American Babylon

 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Tale of Two Cities, Dickens

Attention Deficit Disorder can be a blessing.

 In Mad Dog's case it means he cannot simply read one book at a time but he reads several, switching back and forth, interspersing with viewing TV shows, reading newspapers, listening to talk radio, so his brain is like an orbiting satellite, constantly bombarded by gamma rays, space junk, random asteroids. And out of this comes a sort of stew of ideas, which occasionally coalesce into a coherent thought, however briefly.

Recently, Mad Dog has read "Before the Deluge," --a book Linda Ronstadt gave Jackson Browne to read in 1974, oddly enough, but that is totally irrelevant to today's blog post, just an interesting random ADD thought--and he's read Michael Lewis's "The Premonition" and he's gone back to watching the fantastic German series, "Babylon Berlin" and he visits Twitter whenever he gets twitchy and he's read "The Great Influenza" about the dysfunctional American response to the influenza pandemic of 1918 which killed more people than all the bombs and bullets of the war which preceded and helped spread it. And he's re-read parts of the Constitution and he's thrown in a little Jill Lepore ("These Truths" and her excellent podcast "The Last Archive.") 

And out of this has come a unifying vision, or, one might say, a glimmer of a fever dream.

World War I happened at a time when empires organized the planet in some ways and it spelled the end of some of those empires, the fall of German monarchy, and the winning side were semblances of democracies (America, Britain, France) but that war really did not finish the job; the armistice which ended the military shelling was simply a pause between rounds of fighting, when the fighters returned to their corners to be patched up and watered. 

The interregnum from 1918 until 1939 did not much change governments or attitudes in the Allied states--America, France, England went back to business more or less as usual and America held the debt of their allies and of Germany, more or less as the banker controls his debtors. 

Germany during these years was by  far the most interesting place, as it underwent the greatest changes and faced with the greatest challenges, it did the most interesting thinking and acting. It's monarchy was deposed, and a new Republic emerged, struggled to be born, or as Dylan would say, "It's dying and it's hardly been born."

There was, of course, no one Germany: there was rural (peasant) Germany, the Germany of Berlin and other cities and there were violent divisions between alternatives: Communists (with a stronghold in Berlin), monarchists and fascists.

Berlin during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was as much like America today as we have ever seen any other historical analogy: pulsing with great scholars and scientists (Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr) artists (Kandinsky, Klee, Ballhaus), movie stars (Marlene Dietrich et al), philosophers (Heidegger, Wittgenstein) , writers (Thomas Mann, Eric Maria Remarque) and a cabaret scene which allowed for gay nightclubs and heterosexual free love, paid sex, gender bending. Berlin was magnetic, pulling Isherwood, Auden, a slew of British, American and Russian expatriates. Hemingway and his crowd in Paris had nothing on Berlin.

If Americans know anything about the Weimar Republic's brief life it is the images of people hauling s wheel barrels of nearly worthless Deutschmarks to buy a loaf of bread during the hyperinflation of the early days. But the economy actually stabilized after a few years.

No, what killed the Weimar Republic was structural flaws:

1/ Like any Republic the elected government reflected the flaws in the population which elected it. And most people do not want to live and breathe politics. They want their government to function like their water heaters and automobiles--just turn on; do the job and let me enjoy hot showers, easy transport and live my life. 

And the Weimar had an unwieldy structure: A President who appointed a Chancellor, a Reichstag parliament which could be dismissed by the Chancellor any time he did not like the make up of the representatives.  Like the American Constitution, its flaws could be exploited. The American Senate, of course, represents not people but territory and borders drawn on maps, so that 40% of the voting citizens in the country claim somewhere between 50-60% of the Senate seats. And the Senate forms the Supreme Court, so 2/3 of the government can be controlled by a 40% minority of the citizens. The resentful rural vote suppresses the 60% urban population which wants a government which functions and which believes in cooperation among people rather than picturing itself as the lone cowboy or the plantation owner. 

2/ Deep divisions in belief tore at the cohesion of society:  If you have half of the country believing Black people are subhuman and are happy as slaves, you are going to have trouble forming any government which gives voice and form to that belief. In Germany's case, there were those who believed an authoritarian government, with a king/Kaiser would provide reliable law and order and there were Communists who believed government should and could provide for justice, prosperity and spiritual purity and there were the fascists who believed in various things, but ultimately believed in just one thing: Hitler.

Nobody could bring all these oil and water elements together into an emulsified mix, so they got Hitler.

Trump & Company clearly recognized the likeness between Weimar and America today. Trump aped everything from the pouting image of Hitler to his insistence on simplified messages, to his long harangues about how how everyone--except his true believers--is out to get him, to the Big Lie, to the use of scapegoats, to the embrace of fear of the other, white supremacy and the Republic of Anger. 

During Weimar there was one phenomenon we have not yet seen in America: assassinations. There were roughly 400 political assassinations during Weimar and  of those 400 murders, only about 20 murders were of right wing politicians and those murderers were swiftly punished. But virtually none of the fascist/monarchist murderers of left wing politicians were punished for their acts. 

When Hitler finally took over, in 1933, having bene duly elected, he massacred the leadership of the SA faction of the Nazi party, the storm troopers, whose leadership contested Hitler's control of the Nazi party. The SA had 300,000 men under arms, more than twice that of the German army. Hitler purged his rivals in the Party and consolidated his control, much as Mr. Trump is doing now, without the physical murder (yet.)

Reading through "Before the Deluge" and watching "Babylon Berlin" it all looks so familiar.  Mad Dog has long thought the Germans, although they speak another language were much more like Americans than the British or the French.  Reading "Band of Brothers" and other military memoirs Mad Dog was struck by how often American soldiers commented on their dislike of the French civilians they encountered as they swept across Europe. They liked the Dutch but not the French, except maybe some in Paris, but they liked the Germans, who were apparently more concerned about cleaning up, being tidy and orderly. Well, some soldiers were partial to the Germans; some remarked that they kept running into Germans who insisted "Nicht Nazi"--not Nazi"--and as David Webster said, "It's remarkable: We've been across 500 miles of Germany, countless towns and villages, and we haven't met a single Nazi in Germany yet!"

But, reading about Berlin during the Weimar (1919-1933) the Germans seem so much like us. Anyone who has ever lived for more than a month in England knows the English are not simply Americans who talk funny. They are very different from us.  You have to love the Scotts and the Irish, but they are not us, either. The Germans, much more like us. And reading about how they rejected democracy eventually is a little creepy. 

Minimum Wage: Minimum Gain?

 Listening to the Freakonomics podcast on the minimal wage, Mad Dog experienced the delight of being pulled first in one direction, then the other, as if the winds shifted with each speaker in a lovely debate.

August Macke

Bernie Sanders has been hammering away at the minimal wage since forever and Mad Dog had simply accepted this was simply a matter of economic justice, of doing something to assuage some economic injustice on behalf of those at the bottom of the economic ladder, the immigrant working three jobs to pay the rent, feed the family.

And Mad Dog has dismissed out of hand the idea that those storied "job creators" would simply pack up and go home if they had to pay $15 an hour to their employees. What MacDonald franchise owner is going to shut down his shop over paying that sort of wage?

But then, Mad Dog had pause. Mad Dog once ran a small business and he had one employee. He had to pay a contribution her Unemployment insurance required by the state, Social Security and in order to have a simplified employee pension plan for himself, he had to pay into a plan for her.  And he paid into an "Injured Workers Fund" and there were several other assessments Mad Dog cannot even recall at this point, which the state required Mad Dog pay into for the privilege of having an employee. At one point Mad Dog asked himself: Did I hire an employee or adopt another child? Mad Dog's profit margin was perilously thin for at least a dozen years and increases in insurance rates more than once threatened to scuttle his entire enterprise, not to mention increases in office space rent. He was enormously relieved and happy to not have to be an employer when he finally got a real  job with benefits, after 27 years as a small business owner.

August Macke

But Mad Dog always paid his empolyee more than minimal wage. He had to. Without her, he simply could not run his business. She was valuable and he didn't want her to be hired away and right within his own building there were plenty of other small business owners who would have been happy to do that. So Mad Dog paid for a parking space in the building for her and he gave her a two week bonus at Christmas and he advanced her a loan for the new car she bought every 3 years.  And he felt good about that pension, after a while, because she was married to a no good derelict and that was the only way she could make it, that plus Social Security when she retired and she was 40 when he hired her. Of course, best laid plans--Mad Dog discovered her no account husband had raided that retirement account so he could buy himself a brand new Ford F 150 truck. He claimed he needed it because he had a part time gig delivering flowers. But that's another story.

August Macke

Back to the debate: The economists arguing against the minimal wage increase did not try to say small business owners would shut down rather than pay higher wages. There was some evidence that happened for certain marginal businesses, like the pizza shop or the dry cleaners, but what they did argue was this: The guy who bears the burden of the minimal wage increase is the guy least able to afford it: It's the guy running a small business like the coffee shop, the barista, the flower shop, while the guy at Golman Sacks couldn't care a whit about an increase in the minimum wage. And Mad Dog thought of his own experience: yes, he was one of those marginal "job creators." And there was some data, although it's devilishly difficult to tease out, showing there were some job losses associated with raising the minimum wage in some states. 

August Macke

But if those who do get the higher wage are benefited and now can work only one job, does that not mean the economy and the people are better off as the jobs that do survive can pay a living wage?

Actually, two problems with that. The higher minimum wage only raises the real, expendable income by about 9%, so the change in life for the wage earner is not affected as dramatically as Mad Dog assumed.

The other problem is who are the minimum wage earners? A lot of them are teenagers, whose income may or may not be critical to the family income. Some percentage are the children of privilege, just looking for extra cash. We are not talking about the minimum wage eliminating poverty there.

Obadiah Youngblood

And for some small businesses this means they will only hire experienced employees rather than first job teens, if they have to pay higher wages. The teenager who may not show up for his shift because the job is not critical to his life is not a good bet. But some of those no experience hamburger flippers do need the job to put food on the table and they are locked out.

August Macke

The argument for higher minimum wage to fight poverty is hurt by the observation that most families living in poverty have nobody in the family working. For these families free or low cost day care would make more difference. Or a guaranteed income. But not $15 an hour for a job nobody in the household even has.

One proponent argued that if businesses operating on such a tight margin they could not afford to pay $15 an hour then maybe they should not be in business at all, sick little businesses with no long term prospects--the laundry, the car wash, the coffee shop, the pastry shop. Our own downtown in Hampton has had a succession of business along High Street and Route One which, when they opened, selling surfboards or comic books or board games based on great battles in history or vacuum cleaner supplies or flannel garments or knick knacks in a gift shop, everyone in the neighborhood started up a pool to guess how many weeks those places would remain open.

August Macke

In the end, Mad Dog came away thinking exceptions could be carved out: The big one is for restaurants where the owners ask for an exception for waiters who get twice in tips than the salary they receive. Or maybe for a company with fewer than 20 employees. 

One thing Mad Dog came to accept: Bernie's $15 an hour will not make all that much difference this economy.  Day care, cheap and available, transportation public and low cost and maybe some tax credits for the poor may make a difference but the minimum wage is not much of a solution. 

Critical Racial Theory As a Window

 

Mad Dog has spent some maddening hours trying to suss out what people mean by "critical race theory.
His initial predisposition was to think it must be a good thing because Donald Trump had issued an executive order against it, which is ordinarily a pretty reliable indicator that it must have some positive value.

August Macke

The whole issue came up because "critical race theory" (CRT) was the subject of a bill from one of Hampton's very own delusional duo, Representatives Abramson and Emerick, outlawing the teaching of CRT in New Hampshire public schools, which stopped short of demanding the burning of books or burning school teachers at the stake, but was very clear it meant to stop discussion of objectionable ideas in public schools, which, after all, should never be places where ideas are discussed unless they are unobjectionable and preferably screened for purity by Mr. Abramson and/or Mr. Emerick.

August Macke

Here is a selection of CRT pearls, which Mad Dog extracted from Wikipedia:

1/ "Critical race theory is loosely unified by two common themes: first, that white supremacy, with its societal or structural racism, exists and maintains power through the law;^[6] and second, that transforming the relationship between law and racial power." 

Recently, Mad Dog has become aware of the role played that Federal law which prevented Black veterans from getting low interest loans for houses through the GI bill after World War II. This is one area which is very clear: Most baby boomers benefited from the wealth generated from  home ownership and the appreciation of real estate. Mad Dog was unaware that Black veterans were denied this. Laws which established school segregation played an obvious role in keeping the Negro down. So this seems hardly controversial. 

Obadiah Youngblood

2/ RTC  favors "a race-conscious approach to social transformation, critiquing liberal ideas such as affirmative action, color blindness, role modeling, or the merit principle;^[28] and an approach that relies more on political organizing, in contrast to liberalism's reliance on rights-based remedies." 

Mad Dog has long had reservations about affirmative action, believing it undermines the idea of "meritocracy."  But that has changed, over time, as Mad Dog has come to doubt the legitimacy  of "meritocracy" as it is practiced in academia. It was pretty clear to Mad Dog that for four or five decades, saying a person went to Harvard conveyed with it the idea that person was intellectually superior, because, after all, he had been tested and verified to be a person of genius. Even Harvard graduates talked about the strategy of holding back, before unleashing "the H-bomb" on prospective employers or fellow employees. But if that Harvard grad were Black, whites tended to smile a knowing smile and say, "Oh, well...he's Black," meaning, that credential loses its meaning for a Black. All this meant that the Black genius was denied his due simply because Whites assumed he was judged by a different standard.

Color blindness struck Mad Dog as a good thing, a desirable outcome. Mad Dog loved the idea that when musicians audition for the New York Philharmonic they perform behind a screen, so the judges judge only the music they can hear, and do not choose by gender, race or age.

August Macke

3/ "Criticism of civil-rights scholarship and anti-discrimination law, such as Brown v. Board of Education. Derrick Bell, one of CRT's founders, argues that civil-rights advances for black people coincided with the self-interest of white elitists. Likewise, Mary L. Dudziak performed extensive archival research in the U.S. Department of State and Department of Justice, including the correspondence by U.S. ambassadors abroad, and concluded that U.S. civil-rights legislation was not passed because people of color were discriminated against; rather, it was enacted in order to improve the image of the United States in the eyes of third-world countries that the US needed as allies during the Cold War."

So now, the motive for the man who insists on 

anti-discrimination has to be altruistic and pure? 

4/ "Standpoint epistemology: The view that a member of a minority has an authority and ability to speak about racism that members of other racial groups do not have, 

and that this can expose the racial neutrality of law as false."

This is particularly annoying: As if as a White person I cannot speak out 

against mistreatment of Blacks because I haven't suffered it.

Beyond this is the whiff of the aggrandizement of victim hood: 

Nobody knows the troubles I've known.

LeClerc

5/ "Empathetic fallacy: Believing that one can change a narrative by offering an alternative narrative in hopes that the listener's empathy will quickly and reliably take over. Empathy is not enough to change racism as most people are not exposed to many people different from themselves and people mostly seek out information about their own culture and group."

Again, that hierarchy of the true sufferer: As if only a Black can really 

understand the trials and degradation which Blacks have experienced.

Central Park Hippo 

6/ "White privilege is the set of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come with being a member of the dominant race (i.e. white people). For example, a shop attendant not following a white person around in a store because of assumption of shoplifting is viewed as white privilege. Another example would be people not crossing the street at night to avoid a white person."

This is one of those complaints with which Mad Dog loses patience. Yes, it's aggravating that a White store clerk views Black customers as potential thieves and White people cross the street out of fear of Black people. But that is the character flaw of the White person and does not directly harm, while it might demean the Black person. Look at those photos of lynchings. Those Black men were harmed and were victims of racism. When you start talking about the small stuff you diminish the really nasty stuff by including it all in the same pot.

Winslow Homer

And then there is the reaction of those who have no love for their Black brothers:

"On October 20, 2020, the Conservative UK Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch stated that, in regard to teaching critical race theory in primary and secondary schools, "we do not want to see teachers teaching their pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt.... any school which teaches these elements of critical race theory, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law". 

You know Mr. Badenoch likely has no love for the idea of a multiracial society, but CRT has played right into his hands. The idea that an argument can be presented without allowing for a rebuttal is and should be an anathema.

On the other hand, Mad Dog cannot see that examining CRT, as opposed to "teaching" it can be harmful.

There are other things Mad Dog would like to see incorporated into the curriculum of Winnacunnet High school, things like the biology and anthropology of sexual differentiation and gender identification, but given the structure of Hampton public schools, given the composition of the School Board, given the desire of public school officials to never offend parents, given the background and education of the teachers, that will likely never come to pass. For that matter, as far as Mad Dog knows, if you are parent of a Hampton teen, you could drive him 7 miles up the road to the Phillips Exeter Academy and your child would get no more enlightened on these topics, but it would cost you a lot more. 

Critical Race Theory

 

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school,

It's a wonder I can think at all."

--Paul Simon, "Kodacrome"

Mad Dog has been slogging through "Caste" lately and so his ears perked up when the President of the Hampton, New Hampshire Democrats decried a bill in the New Hampshire legislature which would ban the mention of race and "critical race theory" in public schools.

There are really two issues here: 

1. Are public schools really viable any more?

2. What the hell is "critical race theory"?

Mad Dog presumes "A Colony in a Nation" and "Caste" are part of a literature which depicts the actual experience of race in America as does the 1619 project.

But anyone who has read Howard Zinn or James Baldwin or Heather Cox Richardson or Ralph Ellison or Eldridge Cleaver or Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr. knows what any boy who ever grew up south of the Mason Dixon line knows or, for that matter, what a boy who grew up near Southie in Boston knows or Detroit or Watts. Or if you read "The Hemmings of Monticello."

Mad Dog says he was slogging through "Caste" because he finds nothing new and no new insights there. The best parts so far have been about India, where the caste system has such tight connections to religion and origin myths. But the parts about the subjugation of American Blacks falls into that category of "Tell me something I don't already know."

For Mad Dog's money, all he needs to know about race in America can be seen in those photos, many of which were sent as post cards, of lynchings in the South, where girls who look to be somewhere between 8 and 12 years old and boys of the same age look over their shoulders at the camera, grinning as if they are at a carnival, and behind them, hanging from a tree is a black man. Perfectly normal entertainment in Alabama or Mississippi: "Oh, let's go see them hang a nigger."

The offenses of many of these Black men often came down to some intimation from a White woman that these men had somehow been "fresh" toward them; the old and deep fear that Black men lust after White women, who are sexual magnets to these not really men, animals really, to be treated like animals and butchered for sport.

Mad Dog remembers locker room comments growing up. He remembers a high school wrestling match with a Black opponent and how one of the big tough guys in an upper weight class was disgusted Mad Dog had to wrestle a Negro.

"Well, I beat him," Mad Dog said, not understanding what the problem was.

Later, Mad Dog saw his vanquished opponent in the shower and asked how he was. "I got a headache," he replied.

And Mad Dog recalls feeling sorry for him. Mad Dog hoped he hadn't injured him. But Mad Dog did not know and could not imagine that kid's real injuries then or thereafter.

Mad Dog has plenty of regrets about failing to do the right thing now and then when he was growing up, but he never did fail to defend Negroes, then Blacks then African Americans from insult. Being White, Mad Dog could rise to defense without being accused of self interest. 

But somehow, even as a kid, Mad Dog knew the essential truth he later heard Martin Luther King speak, "Injustice anywhere injures justice everywhere,"

How do you teach that in a public school?

Probably you cannot. And you cannot teach about sex or abortion or any of a variety other "hot topics" in public schools.

Mad Dog went to public schools until he went to college. When he arrived at college, classmates from private schools or from public schools in New York had read "The Sun Also Rises" and "Native Son" and "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "Catcher in the Rye."

When a middle school teacher wanted to read "Catcher" with his class he had to lead them off campus to the public library to do it.

In Montgomery County, Maryland schools, sex, adolescent angst, pre marital sex, rape, racism were things which simply did not exist.

Mad Dog read "Billy Budd" and "A Tale of Two Cities" in high school. Safe stuff. He knew there was another world, a secret world you weren't allowed to talk about in public out there. A friend, a girl, had read "Naked Lunch" and "Peyton Place" and other forbidden texts. But she could never speak of that in school.

Eventually, Mad Dog caught up with the real world, but he had been blindfolded by public education, protected from exposure to dangerous ideas.

Which raises the question: Had he been educated at all?

The greatest nightmare for the principal of a public school is that telephone from a parent who is outraged that her child has come home distraught because an emotionally disturbing discussion occurred in class. We do not want children exposed to controversy or deeply held contrary opinions.

But if we do not want to teach our children how to respond to opposing points of view, if we want them to not know about things, what is it we are calling "education"? 

The Sniper Effect: Blood Is Their Argument

 

Through all the arguments about how to respond to Donald Trump and his merry band of thugs his opponents despaired about the ineffectiveness about the response to his brand of faux masculinity.

What do you say to the man who is not shamed by logic?

Trump had two kinds of defenders: rich and lower class. 

But in his rallies he had only one kind of supporter, the Sieg Heil mob member, who relished anonymous action, violence and mob solidarity.

It is said Trump has only one book at his bedside: Mein Kampf, where he learned his tactics of never admitting wrong, never accepting defeat, repeating any lie so often it began to acquire truthiness by simple repetition and keeping every statement as simple as possible from Hitler. 

Clearly, if you view documentaries about Hitler, the model is so clear it cannot be accidental. 

But what is forgotten is the role of simple murder: For murder, especially political murder, you need no gathering of evidence or shaping of sentences: you just pull the trigger or throw up the noose.

There was no out glamouring John F. Kennedy.  JFK's smooth humor and elegance could not be undone by any of his political opponents. But a bullet could bring him down and reduce all his arguments to dust.

Same for Martin Luther King: Nobody in the 20th century could approach his eloquence or the forcefulness of his rhetorhic or his power to move with words as he employed vivid imagery with cadence and rhythm. He was truly the rock star of mass communications in the 20th century, the only man who could do in front of a crowd what Hitler had done.

But Hitler's appeal depended on staging, the night rallies, the searchlights, the dramatic staging; King could do it with minimal props, he could do it standing on stone steps  with distracted members of the entourage looking elsewhere.

None of the haters could match that talent, not Strom Thurman, not George Wallace, not Lester Maddox. 

But a bullet could silence him.

And when the bullet speaks, there is no rebuttal and you know the argument is over and won by the gun.

Trump is not gone yet. Hitler went to jail and used his time well, and came back to strike when conditions were right, moving with audacity beyond the ossified Hindenberg and the fractured and fractious forces which opposed him. Taken together there were more Communists and workers/socialists than there were Nazis. But the Nazis were unified and violent and they murdered Rosa Luxemberg and anyone who stood in their way. Even other Nazis felt the blood argument: The night of the long knives consolidated Hitler as the leader of the Nazis and ended discussion about dissent.

I am so glad Obama survived his Presidency, although I still fear for him.

But, the fact is, he never scared the Trumpists. He was never that strong.

Now, we have to think about what we will do with that 14% which is violent and committed to Trump.

And we have to remember what country we come from: we have to look at those pictures of grinning men and boys and girls at the lynchings and remember the violent dark soul of this slave owning nation, a nation conceived in rage and nurtured by hate.