Tom's Musings

I’ve been asked. “Tom, where do you come up with ideas for a daily blog given your busy schedule of strenuous sessions at the gym, the daily jogs, and the hours spent over the stove preparing exquisite baked goods?” (Damn, I’ll have to go to confession now.) My point is that ideas are all around me, no further away than a glance through my phone at the latest nonsensical antics from Republicans or my last conversation with just about anyone.

For example, just yesterday I had a session with my new ear doctor at the University of Wisconsin hospital. My previous doc, a specialist of some repute who had removed a glomus tumor from my left ear before the pandemic struck had retired. I had been told he was one of two physicians in the state who were comfortable doing what turned out to be a 5.5 hour procedure of delicate surgery. He will be missed. Then again, it seems like all my docs are retiring. For a moment, I considered whether I was the one driving them from this honored profession. But not even I am that self centered, well not most days except for the ones that end in the letter Y.

I recall my conversation with my eye doctor (another well-regarded specialist associated with the University Hospital) just before he retired to the golf course at Blackhawk Country Club. When I mentioned that I thought docs worked until they carried them out on a stretcher, he looked at me seriously and said “not any more.” I will miss him, we had traded insults for many years as he checked for glaucoma (I was a prime candidate given the shape of my retina etc.) which never came.

Back to me ear doc. He is young and at the beginning of his career. During my session with him, he was acompanied by a resident which is normal since this is a teaching hospital. Usually this is fine except for the time when I was half out of it during my cataract surgery and my former good friend, the eye doc, asked if I minded if the resident doc watching him do his thing took over the operation. This was halfway through the procedure. (I was fine until my real doc started saying things like “after a few more mistakes like the one you just made and you’ll by ready to go.”) Nice of him to ask my permission when I was in la-la land, but I figured I would still have one eye left so why not. Besides, as a university teacher myself, he knew what my answer would be.

But I digress as I’m want to do. Back to my hearing doc. Somehow, and I can no longer recall how, I got the conversation away from my left ear, which does not work anyways, and on to the state of medicine in America. Why were doctors rushing to exit a profession that had once been the vocational aspiration for so many? While I had my hypotheses, I wanted to hear what someone at the beginning of his career had to say.

He held nothing back. Those running medical facilities now were treating doctors and nurses like, in his words, ‘widgets.’ They were being pushed unmercifully in the name of the bottom line … corporate profits. Hospitals, even great ones like UW, were becoming profit centers. Things had gotten worse during the pandemic but he saw this as a permanent trend now. Not only that, but physicians were changing how they did their jobs. I was not totally clear what he said next but it sounded like his peers were selecting what they would do differently in an effort to ensure quantity over quality. Keep pushing patients through which might require ignoring more problematic issues and difficult cases and time-consuming diagnoses.

He mentioned that he had been ‘on-call’ that week and had to do procedures he was not trained in because they had been left untreated earlier by others. Apparently, he had strong feelings that accounted for the rush of medical staff to the exit doors. They were no longer respected professionals, merely cogs in a larger corporate machine (these are my words but his meaning). I was a bit shocked at his honesty. After all, he was meeting me for the first time.

Then he and the resident went on to chat about how good dentists have it. That confused me at first since my own dentist also retired last year at a relatively early age. But all became clear when the resident mentioned that his girlfriend is a dentist. Poor gal, she must be endure great hazing at the social gatherings where docs gather. When I brought up that I knew one doctor, my neighbor, who had been doing 12 hour shifts well into his 80s, my ear doc knew him by reputation. Every one does, he is an infectious disease doc of national repute who was front and center during the pandemic. The ear doc reflected my suspicions when he observed that my neighbor was from the ‘old school’ and that ‘they don’t make them like that anymore.’

In the interest of balance, I should note the conversation I had with my accountant as he was working on my taxes not long ago. I mentioned the general unhappiness among professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and even academics (as compared to when I had decided that working at a university was far better than getting a real job, an insight that hit me sometime during the Triassic period). I wondered whether accountants felt the same. He responded that he was quite happy, but that only happened after he left a large firm and struck out on his own. But I doubt that many doctors or academics will set up shop on a street corner and operate outside larger institutional settings. Perhaps Aristotle and Galen could get away with that but not likely to happen today.

You are probably asking where I am going with this story. Either that, or you stopped reading a couple of paragraphs ago. My point, and I do believe there is one, is that more and more people, even those functioning in once top professions, are unhappy.

My former medical internist would spend a great deal of time with me during routine check-ups. In additon to chats about the horrible state of my body, we would touch upon world events and share our digust at what Republicans were up to. I cannot even imagine how angry he would be today with our politics. He would automatically run a number of tests, do EKGs, take Xrays, and so forth. And he found several things early, like a case of TB that erupted about a decade after my return from India. He loved his job, as does my neighbor, and took pride in doing it well. My first internist did not retire until, in my opinion, they gently nudged him out the door as he approached 80 years of age.

My current internist is widely regarded as very good. When I selected him, it was because he ‘spent a lot of time with his patients.’ As the years passed, those long ago days of personal treatment and even a personal relationship, slowly disappeared. Now, it takes months to see a real doctor, if you are lucky, and each session seems like a pressure cooker where the focus is on how quickly they can get you out the door and on to the next one. If professionals now feel like widgets, totally plausible to me, today’s patients feel worse. And this is in Madison Wisconsin which has the best doctors (they want to live here) and a medical facility on every freaking corner. I oft joke that in the Boston area, where I grew up, there was a Dunkin Donuts Shop on every corner while here there is a medical facility, perhaps two, on every block. Each often focuses on a narrow part of the body … the “U.W. Digestive Clinic for the Lower Foot of Your Colon.” or the “Dean Clinic for the Treament of the Left Heart Ventrical.” This is specialization run amok. Heaven forbid anyone look at the whole patient.

I started this blog with a totally different topic in mind which demonstrates just how chaotic is my mind. Let me touch briefly on my original point which was the obsession with profits by both corporations and institutions that appear to be distorting American life. This is a huge topic so I’ll just introduce a little bit here.

In early 1925, Cavin Coolidge said to a group of newspaper reporters that “the business of America is business.” Government should keep its hands off things and let corporate leaders and financiers have their way. All went well for several more years until the ‘laissez-faire’ approach to our economy collapsed under its own contradictions. Then, a new model spawned by John Maynard Keynes introduced a new paradigm stressing public sector involvement to correct market failings, especially of the magnitude leading to a global depression. Things worked well for some five decades until a concerted Republican campaign was undertaken to bring us back to the 1920s. We are not quite there yet but close enough for me to worry (a lot).

Recently, the Fortune 500 companies generated $1.8 trillion in profits from $16.1 trillion in revenues. That is a fair chunk of chain. Explaining economic phenomena remains as much craft as sceince which is why economists argue so forcefully. But one contribution to these excessive profits is due to recent patterns in what is termed ‘mark-up growth.’ In short, this is the gap between the cost of production and what a firm charges for its products. Over time, prices and costs generally have risen or declined in tandem reflecting a rather fixed relationship between these two metrics. In the past few years (especially after the housing crash of 2008), prices have run ahead of costs after accounting for both raw materials and labor. This unusual trend has been going on for a decade now. The excess profits are going to investors, top managers, and the economic elite. Wages have inched up during the pandemic but not nearly as much as expected.

Only one graph today. This is a trend line of wages for worker bees, the guys and gals working on factory floors and in retail shops. It is normed for inflation and anchored in 1972 prices. Clearly, these people lost ground from the late 1970s through the mid 1990s before flatlining. They are not the one’s getting rich even as they started voting Republican in greater numbers, a fact they yet baffles the crap out of me. Neither have they gotten richer even as profits have soared recently.

What’s going on? Why are profits rising even as costs (including labor costs as reflected in the above chart) have been sluggish. After all, the market is supposed to be self correcting? While there may be temporary periods of excessive returns, competition is supposed to smooth things out over the longer run. Sure, and I have some land in Florida that is a steal at the price I’m offering you. Bottom line, the ‘mark-up growth’ continues unabated with no mechanism to correct things within market dynamics. Some call this ‘GREEDFLATION,’ or the very human tendency for avaricious folk to grab all they can as long as they can. A few suggest that, if continued unchecked, it could destabilize society in fundamental ways.

I can still remember Paul Ryan (Congressman from the area just south of Madison, former Speaker of the House, and VP candidate with Romney) saying that the U.S. health system was the best in the world because it operated largely on market principles. Parsing that statement would take more time than I have but the essential point is patently ridiculous. Ryan was widely touted as a Republican intellectual, which he may well have been. Then again, they do not set the bar high over there. I doubt he would have done well in my policy classes, relying on Ayn Rand as his economics guru as he does.

Health care is a market sector that is rife with informational issues and limitations in competitive dynamics. Consumers cannot shop for medical services as they might for a new suit. Unlike other countries where prices for most procedures are fixed by the government or through negotiations with large insurance systems that cover everyone, here pricing is totally opaque. Can you figure out your bill? I have a doctorate and I can’t. Moreover, how can a consumer determine who is providing the best bang for th buck, or any buck. When you have had a stroke and are being rushed by the EMTs to a medical facility, you are not likey to say … “hey, let’s stop at a few places and comparison shop.”

Going back to my starting point, what happens when our medical system is captured fully by market forces. I’ll give you one clue, it is not the utopia Paul Ryan imagines. It is the dystopia of medical professionals leaving in droves as the ill and sick wait forever for a freaking medical appointment.

I’ve been writing about deep political and philosophical issues of great moment recently. So, I almost gave myself some time off this morning, mostly because I had an early doctor’s appointment and then a busy day. Still, before the day ends, I will touch on a serious topic close to my heart, or should I say waist … defending obesity. Why do this, you ask? Simple, I am one of those so inflicted with this condition.

This issue popped into my head when my good friends and neighbors returned from a hiking trip to Italy this week. Such a trip puzzles me. Really, do you have to go all that way to engage in self-abuse. There are plenty of trails right here in and around Madison if you wish to torture yourself. Or, if you are in to more extreme forms of pain, you simply can read one of my lengthy books.

Anyway, when I saw the two of them I thought to myself that there is no way they have more than 3 percent body fat. Then Ann came up and gave me a big hug (she was a social worker and they hug a lot) which enabled me to more accurately assess the extent of her anorexia. I revised my estimate down to 1% body fat. Now, while that enables them to walk up a flight of stairs without calling 911 for help, does this make them really happy or, more importantly, healthy? Good question.

Let us overlook the fact that I wheeze getting out of bed in the AM, or that it takes me half our to get my socks on. Distracting, for sure, but are these the most important things when considering the merits of adding additional fat to one’s perimeter. I would pose the following scenarios for your consideration before you respond:

You are stuck in the arctic. It is 30 below zero. Who is going to survive longer. A tubby like me or someone with 1% body fat.

Or lets say their is a world wide famine after an asteroid strike. Who will last maybe 4 or 5 weeks longer than those skinny bastards falling over in the first few weeks. Us fatties will, no doubt.

And when your significant other poisons you and dumps you into a body of water to hide the evidence while claiming you ran off to Mexico with your lover. If you are skinny, the chain and weight might actually keep you submerged and undiscovered. But if you are fat, you will bloat more easily and rise to the surface before she can get away with all your worldy goods.

Skinny people, those who spend their lives at the gym and on the hiking trail, don’t think about these things. They should. So, when you are tempted by that last piece of pie, go for it. It will not only taste good but protect you from all sort of mayhem and disaster.

You can thank me later for this sage advice.

We all search for answers to the big questions … how did we get here and where are we going and what is this all about? This is an inherently human aspiration, to figure things out and to understand the world about us. Moreover, as far as we know, we are the only species (on earth that is) with suffiicient self-awareness to pose such abstract queries. Well, perhaps the dolphins have but they are not on Facebook yet, so we don’t know. Not only that, this quest for ultimate answers has been going on for a long, long time.

Check out the the ‘FACTS POST’ below. Somewhere in our distant past, we homo-sapiens prevailed over our neanderthal cousins to start us on our way toward what we are today. When you consider the number of improbable events that had to fall into place just right to first create life, then to facilitate complex biological forms, then generate consciousness, and now to bring us to a state where we might create our own immortality (or singularity where we merge our understandings and thinking into some form of artificial intelligence), it is wildly improbable that we exist at all. The number of factors that had to go ‘right’ are beyond counting. But we do exist, either because some omniscient and omipresent being willed it so or just due to the laws of probability.

Somehow, we have reached our current state where, as a species, we are peering back to the origins of the universe and looking ahead toward immortalizing ourselves in forms of advanced artificial intelligence. This accomplishment defies the odds. So many individual factors had to fall precisely into place over an immense period of time. Even f each event had a .5 probability, the aggregate odds are infinitessimal. That would not happen by chance unless the law of large numbers comes into play. There are trillions of stars and galaxies out there, the chances that a few would permit an outcome in which beings like us would evolve and thrive is better than 0 … perhaps significantly so. Howeverm it would have been a sucker’s bet. Still, all we know is that it has happened here, assuming we are not a fabrication of someone else’s artificial intelligence.

We have the advantage of modern science and technology. Think back to the time when our long ago ancestors huddled in caves and tried to make sense of simple things like thunder and lightning, disease and death, how to survive against so many daily threats. The primitive members on our family tree had to figure things out pretty much on their own. With faulty logic and little clear evidence, answering the unanswerable through appeals to supernatural forces made as much sense as anything else. It also made sense to take elements of their own attributes and merely make them more impressive. For most of human history, our gods were anthrpomorphic in character … much like us but way more powerful, including having robust versions of our own shortcomings and failings.

After one short experiment with monotheism in early Egypt, the notion of single, omnipowerful deity emerged to stay among the Jewish tribes wandering about the middle-east as they tried figuring out how to survive. Their Yahweh, a being so sacred that the word ought not to be spoken, gave them a psychological advantage when facing powerful enemies on all sides. It also provided leverage to the tribal leaders to enforce minimal social conformity among otherwise unruly peoples. You can imagine Moses thinking one day, ‘I’ll wander off and come back with these rules and tell people they are from God. That will bring them into line.’ Even today, religion is employed to support acceptable behaviors essential to the survival of ever larger human groupings. Break these commandments and it is everlasting brimstone for you. I have already ordered a poweful air-conditioning unit for my afterlife.

Yes, the picture above is me during my early religious period. Most people who know me as the depraved lech of my adult years find this fact hilarious. You … religious? No way! But it is true. Just like the cave dwellers of long ago, I sought to make sense of things as I grew up within a Catholic, working class, ethnic cultural cocoon. I only stayed in the seminary a year and a half (and this pic was a posed bit of humor) but it made sense then and now. I wanted to lead a useful and meaningful life. Joining a missionary order (the Maryknollers for you Catholics out there) seemed a way to do that. By my second year of training for the Priestly life, it hit me that I really wanted to save people, not their souls. My faith in a traditional notion of God was not nearly strong enough. But the impulse to do good would lead me to go from the Church to leftist (anti-war mostly) politics and then into the Peace Corps. Later, I studied poverty and taught social policy as a career. The inner drive to make sense of things and live life accordingly never went away.

For me, my rational side could never support a belief system absent some empirical basis. Church leaders often told me to be aware of one’s intellect, it was where Satan lurked (along with all those pretty and sexy lasses). The pretty lasses ignored me totally (I had no occasion of sin in Catholic parlance) so my actual downfall was my intellect. I recall sitting in my High School religious classes (in an otherwise excellent academic Catholic Prep School) questioning so many of the Church’s doctrines. Of course, I did all my questioning silently. That should have been clue number one that a life as a priest was not in the cards. But I had to try.

On a larger scale, society confronts similar struggles. In the Western world we are most familiar with the Renaissance that emerged in 15th century Europe. This revolution in the arts and thought shifted our attention from a rigid set of fixed beliefs to patterns of explorations in which humans began to question things. They started to observe and rely my on actual observations and more rigorous deductions as oposed to given doctrines as the source of understanding. Slowly, we shifted our perspective from an unknowable God to an empirical understanding of our world though the road forward was decidedly rocky. Copernicus only published his findings refuting an earth centered view of the universe upon his death while Gallileo promptly recanted his finding when the Pope challenged him. It was not until the 18th century that the Biblical understanding of time (the earth is older than 6,000 years) took root. That insight also took many years to be accepted, and still isn’t among many evangelicals and Republican politicians.

All that aside, here is the question that I’ve noodled on many an occasion (I do need to get a life). Do we need some divine judge and arbiter of what is good to keep us moral and good? Are Heaven and Hell essential to morality and social cohesion? It is not like the historical evidence is clear on this point. Pope Urban II called for good Catholics to go on a crusade in 1095 to battle the infidels in the Levant. These crusaders for Christ went of a rampage of rape and murder in their God’s name. Islamic warriors did the same as they charged out of Arabia some five centuries earlier to conquer the infidels (in their eyes) and slay those who resisted their truth. And let us not forget the various inquisitions that tortured, hung, burned, and quartered untold numbers of victims for infractions of the most arcane doctrines. Belief can be a most messy affair.

But let us not be overly harsh here. There is a huge difference between those who employ religion and spirituality as a weapon and those who use it for a force for good.

Mr Rogers, the TV peronaity who taught a generation or more of kids clearly was a man of faith. But he never seemed to rely upon his religious affiliation or background to do good nor seek a fortune (I doubt he was in it for the money as so many evanglelical preachers are). He embraced the message of love, compassion, respect, and kindness which he brought to millions of children (and adults). His contributions to better understandings of one another and caring for each other were endless. They included having an African-American as a regular character on his show. This was when racial apartheid was yet part of the American landscape and showcasing a Black actor risked losing part of his audience.

I chose the Marknollers for a similar reason. Many of their Priests and Nuns of that order worked in places like Central and South America were political strife was rampant in the 60s. So many Maryknollers were on the side of the peasants as they battled the oligarchs and coprorations (many foriegn). Some lost their lives for their work and beliefs. Those sacrifices inspired me.

It strikes me that we are yet caught in a transformational era, and there have been several such discrete transitions where mankind has gone through a qualitative change. Our conquest of the Neanderthals (or killing them off with new diseases), agriculture, urbanization, monotheism, the scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and now being on the theshold of the AI revolution. Yet, not surprisingly, we are stuck between world views. None of these ‘revolutions’ happened over night.

Thus, some of us (not me of course) are working on technologies that will alter the very concept of consciousness and what it means to be human. Those on the cutting edge are exploring the capacity to capture and use all stored knowledge in a new form of artificial intelligence, including mimicking and improving (we hope) human emotions and morality. The consequences of the future are beyond reckoning. At the same time, so many are yet stuck on issues like the age of a 6000 year old earth, whether sex is inherently sinful, and on so many myopic and unanswerable notions such as exploring the nature of a divine which simply are beyond our empirical reach. Such divisions are always present during transitions and have the unfortunate consequence of invoking great passions and bitter conflicts. Let us hope for the best.

No forum captures our extant conflicts better than our political arena. We see Republicans rise and say that we need not worry about climate change because God can save the earth if He wishes. Or no need to take the Covid Vaccine since it is all up to Jesus. We see logical abominations such as the argument that guns save lives, and ownership of such is a religious duty just as we cement our reputation as the outlier nation for gun violence and death. We witness countless conservatives argue we need to become a Christian nation (e.g., like the Taliban in Afghanistan) by banning objectionable books, replacing public libraries with Christian alternatives, and replacing parts of the Constitution with the Bible. They push such frightening measures as they vote against every public law and regulation that reflects Christ’s message of love and compassion. It is hard to imagine how these polar opposite perspectives can coincide with one another.

In the end, I mostly thank the stars that I am old and probably won’t be around when homo-sapiens ‘screw the pooch’ as the old saying goes. That means screw things up royally and end the human experiment before we can find out where it might lead.

And that is the big question. Where are we headed? I look at the unbelievable images of the Universe out there (see above) and marvel at the majesty of it all. Perhaps a divine being or force is responsible but such knowledge is beyond my poor talents to determine (and sciences) though I could never accept a personal God who wastes time checking on my attendance at some religious observance on Sundays.

I fervently hope we don’t screw things up. I am comforted by the knowledge that humans just might crack the code to those core questions we have been asking for eons. And that could happen sooner rather than later. How exciting is that? And what if we are the only species in the vast universe capable of doing that. That is frightening one one level and special, even flattering, on another.

One final wild thought! Maybe, just maybe, we are in the process of becoming the very God we have been seeking over the long history of our spiritual and religious searching. Wow! On that note, I see it is time for my nap.

Tucker Carlson, the darling of hard-right ideologues, was sacked by Fox News immediately after that media outlet settled with the Dominion Voting Machine Corporation for about $750 million dollars. While Fox cleared some $2.1 billion last year, this amount probably caused Rupert Murdoch to grab for his ant-acids. As disgusting and smug as Tucker might have been, he was the undsiputed star of the network, ever since Bill Oreilly exited after a string of sexual harrasment suits. Nothing like the family values crowd to engage in a little hanky-panky.

A number of the conservative darlings have been forced off the network over the past decade or so starting with Glenn Beck back in 2011. Glenn was an over the top conspiracy theorist who may even have stretched the credulity of the Fox brass. Roger Ailes, a well placed GOP activist and consultant, bit the dust in 2016 after acusations of sexual harrassment by another Fox luminary, Gretchen Carlson. The next year, 2017, saw two more casualties. Eric Bolling, another on-air star was let go for, guess what, sexual misconduct. But the big news of that year was the release, a polite way of saying the firing, of Bill O’Reilly, their chief far-right purveyor of nonsense and holder of their prime evening time slot. Finally, in 2020, White House correspondent Ed Henry was pushed out the door for, guess what, ‘willful sexual misconduct.’ Females are advised to enter the Fox empire at their own risk, or at least bring their own security forces.

What does this all mean? Is Papa Murdoch no longer calling the shots or, less likely, trying to make amends for a poorly led life as he nears his own demise? Are his sons and heirs taking charge and leading the network in a more responsible direction? These accumulated changes leave Hannity as the one bright star at Fox and the one remaining household name to push nonsense only believable to the tin hat crowd.

Some have suggested that Fox wants to be considered more of a ‘mainstream media outlet.’ In effect, they would be signing on to the ‘fake media’ world they have attacked with such exuberance in the past. For the network, the problem will be a huge hit to their bottom line. Their core, or target, audience thrives on the red meat thrown to the unthinking bubbas of the world. This core audience wants their priors validated and the their personal hatreds acknowledged … in a sense, blessed. They turn to Fox for a kind of perverse comfort in the fact that their comical, if it were not so tragic, view of the world makes sense and is so widely shared by others. If Fox goes any more mainstream, many of their viewers will seek alternatives to feed their deepest ideological passions in droves. What we can say is that the demise of Fox as a propoganda outlet will not automatically return America to sanity.

This raises a question in my head, which is an interesting place to be. As you may know by now, I don’t always think in a straight line. Granted, my favorite activity involves enjoying the discussions I have with myself. They are scintillating and brilliant and, best of all, no can object or insert any contradictory facts or interpretations. At the same time, my imaginary dialogues wander about in strange ways with unusual connections continuosly being formed. Surely a fun place to be.

Here is my wandering for today. We normally surmise that outlets like Fox generate the kinds of far right beliefs and attitudes shared by a large share of the U.S. population. How else would people embrace such obvious follies as Republicans best represent working people or Obama was a disaster for America or (almost hard to put this in writing) that Trump was sent by God to save us. It makes more sense to conclude that Voodoo is the path to Nirvana.

But here is the disconcerting thought that keeps popping into my head. Outlets like Fox do not create the divisive political climate that dominates the American landscape today. It merely reflects and amplifies what already was out there and which had been lurking throughout our history. The hate and narrowness we see among today’s Republicans has always been there though, in the past, had been muted by the buffer provided by rational members who are now long gone. I recall being repelled by the news that many in Texas and the South cheered at the news of John Kennedy’s death by an assassin, and that plots to attack JFK as a traitor to America flourished in parts of the country. Irrational fear and hate were always there, they just had fewer avenues to flourish given that a limited number of outlets broadcast their version of reality. Walter Cronkite was such a soothing and reasonable father figure during the 1960s.

Fox news thrived, not because it created a demented fan base but because that base existed and insisted on an outlet that would support their priors. The hard right, bigger in America than in most places, needed this kind of network to exist. Rupert Murdoch merely saw the opportunity to provde this demanded service. Fox’s array of stars mostly were college dropouts (with some exceptions) who saw a way to make an easy buck.

I can’t prove this of course. However, I’m a firm believer in two things in policy analysis. One should always get the question right and one should think hard about causal connections including, even more importantly, their direction. It makes a huge difference whether propoganda (the real fake news) shapes belief or those alreadt existing preferences create the demand for certain forms of propoganda. We can more easily work on the former while the latter will prove more difficult to remedy.

My mind then wandered in a slightly tangential direction. We are experiencing a heightened sense of angst and malaise in America. There are small signs everywhere. Mass shootings on a daily basis is one clue. Or take the fact that 1 in 3 high school girls reported serious suicidal thoughts in 2021 (according to CDC data). Persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness has jumped from about a third of all girls in 2011 to 57% a decade later. For boys, the corresponding rise went from about 20% to almost 30%. The upward trend took off right around Trump’s inauguration and kept rising though the subsequent pandemic which offered additional stressors.

We also know that kids respond to the world created by their parents. How could they not, even as they pull away to become independent. We see higher levels of pathology among adults these days. Some 53 million have some form of mental illness or impairment in 2020. About 28 million alone abuse alcohol and let’s not even get into meth and opioid addicitons. Moreover, some 61% of adults report experiencing one or more serious stresses as kids themselves. We appear to be passing on the accumulating stresses in life from generation to generation.

My wandering internal conversation now takes me to a topic I shared in a recent blog. There are some very happy countries and they are happy year after year. What do most of them share? They have robust and well developed public spheres that ameliorate life’s stresses. Public services such free access to medical care, inexpensive child care, free education through college, labor market assistance to ensure fair treatment to workers, programs to care for the elderly, and so on, take a good deal of uncertainty out of life. Citizens in such countries prize these things so much that are willing to pay high taxes.

In the U.S., we approach things very differently. We foster conflict and competition under the guise that it produces character and innovation, and that it rewards the best people in some Darwinian struggle for success. All this is wrapped up within the soothing mantle of personal freedom and independence. It is the so-called American Dream, you too can be a millionaire. And a number do win the brass ring. But many more struggle amidst lives caught up in uncertainty and the fear that one slip might cast a person and their loved ones into the economic and social abyss. No wonder so many kids, fighting for some advantage starting in elementary school and drowning in debt as they finish college, are so anxious and despairing. The rampant bullying we see in our high schools is merely preparation for the coming battles as adults within America’s demented zeitgeist.

All this is speculation of course. But I have a few dots I’d like to connect. Our conflict and competitive American culture leads to a higher levels of anxiety and angst which in turn generates a pervasive sense of fear and a distrust of others which, in turn, leads to forms of isolation and the search for those responsible for one’s unhappiness. Buying an AR-15, or publicly displaying a weapon around your waist, may provide some comfort. But another balm is watching your favorite pundit lay out for you, in simple terms, why you feel the way you do and whom to blame for it. This becomes your new fix. You can’t really live without it.

If any of this is true, the remedy for our national ills will not be firing a few firebrands on Fox news. It will require rebuilding our society from the ground up. Alas, I am too old to take this on. Time for my nap!

I don’t watch horror flics. Seeing young college kids killed off in various demented ways holds little allure for me. Yet, sometimes art, if you can call these movies art, does reflect life and might afford us some form of illumination on our national persona.

In this movie genre, a famous villain named Freddy Krueger was introduced by producer Wes Craven in a 1984 release titled Nightmare on Elm Street. This slasher movie evolved into a successful franchise that spawned, and may still, numerous future works of art. But herein lied a dilemma for Craven. Audiences, for the most part, wanted to see the lead protagonists escape a gruesome end and, at the same time, see the emodiment of evil meet some final retribution for his horrific actions. Just how to do that? Why not kill off the bad guy, or appear to at least, but resurrect him somehow in future flics. Far fetched? Perhaps! Still, Freddie kept getting killed, or so it seemed, only to miraculously be resurrected in future films. Who cares about plausibility as long as the money keeps rolling in. Freddy became our nightmare that never ended.

We expect this garbage from Hollywood, or wherever these atrocities are made. For some reason, we expect better from our public institutions and leading political figures. We want to elevate our leaders to a higher level, above the ordinary plane where real people trod. We don’t expect them to resurface after repeated violations of the public trust. When I was young, scandal would easily spell the end for a national candidate. Republican Nelson Rockefeller ended his Presidential aspirations when he divorced his wife and took up with a woman known as ‘Happy.’ Senator Musk from Maine fell by the wayside in the early 70s when he was thought to shed a tear in response to vicious dirty trick attacks by the Nixon camp. A decade earlier, President Kennedy escaped consequences for his womanizing ONLY because the press ignored all the evidence before them. Not even his fabled charm would have saved him if the truth had been revealed. In the most shocking example of all, the nation was remarkably ignorant of the fact that FDR was paralyzed as he led the nation out of a global depression and through a world conflagration. It was agreed that the public was better served by keeping his infirmity a secret. We went to great lengths to preserve our national institutions and leaders,while still discarding them for the most minor of moral infractions.

Up through the 1970s, Americans had confidence in our public institutions. By a wide margin, most told pollsters that they trusted and respected the Courts, Congress, and other vital pillars of Democracy. Today, those figures occasionally approach single digits. Perhaps the last gasp where character and respect mattered in our political life came during Nixon’s fall from grace. When evidence of his shenanigans regarding the Watergate affair could no longer be ignored, Republicans joined Democrats in signaling that it was time for him to go. In that moment, principles still counted over partisan advantage and pure power. Those days, like our longing for the illusory Camelot during Kennedy’s brief tenure, now seem like a lost dream.

Today, there seems to be no bottom to our cynicism and despair. Consider the following. What made America the envy of the world was that it was seen as a ‘land governed by laws.’ When an election was lost, you congratulated the winner and stepped aside. That hallowed tradition started when John Adams found he had lost to Thomas Jefferson, his bitter political enemy. He accepted the results, got in his carriage, and headed back to Boston. Okay, there were a few blips on the way, but the peaceful transition of power remained a relatively sacrosanct foundation of our public life. Most reasonable observers believe that Kennedy only won the razor close election in 1960 because boss-man Richard Daley stuffed the ballot boxes in Cook County, Illinois. But Nixon, of all people, did not contest the outcome since he felt that would damage our Democracy.

One inkling that things had changed came in 2000. Florida held the key to the election. There were all kind of problems with the vote counting including terribly designed ballots and disputes over ‘hanging chads.’ Compounding the doubts were the fact that the Republican candidates’ brother was Governor of the State. Though the recounting and legal battles went on for many weeks, the consensus was that if all the votes were counted fairly , Democrat Al Gore would have been elected. In the end, delays in completing the count and premature court decisions handed the election to Bush. The U.S. Supreme Court ended the sad matter along partisan (excuse me, ideological) lines. Democratic candidate Al Gore, like Nixon some four decades earlier, accepted a flawed process to prevent irreparable harm to the country. The reputation of our highest Court, however, would never recover.

Fast forward to 2020. We have a Republican candidate running for reelection who was so marred with scandal that it would take several volumes to cover the basics. He was routinely accused of incompetence, sleaze, and various mental aberrations even by those who worked in his inner circle, which appeared more as a revolving door than any foundation for a stable and sound government. Let’s focus merely on what happened after he lost by seven million votes in the overall count and by a large margin in the electoral college. Did the Donald, like Adams in 1800, congratulate the winner and graciously hand over power. Hardly!

He immediately declared the election stolen.

He pushed officials in toss up states to find additional votes for him.

He hatched a plot to send fake electors to Washington on January 6.

He tried to get V.P. Pence not to cerify the electoral results.

He tried to get his Congressional allies to throw the election into the House of Representatives.

He mounted the January 6th armed attack on the Capitol to stop the certification of the results from going forward.

He had his media minions continue to attack the integrity of voting machines resulting in a $700 million plus Court judgement against Fox News.

He had other minions conduct expensive after-the-fact audits in several toss-up states which found no wrong-doing, even when conducted by his supporters.

All this adds up to treasonous actions, a total disregard of our laws and traditions, and a breach of any semblence of good or decent behavior. All but one of the dozens of court actions brought by Trump against the election results went against him, whether those making the rulings were liberal or conservative jurists. He still never stopped in his unsupportable claims of victory which only served to undermine our confidence in the election process.

One would think that the public would conclude that his refusal to accept reality to be either the insane delusions of an unbalanced, pathological narcissist or the acts of a political Freddy Krueger bent on destroying our Democracy in the pursuit of ultimate power. How could this not be the case? Yet, Trump even today garners a 70% approval rating among Republican voters. After he was indicted in a New York case for actions associated with paying hush money to a Porn Star, his ratings among the faithful shot up. He retook the lead over his closest rival Ron DeSantis of Florida in the race for the 2024 top prize. Indeed, we have come far from those days when a divorce would preclude a candidate from our highest office. Apparently, we have millions out there who rooted for Freddy Krueger character in his slasher movies.

But Trump is finshed, right? He lost by 7 million last time, won’t he lose by more the next time around? Maybe. But remember that a shift in about 50 thousand votes in several strategic states could have thrown the electoral college his way. And think about this. In his first administration, those trying to control him could only get him to back off his most extreme and bizarre ideas by claiming they were illegal or (in more bizarre moments) merely ignored him hoping he would forget them. That would never work the next time around. Now, he and his closest supporters and sycophants know how to manipulate the process more effectively and will be under no compunction to obey any rules. He has recently said that he would subject all federal officials to a ‘test,’ and would fire all that failed. That is tantamount to saying he would absorb all power to himself.

Do I really believe that Trump can become the dictator he dreams of being. No, I don’t. But then I think of Russia during first part of the 20th century and Germany during the global depression. The ‘left’ in Russia tried a revolt in 1905, which failed and sent Lenin into exile. The Nazis tried their November, 1923 ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ in Munich, Bavaria. This uprising (a forshadow of Jan. 6?) failed and sent Hitler to prison and into a banishment from politics for a while. Most reasonable people thought that Lenin and Hitler would never take power. They were too extreme with Communism being an ill-fit in a backward, agricultural nation like Russia and Germany being too cosmopolitan to fall for a buffoon like the Fuhrer. The overconfidence of the elites and those with common sense proved premature. These first insurrections proved to be dress rehearsals for the real things later on.

The 70% of Republican voters yet supporting Trump represent a minority of all Americans. That should be reassuring. no? But think of this. Right after the October Revolution in 1917, Lenin permitted scheduled elections to take place. The Bolsheviks lost badly, the results were dismissed and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ replaced any reliance upon public sentiment in running the nation. The Nazi’s, in Germany, never received more than 37% of the vote in any free election. Again, the will of the people mattered not. Upon the flimsiest of fabrications, the Reischtag was dissolved and all powers temporarily assumed by Hitler which, to no ones surprise, became a permanent condition. In America, many states are governed by Republicans even though a majority of the voters lean the other way. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are powerful tools to offset the one-person and one-vote principle. Since 1990, only one national election has given Republicans a majority vote though they have won several of these contests through the Electoral College.

The very term Bolshevik means ‘the majority.’ But during Russia’s revolutionary period (roughly 1900 to 1922), they never were a majority. The more mainstream wing of the Communist Party, known as the Mensheviks, dominated the ‘left.’ But a minority of hard liners prevailed during an early international meeting and took this moniker in a brilliant marketing move. The label stuck. We look at the Republican Party today and see a hard core that is reluctant to compromise on extreme principles. They care not one whit about governing but are committed to seizing and securing power. Extremists inevitably brush aside inconvenient niceties such as checks and balances and the rule of law. Such niceties built into our Constitution are mere impediments and inconveniences to them.

As a final reminder, Lenin was exiled after his first grab for power. Hitler was sent to jail when he went after the brass ring prematurely. Trump has yet to see any consequences for his willful and ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy. How empowered must he feel?

We comfort ourselves by saying we are too eductaed, sensible, and sophisticated as a nation to permit any extreme element to assume total power.

Can we be so sure?

The latest international ranking on national happiness is out. I bet you have been waiting with baited breath. The report, which has been released annually since 2002, is a publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and draws on global survey data from people in more than 150 counties. Rankings are based on their average evaluations in each nation over the preceding 3 years [2000 to 2002].

And the winner for 2023 is Finland … again! This is the 6th year in a row that the Finns have taken the top spot though they always react with a bit of surprise, a kind of ‘who … us’ reaction. Their shock might be a tad disengenuous. After all, the other competitors for top spot are, for the most part, their close neighbors. Denmark, as usual, takes the runner-up prize while Iceland seems an annual lock for 3rd place.

There are occasional results that raise an eyebrow. Israel jumped several spots to grab the 4th position, somewhat of a surprize given their constant war footing and political wrangling. After that we have more Nordic countries like Sweden and Norway, along with EU members the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. Is Luxembourg really considered a country? New Zealand, a candidate from the other side of the globe sneeks into 10th spot. The United States, in case you are interested, is in 15th place. This ranking might be higher than you expected given the daily carnage on our streets and our intense ideological divisions. In last place is poor Afghanistan, but they do have some very reasonably priced vacation tours.

While there is always some shifting among spots in each year’s rankings, the overall patterns are very stable. Not even the global pandemic upset them much. As we have seen, the Nordic countries do very well with 5 in the top 7 positions. Moreover, they are always at the top, year after year. How can this be? After all, these places are cold, have virtually no sunlight for half the freaking year, and pay taxes at rates that would have most Americans grabbing their AR-15s and randomly shooting IRS officials. Moreover, I have never seen a single University from that area of the world ranked in the top 25 U.S. College football polls. What could they possibly be happy about?

Okay, they do have pretty nightime displays of the Northern Lights. That has to be impressive but, again, you have to go out in the freaking cold to enjoy them fully. And what about those freaking taxes. Handing over at least half your income to Aino, the tax collector, cannot ge fun. By the way, it matters not if you are a native Finn or an immigrant merely living there. Both groups are equally happy so the results are not based on some inherited brain abnormality. Nope, people like living in these places even with the frigid temps and high taxes.

Of course, humans being the inquisitive sort, researchers and journalists have sought to uncover the mystery of why freezing your butt off makes folk so content. Perhaps there is no definitive answer but there are some intriguing clues. The Finn’s, for example, talk about liking the small things such as family, friends, and nature. In fact, there is a law there termed ‘Every Man’s Right’ that permits all citizens to enjoy access to most land irrespective of ownership. This sense of sharing common goods spills over into feelings of trust. People expect others to do the right thing. In one Helsinki experment, wallets with cash were intentionally left in public places and over 90 percent were returned to the owners with the money untouched. Contrast that with America where we have have courts sagging under the weight of a litigious society in which suing one another is a national pasttime.

When Nordics talk about what makes them happy, they focus on basic human connections and speak remarkably little about material possessions. The Finnish, as opposed to the American, dream has little to do with accumuating a lot of crap. A rolex watch is far less important than elementary social associations. This often is expressed in their satisfaction with a more humane work-family balance. They have shorter wordays and more vacations. When they have a child, public support starts during the pre-natal period. In Iceland, for example, midwives start providing whatever might be needed as soon as the pregnancy is registered. Upon birth in Finland, the parents are eligible, by law, for extended paid family leave for both mother and father. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, some Nordic countries give up to year of family leave which can be shared between the mother and father. In the U.S. we have nothing, nada, zero.

In addition, so many of life’s anxieties has been eliminated by a strong and extensive safety net that serves all as a matter of right. Medical care is universally available at virtually no out-of-pocket costs, child care is heavily subsidized, education is virtually free through college, and the elderly are taken care of by the state. People in these happy placed do not wake up in the morning fearing that their world will fall apart with a costly medical procedure or a lost job. All this public support costs money, no doubt. The Danes pay well over half of their income in taxes. But they see what they are getting for such a significant investment. One survey found that 88 percent of Danes were happy to pay for the public goods they received. My uninformed guess is that all have a sense of hope, each individual has a shot at security and a reasonable life. Too many in the States face hopeless propsects from day one, with shockingly little support (for such a rich country) on their life’s journey.

There is a greater sense that the citizens in these countries are all in this together. There is a common culture and sense of civic participation. Most are willing to put a good deal of their wealth into public program investments that enable all to ‘thrive socially, physically, and mentally.’ This is a far cry from the ‘me against the world’ sentiment that governs ordinary life in the States. Here, our national foundational story (and national myth) focuses on the indpenedent loner who beats off all others to reach the top of the economic pyramid for himself and perhaps his family. Once there, the winner must remain vigilant against all others who wish to dislodge them from their position of privilege. More over, there is never enough. You must always grab more for yourself or risk sliding down this steep mountain top. How freaking sad. That is not an American Dream, it is a dystopian nightmare.

Perhaps, someday, we as Americans can revisit our foundational myths. Perhaps we can create one based more on collaboration than conflict. Not only might we be happier but we just might save our sorry asses in the end.

I love telling the story that contrasts what happened to a group of boys abandoned on a remote island. In the fictional telling of the story, Lord of the Flies (which was published in my youth), a group of kids found themselves alone on an island after a plane crash. Absent adult supervision and established laws, the kids degenerated into anarchy and violence. The lesson was that savagery was the primal instinct of man unless mastered by some superior power or authority.

Lo and behold, in the 1960s, that very same thing happened in real life. A group of Australian schoolboys went sailing (without permission), got caught in storm that blew them way off course before finally beaching upon a deserted island (called Atta I believe). Unlike the fictional ‘Lord of the Flies’ kids, these real life Robinson Crusoe types organized themselves well and established a crude form of functioning govennment. In short, they cooperated with one another with a one for all and all for one attitude. It was well over a year before they were discovered by accident (it was assumed they were all dead). Given their ordeal, they were in remarkable shape.

The lesson? Perhaps we can all do better if we work together, you know… like that happy place, Finland.

The American Taliban, otherwise known as the religious right, are forever touting their ‘pro-life’ trumpet, as if they had some kind of advantage in the race to claim the most advanced moral compass. The truth is that they are not pro-life at all, nor does their claim to ethical purity have any merit whatsoever. Their smug moral superiority is based on an obsession with protecting embryos at all costs, including any concern for the mother’s life and health, as well as ensuring that sex seldom happens outside of procreation. Oh my, this so reminds me of the repressive Catholic culture in which I was raised.

In my humble opinion, their ideological stand is little more than a pathetic attempt to feel superior to those of the ‘woke’ persuasion and, in the end, lacks much coherence. One problem is that, given their overall ideological package, they care not a whit for anyone after they are expelled from the womb. Their political positions on guns, the environment, access to affordable medical care, the public safety net, funding for child care and child protective services, and education (amonh other things) all speak to thwarted opportunities for most at the least and unecessary or amenable deaths at the worst. Gun violence alone is the leading cause of death in our young people and that is a preventable outcome … our peer nations are successful in doing so. For evangelicals, all pretense to caring for others ends when it costs any tax dollars, except when those doollars are employed to kill others. Thus, the one area the GOP would exept from cuts in their debt limit negotiations with the Democrats is military spending.

The meme below is instructive. To be ‘pro-life’ to the righteous right is to care about life BEFORE birth and not at all AFTER birth. As a whole, their political positions tell the post-born (as opposed to pre-born) that now you are on your own. It is time to be independent since the government has neither the right nor the resources to intervene on your behalf … a perspective both ludicrous and immoral. This pro-freedom perspective, for them, means getting no help to navigate through life despite your circumstances of the misfortunes you might face. You are to do it on your own no matter where you are at the starting line … a scion of a wealthy family or the issue from a desperately poor, drug addicted, single mother. I guess it all is God’s will, with the only remedy offered the unfortunate being thoughts and prayers.

Earth Day was yesterday, April 22. The first celebration, which happened 53 years ago, is largely credited to Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, one of a handful of politicians who resurrected the Democratic Party in Wisconsin after World war II. The inspiration for the environmental moevement is atributed to Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and scientist. She was one of the first to see how intimately connected life and the environment were. Her research traced the use of the pesticide DDT to eradicate pests and to show how this poison seeped into our waters and infected fish, some of which were a food source for birds and, of course, humans. One bad outcome spilled over to the next along the food chain.

Spokespersons for the companies that made pesticides attacked her viciously, including questioning her loyalty to America (this was the height of the Cold War after all) and whether she was sane. Anyone questioning corporate America’s right to make a profit absent any accountability had to be nuts. No traditional publisher wanted to touch her book titled ‘The Silent Spring.’ But the New Yorker Magazine made it available to the wider world in serial form and a movement was born (and her work later published in book form to become a best seller).

Her work on the ecological interconnection between human action and the life chain eventually sparked an emerging interest in the broader topic of the environment. It made the public more aware that what we do has a consequence beyond ourselves. A new moral sentiment was forming … that we are stewards of the planet on which we depend. Specifically, people started asking whether observable climate change is the result of anthropogenic (or human caused) forces. Another way to put this is ‘are we killing our own species.’

The suspicion that man’s actions have dire consequence on weather and our environment goes back a long way. There are newspaper articles from around 1912 discussing the possibility that fossil fuels were emitting substances that would adversely impact weather and, more seriously, the climate. Those were mere possibilities then, proven certainties now. The next three graphs lay out the fundamentals in graphic form.

The story is simple. Our actions cause disproportionate amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases to be disbursed into the atmosphere. This effects the layer around the earth in ways that unbalance the homeostatic properties necessary to preserve life as we know it. If things get too far out of balance, it will be all over except for the ‘fat lady to sing.’ All the essential metrics are going in the wrong direction. The only question remaining is whether we have permitted things to go too far, crossed some tipping point of no return, and thus lost all ability to turn the ship around.

Some 65 million years ago, most large species were wiped out by, we presume, an asteroid strike that radically changed the earth’s environment. We could face a similar outcome over the next century or so with one important exception. The dinosaurs, who had been around since about 240 million years ago (a very long run compared to the brief run of homo-sapiens), never saw their fate coming . Even if they could, they had no way to stop it. We have seen our fate coming for over a century. The entire scientific community has been ringing alarm bells as well as our Pentagon, the United nations, and virtually all sane governmental bodies.

We have (or had) the power to reverse things, if only there were the will. But no, in the U.S. we divert our attention to debates about whether slavery can be mentioned in our classrooms, whether our youth can learn that some people love those of their own gender, or that those approaching their teen years should learn ways to prevent unintended pregnancies. We see teachers and librarians being harrassed as right-wing vigilante groups go on book banning crusades.

The striking irony in all this is that the very people who tout their ‘pro-life’ credentials will bear the responsibility if we fall upon this anticipated apocalyptic end. The Republican Party, the political expression of this so-called ‘pro-life’ movement, has just moved to rescind the money President Biden allotted last year to fight adverse climate change. Their unstated rationale for doing so is mostly, if not exclusively, to protect tthe tax advantages of our wealthiest citizens as we struggle to deal with our growing national debt.

Think about that for a moment. The party of life would threaten our entire species to satisfy the egregious greed of a few. I doubt there is a level in hell harsh enough for such people, nor any moral code worthy of the name that could justify such a position. At the barest minimum, a moral person would seek to protect and nurture the vehicle that God or nature has provided us, that vulnerable home on which we have been able to evolve and thrive. As far as we know, we are the ONLY advanced life form in a universe of trillions upon trillions of stars and solar systems. (See a tiny view below) We are unique, a divine experiment of sorts. Should we not keep this experiment going?

Pro-life my ass!

Researchers at Concordia University have completed some interesting research suggesting that a surprising number of males would consider sex with robotic women, especially when aroused. Some females are so inclined though the proportion is less. Admittedly, the investigative methods leave something to be desired (relatively small sammple size that is not representative) but the results are highly intuitive. From my observations, most horny men (and when are they not) would hit on a coat rack just standing there in the corner of a room. When I was young and still afflicted with such needs, I made many a pass at various coat racks as we neared ‘last call’ in various bars or taverns. Turns out that I had the same luck with the racks as I did with human females … none! It is not easy being a guy.

This line of research also suggests that men and women will look to robotic avatars for a variety of human connections … advice, friendship, and emotional connection. The escort service I now use better seek a new form of service if they wish to stay in business. I am sure a fake female will wonder exuberantly at my brilliance and laugh at my jokes with far more authenticity (or at least beleivability) than real women ever have, even when paid to do so. Not all of the AI revolution will be a bad thing.

But that is not what I’m thinking about this morning. No, this is the classic ‘bait and switch’ thing. Sex draws you in before I drive you into a soporific, comatose state with something more serious. It is serious to me at least.

The Texas Senate voted to end tenure for new faculty at their public colleges and universities. Sounds ominous though the legislation has a way to go before becoming law. Still, I’m struck by how dedicated the GOP has become in attacking the pillars of higher education. Our Florida Governor has attacked higher education in his state along in addition to Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. Former Wisconsin Republican Scott Walker went after the Badger State’s flagship campuses, especially U.W.- Madison, which has ranked in the top 50 research university’s in the world for as long as I can remember.

Our former brainiac Governor, who flunked out or was thrown out of Marquette University (choose your favorite story), went after higher education with particular zealousness. Besides working to erode the tenure system, a tradition designed to ptotect scholarly investigation from political intrusion, he made a stab at eroding a principle that had made the Madison campus famous … the ‘Wisconsin idea.’ That principle proposed that the University should be a place where a fearless ‘sifting and winnowing’ could take place not just for truth but for ideas and innovations in the service of the public good. And for a century and a quarter, the Madison Campus was known for that … an incubator for all kind sof ideas for the public arena from Social Security to Worker’s Compensation to the progressive income tax to separating the formulation of laws from the corporations that benefitted from that legislation (NB: Until early in the 20th century, state legislators had no staff to write laws so turned to coprporate lawyers for the task.)

Walker tried to excise the Wisconsin Idea language and otherwise turn the mssion of the campus away from the fearless pursuit of truth toward seving the needs of the the State’s business community. He, and the political party he headed at the time, wished to turn a world class research university ito another voc-tech school, but at a higher level. The blow-back was instantaneous and he never fully accomplished his scheme. Still, state support has eroded with years of Republican control in Wisconsin. State contributions to our public university system now ranks 43rd in the nation while support for the voc-tech system ranks 5th. Budgets reflect values and nothing speaks louder than this. State funds cover only about 20 percent (perhaps a bit more) of the Madison’s budget. Only the Madison faculty’s ability to bring in outside research (it has traditionally ranked among top schools in research money received), along with tuition hikes that erode our ability to reach all youth, enables the school to maintain its quality and reputation.

Now, to be fair, former U.S. Senator William Proxmire, a Democrat, would give out an award to what he considered really stupid research being carried out at taxpayers expense. He called it his ‘Golden Fleece’ award. He hated to see tax dollars wasted. Still, he prized good research. When federal funding for the Institute for Research for Poverty (my first home in the university) was threatened during the Reagan administration, he stepped in to see that support continued as it had since the 1960s War on Poverty. A fierce opponent of porkbarrel spending, this was only one of two times he stepped in to ensure federal support for a Wisconsin-based initiative.

Why do Republicans hate university’s? I mean, are they not the pro-business party. In recent years, Wisconsin’s public universities have contributed about $25 billion annually to the state’s economy, and that is a conservative count. One university spin-off alone, Epic Medical Systems, now employs 12,000 plus mostly high-paying technical folk in the Madison area, and is growing like mad. And that is only one example of many. They should be falling over themselves to pour more resources into this economic engine.

The answer is relatively simple. The research campuses are located in major cities … Madison and Milwaukee. These are seen as bastions of democratic voters. In the last statewide election this April, Dane County sent 240,000 voters to the polls (even more than Milwaukee) and they voted overwhelmingly for the liberal candidate for Supreme Court (82%). In a jurisdiction where statewide races have been decided by the slimmest of margins, a growing liberal bastion like Dane County (Madison) is the enemy. And the most prominent target for slaying that dragon is the elitest university, no matter the cost. Republicans also know that their rural base is highly supsicious of eggheads and those Madison ‘types’ who are considered ‘woke’ foes to be despised and even punished. The divisions evident in our ‘culture war’ has an undeniable spacial component.

The University is seen as a place that takes good kids with sound values from the farm or small towns throughout the state and turns them into socialists at best and Communists at worse. Those eggheads at the university even teach the next generation ‘Critical Race Theory’ or as we eggheads would say … History and Legal Theory. For Republicans, the indoctrination of our youth must he stopped at all costs. They realize that cannot maintain control of power IF voters can think for themselves, identify their self-interests, and connect the dots through analytical reasoning. So, thinking must be stamped out if progressive thought and compassion are to be stopped in their tracks. Some in the GOP have even floated ideas for how to make it more difficult to for college students to vote. When you cannot command a majority, democracy must be subverted.

So, as I was typing out these words, I started reflecting on a related issue. My mind tends to wander, as you have likely figured out. Every great civilization has encouraged learning. The ancient Chinese empires developed the wisdom of Confuscius and his followers, Egypt developed the world’s greatest library in Alexandria (before it was tragically destroyed by fire), the Greek’s during their golden age virtually invented philosophy and advanced thinking, and Rome added and expanded on earlier thought while providing texts that many high school students (including me) grew to hate with a passion.

We now tend to think of the Islamic world as backward and even primitive for the most part. And yet, as the Roman Empire disintegrated and Europe wallowed in violence, anarchy, and decay, the Abassid Caliphate was ushering in a new Golden Age. Baghdad, its epicenter, was then the largest city outside of China. Several Caliphs, starting in the mid-8th century gathered extent knowledge and thinkers to share what they knew, to seek new knowledge, and to preserve ancient wisdom. With new paper making technolgoes, the now famous House of Wisdom in Baghdad replaced the library at Alexandria as the repository of human knowledge. It was only with the Mongolian sacking of that citidel of learning that the golden era finally came to an end.

Before that happened, the Islamic world became the incubator of new ideas in sceince, technology, medicine, literature, the arts, and so much more. It would take several pages to recount the flowering (and preservation) of knowledge in this era. They took every book and document they could find, no matter the provenance or whether it ascribed to Islamic beliefs, and translated it into several langauages. They were a kind of ‘Wisconsin Idea’ of that era. Muhhammed ibn Musa al-Khawizm developed algebra (along with improvements to geometry and trigonometry). The very word algebra comes from the title of one of his books. Ibn al-Haytham is credited with laying out what we think of as the scientific method and thus can claim to be the world’s first ‘real scientist.’ An early author whose unfortunate nickname was ‘boggle eyes’ wrote some 200 books of which some 30 can yet be found in Middle eastern book shops today. Among his insights can be found the essential constructs of evolution that Charles Darwin re-invented a thousand years later.

My point is that intellectual inquiry is essential to the well-being of society and civilization. When you attack science and scientists, you are merely foreshadowing your own decline. I continue to be appalled that Dr. Anthiny Fauci has been so viciously attacked by Republicans for merely employing our best science to save lives. I cannot forget the 1950s when I feared Polio almost as much as being turned into toast by a nuclear blast.

Then came along Jonas Salk from the University of Pittsburgh. He had the freedom to perservere under vicious attacks from many other scientists like Albert Sabin. But he could pursue what he thought was right and came up with an eponymous vaccine that started to erase this scourge. It was not smooth in the beginning and some 200 children died from a tainted batch of the vaccine (due to lax government oversight). Can you imagine the outrage on Fox News today? But there was no fanatical right wing party then to attack science nor a 24/7 news outlets to feed the public misinformation. Science prevailed and polio is history.

If today’s Repubican Party prevails, the America century will be relegated to the dustbin of history, and deservedly so. Then again, we probably will all be dead from an apocilyptic climate disaster before that happens. So, why worry!

I remember when watching the news on television was a sacred obligation for me. I wanted to be informed and enlightened. In recent years I avoid it like the plague, fearing I would go bankrupt after buying new TV sets after repeatedly putting my foot through the screen or buying expensive tranquilizers. I don’t have a lot of time this morning but I’ll share some tidbits after a quick look through my phone.

On the bright side, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell has been ordered to pay $5 million to an expert who debunked his data related to alleged fraud in the 2020 election. An arbitration panel ordered him to pay Robert Zeidman, who has decades of software development experience, this amount. You might recall that Mike, ever the genius and great defender of the Donald, offered that amount to anyone who could prove his claims and data about rampant election fraud false. All these ‘fraud purveyors’ (and there have been many attempts to prove such including an expensive GOP led effort in Wisconsin) has proven is that our elections are remarkably honest.

On a down note, GOP Speaker McCarthy wants to cut federal spending as part of debt ceiling deal. As a reminder, we reached our authorized spending spending limit in January and are functioning as a nation only because of creative book keeping which cannot last for long. The pending deal would raise the limit to $35 trillion but the GOP House is balking. They claim excess spending is the culprit while conveniently overlooking the fact that Trump’s tax givaway to the unber rich added more to the debt than anything else. Even Speaker McCarthy has said ‘default is not an option.’ In such a scenario, the U.S. would not meet its obligations and become the laughing stock of the world (consider us going to the World Bank, hat in hand, begging for help), along with plunging the global economy into the crapper. What is frightening is that the zealots in his party don’t seem to care.

The GOP is trying to play brinkmanship with this issue. Their proposal would not touch taxes and would exempt the military from any cuts. They would go after public spending outside of mandated programs. They are calling for domestic spending cuts to 2022 levels with minimal future increases. That might sound benign but discussed impacts might include losing 125 air traffic control towers, slashing nutrition services to 1 million senior citizens, gutting Pell grants to 6.6 million students, ignoring the needs of 1.2 million poorer mothers getting WIC help, knocking 200,000 children off of Head Start, and resulting in 100,000 kids losing Child Care.

The list goes on including cutting recent additions to IRS which have greatly improved response to taxpayer’s questions AND would actually increase revenue to the government. Perhaps the worst proposed GOP idea would be to rescind Biden’s initiative to battle climate change passed last year. Some $370 billion across a variety of initiatives would be lost along with needed regulations on extractive fossil fuel industries. At a minimum, methane emissions would increase and you could kiss the antarctic good by. I suppose Trump and friends assume they will be dead before the ocean rises and puts their fairy land under several feet of sea water.

In other news, the Trump appointed Texas Judge who suspended the abortion pill is in the news again. Matthew Kacsmaryk, a poster boy for an ideal Gestapo agent, failed to release all his public speeches during hearings on assesing his suitability for the Federal Bench, as required by law. In these ommitted speeches, he said being gay is a lifestyle choice (conradicted by all the evidence) and expressed concerns about things like ‘no-fault divorce’ and ‘permissive policies on contraception.’ This troglodyte would bring us back to the ‘no sex except for procreation’ era of the early Catholic Church. As he advocates for his vision of a Talban ideal for America, some 60% of young women choosing coleges say reproductive rights will be important to their choice. They don’t want to go to school in states that would rescind their ability to exercise control over thier own bodies.

Then there was a CEO of a furniture making company who tried to fire up her employees to meet company financial goals. When some employees expressed concern about future bonuses, Andi Owens responded with: “I had a boss who said … you can visit pity city but you can’t live there. So, people, leave pity city. Lets get it done {achieve bottom line corporate goals}.” Her rah-rah speech, and utter dismissal of her worker’s financial needs was less compelling when the remuneration levels between workers and their bosses was examined. She made $5 million last year while her typical worker made $45,000. She later apologized for being tone deaf. DUH!

Finally, let’s go to McCurtain County Oklahoma … several local officials lamented that they could not go back to the good old days when they could whoop black people’s asses and hang them to a tree. In this pining for what they saw as utopia, they also looked forward to shooting a few media folk before arriving at the astonishing conclusion that blacks have more rights than they have. I guess the right not to be tortured and lynched is too much for these good Christians. How dare minorities wish to live in peace. One of these visionaries has resigned but I believe the others are digging in.

It may have always been this bad but in these days of cell phones and 24 hour news, it is in our faces every damn day. We seem to be drowning in a sea of stupidity and hate. I will leave you with a lighter touch on how I see the typical MAGA type of today.

Have a good day!

If you were to sit around with a bunch of old farts, as I did yesterday afternoon, you will find a lot of reminiscing about the ‘good old days.’ And there were no ‘old days’ better than the infamous decade of the 60s. It was a magical period of exuberance, experimentation, revolution, and hope, above all … hope. Somehow, we geezers look back on this magical time of drugs, sex, and rock and roll with unmitigated longing. But better than all that, we could watch the antics of Rocky and Bullwinkle on TV while learning so much from Peabody’s improbable history.

Mr. Peabody, a really smart dog, would take this doofus Sherman, a clueless boy, back into time (see cartoon above) where he would instruct his dim bulb of a student on the nuances of past historical periods. These instructive lessons turned me into a history buff, a love that has never diminsished yet will never be mastered.

Later in life, my spouse would catch me watching reruns of Rocky, and Gilligans Island, and the Beverly Hillbillies. I always tried to watch them on the down-low, like I did when sneaking a peak at some dirty magazine. Ah, but she was a sly woman … often catching me as I laughed out loud while viewing my favorite brain rot. “I can’t believe it,” she would huff. “You are so intelligent, how can you watch that junk.” (NOTE: I somehow fooled her into thinking I was smart.) I would grant that Gilligans Island and the others were geared for 6 year old minds but Rocky and Bullwinkle were way ahead of their times, and have yet to be equalled for sophisticated adult humor posing as a kid’s cartoon. Then she would sigh, roll her eyes, and mentioned ruefully something about the good catches she let get away.

I did get the last laugh one day. At some event we ran into Gary Sandefur and his spouse. Gary enjoyed a distinguished career as a professor of Sociology and later Dean of Letter and Sciences at UW before ending his career as Provost at Oklahoma State University, his home state. More importantly, he was a good guy whom Mary admired greatly. As we were chatting, Mary thought she could employ him as an ally in her ongoing (and futile) campaign to turn me into an adult. (Men are always amazed that women continue to tilt at this hopeless windmill.) So, she says confidently, “Gary, can you believe that Tom still watches Rocky and Bullwinkle. Really, what adult watches stuff like that.” Gary evidenced a crooked and slightly embarrassed smile while responding quietly “Mary, I just purchased a complete set of that series.” She was struck dumb by his words. Ah, sweet victory, so rarely experienced.

While Rocky (and his friends) helped me immensely during this ‘coming of age’ era, the times themselves seemed exceptional. It was as if our worlds tilted on their axes. I came out of the previous decade as a conventional Catholic, ethnic, working class kid. Here I am (the middle one) in the 1950s, an innocent kid playing little league baseball. The other two kids are my cousins, the one on the left eventually signed with the Los Angleles Angels and played in their minor league sysytem for a number of years. Aside from having a few unconventional ideas for my cultural environment, I was indistinguishable from all the other ruffians who would go on to live ordinary lives.

Then the 60s hit. Remember the movie ‘American Graffitti?’ It is about some high school kids graduating in 1962. They made different decisions and went in different directions and thus experienced radically different life trajectories. The underlying theme was that 1962 was a pivotal tipping point in our culture and history. So much was about to change after Kennedy’s assassination and the Vietnam War heated up. And so it did … the civil rights revolution, the anti-war movement, the feminist awakening, gay rights and native American rights and so much more. By the way, I graduated from high school in June of 1962.

I left the seminary in the fall of 1963 after realizing my lack of any conventional belief in a personal God made the priesthood a poor vocational choice and then matriculated at Clark University for the Spring semester of 1964. At that moment, I was still the conventional kid who grew up in a very ordinary way. By the time I went off to India in 1967, I was a totally different person. I had experienced every dimension and emotion of the turmoil that ravaged my belief structures and challenged my established world views. Most people never endure such a reclamation of their assumptions and their moral cores. Life for them is relatively linear. For me and many of my peers, it was the opposite. We examined and then reframed all that we thought we knew and believed. We recreated ourselves.

Here I was sitting at a beach on Cape Cod toward the end of my college years, musing about the world and my future. I don’t look different on the outside but the inside of me had been totally rebuilt. During my college years I went from a life unexamined to a world fully examined. While I may have learned a few things in classes, most of my education happened outside of class while spending endless hours debating the issues and challenges of the day.

I can still recall the moment I became an anti-war activist. I had an NSF grant to do original undergrad research (in psychology) and got into a debate with one of the other recipients (a kid who went on to Harvard for his doctorate). I was still hanging on to my conservative Catholic cultural beliefs (some of them at least) and tried to defend what we were doing there. He and I went at it for hours, no project research would be done that day. At the end of our personal debate, I knew I had lost that battle (though I could not admit it to him in the moment). Later that year, he sought me out in the cafeteria (I spent way more time there in dialiogue than in the library studying) to praise an anti-war article I had written for the college newspaper. He did not gloat at all, but his victory was in black and white.

That was a small vignette that was repeated endlessly as we rebuilt ourselves, at least as many of us did. Several decades ago, I recall reading an article that has stuck with me. It was by a State Supreme Court Justice in New York State. He talked about coming of age in the 1930s, another period when beliefs and world views were tested as the depression and an impending world war loomed. Like many of his intellectual college peers, he flirted with Communism and other utopian solutions to the looming problems surrounding them. He discarded the extreme remedies but, in the process of fully confrionting the most problematic challenges of his era, was required to rebuild his approach to life from the ground up. He felt that process made him a deeper and better thinker. He was so thankfull for the time in which he had the fortune to mature.

That same epiphany struck me as well. I joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) before they went off the crazy end. The important thing is that I had to think hard and long about what I believed and why. That process was largely forced on me by events and the challenges of the time … would I cooperate with the draft or resist for example. I am struck by how most people wander through life without change or challenge. I would watch students toward the end of the Vietnam War protest era spouting slogans while realizing that they had little understanding as to what they were opposing or why. For many of them, it simply was the thing to do. I found that sad, and commiserated with their situation.

There is nothing more precious than having come to your own set of of values after being through a cauldron of doubt and examination. There are few things so disappointing as going through life without really seeing what is about you.

And here I am in the late 1970s, after several years wandering about trying to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up. By this time I’ve stumbled into the University of Wisconsin and was getting a doctorate in Social Welfare. Almost by accident I would become a pretty decent policy wonk who was lucky enough to be involved in some of the more important social questions of my era. It was a heady time and I felt like I was at the center of it all. I also worked with the brightest academic and policy minds of my generation as well as having the opportunity to pass on my thoughts and skills to the next generation in my policy courses. How much fun was that? It beat working for a living.

To be honest, I was never a great student myself and was never disposed to be a conventional scholar (I stayed in academia with smoke and mirrors). But I always felt I had one advantage. I had been a child of the 60s who used that period of turmoil to full advantage. I had rebuilt nyaself from the ground up. More importantly, I could think for myself and connect the dots in unconventional ways. I had developed a skill at doing lateral thinking. I retrospect, that gave me an advantage no matter what room I was in, and I often was among some pretty impressive heavyweights in many of those rooms. I am so thankful.

We were not omniscient by any means. There are no final answers to life’s challenges and no end to the sifting and winnowing process. And sometimes, I got things dead wrong. I remember saying many times in the 60s, “wait until we grow up and assume positions of power. We will right the world.” When my cohort did take full power, all we did was turn the country toward the ‘right.’ How diasppointing is that. Now we look to the next generation to bail us out from the Reagan and Trump revolutions that have turned America into a near banana republic.

My god, how did that happen? What did happen to Camelot?

PS: I have written extensively on the times and on these issues.

http://www.booksbytomcorbett.com