Tonight at my cancer support group meeting, one of the gang quoted an article in today's Dayton Daily News which I had not read.  I hope you can read it at:

http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/DaytonDailyNews/

It is in the upper right-hand corner, by Daryn Kagan.  (You may need to be subscribers to the DDN web page.)  The important quote for us in the most unpopular club in the world is "When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer.  You beat cancer by how you live, why you live and the manner in which you live."  It helped me to say "F*** YOU, CANCER!!!!!"  Especially after I found the Jimmy V speech at the bottom of

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/stuart-scott-espys-jimmy-v-perseverance-award_n_5594242.html

and the Stuart Scott speech at

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=11225895

In the Scott  speech, substitute the names Tom and John.  You'll know where.

God bless you all.

Today John, Kristine and I went to the funeral for the brother of one of John's college friends.  I went because he was on active duty in the U. S. Navy, so the Westboro so-called Baptist Church sent out their usual call for a demonstration at the funeral or burial.  There was no chance that they would show up themselves; the major news media doesn't cover rural Ohio.  And there was almost no chance anyone else would answer their call.  Very few ever do, and those few are also publicity maniacs.  Some people agree with their warped beliefs about God and homosexuality, but the vast majority of these people have a great respect for the military.  If WBC is ever attacked, it is more likely to come from their friends than their enemies. 

Anyway, although I didn't think that a counter-demonstration or protective "human wall" was necessary, I still went.  Why?  Well, partly because I could.  I'm now 65, but I'm only semi-retired, so I do have extra time available for things.  Here was something good to do and it fit into my work schedule; I could do this.  And it would be time to spend with my son and someone who was extremely important to him.  But mainly, I take my Christianity seriously, and I'm deeply offended by people who make it a laughingstock or worse.  I want it to be clear that this is not, most emphatically NOT, the Jesus in Whom I have put my faith, trust and love. 

So we went to the funeral together.  As I'd expected, nothing evil happened.  The human wall wasn't actually necessary.  Within the church building, we had a normal Catholic funeral for a young adult who  died too young.  It wasn't easy; it reminded me too much of the funeral of my cousin Tom Hopkins.  Especially when the priest remarked that 46 years ago, it had been Army uniforms in the front, and his brother right there in the middle.  Yeah, Father, been there.  It sucked.  The cemetery was close by; everything went normally, and we headed back for our normal work. 

But I had seen something wonderful.  When we came to the church from the funeral home, a "human wall" was in place.  I couldn't see all the way around the church, but everywhere I could see was defended.  People had come together to help and protect their friends and neighbors in a hard time.  Some were local folks, and some were from elsewhere like us, responding to Keith's (the brother) friends and relations. 

Sometimes, good comes out of evil.  This looks like one of those times.  I feel greatly blessed to have been there. 

Sunday at the Festival on the riverbank

Today we went to Mass at the Dayton Celtic Festival.  The priest who can read Gaelic was injured and could not celebrate, so we had a regular English Mass except for the readings.  One of the Irish musicians, strictly a layman, read the first and second readings in Gaelic, so we had that much at least.  And the replacement celebrant did an excellent job. 

But I had a hard time fully concentrating on the service.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous - bright sun, clear sky, perfect temperature (at least in the shade.)  And standing there in the crowd, looking over the riverfront toward the Main Street bridge, it was a wonderful sight.  The grass and trees were glowing green, the levee wall looked clean and bright, even the aging buildings looked pretty.  The whole experience was near heavenly. 

I don't regret living my whole life in Dayton.  It's not the greatest city ever, but it's OK.  Today, however, I was positively glad and thankful to be in Dayton.  Thanks for another blessing, Lord. 

Easter Morning

It's Easter morning, and for a change I heard a good word from the Lord.  I'm convinced that the country I love is in decline, and I don't see any way to prevent the crash.  But today I realized that the Resurrection can happen for countries, too.  While our country may indeed degenerate into a Fascist, or even Communist, dictatorship, we could have a second American Revolution.  The people could rise again and restore life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

God, save your people. 

Sep. 11, 2011

     The closing song at Mass today was "America the Beautiful" and I couldn't sing it.  I just couldn't.  Every time I tried to join in the tear ducts filled instantly, and the music died in my throat.  It wasn't just, or even mainly, the horror of the day ten years ago.  It was what has happened since then.  The blessings called for in the song just aren't happening.  It's not a lack of grace, I believe.  It's a lack of response to grace.  The country I love is rapidly disintegrating.  No one is thinking or working for the good of their country; it's all me-me-me. 
     Crown thy good with brotherhood?  Only if they look and think exactly like me. 
     Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law?  Nope.  Self-control is for others, and I'll decide what laws I'll obey. 
     May God thy gold refine?  The gold has become the god. 
     Till selfish gain no longer stain/The banner of the free?  Not even close.  Selfish gain is not only tolerated, it is glorified. 

     The alabaster cities are no longer in sight.  This human's tears have dimmed them completely. 

A Word of the Lord?

     The Mass readings for a recent Sunday included the passage in Jeremiah 20:7-9 in which the prophet complains that speaking the word of God has brought him nothing but trouble, but he has to keep doing it. I’ve felt that way a lot lately. I feel like I am in the middle of a sinking, decaying country where people who think that they follow Jesus have been tricked into advocating a radical selfishness totally at odds with the plain sense of the Scriptures. The people who are advocating the preferential option for the poor show no respect for the life of the unborn, and scant regard for the elderly near death. But it is to the Christians of the so-called Religious Right that I am beginning to feel called to prophesy.



     Yes, prophesy. I have a feeling growing within me that this is the word of God for America: to paraphrase the prophet Jonah, “Forty years more, and America will be destroyed.” Actually I think the number will be more like twenty-something. The full prophecy is this:


Unless my people abandon the culture of selfishness that they have built up, that selfishness will completely destroy their country with all the freedoms they have professed to love.


I have been saying that this country is in dire trouble for some time now, in this blog and in conversation. I get little respect from anyone. Younger people roll their eyes, politely implying that “you old f**ts always predict doom and gloom.” The elders, especially the Religious Right folks, roll their eyes because they are serenely confident that America is God’s chosen country. Even more than the Pope, the USA is infallible, preserved from any serious error. So Jeremiah’s words this morning sounded familiar. Yeah, pal, been there.


     As a charismatic Catholic, I know a little about prophecy. It is not, most emphatically, about predicting the future. It is speaking a word of the Lord to His people. I’ve had the experience before, in a much more limited context. Is this a risky gift to exercise? Is there a major danger that this is merely egomania running free? You bet your sweet patootie it is. But here I am, predicting the future and risking scorn and derision. Maybe the Lord is in it, or maybe I’m making a jackass out of myself.


     So what are my reasons for thinking that God, Lord of the Universe, has chosen me as His prophet? Nothing that other people will find irrefutable. There’s the test of Moses, from Deuteronomy 18:18-22. If the USA is still a truly democratic, stable and just country in 2051, then I was full of you-know-what and will no doubt be receiving what I deserve. (Unless Jesus accepts my groveling apology. But this won’t be all that high on my list of sins.) There’s also the Jeremiah test, from the passage above. I keep speaking it, even when it gains me nothing but differing degrees of scorn. Finally, and least convincing, I am just dead certain that this country is headed for a disaster and the people who should be sounding the loudest alarms are instead speeding up the process.


     And that is what I feel must be said. People who should know that the love of money is the root of all evil (I Timothy 6:10) are instead cheerfully supporting policies that permit, or even encourage, unrestricted greed and selfishness, as somehow magically good for our country. This despite plenty of historical evidence that St. Paul was right. That is rather frustrating; for the people I want to get through to, an appeal to historical evidence should not be necessary. Aren’t you God’s people? Then why do you ignore His Word?


     A prophecy, especially a public prophecy, is an exhortation to do right. And so I plead with my fellow Christians: Heed the word of the Lord which I have spoken to you this day. I am not threatening or predicting Divine intervention, with plagues and lightning and such. No, even now the sin is making its own punishment.

A Family Revelation

     Man, I had a real revelation a while back. On Facebook, one of my cousins posted the origin of his Dad’s nickname. [Background, if you don’t know my family: My Dad had one sibling, a slightly older brother, who married Mom’s younger sister. Mom and Aunt Peg were the last two of 10, 8 surviving.] My sibs and I had always called him Uncle Skid, and I never knew why. It was just his name, or nickname. He had a severe stutter. Bill (my cousin) had seen a television show on stuttering, no doubt because of the new movie “The King’s Speech”, and posted how he had been moved by it. It was good to know that it was now better understood, and can often be effectively treated. He mentioned a few ways that it had been a problem in his Dad’s life, mostly because he was rejected by the armed forces in World War II.


     He also mentioned the nick name and its origin. When they were boys, my Dad thought that the stutter sounded like the words were skidding. He started calling him Skid, and the nickname stuck. This would have been in the 1920’s, or at most early 30’s. American culture was rougher then; sensitivity was considered a little effeminate. And Dad could be rough. He was a teaser, like me, and not particularly sensitive about it. He believed that making fun of misfortune was a good way to help someone deal with it. But of course it isn’t always. He was sometimes hurt or embarrassed when one of his attempts at humor was not well received. He really was trying to help.

     While they were two different men in many ways, their brotherly love was unmistakable. One time I made some remark to my Dad about being the brains of the family, and he said "Hell, Skid was just as smart as I was. But because of his handicap, everyone babied him." I was shocked; it was the only time I ever heard him being seriously critical of his parents, or Catholic schools. But he was bitter; there was a definite vibe of "they screwed up my brother!" After our family moved up north, they still kept in touch, even though the visits sometimes were limited to a couple of times a year. They just liked being together. Dad’s jobs kept him away more and more as time went on; that hurt all of us, including him and his brother. But the bond was never broken, or even weakened. I pray that my sons can also keep their bond unbroken throughout their lives.

Productivity and Society

When I was young, in the fifties and sixties give or take, science fiction sometimes ran stories speculating about how to have a society in which it is not necessary for everyone to work. If I knew a scifi writer who was looking for an idea, I’d suggest reviving that theme. It seems like America, at least, if not all of the first world, is rapidly approaching the point when all the stuff we need, and a large chunk of what we want, can be produced by a portion of the population. Things I have read recently seem to indicate that this trend may continue, and even accelerate.



First, why didn’t it happen sooner? Writers of that era, both fiction and academic, observed that technology was making output per worker grow much faster than before. Sometime, probably pretty soon, technology would reach the point that having everyone work was unnecessary. It didn’t happen, because while the new tech increased productivity, it also made new things possible, and those new things needed new workers to produce them, and thus more new jobs were created. While assembly line cars needed fewer workers per car, those cars were cheap enough that new demand turned into demand for more workers. Mainframe computers required both programmers and operators, since they made new applications possible, or cheap enough to be practical.


But that’s not happening with the new, www-based inventions. Things like Google and Facebook make their originators billionaires, but generate mere thousands of new jobs, instead of the millions of the last technology generation. So again, we face the prospect of a system which supports more people than it needs.


Actually, this is not a new situation in human history. Most societies have a leisure class. But until industrialization, it has only been possible by having a slave class to make the leisure class possible. The advanced societies of antiquity, both eastern and western, had a leisure class supported by hordes of slaves. The leisure class was nearly always the highest social class, and was usually a tiny percentage of the population. The late Roman Republic was a bit of an anomaly, in having a grain dole and public entertainment that effectively made the lowest social class a leisure class. Of course this was made possible by vast hordes of foreign slaves, mainly in Egypt. It developed from the standard democratic practice of politicians buying votes.


The welfare system of the “Great Society” of the sixties could have been the beginning of a return to the Roman Republic system, only with machines instead of human slaves. It was later pretty much scrapped, for two main reasons. The first was the moral argument: Why should the most useless people get a free ride? Shouldn’t everyone have to earn their way? The other reason was the growing trend toward a radical selfishness: My money is MINE! I don’t want to share any of it with anyone! Taxes are always evil, and taxes which support bums are the greatest evil. These arguments will need to be addressed.


Actually, the selfish argument is more easily addressed, at least in theory. A greater population, especially a population with money to spend, is good for all of the working people. More money being circulated for more goods is prosperity, by definition. Such a system could work. It would have to have a sharp divide between working and non-working, with both social and economic advantage to the working class. It would also need two-way class mobility. This theory may be too abstract to be effective as a short-term political stance, even if it convinces the more educated.


The moral argument is more difficult. The moral teaching that everyone should earn their way in the world has been, up till now, a practical necessity. The result of most people’s natural tendency to do no more than necessary has been the downfall of socialist systems. Some people are full of energy and work helps them feel worthwhile; they will be workers in any system. Others are bums; they will never work harder than they absolutely must to stay alive and are willing to lie, cheat and steal to avoid working. Most, of course, are along a spectrum in the middle. Many, if not most, people will work more if they can receive more for their work. Some will work more even if they only might receive more for the work. So, even with much greater productivity this moral teaching is practical and advisable.


I think that the most likely solution will involve reduced working hours for workers, and generation of make-work, likely by the government. The latter was part of the New Deal attempt to get out of the Great Depression. These projects did many good things of marginal economic value. As a result they were condemned and mocked by passionate believers in capitalism and the work ethic. But they did ease the pain of the Depression, while they lasted.


Sigh, that’s the best I can come up with. Another imperfect solution for this imperfect world. Sometimes I feel really ready for the Kingdom of Heaven.

So where is the center, anyway?

A recent exchange on the Kent State library school listserv helped me realize something about myself and the current political situation.  I have long thought of myself as a centrist, a firm believer in moderation, compromise and the middle way.  I've been pretty proud of it, actually.  It feels like I'm in solidarity with one of my heroes, St. Thomas Aquinas.  And it's bothered me a lot lately that on many subjects, I seem to be liberal, left-wing, not center.  Am I betraying my hero?  Am I being sucked into the extremist, left-wing, socialist Dark Side?  Quelle idee!  God forbid! 

It helped considerably when a responder to one of my listserv posts said that the center changes over time.  He pointed out that while the right-wing is still advocating the same extreme libertarianism, this country has no left advocating, for example, government ownership of anything.  (Well, there are a few, but they have no real influence on anything.)  The positions which, thirty years ago or so, were centrist are now supported by liberals.  So I am not turning liberal, liberals are becoming centrists.  I had been deceived by the fright-wing propaganda calling anything that they don't like "socialism".  I've tried to tell my ditto-head friends that they have no idea what socialism is, but they don't seem to care. 

Not that I'll ever call myself "liberal".  The biggest problem with centrism is that on a few subjects, there is no center.  The most important such subject is abortion: the unborn are people, or else they are not.  No middle ground there.  I've often said, though perhaps not in this blog, that the worst thing to happen to the unborn was not Roe v. Wade, but the co-opting of the issue by the right wing.  As a result, few people actually think about the problem.  Everyone is either "I'm conservative, I'm against it" or else "I'm liberal, I'm for it."  And the slaughter goes on. 

Abortion and Society

I ran across an absolutely fascinating article in the Huffington Post, by David P. Gushee, an evangelical Christian academic (yes, there is such an animal!) on abortion, law and morality. Here is the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-p-gushee/abortion-culture-and-the-_b_813002.html though I don’t know if it will be still there when you access it. Here is the author’s HuffPo bio page and blog list: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-david-p-gushee since the article may be available there later. This one is near the top of the “I wish I’d said that” file.


Dr Gushee makes the case that three trends in Western culture make the legal battle over abortion, while not irrelevant, unlikely to solve the basic problem in Western cultures. The trends are:

1) “The collapse of any cultural assumption that sex is to be reserved for marriage and that marriage is the best context in which to conceive and raise children.”

2) “The devolution of male-female relationships from a striving for a mutual lifetime covenant to short-term use of one another for individual sexual and emotional needs.”

3) “The overall transition from a focus on doing what is right to an emphasis on my rights.”

I hate to have to say it, but this article deepened even further my fear and hopelessness for American society. I can see what he points out, especially since in my misguided youth I helped the growth of these trends. Sigh, more guilt. Having seen and lived a better way since then, I greatly regret my early embrace of ideas 1 and 2. But 3 is arguably the most critical, and as Dr. Gushee points out, has been growing for much longer.

The idea of liberty, that everyone should be free to live a life of their own choosing, goes back to at least the eighteenth century Enlightenment movement. It’s pretty hard to argue with, especially considering the thought prevailing before then: that everyone was either free or slave. A lot of Western thought, at least, taught or implied that one’s estate was divinely ordained. You don’t like being a slave? Hard cheese, property. Think you know better than God? Dr. Gushee expressed it this way:

"My claim here is that the western intellectual heritage -- I speak especially of historic Christianity and Judaism -- trained people for a very long time to orient their lives around living rightly, as right living was prescribed by their faith. There was a given moral framework to the universe and our responsibility was to fit our lives to that framework, which, of course, these faith traditions believed came from God. "

When the Enlightenment intellectuals began to question this attitude towards life, Liberty became the prime value: if God is not defining my life, then I should be. At least, I want to be. But this makes a real problem: how do people live together? What do we do when my freedom conflicts with yours? And conflict it will.

This, I think, inescapably results in a system of radical selfishness. Whether the “enlightened self-interest” of the secular humanist or a naked sociopathic “me-first”, anyone else’s interest must be secondary to mine. After all, it’s my “right!” I’m only seeking justice! This strikes me as a terrible, ultimately suicidal way to run a society. Dr. Gushee describes it thus: “Society becomes a chaotic collision of rights-claims, with everything ending up in court.” This cannot be a stable situation; as the famous Mr. Dooley said “the supreme court follows the election returns.” I know judges greatly respect precedent, but they’re only human. They make mistakes, which either higher judges or subsequent judges must correct. And they have personality conflicts, like any group of people. Mr. Dooley again: “An appeal is asking one court to show its contempt for another court.”

The only solution, I believe as a Christian, is love. God was exactly correct in commanding that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves. In love, the other’s happiness is what makes our own happiness possible. When I act in love, I ignore my rights. My concern is for the rights of the ones I love. No one needs a court; we strive to make our lovers happy. And if this works against our own interests, so be it. It’s worth it to make them happy. But even among Christians who believe in an afterlife, in heaven, this requires trust. It requires trust that the ones we love also love us, and have the same care for our happiness that we have for theirs. And trust is a very fragile commodity.

In this world of Original Sin (as we Catholics call it), where we cannot count on love, we have no clear and obvious way to run a stable society. Probably the best human-only system is something like capitalism, where competing selfishnesses balance against each other. But capitalism is not ultimately stable; it is a balance which can be lost if one actor becomes too strong. The current economic times demonstrate that pretty clearly.

And on the original topic, abortion, who would be the Lorax for the unborn? If justice, and even existence, can only be secured by screaming for “My Rights!”, how can the voiceless survive?

Peel some Spuds

“I just think it’s important to be fair – “ the man began. 
“Yeah, Reg. I understand. But there’s a time and a place, you know? Maybe the best way to build a bright new world is to peel some spuds in this one?”
                                            Terry Pratchett, Night Watch


I was happy to read this little part of the novel. Night Watch is one of the darker, less going-for-laughs Discworld novels. Copyrighted 2002, I suspect that, like most Westerners, Pratchett was in a somber mood, wondering what would become of our world. Dave Barry's first column after 9/11/2001 began "No humor here today. I can't write it, and you couldn't read it." I've heard depressingly few "good news" things since then. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan has become an unwinnable quagmire. Also like Vietnam, changing the political party in control didn't really change anything.

So often I wish that I could take control of this screwed-up world and straighten out all the dysfunctions, confusions and cross-purposes. But as the poet (Friedrich Schiller) said, "against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." And I'm a good Catholic boy; I understand about Original Sin and its consequences. Still, I feel like one of the characters in Jack London's The Sea Wolf who says "...God is noddin' and not doin' His duty, though it's me as shouldn't be sayin' it." Why do we have to sort things out ourselves? We’re no good at it.

But this bit of Sam Vimes' wisdom helps calm me down. Like Reg Shoe (the “man” in the quote, later the first zombie constable in the City Watch,) I want to save the whole world. Also like Reg, I can't save very much. I have joined movements that I hoped would improve life, maybe perfect it. As a hippie I tried to revolutionize our culture so that everyone would be happy. Later I wanted the Charismatic Renewal to revolutionize the Church and through it the world. The second failure hurt worse; I really thought we were God's agents in our world. I withdrew a little too far after that. It was good to concentrate on raising my kids and supporting my wife, but I felt too hopeless even to try anything much bigger.

I’m still hopeless, as you can probably tell from this blog. But I need to light the proverbial one candle. It won’t illuminate the whole world, but maybe somebody won’t stumble.

(“Peeling spuds” is a bit ironic, though. I’m one of those folks that think tater skins are good for you.)

Things I'm Thankful For

     It occurred to me that I'm writing a lot of pretty negative stuff here, and I want to balance that a little.  There are, after all, a lot of things I've been given that are true blessings and I'm thankful for them.  Here is a short list. 
     It occurred to me recently that for most of my life, I've had a job that I liked doing.  I currently work, however irregularly, as a reference librarian, and I really like it!  It is the work I like best of my jobs so far.  Programming was fun, and pretty satisfying.  I loved being part of a Catholic institution at U. D.  But as a reference librarian, I help people directly and immediately.  I love the thanks I get, right away.  Most of the work at UD was too much time alone with a keyboard; it got lonesome.  But at the library, I get the psychic reward right away; I hope that this lasts a good long time. 
     I was born to a very good family, both immediate and extended.  I hear so much in this culture about disfunctional families, and I see stats about the breakdown of families, and I am so glad that I have no personal experience of it. 
     Betty wasn't very easy to catch, but I'm soooo glad I caught her.  We have so many good times together; our tastes mesh so well.  We hardly disagreed on child-rearing, even.  She also was born to a good family; I love her family as much as mine.  It hasn't always been easy, but it has always been good. 
     Tom and John are two different men, and were two different boys, so it pleases me no end that they get along with each other so well.  And it is so good to see some of the things about them that Betty and I worked to give them.  And Tom found a wife who suits him at least as well as Betty suits me. I profoundly hope that John can do as well. 
     These are the immediate thankfuls.  I'm running out of time here, so maybe next year I'll list some larger ones. 

Is Everything Miscellaneous?

     Been reading "Everything is Miscellaneous" by David Weinberger recently. It's pretty good; it helped me understand some things about the Web/Internet that I hadn't understood, or hadn't appreciated, before. One thing is Wikipedia. He showed how its community generated entries, when controversial and fought over, will eventually come to a consensus on the entry and the vocabulary to describe it. Of course, this pushed my centrist, compromising, consensus-builder buttons big time. But even after slowing down and thinking it over, I still agree that this technique will produce valid knowledge at least as often as reliance on experts. God knows "experts" have pulled some amazing stunts in the past; that's a source of material for lots of web sites and stand-up comedy routines. But Weinberger, like most writers on new technology, seems to take the technology he writes about (the WWW) as the only source of all truth, beauty and goodness. He seems to me to say that in this brave new world knowledge itself is different and better. He throws around the phrase "third order", short for third order of knowledge, with great gusto; the Web has made all things new.


     Not that Third Order doesn't make a lot of sense. The first two orders of knowledge can be summarized as data (descriptions of the real world) first, and metadata (data describing data) second. Both of these orders have definite limitations. Weinberger's favorite example of metadata is the Dewey Decimal Classification, especially as implemented in the good old card catalog. These two, while they are vast improvements over simple lists of books, have definite limits to their usefulness. He describes these limits as inevitable consequences of their physicality. I find it a persuasive argument. The card catalog is especially convincing. When I was young it was how you found anything in the library, and it had limits. Subject terms have to be assigned by an educated professional, and if too many books have too many subject terms, the catalog swells to unusability. Conversely, when you kept the catalog to a manageable size you inevitably left out a lot of useful information. Plus, having studied indexing myself, I know that the best educated expert in the world can’t anticipate everyone’s needs.

     It is certainly true that new information technology has enabled a drastic increase in what is possible and what is practical. On the Internet we are not hobbled by many of the physical limits on how we link things, and how we label them. But he sometimes seems to me too rapturous about what these changes and new powers mean. He almost seems to say that reality itself has been re-created. To be fair, he explicitly denies that in the last chapter, but his re-definition of "knowledge" is still much too sweeping for my taste.

     Probably my biggest beef with the book is the chapter in which he states that meaning is now a social process. I don't buy that, at least not without a whole lot of nuancing and limitations. It reminded me of a humorous article from many years ago, when I was writing SPSS jobs for UD faculty research projects. SPSS stands for Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. It had commands to perform statistical calculations specially designed for social science research. You would usually start with a GET FILE command, to fetch the file of data you wish to analyze. Surveys and other such data-gathering instruments and techniques usually have gaps, where for instance a respondent declined to answer a question. In such cases you would enter a special number, and then tell the system to treat occurrences of this number as missing, not real data. The command ASSIGN MISSING did this.

     This article started out by observing that sometimes, sociological research just doesn't go well. You blow through a whole pile of grant money, and nothing correlates, regresses, or lines up with anything else. So he invented some new SPSS commands for when this happens. Instead of GET FILE, use FAKE FILE. You enter the variables and the coefficients you want, and the system generates a data set where everything fits the way it should. Way easier and cheaper, right? But this is a data set with no meaning. So, use the ASSIGN MEANING command. After each variable name, enter a description of its meaning. There; perfect research every time. Of course, the journal editors or referees might balk at "fake data." So you describe your data set as "stochastically inferred data." Problem solved!

     I can't hear anything about "assigning meaning" without flashing back to that article, and I just can't take the concept seriously. But this post is long enough; maybe I'll ruminate sometime about meaning, and what it means.

A Question of Balance

It struck me recently in a Facebook discussion with one of Betty's cousins (technically a first cousin once removed, if anyone cares)  what the real problem with the current conservative "small government" idea is.  The problem is checks and balances, arguably the wisest thing our Constitution writers ever did.  In the problems of their day - big states vs. little, legislative vs. executive, etc. - they set up a system where neither side had control.  The bicameral legislature and other structures made it very difficult for one side to dominate the other.  One side could not tyrranize the other.  This concept is a very large factor in the success of our republic so far.  Indeed, it is a major reason that our government is not even larger than it is now. 

But we have a problem now.  Business, specifically "Big Business", is now effectively out of control.  In the recent banking crisis, the government bailed out several of the largest banks, because if they went out of business the ensuing chaos could have ruined the entire American economy.  They were making high-risk loans, and why not?  It wasn't their risk.  Either the borrowers repaid, or the government covered the loss, lest the entire country collapse.  The automotive industry got a similar bailout, for a similar reason.  So the Fortune 100 are immortal; if they screw up, no matter how stupidly, they have the U. S. Treasury to fall back on. 

Someone, somehow, has to provide a balance.  In the late 19th century, as America transformed from primarily agricultural to primarily industrial, we had a similar situation.  Corporations and industrialists simply went to Congress or the state legislature with bags of cash, and went home with empty bags and favorable legislation.  Bosses and supervisors followed their employees to the polls and directed them how to vote.  These abuses were overcome, but only with great difficulty.  Not coincidentally, the labor unions began organizing in this time.  After the Roosevelt era reforms, labor unions were strong enough to be a counterbalance to corporate power. 

But now, the unions are too weak to be an effective balance to the corporations.  This is unfortunate; Big Labor is the most economically sensible balance for Big Business.  So what is left?  Only Big Government.  This is hardly ideal, but I see no better alternative.  Benito Mussolini himself said that Corporatism was a more accurate name for his system than Fascism.  I really don't like living in a system where a CEO can move a headquarters, disrupting thousands of lives, just because he wants to. 

The Class War in the USA

{Okay, back to hell-in-a-handcart rants.}

It has been a tactic of the fright-wing demagogues to shout “class war!” whenever someone notices that the middle class is shrinking, and that this shrinking is encouraged by government policies. Is class warfare a bad thing? Yes, especially when it is in progress and my side is losing, because we have been convinced that the war isn’t happening. People have been convinced that policies that help the rich get richer are somehow magically good for them too. What is frightening is the persistence of this belief even after the experience of the 21st century so far.

The zero decade had massive parallels to the 1920’s – uncontrolled financial system, bubbles in land and stocks, rapid introduction of new technologies, growing acceptance of formerly unacceptable behavior. The teens are shaping up as a replay of the 1930’s – massive unemployment, economic stagnation, a growing sense of fear in the employed and of hopelessness in the unemployed. I just cannot shake the fear that the late teens or early 20’s will see a replay of the 1940’s. And this time with nukes. Yes, I fear that the end of civilization, or even life as we know it, is again a real possibility.

The class war? It is a major contributor to the trajectory I see our society moving along. It is happening because the upper class, like nearly everyone else in this country, has no awareness of history. Yesterday is old news; last year is antiquity. Henry Ford was far from perfect as a human being, but he did one of the best things anyone has ever done for America. He paid his workers much more than he needed to. He was no altruist; he did it for perfectly selfish capitalist reasons. But, unlike so very many business people, especially now, he thought past the next quarter’s balance sheet. This high pay rate did two long-term things for Ford and his company. They could get the cream of the workforce, which forced other manufacturers to follow suit. And with the extra pay, workers could afford luxuries, which at the time a Ford car definitely was.

The result was that Henry Ford got fabulously rich, richer by orders of magnitude than he would have been had he not paid his workers so well. And the workers, indeed the whole country, got much richer. Of course the real world never runs smoothly; the consequences also included the boom of the 1920’s and crash of the 1930’s. But after the reforms of the Roosevelt administration, enabling the rise of the big industrial labor unions in the 1950’s, the middle class grew to a near majority of the population. Even with the Cold War and the Vietnam war, the 1950’s and 60’s were a happy time in America. Many of the good things of that era, most notably the civil rights movement and the War on Poverty, were made possible by the affluence of the large, stable and comfortable middle class.

The oil shock of the early 70’s followed by the inflation of the late 70’s, on top of the Vietnam defeat, shook the confidence of the country. The upper class, meanwhile, had felt put upon by the Roosevelt reforms that kept relatively tight control over financial institutions. When Ronald Reagan was elected, the campaign began to convince people that government was the root of all evil. This could not have succeeded if all Americans were not so ignorant of history. The rich did not realize that a big and healthy middle class made them richer, and that a regulated financial system gave them greater security. The middle class forgot their parents’ stories of the Great Depression; they forgot that while labor unions were far from perfect, overall life was better with them than without. And large numbers of the poor bought the line that social conservatism and economic conservatism were the same thing.

The result of these factors is the devastation of the middle class. While most of the loss of high-paying low skill jobs is the result of foreign competition, the widespread disrepute of labor unions is a major factor. But now the educated middle class also sees itself in danger. I’ve gone into this elsewhere. Ariana Huffington is one of the few known people who have seen the likely end of this trend: the USA as a third world country, where the rich have nearly everything and everyone else is poor.

Ironically, the loss of the middle class will reduce the wealth of the wealthy. The rich in third world countries have less than the rich in developed countries with a healthy middle class. Why? The middle class is the class that spends money, and thus keeps the economy moving. If no one has any spare cash after food, clothing and shelter, then economic activity ends there. The supply-side vs. demand-side debate of the eighties was easily the silliest public discussion since the founding of the republic. You need both; that this isn’t obvious to anyone astounds me.

Many people have said that for a lot of acquisitive people it really isn’t about the money; it’s a grand game and money is how you keep score. Such people are much less interested in what they have than in having more than others: where do I rank? These are the people who don’t mind a class war and the end of the middle class. Whether I get more or everyone else gets less, I win! Only relative wealth matters, not absolute. This attitude, and those people, will be the death of the USA as a major country.

Traditional Rock

On the radio today, classical WDPR, I heard an interview with the Blue Man Group, who have a performance in Dayton soon.  During the interview the music that accompanies their performance was mentioned.  One of the troupe referred to it as rock - "well, maybe not traditional rock." 

Dear Lord, I must be old.  Rock is now traditional.  Chuck Berry, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney - give it up; get your rockin' chairs ready.  You're trad now.  Though, I suppose, since so many of the originators of the genre are dead, maybe it's just as well.  We can just ignore how young most of them were at their deaths. 

In a way, it's kind of healthy, and I've seen few enough signs of cultural health these days.  Young people, including young musicians, know and have some appreciation for the rock masters of the Eisenhower through Nixon years.  When I was young, it wasn't done to admit to any taste for or appreciation of our parents' music.  It was yet another not-so-smart attitude from the Baby Boomer generation, and I'm glad our kids did not continue it.  Thanks, youngsters! 

The Right is Insane, the Left is Impotent and there’s Nobody in the Center

Before Microsoft Windows, the classical example of insanity was repeating an action and expecting it to have a different result. Now, of course, a PC service tech won’t even listen until you’ve repeated it twice at least.


This has had an unfortunate effect on American politics. Now, even those few people who know a little of history are likely to ignore it. People now hold economic and political opinions as revealed dogma; only truly evil people would disagree.

The American right wing is advocating a continuation, even an expansion, of the very policies that put us in the current predicament. The policies that produced the 1930’s have also produced the 2010’s. The American left is divided into a hand-wringing moderate wing, and a socialist nut-squad who cannot see that their ideas as well have been tried and failed.

In party terms, the Republicans have a moderate, center-oriented wing but it is being bludgeoned into submissive irrelevance by the true-believing right. The Democrats have a moderate, center-oriented wing but it keeps trying for bi-partisan solutions, apparently unaware that “bi-partisan” requires two sides trying to come together. At least the Democrats are not yet controlled by their maniacs, but they have accomplished so little.

It seems that currently the right-wing crazies outnumber the left-wing nutcases by a fairly large amount. So the right may wind up in control of things when our balance is completely gone. And that, as Arianna Huffington is saying, will result in the USA becoming just another third-world country – the richest few will control everything, and we will no longer have a large middle class.

All summer without a post and I come up with another h-in-h rant. I’m sorry. I’ll try to have something more cheerful for the next post. I’d better; I have another gripe almost ready to go.

Shortly after the last post, Betty and I flew out to Oakland, CA to visit Tom and Kelly for a week. That was an incredibly good time. Best, of course, was time with my first son, and his marvelously witty wife. We would have liked more time with Kelly, but what we had was high quality. It's kind of unfortunate that she has a day job again, but that's show biz. Pay yer dues, kid. She is making progress. Tom says that she often makes more from her performing than it costs, and people are beginning to call her with offers. Good luck, babe!

We, of course, did most of the usual Bay Area tourist things: cable cars, Fisherman's Wharf, Golden Gate Park and Ocean Beach. Also Berkeley's Municipal Pier and Sausalito. But easily the best tourist thing was Muir Woods. Going there from Oakland, we didn't take the famous Golden Gate bridge; that would involve lots of city driving through San Francisco. Coming from the I-580 bridge and going cross-country to Muir Woods reminded us a lot of West Virginia - tight curves, steep hills and no guard rails. Who needs guard rails? Most places the trees won't let you roll all the way down those 300 or 400 foot drops. And the trees are immense, and the whole place is beautiful. We walked around the path in awe; the feeling was the same as hiking in WV woods, or the Smokies. Sure, the Grand Canyon is awe-inspiring in its way, but we grew up in tree country and have Druids in our remote ancestry.

Tuesday Betty wasn't feeling good, so Tom and I went to Alcatraz and the City Lights bookstore. It was so good - SO GOOD! - to have that much time with Tom. He really is fun to be with, and I already miss him as much as I did before we went. But City Lights was good. I found a postcard with a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem, and thought it would appeal to Jim Costanzo. I was right; after we got back he called and told me it was possibly the best thing he had ever had from family. Made me very happy!

The big surprise, though, was that I really liked San Fran and the whole Bay area. I had such a stereotype of California as the land of the flake and the home of the nutcase. But I found friendly, mostly normal people. Not only that, they walk on sidewalks and use public transportation as a normal way to go places. Add in the odd, non-chain shops and entertainments and you have most of what I like about New York City with little of what I don't like - dirt and fear. Sure, Ohio is still home, but if you see someone on a bus in Dayton it's an even money bet that they either can't afford a car or their driver's license is suspended or revoked.

So, even if Tom and Kelly end up elsewhere, I would like to go back sometime. (Of course if they stay around there I'm for sure going to go back.) I'm not quite ready to join Tony Bennett yet, but I'm closer than I ever expected to be.

Now Fearful

{continued from Not Hopeful.}

What has inspired my fear is the “Tea Party” movement. It looks like simply unfocused anger, apparently fed by two deep-seated fears. One is the well-founded fear that America is no longer supreme in the world. The movement seems to include those who fear that the USA is no longer able to do anything we want, that no one can compel us or forbid us, and those who fear that the USA is no longer a moral leader. Few will admit these fears openly; thus I have to insert weasel words – “apparently”, “seems”. I could be wrong. Indeed, I profoundly hope that I am wrong. Because this kind of nationalism is a terrible danger, as World Wars I and II surely demonstrate. This has a frightening resemblance to the kind of inferiority complex in Germany that contributed so heavily to those horrible wars. The loss of moral leadership is harder to admit, at least in so many words. We’re losing the sense, never fully justified, that America was admired, not just envied.

The other basic fear is more personal: a fear that our lives are not under our own control. Certainly government has the power to exercise more control than anyone could tolerate, even if it is not currently doing so. But this fear also has an economic and personal component. It is not just fear of excessive taxation, or excessive economic regulation, though that is the public face of it. It is also the fear that maybe my life is not at all under my control. A certain type of rugged individualism is a major factor in the American psyche. If I try hard, I will succeed, and if I don’t succeed I didn’t really try. This has, for many people, the force of a religious doctrine. Unfortunately it is really not correct. If I don’t try, I won’t succeed; that part is clearly true. But human history has uncounted examples of people who tried as hard as anyone, and completely failed. Logically, effort is a “necessary but not sufficient condition” of success.

The conservative emphasis on personal responsibility is not, in itself, a bad thing. Indeed no system lasts long when people need not take responsibility for themselves. But the real problem is opportunity. Can people effectively take responsibility for their lives? The rugged individualist ethic goes deep in our national culture and psyche. I feel that this is because until the 20th century, it was possible to live your own life completely. Just head west till you found a place you liked, and plant a crop or hunt. It might not be easy, or comfortable, but for all but disabled men it was doable. This hasn’t been possible for a long time now, but the attitude persists among us. We are all limited in our choices.

Growing one’s own food is a live option for very few of us. For better or worse, the vast majority of Americans live in a money-only economy. If we want food, clothing or shelter, we buy them. And the thing about money is, you don’t have it until someone gives you some. What we call “earning” money is really trading something we have that is not money (merchandise or labor, most commonly) for money. This means that to get, say, food, we need to find someone with money. We must convince them that we can give them something they want and to give us money in exchange for it. Then we find someone with food, and convince them to take our money in exchange for their food. (I’m making this sound like a more complex version of bartering. It is, but it’s a vast improvement; that’s a subject for another time.)

This gives us two problems to solve: we must sell something, and we must buy something. But the system does not guarantee that either will be possible. We may not be able to find anyone who will pay for anything we have, and we may not be able to find anyone who can sell what we want to buy. Indeed, there may not be anyone who will pay for what we have, or sell us what we need. The second case is what happens in a famine. In this country that is hardly a serious risk any more. But the first happens all the time, for a lot of people and a lot of reasons. Here is my favorite example: In the nineteenth century, telegraph operators were respected skilled workers. It took time and practice to learn the Morse code and acquire speed in transmitting and receiving messages. Such men were in demand; they received a good amount of money for their work. But then came the telephone. The demand for telegraph operators dwindled and died. Men who had been respected middle-class wage-earners had to acquire a different skill or join the underclass. The examples in my own life are Fortran (me) and Cobol programmers. And the older one is, the harder it is to acquire a new marketable skill.

So here we have modern American conservatives. They are committed to the belief that good people always succeed in America, and they know that they are good people. If someone fails, they must try again until they succeed. But by now, a majority of Americans has either lost a job, through no fault of their own, or has a close friend who has lost theirs. This is particularly true among the well-paid but low-skill jobs, which are now getting very scarce. (The post from May 2009 has more detail on this.) And what should be happening, isn’t happening. They cannot find anyone who wants what they have, no matter how valuable the searcher knows it is and no matter how hard they work at looking. That’s not supposed to happen to good people. And it’s hardest for the middle-aged. If they acquire a new skill, they are competing with fresh young workers for entry-level jobs. Employers who should look at their proven record of good work instead look at the lower salaries that young, childless workers are happy with.

This has the effect of a failure of one’s religion. The bedrock I’ve been standing on isn’t rock after all; my life is not what I thought it was. I thought that if I worked hard I was safe, but I worked hard and I’ve been tossed out in the street. The lifeline came loose in my hand. Probably the most common reaction to this experience is the conviction that somebody screwed up the system, and they must be stopped. It must be somebody’s fault, and it sure ain’t mine! And the search for the scapegoat begins.

{a third installment will probably follow}

No Longer Hopeful

I have gone beyond unhopeful to fearful about my country. It has been bad enough that so many people, left and right, ignore everything that they do not already agree with. That truth is neither sought nor valued. That the right says “everything American is the best”, and the left says “anything American is defective at best.” Both of them disregard any contrary evidence. And most of all, that the center, the moderates, are shrinking in number and almost totally without influence. I am a moderate, a centrist, myself, so both sides ridicule me as belonging to the other side, no matter how loudly I say that I am center. Though if anything, the intransigence of the right is pushing me slightly left of center.

I will probably be pushed back to the center soon; intransigence inspires intransigence. I began losing hope when I saw the beginning of an unstable oscillation between left and right. When George Bush, without even gaining a popular majority, rammed through a legislative program which was supported only by the far right, just because he could, I first got worried. In former times a president in such a position was politically very cautious; the “thin mandate blues” prevented extremist actions. But W went on as though every American loved his policies. The federal budget was nearly under control, which I thought could only be explained by divine intervention. Well, he sure took care of that.

That’s when I began to worry that “the center cannot hold” was not poetry any more. I once read an article which explained the pronounced tendency towards political instability of Hispanic countries. This author noted that the Spanish language has no equivalent to the English word “compromise”. The nearest equivalent has a strong connotation of “sell out”. Thus everyone’s position must be all or nothing, and in practice it boiled down, more often than not, into government by the strongest only because he is the strongest. In this country we once had the “spoils system” for filling government jobs, after someone, maybe Andrew Jackson, pronounced “To the victor belong the spoils.” Eventually the country got tired of the chaos of a completely new government after each election, especially when a president (Garfield) was murdered by a man who didn’t get a government job. But with the calls to repeal the new health care reform, we are sliding toward a system of a whole new set of laws after each election.

This way lies madness.

{more along this line will follow.}