HinesSight

Bill Maher has become an irritating purveyor of liberal myths

I've been watching Bill Maher ever since his Politically Incorrect days. When he turned up on HBO with his Real Time With Bill Maher, twenty seasons ago, I watched him there.


I still enjoy Maher. But the past few seasons, and maybe longer than that, Maher often acts like a caricature of a one-time liberal who now takes excessive pleasure in attacking what he believes are overly "woke" Democratic/progressive positions.

I've got no problem with Maher doing that, so long as he doesn't twist the truth to make his point. Which, he does with disturbing regularity.

Last Friday's Real Time show was a good example of this.

His guests were Bari Weiss and Tim Ryan. I guess you could call them centrists. Ryan, a Democrat, ran for Ohio Senator against JD Vance in the 2022 midterm election. Weiss was recruited by Elon Musk to make a big ado about not much in the recent Twitter Files saga.

A central theme of Friday's show was how the American people are fed up with the woke positions of Democrats. (This has been a theme of previous shows also.) 

So there was a lot of tut-tutting about how in many parts of Ohio, and rural areas generally, having a "D" after your name can be a death knell for your election chances. OK, an obvious point, but fair enough. But I keep waiting for Maher, Ryan, or Weiss to bring up an equally valid point.

In virtually every large big city in the United States, having a "R" after your name pretty much dooms your election chances.

So why doesn't Maher spend as much time asking what Republicans need to do to win back urban voters as he does asking what Democrats need to do to win back rural voters? I also couldn't understand why Maher and his guests didn't bring up the 2022 midterm results.

There sure wasn't much of a sign that voters were fed up with Democrats because of their excessive wokeness. The Dems picked up a seat in the Senate, maintaining control of that chamber. And the Dem losses in House races was hugely below expectations. They took control of some Governorships and state legislatures.

Rather than House Republicans having a 30-40 seat majority as many pundits predicted, the GOP just has a narrow four seat majority.

Thus it seems clear that the Democratic Party is alive and well in the United States, contrary to all the doom and gloom about Dem popularity expressed by Maher and his guests.

Another thing that irritates me whenever Maher brings it up is the notion that all across the country, young children are being indoctrinated by teachers in the supposed Liberal Commandment of gender fluidity.

Maher keeps claiming that rather than teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and other core competencies, liberal elementary school teachers are spending much of their classroom time talking about how wonderful it is that some children have two mommy's or two daddy's.

Bill Maher loves to cite individual anecdotes as if this proves anything. Actually, it doesn't. If Maher presented solid data on how frequently teachers of young children are bringing up gender issues, and used an anecdote to back up those data, that'd be fine.

Instead, Maher likes to talk about a single anecdote that he or his staff dredged up, then uses that anecdote to draw broad-brush conclusions about how wokeness is destroying our educational system. 

That's a lousy way to make an argument. Maher should know better, but he appears to have entered a largely fact-free zone on his show. 

Lastly, I can't disagree with Maher's often-stated point that obesity is a big problem in our country. He's correct that obesity is a risk factor if someone gets Covid. But it's a bit simplistic for Maher to say that all it takes for someone to lose weight is will power. 

Meaning, just eat less and you'll lose weight. I've read about numerous scientific studies that show how some people have a natural, probably genetic, propensity to obesity. Sometimes a person's metabolism is out of whack, which makes it really tough for them to lose weight. Medication and surgery may be called for in some cases of obesity.

When Maher and his guests talked about the horrible food in the school meal program, they didn't mention that during the Trump years, it was Republicans who stood in the way of making school breakfasts and lunches more nutritious. 

On Friday, USDA Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps proposed new rules for the Food and Nutrition Service that would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them license to sell more pizza, burgers and fries to students. The agency is responsible for administering nutritional programs that feed nearly 30 million students at 99,000 schools.

Social media reform is needed, but the market mainly should decide

Today NBC's Meet the Press devoted its Sunday morning hour entirely to a discussion of social media: what's wrong with the way things are now on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and such, along with what needs to be done to fix those problems.

It's a complicated subject with no easy answers. Here's what stuck in my mind after watching the program.

Algorithms. Social media sites typically use computer algorithms to determine what gets shown to users. (Twitter is an exception, at least if a third party app is used to access Twitter, which I do. I only see tweets from the people and organizations I follow, and I see all of their tweets, in chronological order.)

This encourages anger and divisiveness, since negativity generally draws more views than positivity, cute animal videos notwithstanding. Several Meet the Press guests called for more transparency in how the algorithms work. But it's unclear what this means.

A Republican congressman, who made good sense, argued that government regulation of the algorithms could cause more problems that it solves. Who decides what is divisive or misinformation? Even hate speech, while easy to decry, is difficult to pin down. Stand-up comedians often make jokes about "sacred cows" in our culture. Are those jokes hate speech or free speech?

Maybe I have a libertarian side when it comes to social media, but I'm wary of regulations that tell social media companies what content to prioritize to their users. So what's the alternative?

Market forces. I agree with several people on this special Meet the Press program who said that if social media companies don't operate in a fashion that users like, many of those users will head elsewhere. To some extent this has happened with Twitter after Elon Musk took over and mostly dismantled company efforts aimed at curbing extreme hate speech and harmful disinformation.

The woman who was a Facebook whistleblower in 2021, I think it was, tried to make an analogy between government requiring seat belts and other safety equipment in cars and regulation of social media companies. 

However, it's a bit of a stretch to do this.

Cars are an essential part of life for most people. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter aren't. Sure, they're addictive, useful, fun, and entertaining. But social media doesn't kill tens of thousands of people a year. And many social media users enjoy them just the way they are.

If someone finds Facebook, or whatever, distasteful, they can stop using it. When enough people do this, the social media company will realize that the market has spoken and changes need to be made.

Section 230. This is the part of the Communications Decency Act that prevents social media providers from being responsible for content put up by users. Here's how the Electronic Frontier Foundation describes Section 230.

Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do.

The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish.

Most of the Meet the Press panel members seemed to think that keeping Section 230 is a good idea. I agree. It would be a nightmare if social media companies were legally responsible for all of the content uploaded by its users. This likely would lead to increased censorship of that content, since social media companies would want to be sure that they couldn't be sued by someone upset with user-generated content.

A better approach, someone said, is what happened with Alex Jones. He was successfully sued by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre after Jones repeatedly and loudly claimed the children weren't really dead. And Fox News is being sued by Dominion voting machines after hosts on the network said that the machines produced fraudulent election results. 

So in egregious cases the legal system can be used to punish libel. There's no need to make social media companies watchdogs over everything users upload on their platforms. 

Section 230 is meaningful to me because I'm an extremely small social media platform, having three blogs, two of which date back to 2003 and 2004. I've always allowed comments on my blogs. I go back and forth on moderating comments. Mostly I haven't moderated them, though occasionally I'll delete a comment that doesn't fit with my comment policies.

Here's what the Electronic Frontier Foundation says about blogs and Section 230.

CDA 230 also offers its legal shield to bloggers who act as intermediaries by hosting comments on their blogs. Under the law, bloggers are not liable for comments left by readers, the work of guest bloggers, tips sent via email, or information received through RSS feeds. This legal protection can still hold even if a blogger is aware of the objectionable content or makes editorial judgments.

Thus I'm very much against Congress messing around with Section 230, unless the changes were minor and didn't alter its free speech provisions. 

Elon Musk's Twitter antics are hurting Tesla's image

Until Elon Musk bought Twitter and started acting like a right-wing maniac, I had a favorable opinion of Musk. Sure, he had some annoying quirks. That comes with being one of the richest people on the planet.

But overall I viewed Musk as an eccentric genius who was doing good things for the world. He made Tesla into a great company, jumpstarting the electric car revolution sorely needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

And his SpaceX company has made great strides in developing innovative advances in rockets, including booster stages that can land themselves and be reused. SpaceX also is responsible for getting my wife and I out of internet hell, a.k.a. dismally slow CenturyLink DSL, when we were able to become beta testers for Starlink satellite internet, which has worked great for us.

Now, though, I'm seeing Musk very differently. What really pushed me over the edge from like to dislike was this recent tweet of his about Dr. Fauci, who I respect greatly.

It's incredibly dumb for Musk to be so blatant about his extreme political views. I follow him on Twitter. These days Musk sounds more like a QAnon crazy person than a CEO. 

Look: I realize that corporate CEOs tend to be politically conservative. But usually CEOs don't throw those views in the face of current and prospective customers. I love my Subaru Crosstrek. I have no idea who the CEO of Subaru is, and obviously also am clueless about what this person's political persuasion is.

That's the smart thing for a CEO to do. You don't want to antagonize a big share of your customer base by trashing their politics. Yet this is what Elon Musk is glorying in doing, and it's hurting the image of Tesla among those who buy a big share of Tesla cars: Democrats.

It used to be cool to drive a Tesla. Now I see a Tesla and think, "There goes someone who helped Musk buy Twitter and say that Dr. Fauci should be prosecuted." I may end up owing a Tesla someday. However, there are ever-increasing choices in electric cars. I'd rather that my money not go to benefit Elon Musk, so I'll look more closely now at other brands.

(The situation is different with Starlink, since we have no other choice for high-speed internet out here in the "wilds" of rural south Salem, a mere six miles from the city limits of Oregon's capital.)

I found quite a few stories about how Tesla's image is going downhill now that Musk is preoccupied with kissing up to right-wingers on Twitter. Here's some examples, along with excerpts from the stories.

Tesla's approval rating sinks into negative territory, survey finds
Tesla’s approval rating has fallen fast, according to one survey. Yes, like politicians, automobile makers have approval ratings.

...The electric-car maker started 2022 with a net-positive score of 5.9%, then peaked in May at 6.7%. In early November, it fell to a negative -1.4% reading.

YouGov found a political divide in the numbers. As the Wall Street Journal explains, “self-described liberals now view Tesla more negatively than conservatives, though conservatives also have a negative view of the brand on average.”

What changed to influence opinions so radically? Tesla CEO Elon Musk famously bought the social network Twitter at the end of October and has been a prominent figure in the news for reshaping its operations.

Elon Musk is about to learn that liberals -- not his new deplorable pals -- buy Teslas
I drive a Tesla. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sometimes it feels like a third of people around me drive Teslas. I see lots of Teslas in New York City, Austin, and Seattle. I don’t see many of them in Alabama, or the Florida Panhandle or mid-Pennsylvania or Idaho, or anywhere else that’s mostly conservative. 

Yet Elon Musk has decided to literally destroy his personal brand—and Tesla’s along with it—in his bizarro turn toward the QAnon dark side. As I’ve been saying for a while (on Twitter), this was never going to end well for Tesla.

...Looking at where electric vehicles are registered in Texas, just 10.12% are registered outside of the state’s four big liberal centers: Dallas-Fort Worth (35.75%), Houston (23.45%), Austin (21%), and San Antonio (9.68%). The vast Texas conservative hinterlands have little interest in Musk’s product. Woke California buys 42% of all electric vehicles—the vast majority in its urban liberal centers—while making up just 12% of the country’s population. 

Tesla is becoming a partisan brand, says survey
Tesla is becoming a partisan brand – losing the support of Democrats and gaining support from Republicans, according to a survey.

Leaders of large companies selling consumer products, like automakers and tech companies, generally refrain from showing direct support to any political party, especially in the US.

Due to the polarizing nature of politics in the US and its two-party system, it’s better to stay away from definitive statements of support one way or the other since you risk alienating large parts of the population.

That’s why it was so surprising to see Elon Musk tell his over 100 million followers on Twitter to vote Republican during the midterm elections last month and going as far as calling the Democratic Party the “party of hate.”

Regardless of your political affiliation, from a business standpoint as the leader of a company selling consumer products, it was a questionable move, and the impact is starting to be felt.

A survey from Morning Consult reported by the Wall Street Journal has been tracking changes in opinion about Tesla from people with different political affiliations. It shows that the number of Democrats with a positive view of Tesla has been tracking significantly down, while it’s up for self-described Republicans:

Tesla’s net favorability among self-described Democrats in the U.S. fell to an average of 10.4% this month through Nov. 27, down from an average of 24.8% in October, according to Morning Consult. It rose to 26.5% from 20% among self-described Republicans during the same period.

Jordan Marlatt, tech analyst at Morning Consult, went as far as saying that Tesla is becoming a partisan brand:

It seems like Tesla is on its way to becoming a partisan brand.

I love Twitter. Elon Musk, not so much.

When people ask if I'm going to cancel my Twitter account now that Elon Musk is in charge of the company, I say, Absolutely not. Then I explain why.

I love Twitter. It's one of the first things I check on my iPhone when I wake up in the morning. It's one of the last things I check before I go to bed. 

But I rarely use Twitter directly. I use a third-party app (Tweetbot) that collects tweets from the individuals and organizations that I follow, then presents them in a clean easy-to-use format.

I never see tweets from anyone I don't follow. I never see ads.

All I see is topical, interesting, provocative content from a wide range of knowledgeable commentators, mostly liberal in their politics. I also get tweets from organizations, including the Portland office of the National Weather Service, TripCheck (problems on Oregon highways), and the Kyiv Independent for up-to-date news about the Ukraine War.

Twitter is a marvelous way to keep informed on just about any subject that you're interested in. When economic news breaks, like a fresh inflation report, Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman shares tweets in my feed about how he sees that news.

I could give many more examples of why I adore Twitter. Now, I realize that people who use Twitter itself, not a third-party application, probably encounter more annoyances, such as ads.

But for me Twitter is very similar to Facebook. Apart from ads on Facebook, I don't see content from anybody that I don't choose to follow. So the argument that I should give up on Twitter because some Twitter users engage in hate speech or misinformation makes no sense to me.

The same thing happens on Facebook. Or any other social media platform. Since I don't follow people on Twitter who engage in hate speech or misinformation, I never encounter tweets with those qualities.

Well, with a few exceptions. When Donald Trump was on Twitter, I followed him off-and-on just to keep up on the crap he was tweeting about. It's easy to unfollow people and organizations, so when Trump got too annoying, I'd ditch him. Then I'd follow him again when I felt like it.

Since I'm a happy Space X Starlink satellite internet customer (was fortunate to be a beta tester of the service, which works great for us), I've followed Elon Musk on Twitter for quite a while. He's always been quirky, along with brilliant.

After buying Twitter, Musk has become irritating in many of his tweets, but I still follow him for the entertainment value. 

There's been a lot of discussion among the people and organizations I follow about whether they should stick with Twitter or migrate to a different platform. Most are staying put, for pretty much the same reasons I am. 

I have to admit, though, that Elon Musk runs the risk of ruining Twitter.

His politics seems to have tilted decidedly rightward. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. However, if Musk persists in allowing Twitter to be a haven for bigots, racists, and militant extremists, I worry that Twitter could enter a death spiral as advertisers jump ship and Musk's investment stops being financially viable.

What's perplexing is how someone as obviously intelligent as Elon Musk can be so ignorant about basic facts. Like the nature of the First Amendment and freedom of speech. 

Recently Musk got pissed off at Apple for suspending the company's advertising on Twitter. He viewed that action as anti-free speech, whereas actually it was very much in line with free speech. As an excellent story by David French in The Atlantic says, the First Amendment only speaks about government, not private actors.

Here's an excerpt from Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson don't understand the First Amendment. If you aren't familiar with the reference to "Twitter files," this relates to today's release of internal Twitter communications regarding a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop.

The First Amendment regulates government conduct. It does not regulate private actors. The text of the amendment itself says that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” That restraint on Congress has since been extended to apply to the U.S. government at all levels—local, state, and federal.

Activists have tried to argue that large social-media companies essentially function as the government, citing a line of cases that treat private parties as government actors when the private parties perform functions that are “traditionally and exclusively governmental.” Examples include running elections, private prisons, and so-called company towns.

But, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently explained, “hosting speech on a private platform … is hardly ‘an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed.’” Social-media companies are not the government.

This means the First Amendment protects Twitter, the Biden campaign team, and the Democratic National Committee. The “TWITTER FILES” released so far do not describe a violation of the First Amendment. Instead, they detail the exercise of First Amendment rights by independent, private actors.

One can certainly agree or disagree with the way in which they exercised those rights. Twitter’s decision to delete pornographic pictures of Hunter Biden was entirely justified and appropriate. Its actions to suppress the New York Post story about Hunter’s laptop were far less defensible. But they were Twitter’s decisions to make, and no amount of misguided rhetoric can transform a Twitter story into a government scandal.

I'm not an economist, but isn't unemployment worse than inflation?

Usually my response to bad economic news is to ignore it as much as possible. After all, what goes up must come down, and what goes down must come up.

So freaking out over short-term worries about inflation, unemployment, the stock market, gas prices, or whatever generally isn't justified. Typically, when things look to be the darkest, the economic sun is about to turn brighter.

Thus even though I find it difficult to look at my iPhone's stock market app first thing in the morning, because I don't want to get depressed before I've had breakfast (might as well wait for lunch to feel bad), until recently I was feeling pretty much OK about where the American economy was heading.

But now I'm wondering if Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, and his organization know what they're doing.

Economics isn't exactly a science like physics. In my perhaps overly cynical opinion, it strikes me as being akin to psychology -- a discipline that aspires to hard science precision, yet falls way short when it comes to being able to accurately model and predict reality.

Currently Powell says the Federal Reserve is deeply committed to fighting inflation. OK, inflation is a big problem, for sure. 

However, the rapid rise in interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve is threatening to produce a recession and high unemployment. Today Politico ran a story, "Dow hits 2022 low as markets sell off on recession fears." Excerpts:

Stocks tumbled worldwide Friday on mounting signs the global economy is weakening just as central banks raise the pressure even more with additional interest rate hikes.

...Energy prices closed sharply lower as traders worried about a possible recession. Treasury yields, which affect rates on mortgages and other kinds of loans, held at multiyear highs.

...The Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world aggressively hiked interest rates this week in hopes of undercutting high inflation, with more big increases promised for the future. But such moves also put the brakes on their economies, threatening recessions as growth slows worldwide.

Besides Friday’s discouraging data on European business activity, a separate report suggested U.S. activity is also still shrinking, though not quite as badly as in earlier months.

So even though the United States and world economies are looking more feeble,  the Federal Reserve and other central banks are planning to raise interest rates even higher because inflation is viewed as a more serious problem than a recession.

I guess that makes sense if you're a professional economist who isn't worried about losing their job, or a Wall Street type who makes money no matter what happens on Main Street. 

But since a recession will cause millions of Americans to be unemployed, it seems clear that if those future unemployed people were asked whether they'd prefer to have a job or to pay higher prices, they'd say that having a decent regular income is more important than having to spend a bit more of that income due to inflation.

Plus, higher interest rates hurt those with credit card balances, people needing a mortgage to buy a house, construction companies hit by lower demand for homes due to more expensive mortgages, and applicants for other sorts of loans.

Maybe the Federal Reserve will be able to pull off the "soft landing" that's a sweet spot where rising interest rates lower inflation to a tolerable level while the economy avoids a recession.

I'm just getting a sinking feeling that the Federal Reserve interest rate hikes are going to make us wish for more inflation and less unemployment before too long as the United States heads into a recession (which some argue is already here, at least in a mild form).

Remember Ukraine. American support can't waver.

It's been about six months since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In those dark early days of the war, it seemed highly unlikely that Ukraine would still be an independent nation half a year later.

Yet here we are, with the brave Ukrainians basically fighting Russia to a standstill. So let's remember Ukraine -- today, tomorrow, every day. 

If Ukraine continues to get strong support from the United States and our allies, there's a very good chance that before too long Putin and his Kremlin cronies will realize that the price of waging their unprovoked war against Ukraine isn't worth the loss of life, sanctions, international condemnation, harm to the Russian economy, and other problems Russia is facing.

The Ukrainian people won't give up their fight. The only way they lose this war is if key supporters, notably the United States, tire of supplying aid to Ukraine and punishing Russia. So preserving American public opinion in favor of Ukraine is crucial.

One way I remember Ukraine is by following The Kyiv Independent on Twitter. For more in-depth coverage of how the war is going, there's The Kyiv Independent web site. How this publication came to be makes for some interesting and inspiring reading in the About section.

The Kyiv Independent is Ukraine’s English-language media outlet, created by journalists who were fired from the Kyiv Post for defending editorial independence.

The Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s global voice, went silent on Nov. 8, 2021, days after celebrating the 26th year of its uninterrupted run.

The publication was shut down by the owner in his attempt to take full control of the newsroom that has always followed the principle of editorial independence. 

Yet, the editorial team of the independent Kyiv Post refused to be silenced. If we couldn’t save the Kyiv Post brand, we could save its values.

On Nov. 11, 2021, over 30 ex-Kyiv Post employees decided to continue the Kyiv Post’s legacy by launching a new publication – the Kyiv Independent.

The following values will serve as the backbone of the Kyiv Independent: 

• • The new publication will serve its readers and community, and nobody else.
  • The Kyiv Independent won’t be dependent on a rich owner or an oligarch. The publication will depend on fundraising from readers and donors and later on, commercial activities.
  • The newsroom will decide and execute the publication’s editorial policy in the community’s best interests. Attempts to influence it from outside will not be tolerated.
  • The Kyiv Independent will always be at least partly owned by its journalists.
  • The Kyiv Independent will strive to reach financial sustainability to preserve its independence in the future.

The team unanimously chose Olga Rudenko, former deputy chief editor at the Kyiv Post, who dedicated 10 years to the brand, to lead the new publication as editor-in-chief.

The Kyiv Independent is still in the making. The website you see is our first, temporary platform. 

As we embark on this new project, we vow to serve as the true, independent voice of Ukraine. 

The Kyiv Independent provides fair and reliable news on a variety of topics. From Russia’s war against Ukraine and disinformation campaigns to the ongoing pandemic and medical procurement, from human rights in occupied Donbas and Crimea to reforms in Kyiv, nothing will escape the view of the Kyiv Independent.

But we can only do it together with you. Join us today and become a part of Ukraine’s fight for a better future with the Kyiv Independent.

I can't celebrate Independence Day when freedom is under attack

I resonate with this image I saw on Facebook, though it doesn't go far enough.

Yes, the horrendous Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade took away the freedom of women in about half the states to choose an abortion. Thankfully, Oregon isn't one of them.

But there's plenty of other threats to the values our country was founded on. We're in grave danger of losing them.

Democracy. The January 6 committee is doing a great job of revealing the details of how close Trump and his enablers came to overturning the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden. What's even scarier, though, is how Republicans across the country are working hard to make sure that the next anti-democracy coup attempt, probably in 2024 but possibly as early as this year's midterms, succeeds. 

Further, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case about whether state legislatures have the right to choose their own presidential electors even if the candidate they favor didn't win the popular vote in the state. This could mean that state judges and supreme courts would have no say in such an attack on democracy.

Women's right to health care. It's bad enough that so many states either have made abortion illegal or are about to do so. It's clear that if Republicans win the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2024 they'll ban abortion nationwide. Already abortion-banning red states are working on laws to prevent women from going to other states for an abortion. This is blatantly unconstitutional, but it's possible the Supreme Court would let them get away with it.

Protecting the environment. It used to be that both major political parties agreed that protecting the environment was a good thing, since everything we value -- life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness -- depends on preserving the natural systems that keep us alive and our economy functioning. In other words, conservatives used to believe in conserving our air, water, and natural resources.

No more. The Supreme Court has undermined the ability of the federal government to deal with the carbon pollution that threatens the habitability of our planet through global warming. Polls show that most Americans want to reduce human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Sadly, our ability to do that has been diminished by an out-of-control Supreme Court that is functioning not as a legal body, but as an arm of the Republican Party.

Freedom to not be shot. Being 73, I'm old enough to remember when guns were used for hunting and target practice. I grew up in a rural community where the progression was BB gun, pellet gun, .22, deer rifle. No assault rifles. Very few handguns. We not only survived, we thrived, because mass shootings in schools or anywhere else were nonexistent.

Now the Republican Party and Supreme Court have decided that it's better to deny children and other people the right not to be shot and killed than to permit reasonable gun control measures. This doesn't increase personal freedom, it limits it, since the freedom to stay alive undergirds every other freedom.

Separation of church and state. Authoritarians like India's Prime Minister Modi like state-sponsored religions, in his case, Hinduism. In our country, increasingly, it's Christianity. The Supreme Court has ruled that a football coach had the right to pray in the middle of the field after games, surrounded by his team -- ignoring the fact that voluntary private prayer is fine, but coerced public prayer isn't. Atheists, Muslims, Jews and other non-Christians on his team would have felt they had to take part in the coach's praying. That's un-American.

I'm as patriotic as anybody. But I won't be celebrating Independence Day tomorrow. Or any day until our country demonstrates that it really cares about personal freedom and independence.

Right-wing extremism responsible for 10 mass shooting deaths

Yesterday thirteen people were shot and ten killed at a Buffalo supermarket by an 18-year-old white man armed with an assault rifle and high capacity magazines.

A day after one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent American history, law enforcement officials in New York descended on the home of the accused gunman and probed disturbing hints into his behavior, as Gov. Kathy Hochul promised action on hate speech that she said spreads “like a virus.”

The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, shot 13 people on Saturday afternoon at a Tops supermarket in east Buffalo, killing 10, officials said. Almost all the victims were Black — shoppers, grocery workers and a security guard bound together by little more than tragic happenstance.

But Mr. Gendron picked his target carefully, the police said, choosing an area known for its large Black population and even visiting the neighborhood the day before the attack in what authorities described as “reconnaissance.”

Clearly his motive was racial hatred. Gendron left a lengthy manifesto professing concern about the "great replacement" theory that bizarrely warns about white people being replaced by immigrants, Blacks, Jews, and Latinos.

Before embarking on a racist rampage in Buffalo on Saturday, the alleged gunman left behind a document denying membership in “any organization or group.”

“I am the sole perpetrator of this attack,” he wrote.

But the 180-page screed, which authorities are scrutinizing in connection with the massacre, leaves little doubt that the alleged perpetrator, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, belongs to a global fraternity fused by the Internet and fixated on the idea that White people are being intentionally replaced.

That idea, once relegated to the fringe, has gained currency on popular right-wing television programs and in the halls of Congress. The theory, known as the “great replacement,” has turned white nationalism into an international call to arms. The apocalyptic vision has accumulated followers during the coronavirus pandemic, which has deepened political polarization and accelerated the online flow of racist ideology.

All mass shootings are horrific. But they used to be mainly the work of deranged individuals who wanted to kill a bunch of their fellow human beings. 

Now, though, we're seeing mass shootings with a far-right political motivation. That's even scarier, since the crazy ideas motivating the killers are emanating from inside the Republican Party and right-wing media outlets like Fox News.

Tucker Carlson, notably. He's been spouting lies on his Fox show about how Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration so they can get lots of new voters, which is a version of the Great Replacement theory. This is an excerpt from the April 13 CNN story.

Obviously, Carlson was never going to apologize for or retract his remarks. But he could have chosen to ignore the controversy, move on, and let it die out. Instead, he did the opposite. Carlson opened up his show by first replaying the comments he made last week — comments in which he essentially endorsed the "great replacement" theory.

 

Then he mocked critics who were outraged he had done so. "It is amusing to see them keep at it," Carlson said of those who have called for him to be removed from Fox's air, a group that now includes the Anti-Defamation League. "They get so enraged! It's a riot!"

 

Making a mockery of those with very real concerns about his rhetoric wasn't enough for Carlson. He then went on to recite the core element of the "great replacement" theory, describing it to his millions of viewers as accurate. "Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party's political ambitions,"

 

Carlson said. "In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country." Carlson told his audience that the "goal" is "to make you irrelevant." He said it is "provably true." Over and over again, he referenced "demographic" change.

Now that ten people have been killed by a man motivated by the lie of the Great Replacement theory, Tucker Carlson should vow that he'll never bring it up again. Of course, he won't do this. Nor will a House Republican, Elise Stefanik.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers came under scrutiny Sunday for previously echoing the racist “great replacement” theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people while targeting Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo.

Yet Republicans around the country are passing laws against discussing race in schools because the United States supposedly has moved beyond racial discrimination. That obviously isn't true, a fact underlined by the deaths of the 10 people in Buffalo.

Mr. Gendron’s writings were littered with racist, anti-immigrant views that claimed white Americans were at risk of being replaced by immigrants or people of color, once-fringe ideas that have been given a fuller airing in recent years by some prominent conservative commentators.

On the far right, the theory, which sometimes blames Jews for fomenting the “great replacement,” has been tied to gunmen in several other mass shootings as well as the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va. that devolved into violence.

Our country desperately needs national gun control legislation. Sadly, the odds of that happening in Congress are slim to none, since Republicans will filibuster it in the Senate.

We also need to control the hate speech that is rampant in the Republican Party, which loves to denigrate immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and anyone else who doesn't conform to their archaic political views, including women who want to choose for themselves whether to have an abortion.

Vote for Democrats. That's the only way the United States is going to pull out of the moral tailspin Republicans have gotten us into.

Young folks, here's a tale of the not-so-good old days

Gather around the blog post kitchen table, young'uns.

(Which means just about everyone, since I'm 73, older than all but a few people reading this, but, hey, if you're a sentient Giant Sequoia, I'm a baby compared to you.)

I realize that hearing senior citizens talk about the good old days is just about the most boring thing imaginable. Not wanting to inflict that on you, I'm going to do something different.

Talk about the bad old days. 

I feel the need to do this because it wasn't all that long ago when I was a youngster just out of college who subscribed to the 1960's mantra, Don't trust anybody over 30.

Well, actually it was all that long ago, about 50 years. In that half century I've learned a few things. Not because I'm smart.

Because the sheer passage of time gives us baby boomers a perspective on where our country was way back when that impels our sometimes frantic desire to warn people about the danger of our country heading that way again.

Which is a clear and present danger, not the sort of warning my grandmother used to give childhood me, like "Never stand under a light globe where the bulb has just been changed, since the globe could fall, hit you on the head, and you're dead."

No, what I'm warning about is a very real commitment by a large share of the Republican Party to return the United States to the way things were when I was in high school, 1962-66. 

OK, not totally, obviously. The GOP doesn't possess a national time machine. We'll still have smartphones, big screen TVs, computers, and other benefits of living in the 21st century. 

What we could lack, though, may sound crazy to those who have grown up in an age of societal progress. However, let me assure you, as someone who grew up when the following were absent from the cultural landscape of the United States, that what was missing, then became a reality, can go missing again.

Meaning, progress isn't inevitable. Societies can go backward. Hard won gains can be lost. All it takes is people, and voters, becoming complacent, figuring that No way could our country ever return to...

Well, here's how things stood when I was in high school.

-- Women were second class citizens. Abortion was illegal everywhere. Girls couldn't wear pants in school. They could be cheerleaders, but could only compete in a few sports. Home economics was required. Getting a loan or credit card typically required a man's signature. Few women worked outside the home.

-- No such thing as LGBTQ rights. We knew there were homosexuals. But they were considered deviants. Any boy who seemed effeminate would be taunted with Queer! Homo! Faggot! There was zero discussion of gender identity or sexual preferences in school other than the traditional male/female. Any suggestion that gay marriage would ever be legal -- ridiculous.

-- Blacks lacked basic rights. I was six years old when the Supreme Court finally declared racial segregation in public schools to be illegal in 1954. But southern States fought the ruling for quite a few years. As late as 1963 Alabama governor George Wallace tried to stop Black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama. Racial discrimination in voting wasn't banned until 1965.

Our country has come a long way since those not-so-good old days. Problem is, there's strenuous efforts to reverse that progress by conservatives. They can't be allowed to succeed.

My fear is that younger people who have grown up without knowing anything other than equal, or almost equal, rights of women, the LGBTQ community, and Blacks will be complacent in the battle to preserve those rights against Republican efforts to turn the clock back to the 1950s and early 1960s.

Like I said, nothing is guaranteed when it comes to human rights and democracy. What seems impossible to lose can be lost. Hopefully this won't happen if enough people wake up and realize the need to preserve our hard-won social gains.

 

 

I'd like to trade Joe Biden for Volodymyr Zelensky

I'm a Democrat who is ever so thankful that Joe Biden is president rather than Donald Trump. But if I could trade Biden for President Zelensky of Ukraine, I'd make that deal without a second thought.

Zelensky is a fighter.

He's rallied the Ukrainian people behind him in their battle against Russia's invasion of their country. More: Zelensky has inspired the entire freedom-loving world by refusing to bow to the demands of Putin, an authoritarian ruler who is committing horrific war crimes in Ukraine, if not outright genocide.

Biden, by contrast, is doing OK in supporting Ukraine, but not nearly enough.

Biden is unduly afraid of Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons if the United States goes beyond sanctions and supplying military equipment to Ukraine, such as by protecting humanitarian evacuations and relief efforts via a limited no-fly zone to stop the killing of many thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

So Putin gets to draw red lines that the United States can't cross, while Biden and our NATO allies refuse to draw a very reasonable red line aimed at Putin.

Stop killing Ukrainian civilians and bombing entire cities into rubble, along with other war crimes, or the United States and NATO will force you to do that by military means.

Would that lead to World War III between the United States and Russia? Almost certainly not. Putin talks tough, but he isn't going to start a nuclear war over Ukraine. 

We're making the same mistake Europe did in the run-up to the Second World War. Assume that an authoritarian ruler, Hitler in that case, Putin in this case, will be content with merely taking over part of an adjoining country.

Didn't work then. Won't work now. 

Zelensky is absolutely correct when he says that Ukraine isn't fighting just for its own survival, but for the survival of the free world. I wish Biden would grasp that fact. If Putin succeeds in taking over part or all of Ukraine, he'll be emboldened to do the same with other countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

And China will feel freer to invade Taiwan, since the Biden doctrine seems to be, "If you're a nuclear power who invades a sovereign nation, we won't confront you militarily, but only by sanctions and providing arms to the country you invaded."

Pretty damn weak.

Plus, Biden initially was reluctant to give Ukraine all the weapons it needed to defend itself. Notably, a plan to have some NATO countries transfer MiG aircraft to Ukraine that Ukrainian pilots were familiar with fell through when the United States didn't want the planes sent to an American base in Germany before being flown to Ukraine.

A just-published New York Times story, "The U.S. Races to Arm Ukraine With Heavier, More Advanced Weaponry," reflects the mistake Biden made by dribbling out arms to Ukraine too slowly and cautiously.

As columns of Russian troops began pouring into Ukraine nearly two months ago, the United States and its allies started supplying Kyiv with weapons and equipment for what many expected to be a short war: sniper rifles, helmets, medical kits, encrypted communications, lots of bullets and the portable, shoulder-held Stinger and Javelin missiles that quickly became icons of the conflict.

Defying the odds, Ukraine held on to its capital and pushed Russia from the north. Now, as the Kremlin switches gears and begins a concerted effort to capture eastern Ukraine, Washington and its allies are pivoting as well, scrambling to supply Ukraine with bigger and more advanced weapons to defend itself in a grinding war.

The West is focused on sending longer-range weapons like howitzers, antiaircraft systems, anti-ship missiles, armed drones, armored trucks, personnel carriers and even tanks — the type of arms that President Biden said were tailored to stop “the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine.”

...Some argue the Americans are being too cautious.

“Seven weeks ago, they were arguing over whether to give Stinger missiles — how silly does that seem now?” said retired Lt. Gen. Frederick B. Hodges, the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe. “We have been deterred out of an exaggerated fear of what possibly could happen.”

...Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, repeatedly expresses gratitude for the aid but wants more, sooner. He admitted to being fed up with listing the same set of requirements over and over again to different national interlocutors, telling The Atlantic in Kyiv: “When some leaders ask me what weapons I need, I need a moment to calm myself, because I already told them the week before. It’s Groundhog Day. I feel like Bill Murray.”

Oscars blow it by a pitifully minor mention of Ukraine

Tonight's Oscars show was viewed around the world. It used to get hundreds of millions of watchers. Maybe that's less now.

Regardless, both those who put on the Oscars and those who won awards blew it by failing to take a much stronger stand in support of Ukraine against Russia's unprovoked invasion.

I watched every minute of the show.

I kept waiting for someone -- a presenter, an award winner, anyone -- to make some impassioned remarks about the bravery of the Ukrainian people and the need for freedom lovers everywhere to support their battle against Russia.

Instead, all we got was the bare minimum: a screen with a bunch of words that called for a moment of silence for Ukraine, along with a request to donate to Ukrainian relief.

Better than nothing. But just barely. 

I heard a lot of talk in support of deaf people, of LGBTQ people, of Black people. But there were only two verbal references to Ukraine.

After a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Godfather movies, if I recall the number of years correctly, one of the honorees said as he was leaving the stage, "Viva Ukraine." 

Wow. The Oscars ran about 40 minutes over the scheduled three hours.

So there wasn't time for a couple of minutes to honor the freedom fighters in Ukraine, who, while the Hollywood elite were congratulating themselves for being able to make movies, were risking their lives to combat the biggest invasion of a European country since World War II?

I guess not. Looks like the Oscars had decided that what the world needs now is 3 hours and 40 minutes of an award show devoted to wealthy people involved with movie-making patting themselves on the back.

The other verbal reference to Ukraine came from Amy Schumer, one of the three hosts, who said after making a humorous remark, "There's a genocide going on in Ukraine and women are losing all their rights."

Huh? Thousands of Ukrainians are indeed being killed. That arguably is a form of genocide, but it also is simply Russia bombing civilian areas rather than military targets. And I have no idea what Schumer meant by women losing all their rights.

Maybe she got Ukraine mixed up with Afghanistan, where the Taliban are indeed taking away women's rights.

Actually, many women and children in Ukraine are losing their lives, not their rights. Russia is forcing lots of Ukrainians to flee to Russia from cities being bombed by Russian forces, so I guess that could be considered a loss of rights.

I found this year's Oscars entertaining, but also deeply irritating. It astounded me that no presenter or award winner, neither of whom is at a loss for words, didn't use the world stage they found themselves on to draw attention to the horrors being inflicted on Ukraine by Russia.

Instead, I watched Will Smith rush up on stage and punch Chris Rock after Rock made a joke about Smith's wife. OK, she has hair loss, and Rock joked about that.

Chris made a comment about Jada's shaved head ... saying he couldn't wait to see 'G.I. Jane 2' -- which got some groans from the crowd, to which he just sorta shrugged off.

Chris didn't think he'd crossed a line, but Will clearly did ... because he stormed the stage and literally socked the dude in the face. A stunned Rock exclaimed, "Wow. Will Smith just smacked the s*** outta me."

The American broadcast on ABC muted, and even froze, but in other countries it continued ... and Will shouted "Keep my wife's name out your f****** mouth" twice to Chris.

Will Smith later made one of the most annoying acceptance speeches I've ever seen when he won Best Actor for his role in "King Richard." Smith kept saying that God had chosen him to do some amazing things, which apparently included punching Chris Rock and swearing at him.

Religious hypocrisy is the worst kind. Will Smith showed that tonight.

If democracy is worth fighting for in Ukraine, it is in the USA

It's too early to tell how Putin's invasion of Ukraine is going to turn out.

Currently a 40-mile long Russian military convoy is making its way toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Tough times lie ahead for the people of Ukraine, who have been fighting bravely against the stronger Russian forces.

But one thing is certain. The freedom-loving world has been inspired by the fierce determination of Ukrainians to preserve their democracy. 

Strong sanctions against Russia have been supported by most European nations, even including usually neutral Switzerland, which has frozen the accounts of Russian oligarchs and others targeted by the sanctions.

(Which is great news for everybody except criminals and authoritarians who believed their money was safe in Swiss bank accounts.)

FIFA, the soccer organization which isn't exactly known for taking strong political stands, has ruled that Russia isn't eligible to compete in World Cup matches. Likely this will sadden ordinary Russians just as much as having their credit cards no longer work. 

Today my 73-year old self was moved by a tweet about a Ukrainian man my age who said he's willing to die for his country.

That got me thinking. What are we Americans willing to do to preserve our own democracy in the face of attempts to overturn it?

Not though an invasion by an authoritarian despot, Vladimir Putin, but by followers of a homegrown would-be authoritarian despot, Donald Trump.

Those Republican sycophants are making it harder to vote in many states. They're targeting minority voters with no fear of pushback from a Supreme Court set on gutting federal election laws that protect the right to vote.

So far Congress has done nothing to prevent a repeat of the January 6, 2021 insurrectionist attempt to overturn the free and fair election that made Biden president of the United States. Conservative Democrats are teaming up with Republicans to stop steps to protect our democracy.

But many others are fighting at the local, state, and national level to fend off the clear and present dangers to American democracy. I'm hoping that the freedom fighters in Ukraine will inspire them and many others to battle as hard against authoritarianism in the United States.

While hundreds of thousands of women, children, and older men have left Ukraine, I've seen a report that 20,000 Ukrainian men who were in other European countries are returning to Ukraine to help fight the Russian invasion.

Deeply inspiring. Especially since here in the United States we're not being asked to risk our lives to save democracy, but to do some much easier things.

Vote, even if it is difficult. Support Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterms. Protest attempts to subvert our democracy. Urge politicians to pass legislation that strengthens voting rights. Contribute to organizations that register new voters and file legal suits to protect the right to vote.

This isn't as dramatic as firing a Javelin missile at a Russian tank. It's just as important though, since our democracy needs protecting as much as Ukraine's does, albeit not in the same way.

One thing we lack is a leader like Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine. He has been inspiring his people to fight the Russian invasion with all their might. Our President Biden, by contrast, has been largely absent from the fight to repel attempts to curtail or destroy our own democracy.

No matter. Eventually a leader may emerge in this country who will inspire like Zelensky has been able to do. Even if that doesn't happen, the main thing is to never give up.

Perhaps Republicans will succeed in stealing the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections. If so, don't give up. If Putin manages to install a puppet government in Ukraine, the Ukrainian people will turn to guerrilla warfare. 

They won't give up just because an authoritarian has won a few battles. They won't give up until they've expended every ounce of energy fighting for democracy. We Americans need to have the same attitude.

Never give up.

Protests against vaccines and masks are super selfish

Tonight we had a meeting of the monthly Salon discussion group my wife and I are a part of.

We met via Zoom because even though some in the group, including Laurel and me, are fine with meeting in-person, others aren't.

So we do our best to accommodate those who are most wary of coming down with Covid, even though everybody in the group is fully vaccinated and boosted. 

This is called being reasonable. Also, unselfish. Doing what you want only is justified if that action isn't going to harm other people. 

I'd like to believe that most people feel the same way.

Freedom has limits. Someone might really enjoy driving while drunk, but this is illegal because of the danger to others. That handicapped parking space is conveniently located, but it needs to be reserved for those who really need it.

This also is the rationale for public health measures.

Each person has a responsibility to look out for the welfare of everybody else. Getting vaccinated and wearing a mask in indoor public spaces both protects the person doing these things, plus other people.

This evening we talked some, as we usually do, about the phenomenon of Trump. I noted how his superpower is shamelessness. We're used to leaders who try to hide their wrongdoing. Trump revels in his misdeeds.

While members of our group had some different ideas about why Trump still is so popular with Republicans (though his approval seems to be dropping), we agreed on some basic points.

Even though it's tempting to view Trump as the cause of the increase in overt racism, disdain for LGBTQ people, anti-vaccine/masking hysteria, and such, this is too simplistic.

It takes two to tango.

Trump is a master manipulator of the dark side in his followers, but he wouldn't be so successful unless there was a dark side to manipulate in a disturbingly large percentage of the Republican Party.

The protests currently happening in Canada show that Trumpist views are gaining traction in our neighbor to the north, as well as in some European countries.

I started attending protests while in college, 1966-71. Back then, as now, until Trumpism reared its ugly head, protests almost always called for a change that would benefit the common good.

End the Vietnam War. Stop unjustified police killings. Act to reduce greenhouse gases. Those were progressive causes. Conservatives had their own causes, such as the Tea Party movement that sought to reduce government taxation and wasteful spending.

I disagreed with those conservative causes, but I could understand that those espousing them sought their own vision of the common good.

In the Canadian protests, though, which are largely funded and supported by right-wingers in the United States, the main battle cry is "Freedom!" Not freedom for someone else. Not freedom for an oppressed group.

Freedom for the protesters to not have to be vaccinated, wear masks, or engage in other public health measures. They are demonstrating zero comprehension of why those measures are needed to prevent deaths, disease, and disability from exposure to Covid.

It's all about Me. Just as Trump is all about Him. Trump's shameless openness about his own selfishness gives an impetus to others to follow in his selfish footsteps.

Which don't lead to any sort of conception of the common good. No, those footsteps make a circular pattern, always facing inward to the desires of Me, Me, Me, with the welfare of other people completely irrelevant.

This is something that hasn't been seen before in American politics, nor in Canadian politics, I'm pretty sure.

A large share of a major political party being captivated by the notion that freedom isn't something to be fought for to benefit others, but solely to allow those protesting to be able to do whatever the hell they want, even if this harms their fellow humans.

MDMA research shows war on drugs is absurd

Sadly, I've never tried MDMA, otherwise known as Ecstasy or Molly. If I had, maybe I wouldn't have said sadly, since MDMA is a feel-good drug due to its ability to induce a massive release of serotonin, creating a feeling of well-being, love, joy.

In his book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion," Sam Harris describes an experience he had at the age of 19, taking MDMA with a friend in 1987.

The setting of our experience bore little resemblance to the conditions of Dionysian abandon under which MDMA is now often consumed. We were alone in a house, seated across from each other on opposite ends of a couch, and engaged in quiet conversation as the chemical worked its way into our heads.

Unlike other drugs with which we were by then familiar (marijuana and alcohol), MDMA produced no feeling of distortion in our senses. Our minds seemed completely clear. 

In the midst of this ordinariness, however, I was suddenly struck by the knowledge that I loved my friend. This shouldn't have surprised me -- he was, after all, one of my best friends. However, at that age I was not in the habit of dwelling on how much I loved the men in my life. 

Now I could feel that I loved him, and this feeling had ethical implications that suddenly seemed as profound as they now sound pedestrian on this page: I wanted him to be happy.

...The interesting thing about this final shift in perspective is that it was not driven by any change in the way I felt. I was not overwhelmed by a new feeling of love. The insight had more the character of a geometric proof: It was as if, having glimpsed the properties of one set of parallel lines, I suddenly understood what must be common to them all.

...The experience was not of love growing but of its being no longer obscured. Love was -- as advertised by mystics and crackpots through the ages -- a state of being. How had we not seen this before? And how could we overlook it ever again?

Sounds great. Sign me up for some MDMA!

Oh, there's a problem. According to an article in the February 2022 issue of Scientific American, "A Psychedelic for Trauma," this happened after MDMA began to be used as part of psychotherapy with people who had distressing memories.

In 1985 the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classified MDMA as a Schedule I substance, making its possession a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The National Institutes of Health subsequently spent two decades funding research that suggested MDMA is neurotoxic and often lethal.

Which isn't true, as a bit of Googling easily reveals.

Most people who have a toxic reaction to MDMA got an adulterated version of the drug. This is what happens when a drug is made illegal. People still use it, but they don't get the pure drug, since it is unregulated. The Drug Policy Alliance says in relation to overdosing on MDMA:

“Overdose” refers to taking a higher than appropriate dose of a medicine or drug, which can happen with MDMA, but is extremely rare. It is much more likely that a problem would occur as a result of MDMA use with contraindicated medications (such as MAOI anti-depressants), preexisting health conditions, overexertion, or dehydration. Given the highly adulterated molly market, it’s also more likely to see an unidentified substance cause problems, rather than MDMA itself.

The Scientific American story by Jennifer Mitchell describes a key reason MDMA got such a bad reputation. 

These early studies indicated that MDMA can promote long-lasting restructuring of serotonin-containing nerve fibers, but they also suggested that such changes occurred only in high doses and were reversible over time.

Then along came George Ricaurte, a neurologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who made a name for himself by touting the alleged neurotoxic and lethal effects of MDMA. Ricaurte claimed that "even one drop of MDMA can lead to permanent brain damage."

His findings, proclaiming that MDMA could ravage the brain and leave nothing but damaged fibers in its wake, were published in the Journal Science and used time and again by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to support the war on drugs.

These data were later retracted after it was revealed that amphetamine, not MDMA, had caused the reported neurotoxicity.

But it has taken us years to get beyond sensationalist antidrug propaganda posters in which phrases such as "This is your brain on Ecstasy" were splashed atop artificially colored brain scans, making it look as if MDMA, as one DEA official put it, "turns your brain into Swiss cheese."

Mitchell is both hopeful and appropriately cautious about the current efforts to restore MDMA as a therapeutic drug for people suffering from PTSD, depression, anxiety, and other mental problems. She writes:

At 15 study sites across three counties, working with more than 70 different therapists and with study participants with childhood trauma, depression, and a treatment-resistant subtype of PTSD, we have obtained incredibly promising results.

...And although there had been concern that administering new medication to people with suicidal ideation could worsen their problems, MDMA-assisted therapy did not increase measures of suicidal thinking or behavior. 

MDMA also did not demonstrate any measurable misuse potential (which should compel us to reconsider the reasoning behind the war on drugs and scare tactics of the 1990s).

For sure.

I'm happy that I live in Oregon, a state that has legalized marijuana, approved psilocybin (magic mushrooms) for therapeutic use, and is the first state to decriminalize possession of all drugs and greatly increase access to supportive health services.

It's time -- past time, really -- for the United States to say yes to drugs. Adults should be able to purchase legal, well-regulated drugs that they want to use either for pleasure or therapy/healing/self-improvement.

It's crazy that alcohol and nicotine can be bought everywhere, even though these substances are much more destructive than most of the drugs still under tight control by the federal government.

Nothing to celebrate on this Martin Luther King day

I was nineteen years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968. When it happened I was on a sophomore semester abroad in Zadar, Yugoslavia along with a couple of dozen other students from San Jose State College and a few professors.

I remember local people coming up to me and my classmates expressing sympathy for King's death in broken English. The same thing happened a few months later when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968.

That year, 1968, was a dark time for the United States. So is 2022. It's depressing that 54 years after King was murdered, our country is still struggling mightily to preserve the voting rights that he and other Black leaders fought for so bravely and vigorously.

Yet here we are, on Martin Luther King day, with the Senate scheduled to begin debating two voting rights bills that have a vanishingly small chance of becoming law. 

Senate Democrats plan to press ahead this week with an effort to push new voting rights protections through Congress, in an all but doomed attempt to enact a key piece of President Biden’s agenda that has been undercut by members of his own party.

The Senate on Tuesday will begin to debate legislation that combines two separate bills already passed by the House — the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — and folds them into an unrelated measure. The move would allow the Senate to bring the bill directly to the floor, avoiding an initial filibuster.

But that strategy would still allow Republicans to block it from coming to a final vote, and Democrats lack the unanimous support needed in their party to change Senate rules to muscle through the legislation themselves. Still, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said late last week that Democrats would forge ahead anyway, forcing Republicans to publicly declare their opposition to the bill.

“We all have to be recorded at this moment in time about where are we in protecting the right to vote,” Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “Right now, it doesn’t look like it has the votes to pass, but we’re going to cancel our Martin Luther King Day recess and be there this week because we think it’s so important for the country.”

Well, if it was so important for the country, why did it take a year after Biden was inaugurated for Democrats to get around to seriously pressing for passage of the voting rights bills? Biden has spoken dozens of times about coronavirus and infrastructure legislation. He's spoken exactly twice about voting rights, with one of those speeches last week.

It's easy to understand why Blacks who were key to electing Biden are so disappointed at his lukewarm commitment to voting rights. Politico says in today's Playbook:

For decades, MARTIN LUTHER KING III has heard his father’s words invoked by politicians across the ideological spectrum on behalf of all sorts of positions — even ones antithetical to his beliefs.

“Everyone believes or says they believe in the words and values of Dad, but they try to extract various portions to make it fit their narrative,” MLK III told me on Sunday. “I have to constantly challenge people and say, ‘No, that's not what dad meant; this is what Dad meant.’ I have to push back because every politician, every elected official is going to be out making statements about how ‘I loved Dr. King,’ ‘I support Dr. King,’ and then … they’re voting against voting rights.”

That’s why today, as Americans mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the family of the late civil rights leader is cutting through the usual lofty invocations to make a specific ask: “No celebration without legislation.”

“[CORETTA SCOTT KING], when she was working so many years to make sure that there was a King holiday, her vision of it always was a day of action — a day on, not a day off,” ARNDREA WATERS KING, MLK III’s wife, told me. “There was no way that we, in good conscience, could celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. this year without [progress on] the legislation that was the cornerstone of his legacy.”

Today, Arndrea, MLK III and their 13-year-old daughter will take part in the “D.C. Peace Walk” across Washington’s Frederick Douglass Bridge and hold a press conference with House Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Congressional Black Caucus Chair JOYCE BEATTY (D-Ohio) aimed at ramping up pressure on Democrats to move voting rights legislation forward ahead of a planned Senate vote on Tuesday. That’s an uphill effort: Neither the Freedom to Vote Act nor the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act have anywhere close to 60 votes in the Senate, and Sens. KYRSTEN SINEMA and JOE MANCHIN aren’t budging in their opposition to reforming the filibuster.

Be that as it may, the Kings don’t hold moderates on the Hill solely responsible for the lack of forward movement.

“What we’ve seen with President [JOE] BIDEN is what happens when he puts his full force and power behind an issue like infrastructure. What we want to see is that same power and passion being put behind voting rights,” said Arndrea Waters King. “We hope that [Monday] is a working day for President Biden.”

The Kings know that the short-term outlook doesn’t look good. But they see keeping the faith — and pushing it forward, no matter the odds — as central to maintaining the late Dr. King’s legacy.

“Had he lived, we would be a fundamentally different place,” MLK III said of his father. “[But] if he just arrived today as a 93-year-old man, he would certainly be very frustrated, but not deterred. He understood that you had to look at the long game. He’d certainly be disappointed that we seem to be going around in a circle. … Not only have we been down this road so many times, we are people who will not give up. We're not going to give in, we're not going to give out.”

I admire that determination to never give up.

But the sad truth is that Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have been working hugely harder to make it more difficult for minorities to vote than Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have been working to protect voting rights.

The time to start a full court press to pass voting rights legislation was the day after Biden took office. Now the Democratic push to do this is too little and too late, which is infuriating.

Lastly, if you're a progressive like me who supports voting rights, and you're open to reading something  really depressing, check out "How Manchin and Sinema Completed a Conservative Vision" in The Atlantic. Ron Brownstein lays out how dismal the future looks for voting rights, ending with:

The one force that was best positioned to resist Roberts’s zealous vision was the ability of Congress and a president to sign new laws reasserting federal voting protections. And now Manchin and Sinema, combined with the impenetrable Senate Republican opposition, have blocked that route—possibly for years. Without federal legislation restoring a baseline set of national voting rights, “it’s hard to imagine the political process delivering any sense of fairness that represents the will of the majority,” Nelson said. “I think the ramifications will endure for generations. It is truly that consequential.”

With crucial help from Manchin and Sinema, Roberts’s triumph now appears complete. And that could trigger a decade of struggle over access to the ballot, unmatched since the days of Jim Crow segregation.

"Woke Racism" is a great book

Today I finished reading John McWhorter's terrific book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

McWhorter is black. He teaches linguistics, American studies, and music history at Columbia University. He's appalled at the excessive wokeness of both blacks and whites who inhabit the far left side of the political spectrum and view race relations through a biased perspective.

Many people will agree with what he writes in Woke Racism. I do. Others will disagree with him. That's fine also. My goal is sharing these excerpts from the book is to encourage people to buy the book and read it.

McWhorter makes a strong case for woke racism being a serious problem. He writes well in an engaging fashion. Enjoy these passages, understanding that a mere 1,000 words out of the entire book doesn't do justice to McWhorter's fuller arguments that are encapsulated below.

Author and essayist Joseph Bottum has found the proper term, and I will adopt it here. We will term these people the Elect.

They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons -- empathic learning, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not.

"The Elect" is also good in implying a certain smugness, which, sadly, is an accurate depiction.

...One response to a book like this might be to own that Electism is a religion. You might consider it a better one than, say, believing that God's son died for our sins and was reborn, waiting to envelope you in his eternal grace if you believe in him.

This new religion is about countering racism. Who could be against that?

But we must ask whether the Elect approach actually shows signs of making any difference in the lives of black people, other than by making educated white people infantilize them. While purportedly "dismantling racist structures," the Elect religion is actually harming the people living in those structures.

It is a terrifyingly damaging business. Here is how Elect ideology does not genuinely care about the welfare of black people.

You are to turn a blind eye to black kids getting jumped by other ones in school.

You are to turn a blind eye to black undergraduates cast into schools where they are in over their heads, and into law schools incapable of adjusting to their level of preparation in a way that will allow them to pass the bar exam.

You are to turn a blind eye to the willful dimness of condemning dead people for moral lapses normal in their time, as if they were still alive.

You are to turn a blind eye to the folly in the idea of black "identity" as all about what whites think rather than about what black people themselves think.

You are to turn a blind eye to lapses in black intellectuals' work, because black people lack white privilege.

You are to turn a blind eye to the fact that social history is complex, and instead pretend that those who tell you that all racial discrepancies are a result of racism are evidencing brilliance.

You are to turn a blind eye to innocent children taught to think in these ways practically before they can hold a pencil.

...Electism calls for everyone who isn't white to found their primary sense of self on not being white and knowing whites don't quite "get" me. 

Electism forbids us non-whites from being individual selves, out of an idea that white racism is so onerous that our self-definition must be fashioned against it, despite that this vastly exaggerates the role of racism in most black lives -- including that police brutality, while appalling, is just one of thousands of types of experiences one goes through from cradle to grave, if at all.

Your Elect friend may claim that I am distorting what they believe. Ask them to specify just how it does so -- and the word-salad answer they craft while looking over your shoulder will show you that I am not.

...Let's pull the curtain back. Is the reason black kids often think of school as white that white people today don't like them, or that the system is somehow set against black kids learning? No. That analysis makes no sense, period.

Only a heedless, numb kind of fealty, a quiet refusal to engage the actual individuals we are talking about, would insist that "racism" is why a black kid, decades after 1966, gives a black nerd trouble for studying hard.

Racism sparked this problem originally, to be sure, but the solution today cannot be to wave a magic wand and "eliminate racism," because the teachers who exerted racism upon black kids three generations ago are now mostly dead.

...To be Elect is to insist that unequal outcomes mean unequal opportunity, which is false. The misimpression misdirects our efforts at change, by inculcating in us a blindness to how a society actually operates. The insistence on this mantra makes us dumb.

...On racism, Elect philosophy teaches black people that cries of weakness are a form of strength. It teaches us that in the richness of this thing called life, the most interesting thing about you is that the ruling class doesn't like you enough.

It teaches us that to insist that black people can achieve under less than perfect conditions is ignorant slander. It teaches us that we are the first people in the history of the species for whom it is a form of heroism to embrace the slogan "Yes, we can't!"

Elect philosophy is, in all importance, a form of racism in itself. Black America has met nothing so disempowering -- including the cops -- since Jim Crow.

...Nota bene: Don't get sidetracked by that person on the other side of the dinner table who says that the Elect are not a real threat compared with overtly racist right-wing extremists. Revolutions are always "messy," one hears, with the implication that in the grand scheme of things, the Elect's current reign is just a matter of the left working out some kinks.

Few people settling for this view would call the alt-right just "messy," and my simple answer is: Imagine the Elect mob coming after you.

If your emotion amid the "mess" of that would be terror, then it's a conclusive demonstration that this is something we need to pay serious attention to. Terror becomes a good thing neither when it comes from the left nor even when it comes from black people. 

Reason must prevail. This is the heart of the Enlightenment. The abolitionists knew it; Civil Rights leaders knew it; today's liberals know it. Only the Elect propose that rationality, where it discomfits them, is mere "whiteness."

It is neither progress nor messy for people to lose their jobs and reputations for not putting the overturning of power differentials at the very core of every single thing they ever do, express, or feel.

It is neither progress nor messy for black people to be taught that our main value is not as individuals, but in how articulately we play victim in order to help whites feel good about themselves in feeling guilty about it.

The Elect is not merely some mess. The Elect is a scourge and must be treated as such.

Supply chain woe: we can't get a part for our broken washing machine

I'm not allowed to use our washing machine, since my wife (correctly) doesn't trust me to handle clothes with the proper water temperature and dryer settings.

But ever since our fairly new Maytag decided that it would be a fun joke to start a washing cycle, then turn off when it got to the rinse mode, Laurel hasn't been able to use the washing machine either. 

She searched our files and found that, as she remembered, we did indeed buy an extended warranty from Kelly's. Sweet, we thought. It wasn't hard to find the "Parts and Service" page on the Kelly's web site.

Which had some optimistic language.

Appliance Hospital is family owned and operated since 1947, Appliance & Refrigeration Hospital is dedicated to providing HONEST, REASONABLE, RELIABLE and REPUTABLE service to our customers in the Seattle, Spokane, Portland, Vancouver, Salem, and Bend areas.

...Our service vehicles stock a large array of factory recommended parts and equipment to quickly return your product to top operating performance.

Please give our knowledgeable, courteous service professionals an opportunity to restore your product to its proper operation. You can count on us!

Likely Appliance Hospital usually does live up to its claim that they can quickly handle a repair. It did take five days for a repairman to show up, but that was fine.

Laurel had gone to a laundromat in the meantime. Not fun, but tolerable given that we expected our washing machine to be fixed promptly.

However, the repair guy said it needed a circuit board. They didn't have one in stock. He said to wait three days, then see if the circuit board was available. Unfortunately, when Laurel phoned she was told that the part had been ordered. No word on when it would come in.

So now we're stuck with an American-made Maytag washer that's unusable for an indefinite future. There's no way to tell whether the laundromat will be Laurel's not-so-favorite hangout for another few days, few weeks, or few months. 

Almost certainly we're a victim of the Supply Chain Hell that has been causing so much disruption.

I'm sure circuit boards are complex. Probably even though Maytag washing machines are made in this country, many or most of the parts for them come from China or somewhere other than the United States.

A neighbor Laurel encountered on a walk said that he's been waiting quite a while for a dishwasher part. He's been washing dishes by hand, something that's a lot tougher to do with clothes. His HVAC upgrade also is on hold due to a lack of materials.

President Biden is working to get our supply chains functioning like they used to. But there's only so much he can do, since mostly this is in the hands of private businesses.

It's just aggravating for so many people to be impacted by shortages when the economy otherwise is doing well. 

I'll copy in a message I got recently from the person in charge of a Kickstarter project I helped fund, being attracted to the lightweight shoes promised by the project. This guy tells a fascinating story of what it's like for a small business owner in these days of supply chain problems.

Dear All, 

The following is a summary of what are the supply issues affecting the market and in particular the footwear market. The following information was collected from different sources but mainly from the Footwear News Corporation (https://footwearnews.com/) but all of the information is available online.

Last year around March when the Great Plague was upon us, nearly every industry, in nearly every country in the world, practically shut down.

And many businesses went bust, never to return.

Eighteen months later the businesses that survived have largely reopened but the reboot process has been riddled with critical errors and system failures.

For example, right now there are countless businesses in industries from retail to manufacturing that are experiencing severe labor shortages. Supply chains around the world are breaking down, resulting in product shortages and major transportation bottlenecks.

The end result of this dumpster fire is that prices are soaring. And I wanted to take this opportunity to connect some of the dots to help explain some of these important trends with regards to the delivery of the Sockwa X10 product.

So let’s revisit March 2020 again when everything shut down. You probably recall that dozens of large companies declared bankruptcy, like Nieman Marcus, GNC, JC Penny, etc.

But there were other companies that went bust which most people have probably never heard of. They were in more mundane, less sexy industries… like manufacturing...the closure of these unsexy industries created supplier shortages. Though their demise was hardly noticed, it turns out they would have a significant impact on the global economy.

Supply has fallen. Last March when a large number of manufacturers went out of business, no one noticed and no one cared. And this production capacity cannot be simply turned on again with a flip of a switch. It takes a lot of effort to resurrect a bankrupt factory, to re-hire and re-train workers.

This trend is worldwide -- even foreign factories (Chinese) have closed, and those that remain open are struggling to retain workers and operate under strict COVID protocols. Manufacturing efficiency is way down as a result, so they’re not producing enough supply to keep up with demand and the big companies like Nike and Adidas are gobbling up whatever capacity any footwear manufacturer that is still in business can offer. Not much production room for the little guys!

Then there are the actual shipping problems:

Shipping Container Pricing -- shipping container prices have exploded. From March 2020 up to March 2021 a 40ft container could be purchased for +/- $2,500-$3,000. Today's opening price is $25,000 - $30,000 per container and there is still no guarantee that you will win the price auction on those containers available.  This increase in price means that shipping your product is now 6-10x more expensive than estimated depending on the size of the product.  We estimated $5 which was realistic when we launched, now we are over $30 to ship the same product.

Shipping Delays -- then there are the crazy delays evident in almost every port in the world, that prevent container ships from delivering their cargo.

A range of factors, including COVID rules and union regulations, means there’s a shortage of maritime crew to operate the vessels. There’s also a shortage of dockworkers, truck drivers, forklift operators, etc. at the ports.

The supply chain chaos has been brewing since the beginning of the global COVID-19 pandemic and has been building momentum ever since. Industry insiders who have first-hand exposure to its ever-changing variables and reach admit they’ve never seen anything like it before. And these experts remain unclear about when the eye of the current Supply Chain storm may finally pass by the footwear, apparel, and textile industries.

The supply chain, shipping and logistics storm, which has battered many industries since the pandemic commenced, increased in velocity during the Summer of 2021 with container shortages, port logjams, surging shipping costs that have forced some brands to resort to air freight, and finally a shutdown of key Asian sourcing factories due to virus spread among workers in Asia.

These factors will result in shipping delays for holiday 2021 and Spring/Summer 2022, late and/or limited deliveries to retailers, possible product shortages on key items and higher costs for consumers looking to snare the season’s hottest products.

Athletic giants Nike and Adidas are not going unscathed by the situation. Like the Sockwa X10, Nike & Adidas are facing problems beyond securing higher-priced container space on shipping vessels.

Crocs’ McNelly sums up the harsh realities of today’s logistics and supply chain climate. “[Vendors] are paying more for less — for less predictability, less space and less movement,” she says, predicting “it’s going to take a long time to get back to the new normal.”

I appreciate that there are some individual pledgers that are not at all happy with me for not communicating more, not producing a survey that collects your size and your address and yes I am late in delivering the product that you pledged for.  I honestly did not foresee the gravity of the above global production and shipping issues when I launched the Sockwa X10 campaign.

I believe that everyone who pledged for the Sockwa X10 understands or has access to information about what has happened since March 2020 and what is happening in the world right now.

So where does the above leave us now regarding the Sockwa X10 crowdfunding campaign?

Production: 75% of the order is ready to ship, we are just waiting for the insoles to come out of production which should now be within the next two weeks (we have had production delays for this factory too).

Shipping: As the price of shipping has increased x10 since we launched the campaign, there are two choices. One is to add an additional $25 to each pair shipped or to wait for the shipping container prices to get back to the levels or similar on which the campaign was launched.  For those that ordered more than one pair, the shipping price of extra $25/pair would reduce for the 2nd, 3rd pair etc.

I have been holding off on sending the survey in the past couple of weeks as I tried to work out how to present this extra shipping scenario in the pledge management software and also crossing my fingers that there might be some sign that shipping container prices stop increasing - I am still working on the survey presentation presently.

Nobody is or was prepared for what is happening regarding these shipping costs and shipping problems, never mind the production issues.

I still need to know sizes, delivery addresses etc because I need to know how much textile to produce for the remaining 25% of the orders.

I will try my best to either complete the pledge management survey in the next few days or find a way of getting people to enter their details onto our Shopify website.  Worst case scenario, I can get you to email me the details.

I am very sorry guys, I'm 54 years old and I have been managing my own businesses for the past 21 years and before that I ran other peoples' businesses for 10 years and I have never experienced anything vaguely close to what has happened since February/March 2021.

I appreciate that there are companies that have $millions more revenue than mine that have gone bust in the past 18 months but that doesn't help me sleep every night.  My company has not gone bust and I still intend to supply everyone who pledged with their product order.

Thank you for your understanding.  I know the above is not what anyone wants to read but it is a reality.  I will update again before the end of this month. Hopefully, I will have some better news to provide.

Kind regards,

Patrick

Nuance is what our country needs now

There's way too many Americans unduly confident right now.

They're sure they're right about Covid policies, the just-ended war in Afghanistan, racial justice, abortion, and a host of other issues that mostly get reduced to short sound bites, pithy Twitter tweets, brief Facebook posts, and other manifestations of our desire to appear absolutely certain about subjects that demand a word currently out of fashion. 

Nuance. 

Which means, a subtle distinction, an awareness of delicate shadings (as of meaning, feelings. or value). How did we get to such a dearth of nuance among a large proportion of our citizenry? 

It's tempting to blame it on Trump. He was a master of anti-nuance.

The crowds who adored his blunt, cocky, in-your-face style of speaking didn't want a political meal marked by difficult-to-describe subtle flavors. They wanted red meat cooked to a crisp over blazing hot coals, doused with BBQ sauce that hit the taste buds like a giant pickup truck rolling over liberal sacred cows.

But that's too simplistic.

The United States seems to bounce back and forth between presidents with greater or lesser nuance.  George H.W. Bush was less nuanced than Bill Clinton who was more nuanced than George W. Bush who was less nuanced than Barack Obama who was (way) more nuanced than Donald Trump who was (way) less nuanced than Joe Biden.

Those "way's" reflect the fact that Trump represented a recent peak of simplistic crudity, yet his becoming president was more a result of Americans relishing a brash overconfident macho style than a cause of the 2016-20 decline in national nuance.

There's always been an anti-intellectual bent among many Americans. Or perhaps better put, an anti-reasonableness bent. We tend to distrust politicians who are open to changing their minds. The sentiment, "I was for it before I was against it," followed John Kerry around in his 2004 presidential campaign like a flip-flop death knell.

Nuance, though, also can be a matter of style. 

Usually it is those on the far left or far right who cling most tenaciously to ideological positions. However, there's not much difference between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when it comes to policies. But I view Warren as more nuanced because she has a gentler, more thoughtful speaking style than Sanders. 

(Unfortunately, this could be one reason why we've never had a female president, since women tend to rate higher on the Nuance Scale. Our taste in national leaders tends to run toward those who express themselves with the most outspoken certainty, though Obama's deliberate speaking style certainly didn't hurt him.)

I readily confess that when Trump was president, I relished hard-hitting attacks on the Idiot in Chief. I felt like firing crudities at Trump was justified when he couldn't open his mouth without insulting someone. Or an entire country. 

Now, though, I'm realizing how much we all have lost -- liberals and conservatives alike -- by engaging in rhetoric that fails to reflect the complex nuances of most issues. Moderation isn't just a valuable political perspective. It also points to the fact that often, if not usually, the nuanced truth lies in-between simplistic extremes.

One of the reasons I'm hooked on the Gabriel Allon character in Daniel Silva's thriller/espionage series is that Allon is a deeply nuanced Israeli assassin. Who in addition to being a highly skilled killer is one of the world's top restorers of damaged paintings.

In every book, Silva has "good guys" and "bad guys." But they aren't caricatures.

Allon has doubts. He makes mistakes. He tries to understand the motivations of the Muslims who want to do Jews and Israel harm. Often Silva presents Palestinians in a totally sympathetic manner, even though his main character is fiercely devoted to his work in the Israeli intelligence agency.

I also read more typical books in this genre. They can be more entertaining, yet not as satisfying, because Daniel Silva presents the reader with hugely more nuance.

This is akin to how I'm able to enjoy reading both People magazine and The New Yorker.

One entertains. The other feeds my hunger for nuance. The September 13, 2021 issue of The New Yorker beautifully reflected this. Three lengthy stories, all in the same issue, each presenting a complex issue in a wonderfully intelligent fashion.

"The Sex Wars: Feminism and its fault lines" is a seven-page discussion of how the single word feminism contains many shades of meaning I wasn't previously aware of. For example, the story told me about the debate in feminist circles over transgender people, with some feminists arguing that transgender females aren't truly women, while others vehemently disagree. 

And I hadn't realized that "butch lesbians" are looked down upon by certain feminists because they embrace a masculinity that pays homage to the patriarchy. Naturally other feminists consider that however women want to look and behave is up to them.

"The Other Afghan Women" is a marvelous twelve page look at how the American occupation of Afghanistan affected women in rural and urban areas much differently. While women in Kabul were enjoying modern liberal freedoms, women in the conservative countryside faced the chaos of war: drone strikes, bombardments, endless fighting.

Those rural women welcomed the return to order that came with the Taliban victory and the American withdrawal. It isn't that they don't want more rights; they just see that those rights need to come from within Islam, not from the barrel of an American gun.

"Force of Nature" asks in eleven pages, Can Kathryn Paige Harden convince the left that genes matter -- and the right that they're not everything? Harden is a brilliant psychology professor who earned tenure at age thirty-two. She specializes in behavior genetics, "which investigates the influence of genes on character traits (neuroticism, agreeableness) and life outcomes (educational attainment, income, criminality)."

Harden, a progressive, gets a lot of grief from academics who view any research into the effect of genes on one's success in life as racist, disgusting, even Gestapo-like. Yet she perseveres, because she knows that learning the truth is more important than clinging to an outmoded "nature vs. nurture" dichotomy. 

As with most things, studying behavioral reality requires a "both...and" mentality rather than a simplistic "either...or" outlook. In short, nuance.

Oregon's changing demographics -- a Salem City Club talk

Today it was refreshing to hear Ethan Sharygin speak to the Salem City Club about Oregon's changing demographics. As befits the Director of the Population Research Center at Portland State University, Sharygin was 100% factual and 0% political. 

These days that ratio often is completely reversed, especially when the fact-challenged side of the political spectrum is doing the talking. So my mind relished the data-filled slides Sharygin shared. Because of Covid, we met via Zoom, which made it easy for me to grab screenshots of most of his slides.

In the course of introducing Sharygin, Russ Beaton made an interesting observation about how things have changed in Oregon during the past 133 years. In 1888 the Oregonian newspaper expressed a hope that the wealth of rural areas spills into the cities. 

Now the situation is pretty much the opposite. 

Oregon's population has been growing at 1% a year recently, while the United States as a whole has been growing at 0.7%. This enabled Oregon to snag an additional Congressional seat, leaving us with six rather than five.

I wasn't aware that generally the rate of population growth slows as the population increases. The figure above shows that Oregon's growth rate has been declining over the past 110 years. The 1900's and 1940's were marked by rapid growth in Oregon, while the 1980's saw slow growth. The gray circles are other states. In the 1900's some states had close to 8% annual growth. Recently, most states cluster around 0 to 2% annual growth.

While Oregon grew faster than the nation as a whole from 2010-20, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, and Utah grew even faster. But, hey, we whipped California's population growth ass.

Some demographic truisms are obvious. Population change is a function of births minus deaths, plus net migration. This chart shows that net migration is a volatile factor in how many people Oregon gains or loses each year. In the 1980's Oregon's population declined in three years, largely because of people leaving the state. In recent years net migration into Oregon has been going down.

This slide shows how Oregon's race/ethnicity breakdown changed from the 2010 census (left column) to the 2020 census (middle column), with the right column showing the difference between 2010 and 2020. The white population declined from 79% to 72%. Hispanic/Latino rose from 12% to 14%. Black/African American rose slightly from 1.7% to 1.9%. I don't understand the combinations of races data very well, so will let that part of the slide speak for itself.

Compared to rural areas in other parts of the country, the population in rural Oregon has been holding up fairly well. Only one county lost population, Grant, while Deschutes (where Bend is) grew the fastest. Marion County grew by 10%. Sadly, in the competition for Oregon's second largest city after Portland, Eugene (176,000)  beat Salem (175,000).

Looking at the Salem Metropolitan area, the population 18 and older increased from 74% to 76%, with a corresponding decline in those under age 18. Vacant or seasonally occupied housing units went from 6.6% to 4.7%, putting pressure on housing affordability/availability. However, Sharygin noted that the average household size has been quite steady, which apparently indicates that, say, there aren't large numbers of young people living with their parents because they can't find a place of their own.

In the Salem Metro area, the white population declined from 71% to 64%, while Hispanic/Latino increased from 22% to 25%.  The Black/African American population rose slightly from 0.8% to 1.0%.

The next slides are data from the American Community Survey of 2% of the United States population, which replaced the census long form.

Sharygin highlighted that Californians migrating to Oregon are most likely to settle in SW Oregon and Deschutes County. Overall, 46% of Oregonians were born in Oregon. I'm part of the 22% who were born somewhere other than Oregon, California, or a Pacific region state (in my case, Massachusetts). Sharygin noted that there has been a decline in migration from Mexico.

The BIPOC population (Black, Indigenous, other Person of Color) percentage is much higher among younger Oregonians. Sharygin didn't discuss the reason for this. Likely it has to do with birth rates and migration patterns. 

The life expectancy at birth for Oregonians is 82 years for women and 77 years for men. Fortunately for us 72 year old men, the life expectancy for those who make it to my age is higher. The Covid crisis should result in a further flattening of the life expectancy curve. 

The U.S. birth rate is 1.7 per woman, while Oregon's birth rate is 1.5. This puts pressure on programs like Social Security that assume population growth.

Redistricting relies on census data. This slide shows three House districts in the Salem area with their 2020 population, which needs to be equalized.

This is one proposal for redrawing the district boundaries to get an approximately equal population in each district. 

Sharygin ended with this slide, which shows where people can get more detailed census data and redistricting maps.

Afghanistan is horrible, but Biden is doing right thing

For the past few days I've been agonizing over how I feel about the situation in Afghanistan.

It pains me that the horrific scenes of panicked people at the Kabul airport trying to flee their country are happening on Biden's watch, since I view him as hugely more competent than Trump, and so far he's mostly done the right things as president.

Last night my daughter, Celeste, and I talked by phone. Even though we're both progressives, much of our conversation centered on what was happening in Afghanistan. 

Almost certainly the Taliban takeover will doom Afghan women and girls to subjugation under harsh interpretations of Islamic law. Which is beyond sad. And we worried about how the chaotic evacuation of Americans after an unexpectedly swift collapse of the Afghan military will impact the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election.

Celeste and I agreed that Biden had screwed-up. It felt weird for us to be so down on the action of a Democratic president we both strongly support, but that's how I felt yesterday.

Today, though, I'm more inclined to look favorably on what the Biden administration has done with the Afghanistan pullout. Here's why.

This afternoon I watched Biden's address to the nation, along with a Defense Department press briefing. Biden did a great job explaining why it made sense to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan. There's no doubt in my mind that both Trump and Biden are correct in ordering this to happen.

(That's one of the few times I've used "Trump" and "correct" in the same sentence.)

Over the past twenty years the United States gave Afghanistan every opportunity to become a better country. We invested huge amounts of money in building roads, schools, other infrastructure. Over $80 billion went to the Afghan military. They got high tech weapons, an air force, training of an army far larger than Taliban forces.

Yet the Afghan military crumpled like a sheet of tissue paper in the past few weeks. The weapons our country gave them now are in the hands of the Taliban. Biden is absolutely correct when he said that it wouldn't matter if the United States stayed for another few months or another few years.

The collapse of the Afghan military proved that withdrawing all American forces was the right thing to do. Corruption and incompetence among Afghan leaders showed that Afghanistan squandered the support the United States poured into that country since 2001.

Our own military deserves a lot of blame also. Just as in Vietnam, our generals painted overly rosy pictures of how well the fight against the Taliban was going, and how strong the Afghan forces were. Sure, the soldiers who fought in Afghanistan were brave.

But in the end we have to face a harsh truth: their efforts were largely wasted. Soon after our invasion of Afghanistan, the mission shifted from hunting the 9/11 attackers to nation-building -- something the United States is really crappy at.

Just as in Iraq, we wrongly assume that Islamic countries want to be just like us: diverse, democratic, materialistic. We  thought Afghanistan could be remade in our own image. Instead, Afghanistan pretty much remained the same, a nation beset with corruption whose people either tolerate the Taliban or actively support fundamentalist Islamic rule.

So there's no doubt Biden was correct to withdraw all American forces. The only question is whether he botched that withdrawal. I found Biden's speech and the Defense Department press conference persuasive in that regard also.

Biden said that Afghan leaders didn't want him to move rapidly on giving Afghan interpreters and others who helped the United States visas to leave the country, because this would have demoralized the Afghan military. Sure, it turned out that likely nothing could have made the Afghan military a worse fighting force than it already was, but this wasn't known at the time.

It does seem like our intelligence services should have been more aware of how rapidly the Afghan army would surrender to the Taliban. However, as a general said at the press conference, it's a truism that battle plans last as long as the first shot, then have to be revised.

I'm bothered by how difficult it will be now to get Afghans who worked with the United States out of the country.

However, it's hard to fault the Biden administration for not doing this sooner. Hindsight always is 20-20. Unfortunately, I doubt that the optimism of those who want us to get tens of thousands of Afghans out of the country in the next weeks and months is justified.

It's hard to believe that the Taliban will allow interpreters and their families to line up outside the Kabul airport and file onto waiting planes. Thus it's a undeniable tragedy that those who risked their lives to aid the United States will suffer mightily under Taliban rule.

Even so, I suspect that in the long run, Biden will have the support of the American people for how he handled the Afghanistan pullout. It wasn't pretty, to put it mildly. But it was necessary. And I have no doubt that if Trump was still president, he would have screwed things up way worse than Biden did.

Baseball as metaphor for politics: why OSU's loss bothers me

Today the Oregon State baseball team failed to win a regional series in the NCAA tournament.

After leading 5-0 in the deciding game against Dallas Baptist, Dallas Baptist scored eight unanswered runs and won 8-5.

After watching the loss on ESPN, I found myself more disturbed than seemed reasonable. After all, it was just a baseball game.

But sometimes I find deep philosophical meanings in sports events, as evidenced by "Deep thoughts about Arkansas' missed pop-up that cost a World Series championship."

In this case, it was the first pitch thrown by OSU reliever Joey Mundt in the seventh inning that cost the Beavers a trip to the NCAA Super Regionals, one step closer to the College World Series.

That pitch came with the bases loaded. Dallas Baptist's Andrew Benefield hit a grand slam home run. Since Dallas Baptist had scored two runs in the previous inning, that changed a 5-2 OSU lead into a 6-5 deficit.

And that, as the saying goes, was the ball game. One misplaced pitch. One good swing. Game over for Oregon State, since they didn't score again while Dallas Baptist added on another two runs.

On a post-game walk around our neighborhood I had a thought about why the OSU loss bothered me so much. It wasn't so much the failure to win, but what led up to the loss. 

The parallels with the troubles Democrats are having in Congress leapt out at me as I walked along.

Oregon State lost its first tournament game. After Trump was elected, Democrats were powerless in Washington D.C. until they took back the House in 2018.

Oregon State then won three games in a row in the regional tournament. In 2020 Democrats won the presidency, narrowly held onto the House, and eked out a 50-50 tie in the Senate after two surprising wins in Georgia Senate races that went to a run-off election.

It looked like Oregon States was going to win after taking a 5-0 lead into the sixth inning. Progressives like me were looking forward to Democrats passing important voting rights, infrastructure, climate change, and other legislation with their 51-50 lead in the Senate (Vice-President Harris breaks 50-50 tie votes.)

All Oregon State had to do was preserve its lead and they'd make it into the Super Regional. All Senate Democrats had to do was eliminate the filibuster on a 51-50 vote and they'd be able to pass groundbreaking legislation that would markedly help the country and world.

Oregon State's hopes were dashed by one grand slam home run swing. Last weekend Joe Manchin (D, West Virginia) dashed most of Democrats' legislative hopes when he said he'd never vote to abolish or weaken the filibuster and opposed the For the People voting rights act.

To build on these parallels, it looked to me like the Oregon State pitchers failed to be aggressive and confident as they tried to to preserve the OSU lead. 

Walks were common, as was getting behind in pitch counts. The game was there for Oregon State to win, but Dallas Baptist kept taking advantage of OSU mistakes until the grand slam put them ahead for good.

Likewise, Republicans are going all out to pass voter suppression laws in states they control, while Democrats are frittering away what likely is their only opportunity to get major legislation through Congress before the GOP likely takes back control of the House, and perhaps the Senate also, in 2022.

It wasn't so much that Oregon State lost that bothered me so much. It was the fact that the game was so winnable, yet OSU failed to win it.

As one of the commentators said, coaches don't get upset when their pitcher allows a batter to get a hit. That's going to happen. What drives them crazy is when walks put batters on base without needing to get a hit.

In the same vein, I don't expect Democrats to win every vote in Congress. What irks me is Democrats like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema essentially giving Republicans wins by balking at doing away with the filibuster that requires 60 votes to pass a bill in a 50-50 Senate.

There's no way ten Republicans are going to support a voting rights act, immigration reform, climate change legislation, or an infrastructure bill paid for by raising taxes on giant corporations. 

So Democrats are akin to a pitcher walking batter after batter until runs are scored without the other team having to get a hit. (This benefitted Oregon State today, but not enough to win the game.)

Nonetheless, both baseball and politics are unpredictable. That's part of what makes them so fun to watch. Just when you think you know what is going to happen, it doesn't. Something else happens.

Democrats may surprise me and succeed in passing major legislation in Biden's first term.

And given the excellent overall play of the Oregon State baseball team this year, I won't be surprised if they make a strong run in the 2022 College World Series tournament. 

Just not this year.

Making daylight savings time permanent is a must, Congress

Tomorrow at 2 am Daylight Savings Time returns. May it never depart again. 

Late fall and winter already are depressingly dark. Losing an hour of late afternoon sun in November, when Daylight Savings Time ends, means that doing anything outside at that time is dreary, if not impossible. 

Fortunately, there seems to be a good chance Congress is going to do away with the twice yearly clock changeover. So says a LA Times opinion piece.

It’s nearly that time of year again when Americans reset their clocks one hour ahead, grumble about losing an hour of sleep — and wonder why on Earth we keep observing the outdated tradition of tinkering with time twice a year.

...But inertia is a powerful force. We keep doing it because we’ve been doing it. And with more important issues commanding the attention of Congress, lawmakers must find it a lot easier just to follow this pointless tradition than to take to the time to examine it.

Nevertheless, momentum is building nationally to dump this practice and stick with daylight saving time year round. (In the event you are confused — and many of us are — daylight saving is recognized for the eight months from March to November; standard time is what we revert to for the other four months.)

...Time may be running short for the clock-changing foolishness. This week Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) reintroduced a bill that would put the nation on permanent daylight saving time. It’s the third time he has proposed this change since 2018, when his state’s Legislature voted in favor of stopping the time shift. Earlier versions didn’t get very far. This time may be different, however, because Rubio has enlisted the support of seven other senators from both parties.

At the very least, Congress should allow states to decide if they want to remain on Daylight Savings Time. (Currently states can stay on standard time if they wish, but not on Daylight Savings Time.)

In 2019 Oregon's legislature voted to have our state be permanently on Daylight Savings Time. But Congress needs to act if this is to happen. 

Sure seems like this would be popular. Especially with people who enjoy getting out and doing something after work. Or, for retired people like me, going for a late afternoon dog walk in daylight.

Ice storm conversation highlights

Tonight our monthly Salon discussion group met via Zoom.

Laurel, my wife, was able to host the meeting even though electricity is still off in our rural south Salem neighborhood, thanks to our generator and the Starlink satellite internet system.

Not surprisingly, most of the conversation centered around the recent ice storm and resulting power outages. We all shared our stories of how we're coping.

Here's some themes that emerged in the course of our 100 minute discussion.

How to prepare for no electricity. Some people favor going the green route. Others the fossil fuel route. Since we live in the country, with our nearest neighbor quite distant, I extolled the virtues of our 7,000 watt Honda generator, which naturally runs on gasoline.

One downside of a generator is noise. They aren't quiet, though smaller Honda generators make little noise. We have a transfer switch that enables various outlets/devices in our house to switch over to generator power when a cable is attached to an outside connector. The generator also powers our well pump.

But a generator isn't great to use in a city, unless you like annoying your neighbors. So the city dwellers in our group talked about solar-powered battery options. Of course, if there isn't much sunlight, recharging would be problematic. Tesla offers large batteries that can connect to their electric cars, if I have this right. 

On a smaller scale, there are batteries (we have a Goal Zero one) that, once charged, can power a cell phone, computer, and such for quite a while. 

It was agreed that having a working fireplace or wood stove is a great idea, though you need a decent supply of wood. A pellet stove can be installed either as a freestanding stove or as a fireplace insert. They require electricity, but not a whole lot. Just a few hundred watts, I believe, which could be supplied by a small outdoor gas generator and an extension cord.

With all the fallen trees and branches from the ice storm, many homes have a plentiful supply of wood. Having that available to burn during the next power outage is a good idea, assuming someone has a fireplace or wood stove.

Independence versus reliance on society. Most of our group lives in single family homes, while several live in apartments. One of the apartment dwellers made an interesting point.

Rather than everybody figuring out on their own how to survive without electricity, that effort would be better spent on working on a societal level to make it less likely that power outages will occur. For example, electrical lines could be underground rather than strung along poles next to or under trees.

Amazingly, several people who were children in Europe during World War II said that power never went off during air raids. I couldn't resist saying, "Sounds like PGE wasn't operating in England or Germany." 

Their point was that it is possible to make electrical systems much more resistant to outages. In modern Europe, virtually all power is underground. And people recalled that in their younger days, power outages seemed to be less common than now. The rise of giant profit-driven utility companies could be a reason for this.

I said that today I'd talked with a neighbor during an afternoon dog walk. He told me that he'd worked for a citizen utility in Iowa akin to Salem Electric. Ice and snow storms are common in Iowa. When they occurred, crews from citizen utilities in neighboring states would rush in to help.

A balance needs to be struck, I guess. Each of us should prepare for a power outage, and we also need to urge politicians to spend tax money on measures to prevent outages from occurring. Personally, I'd like to see PGE broken up into a bunch of smaller citizen-owned companies like Salem Electric. 

One of our members lives in West Salem. She said her power was restored just a few hours after it went out. Me, I have PGE and am still waiting for electricity to come back on eight days after the storm.

Staying in touch with others. My wife and I are stressed from our lengthy power outage. But we felt much better after our group meeting this evening. We humans need other people. Isolation is bad for all sorts of reasons.

A couple in our group live in a close-knit neighborhood. After the storm hit, they said that phones (land line variety, since cell phones weren't working well, if at all) were ringing many times a day as a neighbor would either express a need of their own, or what someone else needed.

In this fashion people were able to band together to help each other get through the ice storm aftermath. Those with chain saws aided those who didn't have one. People who had something to share gave it to people in need of it. Self-reliance is fine. Community support is even better.

For a few days after the storm hit, our cell phone coverage was almost nonexistent. We had to walk up our long driveway to get a decent signal. For almost a week, our land line phone didn't work. This produced a feeling of isolation in us.

Which gets back to the notion that our society needs to invest in ways to keep people connected, both during emergencies and at other times. 

Cellular systems should be made more resilient so cell phones aren't useless after an ice storm. Ditto for internet systems like the one offered by Comcast. I noted that it made a big difference when our Starlink satellite internet system continued to work just fine after the storm.

It felt good to be able to keep up with the news, Facebook, Twitter, and such. For several days we couldn't talk to people by phone. Keeping in touch via broadband raised my spirits in the ice storm aftermath. Yet many people in the United States don't have access to fast broadband.

Mark Cuban is right. National Anthem is way over-played.

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, is no longer playing the National Anthem, a.k.a. The Star Spangled Banner, before home basketball games.

Good for Cuban. 

UPDATE: Bad for Cuban. He gave in to the NBA. 

The National Anthem has nothing to do with genuine patriotism. Neither does the Pledge of Allegiance. Neither does the American flag. 

We could get rid of all three, except for very special occasions, and our country not only would be just fine, it would be even better.

Why? Because nationalism is divisive. Also, ridiculous. People in every country believe that they live in the greatest country on earth. 

The United States is no exception. There's nothing wrong with that belief, aside from the obvious fact that it is just that -- a belief, not reality. Our country does some things well and other things poorly.

So let's simply say that we love the country we're living in, just as other people love their own country. There's no reason to make public displays of country affection commonplace. 

After all, European countries don't play national anthems before soccer games, nor are they obsessed with pledges of allegiance.

I know a woman whose family came here from Germany who can't understand the American habit of singing the national anthem before sporting events. That's just plain weird in her more expansive view of what patriotism is all about.

Nancy Armour of USA Today has an opinion piece about Cuban's decision. Here's how it starts out.

Good for Mark Cuban.

The Dallas Mavericks owner made a decision that is sure to bring howls of outrage, threats to boycott his team and an avalanche of vile and vicious emails. But it was the right decision, and I hope it gives others in professional and college sports the courage, or at least cover, to do the same.

The Mavericks are no longer playing the national anthem before home games. I don’t know the reasoning behind Cuban’s decision, and he’s declined to elaborate further, both to The Athletic, which first reported the absence of the anthem, and USA TODAY Sports.

But he hinted at it last summer, when he said he supported Mavericks players and coaches who were kneeling during the anthem to protest racial injustice following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many other Black men and women.

“The National Anthem Police in this country are out of control,” Cuban said on Twitter. “If you want to complain, complain to your boss and ask why they don’t play the National Anthem every day before you start work.”

He’s right. We don’t play The Star-Spangled Banner before concerts or movies. We don’t hear it at rec league soccer games or school plays. We don’t stand at attention and listen to it before we start our workdays.

If it doesn’t belong at those events – and clearly it doesn’t since there hasn’t been any widespread movement to make it a staple of our daily routine – it doesn’t belong at college and professional sporting events, either.

Here is where a segment of the population will say that anyone who dares suggest doing away with the anthem should move to China or North Korea and see how we like things there. The irony of which never escapes me. Requiring the anthem to be played before sporting events, and using it as some Rorschach test for how much you love your country, is the exact kind of faux display of patriotism those authoritarian regimes excel at.

There are no doubt some who are deeply moved by The Star-Spangled Banner, and see it as a way to honor those who have and do serve this country. But there are also those for whom it is a reminder of this country’s failings, and the work we still need to do to achieve true equality.

Let's all be compassionate Warriors of Reality in 2021

My hoped for New Year's resolution is that as many Americans as possible vow to do better at being (1) more compassionate and (2) more in touch with reality.

I see these goals as being complementary. 

Compassion requires a clear-eyed view of what is causing our fellow humans, animals, and other living beings to suffer. If we aren't correct about what is real, versus what only exists within our own mind, we'll be thrown off track by misplaced concern.

For example, here in Oregon there's currently a push by some to demand that businesses shut down by Covid restrictions, such as restaurants, be allowed to reopen.

OK, that shows compassion for restaurant owners, most of whom are having a tough time during the pandemic. But it's important to also recognize the reality of 344,000 COVID-19 deaths and the many people who suffer, often for many months, from the virus even though they didn't die because of it.

It isn't easy to find the right balance between compassion for a particular group, and compassion for a different sort of people, especially when doing right for one means doing wrong for the other.

But we have to do our best.

And the only way to accomplish that, doing our best, is to combine the compassion that almost everybody (psychopaths excluded) has for people who are suffering with our equally important capacity for separating fact and fiction in the world at large.

In other words, the subjectivity of compassion should be married to the objectivity of knowing reality as it is. The progeny of this marriage will be offspring we can be proud of: wise actions, productive activism, pleasant feelings of having done the right thing.

Since compassion is a natural reaction to seeing other people going through hard times, on both an individual and societal level we need to emphasize the knowing reality aspect of my Compassion + Reality = Right Action equation. 

Compassion is akin to an engine that propels us onward in an effort to make things better. However, without a navigation system that ensures we're going in the correct direction, we run the risk of wasted motion.

Or worse, destructive motion.

I'm inclined to believe that most people set out to do the right thing. Within their own mind, they've concluded that doing this or that is justified to accomplish some desirable outcome.

Problem is, often their good intention leads to bad results because they are clueless about facts that either are deliberately ignored or innocently unaware of.

Examples abound in 2020. Here's several that come to mind.

The Black Lives Matter protests in Portland started off well: peaceful, with a powerful message of the need to reform policing and end systemic racism. But things went downhill when protesters engaged in property damage and confrontations with police. 

There was no discernible purpose behind the setting off of fireworks, defacing of buildings with graffiti, breaking windows, and such. Business owners in downtown Portland suffered through nightly protests that went on for months. 

It seemed obvious that the Black Lives Matter cause was being hurt, not helped, by the increasingly destructive protests. But reality never broke through into the closed minds of the protesters. They were caught up in the game of taunting law enforcement officers and damaging property for no good reason.

In this case it was liberals, with a heavy dose of anarchists, who failed to realize that compassion for Blacks who endure injustice had to go along with an understanding of the reality that violence in the streets was undermining the legitimacy of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Meanwhile, conservatives and Trump lovers were embracing an ever-expanding variety of batshit crazy conspiracy theories. QAnon infected the psyches of people who believed that Democrats were running a pedophile ring from the basement of a pizza parlor. Then came deniers of the reality of COVID-19, and of the efficacy of wearing masks to prevent infection by the virus.

Currently a large share of Republicans have bought into the baseless claim of their Liar-in-Chief, Donald Trump, that Joe Biden's win was the result of election fraud. In this case I can't discern any degree of compassion in their efforts to subvert democracy and steal the election for Trump.

It's a shameful power grab, an attempted coup, that will end only on January 6 after their last-gasp effort to derail the free and fair presidential election fails in the halls of Congress when 306 electoral college votes are counted for Biden and Harris.

Our country can't thrive, and maybe even survive, when so many citizens are either unwilling or unable to acknowledge reality. Those of us who favor fact over fiction and truth over falsehood can't merely sit by in our comfortable corner of the reality-affirming landscape.

That's why I like the term, Warriors of Reality. When we see that someone -- elected official, Facebook friend, whoever -- is trying to tear down the shared reality that binds us together, we need to say "No! This is the truth. You have no right to your own facts, just your own feelings about what is true."

Reality is the ultimate big tent. Reality holds everybody who chooses to take shelter under it. Reality doesn't need us; it is we who need it. Reality is more important than the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, because reality is what makes all these things possible.

Deniers of reality not only harm themselves, they also harm all of those who depend upon it -- which is everybody.

So if you've ever felt the need to fight for something, fight for reality. With compassion, not violence. Those who deny reality often don't know any better. Giving them facts in a calm, cool, collected manner may help them.

If not, reality still stands, with or without them.

 

Salem progressives go (mildly) wild for Biden's victory

Saturday, around the country and indeed the world, people danced in the streets after our country's major news outlets called the presidential race for Joe Biden. 

A monthly discussion group my wife and I are part of had scheduled a Covid-aware outdoor meeting for yesterday afternoon in the back yard of Russ and Delana Beaton in northeast Salem.

Laurel, my wife, did a little dance at one point.

But mostly the nine of us stood around a fire expertly started by Russ, when we weren't sitting around it. Here's photos of the mildly wild celebrating by a bunch of progressives who were thrilled that the Age of Trump had come to a screeching halt.

Though there had been showers earlier in the day, by our 2 pm start time the rain had stopped.

The sun even came out for a while, proving that Joe Biden's presidency will be marked by a radiant return of democracy, civility, and idealism to a nation that has suffered under Trump's mean-spirited authoritarianism for four long years.

Russ and Delana, shown here, thoughtfully provided some champagne and a non-alcoholic alternative for toasting purposes. Each of us got to say something about why we were happy with the election results.

I'm glad that we were able to have an in-person meeting on the Saturday after election day. Thank you Rain Gods! Getting together in this fashion seemed much preferable to a Zoom get-together, our backup plan, which lacks the intimacy and communal feeling of a physical face-to-face gathering.

Biden's election was a big deal for all of us, much more so than other elections.

The reason is obvious: no previous president has posed such a threat to American democracy. Trump is a wanna-be authoritarian, maybe even a dictator. If he had been re-elected, there would have been no bounds on his efforts to make the federal government a tool of his personal power.

Not surprisingly, post-election Trump is acting just as horribly as pre-election Trump. Even more so, in fact, since the Liar-in-Chief is asserting with zero evidence to back him up that the election was stolen from him. He can't say how, because there is no how to speak about.

Thus his pie-in-the-sky court cases are going to go exactly nowhere, as election law expert Marc Elias pithily points out.

Maureen Down, a New York Times opinion columnist, has this to say in her piece, "We Hereby Dump Trump."

We expected more of Donald Trump.

An epic, Jack Nicholson-in-the-Overlook-Hotel meltdown, not just Rose Garden-variety mewling. A conspiracy with grandiosity, not merely pathetic blathering about pointless lawsuits from his entitled children and oddballs Rudy Giuliani and Richard Grenell.

The president has had all this time to hatch a spidery plot to ruin democracy on the way out the door, and this is the best he can come up with?

The election has been stolen!

What’s your proof?

Because I’m losing.

At yesterday's discussion group meeting I talked some about the deliciously absurd press conference Rudy Giuliani held on Saturday at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia. 

Yes, not the Four Seasons Hotel, but Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

The Independent (a United Kingdom publication) has a must-read story about this fiasco. Here's some excerpts from the beautifully written "I saw Donald Trump's presidency come crashing down at Four Seasons Total Landscaping."

It began, as all good 2020 capers do, with a tweet from the president of the United States. It ended with his personal lawyer in the parking lot of a landscaping company, struggling to be heard over a man in his underpants shouting about George Soros.

They say a star burns brightest just before it dies, and this was the Trump presidency in all its flaming glory.

...I arrived to see a media scrum around a chain link fence that led into the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. The building itself was one-storey, with a neat lawn and a row of hedges at the front. It was in that part of town that every town has, where businesses which have no right being grouped together nonetheless gather due to one reason or another — usually the cheap rent.

Across the street from Four Seasons Total Landscaping was a crematorium. Next door to it was an adult book store with a bright yellow sign that displayed its offerings: DVDs and lotions, novelty gifts, viewing booths. It was called Fantasy Island. In retrospect, it was an omen of what was to come.

...Private security guards hired by the president’s lawyers began to call in media outlets by name so they could enter the parking lot. When a media outlet was called, the gathered Trump supporters booed those which they felt had been unfair to the president. “Washington Post”.. “Boooo.” “Fox News”.... “Boooooo!” “CNN” “BOOOOOOOO!”

This was an American pantomime.

In the Four Seasons Total Landscaping parking lot the cameras were assembled, the sound levels checked, the pens were poised and the gates were closed. The world’s press waited for the evidence that would blow this big scam wide open. The sun shone brightly.

Then, out of nowhere, a journalist with a European accent announced the news: “CNN called the presidency for Biden!”

The assembled journalists were paralysed for a moment. Phones started to ring and calls were made. Some were given instructions to leave and started to do so.

Soon after, the sound of car horns honking and cheers in the street began to drift into the backlot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

...Just a few minutes later Rudy Giuliani appeared. This was the second press conference Mr Giuliani had called in Philadelphia in a matter of days, both to make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud. The first took place at an airport hangar.

...Amid all the drama of the last 30 minutes, it appeared no one had told him that Joe Biden had been projected the winner of the election. A member of the press asked him how these lawsuits would overturn the call for the former vice president.

“Who was it called by?”

“All of them,” came the response.

Mr Giuliani took a moment before erupting in mock incredulity: “All the networks? Wow! All the networks!” He raised out his arms and looked to the sky, for a moment looking and sounding like Larry David doing a bit. But the wind had been sucked out of him. The smile had gone.

Take the Salem Climate Action survey, though it is strange

I urge you to take the Community Survey that is part of the process for preparing a Salem Climate Action Plan. I believe you have until November 4.

However, having just taken the survey myself, be aware that it is decidedly weird. Much of the survey has little to do with the climate, or actions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or with the planning process. 

For example, early on a question asked me how often I did the following: work on a community project, attend a public meeting discussing town or school affairs, attend a political meeting or rally, attend a club or organizational meeting, volunteer, attend faith-based services/meetings, participate in some other community involvement activity.

It's difficult to discern what this has to do with the Salem Climate Action Plan. 

Further, it seems obvious that people who take the time to complete the Community Survey are more concerned with what is going on in Salem than the average person. So in no way will this survey tell us much about the community activities most people in Salem engage in, leaving aside the question of why this is relevant to the Climate Action Plan.

The Community Survey page on the City of Salem web site does describe the purpose of the survey. 

As a valued member of the Salem community, you are invited to take this survey so that your perceptions and opinions about Salem can be used to better understand Salem’s strengths and vulnerabilities in relation to the changing climate. Your insights are important to us - your responses will help inform the development of Salem’s Climate Action Plan. We appreciate your input in building a city that is resilient to climate change.

OK, but this language set off some warning bells in the political cynicism part of my brain, which, given my age of 72, has a lot of historical material to work with.

City officials haven't been leading the charge for Salem to join other cities in Oregon with a Climate Action Plan. The City Manager, Mayor, Public Works Director and other high-ranking officials ignored this until progressives on the City Council and 350 Salem OR pressed for a Climate Action Plan.

Ten days ago the City Council approved greenhouse gas reduction goals for Salem, a major step forward and a laudable accomplishment of 350 Salem OR.

So when I completed the Community Survey, under one write-in question I said that climate change deniers should have zero influence on the Climate Action Plan, because the greenhouse gas emission goals already have been determined by the City Council.

What remains to be determined is how to achieve those goals in Salem, not whether the goals should be achieved. 

That's why I found the language explaining the purpose of the Community Survey to be worrisome. It talks about the need to  "better understand Salem’s strengths and vulnerabilities in relation to the changing climate." Huh? That makes no sense. 

What needs understanding is how to reduce Salem's carbon emissions, most of which come from the transportation sector. Hence, driving less in more efficient vehicles (battery powered, ideally) for shorter distances is going to be necessary.

The goal is to do our part to slow down and ultimately stop the changing climate, not to determine how the changing climate will affect us. Likewise, the last sentence, "We appreciate your input in building a city that is resilient to climate change," is even more perplexing.

The primary purpose of the Climate Action Plan shouldn't be to make Salem "resilient" to climate change.

It is to reduce carbon emissions in our city that are contributing to climate change. Sure, a secondary purpose could be to find ways to cope with the bad effects of climate change. But resiliency is a code word for adapting to climate change, rather than taking strong action to combat it.

Now, maybe the strange questions in the Community Survey and the worrisome language in the description of the survey aren't really an indicator of how city staff are viewing the Climate Action Plan.

I'm just worried that these are signs of city officials trying to water down the impact of the Climate Action Plan.

Wildfire good deeds need to become Covid good deeds

People here in Oregon, as elsewhere on the West Coast, have been wonderfully generous with their time, money, and effort in helping others affected by the massive wildfires burning in our forests.

The nightly local news is filled with stories about meals being prepared for firefighters, livestock being cared for after homes were destroyed, donations of clothes and other household goods being used to aid the newly homeless, and other acts of kindness. 

Such isn't surprising. Most people are generous. They feel empathy and concern for those in need. They want to make things better when suffering is rampant. 

I've been wondering, though, how it is that our nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been so splintered and controversial when the response to West Coast wildfires has been so cohesive and praiseworthy.

How is it that Americans are so willing to risk their lives to save homes threatened by wildfire, yet often so reluctant to wear a mask in indoor public spaces or outside when six feet of physical distancing can't be maintained?

Covid has killed hugely more people than the wildfires have. The cover of the current issue of TIME magazine contains a large 200,000, the number of those killed by COVID-19 since the virus started to ravage the United States. 

The cover story is called An American Failure. There are many reasons for the failure to contain the virus, including the willful incompetence of Donald Trump. But other factors are at play, according to the story.  Such as:

Americans today tend to value the individual over the collective. A 2011 Pew survey found that 58% of Americans said "freedom to pursue life's goals without interference from the state" is more important than the state guaranteeing "nobody is in need." 

It's easy to view that trait as a root cause of the country's struggles with COVID-19; a pandemic requires people to make temporary sacrifices for the benefit of the group, whether it's wearing a mask or skipping a visit to their local bar.

...Absent adequate leadership, it's been up to everyday Americans to band together in the fight against COVID-19.

To some extent that's been happening -- doctors, nurses, bus drivers and other essential workers have been rightfully celebrated as heroes, and many have paid a price for their bravery. But at least some Americans still refuse to take such a simple step as wearing a mask.

Why? Because we're also in the midst of a epistemic crisis. Republicans and Democrats today don't just disagree on issues; they disagree on the basic truths that structure their respective realities.

Half the country gets its news from places that parrot whatever the Administration says, true or not; half does not. This politicization manifests in myriad ways, but the most vital is this: in early June (at which point more than 100,000 Americans had already died of COVID-19), fewer than half of Republican voters polled said the outbreak was a major threat to the health of the U.S. population as a whole.

So how is it that Republicans, along with Democrats and independents, are so willing to work hard to help evacuees threatened by wildfires, yet so many aren't willing to wear a mask or do other things to prevent people from suffering the nasty effects of COVID-19?

One reason is that it isn't possible to deny the reality of the wildfires, while there is plenty of misinformation circulating about COVID-19. If it were possible for Trump to spew falsehoods about wildfire damage being "fake news," likely a quarter or more of the population would agree with the Liar in Chief. 

Instead, reporters here in Oregon have been doing a great job communicating wildfire news via newspapers, television, social media, and other ways. This shows the importance of local journalism, which is more trusted than national news outlets. (I trust both, but I'm a news junkie.)

Another factor relates to the American individualism cited in the TIME cover story.

Volunteering to help those displaced by the wildfires is up to each person. Nobody is forcing them to do this. But orders to wear masks in public places come from elected officials. So there seems to be a reluctance by many to do what should be done to save lives just because someone else is telling them to do this.

That reminds me of a childhood retort. "I'm doing it not because you told me to, but because I want to." It's disturbing that adults would extend that to "I'm not doing it because you told me to, even though it is the right thing to do."

At any rate, I'm hoping that the compassion evident in the response of people to wildfire victims -- both those who lost their homes and those who had to evacuate -- will carry over to an increased willingness to wear a mask, physically distance, avoid crowded indoor places like bars, and do other things necessary to prevent death and disease from COVID-19.

With life, it's a truism that we're all in this together. And while no one gets out of life alive, death coming to everyone, we should do our best to help others get through difficult times in their life, whether this be dealing with a wildfire or avoiding infection with the coronavirus.

Wild is what we're wishing will end

For most of us, wild has generally positive connotations.

We like to be out of civilization and trekking into a wilderness. Being called a "wild thing" made for a popular song. We're more excited to see an animal in the wild than in captivity. 

But while a bit of wild is a good thing, too much leaves us exhausted, scared, anxious, uncertain.

That's where the West Coast of the United States is at the moment. Sure, other parts of the country also are suffering from an excess of wild. Oregon (where I live), Washington, and California just have wild to an astonishing degree.

Currently we're suffering through the worst wildfires in memory -- and likely in the entire history of our states. About 40,000 Oregonians have had to leave their homes under a Level 3 "GO NOW" evacuation order. The air quality in Salem, a few miles from my house, is off the chart.

Believe me, it doesn't take long after having a bunch of very large wildfires in your part of the world to make you think, "That's enough wild for a while. Like, forever."

After a week of heavy smoke, I went looking for HVAC filters today. In Salem they've become the new toilet paper, unavailable at the two stores I checked.

Global warming is largely to blame.

Forests are exceptionally dry after an extended drought. Political gridlock, caused in part by repeated walkouts of Republican legislators in Oregon who objected to a climate change bill, preventing a quorum, have stifled attempts to thin trees and create defensible spaces around forest communities.

Our power went out last Monday night.

High winds caused a utility pole to catch fire, leaving electrical wires in the middle of a nearby road. In the Santiam Canyon to the east of Salem, downed power lines caused fires that decimated entire towns. Underground utilities would eliminate that risk. 

But our country isn't investing in infrastructure. We've been lavishing money on the military and giving trillions of dollars in tax cuts to giant corporations instead. Of course, by "we" I mean Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. 

It feels like nobody sensible is in charge of the United States because that's the truth.

So wild proliferates unchecked far beyond the bounds of what citizens are comfortable with. The COVID crisis is another obvious example. There has been no effective national leadership, just posturing, lies, and false reassurances from the Commander in Chief of Wildness.

Trump adores chaos. He revels in conflict.

This makes him utterly incapable of being the cool, calm, collected leader who could guide us through a pandemic that has caused almost 200,000 deaths in the United States, many or most of them preventable given how much better other comparable countries have dealt with the novel coronavirus. 

Then there's the Black Lives Matter movement.

A week doesn't go by, it seems, without another disturbing example of how a person of color has been wrongly killed by police. Here too, national leadership is lacking. Some good things are happening at the state and local level, while Trump focuses on a few protesters who cause trouble rather than the systemic racism that's being protested.

"I can't breathe" is a common denominator that links all three manifestations of excessive wild.

That's what George Floyd said as a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck. Millions of people are enduring wildfire smoke that is unhealthy for everybody, and especially hazardous for those with asthma and other breathing problems. A prime COVID-19 symptom is pneumonia and damaged lungs.

However, there's also a psychological breathlessness afflicting our nation -- the exhausting feeling of climbing a Mount Wild where one steep challenge follows another with little opportunity to rest. Worse, the person who is supposed to be guiding us is clueless about what needs to be done to reach a place of ease.

This is why it is so important that Joe Biden be elected this November. He's the calming anti-wild president that we so sorely need and long for.

Our caring about societal issues has a disturbing trajectory

It's a familiar happening. Some event stimulates an outpouring of concern about a societal issue. Like mass shootings, global warming, police killings of Blacks, Postal Service slowdowns, Trump's outrageous actions.

Protesters march in the streets. Facebook and Twitter erupt. Legislators are contacted. Passionate views are expressed. Vows of "we've got to do something about this" are plentiful.

And then... the familiar trajectory of the bell-shaped curve is evident. What goes up, comes down. A peak level of societal concern is reached, then declines to about the same level it was at before.

Maybe a bit higher, but nowhere near as large as when it seemed that lasting change finally was going to happen.

Then a new issue takes hold in the national consciousness and the same dynamic plays out. This is natural. Nothing last forever. Change happens. It isn't possible for people to stay focused on a single issue forever, or even for very long.

We need to be realistic about what can be achieved by these periodic displays of concern.

Yes, they're exceedingly valuable. They draw attention to a pressing problem, as has been evident with the Black Lives Matter movement. The spark of George Floyd's murder set off a firestorm of justified outrage that brought many more people on board with the Black Lives Matter cause.

So how can this social energy be harnessed for lasting good? As with other causes, somehow a commitment to lasting change has to be institutionalized. 

Yeah, I know. That's a dreadful term for many, institutionalized. It conjures up an image of a patient in a mental hospital, or a prisoner in a penitentiary. Rigid procedures, a lack of freedom, stultifying routine. 

Well, routine is what we're looking for when it comes to lasting societal change.

After activists bring a problem to our attention though special means -- protests, passionate speeches, calls to action -- a transition into institutionalized policies needs to happen. Otherwise the bell-shaped curve thing occurs, a big flurry of ascendent activity followed by a descent into business as usual.

I realize that this is difficult for activists to hear. It's the truth, though. For example, Black Lives Matter protests have done their job in raising public awareness of systemic racism and other inequities within police departments.

But now those protests have reached the point of diminishing returns. People tune out protesters when the same message is repeated over and over for months on end, as has been happening to the city to the north of where I live in Salem -- Portland, Oregon.

This has been exacerbated by a small group of troublemakers who hijack the otherwise peaceful protests, setting fires in police buildings, breaking windows, and such. That encourages counter-protests by the law and order crowd, fueled by Trump's lie that Democrat-led cities are being wrecked by angry mobs. 

What's needed at this point is institutional change within police departments. That process isn't nearly as exciting as marching in the streets. It is equally or more important, though.

Here in Salem, Oregon's capital, our city council has embarked on a months-long effort of conducting a performance audit of the Salem Police Department which will be led by an outside consultant. Sure, a performance audit doesn't exactly lend itself to a stirring chant: What do we want? Performance audit! When do we want it? In a few months!

However, if all goes as planned, and that's a big "if," the performance audit could produce marked improvements in the police department in line with the demands of Black Lives Matter protesters and allied groups.

Institutionalizing change is how lasting progress has been made in civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, environmental rights, all sorts of rights. It is more difficult when political leaders on the local, state, or national level are opposed to the cause being promoted. 

Difficult, but not impossible. Elections can alter the political landscape. Pressure can alter political minds. So let's strike a balance between raising awareness of societal problems through in-your-face methods, and institutionalizing the needed changes.

"A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" needs to be read by all extremists

Last Friday Bill Maher's Real Time show on HBO featured a discussion between Maher and two people who signed a letter calling for more tolerance of opposing views and the free exchange of information and ideas -- Thomas Chatterton Williams and Bari Weiss.

(There's a video of their Real Time segment on a Daily Beast story. It's well worth watching.)

Williams spearheaded the letter, which I've copied in below from a Harper's web page. To see who has signed it so far, click on the preceding link. It includes some familiar names: J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Fareed Zakaria, Malcolm Gladwell, Noam Chomsky. 

The shorthand way of describing the letter is that it decries "cancel culture," which a New York Times opinion piece describes:

As The Times columnist Ross Douthat argues, cancellation is typically expressed as a collective attack on someone’s reputation and employment, which may include calls to deny people opportunities to speak before an audience (in person or online), be fired or put out of business, especially when such calls come from within one’s own professional community. While the Harper’s letter did not expressly use the phrase cancel culture, its emphasis on the “need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences” accords neatly with Mr. Douthat’s definition.

There are many ways of looking at the problem described in the letter, which naturally is the point of the letter. Freedom of expression is needed to investigate every problem in society, including the problem of not allowing freedom of expression.

My personal experience with this doesn't rise to the cancel culture level. I don't have a position that can be cancelled, being a retired blogger and author. What I've encountered has been more along the lines of You can't say that because you're an old white guy. 

For example, my wife, Laurel, was one of the women who put on the first Salem Women's March in January 2017 after Trump was elected. So I had a special interest in a subsequent event that organizers were calling the Salem Womxn's March, which I thought was a bad idea.

OK. Some thought it was a good idea. But instead of explaining why they were right and I was wrong, on Facebook I got a lot of comments along the line of "An old white guy can't criticize how a woman's march is being planned." Which was totally off base, because obviously I was entitled to do just that -- express my opinion.

More recently, I wrote what I thought was a non-controversial blog post, "Violence should never be part of a Black Lives Matter protest." But since I'm not Black, numerous Facebook commenters said I wasn't able to talk about what should happen at the protests. Which also was ridiculous, because I'm perfectly capable of expressing my views on this subject.

Anyway, here's the Harper's letter, minus the names of those who have signed it. I added some extra paragraph breaks to make the letter easier to read.

    A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

July 7, 2020
The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at [email protected]

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts.

But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy.

But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.

We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.

More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.

Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.

The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes.

We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

Wall of Moms founder hits wall of political correctness

As a progressive, it deeply bothers me when progressives turn on each other rather than on the real current enemy, Donald Trump and his Republican enablers.

All too often progressive groups fall prey to extreme political correctness, where the slightest deviation from left-wing political purity is met with extreme vilification. 

This has befallen the founder of the Wall of Moms movement, Bev Barnum.

Barnum is a Mexican-American mother who wanted to do something to protect Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland from the aggressive tactics of federal agents sent by Trump to supposedly guard the federal courthouse, while the real goal seemingly was to bolster Trump's fading reelection chances by appealing to voters energized by a law-and-order mentality.

The Wall of Moms movement has been a huge success. Spin-off groups have formed all around the country. But as the Biblical saying goes, no prophet is accepted in his own home town. Or in this case, her home town.

For me the first clue that something was amiss with the Wall of Moms movement came when I noticed that the twitter feed for Wall of Moms had stopped talking about the Black Lives Matter protests and was all about bashing Bev Barnum.

Why? Well, the Wall of Moms twitter feed shared a message from Barnum that seemed completely reasonable to me, but obviously didn't comply with whatever purity test was being used by whoever now controlled "WOM OFFICIAL."

So Barnum, the founder of Wall of Moms, came up with the idea of making Wall of Moms a movement that could be used to support causes in addition to Black Lives Matter. It's hard for me to see what could be wrong with that.

Why not have a Wall of Moms at rallies supporting efforts to combat global warming? Or immigration reform. Or health care for all. Or a $15/hour federal minimum wage. Or stopping pipelines slated to cross Native American lands. 

But since the first Wall of Moms was in support of Black Lives Matter protests, the politically correct progressive police decided that only Black women should be in charge of the Portland Wall of Moms. A Mexican-American woman wasn't enough of a person of color to count, I guess.

That's ridiculous. 

Sure, it makes sense that Black Lives Matter groups should be led by Black people. But it makes no sense that other groups wishing to support the Black Lives Matter movement also have to be led by Black people.

It's such a waste of energy when progressives outdo themselves to see who can be the Purest of Them All, forgetting that the real enemy aren't those who fail to attain some mythical standard of political correctness, but those in this country who are leading us down the road of authoritarianism, racism, militarism, and other undesirable "ism's."

Bev Barnum forms a non-profit Wall of Moms organization. Good for her. If anyone doesn't like that, they can do something different on their own. What happened to women supporting women rather than tearing other women down?

I can't understand why whoever is running the OFFICIAL WOM twitter feed is so set on disparaging Barnum when they should be focused on making sure that federal agents leave Portland and police reforms occur in Oregon's largest city.

The Oregonian newspaper has a story about the dispute within the Wall of Moms movement, "Portland's Wall of Moms crumbles amid online allegations by former partner, Don't Shoot PDX." What were the shocking allegations? Here's some of what the story says.

Portland Wall of Moms, a group formed in recent weeks and quickly recognized as a staple of nightly downtown protests, was accused publicly Wednesday of “anti-Blackness” by leaders of an existing, Black-led community group.

Wall of Moms, whose members said they aimed to support and protect other Black Lives Matter protesters near the fence in front of the federal courthouse, announced Friday that its white leadership had rescinded their positions to allow women of color to be in charge. New leaders announced Friday include Teressa Raiford, executive director of Don’t Shoot Portland, Demetria Hester and Danialle James.

But less than a week later, Don’t Shoot Portland took to Instagram to urge people against supporting the Wall of Moms, saying that it was no longer working with the moms group.

“The lies are finally clear and we are sad but ultimately not surprised that anti-Blackness showed its ugly head,” read the post published on Wednesday by Don’t Shoot Portland, a local Black Lives Matter and mutual aid group founded in 2014.

The Wednesday post alleges that Wall of Moms founder Bev Barnum filed for business registrations without consulting the newly instated Black leaders and that the safety of Black members at the nightly protests in downtown Portland was overlooked.

Barnum has not yet commented publicly about the allegations.

The post said that issues of Black mothers’ safety have only come to light in the past 24 hours.

Barnum appeared to file three business registrations on Tuesday including one that makes The Wall of Moms a 501c3 nonprofit. Don’t Shoot Portland interpreted the filings to mean that Wall of Moms goal was to get federal officers out of Portland -- not to support Black Lives Matter, according to the Instagram post. The newly instated Black leaders were not told about the registrations, according to the post.

Wow. Bev Barnum wants to get federal officers out of Portland. She filed three business registrations. So this makes her "anti-Black"? I'm a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, but not when leaders of that movement do or say crazy stuff. They owe Barnum an apology, in my opinion. 

If you don't agree, fine. That's your opinion. We can agree to disagree without vilifying each other.

Violence should never be part of a Black Lives Matter protest

I doubt they read blogs like mine, but if some of the jerks who have been aiming fireworks at the federal courthouse in Portland every night, trying to dismantle the temporary fence that surrounds the building, and otherwise provoking a violent end to the otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protests do come across this post, let's have a debate.

My position is: Violence should never be part of a Black Lives Matter protest. Not ever. Repeat, never. 

Now, let me give reasons for why I think I'm correct about this. The first reason is much less important than the second, but I'll start with it.

Yes, I'm an old white guy. However, I was in college from 1966-71 at San Jose State College (or as I like to call it, with zero to back me up, the Stanford of the South Bay).

We had lots of protests against the Vietnam War. I recall that most were peaceful, though sometimes the cops behaved badly. However, most of us hippies truly did believe in "Make love, not war." Sure, there were fringe groups on campus that espoused violence against the Powers That Be. I didn't know anyone who agreed with them, though

So I felt right at home at the only Black Lives Matter protest I've attended here in Salem. It featured thousands of people who listened to inspiring speakers, then marched through downtown and back to the Capitol Mall without any trace of violence or even overt hostility to police. 

(Jerry Moore, the police chief spoke at the event.)

The focus was on what it should be: Black Lives Matter.

And that's what is so irritating about the violent acts being carried out by small numbers of troublemakers or anarchists, not only in Portland but now also in Seattle and other cities. Which gets me to my second, and more important, reason for decrying violence at these protests.

Black leaders are calling for an end to it.

A few days ago E.D. Mondainé, president of the Portland branch of the NAACP had a right-on opinion piece in the Washington Post. Here's some excerpts.

Early in his activism, Malcolm X was asked by a young white woman what she could do to help the cause of civil rights. He famously replied, “Nothing.” Years later, he regretted dismissing her so abruptly, because he came to believe there was much she could do to advance the cause of justice for black people in the United States. But I am quite certain that striking yoga poses nude on the streets of Portland, Ore., was not on his list of actionable items.

Images of “Naked Athena,” as the protester has been labeled, have gone viral, her unclothed confrontation with police earning her accolades as a brave ally of the cause. But I see something else: a beneficiary of white privilege dancing vainly on a stage that was originally created to raise up the voices of my oppressed brothers and sisters. In this, she is not alone. As the demonstrations continue every night in Portland, many people with their own agendas are co-opting, and distracting attention from, what should be our central concern: the Black Lives Matter movement.

...Unfortunately, “spectacle” is now the best way to describe Portland’s protests. Vandalizing government buildings and hurling projectiles at law enforcement draw attention — but how do these actions stop police from killing black people? What are antifa and other leftist agitators achieving for the cause of black equality? The “Wall of Moms,” while perhaps well-intentioned, ends up redirecting attention away from the urgent issue of murdered black bodies. This might ease the consciences of white, affluent women who have previously been silent in the face of black oppression, but it’s fair to ask: Are they really furthering the cause of justice, or is this another example of white co-optation?

...Thursday night, I will lead a rally in downtown Portland to refocus public attention where it belongs: on redeeming a guilty nation. But recent events might be a sign that our work in the streets should be coming to an end.

I am not suggesting retreat. Instead, I am proposing that we take the cause of Black Lives Matter into those places where tear gas and rubber bullets and federal agents cannot find us, and where there is less risk of spectacle distracting from our true aims. In boardrooms, in schools, in city councils, in the halls of justice, in the smoky backrooms of a duplicitous government — that is where we will finally dismantle the gears of the brutal, racist machine that has been terrorizing black Americans and hollowing out the moral character of this nation since its inception.

A front page story in today's Portland Oregonian makes some similar points. 

It was almost 11 p.m. Wednesday when the crackle and flash of fireworks erupted at the federal courthouse in downtown Portland.

For some of the Black activists across the street at the county’s Justice Center, the disruption was a signal to wrap up for the night. The volatile scene beginning to play out a block away was distracting the crowd.

Michael Richard, 38, the final speaker, closed with a lament:

“What’s going on over there is a white movement … that’s taking over Black Lives Matter.”

The rest of the night would be marked by fire, chaos and a show of force by federal officers.

“A spectacle” is how the Rev. E.D. Mondaine described the spasm of late-night violence that has become the norm.

He blamed not only disruptive protesters but also presidential interference, which he said is carefully calculated to divert attention.

“Our movement has been co-opted and I am angry about it,” said Mondaine, president of the Portland NAACP. “Once again the status quo is finding a way to interrupt this revolution, this moment.

“We have to begin to organize more people to talk about the distractors,” he said. “These are privileged children of the status quo dancing on the stages that were designed to lift up the voices of people like (civil rights leader) C.T. Vivian and (U.S. Rep) John Lewis, the stages that were built to lift up the voice of justice and equality and inclusion.”

...Even before the involvement of federal law enforcement, the nights have tended to unfold in predictable ways: Black activists lead the crowds in front of the Justice Center with chants such as “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace.” Often they exhort the crowd to refrain from violence.

Then at some point well after dark, a faction of protesters that Blake referred to as “the graveyard shift,” largely young and white, turns its attention to the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse.

Over the course of the past week, demonstrators have carried out a range of destructive acts: They’ve set bonfires in the courthouse portico and pried plywood off the windows and doors, tossed a grill and garbage over the fence around the building, pointed lasers at officers and lit fireworks with concussive blasts that can be felt for blocks.

Almost on cue, officers with U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, many in camouflage and tactical gear, at some point emerge from the courthouse and sweep the streets using clouds of tear gas, pepper balls and other impact munitions.

...People lashing out during the protests “have legitimate anger, but I would respectfully disagree with them,” said Eric Ward, a longtime civil rights strategist and executive director of the Western States Center, a Portland-based organization that monitors right-wing extremism.

“I would say they are applying that anger in a wrong way,” Ward said. “Pulling down the boards of the federal courthouse or the Justice Center doesn’t stop police from brutalizing Black and Latino and Indigenous people on the streets of Portland.”

Protesting police violence by acting violently toward police obviously undercuts the core message of these protests. It serves no purpose. Well, it serves Trump's purpose to demonize the Black Lives Matter protests as threats to law and order in cities controlled by Democratic mayors.

And that's another reason to end the violence by a minority of protesters: Trump is relishing it.

Here's how easy it is to vote by mail in Oregon

TO: People in states that don't already have 100% vote by mail
FROM: An Oregonian (me!) who loves vote by mail
SUBJECT: How easy it was for me to vote today

First, I want to emphasize that you shouldn't believe anyone, such as Donald Trump, who claims that vote by mail is beset with problems. It isn't. For quite a few years Oregon has had vote by mail for every election. Screw-ups are very rare. Fraud is virtually nonexistent. 

With that out of the way, here's a brief description of what I had to do to cast my ballot today in the May 19 primary election. In short, not much.

(1) Yesterday I got an email from Marion County Elections that told me my ballot was about to arrive in the mail.

(2) Today my ballot did arrive. This is the return envelope.

(3) I sat on a stool at our kitchen counter and completed the May primary ballot in about five minutes. I could have done it sooner, but I needed to check the Voters Pamphlet about the candidates in a few races I wasn't familiar with.

Also, I had to spend some time gazing at the name of my wife, Laurel Hines, on the ballot -- first time she's appeared! I also wrote in a few names of neighbors who, I'm sure, would love to serve as a Democratic Party Precinct Committee Person. Or, maybe not.

(4) This year I didn't even need to stick on a stamp to mail my ballot. The Oregon legislature passed a law that requires prepaid postage on every return envelope. This afternoon we went to Minto Brown Island Park for a dog walk along the Willamette River, so along the way I mailed my ballot on the same day I received it.

Bottom line: I have no idea why every state doesn't use 100% vote by mail for every election.

It makes perfect sense at any time, but extra perfect sense in this COVID-19 time. We Oregonians can cast our ballot without coming close to another person. In my case, I did, but it was just my wife -- who soon will have the title of Most Exalted Precinct 788 Democratic Committee Person. 

I'm not wearing gloves because of cold, but of old (COVID-19)

With fairly warm weather coming to western Oregon next week, I want to explain why I'll be wearing gloves when I go grocery shopping, enter a coffee shop, or am in other public places.

As should be obvious, it isn't because I'm cold, but because I'm old -- and thus more susceptible to the nastier effects of COVID-19, or coronavirus. My wife, Laurel, is in the same situation, except a bit more so, since she has asthma and COVID-19 attacks the respiratory system.

Today Amazon delivered four pairs of these oh-so-trendy gloves that Laurel ordered for me. (Via Amazon I'm also getting some gray gloves with no markings, though I do like the two-tone look of these gloves.)

Laurel has been using similar gloves during her many years of walking dogs at the Willamette Humane Society.

So she's got a routine down that we'll be using until the COVID-19 epidemic in Oregon slows down markedly. Namely, have several pairs of thin plastic gloves available so the ones that have been used can be washed with a load of laundry, then reused.

The reason wearing gloves makes sense to us is that COVID-19 can linger on surfaces for hours, and we don't have a very big supply of hand sanitizer. Thus our plan is to put gloves on when we go into a store or other public place, then take them off before getting back into our car.

It'll be important to not touch the fingers of the gloves when taking them off and putting them back on, but I've been practicing how to do this.

Wearing gloves will give us some increased peace of mind when we're out and about. 

Some Googling revealed that in general, public health experts haven't been advising people to wear gloves, just as they haven't been advising the use of masks. But that advice has focused on thin disposable medical gloves.

And gloves are not recommended either: "This isn't something the general public would be wearing," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "I don't think they're going to do anything but give people a false sense of security, waste time and create more demand for something that's unnecessary, just like masks."

While disposable gloves are frequently worn in medical settings, they won't be as effective in day-to-day life.

"Latex gloves can rip very easily," said Adajla. "They're not designed for going out, running up stairs, doing things in daily life. They're not very durable when it comes to pumping gas or anything ... They're going to get holes. They're not meant for wearing during activities and daily living. Even as a physician, I have my gloves rip all the time."

OK. But what my wife and I will be wearing are lightweight garden gloves, which, as noted above, we'll be washing and reusing. Sure, we'll look like old people worried about getting COVID-19, but here's the thing: that's exactly who we are!

And we're not alone. Today I asked the dozen or so members of our monthly Salon discussion group if they were comfortable meeting during the COVID-19 outbreak. Only one person said they were, so we're going to cancel our March meeting and see how it goes come April.

It's a risk vs. return thing.

Yes, we enjoy getting together and talking about all sorts of interesting subjects. But as I said in an email to the group, it wouldn't be worth it if someone got seriously ill from attending a meeting, as unlikely as that might be. (Plus, it's going to get more likely as the disease spreads.)

Lastly, here's a right-on post that a Facebook friend, Susann Kaltwasser, wrote today. Susann makes some excellent points.

It occurred to me last night after watching all kinds of shows with interviews of experts, mayors and governor dealing with the pandemic that here in Salem we are focusing on the wrong things!

We are worried about toilet paper and handiwipes and masks. And we worry about the crowds in the grocery stores and if school is going to be closed and how will we get to work.

But while we are worrying about the little things like staying safe and our jobs, who is worrying about the big things?

Things like ....is Salem Health (hospital) going to have enough beds to accommodate all the sick patients who have the virus and can they keep them separate from the rest of the patients in the hospital?

Do they have enough equipment to treat hundreds of people who might get ill at the same time? Respirators? ICU equipment?

What will happen to the people who are ill, but not so ill that they need to be in the hospital? People who if they stay at home will just infect the rest of the family need to be kept in isolation. Where will they stay?

What do we do about children who live with their grandparents, because they do not have parents? And then the grandparents get sick?

When will we begin testing people in Salem and then what do the rest of us do, because right now the authorities are not even telling people what city they live in?

Seattle has taken some strong measures out of necessity, but do we want to have thousands of people become ill before Salem begins to take precautions?

Our City does press releases, but where is the face of the "City"? Where is the leadership? What are they doing to help calm us now, so that when things get really bad....and we need to assume that they will...that we do not have panic (assuming that it has not already begun)?

Are we all alone and have to fend for ourselves? Do we think our president is going to save us? Is washing our hands and avoiding people all we should be doing?

This is what other cities did and it did not stop the virus...it is just placating and delaying the inevitable. But can we learn a lesson and do some more proactive things to lower our curve?

I'll bet that you have more questions. When are we going to take this situation serious and begin to actually ask the right questions?

My thoughts about the coronavirus outbreak

Yeah, there's other stuff going on in the world right now other than the coronavirus. But since my mind is filled to overflowing with thoughts about this rapidly evolving tragedy, I figure I might as well do a brain dump into this blog post. So in no particular order...

(1) Feel for us old folks, America. My wife and I are both over 70 by a year or two. So we're doomed! If we get infected. Well, maybe not mortally doomed, though this is possible, but likely we'll suffer more than younger folks. Yet the empty shelves of hand sanitizer, both in stores and online, face young and old alike.

I completely understand why a 30-something parent wants to stock up on hand sanitizer to protect their children and other family members.

But just as public health experts are saying everybody at low risk should wash their hands regularly to reduce the chance they could pass the coronavirus on to someone high risk -- like my wife and me -- maybe it makes sense to reserve some supplies of hand sanitizer for those with compromised immune systems, other serious health problems, and the elderly.

(2) Trump supporters need to wake up. Last night Trump gave a speech designed to reassure a worried nation. It had the opposite effect. Which isn't surprising, because Trump can be guaranteed to tell lies, falsehoods, and half-truths at every opportunity. His failure to mobilize the federal government in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak has made a bad situation way worse.

Other countries have tested vastly more people than the United States. Thus our country is flying blind when it comes to knowing the real extent of how many are infected with the coronavirus. The lack of testing kits is a clear case of presidential malpractice. Unfortunately, those who will become seriously ill because of our Idiot-in-Chief won't be able to sue him. We can vote him out of office this November, though.

(3) Investors are acting wisely. It's painful to see the stock market crashing. But a (small) bright spot is that investors are recognizing with great clarity that the crap Trump has been spewing about the coronavirus outbreak can't be trusted. This morning I read a great Bloomberg piece that explained why the market crashed after Trump's speech to the nation.

Basically, the reason is that Trump's ideas for bolstering the economy were feeble and made little sense, while what is needed to calm the markets is a strong, fact-based, scientifically sound approach to dealing with the coronavirus. Other countries have done this with considerable success. Until the Trump administration changes course and admits it is on the wrong track, the stock market is gong to keep saying, do something different.

(4) Life does seem a bit sweeter. Quite a few years ago I read a piece in Parade magazine by an Iraq war veteran (if I recall correctly) that contained a gripping line: "We all need something in our life that can kill us." Of course, that would be life itself. But what this guy was getting at is that life feels more lively when we know it could end at any moment.

I've been dealing with pretty severe pain in my right leg for about a month. But today was sunny here in Oregon, and it's supposed to rain tomorrow. So I got out my DR Field Mower with the lawn mowing attachment and attacked the grass in our large rural yard. As I was mowing, I kept thinking, "If I were to die from the coronavirus soon, at least I'd leave behind a good-looking lawn."

Somehow that was comforting. It got me focused on the here and now, with a dose of there and then. Namely, the prospect of my eventual death, which obviously isn't a matter of "if" but "when." Sure, it is unlikely that the coronavirus will do me in. But something will, one day, and it felt good to be reminded of how precious every moment is, given that we can't be sure how many moments remain to us -- a lesson that the coronavirus outbreak is teaching all of us.

(5) Sports... who cares? Today it was announced that March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament, won't happen this year. Likely the rest of the NBA season is headed for the same outcome. I was looking forward to watching the Oregon teams in the tournament, but this was a wise decision by the NCAA.

Let's imagine that just one person in the whole United States contacted the coronavirus and died as a result of March Madness. Would that make the tournament worthwhile, a whole bunch of basketball entertainment in exchange for one death? I don't think so, because there isn't any way to weigh the value of a single life versus millions of satisfied fans. Sports are just a small part of life. Life, on the other hand, is life.

(6) Our health care system is teetering. What's deeply concerning about the coronavirus outbreak is how it is going to cast a spotlight on the shortcomings of our health care system. Democrats in Congress are correctly proposing ways to ensure that everyone who needs medical treatment gets it, whether or not they have insurance. But this should be a permanent given, not an add-on in a public health emergency.

Also, I'm feeling mildly guilty about my days in the 1970s and 80s when I was a health planner here in Oregon. One of our jobs was to regulate hospital and nursing home expansions and purchases of expensive medical equipment like CT scanners. The goal was a lean health care system with little excess capacity. 

But now it looks like a lot of excess capacity would be highly desirable. Likely hospitals are going to have to choose between treating seriously ill coronavirus patients, and people with equally serious other problems, such as heart attacks. Bill Gates and others have been warning that a global pandemic was coming. It's too bad that our nation's leaders didn't take those warnings seriously.

(7) Seniors, the homeless, and other vulnerable people deserve to be Job #1. Most Americans are going to get through the coronavirus crisis just fine. Yes, we might have to ration our toilet paper and hand sanitizer, along with finding other things to do than watch sports. But mostly hidden from our view will be many other people who will suffer much more.

Reports already are coming in of seniors who are afraid to go shopping because they might be infected. I hate to think of elderly people sitting at home, isolated and fearful. The homeless also are going to be affected by the outbreak. How do you "socially distance" -- keeping six feet away from other people -- when you're living on the street, or in a homeless shelter?

Then there's those with lung, heart, kidney, and other health problems. My wife has asthma. She likely would be at greater risk than I am from the coronavirus, since it attacks the lungs. And there's millions of other people in this county in a similar situation: having to deal with an immune deficiency problem, or some other serious medical condition.

I just wish we had a president right now who could speak as Joe Biden did today. Compassionately, competently, caringly. The coronavirus could be a way for our county to come together and face this problem as one people, bound together by a common enemy.

It still could happen. But not because of Donald Trump. Rather, in spite of him.

Pros and cons of being a 70-something white guy these days

Well, it was fun while it lasted... being a 71 year-old white guy. For a while recently, I was exulting in the ascendance of my 70-something peers in the Democratic primary.

Bernie Sanders: 78 years old

Joe Biden: 77 years old

Mike Bloomberg: 78 years old

Woo-hoo! The three most viable candidates left standing (albeit shakily) were white guys even older than me.

Yes, Elizabeth Warren was still in the race for a while after Bloomberg dropped out, but by that time it was clear that Sanders and Biden were going to duke it out for the Democratic nomination. It sure looked like 2020 was going to be the Year of the Septuagenarian, in my own mind at least.

I stood a little taller. My back was a little straighter. I looked in the mirror at my gray hair and beard and felt a little better about my aging visage.

Until the coronavirus panic struck. 

I was OK, though obviously not ecstatic, about the stock market going up and down like a yo-yo. Or, to really show my age, like a slinky. 

What truly grabbed my attention, though, was the frequent mentions of how old people -- often disturbingly defined as over 70 -- were at much higher risk of dying from the coronavirus. Suddenly being an old white guy didn't seem nearly as appealing.

A few days ago NPR reported that while the overall death rate was 2.3% in China, among those 70-79 the death rate was 8%. And unless my aging ears misheard the satellite radio in my car today, I recall that someone said the elderly death rate could be 10-15%.

Yikes! Those aren't great odds. Of course, having an underlying condition like a heart, lung, or whatever disease adds to the risk for us old folks, and I'm in pretty good shape, health-wise.

Still... now when I look at Sanders and Biden my thoughts are less on how great it is that they've been able to rise to the top of the Democratic presidential race at their age, as on how risky it is for them to be pressing the flesh at so many campaign events, surrounded by throngs of people that could easily include someone carrying the coronavirus. 

Oh, well. At least I can take solace in the fact that 73-year old President Donald J. Trump is in charge of keeping me safe from the coronavirus. Problem is, early on that solace took a nosedive when I heard all the lies, falsehoods, and misstatements coming out of Trump's mouth.

But all things will pass. I just hope that one of them isn't me passing away from the coronavirus before I get to see Biden (most likely) or Sanders (less likely) defeating Trump in November.

Good news is, I don't have a blood clot. Bad news is, Trump still is president.

Being an ardent progressive in election year 2020 means that I'm prone to view everything through the lens of what it means for the prospect of making Trump a one-term president this November. 

Yes, even being tested to rule out a blood clot in my right leg -- which occurred yesterday.

A bit over a week ago I had a physical therapy visit to get some advice on what to do about annoying leg pain. When Michael, the therapist, asked me what caused the pain, I gave this 30-something guy my 71-year-old perspective on health problems like this one.

"Michael, when I was your age, I could figure out why something hurt. Like, playing too much tennis with my questionable serving technique led to tennis elbow pain. But now that I'm the age I am, aching body parts happen mysteriously. I get out of bed the wrong way, or lift a bag of groceries weirdly, and -- bingo! -- pain. Except the pain doesn't occur right away, so I can never be sure what caused it."

Which is typical for us Medicare folks, based on lots of conversations I've had with people about my age regarding their bodily afflictions. 

Anyway, yesterday the pain in my right leg was so bad, I kept thinking about what a nurse at my family physician's office told me a few days ago when I talked with her about my leg pain. Her main concern was a blood clot, so she told me that if my leg is swollen and feels warm to the touch, I should seek medical care right away.

After some Googling of "blood clot leg" and measuring my calves to see if the right one was the same size as the left one (it was), and feeling that both legs were the same temperature, at first I was reassured that I didn't have a clot. Until I read one more article that said sometimes a blood clot can be present with none of the usual symptoms.

Then I got a second leg warmth opinion from my wife. She spent way more time comparing my lower legs than I did, eventually concluding, "Maybe the right one is a little bit warmer."

That tiny maybe got me to thinking that I should go to Salem Health Urgent Care to rule out a blood clot. However, that didn't turn out to be as simple as I expected, even though it was easy to make an online appointment for 2:40 pm with a Nurse Practitioner. And I was seen close to on-time.

She felt my legs, questioned me about the pain I'd been having, and did her own measurement of my calves. She also prescribed a topical NSAID that could replace the oral Advil I'd been taking, but seemingly with less risk of side effects. Somewhat surprisingly, though, she also strongly recommended that I get an ultrasound to make sure I didn't have a blood clot in my leg.

Yes, I was worried about this possibility, as low as the chance was that I had a clot. And it made sense to rule out a potentially fatal problem, like a clot breaking free and heading to my lungs, or maybe even heart. 

But having been a health planner and policy analyst in my pre-retirement life, I also was aware of how legal liability concerns can affect medical care decisions. I'm not saying that occurred in this case, but just now the Great God Google did reveal a number of law firms who have web pages along the lines of "Medical Malpractice for Failure to Diagnose Deep Vein Thrombosis."

The symptoms of DVT can be missed or misdiagnosed.  This can be extremely dangerous because a person may think that they have something simple like a leg cramp or strain when they actually are experiencing symptoms of DVT.  

I was fortunate that the Cardiac/Vascular center at Salem Hospital could perform an ultrasound on my legs later in the day, which avoided an E.R. visit. The "lower extremity venous duplex unilateral" procedure went smoothly, and I enjoyed chatting with the technician who explained what was being shown on a large screen which, pleasingly, didn't include a blood clot.

This gets me to Trump.

Health care is super-important for everybody. When you're hurting, sick, or needing medical attention for whatever reason, getting that care with a minimum of fuss and cost is Job #1 on your mind. I'm fortunate to be on Medicare, which I like vastly more than the private health insurance I had before.

Medicare For All makes a lot of sense. So does Medicare For All Who Want It. So does the Affordable Care Act. 

What makes zero sense is Trump's unceasing effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare -- undoubtedly in part because of that word "Obama," which fills Trump with irrational anger (and maybe envy, since Obama was a much more popular president than he is).

Trump has no interest in making our nation's health care system better. He simply wants to destroy the most conservative approach to providing health care to all Americans, the Affordable Care Act. Since it relies on private health insurance, Republicans like Trump should be embracing the Affordable Care Act instead of trying to demolish it.

The plain fact is that, like me, most people feel good about their doctors and other health care providers, while being indifferent (at best) about their insurance company. So if somehow Trump, or the Supreme Court, succeed in killing the Affordable Care Act, that makes Medicare for All much more likely, given that Republicans have no viable health care plan of their own.

Lastly, Trump's health care incompetence is on full display as he stumbles through a response to the coronavirus crisis. It's evident that Trump cares much more about how the stock market is doing (horribly) than overseeing a fact-based, transparent approach to dealing with the coronavirus.

One big problem that Trump faces is that his incessant lying makes people automatically believe that whatever he says isn't true. Thus his efforts to calm people down about the coronavirus are having the opposite effect, as Catherine Rampell says in a Washington Post opinion piece, "With coronavirus, Trump's lies and his reassurances backfire."

Trump clearly understands that government messaging can move markets; he blames the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for issuing warnings that may have unnerved traders. At his news conference Wednesday, he also scolded Democrats for allegedly “trying to create a panic.” Trump seems not to realize that saying everything is fine when no one trusts you to assess the situation honestly can cause people to freak out, too.

...In this context, it’s clear how Trump-delivered reassurances might backfire — and already have. While Trump spoke Wednesday from the White House, telling Americans that the government has things under control, stock futures fell. Ordering government scientists to clear comments with Vice President Pence’s office, as has been reported, threatens to dilute the value of any soothing words such experts might offer, too.

There is a corollary to the Goolsbee rule on crisis and credibility. It’s one that Goolsbee told me he learned from the late, great former Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker during the financial crisis a decade ago, when Goolsbee was advising President Barack Obama. Volcker said that the only asset you have in a crisis is your credibility. Hence this other rule of thumb: All normal, non-crisis time should be spent establishing the credibility you’ll need when a crisis inevitably hits.

Would that the Trump administration had done so, instead of fibbing about crowd size and so much else that followed.

City Club talk about Oregon demographics and 2020 Census pleasingly factual

We live in an age of opinionating.

For example, this afternoon the Mueller report was released to the Attorney General. Now there's a frenzy of speculation about what is in the report, how much of it will be released to the public, what the political impact will be, and so on.

So it was pleasant to attend a Salem City Club talk today by demographer Charles Rynerson, a Research Associate with the Population Research Center at Portland State University (my graduate school alma mater): "Oregon Demographic Trends and the 2020 Census."

Rynerson was low-key, highly competent, and almost entirely factual. His talk felt like a healing warm bath of concrete data that (temporarily) washed away the torrent of opinions from a myriad of news sources that typically flood my political junkie brain.

-----------------------

UPDATE: After emailing Rynerson some questions, as noted below, I got the following replies after he returned from vacation. Keep in mind what he says here as you read the rest of my blog post. The first message was sent to someone else who had questions similar to mine. I've uploaded a link to his edited PowerPoint presentation.

Hi,

Sorry for the delay, I was on vacation from the moment I left the City Club event!

This is the edited version of the presentation, based on valuable feedback that I got from a few people after the meeting.  Slide #21 showing in- and out-migration by age group was presented with the two data series overlapped 100%, making it appear that it was a stacked column chart, implying that in-migration was smaller than out-migration.  In fact, in-migration (green columns) is larger for every age group.  By lowering the overlap percentage, this should now be apparent.

Download Rynerson_Demographics_2019

Brian Hines also brought this up in his blog post https://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2019/03/city-club-talk-about-oregon-demographics-and-2020-census-pleasingly-factual.html, showing the original version of the chart. I have cc'd him here, and will follow up with him to clarify a couple of other points.

Glad you enjoyed it!

-Charles

Hi Brian,

I hope you saw my previous message in which I attached the PPT presentation and improved the migration by age group slide.  If you don't have PowerPoint, let me know.  I'd be glad to print it to PDF and send to you.

Thanks for covering the event with the blog post.  You captured most of what I said perfectly.  Allow me to correct a couple of things that I didn't make clear:

"In every age group, more people moved from Oregon to another state than moved to Oregon from another state."

• • My bad -- two other people who spoke with me immediately after the presentation had the same takeaway. Thus I realized that I should edit the image so that the two series are not completely overlapped.  It is not a stacked column chart; the green bars are really taller than the reddish-brown bars for every age group.  I think the edited chart makes that clear.

"Rynerson said there are 13 metropolitan areas in Oregon, with each area being a county. The other 23 counties are in non-metro areas."

• • I hope I didn't say that.  There are 8 metropolitan areas in Oregon.  The Portland MSA includes 5 Oregon counties (and 2 Washington counties), the Salem MSA includes 2 counties (Marion+Polk), and the remaining 6 MSAs are one county each, for a total of 13 Oregon counties in metropolitan areas.

"The other eight counties have a large net migration, but Rynerson said almost all of this was due to Marion County."

• • No, there is positive net migration in all of the metropolitan counties.  Most of the natural increase is attributable to Marion County.

"70% of people will get an Internet-first 2020 Census survey, while 30% of people in broadband deprived areas will get a Paper-first survey. "

• • I did say that, but I may have been a bit reckless.  I'm not sure where I got the 70-30 figure, and I can't find a source.  I may have been confusing it with the 2018 Census Test in Providence, RI, which was 70-30.
  • All of these links say that the 2020 Census breakdown will be 80-20.
    • https://www.brennancenter.org/digitizing-2020-census
    • https://www.wired.com/story/us-census-2020-goes-digital/
    • https://www.nlc.org/sites/default/files/2018-10/Census%202020%20MAG_0.pdf

 I hope these clarifications help!

-Charles

---------------------------

Here's photos of some of Rynerson's slides that I snapped with my trusty iPhone, along with commentary on each. I'll end with some additional things he told us. Let's geek out on some interesting info on how Oregon is changing demographically.

The flowing line is total population in Oregon, which is estimated to be 4,195,300 in 2018. The bars are annual increases in population form 2001 to 2018. The marked dip around 2010-11 reflects the recession that hit in earnest in 2008.

There was a decline in the rate of population growth from 2017 to 2018, but Rynerson said not much should be made of this, since the number of people added in 2018, 54,200, was still quite high.

Population growth is a function of net migration (# of people coming to Oregon - # of people leaving Oregon) plus natural increase (# of people born - # of people dying). This image shows these components in 5-year periods from 1960-65 to 2010-15. Remember: 5 years. That's why the numbers on the vertical axis are so large.

Net migration (brown bars) has always been greater than natural increase, except in 1960-65 and especially in 1980-85 -- which I recall was another economic downturn. The highest net migration was in 1990-95. Natural increase was at its lowest point in 2010-15.

This is a similar graph, but with the components shown in a single bar for individual years from 2001 to 2018. Natural increase in Oregon has been steadily declining since 2007, mostly because of lower birth rates. Net migration has increased a lot since low points in 2010-11.

Because population growth in Oregon has been greater than the national average, Rynerson said our state likely will gain a congressional seat after the 2020 census. He said that redistricting will start in April 2021, apparently because this is when requisite census data is available.

This slide shows that currently Oregon has a considerably larger population per seat in Congress than Washington, California, or the United States as a whole. Reason: Oregon narrowly missed out on getting an additional seat after the 2010 census. If we get a 6th seat, as expected, our population per seat will drop to about 715,000.

This slide shows the average number of people moving to Oregon (green bar) and the number of people moving from Oregon (brown bar) by age group from 2013 to 2017. Not surprisingly, those aged 20 to 29 are the biggest movers. In every age group, more people moved from Oregon to another state than moved to Oregon from another state.

This seems to be at odds with the positive net migration figures shown in a previous slide, so likely I'm missing something here. (Which is why Rynerson is a professional demographer, and I'm not.) I've emailed Rynerson, asking about this. 

Rynerson said there are 13 metropolitan areas in Oregon, with each area being a county. The other 23 counties are in non-metro areas. (All it takes to be a metro area is to have a population center with 50,000 or more people.)

Net migration has been greatest in the 5-county Portland Metro area, as has the natural increase. Which figures, since that area has by far the most people. The other eight counties have a large net migration, but Rynerson said almost all of this was due to Marion County. 

And in the 23 non-metro counties, which basically means rural Oregon, net migration has been very low -- along with a negative natural increase, with more people dying in those rural areas than are being born. 

This chart shows where people moving to Oregon come from. (The columns total to 100%.) Overall, 24% come from California. Rynerson said the SW Oregon and Deschutes column confirms his intuition that southern Oregon has a higher percentage of Californians than other parts of Oregon -- 34%. 

The Willamette Valley percentages are very close to the Oregon total, Rynerson noted.

This interesting chart shows by age group in 2016 the number of white/non-Latino people (blue) and all other people (brown). It shows that the proportion of white/non-Latino steadily increases with age: 63% for those under 15, 71% ages 15 to 44, 82% 45 to 64, 91% 65 and older. 

So demographically, the future belongs to people of color -- an oft-cited national fact that holds true in Oregon, though we have a smaller percentage than the United States as a whole.

Lastly, this slide shows the "baby bust" that's been reflected in previous slides. The blue 1990-2017 trend line is non-Latino total fertility rates, and the green line is Latino total fertility rates. Meaning, the total number of children a woman has. The fertility rates for both groups have been steadily declining, which is why the natural increase in Oregon has been dropping.

But the Latino birth rate has dropped especially fast since 2000. Now it is 1.96, not all that far above the non-Latino rate of 1.51. Rynerson said the replacement rate is 2.1, given that some children don't survive to adulthood. So couples need on average to have 2.1 children to keep the population steady, without accounting for net migration.

This shows that Oregon would be losing population long-term if it wasn't for people moving into our state.

Here's some other info Rynerson shared in his talk:

-- 70% of people will get an Internet-first 2020 Census survey, while 30% of people in broadband deprived areas will get a Paper-first survey. Those who don't respond to the Internet survey apparently will get a paper survey.

-- The Trump administration's attempt to add a "Are you a citizen?" question to the 2020 Census is still being adjudicated. Rynerson said that if this question ends up being included, and someone doesn't answer it, but completes the rest of the survey, likely there won't be a follow-up attempt, due to lack of resources. So I can see immigrant rights organizations advising people to leave that question blank. Heck, I'll likely do that myself, if the citizen question is asked. 

-- Attempts will be made to include homeless people in the 2020 Census. During a one-night event, census staff will go with local  people to try  to count the homeless.

Trump's tariff threat on foreign cars irks VW GTI loving me

Just when I think I can't get more irritated at Donald Trump, our (hopefully) one-term president does something that causes my Irritation Index to jump to a new high.

In this case -- imposing a tariff on imported cars that could reach 25% -- it's a threatened something that's raising my ire. But given Trump's oft-stated love of tariffs, even when they're a spectacularly bad idea, it sure seems like there's a good chance he'll go ahead with an imported car tariff. 

At my age, 70, obviously I've owned a lot of different cars. More have been foreign than domestic. And not because I've got anything against American-made cars. My wife and I have leased three Chevy Volts, a great car that sadly, is being discontinued by GM.

Foreign cars simply appeal to me more.

I've enjoyed my mother's '57 VW bug that I inherited and drove in my college years; a Toyota Corona that took my wife to the hospital when our daughter was born; a Toyota MR2 with flip-up headlights that I loved to turn on; a Volvo 850 turbo that proved station wagons can be really fun to drive; a BMW 325 ix that handled snow pretty darn well; several Toyota Highlanders, one hybrid and one regular; a succession of Toyota Priuses, or maybe Priii; a couple of Subaru's, a Legacy and an Impreza; and currently, a 2017 VW GTI that I'm enjoying even more than the GTI I owned in the early 80's. 

Oh, my wife and I also have ordered a 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, even though the hybrid version hasn't even been released yet.

It will replace our 2014 Toyota Highlander. The RAV4 Hybrid will be made in Japan. If Trump goes ahead with a 25% tariff, the car we're buying from Capitol Toyota here in Salem, Oregon would cost us about $8,000 more, at least. (We haven't gotten a final price on the car yet.)

Everybody who works at Capitol Toyota is an American citizen, I'm pretty sure. And Capitol Toyota obviously is an American company. Why Trump wants to endanger the financial health of all the dealerships that sell foreign-made cars escapes me -- along with so much else Trump does that makes no logical sense. 

I'm not sure what we'd do if Trump imposed a 25% tax on the 2019 RAV4 Hybrid. Likely we'll have bought the car prior to the three month window following the mid-February completion of a Commerce Department report that concluded tariffs could be imposed on foreign cars for national security reasons. 

The Trump administration won't release that report, probably because it is difficult to imagine how having the Toyota RAV4 built in Japan is a major threat to our national security. Likely the Commerce Department made crap up just to please Trump. 

So far few people with working brains in their head are saying "Yay!" to Trump's dumb tariff plan.

Even US automakers think a 25% tariff on imported cars would be a bad idea, in part because other countries would slap tariffs on American cars, and in part because American cars use a lot of parts made overseas that could also be subject to tariffs.

There's even a possibility that cars made in Mexico and Canada would be subject to a 25% tariff.

This would really irk me, since my much-beloved 2017 VW GTI was built in Mexico, and I'm looking forward to the release of the next-generation GTI -- which reportedly will arrive in the United States as a 2021 model sometime in 2020. 

Even with winter tires on steel wheels, I love how my VW GTI looks. And even more, how it drives. There's no better "hot hatch" made by any car manufacturer, foreign or domestic. 

So Donald Trump should let the market decide what cars are bought in the United States.

Believe me, if Trump makes VW GTI's unaffordable to those aficionados like me who adore this car, we'd rather keep our current GTI's until a smarter president takes office than buy a lower-quality domestic vehicle.

The totality of one's life is what counts, not a few screwups

Shock! I totally agree with a piece by Bret Stevens, the New York Times columnist who usually tilts too far rightward for my progressive taste. 

But "Why Ralph Northam Should Not Resign" is absolutely correct in its condemnation of judging people by a few missteps that they've made, rather than the totality of the path they've taken in life. 

Stevens notes that almost all of us have done things that, in retrospect, make us cringe. Here's some personal examples from the high school period of my 70-year-old life. I want to note that my behavior was shared by most of my white, middle-class friends, so I'm using "we."

-- We called anybody who seemed the least bit effeminate "faggot." Well, actually we used that term as an insult for anybody, not just possible homosexuals.

-- We used "retard" with wild abandon for anyone who had a mental disability.

-- We called our Mexican-American classmates spics, taco benders, and greasers. They had their own insulting terms for us, though spoken in Spanish. 

So am I a bad person? Of course not.

Back in 1962-66, my high school years, there was virtually zero attention paid to diversity, sensitivity, political correctness. Girls took Home Economics. Boys took Shop and Mechanical Drawing. Feminism was just dawning, if not still below our horizon.

Sure, it could be argued that my inconsiderate behavior occurred when I was a teenager, not in my 20s, as was the case with Virginia Governor Ralph Northham wearing blackface. But that really isn't the point.

The question is whether society is going off the rails when there's an expectation that people in public life, such as politicians, must be held to a standard that few of us could meet.

Here's some excerpts from Stevens' opinion piece:

It’s probably for the best that Ralph Northam seems determined not to resign as governor of Virginia. He may have done something ugly and dumb many years ago, when he was a young man and prevailing notions of socially permissible behavior were uglier and dumber than they are today.

In the face of a political and reputational disaster he has stumbled badly in explaining himself. If he weathers the scandal, it will mainly be because all of his potential successors have grave compromises of their own.

In the 35 years between those two points he has, by all appearances, lived an upstanding life without a hint of racial bias. If we are going to embrace a politics where that’s not enough to save a sitting governor accused of no crime, we’re headed toward a dark place.

...each of us might want to perform an internal audit before we join the cast-the-first-stone coalition. [Stevens then cites his own history of mild bigotry.]

I admit to all of this not as a form of moral — or immoral — exhibitionism, but because I think it’s true of the overwhelming majority of people irrespective of their race or gender. (If you don’t agree, audit yourself twice.) Few of us are proud of these lapses. Many of us are trying to be considerably more mindful about them.

But most of us don’t rip ourselves to pieces over them, either.

That’s because we believe that our worst moments and dumbest utterances shouldn’t define us.

That our youthful behavior is more of a reflection of what is around us than a representation of what’s inside. That we deserve to be judged by the decency of our intentions and the totality of our deeds. That we are entitled to a presumption of innocence, a measure of forgiveness, a sense for our times, and multiple opportunities for redemption.

Absolutely. 

A poll has found that Virginians are divided on whether Northam should resign, with 47% saying he should, and 47% saying he shouldn't. It's interesting that African-Americans are more supportive of Northam than whites, with 58% wanting him to stay in office and with 37% wanting him to resign.

Now, obviously there are degrees of bad behavior.

I'd rate wearing blackface and doing a Michael Jackson imitation, the only offense Governor Northam has admitted to, as a mild infraction. But sexual assault, which Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax has been accused of by two women, that's much more serious.

I'm fine with Northam apologizing and remaining as Governor. However, if Fairfax's accusers turn out to be credible, almost certainly he needs to resign. 

Apologies aren't enough in many cases. Often, though, apologies are too much. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank makes this case in "The Democratic apology tour is a sorry spectacle." 

He observes that Elizabeth Warren is apologizing for claiming Native American heritage. Joe Biden regrets backing tough-on-crime legislation. Kirsten Gillibrand regrets her previous pro-gun and tough-on-immigration positions. Meanwhile, Trump never apologizes for anything, even though he has done hugely more that merits an apology. 

Democrats are just big on apologizing, even when this isn't justified.

Us liberals often have unduly high expectations of politicians. We want them to have hewed to an ideal of progressive purity throughout their career, even though in everyday life we all learn from our mistakes (frequently more than we learn from our successes).

So stay in office, Governor Northam. And cut down on the apologizing, fellow Democrats. No one is perfect. It makes no sense for someone to resign or apologize when at the time they supposedly erred, they had no idea that what they were doing was wrong.

2019 Salem Women's March is January 19 on Capitol Mall

People of Salem and surrounding areas, here's my strong advice for what you should do from 11 am to 3 pm on Saturday, January 19. Attend the 2019 Salem Women's March on the Capitol Mall. 

My wife was an organizer of the first 2017 Salem Women's March. We loved it.  In 2018 we went to the rather weirdly named Salem Womxn's March. We loved it also.

(See below for the photo/video web pages I made of the events.)

Here's how the 2019 Women's March is described on a Facebook event posting:

The Third annual Women's March in Salem is scheduled. There will be educational and promotional booths from 11 AM to 3 PM. The Rally with speakers will start at noon and the March at 1 PM. There will be food and coffee trucks available.

Salem-News has a story about the march, "Salem Women's March 2019 is coming up." 

Thousands of women from Salem, Eugene and surrounding areas will rally and march in Salem, along with thousands of women in cities across the country and the globe on Saturday, January 19, 2019 as part of the third annual Women's March.

“The Women’s March is not just a March, it is a movement and it has shown its power to change political outcomes and the direction our society is going,” said Debbie Miller, President of the organizing Board for this year’s Women’s March in Salem.

The event is from 11 a.m. through 3 p.m at the Oregon State Capitol Steps/Mall on Court Street.

Women will march in support and solidarity with other women and supporters to remember and solidify the power and the influence that women built by taking to the streets in 2017 and 2018, bringing particular attention to equity in healthcare, wages, and power.

“Not only are a large portion of national leaders ineffective, but they are also destructive to the welfare of their constituents.

"We must make sure they never feel we think their selfish, greedy and amoral behavior is seen as normal. So, we take any and all opportunities to rise up, making ourselves visible and heard all the way to D.C.,” said Joan Warnock, Secretary of Women's March Salem.

SPEAKERS:

-- Professor Wendi Warren Binford: Director of Willamette University Clinical Law Program
--  Danielle Meyer: Chair of the Salem Human Rights Commission and KMUZ Community Radio program host
--  Shelaswau Bushnell Crier: lawyer, teacher at Willamette University, member of several state advisory committees and served as VP for Salem-Keizer NAACP
--  Jennifer Hofmann: Americans of Conscience blog creator and writer
--  Sarah Bennett: Homecare Worker-activist in campaign for care workers rights

For more information or questions on logistics, including accessibility, email: [email protected]

If you missed the 2017 and 2018 marches, or even if you attended them, live (or relive) the great spirit of those days via these Adobe Spark web pages I made of the events.

Good news for Dems in my daughter's Orange County report

Along with other progressives, I'm trying to tread a middle way between undue optimism and excessive pessimism regarding tomorrow's Super Duper Important midterm election. 

But after getting a politically-oriented phone call this evening from my daughter Celeste, who lives in Orange County, California (Laguna Niguel, to be exact), I'm tilting more to the side of "Democrats could have a great day on Tuesday." 

Celeste has been interested in politics, but until this year I wouldn't call her an activist. Tonight, though, she excitedly told me that last weekend she did her first-ever canvassing -- for Harley Rouda, a Democrat who is running against Dana Rohrabacher in California's 48th District. 

Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican who is known for his love of Putin and all things Russian, has held his Orange County seat for 30 years. But he's in a tough fight with Rouda this time around. FiveThirtyEight.com rates the race as a toss-up, with Democrat Rouda narrowly favored to win.

Celeste told me that over 1,100 people have volunteered to campaign for Rouda. Even more impressive, she said that young people were much in evidence at the Rouda meetings she's been to. (Celeste is 46, which I consider young, so those really young people must be in their 20s and 30s.)

She felt super-energized after canvassing for Rouda.

Remember, this is Orange County we're talking about. Sure, Laguna Beach leans liberal, but historically the 48th District has been solidly Republican. Celeste said it consists of coastal areas like Huntington Beach, which is a conservative stronghold.

So the mere fact that the Rouda-Rohrabacher race is so close is one reason to feel positive about Democratic chances tomorrow.

Another reason is the influx of fresh progressive energy into Orange County. Celeste proudly told me that she had recently joined  WAVE, Women for American Values and Ethics, a non-partisan progressive group in Orange County formed after the 2016 election. 

Regarding the Rouda campaign, Celeste told me that there were so many people wanting to canvass for Rohrabacher's Democratic challenger, they've been canvassing Democratic leaning households who haven't returned a ballot yet twice. 

This sort of anecdotal evidence isn't proof that a Blue Wave is about to wash over the United States tomorrow.

However, when combined with polling, early voting, and other indicators of Democratic enthusiasm, my daughter's phone call tonight makes me pretty darn optimistic that November 6 will mark the beginning of the end of the national nightmare that began two years ago, when Trump soundly lost the popular vote but squeaked out a narrow victory in the electoral college. 

Here's a photo of Celeste and her husband, Patrick, looking all southern California'y in Newport Beach.

Here's Nate Silver's predictions for key Oregon and national races

For political junkies like me, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com web site is a treasure trove of election prediction delights. It's beautifully designed, statistically sophisticated, and a good way to learn statistical principles without actually taking a course.

In this post I'm going to share how Silver looks upon some key House, Senate, and Governor races, naturally with a special focus on Oregon races. First, though, here's some tweets that Silver shared today:

So the lean/likely zone for Nate Silver is between a 60%-95% chance of a candidate winning. And the toss-up zone is when no candidate exceeds a 60% chance of winning. Keep in mind that "chance of winning" is different from the predicted percent of the vote a candidate will receive. 

With these definitions out of the way, on to the races!

I'm using the middle "Classic" 538.com forecast, rather than the "Lite" or "Deluxe" forecast (the latter includes experts' ratings, while "Classic" is billed as I'll take the polls, plus all the "fundamentals": fundraising, past voting in the state, historical trends, and more.)

Also, I made screenshots of the pop-ups on 538.com, which explains the bleed-through of what lay beneath the pop-up.

Oregon governor. Silver gives Democrat Kate Brown a 85% chance of winning, which warrants a "Likely D" rating. Yet I've seen newspaper stories calling the race a toss-up. Maybe by their definition, but this isn't how 538.com views the Oregon governor race. 

Florida governor. It's interesting that Democrat Andrew Gillum has almost as high a chance of winning, 78%, as Kate Brown, which puts the Florida Governor's race also in the "Likely D" category. 

UPDATE: Somehow I forgot to include the Georgia and Wisconsin governor races. Here they are:

Georgia governor. This is a really tight race. I don't understand why Kemp has a 58% chance of winning, given that his forecasted vote share is just slightly higher than Abrams'. But I'm sure Silver has some very good reasons for making this prediction.

Wisconsin governor. Another toss-up race. Maybe Scott Walker's election luck (and/or manipulating) has run out. A lot of liberals in Wisconsin will be overjoyed if Evers ends up winning.

Control of the House. Silver gives Democrats a 85% chance of winning control of the House of Representatives. That's high, but I try to keep in mind that Hillary Clinton had a 71% chance of beating Trump, and we know how that race turned out. It'll be interesting to see how close Democrats come to gaining 39 House seats, which is Silver's predicted average gain.

Schrader's House race. Democrat Kurt Schrader has exactly the same chance of holding onto his Oregon 5th House seat as the Democrats have of taking control of the House: 85%. 

Walden's House race. In the Oregon House district where Greg Walden is running for re-election, his Democratic opponent has been doing a lot of traveling around the far reaches of eastern Oregon. But her chances of winning are very slim: 1%. The three other Oregon house races are all rated as solid D, with DeFazio, Blumenauer, and Bonamici all given at least a 99% chance of winning. So Schrader's race is by far the most competitive in Oregon.

Rohrabacher House race. My daughter and her family live in Dana Rohrabacher's Orange County, California House district. She's been working to defeat him, so she'll be pleased to learn that his Democratic challenger has a 64% chance of beating him. Orange County used to be solidly Republican, so this shows how the Blue Wave may become a reality.

Control of the Senate. As is well known, Democratic control of the Senate is unlikely, since many more Democratic senators are up for re-election (many in states Trump won), a result of how well Dems did back in 2012. So the 17% chance of Democrats winning control of the Senate is about the same as the 15% chance Republicans have of maintaining control of the House.

North Dakota Senate race. Listening to satellite radio as I drove around today, I heard a pundit say that Democrat Heidi Heitkamp could lose her Senate race by 20 points. But Nate Silver gives her a 32% chance of winning, and has her forecasted vote share at 48%. So this seems to be an instance of people giving a candidate essentially a zero chance of winning when actually the race is much tighter.

Nevada Senate race. Likewise, the prevailing "wisdom" (note the scare quotes) seems to be that Dean Heller is on his way to keeping his Senate seat in a state that Clinton won. Silver, though, has the race as a toss-up, since Heller has only a 59% chance of winning. 

Florida Senate race. Roughly mirroring Andrew Gillum's chance of winning the Governor race, fellow Democrat Bill Nelson has a 72% chance of beating current Florida Governor Rick Scott in the Senate race. This surprises me, as I thought Scott was quite popular. But it seems a combination of Democratic enthusiasm and "red tide" worries in the state are buoying Nelson.

Texas Senate race. Beto O'Rourke is getting a lot of Democratic love nationally, but his chance of beating Ted Cruz is slim at 21%. Could happen, though. A 1 in 5 chance is a lot greater than a 1 in 100 chance, as is the case with 4 of 5 Oregon House races.

Arizona Senate race. Democrat Sinema has a 64% chance of beating Republican McSally in this race for an open Senate seat. So that's good news for Democrats, since nearly everything has to go right for Dems in Senate races for them to have a chance of taking control of the Senate.

I'll end by observing that I trust Nate Silver's methodology a lot more than I trust my progressive mind -- which dearly hopes that against all odds, somehow the Democrats take control of the Senate.

I believe that Silver is correct with his 17% chance of this happening.

But I can understand why some consider that the Democrats have a greater chance, since mere "clicking around" the 538.com Senate map can produce a different outcome (which I'd call by a non-technical term: wishful thinking.)

Here's what I mean:

I zoom around and see that in Missouri Democrat McCaskill has a 58% chance of holding onto her seat in a red state. In Indiana Democrat Donnelly has a 68% chance of winning. In West Virginia Democrat Manchin has a 89% chance of winning. In Montana Democrat Tester has a 85% chance of winning. 

Then I fantasize that Democrat Heitkamp beats the odds with her 32% chance of winning, and holds onto her North Dakota seat. Plus, Democrat Sinema wins the open seat in Arizona, and Democrat Rosen beats incumbent Heller in Nevada. 

Bingo! Seemingly this means Democrats pick up two Senate seats and they have a 51-49 control of the Senate. 

The flaw in this is my wishful non-statistical thinking. Silver runs computer simulations. I simply run what I want to have happen in my own mind. It could happen, because Silver says there's a non-trivial 17% chance Democrats can take control of the Senate. 

It's just a lot less likely than the "everything goes right for Democrats" scenario I can fashion in my left-leaning mind. 

Great 2018 investing analysis: "Do facts matter anymore?"

In these Trumpian times it often seems like we live in a post-truth world where reality is whatever someone wants it to be. But investing is one area where facts can be ignored for a while, but eventually always come back with a vengeance.

So when I saw that our investment advisor's most recent quarterly musing about how things are going both internationally and here in the United States was titled, "Do facts matter anymore?," I read it more closely than I usually do. 

Since I'm pretty sure this analysis only goes to clients, I've blacked out the name of the investment advisor, along with one other identifying word. Here it is in PDF form, complete with my orange highlighting. 
Download Do facts matter anymore?

I'm a long-time investor who has learned one basic truth over many years: believing you are smarter than the markets, or other investors, is foolish. Here's a couple of blog posts I've written about the logical conclusion derived from that truth: invest in index funds. 

Index investing lets me relax in a stock market crash
Index investing rocks and Jim Cramer sucks

Since basically all I do these days investing-wise is rebalance our portfolio to keep it at roughly a 50-50 balance between stock index funds and bond index funds, I don't pay much attention to "gurus" who claim to be able to know where the markets are heading.

This includes the quarterly investment analysis that comes from our advisor (who I need to be able to invest in Dimensional Fund Advisors, DFA, funds -- since they aren't available to individual investors who don't have a financial advisor).

After all, index investors like me aren't really concerned all that much with which way the economic winds are blowing, since we're content with riding out both scary storms and pleasant breezes.

And at the opposite end of the investment philosophy spectrum, day traders, and commonly now, millisecond traders who rely on lightning-fast movements in a financial instrument to make their money, also aren't concerned with long-term trends, just whatever works to make some quick profits.

So the analysis prepared by my investment advisor is a throwback to simpler times, written on paper, mailed out quarterly, a reasoned discussion of what various facts, figures, trends, and such mean to investors with a lengthy time horizon. Again, here's a link to the PDF file. 

I'm sharing this analysis in part because it is believably gloomy, and when the markets take a big downturn, as they inevitably will, I can have the satisfaction of saying "I told you so!" Or more accurately, I told you what my investment advisor said was going to happen, a matter of when, not if. 

Here's some of what I found most interesting in "Do facts matter anymore?"

-- U.S. federal debt is included in GDP growth. Makes sense. I just had never heard of this before. The Trump tax cuts have us headed toward trillion dollar annual deficits in the near future. The way GDP is calculated, this will be counted as something positive, not negative, as it should be, especially since tax cuts in a strong economy are super-stupid.

-- This isn't new news, but I was surprised to read that adjusted for inflation, "breadwinner" incomes paying an average of $45,000 annually have risen just 0.8% since 2001. Also, that 26.9 million part-time workers have been classified as employed if they work one hour a week or more.

-- I'd also read this before, but it bears repeating: "Debt financed stock buybacks are the primary driver for these breathtaking stock prices and valuations, not company fundamentals or macroeconomic underpinnings." My advisor added, "No problem, optimistic future prospects and narratives, not current earnings and revenues, are all that matter at the moment."

-- As an investor, I found this both pleasing and disturbing: "Earnings aren't necessary for stock prices to rise any more since in the aggregate companies are spending all or more of their net income buying back shares of their own stock and paying dividends to shareholders, reducing share float and boosting earnings by dividing earnings across far fewer shares."

-- A story in today's Oregonian about a cooling in Portland's real estate market echoed my advisor's observation that mortgage applications and pending home sales are declining. Rising mortgage rates and prices make it difficult for new home owners to enter the market, with affordability a major problem,

For those who don't want to read the entirety of "Do facts matter anymore?," here's my investment advisor's not-so-cheery conclusion:

Narratives and prices can change quickly. Company fundamentals like valuations and macroeconomic variables like income growth, ignored for years, will eventually matter again. Don't expect Wall Street or the Fed or various experts to see any trouble coming.

In April 2008, former Fed Chairman Ben Bernacke confidently proclaimed there was no problem. In 2010 a House committee investigating the 2008 crisis learned that former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan "the Oracle," admitted he had been blindsided by the housing crash and credit market collapse in 2008.

Facts do matter, no matter how Trump tries to ignore this clear, well, fact. Right now the markets are in a state of irrational exuberance, to not-coin a phrase. 

At some point rational despair will wash over the investment community, and we'll head into what hopefully will be a fairly short-lived recession marked by a steep stock market decline.

Since this is a virtual 100% certainty, the only bright side I can get from this is if it happens before the 2020 presidential election, so American voters will have an additional reason to dump Trump.

Between the black and white of suicide, there's a gray area

The recent suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have gotten people talking about the problem of taking one's own life. That's good. 

But I don't feel like we're talking about an important issue that is almost a taboo topic: the gray area between (1) the black badness of people killing themselves when there are better options available to them, and (2) the white goodness of people taking control of their death when they are suffering and only have a few months or less to live.


What I see as a gray in-between area is when a person considers that life doesn't seem worth living, but they aren't terminally ill, and there really isn't much or anything that can be done about the bleak situation they're in.

Is it OK to kill yourself in such a situation? I lean toward saying "Yes," but I'm not completely sure. Which is why I call it a gray area. 

Now, I want to be clear that my use of the term gray area doesn't mean that someone is semi-suicidal, as in this person's description of how they feel most days. What I'm talking about is the middle ground of a societal agreement about when it is right or wrong to kill yourself.

As noted above, virtually everybody would agree that if a person is thinking of committing suicide when there are better options open to them (such as mental health treatment, or changing one's situation), every effort should be made to prevent them from taking their life.

And at the other end of the suicide spectrum, if medical professionals agree that someone is near death, and they're seriously suffering from their terminal condition, there's increasing agreement that assisted suicide, or medical aid in dying, is morally acceptable. 

(Seven states currently allow this, including Oregon, where I live.)

That's the black and white of suicide. The difficult gray area is when a person has very good reasons to feel that they don't want to keep on living, and there's little or no chance of changing those reasons, and they aren't terminally ill.

On a personal note, fairly recently I had direct experience of what it is like to be so depressed, the idea of not being alive held considerable appeal for me. Fortunately, I got help with my depression and am feeling much better now. I wrote a blog post during my dark period, "Too depressed to do anything else, I'll write about my depression."

I mention this because it was a wake-up call for me, given that I've been a person who had a distinct fear of death, which to my atheist mind means being gone forever -- a disturbing sensation I described in "Death and the primal fear of non-existence." 

So it was a decidedly unusual experience for me to be aware of my thoughts about death during my depressed period, which were along the lines of You know, being dead doesn't seem so scary anymore. In fact, it sounds pretty damn good.

Thus even though I wasn't really in the gray area that I'm talking about here, because my suicidal tendency was situational, curable with an anti-depressant, plus the support of loved ones and the passage of time, now I have a better understanding of how someone can feel like life isn't worth living, because the situation they're in is just so damn shitty.

And sometimes shitty situations can't be changed, as when someone has a chronic medical condition and it seriously affects their quality of life. 

Like I said, I'm undecided about this gray area of suicide.

My leaning is toward society being more accepting of people taking their own life after careful and full consideration of the pros and cons of committing suicide, when there is little or nothing that can be done to change the situation that is causing them to contemplate choosing death over life.

Autonomy is a wonderful thing. Conversely, feeling trapped is a bad thing. I readily admit that even in my current non-depressed frame of mind, I feel comfort in the fact that if the quality of my life ever degrades to a really low point, there's the option of ending my life.

Writing those words just struck me as strange. I almost feel ashamed, or embarrassed, to have said what I just did. But it's how I feel. And I know that I'm not alone in feeling this way. 

The strangeness of saying "there's the option of ending my life" seems to come from a taboo in our society against talking about the suicidal gray area I'm referring to. 

We're accustomed to urging people contemplating suicide for bad reasons to seek help. Increasingly, we're accustomed to praising people who are terminally ill and choose to hasten their death to avoid needless suffering. But there's an awkward silence about those who have good reason to feel that life isn't worth living, and those reasons are difficult or impossible to change.

I don't know how to deal with this gray area. I just wish that as a society, we could talk about it more openly and honestly. This blog post is my small step in that direction.  

Trump passed 3,000 lies this month. That's horrific.

Everybody lies. Sometimes. A little bit.

But Donald Trump lies to a degree that far surpasses any other president, and indeed most human beings in general, aside from pathological liars such as psychopaths. 

I have to give the Washington Post credit for having staff with the fortitude to chronicle Trump's lies since he took the oath of office. On May 1 the Post reported "President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims so far."

In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.

That’s an average of nearly 6.5 claims a day.

When we first started this project for the president’s first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. Slowly, the average number of claims has been creeping up.

Indeed, since we last updated this tally two months ago, the president has averaged about 9 claims a day.

So we can add about 300 additional lies to Trump's tally, given that the month of May is almost over. Now, the Post uses the term "false or misleading claim" rather than lie, since "lie" implies that someone knows the truth but speaks a falsehood anyway.

Me, I think lie is a perfectly fine word to describe what Trump is doing. Here's a couple of reasons why.

First, a Politico piece, "Trump's Lies vs. Your Brain," points out that Trump has been lying for a long time, not just after he became president. Lying is his habit. Trump does it knowingly and proudly.

The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations; Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true. (Compare that to the politician Trump dubbed “crooked,” Hillary Clinton: Just 26 percent of her statements were deemed false.)

Those who have followed Trump’s career say his lying isn’t just a tactic, but an ingrained habit. New York tabloid writers who covered Trump as a mogul on the rise in the 1980s and ’90s found him categorically different from the other self-promoting celebrities in just how often, and pointlessly, he would lie to them. In his own autobiography, Trump used the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” a term coined by his ghostwriter referring to the flagrant truth-stretching that Trump employed, over and over, to help close sales. Trump apparently loved the wording, and went on to adopt it as his own.

Second, Trump often lies about the same thing repeatedly.

Thus even after the truth has been pointed out to him, Trump persists with his lying. This is despicable behavior for anyone. It is horrific when someone is President of the United States, since citizens have a right to expect that their president is being truthful with them.

The Washington Post has an interactive graphic that documents Trump's most frequently repeated lies. For example, he's repeated this false claim 72 times: “So we have the biggest tax cut in history, bigger than the Reagan tax cut. Bigger than any tax cut.”

The truth is:

Trump’s tax cut is nearly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product, meaning it would be far smaller than President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut in 1981, which was 2.89 percent of GDP. Trump’s tax cut is the eighth largest tax cut — and even smaller than two tax cuts passed under Barack Obama.

What's almost as astounding as the frequency with which Trump lies is the unwillingness of Republicans to hold him accountable for those lies. Amazingly, GOP Congressman Jim Jordan has said that he's never heard Trump lie.

An adult human possessed of all his sensory capabilities said he has never heard the president lie. By The Washington Post's count, Trump hit 2,000 lies with 10 days to spare in his first year in office. As Cooper rightly asked, do none of these qualify as falsehoods for Jordan?

Did Jordan think the president was saying true things when he suggested Ted Cruz's father was involved in the JFK assassination? When he said Mexico was going to pay $12 billion for The Wall, which will now cost American taxpayers $25 billion? When he started saying in private that it wasn't him on the Access Hollywood tape?

Of course he didn't. But Jordan, like pretty much everyone else in his party, is terrified to cross the president in public.

History is going to judge all those conservative apologists for Trump harshly.

In fact, I'll go further and say that everybody who voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election should be held accountable for their willingness to put politics over morality and love of country, since Trump's propensity for lying was on clear display all through his campaigning.

I find it decidedly depressing that 38% of voters in Salem, Oregon, where I live, cast their ballot for Trump. This means that an awful lot of people in my town are totally fine with having our country led by a pathological liar. And that is indeed... awful. 

Look -- I'm almost 70. I remember many presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama.

None of them lied anywhere near as much as Trump does. Further, Trump's lies are having the effect that he desires: destroying the fabric of our democracy so his totalitarian desires can come to fruition. The Politico piece says:

The dynamic we are seeing unfurled in the United States is not merely hypothetical. We already have a model of this process—a country regressing when its leader goes from progressive to deceptive: Russia under Vladimir Putin.

“This worldview”—a zero-sum, I win-you lose one—“is relatively more prevalent in Russia and other cultures with weak rule of law, high corruption and low generalized trust, as compared with Western democracies,” Cushman says. But when Western democracies start looking like those cultures, the norms can quickly shift.

The distressing reality is that our sense of truth is far more fragile than we would like to think it is—especially in the political arena, and especially when that sense of truth is twisted by a figure in power. As the 19th-century Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain put it, “The great master fallacy of the human mind is believing too much.”

False beliefs, once established, are incredibly tricky to correct. A leader who lies constantly creates a new landscape, and a citizenry whose sense of reality may end up swaying far more than they think possible. It’s little wonder that authoritarian regimes with sophisticated propaganda operations can warp the worldviews of entire populations.

“You are annihilated, exhausted, you can’t control yourself or remember what you said two minutes before. You feel that all is lost,” as one man who had been subject to Mao Zedong’s “reeducation” campaign in China put it to the psychiatrist Robert Lifton. “You accept anything he says.”

Police need to give up the "21-foot rule" and other dangerous myths

It was great to see a recent story in the Portland Oregonian, Officers get new de-escalation training, which de-bunked the myth that police officers need to keep someone with a knife at least 21 feet away from them, because supposedly "a person with a knife within that distance can stab you before you can shoot."

This never made sense to me, as I noted in a 2010 post, "Why I'm bothered by another Portland police killing." 

The transient, Jack "Jackie" Collins, was intoxicated and threatening people at Hoyt Aboretum. After Walters knocked on the restroom door, Collins came out. Pretty clearly, Collins had been cutting on himself. There was no report that he had hurt anybody.

So Walters is faced with a 58 year old drunk guy armed with an x-acto knife. I've got several in my tool box. They're handy for stripping wallpaper and handling other chores. Yes, they have a sharp blade. However, they aren't a "bad guy" weapon of choice.

Walters, after having two days to talk things over with his attorney, says that he was backing up, ran into some barrier, and had no choice but to shoot Collins four times. I find that difficult to believe.

If it's true, then Walters is to blame. Restrooms are for public use. Public walk up to them, and people walk away from them. If Walters made the mistake of backing into a barrier, Collins didn't deserve to die for that.

Walters had called for backup. There was ample opportunity to defuse the situation once the police officer realized that all he was dealing with was a drunk transient, possibly suicidal, who only had an x-acto knife.

...One of the guys in my martial arts class, who I've trained with for quite a while, also has been a bouncer in several bars. He says that he has had knives pulled on him several times. The guy never had to kill anybody. Nor has he ever been injured.

I understand fear. I don't blame Walters for fearing for his life. But here's the thing: if you sign up to be a police officer, you should be prepared to "protect and serve." That means putting your life on the line in order to protect and serve the public.

Given that last paragraph, I really liked how Tom Wilson, a retired patrol bureau chief from a Maryland police agency who has been training Portland police on how to handle emotionally disturbed people, modified a familiar adage:

The forum instructors urged Portland police not to repeat the message they've likely heard as young officers.

"You probably were told 'your No. 1 job is to make sure you go home at night,' '' Wilson said. "Isn't it our No. 1 job to make sure everybody goes home?''

For sure.

Too many police officers in the United States are overly ready to use deadly force when this really isn't necessary. As Wilson said, they should have the attitude that it is as important to protect the lives of the people they're dealing with, as their own lives. 

Naturally this is a general rule. If someone is seriously threatening the life of an officer, obviously the officer has a duty to protect themselves. 

An emotionally disturbed person with a knife doesn't meet this criterion. Which gets us back to the myth of the 21-foot rule. The Oregonian story says:

The forum's training departs from traditional training, where officers have been taught to respond to a threat immediately, take charge with commands, hold their ground, and ratchet up the type of force depending on a suspect's behavior. It also debunks the 21-foot rule, used in Portland police training, which says that a person with a knife within that distance can stab you before you can shoot.

''Just simply holding a knife isn't necessarily an imminent threat,'' said Camden County police Lt. Kevin Lutz, who also taught Portland police this week. "We're not throwing out the concept but believe it should be a guide, not a rule. We don't want officers to think of that distance like a kill zone.''

Lutz was among officers from around the country who helped the research forum develop the training, called ICAT for Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics. It sprang from a review of basic police training in Scotland, where officers don't carry guns.

"Why is it when you have someone who is a mentally ill person with a knife in Glasgow, you're able to handle it without someone being shot and we can't?'' Wexler asked, when visiting the country. Wexler brought officers from around the United States to observe the Scotland training. They studied Scotland's approach and modeled the forum's curriculum after it.

Among the training videos is footage from a police body camera that captured an unusual response by Camden County [New Jersey] police to a call involving a man with a knife in a restaurant in November 2015.

When police arrived, the man had walked out of the restaurant and ignored calls to drop the knife. Instead of surrounding him, a handful of officers formed a walking perimeter and followed him as he strode down several city blocks, waving the knife. Some officers stayed ahead, clearing out pedestrians in his path, others to his side and behind.  Taser shots were unsuccessful. Few officers had guns visible. Eventually, the man dropped the knife and was arrested.

March For Our Lives, Salem -- photos, video, commentary

Here's photos, a video of a moving song, and some commentary on today's uplifting March For Our Lives rally at the Capitol. The organizers estimate a crowd of 3,500, which seems believable to me. I enjoyed taking photos of people with creative signs that had great messages. We've got to act to prevent more mass shootings. Repeat: GOT TO. 

Click on the image below to see the Adobe Spark page I made.

"How Democracies Die" advises against hardball tactics with Trump

Well, it wasn't the most fun reading I've ever done, not by a long shot, but today I finished "How Democracies Die" by two professors of government at Harvard, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

A basic message of the book is summarized in the final chapter:

When American democracy has worked, it has relied upon two norms that we often take for granted -- mutual tolerance and institutional forebearance. Treating rivals as legitimate contenders for power and underutilizing one's institutional prerogatives in the spirit of fair play are not written into the American Constitution. Yet without them, our constitutional checks and balances will not operate as we expect them to. 

Trump, of course, is pushing hard against what Levitsky and Ziblatt call the "guardrails" of democracy.

He's notoriously prone to denigrating his political opponents, going so far as to threaten Hillary Clinton with jail time, which Trump's supporters applauded with cries of Lock her up!

And Trump not only ignores the forebearance of former presidents who acted in accord with historical precedent, he takes childish pride in behaving as unpresidential as possible, wrongly viewing this as some sort of authenticity rather than as what it is -- boorish behavior. 

After reading the scarily cogent descriptions of how Trump is acting like other authoritarian national leaders, I was fully prepared for the Saving Democracy chapter to be full of hard-hitting advice about how to resist the dangers of Trumpism.

I wasn't disappointed. However, I was surprised. 

Probably I shouldn't have been, since what Levitsky and Ziblatt call for in that chapter is fully commensurate with the tone of their entire book. I guess it was my own desire to give Trump and his GOP enablers a taste of their own medicine that caused me to anticipate a harder-edged tone regarding how our democracy is to be saved.

In short, to do what Trump should be doing, but isn't: engage in mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance. Here's some passages from the Saving Democracy chapter on this subject.

In our view, the idea that Democrats should "fight like Republicans" is misguided. First of all, evidence from other countries suggests that such a strategy often plays directly into the hands of authoritarians. Scorched-earth tactics often erode support for the opposition by scaring off moderates. 

And they unify pro-government forces, as even dissidents within the incumbent party close ranks in the face of an uncompromising opposition. And when the opposition fights dirty, it provides the government with justification for cracking down.

...Even if Democrats were to succeed in weakening or removing President Trump via hardball tactics, their victory would be Pyrrhic -- for they would inherit a democracy stripped of its remaining protective guardrails. 

If the Trump administration were brought to its knees by obstructionism, or if President Trump were impeached without a strong bipartisan consensus, the effect would be to reinforce -- and perhaps hasten -- the dynamics of partisan antipathy and norm erosion that helped bring Trump to power to begin with.

As much as a third of the country would likely view Trump's impeachment as the machinations of a vast left-wing conspiracy -- maybe even as a coup. American politics would be left dangerously unmoored.

And here's a passage that resonates particularly true given yesterday's marvelous win of Democrat Conor Lamb over his Republican opponent in a Pennsylvania special election for a House seat. Lamb took some positions at odds with liberal orthodoxy, but that's what was needed to win in a district that had voted Republican for many years.

Building coalitions that extend beyond our natural allies is difficult. It requires a willingness to set aside, for the moment, issues we care deeply about. 

If progressives make positions on issues such as abortion rights or single-payer health care a "litmus test" for coalition membership, the chances for building a coalition that includes evangelicals and Republican business executives will be nil. 

We must lengthen our time horizons, swallow hard, and make tough concessions. This does not mean abandoning the causes that matter to us. It means temporarily overlooking disagreements in order to find common moral ground.