Sniffing at the sweet smell of success

Well, I went and did it. I sat down and gave a listen to Mitt Romney's speech to the GOP convention from last week. I hadn't found the time to give it a fair airing to my mind until this past weekend. (It was a busy week, last week.) So forgive me if I'm posting on the topic of old news.

I guess I have to say Romney's acceptance of the nomination wasn't a bad speech, all in all. I think it sounded the right sonics for the candidate as he moves into final campaign mode. There was a decent mixture of platitude and stirring stuff. I'll grant that and, smartly, at least at first, he toned down some of the Obama bashing and affected a more measured respectful —and potentially presidential— tone. With any election that involves challenging an incumbent, one of the things you have to allow for —and even actively pursue — is winning the support of voters who supported your opponent the last time out. Blaming them for voting in a guy who hates God and freedom and doesn't even understand what being an American is —well, let's say that's something of a hard place to do that from. Romney's speech at its core was about making that path from a vote for Obama in 2008 to a different place this year.

[As aside, I've always thought one of the things that cost John Kerry in '04 was the implicit message of his campaign that only a completely ignorant bigot and utter fool could ever have supported his opponent.]

So it was that instead of the usual harangue, Romney posed the picture of an America that had come to together despite party differences and with good wishes for the new president as he set out upon his term of office these three and a half years ago. We all wished the president well, Candidate Romney recalled, that's just the way we are —we wanted him to succeed as we wanted America to succeed —it's only fair if we're disappointed with him now...

Luckily, I was seated far enough away from my computer as I heard this that I managed not to spray the machine's delicate circuitry with the coffee that came spewing from my mouth and nose. I gasped at the notion: Wished him well? Wanted him to succeed? This from the same man who in January of 2009 —about, oh, a little over one week into the Obama administration— was complaining that he shouldn't be expected to support "failed policies" —the same political party whose Senate Leader announced at the very dawn of the administration that his 'number one priority' was going to be seeing to it that Barack Obama serves but a single term.

Succeed... ha.

But I suppose I shouldn't complain. Even the suggested conceit that this cooperative atmosphere once existed might be somehow useful. It could be the seedling sense that it could happen one day... "again." Could this be Romney's... hope? (Not that he'd ever use the term) at least if he's elected anyway?

Actually this word "success" has been turning in my own little stone tumbler of a skull ever since I watched Romney's speech (and wiped off my desk). There came another telling moment for me in the candidate's speech, it was when he let into President Obama for somehow being against success. Romney had given a brief listing (somewhat selective some might argue) of the "success stories" he could tell about his years at Bain Capital."These are American success stories," Romney said. "And yet the centerpiece of the President's entire re-election campaign is attacking success. Is it any wonder that someone who attacks success has led the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression? In America, we celebrate success, we don't apologize for it."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and posit that President Obama doesn't dislike, attack or apologize for success in itself. We could maybe argue over whether he too much dislikes, attacks and would feel awfully sorry to see Mitt Romney succeed at getting elected president, but that's another discussion I think. I'm wondering if maybe what is really at issue between our two candidates and their political parties, is how we define that term —success. The President doesn't attack or apologize for success, but he does challenge the selective narrative of Mitt Romney's "success stories." Should the same definition of success that a CEO uses in the corporate boardroom serve for the President of The United States? Do the Community Organizer and The CEO have different and equaly valid definitions for us to work with? Should we figure out how to best combine them?

That might be a discussion worth having.

Just maybe the problem of defining success cuts right to the heart of the matter. The bottom line is something we all have to be aware of, but a true accounting of whether that bottom line describes a success or failure —a moving forward or a sliding back— involves seeing it from the perspective of the whole, not the individual player —or even your team in the contest. The short term profit taking that dismantles and outsources industrial capacity might score as a success and a profit on the level of an investor transaction, while bearing only cost to the men and women who worked in that industry, to the communities formed by those men and women, to the society that had made a place for that work. Romney rightly remarked that pursuing success in business involves investing effort and taking risks and even accepting the occasional failure. But what I question is whether he sees beyond the loss that you enter in a ledger, that you shrug off in the working balance —or view philosophically as 'creative destruction'— to the loss that cuts deeper than that. I wonder if he has an answer for the whole, both those who profit and those who lose. To ask such a question isn't to attack success in general or even Mitt Romney in particular. It's to pose a challenge I want to see him meet, successfully.

Early on in the convention we heard Mitt Romney praised for the hard truths he would tell us —once we elect him president. It seems to me a little something more to this definition of success would be a good place to start. There's got to be more to his success stories than the aura of his estimable wealth —there's just a little complexity to that sweet smell of success. We would be remiss if we didn't sniff at it just a little.

Ryan shrugged

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

~Ayn Rand

I'm okay with Mitt Romney's choice of running mate. I actually think Paul Ryan will bring something of substance to the fore in our debate and that is good. There is "The Ryan Plan" after all. I may challenge certain of its assumptions and proposals, but at least they've been made explicit such that they can be challenged, subjected to the critique our political process is premised upon.

From what I've observed, Ryan's conservatism appears to be deeply and consistently founded —it's genuine conviction for him. And he respects ideas. For a while now I've been hearing him referred to as "the intellectual leader of the GOP" (which you've got to admit is a little like being called one of the great chefs of Ireland —but let's not go there.)

None of that is to say that I am swayed to support a Romney/Ryan ticket. (I know that comes as a shocker.) I am reminded of that point a few months back when Ryan's Budget Proposals were up for detailed scrutiny and groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that Ryan's plans would eventually end "everything from veterans' programs to medical and scientific research, highways, education, nearly all programs for low-income families." Ryan found his ever so clearly stated budget priorities challenged on their substance —and on basic moral grounds.

Georgetown University Faculty "welcomed" his visiting lecture at about that time "as an opportunity to discuss Catholic social teaching and its role in public policy" —but also noted:

"...we would be remiss in our duty to you and our students if we did not challenge your continuing misuse of Catholic teaching to defend a budget plan that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few. As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has wisely noted in several letters to Congress – 'a just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.' Catholic bishops recently wrote that 'the House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.'

In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love."

At the time Ryan didn't like being "pasted with the epistemology" of Ayn Rand. He quickly gave an interview to The National Review in which he stated, “I reject her [Rand's] philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview." When it comes to epistemology, he said, "give me Aquinas." (Of course he'd already been given Aquinas and a Papal Encyclical or two to boot.)

There was just one problem with Ryan's avid disavowal of Rand's philosophy, the intellectual leader of the GOP was on record with past comments just a little less fulltroated in terms of rejection. Stuff like:

"Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism."

That was one of his observations. And then there was this little testimonial:

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”

Back in 2003 Ryan had told the Weekly Standard, “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.” [Ha Ha Ha]

Maybe there's some droll witticism to giving an overlong atrociously written novel by an atheistic philosopher whose ideas are antithetical to your world view as Christmas presents to your interns — a philosopher famous for lines like "What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty" or "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction."

If there is some clever comment of understated complexity there I have to admit the humor is too subtle for me to understand. It goes beyond irony to the level of the absurd in my view.

I guess I'll just have to shrug.

The months ahead should be interesting anyway.

On big money wagers and the prevailing wind

We all remember the bet, right? It was a while back in the primary campaign in a GOP debate. Rival candidate Rick Perry of Texas was accusing Mitt Romney of redacting his past arguments about Massachusetts' example to the nation for healthcare insurance reform. Perry was offering that what Romney had once pointed to as an example and model for the nation he was now distancing himself from as policy. There had been the matter of some editing for emphasis between the hardcover and paperback versions of Romney's book. As was often the case with Good Old Governor Oops, Perry didn't quite have a real firm grasp of the facts. (There had indeed been some editing between the two releases but with not quite the utter reversal Perry was positing.) This was where Mitt pounced with his $10,000 bet. He knew he was right (in a very small way) he had Perry wrong with his facts (about the book anyway).

"So you wanna bet $10,000?"

Romney has been called "a master of the technicality" —and this is just one more example of how he has earned that distinction fair and square. Romney may have come off a little upper worldly bandying about that kind of dough on a dare, but he managed to beat Perry's larger point back with his bet. Romney was right about the careful rewrite of his own book. But as it turns out Perry was right about many faceted Mr. Mitt's change of face about —let's call it— Rom-Bam-na-Care.

These days the talk is of a recently unearthed relic, a 2009 USA Today editorial Romney wrote, which was of course, dutifully, roundly condemning Obama's approach to the Healthcare Insurance Reform Bill."Mr. President, What’s the Rush?" was his headline at the time. But also at that time —just as Governor Perry claimed in the subsequent debate— Romney was pointing to the very most controversial feature of 'RomneyCare' as an accomplishment the President should take as a model.

"Our experience also demonstrates that getting every citizen insured doesn't have to break the bank. First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others. This doesn't cost the government a single dollar."

Excuse me, but this is the point Perry was trying to make way back when in the debate, that Romney had pointed to this particular policy of the individual mandate as a model for the country. Romney could accurately parse that he hadn't said so much in either copy of his book exactly. But mightn't it have been just little more candid of the guy to admit he had indeed done so writing an op-ed for the USA Today?

"Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families," Romney wrote, complaining of the "rushed" approach Congress and the administration were taking to healthcare reform back in 2009. "There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it."

It takes a subtle mind to read what Romney wrote and not see him as advocating the Massachusetts approach as model. (More subtle than mine, I'm afraid.) And no one ever figured Rick Perry as a fellow with a subtle mind —so I have to ask, in all Solomonic fairness, cutting the baby in half —don't you think Mitt Romney owes Rick Perry at least $5K?

Ryan Grim, writing for Huffington Post, has another take on this same new old news:

The immediate reaction to Mitt Romney's 2009 USA Today op-ed on health care reform has zeroed in on his suggestion that President Barack Obama pursue an individual mandate. But that focus misses a broader problem the op-ed creates for the former Massachusetts governor.

Romney the campaigner has tried to make the most of his argument that his signature healthcare program and its approach are fine for state level policy. And that taken to the federal level he can join in in the chorus of 'Obamacare' condemnation.

But Romney's op-ed, published during the heat of the health care debate and recently unearthed by BuzzFeed, is squarely on the side of health care reform being driven by the federal government. In fact, the national plan that Romney sketched out as acceptable to conservatives closely resembles the one that Obama ultimately signed into law...

Indeed, Romney said in 2009 that Republicans would back the federal reform effort —under a few conditions.

"Republicans will join with the Democrats if the president abandons his government insurance plan, if he endeavors to craft a plan that does not burden the nation with greater debt, if he broadens his scope to reduce health costs for all Americans, and if he is willing to devote the rigorous effort, requisite time and bipartisan process that health care reform deserves," he wrote in the final paragraph of his op-ed.

The "rush" Romney complained of would turn out to be a 14 month process, where the conditions he outlined for bipartisan acceptance of the bill were ultimately met. Still he can't quite conjure the courage to defend the law. Instead he promises repeal day one of a Romney administration. Not sure how that works in terms of the constitution, but I suppose that kind of talk is fair and fine as far as political calculations go. It's just that neither people who are in agreement with what he is saying now or the people who might have bought what he was saying in 2009 should entertain the illusion that they would have in the person of Mitt Romney a president interested in leading on the issue of healthcare insurance reform. What they would have in Mitt Romney is just the guy in the picture I posted along with this piece: a guy pretending to lead and testing the wind with his finger.

Consensus... imagine that.

Comments on President Obama's recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by one very likely candidate for the U.S. Senate for Massachusetts in 2012:

"I support President Obama's appointment today of Richard Cordray to head the CFPB. I believe he is the right person to lead the agency and help protect consumers from fraud and scams. While I would have strongly preferred that it go through the normal confirmation process, unfortunately the system is completely broken. If we're going to make progress as a nation, both parties in Washington need to work together to end the procedural gridlock and hyper-partisanship."

Comments on the same subject from the other very likely candidate for the U.S. Senate for Massachusetts in 2012:

"The President made every effort to present a candidate for a Senate vote, but he was right not to let Senate Republicans block full implementation of the consumer agency. Senate Republicans will surely complain about the recess appointment, but their refusal to allow an up or down vote on Cordray's nomination is just another example of the political games in Washington that must end."

Notice anything?

I think what's being described here is a... c-c-c-consensus.

Of course around the blogosphere and in the hothouse climate of current day political opinion we're hearing those who take a somewhat different tack on The President's recess appointment of Mr. Cordray. Maybe this citing of these remarks —this consensus— is meant as something of a rebuttal to the howls of indignation and calls for impeachment, but I think it is also interesting on another angle.

Imagine a political campaign, in this day and age, where the rival candidates from opposing political parties actually might have the audacity to agree with one another.

I was having a conversation just this past evening with some politically active friends of mine. Democrats. A couple of us had seen Elizabeth Warren speak in Franklin Monday night and were very excited about the prospect her candidacy. I've seen the candidate's stump speech a couple times now, myself and I still found her compelling. But I don't mean to recount Ms. Warrens's speech with this particular post. What I want to note is that what I most appreciate about Professor Warren's candidacy is the fact that her campaign appears to be about something, about substantive ideas and practical ideals that she seeks to advocate and advance. It is not simply a contest for her I don't think. It is not a campaign about how to defeat Scott Brown.

Warren describes her own career as something made possible by a vision of this country as a place of opportunity. She notes that this was a shared vision that was actually actively enabled and advanced by deliberate public policy through much of the last century. She also has a sense of when and where we started walking back from that notion of expanding opportunity for working people and middle class families. She wants to reverse that trend. She proudly points to the work she did to help found the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a part of that activism. I take heart when I hear Senator Brown giving that work its due respect as well.

Make no mistake, we aren't likely to have an election contest for "the people's seat" in the U.S. Senate that doesn't involve politics in its uglier aspects. We've already seen the PAC funded political ads that paint Professor Warren as a freakish radical anarchist bent on the destruction of free market capitalism —and— we've seen the ads that paint Senator Brown as the darling of crony bankers who intend to rape the environment and smother our children, all the while feathering their fetid nests. But with little scenes like this one here I am trying to applaud, there might be the possibility of another kind of contest, a better debate where at least certain of the tasks and goals of government are agreed upon and we manage a candid constructive conversation about how best to get there.

Imagine that.

The wizard of id

IMy initial reaction to Herman Cain —I must admit— was that he was one of maybe a number of what I call Rodeo Clown Candidates, supposed contenders without any realistic hope of securing their party's nomination or winning the general election, but who, nevertheless, by virtue (or lack thereof) of their garish caricatured persona politics, provide some amount of entertainment spectacle for the early going of the campaign. 'The Donald' served a stint in this role, likewise Michelle Bachmann. In real rodeos these clowns provide necessary distraction for the audience with their broad antics during the duller moments of setup, or conversely while the occasional gored cowboy is attended to and the blood is mopped from view. (With candidates like Rick Perry you get something of the clown and the gored cowboy all wrapped up into one.) So it was, or at least that's how it seemed, with Hermann Cain. A big old fence that electrocuted illegals wasn't realistic immigration policy. Nobody really believed every bill the Congress considers should fit on a single sheet of paper, or that tax equity and the state of our economy would be served with a simplistic gimmick like 9-9-9. There was something just a little fun about allowing the pretense though, for just a while.

So it was, or at least that's how it seemed.

When the allegations of sexual harassment first came to light just a while back I thought it reasonable to expect that Cain would be ready to remove himself from the rodeo arena —with maybe some laughable clown shoe footwork first and then one or two parting blasts from the squeeze horn. However, that's not what we've seen and as we've watched how he has handled (or more aptly
not handled) this situation, it has started to strike me that there's another kind of politics going on here with Herman Cain and that it's been going on for a while.

There is a fairly standardized operating procedure for addressing situations like the one Cain finds himself in with the allegations of sexual harassment. Get yourself on the airwaves, dutiful wife by the side, and engage in some warm and cozy, circular and fuzzy conversation, preferably on a homey and well upholstered stage set —with a fireplace— and a homey well upholstered journalist who won't quite ask what you don't quite want to answer. By the time we've all had to sit through that kind of show we are just so happy to see the sordid story go away, we're well past caring.

Cain's approach has been very different. He has called his press conferences in front of the flags arrayed and announced himself the victim, of media bias and racist innuendo and stereotype, of Republican rivals and Democratic machines at the very same time. He's made the categorical denials you should never make, because they can and have been proven patently false. You might think his handling has been inept. What I am wondering is if that isn't exactly how he wants it. He might announce that he doesn't want to talk about the scandal anymore, that he wants to focus on more serious issues, but then he books an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel's late-night TV show. As Lisa de Moraes, writing for the Washington Post put it:

A serious “I don’t even know who this woman is!” news conference about the latest allegations could wait until Tuesday afternoon. On Monday, Cain wanted to look relaxed and share double-entendre gags with a comic.

When Kimmel cracked wise about Cain maybe hiring the noted (or notorious) attorney of one of his accusers as his own attorney Cain replied “You almost made me say something my analysts say, ‘You should not say.” With a wry grin he added “Let me put it to you this way: I can’t think of anything that I would hire her to do! I can’t think of a thing!”

Nudge-nudge-wink-wink. Get it?

You might ask yourself —is he really that stupid? Is that how you handle a situation where your boorish abusive disrespect for women is being alleged? By going on national TV and chortling sly over veiled references to whoring? What's worse —what if he's not that stupid?

Think of that now famous campaign ad, with Cain's campaigner, Mark Block staring into the camera, dragging on his cigarette and blowing the smoke into the camera's (and the country's) face; then that long slow smile from the candidate himself. "I am America" a voice sings in the background. On that same appearance on Jimmy Kimmel's show Cain explained that ad as something emblematic of his political approach. "We have a saying in my campaign. Let Herman be Herman. Let Mark be Mark. And let people be people. That's really one of the things of my whole campaign."

Local sports fans might remember the expression we used to have around here about "Manny being Manny."

This is where that "other kind of politics going on" comes in for me —where things get "interesting" (in that sense of the old Chinese curse about 'living in interesting times'). On the one level of understanding Herman Cain had a situation that had to be handled, made to go away. On that level he could compare himself to Clarence Thomas as the one supposedly wronged because he is a Black Conservative, etc. His wife is on with warm and fuzzy interviews. That proven script was already well written and well known. But there is another level Herman Cain is operating on at the same time. On that level it isn't his victimization or the vulgar preposterousness of the charges against his character and behavior that work to credit his account. It's the plausibility of those same charges. It is the charming idea of 'Herman being Herman' —a boys-will-be-boys appeal to the gut level, to the id —the basest of base instinct in the body politic. The part of each of us that rejects the 'PC' demands of modern life, that is sick and tired of always being told our habits are vices, that they cause cancer or harm the environment, or are somehow boorish —even oppressive— to others around us, that part of us that is tired of having to behave. That appeal in the smoke of Mark Block's cigarette and the grin on Herman Cain's face is the very opposite of having some moralistic scold tell you to "eat your peas."

Herman Cain will tell you that he is a businessman, not a politician or a statesman. And he is not stupid. He has his ideas as to what sells and why. When it comes to our presidential politics, when it comes to our democracy, wouldn't it be sad if he was right?

"...I said that"

Just the other day I came across this quote I rather liked. It was posted as a neat little piece on facebook by some one of my friends. It struck me as right on target for the larger discussion resonating around the country, in these days of The Wall Street Occupation.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

The words, attributed to Thomas Jefferson, appeared alongside one of my favorite portraits of the man and made a nice little poster. I thought to share it, that it might serve as a nice rebuttal to the out there argument we've heard from some, that the protesters protesting the financial industry were somehow un-American.

But just before I shared the quote, inasmuch as I'd never heard it before, I thought I might do well to look for a more specific sourcing. I did not want to find myself being criticized for a lack of due diligence. Well, it was in this search that I came across this same quote as the subject of an article on snopes.com.

The article observes "One of the 'Rules of Misquotation'... is that axiom that 'Famous dead people make excellent commentators on current events'" and "Given the fear and uncertainty engendered by the current economic situation, and the disgruntlement expressed by many Americans... it was only a matter of time until someone trotted out a quotation (apocryphal or otherwise) from a respected, long-dead figure..."

As it turns out, this particular quote fits into the apocryphal category. It is not exactly a facebook fabrication, mind you, but neither can the words be traced back to the lips of our third president. No contemporary documentation ties these words together with Jefferson saying them. Multiple sources are claimed in a range of different citations. According to the Jefferson Encyclopedia, the quote’s first appearance was in 1937 in a United States Senate committee. (And we all know what diligent and meticulous scholars congressional aides can be.)

That little fact struck me as interesting though, the 1937 date, because if memory serves that was a time for 'fear, uncertainty, and disgruntlement' with our financial sector as well. It was a period of popular and political frustration with a dauntingly slow recovery as we clawed our way out of the grips of The Great Depression. (Who was it said that if history doesn't repeat itself, "it does at least rhyme"?) I suppose back in the day some senate staffer probably concocted the quote, cobbled the Jefferson quote together from the kind of thing Jefferson was known to have said, and what he might have said —to serve the current debate with what he could or should have said.

While the full quote in question cannot be traced to Jefferson. The snopes article and several others I found point to things akin that he did indeed say or write in his day, comments that are in fact matters of historical record. Jefferson's "disdain and mistrust of banking institutions" was and is no fabrication. His fate as a bereft debtor at the end of his life is a known as well. I suppose this serves as an example of what we argue over as our "mytho-history" —a story of some kind of truth, but lacking fact.

I wonder just now if this isn't the scene of some cousin concept to the persona politics that gets my goat sometimes these days: The way the exact same words, that on the lips of Ronald Reagan, for example, would elicit the religious awe of the devoted, can be dismissed, resented or worse —if they come from... some other source let's say.

Should who said it really matter so much more to us than what's been said? Should we really need to invoke the authority of the Late Greats to get what are really our own thoughts and beliefs off our chests? To have them heard ? I make no excuse for sloppy history, but as we bring our history around to our current day discourse maybe we should be a little less inclined to quotation, less interested in the specifics of citation and more open to each other's broader inspiration.

We should be willing to grant and make our own guesses at wisdom.

Actually, come to think of it, I think the poet said it best:

"Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time,
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time."

I think Abraham Lincoln said that

“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”

I said that!




—Bob Dylan, 'Talkin' World War III Blues'

October light by the water

"Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future.

And we are all mortal."

~John F. Kennedy
American University, Washington D.C., 1963

The symposium was called "Penetrating The Iron Curtain: Resolving The Missile Gap" —it was another in the series of forums being hosted by the Kennedy Library in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of JFK's presidency. Co-sponsoring the event was the CIA's Historical Collections Division, a subset of their Information Management Services. It was the agency's release of a number of long classified documents that served as the premise for this particular gathering and they had invited a couple of journalist/historians whose work I follow and respect to sit as panelists. That's why I was there: some interesting history to be considered by some thoughtful historians.

When I got there what struck me first though was the audience —the age of it. There was quite a lot of white hair on display (there was the white hair or there was the hair lacking altogether). I remembered that earlier in the week I'd been contacted by a library staffer, seeing I'd signed up to attend they wanted to know if I was a member of the local chapter of The Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) —members were to have special seating reserved. I pictured something like an AARP especially for spies. I had thought I might respond to the email with the old saw about how 'I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you' —then thought better of it. (Nowadays you just can't trust anybody's sense of humor.)

Anyway the room was full of these old soldiers, so it seemed: most everyone there to hear about the history they had been a part of themselves. And I heard more than one of them remark, as they took to their especially reserved seats and chatted with old colleagues, that they were there out of curiosity. These men and women had been a part of that best and brightest and greatest generation. Fifty years back they'd each had some small role to play —never having the full sense of the larger drama, the whole picture. These intelligence officers weren't all of them the cloak and dagger spies I joke about, but maybe they'd analyzed data on Ukranian agricultural yield, or culled Kamchatkan radio signal intercepts searching for telemetric logic, back in the day. This new information and the attempts they would see up on the stage to make some sense of it all, these might shed some larger light at long last.

The image that came to mind was of galley oarsmen from a Greek trireme, having come through some great sea battle years past —below deck and in the darkness, coming to hear the full story of the battle they'd won. I suppose the long views out across the water through the great large windows to either side of the symposium stage conjured that kind of analogy.

The Missile Gap was one key chapter in The Cold War and its ugly sibling, the nuclear arms race. The Kennedy Library was a fitting venue for revisiting the history, as the political notion of it had been crucial to John Kennedy's career. He'd run for re-election to the senate in 1958 and then run for the presidency in 1960 as a vocal critic of Eisenhower and the GOP's perceived complacency in the face of a growing threat, a growing disparity between U.S. and Soviet Russian inter-continental missile strength. This was the era of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, and fear that Soviet advances in technology would outpace our own gave rise to anxious expert projections that in just a few years time Russia would be able to cripple U.S. retaliatory capabilities with a first nuclear strike —and that they would if they could.

The documents released by the CIA in 2011, the star of the show for this symposium, don't apparently tell much of anything many didn't already know (or had at least guessed) about the forces at work or the facts on the ground in this period. The Missile Gap, as things turned out, never was a material threat. It had been the product of willful disinformation on the part of the Russians and some mistaken and overwrought speculation on our own part —what some of the wise old men in the room described as "mirror thinking" —assuming our opposites would play such a dangerous game of poker just the way we would.

A good part of the symposium was focused on the technology involved in debunking the myth, the story was of the way U2 overflights and Corona satellite missions surveilling the Soviets started feeding real data to take the place of raw conjecture, the way the dismal science of number crunching analysts could begin to construct the proof with near mathematical certainty that the Soviet industrial economy was incapable, that, if anything, it was the one on the losing end of any missile gap that might exist.

So it was that Kennedy would eventually find himself being lectured by his Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, that the whole notion of a missile gap was a "myth" that had been "spread around" by well meaning "emotionally guided but nevertheless patriotic individuals" at the Pentagon. It was early on in the symposium that the JFK Library's director, Tom Putnam played back an audio recording of the conversation, where Kennedy dryly reminded McNamara that he himself was one of those misguided patriots.

Kennedy's self deprecation got a good laugh from the audience hearing it fifty years later. But penetration of that myth proved central to the history that followed, the ability to face down Khrushchev's provocations, first in Berlin, then later in Cuba. That was the message for all those old Cold War soldiers watching the symposium from the audience. That the facts they'd found and figured upon had helped. They had had helped steady things through most dangerous times. Intelligence, that was what it was meant to do.

There was something moving about being in the audience —out among all those old soldiers once again taking in the moment of their careers. But there was something harrowing in their story come out into to the light as well:the cold calculations of kill capacity, weapon yield, the Game Theory mathematics that had gone into projecting fatal odds, that had animated the arms race up to the point of The Missile Gap, the strategic thinking that would continue it on past that point, to this very day where arms treaties are still the fair game of domestic politics and where threats of nuclear catastrophe are still the ominous factor we have to figure in to our international policies.

They had talked of the "mirror effect" up there on the stage at one point. One of the historians was pointing to the mistaken reads we had made of Khruschev posturing, how we had assumed the Russians would act as we would act in the situation of actual relative weakness they found themselves in. Khruschev's bluff and bluster had passed for strength and strategic advantage for a while. One of the historians opined that this was a liability of "dealing with tyrants." As I heard this and the mirror effect described, I couldn't help arguing in my mind that there was a useful application of the mirror being forgotten, that of reflection —self examination. Had our political leaders been any more candid in this game of apocalyptic poker? No. Did that make them tyrants as well?

What we told ourselves, when the fear of the Missile Gap was upon us, was that our enemy could not be trusted to outgun us, not in such a way that he possessed the ability to strike us first and neutralize our capacity to strike back, because if he could he would. As it turned out, our enemy had told himself much the same thing, that we could not be trusted to appreciate our advantage, our ability to first strike with such crippling effect that we would face no threat of recourse from our opponent, because if we really knew that we could... we would.

This is the symmetry that had to resort to the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction, that sober agreement that neither should destroy the other without knowing he destroyed himself as well. This horrible balance would be the basis of treaty and negotiation throughout the Cold War. We came so close to such destruction that October just 49 years ago, in the crisis waters around Cuba. But even as we came to the brink, and even as we were launched upon an arms race with ever more frightening projections of what Armageddon would like, we had those occasionally seeing the reflection and through it at the same time and recognizing "that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." Maybe it is that aspect of a mirror, or a reflection you might see at a window or in the water, that served to avert catastrophe back in the day, that has served us at least thus far.

Americans for Prosperity... democracy, not so much

A few years of years back, inadvertently, I offended a couple of acquaintances of mine here in my home town of Holliston, Massachusetts. I was walking along the street. It was the week just before an election. I think this was 2006 and I had been canvasing, phone bank calling, holding signs on street corners, the whole deal we do sometimes when we're advocating for a candidate. So this couple I know drove up in a very impressive looking Rolls Royce convertible, top down, it was a beautiful day and the machine was a dazzling display. I waved hello, Holliston is a small enough town that we generally do that sort of thing and this was on a small enough side street that these folks could slow down and stop to say howdy, and maybe show off the Rolls a little. I dutifully commented on the swanky looking ride and I recall one of them in turn politely remarked that they had seen some opinion piece of mine about the election that was just days away.

I didn't know this couple well enough to really have a sense of their political views and I didn't see the situation then and there as the best place to engage in what I like to call the better debate... what with the possibility of another car turning down the street and us blocking traffic. So we were each set to go about our ways, having exchanged our pleasantries, when I went and offended them both.

I didn't mean to. I meant only to make a joke of it, as we were parting, I looked the Rolls Royce convertible up and down once more with a show of awe and admiration and advised that voter turnout was expected to be so high the next week that the Town Clerk had decided to deal with the volume by asking Democrats to vote on Tuesday and (wink, wink) Republicans like you all on Wednesday.

I meant it as a dry bit of sarcasm, an allusion to the obvious wealth on display with their rolling status symbol and the political leanings we so often associate with such. They were both offended and I now know it was wrong of me to assume as I did, based upon my cartoonish preconceptions, that these people were Republicans. They made it plain to me that they were shocked and more than a bit hurt by the very suggestion before they drove away, their hood ornament glinting in the clear mid-autumn light.

Of course I wasn't actually trying to confuse my fellow citizens about the proper time for them to show up at the polls and vote. The preposterousness of such a move was actually something of the joke I intended, lame as it was. But the recent news item that brought this all back to mind for me... that's another story.

This story, out of Wisconsin just this past week, as it is about to hold a number of important recall elections, might involve some of the same wrongheaded assumption with which I disserviced my Hollistion neighbors. (We should never assume who is a Democrat and who is a Republican after all.) But that preposterous joke? That one where you dupe someone out of their vote? It appears the good people at the "super pac" Americans for Prosperity don't see that as such a bad idea at all, no kidding.

Over the last few weeks, the organization, backed by the same billionaire Koch brothers who bankrolled a good amount for our own Junior Senator's very special election campaign back in 2010, has been sending out absentee ballot applications in primarily Democratic districts in Wisconsin. One might think of this as simply a charitable act of wholesome fellow citizenship. On the surface that would sure be what it seems like. One problem though... actually a couple.

Here's how comedian Stephen Colbert recounts things on one of his recent programs:

Americans for Prosperity has even sent out this actual, helpful absentee ballot applications to Democratic districts. Now, they had to rush these to print, so some people have complained about inaccuracies, but it’s minor stuff like…instead of instructing you to send your ballot to the local municipal clerk where ballots are officially collected, the address on this ballot is ‘Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center,’ which, and this is interesting, does not exist.

Oh and one more thing. The date recipients of these fliers are advised to mail in their ballots by is August 11th.

As Colbert puts it:

"Here's a little rhyme to help you remember when it's due: On August 11th make your selection. That's just two days after the actual election! —Okay? —that sticks in the brain! —Nothing nefarious here!"

Colbert handles the story well, he delivers it with his trademark dry sarcasm and ironical facade for optimum comical effect, sort of like I was going for with that couple in the Rolls Royce convertible those years ago. Going for and getting the laugh. I guess I'll never be such an accomplished comedian. The problem is the deliberate fraud and voter suppression that the folks at Americans for Prosperity and the Koch brothers are underwriting these days in Wisconsin, to me that's no joke. What I see it as is a cynical criminal assault and insult upon American democracy, with nothing the least bit funny about it.

A modest proposal: come reason together

A while back I put up something you could probably call wishful thinking on this blog I participate in pretty regularly called Homes & Co. —"a blog for independent minds" we like to call it. The piece I posted was under the title "Shouting/thinking: "come let us reason together". Anyone who cares to visit that older post will note that my wishes weren't exactly realized then and there. But still something of the idea sticks with me and I mean to make a modest proposal —and not in the Jonathan Swift sense, I don't think —I mean this seriously.

The notion I meant to see examined with the earlier blog post was this idea of "reasoning together" that came up in an interview I heard on the radio with author and philosopher, Jacob Needleman.

Here's something Needleman said that I heard —that struck something of resonant tone with me:

"Shouting is not thinking. “Come let us reason together,” the prophet says, or God says to Isaiah. What this country [needs]... is thought...

I spoke to some members of Congress not long ago. We had a very quiet evening together and we started opening up, just what you and I are doing now. And they said, in effect, you know, “We never get a chance to do this. We’re in there trying to, you know, speak to television cameras or make points with electorates or with lobby groups, but we never …”

I said, “You mean you never come together and just reflect together?”

And they said no.

To me, that’s the dirty secret of America at the moment. That’s the problem."

Like I said, I'm not sure my blog post succeeded in engendering a whole lot of reasoned exchange, but then again I could have asked more clearly, too. We do settle into shouting mode sometimes on that site, more often than I really like, but one thing I do appreciate is that people of differing perspectives (very differing) do visit the forum on fairly level even terms. And there are those occasions when we discover merit in each others ideas, even from opposing points of view. That "reasoning together" does happen from time to time. We may not broker great compromise or arrive at consensus very often, but maybe in that first step of twelve approach to problems, we begin to recognize them... the problems.

So anyway here's my modest proposal: Soon enough the standoff over the budget and deficit and debt will be resolved down in D.C. —or it will be somehow left tentatively/definitively unresolved/resolved once again — and it will be that time of year when Senators and Congressmen can finally leave the Capitol and have a chance do their local visits and availabilities with their constituents. Town hall meetings will be in season, where the disgruntled among the citizenry can show up to shout down and/or the different choirs can turn out to be preached to. As I've said many times before though, what I would like to see is a different kind of debate. Suppose that, instead of each of our Commonwealth's U.S. Senators going off on their own tours, with their own itineraries and agendas, suppose we were to get them to sit down together in the same public forum where we could ask them to compare and contrast their ideas, their sense of the issues of substance and the issues of failing process we are all seeing on display in Washington. Suppose we were to ask them to —or offer them the chance to— reason together. This would be a discussion not about the next election contest —as it seems our politics always is about the contests. These two Senators do not oppose each other in any such contest. They actually serve together. What if we reminded them? What if we conceived of a debate as an opportunity to reason togther —rather than for one side to best the other?

Wouldn't it be interesting to offer them the opportunity for that better debate, to actually make such a debate happen?

Anyway, I post the notion here as a suggestion. Anyone with ideas as to a venue and an approach to the moderation? Maybe someone has some insight, some pull or connection or skill they could lend towards seeing such a discussion happen? Can we each accomplish something by spreading this idea? Simply asking of our senators and ourselves, why not?

I know we all have opinions here. I suppose anyone who wants to tell me this is a foolish idea is welcome to tell me so as well. And maybe this is only that Swiftian kind of modest proposal, useful only as we realize it's such a crazy idea?

Flying with my father

The picture is of my dad as an aspiring pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps —Waco, Texas — I am not sure of the exact year, it is sometime in the late 1940's. He had already done his service in the Navy during WWII when this picture was taken. He'd been around aircraft a while, first as a naval ordinance man and then as a combat air crewman. He'd enlisted in '44, served for three years and when he got out he turned right around and signed up for Army Air Corps flight school. And there he is in this old photograph I found.

My father loved flying, he always would, but not only flying —it was the piloting, that sense of command over the massive forces involved, with all its armament and engineering, the speed and power of the modern airplane. I can remember when I was just a small child. I'd be sitting at the kitchen table, chatting with him as he had his afternoon coffee, and he would hold forth on the sacred mysteries of laminar airflow over an aircraft's wing, ailerons and trim, the tone of reverence in his voice as he spoke the words 'Pratt & Whitney Engine' —the years later you could sense the rapturous awe that still held sway over him. There was something about flying with my father. There was something there at the core of his soul. Long before Ronald Reagan ever borrowed the lines for his speech after the shuttle disaster, my dad could recite from that poem about flight, about leaving behind the bonds of earth and reaching out to touch the face of God.

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Now I have this picture of my father. I look at it and realize he is at about the same age there as my own son is now. In the photograph my father is a young man achieving his dream, realizing that command. When this picture was taken he had arrived upon this place of validation and vindication after such a long hard journey. At the age of eight years, the effects of The Great Depression had broken his family and he had been sent away to live with his aunts on a country farm. I only learned after my father passed away that he had spent time in his early teens as a homeless runaway —my mother explaining why the Little Wanderers had always been a favored charity of his. Then came the war and the Navy. He joined in 1944 at the age of 17. Another prize photograph in my possession is my father in the side gun turret of a PBY Catalina Flying Boat somewhere in the Pacific in 1945. When he got out in '47 he would use his GI Bill to help his parents and his sister buy a little house in Brockton, Massachusetts.

Then he was bound for Waco, Texas.

Over the years I would hear a great deal from my father about his stint in the Army Air Corps Flight Training Program. He could relate in minute detail the rudder, flaps and throttle specifics of every maneuver he had learned on the North American T6 Trainer he flew. And he could relate with chilling clarity the momentary lapse in control during one of his last flight tests, his flight instructor expressionless and clinical as he noted his observations in the flight logbook.

My father "washed out" at Waco. That's what they called it when you didn't make the grade, when you learned that you weren't going to be one of those to earn the wings. He told me about sitting through something of a ritual procedure —Washing Out, sitting at attention (which meant using only the front three inches of the chair and having his spine frozen straight and unbending —eyes locked forward front and center) as across a table sat an administrator or two and the flight instructor he had come to know over the previous weeks. They reviewed his log and explained their decision about his future participation in the Army Air Corps' cadet training program.

They asked him if he differed with or disputed anything in the account of his training flights given in the log and he said he did not. They asked if he agreed with their conclusion that he should not continue in the program and he said he did not. That wasn't going to change anyone's mind of course. As I said, this hearing was something of a ritual. At one point the flight instructor asked my father if he thought of himself as a good pilot and my father answered that, yes, he thought he was. There was a moment of recognition and respect between the two men, just a trace of a smile on the flight instructor's face.

He didn't say I was wrong, my father recalled years later.

I heard that story from my father many times growing up. It was a story about disappointment that he would share when I was faced with my own in life. But he also shared the story from time to time when he was simply in a philosophical mood. It was about as bitter a disappointment as he had ever faced, that's what he felt at the time, but it was that momentary lapse in one maneuver and that close judgement by his instructor that sent my father home to Massachusetts, where he met my mother and formed our family. Had things gone as he so desperately wanted them to, he would have been flying dangerous combat missions over Korea instead of meeting her at a dance in 1950. As he sat there talking with the youngest of his three sons in the home he made for himself with his family, he could see that disappointment of years gone by as providence —a blessing.

And there was something of a gift in that moment with his flight instructor, too. Failure and disappointment didn't define my father or darken his joy in flight, his sense of himself as a pilot. He knew the truth in that poetry about flying and no one could ever deny him that. He would never deny it himself.

Twenty years after "washing out" of the Army Air Corps Training Program, my dad started taking flying lessons again. He used the same leather bound log they had given him in Waco to record his training flights. He completed the necessary hours, soloed and then got his license. He ended up sharing the ownership of a small Cesna and flying out of Hopedale Airport for years. The Cesna 172 he ended up flying didn't have the awesome power of the military planes he'd flown in his youth, where he had first learned to love flight. But nevertheless I know he had his moments, flying over the New England country, reveling in the landscapes below and the skies all around, catching the occasional glimpse of God.

The lady doth protest too much

“They're going to bring in the Justice Department? I'm a housewife, for Pete's sake, who said there needs to be a certain standard, a threshold.

Voting is a privilege.”

That's how Christen Varley responded (as reported in the Worcester Telegram & Gazaette) when informed that the Town of Southbridge Town Manager had requested the assistance of the U.S. Justice Department in addressing what was seen as quite possibly a campaign of deliberate voter intimidation and suppression undertaken by her organization, Empower Massachusetts. Now there's maybe a couple of base assumptions built into Ms. Varley's comment that I'm going to have to argue with, the idea of voting as "privilege" for example, but first I've just got to challenge the lady on her supposed humility.

When I hear "I'm a housewife for Pete's sake" I'm just a little reminded of back in the day, watching Senator Sam Ervin tell everybody on the Watergate Committee that he chaired that he was "just an old country lawyer" —that in his slowly drawn, quaint and jowly North Carolina twang. The mock humility was endearing at first, but after a while it just wore thin as an affectation. Likewise with Ms. Varley's self effacing sense of her stature —as if "a housewife" shouldn't warrant the attention of the United States Justice Department —even if one of her hobbies was demographically targeted tactical voter suppression.

Christen is altogether too humble about her resumé. Last I heard around town here in Holliston, though I will admit I am not on their mailing list, she currently serves as the Chair of Holliston Republican Town Committee. She also serves as Treasurer and Executive Director of Empower Massachusetts —one of the groups behind the Southbridge controversy; she is also President of the Greater Boston Tea Party and Northeast Massachusetts Field Director of The Coalition for Marriage and Family. She's busy. I don't condemn Ms. Varley for being an activist. Not at all, I applaud it —even where I disagree with her pretty vehemently on certain issues. It's pretending she isn't one —that's where it gets to be too much.

If the U.S. Justice Department tries to investigate how Christen Varley handles her responsibilities as a housewife, I will join her in protesting the intrusion and intimidation. That is my solemn pledge. Meanwhile back in Southbridge, I do have a problem when people simply say there should be a standard demanding voter identification and set about pretending —because they say so— that it is so. Tea Party folks usually profess to be fans of the Constitution. That friendship apparently turns a bit fickle when it becomes expedient to regard the voting rights of certain rival demographics as —let's say— a privilege.

Take a look at the billboard advertisement Ms. Varley's group had placed in a poor Latino neighborhood in Southbridge just prior to a special primary election for the 6th Worcester District House seat. When challenged on the placement and the message and the motive of this little media buy, Ms. Varley responded (also reported in WT&G):

“I called the largest billboard company in America and asked for a billboard in Southbridge and they said they had one available, so I took it,” Ms. Varley said, adding that the allegation of intimidation was silly. “We're asking for the state of Massachusetts to consider an act in legislation that requires everybody who casts a ballot to produce an ID to show that they're in the right place at the right time and eligible. It has nothing to do with any ethnic background whatsoever.”

But take another look at the billboard. [I've posted a photo above] How do you read it? Is this a clearly stated message asking you to "consider an act in legislation" to put in place an ID requirement? Or is it a cryptic image vaguely intimating that the requirement already exists? Is it an honest appeal to activist citizens to lobby their legislators to enact a change to election law? Is there actually any advice offered to voters on how to ascertain "the right time and place" to vote? Or is the "message" on display deliberately vague disinformation aimed to confuse and to undermine get out the vote efforts in one targeted low income community —one that just happens to have an election going on?

The billboard is but one aspect of what the Southbridge Town Manager Christopher Clark has asked for Justice Department assistance in addressing. These "empowering" activists Ms. Varley hobbies with, supposedly bent on saving the state from the scourge of voter fraud, also chose the special election primary as a place to focus their voter monitoring efforts. This is their right of course, to monitor elections, to ascertain that election officials are observing every proper practice in assuring voters are properly registered and eligible. It is not the right of anyone, however, to harass voters based upon their ethnicity, their apparent socio-economic standing or their physical or intellectual abilities.

Southbridge Town Clerk Madaline Daoust told reporters after the primary had concluded that she had witnessed “unnecessary challenges” geared toward mentally challenged people and Hispanics. “Some people left saying, ‘I'll never vote again,' ” she complained. Retired Worcester Juvenile Court Judge Luis G. Perez also commented that he saw challengers especially targeting Latinos and spoke of citizens coming away from their voting experience shaken and in tears. When Varley was asked if this sort of reaction wasn't an intended result, or at least something of a bonus, she said of course not, though she did allow as how she found it "disturbing" to see people who she believed couldn't speak english showing up to vote at the polls and developmentally-challenged people “being dragged in" to vote.

In 1965 Congress passed and the President signed into law the Voting Rights Act. To my knowledge it is still the law of the land. Note, by the way, that it refers to "voting rights" not privileges. Among the rights put in place by that particular legislation was the right to ballot access for non-english speakers. As for the developmentally-challenged, in Massachusetts, citizens under legal guardianship retain their rights to register and to vote unless the guardianship under which they are placed expressly and specifically revokes such rights. I guess one could perceive such a person voting with another's assistance as "being dragged" there, while another might see them as simply being helped. I suppose it becomes a matter of interpretation.

Just like the message Ms. Varley and her cohorts intend for poor and Latino voters in Southbridge.

She will tell you that they have no intentions at all, that the only goal is to protect the integrity of each vote. Methinks that's where she doth protest too much. With all their efforts at the polls on primary day, what with nearly two dozen voters challenged and not a single one actually turned away as not eligible to vote, it's hard to see how their Southbridge campaign is supposed to be about nothing more than a problem they came away with no evidence of existing there in the first place. Still Ms. Varley promises she and her friends will be back "in force" on the day of the special election. She says they won't be intimidated.

Go figure.

All up in arms

We have a new business here in Holliston, set up right on the main street through the center of town and just in time for the holidays. The one little detail about the new establishment that has caused something of a stir (at least with some) is the fact that the new business is a gun shop.

I'll admit I had something of a chilled response when I first heard of it myself, but I also I had the sense that on a certain level this was somebody else's business and not my own. Holliston has actually quite a few nice businesses located in the town center: a general store, a coffee shop and a candy store, a bank or two and the library, dry cleaners and a small grocery —a funeral parlor and a hair salon. I would probably rather there was something other than guns & ammo being added to the mix —but that's me.

What bothers me much more than the nature of the new store in town, though, is the character of the discussion in response to it that I've observed. Watching the comment thread unfold beneath a news story on our local on-line news source, HollistonReporter.com, one couldn't help but notice the seething resentments coming to the surface, the bubbling crude. There were the overwrought exclamations of concern about a gun shop "within shooting distance" of a playground nearby. There were one or two glib slights (I'll confess to my own among them). In answer came the comments that the new venture was to be applauded precisely because it was so upsetting to those despised "yuppies and Liberals" who comprise some loathsome "other half " of Holliston. Liberalism, announced one frothy friend of the new business, was a 'Mental Disorder' —kudos to anyone or anything that insults their senses.

Yup, I'm far less bothered by the guns than I am by the ugliness.

There was one comment that comes to mind now that I think particularly circled about the balance we need actually in play. In defense of the shop, one citizen pointed out that Massachusetts had some of the most stringent and demanding standards in terms of gun licensing, some of the most exacting regulation of the sale of weapons of any state in the country. This, the commenter argued, should put to rest the anxieties about guns in stores in immediate adjacency to a candy shop. It should cut through the clamor and quiet the valid concerns and enable the proprietor of the new gun shop to simply go about his business.

I buy that, as both a valid argument in defense of the store —and of the actual value of that much reviled Liberalism. Of course, the Liberalism I refer to is not the cartoon caricature —so popular as a target for purveyors of resentment politics. Rather it is a governing principle of our Democracy, where the instruments of power in government are made responsive and accountable to the people... all of the people, the half that "clings to their guns and religion" and the half that maybe isn't so enthused about products marketed for their kill power, that has some valid concern about the way lethal weapons are treated and traded in our communities.

Oddly enough, it is each half hearing the other half out that is the working concept for our society. Some amount of constructive exchange and cooperation even over our most strongly held differences —that is the enabling premise —I could buy some more of that.

I wish we all could. Sometimes it seems to be in such short supply.

(P.S. Please note that the picture above isn't actually from inside the new shop. I just got a kick out of the guy in the Santa hat.)

Paying forward or passing through

I heard an interview with Charlie Baker on the radio just the other morning and I liked what I heard. It was a relaxed conversation meant, I'm sure, to simply show the human side of the candidate. On that level the endeavor worked to show a good guy with some potentially good ideas and good intentions. I liked the part when he was asked if he could "have a beer" with anybody in history who would it be and he chose Abraham Lincoln. He said he admired the 16th president for the humanity, even the humor and most especially the grace with which he faced some the hardest decisions ever to confront a public leader.

Humor and grace... I liked that.

The piece didn't make me want to change my vote though. I'm firmly in Patrick's camp. (And from what I read in some opinion pages I guess that bespeaks a core flaw in my character.) The radio interview did leave me lamenting that better debate I know we could have had —had the chosen tenor of the campaign been a bit different.

I've met Governor Patrick in person a couple of times, enough to have my own sense of his humor and grace and integrity. I've not always agreed with his stands on every issue, but I have always had some basic sympathy and understanding for those stands, for where he's coming from and where he's trying to go —his goals and his approach toward them.

I've always had a sense of that same respect coming from him, even when he's hearing it from someone who doesn't agree with him on a particular stand.

It's about balance —you could maybe even call it a balance sheet. Patrick talks about Massachusetts, our commonwealth as something he owes a debt to, he talks about being simply aware that he has benefited from certain blessings that are very much of this place and its history: the passion for learning, the deeper cultural calling to social justice, the sense of community based in ideals —on the level of personal history, he talks of being quite simply aware of the opportunity he was given. These gifts comprise a debt in Deval Patrick's ledger and public service is about not paying it back, but paying it forward.

That's a distinction I would have liked to see explored in our politics. It would have been worthwhile debate I think: these different senses of the balance sheet. I don't for a minute doubt that Charlie Baker is genuine in his belief that the books demand balance and I don't think anyone would disagree that this involves the courage to make hard decisions. I'm sure he sees the reconcile function as a public service, too. But, in how we approach the books, there are discussions we have to have about what we value most —what are the costs simply passing through, whether as deferred debt payments or grant anticipation notes, as taxes or health care premiums or tolls —and what more permanently remains.

And then there's grace.

I've heard this said through clenched teeth so many times over the past weeks and months—see you at the polls! —coming from each side of the debate we have ended up with —see you at the polls! ...It comes off sounding like a threat.

As we come to the end of the campaigning, let me just suggest a little more of that grace, no matter how you see the books, passing through or paying forward.

And —oh yeah— see you at the polls!

All history is supposed

I've reached an age where fifty year chunks of time don't seem so big. My own lifetime is nearly such a chunk, now. And so it is that I've been looking at what we call history a little differently of late. Centennials, Bicentennials, I can remember when talk of such milestone increments of time always went to the topic of the settled facts of history. Things of a certain past were etched in stone.

I was about three years old when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his 'I Have A Dream' speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, so just about as far back as I can remember that speech has always been given —a given— and the godlike monumental figure seated as in some sacred temple behind him, he was always already long enshrined, like an embodiment of unquestionable timeless truth. I would read histories where that god spoke of a fiery path we'd passed through defining ourselves as a nation irrevocably. That's the way Lincoln described it, as he sought to bind slavery and freedom to the war cause he led, a fiery path that would light us down to honor or dishonor —in spite of ourselves, that is what he said, as he introduced the Emancipation Proclamation, that is what he said.

There are histories that describe that speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave a hundred years later as some final consummation, a belated historical conclusion. There is that reading that what he laid claim to in the true meaning of our creed was that long overdue conclusion, honorable at long last even in spite of ourselves. King's own rhetoric spoke to that sense of our history —of history itself. He once described Justice as something that travelled through with the geometric certainty of an arc.

Fifty year increments of time.

This November 6th marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency. We'll soon be seeing those other anniversaries of that fiery path coming round again: December 20, the secession of South Carolina, the first Southern state to withdraw from the Union. Every terrible battle to follow.

I think back to my own first understandings of the supposed historical facts. My oldest brother read every history he could get his hands on during the Civil War Centennial, he collected every piece of memorabilia. I couldn't play with my toy soldiers on the den floor without him intervening to arrange them along the battle lines he'd read about in a Bruce Catton book or some article from American Heritage Magazine. He'd lecture on 19th century battle tactics while I marveled at the plastic sculptures of soldiers and canons and cavalry horses at 1:48 scale. It was my brother who saved up the gas money, doing odd jobs in the neighborhood. He saw to it that my family made the pilgrimage to Gettysburg that summer vacation —to visit hallowed ground.

Fifty year increments of time. Those days as family memories and my first awe at the whole idea of history. I remember the cyclorama paintings of battle scenes, entering a dark room and being suddenly surrounded by the images of glorious battle, sound effects and the sober narration sounding all around us, telling the story of three days of horrific bloodshed, as the lighting shifted our attention from scene to scene. I remember the long walk up circular stairs to a tower that surveyed the same landscape, so beautifully quiet the next day. We had climbed up in the still early morning. I held my mother's hand. Mist rose up from below. We had a long ride home and wanted an early start back. I remember the way my father was moved at the sight of a memorial monument to those fallen of a Union regiment of Irish "volunteers" —a dark bronze of a wolfhound sleeping at the foot of a celtic cross.

It was only later I became conscious of the working provisional nature of that history, that sacrifice supposed to long endure, the very real visceral levels on which the fiery trial continued. The summer of the Gettysburg Centennial was the same summer of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech. It was the summer of the Birmingham campaign and the fire hoses trained on peaceful protesters, Bull Connor's dogs tearing at their skin.

These were called current events at the time, not history.

Thinking back nearly fifty years I can remember how a hundred seemed like eternity. But think back just twice those fifty years again and Lincoln's own first battles of the fiery trial were going on and nothing of the ensuing history was yet established. It's these increments of time scaled to my own experience that have me positing that perhaps all history is supposed... provisionally. And its meanings, while they are supposed to bind us together as a nation, we are not with any kind of certainty —fixedly— a nation bound.

There is that price to freedom.

I thought of this as I read the news one recent morning. A woman moves in to a small South Carolina town, a neighborhood known as Brownsville, and off a pole on the front of her house she flies her Confederate flag. And her black neighbors plan to march in protest. They have already petitioned her to take down the flag, but Annie Chambers Caddell says it is her right to honor her heritage. She's hung a sign on the chain link fence outside her home that marks her sense of address: 'Confederate Boulevard.'

“I know she has a legal right to do that on her property. But just because it’s legally right, doesn’t make it morally right,’’ said James Patterson, a 43-year-old crane operator who lives in a mobile home next door. Some of Ms. Caddell's neighbors can remember when that flag she's flying was more than an allusion to "heritage" —when it was a chosen deliberate symbol of oppression and intimidation. They remember "the Ku Klux Klan that used to ride through the town," said Violet Saylor, a 74-year-old retired social worker. That's what she sees when she sees her neighbor's Stars and Bars on display. She said the flag brings back memories of Jim Crow in the neighborhood she has lived all her life.

It was just fifty years after the Civil War ended, in 1915, that film-making pioneer, D.W. Griffith released 'Birth of a Nation' —just another of those increments of time. The prior fifty years had seen the Reconstruction of the post war South devolve into corruption and disappointment and the bloodied-but-unbowed resurgent supremacy of Southern Whites had become the narrative, at least for some. Griffith's film took that narrative up and defined it as a national history. "lt is like writing history with lightning" was how President Wilson described it when he saw the groundbreaking silent movie, noted for its "innovative camera techniques and narrative achievements." The film's sympathetic treatment of the Ku Klux Klan would help lend legitimacy to racism and vigilante violence moving into the next fifty years.

We try to find meaning in events, in the stories and struggles. There are the outcomes we perceive, the ones we intend and those we are confronted with whether we intend them or not. We believe them concluded. We might like to believe there are larger verities we can cast in stone. But even as we carve that stone, even as we pretend to define what is true or just or good about us and say that it is fixed somewhere removed from us in history, we must realize that the narratives that make up our history are all ultimately personal and present for all of us. What we share and sustain and what we ignore and deny is up to us: The honor or the dishonor in spite of ourselves. The same measure of years applies to our own lives as applies to our history.

And like Faulkner said, the past isn't ever even past.