Book Review: "Winners Take All" by Anand Giridharadas

Winners Take All
by Anand Giridharadas
Vintage Books, NY
2018

This is an excellent book, written well, researched well, and with a much needed message, namely, elite corporate philanthropy is basically only interested, whether consciously or unconsciously, in putting Band-Aids over the wounds that they have caused. They like to gather and give money away, but never think of changing the structures of society by which they continue to benefit and by which inequality and misery are increased.

An example of this is Robert F. Smith, the richest African-American in the United States. During his speech as commencement speaker at an historically black college, Morehouse College in Atlanta, he announced to the delight of the graduating class that he was going to pay off all the student debt of the graduates. Smith, however, continues to profit from structures that keep him rich while others remain poor. He has made a fortune with the help of the carried-interest regulation that keeps his taxes low. What if he paid his fair share of taxes--Wouldn't there be more money in government coffers so programs could be funded that prevented students from taking on so much debt?

In Baltimore, not far from my home, there is a mansion operated  by a ladies club. I'm sure they gather together and do "do-goody" projects; I'm also sure that they have no objections to the devious ways some of their husbands made their money. You can also be sure that membership to their group is quite restrictive. (The club is a relic from the past when women didn't work. It will soon be obsolete, but the spirit of privilege and exploitation will live on).

Let's face it: These major philanthropists from corporations such as Pepsico, Exxon Mobil, Walmart and IBM are interested in themselves more than anything else. They gloss over the harm they are doing to society by their greed. How to help the poor? Start a business!

They are market-oriented and globalists, seemingly unaware of or ignoring the fact that globalization has made them unbelievably rich while a worsening inequality remains the lot of most of humanity. They obviously like to keep it that way.

Giridharadas makes a useful distinction between critic and thought leaders. Critics challenge the system and are thus very unpopular with the elites. Thought leaders give the elites assurance and the self-satisfaction they crave; they provide the comforting knowledge that they are doing some good, while not challenging the system that allows them to become very rich and which maintains inequality. They do this by following, without knowing it, these three principles:

1. They reduce structural problems to the personal. For instance, they might provide grants to some women to start a small business, and ignore what keeps them poor in the first place.

2. They provide a "zooming in" focus on  individuals without "zooming out," that is, seeing the whole picture.

3. They provide interventions that are demonstrable, that is, apply Band-Aids to various societal wounds. 

If the elites can profit by their interventions, all the better. For instance, one proposed empowering women by setting some up with beauty salons. The person who proposed this just happened to be the CEO of a cosmetics company.

It is also highly undemocratic that elites get to decide what the poor need, without any representation from the poor themselves--the ladies club model.
.
Giridharadas advocates that democracy, as messy as it is, should decide where funds are allocated. This might be a bit too optimistic, given the rise of populism around the world--an angry reaction to globalization. The poor know that the system is rigged against them. They are angry. What do they do with their anger? Elect Donald Trump. That politics is especially messy these days is obvious.

Giridharadas quotes an actual critic at the end of the book, Chiari Cordelli: "You can't speak in their name. I can speak in the name of my child, but other people are not your children."

The only thing we can do, I suppose, is to remain politically active and vote. We must work toward the goal of the eventual "Finlandiziton" of America, that is, where wages are fair, schools are good, health care is universal, opportunities to live the "American dream" exist for all, etc.--a difficult endeavor, but perhaps not a Sisyphus task. If we work together, many improvements in our society can be made, no doubt about that. "It seems to me that you (the elites) might owe a responsibility or duty to return to others what they have been unfairly deprived of by your common institutions." Thus Cordelli sums up the theme of the book.

Read it!

A Desultory Diary, Episode 9 The Make Russia Great Again Blues

At the end of Chekhov's 1901 drama, The Three Sisters, the lives of the three young ladies lie in ruins. The fiancé of  the youngest, Irina, has just been killed in a duel. The lover of the middle sister, Masha, has gone out of her life forever. Olga, the eldest, has never found anyone to love at all, and probably never will. At the end of the play, Irina lays her head on Olga's bosom and says the following:

A time will come when everyone will know what this is for, why there is this misery; there will be no mysteries, and, meanwhile we have got to live...

It's the old belief that progress, including progress of the soul, is inevitable. I wish I could be that sanguine. An old man, I have come to terms with my own mortality, but I didn't expect that the institutions that have made this country great--the separation of powers, free speech and a free press, etc--not only would grow weak with me, but, especially if our current president is elected for a second term, might even die before I do.

Old age often comes with an umbrella of serenity that protects and gives perspective while armies of angry passers-by struggle and fight in the rain. "We'll get over this," a woman older than I recently told me. I'd like to believe her, but I'm not so sure. My umbrella has holes.

On October 9, 2019, the day I turned 74, Fact Checker determined that Trump had made  13,435 lies or misleading statements since his inauguration. His partiality for Putin and other dictators is obvious. He is without a doubt a racist. The current treatment of refugees at the southern border is shameful.Trump has appointed greedy oligarchs, many of them good friends of Charles Koch and other billionaires, to serve in his cabinet. (This he calls "draining the swamp"). His administration has made what is the crisis of our time, climate change, significantly worse. Yes, this is only a partial list of the mess we are in. The oligarchs, thanks in part to the dreadful Citizens United ruling, have Uncle Sam in a choke hold. Will he survive?

I remember Watergate very well and assure you that the current political situation is much worse.

Trump is arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. I understand he can't help it. For him, that which is good is that which supports him--a textbook definition of an amoral person. He serves himself, not the United States or its people. Scandals and corruption--what else can one expect from a narcissist as needy as Trump?

As I wrote before, Trump, at the apex of a pyramid of power, would fall flat on his face if there were no bricks and mortar supporting him. Approximately the upper third of this pyramid consists of Republicans in the House and especially in the Senate, who continue to support this incompetent president. The lower part of the pyramid, the base, is supported by, well, his base.

Trump might well be too pathological to change; that the Republicans, who have a choice to serve the country or themselves have to date chosen the latter is truly appalling. Even more appalling is the behavior of Mitch McConnell, who has earned his sobriquet, Moscow Mitch.

The lower blocks, his supporters among the general population alas! still stand by their man. They are angry--as Bernie Sanders has stated, they have a right to be angry, but they are angry for the wrong reasons. Some can't be won over; many, however can. Hillary Clinton tried to convey this by her misguided "basket of deplorables" metaphor. She said that half of Trump's supporters fit into this category; the other half, however, consists of good people who have been led astray. They can be reached. (Clinton, however, made little effort to try to reach them).

Democracy to a large part depends on an informed populace; this brings me to a peeve of mine, the entertainment industry. I have seen interviews of passers-by, many of whom couldn't answer the most basic civics questions. Knowledge of history was in many cases woefully deficient. ("Who  won the Civil War?" "I dunno"). Yet everyone knew about the latest hit by Taylor Swift. Wouldn't it be nice if people stopped using social media so much and stopped watching cable so much and spent some of their day reading and thinking?

Our Constitution is under attack. It might take a generation to undo the damage that has already been done. When will this misery end?

Chekhov's three sisters were convinced that better times were coming. What actually came was World War l, which initiated fifty years of unprecedented brutality and destruction.

Martin Luther King believed that the long arc of history favors truth and decency. He might be right, but I don't think we'll see the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow any time soon, however. King believed he had "been to the mountaintop" and had seen "the Promised Land." "I might not get there with you," he said, but we as a people will get there.

I would like to believe it. Current events, however, have led me to a different mountaintop; chaos and dissolution lie on the other side. An old man, I might not get there with you--thank God!

Please do your very best to prove me wrong.

MARGA Man

1.
Nancy Pelosi recently said, "With Trump, all roads lead to Putin." Before Trump took office, it was unthinkable that anyone would seriously say such a thing about a U.S. president. The statement is, however, spot-on.

I am not a journalist; I'm a senior citizen with an overworked staff of one. The following list, illustrative of Trump's bromance with the brutal dictator is probably incomplete. It is astounding nevertheless.

1. Trump denied that Russia was involved with election tampering simply because Putin told him so. Even though the Department of Justice and the C.I.A. came to an incontrovertible conclusion that Russia was the culprit. "I don't know why it should be Russia," he infamously said.

2. Trump wanted Russia to be readmitted to the G10 group, which had canceled its membership after Putin annexed Crimea.

3. Trump's disastrous order to leave Syria played right into Russia's hands. Russia is now a major player in the Middle East.

4. Trump has accepted the refuted conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, which interfered in the last presidential election. This ridiculous theory originated in Russia. The brilliant Fiona Hill, a specialist on Ukraine and Russia, referred to this conspiracy theory, during a recent congressional impeachment inquiry, as a "fictional narrative." She continued, "I would ask you that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests."

5. Trump is now about to be impeached for directing the president of Ukraine to investigate Trump's political foe and to get at the bottom of the conspiracy mentioned in the fourth point above. (One can, of course, neither get to the bottom or the top of hot air.)

The list is undoubtedly incomplete. Thanks to Trump, Russia is now more powerful and the United States more weak. (I leave it up to the politically astute reader to compile her own list of our county's decline under the current administration.)

"Make America Great Again?" Those MAGA hats should read, "MaRGA,"  "Make Russia Great Again," for this is what Trump is doing. Yes, we've elected MaRGA Man. God help us.

2.
As a rule of thumb, the opposite of what Trump asserts is true. His "fake news" is real news; his assertion that "he is the least racist person" indicates his animus towards blacks and browns. This quintessential egotist's insults, once you know the code, actually refer to him. Thus his assertion that Nancy Pelosi is incompetent, or "crazy as a bedbug," can be translated as a confession of his own incompetence; his claim that the impeachment inquiry is a 'hoax' thus refers to the hoax of his defense, etc.

What an inveterate liar! All politicians stretch the truth, but never in the history of the presidency has asserting the opposite of what a commander in chief says been a rough way of getting at the truth. How has it come to this?

I have for a long time asserted that the entertainment industry is at the very least partially responsible for the lack of political knowledge and involvement among a large section of U.S. citizens. I remember seeing street interviews on YouTube. Many didn't know who won the Civil War, (!), not to mention when it was fought, etc. They all knew about Beyoncé's latest hit, however. This ignorance is not good for our democracy. A vibrant democracy requires that citizens make efforts to keep informed, exercise critical thinking, and get involved.

Trump's presidency has been called a reality TV show, a continuation of his popular show, "The Apprentice." There is a lot of truth to this, but one needs to consider Trump's involvement with professional wrestling to get a keener insight into the nature of his base. 

Trump sponsored Wrestlemania, the WWE's (World Wrestling Entertainment's) yearly wrestling event, for several years in the past. He also appeared many times at televised wrestling events. 

WWE is "entertainment," admittedly staged matches, admittedly fake. On one occasion, Trump got into a (fake) argument with the billionaire owner of WWE, McMahon. Trump body-slammed McMahon and strutted away. On another occasion, they decided to stage a proxy match to determine the victor of a pseudo-conflict between them. The loser would have his head shaved on the air. The wrestler representing McMahon lost (of course) and Trump proceeded to shave the guy's head. (McMahon apparently loves to perform these pseudo-masochistic events to entertain the crowd). The spectators went wild.

You get the idea. Most of the audience probably knew that the whole thing had been staged, but they let themselves be (almost viscerally) entertained.  Just like in the movies--One knows from the outset that, say, "The Exorcist" is fiction, but that doesn't mean that the spectator can't get caught up in the show. One sweats, one's heart beats faster, etc., even though the spectator knows that it is "only a movie."

Although many Trump supporters really do think he is the best man for the job, others,  I think, are a lot like the crowd attending a WWE event. They want to be fooled, they want to be driven wild. Whether what they witness is truthful or not doesn't matter at all. They cheer, they hoot; they are entertained. They forget themselves awhile; they also forget truth, decency and their responsibility as citizens. This is why you can't reason with them. Tell a movie fan that the mother of Rosemary's Baby is just an actress and they reply, "We know that. We want to suspend judgement. We want to be entertained."

Suspending judgement in politics, however. is very problematic. It therefore makes no sense arguing with Trump's fanatic base.We must concentrate instead on continuing to tell the truth as we see it, and to work on such things as voter registration.

Trump has been body-slamming Uncle Sam, as it were, since he took office. If he continues to flip him about after 2020, Uncle Sam might never recover. This is our country! We must vote MaRGA Man out of office--before it's too late.

A Desultory Diary, Episode 8

On November 3rd, we had our annual family gathering. In addition, my good friend and I attempted to entertain, flute and piano, followed by Indian food and lively discussions. All had a good time.

This year I decided to do something different. I went to the piano and played a chromatic scale from the lowest A to the next to highest B flat. This comprises 74 individual notes. Why did I do that? I asked. Nobody knew. So I gave a further hint--one nobody would understand, but this gave me an excuse to play a lovely little piece. First I played the melody. Nobody recognized it. Then I sang it in the original German. Then I translated it, and explained why I played it.

It's a beautiful song about aging. Where did all the time go? Soon it's time to depart. It is not at all minor-key Schubertian, but a 
major-key folk song. Here is a version of it which I obtained from YouTube. It is sung by the famous Austrian actor Hans Moser and a soprano. No need to listen to the whole thing, although I recommend that you do.

The song occurs near the end of a famous Austrian play, Der Bauer als Millionär, or "The Millionaire Farmer."

A simple, catchy melody from the nineteenth century, seemingly designed to create an Ohrwurm, an ear worm, in the listener. Sentimental? You betcha. It is also very effective, possibly the best song about the sudden realization that one has grown old. In the play, a character named Wurzel has been living a high life for some time. Suddenly Youth (Jealousy and Age, etc, also appear in the play, a baroque-ish Austrian classic, and sings the song. Just before she sings, in some productions at least, a puff of smoke appears and when it fades, we see Wurzel transformed from a youngish man into an old man. This sudden transformation is very effective theater. It might help older folks recall the moment they first realized that the border between youth and age has been inexorably crossed. Where has all the time gone?

I will conflate the several stanzas into one translation:

Hey, Little Guy,
Hey, Little Guy,
Time and you are passing by;
Today brilliantly shines the sun,
Soon, at last, the day is done;
Hey, Little Guy, Hey, little Guy,
It is time to say good-bye.

We all know that entropy is relentless; however, one needs to be old to really feel it.

The point I was trying to make with the chromatic scale is that for the old there are not many notes left, and the ones that are left do not have the power and resonance of those around the middle of the piano. I was trying to impress on all--the majority of us are 
seniors--that we have to make music with what remains in our power. It is not impossible, even probable, that we can make happier music with these notes than we did in the past, when the world was too much with us. I've been reading about successful older adults; they make do with what they have, not what they've lost, and are, mostly, happier. My message was therefore not a morbid one; it was a (basically) joyous, albeit realistic one. When you're old, said a ninety-year old woman, you have to make yourself happy.  All it takes are visits from Wisdom and Love, who readily respond to our invitations, so much more instructive than the visits of Jealousy and Anger, which appear in the play and continue to plague the young.

That's the message I tried to convey to my older guests.  It bombed. After this, I played a few classical pieces on the piano. That bombed as well.

No matter--Life goes on. Happily!

A Desultory Diary, Episode 7, Québec

October 11-13, 2019

As we sailed down the St. Lawrence Seaway on the morning of October 11th, the surrounding hills afforded a  view of foliage in full splendor--finally! What a captivating non-presidential orange stimulated the cones of our retinas, almost immediately resulting in a mind replete with delight and serenity. Finally!

We had a good time on board. We were quite active: nightly dancing (to a so-so band), yoga, line dancing, zumba and lots of walking as well. Contrary to the norm, we tend to lose a bit of weight on a cruise and this one was no exception--only a few pounds, though.

The food was adequate, if not delicious. Since we are vegetarians--or, more correctly, pescatarians--choices were limited, but still relatively abundant. We enjoyed high tea every afternoon as well.

It was good to transfer to land, though, which was accomplished without a hitch.

The center of the city of Québec is a citadel; it is surrounded by suburbs. It is very picturesque, and very touristy as well. Everyone who lives here speaks French, but English is widespread as well, especially among merchants.

We, of course, visited the cathedral. It was destroyed by the British at least once, and destroyed by fire at least once as well. The present, apparently accurate reconstruction took place in the 1920's The interior is impressive, but the baldachin-like gold plated structure with Jesus as malek ha-olam (king of the universe) was a bit much. It disturbs the view as one approaches the altar from the west. I think, aesthetically at least, the cathedral would look better without it.

We visited the iconic Château Frontenac at the very top; this is where Churchill and others met to plan for D Day.
Other than shopping, there is not much to do. We asked at the tourist center if there was any music  going on. No. There was apparently jazz to be heard at various pubs, however. We had pizza on our last evening at one of those pubs--The blues singer/guitarist seemed to me to be a bit amateurish, but everyone seemed to love it.

The next day we visited the fine arts museum La Musée Nacional des Beaux Arts de Québec. It is located in the suburbs, a little over a mile from our hotel. We took a taxi there and walked back.

The art was mostly local, derivative, and dull. Shlocky religious scenes; mere illustrations of dogma, without the genius of a Raphael or Leonardo that transformed that dogma into something profoundly human. 

One piece attracted my attention. A small painting in a vitrine. True, it reminds one of Paul Klee's work and was painted around the same time as Klee's were. The title is "Une moitié du monde rit de l'autre côté," ("One half of the world laughs at the other half), by Jean Dallaire.

Can one imagine a better illustration of current polarization? Each character is smug. Each is a know-it-all who looks inward; they don't seem to really see each other. One thinks he's handsome, the other thinks she's beautiful. They are, as the viewer can tell, mere caricatures of humans whose ugliness is apparent to all onlookers, but not to themselves. At least that's the way that I see it.

This is what we become when we divide the world into us and them, into I and those people; this is what happens when we forget that others are no different from ourselves.

The next day we had an uneventful flight back to Baltimore, having enjoyed a delightful twelve days and ready to face the future with serenity and verve.

A Desultory Diary, Episode 6, The Speech I Never Delivered

1.

Many years ago, when I was a twenty-something, my mentor in poetry, José Garcia Villa, gave me a copy of one of his verse collections. The dedication was amusing: "A Poetry Collection Without an Introduction--Thank Heaven!"

Tonight a bunch of friends, Nirmala and me will gather to celebrate those of us who have had an October birthday. On October 9, I began my seventy-fifth year. I imagined myself giving a speech, but decided against it. Instead, I decided to write an essay for you, dear readers; at least you have the opportunity to click me--temporarily, I hope--into oblivion.

Well, I thought, maybe I will say--that is, write--a few words about growing old, which, I admit, is not all that good, but not all that bad either. Perhaps I have a few words of wisdom to impart? You be the judges. My target audience is not only the chorus of the elderly, but also to younger soloists who have not yet found their voice.

Nearly a century ago, the great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, wrote the following sublime lines about old age:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

for every tatter in its mortal dress.

                                                         (from Sailing to Byzantium)

Immortal, profoundly wise lines.  Yeats very accurately depicts the muscle wasting--what we physicians call sarcopenia--that begins around forty and increases rapidly after the age of sixty-five. A tattered coat upon a stick--it's as if there is no there there anymore. One becomes a scarecrow, a puppet lying on a shelf, easily ignored. A paltry thing because society treats an aged man as wrinkled packaging that once contained something  worth looking into.

How should an old person react to being ignored, while enduring the difficulties and pangs associated with general diminution? Some of us become cranky, crotchety, sometimes very angry. Here is an excerpt of another great poem, this time by Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Certainly an option, but not, I think, a particular sage one. Buddha, for instance, the quintessential sage, thought anger to be a very negative emotion; associated with a keen (and, eventually, keening) sense of self, it is to be avoided, always. (There is no righteous anger in Buddhism). Raging in old age is unseemly. (If Lear had been a wise old man at the beginning of the play, he wouldn't have raged at the end).

One of the cardinal virtues of old age is acceptance. This includes acceptance of the self, acceptance of the world as it is, etc. (This doesn't mean that one should not work to make the world better--but to do this without rage, is better yet).

Acceptance is only one of the cardinal virtues of age, however. For the most important one, we return to Yeats: "Soul must clap its hands and sing and louder sing/For every tatter in its mortal dress." Wisdom has its violins that can sing over sorrow until the very end. What does this mean?

2.

I have completed seventy-four years, albeit with some chronic diseases rather easily managed, so far; nothing very serious yet. In other words, I've been lucky. Exercising regularly, eating properly, keeping the mind active, etc. undoubtedly have something to do with it; nevertheless, luck has had something to do with it as well. 

One of the difficulties I've had is poor eyesight. I decided it was finally time to start reading large-print books. I went to the local library and was directed to the large-print section, which, indeed, was not very extensive. I took the first one off the shelf, a book about the old old: "Happiness is a Choice You Make, lessons from a year among he oldest old," by John Leland.

The book is not the pollyannic pap one might expect from the title. The oldest old in the book have serious problems, losses in a full array of forms, but they all had decided to make the best of it. An adage from Marcus Aurelius comes to mind: One is chained to the chariot of fate. The choice is whether to stand up and run with the horses or lie down and be dragged. 

Making the best of it means that the elderly souls described in the book had decided to clap and sing, with varying degrees of success, keeping rhythm, despite vicissitudes, to the melodies of life, including one of the darkest ones: "Where are you now, my sweet friend/Everyone I know goes away in the end." Not one of the oldest old chooses any longer to "criticize the turtle for not being something else"--they accept themselves, and others, shells and all. Some clap louder and better than others; all souls of the group, however, sing.

Leland recounts that gerontologists have come up with a new classification: the oldest old, those eight-five and older. I ran with this concept and extrapolated it to include those over sixty-five but less than eighty-five: Sixty-five to seventy became for me old-age childhood; those seventy to seventy-five became old-age youths; the period from seventy-five to eighty-five became old middle age.

A geezer like me, therefore, hasn't even reached old middle-age yet!Therefore, as my soul keeps singing to me: I'm still a kid. A new and beautiful way to look at old age. One is as old as one claps.

This is not a universal view. Younger people, who are the majority, sometimes look down on minorities, especially those who use a cane. A good example is the case of a psychologist--who later sadly and unwisely committed suicide--who devised a system to determine how many "good years" one has left, by subtracting one's current age from sixty-five. Life, for him, ended at sixty-five. By doing this calculation, I, over sixty-five at the time I wrote the poem that will follow, had become "a negative toddler." The rage of a "negative toddler" is the subject of a poem I wrote a few years ago. Life ends at sixty-five--indeed!

What Did That Self-Help Guru Say?

“Simply subtract your age from 65

and that’s how many good years you have left.”

That makes mine fewer than minus three!

Once vim is reduced to a negative toddler,

is it O.K. to sit and forget half your French?

It is not.  Instead, before I’m minus four,

I shall sing and descant upon love

in a language I as yet don’t understand.

Perhaps I’ll send him a postcard from Kandahar;

perhaps I’ll send him an elephant tusk

made out of marzipan

by a lovely, crazy German living in Irkutsk;

he apparently thinks old age is the time

to stare like a cow while a fly

navigates a bulbous nose.  Should I rage?

No, rages are unseemly after minus three;

having outgrown my terrible minus twos

I’m ready for a raucous minus youth,

and if I find a tarantula in La Descubierta,

I promise I won’t send him a fanged memento mori

in a silver candy box, crawling on blue cheese.

3.

Well, here's the section during which I give advice and reveal what is most important in life, at least in my opinion.

Research has shown that what is most important are relationships. (You are invited to listen to the appropriate TED talk on YouTube). Many younger people think that fame and money are the essentials. Money is certainly important, but if it is pursued as the primary purpose of life, one inevitably fails.

In the iconic statue of Nataraja, a famous mudra, a symbolic hand gesture, is depicted: the abayam mudra, do not fear:

That's what the older among us have to offer the younger: struggle for your place in the world, but realize that there is another more important place, the place where wisdom and love reign, and not Mr. Get-a-little-more and you'll be-a-little more. This might take time, but one need to start making place for these noble guests, beginning in youth.

I think this "no fear" or, at least "reduced fear" mantra constitutes one of the chief evolutionary purpose of old age. Many species, especially insects and fish, die after mating. Human beings are different. They need elders to show younger humans how to live. This is indeed consistent with survival of the species.

There is nothing sadder than a young person without a strong ego; there is nothing sadder than an old man who has been unable to transcend it. (A tragic example, not only for him, but for us and the rest of the world, is our needy, catastrophic current president).

What is wise behavior? Acting from the realization that everything, including everyone, is connected. This way of life is a great way to overcome egotistical, petty thoughts. An even better one is putting 'love your neighbor as yourself' into action. These two ways are actually a single path.

We are creatures of Earth and must obey her laws. How do we do that? The following metaphor contains, I think, the secret of life:

Each one of us is a satellite revolving, whether we like it or not, around a brilliant sun. We must revolve, but it is our decision whether or not to rotate, to revolve around our own axis. If you choose not to; if you choose to spend your life always facing the void like the dark side of the moon, that is your choice. If you choose to keep moving, however, you will certainly become well acquainted with the night, but will also know that day follows night: you will also spend a good portion of your life basking in the sun while choosing life. Choose life.

A Desultory Diary, Episode 5, Yom Kippur at Sea

October 9, 2019, Onboard Queen Mary 2

This year my birthday falls on the most solemn day of the year, Yom Kippur. No connection, of course!

I attended Yom Kippur services onboard. The rabbi was a large man, a retired rabbi from Oklahoma. The most riveting part of the service was a recording of a female cantor singing the Kol Nidre with piano accompaniment. It was extraordinarily beautiful and transported me to another dimension where difficulties might still exist but are subsumed into a world of vigorous faith.

All those prayers addressed to malek ha-olam, the king of the universe, were more problematic, however, at least for me.The King of the Universe has absconded like an absent father in Sandtown. So many absent fathers! That's why I have no problem having Him designated the King of the Universe and not the Queen. If God, who apparently controls the universe, is mythologically designated male, He remains an absentee Lord whose laws are easily ignored--we do it all the time. But try to ignore the mythologically designated female aspect, the Goddess of our great womb Earth, and you get in trouble right away. You can flout to a considerable degree the love-your-neighbor stuff and prosper, at least for a while; try to ignore, say, gravity by jumping out the window and the King won't lift a finger to save you. Earth's laws, some of them marvelous, some of them dangerous, are contravened at considerable risk. The stars are indeed splendid, but so are the glories of the Earth, the advantage of which is our being in direct contact with Her. 

My friend told me her synagogue has removed all male references to You-(don't)-Know-Who. (Part of a misguided she-too movement, I think.) Progress?

The rabbi said we should do what is right without any hope for reward. Exactly, or almost exactly, what Hindus teach. It is not easy. Some dissidents, say, in China, do the right thing and get their reward: solitary confinement, or worse. Sometimes doing the right thing results in everything external going wrong. It is not easy and sometimes demands great heroism. Thank God for such people! Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance, was safe in America but returned to Germany to bravely fight fascism. His reward was an execution by beheading shortly before the war's end. Need I repeat it--doing the right thing without hope for reward is sometimes extremely difficult. We are, for good and for bad, creatures of Earth.

The rabbi's sermon was good, if not very profound. He praised a man who took care of this wife for fifteen years. When asked how he could have done all this--she had Alzheimer's--he simply said, "You do what you have to do." The second example of this behavior was a clerk in a store who apparently did what he had to do as well. The third example was a woman in the Israeli army who had to serve on Rosh ha'Shannah. She was determined to hear the sound of the shofar after she got off from duty.. Eventually, two persons accommodated her, long after the New Year's services were over. They did what they had to do as well. 

The service was over 6:30. The rabbi warned us not to leave for dinner at 6, since this was the most solemn day of the year. If you intend to fast or feast afterwards, well, that was up to you. No one dared leave early.

I'm glad I went. The prayers, which have been intoned for centuries--and, I hope, of centuries to come--were beautiful, honed down to the essence like a bonsai oak. I might not believe in You the same way that the congregants did, but, malek ha-olam, I heard.

The night ended with small talk during dinner and dancing thereafter. Du musst dein Leben ändern.

A Desultory Diary, Episode 4, At Sea

October 7, 2019

From dining on them with the aesthetic deliberation of a gourmet to merely snacking on them like a couch potato, words have been the comfort food of my mind for as long as I can remember. The happy transition from carrying around a teddy bear to carrying around a book took place almost seven decades ago; happily there is as yet no inclination to reverting to carrying around a stuffed animal again, this time  while roaming the confines of a nursing home; at least for now. Well, here I was aboard Queen Mary 2 without a book; I thought I had packed one, but apparently hadn't. After briefly getting lost again on this huge ship, we finally arrived at the library on deck 8, on which a funny-sad incident occurred.

I wanted to get a book in a different language. I noticed that a guide to the colored-coded sections was posted: a black patch for non-fiction, a yellow one for thrillers, etc., and, finally, a white one for books in other languages than English. I approached the librarian, a dark-skinned black man in his 40s, with a shaven head gleaming in the light like a harvest moon. "Where is the white section?" I asked him. His puzzled expression seemed to convey, "O God, here comes another one. How long do I have to go until I can retire?" "I beg your pardon," he said out loud. In all innocence I repeated the  question, "Where is the white section?" "What do you mean by the white section, Sir?" he asked, with more than a hint of annoyance.  "The section with books in foreign languages" I replied. He pointed down the corridor. "See that white woman there? Follow her." 

The selection of books was quite limited. I finally chose, "2084: La Fin du Monde, by Boahem Sansal, which received Le Grand Prix du Roman de l'Acadédeme Française, 2015. It is a dystopian novel which takes place in a fanatically religious community in which everyone must submit and not think. The book is a combination of Orwellian nightmare and a (deadly serious) parody of Islamic fundamentalism. The epigraph of the novel is noteworthy. I will provide it in the original French along with my translation:

La religion fait peut-être aimer Dieu, mais rien n'est plus fort qu'elle pour faire détester l'homme et  haír l'humanité. (Religion can, perhaps, make one love God, but nothing is stronger then it to make one detest human beings and to hate humanity.)

This quote reminds me of one by the physicist Steven Weinberg which I discussed in a previous essay: "With or without religion,  good people can behave well and bad people can do evil--but for good people to do evil--that takes religion."

Both quotes, I think, miss the mark. Religion perhaps can make one love God? What about Martin Luther King. St. Francis, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, among others? Their faith certainly made them better people. Religion can certainly add a considerable dose of fanaticism to politics, but so can politics without religion, e.g Stalin, Hitler and Mao. The practice of politics has been flawed throughout history; it's not surprising, given the state of humanity, that the practice of religion has been deficient as well. It all comes down to love and wisdom, the still small voice within, which we all heed with varying degrees of success. It is the betrayal of religion and politics by religion and politics that is the problem.

Eight persons, four couples, including Nirmala and me, ate at a common table every night during the cruise. 

As everyone who reads my blog regularly must know by now, politics and religion, subjects one is not supposed to bring up in polite company, are among my favorite subjects.  I shouldn't have broached these topics, but I did. First night: I discovered that the other six were all Trump supporters; end of discussion. Next night: they turned out to be fundamentalist Christians as well. One young couple from Indiana grew irate--at least the man did--when I stated, politely but with conviction, that I found it impossible for an educated person to deny the validity of evolution. I was told that it is "only a theory." I explained what the scientific definition of theory is. I told them that the mechanics of gravity is also constitute a theory. Would they like to demonstrate its invalidity by jumping out a window? I also denied that the gospels, written by committed Christ-centered persons long after the death of Jesus, wee accurate historical records. The husband grew even more irate and said I was dead wrong. I countered that he believed both that 2 and 2 equals 4 and that Jesus was literally the Son of God; if chance had had its way and they had been born in Mecca, however, they would still believe that 2 and 2 equals 4, yet deny that Jesus was divine, but a prophet and a man, and that the Koran was an infallible  message to Mohammad directly from Allah via the angel Gabriel. Obviously, 2 and 2 equals 4 must represent a qualitatively different form of knowledge. No, he replied, the Muslims and the Jews are just plain wrong. 

His wife, a Marine, was kinder and more polite. I told them not to worry if they ever came to doubt what they believed so ardently now: a life of love and wisdom will always be possible, and that's all that matters. After all, Jesus himself indicated that he, unlike rabbits who have hutches. was virtually homeless. I tried my best not to sound self-righteous, since, God knows, I have no reason to be. 

I shouldn't have said all this, although I was respectful throughout; I think I was a bit nervous, because I did't know what to say. It was either an attempt at friendly polemics or eating dinner in silence while everyone else talked about the glories of the Second Amendment. I want to make clear that the young couple, as well as everyone else, were fine people, albeit with views very different from mine. 

Facts, facts, facts! Pastor Gradgrind is apparently still doing very well in Indiana--yet going beyond facts is essential if one is to have a vigorous inner life; going beyond facts is also the exclusive domain of poetry, in the broadest sense of that word.

The problem with poetry is that in its visible, outer form it remains largely unread, while in its more important invisible, inner form, it remains wildly and spitefully unpracticed.  If you doubt this, read a newspaper, or do what is most difficult of all, look into your own heart. 

Inside wormholes into outside. The invisible rises to the visible; consciousness is a Möbius strip! 

And, after all this, a final metaphor:

Each one of us is a satellite revolving, whether we like it or not, around a brilliant sun. We must revolve, but it is our decision whether or not to rotate, to revolve around our own axis. If you choose not to; if you choose to spend your life always facing the void like the dark side of the moon, that is your choice. If you rotate, however, you will certainly be well acquainted with the night, but will also know that day follows night: you will also spend a good portion of your time basking in the light while choosing life.  Choose life.

A Desultory Diary, Episode 3

October 5, 2019

A motto for our second day aboard Queen Mary 2: Don't just do something, sit there.

We attended a show at The Britannia Theatre last night, featuring a doo-wop group named The Four Flashbacks. Most of us onboard remember, I think, when the songs sung were new, which means that we are, well,  old. The Flashbacks were good; not exactly my cup of tea but a winsome brew nevertheless, with just the right amount of sugar.

Today we're off on a tour of colonial Providence R.I.,  The weather is good.

Providence, we're told, has more colonial buildings than any other place in America. They are, as one would expect, centrally located; they are also beautifully preserved. 

What distinguished the colony of Rhode Island was that its founder, Roger Williams,  permitted those of all faiths, (that is, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews) to practice their religions freely. (For the Puritans, religious liberty meant that one was indeed free--to be a Puritan). The question of Islam, not to mention that of the as yet almost unheard of faiths of Hinduism and Buddhism, apparently never arose).

We saw a fine synagogue:

Jews must have welcomed the opportunity to stand proudly on the island of their faith in a hostile sea, which was still the spiritual geography of most of the West at that time. 

We also saw a very large Quaker Meeting House:

The Quakers, always fine businessmen, excelled, alas! in the slave trade.  Around 1740 they decided that to be a Quaker and to be involved in slavery was a dismal oxymoron. They came to this decision late when one considers the cosmic law of loving one's neighbor, which had been around for centuries, but not so horribly horribly late as in the Southern states. After the decision to eschew the slave trade, many left the community and continued the abomination of selling human beings. The large Meeting House was subsequently no longer filled with Quakers on First Day meetings, and was soon sold.

Roger Williams permitted everyone to practice their specific religion, which everyone apparently did, at least for a while. Only since the nineteenth century did the zeitgeist permit the good citizens of Rhode Island and elsewhere to believe in the Nobodaddy of the current age. (That's as close as I'll ever get to sounding like a Christian evangelical!)

The fault lies in both fundamentalism and in atheism; the fault lies in prose; the solution lies in poetry.

"O my Luve is like a red, red rose," wrote Robert Burns ecstatically. This is poetry. A fundamentalist interpretation of this would assert that since my love is really a rose, she therefore must have aphids and thorns. 

Once it was possible to believe, without denying reason, that God ruled the external universe. Science and the Enlightenment have since taught us that the universe is absolutely indifferent to human needs. (I express this fact with the statement, "There is no smiley face beyond Arcturus").

The dualist creation myth asserts that God created the universe out of nothing; the true creation myth is that something arises from deep within ourselves. Fundamentalism since the Enlightenment, has been losing ground and will continue to do so. The ground, however, is still there. 

The answer to the eternal question cannot be answered with prose. The prose answer--that everything is connected, as science teaches, and that we must practice love for our neighbor, is as far as prose goes, which is very far indeed. It is a prose poem.

Is it sad that so many of us live lives of distraction, following the progress of mechanical butterflies in ever expanding gyres? Yes, but real butterflies surround us as well, delighting all those who are able to see.

End of sermon. Time for high tea.

A Desultory Diary Episode 2

October 3, 2019

We spent a very pleasant two days in New York. As my inner German would say, "Ich habe mir die Füsse wundgelaufen"--I wore myself out walking! Nirmala, too, but she is apparently more fit than I am. 16-17,000 steps a day, however, ain't bad.

On our first day in New York we saw the musical "Come From Away," which received a Tony award. Everybody apparently likes it; for us, however it was just so-so.  Very little characterization; the music was good, but not outstanding. An excellent feel-good choice for tired businessmen. (We are still trying to recapture our experience of the wonderful "The Band's Visit;" no comparison here).

After this, we headed for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We saw da Vinci's great unfinished painting, St. Jerome, on loan from the Vatican. The face of St. Jerome, which da Vinci completed, reminds me of the face of Nicodemus in a late sculpture by Michelangelo, The Deposition, or the Florentine Pietà. That face illustrates the power and dignity of human suffering better than any other work I know. 

Da Vinci knew a thing or two about this as well, to say the least. 

Both depict the difficulties (and transcendence) of old age. Yes, Bette Davis, this time of life is not for sissies. Maybe not as intense as in these two depictions; if your face, however, is old and is as yet unacquainted with the night, it might well be that of an arthritic Cheshire cat.

In da Vinci's painting, Jerome is looking to the side at a crucifix--the eternal symbol of hope in a world after hope in this one is no longer possible. (That other world, alas! is sure taking its time to arrive). How da Vinci was able to capture in painting what Bach captured in music, say, in the opening chorus of The Saint Matthew Passion, is nothing short of astounding.

After this, we headed for the Asian section to visit an old friend, the statue of Kwan-Yin, The Buddha Who Looks Down With Compassion (Avalokiteshvara). Sculpted in China over 1500 years ago, this face knew about suffering as well, yet has completely transcended it.

In the evening we attended a performance of Harold Pinter's "Betrayal."  I must say I was exhausted after walking all day, and might have dozed off for a few moments. This was certainly not Pinter's or the actors' fault. The playwright's characteristic train-of-thought dialogue has aged well. The theme of the play is that everyone betrays everyone else including, perhaps primarily, oneself. 

Our two days in New York were the beginning of a twelve day vacation. I expected to have a few days largely free of dealing with Trump's daily betrayals--emphasis on the 'largely.'  The play somehow reminded me of Trump's duplicitous attempts to darken America's inner core, the light within. Once, when asked if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump replied with something like, "Of course not. I never did anything wrong."

Yeah, right. If it were possible to add a bit more anguish to St. Jerome's face, Trump would be a good candidate to do it. There were Trumps in da Vinci's day, however, no doubt having added a few wrinkles onto the saint's face, painted by an old man of astonishing genius, who saw.

(On October 4th, we began a week's cruise, followed by two days in Quebec City. Our ship was the fuel-guzzling Queen Mary 2. Greta Thunberg, forgive us!  Give us more time, O Time, to be more compassionate and to act more responsibly; support us awhile, O Time, before you decide, without a tick of conscience nor a tock of compassion,  to recycle us. Further desultory observations will follow).

A Desultory Diary, Episode 1

I don't like it, I admit it. I don't like it at all. (Man muss sich fügen, says the German philosopher inside me. Ja, I reply, das muss man).

We live in a world of ostriches. The younger birds live in a different world; they have no need to stick their heads in sand, for sand is all around them. Chicks unreflectingly think they are immortal parts of an immortal world; what they lack is power. Once they have that, they imagine, they will live forever.

Mature ostriches spend their time running around in order to stay in the same place. This takes considerable effort; they have time for little else. What about the 'old birds?'

Only they realize that they've been sticking their heads in sand since chickhood? 

No use to bend down and bill out a hiding place--the joke, of course, is that ostriches with heads in sand think they've found shelter, they think they're safe. Upright ostriches are able, however, to see their neighbors' naked and ridiculous exposure. Ha ha. Uprightness, however, never lasts long.

No need to bend down, for invisible sand, as it were, is the very air ostriches breathe. Irony of ironies: older ostriches, despite decreasing visual acuity, are sometimes, albeit briefly, able to see.

Seeing and not believing, however, can be dangerous.

Yes, you too shall die, my love, you too shall die.

I don't like it, I admit it. I don't like it at all. (Man muss sich fügen, says the German philosopher inside me. Ja, I reply, das muss man).

Primary and Secondary Racism

I am old. I really notice the difference the past few years have wrought: still in (relatively) good shape, I am  nevertheless growing weaker. No complaints; this was and is to be expected. However, I did not expect our democracy to grow weaker along with me.

Unfortunately for us and for the world, our current president neither understands nor cares about democracy. How else can one interpret, say, his indifference to the protests to maintain freedoms which are taking place in Hong Kong?

A rational person can have no doubts about the dangers of Trump’s fondness for dictators and autocrats. Similarly, no objective person can doubt that Mr. Trump is a racist. His racism is the subject of this article, in which I introduce a new concept, secondary racism.

1. Primary Racism

This is the classic form of racism, which has plagued our country since its founding—and before—and is still present in a vehement way, albeit in a less vehement way than in the past. Racism was a key ingredient of the milk on which Uncle Sam grew up to be tall and powerful. Only relatively recently has decency taught the decent that prejudice is a sickness; those affected by it must fight for their health; those afflicted by it must fight for their rights.

Not every non-minority member, however, is aware of this disease; some, like a TB patient deliberately and joyfully coughing in a doctor’s face, even flaunt it. Trump is one of these.

His assertion that he ‘hasn’t a racist bone in his body,’ is perhaps the most egregious of the thousands of lies he has told since taking office. Here is a (partial) list of his animus against African Americans, as recounted by the late Nobel-prize winning author, Toni Morrison:

On Election Day, how eagerly had so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated--embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company had been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama had been born in the United States, and also seemed to condone the beating of a Back Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos.The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

(To this sad list I would add his having called for the death  penalty, in a full-page newspaper ad, of five minority kids who were railroaded by the police into confessing a crime they did not commit. When, years later, they were proven innocent by DNA analysis, Trump insisted that they should remain in jail because the police should never be doubted. What could be more racist than that?)

To his obvious racism against blacks, his more recent behavior has given us many examples of prejudice against browns as well. He might not have originated the crisis at the border; he has, however, made it a lot worse.

Examples abound. He has referred to Mexicans as rapists and murderers; he has attempted to build a wall separating the (mostly) white North from the (mostly) brown South. He has referred to those seeking asylum from violence and chaos in their home counties, as an “infestation;” it is no accident that the white supremacist who recently murdered and injured many in El Paso used the same term. Another example of Trump's animus against Latino immigrants is his policy of separating children from parents, which has affected many families. This cruel practice will go down in the history books, I think, along with other shameful deeds such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War ll.

It is hard to think of something more callous than the recent ICE raid in Mississippi, during which hundreds of undocumented Latinos were arrested while many of their children had no one to pick them up from school. Yes, it is hard to think of something to match this cruelty, but, knowing Trump, something worse will probably follow.

No doubt about it, Trump is a racist. But is he a secondary racist as well?

2. Secondary Racism

Before we define secondary racism, let us define the pathology of its primary practitioner.

I have no problem classifying Trump as being mentally ill, suffering from a severe personality disorder. This is not a liberal or conservative issue, or at least, it shouldn’t be. His pathology speaks and tweets for itself everywhere. The president is a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder, so severe that he and he alone has been considered by several clinicians to be a malignant narcissist. I am not a psychiatrist, but I am a physician; I am aware that one is not supposed to diagnose without a clinical examination, but Trump's is such an extreme case that the diagnosis screams out to us merely by observing his behavior.

Trump’s moral world is simple. For him, what is good is that which supports him; what is evil is what opposes him. He has stated that  a good day for him is a day  in which he trounces all opponents and comes out on top. This is one of the chief characteristics of narcissism: extreme egotism.

Another characteristic is a near-total lack of empathy. A good example of this is a photo taken during his trip to console the people of El Paso after the terrorist attack, a trip which turned out to be a debacle. It shows Trump in a photo with an infant whose parents were killed in the massacre. The infant is held by his wife, Melania, far off to the side. Trump beams at the camera, with his thumbs pointing upwards in a gesture of triumph. He shows absolutely no concern for the infant. Contrast this with the clip of Beto O’Rourke hugging a desperate man crying over his loss.

Another characteristic of narcissists is extreme neediness; the narcissist needs constant praise to cover up, at least temporarily, the desperate insecurity of his inner life. During that same visit to El Paso, Trump, instead of consoling victims, bragged about the crowd size at a recent rally.

A narcissist like Trump thinks that he is so special that he can do everything himself. This is why his White House is so chaotic; this is why Trump ignores experts.

What, then, is secondary racism? Secondary racism is selective racism used as a tool to vanquish  enemies. A good example of this is the president's severe criticism of Elijah Cummings, a black politician, who dared to vigorously protest the treatment of children at the border. Trump excoriated Cumming’s record in Baltimore, and, to boot, excoriated the city of Baltimore as well. Yes, Baltimore has its problems, but it has many advantages as well. (I have lived in Baltimore for many years.) It has a high murder rate; St. Louis’s rate, however, is even worse. Note that Trump has never criticized St. Louis, which lies, at least most of the time, in a Republican state. St. Louis has a large black population as well. That Trump singles out Baltimore and a politician who vociferously opposes him and  ignores similar or worse problems in red states, is an example of secondary racism.

Most African Americans oppose Trump; they are well aware of his primary racism. Let us now imagine a thought experiment. Imagine that blacks were as deluded about Trump as  the whites of his base are; let us imagine that he had the support of the black community. If this were so, I have no doubt that Trump’s narcissism would trump his primary racism. That people adulate him is even more important to him than the ethnicity of his adulators.

Trump characterized his undereducated white working-class supporters, before he needed them, as losers. Whoever praises him is good in his wretched book, the color of their skin, if I am correct, is less important. This I call secondary racism, extreme prejudice against any member of the human race  who opposes him.

Trump, whose malicious racism is apparent to every objective person, is mentally ill; perhaps he can’t help what he’s doing. We, however, elected him; in addition, he still has, God help us,  many supporters. What’s wrong with us?