Monthly Archives: October 2024

I’m terrified

This isn’t a political blog and this isn’t a news blog, but I feel compelled to comment on the state of American Presidential politics today.

I totally recognize that ‘polls’ are almost always ideology driven. Whey are made by political parties, it is obvious. When they are made by news organizations, it is less so. In the days of Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, national TV network news was considered more of a public service (and required to be so by the FCC). Now those rules are relaxed and news networks are profit centers. That means that there is an interest in generating views which means that careful reporting is increasingly rare.

News reporting of elections have been reduced to talking about ‘the race’. Breathless discussions of who’s ahead and who’s behind are everywhere. Issues? Whatever.

In this context, the Republican party is led by a man whose name I will not put in this blog. He’s been saying things for weeks that are either crude playground bullying, meandering off-topic statements, or outright lies. Often all three. He talks openly about using the US military to hunt down ‘enemies of the state’ (inside America) who he defines as anyone who disagrees with him. The Democratic candidate is a mainstream politician. She generally speaks coherently and has an actual platform that she tries to present to the electorate.

The Republican candidate for President was President before and his term was roiled by chaos, culminating in a loss in his attempt to be re-elected. Now, despite many legal decisions to the contrary, he claims that the election was ‘stolen’.

Now he is laying the groundwork for claiming the same thing again even though recent polls have shown him winning. What is he going to say if he wins? It was all a joke?

Whatever the actual numbers are, it is clearly a close race. I am frankly astounded that he has the support of as many people as he does. (I’m setting aside the issue of the Electoral College, which is why we’re even having this discussion. No one is expecting the Republicans to win the popular vote nationwide. A few thousand people in a few key locations will decide who the next President will be. My vote in California is essentially meaningless.)

So, I’m terrified. If he wins, he’ll go on a witch hunt against his political opposition. He has no interest in governing. If he loses, he’ll scream bloody murder that he was screwed, file hundreds of lawsuits against election boards all over the country and, worst of all, his followers who love guns and violence, will come out in the streets again.

The zeitgeist is funny. Who can say what makes people do what they do?  A lot of people in America clearly think this behavior is ok for our leaders. We may be living in a new chapter of Barbara Tuchman’s book March of Folly. I’m not a praying man, but I hope that somehow the numbers come up such that he is turned away. Praying couldn’t hurt.

Dad’s house

When I was a teenager, I was highly annoyed (to say the least) at the arc of my father’s life. He went to college, found a girl, graduated, got a job, got married, had kids, bought a house and . . . lived happily ever after. He was completely devoted to my Mom. Any arguments they may have had were hidden from us kids. He retired from a job he held for over 40 years. Finally, he died in the same house he had bought over 60 years earlier.

Perhaps I’ll address those feelings here someday. Today I want to talk about his house that he bought in 1958, that he raised 6 kids in and that my mother still lives in.

Because she still lives there, I have the privilege of going back to this house of my early years and viewing it with a different perspective. It’s different in many ways. There was the major addition in 1965, which I lived through. There was the reconfiguration of what was originally a ‘den’ and later my bedroom into a ‘sun room’ that is now the location for all large family dinners. Outside, it’s even more different. I think there is one tree left that was extant when I was a youngster.

So, what am I getting at? I was out in the back yard yesterday and went into the little shed on the back corner of the house. Dad built that shed. We were looking at the dripper system that is all over the back. Dad laid that out and it is still functioning reasonably well. On the edge of the deck opposite where most of the plants are is a hose bib. Dad plumbed it in copper pipe. The concrete walk on the side of the house was poured by Dad. I remember him reading about how to do exposed aggregate and trying it on that walk. It didn’t work out so well but the walk is still there and hasn’t fallen apart.

In the garage, there are screws, nails, hooks, shelf brackets, and other useful hardware, all sorted into boxes and neatly labeled. His toolbox is filled with inexpensive tools that were good enough for him. I made a living using tools, so I look at these sometimes and sigh if I have to use one. I can get the job done with them, though.

The cabinets and shelves in the garage were all built by him, as were many of the cabinets and shelves in the bedrooms and ‘family room’ (now known as the office). The construction isn’t fancy, but it has held up. We got a contractor for the major addition I referred to, but Dad drew up the architectural drawings.

Those who are gone live on in our memories. My memories of Dad are many, but being at his house and seeing his work is a different kind of memory. If I wanted to, I could show any of those things to another person and say, ‘My Dad did that!’ and it would tell them the kind of person Dad was, even if they had never met him.

That’s pretty cool!

Fleet Week

I looked up my post from this time last year when I focused on the Blue Angels flying team. It’s an iconic phrase from my youth seeing them at Moffat Field in Sunnyvale. They’re coming back to SF this weekend but I thought this year I’d take a different slant on it. My current phrase is ‘war machines’.

We’re a little better tuned to the neighborhood this year and so we’re more aware of the Navy ships docked at the cruise ship pier and a couple of other places along the waterfront. We’ll probably go and tour at least one of them. We’ve seen a few sailors along the Embarcadero. They have all been scrubbed clean and in their natty uniforms. I made eye contact with a couple and smiled. They smiled back.

I really don’t want to be ‘that guy’ and I don’t hold anything against any of them personally. (How could I? I don’t know them at all.) But . . .

I want to ask them if they ever think about the core function of the organization they are a part of. It’s about killing or frightening people until they submit to your dominance. The US military does a lot of good things but never forget their main purpose.

The Republican candidate for President has been sounding increasingly unhinged lately. When I read about what he is saying, I can’t believe that he has the level of support that he does. I’ve reminded people that he got 73 million votes in the last election. That’s more than any candidate ever except for Biden.

Who are these people? There are even some in this liberal enclave of San Francisco! Like the sailors, they are probably nice on a personal level. Why do they support this jerk? And, to circle back around to my original topic, why do they support the gigantic sums we, as a country, spend on our military?

As a parent of a first responder, I am particularly sensitive to the adulation given to our military. ‘Support our troops.’ Color guards and flyovers at football games. The core purpose of these things is to destroy. Police and fire men and women are in our home towns actually protecting us from danger. I am aware of the many problems we have in America with policing. I’d still take a police officer over a soldier. At least the training for a police officer is not focused on killing people.

So, if we go one of of these ships, we’ll be nice to the sailors. There’s nothing to be gained by getting in a fight with a worker. I’m sure the ships will be very interesting from a technical standpoint. I’ll try to focus on that part.

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