Category Archives: Politics

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.

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.

Belief

I haven’t looked up the definition of belief. I wanted to try it myself. It’s hard to do without a circular reference. Here is what I’ve come up with:

’Belief is holding to be true something for which there is no objective truth.’

This definition is full of problems, I know, but I’m going to run with it. Belief is usually applied to religion, as in, ‘I believe in God’. I think most people would agree that it is impossible to find and objective truth about God, especially a Christian God (capital ‘G’).

But I don’t want to go down that particular rabbit hole today. Many people better than I have debated this issue without satisfactory resolution. I want to pivot to another kind of belief.

Typically, we say that something is true when we see it. Or when we can touch it. We have to be in the presence of our reality for it to be true. At the same time, we believe certain things to be true even when we can’t see them directly. I believe there is an airport on the other side of San Bruno Mountain because I have seen it many times and it is reasonable to expect that it exists when I can’t see it. Airplanes fly over my house all the time which tend to support the notion that an airport is nearby.

I woke up this morning with the knowledge that a belief that I had previously held was gone. I believed in the existence of democracy in America. I believed that at the root of our political system, the people had a voice and that our representatives in government were responsive to that voice.

Is there an objective truth to this notion? I used to think so but events of the past year have made me question that. I want to use the phrase ‘cognitive dissonance’ but that is hifalutin and I don’t think I can defend a definition of that.

When a large group of people act as if they are experiencing a different reality than me, I am at a loss to explain that. Anyway, I can only speak for myself. Today, in my reality, my belief is that we do not have a functioning democracy in America.

I’ve opened up this huge can of worms and now they have grown into snakes and crawling all over the living room. I think I’d better stop now. I’m not prepared to write a whole treatise on belief and perception of reality. I will continue to live what I hope is a righteous life. My seed is sown, for better or worse. I live to contribute my wisdom, if that’s what it is, can be transmitted to the following generations.

Wisdom or folly or silliness, I send myself into the future with these writings. I believe in the future.

day 36. ‘Thank you for your service.’

I’ve written about this idea before. The idea that only our military is performing a service that is worthy of special thanks has always rankled me. Now, in the time of COVID-19, we are discovering that there are others who serve that are equally, if not more, important.

Someone commented on FaceBook, right after the restrictions went into place and the stock market lost 20% of its value, ‘Maybe it’s the workers who are providing value after all!’

Grocery workers, delivery people including those who bring food to the grocery stores, and of course medical people are being appreciated more now than ever before. Does that mean they’re being paid better? In some cases, yes, but in others, no.

Amazon, owned by the richest man on the planet – and by the way getting richer by the minute – has fired workers who have tried to get better working conditions.

In my business, there is a growing realization that large gatherings such as Davies Hall concerts and big conventions may be months away, not weeks. The one thing that I always thought was most basic, the need for humans to gather in groups, has been blown up. I’m starting to see come comments that indicate awareness of the psychological shoals we are swimming in. There was a story today in the news about how liquor and pot stores are doing very well. Online gambling is surging.

Some are expressing hope that some kind of new order will emerge from all this. Will we humans learn to respect the earth and strive less? Honestly, I am skeptical.

But hopeful.

Day 36. The existing shelter in place order here in the Bay Are ends on May 3rd. That would be day 50.

But if the venue can’t reopen, I don’t have a job to go back to.

As I said early on, I have a roof over my head, the electricity, water and Internet are working, Sepi has a lot of food in the freezers here. I am thankful for all of that and more. No one in my family has gotten sick. If the worst we have to cope with is being stir crazy sometimes, I’ll take it.

I’m hopeful.

politics

I was upset enough about the way the Supreme Court nomination hearings were going. I shouldn’t be surprised at how brazen the Republican Senators are in hijacking our democracy but I guess I still am. Bush v Gore was nearly 20 years ago now. I keep coming back to the thought of how people in other countries left to come to America when their home was going crazy. The most obvious is Jews in Germany in the 1930s but there are many other examples.

What if I had to do it? Could I give up my family, my livelihood, my friends, the land that I love? Where would I go? These thoughts run through my head when I get too deep into the political news.

So I went to FaceBook and saw this at the top of my timeline:

He was a classmate and known gang member. It was during 8th grade homeroom when the assault happened. The teacher had only been gone a few seconds. Some of my friends laughed as they witnessed it. I had trust issues and became quite withdrawn for a long time after that. I was ashamed and embarrassed and scared of retaliation.

#whyididntreport

Ashley wrote that! My own daughter-in-law. Daughter-in-love. OMFG!

Since her marriage to Jeremy, Ashley has shown me again and again what a high quality person she is. As I’ve gotten to know her better over the years, my respect and love for her has grown by leaps and bounds.

And now I discover that she has been carrying this. OMFG! The sweetest, purest person I know had this happen to her??

Perhaps equally unsettling is the thought that many, maybe even most, other women are carrying similar burdens. Sarah doesn’t like to talk to me abut such things, but she has had similar experiences over the years. Sepi has told me of some things that happened to her as an adult. Men power tripping with sex.

None of these, as far as I can tell, were actual rapes, but where do you draw the line? There are some incidents in my past where I went across the line for an inappropriate touch or a kiss (I realized later). I have tried to reach out to those women in recent years to apologize and take responsibility.

Dear Ashley, thank you for having the courage to speak out. Love, Dad.

separating children

Lots of words have been written about the policy of our current President regarding refugees trying to enter the United States with children. I did not originally intend to add to them but I just ran across an extraordinary testimonial that touches on the issues of immigration and children.

Here it is: link (PDF)

It struck me that there are similarities between my family’s loss of Zach and these family’s loss of their children. There are important differences, of course. Most importantly is that these children are not dead, but the separation is like a death. As Dr Krell illustrates, the change is profound in their lives.

I think we are like these children, ripped from our loved one by forces we do not understand. I at least had a chance to say goodbye to Zach’s body. I don’t remember crying much that day while we were at the funeral home, but that night in the shower where I thought no one could hear me, I wailed.

musings

I see that it’s been a week since I went out of my norm and posted on a political theme. The hope I felt only a week ago has been dashed by the passage of the Republicans’ ‘tax reform’ bill. As a side not, I put ‘hope’ in my tag window for this post and saw that it’s the first time I’ve tagged that word. That’s pretty sad that I haven’t written about hope in 18 months of this blog.

I’ve written about goals, which are kind of like hope, I think. One implies the other, although I’m not sure which would come first.

I’m going down to stay with Mom and Dad today. Just one night then home again tomorrow night. Work on Saturday then back down to Santa Clara on Monday, Christmas Day. I believe we’ll have 13 for dinner. That’ll be nice. Tim shared with his siblings the birthday card Mom and Dad sent him last week. Dad wrote on it, which is not common any more, but it was somewhat disjointed. He referred to his having ‘half a brain’. I told Tim that that was the worst of what is happening to him: he knows. It won’t get better so, to me, that means treasuring what we can when we can. Thus, I visit as often as possible.

At work, I’ve been trying to develop relationships with people outside my norm. I try to take time to have real honest talk with some of the Davies Hall ushers, with some of the Symphony staff. Everyone is at work, so we all recognize that is our priority but there are private moments. Working primarily in the front of the house, I hardly have any contact with the musicians any more. The last three or four shows I’ve done, Sarah was playing but I didn’t have time to get back stage at the right moment to talk to her. It’s been extremely hard for me to get out and do things not work or family related.

sea change?

I was up in the Loge talking to Hal last night, about 5 minutes into intermission for the Symphony’s Holiday Soul show, when a huge cheer went up on the main floor. The people I could see on the main floor were looking to the rear of the hall so I thought perhaps one of the stars of the show had come into the auditorium for some reason.

Holiday Soul is this years’ version of a show the Symphony has put on for many years to reach out to the black community. It used to be called Colors of Christmas, featuring Peabo Bryson. This year we have CeCe Winans and Edwin Hawkins. It’s more overtly religious than Colors used to be.

The point is that the audience was predominantly black. What they were cheering, it turned out, was the news that the Democrat, Doug Jones, had been declared the winner in the special election for the Alabama Senate seat.

Jones’ Republican opponent, Roy Moore, was a problematic candidate already. Among other things, he essentially advocated that Christianity should be the state religion. Then, a few weeks ago, he was accused by multiple women of inappropriate sexual behavior when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Many Republican leaders said that Moore should quit the race, but some, including President Trump, continued to support him.

Polls up to last weekend showed Moore with a slim lead but the voters of Alabama evidently decided enough is enough.

Jones is the first Alabama Democrat to be elected to national office in a long time. I am hopeful that his election signals the awakening by the American people to the hijacking of their government by ultra-conservatives. The resignation after similar revelations of Minnesota Democrat Al Franken last week was disappointing to me but I thought last night that perhaps his taking the high road can spur Trump to come clean on his inappropriate sexual past.

A couple of weeks ago, when the Republicans in the Senate passed their tax ‘reform’ bill, I was struck by the difference between these Senators and the ones in John Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage. Profiles in cowardice is more apt today.

OK, enough. Make sure you vote, people. It’s not much, but it’s all we’ve got. And it does make a difference.

low

Thursday morning, I had an idea for a nice post. I took my laundry down to the laundry room and the sun was coming in low through the foliage in our little central patio/garden. It was very pretty. When I got back upstairs, I sat at the computer to write, but I saw I had a bunch of emails. I looked through those and answered a couple and the moment was gone. I slid into FaceBook and the news of the thievery in the Senate and the sunshine meant nothing any more.

I had been thinking I would go down to Mom and Dad’s later and stay overnight but I found myself sinking further and further into torpor. I tried to come back to write, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t pick up the phone to call anyone. Eventually, I got out to the mall where I wandered around – hardly anyone was there – looking at stuff I wasn’t interested in. I had some vague idea I could do some Christmas shopping. I did get a couple of things at the drugstore and got to the grocery store.

At home about 6 pm, I ate several bowls of sugar cereal for dinner and went to bed.

Friday was much the same, only I never went out. I checked FaceBook, played solitaire, worked on the jigsaw puzzle, actually read some real books (oh, I got to the library Thursday). In the evening, I saw Rose was home so I went over to talk to her. She was working on some Christmas decorations and had a kind of technical problem so I gave her some ideas and then some tools (skinny pliers). Somehow that made me feel better. I ate a decent dinner and again went to bed early, about 8.

Today brought the news that the Senate actually passed that abomination of ‘tax reform’ but I feel a little better. Better enough to write.

It’s interesting. I want to write deep, important thoughts, but often when I’m thinking those thoughts, I don’t want to sit at the computer. Certainly the last two days were like that.

I’ve got the day off so I will try to get back to my sunny thoughts of Thursday morning and share them with you.

Dummies history

I slagged European History for Dummies a little bit in my last post. In their defense, I offer this quote from the end of a section on the Holocaust.

Don’t forget that thousands of ordinary people were involved. The cattle wagons the prisoners were loaded into had to be booked with the railway companies, firms were contracted to supply the barbed wire or the gas chambers or the ovens. People filled in order forms for gas crystals, or simply delivered the guards’ beer, food, and cigarettes. All these people played their part in helping one of the greatest crimes in history to happen.

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