We are tested in many ways.

 

Will Sunny be on trial Thursday morning? It will be our first puppy class! Will the other puppies be younger, smaller, and less obstreperous? Will we "pass" the class, or will she be so wild that we'll be kicked out? She’ll be excited, I know, when we enter the big working arena, as her dog mom repeats a calming mantra to herself to calm her nerves!

At least puppy class will give me a break from Widowland, this strange new challenging country I now inhabit. Some widows tell me, “It gets easier,” while one said the third year was worse than the second, and yesterday I was told, “It doesn’t get easier. It gets worse.” Obviously, experiences vary across the widowed population. One woman could not bear to look at old photographs or read old letters, whereas I cannot keep from what are to me precious and tangible evidence of past happiness. 

Evidence. There’s a concept that brings me to larger national events. Hearings proceed on the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and while many Americans are glued to their TVs, just as many (or so it seems) are steadfastly avoiding the unfolding story. I have neither television nor the leisure to watch it nonstop if it were available, but I have tuned in on the radio a couple times in the car and have read news summaries of various days’ presentations. 

I was distressed, though, when one friend said her reason for not watching is that the hearings are a “show trial.” What? The term “show trial” indicates the pretense of a trial (i.e., not a hearing or hearings but an actual staged trial, and a rigged one at that), in which the verdict has been decided beforehand, with evidence often manufactured and confessions of guilt forced. Example: the Stalinist show trials that took place from 1936 to 1938. 

 

The trials were held against Stalin’s political enemies, such as the Trotskyists and those involved with the Right Opposition of the Communist Party. The trials were shams that led to the execution of most defendants. Every surviving member of the Lenin-era part was tried, and almost every important Bolshevik from the Revolution was executed. Over 1,100 delegates to the party congress in 1934 were arrested.  The killings were part of Stalin’s Great Purge, in which opportunists and Bolshevik cadres from the time of the Russian Revolution who could rally opposition to Joseph Stalin were killed. He did so at a time of growing discontent in the 1930s for his mismanagement of the Soviet economy, leading to mass famines during periods of rapid and poorly executed industrialization and farm collectivization.

 

-      https://www.historyonthenet.com/stalin-show-trials-summary

 

My friend did not mention Stalin but pointed to the Watergate hearings, which she finds unproblematic, because “most Americans thought Nixon was guilty.” (If his guilt was assumed beforehand, wouldn’t that have been a “show trial,” if it had been a trial and not a hearing?) The whole point of a hearing is to decide if there is enough evidence to proceed to trial. If the prosecution’s case is weak, perhaps there will be no trial, but if one does take place, the defense at least has a good idea of what it will face in the courtroom. From the little I have heard and read, plenty of evidence that we did not have before (example) has been placed before the public in the January 6 hearings, reams of it now public record. Of course, self-selected segments of the public can choose to avoid looking at the record, lest their opinions be challenged by documented facts....

Then there is … Facebook. Here confusion between hearings and trials reigns supreme, with the addition of those refusing to follow the hearings or dismissing the evidence (without having heard it) objecting to the procedure they do not understand and are not following. Example: One comment on a friend’s Fb thread reads: “This Stalinist inquisition has NO rebuttal or cross examination.” (Ah, there! Someone has brought in Stalin! See above quoted passage and compare and contrast Stalin’s trials to today’s hearings.) Well, it happens that the former president did issue a rebuttal statement, twelve pages, and here it is. Typically, he repeats claims already found to be baseless and attacks the current administration’s record, which is not at issue in the hearings. As to cross-examination, that would take place at trial stage, if criminal charges are brought. 

As Abraham Lincoln might say were he alive, in a larger sense America itself is on trial today. Can a nation conceived and dedicated to equality under law long endure, and are we dedicated to the task of preserving our heritage? 

And Then I Turned to Total Froth!

Pages bristling!

Who Stole the American Dream? Part I

I was a long time over my reading of Hedrick Smith. Who Stole the American Dream? was hardly (as you might guess from the title) either cheerful or relaxing or dreamy story to get lost in. Instead, in an effort to resist underlining a clean hardcover (albeit used) book, I kept adding Post-It notes to the edges of the pages, until the fore-edges bristled like a hedgehog’s back.

Smith locates the beginning of the current mess we’re in—mess, as in Congressional gridlock; general incivility; job loss and declining real incomes; widespread financial insecurity; increasing social and economic inequality; a widening gap between super-wealthy and poor; and eroding civic trust—in 1978, which he calls “the pivotal year.” It was in 1978 that, as he puts it,

...the corporate political machine went on the offensive and achieved a legislative agenda that would have profound and far-reaching impact. ... Virtually every economic bill that passed in 1978 had a political tilt in favor of business and the wealthy, often at the expense of the middle class... [my emphasis added].

Jimmy Carter, one of my personal heroes, was president in 1978, but even liberal Democrats jumped on the deregulation bandwagon, and there was no way Congress was going to pass Carter’s tax bill, closing corporate loopholes, ending tax breaks for the rich, and giving breaks to families with low incomes. Smith calls the reception to Carter’s bill a “successful mutiny” and a clear signal to business that they could get whatever they wanted.

The corner had been turned.

We’ve all heard, far too many times, the phrase vicious circle. In Smith’s fourth chapter, “Middle-Class Prosperity,” he discusses the concept of a virtuous circle:

Good, steady pay, and job security, they say, are the drivers of strong consumer demand, and strong demand stimulates economic growth. Business is moved to expand production and invest in new plants. Each expansion generates a new round of consumer demand. The virtuous circle keeps on generating growth, unless someone breaks the chain reaction.

Think of trust between people, how trust is built, and what happens when trust is broken. We anticipate future events in light of our experience. Put simply, a vicious circle is a negative feedback loop, a downward spiral, while a virtuous circle, the positive movement, spirals upward.

As Smith sees it, postwar prosperity in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s went hand in hand with power shared between American companies and the labor force. What those horrible, very, very unfair taxes on the wealthy? Weren’t they a counter-force holding everything back?

Contrary to claims of anti-tax conservatives today that high taxes are a drag on the economy, the long postwar period from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s was an era of strong, steady economic growth—much better growth that the past decade with its low tax rates. However plausible it sounds that high taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals cause them to invest less and take fewer risks, several decades of solid growth in the postwar period offer incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

Not everyone was prosperous in the postwar decades, but the bottom and top of the income scale were closer together than they had ever been before or have been since.

Why did we turn the corner and go in the direction of increased inequality? Why did Congress decide to give tax breaks to the wealthy and deregulate banking and other key businesses? What is the source of today’s relentless push to “privatization” of essential services—education, prisons, even the military? Can business “do it better” and save money for all of us? Is this all for our own good? If so, why does it feel so bad?

*  *  *

No Post-It notes!

After finishing this book (which took me quite a while, as adrenaline surges mandated frequent breaks), I turned to a very modern novel, The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion. It was like a little vacation, reading light fiction on the porch for a couple of evenings, but I have not done telling you about the Hedrick Smith book. Be forewarned: There will be more coming about that!

P.S. 7/14 Next installment up now here. 

No WORDS!!!

What Does It Take to Crack Open a Heart?

Some people, it seems, grow older without much change. With an unchanging personality, there is no epiphany along the way. Others change by hardening up and growing a shell. Chuck Collins belongs in neither group. His heart has been cracked open more than once, and new growth results every time. Born on Third Base is much more than his personal life story—we don’t even get his whole life story, but that’s all right. Chuck’s raison d’être has become working to reduce wealth inequality in America, and he makes his case in this book.

The great-grandson of Oscar Meyer was born into what we have begun to call the “one percent,” the wealthiest Americans. Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, calls a society governed by huge inherited wealth and power “patrimonial capitalism,” and Collins openly acknowledges that he had to do nothing personally to be wealthy. He quotes Edgar Bronfman, Seagrams heir, who said, “To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.”

At age 26, Collins made the decision to give away his inheritance but acknowledges that he still had the advantages of American citizenship, education, freedom from debt, white privilege, and a supportive family.

Touring the country in 2003 with billionaire Bill Gates to clarify the federal estate tax and why the wealthy should pay it gratefully, Collins and Gates told their audiences that even first-generation American entrepreneurs are not “self-made” because they had the benefits of our economic system, laws, roads, other transportation and communication systems, education systems, public libraries, and public investment in new technology. Collins gives the key moment of one talk to Gates, who spins a tale in which God’s heavenly treasury is running low, and She [this is the way Gates told the story; I am not editorializing] came up with a plan: the next two spirits to be born could bid on the country in which they would be born. The winner of the auction would be born in the United States, the loser “in an impoverished nation in the global south.” Gates then asked the audience what is had been worth, to them, to be born in the United States—and, so, how much of their net worth they were willing to pledge to leave behind for the common good.

Paying the estate tax (which applies only to households with wealth of $10.8 million and so has little or nothing to do with small family farms, though lobbyists and advertising against the tax would have the public believe otherwise), Collins and Gates proposed to their audiences, is a way of showing gratitude for social benefits received. It is a way to pass benefits they received along to future generations.

Booksellers, authors, and others are often asked, from one administration to the next, “If you could have the president read just one book, which one would it be?” Born on Third Base is my answer to the question today. Hmmm. I wonder if I could get our new U.S. Representative to Congress to read it? That would be a start....

But this is a book for every American, rich or poor, influential or left behind, for a couple of important reasons.

Why should you read this book?

First, one change of heart Collins had involved the language of class warfare, the “bottom-up antagonism expressed in rhetorical attacks against the rich....” He had used it himself in his early campaigns for social justice, but no one, Collins realized, likes to be hated,  and hating the wealthy will never turn them into allies. So it’s a losing game. He goes further in the other direction. In the same way he invites the rich to get to know their financially less fortunate fellow citizens, Collins invites members of the “99 percent” to reach out to the wealthy—not with a hand out but with the empathy and respect every individual deserves. A lot of rich people, he says, are very isolated socially, and they, too, whether they should or not, have financial fears. Empathy is a theme that runs through every chapter of the book.

Second, this is not just another book telling you what’s wrong in our country and the world and how it got to be wrong, because another important theme is change. Collins tells stories, gives examples, and offers concrete, specific suggestions. If you’ve been downhearted lately about the unleashing, once again, of predatory, extractive capitalism, this is the book you need to read. You’ll find in it steps you can take, beyond protest, to help bring about the changes you want to see.

Empathy and change. Change begins with empathy. We’re all in this together. Yes, we can!!!

Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good

by Chuck Collins

Chelsea Green, softcover, 267pp w/ index

$17.95

Don't Read My Blog Today

Today is the national holiday to honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Please take time today to read about and remember his life. It is important to keep all of Dr. King's dream alive--equality for all Americans, an end to poverty, and peace for the entire world.

Parallelism, Random Examples of; Thoughts on

In a grocery checkout line in Cincinnati with a fellow graduate student, I noticed that the clerk’s curiosity was awakened when she heard my friend’s speech. To American ears, her English—one of two native languages she had grown up speaking—sounded accented.

“Where are you from?” came the inevitable question.

“Africa,” my friend answered laconically.

As we left the store, I asked her why she gave such a vague, general answer, why she didn’t say she was from Ethiopia.

“Most Americans? They don’t care. All they know is Africa.” She was also smiling, I should add. My friend was not a bitter or resentful person.

Over the years, again and again, I have noticed Americans referring to Africa as if it were a country rather than a continent. And yet they would never say of themselves that they are from “North America,” and if their question to a foreigner were answered with the name “Europe,” they would press for a specific country. Only when it comes to the continent of Africa does the parallelism break down, and when I hear examples, I am embarrassed for my fellow Americans.

Climbing and clambering. The ‘b’ is silent in the first, and pronouncing the second with a silent ‘b’ is perfectly acceptable, also. I prefer it that way for the parallelism. (Scrambling, on the other hand, needs its ‘b’ sound because of the ‘l’ that follows.) It wouldn’t surprise me to learn there are differences in the pronunciation of the word clamber from one part of the United States to another, and it may be one of those words (I’m not looking it up, but you are welcome to do so) about which the English apply a rule different from ours. The English so often have their own way of pronouncing words. Schedule, for example. Countries sharing a language, like siblings sharing a bedroom, are in frequent disagreement over what is allowable, sharing and dispute being two sides of one coin.

Foralongtimeinhumanhistorylanguagewaswrittenwithoutpunctuationandwithoutseparationbetweenwords. That we separate words now and punctuate sentences is a matter of convention. Some find the fluidity of language maddening, but one might as well be maddened by the evolution of plant and animal species.


Part of my garden this year is planted in the ground, part in straw bales, and a few items in wooden boxes. In the boxes are chard, spinach, kale and leaf lettuce, the lettuce only in double rows. Parallel rows. The boxes, as you can see, are placed end to end rather than parallel, for easier care, and as the greens have come in, the original seed rows have disappeared beneath the plants. Rabbits—amazingly, incredibly—have not bothered anything in the boxes. Yet!

Very young children are said to engage in “parallel play,” which means that they are playing in solitary fashion in one another’s vicinity—for example, two children in the same room, playing on the floor, each absorbed in his or her own make-believe. Around the yard in summer, David and I often engage in parallel work. When one of us finishes a job, we show off our accomplishment and invite the other’s appreciation.

Teachers of composition and speech are keen on parallelism. I like it, too. I feel in it an aspect of the more general idea of equality, something we feel before we conceptualize it at all.

I was surprised to finish reading Paul Auster's Hand to Mouth: A Chronicle of Early Failure so quickly. There were so many pages left, two-thirds of the physical book or so, but three appendices had swelled the volume. I didn't read the appendices. I did put the memoir on my "Books Read" list. This has nothing whatsoever to do with parallelism. So while we're off the subject, how do you feel about arugula?