Making the Brackets For Musicians

A LOCAL RADIO SPORTS TALK HOST likes to augment his show with a little unsporting fun, so he set up a tournament in which country-western artists compete fot the ultimate prize. Its a sixty four draw with four groups of sixteen, like the NCAA big basketball dance. His one seeds were, I believe, Johnny Cash, W. Jennings, one of the Williams guys, and...I forge who else. Merle, possibly? Folks voted on each "game" by using Twitter or Facebook, of course. Maybe a few phone calls thrown in. They're down to the sweet sixteen, and Johnny Cash, the number one overall seed, seems destined to take down Patsy Cline, no easy endeavor. Its beginning to shape up as a final four including Cash and Jennings, assuming that Waylon can get by Willie Nelson, always a tough out. Johnny is the odds on favorite, according to exhaustive analysis, his "Ring of Fire" being his "ace in the hole". I propose a tournament of classical composers. The one seeds would be Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Brahams, an "all Germanic" seeding, with either Ludwing or Wolfgang assuming the one overall seed, take your pick. Tchaikovsky would be a strong number two, as might Mendelsohn, say, and Ravel, Debussy, but Schuman and Schubert must receive consideration. Thevoting would again take place on social media,, and would have the unintended consequence of bringing at least a modicum of cultural quality to the social media realm, much needed in our execrable era in which half the internet is pornography and the social media, all one trillion of the platforms, are more than replete with insults, savagery, and nonsense.

Plea Bargaining

AFTER THE CHESS MATCH, after the tennis match, the football game, or the election, proper behavior and fundamental decency require that the two former opponents congratulate each other and shake hands. It is acceptable to accuse the winner of cheating only when the accusation is accompanied by very strong evidence of it. That is where Donald Trump and his supporters fail their country, themselves, and their presumed moral values, not only in the certainty with which they speak, but in complete the lack of evidence supporting even the possibility, let alone any certainty of a stolen election. Redundantly though this point has been made on this essay website, it bears repeating, often, for its importance. We offer a plea bargain. Rather than calling Trump and Trumpsters "traitors", as heretofore, we agree to reduce the charge to "bad citizenship", (not "bad citizens", to distinguish bettween a moral lapse and pervasive characteristics). In return we ask only that the accused agree to reduce their claim from "election stolen, no question", to "It seems possible if not probable that the election was stolen from Trump". This quite generous offer will expire soon, so now is the time to shop and save at our bargain baasement plea bargain store! I mentioned to one of my neighbors that to me, Americans today seem surly, angry, and stressed, to accompany the usual arrogance and incivility. She rsponded that she agreed, and that these trends seemed to her to be most pronounced among the younger generation, which, she asserted, "has a chip on its shoulder". I begged to differ, and said that people of my generation, the "oldsters" behave no better, and that their unpleasantness is tangible both in real time and online. Online ugliness seems to favor no particular age, gender identity, race, or religious affiliation, but somehow, the evangelical Christian Trump community might deserve special attention.

Standing Up

AN NBA COACH VENTS his outrage. The manager of the San Fransisco baseball Giants expresses his intention of avoiding the National Anthem in protest of his country's failure to take arms against a sea of troubles. The New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, (who used to be called the "Devil Rays" until the Christians caught up with them) post gun violence stats on their websites and remind us: "Nothing will change until something changes", in an apparent bow to Yogi Berra. Out come the right wing pro gunners, condemning them all. The Yankees have more than three and a half million followers online, and their post got more than seventy thousand likes, making it their single most popular post. If anger and outrage are required to facilitate the much needed change, let us all rage! The most famous picture of Einstein is the one in which he has a pen clipped to his grey sweat shirt, is sitting behind a desk, looking up at the camera, hair disheveled, a stern expression on his face. He has just responded to the question: "Will humanity ever free itself from the scourge of warfare"? His answer is that: "As long as there are people, there will be war"....This cynical view applies to violence generally. As long as there are people, there will be murders and mass murders, with guns or any number of implements turned into weapons. As conservatives are fond of pointing out: damned near anything can become a weapon, including silverware, plates, and coffee cups, as many a wayward husband has learned the hard way. Our best hope is mitigation, not elimination. But war is a special kind of violence, murder on an international scale, and guns are a very special kind of weapon, far more powerful and effective than coffee cups. Einstein said: "You cannot simultaneously prepare for war and preserve peace". American conservatives might have us believe that preparation for war is the best method of preserving peace. They would be mistaken, as they are with their contention that the answer to gun violence is to put more guns in the hands of more people, "good" people'. Who are the "good people", and how to we identify them? Einstine might have said: "You cannot simultaneously increase the number of guns and decrease the frequency of their use." Every "bad" person began as a good person, and was recognized generaly as a good person. The problem is to identify and neutralize them before they become bad. Since we are all initially good people, our best hope is in mitigating gun violence by assuming, a priori, that we are all potentially bad.

People, Killing People, With Assistance

GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, people kill people, goes the right wing meme, if "meme" is the proper word. Trope? Adage? Idiocy? Cars don't kill people, people kill people. Cigarettes don't kill people, people kill people. Viruses don't kill people.....I recall my father tllin gme that he knew very well that smoking cigarettes was going to kill him, but that he chose to continue smoking, becuse he was utterly unable to break the habit. He died from lung cancer which had spread to the brain. A friend once told me, when I suggested he consider quitting cigarettes, that, "something's gonna kill you". I retorted that since that was the case, why not kill yourself? I wish I hadn't said that, but the good news is, he's still alive, knock on wood, as we say. And whereas cars and cigarettes kill nobody, if there were fewer of them, if people used them with less frequency, there would be far fewer people using them to kill themselves and others with vehicular mistakes and second hand smoke. If they didn't exist at all, nobody would commit suicide by using them, for lack of opportunity. The argument against guns is that indeed people kil lother people with guns, the guns bieng merely the instrument of choice, but that if guns ownership were reduced, opportunities for people to kill themselves and others with them would be reduced, and if guns did not exist, there would be no opportunity whatever, and killers would be compelled to find other means. Whatever the alternative method of mass murder, it would prsumably require more time and effort than required to use an assault rifle for a minute. American culture is deeply rooted in the greed requisite for successful capitalism, and in the anger and resentment facilitated by a society predicated almost entirely on competition. A history of violence and the availability of means of mass destruction combine to produce a culture of death. May we seek fundamental societal reform. Last year approximately forty five thousand Americans were killed by people, people who were faithfully aided by gunfire. So far this year in the United Kingdom, a country which several years ago placed strict limitations on gun ownership, four people have died from gunshot wounds. As we say, statistics don't lie. This change of policy was precipitated by a mass murder in Scotlan, a rare event in the U.K., and indeed in every country in the world other than the United states. The argument that cricket bats can be used as murder weapons is counterd by teh reality that with a cricket bat a murderer needs much more time to commit mass murder, cannot kill from a distance, and can be far more easily stopped, by a good rolling tackle if nothing else. We are told that to restrict firearm ownership in the aftermath of a mass murder is "politicizing" the tragedy, which ignores the obvious reality that gun policy is a public concern, and thus, inherently political, and that advocates of gun control conduct their advocacy throughout the year, whether there are mass murders or not. Former president Trump, speaking at teh NRA convention, described this alleged "politicization" of mass murder events as "grotesque". Regarding grotesque, Trump is certainly an expert. Every NRA member who entered the builing in Houston was frisked to ensure that no firearms were being broug inside. It seems that the NRA is not confident that none of its own members are potentiali mass murderers. Shouldn't they all be required to carry guns into their conventions? After all, the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun, so they say, is a good guy with a gun. The trick, there and everywhere, is telling the difference.

Evidencing Absence

THE FACEBOOK POST said: "The best evidence that God does not exist is the lack of evidence that he does". Or maybe there is no such lack of evidence. Perhaps every particle of matter and every quanta of energy in the universe is not only evidence, but proof that God exists, and that we humans are like fish in water; so immersed in our environment that, as we say, we cannot see the forest for the trees. There is only one reasonable system of belief: agnosticism. In truth, we are all agnostics, whether we acknowledge it, because, as Einstein said: "We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything". There is nothing as predicatble as that whatever people choose to believe, they believe with great certitude, leaving no doubt in their opinions. As Goethe said: "We are united by sentiment, sundered by opinion". Those who believe in God are uniformly unwilling to accept even the remote possibility that their faith is mistaken. This principle widely adheres. Consider the people who insist that the election was stolen from Trump. We never hear any of them say that "I suspect the election might have been stolen", or, "I consider it possible, even probable that the election was stolen". Rarely if ever do we hear them express the slightest doubt, despite the complete lack of evidence supporting the accusation. The same holds true with climate change deniers, and conspiracy theorists generally. The less evidence, the more certainty. Lacking evidence to support our assertions, unwilling to abandon our fondest beliefs, we abandon reason, and resort to faith, as of a religion. We lack hummility, and replace it with our arrogance of certainty. Again, Goethe: "Every need and desire denied fulfillment is of necessity constrained to faith". In essence, what we want but do not have we invent by simply beieving in its existence. Thus did our remote ancestors invent religions, and, as Goethe said: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent my own". Einstein was certain that "God" exists, because he perceived God in the orderly harmonious functioning of nature, like the pantheist Spinoza. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is pointless", he said, paraphrased. And also: "My religiousity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we can comprehend of reality." Ultimately, we can be certain only that we can be certain about little or nothing.

Surrendering Not

THIS TIME, thoughts and prayers are not enough. In truth, they never are, and never have been. So, please, spare us the sentiment. Something more, much more, is called for, and has been for decades. Something, perhaps, as fundamental as a complete reconstruction of American cutlure. It becomes tempting to surrender to despair, to acceptance of an American future bathed in blood. The arrow of time points in that direction, considering the violent American past and the violent American present. I had arrived home with a copy of the recently published book "American Schizm: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing Our Nation" by Seth David Radwell, and had begun to find it hopeful and interesting. Like most analysts, Radwell holds out hope, but warns us that the healing process will tke considerable time anad effort, and will not eventuate without sustained, concerted endeavor - by us all. Content with that, I turned on the radio, hoping to hear some baseball scores. What I heard instead was Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr talk about something besides basketball, admonishing the reporters that there are fifty United States Senators intent on doing nothing about mass murder in America other than extend thoughts and prayers. The reporters seemed to be taking notes, so hope flickered. The National Basketball Association is a progressive organization, its members fully aware of their unimportance professionally, fully aware of the association's social responsibilities. Kerr's team proceeded to play poorly. I decided to postpone the baseball scores in deference to a far more urgent matter. If mental illness is the root cause, we are doomed, by reason of collective societal insanity. A renewed, permanent ban on assault weapons and universal background checks would, as theorized, be a good start, and if mass murderers are reduced to knifing their victims, all the better. Best that we accept the reality that while none of us is immune to physical pathology, so it must be with mental illness. I still don't know last night's baseball scores, but of this I can be certain; they were delivered by sportscasters everywhere with thoughts and prayers, but little or nothing else. Having explored and discarded all other alternatives, we Americans are bound inevitably to do the right thing, as Sir Winston Churchill once said, only after having explored all other options; to exert sustained, concerted endeavor, by us all. Into the nightmare creeps what passes for conservatism in our disfunctinal body politic, with it its all too familair, cancerous conspiratorial nonsense, magnified and reiterated through social media and the far right culture which spreads like a cancer with every living day of Donald Trump's pathological influence. The shooter was an illegal immigrant. The shooter was transgender. And the usual trope; the shooter was a government patsy, a plant by some malicious appendage of the American government, intended to stoke support for gun control, for the abolition of the second amandment, and teh confiscation of guns from the dead bodies of right wing sycophants. What better way to fuel the fire of hatred of immigrants, brown skinned people, gays and transgenders, and government, so deeply embedded in America's pathology. No, we must never admit defeat, never surrender to the inevitability of mass murder in America. But we must do more, much more. A good place to start would be for us the American people to delete from our lives and politics the great cancerous disease which stubbornly refuses to wither away and die.

Negative Campaigning

IN A SMALL RED STATE in the southern United States, a conservative Republican candidate for Congress is challenging the incumbent in the primary, with campaign ads which reflect his belief that if only he can "out-Trump" his opponent in a state where Trump received two thirds of the vote, he can win. The incumbent, reminds the challenger, has the audacity to assert that not only did Trump not win the twenty twenty election, but that he lost it by a wide margin.....The lines have been drawn, the litmus test established. If you are a Republican, and you accept the blatantly obvious reality that Trump lost the election, if you fail to embrace what sane America calls "the big lie", if you do not endorse and fully support Trump's attempt at stealing the election from Biden - you are unworthy for service in the United State Congress. The ad continues.....My opponent in this primary actually blames Trump for the insurrrection, (which he calls a "disturbance") at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. You blame the attempted violent overthrow of the United Stats government on donald J. Trump, you don't deserve consideration as the G.O.P. nominee for a seat in Congress. Never mind that Trump planned the insurrection weeks in advance, telling his followers on Twitter: "Be there on the sixth. It will be wild"...Then, at the rally prior to the insurrection, he told the angry mob: "Go the the Capitol and fight, or you're not gonna have a country anymore". And that is precisely what the angry mob did, it went to the Capitol and fought. But no, Trump bears no responsibility for the violence, according to standard Republican dogma. The incumbent has the further audacity to refer to Trump and his supporters as "extremists"! He dare he! Within the Republican party, try telling the truth, and you should be banished from the party, and from all possibility of holding high political office. The age of unreality, individual realities, and misinformation is, unfortunately, not yet at its apex. Years ago a friend of mine said: "I don't know what all this is about, but whatever it is, it isn't over yet, and won't be for a long time". A more accurate forecast has never been made.

Taking Offense

WHEN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN baseball player suggested in a "Sports Illustrated" article three years ago the he might serve as the "next Jackie Robinson", perhpas he revealed himself to be among those who subscribes to the false notion that "history repeats itself", which it most certainly doe not. There will never be "another" Jackie robinson", nor another you, whomever you are, not should there be. Once is enough for us all. Despite the declining percentage of professional baseball players who are African-American, it is to be hoped that it can safely be assumed that never again will there be a need for a brave, heroic person to "break the color barrier", as was the case in 1947. The interviewee further stipulated in the magazine article that he considered it his task to "make baseball fun again", as if it had ever stopped being "fun", which it most certainly has not. Jackie Robinson did not make baseball fun. He made it look at itself in the mirror, he made it come to terms with its mistakes and limitations, and with its racism, he made it change, but the change was painful, and not at all "fun". As Goethe said: "Only by mistakes which really irk us do we advance". Finally,k at long last, American society become sufficiently irked with racism in baseball to permit Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Mr. Robinson the opportunity, the necesity, of advancement. Behind them the rest of society begain to follow, painfully, without fun. And so the world and worm turned, and an "Anglo-American" player said to him, on the field, "hello Jackie". That's when the benches cleared, and the two teams engaged in a standing scrum at home plate, no punches thrown. According to the Anglo-American player, he had privately, in person, made the same joke to "Jackie" several times before, and both of them had laughed. suddenly, offense is taken. suddenlly, the joke becomes a racist remark. Meanwhile, Anglo had applied a tag to African on the bases a bit hard, thought the African, and, well, a needlessly hard tag is enough to change one's mind about whether words intend insult. Another blow to civility at the hands of abuse of political corectness, or "social correctness". When one presumes to consider himself the next Jackie Robinson, and to do so in a magazine article, one has opened the door, the door to jest and ridicule. We Americans have learned that when we take offense, we position oourselves as victims, and can then demand reparations. We have become the most easily offended people, the most voluntarily offended culture, in the entire history of offense-taking. We would all do ourselves a great service if we simply abandoned the pretense of righteous indignation-for-compensation, took the melt water from our snowflake selves, and refroze it into a solid block of ice. Baseball has always been fun, is fun, and shall forever remain fun, without any reincarnation of Jackie robinson, if only the players and fans will allow it to be.

Lying and Stealing

"TWO HUNDRED MULES" is not the title of a thirty minute western television serial program from the nineteen fifties narrated by Ronald Reagan, but rather, a recently released film which presumes to prove, without question, that the twenty twenty presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump by, one must assume, Joe Biden and a veritable horde of co-conspirators, unnamed by its creator, Dinesh D'Souza. It proves nothing, of course, but only rants the same tired accusations we have heard for more than a year and a half, and attempts to support them with contrived, false evidence. There are holes in its reasoning through which one could, as we asy, drive a truck. The truck would have to be driven by MAGA types blocking the road to vaccination or abortion clinics. The holes have been and are being clearly, simply identified explained by such esteemed, credible sources as National Public Radio, and numerous film method analysts. D'Sousa is a conservative activist and staunch Trump supporter, pre and post insurrection, with, as we sometimes say, an "ax to grind". This alone disqualifies him from consideration as a dispassionate, objective analyst. I saw the movie. Its fiction. Its says nothing, proves nothing, other than Trump supporters are desperate for vindication of their nefarious infamy. With each passing day I despise more the people who refuse to accept with good grace the election outcome. They are the people who tried to steal the election, not from Trump, but for Trump. Seldom if ever have I seen more reprehensible voluntary behavior from so many people. Never again will there be a national election in the United States without stain, suspicion, and accusation. The damage they have done, and continue to do to the foundational democratic institutions of the U.S. will take decades to undo. Even now the traitorous liars who still support Trump will watch this piece of flim flam film garbage, and proclaim their own vindication. There will come a time when future historians regard the behavior of Trump supporters with amazement, because they will retrospectively clearly see that there wasn't even a trace of fraud in the defeat of donald Trump, and they will maintain that the MAGA gang very nearly brought an end to the American democratic experiment, an experiment which was nearly never completed. In any country which aspires to democracy an honest electoral system is foundational. And, as any political scientist will tell you, democracies do not function automatically, they work only when we the people make them work, by believing in it and participating in it. For this, it is necessary to have faith that the system is honest, when all indications are that it indeed is. The tragedy of Trump and his supporters is that, without reason, they have undermined the faith of we the people in the democracy we still so dearly hope to create.

Aborting

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN had a way with women, women other than his wife, a wife whom he did not see for the last five years of her life, because he was in France, among other women. He didn't even bother to write. His celebrity among the French brought him "benefits", despite his oldness and fatness. He also had very definite, and fascinating, attitudes towards women. Among them, that one should pursue older women, partly because they don't yell, tell, and are grateful as hell, but also, as he made explicit in his famous essay on women, women age, he asserted, from the head down; she who looks older in the face is yet younger below the neck. Benjamin was, as they say, a "body man". We must trust that he never told any of his paramours to "put a paper sack over your head".... Franklin also had views on abortion, not on whether it should or should not be allowed by law, not whether God ordains it or condemns it - nothing moralistic or legalistic, because in late eightheenth century United States abortion was neither a moral nor legal matter. Then, it was merely a part of life, and, so it seems, fairly common. So common that Franklin provided instructions on how to accomplish an abortion, in the comfort of your own home. This he did in a book called "The American Instructor", one of the most popular books of the day. It had originated in Europe, but Frnklin published an "Americanized" version of it. Essentially, the American Instructor was a basic knowledge book, containing instructions on how to read, write, do basic math, and it included a section on home remedies for common ailments, among them, pregnancy. Books in those days were prohibitively expensive, and an average American coffee table had a copy of the Bible, and a copy of "The American Instructor", if nothing else. The solutions to unwanted pregnancy included consuming nasty things and inserting even nastier things, and so forth. This information is presented here and is intended to remind us moderns that American cultural, moral, and legal history has no tradition of opposition to legal abortion from its inception. Opposition to abortion arose primarily in the late nineteenth entury, when laws outlawing it were passed piecemeal in several states. Abortion in early America was considered "normal", private, and of no concern to anyone other than the mother. Nobody seems to have gotten their panties, as we say today, bunched up over it. Truly, the question should not be decided by nine people, most of whom have never been nor shall ever be pregnant. So perhaps the forthcoming Supreme Court decision, in which abortion laws will be placed, or rather "replaced", in the hands of the states, will, ultimately, prove to be the best solution. We can then have it both ways. If one doesn;t want to live and support a united state in which abortion is legal, one can, as Ronald Reagan used to callously say: "vote with your feet".

Dealing With Race, Somehow

MENTION THE WORD "RACISM', and the variety of reactions is enormous. Some folks insist that racism once existed, but no longr does, and that we should all jsut stop worrying about it, and it will go away, because it isn't there in the first place. Stranged as that is, perhpas the strangest people are the racists themselves, people who, surrounded by millions of human beings all with billions of unique, individual personal characteristices, can't seemt o simply accept the reality that every person has a unique, individual color skin, if you look closely enough, and that, in the grand scheme of things the precise pigment of someone's skin is, well, rather...trivial. We just can't seem to get there, to racelessness. we seem to have given up on our old stragety of "color blindness", because it forces us to pretend to be unaware of something which not only exists, but exists rather blatantly. Somehow, there is something disingenuine about being "color blind" racially. We tried, long ago, "black is beautiful"; that too seemed somehow patronizing, artficial. Many of the people who are actually willing to acknowledge that racism is still very much with us are resigned to its seeming inevitability. I have heard them say things like: "Racism has always been part of human culture, and it always will be." This isn't true either. IN faxct, there is not the slightest indication of racism existng in human culture before the middle of the fifteenth century, when Europeans used the dark skin of Africans to justify reducing them to slavery. The European enslavement of Africans, first practiced by the fifteenth century Portuguese and Spanish explorers, precipitated racism, our modern folly. There is no document in any library or collection in the world yet discovered which, before the fifteenth century, makes reference to "race" as a human condition. To give credit where it is due, considering that it took human civilization thousands of years of non-racist life to even invent something as bizarre as racism; once we got started, we certainly made up for, and continue to make up for, lost time. White supremacy is indeed as old as the United States, which was founded upon racist ideology, but over the past several decades has has reared its increasingly large head. Our modern version of white supremacy, its birth and growth, has parallelled the racial equaily civil rights movement, enogh so to be justly considered a reaction to civil rights, or, as we say these days, a "pushback". Racism post world War Two emerged as an adjunct to conservatism in general, as a fringe extremest movment, but, since the Obama presidency and the Trump movement, has become much more mainstream. Many of our regular American mass murders, including the most recent one, were motivated by racial hatred, white supremacy. The continued influx of immigrants to the U.S. from countries in which most people have brown or black skin fuels the fire; it got Trump elected. Our most modern, far right incarnation of racist ideology has a fancy sounding name, as many idiotic ideals often do. "Replacement Theory" fits in quite well with our current culture of conspiracy theories. According to this nonsensical approach, there is a deep, dark, hidden conspiracy on the part of somebody or other to eliminate "white" people, and to "replace" them with dark skinned models. In Trump's bizarre worldview, the Mexicans are "sending", as if by highoy organized endeavor, rapists and murderers to the United States. Furthermore, let us not forget Trump's description of African countries as "shit hole" countries, and his expressed preference that future immigrants come from Norway. Frist, you elect a black president. That in itself is enough to bring the good ole white boys out of the wood work. The result? A racist president, 2017-2021. We're still reconvering from that. Maybe someday we will.

Just Noticing, Somebody's Missing

SINCE 2005, the population of flying insects in the United Kingdon has declined by sixty percent. Not only is it shocking the severity of the decline, but even more so, it is shocking how recently the decrease has occurred. The methods used to determine this are varied; counting the number of smashed bodies on "number plates" (what are called "license plates" in America) being among them. The term "U. K. " or "United Kingdom" refers to the entire island; England, Scotland, and Wales. Similar declines in insect population have been documented in much of Europe. In the United States and North America, measurements are less comprehensive as of yet, but scientsts suspect a similar decline has taken place. The causes are many, but the main ones are destruction of habitat, fragmentation of habitat, and environmental chemical pollution, including insecticides. People of a certain age will notice that over the decades our cars seems to collide with fewer bugs. The decline in windshield insect collisions has indeed been considerable, studies reveal. It may well be that we the human race hate insects so much, find them so annoying, and have become so accomplished at eradictaing them from our immediate environment - that we are on the verge of eradicating them entirely from planet Earth. The only problem with this, unfortunately, is that if insects go extinct, so do we humans. So does all life on Earth, so important is the place of insects in the greater eco-system. Insects pollinate plants, perpetuating plant species, the plant species upon which all animal life on Earth depends for its existence. In the United Kingdom there is growing interest in restoring the insect population by restoring insect habitat, forests, pasture land, and so forth. Climate change is upon us, far earlier than predicted, and is going to get worse, fast. That's why all these environmental projects; reforestation, restoration of wilderness and habitat, cleaning up the oceans, among others, are so urgently necessary. The great ongoing mass extinction, well documented and far worse than anyone could have imagined, is closely related to climate change and the general environmental pollution human activity has had and continues to have on the planet Earth. We humans are to blame - for all of it - and must change and stop it.

No Mowing In May, Maybe

I FIRST HEARD ABOUT IT on the radio, which, since I lack Cable or dish or internet, is the way I learn about most things. I'm Hooked on NPR. The idea originated in Europe, if I'm not mistaken, and spread across the ocean to Appleton, Wisconsin, a city of about seventy five thousand. A total of about several dozen cities in Europe and the U.S. are "participating" in "No Mow May". according to which participants pledge to refrain from mowing their lawns dkuring the entire month of May, to give insect populations a chance to profilerate among the tall grass, weeds, and wildflowers. Obviously, with the internet, at least one person in every city in teh world of more than a ffew people will find out about "No Mow May". It may be that by the time the idea really gets rolling and millions of people ready to participate - May will be over. Well, maybe next year. I heard about the idea early in the month, and decided to participate. I made it all the way to May twelfth before I changed my mind and cut my grass, part of it anyway. The rest I will do within a day or two, doubtless. In consolation I was assured by at least one intelligent person that had I truly waited until June to cut my grass, I would have been confronted with a veritable jungle. Still, I think its a great idea. Indeed, maybe it would be a great idea to mow our lawns less often in general, to let the grass get taller, and not mind a few weeds and wild flowers here and there. We humans must remember the somtimes inconvenient fact that the outdoors, all of it, is supposed to be, so it seems, insect habitat. Wipe out all insects off the face of the Earth, the human race, and every other species of life, plant and animal, goes extinct. And that is preciesly what we, humanity, are doing; wiping out the insect populations worldwide, with our industrial activity, our lovely carpet-lie front and back yards, and so forth. I have a fairly big yard. Maybe, jsut maybe, I can set aside a small part of it as wilderness until June. I like the idea of designating a small part of my yard, - and I'm guessing that I have just a bit less than a half acre - as wilderness habitat, and just leaving it alone. When I bought the land and built the house all those years ago, it was a vacant lot, with basically nothing growing on it. I went to work changing that immediately, and now all these years later I have a yard full of mature trees, shrubs, and thisk grass, with a few weeds thrown in for the insects. My days of fighting weeds and insects are over. It might be refreshing to walk, bike, or drive through your averagne American suburban neighborhood and see a vista of overgrown yards with flourishing wildlife rather than acres of slick smooth green carpet surrounded by browm privacy fences with graying warped boards.

Suppressing Knowledge

CONSERVATIVE EFFORTS to reshape America by reshaping by legislation what is taught in America's public schools are ongoing efforts in about half the united states. They can be classified in two or three categories. History, especially racial history, and sexual orientation, and science, including evolution and climate change. Censorship of books constitutes a separate category, all of which create a pattern by sharing in common the following characteristic: they are all attempts to suppress, to stifle knowledge. It is reasonable to ask whether there is ever any good reason for stifling knowledge or censoring books. Laws prohibiting any mention of or reference to various sexual orientations, including gay and transgender, in grades K-12 are being passed in several states, and many of the books being banned by school districts are being censored precisely because they present a favorable viewpoint towards acceptance of diverse sexual orientations. How shocking and scandalous, to actually allow books encouraging tolerance to enter our nation's public schools! Political conservatism in America has for decades if not centuries tried to limit learning in schools in service to traditionsl religious beliefs. Human evolution by natural selection, a scientific fact, has been atacked as unacceptable and kept out of American schools since Darwin's book was pubisehd in 1859, because it isn't mentioned in the Bible. The essentially same crowd, the far right religious, is currently engaged in a nationwide project to keep climate change from being taught in public schools, or to teach it merely as a matter of opinion. As obvious as it already is that climate change is real, it will only become much more obvious over the next few years; how much longer can we keep it secret from school shildren? Thus is the impact religious conservatism has on learning, knowledge, education. The great twentieth century philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell famously believed that no person should ever be prevented from learning anything he or she wishes to learn, for any reason. Many of the most respected scholars in the field of education agree. The actual extent of diversity in sexual orientation ia only in recent times becoming fully known, as some western cultures, American included, have become more tolerant of sexual diversity, and gay and transgender people generally are more willing to reveal their sexual orientation. Regarding gays and transagenders, the cow, so to speak, is out of the barn, and long gone. Whether or not school children learn about all this in school or elsewhere, they are going to learn about it, and are going to live in a world more accepting of it. History, of all subjects, must be taught completely and truthfully, even if there are delicate and sensitive white kids who might, once they know the real extent of their ancestors actions, feel just a tinge of shame...

Teaching Climate Change, Maybe

WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL the term "climate change" was never mentioned, because, like the wheel, it hadn't been invented yet. Actually, various scientists, including Einstein, had mmentioned it throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but few paid any attention. Just for the record, Einstein was strongly in favor of it. The expression "global warming" took hold in the nineteen eighties, then morphed into "climate change" as the second millennium waned, and the third began. My teaching career was in social science, lasted well into the twenty first century, and no textbook, lesson plan, or state or local school board requirement required that I mention climate change; every time I mentioned it, which was often, I deliberately tried to scare the crap, so to speak, out of the students, thinking that so doing might slightly increase the number of people in their generation who would grow up and actually try to fight climate change. My great contribution to saving the world. I hope it works. A new monograph by journalist, researcher and writer Katie Worth, "Miseducation: How climate Change Is Taught In America" explores a topic of vital interest to all. She scanned through hundreds of textbooks, interviewed hundreds of teachers, parents, and administrators, sat in on classes in dozens of schools across America, and compiled an extensive data base. The most evident and somewhat shocking conclusion from all this was that the fossil fuel industry and conservative America have for years worked together to supress the teaching of global warming-climate change in public schools, primarily by emphasizing the economic benefits of the fossil fuel indistry, and by emphasizing the false notion that the scientific consensus remains uncertain about whether climate change exists, and if so, what its causes are. Teaching scientific reality, that climate change is human made and that it seriously threatens the future of the human race and all other life on Earth is often painted by corporate and conservative interests as mere progressive propaganda, rather than demonstrated reality. A psychological process called "preference denial" comes into play. Children of conservative climte denying parents are told at home that climate change is a lie told by liberals to justify big government, and to simply cooperate with the teacher at school, and to write down answers on tests that the teacher wants to see, such as, climate change is real. The fact that America's public education system has been and continues to be so strongly influenced by conservative politicicians and politics is reflected in local school board elections all over the country. Cimate change is neither liberal nor conservative, is very real, a clear and present danger, and should and must, for the sake of America's children and America's future, be taught honestly in America's public schools. Climate deniers can either lead, follow, or, as we say, get the hell out of the way.

Sifting Through Facts

QUESTIONS LIKE "Is The United States a racist country" are of as much interest, and maybe more, to history, sociology, and psychology researchers and professors as anyone else. Most folks seem content to merely express a personal opinion on the matter, without going to all the trouble to actually find out by using research. Academicians prefer the hard work that goes with research, and the demonstrable knowledge, the certainty of results, which comes from all the hard work. Finding out whether racism exists within the criminal justice system, for instance, is very simple, in theory. Simply compare outcomes in law enforcements and in judicial proceedings for white and black defendants. The devil is in the details; accumulating, categorizing, counting millions of cases a year. Bottom line, in America, if you're in trouble with the law, you're a lot better off being white than black, period. Ths history and sociology departments of probably every major university in the world have asked this basic question, done this research, research didctated by circumstances, and arrive atthis conclusion: America, alas, remains a racist country today, having always been one. Arguing with facts is pointless, but of course try telling that to a conservative with a head full of false, dellusional notions like stolen elections, climate change hoax, Covid conspiracy, and so forth. The method is: if you don't like the outcome, simply deny its existence. Thus, Biden's election victory becomes a hoax, a scam, as do climate change, and racism in America; another one of those inconvenient facts about which the far right does not wanto to, and therefore refuses, to hear. And therefores, all across freedom's land, in right wing state after right wing red state, iditic laws are being passed by far right wing fact deniers prohibiting public schools from teaching the truth about racism, past and present, in America. This is tragic and disastrous for the simple reason that racism past and present is a reality in America, a fact, and we must accept facts and reality, not deny them merely because they conflict with our world view. Denal of fact and reality is how primitive, ancient religions remain widespread in a world which no longer has any real usse for them. In America, tens of millions of people continue to delude themselves, about elections results, about climate change, and about the reality of racism, and these delusions are deadly dangerous, and must be opposed at all levels.

Deciding, Logically

ROE V. WADE was "passed" during my senior year in high school, with graduation starting to loom over the horizon. I have a pretty good memory of hearing about it on the evening news in January, 1973. but I can't seem to remember my reaction to it, if any. I can't seem to remember anything at all about my reaction to it at the time, which is strange because by then I had already become politically aware, interested, and active, having the previous fall successfully campaigned for the reelection of President Nixon, which to me at the time seemed eminently justified, but soon thereafter came to seem insane, at best. My best guess is that I agreed with Row v. Wade in late January, 1973, and probably wondered why it took so long to arrive. Much as I dislike the jist of the decision striking down Roe which seems likely to be handed down by the nation's highest court, I can see that it might all turn out for the best after all. I heard an intellligent conservative say on the radio that nine people shouldn't decide whether we kill babies. Although I strongly disagree with and object to his wording, I can see his point. I might respectfully suggest that most doctors and medical and biological professionals and scientists agree that many if not most abortions do not kill a baby, but rather, terminate the continued development of what would eventually have become a baby. There is a difference, a difference which is important enough to clarify honestly, rather than deliberatly obfsucate with misleading words. In some united states abortion will be legal, in ohters it will not be. And, why not? The overarching battle will be to determine which viewpoint can take over the federal government. Federal mood swings. Many people, including legislators and magistrates, turn to two inviolable sacred sources for guidance and direction on abortion; The U.S Constitution, and the Christian Bible. Problem is, neither one says anything, anything at all, about abortion. Why we keep looking, or why we ever started looking in either document is the first place for guidance or divine decree about what to do about abortion - when it simply isn't there - is one of those questions for the ages, an eternal mystery, and, maybe, just maybe, one of those "only in America" situations. When the question of whether abortion should be legal in the United States first and finally cane to the Supreme Court, the immediate presumption was: "The answer is, surely must be, in the constitution. The answer to everything is in the constitution." Nobody seemed to know why, or seemed to ever figure out that, no, the answer to abortion is not in the constitution, and never will be, unless we or somebody puts it there. We still keep looking for it there, in both the constitution and the Bible, as if by so doing it will magically come into being, and we will eventually find it. Before we can go any farther in solving the problem, we must somehow dispossess ourselves of the false fantasy that either one of these venerable doceuments will ever tell us anything about abortion, and that therefore, heaven forbid, we must decide for ourselves.

Digging

WE NOW KNOW that on the day of the Capitol insurrection, January 6, 2021, Republican leaders in congress and Trump supporters and allies in general were shocked and horrified, panic stricken to the point of trying to get through to Trump to urge him to stop the violence at the Capitol, or to even resign, as evidently Kevin McCarthy suggested at the time. Many denouned trump's role in the nightmare, and stated their insistance that Trump be held accountable. Then, they went silent. Silent they remain to this day, or evasive. What happned is probablyl nothing so dramatic as Trump's thugs and goons getting to the G.O.P. leaders, "persuading" them to stay loyal to Trump. More likely, they began over time to see that the huge majority of Trump supporters were remaining post-insurrection Trump supporters, a surprising development, although it was probably predictable. Considering Biden's increasing unpopularity and the fact that there are as yet no Republican presidential candidates declared, you have to conclude that Trump has as much chance as anybody to get elected president in twenty twenty four. Even now, the Trump juggernaut is lurching towards a twenty twenty four presidential campaign, full steam ahead, and speaking of the insurection is taboo, as taboo as failing to accept and embrace the claim that the election was stolen from Trump, by somebody or other. We also now know that the events of that fateful day - the big Trump rally near the white House, the violence, the immediate aftermath, were all carefully planned and orchestrated well in advance by many people, many at the very top levels of government. So far more than eight hundred insurrectionists have been indicted and charged with federal crimes, and every single one of them says the same thing: that they did it beause President Trump told them to. If Trump is indicted, tried, convicted of incitement to insurrection, and sent to prison, he could still, under the constitution, run for president, get elected president, and serve as president; from prison. The constitution says nothing about abortion, and nothing about convicted felons bieng prohibited from running for president, getting elected, nor serving. As people like to say: "Let that sink in". Donald J. Trump, president again, from prison. Or even if not from prison, the very notion of Trump and his insurrrectionist-violence prone evangelical Christian far right lily white supporters having any real political power in America is horrifying to the point of being unthinkable.

The Ruling Minority

THE BIG SUPREME COURT LEAK adds fuel to the cultural war fires burning throughout American society, stoked by conservatives-republicans who seem to think that focusing on issues of personal and community standards and values is their key to success. It isn't. Despite apparant legislative victories in conservative states around the country, it is an indisputable fact that a majority of Americans do not embrace the conservative cultural-moral agenda, opose it, and instead support progressive values. For example, far more than fifty percent of Americans believe that Roe v. Wade should be upheld, all polls and surveys reveal. People are starting to notice that a minority, a Republican minority, is governing the country, despite Democrat majorities in Congress and the fact that a majority of Americans lean center left. A combination of gerrymandering, grass roots projects to pack the nation's courts with conservatives, the electoral college, and other undemocratic forces are creating a situation in the United States in which the far political right has far more power and influence than is warranted by their sheer numbers. All these crazy new state laws prohibiting abortion, prohibiting teaching American racial history acurately, prohibiting any reference to gay and transgender people in schools - are we leaving anything out? - are unpopular even in the states in which they are being enacted. Having grown up in conservative soceity, having been surrounded by conservatives my entire life, one thing I know for certain: conservatives do not like homosexuality and transgender people, no matter how you slice it, no matter how you split and parse the semantics. For conservatives, homosexuality is something negative, something bad, something to be avoided and condemned. Hence the laws "springing up" around the country suppressing gay culture, including censoring and banning books which contain a pro gay or gay acceptance point of view. Progressives strongly oppose this conservative approach, and tend to believe that gay and transgender people should be treated like equals, with complete acceptance of them for who they are. Books containing positive attitudes towards them? The more the merrier! Censorship, especially of boooks, is traditionally a conservative approach. Radical liberals tend to oppose censorship, although there have envdeitnly ben instances in which misguided liberals tried to ban "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" because Mark Twain used the word "nigger" in both of them, which, of course, is equally ridiculous. Progressives are evidently going to have to fight for gay and transgender rights as much as they will have to fight for women's reproductive rights. Laughably, dishonestly, conservatives justify their war against gays and transgender folks in schools on the basis of "parents rights", rather than the bigotry which actually motivates them. They have no answer to the simple, obvious question: What about the rights of parents of gay and transgender children?

Watching It All Unravel

IT HASN'T BEEN ALL that long ago. I think myabe it was about the time that young attractive lady was confirmed for the Supreme Court, Elizabeth Barret Browing, Amy Comey Barret, or whomever. The one with the voice of a teenager, and hard ass far right personal political ideology, her single most important qualification for placement on the nation's highest court. Suddenly the Supreme Court had become six three far right wing, and many progressives, on social media, and in real time and real space, started panic predicting that the Supreme Court would now, because of Trump's three picks, overturn Roe v. Wade. As is often the case, I couldn't keep my mouth shut when perhaps I should have. With western movie star confidence I calmly predicted, with self assurance, that Roe v. Wade would never be overturned, by any court now or in the future, that Roe v. Wade is settled law, and settled law stands. I really believed it. I cited for myself and to others several times, wome in recent memory, when a conservtive Supreme court made a liberal decision, such as legalizing gay marriage and upholding Obamacare. Supreme Court justices are people of such high caliber and intellectual perspicacity that they tend to transcend their personal beliefs, ideologies, and prejudices, and interpret the law based upon their best reading and understanding of the law, full stop, as people say. Boy, was I ever wrong. All of my progressive colleagues told me it was out of my mind to even think for a moment that the new Trump far right wing Supreme Court would leave Roe. v. Wade in place, that it was doomed, and that I had better get ready to accept that stark reality. Resolute and unmoved, I stuck to my guns. Boy, was I ever wrong, or so it now strongly seems, what with the publication of the leaked Supreme Court rough draft opinion which goeth viral even as we speaketh. But relly, when you think about it, Roe v. Wade was decided on rather sketchy" grounds, on the basis of the implied but not explicitly enumerated "right to privacy", which progressives believe all Americans inherently possess, and which strict constitutional constructionalist conservatives do not. According to the "leaked" (stolen) document, the current court brilliantly makes the argument that the United States constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to an abortion. Nor, of course, does our seemingly sacred constitution say anything at all about abortion, but, like the Holy Bible, is silent on the matter. Somehow, doesn't it seem at least a little bit strange that nine unelected people are responsible for deciding this issue? Biden now says that he plans to promote legislation guaranteeing legal abortion - what took us so long?