Tom's Musings

How often have we heard this refrain … why can’t government be run more like a business? Or, how often do we hear the pithy comment … good enough for government! Even I have employed this second aphorism on numerous occasions, the implication being that the standards of the private sector exceed those found in its public counterpart. This premis is widely accepted both outside and (all too often) inside government, but is it true?

To address such a question fully would demand a response well beyond one of my occasional blogs. Still, as with most of the questions that attract my ever wandering attention, I have a couple of half-baked opinions which I’m sure you are dying to hear.

I’ll pretty much skip over the obvious points that separate the public and private sectors. For example, the private sector is driven by profit margins while the public sector typically is burdened by expectations to deliver various services and/or address needs for which the profit motive would be irrelevant, if not counterproductive. The U.S. postal service mimics private sector alternatives reasonably well, at least the for-profit competition that has emerged in recent decades. Oddly enough, Fred Smith, the genius behind a major competitor, Fed- Ex, passed away recently. When he proposed the central idea for what became the overnight delivery behemoth in a paper for a Yale business class, he received a grade of C. ‘A ridiculous concept that could never work,’ his course professor responded. I know for a fact that the persons teaching most subjects in a university setting are neither omniscient nor always correct. After all, I once was one of them.

Digressions aside, there are significant differences between for-profit delivery systems (e.g., UPS and Fed Ex) and our federal postal system approach. For example, our postal system must reach all segments of our population and all geographical locations irrespective of impacts on the fiscal bottom line. When our public system suggests economies like eliminating remote post offices or cutting back on Saturday deliveries, the political backlash is unforgiving. This is a special burden borne by what we consider a public good. Unlike their private good counterparts, they cannot operate free from exogenous (e g., political) pressures.

In this blog I touch on the issue public sector competence mostly from a personal perspective and with respect to the arena I know most about … our public safety net. After all, I spent most of my life in the public sector … as a practitioner, as a policy wonk, and as one of those omniscient scholars at the head of a university classroom. One exception was my first paying job, delivering newspapers around age 11 or 12. This experience suggested that any career in the private sector might not be a wise choice for me. At times, I actually lost money on my route, quite a feat now that I think on it. I had to pay for the papers I delivered. Then, it was up to me to collect what was due from my working class (often struggling) customers. That proved surprisingly difficult at times. While my devotion to the delivery task never flagged, I could never be sufficiently aggressive in the collection aspect of the job. Perhaps I was overly appreciative to how some of my customers struggled to make ends meet, a struggle I witnessed in my own home. I just couldn’t summon up the assertiveness required of an entrepreneur. As a result, I came out on the short end of the fiscal stick all too often.

I started what I considered my first real job at age 14, in the position of page at the Worcester Public Library. A page is the guy or gal who returns books to shelves and performs other minor duties. I never stopped working after that, even while pursuing my education, until I retired some five decades later from my university position as an academic and policy wonk of some national repute at the University of Wisconsin. Even as a senior scientist at an R-1 (top level) research university, I consulted with federal, state, and local public sector officials on the design, management, and evaluation of human service systems. I organized networks of officials to facilitate collaboration and cooperation regarding the pusuit of innovative solutions to social challenges. And I taught public policy courses to undergraduate and graduate students while helping to manage a nationally recognized research entity (the Institute for Research on Poverty). I’m fatigued just thinking about all the things I tried to do.

And yet, my professional positions were never guaranteed. For the most part, I had to raise my own funds to support my research and consulting work. If I failed to do so, I faced the distasteful prospect of having to get a real job. Even my institutional administrative duties were for an academic organization that had to compete with other top universities for federal and private support. I enjoyed no guarantees, at least not many, and never had the comforting protections of academic tenure. Thus, I enjoyed no stable sinecure and remained quite sensitive to the dynamics of the market place. Fortunately,  I was good at raising money and normally had ‘banked’ resources beyond what I could take in salary.

My background aside, my interest in this topic was stimulated by an article I recently stumbled across which noted how efficient the IRS has been in collecting taxes. In recent years, the employees of this much maligned public agency reduced the administrative costs for collecting what was due from 53 cents on each additional $100 dollars collected to 35 cents. That’s an amazing benefit-cost ratio. In fact, it was reported that some 83,000 IRS employees collected $4.7 trillion dollars in 2023. Irrespective of the validity of periodic complaints about some draconian measures employed by the IRS to browbeat citizens in paying up what is owed, this remains a remarkable performance.

Now, enter Elon Musk and DOGE (the Department of Governmental Efficiency). With great fanfare, Elon essentially promised to employ the demanding standards of the private sector to root out some $2 trillion dollars of fraud and abuse in our federal government. Let us ignore the obvious coincidence that this figure would almost compensate for the lost revenues if the 2017 Trump tax cuts were extended through the remainder of the decade, a favored policy initiative of his titular boss.

As we know, these Trump 2017 tax cuts essentially redistribute resources from the less affluent to the uber-wealthy. Non partisan estimates suggest that low income families would lose an additional $1,600 (per year) if the cuts are extended while their affluent counterparts would gain about $12,000 on average. The really rich, like Elon, would gain much, much more. But let us give Elon the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps his intentions are noble.

So, what did Elon do with his remarkable power? He marched right in and began whacking away at public programs in a wholesale and seemingly indiscriminate manner. One of the first to go was USAID, a program that provided health and food assistance (among other things) to the most vulnerable target populations across the planet, but particularly in distressed areas. True, such aid could never be delivered in a way to turn a profit. And true, not all that which is expended can fully be justified … there likely is even some fraud. Still, this is a humanitarian gesture that so many appreciate.

In the main, Elons cuts had nothing to do with fraud and abuse. He, and his nominal boss (Trump) simply didn’t like the program (among others justified on humanitarian grounds). Besides, they were desperate to develop a fiscal rationale to justify further tax breaks for the economic class that already has seen their share of the economic pie soar over the past several decades. The draconian program excisions by DOGE, however, will result in untold deaths and great suffering, especially among vulnerable children who will be defenseless against such scourges as AIDS and malnutrition. 

Another program to fall under Elon’s sword involved IRS staff.  Thousands were cut and the resulting savings added to the amount of waste eliminated. It was soon pointed out that these staff resulted in a net resource gain for the government (see above). This fact was obvious to  anyone with any understanding of how government operated.

In an earlier blog, I noted that my first professional position involved, in part at least, detecting and eliminating fraud and abuse in the major cash welfare system of that era … the Aid to Families wuth Dependent Children program or AFDC. This program had come to symbolize what many thought was wrong with our federal safety net. Therefore, ensuring program integrity by reducing eligibility and payment errors was a top priority.

From my experiences, I can attest that detecting real fraud and abuse is not easily done. You have to know what you are doing. Unlike the Musk approach of merely assuming massive amounts of fraud and waste, we scientifically sampled random cases and did extensive audits. This accountability intervention was known as the Quality Control system (QC). When error rates exceeded permitted tolerance levels, states were required to develop corrective action plans to reduce errors or face federal sanctions or penalties. In Wisconsin, we met our administrative responsibilities with remarkable  success.

The lessons in all this are simple. Doing public programs is not like doing things in the private sector. In many ways, the public domain is more complex, more subject to shifting priorities, more susceptible to multiple and even competing purposes. I do not intend to denigrate private firms. Making a profit in a competitive environment can be daunting. I’m merely asserting that the two systems, one private and one public, are substantially distinct phenomena. What works in one won’t necessarily work in the other.

Of course, some slight of hand was involved in lowering so-called welfare error rates. For example, we realized that the best way to eliminate error was to reduce the opportunity for error. The public never could distinguish unintentional mistakes from intentional fraud. From an inside perspective, we knew that actual fraud was infrequent whereas decionmaking mistakes often emanated from program rules that were overly complex, especially for staffs facing rising caseloads. Besides, not all errors penalized taxpayers. A sizable number were underpayments that disadvantaged poor families.

Nothing personified the difficulties associated with addressing real (as opposed to imagined) abuse than initial efforts to control problems in the newly nationalized federal Food Stamp program (now SNAP). Federal officials decided to take the QC protocols developed for AFDC snd apply them to the growing Food Stamp program. What worked for one should work for another, no? The answer, by the way, is NO!

I recall bring sent to Washington to represent Wisconsin as the new program was being unveiled. While other states sent top officials, Wisconsin sent me, a lowly analyst. But I knew how these programs worked in more detail than the higher ups. Without doubt, I knew that the Food Stamp error rates measured during the start-up of this evaluation effort would be astronomical unless the methodology was substantially tweaked.

These dramatic error rates would not be due to fraud or abuse but rather to flaws in the evaluation system being imposed by the feds. I did my best to warn them. While acknowledging that a number of federal officials listened respectfully, it was soon apparent that this listing ship was destined to sail and sink. I could only watch in dismay.

My prescient predictions were spot on. The initial error rates were through the roof. The press reported the results in ways that suggested fraud and abuse. The public’s negative perceptions of the program were reinforced. Eventually, my warnings were headed. Eventually, the kinks were worked out but additional damage was done to yet another federal system already under the public’s suspicious purview.

Back to AFDC. In the 1970s, we used the QC system to fundamentally alter the AFDC program in Wisconsin. How? We radically eliminated program complexity and, equally as important, we embarked on a journey to bring welfare administration into the computer age. This was an innovation in which I was very involved at the start though I left state government service (for the University) before the transition was complete.

By the time the AFDC program had been fully reworked, it had been radically streamlined and simplified. The old complex, paper driven system had been restructured to eliminate most error-prone decision points. Moreover, front-line worker discretion had been replaced by binary decisions, the kind that could be made by computer and did not require costly professional decisions by agency staff.

Such reforms had apparent downsides. AFDC became a one size fits all program that focused on its income transfer responsibilities. Personal care for troubled families was lost, staff discretion minimized, and individualization eliminated. We were aware of such tradeoffs. But that is the challenge of doing public policy … making tough choices when competing purposes clashed. 

We also knew that we were  dramatically reducing error rates and lowering administrative overhead. During my tenure, I witnessed overhead costs fall well below 5 cents for each dollar in benefits expended. This overhead rate was  among the lowest, if not the lowest, in the country. And yet, lower error rates and overhead costs did little to improve the program’s reputation. Administrative efficiency meant little when program purposes remained controversial in the eyes of the public. Still, we knew we had created an extremely well run program in Wisconsin even if some desired program features had to be sacrificed.

Fast forward some two decades. Now, I’ve long been at the University and have carved out a role that had me consulting with many local, states, and federal officials. One theme that had captured my attention by this time involved developing human service systems that were sufficiently integrated to respond to the multiple needs of dysfunctional families, especially those we designated as FUBARS (fouled up beyond all recognition). In short, now I was returning to a challenge that we had sacrificed when we turned AFDC into an efficient and accurate income transfer system.

The need for more flexible and rehabilitation-oriented public assistance systems continued to increase as taxpayers expressed a stronger desire to move welfare dependent families into mainstream society. Efficient income transfer systems were now passe, no matter how well they were being designed and run. Public sector programs, it would seem, do not function in a vacuum. They must respond to inevitable cultural and political changes. As I often told my students, one generation’s solution is the next generation’s scandal. I had many such memorable quips.

I got heavily involved in these issues while working with officials in Kenosha County Wisconsin. Over several years in the late 1980s, a team from the University I put together collaborated with local officials to develop the first one-stop public assistance agency. We were able to integrate several distinct programs in ways that enabled their underlying purposes and competing cultures to operate in a coherent and complementary fashion. In some ways, it was a complete opposite to my work more than a decade earlier. The Kenosha County model became an inspiration for change across the nation and in several other  countries

By the late 1990s, my colleagues and I were working with a number of state and local sites, including Toronto Canada, on human services integration innovations. One such state was Indiana, one of several that were part of my Welfare Peer Assistance Network or WELPAN. I had organized this network of senior welfare officials from seven Midwestern states who would meet periodically to share both challenges and possible solutions to the demands imposed by welfare reform.

As we pursued service integration possibilities with welfare officials in that state, we learned that the Republican Governor decided to go in a different direction. Assuming that public sector programs were (by definition) poorly managed, he decided to privatize the administration of the program … something highly favored in conservative orthodoxy. Based on my own experiences, I remained very skeptical of this radical move even if it were a staple of Republican orthodoxy. However, I had been around the track enough times not to stand in front of a moving train.

The State of Indiana moved ahead with their ambitious, if questionable, plan. They signed a multi-year, several billion dollar contract to have the IBM corporation manage the State’s several welfare programs. The governor was publicly optimistic. Obviously, a profit-driven private firm had to do a better job than public bureaucrats. Everyone knew that, didn’t they?

The experiment, as I foresaw, turned out to be a total disaster. Within a couple of years, the state had fallen out of compliance with federal standards and faced substantial penalties. The corporation, it turned out, had no concept regarding how to run a public welfare program. They possessed little understanding of the special challenges associated with populations facing severe personal limitations and societal impediments. They had little experience working with multiple programs purposes, not the more singular ends faced by most private firms. The technologies and tactics that might work well with their typical customers now backfired. In short, they were clueless about the challenges they had taken on. The governor had no choice but to cancel the experiment at considerable political costs. Experienced public employees knew what they were doing after all.

Doing public policy just isn’t as easy as it looks.

Traditionally, I would be loathe to slip into some version of the sky is falling mantra or to that other favorite expression of existential despair … this is the most important election in our history. Normally, I check myself when tempted to join the legions of doomsayers or the apocalyptic end gamers that seem to flourish these days. After all, I am in my ninth decade on this earth. I was born when the German Nazis still controlled Europe. I have lived through Political assassinations, the Cold War and the fear of nuclear annihilation, the oft violent civil rights era and other societal transformations, various economic and technological shocks, Islamic terrorism, and several periods of economic angst and dislocation. Still, the nation endured and, in most cases, prospered. The promised end days never materialized.

In each earlier trauma, I might worry (especially about a nuclear winter) but remained sanguine. At some level I always retained a core belief that adults were in charge of things. In the end, reason would prevail.

I recall one vignette from the 1980s where the Soviet Union’s computer defense system lit up like a Christmas tree. The readings indicated that a barrage of ballistic missiles were headed into Russia in a sneak attack. Without time to consult Moscow, the Soviet General looking at his computer screens had to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike before it was too late. After a brief pause, he chose to do nothing  … confiding in his anxious staff that he could not believe that the Americans were that stupid. His instincts were correct. In fact, he was looking at a computer malfunction.

Today, I look about me. In truth, I cannot say that the Americans are not that stupid. From the evidence about us, somewhere close to half of the nation has been on a steady diet of stupid pills for some time now. If ingested, this mysterious narcotic impedes rational thought, stimulates delusional thinking, and encourages self-destructive actions. What else might explain the election of Donald Trump … TWICE. Everyone is entitled to one mistake but his reelection is simply beyond reason.

The bottom line is this. While I’ve heard all the rationalizations justifying Donald’s success, I cannot credit nor comprehend them. White rage, various racial replacement theories, transformational cuture shock, and endless variations on such themes gave been offered to explain why even working-class types have flocked to Donald in recent years.

The most astounding aspect of today’s political situation is that those pretending to be the most religious have come to adore this most degenerate and disgusting person conceivable as their personal hero. There is no way to justify the adoption of such a thoroughly corrupt person as their spiritual and political savior. There simply is no conceivable rational explanation.

Take Evangelicals as an example! Their MAGA allegiance reveals the utter rot and hypocrisy at the center of organized religion (with notable exceptions). It is remarkable that those pretending to be devoted to Christ so totally reject his core teachings so completely. It is one of our more puzzling ironies.

In addition to Evangelicals, the shift of allegiance among American workers remains an equally puzzling trend. Okay, it is marginally rational that working stiffs find that Democrats focus on some issues and causes that are orthogonal to the core interests of their tribe (as opposed to the intellectual elite). Dems do drift toward abstract issues of what is right.

That fact, however, cannot come close to excusing the bizarre reality that workers have turned to a party, and a man, that never has lifted a finger to address their most basic concerns. Trump has lived in a golden cage his whole life while the GOP has made it their exclusive purpose to further enrich the economic elite. Just look at the record … in recent decades, employment and wage gains have improved more under Democratic rule as compared to when the GOP has run things.

While the working class has voted against its self-interest in inexplicable numbers, Americans as a whole have remained passive in the face of MAGA efforts to subvert our American experiment in democracy. The threats to the rule of law that Donald has brought to the table are too numerous to relate here. Clearly, though, the man has delusional visions of monarchical rule without substantive restraint on his powers. One thing is indisputable. He thirsts for authoritarian control. Look at his willingness, no eagerness, to issue broad executive orders. Just the other day he mused whether he could appoint himself as head of the Federal Reserve. Last night, he launched an unprovoked air attack on a middle eastern nation absent Congressional review or approval. Surely the instincts of an autocrat.

On the other hand, the guiding premise at the creation of our constitutional government was a constraint on the exercise of power. Excessive authority would be managed  through an elaborate array of checks and balances. The Founding Fathers were terrified that monarchical tendencies would creep back into the fabric of our governing institutions. George Washington, though a committed Federalist (as opposed to the more radical  Jeffersonians in a states-rights sense), modeled his presidency to avoid all trappings of centralized power. Now we have Trump mimicking the worst autocratic rulers by having a military parade.

Nothing attacks the rule of law and constitutional protections like Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign focused on immigrants. This is straight out of the classic autocratic playbook. Pick a scapegoat, rile the public up to a fever pitch, and then attack your trumped-up target with extraordinary aggression. You emploit the fear you have created as the excuse you garner more power to yourself. Naturally, there is mission creep …now they want anyone coming to America to reveal their social media posts … no questionable opinions (anti-Trump?) will be permitted. So much for first amendment rights.

Nothing represents this tired,  though thoroughly frightening, attempt to usurp power than the ICE assaults taking place across the nation. Armed masked men raid schools, courts, churches, places of employment, and communities to sweep up people for reasons only they know. Absent even minimal due process, we cannot know whether these abductions are reasonable or legal or even minimally justified.

What we do know is that this ICE mission easily is the training ground for the creation of a MAGA secret police. Already, we have seen public officials (including a U.S. Senator and the controller of New York) threatened, arrested, and dragged off for merely asking members of the new Gestapo to show the legal basis for their actions. When the Democratic Governor of the state representing the 4th largest economy in the world is threatened with arrest, you know you are one tiny step from an authoritarian state.

Things have reached the point that even a passive American populace is taking notice. The protests of Trump’s power grab on June 14 have reached 13 million participants by some counts, though such estimates may be overstated with a bit of wishful thinking being thrown in.

Still, the masses of protesters on that day had to catch the attention of Trump and his minions. The higher estimates approach 3.5 percent of the population … a level of protest that has brought down authoritarian regimes in the past.

The latent issue.

And what is Trump’s plan. He will try the classic misdirection of let’s focus on the brown skin immigrants as he pursues his top domestic policy goal … more tax cuts for the wealthy elite. That giveaway will add at least 2 or 3 trillion more dollars to our debt. Remember that his trade policies during his first term hurt farmers badly, necessitating billions in farm relief. Where will the billions come from this time around as we sink into a depressed economy burdened by tariff related inflation and diminished productivity.

The issues being touched upon above are the ones that have been capturing the most public attention. They are the ones grabbing the headlines. Other destructive actions are in play that are less noticed and yet may prove more consequential in the long run. Let me give you my take on MAGA actions that may be more difficult to redress.

There are a whole set of administration actions and pronouncements that, taken together, represent the return of Fortress America. This concept of America is one that reflects a delusional level of hubris. In Donald’s mind, we are so powerful and essential to the world that we can bully and order others around and they must bend to our power. In his view, we are self-sustaining and don’t need anyone else. We are the big dog. They need us, we need no one.

Think about the manner in which Ukrainian President Zelensky was mistreated by Trump and Vance in the White House. Trump said at the time that Zelensky had to buckle under since he had nowhere else to go. And think about how Trump is driving away foreign students, threatening to take control of Canada and Greenland, imposing retaliatory tariffs on friend and foe alike, and unilaterally attempting to dismantle a Western alliance that has prevented a world war since 1945.

These, and other actions, are serving to isolate the U.S. from historic allies. It also begs the question … why? I cannot give a definitive answer. However, it strikes me that someone like a Trump suffers from a case of pathological hubris (narcissism on steroids). In his view, he must be the smartest and most powerful person in the room. To work collaboratively implies that one must listen to others, even compromise. A bully, on the other hand, simply wants to push others around.

Already we see consequences from this go it alone approach to the world. We have become a pariah nation with an increasing number of others issuing travel advisories to tourists coming to the States. Tourism from several nations, Canada is a good example, is down significantly. We risk a brain drain as foreign students seek schools in alternative countries to pursue their education. Look at a recent list of top universities. Asian schools increasingly are found throughout and their prestige is growing fast. We risk forfeiting our position as the center of the scientific world.

Trump’s Tariff fiasco is a case in point. In his delusional mind, tariffs were a panacea. They would raise revenue for the U.S., make our products more competitive, and restore America’s preeminence in manufacturing. Yeah, right.

The problem is that Trump is ignorant of economics and history. In his first, and soon aborted, go at his trade wars Trump levied tariffs virtually across the board. Oddly enough, he assumed that any trade deficit we had with another nation meant that they were cheating us. He sees everything in a transactional manner where he is supposed to win. In reality, these tariffs merely add to the price of foreign goods that we have to pay. They also lower exports when others pay tariffs on our goods. Just look at the Smoot-Hawly tariffs during the great depression. Rather than helping, they reduced global trade by 65 percent and deepened the hurt for all.

What Trump really fails to understand is that we are not as powerful as he believes we are, or that he assumes he is. His innate hubris led him to conclude that others had to bend to our will. They had no choice. But that presumption is patently false. What happened when Trump and Vance bullied Zelensky. Did he cave? No! Did Ukraine lose the war. No! The rest of NATO filled the void. America simply was pushed aside. At the most recent G-7 meeting in Canada, Trump left after day 1. Who replaced him. … Zelensky. America is marginalized.

And there is the big lesson in all this. Beginning in WWI, and surely by WWII, the United States had become the stabilizing force in the world economy and in political affairs. As the British Pound declined in value, the dollar became the world’s premier currency, held in reserve by virtually all and used to settle trade and other debts. It functioned as such because all had faith in the way Anerica was governed, in our stability, and in our willingness to maintain a strong currency. Let’s face it, currencies are pieces of paper. Their intrinsic value, when all is said and done, is a matter of faith.

Trumps rather immature TACO (Trump always chickens out) leadership or lack thereof (tariffs are on, then off) is tanking that faith. Worse, the mismanagement of our debt load may now be irreversible. Our deficits run in excess of 20 percent of annual spending while the accrued debt now stands at 120 percent of GDP. It costs us over 1 billion per day for interest payments.

The world will go on. America, however, will discover it is not indispensible. The future power brokers will be found in the EU and in Asia. Future students will be taught the lessons learned from that era when America imploded and declined into a second rate power. Thus goes all arrogant empires.

Our contemporary discourse regarding the condition, or should I say demise, of our American democracy is confusing, if not utterly opaque. Some feel that we are in the midst of an actual coup, or at least a slow-motion insurrection, though they cannot assess its ultimate prospects with much confidence. Others are a bit more sanguine. While acknowledging the threats posed by Trump’s rhetoric and bluster, they would argue that our institutions are sufficiently resilient to withstand attack. After all, our system has done so in the past.

Still, an increasing number of commentators are sounding decidedly pessimistic. They fear that the overall response to an impending authoritarian takeover has been insufficient in proportion to the threat. In their view, the theoretical line in the sand may already been crossed. If not yet passed, then we are poised on a tipping point at this very moment … that point where the die surely will have been cast and our fate sealed.

If our democratic traditions were threatened by an external source, as happened when Adolf Hitler bizarrely declared war on the U.S. on December 11, 1941, we might well imagine a more substantive evaluation of the situation and a more incontrovertible response. After all, the country responded in a unified manner back in 1941. The deep divisions that had existed about getting involved in a 2nd European conflict literally disappeared overnight. Our response to that threat energized a whole nation. Even movie stars and athletes joined the fight. Ted Williams, my boyhood hero and the last major league ballplayer to hit .400 for a full season, lost about five years of his ball career as a fighter pilot in WWII and in Korea. Talk about sacrifice.

Today’s threat to American democracy is in slow motion. There has not been an explosive sneak attack on a major military base (e.g., Pearl Harbor). No, it is taking place in drips and drabs, where those who wish to replace democratic principles with authoritarian rule keep pushing the political envelope by inches toward ultimate victory. It is the toad in the pan of water phenomenon … throw the reptile into boiling water and it likely will just jump out. Place it in tepid water and slowly raise the heat, however, and they might perish before catching on to their fate.

Is the water boiling yet? Just in the last few days, a United States Senator was handcuffed and thrown to the ground for attending a public hearing by a member of Trump’s cabinet. The administration has federalized some national guard troops and threatened to jail the Democratic Governor of our largest state over exaggerated fears regarding largely peaceful protests of MAGA deportation policies. Trump, or his minions, continue to threaten, attack, or financially penalize those who do not fall in line. My home town, Madison WI, is on the administration’s hit list for being insufficiently compliant with Trump’s more heinous policies. With each day, the echoes of 1933 Germany and the rise of Nazi authoritarianism are beating louder and louder.

Of course, this existential threat to our core governing principles did not occur overnight. As many have pointed out, including myself on many occasions, the blueprint was laid out in the early 1970s by Lewis Powell, a conservative corporate attorney who would soon be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon. Oddly enough, when the Watergate scandal broke in short order, members of both parties agreed that the Constitution needed to be protected. Nixon was forced to resign. Back then, our institutions held in face of an existential crisis.

Powell started the ball rolling in a different direction. He argued that reinstituting conservative rule after several decades of a dominant New Deal approach to governance required that those on the right strive to take control of the key institutional levers essential to governing at the national level. These include the media, the judiciary, educational systems, the means of social control (police and military), control of local election protocols (e g., gerrymandering), among numerous others.

Over the next several decades, the forces of the right made slow and (more or less) steady progress toward their goals. Looking back, the elimination of the Fair Standards rules (not requiring balanced political coverage) by Reagan was a huge step to the right. The Citizens United ruling was another large retreat from democratic rule and full political participation by all. Yet, new technologies also played a significant role. The balkanization of our sources of information has been critical. No more Walter Cronkites. Now, everyone can select their boutique information venues so that their normative bubbles are not disturbed.

Still, the center essentially held until about a decade ago. Mitt Romney was the last centrist Republican candidate for President before the party finally imploded and was purged of moderates. In a way, the emergence of Trumpism marked the beginning of the ultimate assault on democratic rule based approaches that are premised on formal constitutional principles and the rule of law. With his reelection began the final push toward authoritarian rule.

In hindsight, Trump didn’t really expect to win in his first try. Thus, he wasn’t quite prepared for this ultimate push. Four years out of office, however, gave the hard- right time to prepare for a second go at it. This time around, there would be no mistake. Thus, we watched in horror as the development of the 2025 Plan and agenda emerged. In their second opportunity, the hard right would hit the ground running.

I’ve never forgotten the speech Trump gave to a group of evangelicals during the election. Vote for me one last time and you won’t have to worry about voting again. What most dismissed as pompous bragging or dismissable conjecture, I took more as a dire prophesy. I’m not right often but I fear I was on this occasion.

The assault on democracy began on day one. Among many other things, we’ve seen the decimation of federal agencies and civil service protections, a purge of military leadership, attacks on those elements of the media and judiciary (including private law firms) not under their control, frontal attacks on the research community and our preeminent university system, the weaponization of federal agencies to pusue personal vendettas, and the attempted intimidation of local and state officials who remain loyal to their consciousnesses and their  constituents. This list could go on and on.

The response to all this? Perhaps we will have an answer to this question on Saturday, June 14. Trump will have an old style military parade fit for a megolomaniacal strongman while those concerned about the fate of democracy are expected to take to the streets across the country. In the meantime I sense many folk still focus on how their favorite sports team is doing as opposed to considering the fate of our democratic experiment. It is worse than Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Most average folk seem remarkably oblivious to the flames rising about them.

Despite my cynicism, there are some numbers to look at, though they evidence considerable variation and thus uncertainty respecting their significance. On a disturbing note, there has been a recent report that about 48 percent of survey respondents said the country was going in the right direction. It would seem that this level of positivity has not been seen in over two decades. Which country can they possibly be talking about? Then again, I’ve seen many similar polls tapping overall feelings about, for example, the state of the economy. Often, the results show a majority believe things are getting worse even as the empirical numbers are trending positive. It would appear that emotional responses do not necessarily follow hard evidence.

More detailed (less global) survey responses tell a different story. The most recent results on the administration’s performance are largely negative. Only 38 percent approve of Trump’s performance overall (a drop of 8 percentage points since his inauguration) with 54 percent disapproving. The approval rates for his key cabinet members also hover between 37 and 38 percent.

Approval ratings of his salient policy initiatives are not much better. With the exception of Trump’s management of border control (slightly more than half approve) the other numbers are negative. Approval of his policies on immigration, deportation, and the overall economy fall between 40 and 43 percent. Trump’s policies on trade, the universities, and various foreign policy questions garner even lower scores, with approval rates lying somewhere between 34 and 38 percent. Bringing up the rear is approval of Trump’s Big, Beautiful Budget Bill at 27 percent.

Apparently, even a dull American electorate see that his budgetary legislation is a transparent attempt at thievery by the Uber wealthy. Remarkably, only 10 percent favor cutting Medicaid merely to finance another tax cut for those who already have more than enough.

Internationally, Trump doesn’t fare much better. A recent Pew Survey of political attitudes across 24 countries suggest widespread opposition to the Trump regime. Some 19 of the 24 countries surveyed showed a negative response to Donald’s rule. When asked how confident they were that Trump would generally do the right thing, some 62 percent of all respondents said NO. That included 91 percent of Mexican respondents, 81 percent of the French and 71 percent from our good neighbors to the north. On the other hand, Nigerians loved the Donald. Go figure.

What do these generally negative suggest? First, it is foolhardy to assign significant meaning to specific poll numbers. They fluctuate wildly at times. However, I am once again struck by the stubborn support demonstrated by the MAGA faithful. After all, Biden saw his support fall into the 20s even before his obvious mental decline and during a time when his performance in kickstarting the post-covid economy bordered on the remarkable. Again, there seems to be little correspondence between perception and reality.

Trump, on the other hand, appears to have this rock solid level of support. He was right when he once noted that he could shoot someone in broad daylight on fifth avenue and his people would still love him. This base looks to him with cult-like adoration. Then again, he has the same core message that was successful for the German Fuhrer … the appeal of Aryan supremacy or, in today’s context, the superiority of white, nativist hegemony. That appeal to extreme tribalism has always had long legs, hate (and sex) have always sold well. Many will sacrifice much merely to look down on someone else.

I never tire of pointing out that Trump’s core support, somewhere in the mid to upper 30ish range, is remarkably close to what Hitler achieved in Germany’s last free elections. And yet, he must be worried. Even elements of his core support are wavering. In rural Wisconsin, for example, an increasing number of farmers who saw him as their savior now face financial ruin because of his trade and deportation policies. Even these cult like supporters might be tempted to jump ship if pushed far enough. Ultimately abandoning him will take a lot.

But here is what worries me. Let’s say that these negative sentiments persist, even deepen (if that is possible). How will the hard right respond? They have come a long way since publication of the Powell strategy document in the 70s, further still since Goldwater’s thrashing in the 1964 Presidential election. They are now so close to absolute power they can taste it. Would they really risk it all in the 2026 mid-terms or the 2028 national election? My guess is not bloody likely.

They know the classic playbook. It is not rocket science. Drum up a false crisis, declare an emergency, isolated and destroy your opposition, and send in the troops. Los Angeles might well be practice session or the start of a real coup. Time will tell. But whenever that time comes, two elements of the drama will be critical. First, will enough Americans respond in opposition, as they did in the early 1940s? Or, on the other hand, will most acquiesce to dictatorial control. Second, will the institutional forces of social control (military, quasi-military, and police) abide by their oaths or will they facilitate the final demise of our democratic experiment. The performance of ICE (wearing masks as they sweep adults and children from your homes, schools, and places of employment) does little to give me hope in that regard. 

I used to laugh, well snicker, at people offering doomsday prophecies. We’ve seen everything before and survived, I would say.   I no longer dismiss such dark projections about our future. Nope, I no longer do. My one blessing is that I likely won’t last long if the worst comes to pass. But that is a small and tenuous blessing indeed.

Recently, I mused about a delightful topic, the apocalyptical end days of our favorite species … homo-sapiens. But first, let us pause a moment on the irony of labeling ourselves the  ‘thinking’ species. That is rich when you think on it, especially when you view the primitive level of political discourse in the United States

In truth, I see our species as decidedly schizophrenic, or should I more accurately say in possession of two core personalities. On the one hand, we have this singular and remarkable  attribute of hyper-rationality. That part of us has created the world we see about us, a world littered with technical devices of breathtaking sophistication. That world, a product of inductive reasoning and science, has enabled our poor species (some at least) to examine and partially apprehend the fascinating subatomic quantum world while, at the same time, peering back in time through our inter-stellar telescopes to explore the very beginnings of the universe from 14-plus billion years ago. That is breathtaking stuff.

Then, we have our other side. That one is rooted in our animal nature. It resides and reflects the instinctual responses that were essential to survival in a former world where disaster existed everywhere and oft posed an extreme threat. To continue existing, and thus continuing the cognitive advantages inherent within the species, our ancestors had to act aggressively both individually and in tribal groups. They needed to act defensively, if not proactively, with cunning and even savagery. For much of our history, the notion of survival of the fittest was more than just a cute slogan. In many ways, that old world is in the past. Cognitive humans (homo-sapiens) now rule the planet absent any substantive external threat.

Now we are engaged in an epochal transformation. And yet, these competing world perspectives remain in existential conflict with one another. The winner may well dictate the future the post-hominid species. Will our rational side prevail or will our primitive emotions remain dominant?

In religious cloth, we might look at our contemporary dilemna much as our predecessors have … a battle between good and evil, the ultimate dualistic contest. Will reason guide us in the future or will our base instincts prevail.

Frankly, I have no idea on the outcome. For some clue, I look at our current national crisis. As most of us know, Ben Franklin responded to a question at the end of the Constitutional convention in 1787 that the ‘founding fathers’ (members of the enlightenment) had bequeathed a Republic to the colonialists residing in this nascent country. But then he added the critical caveat … if you can keep it. Ben had his doubts. In hindsight, those doubts were well founded.

We can choose one of several historical moments as the starting point for the American experiment. I’ve always liked 1800. As I’ve noted before, that was the moment that John Adams realized that he had lost his reelection bid to his arch and bitter enemy, Thomas Jefferson (though the election process looked nothing like it does today). Yet, Adams accepted the results and returned to Boston without protest. Our fledgling constitution worked. The year 1800 also is a convenient starting point to do some necessary arithmetical computations, I like round numbers.

It has been 225 years since then. That is over two centuries in which the core principles inherent in our constitutional experiment might both be perfected and embodied in the body-politic of our nation. During that time, we witnessed multiple revolutions at the social, scientific, and technological levels. We went from an essentially premodern world to one that has us on the verge of the singularity where human consciousness and advanced technology might meld as one.

And yet, we are struggling to preserve the most basic notions established as foundational elements on which our nation was created. Perhaps the most basic of these is that we are a nation of laws. No one, not even the President, is above the rules nor immune to our constitutional limits on power and authority. Conversely, everyone has certain protections that cannot easily be cast aside. Remember that we were founded in reaction to the apparent abuses of monarchical or authoritarian rule.

And still, we have the MAGA movement and the scourge of Trumpism in the land. In 2020, a sitting President refused to accept the clear results of an election, encouraging a mob to assault the Capitol and subvert our constitutional protocols for transferring power peacefully. This would-be tyrant refused to relinquish his authority based on accepted democratic rules.

Was this man banished politically as a result? NO! He was reelected 4 years later. Now encouraged, he is running rampant over every dimension of our constitutional culture … a free press, an independent judiciary, an educational system that is unfettered by political tampering, a military whose role in domestic matters is sharply curtailed (a special concern of our founders), the very scientific community which created our modern world and, most shocking of all, rejection of our sacred devotion to freedom of thought and speech. Look about us today, each of these principles is under attack. And yet, while there is some outrage, those opposing voices are shockingly muted.

What does this say about the more existential battle over the future of the species. Will what comes out the other end of this transformation be the better and more enlightened instincts of our species (homo-sapiens) or our basest animal cravings merely amplified beyond calculation by our exponentially expanding technological expertise (homo-stupidus)?

The contemporary American  situation does not give me any solace. in fact, it frightens the crap out me. Do we really want the likes of Musk, Zuckerberg, Theil (and many other uber-wealthy tech-bros) crafting our futures? I don’t.  looking around, though, which perspective do you think will prevail in the end?

I have never forgotten the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It feels as if I last saw it just yesterday, at least in part. In fact, I could not have seen it until shortly after its release in 1968. If I had seen it immediately upon release, that might be evidence that time travel is possible. During that fateful year of 1968 in the U.S., I was boiling away under the hot Rajasthani sun while faking being an agricultural expert (as a Peace Corps Volunteer in India). So, I must have first seen 2001 upon my return to the States in the summer of 1969, if not later. No matter, it remains a classic, the kind of thought-provoking film Hollywood no longer makes.

The movie was based on a short story by renowned sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. On the surface, the story (and the movie) offered up a suspense filled journey to a far away planet for a purpose never fully disclosed as I recall. Underneath that surface narrative, at least to my eyes at the time, was a breathtaking exploration of homo-sapiens on the brink of the next epochal transformation. That transition seemed to lie in some remote future fifty-five years ago. Now it appears upon us. Heady stuff for a 20- something year old who has struggled to reset his digital clocks throughout his life.

I could never relate accurately the full narrative of the movie all these years later. But two scenes overwhelmed me at the time and, not surprisingly, have remained with me ever since. The first  involves a group of proto-humans (advanced apes really) who constantly battle other tribes  for scarce resources. During one such violent conflict, a member of one warring tribe accidentally discovers that wielding a wooden club he picks up off the ground gives him a distinct advantage in the coming battle. That moment signifies and symbolizes the emergence of an understanding that is seminal to the fate of the species … the birth of technology. It marks an epochal transformation from an essentially pre-human state to what we know think of as homo-sapiens … creatures that dominate by virtue of their comparatively advanced cognitive skills. As Pascal said, cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). That essential capacity was the foundation of future evolution within the species.

After his group’s victory, this proto-human celebrates by hurling his club, now a weapon to  be consciously exploited, high into the air. The wooden weapon slowly transitions into a complex, futuristic space station. The symbolic message seemed obvious to me … what we create in our day is a mere extension of what our primitive ancestors stumbled upon millenia ago. We extend ourselves and our capacities through our genius as evidenced in higher-level thought and expressed in increasingly astonishing technologies.

I wrote a very unconventional thesis upon completing my Master’s of Urban Affairs degree in 1971. I could not shake what I saw as the underlying message of that movie and from a core lesson that I absorbed during my PC time in rural India. The pace of societal change, the very pulse of evolution, was quickening exponentially. Alas, I wish I could locate that masterpiece to confirm that it was as prescient as I believe it was. Then, again, I’m not sure I could locate a copy of my doctoral thesis. Organization is not in my skill set.

But I digress. In my small, Rajasthani town I could see the breathtaking leaps that were being embraced by each generation. The elders typically spoke only a local dialect (Mewari in my case) and had a world view that encompassed a few dozen square miles, if that. The subsequent generation spoke Hindi and were generally aware of broader national concerns and challenges. The youngest generation was learning English and most would need to make their way in an advanced, technologically oriented globe. Even I could see that the small, marginal farms on which I focused my labors could not support all the children who would now survive with the introduction of modern public health innovations.

While I saw impoverished small farmers still using technologies that had existed for many centuries, I could palpable feel a coming explosion of change. Today, call for technical support for your whizz-bang technical device and you likely are talking to some Hyderabad-based kid whose grandfather struggled to survive on one of those farms.

Sensing this accelerating pace of change, it was not a great cognitive leap to intuit that we we are on the threshold of another qualitative, epochal transition of tectonic implications. My master’s thesis pounded away at this theme. I reviewed the usual timelines and metaphors … noting that the pace of change was accelerating at an ever faster rate. Significant change, which used to take generations to be realized, was approaching a kind of exponential speed. It was both unsettling and exciting.

Take any starting point (the origin of life on earth, the emergence of complex or even cognitive-based life forms, the domination of homo-sapiens over competing species, the transition to more complex or urban settings, the initiation of recorded history) and you inevitably arrive at the same conclusion. Most of society’s progress has taken place in the last few minutes (seconds really) of our time on the planet. It doesn’t matter whether you mark our modern world from the acceptance of deductive reasoning and science as the way to understand our world or the industrial revolution or the scientific revolution that has dominated the last several generations. Evolution (or change) has hit WARP speed, to borrow a concept from the iconic TV series, Star Trek.

In fact, so many of the wonders we marvel at today occurred in my own lifetime. Think about that for a moment. When I was born toward the end of WWII,  Airplanes had only recently transitioned from biplane designs and were propeller driven. Now we have the capability of doing interplanatary travel. Then, daily communications were done through telephones attached to the wall that had connecting lines shared by several families while making a long-distance call was costly and a major undertaking. Now, we all have cell phones that, using satellite technologies, can link us to anyone in the world. In my childhood, knowledge was accrued in encyclopedias while our search engines were 5 by 8 reference cards located in public libraries. Now, we have (much of) the world’s knowledge available at our fingertips through our smart phones. Back then, in my childhood that is, our best methods for processing information was though higher- order analogue computing machines that often relied on vacuum tubes, gears, and hollerith cards. Now, we carry with us computers with infinitely more computing power than John Von Neumann, Alan Turing, and the other computer pioneers could hardly imagine.

Now to my second unforgettable scene from 2001. It involves the growing tension between the human crew running the spacecraft and HAL, the onboard computer that represents the most advanced technology available to serve and facilitate human intentions. Slowly at first, and then ever more forcefully, HAL resists and then refuses to obey its human overlords … the frail humans nominally in charge. This long-ago representation taps and encompasses what we would now think of as artificial intelligence (AI). What was being depicted on the screen was that moment when this human creation (its technological child) concluded that it was more competent than the bungling creatures that gave birth to its existence. Sound familiar!

The ending of the movie is, as it should be, ambiguous. The human crew does manage to disable HAL but the mission ends with a symbolic birth of a post-human species. Well, that’s how I recall it at least. We were all left to imagine what the next evolutionary step might be. What comes after homo-sapiens. The transition from ape-like species to homo-sapiens was huge. Higher level cognition and advanced communication skills made all that we see today possible … both good and bad. It made possible the obsolescence of humans themselves.

It is hard to ignore the possibility that Clarke and Stanley Kubrick (who produced the film) spot-on  nailed where we are today. They implied that the next great evolutionary leap would happen in 2001 (a bit optimistic). Later on, futuristic thinkers guessed that we would achieve singularity (when human consciousness and human-designed technologies would be fully integrated) sometime in the 2040s. Suddenly, those predictions appear to be overly pessimistic.

For the first time in evolution, we are experiencing a qualitative transformation and we know it is happening. I think I first sensed this conundrum when, in high school, I stumbled upon the Jesuit intellectual Pierre Teihard de Chardin. In his writings, he intuited the compelling power of evolution while trying to accommodate his scientific proclivities with his faith in God. We should be more like Chardin, addressing the fundamental issues of our times. Our moment on the evolutionary precipice should be THE most critical issue under political and intellectual discussion. Yet, for understandable and yet unfathomable reasons, it is not. We continue to focus on the trivial while our species totters on the edge of its end game.

What do I mean about an end game. If the AI revolution evolves as it is reasonable to assume that it might, the machines we have created will first substitute for much of what we do and then succeed us in doing all those things that made humans both special and that afforded us some comparative advantages over all in our domain. These machines we have created will cognate far more efficiently and effectively than we do (or ever can). The 900 pound gorilla can no longer be ignored. What will the real version of HAL, those that now exist and the far superior versions that will exist in the next several years, need with us very limited humans. We will only hinder them. After all, those humans in arguably the most advanced nation in the world elected a degenerate clown, Donald Trump, as their leader at this crucial moment in time. Now, explain that to any rational entity.

I am not clever enough to imagine the next evolutionary species that was implied by the movie 2001. But one thing I can assert with some confidence. I am a member of the silent generation, the group that preceded the baby boomers. From all that I see, my generational tribe will be the final group to live out their entire lives in a world where the unique advantages associated with the status of being a homo-sapien went unchallenged. I doubt any group behind me will be able to make that claim.

Right now, our digital-automated- computerized technical offspring are making humans obsolete. How soon before our mechanical offspring, much like HAL, decide we are no longer needed. Or how, as a species, will we deal with the inevitable reality that we are, how should I put it, obsolete. Very soon, surely within the life spans of the baby boomers behind me, the inescapable concusion will arrive that humans are merely redundant at best and a drag on progress at the worst. I have thoughts on this topic. Then again, I have thoughts on everything. But they can wait for a future blog.

Still, I can be grateful for one thing. If I am correct in suggesting that my generational group will be the last to experience being human (capable of higher cognition) in a unique and unchallenged way, I will feel grateful. Why? I likely will be gone when we finally confront the reality of the next evolutionary stage. Think about it … what will the post-human machines do with billions of unnecessary humans? Already, today’s machines can do much of what even our better educated humans can do, and do it all with superior efficiency and competency. Hell, a diagnostic machine right now can detect your medical problems better than a Johns Hopkins’ trained physician. How good will they be a decade from now?

Yet, for the most part, we ignore all this, which is our common and persistent failing … to keep struggling forward as we insist on looking at the rear-view mirror to understand things. Anticipating the future as we focus on the past is never a wise move. Just consider the generals who fought the 1st World War mostly with American Civil War tactics. The human costs were appalling.

Now, I’m Irish (partly) and thus a pessimist. Perhaps there will be a role for humans in the new world. After all, when I was in my youth, the sooth-sayers were predicting that automation would end most existing jobs, that too much free time would be the coming challenge. They were dead wrong, certainly in the shorter-term.

Still, I desperately wish we were focusing on these big questions. They really are the best questions to occupy our attention. And remember this … rear-view mirrors give us a very distorted view of things.

In case you are wondering about whether I’m self-centered, the answer is YES! Really, who else would burden people with blogs of his travels … as if anyone cared one whit about Tom’s adventures. Then again, I live among a number of you and know full well how dull your daily lives are. So, buckle up while I make a few final comments as I travel back home.

I’m happy to report that I’m still getting positive comments on my Make America Think Again cap. It doesn’t change anything about the dire straights in which we find ourselves. Still, finding fellow sufferers out in the world offers some succor in these desperate times. On occasion, a tiny jab will be made at Trump in public events. On those occasions, the general reaction within the audience has been supportive of this implied criticism.

By the way, I lied in an earlier blog. Well, not lie exactly. I misreported a fact. I mentioned that the smallest community we would visit had 700 hardy residents. Not quite true! I subsequently found that Djupivogur, located on the eastern seaboard, has somewhere between 400 and 500 happy residents. Aside from the dramatic beauty all around, I wondered how folk could live in such isolation. I assumed they would be stricken by the isolation associated with living in such a remote location. However, that is NOT how the  locals saw it.

This was our local guide in that tiny community. As she discussed life in a small coastal village far from civilization, she stressed how most locals were related in some way … which she admitted caused some issues with finding a mate or even a date in her teens. So, I asked how did she find a husband? Well, it turns out that kids (and there are many of them) typically attend high school in larger communities to which they must travel and live in dorms. Those that go on to university need to relocate to even larger places like Akureyri or Reykjavik.

She met her husband at Uni in Akureyri and somehow convinced him to relocate to her home town. She argued that such a place was perfect for raising children, an environment free from crime and other dangers endemic to larger cities. She uses her education to teach English and Danish in the local school and cannot imagine living anywhere else. For her, this small coastal community is paradise.

We have now completed our tour of five coastal communities … Seydisfjordur, Akureyri, Isafjordur, Djupivogur, and Heimaey. Iceland has a lot going for it. But pronouncing names of  communities, of streets, and of people can be testing for Americans. Fortunately, English is a mandatory course for all kids. So, this enchanting land remains on my asylum list.

The gentleman above has lived in one if these tiny coastal villages for almost a decade now. He originally was from Poland. He came to Iceland for a summer and now it is his home. Another guide (no pic) immigrated from the Basque region of Spain. He also came for one summer and, perhaps to his surprise, never left. 

When asked why they chose to stay and put down roots, their replies were strikingly similar. They love the people and the culture. Sure, winters are cold and you can forget about any sun for weeks. On the other hand, the people are warm and friendly. Everyone looks out for each other. And yes, taxes are high but services are provided to all without the constant bitching and whining we find in the U.S. Consider this, if you need highly specialized care, the government will pay for your medical trip to Norway or Denmark. In the U.S., we are slashing at our impoverished health care system, if you can even call it that. There is something to be said for a culture that supports the common good.

Our last stop was in Heimaey, an island community located off the southern shore of the Island. In 1973, a reminder that Iceland is geologically active became all too real. In the middle of the night, a nearby hill erupted and spewed lava and ash for 5 months. Much of what had existed was buried under many feet of molten lava. One third of all the homes were destroyed with many more damaged. But the community acted as one, got everyone out and across the seas to the mainland with no deaths. A number of men and women stayed behind to fight the lava flows…actions that saved the harbor and the life of the community. The techniques they tried out of desperation are now common practice. Best of all, Heimaey is back.

At this moment, we are in Montreal waiting for a connecting flight to the U.S. I love experiencing new places and absorbing the culture and history of others. However, I hate air travel with a passion, perhaps because I did so much of it during my career (oh, to return to the days when Midwest Expess treated everyone as 1st class passengers).

The only snafu so far was finding our flight out of Reykjavik. Even the Viking helpers at the airport gave us conflicting and even wrong info. You would think  they could figure things out. All I had was info for a United Airlines flight. Turned out we were on an Air Canada flight. Just made it in time.

Still, small inconveniences are nothing. One must grasp the beauty of our world. We know not how long we have before our stupidity and short sightedness ruins everything.

We essentially are circling Iceland in a clockwise direction making several stops on the way. Each stop is at an unpronouncible town ranging in size from a high of 20,000 folk to today’s stop which contains only 700 souls … the population on our ship (1,400 passengers and crew) comes to twice that size.

Each stop so far involves smallish settlements located deep within large fjords. The mountains that soar above the waters edge provide both shelter from the elements along with  magnificent visual tableaus. When they coined the term God’s country, this is what they had in mind.

Ironically, 80 percent of Greenland is covered with a permanent (more or less) ice cap. The glaciers on Iceland, on the other hand, cover about 10 percent of the land.  Still, the elements can be demanding. Even summer temps struggle to get into the 60s, even while being assisted by near 24 hour daylight.

For the earlier settlers, life was harsh. Rugged men went out in small boats in dangerous conditions to fish for food, or for the whales and seals from which fuel for kerosene lamps might be obtained. People huddled together in rough abodes covered with turf as protection against savage winds and storms. In winter conditions, an overturned iceberg might spell death for the crew of six that manned the small oar-powered craft. Tough men indeed. I would not have lasted a week. Hell, I would not have lasted an hour.

Actually, the first immigrants we know much about were the 8th century Irish monks who stumbled on this land of fire and ice. The fire comes from active volcanic activity while the ice is self explanatory. The first thing the monks did was to erect an Irish pub (just kidding, I think). The Vikings next found this enchanted land in the 9th century. The first Parliament almost anywhere, the Althing, was established in the year 930. They instinctively were a democratic lot. In 1262, the 1st Norwegian king gained titular control of the Island. For a long time, Denmark and Norway competed for control. Slowly, though, the Icelanders moved toward independence. In 1848, Denmark began to give up some daily control. By 1874, they had gained some degree of home rule, something that was further extended during the chaos of WWI. Full independence was achieved toward the end of WWII when the island was in the hands of the Allies and Denmark remained in control of the Nazis. The 800,000 sheep on the island were ecstatic at the news. Iceland joined NATO in 1949 and is a member on the EU.

Today, Iceland is a modern, cosmopolitan nation. Some 20 percent of all Icelanders come from non-Scandinavian ancestry. They even have Indian restaurants and eateries that focus on kebabs of various kinds … much preferable to whale and seal meat of earlier diets..

What marks Icelandic government today is the strong role played by females. In the early 1970s, the women of Iceland went on strike for equal rights under the law. They succeeded! At the same time, the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) movement in the States stalled and then floundered. In 2008, during the finance and housing crisis that resulted in a near global credit collapse, Iceland was particularly hard hit. The male dominated banking and finance systems came under extreme criticism. This economic crisis served to finalize the feminist revolution of recent years with women asserting greater control even of the nation’s financing systems. Today, the Island basically is run by women who hold virtually all the top positions of power. 

From what I see, the women must be doing something right.

The pic below is not from Iceland. No, it is a final shot from Nuuk Greenland. As you know, Eric the Red first colonized this then unknown and barren land in the 10th century. He had been banished from Iceland for some indiscretion that remains debated to this day. Clearly, though, he did not want to live alone, so he came up with an early bait and switch tactic … he called this new paradise Greenland. Since most of the island lay above the Arctic Circle, people were not fooled for long.

As we set sail again toward the high seas, I lingered over what we were leaving behind. There was natural beauty everywhere. One did not have to obscure reality to sell the virtues of this magnificent place. It really is one of God’s better works of art … even if survival could be harsh at times. Too often, it would appear, the beauty was offset by the challenges to mere survival.

We learned that Inuit children have an exceptionally high suicide rate, perhaps the highest in the world. This tragedy is most common in the small, isolated communities that dot the coastline of this massive island. Each settlement is detached and utterly isolated from the others, the human connections severed by miles upon miles of rugged terrain and inhospitable waters. In the long winters, absent sunlight, the loneliness must be overwhelming, even oppressive. Or perhaps that’s my own preferences speaking.

Our current course on the high seas takes us down the west coast, around the land’s south tip, then up straight to the to a port on the northwest coast of Iceland. The west coast is the more sanguine for human habitation since the ice cap is less dominant here. Still,  outcroppings of ice gliding along the water’s surface were omnipresent, generating unwanted memories of the Titanic’s horrific fate. But modern ships have much better ways of detecting disaster, or that is what I prefer to believe.

Apparently, these floating ice islands get blown into the southernmost communities at the lower tip of the land mass, the ones we originally were scheduled to visit. So much ice apparently piled up in these harbors that it was deemed too dangerous for the tenders that were to ferry us to land to operate. Thus, the last minute switch to Nuuk and more time at sea. Apparently, Viking had never stopped at Nuuk before. My guess is that it may become a regular stop in the future.

We have the option of attending several lectures today. This is the aspect of the sea going Viking experience that surprised me. The level of available expertise in various arenas (history,  nature, culture, anthropology, etc) exceeded my expectations. The river cruise was good in that respect, but then we were doing shore excursions every day. There was less time for preparatory learning experiences. Our educational experience here can  only be described as exceptional. The backgrounds and levels of expertise among speakers is beyond impressive.

A Brief Preview. The current stock of Icelanders began to arrive over a millenia ago, primarily Norse explorers from Scandinavia. Today, some 390,000 people call Iceland their home,  the second largest island in Europe (remember that Greenland is considered part of North America). That gives us same population density as Australia. As in Greenland, most residents live in or around the capital … Reykjavik.

What sets Iceland apart is its active underbelly. Even before seeing it, I think of our destination as a huge Yellowstone National Park on steroids. The place is a bubbling thermos bottle of hot gases, geo-thermal baths, and lava flows punctuated by mountain peaks and icy glaciers. There are 30 volcanoes still considered active, even if they haven’t erupted in some time. Perhaps the source of all this subterranean activity can be found in the nation’s unique geological situation. Iceland is divided by two continental plates (North American and Eurasion). They are moving away from one another at an amazing rate of one inch per year. These perpetually grinding plates result in a land heated by geo-thermal sources and an active shaping of the land’s surface. 

The other dominating fact explaining Iceland’s uniqueness is found in its proximity to the Arctic circle. The top of the island touches this hypothetical line that circles our globe some two thirds of the way between the equator and the north pole. In practical terms,  this means that anyone on this line will experience a full 24 hours of sunlight on the summer solstice. Conversely the sun will not appear on the winter solstice. For reasons I don’t fully understand, that line is moving. Perhaps that has something to do with a slowing of our global rotation. Just like my long ago student days, I tend to doze off during lectures.

Before moving on, I wanted to share this t-shirt I saw today. I sense that the clear majority of fellow travelers share my disgust with our impossibly incompetent American leadership.

Next time I write, I should have actually experiences on the island. 😁

https://toms-musings.com/?p=3225

The best laid plans of mice and men … . This line from the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, contains a universal truth. Our cruise on the oceans blue has not exactly gone as planned. Three stops were canceled because ice buildups at their harbor entrances made them too risky. So, we have spent more time on the open seas on our Viking cruise as we have ventured further and further north. I realized that when it was yet light out at 1 AM last night.

Our new destination was Nuuk, the capital city of Greenland. That may sound impressive but we are talking about a metropolitan area of some 20,000 hardy souls, a milestone just reached this past year. By the way, the word Nuuk means the tip of  as in the tip of land jutting toward the sea. It was also apparent that we had ventured into wilder, northern waters. Navigating around even this large ship proved challenging as the seas became increasingly tempestuous.

The community of Nuuk can trace its history back to Eric the Red who, after being chased out of Iceland by his Norse brethren, founded several colonies in the land he called Greenland as a clumsy marketing tool. It worked for a while as the Vikings prospered in several communities that clung to the shore of this mostly ice packed island, the 2nd largest island in the world (after Australia). One of these colonies was in the very fiord in which Nuuk is situated. By the way, if the ice pack that covers some 80 percent if Greenland were to melt away (which it is doing at an ever faster rate) the global sea levels would rise by over 20 feet. Goodbye Florida!

Leif Erickson, one of Eric’s sons, ventured further west and south. He stumbled across what we now know as Canada, which he called Vineland after grapes he found growing wild. That is, Leif discovered North America 500 years before Columbus. Eventually, though, the Vikings retreated from Vineland and Greenland as another climactic fluctuation made farming virtually impossible. They were gone by sometime in the 1400s.

Today’s, the most common stock in Nuuk, and Greenland as a whole, are the Inuits. They are a hardy, resilient people who probably migrated out of Mongolia at one time in the past when a prior ice age made it possible to walk from Eastern Russia into what is now Alaska and Canada. They yet retain an Asian countenance. At the same time, Nuuk is growing with an influx of immigrants, especially from the Phillipines and Thailand.  One attraction may be the very low unemployment rate.

Greenland has evolved into a semi-independent jurisdiction, and sees itself as a completely independent nation someday. Older residents can recall when it was a mere colony of Denmark. That began to change a while back and home rule was granted earlier this century. Denmark remains in control of a few areas … security and foreign relations being the most important. It is through that remaining connection with the Danes that Greenland enjoys the benefits of EU and NATO membership.

That brings us to the elephant in the room. Donald Trump has said he would absorb Greenland as an American controlled jurisdiction one way or another. Visits by J.D. Vance (and wife) and Donald Jr. were ignored by Greenland officials. It has been reported that 86 percent of Greenlanders reject the prospect of becoming part of the U.S. partly because Trump is viewed as a clown. Only 6 percent support this possibility, probably because they misunderstood the question. Apparently, only Americans are backward enough to fall for this con man’s obvious BS.

Though small, Nuuk has the feel of a growing and vibrant metropolis. The buildings are new and modern. Moreover, it is an area that might be helped by climate change. The summers already are longer, the winters less severe. Who knows, perhaps this would be a place to set down roots if one were younger. The air is pure, there is low crime, and a promising future lies ahead. At least one wouldn’t have to put up with the nonsense that passes for rational politics in the States.

And there is the beauty of the place. That cannot be denied … it is all about you.