Tom's Musings

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.

Remember when Wisconsin was a laboratory for democracy, a beacon of progressive and good government. President Teddy Roosevelt praised the state as such during the heady days of the ‘Wisconsin Idea’ when the country looked to the Badger state for legislative ideas in support of working Americans and the less fortunate. A collaborative relationship between progressive Republicans and University academics spawned a generation of new ideas such as workers compensation, the progressive income tax, unemployment compensation, open primaries, the social security system and so much more. A strong Germanic-Scandinavian culture supported active government on behalf of the common man and woman … Milwaukee had a socialist mayor until 1960. It was widely presumed that if you wished to see good government in action, you should look to Wisconsin.

Nominally, the state is evenly split between the two major parties. Predidential elections and state-wide elections are hotly contested and decided by very small margins. Yet, hard right Republicans have enjoyed a growing policy stranglehold on the state where they control the State Senate, the Assembly, and the Supreme Court. On a personal note, my spouse was the Deputy Director of the Supreme Court (and unifi

SHIT … I was having trouble and apparently most was lost. Damn, it was a good one.

I suppose I was like most guys who grew up in my post WWII era, totally clueless and inept about the ‘other’ gender. Those of the female persuasion not only struck us losers as being from another planet, they seemed to come from another galaxy located on the other side of the cosmos. My interactions with this alien life form ranged from the mildly amusing to the outright pathetic.

I won’t bore you with the litany of disasters that beset my bumbling attempts to ‘get to second base‘ since ‘scoring‘ so to speak seemed beyond the known laws of probability in that era. Come to think on it, the odds never improved all that much after that but they did get marginally better. You would spend weeks trying to decipher the clues or ‘tells’ that you were told existed. What would happen if you asked her out or ‘made a move.‘ Great thought went into what might constitute interest in your object of desire that included discussions with the other hapless and clueless guys with whom you shared your ignorance.

It mattered not. When you screwed up your courage, the end was the same … “go out with you! I would rather eat crushed glass.’” The kinder ones might use the familiar dodge of the grandmother passing on (for the 8th time that month) or the dog needing to be washed that night (cleanest dog in town). I’m still scarred from these early memories!

In truth, I did marry a wonderful gal. We would have celebrated 50 years of marriage this past December had she not passed away last summer. It was a remarkably happy union. The fact that a shotgun was employed at the marriage ceremony should be ignored. She never discovered that the shotgun I used to envourage her to say ‘I do‘ was not real. Here we are just before I pulled out the shotgun.

But we are talking about my early ‘love’ life here … memories that rival my root canal work and my prostate biopsies for personal pain.

Let’s see. There was one real girlfriend in high school. I don’t know how I got her. My best guess is that I was her penance for imagined sins she had committed. All I know is that she committed NO SINS with me But we did laugh a lot. Okay, she laughed at me when I tried being romantic. Here we are on prom night. Maribeth eventually got a Doctorate in Literature but I lost track and never found out what she accomplished in life.

After my brief attempt at becoming a saint, I went to a college known as a den of ‘atheists and communists.’ Even better, there were few Catholic broads. I thought I would be in erotic heaven. But no, you can take the klutz out of his religious straightjacket but the retraints are still there.

Yet, I managed to stumble upon two serious female acquaintances. I cannot say lovers but we spent a great deal of time together.

This was Carol. She caught my attention because she wasn’t Catholic … being Jewish in fact. She had another point in her favor. She was already engaged to some schmuck who was in the military serving in Alaska. This was perfect for a commitment phobic guy like me. No threat of anything ‘serious.‘ But I liked her a lot. She was smart as a whip, ranked 1st in our class I believe. I thought if I hung around her my grades might improve by some form of osmosis. That didn’t work but we had deep and wonderful conversations. She went on to Harvard for her doctorate and later became a Dean at Rutgers.

Then there was the ‘love’ of my early life:

Here is Lee when she graduated from Clark. She was the one gal from those years with whom I experienced a ‘Hallmark’ moment … seeing her from across the crowded room and ‘falling in love.‘ I don’t recommend that for anyone. It still took me weeks to make my patented move which she rejectd but nicely (no threat to eat crushed glass). After being ‘shot down’ (which I should have been used to by then), I hid in a closet for weeks. For once in my pathetic life, though, I tried again (I must have been smitten). It worked, she just had to work through her guilt than involved a guy from back home who was pursuing her.

I won’t bore you with the tragic story. Neither of us were healthy enough to talk about our feelings. When the time came to put up or shut up, I wandered off to the other side of the world (India). Amazingly, I did raise the issue of marriage in letters but in rather oblique ways. She made the sensible decision of marrying a post doc while working at Harvard.

That should be the end of that but it wasn’t quite the end. After some 4 decades of no contact, I stumbled across her on Facebook and reached out. We were able to have all the conversation through cyberspace that we never had in person while in school. She went through two marriages and was happy in the second, which pleased me greatly. She also earned a doctorate, in some hard science subject like micro-virology or something I do not understand.

The far more important thing is that it turned out she did love me. She had kept evrything I had sent her from India in fact, or given her in college. But she was Greek Orthodox (who unfortunately are very much like Catholics) and therefore had been as neurotic back then as I was. All this mattered not since she was soon to pass away from cancer. But I found the knowledge that we shared an unexpressed love in the early days very comforting for some reason. I hadn’t been rejected, not really.

Hmmm! Perhaps I wasn’t as loathesome as I had feared for all these years. We just may have been two ships destined to pass one another in the fog of youth.

There was something similar about all four women. They were whip smart, witty, independent, and (most important of all) had no standards when it came to men. I would like to think that, were I to do it all over again, that I would do things differently. But that is BS! I’d still be hapless, no doubt about it.

Below is the ill-starred Don Juan in those days. If interested, I explore my early years at length in A CLUELESS REBEL.

It will be difficult for anyone who knows me now to accept the fact that I was a good kid in my youth. I never ran afoul of the law and I even studied my lessons (sometimes), not that it did me much good looking at my grades. In any case, after high school I entered a Catholic Seminary to become a missionary priest. That ill-starred effort only lasted about a year and a half but it signified my intention, or ambition at least, to lead a decent life.

I wonder what happened to that good and pious young man? Oh well!

Nevertheless, while I have led a conventionally debauched and selfich and irresponsible adult life, I yet have this instinct to tell others how THEY ought to live. And unlike those disgusting tele-evangelists, I do it for free since that is just about what it is worth.

Yes, this is me posing in some borrowed clerical gear. I did look the part, like a competitor to Bing Crosby (who played the kindly and wise priest in those 1940’s movies) though my favorite was Gregory Peck in Keys of the Kingdom.

And here I am on the right with my two seminary roomates. They were still there when I left as I recall but I doubt they lasted. Vocations collapsed after my ill informed try. I wonder if I was somehow responsible. The college level Maryknoll Seminary located just outside Chicago was bursting at the seams when I entered in 1962. It was out of business when I brought my wife for a visit a decade later.

But to my spiritual lesson:

These two memes capture what it was all about for me. It was never about a personal deity which I never believed in, not really. It was never about any religious institution or tradition which generally were perverted to conform with their leader’s preferences.

No, it all came down to the message found in many spiritual lessons. Love. Be kind. Be understanding. Be compassionate. Be accepting.

That’s it, the rest is noise or non essential ritual. I went into the seminary because of the core message. I left because I realized a belief in a personal god wasn’t necessary to live that message. Unfortunately, the message is the first thing lost to most of us, especially those who proclaim their religious convictions the loudest.

Rather we should find grace in those who perform quiet and unnoticed good acts. If you are looking for Providence, that’s where you will find Him or Her.

Father Tom

It is snowing in Madison on April 1 (not an April fools joke), so I’m already in a bad mood. It took me virtually no time to stumble across a news article that deepened my despair. It seldom does.

A school principal in Jacksonville Florida recently prohibited his student’s from viewing a 1495 painting titled ‘The Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Mary Magdalene.’ He felt this masterpiece by the great Renaissance painter Bartolomeo was ‘an assault on family values’ and showed a ‘lack of enthusiasm for motherhood’ and (horrors) was ‘a partisan attack on the pro-life movement.’ Yeah, right! As if a 15th century Italian artist put brush to canvas while thinking, “how can I advance the woke liberal agenda in the 21st century.’ On cue, the genius heading Florida’s state government, Ron Desantis, appluaded the school prinicpal’s alertness and courage. Real education must be stamped out.

This is just the latest in a long line of valiant efforts by conservative stalwarts to protect our young from becoming literate and educated. For example, we have the case in Pinellas County (Florida) where the showing of a documentary of Ruby Bridges (the 6 year old black girl who first desegregated Lousianna’a schools) was suspended. This had been shown during Black History month for years but was yanked after a couple of parents complained pending firther review. Then there was the Wisconsin case of a song by Dolly Parton and Cyrus Miley being banned from a school performance presumably because it fostered acceptance of others. Heaven forbid that a song reflect the core teachings of Jesus. And we have the instance where students were not permitted to view Michelangelo’s classic sculpture of David, a Biblical hero, since it displayed his marble penis. Right, as if science (and our kids) had yet to discover that males have genitals. Just shoot me.

Censorship is becoming big business and book banning remains the favored flavor of this exercise in contemporary Fascism. Between July 2021 and June 2022, some 1,648 titles by 1,261 authors were banned or restricted somewhere in the U.S. A Texas Republican legislator has proffered a list of some 850 books to be ‘investigated,’ primarily on suspicion that they teach Critical Race Theory or what the rest of us call American history. Besides our children being driven further into ‘the New Illiteracy’ as Harvey Graff calls it, many household names in literature have come under attack over time …. Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Shakespeare, and God. These and more have seen their clasiscs attacked as vile and pernicious (though in truth the Bible was written by at least 40 ancient authors presumably under God’s direction). Over the past half century plus, J. D, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; Ashley Hope Perez’s Out of Darkness have been banned. The classic most often removed from our shelves is George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984, a work that influences us even today.

Book burning is not new of course. In 212 BCE, Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti burned all the books in his land and had some 460 Confucius Scholars murdered. At least our Republicans have yet to institute a death penalty for those perusing classic literature or art, not yet at least. Literary purges, of course, have been evidenced thoughout time with the years of the Counter Reformation being a particularly active period as Protestants and Catholics vied for the control of minds and hearts. Not just religious books were suspect. King James the 1st banned Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World in 1614. Perhaps even then, it was realized that those who write history control the future. The Victorian Age was famous for exercising control over the public’s tastes while the U.S. postal service was vigilant in the first half of the 20th century while searching for prurient literature like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer published in 1934. Banished in Boston became a shorthand expression for government’s zeal in shaping public morality.

Today’s Republican orthodoxy, however, brings censorship back to the front burner in a frightening way. It is not just that public officials are taking advantage of our slide toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism for political advancement. They are being aided by gullible citizens and parents who routinely attack teachers, librarians, and all others who labor to educate the next generation. These are underpaid and ill respected professionals. I recently conversed with several former teachers of my acquaintance (one of whom I found out via a phone call passed away as I was writing this). They either retired early or stated they never would enter that profession these days because the environment is so hostile and crippling. The image of Nazi’s throwing books on to huge conflagrations is recent enough to be be recalled by many of us. We know where that led, an ending that should NEVER be repeated.

In all this doom and gloom I can find one ray of hope. I came of age during the 1950s. I had McCarthyism, Catholic orthodoxy including the ‘Legion of Decency’ telling me which movies I could watch, sitcoms where words like pregnancy were not used and married couples could only be shown sleeping in twin beds with a night table separating them, and the list goes on. And yet, I grew into a debauched adult who marched against the Vietnam war and spent his life endorsing secular and progressive ideals. When I taught policy courses at the University level, I tried very hard not to tell stdents what to believe, and the few conservatives in my courses went out of there way to thank me for that. I thought my mission was to provide an environment within which they could learn how to think critically, though that did not always work of course. I think it did often enough to make it all worthwhile.

Those who seek to control others will fail in the end. That is my fervent wish, at least. I just hope it turns out to be true.

This didn’t work 😕.

I could write about Donald Trump being indicted but everyone will be all over that. My big fear with the Donald news is that it will overshadow the release of my next book “Refractive Reflections” which is due out in a week or so. People have such weird priorities. Obviously, anything I do us more important than news about that clown. But there you have it.

No, I don’t have much time this morning so perhaps a brief jog down memory lane. I was glancing through the pics I’ve stored on my laptop and several jumped out at me. I skipped over the early ones, the girlfriends who dumped me and the athletic triumphs that only occurred in my feverish imagination. No, I focused on some colleagues whose friendship (and intellectual partnerships) I’ve enjoyed over the years. They capture good times that are now fading away since I’ve begun to lose them … one by one.

I did teach policy courses in the School of Social Work but my real home in academia was the Insititute for Research on Poverty (IRP), a federally sponsored research entity and think tank founded in 1966 and which survives to this day despite several close calls when its future was endangered for one reason or another. I have many grey hairs from a few of those close calls but we survived where others (Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan, Stanford, Washington etc. ) came and went.

Personally, I loved the Institute. It was an interdisciplinary entity where scholars from around the country (world even) would gather and focus on a topic of great interest to me (social and economic opportunity or the lack thereof). I often said it was like a sheltered workshop where the very bright (but essentially useless) might congregate and think about things while doing little real harm. At the same time, the name was known widely in many circles and opened up all kinds of doors for me. People in government, the philanthropic world, think tanks and evaluation firms, and select other academics from around the world would conclude that I was smart simply because I was part of this respected Institute … a great scam indeed.

I joined the Institute in 1975 and essentially never left. Though I fell into it by accident (my whole professional career was an accident) it was perfect. As I said at my semi-retirement gig (a rather nice party which was thrown for me so I wouldn’t change my mind) I told the assembled throng that I had the perfect job … I flew around the country working with the smartest people on the most intransigent problems without any direct responsibility. And I got to pick the problems I wanted to work on. Best of all, they paid me to do this …. as long as I raised enough money for my cockamamie projects which was surprisingly easy. I’m a persuasive cuss.

Enough about the place … a few comments on some of the people:

From left to right, there is me, then Irv Garfinkel, Bob Haveman, and Irv Piliavin at the wedding of Bob’s daughter in New York. I worked so closely with them over the years and now two are gone … only Garfinkel is yet with us. They combined intelligence and caring in ways that I miss so much. And they were giants in the poverty research world.

Obviously, I am grabbing pics from where I can. This was from a party Mary Rider and I threw at our place many decades ago. The tall guy in the middle is karl Scholz, then an assistant professor of economics and now University Provost at Wisconsin and soon to be President at the University of Oregon. The guy at the right is Gary Sandefur, a sociologist and Native American who became Dean of L&S at Wisconsin before returning to his native Oklahoma to become Provost at Oklahoma State University. The other gentelman is Bill Prosser who was on a 1 year leave at the University from the federal government. Bill, unfortunately, is no longer with us. I cannot imagine a finer group of colleagues. I remember when, in turn, Karl and Gary became the Dean of L&S at Wisconsin. I told each, “I don’t care what jkoind of power you know have, I’m going to treat you like shit … as i always have.” Good times indeed.

Now we have Jennifer Noyes, an interesting story. I met her when she worked closely with then Governor Tommy Thompson (later Secretary of HHS under Bush the Son). At the time, we were on the outs with Thompson and the state after years of a close working relationship. But Jennifer was more interested in good govenment than petty politics. She and I worked to repair the relationship and started a good friendship. Eventually, after a stint with a consulting firm, I helped convince her to join us at the University and at IRP, where she also served as Associate Director before rising now to become Assistant to the Chancellor. Despite our sometimes politcal squabbles, we worked on many joint projects. Great fun indeed.

Time for one more memory.

The guy on the right is Sherwood Zink. He was not an academic but an Attorney who worked for the State of Wisconsin. At the finish of a state mandated legislative welfare study, Irv Garfinkel and I began working with Sherwood and others on reforming the state’s child support system. In truth, people did listen to us academics on occasion. Sherwood did. We didn’t get everything we wanted but enough to transform that part of the policy world. He will have to represent the may state and local government officials with whom I worked with around the country. I did work with the best and the brightest. He also is lost to me but remains in my heart.

I have suffered from the imposter complex all of my life. I’m a working class kid who somehow stumbled into this career as an academic and policy wonk. When I was in meetings and conferences, in state capitols, in the Old Executive Office Building in D.C., or at top research Universities, I always expected the adults to come in and throw me out. It never happened and, to this day, I cannot figure out why. What really frightened me is that people would listen to me. Now that gave me nightmares.

That paranoia aside, I had a great professional life, the best available given that Hugh Hefner had the job I really wanted.

IF YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT MY EXCITING POLICY LIFE, GET A COPY OF “A WAYWARD ACADEMIC: Reflections from the Policy trenches.” A witty and insightful tour of the welfare and poverty policy wars when it was a top domestic issue.

You heard it here first, the dominance of homo sapiens is coming to an end. Well, perhaps not the dominance, but rather the utlility of the species. It has been a good, if violent, run. I’m not talking about exterminating ourselves via nuclear holocaust or our stubborn refusal to respond with a scintilla of intelligence to anthropomorphic climate change. No, I’m talking about the end to our usefulness in the world as we are replaced in that respect by our own ingenuity and inventions.

We all have witnessed technologies replacing humans in the performance of mundane tasks, from telephone operators to file clerks to typists. We can easily see higher-level tasks supplanting ornery humans in somewhat more demanding areas … computer driven robots replacing skilled laborers on the factory floor, driverless transport trucks dispensing with their human operators, and robotic arms performing at least lower-level medical and surgical procedures. But humans will always be needed for creative pursuits. Right? Our vanity must preserve one arena in which we will prevail.

I doubt that. Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovations are now dominating the headlines. Creations with ominous sounding acronyms such as ChatGPT are capturing the imaginations of innovators and academics. A Wharton School Management Professor recently tried to assess the limits of what these new technologies could do. With ChatGPT, and related programs, he went about developing a business plan for a game he invented. The tasks normally would demand sophisticated skills in several areas of expertise.

He employed his hi-tech servants to do things like market research, create a positioning document, develop an email campaign, set up a web site, generate a logo and ‘hero shot’ graphic, make a social media campaign for multiple platforms, and script and create a video. All was accomplished. What amazed him … it was all completed in the time it would take him to eat his lunch and at a high level, which he termed ‘superhuman.’ Some estimate that 300 million jobs could be eliminated by AI at the next stage of this revolution, many being high paying positions. Bill Gates has suggested that AI technologies would permit each of us to have a personal white collar assistant. Alex, the low-level assistant that turns on our lights, could move out of the picture.

All this has not gone unnoticed. A large number of movers and shakers, including the aformentioned Gates and Elon Musk, have asked for a moratorium on further AI advancements for a while. Humanity surely needs to breathe and think through what this revolution will mean and how we should respond. Miracle of miracles, politicians on both sides of the aisle are talking with each other about the implications of AI. Who knows, this might be an apocalyptic threat that brings us together though I highly doubt it.

The real test of whether this is a tempest in a teapot or a threat to humanity is whether AI will replace university professors. OMG! I always loved the fact that there were places for people like me in the world … where those who have absolutely practical skills can go and do something that retains the illusion of utility, something like disgorging tons of words to be read by a handful of their peers and inaccessible to the world. As I labored in academia, I always imagined I was a conremporary version of the scribe or priest writing volumes on what a great guy the Pharoah or Prince was. Rather useless but having considerable respect attached to the exercise. Might this societal role, and last hiding place for the inept be approaching its end?

Our fear of technology might well have started with the creation of Frankenstein and his monster by author Mary Shelley. It picked up considerable pace during the 1950s, after the emergeance of nuclear power unleashed our deeper fears. We saw all kinds of monsters in our nightmares. I mean, who recalls Godzilla devouring Tokyo … again. Update our imagined horror to Stanley Kubrick’s classic … 2001. HAL, the onboard computer of the spaceship, realizes he is smarter than the human idiots nominally in charge and takes command of the craft. I still shiver at the memory of those scenes.

Our future monsters might not look anything like Frankenstein’s creatio or Godzilla. It might be the tiniest of binary signals operating at speeds which humans could never compete. It would be an unseen monster, but the deadliest of all.

Sleep tight!