Reading The New Yorker in New Hampshire

Many distinctions have been drawn between human beings and all other animals.
Human beings are the only animals who can use tools--nope. 
Human beings are the only animals who cooperate to attain a goal--nope:  chimps in a zoo in Belgium were filmed working as a team to lug a log, place it against the fence of their cage and then they scamper up and over the log and into the McDonald's next door.

But one thing which is close to mystical, that no other animal can do: Reading.
That little marks on a paper or screen can get into the minds of other human beings and a picture or a more ephemeral idea, math, engineering is one of the true wonders of the universe.

Mad Dog did not like reading in his pre reading days--reading was what seemed to put his parents into an opium den coma on weekends when Mad Dog, as a child wanted to be out exploring, running, playing ball. All his parents did was lie around or sit inertly  in chairs with books.

But once Mad Dog learned to read, he, too,  fell into that opium den coma--only after he had run himself around sufficiently to collapse into a chair-- and he, too, read. 
And then he drifted off with Huckleberry Finn, Great Expectations and Little Women. 

And now, still, reading turns out to be something transcendent. 

But not all reading is equally valuable. Reading Donald Trump's Tweets is not the same experience as reading Steinbeck or the New Yorker.

Reading The New Yorker in his Hobbit home in small town New Hamsphire opens a world for Mad Dog. Without leaving his chair, he can travel around the country and around the globe.

This week's New Yorker (August 17) has two articles which Mad Dog finds magical:
Peter Hessler's account from China, where he was teaching at a Chinese university when the COVID pandemic prompted their shutdown.  Then there is Dan Kaufman's "The Fall of Wisconsin" which seems in some ways even more  exotic and distant than the tale from China.

The best thing about the China tale is the trove of vignettes of the students Hessler provides.  From these, one can only appreciate the humanity of these people, who struggle to build their lives in a world which at once holds out promise, beauty, reward at the same time it clamps down on interaction between people, the free expression of discontent, individual yearning and hope.  

Hessler teaches a class which might be described as journalism and he limits the enrollment, but one young woman manages to convince him to allow her in, which he finally agrees to do, and he discovers she is one of his best students who manages to get stories nobody else can gain access to, because she is so ostensibly harmless and unassertive. But Hessler forgets to fill out her forms, so she cannot get credit for the course. She shrugs this off and says she will finish the course and then take the course again the next semester for credit and Hessler remarks how very Chinese this is: she never recriminates him, but continues react to him as a respected and valuable superior, even when he has acted "like a moron."

Kaufman, on the other hand, tells a story which geographically is closer to home, in rural Wisconsin. In some ways, it is easier for a college educated person like Mad Dog, to relate to the students in China, who struggle to work their way through the requirements, to please professors and do assignments, on faith this will somehow, some day, help them find a place in the world and to advance.
Because Mad Dog spent so many years in school, it is easy to understand the students' mind set than it is to grasp the world view of the farmers in Wisconsin, who get up at 3 AM every morning to milk cows, who milk cows three times daily, whose fathers find the fates of their farms and families are controlled by forces in Washington, DC, where the size of herds, the price of milk, of soybeans and corn are determined.  

The bleakness of lives when deep debt turns bad leads to understandable desperation and ultimately, for some, to suicide, as economic ruin turns to personal recrimination. You cannot run a farm with the expensive equipment, expensive animals and infrastructure without acquiring debt and when a man like Earl Butz comes out to Wisconsin and tells farmers, "Get big or get out," i.e., go into debt, get big herds and expensive machinery to milk those cows or sell your farm, you can understand the resentment. 

Then you have federal government big shots telling farmers to plant fence post to fence post so America can sell soybeans and wheat to China and Europe, only to have those markets collapse in a trade war.
One would think you'd have a revolt.
But, strangely enough, some farmers shrug this off, and one says of Trump, "I don't agree with everything he says but he's the only President who has ever tackled the trade issue." 

Another tells of being invited to a Trump rally, "I was sitting in the second row behind the President. It was unreal. I felt more inspired than I ever have in my life. I'm not a big patriotic, flag waving person, but I felt very patriotic going to that. My son, too. He's twenty, and he kept saying, 'Oh, my God, Dad. Oh, my God.'"

Kaufman describes how voting in several key counties in Wisconsin swing the state and you realize, if you are sitting in New Hampshire, that things happening far away may swing the election no matter what you do.  
It is essential for rod to have a reel and line and a steady hand on those parts, to provide a base, but little movements in the tip of the rod, in the line as it flies out across the water make the difference about whether or not that fish gets caught, in the end.

New Hampshire Death Spiral

Demographics sounds like a major yawner.
The study of statistical profiles of populations.
But a demographer, Peter Francese has written (along with co author Lorraine Merrill) a short book about New Hampshire demographics which has, for Mad Dog, been nothing short of revelatory. "Communities & Consequences II" which has also been produced as a documentary.

Obadiah Youngblood Lesser Boar's Head 

It has tied together a set of observations which puzzled Mad Dog for the over 12 years he has lived in the state, but never seemed a coherent whole, until now.

1/ Mad Dog, questioning neighbors about why they kept voting against the warrant articles to refurbish the middle school (Hampton academy), was told that the renovations would be too expensive and would raise property taxes.

2/ When Mad Dog replied that good schools are the one thing a community can do for the future of everyone, he was told that was a lovely sentiment, but dollars and cents mattered more. When Mad Dog said good schools were what raised property values in the in the Maryland county where he once lived,  that people paid premiums for houses in good school districts, he was told New Hampshire is different,

3/ In the small town of Hampton, Mad Dog has been struck by new developments of homes occupied by retirees, over 55 communities, where children may visit but not live.

4/ Mad Dog marveled at the amateur New Hampshire legislature, in which representatives serve virtually unpaid, making it impossible for anyone but retired folks or housewives or the independently wealthy  to serve. "It's the closest thing to real democracy" his neighbors said. "We don't want people to serve for the money, but because they want good government." So young people who need to make a living need not apply. 

5/ The third rail of New Hampshire politics is the phrase "income tax." Any candidate to fails to "take the pledge" to never sign into law a state income tax is in fact signing his or her own political death warrant.

What Francese & Merrill document is that since 1990 New Hampshire has sought to become senescent,  relentlessly and intentionally, and has succeeded remarkably and is now the 2nd oldest state in the union, behind Maine.

Persona non grata 

It has done this by means of laws passed by its state legislature and by local governments, zoning boards, town councils which have discouraged young families with children from moving to the state by virtually banning "affordable housing" or apartments which might be attractive to young people. By simple rules requiring houses to be built on 2 acre lots, housing density, affordable housing has been discouraged.  The state encourages older, wealthier people to buy second homes in New Hampshire which remain unoccupied most of the year, further reducing available housing and driving up real estate prices. 

Workforce housing, which is located near places of employment, which is year round is increasingly rare in the state.

Affordable housing in New Hampshire towns often comes down to areas occupied by mobile homes, which tend not to house children but more often retired adults.

Obadiah Youngblood  Studebaker Mansion

So this is a "perfect storm" of an aged legislature, which regards children as an expensive burden, which should not be their problem but someone else's problem. 
Children require schools and schools, funded only by property taxes, raise taxes.  In some towns older people are forgiven some portion of their property taxes, but they are not considered to be burdensome as they reduce the tax base; it's the children who are considered a burden. And since the state abjures sales tax and income tax the only way to support schools is through property taxes. 

Other people's children are simply viewed as other people's problems. There is no sense of community among people who see the next generation as the other.

Of course, this is not seen as selfishness by the aging parts of the New Hampshire population; it is seen as self preservation.  "I worked hard for my Social Security and Medicare" and now I don't want to give up dollars to help those coming behind me; they can work for themselves.

As Fracese shows, this is actually a misconception: The fact is, more young families do not add many students to the local schools, where enrollment has been on the decline for 30 years, since efforts to discourage young families have been in full swing. It will take years to repopulate schools in districts which have been relentlessly denuded of children for the past 30 years. 

Obadiah Youngblood  North Hampton Salt Marshes 

It's been a effort at ossification.  The new--new families, possibly immigrant families, possibly poor families--are seen as a threat. It is as if the whole state has decided to become a retirement community. 

And as the death rates climb and the birth rates fall, graduates of  New Hampshire colleges and high schools leave forever, seeking happier hunting grounds, where they are wanted.

And they take with them the skills and energy to revitalize and grow those towns in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland which welcome them.

Expensive burdens 

It sounds like that P.D. James novel, "Children of Men" where the birth rate has fallen to virtually zero, where infertility reigns and babies are never seen. 
But rather than seeing this as a demographic and economic disaster, a dystopia, the current insular population of New Hampshire welcomes this as a sort of Shangri la. 

Axe Murderers of Hampton, New Hampshire

Along Route 27 from the interstate exit to where the road ends in the beach, men in trucks, sometimes protected by town police, have been felling trees, mostly 100 foot pine trees, likely almost a century old, and have left the road denuded, like those clear cut areas on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. 

Vandalism on High Street

The loggers have progressed to what Mad Dog had thought would be sacred ground, the graveyard across from Hampton Academy, where a stately line of pines had formed a border, which is now nearly completely leveled.

Haven't fallen in 100 years; now a threat

The reason for this lethal attack on old trees can only be inferred. Mad Dog has not seen notice about this. He has inquired through the town website, but none of the folks who live along the road where this destruction has been wrought seem to know, and everyone's best guess is the trees are being chopped down to prevent them from falling on the power lines which run along the road.

If so, this is a clear case of deforestation for the purpose of protecting moneyed interests.

Welcome to Hampton

You don't hear people talking about Hampton as a pretty New England town.  It's got a work-a-day look. The old railroad depot houses the best auto garage in the area, but other than the gazebo, there has never been much effort made to make the area appealing to the eye. 

Beautiful downtown Hampton

Beach landscape is often barren, but Hampton has some pretty salt marshes, which have been largely surrounded by buildings, beach houses mostly. The Academy middle school is, finally, a lovely structure and the high school, hidden from Winnacunnet Road, is nice enough.  Ironically, the name "Winnacunnet" is said to mean, "Place of beautiful pines." 

No longer.

Save the power company

No citizen of Hampton should criticize the deforestation of Brazilian rain forests, given what we have silently tolerated right here in Hampton, New Hampshire, USA.

Ok, I've seen the dump but where's the town?

The Coming Civil War

Reading Malcom Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" and his description of the two British leaders who actually ever spoke to Hitler before the world war, the description was so shot through with deja vu I could only stand up and stretch to be sure I was still in the present. 

Both men misread Hitler so thoroughly because they made a basic assumption, borne of their British class system: Any man who rises to leadership must be special, a man who had, figuratively speaking, drawn the sword out of the stone. 

But Hitler was not a special man. He was not crazy, but he was simply willful and not particularly bright. He was exactly what he appeared to be and neither Brit could see that. They had always dealt with people who said one thing in public, another with friends and another in the company of people who were not in their own club. But Hitler simply said what he meant. Neither, to my knowledge, had ever read "Mein Kampf," --or, if either had, clearly neither learned anything from it.

Hitler was just a "vulgar little man" not the sort who could be consequential in the eyes of the British aristocracy.

Mr. Trump, similarly, has been dismissed, misread as simply a rabble rouser who could not be taken seriously, even when he says he will not accept the results of any election which ejects him from the White House. 

And any election which results in rejection, will be, by definition, a fraud, and unacceptable.

It will have been stolen by mail in ballot fraud, by fraudulent voters crossing state lines--as he said they did in 2016 to give New Hampshire to Hillary.

So, he will insist the election, if he loses, is null and void.

People have already done game theory about this.

The case will go to the Supreme Court, which will have only 8 justices by November, and Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch will vote for Trump. Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayer and Roberts for Biden, so there will be no decision.

If Roberts goes for Trump, in the interest of avoiding a Constitutional crisis, the Democratic House and newly shifted Democratic Senate will refuse to accept the Court's verdict.

Then the street fight will begin, first in the old Confederacy and Mountain West, but most viciously in places like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Colorado. 

Attorney General Barr will order in Homeland Security and every federal agent from the FBI to the US Marshals, all decked out in camo, but this time they will need  to look like actual soldiers, because the Joint Chiefs of Staff will order in their troops and then you will have the spectacle of the 101 st airborne shooting at Homeland Security.

Who do you think wins that fight?

Then you have state national guards under the command of governors,  and Mr. Trump will order them federalized them, but each case will be resolved differently. In the South the national guard will support Trump, but not in Blue states. 

The most peaceful parts of the country will be the Red State heart of the Confederacy and Mountain West. 

The coasts will erupt in bloodshed, but the Army will contain it mainly by refusing to obey Trump.

The real bleeding will flow from Kansas north to Wisconsin, right up the middle of the country. 

In the end, we'll have a bicoastal nation, with some Midwestern member states (Minnesota, Illinois and maybe Michigan.)

And that may not be such a bad thing.  

The Northeast and West Coast will prosper economically. The South and those defiant Red States will struggle, but they'll establish enough trading links to be viable.

And the continent will be, like Europe, divided, but in some ways happier.

Rich people from Michigan will still be able to fly south to Florida for the winter and commerce and banking between the new nation states will continue.  Travel between states may require passports and there may be tax barriers set up. But Amazon and Face Book will still bind the states together, so, in the end it won't matter much to the citizen of New Hampshire he cannot just hop on a plane to South Carolina, because he never really had much to do with South Carolina, apart from one excursion to Hilton Head.

Those big military bases, the military contracts to industry will, of course end in the South and that will cause some financial pain. The South will be poorer for the poor and middle class, but most of the upper 1% will still thrive, as it always has in the old Confederacy. 

And for the coastal states, life will actually be more pleasant, unburdened by having to send far more dollars to the South to support Social Security and Medicare and education and FEMA, those states will be wealthier and less burdened. 

Lincoln looked at the wars among European states and held fast to the idea that this continent should be held together by one nation.  But times have changed. And we won't have kings in the various states. 

So, in the long run, we'll likely be better off.

As the fat man told Michael Corleone, sometimes you have to go to the mattresses and just have a war, to let the bad blood out.