I watched the little kiddies come to my door on Halloween night—in such terribly cute costumes, some of them almost too small to hold up their plastic pumpkins for me to drop candy into—and I do think to myself that the holiday has become a bit pallid.
When I was a kid, Halloween was a night for serious pranks. It was a night for wreaking vengeance on unpleasant or mean neighbors. In my suburban neighborhood, I can’t imagine someone taking a paper bag full of excrement—dog or human—putting it on someone’s porch, lighting it on fire and ringing the doorbell; then standing far back to watch the householder try to stomp out the blaze.
Or, if you really didn’t like the guy, not soaping his windows and screens, but rubbing wax into them. One chap near my house, knowing he had it coming, waited outside with a rifle. The unhappy perpetrators spent the rest of the night cleaning up.
Or the time some friends of mine piled old tires in the midst of a fairly major thoroughfare, poured gasoline over them, lit them—and backed up traffic for blocks.
Halloween was a night to put everything moveable inside, in the garage or down the basement. A faucet left thoughtlessly on the side of the house might invite a driveway full of water or even ice on a cold night.
You didn’t damage cars or structures, but that didn’t keep people from parking wagons and anything that could be hauled up onto a roof way up high. One chap I knew was engaged in some serious mischief when the householder came out and threatened serious injury.
My acquaintance fled. He was pursued. He leapt onto the newly floored basement of a house under construction. As he ran across the floor of the house-to-be, he spotted the hole left for the basement stairs and jumped over it.
His pursuer was not so fortunate. My acquaintance confessed that as he listened to the man howl from down in the cellar he really wanted to go back and help. “But,” he said, “I figured if I did the guy would take a two by four to me. So I just ran on.”
There was nothing in the paper about anyone dead or seriously injured so we both concluded the chap had found a way back out and gone home to lick his wounds, in otherwise decent shape. That was a REAL Halloween adventure.
My dad told me that out in rural Iowa the big thing was to go out and tip over outhouses when he was a boy. On one occasion, as they tipped the toilet over on its door, there came a terrible yell from the fellow now trapped inside. Again, no doubt wisely, they just ran on.
Those were real Halloween adventures. The bright purple plastic balloon in the shape of a huge spider that a neighbor of mine forces air into on his front lawn every night for three or four weeks in October wouldn’t have lasted a few seconds fifty years ago.
Nor would the ballooned witches and hobgoblins and pumpkins. I can hardly imaging hanging strings of orange lights from the shrubbery. What might they have been used to decorate fifty years ago?
Halloween is no doubt safer. You needn’t peer out for fear of what might happen to anything left outside. There are costumed mommies and daddies guarding every clutch of toddler and tykes. It’s really much more genteel.
But it’s also just a shadow of what All Hallows Eve has been for centuries. It probably paints me as an atavistic primitive—Frost’s “Great Stone Savage Armed” for me to admit that there is something about the old Halloween that I miss. When “Trick or Treat” meant just that.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Halloween--The Fine Art of Staying Out of It
My favorite Einstein quote remains, “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits.” I first sensed how true that was on Halloween in 1958 (long before I heard Einstein’s quotation). It began as a normal night, studying in the college library.
The library shut down sometime after ten, and several of us wandered over to the campus Commons for a cup of coffee before going home. As we all sat drinking and ruminating, from somewhere outside came the sound of firecrackers.
Of course we all rushed outside. We stood looking about, seeing nothing because there was nothing to see. About fifty of us were in the drive in front of the Commons. That crucial moment came when, left to its own devices, most crowds will break up and go home.
We were ready. Our coffee was drunk, the popping sounds were obviously a little ado about nothing. Eight o’clock classes come early. Let’s head on out.
This very normal conclusion to the evening was not allowed to happen. At that instant, a police car drove on campus, up the drive, shining its lights on us. Seated on the hood was the Dean of Men. The squad car halted menacing close to us, and the dean stood up on the hood.
With the patrol car came two officers mounted on massive Harley police motorcycles. They swirled in front of the car, turned their rear wheels toward us and began backing into us so that we had to jump to get out of the way. The dean began to harangue us.
Over top of the patrol car motor and the roar of the Harleys he shouted. His tone was angry; the expression on his face matched the threat of the motorcycles. For several minutes he went on in a furious tone about God, motherhood and our duty to both.
The result, not surprisingly was a campus wide riot that lasted most of the night and required every available cop in Grand Rapids, plus a flying squad of state troopers stationed in Lansing to be rushed wherever needed—and the entire administrative staff of the college to quell.
Unlimited, indeed. A simple, single act of sublime stupidity can so often result in the chaos—or violence—that everyone ostensibly wants to prevent. How often can the greater part of genius be the simple ability to sit still and allow things to calm down on their own?
The kids were dumb, yes. Several of them got themselves arrested that night. The college may well have taken further punitive action. But their stupidity doesn’t come close to that of the very foolish dean standing on the hood of a police car.
Interestingly, the president of that college was a former OSS (precursor to the modern CIA) agent who had himself been dropped behind German lines to work with the resistance and to help set up a postwar government in Europe. (The dean was unlikely to have acted without his boss’s knowledge—since the former OSS man ran a very, very tight ship at that school.)
What I have seen happen so often among men of action (and that president was—he raised millions to build an entire new campus) is that the one thing they CANNOT do is sit still. They feel they must DO something—even when the wisest thing is to do nothing.
Could our government in Washington occasionally have the same problem? How much better off might we be if, before sending troops to this country or that, we had sat still for a few months, gathered all the facts, read the tea leaves and taken—or not taken—very deliberate action?
Sometimes in foreign affairs sending a police car (invasion force) with a dean (or top diplomat) standing on the hood causes more problems than it ends. Mao, for example, had the genius to sit still—for ten years in the caves of Yan’an, tending his garden—while his enemies dug themselves a deeper and deeper hole. When he came back out, finally ready, he quickly overwhelmed all of China. McCarthy had it wrong—we didn’t lose China, Mao won it—by sitting still.
Evil as he may have been, he knew something that our foolish dean probably never figured out. And that is something I always think of on Halloween.
The library shut down sometime after ten, and several of us wandered over to the campus Commons for a cup of coffee before going home. As we all sat drinking and ruminating, from somewhere outside came the sound of firecrackers.
Of course we all rushed outside. We stood looking about, seeing nothing because there was nothing to see. About fifty of us were in the drive in front of the Commons. That crucial moment came when, left to its own devices, most crowds will break up and go home.
We were ready. Our coffee was drunk, the popping sounds were obviously a little ado about nothing. Eight o’clock classes come early. Let’s head on out.
This very normal conclusion to the evening was not allowed to happen. At that instant, a police car drove on campus, up the drive, shining its lights on us. Seated on the hood was the Dean of Men. The squad car halted menacing close to us, and the dean stood up on the hood.
With the patrol car came two officers mounted on massive Harley police motorcycles. They swirled in front of the car, turned their rear wheels toward us and began backing into us so that we had to jump to get out of the way. The dean began to harangue us.
Over top of the patrol car motor and the roar of the Harleys he shouted. His tone was angry; the expression on his face matched the threat of the motorcycles. For several minutes he went on in a furious tone about God, motherhood and our duty to both.
The result, not surprisingly was a campus wide riot that lasted most of the night and required every available cop in Grand Rapids, plus a flying squad of state troopers stationed in Lansing to be rushed wherever needed—and the entire administrative staff of the college to quell.
Unlimited, indeed. A simple, single act of sublime stupidity can so often result in the chaos—or violence—that everyone ostensibly wants to prevent. How often can the greater part of genius be the simple ability to sit still and allow things to calm down on their own?
The kids were dumb, yes. Several of them got themselves arrested that night. The college may well have taken further punitive action. But their stupidity doesn’t come close to that of the very foolish dean standing on the hood of a police car.
Interestingly, the president of that college was a former OSS (precursor to the modern CIA) agent who had himself been dropped behind German lines to work with the resistance and to help set up a postwar government in Europe. (The dean was unlikely to have acted without his boss’s knowledge—since the former OSS man ran a very, very tight ship at that school.)
What I have seen happen so often among men of action (and that president was—he raised millions to build an entire new campus) is that the one thing they CANNOT do is sit still. They feel they must DO something—even when the wisest thing is to do nothing.
Could our government in Washington occasionally have the same problem? How much better off might we be if, before sending troops to this country or that, we had sat still for a few months, gathered all the facts, read the tea leaves and taken—or not taken—very deliberate action?
Sometimes in foreign affairs sending a police car (invasion force) with a dean (or top diplomat) standing on the hood causes more problems than it ends. Mao, for example, had the genius to sit still—for ten years in the caves of Yan’an, tending his garden—while his enemies dug themselves a deeper and deeper hole. When he came back out, finally ready, he quickly overwhelmed all of China. McCarthy had it wrong—we didn’t lose China, Mao won it—by sitting still.
Evil as he may have been, he knew something that our foolish dean probably never figured out. And that is something I always think of on Halloween.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
No Child Left Behind--Behind What?
Today reminded me of an old Fritz Kreisler story. The noted violinist was walking through a fish market one day when he passed a counter full of dead mackerels, staring at him through blank eyes with mouths open in a kind of stupefied wonder.
He paused to look at them. “My God,” he suddenly exclaimed, “that reminds me! I’m supposed to be at a concert this afternoon!”
I have often thought of that story while standing in front of a class of college or high school students. I lecture, vainly imagining someone will take a note or two (forgive the immodesty but I have never been accused of being a boring lecturer). One or two pencils twitch. Blank eyes (blank minds?) and an occasional gaping mouth.
When I taught American history as a college adjunct, I tested something each semester. “There are,” I would point out, two Treaties of Paris significant for Americans. I’m going to ask you about them on the next test.” Then I would write on the board:
“Treaty of Paris, 1763, between France and England—France gave Canada to England. Treaty of Paris, 1783, between England and the United States—England gave the US its independence. That’s all you have to know. These WILL be on the test.”
I would usually write it out a second time, refer to it three or four more times, and lecture on each when we got to that period in American history. These will appear on the test, I would keep reminding. Come the test, I’d ask them to tell about the treaties. At least half of every class would draw a complete blank. Astonishing.
I’d tell them to read a chapter and assure them there would be a quiz (“just to keep you honest”). I’d get the same results. As much as half the class would offer no evidence of even having the book open to those pages, let alone reading them. Again, astonishing.
I’m probably not as clever as today’s students—but if an instructor warned me that something was surely going to appear on the mid-term, I’d jolly well get THAT question down pat. Warn me of a quiz, and I would have read the chapter with at least a modicum of attention.
So would most of the people I went to school with back in the Eisenhower era. What on earth has happened? I’ve read some articles suggesting that the problem/cause is all of these electronic marvels kids have today—it leaves them bored with reading and note taking. But … .
It’s the blank eyed disinterest in ANY subject (as a high school substitute I’ve been in classrooms for every subject known to man) that baffles me. I’m talking about kids from middle-class homes who are expecting to move on to college.
Today I had the joy of administering the “Common Assessment” test to several classrooms of high school kids. They were supposed to read a passage (in more advanced classes, two) and write a “compare and contrast essay” on the subject.
They were given questions and suggestions (“use quotes”), almost to the point of being spoon fed. Many were done in minutes, handing in slap dash essays of ten or fifteen lines. I asked one girl why her essay had no quotes. “I didn’t read the instructions,” she replied off-handedly.
I read them to you, I pointed out. “I wasn’t listening.” You and the whole class. These tests come out of the “No Child Left Behind” movement. They are supposed to have some impact on student futures and school funding.
No one seemed to care. I gave a quiz on two chapters in “The Great Gatsby” in one class. Most of the class seemed to leave up to half of the ten questions blank, not even attempting a BS answer. Not caring enough. Heaven help us.
Don’t sweat it, Fritz. If you don’t show up, much of today’s audience probably wouldn’t notice.
He paused to look at them. “My God,” he suddenly exclaimed, “that reminds me! I’m supposed to be at a concert this afternoon!”
I have often thought of that story while standing in front of a class of college or high school students. I lecture, vainly imagining someone will take a note or two (forgive the immodesty but I have never been accused of being a boring lecturer). One or two pencils twitch. Blank eyes (blank minds?) and an occasional gaping mouth.
When I taught American history as a college adjunct, I tested something each semester. “There are,” I would point out, two Treaties of Paris significant for Americans. I’m going to ask you about them on the next test.” Then I would write on the board:
“Treaty of Paris, 1763, between France and England—France gave Canada to England. Treaty of Paris, 1783, between England and the United States—England gave the US its independence. That’s all you have to know. These WILL be on the test.”
I would usually write it out a second time, refer to it three or four more times, and lecture on each when we got to that period in American history. These will appear on the test, I would keep reminding. Come the test, I’d ask them to tell about the treaties. At least half of every class would draw a complete blank. Astonishing.
I’d tell them to read a chapter and assure them there would be a quiz (“just to keep you honest”). I’d get the same results. As much as half the class would offer no evidence of even having the book open to those pages, let alone reading them. Again, astonishing.
I’m probably not as clever as today’s students—but if an instructor warned me that something was surely going to appear on the mid-term, I’d jolly well get THAT question down pat. Warn me of a quiz, and I would have read the chapter with at least a modicum of attention.
So would most of the people I went to school with back in the Eisenhower era. What on earth has happened? I’ve read some articles suggesting that the problem/cause is all of these electronic marvels kids have today—it leaves them bored with reading and note taking. But … .
It’s the blank eyed disinterest in ANY subject (as a high school substitute I’ve been in classrooms for every subject known to man) that baffles me. I’m talking about kids from middle-class homes who are expecting to move on to college.
Today I had the joy of administering the “Common Assessment” test to several classrooms of high school kids. They were supposed to read a passage (in more advanced classes, two) and write a “compare and contrast essay” on the subject.
They were given questions and suggestions (“use quotes”), almost to the point of being spoon fed. Many were done in minutes, handing in slap dash essays of ten or fifteen lines. I asked one girl why her essay had no quotes. “I didn’t read the instructions,” she replied off-handedly.
I read them to you, I pointed out. “I wasn’t listening.” You and the whole class. These tests come out of the “No Child Left Behind” movement. They are supposed to have some impact on student futures and school funding.
No one seemed to care. I gave a quiz on two chapters in “The Great Gatsby” in one class. Most of the class seemed to leave up to half of the ten questions blank, not even attempting a BS answer. Not caring enough. Heaven help us.
Don’t sweat it, Fritz. If you don’t show up, much of today’s audience probably wouldn’t notice.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Whatever Happened To Christian Community?
Community is a hard concept for Americans to get their heads around. Everyone has buddies and “friends”—people we’ve known for a year or two and could walk away from without a look back. We came from a Europe where the houses were in the center and fields radiated out from that center like spokes on a wheel.
When we got here, we built our houses somewhere on our 40, 80 or 160 acre plots, often out of sight of the nearest neighbor. (Only the New England Puritans created new settlements by moving whole villages together. That notion did not carry over to the West.)
My own pioneer family, whose roots centered originally here in Western Michigan, moved to places like Oregon, Iowa, Minnesota or California without a second thought. I have cousins I don’t even know about in places I’ve never seen. That’s not unusual.
The new development across the street is full of young families who often sit out on the driveway together while their kids play around them, two, three or four families at a time. But this is a neighborhood of “starter homes”. One promotion, a raise or a job offer somewhere else—a final party and that family is gone. Someone else takes their place.
That extends to the church as well. Go to Europe or our eastern cities. Every few blocks there is a Catholic Church. These were parish churches—people who lived in the blocks around them were expected to go to the nearest church and stay there.
Protestant churches were often very much the same. When I was a boy, I could walk to our church. So could my wife. And you stayed put—good pastor or lousy pastor. That was your church: the one two blocks away.
You grew up with the same kids. Some of the people who were in my youth group I have seen perhaps three times in the past 50 years. Yet, when we meet, we chat like old friends. At one time we were an actual community, and that never quite goes away.
(This had NOTHING to do with liking each other. We were community by dint of proximity and common membership. We went to the same school. We met each other at the neighborhood stores, ice skating rinks and ball fields. Year after year. We sort of melded together. But the bond endures.)
Most Americans today—if they have any church membership at all—are about as loyal to that individual congregation as they are to their department stores. A better price, a glitch in service and they are long gone. Store to store, church to church. There’s no glue anymore.
Too many of us have become a nation not just of individuals but actually rootless and lonely individuals. A “friend” is somebody we momentarily ally with at the office or someone we see at neighborhood barbecues. The notion of growing a friendship over decades is totally passé’.
I suspect this has a far more negative impact on Christianity and the Christian Church than even the most faithful attendees want to imagine. The Church—something more than just one building or even a single denomination—was created by its founders to be a close community.
Each individual was to be fitted into the entire organism like parts of an individual body (See I Corinthians 12) and was expected to stay in that body—to support others and in turn and as needed to be supported by others.
The notion of each family or individual as an unattached atom, free to fly off in another direction at any moment—with no more notice by pastors or fellow members—is about as alien to the idea of “church” as anything could possibly be.
Perhaps this explains the sometimes (to me) seemingly inexplicable coldness shown by much of American Christendom to those in need and those who are not really the sort we wish to associate with. We are not a community—we don’t know how to create one or accept others as part of one.
Over the American centuries, we’ve lost something very, very important.
When we got here, we built our houses somewhere on our 40, 80 or 160 acre plots, often out of sight of the nearest neighbor. (Only the New England Puritans created new settlements by moving whole villages together. That notion did not carry over to the West.)
My own pioneer family, whose roots centered originally here in Western Michigan, moved to places like Oregon, Iowa, Minnesota or California without a second thought. I have cousins I don’t even know about in places I’ve never seen. That’s not unusual.
The new development across the street is full of young families who often sit out on the driveway together while their kids play around them, two, three or four families at a time. But this is a neighborhood of “starter homes”. One promotion, a raise or a job offer somewhere else—a final party and that family is gone. Someone else takes their place.
That extends to the church as well. Go to Europe or our eastern cities. Every few blocks there is a Catholic Church. These were parish churches—people who lived in the blocks around them were expected to go to the nearest church and stay there.
Protestant churches were often very much the same. When I was a boy, I could walk to our church. So could my wife. And you stayed put—good pastor or lousy pastor. That was your church: the one two blocks away.
You grew up with the same kids. Some of the people who were in my youth group I have seen perhaps three times in the past 50 years. Yet, when we meet, we chat like old friends. At one time we were an actual community, and that never quite goes away.
(This had NOTHING to do with liking each other. We were community by dint of proximity and common membership. We went to the same school. We met each other at the neighborhood stores, ice skating rinks and ball fields. Year after year. We sort of melded together. But the bond endures.)
Most Americans today—if they have any church membership at all—are about as loyal to that individual congregation as they are to their department stores. A better price, a glitch in service and they are long gone. Store to store, church to church. There’s no glue anymore.
Too many of us have become a nation not just of individuals but actually rootless and lonely individuals. A “friend” is somebody we momentarily ally with at the office or someone we see at neighborhood barbecues. The notion of growing a friendship over decades is totally passé’.
I suspect this has a far more negative impact on Christianity and the Christian Church than even the most faithful attendees want to imagine. The Church—something more than just one building or even a single denomination—was created by its founders to be a close community.
Each individual was to be fitted into the entire organism like parts of an individual body (See I Corinthians 12) and was expected to stay in that body—to support others and in turn and as needed to be supported by others.
The notion of each family or individual as an unattached atom, free to fly off in another direction at any moment—with no more notice by pastors or fellow members—is about as alien to the idea of “church” as anything could possibly be.
Perhaps this explains the sometimes (to me) seemingly inexplicable coldness shown by much of American Christendom to those in need and those who are not really the sort we wish to associate with. We are not a community—we don’t know how to create one or accept others as part of one.
Over the American centuries, we’ve lost something very, very important.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Christianity--Pie In The Sky?
About fifty years ago, Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, contemptuously dismissed Christianity as “pie in the sky after while”. He pointed out that the Communist goal was to offer mankind some sort of a decent life in the here and now.
That caught my attention then—and it sticks with me yet. For too many Christians and too much of Christianity, Mr. Khrushchev was absolutely correct. Pete Seeger, the folk singer and song writer, performed a wonderful ditty on psychiatry and Christianity during the same time period.
“I don’t want to get adjusted to this world—I got a home that’s so much better, I want to go to it sooner or later …, I don’t want to get adjusted to this world.” The not wanting “to get adjusted to this world” is an eminently Christian concept, of course.
The Apostle Peter concludes the first Christian sermon ever preached (Acts 2:40), “Be saved from this perverse generation.” In short, it’s the perverse people around us we do not want to get adjusted to. But then Seeger, like much of Christianity, echoes a thought that is not really Christian.
Seeger’s thought—and Khrushchev’s—was that Christianity teaches that in order to enjoy happiness and be saved we must leave this world and go to another place outside of this world. In other words, the only place where Christian felicity or Augustine’s “City of God” can be found is after death, “in the sweet bye and bye”, or “up” in heaven.
That is precisely “pie in the sky, after while”, and that is NOT what Christ actually preached. What Christ actually preached was the need to stay in this world, try one’s very hardest to make it a more Godly AND humane place—and not to be corrupted by it at the same time.
Being “in the world but not of it” (Christ’s words) is a neat trick. When one tries to imagine how it is done, one of the first images to come to my mind is that of the painfully aesthetic life of Mother Theresa. Let’s immediately state that most Christians lack the stamina and the grace to live her life. Hers was a remarkably unique calling.
Actually the Christian is called to do something at once easier and harder, something vastly more complicated. Mother Theresa could almost hide behind her celibacy, her poverty and her nun’s habit. The average Christian is given no such place to hide.
He or she is expected to live in a very real world—working, raising children, mowing the lawn and buying groceries, going to the kid’s soccer games AND their Sunday School classes—while not becoming twisted in his or her moral views, not compromising, and never giving up hope. Struggling to make the world a better place while not becoming stained or spotted by it.
It is, after all, the man who is identified as the physical brother of Christ and the pastor of the first Christian Church (the one that met in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem) who wrote, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
That’s hard. But it’s expected of the Christian. It means treading a tricky path. One might have to ally with the Democrats on health care for the unfortunate—while disagreeing with them on abortion and homosexuality.
It makes a Christian suspect. He cannot become blindly loyal to any political party or movement. Some point will always come when he has to step back and say, No. It can make him or her dreadfully unpopular—possibly wishing he or she could leave for heaven.
But, no. When Christ speaks of “the Kingdom of Heaven” he’s talking of something here, right now. In the Apocalypse of John, it doesn’t talk about going up to heaven; it talks about heaven coming down to this earth, right here.
Khrushchev’s pie will come on earth—and the Christian must work for it here. Now.
That caught my attention then—and it sticks with me yet. For too many Christians and too much of Christianity, Mr. Khrushchev was absolutely correct. Pete Seeger, the folk singer and song writer, performed a wonderful ditty on psychiatry and Christianity during the same time period.
“I don’t want to get adjusted to this world—I got a home that’s so much better, I want to go to it sooner or later …, I don’t want to get adjusted to this world.” The not wanting “to get adjusted to this world” is an eminently Christian concept, of course.
The Apostle Peter concludes the first Christian sermon ever preached (Acts 2:40), “Be saved from this perverse generation.” In short, it’s the perverse people around us we do not want to get adjusted to. But then Seeger, like much of Christianity, echoes a thought that is not really Christian.
Seeger’s thought—and Khrushchev’s—was that Christianity teaches that in order to enjoy happiness and be saved we must leave this world and go to another place outside of this world. In other words, the only place where Christian felicity or Augustine’s “City of God” can be found is after death, “in the sweet bye and bye”, or “up” in heaven.
That is precisely “pie in the sky, after while”, and that is NOT what Christ actually preached. What Christ actually preached was the need to stay in this world, try one’s very hardest to make it a more Godly AND humane place—and not to be corrupted by it at the same time.
Being “in the world but not of it” (Christ’s words) is a neat trick. When one tries to imagine how it is done, one of the first images to come to my mind is that of the painfully aesthetic life of Mother Theresa. Let’s immediately state that most Christians lack the stamina and the grace to live her life. Hers was a remarkably unique calling.
Actually the Christian is called to do something at once easier and harder, something vastly more complicated. Mother Theresa could almost hide behind her celibacy, her poverty and her nun’s habit. The average Christian is given no such place to hide.
He or she is expected to live in a very real world—working, raising children, mowing the lawn and buying groceries, going to the kid’s soccer games AND their Sunday School classes—while not becoming twisted in his or her moral views, not compromising, and never giving up hope. Struggling to make the world a better place while not becoming stained or spotted by it.
It is, after all, the man who is identified as the physical brother of Christ and the pastor of the first Christian Church (the one that met in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem) who wrote, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
That’s hard. But it’s expected of the Christian. It means treading a tricky path. One might have to ally with the Democrats on health care for the unfortunate—while disagreeing with them on abortion and homosexuality.
It makes a Christian suspect. He cannot become blindly loyal to any political party or movement. Some point will always come when he has to step back and say, No. It can make him or her dreadfully unpopular—possibly wishing he or she could leave for heaven.
But, no. When Christ speaks of “the Kingdom of Heaven” he’s talking of something here, right now. In the Apocalypse of John, it doesn’t talk about going up to heaven; it talks about heaven coming down to this earth, right here.
Khrushchev’s pie will come on earth—and the Christian must work for it here. Now.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
History Repeats and Repeats and Repeats
How very similar the first ten years of the Twenty-first Century seem to the first decade of the Twentieth Century—with just a change in the name of the principal characters. A century ago England was coming off a hundred years of unchallenged world dominance.
But now she was being squeezed. Her options were suddenly limited. Dangerous rivals were arising in every quarter. After decades of going it alone around the world, she needed allies—making alliances with nations that were scarcely her friends.
As the Twentieth Century dawned, she was bogged down in an unpopular war against the African Boers—who had the sympathy of much of the rest of the world. She made an alliance with Japan—which set her on a collision course with the newly powerful United States. (By 1922, the Americans would obliquely threaten her with war unless she abrogated it. She backed down and did so at the Washington Naval Conference that year.)
She conceded the Caribbean as a sphere of influence to the Americans in 1903, allowing them to abrogate old treaties and build a canal on their own. The rise of Germany—a mutual enemy—forced her into a working alliance with Russia in 1907, against whom she had engaged in a long cold (and sometime hot) war throughout the 19th Century.
The new circumstances led to World War I, after which she was economically and militarily a “dead man walking”. World War II brought her empire down in shambles with the Americans and Russians scrambling for pieces. 1900-1910 can be seen as a beginning of the end for Britain’s empire, her place of economic dominance and her ability to act independently.
Let’s take a look at this past decade. We are coming off better than 50 years of unchallenged world dominance—and a long cold war with Russia who managed to hold about 25% of the planet against us. Our options suddenly seem far more limited—economically, diplomatically and militarily—than they did only a couple of decades ago.
We are doing what would have been unthinkable only thirty years ago—asking Russia for its help in dealing with troublesome nations like Iran whom we once controlled with quick CIA coups. We are bogged down in a couple of far off wars that are unpopular both at home and abroad.
A nation that we once treated with condescension, whose rivers our gunboats patrolled and whose capital our marines occupied, now faces us with as serious an economic (and military) rivalry as we have faced since 1776.
China is coming out of this recession bigger, stronger and economically more dangerous than it went into it—while we are threatened with, at best, a long, slow recovery while China will be able to make further gains on us.
How much doubt can there be that, as the 19th Century was the “British Century”, the 20th was the “American Century”, this new century will be the “Chinese Century”? (When Europe began sending ambassadors to China two hundred years ago, Napoleon refused. With his customary prescience, he warned, “Let China sleep—when she awakens she will devour us all.”)
Like Britain, in 1910, we’re still the biggest dog on the block. New York is still the center of world finance. Our fleets still keep the pirates at bay, around the world—protecting world shipping. But now—as there was with America then—there is a Chinese squadron on patrol off the Persian Gulf. Our navy can no longer do it alone.
How long will we be able to afford to keep carrier battle groups on station at every choke point for world trade in the world? Without military force at those points (a cop on the corner), there will be chaos. Deciding who will replace us where could easily result in some serious warfare.
We may have (as England did between 1918-1939) a period when we still look powerful. But at some point the game will likely be up. The question might well go from, Will we keep the Persian Gulf to Will we keep Hawaii? I suspect some reading this will see that day.
Once again the ball goes ‘round—and ‘round—and ‘round. We may not enjoy this next part of the ride. Just keep 1909 in mind—and England.
But now she was being squeezed. Her options were suddenly limited. Dangerous rivals were arising in every quarter. After decades of going it alone around the world, she needed allies—making alliances with nations that were scarcely her friends.
As the Twentieth Century dawned, she was bogged down in an unpopular war against the African Boers—who had the sympathy of much of the rest of the world. She made an alliance with Japan—which set her on a collision course with the newly powerful United States. (By 1922, the Americans would obliquely threaten her with war unless she abrogated it. She backed down and did so at the Washington Naval Conference that year.)
She conceded the Caribbean as a sphere of influence to the Americans in 1903, allowing them to abrogate old treaties and build a canal on their own. The rise of Germany—a mutual enemy—forced her into a working alliance with Russia in 1907, against whom she had engaged in a long cold (and sometime hot) war throughout the 19th Century.
The new circumstances led to World War I, after which she was economically and militarily a “dead man walking”. World War II brought her empire down in shambles with the Americans and Russians scrambling for pieces. 1900-1910 can be seen as a beginning of the end for Britain’s empire, her place of economic dominance and her ability to act independently.
Let’s take a look at this past decade. We are coming off better than 50 years of unchallenged world dominance—and a long cold war with Russia who managed to hold about 25% of the planet against us. Our options suddenly seem far more limited—economically, diplomatically and militarily—than they did only a couple of decades ago.
We are doing what would have been unthinkable only thirty years ago—asking Russia for its help in dealing with troublesome nations like Iran whom we once controlled with quick CIA coups. We are bogged down in a couple of far off wars that are unpopular both at home and abroad.
A nation that we once treated with condescension, whose rivers our gunboats patrolled and whose capital our marines occupied, now faces us with as serious an economic (and military) rivalry as we have faced since 1776.
China is coming out of this recession bigger, stronger and economically more dangerous than it went into it—while we are threatened with, at best, a long, slow recovery while China will be able to make further gains on us.
How much doubt can there be that, as the 19th Century was the “British Century”, the 20th was the “American Century”, this new century will be the “Chinese Century”? (When Europe began sending ambassadors to China two hundred years ago, Napoleon refused. With his customary prescience, he warned, “Let China sleep—when she awakens she will devour us all.”)
Like Britain, in 1910, we’re still the biggest dog on the block. New York is still the center of world finance. Our fleets still keep the pirates at bay, around the world—protecting world shipping. But now—as there was with America then—there is a Chinese squadron on patrol off the Persian Gulf. Our navy can no longer do it alone.
How long will we be able to afford to keep carrier battle groups on station at every choke point for world trade in the world? Without military force at those points (a cop on the corner), there will be chaos. Deciding who will replace us where could easily result in some serious warfare.
We may have (as England did between 1918-1939) a period when we still look powerful. But at some point the game will likely be up. The question might well go from, Will we keep the Persian Gulf to Will we keep Hawaii? I suspect some reading this will see that day.
Once again the ball goes ‘round—and ‘round—and ‘round. We may not enjoy this next part of the ride. Just keep 1909 in mind—and England.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
God, Einstein and Quantum Mechanics
Most of us live in a world in which Euclidean geometry does everything we need done. We never (knowingly) deal with large enough masses of substance to note any difference in behavior. If we even remember that Pauling said such a difference existed, we focus on Vitamin C.
Yes, he’s the chap who said masses of that vitamin could cure the common cold. Too many of us have tried taking lots and lots of pills and gone right on sneezing. The whole argument has reduced poor Pauling and his theory to something of a joke.
Einstein suffered the same fate. He and men like Planck and Bohr turned physics on its head. But Einstein was not content to rest on his laurels. He looked at the incompatibility between his Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and didn’t like what he saw.
He didn’t like the fact that followers of the new theories saw the universe as a jumble of randomly occurring events without theme or unifying principle. This gave rise to one of his better known plaints: “God does not play dice with the universe.”
So Einstein set to work, spending the last dozen years of his life looking for some theory that could re-unify the universe. It was considered so impossible that he became the butt of jokes and sneers throughout the world of physics.
He plowed on—unsuccessfully. “I,” he said, “have explored a hundred roads that no one else need follow.” After all, he reminded people, he had made his reputation and won his Nobel prize. He could afford to pursue things that might damage a younger man’s career.
Today the whole realm of physics accepts the pursuit of what Einstein called “The Unified Field Theory” as being valid science. No one is laughing.
For most of us, such theorizing approaches the Fantastic. It’s entirely beyond our experience. It is not intuitively logical. A thing somehow changing when there is more of it. A world in which the motions of incredibly vast things and things so small as to be invisible all move in some sort of ordered reality that we cannot even see, let alone fathom.
I remember something I read once. A scientist was trying to explain why it is so difficult to grasp the phenomena of far away space. For one thing, living under miles of earth’s atmosphere puts us in the position of fish in a fish bowl. The water around them distorts all reality beyond the bowl; as our atmosphere distorts space.
I suspect it is more than water or atmosphere we live under and that distorts our perceptions of reality. I wonder if the real distortion isn’t more psychological. We live on a tiny little ball. Everything we deal with from the moment of birth onward is limited by and to the finite reality that can fit on this one, minute planet spinning in immeasurable space that for most of human existence wasn’t even imagined.
Could it be more than just Euclidean geometry—that works so well and fits so neatly on this teensy space—that is skewed? If we could isolate a small particle of the black matter of space, would it behave differently when limited by our finite world?
Our greatest minds have intelligence quotients of barely more than two hundred. Might there be theories, geometries, forces, realities or cosmic laws that might require an intelligence many more times as powerful just to understand?
We who live on a world where the farthest we can go is about 12,000 miles before coming back to ourselves—we can imagine a space that stretches incredible numbers of light years into the beyond. Is it so absurd to imagine an intelligence as much greater than our own?
If someone told us that 12,000 miles was as far as mankind could dream of going, we would make disparaging remarks about his knowledge and his intelligence. But we are equally disparaging when someone suggests the existence of an intellect as much greater than our own (who doesn’t play dice with our universe).
Is that or is that not silly?
Yes, he’s the chap who said masses of that vitamin could cure the common cold. Too many of us have tried taking lots and lots of pills and gone right on sneezing. The whole argument has reduced poor Pauling and his theory to something of a joke.
Einstein suffered the same fate. He and men like Planck and Bohr turned physics on its head. But Einstein was not content to rest on his laurels. He looked at the incompatibility between his Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and didn’t like what he saw.
He didn’t like the fact that followers of the new theories saw the universe as a jumble of randomly occurring events without theme or unifying principle. This gave rise to one of his better known plaints: “God does not play dice with the universe.”
So Einstein set to work, spending the last dozen years of his life looking for some theory that could re-unify the universe. It was considered so impossible that he became the butt of jokes and sneers throughout the world of physics.
He plowed on—unsuccessfully. “I,” he said, “have explored a hundred roads that no one else need follow.” After all, he reminded people, he had made his reputation and won his Nobel prize. He could afford to pursue things that might damage a younger man’s career.
Today the whole realm of physics accepts the pursuit of what Einstein called “The Unified Field Theory” as being valid science. No one is laughing.
For most of us, such theorizing approaches the Fantastic. It’s entirely beyond our experience. It is not intuitively logical. A thing somehow changing when there is more of it. A world in which the motions of incredibly vast things and things so small as to be invisible all move in some sort of ordered reality that we cannot even see, let alone fathom.
I remember something I read once. A scientist was trying to explain why it is so difficult to grasp the phenomena of far away space. For one thing, living under miles of earth’s atmosphere puts us in the position of fish in a fish bowl. The water around them distorts all reality beyond the bowl; as our atmosphere distorts space.
I suspect it is more than water or atmosphere we live under and that distorts our perceptions of reality. I wonder if the real distortion isn’t more psychological. We live on a tiny little ball. Everything we deal with from the moment of birth onward is limited by and to the finite reality that can fit on this one, minute planet spinning in immeasurable space that for most of human existence wasn’t even imagined.
Could it be more than just Euclidean geometry—that works so well and fits so neatly on this teensy space—that is skewed? If we could isolate a small particle of the black matter of space, would it behave differently when limited by our finite world?
Our greatest minds have intelligence quotients of barely more than two hundred. Might there be theories, geometries, forces, realities or cosmic laws that might require an intelligence many more times as powerful just to understand?
We who live on a world where the farthest we can go is about 12,000 miles before coming back to ourselves—we can imagine a space that stretches incredible numbers of light years into the beyond. Is it so absurd to imagine an intelligence as much greater than our own?
If someone told us that 12,000 miles was as far as mankind could dream of going, we would make disparaging remarks about his knowledge and his intelligence. But we are equally disparaging when someone suggests the existence of an intellect as much greater than our own (who doesn’t play dice with our universe).
Is that or is that not silly?
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Einstein, Quantum Mechanics and God
Right when I was beginning to grasp the fundamentals of Euclidian geometry back in 1954, someone pointed out that it wasn’t true. Specifically, parallel straight lines do not stay parallel when stretched on to infinity. They either curve toward each other (elliptical geometry) or they curve away from each other (hyperbolic geometry), but they don’t stay parallel.
This was my first encounter with something that WORKS perfectly fine, but simply is not true. In other words, you can build as tall a building as Superman can leap using Euclidian geometry and the building will stay right up there. But the parallel lines postulated in the construction and the very existence of the building don’t really exist.
I am neither mathematician nor scientist, but the notion fascinated me. A lot about science fascinates me. For example in college I was forced to take a course in physical science. I paid as little attention as was required to pass the course until they mentioned electricity.
The professor went on and on about its properties and all the wonderful things it can do. I finally raised my hand and asked, “What IS electricity?” He looked startled for an instant. Then he replied that no one really knows.
I was appalled. Here is a force we use constantly in nearly every aspect of our lives. We generate it and send it hither and thither. But we don’t really understand what it is. I’m just a liberal arts major with a limited grasp of the forces of mathematics and nature, but it seems to me that I would stop everything and set everyone to work finding out what the stuff IS before I attempted to DO anything more with it.
Who knows what all we might discover if we knew what it really was. We might avoid dangers, and we might create things unimaginable now—if we took the time and money to discover what things are at their most basic level.
Another ten years or so down the road and I attended a lecture by Nobelist Linus Pauling. My ears pricked up when he made the following statement: “Matter (stuff, things) act QUALITATIVELY differently in the mass.”
In other words, if you have mega-tons times mega-tons of the stuff, it is going to act differently than when you only have a ton or so of it—it may even BE something different. In my fuzzy little mind that connected with the whole question of Euclidean and non-euclidean geometry.
Another case, it seems to me, of something wandering out into infinity and being/becoming something different. Another case of something that works on this planet’s surface not being true out in the vastness of the cosmos.
It leaves me wondering—how much of what works for us in the limited realm of space and time we can see from this finite space and time called Earth—may not really be true at all?
For instance, Einstein and people like Planck and Bohr came up with two theories to describe nature as we can see and understand it from here. Einstein’s relativity does a decent job describing and predicting the motion of planets and stars; Planck and Bohr’s quantum mechanics does a fine job of predicting what sub-microscopic are liable to be up to and even offers hints as to where.
The problem is they are not compatible with each other. It would seem if one is true, the other cannot be. Yet BOTH WORK. (Steven Hawking, “A Brief History of Time”) Whoa. Have we somehow slipped the traces and wandered out into infinity?
Are we dealing in a near-science fiction area with dimensions we don’t even know are there—let alone understand? That’s the way I began to feel the more I thought about something as finite as Euclidean geometry. I’ll go on a bit more tomorrow.
This was my first encounter with something that WORKS perfectly fine, but simply is not true. In other words, you can build as tall a building as Superman can leap using Euclidian geometry and the building will stay right up there. But the parallel lines postulated in the construction and the very existence of the building don’t really exist.
I am neither mathematician nor scientist, but the notion fascinated me. A lot about science fascinates me. For example in college I was forced to take a course in physical science. I paid as little attention as was required to pass the course until they mentioned electricity.
The professor went on and on about its properties and all the wonderful things it can do. I finally raised my hand and asked, “What IS electricity?” He looked startled for an instant. Then he replied that no one really knows.
I was appalled. Here is a force we use constantly in nearly every aspect of our lives. We generate it and send it hither and thither. But we don’t really understand what it is. I’m just a liberal arts major with a limited grasp of the forces of mathematics and nature, but it seems to me that I would stop everything and set everyone to work finding out what the stuff IS before I attempted to DO anything more with it.
Who knows what all we might discover if we knew what it really was. We might avoid dangers, and we might create things unimaginable now—if we took the time and money to discover what things are at their most basic level.
Another ten years or so down the road and I attended a lecture by Nobelist Linus Pauling. My ears pricked up when he made the following statement: “Matter (stuff, things) act QUALITATIVELY differently in the mass.”
In other words, if you have mega-tons times mega-tons of the stuff, it is going to act differently than when you only have a ton or so of it—it may even BE something different. In my fuzzy little mind that connected with the whole question of Euclidean and non-euclidean geometry.
Another case, it seems to me, of something wandering out into infinity and being/becoming something different. Another case of something that works on this planet’s surface not being true out in the vastness of the cosmos.
It leaves me wondering—how much of what works for us in the limited realm of space and time we can see from this finite space and time called Earth—may not really be true at all?
For instance, Einstein and people like Planck and Bohr came up with two theories to describe nature as we can see and understand it from here. Einstein’s relativity does a decent job describing and predicting the motion of planets and stars; Planck and Bohr’s quantum mechanics does a fine job of predicting what sub-microscopic are liable to be up to and even offers hints as to where.
The problem is they are not compatible with each other. It would seem if one is true, the other cannot be. Yet BOTH WORK. (Steven Hawking, “A Brief History of Time”) Whoa. Have we somehow slipped the traces and wandered out into infinity?
Are we dealing in a near-science fiction area with dimensions we don’t even know are there—let alone understand? That’s the way I began to feel the more I thought about something as finite as Euclidean geometry. I’ll go on a bit more tomorrow.
Monday, October 19, 2009
R. Crumb: In The Beginning
R. Crumb, the irreverent and satirical American cartoonist who created the first X-rated animated cartoon (“Fritz The Cat”), along with Zap Comics, “Keep on Truckin’” and “Mr. Natural”, has turned his attention to the Biblical Book of Genesis. He’s illustrating it.
His French publisher (Crumb now lives in France) admitted he couldn’t imagine Crumb doing anything on the Bible that wasn’t blasphemous admits to surprise. Crumb hasn’t added a word to the text of Genesis—he just reads it and illustrates it.
Of course the book comes out with Crumb’s own take on it—naked and highly sexed ladies, cavemen- like males, dripping blood and drool. Crumb’s own surprise is evident when he talks about Genesis. He is astonished and more than a bit horrified at the sheer amount of raw sex and violence in the book. Obviously, at some point, someone told him to read it.
I’ve suggested the same to people who have no truck with religion myself. I’ve told them a few stories out of the book. Their eyes get very wide and they say, “I didn’t know THAT was in the Bible”. Good parts of Genesis are, with or without Crumb, a straight X-rate.
When my Sunday School teaching grandmother heard that my parents were reading it to me, she was horrified—considering it unfit for children. I admit there were some stories in Genesis that I didn’t read to my own kids until they were quite a bit older.
Most Christians I’ve met recently haven’t read the book either—at least not with any thoroughness. I remember teaching a religious education class a few years ago. A church-going young lady, intelligent and college bound, turned to me and asked, “Where is the story of Pandora’s Box found?” I had to tell her THAT story isn’t in there. Talk to the Greeks.
What Mr. Crumb is coming upon is the realization the Christianity isn’t a “nice” religion. It doesn’t offer 72 virgins if you blow yourself up for the glory of God—but it isn’t nice in an entirely different way. It is very blunt about the evil that is in—and comes out of—mankind right here on earth. No Biblical author would have been the least bit shocked by Nazi death camps, Rwandan genocide, serial killers or kidnappers who make their victims live for decades in backyard sheds.
Mankind, in Genesis, refuses to follow the directions that came on the package—and quickly sinks to an appalling level of barbarianism. Murder, incest, and fratricide are only a few of the human characteristics that Genesis delineates for the reader.
God himself is depicted as so horrified at what he had turned loose upon creation that he shortens the human life span by 90%, takes away enough of our ability to communicate so that we can no longer cooperate to do evil and, finally, wipes out most of humanity.
Genesis lays the groundwork for the rest of the Biblical message—why God will find no other way to alter human behavior than by sacrificing his very self in one of the most cruel death’s ever invented by mankind. That’s what Genesis is all about. The first promise that there really is a way out of this bloody mess we find ourselves in.
Church leaders are likely to be aghast at Crumb’s illustrations. But he won’t be off the mark. If they think about it rationally for a moment, they will be forced to realize R. Crumb is preaching their sermon for them.
Christianity holds to the belief that “while we were yet like the people depicted in Genesis,” God came seeking us. Some of the people who buy the book for the sake of R. Crumb are going to want to read on. St. Paul would have appreciated that.
Paul pointed out that even if the Gospel is preached out of spite or envy, it is still preached—and it will not return void. Go for it, Mr. Crumb. People who otherwise wouldn’t touch the book are going to pick up your illustrated work. It won’t return void.
His French publisher (Crumb now lives in France) admitted he couldn’t imagine Crumb doing anything on the Bible that wasn’t blasphemous admits to surprise. Crumb hasn’t added a word to the text of Genesis—he just reads it and illustrates it.
Of course the book comes out with Crumb’s own take on it—naked and highly sexed ladies, cavemen- like males, dripping blood and drool. Crumb’s own surprise is evident when he talks about Genesis. He is astonished and more than a bit horrified at the sheer amount of raw sex and violence in the book. Obviously, at some point, someone told him to read it.
I’ve suggested the same to people who have no truck with religion myself. I’ve told them a few stories out of the book. Their eyes get very wide and they say, “I didn’t know THAT was in the Bible”. Good parts of Genesis are, with or without Crumb, a straight X-rate.
When my Sunday School teaching grandmother heard that my parents were reading it to me, she was horrified—considering it unfit for children. I admit there were some stories in Genesis that I didn’t read to my own kids until they were quite a bit older.
Most Christians I’ve met recently haven’t read the book either—at least not with any thoroughness. I remember teaching a religious education class a few years ago. A church-going young lady, intelligent and college bound, turned to me and asked, “Where is the story of Pandora’s Box found?” I had to tell her THAT story isn’t in there. Talk to the Greeks.
What Mr. Crumb is coming upon is the realization the Christianity isn’t a “nice” religion. It doesn’t offer 72 virgins if you blow yourself up for the glory of God—but it isn’t nice in an entirely different way. It is very blunt about the evil that is in—and comes out of—mankind right here on earth. No Biblical author would have been the least bit shocked by Nazi death camps, Rwandan genocide, serial killers or kidnappers who make their victims live for decades in backyard sheds.
Mankind, in Genesis, refuses to follow the directions that came on the package—and quickly sinks to an appalling level of barbarianism. Murder, incest, and fratricide are only a few of the human characteristics that Genesis delineates for the reader.
God himself is depicted as so horrified at what he had turned loose upon creation that he shortens the human life span by 90%, takes away enough of our ability to communicate so that we can no longer cooperate to do evil and, finally, wipes out most of humanity.
Genesis lays the groundwork for the rest of the Biblical message—why God will find no other way to alter human behavior than by sacrificing his very self in one of the most cruel death’s ever invented by mankind. That’s what Genesis is all about. The first promise that there really is a way out of this bloody mess we find ourselves in.
Church leaders are likely to be aghast at Crumb’s illustrations. But he won’t be off the mark. If they think about it rationally for a moment, they will be forced to realize R. Crumb is preaching their sermon for them.
Christianity holds to the belief that “while we were yet like the people depicted in Genesis,” God came seeking us. Some of the people who buy the book for the sake of R. Crumb are going to want to read on. St. Paul would have appreciated that.
Paul pointed out that even if the Gospel is preached out of spite or envy, it is still preached—and it will not return void. Go for it, Mr. Crumb. People who otherwise wouldn’t touch the book are going to pick up your illustrated work. It won’t return void.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Atheist And The God Who Loves Him
Tonight I drove past the house of an acquaintance where I know they hold a Christian prayer meeting. A bumper sticker on one of the cars caught my attention. “God doesn’t believe in atheists.” You could almost see an appended, “Nyah, nyah, nyah.”
Someone with a more fundamental understanding of Christianity would have recognized immediately that the sticker isn’t true. The Christian God DOES believe in atheists—just as he believes in the person with a badly mistaken theology, the criminal, the immoral, the dishonest and self-serving, the greedy and pitiless.
He not only believes in them, but the Bible says he desires them (“all men”) to be saved from the Hell they have prepared for themselves, both on earth and in the hereafter. To make this possible, the Gospel (that means “good news”) says that he loved the unlovable, the evil, the crooked, the morally sick so much that he bled and died for them.
The Bible, you see, works from the assumption that humans are by nature inclined to do what they know they really ought not to do. I once made that point to a secular college class by asking two questions.
One) How many of you—if you knew absolutely for certain that there would be no police on the road when you went home at ten o’clock tonight—would drive home at a safe and legal speed. There were no hands raised, but I got a lot of sheepish grins.
Two) How many of you think that if you had four three-year-olds and three toy trucks in one play area—that it would be wise or safe for an adult to leave the area even for a moment? Again, nods of under-standing.
(The other day I had a kid ask me why I thought there were so many wars. When you were three, I responded, and another three-year-old had a toy you wanted, what happened? A light dawned in his eyes. That, I went on, is why you have wars. We haven’t grown up a bit or become a whit more decent since we were three.)
Why is that so? Christian theology suggests that the human impulse NOT TO READ the directions—or to feel that it is unnecessary to follow them—when putting a bicycle or lawnmower together has been with us from the beginning.
God gave a few simple directions, and we chose not to follow them. The lawn mower didn’t run, and everything else was fouled up. Not only that but we would up hating the one who gave us the directions and proved right in the end. (Ever wind up being angry with your wife when you didn’t do it the way she suggested, and it didn’t work? The hatred between man and God got much worse.)
Set in our own stubbornness we were helpless to change things. So God took it upon himself to do the changing. That’s what the bloody death of Christ is all about. It took blood to pay the debt we had finally accumulated. God’s blood.
My wife has more than once observed, “Do you think I could not love my children when I risked my life and endured so much pain to bring them into the world?” That’s quite analogous to what God feels. He suffered and died to bring that atheist into a better world and better relationship with his Maker. How could he possibly not love him?
God is not a smart mouth about people he loves. (“I don’t believe in people like you, either—nyah, nyah, nayh.”) His people had best not dare to be either.
In the Apocalypse of John, Christ sends back messages to seven of his churches on earth. To five of the seven of his own churches, he has to say, “Repent”. When we refuse to love those he loves, that is precisely what a Christian is called upon to do.
Someone with a more fundamental understanding of Christianity would have recognized immediately that the sticker isn’t true. The Christian God DOES believe in atheists—just as he believes in the person with a badly mistaken theology, the criminal, the immoral, the dishonest and self-serving, the greedy and pitiless.
He not only believes in them, but the Bible says he desires them (“all men”) to be saved from the Hell they have prepared for themselves, both on earth and in the hereafter. To make this possible, the Gospel (that means “good news”) says that he loved the unlovable, the evil, the crooked, the morally sick so much that he bled and died for them.
The Bible, you see, works from the assumption that humans are by nature inclined to do what they know they really ought not to do. I once made that point to a secular college class by asking two questions.
One) How many of you—if you knew absolutely for certain that there would be no police on the road when you went home at ten o’clock tonight—would drive home at a safe and legal speed. There were no hands raised, but I got a lot of sheepish grins.
Two) How many of you think that if you had four three-year-olds and three toy trucks in one play area—that it would be wise or safe for an adult to leave the area even for a moment? Again, nods of under-standing.
(The other day I had a kid ask me why I thought there were so many wars. When you were three, I responded, and another three-year-old had a toy you wanted, what happened? A light dawned in his eyes. That, I went on, is why you have wars. We haven’t grown up a bit or become a whit more decent since we were three.)
Why is that so? Christian theology suggests that the human impulse NOT TO READ the directions—or to feel that it is unnecessary to follow them—when putting a bicycle or lawnmower together has been with us from the beginning.
God gave a few simple directions, and we chose not to follow them. The lawn mower didn’t run, and everything else was fouled up. Not only that but we would up hating the one who gave us the directions and proved right in the end. (Ever wind up being angry with your wife when you didn’t do it the way she suggested, and it didn’t work? The hatred between man and God got much worse.)
Set in our own stubbornness we were helpless to change things. So God took it upon himself to do the changing. That’s what the bloody death of Christ is all about. It took blood to pay the debt we had finally accumulated. God’s blood.
My wife has more than once observed, “Do you think I could not love my children when I risked my life and endured so much pain to bring them into the world?” That’s quite analogous to what God feels. He suffered and died to bring that atheist into a better world and better relationship with his Maker. How could he possibly not love him?
God is not a smart mouth about people he loves. (“I don’t believe in people like you, either—nyah, nyah, nayh.”) His people had best not dare to be either.
In the Apocalypse of John, Christ sends back messages to seven of his churches on earth. To five of the seven of his own churches, he has to say, “Repent”. When we refuse to love those he loves, that is precisely what a Christian is called upon to do.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Foreclosures And Other Blues
Last night’s ABC Nightly News continued to k’vel over the rising stock market, and then offered three stories that caught my attention. (Today the DOW dropped five points below ten thousand as investors took some profits. But it still seems just slightly out of touch with reality.)
Home foreclosures are climbing and will likely continue to climb next year. It’s no longer just subprime mortgages that are sinking. By now enough people have been out of work long enough that regular, fixed-rate mortgages are going into default. There are huge numbers of homes on the block all over the country. The commentator mentioned that in the few seconds she had given her report, fourteen homes had been reclaimed by the lender.
Bad enough to be foreclosed—but what happens if your new house falls apart all around you? It seems that during the last stages of the housing boom, when builders were frantically busy and materials were in short supply, a lot of stuff sneaked in from China.
Drywall is part of that stuff. Some Chinese drywall gives off such toxic fumes that they rot the electric wires running through the walls. This is leading to an understandable concern among the owners of at least 100,000 new houses in forty states—what are the fumes doing to US?
Imagine the repair. You strip all the drywall off the walls and ceilings of every room in your home . Then think of replacing most of the wiring and possibly some of the water and drain pipes. (How long do you store your furniture? Where do you live? Do the carpets and cabinets survive? How about ceiling light fixtures?)
This can cost a good part of the price of an entire new home. Well, we’ll go to the insurance company. Not if they find out about your wallboard first! According to ABC sensible insurance companies are cancelling policies with lightning speed.
(This isn’t as villainous as we might think. You have to remember, ALL insurance is a bet—just like Vegas. You’re betting you’ll get lucky and die or have a major auto accident and collect a windfall. They’re betting you’ll live and avoid the accident. NOBODY bets on a horse with a broken leg. As soon as you learn the horse is lame—or the wallboard potentially lethal—you leave the betting window as rapidly as you can. You don’t insure a house that’s on fire.)
Thank you, China—for rushing to meet our need, once again, when we were hard pressed to produce enough of our own. What recourse do we have? Not a lot—they pretty much hold the mortgage on the United States right now. Heaven help us if they start dumping bonds.
Oh, and there was the story on women’s health insurance. It seems that women pay as much as 48% more in premiums because they are female. This comes from testimony before Congress this week. If a woman has had a Caesarian section, then the fun starts.
In one instance, in case of another pregnancy, a woman’s co-pay was raised to $5,000 before she could see a dime of insurance money. Other women were denied coverage of any kind. Yet another woman was told by a company that if she sterilized herself they would cover her.
(These are the wonderful folk that the Right—all too often the Christian Right—feels we should trust with our health care rather than the government. One thing about government care—to a fault, it does not have a profit motive involved in its decisions.)
Be joyful. The stock market is roaring its way to recovery. Investors—who have something left to invest after last year—are looking very, very happy. Compensation for bankers looks like it will be in the billions and billions this year.
What’s a few foreclosures, a lot of bad wallboard and some startling health insurance caveats in the face of so much happiness?
Home foreclosures are climbing and will likely continue to climb next year. It’s no longer just subprime mortgages that are sinking. By now enough people have been out of work long enough that regular, fixed-rate mortgages are going into default. There are huge numbers of homes on the block all over the country. The commentator mentioned that in the few seconds she had given her report, fourteen homes had been reclaimed by the lender.
Bad enough to be foreclosed—but what happens if your new house falls apart all around you? It seems that during the last stages of the housing boom, when builders were frantically busy and materials were in short supply, a lot of stuff sneaked in from China.
Drywall is part of that stuff. Some Chinese drywall gives off such toxic fumes that they rot the electric wires running through the walls. This is leading to an understandable concern among the owners of at least 100,000 new houses in forty states—what are the fumes doing to US?
Imagine the repair. You strip all the drywall off the walls and ceilings of every room in your home . Then think of replacing most of the wiring and possibly some of the water and drain pipes. (How long do you store your furniture? Where do you live? Do the carpets and cabinets survive? How about ceiling light fixtures?)
This can cost a good part of the price of an entire new home. Well, we’ll go to the insurance company. Not if they find out about your wallboard first! According to ABC sensible insurance companies are cancelling policies with lightning speed.
(This isn’t as villainous as we might think. You have to remember, ALL insurance is a bet—just like Vegas. You’re betting you’ll get lucky and die or have a major auto accident and collect a windfall. They’re betting you’ll live and avoid the accident. NOBODY bets on a horse with a broken leg. As soon as you learn the horse is lame—or the wallboard potentially lethal—you leave the betting window as rapidly as you can. You don’t insure a house that’s on fire.)
Thank you, China—for rushing to meet our need, once again, when we were hard pressed to produce enough of our own. What recourse do we have? Not a lot—they pretty much hold the mortgage on the United States right now. Heaven help us if they start dumping bonds.
Oh, and there was the story on women’s health insurance. It seems that women pay as much as 48% more in premiums because they are female. This comes from testimony before Congress this week. If a woman has had a Caesarian section, then the fun starts.
In one instance, in case of another pregnancy, a woman’s co-pay was raised to $5,000 before she could see a dime of insurance money. Other women were denied coverage of any kind. Yet another woman was told by a company that if she sterilized herself they would cover her.
(These are the wonderful folk that the Right—all too often the Christian Right—feels we should trust with our health care rather than the government. One thing about government care—to a fault, it does not have a profit motive involved in its decisions.)
Be joyful. The stock market is roaring its way to recovery. Investors—who have something left to invest after last year—are looking very, very happy. Compensation for bankers looks like it will be in the billions and billions this year.
What’s a few foreclosures, a lot of bad wallboard and some startling health insurance caveats in the face of so much happiness?
Friday, October 16, 2009
Social Security: Lie To Me, Lie To Me!
Oh, come, come, come. Tell me that there’s no available money to increase Social Security payments next year. I know wars cost money. I know we’ve taken on uncountable trillions in national debt. I can accept that—after all, anyone who has collect Social Security for over two years is on welfare anyway. So I can live with the facts.
All welfare is being cut; we know that. Social Security was never designed to do more than make sure the elderly could afford minimal food and shelter. Anything more than that you were expected to save for yourself. So just give me the facts.
But don’t LIE to me. Don’t tell me that “because there was no inflation last year, there will be no increase in Social Security benefits this January”. Piffle. Balderdash. Pish and Tosh. Pish/Tosh. Phooey. Quite bluntly, you’re full of it.
The data sets that are used to compute inflation are the most skewed bits of fact in the entire land of governmental make-believe. First of all, inflation used to be computed by not including the cost of food and fuel. Why not? Because those prices are too volatile, we’re told.
When prices got really “volatile” in an upward direction—I always thought that was what inflation WAS. But no, it didn’t seem to include anything you bought regularly. (It’s a bit like my recycling service: they will pick up everything, EXCEPT something you might buy, something you might use or something you might wish to dispose of.)
As I recollect, grocery prices have been being upwardly volatile for most of my life. In the 1970’s, the two of could feed ourselves for under twenty dollars a week. Now we regularly spend about fifteen to twenty times that for four of us. (My wife says I am trapped in an antiquated era—one when an Arrow shirt cost six bucks. My first VW came in at way under two thousand.)
But, you see, there’s been a big recession this past year. Prices have held steady or even declined on an item by item basis. Technically they can probably prove themselves right. Cheese, for instance, went way up last year and now has come back down. See? It didn’t inflate.
Something else IS happening. The price on the item stays the same, but! We’re all familiar with the fact that sizes have been cut—remember when a cup of yogurt was eight ounces? Now, as prices stay level, other things are happening.
I noticed recently that the “double roll” sized toilet paper I’ve been buying for years, now lasts about as long as the old single roll. Cleaning products don’t seem to do the job as well as they did a few years ago. Do you suppose they’ve substituted on the ingredients?
Some products have suddenly developed a new taste. Same price; it just doesn’t seem quite the same. I talked to a man who runs a business and complained that sizes are shrinking, ingredients changing. He didn’t argue. He merely explained that if he raises his prices by even a tiny amount, he literally has people screaming at him. So he has to do SOMETHING beside hike the cost.
Sam’s Club does an interesting thing. A product will disappear off the shelves for several weeks—long enough so most of us don’t have the old size around anymore. Then it will reappear, two cans less in the package or a few ounces less in the bottle. Same price. (Please, Walmart takes enough hits—they aren’t alone. They might get MILLIONS of customers screaming.)
Something I noticed a few weeks ago. My shampoo bottle is the same size (it’s opaque), but when I hold it up to a light, it’s down an ounce or two in the bottle.
Same quantity, some price—THAT’S no inflation. More quantity, same price—that might be deflation. Less quantity, same price—is that inflation? Same price, inferior ingredients—what on earth is that? Whatever you call it, it means a dollar doesn’t go as far.
Lie to us, lie to us. A lot of us will believe it. Do we have a choice?
All welfare is being cut; we know that. Social Security was never designed to do more than make sure the elderly could afford minimal food and shelter. Anything more than that you were expected to save for yourself. So just give me the facts.
But don’t LIE to me. Don’t tell me that “because there was no inflation last year, there will be no increase in Social Security benefits this January”. Piffle. Balderdash. Pish and Tosh. Pish/Tosh. Phooey. Quite bluntly, you’re full of it.
The data sets that are used to compute inflation are the most skewed bits of fact in the entire land of governmental make-believe. First of all, inflation used to be computed by not including the cost of food and fuel. Why not? Because those prices are too volatile, we’re told.
When prices got really “volatile” in an upward direction—I always thought that was what inflation WAS. But no, it didn’t seem to include anything you bought regularly. (It’s a bit like my recycling service: they will pick up everything, EXCEPT something you might buy, something you might use or something you might wish to dispose of.)
As I recollect, grocery prices have been being upwardly volatile for most of my life. In the 1970’s, the two of could feed ourselves for under twenty dollars a week. Now we regularly spend about fifteen to twenty times that for four of us. (My wife says I am trapped in an antiquated era—one when an Arrow shirt cost six bucks. My first VW came in at way under two thousand.)
But, you see, there’s been a big recession this past year. Prices have held steady or even declined on an item by item basis. Technically they can probably prove themselves right. Cheese, for instance, went way up last year and now has come back down. See? It didn’t inflate.
Something else IS happening. The price on the item stays the same, but! We’re all familiar with the fact that sizes have been cut—remember when a cup of yogurt was eight ounces? Now, as prices stay level, other things are happening.
I noticed recently that the “double roll” sized toilet paper I’ve been buying for years, now lasts about as long as the old single roll. Cleaning products don’t seem to do the job as well as they did a few years ago. Do you suppose they’ve substituted on the ingredients?
Some products have suddenly developed a new taste. Same price; it just doesn’t seem quite the same. I talked to a man who runs a business and complained that sizes are shrinking, ingredients changing. He didn’t argue. He merely explained that if he raises his prices by even a tiny amount, he literally has people screaming at him. So he has to do SOMETHING beside hike the cost.
Sam’s Club does an interesting thing. A product will disappear off the shelves for several weeks—long enough so most of us don’t have the old size around anymore. Then it will reappear, two cans less in the package or a few ounces less in the bottle. Same price. (Please, Walmart takes enough hits—they aren’t alone. They might get MILLIONS of customers screaming.)
Something I noticed a few weeks ago. My shampoo bottle is the same size (it’s opaque), but when I hold it up to a light, it’s down an ounce or two in the bottle.
Same quantity, some price—THAT’S no inflation. More quantity, same price—that might be deflation. Less quantity, same price—is that inflation? Same price, inferior ingredients—what on earth is that? Whatever you call it, it means a dollar doesn’t go as far.
Lie to us, lie to us. A lot of us will believe it. Do we have a choice?
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Economy: Then Falls All The World?
The British had the wit to understand what we were doing after World War II. They also had the wit to hitch a ride, knowing that a Britain without its empire would have more clout coming alongside the new world empire—the US—than if it sulked and stood alone.
Future British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan asked to be assigned to Eisenhower’s headquarters in North Africa in 1943. He friends asked why on earth. He replied, “We are the Greeks; we must teach these Romans to rule.”
Latin America had feared us for years, calling us the “Colossus of the North”. By 1945 we were the “Colossus of the Planet”. We had an atomic monopoly. Our troops were on the Russian border in China. We had bases on every ocean and sea. In Europe we kept the ancient “Watch on the Rhine”, once the responsibility of Roman legions.
We had the only undamaged manufacturing plants on earth. If you wanted to buy goods—like coming to Joseph in ancient Egypt, which had the only available food—you had to come to us. We were the cross roads and the center of the world economy.
The rest of the world existed to supply us with raw materials and luxuries. Should we, for the moment, be embarrassingly short of ready cash, nations on every continent were only too willing to extend us credit—huge amounts of it.
After all, they told themselves, where can we find a surer, better, safer investment than in American treasury bonds? Before long the trade of all the world was backed and financed by American debt. We no longer had to earn our luxuries: they were almost forced upon us.
We become stinking rich. If we didn’t own it we brokered it, put an option on it—and collected the interest. Truly it seemed to the rest of the world that American streets WERE paved in gold. (Even though they held the mortgage on much of it.)
Our inscription could have been a paraphrase of ancient Rome’s. “When falls the American consumer, then falls America; when falls the American market, then falls all the world.” The arrogance and myopia were much the same.
“It’s been here for as long as I’ve been alive; I assume that it will go on forever.” It looked that way. Even our enemies envied us. The World Trade Center bombers spent time walking through our malls before blowing themselves up.
Our adversary, the Soviet Union, folded. The Iron Curtain fell. East Europeans and Russians alike rushed to emulate the American life style. China became more capitalist than Wall Street. The entire human race seemed to be buying the great American assumption—that this would all go on forever. Until, for one heart-stopping moment last fall, the music cut out.
For a terrifying moment, Coliseums all over the American financial district seemed to totter, ready to fall. For a horrifying instant, we could see that many of the foundation pillars were rotten. The market crashed over 50%. Fortunes and retirement funds were ravaged.
The great Middle Class was vulnerable. It could be hurt—perhaps even destroyed. Angry, frightened voices began to cry out. American voices, of people who had to put off retirement. Chinese voices who realized that their assets were tied to the ones stumbling in New York.
European voices, Latin American voices, Japanese voices, voices from all over the world. All questioning the great American assumption. Can it really go on forever? Or, like Rome and everything else, is there a time when all things come to an end?
We can go back to our postwar assumptions at our peril. Or we can take a calculating look at our real situation and decide what policies will best protect us in a post imperial world. Rome wasn’t that smart. Britain appears to have been. Which will we be more like?
Future British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan asked to be assigned to Eisenhower’s headquarters in North Africa in 1943. He friends asked why on earth. He replied, “We are the Greeks; we must teach these Romans to rule.”
Latin America had feared us for years, calling us the “Colossus of the North”. By 1945 we were the “Colossus of the Planet”. We had an atomic monopoly. Our troops were on the Russian border in China. We had bases on every ocean and sea. In Europe we kept the ancient “Watch on the Rhine”, once the responsibility of Roman legions.
We had the only undamaged manufacturing plants on earth. If you wanted to buy goods—like coming to Joseph in ancient Egypt, which had the only available food—you had to come to us. We were the cross roads and the center of the world economy.
The rest of the world existed to supply us with raw materials and luxuries. Should we, for the moment, be embarrassingly short of ready cash, nations on every continent were only too willing to extend us credit—huge amounts of it.
After all, they told themselves, where can we find a surer, better, safer investment than in American treasury bonds? Before long the trade of all the world was backed and financed by American debt. We no longer had to earn our luxuries: they were almost forced upon us.
We become stinking rich. If we didn’t own it we brokered it, put an option on it—and collected the interest. Truly it seemed to the rest of the world that American streets WERE paved in gold. (Even though they held the mortgage on much of it.)
Our inscription could have been a paraphrase of ancient Rome’s. “When falls the American consumer, then falls America; when falls the American market, then falls all the world.” The arrogance and myopia were much the same.
“It’s been here for as long as I’ve been alive; I assume that it will go on forever.” It looked that way. Even our enemies envied us. The World Trade Center bombers spent time walking through our malls before blowing themselves up.
Our adversary, the Soviet Union, folded. The Iron Curtain fell. East Europeans and Russians alike rushed to emulate the American life style. China became more capitalist than Wall Street. The entire human race seemed to be buying the great American assumption—that this would all go on forever. Until, for one heart-stopping moment last fall, the music cut out.
For a terrifying moment, Coliseums all over the American financial district seemed to totter, ready to fall. For a horrifying instant, we could see that many of the foundation pillars were rotten. The market crashed over 50%. Fortunes and retirement funds were ravaged.
The great Middle Class was vulnerable. It could be hurt—perhaps even destroyed. Angry, frightened voices began to cry out. American voices, of people who had to put off retirement. Chinese voices who realized that their assets were tied to the ones stumbling in New York.
European voices, Latin American voices, Japanese voices, voices from all over the world. All questioning the great American assumption. Can it really go on forever? Or, like Rome and everything else, is there a time when all things come to an end?
We can go back to our postwar assumptions at our peril. Or we can take a calculating look at our real situation and decide what policies will best protect us in a post imperial world. Rome wasn’t that smart. Britain appears to have been. Which will we be more like?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The Economy: When Falls Rome ...
Flushed with arrogance, ancient Romans inscribed on their Coliseum, “When falls the Coliseum, then falls Rome; when falls Rome, then falls all the world.” It was unimaginable to most Romans that an empire stretching from Babylon to London could ever fall. Because Rome had been the center of the world all of their lives—and for centuries before that—they made an assumption—that Rome would last forever.
Most of us alive today have lived in a worldwide American Empire that we cannot imagine falling either. We, too, have built our lives on an assumption—that this new society (built like Rome’s on the spoils of war) will continue as it is—a society and an economy founded on the premise that the affluent American middle class can only continue to thrive and grow.
In my lifetime, I have seen politicians and civil rights leaders challenge the distribution of that affluence. Others have challenged barriers that kept certain groups as outsiders. No one in my memory has EVER challenged the fundamental assumption that the American life style, that American prosperity is here to stay—until “falls all the world”.
We forget that for most of our history, we were far from a prosperous world empire. We owed everybody money. Life on our frontier was brutish and sometimes short. From Jamestown (1607) through the 1800s, we were a traditional society with a handful of very rich at the top, a relatively small class of the “middling sort” who made their living as artisans and professionals, and a larger group of laborers at the bottom.
Throughout the 1800s, the American factory workers tended to earn $6.00 for a 72 hour week. Since he couldn’t really live on that, his wife worked too—for an additional $1.75. His kids, older than ten, worked for $1.25 a week.
You almost might say Henry Ford began the creation of the huge modern middle class when he doubled the wages of his factory workers at a stroke. He had the wit to see that if they all went out and bought Fords it would make him even richer than he was.
The two very successful world wars made us creditors and holders of the majority of the world’s assets. I remember my dad telling me after World War II that we were six percent of the planet’s population, but we used 50% of its energy.
You could have said almost the same thing for money, manufactured goods (machines, TVs, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators—luxuries to the rest of humanity) and sheer military power. Between the wars had come Depression laws that enabled labor unions to fight for higher wages.
After the second big war, millions of G.I.s took college credit and bought homes with their veterans’ benefits. We were creating cadre to run our new empire. An empire it was! We seized British oil fields all over the Middle East; wherever a European Empire began to totter, we were there to gather in the dropping fruit.
In one of the most brilliant strokes of all, we launched the Marshall Plan which tied Europe and Japan tightly to us and our own economy. Their currencies were no longer backed by gold specie—but by stacks of American paper dollars.
This became true all over the planet—Latin America, Asia, Africa. When necessary we employed subversion (Guatemala and Iran). Occasionally we used force (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and Jordan). Like Rome, we were masters of our known universe. (Like Rome which fought an eternal hot and cold war with Parthia [Iran], we had the Soviet Union to keep us on our toes.)
With the exception of a few wicked folk like Castro, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh or Mao, decent people everywhere acknowledged the beneficence of our culture and our economy and the propriety of our ascendance. Like Rome we had brought peace and prosperity to the barbarian world outside our borders.
Such was our assumption. More tomorrow.
Most of us alive today have lived in a worldwide American Empire that we cannot imagine falling either. We, too, have built our lives on an assumption—that this new society (built like Rome’s on the spoils of war) will continue as it is—a society and an economy founded on the premise that the affluent American middle class can only continue to thrive and grow.
In my lifetime, I have seen politicians and civil rights leaders challenge the distribution of that affluence. Others have challenged barriers that kept certain groups as outsiders. No one in my memory has EVER challenged the fundamental assumption that the American life style, that American prosperity is here to stay—until “falls all the world”.
We forget that for most of our history, we were far from a prosperous world empire. We owed everybody money. Life on our frontier was brutish and sometimes short. From Jamestown (1607) through the 1800s, we were a traditional society with a handful of very rich at the top, a relatively small class of the “middling sort” who made their living as artisans and professionals, and a larger group of laborers at the bottom.
Throughout the 1800s, the American factory workers tended to earn $6.00 for a 72 hour week. Since he couldn’t really live on that, his wife worked too—for an additional $1.75. His kids, older than ten, worked for $1.25 a week.
You almost might say Henry Ford began the creation of the huge modern middle class when he doubled the wages of his factory workers at a stroke. He had the wit to see that if they all went out and bought Fords it would make him even richer than he was.
The two very successful world wars made us creditors and holders of the majority of the world’s assets. I remember my dad telling me after World War II that we were six percent of the planet’s population, but we used 50% of its energy.
You could have said almost the same thing for money, manufactured goods (machines, TVs, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators—luxuries to the rest of humanity) and sheer military power. Between the wars had come Depression laws that enabled labor unions to fight for higher wages.
After the second big war, millions of G.I.s took college credit and bought homes with their veterans’ benefits. We were creating cadre to run our new empire. An empire it was! We seized British oil fields all over the Middle East; wherever a European Empire began to totter, we were there to gather in the dropping fruit.
In one of the most brilliant strokes of all, we launched the Marshall Plan which tied Europe and Japan tightly to us and our own economy. Their currencies were no longer backed by gold specie—but by stacks of American paper dollars.
This became true all over the planet—Latin America, Asia, Africa. When necessary we employed subversion (Guatemala and Iran). Occasionally we used force (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and Jordan). Like Rome, we were masters of our known universe. (Like Rome which fought an eternal hot and cold war with Parthia [Iran], we had the Soviet Union to keep us on our toes.)
With the exception of a few wicked folk like Castro, Stalin, Ho Chi Minh or Mao, decent people everywhere acknowledged the beneficence of our culture and our economy and the propriety of our ascendance. Like Rome we had brought peace and prosperity to the barbarian world outside our borders.
Such was our assumption. More tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Economy: Is The Party Over Yet?
Dandy Don Meredith, one of the early commentators on Monday Night Football, used to start singing when the situation for one of the teams became hopeless, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over … .” Is it time to start singing that again?
It’s been—I will use the vernacular—one helluva party. There’s just no other way to describe it. Never before in human history has so much power been concentrated in the hands of one nation. The entire budget of the ancient Roman Empire was perhaps twenty to thirty million.
We spend that kind of money to improve a few highway ramps. Land that was top grade farm land only fifty years ago now stretches for miles and miles of malls, houses, streets and factories. I can show it to you in Grand Rapids, New York City, the area around Washington, and in New Jersey.
It’s true everywhere. If there were riots or embarrassing report cards for our schools, poor hospitals—we threw money at the problem. At all problems. We dropped more bombs on the southern half of Vietnam than we exploded in all of World War II. When we walked out, we left enough equipment behind to make the northern half a semi-world power for awhile.
Hitler launched his whole blitzkrieg offensive with only 2000 tanks. In the 1970s, the Pentagon mislaid 5,000 tanks in West Germany that it couldn’t find for awhile. We sent mission after mission to the moon—at vast cost and with no idea what to do once we got there.
If the Russians were going to launch Sputnik, we’d show them what real rocketeers could do—cost be hanged. Every plane, every submarine, every vehicle and rifle we designed had a cost overrun. So what—we were lottery winners after 1945, just dip into the bottomless cookie jar.
We spent some of the money wisely. Millions of G.I.s came home after the war able to buy houses. That set off a building boom a Nero or Nebuchadnezzar could only envy. What Caesar every put up as many buildings as the G.I. Bill.
Over two million ex-service men got college degrees. Millions more took classes. We went, overnight, from a nation where a high school was a rarity outside city limits to a land where college was expected by an enormous percentage of the populace, urban or rural.
The “middle class”, the realm of “salary men” and high paid blue collar workers, expanded at a rate and to a level never experienced before in any society in history. It all originated in those two cookie jars—World Wars One and Two. There was something new under the sun. The party raged on at levels never seen before outside of an oriental palace.
It became pure corporate welfare. “Clerks” who, in Bob Crochet’s London, had been paid a couple of shillings (twenty shillings to a pound and twelve pennies to a shilling) a week now pushed their papers in the bowels of enormous corporations for enough money to buy a home Scrooge might have envied. They got health insurance, vacations and pensions on top of it.
It all began with that cookie jar. When the cookie jar couldn’t come up with enough cash, we used our vast credit machinery to borrow—from ourselves, from every nation with a currency on the face of this earth. After all, we were the “Wall Street Imperialists”.
The time has come to look at the assumptions we made more than half a century ago about the new middle class and its permanency and start asking, What if it isn’t really so?
The cookie jar is empty. The credit rating looks less and less good as other nations become loath to buy any more of our bonds (read loan us more money). What if last fall was just a sharp reminder that sometimes parties really do come to an end?
Sometimes everything turns back into a pumpkin and mice. Only the glass slipper may be left. And then we may have to join Dandy Don. Will we have any idea what to do next?
It’s been—I will use the vernacular—one helluva party. There’s just no other way to describe it. Never before in human history has so much power been concentrated in the hands of one nation. The entire budget of the ancient Roman Empire was perhaps twenty to thirty million.
We spend that kind of money to improve a few highway ramps. Land that was top grade farm land only fifty years ago now stretches for miles and miles of malls, houses, streets and factories. I can show it to you in Grand Rapids, New York City, the area around Washington, and in New Jersey.
It’s true everywhere. If there were riots or embarrassing report cards for our schools, poor hospitals—we threw money at the problem. At all problems. We dropped more bombs on the southern half of Vietnam than we exploded in all of World War II. When we walked out, we left enough equipment behind to make the northern half a semi-world power for awhile.
Hitler launched his whole blitzkrieg offensive with only 2000 tanks. In the 1970s, the Pentagon mislaid 5,000 tanks in West Germany that it couldn’t find for awhile. We sent mission after mission to the moon—at vast cost and with no idea what to do once we got there.
If the Russians were going to launch Sputnik, we’d show them what real rocketeers could do—cost be hanged. Every plane, every submarine, every vehicle and rifle we designed had a cost overrun. So what—we were lottery winners after 1945, just dip into the bottomless cookie jar.
We spent some of the money wisely. Millions of G.I.s came home after the war able to buy houses. That set off a building boom a Nero or Nebuchadnezzar could only envy. What Caesar every put up as many buildings as the G.I. Bill.
Over two million ex-service men got college degrees. Millions more took classes. We went, overnight, from a nation where a high school was a rarity outside city limits to a land where college was expected by an enormous percentage of the populace, urban or rural.
The “middle class”, the realm of “salary men” and high paid blue collar workers, expanded at a rate and to a level never experienced before in any society in history. It all originated in those two cookie jars—World Wars One and Two. There was something new under the sun. The party raged on at levels never seen before outside of an oriental palace.
It became pure corporate welfare. “Clerks” who, in Bob Crochet’s London, had been paid a couple of shillings (twenty shillings to a pound and twelve pennies to a shilling) a week now pushed their papers in the bowels of enormous corporations for enough money to buy a home Scrooge might have envied. They got health insurance, vacations and pensions on top of it.
It all began with that cookie jar. When the cookie jar couldn’t come up with enough cash, we used our vast credit machinery to borrow—from ourselves, from every nation with a currency on the face of this earth. After all, we were the “Wall Street Imperialists”.
The time has come to look at the assumptions we made more than half a century ago about the new middle class and its permanency and start asking, What if it isn’t really so?
The cookie jar is empty. The credit rating looks less and less good as other nations become loath to buy any more of our bonds (read loan us more money). What if last fall was just a sharp reminder that sometimes parties really do come to an end?
Sometimes everything turns back into a pumpkin and mice. Only the glass slipper may be left. And then we may have to join Dandy Don. Will we have any idea what to do next?
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Economy: Something New Under The Sun
One of the most often quoted verses from the Bible is, “There is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 Lots of folks don’t know they’re quoting biblical writ.) But once in a great, great while something that sure looks new comes along.
At least it seems unusual enough that we don’t know how to deal with it, why it’s happening or whether it is ultimately real or not. That happened to the United States in 1945. Politically we went into a state of nervous shock, hysteria to the point of mental breakdown.
Sociologically we began tossing out norms that had been with us since the early Seventeenth Century—on race, to start with. A civil rights movement that would have been unimaginable before we discovered Hitler’s death camps rose to divide us violently.
Geopolitically we went from being a nation with a very small military, snuggled in the bosom of an imperial British fleet (we went through most of the Eighteenth Century with no more than about seven thousand cavalry troops and no navy to speak of.
As late as 1916, a French general could sneer, “We lose more men before breakfast each morning than you have in your entire army.” Suddenly, in 1945, like a Caesarian birth we were ripped out of our snug womb. The British fleet that had made our tiny military possible was gone.
We were exposed to the world. Britain’s century long feud with Russia was suddenly our feud. Recreating a viable but PEACEFUL Europe and Japan was OUR responsibility—alone. Many historians have looked at these factors, but how many have looked at what happened to us economically?
World War I took us from the status of debtor nation to creditor to the world. (Not being able to handle that reality very much led to the Crash of 1929.) World War II was like walking into a casino, plunking a single dollar into a one armed bandit and suddenly finding ourselves covered with uncountable billions in cash.
Never in all of human history has one nation won so total and world-wide a victory. Never. The other winners? France was covered with humiliation and confusion. China was wracked with corruption and civil war. Britain was penniless with an empire collapsing under her. Russia? Imagine the United States with EVERYTHING east of the Mississippi burnt to the ground, about 30 million casualties to bury and millions more to tend.
Every other industrialized nation was a wasteland of shattered and ruined industrial plants. Britain, which had escaped occupation, had for five years built ALL of its new factories in the continental United States—out of bombing range. British war rationing would continue until 1960.
We were unbombed. We had relatively few casualties. Anyone who wanted to build or rebuild just about anything was going to have to buy it from us. We had almost uncountable cash reserves to fund this rebuilding—which our factories would carry out.
We spent that money—in many cases relatively wisely. Japan thrives today. Germany has one of the most powerful economies in Europe. London and Paris are centers of world banking. China spent decades in non-threatening isolation. All of this made individual Americans rich.
All of this frantic financial activity (Note the Communists never called us the “Washington Imperialists” or the “Atomic Bomb Imperialists”—they called us the “Wall Street Imperialists”. They understood us better than we did.) The enhanced dollar became the real world power.
It enabled us to rule much of the planet—and reap the produce of that planet—while, at the same time, using the loot and booty of war to enrich our citizenry to a level unimagined by any previous human empire. Did we ever stop to think that this wealth was finite, that we could run out of someday? No, we began to accept it as our prerogative.
Let’s take a closer look at what went on domestically tomorrow.
At least it seems unusual enough that we don’t know how to deal with it, why it’s happening or whether it is ultimately real or not. That happened to the United States in 1945. Politically we went into a state of nervous shock, hysteria to the point of mental breakdown.
Sociologically we began tossing out norms that had been with us since the early Seventeenth Century—on race, to start with. A civil rights movement that would have been unimaginable before we discovered Hitler’s death camps rose to divide us violently.
Geopolitically we went from being a nation with a very small military, snuggled in the bosom of an imperial British fleet (we went through most of the Eighteenth Century with no more than about seven thousand cavalry troops and no navy to speak of.
As late as 1916, a French general could sneer, “We lose more men before breakfast each morning than you have in your entire army.” Suddenly, in 1945, like a Caesarian birth we were ripped out of our snug womb. The British fleet that had made our tiny military possible was gone.
We were exposed to the world. Britain’s century long feud with Russia was suddenly our feud. Recreating a viable but PEACEFUL Europe and Japan was OUR responsibility—alone. Many historians have looked at these factors, but how many have looked at what happened to us economically?
World War I took us from the status of debtor nation to creditor to the world. (Not being able to handle that reality very much led to the Crash of 1929.) World War II was like walking into a casino, plunking a single dollar into a one armed bandit and suddenly finding ourselves covered with uncountable billions in cash.
Never in all of human history has one nation won so total and world-wide a victory. Never. The other winners? France was covered with humiliation and confusion. China was wracked with corruption and civil war. Britain was penniless with an empire collapsing under her. Russia? Imagine the United States with EVERYTHING east of the Mississippi burnt to the ground, about 30 million casualties to bury and millions more to tend.
Every other industrialized nation was a wasteland of shattered and ruined industrial plants. Britain, which had escaped occupation, had for five years built ALL of its new factories in the continental United States—out of bombing range. British war rationing would continue until 1960.
We were unbombed. We had relatively few casualties. Anyone who wanted to build or rebuild just about anything was going to have to buy it from us. We had almost uncountable cash reserves to fund this rebuilding—which our factories would carry out.
We spent that money—in many cases relatively wisely. Japan thrives today. Germany has one of the most powerful economies in Europe. London and Paris are centers of world banking. China spent decades in non-threatening isolation. All of this made individual Americans rich.
All of this frantic financial activity (Note the Communists never called us the “Washington Imperialists” or the “Atomic Bomb Imperialists”—they called us the “Wall Street Imperialists”. They understood us better than we did.) The enhanced dollar became the real world power.
It enabled us to rule much of the planet—and reap the produce of that planet—while, at the same time, using the loot and booty of war to enrich our citizenry to a level unimagined by any previous human empire. Did we ever stop to think that this wealth was finite, that we could run out of someday? No, we began to accept it as our prerogative.
Let’s take a closer look at what went on domestically tomorrow.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Economy -- Is It Real? Was It Ever?
Let’s do a little speculating—using the mind, not the online stock broker. It’s the sort of thing done best with the TV turned off and the music down low. It involves doing the sort of thing students are most desperate to avoid in school—thinking.
In all known historical societies (and in most contemporary ones) the economic breakdown has gone pretty much as follows: a top tier of rarely more than, often not as much as, five percent which controls much of the society’s assets.
Next comes an affluent tier made up of managers, very skilled artisans, scientists, priests and bureaucrats who may live paycheck to paycheck, but do so at a relatively high level. In contemporary American terms they can afford homes up to a million dollars and drive BMWs. The Japanese have a nice term for them: “salary men”.
Below that comes a vast manufacturing/service/servant (even slave) class. They live from payday to payday, at a much lower level—in Nineteenth Century America they worked for a dollar a day, six days a week for decades. They control few if any important assets. It is from this class that Muslim extremists are able to recruit their suicide bombers.
American society reflected this three tier society quite accurately from 1776 until the 1940s, with a slowly growing affluent class—as logically followed the growth of our economy as a whole. Then, in the late ‘40s and the 1950s there was a sudden BUMP in that middle group.
Literally millions joined it. Home ownership exploded—from the 800 foot Levittown bungalows to the ever more pretentious half million and three quarter million tract homes of Las Vegas and suburban Los Angeles.
People who for millennia would have been considered as being among the lowest, semi-slave orders of society suddenly made enough money to buy four bedroom homes, two cars, a camper and a couple of snowmobiles. Everyone had at least one TV, a stereo and, by now, a computer.
We proclaimed to the world that we had invented a whole new middle class—one that everyone in society could aspire to join. A gentleman’s college degree became almost a civil right. (When I was in college, an amused medieval scholar pointed out to me that in modern America, college degrees had replaced traditional medieval social distinctions.
In place of Serfs, there were the non-degreed. For Knights we had baccalaureates, for the lower levels of the nobility [Barons and Baronet’s] we had the master’s degree. For Dukes and Counts we had Doctors of Philosophy and Medicine. As soon, as you become entitled to an academic robe, with or without sleeves, you join the modern nobility. You are a Peer in this society.)
All of which gave you a ticket (in most of the last half of the Twentieth Century) to the modern equivalent of a landed estate—a guaranteed salary at a large corporation that could allow you to live better than most medieval nobility, with superb benefits and a luxurious retirement.
We proclaimed that this new and all inclusive society (in wave after wave of civil rights movements, blacks, Hispanics and women demanded their place at the table) constituted a new order of things, that it represented a permanent change in the historical order of human existance—that the new middle class was here forever.
WHAT IF THAT ASSUMPTION WAS WRONG? What if what happened in America and Europe for the fifty to seventy-five years after World War II was merely a momentary blip caused by a unique set of circumstances that could not and have not lasted?
Let’s start tomorrow by looking at the circumstances and forces that came into play in 1945. That may help us get a handle on the future.
In all known historical societies (and in most contemporary ones) the economic breakdown has gone pretty much as follows: a top tier of rarely more than, often not as much as, five percent which controls much of the society’s assets.
Next comes an affluent tier made up of managers, very skilled artisans, scientists, priests and bureaucrats who may live paycheck to paycheck, but do so at a relatively high level. In contemporary American terms they can afford homes up to a million dollars and drive BMWs. The Japanese have a nice term for them: “salary men”.
Below that comes a vast manufacturing/service/servant (even slave) class. They live from payday to payday, at a much lower level—in Nineteenth Century America they worked for a dollar a day, six days a week for decades. They control few if any important assets. It is from this class that Muslim extremists are able to recruit their suicide bombers.
American society reflected this three tier society quite accurately from 1776 until the 1940s, with a slowly growing affluent class—as logically followed the growth of our economy as a whole. Then, in the late ‘40s and the 1950s there was a sudden BUMP in that middle group.
Literally millions joined it. Home ownership exploded—from the 800 foot Levittown bungalows to the ever more pretentious half million and three quarter million tract homes of Las Vegas and suburban Los Angeles.
People who for millennia would have been considered as being among the lowest, semi-slave orders of society suddenly made enough money to buy four bedroom homes, two cars, a camper and a couple of snowmobiles. Everyone had at least one TV, a stereo and, by now, a computer.
We proclaimed to the world that we had invented a whole new middle class—one that everyone in society could aspire to join. A gentleman’s college degree became almost a civil right. (When I was in college, an amused medieval scholar pointed out to me that in modern America, college degrees had replaced traditional medieval social distinctions.
In place of Serfs, there were the non-degreed. For Knights we had baccalaureates, for the lower levels of the nobility [Barons and Baronet’s] we had the master’s degree. For Dukes and Counts we had Doctors of Philosophy and Medicine. As soon, as you become entitled to an academic robe, with or without sleeves, you join the modern nobility. You are a Peer in this society.)
All of which gave you a ticket (in most of the last half of the Twentieth Century) to the modern equivalent of a landed estate—a guaranteed salary at a large corporation that could allow you to live better than most medieval nobility, with superb benefits and a luxurious retirement.
We proclaimed that this new and all inclusive society (in wave after wave of civil rights movements, blacks, Hispanics and women demanded their place at the table) constituted a new order of things, that it represented a permanent change in the historical order of human existance—that the new middle class was here forever.
WHAT IF THAT ASSUMPTION WAS WRONG? What if what happened in America and Europe for the fifty to seventy-five years after World War II was merely a momentary blip caused by a unique set of circumstances that could not and have not lasted?
Let’s start tomorrow by looking at the circumstances and forces that came into play in 1945. That may help us get a handle on the future.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
The Economy: The Fat Lady Ain't Sung Yet
After a busy day we decided to go out for a bite to eat. We chose a once busy center anchored by a Walmart and a Sam’s Club. A couple of years ago it had a Ruby Tuesdays, an Old Country Buffet, a Fazzoli’s and an Applebee’s.
Target has moved out of the center; Circuit City has died. Ruby Tuesdays has closed, as has Old Country Buffet. Fazzoli’s has cut their portions and their quality to the point that I don’t think there were more than five or six patron’s cars parked there all evening. We don’t go anymore.
That left Applebee’s. Two dinners for twenty bucks wasn’t bad. (There’s a rainbow to every market crash.) It was Saturday night—once a busy night in west Michigan. As we sat, we started to count the empty tables. Three this way, four that way and so on.
Applebee’s was making money. (Exactly how much on two dinners for twenty dollars—which most tables seemed to be ordering—I cannot say. I’m sure it’s not a profit margin that pleases headquarters terribly.) But, I kept asking myself, what if the other two restaurants were still open? Would any of them be making a dime?
This is not an isolated incident. I could name other restaurants that have closed up in this part of the state. (Even a “Little Caesar’s Pizza” outlet that’s been open for decades near my house shut down in the past month or so.) Empty store fronts are blooming everywhere.
National Christmas shopping forecasts suggest a retail season that promises to be even worse than last year’s. An article I saw the other week warned shoppers not to wait to the last minute hoping that prices will be cut some more—this year, retailers simply aren’t ordering all that much.
I know of three houses in my neighborhood that have sold this summer/fall. One was a short sale (the bank forgave part of the mortgage); in the second, the seller underwrote the down payment out his own pocket; in the third—a house that was purchased nearly twenty years ago—the seller got out of it the bare minimum he needed to pay off the mortgage.
To me this is in no way a clear sign of recovery. Right now the Federal money being pumped in to the economy is acting as life support. What happens when that plug is pulled? Remember 1937? FDR’s infusion of “bailout money” had brought things back by 1936.
Being an innately conservative man, Roosevelt cut back on Federal spending that year. Pop—right back to full scale Depression levels. It finally took Hitler and the Japanese to bail us out permanently. So what will happened in 2011 or '12? (Maybe the Aztec calendar was written for the American stock exchanges?)
Speaking of the stock market. It’s having a mini-boom. Just like it did in the spring after the Crash of 1929. We’ve gone from over 14,000 to under 7,000 and now back to nearly 10,000—all in the space of two or three years.
More and more pundits, business writers and economists are looking at the DOW, the NASDAQ, and STANDARD & POORS, and wondering what on earth is holding them up. It sure isn’t the business at Walmart corners here in western Michigan, I’ll tell you.
Nor is it the real estate market. Or the employment rate. Or family earnings (down in absolute dollars since the 1970s—even for those who are working). As I drove past the shuttered Circuit City and Target store fronts—as I sat looking at the empty tables in Applebee’s, eating my two for twenty dollars dinner—I had to say it certainly isn’t anything happening here.
Do we stand by for the next exciting episode? Or do we just wait and hope Applebee’s will get so busy they have to reopen the restaurant across the street? Yogi Berra maybe didn’t actually say it, but he could’ve—“It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings”.
I don’t even see her on stage yet.
Target has moved out of the center; Circuit City has died. Ruby Tuesdays has closed, as has Old Country Buffet. Fazzoli’s has cut their portions and their quality to the point that I don’t think there were more than five or six patron’s cars parked there all evening. We don’t go anymore.
That left Applebee’s. Two dinners for twenty bucks wasn’t bad. (There’s a rainbow to every market crash.) It was Saturday night—once a busy night in west Michigan. As we sat, we started to count the empty tables. Three this way, four that way and so on.
Applebee’s was making money. (Exactly how much on two dinners for twenty dollars—which most tables seemed to be ordering—I cannot say. I’m sure it’s not a profit margin that pleases headquarters terribly.) But, I kept asking myself, what if the other two restaurants were still open? Would any of them be making a dime?
This is not an isolated incident. I could name other restaurants that have closed up in this part of the state. (Even a “Little Caesar’s Pizza” outlet that’s been open for decades near my house shut down in the past month or so.) Empty store fronts are blooming everywhere.
National Christmas shopping forecasts suggest a retail season that promises to be even worse than last year’s. An article I saw the other week warned shoppers not to wait to the last minute hoping that prices will be cut some more—this year, retailers simply aren’t ordering all that much.
I know of three houses in my neighborhood that have sold this summer/fall. One was a short sale (the bank forgave part of the mortgage); in the second, the seller underwrote the down payment out his own pocket; in the third—a house that was purchased nearly twenty years ago—the seller got out of it the bare minimum he needed to pay off the mortgage.
To me this is in no way a clear sign of recovery. Right now the Federal money being pumped in to the economy is acting as life support. What happens when that plug is pulled? Remember 1937? FDR’s infusion of “bailout money” had brought things back by 1936.
Being an innately conservative man, Roosevelt cut back on Federal spending that year. Pop—right back to full scale Depression levels. It finally took Hitler and the Japanese to bail us out permanently. So what will happened in 2011 or '12? (Maybe the Aztec calendar was written for the American stock exchanges?)
Speaking of the stock market. It’s having a mini-boom. Just like it did in the spring after the Crash of 1929. We’ve gone from over 14,000 to under 7,000 and now back to nearly 10,000—all in the space of two or three years.
More and more pundits, business writers and economists are looking at the DOW, the NASDAQ, and STANDARD & POORS, and wondering what on earth is holding them up. It sure isn’t the business at Walmart corners here in western Michigan, I’ll tell you.
Nor is it the real estate market. Or the employment rate. Or family earnings (down in absolute dollars since the 1970s—even for those who are working). As I drove past the shuttered Circuit City and Target store fronts—as I sat looking at the empty tables in Applebee’s, eating my two for twenty dollars dinner—I had to say it certainly isn’t anything happening here.
Do we stand by for the next exciting episode? Or do we just wait and hope Applebee’s will get so busy they have to reopen the restaurant across the street? Yogi Berra maybe didn’t actually say it, but he could’ve—“It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings”.
I don’t even see her on stage yet.
Friday, October 9, 2009
A nobel Peace Prize For Obama?
Talk about debasing the coin of the realm! I’m aware that the criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize are a bit nebulous—and the array of eligible achievements is quite broad, but shouldn’t there be SOMETHING substantive that the recipient has accomplished?
Other than get elected to office? This becomes an especially pertinent question when you consider that the closing date for the nomination is February 1st—ten days after Mr. Obama took office. All he had done at that point was win an election and make a few speeches.
(Frankly, if you compare Obama to an actor or a good orator, his speeches are wooden, without emotion.) I am, as I have written, well aware of the mountain of problems Obama faced when he took office. He staved off eminent ECONOMIC collapse for the moment—the jury is still out on whether his fix will prove to be permanent.
He drew down forces in Iraq—but he did not END the war or bring any serious sort of peace to that politically artificial entity (created by Churchill in 1921 to save Britain money in administrating her new imperial territory obtained after World War I). Too early for a peace prize there.
Afghanistan has heated up considerably since he took office. You don’t win a peace prize for doubling the number killed in a year (however worthy the cause—neither Roosevelt, Stalin nor Churchill won the award for fighting World War II).
He got the Palestinian and Israeli prime ministers to shake hands as he glared down at them—one handshake does not merit a peace prize. There is honestly no sign that he has brought resolution to the ancient American domestic racial divide—except in some symbolic way.
Iran continues to build nuclear weapons; North Korea fires its missiles. We’re still breaking up terrorists rings that are trying to do us mischief. Venezuela’s Chavez spews hatred and imprisons his opponents. The drug wars on the Mexican frontier go on apace.
The savage political infighting between conservatives and Roosevelt liberals seems only to intensify in this country—and no person who understands the health care issues in America is sanguine about the bill that is likely to emerge from Congress this fall.
What therefore has President Obama DONE so far? “Holding the lid on”, keeping his balance so far on a jiggling tight rope may show political talent, but is it Nobel class achievement? I suspect that this year’s prize was actually given for a far different reason than any kind of accomplishment.
It almost seems the Nobel Peace Prize judges were saying, “Mr. Bush was such a nasty man and you, Mr. Obama, seem so much nicer, we are going to award you our highest honor for just not being Bush.
On that basis, Nikita Khrushchev (who seemed much nicer than the Stalin he replaced) or Admiral Doenitz (who took over Nazi Germany for the week after Hitler died—and was far nicer) should have won the Peace Prize. No more ludicrous than giving it to Obama for not being Bush.
Teddy Roosevelt won it for actually stopping a war between Russia and Japan. Jimmy Carter won one after decades of being a world class good dobe. Ralph Bunche won for negotiating a cease fire between Israel and five nations that had attacked it. These are significant and REAL achievements.
So are the achievements of Peace Prize winners Jane Addams (Hull House, Annville Institute), the efforts of Dag Hammarskjold, George Marshall (Marshall Plan), Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mendela, Albert Schweitzer, Cordell Hull (primer mover in founding the UN), and even the duo of Sadat and Began.
When we look at Obama’s accomplishments so far, we an only echo the little old lady in the 1980s hamburger commercial—“Where’s the meat?”
Other than get elected to office? This becomes an especially pertinent question when you consider that the closing date for the nomination is February 1st—ten days after Mr. Obama took office. All he had done at that point was win an election and make a few speeches.
(Frankly, if you compare Obama to an actor or a good orator, his speeches are wooden, without emotion.) I am, as I have written, well aware of the mountain of problems Obama faced when he took office. He staved off eminent ECONOMIC collapse for the moment—the jury is still out on whether his fix will prove to be permanent.
He drew down forces in Iraq—but he did not END the war or bring any serious sort of peace to that politically artificial entity (created by Churchill in 1921 to save Britain money in administrating her new imperial territory obtained after World War I). Too early for a peace prize there.
Afghanistan has heated up considerably since he took office. You don’t win a peace prize for doubling the number killed in a year (however worthy the cause—neither Roosevelt, Stalin nor Churchill won the award for fighting World War II).
He got the Palestinian and Israeli prime ministers to shake hands as he glared down at them—one handshake does not merit a peace prize. There is honestly no sign that he has brought resolution to the ancient American domestic racial divide—except in some symbolic way.
Iran continues to build nuclear weapons; North Korea fires its missiles. We’re still breaking up terrorists rings that are trying to do us mischief. Venezuela’s Chavez spews hatred and imprisons his opponents. The drug wars on the Mexican frontier go on apace.
The savage political infighting between conservatives and Roosevelt liberals seems only to intensify in this country—and no person who understands the health care issues in America is sanguine about the bill that is likely to emerge from Congress this fall.
What therefore has President Obama DONE so far? “Holding the lid on”, keeping his balance so far on a jiggling tight rope may show political talent, but is it Nobel class achievement? I suspect that this year’s prize was actually given for a far different reason than any kind of accomplishment.
It almost seems the Nobel Peace Prize judges were saying, “Mr. Bush was such a nasty man and you, Mr. Obama, seem so much nicer, we are going to award you our highest honor for just not being Bush.
On that basis, Nikita Khrushchev (who seemed much nicer than the Stalin he replaced) or Admiral Doenitz (who took over Nazi Germany for the week after Hitler died—and was far nicer) should have won the Peace Prize. No more ludicrous than giving it to Obama for not being Bush.
Teddy Roosevelt won it for actually stopping a war between Russia and Japan. Jimmy Carter won one after decades of being a world class good dobe. Ralph Bunche won for negotiating a cease fire between Israel and five nations that had attacked it. These are significant and REAL achievements.
So are the achievements of Peace Prize winners Jane Addams (Hull House, Annville Institute), the efforts of Dag Hammarskjold, George Marshall (Marshall Plan), Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mendela, Albert Schweitzer, Cordell Hull (primer mover in founding the UN), and even the duo of Sadat and Began.
When we look at Obama’s accomplishments so far, we an only echo the little old lady in the 1980s hamburger commercial—“Where’s the meat?”
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Economy: Good News If It Weren't So Bad
It’s sort of fun to read business news these days. On one page of this week’s “BusinessWeek” we’re told that the coming recovery is going to be soon—and it will meet our most optimistic projections and hopes—up, up and away!
A few pages on and we are told that the housing market is unlikely to recover anytime soon. A third of all mortgages are still underwater (the homeowner owes more than he can sell for). We are further told that this number will probably keep rising.
Furthermore, we learn, banks are becoming less and less willing to accept short sales. This means that your bank (or mortgage holder) is beginning to refuse to forgive the amount you still owe when you sell. Since around 15% of all sales have been short sales, that’s a significant change.
Banks increasingly demand promissory notes (IOUs that say you still owe the money you couldn’t get out of the house) or even cash up front. Distressed buyers certainly cannot manage that. Banks are in some cases making the short sale market go away by taking months longer to give a decision.
After four months or more the prospective buyer is very likely to walk away. This leaves the beleaguered (often unemployed or under employed) owner with no choice but to hang on as he misses more and more payments, owes more and more back taxes.
That can add up quickly—as he teeters closer to foreclosure and possible bankruptcy. As the article points out, in days when banks couldn’t meet payroll, they took any money they could get. Now that things are a bit better, they want their full pound of flesh. (To add to all the money the government gave them?)
Another article tells me that airlines are in much better shape. They are making pots of gold by charging for pillows, luggage, food, use of certain credit cards and check in service. Another bit says TV execs are getting worried that we’re changing channels because commercials start before we’re hooked. They might double the time until the first commercial—from 8 to 15 minutes.
The President of Brazil (whose country is doing very nicely right now) faults US banks for having “no parameters on leveraging loans”. He says our banks were, in effect, lending money out that they didn’t have. But Mergers and Acquisitions are back (those guys haven’t been working much for a year). That makes a lot of people happy.
The stock market is booming. The DOW got so excited over new merger activity that it shot up 124 points in a day late in September. A law professor writes a column in which he points out that the market came back 90% after the Crash of ’29. (Spring 1930)
He could have gone on to mention that three years later, our GNP was down 50% and our entire banking sector had flat lined. Several prominent fund managers are quoted as saying that the market today is overdue for a “correction”. Read: down, down, down.
But a small electronics chain has done well by leaping into the gap left by the bankruptcy of Circuit City last winter. Oh, and another article assures us the nation of Turkey is doing much better handling this recession than it did the last few.
It’s like flying without an altimeter. Are we upside up or upside down? I keep remembering an old frontier ballad that contained the line, “Sun so hot I froze to death.” In any case, don’t cry, Suzanna—I come from New York City with my broker’s chit on my knee.
A few pages on and we are told that the housing market is unlikely to recover anytime soon. A third of all mortgages are still underwater (the homeowner owes more than he can sell for). We are further told that this number will probably keep rising.
Furthermore, we learn, banks are becoming less and less willing to accept short sales. This means that your bank (or mortgage holder) is beginning to refuse to forgive the amount you still owe when you sell. Since around 15% of all sales have been short sales, that’s a significant change.
Banks increasingly demand promissory notes (IOUs that say you still owe the money you couldn’t get out of the house) or even cash up front. Distressed buyers certainly cannot manage that. Banks are in some cases making the short sale market go away by taking months longer to give a decision.
After four months or more the prospective buyer is very likely to walk away. This leaves the beleaguered (often unemployed or under employed) owner with no choice but to hang on as he misses more and more payments, owes more and more back taxes.
That can add up quickly—as he teeters closer to foreclosure and possible bankruptcy. As the article points out, in days when banks couldn’t meet payroll, they took any money they could get. Now that things are a bit better, they want their full pound of flesh. (To add to all the money the government gave them?)
Another article tells me that airlines are in much better shape. They are making pots of gold by charging for pillows, luggage, food, use of certain credit cards and check in service. Another bit says TV execs are getting worried that we’re changing channels because commercials start before we’re hooked. They might double the time until the first commercial—from 8 to 15 minutes.
The President of Brazil (whose country is doing very nicely right now) faults US banks for having “no parameters on leveraging loans”. He says our banks were, in effect, lending money out that they didn’t have. But Mergers and Acquisitions are back (those guys haven’t been working much for a year). That makes a lot of people happy.
The stock market is booming. The DOW got so excited over new merger activity that it shot up 124 points in a day late in September. A law professor writes a column in which he points out that the market came back 90% after the Crash of ’29. (Spring 1930)
He could have gone on to mention that three years later, our GNP was down 50% and our entire banking sector had flat lined. Several prominent fund managers are quoted as saying that the market today is overdue for a “correction”. Read: down, down, down.
But a small electronics chain has done well by leaping into the gap left by the bankruptcy of Circuit City last winter. Oh, and another article assures us the nation of Turkey is doing much better handling this recession than it did the last few.
It’s like flying without an altimeter. Are we upside up or upside down? I keep remembering an old frontier ballad that contained the line, “Sun so hot I froze to death.” In any case, don’t cry, Suzanna—I come from New York City with my broker’s chit on my knee.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Walking Out Of Afghanistan
In the early 1970s, Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont is reputed to have suggested that we resolve the unpopular war in Vietnam by having all our troops shout, “We win!” And then run for the boats. Is that the model we want for Afghanistan?
Remember, the Vietnamese hadn’t done anything to us or even threatened us. Ho Chi Minh adored the Declaration of Independence and he’d tried to be friends with both Wilson and Truman. Even as an enemy he had no ability to damage any part of the United States.
When we did finally pull out of Vietnam (quite unilaterally), no one blew up any buildings in the US or in the cities of our allies. We were just as safe after that war as we were before it. (This begs the question of what we were doing there in the first place—and I can offer no better answer than Temporary Insanity.) Will we be safe if we walk away from Afghanistan?
People trained in Afghanistan—and working with the blessing of the people who are killing our troops now—have already blown up a couple of landmark buildings in New York. They left us a couple thousand dead civilians, and they keep talking about doing it again.
Unlike the Vietnamese, who were willing to be our friends before the war and are perfectly content to be friendly afterwards, Afghanistan contains some real enemies. One reason they haven’t blown up any more American buildings may be that we are keeping them too well occupied fighting us at home. Do we really want to stop—and free them up to do more mischief here?
When Obama meets with his generals over the next few weeks, he has a whole lot of issues to consider that I’m very glad I’m not facing. He is losing support at home—and that makes fighting a war exceedingly hard indeed. A lot of Americans simply want out.
We are fighting in execrable terrain that the enemy knows well. We are hunched up against the borders of some enemy dominated provinces in Pakistan that they can hide in and we cannot pursue. NOBODY over there really likes us.
Our often stated goals of turning Afghanistan into a democratic nation are looking more and more unattainable as the bombs go off. Elections are, if anything, more crooked than our city ballots were under the days of the worst machines. “Nation building”? In Afghanistan? Only if you believe “creation ex nihilo” is an ongoing phenomenon.
It appears that we can neither fish nor cut bait. If we stay, they kill some of us there. If we leave, they come here and kill some of us. Talk about “no win”. If we don’t shoot back, they get bolder. If we shoot back we often hit civilians (who may well be just as much our enemies as the chaps with guns) and are excoriated for killing “innocents”.
Is it possible that we are working from the wrong playbook? During the Indian wars and the Civil War we worked from the strategic point of view that killing and starving lots of civilians would eventually damage the enemy war effort. When they finally quit, Lee’s men hadn’t eaten in days. The Indians were finally forced to come to us for government issue food.
Perhaps we should forget about democracy in Afghanistan and nation building—and just concentrate on making sure no one survives to blow any of us up. Churchill looked at the ruins of London during the blitz and said to the Germans, “You do your worst and we shall do our best.” Our best eventually came to killing up to half-million German women and children in a single raid.
Maybe a workable third alternative in Afghanistan will be a more ruthless version of older strategies. After all, these are enemies. The village “civilians” are not picking up weapons to fight on our side. Perhaps we should leave a small, picked group of special forces types (with, unlike now, enough helicopters in hand for rapid deployment missions) and bring the nation builders home.
Should we make it clear that we are only there to destroy radicals and their silent partners who want to hurt us? And that we will do it—as we did in the 1800s and the 1940s—without pity. After we have convinced them of our intentions—and killed enough—we can sit down and talk?
Horrible as this third alternative sounds, somebody show me how either of the others will work. I don’t see it. I don’t hear Obama talking like he does either. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes war is a very, very, very messy and nasty business. God help us. And them.
Remember, the Vietnamese hadn’t done anything to us or even threatened us. Ho Chi Minh adored the Declaration of Independence and he’d tried to be friends with both Wilson and Truman. Even as an enemy he had no ability to damage any part of the United States.
When we did finally pull out of Vietnam (quite unilaterally), no one blew up any buildings in the US or in the cities of our allies. We were just as safe after that war as we were before it. (This begs the question of what we were doing there in the first place—and I can offer no better answer than Temporary Insanity.) Will we be safe if we walk away from Afghanistan?
People trained in Afghanistan—and working with the blessing of the people who are killing our troops now—have already blown up a couple of landmark buildings in New York. They left us a couple thousand dead civilians, and they keep talking about doing it again.
Unlike the Vietnamese, who were willing to be our friends before the war and are perfectly content to be friendly afterwards, Afghanistan contains some real enemies. One reason they haven’t blown up any more American buildings may be that we are keeping them too well occupied fighting us at home. Do we really want to stop—and free them up to do more mischief here?
When Obama meets with his generals over the next few weeks, he has a whole lot of issues to consider that I’m very glad I’m not facing. He is losing support at home—and that makes fighting a war exceedingly hard indeed. A lot of Americans simply want out.
We are fighting in execrable terrain that the enemy knows well. We are hunched up against the borders of some enemy dominated provinces in Pakistan that they can hide in and we cannot pursue. NOBODY over there really likes us.
Our often stated goals of turning Afghanistan into a democratic nation are looking more and more unattainable as the bombs go off. Elections are, if anything, more crooked than our city ballots were under the days of the worst machines. “Nation building”? In Afghanistan? Only if you believe “creation ex nihilo” is an ongoing phenomenon.
It appears that we can neither fish nor cut bait. If we stay, they kill some of us there. If we leave, they come here and kill some of us. Talk about “no win”. If we don’t shoot back, they get bolder. If we shoot back we often hit civilians (who may well be just as much our enemies as the chaps with guns) and are excoriated for killing “innocents”.
Is it possible that we are working from the wrong playbook? During the Indian wars and the Civil War we worked from the strategic point of view that killing and starving lots of civilians would eventually damage the enemy war effort. When they finally quit, Lee’s men hadn’t eaten in days. The Indians were finally forced to come to us for government issue food.
Perhaps we should forget about democracy in Afghanistan and nation building—and just concentrate on making sure no one survives to blow any of us up. Churchill looked at the ruins of London during the blitz and said to the Germans, “You do your worst and we shall do our best.” Our best eventually came to killing up to half-million German women and children in a single raid.
Maybe a workable third alternative in Afghanistan will be a more ruthless version of older strategies. After all, these are enemies. The village “civilians” are not picking up weapons to fight on our side. Perhaps we should leave a small, picked group of special forces types (with, unlike now, enough helicopters in hand for rapid deployment missions) and bring the nation builders home.
Should we make it clear that we are only there to destroy radicals and their silent partners who want to hurt us? And that we will do it—as we did in the 1800s and the 1940s—without pity. After we have convinced them of our intentions—and killed enough—we can sit down and talk?
Horrible as this third alternative sounds, somebody show me how either of the others will work. I don’t see it. I don’t hear Obama talking like he does either. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes war is a very, very, very messy and nasty business. God help us. And them.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Politicians Reflect US
Yes they do. I was reminded of that fact after writing yesterday’s blog—which attempted to answer all the people out there who consider the men and women who actually govern this nation to be “blood sucking parasites”.
Democracy—and, admittedly, its attendant woes of political maneuver, shenanigans and outright corruption—cannot long exist without a fundamentally responsible citizenry to vote and be governed. Take that out of the equation and democracy collapses.
Remember, politicians are drawn from the body of citizens whom they govern. They are nothing more than you or me elected to public office. When we look at George Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama, we are looking at ourselves. What we choose—be it clothing, movies, friends or politicians--reflects on us. We are what we eat—we are what we choose.
Their morals are our morals. Their corrupt behavior is our behavior. If they are wasteful and greedy, they mirror the rest of us. (Maybe that’s why we get so angry with them—few people like what they see in a looking glass.)
If there is a scoundrel in Congress—who elected him or her? He was your neighbor when you voted for him; he still is. Democracy is absolutely premised on the existence of a responsible and ethical citizenry. Civic virtue—or wickedness—does not originate in government—but rather among the governed.
Yes, democracies can fold up and collapse. When there is a failure of virtue in the people, they must be governed more harshly than democracy will permit. An unbridled populace cannot be permitted to make its own rules to suit its own whims. That way, as history so amply shows us, lies chaos, evil choices and, finally, death.
If the governors have become unbridled and dangerously whimsical (“blood sucking parasites”), whom then do they reflect? If our politicians have indeed become unethical and irresponsible, it is a fair question to ask: How close are we to collapse?
Rome lost its Republic in bloodshed and murder. France lost its Republic (more than once) in street riots and tyranny. Weimar Germany collapsed into Naziism. Russia’s Kerensky was replaced with Lenin and Stalin—millions on millions died. There is always a man on a horse willing to ride to the rescue of citizens grown desperate in the face of a corrupt and ineffectual government.
If we really feel that our government and those we elect to rule us are as bad as many of us say they are, it is high time to straighten ourselves up and restore civic virtue—not just to Washington but to our own lives. In any case, it cannot hurt.
Next time we want to castigate our politicians, let’s first ask—Is it really true? Are they that evil or do they merely espouse policies we don’t favor? Policy difference is not a sin. Convince enough folk to see matters your way and vote the other side out.
Beware of painting the opposition—or even all of government—with the tar brush of parasitism or sinfulness. The last time we tarred an opposition that way (both sides did it), it cost us 700,000 dead out of a population of less than 100,000,000 at places like Gettysburg and Shiloh.
When you hear the old doggerel, “Here, richly with ridiculous display, the politician's corpse was laid away. While others sneered and slanged, I wept. For I longed to see him hanged.”—just remember one thing.
It’s us in the coffin.
Democracy—and, admittedly, its attendant woes of political maneuver, shenanigans and outright corruption—cannot long exist without a fundamentally responsible citizenry to vote and be governed. Take that out of the equation and democracy collapses.
Remember, politicians are drawn from the body of citizens whom they govern. They are nothing more than you or me elected to public office. When we look at George Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama, we are looking at ourselves. What we choose—be it clothing, movies, friends or politicians--reflects on us. We are what we eat—we are what we choose.
Their morals are our morals. Their corrupt behavior is our behavior. If they are wasteful and greedy, they mirror the rest of us. (Maybe that’s why we get so angry with them—few people like what they see in a looking glass.)
If there is a scoundrel in Congress—who elected him or her? He was your neighbor when you voted for him; he still is. Democracy is absolutely premised on the existence of a responsible and ethical citizenry. Civic virtue—or wickedness—does not originate in government—but rather among the governed.
Yes, democracies can fold up and collapse. When there is a failure of virtue in the people, they must be governed more harshly than democracy will permit. An unbridled populace cannot be permitted to make its own rules to suit its own whims. That way, as history so amply shows us, lies chaos, evil choices and, finally, death.
If the governors have become unbridled and dangerously whimsical (“blood sucking parasites”), whom then do they reflect? If our politicians have indeed become unethical and irresponsible, it is a fair question to ask: How close are we to collapse?
Rome lost its Republic in bloodshed and murder. France lost its Republic (more than once) in street riots and tyranny. Weimar Germany collapsed into Naziism. Russia’s Kerensky was replaced with Lenin and Stalin—millions on millions died. There is always a man on a horse willing to ride to the rescue of citizens grown desperate in the face of a corrupt and ineffectual government.
If we really feel that our government and those we elect to rule us are as bad as many of us say they are, it is high time to straighten ourselves up and restore civic virtue—not just to Washington but to our own lives. In any case, it cannot hurt.
Next time we want to castigate our politicians, let’s first ask—Is it really true? Are they that evil or do they merely espouse policies we don’t favor? Policy difference is not a sin. Convince enough folk to see matters your way and vote the other side out.
Beware of painting the opposition—or even all of government—with the tar brush of parasitism or sinfulness. The last time we tarred an opposition that way (both sides did it), it cost us 700,000 dead out of a population of less than 100,000,000 at places like Gettysburg and Shiloh.
When you hear the old doggerel, “Here, richly with ridiculous display, the politician's corpse was laid away. While others sneered and slanged, I wept. For I longed to see him hanged.”—just remember one thing.
It’s us in the coffin.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Politics and Democracy, The Best and Worst
While substitute teaching at the local high school today I noticed a poster the teacher had put up. “Politicians”, it said, “Root word, ‘Poli’. Root word, ‘tics’”. “Poli means many; tics are blood sucking parasites”. It struck me as funny; I laughed.
Then it got me thinking. So many of us view our elected rulers with the same contempt and dislike that we show our bosses, our clergymen, our spouses, our parents and teachers, and anyone with authority over us. There’s the old non-com snarl, “Don’t call me ‘sir’; I work for a living!”
Some, perhaps many, politicians seem to work to earn our contempt—as do supervisors, clerics, teachers and the like. No doubt. But politicians seem to hold a special place in our pantheon of the loathed. Especially in today’s political world in which half the folk running for office seem to offer as their highest qualification the fact that they are not involved in government, don’t know anyone who is, and are most definitely not governmental material.
A generation of proudly self-proclaimed non-politicians holding political office have taught us to immediately distrust anyone who knows anything about governing. (Michigan, for instance, throws all legislators out after six years. That’s about when they start knowing where the key to the bathroom is located.)
How would we actually like a world without “politicians”? (Don’t be hasty with your answer.) Perhaps we’d like to go back to the founding of this nation. Government in the days of Washington, Jefferson and Madison was a wealthy gentlemen’s affair—peons like you and me had precious little to say and were expected to keep to their place.
It was only when the first real professional “politicians” in human history (Think O.K.-- Old Kinterbrook—Van Buren, from whom we get “Okay” as in “I’m O.K. with him”) became active in the 1820s that ordinary sorts of folk could get involved with their government.
Or would we prefer a system wherein we are ruled by commissars, viziers, Fuhrers and Caudillos—or kings, emperors and nobles? No politicians here! (Court politics, yes—as between Himmler and Goering, Stalin and Trotsky—but no politicians. You want freedom from American style politics? Here’s your model.)
I sometimes suspect that at least a few of the people who curse our system and its “bloodsucking parasites” would almost prefer a system with less democracy. They seem sometimes to have a radical agenda that they would be willing to ram through with no recourse to democratic—and that often means political—process.
Since politics and politicians, as we know them, only exist in democracies, one risks calling democracy itself a blood sucker and a parasite. Many rulers alive today would agree with this. They point to the corruption one finds in democratic politics (as if there were no corruption in other systems of government!).
I’ve always remembered what the character played by Charles Laughton in “Spartacus” (an excellent political film if you took out the parts with Kirk Douglas in them) said. He was the champion of the Plebeian Party in the ancient Roman Republic. He spoke truth.
“Better a little [democratic] corruption AND a little [democratic] freedom."
The other thing those who hate democratic politics fret about is its inefficiency. Remember, the founders of our republic MADE our government inefficient to PROTECT us. Pray God you never live under a truly efficient government!
Churchill said it best, speaking of democracy and its politics. “Democracy is the worst system in the world—except for all the others.” Cuss the politicians all you want—but, as Jack Benny used to say, “Consider the alternative.”
Then it got me thinking. So many of us view our elected rulers with the same contempt and dislike that we show our bosses, our clergymen, our spouses, our parents and teachers, and anyone with authority over us. There’s the old non-com snarl, “Don’t call me ‘sir’; I work for a living!”
Some, perhaps many, politicians seem to work to earn our contempt—as do supervisors, clerics, teachers and the like. No doubt. But politicians seem to hold a special place in our pantheon of the loathed. Especially in today’s political world in which half the folk running for office seem to offer as their highest qualification the fact that they are not involved in government, don’t know anyone who is, and are most definitely not governmental material.
A generation of proudly self-proclaimed non-politicians holding political office have taught us to immediately distrust anyone who knows anything about governing. (Michigan, for instance, throws all legislators out after six years. That’s about when they start knowing where the key to the bathroom is located.)
How would we actually like a world without “politicians”? (Don’t be hasty with your answer.) Perhaps we’d like to go back to the founding of this nation. Government in the days of Washington, Jefferson and Madison was a wealthy gentlemen’s affair—peons like you and me had precious little to say and were expected to keep to their place.
It was only when the first real professional “politicians” in human history (Think O.K.-- Old Kinterbrook—Van Buren, from whom we get “Okay” as in “I’m O.K. with him”) became active in the 1820s that ordinary sorts of folk could get involved with their government.
Or would we prefer a system wherein we are ruled by commissars, viziers, Fuhrers and Caudillos—or kings, emperors and nobles? No politicians here! (Court politics, yes—as between Himmler and Goering, Stalin and Trotsky—but no politicians. You want freedom from American style politics? Here’s your model.)
I sometimes suspect that at least a few of the people who curse our system and its “bloodsucking parasites” would almost prefer a system with less democracy. They seem sometimes to have a radical agenda that they would be willing to ram through with no recourse to democratic—and that often means political—process.
Since politics and politicians, as we know them, only exist in democracies, one risks calling democracy itself a blood sucker and a parasite. Many rulers alive today would agree with this. They point to the corruption one finds in democratic politics (as if there were no corruption in other systems of government!).
I’ve always remembered what the character played by Charles Laughton in “Spartacus” (an excellent political film if you took out the parts with Kirk Douglas in them) said. He was the champion of the Plebeian Party in the ancient Roman Republic. He spoke truth.
“Better a little [democratic] corruption AND a little [democratic] freedom."
The other thing those who hate democratic politics fret about is its inefficiency. Remember, the founders of our republic MADE our government inefficient to PROTECT us. Pray God you never live under a truly efficient government!
Churchill said it best, speaking of democracy and its politics. “Democracy is the worst system in the world—except for all the others.” Cuss the politicians all you want—but, as Jack Benny used to say, “Consider the alternative.”
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