Baba Giufa
TODAY FROM AMERICA:
POOKIE’S ADVENTURES ON THE ROAD TO PERHAPS THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL ELECTION OF OUR TIME.
I drove into the Golden Hills today and picked up HRM and two of his besties at the skatepark. While driving them home, I received a call from the good/bad David in South Dakota. Haden and David being old friends, had a long conversation. David told me the farmers in South Dakota had a bad year this year because the soil was waterlogged from excessive rain last winter.
Back in the Enchanted Forest, we watched a horror movie of sorts starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr in which Niven plays a nobleman somewhere in France in the 1950s and Kerr is his wife. They are involved in a ritual requiring Niven, the heir to an ancient castle, to die in order to save the local grape crop. The castle is suitably creepy and the black and white photography properly dramatic. Unfortunately, the plot was ridiculous. Niven dies, the wife and children drive off promising never to return while the evil townspeople stand silently in the rain watching them go. I do not know if it helped the grape harvest. I hope it did otherwise it’s a lot tsuris going to waste.
I hate horror movies. They frightened me as a child and gave me nightmares. Apparently, TCM has been having a horror movie festival in honor of Halloween. I do not know why I am watching horror movies now. One would think 2020 has contained enough horror for anyone. Anyway, we also watched The Wicker Man and then went to bed. I did not have any nightmares that I remember.
Three days before the election:
Biden and Obama campaigned in Michigan. In the morning, we watched The Picture of Dorian Gray on the television. By the end, we had had enough of Dorian Gray, the horror movie festival, or sitting for hours in the dark so, we fled the house. We had lunch outdoors under the plane trees at Piatti’s, a pleasant little place near the Enchanted Forest, where we ate rigatoni bolognese (me) and fettuccine carbonara (Naida) and talked mostly about noses, their variety and people we had known with interesting schnozes. After lunch, I felt much better about life and somewhat more optimistic about the future. We returned home and I decided to celebrate my new-found attitude by taking a nap.
Of course, I also read a lot and write a bit to go along with the television watching, internet surfing and napping. It is something to do while waiting. When someone passes the age of 80 it is all mostly waiting — waiting for the election, waiting for the next illness, waiting for the sun to rise or set. It is humorous really, this waiting. It is not like being in a room waiting to be called into your job interview. It is more like waiting in that room and not knowing what if anything is behind that door. You walk about, sit, or stand. Perhaps you pick up a magazine, riff through the pages and start reading something. It’s not that you want to read whatever it is that you spend those few moments reading, it’s just something you do while waiting.
Then, of course, there is always something, something unexpected, humorous or odd that occurs while you are waiting. It is often ephemeral or fleeting so you have to be vigilant or you may miss it. For example, while typing this, Naida handed me two tiny ice-cream cone tips filled with chocolate that, for a few days, she had been saving for me. It seems the vanilla ice-cream cones we buy at the supermarket for some reason have chocolate stuffed in the bottom of the cone. Naida does not like chocolate, but I do, so she saves the tips for me. That, during this time of waiting, is certainly something worth waiting for.
Two days before election day:
This morning I was woken up by something bumping into my back. At first thought it was Naida in the midst of a bad dream. But, when I reached over to comfort her, I was greeted with a tongue licking my face. It was Boo-boo the Barking Dog thanking me for sharing the bed with him. This, I thought, was an auspicious morning.
Alas, the day turned out to be anything but auspicious. The morning was spent watching Billy Rose’s Jumbo with Doris Day, Jimmy Durante and Martha Rae. It could very well have been considered a continuation of TCM’s horror movie festival. I liked the elephant though. Everybody likes elephants.
We did have a delicious lunch of petrale sole. In the evening, we went to an Indian restaurant in downtown Sacramento. I guess the best that can be said of today is that it was forgettable. Tuesday, I imagine, will not be forgettable — depressing perhaps — but not forgettable.
Back home we watched a silent movie made in 1922. In included scenes of a man’s wife being gang-raped by a German U-boat crew. The husband, the captain of an American warship, sinks the U-boat. He saves the U-boat captain, takes him to his cabin, gets him drunk and persuades him to tell what happened to his wife after which he ties him up and skins him alive. This movie was obviously made pre-code.
The day before election day:
The way I see it, if Biden wins all the states where he is polling five or more points ahead, and if he wins Arizona and North Carolina, he wins the election even if he loses Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas.
I see from the news, the Trump Thugs have already taken to the highways in what appears to be an attempt to discourage minority voters from voting and, at least according to one observer, training for a post election putsch should Trump lose. Meanwhile, the White House is beginning to look even more like a fortress under siege with the emergency construction of an “unclimbable” fence surrounding it.
Anyway, I got up early this morning, before Naida or the dog. Had my usual breakfast checked with the news then decided I would prefer to skip the entire day. So, I returned to bed. At about 3 PM, Naida woke me up and said, “It is a beautiful autumn day. Let’s go for a walk.” So, I did and we did. It was a wonderful walk along the river.
Election day:
Naida left early in the morning to play tennis with her two daughters. The dog and I lazed away in bed for an hour or so. He napping, and I tapping away on my smartphone searching for early election news. I then drove into the Golden Hills for lunch with HRM. Upon my return, I glued myself to the TV to watch the returns. By 7:30 I was deeply distressed. It seemed obvious the Democrats will not take back the Senate, and Biden’s many roads to election had been reduced to one.
8:30, it looks even worse. The one road is crumbling and the night getting darker.
At 9:30 things looked no better, so I went to bed and cried for our country. Could not sleep. Continued reading Joe Abercrombie’s latest book. At about midnight, Naida brought up hot chocolate drinks and cheese danish. I took two full doses of THC(tetrahydrocannabinol). We continued reading until about 3AM when the dope and the hour tricked me into sleeping.
The day after:
I woke up at about noon. I remained devastated and listless. Ate breakfast of coffee and various pastries. Resumed reading. Naida informed me that Biden appeared to have rebounded and if he secures Arizona and Nevada he will have obtained the 270 electoral votes required for election. But, at this time, it looks like he will only have acquired at most the bare minimum 270 electoral votes. Then comes the interregnum beginning with the announcement of the vote this week and continuing, through the meeting of the electors in December and on to January 20. This period, undoubtedly will also feature an attempt at a presidential putsch — he most likely will attempt to use the Supreme Court and the Republican legislatures in Michigan and Wisconsin to overturn the vote or the choice of electors.
By the time we retired to bed, there was still no call for Nevada or Arizona.
Day two post election:
I spent most of the day in bed, getting up now and then to eat or read. Not much has changed in the election results except Biden seems to be catching up to Trump in the late returns from Georgia and Pennsylvania and maintaining it in Arizona and Nevada.
I finished reading Joe Abercrombie’s latest novel “The Trouble with Peace” which continues the “First Law” series that began about seven novels ago. He is classed as a “Young Adults” fantasy novelist, a class of literature I have always been happy to wallow in.
Finishing with Abercrombie, I have turned to the third in the Auntie Poldi series by Mario Giordano, also a favorite of mine. Auntie Poldi is the oversexed, hard drinking, wig topped, caftan wearing 60 year old daughter of a German policeman who settles in Sicily in a tiny village on the slopes of Mount Etna that was the ancestral home of her deceased husband. She settled there “in order to drink herself to death with a view of the ocean.” She, along with her in laws, a few towns people, her nephew and Watson, and the handsome Sicilian detective she beds, sets about solving crimes. She lives her life with few limits, or as she says:
“Moderation is a sign of weakness. If you’ve got something to say, raise your voice!”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An A untie Poldi Adventure) (p. 46). HMH Books.
Or as Giordano explains:
“She wanted to … avoid doing anything stupid and be a good girl. The only trouble was, my Auntie Poldi simply wasn’t made that way. There were few stupidities she hadn’t committed in her life. She’d always had her secrets, and she’d never, as one can imagine, wanted to be a good girl.”
Giordano, Mario. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio (An Auntie Poldi Adventure) (p. 60). HMH Books.
Post election day three:
Well, it appears that Biden will win the election. I have mixed emotions about the results. Yes, the most important result is Biden’s victory but, the failure of the Democrats to take the Senate probably means any structural changes (e.g.,filibuster, taxes, corporate reform) will either not succeed or be significantly watered down. Most troubling, are the losses in the House that will probably allow the ever fractious House Democrats (especially from the “Blue Dogs”) to jeopardize reform with internecine conflicts (it has already begun) .
Now, we enter the interregnum during which lawsuits challenging the election will be brought and disposed of; the the electors will vote for the new president, or not; the pardons, the new Congress will be seated in early January, the Georgia Senate elections deciding control of the Senate will be held and finally perhaps we will see the inauguration of a new president. Have fun…
PETRILLO’S COMMENTARY:
The beat poet Gregory Corso, one of my favorites, way back 60 years or so now, wrote the following:
O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets!
The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists
caught under canopies and in doorways,
and it rains, it will not let up,
and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s
prophecy, will the world be over before the races blend color?
All color must be one or let the world be done—
About the same time Corso was writing this, I was president of the Catholic Interracial Council. The Council, back then was one of the largest civil rights groups in the nation along with the NAACP. The Urban League had just been formed. The freedom riders, Selma, SNICC, and the Civil Rights Act were all in the future.
I convened one of the largest gatherings of civil rights leaders at the time for a conference of several days duration to discuss what we needed to do next to in order to reverse this shameful blot on our nation. As the convener and chairman, I was the introductory speaker at the conference. While preparing my notes for that speech and reviewing the prepared talks by other speakers at the conference, I was offended by the lengths they went to to assure everyone that interracial love and marriage were off the table. So, at the end of my talk to the 2500 attendees at the general session, I concluded with the message that we cannot hope to close the racial divide that so sickens our nation if we insist that love and marriage continue to remain segregated.
We are now faced with an election that some have called perhaps the most consequential election of our times. And, if you do not believe that racism is the primary underlying factor in the election and the most important, then you are missing the point. Yes, climate change is an existential threat to humanity’s future, but it is racism and their support of racist political leaders that is being used by the natural resources industry to maintain control of the political process in order to protect their interest and especially to maintain the value of their hydrocarbon reserves.
As Peter Grenell in the introduction to his study wrote:
“Racism and economic inequality have been embedded in our, and are intimately linked society from America’s beginnings and are intimately linked. America’s political, economic and social structures have been profoundly influenced by an insatiable urge to obtain wealth, from early settlers to the present. Together with an ultra-individualism and a predilection for beliefs not based on facts that Kurt Anderson has called ‘Fantasyland,’ and enhanced most recently under the regime pathologically narcissistic, authoritarian, psychopathic and racist president, racism and inequality are directly responsible for today’s perilous conditions.”
(https://www.amazon.com/GREAT-EXPERIMENT-FREEDOM-RACISM-AMERICA-ebook/dp/B08FRSBTDB). See also, (https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2020/10/27/peter-on-top-the-great-experiment-freedom-greed-and-racism-in-america/)
While it should be clear that racism has been encouraged, managed and funded by a small group of wealthy men, an equally small group of ideologues and owners of a few media companies, it has been directed primarily towards that large politically potent group of white males without a college education. Although the voting power of this group was effectively manipulated in the 2016 presidential election, the political power of this cohort of the electorate has been decreasing steadily for the past decade or two. About two years ago I wrote:
“Poorly educated white males are the first large socioeconomic group in America less educated and expected to do less well economically than their parents. I even have heard of recent studies that indicate that they will not live as long as their parents as well. Whether this last fact is a sad truth or this group is serving as the canary in the cage for society as a whole, I cannot guess.”
“I feel sad for these men; deluded by their history of ascendency over women of their class and other minorities, lied to by their political and religious leaders and misused by their employers, they have been misled to believe their ever so slight social standing was theirs by right and not earned by effort.”
“In 2016 Presidential election they marched to the polls and elected someone who promised them he would tear down every government program that they believed encouraged those who threatened their tenuous social standing. In return, they, perhaps unknowingly, agreed to cede control of the nation and the economy to those who would abandon them at the slightest evidence it would be to their advantage. In return for these meager benefits and support for the psychological comfort of meaningless symbols and rituals such and flags and songs that they cling to as evidence of some misbegotten reality, they were willing to give up much of their freedom. True, they now would be free from the competition of those they believed their inferiors who were being given unfair advantages. In return, they seem to accept enslavement by those they were sure were their betters.”
(https://trenzpruca.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/poorly-educated-white-men-the-death-of-an-american-original/)
MOPEY JOE’S MEMORIES:
– A murder most foul. (2013)“For the past week or so, the discovery of sensational murder and the political speculation surrounding it has gripped the media here in Thailand.”
“A billionaire (Thai baht) Thai businessman was reported to have disappeared. The man had been convicted of and served time for fraud and for promoting ponzi-like schemes. He also was a vocal critic of another convicted felon, the ex-Prime Minister of Thailand who I have referred to in the past as Thaksin the Terrible. Thaksin the Terrible moreover is a fugitive, living in exile and also the brother of the current Prime Minister, Princess LuckyGirl.”
“Within a day of the billionaire scumbag’s reported disappearance, his driver was arrested. The driver immediately confessed that he murdered the tycoon in order to steal $150,000 that the victim had just withdrawn from his account. In Thai fashion, a massive media event was held starring the confessed killer surrounded by what looked like a thousand cops. The suspect led the hoards of police and trailing reporters and cameramen to the spot where the body was buried. There along with several other men he implicated, he re-enacted the gruesome crime for all the world to see.”
“As could be expected, the political party out of power led by the military coup installed previous prime minister Abhisit the Unready (and some think the Incapable), members of his party, and the attorney for the deceased scumbag all have suggested that somehow, Thaksin the Terrible, was behind the murder.
“Now normally allegations of conspiracy like this I find as believable as Rambo movies. However, there may be more here than meets the eye or perhaps even less. The confessed murderer, obviously someone so dumb as to believe that as the last person to have seen the deceased before he went missing the police somehow would not immediately suspect him, nevertheless had the presence of mind to remove and destroy all the disks in the security cameras. In addition, he carefully arranged for co-conspirators to wait in the car to help him carry the body out of the house and bury it many miles away. Also, how the driver, a slender young man was able to single-handedly subdue and strangle a seemingly fit sixty year old has not been clearly explained. The re-enactment in front of the press was notably unconvincing. Finally, the deceased withdrew the $150,000 from his account only a few hours before he disappeared. No one seems to know why.”
DAILY FACTOID:
October 5, 1789, The Women’s March on Versailles begins the French Revolution.
“The Women’s March on Versailles, …was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. The march began among women in the marketplaces of Paris who… were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries, who were seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France. The market women and their various allies grew into a mob of thousands. Encouraged by revolutionary agitators, they ransacked the city armory for weapons and marched to the Palace of Versailles. The crowd besieged the palace, and in a dramatic and violent confrontation, they successfully pressed their demands upon King Louis XVI. The next day, the crowd compelled the king, his family, and most of the French Assembly to return with them to Paris.”
“These events ended the king’s independence and signified the change of power and reforms about to overtake France. The march symbolized a new balance of power that displaced the ancient privileged orders of the French nobility and favored the nation’s common people, collectively termed the Third Estate. Bringing together people representing sources of the Revolution in their largest numbers yet, the march on Versailles proved to be a defining moment of that Revolution.” (Wikipedia)
If we are to survive as a species, women must lead us into the future.
PEPE’S POTPOURRI:
A. Terry on Top: Before the Election.
This post by Terry was written about five days before election. I included it here at that time (10/29) and now await the results of the election to see if his confidence was justified.
“Well, it’s time to look past Election Day. I have no doubt that Biden will win. The only question is, will it be 270 electoral votes or 345 +electoral votes.The reason: the rust belt of Michigan , Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, (the so called Blue Wall that Trump broke in 2016). Biden’s leads in all but Pennsylvania are over 5 points. Even with the margin of error, that lead in two of the three states is pretty much a lock. Even if Biden loses Pennsylvania, (at this point highly unlikely) he still has many options to 270. And with his national lead at 7%-8% , those many options will, in all probability, break his way, at least enough to get to 270. With no toss ups, Real Clear Politics, predicts Biden will win 345 electoral votes.”
It may take several weeks to “count all the votes,” but the end result will be the same: Biden will be the President-Elect. And by a big enough margin to avoid a Court challenge or a tie in the electoral college. It’s possible, of course, that I am wrong, but then , anything is possible, including drawing a royal flush in poker (650,000 to 1), which many pundits refer to as the current odds of Trump winning.
Of course, you may say, what about the Supreme Court halting the vote count in the states after Election Day . While possible, because anything is possible, that is also highly unlikely. Legal analysts note that in the 5 election cases brought to SCOTUS this election cycle, 3 have gone the Democrats way and 2 the Republicans way. The uniting theory of these cases is that the courts , including state courts , should not reverse legislative statues because of Covid, nor for any other reason.
There are no cases or opinions to indicate that SCOTUS would stop the counting of votes after Election Day, so long as those counts are currently authorized by state statute. So rest easy .SCOTUS is not on a suicide mission to destroy its credibility as an independent branch of government.
The Roberts Court, with even the addition of Justice Barrett, will not ignite a firestorm by stopping the counting of votes after Election Day. Here is why: Roberts has the clout within the Court to stop that constitutional stupidity (SCOTUS has no plausible constitutional power to do such a thing, despite Bush v Gore). Robert’s knows that and has no intention to bring on constitutional warfare between Congress and the Court, which, history shows, the Court would lose. Biden is not Gore and he would not put up with it and neither would Pelosi nor Schumer. It’s 2020 not 2000. Congress would ignore the Court and swear in Biden, as the winner certified by the Governors of States, and accepted as such by the vast majority of the country.
And that’s where the article below comes in. Biden is not the polarizing figure Hillary was. He is already moving to unite the country, dismissing the cultural wars, and focusing on solving the pandemic and the economic disruption that has followed it. As David Brooks says below, never in our lifetime has a Presidential Candidate avoided wedge issues like Biden. And it’s working. He is pulling back traditional labor Democrats, alienated by Democratic elite snobbery and arrogance that they believe has led to uncontrolled economic globalization and the destruction of much of the American manufacturing base, among other things. And to be honest, they are right. And Biden and Elizabeth Warren propose to fix that.
But that’s another story. Suffice to say, five days from the election, Mr Biden has done well, far better that most realize , to begin the healing and the uniting of the county that has been culturally divided since 1968; the Nixon Presidency, and the so-called “silent majority”. Thank you Mr. Biden, Mr. President Elect.
Five Great Things Biden Has Already Done
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/opinion/joe-biden.html?referringSource=articleShare)
Two days before the election he posted the following:
“This is a very good summary and analysis of all of the final polls before Election Day. In addition 538 , the gamblers election tracker, predicts a Biden win as a 90% probability.”
“The weakspot for Biden: Pennsylvania. He’s up by 4% on average , much higher in some polls, not so much in others. If he losses Penn, he must take either NC or AZ; in both of which he leads by 4% or so. FL is effectively a toss up.”
“But the point is: If he loses Penn, it’s not 90% , it’s 50-50. So that’s why Biden is spending the next two days in Penn. I’m confident about Penn. But Biden is not. He’s probably right.”
“Analysis | Where the race stands, 2 days before Election Day
“A fusillade of new polls just came out. Here’s what we learned.”
Read in The Washington Post: (https://apple.news/AtzfzQdg-Sm2y5hG2mTVSRg)
And on the morning of Election day, ever the optimist he posted:
“HAPPY ELECTION DAY! And I’m revising everything. ““Something has happened in the last few days. The turnout in Democratic strongholds in GA TX and NC is off the charts. The polls can’t reflect historic turnouts by one party . So they will be off by several percentage points . That means the red wall across the South will likely fail, for the first time since 1968 and Richard Nixon.”
“NC, GA and TX will likely vote for Biden. The national race is not even going to be close. And that’s important , because we need to not just beat Trump, but crush the Republican stranglehold on the South. It now looks quite probable that that will happen. Solely because of an historic turnout, north of 150M.maybe 180M. 2016 was about 135M.”
“And of course there is the Senate. The highly probable pickup of 4 seats, AZ, COL, ME and NC will be offset by losing AL. That’s a net of 3 to get to 50 senate seats. And that’s enough for minimum control of the Senate. But now it appears that a proverbial and historic landslide could happen. If it does Democrats would also pick up one seat in GA(1) and MT, TX, IO, and SC. And a third tier could also fall: KS, Alaska, and GA(2). That’s a net gain of 11 or 58 Senate seats.”
“Now that’s far from certain; however, never since 1964 has such a possibility even been considered.”
“So buckle up political junkies. Something different and historic is happening! I’m sure of it. The polls don’t predict accurately when turnout is this high. So all the states on the bubble with large turnouts could flip Democratic. That’s a landslide in the making.”
I always admired Terry’s unabashed optimism. Alas, optimism, unfortunately, does not win elections, wars, or football games.
B. Trenz Pruca’s Observations:
What is our job in life but to kill and eat as much as we can and leave progeny who then kill, eat, and metastasize in their turn? Everything else that does not contribute to those goals, as much as we deny it, is vanity, just there to pass the time in between the killing, eating and fornication.
C. Today’s Poem:
I am.
I am
more than you think me to be.
I am
more than you see before you.I am
my past and my future,
my dreams and nightmares,
my hopes and my fears,
my loves and my hates,
my thoughts and my doubts.
I am
the air I breath,
the water I drink,
the food I eat,
my piss,
my shit,
my tears.
I am
the sun caressing my skin,
the breeze, the grit,
the hot, the cold.
I am
the books I read,
the music I hear,
the songs I sing,
the whispers and the shouts,
the noise and the silence.
But, I am more,
much more.
I am my organs, my cells,
molecules, and protons,
electrons, bosons, and quarks
within me.
I am here there, everywhere,
and nowhere.
I am a mote in time,
a speck in the biosphere.
I am energy
I am information.
I am a concept
I am a universe
unto myself.
I am.
By Trenz Pruca.
D. Tuckahoe Joe’s Blog of the Week:
About a year ago, Brad DeLong in his blog Grasping Reality with Two Hands, one of my favorite blogs, posted the opening paragraphs of what I assumed he intended to become a book entitled Slouching Towards Utopia?: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century, 1870-2016. It begins with and overview of that century ending in 2016 and provides a glimpse of the significance of that last year for humanity future. No matter the results of the coming election this world of ours will no longer be the same. While Trump is not the sole cause for this substantial change, he is its poster boy.
DeLongs description of the political and social instability brought to America, England and the world as a result of the political events around 2016 is worth the read.
“The Long 20th Century began around 1870 and ended in 2016.”Before 1870 humanity was poor, and life was typically nasty, brutish, and short. Before 1870, over and over again, technology lost its race with human fecundity, and greater numbers coupled with resource scarcity to produce a humanity where most people most of the time could not be confident that they and their families would have their 2000 calories, plus essential nutrients, plus a roof over their head in a year. Before 1870 those on the make overwhelmingly focused on how to take from others or keep what they had while maintaining order, rather on how to make more for everyone. It is true that between 1800 and 1870 technology and organization gained a step or two in their race with fecundity. But only a step. Any post-1870 slackening of the pace of technological or organizational progress, or any major redivision of society’s dividends devoting less to the sinews of peace and more to the sinews of war, and “nasty, brutish, and short” would reassert itself.
But starting in 1870 all that changed. Science reached critical mass and gave birth to engineering. A liberal political order gave birth to a market economy. Engineering and the market produced an explosion of economic growth: these days one single year sees as much proportional technological and organizational advance and change in the human economy as a typical fifty years did back before 1800.
The consequences have been enormous: Today less than 9% of humanity lives at or below the roughly $2-a-day living standard we think of as “extreme poverty,” down from 70%—and even those 9% have access to public-health and mobile phone-communications technologies of vast worth and power. Today the rich economies of the world stand at levels of per-capita prosperity at least twenty (and possibly much more) times those of 1870 and at least twenty-five (and possibly much more) times those of 1800, with every expectation of further doublings in the centuries to come. Today the center-of-gravity of those economies unlucky and in the “Global South” is not at the $2-3 a day living standard of those economies in 1800 or 1870, but $15 a day (and more).
Tell any of those in previous centuries about the wealth, productivity, technology level, and sophisticated productive organizations of the world today, and they would say that with such power and wealth in our collective hands we must have built a utopia.
And yet the politics of 2016 and what that year brought—the stepping-back of the United States from its role of good-guy world leader and of Britain from its role as a key piece of Europe, the return to politics in North America and Europe of a movement that rejects democratic representative consensus normal politics in favor of allegiance to a leader whose principal qualification is a desire to strike at external enemies and at internal enemies who are not properly full members of the ethno-nationalist community, a movement that Madeleine Albright dares to call “fascist” (and who am I to tell her she is wrong?), the conspicuous failure over the previous decade of the stewards of the global economy to either maintain or to rapidly return to full employment—show us that we have no business being overly triumphant. Yes, over 1870-2016, technology and organization lapped fecundity. Yes, then the psychology of a newly richer humanity in which girls learned to read and acquired social power permanently scotched Malthusian forces from their role as the fetters of humanity. But material prosperity is grossly unevenly—criminally—distributed around the globe. And material wealth does not make people happy in a world where politicians and others prosper mightily from finding new ways to make and keep people unhappy.
To watch human history 1870-2016 is not to watch a smoothly galloping racehorse. Instead, it is to watch a rough beast, at best slouching towards Utopia—if we are traveling in the or even in a right direction.
(https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/08/grand-narrative-an-intake-from-slouching-towards-utopia-an-economic-history-of-the-twentieth-century-1870-2016.html#more)
TODAY’S QUOTE:
“It was a rare fine night for a stroll down by the docks, the moon plump as a new pillow in an old-fashioned hotel and the undertow in the turning tide swushing its ripples silvery-green and a bird you’ve never heard before chirring its homesick tale of a place you might once have known and most likely now will never see, mid-June and almost midnight and balmy yet, the kind of evening built for a long walk with a woman who likes to take long walks and not say very much, and that little in a murmur you have to strain to catch, her laughter low and throaty, her humour dry and favouring lewd, eyes like smoky mirrors of the vast night sky and in them twinkles that might be stars reflecting or the first sparks of intentions that you’d better fan with soft words and a gentle touch in just the right place or spend the rest of your life and maybe forever wondering what might have been, all for the want of a soft word and a touch gentle and true.”
This single 183 word long sentence opens the novel Slaughter’s Hound by Declan Burke. It has nothing at all to do with anything else that follows in the novel. It is much like the opening paragraphs of every chapter in his namesake James Lee Burke’s novels about the two male-bonded goodfellows of Iberia Parish in Louisiana that also have nothing to do with whatever follows in the chapter. But, they are all marvelous expressions of natural beauty and mood
TODAY’S PHOTOGRAPH:
This and that from re Thai r ment. 