The Revolution Last Time

Woodstock 

Having dinner with my kids and their wives before the New York primary I was surprised to hear one say, "I don't want a revolution. My life's just starting."  She is twenty something, grinding through the seven separate exams to be certified as an architect, having finished a graduate program at Columbia in architecture, the daughter of immigrants. She is on the cusp of a new life, one she has worked hard for, and Bernie Sanders strikes her as someone who might disrupt all those plans. All that is understandable, but my Bohemian son, the musician, who lives life on the edge, feels the same way. He is into a dozen projects, cobbling together a career and there is enough uncertainty in his life for him to feel  inclined to embrace a great unknown. All of them were voting for Hillary in the New York primary.  

I thought, "This is just the demographic Bernie is supposed to own."

Bernie Wins Burlington Mayorship

I voted for Bernie in New Hampshire, but as I told my friends--I'd rather see Hillary President.








The thing about revolution is that it's risky, and can veer off in unanticipated directions and when I last saw a revolution in full swing, as much as I wanted change and hated the entrenched powerful forces being attacked, I was not thrilled by the folks who were leading the charge.

Revolution Turns To Mud

They seemed to have nothing better to do, and they struck me as superficial and I could not imagine them as old people clinging to the beliefs they espoused--Tom Hayden wouldn't allow Jane Fonda to own a clothes washing machine because it was too bourgeois and it was part of an economy which oppressed the workers. I kept comparing Tom Hayden to my grandfather, who joined the first, unsuccessful Russian revolution, who held guns and when things fell apart, he had to leave his homeland and start a new life. None of these 60's "revolutionaries" were going to leave America and start over if the "revolution" failed.  They were weekend revolutionaries. 

Meet Your New Leaders

There were simply too many people who seemed to be opportunists saying things they thought might buy them some immediate advantage, but they couldn't really believe that engineering and science and all technology was just a tool for the venal and powerful to keep the masses down.

One thing you can say for those delusional adolescents who are hopping airplanes for the Middle East to fight with ISIS--at least they are all in. They are idiots, of course, but all in.  So many of the 60's revolutionaries were playing at revolution. They hadn't thought things through, but they had some underlying voice in their brains which told them not to go too far.

Unappetizing Authority

The vicious racists who ruled the South had to be opposed, and the Black Freedom Riders who faced them had real dignity, but the white kids who walked with them struck me as somehow phony. Those white kids could and likely would go back to their suburban communities, their Ivy League colleges and their future  lives in corporate America--these white kids were just playing at revolution, slumming really. Of course, there were some who were very brave and some who died for their Black friends, but there were too many whose commitment was questionable.
Those Black folks, however,  had no where else to go. They had their backs against the wall. I could believe they did not just want revolution--they had to have it.

Thugs with Badges

The war in Vietnam had to be opposed, and the kids my age who opposed it were not phonies. Our lives were literally on the line.  My friends had already gone and I was scheduled to go. My brother was over there.  We had our backs against the wall.

Fighting for Freedom Vietnam Style

The sexual mores of the time were absurd and destructive: Be a virgin until you are married; never have more than one sexual partner your entire life, and, if you were Catholic, don't use contraception. That meant, of course, women had to stay at home raising kids and could not have careers and families grew to financially untenable sizes.  That had to go.

Better than War

But the alternatives put forward by the revolutionaries went beyond what even I could embrace.  I liked wearing clothes in public and thought sex probably ought not occur, even between consenting adults, in public places. 











Also drugs.  Never could see marijuana or LSD or cocaine as anything but weakness.  If you couldn't get in the mood for sex without these, there was something wrong.  If your own un-medicated senses were inadequate to appreciate a gorgeous day in New Hampshire, a swim in cold water, the fragrance of gardens, then you were pitiable, not someone to emulate.

The revolution of the sixties tied a revolt against malignant racism, with revolt against government authorities who foisted endless war upon a nation which refused to believe we had any good reason for making war and the sexual revolution, which was necessary to liberate women from the status of being baby making machines who had no better prospect in life than earning the title "Mrs." It was all of a piece, although some people embraced one or two parts of the rebellion, not all three. But even someone like me who embraced all three could not help finding many of the leaders, much of the rhetoric, repellent. 

You could understand, yes Louis XV and Marie Antoinette might be decadent, but eventually, with enough heads in baskets and the tumbrels filled, you began to feel a wave of nausea carrying the revolutionary tide. Okay, the Czar was arrogant and needed to go, but what swept across Russia over the ensuing decades, the thought police, the gulags, the millions starving to death for the sake of a bankrupt ideology, then you began to wonder about revolution as an instrument of change.

If you had to go combing through the pages of history for a revolution which was both necessary and, overall, benign, the American Revolution comes as close as any. Men like Hamilton, Washington, Franklin and Adams kept it under reasonable control.  We didn't have anyone like that in the 1960's, save for Martin Luther King, and thank God for him. He kept the most important leg of that three legged stool strong and firmly planted. 

Bernie When

So, yes, I love listening to Bernie. There is a lot left to change.  The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer and the government can and should do something about that. 

But there are some people who are poor for a reason. There is nothing much the government can do about that. Even Jesus observed: there will be poor always.

We can only do what we can do, and leave the rest behind. 

Our Need for Superman

If God did not exist, we would need to invent Him, someone said. (Actually, likely several people said some version of this.)  

I see this every day in my office--people come to me looking for a miracle cure. People want to believe there is a man (or woman) who has power beyond their power to change their lives for the better. In some cases, this is at least partly true. After all, you stagger into the Emergency Room vomiting, dehydrated with the virus which has been making its way through the community and the doctor comes in wearing his spotless white coat, confident, smiling, starts an IV, gives you medicine and within an hour you are no longer nauseated, or dizzy and in fact are quite comfortable and restored and it's like when Daddy picked you up and made everything all right again.

This same phenomenon operates in representative democracies--we want to think there is some bright, talented man who can make us well again.  It's no accident they called Franklin Roosevelt the doctor who had the cure for the Depression. 

From the founding fathers onward, I suspect, the rabble, in their coarse, earth stained clothes, who knew they were uneducated, looked upon those silk stockings worn by Hamilton, Jefferson and Washington, and thought, maybe these smart, educated, successful men know what they are doing--that's why they are successful and they can dispense some of that knowledge to benefit us.

What we like best of all, or at least what some of us like, is the Hamilton type, who was born in poverty and through his own efforts achieves great success. 

But we are fine with a Kennedy, born to wealth, but still a striver.  We have to admire a guy like that, who could have been a playboy and enjoyed his wealth, but he gets on a small boat with a bunch of regular citizens and fights in the big war.  And FDR, there's a guy who could have enjoyed life at his estate, but he rebelled against his own class on behalf of the little guy. 

The problem for a woman, however, is on some subliminal level we do not think of women as having that sort of magical power. A woman may be a nurturer, but can she be a powerful thrower of thunder bolts?  

Rachel Madow did a very nice segment on Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to declare for the Presidency and basically, her countrymen laughed at her.  Shirley Chisholm was both a woman and Black, so they did not even bother to laugh at her; her countrymen simply ignored her.

By the time Hillary Clinton won California, Madow noted, nobody was laughing at the thought of a woman President. 

Mrs., Ms., Secretary Clinton might steal a page from the playbook of women physicians and surgeons, who manage to operate as authority figures by simply exuding confidence, and underplaying the authority angle. 

At her best, Hillary Clinton can be as good as she needs to be. 

Who Can Judge Mr. Trump?

Astronaut Ochao

We really must try to be reasonable when we consider Mr. Trump's claim that the judge hearing his case concerning the complaint by former students at Trump University that he conned them out of their life's savings for bogus "courses" in a scam university.  
Mr. Trump, after all, strikes a reasonable tone when he tells us that the judge hearing his case is of Mexican origin, and is a member of a Mexican American organization, sort of a Hispanic version of the Rotary Club, which, as Mr. Trump says, is fine. 

 It's just that since Mr. Trump wants to build a wall between the judge's ancestral home and the United States, so it's only common sense the judge cannot possibly give Mr. Trump a fair hearing, after all, that one attribute of the judge--his Hispanic background has to be his core identity. Of course, if Kurt Vonnegut was correct, the judge might consider his Indiana birthplace the most important thing about himself--being a Hoosier is one of those things people from Indiana seem to escalate into a cause. 

Mr. Trump is simply saying he  understands how he may have offended the judge-- can't blame the judge Mr. Trump says; the judge simply cannot be fair and should recuse himself.

So let us consider who might be acceptable as a judge for any case involving Mr. Trump, now and in the future. 

Let's break people down into simple attributes.  We could look for fellow television celebrities.  like maybe, Jimmy Smits, who has affinity for good roles on TV, and attribute he shares with  Mr. Trump,  but, no, being Hispanic, he is obviously disqualified as that Trumps everything, although he is also excluded for  having played a Democrat on West Wing.  

Justice Sotomayer is clearly out, if for no other reason than Obama appointed her, and she is Hispanic, a double whammy.  Women, are in general excluded, but especially Hispanic women, especially if they are particularly accomplished, because accomplished people, like the astronaut Ochoa, have it in for incompetent amateurs like Mr. Trump.

Personally, I'd like to recommend Joan Baez, but there's that Mexican thing.
She has a wonderful voice, and she hung out with Bob Dylan, which should be enough to recommend anyone, but no, there's just that South of the Border thing.

Mr. Trump would, by all indications, exclude Muhammad Ali from a jury hearing his case, because Ali was, well, Muslim. Not born that way, but still. And he rejected his God given Christianity, so he is doubly suspect. I mean, he had a wonderful name, "Cassius Clay," which he jettisoned like used Kleenex , to become Muhammad Ali. 

George Carlin, who was Irish, actually judged Mr. Ali quite generously, despite their ethnic differences: Mr. Carlin observed that Mr. Ali had an unusual profession--beating people up, but Ali drew the line at killing them. The government wanted Ali to kill people in Vietnam and Ali said, "No, no, no. I'll beat them up, but I won't kill them," and so he got stripped of his livelihood and treated poorly. Well, he's dead now, so this is a moot point.

And we don't want any losers, like guys who got captured during any wars. Even if they are veterans, those guys who got their airplanes shot down are just so lame. After all, Mr. Trump went to a military school so he almost knows about combat.

That loser McCain

Dr. Oz is also stricken from the jury--another Muslim, although surely Mr. Trump must appreciate his showmanship. They've got that in common, but still if Mr. Trump had his way, Dr. Oz would have never been allowed past the customs gate at JFK airport. Doesn't matter all they have in common, being rich, living in New York, being TV stars--that Islam thing Trumps all.

Now, who could be left?  Should be someone not Muslim, Hispanic or a Democrat.  Nobody too dark because, well the Donald is very blond and you know how dark skinned people envy blonds.  No women, because, like Meghan Kelly, they bleed from all the wrong places. Women cannot be objective about Mr. Trump, although, like Hispanics, women love Mr. Trump.

We really ought to match up the ethnic background, which might sound politically incorrect, but liberals do that all the time with affirmative action, so if we are selecting people or excluding people for attributes, well then we are profiling, but everyone does it. Let's just use the profiling in a positive way to choose someone who would likely see so much in common with Mr. Trump, he'd be a good bet for the jury.

So, who? Or what?

Wait, I've got it:

Uh-Oh Moment for Bernie Supporters

What can I say to get a headline? Am I the Trump of the Left?

Until now, I've been a  Bernie fan, but reading about  Bernie's embrace of Cornel West, his proposing West as a member of the Democratic Party platform committee was a rude awakening. 

It brought back memories of the 60's and 70's, an era which shaped Bernie Sanders politically, psychologically and morally, and era when liberal ideology moved America to the left, and from that many good things evolved:  revision of the repressive, destructive and oppressive sexual mores America had labored under,  rejection of racism, Jim Crow and institutional injustice to Black Americans, rejection of wars of colonial aggression/ anti communism.  But amidst all the push in the positive direction, there was, it must be admitted, a substantial load of sheer lunacy, stupidity and self promotion from figures on the left, and Cornel West is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about.

West has called the Prime Minister of Israel the minister of war crimes.  He has called President Obama a Rockefeller in blackface.  He was, quite rightly, chased out of Harvard when as a faculty member he considered his real future in cutting hip hop records but did not do the sort of "scholarship" which is expected of Harvard faculty, so he decamped to Princeton, where he demonstrated the wisdom of Mr. Summers by becoming a voluble jackass.

Now he is Bernie Sanders' first consequential appointment to a public role.

The kind of revolutionary I can warm to

As a college student, I actually scheduled time in my busy day to walk downtown to Providence, R.I. in a peace rally, but when I arrived to get in line, there was a group of students carrying the North Vietnamese flag, which was not an expression of any sentiment I had.  I wanted to walk with American flags, not the flag of the guys who were killing my former classmates.

I find myself in the same position now, placed there by Bernie Sanders. Yes, I want to change things, but if revolution means embracing a guy like Cornel West, well then that's a revolution which has gone off the rails. We wanted a change which exposed stupidity and hypocrisy and which sent the abusers of our financial system packing, but now we have a grade A fool masquerading as a Princeton professor saying, as Stringer Bell would say, "Such shit."

It might be okay if Bernie brought Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Tom Hayden to the revolution, but when he gets Cornel West and the Black Panthers or a latter day Malcolm X, well we begin wondering how big a mistake we have made.

Sorry Bernie, you lost me.

Suddenly looking a lot better 

The Speech I'd Like to Hear Hillary Make

Sometime soon, Hillary Clinton will be asked to address the transgender bathroom law in North Carolina.  

As my brother, who has a home in Chapel Hill remarked, it's interesting that this whole thing started when a local jurisdiction, Charlotte, passed a city ordinance allowing transgenders to use bathrooms of their choice and the state swooped in and said, "Oh, no. You can't do that."  So you had a bigger government, the state, telling local people in Charlotte what they couldn't do. But when the state is told by the federal government they can't tell Charlotte what to do, the state says, "This is an issue of local control over local affairs! You can't come down here and tell us what to do!"

Jelani Cobb notes, in this week's New Yorker "North Carolina was more than willing to countenance 'all gender' bathrooms when they served the puroses of racial segregation. Jim Crow legislation culminated in separate bathrooms for white men and white women but only a single 'colored' rest room for African-Americans, whatever their gender."

Cobb sees an analogy between  this fight and  the civil rights fight for African American rights--"a tableau of states' rights populism, an embattled minority seeking equality, a conflict over who is allowed to use public facilities and a Southern governor committed to resisting federal executive authority."  But a group of Black pastors in North Carolina doesn't see it that way and is supporting the law.

So when Hillary is asked, here's what I hope she'd say:

"The fact is legislators who supported this law, some of them at least, tried to trot out the warning that if transgenders were allowed to use bathrooms, we'd unleash sexual predators on the women of North Carolina. That sounds a lot like the rationale legislators from the same state once used when faced with the opening of public facilities to all races--Black men, who cannot resist raping White women, would somehow be given full license to rape once they are given proximity.  There was the rape myth pinned on Black men and now the rape myth pinned on transgenders and both were nothing more than a manifestation of a sick imagination on the part of some White Southern males.  There has been not a single instance of sexual predation in North Carolina by a transgender.

And it is likely true the Governor of North Carolina, in a tight election race signed this bill into law hoping to shore up his support among White, conservative men. 

But, having recognized the sordid origins of this law, I have to ask myself why Black ministers in North Carolina have formed a group supporting this law. They clearly do not see it as the same thing as denying civil rights to a despised racial minority. 

And one has to listen to the state legislators who said it wasn't the use of bathroom stalls that bothered them, but the mandate that female locker rooms could be used by individuals with male genitalia.  One might ask if this has actually become a problem in North Carolina, but one can also imagine the problem this very easily  might cause for a commercial gym. How will  female customers at a Gold's Gym or a Planet fitness  react?  They hit the gym at 5 AM, by 6 AM they are in the shower and off to work. But what if standing next to them is an individual with male genitalia?  I suppose, if the showers are separate stalls, that might work, but this is a can of worms.

So, I would support a law which allowed bathroom stall use by any gender, but I would also oppose a law which required the opening of female locker rooms to individuals with male genitalia, in the setting of a commercial or educational facility.
It should be noted, the North Carolina law did not forbid the use of facilities by transgenders but it struck down the imposition of a requirement on these facilities. If they wanted to open up the locker rooms, they could.

 I realize this will shock and dismay some of my supporters, who expect me to stand with any reviled minority against the power and intolerance of the state, but as a matter of principle, I cannot support transgender males who still retain male genitalia using locker rooms for females, even if they consider themselves female. 

The fact is, what they think about their own gender identity cannot be forced upon those who may disagree with them, and anatomy in this case, trumps psychology.

That's where I am on this issue. I'm willing to be convinced I've come to the wrong conclusion, but until I hear a compelling argument to the contrary, I would leave female locker rooms to people with female external genitalia."

Name That Donald

Announcing a new contest, right here on Mad Dog Democrat: Name That Donald.

As we all know, the Donald has named "Crooked Hillary" and throughout the primaries he came up with catchy little derisive epithets which had the effect of sticking with his opponents and pricking them.


Here's a speech for Hillary to give on this topic:

Ms. Clinton:

Fellow citizens: I have been considering how to respond to Mr. Trump's name calling style of campaigning and I have been looking for a way to describe Mr. Trump as he has insisted on describing me as "Crooked Hillary."  Of course, I am trying to stand especially straight as I speak, but I realize a nickname is a tough thing to shake, as anyone who has a younger sister named "Pooky" or a brother named "Sparky" can attest.  
Nobody ever called me "Crooked" growing up. In fact, I had some trouble shaking the goody two shoes image, as a kid. So maybe "crooked" isn't so bad. 

But now I consider how to respond when considering Mr. Trump. 

1/As I think of Mr. Trump's typical approach to public speaking, that style which whips up the Ku Klu Klan members in the crowd, the Birthers, the White supremacist elements down in the front rows:    There we hear Dim Donald or the variation Dimwit Donald and Donald Dimwit and   Dumb it down Donald and Duh, Donald and Dumb and Dumber Donald. or simply: Brain Dead Donald

2/ Then there is Mr. Trump  as he works his way through his Miss Universe contestants:  Debauched Donald, Decadent Donald. Dissolute Donald. 

3/ Or then there is Mr. Trumps claims to have been a great businessman while bankrupting his Atlantic City casinos: Deceitful Donald. Diabolic Donald. Duplicitous Donald.

4. How do we describe the man with his  plans to make Mexico pay for the wall:  Deranged Donald?

5. Of course there is the candidate who describes me as the worst Secretary of State ever: Desperate Donald.

6. But then, think of Mr. Trump trying to stay on subject while he delivers  any kind of a policy speech: Dysfunctional Donald.


More research needs to be done.

Thank you, I appreciate your willingness to listen to the woman who Mr. Trump describes as crooked. Considering the source, I take that as a compliment.

Lilac Days on the Seacoast

Usually, I head for the beach on my bicycle, but the past few weeks, I've headed inland, taking old country roads through Kensington to Exeter.  This week the lilacs have been in bloom, lining the roadside and perfuming the air. Spring has come in fits and starts, but mostly it's been cool, in the 60's. That's fine, because the days are dry and clear and it's easy to ride without getting dehydrated.

The horses along the way are getting to know me. They lift their heads, but they no longer trot away from the fences along the road. They snort: "Oh, it's just him. That dumb guy on his bicycle." 

I keep my iPod plugged in, and listen to my playlists.  Randy Newman is wonderful on long bike rides. How could I have missed so much Randy Newman all these years?  For two hours I have him to myself. And George Carlin. And boogie woogie musicians I cannot even name, and did you know Jonny Rivers did the best "Rockin Pneumonia and Boogie Woogie Flu" ever?  

I had a friend I used to walk with, along the Potomac River, along the C&O canal towpath, and he was appalled by people walking in all that primal splendor wearing head phones. You had the chittering of Kingfishers, the rat-a-tat of piliated woodpeckers, the rush of the river, the wind in the trees. Why would you want to block all that out?  

I never argued with him.  But when I walked alone with my dog, I plugged in. Stevie Wonder,  Ritchie Havens, Ray Charles, Joe Cocker. Have you ever listened to the piano player in Cocker's band?   What a marvelous age we live in.  A piano player plays in England and I can walk along the Potomac, deep in woods inhabited by foxes, muskrats, beaver, deer, listening to what that guy did on Abbey Road. 

Sometime in the early 1960's I asked my father what age, what time in history, he would have liked to live in. He was sitting in his leather sling chair, reading. He read. That's mostly what he did, as far as I could see. He did not play ball or fish or hike. He read.  
When I was tired enough, I read, too. History was my favorite.  The Civil War, of course, was in my blood, growing up where I did. I fantasized about hanging out with Lincoln. From my house in Maryland, I could have walked to his house, less than 10 miles away. I would have just watched him and listened. I might have advised him. (Get rid of those loser generals. Get to Grant and Sherman.) You could just hang around the White House then. Or, the age of knights and kings. Or maybe, the age of exploration, in sailing ships. 

My father put down his book briefly and looked at me, one of those rare occasions when he seemed to notice me.  It wasn't often I asked a question he considered interesting, as far as I could tell, but he said, "Well, this age."  He did not seem annoyed at the moment, to have been interrupted. The question was not without some merit. "The present," he affirmed.  "This is the best time to have ever lived."

"What?" I sputtered.  With all the nuclear bombs ready to drop on us? With racism in every city?"
"Every age has been beset with hate, fear and terror.  We've made progress and we benefit from it now."

He picked up  his book  and returned to whatever he was reading. 

I wandered off considering that 1960 might in fact be a better time to be alive than 1860.  In 1960, Lincoln's beloved son would not have died from typhoid. We had better sanitation and antibiotics.  My father saw the virtue of the present where I had lived in the romantic past. 

Now, I remember that, as I pedal along the roads of Rockingham County, New Hampshire.