A moment in the sun (literally)

As you may have heard, a certain elected official of the United States paid a visit to Huntington, WV last week. When I heard that the ACLU was sending people there to be legal observers, I tagged along as an unofficial volunteer.

The job for the day was not to participate in any of the rallies or protests, but to monitor conditions with the goal of ensuring that people of whatever viewpoint were able to exercise their First Amendment rights, documenting things as necessary.

I think the subtext  for me anyhow was to pay attention in case the situation started to get out of hand.

Mostly, I walked around in the heat for five hours getting my brain baked. And fortunately things didn't get out of hand. The police were generally very professional. There was some screaming back and forth from supporters and protesters but I only saw one person being escorted out by police and no serious violence, even though the potential was definitely there.

There were people across the spectrum who seemed intent on stirring things up. There was even a group of armed militia-type people standing where the protesters were. Fortunately, they were fairly laid back.

The thing that struck me the most was that, although the lines were clearly drawn, most people walked past each other without incident when it was over. There was some give and take, sometimes heated. And at times people seemed to be honestly baffled with how people on the opposite side could think and feel the way they did. Then they went home.

In the end, I found all that to be oddly reassuring.

Switcheroo

I just finished listening to the ancient Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which all kinds of things change form. Little did I know that he could have written a post script on WV's governor Jim Justice, who switched parties publicly during a certain visit to WV earlier this week. We talked about it on a special edition the Front Porch, but I can't remember what I said or if I even agree with myself.

Apropos of nothing again

I'm a philosophical fan of American pragmatism, especially of the William James variety. Not sure how I feel about John Dewey, but I'd probably like him better if he would have been a better writer. I've also read a few by the late Richard Rorty, who died in 2007.

Some lines from his 1998 book Achieving America have attracted attention lately. Here's a slightly condensed version:

[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

Jeez, good thing that didn't happen, right?

You can read more about Rorty's prediction here.

Want to do something?

So if you are one of the millions of people out there who are wanting to do SOMETHING now, here's a simple step for those who live in West Virginia: sign this petition asking the president elect not to turn his back on nearly 180,000 West Virginians from working families who benefit from Medicaid expansion. When you've done that, share the link with others on all your social media.

Once you've done your good deed for the day, you can jog a victory lap and reward yourself by listening to the latest Front Porch podcast.

Is this a full service blog or what?

On the porch

The latest Front Porch discusses the recent election and whether the president elect, whose name escapes me at the moment, and the governor elect Jim Justice will be able to keep their promises. Or should.

Apropos of nothing

So the last few days have been interesting or something, although I would have been fine with boring.

I'm thinking of three things I've read that crossed my path this week. One was this piece by Andrew Sullivan on the dangers of fascism to the USA from the Trump campaign. That was before.

Then a friend sent me this item from Vox about how Trump's proposed policies will be a disaster for the white working class.

Then there's this item from Jacobin about how urgent it is to engage in (small d) democratic political action.

Otherwise, I've been thinking about a book someone told me about with a title I can't print in a family blog. It was something like "**** yes: A Guide to the Happy Acceptance of Everything." The **** in question is neither scatological nor eschatological. I haven't read it (yet) but I think it's kind of a comic novel about someone who tries to say "Yes!" to everything that life throws at him. And yes can be kind of complicated.

I can't say that's my worldview, but I think at some point we all need to say "**** yes" to the challenges that have been thrown our way. And deal with them.

One last thing. A quote that has been on my mind lately is attributed to Mao Zedong (of whom I'm not a fan, btw). It goes like this: "Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."

**** yes!

Signs of the times

You hear a lot these days about the decline of civil discourse. You can hear a lot more of the real thing here, where NY Times reporters document the hateful and sometimes violent rants heard a certain orange political rallies. Warning: it's pretty raw and ugly.

Meanwhile, still in the universe of politics, here's another reason for changing the state motto of WV from "Mountaineers are always free" to "you can't make this **** up."

Finally, did you know that the duck billed platypus was venomous? I was not aware of that. I wonder if they've gotten more venomous these days...

The moon is being howled at

WV Delegate Michael Folk got into hot water recently with a tweet calling for the public hanging of Hillary Clinton. It would seem he has some company these days from the Trump camp, although there seems to be some disagreement as to the method of execution.

(Milder voices would be content with prison.)

The most bizarre, not to say bloodthirsty comments so far come from Ben Carson, who links her to Lucifer (by means of Saul Alinsky). From the NY Times coverage:

Digging into her college thesis about Saul Alinksy, the left-wing community organizer and radical, Mr. Carson suggested that Mrs. Clinton admired him. Then he pointed out that Mr. Alinsky had acknowledged Lucifer on the dedication page of one of his books, suggesting that such an association was somehow damning for Mrs. Clinton.

“Are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model someone who acknowledges Lucifer?” Mr. Carson asked. “Think about that.”

....“If she believed that at that time — and now you look at her actions — you look at what she advocates, the killing of babies, the dissolution of the traditional family, all these kinds of things — those are pretty consistent, quite frankly,” Mr. Carson said on CNN.

Demonization on politics is nothing new, but usually it's a metaphor. Holy literalism, Batman!

Make America what again?

If you're anything like me, you might have a sneaking suspicion that the subtext behind a certain political campaign is "Make American White Again." Well, it turns out there's some evidence that points that way. There's more on that here. And then, apropos of nothing, there's this.

Random observations

Here are a few:

*It's a bit ironic that while congress is finally talking about dealing with mass incarceration, Democratic leadership is MIA.

*Someone else dropped the F-bomb.

*Meanwhile, back at the state capitol, the wrecking crew still hasn't come up with a budget even though we're less than a month from a government shutdown. This Gazette editorial is a day or so old but it sums things up pretty well. And this op-ed doesn't pull any punches.

*Urgent Neanderthal update here.

The other F bomb

If you are one of those people who are getting weirded out by the current political climate, and particularly with the whole Trump vibe, you're not alone. Recently Robert Kagan, a Brookings Institution fellow often regarded as a neocon published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "This is how fascism comes to America."  Shortly after that, the NY Times published this piece about how the Trump campaign has helped spark a global debate about the F word.

Thing is, I didn't like it the first time around. In fact, my dad and two uncles spent a good chunk of the 1940s fighting against it. I'm hoping it's a false alarm but this isn't the kind of thing to ignore.

Rediscovered again

It must be an election year, because WV has definitely been rediscovered. Two presidential candidates hit the state yesterday alone, with two entirely different vibes. Here's coverage of a forum on poverty in McDowell County, one of the nation's poorest counties, led by Bernie Sanders. And here's coverage of the other one.

Speaking of the other one, this piece from Forbes questions his claim to be able to bring back the coal industry.  This one talks about what he didn't say to miners. And this one questions claims about national working class support.

Prophetic words. And others

I'm in the middle of a research project on the timely subject of why WV is poor. Along the way I rediscovered this prophetic 1884 report from the WV Tax Commission, which was alarmed by how quickly out of state business interests were gaining control of the state. Here's how it ended:

The wealth of this State is immense; the development of this wealth will earn vast private fortunes far beyond the dreams even of a modem Croesus; the question is, whether this vast wealth shall belong to persons who live here and who are permanently identified with the future of West Virginia, or whether it shall pass into the hands of persons who do not live here and who care nothing for our State except to pocket the treasures which lie buried in our hills? 

If the people of West Virginia can be roused to an appreciation of the situation we ourselves will gather this harvest now ripe on the lands inherited from our ancestors; on the other hand, if the people are not roused to an understanding of the situation in less than ten years this vast wealth will have passed from our present population into the hands of non-residents, and West Virginia will be almost like Ireland and her history will be like that of Poland. 

The rest is here and it's well worth a look. Golly gee, wouldn't it be terrible if they were right?

Slightly off topic, here's an interesting post from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo about Donald Trump, black lung and coal. Here's an excerpt from an interview Trump gave back in 1990:

I like the challenge and tell the story of the coal miner’s son. The coal miner gets black-lung disease, his son gets it, then his son . If I had been the son of a coal miner, I would have left the damn mines. But most people don’t have the imagination–or whatever–to leave their mine. They don’t have “it.”

Imagine the outrage if something like that came from the mouth of other candidates...

Three things

If I had to name something that has changed for the better in WV since the elections of 2014, I'd have to say it was the writing of Gazette-Mail statehouse reporter Phil Kabler. His latest column on the state budget mess sums things up pretty well.

In a related topic, since quite a few things relate to coal in WV, here's something interesting from the Brookings Institution on the subject. Short version: unlike a simple regulatory approach to deal with greenhouse gas emissions--or simply ranting about a war on coal that is largely market driven--a carbon tax could actually bring much needed resources to the coalfields.

Off topic, in case you missed it, David Brooks had this to say about the Trump moment in American history and beyond.

Three more for the road...from the road

I'm traveling tonight but found a few things worth a look. First, here's an interesting item by Charleston Gazette-Mail reporter and Coal Tattoo blogger Ken Ward on the Blankenship verdict.

The NY Times editorial on the subject is here. Here's the first paragraph:

It was the rarest of news in the coal mining hollows of Appalachia: A once powerful executive, Donald Blankenship, was sentenced Wednesday to a year in prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety laws at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where 29 workers died in an explosion six years ago. The very idea that a dominant baron of the industry called King Coal could be brought to justice and put behind bars shook the region, where miners have long complained that they face dangerous and illegal working conditions that routinely result in no punishment.

Kudos to federal judge Irene Berger, who had this to say to Blankenship:

 “You, Mr. Blankenship, created a culture of noncompliance at Upper Big Branch where your subordinates accepted and, in fact, encouraged unsafe working conditions in order to reach profitability and production targets.”

Finally, just for fun, here's a parody of a famous Robert Frost poem as Donald Trump might have written it.

Hard times

The topic of this week's Front Porch from WV Public Broadcasting was the woes of a certain demographic you may have heard about this election season, to with the white working class. We kicked some ideas around here. And remember, no trolling till you listen to the podcast.

(Fair warning: there are some odd juxtapositions and turns of a phrase in this one.)

Authoritarianism in our time.

OK, so this is another example of a post that's more like a tweet, but here's a look at authoritarianism in our time. Those who have ears, let them hear.

Mother of Exiles

I guess we'd have to ban this poem if some people got their way:

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Trumped

Sometimes I think Donald Trump might be a political double agent or agent provocateur.

Other times I think how awesome a Trump administration might be for pure entertainment value (in a make believe world, of course NOT in the real one). In that virtual world scenario, I kind of envision a "team of rivals" in the cabinet, with such luminaries as Gene Simmons, Gary Busey, and Meat Loaf...

Busey would make an awesome imaginary secretary of state...

In the real world, however, Trump's views on immigration, aside from the having no basis in reality thing, could be a recipe for political disaster for a certain political faction.

If you actually want a fact-based look at the issue, this might be a good place to start. Or, if you're in a hurry, you could check this op-ed by Jared Bernstein out.

The universal thump

"For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials and tribulations of every kind whatsoever."--Ishmael in Moby-Dick.

Here's yet another reason why everyone should read this greatest American novel: most of us are grunts one way or another and the book basically sings the greatness of gruntdom. And even if you have a good gig, you gotta serve somebody, as Dylan sang. Ishmael takes great pride in taking to sea as a simple sailor, even though it means getting ordered about and yelled at.

In his view, the human condition is such that we are all in one way or another a grunt at the disposal of some arbitrary power, even if it is simply that of an indifferent universe:

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about-however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way-either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder blades, and be content.

I don't think I have Ishmael's confidence that things equal out over time, but I appreciate the generosity of his sentiment.

WHAT HE SAID. WV's senior senator goes off on the Ryan budget here.

GRANDMOTHERS made us what we are today. Maybe even literally.

THE DONALD HATCHES A DUD. Not much of a Trump card. (Full disclosure: the Spousal Unit and I used to dream of a 2012 Trump/Palin ticket purely for the entertainment value. You betcha.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED