#365 / New Year's Eve

On New Year's Eve in 1972, I got a vivid reminder that this day was the beginning of something completely new. My daughter Sonya was born. 

I got a 1972 tax deduction, too. 

The tax deduction was welcome, but it is is long gone now (not that I didn't appreciate it at the time). Sonya is still bringing lots of joy to our family - and to lots of other people, too. 

December 31st will always be a great day for me. 

Happy Birthday, Sonya!

Image Credit:
Gary Patton Personal Photo

#364 / Wolves And The Web

The Winter 2013 edition of the Earthjustice Quarterly Magazine is devoted to a celebration of the Endangered Species Act. Earthjustice, which used to be the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, is now an independent nonprofit organization. The Earthjustice motto is "Because the Earth Needs A Good Lawyer." 

Wolves need a good lawyer, too.

In the magazine, there is a special feature on wolves. Since my family and I were just in Yellowstone National Park last year, seeing real wolves (through spotting scopes), I paid particular attention. 

In the 1920's, thinking it was doing something good for the environment, the federal government permitted the extermination of Yellowstone's gray wolf, leading to a trophic cascade: 

• Elk populations exploded, resulting in severe overgrazing of the willows and aspens needed by beavers for food, shelter and dam building. 

• Scavenger species suffered population reductions because they did not have year-round wolf kills to feed on. 

• Beavers virtually disappeared. Dams disintegrated, turning marshy ponds into streams. Heavy stream erosion resulted, with many plant and animal species being adversely affected. 

• Without wolves, the coyote became the apex predator, driving down populations of pronghorn antelope, red fox, and rodents, and birds that prey on small animals. 

It turns out that human efforts to "run" nature, by killing off wolves, unravelled the web of life that supports all living things. 

A brand New Year is coming up. Now would be a good time to make a resolution that we will resist the temptation to think that human beings should be in charge of the Natural World. Each of us, individually, could pledge to ourselves to do something about that. For instance, we might each provide financial support to groups like Earthjustice. You can donate to Earthjustice by clicking this link. 

The Earth needs a good lawyer.

And we need the Earth. 

Image Credit: 
https://secure.earthjustice.org/site/Donation2?8100.donation=form1&df_id=8100

#363 / Guillotines

In her December 21, 2013 opinion column in the The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan reported on "The Most Memorable Words of 2013." She gave pride of place to the remarks of "a billionaire of New York," who told her: 

I hate it when the market goes up. Every time I hear the stock market went up I know the guillotines are coming closer.

I definitely have a pro-revolution point of view, right about now, but I am not a fan of the guillotine, or of any other form of "revolutionary violence." It's good to know, though, that the one-percenters understand that the growing wealth and income inequality in the United States of America is absolutely not a "sustainable" model for the future. The "wealth of nations" is, ultimately, to be disposed of by the nation as a whole, and that undoubtedly means that the income flowing to the "billionaires of New York" must be redirected to serve more general purposes. 

There is still time to do that before the guillotines arrive. 

But I would advise all of us to "get right on it!"

There isn't that much more time.

Image Credit: 
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Guillotine

#362 / Human 2.0

The San Jose Mercury News ran an article on December 21st, with the headline "Human 2.0." The article heralded a "new threshold" in human evolution. Bioengineered devices are being placed within, on, or near people, and are transforming them into "computerized people." Up until now, human beings have been "biological" creatures. Soon, we will become a kind of "combination of ingredients" product.

I remain skeptical that much good will come from actions that I think are based on a confusion between the World of Nature and the human world that we create. The "computerized people" concept is based on such a confusion, in my opinion. 

For me, this confusion seems to pose dangers at least as great as any benefits that may be forthcoming. Consider, for instance, the following statement: 

The idea initially is to have the little circuits gather detailed data on brain functions. But eventually ... the electronic swarms may prove useful for “controlling devices via thought....” 

Ah yes, controlling devices (like your computer search function) via thought.

And what about the opposite possibility, controlling thought via devices (like the devices heralded in the article), that will turn us into "computerized people?"

Let's not have any illusions about what we are getting into here. Turning human beings into computer directed robots is not my idea of "human" progress.

Image Credit: 
http://mountainvision.blogspot.com/2011/05/spiritual-transhumanism-review-video.html

#361 / Who Am I To Judge?

Pope Francis, Time Magazine's Person of the Year, has been hailed by NBC News for asking "Who am I to judge?" when he was invited to address the issue of gays in the church:

The fact that the pope — the infallible leader of the world's one billion Roman Catholics — refused to sit in judgement of gay priests (who were banned by his predecessor) was hailed as remarkable, even revolutionary.

Reminds me of what Jesus is reported to have said, in that speech on the mountainside that got such good coverage in the Gospels (Matthew 7): 

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

Good advice, whoever is giving it!

Image Credit: 
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/22/21984495-who-am-i-to-judge-the-popes-most-powerful-phrase-in-2013

#360 / Under The Radar

Those fortunate enough to have a birthday on the day after Christmas get to fly under the celebration radar. That is my case, and that suits me just fine. When I was in elementary school, there were no embarrassing classroom parties for me, because my birthday was always during Christmas vacation. Even today, I escape my birthdays virtually unscathed. Tonight, I'll be going out to dinner with my wife, children, and grandchildren, and that will be just about it, by way of celebration. That's the way I like it. 

I have had the very good luck to get another day older, each birthday, without finding myself significantly “deeper in debt." I do ponder the question, however, whether I am getting “older and wiser” as the years go by. I actually think that I am getting wiser, as I know I am getting older, but that is a kind of subjective feeling. I have not noticed that other people are telling me that! 

I can remember, vividly, the time I suddenly realized that I was a separate and autonomous person, charged with capability and promise, and that I could act independently, and thus perhaps change the world. I was a freshman in college, and was standing on a balcony that overlooked the front lawn of Wilbur Hall, at Stanford University. Any additional wisdom that I may have accumulated since then has largely been by way of experience. 

The experience of going to the Oak Room in the old Cooper House, at the end of the weekly meetings of the Save Lighthouse Point Association helped me understand that I was not only independently alive, but that I was part of a larger community, and that if "changing the world" was going to be the objective, that was something that was going to be accomplished as a group effort. I find, upon reflection, that my ideas haven’t changed much since then. On my birthday in 1974, I was twenty-nine years old, turning thirty, and had just been elected, for the first time, to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. I have had a pretty lucky life.

I thought then, in 1974, and I still think today, that our ability to participate in the process of governing our local communities is just about the best thing we have going for us. We are all individuals, charged with capability and promise, and we all get to age and get older individually. But we are not only individuals. We are also part of a greater whole. We really are together in this life, and it really is possible for us, when we act together, to change our world.

Participating in that process, the best I can, has given me many Happy Birthdays since 1974. I hope there are a few more to come!

Image Credit:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/1605957-history-of-birthday-anniversary

#359 / Something Is Happening Here

The Christmas stories that are most familiar to us come from Matthew and Luke. We hear about Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, the angels, the shepherds, and the manger. We are informed that the whole pilgrimage to Bethlehem began with a decree that went out from Caesar Augustus that "all the world should be taxed."

Maybe that detail of the story is why Christianity seems to have been so appealing to right-wing, anti-tax crusaders, who so often seem to combine extreme religiosity with anti-government resentment.

I can remember playing one or more of the roles in the typical Christmas Story in various Sunday School Christmas Pageants held at All Saints Episcopal Church, in Palo Alto. The whole cast of characters was there on stage, played by Sunday School students, and even a donkey was included, as I recall. 

What I didn't hear about in Sunday School was anything from the Gospel of John. John more or less ignored the whole "Hark The Herald Angels" thing, and gave us a much more "philosophical" and "theological" account of the miraculous appearance of Jesus in the world. Mary's virginity, incidentally, was not a feature of the story, as John tells it (John 1: 1-18, The Word Made Flesh): 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  

The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.  

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.  

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.  

That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 

Over the years, as my Sunday School days have passed from me, I find that I am ever more impatient with those who presume to be able to reduce the miracle of human existence to a human explanation. I am still paying attention to the Gospel of John, however. This world, this universe, was "made." That's what I believe. I don't think it was an accident. The miracle of human life is a miracle, indeed. I don't think it has resulted from random reactions, plus time. 

There is a light that comes into this world. It lights us all. 

In the words of our modern Shakespeare (and we would be wise to pay attention): 

Something is happening here. 

We don't know what it is. But today ... that is what we celebrate.

Image Credit:
http://bibleencyclopedia.com/goodsalt/John_1_Christ_the_Light_and_Life_of_Men.htm

#358 / Christmas Is Coming

Christmas is coming.
It fact, it's really close.
It's almost sitting on our lap.
And the NSA is already here!



Image Credit: 
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20131213/OPINIONS/312130016/Today-s-Editorial-Cartoon

#357 / A New Look At The Serenity Prayer

Christmas is coming.
The time for making those New Year's Resolutions is coming, too.

Check out this suggestion from Idle No More.

Image Credit: 
http://www.idlenomore.ca/

#356 / The Pfeiffer Ridge Fire

Keith Vandevere, writing in Xasáuan Today about the horrific fire on Pfeiffer Ridge in Big Sur, in which 34 homes were lost, ended his reflections this way: 

All human works are impermanent. Memories too. Perhaps if we let the fire remind us of the wonder and miracle of our ephemeral existence, we can gain something truly valuable from it.

These are true words indeed. 

Keith added: Please make donations to help those who have lost their homes through this local site.

Image Credit: 

http://projects.scpr.org/firetracker/pfeiffer-fire/

35 / Applicants Sought

Bill Domhoff and Richard Gendron have written a fun book on Santa Cruz politics. Click here if you would like to learn more. The online resources provided by the authors even include a review by me. 

The Leftmost City was published in 2008, and the book documents the political history of the City during the 1970's. There is a certain "that was then; this is now" quality to the title of the book. The politics of the City of Santa Cruz cannot really be called "progressive" nowadays, at least not with respect to the way the City Council conducts its business. 

An article in yesterday's edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel reminded me of just how far we have come. The title of the article (in the print edition) is "Applicants sought for new water panel." The story is about how the City Council will soon establish a new "citizen-led advisory panel that will study water supply and management options for at least the next year." 

The establishment of this new advisory group is billed as a way to "reset" the City's conversation with the public about water supply issues. Since at least 2008, the year The Leftmost City was published, the City has been completely dedicated to the construction of a costly and energy-intensive desalination plant. Efforts to get the City to consider "alternatives" have been routinely and summarily dismissed by the Council. Earnest members of the public would get up at Council meetings, and make their case, and once they had exhausted their two minutes at the podium, begging for the City to consider alternatives, the Council would then move on, totally ignoring all these pleas that the City give "alternatives" a real chance. 

As a result of the City Council's unwillingness to listen to the public on desalination, the public went to the streets (in the "progressive" style of politics hailed in the Domhoff-Gendron book). Measure P passed by over 70% of the vote in November 2012. This initiative measure amended the City Charter to give city voters the last say on desalination. 

Shortly after the passage of Measure P, the City received over 400 comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report prepared on the proposed desalination project, almost all of them critical. Among these comments were hard hitting letters from the "responsible agencies," like the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Coastal Commission, that actually have review authority over the City's proposed project. What was the main theme of the critical comments (specifically including those from the "responsible agencies")? It was that the City Council had failed to consider "alternatives," and couldn't properly proceed until it did.

Faced with this situation, the City Council decided it wanted to "reset" the conversation. If that means anything at all, in the real world, the Council will have to turn its one-way conversation with the public (in which the Council tells the public what it should think) into a two-way conversation in which the Council actually listens to the critics.

So...the advisory committee. Sounds like a step in the right direction, but here's the kicker: appointments to the committee will be made by the Council, which means that the Council is going to be listening only to those people that the Council has decided it wants to listen to. The newspaper article says that there will be "three representatives from environmental groups." However, those won't be "representatives" who actually represent the environmental community, and who have been selected by the environmental groups themselves. Instead, the Council is going to determine by a Council vote who should "represent" the environmental side of the desal discussion. Virtually every member of the Council (with one exception) has consistently backed the desalination project, and has refused to listen to the critics.

Personally picking the people you are willing to listen to, and calling it a "reset" in the community conversation, speaks more of press agentry than of a willingness actually to hear from the critics. The Council's planned approach seems pretty much like a continuation of the Council's past "one-way" conversation on desalination. 

At the very least, just in terms of a basic understanding of how democratic procedures work, if someone is going to be called a "representative" of a particular group, or interest, then that person has to be selected by those that the person is going to "represent." Failing to heed this basic procedural requirement (as the Council seems bent on doing) not only maintains the "one-way" nature of the discussion on desal, but turns the Council's heralded "reset" into a further reason for resentment. 

Image Credit: 
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/

#354 / Adventure

I read with great sadness an article in yesterday's paper that reported on the death of Nathan Phillips, a seventeen-year old who lived in Aptos, California. Nathan's body was found in the surf last week, off Seacliff State Beach, and the Santa Cruz County Coroner's Office determined that the cause of Nathan's death was suicide.

When Nathan left home, he said he was going on "an adventure." It was this statement that made me most sad.

Whatever may await us after death (and with one of those "big birthdays" coming up I think about that frequently), I believe that a search for adventure, and meaning, and purpose in life cannot uncover any of these things if that search is directed to a "life after death." This is true whether such a search is carried out by an individual, like Nathan, or by someone who has been informed, like the jihadists are sometimes told, that the "rewards" of life are in the hereafter.

The real "adventure," given to us all, is to be alive in this world, a world we did not create ourselves. Within the world into which we are born, we have the ability, individually and together, to create another world entirely, a world of things, of art, of music. Of history. 

I pray a blessing for Nathan, and for all those who have left this world. And I announce my gratitude for the blessed adventure of life itself. 

Image Credit: 
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/santacruz/ci_24753218/coroner-aptos-teens-death-ruled-suicide

#353 / Equations

The World of Nature is ruled by equations. They express the reality of the physical laws that run the Universe (which it's wise for us to notice we did not create ourselves). In the World of Nature, "law" is a description of what will (and must) happen. We don't call it a "law" unless it has that capability.

In our human world, "law" is a "prescription," not a "description." Human laws (which it is wise to notice we do create) tell us not what will and must happen, but what we think "ought to" happen. Human laws are really just the instructions we give ourselves. 

I have come up with an equation to express the derivation and impact of human laws. It's something I taught the students in my two classes at UCSC this past Fall Quarter. The more I contemplate it, the more I see something in this equation that is just as powerful (in our human world) as that famous equation is in the World of Nature. 

Politics > Law > Government

Image Credit: 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/lega-01.html

#352 / The Offense Department

I don't know if my mother ever read George Orwell's 1984, but she definitely understood how language could be intentionally misused to support those in power, and to convince the "proles" that all the outrages of the ruling group were perfectly acceptable and normal. There was a question on the final exam in one of my Legal Studies classes about "false consciousness." The deliberate manipulation of language is one of the best ways to get there, as totalitarian governments (some of them posing as democracies) have long understood. 

My mother definitely understood the principle. She strenuously objected to using the term "Defense Department" to refer to that agency of the United States government that used to be  called by its real name, the "War Department." 

The change in title occurred in 1949, after the end of World War II, and just about the time that the United States government decided it was going to run the world from a military point of view. 

It would be hard to justify all the things that the U.S. Military has been doing, almost everywhere on Planet Earth, if the actions had to be seen as activities of the "United States Department of War." Instead, we have a "Defense Department," and it's hard not to give some slack to a country that is just "defending itself." Surely that is what the United States government must be doing in all of its military operations, since it's the "Defense Department" that is largely overseeing these activities, which include the assassination of bridal parties in Yemen, and the deployment of heavily armed aircraft carriers around the world to "project American power" in trouble zones. 

After all, "the best defense is a good offense," right?

Let's call the military bureaucracy the "Offense Department," just for the sake of clarity. If that doesn't offend you, I mean!

Postscript:
Mother Jones has a good article in its latest edition that details how the Pentagon is fighting back against proposed cuts in "defense spending." Reading the article is what reminded me of how my mother would regard this "defense spending" misnomer. Check the charts in the article. The United States government is spending more on its military than is spent by all of the next ten countries combined (and those include Russia and China). 

We don't have enough money for health care, or to sustain our educational system, at any level. We don't have enough money to maintain our current infrastructure, or to provide unemployment insurance payments to people out of jobs. We can't undertake vitally necessary environmental restoration work, or provide housing for the homeless. But we can pay all the outrageously expensive bills of the military?

I think my Mom would agree. That's just offensive.

Alma Patton

Image Credits:
(1) http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/pentagon-budget-deal-charts-cuts
(2) Gary Patton personal collection.

#351 / A Message To My Students

I am happy to report that I have concluded my teaching assignments at UCSC for the Fall Quarter. I taught "Introduction to the Legal Process," a class with 170 students, and "Law and Social Issues," a course with 70 students. I enjoyed teaching both these courses! 

In the final examination for the "Law and Social Issues" course, I asked students to tease out some of the "big picture themes" we had studied in the course, by way of reading and analyzing an essay I wrote just for them. 

Here's a copy of that essay (just for you):

We Live In A Political World

The world is being transformed – and we notice that sometimes! When we do, we may become alarmed. On the other hand, we may also seek to detach ourselves, and to insulate ourselves from the overwhelming reality that the world we inhabit is unreliable. Things could go seriously wrong!

In the “good old days,” the General Electric Company advertised itself with the slogan “progress is our most important product.” Today, not too many of us think that some sort of inevitable “progress” is now life’s inevitable gift. Environmental degradation is getting worse. In fact, it’s life threatening. Economic inequality is growing, not shrinking. The President of the United States has declared a war on “terror,” and now the whole world is a battlefield, and we are the combatants! Our privacy and our individual freedoms are under assault in this new global “war.” What the heck are we going to do about it?

If ever there were a time when individuals could assume that things would “take care of themselves,” and that they could pursue their individual lives without assuming a responsibility for the overall shape of the world and society they inhabit, that time has past. Bob Dylan fans may know his song “Political World,” which is not very complimentary to the world of politics, but that does diagnose a reality of our time: “We live in a political world.” We live in a world that we are creating through our collective human action (which is something different from the sum of all of our individual actions added up).

We don’t have to like the shape of this brave new world, but that is our situation. We all play Hamlet now: “The time is out of joint, O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.”

What’s the prescription for the “political” problem we confront? I’m tempted to claim, with Freud, that there is a “talking cure.” The reason for our commitment to “free speech” isn’t that we want everyone to celebrate his or her own individual brilliance. As we enter into conversations about our collective situation, and particularly as we formalize these conversations in the debate and discussion that is the main business of politics, our shared exchanges can outline various paths forward – and then we can choose. We can choose, and we can act. And we can change the world! That really is the essence of citizenship in the United States of America. All are welcome in this “nation of immigrants,” because we need diversity in the debate about what we can and must do, as we forge our future.

While we live ultimately in the World of Nature, which supports all life, and the integrity of which we undermine at our great peril, we live most immediately in a human-created world. The future of our “human” world will be effected, of course, by our individual actions, but will be most clearly shaped by our joint efforts. 

Image Credit: 

http://shadesofcaruso.com/2011/05/24/happy-birthday-superhero-bob-dylan/

#350 / A Major Statement

Pictured is Sir John Major, a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and a leader of Britain's Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997.

I don't generally follow British politics very closely, although I do admit to having gone from admiration to disgust as Tony Blair (also a former Prime Minister, but of the Labor Party variety) turned into a lapdog for George W. Bush. Blair, in fact, took over as Prime Minister in 1997, as John Major left office. 

In October of this year, I heard about an issue of New Statesman, edited by comedian and actor Russell Brand, that was promoted as "The Revolution Issue." New Statesman is a British journal focusing on current affairs and politics in the United Kingdom, and proclaims that it has been "free thinking since 1913." Since I have been a sucker for revolution since 1776, I promptly sent away for the "The Revolution Issue," and it has just arrived in my Santa Cruz mailbox six weeks later. Maybe I should have read the whole thing online. You hate to make a revolution wait.

I may have more to say about Russell Brand's "Revolution" issue later on, but before I even got to the articles about revolution, which are hidden away among other offerings, I learned that Britain and the United States have a number of things in common, despite those events of 1776. For instance, the column on the back cover complained about screaming, pushy parents at the football (soccer) games of British kids.

More to the political point, the opening editorial in the "Revolution" issue of New Statesman was not about revolution at all, but about British energy policy, and they quoted John Major favorably. Major's comment contains some advice that U.S. politicians (from the President on down) should take to heart. I am proud to commend it to you: 

Governments should exist to protect people, not institutions.

Image Credit:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Major_(6357734833).jpg

#349 / Virtual Reality #2

My first blog posting on the topic of virtual reality was titled simply "Virtual Reality." That posting is dated June 21, 2010. Click the link if you'd like to take a look at it. 

I had actually forgotten all about that first "Virtual Reality" posting, but that posting does turn out to have a certain connection to the posting you are reading right now. You might say it's a Chinese connection.

This current posting has been prompted by the picture shown above. The picture was published as part of the Atlantic In Focus series titled "2013: The Year in Photos, January - April." It is #15 in a series of forty photographs. All the photos are well worth seeing. The image above has the following caption: 

During a time of dangerous levels of air pollution, a bright video screen shows images of blue sky on Tiananmen Square, on January 23, 2013 in Beijing, China.

In fact, we can't live inside a video monitor or in any "virtual" reality. We actually live in, and are ultimately dependent on, the "real" reality which is the World of Nature. That's the world we did not create. 

Trying to pretend or convince ourselves that life is alright in the world that we have created, if in fact it isn't, would be making a big mistake. The smog in Beijing isn't going to go away just because we have a nice picture of Nature to look at. If we want to live in a world like the one depicted on screen, we will need to do something in our world (the world of smog and congestion) to change the "real" reality of the world we inhabit. Escaping to a "virtual" reality is just not going to work. 

My first "Virtual Reality" posting cited to the thinking of a Chinese Philosopher, Philip Zhai, also known as Zhai Zhenming: 

R: "So there is a serious philosophical argument that human-created 'virtual realities' can have the same ontological status as 'actual reality.' Philip Zhai is the guy who says that." 

Q: "There you go again! 'Ontology?'" 

R: "Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, or reality. Philip Zhai is a Chinese philosopher who has been arguing that 'virtual' reality may have the same status as what you were calling 'real' reality. One way of thinking about it might be to suggest that since we can create 'virtual' realities that are almost 'real' realities, that there might be a way to push those 'virtual' realities over the edge, and make them fully real."

Well, with respect to the photo of the blue skies in Beijing, let's hope we can make them fully real. The way to do that, though, is to acknowledge the dependence of our world on the World of Nature, the world where those blue skies actually exist. 

Zhai Zhenming may be right that everything in our human world is "created" by us, and thus that all our human-created realities, of whatever nature, are actually a kind of "virtual" reality.

As for the World of Nature, there is nothing "virtual" about that. The World of Nature is the "real thing."

Image Credit: 
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/12/2013-the-year-in-photos-january-april/100642/?utm_source=Atlantic+Media&&utm_term=0_f2eeb0a9f3-16411b539c-310222769

#348 / Compromised

I found the cartoon above in a Calbuzz commentary titled "Why 'Compromise' has become such a dirty word." Calbuzz operates a website devoted to "political news, analysis, commentary and more about California and beyond." The article properly notices that our political process is currently failing to reach compromises that could have benefit to both sides: 

To the Founding Fathers – who had an actual claim to the concept of a Tea Party – compromise was not a dirty word; it was the essence of governance. Without principled compromise as a result of robust debate, Delaware and New Jersey might still be at each others’ throats. Thank you to the boys from Connecticut, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. 

Which brings us to the sorry situation we face today, in California and Washington in particular, in which leaders of the Republican Party are so terrified and intimidated by the noisy anti-tax absolutists in their know-nothing right wing that they are incapable of principled compromise. Even when flexibility would yield them pension reforms, spending controls, entitlement reductions, long-term fiscal stability and more, the Republicans would rather cut off their noses to spite their faces.

All this is quite true. However, I am always leery of the word "compromise" because so many people involved in politics and public policy seem to believe that compromise, in and of itself, should be the "objective" of our political efforts. Not true, in my opinion. 

"Politics" is the process by which our society makes choices about issues when there is a significant disagreement over what the society ought to do. IF there is a clear majority in favor of one thing or another, then a healthy politics will result in a decision that effectuates the majority position. IF, on the other hand, there isn't a strong enough majority to achieve what one side of a debate would like to achieve, then a "compromise" is often the next best thing. 

I simply want to warn against a politics (at the local, state, or national level) that suggests that "compromise" ought to be the "objective" of politics. Not true if the majority has the ability to do what it actually thinks is best, despite significant (but minority) opposition. In a democratic system, the majority should "rule," though we also do commit that the majority cannot override the fundamental political rights of those in a minority position.

During my twenty years on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, I frequently heard appeals to "compromise" a particular decision, even though it was clear that there was a majority desire to do something that didn't involve the compromise. Probably the most significant example with which I was personally involved was the debate that occurred over growth management and the preservation and protection of prime agricultural land. The majority of the voters of Santa Cruz County clearly wanted to achieve a result (one actually enacted in Measure J, in 1978) that would preserve and protect for agricultural use all the lands in Santa Cruz County that are economically productive when used for agriculture. In other words, protecting agricultural land was a very high priority for the majority of the people in the county. The landowners didn't agree, but they were in a minority position. The appeal was to "compromise," as if that were the objective of politics. Luckily, the voters didn't see it that way. Santa Cruz County is fundamentally different today, and better off, than it would have been had "compromise" been the goal. 

From the point of view of an elected representative, who is actually called upon to vote on public policy issues, my rule was always to seek to do what the people I represented really wanted done. If I couldn't achieve that (if I didn't have the votes), then compromising, and getting the best deal I could, was the next best thing - and the right thing to do. 

Calbuzz is right to fulminate about political actors who refuse to compromise when they have no chance of prevailing on a particular public policy issue. My caution is for the situation in which elected officials do have the votes, and are in a position to do what the people they represent actually want. In that situation, if the elected officials heed appeals to "compromise," they will fail to do what the majority actually wants them to accomplish, and that is a failure of democratic politics itself.

So, for those who think that turning "compromise" into a political "objective" is a great idea, and that "compromise" ought to be the purpose of politics, I'd like to suggest a trip to the dictionary: 

Compromise

[obj.] weaken (a reputation or principle) by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable: commercial pressures could compromise safety. 

[ no obj. ] accept standards that are lower than is desirable: we were not prepared to compromise on safety. 

bring into disrepute or danger by indiscreet, foolish, or reckless behavior: situations in which his troops could be compromised.

Image Credit:
http://www.calbuzz.com/2011/07/why-compromise-has-become-such-a-dirty-word/

#347 / A Mandela For America

Wallace Baine writes columns for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, my hometown newspaper. On Sunday, December 8th, he wrote a column recognizing the great achievements of Nelson Mandela, and asked a poignant question. Why doesn't the United States have a public figure comparable to Nelson Mandela, someone who "could be a unifying force, who has the moral authority to command respect and admiration and ... to be a positive symbol for America in the world?"

Baine was able to identify a number of figures from the entertainment industry who seem to generate goodwill across social divisions, and around the globe. These include, in Baine's list, Mr. Rogers, Willie Nelson, Bill Murray, and Morgan Freeman, an actor who has played Mandela in the movies. But Baine found no figure from the political arena that was in any way comparable to Mandela. He doubted, in fact, that even George Washington could "escape the love him / hate him vortex" that seems to typify contemporary politics, and that Baine laments.

For the record, George Washington was, at least to some degree, a figure who did command the kind of position that Nelson Mandela occupies today. Washington was the symbol of the American Revolution (as Mandela symbolizes the revolution that occurred in South Africa), and Washington did, more or less, succeed in placing himself "above" the partisan strife that immediately ensued upon ratification of the Constitution. Let's not forget that the political bitterness and divisiveness between John Adams, our second President, and Thomas Jefferson, our third President, and their partisans on either side, was at least as virulent as anything we see in politics today. 

In the normal course of human events, political figures do not become "unifying" figures because the purpose of politics is not "unification" but the need to make decisions when there is disagreement about what the society should do. Politics is supposed to be filled with conflict and controversy, and debate and dissension, with the resulting decision not being the "unification" of the various positions, but the adoption of a particular course of action by the body politic. Those engaged in any genuine politics, in which real issues are being debated, with real stakes on the table, realize that they are not going to be "unifying" figures. Hopefully, they will be recognized for their achievements nonetheless. The pursuit of "unification" is a wistful hope that human disagreements might be abolished, and the need to make difficult choices avoided. 

I have been a politician. That's my view.

If we want a truly "unifying figure" in our politics, one like Nelson Mandela or George Washington, we are going to need to have another revolution first. As Hannah Arendt says in her book On Revolution, revolutions begin a "whole new story," and those who can help us accomplish that do, indeed, become revered, and rightly so. 

Postscript:

For an interesting commentary on Mandela and violence, published by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, click this link. 

Image Credit: 
http://www.hannaharendtcenter.org/?p=12196

#346 / Dutch Oven Danger

Pictured is a "Dutch Oven." This is a cooking device, available for purchase on Amazon for $30.99. Until about a week ago, this was the only kind of "Dutch Oven" I knew about. 

Because our social media provides lots of bizarre stories to titillate our sensibilities, I now know that "Dutch Oven" has another meaning, too. Check out the definition provided in the Urban Dictionary. I actually don't feel much like repeating it here.

What led me to the contemporary definition of "Dutch Oven" was a story, dated in 2007, still being widely distributed through the social media, titled "Husband Convicted of Manslaughter After Dutch Oven Goes 'Horribly Wrong.'" You can read the story by clicking the link. Again, I actually don't feel much like repeating it here. You should also know, if you do choose to read the story, that Snopes.com, which makes its living by debunking information appearing on the internet, rates this story as "False." I would hope so.

The false story about the "Dutch Oven" gone "Horribly Wrong" is a story about death by methane asphyxiation. 

On a more global scale, that could actually happen to all of us. There really is a potential problem out there. Click the link to read about the true danger of a methane-fueled "Dutch Oven" assault on Planet Earth. As I noted in my posting last Saturday, citing to Scientific American, whose reputation for veracity is good, global warming is "increasing the risk of mass extinction." 

Image Credit:
http://www.amazon.com/Dutch-Ovens-Cookware-Baking-Kitchen/b?ie=UTF8&node=289818

#345 / Secular Stagnation

Pictured is Larry Summers, an American economist, and reportedly President Obama's original pick to head the Federal Reserve Board. On November 8th, Summers gave a speech in which he suggested that persistent conditions of economic stagnation ("secular stagnation") might be the "new normal" for the United States.

Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2008, and who not only teaches at Princeton, but also "teaches" more generally, as a columnist for The New York Times, more or less agreed with Summers in a column published on November 17th. 

Let's not be too amazed at Summers' prediction. The idea of infinite growth (the "old normal" expectation for our economy) is plainly not possible, or even desirable. That is particularly true if the "growth" that occurs in our economy comes at the cost of destroying the fundamental integrity of the World of Nature, which supports our economy and everything else. 

"Expectations" can be dangerous, and can breed both resentment and disappointment if they are not realized, which is almost inevitable if they are unrealistic. We all need to start celebrating, not decrying, an economy that can function in a "steady state" mode, or even one that is based on ratcheting down (not up) the ceaseless consumption that has been driving our economy for decades.

Image Credit: 
http://jowebereconomist.wordpress.com/tag/trend-growth/

#344 / War World

I am reading Jeremy Scahill's book, Dirty Wars. I am looking forward to the movie. On page 172 of the book, I found the following statement by Scott Horton, a human rights lawyer: 

Now ... it's not unusual for the military to have commandos who, in a theater of war, will seek out enemy command and control, with the purpose of identifying them and then killing them. ... And that would be traditional, authorized warfare. ... What's different here, is that suddenly the theater of war has become the entire globe - it's become everywhere. And they're looking at the possibility of assassinating people in Hamburg, Germany, in Norway, in Italy, as well as in Morocco, Jordan, Senegal, Turkey, Yemen, the Philippines and places in the African Horn. And I'd say, in terms of law - it's pretty plainly illegal once you're outside of the normal theater of war.

Scahill goes on to quote Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of "Defense" under President George W. Bush: "the entire world is the 'battlespace.'"

Scahill subtitles his book "The world is a battlefield."

Whether it is drones that put us there, or the techniques of American-applied torture promoted by Rumsfeld, and documented by Scahill, I am not comforted. 

If the world is a battlefield, I am a target.

You, too!

Image Credit: 
http://ccrjustice.org/DirtyWars-FilmPremiere-June7

#343 / Drones Come To Boston

My courses at UCSC are coming to an end. In one of them, Introduction to the Legal Process, I had the students read an article about drone warfare, published in The Atlantic, and available online: The Killing Machines: How To Think About Drones. The article illuminates the changing nature of "war," as American technology pushes to innovate. Traditional concepts of war envision armies meeting on a battlefield, somewhere, and fighting. In the midst of such a fight, each side uses whatever weapons it can, to kill those on the other side, but each side puts itself in mutual danger of death as a part of this process.

In drone "warfare," a person sitting in a comfortable office in Washington, D.C. exterminates a family by remote control. Those killed never see it coming, and there is certainly no way for them to fight back. As for the guy in the office building, no danger there!

Supposedly, America's innovative move to drone warfare is a a way to minimize loss of life, but if the use of drones to execute people is justified by its relationship to a "war" (a "war on terror," presumably), it seems obvious that the only way for the other side to be engaged in the war, too, is for that side to find ways to kill their opponents (Americans) by stealth and without warning. Hence: the Boston Marathon massacre. 

This is what "drone warfare" means to me: the Boston Marathon massacre.

Maybe we should think again.

Postscript: In searching for an image to accompany this post, I happened on an article by Robert Wright, written in April 2013. He makes pretty much the same point, though from a different perspective, and his article is worth reading.

Image Credit:
(1) http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/drone-strikes-and-the-boston-marathon-bombing/275164/
(2) Santa Cruz Progressive Email List

#342 / Weird Worries

When I see articles that I consider provocative, and worth thinking about, I often pass them on to my Facebook Friends. Usually, such articles are about politics, but recently I posted an article titled "Speculations on a probable future destruction of the internet." The article portrays a near "end of the world" scenario, documenting the significant problems that any future failure of the internet would surely cause. My advisory, accompanying my link to the article, suggested that the article was for "those searching for something new to worry about!" 

One of my "geek" friends (and that title is well-earned and definitely merited in his case) told me that the concerns expressed in the article were "overblown or unrealistic. There may be regional outages; nothing near total. The virus that takes down the net for more than five minutes (if at all) is fantasy out of a Michael Crichton novel."

I tend to think my "GeekSpeak" friend is right, but it never hurts to be humble. Humans often, in my experience, think that they are more "in control" than they actually are. Self-doubt and self-questioning can have some beneficial effects. A good dollop of the "precautionary principle" is a good prescription. Take some daily.

What actually attracted me to the article was an imbedded philosophical question. Is the world that we have created, our "human world," more or less reliable than the world into which were were born, the World of Nature?

I think I'm sticking with Nature "when the deal goes down."

Image Credit: 
http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2013/11/113469/speculations-on-a-probable-future-destruction-of-the-internet/

#341 / Two Articles

On Friday, December 6th, I received two different email bulletins about articles that Scientific American has put online. One of the articles posed this question: "How Long Have Humans Dominated The Planet?" This article discusses the "Anthropocene," a newly defined epoch in which humanity is the dominant force on Planet Earth. I have mentioned the Anthropocene previously, in commenting (1) on the writings of Elizabeth Kolbert, and (2) on the reason that I recommend making a tax-deductible contribution to the Earth Island Institute. 

For a little more on the Anthropocene, click on the picture, which certainly does show how humans are now seeking to "dominate" the planet.

The second article from Scientific American was titled "Dangerous Global Warming is Closer Than You Think." That article pretty much indicates that our human "domination" of Planet Earth is working to our own disadvantage. One of my Facebook Friends commented "I fear we will greatly regret our lack of urgency on this issue." I think that's a sage comment, and perhaps an understatement. 

Could it be that "domination" of the Planet should not be our guiding principle? If we don't start making some changes soon, the Anthropocene era may turn out to be quite brief!

Image Credit: 
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/ecoalert-urban-sprawl-welcome-to-the-anthropocene-epoch.html

#340 / Bridge Building

Terry Tempest Williams (pictured) is a conservationist and activist. She is a writer, as well. Recently, a friend sent me a link to an interview with Williams, published in Guernica, an online magazine of art and politics. The interview is titled "Ground Truthing," and it is worth reading. Just click the link.

Williams claims to "see everything in metaphor," a very good way to see the world, in my estimation, and she talks about making many trips from Bucksport to Belfast, Maine across an old and rickety bridge, while being able to see a new bridge, under construction, nearby. The question in her mind, on her repeated trips on that old and dangerous bridge, was whether the new bridge would be completed before the old one collapsed, taking her and her family with it.

A good metaphor, indeed, for our time. But it is we who must build the new bridge. We cannot, actually, afford the luxury to behave as if we can wait for others to do it. 

According to Williams:

I don’t think there is anything as powerful as an active heart. And the activists I know possess this powerful beating heart of change. They do not fear the wisdom of emotion, but embody it. They know how to listen. They are polite when they need to be and unyielding when necessary. They remain open, even as they push boundaries and inhabit the margins, understanding eventually, the margins will move toward the center. They are tenacious, informed, patient, and impatient, at once. They do not shy away from what is difficult. They refuse to accept the unacceptable. The most effective activists I know are in love with the world.

Such activism is what we need; what we must have. We need to look inside ourselves. Are we not called to build the bridge?

Image Credit: 
http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/ground-truthing/