraordinarily egalitarian reform, whose importance is seldom noticed today, was led by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia.

A related change in property law was also happening during this time. Under English law, aliens could buy property, but they could not inherit it. Aliens could sell the land they owned, but they could not grant it in a will. Instead, on death, an alien’s property went to the state. Revolutionary America began to repeal such inegalitarian laws, helping to make the country more inclusive and prosperous.

The country’s first naturalization law had some of the same characteristics as the Declaration of Independence. It showed simultaneously both racial restriction and social inclusiveness. The law limited naturalization to free, white citizens who had lived in the country for two years. We, of course, notice that nonwhites were excluded. (“Free” meant indentured servants could not be naturalized until they completed their periods of indenture.) Blacks could not be naturalized until 1870, and other nonwhites could not be naturalized until well into the twentieth century. There was no legal definition of whiteness. When areas of Mexico became part of the United States in the early1850s, the former Mexicans of those lands were made citizens, and there was an implicit recognition that they were white. The Supreme Court dealt with whiteness and naturalization several times and concluded that Asians and South Asians were not white but that Syrians and Armenians were. In 1922 the Supreme Court held that a high caste Sikh was neither white nor black and could not be naturalized. He had fought for this country in World War I.

However, in addition to noting the racial restriction, we should also consider the inclusiveness of this law. It did not impose a property requirement for citizenship. The rich and the not rich could become citizens. Aristocratic origins did not matter. There was the racial limitation, but no national origin requirement. There was no religious test. At a time when Catholics could not hold office in England and Jews could not become citizens in many places, they could in the United States.

We should keep both racial restrictions as well as these inclusions in mind when we consider this country’s origins. The founding era accepted an institution whose ramifications have troubled us throughout our history, but it also gave us foundations for much of what is good in this country.

I am sure that some will mostly criticize America on the Fourth, which is their right. And I am sure that some will call such critics unpatriotic, which is their right.

Patriotism has often been a contentious concept. Vicksburg, Mississippi, offers an example of its fragility. Exactly four score and seven years ago to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to American General Ulysses S. Grant after a forty-seven–day siege. This was certainly one of the most important actions of the war because it gave control of the Mississippi River to the Americans and severed the confederacy.

Thus, July 4, 1863, was another Fourth of July for patriotic Americans to celebrate, but Vicksburg didn’t see it that way. The town did not honor the Fourth of July for the next eight decades. They continued to identify as confederates, not as Americans. Vicksburg simply ignored Independence Day until after World War II when General Dwight Eisenhower visited the town on the Fourth. Even so, Vicksburg did not want to celebrate the United States. It called the celebrations during Eisenhower’s visit a “Carnival of the Confederacy,” a title I am told that was dropped only when the country and Vicksburg celebrated the Bicentennial in 1976. I’m not sure what to make of their tenacious grasp of a different brand of “patriotism.” I guess I’m just glad that they finally celebrate along with the rest of us.

And I hope all Americans can find something to celebrate this Fourth of July.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Reports say that fourteen bunker buster bombs were dropped on Iran. Another report says that we have only six more such bombs, not enough for another raid. They need replacing. Other reports say that they cost $500 million apiece. Does the $7 billion cost come into the consideration of whether the operation was a good idea?

A young Muslim who identifies as a Democratic Socialist won the New York City Democratic mayoralty primary. If Zohran Mamdani does take office, how long will it be before Trump proclaims an “emergency” that requires, according to him, that federal troops be sent into the city?

The ad I heard was like others from funeral homes. It stressed “pre-planning.” And I wondered, Isn’t all planning, by definition, “pre?”

A new experience: On a brutally hot and humid afternoon, I parked near a hydrant. As is common in New York on such a day, the hydrant, equipped with a sprayer cap, was spewing water into the intersection. Skirting this, I walked a few blocks to Yankee Stadium. The game was interrupted several times by rain. The last was in the bottom of the eighth inning. Concerned about how long this delay would be and whether I would see the game’s conclusion, my friend said that the weather report predicted that the rain would end in seven minutes, but more was due in a half-hour. As the rain was ending, we watched a marvelous performance by the grounds crew as they hurriedly rolled up the tarp and prepared the field for the resumption of play. They, too, were aware of the weather report. The Yankees quickly secured their victory, breaking a losing streak. As we wended our way out of the Stadium, I said to my friend that I certainly needed a shower after the ninety-degree heat. When we got to the exit, my friend said that I might eschew the shower. He pointed outside where it was pouring. Neither he nor I had rain gear. We were going to get soaked. When I got near my car, after unsuccessfully trying to skip from awning to awning, I saw that the hydrant was still spraying. I thought this was redundant with the heavy downpour, but not all thought so. A middle-aged man was twirling about soaking up the rain. He then pulled out of his pocket a sliver of bar soap. Decorously reaching under his clothes, he lathered all the essential parts of his body and then went into the hydrant’s spray to rinse off. He repeated the process several times. Some passersby smiled, but he made this simultaneous washing of body and clothes seem like the natural thing to do with the rain and hydrant. As I drove off, he was still there. Although I lived in New York City for over fifty years, this was the first time I had witnessed such al fresco bathing.

The history book group’s discussion of Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America (2025) by Michael Luo included many comments about the inherent evil in humanity. Afterwards, as emails were exchanged about our next book selection, one member, after voting, added that earlier that day, he had dropped his wallet on a crosstown bus. Later the bus driver rang his apartment bell, saying that he had noticed the friend’s address was near the bus route. The driver would not take any money as a reward. The friend noted that “both decided against a hug.” The friend said that was trying to get a commendation noted in the driver’s file and concluded: “Maybe there’s hope for humankind after all.”

The friend’s experience reminded me of how often we (I) can forget random acts of kindness, but it had me remembering a call I got soon after Covid vaccines were available. The caller told me that he had found my vaccine card on the subway steps and thought that I might need it since proof of vaccination then was necessary to get into some public places. That card did not have identifying information besides my name, but the caller told me that he did internet searches to find my phone number. We arranged to meet, and I got my card back. He did take a modest reward, and I was more than happy to give it to him.