#963: Bamboozlement: A Pernicious Threat to Democracy

        Jonathan Swift (1667-17450

As an informal noun, “bamboozle” means, roughly, “a state of deception or mystification.” As a verb, it means “to deceive”, “delude,” “defraud,” or “to hoodwink.” Despite being a fun word to say, no one really knows anything definitive about its etymology. Even in good old Latin, the word bamboozle is just plain bamboozle. The breathtakingly brilliant Anglo-Irish satiric clergyman Jonathan Swift (best-known for Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal wrote a 1710 essay called "The Continual Corruption of our English Tongue," In this brief piece, he described the word "bamboozle" as one of the words that were in his opinion, "corroding, if not destroying, the English language" In other words, although he had a sense for what it meant, he hadn’t the slightest idea of its linguistic origin. Swift was wrong in his assertion that within a decade or two, the term would completely disappear from human speech.  I mean, here we are, 313 years later, and it is still in use

Anyone who has ever read Twain’s Tom Sawyer will remember the scene in which young Tom bamboozled his friends into whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence.  Who isn’t aware of history’s greatest bamboozlers, Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff?  In order for bamboozlers to succeed, there must be a steady supply of cretins, naifs, and babes-in-the-woods ready and willing to believe that there is reality in “something for nothing.”

Of late, bamboozlement has become a singularly important ingredient in partisan politics.  Three-quarter truths and outright lies have increasingly become the fuel upon which authoritarian politics thrives.  Don’t get me wrong: whoppers and semi-lies have played an important  part in campaigns and elections almost since the beginning of our history. One of the filthiest was  the presidential election of 1884, when Democrats freely used a doozy of a nickname against the Republican candidate, James G. Blaine - former Representative, Senator and twice Secretary of State under two Presidents: Blaine, Blaine: The Continental liar from the State of Maine.  Blaine wound up losing by a mere 1,047 votes to New York Governor Grover Cleveland . . . up until today, the only POTUS to win two non-consecutive terms. 

One of the first people to recognize just how dangerous bamboozlement was to democracy was the late polymath (astronomer, exobiologist, novelist and science popularizer) Carl Sagan (1934-1996) who, in one of his last books, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a  Candle In the Dark” wrote:

                      Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

   “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Now mind you, Dr. Sagan wrote this more than a quarter-century ago. I guess one could add to his already bulging c.v.: “Prophet and Seer.”  It’s not so much that he looked into a crystal ball and foresaw the malevolence of a Donald Trump, the almost geometric growth of bamboozlement in the public square, and the subsequent dumbing-down of a lost, and highly gullible citizenry.  Rather, he was extrapolating just how far a baleful narcissist in the digital era, armed with the ability to reach the masses, could complicate and affect the ability of the hoi polloi to ferret out fact from fiction and science from witchcraft. For as sure as most of us are that G-d made little green apples, this is precisely what Donald Trump and his MAGA acolytes have done. I mean, who in their right mind would ever have believed that bleach or the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine were certain cures for COVID-19, or that the biggest enemies of the nation were “Communist, Fascist, LGBT” and immigrants minorities? And what’s even worse - far, far worse - is that the bamboozlement is so deep and pervasive that anyone attempting to speak “truth to power” is ignored, derided or threatened with future retaliation.

Who would ever have imagined a presidential candidate proclaiming to his supporters not “I am you leader,” or “I am your champion,” but “I AM YOUR RETRIBUTION!”? Speaking before a Veteran’s Day gathering in New Haven just the other day, the FPOTUS said that in his next administration “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country . . . . the real threat is not from the radical right. The real threat is from the radical left, and it’s growing every day.”

The former president and First Bamboozler’s chilling rhetoric — and use of “vermin” in particular — set off fresh comparisons between him and the fascist dictators of the 1940s in some media outlets and even from President Biden’s camp. “Donald Trump parroted the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, two dictators many US veterans gave their lives fighting, in order to defeat exactly the kind of un-American ideas Trump now champions, campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement.

It’s true that Trump has adopted the rhetorical strategies of some of the most reviled dictators. He dehumanizes his political enemies, has discredited the legal, political and electoral system, has demonized the press and has targeted vulnerable members of society, minorities and immigrants, as scapegoats. Like other strongmen, he presents himself as a persecuted savior of a disenfranchised sector of society that sees its traditional values and mores as under attack.

(Do keep in mind that the Bamboozle - on right-wing blogs and networks as well as slickly-produced TV ads - has performed such a total “mind meld” on a vast segment of the public, that 69 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters believe that Biden’s 2020 win was not legitimate, a slight increase from 63 percent earlier this year and through last fall.

We’ve all run into the bamboozled at one time or another. They are the ones who proclaim flat-out lies that seem to be from a single script:

• “President Trump is victim to the biggest political witch hunt in American history.”

• “Under Trump, America was more prosperous, safer and well-respected in the world than it is today under Biden.”

• “Donald Trump had his 2020 victory stolen from him.”

• “Joe Biden is senile and has accomplished nothing; he is the most corrupt president in all our history.”

• “Donald Trump did more for Israel than any other president.”

It’s terribly difficult to disabuse folks like these from believing all the lies they’ve had pumped into their systems. One suggestion I have is making sure you contribute to candidates who don’t engage in “victim talk,” who do their best to bring people together and promote democracy.  Also, keep a couple of links at hand to check out anything you believe is a lie: among my particular favorites are Snopes. Fact Checker, the Washington Post, Factcheck.org and Politifact.  These are all sound, unbiased sites that practice real journalism.

 Carl Sagan was right: “Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#947: A.I.'s Next Step: Bard+Google

  Kurt, Alan and Clint Eastwood in “Coogan’s Bluff”

Those who are longtime readers of this blog will recognize the name “Alan Wald.” Alan is one of the “Hollywood Brats,” my longtime friend; we originally met back in September 1961 in J.O. Ito’s homeroom class, and he was my lab partner in Mr. Falb’s chemistry class.  Over the years, Alan has always been the guy who picks me up and returns me back to  LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) whenever I come back home.  We share a ton of great memories, including the time we spent part of our Winter break from University acting as extras over at Universal Studios in the 1968 Clint Eastwood film “Coogan’s Bluff” (that’s me sporting a serape just in front of and slightly to the left of Mr. Eastwood; Alan is the bearded dude standing just underneath the fellow with  the upstretched arm).  We well remember the shoot; at one point during our lunch break, I donned Alan’s “Sgt. Pepper” red satin jacket complete with epaulets, and convinced members of the visiting Indiana Hoosier Rose Bowl team that I was John Lennon; I wound up signing a couple of dozen of autographs.  

Alan is one of the brightest, best-educated and wittiest people I have ever known.  His wit comes as no surprise; after all, he is the son and nephew of celebrated screenwriters. His father, Malvin Wald, wrote one of most iconic of all motion picture tag lines: “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” As part of his genetic inheritance, Alan has the trained eye of an editor; he has been catching my typos and errata for years.  We are in constant contact via email; hardly a days goes by without my receiving 4, 6, even 8 sparkling missives making comments on the day’s news. A day without an email is indeed like a day without the sun. Many of my weekly essays have their genesis in an idea placed in my head by my long-ago lab-mate.

Which brings us to the title of this piece:  A.I.’s Next Step: Bard + Google. . . .

 This past Wednesday, included in several emails Alan sent me over a 2 hour period was one which carried the title: Example of use of Bard - Bard likes your essays- not too shabby. It turned out to be one of several he sent me that day, introducing me to an experimental bit of A.I. (“Artificial Intelligence”) called Bard, which had received its public release this past March. Bard is best described as “, , , a conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Google, based initially on the LaMDA family of large language models (LLMs) and later the PaLM LLM. It was developed as a direct response to the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT.” It was initially released in a limited capacity in March 2023 to lukewarm responses, before expanding to other countries in May. So what does Bard do? Simply stated, it can do instant reviews of almost anything one can write (so long as it is under 4,000 words . . . (at least for the present).

Alan’s email (“. . . not to shabby) turned me on to the fact that he had copied and pasted my most recent post (Senator Potato Head) into Bard.Google and within less than a minute received 3 different summaries/ critiques, one of which read:

“The author of this article is highly critical of Senator Tommy Tuberville's decision to hold up Senate approval of military promotions. The author argues that this is a dangerous and unpatriotic move that is putting America's military readiness at risk. The author also points out that Tuberville's actions are motivated by his own religious beliefs, which should not be allowed to influence military decisions.

The author's arguments are persuasive. Tuberville's decision to hold up the promotions is clearly having a negative impact on the military. The Marine Corps is currently without a Commandant, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be without a chairman in September. This is a critical time for the military, and Tuberville's actions are only making things worse.

The author is also right to point out that Tuberville's actions are motivated by his own religious beliefs. This is a dangerous precedent to set, as it could lead to other politicians using their religious beliefs to influence military decisions. The military should be free from political and religious interference, and Tuberville's actions are a threat to that principle.

Overall, this is a well-written and persuasive article that makes a strong case against Senator Tommy Tuberville's decision to hold up Senate approval of military promotions. The author's arguments are clear, concise, and well-supported. I highly recommend this article to anyone who is interested in the issue of religious influence in the military.”

After reading this I thought: “I wonder what Bard would think about the rather “thumbs-down” essay [A Pandora’s Box of Existential Fears] I posted back at the end of January this year on A.I? Would it be particularly hard on me for being so damnably negative? And so, I copied and pasted it into Bard+Google and within less than a minute it presented a couple of review. Here’s one of them.:

In your article, you raise some important concerns about the potential impact of ChatGPT on education and democracy. You argue that ChatGPT could be used to cheat on exams, write essays that are indistinguishable from those written by humans, and even target key legislators and influencers with propaganda. You also worry that ChatGPT could be used to create a successful autocrat who is able to manipulate people with lies and deception.

I share your concerns. ChatGPT is a powerful tool that could be used for good or for evil. It is important to be aware of the potential risks of this technology and to take steps to mitigate them. For example, we need to make sure that students are taught how to critically evaluate information and to distinguish between human-generated text and machine-generated text. We also need to develop policies to prevent the use of ChatGPT for malicious purposes.

I believe that the potential benefits of ChatGPT outweigh the risks. This technology has the potential to revolutionize education, making it more accessible and effective for everyone. It could also be used to improve communication and collaboration, and to make it easier for people to access information and services.

However, it is important to use ChatGPT responsibly. We need to be aware of the potential risks of this technology and to take steps to mitigate them. If we do so, ChatGPT has the potential to make a positive impact on the world.

I agree with your suggestion that Congress should pass a law requiring a disclaimer averring something like “BEWARE: That which follows is the creation of Artificial Intelligence. Any resemblance to the human thought process or the truth is purely coincidental.” This would help to protect people from being misled by ChatGPT and would help to ensure that this technology is used for good.

Thank you for raising these important issues. I believe that it is important to have a public conversation about the potential impact of ChatGPT and other forms of AI. We need to be aware of the potential risks of this technology, but we also need to be open to the potential benefits. I believe that ChatGPT has the potential to make a positive impact on the world, but only if it is used responsibly.

At this, I decided to copy and paste Macbeth’s soliloquy upon hearing of his wife’s death in Act 5, Scene 5:

She should have died hereafter.

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing

These are among the greatest 12-lines in all literature. They are both slippery and opaque; Macbeth is essentially asking himself if he’s still capable of feeling anything, specifically fear, In copying and pasting this passage into Bard-Google, I wonder if it will even know from whence it comes. And here is its almost immediate answer/review:

This is a famous soliloquy from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, spoken by the title character. In it, Macbeth reflects on the meaninglessness of life and the inevitability of death. He compares life to a "walking shadow" and a "poor player" who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, only to be heard no more. He concludes that life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

This soliloquy is often interpreted as a reflection of Macbeth's own inner turmoil. He has committed regicide and is now haunted by guilt and fear. He is also aware that his days are numbered, as Malcolm and Macduff are approaching his castle to besiege it. In this context, the soliloquy can be seen as Macbeth's attempt to come to terms with his own mortality.

However, the soliloquy can also be interpreted more broadly. It is a meditation on the nature of life and death that is still relevant today. The words "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" have become a metaphor for the endless cycle of life and death. The phrase "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" has been used to describe anything that is ultimately meaningless.

The soliloquy is a powerful and moving piece of writing that has resonated with audiences for centuries. It is a reminder that life is short and that we should make the most of it. It is also a reminder that death is inevitable, but that it does not mean that life is meaningless.

Bravo! Bard is well aware that I did not write these words . . . and shows a pretty deft understanding of their meaning. And so, just to get an even better feeling for Bard+Googlel, I downloaded a recent essay on the many forms of pre-senile dementia entitled The Long Goodbye. My main question was not whether the program liked my essay or found it important or intelligent, but rather whether it could follow something largely written in a “foreign” language . . . namely, medical terminology. And here is what he/she had to share about a 1,650-word essay:

Thank you for sharing your essay. It is well-written and thought-provoking. I agree with you that we need hope, not hysteria, in the face of diseases like Alzheimer's. It is important to remember that no drug is 100% safe, but that the benefits of Leqembi may outweigh the risks for many people. I also agree that clinical research is not a "zero sum game" between patients and profit. There are many people who are dedicated to finding cures for diseases, and they deserve our support.

I am curious to know what you think of the way that the FDA has approved Leqembi. Some people have criticized the FDA for approving the drug, saying that it is not effective enough. Others have said that the FDA should have required the drug to be more affordable. What is your opinion?

I also wonder what you think of the role of conspiracy theories in the context of medical research. Do you think that conspiracy theories can have a negative impact on the development of new treatments?

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on these questions.

                       Eleanor Roosevelt  (1884-1962)

Although Bard-Google did not understand the purpose of this essay, it did realize that there are far more unanswered questions with which we must grapple in the near future.  The same can, of course, be said for A.I. - Artificial Intelligence - in general, and A.G.I. - "Artificial General Intelligence” - like   “Bard” and other newly emerging hypothetical intelligence agents in particular.  Whether one knows it or not, every time we institute a Google search or ask Siri or Alexis a question, we are using A.I.  A.G.I. is a type of intelligent agent.  The A.G.I. concept is that is that it can learn any intellectual task that human beings or animals can accomplish.  Unlike AI, which relies on ever-expanding datasets to perform more complex tasks, AGI, we are told, will someday be able to exhibit the same attributes as those associated with the human brain, including common sense, background knowledge, transfer learning, abstraction, and causality. Of particular interest is the human ability to generalize from scanty or incomplete input.

I rather doubt that Alan Wald and I will be around when “Bard” replaces “Shakespeare” or makes Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke’s character “Hal 9000” as quaint as an abacus.  But this I/we do know: technological advances always run at a far different pace than the concomitant ethical and moral challenges they create.   And by the way, I am certain that nothing in the realm of A.G.I. will ever approximate Alan’s brilliant wit!

 Eleanor Roosevelt - the greatest of all First Ladies - once noted that “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” By this, I believe she was suggesting that those who have a clear idea of what they want to achieve and a strong belief in their ability to make it happen are the ones who will be most successful in creating the future they desire.  Were she alive today, this most thoughtful and humane of all women might likely change her mind and restate her aphorism as “The future belongs to those who best conquer the challenge of their nightmares.”

 Copyright©2023 Kurt Franklin Stone

#941: Ulysses S. Grant, Donald Trump, Kari Lake, Andy Biggs, Voltaire, Isaac Asimov and Stochastic Terrorism

Move over President Grant: As of this coming Tuesday, you will no longer be sui generis . . . in a class by yourself. For the past 151 years you have held the dubious distinction of being the only POTUS to have been arrested. If memory serves well, it was back in 1872 that you were arrested and taken into custody for speeding on a street in the nation’s Capitol. Truth to tell, you weren’t the only one racing a horse-drawn cart that day; a couple of your friends were engaged in competition . . . they likewise were cited. Your bail was set at $20.00 (the equivalent of $500.00 in today’s money) and you were released back to your residence: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The day after your arrest, you didn’t show up in court to answer charges, and thus lost your $20.00. Case closed.

This coming Tuesday (June 13, 2023), fPOTUS Donald J. Trump, along with his ‘Diet Coke valet’ Walt Nauta, will appear in Federal Court in Miami to answer a 49-page, 38-count Federal indictment (read here)  including 31 counts under the Espionage Act of “willful retention” of classified records at his Florida estate and other locations after he left office on January 20, 2021.  The product of more than 6 months of investigation under the leadership of special prosecutor Jack Smith the indictment is extraordinarily comprehensible; a word rarely associated with a Federal indictment  It is also extremely nerve-wracking and makes one wonder just how well the fPOTUS is sleeping. It can’t be very well. I mean, in addition to this latest packet of legal pain, Trump is heading into Miami with two of his best attorneys no longer on the case. He has but one currently working for him . . . far too few for such a hydra-headed beast. Who knows what legal jeopardy all his former attorneys are themselves facing? (Methinks MAGA stands for “Making attorneys get attorneys”).

And he still has all his troubles in Georgia.

In great detail, the indictment recounts how Trump stashed hundreds of documents marked “confidential,” “secret” and “top-secret.”  It also recounts how on several occasions (some were taped) he waved a document around in front of a visitor to Mar-a-Lago, telling them “This is really secret and I know I shouldn’t show it to you but . . .”  Many contained highly classified military and even nuclear matters which, it they found their way into the hands of, say, Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, could be potentially catastrophic. The precise reason why Trump squirreled away all these documents is anyone’s guess:

• For future sale?  

• As a form of “good-faith currency” for future business deals in foreign countries?

• To feed his own ego?

 Last night, Trump addressed several thousand Republican stalwarts in Columbus, GA  at a brick building that ironically, was once an ironworks that manufactured mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army in the Civil War. In this, his first public utterance since the indictment was released to the media, he resorted to using apocalyptic language, tying together a litany of personal afflictions and affronts - his indictments by prosecutors, his utter disdain for the DOJ and FBI, and his bid for the White House - as part of a “final battle” with “corrupt” forces that he maintained are destroying the country. “This is the final battle,” he told his supporters. I use the word “ironic” in describing the building in which he and his acolytes were gathered, because he is, of course, speaking in unguarded terms about a civil war.  

      Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778)

What the fPOTUS is verbally engaged in is what some call stochastic terrorism. Coming from the Greek stochastikos, which means “skillful in aiming” or “proceeding by guesswork,” stochastic terrorism commonly defined as “The public demonization of a person, or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.” To the best of my knowledge it first appeared in an article in the August 9, 2016 edition of Rolling Stone magazine in which author David S. Cohen used the term to describe Donald Trump's suggestion that "Second Amendment people" could "do" something about Hillary Clinton:

Stochastic terrorism, as described by a blogger who summarized the concept several years back, means using language and other forms of communication "to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable."

Long before Donald Trump, there was Voltaire, the French Enlightenment writer and philosopher who understood stochastic terrorism vis-à-vis people like Donald Trump and his MAGAites when he wrote “Those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities” ("Ceux qui peuvent nous faire croire à des absurdités peuvent nous faire commettre des atrocités").  Along these same lines, Isaac Asimov, one of our times’ greatest polymaths knew that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” 

Try as I may, I cannot decide whether the fPOTUS’s mouthiest, seemingly most virulent cheerleaders - people like former Arizona newscaster (and failed 2022 gubernatorial candidate) Kari Lake, Arizona Representative Andy Biggs and Louisiana Representative  Clay Higgins, among others - are really, truly as fixated on the idea of breaking up the United States through violence as they seem . . . or are merely in need of staying on 45’s good side.  Speaking in lieu of former VP Mike Pence at the Saturday gathering in Columbus, Georgia (after Pence, at the last minute pulled out), she told the cheering crowd ““If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.”  This is chilling  stuff, to be sure.  This is one wacky woman who has changed political affiliations and religions the way many of us change socks. She used to be a liberal Democrat (voting for both John Kerry and Barack Obama); now she is about as far right as you can get.  She grew up as a Catholic, at one time identified as a Buddhist  according to her friends, and as of 2022, she identified as a evangelical Christian

Then there’s Arizona Representative Andy Biggs, who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance (a most powerful position, considering what’s going on vis-à-vis Hunter Biden’s laptop).  He responded to the 38-count indictment with the words “Eye for an eye,” which he  wrote in a post on Twitter on Friday.  Perhaps the most unhinged stochastic voice out there belongs to Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins.  In a cryptic tweet that prompted thousands of angry responses – and confusion – online, Higgins called the arraignment "a perimeter probe from the oppressors." He also used language interpreted by one author as a call for right-wing militia groups to mobilize in support of Trump when he is arraigned Tuesday in Miami.  

In language that few (including yours truly) can translate, Higgins wrote: “President Trump said he has been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”  Though Higgins did not respond to a request for clarification, author, journalist and professor Jeff Sharlet took his words as a call for war. Sharlet is a scholar who knows of what he speaks: his latest book, "The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War," is an in-depth look at right-wing extremism. 

Parsing/translating Higgins’ highly jargonized tweet, Sharlet  wrote Friday on his Twitter account: “Take this seriously. ’Perimeter probe’: Higgins thinks indictment precedes bigger attack. ‘rPOTUS’: real POTUS, Trump. ‘Hold’: stand back & stand by. ‘Buckle up’: prepare for war. ‘1/50 k’: military scale maps (mostly publicly available that show nearby military installations). ‘Know your bridges’: militia speak for prepare to seize bridges.”

Indeed, we are living in extremely dangerous times. For many intelligent people, it is impossible to see how patriotic citizens could ever bring themselves to vote for such a flawed human being as Donald Trump for president. To understand how this could be, we return once again to the insights of Isaac Azimov:

“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti- intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone   # 🟦     

A Star is Born! (#932)

          Introducing John Wayne: A Star is Born

Because I am a “Hollywood Brat,” who has taught at least 2 film classes a week for more than 25 years, my thoughts and opinions have always held a lot of sway with my students. My favorite movie of all time? Casablanca. My all-time favorite comedy? Buster Keaton’s brilliant 1924 5-reel film Sherlock, Jr. Best musical? 1951’s An American in Paris, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron.  The best western of all time? Unquestionably, 1939’s Stage Coach, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne as “The Ringo Kid”  (top billing went to Claire Trevor, who played “Dallas,” a “lady of pleasure”).         #🟦                                           

 John Wayne (Marion Michael Morrison) and John Ford (John Martin Feeney) had a long, long love-hate relationship. The two originally met in 1929, when Ford went to direct a sports-themed film  called Salute at USC, where both Wayne and Ward Bond were members of the Trojan football team. He put the two to work hauling furniture and eventually started giving them uncredited bit parts in his films. After 21 walk-on roles, Wayne was signed to star in a major western called The Big Trail - a 1930 Fox Films stinker which, in old Hollywood parlance, “wasn’t released . . . it escaped.”

Ford was incredibly angry with Wayne for having been disloyal and signing with Fox without even informing him. For the next 9 years, Wayne had to learn his craft without any help from Ford. He wound appearing in 61 grade-B/C films, playing everything from playboys and mill workers to singing cowboys. Finally, in 1939, Ford approached Wayne, told him he was finally ready for the big-time, and hired him to play the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (based on Boule de Suif, a French story written by Guy de Maupassant). In order for the movie-going public to know that John Wayne was going to be a major star, Ford crafted an incredibly long-range “zoom shot” (a “star maker”) to hone in on Ringo when he first enters the picture. At that moment his face filled the screen, a star was born.

As I was watching in rapt - though horrified - attention as the overwhelmingly Republican state Legislature voted to expel two young, Black male representatives for their roles in leading youthful protests calling for gun control, after a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville which killed 3 nine-year olds and 3 adults, one thought kept going through my mind: “Two Stars Are Born” and both are named Justin, which, most fitting, is Latin for “just, honest.” (It should also be long remembered that the white Republican legislators voted not to expel the 3rd protestor, Gloria Johnson, 60, a white female lawmaker who had stood with her Democratic colleagues; nonetheless, her expulsion came within 1 vote of enactment).

During the Thursday debate, Democrats argued that the Tennessee Three’s actions were a mistake, but that expulsion would set a dangerous precedent for democracy. Republicans said expulsion was necessary to prevent further potential attempts to disobey the chamber’s rules. The GOP representatives used a more aggressive line of questioning during cross-examination of Jones and Pearson, calling the two lawmakers disruption makers and attention seekers.

In expelling 2 Gen Z-ers, Justin Jones, 27 and Justin Pearson, 28, House Speaker Cameron Sexton compared the 2 to the rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. During debate, he called the “Tennessee Three’s” actions in joining protesters chanting “no action, no peace,” “unacceptable” and a violation of House rules of decorum and procedure. (It should be noted that Speaker Sexton and his Republican colleagues have repeatedly referred to the January 6, 2021 insurrection as nothing more than a “loud tour” of the Capitol by patriotic Americans.)

Tennessee, of course, is the state where the Ku Klux Klan first drew breathe in December 1865 in the town of Pulaski, and then, 60 years later, in Dayton, put high school teacher, John T. Scopes on trial, accusing him of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. Despite having elected such stalwart progressives as Senators Albert Gore, Sr. and Jr., and Steve Cohen, Tennessee has long been a state where racism and white supremacy refuse to die. Today, as in 1925, the state is once again a laughing stock. The Republican members of the state legislature should be hanging their heads in shame; they won’t, because their rendering of history and fundamentalist Christian values makes them, at least in their own eyes, filled with merit.

Rather than respond to – let alone even consider – changes to gun laws in the Volunteer State (especially when it comes to dealing with semi-automatic weapons), Republican members of the legislature are far more concerned with blaming transgender people for gun violence (the shooter at the Christian Charter School in Nashville was transgender), outlawing drag shows, removing “unacceptable” books from school libraries, and making abortion virtually impossible.  Tennessee leads the charge in passing laws which target LGBT rights. Their religious beliefs and principles force them to put partisan politics above people, and declare that a zygote is far more worthy of legal protection than an elementary school child. Indeed, for them, life begins at the very moment of conception . . . and ends at the moment of birth.

    The Tennessee 3: Johnson, Jones and Pearson

During the floor debate before his expulsion, Justin Jones - who represents parts of Nashville, where the three 9-year olds were murdered - told his colleagues: “This is a historic day for Tennessee, but it marks a very dark day for Tennessee because it will signal to the nation that there is no democracy in this state. It will signal to the nation that if it can happen here in Tennessee, it’s coming to your state next. And that is why the nation - indeed the whole world - is watching us, what we do here.”

Here, Justin Jones hit the nail on the head. Those who have been paying attention to Florida politics under Governor Ron DeSantis and his supermajority legislature, know what he has done to stifle both free speech and Democracy.  Florida’s government implemented new state regulations this year requiring groups that want to hold rallies or events at the Capitol to be sponsored by a state agency or lawmaker. Democrats and liberal advocates say that is hard to do in a state where Republicans control the governor’s mansion and have supermajorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate.

In Montana, Republican lawmakers are advancing legislation that would open up next year’s Senate primary to allow the top two vote-getters in the primary — no matter their party — slots on the general-election ballot. This is a bald-faced maneuver to stymie the reelection of Sen. Jon Tester, the long-serving Democrat seeking a fourth term, because it would only be applicable to the 2024 Senate election. Third-party candidates, who in the past have cut into Republican candidates’ totals, would probably not be on the general election ballot, which could set up a defeat for Tester, the sole remaining Democrat elected statewide.

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) tried to force a county school board to hold new elections, which would have shortened the terms of members he disagreed with. State observers said the governor’s move, which failed, was unprecedented in the state’s modern history.

And so on and so forth . . .

Now, before we all join hands and leap off the front lawn, let’s look at some positives which might be beginning to percolate.  First and foremost, we are beginning to see the emergence of Gen Z-ers (or informally, “Generation Zer”) on to the political stage.  Up until last week, the most prominent was 25-year old Florida Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost (born in 1997) who has already made a name for himself for his wise-beyond-his-years understanding of how politics works, his ability to think on his feet, and his inability to back down on the issues which he and his constituents in Florida’s 10th District truly care about . . . like abortion rights, the abolition of automatic weapons, and the furtherance of Democracy. Then there are the two new “stars” who were birthed on the national and international scene just this week: Justin Jones and Justin Pearson.  They have already won rave reviews for their maturity, steadfastness of purpose, and poise.  Both will likely be returned to the Tennessee legislature shortly by their respective city council/board of supervisors. Having watched them being interviewed by the national media, I am deeply impressed with how passionate and articulate they both are; I cannot remember either of them yet say “um” or “you know.”

Representative Jones is cut out of the same moral cloth as the late Representative John Lewis; like his predecessor, he too is an advocate of non-violence who instills in  his constituents, Lewis’ concept of “good trouble.” (It should be noted that as a student at Fiske University, he was recipient of the “John R. Lewis Scholarship for Social Activism.”  Like his mentor, he stands every chance of becoming a lightening rod for his generation; young people of all colors and ethnicities who are largely pro-choice, pro-gun safety (and anti-automatic weapons), and above all, pro-Democracy. 

I am greatly impressed with the members of Generation Zer; to a great extent, they remind me of the political activists of the 1960s who became damn good organizers and, to this day (for those of us still alive) are still involved in politics.  These new activists are bright, well-educated, and, for the most part, both color- and gender-blind.  And, they will soon be running for school board, city council and county supervisor seats . . . and then on to state capitals and eventually Washington, D.C. 

Once John Ford gave John Wayne the zoom-in “a star is born” treatment in Stagecoach, "Duke” (his nickname came from the horse he rode in all those grade-z oaters) starred in more than 100 more movies.  Although his politics made me nauseous, I admired his filmmaking ability.  Eventually, he became one of the most popular stars in the world. 

This week, we have seen - I suspect - the birth of two new stars. They already have begun building up a following of twenty-somethings who can benefit from the likes of “The Justins,” and identify the "good trouble” which ultimately may well save Democracy for future generations. 

    #🟦

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

Isn't Life Wonderful?

                A Scene From Griffith’s 1924 Film “isn’t Life Wonderful?” 

In early 1924, D.W. Griffith, the greatest of all silent film directors, led a cast and crew to Berlin, where they made what is now considered one of the greatest of all films: the ironically titled Isn’t Life Wonderful?  The film, based on a short story by British soldier/writer Geoffrey Moss, starred Neil Hamilton (who 40+ years later would play police commissioner Gordon on Batman) and Griffith’s protégé, the long-forgotten Carol Dempster.  Isn’t Life Wonderful? takes place in real-time: the post “Great War” ‘20s, when hundreds of thousands of refugees (such as the film’s main characters, “Inga” and “Paul” flocked to Germany in search of food and shelter.  Historically, this was the time when the Weimar Republic was beset by hyperinflation, caused almost entirely by Germany’s staggering ($33.3 billion) debt it owed the victorious Americans, Brits and French.  The inflation that held the Republic in a strangle hold for several years was unlike anything ever seen before . . . or since.  As an example, a loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923; by November 1923, one US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 (that’s a mind-bending  four trillion, two hundred ten billion, five hundred million) German Marks.  Paper money reached such a level that Weimar issued 50 trillion Mark paper. This is the Germany that Griffith chose to shoot his picture in.

And we kvetch and call for a radical change in government when the inflation rate stands at 6.04% (as it did yesterday)?

Griffith, ever a master at telescoping dire reality into  a few feet of celluloid, captures this monstrous hyperinflation in the scene pictured above.  In long shot, we see dozens of families pushing wheelbarrows laden with paper money to a bakery where there is already a long, long line.  Then, camera pulling up closer and closer, we see the baker emerge from his place of business every 30 seconds, wiping off the chalk board that bears the price of a single loaf of bread.  The figure gets larger and larger with each rewrite, as more and more starving families exit the line and go back to God knows where.  This is the brutality and apocalyptical doom which led the common folk to demand to know precisely who was to blame, and the followers of the soon-to-be Führer only too happy to provide the answer: the Jews.  From there, the slide to gruesome dictatorship was all but guaranteed.

Democracy is having a tough time all over the planet; from the world’s oldest (USA) to its largest (India) its newest and most raucous (Israel) to its least comprehensible (France), the forces of intolerance, bigotry and self-regarding defiance for the rule of law are making insomniacs of the masses.  “How is it,” so many of us ask, “that minority political factions are increasingly capable of turning their warped version of reality into the law of the land?  When was the last time democracy was attacked by so many bellicose bullies and would-be dictators?

We are all, of course, familiar with the scene here in the United States, the oldest of all democracies.  Day in, day out, the former president, the MAGA and Clown-Car-Caucus, are stirring the pot and shifting attention to how much freedom their followers at the hands of “Woke” - the new way of saying “Commie Bastard.” They spend their time convincing them that they are losing their freedom to choose what their children should read, learn, see or hear; their ability to carry automatic weapons without registration . . . let alone education.  And on and on.  We are daily witness to the diabolical commands of the former Commander-in-Chief that if he is indicted in any of a number of state and/or federal cases, his followers must "protest, protest, protest” and further warning that should this happen, the American public should “be ready for  potential death and destruction.”  Say what you will about our former POTUS; he knows his supporters well.

                                                   Rahul Gandhi

In India, the world’s largest democracy, P.M. Narendra Modi has summarily disqualified M.P. Rahul Gandhi (the leader of the party opposing the current P.M.) from serving in that country’s Parliament,  after a court found him guilty of defamation over his remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surname.  Now mind you, Mr., Gandhi isn’t just some garden-variety member of Indian society; his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) was India’s first Prime Minister; his father Rajiv Gandhi (1944-1991) who served as India’s 6th P.M., was assassinated by a member of the Tamil Tigers, a radical Sri Lankan separatist group,  in 1991. In a sense, to be a Nehru/Gandhi in India, is the equivalent of being a Roosevelt or Kennedy in America.  Rahul Gandhi, who has served 19 years in the Indian legislature, was removed after he was found guilty of defaming Modi’s surname in a 2019 case filed by a politician in the prime minister’s party. Gandhi was convicted on the defamation charge this week and sentenced by a court in Modi’s home state to two years imprisonment, which, under Indian law, allowed the parliamentary speaker to suspend him from politics.  This is an unprecedented move; one which potentially fires an arrow into the heart of India’s democratic body politic.  Without question, this is an earth shattering event.  One simply does not disqualify a member of the Indian Parliament (especially one with Gandhi’s familial roots) simply because he attacks the P.M.  It is an example of anti-freedom that is all but unsurpassed in that country’s history.  Needless to say, many people in India are up in arms and accusing P.M. Modi and his judiciary of engaging in anti-democratic actions.

In France, protests involving upwards of 1.3 million people (out of a population of about 2.2 million) have become a fixture of Parisian nightlife after the French government rammed through a pension bill last week raising the retirement age to 64, from 62, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament.  The fact that President Macron did this without a parliamentary vote is highly unusual, and highly unlike how things are normally done in France.  The wild protests are part of a larger trend that has seen previously peaceful demonstrations growing increasingly menacing as the government refuses to back down on the pension overhaul. This past Thursday, nearly 1,000 fires were lit by protesters, about 440 police officers and firefighters were injured, and about the same number of demonstrators were arrested throughout France, according to the French interior minister. Those huge protests have shifted in character over the past week. They have become angrier and, in some cities, more violent — especially after nightfall.

                           French President Emmanuel Macron

These protests have been less about the fury felt over the raising of the retirement age to 64 from 62, and more about Mr. Macron and the way he rammed the law through Parliament without a full vote.  Finally, they have broadened into something approaching a constitutional crisis.  As a result of all this, the postponement of a state visit to France by King Charles III  became almost inevitable; the optics of President Emmanuel Macron dining with the British monarch at the Château de Versailles as Paris burned were not just bad; they would have looked like a brazen provocation to the blue-collar workers leading a wave of demonstrations and strikes across the country.  One must remember that the country’s far right, in the person of parliamentarian Marine LePen’s National Rally, which consistently blames France’s educational, social and economic problems on Macon’s immigration policies and left-wing predilections.  Sound familiar?

Then there is the Middle East’s sole Democracy, Israel, which has seen tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of people taking to the streets  protesting Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s changes to the Israeli Judicial system . . . all seemingly for the sole purpose of keeping him free of legal liabilities so long as he holds office.  For the past weeks, Prime Minister Netanyahu - sounding more and more like former President Donald Trump than David Ben Gurion or even Ariel Sharon - has defied critics of his plan to weaken Israel’s highest court. 

Earlier today (March 26), An Israeli good governance group asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption. The request by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel (התנועה לאיכות השלטון בישראל) intensifies a brewing showdown between Netanyahu’s government and the judiciary, which it is trying to overhaul in a contentious plan that has sparked widespread opposition.

                             Israeli P.M. Bibi Netanyahu

The Movement leaders have demanded that the court force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so. It’s repeated refrain is “He is not above the law” (הוא לא מעל החוק). The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and toward a burgeoning constitutional crisis. After the last election, Netanyahu put together a coalition larded with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties in order to maintain power . . . something which has many Israelis both angry and on edge. It has potentially buried a dagger into the heart of Israeli democracy. For the first time in the State of Israel’s nearly 75 year history, the words
”anarchy” (אנרכיה) and “dictatorship” (רודנות) are being heard.

As I’m editing this blog just prior to recording, word has gone out over the Internet that Bibi has abruptly fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for challenging his judicial overhaul plan. Gallant, a former senior general, had called for a pause in the controversial legislation until after next month’s Independence Day holidays, citing the turmoil in the ranks of the military. This is big stuff; Bibi’s government is pushing for a Knesset (parliament) vote this week on a bill that would give his governing coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. It also seeks to grant the Knesset the authority to override Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority and give the coalition the final say over all judicial appointments. Can you say “constitutional crisis?” (משבר חוקתי).  

Bibi and his allies say their plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and  “rein in” what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.  It sounds to me like they are taking  a page out of the MAGA/Clown-Car-Caucus  playbook

These are indeed perilous and most jarring times. Those who were once considered part of the extreme right are now considered the newly emerging center. Where once experience, education, good judgement, diplomacy, and civility were keys to successful leadership, brutishness, extreme commonality, narcissism, the use of fear and a “what’s in it for me” attitude have become central to attracting followers and acolytes . . . people who will follow come hell or high water.

Citizens in India and France, Israel and the U.S.A., have, of late, come to a breaking point; they are fed up with so-called leaders who refuse to listen to their voices, heed their majority wishes or act like adults. They see in these “leaders” men and women whose main concern is feeding their followers a daily diet of mis- and disinformation, and setting up straw dogs whom the public can both fear and hate. In this way, they believe they can keep their followers’ votes and their backers’ dollars. In so many countries, the concept of e pluribus unum (Latin for “out of many, one”) to Après moi, le déluge (French for “after me, the deluge” - King Louis XV’s bon mot which stands for leaving a place or job and predicting disaster or chaos after their departure). What a way to live life!

Much of what made Inga and Paul so desperate in Isn’t Life Wonderful? was that their reality had been turned upside down. Where once, despite their poverty, they led lives worth living, now they had to subsist on horse turnips or, if lucky, a single potato per day. But unlike many of we moderns, they refused to spend their days and nights trying figure out who or what was to blame for the vast changes their lives had undergone. Somehow, they understood that life’s complexities could not be overcome or fixed through vapid simplicity. Despite everything, the came to realize by the film’s end, that they had one another to love, to share with and cheer on . . . the basic ingredients which helped them conclude that indeed, Life is Wonderful.

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

A Pandora's Box of Existential Fears

For the past several weeks I have been spending an hour or so of daily time doing a bit of research on what - at least for me - is the newest thing in Artificial Intelligence (AI): ChatGPT. For the uninitiated (myself near the top of the list), ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an AI and research company headquartered in San Francisco’s Mission District. The company launched ChatGPT on Nov. 30, 2022. It is “an artificial intelligence text generator,” which our “Mind Children” (as the Harvard roboticist Hans Moravec dubbed them more than 30 years ago) consider it to be the “future of work.” Simply stated, ChatGPT is an AI tool that can generate human-like text.  It is a natural language processing tool driven by AI technology, that allows users to have human-like conversations and much more. The language model can answer questions, and assist the user with tasks such as composing emails, essays, and code. Usage is currently open to the public free of charge, because ChatGPT is still in its research and feedback-collection phase. The more I have read, learned and digested, the more I fear that potentially, it’s akin to Cliff Notes (remember them?) warping on crystal meth.  

Let’s face facts: most of us have never seen anything remotely like ChatGPT outside of science fiction. As with most new cyber technology, it is more quickly grokked and grasped by the young than their elders. There’s nothing new about that. I mean, what immigrant parent or grandparent didn’t stand in awe of their young one’s mastering English long, long before they themselves spoke their first intelligible sentence? In most cases, it never dawned on them that the children were immersed in the new language from the first moment they went out to play. What parent or grandparent doesn’t believe their 3, 4, and 5-year olds are geniuses because they can run circles around their elders on an I-Pad, or Smartphone? I often tell my lifelong learning students (many of whom are in their 80s and even above) that if there’s something they don’t understand about accessing information, “Ask your youngest great-grandchild for help.”

As time progresses, the uses of Chatbot technology are going to grow and become ever more sophisticated. For now, students are already handing in written assignments which are the products not of their cerebral synapses, but rather their computer’s software. In a piece published a couple of days ago in the New York Times, 4 writers - Claire Cain Miller, Adam Playford, Larry Buchanan and Aaron Krolik reported on a research project in which a random assortment of 4-graders were each given a writing assignment. “We used real essay prompts from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the standardized test from the Department of Education, known as the nation’s report card). We asked the bot to produce essays based on those prompts — sometimes with a little coaching, and always telling it to write like a student of the appropriate age. We put what it wrote side by side with sample answers written by real children.” None of the experts involved in the project, which included a fourth-grade teacher; a professional writing tutor; a Stanford education professor; and Judy Blume, the beloved children’s author, could tell the difference . . .

As a university instructor and writer, I do not want to wake up one day and find that I’ve become irrelevant due to some devilish bot . . .  

It should come as no surprise that educators ranging from elementary, middle and high school teachers through instructors at such prestigious institutions of higher learning as the Wharton School of Business (whose graduates include Donald and Ivanka Trump, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Jr.) and Harvard Law (whose graduates include Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, Jaimie Raskin and Merrick Garland) have voiced extreme concern over the negative impact that ChatGPT can have on learning. True, students may receive higher grades because their essays and papers are structurally and grammatically perfect . . . but what about learning itself? The major purpose of education - especially at the lower grades - is to teach critical learning skills . . . not just to achieve the highest possible grade point average.

While as of now it seems unlikely that poets, playwrights and comedians will be replaced by machines, I am truly frightened by the existential threat ChatGPT may well have on Democracy itself.  As Nathan E. Sanders, a data scientist, and Bruce Schneier, a security technologist noted in a recent Times report: “ChatGPT could automatically compose comments submitted in regulatory processes. It could write letters to the editor for publication in local newspapers. It could comment on news articles, blog entries and social media posts millions of times every day. . . . Facebook, has been removing over a billion fake accounts a year. But such messages are just the beginning. Rather than flooding legislators’ inboxes with supportive emails, or dominating the Capitol switchboard with synthetic voice calls, an A.I. system with the sophistication of ChatGPT but trained on relevant data could selectively target key legislators and influencers to identify the weakest points in the policymaking system and ruthlessly exploit them through direct communication, public relations campaigns, horse trading or other points of leverage.

If a bot could create a successful autocrat, he or she would look, act, sound and campaign like Donald Trump or George Santos; soulless creatures who are directed by the soulless algorithms of their crafty creators. Their fibs could be told with straight faces, their polling numbers presented as the god’s honest truth.  AI has yet to create subtlety or satire, and knows virtually nothing about the effect its words have on human minds. 

(Speaking of George Santos [or "Kitara Ravache,” his nom de drag], I came across a marvelous definition of fibs in a P.G. Wodehouse novel last night: “Fibs, my dear [are] artistic mouldings of the unshapely clay of truth . . . “) 

Let’s see such gleeful snottiness emerge from  a Chatbot!)

Way back in 1932, MGM costarred the 3 Barrymores, Ethel, Lionel and John, together for the first and only time in a film called Rasputin and the Empress. The model for Princess Natasha (played by Diana Wynard) in the movie was Princess Irina Romanoff Youssoupoff. The real Princess Irina filed a lawsuit against producer Irving Thalberg and MGM, claiming invasion of privacy and libel in portraying her as a mistress and, later, a rape victim of Grigory Rasputin (called Prince Youssoupoff in the movie). She won an award of $127,373 in an English court and an out-of-court settlement in New York with MGM, for  reportedly $1 million. As a result of the success of Princess Youssoupoff's lawsuit against MGM over this movie, Hollywood studios began inserting the disclaimer "This motion picture is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental" in the credits of virtually every film released since.

Taking a cue from MGM, perhaps in the near future, Congress will pass a law requiring a disclaimer averring something like “BEWARE: That which follows is the creation of Artificial Intelligence. Any resemblance to the human thought process or the truth is purely coincidental.”

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

Of Quarks and Quacks

 “Alice” - the Lawrence Livermore particle collider 

Say what you will, but the past 168 hours have been the living definition of an alpha and omega week. Say what? For those who studied a bit of Greek (and managed to stay awake during class), alpha (A) and omega (Ω) are, respectively, the first and last letters of the Greek αλφαβήτα (alphabet). The concept of “alpha and omega” also connotes bipolar opposites; the nadir and the zenith . . . the highest high and lowest low. And that they should both occur in the same 168-hour period (a week) is both eerie and one for the books.

Let’s begin with last week’s omega, its low point - and one I can write about with quite a bit more confidence than its alpha:  its high point.    This past Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, saying that COVID-19 vaccines have been “pushed on Americans,” asked the state Supreme Court to impanel a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing in Florida” related to these shots.  DeSantis announced his request for a grand jury during a media event to discuss “COVID-19 mRNA (“Messenger RNA) vaccine accountability,” where he was joined by state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, M.D., and a group of professors, researchers and doctors - all of whom are noted for questioning the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines and whether adverse health reactions (lethal side effects) have been accurately reported. Within that part of the medical community which specializes in clinical trials in epidemiology and infectious diseases, the response to the DeSantis gang’s proposal was both swift and all but unanimous: that Governor DeSantis and Dr. Ladapo are, in the words of our late Grannie Annie,  “full of canal water.”    

As for the governor’s inane proposal: The Florida Department of Law Enforcement would serve as the primary investigator for a grand jury, though the governor’s petition said any law enforcement agency in the state could be called upon for the probe.

On the same day, DeSantis announced that Dr. Ladapo, who doubles as secretary of the Florida Department of Health, will lead what Ladapo called a “surveillance study” to explore deaths that occurred after people were vaccinated against COVID-19. “We are initiating a program here in Florida where we will be studying the incidents, in surveillance, of myocarditis within a few weeks of COVID-19 vaccination for people who died,” Ladapo said. (n.b.) Myocarditis is a condition that causes inflammation of the heart. It can be fatal . . . although it need have nothing to do with a COVID-19 vaccine or booster. Moreover, a recent clinical study showed that patients with COVID-19 “had nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with patients who did not have COVID-19.”)

One should expect that a state government’s Chief Medical Officer should possess significant experience in the area of public health. Checking the internet’s best source for medical research information [Clinical Trials.Gov] we find that Dr. Ladapo has taken part in precisely 5 clinical trials, only two of which were ever completed: Financial Incentives for Weight Reduction Study and Financial Incentives for Smoking Treatment. Compare this to the soon-to-be-retiring Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is the 6th most cited medical researcher on planet earth, and that prior to being named head of the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] Dr. Rochelle Walensky was chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital . Talk about alpha to omega!)

The DeSantis/Ladapo proposal has next to nothing to do with public safety or the saving of lives. What it does involve is the governor’s obsession for keeping his name and worldview in front of the MAGA crowd who he believes may well be looking for a candidate to replace Donald Trump in 2024. Participating alongside Governor DeSantis and Dr. Ladapo at the Tuesday media event were Stanford University professor Jay Bhattacharya and epidemiologist Tracy Hoeg, both of whom are expected to be part of the the governor’s Public Health Integrity Committee. The committee, according to DeSantis, will “assess recommendations and guidance” that has come from entities such as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health.

Bhattacharya served as a witness for the state in a high-profile lawsuit challenging a directive by DeSantis that schools avoid imposing mask requirements for students to stave off the spread of COVID-19. Bhattacharya also was one of the state's witnesses in a separate legal challenge of DeSantis' decision to reopen schools in the early stages of the pandemic. Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, M.D., PhD., is a board certified Sports Medicine and Spine Medicine specialist in California who has on innumerable occasions spoken out in favor of DeSantis’ anti-mask, anti-school closure mandates: “We know that masks interfere with communication, and children do not like wearing them. The children with hearing impairments and other impairments have difficulty wearing masks. And, we’re forcing them to do this just because we have this idea that they’re going to be doing something good. We have actually no high-quality evidence showing that they are.”

All we can hope for is that the seven-member Florida Supreme Court (six of whom were appointed by DeSantis) will vote against his petition for a Grand Jury, thereby staving off his desire to keep his “COVID vaccines are a conspiracy” campaign away from center stage as we move onwards to 2024.

Well, that’s the omega. What, pray tell is the alpha?

Only what could be the biggest scientific breakthrough since Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (1564-1642), the “Father of Modern Physics” proved the validity of Copernican heliocentrism (which states that the Earth rotates daily and revolves around the Sun) or Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity (E = mc2, which expresses the fact that mass and energy are the same physical entity and can be changed into each other). In this case, the alpha may well turn out to be the BIGGEST and MOST IMPORTANT scientific breakthrough in the past half millennium: going back in time 14 billion years (or less than 6,000 if you are a Bible-toting literalist) to the very origins of the universe. For as of just the other day, Physicists have confirmed the existence of a doubly charmed baryon (a composite subatomic particle), opening the door to an entirely new kind of fusion, known as quark fusion.

Yes, yes, I know, many readers are going to tune out at this point, assuming that I’m going to continue writing in “Star Trek” technobabble. I promise this is not the case: I am neither a particle physicist nor a writer of science fiction; just a regular guy who took a 2 semesters of “College Physics for Philosophers” and a perpetual student. Believe me: I know a hell of a lot more about practical politics and medicine than I do about fusion.

As a brief introduction to this week’s alpha: You’re looking at quarks right now. Magazines, screens, and air are made of atoms, and atoms are largely made of protons and neutrons – which are the most familiar examples of the three-quark bundles that physicists call baryons. Fusion describes a general process in which particles recombine to form new particles, because the new particles need less energy to exist than the old ones did. With that scant info in tow, you should know that on 5 December, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California finally did it, focusing 2.05 megajoules of laser light onto a tiny capsule of fusion fuel and sparking an explosion that produced 3.15 MJ of energy—the equivalent of about three sticks of dynamite. This means that for the first time in human history, scientists have finally, finally been able to ignite a nuclear fusion reaction unlike any before in human history. That's because the fusion reaction produced more energy than it took to start the reaction.

I wish I could go in to greater detail, but this ain’t my field. Nonetheless, after chatting up several friends and classmates who know one hell of a lot more than I do (e.g., those who went into physics rather than philosophy, politics or rabbinics), they tell me that the result of this fusion test should ultimately change the energy picture for the entire globe; that ultimately we will be able to provide clean, non-lethal, non-polluting, infinitely available energy for the rest of human history. And if this isn’t the ultimate alpha, I cannot image what could be better.

What makes all of this so incredibly weird is that at precisely the same time that physicists - the experts whose “religion” is scientific truth - have made such a mind-numbing, historic pronouncement, the conspiracists - whose motto is “believe nothing but what we tell you” - are doing everything in their power to clobber and corrupt our gateway to the future. And for what? For clinging to power? For bringing Armageddon a few inches closer? For putting down those who did better than them in school? I simply do not know . . . and seriously doubt I ever shall.

What I do know is that the future will ultimately be far, far more in the hands of those who use their brains to bring about hope and progress, than those whose raison d’être is to create hysterical retrogression. And, it will also take a radical change in society, wherein telling lies and fomenting fear becomes as unacceptable as alchemy.

Wishing one and all a Happy, Merry Everything!

Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone

Federalists, Dystopians, and Extreme Nausea

Truth to tell, Friday’s 5-4* Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case centered on a Mississippi law that bars most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, didn’t come as that much of a surprise. Movement conservatives, including the Christian Right, the Federalist Society and their billionaire backers, have been pumping time, effort, energy and endless shekels into reversing Roe v. Wade for more than 40 years. Friday’s ruling has automatically jump started so-called “trigger laws” in 13 states as well as putting fear, loathing and extreme nausea into the minds, hearts and kishkes of an overwhelming majority of the American public. (* It should be noted that Chief Justice John Roberts did not join the majority, writing in a concurring opinion that he would not have overturned Roe, but instead would have only uphold Mississippi's law banning abortions after 15 weeks.)  Despite writing that Roe had been fatally flawed when decided back in 1973, Justice Samuel Alito tried to paper over the decision by stating that it was not intended to ban all abortions in the United States; merely to put the decision back into the hands of the individual states.  Can you say “disingenuous?” 

“Trigger laws” would effectively ban abortions almost immediately after a decision from the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.  These states include Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Kentucky and Alabama.  There are an additional 9 states which have already banned abortions: Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.  In an interview on Face the Nation, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem defended her state’s trigger law, rationalizing that in cases of rape and/or incest she does not believe one tragedy is "a reason to have another tragedy occur."  Governor Noem said her state will now work to bolster resources for women who will now have to carry their pregnancies to term, including with more mental health counseling and family services.  "I would prefer that we continue to make sure we go forward and that we're putting resources in front of these women and walking alongside them, getting them the health care, the care, the mental health counseling and services that they should need to make sure that we can continue to support them and build stronger families far into the future as well," she said, adding, "The Supreme Court did its job: it fixed a wrong decision it made many years ago and returned this power back to the states, which is how the Constitution and our Founders intended it."  It should be noted that Governor Noem has made more than a handful of comments that she’s seriously considering making a White House bid in 2024. . .

For the first 15 years after Roe guaranteed women the legal right to control their own bodily destiny, Republicans were as likely as Democrats to support an absolute right to legal abortion, and sometimes even more so. But 2010 swept in a different breed of Republican, powered by Tea Party supporters, who locked in a new conservatism. Going into the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats controlled 27 state legislatures going in, and ended up with 16; Republicans started with 14 and ended up controlling 25. Republicans swept not only the South but Democratic strongholds in the Midwest, picking up more seats nationwide than either party had in four decades. By the time the votes had been counted, they held their biggest margin since the Great Depression. From that point on, Republican-controlled state legislatures began passing more and more restrictive laws which began the inexorable path toward the total dismantling of Roe v. Wade. Not that all the Republican state legislators were saturated with Biblical fervor. They did, in many cases, become increasingly more pro-life in order to grow their majorities and assure greater funding from well-heeled (and largely anonymous) billionaire backers.  This funding issue is crucial; were it not for the Court’s egregious 5-4 Citizens United v. FEC decision back in 2010, which eliminated the prohibition on PACS (“political action committees”) and corporations making unfettered independent expenditures, it is likely that Roe v. Wade would still be settled law today. 

Now mind you, Dobbs (the case which overturned Roe) wasn’t the only terrible ruling from the high court this past week.  Just the day before ruling that women no longer had any say in their bodily destinies, the court struck down a New York gun law enacted more than a century ago that restricts carrying a concealed handgun outside the home. The opinion changes the framework that lower courts will use to analyze other gun restrictions, which could include proposals currently before Congress if they eventually become law.  According to Justice Clarence Thomas, courts are required to "assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment's text and historical understanding,"   

For instance, Thomas wrote, if a gun law is addressing a societal problem that also existed in the 18th century, it is evidence that the modern law is unconstitutional if there was no similar regulation then. Likewise, he said, if that societal problem was historically addressed using a type of regulation different than the one now before a court, this is also evidence that the modern law is unconstitutional.

"When confronting such present-day firearm regulations, this historical inquiry that courts must conduct will often involve reasoning by analogy—a commonplace task for any lawyer or judge. Like all analogical reasoning, determining whether a historical regulation is a proper analogue for a distinctly modern firearm regulation requires a determination of whether the two regulations are 'relevantly similar,'" Thomas wrote.  Thursday's ruling means that for a court to find any type of gun law constitutional, it will have to be consistent with how firearms were regulated historically.  This means states and localities will run into legal trouble whenever they try to enact a gun law that does not have a historical parallel, particularly if the problem the law is trying to address is a problem that arguably has existed for generations.  

In other words, just as with the Dobbs decision, this one invites us to travel back into the past . . . to willfully ignore past decisions of the court.  To a huge extent, this is the work of the  Federalist Society, which wants nothing so much as to return to an America in which men rule over women, states have clear control of the law, black’s and other minorities legal rights take a backseat to those of White Christians, and the frontier is once again, just outside our front doors.

During times like these, my reading habits change.  To get away from all the angst, worry and bile, I tend read as much P.G. Wodehouse as time permits.  (For those not familiar with him, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE [1881-1975] was one of the funniest, most inane British writers of all time.  He is perhaps best known and most beloved for his series of novels starring Bertie Wooster (one of the dotty “idle rich”) and his sagacious valet Jeeves. My all-time favorite, by the way, is Ring For Jeeves). For more serious, mind-numbing fiction, I find myself turning (or returning) to such classic dystopian novels as:

• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895)

• The Iron Heel by Jack London (1908)

• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1921)

• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

• It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1936)

• 1984 by George Orwell (1948)

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1984)

Dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and frightening. “Dystopia” is the bipolar opposite of a utopia, which is a perfect society. The novels I have been rereading, most notably Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here, and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, take us into an American society/political culture in which democratic freedoms have been wrenchingly upended by brutal autocrats and hideous dictators. What makes these novels so compelling is that no matter how long ago they were written or published, they all seem to be talking about today. The one drawback in most of them is that they offer no solutions to the problems they all predict . . . short of moving away to another country.

                          Wedding photo of Clarence and Ginni Lamp Thomas in 1987

Although by no means a novelist, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a world-class dystopian.  In his separate, concurring opinion in last Friday’s Dobbs decision, Thomas wrote that this was undoubtedly “an erroneous decision.”  Thomas went on to write that the Court should “reconsider” such previous rulings as those that protect contraception access (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965), same-sex relationships (Lawrence v. Texas. 2003) and same-sex marriages (Obergefell v. Hodges,  2015).  Not surprisingly, nowhere did Mr.  Justice Thomas mention the court’s unanimous 1967 decision (Loving v. Virginia) decision which made inter-racial marriages legal.  At best, Thomas’s omission could be considered a case of inconsistency; at worst, utter hypocrisy.  But then again, hypocrisy and inconsistency have long been key ingredients in both bare-knuckle politics and dystopian literature.  

For all those who have been so vociferously in favor of over-turning Roe v. Wade, one has to wonder whether they are going to do anything about assisting all these newborns (even those who are the product of rape and incest) with food, housing, medical care and education, or just leave them floating in the breeze.  And do all those ultra-conservative cretins who have hopped aboard the “Replacement Theory” bandwagon understand that by outlawing abortions - which will most directly affect non-whites and the poor - will greatly increase the minority population of the United States . . . thus making their supposedly “worst nightmare” a far greater reality?  Not only are they both inconsistent and hypocritical; they are immoral. 

As mentioned above, dystopian novels rarely provide suggestions for remediation . . .  short of emigration. Not being a dystopian writer, permit me to conclude with a  couple of suggestions:

1. Increase the number of Supreme Court Justices from 9 to 13 . . .  the number of Federal Judicial Circuits there are in the U.S.A.

2. Elect a staunchly Democratic Congress which will get rid of the filibuster and enact a bill which codifies abortion as a federal right.

3. Start the process of overturning the Citizens United  ruling. 

4. Make sure that Roe v. Wade is on every ballot in every state and district in 2022.

Never give up hope!  This land belongs to the majority . . . 

Copyright© 2022 Kurt F.  Stone

"The Darkness on the Edge of Town"

This past Thursday (December 9, 2021) the veteran journalist and news anchor Brian Williams signed off as host of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, thus ending his 28-year run with NBC News. In his final 3 minutes and 51 seconds on-air, Williams delivered a highly reflective valedictory which, if it had had a musical backdrop, would undoubtedly have come from Paul Anka’s My Way, featuring the lyric Regrets, I’ve had a few/but then again, too few to mention/I did what I had to do/and saw it through without exemption . . . But more than that, he spoke out for his greatest fear: the future of America:

After 28 years of Peacock logos on much of what I own, it is my choice now to jump without a net into the great unknown,” he said. “As I do, for the first time in my 62 years, my biggest worry is for my country.

The truth is I am not a liberal or a conservative, I am an institutionalist. I believe in this place, and in my love of country I yield to no one. But the darkness on the edge of town has spread to the main roads and highways and neighborhoods. It is now at the local bar and the bowling alley, at the school board and the grocery store. And it must be acknowledged and answered for. Grown men and women, who swore an oath to our Constitution — elected by their constituents, possessing the kind of college degrees I could only dream of — have decided to join the mob and become something they are not, while hoping we somehow forget who they were. They’ve decided to burn it all down with us inside. That should scare you to no end.

Williams announced he would be leaving NBC News back on Nov. 9, bringing to an end a relationship that began in 1993 when he joined the network. Before moving to MSNBC, Williams served as chief anchor and managing editor of NBC’s Nightly News, succeeding the legendary Tom Brokaw in 2004. In 2015, he faced scandal and a six-month suspension over false claims about his helicopter being hit by a grenade in March 2003 while covering the Iraq War. He was later replaced by Lester Holt in the anchor role, and made his transition to the 24-hour cable network.

To Brian Williams’ detractors, the scandal and suspension represent the entirety of his nearly 3-decade career. Sadly, that’s the way things go in the modern world; one’s detractors make sure their audience never forgets the foibles of the fallible who happen to occupy the opposite side of the whatever aisle divides them, all the while turning both a deaf ear and a blind eye to the imperfections of those they support. A handful of mistruths from Brian Williams make him lower than Lenin in the minds of the Fox/News Max/OAN/Breitbart crowd, while the 30,000+ whoppers told by Boss Tweet matter neither whit nor farthing.

Like many on our/my side of the aisle, I found Brian Williams' valedictory to be terse, his words well crafted and his message scary as hell.  His message - and what today we increasingly refer to as “messaging” - hit the nail on the head.  “Messaging” is a fairly new concept, and means something like: the ideas or messages conveyed either explicitly or implicitly by a politician, advertising campaign, etc., or the way in which this is done.  Williams’ political messaging, in a nutshell, conveyed a great truth: We need more people WITH A PLATFORM to step up and say, “Hey folks, we’re on the ledge of losing our imperfect republic, our highly flawed but great democratic experiment. Open your eyes. We are hanging on by our freaking fingertips. 

Writing about Williams’ messaging in The Daily Kos, progressive Stella Ray noted “There will be those who say this is hyperbolic---but I now think those are the same sort who didn’t see Hitler coming, even after the Brown shirts had arrived. And make no mistake about it, the Brown shirts have arrived in the United States of America. They just go by different names these days. All sorts of  names, but most disturbing of all is this name: the Republican Party. There is no ‘both sides do it’ in this ultimate game, despite my opinion on the many imperfections of the Democratic Party.  I

I think there is no doubt this is who Williams was talking about.  Think about it: so much of what is driving Americans apart and democracy down is due to things such as:

• The promotion of anti-vaxxing, anti-masking lies in the name of “preserving individual freedom,”

• The passing of countless pieces of state and local legislation making voting terribly difficult - if not impossible - for the poor and people of color . . . and this in the name of safeguarding against electoral fraud;

• State-after-state enacting laws which make abortions next to impossible for all but women (or families) of means;

• The perpetuation of a solid slate of lies concerning the dangers posed by refugees, asylees and non-white immigrants;

• Perpetuating myths and lies about the teaching of Critical Race Theory; fostering bullying against children who are LGBTQ;

• Denying climate change;

• Spreading conspiracy theories about virtually everything in order to keep their base close at hand;

• Convincing a vast portion of America that anything they disagree with is the product of a Socialist/Communist revolution in the making.

Democrats have long been unsuited to repelling Republicanism. Hells bells: Democrats have long been unsuited to fighting fire with fire, to calling a spade a spade or showing anger. For too long, Democrats have strapped on lace gloves for any lethal Mixed Martial Arts battles they’ve entered. For the past couple of decades Democrats have held on to the canard that “working across the aisle” is the best way to survive, succeed and progress.  

It seems to me that if Democrats are going to succeed - to continue occupying the White House and leading both the House and Senate, they are going to have to shine one whole hell of a lot of cleansing megawattage on that “Darkness on the edge of town” of which Brian Williams spoke during his final segment of “The 11th Hour.”

Democrats are going to have to pump ungodly amounts of cash, courage and energy into races for POTUS, Congress, governorships, state legislatures, county commissions and boards of supervisors and education across the country. We are going have to flood airways with visuals and actualities of what such political miscreants as Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley et al have been vomiting out for the past several years . . . mostly as an act of obeisance to their cult leader, Donald J. Trump. In addition to being the one party running on a platform of political possibilities, Democrats will have to point out their opponents’ lies, conspiracy theories and penchant for scaring the daylights out of the citizens of America. Anything less will spell not only loss at the polls, but the loss of democracy in cities, towns and farmlands of this once great nation.

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

Words

The great and revered Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) - Indian lawyer, anti-colonialist nationalist and sage - was a man of words, great deeds and even greater character. Indeed, in one of his many, many aphorisms, he wrote: Keep yourself positive, because your thoughts become YOUR WORDS.
Keep your words positive, because your words become YOUR BEHAVIOR.
Keep your behavior positive, because your behavior becomes YOUR HABITS.
Keep your habits positive, because your habits become YOUR VALUES.
Keep your values positive, because your values become YOUR DESTINY. 

I’ve always been fascinated by etymology - the study of the origins and history of words.  Take as but one tiny example, the word lens - the glass that regulates light and vision in eyeglasses. It comes from the Latin lenticula, which is a lentil . . . which has roughly the same shape as the glass (or plastic) gizmo the oculist cuts and installs into our glasses.  (gizmo, BTW, is a slang term of unknown origin).  In Hebrew, the word for lentil is עֲדָשָׁה (ah-dah-shah), which is also the word for lens. 

In creating a word for lens in the here-to-for dead language, Hebrew scholars searched various languages to see how they had arrived at a word for their tongue.  So what did the Hebrew scholars do?  They simply followed the etymological trail left by Latin-to-English.  (Hebrew, by the  way, which is one of the world’s most ancient tongues, spent untold centuries being a so-called “dead language.”  It was given new life starting in the mid-1880s by a Polish Jewish lexicographer named Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who all but single-handedly took it - Hebrew - out of the linguistic burial ground and breathed new life into it.  Today, it is the one of the official languages of Israel, and the "Academy of the Hebrew Language” is still adding new words to its vocabulary on a regular basis.   

New words are also being created and recognized here in the United States on an almost weekly basis by the good folks Merriam-Webster. In some cases, words - like ginormous and luciferase - are brand-new and already passing muster on anyone’s computer spell check. Then too, there are old words being recognized as having new, additional meanings. Take the word “victim.” Sure, everyone knows what it means: A person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action. But according to the October 27, 2021 edition of the Merriam-Webster words-of-the-week website, it now has an additional meaning.

The other day, a judge ruled that prosecutors in a high-profile case could not use the word “victim” in reference to people who had been shot by someone else.  The men shot by Kyle Rittenhouse in August 2020 can potentially be referred to at his trial as “rioters” or “looters,” but not “victims,” Wisconsin Judge Bruce Schroeder declared that using that word to describe the men who died would be “loaded with prejudice.”   

Score one for the morons . . . for as one anonymous wag once noted:

"Be careful of the words you say,
Keep them short and sweet.
You never know, from day to day,
Which ones you'll have to eat."

“Eating words” is a quaint expression from yesteryear. It does not carry the same warning power as it once did . . . thanks to the internet and social media. For realistically, once something is posted on the internet (either in print or voice), it’s next to impossible to delete it. In an apparent contradiction in terms, if you happen to delete something in your control (like a document or a file), it’s next to impossible to get it back. But the internet . . . that’s a different kettle of fish. Take Representatives Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who have enmired themselves so deeply in the quicksand of the internet, that no amount of backtracking will ever save them. (BTW: speaking of a “contradiction in terms,” quicksand is a fascinating word; sinking in quicksand [a mixture of sand or clay and salt that has become waterlogged] is anything but quick; it is a slow and agonizing process).

Within the past several days:

• Paul Gosar has posted a truly sick video on Twitter (he has 177.1K followers) that depicts anime characters killing other characters with the faces of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and President Biden.  It is still up for all to see . . . and as of this morning, has been viewed more than 1 million times. Outraged by this lunacy, people across the country have begun questioning whether the DOJ, Speaker Pelosi or House Minority Leader McCarthy are going to do anything about it . . . like arrest, censure or forced resignation . . . 1st Amendment be damned.

• Marjorie Taylor Greene conducted a poll on her Twitter feed (she has 456K followers) asking them if they feel America should divide into two different nations based on red and blue states.  She also discussed this possibility on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, with the now-subpoenaed former Trump guru vehemently disagreeing.  Nonetheless, nearly 50% of those responding to her poll agreed that America should be divided into 2 countries based on whether they poll majority Democrat or majority Republican.

• Senator Cruz, was captured on a live podcast being interviewed by extreme anti-vaxxer Joe Rogan mulling over whether Texas should secede from the union, declaring “. . . if there comes a point where it’s hopeless, then I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil.” (BTW: the movement to secede already has a name: “Texit” Furthermore, Senator Cruz has gone so far as to suggest that were secession to succeed, he just might consider Rogan for President).

One wonders if these words and visual images - none of which can ever be totally deleted - will ever begin to repulse or sicken so-called “patriotic” Americans; to make them awaken from their lethargy and ask "What hath we wrought?” I for one would urge Democrats to undergo some kind of political kyphoplasty (spinal stenting), in order to grow a backbone, and use the various words and visuals against our well-armed modern-day insurrectionists. These rebels are as potentially lethal to the  future of our country as were the secessionists of the 19th century.  Like their ancestors, these mouthy internet insurrectionists are threatening to destroy a country in order to “save” it. 

The question is: do we, who form the modern Union, have the courage, the skill, the will and the words to defeat them? What words, behavior, habits, and values, shall we employ to secure our destiny? Perhaps the words of the greatest of all American, thinkers, leaders and doers, Abraham Lincoln will give us some powerful motivation:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves,” and

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the [people] who pervert the Constitution.”

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

In the Majestic Words of JFK (Or Ted Sorensen, or Winston Churchill or George St. John)

Without question, one of the most majestic and awe-inspiring of all presidential inaugural addresses was the one delivered by the then 43-year old John Fitzgerald Kennedy on January 20, 1961. It was also one of the shortest - a mere 14 minutes. That speech contained such gems as:

• 'Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'

• 'If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.'

• 'Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.' and perhaps the most magical of all presidential phrases:

• 'And so, my fellow Americans - ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.'

The inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) represented a seismic change in American politics.  He was, after all, more than a generation younger than his predecessor, President Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969).  He was also the first president born in the 20th century and brought to the White House, a dash and flair, an energetic youthfulness and élan unlike anything America and the world had ever seen before. JFK and his picture-perfect family had it all: wealth and movie-star good looks; sophistication, 50-mile hikes and above all, breathtaking charisma.  He only lived a brief 46 years; unbelievably, he has now been dead for nearly 60. 

Kennedy’s image is that of a fire-breathing progressive.  In truth, he was anything but.  Rather, he was a slightly right-of-center moderate Democrat whose greatest accomplishments - Medicare, the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts - were mostly completed by his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was likely American political history’s most masterful legislative prestidigitators.  What Kennedy had in spades over Johnson - and most all of our presidents before or since - was the ability to motivate people of all ages to get off their backsides and give something back to “The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.”  The motivation of which we speak was of course wrapped up in the ultimate sentence of JFK’s  inaugural address: to "Ask not what your country can do for you, [but rather] ask what you can do for your country.”  Ironically, those words for which he is best remembered may well have not come from his pen . . . or that of Ted Sorensen, his brilliantly poetic 33-year old speechwriter.  According to Chris Matthews, the former press spokesman for Speaker Tip O’Neil,  chief speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and former MSNBC news host, that phrase likely came from either from one of Winston Churchill’s war-time speeches or George St. John, who was JFK’s headmaster at Choate  in the early 1930s.  In his 2011 book Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,  Matthews, who interviewed many of Kennedy’s Choate classmates, notes that they frequently heard headmaster St. John tell his students precisely the same thing.

I well remember listening to JKF’s inaugural address on the radio in Miss Cook’s class that January afternoon in 1961.  (The next day would be our father’s 45th birthday).  The new president sounded so young; his Boston accent was like something we only heard in movies; hearing Robert Frost read the poem The Gift Outright was especially rewarding . . . I was terribly smitten by great poets, thanks largely to “Granny Annie,” my mother’s mother. (Actually, Frost had written a brand new poem for the event entitled Dedication.” He approached the microphone, but blinded by the sun's glare on the snow-covered Capitol grounds, Frost was unable to read it. Thinking quickly, he instead recited "The Gift Outright," a poem he had written in 1942.)

I also well remember wanting desperately to join the Peace Corps and go out on a 50-mile hike. Alas, one needed a minimum of a B.A. in order to join the former, and their parents’ permission to participate in the latter. (I was but 11 at the time and possessed neither the degree nor parental permission.) Nonetheless, JFK inoculated in many of us a desire to be active, to give something of ourselves back to the country of our birth. JFK would be the reason why many of my generation became involved in what used to be known as “causes.” It’s something woefully lacking in today’s world . . .

        Post-war: able to get back into tailored clothing!

As a child, I well remember going to either the Union (train) Station in downtown Los Angeles or what was then known as the Los Angeles Airport (where parking was still both unpaved and free). In my recollection, both places were filled with uniformed soldiers, sailors, and marines rushing to make connections. In our neighborhood, there were many men who still bore the scars and halting gait of men who had been injured in the war. Unbeknownst to us - children living lives of relative privilege, many of our parents were actually in the 91%-92% income tax bracket and yet never tried to start a revolution. They were children of the Great Depression who survived a gruesome war and helped rebuild both a nation and a world. For some, it was a matter of noblesse oblige; for most, it was part of the obligation of being a patriotic citizen.

Where have those times gone?

I for one firmly desire to see Congress and the Biden administration institute something akin to “National Service; a series of programs and policies meant for the masses to join, thereby repairing our country while answering JFK’s challenge to “ask what we can do for our country.” In one of the very few conversations I ever had with my father about his 6 years of service during WWII, I remember him telling me that perhaps the best part of being in the service (outside of winning the war and coming back alive) was working alongside and getting to know people he otherwise would never have met. “I learned so much about people who were vastly different from myself . . . and they about me. Imagine: I was the first Jew many of these lads had ever met . . .”

Let’s face it: for quite some time, Americans have been growing further and further apart, whether the dividing lines be race, religion, politics, ethnicity economics or a combination of any or all these things. We frequently take sides, “knowing” that our problems or shortcomings are due to others with whom we have next to no contact with - let alone or knowledge of. This is a loss for all of us. If there were some way for people to work together for the common good, perhaps we could revive the dream of JFK: to ask what we can do for our country. I for one couldn’t care less whether the words come directly from JFK, Ted Sorensen, Winston Churchill or George St. John or Bob Dylan. If America is to survive, we must all find a way to work together.

Interestingly, the one person in the Biden Administration who has spoken most about reviving a national service program is Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He is all all in favor of expanding the Peace Corps (which still exists), as well as Vista and other such programs. Ironically Elaine Chao, Secretary Pete’s immediate predecessor at DOT (she is the wife Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) served as the head of the Peace Corps during the first Bush Administration. Perhaps Buttigieg and Chao should get together with President Biden and his Chief of Staff Ron Klain in order to begin the process of creating a new National Service agenda for all of America.

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

My Friend Marvin: the Once and Former Conservative Republican

More than 20 years ago, when I was dividing my time between Harvard’s Widener Library, Williams College’s Sawyer Library and the Library of Congress doing research on what would turn out to be the first of two books on the history of the Jews of Congress, someone - now long forgotten - sent me an email asking if I was aware that Oklahoma Republican Mickey Edwards likely came from a Jewish background. And so, dropping everything, I spent a considerable amount of time looking into this conservative Republican’s family history. It turned out that indeed, Mickey Edwards (née Marvin Henry Yarnovsky) was and is a former Jewish member of Congress who was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1937, the son of Isidore, the orphaned son of Polish immigrants and Rosalie, whose family had changed their name to Miller, and was the daughter of Lithuanians. Mickey would eventually move with his family from Cleveland to the southside Capitol Hill section of Oklahoma City, where his father, (now called “Eddie Edwards”), managed a shoe store. Mickey has long said that were he to have remained in Cleveland, he likely would have turned out a liberal Democrat.

Mickey eventually earned a degree in journalism, graduated from law school and was elected to Congress, where he became a leading Republican. During his 16 years (1977-1993) in Congress, he served variously on the House Budget and Appropriations committees and was the ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations. He was also a member of the House Republican leadership, serving as the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, the party's fourth-ranking leadership position, He also helped found the Federalist Society and was one of the leading lights of the American Conservative Union.

Once leaving Congress, Mickey, a truly intelligent, well educated man, went into academia, where he spent more than a decade teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, then working as a Lecturer of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and as a member of the Princeton Project on National Security. He taught courses on "How to Win Elections" and "Congress and the Constitution." To this day, he is also a Vice President of the Aspen Institute, and Director of the Aspen Institute-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. In 2013 Mickey was appointed a National Constitution Center – Penn Law Visiting Fellow. But to me, what is most telling is that he gave up his affiliation with conservative Republicanism and eventually left the party altogether.. Why? Because he could no longer abide with the cultish nature (read: pro-Trump) of the G.O.P. In a radio interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Edwards said that he had voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 general election. He endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and left the Republican Party after the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6 of this year.

In another interview with KFOR, an NBC-affiliated station in Oklahoma City, Edwards said he could not understand how even after Republican, Trump-supporting governors and legislators confirmed it was a fair election, members of Congress continued to call it into question.

“The members of Congress knew better. They knew better. [Oklahoma Senator James] Lankford knew better. Members of the house delegation knew better,” Edwards said. “They knew the results, they had the information. They saw that it was Republican Trump supporters all across the country who were saying, ‘no, we lost.” He simply could no longer lend his name or talents to a Republican party that was devoid of values, issues or morality. “This has become a cult. It’s no longer a political party. It’s a cult. It’s the kind of a cult that when the leader of the cult does anything, no matter what it is, or how awful it is, they voted,” Edwards said. “They voted to question the election results even after people came into the Capitol, tried to kill them and killed a police officer who was trying to protect them. And they did that.”-

Now mind you, these are the words, sentiments and political actions not of what used to be referred to as a “Rockefeller Republican,” or even today’s far more conservation incarnation - a so-called “moderate” Republican - but rather, as mentioned above, a former member of Congress who was a founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, national chairman of the American Conservative Union and at one time chaired the House Republican Policy Committee. In other words, this is a party which welcomes the loony likes of Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Rand Paul (KY) and Josh Hawley (MO), or Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Madison Cawthorn (NC-11), Matt Gaetz (FL-1) or Lauren Boebert (C0-3); it has no place for a legislator/thinker like Mickey.

I call Mickey every once in a while just to see how he is doing, get in a bit of mutual kvetching, and dream dreams about the future.

While we’re at it, let’s get a few things straight:

• First and foremost, the Republican Party, far from being a political party in the historic sense of the term, is a full-blown cult which cares not a whit or farthing about what a majority of voting citizens support or desire, but mostly what their cult leader supports or desires.

• Second, more and more, Republicans are far more easily identified by what they are against than what they are for. They are against abortion, gun safety legislation, taxation, federal spending (on anything but tax cuts) and all Democrats (from AOC and Bernie Sanders to Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin) . . . whom they want all Americans to believe are nothing more than a toxic gang of traitorous Communists bent on the utter destruction of this country

• Third, that besides taking back the White House and Congress from the hands of these “Communists,” they are only concerned with the money and the votes of quickly fading white Christian majority. And if to keep said majority they must put electoral stumbling blocks in front of all Democrats - suburban housewives, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, college students and the elderly - so be it.

To my way of thinking and understanding, this is not a winning strategy; it is a blueprint for a dangerously divided America. Think about this:

• Despite the fact that more than 70% of the American public supported passage of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, not a single Republican in either the House or Senate voted in its favor.

• Despite the fact that the vast majority of Republican legislators want to see Roe v. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court, a majority of Americans (61%) continue to say that abortion should be legal in all cases (27%) or most (34%) cases. A smaller share of the public (38%) says abortion should be illegal in all (12%) or most cases (26%).

• Six percent more Americans say they were in favor of their senators voting to convict former President Donald Trump during the Senate impeachment trial than in his previous trial, according to a new poll. In the poll, conducted by Gallup, 52 percent of Americans said they were in favor of convicting Trump, while 45 percent said they' were in favor of their senators voting against conviction. And yet, when the final vote was taken on February 13, 2021, only 7 Republican senators voted in favor of conviction — and they are now on the former president’s “hit list” - Republicans whom he has sworn to see destroyed due to their lack of loyalty.

Is this any prescription for future electoral success?

Unlike many partisan Democrats I speak with on an almost daily basis, I do not wish to see the GOP disappear.  Any political system that relies on but a single political party to get things done is a system headed towards the land of autocracy.  For myself, I greatly prefer a two-party system in which both major parties campaign on – and can fully explain and justify – what they are for and what they are against.  A political system which exists only on what one party proclaims – and frequently in dishonest terms – what the other side is against, is none too healthy.

In other words, a system which cannot find a place for the likes of my friend Marvin is in deep trouble.  As always, I wish him well, pray for his health and energy, and wish him many, many more years of helping bring healing to his former party . . .  you know, the one created by a guy named Abe? I think I’ll dial him (Marvin, not Abe) tomorrow . . .

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

The Clone

Politically speaking, Florida is one of the strangest states in the nation. How so? Because while the farther north one goes in the 50 states, the more liberal/progressive the state tends to become. Likewise, the farther south one travels, the more conservatives you run into. Not so the “Golden State.” Here, the farther north one travels, the more politically southern it becomes. And for those of us who live in the southern-most part of the state (Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties) we bask in the land of Democrats and anti-Trumpers. The Jewish members of our Florida Congressional delegation (Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Ted Deutsch, and Lois Frankel) all hale from the South, while the most ultra-conservative represent districts which abut Alabama and Georgia . . . in more ways than one.

Florida is a state with a lot of conservative political clout. Consider that among those giving serious thought about making a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 - that is, presuming the former President isn’t spending the lion’s share of his time and presumed fortune in court - three (Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio as well as Governor Ron DeSantis) are generating a lot of publicity and dollars. In matter of fact, of the three, the 42-year old DeSantis garnered 21% (good for second place) in a straw poll of possible presidential candidates at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) gathering held in Orlando.  (n.b. Donald Trump came in first with 55% of the vote, and both Rubio and Scott were in single figures.  Without Trump in the mix, DeSantis came in first with 43%, with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem hauling in 11% for second place and Donald Trump, Jr., coming in third with 8%.)  And unlike politicos like Senators Rubio, Scott, Cruz and Graham, who all went from being targets of some of then-candidate Trump’s most scurrilous, obnoxious, opprobrious barbs and then became among his most ardent supporters, DeSantis has, generally speaking, been a Trump acolyte since day one. (I guess that since DeSantis went to Yale largely on the strength of his prowess as a baseball player [at one time he was captain of the varsity], that would make him Trump’s earliest and biggest “athletic supporter.”  LOL) 

Interestingly, though in his final House race in 2016, then-Rep. DeSantis ran mostly against Democrats and rarely - if ever - mentioned his support for The Donald . . . despite having been one of the very first members of Congress to endorse him.  However, once he became Governor of Florida in early January 2019, he began acting, sounding - even breathing - like a clone of America’s Tweeter-in-Chief. This was especially true when it came to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The lion’s share of Governor DeSantis’ polling numbers deal directly with his handling (or ignoring) of the COVID-19 pandemic. While his mentor was either proclaiming that with the coming of warmer weather the virus would disappear, or overriding his medical advisors and urging that hydroxychloroquine and/or household bleach were the way to go, DeSantis was underreporting the number of COVID-19 cases in Florida; at one point during the presidential election, he simply stopped making daily reports so as not to make his mentor look bad. He also refused to close beaches or bars, and urged that public schools be immediately reopened since “as everyone knows, children don’t get COVID-19,”  and refused to institute anything close to the wearing of masks in public. It got so bad that in December of last year - after Trump lost the election - DeSantis went back to making statistical reports and urging that nursing homes and senior independent living facilities receive the lion’s share of vaccine; The New Republic named DeSantis its “Scoundrel of the Year.”

So what is DeSantis’ strategy vis-à-vis a presidential campaign in 2024?  Coming out of this past weekend’s CPAC gathering – where only 68% of those polled were in favor of Trump running again – DeSantis is likely putting his money on his mentor’s being either “overly occupied” (all those potential legal challenges) or legally debarred from, “beating the Democrats for a third time.” This means that at this early juncture, Governor DeSantis is running for “Mr. Congeniality,” rather than “Mr. America.” One can only wonder what Trump’s feelings were about his political future when he could only win the approval of 68% of his most loyal supporters. DeSantis is likely bright enough to understand that many Republicans are going to be looking at fresh faces in both 2022 and 2024. But for DeSantis, this will mean having to figure out who he is going to be - and what he’s going to be running on - in a post-Trump world. After several years of being the “Trumpiest of the Trumpeters,” he going to have to change both the key and the mode of his silly symphony . . . which of course carries a lot of political risk. For if there’s one thing hard-corps conservative Republicans truly crave it’s taking government back from the Democrats.  Trump lost it; politicos like Cruz, Rubio, Scott, Graham and DeSantis cannot reverse that trend without altering their tune.

 Coming from the ancient Greek κλώνος (klónos) meaning “twig,” cloning is a technique scientists use to make exact genetic copies of living things. Genes, cells, tissues, and even whole animals can all be cloned. Some cloning is actually done in nature; single-celled organisms like bacteria make exact copies of themselves each time they reproduce. Others, of course are made in a lab.  In the world of politics, clones are created self-consciously by organisms seeking to triumph by imitating the ideas, platforms and messages of others.  But just as in nature or the lab, political clones are subject to the same genetic defects, faults and flaws as their original host.

In other words: beware Governor DeSantis . . . the footsteps in which you wish to tread are filled with genetic glitches, gullies and gremlins.  

Copyright©2021 Kurt F. Stone

Living the Dystopian Life

In the world of medicine, a substance or drug used to induce vomiting is called an emetic. Historically, the go-to emetic was an agent called syrup of ipecac; it is no longer the standard of care in either human or veterinary medicine, due to its cardiotoxic (having an adverse effect on the heart) potential. Today, the safest over-the-counter emetic is likely activated charcoal. Then too, there are so-called “cathartics” like Sorbitol, an artificial sweetener which is frequently used to speed up the emptying of the gastrointestinal tract [GIT].

These and other emetics are generally used to rid the GIT of poisons - caused by ingesting rancid foodstuffs, imbibing too much alcohol or a sequela (a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease or injury).  Regardless of the cause or emetic used, emesis (the medical term for barfing or upchucking) can indeed provide much-needed relief.  But what about the kind of extreme nausea which has nothing to do with ingesting or imbibing, but rather with overindulgence in the kind of dystopian politics many of us witnessed during last week’s Republican National Convention . . . aka publice coronum regalem Donald Trump (Latin for The coronation of Donald Trump)?  

I am sorry to report that I have been engaging in quite a bit of self-inflicted stupidity these past several weeks: reading - and in some cases rereading some of the most ghastly, hit-the-nail-on-the-head dystopian novels of all time.  For those who can define “utopian,” but become tongue-tied when it comes to “dystopian,” the former (“utopia”) was coined by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 book Utopia, which was about an ideal society on a fictional island. The latter, when applied to literature (as in “Dystopian literature”), refers to essays and novels which explore the dangerous effects of political and social structures on humanity’s future.  Generally speaking, dystopian novels break down into various types:

• Nuclear disaster

• Government control

• Religious control

• Technical control

• Survival

• Loss of individualism.

Included on my “Best Dystopian Novels of All Time” list are:

• The Trial (Franz Kafka, 1925)

• Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, 1932)

• The Iron Heel (Jack London, 1907)

• It Can’t Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis, 1935)

• The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood, 1985)\

• Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, 1953)

• The Time Machine (H.G. Wells, 1895)

• Do Androids Dream of  Electric Sheep? (Phillip K. Dick, 1968)

• The Wall (John Lanchester, 2019)

• Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)

• 1984 (George Orwell, 1948)

Without question, my three favorite novels culled from the above list are Jack London’s largely unknown The Iron Heel, Sinclair Lewis’ chilling It Can’t Happen Here, and my all-time favorite, George Orwell’s 1984, which was without a doubt the worst thing anyone could have been reading during last week’s RNC.  I know, because I was engaged in rereading that novel in the hours leading up to ‘45’s seemingly endless speech on the grounds immediately outside White House.

The number of mask-less mega-donors crowded together like sardines in a well-oiled tin approximated the number of people who expired due to COVID19 on the very day of  Trump’s coronum regalem.  And what got their digestive juices flowing in ever greater volume was the portrait of an America Trump warned against should the Biden/Harris ticket manage to win the election.  Fascinatingly - and may we say, ridiculously - the very apocalypse POTUS was sternly warning against should Democrats take back the White House (not to mention the U.S. Senate), is the very America that ‘45 and his cronies are currently overseeing during their time in office; in other words, they are essentially warning against themselves.   If this carries so much as a scintilla of logic or reality about it, then those of us who tend to support Biden/Harris and the Democrats are likely long in the throes of bilious political nausea, searching for a potent emetic.  Like Winston Smith and the proles of Oceania in Orwell’s 1984, Trump’s “maskless marvels”
live under the thumb of “Big Brother” and his henchmen who have proclaimed that in “Newspeak” “War is Peace,” Freedom is Slavery,“ and “Ignorance is strength.”  In Trump’s America,  though the slogans may be different, the message is largely the same: “Media is made up of liars,” “Autocrats are small-D democrats,” and “Scholars and intellectuals are ultra-liberal enemies of the state.”

During his acceptance speech, POTUS made a series of promises defying what he and his party have engaged in during the past 3 1/2 years:

• “We will ensure equal justice for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.”

• “We will uphold your religious liberty” (as if it is in danger).

• “We will protect Medicare and Social Security.”

• “We will always, and very strongly, protect patients with pre-existing conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party.”

Then too, in that same speech, Trump engaged in a liefest to beat the band, loudly proclaiming that:

• “The Democrat [sic] Party supports the extreme late-term abortion of defenseless babies right up to the moment of BIRTH.”

• “If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other Constitutional freedoms.”

• “Biden will defund police and bring violence to America’s cities . . .No one will be safe in Biden’s America.”

• If  the Democrat [sic] Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them.” 

The difference between the Republican and Democratic Partys’ political strategy for the 2020 election is as dissimilar as negative is from positive or zebras are from Croatian Coldbloods.  The Republicans (who did not see fit to publish a party platform) have largely based their electoral strategy on fear; the fear of left-wing Socialism, anarchy, Fascism (they can’t all go together!), endless taxes, governmental corruption, and the outlawing of “That Old Time Religion.”  Democrats, on the other hand, are pushing hope; the hope of better days if only we work together; the hope that grows when ceaseless lies are replaced with the telling of truth and taking responsibility for the mistakes we make.  Republicans, like Big Brother in 1984, communicate via Newspeak, which turns lies into truth, vigilantism into heroism and loyalty to the Supreme Leader into presidential pardons.  It is enough to make many a former Republican grab for an over-the-counter emetic. 

In Donald Trump’s dystopian world the POTUS has consolidated a circle of extremist advisers; hardline restrictions on immigration which include separating and caging children away from their parents; eliminating many Wall Street and environmental restrictions enacted by the previous administration and made it next to impossible for ordinary Americans to agree on simple truths, let alone politics. He has actually convinced a sizable minority of the American public that despite suffering more than 180,000 deaths from COVID19, he is absolutely correct in ignoring the advice of galaxy-class physicians and scientists and that despite more than 1 million people applying for unemployment insurance every weak for the past 3 months, the economy is booming. And perhaps the worst, he has sold his minions on the fact that voting by mail is the biggest con since Charles Ponzi. If all this isn’t dystopian, I don’t know what is.

(BTW: Since beginning this essay, POTUS has retweeted a conspiracy theory falsely claiming that only about 9,000 people had “actually” died from corona virus, instead of more than 180,000.  Twitter later removed the tweet, written by a user named “Mel Q,” who is also a believer of the QAnon conspiracy theory, saying it violated its rules.  In yet another series of tweets early this morning, Trump also embraced a call to imprison New York  Governor Andrew Cuomo; threatened to send federal forces against demonstrators outside the White House; attacked CNN and NPR; embraced a supporter charged with  murder; and repeatedly assailed the mayor of Portland, even posting the mayor’s office telephone number so that supporters could call demanding his resignation.  Vice President Biden put on his “big boy pants” and responded in kind: “What does President Trump think will happen when he continues to insist on fanning the flames of hate and division in our society and using the politics of fear to whip up his supporters?  He  is recklessly  encouraging violence. He may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong - but his failure  to call on his  supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he  is.”)

So what is the sole emetic to be taken for extreme political nausea? 

Simple:

Voting+campaigning+making financial contributions

It may not bring Sir Thomas More’s Utopia back to life . . . but what have we to lose?

There are 63 days until November 3, 2020

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light . . ."

It seems that with each day’s - each hour’s? - headline, breaking news or revelation, the world we live in becomes increasingly - maddeningly - incomprehensible; one providing far more question marks than exclamation points. Indeed, as Macbeth moaned at news of his wife’s death “. . . all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death . . . It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” (Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28).  One simply cannot wallow in any darker, more shadowy passion.  I deeply apologize for beginning this essay in such a tenebrous manner . . . especially in light of the fact that it is being crafted just hours before the nation’s 244th birthday . . . when history and hot dogs are  supposed to be consumed beneath “the rockets’ red glare.”  But these are different days; our country, our world, has become demented with pandemic, with spineless dishonesty, rudderlessness of epic proportion and a noxious need to blame others for nearly anything we cannot abide.

Here in the United States we seem to be moving ever faster and farther into our opposing corners. In one corner we have the overt violence of racists, white supremacists, “boogaloo bois” and the conspirators of “QAnon” calling for a second Civil War; in the other, groups and individuals urging a coming together of people of different colors and backgrounds . . . of a  revival of e pluribus unum (the nation’s motto given to us by Benjamin Franklin . . . Latin for  “Out of many comes one”). To be honest, historically, America has long had its contentious factions: Federalists v. Whigs; slave-owners v. abolitionists; blue-bloods v. immigrants; Democrats v. Republicans. The big difference, it seems to me is that today, there are simply far, far more forms of mass (“social”) media putting our differences under the glare of far far too many terawatts.

As I started blocking out this essay a line from the late Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) came to mind. It comes from a poem he wrote in 1947 (when he was 33 years old) entitled Do not go gentle into that good night. (It was not published until 1951.) This, his masterpiece, was described in part by one critic as “. . . a rapturous ode to the unassailable tenacity of the human spirit.” Written shortly after his beloved father died, Thomas’ villanelle reads, in part:  

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It has always been a favorite of mine.  And more importantly, the verse about “raging against the dying of the light” has long been a watchword for me - especially when it comes to politics.  I have long been of the opinion that like boxing, politics has become less and less of an art form and more and more a type of mortal combat. The further on in time we get, the more seems to be at stake - and not just in terms of ideology.  Our elected officials - from city council to county commission to Congress and ultimately the White House is, except in increasingly rare cases, the purview of the the wealthy . . . those who pay for the campaigns and, when all is said and done, make victory possible. They are the ones who play the tune and set the metronomes; they are the ones to whom oh so many politicians must do the bidding.  As rich as he claims to be, ‘45 is still a puppet, a cats-paw of those who, even while despising him, find him to be both malleable and useful.  So far as I can tell, Boss Tweet serves precisely two masters: those who make contributions to his campaigns, and his own vaunted sense of self . . . much of which is fueled by dire insecurity.  And this is where Dylan Thomas comes back in to the essay.

Statistically, it is obvious that a majority - slim though it may truly be - of the American public is increasingly on to the many larcenous, libidinous and flat out lying tropes of the nation’s 45th president and his “acting” staff of underlings.  Yes, there are certainly those who will gladly follow him to the very gates of Hell, believing their portals to be overlaid with gems and not hydrofluoric acid.  They are the ones who don’t seem to have a problem supporting a lewd, crude dude just so long as he is the antithesis of his predecessor. But ultimately they are wrong; they have been fooled . . . perhaps willingly, perhaps not.  They are, to reemploy Secretary Clinton’s difficult term, "deplorables.”   These are the ones, both in government and standing out on the streets sans masks and brandishing the signs and weapons of self-created victimhood, who reject  the wisdom of science and lessons of experts; who have their eyes avariciously focused on today at the expense of our many tomorrows; and are world-class champs in the game of blame. Left to their own devices the skies have become perceptively darker and more dangerous; our union is in peril.

It is up to those of us who seek a more perfect union, who are both embarrassed and humiliated by the manchild of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who has deluded himself into believing he speaks in our name to the rest of the world to send him packing; to "rage against the dying of the light.”   

Please, please, I beg you a thousand times over.  You must vote.  Qvetching (that’s Yiddish for “bellyaching”) is obviously not enough. You must send in your vote-by-mail, absentee ballot or even brave the same-day ballot box, and vote out both ‘45 and all those Republicans who support him. Don’t simply delete all those emails from various candidates begging for a few campaign dollars here, a few campaign dollars there.  Not only must he be defeated; he must be overwhelmingly defeated.  For if Joe Biden only wins in a squeaker, there is every reason to believe that ‘45 will declare the final tally to be fraudulent and then, like the conspiracy dreamed up by novelist Phillip Roth in his haunting 2004 novel The Plot Against America refuse to leave the White House.  Just yesterday, former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth published an ominous op-ed in Newsweek suggesting that ‘45 and his political strategists might already have a plot in mind to keep their boss from having to cede his position . . . through a combination of voter  suppression, the purging of voter rolls (especially in urban centers with higher percentages of minority voters) and fiddling around with precisely how the Electoral College does its work.  Assuming the worst, the only possible way to defeat this plot . . . as stated above . . . is to defeat Boss Tweet by a historically “yuge” margin.

If we are going to succeed at bringing back the sun, we must not “. . . go gentle into that good night,” but rather “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

It’s our nation, our world, our future to conquer and to preserve.

There are precisely 122 days left until November 3, 2020.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Copyright©1951 Dylan Thomas

"When I Hear Music, I Fear No Danger"

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Without question, these are very strange, trying, and frightening times. We’ve been through them before and shall no doubt go through them again . . . but not quite like this. I wonder if we will ever again say the noun normal without first using the adjective new or putting the term in finger quotes. For some, times like these call for extra shots of Cocchi Vermouth di Verino or 25-year old Dalmore; for others it might involve watching Casablanca for the 900th time or rereading Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here for the 12th time. If it weren’t that I post weekly thousand-word political essays and lecture on both politics and political history online (until we get back into the classroom) I wouldn’t be spending any time watching the news or reading the Times, Post or The New Yorker.  It’s just so all-fired nauseating.

To me, one of the healthiest things a fellow sufferer can do (gym is closed) is listen to music . . . and not just any music.  Selecting precisely which tunes from what genres can keep one’s psyche safely afloat.  And then, the mere act of listening and singing or humming along can act as a wondrous humane cocoon.  The right song, the best sonata, that chart-topper from ages long gone, can be a restorative panacea for a torturous pandemic.  One is reminded of Thoreau’s marvelous bit of insight: When I hear music, I fear no danger! 

Wishing ever so much to allay a bit of fear and loathing while pasting a smile and a remembrance of things past (avec mes excuses, M. Proust) I would like to share with you 3 songs: one which can bring a tear to the eye; one which can put a smile on the face, and the 3rd which will hopefully put a bit of awe and optimism into the soul.

The first is Paul Simon’s 1973 piece American Tune, as sung by Paul and Art Garfunkle (who did not appear on the original recording) at a concert in New York’s Central Park on September 19,, 1981. The ever dexterous Simon “borrowed” the major motif for this song from J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (who in turn bodily stole it from a composer named Hans Leo Hassler) and is, in my mind, the most patriotic, most deeply American song ever written.  It is one of the few songs always - and I mean ALWAYS - brought tears to my eyes:

"American Tune"
Many's the time I've been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and I've often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I'm all right, I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
For we've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what's gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it's all right, it's all right
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all, I'm trying to get some rest

Next comes “Fly Me to the Moon,” written by Bart Howard and Kaye Ballad in 1954, and most famously, recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1964 and closely associated with the initial Apollo flight to the moon.  Over the years it has also been recorded by the likes of Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole and Judy Garland.  The version we include is here by the then 5 year old Sophie Fatu, an extraordinarily talented little girl who really has music in her soul.  I posted this last week on my Facebook page and received a lot of “likes” and “loves.”  I have already watched/listed to it a couple of dozen times.  To me, it expresses the delight, the energy and simple pure sweetness of extreme youth . . .  an emotional pick-me-up at a time of extreme fatigue:

 "Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words)"

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On a-Jupiter and Mars

In other words: hold my hand
In other words: baby, kiss me

Fill my heart with song
And let me sing for ever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore

In other words: please, be true
In other words: I love you

Fill my heart with song
Let me sing for ever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore

In other words: please, be true
In other words, in other words: I love you

Lastly, The Weight, a 1968 song written by Robbie Robertson and recorded by his group, “The Band,” one of the greatest rock bands of all time. It is a fairly esoteric piece containing the end-of stanza phrase:

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

The reason I included this song is two-fold:

1. It always brings me back to my years as an undergraduate at the University of California: a time of growth, of exploration and experimentation, a time of political awakening and spiritual growth; a time - even before Woodstock - when we truly believed our generation could change and heal the world, and

2. The extraordinary new, online version of this song in which musicians from virtually all over the globe - some world famous, many unknown outside their own neighborhoods, combine in the isolation wrought by Covid-19, to record and video a single song. Like Michael Jackson’s “We Are the World,” it sends a message of healing; that together, people from all over the world, working in harmony towards a single goal, can accomplish great things for humanity. Unlike Jackson’s paean - in which dozens upon dozens of musicians gathered on a single recording stage - this time around, Robertson’s message was recorded and performed all over the planet . . . in perfect musical and human unity.

To me, watching and listening to this wondrously conceived, brilliantly mastered piece of musical technology, shows what people can accomplish by working together. Together, perhaps, we can make the world more a family sharing pretty much the same dangers and dreams, inspired by the same goals and ambitions. This weight is truly The Weight:

"The Weight (Concert Version)"
(from "The Last Waltz" soundtrack)

I pulled into Nazareth, just to feelin' about half past dead
I just need to place where I can lay my head
"Uh, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, but "no" was all he said

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

I picked up my bag, and went a-lookin' for a place to hide
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side
And I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on would you go downtown?"
She said, "Well, I gotta go but my friend can stick around."

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

Go down, Miss Moses, there ain't nothin' you can say
'Cause it's just old Luke and Luke's a-waitin' on the Judgment Day
"Well, now, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?"
He said, "Do me a favor, son, won't you stay and keep this Anna Lee company?"

And take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

Crazy Chester followed me, yes, he caught me in the fog
He said, "I will fix your rack if you take old Jack, my dog."
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man."
He said, "That's OK, boy, won't you feed old Chester when the other eat."

Yeah, take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me)

I catch a cannon ball now to take me over down the line
'Cause my bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know that she's the only one
She sent me here with her regards for everyone

Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and, and) you put the load right on me
(You put the load right on me).

H.D. Thoreau is/was/always shall be true when he begins his verse: “When I hear music, I shall fear no danger . . .”

So too is the end of the verse right on the money: “I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”

Stay safe.  Stay healthy.  Stay kind.  Stay humble.  Stay home.

Copyright©1954, Bart Howard, Kaye Ballard
Copyright©1968, Robbie Robertson
Copyright©1973, Paul Simon

Copyright©2020, Kurt F. Stone

Is History History?

Among those who are reasonably well-educated, it is generally agreed upon that Herodotus (that’s him in the photo on the left) is “The Father of History.” Born and raised in Halicarnassus (modern-day Turkey), Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.E) is best known for his work The Histories, a straightforward account of the origins and execution of the Greco-Persian Wars, which lasted from 499 to 479 B.C.E. “Here is the account,” the work begins, “of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus in order that the deeds of men not be erased by time, and that the great and miraculous works–both of the Greeks and the barbarians–not go unrecorded.”  Most of what we know about the Battle of Marathon is from Herodotus. “The Histories” also incorporated observations and stories, both factual and fictional, from Herodotus’ travels.

Ever since, the writing, editing and reading of history has been of extraordinary importance. Across the centuries and generations, the study of history has been of paramount importance. “'Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it” philosopher Georges Santayana. Speaking before the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill modified Santayana just a tad, changing it to “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.' Whichever is the true rendering, the truth remains; without knowing, understanding and caring about history, our mutual future is in dire jeopardy.

Over the past several weeks and days, national attention has been fixated on the United States Senate as to whether or not the Upper Chamber would vote to convict or acquit our impeached president of the United States (IMPOTUS), Donald J. Trump of abuse of power and contempt of Congress.  Among those Republicans in the political cross-hairs, none were more prominent than Senators Romney (UT), Murkowski (AK), Collins (ME) and Alexander (TN). All 4 had publicly spoken about their desire to subpoena witnesses for the senate trial. In the long-run, Senators Romney and Collins decided to vote in favor of subpoenaing witnesses like former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, Acting Chief of Staff and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Nick Mulvaney. and Michael Duffey, a senior official in the Office of Management and Budget. Senator Romney evinced a level of moral courage seldom seen among members of the Republican caucus.  As can best be determined, Senator Susan Collins was given a pass by Majority Leader McConnell: not only was her vote unneeded; had she voted against subpoenaing witnesses, voters in Maine would likely have voted her out of office.  In the meantime, Senators Alexander and Murkowski changed their minds stating, in essence, that although the IMPOTUS was obviously guilty of the charges against him, they did not add up to impeachable offenses. So far as Tennessee Senator Alexander, who is retiring and thus not running for reelection, his rationale is, to my way of thinking nearly incomprehensible.  On his official website, he (or his staff) wrote:

I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense. …The Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate. 

“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday. …Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve with ‘the consent of the governed,’ not at the pleasure of the United States Congress. Let the people decide.” 

Likewise, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski’s logic was more than a bit skewed: 

“Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout. I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.”

What Senators Alexander and Murkowski - along with a lot of other Republicans (and a few Democrats) - are going to wind up with is a tainted reputation - an acidic asterisk - for the rest of time for being elected leaders who, for whatever reason, decided that despite the IMPOTUS’s obvious guilt, were not going to vote to support hearing from a single witness against him. Imagine that: a trial of momentous import without a single witness! This makes virtually no sense. It seems that in the long run, Senators Alexander, Murkowski et al care not a whit about the judgment of history; they are far, far more concerned about what the president, his henchmen and supporters care about them today.

In other words: to hell with tomorrow.

History has become history . . .

In this essay’s second paragraph, we presented the nearly identical aphorisms of Santayana and Churchill about those who forget history being doomed to repeat it. Pretty chilling stuff. Well, in this instance - the senate’s 51-49 vote against subpoenaing witnesses - the man of the hour is neither as wise as the former nor as politically adroit as the latter. In this case the aphorist of note was a legendary industrialist and multi-billionaire (about $200 billion in today’s $$$) who also happened to be one of most the hateful bigots of all time: Henry Ford.  Unlike Santayana and Churchill, Ford believed with every fiber of his being that “History is bunk.”  In a widely-reported 1916 interview with a journalist from the Chicago Tribune, Ford told the writer, one Charles N. Wheeler:

"Say, what do I care about Napoleon? What do we care about what they did 500 or 1,000 years ago? I don't know whether Napoleon did or did not try to get across and I don't care. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today."

(It should be noted that not only did Ford create the industrial assembly line and the world’s first affordable automobile, he also purchased a newspaper [The Dearborn Independent] in order to publish a multi-issue screed entitled The International Jew: The World’s Problem . . . which incorporated most, if not all of, history’s most vicious anti-Semitic tract: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  To this very day, Ford remains a god to White Nationalists, neo-Nazis and conspiracy addicts of all stripes.)

It is more than depressing to imagine people who are supposedly of accomplishment and rank, people who are in a position to play a significant role on the stage of history, having so little - if any - concern whatsoever about their future place on that stage. I guess so long as they maintain their political positions, not draw the fury or ire of their “highly stable genius” and live out lives of comfort and recognition, that’s all that matters. I for one cannot understand how so many people whose lives are both guided and guarded by deeply-held religious scruples and theological concerns of eternal life, can at the same time be so lacking in curiosity - so uncaring - about their place in the annals of history. Does it not matter to them that history - if not G-d co-self (my term for “him/herself”) - will have the final judgement. Has it not dawned on them that in five, ten, fifty years and more, historians will have uncovered just how corrupt, self-serving and traitorous this administration has been from even before day one? That in large part, it was due to their spineless lack of moral courage, their robotic need to put partisanship above patriotism that led to America’s no longer being the world’s “last great hope?” If history will remember them at all, it will not likely be for their greatness . . . but for their turning their backs on both the people they were supposed to selflessly serve and on history itself.

Tell me: has history, like Herodotus, himself, become history?

274 days until the presidential election.

Copyright©2020 Kurt F. Stone

Tempus Fugit

One of the universal truths which exist outside the bounds of logic is this: that the older one becomes, the quicker time flies (tempus fugit).  Within the logical sphere, of course, tempus fugit is pure twaddle; no matter what one’s age, a day will always consist of 24 hours, a week of 7 days, a year of 12 months, and a decade of precisely 5,256,000 minutes.  This is, again, within the realm of reason.  Emotionally and experientially however, time does seem to fly faster and faster with each passing year.  To a 9-year old counting the days until the beginning of summer vacation, a single month feels like an eternity; to a retiree taking a two-week cruise to Alaska, 336 hours go by in the wink of an eye.

You get the point.

Then there is the nether-realm of time - neither long nor short, a combination of blink-of-an-eye fast and agonizingly slow,  As an example, three weeks from today, January 20, 2020, ‘45 will have “served” (?) as POTUS for 3 years - 1,095 days. In some respects these three years have gone by very, very quickly. Indeed, it seems like yesterday when he claimed his inauguration was attended by “up to 1.5 million people” - a figure which photographs clearly debunked. And yet, how many eternities has it been since he began referring to journalists as “among the most dishonest human beings on earth?” In matter of fact, both occurred on the same day: January 21, 2017.

Without question, 2019, filled as it has been with drama, heroism and angst, tragedy and antic lunacy, has, nonetheless flown by. Then too, it has also crawled by at a snail’s pace, leaving behind a trail of shock, horror, hatred and gastropodal slime which although not necessarily lethal, is truly disgusting. Standing at the threshold of 2020, it can’t get here fast enough. Perhaps - just perhaps - the new year will bring hope; hope for a return to the “Yes we can!” weltanschauung of just a few years back.

New Years have long involved the making of resolutions. They can range from the personal - like taking off 10 pounds, quitting smoking or being more charitable - to the communal - such as showing greater civility, fighting against bigotry, prejudice and inequality. Making resolutions is easy; keeping and accomplishing them is a far, far greater challenge.

It is with utter humility that I suggest a few social, political and communal resolutions to consider:

“Seize the Day!”

• To Democrats, Moderate Republicans and Independents: decide what’s most important in the person you nominate to take on ‘45: the ability to defeat him, give walking papers to the likes of McConnell, Graham, Gohmert and Collins and begin to restore America’s position of world leadership or pushing a platform which is beyond the ability of a large swathe of the voting public to grasp, let alone support.

• Quit seeking the “perfect” nominee to take on Boss Tweet and his mutinous minions; doing so can only make “the good” or the “most possible” into an also-ran . . . thereby reelecting IMPOTUS.

• Quit trying to change the minds of those whose minds have already been made up for them. All that can come of such arguments and debates are anger, incivility and even greater civic divisiveness.

• Quit sitting around and merely grousing: Do not expect others to be responsible for the change(s) we seek. We must all work together if we are to bring about those changes we seek.

Unbelievably, the first event in the 2020 presidential campaign season - the Iowa Caucus - takes place a mere 7 weeks from today (Monday, February 3.)  I predict that these 7 weeks will fly by at the speed of light. Tempus Fugit indeed! The day after that caucus, attention will then shift across the country to New Hampshire, whose primary takes place 1 week later (Feb. 11), then on to Nevada (caucus, Feb. 22) and South Carolina (Feb. 29). By the 1st of March, if all goes well, we will add another watchword to our Latin catechism: carpe diem, namely “Seize the Day!”

If 2020 is to be the watershed moment in time we so desperately need, it’s going to take a lot of work, energy, drive and commitment. Let us resolve to keep our eyes on the prize.

Fiat lux (“Let there be light!”)

And to all, wishing you “a Happy Sylvester” - a Happy, healthy and successful 2020.

290 days until the next presidential election.

Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone

Of Gadsby, Lipogramic Literature and The Future of Donald Trump

"E" is the most commonly used letter in the English language. Not only that; it’s the most commonly used letter in lots of other languages including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch. So there are undoubtedly easier letters to omit if one decides to construct a lipogram—a text that deliberately omits a particular letter—no matter what one’s nationality or native language might be.

All of which makes the fact that not one but two authors managed to write entire novels without ever using the letter "E" all the more amazing. The first of these, Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby is a 50,000 word novel which he self-published in 1939 —and there’s nary an "E" in sight (at least not once you get past the author's name or the introduction, in which Wright mentions how people often told him that such a feat was impossible). How did he do it? Simple (well, sort of): he simply disabled the “e” key on his manual typewriter.

Inspired by Wright, French Jewish novelist Georges Perec (1936-1982) decided to write his own lipogramic novel without the letter "E"—in his first language, French. Published in 1969, it was called La Disparition and was later, incredibly, translated into English in 1994 by Gilbert Adair, who renamed it A Void, as the literal translation (The Disappearance) would have contained three examples of the prohibited letter in question).

This kind of highly disciplined writing is known as “lipogramic literature,” generally defined as “ . . . a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided.” Historically, this is nothing new: extended Ancient Greek texts avoiding the letter sigma (Σ, the 18th letter in the Greek alphabet) are the earliest examples of lipograms.

In his review of La Disparition, Italian journalist and short story writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985) noted that Perec “bears no resemblance to anyone else.” Indeed, there is another best-selling “author” named Trump of whom the same can honestly be said: that he “bears no resemblance to anyone else.”

“Ah!” I can hear my many detractors bellowing. “We were wondering just how long it would take you to get around to disparaging Donald Trump, the best POTUS in all American history.” Sorry it took so long (precisely 330 words), but it’s the god’s-honest truth: he is unquestionably unlike anyone else who has ever held that office. Unlike Gadsby or La Disparition, 45’s utter otherness has not been - indeed, has never been - based on a conscious intellectual challenge of being sui generis. Rather, it’s because he has long possessed a different mindset than any of the preceding 44 American chief executives. His unconstrained manner public expression - not to mention his relationship to the truth, or sense of self - have been totally at odds with that which we’ve come to expect from American presidents. He’s not just missing the most common letter in the alphabet; he is totally bereft of that which separates self-aware primates from trilobites.  Yes, this is a pretty harsh judgment, but one which - so far as I can tell - is eminently merited.

Over the past several weeks, the march toward impeachment - not to mention removal from office - has been as relentless and inexorable as Sherman’s “March to the Sea.” As a result of Boss Tweet’s capitulation to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thereby sentencing our Kurdish allies to death and upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East, ‘45 has begun losing the support of his most ardent, most devotedly compliant paper tigers in Congress, the Department of Justice, Foggy Bottom and even the “700 Club’s” Reverend Pat Robertson, who recently warned that the POTUS is “in danger of losing the mandate of heaven.” And, speaking of religion, one wonders how much longer his most zealous Jewish supporters (the ones who are more than willing to overlook everything squirrely about him because “He’s the best friend Israel ever had!”) and begin realizing that by pulling our troops out of Northern Syria, he’s essentially ceded power in the area to Russia and Iran . . . which will likely imperil the Jewish State.

This matter of the Rev. Robertson and white evangelical Christians has me particularly stumped.  Why would Trump’s base - which uttered not a peep over the immorality of separating Hispanic children from their parents and then stuffing them into dangerously over-crowded holding facilities - why should they now find his abandonment of the Kurds and quid-pro-quo with the Ukrainian president so immorally offsetting?  Why after all the years of silence about his many affairs, his shutting down the government in order to get a border wall he had promised a thousand times over would be paid for by the Mexicans, and his obsessive “lapdogism” when it comes to autocrats and murderous dictators, why now the beginnings of this seemingly unstoppable march to the sea of political oblivion?  

Perhaps in the not so distant future, after the partisan dust has begun settling and ‘45 has gone on to the next (and perhaps last) phase of his public life - that of the perpetual defendant - some brilliant, highly motivated lipogramacist will write and publish a novel which avoids the letters t-r-u-m- and p. And, if there is any justice in the world of letters, this novel will suffer the same fate as Ernest Vincent Wright’s Gadsby: shortly after its vanity publication, a warehouse containing the vast majority of extant, unsold copies, burnt to the ground . . . thus consigning the novel’s protagonist, John Gadsy, to the fires of eternal obscurity.

385 days until the next election.

Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone

"Do Not Separate Yourself from the Community"

(An opening note: Tis that time of the year when reading and editing clinical trials, lecturing and writing about the golden age of Hollywood and engaging in partisan politics must take a backseat to preparing for High Holiday services. And so, as is annually the case, I am turning one of my Rosh Hashana sermons into the basis of a weekly essay. Because I - for obvious reasons - despise the expression “killing two birds with one Stone” - let’s just say that this week’s post is serving a dual purpose . . .

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is the only Jewish holiday which begins on the first day of the month.  And unlike most calendars, the Jewish New Year does not begin on the first day of the first month.  Rather, the Jewish New Year begins on the first day of the  7th month, which is called Tishri.  The Jewish calendar is a monumentally complex document; while years (we are entering 5780) are reckoned on a strictly solar basis, months are strictly lunar - e.g., based on fluctuations of the moon. And unlike most New Year’s celebrations around the world, this one calls for far more contemplation than revelry; the “resolutions” it requires we make are far less fanciful or frivolous than most.  Year in, year out as I prepare for the new year, I reread and contemplate anew a handful of what I consider to be among the most important, the most crucial bits of wisdom coming from our literature.  Among them are:     

• Lev. 19:14: לֹֽא־תְקַלֵּ֣ל חֵרֵ֔שׁ וְלִפְנֵ֣י עִוֵּ֔ר לֹ֥א תִתֵּ֖ן מִכְשֹׁ֑ל וְיָרֵ֥אתָ מֵּֽאֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ אֲנִ֥י יְהוָֹֽה (Neither curse the deaf nor put a stumbling block before the blind.”)

  Lev. 19:16” לֹֽא־תֵלֵ֤ךְ רָכִיל֙ בְּעַמֶּ֔יךָ לֹ֥א תַֽעֲמֹ֖ד עַל־דַּ֣ם רֵעֶ֑ךָ (“Do not be a talebearer *[a perpetual or compulsive liar]; do not stand by and watch other human beings idly bleed.”) 

• The Ethics of the Sages (2:1) הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אֵין בּוּר יְרֵא חֵטְא, וְלֹא עַם הָאָרֶץ חָסִיד, וְלֹא הַבַּיְשָׁן לָמֵד, וְלֹא הַקַּפְּדָן מְלַמֵּד, וְלֹא כָל הַמַּרְבֶּה בִסְחוֹרָה מַחְכִּים. ובִמְקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ: (“The Sage Hillel used to say: a A brutish man cannot fear sin; an ignorant man cannot be pious, nor can the shy man learn, or the impatient man teach. He who engages excessively in business cannot become wise. In a place where there few if any human beings  you strive to be a mentsch.”)

• The Ethics of the Sages (4:1): :זוֹמָא אוֹמֵר, אֵיזֶהוּ חָכָם, הַלּוֹמֵד מִכָּל אָדָם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (תהלים קיט), מִכָּל מְלַמְּדַי הִשְׂכַּלְתִּי (The sage Ben Zoma used to say ‘Who is truly wise? The one who can learn from any and everyone.  For as it is written (Psalms 119.99) “I have learned from all my teachers.”

• The Ethics of the Sages (2:4) אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר (Do not separate yourself from your community.”)

In concluding 5779 and heading into the Jewish year 5780, these 4 lessons can and should be of paramount importance. For this past year (or two or three) has made most of us angry, cynical, lacking in trust, and has brought about intense feelings of powerlessness. Hillel’s insight into the nature of brutes, boors and ignoramuses is so on the money as to seem like it was written just yesterday.  With few exceptions among those we know and love, people have become stupefied over how easy it is for those supposedly occupying positions of authority to turn their back or remain silent in the face of gross authoritarianism, cupidity and outright inhumanity.  We wonder at the gross inconsistency of public people presenting and proclaiming their religious bona fides to anyone and everyone who will watch or listen, and then turning both a blind eye and a deaf ear on the poorest, most vulnerable among us.  So which of the rabbinic and Biblical aphorisms and laws is most important in this day and age?  Certainly being a menstch  (Yiddish for “a substantial human being”) when so many others are acting like proster mentschen (the antithesis of a mentsch) is of great importance.  I have to believe that Hillel’s dictum about not separating ourselves from the community (הציבור ha-Tzibor ) comes in first.  Originally,  in using the term הַצִּבּוּר (ha-Tzibur, the community) Hillel was referring specifically to the Jewish community.  Today, after centuries and generations, I think we can expand ha-tzibur to mean “humanity in general.” That which ties all of us together into a single community - whether European, Asian, African or Pacific Islander is planet earth. This is the community that binds us all together.

In a medieval Jewish story, a wealthy landowner asks a simple-minded peon who works on his vast estate “What is the biggest thing in the world?” Deathly afraid to give the wrong answer - and certain he is incapable of giving the correct one, he blurts out “The biggest thing in the world is the earth itself!” Thinking over what he had heard, the landowner smiled and said “How right you are! Indeed, that is the only answer possible.” Think about it: could there be anything in the world larger than the world itself? 

This brings us back to Rosh Hashana and all the anger, cynicism and feelings of powerlessness which consume us as we enter 5780. What can we do to shake all the negativity and use it as positive fuel for the New Year? Certainly complaining, kvetching and endlessly arguing with those who see the world through different eyes is not the answer. Nowadays, attempting to change people’s minds is as about as futile and frustrating as trying to convince an elephant how much more sense it makes to be a donkey. No, it seems to me that perhaps the most potent prescription for the New Year is the one ascribed to Hillel in Pirke Avot (The Ethics of the Sages):

אַל תִּפְרוֹשׁ מִן הַצִּבּוּר (“Do not separate yourself from your community”)

In other words, don’t seat a back and merely curse the darkness; find a cause and do your part to repair a broken world. As I write these words, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg - the new face of a planet-wide climate change movement - has just finished an impassioned speech before the United Nations on the biggest thing on earth: the earth itself. In her “How dare you?” address, Ms. Thunberg told the nations of the world “You all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school, on the other side of the ocean." Citing more than 30 years' worth of scientific studies and warnings that greenhouse gases and other factors were establishing a dangerous new environmental trend, Thunberg criticized politicians for not developing solutions and strategies to confront that threat. She repeatedly reminded the various delegates that her generation - not theirs - will be the ones who ultimately have to live with the consequences of global warming.

In order to make an even greater point, Ms. Thunberg sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to New York - rather than flying in an immense polluting jet aircraft. For her efforts at rallying young people the world over to the cause of climate change, she was greeted with warmth and thunderous applause. Perhaps not surprisingly, she was also castigated, called a “Socialist who’s part of an international conspiracy,” and put down for not understanding reality. In a sarcastic Tweet, the president of the United States (who did not attend that part of the United Nations gathering) mocked Ms. Thunberg: "She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!" he Tweeted.

Shortly after the speech, Thunberg and other young people filed a legal complaint against five countries, saying their role in climate change has violated a widely ratified U.N. pact on children's human rights.

"I and 15 other children from around the world filed a legal complaint against 5 nations over the climate crisis through the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child," Thunberg said via Twitter. "These 5 nations are the largest emitters that have ratified the convention."

Those countries are France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina and Turkey; they are accused of not curbing emissions and promoting fossil fuels, despite being well aware of the risks of climate change. Unlike most other signatories to the convention, the five countries have also approved a procedure for receiving complaints about potential violations.

The U.S. has signed the U.N. treaty, but has never ratified it. When Somalia and South Sudan ratified the convention in 2015, that left the U.S. alone in not being a party to the human rights agreement.

The young activists announced their complaint at a press conference at UNICEF Headquarters in New York — right across the street from the U.N. building where Thunberg spoke earlier.

The movement among the young is catching on. Already, students around the globe are taking off Fridays from school in order to make their concerns known to adults in both the world of politics and business - stressing that time is running out and they must put the needs of the planet above profit. For their efforts, their movement is growing by the week . . . as are the negative comments. But still fueled by youthful idealism - that which less than 2 generations ago ended the military draft, caused the voting age to be lowered from 21 to 18, drove a president from seeking reelection and ultimately ended a war - these teeners and tweeners are the living, breathing embodiment of HIllel’s dictum about not separating ourselves from the community.

And so, on this, the first day of 5780, I urge one and all to commit themselves to a cause or a project larger than themselves;  causes which will help repair the world. The ribono shel olam (“Master of the Universe”) has placed it in our hands to act as beloved stewards and caretakers of the world he/she created. There is so much work to be done and so little time in which to do it. For anyone looking for a cause, a campaign or an action who is a bit in the dark, please contact me and I will provide you with a list of possibilities. God’s planet needs us - now, more than ever.

אני מאחל לכם שנה טובה ומתוקה Wishing you a Happy and Sweet New Year,

הר אשר איעזר בן ר' אליעזר סטון (KFS)

411 days until the next election.

Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone