Tom's Musings

Since I have no life, I belong to two book clubs. One met last night and the other meets this afternoon. Last night’s gathering discussed The Daughters of Yalta while my other group today will be discussing Lenin on the Train. The first book explored the final conference between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill held at the end of the war in Europe. Since the Nazi’s were virtually defeated at this time, the focus of this momentous meeting was to discuss the post war European world … whether a United Nations was feasible, what would be the fate of Poland and other East European countries, and whether Russia would join the war against Japan.

The literary focus was on the role three daughters (of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Averill Harriman who was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow) played at the conference. Each accompanied their fathers at the conference for various and different reasons but all played important roles. Anna Churchill, for example, worked hard to keep her dad alive through the grueling conference. This well written work, however, managed to shed considerable light on this momentous moment in history.

The second book focused on the decade leading up to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. That November, the Provisional Government established after the fall of the Czar was in turn thrown out by a minority of hard-left Communists. Again, this moment in history was approached from a slightly oblique angle … the cynical decision of the German high command to help Vladimir Lenin get from his exile in Switzerland back to Russia. The Germans hoped he would, as in fact happened, topple the first post-Czarist government and get Russia out of the conflict.

I suspect even they were surprised when this wild scheme worked. After all, the German brain-trust also tried to foment an uprising in Ireland (the 1916 Easter uprising which ended quickly and tragically) and an uprising in India (which went nowhere). But their Lenin crackpot scheme, against all odds, worked and altered himan history. At the time. they thought, if this cock-a-mamie scheme worked, they could easily dispatch of Lenin and his crowd after victory in the West. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I also watched an older movie over the weekend called Darkest Hour. This excellent flic focused on the darkest days in Britain when Churchill replaced Chamberlain as PM and the Nazis invaded the low Countries and France in early 1940. It involved an agonizing debate over whether England would sue for peace with Hitler. Remember, the situation of the Brits as France crumbled. They had no major allies at the moment and (in just a matter of days), their forces would be huddled around the port of Dunkirk waiting to be annihilated or captured. Without an army and what seemed like an inadequate air force, there odds of survival appeared impossible despite having the best navy in the world. There was a huge sentiment in Parliament to recognize reality and settle for the best terms possible. George VI was on the verge of seeking exile in Canada and U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK) was an aggresive proponent of appeasement. Though he wavered, Winston Churchill held firm and gave his famous ‘We Shell Never Surrender’ speech to parliament. It seemed like national suicide at the time.

All this got me thinking about how fragile history is, how much depends on idiosyncratic events that might have gone another way. At Yalta, for example, FDR was dying. It was never admitted, of course, but all who observed him could plainly see this was the fact. Worse, his closest aide (Harry Hopkins) was also dying. Hopkins had been joined at the hip to FDR, enjoying such a close relationship that he lived in the White House for a number of years.

One cannot say for sure, but perhaps the course of events at Yalta and beyond might have been different had America been led by someone not in such severely compromised health. In those critical moments, FDR pushed away Hopkins, Churchill, and his Soviet Ambassador Harriman in the vain belief he could establish a special relationship with Stalin. All these advisors had a more realistic view of ths Soviet leader, but had little opportunity to alter FDR’s opinion or approach. He had to know this man’s history, a sociopath and sadist who killed off millions including virtually all of his close comrades in fits of paranioa and in the lust for total power. Would a healthy man have committed such an obvious blunder?

Or consider the German High Command during WWI. As the conflict seemed never ending they became desperate. America was about to enter the war. They needed Russia to leave the field of battle. But the Lenin card was such a long shot. Why expend resources on this guy along with the political capital that came with initiating a scheme to get him (and a number of his associates) across Germany and through Sweden and Finland to St. Petersburg. His party, the Bolsheviks, were thought by many as a bunch of kooks with no chance to assume power. The Mensheviks were the overwhelming majority among the socialist left. Unfortunately, this dominant wing of the left felt a moral obligation to respect the promises they had made to their allies. They supported continuing a fultile war that bled Russia dry. Lenin brought with him a fierce focus and an unbending and obsessive will. By the Fall of of 1917, he has seized power.

But there had been so many times when Lenin might have been stopped. The German’s might have scrapped this hairbrained scheme (or so many thought at the time). Lenin could have been stopped at the Russian border, when he was halted and almost refused entrance until permission to allow him in was secured from the Provisional Government (P.G.). Kerensky, the leader of the P.G., finally granted him permission to enter thinking him a marginal actor and no real threat. After realizing that was an error of judgment, Kerensky might have come to his senses and gotten Russia out of the war, an act that might have saved his government which started out with condiserable popular support.

Instead, he launched another ill-fated advance which resulted in another slaughter of Russian troops which, in turn, incited mutiny among the soldiers and insurrection in the streets. It all might have been so different. Perhaps the world would have been spared some seven decades of Communist threats. Kerensky ultimately escaped to the United States and continued to attack the Bolsheviks as he regretted the choices he had made.

Or what if FDR had been well enough to think clearly at this point. Why did he ignore his closest advisors to pursue a ‘relationship’ with a paranoid dictator who had never honored a commitment in his life. Hopkins, Harriman, and surely Churchill never had illusions about what would happen to Poland and other Eastern European countries at the end of the war. But, with FDR’s acceptance of Stalin’s assurances, they left Yalta with vague language and illusory promises including free elections in Poland that were doomed from ths start. All they had to look at was Stalin’s recent behaviors such as when he signalled the Polish underground movement in Warsaw to rise up while suggesting that nearby Soviet Troops would help them. Then he ordered his forces to halt on the outskirts of the city as some 200,000 Polish freedom fighters were slaughtered by Nazi troops. Stalin wanted any and all possible resistance to Communist control eliminated. That is what the police would call ‘a clue.’

But let us think back to other moments when history hung in the balance. Churchill being appointed PM at this critical moment was not a sure thing. The King did not want him. Prime Miinister Chamberlain, who was on his way out, preferred Lord Halifax as his successor … a strong supporter of negotiating a peace with Hitler. Halifax turned down the office, most likely on the assumption that Churchill would fail miserably and he (Halifax) could ride in to save the day with less damage to his own reputation.

That turned out to be a massive miscalculation. At the time, though, it was a sensible decision. After all, who could anticipate the RAF could hold out against the Luftwaffe, or that Hitler was dumb enough to start a two-front war before securing his western flank, or that Hitler would declare war on U.S. after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when he didn’t have to. By all odds, Chrchill’s reign as PM shuld have been short and forgettable. Few gave England any chance of holding out against what looked like an invincible force at the time.

Or let’s go back to the period after Roosevelt was elected. While giving a speech in Miami in February of 1933, some 17 days before his inauguration, a crazed gunman (Guiseppe Zangara) started shooting at the President-elect. The wife of a local physician grabbed the would-be assassin’s arm as he began shooting. As a result, the Mayor of Chicago who was greeting FDR at the moment was hit by one of the bullets and died days layer.

But think of this, candidates picked their running mates only on political grounds at the time. No thought was given to the suitability of the man to lead the country. John Nance Garner would have succeeded to the Presidency. He was a southerner by temperment, a die hard racist, a fiscally conservative politician utterly incapable of leading the nation during the depths of the depression. This would have been a disaster of unknown, but not unexpected, proportions.

Or let’s look at Hitler in his early days. Theoretically, he could have been shot for treason, or at least sentenced to a long prison term, after his treasonous act of leading the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. This insurrection was put down rather easily but only after a number of deaths. But Hitler was treated leniently by the courts, only spending about 2 years of a soft incarceration during which he was permitted to receive visitors and wrote his manifesto … Mein Kampf. Would the Nazi’s have risen to power had he been treated more harshly? More importantly, is there a lesson to be learned for how Trump has been treated after the january 6 insurrection on the American Capitol? Or what about the apocryphal story about a seminal moment in WWI. A British soldier purportedly had a clear shot at Hitler and chose not to take it for reasons no one knows. Would 50 million plus lives have been sapred if he had? Not likely but one never knows.

One could go on with the ‘what-ifs’ of history. I mean, really, what if James Comer hadn’t made the bone-head move of releasing the news that the FBI was looking into Hillary’s emails just days before the 2016 Presdiential election. Would we have been spared the agony of a Trump admnistration if he had waited a week? Oh, what might have been!

When you don’t have a real life, these are the things you think about as you avoid doing anything actually productive. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll go out and get a real life.

But don’t count on it!

In less than two weeks I will enter my 80th decade. Let me put a better spin on that, I will be 79 years old. No matter how you phrase it, I will be ancient. And those cute jokes in the above meme … all too true! Really, how many more years (months, weeks?) before I will be buying Depends, surviving on Ensure, or picking out walkers from the geriatric selection on Amazon.com. After all, I’ll need a top notch walker to chase the nurses around my nursing home. How did that happen? How did that happen so fast?

Sometimes I look back and think, it was a long life. My early images usually come to me in black and white, slightly whiter at the edges. That’s probably because my extent photos of those early years look like that … monochrome and faded. It is almost as if they were from someone else’s existence, another person or not me at least, who lived in some exotic world long lost to us. It was a world without the internet, where you looked up things in an encyclopedia or in a library card file cabinet, where you talked to your friends face to face, where you used your phone only if someone else on your ‘party line’ wasn’t using it, where the milk man and ice man and coal man made regular deliveries, and where you played outside and unsupervised without concern about being kidnapped or abused. My parents encouraged me to play outside and in the traffic but that is another story.

I can recall being thrilled to be assigned as the ink well filler at my local Grade School. Yes, we had ink wells in those days. They were essential to refilling of our pens as we were instructed in how to write in the cursive style. I think quill pens had been discarded only a couple of years before I arrived. Yes, penmanship was taught in those pre-historic days, as well as diagramming sentences, and spelling correctly. Okay, I had trouble in all three areas but at least these skills were taught. Another honor I received was being assigned to walk a group of the younger kids home. I even got to wear a white thingy defining my elevated status. I don’t think more than a dozen of those insufferable little brats were lost on my watch.

There is another ‘sense’ I have about my dotage. I don’t feel this old. I still think about myself as a sexy guy with a trim body and a full head of hair. I put a pic on my Blog profile from that era just to remind me of those glory days, not that any of that helped me with the lasses. Nothing helped with members of the feminine tribe! Sigh! Once, perhaps about a decade ago if that, I was carded while buying something that required proof of age. When I laughed out loud at the at the clerk and revealed to him that I had been a schoolmate of Abe Lincoln, he adopted a look of incredulity … ‘well, you don’t look old.’ Really, I thought they had to pass a drug test before getting these jobs.

Then, of course, comes my daily reality test. It is a bitter test indeed, one of pain and suffering. I have to get up each and every morning. The groaning and muttering and complaining about a body that doesn’t work very well is followed by a horrific realization of the long distance to the male throne room. That moment is best not decribed. Such scenes are not suitable for women and children. And now I have this damn Fitbit watch, a device created by the Devil him or herself ostensibly to get me into shape. That evil thing sets down in irrefutable ways just how inert I have become. ‘What do you mean I only walked 174 steps today?’

I hate people to know this, but I once went to the gym regularly, and walked around the golf course (no cart). Back in high school and college I walked to school, long walks of several miles in all kinds of weather. Now, when the phone rings on the other side of the room, I debate whether the long trip is worth it. That crisis has been resolved by my new technology. The number now shows up on my watch and helps me ignore the calls from scammers promising to make me a literary star. In those, and many other moments, I know I am beyond ancient. OMG! Remember when we had to walk over to the TV to turn the tuner (i.e. pre-remote controls). How did we survive? While that health and fitness watch has come in handy in some ways, it did me no favors when it assigned me a personal nickname … lard ass.

There is one blessing for which I am grateful. I have all the financial resources I need to live in comfort and without worry. Even the enormous costs associated with having my spouse cared for in a memory care facility as she declined with Alzheimers was easily covered because we could pay for a good long-term insurance policy that was available and affordable back in the old days. I thought about all of this, and my good financial fortune, when I ran across a few statistics a couple of days ago:

Just before the pandemic hit, half of all American households had no retirement savings, none at all. While shocking, it has long been known that American’s are relatively poor savers (compared to Asian families for example). Further, it was estimated that only one-quarter of working households had defined benefit plans [pensions], down from at least one half as recently as 1989. But those that had contemporary retirement accounts haven’t saved much. Less than a third of all those houesholds held $100,000 or more in savings, hardly enough to enjoy a comfortable retirment. At ages 55-59, the prime pre-retirement years, the median household had $25,000 in retirement accounts, $5,000 in checking and savings, $40,000 in financial assets, and an overall net worth of $180,000 dollars. With such low levels of private resources, many elderly will rely substantially upon Social Security benefits. The average household benefit from that program today is about $22,000 … hardly enough to escape poverty. And this system will come under increasing pressure in future years.

If you were to travel through Sun City in Arizona or the Villages in Florida, you will see thousands of happy retirees enjoying their Golden Years. They will whip around in their golf carts, enjoy daily rounds of golf, drinks with neighbors in the late afternoon, followed by a meal at a fine restaurant. They might even enjoy the occasional cruise or trip to exotic locations like Las Vegas. Life seems good for our retirees. I recall driving through the villages and seeing all those smiling faces on people waving at us. They seemed so friendly until I remembered they voted for Trump in large numbers. Ugh!

Two things to keep in mind when looking upon these fortunate ones. They represent only a portion of all retirees and, because they congregate in highly visible communities, are easily confused as representing the norm for all of the elderly. Those struggling to survive day to day tend to be scattered and less visible. But there is another way to look on this matter. What we see before us usually is what is most obvious. There is a silent tragedy unfolding, hidden by the curtain of time and our typically myopic point of view.

Many observers have talked about the hollowing out of the middle class, something that happened gradually as a consequence of the Reagan revolution and the redistribution of income and wealth to the elite. Well, think about this. It is this vaunted American middle-class from a prior era that filled up all those modest ranch style homes in retirement communities. Most of the current inhabitants of these homes, or filling up the golf courses, were fortunate enough to work during the golden era that preceded the ‘war on working America’ that began when the newer tribe of Republicans seized control in the 1980s.

My wife and I can be counted upon as memebrs of a more fortunate generation. We came of age in a blessed period when the American Dream was alive and well. We both came from working class families of limited means. Still we were easily able to work our way through school to higher degrees from top universities (a Ph.D. for me and an honors Law Degree for her). And we worked in an era where defined pensions were commonplace, good job opportunities were available, and reasonable compensation packages were the norm. I taught at the college level and, day after day, saw the anxious looks of students who were burdened by crushing debt at the start of their careers and frightened by receding prospects in their futures. These were college students. I understand that the despair and anxiety among today’s high school youth are palpable and disturbing.

My point is that our economic sins of today won’t be fully expressed until sometime down the line. Untold numbers of future aging Americans will hit their golden years without adequate resources to get them through to the end. That is a sad prospect. The old saying is that we measure a society by how it treats its most vulnerable members … the young and the old. We have always sucked (comparatively speaking) in supporting our young. We have done somewhat better with our edlerly (they vote after all). But I fear even our limited successes with that population are about to end.

In the future, America may fail to protect neither its young nor its old. Pathetic indeed. So, perhaps I should not moan so much about my crumbling body and receding hairline. At least I have enough to eat well, too well in fact, and have a decent roof over my head. Hell, I can even buy a hi-tech fitness watch I’ll never use without worrying about the cost. Oh joy!

Nothing is worse than waking up in the morning. Okay, you optimists will say that the ‘alternative’ is worse …not waking up. Then again, we really don’t know that, do we. None of us has ever been to the other side that we know of at least. Perhaps these gorgeous Valkyry females will sweep me up to where Odin’s Great Hall is located (from Viking mythology) and where great feasting and debauchery are the norms of each day. But just my luck, Odin would be a Trump supporter and would kick my ass out within 12 hours of arriving, or is that 12 minutes. No, my afterlife will surely be a toasty experience but at least I’ll be with most of my friends, or would be if I had any.

Then there is this Fitbit watch I bought on impulse on Amazon. Okay, me with a Fitbit (an exercise and health aid that also provides some useful info) is like an eskimo buying a top-of-the-line air conditioner. Stupid, right? But here is the thing. They popped up on the Amazon site when I went to see if my latest book had finally been uploaded for sale (it hadn’t). So I paused and started looking them over. I seldom buy crap except for books but occasionally I can be lured in to at least ogle technology, even when I know these devices are way beyond my skill level. But before I could move on, there was someone at the door delivering my brand new Fitbit watch. What?

Not quite but almost. I did order one at about 9:30 in the morning and it was delivered by Amazon a little after noon on the same damn day! I couldn’t believe it. Then I vaguely remember there was something in their pitch about ordering within the next 35 minutes and you would get it …. I stopped reading thinking it would be in a day or two. But they were talking about hours, not days!!!

I’m convinced no one else got theirs this promptly. I am convinced that there is a plot by those who hate couch potatoes. These evil people are everywhere. I have a neighbor couple. They seem nice and normal but they are forever trying to do me in by suggesting that I go hiking with them. Hiking!!!!!! I would rather be eaten alive by a horde of army ants. Well, probably not, but hiking is a close second.

Anyway, I now know that corporate America is also scheming against me, probably in cahoots with my neighbors. But I tried the thing out and, in a miracle beyond anything Rod serling (Twilight Zone) ever imagined, I was able to sync it to my phone and get it working. Amazingly, I liked it. It told me I had walked at least am 8th of a mile that day and once got my heart rate up to 40 beats a minute. I didn’t find all the features but one caught my attention. It was the exhortation to get off my ass and move a bit. I was less enchanted with the nickname the device gave me … lardass. But I must admit, this feature made me long for my late wife. She also performed the same useful service.

Ah, but the insanity continues. Now, I found a good friend who mentioned liking her old Fitbit but hers had a cracked cover and was old. After some discussion, I went back to the Amazon site and discovered I had overlooked the top-of-the-line model. At this moment, all attachment to reality abandoned me. Now, I just had to have this more expensive whizz-bang model. So, I gave her my brand new one and ordered a version used by world-class athletes, Olympic medalists, and other such types. Yup, when God was passing out brains, he must have missed me in the queue. It took Amazon, a whole day to get this one to me. They must think folk into exercise are like druggies, they need their fix immediately … no waiting. I could wait … really I could.

So, now I have this great achievenent in technology. Will I soon be buff and sexy and have the girls chasing after me? Wait, am I delusional? Even when I was skinny and in shape, with a full head of hair, the girls never chased after me. I always could make them laugh, but that was at me, not with me. However, I did find a few features of use. It was nice to know the time, the weather, the fact that my heart rate would double everytime I got up to walk all the way to the male throne room, and so forth. It even provided me with details on what I do best in life … sleep. It laid out when I went to bed and woke up, how much time in the interval was spent awake, in REM sleep, in light sleep, and in deep sleep. I suppose that’s useful but why escapes me at the moment.

But as I played with my toy a bit I kept coming across so many other features, some well beyond my understanding. I could work on my EDAs by covering the watch with my hand and keeping still for 2 minutes and perhaps listening to easy music provided on their Premium Service Plan, which is free for 6 months to reel you in. Of course, they offer a complete set of workout options to help you to your fitness and weight goals. I can assure you right now, they will remain untouched. I was tempted to write to Fitbit to inform them that their strenuous workout regimens were not needed. I had my helpful neighbor couple who were more than eager to kill me for free.

But here is the real problem. I’m not smart enough for this kind of phone. I don’t even come close. Every time I pause to play with it, I find features I never knew I had. Some I can understand and make work, other will remain an eternal mystery. Even when I get one to work, there is only a remote chance I will find it a 2nd time. I don’t know how I found it the first time.

When I found the alarm function I tried it out. Looked good until the alarm time came and then nothing happened but the slightest vibration. Somewhere, in a location never to be uncovered is the secret to actually hearing the alarm go off. But now I can’t even find the initial function. I got a Ph.D. and spent most of my life in academia. You would think I could manage a freaking watch. But no!!!! All that education, and I learned nothing useful. I bet 12 year olds who are flunking grammar school can work my watch.

So, as a distraction from my watch miseries, I glance through my phone to catch up of the news. Now, that’s sure to raise my spirits. Ah, by the way, does anyone have extra strong rope that might carry my weight? The other ropes I tried all broke.

No matter, I’ll make do. I see that there were three mass murders in Texas alone over the weekend with 18 dead and many wounded. Of course, Republican offiicials responded with alacrity and penetrating wisdom. Governor Abbott immediately began tweeting about the border crisis and blaming that on Biden. A new Christian Nationalist far-right member of Congress from the Lone-Star State suggested God had some kind of ultimate responsibility but we could put armed guards at all malls and many other public places. Yes, more guns, always more guns. The Republican obsession with guns will turn us into an armed camp seldom seen in any advanced nation since the Nazi’s controlled most of Europe and the Soviets suppressed freedom in Eastern Block countries after the Nazis were defeated. What a future to anticipate!

Then I see that Ron Desantis is pushing a Bill that would exclude Chinese from purchasing land in the Sunshine State. Now, the target group for this wise piece of legislation own some 380,000 acres at present while a comparable group of Canadians own about 12.5 million. But let’s go after the people that look different. It is the Chinese Exlusion act of the late 19th century all over again. Perhaps camps are next for our wanna-be autocrat from Florida. Are the camps used to lock up Japanese-Americans during WWII still available?

The road to authoritarianism and horror starts with dividing us from them. Then you keep the base fearful and riled up as the steps toward Fascism are taken one by one.

Time to stop. I just looked at my spiffy watch which is telling me I’m just about to stroke out. I would for sure if she next told me to get off my lard ass and start moving, which she usually does at this time (when I write my daily, inspired thoughts). Until tomorrow, I will be calm unless I listen to her and start exercising. If that happens, all bets are off and I might be lying prone on a local street as my nighbors walk around me on their daily hikes. Okay, I’m sure they will double-bag me and out me out for trash pick-up.

BTW … I also have a diferent watch that summons medical help if something goes wrong, like I collaspe while hiking. But I kept dropping the damn thing or doing something that got me these calls asking ‘the nature of my emergency.’ Then I would have to explain that there is no emergency other than the fact that I’m just a complete idiot. This is true, but no need to prove that to the world. I stopped using the damn thing.

I wonder how long will the Fitbit device last :-).

I have been witness to a modern day tragedy, one that has taken place since the beginning of my professional career in Wisconsin. When I arrived in Madison in 1971, first to work for State government before moving to the University in 1975, the State’s reputation for clean, competent, and progressive government was unparalleled. The State’s bureaucracy was shielded from political meddling by citizens boards who oversaw most key agencies. A strong civil service system prevented any form of patronage or nepotism from diluting what was a highly competent and dedicated workforce from functioning in the public interest. As I ran into officials from other states and from Washington, I heard the same refrain again and again. Wisconson was the state they looked to as the proverbial ‘city on the hill’ where the highest ideals of public service had been realized.

That was true from my perspective. I enjoyed my time as a civil servant during which we introduced, among other things, groundbreaking innovations in the automated management of human service and welfare systems, or at least begun that process. I once asked a colleague at the time why this was so. Just what made Wisconsin special. She thought this might be attributed to the strong Germanic and Scandinavian cultural persectives that dominated the state. A tradition of public service and service to the entire community formed the underlying zeitgeist of how government was seen and what was expected from it. Milwaukee had long been run by socialist mayors until a mere decade before my arrival and they had a reputation for competency and scrupulous honesty.

And then there was the famous ‘Wisconsin Idea,’ where the boundaries of the University were the boundaries of the State. Put simply, the intellectual resources of the University of Wisconsin would be brought to bear to improve the governance of the people and in the service of all the people. The groundwork for the full expression of the Wisconsin Idea can be traced back to Robert M. Lafollette and Charles Van Hise. They were members of Wisconsin’s class of 1879. Lafollette, a liberal Republican when there were such animals, was better known as ‘Fighting Bob’ and went on to become a nationally known political figure and champion of progressive reforms. Van Hise served as University President from 1903 to 1918, a period when the Wisconsin Idea flourished and matured. This concept gained such currency that Teddy Roosevelt, as he accepted the Presidential nomination in 1912, observed that “the University of Wisconsin has been more influential than any other agency in making what it has become, a laboratory for wise social and industrial experiments in the betterment of conditions.”

One of the major reformers from this period was John R. Commons who joined the faculty in 1904. Lafollette immediately recruited him to work on a strenghtened civil service law, one that would shift state government from a patronage based civil service to one founded on expertise and merit. He went on to strengthen the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library (later Bureau). This improved the technical capabilities of the lawmakers, and diminished an odious tradition whereby special interests drafted state laws since that capacity did not exist within the legislature up to that point. Corporate lawyers were eager to help out, as you might imagine, but that quite obviously was a transparent conflict of interests.

Commons, late in his career, observed “I know see that all of my devices and recommendations for legislation in the state or nation have turned on this assumption of a nonpartisan administration by specially qualified appointees.” The first era of the Wisconsin Idea did more than enhance the apparatus of state government. University experts worked with the legistature to intriduce develop and enact a number of progressive ideas such as a progressive income tax, workers compensation, and so much more. If there was a birthplace for the nation’s ‘progressive era,’ it was in the Badger State.

The second strong era of the Wisconsin Idea occurred during the the Great Depression of the 1930s. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in response to the horrific suffering brought on by a global economic collapse, established the Committee on Economic Security to develop a strategic response to the unfolding tragedy. Not surprisingly, the President looked to the University Wisconsin for ideas and experts. He tapped Ed Witte, one of John Common’s students, to head this critical committee. Witte, in turn, brought along Arthur Altmeyer, Harold Groves, and the young Wilbur Cohen to Washington in addition to several social insurance ideas they had been thinking about. This ‘brain trust’ was largely responsible for enacting the Social Security Act in a mere six months. This act fundamentally altered the character of national governance in the U.S. by drastically increasing the role the federal government would play in supporting vulnerable Americans.

A third Wisconsin idea era occurred in the 1960s. Robert Lampman, an economist from U.W. was serving on JFK’s Council of Economic Advisors. He (and Burt Weisibrod, another U.W. economist) wrote a seminal chapter in the annual economic report to the President which argued that economic growth alone would not lift all boats out of want. There were structural pockets of poverty in the ecomomy that would need direct intervention. His ideas were picked up by JFK’s successor and became the basis for the 1965 declaration of a War On Poverty by Lyndon Johnson. When the federal government realized they needed academic help in this new war, they immediately looked to Wisconsin for intellectual firepower. The Institute for Research on Poverty was established in 1966 with Bob Lampman as the first Acting Director. Almost six decades later, the Institute is still going strong.

When I moved from State governemt to the University in 1975, I was able to facilitate a working relationship between the State and the Academy that worked well for many years. I don’t have time to recount all the benefits of such a parnership but they encompassed such areas as Child Support, a State Earned Income tax, the integration of welfare with labor market and human service systems, innovations in child welfare and child care, and so much more.

Buy alas, Camelot never lasts forever. Even during those halcyon days, when the quality of State government in Wisconsin was the envy of all, some cracks appeared. In the late 1970s, changes were made to the structure of state government that introduced more politics. The State’s chief executive was given more power to appoint top bureaucrats. I paid particular attention to this shift largely because my spouse was on the Committee that recommended such a shift. She and I argued at the time (politely). She maintained that the Chief Executive needed more control of the bureaucracy to govern effectively. I responded that such a change would turn Wisconsin into just another state paralyzed by political disputes and managed by suspect lackeys in too many (though not all) cases. A decade later she finally swallowed her pride and admitted that I had been right. [NOTE: That might have been the only time that happened in our five decades together.]

While the slide toward a politicized state government accelerated under Republican Tommy Thompson, there is little doubt that the last decade has seen the most precipitous collapse of what made Wisconsin special (though Democratice Governor Tony Evers has at least slowed down Republican mischief). In 2015, during his short run for the Presidency, Republican Governor Scott Walker cut the University’s budget, packed the school’s Board of Regents with hard-right conservatives, gutted tenure protections, and went after the ‘Wisconsin Idea.’ Republican politicians talked as if the school should be a glorified vocational or tech school where the prime mission was “connecting students and workers withthe skills needed in today’s workforce.” They disprespected all notions of a broad-based educational experience or helping students to become critical thinkers. Walker even tried to excise language in the University’s mission referring to the Wsiconsin idea but the blowback was immediate and fierce.

Not unexpectedly, U.W. began a reputational and actual slide even as the school’s administrators spent millions on faculty retention packages. Top faculty always have options and the best of the best began fleeing to more accepting pastures. While you can always fill faculty slots, you cannot easily get the stars that will bering in resources. Not surprisingly, U.W. slid down research funding rankings. I recall that, at one point, the school had been 2nd overall in federal research dollars, right after Johns Hopkins . In National Science Foundation funding, the school fell from 10th place in 2010 to 16th in 2021 while overall research and evelopment spending (from all sources) declined form the 3rd position nationally in 2010 and to 8th in 2021. U.W.s reputational ranking most recently was placed at 49th among all universities. It had been in the 30s as I recall before the attacks began, a very high spot for a public university.

But the most grievous area of Wisconsin’s decline has been in the core of any mature democracy … the right to vote. After Republicans took over full control of state government in 2010, they accelerated their attacks on democracy. Beyond further gerrymandering voting districts, they worked hard at voter suppression by making the voting process more difficult, especially in urban areas where monorities lived. Among other things, they tightened residency requirements, shortened the time frames for early voting or the use of absentee ballots, enacted tougher voter I.D regulations, and disallowed ballot drop boxes. The proffered reason for all this was voting security but that is nonsense. In 48 general primary and special elections between 2012 and 2022, only 192 election fraud cases were brought before the courts. That represented some 0.0006% of all votes cast. And most of these were not intentional (e.g., a felon casting a vote becsuse they did not know they were ineligible).

Voter suppression and gerrymandering are desperate attempts by conservatives to retain control as they see their power slipping away. Consider the following. The University of Wisconsin is an economic engine, especially in Dane County where it is located. The research conducted at the University has spun off many hi-tech firms and businesses. One example is Epic Systems. If your doctor is entering your information on a computer anywhere in the country (or maybe the world), he is likley using an Epic Medical Information System. They started with about 3 employees about three or four decades ago and now have well over 12,000 well-paid workers (the last I looked) and are growing like mad.

You would think Republicans would love all this and support the University as an economic engine that spawns such economic growth as well as bringing in hundreds of millions in research monies (not to forget the forign students who come to study at a World Class University). I shudder to think what the local economy would look like if Republicans succeed in destroying what is left of a world class instituion. But here is the problem for the ‘right.’ These new and mostly younger hi-tech and well educated workers tend to vote Democratic. That cannot be tolerated and no price is too bigh to pay.

In the last election this Spring, Dane county sent more voters to the polls than did the State’s population center Milwaukee and some 82 percent of them went for the liberal candidate for the States highest court … who won by a surprising margin over a hard-right MAGA type. And, as all these hi-tech companies continue to grow, so does the population of Dane County. On the other hand, as rural areas stagnate or decline in population, Republicans see the State sliding from purple to blue. They would do anything, including sacrificing a world class university and and slowing the state’s economic growth while destroying a functioning democracy, simply to stop that decline in their fortunes. After all, they represent the interests, not of all the people of Wisconsin, but of the favored few who are wealthy enough to buy what they want.

Fighting Bob LaFollette must be turning in his grace. But it is not too late to turn Wisconsin around, though righting the ship is far from a done deal! Stay tuned.

Charles III has been crowned as Britain’s monarch. I have not watched a moment of the ceremony nor any of the attendant hoopla. If I wished to torment myself, I would go hiking or something equally ridiculous. However, the occasion of this event raises an issue I’ve periodically noodled … how should we treat our ‘leaders.’ Just how should we judge them and, more importantly, select them.

I was a child when the last coronation took place. I have this faint recollection of watching some repeat of that ceremony on a grainy black and white small TV as my father cynically made a couple of snide comments. He was 100% Irish and our tribe were supposed to hate the Brits. While there is ample justification for such animosity, Anglophobia, like virtually all the other prejudices, never took root in my heart. (Correction: I despise Republicans). Besides, Elizabeth was young, attractive, and appealing. Phillip, her consort, was handsome and dashing. The ceremony, as I recall, was nothing like we had here.

However, monarchical dynasties have one glaring flaw. They are populated by real people. Few, if any other families, have public relations efforts to rival the Windsors. At the same time, few families (except maybe for the Kardasians) have as much attention paid to their every move. No group can withstand such a complete immersion in the public eye without being tarnished. That is axiomatic.

Harry and Meghan have provided more than enough ammunition to the dynasty detractors and scandal demanders. If it were not them, someone or something else would offer up salacious gossip and innuendo to a public demanding the dirt essential to taking down the elite and the privileged.

Now, I have no real opinion on the Royals. Mostly, I am noodling the emotional attachment we place upon our so called leaders.’‘ There remain several democratic monarchies in the world where the king or queen retain little political authority but serve as a symbolic head of state. In other regimes, a President is elected for a set period of time though real power lies with a body of elected officials who select a Prime Minister from among the majority party. In that case, the ‘President’ often is involved in forming a governing coalition especially if multiple parties compete for power.

Only in America does the President, or ‘head of state,’ exert so much executive power and authority, except in those countries where your garden variety autocrat remains (like Putin). Though the Constitution tried to balance and distribute authority between the executive, a bi-cameral legislature, and the judiciary, power has evolved up to the Chief Executive over time. Our first President tried mightily to strip the office of monarchical overtones but distributed power has always felt inefficient or confusing. People, especially in times of difficulty, want strong leadership and clear accountability.

In a pure sense, our Chief Executive is supposed to be merely an executive, someone who manages the ship of state. They are not necessarily supposed to don a higher mantle of authority nor wield dictatorial powers. I’m sure the Founding Father’s would be appalled by what the office has become today.

Over time, ironically, kings have become weaker (or disappeared) especially after WWI. The British Monarchy remains because it accepted a gradual loss of authority with appropriate while the U.S. struggles against those who would take the final steps toward replacing a limited executive with an outright autocratic.

We often want to invest those at the top with way more than formal authority. I watched a marvelous movie last night (Darkest Hour). It was about the days after the Nazis turned west and invaded France, British PM Chamberlain was dumped, and Winston Churchill installed in his place. In short, when most even in his own party wanted to sue for peace with Hitler as British armed forces were huddled at Dunkirk, he held firm and rallied the nation. He was larger than life. Imagine history if England had not held out.

We also like to look back at strong or charismatic men in our past … FDR’s fireside chats during the depression and JFK’s charm and charisma during the height of the Cold War. We want to replace them with contemporary equivalents. In effect, while we have a Chief Executive, we still look toward the occupant of that chair for something more than mere administrative skill. We want to be inspired, to have someone in office who elevates and motivates us. We also want someone who seems to care about us.

When I first shook Bill Clinton’s hand, he seemed to be looking into me as if I mattered, which I didn’t of course. All the stories about him were true, he was magnetic. Hillary never had the same skill at ‘connecting’ and paid a bitter price.

But do we need a substitute king as our President. In the old days, the Monarch was an expression of the country and the people. Today, we should be beyond such infantile needs. As a people nominally governing ourselves, should not we focus on competence over charisma? No corporate CEO prtforms all the task essential to the business nor does he or she often sell the companies products with their personality. Their main task is to make strategic decisions and, more importantly, select good people to do the real work. If they can present well to the larger world, fine. But is it essential?

Here’s the bottom line. We want leaders to be competent, to be approachable, and to be inspirational. Now that’s a good trick. If I had to pick, and we always do, I would go with competence. Trump is inspirational to his base, but it is hard to imagine a more incompetent and dysfunctional executive.

So many have told me in recent years that they just didn’t like Hillary. Some did not vote for her for this reason. I would always think ‘you didn’t like her.’ So freaking what! You were not going to marry her for crying out loud.

In choosing a leader, selecting someone with values you respect is critical. But you don’t have to agree on everything. Another of my favorite mantras is ‘if you want the perfect candidate, you will have to run for the office yourself.’ No one will be perfect in your eyes. That is a given! But, for God’s sake, don’t support someone merely because they bring out your worst instincts or hate the same people you do. Republican candidates today campaign on the basis of pure bile … which can stir up the greatest froth among the following herd. But that is NOT governing.

Where am I going with all this? This morning I read that Biden’s low ratings give Republicans a shot in 2024. Many question his mental acuity. I will repeat. He doesn’t have to be perfect. I am confident in his overall values and that he will pick good people. That alone will put him way beyond any Republican candidate.

As with Charles, I am not a Biden devotee. But I wish both leaders well.

This meme doesn’t just mean Christianity. You can add Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikkhism, Judaism, or Islam to the mix. At the core of each is a fundamental teaching so universal that it is called the ‘Golden Rule’ or the ‘Law of Reciprocity.’

Before I get too spiritual, how about a temporal note. On the economic front, we added 253,000 jobs last month. The overall unemployment rate fell to 3.4% while for Black’s it was an historic low of 4.7% while Hispanics had a rate of 4.4%. The rate for adult women was 3.1 %

Such historic numbers don’t happen by accident. The slow and steady Biden has passed the Infrastructure Act, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act among other initiatives designed to invest in workers. This is counter to the traditional Republican approach of giving the wealthy more money and hoping for the best. The outcome of that tactic is totally predictable. The rich get obscenely rich and the rest of us mere mortals struggle.

This is a form of reciprocity in a way. People vote for representatives they believe, or hope, will respond by considering their interests or at least don’t ignore them. Now, anyone who has done policy realizes that not all interests can be satisfied simultaneously. There are always winners and losers. However, good governance seeks a balance on this scale. When a narrow group, like the Uber wealthy under Republicans, are always preferred, that faith in governance is broken. The moral and fiscal rule of reciprocity is shattered.

On a more spiritual level, the ‘golden rule,’ or ‘law of reciprocity’ is so simple. All major religions enjoin us to treat others as we would like to be treated. Christ’s message (as passed down since we don’t know what he really said) was even stronger on these matters. He told us in many ways to reach out explicitly to those unlike ourselves. We must love those who look, behave, and believe differently than us. This is the one and only true commandment.

I don’t know what was in the minds of those who set down the early spiritual precepts, roughly in the 8th and 9th centuries for Islam, the 2nd and 3rd centuries for Christianity, and much earlier for Judaism. But their thoughts and sentiments are remarkably similar. It is as if they all had the same insight … we are all in this together and we damn well better get along.

Too bad many of the followers of each tradition lost their ways. They became obsessed with enforcing conformity and failed to listen or seek the prime mandate of their belief system. That mandate is remarkably simple, yet the most difficult of all to follow:

Love yourself and love others as you would yourself!

This departs from Republican orthodoxy. Love only yourself and to hell with everyone else! Think about this tomorrow.

NOTE: I’m doing this in my phone. Hopefully, it us readable.

A NOTE: I am gaining a bit of traction with these blogs. Over the past few days I’ve been visited by folk from the U.S. (obviously) but also the U.K., Spain, Canada, Germany, Norway, Italy, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, the Dominican Republic, N. Madedonia, Romania, Mexico, India, and the Ukraine. Hopefully, the Ukrainian visitor is not a Russian soldier invading that brave country but there you have it. I also have no idea whether they like what they read or not. Since my grasp of reality is tenuous at best, I’ll assume the best. [A quick positive note on that: Putin’s mercenaries, the Wagner Group, may be abandoning him.] Busy day today so only time for a rather quick thought.

Could anyone look at what remains of the Republican Party and not conclude that it has become a full-blown cult bent on establishing an autocracy or what would be called a dictatorship in polite society?

Apparently, Arizona’s Kari Lake is Trump’s front runner for the VP slot on his 2024 ticket. By way of reminder, she is the extreme MAGA enthusiast who, upon narrowly losing her race for the U.S. Senate, did the full-blown Trump rant of crying fraud and refusing to accept the results. Nothing like a complete loss of contact with reality to cement one’s credentials for high office.

I bring her up after reading that she has suggested the GOP dismiss all primaries and other traditional protocols for selecting their nominee and simply rally around their glorious leader … The Donald. The details of democracy are just so inconvenient when you wish to coronate a Supreme Leader, or establish yourself as his successor. Trump, for his part, has already said he will not debate any other nominees. He simply presumes he is the presumptive Fuhrer. After all, he won in 2020, and bigly (if you accept his delusions). Many of his rabid followers still believe he is running the country from Mar-A-lago with the fake media putting out lies about this Biden guy.

It was clear that The Donald always thirsted to subvert the checks and balances established by our Constitution and, in their place, assert total control. During his first time around the Ferris Wheel, he bristled at those who reminded him of the consraints he faced, firing many who would obey the law as opposed to his personal whims. He would have his Cabinet members heap personal praise on him at their rare gatherings as if he were a Middle-Eastern potentate and not a civilian chief executive. He yearned for a military parade marching down Penssylvania Avenue with he, the Supreme Leader, high above in the viewing stand, just as Communist Autocracy did for decades in Moscow on May Day. Didn’t he praise Putin and the other dictators around the globe while spurning NATO and our peer democracies?

He won’t be constrained if he were to get the brass ring a second time. He already has suggested a test for all Government employees and the firing of those who fail. Let me be clear on this. Such a review would be little more than a loyalty oath to Trump as the Supreme Leader. He would replace all Constitutional restraints, or try his damndest.

Would the reasonable members of his party hold him back, force some minimal acceptance of the rule of law on their leader? I would not hold my breath. While a few in the GOP have not gone over to the dark side and may retain reservations about their nominal head, most have evidenced little reluctance to support the pillars of democracy. They have crammed through Supreme Court Justices, employed transparent voter suppression tactics, enacted gerrymandered voting boundaries in local elections, and issued campaign ads that would have impressed Joseph Goebbels for their dishonesty and blatant misinformation. Power is all and they are in the game.

But he cannot win, right? Surely, a man that lost by 3 million votes (in the overall vote) in 2016 and 7 million the second time around, would be beaten soundly in 2024. No rational person could see a path by which Trump and Lake might weave their way through the electoral college, especially if he is in jail or house arrest for one or more of his felonies. After all, while Biden is doing a good job, even if he is old and not very exciting. Then again, Americans are childish enough to feel they must like their President. Really? We are not marrying the freaking person for crying out loud.

What worries me is something else, the stuff of nightmares. Even a boring Biden-Harris ticket should win IF …. there is not some catastrophe. What if Americans experience some form of existential threat? Remember, Hitler was yesterday’s news, a has been and never was, until the great depression brought Germany’s economy crashing down in the early 30s and unsettling civil strife between left and right coursed through their streets.

I am not one to give into flights of conspirital fancy (at least not before Trump came along) but here is something to think about. The one thing that might boost Trump’s chances in 2024 would be some kind of existential crisis. War might be one but people tend to rally around the current leader in that circumstance. A climactic disaster? No, that might be the same as war and besides, you can’t dial up one of those on demand. But what about an economic calamity of 1930’s proportions. That swept Hitler into poawer and the Republicans out of power for a generation while the political landscape in the U.S. was rewritten for another two generations.

But you cannot dial up one of those on demand either, or can you? The debt limit debate is nearing a crisis point. If we default, and apparently we have less than a month left before we run out of fiscal tricks, we face disaster. When America cannot pay its bills, you not only have an economic fallout of unimaginable proportions but you would shake the foundation of our trust in government. We assume our government will honor its debts. If it does not, if it betrays that trust, all bets are off and the very basis of even our currency is moot. It is not as if we back up our greenbacks with gold or precious metals. We back it up with a moral and, until now, inviolate guarantee … the backing of our national government.

Not even Republicans are so venal and evil that they would break the country, and destroy its credibility, just for a grab at power, right? Don’t be so sure. After all, they shut the government down in 1995, 1996, 2013, 2018, and 2019 for temporaty periods just to get their way. But they always backed off when, to their shock, the public missed government services even though the essential ones continued. These were not even ‘default’ shutdowns but merely inconveniences due to unpassed budget bills.

Default is magnitudes more important and consequential. Democrats cooperated with Republicans in raising the debt limit three times during Trump’s reign even though the spiking deficits were all about his efforts to shift trillions of dollars to the wealthy through egregious tax breaks. Dems would not endanger the country, or the globe, merely because of some selfish policies by their opponents. They care about the country and governing.

You might assume Republicans, at the end of the day, also would act responsibly. I so wish I could believe that. But letting the the U.S, default rayther than raise the debt ceiling would give them the crisis that might push Trump over the top in 2024. Desperate voters are not rational voters. Nor do they connect the dots well and blame the right people for their problems. And, if the GOP can get power just one more time, they just might unravel what remains of our experiment in ‘government of the people, for the people, and by the people.’ We might not get our democracy back for a very long time, if ever.

On that bright note, I’ll sign off for today, and likely for this weekend! But, like your favorite horror flic villain, I’ll be back.

I may have to dial it back over the next few days as I am otherwise rather occupied. After all, it’s not as if I’m paid for sharing my wit and wisdom though I do get compensated way more than they are worth. So, more bad jokes today. And these are a bit sexist but if we don’t laugh at ourselves, who will. And nothing, I mean nothing, is more hilarious than men and women trying to get along.

…………………….

FBI Assassin: The FBI had an opening for for a top level assassin. After the candidates had completed all the testing and interviews, they were given one final hurdle to complete.

To the first candidate, “Your wife is in the next room. Take this gun, go in their, and shoot her.”

The candidate looked appalled. “I simply can’t do that. She’s my wife.”

The FBI screener said. “Well, then you are not the man for the job. Take your wife and go home.”

They said the same to the second candidate. He looked shocked, but took the gun and went into the room. After a minute of two, he came out. “I tried but, in the end, I just couldn’t do it.”

“Sorry then, you and your spouse may leave now.”

The third candidate was a woman. She was told her husband was in the room and given the same instruction. She went in. Seconds later there were several shots followed by loud banging, crashing, and sounds of a desperate struggle.

Alarmed, the FBI screener opened the door and there she stood, wiping the sweat from her brow. “That damn gun was loaded with blanks so I had to kill him with the chair.”

[courtesy of Sue Wilson]

……………………………….

A Lesson: A Sunday school teacher wondered if her young students were confused about the nature of Jesus. So, she asked them where they thought Jesus lived.

“In heaven,” little Jimmy said.

The teacher smiled.

“In my heart,” said little Tommy, always the suck-up.

The teacher smiled even more broadly.

Then she turned to little Mary who said, “In the bathroom.”

“The bathroom?” The teacher was surprised. “Why the bathroom?”

Because my dad, when he gets up every morning, goes to our bathroom and starts banging on the door while shouting, “Jesus Christ, are you still in there?”

…………………………

The Weight Issue: One day, Tom was having a brew with his good buddy. “So, last night, I threw my arm over my wife while we were in bed and the task felt easier than usual. So, I asked, ‘love, have you lost a bit of weight?”’

“Aaaw, honey, that’s so sweet of you, but I don’t think so,” she said. “In fact, to be honest, I may have added a couple more pounds this week. What prompted your statement.”

“Oh, now it all makes better sense,” I said aloud what should have remained unstated. “I see that you have sunk deeper into the mattress.”

His buddy shook his head in disbelief at how utterly stupid his mate was. “So, I assume you’ll be needing a place to stay for a few days.”

It is a matter of great interest to me how false perceptions emerge and solidify as they become an accepted consensus, at least among some. Really, how did the Republican Party become the stewards of economic stability and growth when they have been behind every economic disaster since Coolidge and Hoover drove us into the abyss in 1929.

If you examine the record over the last few decades, Democratic leadership is associated with job growth, wage increases, and overall positive economic activity, including gains in the equity markets. Since World War II, the stock market increased the most in the administrations of Barak Obama (plus 148%) and Bill Clinton (plus 227%). Correspondingly, the market fell in only two administrations during this period, both Republican. They fell by 16 percent during Nixon’s tenure and by 22 percent under Bush Junior’s watch.

Nevertheless, Joe six-pack today thinks the Dems are death to their financial future, their job security, and their cherished values. That was not the thinking in my world growing up. I heard the adults in the 1950s chat about the two parties, claiming that Republicans always ruined the economy while Democrats tended to get us into war. Such easy categorizations had an implicit rationale back then. World War I, II, and Korea all started under the Democrats, while the global depression started under the Republicans, who were clueless about what to do when it did begin. Of course, this was Massachusetts which was never considered a mainstream place in any political sense.

Even in good old Wisconsin, there were large swaths of western and northwestern counties, largely rural in character, that were strongly Democratic when I first moved to the state in the early 1970s. The farmers and small business people living there yet recalled the time when New Deal programs helped them weather the bad economic times, kept the family farms from going under and the towns from declining into ghostly apparitions.

Over time, and certainly aided by the growing drumbeats of right-wing propoganda, their gratitude was replaced with growing suspicions and raw fears. The Democrats, they were told again and again, were helping those people who were not like them … lazy minorities living in dangerous urban areas. The elites were poisoning the minds of their children in Universities like UW Madison, clearly a bastion of socialist and Communist thinking. They were permitting alien forces to invade our nation and crime to run wild as those liberals and other ‘woke’ types coddled the evil doers while failing to protect their kind. There was no end to the perfidies to be laid at the laps of the State’s Dems. Today, the rural arts of the state are Republican while the Dems are found huddling in the larger urban centers.

Crime is a good example. Nothing like the irrational fear of rampant rape and pillage to scare people into looking for a strong savior, a Trump or Desantis type. An ongoing survey taps the perception of whether crime in the respondent’s area is growing better or worse. Before Trump emerged on the national scene, Republicans were more pessimistic but the gap was not large. By the time Donald was ousted from ofiice, the gap was some 30 percentage points with 42 percent of Dems saying worse and 72 percent of Republicans saying the same. This was the case even though more from the GOP camp lived in these rural, fairly crime free areas. Trump, and his propoganda outlets, hammered away at the theme that the world in Democratic-controlled areas was falling apart in civil disorder.

One reason behind this ‘the sky is falling’ consensus among Republicans is apparent … the relentless push by the conservative propoganda machine that liberals were permitting evil to run amok. I need not say the obvious, this fear tactic is straight out of the traditional Fascist playbook. Fox news anchors and their guests spotlighted crime some 80 percent more frequently than their MSNBC peers. And they did not emphasisze the good job law enformement was doing.

What was the truth? Well, like all social issues, it is complicated. Reported violent crimes were down in 2022, after Biden took office. However, you would not know this from the continued drumbeat from conservative sources which doubled-down on their pushing of tired shibboleths that crime was rampant wherever and whenever Dems ruled. In fact, homicides were at 8.2 per 100,000 people at the end of the Trump administration. To put that in perspective the rate was 10 per 100,000 when Clinton took office and fell to 6 when he left. The rate was about 5 at the end of Obama’s rule. While many things might contribute to such trends, the rates were highest at the end of each Republican administration. The Dems apparently did a decent job on their watches.

Think about the right-wing prescriptions for violent crimes. They want to put more guns on the streets. They pass ‘stand your ground’ laws where you can shoot down someone whom you believe threatens you. The cowtowns in the old west had much stronger gun laws, often restricting them within city limits. Today’s Republicans want everyone armed and dangerous. And so, when some folk in Texas asked a neighbor to quiet down (he was shooting off a loud gun from his porch), his response was to kill five people including a child. One witness said the assassin claimed ‘that he was on his own property so he could do what he wanted.’ Never forget that gun-related deaths on a proportional basis are much higher in red states as opposed to blue states. Guns do not save lives. Commons sense laws do.

As I have said in the past, the American foundational myth is that of the lone individual immersed in a Darwinian struggle for survival and triumph. When stripped of all rhetoric, the American dream is a few fortunate individuals rising to the top while most struggle to stay afloat. As the nation’s wealth and income inequality worsen to levels not seen since the great 1929 crash, so do the ties and bonds that keep us together. It is hard to sustain a sense of togetherness when unfairness abounds and the consequences of failure so obvious and final. It is difficult to remain sanguin or optimistic when a few reap all the rewards, often because of a rigged system that give huge advantages to those well connected, likely those with the correct skin color and enjoying fortuitous backgrounds. My oft repeated mantra is that if you want the ‘American Dream’ you best emigrate to one of several Scandinavian countries that top the list for happy citizens.

When that preferential system favoring the established elite is threatened, fear arises which is followed by uglier possibilities. WASPS once had a comfortable control of the levers of power. Now, that hegemony is seen to be slipping away. Caucasions represented some 76 percent of the nation’s population in 1990. They are down to 58 percent now and will lose their majority status by 2045. This has led to uncomfortable outcomes like the creation of an ‘American First’ caucus in Congress that is dedicated to the preservation of ‘Anglo-Saxon traditions.’ In the past, this would have been labeled a Klu Klux Klan rally. It has led to Trump and Desantis and other autocratic types who wage ‘culture wars’ to keep their followers stoked in a blind fury and thus less able or willing to identify the real sources of their discomfort.

The undisputed ruling group has never been comfortable with the potential loss of power. Their fear leads to hate, which leads to violence. Thus we have the January 6th attack on the Capitol. However, the storm troopers breaking down doors and clubbing police officers were not the white elite but the less educated who could easily be manipulated by blatant forms of propoganda, the ‘Proud Boys’ and their ilk. The easily led are the ones now going to prison, not the ones who fed them lies and pushed them on their way up the Capitol steps. The MAGA hats they wore, and the slogans they shouted, could have been heard by Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts in a prior era. It was the same slogans, the same fears, the same hate, the same violent solutions.

This widespread fears among adults seeps into the consciousness of the young. We have seen depression and anxiety among teens ramp up dramatically over the past decade in particular. Some of their worries are my worries, like climate change and the loss of careers to advanced computers (though I’m too old to wrorry much about either of these). But mostly they look with foreboding toward their futures. That is so different from my youth where, though raised in a family of very limited means, I saw abundant opportunities in front of me.

I strongly think that the young feel the loss of connectedness. The Republican God of ‘each person for himself’ is a lonely and frightening place to be. The Darwinian fight to keep going as the opportortunities for success recede wears on you over time. It affords each of us little succor or hope, which is why the happiest countries are those where government and people care about each other.

Our pervasive despair among the young is first seen by their teachers who, in turn, are battling despair and hopelessness. According to a recent survey, only 12 percent of American teachers are happy in their vocations and some 55 percent are considering bailing out. They are not paid nearly enough to take on the challenges they face or reverse the anxieties of those in their charge.

Is the fat lady singing? By the way, the lady in question presumably belts out a great song at the end of some opera. Since operas are not in English, a numbnuts like me can only figure out when the agony is about to end is when she comes on the stage to sing.

So, once again, I turn my one ear that works to listen for her. I do hear something. I hear that some 75 percent of those supporting Trump yet believe he won the 2020 election despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I hear that in a ranking of countries on a democracy-autocracy scale created by the CIA, some political scientists have recently downgraded America to the status on an ‘anocracy.’ This would put us somewhere between a mature democracy and an autocracy. This status typically is associated with a heightened risk of social unrest and even civil war. Then I stop listening.

I shake my head and thank my stars that my time here is limited. But some singing still reaches me despite my efforts to shut it all out. Only time will tell if it is her that I hear.

First, a personal note. The surgeon found three small polyps (is there a plural for polyps?) in my colon yesterday, all easily removed. She told me after that, given my age, this might well be my last one since something else, like my atrocious eating habits, will do me in first. I was actually a bit sad at the news, not about passing on but about no more colonoscopies. After all, the young surgeon could pass for my grand-daughter and was very cute. I was surprised, though, when she asked me for a date after the procedure. Then, again, she did see my best side … LOL. But what hit me was an untapped business opportunity, the ‘colonoscopy diet.’ If I had one of these every week, I’d lose all that extra weight I have … and with no freaking exercise.

Okay, there is a lot of more serious stuff to worry about out there, or so it seems. Economists keep warning of an impending economic collapse even though nothing has happened yet. Donald Trump, who seemed to be on the ropes not that long ago, has surged back into the GOP lead after his legal woes increased, and America’s gun carnage seems to be worsening as talk of widespread civil strife increases. Of course, there remains the international wild card in Putin, a Trump-like figure who might easily ignite a scorched earth policy as his autocratic rule is threatened by an ill-fated incursion into the Ukraine. But our real worries are internal.

Let’s take the economy. Various pundits have been predicting a recessions or even a 1930’s – type depression for a year now. Some experts point out that some 12 economic indicators point to a crash of some magnitude. Most recently, it has been pointed out that the M2 money supply has shrunk by 4.1 percent since last year. This is a tectonic change, not seen since the great crash of almost a century ago. Though I have no idea how we lose money in the aggregate, this sounds ominous. Yet, the markets have rebounded since the beginning of the year and Armageddon keeps getting put off. So, are the doomesday predicitons real? Should we listen to see if ‘the fat lady is really singing.’

Who knows what to believe these days. What is real and what not. The thing is, we have been inundated by clearly ‘fake news’ since the Gingrich Revolution of the early 1990s. It existed before that of course but not on the scale we now face. I’m not talking about misinformation from Russian bots enclosed in military basements in St. Petersburgh Russia who swayed the 2016 election toward their favored candidate Donald Trump. No, I’m talking about our home grown propoganda machine that would have made the Russian Communist print outlet Pravda appear to be a beacon of truth. Those old style Commies could have learned a lesson or two from the today’s Republican Party in the art of sophisticated misdirection and outright lying.

George Washington once said that “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the powers of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to their unjust dominion.” Either he was very prescient and able to see two centuries into the future or he was talking about Thomas Jefferson who, disagreeing with the oh-so popular Washington’s beliefs in a strong national government, waged a quiet campaign agasinst him and then an overt and salacious campaign against his Federalist successor John Adams. Newspapers, in those days, often were aligned with specific candidates and philosophies. But somewhere in the 19th century, they adopted a more independent posture and pretended to print the truth, leaving opinion to their editorial pages. Amazingly, some of them did just that.

Something happened about three decades ago that restarted the age of propoganda and outright fabrications with a renewed vengeance. A good starting point would be when Newt Gingrich and some 300 Republican members of Congress stood on the Capitol steps on September, 1994 and announced their ‘Contract with America,’ or what some of us called the ‘Contract ON America.’ Though only a few minor promises in their expansive reworking of the country ever saw the light of day, it was ‘the show’ that mattered. That summer, I went back to the U. of Wisconsin after a year’s leave in D.C. to work on Clinton’s welfare legislation. I recall a top Republican operative on the Hill telling me one day about the new language they were required to use. The inheritance tax was always to be called the death tax, or you were fined by the party (the Republican and not the Communist party). Capture the language and you capture the heart. More to the point, the show was about to become big time.

In 1960, there were only two radio stations that had a talk-show format. In 1995, there were 1,130 such stations across the nation with 70 percent of them explicitly conservative in perspective. The march to the right was jump-started in 1988 when Rush Limbaugh went from a local show to a national frenzy reaching some 20 million faithful listeners at one point. Soon several heavyweights entered the scene. The conservative muckraking outlet called the Drudge Report started in 1995, Fox News began its rise to prominence in 1996, and Newsmax in 1998. Succcess breeds imitation and others joined a crowded field of far-right outlets.

The Evangelical Church collaborated with the Republican National Committee (RNC) to form the Christian Coalition, led by Ralph Reed with much support from evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell. That group organized a smear campaign based on total fabrications about Democratic candidates across America. The lies worked and the Republicans secured the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades. With such success, the web of deceipt went into high gear. Limbaugh, the first superstar was followed by Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, Carlson, Coulter, and too many others to mention. There was much money to be made in feeding the public BS and plenty of greedy types lining up at the trough.

One of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s first moves was to eliminate the Office of Technological Assessment (OTA). This office, created by a former Republican President (Nixon, no less) before the party had gone off the rails saved only $20 million at the time even though it was touted as a cost saving measure. More importantly, it provided Congress with objective information and thus was seen as dangerous to the apparatchiks of the GOP. In a moment of transparent projection, Gingrich hilariously accused President Clinton of “treating truth as a transaction.” Are any Republicans self-aware or don’t they care?

Today, I have time for one example of how wild lies infest the public consciousness. In July, 1993, White House Counsel Vince Foster, a close Arkansas friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, committed suicide by shooting himself through the head in a national park near to Washington. In a suicide note, he wrote about heinous Republican attacks on him as part of their ridiculous Whitewater scandal campaign. He was too decent of a man for such scurrilous attacks, became depressed, and ended it all. Vince pretty much blamed Republicans for this. So, how did the new Party of Gingrich respond?

First, a Gingrich acolyte, Dan Burton somehow took a simulated shooting of a melon as proof that Foster was murdered and did not die of a self-inflicted wound. They were soon off and running, aided by Limbaugh and the growing far-right propoganda machine as well as millions poured into this campaign by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife who created the infamous ‘Arkansas campaign’ to dig up dirt on the Clintons whether valid or not. That grew into some four distinct investigations, one of them being by Ken Starr, the lead investigator in charge of House campaign to impeach Clinton. They spent millions trying to prove such silly fabrications that the Clinton’s killed their friend because he knew too much about their scandalous behaviors, that they rolled him up in a carpet and dumped him where he was found, and that this was just the tip of the iceberg. They did all this for years despite the fact that every single responsible official said over and over that all the evidence supported suicide, every last bit.

Guess what, at the end of the day (or propoganda campaign), none of these ‘investigations’ found any proof of the suicide lie … not a single thing. Yet, only 35 percent of the public by this time believed that Vince Foster killed himself, though fewer blamed the Clintons. Buoyed by their early success, the purveyors of falsehoods eventually had the Clinton death toll up to 60 and then 90 victims, eventually leading Hillary to complain about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ that attacked them without end, without mercy, and without any real justification.

That was at least a generation ago. Does it matter now? Well, Hillary Clinton went into the 2016 presidential campaign hindered by a great amount of distrust after a quarter century of continuous attacks. She lost to a man who, by any measure, was totally unsuited for the office. In the Covid pandemic, the right-wing propoganda machine convinced many Americans that vaccines would kill or cripple them, that Dr. Fauci was the enemy, and that most prevention measures were a Democratic plot to ruin the economy and weaken Trump. As a result, the death rate from Covid in those counties with the highest support for Trump was 5 to 6 times higher than in the top Democratic counties. Their lies were killing their own kind, but why would they care? And now we have the famous‘Big Lie’ campaign, much like the Vince Foster matter or the Benghazi campaign during the Obama years where multiple investigations also came up with absolutley nothing. So much time and effort spent on election fraud to sate the malignant narcissism of one demented wanna-be autocrat.

Oh, I remember watching Walter Cronkite on the evening news in the 1960s. Surely not everyone agreed with him. However, he gave us reasonably objective news in a non-hyperbolic style. We pretty much were operating out of the same playbook. Now we have at least two oppositional worlds where the members of each hate one another. Not a good sign for the future … the divided house and all. Let me end with a quote from John Adams (1814): “Remember, a Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

I should use the my one ear that still works to see if the ‘fat lady’ is yet singing.