We all obsess. Technology just lets Millennials do it in a more obvious manner.

This Salon.com essay is a nice perspective on a film, "Brigsby Bear," I've not yet seen, and will wait till it arrives on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.  An early trailer struck me as a bit too self-conscious, and even cloying.  But I liked its gentleness and eclectic sensibility.  This later trailer seems more consistent with the writer Matthew Rowza's perspective.

My one criticism of Rowza's essay is that it overstates why Millennials get "obsessed" with certain pop culture reference points.  It's not slacker-dom that causes Millennials to do this--and admittedly Rowza merely implies this reason.  The better way to see this phenomenon is to ask what makes Millennials able to do this?  And the answer is technology with a capital T.  Millennials did not change human traits.  Technology simply made it possible for certain human traits to develop further.

Take myself as an example.  When I was a pre-teen and teen, I obsessed over "The Prisoner" and "The Twilight Zone."  But until I became an adult, I could not watch those shows whenever I wanted, and certainly could not watch them over and over again.  I had to rely on and develop a memory of dialogue and plot lines if I was lucky to set aside a time to see a rerun of the shows.  I remember waking up with an alarm clock to watch a rerun of the last episode of "The Prisoner" when I read in TV Guide it would be on at 1:30 a.m. on a Tuesday on Channel 5, WNEW-television.

I was also obsessed with the late comedian, Lenny Bruce.  But with Lenny, however, I had records!  And trust me.  I listened over and over and over again (I did not get many dates, obviously...) and I found a book of transcribed Lenny Bruce routines by John Cohen.  And I read and memorized nearly all of that book.  To this day, something will occur or someone will say something that literally triggers a Lenny Bruce routine line and I repeat it, mostly to confusion of the other person if it is heard by that person.

Hmmm...obsession?  Oh yes it is.  And I am a Baby Boomer, not a Millennial.  And I was able to do that because, unlike someone who was a teen in, say, the 1920s, who only had radio and could only hear shows once at a certain time...well, you see the point.  And go back further before the advent of the novel.  Not much time to obsess unless one was a wealthy person who could collect things.

Technology has granted us a right to obsess.  And let's not think Millennials aren't thriving as a group because of this technology that allows for obsession.  It may be technology, in the sense of automation and higher efficiencies from computers.  That is definitely a part of the challenges facing Millennials.  But talk of "technology" as a separate part of the general systems, or something "naturally" (objectively) occurring, instead of seeing technology as something which is an integral part of a society that is promoting inequality, is what leads us astray.

I just wish people in power would take the time to read "Labor & Monopoly Capital" (1974) by Harry Braverman.  It is an amazing work by a barely high school graduate, a labor organizer by trade, and a self-taught intellectual, who analyzed how a capitalist system uses technology to further control the workplace and, while it may not lead to enslavement, certainly promotes anomie and disruption of human connection.  Braverman, in this book, predicts the decline of bank tellers and the rise of what we call automated teller machines (ATMs).  In 1974.  He says the promotion will be that it will be cheaper for the employer banks and of course cheaper for consumers.  There will be a fee, the banks will say, but it will go away.   And of course it will not go away.  Braverman understood how the world works, at least our world.

So again these cheap drive by's against Millennials, even when offered in a kindly way, are really dodges that even good people like Rowza do not necessarily see.  I am not asking that Rowza say what I've said.  That is not the point of his essay.  I like his essay and am now more intrigued to see "Brigsby Bear."  I just want us all to notice how even a Millennial like Rowza can't help but kick Millennials, when the thing we should "obsess" over is not generations, but societal systems.  We should be constantly asking:  "Why isn't technology freeing us?  Why is it burdening us?" For those questions are better than "Why are Millennials so obsessive over what we adults consider silly?"

We can then see which questions lead us to question true authorities over our lives and which divide us.

An essay from England about corporate media that speaks exactly to the issue of corporate media in the U.S.

This article from the London Review of Books, is an interesting read, and may include some rough waters as the author, Tom Crews, delves deep into the 1830s and Dickens' Pickwick Papers and then forward into the rest of the 19th Century to find how corporate media developed.

But we get nuggets like this:

If the relationship (between politicians and media) is no longer quite so gentlemanly – it has become unhealthier over time, as each side has attempted to control, exploit and bully the other – it remains fundamental, and incurs the same risks that have been there from the start: that close access inhibits perspective, thus affecting sense of proportion on both sides, making political journalism overwhelmingly Westminster-centric and vitiating its evidence base. Whatever the government of the day, the connection is too cosy to allow for radical critique. (Robbie Gibb, who recently quit his job as editor of the BBC’s Daily Politics and Sunday Politics to become Theresa May’s director of communications, is only the latest figure to pass through the revolving door between the media and Downing Street.)

We have the same antecedents here, and ours go back to the 1790s with the Aurora and Gazette, as dueling Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian newspapers, with each man not-so-secretly funding the editors/publishers who printed the most vile and scurrilous "information" about the other. Gordon Wood's "Empire of Liberty" (from 2009, and the title is, of course, from Jefferson's phrase) does a solid job of showing how the 1790s were a decade in which this nation was perilously close to a Civil War--yes, that should shock many of us, but it is true--and Claude G. Bowers' "Jefferson & Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America" (1925), which I've lately been re-reading, has several chapters about what he calls, somewhat innocently, "The Terror" and the manner in which the two main competing newspapers and their editors fanned hysteria and were engulfed in the hysteria they created (Bowers' hostility to Adams, Hamilton and Federalists is something one must get past, but it is still riveting and informative reading).

But this issue of how "access" to the deepest bowels of power tends to skew perspective and cause otherwise bright and earnest reporters, editors and publishers to lose sight of reality is a real issue and has been for many years. I.F. Stone often talked about seeing things clearly because he did not go to the cocktail parties or mingle with the politicians.* And here is a portion of Stone's autobiography he wrote in 1963:

The fault I find with most American newspapers is not the absence of dissent. It is the absence of news. With a dozen or so honorable exceptions, most American newspapers carry very little news.Their main concern is advertising. The main interest of our society is merchandising. All the so-called communications industries are primarily concerned not with communications, but with selling. This is obvious on television and radio but it is only a little less obvious in the newspapers. Most owners of newspapers are businessmen, not newspapermen. The news is something which fills the spaces left over by the advertisers. The average publisher is not only hostile to dissenting opinion, he is suspicious of any opinion likely to antagonize any reader or consumer. The late Colonel McCormick, in his Chicago Tribune, ran a paper about as different as possible from mine in outlook. But I admired him. He stood for something, he was a newspaperman, he gave the Tribune personality and character. Most U.S. papers stand for nothing. They carry prefabricated news, prefabricated opinion, and prefabricated cartoons. There are only a handful of American papers worth reading —The New York Times, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science Monitor—these are news papers in the real sense of the term. But even here opinion is often timid; the cold war and the arms race are little questioned though these papers do speak up from time to time on civil liberty. There are only a few maverick daily papers left like the York (Pennsylvania) Gazette and Daily and the Madison (Wisconsin) Capital Times. All this makes it easy for a one-man four-page Washington paper to find news the others ignore, and of course opinion they would rarely express.

(And if you have the time, check out this wonderful film by Jerry Bruck about Stone, named after Stone's legendary, "I.F. Stone's Weekly" (1973).)

Upton Sinclair's "The Brass Check" remains one of the great historical records of the rise of corporate media and how it works to propagandize the working class into voting against its own interests, which is what Walter Lippmann, a couple of years after "The Brass Check" appeared, called "manufacturing consent." George Seldes, who personified "the intrepid reporter," now called an "investigative" reporter, went from a person who thought Upton Sinclair was a bit of a showman and too conspiratorial to became an even more arch-watchdog over corporate media (then called the "capitalist press"), to the point where "mainstream" journalists thought Seldes a "crank." However, Seldes wrote some of the most foundational press criticism that still sizzles today, and his books "Freedom of the Press" (1935) and "Lords of the Press" (1938) should be required reading in high schools across the nation. YouTube also now has the excellent documentary on George Seldes, from Seldes' first memoir, "Tell the Truth and Run."

That some think Stone and Seldes were "Reds" is pathetically and ridiculously sad, but that sort of attack dates back to the systems and institutions that were set up in the aftermath of the Espionage Act of 1917 and the post-WWI and then post-WWII worlds where corporate media, acting as a handmaiden to American political and business leaders, perfected Red-baiting. That it has reached a point where Eisenhower, were he to return today and hold the same political views, would be to the left of most American politicians, and would be positively toxic in the corporate media echo chamber, is precisely what ails us in improving our discourse and search for appropriate public policy making. And just so people know, Seldes was one of the only American journalists to have been hounded out of both Soviet Russia and Mussolini's Italy for...telling the truth and then having to run. At most, both Seldes and Stone were Popular Fronters, who were wary of Communists in the U.S., but saw them as practical allies for rallying activists to fight for New Deal policies.**

I apologize for the American history diversion, but it goes to the heart of why Crews' essay is so enlightening for us as Americans. Crews' essay begins with something very powerful, which is how the corporate media including The Guardian, the supposedly left-wing newspaper, failed to understand what was happening in the election of 2017 in the U.K.

There is a journalistic, snarkily fun but deeply researched book set for release in the U.S. later this fall--it is already released in the U.K. and my cousin sent me a copy a month ago--that documents the rise of Corbyn before this year's election, and just how lacking in judgment and perspective the corporate media in the United Kingdom really are (It is called "The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn's Improbable Path to Power" by Alex Nunns). The book speaks directly to our news media here and to the vacuousness of the pundits, editors and publishers in our nation. It is not that the best, such as the NY Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, etc. do not report factual information. They mostly do, but the slant is ever present, starting with the word "moderate." There is also the fascination with rich business executives as if they know statecraft--which led so many to say about Trump, "But he is a rich businessman!" as if that meant he could govern. And worst are the usual bromides about private enterprise being superior to government, that tax cuts in rain or shine make sense, that those who press for war are more "serious" and that those opposing war are suspect and always have a shifting goalpost burden of proof, and how there must be two sides to the climate change debate as if this was only a political, not scientific issue we are discussing.

So yeah, I went on a bit here. But those who have woken up to the biases of corporate media in our time should know that the world did not begin to change in this regard when those persons woke up. And a deeper reading of the past will immensely enlighten those persons so that they do not reject everything in mainstream corporate media, but instead learn to discern and think critically, and with a far longer perspective--and to recognize too how capitalism is itself an ideology and a source for bias. Or maybe leave it to Upton Sinclair, who famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” And just over 100 years ago, it was said of the British newspaperman that he did not need to be bribed, because he already understood the needs of the Empire. It is how he kept his job.

Footnotes:

*Stone did have lunch, in the immediate post-WWII world, with Assistant Treasury Secretary, Harry Dexter White, where White would talk about expanding what later became somewhat sardonically known as Pax American, and Stone would shake his head and argue with him why that is not a good thing. Stone was incredulous that anyone would consider White a pro-Soviet spy as White was so clearly wanting to lead an International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank with pro-Western and especially pro-U.S. leadership.

**Some years ago, I had to save the Wiki entry on I.F. Stone from being too credulous about Stone's supposed pro-Stalin and pro-Soviet Union views back in the 1930s by pointing out what we learned in the Robert Cottrell biography of Stone, which is that Stone was fairly anti-Stalinist in his earliest editorials he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer as the purges began, calling Stalin a "thug"  and other epithets.  I have had a disagreement with Myra McPherson about this, I admit, as she believes publisher David Stern's daughter that Stern wrote several of those editorials denouncing Stalin's tactics and actions. I don't buy that for a moment as the editorials are in Stone's deep historically minded and then invective style, especially the op-ed about the military being purged by Stalin, which op-ed includes a reference to the French Revolution's Thermidor period. Sorry, but David Stern, a newspaper publisher businessman, was not about to reference the French Revolution in that way, unlike Stone, for whom the French Revolution remained a guiding avatar and reference point throughout his life.

Don't forget the enemies of freedom from the Far Left, either...but there remains a difference

Bari Weiss of the NY Times has written something very important for those of us who protest anti-human, anti-environmental policies and racism/sexism in our society.  It turns out four of the organizers of the Women's March have a very bad history of supporting dictators and hatred themselves.  I think an article like this is important and exposes something that a lot of us did not know.

Are all of Weiss' points valid?  No, the drive-by on Keith Ellison, who has long renounced his behavior of 20 years ago and who has been very consistently reasonable and anti-hate since, was unbecoming of her.  And is anti-Zionism alone a sign of being a hater?  Sorry, Bari.  But, no.  Netanyahu and Israeli policies towards Palestinians are enough for most kinder Americans to shudder when they read about it or hear about it.  And when the light was shone on Farakkahn after his Million Man March, he had to retreat to the sidelines because he was exposed as the often weird minded hater he is.  That any of these four women could find him enlightening speaks very ill of their judgment and overall worldview indeed.  And further, let's recall that these four did not help organize more than the main march in D.C. Plenty of marches, large ones, occurred across the nation with which they little or nothing to do with.

There is one other difference that Weiss did not need to note, but I will here.  If any of these four women tried to get a hate-filled chant against Jews or blacks (or for that matter against men in general) started at the Women's March or Marches,  they would not find many takers.  And not many grabbing Tiki Torches to menace a religious institution, either.  What I recall reading about the Women's Marches was how free of violence they were and how much they meant emotionally and politically to so many who attended.  A very different thing.  Weiss is not "falsely equivalencing" I might add, but the temptation from some reading this is likely.

The problem most right-wingers (and to a much lesser extent, a few corporate media pundits who are Clintonites) will have reading Weiss' article is they will likely fall back on the tropes they know so well, which is Red-baiting just as Weiss herself did with Keith Ellison.  Well, news flash, at least to right-wingers:  Look in the mirror.  You want to defend the current occupant of the White House for his footsie relationship with Putin?  You are now a pro-Russian "apologist" in the parlance you know so well.  You want to wait until a "real" news source tells you the guy who plowed into the crowd with his car was a pro-Nazi, and say the so-called "anti-fa" was as bad as the ones shouting hate slogans?  Meet real Fellow Traveler status, again, something that remains a right-wing byword to demonize and delegitimize someone whose politics with which they disagree, like demonizing someone who supports a progressive income tax or national health insurance.

So again.  Let's thank Bari Weiss for her investigative analysis and learn why we should all be wary of these four persons she exposed--Bland, Sarsour, Perez and Mallory--,who really do not speak for the multitudes of women and pro-feminist men who will no doubt organize again across the nation to oppose policies that hurt women's rights to bodily autonomy and women's health.  The only good thing, I suppose, is that the four women are on "our side" on those matters.:)

Don't count on keeping the free birth control in your employer's group health insurance...

The specter of Chistrian Dominionist/Dominatrix Vice President Pence rises again.  Trump just dances with those who brought him.

Okay, ladies.  You know what to do here.  Can't count on enough of us guys here, unfortunately.  Time to get out the pink pussy hats and protest.  We will try to join you this time.

Also, 2018 is arriving sooner than we think.  And the single ladies especially, who often do not vote in non-presidential election years when the Congress critters and a third of the Senate cats are up for renewals, may actually find a reason to vote against the mean ol' ones who would make them pay more for birth control pills and devices.

Then, we can elect a Democratic Party dominated Congress and put the Trumpster in his place.  He will submit.  He is really not all that tough.  And, really, he just wants to be liked.

UPDATE 9:10 p.m. 8/21/2017:  I guess Robert Reich sees what I do.  We won't talk about, at least for this moment, the damage people like Scott Pruitt and Betsy DeVos are doing...Just hold on, though, folks.

Maher: How can you get tired of winning if you don't get over losing?

We can be against the American Empire without being against American world leadership and ideals

Here is David Brin, who I deeply admire despite the fact that he finds my Popular Front-liberal coalition historical perspective distasteful.  

I am sad I am making my first MFBTS post for one of David Brin's blog posts one where I disagree more than I agree with him in terms of his subject matter, for I have found most of his posts compelling over the years, and especially since the rise of Donald Trump, the politician.

First, I have a hard time believing Republicans and Democrats will together decide to remove the president under the 25th Amendment.  I get that one does not need to show mental incapacity, but I question whether an elitist removal on the basis of "political" "incapacity" (not policy based, but based upon ability to govern) is a good thing.  I am concerned such a procedure will end up backfiring and creating even further conditions for a renewed violent Civil War--sorta the way the elite opinion in Washington, D.C., including then-incoming President Buchanan, thought it would be a good idea to have the Dred Scott case come down hard one way or the other on the slavery question to supposedly settle the matter.  

Besides, unless we also remove Pence, we fall into the trap Brin has consistently and correctly warned us about:  Pence is worse from any public policy stance that has anything to do with the Enlightenment.

Second, Brin's love for Pax Americana is naive at best, which I also get can be an insult for someone such as Brin, who is both eminently practical and deeply knowledgeable on so many subjects, including world and American history in addition to his immense scientific and mathematical knowledge.  But for him to say Pax Americana is 90% benign and 10% malignant shows grave ignorance of U.S. history in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.  That's a lot of territory, though with Africa, the U.S. role has been relatively limited compared to other European nations, including the U.K. in the definition of "European."

And it matters very little that previous Empires were as bad or worse. One can make the argument, for example, and Gore Vidal was very insightful on this particular topic, that once the Romans vanquished a region, they gave back a lot of autonomy as long as a portion of the agriculture produced and manpower were provided to the then Roman Empire.  The British gave a lot to India too under the type of rhetorical gloss Brin wants to make for Pax Americana.  What the British Empire gave, and we too give, is hypocrisy of the reality of its oppressive nature and its most outstanding and brilliant ideals, something perhaps earlier Empires did not have--though perhaps Athenian hypocrisy was fairly well developed, too.  More recently, meaning the last fifty years, the Russian Soviets built many hospitals, roads, and schools in Afghanistan, as that nation descended further into religious-based tribal warfare.  Where the U.S. did well was with Europe, and there much better than the Soviets did for Eastern Europe.  In a way, Brin sounds like those old Stalinist apologists who liked to quote Mao in saying Stalin was 70% good, 30% bad.  I went "ugh" when I was in college in the 1970s and go "ugh" now.   I would be more willing to go 80/20% with 80% being malignant with respect to the American Empire.  Stalin?  Not worth 1%.   I know too many of us believe we are supposed to root for our nation the way we root for our sports teams, but one is capable of loving our nation's land and people while recognizing the history of our nation is not all clean and perfect. 

But having said all that, I find I agree with Brin that it is very, very dangerous for us to lose economic leadership, beggar our consumer society and undermine our advanced learning.  It is also very dangerous to undermine our civil servants, especially those performing detailed analytics, metrics and other research. I too respect our military leaders who think about facts, circumstances, human power, and tactics when being asked to weigh military options, and care about the morale and readiness of and care for our nation's soldiers.  I also strongly believe we as citizens owe a duty to our military not to put them in harm's way to oppress other nations, but to truly use them as a last resort when diplomacy fully fails.  

And so, when we review his entire post, I feel confident in saying that while I disagree with more of his blog post than agree, what we agree on is actually more vital.  For the first disagreement is merely one of theory and the second disagreement is about American foreign policy history which we can't go back and change anyway.  Where we agree is standing athwart against the destructive behavior of the Republican-led Congress and this administration, which each appear to want to govern without a majority of voters' consensus.   

Limits of discourse and the rise of fascistic tendencies

I find myself being re-drawn into the writings of Bertrand Russell.  Here is an enlightening essay on the Ancestry of Fascism which he wrote in the 1930s.  It is eerily relevant today, particularly his passages about the limits of discourse with people who refuse to share commonly held facts.

Reliance upon reason, as thus defined, assumes a certain community of interest and outlook between oneself and one's audience. It is true that Mrs. Bond tried it on her ducks, when she cried “come and be killed, for you must be stuffed and my customers filled"; but in general the appeal to reason is thought ineffective with those whom we mean to devour.

Those who believe in eating meat do not attempt to find arguments which would seem valid to a sheep, and Nietzsche does not attempt to persuade the mass of the population, whom he calls the bungled and botched." Nor does Marx try to enlist the support of capitalists. As these instances show, the appeal to reason is easier when power is unquestioningly confined to an oligarchy.

In eighteenth-century England, only the opinions of aristocrats and their friends were important, and these could always be presented in a rational form to other aristocrats. As the political constituency grows larger and more heterogeneous, the appeal to reason becomes more difficult, since there are fewer universally conceded assumptions from which agreement can start. When such assumptions cannot be found, men are driven to rely upon their own intuitions; and since the intuitions of different groups differ, reliance upon them leads to strife and power politics. 

Yes, this does sound familiar these days...

Social media gang ups on people who harbor pro-Fascist or pro-Nazi beliefs is a moral wrong in this time and in this nation at this time.

God, I hate this.  I know, I know.  I don't like the guy's politics, either, and if he is saying bad stuff about people for being...Jewish, then I really don't like that guy's politics.  

But using social media to gang up on these individual people and then getting them fired, hounding them, and making it so they have to move strikes me as deeply and utterly wrong.  Maybe I am just a naive liberal minded guy, but I find many of them are misguided souls who have experienced loneliness, or some sort of psychic pain, or something akin to that.  I also find that I get mad more at the politics and economic policies that led us to where we are in so many parts of the nation over the past several decades.  

I know too they don't think this way, but that doesn't stop me from thinking the way I do.  I am ready to start to say to people that maybe they should wear masks, maybe they should go anonymous.  It is scarier that way, for certain, but if people are going to support ganging up on individuals for exercising free speech rights, well, count me out on that gang up.  I will stand with the Tiki torch marchers (most of them, not the ones who were menacing and chasing Jews out of their nearby temple) under principles that go back to at least Voltaire.  I am not saying it is never good to gang up, but I must say we need more faith in our institutions in this regard than we have shown here.  I think there has been plenty of opprobrium from across much of the political spectrum, and Trump's tone deafness and cynicism led him to be far more ridiculed inside his own current party than anything else.  Let's move from there, rather than beat up on these lone individuals.

What even good historians in our nation do not often understand is why American Communists did not want to identify themselves as Communists in the post WWII period, particularly during the Red Scare.  Well, first off, there was the Smith Act of 1940 which was quickly used to go after Communists to put them in jail on the basis of their beliefs as Communists--even though some American Communists joined in support for passing the Act, thinking it would be used against Trotskyists, I kid you not (and Trots were early targets, I should add).  But more important than that was the fear of Communists that we would, as a nation, repeat the Palmer Raids and the sometimes outright severe bodily injury and even death meted out to Reds and anarchists in the period of 1917 through a lot of the 1920s in places like Montana, Idaho, West Virginia and the like.  When we try to understand what people were thinking at a given time, we need to see how they saw the history of the previous twenty-to-forty years for their perspective, not engage in presentism. 

The Time I Opened Up Personally on Facebook as We Were Leaving California for New Mexico

The great investigative journalist, Dan Moldea, had loved this FB post so much he said he thought it should be published in some magazine or journal.  I am humbled by that, but I didn't feel comfortable having too widely read at the moment, and even now.  But I am ready to let it be published and protected I guess here at Blogger, and more particularly the MFBTS.  It sorta fills in some background of the very first post this morning in the Inaugural Day of MFBTS....:) This post was written around June 25.  We left town several days later as we stayed in California till the end of the month.

I don't like to talk about my personal life on FB but thought it time to open up at this moment of a very eventful year in my life. It is not a farewell but it is a milestone in a personal way and so if people want to read about what's happened to us and is happening, here it is:

Tomorrow the movers arrive at our home in Poway, San Diego County, California. The family home was sold in April and we have been renting back through this month to allow Jackie and the Daughter, whose name is Shayna by the way, to finish their respective school years. This Wednesday, Jackie and I, and the family dog Zoey, begin our trek to Albuquerque, New Mexico to begin another phase in our lives. We have a heavy regret in leaving what I call the Greatest State in the Union, but we are excited about moving to the Land of Enchantment, which is New Mexico.

Almost three years ago, it hit me that our family's continuing yearly medical out of pocket costs, averaging at that point over $20,000 a year, and owing mostly to my continuing and increasingly losing battle with atrial fibrillation and tachycardia, were draining us of the ability to pay down a high priced California land/home mortgage. I knew by 2014 that by the year 2017, when I hopefully reached age 60, we would have to leave San Diego County and likely California (unless we wanted to live in Fresno or Stockton or some rural area) but at the same time try to find gainful employment as a lawyer. There was also the factor of what Jackie has often called a toxic environment of the job I was in, and a continuing frustration I have had in not being able to have the economic flexibility to pursue mediation as a career or an academic career (by going back to get a graduate degree in History or Literature).

So the research and planning began. We initially thought the answer for us was Portland, OR or somewhere in Washington State. We even took a trip there last year and, while deeply impressed, we found the home prices in Portland were only half of California's and would still require us to have relatively high paying jobs to hold a home mortgage, again owing to the fact we were not very far in paying down our CA mortgage due to medical expenses and our decision to pay for our children's higher education. We also found the traffic going into Portland from various directions to be surprisingly Los Angeles-like due to a refusal on the part of the electorate there to improve its access roads. Washington State outside of Seattle stuck Jackie as too provincial and Seattle itself home-price prohibitive for us.

Then, late last year, Albuquerque, NM came into view and multiple trips later in the early part of this year, we knew we found the right recipe for residency: Great climate, inexpensive home prices, a wonderful university nearby and a place culturally and politically resembling what I again call the Greatest State in the Union. We were also and continue to be awestruck by the friendliness of the various people we have met in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho, the latter town our actual destination--and this has made it very special and wonderful for us, even as we have no family ties there.

The Son and Daughter have each decided to stay in what I have long told them is Vacationland, i.e. San Diego, as the Daughter is continuing her college career while the Son is teaching at a truly elite SAT prep organization (he is I think the only non-PhD or Master Degree teacher there) and applying for graduate school in the Fall.

2017 has been a bittersweet year in many ways in our immediate family, but medically, it has been a miraculous one for me. After years of not being able to undergo a heart ablation procedure due to my internally strange anatomy and what was previously viewed as a "mess" inside me, owing to a DVT blood clot I suffered in the late 1980s, my Los Angeles based cardiologist sent me to the Cleveland Clinic owing to his friendship with the lead electrophysical cardiologist there. I went to Cleveland Clinic for testing in January and with new technologies, they were able to propose a mapping process to ablate the tachycardia and atrial fibrillation that were growing worse and worse, particularly since September 2016 when my Los Angeles doctor began to worry about my increased issues with those two electrical conditions. The scary part was the alternative that would have made me a candidate for a pacemaker that only those with very shortened lives receive, which involves removal of aortic valves.

In April, I returned to Cleveland and underwent the procedure, which has so far been a miraculous success. For the first time since the dawn of my 20s, I am in regular sinus rhythm and my skin tone as bright as a twenty something too (I am still on the multiple daily medications but the plan is to be off them all by the end of next month). It has been a wonderful experience to breathe normally and I did not realize how bad off physically, relatively speaking, I was--and frankly, most people including Jackie did not notice either as I guess I hid it well. After the ablation, I began jumping around to the point where Jackie was beginning to worry I was getting too young for her! But then, I got hit with gallstones at the start of May and had to have my gallbladder removed later that month. That threw me for a loop and has ironically led me to avoid my favorite foods of pizza and ice cream (electrical heart problems aside, I continue to be told by doctors that my physical heart and arteries are ridiculously strong and had no dietary restrictions till the gallstones finally hit) and the little paunch that was finally starting to show has gone away to a point where I am probably weight wise as thin as my mid 30s. The ice cream and pizza eating are supposed to return by the end of next month for me but I find I am doing fairly well with the limiting diet. So overall, my health is as strong as it was in my 20s and I am ready medically more than ever for this new chapter in our lives.

Jackie and I have each found employment in Albuquerque/Rio Rancho and again we are feeling blessed at being able to have the choice to move to a lovely place, climate- and people-wise. I still feel some rage at our nation's medical system that drained us of our savings but feel blessed and amazed at how the doctors and staff at Cleveland Clinic, a place which operates on principles of the British National Health Service (non-profit where everyone, including doctors are on salary and where doctors not hedge fund types make the economic decisions), saved my life. I could and should also rage at a system that led me to front the Son's higher education costs to keep him out of debt, but I do not regret that more discretionary decision in the least and we have part of our savings informally set aside to protect our daughter in this regard as well.

As we have gone through the tougher patches (physical, emotional and economic) of preparing our home for moving, and gone through the grief of leaving our families, Jackie and I have each said we are glad we are able to continue on our life journey together. We both find solace in the fact that we are married 30 years next month and still find each other our best friend and only lover. We admittedly look forward to being empty nesters in Albuquerque, with the family dog Zoey well in her Winter Years but still the loving, kind creature we rescued nearly twelve years ago.

Jackie and the children have also decided that I need to calm down my FB posts for, as the Daughter says, "Dad, you've said pretty much where you stand on politics, superhero films and music, haven't you?" Yes, that is probably true, I reply. And the Son and the Wife strongly nod in agreement with the Daughter's statement. I have said that as we now begin the last steps in our move, I will see if it is possible to curtail my FB activity. I crack up at those who say, "I'm leaving FB and I won't ever comment on anything again!" and of course within two weeks, little has changed. I have, however, made a promise and I will make the effort to not check the feed in the first place.

I was hoping there was going to be another change in our lives when a major film entity at the start of this month contacted my novel's hardcover publisher to see who owned the film/miniseries rights--and learned I do, with my second publisher of the paperback/Kindle version. They said they were going to contact us by this past Friday with a go or pass decision, but have not contacted us as of yet. Who knows how the wheels of film and miniseries work even in this new age of Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and the like? It is an honor to have heard the person from the entity say how much particular people there love my novel and that those persons have actually read the book all the way through (that seems to be a rarity in the so-called Hollywood circles from what I have read over the years). But still, I consider this development not much different than a lottery ticket. As they say, "Don't quit your day job..." Well, not for that reason, anyway...unless one is young, has no family responsibilities or the like, I suppose.

Overall, Jackie and I have realized we are living in the Nicholas Cage-Tea Leoni film, "The Family Man" or else "It's a Wonderful Life" and we move forward with a touch of wariness, some familial sadness, a declining rage at leaving the Greatest State in the Union, and a burning rage at our nation's economic and justice system--but with confidence and joy in our hearts. And for me, I mean "hearts" both physically and emotionally.

And then, about ten days or so later, as we were unpacking in New Mexico, I wrote this on FB:

Still unpacking books. But it is extraordinary to look at the wisdom and insight on the shelves of the new home in New Mexico. I was all set late last year to get rid of most of the books, either through selling or giving to libraries. The Wife, sensibly, said it was better to sell them or give them away than haul them across a couple of States and have to find room in a smaller home--and pay for poundage with the movers. I had learned from booksellers, and one collector in particular, that while the books were an unusual collection, and there were first editions and signed editions, it was not worth any more than a buck a book overall, so about $1,500. That is what convinced me to decide to lose the books for the move.

Then, something happened. Each of The Children came separately to The Wife and me and said, "Dad, please don't get rid of your books." As one of them said, "Dad, you are part of your books. When you die, it is part of what we will remember of you." The Wife and I looked at each other and smiled, and she said, "Okay, I guess we keep the books."

Still, as we unpack throughout the house, The Wife is beginning to wonder again, "Can't you prune more?" Before the move, I pruned about 300 of the books. And as we unpacked, I realized I could prune more and have thus far pruned about 30 more, not much, but a start.

And yet, as I sit typing on a computer here in the room we have designated as The Office Room, and scanning the books on the six bookshelves around the room, I am reminded of why I have held onto the books. The Vidal historical novels and essays, the Chomsky works, I.F. Stone and George Seldes books (all of them!), Upton Sinclair galore, every Michael Harrington, the Victor Serge works, writers from Kingsolver to Walter Mosley to William Kotzwinkle to Indianans Vonnegut and Tarkington, and of course dear Sinclair Lewis (all of the works of Lewis), Stephen Jay Gould and Feynman, most of the works of Hofstadter, some Commager, two of the three David Brion Davis works on slavery and Western culture, and Van Woodward, more Foners (plural), all the David Potters, EP Thompson works, more recent historians (including FB pal Ben Alpers), sociologists Jencks, Riesman, William Julius Williams, environmentalist works from Bernard DeVoto to Robert Marshall and Aldo Leopold, Native American works, African-American history (which surprised one of the two African-American mover guys as I marked subjects of book boxes), women's histories and separately several books of one of my favorite historians without pedigree, Catherine Drinker Bowen, legal histories and bios including a book from 100 years ago about Lincoln as a lawyer that remains vibrant and brilliant, sports histories and bios, and on and on. And in another room, much more fiction from the classics of Dickens, Trollope, and of course Hardy, to Maugham, Greene, Ignazio Silone and up through Isabel Allende, Vikram Seth and Michael Connelly. And back to The Office Room, more eclectic historians and writers than one may usually imagine and other FB friends including Dan Moldea and Myra MacPherson.

And yet, still left packed are all the Doonesbury books, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Bloom County, books on China, Vietnam, Russia, more journalist books, and further Judaica, though there is already a row for Jewish authors writing fiction on the subjects Jewish, Israeli, Zionist and the like, and the magisterial bio of FDR by the now felon financier and business maven, Conrad Black, and more world and American history, though lots already are on the shelves. The Son has "stolen" the Calvin & Hobbes and Far Sides, though, and they remain in the Greatest State in the Union (I should add there is an entire row for books on the Greatest State in the Union, including nearly all of the late Kevin Starr's works).

Some find it an insult to ask, Did you read all of the books on your shelves? I am fine with the question, perhaps because I've read about 75% or so of the books on the shelves. I hope that does not sound arrogant. It is simply a fact. Maybe it is why I so admire the handyman who came by yesterday as he knows how to do stuff that I cannot and as I told him, I barely know the difference between a wrench and screwdriver (not really true, I added, but it may as well be true). He was astounded by all the books in the house but I said we all learn in different ways. And many of us gain insight as we go along, some more than others of course.

These were my thoughts as I was getting ready to attend the Sinclair Lewis Conference in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, something I've long wanted to do, so I took some moments to write about the books on the shelves.

POSTSCRIPT:  All books unpacked by the end of July.  Hooray!

My review of "Baby Driver" from Facebook

An example of a film review I wrote on Facebook. I don't know if more than a few read it, though...:). I am now too tired to do Links so I figure if you don't know or want to know more about something, The Internet is right here for us all, at least until the Trump infested FCC completes its task of undermining Net Neutrality and putting up the gates Corporate America has long wanted. Anyway...

Edgar Wright is my new favorite director. He is a big part John Carney ("Once" and "Begin Again") where he intuitively understands soundtracks can be dialogue and even narrative. In Wright's newest film, "Baby Driver," the soundtrack is in the iPods and other electronic devices of a character named "Baby" who drives the getaway cars for Kevin Spacey's criminal mastermind boss. In this film, we experience the soundtrack with the characters in the characters' "real" time. For someone such as myself who lives in a soundtrack in my mind, this was exhilarating to experience in watching a film.

Wright is also part Quentin Tarantino, at least in this film, which has a higher serious violence quotient than previous Wright films I've seen. There is also a dry and cynical wit that makes the sometimes sparse dialogue sparkle. I have rarely encountered a film where the director did not make the mistake of adding dialogue to explain what is already seen on the screen, which may be owing to Wright's understanding of music as dialogue so that he knows the characters should not say something unless there is something to say. The car chases in this film are alone worth the price of the experience and ticket and should keep less eclectic minds occupied...The chase scenes are brilliant and creative from start to finish, but pay homages to car chase films going back to the original knock out car chase film, "The French Connection," in the early 1970s. The car chases, pun alert, drive the film as much as the music.

What saves Wright from the soullessness of Tarantino, however, is not only his John Carney sense of music as dialogue and narrative, but his sentimentality, something which owes itself to Frank Capra, even if Wright, a Brit, would likely not cite that influence. There is a kindness to the lead character, "Baby," that is not lost even when he is presented with only bad choices. The sentimentality throughout this film may even be as shocking to modern American hipster audiences who love Tarantino as anything else in the film. There is no full on happy ending that makes everything all right, as in a Capra film, but mostly there is. There is a "Good, Bad, and Ugly" narrative of a spaghetti western lurking beneath the pyrotechnics that define modern films.

Bill Pope was the cinematographer for "Baby Driver," as he was for Wright's brilliant cult classic film, "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World."* His stylized cinematographic work is a wonderful combination of gritty reality and almost technicolor-esq surreality. It worked beautifully in "Pilgrim" and it works as seamlessly as Wright's soundtrack that we and characters simultaneously experience.

For this film, writer-director Wright stepped away from his usual roster of actors. Some major names were here, including Spacey, but also Jamie Foxx and Jon Hamm, the latter two deserving Oscar noms for best supporting actor for their performances. They are amazing and you really believe them despite their previous nice-guy personas in both film and off-set.

The Daughter is visiting the Land of Enchantment and took me to see this film last evening. She said, "You HAVE to see 'Baby Driver.'" And by the time Simon & Garfunkel showed up in the soundtrack, with the song being the title of this film (It was the B-side to "The Boxer" as I confirmed when I returned home to my box of 45s...), I turned to her and said, "Edgar Wright is a f-ing genius!" Oh, and no spoiler, but just see how Wright uses Focus' "Hocus Pocus" in this film. It is, well, genius.

This film may not get much attention from the Academy. If it does, I will be happily surprised. Otherwise, it goes into the bin as another exhibit for my thesis that there is a disconnect between the "adults" in Hollywood culture and the Millennials (and also intellectuals of all ages) which is as wide as when Hollywood produced films like "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" in the early to mid 1960s. It is the equivalent to the "Generation Gap" of that era. Hollywood elites have already missed the fact that Superhero films are this era's Westerns, and embarrass themselves with their continued "Get off my lawn" criticisms of Superhero films. These elites also do not understand or appreciate filmmakers like Carney and Wright who use soundtracks in beautifully creative ways that would leave Orson Welles would be sitting and clapping away.

Oh well, on to the "Lady Macbeth" film tonight, where The Daughter says The Wife can go with us. And in fairness, The Wife had previously seen "Baby Driver" when The Son took The Wife to see it shortly after its release, when we briefly returned to The Greatest State in the Union for a short weekend trip.

* If you have not seen "Pilgrim," rent, buy, download or whatever you have to do to see that one. "Pilgrim" is why Wright deserves a full on writer-director chair for a Marvel or DC film, even though his one stint in Marvel-land for "Ant-Man" did not work out (I am actually sorta glad because Adam McKay stepped into the screenplay duties and put together a marvelous film).

Corporate Democrats: 'Heads We Win, Tails You Lose: And if you economic populists complain, you are whiny purists who are starting a civil war in the Democratic Party."

This article in The Week, a not liberal newsweekly publication, set me to thinking long on FB. Here it is reprinted here at MFBTS.

Seeing how corporate Dems are up in arms against the guy, I re-read this one. It is in fact worth reading. My only pet peeve with Ryan Cooper's article is that Harris, Booker and Patrick are not "centrists" when they either (a) refuse to prosecute miscreant bankers and financiers or (b) take their money, mute their economic populist rhetoric and policy proposals. These are not what the majority of Americans wanted or want on those issues. Unless we define what "centrist" means, it carries with it something deeply misleading, that somehow these three corporate Democrats speak for a majority of Americans on these matters being criticized and they are therefore more "electable."

If however we mean by the word "centrist" that they can raise money from big donors and cause people like me in the intellectual work world in a coastal or semi-blue place (like New Mexico, where I now live) to reluctantly vote for any of them over most any Republican, well, then that is fine, again if that is what we mean by "centrist."

But really, in American discourse, it is hard to find a more misapplied or misunderstood or poorly defined term than "centrist." I consider it an uppermost abuse of language that such folks get that label, when Bernie Sanders, under the first definition of "centrist," fits that label far more. For Bernie's positions resonate in particulars with a majority and sometimes high majority of Americans. Yet, nobody dares call him "centrist." And maybe he is. Isn't Bernie to the right of Hillary Clinton and her biggest supporters on gun control? Hmmm....Yet, it is laughable in our discourse (not in reality) to call him a "centrist."  That, however, is corporate media propaganda at its worst over the past half century at least. And we all live in it and abide by it even when we proudly announce to ourselves we are not manipulated.

Oh and let's get to a substantive point that buttresses Cooper's article. From the 1980s forward, unions and progressives were told over and over that they can't get what they want on economics and have to support Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) candidates starting with Bill Clinton, Paul Tsongas and the like. It was the mantra of "It's the Supreme Court! It's abortion!" When those folks got nominations for President, Senate and House and even Governors (I'm talking to you, Ed Rendell...), labor and most progressives shut up and went along. What is disgusting to me is that the reverse is not true of the corporate Dems and the elite or establishment Dems. They just want to play a game of heads they win, tails you lose when someone, anyone, says we are in a populist moment and we have to hear the voices in those states that should not have gone for Trump, but did.

And when Sanders-centrist types (yup, fun use of the term here) say, "Ya know, maybe we need to listen to this moment and coalesce around economic populist candidates, meaning candidates who run against Wall Street and financiers, bankers, elites in business, etc.," well, the fury is unleashed against Sanders types and progressives for starting a civil war. This makes at least progressive types such as me say to ourselves, "So we can't have a nominee...ever?" Well, we can't. Not when money talks and Harris, Booker and Patrick let money talk through them. And not when we have corporate media pundits (with Cooper and also Shaun King at the NY Daily News as near exceptions) and Democratic Party strategists tell us we have to accept and vote for Big Donor recipient candidates for the nomination of statewide and nationwide positions because that is "what's good for us." And, really, if we can't argue about this in an off or non-election year, then when is the proper time to argue? Oh wait, I know. Shut up. Abortion. Bernie Bro.

And the sad thing is that Sanders' votes on abortion are nearly perfect over 25 years and he was for gay rights well, well, well before the Clintons. It makes one wonder whether too many of the voices talking about abortion as a litmus test are really trying to ensure economic populism is not the topic for a Democratic Party statewide or nation wide nominee. And note too: when Bernie Sanders talks about these important cultural issues to people in rural, religiously-reactionary communities, he gets their respect because they respect his genuineness, and his recognition that we should argue these matters morally, except he tells them there is a moral position FOR abortion and FOR gay rights. For the three corporate Dems under consideration and discussed in Cooper's article, their language and policies are often a function of focus groups to allow them to play off those focus groups to take care of Big Donors first and foremost. And none of those three would know a labor union if it fell on them.

If we want to have Democratic Party candidates win elections, establishment, DC centric and strategist Dems had better recognize the moment, as well as the change arising from a social media world where an eclectic guy like me gets read and heard by others in the hoi polloi, and where the experts in marketing and strategizing are really not all that bright or competent, unlike the assumption inherent in the structure of cable news in America.

And another thing: Let's all stop trying to play pundit-safe. Let's just say what we think. Let's vote in a primary for the candidate we like best and stop this bullshit that makes us think, Oh, man, I don't want to support someone who corporate media says will lose. Enough with that shit already. You are not a pundit being paid to be on television. You are not a political party strategist paid to strategize. You are citizens. Act like a citizen, God damn it. That is what I am doing here. I have a view. I expressed it. I vote for the candidate I want in a primary of the Democratic Party. And I state why I do, publicly.

Genetics and birth certificates show a lot of race mixing...something for the white racists in America to recognize

Another FB post that belongs in the MFBTS (MF Blog, The Sequel):

Slate.com has an amusing article about how genetic testing can surprise many of those who have long histories in the United States. There is an even more wonderful book from 1928 or 1929 by the journalist George Schuyler,* who wrote a long pamphlet based upon his study of birth certificates throughout the South. What he found is that most Southerners who identified as "white" had some "negro" (the parlance of the time) ancestry. It was something Schuyler thought may help "white" Southerners understand about the malleability of "race." His analysis also fit in with those biologists standing athwart against eugenics and saying race is not biological but social construct, since we don't separate people with different color hair or eyes and other differences among human beings. For at the time, most people did not want to mix "blood" of whites and blacks and did not want to realize, it is all the same thing, human blood. Schuyler's point was that the blood was already mixed, and mixed deeply, and so...he was asking why the fuss about race. Youthful optimism on his part, I suppose, that people will react logically more than emotionally to information that contradicts their worldview.

Maybe some university press should re-print Schuyler's book because it is likely many of the records he went through are now lost, and his scholarship at the time was highly commended.

*Schuyler was an African-American journalist and novelist of the early to mid 20th Century. He began his career with African-American newspapers, most prominently the Pittsburgh Courier, and was self-identified as a socialist in the Debs and A. Phillip Randolph tradition. He became controversial after World War II for his strident anti-Communism and his later opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, and I use "opposition" mildly because it was really hostile. In fact, after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Schuyler penned an article, consistent with his attacks on King for getting the Nobel Peace Prize, as someone who brought forth more violence and who put at risk other African-Americans (he continued to use the term "Negro," even as that word had begun to be controversial) as white people would become violent at the attempt to overthrow Jim Crow racism. Schuyler was married to a woman who was "white" (remember, Schuyler's book), and they produced one child, a daughter who became a great pianist who toured the world, and who tragically died in a plane crash after playing a concert for American troops in Vietnam. Alicia Keys at one point owned rights to film her story, but it was never made. A pity.

The Socialism of Fools

This is from a Facebook post some days ago. I thought I should place, with added links that one may do with Blogger, a few of the recent substantive and sometimes long FB posts here:

August Bebel was a writer, philosopher and even a politician in the late 19th Century and start of the 20th. He famously said, "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools," because he recognized that anti-Semites had a world view that explained "everything." It was also a dig at the more "enthusiastic" socialists of the time, though Bebel was a socialist himself--and wrote a lovely book called "Woman and Socialism," of which I happen to own a copy in its original translated title, "Women Under Socialism." (note the beautiful cover)

For years, I said to Clintonites that if we do not take care of the economic security of vast swaths of the nation, we will end up with fascists and racists telling those who are suffering what "the answer" is. But all the Clintonites would do is scream at me, "Abortion! The Supreme Court!" And I mostly went along, which is why I am so angry at their tone-deafness in the face of this populist moment.

Well, now the Clintonites, who permeate the halls and executive suites of corporate media, have the consequence I worried about 25 years ago. And yes, Bernie woulda won because even among those men shouting about Jews, there were some who would have gone to their better values. And that would have been all Bernie needed. None of those torch-bearing marching men supported Hillary Clinton for what may ultimately be irrational reasons that are better explained through the lens of the Salem Witch Trials which were primarily based upon the fear of an intelligent woman, as opposed to our modern and sometimes limiting sensibilities of what it means to be sexist--for Sarah Palin would have gotten a lot of their votes...

Bebel's quote from nearly 110 years ago is now sadly relevant today. We are retreating into an atavism that is spawning all sorts of other isms that are not very nice. At least as the late Michael Harrington wrote, the socialist aesthetic tells us we need to not only be in solidarity with each other, but most importantly kinder to each other. That was the essence of Bebel's book, too, I may add. And at least, too, today's socialists should be more humble as we move forward because the 20th Century saw what happened when the most "enthusiastic" socialists took over governments in places like Russia and China. I say this as well to the "new" atheists. A little humility can go a long way...

Roger B. Taney was no Confederate, but the evil of his words in the Dred Scott case lives on

So how do I feel about the removal of the statues of former Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (pronounced Taw-nee for those who may wonder)? Mixed emotions. However, I support the removal along with the Confederate statues, ultimately because of the history of race relations in Baltimore, though I am glad Taney's statues are not being destroyed. And ironically, this controversy will ignite more scholarship that give Taney more due than he has been given in the public eye--a good thing, I must add. 

I tried to find on the web the marvelous speech Dean Acheson delivered on July 4, 1936 in the centennial year of Taney's ascension to the Chief Justice position. It is marvelous because it is so judiciously phrased and showed that Taney remained loyal to the Union, unlike Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and the other traitors. Yes, let's use that word even though Acheson was wise enough to not go that far--as that was not his point he was trying to make. Those others, however, unlike Taney, took up arms against the United States government, and for a cause that is sickening, slavery. But enough of that. Let's talk Taney. 

As Acheson recognized, Taney was a Lockean liberal, but like a true Lockean liberal (not the Ayn Rand-infested zombie caricature), Taney became worried about private money power almost immediately after helping steer President Jackson (Taney was Jackson's administration's Attorney General) to dismantle the national bank, which Taney saw, for better or worse, as a den of monopolistic financiers. 

Taney was a controversial choice for Chief Justice because of his political position as Jackson's Attorney General, and he was barely confirmed to the Court after a first rebuke by the Senate. The truly great Chief Justice John Marshall, his predecessor, had actually supported Taney's eventual ascension to the Court before Marshall's death in 1835. for Taney had a great legal career, and had--ready?-- defended black slaves suing for freedom, and people who worked to protect free blacks from kidnapping. In one case he was arguing as a lawyer, he openly said to the judge in the case that slavery was a "great evil." Taney inherited slaves in 1820 and immediately freed them, providing them money or a pension if they were old. 

Taney, in one of his early cases as a justice on the Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in the famous "Charles Bridge River" case that said a corporate charter, once given, is not inviolable, and that the State could revoke or modify that charter. The decision tempered one of the few John Marshall era decisions I found less than salutary ("The Dartmouth College" case). Taney wrote, "While the rights of private property are sacredly guarded, we must not forget that the community also have rights, and that the happiness and well being of every citizen depends on their faithful preservation." A nicely balanced phrase, that. 

Acheson, in beginning his speech, quoted Shakespeare, particularly Shakespeare's channeling of Mark Antony, saying: "The evil that men do lives after them/The good is oft interred with their bones." 

Re-reading Acheson's speech (reprinted in a book of his writings and speeches he edited and which was released in the last months of his life, entitled, "Fragments of My Fleece" (1971)), I came to my conclusion that the evil of the Dred Scott decision justified removing the statues, and we should no worry about any niceties. In the Dred Scott decision, Taney wrote:

In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument. 

... 

They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.

Evil. Just plain, unadulterated evil. Taney's words formed the majority opinion in a case where a black man was denied the right to sue for freedom, having been taken to multiple states where slaves were deemed free. Taney foolishly thought if the Court came down hard one way or the other on slavery, the nation could avoid political strife. How wrong he was, as many historians believe Dred Scott made the Civil War inevitable. After the decision was announced, racist Southern plantation owners applauded at the federal government trampling on States' rights--so remember that when you hear the talk of "Southern heritage" and "States' rights." And what made the decision even worse is it disregarded all blacks' rights, whether free or slave. The decision was racist to the core. 

Still, we ought to remember why the Taney statue was erected in 1871, as it captures the very mixed emotions I feel today. Taney died in 1864, while still serving as Chief Justice. Senator Charles Sumner, a so-called Radical Republican, and an anti-slavery stalwart, led the Senate to refuse a statue or bust of Taney to join the other Chief Justices in the late 1860s after the War ended. Sumner and other strong Republicans remembered it was Taney who issued the decision denying Lincoln the right to suspend habeas corpus, a decision Lincoln simply ignored. However, the Maryland State government, Taney's home state, wanted to honor Taney, as people there recognized Taney had done much good and served with distinction in many capacities including the Supreme Court. When Taney's successor, Salmon Chase, an anti-slavery stalwart, but corporate apologist, died a mere five years into his term as Chief Justice, both Chase and Taney had their likenesses erected in Washington, DC along with other Chief Justices. Therefore, erecting statues or busts of Taney did not arise from the same racist motivations that led to the statues of other Confederate political and military figures intended to justify the Confederacy, in an era where many historians, as well as elite members of society, had accepted racist bromides and the nonsense about the "Lost"--implied "Good"--"Cause." 

Again, Taney remained loyal to the Union unlike the traitors. But the evil he did in the Dred Scott case lives on, in the form of the killing of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police, and the lack of justice in the subsequent prosecution of the police department there. And so, bury the good part of this man in the museum, and not leave the bad sitting on the grounds of a public edifice that is supposed to denote equality before the law. 

Here is a 1936 book review of a Taney biography released in the same year as Acheson's speech and Taney's ascension to the Supreme Court. It is from a Yale Law School professor in the Georgetown Law Review, but reprinted through a scholarship repository at Yale Law School.

digitalcommons.law.yale.edu

DIGITALCOMMONS.LAW.YALE.EDU

The Return of MF Blog

I have decided this morning to resurrect MF Blog, which existed for about ten years from 2005 through 2015.  I had gotten rid of it because my Wife and Mother thought that I was hurting my career as a lawyer and my desire to be a judge.  I admit to having become tired of their complaints on this subject and realized I should heed their words.

I did not feel bad about the decision because I realized I was already on Facebook.  Ironically, I had not been anywhere near as topical or political on Facebook when I joined, having joined it only to communicate with friends and family from other parts of the nation, mostly on the East Coast where I had been raised.  But then, also ironically, I became ardently politically minded on Facebook when Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president.  Before that I was far more about music posts and film reviews.  But when Bernie announced, I truly believed, and continue to believe that Bernie's candidacy mattered.

But times have changed for me again.  My Wife and I have now moved from The Greatest State in the Union (TM), i.e., California, and earlier this month, I hit age 60.  I also realized my dreams of securing a judgeship are over, and my dreams of staying in California are over.  We are now happy to move forward with our lives in the Land of Enchantment, also known as New Mexico.  For those who do not know, New Mexico is a wonderful place which should also be called The Most Underrated State in the Union (TM).  Those TMs are jokes, in case someone is wondering...Anyway, it hit me this morning, just as I was completing a long post on Facebook this morning on former Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and the removal of his statues from the public areas in Maryland, that I may as well resurrect MF Blog and call it MF Blog, The Sequel.

I know, I know.  Rarely do sequels measure up to the original.  But I hope it to be "The Godfather II" of Blogs.  It is something to strive for, at least.  I will follow Digby and some bloggers and not activate the Comments section, though.  I realize I don't have to argue with people so much if I start the Blog, and people have told me I am much too indulgent of commenters at Facebook.  Also, I am still working as a workaday lawyer and a major point of our move is for my Wife and I to slow it down a bit.  Less arguments with people may be better for that goal, I believe.

If I was to describe MF Blog, The Sequel, it is probably going to be about the Taney sort of post that are too long for a Facebook post.  There may be music links, film reviews and there may be other things.   I will see how things progress...

I have left up another Blog as a separate Blog, which is called "Boomerang."  That is the name of the semi-short story I finally wrote out last year and published via Blogger to the world last September.  It has only had just under 1,000 hits and I think it ran its course, though its subject matter will become more and more relevant each passing year as our nation continues its self-destructive ways.  I leave it up and will try to put up a permanent link to it here at the MF Blog, The Sequel.

I know a few folks will be happy to see the return of MF Blog.  However, I am doubtful my Wife or Mom are going to be happy about it...