Russian tanks and Elvis

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Jim

Instead of listening to music in the morning, I’ve been turning on the TV to see the latest news from Ukraine. The war is compelling: horrifying and inspiring at the same time. Everyone hopes and prays for the triumph of good over evil, but down deep we’re afraid it will end badly. Because we’ve seen this movie before: Russian tanks rolling into Chechnya in the 1990s, Prague in 1968 and Budapest in 1956. 

The 1956 Hungarian revolution sticks in my mind because I had a personal connection: a family of cousins in Budapest. My grandparents emigrated to Chicago from Hungary around 1900. My mother’s first language was Hungarian, and over the years she collected relatives and tracked down estranged kinfolk. 

At some point she got in touch with distant cousins in Budapest, a family with four sons, and sent them packages of food and clothing. It was not until after my mother died that I learned that she also sent needed medicine that was unavailable in Hungary. When I was in high school I exchanged letters with the two younger sons, who were about my age and were learning English. 

In 1956 Hungary was a satellite of an expanding Soviet Union. No one was under the illusion that any country behind the Iron Curtain was an independent nation. After years of repression and growing unrest, widespread protests escalated and briefly replaced the Stalinist government of Hungary with a more benign Communist regime. The Soviets retaliated by sending Russian troops. 

As the Cold War was heating up, all the rest of the world could do was watch in horror as Hungarian teenagers lobbed Molotov cocktails at Russian tanks and refugees streamed across the border. United Nations resolutions and condemnations from Western leaders had no impact on what was effectively an internal Soviet dispute in which intervention could trigger nuclear war.

One of the most prominent calls for support for Hungarian refugees came from Elvis Presley. At the height of his popularity, he used his headline appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show to call attention to Hungary’s plight and solicit Red Cross aid contributions. In 2011 the Hungarians honored Elvis posthumously by making him an honorary citizen of Budapest and naming a street for him.

Happily, my cousins survived the uprising and its aftermath. The two oldest sons fought the Russians and fled the country. Years later I got to know one cousin who had emigrated to Canada. I visited him and his wife in Vancouver and they visited me in Albuquerque a few years ago. I follow the Facebook posts (in Hungarian, unfortunately) of another cousin who remained in Hungary. 

The Hungarian revolution solidified the Cold War as a stalemate that lasted for decades. The Russian invasion of Ukraine promises to result in another geopolitcal reset one way or another. All we can do is watch in hope and horror, contribute to the many relief efforts that are emerging and urge our leaders to keep sending weapons. And remember the Hungarians and Elvis. 

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Don’t know much about history

Posted on November 12, 2021 by Jim

I’ve been scratching my head over the controvery about teaching critical race theory in schools. Whatever the hell critical race theory is, it’s clear that politicians want to either mandate it or ban it. I see this as an opportunity to get the schools to do something they haven’t done in at least a generation: actually teach history.

We know schools in the United States are not as good at teaching reading, math and science as schools in your average country such as Slovenia, Portugal and Vietnam. They really suck at teaching history, in which only 15% of eighth-graders are proficient.

This is not a new problem. I learned the basic history stuff in school but was not particularly interested in it. Many years later I became a late-blooming history buff by reading history and historical fiction: sound research and good writing that made up for the uninspired teaching I had received.

Understanding history — and watching it evolve as new research adds perspective to old events — has clarified my sense of identity and informs my perspective on current events. As I watch students tear down statues of founding fathers they know nothing about, I wonder if they are aware that the French Revolution ended in dictatorship, or that Marxism killed 80 million Chinese and 30 million Russians.  

Critical race theory will not correct this appalling lack of knowledge. The definition of critical race theory appears to be as slippery as the definition of gain-of-function Covid research. Regardless of what you call it, some of the things that actually are being taught in schools are concerning.

Third-graders are being forced to deconstruct their racial identities and separate themselves into oppressors and oppressed. One school system accused white teachers of “spirit murder” against black children. Another teaches students that all white people perpetuate systemic racism. A private school asks parents to “decenter” whiteness at home and in their families. Students are taught that the police are racist and encouraged to join in protests.

Even though the Black Lives Matter movement has lost the support of the majority of Americans, the counterfactual claims of BLM and the 1619 Project are being taught as established fact in a growing number of schools. One teacher complains that political tracts have replaced history textbooks, and she is no longer permitted to teach students about the Holocaust. 

Critical race theory is being debated in my adopted home state of New Mexico. It’s an unusual challenge in a state that was practicing diversity and inclusion for centuries before it became trendy. The Conquistadores who colonized the place were a racially mixed bunch, and New Mexico’s population now is 49% Hispanic, 37% Non-Hispanic white, 8% Native American, 2% Asian and 2% African-American. Imagine the hapless teacher who must decide whether a child of Anglo-Hispanic parentage who’s part Native American is an oppressor or a victim. 

Instead of replacing a partly biased version of history with an overtly racist one, I’d like to see states take a fresh look at what history needs to be taught in the schools and how to teach it. Educators and politicians are the least-qualified people to do this. Start with a panel of historians, including some who are not subject to university censorship. Make it an open process with ample opportunity for citizen input and public discussion. Review the curriculum every few years to keep pace with the continual evolution of history.

There is no excuse for boring history lessons in schools when so many interesting resources are available. I’ll bet high school students can learn more about the Civil War from Ken Burns’ documentary than anything their teachers can present. What if middle school kids could take an Ancestry.com DNA test and trace their family histories as a class project? 

If political factions are demanding that we fundamentally transform America, our citizens need to understand what, exactly, needs transforming and why. And if we are better aware of history, perhaps we can dissuade our politicians from repeating history’s mistakes yet again.

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The American dream in four walls

Posted on October 8, 2021 by Jim

I’ve always been interested in houses: fixed up a couple of old ones and built a new one last year. Home ownership has been a major factor in middle-class wealth accumulation and upward mobility in the United States and certainly contributed to mine. 

Growing up in a tiny apartment gave me an appreciation for home ownership. My parents scrimped and saved until a modest inheritance from my grandfather gave them a down payment on a house. 

My generation was luckier. I bought my first house in 1969 at age 26 for a little more than twice my annual income and (as a military veteran) practically nothing down. Over the years steady growth in home values enabled my family to move up to nicer houses. Tapping my increasing home equity put my kids through college and paid my late wife’s medical bills. Meanwhile, the sale of my parents’ last house covered their elder care and final expenses.

Today, however, the escalator to prosperity of home ownership is out of reach for a growing number of Americans. 

There are many reasons for this. Crushing student debt has caused many millennials to delay marriage and children, and makes it difficult for them to qualify for home mortgages. The housing supply has not kept pace with population growth and demographic changes. Builders find it more profitable to build McMansions than starter homes. Zoning laws set minimum lot sizes and discourage low-priced homes. Environmental building codes make homes in some areas more expensive.

To make matters worse, the overheated housing market we’re now seeing has jacked up home prices. Large corporations are snapping up single-family houses and converting them to rental properties. When I downsized to a smaller place last year, I chose to build a new house because available homes in my desired size and price range were hard to find. 

Every politician genuinely wants to make housing more affordable for working families, but government interventions in the housing market have been inconsistent and sometimes have had harmful side effects. Federally-insured FHA and VA mortgages have been a long-term success. Yet the 2008 housing crisis was triggered by a well-intentioned policy to grant mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them, which led to runaway speculation by financial institutions. 

Government efforts to create affordable housing focus mostlly on rental apartments. Renting certainly makes sense for many people at different stages of life, but many renters still want to be homeowners and nearly half worry they won’t be able to buy a home.

Build more starter homes

We clearly need to expand the housing supply, and especially need more moderate-priced houses to lower the threshhold of home ownership. About 1.5 million housing units are built in the U.S. each year, millions fewer than needed to meet demand. 

Watching my new house being built reminded me that home construction hasn’t changed much over the years. The roof trusses were prefabricated but the rest of the house was nailed together on-site, board by board. My old house in Oak Park was built in much the same way in 1911. No wonder houses are so expensive!

Wider use of manufactured housing can reduce construction costs. Not just mobile homes: Modular homes (even luxury models) can be quickly assembled on-site from factory-built components. This will require changing the artificial barriers of zoning laws and lending requirements. It also makes sense to overhaul zoning laws that create artificial scarcity in areas where people want to live.

Equity for renters

We subsidize homeowners with a federal tax deduction for mortgage interest and property taxes. Renters get squat. If we want to help working families build wealth, how about a comparable tax break for renters? What if renters could start building equity by investing a refundable tax credit in tax-deferred savings toward a down payment on a house or condo? This will require some tax-law gymnastics, but that’s what Congress does best. 

I have problems with most proposals to forgive student debt and grant reparations to correct past discrimination. But if we are going to do this sort of thing in the pursuit of equity, the best way to reduce the wealth gap is to include a mechanism and incentive to purchase homes.

If our policymakers are serious about helping working families — whether they seek to Make America Great Again or Build Back Better — one of their objectives should be to make it easier for young people to become homeowners as a down payment on the American dream.

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Flashback

Posted on September 10, 2021 by Jim

One of my dark-humor quips in recent years has been: I hope our government learned the lessons of Vietnam. And built an embassy in Afghanistan with enough room for multiple helicopters.

That stopped being funny when I saw the TV images of helicopters hovering over the embassy in Kabul and refugees clinging to airplanes. It’s eerily reminiscent of 1975 in Saigon and brings back memories for those of us who served in Vietnam.

I was one of the lucky ones. On coastal patrol in 1966-67 I drew my pistol every day to search sampans but never saw combat. No one I knew personally was killed or wounded and I apparently was not exposed to Agent Orange.

By the time Saigon fell the U.S. had completed an orderly, multi-year transition to shift warfighting to the South Vietnamese, who held out until Congress withdrew U.S. support. I had been part of the operation that welcomed our prisoners of war home in 1973.

Still, the fall of Saigon brought up conflicting emotions. I was relieved that the war finally was over, and saddened by the loss of life and utter waste of the whole conflict. I was angry at the politicians who dragged us into a war they mismanaged and ultimately chose to lose.

I also felt bitter toward my fellow Americans whose justifiable opposition to the war was turned against those who fought it. When I left active duty and began looking for a civilian job in 1968, an employment counselor advised me to not mention my service in Vietnam to prospective employers. I was instructed to wear civilian clothes on reserve duty in the Pentagon in 1970 because people in uniform were being hassled on the streets of Washington.

I still encounter people who assure me they supported our troops even though they demonstrated against the Vietnam war and I still do not fully believe them.

After the fall of Saigon it took nearly 20 years for our military services to regain the support of the American people and begin winning again under a new generation of leaders who had been junior officers in Vietnam. They were supported by political leaders from the World War II generation.

That will be more difficult this time. The political generals and admirals who bungled the Afghanistan withdrawal are unlikely to be held accountable. Preoccupied with rooting out mythical white supremacy and purging oficers who disagree with them, they have no interest in rebuilding an effective fighting force and appear incapable of doing so.

The Armed Forces may not get much help from today’s political leaders. Relatively few Vietnam veterans have held public office, and the vast majority of my generation’s politicians either dodged the draft or served far from the combat zone.

If anything, the current administration is more craven and significantly less competent than the likes of Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. Compared to the end of the Vietnam war, the Afghanistan rout has been a military and diplomatic blunder of historic proportions. In today’s political climate, it’s unlikely that any of these officials will be held accountable.

There are a few hopeful signs, however. One change since the Vietnam era is that the military men and women who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have had the heartfelt support of the American public. When our troops come home they are welcomed by cheering crowds at the airport instead of protesters.

The most positive sign is that increasing numbers of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans are being elected to Congress from both parties. That’s a change from the aftermath of Vietnam. If the nation is to recover from military defeat and international humiliation, these are the people to lead it.

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Lou Grant is dead

Posted on September 7, 2021 by Jim

The death of Ed Asner last week at age 91 prompted TV stations to resurrect clips of the actor’s most memorable role: Lou Grant, the crusty news editor on the Mary Tyler Moore Show from 1970 to 1977 and the Lou Grant show from 1977 to 1982.

The archetype of the tough but nurturing editor resonated with the American public because it was true. Everybody who worked in journalism in the middle of the Twentieth Century probably had an editor a little like Lou Grant. 

For me it was a Chicago newspaper editor who taught journalism classes part-time at Northwestern University. His classes were a boot camp in which any deviation from accuracy and clarity was met with stinging criticism. A few of the women in the class were reduced to tears, which probably would get him fired today. 

The Chicago City News Bureau, a legendary training ground for reporters, had a sign in its newsroom that read: “IF YOUR MOTHER SAYS SHE LOVES YOU, CHECK IT OUT.” 

During my public relations career it was challenging (and fun) to match wits with reporters who drilled relentlessly for verifiable facts. And when I supervised my company’s employee publications I let my writers and editors know that Lou Grant was my favorite TV show. 

Demanding editors guided journalism’s climb from the disrepute of Yellow Journalism to respectability by mid-century. They tempered the crusading passion of young reporters by insisting on scrupulous fact-checking and unimpeachable sources, as Ben Bradlee did with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in the Washington Post’s Watergate coverage. By the 1970s around 70% of Americans trusted the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. 

Times have changed. Today’s editors are at the mercy of their reporters and their job security is at an all-time low. Editors are losing their jobs over a politically incorrect remark, an unsubstantiated allegation, or for publishing an op-ed by a member of the opposition party. Any editor who acted like Lou Grant (or my journalism professor) would be canceled immediately.

Objective reporting has been replaced by political advocacy that’s more like the Nineteenth Century than the Twentieth. There are many reasons for this, but the result is that the news media now play the same rabble-rousing role in today’s public discourse that they did in the Spanish-American War. Editorial guardrails and enforcement of standards have no place in this environment. 

It’s no surprise that the percentage of Americans who trust the news media has fallen from 70% to 40% with a sharp division along party lines. Because business now has more credibility than the news media, public relations professionals are shifting from traditional press-agentry to podcasts, social media and other alternatives to get their message out. 

Solid journalism still exists but readers have to look beyond newspapers and TV networks to find it. Seasoned journalists like Glenn Greenwald are publishing on their own via digital platforms such as Substack. Nonprofit newsrooms and digital media have taken over much of the investigative reporting the traditional news media used to do. I’ll bet some of them have editors. 

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Risk in a time of pandemic

Posted on June 29, 2021 by Jim

Life is all about taking risks when you get right down to it: your first steps as a toddler, your first day of school and so on to starting a family, launching a business or contemplating cancer treatment. Calculating risk versus reward is a mostly automatic process that takes place in the brain and the gut. 

We all have individual perceptions of risk that may or may not make sense. I’m okay with riding in an airplane that’s catapulted from an aircraft carrier but you’re not getting me on a motorcycle.

It’s not just risking life and limb. When I left the active-duty Navy for a corporate job, my military-brat wife was momentarily apprehensive because this was the first time in her life that the person who bought her groceries could be fired. (She got over it and took the risk of starting her own counseling practice years later.) 

Aversion to risk can stunt lives. I stutter, and that was a problem until I learned to take risks with my speech instead of avoiding speaking for fear of being embarrassed. This is a big issue for people who stutter: I’ve encountered many stutterers who have allowed their fear of speaking to dictate their careers and social life. 

During the past year, our society’s response to the Covid pandemic seriously messed with our perceptions of risk. The virus was new, unknown and scary. It did not help that the news media served up a steady diet of pandemic porn, scientific discussion was censored and politicians of all stripes behaved badly. 

The result was a tangle of contradictions, such as the odd pronouncements from public health officials that Black Lives Matter demonstrations were okay but outdoor church services were superspreaders. And fully-vaccinated politicians pleaded with everyone to get the shot but signaled their own distrust of the vaccine by continuing to wear masks themselves.

We rely on elected officials to balance risks and benefits, and watched varying perceptions of risk drive public policy. It turned out that some states that imposed draconian lockdowns suffered severe economic and public health consequences but still had higher Covid death rates. Yet states that reopened quickly amid dire predictions from the “experts” often fared better. It’s tempting to conclude that: a) Our leaders may not know what they’re doing; and b) Lots of people are trying to scare us. 

So we’ve been pretty much on our own in deciding how frightened to be, calculating our own risk and figuring out how to behave. 

Because the virus is most deadly to my age group I wore gloves and wiped down food packages in the initial weeks of the pandemic, wore a mask and mostly stayed home (easy enough for a retiree). Getting vaccinated reduced my risk of serious illness from Covid by at least 94%, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Since I’m in excellent health, those odds were good enough for me to gradually resume normal socializing (mostly with other vaccinated seniors) as infection and hospitalization rates declined.

Other folks will have different perceptions of risk, of course. I wonder how many people wore masks while jaywalking across busy streets. 

As the pandemic winds down it’s been interesting to watch people figure things out. Late last month I attended a chamber concert at which masks were optional but the audience — geriatric and presumably vaccinated — virtually all wore masks. Last week I went to the same concert and found the same crowd unmasked. Did they feel safer than they did a few weeks earlier? Or less concerned about being mistaken for Republicans? 

Some people can tolerate less risk than others and I can’t blame anyone for erring on the side of caution. One surprise the pandemic revealed is that educators, as a group, appear to be more risk-averse than the rest of us. Despite overwhelming evidence that children rarely catch or transmit the virus and healthy teachers are at less risk than retail workers, educators were genuinely afraid to return to the classroom even after they jumped the line for the vaccine. Which raises a question: Are these the people we want teaching children to evaluate information and make rational decisions? 

It’s hard to tell what long-term impact the pandemic will have. A recent poll found that 50% of those surveyed believe Covid has permanently changed the way we live in the U.S. Because government officials are quick to impose restrictions and slow to remove them, it’s a good bet that some Covid rules may remain in place for at least as long as we’ve been taking our shoes off at the airport. 

Trust in institutions was declining even before our elected leaders, public health experts and news media fumbled the response to Covid. How will Americans react to the long-term extension of this pandemic or the beginning of the next one? Will everyone continue to obey the authorities, or will more people thumb their noses at them? 

I suspect the country is as divided on risk tolerance as we are on practically everything else. So some of us will demand that our leaders create an environment of zero risk regardless of the economic and human cost. Others will challenge them to weigh risks and benefits to make reasonable tradeoffs for the greater good.

I’m going to keep a mask handy just to be on the safe side. And in case they change the rules again.

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Gunnery practice

Posted on June 21, 2021 by Jim

Another story from my Navy days that’s still mostly true.

A big, empty box went over the side. “That’s a Viet Cong box,” the captain announced. “We’re going to attack it. Come to general quarters.”

Our wooden-hulled coastal minesweeper could clear any minefield that threatened the fleet but was not designed as a gun platform. Minesweepers have been described as belligerent-looking yachts with grey paint. 

Still, we were on coastal surveillance patrol in Vietnam. Our mission of stopping and searching junks and sampans was largely uneventful and we operated too far from shore to draw Viet Cong gunfire, but action was always possible and we had to be prepared.

And we did have guns, sort of. A manually-trained 20mm cannon on the focsle was designed to blast floating mines and several machine guns were added for Vietnam deployments. Our 35-man crew included one underemployed gunner’s mate. 

I was the officer of the deck and, under the captain’s watchful eye, set a course for the box at our maximum speed of about 12 knots. The 20mm gun engaged when we were within range, and when we got closer I turned the ship to bring the broadside machine guns to bear just like it said in the textbook. We missed the box and I brought the ship around for another high-speed pass. 

After a couple of unsuccessful passes I began making lazy circles around the box while we blazed away. 

We were having a wonderful time! The cannon and machine guns were firing furiously with tracer rounds going everywhere. The captain was shooting a Thompson submachine gun from the bridge wing. The executive officer was lobbing hand grenades. I think the cook had a shotgun. 

With all that firepower we could have done serious damage to a North Vietnamese smuggling trawler (as another minesweeper did the following year) and would have positively shredded an armed junk. But the box was a smaller target and harder to hit.

After a lot of enthusiastic shooting we finally sank the box. Ran over it with the ship. 

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Dr. Seuss and Porky Pig

Posted on March 18, 2021 by Jim

So several of the Dr. Seuss children’s books have been withdrawn because of perceived racial stereotypes in the illustrations. Cue the outrage and clutching of pearls. Dr. Seuss cancelled! Dr. Seuss! Is nothing sacred? 

While this may fit the contemporary narrative of cancel culture controversy, it’s nothing new. Thirty years ago a guy I used to know led a campaign by the National Stuttering Project to cancel Porky Pig.

People who stutter have a long-standing relationship with a stuttering cartoon character. Porky is an engaging character, stutter and all, and appeals to everyone including most people who stutter. It was not always so, however. Early cartoons from the 1930s showed Porky being ridiculed for his stutter and are difficult to watch. Some people who stutter have painful memories of being compared to Porky Pig as children.

The campaign to cancel Porky Pig, with publicity stunts such as picketing Warner Brothers, raised awareness about stuttering but otherwise went nowhere. Much of the news coverage was negative because by the 1990s Porky had evolved into a more positive character. One of the reasons we changed the organization’s name to the National Stuttering Association several years later was that being identified as the anti-Porky soreheads was getting in the way of our growing national reputation as a stuttering support organization. 

Media portrayals of stuttering were a frequent topic of discussion during the years I handled public relations for the National Stuttering Association. We were quick to condemn anything that clearly disparaged stuttering or reinforced false stereotypes. But consensus often was difficult because the way people who stutter react to a movie or TV show can be a Rorschach test of their own attitudes and degree of self-acceptance. Some of our members were offended by movies like A Fish Called Wanda and My Cousin Vinny but many others thought they were hilarious. 

In recent decades opinions of people who stutter have shifted toward more openness and self-acceptance, and Porky Pig now is practically a folk hero. When I attend National Stuttering Association conferences it’s not unusual to see Porky buttons, t-shirts, ballcaps and wristwatches. The version of Porky that’s familiar to most people today is an endearing character who is respected by his friends and does not let his stutter get in the way of a good time. And he does not have to wear pants.

Fictional characters can evolve along with society. The classic children’s book Little Black Sambo had illustrations and character names that reinforced practically every racial stereotype of the Jim Crow era. It had largely disappeared from libraries by the 1970s (over the objections of my mother). But the story itself was not in the least racist and eventually was reincarnated with more appropriate names and pictures.

We haven’t seen the last of Dr. Seuss. It’s possible to quibble about perceptions of racism in the handful of withdrawn books or criticize the Seuss organization’s decision, but sales of the other Seuss books are soaring. So you can still order Green Eggs and Ham from Amazon and do not have to buy one of the copies that Sen. Ted Cruz is autographing as a fundraiser.

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Watching history repeat

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Jim

I enjoy history, but the disadvantage of being a history buff is getting flashbacks to centuries past whenever I read the news. History repeats itself, often at the hands of people who failed to learn its lessons. Some current issues are movies we’ve seen before and can be amusing (or depressing) when you know the likely ending. 

Impeaching Cromwell

Right now there’s a big controversy over whether the Democrats can impeach Donald Trump even though he’s no longer President. Pundits and lawyers are debating nineteenth-century legal precedent for and against impeachment. But there’s a clear precedent in English law in the case of Oliver Cromwell. 

Cromwell was a disruptive guy. He led the English Civil War against the Deep State that deposed and executed King Charles I, and ruled the country from 1653 until his death in 1658. When the Royalists returned to power in 1660 they were infuriated that Cromwell had died from natural causes. So poor old Oliver’s corpse (yes, his corpse!) was disinterred from Westminster Abbey, hung in chains and beheaded. Sounds like the Royalists were really afraid of the guy and wanted to make absolutely certain he wouldn’t hold a rally or go on 17th Century social media. So the Democratic restoration probably is on solid historical ground. 

Saving democracy from the Reichstag fire

In 1933 a fire at the Reichstag, the German parliament building, was blamed on a Communist plot to overthrow the government. Some have compared this to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.The Nazi government responded to this threat to democracy with the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State, which clamped down on on civil liberties big-time. They harnessed the power of the entire government to restrict freedom of speech and assembly, overrule state and local governments and root out domestic terrorists. That would never happen here, of course.

One drop of blood

Separating people by race always has run counter to human nature because people tend to assimilate, intermarry and breed. In the 19th and early 20th centuries some Southern states tried to enforce racial segregation and bar interracial marriage by classifying anyone with “one drop” of African-American blood as Black. This practice ended because it was wildly impractical and and ran counter to the desire for equal opportunity embodied in the civil rights movement.

Now the one-drop theory has been resurrected by our race-obsessed identity politics and culture. Thanks to DNA testing, someone like Elizabeth Warren can self-identify as a member of an oppressed minority group and claim favored treatment on the basis of equity. 

Yet multiracial people have been the fastest-growing demographic in the United States since the 2010 census. Racially mixed marriages and adoptions are commonplace. We still need to stamp out the vestiges of racism, but in the long run politicians may find it harder to divide Americans by race when we’re all in the same melting pot. 

Sedition is trendy again

Until a few weeks ago, sedition was a musty historical footnote or obscure Jeopardy question. Now half of Washington is guilty of it. Broadly defined, sedition is incitement of rebellion against the state. Current United States law, however, protects free speech and narrows sedition to a specific conspiracy to overthrow the government. 

It was not always so. In 1798 President John Adams pushed through the Sedition Act that made it a crime to criticize the President. Several newspaper editors were convicted, and an outspoken local crank who posted a sign got a stiff jail sentence. Protests broke out across the country and led to Adams’ defeat in the election of 1800. 

Congress went back to the sedition well in 1918, when Congressional Democrats passed President Woodrow Wilson’s Sedition Act and more than 2,000 Americans were prosecuted for speaking against World War I. The law was repealed later that year after Republicans won the mid-term elections. 

So if we see pressure from pundits and politicians for a tougher sedition law in the U.S., remember that we’ve tried this before and it did not end well.

Wanna buy some tulip futures?

GameStop, Robinhood and Reddit did not exist during the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th Century, but tulips were a really hot investment. Yes, tulips. Flowers, for crissakes. The Dutch invented commodity futures markets and tulips became a prized luxury item in a prosperous country. As growers developed more attractive and exotic varieties, the market for tulip bulbs heated up. In 1637 some single tulip bulbs were priced astronomically higher than their intrinsic value: as much as 10 times the annual earnings of a skilled artisan. 

Lots of people bought in, made money, and quickly lost it when trading collapsed and they actually had to take possession of the damned bulbs. So they were poor again but, unlike the GameStop investors, had really nice gardens. Could have been worse: Hedge funds did not exist in the 17th Century and nobody was shorting tulips. 

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Shot in the arm

Posted on January 30, 2021 by Jim

I’m registered to receive the Covid-19 vaccine and hope to get my first shot in the next few weeks. The sooner the better. At my advanced age, I can’t imagine NOT getting vaccinated against a disease that is 220 times more likely to kill me than the average 29-year-old. I find it hard to understand why so many people, even in my age group, are more frightened of the vaccine than the virus. 

I am tempted to ask my anti-vax contemporaries if they regret getting the polio vaccine in the 1950s. Polio was a big deal when I was a little kid. The polio pandemic of 1949-52 targeted children from five to nine years old. It killed 3,000 of them in the U.S. and disabled another 21,000. Whenever a child got a cold parents worried that it might be polio. I remember hearing rumors about kids in the neighborhood getting polio and it was pretty scary. Many children who had mild cases of polio (including my late wife) saw a recurrance of symptoms — post-polio syndrome — in middle age.

We saw lots of newspaper photos of kids on crutches and in “iron lung” respirators. It’s probably just as well that cable TV news did not exist in those days. Our news media have given us a solid year of Covid pandemic porn, and one can only imagine the fear-mongering they would have generated about polio. We also dodged a bullet because neither Eisenhower nor Stevenson used polio as a campaign issue in 1952.

Opposition to vaccines has existed since the 18th Century. There was some opposition to the polio vaccine in the 1950s (and some government missteps) but nearly everyone embraced the vaccine when it became available in 1955. The scientists who developed it won the Nobel Prize. Polio cases dropped dramatically and the disease was virtually eliminated in the United States by 1979. Measles followed a similar trajectory: Vaccination virtually eliminated the disease in the U.S. but now it’s back thanks to the anti-vaccination movement. 

I got all my shots as a kid. Any hesitation I might have had about vaccinations was dispelled when I joined the Navy. Everyone got a bunch of shots in basic training, often administered with a high-powered squirt gun that punctured the skin sans needle with a jet of vaccine (which sometimes resulted in bleeding). When we lined up for shots they had an ambulance standing by because there was always someone who fainted (often a big guy). I got more shots when I went overseas. If New Mexico ever gets an outbreak of cholera or bubonic plague I’m good.

My son got a head start on vaccinations. His first baby shots did not “take” because he already had antibodies in his system: Before he was born his mother got a round of vaccinations when the Army sent her family to Germany and another when the Navy sent us to Japan.

The Navy kept my vaccinations up to to date during my years in the reserves. A wallet card that documented my shots came in handy during my annual physical exam when enthusiastic corpsmen were eager to re-vaccinate me. In recent years I’ve added vaccinations for pneumonia and shingles, and I get a flu shot every year.

So I have no hesitation about getting the Covid vaccine. It’s encouraging to see that politicians who were disparaging the vaccine last year now are urging people to take it. I hope, for everyone’s sake, that enough Americans get vaccinated to ultimately eradicate Covid, just as we did with polio. I’m sure the media and politicians can replace it with another national crisis. 

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