Compromise or Betrayal

The Politics of Gridlock

So, I wrote the Washington Post, again. Something like Letter to the Editor number lebenty-leben, I’m guessing. They didn’t get around to publishing it (quelle surprise!), but here it is:

Editor,

“Obama did not lead a U.S. retreat from the world,” Jackson Diehl writes in “Foreign policy red flags “(Post, Nov. 12). “Instead he sought to pursue the same interests without the same means.”

Obama has withdrawn ground troops from war zones, cut the defense budget, and backed away from nation-building projects and from U.S.-led interventions, Diehl tells us. That sounds to me like a decision to pursue distinctly different interests around the world and, more specifically, to make it clear that the U.S. will no longer police the world to secure all the advantages that once accrued under Pax America.

If my understanding is correct it might mean that U.S. corporations can no longer invest and operate globally backed by the threat of force. If my understanding is correct it might also mean that groups with historic grievances against the U.S. (real or imagined) will unfortunately have more space and freedom to plot anti-American violence. Indeed, that might make Americans a bit more vulnerable, a risk that we will have to figure out how to manage and reduce by other means. But if we can do this through a “lighter footprint” globally, we might become one of the principal architects of a more peaceful world.

Or is Diehl suggesting that a heavier footprint might get better results? Are we talking, say, the Bush footprint, which resulted in upwards of one million Iraqis and Afghanis dead or displaced, thousands of American fatalities, and a military budget that roughly doubled from the first Bush-year to the last? Is that the footprint Diehl is recommending?

Jeff Epton

That’s the letter, but there’s more to say, of course. Obama’s “lighter footprint” still includes drone attacks, Guantanamo and anything but a get-tough-with-Israel element, but at this time in history, and after almost 50 years of disappointment with American foreign policy, I’m more than willing to settle for half a loaf.

And, speaking of compromise, disgruntled leftist though I may be, I’m ready for more of it. If Barack Obama wants to trim a little around the edges of programs I support, including Medicare, in exchange for Republican votes for higher taxes on the wealthy, other revenue increases of various kinds, closing tax code loopholes or ending subsidies that supplement the profits of oil companies and hedge funds and other corporate actors, and continuing reductions in the military budget, I’m ready to sign on.

Some of those cuts likely will harm individuals and communities that need more, not less, government assistance or protection. But without Republican support for revenue increases the country will continue to be pummeled by the effects of political gridlock.

Of course, there are lots of possible compromises that will provide no long-term benefit. Any worthwhile deal with Republicans in Congress must be part of a strategic assessment that suggests that the Republicans who do compromise will be willing to do so more than once.

I don’t know what criteria to apply in reaching such a conclusion, but I’m fairly certain that there are Republican senators and representatives who believe that a deal of some sort would be better for the country than falling off the fiscal cliff and also believe that Republicans who continue on their present reactionary path might well be overwhelmed by an approaching demographic tsunami.

There will be plenty of folks who wish to argue with this approach. People who believe that compromise can easily convert to betrayal. Robert Borosage lays out that perspective in persuasive detail in “A ‘grand bargain’ on the fiscal cliff could be a grand betrayal.”

Borosage’s main argument is that going over the fiscal cliff will not immediately do the kind of damage that so many observers are predicting. Further, he says, the nation does not have a debt or deficit problem, but a jobs problem that needs to be addressed first. And, finally, that there is plenty of time next year, after going over the cliff that is not a cliff, to address the problems created by lapsed tax cuts and automatic budget cuts.

But I’m not persuaded. I agree with the proposition that getting more people back to work is more important than addressing the deficit. But what Borosage and I believe is not going to compel action. The end of the payroll tax cut is going to reduce household income for even the poorest working families by a meaningful amount. That’s not going to get anybody back to work. There are more layoffs coming, as well, as the fiscal cliff approaches.

Sorry I am that compromise is necessary, but January will not create a more flexible Congress or present new opportunities to pass another sorely needed stimulus bill. Stimulus items like spending for infrastructure, extending unemployment benefits, and preserving the payroll tax cut are going to take compromise, now or later. Election victories notwithstanding, coaxing the right number of Republicans to vote with Democrats is going to take giving up something.

Though Jackson Diehl’s Nov. 12 piece left something to be desired, two Post columnists wrote rather more interesting columns that ran on Nov. 14. Dana Milbank’s “The Confederacyof Takers” points out in substantial detail how well most red states do feeding at the public trough. “Red states receive, on average, far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. It is the opposite in blue states,” Milbank wrote.

Also, check out Harold Meyerson’s “The GOP’s gerrymandered advantages,” which points out that in Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania congressional races, Republicans won 30 more seats in the House of Representatives than Democrats, despite the fact that Obama won the popular vote in those states by margins that should have led to a 30-seat Democratic advantage. That did not happen, Meyerson wrote, because Republican gubernatorial and legislative control of those states after the 2010 census permitted significant gerrymandering of House districts. “…by suppressing competition, and crafting uncompetitive districts, [Republicans] maintained their hold on the House last week.”

 Obviously, it will take a while before the full effects of the coming demographic change will swamp intransigent Republicans. In some cases, it will take Democratic victories in tight elections in state legislative districts over the next six years before redistricting will permit Democrats to once more exercise all the prerogatives of the majority party in Congress. But legislative victories for working people and minorities should come a little easier in the future than they have over the last four years.

In the meantime, we should all keep in mind that working people in the red states are suffering, too. After all, capital and organized commercial interests in the south, like weapons manufacturers, oil companies and agribusiness, are siphoning off a huge share of the federal largess that heads that way.

Ordinary folks in the red states are pretty much getting the same shaft as working people elsewhere. They may even have been getting it longer. The fact that they don’t seem to vote their own interests is a measure of how long they’ve been exploited and of the absence of unions to organize and message an alternative. While we are compromising, and strategizing our way to future victories, we ought to figure out a way to talk plainly and supportively to folks in the red states. They are Americans and they are our sisters and brothers.

A meditation on the Romneys

comes to an improbable conclusion

Walking the dog a bit ago and musing, I came across something of a meditation about Ann Romney and about Mitt. I'm feeling pretty well-disposed right now (it turns out the defense of Obamacare is pretty damn good medicine), but I'm still not intending to write anything nice about the Romneys.

The meditation began with a focus on Ann's horse, which, we have been told, has been an important element in the treatment of Ann's multiple sclerosis. Really? And, so, are we to understand that we are to pay no attention to the wealth piled up in the corner, but focus instead on Ann's self, mortal like the rest of us?

I can manage a very little of that, but then the thought comes to mind: How incredibly privileged the Romney's are that they can afford such treatment. Yes, we will all shuffle off this mortal coil, but along the way some of us will suffer more.

None of this means that the Romney's are bad people (though wealth and cluelessness and the desire to lower taxes on the rich is the dangerous wish of a powerful person), but they do not a First Family make. According to media reports, Republicans are doing some serious investigation of their strategies and commitments and exploring options for the future. Let me suggest that they never run a person this rich for the presidency, again.

That wasn't a viable choice this time, and isn't going to be again, I'd wager (though I'm not willing to bet a Romney-style $10,000 on the proposition). Certainly, wealthy men and women are going to be the ones occupying the presidency for as far into the future as we can see, and will capitalize on their stature and our celebrity culture after they serve, but Romney was very likely a zero too far. His $250+ million fortune was less transparent than the fifty-times smaller fortune of the man he ran against and substantially larger than that of the Bush family.

But Obama made what he has on fame and book royalties, both things that have come to him fairly recently in life. And George W. Bush had a goofiness about him that persuaded lots of ordinary folks that Bush was a pretty ordinary guy, too. Lots of voters were okay with a goofy, rich man for president when times were good, but this time around, a rich man who has the same vibe as Thurston Howell III (on Gilligan's Island), would have been kicked to the curb sooner, and long before Obama sleepwalked through the first debate, if the economy had been only marginally better.

Thinking back on images of the campaign, I am struck by how often I recall pictures of Mitt looking befuddled or startled. Looking, in fact, like he has just run up against another manifestation of real life--like mere mortals questioning his judgement or his veracity--that he had never experienced before. Well, the only people I know of who are routinely protected from that sort of collision with reality are CEO's and the one percent. Don't kid yourself, you Republican deep thinkers, everyone was going to figure out that Mitt didn't have a clue, even if the Obama campaign had spent less money trying to convey that impression of Mitt.

I must say I don't envy Republican strategists right now. They must figure out a way to compromise on taxes and the deficit and Social Security and Medicare and the debt ceiling and immigration and infrastructure and climate change while maintaining strong connections to Tea Party supporters, half of whom will demobilize as the economy improves. For the Republican party as it is presently constituted, staying relevant in an age of adverse shifts in demographics and the electoral map  is like being up the creek without a paddle.

But the somewhat bizarre conclusion to my meditation is the thought that I really do wish the Republicans well. Democrats could use a hand governing the country at this very critical time. A Republican boost could be transformative.

First we reelect the president

Next we heal the world

Well, so much for my abilities at foreshadowing what I might do next. My last post ended with the hopeful observation that I might write next about "the Chicago Way (here or here, for example)," a concept intended to suggest that dirty tricks and corruption have been refined to an extraordinary degree by Chicago politicians, of which Barack Obama is one and whose campaign, as the story goes, is too slick and too malign for the honorable likes of Mitt Romney.

I intended to belittle the notion that Chicago was so exceptional in the way of corruption and cynicism, and to call on lessons from my own experience as a politician in Ann Arbor and as a journalist in Chicago and Dayton to support an opposite conclusion, namely that politicians are no more corrupt or venal than the rest of us. That's a point that I think needs elaborating and repeating, but I've lost interest in the idea as the topic for this post.

Instead I want to elaborate on a comment my friend "kpdriscoll," left responding to the previous post, a bit about October surprises and the unlikelihood that there are any secrets left about Barack that might come out at the end and damage his political position. I wrote that only Romney could be victimized by the sudden appearance or elaboration on one of his "secrets." I was thinking about, say, the release of previous years tax returns or some nasty story about Bain.

The piece was weak. I wrote what I did because at the time I was feeling a little puny myself. Hell, I've been feeling a little puny for the last month or so. And my lassitude, I am convinced, came from the dread I felt about this election. Obama will lose, Romney will win, I've been thinking for more than a month now, and what will follow will be more of the Republican attack on government, an attack that has already, in the 32 years since Reagan was first elected, significantly defunded the government with severe consequences for the poor, for public education, for college students, for consumers, for healthcare and for the environment, to select just a sample.

In réponse, KP cited Hurricane Sandy as really the only October surprise of this election cycle and expanded with the observation that Sandy injected climate change and the environment back into political debate, however belatedly. This is true, I guess, as far as it goes, but climate change has been injected back into a debate that has been substantially soured by the ongoing Republican project, aimed at deligitimatizing the notion that government can improve and advance our common interests.

The two-pronged attack, defunding and deligitimatizing government, have left the country in a perilous state, especially in regard to a challenge as enormous as global warming and seas rising. Of course, the complete collapse of the U.S. and the global economy would have go a long way toward slowing the increase in the average global temperature, but as George Lakoff points out in "Global Warming Systemically Caused Hurricane Sandy," burning the gas reserves of Exxon Mobil alone would raise the average global temperature high enough to threaten civilization as we experience it. "The oil stored by all the oil companies everywhere would, if burned, destroy civilization many times over," Lakoff continues.

Under such circumstances, it should be obvious that even worldwide economic collapse would not eliminate the threat of devastating climate change (devastating superstorms are already here). It will take a government-led project many times larger than the Marshall Plan, larger than all public and private space exploration to date, to back us away from the damage that has already been done and to do so in a way that maintains the livelihoods, aspirations and quality of life for billions worldwide. It may be that it cannot be done.

It may be that the damage done by Reagan, Bush, Cheney, Bush, Rove, Boehner, McConnell, Romney and others has already crippled the faith that Americans have in their own government to the point that any new Marshall Plan would sound like "Solyndra" in American ears. But taking on that lack of faith and restoring American belief in the power of government to transform the world we live in is the challenge before us.

Like I said, I've been feeling pretty puny. Keeping the faith in the face of the threat presented by Romney has been harder for me than the experience of living with 12 years of Reagan-Bush and another eight years of Bush the Younger. Of course, in this instance, the fact that Marrianne works in the Obama administration and brings home the lion's share of our bacon is a factor, too. Without Marrianne's earning power I'd just be an aging retiree on a fixed income with a 14-year old kid and a terribly spotty work record. I'd be toast. So, yes, I have a personal stake in the outcome.

But I have a personal stake in restoring faith in government. It will not be hearty individualism or capitalism or the right to carry firearms that will protect the lives of the people I love who will be here after I'm gone. It will be American faith in the grand possibilities of collective mission articulated and guided by a progressive, democratic government. Unfortunately, climate change is gonna' keep on comin' while the essential work of restoring faith gets done.

So, first, we need to reelect Obama. Then, at a minimum, we are going to need a President Obama ready to play rough with plutocrats and corporations that have been the principal beneficiaries of the widening wealth and income gap and the deregulation push of the last 30 years. Close that gap, restore justice in the marketplace, and lead.

Do that and billions of us will have a chance of living reasonable lives into the second half of the 20th Century. Fail that and watch the continuing march of reactionaries and worse leading us to a place we never dreamed was possible.

If there's an October Surprise...

...it will most certainly be Mitt's.

No way there's an October Surprise for Barack. He may very well be the most investigated man in history.

I base that conclusion on the sheer power and range of today's investigative tools wielded by the mostly right-wing zealots with a hard-on for Barack Obama. If there were any damaging secrets in Barack's past, we would know them already. City and country blocks around each location Barack has ever been have been excavated and sifted through by miners with the black-hearted souls of Dickensian villains and the eternal optimism of the '49ers.

One thing about which all Americans ought to be sure is this: Barack Obama is exactly who he appears to be--an ambitious, thoughtful family man with an abiding love for his wife and children and a desire to do right in the world.

In rather surprisingly stark contrast, Mitt Romney is the most opaque and guarded man to have run for president in my memory, which does run as far back as Ike and Adlai, both of whom, by the way, projected authenticity, itself a separate deficit plaguing Mitt. Together the lack of transparency and the lack of authenticity suggests that Mitt has secrets, some of which might be significant enough to assume "October Surprise" proportions.

Of course, for all I know, Mormonism and its sincere practice might somehow shore Mitt up in a way that makes his deficiencies less problematic. But I doubt it. We just might not ever know.

In any case, we do know this. Barack is a straight up, honest guy. Such secrets as he might have will be very much like the rest of us. Bad, embarrassing, pathetic, whatever, but the secrets of a man who might very well be an exemplar of honest. Rather like a previous president from Illinois.

Which all brings me to consideration of the Chicago Way a term currently being pounded by hard right columnists and bloggers, like Victor Hansen; a concept likely to be the jumping off point for my next post.

Obama's Wednesday Night Failure

We need more Grant, less McClellan

Just like everybody else, or like tens of millions of people, we watched the debate on Wednesday night. Obama was not okay.

I've always liked him as a person. We don't have the same style, but he seems authentic. And on Wednesday night his authentic self appeared too troubled, by far.

He's never seemed a courageous man to me. (I say that with no intention of portraying myself as his opposite. I'm more than a little ambivalent about the strength of my own heart.) But I haven't been expecting courage from Obama--or innovative and radical policymaking--though that is exactly what we need. What I have always liked about Obama is his thoughtfulness and intelligence.

As it turns out, for purposes of the debate, it was his habitual lack of courage that made the difference. Obama is just not in the habit of fighting back. For all the Republican insistence that he rammed the healthcare bill down America's collective throat, there simply wasn't (and isn't) anything hard to swallow about it. The Affordable Care Act (or whatever, call it ACA), will result in covering, what, 40 million more Americans.

And it won't raise the cost of health care very much. Its flaws are that it doesn't go far enough (among other deficiencies, it doesn't direct use of the government's purchasing power to lower health care costs). In short, Obama didn't "ram" ACA. He just didn't get any Republican votes for it.

The Republicans, some of them, know that ACA, in the form that actually passed, was not a truly progressive accomplishment. But it did edge closer to a slippery slope.

Some conservatives may be genuinely and honestly concerned about the direction ACA traveled toward more government control of health care, but the Republican ox that ACA (or, rather, what ACA might have been) threatened to gore is private profit and the income of the one-percent. Everybody, including Obama, knows this. Or should.

The trouble is that some Republicans are, in fact, successful (and generally cynical) communicators. They have made even liberals a little uncomfortable about "Obamacare." (Come on, Mr. President, don't embrace that term, don't 'kind of like' it.)

What I'm saying here is this: the missing element, in the whole first term of Barack Obama, was courage. Evasions, clarifications and constant compromise were not occasional tactics, they were the strategy. (A further, even uglier, truth is that liberals haven't been very brave for a long, long time, but that is another story.)

Look at the last four years. A timid stimulus package. A policy that included both a surge in Afghanistan and a timeline for withdrawal. Promises to bishops followed by broken promises to bishops. Letting Goldman, Sachs fail and then running away from the implications of that policy in favor of "too big to fail." Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Baby steps and half-way measures. And so on and so forth.

Never a strategy for the meaningful presidency we thought was possible. Only engaging in battles and then retreating to the nearest safe haven.

There is one (audacious) hope, here. That Wednesday night's debacle will be a wake-up call and that the next four years we will see a little more Grant and a little less McClellan.

The Indictment of Mitt Romney

This indictment of Mitt Romney, raising questions about his fitness to serve as president of the United States, is past due. Of course, the simple fact of one’s unfitness to serve, would not prevent Romney from serving—one need only review the case of George W. Bush or, for that matter, the hallowed Ronald Reagan, who napped away at least the last half of his presidency while functionaries like Ollie North got away with murder.

But I digress. This indictment will frame the case against Romney based on his political flip-flops and prevarications, his mid-twentieth century air (far too retro for the challenges of our time), and the devastating simple-mindedness of his political program, at least insofar as it can be determined.

To make this case, the indictment will call upon the recent opinion pieces of several knowledgeable journalists and economists. It should be noted that the likely response from the Romney campaign to this indictment, other than studied indifference, will be to disparage both journalists and economists in sweeping terms.

No matter. Those who investigate and judge the particulars as outlined in this indictment will recognize that ad hominem attacks on the individuals (and their professions) quoted here are in no way a merit-based refutation of their arguments.

There is “…an existing stereotype of Romney and Republicans as wealthy white businessmen, clinking wine glasses while bemoaning the irresponsibility of the help,” wrote Michael Gerson in a column in The Washington Post on Sept. 21. Gerson, who was a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and may very well be the person who coined the phrase “compassionate conservative,” centered his column, “Ideology without promise,” on what the video of Romney at a Boca Raton fundraiser in May revealed.

The problem, Gerson wrote, isn’t really its power to confirm the stereotype of Romney, after all, “few imagined Romney to be a closet populist.” The problem is what the video suggests about “Romney’s view of the nature of our [current] social crisis.” Gerson’s elaboration of that crisis delves into the ways that the decay of neighborhoods, widespread job losses, poverty and personal financial collapse devastate individual lives and whole communities, magnifying their vulnerability and make government activism and creative policymaking an absolute necessity.

The Romney revealed in the video, and the incessant Republican political assault on the federal government, makes them worse than irrelevant. “…a Republican ideology pitting the ‘makers’ against the ‘takers’ offers nothing. No sympathy for our fellow citizens. No insight into our social challenge. No hope of change. This approach involves a relentless reductionism. Human worth is reduced to economic production. Social problems are reduced to personal vices. Politics is reduced to class warfare on behalf of the upper class,” Gerson wrote, in what might be the most withering dismissal that will be written by a Republican about Romney and his campaign during this political season.

A day later the Post published a piece by Ezra Klein also focused on Romney and the 47-percent video. (Unfortunately, try that I might, I cannot locate a web version of this article available for free.) In his piece “Romney’s skewed view on personal responsibility,” Klein, formerly a business writer for the Post and now one of their most frankly liberal op-ed columnists, demolished Romney’s pay-no-income-tax dismissal of half of the country. “…more than 60 percent of [the 47 percent] were working and contributing payroll taxes—which means they paid a higher effective tax rate on their income than Romney does,” Klein wrote, adding that “an additional 20 percent were elderly.”

Worse than Romney’s dismissal of low-wage workers and retirees, Klein continued, was his description of who he needed to care about politically. “I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives,” Romney said.

The horror here is that the people Romney dismisses are the people who must take more, not less, responsibility for their lives, Klein wrote. The time spent commuting on public transportation and wrestling with the scheduling difficulties that result, the time spent worrying about how to get one’s children into decent, affordable schools, the energy spent deciding on what to pay or what to buy in any given week, managing a budget with no give and with holes in the safety net below, takes an enormous amount of responsibility and energy. Mistakes of judgment will be made, Klein wrote, citing studies that vividly demonstrate how fraught and consequential are the lives and decisions of the 47 percent.

“Romney, apparently, thinks it’s folks like him who’ve really had it hard. ‘I have inherited nothing,’ the son of a former auto executive and governor told the room of donors.’ Everything Ann and I have, we earned the old-fashioned way.’ This is a man blind to his own privilege,” Klein concluded.

Also applicable here might be former Texas Governor Ann Richard’s observation about Bush, the father. “He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”

In another piece in the Post that ran the same day as Klein’s piece, Colbert King made the case that the most damning thing about what Romney said privately in Boca Raton in May is how dramatically it undercuts what he said to the NAACP in public at their July convention. (King’s column, titled in the print edition, “Not buying what Romney is selling,” King quoted Romney’s apparently sincere sympathy for African Americans who live in a country where equal opportunity is not “an accomplished fact.” Because that is the case, our bad economy is not “equally bad for everyone. Instead, it’s worse for African Americans in almost every way,” Romney told the audience.

King detailed Romney’s claims to understanding and empathy. “We don’t count anybody out,” Romney said, “Support is asked for and earned, and that’s why I’m here today."

But, King wrote, the stuff Romney told the NAACP audience in July doesn’t square with the stuff he said privately in May to wealthy supporters at the Boca Raton event. “Romney, of course, was slurring more than the members of the NAACP, wrote King. “He also insulted retirees, college students, Americans with disabilities and people who work for a living for not much pay.”

In speaking to the Boca Raton donors, “witness Romney, the Chameleon, telling that crowd what they wanted to hear,” King wrote, in the process raising the implicit question: Why would an audience of political donors want to hear a presidential candidate dismiss 47 percent of the country?

Though an important question in its own right, it is nevertheless a digression from this indictment and will therefore be left to another time. Instead we will move on with the observations of economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

In “Romney pledges a Fed that will screw workers” posted on the Truthout website on Aug. 27^th, Baker detailed the ways that a strong (read overvalued) dollar results in lost manufacturing jobs and depressed wages in the United States, and a huge international trade deficit. But the strong dollar also confers enormous benefits on corporations and the wealthy.

“The arithmetic on this is striking. Productivity is projected to grow by more than 25 percent in the next decade. If workers get their share of productivity growth, this would imply an increase in annual income for the typical family of approximately $12,000 by 2022. On the other hand, with a Fed following Romney's strong dollar policy, workers in 2022 will be lucky if their wages are as high as they are today,” Baker wrote.

In furthering the indictment of Romney, it should be noted that Baker does not confine his scorn to Republicans, identifying Robert (“Wall Street”) Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of the Treasury, as a principal architect of strong dollar policy. “While the strong dollar may be a loser for most people, it does offer large benefits for people like Mitt Romney, Robert Rubin, and other members of the 1 percent,” Baker added.

“These people are all heavily involved in global business and their money goes further when buying into China, India, and elsewhere when the dollar is stronger.

"In addition, there are retail companies like Walmart that have set up low-cost supply chains in the developing world that depend on an overvalued dollar. Do you think they want to see the price of the goods they purchase overseas rise by 20 percent when measured in dollars? The same applies to manufacturing companies like General Electric, which produce most of what they sell in the United States overseas,” Baker continued.

Itemizing Romney’s obvious disinterest in the fate of so many people should not be concluded without a look at his apparent position on women and health care. Notwithstanding his obvious affection for his wife, Ann, whom he makes use of in his efforts to reach autoworkers (“my wife Ann owns two Cadillacs”), he seems unaware of the need to make policy for the majority of American households led by single moms or with both parents working.

“… the Republican Party [has] just spent two full years using their power across the country to get involved in women's medical decisions and gay people's lives, and ... Mitt Romney [has] repeatedly vowed to do the same if elected,” wrote Marge Baker, an executive vice-president at People for the American Way.

In “Romney toWomen: Stop worrying about your bodies and just trust me,” posted on the Huffington Post website, Baker added “Yes, the economy and jobs are hugely important issues in this election (though ones in which Romney doesn't exactly have an advantage). So is foreign policy, which one Romney advisor dismissed this week as a 'shiny object.' But so are the personal attacks that Romney and his allies are lobbing at women.”

There is much additional testimony that could be brought to bear for this indictment, but brevity matters and is sometimes decisive. The election likely will come long before Mitt Romney is called into court to face these charges. And the outcome of the election will likely make further action against Mitt a substantial waste of time and energy.

In the meantime, does anyone care to defend the guy who led a gang of school boys in an assault on an effeminate classmate, who went on vacation with his dog in a crate on the roof of his car, who includes a number of NASCAR owners among his good friends, and who has said that he would not lift a finger on behalf of 47 percent of the country? If so, please respond on this site.

It's the European economy, stupid

In Obama vs. Romney, Merkel holds the key cards

So the Greek and Spanish economies are bleeding out all over the floor of the Eurozone. Blood drips from not-yet-fatal Italian wounds, as well.

A recently announced deal to bail out Spanish banks has put off the reckoning for now, but the next round of European panic is probably a few days away, at most. Bank failures or default on debt payments by one of the southern European countries seem all but inevitable, so does a deepening of the current Eurozone recession. When that happens it will be bad news for the increasingly fragile American economy, which appears unlikely to gather much strength between now and the November election.

Everyone knows what that means: Mitt Romney will defeat Barack Obama.

Though the race may be tight, if the global economic slowdown is big enough, Romney’s coattails may lengthen enough to protect arrogant and naïve Republican members of the House of Representatives from the election-day judgment they deserve. Spared from defeat, the Tea Party will plunge ahead with the deconstruction of the federal government’s capacity to initiate, maintain, protect, invest, underwrite and regulate. And aided and abetted by Tea Party populists, Romney will implement his own limited agenda deregulating corporations, privatizing benefits, socializing risk and subsidizing the wealthy.

By the time that’s done, Romney will have crashed whatever remains of the American economy and will be a one-term president, himself. But, afterward, it will take decades of progressive policies to restore a stable and fair economy that rewards effort rather than wealth.

Because the health of the American economy and the outcome of the election in the United States very likely rides on what happens to the Eurozone, Obama has been lobbying European leaders to save the Eurozone by bailing out and stimulating the economies of the southern tier. In this matter, with the English wandering around in their own economic funk and French socialists praying for relevance, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel swings the most weight. And Merkel’s instincts seem conservative. She has been a champion of tough love and bitter restraint for the Greeks. And although the recent deal with Spanish banks was more generous and forgiving, Merkel will err on the side of caution. She will prefer to avoid any further moves that rely on stimulus.

As the fifth biggest economy in the world and an industrial powerhouse, Germany likely can survive even a partial collapse of the Eurozone. But the German economy, too, is weakening, forcing Merkel to consider whether it is worth it to be the only European economy left standing after the dust settles. Ultimately, the policy math might lead to the conclusion that continued bailouts for weaker economies will be the best thing for Germany. If so, the American recovery will stagger ahead, possibly even gain steam in time for a few good job-creating months immediately preceding the November election.

Everyone knows what that means: Barack Obama will defeat Mitt Romney.

Whatever a second term for Obama might mean, it will not mean permanent tax cuts for the rich, new and large subsidies for dirty energy or a resurgent Tea Party. But the big question is this: If European failure will tank the American economy and, with it, Obama’s chances for re-election, what kind of advice might Mitt Romney’s campaign give Angela Merkel on the subject of medicating sick European economies? Before you answer that question, consider that the Reagan campaign in 1980 was alleged to have done something similar, completely undermining Jimmy Carter's re-election chances.

A Bishop Joke

Two bishops walk into a bar...

I haven't posted anything here since last November. I haven't posted on my other blog, Outdoor Poetry Season, since February. And didn't post on either blog all that much during the whole of 2011. On the one hand, about this morass of go-slow I've been in, I'm inclined to go easy on myself. I suspect long silences are a more frequent feature of the rhythms of my life than I've been inclined to recognize.

There is also this: For the last six months, I've focused my off-line efforts on creating, revising and finalizing the draft manuscript for the book of my poems that I intend to self-publish before my 65th birthday in August. The copy is now off to Ella Epton, my sister-in-law, for layout and design. By the time Ella is done with it, no amount of tiny revisions will save me from the embarrassments and mortifications that likely accompany publishing, self- or otherwise. Regardless, the book, to be titled Wild Once, and Captured, will be worth looking at if only to see the illustrations that Stacee Kalmanovsky, Ella's daughter, has produced to go with the poems.

Meanwhile, let me move on with an observation (or two) about the Catholic church and about American bishops by citing a recent article in the Wahington Post, "Nun's Vatican-condemned book shoots up on the bestseller list." According to the article, widespread news reports about official church hostility to Sister Margaret Farley's book drove it from approximately one hundred forty-two thousandth place on the Amazon best-seller list to 16th place in about 24 hours. I think it's safe to say that in resurrecting Sister Margaret's book, the Pope, and his agent, the Vatican-based Office for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, have performed a miracle.

[Interesting historical note: The Office for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith was originally established as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition in 1542. You could look it up here.]

Of course, this miracle amounts to almost nothing by comparison to the Catholic church's greatest single accomplishment, i.e., sustaining for two millennia, more or less, belief in the one god and spreading belief in the one god during that period to more than three billion people worldwide. We may debate the point--there are substantial faith differences between Christians, Moslems and Jews, but Jews, less than 10 million people at most times in history, would be no more than an idiosyncratic cult had Catholicism (the early Christian church) failed to spread and institutionalize the Word. Islam, which accounts for more than a billion believers, itself, required the spread of Christianity before Muhammad could rework its message in a way that would capture the imagination of desert people.

Which brings us to the American bishops, currently at war with Obama the Apostate (as I suppose he is fearsomely imagined in the bishop's very private--no women or uncloseted gay men--soirees). Bishops have been policing the boundaries of the faith, keeping a sharp eye out for heretics, since Irenaeus launched multiple attacks on the Gnostics in the second century CE. (Check out Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels for a detailed account of what was lost when a few men launched a movement that would secure church power in their hands and those of their designated successors over the next two thousand years).

The bishops have responded with an aggressive counterattack to the requirements in the new health care law that most faith-based organizations must provide access to a full range of reproductive services for women (e.g., abortion and contraception) if they provide health care to their employees, at all. The bishops are further exercised by Obama administration requirements that charitable organizations providing services to female victims of human trafficking must also provide them with access to a full range of reproductive services. The bishops claim that such requirements would force Catholics to violate their own consciences and that there are no acceptable work-arounds (such as partnering with other organizations that would be comfortable providing such services).

The political stance of the bishops may make a kind of sense in light of Catholicism's near-2000 year record of success in defining the basic worldview of billions of people, but in the modern world, where billions do not share the values and attitudes of this all-male cadre of celibates, it is nonsense. However they may elbow their way into the debate, ongoing success in narrowly defining and institutionalizing the beliefs of a few men who deliberately excluded women from the original club long before STDs, orbiting space junk, and human-caused climate change do not qualify club members for a political role in the high stakes world of the 21st Century. It should, perhaps, disqualify them.

Occupy

Understand the wait for what
it is. There will be no great leap
forward. That debate is over.
The throng does not march toward

ordained fate. There is simply each
meandering face, longing for common
flow, and the hard places along the way.

So, it behooves us to wish
each other well, to mourn the dead,
to fight like hell
for the rest. Occupy.

Debt Ceiling Blues

But all praise to memory

While we're all trying to decide how much we hate Obama's debt ceiling deal and whether or not the man has crossed our own individual political line-in-the-sand, I offer my own reflections on memory (probably, but not certainly, irrelevant to the current fiscal crisis and equally irrelevant to the lives of all but a tiny few of the admittedly small number of readers of this blog). Got that?

Last night Marrianne and I watched the 3rd episode of Falling Skies, some cable channel's 13-episode, alien-invasion series. (And, no, I am not going to get into some side discussion on what and why we were watching.) At one point, a father tries to console his son over the son's loss of his girlfriend during the struggle against alien invaders. Into the bargain, the human population of Earth has been decimated, so everybody is essentially an individual variation on a shell-shocked survivor.

"At least you have memories of her," the father comforts.

"Mom was better at this, Dad," the kid responds, both wryly and sadly.

"Yeah, that was pretty lame," says Dad.

NOTE: Do not rely on these quotes for authenticity. They are constructed from memory.

The viewer sort of nods and agrees with Dad and Son that the comforting advice is lame. That, I suspect is what we all think; that memories of a person or a pet or a place or an event are but pale shadows of the real deal and without the power to comfort especially when the loss is recent and raw.

Most of the time it may be nearly indisputable that memory is not enough, but the truth is that sometimes memory is more than loving recall of something that cannot be recreated. Sometimes memory is vividly real and as familiar as the air. I am 64 years old (or nearly so) and past my prime in, oh, so many things. But I remember prime in those many things, and remember in detail.

I'll admit straight up that what I remember may never have happened as I remember it, but that is a mere bagatelle (French, I think, for a gossipy bagel). Memory, however flawed, is the best we got for building and maintaining individual identity, so while we need to have it, we might as well tap some of its great power, e.g., the ability to hold a lover or a pet or a great moment in our lives so close to the core of our being that they come alive, tangible as a warm breeze or cool water, releasing a flow of endorphins that cleanses us and brings us close to what we most desire.

One is favored by such moments only rarely. If they happened too often, the number of square-peg people in a round-hole world would overwhelm the capacity of our institutions. As, in fact, is happening now with the tribal fantasies of the Tea Party seriously testing our political capacity to understand each other and cooperate.

Yesterday morning, while out with my middle-sized dog, Jetta, traipsing through a dry-season wetland, I stumbled upon a series of memories of myself at 12 and the games I would play with my neighborhood friends. One game, in particular, seemed perfect for our block of brick three-flats and apartment buildings. "Ditch," as we called it, was played entirely outdoors, except for the warrens of basement tunnels running under the three-story apartment buildings that squatted on three or four lots along the street. If you could get into a basement, more power to you. Just don't get caught by your pursuers on the other team or by a building janitor.

Evolved out of the almost casual inclination of any group of two or three or four or more kids to hide from, flee or "ditch" a subset of that same group, into Ditch, in which half of us pursued the other half everywhere on the block--though tunnels, over fences, off garage roofs--until we had captured and held every member of the other team. It was an adrenalin-soaked, terror-producing, entirely exhilirating after-school and weekend activity. We played it compulsively, like rats ignoring food and water in favor of the button that releases another dose of cocaine or some such drug.

I think we played Ditch often enough and hard enough and long enough to force our bodies to adapt productively. For all that fitness has always mattered to me, I don't think that my body and its capabilities were ever again so well matched. I was a wiry, agile, relentless, Ditch-playing machine.

And now, I'm 64. I can still go hard when I have to, but I can't keep it up with the same ease I used to have, and I don't recover from going hard at anywhere near the old rate. One thing I am plainly not is twelve years old. But Saturday morning, out with Jetta, I was.

We had gotten kicked off a portion of the back acreage of the Howard University Seminary and I was morose. I knew Jetta and I would be okay out on the wetland (quite dry at this time of year), but I was feeling furtive and anxious. I sat down and wrote a poem that I'll post on Outdoor Poetry Season, but the effort did not empower or invigorate me.

Moping my way off the property, I recalled myself at 10 or 11 walking across the lawn of some 10- or 12-unit apartment building and being suddenly confronted by the building janitor, who was waving a rake and ordering me off his lawn. None of us knew his name, but he was a big guy, putting us in mind of a bear, so we called him Andy Panda; a cuddly sort of label that I suppose we applied in order to diminish the fear he inspired in us.

I ran around him and when I got a safe distance, I yelled. "I'm not afraid of you, Andy Panda."

The memory stimulated additional memories and all the sights and sounds of Ditch flooded my mind. It was definitely a WWJD-moment ("J" meaning a 12-year old Jeff). Trying to caution Jetta to stealth, I made my way along the wooded fringe of the Howard property, suddenly determined to get across the three-block landscape from which I'd previously been banned, not by Andy Panda but, by a guy with a gun and sergeant's stripes.

Jetta was having difficulty inhabiting my vision, but I was all in. I was 12 and my heart was pumping and I was alert and tingling and ready and finally confident that no guy with a gun and sergeant's stripes was a match for me. I can't say what proportion of the journey involved stealth and slinking through the shadows and what part was sprinting and dashing ahead, but it felt a good mix. I could feel the sweep of dozens of prying eyes, but I was nearly invisible. I could sense when my pursuers got close, or when I passed near a surveillance point, but I zigged and darted and sped beyond their awareness.

At the other end of property I paused and coaxed Jetta into the shadow by the trees and looked back at where I'd been. I was safe, I was victorious and looking ahead to where I was going with fresh anticipation. All praise to memory.

And what was it we were talking about?

Definitely a Midsummer's Outdoor Poetry Season

Seasoned by climate change


Went for a walk with Jetta this morning. Out for an hour, lingered in the seasonal wetland (now, very dry) behind Howard University's School of Religion. Swung by the largely unmaintained hilltop ruins around the site of an old Civil War-era fort. It really is amazing what's only a minute away on foot around here.

In any case, I was dripping sweat by the time I got home, even though it wasn't even 9 a.m. And the streets were deserted, people already hunkered down against the heat.

What ever are they going to do by the middle of the century when the average temperature will probably be 7 degrees higher than it is now, maybe 10 degrees? Imagine, 80s when it used to be 70. 90s when it used to be 80. And a day like today would be what temperature by mid-afternoon? By 2040, maybe 110 degrees.

It wasn't like I was exercising vigorously, though I was preparing to go with Marrianne to Bus Boys and Poets for open-mike night, tonight. So I was throwing myself around imaginary stages and gesturing emphatically. It is well and truly Outdoor Poetry Season.

I'm going to recite The Unfolding first. And then The Last Night.

Matt Damon speaks,

I reshape the message just for me.

In The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon speaks to a crowd of adoring supporters after a tough election loss. He tells them that even though he is widely regarded as a natural, down-to-earth guy, as a candidate he has been no such thing. Holding up his shoe, he talks about the influence of consultants on him and his campaign and how unnatural he really is.

We paid this one guy, he says, to figure out the right amount of "scuff" on his shoes. If the shoes are perfect, voters will think you are a lawyer or a banker, some kind of snob, not one of them. If your shoes are scuffed like some kind of working class guy, the Damon character says, you won't get support from big money contributors. So, the right amount of scuff is a big deal.

This I have known personally all my life. My dad was a dominating, charismatic figure. He was also meticulous about his appearance, even fastidious. And he always went for maximum shine on his expensive shoes. He loved me, and wanted me to achieve great success in life, but the plan was never mine, always his.

I reacted to him, I think, so strongly that I've spent a portion of my time on this good earth trying to figure out the right amount of scuff for me. This is not so easy as it sounds. Knowing that you are not Bernie Epton is not the same as having the right footwear in the right condition for every occasion in life.

Correct me, if I'm wrong about homophobic rant

So comedian Tracy Morgan (a Saturday Night Live alumnus) recently unloaded a darker part of his soul with a line at one of his comedy shows, claiming, apparently, that "he'd 'stab' his son if he were gay (Washington Post)." Chastised by activists, Morgan recanted (as opposed to "reranting") his remarks and apologized. I'm pretty certain that his apology is sincere and his understanding of human rights and shared humanity has been upgraded. I'm also certain that he's no more tainted than the rest of us--we are all only (and uniquely) human.

But beyond that, what would it mean for any man to stab his son upon discovering that his son was gay? Lots of possible interpretations, to be sure. Here's my take on the psychology underlying the threatened homicide:

A man, a particular man, say, stabs his son when he discovers that his son is gay for two purposes.

One, though he may never have had (knowingly) a homosexual desire, let alone encounter, this particular man stabs (penetrates) in the wild hope that he could have his son before any other man might take him. This is the return of the repressed.

And two, this particular man wishes to be the sole possessor of whoever it is that he finds himself lusting after. Does stabbing guarantee that he would be the only man (or, at least, the last one) to have his son?

This is a detailed acting out of jealous sexual rage. It makes no difference what gender or sexual orientation we are speaking of here. We are all only (and uniquely) human.

But we'd also better hurry up the expansion of our collective understanding of our shared humanity. Worse is coming.

The Spirit of Phyllis Hall

Rich and Forever Giving

When my mom died last fall, she was ready to go, though she nevertheless regretted that she had reached the point where death might be welcome. She didn’t want to linger in her dying, nor did she laze about much in life. Loving always, but not particularly interested in showing it. She had friends, people who loved her, but she still lived her life in a kind of isolated splendor. She wasn’t much for passing out compliments, either, though she celebrated each of us for the virtues she believed we possessed. But she loved us. Gift aplenty.

Now Perry Hall’s mom has died. It has taken me a day or two of thinking about it to fully grasp what Phyllis Hall gave me that no one else did. And in understanding what she did for me, I know I feel a portion of the loss that the Hall family must feel.

Perry’s been a friend my whole adult life. We don’t see each other much anymore, but if I needed him and I told him so, he would come. As I believe I would come for him. A friendship with a man like Perry would be gift enough from Phyllis Hall, but it’s only a fraction of what Phyllis gave me.

In 1970 I spent a good portion of the summer living at Perry’s mom’s house on Hobart, a street one block from Trumbull Street in Detroit. Perry lived there, too, of course. A whole lot of others, brothers, sisters, grandchildren and cousins, lived there, too. And if they didn’t live there, they were around daytime, or nighttime, or mealtime, or bedtime, or maybe all the time; there was no roster or schedule.

During the day Perry and I worked at Ed Bowyer’s Insight Magazine. The magazine was an exemplary editorial vision, but Ed didn’t have the resources to execute that vision. The first issue, showing the statue, Spirit of Detroit, tying off an arm and shooting up, created quite a stir. Insight lasted, two, maybe, three, issues. But it was beyond doubt an important place to work and Detroit was a fine place to engage in struggle.

We ran one feature, an interview of a group of black Detroit-area Vietnam vets, over a couple of issues. The interview was raw, poignant, portentous; full of the anger and frustration of African American men in America in the ‘60s and’70s.

At night Perry and I would return to the Hall homestead, share food and drink, socialize, visit neighbors; a group of autoworkers, members of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) lived across the street, sharing space with grassroots activists who worked for radical Detroit city councilman Ken Cockrell. Life that summer felt relevant and rich. But the key to it all was Phyllis Hall.

She worked a swing shift as a matron at the Detroit House of Corrections, in my mind’s eye a large, dark, forbidding place. But I knew it was a place Phyllis could handle, even as I was sure that I would barely survive there.

Sometimes on her way home from work, Phyllis shopped for groceries and cooked at midnight. Whoever was awake would gather at the table. Others would rouse themselves from sleep. There were never enough beds, so on occasion, waking for midnight dinner, I would find one or two of Perry’s nieces or nephews sleeping on top of me. That always felt like a kind of loving comfort that I did not experience again until my own infant children slept soundly (and with a profound weight) on my chest.

It didn't matter how many people were at the house during those late night dinners, who was sleeping or who was awake, because there was always enough food. Maybe because there was always plenty of love.

I never figured out when Phyllis slept. I’d guess that since she was so busy taking care of everyone else she probably wasn’t getting enough sleep herself. But she lived through Hobart Street and so much else in her life, and lived well for eight decades, so maybe it was caring for others that kept her whole and thriving.

I didn’t see Phyllis much after that summer, but I knew I’d get a warm welcome anytime I came by. I never told her how loved she made me feel, I don’t think she needed to hear such things. But now that she’s gone, I feel the need to note some of the gifts I received from her, gifts I’ve been unwrapping my whole life.

Some time in high school, I lost my innocence about race. By college I knew that equality and meaningful integration and shared understanding were, without struggle and pain, beyond our collective reach in the United States. And I knew that whiteness was both a privilege and a sort of stupidity about the world. And I thought these things with a kind of sorrow I couldn’t evade despite varied and creative efforts to do so; especially after Martin Luther King, Jr., the most enduring heroic figure in my life, was killed. But Phyllis’s house was the place where my whiteness mattered least, and where I did not have to evade the sorrow because I could briefly set it aside. All that counted, so far as I could tell, was the content of my character and that every other person coming into Phylli’s home.

In Phyllis’s house, we were all affirmed.

And, thinking of those late night meals, I am aware that what we all dined on together may not have what we wanted, but it was all that we needed.

Phyllis Hall was the exemplar of the kind of person Sweet Baby James advises us to be:

“Shower the people you love with love,
show them the way that you feel.”

I'm happy to have known her.

Ambivalence

To fight or not to fight in Libya or anywhere else?

That is, or ought to be, the eternal question. Whether the cost in human lives and national treasure is worth the outcome. And whether the outcome is clearly and transparently defined or is oblique and misdefined. For Americans, after all, it has never been simply a question of whether we support or oppose the clear goals of war, but also whether we have been lied to and mislead. There is a dissonance within ourselves and our country that sometimes cannot be resolved.

In my lifetime, that has been the case in Iran in 1950, in Guatemala in 1954, in Vietnam in 1956 and beyond, in Cambodia, in Chile, in Panama, in Granada, in Nicaragua, and so on and so forth. The same questions do not arise in every instance.

Most often, I am persuaded that American goals are not on the side of justice. When the U.S. intervened in Kosovo in the early '90s, many on the Left supported that intervention. The Serbian Slobadan Milosevic seemed bent on the destruction of Albanian Kosovars. But I didn't support that intervention, despite the fact that Milosevic was almost certainly a war criminal. Earlier the U.S. had left Rwandans to their fate. And been indifferent to the plight of civilians in the Horn of Africa suffering from war, expulsion and famine. How could the same country that did not trouble itself over Rwandans, Congolese, Somalians and Ethiopians be judged guileless and innocent of ulterior motives when it rode to the rescue of Albanians?

But we are another decade along now, and are led by a president whom I genuinely believe wishes to solve conflicts and ameliorate suffering, perhaps even in the case of Palestinians. And I am persuaded that many lives have been saved in Libya by the recent U.S.-led intervention. Still, I remain troubled by the notion that the among the few certainties here is that weapons manufacturers will get reorders and that even humanitarian interventions serve the interests of some who don't give a hoot about Libyans or about Palestinians or about the millions of recent dead for whom humanitarian intervention never came. But how could abstention be the answer?

The Libyan War is...

A. a bad idea.
B. a necessary evil. Innocent people are dying. U.S. intervention will keep Gaddafi from murdering his people.
C. not the outcome of constitutional deliberation and process.
D. a sign of Obama's weak leadership
E. a good idea.
F. What kind of phony discussion is this? The war in Libya is another undeclared war based on a (probably incorrect calculation of) national interests that will cost the United States much more than it delivers and will fall far short of any reasonable humanitarian goal.

There is a G, of course, namely that the whole idea of intervention in Libya is confusing and difficult to assess. The probabilities seem fairly high that, if Americans were to respond to a poll asking such a question and offering A through G as possible responses, a plurality would likely admit confusion and choose G. A good number might also support the idea that some sort of humanitarian intervention is necessary. A relative few would be likely to choose A, a bad idea.

On Tuesday, March 22, the Washington Post op-ed page featured five pieces offering some sort of counsel in regard to the choice. The five opinion writers, Anne Applebaum, George Will, Michael Gerson, Richard Cohen and Eugene Robinson, arguably came down on the side of B, C (with a leaning toward A), D & B, D & B, and F (or at least, A), respectively.

Only Applebaum, in "Aim low on Libya," expresses strong support for intervention and excuses the week-long delay in getting there, arguing that quicker or more enthusiastic intervention would have resulted in a widespread perception of American war-mongering. It made sense in this case, she says, to wait for the British and the French to take the lead.

Will doesn't believe that Obama's reasons for intervening were constitutional, persuasive or grounded in a reasonable grasp of history. He calls Obama's observation that Gaddafi has lost all credibility with the Libyan people "meretricious boilerplate [apparently] designed to anesthetize thought." Will helpfully brings history into the discussion, citing the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War as experiences that could teach valuable lessons. His use of history would be even more effective here had he previously bothered to vigorously play the unconstitutional card in regard to the two wars against Iraq launched by the Bushes, father and son.

Michael Gerson, a speech writer for Bush II before he got his job as a Post columnist, endorses the attacks on Libya upfront in "Obama's late arrival," but then spends an additional 800 or so words complaining that Senators Kerry, McClain and Lieberman were quicker to arrive at the public conclusion that intervention was necessary. This appears to be so, but significance ought to be a criterion for the Post's op-ed pages.

Bombing Gadaffi might get us to the end of the "old order in the Middle East" and lead to the "stability and prosperity [that] are powerful antitodes to the violent urges of nihlism and extremism," as Gerson writes. Then, again, maybe bombing, which the United States has engaged in from time to time these last many years, provides some sort of evidence that stability and prosperity are not always antidotes to violent urges.

Richard Cohen, who plays an establishment liberal to Gerson's establishment conservative in the pages of the Post, doesn't like the way Obama governs, either, but makes the case with a little bit more humor than Gerson. In "Uncle Miltie's plan," Cohen does make the helpful point that "the search for a Unified Theory of What Is Happening [in the Middle East] is futile" and details why. All the same, Cohen's chief criticism of Obama appears to be that the president lacks a unified theory. The administration, Cohen concludes, "could have made an argument for staying out [of Libya] or a more forceful argument for going in. Instead it made both. "Milton Berle now plays the White House," he writes. And, no doubt, also haunts Cohen's ambivalent dreams.

Way below the bottom of the fold comes Eugene Robinson's "The dictators we need." Perhaps placement on the page reflects the Post's assessment of the merits of Robinson's argument, but it does have the virtue of clarity. After noting that Gadaffi is a genuine villain, threatening to "turn all of Libya into a charnel house," a blunt description of the allied intevention "clearly intended to cripple the government and boost the revolt's chances of success," Robinson offers a real-politik survey of U.S. relations with other autocrats in the Middle East. He concludes with the observation that the world would be better off without Gaddafi, "but war in Libya is justifiable only if we are going to hold compliant dictators to the same standards we set for defiant ones. If not, please spare us all the homilies about universal rights and freedoms. We'll know this isn't about justice, it's about power."

Perhaps Robinson's observation explains why, amidst all the opinions, pro, con and in between, we aren't hearing from Republican budget hawks about the cost of war. We never do.

But surely, in a country where state governments are moving to outlaw collective bargaining rights for public employees, and public school teachers are being pink-slipped for budgetary reasons, some strong right-wing voice could be heard shouting above the din that we are already spent more than one trillion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (see Costofwar.com) and can ill-afford another engagement that will raise the cost by billions of dollars (Tomahawk missles cost $570,000 each, the F-15 that crashed a couple of days ago cost $30 million, the first day of combat in Libya coast an estimated $100 million). Alas, no such voice is to be heard.

Is it reasonable, to follow Robinson, to observe that most weapons manufacturers are Republicans, frequently generous campaign contributors, and huge fans of reorders for expensive weapons and expended munitions? I mean, in what other business does a reorder for a single item gross upwards of one-half million dollars?

On his Nation blog, in "Ten calls from Congress for a debate about war," John Nichols appears clear (oxymoron?) on one point: If it is to happen, Congress should authorize military action in Libya. The point is legalistic, perhaps necessary, historically venerated, and insufficient.

If Libya is a humanitarian tragedy about to happen, then any war effort mounted in response ought to be congressionally authorized. But if action is necessary, congressional authorization is not enough. And if Congress does not authorize, and tragedy occurs, what would be America's share of the blame? Further, by how much would a Congressional vote to authorize be delayed as a consequence of behind-the-scenes jockeying to put off such a vote? So, no, Nichol's apparent position lacks gravity and, hopefully, does the Nation an injustice.

But the Nation did editorialize on March 18 in response to the prospect of U.S. intervention. The editors have much to say and make many useful points about the sorry history of U.S. intervention in the Middle East (Libya's in North Africa, but who's counting?) and in Arab countries. I think the piece is a must-read, but I really can't tell if they mean to endorse no-fly zones or other intervention.

Here's the thing, G (the whole Libya-thing is confusing and difficult to assess) is the most understandable answer, but I keep thinking that if I were to remain mindful of the lies and misrepresentations that preceded the U.S. invasion of Iraq, that preceded the first Gulf War, that justified the embargo of Iraq (which may have caused the deaths of 1,000,000 Iraqis, including 500,000 children), that accompany U.S. aid to Israel and support the continuing oppression, dislocation and disenfranchisement of Palestinians, that excuse or obscure the human rights violations of a dozen key American allies, that hide the profits of war to a select few and shed theatrical tears for the losses of many, if I keep all those things in mind, then the only honest and reasonable answer for me to make is F (What kind of phony discussion is this? The war in Libya is another undeclared war based on a probably incorrect calculation of national interests that will cost the United States much more than it delivers and will fall far short of any reasonable humanitarian goal.)

Regardless, having gone to war (again), let us conclude with a prayer, Mark Twain's War Prayer, which includes this (among its many lines):

"help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;
help us to drown the thunder of the guns
with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;"

and so on.

There But For Fortune

Phil Ochs story shines with the promise of the '60s and teaches lessons about the failures of the time

Marrianne and I went to see There But For Fortune this past weekend. I did not fall asleep during the documentary, which I expected to do, because I ended up feeling almost inside the movie and was carried along by the events that were so pivotal in Ochs' short and dramatic life. One thing seems clear, Ochs is among the best songwriters ever at writing melodic and lyrically powerful songs about political realities.

His songs were important to me at the time, and though I never heard him in live performance, his songs reliably expressed my own feelings about the Vietnam War, about the overthrow of a democratically elected Socialist government in Chile, about Civil Rights, about the lives of working people, and about the nearly anonymous lives of the victims of capitalism and institutional power. Sometimes, such as at the Democratic convention in 1968, Ochs and I were in the same places, on the same streets, sharing community and shouting to be heard. At one point in the documentary, Ochs' daughter, Meegan, applauds the documentary effort, noting that her father would be thrilled to be remembered, but saddened that so many of the important struggles of the '60s were yet to be won.

Ochs struggled with manic-depression, which was likely partially inherited from his father, who was himself hobbled and institutionalized by the condition. Ochs' mania may very well have been one of the most important factors in his consistent ability to mobilize for protest and organizing. His mental illness may also have been inseparable from his creative power. By 1976, when Ochs killed himself, his depression and self-medicating alcoholism were likely the most important factors. Both his strengths and weaknesses may have been to a substantial degree the gifts of his manic-depression. But another factor in his suicide, a factor which must have undermined his previously impressive resilience, his ability to engage the fight for peace and justice, was a feeling that the promise of the '60s was dissipated, that the movement had lost too many struggles, had been defeated, compromised or had turned to violence.

Ochs was only a few years older than me, and he's been gone for almost 35 years. But watching There But For Fortune I felt both the joy of comradeship, bafflement at the ebbs and flows of creativity, and the sorrow of loss. Ultimately, I can't say whether Ochs' early death makes his life more quintessentially a '60s life, or less so. But he was vulnerable in a way that most of us are not because of the severity of his mental illness.

This morning before she left for work, Marrianne told me about a colleague of hers at the Department of Health and Human Services who as a boy was a refugee. At one point in his childhood, he walked hundreds of miles across an African desert to escape war and starvation. The story got me to thinking about the size of the struggle for peace and justice that we face now and how a person tempered by a childhood journey across deserts might tackle the challenge. This issue very much matters to me because I can't easily answer strategic questions about how to rebuild the peace and justice movement and restore faith in this country about the good that government can do. It is clearly a struggle for a longer haul than ever reckoned by Phil Ochs or by me. So I guess I'd have to start with the acknowledgement that if one is planning a long walk across a vast desert, one should begin in the knowledge that water and food might be frequently unavailable, but there is a promised land, of sorts, on the other side. And, of course, when food and water are available, it will seem like a banquet.

What Is To Be Done?

A blogger without a clue

Things are bad, very bad ...

1. Natural disaster in Japan could begin a series of cascading events that includes additional earthquakes on other (potentially more dangerous) faultlines near Japan, failure of Japanese infrastructure (e.g. explosions at nuclear reactors and dramatically diminished electrical supply), and severe damage to the Japanese economy with downstream damage to the already weakened global economy while

2. Gaddafi reasserts control in Libya, Libyans suffer mortal punishment and repression, and anxiety over the global oil supply causes another spike in oil prices delivering another blow to the national economies of oil importers while

3. Billionaire capitalists in the United States finance a reactionary populist attack on government and

4. Republicans in Congress block spending for economic recovery, deconstruct healthcare reform, defund social programs, whittle away at Social Security, investigate Muslim Americans, deny responsibility for climate change while

5. Republican governors Scott Walker and John Kasich win a perhaps temporary but decimating victory over unions in Wisconsin and Ohio, and

6. State legislatures with conservative majorities begin a systematic attack on women's reproductive rights, minority set-asides and Latinos born in the United States and

7. Democratic state legislators in Maryland, politically intimidated by socially conservative, church-going African Americans from Prince Georges County, defeat a bill to legalize same-sex marriage while

8. District of Columbia Mayor Vince Gray, elected as a reformer to a term that began in January, finds himself hobbled by nepotism, cronyism and corruption scandals, severely wounding optimism for a DC city government run by grownups while

9. "No HIV testing" signs pop up on storefront clinics in the District and homeless people burst into tears of gratitude for eye contact and

10. I couldn't sleep last night for thinking about the engorged deer tick I found on my back.

So, assuming other issues not mentioned in the foregoing list, like war and peace and military spending are included and leaving aside the deer tick, what is to be done? I suggest three possibilities: one, throw a massive end of the world party and/or legalize marijuana; two, choose denial, in general, or join the Tea Party and pretend none of this is actually happening; or, three, join a diverse, multi-racial multi-cultural organization in your community and live, work and organize like our lives together depend on doing so. Any preferences?

Egyptian democracy is a challenge to Israel

Watching the celebration in Tahrir Square moves me to tears. The Egyptian people have managed the peaceful overthrow of a tyrant who ruled them for 30 years. This staggers me. Imagine the possibilities.

And it suddenly occurs to me why Israel lives in mortal dread of democratic change in Egypt. It is not because the Egyptian people will suddenly turn on Israel. It is because an Egypt peacefully liberated by its own people will be a clarion call for Palestinians.

There is also this: the possibility of a democratic state in Egypt side-by-side with a Jewish theocratic state in Israel. That is the mortal threat to Israel--that its dispossession of the Palestinian people will become much clearer to Americans.

The Right Attacks Planned Parenthood

When Acorn came under attack by the Right, I underestimated the depth and seriousness of the assault. The videos produced by young, right-wing zealots conveyed the impression (to some audiences) that ACORN was an edgy organization with a fraudulent social agenda whose employees stood ready to assist underworld-types how best to game the system. In truth, ACORN was edgy and hard-charging and and populist.

At the time the videos surfaced, I thought ACORN might get in a mild bit of trouble, but that it would matter little. ACORN, as I thought of it, was an over-the-hill organization with a stale agenda. I may have been right in some respects--that ACORN was tired (and undernourished)--but it turned out that the organization was indeed in deep trouble. And I entirely ignored the possibility that if a group working at the grassroots for affordable housing and a living wage, and against predatory lending, was erased, neither justice nor a movement that believed in justice would be well-served.

Now ACORN is gone. It took less than a year from the time the organization came under fire until it went under. And now, Planned Parenthood is under a similar attack.

When it happened to ACORN, the right did not know it could destroy a center/left organization. It took awhile for most right-wing organizations to recognize the opportunity that was presenting itself. That's not the case this time. The Right knows what is possible. The Right is mobilized. The Right has learned lessons about how to pursue and amplify the attack. The Right knew another attack was coming.

Of course, Planned Parenthood isn't ACORN. Planned Parenthood is a bigger organization with a better foundation, a larger constituency, more resources and more access to resources. All to the good, because Planned Parenthood may be facing a fight for survival here. And if there's still a Left out there, it better show up for this fight.

Gun Control According To Harvey Wasserman

Or Harvey Gives Us Hope


I used to believe that the left ought to make a loud and constant racket about banning automatic weapons, banning concealed-carry and limiting gun rights, in general. As a member of the Ann Arbor City Council in the '80s, I even sponsored an ordinance that would ban all hand guns from the city. The ordinance created great consternation statewide and commanded the attention of all manner of gun owners, hunters and self-styled militia-types from around the country. Several statewide organizations mobilized members and supporters to participate in lobbying campaigns against the ordinance and attend Council hearings in Ann Arbor.

I got one (pink) postcard from an anonymous source to the effect of "we have our sights on you, Comrade Epton." Several others left similar messages on my home answering machine or corresponded to the same effect.

I didn't return such phone calls, but in instances where people included their own address, I took the opportunity to disagree in writing. I also spoke to several groups, including opposition ones. Despite frequent and furious hostility, the general tone of the discussion was reasonably civilized and frequent focused on larger questions about violence in America and its causes. Many participants seemed to feel that there were larger philosophical questions about justice at stake. The ordinance lost--the Ann Arbor City Council was not so liberal as people imagined and at least one member of the council voted against the ordinance because it would "disarm" African-Americans.

But the discussion of gun control seems to have moved much further to the right since then, and has made writing about gun violence not worth the agony of an increasingly confrontational political environment. Into the bargain, the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision appears to greatly enhance the lobbying strength of the National Rifle Association and other anti-gun control groups.

Ultimately, the simple assertion that the 2nd Amendment confers broad rights to own and carry guns of all descriptions seems to occupy the middle ground in the current debate about gun control, successfully stifling initiatives to reestablish significant limits on handguns and automatic weapons. But here comes Harvey Wasserman making the argument that the 2nd Amendment demands gun control. If the left wants to reengage the question, Wasserman's simple formulation is the place to start.

Obama's State of the Union

Can the left live with it?

President Obama's speech last night was definitely not a leftist call to arms. But in the wake of a stinging electoral defeat for Democrats in November, it was, by and large, the speech Obama needed to give; and a speech well within his strike zone. One might have expected progressives to condemn Obama's caution, his willingness to concede space to Republicans with commitments to freeze discretionary spending, take on tort reform and and control Medicare spending, but attacks from the left, so far, are muted and seasoned with approval for some of the things he did say.

Nation writer John Nichols adopted a balanced tone in assessing the State of the Union speech. While noting Obama's declared intention to soften some regulations, continue supporting free-trade agreements, in general, and accommodate other Republican interests, Nichols also applauded Obama's forthright defense of Social Security and government investment in infrastructure.

"Obama has more political capital than he did in the weeks after the election .And he used it to defend Social Security -- rather then embrace calls for slashing benefits or experimenting with privatization – and to renew commitments to classic infrastructure investments in roads, bridges and transit, as well as 21st century projects such as high-speed rail and the development of national wireless networks," Nichols wrote.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), noted that Obama's call for further controlling healthcare costs should be perceived as a way to defend, not attack Medicare. "In reference to Medicare and Medicaid, President Obama stuck to the facts and pointed out that the problem is the broken U.S. health care system, not inefficiencies in these programs. He noted the progress made in controlling health care costs in the Affordable Care Act, but acknowledged the need to go much further in containing costs," Baker said in a written statement released by CEPR today.

The statement also credits Obama with resisting "...the immense pressure from the financial industry and other opponents of Social Security and Medicare by refusing to call for large cuts in these programs in his State of the Union Address. Given the power of these groups, this would have been the easiest path for him to take. However, he instead insisted on the need to protect Social Security and to ensure that future generations of workers can also depend on it."

But Baker was clear about the speech's shortcomings: "The most disappointing aspect of the speech is that it largely skipped over the current economic crisis. This may reflect a view that there is little that Congress will agree to do to at this point. But it still is unconscionable to accept the idea that 25 million workers will go unemployed or under-employed, with millions more losing their home, because of the economic mismanagement by the country’s leaders."

He also took exception to Obama's continuing support for free trade, arguing that an over-valued dollar is the fundamental cause of the continuing U.S. trade deficits, "the largest imbalance in the economy today."

Robert Scheer's critique of the speech must rank among the best expressions of left-wing frustration with Obama's centrism. Scheer's post today on The Smirking Chimp dismisses the speech as "platitudinous hogwash." Obama ignored "... the depth of our economic pain and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible—understandably so, since they so prominently populate the highest reaches of his administration," Scheer wrote. "The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole."

Scheer's points are well-taken and only occasionally hyperbolic (the government spent $1 trillion on the Wall Street bailout, not "trillions"). Indeed, there are certainly more bankers and brokers in the Obama administration than there ought to be, but it won't be the presence of Wall Street big shots in the administration that will undermine any moves Obama makes to increase investment in infrastructure and high tech. Nor will they force Obama to compromise his defense of Social Security and Medicaid.

Republican opposition, of course, will be the first cause compromising Obama's ability to move forward with domestic infrastructure investments, with further action to control health care costs, with effective follow-up on Sec. of Defense Robert Gates proposed cuts in the military budget and other initiatives progressives wish to see. But a left that cannot refrain from unnuanced and relentlessly hostile critiques of Obama's performance and agenda could pose a further problem.

Right now most observers on the left seem willing to give Obama the benefit if the doubt. That comes as a little bit of a surprise, given the widespread perception that Obama and Congressional Democrats didn't go far enough with health care or squeeze out a bigger stimulus bill. But the odds are that the left was as chastened by the November election results as was Obama. If so, would it be too much to ask that a progressive follow-up include electing a few more progressives to Congress and organizing to take back a few Congressional districts from the Tea Party?

Michelle Rhee's achievement

It says here: DC schools are not the very worst

Check out the most recent edition of Lapham's Quarterly. In his preamble,"Dancing with the Stars", Lapham sketches out the anatomy and history of celebrity, associating it with earlier manifestations like, "the vanity of princes" or the "wish for kings" or the "pretension to divinity " found in some leaders in all societies, including ours, especially "since John F. Kennedy was king in Camelot, and the collective effort [to manufacture fame]--nearly fifty years of dancing with the stars under the disco balls in Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street..."

There is always, always, a hot new thing, and always a new niche opening. For the moment, former DC public school chancellor Michelle Rhee occupies a celebrity niche in education; type Michelle into a search engine and Rhee will pop up before Obama.

But her moment is likely passing. Rhee has moved on to her own nonprofit organization, Students First, and to Sacramento where she will live. The Students First website promotes the organization as the agent of a national movement that will influence educational policies down to the state and local level. The website features glowing generalities about great teachers, informed parents and motivated students, but little about the Rhee's confrontational attitude toward teachers unions, the ultimate basis for her celebrity. Rhee and Students First, according to Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss, "are attempting to raise $1 billion for her new effort to take on the teachers unions." Rhee, it appears, still prizes confrontation with teachers unions above all else.

In her short turn as chancellor, a little over three calendar years on the job (but likely less than that in real time), Rhee crafted her own image as a teachers union nemesis. And the media responded. See, for example, Time magazine's 2008 take on Rhee, who posed on their cover holding a broom with which she would presumably sweep out the "bad" from America's schools as a way to get on the right track, or Fast Company's 2008 cover story, "The Iron Chancellor," which applauded Rhee's serve-the-children-damn-the-adults rhetoric, or the same magazine's 2010 follow-up on Rhee, which included her off-with-their-heads explanation for the firing of some 250 teachers, "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school," Rhee says. "Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"

Standardized test scores improved after Rhee's first year on the job, but the results from the next two years were mixed. Nevertheless, Rhee gets lots of credit for "fixing" a disastrously bad school system. "When Rhee took over in 2007, D.C. schools were tied with Los Angeles for worst-in-the-nation status," writes Richard Whitmire (author of The Bee-Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District), in "Rhee's necessary toughness." Her achievement, Whitmire, observes, "boosted the District off the cellar floor." Such an improvement hardly seems worth celebrating, but Whitmire is pleased with it and pronounces his disappointment at being unable to "identify one state poised to make Rhee-style academic gains."

So in the wake of Rhee's scorched-earth march through DC, we are now looking for other leaders who will, at a minimum, literally decimate the teachers unions in various school districts, abandon her post in three years or so, and leave behind minimal gains on standardized tests that cannot be correlated with specific, sustainable reforms. Such are the gifts of celebrity.

The Power of Our Grief

There was a time when nobody cared what I did. That is a time to which I am fast returning.

The difference is that the first time around I was unaware of anyone else's active interest in me (or lack thereof), but this time around I am clear that nobody cares.

But why should anybody do so? We all ply this dark river in our one-woman or one-man canoes, and it is too fast a river, and too turbulent. Under those circumstances active caring for another person is an act of grace. The pains and the aches and the memories of wounds and losses are personal burdens that can't easily be shared.

That is one of the things that sex is for--to bridge the gap, to greet the world naked and to share it, to love and be loved, to touch the sky. But one cannot ask too much of lovers, nor grab for too much sky.

It's a funny thing (and a blessing, I guess) when you, and maybe others around, believe that what you do next might make a difference. Might save some lives, or parts of lives. Might help set some people free.

That's where the promise of who we are comes in to play, the promise of who we are willing to try to be. Do we dream across the threshold of ourselves, a person who maybe makes the world a vanishingly small bit better? If ever we are to become that person, it will be love more than skill, openness rather than dedication, the power of kindness, of naked touching, of ecstatic longing and deliberate vulnerability; feelings that first come to us at birth, at sleeping deeply and with each loving encounter.

We can be awesome in our grief for the world. And we can be restored by our shared grief, and wonder that we might always have been okay.

The Franciscan Monastery and Later That Night

Almost noon. On the grounds of the Franciscan monastery in Northeast DC. About 100 years old, the monastery, designed with a Jerusalem aesthetic, intends to convey the Franciscan’s historic duty as Christian stewards of the Holy Land. With little training or instinct for the visual arts, I can only guess at how well the architecture accomplishes that goal. But it works for me, non-Christian that I am.

The grounds and building include all manner of replicas of grottoes and catacombs venerated in Catholic tradition. The Stations of the Cross are here, of course. I am not moved by the power of these images, I think, but I am affected by my awareness of the impact that the stories of Jesus and the early Christians have on many believers.

That awareness leads to some sympathetic vibration with the faith of others, a contact high, perhaps. I am awed by the stories that humans tell; awed by the storytelling ability that must be one of our first collective cultural achievements. When did people first tell stories that move audiences to weeping, to earnest devotion, to heroic sacrifice, to stoicism and, even, to voluntary suffering?

There are plenty of stories in Jewish tradition that accomplish these things, but none that I know of that feature a being who is both man and god. Feeling receptive, but in no way reverent, Under a low, overcast sky, on the exuberantly lush and landscaped grounds, I begin walking the stations. By the time I reach the second station, I succumb to the urge to memorize them, and I do, more easily than I expected.

Jesus is condemned to death. And I am the sole witness.

Jesus takes up the cross. It is a strikingly cruel and unusual prelude to crucifixion, a Roman form of execution reserved, I think, for troublemakers, thieves and rebels—enemies of the state.

Jesus falls the first time. An emotional response actually begins to well up in me, but a couple, carrying a child and trailing others in their wake disrupts the solitude and I move on.

Jesus meets his Holy Mother. Simon helps carry the cross, an act of courage and human devotion. Veronica wipes Jesus’ face and will be remembered forever. Jesus falls the second time. Jesus exhorts the pious women.

Jesus falls the third time. Gazing at the scene, I feel the brutal impatience of the man who is urging Jesus up the hill.

Jesus is stripped of his garments. This is truly the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows. Jesus is nailed to the cross. I am not prepared for the ache I feel. Jesus dies on the cross. Jesus is taken from the cross. Jesus is carried to the sepulcher.

It’s over. I have surprised myself and felt some part of what I imagine faithful others must sometimes feel. This story of a Jewish priest who suffers and dies and rises to become something else is a most potent story, the foundation story of a kingdom on earth. Jesus suffers, consoles, forgives and transcends, but is rooted in the earthly and, even, the profane (if you buy into Nikos Kazantzakis’ version of The Last Temptation of Christ).

And then I think of Marge Piercy’s He, She and It. To protect the Jews of Prague in the 16th Century, Piercy’s version of Rabbi Judah Loew creates a being of great power, who is neither a man nor a god. The Golem of Prague, like Jesus, suffers from the burden of his mission and his difference from others; suffering is his fate. But there is great power in this story, too, magic.

At the risk of proposing something that sounds like “two guys walk into a bar…” I wonder what counsel Jesus and the Golem of Prague might offer each other. Humans might evade their obligations to each other and to their communities, but they don’t do so with easy consciences, one might say to the other. And so they create us to lift the burden from themselves.

And so it goes, Kurt Vonnegut, would add, were he drinking at the same bar at the time and overhearing Jesus and the Golem as they consoled each other and teetered at the brink of overindulgence.

Oddly, Pope Benedict XVI drinks here, as well, but he only comes in for a single shot of schnapps late in the evening. One can see him stiffen at the very sight of Jesus and the Golem drinking together. Benedict barely acknowledges Jesus with a nod and takes a stool at the end of the bar.

It is obvious that he can’t stand Vonnegut, either, though Vonnegut loves to ask him how he’s doing. Benedict sniffs shortly, as though in the presence of a bad smell. I want to say, loosen up, man, but I don’t want to sour my relationship with him.

This is not a guy who will easily give up the habits of a lifetime. After all, before he was pope, Benedict was Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. A couple of centuries ago, the Prefect would have been known as the Grand Inquisitor, and would have had the responsibility for prosecuting people like Galileo for various heresies and, in many cases, torturing and executing heretics. I don’t think Benedict is that dangerous, but it’s still possible that Vonnegut, if he weren’t already dead, harbors a death wish. But that’s another story.