#208 / I Had A Thought About My Favorite Bridge

  

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It turns out that Arana Gulch, located in the City of Santa Cruz, has its own entry in Wikipedia. Click this link to read all about it. The Wikipedia entry told me something that I didn't know, which is that the bridge that I have pictured, above, leading into the City's Arana Gulch Park, has an official name. It is called "The Hagemann Gulch Bridge." I walk around town quite a bit, and I feel certain that I cross this bridge at least once or twice a week. When special friends come to visit, I might take them right across. This bridge, in fact, may well be my favorite bridge, anywhere. 

It is hard to tell from the picture, but what I guess is officially called "Hagemann Gulch," which is spanned by this bridge, is really, really deep. It is surprisingly deep. You can't actually tell unless you are out on the bridge, and on Thursday, May 16, 2024, when I took the picture that you see, above, I was out on the bridge. I was out on the bridge, and that's when I had a thought. 

This bridge, I thought, is just like human civilization - or human civilization at its best, perhaps. The bridge is elegant, and well-engineered, and it carries us over the profound depths of a world in which Nature, not human design and industry, determine what happens. Were we all to fall into the depths of Nature, below the bridge, it is unclear whether we would survive, or how well we'd do. This narrow bridge of "civilization" is what we rely upon, and many of us never look at the depths of Nature, below.

I refer, not infrequently, to my so-called, "Two Worlds Hypothesis." This blog, in fact, used to be titled "Two Worlds," and the explanatory legend at the very top of my blog's current iteration explains why that was true (and why the current title, "We Live In A Political World," is also true): 

We live, simultaneously, in two different worlds. Ultimately, we live in the World of Nature, a world that we did not create and the world upon which all life depends. Most immediately, we inhabit a "human world" that we create ourselves. Because our human world is the result of our own choices and actions, we can say, quite properly, that we live, most immediately, in a “political world.” In this blog, I hope to explore the interaction of these two worlds that we call home.

The thought I had, as I crossed the Hagemann Gulch Bridge on that Thursday in May, is that our human civilization, besides being amazing in the beauty and complexity of its own design, is, very much, what keeps us from the dangerous conditions in which we would otherwise have to live, if we were to be cast back in to that "World of Nature" upon which we do ultimately depend. 

As those who have taken a course or two in political theory might remember, there is not any real agreement about what kind of conditions might actually prevail in the genuine, pre-civilization, "State of Nature," were we to have to live there - to live there without our "civilization" to insulate and protect us. Rousseau thought everything was wonderful there in the "State of Nature," and that "civilization" really screwed things up. Hobbes, on the other hand, thought the "State of Nature" was "red in tooth and claw." Some modern investigations seem to tilt towards Rousseau; however, there does seem to be a legitimate concern that without civilization to sustain us, the "State of Nature" might be pretty brutal. 

I suggest that we should respect the "World of Nature," but that we should treasure and take care of all the works of our own collective efforts, as well. It has taken us thousands to years to build a "Human World," a "human civilization" that can carry us safely over the depths. Let's be careful to treasure both of the worlds upon which we utterly depend.

I have mentioned "The Hagemann Gulch Bridge" at least once before - before I knew its official name. In a blog posting published on the last day of December, 2022, I posted another picture of the bridge - a picture looking in the opposite direction from the picture I have presented above, and a picture taken in the evening, as I was returning from a long walk. The picture from that earlier blog posting is presented below, accompanied by the thought I had about the bridge on that occasion: 

Up the hill, through the fields, over the bridge and home. Memento Mori.

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Image Credits:

(1) and (2) - Gary A. Patton, personal photos

#207 / Small Acts... Of Revolutionary Love

 

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Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, gave a speech delivered at both the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her speech was printed, as an essay, in the April 2024 edition of The Nation magazine.

As printed in The Nation, Alexander's essay was titled as follows: "Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now." Her words, as Alexander reveals, were inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 speech condemning the Vietnam War. 

I urge anyone reading this blog posting of mine to click that link, and to read Dr. King's speech. Read what Michelle Alexander has to say, too! Here are some of the words that Alexander chose to end her essay:

Twenty twenty-four just might be the year that changes everything. But the way that things change is ultimately up to us. It can be a time of world war, genocide, the collapse of democracy, and the loss of hope. Or it can be a time of great awakening—when we break our silences and act with greater courage and greater solidarity, a time when the existential threats that we are facing finally lead us to embrace humanity and perhaps even glimpse the spark of divinity that exists within each one of us, and all creation (emphasis added). 

Small acts of personal courage can change history. They can change individual lives, and they can change the world. Dr. King's speech inspired me, and others, to resist the draft and to refuse to participate in the War in Vietnam. Thousands of young men refused and resisted; tens of thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands, took other actions to resist the war.

Let me reference, then, and slightly restate, what Margaret Mead said, in one of her most famous pronouncements. Margaret Mead said that we should "never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world."  That's true, and small acts of "revolutionary love," even individual acts, can do the same. As Mead claimed, "Indeed, that's the only thing that ever has."

I would like to amend Alexander's statement, as I have copied it out, above. I am proposing to change just two words. In that very first line, the one I have emphasized, where Alexander says, "just might," I would say, "must."

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Image Credit:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/mlk-vietnam-war-speech-gaza-democracy/

#206 / Property-Based Voting

   

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Today, I am republishing a newspaper column that first appeared in the Sun-Gazette newspaper, which "serves the communities of Tulare County, California." The column is by Trudy Wischemann, who, among other things, writes a weekly column called, "Notes From Home." Wischemann's "Notes From Home" column regularly appears in the Sun-Gazette. This edition showed up in my email inbox back in the middle of May.

Wischemann is objecting to "property-based" voting (particularly as applied with respect to the governmental agencies that control how groundwater is managed in California). She is also urging that something must be done about it. I most definitely agree.

Some of those who are reading this blog posting of mine may not be aware that our state has a system in place in which governmental power (which we think belongs to us all, equally) is actually allocated to those with the most money. That's true, though, and I think Trudy Wischemann is right to object!

oooOOOooo

No Vote

 

Trudy Wischemann, 

May 15, 2024 

What if someone told you that you have no vote? Right here in America, you a citizen, being told you have no vote: what would you do? Or, a little slimier, you can have a vote, but it won’t count. What then? 

Millions of us face this every time we go to the polls (or excuse ourselves from voting) because we’re convinced it doesn’t matter. If you’re a Democrat living in a fire-engine-red district, does that give you license to abstain? Your vote counts even if it doesn’t win, an expression of an alternate way of viewing the potential solutions to the world’s problems. Another alternative is to move to a district where your vote might just help tip the scales. Most of us don’t go to that extreme because we are not bothered enough by the results of losing to the candidate not of our choice. 

But what if everything was at stake, everything we’d ever worked for and accomplished teetering on the decisions of people who are not even slightly influenced by our needs? What if you lived where people whose voting power gave them full license to serve their own interests at the expense of the neighbors, and actually benefited from your demise or emigration? 

This is the situation that smaller-scale, resident farmers/growers have faced—or not faced—in the Tulare Lake Basin for 75 years or more. Unfortunately, this unbalanced power dynamic that we have not (yet) faced spreads far beyond those muddy shores.

The cause is property-weighted voting in water/water storage districts, which I’m bringing up again because I get to speak on that topic to the League of Women Voters of Tulare County next Tuesday, May 21. I’m calling it “Property-Weighted Voting and the Demise of Democracy: Tell ’Em We’re Taking It Back.” I will be describing what actions we could be taking, based on certain principles embedded in documents like our State Constitution and bodies of legal precedents. What I am advocating is that we the people begin the process of abolishing property-weighted voting in this state, effectively overturning the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Salyer et. al. v. Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District, which decided 6:3 that property-weighted voting in these kinds of districts is constitutional at the national level.

The need to do so is urgent. Property-weighted voting allows super-large landowners to control the water supplies of all landowners within their district’s boundaries, not just the water for their own properties. (As I have written in this column over the past year, we could see this dominance more easily during the 2023 flooding events than we can with groundwater overdraft and export outside the groundwater basins.) This power allows them to exert power over the regulatory agencies, as well as local public servants, who bow to their wishes at the public’s expense. It has allowed them to take control of the groundwater management process in invisible ways, which threatens to leave us—the communities and resident agricultural enterprises that make up our rural economy—high and dry. We will all be paying a price for it—for essentially having no vote over the management of our groundwater, our last source of defense against droughts.

At this moment, we have no vote over our socio-economic future as a rural economy. But we have voices, and it’s time to use them. Tell ‘em we’re taking it back—and they might as well get used to the idea.

Our LWV meets third Tuesdays in Visalia at Left of Center Bistro, 699 W. Center from 11:30 to 1 p.m. For buffet lunch reservations RSVP: LWVTulareCo@gmail.com before 5 p.m. (emphasis added).

Trudy Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes wrongs. You can send her your thoughts on speaking up c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247.

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Image Credit:

https://thesungazette.com/article/opinion/2024/05/15/no-vote/

#205 / D.J - J.D. (And A Chance To Smile)

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Most will recognize Narcissus, portrayed above. Narcissus is said to have died, gazing into a mirror, so fascinated was he by his own image that he simply could not bring himself, ever, to turn away from that image, as he was there portrayed in that reflection of himself. 

Of course, as we all know, an image in a mirror appears in "reverse." It is thought-provoking, thus, to contemplate the Republican Party ticket, this time around. It consists of D.J. Trump, and J.D. Vance. Fascinating, indeed!

Trump and Vance are both narcissists, at least as I interpret the medical definition: 

Narcissism is extreme self-involvement to the degree that it makes a person ignore the needs of those around them.

We know about Trump's narcissism from experience, and having now read Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, in its entirety, I can reliably testify that Vance is Trump's equal in his self-fascinated preoccupation with all that he is, and has done, and is yet to do. 

May J.D. and D.J. continue to gaze fondly into each others eyes, as their campaign proceeds, and may their narcissistic politics perish at the end, as Narcissus died at the pool.

What a relief it will be to release our politics from the danger that we, too, might be seduced into that gaze - a gaze that sees nothing but oneself, and one's own desires, and that cares nothing for everyone else. 

Up until last Sunday, I certainly didn't know I would be, but I am smiling, now, just like President Biden, and the Vice President he chose to run with him, and to replace him as required. 

That's a great picture, isn't it?

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.palomar.edu/telescope/2015/03/30/narcissus-a-mortal-son-of-gods/

(2) - https://www.npr.org/2024/07/21/nx-s1-5047825/donald-trump-jd-vance-michigan-rally

(3) - https://scheerpost.com/2024/07/22/chris-hedges-my-thoughts-on-biden-dropping-out/

#204 / Infections Of The Mind

  

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Gary Saul Morson, pictured above, is an American literary critic, known for his scholarly work on Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Morson is Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University, and he was previously Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania. Click this link for more information from Wikipedia. 

I was struck by a column written by Morson, and published in the May 15, 2024, edition of The Wall Street Journal. The column was titled, "Marxism Is a Gulag of the Mind." Of course, unless you are a subscriber to The Journal, I give you no guarantee that clicking that link will allow you to evade what is likely to be a paywall of some kind, and let you actually read the article. Here, however, I will give you the gist of the column: "The left manipulates politics by inverting the meaning of terms like ‘democracy’ and ‘equity.’" 

Morson lays out his case as follows: 

The Marxist impulse is always to accuse your opponent of what you are doing or plan to do. It resembles what Freudians call “projection,” except that in Freudian theory projection happens outside the person’s awareness and is governed by an unconscious desire not to recognize one’s own intentions. For the leaders of Marxist and quasi-Marxist movements, the technique of accusing others of one’s own aggressive plans is entirely conscious. Call it “the political projection principle....” 

The test of whether a person really believes in freedom is the readiness to protect the freedom of opponents. It’s easy to do when the opponent is mild and honorable, but what Democrat will rise to defend Mr. Trump? They accuse him of harboring authoritarian designs as they prosecute him in several courts so that he can’t campaign, must spend his money defending himself, and may find himself in prison before the voting starts. Arresting potential challengers is what former KGB operative Vladimir Putin routinely does. In Maine and Colorado, Democrats tried to keep the presumptive Republican nominee off the ballot entirely. Who exactly is undermining democracy? 

Mr. Trump was charged with planning to curtail democratic freedoms, but the Biden administration pressured social-media platforms to censor even true information about Covid and other sensitive topics. On campuses and in businesses, “equity,” like “true democracy,” has taken the place of its opposite, equality. Rights are for those who accept the new definition of rights; everyone is equal, except those who aren’t. George Orwell grasped this way of thinking perfectly. “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,” goes the slogan of “1984.” Today diversity often means uniformity; equity, inequality; and inclusion, exclusion of those who think differently.

The Hamas charter explicitly calls for killing all Jews, but the terror group’s campus supporters, who often harass Jews, accuse Israel of genocide. They call President Biden “Genocide Joe.” No one uses hate speech more often than those who constantly accuse others of using hate speech.... (emphasis added).

I think that Morson makes a valid point. In political arguments, the kind of "political projection" he identifies and complains about is not uncommon. However, it seems to me that Morson evidences the same pathology that he decries in "Marxists," and "leftists," not to mention, impliedly, those who are supporters of our current President and the Democratic Party. I think that Morson's article might have been better titled, "Infections of the Mind." Morson's title suggests that it is only "Marxists," "leftists," and similar political types who are "imprisoned" within a false understanding of reality. 

What I think, differing from Morson, is that political debate and disagreements - central to democratic self-government - can all too easily be "infected" with what amounts to the "virus" of "political projection" that he has identified. Morson is infected himself, it seems to me. The critique he makes of those with whom he disagrees politically would apply to himself, and to other "non-Marxists, non-leftists, and non-Democratic Party Members."

In other words, what Morson has identified is not a disease of "the left." He has identified a disease that can (and often does) infect those of all political polarities and persuasions. This disease of "political projection" can be deadly, too. Our worries about what happens after the November election, this year, no matter who wins, is an evidence of just how concerning this kind of infection can really be. 

In my mind, the political phenomenon identified by Morson is related to an observation that was frequently made by my mother (I've mentioned her advisory before): 

Comparisons Are Odious

To insure that we achieve the kind of politics we need, free and untrammeled debate is absolutely vital. Our "Founding Fathers" were pretty smart, politically speaking, and the First Amendment is intended to make sure that we don't allow real or projected "catagories" to preempt political discussion on the merits. 

Marxists and MAGA advocates both need to be able to speak freely, and one's membership in whatever group should never be allowed to put them in a category which then allows anyone to dismiss or disregard the merits of what they have to say. 

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Image Credit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Saul_Morson

#203 / Making Friends

 

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I am showing you, above, a picture of "Jared." He is a fitness guru, and I pulled the photo from a New York Times story by Kevin Roose. The hardcopy version of the story comes to the reader with the following title: "These Are My Friends. I Made Them." 

If The Times' paywall permits you to read it, I think the story is worthwhile. The photo above is only slightly different from the photo I saw when I read the story in the hardcopy version of the newspaper, or the story as you will see it if you read it online (paywall permitting, of course). 

To be frank, I was a little intimidated by "Jared," given his chisled body and rather serious demeanor. "Ariana," however, pictured below, and another one of Roose's friends, comes across as really approachable - at least, that is how she comes across to me. In the original version, "Jared's" photo had a short advisory in the upper lefthand corner, "Generated By A.I." "Ariana," who "specializes in giving career advice," is pictured with the disclaimer intact: 

If you have been reading my blog postings on a regular basis (and I do encourage you to subscribe, so you can do that), you will remember that I have been urging readers to "Find Some Friends." 

"Finding" some friends is totally, wholly, and completely different from "making" some friends, if by that "making friends" phrase we include "making them up," using so-called "Artificial Intelligence" software programs. 

The "real world," which is often represented online by a shorthand expression, IRL ("in real life"), is a world fundamentally different from the world we are creating in cyberspace. In a past blog posting entitled, "Let Me Explain The Modern World," I sought to make clear to readers that we are - whether we fully realize it or not (and I think most of us don't realize this) - moving our lives increasingly into an online world that is ever more detached from the world in which we ultimately live (the world IRL).

My "Two Worlds Hypothesis," also frequently mentioned in my blog postings, is intended to help us not only understand our "limits," but to remind us, perhaps first and foremost, of our almost unlimited possibilities. 

We do live, most immediately, in a world that we create ourselves, and the "Human World" that we create is, essentially, limited only by what we can think, because what we can "think," in general, is the only limit on what we can "do." Caution, however; both dreams and nightmares can come true! 

All the social, political, and economic realities that define the world in which we most immediately live are the result of our own decisions and actions. And, for that matter, many of the "physical" realities we encounter are the product of human ideas and actions, as well. From freeways, to skyscrapers, to electron microscopes, to the Nazi Death Camps, the physical realities we encounter, most immediately, are the results of our own actions, based on what we have envisioned, and thought, and thereafter conjured into "reality." 

However, consistent with the concept that we live in TWO worlds, simultaneously, there ARE some limits on the world that we create for ourselves. While we live most immediately in a "Human World," we ultimately live in the "World of Nature," a world that we did not create. Nothing we can do in "our" world can contradict the laws that apply in the "World of Nature." Check out a recent blog posting on what global warming is doing, to get the idea. 

This fact, that we are ultimately dependent on the "World of Nature," is something that runs contrary to our own sense that we should be "in charge" of everything. Theologically speaking, the limitations that demonstrably apply to our human life tend to "bug" us. You might cross reference "Death" at this point!

I sometimes call the world in which we ultimately live "The World That God Created." Trying to come to terms with this understanding about our true position in the universe - whether we use that "God" word, or prefer a more "scientific" vocabulary - is what "theology" is all about. While I am speaking, of course, from the foundation of a mere one year sojourn at Union Theological Seminary, in New York City, I do think I have the basics down! 

Ultimately, we are born and die in a world that is most definitely not the result of human thoughts, decisions, and actions. How we conduct our life in the world, now that we are here, is up to us. Again, I think that my "Two Worlds Hypothesis" provides a good framework for us, as we try to come up with some satisfactory answers about what we should do. 

Let's go back to "Making Friends." If we think we can "make friends" the way Kevin Roose has made his online companions, by the use of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), we are sadly deluded. Those "friends" are not "real." WE are real, but the "reality" of who we are is founded in the "World of Nature," or the "World That God Created." Trying to "make friends," who are not independent of us, but who are the product of human technology, is an example of our efforts to pretend that we don't have to live in the "real world," a world that is ultimately ruled by laws that we can't change (though we can change, or ignore, any law that we make up within our "Human World").

The "real world," inevitably reflecting its two-fold nature, will simply not let us eliminate the constraints and limits that "bug" us, as we seek to assert total dominion over everything. Forget about "making" computer-based "friends." They are not the kind of friends we need.

When I say, "Find Some Friends," as I do, I mean find some real friends - friends who, like each one of us, have been so mysteriously born into this glorious world that we call home. We need some real friends. We need the company!

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/technology/meet-my-ai-friends.html (retouched)

(2) - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/technology/meet-my-ai-friends.html

#202 / Fortitude Ranch

 

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Things could get bad. Those "Doomsday Preppers" might have it right. What should you do?

Well, how about buying yourself a spot in a franchised string of "retreats" that will allow you to join with others to insulate yourselves from all the possible civil unrest that might be just around the corner? Does that sound good? If that does sound good to you, maybe you should be exploring "Fortitude Ranch." That link will take you to the "Fortitude Ranch" website, which bills its offerings as "Real Life Insurance - A Private Vacation Country Club And Survival Community." 

The weaponry shown comes with your club membership, so you and your fellow Fortitude Ranch members can kill anyone who might want to crash your luxury escape pad. I found out about this opportunity from a July 14, 2024, story in The New York Times. The story is titled as follows, online: "Is There A Future In The Doomsday Economy?" 

Picture yourself at one of the Fortitude Ranch sites, below. A year's supply of everything you need comes with the membership (plus guns, remember). Who wouldn't want to spend a year in the Nevada desert, fighting off marauding interlopers, in order to protect their freedom? What could possibly go wrong?

Another alternative, which I have been advocating, is to "Find Some Friends." I still think that Octavia Butler has it right. Cheaper and better than "Fortitude Ranch." But maybe that's just me!

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Image Credits:

(1) and (2) - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/business/fortitude-ranch-doomsday-economy-survival.html

#201 / Our Next Vice President?

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There’s no law, there’s just power. 

And the goal here is to get back in power.

That quote above, from J.D. Vance, now the Republican Party's designated candidate for Vice President, appeared in Jennifer Szalai's "Critics Notebook," in The New York Times, on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. If you would like to read the entirety of what Szalai has to say, use the following link (The Times' paywall permitting, of course). The headline on Szalai's column was, "The Nazi Jurist Who Haunts Our Broken Politics." 

In all fairness to Vance, the quote, above, is only a fragment of what Szalai provided in her column, and it is a "requote" of something first said by Carl Schmitt, who is described by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as follows: 

A conservative German legal, constitutional, and political theorist, Schmitt is often considered to be one of the most important critics of liberalism, parliamentary democracy, and liberal cosmopolitanism. But the value and significance of Schmitt’s work is subject to controversy, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with National Socialism.

Here is another quote from Schmitt, as reported by Szalai: 

"Dictatorship could in fact be democracy's most authentic expression."  

Schmitt thought the object of "politics" was not to arrive at acceptable compromises, given that we all have different ideas about what would be best, and what our government should do. Instead, Schmitt was of the mind that "politics" is actually an effort to amalgamate enough power to eliminate any alternative, so that the political "winners" will be able to have the government do what those who win the power struggle believe is best, with no compromise or impediment. In other words, the actual objective of "politics" is "dictatorship," according to Schmitt.

If you don't see where Szalai got her headline, about how there is a Nazi philosopher "haunting" our current politics, you haven't been paying attention to Project 2025, and to the Trump promise that he will begin his next term in office as a "dictator." You haven't been paying attention to the ideas and intentions of J.D. Vance, either, which are summarized in that quote at the top of this blog posting.

As readers of this blog posting probably know, J.D. Vance wrote an acclaimed book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. As they probably also know, the word, "elegy" is defined as a "funeral lament," a mourning for what is dead, and gone. 

I don't like the Carl Schmitt concept of "politics," and I think it's going to be critically important for Americans, everywhere, to vote against the Republican Party (Trump/Vance) ticket. Otherwise, I am afraid that Vance's next book might well be titled, "An American Elegy: Memoir of a Politics that Didn't Think That Dictatorship Is Its Acceptable And Actual Objective."

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Image Credit:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/15/trump-picks-senator-jd-vance-of-ohio-as-his-republican-running-mate

#200 / If You Can Keep It

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Benajmin Franklin signed the Declaration of Independence, and Joyce Vance quotes his observation that the framers of our Constitution gave us a Republic, "if you can keep it." 

Can we? Joyce Vance suggests that there is a real question about that!

I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney who is now writing a daily blog called, "Civil Discourse." Vance suggests, in her July 10, 2024, blog posting, that we should take seriously the agenda laid out in "Project 2025." Project 2025, as prepared largely by former staff members for then-president Trump, outlines the ways that Donald J. Trump, if elected as president in 2024, could dismantle what we think of as American democracy. 

The Lincoln Project has issued a video presentation about Project 2025. Vance is recommending that we all watch it. I did. 

Frankly, the Project 2025 video is hard to watch. Still, as Vance advises, we'd all better watch it. Former president Trump is hoping that we won't, and particularly that we won't believe that it would be possible for him to do all the things that the video says he will do, if he is put back into our highest office. 

I am inclined to believe Joyce Vance, and she says: "Believe it!"

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https://www.donaldjtrump.com/

#199 / They

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Pictured above is Raymond Oliver Dreher, Jr. (born February 14, 1967), known as Rod Dreher. Dreher is an American expatriate writer and editor living in Hungary. He was a columnist with The American Conservative for twelve years, ending in March 2023, and he remains an editor-at-large there. He is also author of several books, including How Dante Can Save Your Life, The Benedict Option, and Live Not by Lies.

The above information is coming to you by way of Wikipedia. Dreher's blog, should you wish to consult it, can be found by clicking this link. I have mentioned Dreher before (and actually more than once). I first became aware of him by way of a New Yorker profile. 

Below is a rather long extract from Dreher's blog posting published on July 15, 2024. In that blog posting, Dreher reacts to the attack on former president Trump that occurred during a July 14, 2024, rally in Butler, Pennsylvania:

Whatever the motivation of the failed assassin, this was a monumental failure on behalf of the Secret Service. How the hell does a gunman climb onto that roof and crawl into place, with multiple people in the crowd screaming, “He’s got a gun!” and trying to warn police, and squeeze off shots at Donald Trump?! There were snipers already in place for just such a possibility. Why were there no Secret Service agents on that roof to begin with? It’s an obvious platform for an assassin, were one to be present. The conspiracy theorists are already going wild on this point, and understandably so. I say “understandably” not to endorse a conspiracy theory, but to say this Secret Service failure gives natural rise to such speculation.  

My thoughts as I was falling asleep on the first night, on the fact political and culture war fact pattern emerging:

 

They wouldn’t leave Evangelical Christian Jack Philips alone to bake his cakes and run his business. 

They won’t let parents know if their children are transing themselves in school. 

They won’t let parents remove pornographic books from school libraries.

They teach little children and teenage minors to hate everything normal — their families, their own bodies, even their very identity. 

They told us that the President of the United States was a Russian Manchurian (Siberian?) candidate, and crippled his administration with these lies. 

They told us Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, though they knew it was not. 

They lied to us about Covid and its origins. 

They told us that we couldn’t have even a semblance of a normal life because of Covid … unless we were going out onto the streets to protest racism, or burn the cities down to honor George Floyd. 

“Mostly peaceful” riots. 

They have turned professional journalism into propaganda.

For example, they ignored obvious signs of Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline into decrepitude, until he choked on live TV — and are now shocked, shocked that the White House deceived them. 

They tried to ruin as a bigot a high school kid who wore a MAGA hat on the Mall, and was set upon by a provocative left-wing activist.

They have conspired to destroy institutions essential to running society by keeping out the accomplished and the meritorious, for the sake of letting in those who are incapable of doing the work, but who possess the favored demographic profile. 

They have divided America and made us fear and loathe each other on racial lines. 

They have demonized white people — especially white males. 

They have destroyed statues and attempted to rewrite American history to reflect ideological convictions. 

They have led near-pogroms against Jews on elite American campuses. 

They secretly pressured, from senior government levels, a policymaking medical organization to abandon scientific considerations in order to eliminate lower limits on sexually and psychologically mutilating children. 

They passed laws in some states allowing the government to seize minor children from their uncooperative parents, for the sake of sexually and psychologically mutilating them. 

They are destroying women’s sports, and making women everywhere more vulnerable to mentally unwell men who think they are women. 

They gaslit us into war in Iraq, and now they’ve gaslit us into an ongoing, unwinnable war against Russia, risking World War III for no plausible national interest. 

They are wrecking the military with DEI, such that fewer normal men want to serve. 

They have frightened millions of Americans into silence over fear of cancellation. 

They have left the back door into the US wide open for migrants, including Hezbollah fighters, likely Chinese agents, and others. 

They shipped America’s manufacturing base overseas, and blame Americans for being unhappy with their economic prospects. 

They deregulated Wall Street, and when it blew up in 2008, managed to avoid punishing anyone for it. 

They failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no senior military commander lost his job for it, even though the 2014 Afghanistan Papers report revealed that the Pentagon didn’t know what it was doing, and didn’t care. 

All those American soldiers, physically and psychologically maimed by the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, and by the stupidity of trying to build a liberal democracy in Afghanistan — swept under the rug. 

In a country where you have to show ID to buy beer, this week they tried to defeat a law that would require people to show ID proving their are citizens in order to vote. 

They declared that Americans who dissent from all this are on the “far right” and might be “domestic terrorists” — while mollycoddling Antifa and violent leftists. 

They put Trump through a show trial in Manhattan on flimsy charges, to make him easier to remove as a rival to Joe Biden. 

AND NOW … they have tried to assassinate Trump. 

Who is “they”? The Ruling Class. The people in power — including some Republicans; it wasn’t Democrats who led the invasions, nor only the Clinton Democrats who bent over for Wall Street). I’m talking about the people who benefit from the system as it is.

It's a nice gesture for Dreher to suggest that maybe some "Republicans" are implicated in all the insults he lists - all those outrages that "They" have perpetuated upon the American people. It is true, for instance, that the shooter who apparently just grazed Trump's ear, was a registered Republican, but it is pretty clear who Dreher thinks the bad guys are - who "They" are - as you read through Dreher's list. 

In August of last year, when I referenced Dreher, the title of my blog posting read: "Songs of Resentment." If you want to track it down, you'll find a link to an actual song, too! Given this recent "They" listing, it looks like Dreher thinks that there are a lot of new verses that might be added to the tune!

I keep saying this, but it seems to me that what I am saying continues to be relevant. In the United States of America, WE ("we, the people") are "The Ruling Class." At least we can be, and we should be, and we have the right to be! There is no "They" who are ultimately responsible for oppressing and distressing us. In our "self-government system," our remedy for the outrages that we can see everywhere is to organize politically, and then to use whatever political successes we have to advance the agenda we think is best. I have had some people tell me that this "model" sounds good, but that it just doesn't work in our current economic situation. Not in "real life." Well, if it truly doesn't work, then we need to do something about that, don't we? Unless, that is, we are willing to stipulate that we are the powerless pawns of those with the big bucks, which is pretty much the theme of that "Song of Resentment" I linked above. 

I'm not buying into a declaration of powerlessness, and I hope no one else is, either, because what we "think" determines what we "do," and what we "do" determines what happens. 

While we are trying to work out a good strategy, allow me to give my opinion: Making up lists of all the horrible things that "They" have done to us (finding more verses for those "Songs of Resentment" that we so often love to sing to ourselves) is exactly the opposite of a successful strategy. 

Frankly, that kind of thinking is what sends people to the rooftops with automatic weapons!

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Image Credit:

https://ludovikafesztival.uni-nke.hu/en/eloadok/rod-dreher/

#198 / Shooting For A Positive-Sum World

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That picture above, as far as I am concerned, depicts a very good looking pie! And isn't this absolutely obvious: If I get a big piece of that pie (the kind I want) you'll get a smaller one? 

You can click this link right here to see what the "Conceptually" website has to say about that. You might also try this link, to see if The New York Times will let you read a column by David Brooks, who suggests that the assumption I outline above may not, in fact, be a correct way to understand the world. Here's an excerpt from that David Brooks' column: 

Sometimes social revolutions emerge from ordinary ideas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, thinkers like William Petty, David Hume and Adam Smith popularized a concept called “division of labor.” It’s a simple notion. If I specialize in doing what I’m good at, and you specialize in what you’re good at, and we exchange what we’ve each made, then we’ll both be more productive and better off than if we tried to be self-sufficient.

It seems banal, but division of labor was part of a constellation of ideas that liberated our civilization from the savage grip of zero-sum thinking. For millenniums before that, economic growth had been basically stagnant. Many people simply assumed that the supply of wealth was finite. If I’m going to get more of it, it will be the result of conquering you and stealing what you have. In a zero-sum mind-set, the basic logic of life is dog-eat-dog, conquer or be conquered. Property is theft. Predators win.

Division of labor, on the other hand, and the other principles that underlie modern capitalism, encouraged a positive-sum mind-set. According to this way of thinking, the good of others multiplies my own good. Steve Jobs got to enjoy a fortune, but I get to enjoy the Mac I’m now typing on and tens of thousands get to enjoy the jobs he helped create.

In this kind of society, life is not about conquest and domination but regulated competition and voluntary exchange. Not about antagonism but interdependence. In this kind of marketplace, Walter Lippmann wrote in the late 1930s, “the vista was opened at the end of which men could see the possibility of the Good Society on this earth.”

David Brooks is too "saccharine" for many. He's too "goody-goody." Let's admit it, the Brooks' critics say; more pie for me means less pie for you. And vice versa - don't forget that! Take it from a former president (you know the one I am talking about). All that stuff I just reproduced from Brooks' column is nothing but "liberal hype." There are "winners," and there are "losers," and I know that the real "winners" get the whole pie!

Right?

Well, maybe not. If the phrase that I often repeat in these blog postings is an actual statement of the truth (and is not just some kind of pious pontificating), then the fact that "we are all in this together" testifies to the reality of what Brooks is telling us - or is trying to tell us. 

I think that Brooks is right, and we'd better start shooting for a "Positive-Sum" world!

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Image Credit:

https://conceptually.org/concepts/zero-vs-positive-sum

#197 / Assets, Not Liabilities

 

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A recent "Comment" in The New Yorker Magazine, by Jonathan Blitzer, focused on our immigration system, with Blitzer advancing the idea that there has just been, finally, thanks to President Biden, a "Leap Forward On Immigration Policy." 

The American immigration system has been called many unsavory things, most of them deserved. It was last reformed thirty-four years ago. What has emerged in the decades since is a welter of backlogs, visa shortages, piecemeal enforcement measures, and every manner of bureaucratic complexity. Ordinary people, trying to work and take care of their families, are often forced into surreal scenarios. Take the 1.1 ­million people in this country who are married to U.S. citizens but are undocumented themselves. You might assume that it would be relatively straightforward for them to get on firm legal footing. In fact, the process is quite complicated. Anyone who first entered the United States illegally must travel to another country for a visa interview at a U.S. Embassy or consulate. But if she has lived in the United States for more than a year without papers, as some eleven million people have, a law in place since the nineteen-­nineties bars her from reëntering the country for up to a decade. That could mean, in effect, getting stranded outside the U.S., despite having a partner, possibly children, and a livelihood here. She can get a waiver permitting her to remain in the U.S. if she can prove that her prolonged absence would cause “extreme hardship” for certain members of her family. But, because of processing delays, getting the waiver can now take three and a half years.

A couple of weeks ago, at the White House, President Joe Biden announced the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade. He gave roughly half a million undocumented spouses of citizens a path to permanent legal status, on the condition that they have lived here since at least 2014 and pass a criminal-­background check. “I refuse to believe that to secure our border we have to walk away from being American,” Biden said. “The Statue of Liberty is not some relic of American history.”

Strangely - or, actually, not so strangely at all - I immediately thought about homeless persons when I read about this latest, significant change in how we are going to treat the immigrants who are here, living amongst "us," the non-immigrants and the non-homeless. 

It is well known by anyone who has taken the trouble to read about immigration that our longstanding national policy of welcoming immigrants to the United States has been of inestimable benefit to our nation, both economically and socially. What the history of immigration to the United States tells us (symbolized by that Statue of Liberty mentioned by our president) is that people - and every person - must be welcomed and encouraged, and seen for what they really are, "assets," not "liabilities." 

The human "potential" that each human being represents is lost and forsaken when we exclude them - when we fail to include them in our national life. 

Human kindness tells us to welcome the poor, those who have nothing, and to invest in them because it is the "right thing to do." All true. But don't forget, when the temptations of "self-interest" start prevailing in your inner dialogue about reality, that extending help, and bringing into our lives those who are strangers, those who have nothing, not only gives them an opportunity to shine, it benefits all the rest of us, too.

Raise high that torch, and welcome all those who come with nothing, and for whom opportunity (and human kindness) will release great benefits. 

Not only for them, which is good enough! For all of us! 

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Image Credits:

(1) - https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/homeless-unhoused-who-cares/

(2) - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/

(3) - https://www.statueofliberty.org/statue-of-liberty/overview-history/

#196 / One Good Deed

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Bob Dylan fans will just take one look at that picture, above, and know exactly what song I am thinking about. You can click right here for a review of and meditation on "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts." The song is featured on Dylan's album, Blood On The Tracks. If you click the link to the title of the song, you'll be presented with the full lyrics. This link will let you listen to the song. 

As is so often the case with the Dylan songs I listen to and remember, I associate this song with just one verse - and actually with just one line of the lyrics: 

Rosemary started drinkin’ hard and seein’ her reflection in the knife

She was tired of the attention, tired of playin’ the role of Big Jim’s wife

She had done a lot of bad things, even once tried suicide

Was lookin’ to do just one good deed before she died

She was gazin’ to the future, riding on the Jack of Hearts

Thinking about life (and remembering those bad things, maybe - some of those things we'd like to forget), isn't it natural to wonder if there is "just one good deed" that we might do before we die?

Rosemary's pick - killing off an abusive and unfaithful husband - is not my personal recommendation, but thinking about that condign assignment, that "one good deed" we know we really need to do, is almost always going to require self-sacrifice. That's how we know it's a good deed. 

When we give up something, ourselves, for the benefit of someone else, we are working out the real meaning of life. 

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Image Credit:

https://chrisgregory.org/articles/bob-dylans-lily-rosemary-and-the-jack-of-hearts-the-only-missing-person-on-the-scene/