It is amazing, and disturbing I suppose, what random crap catches my attention on any typical day.

For example, there was an article about an 86 year old man who returned a copy of George Orwell’s classic book on totolitarianism titled 1984 some 65 years after borrowing it from a library. His reasoning was that people REALLY, REALLY needed to read this cautionary tale now more than ever.

Then I noticed Harvard admits some 1,600 undergrads a year, about 11% of them international students. In fact, the top 20 U.S. universities as a whole admit about 30,000 American students each year. For those wanting to attend these elite schools, the odds are not in their favor. There are about 2 million students graduating annually from about 40, 000 high schools. If these top schools ONLY selected valedictorians, there would still be 10,000 of these top scholars left out each year. And that doesn’t account for the athletes, legacies, and rich kids whose parents build a new wing on a school building who get in with lesser credentials. The truth is, even the best of the best will get left out in the race to attend the top schools.

Speaking of education, I next noticed that the Republicans in my Badger State are still bent on ruining things out of sheer spite. Recently, they refused to permit the erection of a new Engineering Building on the University of Wisconsin campus. Most states are beefing up their STEM curricula for economic development purposes. Not here! That wasn’t enough mischief for them (I really think they stay up nights dreaming up stupid stuff to do). They next proposed cutting another a $32 million from the Madison’s campus budget (an elite research university typically ranked in the top 50 such schools IN THE WORLD). Why this last minute cut? Because the school’s administration still wants to improve various diversity and inclusion efforts to attract and keep underserved populations. The nerve of these socialists. But that is hardly the deeper reason. Despite the university being an amazing economic engine for the state, the highly educated, professional, and thinking population it attracts tend to vote Democratic (Note: Dane County, where the campus and state capitol is located, voted 82 percent for the liberal Supreme Court candidate in the Spring election, tipping the top Court to the liberals. Another note: my late wife retired early from her position as Deputy Director of the State Court system when she saw it becoming highly politicized and partisan, thereby making a mockery of justice.) To Republican polliticians, the outrage of turning the deeply divided state a bit bluer had to be punished despite the fact that just one university spin-off (Epic Medical Systems) has generated some 15,000 high paying technical jobs in the Madison area. The problem is that these professionals, and the thousands of others being hired by high tech and medical spin-offs in the area, which is booming) are too smart to vote Republican. Better to have poor and stupid voters in a floundering state than have a vibrant economy with too many educated folk. (But I vent here, sorry).

Then there is the inspirational story I ran across. A 14 year old Russian boy dropped out of school, something his school mates noticed and inquired about. When they found out he had been rendered blind by a botched medical procedure, they offered to help him in any way they could, including escorting him to class and back and reading to him what the teachers wrote on the board. The boy’s mother was brought to tears by their generosity. And they kept theor promise. Lev Semenovich Pontryagin graduated with honors and went on to become one of the greatest mathemeticians of the 20 Century. And here I was, fully sighted, and I could barely pass high school algebra. (Note: I yet recall scrawling across the page of one algebra exam the words veni,vidi, flunki, loosely translated as I came, I saw, I flunked in Latin. The teacher responded by writing … almost!)

As you know, I’ve always noodled how we arrive at our moral and normative centers (see my last Blog). I ran across a story I’ve seen before yet which remains instructive. Martin Adolph Bormann was the son of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s close associate and personal secretary. The son was fully indoctrinated and a rabid member of the Hitler Youth group as a young teen when the Reich fell. Many of his closest friends committed suicide when their hero, Adolph took his life. They could not conceive of living in a different world. Martin, the son, considered this but, at the last moment, chose life. More than that, he began to ween himself from the brainwashing that dominated his youth. He became a Catholic Priest, devoting his life to fighting any return to Facism. It seemed as if no amount of indoctrination could steer him away from what he was meant to be … a decent human being.

As the 2024 election nears, we will hear the usual political drumbeat about America being ruined by high taxes, over spending, and a bloated Washington bureaucracy. Why bother with facts when rhetoric is so much more satisfying. So, I noticed a note on the top marginal tax rates over time. The top rate was 81% at the start of WWII, mostly to fight the Depression. It rose to 91% at the end of the Eisenhower administration (1960) as we still were spending down our huge war debt. Kennedy and Johnson knocked it down to 72% by 1970. When the Reagan revolution came to center stage, the top rate was dropped to 28% by 1990. Today, it stands at 35%. So, remember that America emerged as the world’s leading economy during the period when the rich were taxed at a top rate almost 3 times what it is today. The sky will not fall of we tax the filthy rich a bit more. That is just whining from the filthy rich who remain greedy beyond all measure. And, by the way, federal revenues generally average about 20% of GDP in the States, quite low when compared to other rich countries. And the size of the federal bureacracy, if anything, has declined as a proportion of the population over time. If government has exanded in size, it has been at the local level where people want, and support, MORE services. However, get ready for some frantic ‘the sky is falling’ screaming.

Speaking of whining, the MAGA devotees are all up in knots about their cult hero being indicted on 37 charges under the Espionage Act of 1917, a piece of national security legislation enacted as the U.S. became an international power player as it entered WWI. This is serious stuff. Under this Act, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to Russia at the start of the Cold War. Aldrich Ames, a CIA operative just died in Prison. He was convicted in 1994 of spying for the Soviets for $1.4 million. The Trump administration had no problem going after people under this act as well. In 2019, Harold Thomas Martin was sentenced to 9 years in the slammer for espionage. What in the world excuses Trump for illegally keeping highly classified documents without adequate (or any) safeguards, and then lying about it. Ever having an eye out for transactional opportunities, many believe the only plausible rationale for his behavior was that he would try to sell this stuff to the highest bidder. Even conservative jurists admit prosecutors have an excellent case. This will be a test of whether we can remain a ‘nation of laws, not men.’ If we don’t, you can kiss the American experiment goodby.

On a more upbeat moment, I ran across bios of young women who acted with uncommon bravery in WWII. Hanna Szenes was a Jew recruited by the British Special Operations group and dropped into Hungary to help Jews escape deportation to Auschwitz. Eventually, she was captured, tortured, and executed at 23 of age. She didn’t have to do what she did. Irena Sendler was a nurse, a devote Catholic, and the daughter of a Polish doctor and Socialist who volunteered to work in the Warsaw ghetto. She risked her life on a daily basis as she snuck out as many babies and children as she could right under the noses of the nazis. She did so while entering and leaving the ghetto as she performed her duties. As with so many others, she eventually was caught and tortured mercilessly by the Gestapo. Many of her bones being broken as a result but she never told her captors anything. Several times, she came within a whisker of being executed, only escaping death when her friends bribed a Nazi official. She lived to be 98 years old. I am always humbled by such selflessness and courage.

These are just a few of such stories that pass by my consciousness in a single day. The world really is such a fascinating, if frustrating, place.