Tom's Musings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time for one more memory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sleep tight!

There used to be an old joke about the new tax law that had just passed and was designed to simplify the tax code. It went something like: (1) How much money do you have? (2) Send it to us now!

Cute for sure. But the reality is that Americans are not taxed that severely when compared to others even though we spend disporoportionately more on things like military adventures, national security, and incarcerating our own citizens (we have one-quarter of all incarcerations with only 5 to 6 percent of the world’s population). Such expenditures are less advantageous to national prosperity than investments in things like education, infrastructure, and health, but there you have it.

Doing comparative assessments of tax burdens is a tricky business and I am no expert. But a quick survey of several listings puts the U.S. around the 40th position or so (of countries listed) and below our peer nations. For example, Finland has a 56% income tax burden on average, a 24% sales tax, and a 20% corporate tax, all national). The U.S., by contrast, has a 37% federal income tax burden, a 0% sales tax (though some states impose this), and a 21% corporate tax. These numbers are approximations since many fees or local taxes, for example, are not uncluded while actual taxes may vary from nominal rates pais after the attorneys and accountants do their magic. Wouldn’t it be great to have a flat tax.

I chose Finland as a comparison because they are ranked 2nd on most lists, right after the Ivory Coast … the latter not being a desirable retirment spot. And yet, according to several recent hedonic national studies (basically how happy the citizens of a country are), the Fins are the happiest SOBs in the world. How can that be? They live right next to the freaking Russians who threatened them over history, have aall this cold and snow, get about 6 minutes of sunlight during winter, and give most of their money to the government. By American standards, and according to our prevailing attitudes, they should be totally miserable.

There is one big difference between them and us. For the most part Fins believe in the common good. Unlike whiny Americans, they appear to be willing to invest in those things that bring security and opportunity to all. They are not walking around obsessing about a medical event bamkrupting them or a job loss resulting in personal catastrophe. Unlike us, they have an adequate safety net. Moreover, these public investments lead to a general sense of opportunity. The Fins routinely rank number 1 (or close to it) in cross-country educational outcomes. This basic investment is paid for by the national government, not distorted by local variations in wealth. More to the point, teachers are respected as much as doctors and lawyers and paid commensurate to their status. American educational outcomes, like our health outcomes, routinely are average at best, well off the results found in top nations. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

As I am finding out, I start a post with one thing in mind and then drift off in another direction. Now to get back on track. AMERICANS MOAN AND GROAN INCESSANTLY ABOUT TAXES EVEN THOUGH THEY PAY LES THAN MOST OF THEIR PEERS IN OTHER PLACES. It might be that other nations see benefits from their taxes like educated children (affordable even through college), accessible and affordable health care, cheap or free child care, well-maintained infrastructures including high speed trains, and low poverty rates. Americans get one advantage … job opportunities in our many prisons and fly overs at football games by the best military aircraft in the world.

But that is not my real rant for today. No! Paying taxes doesn’t bother me that much at all. In fact, I could pay more. And I know that those at the top of the economic pyamid could pay way more without batting an eye. Would they really miss that 7th villa in Tuscany or the 8th Lamborghini?

Economists know that after an inflection point somewhere around (but not far above) the median income level, the utlility (perceived benefit) of additional dollars becomes less. Other than a psycholological gratification of beating out their competitors in the race for richest schmuck, they don’t even notice the most recent $ billion (or $ million) bucks added to their vast nest egg. It is all a game at that point.

No, what drives me to distraction are the incessant hits I get from those trying to separate me from what remains of my very modest fortune. Forget about all the ads on TV telling me to ask my doctor to prescribe the little purple pill for some ailment I don’t even have or recognize. I’ll focus rather on my two most disturbing groups: Politicians and these damn firms trying to make me a literary luninary. I mentioned these in my last post before getting distracted.

POLITICAL HITS: The number of political requests for money is endless. During the last campaign (not even a presidential year), I counted the number of ‘hits’ during a 24 hour period … by email and texts and snail mail and calls. I stopped counting at over 200, and I didn’t listen to all the phone calls so there might have been more. I thought this would end after the votes were counted. No way! Yes, the volume is less but I get many (not 200 Plus) but a lot every single day. I loathe the thought ofthe next real election.

Volume is one thing. The desperation is another. Every psychological trick is employed, entreaties to vanity, desperate pleading, threats, appeals to one’s most vile instincts (like hatred for the other side) and so forth. Really, I’m not going to make the Speaker of the House cry if I send $35 bucks to the Democrats. And disenguousness from the Republicans in mind boggling. They continue to assert that I’m a top donor, that I’m $50 dollars away from platinum status as a supporter, that they want to send me an award as Fascist Of The Year (my label, not theirs) if only I could send in another $100. Truth is, I don’t give them a dime but that doesn’t even slow them up. There is one Dem pitch that particularly rankles me. They imply that Biden authorized this year’s Social Security increase and I should demonstrate my appreciation with another contribution or something like that. The increase is a good thing but Biden had nothing to do with it. The SS COLA was passed into law back in the 1950s. Biden was still in elementary school back then.

THE PRIVATE SECTOR: One example here though there are many. I have published academic books through traditional publishers and (recently) non-academic books through self-publishing. I’m not sure what others experience but I’m relentlessly pursued by fims promising to make me a literary star. Their pitches vary but most say that their ‘book scouts’ have discovered an earlier gem of mine. They then say they can sell me to traditional publishers where I can get $80,000 advances on my next book, or get my book into shops across the country and in other nations, or sell my book to Hollywood. The variations on the theme are endless, and all I need is to send some money in to cover some unavoidable expenses. Since there are so many of these outfits, I can only conclude that there are a lot of folk out there suffering brain damage after falling off the turnip truck. They call, text, email, and invade my drams at night. And they are persistent. I see the same phone numbers cropping up day after day. They don’t take no for an asnswer.

Perhaps there is a legitimate offer or two within the forest of contacts but I will never know. Every once in a while I will answer a call, mostly I’m bored that day. Too often their ‘tells’ are obvious. The caller has a heavy accent (calling from the Phillipines, Malasia, a Nigerian Prince?). You can also hear noise in the background, which I assume are other ‘Literary Vice Presidents of Acquisitions’ making cold calls on commission. Since they almost invariably reference my older masterpieces published by XLibris early on (and which I no longer promote), my guess is that XLibris sold lists of gullible authors to others (or created shell companies). In turn, these scam outfits put desperate folk on commission to try and bilk self published authors to the end of time. They play upon vanity of people like me. You know, I am so close to becoming the next James Joyce or William Faulkner. The private sector (and Republican politicians) know one thing about us … there really is a sucker born every minute.

Bottom line … conservatives rant on about government being too intrusive and taking our freedoms. Really? Sure, government imposes rules like red lights at intersections or required vaccines to save your life or laws against pouring poisons into our foods or into our rivers and lakes. I can live with those. Some might seem a nuisance (like when I stop at a red light at 2 AM and no one is around) but I don’t mind those things, not too much at least.

It is the politicians and the sharks in the private sector who lie and manipulate and endlessly harrass you in pursuit of the American dream which, in case you missed it, comes down to separating you from whatever money you have left.

End of rant for today! Please enjoy the rest of your day.

Today is a relatively busy day for a retired fart like me. I was going to write a short piece on the world’s ongoing and relentless efforts to separate me from my remaining money. Such ceaseless endeavors come from two main groups … firms promising to make me a literary luminary (if I just send them some money) and politicians (who insist that my small contribution of $50 bucks or so) is all that stands between us and Armageddon. I’ll go back to that at a later date.

I also should mention that I’ve received a number of emails from my few followers asking me to continue. I will for the time being but you may want to spread the word. I also noticed an uptick in visits, mostly from China. Perhaps the title of my last post about American Exceptionalism caught their attention.

Today, I cannot ignore the latest school shooting, this time in Nashville. THREE chidren and THREE adults were slain. We’ve become deadened to such tragedies. It is the 15th such horror since Columbine in 1999, the death toll is now up to 175 innocent children and youth slain. The Republican response will be predictable and utterly sad. They will suggest we turn schools into armed camps, require teachers to carry weapons, or even turn elementary school students into junior Rambos sporting their own deadly hardware.

It goes without saying that this is another example of American exceptionalism. School shootings are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to losing our young ones. Our surfeit of weapons provides so many tragic opportunities for death and destruction, both accidental and inyentional. No other advanced county comes close to our carnage that takes the lives of our young:

Surely, this is a record of which we can be so proud. At the least, it should raise some doubt on the claim that guns promote safety. I would love to see one scintilla of evidence in support of that proposition.

Some three decades ago, I believe, Australia had a horrific school shooting. They were outraged and responded by drastically reducing the number of automatic weapons floating about their streets. It has not been repeated. We, on the other hand, have way more firearms on our streets than citizens. Moreover, we permit almost anyone to secure dangerous weapons meant for warfare. There are an estimated 16 million AR-15s out there … a military grade semi-automatic weapon that is not essential for hunting deer, fowl, or squirrals. It does a great job, however, of mowing down children and teachers.

I need not go on about this example of American exceptionalism, or should I say our American shame. Those that hide behind the 2nd Amendment are, in my opinion, dead wrong. Read the language. Souunds to me as if the founding fathers, fearing too much centralized power would lead to the reestablishment of a monarchy of sorts, wished local governments to maintain ‘well-regulated’ militias. Their fascination with checks and balances led them to promote decentralized military power. That is far, far from Republican arguments that everyone, adults and children, run around sporting the latest killing machines.

Think about this. The westerns we see on TV present a false picture of things back then. Gun violence was greater in many Eastern cities than in places like Dodge City, Kansas. Why? Because local ordinanced banned guns within city limits. The gunfight at the OK corral happened because the Mclaren’s and other cowboys refused to obey this law being enforced by the Earps, though a simmering feud contributed to things.

Still, a lesson might be drawn from this history. We were more civilized back then than we are now. How freaking sad is that!

First, let me say that I did get several responses suggesting that I keep this blog going. Perhaps I do have an audience greater than one, though writing for myself might justify this effort in and of itself. After all, the best conversations I have occur within the six inches or so between my ears. So, onwards … at least for the time being.

Second, I keep thinking that my next post will be light and frothy. Apparently, however, I have a lot of venting to do but the wit will not be far behind. I promise.

It is easy to be fuming these days. It remains shocking to me, and anyone with a minimal moral compass, that a major American political party has been cowed by a narcissistic sociopath who would leave the country in flames rather than face the consequences of his own actions. This reminds me of the McCarthyism of the 1950s though the country rather quickly came to its senses back then and censured that sick political pretender though much irreperable harm was done in the meantime. But I will leave Trump for another day or several days.

Today we take a peek at the topis of American Exceptionalism, the tendency for many people, and almost all Republican politicians, to claim that we are the best. We are the shining City on the Hill that stands as an exemplary beacon of hope for the world. I certainly believed that as a child growing up in the post WWII period. That youthful illusion is long gone. To be fair, let us take a look at one area where many claim that the U.S. is superior and see how we are doing.

This graph looks messy but is quite illuminating. It lays out three variables or dimensions … time (from around 1970 to just before the Covid pandemic), expected life expectancy (from less than 70 years of age to the mid 80s), and per-capita expenditures on health care adjusted for inflation and cross-country price differences (ranging from less than a thousand dollars to more than $10,000).

Now, if you got all that, here is the basic story. All the other countries depicted here spend much less per person on health than we do and yet all, every one, has a longer life expectancy … by several years. Many spend half of what we do for much better outcomes. Only Switzerland approaches us in outlays yet still spend about 70 percent as much as us. Yet, there is little outrage at this shocking performance.

Stunningly, Republicans often praise us as having the best health care system in the world. For example, we can see any doctor we would like without waiting times like they have uo in Canada with their socialist approach to care. They note that people fly in from other countries to avail themselves of our superior care. They somehow neglect to mention those that die or go without care because of costs. Very convenient.

They also don’t mention that these medical travelers often fly in from oil rich countries with bags full of money and to whom cost is not a factor. They seldom mention the migration of Americans to other countries seeking quality medical services at a fraction of the cost. And let’s look at those wait times in every other country that provides socialist care. Well, I never heard a Canadien complain nor express any freaking desire to become part of our system. Just the opposite, they manipulate their stays in the U.S. to maintain access to their own health care system. Besides, I live in Madison Wisconsin, which has great doctors and health facilities. There seems to be one such facility on every other block. And yet, try to get a non emergency appointment (e.g. a colonoscopy). My internist ordered one for me last fall and I won’t get in until the May (and I have great insurance).

I recall Paul Ryan, former Republican Speaker of the House and VP candidate who represented the district just south of me. He once proclaimed that our system was superior precisely because it was based on free market principles unlike all the other countries in the world which publicly guaranteed access and controlled prices. I guess he never looked at the data, or paid attention to the yearly 40,000 plus amenable deaths that occured when he made this claim, or the fact that two out of three U.S. bankruptcies are caused by exorbitant medical bills, the biggest reason for economic disaster by far.

Think about it for a moment. Paul enjoyed a Cadillac health insurance program as a Congessman. More to the point, buying health care is not like buying a car. It is not as easy to comparison shop. Who knows enough to sort through competing claims even if they have a decent concept of the specifics of their ailment. Nor do peope have a choice in many cases, not everyone can think about alternate providers when they have a heart attack. I recall terrible stories of my Florida neighbors whose spouses were carted off to the nearest (and profit based) cardiac care facility because that is what the emergency people do. Never, and I mean never, leave a loved one in the care of a facility whose motive is profit and not the well-being of the patient.

Despite Paul’s claim that our free markey approach leads to quality care, we have a semi-socialist system where the elderly, veterans, and the poor have publicly provided care, at least in part. It is not great coverage and Republicans would love to cut these programs back. Just imagine the suffering and dying, plus the economic hardship, that would result is they succeed. And don’t forget their franntic efforts to undo Obamacare despite public approval and the good the program did. There is one principle that dominates Republican thinking … if it doesn’t benefit the very rich, it is not a good thing.

Much more might be said but let me end with one more point … the fact that we do not view health care as a public good. Among other things, we give the markets considerable (though not always total) freedom to set prices. Guess what, they set them as high as they can get away with.

This is an easy chart to interpret. U.S. prices for drugs is much higher than in that damn Socialist country to our north. Moreover, the drugs are just as effective. Other countries offer even better prices. No wonder, so many go on drug holidays, and I don’t mean to buy a supply of weed. Many Americans must decide between food or medicine. Sometimes it is a matter of life and death.

I still laugh at the Republican claims that Obomacare would introduce death panels into our health care system. There have always been death panels and there there have always been well-paid people who act in ways that are criminally negligent with respect to human life. They are found running insurance companies, in the corporate offices of parmaceutical companies, and in the board rooms of some major medical facilities. Rick Scott, former Florida Governor and now Senator, ran a for-profit health company before entering poilitics. When he was in charge, his company was hit with the largest fines ever (to that point) for fraudulent billing of the federal government. I guess there is truth in the old British aphorism … steal a loaf of bread and go to prison, steal a railroad and go to Parliament.

There are a growing number of stories about people going to Europe for hip replacements and other more elective surgeries. Even with travel and other expenses, it is cheaper to go abroad if they don’t have great insurance. Even those with some coverage find the OOP (out of pocket) expenses in the U.S. exorbitant. This sad state of affairs will never change as long as health care is viewed as a profit center. If people have to die to sustain the bottom line so be it. Just the cost of doing business. That is an unacceptable cost to me. I am shocked that the public is not up-in-arms.

When Republicans state that it would be too expensive to provide health to all, ask them this … how does every other advanced country in the world provide health care as a public good?

American exceptionalism! You bet. We are just about the worst in the advanced world.

NOTE: Some argue that a ‘medicare for all’ approach would save money in the end fora variety of reasons including all the resources wasted on advertising and cost avoidance activities that do nothing to improve outcomes.

After a few days on this blog, I realize one fact already. I will be writing for myself, at least for the most part. On Facebook, as sorry as that platform is in many respects, I easily gathered followers … 30,000 the first time around and 7,000 in a short time on my 2nd tour of duty. It was flattering but the format didn’t lend itself to reflective thought nor did they comrehend basic communication skills like humor and irony. My God, were they dumb … those running FB, not my followers.

I doubt I will ever get more than a handfull of readers here, though some have suggested SubStack as a better platform except I tried that earlier and found it bewildering. So, shall I continue? To write or not to write, that will be the question. I might even if there is no audience. After all that is why I write books, for myself. The number who read them is minsicule compared to the effort and cost that goes into them. In the end, though, the process is its own reward. Only time will tell with respect to my short career, to date, as a blogger.

However, it is Sunday. On Facebook, I usually donned my religious robes and identity myself as Pastor Tom or Father Jim. As such, I would dispense homegrown comment and thought on spiritual matters. After all, I spent over a year studying for the Priesthood in my misspent youth. Doesn’t that make me an expert?

This is a vast topic so let us start by touching on some core meanings or concepts. Look at the next insert:

This is a very truncated overview of the evolution of spiritual thought. I say spiritual but this really is more about religious movements. When I say truncated, I mean really truncated. Beliefs in things beyond our own beings likely started when our primitive ancestors realized they were pretty helpless in the face of life’s uncertainties and, in the beginning, life was very uncertain indeed. Early forms of Animism posited a sense of awe into the things early homo-sapiens confronted, and feared or needed, on a daily basis. That turned out to be just about everything. Many of our founding fathers embraced a form of Deism that, to my mind, was a highly sophisticated form of Animism in that Providence’s presence was seen everywhere and nowhere.

As humans evolved, they needed more structure and certainly more rules to govern ever more complex interactions and populations bound together by urban density. Where does this moral authority to enforce consensual behavior come from … most likely something or someone very powerful and outside of ourselves. Things get complicated quickly, though. I saw one etsimate that people around the globe today worship some 3,000 distinct versions of God, though the notion of distinct might not hold up to scrutiny. There are that many more, probably, just within the Hindu tradition.

So, what we see is a glacial evolution in the concept of a controlling Providence, mostly in the direction of settling on a single omniscient and omipresent entity whose attribures continue to be debated. Monotheism seems to have prevailed in the very human contest to define the divine.

Thinking closely on this evolution, we might well ask … is God a human creation to satisfy the needs for survival of the species, or at least our own affinity groups? As society evolved toward hierarchical and top heavy governance systems, pluralism amongst those residing in the Heavens seemed at odds with the order and control extent rulers wished to see on earth. Even Constantine realized the single Chrisitian God was preferable to the many Roman ones though too late to save an empire already fraying at the edges.

In addition, there is a possible evolutionary process within given religious traditions. Take a gander at the next insert:

One might consider this the life-cycle of a formal religion. In general, you evolve from early passions and belief toward boundaries that separate you from others and then on to an increasing number of internal rules and methods for enforcing conformity. This is not unique to religious institutions but found in most organizational forms … what I sometimes like to think of as the ossification of institutional passion and the slow sclerosis of belief systems or sense of mission. In that process, the means for profiting from positions of authority grow, and the lure of profits based on unquestioning loyalty of devotees is tempting. Think about Joel Osteen, the tele-evangelist with his huge mansions and several Lear Jets. That is some distance away from an itinerent Jewish Rabbi of sorts with a few scraggly followers preaching love and sacrifice as he wandered about Judea.

If religion is, in fact, a man-made phenomenon, but possessing a strong sense of moral authority, the possibilities of abuse are extraordinary. With boundaries that separate the in-crowd from others, the potential for conflict rises exponentially. No one has been more bloodthirsty throughout history than those defending their God. We thus come to another core concept that has been called ‘Monotheistic Absolutism.’ All spiritual traditions can lead to violence but the emergance of monotheism raised the stakes. When there were many gods, it was a bit easier to switch allegiance or pick the one’s closest to your innate dispositions. When there is one God, other’s must be false … almost by definition. It comes down to “my god is better than your god.”

I will return to these themes, and many related ones, in future blogs … should there be any. But let me leave this one with a thought or two to keep you thinking. Let us look at the vast universe that the Hubble and Webb telescopes have revealed to us. There are untold trillions of stars our there in billions upon billions of galaxies that are stretched across distances that boggle our minds. If you want some sense of awe, look at the world out there. Seeking meaning in some ancient writings that probably were created by a committee looking for advantages given early political disputes about truth and power is not the way to go and surely a poor guide to comprehending the mysteries of which we are an integral part.

If we are ever to get some appreciation of an entity or understanding that simulates what we mean by God, it likely will be at the end of some evolutionary journey which our species playes an essential role. But we must look beyond our petty disputes and see the bigger picture. Someday, those who follow us may get a glimpse of that meaning which ties the infinitely vast and endlessly exciting cosmos together. They might well glimpse the rhetorical face of God. That possibility excites me.

However, that will only be possible if we don’t destroy ouselves at the beginning of the journey.

By the way, I write a lot about these themes through my characters in my book that should be released shortly …. ‘Refractive Reflections.’

This is what I woke up to this AM. I will admit, it is pretty while coming down but eventually you have to go out in this crap. Then it usually sucks the big one, especially if you don’t engage in those patently ridiculous winter sports like snowshoing or cross-country skiing or some such rot.

Okay, okay, I can think of a few folk who make good use of this solidified form of liquid. My neighbor across the street is a snow sculptor. He is probably ecstatic today, though I do question his mental stability. What is wrong with him? Still, he creates cute pieces of his art. Below is his creation from our last dump.

Such distractions are hardly enough to compensate for the dread I feel when seeing tons of this white stuff descending from the heavens. It is enough to make a man regret selling his winter home in Florida where the following was easily accessible.

Then again, I would have to live in Florida, where Ron DeSantis is Governor. No, I’ll take the cold and snow. Besides, soon Spring will be here and all will be glorious again.

Spring will arrive …. right?

Some political tactics are as ancient as those fossil specimens being dug up in various pre-Cambrian geological settings. That is, these strategies are almost as old as time itself. None is more time tested than ‘if you are unhappy, it is this other guy’s fault.’ This is otherwise known as the ‘scapegoat’ trick. And who is this other guy? That’s the beauty of this transparent distraction, it can be anyone you want.

For the earliest homo-sapiens spreading out of East Africa into Europe some 70,000 plus years ago, the ‘other’ of that era likely was the remaining Neanderthals they ran into as the glaciers retreated north. For King Solomon in the Old Testament, it might be the Hittites. For the early Romans, it probably was the Carthaginians. For the Spanish during the Age of Exploration, it was the the Portuguese for a while and then the Dutch and then the English. As nation states evolved, it was the English hating the French and the French returning that animosity in kind. When the Ottoman Empire struggled during the WWI period, the Armenians proved a useful scapegoat leading to one the earlier genocidal efforts in modern times. Northern Ireland had their Catholics, or Papists. Sunni Muslim’s had Shiites and vice-versa. The Nazi’s had the Jews. And the American’s cycled through a series of easy targets … Native Americans, the Irish, the Chinese, the Slaves and Italians, Hispanics and Latinos, along with the usual suspects … Jews and Blacks.

It is as if identifying and then blaming the ‘other’ is embedded within our genetic makeup. Then again, the appeal of the scapegoat tactic has an intuitive and obvious appeal. Who in their right mind wants to take responsibility for their situation and their fate. After all, that is just so … mature!

When Hitler, after recovering from his gas attack wounds late in WWI found that Germany had lost the war and signed a humiliatiing cease fire treaty, he found the very concept of national defeat impossible to accept. He quickly convinced himself that his homeland was ‘stabbed in the back’ by a perfidious cabal of Jews. That one man might easily convince himself of such a delusion is not surprising. But he was able to convince an entire nation of that falsehood, or most of it anyway … a society considered among the most cultured and sophisticated in the world of that time. In truth, Germany was exhausted by the Fall of 1918 and being over run by vastly superior forces.

Let us look at an example closer to home. In the anti-bellum South during the first half of the 19th century, only about 1 or 2 percent of Southerners owned significant numbers of slaves. They were the 1 percenters of that era given that the exploitation of human suffering led to egregious accumulations of wealth available only to the favored few. Here is the odd thing. Not only were African-Americans suffering, but poorer whites faced harsh economic conditions and few real opportunities for upward mobility. This was a feudal and authoritarian society in a classic sense. Political and economic power had been secured by the few at the very top of the pyramid and inequalty was hardening year by year.

You would think that struggling white laborers and hardscrabble farmers would confront such an unfair system. But no, just the opposite. Most, though not all, defended both slavery and the economic and cultural frameworks that supported this hideous institution. More remarkably, they went off to war by the millions to suffer and die for a cause that clearly repressed them and which materially dimmed their futures.

What did they get in return? They were able to look down upon their darker skin bretheren, people they were closer to in most respects than the elite who sent them off to suffer and too often expire in gruesome ways. It is hard to imagine such a bargain as making any rational sense. But a hundred years after that horrific conflict, the South yet practiced legal apartheid with enormous public support, at least until federal power enforced a limited form of de jure equality.

Recently, the scapegoat tactic continues to weave its magic in many places … Hungary, Turkey, Poland, Venezuala, and even England (Brexit was partly a reaction to immigration fears). The rise of Trumpism and today’s Republican Party is a direct result of ‘blaming the other.’ Almost half of America is convinced that barbarians from south of the border will steal ‘their’ country and, if they live too far away from the Rio Grande, that ‘woke’ liberals will confiscate their guns and their religion and their culture. As the latest generation of conservatives cower in the face of such threats, an ecomomic elite gathers more of the economic pie along with the power attached to that money.

We are, at the same time, an odd and fascinating species. With our technologies, we now can peer into the origins of our universe and create awsome forms of artificial intelligence. At the same time, we are driven by the same hate, fear, and divisions that infected our earliest ancestors.

Late at night, I often ponder a conundrum that has intrigued me for decades. Which will prevail, our primitive fears or our better angels. As of today, I have no freaking idea.

A friend of mine recently visited Hanoi Hilton while touring Southeast Asia. In case you have forgotten, that was the infamous prison where American POW’s were incarcerated and tortured during the Vietnam conflict. The scars generated by that war have remained within some of us throughout our lives. That must be my case since it a theme that simmers throughout some of my recent fictional works, particuarly Oblique Journeys.

Then there are the hundreds of pitches I get from conservative politicians and groups. Don’t ask me why they keep hitting on a confirmed Socialist like myself but there you have it. Aside from praising me for being one of their strongest supporters (I don’t give them a dime), a majority address me as ‘Dear Patriot.’

Are they kidding! Do they really believe patriots would pour their heart and soul into dismantling the democratic protocols and legal safeguards that once marked America as a leader in the so-called ‘free world’ and an example for people everywhere with democratic aspirations. Feverishly seeking to establish an authoritarian and totalitarian regime in the U.S. seems a rejection of my youthful view on this ambiguous concept of patriotism. Then again, what does it mean to be a patriot?

I still recall being drilled by three members of military intelligence during the physical I was required to take as part of the military draft process back around 1970. There was a question on one of the many forms to be completed asking if I had belonged to any organization advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Having ascertained from the friendly Sargent overseeing this process that SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) was such a nafarious organization, I entered that group in the space provided (I was a member before they went bat-shit crazy). Thus, my convivial chat with military intelligence took place.

For me, the highlight of our exchange of ideas came when they asked “if I would fight any and all enemies of the United States.” I recall leaning back and looking at them as if I was seriously considering their question before replying with great sincerity … “First, we must define enemy.” That led to their threats to drop assholes like me into North Vietnam though I thought that unlikely in the short term.

That vignette, and the crises of conscience that is reflected throughout Oblique Journeys and (more recently) Refractive Reflections, has stayed with me during the course of my life. What is patriotism? Who is the enemy? I did manage to evade military service, or a flight to Canada which my fictional protagonist was required to do and which I seriously contemplated for a time (some of my protagonists tend to be romanticized versions of me). Still, that whole experience left me with a sense of guilt. Had I acted totally from conscience? Was I rationalizing some form of cowardice? Or was I the true patriot from that era? A good deal of the personal struggles in Oblique Journeys and Refractive Reflections focus on such questions.

Fast forward some five-plus decades or so. The same questions haunt me. What does it mean to be a ‘patriot.’ Who are our enemies? I still cannot answer such questions with total satisfaction. There really are some imponderable questions that make life worthwhile. But I have inched along toward an answer:

First, despite a surfeit of Catholic guilt in my makeup, a residue of being raised as such, I no longer feel guilt for not bearing arms in the 1960s. Now, except in the rarest of circumstances, I would never do such a thing.

Second, it strikes me as foolish to defend a country simply because one lives there. One must embrace the culture and values of that nation. Do we still not look down upon the good Germans who supported a Nazi regime or do we not sympathize with the Russian youth of today who evaded Putin’s conscription. Mere citizenship is not enough. There are many aspects of American today that drive me to tears and shame, topics for future blogs. I would be hard pressed to fight for a country I do not respect.

Third, how would I answer my military intelligence inquisitors today? Who is the enemy? My simple answer is this. Based upon almost 8 decades of experience and thought, it seems to me that the enemy lies within. It is perhaps the 40 percent of our neighbors and fellow citizens who sport MAGA hats and reject democracy, science, and compassion. I have lived through the Cold War and the War on Terrorism. They promise difficulty but only one group, in my mind at least, offers an existential threat to what we purportedly value the most … today’s Republican Party. Madeleine Albright (Clinton’s Secretary of State and U.N. Ambassador) recently said in a book that America is closer to Fascism (her Jewish family escaped the Nazi’s just in time) than at any time since WWII. Yes, I have found an enemy which could bring me to bear arms.

My conscience is clearer now than it was those many years ago. Perhaps I will have it all worked out with just one more book.

People say I’m pretty smart. Okay, I can’t name names of such people at the moment but I have been in school a long time … like my whole life. That must count for something.

Yet, like virtually all other males, I am clueless when it comes to those of the female persuasion. Let’s get past their obsessions with relationships and feelings and other emotional nonesense when they might focus more profitably on sports and sex or, more promising, sex and sports. What is with this processing of the minutiae of one’s life. At the end of each day, my poor Mary would ask me how things went. I had the same response every day … ‘fine.’ It mattered not whether I made an earth shattering discovery (which I never did) or whether we lost all our research funding (which never happened either but there were some close calls). Each day was ‘fine.’

Of course, I would get an earful of what went on in her day (she was deputy director of the Wisconsin Court System). I recall when she went back to Law School. I would pick her up in back of the school and she would talk non stop all the way home about the cases being discussed in class. Like I could care. Perhaps that was the origins of the glomus tumor that grew in my ear and which took over 5 hours for the surgeon to remove.

Bottom line, what do women see in men? Why do they freaking bother? We don’t listen. If by chance we do, we want to fix things and not just listen to them express their frustrations. And if we try to listen, we often can’t figure out what’s going on. Face it, we are not the brightest bulbs on the marquee, the sharpest knives in the drawer, the fastest arrows in the quiver. Okay, you get the picture.

Then there are household chores. I was always getting fired by Mary (my long-suffering spouse). I know what all the females out there are saying. You think I tanked my responsibilities on purpose in order to get fired. You would think so, but no. It was all incompetence, plain and simple. I thank the good lord that he created universities where those without any skills whatsoever might go and toil away on meaningless things without bothering real people doing meaningful tasks like cleaning toilets.

There is sex of course. Even though it strikes me that female orgasms are more powerful than their male parnters, some seven decades of observation suggests women are just not that interested, and never have been. Mostly, for them, it is a transactional activity useful to achieve other ends … security, money and things money can buy, social status, and (god knows why) male companionship (see paragraph 1).

We males always suspected such even though our sparring partners from the other gender can, as we know, fake important things with considerable aplomb. This leads to a conundrum for us. If you watch female behavior closely, you realize they look upon us as dangerous predators (no eye contact, always checking us out on google, carrying pepper spray, and so forth). I didn’t have to get used to the social distancing during the Covid pandemic since women ALWAYS practiced social distancing around me … staying six feet away. So, when I was in the game, so to speak, life was difficult. I would worry that some friendly female was really thinking “oh no, this Corbett character is going to make a pass. Better I be bitten by a rabid dog.” Sigh!

But now, finally, I am the perfect male. I’m so freaking old that everthing has fallen into place. I’m pretty deaf so that I just nod while the females in my life are chattering away while blessedly not hearing a damn thing. I still can’t do anything practical but I have plenty of money and can hire people too do real work. And most importantly, I have virtually no testosterone left. Women can be around me without seeing me drool uncontrollably or fear I will make some clumsy pass.

This is nirvana for me and those on the other side of the gender divide. I have no freaking idea why Providence made two sexes so different as to be compleely incompatible, but He did permit us a few years at the end of life where we might get along and enjoy one another’s company.

You can send all hate mail to corbettirp@aol.com