Wednesday, April 2, 2025

#92 / An Autoimmune Reaction



 
Heather Cox Richardson is one of my favorites. Click the following link to be connected to her Substack website, where you can subscribe to her "Letters From An American." At the end of this blog posting, I am providing, in full, the "Letter" she published on March 28, 2025, and upon which I am commenting here.

To be clear, Richardson does not mention autoimmune diseases in what she published on March 28th. However, after having read her posting, that phenomenon is what immediately came to mind. Here's what the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences says about auto immune disease: 

If the immune system malfunctions, it mistakenly attacks healthy cells, tissues, and organs. Called autoimmune disease, these attacks can affect any part of the body, weakening bodily function and even turning life-threatening. (emphasis added).

Autoimmune disease, in other words, occurs when the immune system, which is supposed to protect the body by attacking hostile organisms coming from outside our body, starts attacking the body itself. What struck me was the parallel, or analogy, between autoimmune disease and what the Trump Administration is doing, by way of its national political, social, and economic policies. 

Here is a brief quote from the March 28, 2025, edition of Heather Cox Richardson's "Letter From An American" (again, available in full at the end of today's blog posting): 

“Another wipeout walloped Wall Street Friday,” Stan Choe of the Associated Press wrote today. The S&P 500 had one of its worst days in two years, dropping 2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 715 points, losing 1.7% of its value. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.7%. On Tuesday, news dropped that the administration’s blanket firings and wildly shifting tariff policies have dropped consumer confidence to a low it has not hit since January 2021. Today’s stock market tumble started after the Commerce Department released data showing that consumer prices are rising faster than economists expected (emphasis added).

Trump policies, so he proclaims, are intended to protect the United States from hostile policies that he asserts are attacking our society and economy from without (including alleged attacks by those we have always thought were our "allies" and "friends"). Instead of protecting us, though, the Trump policies are actually, themselves, undermining our social and economic health.

When you get sick, or when illness threatens, it's important to identify what's causing your illness - or what could cause it, if the illness is more of a "threat" than a current affliction.

With respect to our social and economic health (which has actually been pretty good, up to this point), it is pretty clear to me what is going to be our major problem. What is having the worst effect is a clear case of "autoimmune disease," namely, the helter-skelter policy changes being promulgated by the President and his billionaire acolytes, which are attacking our heretofore healthy society and economy. 

The "cure" for what is likely to be an increasingly distressing impact on us should be pretty clear. Right?

Let's get the Congress mobilized, to start dealing with any real economic and social problems, and stop allowing that guy who says, "I, alone, can fix it," to undermine the national health, safety, and welfare, by subjecting the country to the policy equivalent of a vicious autoimmune disease.


oooOOOooo

Letters From An American
Heather Cox Richardson
March 28, 2025

“Another wipeout walloped Wall Street Friday,” Stan Choe of the Associated Press wrote today. The S&P 500 had one of its worst days in two years, dropping 2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 715 points, losing 1.7% of its value. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.7%. On Tuesday, news dropped that the administration’s blanket firings and wildly shifting tariff policies have dropped consumer confidence to a low it has not hit since January 2021. Today’s stock market tumble started after the Commerce Department released data showing that consumer prices are rising faster than economists expected.

AIG chief international economist James Knightley said: “We are moving in the wrong direction and the concern is that tariffs threaten higher prices, which means the inflation prints are going to remain hot.” Business leaders like lower interest rates, which reduce borrowing costs and make it cheaper to finance business initiatives, but with rising inflation, the Federal Reserve will be less likely to cut interest rates.

Makena Kelly of Wired reported today that billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is planning to move the computer system of the Social Security Administration (SSA) off the old programming language it uses, COBOL, to a new system. In 2017, the SSA estimated that such a migration would take about five years. DOGE is planning for the migration to take just a few months, using artificial intelligence to complete the change.

Experts have expressed concern. Dan Hon, who runs a technology strategy company that helps the government modernize its services, told Kelly: “If you weren’t worried about a whole bunch of people not getting benefits or getting the wrong benefits, or getting the wrong entitlements, or having to wait ages, then sure go ahead.” More than 65 million Americans currently receive Social Security benefits. Today Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) recorded himself calling the SSA and being told by a recording that the wait times were more than two hours and that he should call back. And then the system hung up on him.

Musk told the Fox News Channel today that he plans to step down from DOGE in May, apparently at the end of the 130-day cap for the “special government employee” designation that enables him to avoid financial disclosures. In February, White House staffers suggested Musk would stay despite the limit.

Today the State Department told Congress it is shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) altogether by July 1. Whatever agency functions the administration approves will move into the State Department. Founded by President John F. Kennedy and enjoying bipartisan support, USAID administers programs for global health, disaster relief, long-term economic development, education, environmental protection, and democracy. It is widely perceived to be a key element of U.S. “soft power.”

USAID was created by Congress, and its funds are appropriated by Congress. Congress and the courts have established that the executive branch—the branch of government overseen by the president—cannot kill an agency Congress has created and cannot withhold appropriations Congress has made. The authors of Project 2025 want to challenge that principle and consolidate government power in the hands of the president. It appears they have chosen USAID as the test case.

As Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shatters science and health agencies, the nation’s top vaccine regulator, Dr. Peter Marks, submitted his resignation today after being given the choice to resign or be fired. Dan Diamond of the Washington Post noted that Marks has been at the Food and Drug Administration since 2012 and has been at the head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research since 2016.

In his resignation letter, Diamond says, Marks expressed his deep concern over the ongoing measles outbreak in the Southwest—now more than 450 cases—and warned that the outbreak “reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined.” Marks said that although he was willing to work with Kennedy on his plan to review vaccine safety, “it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

On Tuesday, news broke that Kennedy has tapped anti-vaccine activist David Geier to lead a study looking to link autism to vaccines, although that alleged link has been heavily studied and thoroughly debunked. Infectious disease journalist Helen Branswell notes that Geier does not have a medical degree and was disciplined in Maryland for practicing medicine without a license.

British investigative journalist Brian Deer, who has written about the hoax that vaccines cause autism, told Branswell: “If you want an independent source,… [you] wouldn’t go to somebody with no qualifications and a long track record of impropriety and incompetence.” But, he said, “[i]f you wanted to get in anybody off the street who would come up with the result that Kennedy would like to see, this would be your man.”

Tara Copp of the Associated Press reported today that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has done some targeted staffing, too. His younger brother Phil Hegseth is traveling to the Indo-Pacific with the secretary in his role at the Pentagon as a liaison and senior advisor to the Department of Homeland Security. Hegseth also employed his brother when he ran the nonprofit Concerned Veterans for America, where the younger Hegseth’s salary was $108,000 for his media work. Copp notes that a 1967 law “prohibits government officials from hiring, promoting or recommending relatives to any civilian position over which they exercise control.”

Hegseth and his colleagues are still in the hot seat for uploading the military’s attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen to Signal, an unsecure commercially available messaging app. Yesterday, Nancy A. Youssef, Alexander Ward, and Michael R. Gordon of the Wall Street Journal reported that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz identified a Houthi missile expert whose identity Israel had provided from a human source in Yemen, angering Israeli officials.

Americans, especially those with ties to the military, aren’t happy either. Military, the leading news website for service members, veterans, and their families, titled a story about the scandal “‘Different spanks for different ranks’: Hegseth’s Signal scandal would put regular troops in the brig.” Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that the story had “angered and bewildered” fighter pilots, who say “they can no longer be certain that the Pentagon is focused on their safety when they strap into cockpits.”

At a raucous town hall held today by Republican representative Victoria Spartz (R-IN), the crowd booed Spartz loudly when she said she would not call for the resignations of Waltz, Hegseth, and the rest of the people on the group chat.

All the mayhem created by the administration has created enough backlash that the White House appears concerned about upcoming special elections on April 1. One is for the seat in Florida’s District 6 that Waltz vacated when he became national security advisor. In 2024, Trump won that district by 30 points, and Republicans considered their candidate, state senator Randy Fine, whom Trump has strongly endorsed, to be such a shoo-in that he barely campaigned. His website features pictures of him with Trump but has only bullet points to explain his stand on issues.

Democrat Josh Weil, a middle-school math teacher who has outraised Fine by almost 10 to one, is polling within the margin of error for a victory in a contest where even a 10- to 15-point loss would show a dramatic collapse in Republican support. Weil has tied Fine to Musk’s unpopular DOGE and to the president, as well as to cuts to Social Security and Medicaid.

Trump is now personally campaigning for Fine and for the Republican candidate to fill the seat vacated by former representative Matt Gaetz in Florida District 1. There, Democratic candidate Gay Valimont is running against Republican Jimmy Patronis in a district that elected Trump with about 68% of the vote. Like Fine, Patronis is strongly backed by Trump and wants more cuts to the federal government; Valimont is a former state leader for Moms Demand Action and focuses on healthcare and veterans’ services. She has criticized DOGE’s cuts to VA hospitals. Like Weil, she has significantly outraised her opponent.

Republicans are concerned enough about holding the seats that billionaire Elon Musk, who poured more than $291 million into the 2024 election to help Republicans, has begun to contribute to Republicans in Florida. On Tuesday he spent more than $10,000 apiece for texting services for the Florida candidates.

Musk has contributed far more than that—more than $20 million—to the April 1 election for a ten-year seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Trump loyalist Brad Schimel is running against circuit court judge Susan Crawford in a contest that has national significance. Wisconsin is evenly split between the parties, but when Republicans control the legislature and the supreme court, they suppress voting and heavily gerrymander the state in their favor. When liberals hold the majority on the court, they ease election rules and uphold fair maps. Currently, the state gerrymander gives Republicans 75% of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives although voting in 2024 was virtually dead even. The makeup of the court could well determine the congressional districts of Wisconsin through 2041, through the redistricting that will take place after the 2030 census.

Musk has told voters that if Crawford wins, “then the Democrats will attempt to redraw the districts and cause Wisconsin to lose two Republican seats.” Not only has Musk said he is going to Wisconsin to speak before the election, but also he is handing out checks to voters who sign a petition against “activist judges,” a suggestion that it would not be fair to unskew the Republican gerrymander. Last night, Musk advertised a contest that would award two voters a million dollars each, with the condition that the winners had to have already voted.

This morning, Wisconsin Democrats issued a press release noting that Musk had “committed a blatant felony,” directly violating the Wisconsin law that prohibits offering anyone anything worth more than $1 to get them to “vote or refrain from voting.” Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler said that if Schimel “does not immediately call on Musk to end this criminal activity, we can only assume he is complicit.”

Musk deleted the tweet and then, eliminating the language that said people had to have voted, posted that he would give the checks to spokespeople for his petition. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul sued to stop Musk “from any further promotion of the million-dollar gifts” and “from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.” “The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to ensuring that elections in Wisconsin are safe, secure, free, and fair,” Kaul said in a statement. “We are aware of the offer recently posted by Elon Musk to award a million dollars to two people at an event in Wisconsin this weekend. Based on our understanding of applicable Wisconsin law, we intend to take legal action today to seek a court order to stop this from happening.”

MeidasTouch reposted Musk’s offer to “personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote” and noted: “No matter what side of the aisle you are on, you should be appalled that a billionaire thinks he has the right to buy elections like this.” Former chair of the Ohio Democratic Party David Pepper posted: “Have some pride, America. We are so much better than this guy thinks we are.”


 

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

#91 / The "End of History"? Maybe Not!

  


I enjoyed an article in the LA Progressive that appeared online on January 16, 2025. The article, by Andrew Bacevich, was titled, "Could History Be Trying to Tell Us Something?" If you click that link, you should be able to read the entire article for yourself. I don't think there is any paywall. 

Almost more than the article, I enjoyed the graphic that came with it, which I have incorporated into this blog posting, above. The graphic depicts our new president as playing out an observation from "Macbeth," generating a great deal of "sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

In summary, the Bacevich article takes on the idea that the dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the "end of history." Not so, he says: 

Allow me to suggest that those who counted History out did so prematurely. It’s time to consider the possibility that all too many of the very smart, very earnest, and very well-compensated people who take it upon themselves to interpret the signs of our times have been radically misinformed. Simply put: they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Viewed in retrospect, perhaps the collapse of communism did not signify the turning point of cosmic significance so many of them then imagined. Add to that another possibility: Perhaps liberal democratic consumer capitalism (also known as the American Way of Life) does not, in fact, define the ultimate destination of humankind.
It just might be that History is once again on the move—or simply that it never really “ended” in the first place. And as usual, it appears to have tricks up its sleeve, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House arguably one of them.
More than a few of my fellow citizens see his election as a cause for ultimate despair—and I get that. But to saddle Trump with responsibility for the predicament in which our nation now finds itself vastly overstates his historical significance.
Let’s start with this: Despite his extraordinary aptitude for self-promotion, Trump has shown little ability to anticipate, shape, or even forestall events. Yes, he is distinctly a blowhard, who makes grandiose promises that rarely pan out. (If you want documentation, take your choice among Trump University, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Taj Mahal, and even Trump: the Game.) Barring a conversion akin to the Apostle Paul’s on his journey to Damascus, we can expect more of the same from his second term as president.
Yet the yawning gap between his over-the-top MAGA rhetoric and what he’s really delivered should be instructive. It trains a spotlight on what the “end of history” has actually yielded: lofty unfulfilled promises that have given way to unexpected and often distinctly undesired consequences (emphasis added).
 
Bottom line? History has not "ended," and that means that each one of us, individually, and all of us, collectively, continue to have the ability to do something "new," and "unexpected," and to tell a "new story," one that has never even been thought about before.

"Possibility" is our category, and because we continue to have the ability to "act," we continue to have the ability to change the world.

Considering the day on which this blog posting is scheduled to appear. Let me say this: "No Fooling!"

Better get to it, too. That's my advice!!



Monday, March 31, 2025

#90 / Short-Term Pain And No Long-Term Gain

 
  

It is well-established (and makes a good deal of sense) that some short term pain may well be worth it, if the "short term pain" leads to a "long term gain." Presumably, this might the idea underlying our current president's recent announcement that "a recession may be worth it." Let's examine that premise.

As it turns out, many economists don't agree that the policy changes being made by our president are going to have any longer-term payoff. What they see is "short term pain" leading to "long term pain." Click that link in the first paragraph and read what New York Times reporter Ben Casselman has to say on this topic (paywall policies permitting, of course). 

I found the most revealing part of Casselman's article to come right near the end:

Who bears the costs?

The 2017 tax cuts disproportionately benefited higher-income households, according to most independent analyses. Medicaid cuts would overwhelmingly hurt low- and moderate-income families, as would cuts to other government services. Tariffs likewise tend to be hardest on poorer households, which spend more of their income on food, clothes and other imported goods. 
The short-term pain created by the administration’s policies, in other words, could fall hardest on low-income Americans — many of whom voted for Mr. Trump in hopes of improving their economic situation. 
“It’s really hard to see how the Trump voters come out ahead,” Ms. Clausing, the former Treasury official, said. “Prices are going to be higher, disruptions are going to be higher and the safety net is going to get cut." 
Even some defenders of Mr. Trump’s policies, such as Mr. Cass, say cutting benefits to pay for tax cuts runs counter to the administration’s stated goal of restoring the middle class (emphasis added).

Just to highlight the obvious, the adminstration's "stated" goal is not its "real" goal. 

The "real" goal is to benefit the billionaires, and to hell with the rest of us. 

That make it clear?

Foundation of Freedom

Sunday, March 30, 2025

#89 / This Is The Day!

 


This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118

Richard B. Hays is pictured above. He died on January 3, 2025. Hays was an ordained Minister in the United Methodist Church and was the retired Dean of the Duke Divinity School. The picture above comes from an obituary published in The New York Times on January 16th. The quotation is from one of Hays' favorite Bible readings.

The headline on the obituary in The Times called out Hays as a theologian who "had a stunning change of heart." During much of his life, Hays provided a "full-on argument from Scripture against gay relationships," but in 2024 he recanted his earlier views. His book, The Widening of God's Mercy, was published in September 2024 as an "act of repentence." 

What struck me most in Hays' obituary was the reason that Hays gave for changing his mind about same-sex relationships: 

Mr. Hays changed his mind about same-sex relationships, he said, because God changed his mind.... 
In “The Widening of God’s Mercy,” published in September by Yale University Press and written with his son, Christopher B. Hays, Mr. Hays maintained that if the Bible is read holistically, as a complete narrative, it reveals a God who continually extends grace and mercy to ever wider circles of people, including those who once were outcasts....
In Mr. Hays’s view, the Bible repeatedly presents a portrait of a God who changes his mind and evolves his thinking — a concept that might make many Christians flinch.

This view of God, as a Creator who changes his mind, replaces an "abstract" idea of divinity with what we might call, from our own perspective, a "human" one. And if we humans are all fashioned in "the image of God," which is one of the claims made in the Bible, then that "favorite" verse of Hays - "this is the day that the Lord has made" - could (and I say, "should") inspire us to realize that we are able to (and I would say "expected to") change what we do, and change our human world, as we understand, better, and more inclusively, what it means to be human, and alive. 

This day, today, is the day of the Creation. Let us rejoice, indeed, and be glad in this day, and make this day an exemplar of what is our best impulse and understanding of the love and mercy that have placed us, all together, so mysteriously, here!


Saturday, March 29, 2025

#88 / Three Branches

    
  

As almost everyone knows (or should know, anyway), the government of the United States of America consists of three branches. As outlined in the Constitution, the first branch (Article I) is the "Legislative" Branch. The second branch (Article II) is the "Executive" Branch. The third branch (Article III) is the "Judicial" Branch. 

Currently, our government is in vast disarray because the person elected to head the Executive Branch, Donald J. Trump, has chosen to disregard what the Constitution demands. You will, I am sure, remember what he says: "I, alone, can fix it." That personal statement by our current president can be described, in more "legalistic" fashion, by calling Trump's claims the "Unitary Executive Theory." In fact, using that title is really only an attempt to provide some claim to legitimacy for what the president is doing. He is repudiating the Constitution. I would certainly encourage anyone reading this blog posting to click the following link to an article in The New Yorker, featuring a discussion between Isaac Chotiner and Samuel R. Bagenstos, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden Administration. The article is titled, "Why 'Constitutional Crisis' Fails to Capture Trump’s Attack on the Rule of Law."

On March 22, 2025, the two national newspapers that I read each morning, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, had editorial statements, columns, and news stories that highlighted the governmental "disarray" I have mentioned above, and that outlined how our current "Constititutional Crisis" is playing out. For those whose subscription status permits, here are some references: 


The "genius" of American government resides in the "separation of powers" that makes it exceedingly difficult for any single person to command the vast resources of our government, from the budget and its billions to our armed forces and the nation's nuclear weapons reserve. In fact, what has made "America Great" has been the fact that the structure of our government has demanded that people from all over our diverse country, and with every conceivable type of viewpoint and background, have had to work together, to try to come to some agreement on what "America" should do. This "combination of ingredients" approach to decision making has proven to be a "feature," not a "bug."

Trying to vest all key decisions in a single person (even one who is tempermentally stable, and profoundly and empathetically supportive of the incredible diversity of our nation) would be a terrible mistake. All the bigger mistake when it happens that the person claiming that "he alone can fix it" is neither tempermentally stable nor empathetically proficient. 

When such a horrible possibility appears (and it is definitely here), the responsibility for making certain that the worst does not happen ends up being the responsibility of each one of us - and of those elected "representatives" who are, indeed, supposed to "represent" what the people who elect them want. Let's be clear, it is our responsibility to make sure they do that!

Within the official government structure, our system puts the "Legislative" Branch first. We, the people, need to make sure that the Legislative Branch does what it is supposed to, and that it does what the Constitution both contemplates and commands. The New York Times column linked above (and here, again) is absolutely correct:




Foundation of Freedom

Friday, March 28, 2025

#87 / Going Rogue On America?

 


That is Kristen Soltis Anderson, pictured above. She is a pollster, speaker, commentator, and author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up). Amazon calls her "the GOP’s leading millennial pollster."

I haven't read Anderson's book, and my only contact with her, and with her thinking, comes from a "Guest Essay" she wrote for the Opinion section of The New York Times on March 18, 2025. Her opinion piece outlines why Anderson thinks that president Trump's poll numbers are sagging (which she says they are). Here is her analysis:

Mr. Trump seems to view his job differently than many voters, which is one reason for his falling poll numbers. He strongly believes that he was elected to return to Washington as a disrupter, this time with significantly more experience and effectiveness than in his first term. He sees himself as bringing strength back to the Oval Office after four years of a weak Joe Biden. In this, he believes he has the latitude to go big and bold, to create some turbulence and cause some prices to rise in the short term as he asserts himself in Washington and around the globe. All of this, Mr. Trump says, is in hopes of establishing a stronger American position over the long term. 
But as I dug into Mr. Trump’s polling data, it looked increasingly that American voters’ mandate to the president was more narrow than he sees it. After a prolonged period of inflation, with a Biden administration that told Americans not to believe their lying wallets, voters clearly wanted the next president to stabilize the economy and make their cost of living more manageable (emphasis added).

Putting it a different way, Anderson asks this question:

Are Mr. Trump’s actions in step with what voters want from him, or is he going rogue on America, doing his own thing, polls be damned? Did people want him to remake the government and disrupt the global financial order, or did they just want cheaper groceries (emphasis added)?

Ms. Anderson is a Republican. She is being polite. Anyone who comes from the "Democratic" side of our partisan political divide has no doubt whatsoever that our current president is not only "going" rogue on America; he has already "gone" rogue. 

Robert Hubbell, to pick an example of someone who comes from the political side opposite to the side occupied by Kristen Soltis Anderson, wrote in his March 18, 2025 blog posting that our greatest danger is to accept as a "fact" that our president's dictatorial ambitions have been fully realized, and that "democracy is over." I do have certain Facebook Friends who make claims like that. Hubbell says, and I agree, that it is important not to accept any claim that our president has successfully eliminated democratic self-government, or that he has successfully installed "fascism" - although it's pretty important, I think, to understand that this is exactly what our current president is attempting to do, and wants to do. 

Here's Hubbell:

Why am I confident that Trump's defiance of the judiciary will not “finish our democracy?” 
Because we have broken faith with the Constitution on numerous occasions in our past but always managed to return to our founding document, which serves as our north star and moral compass. We will do so again. 
There is danger in telling people that “democracy is finished” if Trump successfully ignores a court order. If we make that claim often enough, people will believe us—even though it is not true, not by a long shot. American democracy will not end so long as we do not give up on the Constitution
And we aren’t going to give up on the Constitution. I am not. You won’t. Your neighbors and friends won’t. Hundreds of millions of Americans are not going to quit. In the words of Alexei Navalny, “You are not allowed to give up” (emphasis added).

Our president has, in fact, "gone rogue" on our system of government. Unless we give up (and I do include our elected representatives in Congress in a listing of those who must not "give up"), we and our system of democratic self-government is not only going to survive, but to prevail. 

Just in case there may be some reading this blog posting who have never read the 1950 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech given by William Faulkner, which uses language quite similar to the language that I just used, let me provide a significant part of the text below. Faulkner outlines the kind of attitude towards danger and adversity that we must all seek to sustain.

Let's not capitulate or stipulate that Trump, and Musk, and all of Trump's other minions, have succeeded in wrenching away self-government from our hands. 

That will never be true - unless and until we give up!

oooOOOooo

William Faulkner Banquet Speech


William Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1950

Ladies and gentlemen,

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail (emphasis added).


Foundation of Freedom

Thursday, March 27, 2025

#86 / Preppers



 
I never made it to Eagle Scout, but I was, for a time, an active member of a Boy Scout troop. I still have my copy of the Boy Scout Handbook For Boys on a bookshelf in my dining room. Click that link for a picture of exactly what my copy looks like. The price is listed as sixty-five cents on the cover of the book I have. 

"Be Prepared" is the Boy Scout motto, and maybe it's true that "once a Scout, always a Scout." My blog postings talking about global warming and solar storms (not to mention earthquakes off the coast in the Pacific Northwest), made me think about that motto. What should we - what should I - be doing, right now, to "Be Prepared," and to put that motto into practice?

Maybe, I thought, I should look into becoming a "Prepper." That would be taking that "Be Prepared" motto seriously, wouldn't it? I had heard the term, but I had only a very general idea of what it would take to be a "Prepper," so I looked up that term, online, and found that Wikipedia categorizes "Preppers" as the same thing as "Survivalists," and also uses the term, "Doomsday Preppers." 
 

There is no bright line dividing general emergency preparedness from prepping in the form of survivalism (these concepts are a spectrum), but a qualitative distinction is often recognized whereby preppers/survivalists prepare especially extensively because they have higher estimations of the risk of catastrophes happening. Nonetheless, prepping can be as limited as preparing for a personal emergency (such as a job loss, storm damage to one's home, or getting lost in wooded terrain), or it can be as extensive as a personal identity or collective identity with a devoted lifestyle. 
Survivalism emphasises self-reliance, stockpiling supplies, and gaining survival knowledge and skills. The stockpiling of supplies is itself a wide spectrum, from survival kits (ready bags, bug-out bags) to entire bunkers in extreme cases. 
Survivalists often acquire first aid and emergency medical/paramedic/field medicine training, self-defense training (martial arts, ad hoc weaponry, firearm safety), and improvisation/self-sufficiency training, and they often build structures (survival retreats, underground shelters, etc.) or modify/fortify existing structures etc. that may help them survive a catastrophic failure of society. 
Use of the term survivalist dates from the early 1980s.

The Hill, an online source of news on topics mostly political, also provided some guidance. The following suggestions came from an article in The Hill titled, "What the average family can learn from doomsday preppers."


Many countries in the world (including the U.S. and Finland), already advise people to prepare to survive for three days without help from authorities. For those who want to make a modest investment in preparedness, here are our top tips for the everyday family prepper:
 
A “basics” kit kept somewhere accessible. It should include a couple of flashlights and spare batteries, a wind-up radio (governments still plan to broadcast on radio in an emergency), hand sanitizer, a pack of face masks, a charged battery pack for devices, foil blankets for emergency warmth, baby wipes in case the shower is out of action, a basic first aid kit that hasn’t been raided and a supply of any essential medication. And don’t forget your pets! 
You certainly don’t need an underground store, but having a few days’ supply of nutritious food items that don’t require cooking (baked beans, soups, cereal, etc.,) would likely be helpful in the event of a major crisis. Some ultra-high temperature (UHT) and powdered milk would come in handy and some spare powdered baby milk too if you need that. I’d definitely add spare toilet paper to the list (for some reason this is what sold out first in pandemic panic buying.) 
Bottled water and a water filter. You can survive on not a huge amount of food for quite a while, but a lack of drinkable water becomes a problem pretty quickly. We keep a few large bottles of water tucked away, but also have a camping water filter that is effective in making safe pretty much any natural water source if we ever need it. 
We would never advise keeping dangerous stores of car fuel lying around in gas cans, but if you can keep your vehicle topped up with fuel or electricity rather than filling up from empty, you won’t run into immediate difficulties if the supply is suddenly interrupted for any reason. You can also use your car battery to tune into emergency radio channels — and to charge your cell phone. We keep a road atlas, a couple of blankets, long-life snacks and some bottled water in the car in case we ever get stuck on the move. 
Keep some cash tucked away in a place you will be able to find it in case of emergency. In a disaster, credit cards might not work.
You don’t have to obsess about every eventuality; that way madness lies. But having a few of the above things in place is peace of mind that the family will have the basics in most circumstances.

I am pretty much thinking that planning ahead for problems makes a lot of sense. After all, our presidential election now being over, and with the Trump Administration now flexing its power, I keep remembering that the candidate who won has promised to become a dictator, and to use military force against those whom he decides are not going along with his program. 

Plus, I can't help remembering the devastating fires in Los Angeles, in early January. We do have those potential earthquakes, wildfires, and solar storms, plus the ongoing disaster of global warming, which has a lot to do with the wildfires I just referenced.

Do we want to get prepared to survive and sustain in a world of non-hypothetical real disasters, and lots of potential disasters, all of them very much meriting that "terrifying" label?

Emergency kits, and similar preparations will be welcome, undoubtedly, but other people are going to be the key. Let me say it one more time.

What do we need to do to prepare for the future - for future troubles, and for the future opportunities we will, undoubtedly, also encounter?

We need to take some advice from Octavia Butler. Find some friends!

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

#85 / The "-Ism" Trap



Putting names to the way we organize the world can help us to understand it. It can help us navigate the world, too. Still, it's best to be cautious, so that we don't start believing that the "names" we ascribe to things are truly the things themselves - that the names we use are genuine "realities," as opposed to being simply the terms that we have developed, and that we have chosen to use to help us understand reality. 

That was my thought as I reviewed this New Yorker cartoon, published way back in September of last year! 

Let's not get caught in that "-ism" trap!


Tuesday, March 25, 2025

#84 / Let's Shake On It



The picture shown above has made a big impression on me. It accompanied an article published by Bloomberg on January 9, 2025. On that date, memorial services were held in the National Cathedral, to honor former president Jimmy Carter. 

Apparently, some consternation occurred, after the memorial ceremonies were over. Country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood performed what has been reported to be Carter's favorite song, John Lennon's "Imagine." Well, Lennon's song does contain lyrics that encourage people to "imagine there's no heaven." What a song for the National Cathedral, right? 

I choose not to enter into the recriminations that were apparently made by some. I just want to look at that picture, selected by Bloomberg to accompny its article on the memorial to Carter. 

The picture shows President Carter shaking the hand of Deng Xiaoping, who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1989. Isn't that a great picture? 

While we are talking about imagining things, can we imagine a president who wouldn't threaten other nations with military force or economic sanctions, but who would just talk to their leaders, instead? I am thinking about a president who would be working with one of those leaders to find ways for the United States to cooperate with that leader's country, to address all the incredible challenges that face the world today. Wouldn't that actually be amazing? I'd like to imagine that! A few steps short of heaven, to be sure, but that is the direction we need to go!   

I bet a president like Jimmy Carter could work with those leaders of other nations (even China), and find some common ground and agreement on some positive things for the two nations to do cooperatively, things that would help both nations deal with the mutual problems and possibilities that are challenges for all of us. I can envision just what it would look like, too, when the president and one of those foreign leaders started working out some of the possibilities. Just like that picture of Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping!

Here's what I imagine our president might say: "Hey, that's wonderful. That's a great idea. Let's shake on it."

  

Monday, March 24, 2025

#83 / Power Up, II



Political power, as everyone pretty much knows - and as some know from experience - is generally exercised from the top down. But where does political power come from in the first place?

In a blog posting titled, "Power Up," which I published on January 27, 2025, I cited to Hannah Arendt's discussion of the origin of power: 

Power comes into being only if and when men join themselves together for the purpose of action, and it will disappear when, for whatever reason, they disperse and desert one another.

In other words, while power is exercised from the "top down," power is generated "from the bottom up." 

That means that we, ordinary people, are the source of the power which can be - and so often is - turned against us. 


But let's note, carefully, what Hannah Arendt says, too. Power is generated (from the bottom up) when, and only when, we "join ourselves together." That means, as I am fond of repeating, that we will only have "self-government" if and when we get engaged in government and politics ourselves.




 

Sunday, March 23, 2025

#82 / Boredom (Watch Out; It's A Sin!)



That is Frederick Buechner, pictured above. I have mentioned him before - for instance in a blog posting from 2023 that reported on one of his books, A Room Called Remember. I really loved that book, which I obtained from a "Little Free Library," found as I was walking around the city. Those who live in my hometown of Santa Cruz, California, are fortunate. There are a lot of those Little Free Libraries in Santa Cruz, and they seem to be located almost everywhere.

To prove that point, let me report that I also found another one of Beuchner's books in a Little Free Library - in this case a different Little Free Library. The name of the second Beuchner book I found is Listening To Your Life, and let me recommend it! The book presents itself as "Daily Meditations," with one entry per day, the entries beginning on January 1st, and then ending on the 31st of December. Impatient reader that I am, I just picked up the book and read it straight on through. Let me recommend that book, again, and suggest that you read it any way you want to! 

As an example of what you'll find, here is Beuchner on boredom (that's an entry marked for May 31st):

ACEDIA, BOREDOM, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It deserves the honor.

You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it, or choose not to. You can yawn your way through Don Giovanni or a trip to the Grand Canyon or an afternoon with your dearest friend or a sunset. There are doubtless those who nodded off at the coronation of Napoleon or the trial of Joan of Arc or when Shakespeare appeared at the Globe in Hamlet or Lincoln delivered himself of a few remarks at Gettysburg. The odds are that the Sermon on the Mount had more than a few of the congregation twitchy and glassy-eyed. 

To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about.

To be bored is a way of making the least of things you often have a sneaking suspicion you need the most.

To be bored to death is a form of suicide.


My blog is mainly a commentary on "politics." The title of the blog, "We Live In A Political World,"  reveals this preoccupation. I strongly urge you not to think of politics as "boring," yet I think many of us might be doing that, and quite probably as a kind of self-defense measure. In other words, to go just a step beyond what Beuchner says, we might try to avoid "politics," by finding it "boring," as a way to insulate ourselves from a responsibility that we may feel inadequate to discharge. This is a more specific version of Beuchner's observation that "You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about."

Well, we ARE worth getting excited about, where politics is concerned. At least according to the system we have set up, and with which we have been living with for almost 250 years, we are "self-governing," the "rulers," not the ruled. If we think of ourselves as "bored" by politics, that may well be a defense mechanism. Do we really want to be responsible and accountable for the business of government?

Well, I think we had better be! I want to urge you to examine your own involvement in politics. If you are not deeply and personally engaged in "politics," which is the beginning point for self-government, you are letting someone else rule over you. 

Anyone too "bored" to get involved in politics is actually committing a kind of political "suicide." 

Think about it! 

 
Image Credit:

Saturday, March 22, 2025

#81 / Beyond Description



Writing in Consortium News, Chris Hedges comments on what Israel has done, and is doing, and what he believes Israel will continue to do in Gaza and the West Bank. Hedges tells us that what is happening is "genocide," and that genocide is the "new normal." The image above, which headed up Hedges' column, makes clear how truly horrible are the activities he describes. Here is Hedges' two line introduction to his article:

This will be a Hobbesian world where nations that have the most advanced industrial weapons make the rules. Those who are poor and vulnerable will kneel in subjugation.

The title of my blog posting today ("Beyond Description"), has a dual purpose. First, and most obviously, the title  was prompted by the most common understanding of the phrase. As the Cambridge Dictionary puts it, the phrase "beyond description" means "something that you cannot describe accurately because of its great size, quality, or level." In the case of the actions and activities being discussed by Hedges, the horror of what he describes is what merits the use of this phrase. What is being discussed is "beyond description" in that the past, present, and postulated future activities Hedges is writing about (activities in which the United States is deeply involved) are too horrible to contemplate.

The main reason that I have titled my blog posting, "Beyond Description," however, is different. It is my purpose, in my comment, here, to point out that "description" is Hedges' main work in his column, and that what he says in the column, by way of his "description" of the future. is a betrayal of the reader. 

What Hedges is doing is to "describe" an existing reality (obviously, as he sees it), but more importantly - and erroneously - Hedges is "describing" not only what  exists now, but what he states "will be." Hedges is saying that the continuing and future actions of Israel and its supporters (with the United States in the forefront) "will" create a "Hobbesian" world of horror, and that the poor and vulnerable "will" be subjugated.

If you take writing seriously, it is important to be aware of - and to avoid - the "is fallacy." It is simply not true that what "is," in the present, is the same thing that "will be" in the future. Maybe that will be true. Or maybe not. Still, many do as Hedges does, and extrapolate the description of a current reality as if what exists now - what "is," now - is what must and will inevitably continue to exist in the future. The use of language in this way is actually important, because when one says what "will be," whether something "good" or something "horrible" is being described, a reader is implicitly being told that there is nothing, really, that the reader can do about it, or needs to do about it. Our human freedom and "agency" is denigrated and despised when the future (always unknown and susceptible to change) is "described," as if that description of the future were the description of reality itself. 

Unless you are fine with conceding your own powerlessness, you - and all of us - need to get "beyond description" as we look forward into the future. The future can never properly be described as though it actually "exists." It doesn't. Not yet!

The future depends on what we do now. 

Let's not forget that!