Living The Truth

In 1978, Czech dissident Vaclav Havel published, via samizdat, an essay entitled, The Power Of The Powerless.  In 1968, a futile attempt to "put a human face" on socialism in Czechoslovakia, was crushed by Soviet tanks, and a wave of repression occurred to ensure it never happened again.  Havel and others attempted to build resistance to the communist apparatus.  In his essay, Havel describes what he characterizes as a "post totalitarian system", one that relies on a:

. . . labyrinth of influence, repression, fear, and self-censorship which swallows up everyone within it.

In other words, something like the society the Woke are trying to build right now in America.

Havel gives us a parable, the story of the greengrocer who places in his shop the sign, Workers Of The World, Unite!  Does he do so because he believes in the slogan?  No, he does so as a sign of his submission to and humiliation by the regime because it is too dangerous not to.  From the regime's perspective it is even more powerful because those who disagree with it must publicly demonstrate their support.  The individual living within such a system must live a lie to survive.  Havel proposes that the only path towards restoring a free society is for the individual to refuse to live the lie and that by living the truth on a day to day basis to differentiate themselves from the mandated culture.  Havel's argument is complex and goes on to explain how it is possible to exploit the cracks in the system, live the truth, and still possibly survive.  

Havel himself was jailed several months after The Power of the Powerless was published clandestinely, serving four years in prison.  He survived living the truth and, in 1989, became the last President of Czechoslovakia and, in 1992, the first President of the Czech Republic.

With that in mind, I ask you watch the 10-minute video embedded below.  It came to my attention through a piece by Rod Dreher, author of the just-released Live Not By Lies.  It was published in the American Conservative, an online magazine and one which features many authors I do not care for.  However, I follow Dreher on twitter so I can get notice of his articles, finding him credible and thoughtful.

The video, posted on October 27, is by Jody Shaw, an administrative assistant at Smith College in Northhampton, MA as well as being a graduate of the school and a self-described liberal.  She's also "sick and tired of enduring what she describes as “harassment, discrimination, and hostility” in the workplace at Smith, because she is white" and Ms Shaw speaks up not just on her own behalf but on behalf of many others who have spoken with her but fear speaking publicly.  She is resisting the poison that Critical Race Theory and the Woke are trying to inject into our society.

Stopping the hysterical stampede towards totalitarianism will take the work of many brave people like Jody Shaw.

Ms Shaw, claims that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on race illegal, protects her.  She's right, but unfortunately, the increasingly progressive-oriented legal academics and civil rights groups do not agree with her, arguing that White people are not protected by the Civil Rights Act despite its clear language.  A little back history is important here.  In 2009, when Eric Holder became Attorney General in the Obama administration, he hired about 100 new lawyers for the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice.  A later Inspector General report on that hiring process chastised Holder for hiring those lawyers exclusively from a select group of civil rights organizations, including the NAACP and LaRaza, which take the position that the anti-discrimination provisions of the Act do not apply to Whites, while rejecting many other qualified candidates with similar credentials, but without similar views.

It is also appropriate to note that, as I write this, the California Democratic Party is spearheading an effort to repeal the anti-discrimination clauses in that state's constitution.

Every time I think of the courage of a Havel or a Jody Shaw I become more outraged at the moral inversion currently underway in large parts of our society, and one specific example comes to mind.  Angela Davis is someone of whom I've written before, a violent and evil person.  Since this post in January 2019 with the eruption of the Woke this year she has regained a great deal of public prominence being featured on the cover of Vanity Fair which contains a fawning and disgraceful agit-prop interview of Davis by movie director Ava Duverney, as well as two glowing articles in the New York Times during October.

Angela Davis is a communist.  She opposes human rights.  And, when approached in the 1970s seeking her support in seeking the release of dissident Czechs like Vaclav Havel, her response was "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison".  Those involved in her public rehabilitation show their true colors.  For more on the noxious Davis read this piece.

The Woke want you to believe that it is Angela Davis who lacks power and privilege, even as she has been showered with decades of appointments in academia and celebrated as a political and fashion icon, while it is those like Jody Shaw, fearing the loss of jobs and careers for speaking out, who wield the power and privilege.  When you are asked to believe that you are being asked to live the lie.  Will you decide to live the truth?

UPDATE: If you want to know what it is like living in the Woke version of America, ask Tiffany Riley, recently fired as a high school principal in the Mount Ascutney School District in Vermont.  The District Board fired here because back in June she wrote:

I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get to this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point. While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race. While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all? Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.

In the peculiar logic of the Woke, one of the Board members said the most convincing moment for her was in a phone conversation with Riley.  When the Board member accused Riley of being a racist, it was the fact that Riley rejected this accusation that was the most damning fact. 

This reasoning, so common on the Woke, evokes a scene from the magnificent German film, The Lives of Others, in which the interrogator from the communist Stasi secret police of East Germany questions a prisoner:

Q.  You think we imprison people on a whim?

A.  No.

Q.  If you think our humanistic system capable of it, that alone would justify your arrest.

In an October 15 statement, Riley asserted:

“I did not know that talking about ‘all lives’ was ‘code’ for opposing the nonviolent messages of the Black Lives Matter movement. Black lives have always mattered to me, which is why I had been leading equity training in the school.”

These examples point out that the Woke are just as much a danger to traditional liberal Democrats as they are to those on the right.  There are many who believe in opposing racism and seeking justice in society who fail to realize that the Woke and their allies like BLM and Antifa are racist and oppose equal justice for all in society.

This is Your Future under the Woke and the Democratic party, none of whose leading figures have objected to this insanity so antithetical to basic American values.   Absolute adherence is demanded to every single aspect of woke theology or you will be branded a heretic.

Fine People On Both Sides*

President Macron of France has expressed his displeasure with the coverage of the recent Islamist beheadings and knife murders in the American press, specifically the New York Times and Washington Post, whose coverage has amounted to declaring "there are fine people on both sides" of these atrocities.

Both outlets have run multiple pieces with this perspective.  For example, the Post ran an article, "Instead of fighting systemic racism, France wants to 'reform Islam'", and numerous articles explaining away the incidents as results of France's secular policies.

After seeing the media coverage President Macron declared:

"Alignment with American multiculturalism is a form of defeatist thought"

I think he's on to something there.  As we've discussed in previous posts, the current Woke theory of multiculturalism is very different from that of twenty years ago.  That ancient relic multiculturalism was about mutual tolerance, acceptance and, in many instances, enjoyment of differences with the idea that we shared a common American culture.  Today's multiculturism focuses on fostering differences, power, intolerance, suspicion and the destruction of common values.  France is right to reject it.

Actually, as I look at the American media coverage it probably is an overstatement to call it a "good people on both sides" approach.  Rather it skews things so those really responsible for the incidents are the beheaded teacher who mocked Mohammed and the three killed in Nice, who were all (gasp!) practicing Roman Catholics, so probably bigots who deserved it, while the true victims were the killers driven to these unfortunate acts by French social policy hostile to Muslims.

---------------------

You probably know the title of this post is taken from President Trump's 2017 remarks at a press conference after the Charlottesville protests over the removal of a statue of Robert E Lee and the presence of white nationalists and neo-nazis at the protest.

I did not see or hear the President's remarks at the time but certainly heard about them.  Based on my personal dislike for the man and his penchant for appalling rhetoric and generating random, unintelligible word salads when not reading a speech, I assumed, given the small but still residual respect I then had for the media, that both his words and the context were being accurately reported.

Over a year later, I read the actual transcript of that press conference and was surprised.  It came via Ann Althouse, the retired U of Wisconsin law professor, whose blog I read daily.  Althouse, who voted for Hillary in 2016, came across the transcript while looking for something else, and felt it important to bring it to her readers attention.  It turns out that while Trump did say "there were fine people on both sides" of the protests, he was referring to the argument over whether the statue should be removed, and at two different points explicitly stated he was not including white nationalists and neo-nazis in that group, specifically saying he "them I totally condemn" and denouncing them as "bad people"!

Yet the myth persists and candidate Biden has repeatedly used it during his campaign and I suspect most regular readers of the NY Times, Washington Post, watchers of CNN or MSNBC, or listeners to NPR do not know about the President's full remarks. 

This is why I no longer believe anything from these sources unless I can independently verify it.

 

Raise Your Hand

Wow.  Came across this at Open Culture.  It's Janis Joplin and Tom Jones from his 1969 variety show This Is Tom Jones.  Jones was certainly no slouch in the singing and dynamism categories but Janis is just an amazing singer and ball of energy.  Reading the article I realized I'd heard her sing the song at Woodstock in August 1969 which you can listen to here.  I like her with Tom better.

Righteous Acts

The Trump administration has recently taken four important actions confronting the scourge of racial discrimination and stereotyping underlying Critical Race Theory and embraced by the advocates of Woke theology (for more on the dangers posed by CRT read other posts in the Your Future series). They are the cornerstones of a strong Federal response to CRT and are certain to be immediately undone if Joe Biden is elected.

The first is the investigation of Princeton University by the Department of Education based upon the admission by its President that it is a racist institution, and therefore possibly acting in contravention of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Second, the Department of Justice lawsuit against Yale University for its alleged discriminatory admission practices, also in violation of the Civil Rights Act.

But it is the next two that are, by far, the most important:

On September 4, Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a directive banning Critical Race training in the Federal government. This followed the revelation that such training has infiltrated the federal bureaucracy in recent years.

Vought's letter states:

"These types of 'trainings' not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce. We can be proud that as an employer, the Federal government has employees of all race, ethnicities, and religions."

Banned is:

". . . any training on 'critical race theory', 'white privilege', or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil." 

The final act is the Executive Order (EO) issued by President Trump on September 22 banning Critical Race Theory training by Federal contractors and grantees, an EO impacting a wide array of institutions from business corporations doing business with the government to colleges and universities which receive federal grants (the details of the EO can be found at the end of this post).

Democrats and their media allies have falsely and repeatedly claimed that this EO bans diversity training. This is a lie.

To the contrary, the order explicitly:

 . . .  does not prevent agencies, the United States Uniformed Services, or contractors from promoting racial, cultural, or ethnic diversity or inclusiveness, provided such efforts are consistent with the requirements of this order.

Moreover it allows for academic discussion of Critical Race Theory, providing:

Nothing in this order shall be construed to prohibit discussing, as part of a larger course of academic instruction, the divisive concepts listed in section 2(a) of this order in an objective manner and without endorsement.

It is a moral disgrace that 56 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, large parts of the academy, media, and one of our political parties have embraced this doctrine (the tipoff is anyone invoking the term "systemic racism" supports CRT) and that such an Executive Order is needed. 

As progressive Zaid Jilani has noted:

The portion of people who view their race as defining them declined a lot during the 20th century, coinciding with a big decline in implicit and explicit bias. These folks really looked at that and said we want to crank it up again?

And beyond just the effect on race relations, CRT is a reactionary doctrine that would reverse the Enlightenment and take us back to an era of tribalism and clans, set at each others throats.

Keeping the United States together, a nation of 330 million with diverse ideas and backgrounds is not easy. CRT is not only designed to make it harder to keep our country together but it is opposed to the idea of "neutral processes". Neutral process is the idea that our government institutions and judicial processes will strive to have processes that work equally for all parties. It means that no actions or elections are irreversible or should be events posing an existential threat to any American citizen. In reality, no processes are perfect, or perfectly neutral, but being able to assure some basic level of adherence to these processes is essential in the trust needed to maintain a democratic republic.

CRT rejects the concept of neutral processes, believing that all institutions are based on racial group-centered power hierarchies and that is all there is. There are no real ideas as such, there are no differing individual perspectives. The only question is who is on top of the hierarchy and those are top are entitled to wield power in any way they believe is justified. It is why if CRT advocates control our culture they would have no hesitation in banning any dissenting views, openly endorsing repression. My principles when I was a liberal democrat and today include freedom of speech freedom of conscience, and due process and equality under the law. It turns out that for many who professed the same beliefs it was merely a tactical move. An America where CRT holds sway in government and our institutions will be transformed into an unrecognizable country.

Or, as Frank Hebert wrote in Children of Dune:

When I am Weaker than you, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom because that is according to my principles.

And, once again, in a Biden Administration these actions will be immediately reversed. My guess is Biden does not understand what CRT really is, but those around him surely do, as will the thousands of Democrats appointed to political positions in the Federal bureaucracy in a Biden administration, and the progressive trained judges appointed by Biden (or Harris).

As a palette cleanser let's close with the UK Minister for Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, blasting CRT.

The EO is titled, Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping.  In the preamble, after discussing the creed expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the sentiments of President Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr regarding equality and the worth of the individual, it goes on to say:

Today, however, many people are pushing a different vision of America that is grounded in hierarchies based on collective social and political identities rather than in the inherent and equal dignity of every person as an individual. This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans.

This destructive ideology is grounded in misrepresentations of our country’s history and its role in the world. Although presented as new and revolutionary, they resurrect the discredited notions of the nineteenth century’s apologists for slavery who, like President Lincoln’s rival Stephen A. Douglas, maintained that our government “was made on the white basis” “by white men, for the benefit of white men.” Our Founding documents rejected these racialized views of America, which were soundly defeated on the blood-stained battlefields of the Civil War. Yet they are now being repackaged and sold as cutting-edge insights. They are designed to divide us and to prevent us from uniting as one people in pursuit of one common destiny for our great country.

It then cites several recent examples of training in this pernicious doctrine:

Training materials from Argonne National Laboratories, a Federal entity, stated that racism “is interwoven into every fabric of America” and described statements like “color blindness” and the “meritocracy” as “actions of bias.”

Materials from Sandia National Laboratories, also a Federal entity, for non-minority males stated that an emphasis on “rationality over emotionality” was a characteristic of “white male[s],” and asked those present to “acknowledge” their “privilege” to each other.

A Smithsonian Institution museum graphic recently claimed that concepts like “[o]bjective, rational linear thinking,” “[h]ard work” being “the key to success,” the “nuclear family,” and belief in a single god are not values that unite Americans of all races but are instead “aspects and assumptions of whiteness.” The museum also stated that “[f]acing your whiteness is hard and can result in feelings of guilt, sadness, confusion, defensiveness, or fear.”

The preamble concludes:

Therefore, it shall be the policy of the United States not to promote race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating in the Federal workforce or in the Uniformed Services, and not to allow grant funds to be used for these purposes. In addition, Federal contractors will not be permitted to inculcate such views in their employees.

Banned are nine types of "divisive concepts":

(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; 

(2) the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist; 

(3) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; 

(4) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex; 

(5) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex; 

(6) an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex; 

(7) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; 

(8) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or

(9) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race. The term “divisive concepts” also includes any other form of race or sex stereotyping or any other form of race or sex scapegoating. 

"Race or sex stereotyping" is defined as:

. . . ascribing character traits, values, moral and ethical codes, privileges, status, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of his or her race or sex.

"Race or sex scapegoating" is defined as:

. . . assigning fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex. It similarly encompasses any claim that, consciously or unconsciously, and by virtue of his or her race or sex, members of any race are inherently racist or are inherently inclined to oppress others, or that members of a sex are inherently sexist or inclined to oppress others.

The EO also directs the Attorney General to:

. . .  continue to assess the extent to which workplace training that teaches the divisive concepts set forth in section 2(a) of this order may contribute to a hostile work environment and give rise to potential liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . . .

A Closed Ecosystem

A closed ecosystem is "a self-replenishing ecosystem in which life can be maintained without external factors or outside aid".   I'm familiar with the concept having worked in the environmental field for many years.

It is what media, including social media, have been busily constructing in America over the past few years; an echo chamber in which only certain voices can be heard and others excluded.

Over the past decade we've seen the growth of "fact-checking", an industry dominated by progressive minded institutions like Politifact, Snopes and the various legacy media outfits like the New York Times and the TV and cable networks.  

They apply a common and consistent approach depending on the political orientation of the statement source and the narrative these institutions seek to impose on consumers.

If it is Republican or GOP both the literal statement and the context in which it is set will be scrutinized meticulously.  If the statement is actually correct but there is context omitted it is declared "false".  It the statement has inaccuracies but the missing context provides support for the assertion the statement is still declared "false".  The opposite occurs if a progressive or Democrat is the source of the statement.  I've seen fact checkers acknowledge a statement by a Democrat is actually false but then supply some additional context and declare the statement "partially true"!

Then the social media take the fact checker conclusions into their process for determining what their users can see or whether warnings need to be posted regarding certain articles thus reinforcing a virtuous circle for progressives.

The same approach is taken regarding determining if a group or individual is engaged in hate speech.  Media companies rely or cite to certain groups when reporting on this subject or, in the case of social media, actually engage these groups to help determine if certain speech should be banned from their platforms.  Many of these groups are actually hate groups themselves though positioned on the Left, who deliberately sent out to demonize those with whom they disagree.  An example is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which outrageously and overbroadly classifies its political opponents as hate groups in order to get them banned and condemned.

The SPLC is also an example of another phenomenon - the takeover of once respectable organizations by Progressives who turn them to evil purposes but profit from the long-standing brand reputation and continue to suck in contributions.  Forty years ago the SPLC was a fine organization fighting real racists like the KKK.  Today, it is a fund-raising scam with hundred of millions in slush funds and happily designating anyone not 100% following the progressive line as a hater.  Other organizations that have gone through the same mutation include Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union.

More recently we've seen a variation added to the toolkit of the fact-checkers which is to simply not fact-check statements made by politicians, individuals and groups they sympathize with.  Why bother going to all the trouble to explain away inaccurate statements when you can just ignore them?

I was prompted to write this after looking at the NY Times and WaPo fact checks on last night's debate.  It turns out that neither fact-checked Joe Biden's statement that no one lost their individual health insurance under Obamacare.

Not only is that statement a lie, but it ties back to the most consequential political lie used to pass a domestic program in American history.  In 2009-2010 during the Obamacare debate, President Obama repeatedly stated, on more than 30 occasions, that if you liked your doctor or your healthplan, you would not lose them under Obamacare.

The truth is that five million Americans lost their plans under Obamacare, including my sister, her husband and their daughter.  Moreover, in 2011, once Obamacare was law and it was safe to tell the truth, the Department of Health & Human Services, in the preamble to a rulemaking, estimated that up to 93 million American could lose their existing coverage once the Cadillac Tax imposed by the law, kicked in (and which I wrote about way back in 2013).  This catastrophe was only averted by Republicans in Congress postponing the deadline for imposition of the tax.

Given the penchant for carefully counting each Trump "lie" in the press, my question is whether President Obama's lie, which had big consequences on millions of Americans, should be counted as 1, 30, 5 million or 93 million?

And, as for Joe Biden's statement and its accuracy it's as if for readers of those publications it has now been certified as true through omission in the fact-check.

That is what I mean by a closed ecosystem in which readers and watchers can be comfortably enmeshed, with their dearest beliefs constantly reinforced, unaware of reality.

Covid + 7

 It's now been seven months since Mr Covid joined us.  Here are my past pieces and you can read where I was right and wrong.  Current reflections:

1.  I never thought the storm would go on for this long.  Back in February I anticipated it would be bad but over by summer or latest early fall.  To me the lead indicator of how bad it was going to be was that China, which does not place individual health as its highest priority, was willing to take a substantial hit to its top priority, the economy, in order to control Covid.  Now, who knows?

2.  As older folks (though in good health) we are in the more vulnerable category.  It's to our benefit that a lot of younger people get this to develop immunity and break transmission chains, and it is also to our benefit to take reasonable precautions to make we don't get infected but it may be to others benefit that we do. 

3.  Let's be thankful that unlike many other similar pandemics, this is not disproportionately impacting the young.  Better us old folks than them.

4.  Would any other strategy have made for a significant difference for the United States?  As I look at what's happened globally I am more doubtful about this than I was earlier in the year.  And I am speaking of practical measures, not those invented in the public health dreamworld.

5.  People need to stop making premature declarations about winner and losers, particularly claims driven by politics.  As we've seen from the ups and downs and various waves it ain't over until it's over.  We simply don't know what will happen in the next few months and you cannot extrapolate from current conditions.

When the Northeast was hit early in the this, many in the rest of America thought they were handling it better than the Northeast.

When later the Southeast was hit, many blamed state leadership, even though the results (as of now) weren't as bad as the Northeast. 

Maybe now that most states have experienced at least one wave we can get beyond that.

After the Western Europe initial wave crashed and cases were very low in the summer, some people claimed it proved they were handing it better than the U.S., where deaths had declined but were at a relatively high level.  Now Western Europe faces a massive second wave.

Worldometer data for Today:

U.S. (pop. 331 million), 73,000 cases, 959 deaths

Spain, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands (pop. 371 million), 135,000 cases, 783 deaths

 ADDED: Next day data:

U.S.: 79,000 cases, 894 deaths

S,UK, F, I, G, B, N: 141,000 cases, 978 deaths

6.  What is a Covid death?  I've learned there is great variation in how deaths are classified by various countries which makes direct comparisons difficult.  It is also very difficult to get definitive, as opposed to anecdotal, information on this.  From my research, Belgium may have the most expansive definition while the U.S. is relatively liberal in attribution along with a number of other countries.  For some other countries, like Italy and Spain, there have been credible allegations of under counting.  And some countries, like Russia and Iran appear to have pretty restrictive definitions.

Mortality differences between countries are also influenced by demographic and health conditions.  Countries with younger populations will have lower rates (for instance, the states of the Arabian Peninsula have high infection but relatively low mortality) as will healthier populations with less high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, all conditions that are more prevalent in the U.S. than in many other countries.

This is the current list of countries with death rates in excess of 400 per million.  I picked this because it provides a broad bracket with the U.S. in the middle.  About all I feel comfortable saying right now is all of these countries are in the same ballpark.

U.S.  688

Brazil  732

Spain  738

Argentina  607

France  524

Colombia  581

Peru  1,026

Mexico  676

UK  652

Chile  720

Italy  612

Netherlands  404

Belgium  908

Ecuador  705

Bolivia  730

Panama  599

Sweden  586

Moldova  407

North Macedonia  420

Montenegro  403

There are several other countries currently on track to exceed 400, including Armenia, Iran, Ireland, Romania and South Africa.  Given the extent of the current outbreak in eastern Europe I anticipate several more countries from that region joining the list.  And with the unknowable future course of the pandemic the list could look entirely different in early 2021.

7.  Per capita versus absolute numbers.  I see a lot of this, again often for political purposes when people argue whichever one suits their purpose.  Please stop it.  

Example - India is not on the list above but it has the third highest number of deaths (117,000) and second highest number of cases (8.7 million).  The U.S. has the highest death total but, as you saw above, it is not the highest per capita.

8.  What is happening now?  The entire Western Hemisphere has been hard hit, even Canada which had done fairly well and is seeing a surge.   Western Europe is seeing a huge second wave, and Eastern Europe, which had been relatively insulated earlier is now seeing a major wave.  In contrast the Scandanavian countries have been stable so far.  Things are getting worse more slowly in Russia and the former Soviet Republics.  The Middle East has been seeing many cases for a while with Israel, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq having recent surges.

Sub-Saharan Africa has, so far, seen minimal impact with the exception of South Africa.  In South Asia, India faces a full scale pandemic.

9.  I'd like to have more and better information on what the countries that have escaped the worst have been doing.  I am not including isolated islands nations (Australia, New Zealand) or small city states (Hong Kong, Singapore) with conditions difficult to replicate here.  What interests me are places like Uruguay, surrounded by hard hit Brazil and Argentina.  Or Germany which, until recently, had also done much better than its neighbors.  Why has Vietnam, which does not have the most robust public health system, done so well?  

On a related matter, I'd like to know if there are genetic, health, or demographic factors that are playing into the relatively good performance of East Asian nations in addition to their control measures.

10.  Related to #9 is trying to make sense of the Sweden response.  My reading indicates that the measures it took (and didn't take) are is less dramatically different from most countries than either its supporters or detractors claim.  The other thing to note is that, as of today, Sweden's death rate (586) is substantially higher than its neighbors Denmark (120), Norway (51), and Finland (64).  The only thing I know for certain is that we can only draw conclusions when this is over.  It would be premature now.

11.  U.S. pandemic planning was built around an influenza, not coronavirus, outbreak and predicated on an infection with a fatality rate of 10-20%!  We still don't know the ultimate fatality rate for covid-19 but it is substantially less.  As of today the fatality rate per confirmed cases is 2.6%.  However, we know the actual cases are a multiple of that figure so the actual fatality rate is less than 1% and might be as low as 0.15%.  Looking at how we (and the world) have reacted to this I do not think we could, under any circumstances, handle an influenza pandemic of the scope in our planning documents and that is a very, very sobering thought.

12.  This is definitely not the flu (or at least like any flu we've experienced in the U.S. in the past half century).  Before covid I'd never paid any attention to how the CDC developed its estimates for flu cases and death each year.  Now that I have it is clear to me that the deaths are very likely overestimates, so covid is actually worse than it appears from a comparison with the CDC flu estimates.

Covid is also very different in its impact on age groups.  The groups hit hardest by flu are the youngest and the oldest, but as we've seen, covid has much less impact on those under 20 than the flu and may have a slightly less impact on those under 40.  But for populations older than 65 it is much worse.

ADDED: I've also realized the need to be cautious when comparing covid with prior pandemics.  With prior pandemics death and cases are rough estimates while we've never counted any disease in real-time with the specificity with which covid is tracked globally.  Comparisons can be very misleading if not properly caveated.

13.  Treatments are better which is contributing to the lower death rates since April but there is still a lot we don't know about covid transmission, how it acts on the body and any longer term impacts on those infected.

14.  There's been a lot written about herd immunity with some suggesting it may kick it at lower population infection rates than previously postulated.  The verdict it out but it looks to me that the Western Europe resurgence is not a good sign.

15.  The original idea about lockdowns was to implement them for a few weeks to avoid surges and collapse of health care systems.  They have evolved to some extent to be in place until there is a cure for covid-19.  I think this unsustainable the longer the pandemic goes on and the economic, societal, physical, and psychological costs are substantial.

16.  Though I think outcomes would not have been substantially different (the one exception that does come to mind is sending infected patients to nursing homes) most of our leaders and institutions have not come out of this looking good.

- Public health officials told us for the first two months that public wearing of masks was stupid and ineffective and then started calling us stupid if we didn't mask.  In February, I looked online at mask studies (most in East Asia) and concluded they had at least some marginal benefit in crowded or indoor locales and we've been using them since then.

- They completely screwed up the development of a reliable covid test which set us back at the beginning.

- The published government plans developed since 2007 (which I reviewed online) were so general as to be not usable as practical implementation and response guides. 

-  In May and June we were suddenly told by public health officials and some politicians that participating in mass gatherings somehow magically gave you covid immunity if it was for purposes the public health and politicians approved of.

- And as for Dr Fauci he's been on every side of every issue since January.  I know he has some big fans, but I don't get it.  He also has detractors who think he's been wrong on everything but he hasn't.  He's been wrong and right about everything because of his shifting statements.

- State politicians in some cases downplayed covid early on, in others sent infected patients back to nursing homes, in others delayed urging the use of masks, and in other completely overreacted in their dictates which have been kept in place well beyond reason.  And not enough bad can be said about the ghoulish Governor Andrew Cuomo.

- The President did what he often does.  The actual actions taken at his direction were often good or at least not bad, but they were accompanied by terrible rhetoric, bad tone, conflicting messages, goofy ramblings and stream of consciousness which is not what the public wants to hear at a time like this.  He sounded (and sounds) like a man not in control of himself.

Do The Right Thing: Part 1

As I've been noting there are quite a few liberal and progressive voices who recognize the danger posed to America by Woke theology.  The frustrating part for me is seeing excellent analysis that most of the time turns away from what is needed politically to stop this freight train from destroying our society.  For more on why it is such a danger, read the other posts in my Your Future series.

Below are three examples of this phenomenon of those who would rather engage in wishful thinking.

Andrew Sullivan has written eloquently of the threat posed by Wokeism to liberal democracy and he was forced to leave New York Magazine because of it.  But he remains delusional about what his options really are in his recent essay, Dreaming Of A Landslide - a landslide for Joe Biden and the Democrats, that is.  Why he thinks giving Democrats control of all branches of government is a good idea, given the party now has a paramilitary wing; stood by while cities burned and crime rates have soared over the past few months; is intolerant of dissent; supports Critical Race Theory which denies our common humanity; supports revoking anti-discrimination laws; and has cadres of like-minded apparatchiks ready to fill thousands of positions in a new administration, is absolutely baffling.  He is dreaming, he is dreaming in a dream world.

I was going to write a critique of Sullivan's specific points, but Micky Kaus, an eccentric Democrat from California beat me to it, so I will liberally quote from him:

1. Sullivan argues a Trump shellacking would have a big impact. "Bush’s loss to Clinton, in turn, solidified the hard right’s control of the GOP from Gingrich through to Trump." Huh? The Republicans’ next four nominees were Bob Dole, George Bush's son George Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney. None are hard right.

2. Sullivan seems to entirely blame Trump for "tribalism" and "polarization," which is why Trump needs to be expunged and cauterized etc.. Trump certainly hasn't cured those problems — or even tried — but given the Democrats' inability to come to terms with his 2016 victory, their immediate full-on opposition, their ongoing attempts to reverse the election’s result— plus the pre-Trump ascendance of Critical Race Theory (critqued most accessibly by Sullivan himself) and the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests (against police brutality, not Trump's policies), it seems as if at least some percentage of the blame should fall on Democrats who'd feel vindicated by a landslide.

3. "[Trump]  has worsened social and economic inequality, when a reformist conservatism would seek to ‘level up’ a society wracked by hyper-global capitalism." But this ‘leveling up’ is exactly what was happening until the pandemic hit this year, with wages at the bottom rising faster, than the wages of higher-paid Americans, thanks to both tight labor market (helped by restrained immigration) and minimum wage hikes in many states. The pandemic probably reversed these gains, and maybe Trump's partly to blame for the pandemic. But it's hard to say he needs repudiation as an innate enemy of ‘leveling up’ when he made things better for 3 years.

4. "A landslide matters because it gives Biden a much bigger mandate to govern from the center.” Really? Compared with, say, a narrow Biden win that suggested voters were wary of leftish Dem ambitions? Seems like wishful Brit leader-writer thinking to me. It’s much more likely that a big win would give the left a bigger mandate, no? -- a mandate to end the Senate filibuster, add states, pack the Supreme Court, to name the current hotly discussed changes. Also to use any new procedural leverage to help pass an ambitious health care plan, a "card check" program of unionization, various cash programs that approach a UBI, added race-preference mandates, etc. Not saying these are all necessarily bad things, but they ain't centrist.

5. Andrew approves Republican populism:

The Republican move toward defending the unskilled, protecting working families, guarding entitlements, resisting urban wokeness, checking free trade absolutism, restraining overseas intervention, and curtailing mass immigration is one that need not be abandoned. Its time has come.

Hard to square this confident hope in the future of Trumpish policies with Sullivan’s claim that a landslide “would say to posterity: we made this hideous mistake, for understandable reasons, but after four years, we saw what we did and decisively changed course.” Hideous mistake or “time has come.” Pick one.

More practically, curtailing mass immigration won't be possible if Democrats succeed in passing something like the old Gang of 8 bill that would double legal immgration, legalize virtually all current illegal immigrants, and practically invite a new influx of economic migrants posing as "asylum" seekers to overwhelm our legal system. Sullivan’s landlslide — giving Democrats conrol of the Senate — is what would enable Democrats to very quickly do this, shaping the electorate for the rest of American history and thereby making many of Andrew's other, anti-woke goals, unattainable. You’d think he would face up to this.

You would think, but he won't.  This is not the Joe Biden, nor the Democratic Party of the Clinton years.  That is gone.  What is left is a radicalized party that also controls the major institutions of our society.  Do not expect mercy if they control the federal government on top of that.

George Packer is a writer for many prestigious liberal publications including The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine and a standard issue progressive so his October 2019 piece in The Atlantic, When The Culture War Comes For The Kids, must have startled some of his regular readers.  Living in New York City, Packer and his wife fell into the educational pressure cooker regarding their children but ultimately forsook private school for public education in city schools.

My wife and I are products of public schools. Whatever torments they inflicted on our younger selves, we believed in them. We wanted our kids to learn in classrooms that resembled the city where we lived. We didn’t want them to grow up entirely inside our bubble—mostly white, highly and expensively educated—where 4-year-olds who hear 21,000 words a day acquire the unearned confidence of insular advantage and feel, even unconsciously, that they’re better than other people’s kids.

He sees what is wrong with the focus on identity:

In politics, identity is an appeal to authority—the moral authority of the oppressed: I am what I am, which explains my view and makes it the truth. The politics of identity starts out with the universal principles of equality, dignity, and freedom, but in practice it becomes an end in itself—often a dead end, a trap from which there’s no easy escape and maybe no desire for escape. Instead of equality, it sets up a new hierarchy that inverts the old, discredited one—a new moral caste system that ranks people by the oppression of their group identity. It makes race, which is a dubious and sinister social construct, an essence that defines individuals regardless of agency or circumstance—as when Representative Ayanna Pressley said, “We don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice; we don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.”

At times the new progressivism, for all its up-to-the-minuteness, carries a whiff of the 17th century, with heresy hunts and denunciations of sin and displays of self-mortification. The atmosphere of mental constriction in progressive milieus, the self-censorship and fear of public shaming, the intolerance of dissent—these are qualities of an illiberal politics.

It took me a long time to see that the new progressivism didn’t just carry my own politics further than I liked. It was actually hostile to principles without which I don’t believe democracy can survive. Liberals are always slow to realize that there can be friendly, idealistic people who have little use for liberal values.

Packer regrets the civics is no longer taught:

By age 10 [his son] had studied the civilizations of ancient China, Africa, the early Dutch in New Amsterdam, and the Mayans. He learned about the genocide of Native Americans and slavery. But he was never taught about the founding of the republic.” 

And he understands that what is going on is indoctrination, not education.

The fifth-grade share, our son’s last, was different. That year’s curriculum included the Holocaust, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. The focus was on “upstanders”—individuals who had refused to be bystanders to evil and had raised their voices. It was an education in activism, and with no grounding in civics, activism just meant speaking out. At the year-end share, the fifth graders presented dioramas on all the hard issues of the moment—sexual harassment, LGBTQ rights, gun violence. Our son made a plastic-bag factory whose smokestack spouted endangered animals. Compared with previous years, the writing was minimal and the students, when questioned, had little to say. They hadn’t been encouraged to research their topics, make intellectual discoveries, answer potential counterarguments. The dioramas consisted of cardboard, clay, and slogans.

De Blasio’s schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, has answered critics of the diversity initiative by calling them out for racism and refusing to let them “silence” him. As part of the initiative, Carranza has mandated anti-bias training for every employee of the school system, at a cost of $23 million. One training slide was titled “White Supremacy Culture.” It included “Perfectionism,” “Individualism,” “Objectivity,” and “Worship of the Written Word” among the white-supremacist values that need to be disrupted. In the name of exposing racial bias, the training created its own kind.

Finally, Packer's son revolted against this mockery of an education:

“Isn’t school for learning math and science and reading,” he asked us one day, “not for teachers to tell us what to think about society?”  

His conclusion?

Watching your children grow up gives you a startlingly vivid image of the world you’re going to leave them. I can’t say I’m sanguine. Some days the image fills me with dread. That pragmatic genius for which Americans used to be known and admired, which included a talent for educating our young—how did it desert us? Now we’re stewing in anxiety and anger, feverish with bad ideas, too absorbed in our own failures to spare our children. But one day the fever will break, and by then they’ll be grown, and they will have to discover for themselves how to live together in a country that gives every child an equal chance.

Of course, we have the ritual denunciation of Trump but Packer can't put two and two together.  He can't understand why this horrible turn has happened in education.  He doesn't seem to understand that foundational and influential groups within the Democratic Party - teachers unions, school administrators, higher education, our country's largest foundations - are the very reason this disaster is unfolding.  He thinks the "fever" will magically break and all will be well.  It won't break on its own unless people like him face into what is necessary to break the fever.

Bari Weiss left the New York Times earlier this year after many of its staffers found her brand of traditional liberalism offensive in these Woke times.  She recently published an essay in Tablet, "Stopped Being Shocked" with the subtitle "American liberalism is in danger from a new ideology - one with dangerous implications for Jews".

It's worth a read.  Bari starts with a bang:

The confusion - and there seems to be a good deal of it these days - is among American Jews who think that by submitting to ever-changing loyalty tests they can somehow maintain the old status quo and their place inside of it.

Did you see that the Ethical Culture Fieldston School hosted a speaker that equated Israelis with Nazis? Did you know that Brearley is now asking families to write a statement demonstrating their commitment to “anti-racism”? Did you see that Chelsea Handler tweeted a clip of Louis Farrakhan? Did you see that protesters tagged a synagogue in Kenosha with “Free Palestine” graffiti? Did you hear about the march in D.C. where they chanted “Israel, we know you, you murder children too”? Did you hear that the Biden campaign apologized to Linda Sarsour after initially disavowing her? Did you see that Twitter suspended Bret Weinstein’s civic organization but still allows the Iranian ayatollah to openly promote genocide of the Jewish people? Did you see that Mayor Bill de Blasio scapegoated “the Jewish community” for the spread of COVID in New York, while defending mass protests on the grounds that this is a “historic moment of change”?

After a ritual denunciation of President Trump, Ms Weiss concludes her opening barrage:

And unlike Trump, this one has attained cultural dominance, capturing America's elites and our most powerful institutions. In the event of a Biden victory, it is hard to imagine it meeting resistance. So let me make my purpose perfectly clear: I am here to ring the alarm. I’m here to say: Do not be shocked anymore. Stop saying, can you believe. It’s time to accept reality, if we want to have any hope of fixing it.

She goes on to discuss Woke theology and Critical Race Theory with an emphasis on what it means for Jews:

By simply existing as ourselves, Jews undermine the vision of a world without difference. And so the things about us that make us different must be demonized, so that they can be erased or destroyed: Zionism is refashioned as colonialism; government officials justify the murder of innocent Jews in Jersey City; Jewish businesses can be looted because Jews “are the face of capital.” Jews are flattened into “white people,” our living history obliterated, so that someone with a straight face can suggest that the Holocaust was merely “white on white crime.”

This is no longer a fringe view. As the philosopher Peter Boghossian has noted: “This ideology is the dominant moral orthodoxy in our universities, and has seeped out and spread to every facet of American life— publishing houses, tech, arts, theater, newspapers, media,” and, increasingly, corporations. It has not grabbed power by dictates from above, but by seizing the means of sense-making from below. 

It is why California attempted to pass an ethnic studies curriculum whose only mention of Jews was to explain how they, along with Irish immigrants, were invited into whiteness.

It is why a young Jewish woman named Rose Ritch was recently run out of the USC student government. Ms. Ritch stood accused of complicity in racism because, following the Soviet lie, to be a Zionist is to be nothing less than a racist. Her fellow students waged a campaign to hound her out of her position: “Impeach her Zionist ass,” they insisted.

She then proceeds to castigate Jewish leaders from refusing to face into the situation.  But so does Bari Weiss.   

The radicals play on liberal guilt which prevents them from effectively opposing their lunatic and divisive schemes and on liberal's reflexive revulsion at Republicans which prevents them from creating alliances to fight the biggest danger we have faced since the Civil War.

However repugnant you find Donald Trump, unless he prevails (and right now I think he will lose) and the GOP retains control of the Senate, there will be no institutions in our society resisting the Woke.  It will be over.  Time to face reality, however unpleasant, and do the right thing.

At times like these I am reminded of Frodo and Gandalf's conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

A Game In Scranton

The photo below was taken on October 17, 1919 and may be the last time Babe Ruth appeared in a Red Sox uniform.

The photo was published in the Scranton Times-Tribune and the occasion was a charity game organized by local lawyer Leon Levy to raise funds for the American Jewish Relief Committee.  The work of the Committee was mostly directed to helping Jews in Eastern Europe left destitute in the wake of WW1 and now threatened by revolutionary turmoil and pogroms.

While other major leaguers participated in the game, the Babe, who that season set a new home run record with 29, was the big draw, and organizers were thrilled when he wired the day before that he would be coming for the event.  Though Ruth hit two doubles, the crowd was deprived of seeing a home run, though he hit a monstrous shot foul down the right field line that left the park, flew over a street, and came to rest in a field on the other side of the road.

The festivities did not end with the game.  According to the Times-Tribune:

The fun did not end with the All-Star charity game, the players would stay in town a few more days to continue to help raise funds. On Saturday, the players help with a Tag Day. Were they went around downtown Scranton tagging everyone to contribute to the fund. Then in the evening, parties were held throughout the city at places such as the Hotel Casey, the Hotel Jermyn and the Poli Theater. At 9:30, a dance was held at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association building on Wyoming Ave. Ruth along with Mike McNally and other professional players were on hand to dance and pose for photos with committee members and the young ladies who were selling cigars, cigarettes and novelties at the dance. In addition, the players signed baseballs, used in the charity game, were later auction off.

The goal of all the fundraising efforts for the local campaign for American Jewish Relief Committee was $200,000. In today’s money that figure would be $2,749,734.

The crude and poorly educated Ruth did not exhibit the casual bigotry so prevalent in America at the time, though I am sure his language was not tame by modern standards.  Later in life, in 1942, the Babe, of German heritage and raised in a Catholic reformatory for orphans and wayward boys, was the lead signatory on a full page appeal published in the New York Times and 50 other major newspapers denouncing Hitler's campaign of extermination against the Jews (you can read about it here).

And, as is well-documented, Ruth frequently played in exhibitions with Negro League players and repeatedly expressed a willingness to have them play in the majors.  He also, despite the entreaties of his manager who worried it would damage his image, regularly visited Negro orphanages in his travels across America.  

The Takeover Strategy

 

This is the full-fledged Woke version of the strategy.  For the past three decades it has been employed more subtly to takeover what started out as reputable "neutral process" organizations like Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union which are now just shells inhabited by the Woke who use them to suppress individuals and speech they disagree with.  However, many, who in good faith, supported these institutions years ago don't understand what has happened and still support the brand.

Cripple Creek

Let's feel good today!  From the 1989 tour of Ringo Starr's All Starr Band, it's Up On Cripple Creek, from The Band's 1969 album which is that rarity, a perfect record that holds up over the years (here's my song by song breakdown)  And it really is an all-star band.  Levon Helm (vocals, drums) and Rick Danko (bass) from The Band, Ringo on drums, Joe Walsh (Joe and Ringo are now married to the Bach sisters) on guitar, Dr John and Billy Preston on keyboards, with Nils Lofgren,

from the E Street Band, on guitar.

A Walk In Ravello

If you are looking for a way to imagine yourself outside the Covid penalty box and lower your blood pressure at the same time, watch this real-time video of a walk in Ravello.  Located on Italy's Amalfi Coast on a thousand foot high plateau looming over the coast it is a dramatic, beautiful and peaceful location.  The Mrs and I were supposed to be there right now before Mr Covid thought otherwise.  We've walked all these paths before and had looked forward to returning for our 4th visit.  Now we hope to make it there in 2022.  The hotel we stay in is located about 150 yards beyond the end of the tunnel shown in the last minute of the video.  Don't miss the view from the Belvedere of Infinity at the Villa Cimbrone which begins about 42 minutes in.

Taj

As a spin-off from my recent spate of Rolling Stones posts here is Taj Mahal from the Stone's 1968 Rock n Roll Circus.  Taj performed, and still performs, a wide range of music from rock, blues, soul, laid-back country and more.  This is Ain't That A Lot of Love followed by the very different Fishin' Blues.

Movies Then And Now

I came across this list of the top movies in September 1988.  No Superhero movies, no sequels (with the exception of Elm Street).  The rest are all originals and some outstanding movies.  We saw six of them in the theater.

Moon Over Parador about a failed actor (Richard Dreyfuss) in an unnamed South American country replacing a dictator (the late, great Raul Julia).

A Fish Called Wanda with John Cleese and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Die Hard. 'Nuff said.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit with Bob Hoskins and the voice of Kathleen Turner in a wildly creative film.

Married To The Mob with Michelle Pfeiffer, Mathew Modine and Dean Stockwell.

Big.  Tom Hanks. 'Nuff said.

How many would be made today?

US Box Office, September 9-11, 1988

Rank	Title	Gross
1	Moon Over Parador	$3,268,975
2	A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master	$3,201,442
3	A Fish Called Wanda	$2,806,910
4	Die Hard	$2,608,219
5	Betrayed	$2,511,437
6	Cocktail	$2,221,849
7	Young Guns	$2,172,952
8	Who Framed Roger Rabbit	$1,883,805
9	Married to the Mob	$1,613,572
10	Big	$1,326,258

 

Consoling Dizzy

I'd never seen this photo until last week.  Taken on September 27, 1938 it portrays a distraught Dizzy Dean being comforted by two of his Chicago Cubs teammates after being relieved with two outs in the 9th inning as he held a 2-0 lead over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the midst of a torrid pennant race.

On September 3, the Cubs lost a doubleheader to the Reds leaving them in third place in the National League, seven games out of first.  Since then the Wrigley squad had won 18 of 21 and only 1.5 games behind league leading Pittsburgh as they began a three game set against the Bucs on September 27.

The Pirates starting lineup contained three future Hall of Famers, brothers and outfielders Paul and Lloyd Waner and shortstop Arky Vaughn, while a fourth future HOFer, Heinie Manush would enter the game as a pinch hitter.

Dizzy Dean, while also a future HOFer, was a shadow of the pitcher he'd been only 15 months before.  From 1932 through 1936, Diz was the ace of the St Louis Cardinals staff, winning 120 games while also amassing 30 saves.  1937 started off the same.  On July 4 he blanked the Cincinnati Reds, allowing only 7 hits and striking out 8, leaving him with a 12-7 record and a 2.41 ERA.  He was also one of baseball's greatest characters, always quotable by the press which adored him and he, in turn, played up his self-created image as a rube from the Ozarks.  The nickname Dizzy was appropriate.

On July 7, Dizzy started the All-Star game, held in Griffith Stadium, home of the Washington Senators, with President Franklin Roosevelt throwing out the first ball.  Dean held the AL scoreless in the first two frames.  With two out in the 3rd, Lou Gehrig hit a two-run homer.  Next up was Earl Averill (another future HOFer).  Averill lined a shot that hit the big toe on Dizzy's left foot with the ball ricocheting to second baseman Bill Herman who tossed it to Johnny Mize at first for the final out.

Dizzy's toe was broken but he insisted on returning quickly to the Cards rotation, making his next start on July 21 against the Boston Braves.  Dean later said it was a big mistake.  A right handed pitcher strides with his left foot using it as a lever in his pitching motion.  Because of the pain, Dizzy altered his motion and hurt his arm, causing permanent damage.  He made three starts in the regular rotation (including one that lasted 10 1/3 innings!) and didn't pitch badly, but something was clearly wrong.  Trying to pitch on three more occasions that season he finally gave up after a September 8 start.  He'd lost his fastball; in 150 innings prior to the All-Star contest, Dean whiffed 110 batters in 150 innings or 6.6/9 innings; after the injury only 10 in 47 innings or 1.9/9 innings.

His arm still aching, the Cards traded Diz to the Cubs on April 16, 1938 in return for pitchers Curt Smith and Clyde Shoun, outfielder Tuck Stainback, and $185,000 (a very large sum at the time).  The Chicago club immediately inserted Dean into their starting rotation and he made four appearances before arm trouble derailed him and he missed the next two months.  In those four appearances, Dean pitched well, going 3-0 with an ERA of 1.05 but his fastball was still missing in action, whiffing only 6 in 25 2/3 innings.

Returning to the mound on July 17, Dean became a once a week pitcher for the rest of the season.  As of the morning of September 27, he'd appeared in only twelve games but pitched remarkably well in that limited action, with a 6-1 record and ERA of 1.91.  In nine starts Diz allowed 0,1, or 2 earned runs seven times and in the other two, 3 and 4 runs.  Since August 20 he'd been used exclusively in three relief appearances, allowing only two hits and no runs in 6 1/3 innings.  Even without a fastball Dean remained an effective and savvy pitcher.

The atmosphere must have been electric that afternoon with 42,238 fans crowding into Wrigley.  Against the Pirates, Dean's fine pitching continued.  Over the first 8 innings, the Steel Town team managed only six hits, all singles, while none walked and Dean struck out one batter.  Meanwhile, the Cubs scratched out two runs and held the lead going into the top of the 9th.  Lead off batter Arky Vaughn was hit by a pitch and then Gus Suhr popped out to second.  One out.  Pinch hitter Woody Jensen grounded back to Dizzy who whirled and threw to shortstop Billy Jurges covering second to get the force out on Vaughn.  Two out.  The next batter, Lee Handley, whacked a double to left field, advancing Jensen to third.

Catcher Gabby Hartnett, who'd replaced Charlie Grimm as Cubs manager in midseason, came out from behind the plate, walked to the mound and called in Bill Lee to relieve Dizzy.  Lee was the Cubs ace, winning 22 games that year and 169 in his career.  A bitterly disappointed and upset Dean went to the dugout leading to the picture above.  He must have been even more upset when Lee promptly threw a wild pitch to batter Al Todd, allowing Jensen to score and advancing Handley to third but the reliever salvaged things by then striking out Todd, preserving the win for Dean and the Cubs and bringing them with 1/2 game of the Pirates.  The game only took 98 minutes to play.

The next day contained even more drama.  The Cubs and Pirates were tied 5-5 going into the bottom of the ninth when the umpires announced that encroaching darkness would make this the last inning; if the Cubs failed to score the game would be declared a tie and need to be replayed in full.  It had already been a nerve wracking contest for fans.  After the Cubs jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the second, the Pirates scored three in the 6th, while the Cubbies then responded to two in the bottom of the frame to knot the game 3-3.  The Pirates scored two more in the 8th and once again the Cubs pushed two runs across in the bottom to retie.  With two outs in the inning, player-manager Hartnett came to the plate.  With an 0-2 count he smacked the next offering from Mace Brown into the left center bleachers winning the game and propelling the Cubs into first place, a position they never relinquished.  As Hartnett rounded the bases, Cubs fans stormed the field.  The four-bagger became known as The Homer in the Gloamin'.

For Dizzy Dean the game of September 27 was the final highlight of his career.  He struggled on for three more seasons with the Cubs, making occasional appearance and going 9-7, flashing sporadic moments of brilliance, including two shutouts in 1939.  The photo is particularly poignant because we are used to seeing photos of Dizzy pitching, smiling and entertaining.  Here he is a vulnerable, broken down and still fiercely competitive pitcher making his last stand.  He was only 28 years old.

The Ancient Generations

He wished he had not used such confident, presumptuous words in writing to Blaine.  From very early times men had believed that it was unwise, even impious, to tempt fate: the ancient generations were not to be despised.  The confident system of his youth - universal reform, universal changes, universal happiness and freedom - had ended in something very like universal tyranny and oppression.  The ancient generations were not to be despised; and the seamen's firm belief that Friday was unlucky was perhaps less foolish than the philosophe's conviction that all the days of the week could be rendered happy by the application of an enlightened system of laws.

- Reflections of Dr Stephen Maturin in The Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brian

Rereading Patrick O'Brian's magnificent series of Aubrey-Maturin novels, which can also be described as a 7,000 page novel in 20 chapters, I came across this passage which struck me as appropriate given our world today.  Discovering the books in 1990, over the next 2-3 years I consumed the existing volumes (the series began in the early 1970s), and then anxiously awaited the yearly release of O'Brian's next chapter which continued until his death in 2000 at the age of 85.

Embarking on my reading project in May, I am nearing the end of The Wine-Dark Sea, the 16th in the series, and finding that doing so in a short time frame gives a different perspective than reading the novels over ten years, providing a better sense of continuity and immersion in the period of the Napoleonic Wars and of the characters and their relationships.

The books can be enjoyed from a historical perspective, as a chronicle of the British navy and its peculiar and specific culture during the first two decades of the 19th century, as a nautical adventure, an exploration of friendship, novels of manners with a kinship to Jane Austen, and above all for the beautiful writing.  O'Brian challenges the readers.  He writes as though he was living in the times, with no foreknowledge of the 20th century and is thus able to convey the mindset of his characters as they lived and thought then, devoid of many aspects of modern sensibility.  He also trusts his readers, often inferring events and motivations rather than describing them directly.

It is like being back with old friends and indeed, it is as a story of friendship that I most appreciate the novels.  Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin are very different.  Physically, Aubrey is tall, broad and heavy weighing more than 220 pounds, with long golden hair, and a big booming, gregarious and robust presence bearing the scars of many battles, while Maturin is smaller, much slighter (125 pounds), pale skin and pale blue eyes with short dark hair, and a quiet and observant presence.  Temperamentally, Aubrey reacts instinctively, helpless when not on a ship, but every bit the commander when sailing,  believing in the infallibility of the ways of the navy and of the deceased Admiral Nelson, firmly adhering to traditional English ways.  Maturin, of Catalan and Irish heritage and a Papist, a former revolutionary still filled with a desire for increasing human liberty, with an instinctive negative reaction to any authority, supporting the British as the lesser of the two evils compared to Bonaparte.  They are united by their love of music and their respect for each other.  Irritating each other and quarreling at times, despite occasional  rifts the friendship endures and deepens over time.  They care for each other because of what they are, rather than allowing friendship to be undermined by what they are not.

Rereading the book also reacquaints one with the host of other memorable characters, Tom Pullings, Bonden, Martin, Awkward Davies, Padeen, Joe Plaice, young one-armed midshipman Reade, the irascible Killick looking like a "lean, cantankerous and out of work ratcatcher" while, back on land, we have Aubrey's wife Sophie, Maturin's occasional wife Diana Villiers, and Sam Panda, Aubrey's son with a Bantu woman, conceived when Aubrey was at Capetown, and now a Papist priest, rendering his admiring father, unaware of Sam's existence for many years, a bit nonplussed and Maturin bemused, and Surprise itself, Aubrey's beloved vessel, as much a character as the rest.

I'll finish the novels sometime this fall and, God willing, reread them again in another ten years.

In the passage quoted above it is 1813.  Maturin, now working for British intelligence and reporting to Joseph Blaine, is in Peru seeking to spark an revolt for independence against Spain, a nominal British ally.  During the heady summer days of 1789, a younger idealistic Maturin had been in the streets of Paris, supporting the revolution.  Now disillusioned by the results and the triumph of the dictator Bonaparte he muses on what he has learned over the years.  It reminds me of Margaret Thatcher's quip that the American revolution gave us George Washington and the Constitution, while France's led to a dictator and "a pile of corpses".  And it is also a lesson for today.

Gibby

Another one of the baseball icons of my youth has passed.  Bob Gibson died at the age of 84 after a lengthy struggle with pancreatic cancer.  In the mid-60s, the National League featured three dominating hurlers, Sandy Koufax, Juan Marichal, and Bob Gibson (the recently deceased Tom Seaver entered the elite at the end of that decade).  I wrote of the three of them in Gibson Koufax Marichal Mashup.

Each had their trademark - Koufax's beautiful pitching motion, Marichal's leg perched higher than his head during his motion, and for Gibson it was the ferocity with which he seemed to throw himself, as well as the ball, towards hitters.  Gibson was the most feared of this group.  He wanted to dominate "his" part of the plate and did not hesitate to throw inside.  Willie Mays admitted he was scared facing Gibby and Dusty Baker recounted the advice Hank Aaron gave him as a rookie:

"Don't dig in against Bob Gibson, he'll knock you down.  He'd knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him.  Don't stare at him, don't smile at him, don't talk to him.  He doesn't like it.  If you happen to hit a home run, don't run too slow, don't run too fast.  If you happen to want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first.  And if he hits you, don't charge the mound because he's a Gold Glove boxer."

I still remember watching Game 1 of the 1968 World Series in which Gibson and the St Louis Cardinals faced the Detroit Tigers.  Gibson whiffed a World Series record 17 Tigers that afternoon, a record that still stands.  Look at how loose his motion was, how he flings himself towards the hitter and then off to the first base line.  I knew at the time I was witnessing something extraordinary.







Play With Fire

     So don't play with me, cause you're playing with fire

This song came to mind today for the first time in probably decades.  Very early Rolling Stones, it was the B-side of Last Time, released in early 1965, and doesn't sound like the Stones.  Unlike the muddy sound typical of early Stones, Play With Fire has a clean, direct feel.  Last Time was a hit in the U.S., breaking into the Top 10, but it was the Stones' next single, Satisfaction, that made them THE ROLLING STONES.

Only Jagger and Keith Richards were on the recording.