The one book to read to start this upcoming decade

I remember Stephen Jay Gould's witty, mischievous book on the turning from 1999 to 2000, and whether the 21st Century really begins in the year 2001, not 2000.  We are now here again as we enter the 20th year of this century.  Is it the start of the 2020s or is that in 2021?  The great Renaissance mind of David Brin posits decades do not begin in the cultural sense until the second or third year of a decade, and offers the example of the 1960s--The Sixties began with JFK's assassination and the advent of The Beatles phenomenon in the US--and Aughts, where the decade doesn't really culturally begin until the events occurring on September 11, 2001 (Don't believe me, ask Family Guy).  For me, the timing of cultural changes is too diffused and diverse, though Brin's analysis remains important because he said don't to get too caught up in zeroes or ones.

Nonetheless, if there is one book to read for this upcoming decade, it is Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday, a book written in 1931 about the 1920s period, a century ago. What is stunning about Allen's book is how well it has held up as a cultural and historical work.  It reads particularly well, owing to its witty writing style. Most importantly, Allen's insights remain profoundly accurate in a way that something many of our current pundits and historians may find themselves embarrassed for themselves at what they wrote even five years ago.  Lewis wrote his book in a format that is breezy and conversational, not scholarly, which merits recommendation for readers not caught up in academic works.  For those whose minds are otherwise sufficiently inquisitive, Allen provides a post-narrative section discussing various books, articles and other sources upon which he based his narrative.  Lewis is comprehensive, without going into too great a length (the book is 352 pages in hardback and 302 pages in paperback), covering nearly every type of topic, from the cultural to political to economic, again with a sure, deft, and lively hand.  

I tested giving a copy of this book some years ago to a staff person at my old office I worked at in Los Angeles.  He was a Latino male who just turned 20 at the time, and who was completing community college and had just received entrance to UC Davis.  He had been a high school wrestler, not interested in much besides sports and partying, and had realized, as he entered that ripe old age of 20, he needed to get his act together.  He came from a relatively poor, hard working family, who did not think much of higher education. His working at the law firm came through a friend of the son of the boss, and was totally happenstance. As he was, at that point, in the twilight time between graduation from community college and entering the junior year at a prestigious public university, he became concerned about his lack of exposure to the type of things my wife and I exposed our children to in their formative years. He asked me to recommend something to read that would deepen his perspective, and I suggested, after a long thought, Allen's book. He took it from me, sorta interested, and then began to read it.  By the time he was done, he found himself transformed and said he now much better understood rhythms in our society, and much more deeply. Reading Allen's book inspired him to begin reading newspapers online, and began to push out further beyond his own world.  In fact, he read next a Stephen Jay Gould book of essays I suggested (though I now cannot recall which book of essays), and he loved that, too--especially as I told him he need not read in order or read them all in one reading.  The young man kept in touch through his first semester at UC Davis, first saying he still felt overawed compared to other students, and how he never worked so hard at school in his life to keep from falling behind. He survived, however, and from there, his life took him away from me and much of his life in Southern California, at least then.  

In my not humble opinion, Allen's book should be required reading for high schoolers and college  age students, and even for us older folks, this coming year or next year, 2021. Only Yesterday provides perspective, and helps us realize how much has changed, how much has not, and how patterns in American society and history repeat themselves in ways that should challenge us as citizens. Allen was a respected editor at Harpers' magazine, and known for being a genial person. I let Jonathan Yardley, the famed former book section editor at the Washington Post, describe Allen and his monumental book.  For those who already read and adore the book, such persons may wish to read it again, if the last time it was read was decades ago.  It is also worth perusing Allen's other works, starting with Since Yesterday and The Big Change: America Transforms Itself: 1900-1950.  Having read those, too, I should say I found Since Yesterday the better read compared to The Big Change. Allen really understood the FDR and New Deal era much better than most commentators in my lifetime, save perhaps Richard Hofstadter.  The Big Change struck me as a bit too complacent and pedestrian compared to Allen's other two works, both of which were written with the sense that something momentous had changed from one decade to another, whether from 1929-1931, or from 1939 to 1940.  As I write this, I realized it is probably time for me to go further with Allen and find his 1935 book, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1%.  See what I mean about Allen's perspicacity and timelessness?  He was talking about the top 1% in 1935.

Well, anyway, Happy 2020s, America and the world.  Right now, I am more in mind of Bette Davis' famous line as the slightly fading star, Margo Channing, in All About Eve, something about fastening seat belts and a bumpy night. 

Our governor has a MeToo scandal

My favorite governor outside of CA Governor Gavin Newsom has a "MeToo" scandal. I have heard from one person who has known both the gov and accuser how the accuser is a volatile fellow, and may not get along well with others. On the other hand, I have heard our governor can be a tough person with people, too. The accuser initially broke his story on Twitter, which was fine, but said he would not give interviews to anyone other than a particular political reporter from the AP (see his Tweet from December 25 within the right wing journal's link, where the accuser said "I declined a lot of interviews today for various reasons...I'll only speak with the @AP's @RussContrerras about her horrific sexual assaults of me and others staffers.  There are so many more victims than me.") A day later, he went to a right wing political online journal to give his story, and then to a local television station known to promote right wing views in New Mexico. I don't mind, but I wonder what the AP reporter said to him or if the reporter even responded to him.

In my time here since mid 2017, the state has seen two claims of sexual harassment against prominent men, a politician, Carl Trujillo, and a labor leader (and a friend of The Wife and mine) Jon Hendry, where the accuser refused to testify, claiming she did not want to name others who could substantiate her claims (as in Trujillo's case) or where two accusers sued, but then refused to substantiate their accusations in either any written discovery answers or in deposition, and have been sanctioned by the Court for refusing to submit answers under oath (Hendry's case). Still, both men were driven from their offices before the cracks in the accusations began to emerge. People may also recall I was initially concerned about the legitimacy of the accusations against Kavanaugh as one person's accusation should not be accepted as the complete truth without context and further information.

Here, it is hard to say what happened yet.  The article says Governor Lujan-Grisham is a "prankster," which I have found troubling when it was George HW Bush and so many others who have wealth or power (the junior Bush, George W. Bush, was also a towel-snapping prankster, and liked to bestow sometimes awful nicknames on people who did not seek them, a separate form of power abuse arising from having personal wealth and power).  I have never liked "pranksters" because, often, the pranks end up being cruel to people who are reasonably sensitive, and there is almost always a bullying aspect to the pranks.  On the other hand, I winced at the accuser's claim he has suffered emotional distress over the episode, as I often find claims of emotional distress from players (and this fellow is likely a player), regardless of politics, to be at least one where their word alone will not substantiate the claim. However, I can potentially believe the retaliation part, but withhold judgment--as what I have also seen in New Mexico politics in my relatively brief time here is its insularity and cliques that remind me of the late 1980s film, "Heathers," without the actual murders, of course.  

If the governor's accuser sues the governor in a civil court claim, and the witnesses in the room are placed under oath, we may expect to learn more about the allegation. We may also learn if the governor behaved in this manner with others, as the accuser alleges in one sentence in his tweet.  In addition, in the accuser's interview with the right wing political journal, the accuser claims the governor had affairs with two other men in the recent past, which may also get an airing. But I have tried to be consistent about extramarital affairs, and say, isn't that really something between spouses, not the electorate? The only difference with Trump in the Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate relationships was the campaign contribution part of at least the Stormy Daniels affair. That is a legitimate political problem, as it was for John Edwards, whose career was ended, after having his mistress on the payroll for supposedly video services, but largely, it turned out, for, ahem, other services.

Oh well. We shall see what we shall see.  The sad part about this is how corporate media love these types of prurient scandals, and this may cause the governor to lose the necessary moral capital to fight for legitimate public policies, starting with using the Permanent Funds (New Mexico has $25 billion in its so-called rainy day funds) for education, free public college tuition, repealing anti-abortion laws, and further infrastructure funding.

Internet Archive digitalizing public domain record albums from the early to mid 20th Century

My friend Wynn sent me a link to an internet archive, which is working with Boston Library, to digitize record album which are supposedly in the public domain. I decided to start with comedy albums to see what was there, and what I found made me wonder if Flip Wilson's Cowboys and Colored People, which has the famous Christopher Columbus routine, could really been the public domain. And for fans of The Fabulous Mrs. Maisel, of which I am not a fan, as readers may recall, there are a few Rusty Warren albums. It is amusing to me that many people think the show is based upon Joan Rivers. It is to a certain extent, but the type of humor Mrs. Maisel is attempting to do is part Lenny Bruce and a bigger part Rusty Warren (and possibly a touch of Belle Barth, also in this archive).

I have gone through the jazz, classical and folk, too, and am again amazed at what is supposed to be in the public domain. I also found an error in dating for the Chad Mitchell Trio's 1965 release, That's the Way It's Gonna Be. The archive has it listed as released in 1960. That is wrong, and they should have been able to notice the Phil Ochs song that was the title track on the album was not yet written at the time, and neither was Dylan's Mr. Tamborine Man, which is also on the album. Still, this is an amazing project and one that is hopefully being supported.

The key, however, are the classical pieces in the public domain.  Awesome stuff, including Ralph  Vaughan Williams symphonies and other composition.

David Brin's post about watching the watchers and links are vital reading

Bernie needs to speak with David Brin, stat. Bernie can't rely on the ACLU, as Brin notes early on in this blog post, as the ACLU is stuck in the "Let's blind the elites" mindsets, which Brin says will not work because they never worked. I am sometimes less optimistic about Brin's approach of watching the watchers than Brin is, but I find Brin's approach far more reasonable. Brin's approach allows for continued technological advances, and gives regular people tools to fight against non-transparent authority. Brin has always represented a type of libertarian sensibility that has more in common with the New Deal and even Emma Goldman than Ayn Rand.  I recall, in 2015-2016, Brin liked Bernie, meaning he still liked Hillary Clinton more, from his strategic point of view, but he believed Bernie to be a solid candidate who he would have gladly voted for, and against Trump.

The tsunami this time

We have no idea of the tsunami that is coming in the form of ads throughout all corporate media, FB, and anything where there is advertising. This money corruption of the electoral process will be unlike anything we have ever seen. It will play to dividing the working and middle classes against each other on race, creed, ethnicity, and it will be filled with distortions and lies, and endless propaganda. Corporate media will love making money for airing and showing the ads. It is all of a piece.

How uniformed does one have to be to join an MSNBC panel?

Even when MSNBC deigns to report on what most have seen for at least five weeks, as it did this morning--hooray!--, the suits still have to ensure at least one corporate shill on the panel will attack Bernie Sanders. This time, it is Heidi Pryzbyla. She is the personification of the cocktail party goer in the DC Village who really makes no time to read anything. First, Pryzbyla has obviously missed all the anti-Bernie "analyses" in corporate media. Also, with any research, she could have learned Bernie is known as the "amendment king," for ensuring better legislation and stopping or undermining the scope of bad legislation. I crack up at her idea that Bernie is wrong because it took the rest of the nation 30 years to catch up with him, when he was not on television. Pryzbyla forgets over 60% of Americans polled in 2015 had never heard of Bernie. Finally, and most importantly, Bernie has openly said he would continue to mobilize Americans after the election because, as he also says, his becoming president alone can't change things. So on every single point the commentator made, she was either wrong or uninformed. There is a reason the networks hire such incompetent people, and that is because they know what to say that pleases the corporate executive class. And uber insider Mike Barnicle is wrong to think most of Bernie's current supporters have been with him for decades. I have, but I am an outlier on this. Most of the people who like Bernie had first heard of him only around 2015. Even Nina Turner had not known hardly anything about him when he announced. She had been an early supporter for Hillary Clinton in 2014, and was stunned to learn about Bernie.

It is amazing to consider how these people on television are so uninformed.  But less amazing when one considers how the capitalist press operated since the late 19th Century and how corporate media has conducted itself, particularly since the early 1980s.

Drive bys for December 27, 2019

As we begin our final countdown to the end of the year 2019, some drive bys:

* The next time we hear someone ragging against California, start with this analysis. And let's also remember Blue States tend to subsidize Red States when measuring how much federal taxes Blue States pay compared to the benefits received, and Red States getting more in federal benefits than what they pay in federal taxes.  Those Trumpists trumpeting unemployment figures (which again for those not knowing this, includes part timers seeking full time work as "employed") and the "strong" economy, while ripping into Blue States, starting with CA, really need this perspective. And here is some important perspective from the ever-valuable Business reporter at the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik, regarding CA's new law challenging the abuses of the so-called "gig" economy.  It is important not to believe a corporation's press release about why there are mass layoffs.  When they blame a pro-worker law, they are often lying and trying to cover up their own greed.

* Michael Moore and I have been rhetorically tracking more than I can ever recall.  His analysis on Democracy Now! this week is one important insight after another, starting with something I did not know, which is that 90,000 voters in African-American neighborhoods throughout Michigan voted for nearly every elected office in November 2016 except president.  When we consider Trump won Michigan by less than 12,000 votes, that is remarkably profound.  When we consider what Moore does not say, but anyone who knows Moore knows he knows, Bernie won the 2016 Michigan primary in a decisive way over Hillary Clinton.  And let's plug here what should be required viewing for Democratic Party voters over the remainder of this holiday season, and is free on Amazon Prime, "Fahrenheit 11/9."  To think this is about Trump is to be very much mistaken.  This is about the corporate media, the 2016 Democratic Party primary, and how the rules favored Clinton to a remarkably disgusting degree, and the vacuousness that is Barack Obama.  The Wife, watching Obama's performance in Flint, MI, and it was a performance, was so disgusted, she said, with almost a vomit, she would never trust anything Obama ever said again.

* This is amusing.  Bernie Sanders visits the LA Times editorial board, an editorial board that fears him and despises him--and if it does not, they fear for their jobs.  They were on their best behavior, but they know what they do every single day, which is to attempt to convince their readers and beyond not to vote for Sanders.

* It is strange for Chuck Todd to say he was naive about how Republican operatives and politicians would come onto his show to distort or lie, and not see that this is a coordinated operation.  Chuck Todd obviously knew what he was doing all these years. Certainly, he had to have read some of the press criticism from FAIR, and various writers. He styled himself as an intellectual all these years, a wise man who supposedly knew a lot and read a lot. To suddenly say he was merely "naive" is some sort of strange cop-out that now seems to be boomeranging back against him.  Oh well. Good riddance if he loses his perch the way David Gregory did. Still, expect someone worse, like the vacuous Katy Tur.  That is the way of corporate owned media.

* Cultural history is endlessly fascinating.  David Susskind was important teacher for me, growing up in the 1960s.  I was too young in the early 1960s to appreciate this cultural history about how he came to interview Martin Luther King, Jr., and saved his career from right wing censors, but I started watching him in the late 1960s.  I saw him interview Gore Vidal, with whom I immediately was fascinated, and then saw this episode about "How to be Jewish Son," which was liberating to me.

* First, people told me it was ridiculous to think Trump would ever be impeached.  Now, they say he can't be removed.  Yet, the walls are starting to crack among right wing and Republican oriented ranks.  Yes, so far, it is only Christianity Today, the lead political reporter at the Christian Post, Matt Lewis, David French and Ramesh Ponnuru at The National Review, Judge Napolitano at FoxNews, and former Republican congressmen such as Dave Trott (R-MI).  However, the impeachment trial has not yet begun in the Senate, and it will be interesting to see what happens. I like Adam Schiff now has his eye more firmly on Vice President Pence's role in the Ukranian shakedown.  Pence should be impeached and removed, too.  For months, I have been saying, if this occurs, Nancy Pelosi would take over as president, but she would be wise to follow her bi-partisan instincts for a good cause for our society--as opposed to her usual bad judgment in trying to be bi-partisan.  She would, in that instance, be able to find a decent Republican congressperson to serve as VP, and be co-presidents for the remainder of the Trump-Pence term.  I have also said this process does not help Democrats for 2020 because Republicans would be free to nominate a new face who is not as vulgar as Trump nor as compromised by foreign interests the way Trump has been.  As I have written before, I see Trump as a danger to what remains of our Republic, with an accent on "remains." 

* Here is an interesting interview with a left wing commentator, Michael Brooks, at The Hill's online show, Rising, about the consequences from global corporate economics.  While I continue to worry the Fascist International has the immediate upper hand, due largely to older, European and European Americans forming coalitions with Chinese economic/political elites, Saudis, and even Israelis and Turks, my hopeful side says we are at the pre-dawn of a global movement of workers and remaining peasants. By mid century, assuming climate crises don't throw this off, we could even hope for a true Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) type of union organizing. It remains sad the term "Neo-liberalism" continues to confuse Americans, as what the term refers to is global corporate dominated capitalism.  I am sure this use of the phrase "Neo-liberalism" confuses many a white working class Trump voter who may otherwise be willing to consider Bernie Sanders or economically populist Democrats.

* The important thing I find in this chart about worker income and those in the top 1% and 0.1%, having seen it and absorbed it before, is how the inequality begins to charge in 1979, the first year after President Carter signed the capital gains tax cut in July or August 1978. I was in DC when that was passing both houses of Congress, and saw, first hand, how the owners of this nation work, and how the true coalition of Southern Democrats and Republicans worked in Congress. It was the summer when Carter openly said to Democratic Congress people, including Senators, he would not sign any labor law reform that had been painstakingly developed, and would not support raising the minimum wage above current cost of living, to get the minimum wage back on the track it had last been in 1968. Carter was the first Neo-liberal president, notwithstanding his being the second best ex-president in US history, with John Quincy Adams being the best.

Christmas spirit, Bernie Sanders and Jesus edition

Ryan Cooper at the once Moonie-owned The Week remains one of my favorite corporate media pundits.  This holiday op-ed is a reason why.

No more negative waves, man

It is time for those of us who are sympathetic to Bernie Sanders' policy proposals and community organizing strategies to stop agreeing with those who treat Sanders as a fringe candidate, or someone who can't win. When Politico.com decides to publish an article like this, and people from the DNC establishment go on the record to say they are concerned Sanders can win the nomination, counting off the early primary states where Sanders now has momentum, and is ahead or in position to be ahead by voting time, that is important information and perspective, that should be something we should be talking about much more than not.

This is not our way to avoid bad news, i.e. Sanders not winning, as in Donald Sutherland's character, Oddball, in the often unjustly neglected war/anti-war film, Kelly's Heroes. The importance of speaking more positively and hopefully about Sanders is to counter the negative spin constantly emanating from corporate media punditry, and talking positively when corporate broadcast media is ignoring Sanders and his exciting campaign.

Christmas Day drive-bys

* I never knew the melancholy opening verse to "White Christmas."  I knew some of the background in Berlin's life, but did not know of his heartache he suffered during a particular Christmas, i.e. the loss of a child.  This was a great op-ed for Christmas Day.

* I think this Genesis "Christmas" song, from their 1977 album, Wind & Wuthering, may be appropriate for our current times, especially in the Anglo and American societies. 

* When I saw the Uber company's CEO selling off the remaining stock, I thought immediately of this Steve Miller Band song. 

* Over my years of representing companies in court, I have thought more and more about whether we should reform franchise law in the way the late Obama administration was finally beginning to do. People wear McDonald's uniforms, and the signs, products, and accoutrements are bought from and show McDonald's, but the employees work for some largely nameless franchisee, usually hiding behind an limited liability company to avoid personal responsibility. The franchisee pushes down his or her costs, starting with labor, under the pressures, in the form of "fees," charged by the ultimately in charge corporation. And, when workers think they can band together as they did in the 1930s against General Motors in multiple factories across the land, the workers find there are all these individual franchise holders who are not related to each other, even though they all look and act alike.  I look back and realized those who passed franchise laws were more worried about how the ultimately in charge corporations were ripping off the franchisees. However, over the decades, and with the protections, franchisees have been making oodles of money off far more exploited employees--with no real protections for employees and employees barred from organizing against the behemoths. This NLRB ruling from the Trump administration is another example of how Trump pursues fascistic oriented policies, while dividing the working classes along cultural issues.

* I applaud this church for paying medical debts of over $5 million, but we should also continue to strive to live in a society where that is no longer necessary. For us, we are still paying for medical services on a monthly basis, with us still owing over $1,000 after months of monthly payments. Those who say cancer can lead to bankruptcy in the US are correct, though we had made enough coin to withstand the costs outside of insurance. We are one of the relatively lucky ones.

* I am of mixed emotions about this bill, but its humaneness is a major plus. Still, I winced when the fellow said he just can't find Americans to pick crops because he did not complete his sentence. It should be he can't find Americans to pick crops on land he owns because he won't pay enough. If he did pay someone to do backbreaking work he no longer wants to do, it would cut into his vast profits he makes off exploited labor.

* And it is extraordinary the Los Angeles Times did not cover Bernie Sanders' massive rally in Venice, CA this past week.  The Times published a couple of letters to the editor today criticizing the Times, but the venerable newspaper has not apologized. Also, don't mind the schmuck from San Diego who writes his anti-Sanders' screed.  He obviously spends his days watching MSNBC.  He's most likely also a Boomer, as in "Ok, Boomer."  I may have even met this guy in my Jewish president of a synagogue travels in San Diego.  Sigh.

* From David Brin's FB page (I am not on it, as I doubt he would friend me, but he is on another FB's friend list), and it is a great one for today and other family holiday gatherings:  

"...(T)his is the time to test my technique. Spread the word! If under attack by red-hats over family dinner, say: "In order to put aside politics WHILE making it clear which of us is running away: let's make it a wager over fact, cousin. Pick one of the following, deposit $100 with grandma to hold the stakes... we'll shake on the bet and then no politics till next year! Till then, let's all wallow in love, hm? But first, a bet:"

"- Whether human generated CO2 is turning oceans acid.

"- Whether you can write down (right now) the name of more than one fact-profession not attacked by Fox. (Science, teaching, journalism, intel or FBI... no quibbling.)

"- Whether picking a dozen at RANDOM from the list of 15,000 Trumpian lies will result in more than three have any truth to them.

"- Whether Putin called the fall of the USSR the 20th Century's worst tragedy, or whether he and his pals and "ex" KGB consist of nearly all the same men, doing the same things, with the same goals. And whether Putin/Fox hate George Soros because he toppled the Soviet empire.

"- Whether those screaming "fake news" have ever offered to help set up a real, nonpartisan fact-checking service.

"- Whether any TEN other presidents have been 'betrayed' by as many men who were "great guys" just months before, and what that says about DT's character judgement.

"Notice the common thread. Each goes to the heart of the matter but NOT in a way your redder cuz has pre-prepared memes for. Each is a matter of verifiable fact and not raving opinion, like "no collusion!"

"Anyway, nothing shuts them down... and will get things back to a peaceful dinner at grandma's... better than making THEM desperate to change the subject.

"May you and yours all have joy and may God bless America and this Great Experiment in freedom and tolerance and progress. And science."

And it is definitely true, as the other matters Brin cites are true, that Soros' currency manipulations centered on the Eastern European Communist dictatorships and the old Soviet Union dictatorship.  See here and here.  Also, see this article from The Guardian, which provides a critique of Soros that is reasonable and not conspiracy-anti-Semitic laden, and this note from a Stanford economist, showing how a person with Soros' money can go from Superman to Zod in an instant  It is an amazing piece of propaganda how Soros' open society initiatives are turned into sinister conspiracies.  Oh, and the Putin stuff is true, too, which is why I keep comparing Trumpists to  American Stalinists, and keep saying they need to apologize to Alger Hiss and definitely Harry Dexter White.

Death of a sociopath and narcissist who speaks to Boomerism

As readers know, I hate my generation, well, let's be specific.  I hate my fellow whites in my generation--again, as a generality, not too specific.  But, as a generation, we were influenced by those born in the early 1940s, just before our generation began to be bred.  Peter Schjeldahl, a noted art critic for the Village Voice and the New York Times, which alone should be laughable as a bullshit job, considering the subjectivity in the art world since the end of World War II, has written an extended essay in this week's New Yorker, surveying his life as he slowly passes away from lung cancer, which he recognized is tied to his habit of smoking cigarettes.  

I read the essay, and, by the end, found myself thinking, God, I hope this guy dies soon. He is a ridiculous, callous, narcissist of a type that typifies people born into relative wealth who are unable to see how their relative wealth followed and protected them throughout their entire lives. One may think of an even more banal George Minafer, from Booth Tarkington's classic novel, The Magnificent Ambersons. Such people are blind to their lives as social constructs based upon happenstance and circumstance. It is an astonishing read because Schjeldahl feigns at self awareness, but he doesn't know the half of it. 

Schjeldahl is like the male narrator in Roth's "Goodbye Columbus", where Roth himself never knew what assholes Roth and his "narrator," which was certainly a character in the novella, both were. They formed an important literary part of why the 1960s women's liberation movement became necessary (see: Barbara Ehrenreich's paradigm shifting analysis of the rise of the women's movement as a reaction to men like Roth, though she does not mention, let alone dwell on, Roth).

Oh well. This lifelong jerk to especially women, but also men he knew, will soon be dead. And let's say it loud and clear: Good riddance, Peter Schjeldahl.  Your life is a waste, your education and experience taught you nothing about empathy, and you merely lived a series of selfish experiential events where you hurt other, more vulnerable people more often than not. You are worthless, and a horribly banal human being.  The sooner the world is rid of you, the better others may feel. 

And, yeah, I am glad the overrated hack Philip Roth is dead, too.

Merry Christmas. :)

The Problem of Biden and Bi-Partisanship in the Current Political Party Duopoly

Someone put this article on my FB feed today, and reminded me of one of Biden's worst policy moves.  It is easy to see Biden as Senator Payne in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  But the implications of this have become politically unbearable for too many of us.

As we reach the end of December 2019, and the election year 2020 is upon us, our nation's corporate owned (and corporate subsidized, as in PBS) broadcast media are trying to find a way to resurrect Biden.  Biden continues to lead in polls among people who must truly be outside of most reasoned and informative discourse for whatever reason.  It is a stubborn fact Biden continues to lead in many state polls and national polls.  Yet, the frustrating part is, if Biden became the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, we would be confronted with remembering his actions, starting with bankruptcy "reform" in 2005, the subject of the article in GQ magazine from October 23, 2019.  

It is important to stress Biden could not have achieved bankruptcy reform, from his perch as a minority chair of multiple Senate committees, without the strongest push from Republicans, starting with Republican leadership still in power today, and a Republican presidency in the form of Bush the Younger-Cheney. This is something to remind Republican friends especially, because Democrats largely did not vote with Biden on bankruptcy reform, especially the liberals and leftists Republican voters love to hate.  Biden's political crimes in supporting the Iraq War II, bankruptcy reform or corporate dominated trade deals are not examples of Biden's liberalism or certainly not any leftism. Each of these policy decisions represented a "bi-partisan," elitist approach to governance, which maintains or gives more power to the corporate executive classes, which continue to dominate our country.  The Republicans, since the late 19th Century, have been most adamant in supporting corporate domination of our lives, and only with the move of the civil rights movement from the Republican to Democratic Parties, did the Republicans seize upon cultural conservatism for votes.  Under Trump, the fealty to, and striving for even more, corporate power and domination has continued, while the Republican Party specializes in even more powerfully poisonous appeals to diminishing white working class people's worst prejudices on cultural issues from abortion to gays to guns and immigration.  And when that is not enough, they have nearly perfected voter suppression.   

After spending the period of 1993-2004 outside the Democratic Party, except for a brief return in more state and local politics in 1998, and seeing the nation was not ready for a third party or any new party, I have worked, and will continue to work, inside the Democratic Party to re-animate a labor movement and help put our nation back on a track to complete the New Deal. This time, however, we must make no compromises over race, ethnicity, or religion that would disenfranchise anyone.  If this project does not prove feasible, I expect to follow the younger people in our nation away from both the Republican and the Democratic Parties, and seek new ways to argue for the policies Bernie Sanders has presented to our nation.  I will continue to stand with the young, as long as the young want to fight for economic, environmental, and social justice.  That remains to be seen, as sometimes, as one ages, one loses hope and, worse, the further one gets away from one's education, the less one reads and thinks about anything other than day-to-day survival.

Biden, Mayor Pete, Klobuchar, Booker, Castro, and even Yang and Warren to varying degrees, represent the duopoly's stranglehold on our discourse.  Yang thinks outside the political box on technology and universal basic income (UBI), but, sadly, on most other issues, he shows he is a child of the Clintons and Obama--and Biden.  Warren appeared to be a person who understood the New Deal, but has shown no understanding about political mobilization and grass roots movements.  She is limited by her technocratic worldview she developed as a Republican in the 1980s and early 1990s, in a time when, considering her roots and then her high level of education, I frankly think she should have known better. However, Biden represents and personifies what has been wrong with the Democratic Party's leadership since the late 1970s. Biden is truly Senator Payne, and truly been on the wrong side of monumental decisions (every time with the majority of Republican office holders, which we must stress even to Democrats who still whine that Bernie Sanders is not a "Democrat"), decisions which continue to negatively reverberate in our society. Biden is a decent man in many ways, to be sure, and would represent an improvement over Trump and the Republicans.  However, as The Son has said to me, and I paraphrase rather than quote him directly, Do we really have time for this type of dithering at this point in the planet's life and in a time of grossest wealth inequalities?

My hope is we eventually reform and reestablish political parties and coalitions, such that if the system still has to rely on only two parties, let them be in the realm of, and ideas emanating from, the Greens and Libertarians.  With such a different set of parties or reformed parties, the consensus which would arise from that duopoly would be one where the majority of Americans can be more effectively against, and therefore beginning to tame, the military-industrial complex, including ending endless wars; pushing for personal civil liberties; and against drug "wars" that decimate minorities far more often than white folks.  To Millennials and Gen Zers, I am counting on you both to lead us out of the Democratic Party if we find the Clinton forces and aging white Baby Boomer liberals continue to act like they have since the mid 1980s and prevail in this primary season.  In the 1990s and early 2000s, I tried, much more alone, and isolated in that pre-Internet and early Internet age, and I miserably failed.  This time around, I think we have some momentum, but I am frankly too old to begin to lead any charge.  Bernie Sanders has been around and built up a movement over time.  I am a nobody.  And I don't have his excellent health.  The problem of the current duopoly is the one that ultimately has to be overcome, and we are still not ready as a nation to break from that duopoly.  As Bernie Sanders represents a promise of hope and structural change for the better for the vast majority of Americans, and the world, Biden represents an existential threat to that hope, even as Trump remains the most immediate existential enemy to all that remains of our Republic.

Drive bys: December 22, 2019

As Wintertime winds blow cold this season, some drive bys:

* And speaking of The Doors, it's Sunday morning, ya know?  I wonder, is anyone else out there thinking they could do a better job of governing the planet than God?  I think there should be.  And I'm not talking about psychopaths and sociopaths who wanna be a Big Boss and wanna conquer the world.  I'm talking just nice folks who would like to lessen human suffering.  As the Hedonistic Revered Jim intones in the title song, "Soft Parade":  "You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!" Or maybe God just says Nope, no will do.  Which again brings me back to my question.  I think many of us would be far kinder, would not hide behind clouds, or such nonsense.   So when we are praying over this holiday season, maybe confront God with his crappy earth management.  Way too much suffering and hate out there.  Just come down and talk to us for once and tell us to be nicer to each other, will ya?  Kurt Vonnegut understood.  So did Ian Anderson, when he sang He's not the type you have to "wind up on Sundays."

* I have always wondered how many people lie on applications to get into "undecided" focus groups. I think it is more than we are led to believe by people such as the notorious right wing pollster, Frank Luntz.  This focus group for the December 19, 2019 Democratic Party debate supposedly showed only six supporting Sanders before the debate, and suddenly, 14 like him.  And what people think of themselves as moderate or liberal or conservative becomes murky really quickly when specific issues are argued.  What I think some people in the Democratic Party are starting to realize is Bernie is not running a campaign.  He is creating a movement and mobilizing people.  He is following the labor organizer's credo: Educate, Agitate, and Organize.  It was Bernie's closing statement to millions of viewers at the end of last Thursday's debate.  It is this strategy tat scares upper middle class professional and managerial types who dominate corporate media executive suites and punditry.  

* And there is this moment Andrew Yang shared about Bernie.  Precious.  As readers of mine know, I adore the ida of a universal basic income, and have stressed the need to begin to separate income from work.  Rich people have done that millennia and do it through today.  Some become wastrels, others find causes to become involved in that sometimes benefit humanity, and others continue to do work of some sort or another.  It would not be much different if there was a good UBI for every person in the US.  My concern about Yang's proposal is telling people they can't have food stamps if they take UBI.  My other concern is, are we ready for a 10% value added tax, which is essentially a sales tax?  Where I depart from him is also about timing.  We need a major push for infrastructure redevelopment, as the Army Corps of Engineers keep reminding us every year.  It is up to over $4 trillion, and many of the jobs to be done cannot be done with robots or drones.  We need people.  And with the decline in birth rate to levels that may be demographically catastrophic from various perspectives, we will need people to do these jobs.  So Bernie's job guarantee makes more immediate sense than Yang's UBI proposal.  Bernie stands for increasing benefits and increasing the poverty line that is currently at just over $12,000 a year, which is certainly not enough in most places where people live.  I think Bernie is more practical--funny, that--but Yang's ideas about Democracy Dollars, privacy rights, and other proposals have great merit.  It is too bad Yang speaks too much like Elon Musk about nuclear energy, self-driving commercial trucks, and the like.  That stuff ain't feasible without big risks to the environment (nuke power) and we are way far away from self-driving commercial trucks.  

* Sam Seder and Michael Moore give better commentary in about 12 minutes altogether than two weeks' of cable news punditry.  And next time we consider stereotypes regarding military personnel, remember the chart in this link from Foreign Policy magazine from last month.  It is likely growing for Sanders.  Sanders has more than double the donations than the military vet Mayor Pete (Mayor Pete is in second place) and nearly triple the donations Trump has received from military personnel.

* I love these holiday conversation starters.  Watching heads of my fellow Baby Boomers and the addled Oldsters explode is as important as carving the turkey.  Tommy Siegel may be my new favorite political cartoonist. :)

* The big news in corporate media has been the two editorials from places not deemed to be liberal left bastions:  An official editorial from Christianity Today, a major evangelical publication, and the second, from a senior editor at National Review, Bill Buckley's magazine.  Both call for Trump's impeachment and removal.  Now, one may say, wait a minute.  These folks would be ecstatic with President Pence.  That is why I am glad Schiff is willing to continue investigating Pence for his involvement in the Ukraine scandal.  Pence should have known better, but showed his true Dominionist ends-justify-the-means mindset.  He is the fruit of a poisonous tree and should also be removed.  

* My frustration grows with Krystal Ball and others who are more firmly anti-anti-Trump.  It is possible to decide, even by oligopolist standards, what Trump continues to do and how Trump continues to behave is not good for American society or any remaining positive norms our Founders bequeathed to our continent.  And this in the face of significant numbers of Americans in favor of removing Trump from office.  It is not that Ball is wrong, as yes, MSDNC and CNN are wall-to-wall about impeachment and impeachment related stuff.  However, it is at least theoretically possible to focus on more than one thing at a time.  It is, though, naive of anti-anti-Trumpers, including Ball, sadly, to think corporate media will suddenly find time to talk about income inequality and labor strikes if there was no impeachment proceeding going on.  Corporate media will talk about guns, abortion, immigrants and anything else they can find to avoid such structurally based analysis and arguments about the economy or climate change's relationship to the elite powers who govern the nation and the world.  So the argument that we should not impeach Trump falls apart as badly as Trump's defenders' attempts to avoid admitting what Trump himself already admits about his own conduct.  Impeaching Trump is part of a larger solution.  It does not vindicate the system, though we would hear a lot of that nonsense, just as we did in 1974 after Nixon resigned.  It doesn't change the singular fact Trump is a danger to what remains of our republic.

British elections, part II: British elites still have a hard time seeing the proper level of reality, including critiquing the role of corporate media and the BBC

Decent interview in the New Yorker with a Cambridge professor. The prof is largely correct, but he doesn't seem conscious of his essential contradiction: Corbyn should have been stronger against Brexit, but he admits Labour would have lost in so many Leave districts that were otherwise pro-Labour.  The very idea that Remain would have won if Corbyn was a full-throat Remainer can't pass any smell test, and note the don in the interview gingerly admitted that point.

Two stunning facts remain: (1) Britain's elite were so full of hatred for and fear of Corbyn they consciously allowed themselves to have less fear of a Johnson/Tory victory and (2) their adamant stance on Remain was foolishness incarnate in terms of political strategy. Had they had any good faith and desire for unity for Labour, they would not have excoriated Corbyn as they did, and would have better explained Corbyn's sensible, moderate position that allowed for a new negotiation and a re-vote on the result of that re-negotiation.  Corbyn had credibility with many Leavers for years as someone who had been deeply critical of the role Central European (largely German) bankers had over the European Union, to take one major example.  Somehow the Cambridge don has forgotten all of that in his analysis. 

Note also nowhere does this Cambridge don admit the corporate media's and BBC's consistent, breathless attacks on Corbyn's competence in addition to Corbyn being some sort of alien amidst true Britons had a horrific effect on older shut-ins, who chose to go with Johnson and the Tories rather than risk Corbyn and Labour.  Also, despite the massive pro-Liberal Democratic Party bias among elite media, none of their preferred candidates did well, and their leader lost her otherwise safe seat in Parliament.

I am, however, very glad the Cambridge don told the New Yorker writer that Bernie Sanders is in a very different position from Corbyn and how the election in the UK has nothing to do with Sanders' increasingly strong fortunes. The corporate media here in the US has been so much more beaten down in the hearts of tens of millions of Americans, meaning it has largely lost credibility except with an increasingly smaller part of our population, and youth is coming out even more than in the UK, even in various Republican oriented states.

Newer music courtesy of my children

I think one of the many things I find infuriating about people my age is how often we are behaving like our parents and grandparents in not understanding youth musical culture. I would have thought we would be better because the 1955 Rock and Roll Line, as I call it, made it difficult for my parents and grandparents to understand progressive rock, let alone regular rock and roll. But after the 1970s, we as parents should have been much better at learning of new music. Alas.

The Son has recently begun a radio show at North Carolina State University he calls "The Eclection," which is prog and other electronica from 1980 through the present. The Wife and I have been listening to his show and find the music far more compelling that either of us anticipated. Then, The Daughter appeared in New Mexico this week, and has been providing Dad with music I had heard once before from The Son or never heard before. 

I thought I would list some of the music and bands I have heard this week that may interest my few readers.

Riverside is a Polish progressive rock band that has Moody Blues type vocals but top notch musicianship and composition.  Here is one of their songs from about a decade ago, "Dance with the Shadows."  Another prog band, no longer active, is Black Bonzo, out of Sweden.  I have posted this before, but I adore it.  It is "Sound of the Apocalypse."

Sufjan Stevens is a progressive folk guy who is well known among the college set and other eclectics in the Millennial and early Gen Z crowds.  Here is "Chicago," one of his most popular songs.

The Oh Hellos are a brother-sister duo from Texas.  And they have great stuff.  Here is the first song The Daughter played for me. It is called "Poet, Soldier, King." 

The Fleet Foxes are a Millennials and early Gen Z hipster's favorite.  Here is "White Winter Hymnal."

Zero Seven is the ultimate eclectic band because this song, Likufanale, is not representative, and most songs won't be.  But I love it.

What is so wonderful about these examples is the freshness of the melodies and the passion they bring to the music they are playing.  I admit I still have a problem listening to most hip-hop with any enjoyment and there is a familiarity with the songs I have chosen as examples.  I also saw a middle school English teacher do an extraordinary analysis of the music and lyrics in a Katy Perry song, showing how she consciously used a particular poetic style in constructing her lyric to the song, and how the music accented and played off those lyrics.  While I still would not classify myself as a Katy Perry fan, I was impressed because she was intriguing her middle school (7th or 8th grade, I forget which) students, and giving them credit to look deeper into their popular culture and beyond themselves.  It is why I am so passionate about defending Marvel-DC superhero films in general (not all, certainly, and recently, the disappointments have outnumbered by far anything I have loved).  

My wish for parents as we head into a presidential election year, is to listen more and engage with our children, as to the television shows and films they are watching and music they are listening to, and see if there are ways to find each other.  I also want to do a shout out to the new song from The Who, "Break the News," which is almost unique among old artists releasing a new song that is compelling. I was stunned when I heard it and adore it.  I think The Son, at least, will like this, too.  What I have said to our children since they were young is most generations or eras contain mostly garbage in music, film, novels, etc.  However, the key is engaging with the culture and finding those that either illuminate the time in a profound way or transcend the time, or else are thoughtful and different.

Chris Hedges: Romanticism posing as cynicism

Chris Hedges embarrassed himself during the fall 2016 presidential campaign by positing there was no qualitative and substantive difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In the essay I linked to, Hedges wrote:

While there is a difference in the temperament of the two major presidential candidates, that difference will play out only in how our poison will be delivered. Political personalities serve global corporate centers of power.  (Underlining added)

Later in the essay, Hedges wrote:

Voting for Hillary Clinton will not halt this slide into the apocalypse. It will only accelerate it. Donald Trump may vanish from the political landscape, but someone even more venal, and probably more intelligent, will take his place. Our job is to dismantle the machinery that is pushing toward the cliff. And this means sustained and massive civil disobedience.... (Underlining added)

I recall being appalled at the time how Hedges could believe Hillary Clinton, as president, would have accelerated the slide into a dystopian society compared to Donald Trump. So often, people who focused on the presidential race ignored the fact the Republicans fully controlled Congress at the time, and that Trump's choosing Pence--who we forget was a failed governor in Indiana likely to lose re-election--was Trump fully and irrevocably deciding to throw his carnival barking on behalf of right wing politics, complete with racism, sexism, xenophobia, fascist tendencies, and undermining of what was good about the federal government. Trump, as president, has accelerated the slide into an apocalypse far more than Hillary Clinton would have done, something I saw as likely, and Hedges refused to believe at all. As with most commentators at the time, Hedges appears to have thought Hillary Clinton would prevail over Trump, as one watches this debate he had in September 2016 with Robert Reich; hence, his hyperbolic rhetoric, one supposes. Hedges obviously wasn't heeding Michael Moore, who I was heeding by that point.

In the Trump Era, Hedges has continued to refuse to recognize what has substantively changed under Trump: withdrawal from the Paris climate accords; withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement; reversal of Obama's executive orders, starting with the DACA, environmental protections, and protection of abortion and LGBTQ rights in the military, more favorable loan forgiveness and other related policies at the Department of Education; and the promotion of the worst judges who will haunt our nation for decades, assuming our nation can survive--and the mass of humanity survives. And, from a societal standpoint, I find it disgusting for Hedges to not recognize a simple fact:  Hillary Clinton would not have given permission for racists, anti-Semites, and xenophobes to come out from the shadows, or given them succor.  

Hedges writes in a manner that leads me to believe he almost roots for violent, armed revolution and anarchy, as he believe the US government and our society are so corrupt and so beyond redemption, there is nothing left to reform.  Worse, Hedges seems to think a global economy--and the military power which goes with it--dominated by Chinese dictators and Russian oligarchs is somehow better than Pax Americana.  And yet, Hedges continues to call Bernie Sanders naive.

Now we have Hedges making a cynically-based case that, because the US government and society is morally and economically bankrupt, nothing Trump can do, particularly Trump's bribery/extortion of a foreign government for his own purposes, his continued cavorting with Russians, his undermining of any pretense to democratic/republican norms, and undermining our nation's relationships with Western Europe and South Korea, is impeachable. 

Sadly, I find I continue to agree with almost everything Hedges says in this recent interview at Salon.com, less than a week before he wrote his essay. However, what I believe Hedges misses, in his overall conclusions, is how dangerous it is to just allow everything to fall apart and how dangerous it is for Americans and our nation's Senate to give Trump a pass.  It is already upsetting to me how Pence is getting a pass, when Trump has implicated Pence in the months-long scheming against Ukraine.  I have been careful to say Trump has undermined what remains of the republic, which is very different than saying what one breathlessly hears on MSNBC, for example.  But, to the larger point in response to Hedges, there is no glorious socialist revolution coming by letting Trump continue to violate electoral and political norms. Worse for Hedges' rhetoric, it is not as if most of us live in a society where we are on farms where we can grow our own food, sew our own clothes, use an outhouse, and have horses and buggies to transport our muskets to fight against governmental tyranny. Hedges lives in a world more akin to 1819 than to 2019. It is Hedges' revolutionary romanticism I find troublesome, especially as I recognize the romantic impulse in myself, as I often think it is 1939 instead of 2019. I get it, Chris, I really do. However, let's not go too far back for our historical analogies and let's not let our hopes minimize or ignore the realities of the challenges we face at present.  

For all my sadness, I have hopes for strong showings for Sanders in the early primary states, and momentum toward a presidential nomination.  For all my frustration at my own generation and the addled Oldsters of a lighter skin complexion, I have hope that younger Americans will work with us aging Boomers who empathize with them, to more successfully achieve positive and important structural changes in our society.  As a warning to those who do not understand the import of Hedges' criticisms, however, I also believe young people will be far more willing to desert the Democratic Party after 2020 if the party nominates a corporate Democrat for president, just as I believe such a candidate will lose to Trump through the Electoral College, even if Trump loses the popular vote by 5 million votes, and not 2.9 million votes, as he did in 2016. I share Hedges' disdain with the Democratic Party and the corporate media, though, unlike Hedges, I root for the demise of the latter even more than I root for the demise of the Democratic Party. Hedges remains an iconic voice, but one I have been very disappointed with since the Democratic Party's nomination of Hillary Clinton in August 2016.  Hedge's descent into anti-anti-Trumpism is complete, though I believe Hedges can step back at some point in the future.  For now, Chris Hedges' judgment remains very much clouded in romanticism posing as cynicism. 

We are losing faith in democratic/republican norms

Michelle Goldberg, who has been outstanding for the past year or so, has written an op-ed in the NY Times speaking about grief over people losing faith in democratic or republican norms (lower case for philosophies of government, not political parties). She is essentially correct.  Her essay should be read in tandem with Bertrand Russell's "The Ancestry of Fascism" from 1935 about how difficult it is to argue with people who are not even aware they have rejected those norms (It is unfortunate the Google Docs version is edited and removes most of the point Russell was making about trying to argue where the foundational norms for agreement no longer exist.  It is worth getting the book in which the essay was reprinted, "In Praise of Idleness").

This got me to thinking about my lost opportunity to write a PhD on this subject.  I had at least two thesis idea, and one of them was the most ambitious, and is relevant here. My more ambitious PhD thesis was going to be about the loss of faith in democratic/republican norms during the 1930s, and how there were those who saw Fascism as a road to get on and those who saw Communism as a road to get on. Most business people, including Hollywood studio execs and the editorial board of the NY Times, and a surprisingly strong minority of intellectuals, writers, and others in the creative arts were more concerned with fighting Communism and therefore siding with Mussolini and Hitler, and even the Japanese war lords (one recalls John Foster Dulles' defense of Japanese atrocities and imperial conquest of much of China in 1935 in the Atlantic Monthly, sadly not online and only referenced here at the I.F. Stone Weekly archives). Union organizers, liberal people of faith, and many in the creative arts were more concerned with fighting Fascism and therefore siding with Stalin or at least Trotsky. What both sides agreed upon was the democratic and republican norms were no longer effective to promote a stable society, and what was needed was government to organize the masses in one way or another to provide stability and eventually prosperity. I wanted to write about the period of 1930 through 1946 and how both sides included many who became more confident again in those norms to reject their initial leanings, but only one side was demonized for ever giving into despair about those norms (there were exceptions: William Bullitt and Joe Kennedy, Sr. were knocked out, but that is because they directly challenged FDR in the Democratic Party and paid the political price for the challenges).  I also wanted to be fair to both sides, in the sense of seeking to explain their motives, their overall desire to avoid excessive measures, and to look at their overall conduct before and after the 1930s.

Anyway, we are, again, at this point in American history. However, this time, I am not sure there is an FDR to save us. Well, I am sure, and the presidential candidate's name is Bernard Sanders. Unfortunately, since most people today, my age and up, especially, don't understand what I am talking about in the previous paragraph, and keep thinking instead we should just muddle through or just get rid of Trump or Trump-Pence, my despair and sense of hopelessness are heightened that this time, we will not choose well as a nation.  Worse, the bad faith "arguments" Republicans are making with respect to the impeachment proceeding would be astonishing to most observers even a few years ago.  Notwithstanding this grief I feel these days, I have not given in to the conclusions those in the 1930s and early 1940s gave in to regarding democratic or republican norms.  Far from it.  I support open primaries, same day registration, public financing, instant run off types of reforms in elections, the National Popular Vote initiative regarding the Electoral College, an end to Voter ID laws, and other electoral reforms. I continue to disagree with the early 20th Century revolutionary line about "the worse it gets, the better it gets." Often, it just gets worse when we give up the norms.  My opposition to the "worse it gets, the better it gets" line is what drives my support for Trump's impeachment, and even Pence's impeachment, too. It also drives my rage against Weimar Republic types in corporate media and in the Democratic Party who would rather risk losing to Fascism than allow for completing the New Deal.

________________

So what was my more straightforward PhD project, you may wonder? That project would have been to write the first full length biography of Charles Francis Adams in over 60 years, and to write about the importance of Adams in ways his great previous biographer, Martin Duberman, was not able to, in 1957, write about Adams in quite the way I would, due to constraints on how biographies were written in the 1950s.  I planned to call this thesis paper or book: "Charles Francis Adams: Legacy and Loyalty" and would focus on how those two terms defined much of Charles Francis Adams' life.  Examples would include Charles Francis Adams' loyalty to, and protecting the legacy of, his father, John Quincy Adams, and grandfather, John Adams, in the sense of going through their papers, cataloguing them, and then offering an illumination of his father's and grandfather's policy positions, their political and other philosophies, and their integrity in how they governed (I would not hesitate to offer critical information regarding the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798 or how JQA was not sensitive to Native Americans in his negotiations with Spain over Florida, to take two concrete examples).  The phrase would also illuminate Adams attempting to be practical in his opposition to slavery in the Antebellum period to protect the nation's legacy, and, then, as US ambassador to Great Britain during the US Civil War (1861-1865), working hard and effectively to defeat those British politicians seeking to side with the Confederate treason to the US. In his actions as ambassador, Adams showed a sense of loyalty and demand to protect the nation's legacy--and the best of British's anti-slavery legacy.  Finally, after the Civil War, Adams was important in establishing modern international law, helping to establish the first international arbitrations, including one between the US and Great Britain.  Duberman could only hint at some of Adams' personal issues, especially Adams' descent into dementia, and Adams' relationships with his wife and sons.  I figure the bio would be at least 500 and likely 600 pages, plus footnotes--in short (pun intended) more like Chernow's bio of Hamilton in page length.

I am open to someone telling me they would fund me for one or both projects. Although I do know some wealthy people, I don't know anyone interested in such funding. :)  

The failure of corporate media (including the BBC) in the UK and the continued rise of the Fascist International

No time this morning for links (other than my own), but here goes my initial take on the British elections this week:

First, I think there has been a failure of the entire pundit class in corporate media and the BBC. The belief for the past three years was that Remain was far stronger than Leave. If that was true, then Jo Swinson and the LibDems should have vastly outperformed expectations and Corbyn only winning a right to form a coalition with the LibDems and perhaps the SNP and other parties. Instead, Leave won big. This also means Corbyn’s attempted strategy of trying to find a compromise was correct, but the corporate and BBC media failed him by presenting Corbyn as a ditherer. One thing I find most Anglo-American voters do not want is a ditherer. They want resoluteness. The Conservative message, built on a lie, as usual, was still one of resoluteness. “We’ll get Brexit done!", without saying just what that "done" in fact is. The Blairites, and their many friends in the British corporate media (I definitely include the Manchester Guardian here) and the BBC have no basis to say anything against Corbyn, and in fact bear most of the blame for undermining their party’s leadership. Their elitist oriented Remain arguments and attacks on Corbyn sure didn’t help Jo Swinson and the LibDems–again–and Swinson lost as did the Blairites who defected from Labour to run as LibDems. 

I also underestimated myself, here in the States, how much differently Corbyn is viewed in the UK compared to Sanders in the US. Sanders remains the most popular politician in the US, and it is Sanders' resoluteness and his consistency which gives people here a positive feeling about him. Corbyn was made into a pariah (the Guardian this morning showed Corbyn had lost 55% of his popularity in ratings and was essentially in negative territory), and, as Corbyn attempted to hold Remain and Leave voters together, again with the constant attacks in media in the UK, it seems those attacks had their effect. The ridiculous attacks on Corbyn as an anti-Semite, when the number of anti-Semites in the Labour Party is no greater than the Conservative Party, and where Corbyn himself is one who is not at all anti-Semitic in any way, had their effect, but somehow one wonders, Did more well off Jews in Great Britain simply vote for the Conservative Party and bypass the LibDems, too?  If so, there should be a lot of soul searching around British shuls tonight and tomorrow.  If anyone thinks Boris Johnson would come to "the" Jews' rescue if the anti-Muslim fervor and anti-cosmopolitan fervor develops, those people have no understanding of Conservative Party "principles" over the past 100 years, when British working people first tasted their rights to vote.  Fascism is the language capitalists use to maintain power over the people they still consider serfs.

As I initially see things, there are two ironies in this election: First, the voters who jumped on board with the Conservative Party in those coal mining and other towns just jumped on board with the very people who did them in 30 years ago under Thatcher. And the Conservatives have not changed in their hostility to worker unions, hostility to the entire Beveridge project and hostility to the NHS. This leads to the second irony, which makes this a Twilight Zone election, meaning voters strongly demanded something, have now gotten it, and will one day realize they will not get happiness, but what they “deserve,” which is disaster. Getting Brexit “done” will mean more economic ruin and the undermining of the NHS, especially in those more rural areas in Wales and Midlands and the coal and other mining areas. The Fascist International is definitely on the rise, and the Weimar Republic politicians in the US and UK have been, as in the 1920s and early 1930s, the handmaidens for fascism, preaching “moderation” at a time of pain and recrimination on the part of voters who feel betrayed and left behind.

One query exists in my mind, however:  Where was the youth vote? And, were the lines for older Brits who came out in force, feeling their whole way of life was under attack, and lured by the siren song of the Conservatives?  Did the youth simply stay home, thinking they were outnumbered?  These are important questions for the US, as the youth would be making a grave error to stay home in 2020.  I have said we can expect Trump to win 60% or more of the aging white vote, and that there will be a 70% and possibly 80% turnout of aging white voters.  They are mobilized by right wing media and they are enthusiastic in their fears, hatreds, and clinging to old ideas based upon white supremacy.  If the Democrats want to win in 2020, it will not be through "moderation." It will be through resoluteness and exciting the Democratic Party's natural bases, starting with youth and people of color.  People of color have shown in polling data they are not looking for superficial skin color, but people who are--that word again--resolutely on their side.  There is reason to believe trade will be included in Trump's "triumph" arguments and Dems would be wise to let Sanders continue to stand foursquare against the past trade deals, and push for his vision on international trade, a vision that begins with American workers' interests.  It has deeply concerned me how the elite classes and the US corporate media would rather risk Trump's re-election through the Electoral College than stand with the sanity that is Sanders.  Sanders is right to remain resolute. Sanders is right to remain critical of corporate media.  Sanders is right to push his candidacy through social media.  

In closing, anyone who thinks more "moderation" on the part of Labour would have won the elections this week have missed the point and moment entirely.  This is far less a repudiation of Corbyn and the Labourites than a repudiation of the elites and, instead, an embrace of fascism, which of course is just the elite wolves in sheep's clothing.  

UPDATE December 15, 2019:  I have been told, but have not confirmed in a published account, the number of Labour and LibDems votes exceeded Conservative votes. However, that did not reflect the number of seats won because the UK suffers even more from the start demographics between rural and urban/suburban districts than the US.  There are many districts scattered throughout Great Britain, particularly in Wales and England proper, where a relatively few voters can have their votes count far more than the multitudes in London and other larger cities.  This, however, is not an argument against my analysis, but favors it.  It means, again, Corbyn was correct to pursue a softer and reasonable approach to Brexit, and proves the near uniform negative attacks on Corbyn in corporate/BBC media made Corbyn look weak--a fatal arrow right through the heart of Corbyn's personality over his long career, where he often would stand alone and be fearless.  This article also provides a voter breakdown which should prove, to anyone acting in good faith, that the "third way," "centrist," "Blairite," etc. would have done better is as wrong as ever. The third way, etc. candidates fared worse across the board.  Again, the corporate media/BBC failure was overstating the Remain vote throughout Great Britain, without analyzing the issue district by district.  The failure is regarding political strategy, since many in the elite cannot be happy with Johnson's victory. This failure to comprehend the correctness of Corbyn's political strategy led to overconfidence and the belief among the British economic elites that attacking Corbyn would lead to a great surge for the LibDems.  There is no showing our nation's corporate media and economic elite will learn any lessons from the historic defeat for Labour in this past week's elections in Great Britain.

I should also say, without modesty, that Bernard Porter, a very intelligent British historian, agrees with the essence of my analysis.  See his blog post from the other day, and his reply in the comments to my comment, which was written before my own blog post on this subject.   Porter remains my favorite commentator, and it is telling he is only at a blog, not in, say, The Guardian.  Here are other posts from him these past couple of days, all well worth reading.  He and I appear to agree about the loss of a reasoned discourse, even among elites, and we were both outraged at the anti-Semitism charge against Corbyn, especially as his mother taught him the importance of both anti-fascist politics and protecting Jewish people from fascist bullies and institutions, a favorite sport of Europeans for nearly two millennia.

UPDATE #2:  Here is a fairly detailed set of polling data and analysis, which, to me, showed why the attacks on Corbyn for dithering on Brexit proved decisive in undermining Labour's unity, and favored the Conservatives.

UPDATE #3: David Graeber, who lives in Great Britain and is a respected social anthropologist, writes in the New York Review of Books about the election debacle and comes to essentially the same conclusions I did in my first reaction.  Nice to see Graeber, an astute mind, seeing what I saw. :)

Drive Bys: December 12, 2019

* In the late Edwin Bayley's great book, "Joe McCarthy and the Press," published in 1981, Bayley, who was the top political reporter for the Milwaukee Journal (who covered McCarthy from his first campaigns in the late 1940s forward), said the key to avoiding the hysteria McCarthy played upon was to report the senator's statements as either not proven or supported by evidence, or to say the statements were factually wrong. What Bayley, who died in 2002, could not have imagined was the rise of corporate cable "news" and how more and more older Americans especially are impervious to principled argument, good government, or even facts that are verifiable. My wife and I were privileged to know Bayley and his wife in their last years, and he always got a kick out of the fact that I, a non-journalist, had read his book before meeting him. His book sold a few thousand copies, I think, and was mostly read by journalist professors, and not enough journalists, though his book did shape, I think, the idea of fact checking that has developed since the 1990s. But as we see in this impeachment of Donald Trump saga, it is not enough for too many of our fellow older Americans.  No matter how clear a case there is for impeaching Trump, and frankly, reason to investigate further Pence's role, based upon Pence being part of the months' long calls to the then-new Ukrainian leadership starting in the spring of this year, and seeing polling data showing support for impeachment declining from half to less than half, one despairs for rational discourse more than in a long time.  See The American Conservative concluding there is strong reason to impeach, as well as Robert Reich, erstwhile progressive economist, saying the same.

*I remember 40 years ago, Disney had a robust union and its wages and benefits were the envy of Orange County. I know. I worked there in the summer of 1980 and they paid significantly more than minimum wage, 50 cents, which is not much in today's terms, but in purchasing power at the time, was significant (For those who may inquire, I was a Jungle Cruise guide..."Welcome aboard the Leaky-Teaky. I'm your captain, Les Capable!" "There's something you don't see every day--I do (moaning)--the back side of water!" Things began to fall apart by the end of the 1980s and now we learn people are living in their cars, as they can't afford rent, while working at the "happiest place on earth." 

Bonus point: In 1980, what position received the highest hourly wage for a staff park employee at Disneyland? Ready? Custodians. Disney management would say to employees it is why the park was so clean. Today, they make the $14 an hour that leads to living in a car.  Imagine that, imagineers.

* The Confederacy continues to stack the courts to ensure white supremacism for the next twenty to thirty years.  The backlash will be a more robust use of impeachment for these judges, who are clearly unqualified.  This latest one is shocking because so many of this fellow's colleagues were so strong in their negative opinions of him, calling the nominee "lazy," "arrogant," and other words that would describe someone not suited for a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary.  

There’s an old Walt Disney quote, a favorite of workplace morale posters and business self-help books, that goes: “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” These days, there are a lot of people making the Disn...

* I originally was outraged at learning from the initial NY Times report that Trump was changing the meaning of being Jewish from a religion to a nationality. Judaism has not been a nationality since the Diaspora, and became an ethically based religion for the past 2,000 years. People move in and out of Judaism as with other religions. To suddenly tie us to a "homeland" in the present form of Israel is deeply misguided, and will eventually play into the hands of anti-Semites who do not see Jews as "true" Americans. Then, I read this article in Slate, and thought, maybe we are overstating all this. But now, I read this article and see my initial take was essentially correct. The expanded definition of anti-Semitism now ties Jews to Israel in a way that I would not agree with at all. The definition the Trump administration is using for anti-Semitism includes statements denying Jewish people their "homeland," and specifically defines as anti-Semitic that the state of Israel constitutes a "racist endeavor." Sorry, I dissent from that broad a definition of anti-Semitism because Israel was created as a political act, not a religious one. Ben Gurion and his advisers were, almost to a person, male and female, atheists and mostly socialist in outlook, not religiously motivated. Further, the entire idea of Zionism from Theodor Herzl was an express reaction to European nationalism in the late 19th Century that was a culmination of European Christian anti-Semitism. The reason most, but not all orthodox groups opposed Zionism in the early to mid 20th Century was, as they would caustically state, because God, not Ben Gurion tells Jews when to return to Israel.  Trump continues to stoke anti-Semitism in various ways, as his speech last week to a Jewish organization shows.

* There was a bumper sticker in the past decade which said, "Republicans for Voldemort," which was meant to show the values the Republicans were espousing were inherently evil.  I loved the sticker because it so creatively and ironically stated what has gone wrong in the Republican Party decade over decade since the 1960s, especially.  But now satire has once again been eclipsed, where an official Trump campaign has placed Trump's head over the Marvel Universe's most powerful villain, Thanos.  

* I am starting to think the Boomers on my FB page did not understand my one liner, "Kids, you know what to say," in response to this meme about good ol' Walter Cronkite. I had to resort to a statement in the comments section, stating the meme is closer to one of those Boomer and Oldster memes about the "good old days," this time, about corporate media. Uncle Walter, as we used to call him, actually did offer opinions, and those opinions drew Republican ire in 1972, as he was the only newscaster who would report on the work Woodward & Bernstein were doing at the time of Watergate. He offered opinions in a report over two nights, two weeks before the 1972 election, saying the scandal, already being called "The Watergate Scandal," was one that showed Nixon was a threat to our nation's electoral integrity and more. Also, it was Uncle Walter who told LBJ in 1968 the Vietnam War was no longer "winnable," prompting LBJ to lament, "When we've lost Walter Cronkite, we've lost the country." Walter Cronkite, ironically, was a Republican in his voting habits, and, early in the Nixon_Agnew years, regularly played tennis with Spiro Agnew, as this book, "Air Time: The Inside Story of CBS News," I believe, stated. Cronkite also recognized the little amount of information his show provided. He said in interviews he was essentially reading headlines and adding pictures for 22 minutes a night. He thought anyone relying on him instead of reading actual news stories were making a grave error. Oh well. Boomers and Oldsters. So pathetic. So very, very pathetic. For the last line in the meme, "I am not making this up," is actually, um, wrong. The meme is "making it up." And therefore my line was intended to mean, "Ok, Boomer." Sigh.

* And a defense of Elizabeth Warren over her latest imbroglio, her consulting fees over thirty years: $2 million in consulting fees over 30 years is about $67,000 a year, isn't it? But I think she had to stop doing consulting work after her senate victory in 2012, so the average is probably closer to $85,000 a year. Either way, that is still a lot less than I had assumed from the imbroglio over this issue. And yes, we ourselves have represented companies and some big corporations over the years, though I wonder whether I would have done that had I been in the type of professorial positions Warren held starting in the 1990s, and had medical insurance from a university. Still, I am not dragging Warren over the coals on this issue. Her public advocacy from the mid-1990s forward should be far more important with only one exception: Her fight for the company fighting the union over medical insurance benefits.

* My former mock trial high school student, Matt Klickstein, has written what looks to be a well received comic book, "You Are Obsolete." Sounds great. Matt, of course, has written or co-written a number of books already, as seen here at Amazon's listing for him.