Southern Oregon Hemp Update

Hemp is going in the ground again.

Less this year than last.

 

Newly planted hemp field

Last year Southern Oregon went crazy for hemp. "Hemp" is the term used to describe the strain of the cannabis plant that is grown for its high CBD and very low THC content. 

It is generally planted out in fields, like a tomato crop, most frequently in raised furrows beneath a strip of black plastic, under which are one or two irrigation drip lines.

Fields like these were widespread last year on any piece of irrigable flat land, and it is going in again right now, but in fewer places. 

Reminder: the hemp plant with CBD is the same plant as the get-you-high THC-laden cannabis plant, rather in the way that a Rottweiler and a Golden Lab are different varieties of the same species. In dogs, one is bred for aggressiveness toward strangers and one is not. The hemp plant is bred to have as much CBD and as little THC as possible, so that the CBD plant can be grown openly and legally as a source medicine without psychoactive properties. The State of Oregon tests the CBD fields for THC. If there is too much THC, the crop must be destroyed.

Hemp fields look like the one pictured above. As a rule of thumb, if a driver can see the crop, it is a CBD crop. THC is grown out of sight, behind fences or in greenhouses.

Last year people grew more hemp than they could sell. There was a gold rush mentality, fueled by suppliers and processors who wanted to encourage farmers to grow, grow, grow, and the area was abuzz with stories of extraordinary opportunity. Grass hay and alfalfa land was converted to hemp. New growers had the farming problems typical of beginners, complicated by a wet period at harvest season that brought mold, and the end-use market was complicated by changes and indecision at the federal level about what CBD can be used for. The price collapsed. I heard from many growers this spring that either they were sitting on unsold harvested/dried inventory, and that they were abandoning plans to plant this year, or they planned to grow reduced amounts. 

Last year--and today--a grower might have had sunk costs of $4,000 per acre into his hemp field at the time of harvest. A hemp grower might find suitable land to plant for a price of $500 to $2,000 per acre for the year, with $1,000 to $1,500 being most typical. The grower would plant perhaps 2,000 plants per acre, and seed prices for CBD again fit into a range but one dollar per seed was typical. The seeds were sold as high-CBD and ultra-low TCH plants. They were also represented to be "feminized" seeds. Then there is  the plastic sheet and the specialized equipment to lay it down, the drip irrigation lines, the fertilizers, the pesticides, the harvesting costs, the drying costs, the storage costs, and the labor costs all along. 

Cannabis is a hardy weed, and bad product can be grown carelessly--but then it isn't sellable. Sellable cannabis take care at every step by knowledgeable growers. That costs money.

THC plants, in a Hoop House, May 17

Southern Oregon has an edge in growing good product, partly because of climate. We have an excellent one for cannabis. The primary advantage, though, of Southern Oregon has is the established base of product suppliers and the knowledge base of experienced growers. People who had been growing THC cannabis for years know some of the pitfalls to avoid.

Growers hoped to get 2,000 pounds per acre of dried "biomass," i.e. dried plant material. At $20/pound that meant gross revenue of $40,000 an acre. Few people got that much. Some got more.

I am personally aware of a grower who had an unusually pretty crop, 2,000 plants per acre, each plant 5 to 6 feet tall, who sold his 25 acre field at $45/plant: $90,000 per acre, sold as-is, to be harvested by the buyer. There may be other examples of gate receipts that high, but that is the highest to my knowledge. Most growers did far worse. Some were wiped out by mold or product that turned out to have seeds in it.

CBD flower has seeds when there is a male plant around that pollinates the females in the field. A male plant--or a male branch which can emerge unexpectedly on a female plant--can pollinate hundreds or even thousands of downwind female plants, making their resulting flowers "seedy" which sharply diminishes the value. Wholesale buyers strongly prefer non-seeded flower because end-use customers strongly prefer it. A young male plant can be distinguished from his sisters by walking down the fields and examining each plant carefully. The difference between the two is about as visible as the difference between this period--.-- and this comma--,--so monitoring plants for males is a significant labor task, especially when a grower bought seed that was imperfectly feminized. Buying bad seed was easy to do last year, since the seeds are identical, the industry is new, and there have not yet been long established, credible, reliable  seed sources with brands and reputations to protect. Seed acquisition was a wild west. Lots of growers bought bad seed stock.

This spring the market opened up and product began selling both as bulk product and as trimmed dried flower, i.e. round buds of CBD for direct smoking. This has encouraged the growers who survived last year to try hemp again this year. It  also caused growers who migrated to CBD farming from THC production, with its burdensome regulatory oversight and plant limits, to go back to growing just the TCH-style cannabis. One must put up with a dysfunctional regulator, but at least one could sell the product--probably. The difficulties of dealing with the OMMP regulator created an artificial scarcity. Only the patient and persistent could put up with the changing rules, unanswered questions, and the deadline crises caused by their failures to examine and process paperwork that had been in their possession for months--my own experience. The regulatory bottleneck lowers supply and improves pricing.

June 29. Net trellis supports the branches

This is a week of transition, visible on rural roads in farm country. One sees bare fields that were in hemp last year but appear unplanted--for now. Other fields are in the midst of being planted--or rather transplantation. Seeds have been growing in greenhouses in tiny seed pods for several months. Plants going into the ground have been pulled from seed pods and are going in as sprigs about one foot in height. Look closely at the first photo and one sees those tiny shoots spaced about every 3 feet in the plastic. This is the noticeable feature of rural roads: hemp growing in strips of black plastic.

Meanwhile, less visible, are the THC grows. I hear anecdotal comments that some of the CBD grows actually have hidden THC plants in them. After all, the plants are identical until put into a laboratory. Rottweilers and golden labs are instantly apparent as different; CBD and THC are not. A hemp grower might place a hundred secretly marked THC plants in a ten acre field of 20,000 plants. The grower would run the risk that Oregon testing authorities would do a random sample test and find those plants amid the legal CBD crop, but the chances are small. There are penalties if caught. Does it happen? Three different sources told me it does sometimes. Growers are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs take risks. Why? Because THC-laden flower is more scarce and therefore far more valuable than CBD flower. 

Newly transplanted. Wire cage will support branches

People growing the THC plant legally, either under the "recreational" or "medical" grow protocols are closely monitored, their crops measured and accounted for, ending up in legal sales at dispensaries. That legally grown TCH variety is grown on small lots, behind fencing. Medical grows are limited to 48 plants per EFU tax lot or the canopy size restrictions on a "recreational" grow sites, which lead growers to attempt to maximize yield as much as possible within those limits.

Southern Oregon drivers might notice well back from the road some Hoop Houses. These are temporary structures built with PVC pipe and sheets of plastic. Growers can grow essentially a second small early crop by planting and harvesting that crop before their larger field goes into flower. Cannabis plants growing THC are counted toward the 48 plants when they are in flower. Normally at Southern Oegon's latitude cannabis plants do not go into flower until the first or second week of August, when the shorter days trigger the plant into recognizing that it is time to get on with reproduction. Plants grown in the Hoop Houses have opaque plastic pulled over them in the evenings beginning in mid-June, creating an artificial darkness for 12 full hours, triggering the flowering process to begin very early. Those "light deprivation" plants are harvestable just before the "long term" 48 on the same site go into flower. That early harvest "light dep" crop is smaller, with perhaps an average of one pound of dried flower buds per plant, but it creates some early product to "beat the season" for an early crop, and to be off the property before the October-harvest crop counts against the plant limit.

The plants that will look like this plant harvested last year are currently two to three feet in height. They double in size every week. 

They are legal and a big part of the Southern Oregon economy. They employ a lot of people, but by law and by practice, this part of the cannabis economy is supposed to be invisible.

Note the size of the "candles," i.e. the stalks holding a strip of buds. These are about  eighteen inches long and the thickness of a wrist.

The presidency is no fun.

Trump said he didn't know about the Russian bounties, and it is fake news anyway.

Things aren't going well in America.

CBS: Things going poorly

There is a meme circulating about Trump: he is inattentive to the job and he isn't very good at it. 

Trump likes to tweet. He likes rallies and cheering crowds. He likes that part of the job. He doesn't like experts with their briefing memos and the complicated parts that deal with policy, legislation, and the business of government.

Trump's management style did not use to hurt him. Now it does. For three years, with an economic recovery underway, unemployment down and the stock market up, there was an idea out there that less government and fewer regulations were the good thing that kept the good times rolling. Trump sold the idea that he inherited carnage and immediately turned it into greatness. The public bought it and credited Trump. Even people who were disgusted by Trump gave him grudging credit.

Trump was a message guy, not a manager guy. That was the story on the street and Trump embraced it. He openly said those CIA briefings were repetitive and boring. The word got out that he wouldn't read memos unless they had his name in them, repeated throughout. It got around that he got news, information, and policy ideas from Fox, not his staff. Former top aides all have the same message, that he doesn't take advice, he acts impulsively rather than strategically, and that he simply does not know how to do the job and doesn't care to learn. It didn't hurt him.

Trump's biggest symbol of effectiveness was getting judges through. He proudly outsourced that to the Federalist Society and Mitch McConnell. 

The whole picture fit his populist brand, all consistent with the Reagan idea that government is the problem, not the solution. 

Then the virus. Trump's response to the virus was on brand for Trump. He minimized the threat, announced that state governors were in charge, then positioned himself as a virus control skeptic. 

Problem: the virus came back. Now, even on Fox, there are whiffs of complaints about competence. Their news shows have public health people talking about missed opportunities.

This newest story is that Russia paid Taliban fighters to target and kill American soldiers, while at the same timeTrump was pressing for friendlier relations with Russia. Trump said he didn't know about it. That excuse falls into the middle of the virus-inattention idea.

The NY Times says they have some twenty sources for the story, but all of them are anonymous. There is room for Trump to call it "fake news," but that is complicated by the fact that Trump's biggest sycophant, Lindsey Graham, says we need to get to the bottom of it, and number three House Republican Liz Cheney is saying the same thing. Foreign policy hawks suspect it isn't fake and are saying so aloud.

Gallup: Unsatisfied America

The idea is perking: Trump is dropping the ball, and as with the virus, it matters. If the NY Times article falls apart, then Trump will come out of this a winner, but if not, then a different idea will gain more momentum, that Trump just isn't very good at the hard work of being president. 

Biden is frail. Trump is wild and crazy. Pick one.

     "In his third presidential run at 77 years old, it is clear that Joe Biden's mental state is diminishing, leaving him unfit to serve as Commander in Chief."

        Brad Parscale, Trump campaign manager

Sleepy Joe can fix his problem. High drama Trump cannot.

Democrats want the 2020 election to be a referendum on Trump. Trump will make it a choice. 

Click: Ad titled "Fortitude."

We see the Trump campaign at work in this new 30 second ad attacking Biden. "Joe Biden is slipping," says the voice of a woman who sounds sorry for Biden rather than angry with him. We hear Trump's energetic voice at the end, saying he approved the ad. 

The ad pairs with a second ad "Just Getting Started." It contrasts old, failed liberal policies of Biden against Trump's energetic job-boosting, regulation-cutting, tax-cutting, China-bashing forward motion. "He did it his way, not the Washington way, and he's doing it again." The music underlying the narration is fast, intense, as if from chase scenes in action movies, the hero on the run. Again, it closes with an energetic Trump saying he approved the ad. 

The story of Biden's incapacity fits a narrative that Biden is maintaining a low profile as a strategy of hiding Biden to keep his diminished capacity a secret. The meme is that Biden is a puppet, managed by staff and manipulated by the left.

This is not all bad for Biden. He has a fix. Biden just needs to show up and be his strongest, best self. He can do it. Trump has set the bar very, very low for him. One and two second snippets of Biden grasping for a word or going over a speech sets the image of Biden in dotage. I have seen him in real life about eight times for about six hours. Those images are not the "real" Biden. He is better than that, thank goodness. Biden can stand tall and deliver a speech. 

He isn't Mr. Stemwinder, but he come across as steady. Steady enough. Certainly steady compared to Trump.

Click: "Just getting started."

Trump's campaign will attempt to shape how audiences interpret what they see, and to look for the worst in Biden. That is certainly what I did. I looked for frailty and saw glimpses of it, but the man I saw in Iowa and New Hampshire is not the vacant-eyed zombie shown in the photo captures in the "Fortitude" ad.

Trump's characterization of Biden is not all bad for Biden, given the positioning of the two candidates. Biden is selling stability and normalcy, not action. Trump is selling the weak spot in Biden's brand, but in doing so he is actually simultaneously affirming Biden's brand of low drama.

This blog predicted that the Trump schtick would get exhausting, and it is happening. The re-emergence of COVID-19, Trump's doubling down on stoking racial tensions, and high unemployment work to reframe Trump's brand. He is no longer the go-getter, game changer, tradition breaker, and media curiousity. He is the bull in a china shop who mismanaged events. Biden's caution looks better in comparison.

The Tulsa event was announced as a packed house with overflow crowds, with careless proximity and masses cheering. It is exactly what health experts say is dangerous. People decided to stay home and watch it on Fox. They weren't exactly rejecting Trump; they just didn't want to be wildly careless, like Trump.

The political environment is changing. Trump is a curiosity people can skip. Pence is cancelling events. Trump is committed now to Jacksonville for the Convention and people there are objecting. 

Trump wants this to be a choice between action vs. inaction. Events are turning this choice to one between foolish and cautious. Caution is starting to look good to people.

A "regular Joe."

     

"That wealthy man had complete disregard for the fundamental dignity of his employees. He had no respect for them. All while calling himself 'the working man's friend.'"

         Joe Biden, telling a story of his father's boss

The e-mail I got from Joe Biden makes me like and respect him more than before.

In New Hampshire, talking about his father

This blog has discussed Biden's flaws. He is somewhat old and frail for his age, just enough to worry me. He is unusually inarticulate for a professional politician. He doesn't have charisma or star power. In the current media environment he is not "clickable." He has been wrong on some important policies and behind the curve on others. It makes sense that polls show that even people who support Biden are not particularly enthusiastic about him. He doesn't have the magic grace that Obama had. He is not the flamboyant center of attention the way Trump is.

Biden has compensations. I witnessed one this week, in the unusual place of a e-mailed solicitation for money. 

The story is an elaboration of the picture of himself that Biden displayed repeatedly in Town Hall events in New Hampshire and Iowa. He was a boy, with parents who struggled with money, and who fell on hard times. Sometimes the focus of his story is on the fear in a boy's heart, but more commonly Biden speaks empathetically from the point of view of the father. Biden describes the pain and shame felt by a parent who needs to tell children they have to uproot, to move into their grandparents' home, because the breadwinner lost his job. A breadwinner has a role and a duty, and when he or she fails at it there is shame.

This is his story: 

This story is about my dad’s boss -- the owner of the car dealership where he worked. He was a big guy in every sense -- over six feet tall, with a sizable bank account and political connections all around the state. His billboards around town advertised him as “the working man’s friend.” His trademark was the silver dollar. He’d hand them out to all his good customers. My parents went out one evening to attend the dealership’s annual Christmas party. They’d cleared out the showroom for the night to make room for a big band and dancing. My dad loved swing music, and he loved to dance. My parents were just sitting down to dinner when suddenly, the owner of the dealership took one of those buckets of silver dollars he was known for and threw them down on the dance floor. Then, he stood and watched from above, with amusement, as the salesmen, secretaries, and mechanics all scrambled around the dance floor, picking up the coins. Dad stood frozen for a second. Then he stood up, took my mom’s hand, and walked out of the party. He would go on to quit his job because of it. Looking back, I realize why this man’s behavior offended my father -- and why it offends me so much today. That wealthy man had a complete disregard for the fundamental dignity of his employees. He had no respect for them. All while calling himself “the working man’s friend.” Does that person sound familiar to you? Because he sure sounds familiar to me. He sounds a lot like Donald Trump. A rich guy with no respect for the dignity of working Americans. His time in office has been spent quietly making people like him richer and richer, while leaving most Americans left scrambling for the coins he has tossed on the floor. I say: Enough with that malarkey. Enough with these bullies. I know a bully when I see one -- because I’ve stood up to them before. I know how to fix our economy because I helped pull us out of one of the worst economic downturns of our time. I know the value of a dollar because I was raised in a working-class family that didn’t take that kind of money for granted.

My purpose here is to focus on Biden's story. The pain of failure that is so big a part of Biden's history starts with a premise, one of self worth and dignity. A working person can be proud. "Regular Americans" are OK. They have dignity. They work and need to be paid and deserve being paid and being treated with respect.

The demographics of "working Americans" have changed since Biden was a boy. The "workingman" is more often than not a woman. Hillary Clinton lost big among those people, especially men. She communicated that she was part of the "professional class." They hire, fire, and supervise working people, but aren't one of them. They look at them, talk about them, evaluate them, incentivize them. Biden communicates a whole different vibe. Biden grew up as one of them and the memory of that origin still animates him. He knows the bitter taste of disrespect when it comes from a boss.

Within the political left, there are visible spokespeople for righteous shaming and scolding of the "deplorables" with their unacceptable behaviors and attitudes. They will complicate Biden's campaign, in part because they say interesting, extreme, angry things, and they are Democrats. Trump and Fox and Republicans generally will try to associate Biden with with the finger-pointers. See! Democrats have contempt for you!

It will damage Biden, but it won't fully stick. The story of the working man's dignity is too much a part of the Biden story. Indeed, I have posted here that he is tiresome talking about his childhood, going on and on, when he "should" be talking about the future. However, there is value to Biden reminding people of his origin even as it reminds people of his age. The story is his inoculation against being folded into leftist self-righteous cancel culture. More American hate it than like the left's version of Moral Majority. Indeed, Biden is a victim of it.

For better or worse, Joe Biden is who he is,  a "regular Joe." He loved and respected his parents. He hasn't forgotten his roots. 

Trump is going tone deaf

Trump's instincts are failing him. Donald Trump is stuck in the past, reliving the Greatest Hits of 2016.

Trump is out of touch with the new reality. 

He thinks people are still worried about MS-13 and caravans of people coming from Latin America to take jobs. He was in Lafayette Park holding up a Bible, and then in Tulsa saying the good citizens of America needed to take back their country, and on Sean Hannity last night talking about Confederate statues and describing Chicago as a hell hole worse than Afghanistan.

Old News

He has reprised the Golden Oldie from Richard Nixon in 1968, describing a "Silent Majority" of fearful people who want "Law and Order" in response to anarchic violence from dark skinned marauders in league with radical anarchist socialists on the left. They didn't show up in mass in Tulsa, but they are out there. They may not fully know they want law and order, he said, but they do in their hearts, and it will pay off for him in November.

Fox News is on board fueling the culture war, spreading the message of outrage over the assault on good, normal, country-music loving, southern fried chicken eating Americans, all of them being abused and insulted by northern elitist socialist Democrats. 

This may work for Fox, but it doesn't work for Trump. Trump misunderstands the moment.  There is a pandemic. There is unemployment. We watched a black man die by suffocation.

MS-13 is no longer top of mind for immigration. Now the story is hundreds of people getting infected in slaughterhouses in Iowa and South Dakota and fruit packing plants in Yakima. Who are those people? Immigrants. Poor people coming to America to do hard, miserable, low paid work in virus hotspots--hotspots the government requires stay open. That is the new face of immigration. It doesn't seem all that ominous to the native born, after all.

Bad timing for Trump

Repealing the ACA--Obamacare--seemed like a good issue for Republicans in 2016. Republicans are on record saying that darned Obamacare was giving subsidized health care to too many poor people and we should stop that socialist nonsense. Trump's Justice Department just yesterday re-affirmed its support of the effort by Republican Attorneys General to declare the ACA unconstitutional. Cutting healthcare and eliminating the mechanism for assuring people can get insurance if they have preconditions comes at a time when Trump's White working class base is out of work, their employee based health care withdrawn, and they are most vulnerable. 

Meanwhile, in a pandemic, the predominate message is that ones own health depends upon the health of others--the very opposite of not-my-problem self reliant message underlying ending the ACA.

Trump's public statements show little empathy or understanding of the root causes of the protests. He lumped the protesters with the looters and anarchists. People who had been willing to ignore racially biased policing--for example in stop-and-frisk policies--have a new sense that, yeah, maybe something isn't quite right. This moment of White reflection might pass--Trump is counting on it--but for now Trump seems heartless and clueless, willing to pour gasoline, not water, on the fires of racial tension.

Trump rolled the dice on how to handle the virus. He understood America's impatience with social distancing and its economic effect. He minimized the virus and represents the get-back-to-work position on the virus and he politicized wearing masks. The Tulsa event was a brazen statement of position. Forget the worrywart so-called experts. Crowd in. MAGA people go mask free. Live free or die. 

There was calculation there. The effect on the economy was brutal and the virus most affected bright blue New York and it poor Black Americans, not the Trump base. It is their problem. Why should you suffer?

That bet is going sour. Swing state Arizona and Florida are becoming hotspots. College football players are getting sick. Trump campaign staffers are getting sick. Secret Service people are getting sick. Trump looks like a hypocrite--going mask free and telling people not to worry--while he himself is surrounded by people getting tested daily. Hypocrite. Bone spur Trump.

Trump come across as out of touch with the current realities. The culture war he is stirring up is a distraction, but now it comes across as a forced and phony distraction. Trump had an element of authenticity in the past. He was a crude guy who spoke his mind and bullies his enemies. But now he comes across more as a crude guy who is obviously trying to con you by manufacturing enemies, and waving a Bible instead of dealing successfully with the economy, the virus, and the real problems in America. 

The message being sent out by John Bolton, General Jim Mattis, Michael Cohen, Anthony Scaramucci, Tom Tillerson, the impeachment witnesses, and the Lincoln Project is that Trump is a con man in it for himself, and not for the country. 

It is starting to stick. 

Taking a knee. Part Three

Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest racial injustice. His protest drew complaints.

       "You disgrace the entire nation. The taxpaying citizens of this country subsidize your plush work environments, yet you choose to use those venues to openly offend those very citizens."

          From letter of complaint to the NFL

This blog asked readers: Was that complaint letter the voice of a racist?

Sports Illustrated

For two days this blog has examined an angry letter written to the NFL and its employees. The letter's author was sharply critical of Colin Kaepernick and others for their silent protest against racial injustice during playing of the National Anthem. The letter said the players have "an over-inflated view of themselves. "You disgrace the entire nation when you 'take a knee.' You are nothing but overpaid entertainers." 

Read the entire letter in the blog post two days ago, June 22. 

Thad Guyer said the letter-writer was obviously and flagrantly racist. In yesterday's post Michael Trigoboff responded that a racist animus was indeterminate, and in any case Kaepernick's protest offended his own sense of respect for our national symbols, and that Kaepernick represented a movement characterized by self righteous and censorious over-reach on political correctness.

Today's post presents three of the many comments this blog received. The original subject of the protest--racial injustice--has gotten lost. The dispute is over the protest itself.

One view: Kaepernick is an American citizen and he has a right to protest

John Coster

John Coster began as an electrician, which career led to managing construction on billion dollar projects for Microsoft, Google, Skandia and others. He takes time to go on Christian missionary projects to some of the world's most troubled places. He brings a progressive and evangelical Christian orientation to issues of public concern.  He wrote:

    "I agree with Guyer's assessment but rather than just throw water on the grease fire, I'd like to ask the writer some questions: 

     1. Exactly what does the flag stand for if not the freedom of expression, including yours?

     2. Do you agree that the premise of The Declaration of Independence that an aggrieved people have the right to dissent and even replace a government that isn't working for them? Is there any context where that should not be expressed or exercised? 

     3. What is exactly wrong with using a public platform to express your beliefs or exert influence? The NFL is a business that makes money from its brand. Trump got elected President based on nothing but his inflated TV brand and being able to stoke outrage. He's now using his presidential platform to stoke outrage of a different kind. The NFL at first caved into Trump's bullying but has figured out that more of their tribe (and earnings) are aligned with racial justice than the mythical nostalgia of white America. If you don't like the brand-then you're free to not shop there. What does the NFL actually owe you?

   

     4. I thought it was striking that an African-American GI was used as your example of a "real hero". What do you say to the data that show that this "hero" is many times more likely to be arrested and incarcerated JUST because he is black? Further, what do you personally propose to do about this kind of systemic injustice? Or do you agree that's all okay so long as nobody acts disrespectfully to the symbol for which he fought and was disfigured. 

     Oh, it's all so simple if you don't bother to think about it."

A second view: It's about social class, snobbery, and a covert form of racism.

Herb Rothschild

Herb Rothschild is a retired professor and current peace activist and writes a weekly column for the Ashland Daily Tidings.

     "What I was struck by in the physician's letter is how demeaning it is. It begins with a false analogy--that a football player's expressing a political opinion is parallel to a layperson's giving a medical diagnosis. This is itself tell-tale, because it suggests that football players aren't citizens, all of whom have both the standing and even the obligation to speak out on critical public topics. Instead, they are mere entertainers of an audience of citizens like the author of the letter, who doesn't hesitate to express his political opinions. 

     The contempt becomes increasingly explicit as the letter continues. This snobbery of a physician toward a football player is sufficiently offensive to condemn the letter for gross prejudice. What you asked me, however, is whether it is racist. Thad Guyer sees it as overtly racist and condemns it in intemperate language. I see it as covertly racist, the kind that the author is blind to. He probably thinks that his extolling the sacrifice of black soldiers frees him of bias. But it is almost certain that he was less hesitant to write so contemptuously of NFL players because the majority of them are black and the players who took a knee, beginning with Kaepernick, were black. 

     When I was growing up in the pre-Civil Rights South, blacks weren't entitled to voice political opinions. They were servants. I think that is the true analogy underlying this letter. but one to which its author is oblivious."

Kaepernick really does offend people. And so does leftist bullying when they condemn people for feeling that offense. 

Gary Shade, smokejumper and author

Gary Shade is a semi-retired trucker. He graduated from Penn State Forestry during the Vietnam era, was a commissioned US Army officer, then smokejumper, then investment advisor. He write about his adventures, including a book on life as a long haul trucker--The Hotshot Chronicles.

    "Regarding the NFL letter. Guyer's "racist author" represents tens of millions of Americans who hold similar views along with flag kneeling which desecrates the memory and sacrifices of those who served their country and the world. How does name calling help folks dialogue and communicate, in an adult manner, regarding racism and patriotism. As an intellectual leftist bully, his displays of righteous indignation are discouraging. Thad's white male anger is unbecoming. It may work for a job on the Supreme Court. But, can we leave behind anger's attempt to make the other feel guilt? His critique of others is more about him, and what we need to do to make him feel better.

Lawyers really suck when it comes to reconciliation, collaboration, and empathy. They are taught to aggressively pursue win-lose confrontations. And, in order to successfully plead the victim, they feel compelled to aggrandize the victimizer.

We are all judgmental about most things in our cause and effect world. All day long, we are each making prejudicial judgments that shapes our perception of people of different shapes, sizes, colors, sex, and beliefs. I don't know who is more irritating, a pugnacious anti-racist or a quiet ignorant racist? They both make my head hurt.

Me thinketh Thad doth protest too much"

Taking a knee. Part Two.

Colin Kaepernick's protest symbolizes more than racial injustice. 

To some Americans it symbolizes contempt for America and people like themselves.

Yesterday this blog published an angry letter sent to the NFL and its players. 

It called players "spoiled babies" who are over-indulged and overpaid entertainers, mere employees playing a game and doing "antics" for the public's entertainment with an inflated view of their worth. The letter says they disgrace the nation and insult the flag, the country, and the real heroes, America's military. Photos included in the angry letter show a badly wounded Black soldier.

The letter generally took the position Donald Trump takes. He called NFL players who take a knee "sons of bitches" and says the gesture signals an insult to the flag and national anthem and patriotic Americans.

This blog posed a question: Was the letter an example of racism? The letter certainly projected disapproval of uppity presumption. A guest post response by Thad Guyer said it was thoroughly and undeniably racist. This blog received other comments in agreement with Guyer.

A significant portion of Americans agree with Trump and the sentiments of the letter. Does that simply confirm that a significant portion of Americans are racist? Michael Trigoboff teaches computer science at Portland Community College. He said the letter resonated with him. I read Trigoboff to think Kaepernick represents something else, another iteration of liberal overreach demanding politically correct conformity, and a symbol of tyranny and "cancel culture," and not racial injustice.

[Tomorrow I will publish 3 more comments. Two of them agree that the angry letter to the NFL contains racist animus. The other said Kaepernick insulted America's veterans, and moreover that Guyer's response yesterday was an example of the issue Trigoboff describes, leftist bullying.]

Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff 

I resonate with that letter to the NFL.  I do not like seeing the flag of my country disrespected.

That letter never mentions race. There is no way to determine whether or not the author was motivated by racial resentment.

My feelings about the movement’s larger political goals contribute to my irritation at these athletes kneeling during the Star-Spangled Banner.

If I wanted to watch a football game, I would get irritated if players forced an infomercial on me about their personal political views. I like music and would feel the same at a concert if I had to hear their politics.  Of course, it depends on whether I agree. I enjoyed Country Joe and the Fish’s Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die Rag when I saw them live, but back then I was a 20-something stoned hippie freak anti-Vietnam War protester. 

I have mixed feelings towards the Black Lives Matter movement. I totally agree with “black lives matter” as a subset of “all lives matter.” (Note saying "all lives matter" is something that can get you canceled these days. A soccer player got fired from his team recently because his wife tweeted the forbidden phrase. Punishing people for things members of their family did was typical of communist regimes.)

BLM has larger political goals of the movement, like "abolish the police," racial reparations, the imposition of critical race theory on society, the show trials, forced apologies that read like hostage notes, and "canceling." I do not sympathize with these political goals.

Movement demonstrators often chant "hands up, don't shoot," a slogan that arose out of the incident in Ferguson. At first people thought that's what had happened, but once the Obama Justice Department reported that wasn't what happened, Black Lives Matter continued to use the slogan and claim that Michael Brown was shot with his hands up.


I do not like being lied to.

I love my country and care about patriotic displays. This is my country. I was born and raised here. If my Jewish ancestors hadn't been able to come here in the early 1900s, my parents would have been killed at someplace like Auschwitz. 

I believe in "my country, right or wrong." This doesn't mean that don’t recognize wrong things that have happened in American society. It means that I have feelings for my country that I don't have for any other country. It’s analogous to how I feel about my family.

It's one thing to have wrong things about my country pointed out with what feels like affection. It's entirely different when those things are pointed out with what feels like contempt. What Black Lives Matter, the 1619 Project, etc. express feels like contempt to me. That is what I saw in Kaepernick’s protest and it is why the letter to the NFL resonated with me. 

Some behaviors are definitely racist (e.g. a burning cross, a noose); some things are definitely not racist, and some things fall into a gray area. The letter falls into that gray area. I understand that it can be viewed as racist. It can also be viewed as not racist. I don’t like that this movement is quick to categorize the entire gray area as racist, and to silence anyone who sees shades of gray by calling them racist.

In the current rhetorical environment, accusations of racial animus are flung around promiscuously and used as weapons to shut down opinions that violate the taboos of political correctness. Right now, the word "racist” is the biggest rhetorical bomb in the arsenal. Get tagged with it and your entire life can be destroyed.

The woke mob will detonate it anywhere they can. It's a regime of rhetorical terror. Whatever happened to due process?

When you express an opinion that's different from theirs, they say you have "caused harm." I have participated in online discussions on race, and have been accused of "causing harm" and doing "violence” for things like pointing out that Michael Brown did not have his hands up, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was an adult -sized kid holding a "toy gun" that was indistinguishable from a real gun. I was reporting the simple truth, but no matter.

During a recent email discussion at the college where I teach, I asked a question about “harm” saying it would be helpful if you explained whether “harmed“ meant physical injury? Emotional? Something else? Where are the lines, I asked?

I got this response:
    "Michael Trigoboff, you’ve been perpetuating violence against oppressed ppl for as long as I’ve worked here. For your gaslighting, for your very, very vocal support of oppression against women, trans folk, and BIPOC, for making numerous statements about how you think our students are stupid and lazy — I am putting you on notice NOW. Our community will NOT tolerate you acting like this for the remainder of your tenure.”

I felt attacked because I was attacked. Black Lives Matters doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is part of a bigger movement that squelches honest inquiry. So, my response to the Kaepernick protest is colored by my feeling that his protest isn’t just about justice. It is also a movement of people who attack people who aren’t on their team, and indeed treat them with contempt.  

The letter to the NFL was intemperate, but it demonstrates what can happen when people like the letter-writer feel their thoughts and values are under attack.