Quotes That Help Us Understand Our Troubled Times, Part l

We're in a time of trouble indeed.  We've elected a president who is unfit for office, and, if left unchecked, will most likely cause a lot of damage both here and abroad. As I made clear in previous essays available on my blog, Trump is a pathological narcissist; he is, yes, mentally ill.  This is not a partisan position; nobody wants, or should want, an incompetent, impulsive, troubled, egomaniacal bully in the White House.

I'm pleased, however, that resistance to his racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim positions is on the rise.  I'm writing this at a time of mass protests regarding his recent bizarre, anti-American executive directive that no one from seven Muslim-majority countries be allowed entry into the United States for the next 90 days. (Why is it bizarre?  I'll give one reason: citizens of Saudia Arabia are responsible for more terrorist actions against the United States than the population of all the seven proscribed countries combined.)  He must be stopped by non-violent means.

While reflecting on the state of the world today, some of my neurons sent messages to other neurons in their Google-like search for recondite memories that apply.  My mind, on separate occasions, received, as if out of nowhere, four quotes while watching the news--news which elicited from my astonished mouth exclamations such as "OMG!" or "WTF??!!" each time. They are perhaps nothing more than one mind's responses to mindlessness from the White House; they also might cause your neurons to send messages to the muscles in your neck, so that you, dear reader, nod your head in agreement.  If the quotes increase your understanding of the present situation even slightly, and, better yet: if they increase your resolve to resist, the purpose of this essay will have been met.

First Quote : Was Hände bauen, können Hände stürzen, What hands build, hands can tear down

This line comes from Act l, Scene 3 in Friedrich Schiller's famous play, Wilhelm Tell.  I had read the play earlier, but this quote stayed in my mind only after I heard an actor speak it on stage. (I don't remember much else; I must have seen the play in Germany at some time between 1965 and 1966). It deeply impressed me, since the quote is still fresh in mind, although I have never read the play again,  or seen it performed since.

In the play, Hapsburg bullies are attempting to annex the Swiss cantons.  Gessler, the tyrant governor,  has constructed an enormous dungeon, striking terror in the minds of the people. What follows is my translation of the moment when the quote which we are discussing occurs:

Master Steinmetz
O Sir, if you could only see the dungeon
among the rubble.  Yes, whoever is imprisoned there
will never hear the cock crow ever again.

Stauffacher
Oh, God!

Master Steinmetz
Observe the sidewalls  and the buttresses;
they stand as if built for eternity!

Tell
What hands build, hands can tear down.
                              (pointing to the mountains)
God has established the house of freedom.

Schiller was an idealist and firmly believed in the power of individuals to transform society for the better.  Written over one hundred years before Word War l's bloody introduction to the horrors of the past century, the play evinces Schiller's belief that
progress is inevitable. There can be no turning back.

Kant defined the Enlightenment as "the withdrawal of human beings from their self-caused immaturity."  Once the light of reason dawns upon the world, gradually dispelling the darkness of ignorance, societal improvement  cannot be halted.  There will be no tyrants left  at high noon, and the day of justice and freedom, one supposes, will last forever. 

We can no longer share that degree of idealism.  Yet, we have reason to be optimistic; faith in life and in ourselves is part of human nature.  The difference between Schiller's time and ours is the conviction of the former that very good times will come in the near future.  Yes, our epoch asserts, we might come to the top of the mountain, but it's Everest, Schiller, it sure ain't a hill. We moderns know only too well that the ignorant armies of greed against greed, power against power, and  prejudice against prejudice will clash by night and fight us all the way.

We might not be able to swallow it whole, but I think a dose of Schillerian optimism is much needed in these difficult times and will do us much good.

As you might have guessed, the quote came to mind as our misguided president proceeds with the building of an inhumane and unnecessary wall between Mexico and the United States.

When I first heard this quote, so long ago, I shrugged it off as another example of Schillerian naivete.  How can the two hands of David tear down the walls built by Goliaths?  How can two hands tear down the brutal edifice of fascism?  But what if we join hands and prevent those edifices from being constructed?  If we don't do it sooner, we just might live to regret the later for the rest of our lives.

Interpret the quote figuratively.  Replace "hands" with "resistance," "wall" with "threats to democracy and justice". Thus, the quote can be applied to our current sad state of affairs as follows: Trump is constructing dangerous and irresponsible walls; we can tear them down.

Better yet: let's act like grownups  and do the right thing now.



Part ll will follow soon.

Quotes That Help Us Understand OurTroubled Times, Part l

We're in a time of trouble indeed.  We've elected a president who is unfit for office, and, if left unchecked, will most likely cause a lot of damage both here and abroad. As I made clear in previous essays available on my blog, Trump is a pathological narcissist; he is, yes, mentally ill.  This is not a partisan position; nobody wants, or should want, an incompetent, impulsive, troubled, egomaniacal bully in the White House.

I'm pleased, however, that resistance to his racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim positions is on the rise.  I'm writing this at a time of mass protests regarding his recent bizarre, anti-American executive directive that no one from seven Muslim-majority countries be allowed entry into the United States for the next 90 days. (Why is it bizarre?  I'll give one reason: citizens of Saudia Arabia are responsible for more terrorist actions against the United States than the population of all the seven proscribed countries combined.)  He must be stopped by non-violent means.

While reflecting on the state of the world today, some of my neurons sent messages to other neurons in their Google-like search for recondite memories that apply.  My mind, on separate occasions, received, as if out of nowhere, four quotes while watching the news--news which elicited from my astonished mouth exclamations such as "OMG!" or "WTF??!!" each time. They are perhaps nothing more than one mind's responses to mindlessness from the White House; they also might cause your neurons to send messages to the muscles in your neck, so that you, dear reader, nod your head in agreement.  If the quotes increase your understanding of the present situation even slightly, and, better yet: if they increase your resolve to resist, the purpose of this essay will have been met.

First Quote : Was Hände bauen, können Hände stürzen, What hands build, hands can tear down

This line comes from Act l, Scene 3 in Friedrich Schiller's famous play, Wilhelm Tell.  I had read the play earlier, but this quote stayed in my mind only after I heard an actor speak it on stage. (I don't remember much else; I must have seen the play in Germany at some time between 1965 and 1966). It deeply impressed me, since the quote is still fresh in mind, although I have never read the play again,  or seen it performed since.

In the play, Hapsburg bullies are attempting to annex the Swiss cantons.  Gessler, the tyrant governor,  has constructed an enormous dungeon, striking terror in the minds of the people. What follows is my translation of the moment when the quote which we are discussing occurs:

Master Steinmetz
O Sir, if you could only see the dungeon
among the rubble.  Yes, whoever is imprisoned there
will never hear the cock crow ever again.

Stauffacher
Oh, God!

Master Steinmetz
Observe the sidewalls  and the buttresses;
they stand as if built for eternity!

Tell
What hands build, hands can tear down.
                              (pointing to the mountains)
God has established the house of freedom.

Schiller was an idealist and firmly believed in the power of individuals to transform society for the better.  Written over one hundred years before Word War l's bloody introduction to the horrors of the past century, the play evinces Schiller's belief that
progress is inevitable. There can be no turning back.

Kant defined the Enlightenment as "the withdrawal of human beings from their self-caused immaturity."  Once the light of reason dawns upon the world, gradually dispelling the darkness of ignorance, societal improvement  cannot be halted.  There will be no tyrants left  at high noon, and the day of justice and freedom, one supposes, will last forever. 

We can no longer share that degree of idealism.  Yet, we have reason to be optimistic; faith in life and in ourselves is part of human nature.  The difference between Schiller's time and ours is the conviction of the former that very good times will come in the near future.  Yes, our epoch asserts, we might come to the top of the mountain, but it's Everest, Schiller, it sure ain't a hill. We moderns know only too well that the ignorant armies of greed against greed, power against power, and  prejudice against prejudice will clash by night and fight us all the way.

We might not be able to swallow it whole, but I think a dose of Schillerian optimism is much needed in these difficult times and will do us much good.

As you might have guessed, the quote came to mind as our misguided president proceeds with the building of an inhumane and unnecessary wall between Mexico and the United States.

When I first heard this quote, so long ago, I shrugged it off as another example of Schillerian naivete.  How can the two hands of David tear down the walls built by Goliaths?  How can two hands tear down the brutal edifice of fascism?  But what if we join hands and prevent those edifices from being constructed?  If we don't do it sooner, we just might live to regret the later for the rest of our lives.

Interpret the quote figuratively.  Replace "hands" with "resistance," "wall" with "threats to democracy and justice". Thus, the quote can be applied to our current sad state of affairs as follows: Trump is constructing dangerous and irresponsible walls; we can tear them down.

Better yet: let's act like grownups  and do the right thing now.



Part ll will follow soon.

The Inauguration of Narcissus, January 20, 2017

Who would have guessed it? The pundits, just about all of them, have gotten it wrong again.  I believed them the first time: I told my nephew, Ranjit, who looked a little nervous on that fateful night when the election results started to come in, "Stop worrying, Ranji--Americans could never elect a man like that."  Stop worrying, indeed.

The pundits were wrong, the polls were wrong, and I, who read and listened to what they had to say, was wrong as well.

This time I'm not going along with them.  They still don't know who Donald Trump is.  They think he's an unqualified--they've got that right--demagogue--they've got that right as well--who, nevertheless,  is ready to do what he says he will do, namely, to fight like hell for the working-class, especially the white working-class.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The real Trump is transparent as the notoriously ambiguous Delphic Oracle.  A famous example was its response when asked whether the Greeks or the Romans would win the Trojan war.  (I could not find the Latin quote, so I am translating what I remember to be the English version back into Latin.  If anyone knows the Latin quote, please let me know!)  The oracle's revelation is as follows: Dico Troianos Danaos vincerunt.  "I say that the Trojans will defeat the Greeks."  But this could also mean,  "I say that the Greeks will defeat the Trojans!"  (Troianaos is in the accusative case since it follows "dico" and either Troianos or Danaos can be the subject of the dependent clause, since Latin, as an inflected language, has much freedom regarding word order.)

Thus, the oracle was more than ambiguous, it was meaningless.  Similarly, one can't be certain if Trump believes anything he says.  The one thing we can be certain about Trump is that he is a pathological narcissist.  He needs praise like frogs need water.  He will say just about anything to get it.  He's like a stand-up comedian who feels like he's in heaven when he delights the audience, and feels like he's in hell when he flops.  Another thing about Trump: he can accept criticism as readily  as a fly, if it could think, would accept an invitation to play trampoline upon a spider's web.

I give but one example.  During the Golden Globe Awards, Meryl Streep said that Trump's mockery of a handicapped journalist "broke her heart."  Trump replied--how else--with a tweet:

Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked me last night at the Golden Globes. She is a Hillary flunky who lost big.  For the 100th time, I never "mocked" a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him "groveling" when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media.

(Ugh! What ugly writing!)

Do you doubt that his response would have been very different if Meryl Streep had praised him?  If you do, you're like the pundits who try to give meaning to the meaningless.   Trump reminds me of a toddler throwing a fit when his brother gets two cookies when he only gets one. If his brother, however, gave the two cookies to him, the toddler's  pouty lips would turn into a drooling smile in an instant.  Whatever Trump says is merely a means to get praise; change the audience and Trump's "message" will change accordingly.

(This, by the way, is what Trump said about Streep in 2015: "Meryl Streep is excellent; she is a fine person, too.")

If sparrows were in power, he would tweet wildly in their favor, and beam with delight when they all tweeted  back their admiration.  If they weren't important, he'd be trying to wildly empower stray cats.

Donald Trump, to put it mildly, had never been an advocate for the working class before he ran for president.  He associated throughout his career with whites like those he appointed for his cabinet, rather than like the disgruntled rural whites who imagine he means what he says.

How can one tweet for the poor tweety birds with a cabinet full of rich vultures?

Trump reminds me of a comedian who gets into trouble for having made an ethnic slur.  "I was just trying to be funny.  I love and support (lesbian, gays, or whoever he had insulted).  If I offended anyone, I apologize. Still love me, still love me--please!" Yes, Trump is more like a narcissistic comedian rather than like a politician.  He delivers what his audience wants to hear with true mastery.  " I just needed to get my cheers and  claps"--yes, but in Trump's case the jokes are on us.

An example of one of those jokes-on-us is the following excerpt from his acceptance speech:

Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of the nation, an educational system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have taken too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.  This American carnage stops right here and right now.

A wildly inaccurate clown's-eye view of America! "Let the toddler rant," the Republicans must be saying to themselves.  "We control both Houses and we have a very different agenda."

Yet the pundits continue to analyze such statements as if there were content behind them. For instance, this is what Gail Collins wrote in response to his inaugural speech (New York Times, January 21, 2017):

He still appears to think that all poor neighborhoods are terror zones and public schools are something out of "Oliver Twist."

Here is a quote from the Times editorial from the same date:

The new president offered a tortured rewrite of American history...

Liberal journalists and TV pundits have been providing analyses in the same vein for some time.  They are wrong.

Here's what I believe is the real reason why Trump has such a dystopian view of America: if, in your own myth,  you must be a savior, the people you are to save must first be in grave danger.  If they're not really in gave danger, well, make it up. 

If you want to be known as the  liberator of birds, it helps to put them in cages first. 

Trump, I say again, is a pathological narcissist.  A better adjective that applies to him, instead of misguided, ignorant, racist, misogynist is, well, crazy.

According to a Russian proverb, a wise man has long ears, big eyes and a short tongue. That does not describe the person whom we elected to the highest office of the most powerful country in the world.  One that does: a narcissist is deaf to words of wisdom, blind to insight, has a big mouth and has, in Trump's case, small hands as well.  Without cheers, he disappears.  I hope it won't take too long before the white working-class figures out that they've been had.  Until then, there is a very good chance that Trump will do considerable damage to democracy, to the United States, and to the world.

We're in for a wild ride indeed.

The Schaefer Effect

"The mayor wants us to go outside and cheer President Reagan as he passes by.  The motorcade is scheduled to pass Pratt and Charles in about fifteen minutes.  Get your coats on now."  The man who gave us this abrupt order was the Commissioner of Health of the Baltimore City Health Department.

The year was 1980.  We had no choice--that is, if we wanted to keep our jobs.  So the entire staff of the Health Department, dozens of us, marched into the cold, waiting to cheer The Gipper.   We had to wait a long time.  (Ronald Reagen was scheduled to give a speech somewhere in Baltimore, I don't exactly remember where or why.)

Finally, the motorcade whizzed by.  We assumed that the cars raced past along the closed-off thoroughfare for security reasons.  I doubt if the president had time to notice us. or that he even cared if he did.

I felt like a South American peasant having no choice but to execute a dictator's command.  After that, chilled and unfulfilled, we returned to work.

The man who gave the Commissioner of Health that command was the Mayor of Baltimore at the time, William Donald Schaefer.

Mayor Schaefer was a member of the City Council for some years before he began his long service as mayor of Baltimore.  He was thought by many not to be very bright, but got things done in the vast red-tape sea upon which many bureaucrats floundered.  He had a temper and often got his way by yelling and browbeating others.  He had a huge network of powerful friends; if you crossed him, you were in for trouble.  He was dedicated to Baltimore, however, and accomplished many good things. For instance, as manufacturing left Baltimore, which was inevitable, Mayor Schaefer switched the focus from factories to tourism.  Baltimore's famous Inner Harbor is a testimony to the many successes of his administration.

After serving four terms as mayor, he became governor in 1986.  He had accomplishments as governor as well, but he was much more effective as mayor.  Yelling didn't work as well in Annapolis; he couldn't boss state representatives around  as if he owned the state.  Calling Maryland's Eastern Shore a "shit house" and referring to women, including female politicians, as "pretty little misses," certainly didn't help his state-wide reputation either!  He worked hard, however, learned to compromise somewhat, and had several successes.

The point I am trying to make here is that strategies for success in one context might not work well at all in another.  Resultant difficulties from failure to adapt and change to a new situation is what I call "the Schaefer Effect."



2.

I contend that "The Schaefer Effect" is going to assure Trump's failure as a president.  He is a master of inflaming his base with lies; he tells his fans just what they want to hear.  They are opposed to immigration.  He tells them that Mexicans are sending rapists to the United States.  They hate Obama.  He tells them that Obama's administration has been the worst ever.  They hate Hillary Clinton even more.  He tells them that she is a crook and, if elected, he'll appoint a special prosecutor and send her to jail.  He will replace the disastrous Obama care with something great--even though he has no plan.  He will build a wall between Mexico and the United States and Mexico will pay for it. He's going to "drain the swamp" and free America from the machinations of the big banks. Climate change is a Chinese hoax. Etc. Etc.

It is clear to me that the only reason he tells these lies is to receive the cheers of the crowd.

He has disparaged the C.I.A. and F.B.I. about the Russian hacking, because, if he acknowledged it, it would be an indication that he might not have won, had the Russians not done what they did.  Here is a tweet of his from January 7, 2017:

"Only reason hacking of the poorly defended DNC is discussed is that the loss by the Dems was so big that they are totally embarrassed."

Never mind the truth: he didn't "win big" at all--Hillary Clinton received about three million votes more than he did.  (He refused to acknowledge this with another lie, namely that there was widespread voter fraud.)

The lies that went over so well with the angry members of the white working-class, however, will not go over well with Democrats and Republicans in Congress due to the Schaefer effect.  Republicans are understandably delighted that the party controls all three branches of government, but they're not going to be his cheerleaders.  If Trump indulges in bizarre outbursts (and he assuredly will) that challenge Republican interests, they will let him know about it. Conservative politicians such as Lindsay Graham and "I like heroes that don't get captured" McCain are understandably shocked by Trump's response to the hacking.  It is not an exaggeration to call it borderline treasonous. Not to mention all those conflicts of interest that are not going to go away!

Political pundits, especially the liberal ones, are shocked and dismayed.  However, I believe they're missing an important point: Trump is crazy.  I don't use that word lightly.  He is a pathological narcissist and thus in need of constant praise.  He will deny reality to get that praise.  He is not able to endure the slightest criticism, however justified.

Senator Dick Durbin recently said the following: "I spent months never believing he would become president.  I sincerely hope that the office makes the man."

This is NOT going to happen.  I repeat: Trump is crazy. This isn't name-calling; this isn't a partisan insulting of a man whose policies one doesn't like.  Trump's pathology trumps content.  If Putin had insulted him and supported Clinton, the former would get the brunt of a string of vicious Trump tweets. 

No party wants to have a truly crazy man in charge.  Even Republican opposition will become more and more apparent.

All presidents have to endure criticism, some of it justified, some if it not.  In Trump's case, any criticism shakes him to his pathological core.  He reacts to it as many a toddler would: by throwing a tantrum.  

How did this man ever get to be president?  Let's hope he's removed from office before serious damage is done to our already endangered republic.

A doctor friend of mine, a conservative, recently told me how he viewed the oncoming Trump presidency: "I just hope we don't get vaporized."

I repeat: Trump is crazy.

It's a different ballgame--one in which the home team is going to lose badly.  Every czar beyond our shores is going to be pleased.

Political Predictions: A Lamentation for Muted Trumpet

This post contains my political predictions for the next four years, the period of Trump's presidency.  Before I start these Lamentations for Muted Trumpet, I would like to make the following points:

1. I am not a pundit; I am very interested in politics, but politics is not my area of expertise. (Which might not be a serious disadvantage, since pundits are often dead-wrong,) 

2. As my friends know, I am often wrong as well.  After all, when my family and I settled down to watch the election returns, I assured family members not to worry.  "Trump cannot win, " I said.  Yeah, right. 

3.  I admit that most people would consider my political views to be liberal ones.  The way I see it, however, is this: Two very major problems in my country are race and inequality.  Which party do I think would best address these issues?  You guessed it.

4. I come from that sliver of a social stratum, (which has since, unfortunately, increased,) between poverty and working-class. I have become a professional, but I never have forgotten my difficult roots. My nuclear family now is tri-racial: brown (my wife is from India;) black (my adopted son is African-American;) and white, (me).  It is not surprising, therefore, that I see inequality and racism as major problems.  Having written that, I would like to make clear that I do not fit the white working class into a "basket of deplorables"--to the contrary, I have a lot of empathy for them.  

Now we can proceed to the predictions:

1.  Within two years from now, and certainly by the end of Trump's presidency, many, perhaps most, of Trump supporters  will realize they've been had.

2. The economy will improve initially and then, perhaps rapidly, deteriorate.  Economic conditions will be worse at the end of Trump's presidency than they were at the end of Obama's. I think there is at least a 50% possibility of a fairly major recession.

3.  The rich will continue to get richer, while the poor will continue to get poorer.  The poor will have less access to food stamps.  The minimum wage will not rise.  However, social security will remain largely intact--the age limit for retirement might be increased, however, which will adversely affect those less well off financially.  Regarding Medicare: the age for receiving benefits might be raised here as well, and Medicare Advantage plans will increase, to the delight of insurance companies.  However, Ryan will not get his way and be able to transform Medicare into a voucher system.

4. Many will lose medical insurance, especially those covered by ACA federal funds for Medicaid.  The Republicans might delay repeal of the ACA for two years, in order not to suffer losses in the 2018 midterm elections, but the eventual impact will be great.  It would be impossible to cover  pre-existing conditions without requiring the young and healthy to be covered.   Repealing much of the ACA will be a windfall for the rich.  Republicans have no intention of increasing taxes to pay for medical services--as all developed countries do--making illusory their promise of a better replacement for Obamacare. If we're lucky, the havoc caused by the repeal of the ACA will eventually lead to a single payer system after Trump's exit. 

5. There will be many scandals.  Trump will continue to have major conflicts of interest regarding real estate holdings, and will probably be found at some point to be in violation of the emolument clause of the Constitution. It is very likely that some of his cabinet members will be involved in scandals as well.

6.  We are in for a wild ride.  Trump has insulted a lot of groups; their members will continue to vehemently protest his presidency, and will eventually be joined by disappointed Trump supporters as well.  The wall between Mexico and the United States, however, will not be built as promised; nor will the majority of illegal immigrants be deported.  Hate crimes will continue to increase.  There will be, however, no official abrogation  of citizenship rights of Muslim-Americans. 

7. Foreign powers, such as North Korea, China, and Russia, will challenge and test Trump's ability as president.  He will not be able to counter them adequately. If there is a major act of terrorism, for instance, Trump will overreact in a dangerous way.  There is a good chance--more than 50%--that a major political crisis will occur during Trump's presidency.

8.  Trump is a pathological narcissist, needing constant affirmation.  He is unable to grow into his position; his position will eventually make his incompetence more and more evident.  I think the chance for impeachment is at least 50%.

9. Some of Trump's more outlandish views might foster cooperation between Republicans and Democrats.  This will be a welcome trend.

10. Trump might be able to pass a much-needed program to repair infrastructure.  How this can be done without raising taxes, however,  eludes me.

11. A very conservative Supreme Court will not overturn Rowe vs. Wade, but will continue to limit, along with federal courts, access to abortion.  The days of Planned Parenthood are probably numbered.

12. You don't have to be a Nostradamus to predict this one: climate change will get considerably worse.  

13. The possibility of ending the Israeli-Palestine conflict will become more and more remote, adding to international tensions.

I don't want to end with the unlucky number thirteen, so I will add another:

14. Democrats will regain the presidency and quite possibly the Senate, the latter as early as 2018.

Well, those are my predictions.  Trump's will probably wind up being the worst presidency in the history of the United States.  I end on a hopeful note: I hope I'm wrong.  I would much rather have egg on my face, as it were, than, as it were again, tears on my cheeks.  

Every year, I will re-post these predictions with a few words about their accuracy at the time.  Let's hope that these predictions will be able to be dismissed as dead-wrong views of an out-of-touch liberal, pathetically unable to digest his just desserts of sour grapes and acrid lemons.  

Racial Segregation in Baltimore and Beyond

1.

Many years ago, when I first moved to Baltimore, I was walking back to the house we had just bought on Wickford Road.  It is a block filled with Tudor-style houses, all built around 1930. I doubt if they were called town houses when they were built, much less townhomes, but that's what we'd  call them today.   Each of the large structures consists of two peaked-roofed end units wtih two smaller dwellings in between.   The section of Baltimore where we live, with the exception of my family, is  an exclusively white neighborhood, an upper-middle class section of the city, adjacent to the far wealthier neighborhoods of Guilford and Roland Park, to the west and north of us, adjacent to the less wealthy sections of Hampden and Medfield, to the south and west.  All these neighborhoods are, you guessed it, white.  (The city as a whole is over 60% African American.) Approaching our house from the other side of the street, I noticed a car had stopped in front of me, as I was about to cross over.  A young man rolled down the driver's side window and asked me the following question, "My wife and I are thinking of buying a house in this neighborhood.  Could you tell me if any blacks live around here?"  "See that house across the street?" I said, pointing to an end unit easily visible through the windshield.  "A black person lives there."  Before waiting for a response, I added, "By the way, I live in that house as well."  He drove off without saying another word.


2.

"Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values of the White neighborhoods."

Who said that?  Some crackpot fanatic?  David Duke?  A member of the Alt-Right?

No, it was the Mayor of Baltimore, with the full support of the city council and the vast majority of Baltimore's white residents.  '

The time was the early part of the past century.  In 1910, a Yale-educated lawyer had the temerity to "pollute" a wealthy Baltimore neighborhood by moving into it.  The Mount Vernon area of Baltimore was the most exclusive Baltimore neighborhood at the time; at various times, the Cone sisters, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James and the Duchess of Windsor all lived there.  The inhabitants were outraged at the possibility of integration; they demanded action.  They got it.  A law was passed that if a block was 50% or more white, no black could live there, similarly, if a block was 50% or more African American, it would be illegal for a white to live there.  The mayor got his wish.  Baltimore, already segregated, became even more segregated.

Worse: The New-Deal era Federal Housing Administration was set up to foster home ownership--to whites.  The law from 1934-1968 forbade the provision of mortgages to blacks.  Blacks could only purchase a house through the so-called "contract system."  The methods devised by these white loan sharks were truly despicable. The cost of a house financed through the contract system was outrageously high.  The loans were not amortized, so if one payment was missed, the house would be repossessed and "flipped" to another black family.  Many African-American families worked several jobs in the desperate effort to meet payments.  They were forced to sublet.  They could not afford repairs.  The black neighborhoods soon devolved into ghettos.  During this entire period, African-Americans were unable to amass wealth from property values, the root of the vast discrepancy between black and white wealth to this day.

In short, federal, state, and local policies are responsible for deliberately creating every poor black neighborhood in Baltimore.

"They're lazy." "They don't want to work." "They're violent." "They have lots of children and live off welfare," etc.  These views and others like them, are nothing more than variations of the heinous words the mayor of Baltimore said so long ago.


3.

In 1967, Lyndon Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to determine the cause of the recent urban riots.  It asserted that, "Our nation is moving toward two societies one black, one white--separate and unequal."  New legislation was passed to counter this trend. After 1968, bureaucrats by law could no longer red-line districts.  (Previously, they had actually colored in red, black neighborhoods on their maps, so their racism could be performed in a more efficient manner.) The Fair Housing Act of 1968, however, designed to break down patterns of racial and local segregation, had done much good but has done little to counter segregation.  Nearly all subsidized housing occurred in poor neighborhoods, where poor schools, dreadful transportation, and lack of jobs continued to be rampant.  A recent Harvard study demonstrated that when poor people move into better neighborhoods, their children are much more likely to attend college, and better colleges.

Recently, the Obama administration took the Fair Housing goal of "affirmatively furthering" integration more seriously. Julian Castro, the current head of HUD,  has proposed that sums provided for housing vouchers would vary by zip code, and that any landlord who was a recipient of federal funds could not refuse housing vouchers.  Thus, voucher recipients of poor communities would get more support if they moved to an area where rent was higher.  There would also be "mobility counselors" to encourage moves to the suburbs.  HUD would supply states with neighborhood maps designed to increase integration.  Castro viewed these measures as essential, since the Fair Housing Act goal of integration was not being implemented.

This was the first significant attempt to integrate neighborhoods in a long time.



4.  

Edward J. Pinto, a housing specialist of the conservative American Enterprise Institute has this to say about the new measure: "This is just the latest attempt by HUD to social engineer the American people...The goal is to get the suburbs to look like the cities.  It's presumptuous of HUD to think that someone in Washington D.C. should decide all this."

Conservatives always want smaller government.  I, however, contend that government should be as small as necessary.  If the majority had been fair to minorities during the course of American history; if they hadn't actively "socially engineered" segregation and black poverty, no intervention by the government would be necessary.  Government intervention, often clumsy, should always be the last resort. If you want small government, America, be fair. The treatment of fellow Americans who are black has been abominable; two of its legacies, segregation and poverty, is so widely accepted that it is thought by many to be the natural order of things.  It is obvious to any fair-minded person that they are not.

If the country had acted according to the Golden Rule, no rules and regulations would be necessary. The only solution to the race problem in America is integration.  Many cities across America, Baltimore among them, are more segregated than ever. Something needs to be done.



5.

Two coveys of ants,
each color in its own Pompeii--
The volcano wakes


6.

The President-elect has nominated Ben Carson as head of H.U.D., replacing Julian Castro.

Dr. Carson, as everyone knows, is a retired neurosurgeon.  When I worked with the Johns Hopkins Community Services, I referred many patients to him.  One of my patients had a benign brain tumor, which Dr. Carson successfully removed.  His parents named their next child Carson.

One day, while my son was an elementary-school student, he came home from school elated.  He had just heard Dr. Carson give a talk at his school.  "He was great!" my son  beamed.  "I didn't know black people could become doctors."  (My son was the only black student in his class.)  He admired Dr. Carson very much.

His enthusiasm has long since waned. along with mine.  Oh, Dr. Carson, you should have left well enough alone!

He believes being gay is a choice.  He does not believe in evolution.  He believes that "political correctness" has stopped conservative politicians for "saying it like it is."  Is there no such thing as truth?

In a July 23rd 2015 editorial in the Washington Times, he wrote the following:

"To be fair, white flight was not exclusively the consequence of forced integration policies.  Other private and public housing policies such as redlining, restrictive covenants, discriminatory steering by real estate agents and restricted access to private capital--all attempts at social engineering--(my italics)--exacerbated the suburban segregation in the 1970s and '80s."


"...These rules, (Obama's new regulations), come on the Supreme Court decision narrowly upholding the use of "disparate impact" analysis in determining whether municipal housing policies have a racially discriminatory effect, whether intended or not."

"These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse...entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous."

Dr. Carson, the neighborhood structure of the United States, did not arise by accident.  Whether a given municipality has a discriminatory intention doesn't matter.  The very existence of exclusively white neighborhoods is the product of discrimination, whether those living there acknowledge this or not.

Dr. Carson, your equating years of severe and deliberate racial segregation by white society and by the federal government with President Obama's measured means to help correct it is abominable.  In your mind, both are examples of social engineering--as if they were morally equivalent!

Black students were denied access to integrated schools and universities for generations.  Integration did not come about voluntarily.  Was Brown vs. Board of Education just another heinous example of social engineering?

The two great problems in the United States, racism and economic inequality, are intolerable.    If politicians and those who elect them  don't like government intervention,  they should be making significant progress in creating a society in which  such intervention is not needed. The lava of racism continues to flow. Something needs to be done!

7.

If not now, when?

Sea Turtles and Democracy

1. The Green Sea Turtles

The highlight of our recent trip to Costa Rica, (December, 2016), was a visit to Tortuguero State Park, situated on the Caribbean coast of the country.  “Tortuguero” literally means “turtle catcher”; the term refers to the days when hired locals would turn over the giant turtles onto their backs, where they helplessly remained until Spaniards came and killed them.  

An adult sea turtle weighs up to 1500 lbs; an average adult yields 75 lbs of meat. They're called green sea turtles because their flesh is green, due to the color of the vegetation they eat.  Their eggs were a  delicacy once, and in some places of the world, they probably –and mostly illegally—still are. Once in danger of extinction, sea turtles, thanks to the work of dedicated conservationists, are a protected species in most countries where they are present.  With continued vigilance, sea turtles will still be around to delight future generations of their very distant relatives, us.

Wise Costa Rican politicians (there were many horribly unwise ones as well in the history of this small Central American nation) have designated thirty percent of the country's land mass as national parks, a percentage that ranks among the highest in the world.  (An amazing fact: this land, the size of the U.S. state of West Virginia, is a very tiny fraction of the total land mass of the world; nevertheless it contains 5% of the world’s biological diversity).

Although Tortuguero is only 86 kilometers from our starting point, San José, the capital, it took us, counting breaks for breakfast and lunch, just about the whole day to get there.  There are no highways in Costa Rica; there isn’t even a direct route to the park: the  main roads zigzag across the country and thus make only slow progress in either the northern or southern direction.  In addition, about half of the route from San José to Tortuguero has to be covered by boat.

The beautiful, pristine beaches of Tortuguero State Park constitute  an important area in the life cycle of green sea turtles.  Every month, female sea turtles return to the same place where they were born—how they manage to do this is a mystery, at least to me.  Once on land, they dig a hole in the sand in which they lay about 120 eggs.  (August is the peak month of their nesting in Tortuguero; we didn’t see any adult turtles during our December visit.)  The eggs hatch two months later.

The local population of humans has learned that they can  make more money from tourism than they would from slaughtering sea turtles or from robbing their nests of its eggs.  Our guide works with a young man who takes tourists to nesting sites.  He knows knows where the ones with mature eggs lie.  He does this for ten dollars per head, which we—at least most of us—willingly paid.  (You know what he’d be doing if he couldn't make a profit in an ecological way.)  

After we agreed to hire him, he poured water over a nesting site; this simple procedure causes mature eggs to hatch.  By the time we got to the beach, scores of little critters were scurrying toward the ocean, a few hundred meters beyond the site of their birth.

Life isn’t easy for sea turtles. Only about one per brood makes it to adulthood.   While we watched them—it is not easy to hurry towards water when one’s means of locomotion is a pair of tiny flippers—vultures circled overhead.  None of them swooped down to snatch them—they, of course, feared more than hunger the most vicious predator of all, human beings.  With much effort,  the baby turtles eventually reached the sea.  We saw some being whacked back to shore by waves; none of these setbacks was permanent, however.  Every one reached the ocean, then quickly disappeared into it.  This is a photo I took of one, about halfway in its struggle to come to the end of dry sand: 

Their trials don’t end once they reach the liquid environment in which all life on Earth began.  Crabs and fish await them.  I hope the one in the photo is still alive!

As many of you know, we now live in the epoch called The Anthopocene Age, in which human beings, for the first time in natural history, are able to significantly alter the environment.    In this age of mass extinction, which began around 1950, turtles still must face the most vicious predator of all.  Human beings kill them in various ways, mostly indirectly now.  Some of these amazing reptiles get trapped in fishing nets; others become sick from  pollution. There is, for instance, a swirling mess the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean; the mess consists entirely of garbage.  Plastic does not degrade.  Many sea turtles, mistaking balls of plastic for jelly fish, die a slow death after swallowing  a meal of shimmering, diaphanous, unnatural junk.

All human beings, of course, are not vicious predators.  The majority of nesting areas throughout the world are now protected sites.  Many natural scientists continue to dedicate their lives to studying these sublime creatures, with the goal that they thrive, or at least don’t become extinct.  They are apparently succeeding.

(If I had my way, I would let natural predators have their way as well. I believe vultures should be vultures, crabs should be crabs and fish should be fish. When humans act like vultures, crabs, or fish, however, that is another matter.)

Back in the United States, I am filled with joy whenever these magnificent creatures swim about freely in the oceans of my mind.  (There is garbage there also, but I’m doing my best to remove it.  I wish everyone worked as hard to remove outer pollution as well.)

2.  An American Nightmare

I am a poet, images and music are my business.  It’s thus not surprising that I wrote many haiku in Costa Rica, even though I hardly ever write haiku.  The images of all the live wonders I saw there—sea otters, a rare chestnut-bellied heron, jacaras, caimans, iguanas, etc., seemed to me to be almost demanding to be captured and preserved in haiku.  To each his own: while my fellow tourists took pictures, I wrote poems—fourteen of them, in fact, during the course of our stay.  One of them, as you may have surmised, has baby sea turtles as its subject:

Birds of prey above;

Hatchlings scurry toward the sea—

Crabs and fish ahead.

Life is precious as it is precarious.  The best human institutions can become extinct as well, a horrifying thought. The fragility of existence, especially of human existence, more than now and then weighs heavily on my mind.

One night, after our return, I had a nightmare.  I saw a giant sea turtle, which, in my dream, represented American democracy.  I have always thought, although it lumbered clumsily toward its goal and got stuck sometimes, that our giant democracy was invincible. Yes, it could be injured and had many scars from wounds of the past, which were mostly self-inflicted--It was, however, far too big and strong to be killed.  Suddenly, the huge turtle behind my closed lids transformed into a newborn, faced with a gauntlet of creatures ready to devour it. For the first time in my life, I realized that democracy in my country was in serious danger, threatened by a demagogic vulture, corporate crabs and a sea full of ignorant fish.

As I woke up, this haiku came to mind:

Democracy must

Struggle toward equality—

Vultures overhead.

It’s a bad haiku, but, unfortunately for all of us, it is also distressingly true.