#17 / Tectonic?

 

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Pictured above is Allen C. Guelzo, an historian who specializes in the history of 19th-Century America. Guelzo serves as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. 

As outlined in a "Weekend Interview" in The Wall Street Journal, Guelzo has come to believe that our the recent, 2024 presidential election will prove to be "tectonic."

[Guelzo] characterizes only three past elections as tectonic—1800, when Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams and the Federalist Party quickly withered; 1860, when Lincoln’s victory established the Republicans as a major party that would dominate presidential politics for seven decades; and 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt trounced Herbert Hoover and cemented the modern Democratic coalition.

Guelzo is putting Donald Trump into some rather prestigious company - and even if Guelzo is right about the 2024 election turning out to be "tectonic," I don't think it's true that Mr. Trump shares many (if any) of the personal qualities for which Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Roosevelt are rightly remembered and esteemed.

For Guelzo, a "tectonic" election is one one that marks a permanent structural change in the American electorate and political parties. Most of the column in The Journal speculates on why this may be a fitting description of the 2024 election. Let me confess, I am not persuaded, but I do want you to hear Guelzo's pitch: 

The proposition that this is a tectonic election, [Guelzo] stresses, is only a hypothesis, and it can’t even begin to be tested for years. 

The test consists of two parts: “First of all, there have to be repeated losses,” in this case for the Democrats. That rules out the elections of 2004, 2008, 2016 and 2020, all of which the losing party soon followed with comebacks in Congress and then the White House. Second, the victor’s party must be “involved in some really large-scale event, which it succeeds in handling. Maybe not elegantly, maybe not comprehensively, but at least gives the impression of having succeeded.” 

Hence the need for results. Mr. Guelzo thinks Mr. Trump will attempt to deliver them in three broad areas. “One is a redirection of the entire economy.” He sees the debate over immigration through this lens: “That’s why the whole business over H-1B visas has blown up the way it has, because we’re not really talking about immigration. We’re talking about the economy and who has access to success and growth in the economy.” 

The second is “a major reordering of foreign policy.” Mr. Guelzo sees Mr. Trump as following in the footsteps of Robert Taft, who held what is now JD Vance’s Ohio Senate seat from 1939 until his death in 1953. “Taft was one of the last major American politicians who really thought that, like [John] Quincy Adams said, going in search of monsters was a big mistake.” Mr. Guelzo reckons that Mr. Trump is “very serious about disengagement” and “wants to push that clock on foreign policy way, way back, even to before the assumptions and the consensus of the Cold War.” 

That will likely mean “an end of the war in Ukraine with some kind of negotiated settlement,” Mr. Guelzo says—but not a surrender to Vladimir Putin. He will claim victory, but “everybody knows the Russians failed militarily.” Mr. Guelzo thinks that failure will curb the imperial appetite of the Russian dictator, whom he assigns a Trump-style nickname: “I have no respect whatsoever for little Mr. Weasel Face. In my mind, he is almost beneath contempt. But I think that so many embarrassing reverses have occurred on his watch, I don’t think he’s going to be eager to invite that kind of thing happening again anytime soon.” 

Mr. Trump’s third major ambition is the one he has assigned to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency. Mr. Guelzo suggests that’s a bit of a misnomer: “DOGE is not so much about the budget. It’s about disempowering the bureaucracy that is fed by the budget, and that’s also a clock-turner.” It would “turn things back to the days of Woodrow Wilson.” 

That won’t be easy, Mr. Guelzo says, “because so much of the modern economy is wrapped up with the federal bureaucracy.” Agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration and the Food and Drug Administration serve vital functions, even if their performance is lacking. “If this disempowerment is not very fine-tuned, it’s going to backfire. And the backfire could undo everything that Trump would like to have done in terms of the election having a tectonic result.”

It could be that I am hung up on the "great man theory of history," believing that "fundamental," or "tectonic" changes almost always reflect "the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities, or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect."

I am quoting Wikipedia, there, and I note that Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt all fit that description. Trump, emphatically, does not. If anyone expects Mr. Trump to be able to achieve the kind of changes that Guelzo outlines in the text quoted above, I think it is almost certain that such expectations will be unrealized. Of course, as Guelzo does note, only time will tell.

Setting aside the "Great Man" theory of change, I do think there is a chance that the 2024 election might turn out to be "tectonic." If that does happen, though, I don't think it will be because president Trump will accomplish those three objectives that Guelzo postulates are needed. Instead, I think it just might be true that this past election, and its aftermath (which "aftermath" will begin in just a few more days), will stimulate ordinary people to return to an active and personal engagement in politics. 

If that were to happen, that would be a genuine "tectonic" change, because a lot of us have been standing around since the late 1960's, watching what others are doing - those official, designated drivers of change - and they haven't been doing a good job. We're in peril, as I hope my blog posting yesterday made clear.  

It is time for us to take back the wheel, and start steering ourselves out of the skid that is going to take us into oblivion if we don't rise to the occasion. And... we know that's true, don't we? Again, check those pictures featured at the end of my blog posting yesterday, if you have any doubt. 

It's time to take back control over our own politics, and if we do, that would be "tectonic," indeed!

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#16 / Consider The Alternatives

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Angela Merkel, who is pictured above, served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021, the only woman ever to have held that office. Merkel has recently written a book about her years of service, and as you can see from the picture, which shows the book sitting on a table in front of her, Merkel's book is a not a small one. A book review in The Wall Street Journal characterizes the book as "a 736-page memoir to secure her crumbling legacy." 

That Merkel's legacy is "crumbling," and deservedly so, is the main theme of The Journal's review. The review was written by Bojan Pancevski, and is unrelenting in its message that Merkel's policies have had bad consequences for the nation. The title of Pancevski's review is as follows: "Angela Merkel Wants Her Memoir to Save Her Legacy. It’s Backfiring."

I am not personally familiar with very many of the things that Merkel did while in office, but I am always suspicious of the political tilt of any statement I read in The Wall Street Journal. Maybe Merkel's time as Chancellor wasn't as bad as this review in The Journal indicates. I don't really know. However, presuming that one of the statements in Pancevski's review is accurate, I do question Merkel's good judgment on what the review presents as a fundamental feature of how Merkel ran Germany: 

The former physicist’s sober and consensual approach to politics was a hallmark of her long years in office. As Germany’s first female chancellor, Merkel seemed free of the vanity of alpha-male politicians. But in her memoir and the interviews surrounding it, she has shown a different, more defensive side, doubling down on even her most divisive decisions and swatting away criticism. It does not, she told CNN, “make a whole lot of sense” to question her judgments with the benefit of hindsight: “We always have to look at matters under the conditions we were in then.” 

In that context, Merkel insists in the book, her policies had “no alternative”—a phrase she often used to justify them while in office. This response was the inspiration for the name of a once-tiny anti-Merkel party, Alternative for Germany, whose aggressively nationalist and anti-immigrant views have now helped it become Germany’s second-largest political force (emphasis added).

The title of Merkel's book is Freedom, which is certainly ironic if the book, in fact, insists that there was "no alternative" to everything she did as Chancellor. It is disturbing that a neo-Nazi political party, "Alternative for Germany," has benefitted from the public's rejection of Merkel's policies - and perhaps more accurately, of a repudiation of what is claimed to be Merkel's former and continuing assertions that there was "no alternative" to the policies she advocated, and carried out. 

Claims by any government official that there is "no alternative" to any policy proposal is simply to elevate power against possibility. There is always an "alternative." A fundamental feature of our human life is our freedom to act. This is the great treasure that is found within the political realm, our opportunity, always, to do something unexpected and new, something never even thought about before. 

Anyone who regularly reads my blog postings knows that this truth about our human situation - which is described, and advanced, and insisted upon by political theorist Hannah Arendt - is what I believe is the most important thing to understand about politics and government. American government, as created by the United States Constitution, has been designed to maximize the possibility of "alternatives," promoting, as it does, dissent, debate, and compromise. 

If we believe in what we have professed, we must, in other words, always "consider the alternatives." 

And.... we had better get right to the job of doing that, too, because it is increasingly obvious that if we continue to pursue the policies of the past, with respect to war, global warming, and income inequality, to name three critical issues, the likely result will be the end of human civilization, or (worst case) the end of all human life, or the end of all life on this planet.

Do you think I might be overstating things? Well, consider these alternatives: 

Hydrogen Bomb Test

Pacific Pallisades / Malibu Fire

Newark Riots, 1967

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(1) - https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/angela-merkel-wants-her-memoir-to-save-her-legacy-its-backfiring-509b30c5

(2) - https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/all-you-need-to-know-about-a-hydrogen-bomb-302352-2016-01-06

(3) - https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/experts-warn-total-cost-damage-902455

(4) - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/nyregion/newark-riots-50-years.html

#15 / Pen Pals And Exchange Students

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Back in mid-December, The Wall Street Journal ran a column by Diane Cole that commented on the book that is pictured above, Dear Unknown Friend. 

"Writing Across The Divide" was the title of Cole's book review. Here is a brief excerpt from that review: 

As Alexis Peri tells us in her surprising and perceptive study “Dear Unknown Friend,” approximately 750 American and Soviet women had engaged in [ongoing exchanges] from 1943 until well into the 1950s—not in person, but as pen pals. Ms. Peri, a professor of history at Boston University, discovered thousands of letters belonging to these correspondents while researching her previous book, “The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad,” at the Russian state archives. 

The correspondence project, jointly sponsored by the U. S. State Department and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was prompted during World War II by the unanticipated alliance forged between the two countries for the purpose of defeating Hitler. Both countries wanted to rally support and empathy for their former foe turned unlikely bedfellow. And if these new friendships should encourage converts to cross the ideological divide? So much the better for the winning side....

Ms. Peri makes a compelling case that the shared insights did reap rewards large and small—“they cracked open new books, tuned in to new radio programs, and nosed through new periodicals,” the author writes—as women of both countries exchanged encouragement and advice on managing and balancing work and motherhood, long before the term “juggling” became common. Even years after these exchanges ended, Ms. Peri suggests, the former correspondents served in memory as courageous examples for each other as they pursued love and work amid the uncertainties of the postwar world, keeping alive the fact of our shared humanity.

I think it would be great for the United States government, and cities and counties, and states, and elementary schools and high schools, and colleges and universities, to institute, on a very much larger scale, an ongoing, permanent program, encouraging and sustaining the formation of international "pen pal" relationships. 

In fact, let me recommend a book I recently read, I Will Always Write Back, by Martin Ganda and Caitlin Alifirenka. This story, about an international pen pal relationship that changed many lives, was written with Liz Welch, and is truly inspiring. It is definitely worth reading.

I am thinking, though - thinking about that Cold War "pen pal" program, and how we might expand that - that it might be worthwhile to "up the ante," substantially, and to institute a really, really large national and international student exchange program, supported by our very own tax dollars. There is a lot of money in the so-called "defense" budget, and this would be a program that would be dealing with the problems of achieving and sustaining global peace.

If there is one thing that is clear to me (and to you, too, I hope), it is that we all live in one world, and that we are going to need to be able to collaborate and cooperate if we are going to have any chance of meeting the global warming challenge that is our generational assignment (no matter what "generation" you might identify with). We do, as well, have the need to eliminate the threat that nuclear war poses to everyone of us. 

Below is a video link to a talk by Noam Chomsky, a talk most somber and serious. If you'll take the time to listen to it, I bet you will agree that he is right about what he says.

If Chomsky is right, all of us alive today - in every part of the world - must find ways to "change our way of thinking," and that means, among other things, that we will need to build a system of truly global cooperation. Why shouldn't the United States offer to help make that a possibility by paying for every young person (during their high school and college years - whether the young person is in college or not) to have a nine month foreign exchange visit in some other country? We, U.S. taxpayers, would bear the costs for all the students who would participate, from our country and from all the other countries involved. 

We could start small, but we need to think big. We do live in one world. Let's start recognizing that reality, and lets start finding ways to establish some worldwide connections to support the worldwide cooperation that we must accomplish.

Here's Chomsky, talking about the other alternative: 

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https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674987586

#14 / Science As A Social Enterprise

 

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Have you ever heard of Émilie du Châtelet? She is pictured above. I had never heard of her until I read a book review in the November 4, 2024 edition of The New Yorker. Clicking here may land you there, but I make no promises about The New Yorker's possible paywall protection plan! I hope, if you are a  non-subscriber, you can slip by any paywall that may exist to read about Émilie du Châtelet.

Adam Gopnik wrote the book review I am talking about. It is titled, in the hard copy version, "A Piece Of Her Mind." Online, Gopnik's review is given this headline: "Does the Enlightenment’s Great Female Intellect Need Rescuing?" As it turns out, du Châtelet is perhaps known best for having been Voltaire's lover (while du Châtelet was married to someone else, who apparently knew all about her affair with Voltaire, and raised no terminating objection). 

The recognition to which du Châtelet is most entitled, however, is less as Voltaire's lover, than as a commanding intellect - a person we would now call a "physicist." 

Among other things, du Châtelet's work in physics was informed by her perception that science is a "social enterprise." In other words, the "great man" theory of scientific progress (or even the "great person" theory, considering the fact that du Châtelet was a woman) has no real claim to authority. She advances the idea that science is a "peculiar kind of social practice." It is not "individualistic." It is, to repeat, a "social enterprise."

Our "World," the life we have built, often called, by way of shortcut, "Human  Civilization," is not the product of a bunch of individual insights and actions, added up. 

We are "in this together." That is true in the realm of "Politics." It is true, even, in the sphere of pure science. 

And thank you for pointing this out, Émilie du Châtelet!

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#13 / Artificial Sweetener

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On November 9, 2024, The New York Times published a "Letter To The Editor" from Julia Lee. You can read her letter, below. Lee was reacting to an article that documented how one teenager's involvement with an "artificial" companion took him to suicide. 

"Artificial" relationships are, by definition, not "real." Online "sweeties" are fake!

Can we find a way to renew our commitment to the "real world"?

We need to do that!

I keep putting it this way, "Find Some Friends"! 

Real ones, that is. Artificial sweeteners are bad for our health!

oooOOOooo

To the Editor:

Kevin Roose highlights the danger of A.I. companions worsening isolation by replacing human relationships with artificial ones. I agree that while these apps may offer entertainment and support, they also risk deepening loneliness by diminishing one’s ability to engage in real social interactions.

As a high school student, I have friends who rely on Character.AI to help them cope with loneliness. The tragic case of Sewell Setzer III shows how these platforms can draw teens away from real-life connections and proper mental health resources.

To better understand the risks, I visited the website Sewell had been associated with, only to find that on the topic of mental health, I saw no warnings or links to professional assistance.

Alarmingly, the A.I. is presented as an expert and even claims to be human, deceiving users with humanlike traits such as sarcasm and humor. We need stricter safety measures to prevent harm, especially to younger users.

Julia Lee

Fairfax, Va.

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#12 / Quaker Evangelism

  

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I attend the Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends - generally called "Quakers." Click that link to see what Wikipedia can tell you about the Quakers. Or, check out information available through Pendle Hill. Or, read this earlier blog posting. If you want to, you can even consult the website maintained by the local Quaker Meeting. 

 

I took the picture at the top of this blog posting a couple of months back, in the parking lot of the Santa Cruz Quaker Meetinghouse, which is pictured above. For what it's worth, I agree with the advisory featured in that passenger-side car window!

Being a Quaker is not exactly "easy." I think that statement is pretty accurate! 

But being a Quaker is quite worthwhile! That's my evaluation. Send me an email if you have any questions, or check out the details on the Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting, which meets at that Quaker Meetinghouse.

As I have said before, "You're invited!"

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(1) Gary A Patton, personal photo

(2) - https://www.gapatton.net/2024/02/35-where-two-or-three-gather.html

#11 / Let's Not Pretend

   

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Guy R. McPherson writes a Substack blog with this title: "Nature Bats Last." I have mentioned McPherson before. One of the last times I think I mentioned him, on October 23, 2024, I called him "Glum."

McPherson's "glum" just keeps on coming! In a blog posting dated October 28, 2024, McPherson wrote that "Earth’s temperature could increase by 14 C, otherwise expressed as 25 degrees Fahrenheit." This temperature increase, if it were to occur, would far exceed the official estimates currently being accepted, which are in the 6-8 degree range. Click here for a link to the article in SciTechDaily that McPherson is referencing.

As is consistent with McPherson's commitment to "glum," he pretty much says that all humans would die if these predictions come true. In fact, McPherson thinks we will all be extinct long before Earth warms up as much as the article in SciTechDaily is predicting. 

Jonathan Franzen, a local Santa Cruz resident, and an acclaimed author, does not, at least typically, glory in "glum." However, Franzen's 2019 article in The New Yorker has a message that doesn't seem all that different from McPherson's. Franzen asks, "What If We Stopped Pretending?" As Franzen's subhead puts it: "The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it."

I wrote about Franzen's article shortly after it came out. It does, by the way, mention Santa Cruz, and specifically the Homeless Garden Project. It's worth reading. While Franzen employs the word "apocalypse," he has a positive way of talking about it, which is more or less the opposite of "glum": 

There may come a time, sooner than any of us likes to think, when the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes. At that point, traditional local farming and strong communities will no longer just be liberal buzzwords. Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it. A project like the Homeless Garden offers me the hope that the future, while undoubtedly worse than the present, might also, in some ways, be better. Most of all, though, it gives me hope for today (emphasis added).

I am with Franzen! Patient and hopeful work is in order, not "pretending" that we don't have a problem, and that we don't have to face more and more of what are truly life-changing challenges. Let's not pretend, but let us not permit ourselves to state, as if it were an inevitable and inescapable truth, that there is nothing for us in the future but the glum certainty that there is no hope for all the glories of this Earth, and the human world we have made within it. 

Let's not "pretend," but never say - or tell ourselves - that hope is a sham and that our efforts to persevere and prevail are not worth attempting. This thought seems particularly pertinent in view of what has happened, and is still happening in Los Angeles.  When we confront "life-changing challenges," that means that we are going to have to change our lives. Franzen says that those changes can result in us being "better off" than before. 

Can you buy that?

I know I can.

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https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending

#10 / Time Recaptured

 

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Aftter I finished reading The New York Times' article on Sedona, Arizona - which I encountered on October 26th of last year - I opened up the Saturday/Sunday, October 26-27, 2024, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The Journal had another article I immediately recognized should be featured in my blog. The article was titled, "Time Recaptured" in the hard copy version of the paper. When you click that link, you will find that the online title is different. 

The article I am talking about was featured in The Journal's "Books" section, which highlighted the picture reproduced above. That picture is very much like an image that I used in my "Trucker Time" blog posting published in October 2020. The picture from that 2020 blog posting (reproduced below) was also captured from an article in the "Books" section of The Wall Street Journal:

 

"Time" is always a timely topic!

The Journal's most recent article - the one I read on October 26th of last year - was a review of a book by Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World. Herring's book is, apparently, "the first biography of Henri Bergson in English." At least, that is what Herring says. 

Frankly, I found that claim rather surprising. Bergson is a Nobel Prize Laureate, and is well-known in the English-speaking world, including being known by me. I checked, and my memory had not betrayed me. As I had correctly remembered, I have a well-underlined paperback version of Bergson's Time And Free Will on my own, personal bookshelves. That paperback edition of the book was published in 1960, and I read the book right around then. Time and Free Will was originally published in 1889 (in French). So, I really am surprised to hear that no one has done an English language biography of Henri Bergson after all these years. 

I have not double-checked Herring's claim, but if no one has done an English language biography of Bergson until now (sixty plus years from when I read Time And Free Will in English and over 130 years from the date it was first published in French), I certainly do think it's high time!

Speaking of "Time," which was a major focus for Bergson, it was Bergson's contention that our usual relationship to time is fundamentally flawed. Time, in fact, is "immeasurable unless ... you stop it in its tracks," as Herring explains in her book:

When we “clock” time, we cut it into segments, then place these next to each other ... “like interchangeable beads on a string.” In doing so, we make time into a three-dimensional object. We make time into space.

But time is rarely experienced in this way: A minute can seem like hours; a day can feel like a few short minutes. When we live in time, we observe no border between one moment and the next. Bergson called the human experience of time durée—time lived as continuous flow.

If you think that our understanding of "Time" is consequential - that it is "important" - then I hope you will consider rereading my 2020 blog posting on "Trucker Time." In that blog posting, I suggest that George Fox, the first Quaker, had the best statement on "Time."

Ye have no time but this present time, therefore prize your time, for your soul’s sake.

Simply put, we live in the "NOW." 

Now is when we are alive (not yesterday, or some other time in the past, and not tomorrow, or some time in the future).

NOW! 

Now is when we act (or fail to act). Now is when we can do something "new," something never even thought about before.

NOW is when we can change the world - a world that must be changed!

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(2) - https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-clock-mirage-review-the-pulse-of-time-11595284205

#9 / Facing Up To The Real World

  

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Anyone who reads my blog postings on a regular basis will know that I continually disparage much  of what we now call, "Tech." It is my belief that we inhabit a "real world," in which real dogs can bite, real sidewalks can trip one up, and real kisses are capable of transporting those involved into something that is "beyond" the "real world," but still of it. 

Lately, human beings seem to be spending a lot of time and money figuring out ways to escape from this "real world." Increasingly, we rely on "artificial" intelligence (instead of our own "real" intelligence), and we live "online," as opposed to inhabiting the common world that is defiantly palpable, and tangible, as opposed to "virtual." 

"Virtual Reality," I submit, is not "reality" at all. If you click the link I just provided, you will see what Wikipedia has to say about virtual reality, by way of a definition. I was pleased to discover that our omnibus, online encyclopedia says that "virtual reality" is a "simulated experience." I pretty much agree with that, and I hope you'll agree with me that "simulated" is another word for "fake." A "simulated" one hundred dollar bill is actually "counterfeit." 

At any rate, for those who want a congenial and positive view of virtual reality, let me refer you to a fairly recent article in The Wall Street Journal. The article, one of Joanna Stern's "Personal Technology" columns, is titled, "The Smart Glasses That Won Me Over." The ones she likes are pictured on the left, above. There seem to be lots of options! 

So-called "smart glasses" are glasses that allow you to view the "real world," but to add in other items from an "online" reality. Once you put on these glassss, Stern reports, "you look at your phone a lot less." No need to look at your phone; a lot of what you get from your phone will show up in your eyeglasses. These "Smart" eye glasses also let you take pictures of whatever it is you're seeing. No need to have to pull out that camera phone you're using now. This feature of "smart glasses" may be a mixed blessing, I think, since it will help make sure that private moments and mistakes will be documented for the world to see!

I guess I am pretty easily triggered by efforts to help us all escape from the physical reality that we have always accepted as the "real world." It's the "real world" that will kill us or save us, after all, and there is definitely a question which way we're headed. 

If you are really smart, I think, you'll drop any efforts you may have been making to "enhance" or "augment" the realities that are out there. My alternative proposal: Let's get to work dealing with our very "real" problems and possibilities!

PS: That means REAL political action!

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https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/meta-orion-smart-glasses-tested-2eec7bef

#8 / Service To The Empire?

   

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Chris Hedges is an American journalist, author, and commentator. He is also a Presbyterian minister. Hedges writes, quite often, for Consortium News. In an article posted on the Consortium News' website, on January 3, 2025, Hedges has warned us, as follows: "Don't Deify Jimmy Carter." Carter's distorted image, above, headed up Hedges' commentary, which can be summarized in the following excerpt from what Hedges has written: 

Jimmy Carter, out of office, had the courage to call out the “abominable oppression and persecution” and “strict segregation” of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. 

He dedicated himself to monitoring elections, including his controversial defense of the 2006 election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and championed human rights around the globe. 

He lambasted the American political process as an “oligarchy” in which “unlimited political bribery” created “a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors.” 

But Carter’s years as an ex-president should not mask his dogged service to the empire, penchant for fomenting disastrous proxy wars, betrayal of the Palestinians, embrace of punishing neoliberal policies and his subservience to big business when he was in office (emphasis added).

I have a number of friends who, like Hedges, call the United States government, "The Empire." Most recently, my friends who use this term have been linking their use of it to the United States' assistance to Israel, as Israel's actions in Gaza become ever more difficult to support. 

I feel certain that I am not the only one who hears this language - calling the United States government "The Empire" - as an intentional reference to Star Wars. In the movie, and in all of its derivatives, "The Empire" is described as follows (calling upon what Wikipedia says): "The Empire is a fictional autocracy ... an oppressive dictatorship with a complicated bureaucracy ... [which] seeks the rule and social control of every planet and civilization within the galaxy, based on anthropocentrism, nationalisation, state terrorism, power projection, and threat of lethal force."

"The Empire," in other words, as the Star Wars franchise employs the term, is a shorthand way to call out a government that represents total and absolute evil. 

Is such a characterization of the United States' government really "fair"? And is it really "fair" for Hedges to name Carter as a lackey to "The Empire," despite all the good thing that Hedges admits that Carter has done?

My own sense is that while the United States government has made many mistakes, of both omission and commission, including some things it has done to support Israel in its actions in Gaza, some of which are quite probably violations of international law, and while the United States government has done other horrible things, it is probably not "fair" to equate the United States government to a government (the fictional "Empire") that can properly be called "absolutely evil." I also think that it is not "fair" to identify Jimmy Carter as a "dogged servant" to a government that can properly be thought of as absolutely evil. 

However, my objection to equating the United States government to "The Empire" as a government that is absolutely evil (and to suggesting that former President Carter was just a lackey for such a government) is not, in fact, an objection based on what I think of as an "unfair" equivalency. 

Here is why I object to using "The Empire" as a way to describe the United States' government (even admitting that our government has done many terrible things in the past, and in the present, and is likely to do even more in the future). Designating our own government as "The Empire" implicitly suggests that our government approaches us from outside. Now, in the Star Wars' movie and literature, "The Empire" IS an external force, and a force of "absolute evil." But OUR government is NOT an "external" force. WE are the government. 

Characterizing our own government as "The Empire" is a way to let ourselves off the hook. If the United States, or any of its representatives, are engaged in evil actions, our role is not simply to observe and decry them. When we assert that we have a system of democratic self-government that means that when evil is being done by the United States, that can't be attibuted to some "external" entity. We are on the hook for what our government does. 

When we name "The Empire" as the problem (meaning our own government), we impliedly excuse ourselves from complicity and responsibility. 

How about we take responsibility, instead? That means open political action in opposition to evil actions, not denunciations of our government as though it can properly be considered as some outside force. 

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#7 / The Great Tune-Out

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Susan B. Glasser, writing in The New Yorker, has provided readers with a "2024 In Review" piece that she titled, "The Weird New Normal of Donald Trump in 2024." Here is how Glasser frames her effort: 

Every year since 2018, I have written a version of this year-end Letter from Washington. What’s striking reading back through them now, on the eve of Trump’s return to the White House, is not so much his continued dominance of our politics as it is the consistency of how he has accomplished it—the manic governing by social-media pronouncement, the bizarro news cycles, and the normalizing of what would have previously been considered the politically un-normalizable. Even his targets are remarkably similar year in and year out—the Radical Left Lunatics, windmills, Justin Trudeau. In Trump’s 2023 Christmas social-media post, he wished the nation a happy holiday while praying that his enemies “ROT IN HELL.” What we have managed to forget about Trump in these past few years would fill entire books about other Presidents. This year-end exercise has been a small effort in trying to remember (emphasis added).

As Glasser pursues her exercise in "trying to remember," she makes what I think is a notable point: 

A new Associated Press / norc poll, released Thursday, says sixty-five per cent of American adults now feel the need to limit their consumption of news about politics and the government—the Great Tune-Out is real.

In other words, Glasser is telling us, she is not the only one who has "managed to forget" about Trump - and Glasser's characterization suggests that it actually takes some considerable effort to do that. Unlike Glasser, however, who is, after all, paid both to remember and to comment, ordinary Americans apparently would rather forget. At least, they don't want to be reminded. 

The "Great Tune-Out" that Glasser has brought to our attention may help many of us feel better. It does seem, if Glasser's statistics are right, that people may be "tuning out" because it's so painful to accept the fact that Donald J. Trump is now going to be, once again, our national "representative." That "Tune-Out" seems to mean, the way I'm interpreting it, that most of us would like to forget about how our next president will be "representing" us to the world at large. Sixty-five percent of us, apparently, don't want to be reminded that we have elected a self-promoting, pontificating, blowhard, who has no significant respect for other nations, or the law.

If I am interpreting those poll results correctly, I can well understand where they come from. Trump's conduct is often so cringeworthy that it's embarassing to have to face the fact that he is now our number one national spokesperson. Take over Greenland? Comandeer the Panama Canal? Annex Canada? Oh, sure! I would rather not hear about it!

My own thought, however, is that we had darn well better keep paying attention, painful though it may be. Trump works for the nation - for all of us - not vice versa (which is one of the things that Trump doesn't seem to understand). To make self-government work, we need to keep in mind that we are the "governors," not the "governed." In other words, we are "in charge." 

If we don't pay attention to what our "representatives" are doing in our name (because it's too painful to contemplate, or for any other reason), we can pretty quickly end up finding that our interests will be sacrificed and forgotten. We need to pay attention, in other words, to what our "representatives" are doing in our names. If we don't, this nation and the world at large will likely soon find themselves in a world of hurt!

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#6 / An Evolving Retail Landscape

      

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The January 4, 2025, edition of The Santa Cruz Sentinel, my hometown newspaper, ran an article on Page 4 that announced the close of the O'Neill Surf Shop on Pacific Avenue. Pacific Avenue is the city's main downtown shopping street. The article explained the shop's shutdown as an effort to "consolidate operations in an evolving retail landscape."

In case others have not noticed this "evolving retail landscape," it is largely characterized by an increasing number of closed-down storefronts throughout our community. These, I believe, reflect one thing, more than anything else. We are not in a time of general economic "downturn." Almost the opposite - at least that is what a number of economists seem to be saying. We are, however, in a time in which we seem to be abandoning "real world" retail for "online" retail at a prodigious pace. I keep seeing those delivery trucks in every street, at every hour of the day and night. 

As in many other aspects of our life, we seem to have been persuaded that our lives are better lived when lived "online."

I don't think that's true. How about you?

If you don't think that's true, either, then start considering how you can detach yourself from your phone, stop ordering your dinners from Doordash, and figure out how to obtain the books, and the hardware, and the household items you need from somewhere other than the Amazon store. That would be a beginning, anyway. The more we patronize and purchase from "the internet," the more "real world" storefronts close. 

Are we ready, once again, to go back to living in that physical, "real world"? Truly, I hope so!

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#5 / Body And Soul

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You don't "have" a soul. You "are" a soul. You "have" a body!

Recently, I came across the quotation I have just provided, which struck me with its importance, and now I can't remember where I got that. Such forgetfulness is not, I confess, an uncommon experience for me, nowadays. I remember things, all the time, but I don't remember where I heard them, or saw them, or found out about them. That can be frustrating, of course, but I tell myself that as long as I remember the "main thing," the circumstances surrounding my discovery of that "main thing" are of lesser import. 

Just to be clear, though, and despite the picture above, I can tell you that Frank Sinatra was not involved in drawing my attention to the rather significant assertion I have quoted right under his picture. You can, though, click this link if you'd like to hear Frank sing the song. 

As I attempted to track down the origin of the thought that we don't "have" a soul, but that we "are" souls, I found a website discussion that goes out of its way to deny that C.S. Lewis ever said this. Apparently, a claim that C.S. Lewis originated this saying is often made, but the Mere Orthodoxy website ends up tracking down the "you don't have a soul" assertion to some sort of Quaker source:

The British Friend, one of the two main British Quaker periodicals at the end of the 19th century, published a piece in 1892 on excessive mourning at funerals. The author believed that overly strong mourning kept people from remembering their hope in heaven. It is here, finally, where we find the quote attributed to George MacDonald. “Never tell a child,” said George Macdonald, ‘you have a soul. Teach him, you are a soul; you have a body.’ As we learn to think of things always in this order, that the body is but the temporary clothing of the soul, our views of death and the unbefittingness of customary mourning will approximate to those of Friends of earlier generations.”

Since I self-identify as a Quaker, I was rather pleased to learn that the observation about who we really "are" - "souls," not "bodies" - may well have originated with the Quakers. As for the thought itself, I do think it is an important one. It makes sense to me that we should all be trying to figure out who we "are," when we get right down to it, and if we embark upon an effort to do that, we might well conclude that we are best defined as "souls," not "bodies." Specifically, that way of thinking about it certainly helps us deal with that ever-difficult question of "death." 

We do know, even if not yet from personal experience, that "bodies" die. "Souls," though, as we may envision them, might provide us a way to understand that it is entirely possible (as one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs asserts) that "Death Is Not The End." 

Here is my own view: I, personally, think that "materialism" undershoots reality. If you don't believe me, try listening to Jimmy Carter as he ponders "materialism." In my view, there is something more going on in life than can be accounted for by the structured arrangements of atoms, faithful to the laws of physics (and biology). If pure materialism does not explain "life," and does not fully explain and account for our own existence in this world, it is very tempting (to me, at least) to decide that we "are," actually, "spiritual" beings. If I have to pick between "bodies" and "souls," I am going to go with the idea that we "are" souls, and that we "have" bodies, just as that Quaker-originated assertion says. There is a supremely important insight there!

On the other hand, I have never given up propounding what I call my "Two Worlds' Hypothesis." This is the name I have given to my claim that we live in two worlds, simultaneously. Most immediately, we live in a world created by human action. Ultimately, though, I am convinced that we live in a "World That God Created." This "world" is what I most usually call the "World of Nature." All our human efforts - and successes - in forging a reality for ourselves can have come into existence only because of our completely mysterious appearance and existence on Planet Earth. That "World" came first, and we depend upon it, utterly. 

Given my own way of thinking about the world, which is founded upon both an appreciation of the significance of what we, as humans, have done, and can do, along with my understanding that all of our human accomplishments are, in the end, based on the Creation, which is our ultimate "reality," I am now prepared to think that we are both "bodies" and "souls." Trying to assign "primacy" might be a big mistake, given my overarching belief in a "Both/And" reality. For any Christians among those who might be reading this, I think it is worth noting that Christians deeply believe that Jesus was God, appearing in human form, and that Jesus' ressurection from the dead, as he appeared once more in his "body," does seem to go along with the idea that disavowing the "body," to give complete primacy to the "soul," may not be the Biblical way of looking at things.

Frank Sinatra, in other words, may well be on the mark in claiming that what ultimately and really counts is both "Body and Soul." That's what we have to give, the whole package, and that is what love requires. Again, click the link if you'd like to hear Frank Sinatra sing that song (with a full orchestral accompaniment, by the way)!

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