Domingo, 31 de Diciembre de 2017

Happy New Year to the Readers of my Blog

and a splendid 2018

Trump and the Press

Trump as President and the Press

    I’m not much of an historian, but given my  limited knowledge, Donald Trump is unique as president of the United States. Unique, alas, not in his sterling characteristics, but in the multiple ways in which he is unpresidental.
   This observation is hardly original, but serves as the introduction to the point I want to make. It is refreshing—though that’s not quite the word—that the press is so very frank about their views of Donald Trump. To put it succinctly, he is treated, day after day, by numerous writers, even in the sedate New York Times, with almost brutal frankness, stressing his unpresidential actions and pronouncements.

   In short, Trump’s unpresidential behavior has also led commentators to abandon the conventional deference to the highest American officer. Leadership can pull you up; but it can also pull you down. The mid-term elections will show whether Trumpism, supported by Republican whimpishness, is the country’s future or whether we return to boring bi-partisan conventions.

The Road to Acapulco

From Mexico City to Acapulco

   We live in Mexico City, over 7300 ft above sea level. That’s quite a descent during the 5+ hours down to Acapulco at the Pacific Ocean. Given the efficiency of cars, it doesn’t take any longer going up all that distance, though I am sure that much more gas is consumed on the return to Ciudad Mexico.

   It’s a great road, four lanes, divided, going through quite rugged country—hence multiply curved—with mostly trees on both sides. But by no means only trees. Many, many sections have high walls on one or both sides, indicating clearly that the road was cut deeply into a rough terrain.

   The walls are so high—or, more accurately, the road is down so deep—that, mostly, they could not be left them untouched after the excavating machinery produced them. Without some treatment, dirt and stones would continuously, or at least sporadically, bombard the road, making it dangerous to the point of being wholly unsafe.

   In short, those almost sheerly vertical expanses must be treated to make the road safe or even just passable. And treated they are, in a great variety of ways, with often special walls on the side of the road preventing stones an dirt spilling into the passage for speeding automobiles.

   How treated?  I took no notes, much less take pictures, but a lot  of ingenuity was lavished the ways that these monumental walls are kept stable. Complex configurations of wires, hold in some expanses, what looked like plastic sheets contain others. Everywhere fist-sized stones are inserted in rows and rows of plastic pipes emerge from the walls, presumably to relieve water pressure in weather not as benign as we had.

   In a few spots workers were visible on those walls, held by ropes to prevent them from sliding disastrously down into the roadbed. They were a small sample of the hundreds of skilled operators that covered these “walls” in the first place.

   I am not knowledgeable about important roads of the world, but this one from Mexico City to Acapulco should be counted as one of them. I was surprised that the internet did not mark it as being as unusual as I found it to be.

The Al Franken Solution: a Modest Proposal

   In my not-all-that-humble opinion, Al Franken should not have resigned. While I didn’t make a survey nor establish a ranking of the severity of sins, his seem to me near the bottom end of the recently revealed offenses—probably not much worse than those to be found in fraternities of Ivy League colleges.

  But while he has not yet resigned, he is irrevocably committed to do so. Any day now he will formally be leaving the Senate.

   Then what? For one thing, he’ll make much more money at whatever he takes up. I am sure that more than one attractive offer is now to be found on his desk.

   Maybe he will be happy doing what comes next, especially since it will surely include opportunities to write, so he will continue to make his opinions known. Very possibly, he will find the forthcoming stage of his life quite satisfying.

   But maybe not: being a Senator is special and almost surely addictive. This is where my proposal comes in, almost as radical (not quite!) as Jonathan Swift’s, the person who long ago coined the phrase Modest Proposal—look it up.

   Al Franken should declare himself to be a candidate to succeed himself as Senator from Minnesota.

   Franken would of course be taking a big risk. That bet is High Risk-High Gain. But it fits in with his prior career and with his personality. Go do it, Al!

Unheard from Participants

   We’ve heard from a lot of people in this unprecedented discussion of  American sexual practices. We have heard from women who had been maltreated in many ways. We’ve heard from sinners, of males who didn’t control their hands and much more. We have not heard—or at least I haven’t—from the wives of those confessing sinners.

   I believe that most of the owners of these wandering hands and penises are married, entitling wives to sole claim on those appendages. I can understand the wives’ unwillingness to speak out, though I wish they would. But I suspect that quite a few are “speaking out” to their lawyers, pushing to get them out of it — divorced.

The Current Sexual Revolution In the United States

   I wish the impossible: that I could read what future historians have to say about this period in American history. I would be immensely interested to find out what, say, twenty or more years of perspective will make of two mostly undoubted generalizations that characterize the last very few years.

   The first and most clearly causative phenomenon to be noted is the almost explosive attention paid to dubious and much worse sexual practices perpetrated by American males, with primary attention focused on men who are to various degrees prominent. There has been no talk of the behavior of the hoi polloi, if only because their behavior would have to be revealed via cumbersome research, rather than by a combination of accusations and confessions.

   My own assessment of this two-fold, call it movement, is mixed. On the one hand, the revelations of largely male sexual behavior seem very plausible indeed, given, especially, the widespread quasi voluntary confessions. Little has been remarked about transgressions, where they exist, by American women.  They would in any case probably amount to a small fraction of that of men and be practically free of the violence, the coerciveness of men’s behavior.

   Most  of this strikes me as very positive, even though I am doubtful that this wave of confessions and accusations will have a permanent effect on American sexual practices. Remorse and virtuous resolutions will weaken and wane, with little left by the time a couple of decades have passed. While I am anything but seriously knowledgeable about evolution, I am confident that experts could point to passages confirming that pessimism in texts made up of the writings of Darwin and his followers.

   Now more briefly to my second point. Just about everything that has been going on has been remarkable, even shockingly free of call it procedural safeguards. No one questions reports of wrongdoing in ways that would make sure that the versions put forward are the most voracious possible under the circumstances. Even the confessions of perpetrators deserve to be questioned, given lots of psychological reasons that make misstatements possible. Not that this is determinative in the cases we are looking at, but it is worth noting that many of the drastic changes that have already been made would probably not have been required if they depended on the verdict of a court of law.

   There is a cost, not much mentioned, namely the loss of the services and ministrations of a series of talented men. They most certainly are sinners or were in the past, with many engaging in reprehensible behavior that however wrongly American society has tolerated in the past.

History Makes a Difference

By Wednesday evening, there was widespread expectation in the Democratic caucus that Senator Al Franken would step down.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/us/politics/franken-harrassment-resign.html 

What Al Franken did was wrong. It was wrong the day before yesterday when nobody paid attention. It is wrong today, when past behavior has become the news of the day. Is it a good thing that the national ethos has shifted in this direction? Emphatically YES. Is it right to use the current and very recent ethos to judge behavior of years ago—sometimes of many decades? My view is NO. Let historians give a fair account of what has been transpiring; but let ’s not punish offenders of actions past that were then tolerated, even if very wrongly so. This entire discussion is taking place as if there were no such thing as history. We have no obligation to judge what has happened in the past was right, but we do have an obligation to understand that a past period was different from the present.

PS

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/us/politics/al-franken-senate-sexual-harassment.html

The thing to also read in this NYTimes story about Al Franken’s expected resignation are the letters of readers’ comments. 

Many of them reflect my own sentiments. There is a huge difference been Franken’s behavior and e.g. Weinsteins. We are seeing a wave of hysteria that obliterates important distinctions and couldn’t be more remote from fair and reasoned procedures. Nor do I believe that the view I have just expressed is incompatible with a belief that 95% of the behavior that has been cited during past weeks is dead wrong.

  

Holding Hands

“In the report compiled by the Lake Forest, Ill., police department, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, the man said he was 15 when Mr. Levine held his hand in an “incredibly sensual way.” (NYTimes, 12/2/17)

   This is newsworthy? Surely Americans are not just now discovering sex! I had a professor, when a student many decades ago, who sat you down in a low chair with arms, when you came into his office, sat down next to you and held your hand. While I was fairly naive then (and probably still am), I made my diagnosis and did nothing, told no one—until now.

   As I have stated before, it is clearly a “Good Thing” (1066 and All That) that the sins of powerful men are subjected to daylight. But rather than joining those who just cheer, I also want to warn of the proximity of a pendulum swinging excessively in the other direction. We don’t need another Puritan Age.