The countries of the New World prospered after World War II because they were never attacked on the continent. In this entry* we shall see how the United States began to feel a grassroots new cultural, social and political current brought about by the first postwar generation.
The decade that in the United States is still remembered as simply "the Sixties" began with three symbolic starting points.
In late August 1963, an African-American civil rights march on Washington was led by Martin Luther King, Jr. President Kennedy was assassinated in November. Then in February 1964, on the very widely watched Ed Sullivan Show, a group of long-haired English musicians called The Beatles played their electric guitars amid deafening cheering from teenage girls.
John F. Kennedy, for a time regarded as almost an informal saint and martyr (until his rampant sexuality became known), was said to have advocated reforms the "liberal" wing (in the U.S. and non-European sense) of the Democratic Party sought to carry. To "honor Kennedy's memory," Lyndon Johnson, a Southern political genius, succeeded getting a broad range of socio-economic legislation approved.
The first triumph was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which remains the basis of all protections and guarantees of equal rights for minorities and women. As for women, conservative Southerners proposed adding "sex" as a joke, to the prohibition of discrimination by "color, creed or national origin"; the liberals took them at their word, knowing that their adversaries had made a tactical error. (U.S. liberals are not the European liberals who advocate a hands-free market and laissez faire policies, but reformers favoring substantial government intervention in the economy, albeit less so than the European left.)
Johnson also launched, the following year, when he won by a really overwhelming margin never seen again, the "War on Poverty. In less than 10 years, poverty was reduced from 19% to 11% (today it is 15%, to be explained later). LBJ also bequeathed a very broad socio-economic legislation, such as federal health insurance for the elderly and the poor, assistance for families and children in need, expansion of access to food stamps, subsidies for housing, etc.
The disadvantage for liberals, one from which the Democratic Party does has yet to recover, is that the South became Republican when the Democrats ended racial segregation. Nixon in 1968 called it "the southern strategy" to reverse the geographical alignment of the two parties.**
In economic terms, it was a moment of enormous prosperity. The average salary doubled between 1945 and 1965. African-Americans entered supervisory and professional occupations. By the end of 1970 women would join them (and soon surpass them).
There was also new music, a Dionysian sound of rock-and-roll that broke with the apolitical restraint of earlier popular music. To rock was added the rediscovery of British and Irish folk music, and its traditional forms of popular protest. Popular music stopped being so much about romantic love as Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Peter, Paul and Mary, among others, sang about rights, peace, humanity and, as Che Guevara put it, a deeper love of people.
The important topic of the era was freedom. Why more freedom? Looking back half a century later, I would say that prosperity made society more expansive and tolerant. There were protests (and I say this in the broad sense of the Latin protestare, which is "witnessing") of love, racial integration and peace. It all came from the conviction that the time had come to share prosperity, well-being, and happiness (often expressed as sexuality) as widely as possible. It began with the March in Washington singing "We Shall Overcome" reached its climax in Woodstock with the song of Country Joe & the Fish against the Vietnam war.
I left the United States in 1961 and returned in 1970. I left a country that thought itself essentially white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon and orderly, whose average people showed little interest in the rest of the world. I returned to a country where people drank French wine with their meals, had been in Europe or planned to do so even if it was backpacking, had experimented with some recreational drug, was open (in theory at least) to sexual variety and racial integration, and talked about breaking with conventions an awful lot.
That was my generation, embedded in "the movement," which was a fuzzy mixture that had a hint of hippie, a bit of leftism and stylized anarchism, a general tendency to accept radical changes towards a new country where the important thing was to love a great love for all.
We launched a cultural revolution that expanded job opportunity for African-Americans and other minority groups, such as Hispanics, and the oppressed majority, women. It was done through changes in the way of thinking, dressing and talking; and without violence.
This was especially evident in what is now called the "second wave" of feminism, which began with the publication in 1970 of an anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, the emergence of Ms. magazine and the song I Am Woman in 1973. Two words suddenly disappeared from everyday vocabulary: "boy" for black workers vanished overnight after the 1964, 1967 and 1968 riots, as did "girl," somewhat more slowly and reluctantly, for a woman.
Finally, there is the question of attire and the length of men's hair. The consensus of all with whom I have talked about it is that until about 1968 the Beatles haircut was only for the musicians and a few adventurers who were the real hippies of 1967. However, by 1971 or 1972, even adults, like presidential candidate George McGovern, had at least sideburns and no male under the age of 30 had hair that did not reach at least the bottom of the neck.
Adults, corporations and the de facto powers, that is, all those who felt threatened, opposed this amorphous movement.
Unlike the worker-student coalitions in Europe, working-class whites resisted the changes, resentful of new competition in employment and housing from blacks, whom some of these workers still hated; for the white worker, racial prejudice was like coming home and kicking the dog in lieu of kicking the unassailable boss. There was a long history on the part of the wealthy of skillfully using ethnic hatreds to divide workers. Yet it takes taking a good look at those who opposed the youthful rebellion carefully to understand.
Americans of the generation that had gone to fight in World War II and Korea, were shocked that their children chanted against going to Vietnam "Hell no, we will not go!" and even burned the stars and stripes. Those who married in church, had children and formed families now saw their offspring join in free love, which was possible first thanks to contraceptives then abortion, legalized in 1970. Older women felt mocked for being mere housewives without paid jobs or preofessions.
That generation felt ridiculed for being "squares" and "useful idiots" of the "system." As a political force, all these people who longed for the United States from "before" ( the black and white of the 1950s) became invisible after Barry Goldwater's wipeout defeat in the 1964 presidential election, and were briefly appeased by Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew, who coined the phrase "the silent majority," a mass that resurfaced politically for revenge in 1980.
Notably, just as this era began with the unfinished presidency of Kennedy, it ended with another truncated presidency, Nixon's, which ended with his resignation in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal.
* This is the third in a short series of posts that attempt to sketch contemporary U.S.cultural and social history. I intend to present how the time and place felt from a personal perspective, and only in the background, the history whose first draft appeared in the newspapers. All this comes from an exchange with a French correspondent that I thought might be of interest to readers of my Spanish blog.
** The Democratic Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1792, while the Republican Party was launched in 1854 by Abraham Lincoln. U.S. political parties do not represent distinct ideologies, but interests and opinions, rather than theories. Since the Civil War, Republicans represented industrial anti-slave interests (it's cheaper to pay a wage and let the worker figure out how to provide for himself with it, than to assume life-long responsibility for a slave's housing, food and clothing, however meager). The South became staunchly Democrat because it was unpalatable for whites to vote for "Lincoln's party" (former slaves in the South were effectively denied the vote until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which conservatives are currently trying to undo). In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was a personalist leader much like Argentina's Juan Perón or Brazil's Getulio Vargas, forged a unique coalition that comprised unions, white ethnics (meaning not of English origin) Blacks, liberals (including the tiny left and intellectuals) and Southerners for the historical reasons cited. This is how FDR became the only president elected four times (which led to a constitutional amendment, proposed by Republicans, to limit the presidency to two terms). That coalition was mortally wounded in the 1960s, as became clear in the 1970s and 1980s.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Two Men Who Opened Doors (1960-63)
Until November 1960, a Catholic had never been elected president of the United States. Al Smith, a Catholic of Irish origin, had tried it in 1928 and lost due to the anti-Catholic prejudice of the white Protestant majority. To the meaning of this reversion I dedicate this part of the series.*
The separation of church and state, written into the U.S. Constitution 200 years ago by Protestants who feared Rome as much as one another, had been the excuse for not having diplomatic relations with the Vatican State (relations that were established recently In 1983, under President Reagan, a Presbyterian who had been baptized Catholic).
You must have lived it to understand it.
The American Catholic world in 1960 was essentially a social castle, with walls of social protection for the 24% of U.S. inhabitants who professed the faith. It was an enclosed parallel society, governed by clerics (most of whom were of Irish origin and had their own fierce ethnic prejudices).
That small country within a country, which had been carved from the 1840s when the Irish came massively fleeing the potato famine, had seen the addition of waves of later European Catholic immigrants: Poles, Italians, Germans, Czechs and several Slavs.
A 1960s U.S. Catholic was seriously a Catholic. He went to Mass every Sunday, did not eat meat on Fridays and was part of huge families. He went to a Catholic school, whether parochial or private. If he was a worker, he joined a union in which his fellow Catholics were members with the active support of the clergy during strikes. The "lace curtain" Irish (except for the Kennedys), went to Catholic universities and from there entered Catholic law firms or Catholic brokers.
Our typical U.S. Catholic man married a Catholic woman and had 6 to 12 children. He bought insurance from a Catholic agent and went to Catholic bankers. He never joined a number of associations because they were Protestant and neither he nor his wife ever considered sending their children to a public school. Catholics paid taxes for public schools and also supported a network of parochial schools that did not receive a cent from the government.
On vacation they went to beaches where Catholics were welcome (often because hoteliers were Catholics). Oh, and since the Irishmen of New York and Chicago had built powerful local political machineries, being Catholic meant voting for pro-Catholic unions and the Democratic Party, not the Protestant, Republican, elite party.
The vast majority of Catholics had been poor and working class until the GI Bill, which subsidized the university for the soldiers who served in World War II (thus generating the broad post-war professional middle class).
The Irish came out of poverty by entering police work, then intelligence (there is even an inside joke in the CIA that the agency's abbreviation stands for "Catholics In Action"), local politics, trade unions, or the priesthood. Because they were the only natively English-speaking Catholic immigrants, the Irish became the ring leaders of all Catholic immigrants.
The Italians (some of them) formed the Mafia, which originally was a set of independent self-protection groups (as they had been in Italy, when the Sicilians fought Italian annexation). The Poles were at the bottom of the social ladder, and were the target of prejudiced humor. There was for a time, from the 1880s at the end of World War I, a vibrant German Catholic community that supported its own bilingual German-English schools; this was destroyed by (a) the Irish clergy and (b) the war, when being of German origin was something that one hid.
Most non-Catholics do not know this part of our history and therefore do not realize how enormous it was for Catholics to see one of their own nominated and elected president. To the Protestant majority, Kennedy was just an appealing young man (and how young man he seems to me now!) in a hurry to get things done.
Listening President Kennedy's speeches once again after so many years, it is surprising to note how often he used the word "revolution" to describe nearly every proposal and challenge he posed. Yet, if one takes off his glasses of nostalgia, there is no doubt that he was a relatively conservative president.
In fact, what was revolutionary about Kennedy and the other John of his time, Popr John XXIII, was the role they assumed just as social culture was shifting. They were both catalysts of a social and cultural revolution that seemed to start in the United States and, through the U.S. megaphone of Hollywood and popular music, in the world.
For Catholics, Kennedy's election meant that the gilded doors of the famed American Dream had finally opened at all levels. In the 1960s, Americans of Irish descent rose in socioeconomic terms to the upper middle class. (In the United States the idea persists that we are all middle class, but we aren't.) Before 1960, Catholics were mostly non-professional, industrial and manual workers; after that, a very large proportion of Catholics became white collar workers and affluent.
How brief a shining moment it was! One moment, as I recall, even the nuns at school seemed to be walking on a happy cloud in November of 1960; the next moment, they were crying, on another November, three years later.
* This is the second in a short series of posts that attempt to sketch contemporary U.S.cultural and social history. I intend to present how the time and place felt from a personal perspective, and only in the background, the history whose first draft appeared in the newspapers.
The separation of church and state, written into the U.S. Constitution 200 years ago by Protestants who feared Rome as much as one another, had been the excuse for not having diplomatic relations with the Vatican State (relations that were established recently In 1983, under President Reagan, a Presbyterian who had been baptized Catholic).
You must have lived it to understand it.
The American Catholic world in 1960 was essentially a social castle, with walls of social protection for the 24% of U.S. inhabitants who professed the faith. It was an enclosed parallel society, governed by clerics (most of whom were of Irish origin and had their own fierce ethnic prejudices).
That small country within a country, which had been carved from the 1840s when the Irish came massively fleeing the potato famine, had seen the addition of waves of later European Catholic immigrants: Poles, Italians, Germans, Czechs and several Slavs.
A 1960s U.S. Catholic was seriously a Catholic. He went to Mass every Sunday, did not eat meat on Fridays and was part of huge families. He went to a Catholic school, whether parochial or private. If he was a worker, he joined a union in which his fellow Catholics were members with the active support of the clergy during strikes. The "lace curtain" Irish (except for the Kennedys), went to Catholic universities and from there entered Catholic law firms or Catholic brokers.
Our typical U.S. Catholic man married a Catholic woman and had 6 to 12 children. He bought insurance from a Catholic agent and went to Catholic bankers. He never joined a number of associations because they were Protestant and neither he nor his wife ever considered sending their children to a public school. Catholics paid taxes for public schools and also supported a network of parochial schools that did not receive a cent from the government.
On vacation they went to beaches where Catholics were welcome (often because hoteliers were Catholics). Oh, and since the Irishmen of New York and Chicago had built powerful local political machineries, being Catholic meant voting for pro-Catholic unions and the Democratic Party, not the Protestant, Republican, elite party.
The vast majority of Catholics had been poor and working class until the GI Bill, which subsidized the university for the soldiers who served in World War II (thus generating the broad post-war professional middle class).
The Irish came out of poverty by entering police work, then intelligence (there is even an inside joke in the CIA that the agency's abbreviation stands for "Catholics In Action"), local politics, trade unions, or the priesthood. Because they were the only natively English-speaking Catholic immigrants, the Irish became the ring leaders of all Catholic immigrants.
The Italians (some of them) formed the Mafia, which originally was a set of independent self-protection groups (as they had been in Italy, when the Sicilians fought Italian annexation). The Poles were at the bottom of the social ladder, and were the target of prejudiced humor. There was for a time, from the 1880s at the end of World War I, a vibrant German Catholic community that supported its own bilingual German-English schools; this was destroyed by (a) the Irish clergy and (b) the war, when being of German origin was something that one hid.
Most non-Catholics do not know this part of our history and therefore do not realize how enormous it was for Catholics to see one of their own nominated and elected president. To the Protestant majority, Kennedy was just an appealing young man (and how young man he seems to me now!) in a hurry to get things done.
Listening President Kennedy's speeches once again after so many years, it is surprising to note how often he used the word "revolution" to describe nearly every proposal and challenge he posed. Yet, if one takes off his glasses of nostalgia, there is no doubt that he was a relatively conservative president.
In fact, what was revolutionary about Kennedy and the other John of his time, Popr John XXIII, was the role they assumed just as social culture was shifting. They were both catalysts of a social and cultural revolution that seemed to start in the United States and, through the U.S. megaphone of Hollywood and popular music, in the world.
For Catholics, Kennedy's election meant that the gilded doors of the famed American Dream had finally opened at all levels. In the 1960s, Americans of Irish descent rose in socioeconomic terms to the upper middle class. (In the United States the idea persists that we are all middle class, but we aren't.) Before 1960, Catholics were mostly non-professional, industrial and manual workers; after that, a very large proportion of Catholics became white collar workers and affluent.
How brief a shining moment it was! One moment, as I recall, even the nuns at school seemed to be walking on a happy cloud in November of 1960; the next moment, they were crying, on another November, three years later.
* This is the second in a short series of posts that attempt to sketch contemporary U.S.cultural and social history. I intend to present how the time and place felt from a personal perspective, and only in the background, the history whose first draft appeared in the newspapers.
Monday, June 19, 2017
Color Arrives (1958-60)
Although we are accustomed to think of our time in terms of decades, in terms of social consciousness decades don't match the decimal figure. The Sixties actually began in late 1963. Between 1958 and 1963 there was a "twist" of social consciousness, and in this entry in the series* I concentrate on 1958-60.
The significant cosmetic touch of the time was the introduction of color television and Technicolor (somebody's trademark). The first televised presidential debate took place. Then came cars with extravagant fins and the beginnings of rock and roll.
Color of another kind also came into prominence. The country was still largely segregated by the color of the skin. (It was called "race," but as we all know today, race is a social construct of prejudice and not a biological fact.)
In some states the separation was carried out legally and ubiquitously. But in 1954, the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of the schools; the armed forces, it should be noted, had desegregated by President Truman's order in 1946. There was a Civil Rights Act passed in 1958 that made some minor changes, but segregation continued.
What did it mean, in practical terms, to separate people by the color of their skin? There were separate facilities everywhere: white bathrooms and black bathrooms; restaurants for one and another color; separate seats on buses and trams.
This was not so obvious to me in New York, where that sort of segregation was just impractical and, after all, we were in the North. In New York, segregation was largely socioeconomic. African Americans were kept poor through discrimination in education and employment, in addition to housing.
I saw apartheid-type segregation when we moved to Washington, which is south of the Mason-Dixon line, the cultural and legal divide that had once separated slave states and free states. In Washington, as in New York, there was socioeconomic separation. Whites lived in the best neighborhoods, with the best schools and got the best positions.
In addition, I saw in the parks that there were water fountains marked "white" and next to them, other fountains, generally smaller and less well kept, for "colored" (as a child the word struck me as odd: white is a color and, strictly speaking, no one was really white). There were separate seats on the buses (but, interestingly, not on the streetcars).
Taxi drivers, waiters and, in general, service staff, were black. The police were white, as were the bus drivers.
I went to private Catholic schools (and to the French school a year), so I did not see black children in school. There was an amusement park, Glen Echo, to which I loved to go; only years later, when I returned from a long absence abroad, I learned that it had closed because it was segregated: it was a shock to realize I had never noticed there were no black children.
I also saw another type of segregation. At a time when African nations were becoming independent and began to send their first diplomatic delegations to Washington, a hotel we initially stayed in denied them lodging.
The Windsor Park Hotel which is now located in the Kalorama area is the annex building that the original hotel; it was quickly acquired to accommodate African diplomats. The main building eventually became the Chinese embassy and only this year was it demolished.
Despite these problems, the civil rights movement began to pick up momentum in those years and there was a sense that the United States was willing to become a country with a bigger heart. At that moment came a young politician who symbolized breaking another kind of prejudice, John F. Kennedy.
* This is the second of a short series of deliveries that attempt to sketch the contemporary U.S.cultural and social history. I intend to present how the time and place was felt from a personal perspective, and only in the background, the history whose first draft appeared in the newspapers.
The significant cosmetic touch of the time was the introduction of color television and Technicolor (somebody's trademark). The first televised presidential debate took place. Then came cars with extravagant fins and the beginnings of rock and roll.
Color of another kind also came into prominence. The country was still largely segregated by the color of the skin. (It was called "race," but as we all know today, race is a social construct of prejudice and not a biological fact.)
In some states the separation was carried out legally and ubiquitously. But in 1954, the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of the schools; the armed forces, it should be noted, had desegregated by President Truman's order in 1946. There was a Civil Rights Act passed in 1958 that made some minor changes, but segregation continued.
What did it mean, in practical terms, to separate people by the color of their skin? There were separate facilities everywhere: white bathrooms and black bathrooms; restaurants for one and another color; separate seats on buses and trams.
This was not so obvious to me in New York, where that sort of segregation was just impractical and, after all, we were in the North. In New York, segregation was largely socioeconomic. African Americans were kept poor through discrimination in education and employment, in addition to housing.
I saw apartheid-type segregation when we moved to Washington, which is south of the Mason-Dixon line, the cultural and legal divide that had once separated slave states and free states. In Washington, as in New York, there was socioeconomic separation. Whites lived in the best neighborhoods, with the best schools and got the best positions.
In addition, I saw in the parks that there were water fountains marked "white" and next to them, other fountains, generally smaller and less well kept, for "colored" (as a child the word struck me as odd: white is a color and, strictly speaking, no one was really white). There were separate seats on the buses (but, interestingly, not on the streetcars).
Taxi drivers, waiters and, in general, service staff, were black. The police were white, as were the bus drivers.
I went to private Catholic schools (and to the French school a year), so I did not see black children in school. There was an amusement park, Glen Echo, to which I loved to go; only years later, when I returned from a long absence abroad, I learned that it had closed because it was segregated: it was a shock to realize I had never noticed there were no black children.
I also saw another type of segregation. At a time when African nations were becoming independent and began to send their first diplomatic delegations to Washington, a hotel we initially stayed in denied them lodging.
The Windsor Park Hotel which is now located in the Kalorama area is the annex building that the original hotel; it was quickly acquired to accommodate African diplomats. The main building eventually became the Chinese embassy and only this year was it demolished.
Despite these problems, the civil rights movement began to pick up momentum in those years and there was a sense that the United States was willing to become a country with a bigger heart. At that moment came a young politician who symbolized breaking another kind of prejudice, John F. Kennedy.
* This is the second of a short series of deliveries that attempt to sketch the contemporary U.S.cultural and social history. I intend to present how the time and place was felt from a personal perspective, and only in the background, the history whose first draft appeared in the newspapers.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
We lived in black and white (1950-57)
I see the 1950s in the United States in black and white, like television back then.
The 1950s of the last century, already half a century away, form a time of cars with rounded chassis and adults wearing clothes that often seemed too large. Clothes that had few colors, or no more color than the average floral wallpaper.
Insofar as I knew, men worked in offices. They wore hats, put on shirt and tie suits, some wore bow ties. They smoked. A pack of Parliament cigarettes evokes my father perfectly.
Women stayed home taking care of the house and the children (me and my companions). American women did not make-up. But all the moms, American or foreign (like mine), made sure we believed that the world was made for children.
We did not know it, but we were part of the U.S. baby boom generation, born between 1946 and 1964. Johnnies returned from war, got married, got scholarships to go to college, moved to the suburbs and, whatever else they did in their bedrooms, they scattered children everywhere. We, the boomers, were made to think that everything was possible.
Among the artifacts I preserved from that time is my favorite childhood book for years, The Golden History of the World by Jane Werner Watson and Cornelius De Witt (published in 1955), subtitled "A Children's Introduction to Ancient and Modern Times". Golden was a children's books brand.
The last chapter "Our World Today, 1950 -" begins as follows:
It is definitely a world in which the child reader (I read it hundreds of times) could think that if there were pharaohs and Napoleons, and wars and miseries and everything in the past ... from here on, with me, a new story full of wonders begins.
In that clean and orderly New York, the New York of John Cheever's early short stories, it was possible to think like this even as an adult. Or so I understood.
It was a happy time for a president, Eisenhower, who had a baby face. He did not inspire much, but did not offend either.
There was dissent, of course.
There were the beat poets, such as Allen Ginsburg, whom my father said he met in a Bohemian bar in Greenwich Village. They were bearded people who said strange things, as incomprehensible to a child as to most ordinary people.
There were also the forerunners of the 1960s music revolution. Elvis then, like the original rockers, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, and so forth. I only knew the classical music that both my parents listened to. Or the popular variety show music, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore and Perry Como.
I also think of those times as the Cold War era. There was nothing more frightening than a Communist. Once, in kindergarten, on a day devoted to talking about the various jobs there were, the nun asked us "What do your Daddies do?"
When I replied "Communist," the school called my mother, who after asking me what I was talking about realized I was confusing the Reds with what my father did. I had meant "economist".
There were many other things in that childlike period in the United States, but I did not notice them.
This is the first of a brief series of deliveries attempting to sketch the contemporary cultural and social history of the United States in my lifetime. It arises from an exchange with a correspondent in France, later a blog for my Spanish-speaking readers. I intend to present how time and place felt; the history whose first draft appeared in the newspapers will only appear in the background, as small details in a panorama shot, somewhere near the horizon.
The 1950s of the last century, already half a century away, form a time of cars with rounded chassis and adults wearing clothes that often seemed too large. Clothes that had few colors, or no more color than the average floral wallpaper.
Insofar as I knew, men worked in offices. They wore hats, put on shirt and tie suits, some wore bow ties. They smoked. A pack of Parliament cigarettes evokes my father perfectly.
Women stayed home taking care of the house and the children (me and my companions). American women did not make-up. But all the moms, American or foreign (like mine), made sure we believed that the world was made for children.
We did not know it, but we were part of the U.S. baby boom generation, born between 1946 and 1964. Johnnies returned from war, got married, got scholarships to go to college, moved to the suburbs and, whatever else they did in their bedrooms, they scattered children everywhere. We, the boomers, were made to think that everything was possible.
Among the artifacts I preserved from that time is my favorite childhood book for years, The Golden History of the World by Jane Werner Watson and Cornelius De Witt (published in 1955), subtitled "A Children's Introduction to Ancient and Modern Times". Golden was a children's books brand.
The last chapter "Our World Today, 1950 -" begins as follows:
"This is a fascinating world to grow in. In our time the magic of fairy tales has come true, we can fly through the air the most comfortably seated house we can turn the world in the time it took in another time to go Paris to London or Boston to New York.You can shop in India, South Africa or Japan and pay for goods by signing our name on a piece of paper we have brought.And in the shops of our own towns goods are brought For us from all countries of the world."
It is definitely a world in which the child reader (I read it hundreds of times) could think that if there were pharaohs and Napoleons, and wars and miseries and everything in the past ... from here on, with me, a new story full of wonders begins.
In that clean and orderly New York, the New York of John Cheever's early short stories, it was possible to think like this even as an adult. Or so I understood.
It was a happy time for a president, Eisenhower, who had a baby face. He did not inspire much, but did not offend either.
There was dissent, of course.
There were the beat poets, such as Allen Ginsburg, whom my father said he met in a Bohemian bar in Greenwich Village. They were bearded people who said strange things, as incomprehensible to a child as to most ordinary people.
There were also the forerunners of the 1960s music revolution. Elvis then, like the original rockers, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and the Comets, and so forth. I only knew the classical music that both my parents listened to. Or the popular variety show music, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Shore and Perry Como.
I also think of those times as the Cold War era. There was nothing more frightening than a Communist. Once, in kindergarten, on a day devoted to talking about the various jobs there were, the nun asked us "What do your Daddies do?"
When I replied "Communist," the school called my mother, who after asking me what I was talking about realized I was confusing the Reds with what my father did. I had meant "economist".
There were many other things in that childlike period in the United States, but I did not notice them.
This is the first of a brief series of deliveries attempting to sketch the contemporary cultural and social history of the United States in my lifetime. It arises from an exchange with a correspondent in France, later a blog for my Spanish-speaking readers. I intend to present how time and place felt; the history whose first draft appeared in the newspapers will only appear in the background, as small details in a panorama shot, somewhere near the horizon.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
How the United States evolved, from 1950 to 2000
Upon turning 65, I am giving a backward look at U.S. sociocultural developments, or the "feel" of the times that I lived, which are now history.
Not long ago, in my Spanish blog I wrote a series of entries on the U.S. in this period for my friends who are less familiar with what it's been like to be here. The next few entries will provide not merely a translation but an adaptation for the North American reader.
Stay tuned.
Not long ago, in my Spanish blog I wrote a series of entries on the U.S. in this period for my friends who are less familiar with what it's been like to be here. The next few entries will provide not merely a translation but an adaptation for the North American reader.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, June 06, 2017
Apocalypse
Three things point to apocalypse in the near future.
First, there is the world of my occupation, journalism (distinct from blogging). I have been reeling ever since May 31, when I heard that the New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role. In my own less august journalism world, things have not been going according to plan either.
This is the kind of gutting of the invisible people who make a well-written, well-researched news medium possible. It happened to The Washington Post several years ago and only the calamity of Trump was temporarily stayed the executioner. The Post was never the Times, but it could be a reliable source of information, sometimes written decently. I explained it in The Information-free Society.
Second, my eye caught a business story in the Post, Why Apple is struggling to become an artificial-intelligence powerhouse, that made the Newtonian apple hit my head. AI explains the socioeconomic future!
Put simply, it is this: the elites, the unknown "they" who have their hands at the levers of society and the economy like the Oz wizard, behind the curtain of government, have decided to decimate the population. There are too many people, they fight too much, they want wages and rights and all sorts of things humans want but can't all have. Solution: starve 80 percent of humanity and leave a thin layer of highly educated people who can live off the goods and services produced by AI. (I would hope that me and mine are among the privileged 20 percent, but I can't be sure.)
Third, there's climate change. No further explanation is needed.
This may reflect the realization of my own personal apocalypse, as I approach my 65th birthday, but I honestly just don't see a better future.
First, there is the world of my occupation, journalism (distinct from blogging). I have been reeling ever since May 31, when I heard that the New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role. In my own less august journalism world, things have not been going according to plan either.
This is the kind of gutting of the invisible people who make a well-written, well-researched news medium possible. It happened to The Washington Post several years ago and only the calamity of Trump was temporarily stayed the executioner. The Post was never the Times, but it could be a reliable source of information, sometimes written decently. I explained it in The Information-free Society.
Second, my eye caught a business story in the Post, Why Apple is struggling to become an artificial-intelligence powerhouse, that made the Newtonian apple hit my head. AI explains the socioeconomic future!
Put simply, it is this: the elites, the unknown "they" who have their hands at the levers of society and the economy like the Oz wizard, behind the curtain of government, have decided to decimate the population. There are too many people, they fight too much, they want wages and rights and all sorts of things humans want but can't all have. Solution: starve 80 percent of humanity and leave a thin layer of highly educated people who can live off the goods and services produced by AI. (I would hope that me and mine are among the privileged 20 percent, but I can't be sure.)
Third, there's climate change. No further explanation is needed.
This may reflect the realization of my own personal apocalypse, as I approach my 65th birthday, but I honestly just don't see a better future.
Monday, May 29, 2017
The Dead are not heroes, they're victims
Once again we come to Memorial Day and its orgy of militarism and the propaganda schmaltz. What else do you call "honoring" the dead, essentially people ordered to go get killed for the profits of the war making machine?
Make no mistake about it. They didn't die for our relative "freedoms" (we are no notably freer than Britain or France or Sweden). No soldier dead since World War II gained us any. They died for Boeing and Grumman and Lockheed.
Still, they keep sending Johnny marching off to kill and be killed. It's time to stop.
Here are some of my posts from other occasions on this subject:
Make no mistake about it. They didn't die for our relative "freedoms" (we are no notably freer than Britain or France or Sweden). No soldier dead since World War II gained us any. They died for Boeing and Grumman and Lockheed.
Still, they keep sending Johnny marching off to kill and be killed. It's time to stop.
Here are some of my posts from other occasions on this subject:
A Greatful Nation
Dulce et Decorum Est
War is the fault of all the soldiers who wage it
Let's not forget: Osama had a point
Defying militarism
Let's stop, please. Let's honor people by staying out of war and stop bombing countries with which we are not at war.
Dulce et Decorum Est
War is the fault of all the soldiers who wage it
Let's not forget: Osama had a point
Defying militarism
Let's stop, please. Let's honor people by staying out of war and stop bombing countries with which we are not at war.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Rot In Hell: Roger Ailes
I hereby resurrect the Rot In Hell Awards I started in 2006 for rapscallions who die, lest others attempt the rehabilitation of their reputations.
In the case of Ailes, his life is so filled with travesty that the challenge is to find something mildly neutral to say about him. Even The New York Times can't do better than republish a statement from his wife about him being a "living husband" (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!).
Strike 1: he was rich.
Strike 2: he was a conservative propagandist of the most loathesome kind, a facilitator of faux news (the news part of the Fox network) before even someone like Donald Trump gave a name to it.
Strike 3: he abused women who worked for him.
Y'er out!
In the case of Ailes, his life is so filled with travesty that the challenge is to find something mildly neutral to say about him. Even The New York Times can't do better than republish a statement from his wife about him being a "living husband" (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!).
Strike 1: he was rich.
Strike 2: he was a conservative propagandist of the most loathesome kind, a facilitator of faux news (the news part of the Fox network) before even someone like Donald Trump gave a name to it.
Strike 3: he abused women who worked for him.
Y'er out!
Monday, February 06, 2017
What Trump Is Probably Hiding
Donald J. Trump is probably not a billionaire if you subtract his
debts from his assets, that is why he is hiding his tax return. He has a
smaller wallet than he would like everyone to think; almost certainly
he didn't add to what he inherited.
He probably coasted, at best, on what used to be called "gentleman's Cs" in the fancy schools he attended. He got in mostly because his father had money.
He has enough money that he could buy sex anywhere, hence his claim to have better sex than anyone else. But I bet he's not a particularly good performer in bed. Why brag about it otherwise?
As for business, he has been in the easiest, least productive sector of the economy that there is: real estate. Let's face it, land just sits there. It contributes nothing to a society to put one more ugly chrome and glass structure on it. It doesn't help the average consumer do anything.
He doesn't have to hide that he is rude, crude, dishonest and basically selfish. That is perfectly in evidence. As is that he has never opened the Bible for more than appearance's sake -- such as at the inauguration.
Which reminds me, he probably hides most of all that he is not interested in the job of president, at least not as the official described in the Constitution. He would like to be CEO of the United States, but CEOs are neither elected nor particularly accountable to anyone; it's not what the Constitution prescribes.
He probably coasted, at best, on what used to be called "gentleman's Cs" in the fancy schools he attended. He got in mostly because his father had money.
He has enough money that he could buy sex anywhere, hence his claim to have better sex than anyone else. But I bet he's not a particularly good performer in bed. Why brag about it otherwise?
As for business, he has been in the easiest, least productive sector of the economy that there is: real estate. Let's face it, land just sits there. It contributes nothing to a society to put one more ugly chrome and glass structure on it. It doesn't help the average consumer do anything.
He doesn't have to hide that he is rude, crude, dishonest and basically selfish. That is perfectly in evidence. As is that he has never opened the Bible for more than appearance's sake -- such as at the inauguration.
Which reminds me, he probably hides most of all that he is not interested in the job of president, at least not as the official described in the Constitution. He would like to be CEO of the United States, but CEOs are neither elected nor particularly accountable to anyone; it's not what the Constitution prescribes.
Friday, December 16, 2016
Does Greek Mythology rhyme, echo, or retell with the stories of the Bible?
Not directly. The sources of Greek mythology did not have direct contact with the sources of biblical writings, and vice versa, in any way that would make borrowing likely or even plausible.
There are, however, archetypal ideas found in different forms in every set of writings about the very basic human concerns. We all are concerned with right, wrong, life, after life, etc.
The view that the Bible is "actual reality" is hugely off base. The Bible has a lot of mythology.
The creation story is not factual, nor is the Flood. No one can verify that Moses existed or that the Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt, much less wandered in the desert. Some of the historical books bear a passing resemblance to verifiable history, but could hardly be called actual history. We know precious little about the person of one Jesus of Nazareth, somewhat more about some of his followers, but not much.
These are just a few of the many ways in which the Bible is a mythological anthology, much of it not even written down by its original sources.
The Bible, however, is not about facts but faith. As Greek mythology was.
Mythology is not a collection of falsehoods, as some believe, but rather a literary form of telling foundational stories.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
There are, however, archetypal ideas found in different forms in every set of writings about the very basic human concerns. We all are concerned with right, wrong, life, after life, etc.
The view that the Bible is "actual reality" is hugely off base. The Bible has a lot of mythology.
The creation story is not factual, nor is the Flood. No one can verify that Moses existed or that the Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt, much less wandered in the desert. Some of the historical books bear a passing resemblance to verifiable history, but could hardly be called actual history. We know precious little about the person of one Jesus of Nazareth, somewhat more about some of his followers, but not much.
These are just a few of the many ways in which the Bible is a mythological anthology, much of it not even written down by its original sources.
The Bible, however, is not about facts but faith. As Greek mythology was.
Mythology is not a collection of falsehoods, as some believe, but rather a literary form of telling foundational stories.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Why do Catholics revere Mary (mother of Jesus) more than other Christians?
Strictly speaking, Catholics revere or respect Mary on a par with Orthodox Christians, but somewhat more than most Protestants, who do not believe in invoking saints for intercession (to speak on one's behalf to God). Thus the broad and larger trunks of Christianity consider Mary special, with Protestants the minority exception.
Why? A variety of reasons.
First, there's the respect for the mother of Jesus, which was surely why John the apostle took her to live with him. Second, there's looking at Mary as an example of obedience to God, shown in Luke's narrative of when the birth of Jesus was announced to her. Third, there's the view that thanks to Mary we have Jesus, which has given to various theological titles of Mary, some resulting in a bit of symbolic "inflation," but nonetheless in some respects, reasonable.
People who study popular piety, which is how the theologically untutored devotion to saints and to Mary is called, agree that there are psychosocial factors, as well. Jesus is a powerful male figure. Mary seems more approachable and her story is one of being an ordinary person caught up in a major story, like most of us.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Why? A variety of reasons.
First, there's the respect for the mother of Jesus, which was surely why John the apostle took her to live with him. Second, there's looking at Mary as an example of obedience to God, shown in Luke's narrative of when the birth of Jesus was announced to her. Third, there's the view that thanks to Mary we have Jesus, which has given to various theological titles of Mary, some resulting in a bit of symbolic "inflation," but nonetheless in some respects, reasonable.
People who study popular piety, which is how the theologically untutored devotion to saints and to Mary is called, agree that there are psychosocial factors, as well. Jesus is a powerful male figure. Mary seems more approachable and her story is one of being an ordinary person caught up in a major story, like most of us.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Monday, December 12, 2016
What are the main differences between Catholicism and Protestantism?
The principal difference is epistemological, meaning where and how the teachings of the Christian faith are revealed and how they may be legitimately applied and developed. Otherwise, there are superficial differences in church organization and worship and some semantic arguments that when you drill down in a peaceful and amicable way amount to very little.
Catholic epistemology holds that truth is revealed by God and entrusted through the apostles to the Church under a pope going back to St. Peter, out of which sprung the Bible (with 73 books, per the Council of Trent), theology, seven sacraments, etc. Protestant epistemology holds that divine revelation is confined to the 66 biblical books that Martin Luther approved of, subject to the interpretation of the individual good faith Christian; the Protestant consensus is that the Bible justifies only two sacraments and theologies vary widely.
Traditionally, almost all Protestant denominations hold to some version of Luther's three solas (sola scriptura, sola gratia, and sola fide, meaning only scripture, only grace, only faith). These were thought to divide Catholics and Protestants, but as the heat of controversies simmered down, it seems that the theological meaning and significance of scripture, grace and faith are really very similar. Catholics and Protestants both acknowledge that the Bible is a central touchstone of Christian teachings. Similarly, Catholics and Protestants both believe that salvation comes as a gift (gratia) from God through Christ. Finally, Catholics and Protestants both believe that faith is what allows believers to receive the benefits of the salvation work of Christ.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Catholic epistemology holds that truth is revealed by God and entrusted through the apostles to the Church under a pope going back to St. Peter, out of which sprung the Bible (with 73 books, per the Council of Trent), theology, seven sacraments, etc. Protestant epistemology holds that divine revelation is confined to the 66 biblical books that Martin Luther approved of, subject to the interpretation of the individual good faith Christian; the Protestant consensus is that the Bible justifies only two sacraments and theologies vary widely.
Traditionally, almost all Protestant denominations hold to some version of Luther's three solas (sola scriptura, sola gratia, and sola fide, meaning only scripture, only grace, only faith). These were thought to divide Catholics and Protestants, but as the heat of controversies simmered down, it seems that the theological meaning and significance of scripture, grace and faith are really very similar. Catholics and Protestants both acknowledge that the Bible is a central touchstone of Christian teachings. Similarly, Catholics and Protestants both believe that salvation comes as a gift (gratia) from God through Christ. Finally, Catholics and Protestants both believe that faith is what allows believers to receive the benefits of the salvation work of Christ.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Fidel and I
Towards the middle of April 1959, when I was still an elementary schoolboy, I had a chance meeting with a personage who has just died. Many years later that person still affected the world. It happened more or less like this.
At that time, my father served as a diplomat in Washington, D.C., sent by the government of President Arturo Frondizi of Argentina.
Given my age I was not told too much about my father's work. It was, as always, something to do with economics. My father had taught me the law of supply and demand and, in a children's history book, I had read something about a certain Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin who had caused a stir in the world of adults.
We were all in the middle of a Cold War with the Soviet Union, with the possibility of nuclear war. All this was very complicated, interesting and frightening at the same time.
Years before in New York, where I was born, I had startled the nuns in my school the day the teacher asked us what our Daddies did, as part of a lesson on the idea of working, and I replied "he's a Communist." My mother asked me about it and managed to make out that I had meant "economist." At my age the two words were very similar. My father was not a Communist, not by long shot.
But that was before the episode about which I write, which was in 1959, months after the triumph of the Cuban insurrection led by Fidel Castro (and, curiously enough, equipped by no less than the Central Intelligence Agency). In April, Fidel came to Washington for 11 days to meet with officials, but also to visit the capital.
It should be understood that in April 1959 Fidel Castro was not known as a Communist. He was a hero to almost everyone. Richard Nixon, who had debated with Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR, pronounced him "almost naive in ideological matters" after interviewing him.
Fidel had overthrown a dictator, one those of the 1940s and 1950s in Latin America. The dictator had been one of those more or less demagogic leaders, megalomaniacs, who censored the press and barred criticism, ideologically eclectic, some accomplishing socioeconomic improvements and some not. Getulio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina, Marcos Pérez Jiménez of Venzuela, the three Somozas of the dynastic dictatorship in Nicaragua, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, François Duvalier of Haiti and, of course, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba.
At that time, my family was looking for a house and meanwhile we were staying in a hotel where many diplomats and foreign groups came. I was a multilingual kid who talked to everyone and I met a group of young Cubans, young men and women in their 20s, who adopted me as their mascot and invited me everywhere.
Fidel arrived in the city and my Cuban friends were ecstatic, telling me that they were going to go in the caravan of cars that would accompany the new Cuban president to visit George Washington's home in Mount Vernon, Va., about an hour from Washington.
I got caught up in the excitement and ran with one of them to beg my mom for permission to go with them. My mother had doubts but I convinced her. The day arrived and she made me put on a suit, used gel on my hair to make it stiff as a rock, and I left, riding on the hood of a convertible like parade model, my feet held to the back seat by two of my Cuban friends.
We arrived at Mount Vernon and after waiting in line I found myself in front of a bearded man who seemed to me very tall. I told him what my mother had told me, that my parents and grandparents extended the congratulations of Argentina. He told me something else that I don't remember and urged me to tell him something of what I thought.
And then my request came out: "I would like a uniform like yours."
He smiled, told some of the men around him to take my information and send me a uniform. I was happy. Fidel Castro would send me another outfit to play in, along with my cowboy clothes and my civil war soldier and baseball uniforms.
My family did not have much occasion to receive the uniform. Meanwhile, my father became an advisor to Frondizi in the Pink House, Argentina's version of the White House. In that position he participated in a private meeting with Che Guevara, the latter in his capacity as Minister of Industry of the Republic of Cuba, and in a more protocolary encounter with Fidel Castro in Punta del Este, Uruguay. No one told me, still a boy, what was said in such high level gatherings.
Years later, around 1990 I found myself, as spokesman for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, making the case on television for ending the useless economic blockade of Cuba, a reality that has not yet come to pass, despite the resumption of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.
From my point of view, Fidel was less nefarious than those who hate him say, but also less spectacular than those who adore him think.
Undoubtedly, as Brazilian economist Celso Furtado explained, Cuba's socio-economic success in eliminating the extreme poverty that still afflicts much larger Latin American countries is an example that should inspire shame in all the governments of the continent. On the other hand, there should be some way to achieve similar achievements without a Stalinist regime.
Today, as news of Fidel's death reached me, I have different complaint: he never sent me the Cuban guerrilla uniform I had asked for!
At that time, my father served as a diplomat in Washington, D.C., sent by the government of President Arturo Frondizi of Argentina.
Given my age I was not told too much about my father's work. It was, as always, something to do with economics. My father had taught me the law of supply and demand and, in a children's history book, I had read something about a certain Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin who had caused a stir in the world of adults.
We were all in the middle of a Cold War with the Soviet Union, with the possibility of nuclear war. All this was very complicated, interesting and frightening at the same time.
Years before in New York, where I was born, I had startled the nuns in my school the day the teacher asked us what our Daddies did, as part of a lesson on the idea of working, and I replied "he's a Communist." My mother asked me about it and managed to make out that I had meant "economist." At my age the two words were very similar. My father was not a Communist, not by long shot.
But that was before the episode about which I write, which was in 1959, months after the triumph of the Cuban insurrection led by Fidel Castro (and, curiously enough, equipped by no less than the Central Intelligence Agency). In April, Fidel came to Washington for 11 days to meet with officials, but also to visit the capital.
It should be understood that in April 1959 Fidel Castro was not known as a Communist. He was a hero to almost everyone. Richard Nixon, who had debated with Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR, pronounced him "almost naive in ideological matters" after interviewing him.
Fidel had overthrown a dictator, one those of the 1940s and 1950s in Latin America. The dictator had been one of those more or less demagogic leaders, megalomaniacs, who censored the press and barred criticism, ideologically eclectic, some accomplishing socioeconomic improvements and some not. Getulio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina, Marcos Pérez Jiménez of Venzuela, the three Somozas of the dynastic dictatorship in Nicaragua, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, François Duvalier of Haiti and, of course, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba.
At that time, my family was looking for a house and meanwhile we were staying in a hotel where many diplomats and foreign groups came. I was a multilingual kid who talked to everyone and I met a group of young Cubans, young men and women in their 20s, who adopted me as their mascot and invited me everywhere.
Fidel arrived in the city and my Cuban friends were ecstatic, telling me that they were going to go in the caravan of cars that would accompany the new Cuban president to visit George Washington's home in Mount Vernon, Va., about an hour from Washington.
I got caught up in the excitement and ran with one of them to beg my mom for permission to go with them. My mother had doubts but I convinced her. The day arrived and she made me put on a suit, used gel on my hair to make it stiff as a rock, and I left, riding on the hood of a convertible like parade model, my feet held to the back seat by two of my Cuban friends.
We arrived at Mount Vernon and after waiting in line I found myself in front of a bearded man who seemed to me very tall. I told him what my mother had told me, that my parents and grandparents extended the congratulations of Argentina. He told me something else that I don't remember and urged me to tell him something of what I thought.
And then my request came out: "I would like a uniform like yours."
He smiled, told some of the men around him to take my information and send me a uniform. I was happy. Fidel Castro would send me another outfit to play in, along with my cowboy clothes and my civil war soldier and baseball uniforms.
My family did not have much occasion to receive the uniform. Meanwhile, my father became an advisor to Frondizi in the Pink House, Argentina's version of the White House. In that position he participated in a private meeting with Che Guevara, the latter in his capacity as Minister of Industry of the Republic of Cuba, and in a more protocolary encounter with Fidel Castro in Punta del Este, Uruguay. No one told me, still a boy, what was said in such high level gatherings.
Years later, around 1990 I found myself, as spokesman for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, making the case on television for ending the useless economic blockade of Cuba, a reality that has not yet come to pass, despite the resumption of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.
From my point of view, Fidel was less nefarious than those who hate him say, but also less spectacular than those who adore him think.
Undoubtedly, as Brazilian economist Celso Furtado explained, Cuba's socio-economic success in eliminating the extreme poverty that still afflicts much larger Latin American countries is an example that should inspire shame in all the governments of the continent. On the other hand, there should be some way to achieve similar achievements without a Stalinist regime.
Today, as news of Fidel's death reached me, I have different complaint: he never sent me the Cuban guerrilla uniform I had asked for!
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for Tomorrow We Die
The title phrase draws from a letter of Paul of Tarsus to the Corinthians that uses the phrase ironically, yet it expresses perfectly what the Trump era promises to the physical environment. Go ahead and buy yourself an a SUV, not only has climate change been way past stopping for a decade, but now Trump's malign neglect will speed up and worsen its effects.
The full quote is: "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what is the gain to me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die." In other words, if you don't believe in God, Christ, salvation or an afterlife, don't waste your time trying to be upright.
Donald of New York might have written to those two guys from Corinth, of whom he seems to have been fond, something like: go grab yourself some pussy and, oh, yes, some beer.
Bring it on!
Let's turn on all the lights, burn all the gasoline we can, buy all the furs we can afford, run all the air conditioners we want, throw away all the plastics we can think of ... the planet is doomed.
Before Trump the first serious effects of climate change were due by 2050 -- a date likely to be after my death. Now, with a little help from me, I can live to see it. Hurrah!
The full quote is: "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what is the gain to me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die." In other words, if you don't believe in God, Christ, salvation or an afterlife, don't waste your time trying to be upright.
Donald of New York might have written to those two guys from Corinth, of whom he seems to have been fond, something like: go grab yourself some pussy and, oh, yes, some beer.
Bring it on!
Let's turn on all the lights, burn all the gasoline we can, buy all the furs we can afford, run all the air conditioners we want, throw away all the plastics we can think of ... the planet is doomed.
Before Trump the first serious effects of climate change were due by 2050 -- a date likely to be after my death. Now, with a little help from me, I can live to see it. Hurrah!
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Amerikkka has taken off its mask
For Hispanics, who watched Barack Obama deport about twice as many people as George W. Bush, this is refreshing. Turns out the United States was always about white, not so white and black. The white liberals and the dog-whistling conservatives aren't that much different if you're not a non-Hispanic white.
Trump is no dog whistler. Trump has made clear he will encourage the hate. At last an honest man, Dionysus!
Sadly, I have to accept that the country I have loved and hoped in doesn't want me and never wanted me.
My real name is Cecilio José Morales. Do you think I call myself Cecilieaux Bois de Murier because I want to be French? The French are a nation of sissies who never saw German to whom they couldn't surrender.
No. I am Cecilieaux Bois de Murier because I have been told repeatedly online, by idiots with losing arguments that they would have me deported. My words were just Spic talk when said by Cecilio Morales.
Right. Deport me to New York City, where I was born.
Trump is no dog whistler. Trump has made clear he will encourage the hate. At last an honest man, Dionysus!
Sadly, I have to accept that the country I have loved and hoped in doesn't want me and never wanted me.
My real name is Cecilio José Morales. Do you think I call myself Cecilieaux Bois de Murier because I want to be French? The French are a nation of sissies who never saw German to whom they couldn't surrender.
No. I am Cecilieaux Bois de Murier because I have been told repeatedly online, by idiots with losing arguments that they would have me deported. My words were just Spic talk when said by Cecilio Morales.
Right. Deport me to New York City, where I was born.
Monday, October 17, 2016
What are valid arguments supporting discrimination against the unemployed?
To discriminate is to evaluate someone based on characteristics other than merit; sometimes it involves acting on that assessment.
In actual fact, unemployed people experience many kinds of discrimination. There is ample evidence, for example, that it is easier to find a job when you already have one. This is largely because to potential employers someone who is employed is already demonstrating some basic minimum traits (showing up at work, behaving reasonably in a workplace, keeping up some level of productive behavior, etc.).
However, it would not be logical to assume that every person who is unemployed does not possess similar traits, only that the traits are only not evident in the present. Nonetheless, the bias exists among employers.
Some even argue that the longer a worker stays out of work, the more their skills degrade—for example, the jobless often do not gain exposure to the latest techniques in certain fields or through lack of practice they lose proficiency. This is debatable. Certainly, it cannot be applied reasonably to everyone on a blanket basis.
At this writing in mid-2016, in most of the United States to act in the labor market on the basis of biases such as I have presented is not illegal, although it is neither kind nor fair nor, in many cases, sensible. In my view, it is not valid to refuse to hire people on the basis that they are unemployed.
There are other conclusions, however, that may be validly drawn from unemployment.
People without jobs are not likely good risks for a bank loan, unless they can show unearned income. Unemployed people are not likely to be paying taxes, they are likely to suffer from unemployment psychologically and require help. Some studies show that people who lose their jobs during great economic crises tend to have lower future incomes and life expectancy. It would be valid to make some decisions on the basis of these effects of unemployment and take actions that might discriminate, sometimes for the good of the jobless person.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions are not mine.
In actual fact, unemployed people experience many kinds of discrimination. There is ample evidence, for example, that it is easier to find a job when you already have one. This is largely because to potential employers someone who is employed is already demonstrating some basic minimum traits (showing up at work, behaving reasonably in a workplace, keeping up some level of productive behavior, etc.).
However, it would not be logical to assume that every person who is unemployed does not possess similar traits, only that the traits are only not evident in the present. Nonetheless, the bias exists among employers.
Some even argue that the longer a worker stays out of work, the more their skills degrade—for example, the jobless often do not gain exposure to the latest techniques in certain fields or through lack of practice they lose proficiency. This is debatable. Certainly, it cannot be applied reasonably to everyone on a blanket basis.
At this writing in mid-2016, in most of the United States to act in the labor market on the basis of biases such as I have presented is not illegal, although it is neither kind nor fair nor, in many cases, sensible. In my view, it is not valid to refuse to hire people on the basis that they are unemployed.
There are other conclusions, however, that may be validly drawn from unemployment.
People without jobs are not likely good risks for a bank loan, unless they can show unearned income. Unemployed people are not likely to be paying taxes, they are likely to suffer from unemployment psychologically and require help. Some studies show that people who lose their jobs during great economic crises tend to have lower future incomes and life expectancy. It would be valid to make some decisions on the basis of these effects of unemployment and take actions that might discriminate, sometimes for the good of the jobless person.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions are not mine.
Friday, October 14, 2016
Why is it not possible to eliminate world poverty?
Conceptually, poverty cannot be eliminated because being poor means being the person(s) with the least money and resources. Someone will always be richest and someone poorest unless some way is found for everyone to own and have income that is exactly identical.
However, poverty as a condition in which essential needs such as food, clothing and shelter are unmet, can in theory be eliminated. For the past 100 years or so humanity has possessed the means to produce enough food, clothing and shelter for everyone, whereas in the past the lack of industrial machinery might have prevented this and genuine shortages existed.
What is lacking is the political will, the collective disposition of most people and most societies to make an earnest effort to make sure these become available to all. This could change. The fact that the United Nations Millennium goal to eliminate extreme poverty is slowly being met shows much more can be done. What cannot be done is eliminate poverty and keep societies that have excess luxury intact.
Also, a much more difficult way to eradicate poverty involves providing everyone the access to education and employment sufficient to help them become self-sustaining. This is a much more complex problem.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
However, poverty as a condition in which essential needs such as food, clothing and shelter are unmet, can in theory be eliminated. For the past 100 years or so humanity has possessed the means to produce enough food, clothing and shelter for everyone, whereas in the past the lack of industrial machinery might have prevented this and genuine shortages existed.
What is lacking is the political will, the collective disposition of most people and most societies to make an earnest effort to make sure these become available to all. This could change. The fact that the United Nations Millennium goal to eliminate extreme poverty is slowly being met shows much more can be done. What cannot be done is eliminate poverty and keep societies that have excess luxury intact.
Also, a much more difficult way to eradicate poverty involves providing everyone the access to education and employment sufficient to help them become self-sustaining. This is a much more complex problem.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The anti-Columbus fashion is a matter of bias fed by lies
Christopher Columbus was not a saint and, despite his first name (which means Christ-bearer), was likely a Marrano (or secret) Jew. Moreover, the first European ever recorded as having set foot in the New World was openly Jewish, a man named Luis de Torres, who spoke Hebrew to the Americans he met on October 12, 1492.
If this startles you, it is because the reality of what happened that fateful day and in the years that followed has been obscured by historical propaganda.
The version prevalent in the English-speaking world is that cruel, lazy and papist Spaniards landed in the Caribbean driven by a lust for gold, a crazed desire for spilling blood and enslavement of natives and an unquenchable urge to rape their women. The republics were doomed to fail given their rampant “miscegenation” and collapse into neofeudal sloth. Britain and later the United States were duty bound, the story went, to exploit these people for the good of the continent, bringing democracy and free trade.
This overlooks several uncomfortable facts.
Information about Spanish wrongdoing during the early colonization is not a new discovery by liberal left-wing U.S. academics, or even by American Indian activists. The facts come from the written advocacy on behalf of natives by Spanish Catholic priests, including the first one ordained in the New World, going back 500 years.
Little is said by the outraged garment-rending followers of anti-Columbus fashion about British atrocities against American Indians, Irish, Indians from India, Africans and so on. This includes the first recorded use of germ warfare, when British commanding generals ordered, sanctioned, paid for and conducted the use of smallpox against Native Americans during the French and Indian War. Where were the Protestant clerics demanding that such practices be put to an end?
This is to say nothing of the introduction of the kidnapping of Africans into slavery in the New World, a wholly British and Portuguese business. Today, every single former British colony, including the United States, has an ethnic or racial fissure at the core of its society. Ever wonder why?
Of course, there is a Spanish-speaking-world version of historical propaganda about the colonization of America, with other distortions.
According to the traditional Spanish and Ibero-American story, valiant and devout Spanish military men and missionaries brought civilization and Christianity to savage Indians, installing societies in which all were respected according to their ordained station. Notably, these societies included an intermingling of Spanish, American natives and Africans that today offers a rich palette of skin hues in that part of the world. The venture was disrupted by British pirates’ attack on Spanish shipping and their agents’ promotion of discontent among the local elite.
In a relatively new and revisionist rendering since the 1970s—which adopts some of what traditionally was called the British “black legend” about the Spanish colonies—the Ibero-American story adds that the former colonies of Spain and Portugal became neofeudal estates thanks to a deliberate British campaign to develop a neocolonial regime of subservient banana republics. Once the British Empire faded, the United States stepped in as colonial master.
Supposedly enlightened U.S. Americans are coming to the game a little late—as are the Ibero-American children and grandchildren of more recent immigrants who had little to do with colonization. It’s easy to see wrongdoing in past generations of unrelated foreigners.
The much harder task is to reevaluate history with fresh eyes that take into account what people born before our time could not have known or understood.
For example, the term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin in his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It means to kill a tribe, from the Greek genos (race, kind). Columbus would not have known what anyone bringing up such a charge even meant.
All conquest in history, even in 21st century Syria and Ukraine, has involved some vile and repulsive violence against the civilian population, often enough chosen as victims simply because of their kind.
Columbus was not leading a scientific expedition out for a picnic. He was leading an expedition to get access to Asian goods that could be sold in Europe. He had investors to repay, because contrary to legend the Catholic monarchs did not finance the venture, but rather a consortium headed by two conversos like Columbus: Luis de Santangel, Spain’s chancellor of the royal household, and Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of Aragon.
In researching this post, I found a fanciful explanation that adds another viewpoint, published in an October 14, 2013, Times of Israel blog by Simcha Jacobovici, a Canadian-Israeli filmmaker and journalist.
Jacobovici points out that Columbus left the port of Palos on August 3, 1492, which to him is the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av, “the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, the day that both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed.” It was also the deadline for Jews in Spain to convert or leave.
Alongside Columbus’ ships was a veritable flotilla carrying Jews. Indeed, at least four Jews were on Columbus’ crew, in addition to Luis de Torres: Marco, the surgeon; Maestre Bernal, the physician; Alonso de la Calle, a bursar; and Rodrigo de Sanchez of Segovia, who was related to the Aragon treasurer.
Then Jacobovici drops his bomb:
Whatever Columbus was looking for, he accidentally chanced on something else.
There was no established protocol on what to do when you find lands you didn’t even know existed, inhabited by peoples with warfare technology vastly inferior to your own. The precedent, from the most ancient history, offered one clear example: conquer them.
If this startles you, it is because the reality of what happened that fateful day and in the years that followed has been obscured by historical propaganda.
The version prevalent in the English-speaking world is that cruel, lazy and papist Spaniards landed in the Caribbean driven by a lust for gold, a crazed desire for spilling blood and enslavement of natives and an unquenchable urge to rape their women. The republics were doomed to fail given their rampant “miscegenation” and collapse into neofeudal sloth. Britain and later the United States were duty bound, the story went, to exploit these people for the good of the continent, bringing democracy and free trade.
This overlooks several uncomfortable facts.
Information about Spanish wrongdoing during the early colonization is not a new discovery by liberal left-wing U.S. academics, or even by American Indian activists. The facts come from the written advocacy on behalf of natives by Spanish Catholic priests, including the first one ordained in the New World, going back 500 years.
Little is said by the outraged garment-rending followers of anti-Columbus fashion about British atrocities against American Indians, Irish, Indians from India, Africans and so on. This includes the first recorded use of germ warfare, when British commanding generals ordered, sanctioned, paid for and conducted the use of smallpox against Native Americans during the French and Indian War. Where were the Protestant clerics demanding that such practices be put to an end?
This is to say nothing of the introduction of the kidnapping of Africans into slavery in the New World, a wholly British and Portuguese business. Today, every single former British colony, including the United States, has an ethnic or racial fissure at the core of its society. Ever wonder why?
Of course, there is a Spanish-speaking-world version of historical propaganda about the colonization of America, with other distortions.
According to the traditional Spanish and Ibero-American story, valiant and devout Spanish military men and missionaries brought civilization and Christianity to savage Indians, installing societies in which all were respected according to their ordained station. Notably, these societies included an intermingling of Spanish, American natives and Africans that today offers a rich palette of skin hues in that part of the world. The venture was disrupted by British pirates’ attack on Spanish shipping and their agents’ promotion of discontent among the local elite.
In a relatively new and revisionist rendering since the 1970s—which adopts some of what traditionally was called the British “black legend” about the Spanish colonies—the Ibero-American story adds that the former colonies of Spain and Portugal became neofeudal estates thanks to a deliberate British campaign to develop a neocolonial regime of subservient banana republics. Once the British Empire faded, the United States stepped in as colonial master.
Supposedly enlightened U.S. Americans are coming to the game a little late—as are the Ibero-American children and grandchildren of more recent immigrants who had little to do with colonization. It’s easy to see wrongdoing in past generations of unrelated foreigners.
The much harder task is to reevaluate history with fresh eyes that take into account what people born before our time could not have known or understood.
For example, the term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin in his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It means to kill a tribe, from the Greek genos (race, kind). Columbus would not have known what anyone bringing up such a charge even meant.
All conquest in history, even in 21st century Syria and Ukraine, has involved some vile and repulsive violence against the civilian population, often enough chosen as victims simply because of their kind.
Columbus was not leading a scientific expedition out for a picnic. He was leading an expedition to get access to Asian goods that could be sold in Europe. He had investors to repay, because contrary to legend the Catholic monarchs did not finance the venture, but rather a consortium headed by two conversos like Columbus: Luis de Santangel, Spain’s chancellor of the royal household, and Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of Aragon.
In researching this post, I found a fanciful explanation that adds another viewpoint, published in an October 14, 2013, Times of Israel blog by Simcha Jacobovici, a Canadian-Israeli filmmaker and journalist.
Jacobovici points out that Columbus left the port of Palos on August 3, 1492, which to him is the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av, “the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, the day that both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed.” It was also the deadline for Jews in Spain to convert or leave.
Alongside Columbus’ ships was a veritable flotilla carrying Jews. Indeed, at least four Jews were on Columbus’ crew, in addition to Luis de Torres: Marco, the surgeon; Maestre Bernal, the physician; Alonso de la Calle, a bursar; and Rodrigo de Sanchez of Segovia, who was related to the Aragon treasurer.
Then Jacobovici drops his bomb:
Why would Columbus take a Hebrew speaker with him on a voyage to the New World? Because, according to Simon Wiesenthal in his book Sails of Hope, Columbus wasn’t looking for India. Rather, his secret mission was to find the lost tribes of Israel.Whether this is true is irrelevant. There is some evidence that the delay in the Canary Islands, apart from having to do with the Great Navigator’s affair with a widow whose house in Las Palmas still stands (I visited it), was related to negotiations involving Jews and the Spanish authorities.
Whatever Columbus was looking for, he accidentally chanced on something else.
There was no established protocol on what to do when you find lands you didn’t even know existed, inhabited by peoples with warfare technology vastly inferior to your own. The precedent, from the most ancient history, offered one clear example: conquer them.
Monday, October 10, 2016
What do people mean when they refer to Republicans and Democrats?
There are technically more than two political parties, but only two get the attention and the money to win elections from time to time.
The Democratic Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson. For a long time after the Civil War it was a predominantly Southern party, until Franklin D. Roosevelt refashioned it into a coalition of groups that benefited from measures to combat the Great Depression in the 1930s. That is when the Democrats first became liberal-leaning and favoring labor unions and worker rights, later civil rights.
The Republican Party was founded by Abraham Lincoln. It arose out of many of the issues that gave rise to the Civil War and was supported mostly by the Northeastern elites made rich by industrialization. For much of the second half of the 19th century it was a majority party thanks to that support (and the exclusion of many groups from voting). The FDR coalition, which fell apart in 1968, turned it into a minority party until the 1980s. The Grand Old Party, as it was called long ago, reversed its fortunes primarily by attracting the votes of white
Southerners who never forgave the Democratic Party for supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended legal segregation.
At present, the long-term demographics are working in favor of a future Democratic majority, as non-Hispanic whites are rapidly becoming a minority (Anglo-Saxon whites already are), but the plutocracy may find a way to corrupt the political process and keep the Republicans in play.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
The Democratic Party was founded by Thomas Jefferson. For a long time after the Civil War it was a predominantly Southern party, until Franklin D. Roosevelt refashioned it into a coalition of groups that benefited from measures to combat the Great Depression in the 1930s. That is when the Democrats first became liberal-leaning and favoring labor unions and worker rights, later civil rights.
The Republican Party was founded by Abraham Lincoln. It arose out of many of the issues that gave rise to the Civil War and was supported mostly by the Northeastern elites made rich by industrialization. For much of the second half of the 19th century it was a majority party thanks to that support (and the exclusion of many groups from voting). The FDR coalition, which fell apart in 1968, turned it into a minority party until the 1980s. The Grand Old Party, as it was called long ago, reversed its fortunes primarily by attracting the votes of white
Southerners who never forgave the Democratic Party for supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended legal segregation.
At present, the long-term demographics are working in favor of a future Democratic majority, as non-Hispanic whites are rapidly becoming a minority (Anglo-Saxon whites already are), but the plutocracy may find a way to corrupt the political process and keep the Republicans in play.
This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.
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