The Past Isn’t Past

For the past couple of years, I’ve been reading books on American history–some general, several by scholars focused on slavery and Jim Crow, and still others exploring specific movements–for women’s suffrage, for civil rights, for LGBTQ acceptance. I’ve come away from these descriptions of times past with the realization that in far too many ways, the past really isn’t past–that world-views that were powerful “back then” are far more present than I’ve wanted to believe.

 I recently finished a book titled Marse, written by a forensic psychiatrist named Kirkpatrick, who’d discovered–relatively late in his life–that the great-great grandfather for whom he was named had been a slave owner. In high-school, he and a Black acquaintance with the same last name had jokingly called each other “cuz.” When the two of them reconnected, some forty years later, the classmate shared his ancestry research, which had uncovered the fact that his forebears had been owned by the author’s ancestors–hence the same name. 

Kirkpatrick was stunned–that bit of history hadn’t been part of his family’s lore.

“Marse” is an old Southern word meaning “master,” and Kirkpatrick chose it as the (somewhat awkward) title of the book. Given his professional background, he fashioned his research as a “psychological autopsy” into the minds and behaviors of the Southern planters who believed themselves entitled to own other human beings.

Kirkpatrick’s description of the psychological effects of the “peculiar institution” on  slaveholders was instructive. He delved into the psychological mechanisms with which Marse justified the ownership of other human beings — the personality distortions, defense mechanisms, and psycho-pathologies that were an arguably inevitable effect of owning human “property.”

What was especially fascinating to me was the extent to which all White Southerners, those who owned slaves and those who didn’t, believed that Christianity and the Bible affirmatively promoted slavery as a positive good. Kirkpatrick devotes an entire chapter to  Evangelical pastors’ arguments justifying White dominance, arguments that Blacks were little more than animals who didn’t have souls, insisting that God had decreed the propriety/necessity of slavery, and arguments emphasizing that Jesus never spoke out against enslavement.

Southern Evangelicals, having cited chapter and verse, successfully enlisted the Bible to justify the overwhelming majority of slaveholders and non-slaveholders in defense of slavery as ordained by God.

The parallels between the psychology of antebellum slaveholding and today’s racists are unmistakable. The poor Whites who formed the bulk of the Confederate army identified with the slaveholders; they hated Black enslaved people and believed them to be inferior.

As Kirkpatrick writes, it would be naive to think that the psychological pathologies that enabled slavery didn’t continue to shape the nation’s economic, social and political systems over the century and a half that followed the Civil War.

In his final chapter, Kirkpatrick draws a compelling parallel between today’s Trump supporters and the Southern Whites who fought for slavery and for White Christian social dominance. He compares the South’s belief in the “Lost Cause”–the revisionist belief that the South’s losses in battle were the result of chicanery–that the South had been the victim of “Yankee vandals” engaged in an immoral and political power grab– to Trump’s Big Lie that his election had been stolen through fraud and theft.

Kirkpatrick draws a straight line between today’s MAGA movement and those “Lost Cause” Southerners. Like “Lost Cause” believers, Trump supporters feel  cheated and victimized–and are consumed with resentment and rage, “denying to themselves just how fearful they are about the changes taking place in the social and political fabric of our nation.”

The fact that the rioters who stormed the Capitol constituted a lynch mob dramatically links the events of January 6, 2021 back to the racist white supremacy of American slavery and post-Reconstruction violence of the Jim Crow era in American history.

The chapter traces what Kirkpatrick calls the “through line” of racist White supremacy and the psychology of those pre-Civil War slaveholders to  today’s MAGA GOP and Trump.

I don’t want to suggest that today’s White Christian ideology comes solely from “Lost Cause” Southerners;  this video (sent by a reader) of 22,000 American Nazis gathered in Madison Square Garden before WWII demonstrates that bigotry didn’t come only from the South.

Americans are just now coming to terms with the realities of the nation’s past. Much of that past is immensely positive–but making continued progress will requires us to grapple with the other parts, the parts that were wrongheaded, savage, and shameful.

We will never understand where we are if we don’t know where we’ve been, and we won’t defeat the MAGA throwbacks unless we understand the complicated and ugly roots of their hatreds.

Accurate history matters.

Comments

Wow…

Allow me to begin with an admission: I’m not a scientist and I don’t play one on TV.

That said, the various newsletters and publications I receive increasingly feature reports of scientific breakthroughs (one of which is described below), reminding me that a constant focus on humanity’s seeming inability to escape tribalism and social discord gives one a distorted picture of where we are as a species.

There is a substantial mis-match between humankind’s social/political progress and our very impressive advancements in science and technology.  I am definitely not advocating that we sit back and ignore climate on the theory that science will save the day. We still need policies to address the reality of a warming planet. But in addition to other measures aimed at reducing harmful emissions, those public policies need to incorporate and encourage insights produced by the scientific community.

Some of the emerging technologies that promise to have a significant effect on climate change:

  • Carbon capture and storage that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants and industrial facilities, preventing them from entering the atmosphere. Evidently, the captured emissions can then be stored underground or used in various industries.
  •  Breakthroughs in renewable energy promise significant reductions in  the cost of energy. The last few years have seen increases in solar and wind power generation, advancements in batteries that store energy, and improvements in  the efficiency of renewable energy systems.
  • Consumers have warmed to electric vehicles, and we are on the cusp of widespread adoption of electric automobiles as driving range has increased and charging infrastructure improves.
  • Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced through renewable energy sources (such as electrolysis of water using electricity from wind or solar power.) Carbon-free hydrogen (with which I was–and am– unfamiliar) has a wide variety of applications.
  • The movement toward sustainable agriculture doesn’t just reflect health concerns;  innovative agricultural practices reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration.

There’s much more. I lack the background to fully understand these advances, but from what I read, it appears that advanced materials being developed for use in construction and manufacturing can also significantly reduce emissions and our carbon footprint.

And that brings me to the “wow” of today’s title. The Washington Post recently reported that scientists have found a way to create energy out of virtually any material.

Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution.

The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material, such as wood or silicon, can be used, as long as it can be smashed into small particles and remade with microscopic pores…

“What we have invented, you can imagine it’s like a small-scale, man-made cloud,” said Jun Yao, a professor of engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the senior author of the study. “This is really a very easily accessible, enormous source of continuous clean electricity. Imagine having clean electricity available wherever you go.”

It’s worth emphasizing–as the article does–that this discovery is just the beginning. It will take much more work and experimentation to bring the energy generation to scale and make the invention commercially usable.

The scientists first must work out which material would be most efficient to use in different climates. Eventually, Yao said he hopes to develop a strategy to make the device bigger without blocking the humidity that can be captured. He also wants to figure out how to stack the devices on top of each other effectively and how to engineer the Air-gen so the same size device captures more energy.
It’s not clear how long that will take.

“Once we optimize this, you can put it anywhere,” Yao said.
It could be embedded in wall paint in a home, made at a larger scale in unused space in a city or littered throughout an office’s hard-to-get-to spaces. And because it can use nearly any material, it could extract less from the environment than other renewable forms of energy.

“The entire earth is covered with a thick layer of humidity,” Yao said. “It’s an enormous source of clean energy. This is just the beginning in making use of that.”

Good news, but it’s all about timing. Once again, humankind finds itself needing to avoid calamity in the interim between now and a promising future. At a bare minimum, avoiding the unthinkable will require a Congress composed of rational adults, and that will require the defeat of the GOP’s current clown show.

Fingers crossed.

Comments

Guns

Want to invade Mexico? The option is on the table if America re-elects Donald Trump (a/k/a “the former guy” or TFG). According to the Washington Post, 

former president Donald Trump is preparing battle plans to attack Mexico if he regains the White House. This is only the latest escalation of saber-rattling in the wake of the recent kidnapping and killing of Americans in Mexico. Former U.S. attorney general William P. Barr, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (Tex.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) are among those calling for U.S. military action in Mexico to take on drug cartels.

The author of the essay acknowledges that the Mexican cartels need to be stopped. But–as he points out–this isn’t a problem Washington can bomb its way out of.  

There is a way to accomplish that goal, however. The U.S. could: cut off the gun pipeline that arms the cartels.

Duh.

I rarely address America’s gun crisis, because I know what every sentient citizen knows: the “Second Amendment” purists (a/k/a gun nuts) will remain unmoved by death and/or data, and too many of the lawmakers elected by the majority of Americans who want rational regulation are spineless Republicans unwilling to buck the NRA. My two-cents worth is highly unlikely to resolve the stalemate between America’s delusional cowboys and those of us who recognize that the problem is the ubiquity of weapons.

That said, my cousin–a medical doctor I often cite on this platform–sent me an op-ed he recently published in his local paper, and it is worth sharing, because it addresses the predictable effort by pro-gun advocates to divert attention from weaponry to mental illness. 

With his permission, here it is, in its entirety:

The spate of recent firearm deaths at schools and public places has rightfully triggered a lively public debate. Among all the clatter, we often hear politicians stating that we can reduce firearm deaths, such as those occurring in public places, if we would simply employ better detection and management of mental illnesses. But this is a flawed concept: At best it would solve only a tiny fraction of the problem, estimated at approximately 3-5%. In reality, most people who are violent are not mentally ill, and most people who are mentally ill are not violent. Although seemingly logical at its surface, let’s clarify this issue further by applying scientific/numerical analysis.

Since 2006, there have been approximately 550 mass shootings in the United States, resulting in 2,900 people shot and killed. Since most of these shootings are perpetrated by single gunmen, this means that roughly 550 (or slightly more) individuals carried out these heinous acts.

According to the National Institute of Health, the prevalence of major mental illnesses in the U.S. is approximately 4.2% of the entire population, meaning that about 10.4 million people harbor serious mental disorders. Even if one assumes that this entire group of 550 killers were mentally ill, which is clearly false, this total number would constitute an infinitesimally small percentage .0053 of all those suffering from mental illness. Unless we had a fail-safe method of detecting 100% of individual would-be killers from this large group of mentally ill, our ability to detect a future killer remains at nearly zero, which represents the proverbial needle in the haystack. Supporting these data, all mental health professionals freely admit that it is virtually impossible to predict accurately—nowhere near 100%—of those with known mental disorders that are likely to perform such acts of violence. Compounding this problem even further, laws in this nation generally preclude forced detention of mentally ill individuals that have not yet performed any act of violence, for more than brief periods. What this means is that, given these extremely daunting numbers, detection and treatment of those with suspected mental illness in the effort to ward off gun violence is a virtual impossibility, notwithstanding the pronouncements by many ill-informed politicians.

It all boils down to a simple bottom line: Major efforts must be aimed primarily at sensibly limiting everyone—whether or not mentally ill—from freely obtaining firearms capable of killing—especially of the mass variety.

We must allow numeric principles to guide us, not a bunch of mercenary political figures, often under the thrall of the NRA, who wish to apply so-called “common sense measures” to control this national scourge! Detection and treatment of mental disorders is indeed a laudable goal, but not in the effort to reduce firearm deaths!

One of those inconvenient data points: Mass shootings in the United States have tripled since the assault weapons ban lapsed.

If we are going to talk about the role mental illness plays in this mayhem, we might start with TFG and move on to the lunatics arguing that arming everyone in sight will make us safer.
 

Comments

The Youth Vote

There are two very important things to know about that imprecise data point we call “the youth vote.” There is substantial agreement about one of those things, and equally substantial disagreement about the other.

The data is convincing when it comes to the political preferences of young Americans: they lean Left to a marked degree. Actually, we can argue about the definition of “Left,” since in former, saner times, much of what we now call Left used to be considered pretty moderate, but we are where we are–and where we are is with a youth cohort likely to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

There is far less agreement on the second issue–turnout. Will that youth cohort appear at the polls in numbers sufficient to make a real difference?

A number of older Americans–some of whom comment here–have been permanently soured by past performance. Until very recently, young people (variously identitified as those 18-29 or 18-35) have been less likely to vote than their elders (although older Americans haven’t exactly overwhelmed their polling places either.) And–like curmudgeons in ages past– some older Americans are simply Archie Bunkers when it comes to any aspect of the nation’s youth.

Whatever the merits of the contending arguments, and whatever the age range considered “youth,” turnout by younger voters will obviously be very important in the upcoming election cycle, so I did a moderately deep dive into the data, and found evidence that turnout among young voters has increased in recent elections. Obviously–as those investment analyses always warn us– past performance is no guarantee of future behavior,  but charting trends can suggest a trajectory.

The following data, pulled from the United States Census Bureau and other reputable sources, shows that, in 2018 and 2020, there was a notable increase in voter turnout among young people compared to previous years.

According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), in the midterm 2018 elections, youth voter turnout (which CIRCLE defines as turnout by ages 18-29) reached 36%. That isn’t exactly a “wow” number, but then neither is 50.3%, which is the percentage of all eligible voters who turned out in 2018. Youth turnout actually equalled the 36 percent of eligible Americans who had bothered to cast ballots in 2014.

What is more significant than the percentage of young people who voted in recent elections is the fact that youth turnout has substantially increased compared to previous midterms.

In the 2020 presidential election,  estimated youth turnout rose to 52-55%, a pretty significant surge in engagement.

For obvious reasons, both youth and older voter turnout have increased more sharply in swing states. In states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where the 2016 presidential election was decided by incredibly slim margins, there were notable increases in youth voter participation. The 2020 primary elections witnessed a surge in youth voter turnout compared to previous primary cycles in Texas, California, and North Carolina,for example.

Civic engagement isn’t confined to vote turnout, of course. Over the past decade or so, we have seen increasing activism among young Americans on behalf of social and political issues. Engagement in movements such as Black Lives Matter, and organizations advocating for climate change and gun control has grown–and absent substantial progress on those and similar issues, there is no reason to expect a return to previous levels of apathy.

Youth turnout is important because it is a lopsidedly Democratic age cohort, but what really struck me as I looked into these numbers was the pathetic civic performance of us older Americans. Yes, many young folks have historically ignored their civic duty to vote, but so have millions of their parents and grandparents.

Older Americans haven’t exactly been civic role models.

The fact that only 50% of eligible Americans cast ballots in 2018 can’t all be attributed to vote suppression. Instead, it signals a lack of what we used to call “civic virtue.” When half of those entitled to vote don’t bother, we elect the buffoons, ignoramuses and Neo-Nazis who appeal to small but passionate slices of the voting public–constituencies that do turn out.

The 36% of youth who voted in 2018 matched the 36% of all registered voters who came to the polls in 2016. I personally think both of those percentages are shameful.

Maybe we should emulate Australia, where voting is mandatory. Punishment is relatively minor– failure to cast a ballot will result in a small fine–but the result is a culture that encourages voting, and an electoral result that more closely mirrors the actual preferences of the population.

As we’ve seen, when only culture warriors are motivated to vote,  we get “lawmakers” like Tommy Tuberville and Marjorie Taylor Green. I’d like to say we deserve better, but given our levels of civic participation, maybe we don’t.

Comments

Worse Than Trump

Ron Desantis (Taliban: Florida) has announced his campaign for President in a widely-mocked, glitch-filled Twitter appearance, so it may be time to re-read a February New Republic essay “A DeSantis Presidency Could Be Even Worse Than Trump.”

The sub-head is brutal: “Donald Trump was and is a lazy, ignorant narcissist. The Florida governor is a smart, motivated, very right-wing Catholic who wants to remake America as he imagines God wants it to be.”

The article preceded DeSantis’ precipitous plunge in the polls, and takes seriously the possibility of DeSantis capturing the GOP nomination. Back in February, before the general public became more familiar with DeSantis’ agenda (autocratic) and personality (wooden/off-putting/missing), the Florida Governor was viewed as relatively sane and intelligent, at least compared to Trump, and many in the public  assumed that meant DeSantis would be a better president than Trump.

The following paragraphs from the essay reminded me of a gloomy conversation I had with a friend the weekend after the 2016 election. Her most hopeful prediction–which turned out to be very accurate–was that Trump’s manifest incompetence would prevent him from actually enacting much of the damage he was promising.

DeSantis differs from Trump in several ways. While Trump couldn’t care less about “critical race theory” or transgender people, and simply throws stuff into speeches at his rallies that get the biggest reaction, DeSantis is a deeply conservative Catholic and a true believer in the culture wars he engages in. The other key difference is that DeSantis is a Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyer, while Trump skated through a bachelor’s in business where one of his professors called him “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”

The damage Trump was able to do was limited by his lack of discipline, ignorance of how the system worked, laziness, and lack of motivation. He is simply a narcissist who likes feeling rich, powerful, and important. DeSantis, however, is none of these things. He is not lazy. He has discipline, motivation, and an intimate knowledge of how to use the system to get what he wants. DeSantis fully intends to remake America the way he believes God would want it to be, and his knowledge of law and governmental structure allows him to do it on a scale, and with a precision, that Trump could only dream about.

The essay noted that DeSantis was pursuing what it called “one of the most aggressively authoritarian agendas in the country” by using two primary strategies: “capturing the referees and strategic ambiguity.”

DeSantis quietly packed both the Florida Board of Medicine and the New College Board of Trustees with ideological fellow travelers to bend institutions to their will. The Board of Medicine now includes campaign donors, Catholics who substitute the Vatican’s positions for that of professional medical organizations, and proponents of conversion therapy, while the surgeon general of Florida is an anti-vaxxer. 

The strategy is to move the decision-making process out of the public spotlight by giving important decision-making authority to people who can’t be held accountable at the ballot box. (Diane Ravich recently noted that DeSantis had gutted Florida’s open records law–another ploy to keep that “capture of the referees” hidden from public view.)

And that “strategic ambiguity”?

DeSantis has made persistent war on “woke” education–from public schools to state universities.

The DeSantis administration swore up and down that the “Florida Parental Rights in Education Act” (the “Don’t Say Gay” law) was simply there to protect vulnerable young children from being exposed to dangerous or obscene ideas, images, or writing. In reality, it was deliberately vague and overly broad. When schoolteachers and librarians reached out for guidance on what is allowed, they were met with silence by the DeSantis administration. This left them with the choice: Do we remove everything from school libraries, or do we risk the potential legal consequences of annoying his administration?

Back when we had a legitimate Supreme Court, employment of this tactic was repeatedly struck down for creating a “chilling effect,” that violated the First Amendment.

The article lists a truly terrifying number of ways a DeSantis administration could use these strategies in support of a radically Rightwing  culture war agenda. I would encourage you to click through and read it all if I thought this little martinet had a realistic chance to be President, or even the Republican nominee. But since February, when this essay was published, Americans have learned a lot about Mr. DeSantis.

Current polling reflects the public’s response to DeSantis’ repetitive attacks on  “wokeness” and the strategic stupidity of picking a stubborn, petty fight with Disney (Florida’s largest employer and largest tourism draw), among other unforced errors.

And really, no one wants to have a beer with this guy.

Comments