Snowflake Factor and Huckleberry Finn

 It is a curious thing when you are disappointed by folks with whom you share basic beliefs; it is more distressing in some ways than the vitriol of out and out White supremacists.

Recently, I've been listening to "Huckleberry Finn" as a book on disc, read by the incomparable Eric Dove, who can shift between Huck and Jim and other characters with fluidity and seamlessness. I first read Huck Finn at age 11, in the hammock on the shoreline of our rented cabin at Lake Winnipesaukee, and all I remember about that experience was the intense sense of loss when I read the last sentence and realized there was no more Huck Finn to read.  I must have re-read it at some point, but so long ago I cannot remember. So this is, in a way, a new reading for me.

I had forgotten how early and how often Huck struggles with his conflict between loyalty to Jim and loyalty to the Southern "morality" which embraced slavery as a good and necessary institution. 

Huck, of course, is an outcast, the son of a drunk who abuses and uses him, and Huck lives under the care of an aunt, who owns the slave Jim. But Huck perceives he is not really of the polite society around him, and he knows that fitting into that society will always come hard.

He tells the tale, first person, constantly trying to make sense of the righteous ways of Southern society, which he finds perplexing, because, of course, that society is fundamentally corrupted by the peculiar institution.  

He is the boy viewing the Emperor without clothes, the peasant who looks at the world controlled by powers he cannot fully understand, trying to make sense of a world which makes no sense,  and it's a wonderful device for exposing the hypocrisies and cruelties of the reigning society.

While there are plenty of themes running through the narrative, as Huck ponders the inanities of organized religion, and the workings of aristocracy and royalty, the major theme, the most basic conflict, is Huck's struggle with the morality of slavery and his growing love of the best, most sympathetic and moral person in the book, the slave Jim.

Huck's conflicts begin early in the book, and resurface frequently, as he knows he is aiding and abetting Jim's flight to freedom, and he has absorbed enough of Southern mores to know that he is doing wrong to Jim's owner, who could sell him for $800, and to the owner of Jim's children, who Jim hopes to free either by purchasing their freedom or enlisting abolitionists to help him. These intentions horrify Huck, as he has internalized the idea that Jim is valuable property and Jim belongs to his White owners. 

But Jim clearly loves Huck and is rendered distraught and miserable the several times he thinks Huck has been drowned or killed.

Driving along in my car, listening to the scene where Huck returns to the raft after being swept overboard, to find Jim, asleep at the tiller, I saw Jim awaken, overjoyed to find Huck alive and on board, and I was shocked when Huck proceeds to play a Tom Sawerish trick on Jim, claiming he was never washed overboard and insisting Jim must have been dreaming and insinuating Jim was too stupid to even know what had really happened, but eventually, Jim sees the wreckage of the storm which washed Huck overboard and he asks Huck why he would be so cruel to try to convince Jim his mind was soft--Huck was "gaslighting" Jim--and I was totally with Jim. 

Jim is hurt and confused by Huck's attempt to manipulate him, and he says so, and it's a stunning moment. 

That was a stinking cruel thing to do and Huck, for the first time in his life feels genuinely ashamed and contrite. It's a powerful scene and it cements the idea that slave or not, Jim is not only a human being, but a very fine human being who knows right from wrong and who knows what dignity means.

 And, in the 31st chapter, after some fits and starts in which Huck sets off  to betray Jim, but then cannot go through with it, Huck tells us he knows he will go to Hell, and he knows he deserves to go to the  everlasting fires because he has decided to help Jim to freedom, which Huck "knows" is the wrong thing to do. But, Huck, along with the reader, cannot do anything but love Jim.

Christopher Hitchens once remarked that only the religious can do something really despicable--like flying an airplane into a tower or blowing up children with a bomb--because if you did not have religion telling you to do it, you would know it's wrong. This is the lesson Huck learns.

No more powerful dismemberment of the rationale for slavery has ever been accomplished by any writer, not by Harriet Beecher Stowe, nor Thaddeus Stevens nor even Lincoln, because we have got to know Jim personally and we know Huck will ultimately have to choose Jim.

Against all that, parents in several school districts, in liberal California, have taken action to expunge Huckleberry Finn from school libraries and classrooms because they object to the use of the word "Nigger" which they call "the N word."

There is so much wrong with this, it is hard to know where to begin.  

Do these parents really think their delicate children will be somehow permanently stained, traumatized and irreparably harmed by learning that Negroes, Blacks, African Americans were once (and still are) called "Niggers?"

One can only imagine how these parents would react to Randy Newman's song, "Rednecks," another satirical demolition of Southern bigotry and Northern racism, which uses the refrain, "We're keeping the Niggers down."

What sort of society, or subculture, do we have when there are words so heinous they cannot even be mentioned--like those Orthodox Jews who cannot say the word "Yahweh" the name for God because it is too holy for human lips? Who is foolish enough to not see that to expose the disease, you have to first look at it? 

What bothers these parents, no doubt, is the fact that "Nigger" is used by a narrator who is not depicted as a loathsome person, and so it might be concluded that using that word does not fit their own world view that anyone who uses it is despicable and can have no attractive qualities. 

But is that not exactly the point? Will children not encounter people who say "Nigger" or other racist things who appear to be otherwise normal or even attractive people and is it not important that children can learn to see that certain words or sentiments can alert you to the other side of people you thought were your friends?

And what do those parents think will happen to their delicate children when they hear the word "Nigger" in the locker rooms, the cafeterias or the hallways at school?

Plumber, HVAC, Electrician, Soldier, Spy

 The plumber who arrived to work on my water heater today brought an apprentice with him. 

He told me the system for apprentices got a big help "under Trump." 

We did not move beyond that to other Trump topics, but, clearly, from the point of view of this 69 year old plumber, the establishment of this program, which pays him to train apprentices, funds the trade school on Towle Farm Road and, importantly, demonstrates the affection of the government for training plumbers, electricians, HVAC and carpenters elicited a reciprocation of affection.

The master plumber told me there were simply not enough plumbers in New Hampshire, and all the way into the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and he's worried about who will take over the important work he knows needs to be done and will need to be done over the next forty years.

I was unaware about Trump's efforts on the behalf of trades so I Googled it and here's a piece from NPR:

The White House wants to nearly double the total federal commitment to provide states with funds for career and technical education – from about US$1.2 billion in the current fiscal year to about $2.1 billion for fiscal 2021.

This proposal marks the first time in more than 20 years that the federal investment in career and technical education could change in a meaningful way after declining for the last two decades.

For instance, in 2004, total funding through the Carl D. Perkins Act – the federal law that deals with career and technical education spending – was $1.7 billion. By fiscal 2020 it had dropped to $1.2 billion. Adjusting for inflation makes the drop even larger.

Student participation in career and technical education had also declined during the era of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law that required increasing the percentage of students proficient in math and reading by 2014. Meanwhile, an emphasis on testing dominated education policy during the same time period, which maintained focus on tested subjects like math and reading, and less on career development.

The proposal also calls for allocating $83 million to competitive grants to states. Proposing competitive grants suggests that the administration will look to fund states with the most innovative proposals. This is in contrast to just giving out money based on how many students a state may serve, which is how most of the federal funds for technical education are allocated.

Trump also wants to double fees associated with H1-B visas – visas that allow for the hiring temporary workers from abroad with high skills that are in short supply in the U.S. This hike could raise an additional $100 million or more. The idea here seems to be to use revenue collected from programs that use talent from abroad to invest in educating students here in the United States.

So, when Democrats (who are mostly white collar workers) get together and grumble about the mystery about why all those people we see on TV "vote against their own interests" it is just possible these folks are not voting against their own interests but are voting very much in their own interests, i.e. the interests of the people who keep homes and businesses running by insuring electricity, water, heat, cooling and building have seen Trump working to help them while President Obama constantly talked about getting more kids to go to college.

Obama's life, of course, was changed by going to college and then law school, so it's not hard to imagine why he talked about college so much. And it's easy to understand why people of color who look from the outside at those ivy walled campuses might think, if only we could get into that world, we'd be able to make the same easy money all those college men and women have been able to claim.

Of course, "the trades" are not easy. The money they make is not easy money. It's good money, but not easy money.  They require significant intelligence and physical power and there's lots of emergency call which can make your life uncomfortable.  

When I was 12 years old, my school made me take "Mechanical Drawing" which proved to be one of the most challenging, fascinating and illuminating courses I ever experienced in the 12 years of public schooling.

Trying to see an object from the discipline of the restricting your view to a single view was not intuitive and required me to struggle with problems of visual perception. I spent more time on this homework than I spent on algebra and geography, which worried my parents because Mechanical Drawing was a "minor" subject and something blue collar, and they wanted to be sure I grew up to be a professional, a doctor or a lawyer. Their own parents were tailors, and they wanted "better" for their children. 

So, there was a class thing going on: Plumbers, electricians, HVAC workers might be important when you needed them, but they were blue collar and would never rise above a middle income status. Plumbers average $60,000-$130,000 annual income, which in most places in America allows for a comfortable life.

And this is a line of work which cannot be outsourced.

In the 21st century, work which cannot be outsourced to India and China may prove more stable and secure than some professional work.  The radiologist, who had to go to college (4 years), medical school (4 years) and residency (3 years), now finds that the hospital has hired a doctor in India to read the CAT scan of the patient's head, because that scan is now on the internet and the doctor in India works for a company which underbid the group the American radiologist works for.

And beyond that, the whole notion of what work is important, worth doing, and what is valued is now more broadly appreciated. Just watch "This Old House" on TV and see the amazing stuff those construction tradesmen and tradeswomen can do.

One of the candidates for the U.S. Congressional seat in New Hampshire, some years ago, Deglan McEachern, said, "Hold up your hands if you think you can get a plumber to come out to your house tomorrow." Of course nobody in the crowd raised a hand. "This is what we need, not more college grads with degrees in basket weaving, but plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen."

He lost.

On the way out, the plumber mentioned that he has to undergo recertification every year with the federal government, as part of the apprentice program and last year they insisted he put up a poster at his office (which is in his home) saying that he endorses equal treatment for transgenders and gives telephone numbers where offended transgender apprentices can phone authorities if they feel abused. He said he ran track at UNH, and he ran the 800 meters and his times were always better than the women's world record. He said, "I could have gone to the Olympics if I were competing in the women's 800 meter event. But there's probably a reason they separate men's from women's competition."

Transgender Competing as a Woman

Later he added, "The thing about transgender, is it's got to be a disease, right? I mean who in his right mind would cut off his own balls?"

Broke all the Women's Records

Democrats have been preoccupied with being sure that 0.6% of our population which is transgender is not offended or disparaged. And I agree, nobody should be harassed or denigrated because of their gender or sexual identity, but from a strictly political, count the numbers viewpoint, transgender is a losing proposition. Trades training is where Democrats ought to be.

Some Psychopathology is Visible Augenblick

Affirmative Action Miasma: Dept of Politically Incorrect

 

First, allow me to affirm my complete agreement with Dr. Martin Luther King: children from now and forever should be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.

Second, let me acknowledge that Blacks and other colored folk have been denied membership in labor unions, in apprentice programs, even the opportunity to be fighter pilots when, in fact, experience has shown (viz Tuskegee airmen) they perform every bit as well as whites when given the opportunity in these realms.

Having said all that, I have to believe two things:

1. There are some jobs where all that counts is competence: I don't care about the color of the skin (or the gender) of the pilot when I step on my airplane, nor do I care about the color of who made my HVAC, who wired my house--all I care about is they did their job well.

2. While there have been longstanding wrongs regarding making a wide range of economic opportunities available to people of all races, it is not the job of the medical profession to right these wrongs. The job of the medical profession is to provide the very best medical care to all citizens, which of course begins by choosing, as best it can, the best people to be trained to deliver that care. 

The New England Journal of Medicine published a "Perspective" piece on March 9, 2023 "Diversifying the Physician Workforce," in which Dr. Quinn Capers argued:

1. Diversity (i.e. having more physicians and scientists of color) in the physician workforce would improve the quality of care, at least for colored patients, but likely for everyone.

2. It is the responsibility of the medical profession, namely the admission committees at medical schools, the faculty at residency training programs to be sure much larger proportions of Black and colored candidates are placed into medical schools and internships and residencies, and that failing in this effort, deans, chairmen of departments should be fired if they do not achieve demonstrable goals.

3. The idea of a "meritocracy" should include the idea that being Black is, in and of itself, a form of "merit," where admission to medical schools are concerned. 

"Any selection committee hires or admits candidates on the basis of 'merit,' which should be defined in keeping with the stated mission. For medical schools seeking students who want to serve underserved populations, for example, applicants can be stratified according to their relative past activities and potential for continuing such service in the future."

What he is referring to here is the problem of getting physicians to open up practices in poor, often inner city areas where medical care is scarce, and the idea that Black men and women are more likely to do that. Of course, what he is struggling with here is there is no evidence this actually happens: Black medical students, who have debt, or who simply have worked hard to rise above modest economic origins, have no intention of simply returning to the ghetto's once they have their MD degrees.

Then there is the sticky wicket of what is "merit." 

Dr. Capers says, "Despite compelling evidence that workforce diversity in medicine adds value to decision making, scientific inquiry and care." 

But of course, there are no convincing studies any of this is true.  It would be lovely to think that simply adding Black doctors to the workforce would mean well trained Black doctors returning the the land of their forebears and practicing high quality medicine or going out into the nation at large, in all levels of affluence and poverty, and "making a difference." There is no actual unbiased evidence this happens. 

Capers does address, head on, the old "Bell Curve" argument that Blacks simply test worse on standardized tests, which he says predicts only the likelihood of high scoring students to test well on future standardized tests. This is the old problem of cultural bias of many of the MCAT (Medical College Aptitude Test), and all the series of tests given medical students throughout their years of training.  I would be the last to argue or standardized "board exams" or any of the exams I was subjected to are meaningful or well conceived, but that doesn't mean I agree that if Blacks were judged on the basis if "clinical excellence, collegiality, leadership skills [whatever that might mean in medicine] and problem solving skills, academic curiosity,"  this would result in more Blacks being selected for medical school, residency or fellowship programs.

Another quality Dr. Capers thinks should be weighed in choosing future doctors is "diversity competency" by which he means "potential for advocating for health equity in the field."

So now we have a sort of political test for doctors, which sounds vaguely familiar, as Soviet doctors who did not advocate for "the workers" or who were deemed insufficiently enthusiastic for advocating for the rights of the proletariat were relieved of their jobs and sent to Siberia.

The official bureaucracy Dr. Capers advocates, when brought down to the specifics sounds increasingly like something out of "Darkness at Noon:"

"Best practices for successful bias-mitigations trainings, advising that session be voluntary and recurrent, provide actionable tasks for participants, be framed with positive messaging ('it is human to be biased but we can overcome biases to treat everyone fairly' rather than 'you are racist') and be situated within an institutional framework for mitigating bias and enhancing diversity and inclusion. For medical school admission committees, these training could occur annually; faculty-selection committees could undergo training before nominating and rating candidates," says Dr. Capers.

Presumably, the short summary of this is: You better admit a lot more Black folks here or you're out!

So, the New England Journal of Medicine has lined up to advocate this brand of righteousness, and one can only imagine why.

But this is exactly the sort of advocacy which hands Tucker Carlson and Ron DeSantis their most cherished weapons:  Look, now they are trying to put pilots into the cockpit who will crash your plane; they are trying to put surgeons into operating rooms because they are Black, not because they are good; they want your family doctor to be Black to fill some government quota!

Oh, you can imagine it all, and none of it is good.

One past chairman, who is White, of a department at Duke University Medical School, tells a story which illuminates the complexities, subtleties and difficulties of figuring out what "the Right Stuff" is in doctors and being able to identify it. He operated on his own private, unscientific theory of learning and character, but it strikes me, for all the amateur nature of his approach, it seemed to work.

One year he chose a candidate for his program who had been a tight end on an SEC football team. He was a big Black man, who was overlooked by other residency programs, perhaps because he had gone to a state medical school or perhaps because he was simply physically intimidating, or perhaps because he was Black. His standardized tests scores were not stellar. There were 90 applicants who scored better. But the chairman gave this guy one of the spots for which 100 other candidates from Harvard, Stanford, Hopkins and other elite medical schools had competed. The Chairman "took a chance." 

He did this in part because he had a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the products of top medical schools he had selected previous years: these were men and women who had never had less than an A since elementary school, who had aced all their standardized exams, who had been at the top of their medical school classes.  But, the chairman had noted, they were fragile when it came to being corrected. 

"They'd never got anything wrong in their whole lives. Never dealt with failure, and they'd just fall apart when you'd point out if they had missed something."

Not the doc in this story, different guy

"But this guy, this former football player, was used to being coached, to getting something wrong, getting corrected and the next time, he did not make that mistake again. So he starts off, first year maybe in the bottom third of his class here in the program. But I sit with him and show him stuff he's missed on this chest film, and he says, 'Oh, right! Yeah.' And he never misses that again. And by the second year, he's in the top 25% of his class and by the end of his third year, I'd say he was the best resident in our program by a country mile. He was just so 'coachable.' He'd made all the mistakes you can make, and you corrected them and he did not make them again, and, in fact, he got creative about seeing mistakes coming down the road and so you didn't even have to coach him about that. He was, more than once, mistaken by faculty members as a janitor, sitting there a big Black guy in scrubs, but he never took it personally. He'd sometimes just get up and empty a trash can, and shrug it off and go back to work. I'd take a dozen more like him, if I could find them."

Now THAT is affirmative action.

American Alienation: When Authority Dies

 Gail Collins cannot figure out Ron DeSantis.

The man is boring. Where is the appeal?

Obama could not figure out Trump.

The man is a clown. Who would ever vote for him?

Dealing as I do with "the public" every day, the folks who work for Raytheon, Dunkin Donuts, Walmart, Dollar Store,  I know the appeal.

Whoever sneers at authority, especially government authority gets attention. Resentment runs deep.

A sixty year old man and his wife, visited me. He lost his job driving a truck up to Wolfboro daily, where he loaded water bottles on board and drove them back to a Market Basket warehouse in Lawrence.  But then he had to start insulin therapy--you can't get a commercial driver's license if you take insulin. 

Then the owner of the house where they rented the first floor told them he was renovating the place and bringing it up to code (more government regulations) and once he did that he would double their rent, so after 25 years, they were faced with homelessness. They had planted flower beds around the place, scrubbed the windows and the siding, treated the house as if they owned it but now they were out.

They didn't become homeless: Somehow they were able to afford a "double wide" mobile home in a trailer park and with Social Security they could pay the mortgage, and with Medicare they could get medical care. And you can keep your government hands off my Social Security. 

They seethed about their neighbor who is on Mass Health and gets his insulin, and in fact all his drugs, for free when hard working people like them struggle to afford their medications. This neighbor gets a free ride, claiming to be disabled, when the erstwhile truck driver cannot keep his job because of his diabetes. The neighbor gets a free handout, a welfare queen, while the truck driver's taxes support that bum. 

That's the way government does: Takes from the hard working white guy and gives it to the undeserving Hispanic who just moved here for the welfare.

Public schools are nothing more than crowd control. Nobody in authority has anything to teach the down and out crowd.

This clip from "The Wire" says it all. The police major is trying to change the war on drugs, which affects all the school kids who work the corners as hoppers and scouts, but the moment he alludes to "teaching" he loses his audience. These inner city kids share the crucial characteristic with the white truck driver--alienation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSOCNez3LM0