Liberals, Conservatives and All That Jazz

I just finished reading Leonard Mlodinow’s book, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, in which he tells the history of statistics and shows how we are inclined to find (and trust) patterns where there are none. Our illusions about significance, he says, blind us to how much chance rules our lives. In his crosshairs are, among other things, polls, wine ratings, sports scores, and the stock market.

This is the kind of book I love: rational, demonstrable, skeptical, and amused at the human ability to willingly delude ourselves into meaning where there is none.

While I enjoyed all the statistical blunders he describes (including the OJ trial), one of the founders of the field of statistics he discusses particularly interested me for another reason. This is one Thomas Buckle who wrote two volumes of a planned trilogy on European civilization from a statistical point of view. The third never materialized because he caught typhus in Damascus and died in 1841. This might be unexceptional except a doctor offered to treat him, an offer Buckle declined because the man was French. Therefore, as Mlodinow points out, Buckle died.

British xenophobia aside, I find myself imagining a modern counterpart: Mr. Buckle as a Republican choosing death over being treated by a Democrat.

While we may dismiss my musing as merely playful, I wonder if that’s not what has been happening in our politics. Rather than solve anything together, both parties would prefer to see the patient die while pointing the finger at one another and calling one another names.

This leads me to another musing: why has the word liberal become so vilified when the word conservative is just as culpable. Both words describe the outer edges of the bell curve Mlodinow describes. Statistically neither side of the statistical deviation has any claim to moral majority, liberals and conservative claim about 30% on each end, with the rest of us clumped somewhere in the middle. Yet the conservative deviation has set itself up to be the middle.

Conservatives, of course, are (primarily although not exclusively) Republicans who disapprove of the party and wish to distance themselves from policy decisions that are unpopular or difficult to defend. They claim it was Republicans (not conservatives) who allowed themselves to be bought and sold by corporate interests thus bringing on the corporate bailout; it was Republicans (not conservatives) who took the country to war on the basis of a flimsy excuse; and it was Republicans (not conservatives) who racked up a massive budget deficit.

Conservatives like to cherry pick the ideals of the party. They argue they are fiscally prudent, flag waving patriots, free enterprise supporters, and believers in free enterprise and American predominance in the world. Their banner holders are the new populists who promise to listen to the people (until corporate money starts pouring in). You must forgive my cynicism here as, being senior, I have seen so many protestations of political virtue dashed upon the rocks of opportunity.

I must admit I am no fan of liberals either when they display the same absolute behavior (and they do). That I find the moralistic posturing of the conservative right more annoying is really my own problem. My particular wrath is reserved for the invisible hand (and not Adam Smith's) that runs the government and country.

That invisible hand is not the marketplace but Big Business and Big Finance. I've talked before in this blog about how corporations are not governments and I am discouraged how many segments of the population simply cannot see the larger picture any more than they can see how their own behavior contributed to our meltdown.

Our gullible media (itself a corporation) does from time to time expose the corporate benefit behind the Middle East wars, yet the same people raising hell over lapel pins can find nowhere near the same anger against the financial manipulations that have robbed us of pensions and home values; in fact, they seem poised to vote back in the very same people who allowed the mayhem in the first place. I am confounded.

Corporate America will support conservative candidates because they will be less likely to regulate the financial markets; it does not take much to predict where they make the major contributions in their own interest. The recent Supreme Court decision means they have no limitations on their donations to political campaigns, so there will not be even the pretence of covert funding. Conservative candidates can be expected to reap a funding bonanza.

Given all this, I don’t understand why anyone would want to be called conservative, let alone choose that name for themselves, when it implies being a stooge for big money. Liberal is bad enough—but to be called conservative? I’d be pretty upset if someone tried to call me that.

Tea Parties and The Holy Land Experience

The sociologist in me is fascinated by the emergence of rival tea party factions in the midst of what pundits are calling a grassroots reform movement in the US. I'd love to believe that but I despair when I hear that the "rival" groups are actually being managed by an organization paid to consult for the Republican party and the two supposed factions are managed by offices next door to one another.

The cynic in me is really my own personal bullshit meter but now and then it is capable of becoming un-cynical (for want of a better word) until it finds evidence yet again of the inconsistency, corruption, and moral vacuity of a large part of the world. I'd love to believe that tea party people are really thinking for themselves, but I think it more likely that a bunch of people operating on enthusiams and unexamined assumptions about how the world should be are being manipulated yet again for somebody's profit.

Let me state here that I have nothing against the founding principles of the Reublican party. What I object to is how this party allows itself to be bought by corporations who have no interest in anything other than themselves and to be directed by a bunch of religious nuts. I could probably live with the corporations. They at least are not hyprocritical--they've made it clear from the start that all they're interested in is profit, which at least creates jobs. I cannot live with the religious mentality that goes to the Holy Land Adventure exhibit in Orlando and weeps at the reenactment of the crucifixion, complete with rock singers dressed in Arab clothing. "Come thrill to the Crucifixion, real blood!, talk to the Virgin Mary."

Yes, you must be saying, she watched Bill Maher's Reliculous. I did. It's slanted, it's no respector of unexamined belief, and it hits on the the most bizarre nonsense associated with all the world's major religions. I laughed. I looked on in horror. And I realized that we need to do more of what I call choosing to believe, with emphasis on the choosing rather falling down in awe before so-called authority. We don't need graven images these days when we have televised evangelicalism.

Those of you who have heard me hold forth on the subject of religion know I am not anti-religious if you define religion as spirituality. I am anti organized-religion where hypocritical hucksters create laws and ideas not in any Bible (as if a bunch of nomads living in the desert long before technology are really that authoritative), and use these phoney ideas to leech money from their followers. If humans are made in the image of their creator, surely they have enough sense to judge for themselves what they believe in. Are we so poverty stricken that we cannot accept our own spirituality unless someone is giving us the latest made-up laws to get into whatever we define as heaven.

America, Reublicans, Religionists, let's for heaven's sake get over this absolutism that has taken us by the necks and look at ourselves in the mirror. Your unexamined belief and willingness to wallow in a bath of emotion is paying off for someone or it would be promoted and enforced.

There are no answers. No one can give you the laws for living except in the most day to day forms. No one can promise you a heaven of your preference. You aren't going to get raptured up to heaven--no one is that lucky. If this world is destroyed it is not the creator who does it--it will be us.

A Pair of Recluses in Arizona

It’s been six months now since we made the decision to bring the travel trailer down to Phoenix, site it permanently in an RV resort, and turn ourselves into part-time snowbirds. During those six months, much has happened, including an offer to publish my second novel from a commercial publisher, and the end of the on and off decision making process by which I decided not to sell the Denver house just yet. But far and above has been the learning curve involved with becoming semi-gypsies.

I must admit that some of the learning curve was anticipated—living small and spare is different from living in a large suburban house with basement and crawl space into which to stuff things that have dubious immediate purpose and only a “maybe” future ahead of them. Storing the unnecessary in an RV is undesirable if not impossible, so what is not obviously essential finds its way to the well-stocked local thrift shop. I have six hangers in my little bedside closet and that—as they say—is that.

The more important learning curve has, however, has involved something more profound since it touches on who we are and, more definitely, who we are not.

When we started this adventure, we were open (for us) to breaking out of our conventions of social behavior. In other words, we started conversations with fellow campers and looked forward to participating in planned resort activities. There was a morning coffee group of older gents that suggested Sid would not be always looking at me as he drank his; there was a hiking group we both could join; and there were planned social events such as potluck dinners and breakfasts.

While we were happily imagining this world of social contacts, however, we forgot a basic component of the whole equation. We forgot that we were us.

The old gents coffee klatch turned out to be a morning bitch about politics (liberal, black president)and things that go wrong with RVs. A large percentage of the park residents turned out to be blue collar or retired small business owners with McCain-Palin stickers on their trucks. We were fortunate in finding the only other couple (we believe) who are middle of the road like us. They were classier than us—daring to have an Obama-Biden sticker on their truck—but the message to us is clear: Arizona is a red state, the RV is a red zone, and we don’t fit in.

The hiking group turned out to be a group of “getting to altitude and staying there” extreme hikers (extreme for a group of supposedly over 55 anyway). We went with them on the first hike, a fairly simple walk in Lost Dutchmen Park. Ordinarily this park has some of the most mellow walks in Apache Junction, but the group went at a fast clip and ostentatiously stopped for the stragglers (us) to catch up to them. We were holding them back and let us know it. We decided to go off on our own in future. Last time I looked, they went hiking on Picacho Peak south of Phoenix, which has a fixed rope because of the steepness, a trail so narrow around an outcropping that is has a wire cage to catch anyone sliding off, and a reputation for having “no mercy” on hikers. OK—glad we passed on that.

The social events were a study in insanity. No matter how early one arrived, the best tables were marked with post-its as being reserved. This practice was apparently approved since many of the attendees were returners and wanted to sit with friends made over a number of years. Same time next year has real meaning in the park.

Reserving tables ahead of time meant that newcomers without these associations were relegated to the left-over seats around the perimeter with no chance at meeting people. At New Year’s, we got there early only to crushed so tightly against a wall people had to get up to let us out, Even though we’d bought tickets, we left without eating.

The worst evening as far as I was concerned was the so-called Hawaiian night. It was potluck so I cooked a ten pound pork butt, haole kalua-pig style. It made a mound of shredded meat so huge I thought I’d have left-overs to bring home. I don’t know what the others thought was Hawaiian food (one lady brought a small bowl of hominy???) but whatever it was there wasn’t enough. The food ran out before the diners did, something that would never have happened in Hawaii because of the custom of generous sharing.

Then to make matters worse they had “Hawaiian entertainment,” consisting of clowning around in Dollar Store raffia skirts. I was so offended I gave a short demonstration of the few steps I knew to the song they were jumping around to. There’s a picture of me on the web now in which I look a complete and overweight idiot. To me what they were doing was as bad as making whooping sounds and claiming it to be American Indian.

So, we’re now back to being our usual socially reclusive selves. We’re enjoying the weather, the park is safe and convenient, and we’re doing what we want at our own speed but except for Bob and Lynda, we are by ourselves.

And we’re finding it quite all right.

On the Back of a Whale

The Japanese say that their country rests on the back of a whale and earthquakes happen when the beast shifts its position. I've always liked this concept. Beside requiring an incredibly accommodating whale, it reminds us the planet is not inert but alive in the sense that there is a limit to the nonsense it will endure from us.

Now, I'm not saying we are responsible for earthquakes. In the face of no better way to understand their causes, I subscribe to the theory of plate shifting and continental drift. I lived almost 40 years in Hawaii. People living in the Islands know all about moving hot spots as the plates shift. In fact, the newest island, Loihi, is forming now under the ocean off the Big Island.

What I'm saying is if we can't control earthquakes, surely we can control ourselves. If we believe we are on the back of the whale, then common sense says we should respect the animal and understand it will behave like a whale. Why are we surprised when the whale shifts and brings earthquakes and tsunamis? Why are we wasting our time listening to ignorant claims of a pact between Haiti and the devil? It's the whale, for heaven's sake, just doing what it does.

I feel the same impatience watching people in Haiti being dragged out of sub-standard housing that collapsed around them as I felt when I watched Katrina survivors begging for water and food. Worse, I have every expectation that we'll see scenes just like this again when one of our West Coast cities is devastated as New Orleans was. Just what we will need: the media yet again arriving (when relief workers supposedly can't get in) to report every juicy detail of human misery and then provide fodder for the pundits comfortably back hime to shovel out their uninformed guesses and unhelpful speculations.

In fact, sad though I am for those in Haiti, it's the media that I am most discouraged about. Haitian family members in the US and around the world need to know about their loved ones and old neighborhoods, but this continual replaying of the same scenes recalls those dreadful days after 9/11 when we had to endure hours of watching the planes hitting the Twin Towers. It was pandering to our own worst tendencies to want to be entertained. Panders, in fact, is what the media have become in their desperate attempt to keep ratings.

Back when I was in college, eons ago, Marshall McLuhan was just hitting the circuits. His idea was prophetic: he said the medium was the massage (sic). He used the word massage because he wanted to say that the new form of instant communication and broadcast were inevitably going to shape what was broadcast. Today, our technology allows us to view and review (ad nauseum) human suffering and at the same time distance ourselves from it. We have no way to process what we are seeing except to watch it unfold like a movie or television show.

Our technology has, in my personal and admittedly senior opinion, debased our abilities to think metaphorically. Perhaps if we could envision the earth as a living creature, we might be better at not assuming arrogantly that everything here is for us to use and discard (a viewpoint for which I will not forgive the creation myth in Genesis). We might be better at helping our fellows instead of judging them. We might be better at remembering John Donne's words that no one of us is an island, even if some allow themselves to be smug and comfortable and moralistic.








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Christmas and Progress

I've decided in my older years that the best part of the season is Christmas Eve. This is the one day when everything is possible. Because it hasn't happened, the next day still holds the potential for a happy day and for gifts that won't leave me scratching my head over what to do with them. On the eve, I can think only positive thoughts about family without having to watch the day deteriorate as someone raises the issue of Health Care or Iraq. Yes, Christmas Eve is lovely. It's the one day that resembles those phony picture of snug sentiment, yule logs, and eggnogs, that we are fed by our media and by our own faulty memories. The reality is something more complex in many fractured families. I've come to the conclusion that whoever hosts a family dinner probably loves the guests best as they leave.

Still, eve or not, I find myself engaged with the idea of progress. This idea did not jump unasked into my mind, as the poets say. I read an article in the latest edition of the Economist, which asked the question about where there had been progress we could point to and how we might measure it if we felt there had been. The essayist went back into history to find examples of what might be considered "progress," and finally identified two areas in our lives where there had been change for the better. These were science and the economy (he was talking about the changes since the Industrial Revolution when there was no real middle class and working conditions were appalling). This being the Economist, the article conluded with a lecture on the need for regulating both science and the economy, with which I heartily agree but would also add on religion.

It's an interesting question about progress and I don't think the Economist essay is anywhere near the last word. For example, xactly what is progress? I've often heard the word coupled with the phrase "you can't stop," as in some juggernaut of change that carries both posiive and decidedly negative outcomes. They put through the high speed railway from London to the south coast, a positive, but threaten one of the most scenic parts of Kent in the process--far beyond negative, I should say, and venturing into lunacy. Yet, none of us would deny the massively positive changes that medicine has brought us, just to use one example. Or the conveniences of travel that we take for granted.

Most of us think of progress as a change that is rational, productive, and helpful. Even if I accept this definition, though, I reserve the right to hedge on whether things that meet this criteria are always beneficial. Keeping someone elderly alive at the cost of their suffering doesn't meet my requirement. Progress in this area would be someone talking wisely to me about end of life issues when I am there rather than assuming that every single day of my life is equally valuable. I shall come back and haunt anyone unwise enough to keep me artificially alive just because the science allows it.

At one point, the essayist admits that many measures of progress are really accounting: how many infants die, how long people live, how much money they earn, and so forth. And I fully agree with him. As I write this and think about this question of progress, I find I would define it another way. I would ask, how more self-aware have we become because of the advances in our world? Are we better people? Are we wiser in setting our standards for our own ethical behavior? Have we learned to accept the responsibility for thinking rather than choosing sides as if we were playing the Super Bowl? Have we asked ourselves not just what we think but why we think it? Have we gone into that journey within to face who we really are and accept that we are not always right and not always nice.

One of the Greek or Roman philosophers (it's late and my Bartlett's is back in Denver) said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Yessss. That's what separates te truly thoughful: they don't spout regurgitated ideas from someone else. They form their own ideas and accept the accountability for them. My idea of progress then is a time when by education and tempermanet we are able to look dispassionately at ourselves. This to me is the real, hard work of living. Until then we are still the same grubby, competitive little animals we ever were no matter how long we keep ourselves alive or flaunt our wealth to our neighbors.

Fairy Tales Our Parents Taught Us

This new business with Tiger Woods has prompted me to revisit the whole concept of relations between men and women and what we think we know about them. In our culture, we expect a monogamous relationship, partly because that’s what our various religions promote but also because, for good or bad, our society has decided the primary beneficiaries of marriage should be the children and children do better, we are told, in stable, two-person relationships.

Obviously, not every culture agrees and there have been and are societies that foster multiple marriages, mostly increasing the number of permitted wives in what seems the idea that if you can afford her, you can have her. Interestingly (to me anyway), examples of marriages with multiple husbands don’t come quickly to mind—mine anyway. I must admit to a bizarre admiration for anyone who can satisfy and keep happy multiple partners; it seems hard enough to maintain a positive relationship with just one, human beings as complex as they are. Again, though, that’s just me.

Still, I found myself thinking about this whole business between men and women and marriage as I watched Tiger Woods venture into the tabloid media and lose forever any semblance of privacy. He’s going to be the Paris Hilton or Brittney Spears of the golf world ever after. I hope he’s got a strategy for dealing with the inevitable heckling when he’s on the golf course again (we do so like to create heroes and then judge them).

The problem is, in my humble view, this culture tries to define the roles of men and women from two conflicting viewpoints, power and so-called “family” values.

Many young women—I’ll start with them since I know them better—have all too often been encouraged to look on marriage as salvation. The myth of Snow White says it all. The man is supposed to be rich and powerful to deserve her. All she has to be is beautiful. Through her husband, she can enter a world of power (his) and comfort (provided by him) and all she has to do is have children (to cement her position in his life and his bank account), maintain a household, and keep herself in shape.

Unfortunately, this world outlook has a lot of pitfalls and a great many drawbacks. For one thing, it makes the woman/wife completely dependent. It also makes her vulnerable to other marauding women who envy her lifestyle and would like to replace her. This is particularly the case when the husband is famous and wealthy. I’d say attractive, but that doesn’t seem to be a requirement as long as the bank account is.

I’ve been watching a marriage here in Colorado where this pattern plays out. Not that he’s rich and attractive, but he is the breadwinner and she’s never worked. She is completely dependent on him and he doesn’t try to hide his contempt for her. Of course, this is the failing of both parties, but because she doesn’t want to work she’s made a deal with the devil in order to be kept. He derives pleasure from the feeling of power over her lack of power. A sick example of this pattern, but I think it makes my point.

Many young men, on the other hand, seem to be socialized to compete for the trappings of power. Cars, boats, technology—all are advertised with pictures of provocative models—young women who fit the culture’s idea of beauty. The message is clear: earn big bucks and you’re entitled to the benefits. It doesn’t matter if your breath melts plastic or your stomach pours over your belt, you’re entitled to all your money can buy. Unfortunately, there are any number of women only too willing to be bought.

Hence Tiger Woods’ problem. He has a gorgeous wife and gorgeous children and “family values” say that should be enough. But at the same time he’s wealthy and operating in the world of power, best exemplified by Bill Clinton who answered “Because I could” when asked why he’d strayed..

When men stray, there are the inevitable defenses and accusations. I read in somebody’s blog that it must be Woods’ wife’s fault since she must not have been giving him enough sex. Don’t ask me how the blogger came to that conclusion since she’s had a child recently and they must have had sex sometime. Someone else I know said straying is built in to the entire male sex since they would all do it given the opportunity. Well, I don’t see where that is true either.

So I think we need to take a look at the fairy tales we’ve been force fed, particularly about marrying princes and princesses or even, in this case, contracting celebrity weddings. Being the best golfer in the world doesn’t really mean Tiger can have every bimbo and gold digger on the planet without having his business sold to the National Enquirer. Nor does being married to power and money really mean that the happy-ever-after and the prince of his wife’s dreams were ever guaranteed.

Ms. Palin's Cheesecake

I never thought I’d say thank heavens for Sarah Palin. I finally see some use for her beside (dangerous) comic relief. She's a glorious side street to national affairs. What’s really tickling me is how her calculated self-promotion makes amazing study in contrasts with the serious business being done quietly in the nation.

What has prompted my reconsideration of her is the cheesecake photo on the cover of Newsweek. There she is in shorts, making the most of her trim figure and posing like a swimsuit model. I found myself saying to her, “Wow—go for it. You’re the best diversion the nation could have because while we’re watching your narcissistic nonsense, the government can go on about its quiet and needed reforms.”

Talk about bread and circuses to keep the crowd roaring. She does it all by herself.

Thousands of lobbyists ferreted out of advisory committees:. Has she noticed? Does she care? Ms. Palin dons her shorts and does a perfect imitation of a gold digger: I’ve got it, baby, I’m flaunting it, and I’m gonna get rich.”

Parts of health care reform squeak through in the senate: Our Sarah does a book tour through the small towns where her adoring fans are more likely to be found than in the more educated and cynical cities, the very places she would have to carry if she were a serious presidential candidate.

Careful calculation and risk assessment start to reduce unemployment: little Miss Nike tries stir up the birther theory that Obama isn’t US born, an idea thoroughly discredited by Hawaii, the Hawaii newspapers, and ME (I saw his mother pregnant with him).

A weary Obama authorizes more American troops to Afghanistan: Ms. Palin announces a new political theory of tit for tat. “I was swiftboated over my son, Trig; therefore, it is an acceptable strategy. Let the dirt begin, it’s all fair in the political process.”

Ms. Palin never found a fork in the road let alone took the high one.

But, as I said, I have a new appreciation of her role in the world. While the emotion-driving, fearful, credulous among us have found their heroine, she is busy focusing their attention on her. I can envision Ms. Palin in shorts and provocative smile on a campaign poster for one of her opponents. Presidential? Hardly.

I had been worried that some populist swell would put her into contention for 2012. Oh she’ll be around and she’ll make a lot of noise and she’ll undoubtedly come out with some advantage for herself—but, baby, as all the aging bimbos can tell you, enjoy the ride because it doesn’t last longer than you’ll be able to pose in shorts for Newsweek. .
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