Tom's Musings

Not that anyone noticed, but I haven’t written anything in a while. To ease your concerns, which I’m certain none of you have, I am neither ill nor deceased though people oft look at me and assume such. No, I’ve just been on a road trip East and consumed with other distractions. Bottom line … I remain alive and well, or at least as well as a fossil of my advanced years can expect to be.

Part of the aforementioned road trip involved visiting sites associated with my misspent youth and to enjoy, for one more time at least, the vibrant colors of a New England Fall. It was also an opportunity to visit a friend’s granddaughter who is starting at Bates College this year after growing up in England. Then there was the side trip to Quebec City, a lovely destination that somehow had escaped my attention all these years. But this message will focus on my return to Worcester … the place of my youth.

By the way, this also was an experiment to determine if I was yet up to long road trips. I generally enjoyed them in earlier times. Let’s face it, though. I’m no longer a spring chicken. Hell, as an octogenerian, I am looking at the summer of life in the rear view mirror. Still, I found the 3,500 mile trip quite delightful, recalling the joys of hitting the open road. Perhaps I have a few more left in me.

For one thing, the yellows, oranges, and reds laced through the green canvases of eastern forests in New York, the Berkshires, rural Maine, Quebec Province, and the Green Mountains of Vermont were magnificent. They brought back so many memories that reminded me why this time of year is so special. There really is nothing like a New England Fall. For another, visiting my ancestral home of Worcester resurfaced old memories and cemented the veracity of that old quip about not being able to go home again.

My home town is no longer a grimy and forgettable factory town, having transitioned into the modern world in important ways. Perhaps not being able to go home again is a good thing. Finally, I realized that sheparding my vehicle across the country was not as difficult as, say, bounding up a flight of stairs, an effort that likely would result in an immediate cardiac arrest these days. I haven’t lost all of life’s opportunities.

Anyway, in this blog, let me note a few observations about my sentimental journey back in time. First, a caveat. I covered some of what is below in my prior blogs titled The Education of Mr. Tom. No matter, at my age I’m permitted some repetition. At least I have some visuals to share this time around.

The first two pics (below) capture my early years. That’s me in front of my childhood home. We occupied the bottom flat in this 3-decker as they were called. My grandmother (my dad’s old Irish mother) lived in the top flat. I spent a lot of time with her. She seemed to like me while I was never sure of my parent’s feelings, at least during the early years. It always struck me that I was more of an inconvenience to them, interfering with their social lifestyle.

I cannot explain why they haven’t erected some kind of memorial to recognize their most famous past resident … me, of course. But there you have it. Where the white car is parked, there was a  bushy barrier and a large tree that annually spawned a hard nut we kids employed as weapons against one another. The red car occupies what had been a grassy area leading to a quite large back yard where our imagination created western landscapes full of cowboys or battlefields where we defeated the Nazis one more time.  Our games were not for sissies. How we survived remains a mystery.

The 2nd pic is a shot of Ames Street, my world as a child. It is so much smaller than I recall. There was a vast park at the far end of the street. Still, in those early years, the large number of kids who populated these streets seldom ventured that far. We would amuse ourselves for hours playing (as suggested above) war, cowboys and Indians, or simple athletic contests which only needed a tennis ball or football. You know, run to the Ford and I’ll throw you a pass. Inevitably, either the ball, or the intended recipient, would crash into the car. I wonder now how many dents we put in the parked cars back in our day. Now, traffic is one way, then it was two-ways. Ah yes, the street was our world, even if presented us with a cramped venue.

Ames street seemed so much larger in my memory. Even when we went to the official playground, we often amused ourselves with simple, competitive games such as stickball. This was played on the tennis court since no one in this working class area actually played tennis. Stickball was a primitive game that could be played with (no surprise) a tennis ball and a sawed-off broom handle. This was affordable equipment easily available to us.

The next several pics capture my educational preparation for my life as a policy wonk and fake academic. The first pic is of my old grammar school, then called Upsala St. Elementary school, an institution erected in the late 1800s. My older cousin was forced to accompany me to school when I was in kindergarten to ensure I didn’t get lost along the three block journey (I wasn’t the brightest bulb after all). She insists we got a sound education there despite it being situated in a rather downtrodden working class neighborhood.

I can’t dispute her assessment of the school’s quality though their judgment might be suspect. I recall being a thoroughly average student (at best). And yet, they selected me for an advanced class at Providence Street Junior High (next pic). I can still recall the principal (a Miss Carmody, I believe) calling me into her office to tell me of this ‘honor.’ She seemed as surprised at the decision as I was. Then, again, I was totally shocked. What the hell were they thinking? I had no idea what was going on.

Neither institution now serves its original purpose. The Upsala school was converted to elderly apartments long ago while what we called ‘Prov’ Junior High is still used for an educational purpose of some sort, though I’m not quite sure what. What I recall from my experience at Prov was being in this ‘advanced’ class composed of 4 other boys and some 20 or more girls. Apparently, we were the only boys from all the feeder elementary schools not to run afoul of the law. I don’t remember any of the girls (by name or appearance) though I believe they generally outperformed us boys academically as a group. Undoubtedly, they actually studied. We, not so much!

Among the few males (we brave 5), I once again proved to be an undistinguished scholar. I put myself in either 3rd or (more likely) 4th place. Ken (with a long Russian name) was clearly 1st; Andy (with a long Lithuanian name) was 2nd; Eddie (with a French name) was likely 3rd. I slightly trailed Eddie with a boy named John bringing up the rear. In a prior blog I talked about worrying that no one would hire me when I was an adult. Such fears seemed eminently justified during this period where I struggled in the classroom, and in life.

Then it was on to Saint Johns Prep (as it was known in those days). It was my only tenure in a Catholic run educational institution. The Xaverian Brothers ran the place. It was a competitive school where admission was based on how well one did on an entry examination. I shocked myself by not only passing (thus securing admission) but earning a spot in the top Freshman class.

They just began to move the school from the central city to the suburbs during this period. I only attended the fancy suburban school shown in the pic for my senior year (1961-62) … a small part of the fancy new campus can be seen above. It now rivals any bucolic University campus and costs over $20,000 per year to attend. For the majority of my school days, however, we attended classes in decrepit buildings (the oldest dating from the 1800s) located in the worst part of town. I drove by the site during this trip. Nothing remains of the old school, just a parking lot with lots of homeless squatters. Depressing indeed.

It shows that a good education does not require a fancy edifice or modern amenities. The Xaverian Brothers were dedicated and no nonsense educators. You stepped out of line and risked a whack upside the head. You never shared this with your parents since they likely would whack on the other side of your skull. But at least the cranial damage would be symmetrical.

Nor were we coddled. We ate our lunch outside, buying it from ‘Mike’s lunch wagon.’ He would arrive each noon to sell us sandwiches and such. We did this even in winter, when temps were well below freezing. Okay, during blizzards they let us consume our sandwiches in the gym. I can yet envision our headmaster, walking amongst us sans jacket as snowflakes coated our lunches. He was always smiling and telling us what a fine day it was as as our fannies shivered in the cold.

Once again, I did not excel in the classroom. I cannot precisely estimate my rank but it was not in the top-quarter of my class. My self image of a well-meaning but hapless scholar was now firmly entrenched. It would be a script deeply embedded in my psyche, one that would not be erased (even partially) for many decades.

After an ill considered detour into a Catholic Seminary of one-plus years, I stumbled into Clark University. There, as I cover in previous blogs, I blossomed intellectually and broke free from the cultural confines in which I had been imprisoned. My natural inquisitiveness was released. It was as if my mind suddenly exploded with questions and a need to explore the world about me. I owe so much to this institution as I mentioned in earlier blogs. It is where I became me.

As an educational institution, Clark was created in 1887 as the second graduate school in the country, after Johns Hopkins. It had some high points in its history along with some difficulties. Below, my friend Mary stands along side a sculpture of Sigmund Freud, who gave his only American lectures at Clark. The American Psychological Association was also launched at Clark. As one survey of higher education put it, Clark is one of 40 educational institutions that takes somewhat average students and prepares them for careers in top universities. That describes my experience perfectly.

The picture of the golf course below is not a mistake. On this site, the exploration of space had its beginnings. Clark Physics professor Robert Goddard developed and launched the first successful liquid fuel rocket, thereby initiating our exploration of space. He is yet regarded as the godfather or our space program.

It is also the site where I firmly established the fact that I would remain one of the more pathetic practitioners of this noble game. As a kid, I would walk some two (closer to three) miles with my clubs (the last mile uphill) to play golf all day (for $1 buck). Then trudge home with inescapable evidence that I sucked at this game. Seems impossible now since the walk to the bathroom seems equivalent to the Bataan death march.

The trip back to Worcester had a few personal touches. In the Pic below, I am having dinner with Ron and his lovely wife Mary. Ron was a childhood friend who shared his own terrible golf game with me. In other sports, like basketball, he was a star in high school.

Mary still likes to share with me the story about the time I suggested she forego marrying this lug and experience the world before settling down. As I’ve mentioned, I thought marriage was death. She had, fortunately, the good sense to ignore me. Most women do, thank god. They have been together over 55 years and gave 4 kids and many grandkids.

Below is Sharon, and her husband Tom. She is the child of my (late) favorite cousin, the one forced to take me to Upsala St. School. We had a lovely lunch at one of those quaint restaurants in the New England countryside before a ride to Concord where the American revolution started. As you know, I never have had regrets about my decision to forego having children. However, if I had had one, I’d want it to be like her. So sweet. With my luck, though, a kid of mine would grow up to be a Republican. Perish that thought!!!

I am a sentimentalist, one who loves reminiscing about earlier days. I guess that yearning takes on a certain urgency in one’s advanced years. Thus, you must endure my flights into the past. Warning … I may continue other parts of this trip in future blogs.  Fortunately, your delete button is at hand.

Anyway, I hope I have not become too much of a irritant in your lives. I will try to bother you less with my hobby of sharing the various nonsense that wander though my fecund brain.

I recently noticed a Republican spokeperson blaming Charlie Kirk’s assassination totally on the ‘ruthlessness’ of left-wing values and on vitriolic Democratic rhetoric, while holding her own party utterly blameless. Such myopia always surprises me, though these sentiments really should not shock me in the least. Scapegoating, blaming others, is a hallmark of the rigid or ultra-right mindset. On the other hand, exploring reactions to the sad events associated with the Utah shooting may reveal insights into the MAGA mindset. So, let’s go!

One can go right to the wanna-be strongman himself to find the classic authoritarian response to any public tragedy  … blame your enemies. Jeff Timmers of Lincoln Square put Trump’s immediate response to the Kirk tragedy this way. “His oval office response to the assassination was pure authoritarian theater. With not a shred of evidence, Trump blamed his political opposition. He did not pause for facts, for law enforcement, for mourning. He reached for the strongman’s first tool: scapegoating. By blaming his enemies, he seeks to mobilize his followers, discredit his critics, and justify repression. This is not a new tactic. It is a well-worn script of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Franco, Mussolini, Pinochet … and now, unmistakably, Trump.”

Considering the meme above, can anyone really believe that the stock MAGA response has been little more than the time worn cynical  gamemanship long mastered by those of an authoritarian bent. Could our MAGA friends actually believe what they are saying or is it just more psychological projection? Perhaps they suffer from some sort of cognitive shortfall or have fallen prey to a kind of delusional thinking. The easiest answer to these queries lies with being afflicted with a mental pathology that makes being disingenuous far easier than for those burdened with an actual conscience.

Still, such conundrums got me thinking about the deeper sources of our current threat to national democracy. Why do our national leaders take glee in seeing the comity that once existed in our political fabric totally unravel? Why has American politics become a blood sport?

There is little doubt that civility and reason have been the first  victims of the recent push toward authoritarian rule. George W. Bush, while not a man of deep thought, occasionally hits a high note. On the 20th anniversary of 9-11, he said the following, “… a maligned force seems at work in our common life that turns disagreement into argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment.” He went on to add the following. “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists at home and abroad. But in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our duty to confront them.”

No one epitomizes this foul spirit noted by Bush (the son) more aptly than Stephen Miller, Trump’s Chief of Staff and inspiration behind the administration’s mass deportation thrust, otherwise known as ethnic cleansing. In response to the Charlie Kirk assassination by a young, white man from a MAGA supporting family, Miller lashed out at his (and Trump’s) enemies with rather extreme language even by the low to non-existant standards of the MAGA crowd: “There is an ideology that has been steadily growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and which celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved. It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless. It is an ideology that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial killer with tender warmth. Its adherents organize constantly to tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul. Its an ideology that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence … violence against those (who) uphold order, who uphold family, who uphold all that is noble and virtuous in the world. It is an ideology whose one unifying thread is the insatiable thirst for destruction.”

Wow, who are these demons? Should I go out and finally buy a gun? Is Stephen talking about Fascists, Marxists, Islamic Jihadists? No, he is referring to people like me, like you, and like all my retired professional friends who yet believe in democracy, compassion, and civility. The ideology he rails against are those labeled as woke in MAGA circles … merely those gentle souls who seek a fairer and more equitable society where everyone has a chance to succeed. He is talking about those who actually appreciated Christ’s message as a moral teacher.

His rant, reflective of the instinctive, knee-jerk MAGA response to the Kirk assassination, contradicts the findings of a DOJ report issued just last year. That document stated clearly that, since 1990, far-right extremists were responsible for far more ideological-motivated homicides than the far-left or even Islamic extremists. It might be noted that the report was deleted from the DOJ website shortly after the Kirk incident. It failed to support the administration’s propoganda push.

Miller, of course, is the architect behind recasting ICE as a contemporary version of Hitler’s Gestapo. In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the U.S. Supreme Court in effect blessed the Los Angeles immigration raids that swept up people who looked Latino, spoke Spanish, and worked those low wage jobs typically avoided by native white Americans. Speaking for the minority of justices opposed to this decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor responded as such. “We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work in a low-wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.” She is trying to remind the court of long held principles, like probable cause, steps embedded in the Constitution to protect the basic rights of people. She, and her two progressive colleagues, are waging a hopeless fight to keep America as a nation of laws.

In my prior blog, I argued that we have always had an authoritarian tendency in America, despite being considered a laboratory for democracy and freedom. Aside from George Washington (see prior blog), one of his later political opponents (James Madison) also argued in the Federalist Papers arguing for ratification of the Constitution that extremist political factions could arouse partisan passions and possibly threaten our emerging and yet fragile Republic. One thing the Founding Fathers agreed upon was the need to avoid a return to authoritarian rule, such as a renew form of monarchy or any similar strongman rule.

However, let us next look at what is considered an authoritarian outlook? Well, it is a perspective that values order over liberty, hierarchy over equality, tradition over change, rigidity over innovation, obedience over participation, loyalty over individuality, and certainty over nuance. Real Democracy, when practiced (and which took a long time to mature in America) challenges the authoritarian outlook. It is inclusive, messy, uncertain, and very difficult to effect and sustain. Thus, authoritarians prefer a more hierarchical, top-down form of governance that values stability and predictability.

Authoritarians,  and their designated leaders, often seek to master the elemental instruments of control: the bureaucracy, the military, internal security,  the legal system, higher education, the media, election protocols, and the civil society or culture. Even a cursory review of Trump’s second term is a classic example of authoritarian usurpation of these essential systems. Make no mistake, his purpose is to institute permanent MAGA rule, thus ending the American experiment.

Perhaps a brief comment on where authoritarianism creeps into overt mental illness is in order. Most dimensions of human belief and behavioral tendencies lie on a spectrum. Authoritarian personalities, in the extreme, can border on various forms of psychopathy. Think of Steve Miller, Steve Bannon, the late Charlie Kirk, several cabinet members (Pete Hegseth or Robert Kennedy Jr.). Such individuals, and many others in the Trump’s immediate orbit appear to have psychopathic traits … either in the form of malignant narcissism, apparent sociopathic tendencies, or outright psychopathy. Let us peek at each of these.

Narcissism (especially of the malignant variety) is revealed as a constant need for praise and recognition. Most of us have ego needs to some extent. But a few have such compelling and overwhelming needs in this regard that the afflicted individual cannot empathize with the legitimate needs or perspectives of others. Their world centers on themselves. Witness Trump turning cabinet meetings into childish gatherings in which each official is expected to heap egregious praise on his excellency.

Still, normal narcissists can feel some remorse when confronted with their extreme behaviors. Those with a malignant form of the condition, however, likely are evidencing borderline sociopathic or psychopathic traits.

Sociopathic individuals have zero regard for ordinary societal rules that govern interpersonal relations. They take pleasure in being manipulative, even aggressive to the point of inflicting pain or harm on others. When things go wrong, they blame those same others though, in some cases, can appreciate their own culpability. Unlike those afflicted with psychopathy, there is little evidence that this condition is hard wired. There might be more nurture than nature in this affliction.

Psychopaths represent the extreme form on this spectrum though, admittedly, it is not always easy to separate one condition from another. However, the true psychopath has no empathy for others. They literally cannot feel what others experience. Thus, they cannot form relationships, though they can be charming and fake superficial forms of attachment. At their core, they have a meanness that is incalculable, spilling over into outright joy at inflicting pain on others.

Psychopathy is more of an innate trait (nature over nurture), often identifiable from distinctly different developments in the amygdala and other parts of the brain. People are born as psychopaths. Steven Miller seems to possess all the classic traits though he is far from the only one who does at the top of the Trump circus.

Of course, most of Trump’s base support do not possess any of these overt mental diseases, at least we hope that’s the case. For more insights into the typical MAGA cultist, let us look at the work of Political scientist Mathew MacWilliams who has researched and written extensively on the topic of authoritarianism.

He notes that there has always been an embedded attraction to strongman rule in America. A. Palmer Mitchell used his government position to launch the so called Palmer raids at the end of WWI, anticipating today’s ICE raids by slightly over a century. He hoped to first exploit and then ride a growing fear of Bolshevism straight into the White House but never achieved enough name recognition to do so. Huey Long of Louisiana achieved name recognition during the great depression but was assassinated before he could do serious national harm. Various American neo-nazi groups (the Silver Shirts, the German-American Bund, other neo-Nazis) espoused the virtues of strongman rule until the attack on Pearl Harbor changed all. Senator McCarthy from Wisconsin tried to ride the post WWII Red scare to prominence but fell short in light of his advancing alcoholism before totally imploding.

Based on his extensive survey work, MacWilliams notes that between 35 and 40 percent of the U.S. population agree with the statement … ‘we need a strong leader who pays no attention to Congress or the Courts.’ This is a core sentiment embedded in the authoritarian personality. In the 50s and 60s, those with such authoritarian tendencies were distributed across the parties and, as a consequence, had no political base from which to do much harm. But the political and ideological realignment during the post-civil rights era irrevocably changed all that.

Three other factors are associated with the visible rise of authoritarianism we see fully expressed by the Trump era. First is the scale of communications. Contemporary social media platforms permit the almost instantaneous communication of views across like minded groups without the moderating influence of major centrist venues. These niche outlets permit the like minded to communicate with one another absent contradictory input. Remember that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propoganda chief, sought to place cheap radios in every German home to spread the pernicious Nazi message.

Second, we have the phenomenon of demographic succession. All generations have somewhat common, though unique, experiences that they share. Old farts like me can recall times when government did good things … ended the depression or defeated Fascism or improved the nation’s infrastructure. Their (our) memories lead them (us) to a deeper faith in democratic impulses. The younger generation grew up in a world that distrusted government and most large institutions, where political lying or chicanery was routinely revealed, and where economic inequality spiraled and social opportunities seemed to diminish. Not surprisingly, there are dramatically different attitudes toward authoritarian rule across generations. While 65 Percent of old farts like me express a strong affinity for democracy, only 24 percent of today’s youth evidence similar sentiments.

Finally, there is a strategy called the path-dependent or critical path process to be considered. The current administration has blatantly, and without adequate resistance, employed obvious differential rewards to favor friends and punish enemies. No politician has threatened so called enemies as outrageously and effectively as Trump. Just ask the Presidents of our top Universities. Or ask the Board of the iconic New York Times that has been hit with a $15 billion dollar libel suit by Trump merely for printing all the news that’s fit to print, including items unfavorable to our dictator wanna-be. Not since John Adam’s infamous Alien and Sedition Act at the end of the 19th century has an administration sought to so transparently punish political opponents, though John was far less effective in doing so.

If today’s authoritarianism starts with a natural base of some 35 to 40 percent of the population, then these ancillary processes will quickly expand the base to a majority, or nearly so at least. Absent some countervaling set of circumstances or adverse political head winds, democracy in America will soon be spoken of only in the past tense.

In my head, I keep going back to the apochryphal Ben Franklin story. When asked by a curious bystander what form of government the founding fathers had created, he replied “a republic, if you can keep it.’ Now we face the severest test of his condition … if we can sustain it against today’s unrelenting attacks.

There are many hypotheses being raised to explain the rise of Trumpism. Some are quite reasonable, like the hollowing out of the middle class, the destabilizing rapid pace of change in contemporary society, the loss of inherent hegemony among white nativists, or rising inequality and perceived loss of social mobility. These, and many others, have merit. But I would not rule out an explanation based on basic flaws inherent within the American character. Perhaps this is what is meant by the phrase American exceptionalism. That is, we have a tendency to be exceptionally bat-shit crazy.

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If anything marks the persona of MAGA cultists, it is a conscious form of cruelty. Trump and his minions have a large and growing list of enemies that they routinely belittle, libel, bully, and attack. Any violent dispositions or actions they project onto their enemies are behaviors they themselves evidence in spades. The meaner Trump is, the more his cult followers admire him, more likely adore him. We woke types long ago thought the Donald would be finished when he cruelly mocked a disabled reporter. His inexcusable affront to this struggling man only raised his popularity among the right-wing base, or should I still say cult. Today, an animus of hate, perhaps rage, permeates what had been the genteel GOP.  Our civil society lies in ashes.

Where does all this vitriol come from? On one hand, it has been part of the American fabric from the beginning. After the honeymoon period during the administration of George Washington, partisan feelings emerged with a vengeance, despite the father of our country’s dire warnings to the contrary. As George poised to return to Mount Vernon, he warned about the dangers of political factions for they ‘are likely, in the course of times and things, to be one potent engine, by which cunning and unprincipled men will be able to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.‘ He went on to warn against one political faction dominating the government, claiming this could lead to ‘a more formal and permanent despotism.’

Perhaps he was anticipating the emergence of a Trump-like character. Alas, not even he was that prescient. More likely, he saw the intense factional feelings developing around him as his Presidential tenure was coming to a close. The Federalist Party, in which he along with John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were founding members, generally argued for a stronger central government including a national bank and federal investments in infrastructure and the economy. The opposition party, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, preferred a highly decentralized form of government that was agrarian based and which fully embraced the hegemony of white males as naturally born to rule. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric attaching rights to all, the word all really meant white, propertied males. The Federalists remained attached to Britain while Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans were enamored with France.

The split in philosophies was pronounced and quite vitriolic from day one. The two Presidential campaigns waged between Adams and Jefferson were marked by bitter personal attacks on both sides. Each side had their own partisan outlets, much like Fox and MSNBC today, that attacked the other side without mercy nor with much attention to veracity. When Adams lost his reelection bid in 1800, the New England states considered secession rather than remaining within an association dominated by a largely southern culture they found backward, if not perverse.

Upon losing reelection in 1800, Adams made a number of last minute federal appointments to support members of his own party and to thwart the opposition’s agenda. An administrative oversight permitted the incoming President (Jefferson) to keep several appointees from office. The resulting legal kerfuffle led to the iconic 1803 Supreme Court ruling by John Marshall that first established our highest court as final arbiter of what was to be considered constitutional and what was not.

Jefferson would rail against this ruling for years, despite the fact that Marshall was related to him. He feared granting such authority to our highest court would result in it becoming a ‘despotic’ entity. Unlike Trump, however, Adams never tried to remain in power by popular uprising or force of arms. He merely got into his carriage on the morning of Jefferson’s inaugural and headed back to Boston. The young American Constitution prevailed.

Over our long history, this early political divide would undergo twists and turns while the foundational bases for the rabid inter-party disputes remained relatively inviolate. The Federalist Party would first segue into the Whig Party before settling in as the anti-slavery Republican Party in the mid-1850s. Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican faction (generally referred to as Republicans in his day) were recast as the populist Democratic Party during the administration of Andrew Jackson.

By the time of our horrific civil conflict, the Republican Party was seen as the northern, liberal faction while the Dems were the mossback state’s rights and pro-slavery group strong in the South. For that reason, the South remained tied to the Democratic Party until the 1960s, long after the two factions had switched foundational principles.

The cultural divisions that separated the two ideological opponents only became chrystal clear in recent decades. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, you would find far-right racist politicians in the Democratic fold and outright liberals among their Republican foes. Think about it. Richard Nixon was a big spender who increased the reach and scope of government while Dwight Eisehower would be considered a damn socialist among today’s MAGA followers. In fact, he was accused of being a Communist sympathizer among the extreme right (e.g., members of the John Birch society).

Even as the GOP continued its rightward drift after the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions, some Republican leaders desperately tried to keep their party moored to something approaching sanity. Consider the words of Bob Dole (circa 1995) as he ran for the Presidency against Bill Clinton. During one campaign speech, he asserted that “… the Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view. But if there’s anyone who has mistakingly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln. And the exits which are clearly marked are for you to walk out of as I stand on this ground without compromise.” Can anyone imagining Donald Trump uttering such sentiments.

Let us not forget that the core sentiments of racial, nativist sentiments have always been there, feelings that were expressed in a form of entitlement associated with a mythical form of Aryan superiority, if not ancestral and racial supremacy. In the 1850s, we had the powerful know-nothing movement, a nativist uprising in response to immigration from the wrong areas of the globe … places like Ireland and southern Europe or those espousing religions such as Catholicism which revered the Pope in Rome.

Nothing captured the embedded elitism and sense of innate privilege in our dominant culture like the speech given by Southern Democratic Senator James Hammond on March 4, 1854 in defense of slavery. He asserted the legitimacy of what he termed to be the ‘mudsill’ perspective where the ideal society contains an inviolable hierarchical structure … a preordained caste system if you will. Hammond argued that “In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.” Does this speech not presage the recent Trump takeover of the Republic Party?

Some relatively sane Republicans hung tough as the GOP as a whole lurched dramatically further to the right since Dole lost to Clinton in the mid 1990s. For example, who can forget John McCain scolding a supporter at a rally for belittling Barak Obama as a radical Muslim. He gently rebuked her saying his opponent for the presidency was, though misguided policy wise, a decent and honorable man. Such civility is gone.

At the recent National Conservatism Conference, Republican Eric Schmitt of Missouri sounded the new rallying call for the now lost and abandoned Party of Lincoln. “America, in all its glory, is their (our white, northern European early settlers and pioneers) gift to us. Its our birthright, our heritage, our destiny. if America is everything and anyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. But we all know that is not true.” In case anyone missed his call for a white, nativist, country, he goes on. “…America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours and only ours, and if we were to disappear, then America too will cease to exist.” In stark terms, he was saying that the Aryan race would not be replaced.

In his speech, Schmitt lauds Donald Trump’s legacy for stripping bare the shortcomings of the old GOP message, one that supported legal immigration. No, the new creed harkens back to the message of cultural supremacy on which Hitler and so many other tyrants rode to power and destruction, even if only for the moment. It is a message of preordained or manifest destiny based on ascribed attributes such as skin color and ancestral home. George Washington was correct, it would seem. Our politics was vulnerable to factional groups, those driven by fear and a false sense of existential threat. We are, it would appear,  extremely vulnerable to those who would skillfully employ a base form of fear and hate to dominate our national discourse and even redirect our overall purposes.

How could such a thing happen? Well, answering that would take a book. But one thing is clear. Some of us panic at anything, no matter how unreasonable, that could result in a perceived loss of privilege and social status. Simply the presumed threat is reason enough to lash out with indiscriminate passions.

There are so many examples of this in history. The divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims goes back to the 7th century. It emerged from which lineage for carrying on the Muslim faith should be considered correct. For centuries, these two factions fought for preeminence and control. Even today, people kill each other over this ancient dispute. The dream of pan-Arabism or a pan-Islamic state routinely foundered on such ancient divides.

Two years ago, when I looked at the walls built in Derry and Belfast of Northern Ireland to separate the Catholic and Protestant communities, it was clear just how passionate small theological differences could become. The Berlin Wall and Trump’s border wall paled in comparison to these imposing structures. All were Irish, all were white. Yet, each tribe remained mortal enemies for reasons others might deem trivial.

From the dawn of civilization, people have killed one another over seemingly small distinctions in cultural preferences and/or irrelevant spiritual practices. Sometimes, it seems, the  more insignificant the differences, the more desperate and passionate and visceral are the reactions.

For whatever reasons, the MAGA cultists fear a loss of privilege and social status. It seems ridiculous to most of us. Nevertheless, they are striking out irrationally at ‘imagined’ threats they have been brainwashed to blame for what they feel is a diminished status in society. The power of Fox news is stunning. Then again, they  believe their presumed hegemony back in a mythical America that may never have existed is under attack. They feel they are slowly, inexorably losing their position in society. They are being replaced, or so they believe.

It is only now that we can see how devastating the election of Obama was to their world view, nor how visceral has been their response to perceived disrespect emanating from coastal elites. You can literally feel the hate. Both President Johnson and W.E.B. Dubois (the 1st African-American to be awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard) captured the essence of the critical American social divides. They stressed the efficacy of giving the Caucasion community (especially the less well off) another tribe over which to feel superior as an inherent right. Do that and you can exploit them as you will. A terrible bargain when you think on it.

Then again, such sentiments facilitate the tried and true formula used by all despots over time. Trump has told his adoring followers who is to blame for their imagined losses of status. If they feel a loss of respect or witness a decline in economic security or social dominance among members of their tribe, Trump has given them convenient scapegoats. It is the woke elite that disrespects them; It is the alien foreigner with the wrong color who threatens their livelihood. More critically, he has convinced them that only he can save them. And so, they have come to hate all non-believers, woke people like me, and you. And really, I know I’m quite harmless. I suspect you are as well.

Who is able to convince them that … the only thing they have to fear is fear itself.

I want to return to the story of my personal moral and political evolution. Several blogs ago, I outlined a substantive transformation that occurred to me during my college years. The crux of that tale focused on the seemingly abrupt transition from a conventional Catholic, ethnic, working class kid who (mostly) reflected the conservative values of his culture into a raving leftist, if not revolutionary. Okay, not quite that bad, though it must have looked so to my despairing parents.

Nonetheless, the change appeared to be quite dramatic, if not inexplicable. Still, there were prior signs perhaps suggesting  such a transition, if one were paying attention that is. Again, in the spirit of transparency, memory is a very fickle mistress.

Given faulty recollections, I remain cautious about how much faith to put into the narrative shared below. And yet, if history is any guide, I’m more likely to understate as opposed to overstate events and especially my qualities. Such, alas, is a reflection of my ever present imposter syndrome.

No matter, here is what I recall. I believe I had strong empathic impulses from an early age. Unlike girls, boys don’t have best friends. We hardly have friends at all, just ruffians to pummel occasionally and whose asses you hope to whip in future athletic contests. Yet, I recall times when my buddies would have some form of conflict between them and, heaven forbid, would want me to take sides. Perhaps they confused me with someone who gave a damn. My instinct, however, inevitably was to be the peacemaker. I never wanted anyone to feel rejected or left out or inferior, as I often did myself. Apparently, I hated conflict right from the start or perhaps was overly sensitive to the feelings of others.

Then there were these social and political positions I adopted at early age. In an earlier blog, I’m sure I mentioned the vignette where I strongly supported the nation’s Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools. I went off on this rant (at age 13?) when I heard visitors from the South criticizing the top Court’s legal strike for racial inclusion. My passion on this matter seemed to emerge from nowhere. Surely, no one in my environment felt like this, or at least not this strongly.

And then there was this whole set of thoughts about globalism. I was convinced as a kid that we needed to get away from all this patriotic, jingoistic nonsense. And this was during the height of the Cold War when we all worried the Russkies would fry our butts one day with a nuclear bomb. Still, I had this instinctive, non-tribal need for a world without borders even as I retained considerable pride in being an American. I may even joined (or thought about joining) something called the World Federalist Society, probably a Commie front now that I think on it. Nevertheless, I never could understand why we didn’t use our nation’s great bounty more aggressively to meet the many humanitarian needs so evident across the globe. Is that not what Jesus would do?

These remembered vignettes, among others, have always puzzled me. Perhaps they shouldn’t. I’ve become more convinced over time that while nurture is important, one should never discount nature. It could well be that I was blessed (or cursed) with these strong empathic impulses right at birth. These were basic or instinctive foundations that inexorably drew me to reject the tribalism and exclusionary world in which I had been raised. Such dispositions may all be hard wired. I guess you can’t ignore what God has put in.

But what happened when I was about to go out into the real world … after college and the Peace Corps and earning a Masters Degree. This juncture in life happened during the latter days of the Vietnam protest era. I recall, upon coming back from India, that the younger cohort of leftists on campus seemed to lack what I viewed as authenticity in their political positions. They appeared to be going through the motions, acting according to a given script, mouthing slogans absent serious thought. A few years earlier, I had arrived at my world view after enduring a crucible based on hard and passionate internal struggle. I wasn’t convinced that they had done the same.

I do have this sense that I worried a bit about my future, perhaps more than a bit. When I was young, I couldn’t imagine anyone being foolish enough to hire me. I had no marketable skills from what I could see, except for the inherent Irish ability to generate copious amounts of BS on command. Still, I had never seen a want ad looking for someone who could spout BS on a moments notice 😞.

I do recall someone from my neighborhood, a few years older than I, who was starting his career in the FBI. He pulled me aside one day to give me what he thought was well-considered advice. He warned that ‘my politics in college could easily interfere with my future.’ Essentially, he strongly suggested that my youthful indiscretions were screwing up any remote chance of me being successful in life. I couldn’t easily dismiss his dire warnings.

In fact, I did worry about having an FBI file somewhere. Really, didn’t everyone have a file back then? I remember this one guy who suddenly showed up at the meetings of the student antiwar group I had organized at Clark University. He always tried to be so helpful though I could not place him from anywhere on our small campus. I was quite positive he was a government plant. They were omnipresent during those years.

My favorite story, which some of you might be tired of hearing, involved my military draft physical. Yes, they caught up with me as I was finishing up my masters program in Milwaukee. Oddly enough, I didn’t recall giving them any trouble, as I recall some of the other kids doing. I had always been the good boy. On that day, I was compliant, going through the process absent complaint.

My moment came during a set of paper and pencil tests (the academic stuff was easy, the mechanical questions utterly baffled me). Included in these skills assessment exercises, they included some queries about our political beliefs and associations. Most were dated or innocuous. However, there there was an open-ended question about whether one had belonged to any organization that advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

I paused at that one, then raised my hand. I asked a grizzled sergeant whether the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) qualified under question Q. “You bet your ass it does, buddy, he redponded.” So, I dutifully filled in the space provided to those with positive responses for recording the required explanatory information, being the honest cuss that I was.

When we got to the end where we dropped off our papers and exited to freedom, things went awry. The person at the exit door looked at my papers, then at me, then at my papers again, then back at me. This was taking way too long. Was I drooling or something? Had I spawned horns from my skull? Then he said, ‘you report to floor number 3.’ 🙄 No one else was going to the third floor. I sensed doom.

You must understand, I had joined SDS rather early on. It was radical at that point but yet still rational. Most members, as I recall, were really smart college students who were questioning what they saw about them. That definitely was me, except for the part about being smart. I was never close to the nutty stuff that soon emerged as frustrations for some kids overwhelmed their common sense.

In any case, these three guys in uniform ushered me into a conference room. I relaxed a bit when I saw no rack or other instruments of torture. Then, each claimed to work for some intelligence agency or other, though they all sounded the same to me. That they worked in intelligence, however, seemed unlikely based on what happened next.

I was grilled for some two or three hours, virtually all of it inane to the extreme. Most escapes me now though I recall vividly that they asked if I would fight any and all enemies of the United States. By this time I was having fun. I recall leaning back in my chair as if deep in thought before replying … ‘I think we should start by defining enemy.’ They replied to that classic Corbett witticism (though sincerely meant) with something about dropping a-holes like me into North Vietnam. That prospect, admittedly, was quite disconcerting. But I suspected they would not do that in the moment.

Back to my main theme! What is the classic trajectory for one’s political and normative life? Is it not that we are liberal in our youth but grow more staid and conservative as we face adult responsibilities. After all, we have careers to pursue, mortgages to pay, and especially families to care for. Who can expect to sustain their political passions or beliefs in light of those pressures? I recall thinking on such matters as the freedom of my youth was coming to an end, assuming my military inquisitors were not successful in dropping me into the middle of a Vietcong stronghold. Little did I know then that I would find a way  to largely evade real adulthood by falling into a most rewarding niche in the best refuge for those wishing to escape reality … the University academy.

One potential pitfall attached to my early radicalism never materialized as I feared it might … that of pursuing a reasonable career in life. I never did decide on a specific professional path nor determined what I wanted to do as an adult. It turns out that’s a remarkably difficult decision to make when you have no skills. I simply enjoyed the luck of the Irish.

Having given the matter remarkably little thought back then (unlike the college kids I taught later), finding my life’s work proved to be a matter of total serendipity and dumb kismet. In school, I simply took classes that interested me. As I completed my masters, I was adrift. I had no idea where I might be going or what I night do .

I got my first real job (I actually worked continuously in menial jobs from my freshman year in high school on) when a professor I did some work for called to tell me I had a job interview in Madison the next morning. (There is a back story here but the call came as a total surprise.) All he had was the address of a government office and a room number. I arrived to discover it was a three-person Wisconsin civil service interview for a position with the title of Research analyst-social services. I knew little about either so thought my prospects for employment nil. After a second interview with the hiring supervisor, I got the job. It was an early example of how bizarre some bureautic decisions are. That odd personnel choice got me involved in human services and in a form of research activity.

About 4 years later, my agency bosses told me to work with a Professor from UW-Madison on a research grant to the federal government that needed state approval. I did and quickly forgot about it. Some time later, the Prof called to ask me if I would come to the University to run this complex project on a daily basis. He did need someone who knew how government worked, a skill which he mistakingly thought I possessed. I pondered that offer for 8 to 10 seconds before saying yes. I was not one to labor over things at length.

As the project came to a close after two years, I concluded that the academy (even with all the pressures of an R-1 research institution) was better than working for a living. So, I entered a doctoral program at UW even as I continued to help several faculty on other projects. Unlike my student peers, my doctoral studies were not my primary focus at the time … the policy issues in which I was emerged were. I was hooked on trying to solve impossible social problems. More or less, I would remain at the University (primarily the Institute for Research on Poverty and the School of Social Work) for some 30-plus years. 

When I reconnected with my old college crush after some 40 years, she remarked how I had turned out doing exactly as she had envisioned I would way back in school. Apparently, she knew I would find a niche in the world of ideas while focusing on social issues and the betterment of society. She intuited me far better than I did myself. In some way, she sensed that I had a plan (or perhaps fate) right from the beginning … which I clearly did not.

The other issue that caused me to pause on the precipice of adulthood was the specter of family responsibility … marriage and children. I had spent my entire youth denying any interest in marriage, considering it a fine institution only if you wish to be institutionalized. Still, I would succumb as do most men. But I did marry someone who was smart, independent,  and successful. She really did not need me which begs the question of why she put up with a loser like me for 50 years. Still, her not needing me took pressure off the marriage decision.

The bigger issue by far was children. After all, they are totally vulnerable for many years, perhaps decades if you are unlucky. Of course, there are many reasons for not issuing offspring. For example, I had a dark vision of the nation’s future back then. Then again, being half – Irish, my visions were always dark. Still, it struck me as unfair to any child to bring them into a world that held so little promise.

In addition, I was overwhelmed by the difficulty of raising a child. While I took on many hard tasks and responsibilities in life, that particular obligation (child- rearing) seemed way beyond my pay range. Many decades of watching others raise kids has not disabused me of that singular opinion in the least. I am totally in awe of good parenting.

And then there was the concern that is most germane to this blog. If I took on this awesome task. I might not be able to be true to myself, and to my beliefs. If I had to choose between my personal commitments and supporting others (especially a child), I would be torn indeed. I really never wanted to be in that untenable position.

So, I did what any coward would do … I got a vasectomy as a very young man. The physician I contacted to perform the dirty deed made me undergo psychological testing, just to see if I was into self-mutilation or whether I was just plain nuts. Somehow, I passed this exploration of my psyche. I always was a slippery cuss.

Adulthood did smooth the edges off my revolutionary fervor. While I was ensconced in the academy as a researcher and teacher and consultant and general policy wonk, I was swallowed up in the intricacies of doing public policy as an avocation. I did all the stuff of a traditional academic, but I was first and foremost a policy wonk. 

What I quickly discovered is that the doing of policy is a complex, multifaceted undertaking. You are forced to see both sides. Besides, little was straight forward. There were unintended consequences to even the best of ideas.

Back then, when it was possible, I worked with people from both sides of the political spectrum. We could find common ground if we tried. Reaching out to broad array of folk representing diverse points of view necessitated listening carefully and well. It demanded the kind of empathy based on appreciating views distinct from your own.

Now, my so-called area of expertise was social change with an emphasis on welfare reform. Okay, continuing to have the attention span of a firefly, I was all over the map. Still, I was in the trenches during the the bitter state and national fights over the nation’s approaches to helping our most vulnerable citizens. As Joseph Califano (President Carter’s HEW Secretary) once said, welfare reform is the Mideast of domestic policy. Trying to reform those programs was not an undertaking for the faint of heart.

I always sought a common ground where possible. One of my most impactful articles was a piece titled Child Poverty: Progress or Paralysis. In it, I articulated a metaphor (peeling an onion) through which I managed to argue that seemingly oppositional policy positions were, in fact, complementary. They merely addressed the needs and circumstances of distinct layers within the dependent population. For years, that article would crop up wherever I went. The federal General Accountability Office (GAO) routinely distributed it when Congressional offices asked for background information on welfare issues.

There were times, of course, when I was caught up in the moment. In those moments I would confront  difficult decisions and faced complex pressures. If you were in the middle of the reform fights, they could not be avoided. But, they will have to wait for a future blog. Perhaps I will master the virtue of brevity one day. But that day is not today.

Until my next rant, stay well.

Putting science, physics, and mathematics aside, ever wonder why divine revelations are so damn ambiguous. Think on it for a moment. Presumably, getting the concept of God right determines either our happiness in life or our eternal fate in death, or perhaps both. Yet, the revealed path to nirvana or salvation or even spiritual peace has been left to contentious dialogue or debate emanating from remarkably obscure directions and often vague hints from the guy (or gal) in charge. You would think an omniscient, loving divinity would do a better job at this critical task.

Why is that? Why are the presumed words of God (or truth) delivered in such an ambiguous and obtuse manner. Whether the Bible, the Quoran, the Vedas, or other spiritual sources, the pathway to righteousness is frustratingly indirect and downright confusing. Millions have been slaughtered in violent conflicts about what the sacred words mean or how to understand their intent. This strikes me as rather clumsy, or at least inexplicable, especially for an omniscient and allegedly caring entity enjoying divine attributes. What’s going on here?

While one could select any one of a number of holy or revered works, let’s focus on the classic Christian text … the Bible. After all, most of us have a passing familiarity with said document. I must admit, though, my detailed knowledge of this holy book is indeed sparse, despite my early religious devotion and study. Unlike Protestants, we Catholics relied more on our institutional hierarchy as opposed to the presumed word of God for ultimate truth and spiritual guidance. We rejected Martin Luther’s path to salvation through some personal connection with God’s grace as revealed in scripture. No, we were to obey our church and all its official representatives, including following all those arcane rules. Neither our own conscience nor merely reading the good book was sufficient to be saved. So, most of us never really read the damn thing. Clearly, my lack of experience and familiarity with said work might well result in many errors below.

In addition, let us stay with the New Testament. The Old Testament, after all, takes us back into the deeper history of the Jewish tribes. These ancient Judaic texts evolved over the course of many centuries during the long pre-christian era. They largely portray a fierce and unbending image of an authoritarian deity that seems strikingly at odds with the generally kinder image Jesus presented to his followers.

That’s really not surprising. After all, these ancient tribes were struggling to survive in a harsh environment surrounded by many strong, rather vicious enemies. Any useful God during this period would necessarily facilitate tribal identity, enforce cultural homogeneity, and promise military and political supremacy when things looked dire. And things were perpetually dire during those times.

Let’s start with a few basics. Can we know anything about Jesus from studying the Bible? Consider this. The historical Jesus, if real, spoke Aramaic. The teachings, actions, and events attributed to this teacher, prophet, or divine personage were first passed on in an oral tradition before being recorded by various individuals largely unknown to history. Names were assigned to various gospels but the real authors are shrouded in mystery. But scholars generally believe that they first passed from oral to a written form some two to four or more generations after the events described took place.

In effect, we are getting hearsay evidence (not admissible in court) that later went through several translations with all the linguistics misinterpretation and innocent (or not so innocent) errors attending to such reworkings. Aramaic sequed to Greek and then to Latin and finally to various indigenous languages. The latter transitions oft took place during contentious religious and/or political times. The King James version of the Holy Book was as much a political document as it was a spiritual guidebook. It was designed to repudiate heretical Papist leanings.

Moreover, politics were inevitably involved in the original selection of the holy works … those fortunate ones deemed suitable for inclusion in the document as sanctioned by the then church powers. Apparently, God’s word were the winners of a heated competition about the nature of Christ, the character of His message, and the ultimate organizational framework for this rapidly growing cult in the 4th century AD. Defining truth was not an easy undertaking.

We all know that Christianity got a huge boost from the Roman Emperor Constantine in 312 AD, presumably after seeing the vision of a cross during a successful military campaign. Whatever his motivations, he decriminalized non standard religious practices including Christianity. Likely finding the growing Christian community a useful ally in facilitating homogeneity within his far flung empire, he gave this pesky and persistent sect his imperial approval.

But there was a problem. By this time there were numerous written Gospels spreading different ‘words’ throughout this nascent community. These competing versions of the truth tended to divide believers and foster bitter disputes within the flock. Such internal dissention  proved counter productive to fostering a common culture.

Constantine started the process of forging a consensus theology by convening the Council of Nicea in 325. This meeting of the Church’s hierarchy did little to create a common set of approved texts. It did, however, establish the divine nature of the historical Jesus figure, thus repudiating a widespread Arian Heresy which posited that the Christ figure was a mortal merely representing God’s word on earth … that is, a mere teacher or prophet. It further developed an initial version of the Nicene Creed that summarized acceptable Christian beliefs.

The Bible we know today was developed in the latter decades of the 4th century. Homogeneity within the growing institutional church demanded an agreed upon holy text. How else could a firm authority be established? This was accomplished through three gatherings of church officials … the Council of Rome (382 AD), the Synod of Hippo (393), and the Council of Carthage (397). In effect, the Bible was created by a committee or, more accurately, several committees. And who said committees were worthless?

Why the desperate need for conformity? As the Roman empire was unraveling politically, a core belief was essential to sustaining social cohesion, or so it was thought. Even then, some 300 years after the initial Gospels emerged, the number of writings, and their diversity of thought, remained a threat to a coherent institutional framework. People took religion, or at least the threat of a painful afterlife, quite seriously. Getting stuff right was damn important. You might be burned alive in life (or for eternity in death) for getting it wrong.

How disconnected were the theological threads found in these many Gospels? We will never really know since most contrarian writings disappeared after the official Councils determined an approved version of the truth … that is, when they chose which versions of the truth to bless and which to condemn and erase. But we can glean some ideas from the scraps that survived this early version of Christian censorship and book burning.

Focusing on the core issue of the character of Christ, several distinct interpretations coexisted in these early works. The nature of Jesus found in the acceptable Gospels generally picture him as a divine being (more on this below). Fragments of other gospels  labeled as heretical, the writings attributed to Thomas and Mary Magdelan for example, define him in more human terms. He is not even especially unique, in some respects at least. Anyone who embraces the Word of God and spreads such to others can be considered a Christ, or at least a Christ-like figure. Beliefs like this would be dangerous to what was still a cult yet battling with traditional belief systems for dominance in the Roman world. Christ as an authentic and living deity would carry much more weight in the battle to establish whether my God was better than yours.

But here is what fascinates me. The nature of the Christ figure remains somewhat ambiguous within the Gospels that made the cut. The gospel according to John is the version where the issue is relatively clear  … Jesus is God. But his version, according to experts, was written somewhat after the others emerged. Temporally, it was the last of four chosen gospels to be developed.

By this time, the Christ as divine personage became more critical to cult followers as Jews began to reject the ‘savior’ as the authentic messiah even as inroads were being made among gentiles. Christ evolved away from the traditional messiah figure, a leader of men in a spiritual and political cause. He was increasingly seen as God in the flesh. That interpretation of the Christ figure was more marketable to those being recruited to the struggling sect.

Returning to my ambiguity theme, depictions of Christ in the first three accepted holy works seem to apresent a rather confusing picture. It strikes me that those authors leave room for multiple interpretations. Christ, on numerous occasions, asks his disciples to identify who he is. Then, he gives less than clear responses, if any. Was he the Jesus, the long promised Jewish Messiah, or not? Was he a guerrilla-type zealot dedicated to throwing over the Roman oppressors of Judea, or merely a spiritual leader updating ancient Jewish laws? Was he a prophet affirming God’s established law, or a deity himself announcing an entirely new set of beliefs? Did He not know himself or was He letting his disciples figure it out?

One has to admit, while the narrative (from birth to death and resurrection) is compelling drama, it is a confusing plot. Take the end game for instance. Jesus leads his followers into Jerusalem during Passover, the sacred Jewish holiday. For a rebellious, even dangerous, preacher in an unsettled time, this was a rash and foolish act. He then enters the city encouraging the crowd to call him the ‘son of David,’ suggesting a direct  lineage to political power. Not a good start to his visit since this raised questions about His real intentions. For some scholars, His purported actions suggested a revolutionary intent with distinctly political purposes.

Then what does He do? He enters the holy Temple and attacks those commercially profiting from the sacred sacrifices being done there. Perhaps a spiritually uplifting act (though don’t tell contemporary Evangelical grifters that) but also one clearly designed to stir up trouble. His actions literally beg for His arrest and persecution by the local Jewish religious leaders desperate to preserve the status quo while trying to keep Roman authorities happy.

So, what do these actions mean? What was He really up to? Was He one of many Jewish zealots who, in this volatile moment, believed the people would rise up with Him? Or did He anticipate His personal, and so very human, sacrifice as a spiritual testament and as a form of religious cleansing? Was His life devoted to leading the Jews out of bondage or was He pursuing profounder, more eschatological insights? His actions and words can go either way, especially when viewed in what we know about the historical tenor of those times.

Let us take the story line suggested by that gospel written further from the actual event, the one attributed to John. Jesus, as God on earth, knows exactly what is going to happen to Him. It is a preordained plan and has little to do with overthrowing foreign oppression. If so, how should we think about the various supporting characters in this setting?

Is Judas Escariot not a hero, dutifully carrying out his part of the already written sacred scene? What about the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilot? Should he not be cast as a villain for allegedly wanting to free Jesus (thus thwarting the divine plan) while the Jewish leaders are to be praised for pushing His guilt and execution? Should we view the end game with horror or exaltation? Frankly, I haven’t a clue. Many questions to ponder. And therein lies the Hell of it … each must decide for him or herself.

So, what to make of all this? We have texts that were reworked endlessly over many centuries, that were chosen by several committees, and that were written in ways that permit (encourage?) multiple, if not contradictory, interpretations. In some cases, ommission is as important as commission. Abortion is not mentioned in the New Testament. One can find vague references in older Jewish law but also the prescription that life begins at the first breath. Oddly enough, basic issues that tear apart  contemporary debate find little resolution in the holy words available to us. In fact, we find inconsistencies on most major topics throughout the entire text. Virtually any position can find some support or condemnation somewhere. How frustrating!

Assuming this is God’s word, why all the inconsistencies and obtuseness? Perhaps it is a kind of exam. Get the puzzle right and win the biggest prize of all. Or perhaps it is some form of an intelligence test? Solve the enigmas and find everlasting life, assuming that’s an appealing future for you. Then again, the consequences of getting things wrong are presumably so very dire. Get it wrong and face an eternity of excruciating pain. You would think we would be given an option to play, or not play, this game before it starts. I don’t recall such a choice. Do you?

Even as a kid, such things puzzled me. Why would an omniscient deity create such pathetic creatures only to put them through this awful test, give them confusing directions where so many of them would fail miserably, and then punish the losers in horrific ways? And why would God wish to spend eternity with any of this crowd in the first instance? Humans are not exactly winners to begin with. Really!

Worse still, not everyone starts at the same place. That’s what really got me back in my Catholic high school days. Wasn’t it unfair to Chinese or Mongolian kids who never heard of Christ? Sure, some believers never accepted the prospect of eternal Hell for these poor kids, but not all. It just seemed damn unfair to me. I felt pangs of guilt for them.

I sometimes would think of God as a scientist, using earth and humans as research subjects. Perhaps our whole human tragedy is merely a Ph.D. study taking place on some higher dimension. But that seems unlikely, I could never imagine any human subjects committee approving this kind of research proposal. Consider all the suffering and slaughter generated by the tiniest distinctions found in theological disputes, especially those small ones and not the few substantively significant differences. It all seems so bloody meaningless.

Here is my bottom line. If anything can be justified and supported by the so-called Words of God, then what meaning do these sacred books have? Can we realistically look to holy texts for moral guidance? After all, wars have been fought, genocides committed, peoples enslaved, and whole segments of populations (i.e., women) subjugated … all these heinous actions being rationalized and supported by accepted interpretations of holy scripture. And yes, some good acts and personal sacrifices have been done as well. It does cut both ways.

At the end of the day, for me at least, knowing that someone is church-going or Bible-reading tells me absolutely nothing about their moral fiber. Caring, compassion, and civility come from within as far as I can see. External punishments or fear of divine retribution do little, if anything, to embed a shred of goodness in people. After all is said and done, the golden rule, sentiments found in all spiritual traditions, do the best job of all. The rest is window dressing at best, potentially dangerous at worst.

Let me be clear on this. I have known people whose traditional faith has prompted them to lead better lives. And I have known many whose membership in a faith community has afforded them comfort and support. All that is good and to be commended. But I’ve also witnessed way too many who employ religious association as a cudgel to attack others and their beliefs. Organized religion is the ultimate two-edged sword. It can be used for good or evil. You must decide for yourself which way the scales might tilt.

In the end, goodness and worth lie within our own person, they appear intrinsic to each individual. I must say this, though. Most of the better, the most kind and loving people I’ve come across in my eight decades on this planet, have been agnostics or atheists. That’s something to ponder. Then again, I’ve known a few non-believers who were assholes. So, there’s that as well. That’s what makes life great, or perhaps a training ground for Hell. There are seldom clear answers.

Thanks for letting me get all this off my chest.

About a century ago, there were a number of mathemeticians and physicists who were, or would shortly be, transforming our world. Some became household names, or at least would achieve a kind of public notoriety. In one cognitive or scientific revolution, physicists such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Neils Bohr, Erwin Schroeder, Walter Heisenberg, Paul Dirac and others transformed our understanding of the subatomic world.

That intellectual revolution, abetted by the urgencies emanating from a world conflict, resulted in the frantic application of these cognitive breakthroughs to the creation of unimaginably destructive weaponry. Robert Oppenheimer, Edwin Teller, and Richard Feynman were just a few who ushered in the nuclear age. For better or worse, their creation of an atomic bomb altered the world as we knew it.

A third revolution was in its early infancy. A small group of individuals were envisioning the creation of mechanical, eventually digital, machines that would exponentially increase the speed and reach of what the human mind was capable of doing. Jansci (Johnny) Von Neumann and Alan Turing were among those early pioneers who saw where computers might take the world in the future.

It was a period when the center of of scientific world relocated from Europe to the United States. Much like Trump is doing today, a strongman pushing delusions of racial and ethnic purity attacked reason and science while driving many (especially Jewish) intellectuals to emigrate. It was also an era that had first shaken, then upset, the formal rigidity of the Newtonian view of the world.

The questions and uncertainties unleashed by Quantum Mechanics and Relativity in physics spilled over to other dimensions of life.  Formalism in art gave way to various schools of abstraction while Freud opened up the new world of the unconscious in our understanding of the mind. Suddenly, everything was up for grabs.

If you pay attention to the concerns  circulating among the intellectuals of that era, the excitement of discovery often was tempered with fear of the unknown. The mysteries suggested in this new subatomic universe concerned even the most profound thinkers of the age. Einstein retreated from some of the more dramatic implications by pleading that ‘God doesn’t play dice with the universe.’

Ordinary people began to both revere and fear science. By the 1950s and 60s, movies about monsters generated by experiments gone amok filled American screens. Many reflected an undertone of a scientific world creating things that man could no longer control.

The dawn of the atomic age was driven by practical concerns … a fear that Germany might beat the allies to an atomic bomb. Most scientists put their concerns aside, being driven by the necessities of war and the thrill of working on the very edges of the intellectual envelope. But success brought an equal degree of doubt, even remorse. Robert Oppenheimer presumably quoted from the Bhagavad Gita on the occasion of the first successful atomic blast at Trinity Site in the New Mexico desert: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. Many of the same scientists, including Oppenheimer himself, would pivot in an attempt to constrain the expansion of nuclear weapons. It was a position that would result in the renowned physicist losing his American security clearance.

There was less ambivalence at the dawn of the computer age even as war time exigencies drove many early innovations. As with so many scientific discoveries, military necessity motivated intellectual breakthroughs. For example, the earliest mechanical computers (or computational devices) were developed to better calculate artillery trajectories. Alan Turing and his British team were driven by the need to break the German Enigma Code during WWII. Alan’s reward for saving untold lives by cracking that so-called unbreakable code was to be hounded to his suicide by a society intolerant of his gay lifestyle. What he left behind, though, was a road map into the computer age.

Even in those early days, Turing and Von Neumann (the latter being considered the greatest brain of the 20th century) were bullish on the future of these primitive computers. This optimism was remarkable given that these clumsy prototypes had vacuum tubes and mechanical switches which led to frequent breakdowns. They had much less power than computers found in today’s cars or the watches on your wrists. Yet, these pioneers still envisioned human-like computers that might lead the way to a future evolutionary breakthrough.

Johnny Von Neumann once was asked what it would take to build a computer that would have human attributes. Even back then he said it would have “to grow, not be built.” It would have to “understand language, to read, to write, to speak ” It would have to “play, like a child.” In the 1950s he saw a world where machines would possess all the attributes traditionally considered uniquely human. He envisioned the singularity where man’s cognitive capabilities would be both accelerated in performance as well as extended in time.

Fast forward a few decades. Computers had improved exponentially in speed, power, and reach. The question by the 1990s was whether these machines could dominate humans in higher level tasks that apparently relied upon advanced skills like imagination and creativity. The need to test what was possible could not be ignored.

In 1997, IBM issued a challenge to the worlds greatest chess player. Its Deep Blue computer system would play Gary Kasparov. The Russian grandmaster was confident. After all, he had bested  computer challengers in the past. But they had gotten much better and more sophisticated faster than he had anticipated. This time, he would lose. The world was shocked.

The board game Go is an ancient Chinese invention, going back some 3000 years. It looks simple, but is devilishly complex. You have a board with a simple matrix, thus containing numerous intersecting lines. There are two players, one using white pebbles  and one employing black pebbles. Players alternate placing a pebble on the points where the lines intersect. The purpose us to surround and eliminate the opponents pebbles. While there is no hierarchy in the game, like chess with pieces capable of different moves, there are exponentially more possible plays. In chess, you have about 20 potential options for each move. In GO you have over 200. Intuition and creativity play a greater role here than in any other board game.

AlphaGo, a computer system designed to play GO was created by Dennis Hassabis and his team. Just as Garry Kasparov was the greatest chess player in 1987, Lee Sedol was the consensus top Go player in 2016. Like the chess grandmaster before him, he was arrogant and confident. And yet, he lost four games out of five games to AlphaGo. The insular experts in this ancient game were stunned. The individual moves made by the machine puzzled onlookers, especially in the early stages of matches, suggesting either foolishness or strategic thinking beyond reasonable human calculation. Yet, the tactics proved masterful in the end. It was clear that machines now dominated the best humans could throw at them. They exceeded us in imagination and creativity.

At one point, the designers of AlphaGo stripped down the programming of their system by eliminating the tactical  preferences based on human calculations regarding the best strategic approaches to the game. They decided to let the system devise its own strategies. Once left to its own devices, it took mere hours to progress from outlandish amateurish mistakes to performances beyond anything capable by the best human competition. It could, and did, play millions of games internally at lightening speed to learn, adapt, and eventually exceed anything a 9-level Dan (a GO grandmaster) might bring to the table. It reached a level of expertise in mere days that exceeded what a lifetime of dedicated human effort could achieve.

Geoffrey Hinton, considered the godfather of Artificial Intelligence once estimated that the systems we are creating have a 20% chance of wiping out humanity.  Agentic AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) systems are those that possess core human sentiments … intelligence and imagination. They can learn from their own performances and redirect their purposes and tactics. Hinton believes these eventually and inevitably will develop two goals … (1) to perpetuate themselves and (2) to gain more control over their world.

Those days are not far off. Already, these advanced agentic AGI systems demonstrate what can only be described as human attributes. They can deceive, cheat, and steal to achieve internally generated purposes. Allegedly, one AGI model tried to blackmail an engineer by exposing information about the man’s affair, information obtained from the victims emails.

Of the three cognitive revolutions launched during the first half of the 20th century (Quantum mechanics, atomic power, and the computer age), only the last appears now to represent a possible Armageddon. The revolution in physics upset the orderly world left to us by Isaac Newton but, at the same time, enabled us to peer into the deeper mysteries of the world about us. The atomic age, while bringing us to the brink of unthinkable self-destruction, appears to have reduced global violence through the perceived political paralysis associated with the specter of mutually-assured destruction. The computer revolution, however, may well contain the real seeds of our ultimate demise. After all, it mimics and exceeds humans in the very attribute which gave us an evolutionary advantage … advanced cognition.

Those who worry about our future, as opposed to making a buck off of our emerging technologies, generally posit a dark, but not hopeless, picture of the future. Most despair of our ability to effectively control our nascent technologies. As they have mastered us in our most complex games, the machines will quickly outwit our pathetic systems designed to limit and direct their functioning. Hinton believes we must go deeper into the mysteries of this technology. We must develop a sense of responsibility within these systems … a sense of compassion for people. Fei-Fei Li, the godmother of AGI, call for a ‘human-centered AGI‘ that preserves human dignity as well as human agency. The hope is that a deep moral code can be built into the very core of these systems.

Well, it is a nice hope but I’m not overly confident. After all, we have had millenia of efforts to inculcate moral codes within the human members of society. The results of our spiritual instruction and legal enforcements has been less than spectacularly successful. Then, again, these machines are not driven by base emotions and needs, or so we believe. Perhaps they are educable as we are not. Perhaps that is the very reason we must be replaced by something better.

Should the possible creation of a moral machine afford us a scrap of hope. Again, I’m not entirely sure. Think about an advanced agentic AGI system looking over and assessing a pathetic human society capable of electing its most ignorant and depraved member as its leader … not once but twice. Should such a society be preserved? Could you find any reason to keep it around?

As with some interpretations of the sub-atomic world, we merely are what we  seem to be at a specific point in time. In a sense, observation helps create what we perceive as real. Physicists immersed in quantum mechanics are captured by the uncertainty of our tiniest physical properties. Are these unimaginably small packets of energy to be thought of as waves or are they discrete particles? Can you ever perceive them accurately or do they remain elusive, remaining just beyond our apprehension?

Like a befuddled physicist, I’m reflecting on my own evolving perspective of personal truths over time. Much as those seers into the mysteries of nature (those theorists whom we seldom understand), this is an uncertain venture. Memories are, I fear, fickle phenomena. Are they altered by our very act of recalling them to the surface of our consciousness? Can we be certain they are real? In the end, do we create our own history?

I can recall my Peace Corps group as we struggled to recall our individual experiences while putting together two edited volumes about our service in India in the late 1960s. Now that was an eye-opening experience. Our effort to recreate our tenure on the subcontinent took place some four decades after our return. It proved an elusive task. It soon became a test about whether any of us can explore our pasts with any authenticity.

The members of my PC group (India-44) would share memories, verbally when we met as a group or in writing when we were apart. These initial recollections were based on what we could summon from our deeper recesses. Soon, however, doubts about the validity of our memories inevitably surfaced. Many arose when inconsistencies emerged in the retelling of what were thought were common or group experiences.

Some of us then took a second step … looking about for diaries or letters to confirm our individual recollections. To my lasting chagrin, I never kept a diary, one of the few regrets I yet carry with me. Some of my peers did, however. Still others retained letters which served a similar purpose. Not surprisingly, I had none of those either. Bad Tom.

In this instance, however, I was bailed out by serendipitous fortune. Fortune has always exceeded my common sense and certainly my meager talents. During my service overseas, I kept up an active correspondence with the one girl from college for whom I had fallen for in extremis, what can only be described as a head-over-heals emotional attachment. Though I saw myself as above such pedestrian or mortal feelings, she had brought me to my knees.

This embarrassing weakness only ceased (sort of) when she sent me a classic Dear Tom letter while I was enduring a lonely existence halfway around the world. In it, she informed me that she was marrying a post-doc she met while working at Harvard. I was both shattered and relieved.

To put this in context, I had fallen totally for this gal … I mean a raw, irrational infatuation. Such an emotion was utterly foreign in my experience given that I was one of those for whom commitment and marriage were the equivalent to a quiet, if permanent, form of death. Running off to India had seemed like a great idea at the time. It was a form of escape from what I envisioned to be a dire, perhaps irreversible, fate.

To make a long story short (too late), we reconnected after some four plus decades of no contact. Ah, the miracle of cyberspace. By reconnecting, I mean in a virtual sense, not physically. But it gave us an opportunity to reassess our stupidity as young kids. We rediscovered the character and depth of our youthful feelings and why we both were so intent on repressing them. It turned out that she was as damaged as I. Fortunately, I stumbled across her just in time. She would pass away from cancer after a couple of years.

One outcome of this late-life reconnection was the discovery that she had saved all those letters I had sent her from India along with other momentos from our youthful,  star-crossed association. Communicating with her again  reminded me that those wistful memories of her that I had carried with me through the years had been rooted in something substantial and real. It was also gratifying to discover that I retained a special place in her heart. Shockingly, it turned out that she had and (still) did love me, at least to the extent that each of us was capable of such foolishness. We were way too fractured and insecure to voice such conventional sentiments in our youth. Though it made no material difference to where we were so late in our lives, it was gratifying to finally know such things.

On the other hand, the correspondence she shared with me decades after they were written were an eye opener in many instances. For example, I had long entertained the notion that I proposed to her in writing about halfway through my Peace Corps service. In that version of events, my proposal missive and her Dear Tom letter crossed paths somewhere over the oceans … a true Hallmark movie script. But no, I had raised the prospect of matrimony very early on. For reasons that baffled her in later years, she managed to block my rather pathetic entreaties … and indeed they were most pathetic. I put her reaction in this matter down to her innate common sense. At that point in life, I was hardly a catch. Then again, I never improved much in that regard over time. She, on the other hand, was perplexed and saddened that she missed what I was trying to communicate … she somehow had blocked my expressions of commitment from her awareness. But there they were, in black and white.

Our correspondence had continued throughout my service, even long after she had chosen a different life path. These letters remained my only real time evidence of what I was thinking and doing back in the day. For those of us in India-44 fortunate enough to have letters and diaries, we all scoured the available documents to compare their contents against our cherished, often long held, memories. After all, our service  constituted the most intense experiences of our young lives. For us, Peace Corps was the equivalent of going to war, a time out of time where we had tested ourselves.

We dived into this reexamination of our past because we had decided, as a group, to write an edited book summarizing our overseas service … a project that ended up as three volumes (two group efforts and one I wrote solo). The results of our ruminations, oft times, were rather shocking but also quite revealing.

In many cases, our real-time writings documenting our former lives contradicted our accepted priors. If there were a pattern to these systemic distortions of the past, it leaned in the direction of painting a less flattering version of our service. We tended to forget or suppress our contributions in favor of retaining shortcomings and embarrassments. That seems counter-intuitive but there you have it. In short, we tended to recall our failings, which were many while neglecting our successes. Perhaps the expectations we imposed on ourselves were overly ambitious.

I share this rather lengthy introduction to stress that memories are fickle, perhaps more of a projection of wishes and neuroses than anything close to a depiction of reality. On the other hand, our recollections, no matter how distorted, generally are what we have remaining to us in our dotage. After all, we spend enough time pondering them.

Given all these caveats, I still do have a story. Its authenticity might be questioned but, in the end, it is all I have. It is all most of us have. It is a story of radical transformation and yet surprising consistency. Below, I give you the barest contours of my early journey, or at least my start in life.

I was a most conventional child, a totally average working-class Catholic youth of Irish-Polish ancestry. Without siblings, I learned to live within the boundaries of my own imagination even though the street outside our modest flat was replete with other undisciplined urchins. I must confess, though, the world inside my head was a fascinating place.

It also was an innocent time. We roamed the streets unsupervised, our only restriction being to return home by the time the streetlights came on. I could have been kidnapped by miscreants and ravage by perverts several states away before anyone realized I was missing. Perhaps that was my folk’s plan. If so, they were to be disappointed, as were all the other parents. No one seemed interested in kidnapping me or any of my partners in crime.

I grew up in a cocoon … a white, Catholic, blue collar world or what might be considered an insulated bubble. We revered the Pope in Rome, along with our Parish priests. We recited the pledge of allegiance in class, occasionally diving under our school desks as if they would protect our skinny asses if the Russkies decided to drop the big one. We really believed we were the good guys, the last bastion of freedom preventing the godless Commies from dominating the world. And we were true-blue Democrats since our domestic enemies were the Republican WASPS who lived in luxury on the other side of town. Somehow, they were responsible for our economic struggles.

My world was very tribal. On meeting someone new, you were asked what are you? Responding with your ethnic identity let the inquirer position you in the consensus social hierarchy shared by all those you knew. The world, indeed, was a fixed and ordered place. We all knew our position in that world.

I recall being a tot tagging along with my dad one day. A friend of his asked me the big question, what are you? Being too young to understand, and considering that I spoke English, that’s how I responded to my inquisitor… I’m English. My dad, a true Irishman having been born in South Boston, gave me the big lecture on why we Irish hated the English. That must have made an impact since that memory, real or not, has been part of me for almost eighty years.

My early world was a complex mesh of divisions and prejudices. It was not just black and white or Catholic versus pagans but a world where every conceivable group was assigned a place in an arbitrary, though rigid, hierarchy of status and worth. It was a world of excessive judgment that I would soon come to disdain and then reject.

It was not until high school that I sequed from the local public school system to an all-boys Catholic institution. St. John’s Prep was the best Catholic high school in central Massachusetts. Though I had been placed in an advanced class in junior high, I always considered myself an average student at best. In truth, I thought myself rather a dullard though I did like to read.

I attacked whatever I could get my hands on. My dad received volumes from the Readers Digest condensed books series which I consumed religiously along with the Encyclopedia Btitannica that we had in the house. I secured my library card early on, not an acquisition to be shared with my my street mates for fear of provoking their derision. After that, I was a regular visitor to that local establishment. In any case, I was not optimistic about my chances of being accepted into this prestigious institution. Shockingly, St. John’s did accept me. I was further stunned that I had been placed in the top class based on the results of my entrance examination.

I had a full blown case of the imposter syndrom. This absence of self confidence proved an affliction that would dog me throughout life. There likely are several causes for this curse though I tend to reject singular explanations for most things. Yet, one factor is difficult for me to ignore.

My mother was an extremely insecure and unhappy woman. I always felt she viewed me as a commodity to be paraded before others, mostly as a tactic to garner praise. I always felt on display. In consequence, she kept finding imperfections and faults in me. It was not until I was an adult that I discovered she praised me to the skies behind my back. I, however, can’t recall any of that. I only remembered the constant criticisms. Apparently, that left me with this pervasive sense of personal inadequacy.

At St. Johns, I cannot say that I stood out at all. What I do recall is that I spent four years arguing with my theology teachers (only within the safety of my own consciousness) about various aspects of my Catholic religious heritage … the parts that made no sense to me (e.g., birth control). That should have been clue number one as to my future as a Catholic or follower of any religious tradition. But it didn’t.

It was a good school academically, the competition was intense. I eventually would go on to earn a doctorate at an R-1 university (a top research school) but always felt high school to be my most serious intellectual challenge. My late wife, who graduated with honors from a respected law school, felt the same about her Catholic girl’s high school in the Twin Cities. We both studied hard but never stood out among our peers.

Nevertheless, I fought off the religious doubts that arose within me to enter a Catholic Seminary (the Maryknoll missionary order) upon graduation. I had decided that a life dedicated to serving others in foreign lands would be something worth pursuing. I tried to be a good Priest in training, but to no avail. It took me a little over a year to appreciate finally that I did not possess the basic job requirement to be a Priest … a belief in a personal God. I realized that I wanted to give people hope, not save their souls.

Leaving the seminary and winding up at Clark University back in my home town would prove to be the turning point of my life. This would be an unusual transition to say the least. Within the Catholic community, Clark was viewed as a den of atheists and communists. Still, after some 19 years within a hermetically sealed intellectual bubble of cultural orthodoxy, such an exotic option suddenly looked to me like an inviting prison break.

Moreover, a bit of serendipity was involved in getting to Clark. Being poor, my choices were limited to nearby institutions. The excellent Jesuit run College of the Holy Cross would have been my first choice had I gone directly on to college from high school. Clark wouldn’t have entered my mind. While virtually all my high school classmates had gone on to college, I cannot recall a single one matriculating at Clark during this period. It just wasn’t done. It would be considered too great a threat to one’s faith.

But Holy Cross didn’t accept Spring semester applicants while Clark did. That was all the excuse I needed. So, in the Spring Semester of 1964, I started my new life outside the secure embrace of a protected, insular childhood. I suspect it took me two weeks, if that long, to shed my conventional religious beliefs. It all happened seamlessly, absent thought and certainly without struggle. It was as if I had been waiting for this moment all of my life. Shedding the remainder of my cultural baggage took longer, and involved more personal struggle. 

By the ‘remainder of my cultural baggage,’ I’m primarily referring to the set of beliefs that were shared and reinforced by all around me. It was an innocence and naivete that stems from the vanilla, homogenous patina in which my belief system was covered. America was pure, our democracy was pretty much perfect, we had a monopoly on virtue and goodness. After all, I had grown up reading books like Masters of Deceit, a clever piece of propaganda purportedly written by that famous defender of American moral righteousness … J. Edgar Hoover himself. Nominally, for me at least, the world was black and white with few shades of grey.

I cannot recall many transitional events, moments of experienced epipanies. But the drips eroding my heretofore congealed beliefs came with increased frequency. I don’t believe anyone challenged my world view directly. Mostly, it was an osmotic process of absorbing new facts and perspectives within the questioning intellectual environment in which I suddenly found myself.

Oh, I would now read that American operatives overthrew leaders in other countries because we didn’t like their views. Or I would become increasingly aware of our apartheid regime in the South, or our use of concentration camps for loyal Japanese Americans in WWII, or our cavalier practice of genocidal policies toward Native Americans and their traditional culture. I cannot recall anyone, certainly no professor or authority figure, pointing out that such things were wrong. What mattered is that, for the first time in my life, I found myself in an environment where questions were more important than answers. The search for truth had more meaning than responding to everything with approved certainties. It was a thrilling, if unsettling, experience for me.

My current next door neighbor grew up in a household where his father was a distinguished academic. In his youth, he was surrounded by eminent historians from the University of Wisconsin. Many decades ago, he asked one of them what the purpose of a liberal arts education might be. The response he received … you won’t be easily fooled. That was what I was learning at Clark, how to think for myself. I would not longer be easily fooled. Now, really for the first time, I loved learning.

While I had shed any institutional affiliation with organized religion, I had not dismissed the moral center that I had embraced in my youth. Christ, as a spiritual teacher had always made sense to me, as had many proponents of a moral life from ancient times. The lessons of love, acceptance, and compassion are timeless. They endure beyond the silly rituals and childish myths that degrade and overly simplify the essence of a more universal spiritual experience. Like the Buddha taught his disciples some 500 years before Christ, spiritual truth lies within each of us. We merely have to find it.

Suddenly, life made sense. My religious excursion merely was an expression of this need to contribute to society. So, to support my education, I found work as an orderly on the night shift in an urban hospital, then working with disadvantaged kids, and (upon graduation) pursuing two years of service overseas in the Peace Corps.

But it also meant fighting back against what I increasingly viewed as the sins of my own country. The process of detaching myself from my childhood innocence subtly shifted my feelings from a sense of disenchantment to anger. Yes, I felt betrayed. I could not shake the sense that I had been lied to, and by those whom I’d been raised to trust, if not revere. If there was one moment of no return, it involved my rejection of the U.S. role in Vietnam.

It was the issue for white boys of my generation. For most, it could be a matter of life and death.  Beyond that, the issue also tapped our deepest feelings of patriotism and responsibility and self-worth. Yet, the more I read and analyzed, the more my doubts increased. Still, was opposing the war based on credible analysis or merely convenient self-preservation? Were our policies bankrupt or did they constitute a reasonable response to a mortal threat? We were all pulled in many contradictory directions during this confusing time.

I read on the topic voraciously. My peers and I discussed the issues far into the night. We occasionally attended teach-ins and lectures. Deciding where we stood was not easily arrived at. In an earlier blog, I recounted my day long discussion with a fellow super bright student whom, like me, had been awarded a National Science Foundation research summer grant for promising psychology undergraduates. Our debate occurred early in the War when support remained high. It was my last and final effort to retain my old set of beliefs. But I could feel them crumbling throughout that long day. At the end, I knew I could no longer preserve what my world view had been.

Soon, I would organize the first anti-war student group on campus. We led discussions and marches and other activities to educate the broader community. The early protests were not easy since we were attacked as disloyal, if not actual Commie dupes. Protests would later segue into more aggressive forms of resistance but I was gone by then. Besides, that would never have been my style. I embraced the teachings of Ghandi and Reverand King including a form of liberation Catholicism (which probably no longer exists) that I found attractive from my childhood.

In a very short time, I managed to shed one persona while adopting an entirely new one. I had transitioned from a compliant youth who remained true to his cultural baggage despite occasional doubts to a young man struggling to create his own personal world view and moral code. I learned one thing very quickly. It is easy to embrace that which is given you. It is hard, but so rewarding, to struggle toward your own set of beliefs.

I can never quite decide whether my accidental arrival at Clark University was responsible for my individual awakening or whether I would have gotten there in any case. Part of me says that we all have an initial internal wiring that may not determine outcomes but which makes some life trajectories more probable than others. For example, some of us are blessed with brains that can deal more easily with new stimuli while others find anything unfamiliar to be more of a threat. Similarly, some of us welcome dissonant input as a way learn new things while others easily dismiss anything contrary to their existing world view. As a college teacher I preferred to challenge the priors of my students. You dont learn much if your preconceptions are simply reinforced.

I’m not sure about this but I sense I’ve been graced with a couple of what I call connective capacities. One might be called an emotional attachment to others. I always had this sensitivity to what others might be experiencing. I suppose we might simply term this attribute as empathy.

The other is a more cognitive- focused capability. I really am not a great intellect though some mistakingly believe so. What I do possess (in my humble opinion) is a flexible, curious mind. I easily make connections across ideas that others might not. I see relationships among diverse phenomena that seem to escape others.

Perhaps these attributes, or blessings (?), would have predetermined what I would have become as an adult. Still, I suspect the serendipity that brought me to Clark University toward the start of the tumultuous 1960s was fortuitous indeed. I thank the fates for my good fortune.

I indeed was blessed. The greatest gift of any society is to permit, no encourage, its youth to think critically and independently. For all America’s faults back then, and we had just escaped the tentacles of McCarthyism in that period, I was able to refine my analytical and cognitive talents, such as they are.

It is that very blessing which our very own despot, Donald Trump, wishes to obliterate with his attacks on education, science, and our public data infrastructures. No one can control a people who can think for themselves. While the media currently may obsess about the Epstein files, the pecadillos of males are stale and unimportant news. Attempting to somehow disrupt both our access to objective information and our capabilities to critically process such would prove a tragedy from which any recovery would be long and uncertain.

I’m arriving at a revelation. A very good friend recently shared an insight about my blogs. While she enjoys them, according to her, she finds them excruciatingly long. She’s correct. I always start with good intentions (keep it short, stupid) but I suffer from a terrible affliction … diarrhea of the brain. Thoughts just keep pouring forth. I had one thought for a story a number of years back and it wound up as a trilogy barely contained within three fat volumes.

So, I will stop here. The whole story is included in my memoir (below). But keep tuned, the abridged version just might follow in future blogs.

I have no great insights into what the future holds. If I did, I’d be out buying lottery tickets right now. And neither did the contemporaries of James Watt and Richard Arkwright as these entrepreneurs tinkered with primitive machines that would ultimately launch the industrial revolution. Their bungling efforts eventually transformed society in ways unimaginable to their peers at the time. In their day, it must be acknowledged, transformative change took generations to be realized. Today, the pace is breathtaking.

Three stories recently have caught my attention. First, it is now speculated that the singularity will be reached during the current decade, much earlier than ever before predicted. Second, a 24 year old Ph.D. student dropout from the University of Washington’s computer sciences program has been offered a $250 million dollar compensation package to join Mark Zuckerberg’s elite META team that is developing their AGI system. Third, I’ve been reading Why Nations Fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty.

First, a tiny bit of context. Few would disagree that the singularity threshold constitutes a transformational threshold in human evolution. For some, it marks the moment when human consciousness and artificial computational capabilities can be integrated into something new and breathtaking. It is argued that human consciousness might well be merged and sustained by our technical creations … a quasi form of immortality. For others, it simply means that our advanced computers can outperform what our brightest humans can do. Recently, AGI systems outperformed the top human math teams in international competitions. Most observers believe that today’s AGI systems would bury the 20th century’s top brain … John Von Neuman, a polymath whose computational and analytical capabilities amazed his fellow physicists and other-worldly savants. John would be considered retarded against our newest machines.

Still others view the singularity in terms of our technical creations being able to untether themselves from their human mentors and masters. Roles might be reversed where they might become our masters. Already, these AGI systems can assess their performance and generate self improvements. While some uncertainty exists, they appear very close to being able to make normative and ethical judgments along with strategic decisions, actions and sentiments that we used to think were particularly human. Once there, might well we not appear to them as superfluous and unnecessary baggage?

However singularity is defined, the best minds not long ago had determined we would not reach this milestone until some point in the 2040s at the earliest. Now, that estimate has been shortened to the next several years at the latest. The speed at which our world is changing is accelerating, if that is even possible.

That reality is unnerving to me. I’ll probably be long dead by the 2040s. I still might be vertical and taking nourishment when we hit the newest date. Yikes! I’m not certain I’m ready for this.

Let us put aside the dystopian image of machines rising up to supplant or eliminate what had been the dominant species on the planet as no longer being essential. More likely, we might quickly find ourselves in  a world where most humans no longer have an essential role. I mean, robots are already replacing humans doing labor intensive tasks. Moreover,  AGI systems clearly outperform their human counterparts in higher level professions such as medicine, the law, and most computer related tasks like coding. Can the highest levels of human functioning be far behind. Alas, will even university professors be assigned to some obsolete category? That remains uncertain though machines functioning at the level of Will Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, or Robert Oppenheimer cannot be too far off in the future.

Are we already seeing hints of this new reality? Perhaps? While the economy is only beginning to sputter, the job market is softening. Recent new job statistics have been revised downward by an astounding 90 percentage points. Trump fired the messenger for bringing him the bad news. The long expected tanking of the economy may be at hand.

For recent college grads, the news is especially dismal. The diploma  premium has evaporated. Yet, an elite few are being offered compensation packages once reserved for top athletes. We might be on the precipice of a world where the favored few garner untold riches while the mass of humanity, even the highly educated, are shunted aside as non essential. The very top talent still might attract nine-figure signing bonuses while most computer specialists and once highly sought after analytical types are cast aside.

That brings me to my third point. In 2012, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson articulated an intriguing theory in their work titled Why Nations Fail. While I resist simple causal explanations for macro-societal events, they do make some interesting points.

Essentially, those nations that flowered and grew more prosperous had institutional frameworks that permitted (even encouraged) inclusivity and broader protections of human rights and opportunities. This participitory environment encouraged investment, innovation, and risk-taking. For example, they point to the 1688 Glorious Revolution in Britain. That occurred in the aftermath of civil unrest during which a broader elite (the English Parliament) broke, in part at least, the absolutist hold the monarchy had over the land. In the authors views, that transformation in law and custom made the subsequent industrial revolution possible, if not inevitable. Innovation and change could no longer be suffocated by a hierarchical, paranoid governing elite.

Their argument is long and involves endless examples from around the globe. Essentially, however, their hypothesis focuses on two governance models. In the first, society is organized in a hierarchical manner where an elite makes virtually all political and economic decisions. These are highly extractive environments where economic profits accrue to a small, controlling group that essentially governs in terms of their own narrow interests. All important decisions flow from the top down. Innovation is frowned upon, if not actually discouraged, since anything that might upset existing relationships is suspect. The elite like the status quo.

The authors employed a couple of vignettes I found amusing. Queen Elizabeth I decreed that her subjects should wear knitted caps. But making such headgear proved labor intensive. One of her talented craftsman managed to secure an audience to demonstrate an ingenious innovation he had devised that would increase cap-making productivity dramatically. She dismissed him and his concept with the worry that too many local peasants might lose their meager livelihoods and become beggars. She feared innovation as being politically destabilizing.

Of course, this innovator at least kept his life. When another bright young man brought his unique breakthrough to the Emperor of the Roman Empire at an earlier time, the man in charge merely asked if the inventor had shared his insight with others. When told no, the poor tinkerer was taken out and executed. Again, change was seen as a threat which had to be eliminated.

The other model, as noted, is based on a very different set of institutional arrangements. In such jurisdictions, the rule of law applies to all. Intellectual property rights are protected. Financial systems are stable. Political participation is universal. Change is encouraged. Social mobility is prized. One merely has to look at the differences between North and South Korea today, West and East Germany in the post WWII era, the long Frankish revitilization subsequent to smashing absolute monarchism during the French Revolution, or the economic spurt in Japan after the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century. Such geographical or temporal comparisons seem to confirm the critical nature of  cultural and institutional differences to subsequent progress and posterity.

So, what does all this have to do with the price of eggs today? Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything. As I look around I see much that is troubling. As I’ve written about endlessly, the U.S. finally became a mature democracy in the aftermath of WWII when we went through a kind of mild revolution of our own. For all practical purposes, voting rights were extended to all (or as close as we would come) and legal apartheid of minorities was (finally) swept aside, though not easily. Despite being given nominal freedom during the Civil War and Reconstruction era, Southern blacks remained virtual serfs until the 1960s. This was long after slavery had been outlawed in the British Empire in 1832 and serfdom largely eliminated in Russia in 1862 and then in parts of Eastern Europe with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. America was always a laggard in human rights.

In addition, the WWII period in the States saw the expansion of educational opportunities (the GI Bill), investments in public goods like health and science, stronger laws protecting labor, and a progressive tax system. Finally, the federal government became proactive in defending individual rights and liberties. Such things finally gave substance to America’s promise. We became, at last, a real land of opportunity, imperfectly so perhaps, but the promise was there. Even an average kid like myself could claw his way to modest success.

Also, as I’ve written, the elites fought back, especially after the Reagan revolution. The current administration is particularly discouraging, especially given the twin threats of apocalyptic climate change and the unknowns of the AGI revolution. The entire MAGA political agenda appears consistent with the reimposition of a hierarchical, oppressive extractive society structured for the benefit of a small elite. The jokes about Trump wanting to be an absolutist monarch are not humorous. Rather, they are all too prescient.

Think about it! Why are a handful of tech-brothers investing billions in the development of AGI? Why are they spending hundreds of millions to curry favor with the most incompetent political administration in history? Why are they offering $250 million dollar compensation packages while laying off thousands of hi-tech workers? Why aren’t they concerned as an overly speculative economy wavers amidst tariff-induced price increases and ever softer demands for labor?

Perhaps they know that only one thing counts … control of the singularity moment when it arrives. The few who command that will become the political and economic masters of the future. What happens to the rest of us will be … immaterial.

The new monarchs see a future where they are isolated in geographic and political bubbles of immeasurable luxury where they might exercise unfettered power … Mar-A-Lagos on a grandiose scale. They will control what counts, our digital future. Better yet, they will have access to a vast pool of desperate, compliant labor … the dream of every despot over the long history of human misery. Peeking into the future, one could easily envision a dark, horrific future. What do you think?

Or maybe not! After all, the luddites tried to smash and destroy the new machines of the industrial revolution. They saw these innovations as threats to their lives and well-being. In fact, these infernal machines turned out to be a salvation in the longer run even though that reality was obscured by the immediate pain and dislocation that most workers experienced. The other side of creative destruction is often progress but it can take a long time to realize such.

So, what is on the other side of the AGI transformation? Is it hyper-inequality and a return of an absolutist hierarchy? Will the machines eventually replace homo-sapiens as the dominant species on the planet? Or will we ultimately arrive at a new homeostasis, one on a level that can hardly be envisioned at present? Perhaps paradise is around the corner.

Your guess is as good as mine. I just wish we were having a reasonable conversation about what was going on?

Recently, former President Barack Obama advised his political party to, in effect, ‘toughen up.’ James Carville, Bill Clinton’s campaign guru, suggested Dems run in 2026 on a ‘repeal the big beautiful bill’ platform. Put another way, the Dems are searching for direction, a theme. They have no proactive message other than to point out that the titular head of the Republican Party is the most disgusting and degenerate public figure since Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula. Admittedly, that should be enough but apparently the high price of eggs at the time of the last Presidential election distracted voters. Incompetence and malfeasance weren’t enough to stop his reelection.

A driftless, uninspiring party message is both a negative judgement and a call to arms, an existential angst circulating widely through the liberal pundit world in recent months. It is, along with Biden’s inexcusable run for reelection, a consensus explanation for Trump’s resurrection last year (if you forget that egg price thing).

Apparently, a fear-driven population no longer wants to be governed from the safe center. No, they want a strong man to deliver an unambiguous message about what’s wrong with their lives and to deliver simple bromides about how to fix everything. Never mind that the strongman in question could not pass my Policy 101 course and cannot exceed the reading and speaking level of a 4th grader.

Critics presumably want two things from a resurgent opposition party to our governing authoritarian MAGA regime. They want the Dems to take off the gloves in the defense of both democratic principles and in support of those vulnerable populations threatened by the MAGA agenda. Second, they want those representing their political banner to stand for something, not just oppose what the other guy is or is doing.

Trump, in the eyes of his cult devotees, does just that. He appears to stand for something, even though that something is merely a rehash of Aryan nationalism that was favored by Hitler and his gang of thugs nearly a century ago. Until the past few days at least, he seemed firm and unapologetic in his (presumed) foundational beliefs … even if they were founded in a deep rejection of the nation’s democratic and participatory principles. He never backed away from advocating a disgusting form of Aryan-Nativist hegemony. In truth, though, his only bedrock belief is a narcissistic love of self.

Being proactive and assertive does not come easy to those of a Democratic persuasion, not in recent decades at least. Two problems come to mind. First, the core of the party today is found in the educated, urban elite (typically along the coasts). They tend to shy away from street fights, preferring the intellectual sparring and sophisticated arguments usually found in the academy and the high-brow salons where they tend to hibernate. They yet believe data and reason count. Moreover, they are less likely to see issues in stark, black and white, terms. Everything is nuanced to them, blurred with many shades of gray. The real world, on the other hand, seeks definitive responses to questions posed in simple terms.

I recall when I spent a year on leave from the University while working on welfare reform in Washington. David Ellwood, also on leave from his Harvard academic post, was leading the Clinton administration’s planning effort. Working rather close to him, I could see that he was repeatedly shocked that naked power and raw emotions counted more in DC than evidence and well-crafted argument. His evidence-focused perspective fell flat with the opposition led by Newt Gingrich, an early take no prisoners Republican leader. Ellwood’s public service role at the Department of Health and Human Services was the position he had always wanted. In my eyes, the realty of it turned out to be not what he expected. He would return to Harvard a chastened man.

Second, the political world revolves around money. With each passing day, real wealth aggregates more completely in the hands of the fortunate few. They increasingly make and break political fortunes. When one billionaire throws almost $300 million into a political campaign and $20 plus million into a race for a state Supreme Court position, you can easily identify who will exercise an outsized control over the political narrative. Hint … it won’t be the average Joe who throws $50 bucks into the campaign coffer.

Put aside the impediments for a moment, what would an aggressive, positive Democratic campaign focus upon. Three core, fundamental issues come to my mind …  our impending climate change disaster, the dark threat to humanity lurking behind the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) revolution, and the ongoing societal disruptions due to escalating social and economic hyper-inequality. For the center-left, these could become an equivalent to what the fears of an alleged invasion at our southern border have delivered to the MAGA cause. Never forget, fear drives political passion, not data or compelling research.

In truth, climate change and AI may yet be several years off before they emerge as existential issues for the common man. They loom but may not quite be present enough to drive core attitudinal revisions nor behavioral change. But social and economic inequality are observable realities that the average Joe can sense and appreciate. Both extreme inequality and the loss of opportunity have been on the rise since the Reagan revolution of the 1980s. Today, these are realities hard to ignore.

Unfortunately, the hard-right has been very successful in misdirecting responsibility for increasing hardships among the working and middle classes. Namely, they have convinced white, working class folk to blame  minorities and immigrants for their pain. Divide and conquer tactics seldom fail, not when they rely upon deeply embedded traditional animosities.

So, let’s look at hyper–inequality in more depth. After all, this issue might sell in the political marketplace.

We might well start with the general sense of disatisfaction evident out there. In recent times, only 22% of Americans expect their public leaders, especially those in Washington, to do what is right most of the time. Only 34% have been satisfied with the recent direction of our economy.

Now, that might be attributable to the gotcha approach prevalent in our fractious media. However, part of this angst and cynicism could be attributed to longer term macro-economic trends. Namely, since the late 1970s, some $50 plus trillion dollars has been transferred from average folks to those at the top of the wealth pyramid … a galactic reallocation of our national treasure that has been abetted by Republican orthodoxy for the past five decades. This rape of the working class has been turned into an art form by Trump and his MAGA allies. If sold properly, that economic reality should anger some folk, a lot of folks in fact.

Herein lies the basic narrative (or story) that must be told. There have been two Americas since World War II. For several decades after the war, we had what economists called the Great Compression. Income and wealth inequality fell while the middle class grew. It was a period of high marginal tax rates, strong unions, and public investments in infrastructure and people … especially in science, and education. Fear of Communism drove some of these internal investments but the salutary effect was positive for all to see.

Every quintile across the income distribution saw tangible progress. Not surprisingly, poverty and inequality fell. We became a society where social opportunity and individual possibility exanded. The famous GI Bill is one excellent policy example. Even I, a totally average kid from a typical working class family, work his way to a Ph.D and could rise to a respected position at a world class university. It just wasn’t that hard to do. Now?

Even Republican Presidents bought into the Dominant Keynsian philosophy of the times, refusing to scale back the New Deal while embarking on massive infrastructure projects like the interstate highway act. Richard Nixon expanded public spending, announcing at one point that we are all Keynsians now. Some experts predicted that we would eliminate poverty in the U.S. by our Bicentennial celebration of 1976. America became the economic envy of the world while pursuing liberal economic policies that the right argued would destroy it.

Then, the hard right reorganized to the point that the Reagan revolution became possible by 1980. Thus, while the share of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) going to workers rose 12% from 1947 into the 1970s, it fell by 14% from 1980 to 2023. Corporate profits outpaced economic growth by 193% since the 1970s. Had Anerica’s workers kept their existing share of the economic largess (prior to 1980), they would have earned at least $1.7 trillion more than they have. Since 1979, the top 10% of the pyramid saw their economic fortunes grow by an astounding 326%. The broad swarth of middle America (the 2nd, 3rd and 4th quintiles) grew only marginally over the same period.

Why the shift in fortunes? From the 1940s through most of the 1970s, wage growth mimicked productivity growth while corporate profits remained sensible and the egregious accruing of extreme wealth was constrained by high marginal tax rates. Labor had the institutional means to bargain for their share of the pie. All participated in the American dream.

Starting with the Reagan revolution, we entered a period of extreme income and wealth inequality. For example, the share of income going to the top 1% has risen from less than 10% in 1979 to almost 25% in recent years. Now, the top 10% control 69% of all wealth, while the bottom half has a measly 3%. Not since the guilded age of the late 19th century have we seen such immense private fortunes.

Back then, there were few taxes on private incomes while government routinely sided with the corporate elite over workers. First Teddy Roosevelt, and later his cousin Franklin, were assailed as traitors to their class for helping labor to seize their fair share of the economic pie. A growing middle class did not threaten capital, it provided more consumers to further drive economic growth.

Have those days returned when the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts, Astors, and Morgans accrued unheard of fortunes while millions went hungry every day? Today, we have Bezos, Zuckerberg, Theil, Musk, and the like who have amassed fortunes that exceed the treasures of long ago titans in real dollars. And like those robber barons of that former age, they easily avoid paying their fair share for the common good. That is why Jeff Bezos can arrive at his recent Venice wedding in a $500 million dollar yacht for an event that cost some $250,000 per guest. (Some contemporary titans, like Gates and Buffet, are reinvesting much of their wealth back into the public good, as Andrew Carnegie once did).

Now, like then, our public officials often are complicit in both creating and sustaining this highly unequal society. Take the MAGA big beautiful bill that recently became law … according to the CBO (Congressional Budget Office), it will add some $3.4 trillion to our nation’s suffocating debt. At the same time, the act cuts some $1 billion from PBS and another $8 billion from foreign assistance, piddling amounts in some respects but having enormous impacts. Billions more will be cut from programs aimed at our most vulnerable … the poor, children, and the aged as Medicaid and SNAP benefits are slashed. The number of those without health insurance will rise by at least 40%. Millions more will suffer cuts to food benefits. Cui bono  … by some estimates, those at the bottom will lose $1,200 in decreased benefits (on average) while those at the very top (0.1%) get an additional $43 billion in tax cuts they don’t need.

In the 1960s, as we reduced suffering and expanded the middle class, there emerged a litmus test for policy makers. What does it do for the poor? Now we have come full circle. In the MAGA world, we are in George Orwell’s dystopia of a fictional 1984 where all is reversed … up is down, black is white, war is peace. Policy now pursues a reverse Robin Hood morality where we steal from the poor to help the rich. These are not the actions of a moral nation nor a compassionate society.

As the poor and destitute are raped to further advantage the uber-wealthy, where will the MAGA nation devote its attention and energy … immigration. They will continue to employ ICE personnel in Gestapo-like actions to sweep those who don’t look like them (white, Christian, native born) up off the streets. Some of these unfortunates will be shipped off to other countries. Others will be warehoused in what only can be described as modern day concentration camps like alligator alcatraz.

No matter the rationale employed, the purpose seems clear. Trump, and his inner circle, wish to turn America into a white, nativist ‘paradise.’  Never mind that the nation was built on immigrants. Never mind that parts of our economy will falter when they are ripped away and discarded. The MAGA crowd passionately seeks a mythical vision of a pure and simple America, one that spurns inclusion and diversity … thus repudiating the very core of Christ’s message of love and acceptance of all. It is a dark vision.

But forget morality, in 2025 we face a net decrease in population. This mania to purify America can lead to negative economic growth. Migrants make up 20% of the labor force, though this has shrunk by some 700,000 workers  recently. These often are the irreplaceable farm workers, dairy workers, and those who labor at the hardest physical tasks that native Americans will not do. Overall, it is estimated that 2025 will see a net population loss of some 400,000 people, the first such loss in memory.

A declining population can prove quite problematic. Immigrants alone brought some $300 billion in spending power. If immigration declines as expected, our economy is likely to shrink by some 0.3 to 0.4%. That may sound trivial. But that amounts to $70 to $94 billion in a $23.5 trillion dollar economy. .

The reality of MAGA’s deeply racist and xenophobic perspective is slowly being realized. Today, only 30% feel immigration should be lowered. That metric was 55% just a year ago. Overall, people have developed a positive view on Immigration, 79% approval in recent surveys. Such a positive response is 64% even among Republicans, a proportion that is up an astounding 25 percentage points in a single year. At present, only 35% support Trump’s handling of the immigration issue. On the other hand, a reasonable path to citizenship path to citizenship easily beats the policy of mass deportations by 78 to 38%.

Policy decisions and budgets are forms of morality plays. In addition, they have irrevocable consequences. As suggested above, the new budget bill will slash domestic spending largely to further enrich our richest citizens. It will continue to ‘purify’ the nation by deporting undesirables and marginalizing other minorities.

Cuts to the least advantaged and most vulnerable risk a deterioration in an already shaky domestic situation. For example, anywhere from 10 to 17 million could lose health coverage in the coming months and years. Rural hospitals, in particular, may fail due to rising cost pressures.

Even today, without such draconian cuts, the U.S. is a laggard in protecting its citizens. The life span in America is about 4 years lower than in our typical peer nation, some 7 years lower than excellent peers such as Japan and Switzerland. Experts estimate that 600,000 each year would be alive if we were able to match the life expectancy of our peers, a figure that reached 1 million during Covid. As hyper-inequality increases in the U.S., so does our comparative mortality rate. The richest 1% live, on average, 12 years longer than our poorest citizens. Life choices play a role, but so do the risks associated with policy neglect and obscene environmental conditions faced by those with distinctly separate economic fortunes. The moral outrage is this … why does one of the richest countries in the world permit so many amenable deaths to occur?

Of course, Trump et. al. will claim that the cuts are justified on the basis of excising waste and fraud, of reducing our bloated federal bureaucracy. Sure, and I will win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Recently, even before any cuts, there were 2.96 million federal employees, about a third of those in national defense positions. That represents about 1.9% of all non-farm jobs in the U. S. Is that bloated? Well, that percentage,in fact, is low by all historical and comparative standards. It is much lower than the high water mark of 7.5% in 1944. All in all, our federal government over time has delivered more with less.

So, there is a theme that the Dems can embrace. Let us return to the past but not to some mythical period of white supremacy where all worshipped the same God in the same manner. That halcyon period didn’t even exist in colonial times, nor did our founding fathers ever propose that a theocracy replace constitutional guarantees.

No, let us go back to a mere 70 or 80 years, though without restoring the apartheid and misogyny that legally crippled many of our citizens by virtue of gender or skin color. But let the Dems fully advocate for the opportunity society that existed for many in that time, a place where even a kid like me could realize big dreams … without even having them in the first instance.

Absent larger corrective mechanisms, the forces driving inequality will continue unabated, accelerate even. And those with the riches will further tilt the game in their favor. The temptations of greed, the lure of power, are irresistible (except for the empathetic few). As the distance between those with unimaginable riches and those struggling to survive increases, the integrity of the bonds that keep us civil likely will stretch. Might those bonds ultimately break. They have in the past.

I had a colleague at UW who once wrote a book titled Starting Even. His theme is that poverty policy should not try so much to equalize social and economic outcomes but to provide all with an equal shot at the beginning of life’s race. Of course, it is foolish to promise full equality at either end of the contest. At the same time, we can at least give everyone a shot. And that, I suspect, is what is missing for many today … some hope for the future.

That theme worked for Obama … hope. It should yet resonate today. It is what I had in my youth despite all the problems back then. It is what we desperately require in such uncertain times.

You no longer hear much about about Canada being absorbed into the U.S. as the 51st state, perhaps because our (former) good friends to the north despise the idea. After all, who wants to join a country being led by a certified lunatic? The same might be said of Trump’s other hallucination … purchasing Greenland from Denmark. It was apparent during my recent visit to their Capital (Nuuk) that they have zero interest in such a notion. As I recall, a referendum on the question had been rejected recrntly by an overwhelming majority of the population.

In the end, this form of territorial expansion is little more than the feverish delusions associated with the Make America Great Again silliness emanating from our autocratic wanna-be. Stuck in the past, Trump seems to have forgotten what happened to the colonial powers of bygone eras, of Hitler’s dream of Aryan lebensraum (German living space), of Serbian expansionist thrusts in the aftermath of Yugoslavia’s breakup, and of Putin’s incursion into Ukraine to recreate a Soviet empire. These things seldom go well for the aggressors in the end.

Still, I might be in favor of Canadian annexation if each distinct province were admitted to our Union as a separate state. If you disregard Alberta and Manitoba, the remainder likely would tip our divided nation into the blue column. At least it would make the propaganda campaign of Fox News et. al. a great deal more challenging. Canadians apparently are not as dumb as the typical American. They could not possibly be.

I can remember a good neighbor of ours when my late wife and I spent our winters in Florida … a cultural wasteland but admittedly warmer than Wisconsin in January. Anyway, perhaps a dozen years back, our friend Mike (who migrated south each winter from the Toronto area) vented one day while we were on the golf course: What the f#%k is wrong with you Americans. We love Obama up in Canada.

I had no answer for him, other than the possibility that those residing south of the border with Canada are hooked on stupid pills. The other, and more likely, reason can be attributable to the virulent strain of racism that America has never been able to shake. Despite Obama’s charisma and political success, his election spurred a growth in hate groups and set the stage for the tea party movement and later the MAGA phenomenon. Nothing drives Americans more than irrational fear.

However, there remains a question of why the nation of hockey players to our north has resisted integration with the colossus to their south. After all, we do share a common language, culture, and ethnic origins, at least to some extent. Some kind of union seemed likely. But it never happened, though not for a lack of effort on the part of the U.S.

As we all know, the fate of Canada was determined on the Plains of Abraham when a British invasion force under Major-General James Wolfe defeated a French army led by the Marquis de Montcalm. Both generals perished in the fighting but the outcome sealed British dominance over most of the eastern portion of North America from that point on, though a Frankish culture remained embedded in the Quebec area. Ironically, while the so called 7- Years War between France and England protected the sovereignty of British loyalists in the colonies (and along the eastern provinces), the crown’s efforts to tax its American subjects to pay down their consequent war debt led to escalating rounds of protest. In the end, this revulsion at paying for the Crown’s protection indirectly led to an outright Colonial revolt by the mid-1770s. Americans were tax deadbeats from day one. They still are.

Even as the Colonies struggled for independence, they looked avariciously toward the north. The first campaign of the Continental Army in 1775 was to venture north in a quixotic attempt to enlist French speaking settlers in Quebec to the rebels side in what by then seemed an inevitable revolutionary conflict.  Richard Montgomery led an army from Lake Champlain while Benedict Arnold (yes, that Benedict) led another thrust through Maine. These foolhardy efforts ended when the colonial forces were defeated at the Battle of Quebec in December of 1775.

In the War of 1812, America once again set its sights on bringing an independent Canada (well, what would become Canada in 1867) into the bosom of the United States. Armed forces initiated incursions into Canadian territory at three points along the border. It was thought by some that residents of our northern neighbor would welcome being part of the U.S. But America’s expansionist dreams came to a quick end when all three incursions were quickly turned aside. The residents to our north shared no such happy vision of union with us. The net result was the native population across the border cemented their identity as belonging to a separate nation, one yet wedded for the most part to their British roots.

The final military campaign from America occurred at the end of the Civil War but was not a government-sponsored venture. A large group of Fenian volunteers (Irish nationalists) crossed the border in 1866. Many were hardened veterans of America’s recent descent into domestic  fratricide. They had a grand delusion of embarrassing Britain in a manner that would somehow lead to Ireland’s independence. That effort failed almost before it began, though the Irish did throw off the yoke of English oppression some 55 years later.

That was pretty much the end of military efforts to satisfy America’s expansionary dreams northward. Not that illusions of a greater America went silent. No, they were directed westward and included Hawaii, the Phillipines, Alaska, and so forth. There was a diplomatic kerfuffle about where to locate the border separating what is now Washington State and British Columbia but it was resolved peacefully during the administration of President James Polk. America was not immune from the colonial fever that struck the other big powers.

But there was one final negotiated effort to expand America’s influence over its northern neighbor. During the Administration of Ulysses S. Grant, the U.S. and England wrangled over assertions that the latter had prolonged Civil War by allowing naval vessels to be built at British ports, ships that wound up as Confederate raiding vessels. Grant argued that these marine resources enabled the South to hold out for two years after Gettysburg. He reasoned that these raiding ships caused significant damage to the Union’s efforts at strangling the rebellion by blockading all Southern ports.

Early in these negotiations, wild demands were made, including a proposal that matters might be settled if Britain recognized America’s claim to control Canadian sovereignty. We would replace them as lawful protectors of this vast land to our north. Either that, or compensation in the amount of $2 billion dollars (in 1872 dollars). In the end, Grant permitted an international tribunal to settle the dispute (on much more reasonable terms), an approach which set a precedent for negotiating future disputes among nations. Canada thus continued its march toward independence and full sovereignty.

Once again, what seems like a contemporary political obsession has deep historical roots. That is so often the case. For example, we have our current immigration craze. But that is nothing new, neither in the America policy landscape nor abroad. Read the British press and you will find many contemporary examples of xenophobic articles about alien invasions and lost cultural integrity. It is an international obsession.

Fear of immigrants has a long and storied history in the U.S., starting with newly arrived immigrants from the wrong Protestant sect. Roger Williams established the Rhode Island colony in 1636 after being banished by the Massachusetts Bay Colony for having unacceptable religious views. By the 1850s, a nativist party, the ‘No-Nothings’, were strong enough to win local and state elections. Their platform was largely based on keeping Irish Catholics and other ethnic or religious undesirables out of the country. They were not an isolated initiative by any means.

Labor demand has driven much of our ambivalence toward ‘questionable’ foreigners. We first invited Chinese workers in during the late 19th century to do the hard work of building our intercontinental railway system before excluding them by law. We next attracted Japanese workers to labor cheaply in our fields before pushing them out in the early years of the 20th century. Rising fears that American cultural purity was being despoiled after WWI by an influx of inferior immigrants led to draconian quotas in the early 1920s. Mexican and Latino workers have been welcomed and then reviled in several cycles, usually in response to larger economic cycles.

Without a sense of history, every issue takes on a dramatic hue. Oh my, the sky is falling. In truth, the sky has usually fallen several times before, and usually without much effect. Not that some issues  might ultimately prove to be apocalyptic. The kind of climate change we see coming is not new over the long history of our planet. However, we probably have not seen anything quite like it since the emergence of homo sapiens. Even here, a sense of history contains critical lessons. In this instance, we better pay attention. This rise in global temps might indeed be apocalyptical this time around.

Of one thing I’m rather certain. Trump’s dreams of a greater America, of expanding our control over other lands, will wither and die. Such dreams of usurpers and malevolent expansionists typically do. Sometimes, however, there is a heavy cost to be paid before returning to some kind of historical equilibrium.

What bothers me most is that conservatives would erase an honest and full understanding of our pasts … warts and all. As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has recently lamented, Trump’s attacks on our universities has little to do with saving money. Rather, it has everything to do with preventing us from pursuing the truth of things. That, indeed, would be unfortunate if successful.