Cursed with Interesting Times

Nobody said that life would be easy, but nobody said it would be such a disaster as this, either.

I, for one, have been as restrained as humanly possible (given that I'm a blogger, bloggers being a population not well known for restraint), except for occasional bursts of . . . non-restraint.  Things that seem straightforward to us, appear to be highly complex to those in the parliamentary war-zones (or at least, so it appears to us).

This whole Russian thing seem silly to me; was there illegal hacking of our election equipment by the Russians?  That would be bad, but that does not seem to be what the Mueller investigation is about.  Was any attempts to compromise our election equipment instigated by our president, or on his behalf?  If there was, it seems clear grounds for getting rid of the president.  It does appear that the laws make it very difficult to get rid of a president who is determined not to be gotten rid of; in all previous cases of impeachment, it seems that the president in question simply resigned.  That isn't going to happen, as far as I can see.

But now we have a majority of Democrats, and I live in fear that we will squander that majority with senseless actions that waste our resources, and actually deliver the government into the maniacal hands of people such as Mitch McConnell, and others who ought to be placed in line for the guillotine.  We have replaced one set of agonizing circumstances for another, though this second set has more potential for re-delivering some sanity than the previous one.  Most of the freshman class of Democrat representatives are decent people with compassionate views.  I don't know whether to pray that they hold onto their compassion, or whether to pray that they become as ruthless as Madame DeFarge.  Even we atheists believe in compassion, but it seems that we ought to make a few exceptions to this prison reform initiative, and deliver Trump to the Taliban when the time comes.  (Actually, he may do very well with them.  Unfortunately.)


Arch

Washington Reverberations

At one time, however reluctantly, I considered the Republican Party (of the eighties and the nineties) as a bunch of wrong-headed fellows, but with honorable intentions.  The relentless hounding of Bill Clinton annoyed me, but I clung to the belief that they were decent guys, just a lot more interested in lowering taxes than was good for everyone.  Now, I have given up; regarding the present leadership of the GOP as a bunch of wrong-headed good guys is a stretch that I cannot undergo, without snapping my elastic.  Someday, I suppose, the GOP could ride again, but playing dirty has become a way of life, because as they understand it, their political base is incapable of understanding the gentility of old-school politics; but it does like crude behavior, and taunting the liberals, (they assume,) which probably explains the boorish behavior of the Trump-influenced GOP.

It is, I think, a big mistake to assume that T-GOP boorishness is going to be the norm for henceforth.  To assume that might be what will keep us sane, but it will paint us out of any possibility of even flashes of civility in any branch of Congress.  Balancing the budget, restoring environmental protections, none of these things are, IMHO, as important as holding out the promise of a return to civility.

That is not to say that we consider bad behavior as something in which a president can indulge with impunity.  All this reckless golfing, all the blatant promotion of Trump's businesses at government expense, all the maneuvering to obscure obstruction of justice, and to load the administration with Trump loyalists, is bad, but so is the rudeness extended to foreign heads of state, and the encouragement extended to racist organizations at home.  The latter strikes me as cowardly; Trump may not be himself a racist, but he indulges racists in the belief that they are friends and family of the Alt-Right, and they are a means to an end.  Or rather, chastening them might be a possible beginning to his possible end.  Many of the essential flaws of Trump, (laying aside his essentially flawed character, to begin with,) have to do with the flaws of businessmen turned politician in general.  They are unethical.  I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise, but this is the lesson we can take away from the poster boy of Business: Donald R. Trump.  He has ruined the reputations, in the eyes of the Democrats, of everyone who associates themselves with Business.  And Democrats are not just those in Congress whom he considers to be "losers".  There are Democrats everywhere, and as long as Trump and the GOP orchestrate the flow of our money to the haves, the number of Democrats are going to rise, and the GOP may have to re-think the wisdom of alienating the Working Class.  We may have thought of ourselves as The Middle Class, but, haha, it is looking more than ever as if we're becoming the proletariat.

Meanwhile, I sincerely hope that the vast number of women elected to Congress will be received with civility and respect by their Republican colleagues.  Just as importantly, I hope they are able to deal with their outrage at the overreaching of the Congress of 2016 with stern control and moderation.

Arch

Some Thoughts after the Mid-Term Elections

After a sleepless night—actually, I slept like a babe; I cannot lie—I tried to get some straight information about what happened; a summary of the election outcomes, but unlike in earlier years when I went to the TV or YouTube this election, I got only some vague hysteria.  I fairly soon learned the main facts: the Democrats had gained a majority in the House, and the Republicans had got a couple of extra seats in the Senate; an absolute majority, in fact.  Well; I like the House gaining a majority, though the days when the House acted predictably and reliably seem to have gone—had gone some time ago.  A few years ago I would have thought that the Republican majority in the Senate would not be anything to worry about.  But no; these days, even the Senate is running scared before Trump.  I now understand: it appears that when Trump campaigns for his favorite members of congress, they tend to win; when he does not campaign for Republicans, they lose.  So by selective campaigning, Trump appears to have weeded out those who do not support him implicitly.

Before I try to guess what the implications are, beyond the obvious ones, I would like to say that Nancy Pelosi, in her press conference a couple of days ago, came across as someone who was capable of dealing with the situation much more competently than I had thought.  She struck what I thought was the appropriate tone; she did not seem to seethe with anger, but she gave the impression of being very determined; she drew the lines in the sand that hardly anyone could argue against: she would not tolerate interference with the oversight of the other branches of government with which Congress has been charged.  All the time, she was cool and polite, and did not indulge in any sort of incendiary rhetoric at all.  But she did come across as very old, but hardly decrepit.

For those who want to see Nancy Pelosi in a more informal setting, here she is with Stephen Colbert.  Stunningly confident, but not worrisomely so.  I was delighted to hear her occasional chuckles, while Steve Colbert cringed, thinking her prediction of success would precipitate a bad turnout.  (It is possible that the outcome might have been better if halfhearted Democrats in the southern states had not taken Ms. Pelosi's blithe confidence to be permission to sit out the election, but it is a free country, even if some of us wish it wasn't.)

To summarize: Trump gave a rare press conference the day after the elections, and he deplored the fact that those Republicans who had not embraced him with open arms had not won their seats; he hurled insults at those who accused him of being racist; he refused to answer (or answered vaguely) questions about what he would do, now that the Democrats had a majority in the House; he did not answer questions about his cabinet.  Soon afterwards, he banned a particularly aggressive CNN reporter from the White House Press Corp (Jim Acosta), though I personally believe that Jim Acosta was at fault for not surrendering his microphone, and thus hijacking the press conference.  What is Trump to do: just patiently wait until Acosta thought he was done?  (Sarah H. Sanders played a video—which some Democrats insist has been altered—to support their claim that Acosta wrestled a female intern for the microphone.)  Next, he asked Jeff Sessions for his resignation, and then appointed a fellow called Matt Whittaker as acting head of the Justice Department.  There is some belief that such an appointment had to be approved by the Senate.  (But of course, now the Senate is running scared that without Trump's willing support and campaign, they may never win an election again.)

Among the freshman congressmen/congresswomen are two Islamic women, two Native American women, and two openly gay women, not all of whom are distinct; for instance one of the Native American ladies is openly gay.

 One article on the Internet (Atlantic Monthly) suggests that the divide between the Left and the Right is based on attitude towards education.  This was reported by at least two scholars.  Looking deeper at the effect, using exit polls, some scholars concluded that behind the "Diploma Divide" were uglier attitudes expressed as follows:

If you look at white people who voted for Trump—both those with college degrees and those without—and identify everybody with a high level of resentment toward minorities, women, and Muslims, as well as those who want an arrogant, assertive leader, there’s almost no one left. The vast majority of Trump voters share those sentiments, the researchers found, regardless of education level.

Sad as this makes us feel, we must remember that these attitudes are not permanent.  The article goes on to say that this seems to flow from nostalgia on the part of less educated white voters for a time in the past when blacks and immigrants did not share the rights and privileges that were exclusive to whites.  But whites with education appeared to have less distaste for the increased equality of more recent times.

Education.  Not related to the elections as such, I'm wondering what we can expect from the Federal Government in the area of Education.  Of course, personally knowing fellow-students of other races and colors is likely to make college youth more comfortable with the society we have.  But what can the Federal Department of Education (currently headed by Ms. Betsy De Vos) do for the country?

I have written numerous blogs on this subject, but I know I have failed to be clear, mainly because I was a teacher at the time, and I was too close to the facts to be entirely objective.  (I had taken the view that students had to learn all that was in the curriculum, because it was good for them.  And many of them needed all that, because they were certifying to be high-school teachers themselves.  But the culture that it was necessary to sweeten the deal with entertainment was gradually overtaking our institution, at which point I chose to depart.  But if some clever young fellow would be able to teach the syllabus as well as keep his students entertained, then he should be allowed to do it!  However, there was a simultaneous tendency to sacrifice some of the more difficult topics in favor of more entertainment, which seemed perverse.  The question is: are those last few difficult topics worth the effort?  If the objective is to be better at anything that Japanese, or Finnish, or Chinese students, then, yes.  But if teachers in high school are not really expected to cover all the topics that they covered in the past, then no.)

Everybody seems to be confused about the Federal role in Education, despite the fact that primary and secondary education is controlled by local governments.  Some people think that it is an economic issue: the nation needs educated labor if it is to compete economically with other countries.  But in the face of increasing globalization of manufacturing and commerce, the role of government needs to be re-thought.  It is more expensive to manufacture practically anything in the USA because life is more expensive, and education is more expensive here, because the kids must be entertained, too.  So our young people are going to be at a disadvantage in jobs that require actual hard knowledge, whereas they're going to be excellent at jobs that involve low-level thinking.

I was watching news programs where investors were discussing what to do in the event of a Blue Wave vs. a Red Wave, and they were talking about the S&P 500, and what it did on such-and-such a date, and how some investing firms focused on selling stock, while other firms focused on buying under-priced stock, and so on and so forth.  In certain quarters, this sort of knowledge is given a premium, and some of this is taught in Business courses in college.  It seems to me that the training (if you can call it that) received by a investment manager makes him or her useless for anything else.

However, if the Department of Education were to focus mainly on an excellent elementary education for all, they can't go wrong.  I think carrots are going to be more useful than sticks.  I have not studied the problem, but I have gathered that elementary education responds well to Federal support, provided they do not push it too hard, and provided elementary teachers do not respond too wildly.

To improve the level of high school education would be the greatest thing the Federal DOE could do, but I think it is going to be a tough undertaking.  There is more push back at every level, and hardly any success in the past on which they can base a successful program.  On top of all of this, the Alt-Right probably contains more than its share of education-haters, and parents of high-school kids are more likely to resent Federal supervision or influence than parents of elementary school kids.

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Many Ways to Be a Girl, but One Way to Be a Boy: The New Gender Rules

This article: Many Ways to Be a Girl, but One Way to Be a Boy: The New Gender Rules is on a topic that has lots of relevance to something that I am concerned about.  But let's look at the main point first.

Because of the tireless efforts of feminists, girls are gradually being liberated to present themselves in a variety of ways: all the way from being ultra-feminine to being almost ungendered, in the sense of having interests and dress preferences that are neither feminine or masculine, and personal styles that do not fit into those of their parents' generation.  Make no mistake: not all of these are endorsed with equal enthusiasm in every location, or by every society.  In some conservative hell-holes, a girl who wants to be a fireman or a police officer would be looked at with some concern, or even scorn.  But a boy who wants to dance ballet, or wear a dress, is regarded with almost universal distaste.

To make myself perfectly clear: it isn't literally true that there is only one way that boys are permitted to present themselves. There are increasing instances of boys who have creatively found ways of presenting themselves differently than the athletic, masculine, taciturn, "man of action" type of guy.  The beer-swilling, football-playing type of boy who claims to be uninterested in school is a stereotype that has had its day, certainly.  But this is, in some ways, the central stereotype from which boys dare to diverge in some ways, but usually not too far.  Depending on where you live, there will be young fellows who reject this 'norm' utterly.  They can be uninterested in athletics, perfectly articulate, interested in school, and satisfied with almost any drink but beer, and also depending on the locality, they may be called nerds, or some other uncomplimentary term, invented by the morons who find the old stereotype comfortable, and probably the only one they can aspire to.  But the point of the article above is a rather relative thing: girls can safely stray much further from the feminine stereotype norm, and with fewer negative consequences, than boys can stray from their stereotype; and this is what is being talked about: why not boys as much as girls?  Why isn't the spectrum of tolerated personality styles as wide for men as for women?

Now, boys who would like to wear feminine dress are not rare at all.  For example, Ronald Reagan's son, Ron Junior, who wanted to dance ballet, was often humiliated, but as anyone who has seen him recently will agree, is a man with a personality that will probably satisfy the most bigoted sexist.

Now here's my point: first of all, I deeply dislike the rush of some parents to gender modification of underage children.  A boy who wants to present himself in a more feminine style should simply be allowed to do so.  Often the parents are horrified by this situation, but more often it is the classmates and the school administration that is more uncomfortable with it.  Until we take a more aggressive attitude towards freedom of gender expression,  (I don't even know whether that is the proper term for what I want to talk about, but it ought to be clear) there are going to be kids---and some overenthusiastic parents---who want to settle the problem once and for all, but replacing the poor guy's genital apparatus with those of a little girl, or hitting him with hormones, with the intention of surgical 'improvements' later on.  And the same goes with girls who want to present themselves in the style of boys.

There certainly are children who are hermaphrodites by birth, where the gender assignment is ambiguous.  Not being one of those, or even knowing one closely, I don't know how traumatic that is for the child, though it is doubtless deeply problematic for the parents, especially in a society that views gender as a very dichotomous thing.  But those are the exceptions; the vast majority of children who feel themselves to be gender fluid in the sense of (a) not comfortable with their assigned gender in every regard, and (b) not satisfied with their assigned sexual orientation, should be permitted to express themselves in terms of personal style (clothing, hair, personal presentation, etc) any way they wish, without it being considered imperative that they should have surgery at the first opportunity.  In fact, they should not be permitted to have (and their parents should not be permitted to encourage) gender reassignment surgery until they're old enough to marry, for instance.  This is obviously an arbitrary choice of age, but considering that the surgery is not easy to reverse, this can be considered something that society should enforce for the protection of the minor.

If there was a way for a child to experience what gender reassignment is like without the actual surgery, (assuming it is not permanent,) it would be ideal, and that could be tried when the child is young, and not yet in a calcified gender state.  (In fact, it might be a good thing to moderate tendencies in certain young males towards sexual harassment, to let them experience what it feel like to be at the receiving end.)

These problems are very First World, admittedly.  For that very reason, unless we in the West do not address the issue ourselves, it is unlikely that anyone else will.  (Except, of course, that Japan might take the lead in this one, since their traditions seem to be more flexible in these sorts of matters.)

I'm still thinking about this problem, but for lack of a forum in which to talk about the issue, my thoughts on it are slower than molasses...

Arch

P.S.
On a related note, perhaps it is time to insist that whenever an instance of pedophilia is discovered in clergy, that a huge fine be levied on the church, which must be given to state controlled charities.  I'm talking a fine of millions of dollars, which should not go to the victim, certainly not all of it.  Ultimately, I believe that the blame has to be placed on the church, for requiring or encouraging celibacy on the part of the clergy.