Numbers and Some Perspective: Is The Coronavirus More Racist Than the Police?

Like most people, I've been mulling over the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests. As have my friends.

It's really hard to be rational about police violence and brutality, toward black people and people in general. Especially when you are confronted with videos. Videos that elicit emotions. But videos that are also cherry-picked from millions of events. Policing in America is very very difficult. Is the culture of police racist, or is it overly-militarized, or is it simply rational in the face of a violent gun-filled society?

The new episode of The Weeds (Fixing the Police) gets into the nitty-gritty of this. They avoid race. They discuss the pros of a diverse police force, the possibility/impossibility of unbundling the police, the problems with qualified immunity, the simplest way to improve policing (make it easy to get rid of the worst officers) and the difficulty of reform because of police unions. So many of these things apply to teachers as well, so if you are a teacher, this episode is a must-listen. The reforms people want for police unions are often the same reforms people want for teacher unions.

If you want more on how innovative policy could transform policing, Tyler Cowen's new episode with Rachel Harmon covers a lot of stuff:

Rachel Harmon joined Tyler to discuss the best ideas for improving policing, including why good data on policing is so hard to come by, why body cams are not a panacea, the benefits and costs of consolidating police departments, why more female cops won’t necessarily reduce the use of force, how federal programs can sometimes misfire, where changing police selection criteria would and wouldn’t help, whether some policing could be replaced by social workers, the sobering frequency of sexual assaults by police, how a national accreditation system might improve police conduct, what reformers can learn from Camden and elsewhere, and more. 

I obviously think podcasts are a great medium for putting things in perspective. They are unconstrained by time, topical, and often allow smart people who don't come off well on video to express their opinions, with the benefit of audio editing.

Sam Harris puts things in perspective as well as anyone on his Making Sense podcast. He has slow and rational, rather emotionless discussions with smart people. But he does episode "#207: Can We Pull Back From the Brink?" all by his lonesome. He speaks for nearly two hours, in sentences that form logical paragraphs. It's really impressive. Unless you are very focused, it will be hard to listen to in one sitting. I think it's required listening if you want to think about these protests and the death of George Floyd.

Here are some of the questions that the episode (and my resultant reflection) have produced.

First of all, Sam Harris and most everyone has condemned Derek Chauvin's use of force on George Floyd. 

But the question about the scene are myriad: 

Was Chauvin trying to kill George Floyd? Would he have used a different amount of force on a white person? How often do the Minneapolis police (or any police) use this maneuver to restrain people? Why exactly were they restraining Floyd? Is Chauvin a homicidal maniac, a blatant racist, or did he think he was using a standard move to subdue someone resisting arrest?

No matter what the answers, this particular scene was heinous. But are most cops abusing black men like this? Are they doing something different to white people?

Sam Harris points out that there are over 10 million arrests each year in America. About one thousand of these result in lethal force. So one on every ten thousand arrests. Is that too many? It's more than in other developed countries. But we have WAY more guns on the streets than any other developed country.  

Of those that die, most of them are white. About 30 percent of them are black. Black people only make up 13 percent of the population. So there is a disparity. Some claim that this 17 percent disparity is racism. 

Is it?

Perhaps. But black people tend to be more likely to be arrested, and more likely to be involved in criminal activities. If you take this into account, then-- according to Sam Harris and most of what I have read: 

This suggests that officer bias – in terms of officers making different shooting decisions for black and white citizens – is not necessarily the cause of black citizens being shot at higher rates. Even if officers were making the same decisions about whether to use deadly force for black and white citizens, population-level disparities would still emerge given these crime rate differences.

Is some police brutality racist? Perhaps, but that's hard to prove. It's a case by case thing. Is some police violence due to poor training? Absolutely. But there have been police reforms, especially in large cities. FiveThirtyEight has a podcast on police violence that details this. White police are LESS likely to use lethal force on a black person than they are on a white person. Have these reforms in large cities been enough? Do police unions need to be dismantled? Is it possible to dismantle the culture of police in a country as violent and gun-ridden as the United States? The data and numbers are ambiguous . . . although it seems lethal force is going down in major cities, and it is going up in rural areas.

Is some of this police violence because we send a person with a badge and a gun to deal with all sorts of problems that don't necessitate a badge and a gun?

How much of this can be blamed on the war on drugs? Harris talks about "no-knock" drug raids, which are inherently violent for people of any race. Are they necessary?

Harris brings up the largest factor, of course. Median black families have one-tenth of the wealth of median white families. So black families are more likely to live in poverty, in rougher neighborhoods, closer to crime, and closer to hands-on policing. Statistically, much of this inequality is due to slavery, Jim Crow laws, the fables of the Reconstruction, segregation, white supremacy, the KKK, political suppression, lack of civil rights, systemic discrimination, and real estate. Location, location, location. 

This is all well and good to keep in mind until the shit goes down. Then every situation is particular. Radiolab has a fantastic episode that explains the criteria for "reasonable action" by police. It's much more about acting reasonably in the moment, then assessing the totality of the situation. 

Malcolm Gladwell has a great podcast on this archetypal police situation, Descend into the Particular.

He comes to the conclusion that we might police laws far too rigidly, especially in neighborhoods where there is a constant police presence. Howard "Bunny" Colvin from The Wire would agree.

Gladwell breaks down the findings about the shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson riots and makes two assertions:

1) the white cop that shot Michael Brown was truly threatened by him

2) the policing system in Ferguson oppressed, terrorized, extorted, and enraged the people of the town, most of whom were black.

The Indicator has a heartbreaking episode on how fees and fines often target people of color and destroy their finances and their relationship with the police. Defunding the police could compound this problem-- if the police have less money, they are going to rely on fees and fines more. The fix for this is something no one wants to hear: higher taxes and a better-funded, more professional, better trained, less militarized, less statistically oriented police department. A department that is incentivized to have good community relations, media presence, and ethical standards, rather than high arrest rates and other conflict-ridden incidents. The Wire covers this.

So in the moment, it's really hard to deescalate a situation when the people you are trying to police despise you. In fact, it's really hard to police any situation that might lead to violence or gunplay.

Now there is Rayshard Brooks. Another video. And with ten million arrests, there will always be another video. Arrests will go awry and people will get shot. Black and white. Videos will surface.

Videos don't indicate the totality of truth. Were the George Floyd protests peaceful or were they riotous? Depends on which videos you watch. This is a major problem. 

For most of the Brooks video, it's a typical DUI stop. Fairly cordial and boring. The Daily podcast "The Killing of Rayshard Brooks" summarizes the incident, if you don't know the details. And then things go wrong. And then there are the questions:

Would the cops have let a white guy walk home? Maybe, maybe not. Once the cops ascertained that brooks was drunk, they couldn't let him go. Brooks also had an outstanding warrant, which was probably weighing on his mind. When they try to cuff Brooks, a scuffle ensues, Brooks punches an officer, grabs a taser, runs, and then turns and shoots the taser at the cop in pursuit, and then he gets shot three times. 

Can a cop let a drunk guy run away with his taser? Does a cop have to arrest a person who has been driving drunk, white or black? Could he have let him move his car out of the drive-thru and then sleep in it? Are the police now liable for this guy? He was drunk. The officer, Garrett Rolfe, was fired for the shooting. If a social worker showed up on the scene, how would it have played out? 

For most of the body-cam video, which is 45 minutes long, Rolfe seemed polite and in control, but once the scuffle ensued and Brooks grabbed his taser, things got ugly quickly. This one seems different than the George Floyd case. The shooting was probably legal, but unnecessary. Brooks was running away. But when he points the taser at the cop, the cop reacts. In that split second, what is running through the cop's mind? If he is shot by the taser, is Brooks going to grab his gun? I would not want to be in that situation.

These are interesting discussions to have. You could discuss this one case for a long long time. But with ten million arrests per year, Harris points out that there WILL be another one. It's the law of averages. And another. 

People are angry. The new episode of This American Life, "Here Again" begins and ends with angry black women. 

The monopoly analogy really gets at just how shafted black people have been in America . . . but so have native Americans, folks in Appalachia, Japanese during WWII, etc. American capitalism shafts a lot of people. 

If you go too far down this road of anger and white guilt and searching for racism, you end up with this . . . a Minneapolis councilwoman saying that calling 911 when you are being burgled comes from a place of privilege. 

This is how Trump gets reelected. As the law and order president. Yikes. So everyone needs to listen to the Beastie Boys and check your head.

Defunding the police is possible, if you can replace them with something. Camden has done this, with some success. But it's a huge job. Police unions hold a lot of power, political and otherwise. And many people genuinely like and respect the police. Starting over is a monumental task, and maybe not the right task during a pandemic. 

Coronavirus seems far more racist than the police, by the numbers. Here is some data from Brookings:

Whites comprise 62% of people in the U.S. between ages 45-54.  In that age group, 1,013 white people have died from Covid-19 (22% of the total) compared to 1,448 Black people and 1,698 Hispanic/Latino people.

This is abominable and gets back to how black people have been shafted by the system. And these numbers are something we can improve immediately, with federal leadership, testing, contact tracing, etc. 

If you go by the numbers, black people should probably be a little angrier about police brutality than white people, but not THAT much angrier. We should all be angry that we live in a country that needs militarized police. We should all be angry that we live in a country with such a prevalence of guns and violent crime.

But black people should be very VERY angry about how they have fared during coronavirus.

Who is to blame for that? How could this be remedied? Does our Federal Government even care? It seems Trump and his cronies are only reactionary and won't address this until there are people in the streets chanting about this issue. But of course, going to the streets to protest a virus is the very thing that might increase the virus. It's an ugly dilemma.

Sam Harris thinks the only way forward is to make things LESS about race, with the ultimate goal that the pigmentation in your epidermis is no more important than the color of your hair. I agree with him. Identity politics is the death of us. We should focus on reforms that reduce inequality for our entire society. But that's not how politics and protests work.

I hope things calm down soon and smart people discuss this in a reasonable manner. . . but holding that opinion might put me in the minority. 

Don't Mess With the Locals: Whether You are on the Merrimack or off the Harbor

Townie, a memoir by the best-selling author Andre Dubus III, is the small-town Caucasian version of season four of The Wire. It ends better for him than it does for most of the school kids in Baltimore (perhaps because he is white and his family, though poor, has better connections) but it still explores the same theme: the realm of male violence.

Dubus grows up in a sequence of rough and tumble mill towns in Massachusetts. His home life is anarchy. His dad is mainly absent, teaching college, banging college girls, and becoming a heralded short story writer. His mom is harried and overworked. The kids are left to fend for themselves. He is bullied, beaten, intimidated, and traumatized. The same goes for his artistic younger brother. Then he learns to fight. He also learns to box (there's definitely that vibe from Cutty's gym in The Wire . . . tough street kids learning some discipline and skills that actually translate to their day-to-day existence).

Dubus eventually finds his way, but it's a long and meandering path, fraught with bar-room brawls, vindication, weight-lifting, boxing, stalking people in the streets looking for justice, and the constant looming threat of violence. Once Dubus learns to break that "membrane" and punch someone in the face, over and over, hurt them, it's hard to unlearn that power.

The book might be a bit long, but I blew through it in a few days. I think it's required reading for anyone who has been in a fight, chickened out of a fight, or wonders why some guys end up throwing punches (or worse) for little reason at all. This might help explain those feelings.

Dubus is constantly trying not to portray himself as a hero-- he understands that throwing down isn't the solution if you want to move forward-- but in so many instances, the person willing to use violence is the hero of the moment . . . just perhaps not in retrospect.

The book ends how it must, and those sections when Dubus matures and reconnects with his dad drag a bit, but the first 2/3 of the book is some of the most compelling reading on what it's like to be a young man who needs to establish himself in a fluid and dangerous environment that I have ever read (and again, you should read this in conjunction with Season 4 of The Wire to see both sides of the coin: the white-trash version and the inner city black version).

Cities? Discuss . . .

For some time now, people in America have been moving out of the largest cities to small towns, suburbs, and exurbs. The COVID pandemic has accelerated this trend. The virus puts a serious tax on density.

While this exodus might be good for my property values-- I live in a small town on the train line to NYC-- from a larger perspective, it's kind of scary.

First of all, large cities are some of the greenest places on earth. Especially New York City.

If people move out of our big cities and spread out into the suburbs, traffic and air pollution are going to get worse. More open space will be converted to suburban neighborhoods. Wildlife corridors and wetlands will be disrupted. 

How will this contribute to global warming, air quality, and energy consumption?

If you want to be topical, you've got a better chance of being killed by police in suburbs and country, because cities have more resources and better training programs for their police. And cities tend to be more liberal and accepting of people of color (and diversity in general).

If people move out of cities and spread thinly across our country, what will happen to those urban spaces? We've all learned to shop online (I just bought some athletic shorts from Amazon . . . I know my size and inseam preference and everything) so there's going to be some sort of massive restructuring of retail space. 

We have so many stores in America, especially in our cities. Ten times more retail space per capita than Germany.

What will happen to these stores? And the strip malls? What will happen to the strip malls?

One of my friends used to commute to NYC, but now he's working from home. And he's going to be working from home forever. His company is seriously considering getting rid of all the expensive office space in the city. 

Why keep it?

What if this happens on a massive scale?

Now this migration may allow middle-class people who always wanted to live in major cities but could never afford it the opportunity to do so. People who enjoy diversity and density and city parks and the thrum of creativity and humanity outside their doorstep 24/7.

But with the pandemic looming, will they move? 

I don't have any answers, but I'm sure something is going to happen. Right?

This Is What I Said to My Wife After She Finished (Loudly) Power-washing the Deck

I don't like heat or noise.

I like cold and quiet.

These Regions Go To Eleven

Colin Woodard's 2011 book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America is just as relevant today as it was when it was published. 

Perhaps more so.

Woodard's thesis is pretty simple. He's actually expanding on a book written in 1981 by Joel Garreau called The Nine Nations of North America. Garreau suggests that North America can be divided into nine nations, which have distinctive economic and cultural features. 

Woodard turns up the history and the conflict between these "nations" to eleven. It's a fun read (for a history text). And timely, of course. It will make you think about the various regional responses to the COVID pandemic. 

For example, I've been browsing rental houses on VRBO. Before you can rent a house or travel to Vermont, a number of requirements need to be met. They want tests, quarantining, and they are wary of travelers from New York and New Jersey. They don't have many cases and they want to keep it that. 

On the other hand, this is what North Carolina has on its website:

Here are some important facts about traveling in North Carolina: 

• All North Carolina borders are open.
• There is no national quarantine.

We ended up renting a house in North Carolina.

This is how Woodard divides things up:

Woodard gets deep into the history that formed his "nations." He begins with the Founding Fathers and notes:

Our true Founders didn’t have an “original intent” we can refer back to in challenging times; they had original intents.

Here are some other selected passages you might find interesting (probably far too many to read through, but I love the highlighting feature on my Kindle. I can then export the notes to a Google doc and vomit them here on the internet).

First of all . . . the big premise:

The United States is a federation comprised of the whole or part of eleven regional nations, some of which truly do not see eye to eye with one another. These nations respect neither state nor international boundaries, bleeding over the U.S. frontiers with Canada and Mexico as readily as they divide California, Texas, Illinois, or Pennsylvania. Six joined together to liberate themselves from British rule. Four were conquered but not vanquished by English- speaking rivals. 

Woodard makes a case against dividing an authentic culture with an artificial barrier.

Mr. Trump, tear down your wall!

 
The borderlands on both sides of the United States–Mexico boundary are really part of a single norteño culture. Split by an increasingly militarized border, El Norte in some ways resembles Germany during the Cold War: two peoples with a common culture separated from one another by a large wall. Despite the wishes of their political masters in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, many norteños would prefer to federate to form a third national state of their own. 

Sometimes, real history is paradoxical.

English-speaking cowboys would later adopt other Spanish vocabulary, including rodeo, bronco, buckaroo (from vaquero), mustang (from mesteño), bandoleer (bandolera), stampede (from estampida), and ranch (rancho). Oddly enough, it was the Franciscans who introduced this cowboy culture to what is now Texas and California, as tallow and hides were among the only products the missions could profitably ship to the rest of Mexico. Short on labor, the friars trained their neophytes to be their vaqueros, flouting Spanish laws against allowing Indians to ride horses. When the governor of California complained about this practice, a friar responded, “How else can the vaquero’s work of the missions be done?” The first American cowboys were, in fact, Indians.

There were (and are) varying ways that the regions treated the natives. 

Champlain’s vision for New France was more radical and enduring than de Mons’s. While he shared de Mons’s commitment to creating a monarchical, feudal society in North America, he believed it should coexist in a friendly, respectful alliance with the Native American nations in whose territories it would be embedded. Instead of conquering and enslaving the Indians (as the Spanish had), or driving them away (as the English would), the New French would embrace them.

But the Virginia Company’s plan was based on the faulty assumption that the Indians would be intimidated by English technology, believe their employers were gods, and submit, Aztec-like, to their rule. The Indians, in fact, did none of these things. The local chief, Powhatan, saw the English outpost for what it was: weak and vulnerable but a potential source of useful European technology such as metal tools and weapons. 

In one notorious incident, they surrounded a poorly defended Pequot village and butchered virtually every man, woman, and child they found there, mostly by burning them alive. The slaughter was shocking to the Puritans’ temporary Indian allies, the Narragansetts . . .

 When people headed down the coast, to the southern states of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas . . .

Visitors constantly remarked on their haughty sense of personal honor and their furious reaction to the slightest insult. While the Yankee elite generally settled their disputes through the instrument of written laws, Tidewater gentry were more likely to resort to a duel.

By a twist of history, the dominant colonies of New England were founded by men who stood in total opposition to nearly every value that Tidewater gentry held dear. 

These are the two reasons Americans are insane:

Here were the kernels of the twin political ideologies of America’s imperial age: American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. The first held that Americans were God’s chosen people, the second that He wished Americans to rule the continent from sea to sea.

Woodard is definitely somewhat liberal, and not overly kind to the region he calls the Deep South.

From the outset, Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror. 

Of course, the Deep South wasn’t the only part of North America practicing full-blown slavery after 1670. Every colony tolerated the practice. But most of the other nations were societies with slaves, not slave societies per se. Only in Tidewater and the Deep South did slavery become the central organizing principle of the economy and culture.

Until the end of the seventeenth century, one’s position in Tidewater was defined largely by class, not race. The Deep South, by contrast, had a black supermajority and an enormous slave mortality rate,
thousands of fresh humans had to be imported every year to replace those who had died. Blacks in the Deep South were far more likely to live in concentrated numbers in relative isolation from whites.
Marriage outside of one’s caste is strictly forbidden. So while the Deep South had rich whites and poor whites and rich and poor blacks, no amount of wealth would allow a black person to join the master caste. 

He admires Greater Appalachia, though I think he's a bit scared of those folk.

The last of the nations to be founded in the colonial period, Greater Appalachia was the most immediately disruptive. A clan-based warrior culture from the borderlands of the British Empire, it arrived on the backcountry frontier of the Midlands, Tidewater, and Deep South and shattered those nations’ monopoly control over colonial governments,

Proud, independent, and disturbingly violent, the Borderlanders of Greater Appalachia have remained a volatile insurgent force within North American society to the present day.

Indian wars and other violence in Appalachia had profound effects on the other nations, particularly the Midlands. 

His take on the Revolutionary War makes sense (but it's not as romantic as what we learned in school).

The military struggle of 1775–1782 wasn’t fought by an “American people” seeking to create a united, continent-spanning republic where all men were created equal and guaranteed freedom of speech, religion, and the press. On the contrary, it was a profoundly conservative action fought by a loose military alliance of nations, each of which was most concerned with preserving or reasserting control of its respective culture, character, and power structure. The rebelling nations certainly didn’t wish to be bonded together into a single republic. 

David Hackett Fischer makes the case for there having been not one American War of Independence but four: a popular insurrection in New England, a professional “gentleman’s war” in the South, a savage civil war in the backcountry, and a “non-violent economic and diplomatic struggle” spearheaded by the elites of what call the Midlands. The four wars, he argues, were fought sequentially and waged in different ways and for different goals. 

The way things finally shook out, The Native Americans were certainly the biggest losers . . .

The American rebellion was precipitated by the Seven Years’ War, a massive global military conflict between Britain and France that lasted from 1756 to 1763. It’s remembered in the United States as the French and Indian War, because here the British fought against New France and its aboriginal allies.

In the end, the French were defeated, and all of New France (save the tiny islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon) was handed over to the British Empire. This had two consequences for the people of the continent. First, it removed from the political and military stage the only European society on which Native North Americans could rely.

During the start of the Revolutionary War, New York and New Jersey weren't particularly interested in freedom, liberation and revolt (perhaps because we are so well situated for trade . . . why rock the boat?)

New Netherland’s patriot uprising met with sudden and complete defeat in the summer of 1776 following the arrival of a British armada of 30 warships, 400 transports, and 24,000 soldiers. This invasion force scattered General Washington’s army, retook the city, and by the end of September occupied an area conforming almost exactly to the boundaries of the New Netherland nation. The rebels dispersed and ecstatic townspeople carried British soldiers around on their shoulders. New Netherland had fought a war against liberation and had lost badly. 

New Jersey simply fell into anarchy. “The state is totally deranged [and] without government,” a Continental Army general observed before the British moved in. “Many [officials] have gone to the enemy for protection, others are out of the state, and the few that remain are mostly indecisive in their conduct.” 

Why are we still arguing about the Constitution? 

In the end, the U.S. Constitution was the product of a messy compromise among the rival nations. From the gentry of Tidewater and the Deep South, we received a strong president to be selected by an “electoral college” rather than elected by ordinary people. From New Netherland we received the Bill of Rights, a set of very Dutch guarantees that individuals would have freedom of conscience, speech, religion, and assembly. To the Midlands we owe the fact that we do not have a strong unitary state under a British-style national Parliament; they insisted on state sovereignty as insurance against Southern despots and Yankee meddling. The Yankees ensured that small states would have an equal say in the Senate.

Why does Canada exist? Perhaps to show us the things that we screwed up . . .

If you’re an American, have you ever really asked yourself why Canada exists? When the American Revolution came about, why did only thirteen rather than eighteen North American colonies wind up revolting?

We’ve been taught to think of the ratification of the 1789 Constitution as the crowning achievement of the American Revolution. Most people living in the United States at the time, however, didn’t see it in quite those terms. Outside Tidewater and the Deep South, many were alarmed by a document they regarded as counterrevolutionary, intentionally designed to suppress democracy and to keep power in the hands of regional elites and an emerging class of bankers, financial speculators, and land barons who had little or no allegiance to the continent’s ethnocultural nations. Indeed, the much-celebrated Founding Fathers had made no secret of this having been one of their goals. They praised the unelected Senate because it would “check the impudence of democracy” (Alexander Hamilton), and stop the “turbulence and follies of democracy” (Edmund Randolph), and applauded the enormous federal electoral districts because they would “divide the community,” providing “defense against the inconveniences of democracy” (James Madison). 

 
The competing philosophies of these eleven nations become abundantly clear during the Civil War.

There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the Civil War to defend slavery, and its leaders made no secret of this motive. Slavery, they argued ad nauseam, was the foundation for a virtuous, biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states.

Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower-class people should be enslaved, regardless of race, for their own good.

The planters’ loathing of Yankees startled outsiders. “South Carolina, I am told, was founded by gentlemen, [not by] witch-burning Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics who implanted in the north.

“There is nothing in all the dark caves of human passion so cruel and deadly as the hatred the South Carolinians profess for the Yankees,” he continued. “New England is to [them] the incarnation of moral and political wickedness and social corruption

From central Pennsylvania to southern Illinois and northern Alabama, Borderlanders were torn between their disgust with Yankees and their hatred of Deep Southern planters. Both regions represented a threat to Borderlander ideals, but in different ways. The Yankees’ emphasis on the need to subsume one’s personal desires and interests to the “greater good” was anathema to the Appalachian quest for individual freedom; their moral crusades

On the other hand, Borderlanders had already suffered generations of oppression at the hands of
aristocratic slave lords and knew that they were the people the planters had in mind when they talked about enslaving inferior whites.

And there are some fables of the Reconstruction:

In all three nations the resistance to Reconstruction was largely successful. There could be no return to formal slavery, but the racial caste system was restored, backed by laws and practices that effectively prevented blacks from voting, running for office, or asserting their common humanity. In the Deep South and Tidewater, single-party rule became the norm and was exercised to resist change, social reform, or wide citizen participation in politics. 

Meanwhile, in Greenwich Village . . .

From that single square mile tucked inside the tolerant cocoon of New Netherland would spring much of what the religious conservatives of the Dixie bloc would later mobilize against: the gay beatniks and their hippie successors, left-wing intellectualism, and the antiwar movement. Like seventeenth-century Amsterdam, New Netherland provided a sanctuary for heretics and freethinkers from more rigid nations.

This conflict finally came to a head during the Civil Rights movement:

In 1955 the three nations of the Dixie bloc were still authoritarian states whose citizens—white and black—were required to uphold a rigid, all-pervasive apartheid system. 

In Mississippi, it was illegal to print, publish, or distribute “suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and Negroes,” with perpetrators subject to up to six months in prison. Klansmen and other vigilante groups tortured and executed blacks who violated these rules, often with the public approval of elected officials, newspaper editors, preachers, and the region’s leading families.

Across the Dixie bloc white Southerners initially reacted to the movement with disbelief, having been conditioned to think that “our Negroes” were “happy” to be oppressed, patronized, and deprived of basic human and civil rights. 

And the liberal folks from NYC were to blame:

Clearly, their beloved blacks were being manipulated by what Deep Southern politicians called “outside agitators”—Yankees and New Netherlanders—who were often also believed to be communists.

Damn Yankees!

Take the environmental movement, for instance. The entire history of the movement prior to Earth Day took place in the four Public Protestant nations, where the spiritual emphasis was on bettering this world rather than preparing for the next. 

Another New Yorker, President Theodore Roosevelt, pioneered federal government involvement in environmental protection, founding the national forest, park, and wildlife refuge systems. Roosevelt’s Yankee cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, created the National Wildlife Federation in 1936.


Not every region is as concerned about the environment (or the people who work in it) as Yankeedom.

To keep wages low, all Dixie-bloc states passed laws making it difficult to organize unions—which their politicians sold as protecting the “right to work."

Taxes are kept too low to adequately support public schools and other services.

From the gas fields of Louisiana to the industrial hog farms of North Carolina, environmental and workplace safety rules are notoriously lax.

The goal of the Deep Southern oligarchy has been consistent for over four centuries: to control and maintain a one-party state with a colonial-style economy based on large-scale agriculture and the extraction of primary resources by a compliant, poorly educated, low-wage workforce with as few labor, workplace safety, health care, and environmental regulations as possible. 

There is some discussion of one of my favorite books on regionality:

This is the strategy Thomas Frank described in What’s the Matter with Kansas? which revealed how the oligarchs of his native state used social and “moral” issues to rally ordinary people to support the architects of their economic destruction.

Vote to stop abortion, receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking.

Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining. 

The important thing to understand is that within our country there are regions that predominantly believe and value completely different things than you. 

Tidewater senator Jesse Helms tried to block the creation of the Martin Luther King holiday on the grounds that the civil rights leader had been a “Marxist-Leninist” who associated with “Communists and sex perverts.”

Tom DeLay proclaimed in the early 2000s, “The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills.” “Nothing,” DeLay told bankers in 2003, “is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.”

After the 2010 BP oil spill, Representative Joe Barton (from Deep Southern Texas) publicly apologized to the company for having been pressured to create a fund to compensate its victims, calling the initiative—but not the spill—“a tragedy of the first proportion.”

I'm not very keen on George W. Bush and the horse he rode in on. But some people love this stuff:

His domestic policy priorities as president were those of the Deep Southern oligarchy: cut taxes for the wealthy, privatize Social Security, deregulate energy markets (to benefit family allies at Houston-based Enron), stop enforcing environmental and safety regulations for offshore drilling rigs (like BP’s Deepwater Horizon), turn a blind eye to offshore tax havens, block the regulation of carbon emissions or tougher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, block health care benefits for low-income children, open protected areas to oil exploration, appoint industry executives to run the federal agencies meant to regulate their industries, and inaugurate a massive new foreign guest-worker program to ensure a low-wage labor supply. Meanwhile, Bush garnered support among ordinary Dixie residents by advertising his fundamentalist Christian beliefs, banning stem cell research and late-term abortions, and attempting to transfer government welfare programs to religious institutions.

By the end of his presidency—and the sixteen-year run of Dixie dominance in Washington—income inequality and the concentration of wealth in the federation had reached the highest levels in its history, exceeding even the Gilded Age and Great Depression.

If you're someone from New France, Yankeedom, the Left Coast or the New Netherlands and you want to drive yourself batshit crazy, imagine this . . .

Consider for a moment what U.S. politics and society might be like if the Dixie bloc never existed, or if the Confederacy had peacefully seceded in 1861. You don’t have to stretch your imagination, because this very scenario has been playing out north of the U.S. border.

Comparative early-twenty-first-century sociological surveys have found that New France is the most postmodern nation in North America. It is the region with the lowest proportion of people who believe in the devil (29 percent) and hell (26 percent). Asked if they agreed that the “father of the family must be master in his own house,” only 15 percent of Québécois said yes, compared with 21 percent of Far Western Canadians, 29 percent of New Englanders, and 71 percent of respondents in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Another academic pollster found them to be more tolerant of homosexuality, extramarital affairs, prostitution, abortion, divorce, and having neighbors with AIDS, large families, drug problems, or emotional instability. Québec, one scholar found, was the region of North America with the highest degree of enlightened individualism and the least respect for traditional forms of authority.

While the Dixie bloc pulls the U.S. federation hard to the right, New France pulls Canada well to the left.

So Woodard sees this scenario playing out over and over, until there's something so cataclysmic that it tears us apart:

One scenario that might preserve the status quo for the United States would be for its nations to follow the Canadian example and compromise on their respective cultural agendas for the sake of unity. Unfortunately, neither the Dixie bloc nor the Northern alliance is likely to agree to major concessions to the other. The majority of Yankees, New Netherlanders, and Left Coasters simply aren’t going to accept living in an evangelical Christian theocracy with weak or nonexistent social, labor, or environmental protections, public school systems, and checks on corporate power in politics. Most Deep Southerners will resist paying higher taxes to underwrite the creation of a public health insurance system; a universal network of well-resourced, unionized, and avowedly secular public schools; tuition-free public universities where science—not the King James Bible—guides inquiry; taxpayer-subsidized public transportation, high-speed railroad networks, and renewable energy projects; or vigorous regulatory bodies to ensure compliance with strict financial, food safety, environmental, and campaign finance laws.

Instead the "red" and "blue" nations will continue to wrestle with one another for control over federal policy, each doing what it can to woo the "purple" ones to their cause, just as they have since they gathered at the first Continental Congress.

We don't have a shared cultural history in this country. Woodard believes our only hope is this:

The United States needs its central government to function cleanly, openly, and efficiently because it’s one of the few things binding us together.

Yeah right.

No Good Dave Goes Unrewarded

It looks like my stint as a community service pandemic shopper is coming to a close. While there were occasional rewarding moments, I'm happy that this chapter of my life where I pretend to be a good person is over. Unlike my wife, I don't think I'm cut out volunteering for things that are not directly tied to my own self-interest (or the self-interest of my kids, wife, friends, students, etc.)

Of course, it also might have been luck of the draw. She's been shopping for a lovely and grateful Trinidadian woman who lives in the senior community building in our town. The woman regales my wife with stories, dirty jokes, and thanks. My wife truly enjoys doing things for this woman.

I've been shopping for a laconic older gentleman who seems to be something of a shut-in. He lives on the second floor of a house divided into three apartments. An old lady with an eye-patch lives on the first floor. I think she's the landlord. She doesn't approve of all the diet soda and iced tea that my guy buys each week.

I think it's time for my guy to get out and about. He lives right around the block from Stop'n Shop and he mainly eats soup, pineapple chunks, crackers, and lunch meat. They've removed the one-way arrows from the aisles in the store, so I think restrictions are loose enough for him to go for it. He needs to see for himself that there is no such thing as "Medium" eggs. These days it's all "Large" and "Extra-Large." 

I don't think he understands that I'm a volunteer and that I don't get paid to buy and deliver his groceries (though I've told him this . . . the graduate student that lives upstairs next to him understands this and has been appreciative of my service and the lady with the eye-patch understands the deal as well). 

So we parted ways today with nary a thank you. And his emails have been getting a little weird. I'll give you a sample, so you know what you're getting into when you volunteer for community service. It's not all medals and parades.

Here's a recent one . . . so he's discussing a receipt from two weeks ago:
 

I went through the register receipt for the groceries you bought on 5/22/20. On the bill from Stop’n Shop on 5/22/20, This item was rung up 3 times—I don’t know what it was. SB is the code for Store Brand: SB.CD.HMST.CHKNN 1.19. Also, on 5/22/20, this item was rung up twice—CMP is the code for Campbells: CMP.GRFORCK.FRN 1.89. I don't know what that item was. The Campbell’s products I bought were rung up elsewhere.

This is what I wrote back:

Not sure what to tell you about this. I don't know the codes for various soups and this was two weeks ago, so I don't think we're going to be able to figure it out. I'll try to make sure that nothing is rung incorrectly-- I'm not sure how this happened or if it was some other kind of soup that got rung up, as they don't always have exactly what you ask for so I try to get something close.

I really love his reply to this. He carefully explains how to go to a grocery store and purchase items, though I've been shopping for him with some measure of success since March!

In the store, I ask that you stay with the cart containing my products. Then watch the cashier's moving belt observing the products on it so that only my products are there. When the cashier is scanning the products, see to it that only my products are scanned. Hopefully, your vigilance will be enough to prevent this problem from happening again.

I'm really proud of my tone in the reply. I tried to channel Saul Goodman, when he was lawyering for all the old folks. He was always patient, good-humored, and empathetic. Never sarcastic.

You got it. I will keep an eye on things and make sure nothing gets rung up twice or mixed together with any other products.

I really wanted to throw around the word "vigilance" in my reply. Especially in regard to Italian Wedding Soup. But I didn't. I rose above it. 

While I'm not going to rush out and volunteer for anything in the near future, I'm happy that I did some service. Before the pandemic, I never went to the grocery store. I was awful at it, so it was easier for my wife to go.

But today, I whizzed through the store, grabbing the stuff on my old man's shopping list like a pro: liverwurst here, bananas there, diet root beer in this spot, reach down for the applesauce, grab a few pears, etc.

Fast and fearless. 

When I look at the guy I was shopping for, I certainly think: there by the grace of God goes I . . . but perhaps learning to navigate the local grocery store is a step in the right direction for me to avoid that fate.

Trump Steals a Move from Shakespeare's Richard III

Today's episode of The Daily (The Showdown at Lafayette Square) details how Donald Trump used the U.S. military to disperse nonviolent protesters with tear gas so that he could creep out of his bunker and pose at St. John's Church with a bible in his hand.

I would applaud our fearful leader for his iniquitous inventiveness, but Shakespeare got there first.

When Shakespeare's Richard III (who is far more charming and eloquent than Trump, but shares his misshapen ego and hunger for loyalty and power) wants to appear above the fray (although he has been wielding his power behind the scenes in maniacal fashion) his slimy advisor, the Duke of Buckingham, gives him a prop. 

A prayer book.

It's ham-handed, but some people love that kind of overt symbolism.

Richard has killed and slandered everyone in his path and galvanized the military. Still, Buckingham counsels Richard to "play the maid's part" when the mayor offers him the crown. He poses him between two churchmen with a prayer-book. The Lord Mayor is properly impressed (or at least pretends to be, to avoid the wrath of Richard).

So Richard plays the part of a pious devotee . . . for a moment. And then he accepts absolute power. 

"I am not made of stone," Richard tells the audience, winking at us, letting us in on the joke. In the same way, Trump tweets, letting his fans in on the fun.

Are we headed down the same plotline? I don't know, but it's worth reading Richard just so you know it.

Here is the scene:

BUCKINGHAM

The mayor is here at hand: intend some fear;
Be not you spoke with, but by mighty suit:
And look you get a prayer-book in your hand,
And stand betwixt two churchmen, good my lord;
For on that ground I'll build a holy descant:
And be not easily won to our request:
Play the maid's part, still answer nay, and take it.

LORD MAYOR

See, where he stands between two clergymen!

BUCKINGHAM

Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,
To stay him from the fall of vanity:
And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,
True ornaments to know a holy man.
Famous Plantagenet, most gracious prince,
Lend favourable ears to our request;
And pardon us the interruption
Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.

RICHARD of GLOUCESTER

My lord, there needs no such apology:
I rather do beseech you pardon me,
Who, earnest in the service of my God,
Neglect the visitation of my friends.
But, leaving this, what is your grace's pleasure?

You can't make this stuff up.  

Twenty Years!

Today, Catherine and I celebrate twenty years of marriage. Twenty years!

That's ten years times two, man!

 

For a marriage to last twenty years, it has to endure the winds of change. It has to survive and thrive.

Twenty Things That Our Marriage Has Survived

Our marriage survived an extremely long courtship (eight years). Yikes.

Our marriage survived a wild wedding (include a wet and muddy ending . . . I got thrown into the Lawrence Brook and was too filthy to ride home in the vicinity of my lovely wife, instead, I got loaded onto a trash bag in the back of an SUV).

Our marriage survived our first years of teaching.

Twenty years ago, in Milan . . .

Our marriage survived cross country trips and a monthlong voyage to Ecuador.

Our marriage survived ditching tenure for parts unknown.

Our marriage survived three years living in Damascus and traveling the world.

Our marriage survived intestinal distress and the Second Intifada.

Our marriage survived life before we had money to pay for a cleaning lady (barely).

Our marriage has survived numerous births and deaths.

Our marriage has survived a house purchase and kitchen renovation. Our bank account barely survived.

Our marriage survived a child in a skull shaping helmet.

Our marriage has survived travel soccer.

Our marriage outlasted my 1993 Jeep Cherokee.

Our marriage survived our impetuous son getting hit by a car (he was fine).

Our marriage has survived the acquisition of two dogs.

Our marriage (and out basement) has survived floods and hurricanes (with FEMA assistance!)

Our marriage has survived epic family trips across our vast nation and beyond.

Our marriage has survived raccoons in the attic.

Our marriage has survived my wife teaching fifth-grade math remotely (barely).

And our marriage has survived the Covid-19 quarantine . . . so far.

To celebrate all of this survival, we planted something that could very well survive beyond our marriage . . . a Scarlet Fire dogwood tree.

Apparently, although we stumbled on it serendipitously, it's the perfect tree to commemorate our anniversary. Catherine and I met in New Brunswick, while we were both attending Rutgers, and this tree was bred and developed at Rutgers. Forty-five years of horticulture to produce this tree.

There's a Chinese proverb that says: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” 

I hope twenty years from now, Catherine and I will be able to look at this tree and remember when we planted it.

Internet: Luxury or Utility?

The new Planet Money episode "Small America vs. Big Internet" brings up many of the typical free market vs. government themes that are prevalent in lobbying and politics in our great nation.

But the Covid pandemic really reframes this particular debate.

The City of Wilson was sick of not having fast internet, so they built their own network. They run it like a city utility . . . and it worked (not an easy task). When the big telecom got wind of Wilson's success, they sent a horde of lobbyists to North Carolina to nip this in the bud. The telecom companies have been doing this on a state by state basis, and twenty states now have laws prohibiting cities from creating their own internet infrastructure.

These "level playing field" bills are pushed by telecom lobbyists in the name of free-market competition. But small towns lose out because sometimes it's not financially worth providing fast internet for them.

The question is this: how does the pandemic reframe this dilemma?

Is fast internet a luxury or a utility?

If public schools continue to use the internet for remote learning, then I think there needs to be a shift in the legislation. Fast broadband is vital to kids being educated. If towns want to provide this-- and they can pull it off-- then they should be allowed to do so.

Wilson has been grandfathered, and they are still providing inexpensive fast internet for their residents. But they are not allowed to expand. They should be a model for the nation-- the internet is more like water and electricity and public schools than it is like cable TV.

I'm sure the Trump team is on this.

You Can't Go Wrong with Josephine Tey

Another week of life during COVID, another mystery novel down the hatch . . . 

Josephine Tey's To Love and Be Wise-- the 4th installment featuring the calm, cool, collected, oft-times confused, always curious, and super-classy Inspector Grant-- might be better as a literary novel than as a mystery. The mystery resolves fast and furious in the final pages, but the real fun is touring the weird little English countryside village of Salcott St. Mary with Inspector Grant. The town was once full of farmers and craftsmen but is now regrettably invaded by London artists. They seek the lovely scenery of the town, which sits on the banks of the Rushmere river. 

Reminds me of Wellfleet, a similar town of locals and artists, which sits on the upper arm of Cape Cod.

When you read Josephine Tey, you'll need to look up words like "manqué" and "farouche" but you'll be treated to quick bits of characterization like this:

What made a man a bounder was a quality of mind. A crassness. A lack of sensitivity. It was something that was quite incurable; a spiritual astigmatism.

You also get a detective who is familiar with high art and culture, and thus makes allusions instead of terse, hard-boiled pronouncements . . .

But Walter pinned his worm on to a Shakespearean hook and angled gently with it, so that his listeners saw the seething legions of blind purpose turning the grey rock in the western sea into the green Paradise . . .

Tey herself is something of a social commentator:

And walking has lost face since it became universal in the form of an activity called hiking.

Inspector Grant is no Sherlock Holmes. He thinks hard about the case, runs through the possibilities, and makes his befuddlement apparent to the reader. He struggles for any kind of epiphany and lets you in on that struggle. I really like this about him. I can enjoy the scenery and the people, and then-- once in a while-- he lays out what I've missed.

The possibilities are: one, that he fell into the water accidentally and was drowned; two, that he was murdered and thrown in the river; three, that he walked away for reasons of his own; four, that he wandered away because he forgot who he was and where he was going; five, that he was kidnapped.

Inspector Grant does not completely discount the London artists, just because they aren't gritty and local. Take his friend Marta Hallard, the actress-- who he describes thusly:

He looked across at her, elegant and handsome in the firelight, and thought of all the different parts that he had seen her play: courtesans and frustrated hags, careerists and domestic doormats. It was true that actors had a perception, an understanding of human motive, that normal people lacked. It had nothing to do with intelligence, and very little to do with education. In general knowledge Marta was as deficient as a not very bright child of eleven; her attention automatically slid off anything that was alien to her own immediate interests and the result was an almost infantine ignorance. He had seen the same thing in hospital nurses, and sometimes in overworked G.P.s. But put a script in her hands, and from a secret and native store of knowledge she drew the wherewithal to build her characterization of the author's creation.

She has one of the most telling takes on how to find the murderer. 

Well, I take it you commit murder because you are one-idead. Or have become one-idead. As long as you have a variety of interests you can't care about any one of them to the point of murder. It is when you have all your eggs in the same basket, or only one egg left in the basket, that you lose your sense of proportion.

If you're looking for some sharp and entertaining prose couched within a highly entertaining mystery story, I highly recommend this enigmatic Scottish lady. Her real name is Elizabeth MacKintosh and she wrote plays as Gordon Daviot, but it's when she embodies her Golden Age detective-style as Josephine Tey that something special happens.

Conservatives and Liberals Enjoy the Dog Park (and confusing Dave)

Saturday morning at the dog park, I talked to a professed conservative about the Covid pandemic . . . he was optimistic about the numbers and he seemed like an intelligent, rational business guy (he was willing to admit that he thinks Trump is insane and has handled things poorly . ..  he said he would have voted for Bloomberg for president-- which means he's not voting for Biden, I suppose).

Anyway, he had crunched the data and he was sure the virus was going to subside when the warm weather comes. 

We did not wear masks while we chatted. 

Sunday morning at the dog park, it was the usual group. Liberals. Lawyers, teachers, lesbians, etc. They were all wearing masks, so I put my mask on.

They don't think the warm weather theory holds water. They cited Brazil and Ecuador as counter-examples.

They are also worried about droplets in the air when it's humid. They are worried about crowded beaches, crowded stores, Wal-Mart, the fact that people of color are suffering more from the pandemic. They are worried about wealth inequality being amplified and the fact that the investor class isn't really feeling this because the stock market is propped up by the fed. 

They think Florida is suppressing the Covid numbers.

The teacher said she didn't think meat-space school would start until January.

I don't know what to think.

New Jersey Starts to Open . . . Is This a Good Thing? Too Many Numbers to Know For Sure . . .

Outdoor stuff in New Jersey is starting to open.

My wife is down at the community garden today, handing out keys and helping people to reestablish control over their wild-grown plots.

I played tennis with a buddy at the park by my house yesterday.

The dog park is open!

This is great for me. I've gone from interacting with hundreds of people a week to the usual quarantine family-time and Zoom happy hours. The lack of stimulus is making me a little crazy (although I've been passing the time with low-stakes online poker. I'm reading some books and learning some math . . . but I don't think I'm headed to the WSOP any time soon).

The dog park at least restores some random social interactions, for both me and Lola.

This morning, I got to talk to a smart guy from down the street. He's in finance and owns a HUGE house. He's a conservative but thinks Trump is a lunatic. He would have voted for Bloomberg. He thinks the free market economy is rigged against the environment but doesn't like liberal foreign policy. He's the kind of conservative that that-- if you're in a left-wing echo chamber-- you might not think exists (now, of course, he lives in Highland Park . . . which is the most liberal town in a liberal county, so that skews things).

He's a hedge-fund data scientist and he's sanguine about the numbers-- which is a nice change. He says if you look at the data, you really need three things for the pandemic to continue.

1) an elderly population

2) densely populated areas

3) cold weather

You can read all day about #3, but it seems that warmer weather will at least slow the spread of the virus (but this won't prevent it from returning in the winter). And it's getting warm and yucky in New Jersey (in fact, I've got the AC on right now . . . when my wife gets home she's going to yell at me, but it's 73 in the house and humid. That's gross).

I presented the conservative-data-guy the statistics rattling around in my mind:

For every 800 people in New Jersey, one of them has died from Covid-19.

Two percent of the state has tested positive for the virus.

We're still generating over 100 deaths and over 1500 cases a day.

He told me something I know: the vast majority of the people that died were in nursing homes. That doesn't make it right, but it could have been prevented. Old people really can't handle this thing. There does seem to be some long-lasting effects in younger people, but we're probably going to build herd immunity in New Jersey and New York (at a great cost, but the genie is out of the bottle).

He's rooting for herd immunity. It's going to be a long road. I got my antibody test this week-- I'm still waiting for results. The doctor said about 20 percent of people being tested came up positive for antibodies. I think I had it February, but my wife was negative for antibodies. And the doctor said the two things she's hearing most from people testing positive for antibodies are:

1) two weeks

2) it felt like the worst X ever . . . the variable being flu, bronchitis, cold, strep, cough, etc.

My thing in February wasn't the worst thing ever (although giving blood for the test WAS the worst thing ever . . . I was really nervous -- my blood pressure was higher than normal-- and maybe a little dehydrated because I went running. The lady had to do both arms-- she didn't get enough blood out of the first arm. I wanted to give up and leave . . . I didn't like being in a room with multiple people giving blood . . . wounds don't bother me but when blood is circulating through tubes and needles, I get light-headed).

We agreed on a few things. Other countries did a better job.

Taiwan, for instance, had 440 cases and 7 deaths. Part of this might have been the heat, but it's mainly through comprehensive testing and contact tracing.

Our President has failed us on the testing, the tracing, and the plan. This conservative totally agreed with that. Trump, like Putin and Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, is too macho to deal with something as small and statistical as a virus.

And Americans aren't big on mandatory tracking, testing, and tracing. Our freedoms don't mesh with fighting a virus. So we aren't out of the woods yet.

The attitude of the day is guarded optimism-- for now-- but unfortunately, winter is coming.

Quarantine Partying: The Wreckage

At 6:15 AM this morning, when I sat down at the computer to begin putting up assignments for my students, this is the image that greeted me:

And upon further inspection, it was exactly as I had imagined.

I was tempted to wake my children up and confront them with the evidence of their iniquity, but -- for once-- I avoided melodrama and remembered my phone had a camera. I could show them later, when they were fully rested and might respond more appropriately. I didn't need another melee like yesterday . . . when the two of them got into a fistfight over a phone charger and I lost my shit.

And it wasn't all that bad: this decadently slam-dunked empty pudding container was the only remnant of their quarantine recreation; it happened last night while they were playing Magic: The Gathering with some friends on the computer in the kitchen. We're lucky to have so many devices.

I went down to my study and checked to see if I was a hypocrite. Not so much. The only remnant of Tuesday Night Corona Poker was an empty glass . . . a glass that was once half full of seltzer and tequila. 

This brought back hard memories. For the majority of last night, I was seeing the glass half-full, making hands, bluffing wisely, scaring people out of pots, stealing blinds . . . I was optimistic as hell. How could I lose? It was down to Stacey and me, I was up 8000 chips to Stacey's mere 780, and the blinds were getting big. I knew she was the better player . . . the more experienced player, but not tonight. Tonight was my night to shine. I was pushing her around, knocking her out of everything, and then she doubled up on a weird draw. And then she did it again. I had a huge hand but she drew four diamonds in a row to make a basement door flush. Then she went back down, and then she drew again and again and again. Against solid calls (although I could have been more patient . . . if I had been patient, she would have gotten blinded out). And then it was suddenly over. My glass was half empty. And I didn't put a coaster under it. 

A Norwegian, an Australian aborigine, and a clown walk into a bar . . .

If you're looking for a crime thriller with a double layer of exotic unfamiliarity, check out Jo Nesbø's first Harry Hole novel The Bat.

Nesbø is a Norwegian author, but he has Harry Hole travel to Australia to investigate a murder. So you see the country as both a tourist and a detective. Harry's "tour guide" from the Sydney police force is Andrew Kensington-- an aborigine-- so that adds another layer of alienation to the narrative. Throw in Sydney's wild gay scene, a salacious circus, a dismembered cross-dressing clown, rednecks in the outback, the illegal drug trade, dangerous creatures, indigenous mythology, Northern Europeans in a faraway land, a serial killer and you've got quite a vivid collage.

On the one hand, Harry Hole is the classic detective with a tortured past . . . but in this first Hole novel, Nesbø revises this trope, and Hole becomes a detective with a tortured present. He falls off the wagon during the investigation-- and you'll learn why that is NOT a good thing-- and he has to confront his past and dark and ugly ways.

Ten box jellyfish out of ten.

Dave is in the Shit

The last thing of note that happened to me was this:

Saturday morning, when I was bending over to scoop and bag my dog's poop, a bird shit on my head. Bird crap splattered all over my headphones and my hat.

I was dealing with shit from above and below.

This week, instead of getting shit on, I'm going to get some shit done. My van needs fixin', the dog needs to go to the vet, I need to get an antibody test, and I'd like to close an account at the Credit Union.

I'll tally up my getting-shit-done-rate at the end of the week.

If You're Getting Bored of Your Pandemic Work-outs, Try This One . . .

It took two tries for me to complete this video. I still can't successfully do all of the exercises, but I'm close.

The instructor is uninspirational and emotionless, but she's really cute and has perfect form.

I listened to a podcast during my second (and successful) attempt. The podcast combated the monotony (although many people feel podcasts ARE monotonous . . . including and Rick and Morty . . . but not Summer).

The first time I tried, I made it 22 minutes out of the half-hour and then collapsed, full of shame. But today I conquered all thirty minutes. I'm strong like a 110-pound girl!

Quarantine Day One Million

Starting to lose the thread . . . but here are some thoughts anyway.

I waited in line the other day to get into Trader Joe's . . . the line was really long. It went beyond Bed Bath and Beyond. But the line moved quickly because it wasn't very dense. The lady in front of me was bad at approximating distances. She was keeping a good six or seven yards behind the next person.

There was a cheerful guy spraying carts with something. But then you get inside and it's the normal madness. There were arrows on the floor which I found it impossible to follow. The aisles and small and everyone is on top of each other. I squeeze and fondle every piece of produce before I select it. The whole setup reminded me of beefed-up airline security after 9/11. It might make you feel safer, but deep down you know it's not doing shit. 

I finished Donna Tartt's The Secret History. It's not quite as epic as The Goldfinch but it's faster-paced and-- if you went to college in the 80s or 90s-- required reading. It's the R-rated version of Dead Poet's Society.  

In financial news, my son Alex built a computer bot so he could buy a Supreme product drop. A leopard skin cap. It was seventy bucks. He split the price with his brother, and they are going to resell it for a profit (so they believe). I will keep you posted on this outlay.

My wife said a strange thing the other day when she was trying to laze about on the couch and watch baking shows. She said, "I want to lie like broccoli." She claimed this line was from a movie. I thought she was mixing up idioms again. 

But I was wrong.

Parallel Madness!

This episode of The Indicator informed me of an Amazon Prime show called Counterpart in which there's a world parallel to ours in which life is lived in the shadow of a deadly flu outbreak. Apparently, the post-pandemic world in the show looks "disturbingly similar" to the world many of us are living in now.

The show stars the inimitable J.K. Simmons, so I might check it out.

Then there's there are the murder hornets. An invasive bug from China that manifests itself in Washington State and starts to move across the United States, wreaking havoc on the European honey bees that have not evolved evolutionary immunity to the creatures.

Parallel madness.

Years ago, I pitched a show to Netflix set in an alternate reality. 

Donald Trump runs for President and Russian hackers employ social media algorithms to make it so. Then "President Trump" has to deal with a deadly zoonotic virus that invades our great nation. It comes from the far reaches of China-- from a bat or pangolin-- and Trump and his incompetent federal government have to deal with the medical and financial crisis. 

Chaos ensues!

It's a satire, of course, but Netflix didn't get it. They said it was absurd, and not in a hip, surreal way. More in a sad and stupid way. 

Dave's Community Service Finally Pays Off!

Once again this morning, I did my community service shopping and delivery for my old dude. Pineapple chunks, Italian Wedding soup, chicken franks, bananas, apple sauce, two-liter diet lemon/lime soda, etc. I'm getting pretty good at his list. As I loaded the bags into the car, it started to drizzle.

When I pulled into the apartment driveway, there was something new. A cute blonde woman-- wearing lasses and probably in her late twenties- sat in the trunk space of her Subaru. She was working on a computer, using the hatchback as an umbrella. I had seen her briefly in the apartment once before. I asked her if she was related to my old dude and she said, "No, just a roommate. Apparently, there are a couple of small apartments on the top floor." Then she complimented me on my good deed and we talked for a good thirty minutes. She once was an elementary teacher in Arkansas and now she's on a research grant at Rutgers. She was in the midst of collecting data from schools in Brooklyn when the virus hit. Now she's busy finishing up her research and applying for new grants. We talked a lot about how school might look in the future, the way this pandemic will pull back the curtain on income inequality and its effect on education, prom, graduation, my wife trying to teach math to elementary students remotely . . . all sorts of topics.

I think she found me charming and funny, though I was dressed like a homeless person and I haven't shaved in a while. And we were far enough apart that she couldn't smell my morning coffee breath, which wasn't particularly pleasant (I know this because I was wearing a mask in the Stop&Shop, which amplifies and exacerbates coffee breath). This is the kind of credit you should get when you do community service-- I think this would make a great commercial for the program, a guy drops off he groceries for an old dude and then gets to chat with a cute, intelligent chick. 

I'm sure she will tell her cute graduate school friends about me, and they will all be there next Friday to laud my good deeds.

Is the Stock Market Fake News? Is Your Consciousness Fake News? Who Knows?

Planet Money Episode 995: Buybacks And Bailouts is a winner. The podcast dissects the viral debate between CNBC anchor Scott Wapner and billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya. The Canadian venture capitalist believes that the U.S. federal government should let the airlines fail and not be particularly concerned if hedge fund investors lose their vacation homes in the Hamptons.

What follows is his logic.

Over the past decade, large businesses have made enormous profits. With those profits, you have two choices:

1) You can use the money to improve the company itself. You can pay employees more. You can invest in R&D. You can save a pile of cash for emergencies.

2) You can give the money to investors, making the stock more valuable. You can do this with dividends, or the more recent financial engineering miracle . . . stock buybacks. You take your profits and buy lots of company stock. Then you make that stock disappear, increasing the value of the remaining stock.

Obviously, you can also balance the two, but Palihapitiya believes that great companies do more of number one. They are visionary and look to the future.

The airlines did a lot of number two. So did many companies in the S&P 500. According to Palihapitiya:

Since 2009, the 500 companies in the S&P 500 - so these are the 500 best companies in the world - they bought back $7 trillion of stock and/or issued dividends. OK? That turned out to be more than 90 cents of every single dollar of profit that they made over the last 11-plus years.

So why bail these companies out? They haven't looked to the future. Mainly, they've made the rich richer. Palihapitiya thinks it is abominable that only five cents of every dollar in the stimulus package has been handed to individual Americans.

Now, the stimulus money will find its way to some individual Americans; those that have money invested in the stock market. Because the money will serve to prop up the market and prop up stocks in companies that executed buybacks. So the rich will get richer. And folks not heavily invested won't see much money.

I can see both sides. I want my retirement savings to stay solvent. I want my pension to exist. But I know I'm one of the lucky folks, even if I'm not a billionaire. There's plenty of people who don't own stocks, don't have retirement money saved, and don't have a pension. They need cash. They may not get it . . . or get much. Meanwhile, big businesses will.

Here is a piece of the video. Definitely listen to the podcast first.




In other podcast news, somewhere in the middle of this conversation between Sam Harris and Yuval Noah Harari, they explain why I bought Donna Tartt's The Secret History on Amazon the other day. Harari claims that the AI algorithms used by Google and Amazon and Facebook would have known he was gay years before he discovered this. Amazon knew I would buy Tartt's novel for $1.99 . . . a great deal! They knew better than me what I wanted. Now I'm happy reading it, though I would have never remembered about it with AI assistance.

Is this a good thing?

Who fucking knows. The same goes for the bailout.

The Usual Quarantine Stuff

Last night was Zoom pub night. Again.

Earlier Thursday, it was more TV. So much TV. I watched some Bosch with the wife, The Expanse with the kids, and The Wire with the wife and kids. I tried my best to watch some of the Parks and Rec reunion but found it awkward and sluggish. Headed back to Zoom pub night (which is also awkward and sluggish, I think that's just what Zoom is like).

I woke up at 4:45 AM this morning. Decided to get up and get some grading done. Waded through a bunch of narratives and some other assignments. Then went back to bed. That's a plus about remote learning: you can work on your own schedule.

Zoom meeting with the English Department at 8:30 AM.

Then I did some community service and went shopping for an old guy. Bought the usual stuff: liverwurst, ham turkey, pineapple chunks, soup soup soup, grapes, applesauce, etc. Old person food. I'm getting quicker in the store. Listening to electronica helps (Amon Tobin and Boards of Canada).

When I dropped the food off, a cute lady finally witnessed my community service! She answered the door. She was either a relative or some sort of aid. It's nice when someone cute sees you doing community service, but-- unfortunately-- I was dressed like a homeless person.

Note to self: if you wear a mask and you forgot to brush your teeth, you're going to smell some bad breath. Your own bad breath. And there's no way to escape it.

Ian and I did our usual three-mile run. It started pouring rain ten minutes in and didn't stop until we got home. Huge drops. Now it's warm and sunny. Springlike.

Ian stumbled on a fawn while walking the dog.

I just finished my second Josephine Tey mystery: a Shilling For Candles. She's a great writer. Weird characters, a run-of-the-mill detective without the tortured past, and a great ear for dialogue.

Here is a sample passage, summarizing the information the police received about possible sightings of an alleged murder suspect on the run:

By Tuesday noon Tisdall had been seen in almost every corner of England and Wales, and by tea-time was beginning to be seen in Scotland. He had been observed fishing from a bridge over a Yorkshire stream and had pulled his hat suspiciously over his face when the informant had approached. He had been seen walking out of a cinema in Aberystwyth. He had rented a room in Lincoln and had left without paying. (He had quite often left without paying, Grant noticed.) He had asked to be taken on a boat at Lowestoft. (He had also asked to be taken on a boat at half a dozen other places. The number of young men who could not pay their landladies and who wanted to leave the country was distressing.) He was found dead on a moor near Penrith. (That occupied Grant the best part of the afternoon.) He was found intoxicated in a London alley. He had bought a hat in Hythe, Grantham, Lewes, Tonbridge, Dorchester, Ashford, Luton, Aylesbury, Leicester, Chatham, East Grinstead, and in four London shops. He had also bought a packet of safety-pins pins in Swan and Edgars. He had eaten a crab sandwich at a quick lunch counter in Argyll Street, two rolls and coffee in a Hastings bun shop, and bread and cheese in a Haywards’ Heath inn. He had stolen every imaginable kind of article in every imaginable kind of place—including a decanter from a glass-and-china warehouse in Croydon. When asked what he supposed Tisdall wanted a decanter for, the informant said that it was a grand weapon.

And here is my favorite line from the book:

It is said that ninety-nine people out of a hundred, receiving a telegram reading: All is discovered: fly, will snatch a toothbrush and make for the garage.

It's interesting what people lose themselves in during quarantine. Some people are watching old sports. My buddy Whitney is mainlining music documentaries. All I want is crime stuff. The chase scenes, the investigation, the freedom of movement, the bars and dives, and the various localities pull my mind from the reality of quarantine confinement.