"And may God protect our troops."

My father served in World War II in the Third Army. He survived, lived a long life, married and had three children.

Robert Sage, on surrendered rifles, 1945

History is written by the survivors.

President Joe Biden ends every formal speech with these closing words: "and may God protect our troops."

Memorial Day, Part Two.

Beginning in 1996, when my father was 76, he began writing his memoirs, which turned out to be 317 printed pages. The midpoint of the book catches him at age 24, getting onto the Queen Mary which was serving as a troop ship bringing soldiers to Britain in preparation for moving into Europe. It was not a luxury ride. The Queen Mary was the fastest large ship afloat, and with 20,000 soldiers aboard it was a prime target for submarines. The Queen Mary surged across the Atlantic, bouncing and blasting into waves, hoping to outrace any attempt to torpedo it. The ship was awash with vomit--a chapter in the book.

I have read that this is typical of memoirs. The midpoint of a book written by old men is not the chronological midpoint of their lives, nor of their careers, but much earlier. The vivid memories of youth are the ones they want to share. The four years of his life as a soldier represent five percent of his life and a third of the book. A week in combat was more memorable than five years as a school principal, and a better story.

Robert Sage had been stationed in Boston, part of a group manning anti-aircraft facilities to protect Boston Harbor--a task that turned out to be unnecessary. Its real purpose was waiting and preparation for landing American troops into Europe. During that year he met, courted, and married Anne Kostarelos, an American-born woman who grew up in Boston's Greek immigrant community. 

He described his time in the Third Army as one of very good fortune. He was in the infantry and men in rifle companies got killed. That wasn't his assignment. He was a messenger, bringing troop movement orders from Headquarters up to officers who commanded troops at the point of battle. His primary job was to get the message through, not to seek out enemy soldiers. To do this, he needed to stay alive. Somehow--perhaps by dumb luck--the Army put a man with extraordinary skill at remembering routes and directions into a job that required that skill. Dad could hear just once complicated directions with multiple turns and obscure turning-points, but then follow them, in the dark, in a different season, in a different mode of transportation. He preserved this gift throughout his life.

His time there was dangerous. He was nearly killed several times--by a tank that blew his jeep out from under him, by rifle fire, by land mines, by decapitation by piano wire strung across a road, and by freezing to death after being soaked in water in January with no dry clothes. The photos here are of a relaxed, happy guy. He survived. His army won. He made it home. 

Robert Sage, Memories of a Table Rock Boy:

                                       Messenger Chapter.

Our regimental headquarters was located near there, but to get from our position at the airport required an intricate routing. My instructions were:

“Drive across this field to the autobahn.You’ll see four German soldiers’ bodies at the best point for climbing up the side. You have to go up fast or you’ll high center at the top. Drive on the autobahn until you come to a break, which you won’t be able to cross. Drive down the bank. Again, start off fast or you’ll high center. Cross the field to the unpaved road. Turn right and follow it. Don’t take any roads leading off to the left. That area has not yet been taken. Eventually you’ll get there.”

I had made the trip once in daylight, when Sergeant Major Jones called me to battalion headquarters. It was about ten o’clock at night. General Culin and his son had come in on an airplane and wanted to be taken to regimental headquarters. Since I was the only person who had made the trip, I was given this honor. “Could headlights be used?” It was decided they could be.

General Culin got into the front seat beside me. His son, a lieutenant, got in the rear seat. The route I would have to take had been somewhat frightening to me, even in the daylight. Now, with a general, I wondered if I might be court marshaled for endangering his life. I pointed out the bodies of the German soldiers to the general and explained that it would be necessary to go up the side fast.

He understood. “Just do as you normally would do.”

“How long have those bodies been there?” his son, the lieutenant, asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” I answered.

The three-mile trip on the autobahn went quickly, as I worried about the drive over the side. It came quickly. I would have to do it. The rear axle scraped and the rear wheels lost traction. Had I been too cautious? I held my breath. Yes, it was okay. We were moving down the bank, and a road came into view in the headlights. There was enough light to see without headlights and we were now in the area that I had been told was just two miles from enemy territory. I turned off the lights and drove slowly.

Where were those two dead horses that had told me I was on the right road? I continued on. Still no dead horses.

Then I passed a large building. I hadn’t remembered any large building. I pulled to a stop.

“What’s the problem, Corporal?” the general asked.

“We should have come to two dead horses in the road. I want to be sure we haven’t taken a wrong road.” I walked back to the building. A sliver of light was coming from a small window some distance above the
ground. I pulled myself up by the ledge and peeked in. It was a large room and seemed to be filled with people. I listened. They were speaking in a language I couldn’t identify. Were they locked in? Could it be I was now behind enemy lines?

I walked back to the jeep. The general and his son were out of the jeep and under a canvas on the ground. A light shining around the edges told me they were probably studying a map. I walked on ahead. In a short
distance I came to the dead horses. I rushed back to the general to tell him the good news.

We continued on.

“Damn.”

“What’s wrong?” the general asked.

“We have a flat tire. I’ll need to put on a spare.” I started to work. A soldier appeared in the darkness, a regimental headquarters guard. Yes, we were only a short distance from our destination. He would walk the general and lieutenant to it.

Before leaving, the general asked, “Tell me, Corporal. How long have you been doing this?”

“Since we went into combat in the Saar, sir.”

“Always alone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No more, Corporal,” he said emphatically.

The next day written orders came out that mounted messengers were to work in pairs. Most battalions had already been doing this, but Sgt. Major Jones needed an order to get him to be reasonable. Paul Rega, a nineteen-year-old from LaGrange, Illinois, became my companion, and Philip Ridinger, a spunky young replacement who had been working in battalion headquarters, now had been assigned to work with Corporal Montgomery.

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

Robert Sage came home.  Had wife pregnant with a son--me--, a daughter age two, and a later son, David. 

He had a career, starting as a teacher at Jackson School in the Medford School District.

 

Memorial Day

Complex History.

White Americans enslaved Black ones. White Americans fought to free them. 

Union Army, 8th Regiment Conn. Volunteers

My farm is on land where Indians lived.

     "The regiment was mustered out on the 12th of December, 1865, after four years and two months of service. Its tattered colors in the Capitol at Hartford speak more eloquently of its service than pen can do here, and the brave men who helped to make and maintain its honorable record.

              History of the 8th Regiment of the Connecticut Volunteers 

Stephen Nealon is my great grandfather. He married his wife, Avarilla, when she was fifteen, and she had already birthed three of her ten children by 1883, when they came to southern Oregon and bought the family farm at the base of the Table Rocks. My great-grandfather arranged that his gravestone would mark his service as a soldier in the Union Army in the Civil War, Company H of the 8th regiment of the Connecticut Volunteers.

A history of the regiment reports a dozen engagements including the siege of Fort Macon, and battles at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and a last battle at Fort Harrison. Some 72 men were killed in action, another 42 died of wounds, 132 died of disease, and 610 survived the war. A monument was erected at Antietam for the regiment. 

He was a survivor, and possibly did particularly heroic things in the war. He was there for all of it, which was heroic enough. Within the family there is less information about his war years and more about his having married a very young Southern girl, and then burdened her--or was it blessed her?--with ten children. She died young--or was it young for that time?--at age 60. His mother-in-law moved in with them. Was this elder care in the era when expectations and necessity meant care for frail seniors was done in the family, or was she there to help her daughter with the child-rearing? Maybe both. There was a small farmhouse and room for eleven. 

My great grandmother, Stephen's wife, is the old-looking woman, right of center in a white apron, holding toddler John, and there were two more children to come. Her oldest children, boys Marian and Harry, on either end, were in their 20s.

Today having ten children seems like an extraordinary burden on a wife--an act of patriarchy or insensitivity or cruelty. And yet in that era of big farm families and limited access to contraception, possibly it is evidence of continuing acts of loving intimacy appreciated by them both, the younger wife with agency getting exactly the big family that represented high achievement. They were people of their times. I don't know her motivation, but I see the fruits of it: the farm divided into ten strips of land, one for each child.

Was Stephen Nealon an advocate for racial justice that would stand muster in today's world? He risked death to help end slavery--a strong credential. But there is no record at all on his attitudes toward slave compensation after the Civil War, about racial justice generally, about whether he would have welcomed Black neighbors and friends, and whether he supported inclusion and equity. He almost certainly would not be thought woke, were he alive today. The era of his adulthood was a period of open, public Jim Crow-type segregation and prejudice, in both the north and south, including southern Oregon. There were no black families in southern Oregon. The Medford Hotel refused Black guests, throughout the 1950s. 

The great-great-grandmother, Atlanta Law, lived in Georgia and may have been a Confederate sympathizer. It seems likely to me. The Union Army burned down her city. 

Great-Great Grandmother

There is good legal title to my farm land. Stephen Nealon purchased it from a man who received it under the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850, an act that distributed land to settlers in the Oregon Territory. The act was the predecessor to the Homestead Act. White male settlers could claim up to 640 acres of land after working and residing on it for 14 months. Indians could not. Indians were not "citizens."

The land was available because of the displacement of the local Indian tribes during the 1850s. The lands along the rivers in the Pacific Northwest were unusual because they allowed large permanent settlements of hunter-gatherer populations. Salmon were abundant and easily harvested. There was no need to travel with the game and the seasons. The fish came to them. My farm abuts the Rogue River, and arrowheads are visible on the pumice soil after a rain. It was Indian land. 

Indians were displaced after skirmishes, an Indian War, a treaty, then a second displacement and removal. By 1883 it was a White man's area, and my great grandfather paid $3,000 for the 180 acres. Stephen Nealon's hands are clean, I suppose, but there is a darker past in the origins before him. The United States occupied it sufficiently that the Spanish and Russians didn't contest the land. We signed a treaty with Britain for land south of the 49th parallel. The people with the best title were Indians, but the White settler mindset was that they didn't count except as inconvenience and impediment. The land was the U.S. government's to distribute by right of occupation and conquest. 

My father, home from WW2

A few years ago an Indian group, the Cow Creek Band of the Umpqua Tribe, bought a large piece of property very near my farm, having paid money to the heirs of the businessman who then owned the ranch. Once again the descendants of Indians control native land at the base of the Table Rocks. The Cow Creek Band are not the descendants of the displaced people, but they are here now and claim the most valuable part of the privilege of ownership and occupation--a monopoly right on local gambling customers. They were the first to open a profitable casino in the area, in a spot on the I-5 freeway 70 miles to the north. Another tribe would like to site a casino locally but cannot get the permits. The Cow Creek Tribe has "dibs" the same way White settlers did, by occupation and conquest.

Today I visit the gravesites of my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and one great-great grandparent. I am the heir to benefits and miseries. They survived, and here I am. It is all unearned. 

"Greater Idaho" and the Electric Ford F-150

21st Century American "sectionalism" is urban vs. rural.

The new all-electric Ford F-150 is just what America needs. A crossover

Oregon is in the national news yet again. 

Some eastern Oregon counties are proposing leaving Oregon to become part of Idaho. It won't happen. It is a gesture to express unhappiness with Oregon's Democratic governor.

Weather in Oregon comes from wind blowing from the west off the Pacific Ocean. It hits the Cascade range which runs north-south down the western U.S. marked by the elevation change from green to brown. The elevation brings rain on the valleys to the west. That geography allowed early settlement on very productive farm land. Cities grew. 

Ninety percent of Oregon's population lives west of that north-south Cascade chain. East of that mountain chain is "high desert" land of low rainfall and wide open spaces. It is where the deer and the antelope play.

The discouraging words heard there reflect the fact that the eastern 70% of the state's land is geographically, culturally, and politically more similar to Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and the Dakotas than it is to the wetter, more populated area west of the Cascades. Mike McCarter, the president of the group advocating for "Greater Idaho" said:

Seventy-eight percent of the people are in the urban area, more or less in the Willamette Valley in Portland. They control the Legislature completely. They have a supermajority. That's why they don't care to listen to those representatives from central or eastern Oregon. They're dealing with issues around urban folks, and their social agenda is to be a sanctuary state to allow the homeless people to come in, to reduce the laws on drugs, to remove or lessen than the budget for police officers.We're not saying that that is wrong. We don't agree with it, but they're dealing with those issues, and those aren't the issues that we have. Rural Oregon is traditional, has traditional values. We're more into our communities, more into our schools, more into supporting law enforcement.

  

Rural "mountain state" Oregon frustration and grievance is not built around their being exploited. They get more than their "fair share" of state resources. Urban Portland's economic activity generally transfers wealth to them, not away from them. Portland's taxes subsidize the expanded Medicaid programs. Liberal Oregon took full advantage of the ACA and Medicaid expansion, which saved the rural hospitals in those counties and provides health care for a high percentage of their residents. Yet people in those counties voted heavily for Trump and for a congressman who led the fight to repeal the ACA. 

The problem is cultural. They liked Democratic health care in practice, but not if they thought it came from "Obamacare." This is Trump country. McCarter displayed it in the above quotation. 

People in these counties have different sensibilities from urban Oregon, which is why I celebrate the proposed all-electric Ford pickup truck. Rural Oregon is pickup truck country. The new Ford electric pickup truck looks like the existing gasoline one. The electric one is a hefty 6,000 pounds. It can haul stuff. It costs about what the gasoline one costs, just under $40,000 and about $33,000 after the rebate. It is a normal vehicle, not a luxury one. The important thing is that it is a truck.

Tesla, too, has a truck, and it offers a comparison. The Tesla looks like a truck for archetypal Democrats. The Ford F-150 is a truck for people who voted for Trump but could be Democrats if Democrats smartened up with their messaging and policies.

Tesla

Ford electric F-150--shown working in rural area

Ford electric F-150--shown in a city

The Tesla pickup truck is a coastal elite city-person's idea of a pickup truck. It looks like something a wealthy person who works in high-tech or finance would buy. The Tesla pickup truck is a science fiction vehicle and a statement of "all hat and no cattle" pretension, combined with elitist tastes and money to burn. It is everything rural people dislike about coastal elites. 

The Ford truck looks like a truck. The traditional front hood is missing in the Tesla. It is there in the Ford truck, an enormously useful closed, locked trunk where a person can keep tools, work boots, a chain, emergency flares, a spare trailer hitch, and small, light stuff you don't want to blow around in the back of a truck. It is sensible. It isn't show-off.

Until now, electric vehicles have had an urban, Democratic sensibility. The archetype breakthrough vehicles were either a statement of environmental sensitivity--a Prius-- or of technology and wealth--Tesla. In either case it shouted "Democrat." It wasn't a meat-and-potatoes vehicle. Both frugal Prius and extravagant Tesla emitted a sushi and pinot noir vibe. 

The electric Ford F-150 is a crossover. Biden was smart to have been associated with it in his trip to Dearborn, Michigan. It suggests the potential that Democrats can figure out how to broaden their appeal to include more country-western and religious broadcasting listeners on the car radio. Democrats say that good environment is good jobs, but they don't show it. The shutdown of the Keystone Pipeline took place in real life, immediately. The building of wind turbines in Pittsburgh has not happened yet. The clock is ticking for those wind turbine factories.

Cars are symbols of taste and identity. An electric F-150 demonstrates there is a middle ground in America. Good job, Ford.

Biden at the Ford factory in Dearborn

Democrats will either figure out a crossover sensibility, or they will keep losing elections.

Biden:  "This sucker's quick.

Reporter: "Mr. President, would you buy one of these?"

Biden: "I would."

Good job, Joe Biden.

Real Raw News: Hillary Clinton Hanged at Gitmo

Fifteen percent of your fellow Americans believe the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global sex-trafficking operation.

Possibly readers missed the news of Hillary Clinton's execution, witnessed by Donald Trump, at 9:05 p.m. on April 26. 

To learn what is really going on, one needs to consult the right news sources.

https://realrawnews.com/2021/04/hillary-clinton-hanged-at-gitmo/

The Public Religion Research Institute, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that studies the intersection of American politics, culture, and religion, released the results of a poll. The organization noted a "non-trivial" number of people believe in the Satanic cabal conspiracy. Moreover, a higher number of people, 20%, believe "a storm is coming soon that will sweep away the people in power and restore the rightful leaders." And 15% of all Americans and 28% of Republicans, agreed that "things have gotten so off track true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country." Understanding QAnon’s Connection to American Politics, Religion, and Media Consumption. 

This helps explain why so many Republican officeholders are sitting back quietly and going along with Trump. They don't want to stand in front of a stampeding herd. Too many Republican voters believe ideas that would seem extreme, except that they are so widespread they have become commonplace. The poll also helps explain why GOP cooperation and compromise with Democrats is so politically difficult. One doesn't compromise with disgusting Satan-worshiping pedophiles who traffic and kill sex slaves. 

Hillary Clinton remains a special focus, claimed to be someone who tortures children to cause their adrenaline to rise, then kills them to drink their adrenaline-infused blood. Or cuts the faces off children to make a therapeutic mask she applies to make her own face look younger, an idea that circulates on the web under the name "Frazzledrip."  Forbidden Knowledge: Frazzledrip is real  There are also links on that site to NASA admitting the moon landing was faked.

Belief in this suite of beliefs is not limited to Republicans. While 28% of Republicans believe the Situation so grim that a violent overthrow of the government may be inevitable and necessary, 7% of Democrats agree, and Democrats have the Congress and White House.

The strongest predictor of belief in this is the respondent's primary source of news and information.

Various demographic, religious, and political factors are associated with agreement with the belief: Being a Republican, being a political conservative, being Hispanic, being Catholic, not having a college degree, and being non-White.

Influences

The headline for this blog post was news that Hillary Clinton was hanged at Guantanamo Bay at 9:05 p.m. on April 26. It is the kind of thing that catches a reader's attention.This was not covered by the mainstream fake news. If a reader believes what one sees on mainstream media, she is still out and about, carrying on as usual--somehow, apparently, not executed after all. The story here of Hillary Clinton's execution has lots of details to give credibility. Her last meal was scrambled eggs and a milkshake; Donald Trump was in attendance to watch; Navy Seals arrested her on March 2; a three-officer panel found her guilty of murder; the gallows was a steel scaffolding, with a trap door opening down. The story concluded with a quotation from "a source":

"As much as Trump hated her, this was purely business. He cares about the children who suffered at her hands more than he cares about what she did to him. Yes, her demise sends a signal to the Deep State. But Trump knows there are many more to go, and he won’t celebrate till the job is done.”

Other news stories on this site are that the military arrested Adam Schiff on Wednesday; that a military tribunal convicted John Brennan of murder and treason; that the U.S. Navy Seals stormed Bill Gates' Wyoming ranch, and that Anthony Fauci is preparing to flee the country, having purchased overseas properties in the UK, Argentina, and Panama, and having netted at least $9 million  from COVID vaccination sales. Read about it here: www.realrawnews.com

The news stories are fantastical, but they are not trivial. The stories are written as factual, contain tidbits of specifics that make them read like a wire service report, not an opinion piece, and are amazing enough to be circulated among like-minded people. Maybe it's true. Maybe some of it is true. I read about it somewhere. 

The story of Hillary's death has been viewed 599,335 times in the past month. The story of Anthony Fauci has had 96,390 readers since it was posted on May 15. 

 

"Why is everybody always picking on me?"

"Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum I smell smoke in the auditorium,

Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown, he's a clown that Charlie Brown,

He's gonna get caught just you wait and see

 
(Why's everybody always picking on me?)"

          Hit song by The Coasters, 1959

Click: two minutes

In the novelty song Charlie Brown the refrain "Why is everybody always picking on me" is done in a deep solo voice. Boys in elementary school in 1959 deepened their voice and copied the refrain. It was so cool.

The Charlie Brown teenager is smoking in the auditorium, gambling in the gym, throwing spit balls, and calling the English teacher Daddy-o. He is a bad boy, acting out and showing off. He is breaking rules and the center of attention. 

Donald Trump made a political career acting out and showing off, showing contempt for the experts, the law-makers, the news media, the CDC, the trade representatives, and the diplomats who represent an international foreign policy consensus. By refusing to concede an election he remains defiant and cool, to the applause of the solid majority of a political party that may well be the majority party in America  Trump was Charlie Brown and still is.

He was given notice that a criminal grand jury has been convened to review evidence that involves him personally, as well as his family and business. Tax avoidance and bank fraud leaves a paper record and he may be stuck with some documents with his signature on them. 

Writing from Mar-a-Lago in his new media platform, Trump said everyone was picking on him.

This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it’s never stopped. They wasted two years and $48 million in taxpayer dollars on Mueller and Russia Russia Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and it continues to this day, with illegally leaked confidential information.

No other President in history has had to put up with what I have had to, and on top of all that, I have done a great job for our Country. . ..

Rebellious. Misunderstood. Cool.

In the campaign of 2016 Trump had said he avoided paying any taxes for many years, and when criticized for it he didn't minimize it. He was proud: "That makes me smart." He paid no political price for not paying taxes. His 2018 and 2019 tax bill came out to exactly $750, after having earned and spent tens of millions of dollars. The precise number of his tax bill was showing off: He arranged earnings, write-offs, depreciations, licensing income, profits and losses on multiple properties and businesses, and arranged to pay an identical token tax two years in a row. He was showing he could pay any tax he chose. The $750 total tax bill was the equivalent of leaving a one penny tip at a restaurant. Of course I left a tip. It was a display of arrogance and entitlement: "See what I can get away with." Charlie Brown called the teacher Daddy-o. 

As president he criticized the FBI and CIA. They weren't the good guys anymore. They were the "deep state." He appointed people to cabinet offices whose goal was to disrupt or dismantle their departments, or he left key positions vacant.

He wasn't part of the establishment. He thumbed his nose at it.

Democrats are misreading this. They think that the law is closing in on Trump. CNN and MSNBC opinion hosts are giddy at the potential legal peril for Trump. They will be disappointed.

Trump will survive just fine. Tax cheating and hoodwinking the banks won't create significant legal or political cost for Trump. People don't like and respect the IRS and big banks. They are necessary evils--as popular as the high school discipline dean. Trump has a legal escape hatch as big as a barn door--taxes are complicated and he trusted his accountants. No one cheers the tax collector.

Trump, like Charlie Brown, is being cool, reflecting the public's diminished respect for institutions of government. He scoffs at Dr. Fauci, at mask-wearers, at expectations that losers of elections concede. Our serious adult selves understand that taxes are the price of citizenship and a safe, free country, and we understand that tax compliance is the law. But our willful youthful selves like the idea of defying authority figures that lost credibility.

What does the cool guy do to save face when the rules finally catch up with him? He turns the tables. Unreasonable authority figures are picking on him. That, too, will be an easy sell for Trump.

Listen to the song and absorb its meaning. Charlie Brown isn't just the center of attention. He is the hero of the story.

Wacko Conspiracy-Believing Nutjobs

      "Peter, can you believe the utter nonsense people believe?"

People call or write me to tell me about some new conspiracy circulating within social media. 

I need to have a little humility. We all believe incredible things.

Trump told Americans that Barack Obama was supposedly

born in Kenya or Indonesia or somewhere other than the Hawaii hospital that had a record of his birth back in August, 1961. In preparation for his presidential eligibility 46 years later, people--someone--allegedly corrupted or tricked hospital staff, two newspapers, and the state of Hawaii to record his birth as happening in Hawaii when it did not. And he was really a Muslim. 

Now it is the Big Lie. Even Fox News routinely calls it "false" when Trump asserts that he won the 2020 election. This charge presumes that Democrats--who cannot get it together to pass an infrastructure bill--could pull off a secret multi-state conspiracy involving thousands of county clerks, hundreds of elected officials, election equipment, auditors, hand counters, and judges--many of them Republicans highly motivated to find fraud and call it out. Not credible.

Or the conspiracies regarding COVID--that it was planned by Anthony Fauci, or Bill Gates, or George Soros. That the vaccination contains micro computer chips so Microsoft can follow people and control them. That the vaccine sterilizes women. That the COVID death numbers are massively faked and everyone is in on it. Or that thousands of people are dying from the vaccines and we aren't being told. Not credible.

Yet a lot of people believe some or all of it, saying in conversation, that it may be true, that they aren't sure what to believe. Trusted sources claim it, so they believe it and aren't taking any chances.

It is crazy, but it is not surprising. People believe crazy, invisible things all the time. Not just gullible people. Smart people. 

Indeed, the smartest .

A scientific understanding of the world presumes that much disease, especially infectious disease, comes from "germs," or "pathogens," or bacteria, or viruses--invisible things that we take on faith to be surrounding us. Few of us have seen germs. We learned about them from parents as we learned to use a toilet and we accepted this as true. That understanding was reinforced by the authority figures in school and by physicians and people we perceive as scientists. We take on faith that these invisible things are somehow removed or neutralized by soap and water, or alcohol, or hazmat outfits, or counteracted by vaccinations. We believe in an unseen world, and much of it is dangerous.

Today's Scientific American  announces the discovery of new sub-atomic particles: Muons.

Despite its remarkable success in explaining the fundamental particles and forces that make up the universe, the Standard Model’s description remains woefully incomplete. It does not account for gravity, for one thing, and it is similarly silent about the nature of dark matter, dark energy and neutrino masses.

A beam of positive pions—lightweight particles made from an up quark and a down antiquark—decay into muons and muon neutrinos. The muons are collected and channeled into an orderly circular path around the magnet, which they will circle, at most, a few thousand times before they decay into positrons. By detecting the direction of muon decays, physicists can extract information about how the particles interacted with the magnet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKxQTvqcpSg

This is a potential new scientific understanding of matter, potentially changing the previous understanding of matter. Properly understood, solid things are really amalgams of tiny things bouncing around, and those things consist of yet smaller things circling others, forming and decaying. We keep learning more about those tiny things, and some of what they do is appear, disappear, and turn into opposites of themselves. It isn't credible but I believe it.

My presumption is that most readers have only the foggiest idea of what is described in the Scientific American article. This is a new presumed discovery but takes place in a century-old re-understanding of some conundrums about the apparent speed of light. The effort to make sense of those conundrums caused people to reimagine reality. The new understanding seemed to contradict every common experience of sense and nonsense. In the realm of 20th and 21st century physics light is both a particle and a wave depending on whether it is being measured, time is fluid, and gravity is an illusion based on the warping of space, and things created in one place appear to change instantly at the source depending on whether someone at a distance and later in time intends to measure them. Strange. 

There are right wing news sites that have serious-appearing people insisting on the truth of wildly improbable things. Scientists, too.

If the above twelve-minute video leaves you confused and wondering if your whole understanding of the universe might be wrong, here is another on the same subject, this one beginning with the mind-bending words,

 "Over the course of your life your feet will age approximately one second more than your head due to gravitational time dilation."            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKD1vDAPkFQ

Here is the physics lesson you might have seen--or skipped--during college: Two hours and 31 minutes on Einstein's special theory of relativity, explained by Brian Greene. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKJuC5CUMgU

I conclude with a simple takeaway: Humans believe things we cannot see, including things that don't "make sense."

Which seems more weird and less possible? That Hillary Clinton, bored by running for President and wanting to earn money, chose to do so by operating a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor? Or that a person who falls off a roof of a building is headed toward the ground because he is bending time.

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard

The Supreme Court took the case.

The plaintiffs say affirmative action is racial discrimination. 

Some Asian-American students who were rejected for admission had higher objective measurements of "merit" than those of Black and Hispanic students who were admitted.

It is unfair, the plaintiff said. It is also illegal.

Click: Washington Post overview

There is growing national consciousness of the difference between "equality" and "equity." 

Harvard is a well-known and useful brand. Able and ambitious people want the credential and the education it implies. Harvard gets federal money in grants, so is subject to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race.

There is a school of thought about fairness: Equality. Treat everyone the same. Martin Luther King voiced it when he said he wanted his daughters to be judged by the quality of their character, not the color of their skin. Chief Justice John Roberts voiced skepticism of affirmative action based on race. He said that the way to stop adverse and prejudicial racial discrimination was to stop all racial identification and advantage. Discrimination perpetuates discrimination, he said.

There is another school of thought about fairness: Equity. Recognize that the playing field is not level. The metaphor might be the game of Monopoly. We don't start life with a blank board, everyone given an equal amount of money, then the dice shaken. People are born into a world with Atlantic Avenue, Boardwalk, the Railroads, and the Utilities all owned. Plus the rules perpetuate advantage. Each time the rich circle the board they get paid their $200; each time those without property circle they pay rents and utilities. 

Click: Futurity.org

If fairness is understood to evaluate present and potential game-playing skill, then that means leveling the playing field to get equity.  Powerful political forces work for people who have property to keep it and pass it on to heirs. Theoretically we assure every young person adequate nutrition, housing, health care, and education, so every player can compete. In practice, none of those things are equal.

It is a reasonable evaluation of inherent "merit" in playing the Monopoly game for a college gives "extra credit" to a person who overcomes disadvantage. When a 17-year-old pushes through disadvantages to get a 1500 SAT score, he or she may have more smarts, ambition, and overall moxie than a student who benefited from every opportunity and scores 1550. 

But that isn't Harvard's real situation. That argument obscures the reality, in my opinion. My observation from having interviewed approximately 40 Harvard applicants in the past five years is that nearly all of them are very highly qualified and would do well at Harvard or any other college. After accounting for foreign students and people admitted because of special considerations--e.g. recruited athletes, daughter of a president, a son of a tenured professor--then there are 25 or 30 applicants for every position. Nearly all of them have perfect resumes.

The differences between the various students are small, measured by objective criteria, and the goal is to admit people who can contribute to Harvard during their student years and who may profit from the education to  become leaders in a variety of fields. The score on a calculus exam probably measures knowledge and aptitude for calculus, and maybe, by extension, gives some insight into overall academic horsepower. People disagree on this. It misses the broader point that academic ability measured in a paper test is only one aspect of "ability." For example, the ability to articulate fluently and persuasively what one is thinking is an aspect of intellectual horsepower, and an enormously valuable life skill, but it is not well measured on paper. Nor is courage. Nor is the ability to sing.

An SAT or National Merit exam or any other objective measurement does not necessarily measure the talent and personality necessary to be a leading politician (Majority Leader Chuck Schumer), being the founder of a business that re-organizes the craft beer industry (Jim Koch; Sam Adams beer), the producer of hit TV shows (Frank Rich; Veep, Succession), someone who can lead the Office of Management and Budget back when the federal budget was in surplus (Frank Raines), or to become a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer (Bonnie Raitt.)  A lawsuit that assumes that Harvard's intent is to concentrate on identifying and training the next generation of tenured professors by filling the class with people presumed to be the top hundredth of one percent in test-taking misunderstands Harvard's intent. They want a more diverse student body than that, both for the benefit of the student experience and for Harvard's greater goal of educating the various leaders of the next generation in multiple fields.

In the decade ahead some people will be leaders for Black Americans and Hispanic Americans. Those people will almost certainly be Black and Hispanic. Those future leaders are entering college now. Harvard wants a shot at educating them. White and Asian students entering college now need to meet and know people from those backgrounds. There is a reason to admit an intentionally diverse class. Resourcefulness, leadership, courage, and ability to innovate show up in ways that do not measure easily.

There will be lots of commentary on this lawsuit and its implication for the issues of affirmative action and equity. The Court may disallow Harvard's current system of attempting to create a well-rounded class. The result will be colleges narrowing their basis for acceptances and the Monopoly game of American life will give even more advantage than it does now to the sons and daughters of the privileged. They test well. 

It won't be the stated intent, but it will be the result. 

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

No wonder governors are in trouble. The COVID rules don't make sense to people anymore. 

Even the people who make the rules cannot obey them.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer apologizes.

"Because we were all vaccinated, we didn’t stop to think about it. In retrospect, I should have thought about it. I am human. I made a mistake, and I apologize.”

On May 15 Governor Whitmer updated the COVID rules in response to rising vaccination rates combined with the spread of a new variant in Michigan--a mixed situation. The COVID war is being won, but it isn't over yet, not in Michigan. She announced that nearly all COVID restrictions would end on July 1, but for now there were still rules in place. There were 50% capacity limits at retail establishments, six-foot spacing at sports events, libraries, and waiting rooms. There are specific definitions of "households," of "contact sports," of what constitutes an approved face mask, of what constitutes "indoors," of gathering densities at residential venues. 

All this took place in an order issued by the Governor, 4858 words of dense, complicated material: CLICK.

Whitmer erred when she did something perfectly natural to do. She went to a restaurant with a small group of vaccinated people--a perfectly compliant act--saw two other groups of also-vaccinated people at nearby tables, and then somebody pushed the three separate tables together to form a single makeshift connection of fifteen to better facilitate cross-talk. And somebody noticed.

Mistake!

Each table individually was fine, but when pushed adjacent they became a violation, as described in item 3 of section three.

Gathering limitations for entertainment establishments, recreational establishments, and food service establishments:

3. Consumption of food or beverages is permitted only where patrons are seated, groups of patrons are separated by at least 6 feet, no more than 6 patrons are seated at a table, and groups of patrons do not intermingle.

She violated that rule. Of course, she is catching hell for it. 

Her photographed error is unmistakeable body language communicating privilege and hypocrisy--even though it was, of course, unintentional. She gave voters--both partisan opponents and friends alike--a basis for rejecting both her legal and moral authority. The rule maker didn't obey the rules. Elitist!. Hypocrite! Phony! Tyrant!  "If high and mighty Gretchen Whitmer doesn't follow the rules, why should I???"

The moral authority of the rule-maker is doubly important here because the rules themselves lack the legitimacy that comes from "making sense."  A 35-mile-per-hour speed limit on a curvy road has the legitimacy of apparent danger and the social signaling that other drivers drive about 35 MPH there, a legitimacy present whether or not the state governor is popular. But COVID rules make solid lines in gray areas of uncertainty and ambiguity, so moral authority matters. Entertainment venues trigger rules when 300 people are in attendance, but not to 290. Exercise facilities are limited to 30% capacity, not 35%. Rules were set up for non-tribal casinos, but not tribal ones. At dining areas of "multipurpose facilities" the dining room must be closed between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. for some reason. Why not midnight, and why require closure at all? It seems crazily arbitrary. And caught in this tangle was the governor herself: Three tables of five patrons were safe" and legal, but pushing them so they touched created a violation.

It is time for governors to read the room. For better or worse, a critical mass of Americans are done with COVID shutdowns, except in a few places of special concern, i.e. congregant living places for seniors, health care facilities, and dense transportation sites like airplanes and subways--the CDC exceptions. People are accustomed to special rules there, and they "make sense."  Beyond that, Americans trust their own judgement on their risks--same as with decisions on whether or not to ski, eat raw oysters, or smoke cigarettes. Some people will keep wearing masks. Most will not. Suit oneself.

Is this ideal from a public health perspective? No, not ideal. But it is consistent with the American spirit of independence. We are less communitarian a society than some other cultures, e.g. Britain and Western Europe, and less willing to accept authoritarian regimentation than are people in Singapore and China. Governors attempted to hold back the tide for a while, and now Americans will be Americans. People who are vaccinated are probably safe for now; they presume so. People who aren't vaccinated don't want to be. People who are at risk because they cannot be vaccinated are on notice to stay away from other people for a while and maybe forever. That is cruel to them, but it is where Americans are on COVID.

Time for governors to give it up: Declare victory. Say we won the war on COVID, thanks to vaccines and fifteen months of shutdowns. Now do your own thing on COVID. Game over. Olly olly oxen free. 

Or, as we said in my neighborhood near Roosevelt Elementary School in Medford, Oregon, "Olly, olly, in come free."