#243 / Revisiting The Global Warming Solutions Act

That is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, seated in the center, signing The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The woman in the red jacket, on the far left of the picture, is Fran Pavley. 

 

It was Pavley who first introduced the bill, Assembly Bill 32, that was ultimately enacted and then signed into law. To her immediate left is Fabian Núñez, who became the main author of this historic legislation, claiming that privilege as the Speaker of the Assembly. 

 

Without a doubt, at the time it was signed into law, AB 32 was the most far-reaching and important legislative effort to combat global warming that had ever been enacted, anywhere in the United States. The legislation was amended, and strengthened, in 2008, by Senate Bill 32, legislation also carried by Fran Pavley, who by that time had moved to the California State Senate. 

I think it is time to update The Global Warming Solutions Act once again. The law is found in the California Health and Safety Code, starting at Section 38500. You can click that link to view the law. As the law is currently structured, the California Air Resources Board (the ARB) is the state's designated lead agency, and the ARB is charged with "monitoring and regulating sources of emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming in order to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases" [Section 38510]. 

 

That still makes sense. I was a member of the ARB, once, and I can attest that it is an incredibly effective state agency, with scientists and lawyers on staff, and with a proven record of taking on the state's biggest polluters and making them reduce or eliminate dangerous emissions.

But changes are needed. For one thing, a so-called "Cap and Trade" system, mandated by the Legislature, but operated by the ARB, allows major polluters to continue to emit greenhouse gas emissions, if they will just pay the state some money for the privilege of continuing to pollute. This program shifts to the state the responsibility for making emission reductions somewhere else, as opposed to making the polluter reduce those emissions in the first place, right where they are being generated. 

Our world is in crisis, and the rule ought to be this: If it is technically possible to reduce a greenhouse gas emission then it should be mandatory for a polluter to eliminate or reduce that greenhouse gas emission at the earliest possible time. That is what our laws and regulations really ought to provide. No more hoping that "market mechanisms" will prompt good behavior. No more "Cap and Trade" escape routes.

 

Our global warming crisis is a matter of life and death - planetary life and death. We should have zero tolerance for the continued emission of any greenhouse gas pollutant that can be eliminated or reduced, and our state law should make this absolutely clear. What about language along the following lines?

 

The State Air Resources Board shall ensure that every action that is technically possible to be taken, to eliminate or reduce any current greenhouse gas emission, shall be undertaken at the earliest possible time, with the objective of ensuring that the state achieves net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

 

The Global Warming Solutions Act should also institute a new effort. Not only do we need to eliminate or reduce current greenhouse gas emissions, we need to establish an active and effective program to "draw down" carbon dioxide that is currently in the atmosphere. Our laws should mandate that the state achieve ongoing and increasing net negative carbon sequestration rates, to the maximum extent technically feasible.

 

The idea I am advancing here is pretty simple. If there is a feasible way to eliminate or reduce any greenhouse gas emission - if there is a technical way to accomplish such an outcome - then we need to mandate the elimination or reduction of that emission at the earliest time possible. Similarly, we need to do everything we possibly can to "draw down" carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere - again, as quickly as we can accomplish that. We are in a crisis here. We need all hands on deck. 

 

That brings me to my final suggestion. While I do endorse the ARB as the logical agency to implement the state's greenhouse gas elimination program, it is time for the State Legislature - our elected representatives - to take direct responsibility for leading the effort to eliminate or reduce, to the greatest degree possible, any greenhouse gas emissions occurring within the State of California. 

 

I would like to see the Legislature maintain continuing oversight of both the development and implementation of the program of emissions reduction measures, and measures to increase carbon sequestration. 

 

To that end, the Legislature should establish a Joint Committee on the Global Warming Crisis, composed of ten members of the Assembly and ten members of the Senate. This Joint Committee should meet as frequently as the Committee may decide, but the Joint Assembly-Senate Committee should be required to hold a public oversight hearing on a quarterly basis.

 

The Governor should be required to address the Committee at each such oversight hearing, and members of the public should be permitted to speak - to provide both suggestions and criticisms. 

 

The Air Resources Board should also be required to present a report to the Joint Committee, at each one of the Committee's quarterly meetings, outlining the status of the state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase carbon sequestration in each of the following areas: (1) Transportation; (2) Energy; (3) Industrial Activities; (4) Residential and Commercial Buildings; (5) Agriculture; (6) Natural Lands; (7) Water; (8) Waste Management; (9) State Government Activities and Operations, and (10) Local Government Activities and Operations. 

Did I say, "all hands on deck?" That is what we need. Just like in World War II, we need completely to reconfigure what we're doing, and we need to begin immediately. 

 

I only wish that Fran Pavley were still around in the Legislature, to provide the leadership we need! Let's see who might be willing (and able) to take her place, and to make California into a global leader in the fight to stop global warming (and to protect all living things on Planet Earth).

 

 

Image Credit:

https://www.newsmax.com/fastfeatures/global-warming-solutions-act/2014/12/14/id/612572/

#242 / We Didn't Start The Fire?

 

That's Billy Joel, above, with a picture from the official video of Joel singing his 1989 hit, "We Didn't Start The Fire." If you click this link you can read the complete lyrics. The chorus goes like this:

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

 

In case you're not familiar with it, Joel's song is what Wikipedia calls a list song: "Its fast-paced lyrics include brief references to 118 significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949, the year of Joel's birth, and 1989, in a mainly chronological order."

 

Is "We Didn't Start The Fire" one of my favorite songs? Well, not really - or at least not up until now. I have to confess that I have no recollection of ever having  heard (or heard of) this song until I read an article about it in the Wednesday, August 25, 2021, edition of The New York Times. That article brought the song to my attention. 

 

Well before 1989, when "We Didn't Light The Fire" was a hit, I had placed myself in a musical closed garden, bounded on all sides by the songs of Bob Dylan. If, on August 24th, someone had challenged me to name a "list song," I am pretty sure I would have responded with a reference to "Murder Most Foul," a recent Dylan composition which is his longest-playing song, ever. Actually, "Murder Most Foul," which is definitely a "list song," has some similarities to "We Didn't Start The Fire," though Dylan's song does not seek to duplicate the frenetic pace of Joel's effort.

The Times' article that drew my attention to "We Didn't Start The Fire" was written by Lindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic living in New York City. Zoladz reports that Joel's song "thrilled" her when she was four years old. Now, though, she questions her judgment. She tells us that even Billy Joel has "mocked" the song, and she sounds a bit apologetic about her early enthusiasm:

I have ... felt a need to ... avoid coming to terms with an embarrassing truth, which is that my first favorite song — yes, me, a person who grew up to be a professional music critic — is a song hated so vehemently by some people that its own Apple Music catalog description admits that it regularly shows up on “worst song” lists. It certainly seems to be one of the most parodied songs in pop music history. Even its own composer has an ambivalent-at-best relationship to its existence and has repeatedly compared its monotonous melody to a “dentist’s drill” and “a droning mosquito.”

I am talking about Billy Joel and his notorious, wildly mystifying 1989 U.S.-history-lesson-on-Adderall “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which as a 4-year-old I believed to be the greatest song ever recorded. 

 

I  would definitely say that "We Didn't Light The Fire" is NOT "the greatest song ever recorded" - and it appears to me that even Zoladz would agree, at this point. Nonetheless, having now been introduced to the song, let me say that I like it quite a bit. I particularly like the official video (available below) which starts off with clips from "I Love Lucy," which is something I do remember from my far-off youth. I certainly encourage anyone reading this blog posting to watch the video. It's a bit over four minutes in length. 

I have two contradictory reactions to "We Didn't Light The Fire," which lists many events associated with our past history, some of which continue to affect our history today. Many of the events that make the list are what we would probably call "bad" things. The song claims that we didn't "start" the fire that is engulfing our world, and then suggests that we are, despite our innocence, "fighting" it bravely, doing the best we can. 

Well, the feeling that we are called upon to "fight" the battles that history has brought to us does resonate, I think, with everyone's experience. History precipitates itself into our present, and challenges us (requires us, actually) to respond. The present moment in which we live is the product of historical events that have swept into our lives like our our California wildfires, and we are compelled to "fight," in the present, what history has brought to us from the past, though we can't, really, be charged, individually, with having caused the circumstances in which we have to fight. 

 

That's all true, and Joel's song extends some sympathy to us for having found ourselves in this arguably "unfair" situation. 

 

There is, though, another perspective. The world in which we live, the "historical" world of human events and action, is truly a human creation - and that world is the result of our past actions. "We," collectively understood, are in fact the ones who have "started the fire." Our present responsibility for what exists in the world is not, in fact, "unfair."

The California wildfires are actually a good example of what I am talking about. The former residents of Greenville, California (or maybe I should say the "residents of the former Greenville, California") did not, individually speaking, "start the fire" that consumed their homes and their community. 

But we did start the fire, collectively speaking, and we need to take responsibility for the history that has eventuated from our past actions, actions that continue right up to the present moment. 

Maybe watching "We Didn't Start The Fire" can help us reflect on our real human situation, and maybe, as we accept our responsibility for the common human world in which we live, we will recommit ourselves to that world and to the fight that will be necessary to sustain it. Maybe such recognition, accepted, not rejected, as in Joel's song, will support us as we "fight on," as fight we must. 

 

In Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt makes clear that this is exactly what we have to do. 

 

We didn't start the fire? 

 

Maybe not - but maybe we did, right? We can choose to consider ourselves as relatively blameless individuals, unfairly caught up in a reality that is the product of past actions for which we have no individual responsibility. Or, alternatively, we can decide that we are willing to accept our individual responsibility for the collective reality that has been our human creation - the reality in which we now find ourselves. 

 

However we wish to think about it, here we are! Right in the middle of the flames!

Image Credit:

https://www.antiwarsongs.org/canzone.php?id=3620&lang=en

#241 / Speeches

 

I don't usually have dreams at night, but just the other night I did have a dream. And what a happy dream it was! I can't tell you now where I was speaking, and what, exactly, I was talking about, but in my dream I was making a speech. 

I have made a lot of speeches in my time. Click right here if you'd like to see a list. 

The first speech on my speech list was a speech I gave to the California Association of LAFCOs, at its statewide conference in Monterey. LAFCO stands for "Local Agency Formation Commission," an agency created by state law to combat sprawl. In October 1978, which is when I made that speech, the voters of Santa Cruz County had just adopted Measure J (in June 1978). Measure J, which I wrote, was a referendum measure that established a Growth Management System for Santa Cruz County. Among other things, Measure J gave the strongest possible protection to Santa Cruz County farmland, and established an Urban Growth Boundary, both of which provisions, once enacted by the voters, saved Santa Cruz County from the fate of adjoining Santa Clara County. Measure J, in other words, was definitely "anti-sprawl." 

 

If you don't remember the specifics of Measure J, which also included a path-breaking program mandating the production of affordable housing, as non-affordable development occurred, you can click on that Measure J link to see the text. You are also encouraged to click right here for "The Story of Measure J," an explanation of just how Measure J came to be, and what it does. 

As you can undoubtedly tell, I am rather proud of Measure J. As you can also probably tell, at least if you read through that Speech List, I really like giving speeches! I am pictured, above, giving a graduation day speech to the graduates of the UCSC Environmental Studies Program. That was in July 2015, long after I had retired from the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, and at a time when I was, clearly, coming to the end of my speechifying days. The last speech on my list was in May 2019, over two years ago. 

 

There is, if not a specific formula, a set of guidelines that you need to think about if you want to make a good speech. The University of Arkansas proposes five "Rules of Rhetoric," which it denominates the "Canons of Rhetoric." Generally, I am good with just three basic guidelines, often called the "Rhetorical Triangle." These are: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. 

I have a hunch that I would still make a pretty good speech, if ever asked, but that "Ethos" thing is a problem. According to that "Rhetorical Triangle," "Ethos" can be thought of as "the role of the writer (or the speaker) in the argument, and how credible his or her argument is." In other words, you need to "speak with authority, and "not as the scribes." No longer being an elected official (I stepped down from the Board of Supervisors in January 1995), my "authority" is getting pretty thin. 

 

I guess that is why I was so happy in that dream. At least while I was asleep, my authority must have been restored. I really do like giving speeches. Call me up if you ever need one! 

"My name is Gary Patton." That's how I always start them off.

 

 

Image Credit:

Gary Patton personal photo

 

#240 / Murder By Remote Control

 

The picture above shows U.S. personnel operating killer drones. The picture was appropriated from an article in Consortium News. The article was titled, "In Pre-Sentencing Letter, Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale Says Crisis of Conscience Motivated Leak."

 

Perhaps I should have titled this blog posting, "Your Taxpayer Dollars At Work." That headline would also have fit. Hale is facing four years in prison because he "leaked" to the general public what drone operators do. This is pretty much the same kind of thing that Edward Snowden did when he "leaked" information to the public that proved the United States Government is spying on the telephone calls of every person in the country, without telling them about it. 

 

The U.S. Government calls what Hale did (and what Snowden did) "espionage." In other words, the taxpaying citizens of the United States are not, according to their government, supposed to know what their government is doing in their name, and with their money. According to the government, U.S. citizens are just the same as hostile enemy powers, and those who tell us what our government is doing are just the same as foreign spies. This claim is being made even though those citizens, in what we call our "democracy," are actually supposed to be in charge of the government.

Pretty hard to be in charge of the government if you are not allowed to know what the government is doing, isn't it?

 

I recommend you read the article. Just click the link.

There is a responsible case to be made that many, if not most, of the drone killings carried out by our government, in our name and using our money, are better classified as "assassinations," or as "murder," rather than as "wartime operations." 

 

To make up our own minds about this, we need to know the facts. And those who tell us the facts, and tell us about what's going on, are not foreign spies or enemy agents!

 

 

Image Credit:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3611639517962742486/2197949300767874890

 

#239 / Panpsychism Meets The Bible

 

A recent article in Salon, the online magazine, tells us that "Panpsychism, the idea that inanimate objects have consciousness, gains steam in science communities."

 

To the extent this is true, it's big news, since "scientists" have never liked panpsychism. The matter at issue, in case you have not run into panpsychism before, is the nature and origin of consciousness, which we all more or less assume is a real thing, since we all experience it, or think we do! 

 

Here is how Salon begins its discussion:

Panpsychism's appeal may stem partly from the fact that scientists currently can not explain what consciousness – the thing that gives you a mind and makes you self-aware — actually is. During the 17th century Enlightenment, philosopher René Descartes famously argued for a so-called "dualist" approach to explaining how our mind interacts with our body. He argued the physical matter of our bodies and whatever substance creates a mind are separate entities (perhaps connected by the pineal gland), with our flesh essentially serving as a house for our souls. This argument holds that if science could explain everything, it should be able to quantify a mind/soul — visually describe it, hear it, feel it, measure and record it. None of that has happened; indeed, the very notion of it happening seems nonsensical....

"The problem is a lot of regular people, who are not philosophers, are dualists, because they believe in the mind or the soul as a separate entity from their physical being, their physical body," David Skrbina, a philosopher and author of the book "Panpsychism in the West," told Salon. "And so a lot of people for religious reasons, and just 'common sense' reasons, tend to think in dualist or Cartesian terms without really even understanding it. And so when we talk to the public at large, we are sort of stuck dealing with the Cartesian question, even though most philosophers, I think, do not give it much credibility at all."

The article in Salon goes on to say that "non-dualist" explanations don't seem to work very well, either:

 

Those who believe our minds come directly from our bodies are also facing some logical challenges. In other words, there is no equation, no theory that would account [for] nor explain our conscious feelings, the everyday state of awareness and thought that constitute life and existence. There is nothing in physics or chemistry or biology that accounts what it is like to be.

 

You can detect, in the discussion presented here, in which Salon quotes a "philosopher," a certain philosophical and scientific disdain or contempt for "regular people," and for their cognitive capacities. But, of course, the magazine does make clear that the philosophers and the scientists don't really have any "scientific" explanation of consciousness that stands up to a normal scientific analysis. 

 

Reading the article is worth the time, in my opinion, but if you choose to do that, you should understand how the story ends. The question is not settled. Salon's last lines confess that neither science nor philosophy has a solution to the puzzle:

"Scientifically speaking, we're in quite a bind with consciousness in particular and with the mind in general, just because of the nature of what it is," Skrbina told Salon. "It is not the kind of thing that is really, like I say, subject to scientific analysis."

 

Since I spent a lot of Sundays in the Episcopal Church, as I was growing up, I have always been able to rely on something that Paul the Apostle said, as I have tried to grapple with the difficult to understand problem of "consciousness." Paul's statement is found in Acts 17, and the phrase I have highlighted below, spoken by Paul to a gathering on Mars Hill, in Athens, was long ago made liturgical. It has always stuck with me: 

 

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead (emphasis added).

Paul's claim that we "live, and move, and have our being" in God, who created us, and who created all things, provides at least one solution to the problem of where our "consciousness" comes from. It comes from our Creator, and that "consciousness" pervades everything in the Creation. It is independent of the physical realities that present themselves to us as "the world." At least, that's the way I get it. "Panpsychism" is pretty much the way it really is, because everything that exists has its being in that same Creation of which we are a part.

 

This is a "religious" claim, I know - and thus difficult for many to accept. But my "Two Worlds Hypothesis" is really just a restatement of what Paul has said. We are most impressed by, and focused on, what we, ourselves, accomplish, but the human world that we create is only immediately our home. Ultimately, we live in the World of Nature, or the World that God Created, and if we forget this, we are certain to perish.

 

The words I heard in Sunday School continue, for me, to explain our human situation. We are in this life together, but we have not arrived here of our own choice. We are not alive, and conscious, because of anything we have done. Our lives are a mystery, but we do know one thing: the origin of our lives is not in ourselves, try as we will to claim that everything in our world has its origins in us. We would rather be our own creations. 

But we are not!

 

Image Credit:

https://www.salon.com/2021/07/23/panpsychism-the-idea-that-inanimate-objects-have-consciousness-gains-steam-in-science-communities/

#238 / One Thing We Know

 

 

The Wall Street Journal is really big on private enterprise - and that includes lots of approval for the space conquering efforts of BB&M (Branson, Bezos, and Musk). In a column in the July 24-25, 2021, edition, a Journal columnist compared those three billionaires to the Vikings. Favorably, let me assure you! 

What really got me going, though, was another column in the same edition of The Wall Street Journal by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. He writes a "Business World" column on a regular basis, and the column I am thinking of was titled, "Why Space Tourism? Because It Operates outside of NASA." 

 

If you detect echoes of Ronald Reagan's famous pronouncement, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem," I think you are getting to the essence of Jenkins' message: Government can't do anything right, and shouldn't even try. Thank God for the entrepreneurs!

These sentiments, though, weren't what drew my attention to Jenkins' column. A bias that is big on private enterprise, coupled with "down with the government" sentiments, is the daily bread of Journal readers. I, personally, subscribe to the paper on the Covid-19 vaccination principle: by giving myself a mild exposure to a deadly anti-government hysteria, I ward off a serious reaction to my own observations of government incompetence and wrong-headedness.  You can check yesterday's blog posting for an example of the kind of state and federal wrong-headedness that I am talking about. 

No, it wasn't the typical anti-government diatribe that got my attention in Jenkins' column. It was this statement: 

A mammalian species lasts only about two million years in the fossil record. One thing we know is that a species tied to one planet is guaranteed to fail eventually.

 

Think about that one for awhile! Let's assume that the archeologists have, indeed, found examples of mammalian species that have lived for two million years before becoming extinct. Our own brand, homo sapiens, has only been around for about 300,000 years, and if we hope to last for another 1,700,000 years we're going to have to make some changes pretty quickly. Changes, let me say, that focus on how we treat our existence on this planet. 

 

So what does space have to do with it? Where does Jenkins get that "one thing we know" statement, claiming that "a species tied to one planet is guaranteed to fail eventually." Does he know something about other species, not "tied to one planet," that have managed to survive for more than 2,000,000 years? Is he in touch with those UFOs that the government is now saying seem to be buzzing around our skies with fair frequency?

The "one thing we know" - the one thing that we ACTUALLY know - is that the only life of any kind that we have ever observed inhabits our own planet, Planet Earth, and that there isn't any other place to go. Not that we know of, at any rate! If Jenkins has information to the contrary, not available to everyone else in the world, now would be a good time to be forthcoming about it. 

And if he doesn't? Well, the "one thing we know" - that we ACTUALLY know - is that we need to learn how to live on Earth, together, and with all the other species who live here, and within the limits of this planet.

 

That's it, folks. One planet, our planet, is all we've got, and it's a pretty nice place to live, too.

 

Let's keep it that way!

Image Credits:

(1) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/07/what-if-jeff-bezoss-big-space-adventure-saves-us-all

(2) - https://www.popsci.com/best-images-earth-from-space/

 

 

#237 / The Crux Of The Problem

 

In These Times is telling us "We Don't Have Time for Climate Symbolism." Anyone who has been reading the newspapers, or who has been smelling the smoke, knows that's true. So, what's happening, folks? 

 

Here is how In These Times sees it:

 

The crux of the problem is Biden’s unwillingness to take on the fossil fuel industry. Instead of a robust plan to end drilling, his administration promotes industry-backed ​“solutions” like carbon capture. But at power plants, carbon capture has cost billions of dollars without removing a significant amount of emitted carbon. Filtering carbon directly out of the air is even more fanciful. The United States emits around 6.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. To remove even 1 billion tons through direct air capture would take nearly our entire annual energy output, one study shows.

This industry-friendly approach is mirrored by Biden’s team. Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, touts increased exports of liquified natural gas as a solution, while climate advisor Gina McCarthy (who ran interference for the fracking industry in the Obama administration as head of the Environmental Protection Agency) made it clear that ​“the administration is not fighting the oil and gas sector,” according to a White House summary of a meeting she held with oil and gas companies in March.

FDR, talking about the utility industry and his efforts to promote public power, famously implored voters to judge him by his enemies. In the case of climate change, Biden’s approach should be judged by the ones he refuses to make. 

 

California's governor, Gavin Newsom, now facing a recall because of his dining habits, rather than because of his allegiance to the fossil fuel industry, is pretty much on the same page with President Biden. 

Better than the alternative isn't good enough, if we want to keep our planet habitable.

That's the crux of the problem!

 

 

Image Credit:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/climate-symbolism-biden-fossil-fuels-fracking-democrats

 

#236 / The U.S. Lost Another War

 

As I am writing this posting, a few days before it will actually appear on my blog, the newspapers are still focusing on the fact that the United States has lost the war in Afghanistan. 

 

I have noted before that The Wall Street Journal has been particularly preoccupied with this fact (largely in an attempt, I believe, to diminish the political prospects of our current president and the Democratic Party). However, The Wall Street Journal is certainly not alone in wringing its journalistic hands at what has eventuated. Almost all of the newspapers I read are noting the obvious. Among other things, the newspapers are bemoaning our loss of the War in Afghanistan as a gigantic waste of money.

Let me ask you this: Is it a surprise that the United States has lost this war?

 

I think not. 

 

If this country doesn't want to "lose" wars, the best strategy will be not to get into any more wars. War as a mechanism to achieve any positive outcome is a losing strategy. Surely, we should have noticed this before now. Our military adventures, from Vietnam, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, have resulted in lots of death and destruction. Ultimately, they have achieved no positive result. Rather, the opposite.

According to The Washington Post, which is wringing its own journalistic hands, the United States government spent about $2.3 trillion dollars on the War in Afghanistan. 

I say, let's invest in a better strategy. If we want to "save the world" from its afflictions, specifically including "terrorism" (but there are lots of other problems, too), investments in military actions are counterproductive. If we were now to mobilize our money and our manpower in projects of "uplift," instead of in projects devoted to destruction, "what a wonderful world this would be."

Actually, Martin Luther King, Jr. somewhat understated the case, as he made the observation I have just quoted above. We are, unless we change our course, headed not only for "spiritual doom," but for REAL, all-encompassing physical doom, as well.

 

Let's start investing our trillions in stopping the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, and reinvesting in protection for the land, and the trees, and the people. That strategy would, indeed, make the planet where we live a "wonderful world," once again.

 

Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.beltandroad.news/us-exit-from-afghanistan-will-peace-return/

(2) - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/martin_luther_king_jr_138301 

(3) - https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2206/earth-from-space-15-amazing-things-in-15-years/

#235 / Trump The Truthteller

 

Please accept my invitation to read the entirety of an article by Roger Berkowitz, the Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. Berkowitz' article, dated October 15, 2020, is titled, "How Do We Rebuild a Shared American Reality on a Foundation of Lies?"

That's a good question, right? Yes, because that's exactly where we are:

 

Today, our infatuation with images and our flight from the real world is all around us. The President lied about the size of the crowds at his inauguration. He lied to the American people about the Corona Virus. He is now lying about the threat of voter fraud. Just this week he appeared at campaign rallies after having tested positive for COVID-19. The audacity of Trump’s lies is at times difficult to fathom. What needs to be understood, however, is that the President’s lies are not attempts to convince or persuade; his lies are designed to buttress his image. His lies about the inauguration are to protect his image as a powerful leader. But above all, his lies that attack experts, civil servants, the intelligence agencies, and our political institutions are aimed to burnish his image as a truthteller.

It is a twist of irony that the greatest liar ever to hold the office of the Presidency won in large part because people saw him as telling the one big truth—that the system is broken and corrupt. Donald Trump can appear as a truthteller because he rejects the expert-and-pundit-driven theories and speculations that have come to justify globalization, imperialism, systematic racism, rape culture, and media objectivity.

Globalization and free trade have been sold as an unqualified good by the cosmopolitan classes who jet around the world attending conferences and opening factories, while millions of people in the lower and middle classes see their incomes diminished with little benefit. United States intervention in foreign nations is defended by the foreign policy elite as necessary to uphold the liberal world order, but the people who fight those wars are almost exclusively those on the bottom of the economic and social ladder. Systematic racism and white privilege embrace a theory of collective guilt, ignoring differences of class, origin, and hardship, and forgetting that where all are guilty, none are guilty—all of which leads to a public relations strategy of admitting an abstract guilt divorced from consequences. The claim from the #MeToo movement to “believe women”—rooted, of course, in the longstanding silencing of women—makes the ideological demand that all women be believed, until, of course, someone like Tara Reade accuses Joe Biden of rape or popular feminist professors are accused of harassment, at which point the phrase “believe women” hits its limits. And the embrace of “resistance journalism” by much of the media elite has, finally, made clear the real bias of mainstream journalism that largely ignores and diminishes the worldview of those outside the centers of urban and elite culture. There is no greater example of this than the continued effort by some in the press to connect the dots showing President Trump’s collusion with Russia even after the Mueller Report found no evidence of such collusion (emphasis added). 

 

Our "common world" is ever more obviously being constructed on a foundation of lies. Being clear about that is certainly Step #1 in doing something about it. But what to do? 

 

Arendt's seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, makes clear that an acceptance of the kind of all-encompassing lying discussed above is an absolute precondition for totalitarian government. When "everyone" has come to believe that everything they hear or see is probably a lie - and we are getting close to that, today - totalitarian government, leading inevitably to massive death and destruction, is an inevitable consequence. 

Here is how Roger Berkowitz explains "how to rebuild." While this article is dated from last year, I only came upon it in late June of this year, and I was pleased to see that Arendt, and Berkowitz, are arguing for a strategy that I also applaud, "Talking With Strangers."

 

It is in speaking with one another that we come to share common reference points and in our talking amongst ourselves conjure the factual world into being. At that point the facts become part of our shared truths, “the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us.” The tendency to “transform fact into opinion, to blur the dividing line between them,” can lead to a situation where “simple factual statements are not accepted,” and even the most basic facts dissolve into the diversity of viewpoints. When this happens, there is no permanence and no durability to the world. A world without durability and permanence is an inhuman world and ceases to be a home and a haven mortal beings.

While Arendt wonders if there may be no remedy for cynicism, she also offers a faith that amidst the ruin of our human world, a new world can be reborn. She holds a fundamental belief in the power of talking. She writes: “We become more just and more pious by thinking and talking about justice and piety.” But why is this so?

First, in talking about the world with others, with those who disagree, we make the world visible in its complexity. Second, in talking about the world, we also make judgments and decisions about the world. Those decisions, Arendt admits, “may one day prove wholly inadequate.” But even absent agreements on the nature of a crisis and how to solve it, the act of speaking with one another about the crises of our times will, she argues, “eventually lay the groundwork for new agreements between ourselves as well as between the nations of the earth, which then might become customs, rules, [and] standards that again will be frozen into what is called morality.” In talking with one another we create the kinds of shared experiences and common points of connections that might, over time, become the building blocks of a new shared world that can give birth to new traditions and thus a new moral order.

This potential rebirth of a new common ethical world is not only possible, but likely. It depends, however, on the courage to speak honestly and openly with one another absent ideological rigidity (emphasis added).

 

So, there's our assignment! Highlighted in bold.

 

 

Image Credit:

https://duluthreader.com/articles/2020/10/30/116135-our-pinocchio-president

#234 / Domestic Terrorist #1

 

The March-April 2021, issue of Mother Jones called former president Donald Trump a "Mob Boss," and a "domestic terrorist." The article in which these charges were levied was written by Mark Follman and was titled, "American Carnage." 

The description of Trump as a terrorist leader is neither metaphor nor hyperbole—it is the assessment of veteran national security experts. Trump, those experts say, adopted a method known as stochastic terrorism, a process of incitement where the instigator provokes extremist violence under the guise of plausible deniability. Although the exact location, timing, and source of the violence may not be predictable, its occurrence is all but inevitable. When pressed about the incitement, the instigator typically responds with equivocal denials and muted denunciations of violence, or claims to have been “joking,” as Trump and those speaking on his behalf routinely made.

Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, is one of the "national security experts" cited by Mother Jones. Here's her bottom line: Trump must not be allowed a second act. "This is how to think about it," Kayyem said: "No forgiveness."

 

No second act? I'm good with that!

 

 

Image Credit:

https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/10-unusual-twitter-marketing-tips-from-donald-j-trump.html

#233 / Upwork

 

I am not a friend of the "Gig Economy." Click that link for an earlier rant. If you can penetrate The New York Times' paywall, you can read a modern defense of the "Gig Economy," now called the "Freelance Economy." Hayden Brown, the Chief Executive of "Upwork," is pictured above. "Upwork" is informing the people who run corporate America that they should "build [their] business with top freelancers." Brown's defense of her business model, as it appeared in The Times, is titled, "Riding the Freelance Wave."

One big problem with building our economy on the "Freelance Wave," or basing it on a "Gig Economy," which is the same thing, is that the corporations that control the jobs take no responsibility for the long term needs and interests of the workers. Somebody has to take responsibility for those needs and interests, of course, since we are, in fact, "all in this together" in the end. In the "Freelance" or "Gig" economy, that backstop responsibility will ultimately devolve upon "the government," our mechanism to provide for our community or collective needs.

 

Any problem? Well, yes. For one thing, the government is often quite a bit behind the curve, when it comes to stepping up and providing for the needs of those who have been "washed out" by the corporate economy, and when it acts at all, it often musters an inadequate level of resources to meet the need. Here's a picture of the consequences, when the government doesn't promptly mobilize to deal with social and economic problems. The picture is from the City of Santa Cruz (taken quite recently), but you could find similar scenes almost anywhere you look in California and beyond:

 

Naturally, the corporations, encouraged by facilitators like Hayden Brown, and by commentators like Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, who has written a book extolling the "Gig Economy," don't want to highlight the unspoken public subsidy that is inherent in the "Freelance" or "Gig Economy" model. Since we all, nonetheless, as citizens, will have to deal with the consequences of turning workers into "freelancers," let me suggest two public policy options that could help deal with the problems inherent in the "Freelance/Gig" model:

First, we could enact laws that require or significantly encourage corporations to transform themselves into cooperatively-owned businesses. Corporations that did that would continue to enjoy all those corporate tax breaks and governmental encouragements that virtually all corporations now obtain. Those that didn't would have to pay dearly, giving our government the resources to provide the necessary backstop function. This would be an indirect way to make sure that corporations didn't just use and dispose of the workers who actually produce the wealth that the corporations are amalgamating for their top business executives and their stockholders. 

Second, the government could start taxing corporations more (a lot more, especially since lots of corporations don't pay any income taxes at all). If the government did that, it could then use those funds to provide a government-backed pension plan, health plan, education plan, and housing backstop for the workers who find themselves without means. We all, through our government, in other words, would make sure that the corporations would give us the financial ability to "have the back" of workers when adversity hits. 

 

The "Freelance/Gig Economy" is premised on the idea that we are a bunch of deracinated individuals, and that each individual needs to look out for him or herself, and that if they find themselves unable to do that, too bad for them. 

 

That isn't the reality of our life together. We really are "in this life together." If we don't find a way to make our community and collective life together work, then we are all going to go down, not just the "freelancers."

 

Image Credits:

(1) - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/business/hayden-brown-upwork-corner-office.html

(2) - Personal photo Gary A. Patton 

 

#232 / Past Imperfect

 

Ross Douthat, who writes a column for The New York Times, has been worrying about "The Excesses of Antiracist Education." It seems like a lot of people are doing that, these days, and the readings I have been doing do not convince me that this is an easy topic to address. 

 

Douthat's column on July 4, 2021, begins this way: 

In my last column I tried to describe part of the current controversy over race and K-12 education — the part that turns on whether it’s possible to tell a fuller historical story about slavery and segregation while also retaining a broadly patriotic understanding of America’s founding and development.

 

I do think that Douthat has hit on a real problem. While it would be nice to present our national history as a "broadly patriotic" story, any genuine respect for the truth makes that pretty difficult. Critical Race Theory (CRT) wants to insist that we confront a history that diverges widely from our upbeat, conventional narrative - the one that starts with The Declaration of Independence and then casts the entirety of our history as a progressively successful effort to live up to what that document proclaimed.

One thing that might help is to keep the "is fallacy" at the forefront of our thinking. The "is fallacy" takes as a given that whatever is true is inevitable. Thus, if we say that the United States is "racist," that means that the United States is now and always will be "racist." That's the essence of America. Existence and essence are the same. If something is true, it's true forever. 

 

Let's remember that it is an error to think that what exists now, or what has long existed, historically, is inevitably a statement of what will and must exist in the future. We tend to use a grammar that is based on this idea - fallacious though it is: "My sister is shy. Your father is fat." Whatever "is" statement we make, even assuming that the statement is accurate at the time we make it (and not all statements are, of course), a true statement about a current reality (or about a past reality) does not indicate that the future must be the same as the past. Things can change (and can be changed). And we can, too. 

As a nation, we definitely have an imperfect past - with our imperfections continuing right into the current moment. Statements about the enduring racism that has characterized so much of our history are accurate. We need to acknowledge and own those statements. We need to confront the truth.

 

Past and present, however, do not delimit our future. Who we "are" depends on what we "do" - and what we will do now is the most important thing of all. 

 

Speaking to that truth, in a lot of ways, is what I'd call "broadly patriotic."

 

 

Image Credit:

https://ccrcbc.com/anti-racist/

 

 

#231 / What A Telling Juxtaposition!

 

Anyone who reads this blog on any regular basis knows that I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal. I am not ashamed to admit it.

Let me hasten to advise readers, however (and particularly any readers who do not regularly follow my blog postings), that my decision to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal does not reflect a decision to subscribe to the views most commonly expressed in The Wall Street Journal. Anyone who does regularly follow my blog postings has probably already figured that out!

On Wednesday, August 18, 2021, The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages (almost always the last three pages in the first section of the paper) were almost exclusively devoted to an abundance of "ain't it awful" discussions, all focused on the same thing. The topic? The alleged "failure" by President Biden and his Administration to do the right thing as United States troops left Afghanistan. We should remember, of course, that withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan is something that several former presidents had promised to do, but had not accomplished. 

 

Here is a listing of the commentaries I am referencing:

 

Columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. weighed in with a column titled, "Biden's Eyes-Open Debacle."

William A. Galston, pointing out problems in Afghanistan, titled his column, "Biden Has Trouble at Home, Too."

Charity Wallace wrote that "The Nightmare Resumes for Afghan Women." 

Adam O'Neal bemoaned "The Translators Biden Left Behind." 

Dan Crenshaw opined that "almost everyone agrees that what's happening in Afghanistan is an unmitigated disaster."

Former Vice President Mike Pence weighed in with the claim that "Biden Broke Our Taliban Deal." 

There were five Letters to the Editor in the paper, appearing under a common headline, "Biden's Disastrous, Precipitous Withdrawal."

In its "Review & Outlook" column, where the paper's traditional editorial statements appear, one editorial was titled "Operation Afghanistan Rescue." That editorial statement alleged that "an unknown number of Americans, and thousands of Afghans targeted by the Taliban," are now "stranded."

The next editorial in line, "China's Afghanistan Taunt," indicated that the troop withdrawal was a real gift to China and Russia, "our true strategic competitors."

Finally.... after almost three full pages of articles and editorials and letters decrying the Biden Administration's success in actually doing what no former Administration had been willing to do, the last editorial statement in The Journal's "Review & Outlook" column turned its attention to a topic different from the statements about Afghanistan found everywhere else on its editorial pages. Or was it a different topic, after all? 

 

In The Journal's August 18, 2021, editorial titled, "The Democratic Food-Stamp Boom," which editorial was accompanied online by the picture found at the top of this blog posting, The Wall Street Journal decided to link the Biden Administration's increase in food stamp support for poor people to the "Afghanistan retreat."

And here is how The Wall Street Journal did that:

What a telling juxtaposition. Amid the throes of its Afghanistan retreat, the Biden Administration on Monday announced a giant food-stamp expansion. Democrats are shrinking the U.S. military footprint around the world so they can expand the welfare state at home.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is increasing benefits by an average of 27% over pre-pandemic levels under the guise of updating its Thrifty Food Plan. This is the basket of foods that the government uses to determine benefit size, which averaged $130 per person monthly before the pandemic. Benefits are adjusted annually for food inflation.

Progressives complain that the basket hasn’t changed since 2006 despite the government’s changing nutritional standards, which recommend people eat more lean protein, fruits and vegetables and whole grains—all of which tend to be more expensive. Ergo, USDA is now sweetening the average benefit by a whopping 27% over pre-pandemic levels (emphasis added).

 

Let me emphasize what The Wall Street Journal has said in its editorial on food stamps. Naturally, given that the paper is devoted to the interests of the wealthy, and even the super-wealthy, it's not unusual to find that the paper doesn't have any sympathy for poor people who can't afford food for their children. 

But.... let's look at the trade-offs that The Journal spotlights in its opposition to increases in food stamp support for the poor. 

WHAT A TELLING JUXTAPOSITION!

It appears to The Journal that the Biden Administration is "shrinking the U.S. military footprint around the world" in order to spend that money in a way that benefits people in the United States. 

WHAT A TELLING JUXTAPOSITION!

 

Isn't that exactly what ordinary people in the United States might hope would be the priority of their government? 

I would like to think that the answer is, "yes." It makes me happy. I'll tell you that!

 

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democratic-food-stamp-boom-joe-biden-usda-welfare-state-11629225286