Tom's Musings

For some reason, my neighbors and friends have been focused on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) phenomenon in recent days, a topic I discussed a while back. Given the recent spate of doom and gloom articles on the topic, virtually all echo my feelings that it is a blessing to be an old fart since we won’t have to confront the unknown world ahead of us. And it’s not just a bunch of retirees who fret about such things. The chief scientist at DeepMind, one of the companies frantically developing the next generation of AI technology, perhaps better labeled AGI or Artificical General Intelligence, offers a horrific possibilitiy. AGI, he recently said, is the greatest existential threat we as a species face, even greater than a global biological pathogen. Yet, the work on this threat continues at an increasingly frantic pace.

I am reminded of Robert Oppenheimer who, upon successfully igniting the first nuclear blast in the New Mexico desert in 1945, likened what he and his fellow scientists had done to the Hindu God of death and destruction. Had they created their own destruction he wondered in that moment. Many of those working on the Manhatten Project later regretted their participation. Besides, I would put anthropogenic climate change at the top of the list of existential threats and I wouldn’t excluse nuclear holocaust just yet. I recall scrambling under my elementary school desk in the 50s when we practiced against the Russkies dropping the Big One. I was sure I would be toast in those days. But it hasn’t happened so far, though there have been at least two very close calls. Iss this a reason for hope?

Technology has its own compelling drive. We are a curious species and want to pursue the unknown. Besides, there are untold riches to be had by those who win command the AGI market. Certain entrepreneurial breakthroughs bring undreamed riches to those who bring a new concept to scale. Think of Jeff Bezos and Amazon, or Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. The returns to those who command future machines that can replace an estimated 300 million jobs globally (one estimate of the labor force impact of AGI) at the start of this next technological innovation cannot even be imagined.

Judy Faulkner, a local Madison entrepreneur, has become a billionaire by taking a small University of Wisconsin Project and turning it into a major company that dominates the medical records industry. She could use this emerging AGI technology to replace the thousands of programmers that toil in the amazing, sprawling campus syill being erected just outside Madison WI (According to my neighbor whose daughter works close to Ms. Faulkner). Think of the returns when you bring to the market a set of machine that can replace the millions of humans hard at work in the medical industry, an empire that represents some 17 or 18 percent of America’s GDP. Croeses would have to step aside for this new wealthy elite which would command unimagined resources and power.

Perhaps, though, all this alarm is overstated. As a good friend has assured me, AI is all around us. It is in our cars, our watches, on our factory floors. It is omnipresent and mostly does good things. And she is right. So far, removing humans (or complementing them) from many functions has improved the world. And yet, I cannot help but think these are tasks being replaced or enhanced at the very beginning of this revolution. It is like the Wright Brothers getting excited when their rickety craft left the ground for some 120 feet on the first try. About a half century later, we were sending our ships into deep space. Don’t be fooled by what you see at the beginning.

Not long ago, we used to talk about the ‘singularity,’ a magical moment when human consiousness could be uploaded onto machines and achieve a kind of immortality. On an episode of the Big Bang Theory, nerdy Sheldon Cooper lamented that he would not live longe enough to be around for this milestone which, when I paid attention to such things, was projected to arrive in the 2040s. Most of those at the forefront of AGI now think any such qualitative breakthrough will happen much sooner than that, though uncertainty remains.

Two facts might be considered. The amount of money being poured into AGI research and development is growing exponentially. In recent years an estimated $21 billion has been invested. In the first 3 months of this year, another $11 billion has been poured in as the race heats up and the functionality of these ‘machines’ leaps forward. Second, the progress in mimicking, replacing, and surpassing human functioning is proceeding at an astounding pace. A decade ago, we were tacken aback that this technology could recognize images at the level of a child and play chess at the level of a Master. By 2022, our friendly devices had mastered virtually all computer games, could pass the Medical Licensing and Bar exams, could write at least 40 percent of the code now done by advanced programmers, could engage in self-reflection and improvement, and could reason at a level way above any and all Republicans.

Some estimate that the sophistication and power of this technology has advanced by a factor of 100 million in that decade. What will this technology look like in another decade, another generation. No one knows. This is why hundreds of top tech people including Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), Elon Musk, and Bill Gates have called for a moratorium on this growing beast to think things through. Would that be enough? Can government take control and regulate this monster when we cannot even agree on our debt ceiling which could plunge the U.S. and world economy into a horrific economic crisis? Look how good we are at dealing with the climate crisis in which warning signals about carbon dioxide emissions were being sounded over a century ago. I am not hopeful.

It is easy to speculate about the millions upon millions of jobs that will be replaced. On a recent trip to the Twin Cities, I passed many over the road trucks, most of which were begging for drivers. Wages and benefits for these positions have gone up in response to the shortages. Some make $100,000 per year now, unheard of in the past. Robotics will replace them in short order, and likely will given the current labor costs. Getting a diagnosis from a doctor? It takes me 6 months to get a freaking appointment now and I live in a city which has a medical facility on every other corner. Even today, AGI can accurately diagnose most conditions faster and as accurately as my smiling internist (who is damn good at what he does.) And professors? Who will need them as teachers? The latest AGI machines can absorb virtually the entire internet. My peers at Wisconsin, as smart as they were, could not keep up with the outpouring of research in their own and increasingly narrow sub-specialities. I could go on but you get the picture.

This leaves us pondering what will happen to people. How will they survive without work? Perhaps more to the point, how will they find purpose in life? I recall a Star Trek episode where the crew of the Enterprize stumbled across a civilization living in a world where machines had taken over all the required tasks. The humans that remained had reverted to a child like level, simply existing without purpose or meaning. Hmm, sounds like my life. In any case, that could well be an idealized scenario.

What I find ironic is that the capacity to replace humans comes at a time when we have so many of them. In the past, children perished in large numbers … half died before puberty across time and over all societies. It was as if it were an iron law. That rate began to fall over the past century plus. It went from 1 in 2 at the onset of the 19th century to 1 in 4 by 1950; then fell to 1 in 5 by 1960; then plunged to less than 1 in 25 by 2017. Sure, we have far fewer pregnancies (and I suppose we could outlaw sex), but the world’s population continues to grow. We have over 8 billion souls seeking to survive today with a growth rate of almost 1 percent annually. That’s a lot of new folks every year given the huge base. What will we do with them all when they become irrelevant?

The pessimists among us (and I sometimes am with them) consider even more horrific outcomes. Machines that smart, and having access to all of human history and our record of unimaginable stupidity and barbarism, cannot help but conclude that the hom-sapien species was wildly misnamed. There is nothing wise about us. What would they need with us, or most of us at least? In the aggregate our resume is not impressive. One wag speculated that our demise from any rising up of AGI would at least be more efficient and painless than alternative armageddons like climate disaster or nuclear war. That’s a consolationI suppose.

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece (2001: A Space Oddyssey), one of the space ship’s crew members eventually shut down HAL, the onboard computer when it decided the human crew was not worth the effort, though it was a close run thing. I wonder if we will have a Dave when our time comes, and what the outcome will be?

When I was in India back in the 60s, faking it as an farming expert, I had a bad feeling. All my life, my feelings have been on the dark side. As I keep pointing out, I’m irish. That’s what we do … see black clouds everywhere.

Here’s my point. I saw small farms in my backward, rural site that could barely support one family. Yet, there were many children in each family while health services and disease control had progressed to the point where most children were now surviving. Male family heads, however, still thought they needed many children to ensure male survivors.

Remember this. Global child mortality rates hovered at an estimated 50 percent throughout the history of our species. That began to fall precipitously as modern hygiene and public health measures kicked in. The global rate fell to about 1-4 by 1950 and less that 1-25 today. In Scandinavian countries, the rate approaches 0 though, as usual, the U.S. lags far behind more advanced nations.

Below is a pic of two volunteers I trained with who did public health work in Maharasthra. Unlike my pathetic agricultural efforts, these programs worked.

Now here is my point! What would happen to all these children who would now grow to adulthood. You could not divide up these postage size farms any further. India’s urban areas already seemed crammed with too many people scrapping to survive, and barely managing that. I can yet recall watching men carry cases of Coke up a steep mountain to a hill station where I was vacationing since that was cheaper than motoring the liquid up, and it gave them a job. I really was the ‘ugly American’ in those moments. I felt I was at ground zero of the ‘population bomb’ we all talked about back then. Within a generation, India would collapse, or so I predicted.

Fortunately, as my future spouse would repeatedly point out, I was wrong … again. India’s population continued to grow. Recent headlines announced that, at 1.4 billion souls, the population had surpassed China’s and placed her at the top of the list. Yet, no collapse. What happened? In point of fact, population growth has slowed and is projected to trend down not long in the future.

The obvious answer is that I’m a dumb shit but let’s put that possibility to the side for the moment. Normally, the solution to such difficult questions are multifaceted in character. There are few single and simple answers. It was not that India’s leaders were not trying hard to stem population growth even back then. A national birth control campaign started in 1952 with the slogan ‘hum do; hamare do’ or ‘we are two, and will have only two.’ {children}. Indira Gandhi, the PM in the 1960s, was very aggressive in getting men sterilized sometimes forcibly which generated considerable blowback.

I can recall sitting in a meeting where local officials explained the benefits of family planning (i.e., getting a vasectomy) to men, I don’t recall any women in the room. One grizzled man asked what would happen if he had this procedure and then his wife got pregnant … the room erupted in laughter. Even with the incentive of a promised cheap transistor radio, I doubt there were few takers that day.

Perhaps the answers can be found in an article I ran across a couple of days ago. It told the story of two provinces, Bihar in the far northeast of the country and Tamil Nadu located in the far southeast. They have had very different outcomes in dealing with India’s challenges. Let’s look:

Bihar is a conservative area, still steeped in the past and largely agricultural. You might consider this the Indian version of America’s south … stuck in tradition and rigid views. There, women still have a high (though not as high as in the past) birth rates … about 3 children per family. Education is lacking, with only 55 percent of the women being literate. And most married females remain in traditional roles. Only 19% are employed.

Tamil Nadu is like a different country. The birth rate is less than 2 (1.8), which is comparable to many western countries. The women are better educated with a female literacy rate of 84%. Finally, more married women function outside the home with a 46 % labor force participation rate. Bihar and Tamil Nadu have taken very different paths, not unlike the split we see in the States.

Tamil Nadu does some interesting things. As soon as a pregnancy is registered with local authorities, a ‘village nurse’ will start visits with prenatal care and health information. The birth will take place in an advanced medical facility where family planning counselors will work with the mother to determine what is best for her regarding future pregnancies. Depending on circumstances, cash incentives are available up to $240 U.S. dollars to cease producing children though all is voluntary. All family options are explored and made available at no cost. Later on, as girls transiton toward adulthood, an incentive of 1,000 Rupees is awarded those who stay in school and delay marriage. This campaign is far ahead of what you would find in Mississippi. Tamil Nadu got the simple fact that you work with the women if you want an effective family planning program.

But not everything is explained by what happens at the micro or individual level. India also had an economic rennaissance beginning in the 1980s. For 3 or 4 decades after achieving independence, economic growth was slow, hampered by too much bureaucracy and red tape. A campaign to remove many impediments worked in some areas. Tamil Nadu, for example, looks a lot like other booming East Asia countries with new industries flourishing and economic opportunities growing. The joke about the service technician calling himself ‘Steve from Wichita’ really being ‘Patel from Hyderabad’ is not a joke. Send in your tech problem and a highly educated technician on the other side of the world will work on it over night.

Local community development efforts undoubtedly also helped to avert the apocolypse … a possibility I did not see at the time.

Below are two shots. The first, which I shared before, is my home during my glorious Peace Core experience. The surrounding ares was bleak and nothing but desert.

The next shot is the same location. It is developed, with agricultural work ongoing where only sand and dirt once dominated everything. I did not see such growth in the future. BTW … where it says Panchayet Samiti Office (or Community Development Center) is the exact location of my home in the first shot.

India still has many problems, the biggest of which is a conservative national government that appeals to Hindu Nationalism, a kind of Trumpian view of the world. However, at least it has not collapsed as I once feared.

My late wife was right … I am an idiot!

One regret I’ve had from my misspent youth involves the utter lack of curiosity evidenced in my personal ancestry. Oh, I had some curiosity in the family background but not enough to sytemically gather information back when direct sources of that information were yet available to me. Alas, my grandparents passed when I was quite young and lacked all curiosity in such matters. The few questions I asked relatives from my parent’s generation usually resulted in vague information like … your grandpatents immigrated from somewhere in Ireland or Poland. That wasn’t good enough, especially if I now wanted to pursue Irish citizenship available to those who could prove a direct linkage to the old sod. That possibility, you see, became more attractive as America went into the crapper.

Any way, I finally got my shit together, so to speak, spit into a tube and then shipped that off to Ancesty.com early this year. Since then, information has been dribbling in on my roots based both on that DNA sample and on public records. You can get a rough estimate from the location where your family was from for a surprisingly modest investment but then they tease you into making additional investments as they occasionally share additional details. But I’ve wasted my money in more ridiculous ways.

One issue intrigued me. I knew my father’s parents came somewhere in Ireland. At the same time, I also knew that Corbett was not an original clan name from Eire. It likely was Norman in origins and my roots would be linked back to Northern France (Corbett with an e on the end) or even back to Viking roots which settled in the north of France during the period when the Norsemen expanded their reach to North America (well before Colombus) all the way into Russia before it was Russia. [NOTE: Normandy comes from words to describe men from the ‘north’ or Norsemen.] These Vikings even raided and settled along rivers like the Dnieper. The very word Russia come from Rus which referred to some aspect of the river boats used by Vikings as they made their way along rivers in that part of the world, or so I recall.

But I digress. It turns out I am officially half Irish. On my mothers side I expected to be Polish but that was more vague. The wizards at Ancesrty said I was 31 percent Baltic and 19 percent East European Russian. What the hell does that mean other than the people of that region moved around a bit before my mother’s parents emigrated from an area in Poland around the time of the the first world war. I did know that my mother’s older sister was born in what is now known as Poland. Exactly where I don’t know and parts or all of Poland was often gobbled up by their bigger neighbors from time to time.

They have come up with surprisingly little on that side of the family. My grandfather was named Constantin Spolinski who married an Isabelle Boguszewics. My mother was born as Jenny Anna Spolinski in 1920, not long after they arrived in the U.S. and just before the immigration crackdown on undesirable aliens like Eastern Europeans. They have provided little additonal information like immigration details, marriages, children etc. I do know they first settled in Wisconsin before moving east and eventually ending up in Worcester Mass, the garden spot of New England (LOL). Sometime in her youth, my mother changed her name to Jane Ann Spiglanin, which became the family moniker sometime after arriving here. I have no idea when or why.

Jane Ann Spiglanin married Jeremiah Thomas Corbett (he went by Tom) in 1942.

Here is the happy couple around that time. I look upon this picture in wonder. They seemed to like one another. I never experienced that, only the constant fights though they stayed together for reasons I could never fathom. I recall one or the other saying a divorce would be too expensive. Really? The real problem was that my mother married for love when she was seeking someone who would support her in the manner she thought she deserved. Bad choice. My dad was an exciing guy in his early days who operated on the edges of the Irish mob (he would be considered a ‘bad boy’ today), but he settled into a life as a factory worker after I was born. I have always felt guilty about that.

I have more info on my dad’s side of things. His father was Jeremiah Timothy Corbett, born in Munster Ireland (southwest) in 1886.

This was Jerry in the middle with his two sons. My uncle Timothy is on the left in his WWII uniform and my dad on the right. They are standing in front of the State Mental hospital in Worcester where my gradfather spent his later years for a condition never explained to me. I never met him though I recall as a tot staying in a car while my dad went in to see him [It wasn’t child abuse to let tots stay in cars back then].

My dad’s mother was born in 1880. Mary Agnes Boland grew up in Country Clare, just south of Galway on the west coast. Not sure when they came over but they were married in 1912 and settled in the South Boston Irish ghetto before moving to Worcester sometime later. There were several children born in the subsequent years including my dad in 1918. At least one, perhaps two, died in infancy since I never recall any mention of them. Who is Bridget?

However, my parents met when my dad worked for a Bingo operation (which was a form of legalized gambling then). He was, as I mentioned, an exciting bad boy at the time. They married in 1942 and I came along in 1944. They took one look at me and said … no more sex for us. That was a wise decision with which I have no argument.

Here I am on my grandmother’s lap.

Some of the mystery is being filled in but so much remains, especially on my mother’s side. I’m guessing the Irish spend a lot more time thinking about their roots. Ancestry did lay out an area where my maternal DNA is prominent. That area covers an expansive area from today’s eastern Poland, the Baltic nations, through Eastern and southern Russia far to the east. My stock very likely came from Eastern Poland and the Baltic region adjacent to the North Sea. These regions are located close to one another. I will need to do more digging one day.

However, I do have enough evidence to start the process of obtaining dual citizenship with Ireland. That might come in very handy if Trump or one of those Republican crazies captures the White House in 2024.

One of my book clubs read the Secrets of the Sprakkar by Eliza Reid. The author is the ‘First Lady’ of Iceland. She is a Canadien by birth who met her husband, the current President of this small nation, when they were both students at Oxford University. She believes her perspective is unique, moving to this insular society in 2003 without any knowledge of the language or culture. Now she represents the place around the globe. Still, she feels she has an ‘outsiders’ perspective that can be of use in telling the world what she has experienced here.

The word Sprakkar is icelandic for exceptional women, and that is the theme of her book. Iceland is at the top of the world list for gender equality (America lags behind in about 30th place). Then again, America lags behind in so many areas, health outcomes, education outcomes, personal saftety, income equality, and national happiness. In the last category, Finland is #1 with places like Iceland right on their heels.

Everywhere you look American is way behind except in rankings of bad things. Mass murders, we top the list. Child poverty, way up there. I just read that 100 million Americans have racked up $200 billion dollars in medical debt. An unplanned medical emergency is the no. 1 reason for U.S. bankruptcies. Other advanced countries treat access to medical care as a ‘right.’ We treat it as just another profit center except for certain groups. American exeptionalism has come to mean exceptionally bad and that American Dream is more like the American Nightmare.

The author, Ms. Reid, focuses on gender issues. Iceland was not always the nirvana it is today even though the country’s females always had to be strong and independent given the prime occupations of the land and that they were on their own a lot. As in many lands, women felt they were second class citizens until almost five decades ago. In 1975, women called a national strike. Of course, there are fewer citizens in the whole country than in Dane County Wisconsin where I live. Still, some 90 percent of the women turned out and the repercussions were profound (note, there have been several additional strikes, the most recent in 2018).

In just a few years, 1980, the people of Iceland elected the first female President in the world, Vigdis Finndogattir, not exactly a household name in the world. Few Icelanders achieve the notoriety of a household name since no one can pronounce their damn names. I might also note that there were earlier female Prime Minister (e.g., Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi among others) but these politicians rose to this postion by a party vote and not a general election.

With that, the race to gender equality was on. At the time of the national women’s strike, only 5 percent of Althing members (their elected governing body) were female. It rose to 15 percent by 1983 and now stands at 48 percent, far outstripping the U.S. and most other peer countries. About three out of four women have paid jobs; the comparable rates are 61 percent in Canada and 56 percent in the U.S.

The statistics could go on but that is not what struck me about her story. In fact, the members of the book club (the majority are women) were not enthused about the book, finding it sanitized and vanilla, as if problems were being downplayed. She is, after all a sitting ‘First lady’ (that is not what she is called there), so political sensitvity has to be an issue in what she publishes.

For example, I noticed she discussed the casual attitude toward sex there, which she praises as a form of liberation, along with the wide availaility of contraceptives and early sex education. Since I came of age in a period and culture (the 1950s, Catholic, working class) of total repression of all things sexual, my immediate response was to take the first plane to Rekyavik. One of her more humorous vignettes was the exasperation expressed by a young gal who felt pressured to introduce to her parents the young men she brought home for a night of carnal delights. What a burden! Then she mentions that only 30 percent of births are to married couples though many more co-habitate (note: there are far fewer teen and unwanted births, however). What she doesn’t explore are the longer term effects of the erosion of traditional marriage. I wish she had since I suspect a downside.

What really imprssed me was something else, not so much gender eqiality (a good thing indeed), but the safety net that makes the people of Iceland (and other Scandinavian countries) so relatively secure and content. It starts with pregnancy. The state supplies free midwife-based prenatal care in the home for the duration of the pregnancy. The birth process itself take splace in a high quality medical facility at a nominal fee (I think she said about 5 American dollars). A full year of paid family leave is guaranteed by the state that can be shared between the male and female parents. The cost of child care is very reasonable, and education through college incurs only a nominal administration fee of about $550 U.S. dollars. Of course, medical care is a right available to all citizens.

Thus, it is easy to have children. Ms. Reid had 4 kids in her first 6 years in the country. The birth rate in Iceland remains among the highest among advance dcountries. Having a child is not a huge economic risk. Living period is not fraught with anxiety where the loss of a job or a pre-exisiting medical condition can spell disaster. One public service caught my attention. She mentioned that the government directly pays child support to the parent raising the child and then attempts to collaect that amount from the absent party. Here, in Wisconsin, I and my collaegues tried to introduce a similar scheme back in the 1980s. We called it the Child Support Assurance scheme. Though we had federal permission to try it, we ran into a firestorm of opposition. Among other things it was seen as government over reach and radical socialism.

Natually, all this cost money and their tax rates are very high, even without any military exenditures. Americans would howl at the rates Icelanders pay. But thay don’t seem to mind. Why?

Well, they feel they get a lot for their taxes, and they do. What Americans pay out of pocket are included in an advanced scheme of public support. But I think the difference goes beyond that. They have a strong sense of community. They tend to see themselves as part of a large family where the burdens and risks of life are shared. When I asked a colleague many years ago why we in the States have such an inadequate saftey net, he respnded with one word … heterogenity. We have no common sense of identity, no common culture, no shared community. It is all ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ Our foundational myths ar based on the settlers who dominated the new land and the cowboy who, on his own, fought off all others for his space and his family. Images such as independence and self-reliance define the core attributes of the good American. Let everyone get their AR-15.

In my fictional book just coming out (Refractive Reflections) I write at length (through my characters) about what is needed to alter the American zeitgeist. It is not only a change in policy that is needed but a transformation in our foundational myths. We somehow must transition from selfishness, conflict, and domination to a something closer to collaboration, civility, and community. That is why I liked this book. It showed a society build on radically different presumptions than here and where the people also were much happier. True enough, they live on a smaller and more manageable scale, but I’ll overlook that for the moment.

Back in pre-historical times, before the internet and smart phones, I still had dreams and, incredibly, values. I even went to church as a kid. Surprisingly, I took it all that spiritual instruction seriously while absorbing the lessons that most others seemed to miss. You know, love thy neighbor and not just cute Suzy the next block over but those who don’t look like you and those who need help. You might remember those lessons, Christ’s message that others, like Evangelicals, conveniently over look.

So, I tried the Catholic Seminary for a while until I realized you had to believe in God to be a priest before doing other do-gooder stuff like working in a hospital and with poor kids in a rough neighborhood while working my way through college. And what does a Psych major with such delusions of sainthood do after they hand him his BA degree? He joins the Peace Corps. What else?

Peace Corps was big back in the 1965 when I applied. The program was still in its so called ‘wild west’ days when huge numbers applied, only a few were chosen, and fewer still survived the long training and arduous placements. I actually chose India, what I later found to be one of the program’s tougher sites. I also thought I had signed on for a rural Public Health program, spurred on by my vast experience emptying bed pans on the 11-7 shift at a Catholic Hospital while I slept through my classes during the daylight hours. I had visions of being the next Albert Schweitzer. I doubt I was very swift in those days, having tried a shot at Sainthood and then giving SDS (Stidents for a Democratic Society) a shot as I tried to stop the war in Vietnam.

Two surprising things happened. Peace Corps took me and I made it. However, instead of healing the sick, I was first assigned to a poultry program and later agriculture. Talk about a mismanaged and misguided effort. We were all urban kids with a rather large proportion from elite colleges … Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, and so forth. Farmers we were not, but we had some great discussions. It later struck me as a classic ‘bait and switch’ scheme.

One day, in 1967, I was dumped in a small town some 60 kilometers or so south of Udaipur, Rajasthan. Here is my abode for two years:

My home was the building on the far right. It was part of the government complex devoted to developing this backward part of a Province located on the Northwest border adjacent to Pakistan. While there were several accomomadations for goverment workers, they all lived in the town about a mile away. I shared my living quarter with scorpians and other unseemly creatures. I got some flip flops since I never wanted to insert my feet in real shoes, not knowing what surprize might await. I had no running water but I did get electricity after six months. I thought that luxurious indeed.

The real challenge is that we had no idea what we were doing. You can’t take city kids and turn them into ag experts with a little training. And we were isolated. No cell phones or internet or any means of communication. Making things worse, the Hindu culture was complex and rather rule bound … rigid actually. There was no bar to carouse with the locals and women were strictly off limits. This enforced chastity, though, was not that hard for me. After all, I had grown up with Catholic girls. Still, the relentles heat, isolation, and lack of any obvious purpose in the desert tested us all. Crapping in a hole in the floor with no toilet paper added to the charm of the place.

But some of us perservered. From about a hundred of us excited kids on day one of training, about two dozen of us were left standing at the end. Many were asked to leave and more self-selected out. Below are the hopefuls on the first day of training and next are many of the male survivors (about a similar number of females that we trained with were in the Public Health program I wanted and served in a different Province) when we gathered some four decades after returning to the States.

When we gathered many decdes later, we shared our horror stories and laughed at our ineptness. And yet, we all tried. Though working in technical areas we knew little about, we were a bright bunch (the accomplishments of this group in life are quite amazing, with the exception of me that is). Let me amaze you with my achievments:

Ah yes, even before we made it to our villages, we cemented Indo-American relations through a series of basketball games with the local college kids. We beat them easily until we showed up for the final match and they brought in a bunch of ringers from the military or a local prison, we never found out which. No matter, they beat us in every way possible including in the score. A riot almost broke out but we were all friends in the end. Three of us joined the local Udaipur team in an ‘All India’ tournament in Jaipur. There, we found out they could play the game in othe rparts of the country. We were crushed.

Beyond that, there were gardening projects, poultry projects, and demonstration plots marketing new types of seed. I have no idea how much good all this did. I did become aware that there were two rumors about why we were there. Either, I was a CIA spy OR I was there to learn farming so I could become a farmer when I returned to the States. No one saw me as an expert. I do like to poimt out that India was importing grain when I arrived in 1967 and exporting grain when I left in 69. I hate to take all the credit but numbers don’t lie. LOL!

In the end, we got way more out of the experience than the natives. We formed friendships that would last a lifetime for one thing. In the foto below, I’m with Haywood on the left and Bill on the right. Haywood grew up dirt poor to a North Carolina sharecropper family. He credits peace Corps witjh inspiring him in his future life which included getting advanced degrees and securing a high postion in a national labor union. Bill, a Yale scholarshop student, went on to get an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. in economics from NYU. He did international banking before the lack of ethics in that field disillusioned him. He later worked for the U.S. Federal reserve System. Here, we are visiting the family of one of our language instructors in Delhi.

As we discussed our experiences during several gatherings over the past dozen years or so, one thing became clear. Our India experience changed us. I became more confident, though the imposter syndrome has stalked me through life. And I learned so much about the power and influence of culture and how to work with diverse people. Those lessons shaped my peronality and informed my approaches to the policy issues I struggled with in my career as an academic and policy wonk. I brought a unique approach to my labors which, I believe, came out of this experience. I am so thankful.

Perhaps there is some merit in making such experiences more available to our youth today. I realize you cannot replicate what we endured back then in the ‘primitive’ days of the Peace Corps experment. Still, exposing young people to starkly different cultures and getting them out of their familiar comfort zones cannot help but expand their view of the world.

Obviously, this is a cook’s tour of an unforgettable period of my life. And being me, I’ve written a book about it, drawing upon the thoughts and writings of my fellow sufferers. It is witty, insightful, sad, and hopeful all at the same time. ‘It really was a good idea at the time.’

I’m back after my short hiatus to spend time with in-laws. I survived quite nicely, it was fun actually. Life is full of surprises.

What to chat about today. There are so many outrages that selecting a topic on which to display my ignorance is not an easy task. But the abortion medication kefuffle in the courts managed to capture my attention after considering other possibilities.

The specifics are not complicated. A Trump appointed Federal Judge in Texas (Matthew Kacsmaryk) reversed a 23 year old FDA approval of the medication (Mifepristone) long used to induce abortions essentially. His decision essentially removed that as a remedy for unwanted pregnancies. In recent years, about half of the estimated 600 to 900 thousand annual abortions were terminated in this manner. The ruling is a big deal.

Within days, a Federal Judge in the State of Washington reversed that order in response to a number of Democratic Attorney General’s who anticipated the Texan’s conservative ruling. President Biden made a statement that the Texas action represented an assault on the Federal Drug Administration and, by extension, the federal government. The U.S. Department of Justice entered the legal fray along with the impacted drug companies.

Underlying the specific issue in contention are a bubbling set of oppressive legislative acts, either effectuated or contemplated. Conservative States are arming themselves, or thinking about at least, jailing those who seek abortions, as well as those who perform them, even those who aid in the transportation of those seeking such a remedy in another state or country, and so forth. The consequences include heavy fines, increasingly longer jail terms, and at least one state floated the idea of the death penalty which makes some logical sense if you see the termination of a fetus as murder.

This legal tempest raises an issue for me that I’ve noodled for some time now. Does anyone still believe that CONSTITUTIONAL LAW is something concrete or defineable which can be discerned through analytical analysis or judicial review. If that were the case, we would not see so many narrow judgments along ideological, if not partisan, lines. We would not have seen the emergance of the Federalist Society, a conservative body dedeicated to tilting the judiciary to the right. We would not see knock down battles over appointments to the High Court or the Federal Courts, nor would state High Court races be so hotly contested. Even a generation ago, the $40-plus million spent on the recent Wisconsin race for a spot on that state’s high court would have been unthinkable. Nor would anyone have predicted that such a race in a backwater state could possibly garner such national attention.

The thing is that justices, particualry on the Supreme Court, the federal appelate benches, or on State High Courts are no longer seen as diviners of some innate truth. They still wear the black robes, sit on platforms that rise above those pleading their cases, and conduct their deliberations in secrecy (usually). All such niceties are designed to sustain the illusion that they speak with some divine certainty. No rational person can possibly believe that nonsense any longer. Now, more than ever (at least recently) the principle of ‘post-decisionism’ comes into play. Justices know how they will decide as they go into a legal case, especially if it controversial and has partisan implication. Their arguments, deliberations, and consultations involve rationalizing their prior decision which they brought to the bench. All pretense to nonpartisanship is gone. They have become another branch pf political hacks though I love the hacks that support my view of the world.

As this becomes clearer, hardball tactics will increase. The liberal who won the Wisconsin race for the state Supreme Court has already been threatened with impeachment by a Republican supermajorty controlling state government (through gerrymandering). It likely will not happen but they might try simply because they don’t like her politics. Some observers criticized her becuse she was open about her opinions on abortion, voting rights, and so many hot button issues. They said that candidates for the Court should not reveal their likely opinions since that smarts of prejudging cases that will come before them. Are you freaking kidding me! Everyone knew her opinions as well as the opnions of her hard-right opponent. That’s why millions poured in from around the country to elect her AND to defeat her. No secrets there.

So, is this a new phenomenon? In truth, nothing is new. As I pondered our latest judicial crisis, my mind drifted back to just before the Civil War and right after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. Two cases involving Wisconsin captured national attention in those dark days. Dred Scott, and his wife Harriet, separately filed petitions in a Missouri Court that they should be released from bondage after having spent several years in Fort Snelling, Wisconsin (the man who ‘owned’ them at the time was associated with the military). On the basis of once free, always free, the outcome of the case seemed certain. They would win.

It took 11 years for this drama to be decided. The result was the 1857 Dred Scott decision, termed by some the worst in Court history [It should be noted that the Court at that time was dominated by Southern conservatives]. Roger Taney, writing for the majority:

“They [African Americans] were at the time [of the Constitutional ratification] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugcated by the dominant race and whether emancipated or not, remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges…”

In short, blacks were not, and would never be, citizens who might avail themselves of the rights of citizenship.

BUT, and there often is a but, one Joshua Glover escaped bondage and fled to Racine Wisconsin around 1853. He was captured and jailed in Milwaukee pending being sent back into slavery acording to the infamous Fugitive Slave Act. But the same harsh divisions we see now in America were boiling then. An angry crowd surrounded the Milawukee jail, freed Glover by force and spirited him off to Canada where he found freedom and where a park honoring his name can yet be found in Toronto.

The story does not end there, however. Charges were brought against several individuals seen as responsible for freeing the prisoner in contradition of federal law, abolitionist Sherman Booth being one of them. They were convicted and faced fines and jail sentences. These cases made their way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court where the State’s High Court reversed their sentences. In effect, a political and ideological battle raged about the morality of slavery and the relative authority between the federal and state governments. Obviously, this is an abridged version of far more complicated events and legal arguments. But I do love one quote from the Wisconsin decision.

“In Virginia he [Glover] may be, indeed, a chattel; but in Wisconsin he is a MAN … the laws of Wisconsin regard him as a person here …”

Perhaps in response to the Glover issue, which garnered national attention, a group of two dozen or so mostly dissafected Whigs gathered in a school house in Ripon Wisconsin. Among their most pressing concerns was the scourge of slavery and that it might be extended into the West. They also feared that northern states might be forced to assist southerners in the perpetuation of this monstrous institution. So, they created a new party … the Republican Party. In several short years, they elected Abrahan Lincoln to the White House and the rest is history [Another note: Today’s Republican Party bears no resemblence to the liberal party that emerged in the mid 1850s].

What we see in the Judiciary is merely one reflection in the national rupture tearing apart the country. We saw it in the 1850s as well. The end result was a tragic Civil War. How will our cultural and judicial unrest end? I wish my spouse, a former official of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, were still around to chat with about such issues. She could at least tell me what I got wrong. She was good at that.]

Easter season is here. So, in lieu of my usual political rant or one of my solopsistic ramblings, I thought I’d post something appropriate to this day. Don’t faint now. I do sometimes think before I write, just not often.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the institutional aspects of religious belief systems as being mostly ‘noise’ designed to bind followers to a divisive dogma and to keep the contributions flowing. A bit cynical perhaps but there you have it. But there is a more spiritual dimesnion to belief and I find good in that.

At some point, when I was in college, it struck me that virtually all religious traditions had a common core, though those central doctrines often were obscured in their sacred texts and certainly by the interpretations by those guarding the inner sanctums. In the end, they came down to this … be good and be kind to others. You know, the ‘golden rule’ or treat others as you would be treated. I can remember sitting in a car late one night with a comely coed during my undergraduate days. Her name has long slipped into obscurity. Since I had no money, I thought my best chance of getting to any base was to sound wise, or at least smarter than a sack of rocks. So, I went on about my philosophy of life for a bit … telling her about my moral compass so to speak.

That so-called ‘compass’ was simple as I recall. “We are born and sometime down the line we pass from this mortal coil. In the meantime we must decide how we shall spend that time which, I was convinced, was fraught with unhappiness and disappointment and even pain(I am irish after all). I told this gal that I only hoped to make life just a fraction easier for those on this journey with me, likely by making them laugh just a little.” I can’t recall for sure but I doubt this BS got me to second base but, on reflection, it hit me that I actually might believe such sentiments.

Spirituality is a journey. We can walk it alone or we can share it with others, trying to negotiate the rough patches as best we can. The trick is how to assist others along the way. That is not always apparent nor easy most of the time. Adding to the challenge is that males and females are dropped on to this planet with wildly different dispositions and skill sets. Guys have less innate empathy and, when they try, it usually comes out as an instinct to ‘fix’ problems. How different are the two genders. The next pic captures an essential difference.

Now, since I was an only child I had no young siblings of the female persuasion who risked being in my presence during our early years. However, I am a typical male in most respects (how freaking sad). I can recall my long suffering wife sharing whatever crisis she was facing on a given day. Immediately, I would leap into ‘fix-it’ mode. I was always perplexed when that proved ineffective and when she withdraw into sullen silence. Yes, I was an idiot. Not a complete idiot though. I was never one of those guys who thought sending some female I barely knew a foto of my ‘family jewels’ (private parts). Really, how moronic cana guy be to think a foto of his junk will turn on a female. For heavens sake, try your bank statement instead.

My lesson for today is not whether we should help others but how. I will admit that even I, not the swiftest arrow in the quiver, eventually got it that fixing someone’s ‘hurt’ was not always the best response. It occerred to me, after many failures, that this response made me feel better but was not always the best approach to the other’s situation. If not that, what was?

Oddly enough, for reasons I won’t bore you with, yesterday I had two separate conversations with female friends. Each coincidently shared some wisdom contained in a New York Times piece that I found insightful. Essentially, it focused on a question that some school teachers found very useful for dealing with their younger students who were feeling emotionally overwhelmed. It is a simple question:

“Do you want to be helped, heard, or hugged.”

Someone who is sharing pain with us is reaching out. However, a dullard like me is woefully unprepared to detect what they need in response. There is research that each response (hearing, hugging, helping) evoke or stimulate distinct chemical and/or emotional responses. Like my experiences as a policy wonk, I understood in that arena that you have to get the quesiton right in the first instance to make any progress. Getting it wrong can result in more harm than good.

I am thankful to these two female friends. This approach strikes me as intuitively sensible. Then again, I thought sharing my philosophy of life with a comely co-ed in college would get me to second base. So, what the hell did I know?

I would add one more H to this question. Humor!

Do they want me to make them laugh. I add humor since this is in my wheelhouse. Making people laugh is my strength, my go-to response in most situations. And I have found that humor is especially effective with females. Even as a young man, I realized that every time I took my clothes off in front of a woman they would double over in hysterical laughter. Just a gift I suppose.

One final thought. We assume that we, homo-sapiens that is, are the pinnacle of evolution. Given our hubris, we assume that we are the best and the brightest and most advanced. We just might be. Sometimes, though, I see other primates who evidence collaborative behaviors and demonstrate the kind of intimate bonding that might well put us to shame. Few other species have refined technology to slaughter others of their own kind. Think about that for a moment. I leave you with the following image.

BTW …. I am off on a short trip. There likely will be a brief break in these fantastic blogs :-).

Welcome to the United States of America in the 2020s. In Tennessee, two Democratice state lawmakers were expelled by their Republican legislative colleagues for protesting gun violence in a legislative chamber. They did so in response to another mass killing of school children and educators in that state. In Wisconsin, the defeated conservative candidate for the state’s Supreme Court turned his concession speech into a virulent and vitriolic attack on the liberal woman who defeated him. Speculation now swirls that Badger State Republicans will use their supermajority in the State Senate (thanks to gerrymandered voting districts) to impeach the newest member of the high court because she is a liberal and supports abortion rights for women. Several Republican Congressional representatives in Congress have publicly called for a national ‘divorce’ or separation between conservative and liberal parts of the country, a sentiment espoused with increasing frequency by right-wing pundits in the media echo chamber of the hard-right.

At the heart of these kerfuffles is the new American culture war, a fight for what American’s increasingly see as the battle for the nation’s soul. The front lines of that apocalyptic battle are conflicts over guns, abortion, sexual expression, the definition of marriage, and fears of government over reach. Underlying this culture war are longstanding , often sub-rosa, American disputes over racial and ethnic and religious nationalism and diversity (The two Tennessee lawmakers expelled were Black while a third White legislator escaped this fate).

The hardening battle lines crop up in odd ways. Alabama U.S. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach, has used his key Congressional committee position to single handedly stop promotions in the U.S. military. Pentagon officials increasingly decry the threat to our military preparedness and security at a time when international turmoil with Russia, China, and North Korea are on the rise. Tuberville’s issue? The military issued rules ensuring that female members would have access to abortion services.

Nothing strikes the citizens of civilized nations around the globe as more absurd than America’s willingness to sacrifice school children in the slavish worship of guns … particularly military-style automatic weapons that have no role in deer hunting or personal defense, unless you plan on protecting your house from a Russian invasion. This is an odd issue on which to defend one’s right to forfeit their final attachment to sanity. There have been 377 school shootings in the U.S. since 1999. Some 623 children, often young victims, have been killed or seriously injured. It has been estimated that almost 350,000 school children have been directly exposed to gun violence during school hours while millions have been exposed to the anxieties associated the loss of security in their classrooms.

In my day as a young student (the 1950s), we did have our worries. I recall fearing polio a great deal, which was eradicated by a vaccine that many of today’s Republicans would likely oppose as government over reach. I also feared that the Russkies would drop the ‘big one’ on our school, but was comforted by the notion that my demise would be quick. And, of course, I worried I would fail my exams. I still have nightmares that I am approaching exams after not having attended any classes. But I never, not in my wildest and most improbably dreams, ever conceived that a disgruntled student or deranged adult would walk into my classoom with an AR-15 weapon (or the equivalent from that era) and gun me and my classmates down.

During one period of time in the 21st century, an international comparison of school mass shootings was done. There were 288 such events in the States during the period of the study. In the nation ranked just below us, Mexico, there were 8. The slaughter of our school children (in a place that should be safe for them) is a clear example of American exceptionalism and certainly our national insanity. And don’t get me started on the 2nd Amendment … I’m still looking for that well-regulated militia which bears no relation to permitting every wing-nut access to military hardware.

If we were a rational nation, we would be focusing on different issues … things like the threat to jobs and the economy posed by the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies or the threat to the species emanating from anthropogenic climate change. But no, the front lines of our ideological battle fields are disputes over things like guns, abortion, gays rights and, as always, diversity. These are the touchstones that define us as a culture and who we are as a people. Many, not a majority, see America as white, as Christian, and as rooted in what they perceive as traditional values like personal freedom and independence. Notions like collaboration and consensus, the principles of democratic rule, are conflated with socialism and moral decay in their minds … i.e., with those who identify themselves as Democrats In the end, this portion of America yearns for a strong man to right all that is seen as wrong about us. They yearn for a return of the nation to ancient verities that never existed.

Is this sense of internal conflict unique in America? Not really, few things are seldom new. By the 1850s, the broiling diputes over slavery were reaching a crescendo. And let us not be confused, ‘slavery’ was a front-burner issue that stood for deeper cultural divides. The northern part of the nation sought to sustain democratic principles (as badly as they were conceived in that era), to encourage some social mobility and improvement, welcomed education and new ideas or innovation. The Republican Party emerged in Wisconsin in the mid-1850s precisely to pursue this vision of America. Abraham Lincoln risked everything, and sacrificed 600,000 lives to force two distinct cultures back together in the pursuit of unifying norms and a political dream where all might have at least a chance to be what they could be.

But the run up to war was a period of geographcal hate and suspicion, violence in our legislatures, and a breakdown in normal discourse. recall that one U.S, Senator from the South attacked and almost killed another member for speaking out against slavery. We are close to such levels of acrimony today. Then, it was mostly north versus south. Today, it is largely urban versus rural.

But here is the question that nags me, and has for some time. Our Civil War, our national bloodletting, succeeded in forcing two opposing cultures back together within a single political body. But did the marriage work?

I am doubftul. It strikes me that the simmering conflict in America would merely was suppressed while de jure apartheid permitted pernicious practices of exclusion and exploitation to continue in many parts of the country. The ‘rights’ movement of the 1960s rectified old wrings nut opened the old scars over time.

Frankly, I’m not sure. I have doubts we can stay together as one country and remain an effective political body. The divide simply is too deep. Lincoln himself saw the weakness of his own herculean efforts to bind us together … “a divided house cannot stand.” On the other hand, I have no idea how to effectute a civil divorce.

I had a pleasant surprise this morning, aside from discovering that I was still alive thanks to some minor miracle. The advanced copy of my latest and greatest (Refractive Reflections) was waiting for me outside my door. The months of labor were near an end, though writing for me is hardly work. That is a good thing since I consider ‘work’ to be the worst four-letter word of them all.

I must admit. Writing has taken over my life in these so-called golden years. Perhaps that is not such a surprise. As a young kid growing up in an ethnic, Catholic, working class neighborhood in Worcester Massachusetts, I was an oddball. I still am. Okay, I was a misfit in many ways but one stands out in particular. I dreamt of being a great writer. No one else on my block had such an aspiration. The only thing my ruffian friends read was the side of the cereal box in the morning. In my home, I was lucky enough to have a collection of Reader Digest’s Condensed books and a bunch of Earl Stanley Gardner’s Perry mason mysteries (my dad .

True enough, I never recall any of the budding delinquents among my circle of buddies sharing anything about the latest literary gem they had just finished. None joined me when I mentioned I was heading off to the library, treating my destination as if it were one step below Devil’s Island. They all had the common aspirations of my world in post war America. They talked about becoming soldiers, cowboys, athletes, and mobsters … though there were no Italians among my friends which made the final option less likely.

I never knew where such goofball ideas came from, and I had many. For example, as a rather young kid I joined the World Federalist Society, a group devoted to moving away from nationalistic identifications towrd the concept of a single world. It likely was a Communist Front organization but it cost nothing to join. The only other group I signed on for was th Boston Celtics Junior Boosters. That didn’t cost anything either, money was tight. I did give the Boy Scouts a look but they kicke dme out beffore I made ‘tenderfoot.’ My craziest thought was becoming a missionary Catholic Priest but came to me senses after about a year and a half.

But being a writer remained my secret and unexpressed passion. In high school, I was an unispired and uninspiring student, to say the least (in truth, I was never a great student at any level but HS was the worst). Still, one day our English teacher had us write a short story for homework. This was great. It was not like those algebra conundrums about the boat going upstream at 10 MPH and the rive rflowing the opposite way at 5 MPH, and a wind hitting the craft obliquely at 15 MPH. Then the question: How long did it take the captain to eat his lunch? I had a better chance of curing cancer than figuring those things out.

But a story… somehting creative that did not involve numbers. That wa sin my wheelhouse. That night I was busy scribbling out my first masterpiece. When our teacher (a Xaverian brother) asked for a volunteer to share his creation, my hand shot up as the other students slunk under their desks. he looked at me with a familiar ‘oh no, not that moron.’ But i was his only option so he sighed and gestured to me. I rose and started reading. As I came to the end, sweat broke out on my brow as my confidence ebbed. What if my clasmates were laughing at me, storing up their insults to hurl at me at theoir earliest convenience. Why had I subjected myself to such public ridicule.

I had written a simpple story but one that drew the audience in one direction until the very end when there was an unexpected twist. I thought it clever but now that I had revealed all in public, my confidence evaporated like a snowball in July. I looked up with great trepidation. There were no smirks, no usual looks in my direction that screamed ‘what a schmuck.’ They were shocked. The teacher was shocked. I wasn’t as dumb as a sack of rocks. Who knew?

Perhaps this one gift came my father, an Irishman blessed with that Celtic blarney. He was just a working stiff after a youth walking on the wild side but I could tell he was smart and a good story teller. Once, perhaps after he had passed, I was going through his effects. I came across a story that had been printed in the local paper from the ealry 1930s. There was a picture of his HS basketball team and a narrative that included questions of the players about different things including what he wanted to do as an adult. My father said he wanted to be a journalist, a dream beyond his reach as a por Irish kid during the height of the depression. But his aspiration always made me wonder.

When I somehow made it to college (you would think any decent school would know better than to let me in), I recall the time I ran into my English Lit professor. Here was another coourse I loved. We were in a food line so he had no escape. I shared my dream of being writer one day. He did not laugh as I recall. He simple had one question for me. “Can you tell a good story?” I had no freaking idea so remained moot in that moment.

Other than writing a novel while in India (Peace Corps), I put aside that childhood passion. I now wonder if that first try was any good. I think it got thrown out with some dirty underwear after a decade or two. No, I stumbled into a career as a policy wonk and an academic. It was a fun life where I got to work on interesting challenges of my own choosing while working with really smart people from around the country. I even loved teaching. The classroom can be fun when you are on the correct side of the desk … LOL. Besides, they paid me to have fun so I always had a roof over my head and three-squares a day. Not sure that would have been possible as a writer.

So, as my spouse’s health began to decline (alzheimers), there was less travel and other things to keep me occupied. I went back to that early passion about a dozen or so years ago. Since then, I’ve rolled out works of fiction, memoirs, and policy works … at least a dozen, more if you include rewrites of the early works. And guess what, I’ve loved every minute of it.

Below are a few of my fictional works. I’ll share the non fiction gems in the future.

Did I choose the right path in life. Who knows. I loved doing policy work. I always received wonderful feedback as an acadmic writer, even from those hard ass economists. And I loved the college students whose lives I shaped. But there will always be a nagging doubt that I compromised in life … that I did not pursue my first passion.

Oh well!

If you had been able to read my entire blog yesterday, you would have seen that I ended on a down note. I was about to pack the car with my essential belongings to emigrate to the ‘civilized’ country to our north … assuming that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had remained in Republican hands. After all, the party of Trump controlled some two-thirds of the State Senate, almost the same pluraity in the Assembly, a majority on the State Supreme Court, and 6 of 8 U.S. Congressional districts. They only lacked the Gubernatorial Seat though veto-proof majorities might only be an election away.

The Red Tide in what had been one of America’s beacons of democracy and good governance, especially in the heyday of the ‘Wisconsin Idea,’ would have been complete. Trump’s party would have been positioned to cement authoritarian rule on the state’s citizen for at least a generation. Say goodby to the American experiment in democracy.

Pundits from around the nation focused on this special election for our Supreme Court. Robert Reich called it much more important than Trump’s arraignment, basically a pro-forma legal event, while the always eriudite Heather Cox Richardson labeled it a ‘huge’ event. Most placed the election in national terms, reminding us that a shift to Trump of some 43,000 votes in several swing states could have kept our last President in power despite losing the election by 7 million votes. Local politics matter … a lot!

The Republican stranglehold on power since the onset of the 21st century has resulted in the stark erosion of democratic principles in the Badger State. Though objective observers estimate that the Democratic Party likely has a small plurality of aggregate support statewide in Wisconsin, gerrymandering and voter suppression have rendered those in the center-left with virtually no power. The prospect of facing the 2024 Presidential elections without safeguards over the electoral process worried many on the national scene and here. The implications for the right were not lost on them. When the results came in early this morning, far right activist Ali Alexander said “we (Republicans) just lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I do not see a path to 270 in 2024.” He realized that his party might have to win elections legitimately for a change.

My eloquent blog yesterday was cut off when I was talking about why my spouse retired early from her position as Deputy Director of the Wisconsin High Court (and unified court system). She had worked for liberal and conservative judges in her position for over two decades, respecting virtually all of them even when she might disagree with some of their values. But she saw where the winds of change were leading. Huge amounts of corporate money poured into what had been non-partisan judicial races in an attempt to impose a right wing agenda on the court’s legal products. Collegiality was replaced by bitter partisanship culminating in a conservtive male justice putting his hands around the neck of of a liberal female peer before backing off. At that moment, she knew it was time to retire and get out of Dodge just as the 20th century ended.

During the early years of this millenium, Republican court candidates prevailed and assumed a 6-3 majority on the bench some 15 years ago. All the hot button issues like protecting easy access to the polls, creating voting boundaries, overseeing election integrity (or not), and abortion were fully in Republican hands. We Badger State residents recall that the Republican legislature hired a former Supreme Court Justice to investigate alleged Democaratic voting fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. After spending a considerable amount of money and time, he and his team found absolutely nothing. Benghazi all over again.

Almost a decade ago, Republican control of Wisconsin seemed unassailable. They had the trifecta (senate and assembly, the high court, and the governor’s seat). Scott Walker, a darling of the hard right, won reelection by five percentage points over his Democratic opponent in 2014. It looked bleak to those of us who still believed in democracy, reason, civility, compassion, science, and community. If my spouse had not been suffering from early onset Alzheimers, my car would have been packed and my compass pointed due north.

While, in the short term, little can be done about local races in what pundits have claimed is the most gerrymandered state in the U.S., the statewide races have begun to shift in a blue direction. In 2018, Democrat Tony Evers (definitely not a glamorous campaigner) edged out a victory over Trump acolyte Scott Walker (49.6% to 48.5%) for the governor’s seat. In 2020, a Dane County liberal judge named Jill Karofsky beat the then incumbent Republican member of the high court who had been appointed by Walker with relative ease (taking 55.3% of the vote). Then, in 2022, the still exciting Tony Evers (sarcasm) managed to beat his Republican opponent for reelection with some breathing room (51.2% to 47.8%). Was the Red Tide finally receding?

Only time will tell. But the 2023 high court race is encouraging. Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee judge handily beat conservative Dan Kelly by over a 10 percentage point margin. The race garnered not only national interest but became an intense ideological conflict. The vote turnout was easily a record for such an election. And the money spent was over 3 times the previous record amount for such a high court race, which took place in Illinois in 2004. One national pundit found it shocking that as much money as was spent for a Canadian national election had been expended on this state court race. Of course, as the results became clear, the Republican candidate refused to congratulate his liberal opponent, calling her ‘deeply deceitful, dishonorable, and despicable.’ As usual, a class act. I swear, today’s Republicans engage in more ‘projection’ than any other group I know.

Is the so-called blue trend real? Only time will tell. Going in, I was more optimistic than usual (for me). My hopes were raised when I voted yesterday and I had trouble finding a parking spot and there was a queue waiting to scan their ballots. When the totals were counted, some 240,000 plus votes were cast in Dane County (Madison) with over 80% of the total going for the liberal candidate. Dane cast more votes than its bigger neighbor down the road … Milwaukee which gave the liberal 70 % of their votes. Moreover, the population of Dane continues to grow exponentially, which must worry conservative operatives greatly. They will likley increase their attacks on the University of Wisconsin which they see as an incubator of liberal sins. But even smaller counties, especially in the southwest and northern parts of the state, swung into the democratic column. These are good signs.

It wasn’t a perfect night. A special election for a State Senate seat went Republican by a slim margin (50.9% to 49.1%). This will give the conservatives power to exercise impeachment powers though does not give them a veto-proof majority. Many expect great mischief in the future, including trying to throw the newly elected justice off the bench for specious reasons. Such arrogance would likely spark great resentment in the state though appeal strongly to the MAGA base. But even here there are signs of hope. U.S. Republican Senator Ron Johnson, easily the dumbest member of that august body, took well over 60% and then 54% of the votes in that area during his past two contests. The preference for conservatives here may well be on the wane as this Milwaukee suburban area seemingly swings in a blue direction.

In any case, I am not packing my car this morning to emigrate to Canada. Our friends to the north are spared my presence in their beautiful land. I am sure they are most grateful for that.

And here is hoping you get the entire blog this AM.