Category Archives: Random Blogging

Two Paths Diverged in a Wood….

When news outlets reported that former New York Governor Mario Cuomo had died, I couldn’t help thinking of Robert Frost’s famous poem, the one that ends:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It isn’t entirely apt, because Mario Cuomo actually represented the path “less traveled,” but the enduring message of Frost’s poem–at least to me–is that we choose the paths we will travel, and those choices do, indeed, “make all the difference.”

Mario Cuomo is probably best remembered for his speech to the 1984 Democratic convention, in which he criticized Ronald Reagan’s sunny description of America as “a shining city on a hill”–describing it as the worldview of a man unaware of poverty and unconcerned about impoverished Americans. “Mr. President,” he said, “you ought to know that this nation is more a ‘tale of two cities’ than it is just a ‘shining city on a hill.’ ”

Cuomo himself came from a poor, immigrant family, and he never forgot the struggles of his family and the families in the neighborhoods he grew up in.

Cuomo’s antipathy to the death penalty was undoubtedly rooted in his Catholic faith, but it was a position that he defended with secular logic. He was deeply religious, but (unlike so many of today’s ostentatiously pious politicians) he understood the difference between religion and government, and why keeping that bright line between them was necessary both to authentic faith and effective governance. His principled belief in church-state separation led him to defy the Catholic hierarchy and publicly defend elected Catholic officials who opposed both abortion and use of the power of the state to impose that opposition on others.

Brilliant and uncommonly thoughtful, Cuomo was an articulate voice for the “little guy” and a powerful advocate for the importance of government.

In his first inaugural address as governor he called on state government to “be a positive source for good.” But–as the New York Times noted in a column after his death– the speech “also offered a critique of Reagan policies and a liberal vision for the country. Fiscal prudence, Mr. Cuomo asserted, did not prevent government from providing “shelter for the homeless, work for the idle, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute.”

At the time, Americans (including yours truly) rejected both Cuomo’s view of the civic landscape, and his belief in the possibilities of government.

In the 1980s, two political paths diverged in America. We chose the one that was easier, the one that asked less of us–the path that allowed us to believe in our own superiority, blame poor folks for their poverty, and pursue policies that benefited the already comfortable.

And that has made all the difference.

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The Blame Game

As we approach New Year’s Eve, many of us are making our (recurring) resolutions. Going to lose that weight. Going to save for retirement. Going to earn that promotion.

Can I suggest a collective resolution? Can we humans–and especially we Americans–take time off from the national pastime of finger pointing? Instead of trying to prove that “it’s their fault,” (whatever “it” is and whoever “they” are), might we turn our attention next year to actually trying to solve some of the problems we face?

Case in point: When two police officers were killed by a deranged man who claimed to be seeking vengeance for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, a number of right-wingers (most notably Rudy Guliani) immediately began blaming everyone– from the President on down–who had spoken out against police misconduct.

Really?

As Kevin Drum noted:

I assume this means we can blame Bill O’Reilly for his 28 episodes of invective against “Tiller the Baby Killer” that eventually ended in the murder of Wichita abortion provider George Tiller by anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder. We can blame conservative talk radio for fueling the anti-government hysteria that led Timothy McVeigh to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City. We can blame the relentless xenophobia of Fox News for the bombing of an Islamic Center in Joplin or the massacre of Sikh worshippers by a white supremacist in Wisconsin. We can blame the NRA for the mass shootings in Newtown and Aurora…We can blame Sean Hannity for his repeated support of Cliven Bundy’s “range war” against the BLM, which eventually motivated Jerad and Amanda Miller to kill five people in Las Vegas after participating in the Bundy standoff… And, of course, we can blame Rudy Giuliani and the entire conservative movement for their virtually unanimous indifference to the state-sanctioned police killings of black suspects over minor offenses in Ferguson and Staten Island, which apparently motivated the murder of the New York police officers on Saturday.

As Kareem Abdul Jabbar pointedly noted:

The protests are no more to blame for [the shooter’s] actions than The Catcher in the Rye was for the murder of John Lennon or the movie Taxi Driver for the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Crazy has its own twisted logic and it is in no way related to the rational cause-and-effect world the rest of us attempt to create.

Can we all agree that in a country that protects free expression, lots of people will say lots of things–none of which cause or excuse anti-social behaviors?

Can we all agree that it is in the best interests of the vast majority of good police officers to root out the bad apples?

Can we all agree that it is perfectly possible to condemn police or prosecutorial misbehavior while strongly supporting good police and honorable prosecutors? (When your kids misbehaved, and you punished that behavior, did that make you “anti-child”?)

Can we take a long look at our inadequate mental health system, and work on better detection and intervention for the minority of the mentally ill who are dangerous? (Failing that, can we at least stop arming them?)

Can we actually do something about the issues we face, instead of looking for someone to blame?

Oh well.  I’m still going to try to lose that weight.

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Maybe We Aren’t Evolving After All

All I want for Christmas is a little science literacy.

This is the season for lists, and Mother Jones recently ran a list of the dumbest science deniers of 2014.

Topping that list was Donald Trump, who may well be the most ludicrous and least self-aware person on the planet. Trump (who regularly takes to Twitter to embarrass himself) responded to freezing temperatures in parts of the country as evidence that “this very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop.”

Umm…Donald, there is a difference between weather and climate. Look it up.

The Donald also joined the anti-vaxxers, pointing to the thoroughly debunked link between autism and vaccination, and–to top it off– insisted that we shouldn’t allow those doctors and nurses who had been selflessly tending to Ebola patients back in the country. The tweet:”People that go to far away places to help out are great-but must suffer the consequences.”

We can laugh at Trump (most people do), but far more portentous than the nattering of an ignorant, narcissistic billionaire is the ongoing attack on sound science from Congress. That attack is genuine cause for concern.

Republican Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas took his opposition to basic science straight to the source: The grant-writing archives of the National Science Foundation. In an unprecedented violation of the historic firewall between the lawmakers who set the NSF’s budget and the top scientists who decide where to direct it, Smith’s researchers pulled the files on at least 47 grants that they believed were not in the “public interest.” Some of the biggest-ticket projects they took issue with related to climate change research; the committee apparently intended to single out these projects as examples of the NSF frittering money away on research that won’t come back to benefit taxpayers. The investigation is ongoing, and the precedent it sets—that scientific research projects are only worthwhile if they directly benefit the American economy—is unsettling….

Science denial on Capitol Hill is set to get even crazier next year. When Democrats (and environmentalists) got a sound whooping in the midterm elections, a new caucus of climate change-denying senators swept in. Almost every new Republican senator has taken a position against mainstream climate science, ranging from hardline denial to cautious skepticism. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the incoming majority leader, has vowed to make forcing through an approval of the Keystone XL pipeline his top agenda item in the new year; he also wants to block the Obama administration’s efforts to reign in carbon pollution from coal plants. And the incoming chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is none other than James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who actually believes that global warming is a hoax orchestrated by Barbra Streisand. You can’t make this stuff up.

Maybe evolution is more selective than we thought…..

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Morality and Religion–Not Exactly Connected

A Post/ABC survey taken after the release of the Senate’s torture report has generated results which–displayed in tabular format--have been making the rounds on social media.

The question was whether the torture tactics had been justified. Responses were broken down by religious affiliation; significant majorities of Protestants and Catholics said yes. Only among the “nones”–those claiming no religious affiliation–did a majority of respondents disavow torture.

Apparently, a lot of those pious “Christians” –the ones who whine about the (wholly manufactured) “War on Christmas,” who self-righteously refuse to pay for the “sinful” birth-control of their female employees, who insist on their right to impose their beliefs on others in a multitude of ways–see no conflict between their scripture and the torture of other human beings.

Shades of the Inquisition…

If this survey is accurate, it would seem to rebut the assumption that secular Americans cannot be moral, because they “lack God.” In fact, it raises an interesting question: what sort of God do these torture apologists worship?

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The More Things Change….

I’ve been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism,” and on page after page, I’ve been confronted not just with how much has changed, but how much hasn’t.

The entire book (and one thing you can say about Doris Kearns Goodwin is that she leaves virtually nothing out–the book is a monster) is a window onto an era of progressive Republicanism.The book details Roosevelt’s fight against powerful corporations and “trusts” (monopolies), his passion to protect the environment, his concern for American workers and his devotion to the common good. It also details the extent to which Taft agreed with him about the need to constrain commercial overreach and protect working Americans, and of course, the personal foibles that led the once exceptionally close friends to part company for so many years.

We have seen progress: Roosevelt was criticized for even inviting a black person to the White House. Now, a black President lives there (although that fact seems to have driven a significant number of contemporary Americans insane.) Thanks primarily to unions, we  have the 8-hour workday Roosevelt supported, although millions of Americans work longer hours than that at more than one job. Teddy’s Democratic cousin Franklin would secure passage of social security and other social safety net legislation for which Teddy advocated. But the theme that runs through the book is an unhappily familiar one: the wide and persistent gulf in resources and political influence between the rich and everyone else.

One thing that has most definitely changed since the Gilded Age and its aftermath is the practice of journalism. The book covers the age of Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, of McClure’s Magazine, of muckraking and genuine investigative reporting. Journalists were given the time and resources to delve deeply and write extensively about what their research uncovered. And it mattered.

Perhaps the most striking change since the era of Roosevelt and Taft is in the philosophy of the Republican party. Reading Roosevelt’s speeches and letters, reviewing the positions taken by Taft, it’s impossible not to be struck by the gap between the party’s priorities then and now. Both Roosevelt and Taft would have immediately recognized today’s plutocrats and oligarchs, but they would have been astonished by the anti-intellectualism, the rejection of science and environmentalism, and the faux religiosity of today’s GOP.

Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft would have been appalled by Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Louie Gohmert, and the other buffoons who have unaccountably found a congenial home in what–despite its faults– used to be one of America’s great political parties.

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