Reflection at the dawn of modern America: Gerald Murphy’s story

"Keep your silly ways or throw them out the window. . .
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Sex and drugs and rock and roll
Is very good indeed."
     Ian Dury, Dury and the Blockheads, 1977

There have been Great Awakenings in the past, periods understood a transformative religious revivals. We had a Great Awakening of our own. 

People born at  front end of the Baby Boom generation are old enough to have seen the world in the pre-dawn era and then experienced the changes in our culture that took place in the late 1960s.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the birth control pill, the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Baby Boom itself combined to change America. We experienced a revolution in law and culture. Our culture digested that revolution, along with its inevitable pushback. Jimmy Carter expressed the do-good, love-your-neighbor liberal side of the counter-revolution. Ronald Reagan reaffirmed patriotism and American goodness. We are experiencing a new version now, more angry, less tolerant, more Old Testament in its religion, especially in red states, among the self-identified evangelical Christians, in rural communities, and among working people of all races. 

Gerald Murphy was there at the beginning. He was the eighth of nine children. He is the young man in the lower left of this photograph.

Then he went to California. 

He taught English to high school students. He is retired and lives in Medford, Oregon. He writes plays performed by schools, churches, and community groups. 

A reflection by Gerald Murphy

Gerald and wife Nicole

My neighborhood in Philly was called Germantown, although I met very few people of German descent there. Mostly I lived around Irish and Italian Catholics and Blacks. The Catholic kids all went to Cardinal Dougherty High, at that time the largest Catholic high school in the country with over 6,000 students. After I graduated in 1963, I went to nearby LaSalle College for one semester, but jumped at the chance to move to Burlingame, California when my recently-married sister offered me a spot on her sofa. The draft loomed over everyone my age, but I was safe if I stayed in college. I signed up immediately at the local junior college, grew my hair long, and met my wife Nicole Jones in an English class. Two years later we moved in together and sometimes failed to take proper precautions, with passion overtaking common sense.

After that semester, she moved back to her family in Ashland, Oregon, while I hitchhiked back to my family in Philly, taking a clerical job with the Pennsylvania Railroad. My parents, especially my mother, were disgusted by all the changes in me, and not just the long hair. My politics always skewed left, but now I was very vocal with my right-wing siblings, especially my oldest brother. Soon after I started work, Nicole informed me from Ashland that the rabbit died. At the same time, the local draft board informed me that I was 1A for Viet Nam. We decided to marry and solve both problems. She came to Philly and we tied the knot at a local justice of the peace. Of course, any marriage outside the Church was seen as illegitimate. Also, my wife was raised a Methodist, and we all know about those devil-worshipping Protestants. Everyone we knew assumed our wedded bliss would be short-lived. Three kids and 58 years later we are still together, but I still haven't learned to put down the toilet seat.

Of course, this isn’t everything that happened to me in these times. I didn’t mention, for instance, that that the Catholic grade school I attended gave me the award for religion in 8th grade, a fact made all the more ironic because even then I already had serious doubts about the existence of God. It wasn’t something I could admit to my deeply devout parents, but when I moved to California in 1964, my atheism drew yawns from my peers. It seemed no one on the West Coast believed in the Almighty. He had been replaced by sex, drugs and rock and roll.

When I returned to Philly two years after my California experience, I felt like I was traveling back in time. The Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Grateful Dead weren’t there yet. Instead Pat Boone, Lesley Gore and Gene Pitney still ruled the air waves. I had taken LSD in California. In Philly, only jazz musicians dared smoke pot.

Of course, Philly and the rest of the country did catch up with California. And it wasn’t just rock and roll and drugs. Civil Rights and riots turned every big city into a possible battle zone. Negroes became Blacks. Girls became women. The Pill meant you could have sex anytime you wanted it. Revolution was in the air. Every young person I knew believed we were witnessing the beginning of an era of profound change.

And they were right. We just didn’t realize that revolutions almost always bring on a reaction. We didn’t realize that many people yearned for the very world we wanted to leave behind, a world of right-wing reactionaries, religious and racial bigotry, and the reunion of church and state. We had no idea our country might one day even choose autocracy over democracy.

And our good times are all gone,
And I’m bound for moving on.
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way.
     Ian Tyson, four Strong Winds, sung by Ian and Sylvia. Released in U.S. in 1964

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Easy Sunday: Jackson County ballot measures.

The three measures try to increase citizen influence in county government.

The commissioners are defending their fortress.

The supporters of the ballot measures are trying to make the county citizen-led. In the cities elected officials provide oversight and direction to city administration. It works. These three measures would make Jackson County commissioners nonpartisan, they expand their number from three to five, and they cut commissioner pay back to a median household income. This isn't new and strange. It makes the county more like the cities, where elected citizens provide representation and oversight.

Currently county commissioners are managers with step-increases as they progress in tenure in the job. It makes the commissioner job a career position, supposedly more valuable to the organization as they gain experience within the institution. That encourages loyalty to and defense of the organization and its internal team. They look inward. They don't oversee the management team. They are the management team. They have become in effect the support staff for the administrator. Where is the watchdog function? Who is there to push back against a three-year guaranteed-income severance package for the administrator?

The measures change that. They convert commissioners back to citizen representatives of the people who supervise the county administration.

Like the wagon trains of the old Oregon Trail, the commissioners and administrator have circled the wagons to protect themselves from the public. They can run such a huge campaign because they raised money from the very people who have franchise agreements and building and paving contracts with the county. 

If people want to open up county government, they will vote yes on the three measures. They may not. The people enjoying the benefits of the status quo don't want it opened up and they have run a huge campaign.

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Reflection at the dawn of modern America

"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius"
     James Rado and Gerome Ragni for the 1967 musical "Hair"

A great cultural change took place beginning in about 1964. Before that was the "pre" era, before so many things that define our current law and culture. Catalysts of change included the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the birth control pill, the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King, Jr., and that huge generation of post-war babies who came of age beginning in 1964. Time magazine called us "Youth," and it called us a game-changer just by being alive in such a mass.

My age cohort, people in the front end of the Baby Boom generation, were leaving high school just as the cultural ground was changing under our feet. 

Jack Mullen

Jack Mullen graduated from Medford High School in 1965; he started college life in the pre-modern area. He had settled into college life before the changes began so he experienced before-and-after. 

My age cohort has entered a time of life where we are doing more reflecting. Or maybe the reflecting comes from the events of this moment. The political strife and division seem so familiar. We had been in a cultural revolution. Forces of resistance grew in the interceding decdades. We are in a cultural counter-revolution against changes put in motion 60 years ago. 

A reflection by Jack Mullen

Student protest then and now

By accident of birth, in 1947, I became an original member of the early class of Baby Boomers. We Boomers, who graduated from high school in 1965, had no idea we’d become a touchstone for a changing post-war America.

The University of Oregon that I entered in the fall of 1965 was similar to the University of Oregon that my older brother entered in 1957. The differences were few: His freshman class liked Elvis; we preferred the Beatles. Holden Caulfield of the "Catcher in the Rye" was their anti-hero. Ours, a little later, was Ben Braddock of "The Graduate."

Soon, ever so slowly, echoes from afar slowly swept into the lives of my freshman class. Down the road in Berkeley, the Free Speech movement galvanized the University of California campus. My freshman English Comp class studied and wrote about it.

At the same time, high school friends from Medford, those who did not possess a college deferment, were drafted and sent to Vietnam. I lived a cushy life in Eugene while they were sent away to parts unknown to them. Five members of my Medford High Class of ’65 never came home. Of those who did come home, some confided in me. I am not a gifted enough writer to relate what they experienced. I’ll leave it at that.

I enjoyed the good life in college. Oregon provided a wealth of opportunities to study in whatever field one desired. Starting winter term in 1968, I chose far east history as my major, with a minor in Political Science. Curiosity about what drew our nation to Vietnam consumed me.

The year 1968, as for many Americans, disturbed me, and the nation as a whole felt a general uneasiness. I’m sure many of our ancestors back in 1860 similarly felt ill at ease witnessing our nation drift apart. The year 2024 may soon rank up there with 1860 and 1968 as a time when levelheaded discussions about our country and the world are hard to come by.

Back in ’68, the Vietnam War tore families apart; assassins took the lives of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy; race riots broke out across the country. Protesters' heads were clobbered outside the halls of the Chicago Democratic Convention. I was moved to join anti-war protests.

The kid who entered college in the fall of ’65 took a big leap to join in campus protests. I suppose I felt a little isolated from some friends, but I needed to put myself out there for what I was becoming to believe was a senseless war. All our protests at the time were orderly and peaceful; maybe a few hecklers questioned our patriotism, but little more than that.

As graduation day in June, 1969 approached, my roommate and I filled out applications to join the Peace Corps.

As we, class of ’69 U of O graduates, sat in seats designated in Autzen Stadium for our graduation ceremony, University President Charles E. Johnson started his speech with a Dickens quote from "Tale of Two Cities": “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Suddenly, a young graduate from the Black Student Union walked across the stage and politely asked interim President Johnson if he could say a few words. President Johnson backed up and allowed the young man to talk for five minutes. I can’t remember what he said, but it was not fiery. The young man left the stage, and President Johnson resumed his speech. At the end, the Class of ’69 did not toss their hats into the air. It was not the type of year for such frivolity.

The following Monday, President Charles E. Johnson died of an apparent suicide.

If there is one parallel today to 1969, it’s that Joe Biden, like Charles Johnson, finds himself pilloried from all sides. President Johnson got it from students, faculty, alumni, state legislators, and all the state’s leading newspapers. The only difference is that the shots that Joe Biden takes are on a larger stage.

Domestically, normal allies who would be siding up with Biden in an election year are upset and are abandoning him. Most don’t realize the long-term effect their abandonment might have.

Internationally, no Anwar Sadat or Menachem Begin type seems willing to employ the art of compromise to finish what the trio of Sadat, Begin and Jimmy Carter started at Camp David.

Through all this morass, is there is someone on this planet better qualified to tackle the challenges we face? If so, I’d like to know who that person is.

 

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Jackson County salaries

A Republican lawyer writes me with political advice:

"Peter, the salaries are the big motivator for the YES vote. Not that good government stuff like going nonpartisan, or getting better representation with five commissioners instead of three. Even Republicans with big 'NO!' signs on their yards plan to vote 'YES'to cut salaries. Don't you realize that? 

Tell the 'Jackson County for All' people to emphasize the salaries if they want to win this thing." 

I suspect my Republican friend is correct.

People are startled by the salaries of the commissioners and the county administrator.

There is a small but energized group of people who follow politics, especially local politics, closely. I am in that group. 

Over half of Americans follow politics the way I follow sports. I am aware that the NBA playoffs are going on but I don't remember any player names except Damian Lillard. Back when I worked in an office I filled out a March Madness bracket to be cordial. I knew nothing about any team. I know enough about sports to have a two-minute conversations with people who do care about sports. That is how I  understand that great block of Americans who get polled and say they are "undecided" on voting for Trump or Biden. For them, politics is a spectator sport, and they don't care much about it.

But sometimes in sports, something pushes into my active consciousness. If the Trail Blazers were in the NBA finals, I might watch a game. If the Oregon Ducks were playing Alabama for the national championship I would watch on TV and cheer for Oregon, hoping that we Oregonians would show a thing or two to that team from a state that bans abortion even in the case of rape, incest, and the health of the mother. (See? Even then, the sports event gets back to what I care about.) 

Sports help me understand voters.

Click: 30-second ad

The commissioner salaries -- plus their perks including health insurance, telephone allowance, car allowance, technology allowance, and PERS -- have an instant element of surprise when I mention them to people. It breaks through, sort of like my learning that the Oregon Ducks would be playing for a national championship in football. 

County Administrator Danny Jordan's salary, plus perks including a home loan and three-year severance package, has the same effect: surprise.

There is a single simple message that I think poorly-engaged voters (i.e., people like me with sports) get. They think the salaries are self-serving. It fits into a template of presumption that a great many people have of government. That is that politicians arrange things to take very good care of themselves if they have the opportunity. One need not be conspiratorial in one's thinking to believe that. It is just an presumption based on general life observation that friends support friends, that politicians get support from prosperous donors, and that in return politicians return the favor. Politics is a swamp. 

I think the recent action by the Board of Commissioners to vote themselves another pay raise, done in the face of ballot issues that would cut their pay, could be read as a sign of confidence that the giant campaign they have organized to defeat the ballot measure will preserve the status quo. Most voters won't know about the recent pay raise. Some of the ones who do know about it will consider it arrogance. A few voters will think the commissioners darned well ought to be paid $150,000.

That is where my friend, a Republican in good touch with fellow Republicans, thinks the commissioners have mis-calculated. The majority of voters, Republicans included, do not particularly value the work of the commissioners, he tells me. The presumption, including among Republican donors to the "NO!" campaign, is that the administrator spoon-feeds the commissioners information and they go along with whatever he says. They have to. He controls the information they get. This sets up a mutual protection system -- the commissioners support Danny Jordan and he protects them by positing giant costs to add two commissioners at half the salary.

I suspect this set of presumptions is overdone and unfair to commissioners, but that template of belief is consistent with Republican populism. That is the ascendant GOP mood. The reality of whatever happens at the courthouse is less important than the belief that politicians are no darned good. That is why opposition to the increase from three to five has political traction. Voters consider extra representation to be worthless, just "Big Government." Heck with that.

But the salary issue cuts the other way; yeah, its "Big Government." Heck with that, too.

I know that there has been expensive polling on this issue. By dumb luck, I was polled at random by the top-tier Republican-orientedNelson polling organization out of Portland. The "NO!" campaign has poured new money into its effort. I suspect that the YES people are ahead or at least close. 

I have a guess about how the election will turn out. Measures one and two, making the positions nonpartisan and increasing the number of commissioners to five, will have difficulty. Voters will have seen all the organized activity saying "NO!", and many people engaged enough to vote will go along with the consensus of all the signs.

But the salary-cut measure will pass. The same people who consider five commissioners too many will think that $150,000 for the commissioners, is too much. And so is $367,000 for County Administrator Danny Jordan.

Is that over-simple?  Is it unfair to the commissioners to say most voters think commissioners are puppets of the county administrator? The idea is out there in the political ether. I don't have any idea who replaced Damian Lillard, nor do I know who is the quarterback for the Ducks. People fill out their ballots with some generalized beliefs about government in mind. They feel grouchy about government, especially Republican populist voters.

 I think my Republican friend has it about right.

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Secreatary of State decision on Alyssa Bartholomew

The Oregon Secretary of State's office determined that Alyssa Bartholomew's Voters Pamphlet description of her job experience did not constitute a felony misstatement.

I think she mis-stated her job history. She left out the word "Assistant" in describing her job with the county. 

I described the problem two weeks ago when the Voters Pamphlet first came out. Alyssa Bartholomew, a candidate for district attorney, described herself as having been "Senior Counsel, Jackson County." That didn't sound right to me, so I made a formal inquiry with the Jackson County Human Resources Department. They wrote back saying her job title was "Senior Assistant County Counsel."

I considered it part of a pattern of resume exaggeration. She also wrote that she had experience "directing" a staff. There was an executive director to do that. She was on its board.

I did not consider these examples of resume puffery to be flat-out, red-handed, black-is-white lies. It was less than that. To my mind these are exaggerations. Fibs. Rounding up. The first of these took place in the part of the Voters Pamphlet where candidates are warned that it is a felony to be inaccurate. That was where she left out the word "assistant."

Bartholomew's response to my request for an explanation was that she was in fact a lawyer, and therefore a "counsel." And she was "senior" to one or more other attorneys and she did significant legal work including during a time when the person with the job of County Counsel, was absent. Therefore she could accurately call herself "Senior Counsel" notwithstanding a job title that called her an assistant to the actual senior counsel. 

I referred it to the Oregon Secretary of State's office to see what they thought. Was her description factual, or factual-enough? I learned that their standard leans toward searching if there is any way the words can be construed to be factual. They decided in Bartholomew's favor. 

[Y]ou allege Ms. Bartholomew made a false statement in her voter’s pamphlet statement by referring to her previous employment as “senior counsel” instead of “senior assistant counsel”. 

 

To determine whether a statement is false under ORS 260.715(1), the Division asks whether any reasonable inference can be drawn from the evidence that the statement is factually correct. The Division has reviewed your allegations and determined that a reasonable inference can be drawn indicating that Ms. Bartholomew held the position she claims in her voters’ pamphlet statement.  

The standard the office uses is whether there is any reasonable inference that the statement is correct. That means that we are obligated to stretch to see how we can make both "Senior Counsel" and a "Senior Assistant Counsel" the same thing, at least arguably. Bartholomew made the stretch. I can see the point if I squint a little. Both do serious legal work; she was not always supervised. So, arguably, senior assistants are indeed senior counsels. 

But as a voter, and a person who cares about justice, judges, and local courts, I use a different standard than the is-it-arguably-true standard. I use an are-we-being-misled? standard.

Some things are arguably accurate, but are, in fact, sneaky misdirections. Call them fibs. There is gray area in language, so a speaker's intent and its effect on people who hear the message are considerations when judging if something is honest. She had a significant early-career job and her Voters Pamphlet puffed it up a little to give voters an impression of deeper experience and responsibility. 

A District Attorney has opportunities every day to put a thumb on the scales of justice and to define ambiguities and gray areas. I don't want a DA stretching to see what she can get away with because it is arguably true when seen in the best possible light. That is what I think we see in her Voters Pamphlet. But the Secretary of State's office made its decision, and they determined she was accurate enough. She is not guilty of felony dishonesty.

I am looking for someone a little more straight-arrow in a DA.  Maybe I am naive.

I voted for Patrick Green.

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End encampment protests

Encampments are a poor way to protest at universities.

Letting vandals join your protest group is dangerous.

The Oregonian newspaper

The Oregonian reported:

Police moved in early May 2 to clear the library. They arrested 31 people, including at least six students, during the sweep and throughout the day as people continued to demonstrate.

University officials found paint splattered on library floors, glass broken, spray-painted messages covering walls and furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras had been disabled. Fire extinguishers were missing and the fire alarm system was dismantled.

I am not organizing or participating in campus protests, but I have some words of caution and advice for protesters anyway. Don't let your message be hijacked by vandals, nihilists, or lawbreakers.

Portland State University library

Universities are convenient places for protests. Universities' support for free thinking and free speech makes them a place where policy ideas are shared. Encampments at universities are body language expressing passion more persuasively than does writing letters or signing petitions. Encampments created a good visual backdrop for television and social media. Protests at universities are a natural.

The problem is that university encampments are disruptive, and not in a good way. They cross a line between free expression and compulsion. To be fully newsworthy, encampments need to block access to a useful facility, for example a library or an administration building. That means some element of compulsion. Encampments cross a line between good-speech and bad-speech, a line universities think and care about because so much of the work of a university is about the boundary lines of truth and error. Ideas are tested there, and how ideas are tested matters. Protesters are judged closely on how they protest. 

Encampments are counter-productive. Students look like privileged dilettantes, with time to waste. Parents are more likely to see campus disruption as a potential danger than they are a real-life clinic on ethics for humanities majors, or power dynamics for social studies majors, or marketing for business majors. University presidents have learned that their careers are on the line if they disappoint politicians or their trustees. University presidents are on tenterhooks.

Encampments are risky for protest organizers. Small trespasses break a boundary of lawfulness. Once an individual or group decides it's OK to camp on a lawn, it is a small step to feeling entitled to enter and occupy a building. The building is your castle now, your blank slate. 

Portland State University library

The occupied place represents the vanquished establishment. Whatever good intentions there may have been in the eyes of the protesters gets overwhelmed by the images of a vandalized building. I happily admit that vandalism images anger me. The waste. The disrespect.

Organizers cannot control the behavior of everyone who attaches themselves to the protest. Protesters get judged by the behavior of the worst people who act under the cover of the group, even if they are not in the group. Who knows which occupiers at Portland State did the damage? There is a life lesson people learn on college campuses in different ways: Toga parties with free-flowing beer get out of control. You cannot control who crashes the party and you cannot control what drunk people do. Same with protest encampments. You cannot control what people drunk with political passion do.

College classmate Sandford Borins, now an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto, joined a group of other professors in a group letter urging an end to encampments at universities. He published it in his own blog, https://sandfordborins.com. It begins:

We, the signatories of this letter, believe that Universities exist to educate students and host academic research. These activities require a calm and respectful environment that promotes civil discourse. In this spirit, we oppose the movement to create encampments on University grounds. Such actions sow division and create exclusionary spaces, undermining the purpose and functioning of a University.

He continues at his site. He writes from the perspective of protecting the university. I write here from the perspective of protecting the clarity of the message of the protesters. We each reach the same conclusion: Stop the encampments. There are better ways and better places to make your point.

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It's not the crime, it's the coverup."

"What goes up must come down 

Spinnin' wheel got to go 'round 

Talkin' 'bout your troubles it's a cryin' sin 

Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel spin

. . . 

Did you find the directing sign on the

Straight and narrow highway?"

      David Clayton-Thomas, of Blood, Sweat and Tears, 1968

There is a lot of reflecting going on among people in my age cohort. It's deja vu all over again.

People old enough to collect Social Security remember campus unrest of the late 1960s and see today with that memory in mind. There was the "just cause," in the form of opposition to the bombing of civilians; we heard opposition voices saying the bombing was necessary; we faulted university "complicity" with national policy; we witnessed police action that some people considered overdue and others considered excessive. 

Mass Meeting at Harvard Stadium, April, 1969

My own role has circled back and repeated. At the time, and again today, I observe that the protests are backfiring politically. A silent majority of people look at college students as naive and privileged. People who think the cause is pretty good, or even very good, question their tactics. 

The wheel spins on crimes and cover-ups, too. Fox News barely mentions the Trump business records trial. They fill news hours with stories of campus tents, disruption, and protest. They ask, Why does so much chaos follow Biden around? That is the story: Biden equals chaos, at the campus, the southern border, Gaza, grocery shelves, gasoline pumps, and even with Trump. Trump wouldn't be disruptive if Democrats didn't investigate his crimes. 

Nixon conspired with his top officials to cover up an election crime -- his team bugged the Democratic National Committee headquarters. A trusted lawyer, John Dean, spilled the beans, and there was a record of the crime, the White House tapes. Now we have Michael Cohen and the signed checks listed as tax-deductible legal expenses. Trump knows better than to tape record himself or to have email evidence, but he slipped up with hush money checks.

Now, as during the Watergate mess, critics say that the actual criminal act was a tiny one. Nixon just told a little fib when he told the FBI to drop the investigation, claiming it was a secret national security matter being handled by the CIA. That fib was obstruction of justice. Republicans back then took that seriously; I think because Nixon himself took it seriously. Nixon was ashamed. He knew it was corrupt and he knew being corrupt was morally wrong. Republican senators picked up on his sense of guilt.

John Dean, 1973

Michael Cohen testifies

Trump knows full well it was corrupt -- after all, he signed checks valued at over $400,000 to make a net payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels: an expensive way to keep a crime secret. Trump is sticking to his story, that he didn't know Stormy Daniels, that he did nothing wrong. Trump isn't ashamed. He was taking care of number one and that is what people tough enough to be president do. If Trump isn't ashamed, it must not be wrong. Republican senators are sticking with Trump, saying Trump did nothing wrong, so therefore prosecuting wrongdoing is the real crime.

The wheel spins, and we see events today through eyes that saw the world 50 years prior. I learned 50 years ago that disruptive protests are counterproductive short-term but they do change policy, as becomes apparent in two or three decades. I won't be alive to see that. Maybe there will be peace in the Middle East when everyone alive today is long dead. 

I learned the lesson 50 years ago that politicians who cheat to win an election get caught and shamed for it. That expectation causes my disappointment with the current generation of Republicans. Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie are on the outs, no longer in good standing. Now Republicans tolerate anything their leader does. People who think Trump is wrong are quiet about it, or maybe they agree with Trump. Local politicians place their field signs next to Trump's. 

This is the new normal. Young people are watching. In 30 and 40 years they will be in charge of things.

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The U.S. has natural gas to burn.

One reason Biden is in trouble is right here, circled on the map.

That spot in the night sky is brighter than Denver, San Francisco, or Portland and Seattle combined. It's amid wheat fields in North Dakota. 

They are flaring off natural gas. It is a by-product of oil drilling and oil companies can't get the natural gas to market.

Several times a week people ask me, "How is it possible so many people are planning to vote for Trump. Why is this election even close?"

President Biden was elected as a centrist. Democratic primary voters made that choice in the spring of 2020 when they chose Biden, not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. He adjusted to try to keep the progressive left from defecting, so he is governing as an environmental progressive.

Democrats generally support "the climate agenda" when it is presented generally. But in everyday practice, most Americans are more concerned about grocery and gasoline prices than they are about climate. Climate is a theory and a mystery, and it is the future. Prices today are money out of today's billfold. Democratic climate activists oppose natural gas pipelines, chilling facilities, and natural gas terminal port developments because they recognize that these investments make natural gas more marketable. Inexpensive natural gas makes greener alternatives less attractive. Investments in natural gas pipelines have 40-year lives, so if we build out natural gas distribution, and people continue to build homes with natural gas furnaces and ovens, then the U.S. will delay making the switch toward greener energy. That is why some blue jurisdictions have placed bans on new natural gas hookups. Popular demonstrations and lawsuits by environmentalists oppose new pipelines. 

The net result is that America flares off natural gas at the pump-head. It is the result of policy. 

Biden's policy choices send a message to working class Americans everywhere. They attribute high gasoline prices to Biden. People in energy-producing areas of Pennsylvania, New Mexico and upstate New York, get the message that Biden cares more about the climate policies of college-educated liberal elitists than he does about their jobs. Pennsylvania and New Mexico are battleground states. The loss of House seats in New York cost Democrats a House majority.

High gasoline prices are practical body language. Natural gas flares are practical body language. No speech about Bidenomics or "balance" or "transitional fuel" overcomes what people see and fee.

Democrats might be stronger politically if they remembered the emotion of John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck described government policy of destroying food to meet a long term goal. People saw the waste. They saw something they wanted withheld from them. They didn't appreciate the long term goal. 

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? . . . . There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. . . . [A]nd in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

For working Americans a fill-up of gasoline -- 21 gallons at $4.85 a gallon, the current price in Medford -- is a hundred dollars, which is over four hours, and perhaps more, of work for the median-income employee. Prosperous, well-educated Democrats who perceive climate as a pressing emergency see the wisdom of making the hard choice to reject natural gas. Some of them are removing their gas ovens and stovetops. They wonder how it is possible that so many voters would choose a crazy, dishonest, would-be dictator who denies climate change and loves oil companies.  

President Biden's policies have Americans flaring off natural gas. It seems so wrong. In the eyes of working people there is a failure and the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy.

"Good" may be the enemy of the "good enough" and the possible.

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Easy Sunday: So much to worry about, but let's not.

So much news.

Gaza war, campus demonstrations, local and national campaigns, inflation, Stormy and the Trump trials, Biden in Wisconsin, Kristi Noem shooting an untrained dog, prospective Vice Presidents pre-announcing they won't concede a 2024 election loss.

So much opportunity for worry and outrage.

Here is Mother’s Day present, a funny bit from YouTube. 

Patrick Stewart plays an angry British Prime Minister, outraged at the imposition on British sovereignty of the European Commission on Human Rights. What have they ever done for us?

Three and a half minutes.

Click Here

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Up Close in Paris: A Guest Post

The United States is a Republic in Peril

Exactly three years ago Steve Wolfram sent me a guest post comment that I headlined with the same words I use today. He wrote that Trump had hijacked the GOP and it was flouting democratic norms. The U.S. and France both established our democracies in the same decades of Enlightenment enthusiasm. Our democracies have been parallel, but different. He sees both.

He writes again, this time with an opinion on a problem in today's headlines: the student encampment movement on US campuses in a comparative analysis informed by how the French deal with public demonstrations. Born and raised in Texas, Steve is a college classmate. After law school at Harvard, he worked as a corporate attorney in private practice  in New York, London and then Paris. Before retiring in 2017 he worked as General Counsel for M&A at EDF, the French electric generator. Father of five children and grandfather of nine grands, Steve has lived in Paris since 1991. 

Guest Post by Steve Wolfram

The Limits of the Righteous Cause – A View from Paris on the Encampment Movement on American Campuses

"‘You must leave campus immediately’: MIT suspends protesters as encampment tensions escalate"

This Boston Globe  headline is one of many reminders that, to my consternation and surprise, we are still working through a crisis of confusion in American thinking about the scope of the rights to freedom of speech and to peaceable assembly in dealing with the campus encampment movement.*

It is not the substance of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist message of the protestors that I find most disturbing or surprising. Or even their disregard of the political counter-productivity of playing right into the electoral strategy of Trump, under whom the Palestinian cause would again count for little or naught.

On the contrary, I find the horror of college students (among others) at the destruction and loss of life in Gaza to be an entirely understandable human reaction to the death of innocents, particularly children, in the brutal Israeli response to the Hamas massacre of October 7. And, beyond Gaza, I believe that, as with the protest movements of our youth, today’s protests reflect a legitimate underlying anger with elders for the state of the world that they are leaving to their children and grandchildren, who face decades into the future of dark existential challenges with climate change, environmental catastrophe, mass migration, and economic inequality.

Rather, what is most concerning is the jarring discovery of a school of thought emerging not just among students but also among professors and administrators that the degree of freedom of expression and assembly is not fixed, but should be determined by the righteousness of the cause in question. Because our cause is righteous, the logic seems to go, the more liberty and latitude we deserve in our freedom of expression and assembly in support thereof, regardless even of the rights of others.

Beyond the plethora of tent encampments, the consequences of the flexibility in this “liberty for me, but not for thee” application of First Amendment principles are grave. I have no doubt, for instance, that the miscreants of January 6 fervently believed in the righteousness of their cause. And to them, this belief sufficed to justify their actions. In other words, that the end justifies the means. Such has been the mentality and rationale of Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin , Hitler and all other authoritarians. And of Putin today in attacking Ukraine in blatant violation of the UN Charter. And of Hamas in justifying October 7 and of those seeking to excuse October 7 or, in the parlance, to “contextualize” the Hamas attack on the innocents. 

The heart of the problem is that, if each group is permitted to act solely on the basis of its own judgement of what is righteous, we no longer live under the rule of law that is the ultimate safeguard of freedom and equality.

As one who believes that we have benefited greatly by living under a Constitution firmly grounded in Enlightenment principles, I have been shocked by the negative blowback even among educated peers to the affirmation by Harvard Professors Steven Pinker and Jeffrey Flier -- with reference to the Harvard encampment movement-- that, while in a rules-based democracy, freedoms of speech and assembly must absolutely be protected regardless of substance or virulence, these freedoms  are not without reasonable limits as to time and place designed to protect public safety and the ability of the university to fulfill its function as a forum for learning and free exchange of ideas. For ultimately this blowback constitutes a rejection of the fundamental definition of liberty ---echoed by Pinker and Flier --  spelled out in the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789 (Article 4): 

“Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every man has no bounds other than those that ensure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights.”

In contemplating the ideological confusion in the United States resulting from the taking root of the “my cause is righteous” school, I am struck by the contrast with the relative success and intellectual clarity that France has achieved in dealing with the inherent tension between liberty of expression and assembly and the interest in public order that have allowed freedom of assembly and speech in a country where demonstrations can be considered not just a collective national sport, but a vital catalyst to vital political engagement.

When I first became a French resident 35 years ago, I was impressed with two phenomena: first, the multitude and variety of demonstrations -- manifestations or "manifs" for short; and, secondly, the invariable presence of riot police regardless of the size or cause at each and every manif.

In my neighborhood -- home to a number of ministries and the National Assembly -- I been treated to a front- row seat to manifs several times a week. The causes are immensely diverse, ranging from those related to the vital issues of the day -- both foreign and domestic – to specialized causes of limited general interest. (My personal favorite in this latter category was a small but enormously enthusiastic march I encountered one morning in support of the protection of wolves in the Pyrenees). I would indeed be hard- pressed to name a cause -- with the sole exception of a march in support of the Donald -- that has not been represented in the streets.

As to the ubiquitous police presence, for a long time I thought of it as solely an overbearing, even tyrannical menace that would be unusual in the U.S. for most demonstrations. As my experience deepened, however, I began to view police presence against the background of France’s long history of violent urban demonstrations, starting in earnest with the Revolution and continuing throughout the 19th century and onto May 1968 and beyond. Given this violent past, I now have come to view the demonstrators, on one side, and the riot police, on the other, as a neatly symmetrical embodiment of the duality of the resolution of the tension between the principles of  liberty and public safety and order, both rooted in the Rights of Man.

With the number and variety of manifs, I find it remarkable that the vast majority -- loud and rambunctious as they may be -- occur without material violence. The gilets jaunes (yellow jacket) marches every Saturday in late-2018-early-2019 were undeniably an exception, but one that I would maintain proves the general rule of orderly protest that serves not only as a healthy and effective outlet for political and ideological expression but also as an important  stimulus to political engagement  in a fundamentally democratic society steeped in constant confrontational, but peaceful political dialogue of a maturity and vigor that I fervently wish existed in our contemporary American culture. 

  
Our Bill of Rights was proposed for ratification in September 1789 in parallel with the promulgation in France of the Declaration of the Rights of Man the same year. With their common source in the ideals of the Enlightenment, there are of course many similarities. But from an American perspective, it is notable that freedom of speech and assembly in France is somewhat more limited than under the First Amendment, as broadly construed in  American jurisprudence. While freedom of expression is explicitly recognized in the Rights of Man, freedom of assembly is only implicit; and even freedom of expression is subject to the condition stated in Article 10 that “the manifestation of such opinions does not interfere with the established Law and Order.” Public "hate speech", for example, is illegal in France, with statutory prohibitions on incitement of racial violence and on Holocaust denial. All demonstrations require a permit from the authorities approving the route to be taken and measures to ensure orderly conduct, with the authorities retaining discretion to refuse such permits in the name of public safety, as recently occurred to prohibit at least one pro-Palestinian march in the aftermath of October 7. And perhaps most significantly, our First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and assembly are  limited to protection from infringement by governmental action, thus still permitting -- for example – various forms of “hate speech” that would be illegal in France.

Notwithstanding (or perhaps in some ways because of) these well-understood restrictions, the French enthusiasm for les manifestations remains alive and well and taken as a sacred right by all political classes.  Yet another French paradox? 

Granted, it has taken France over 200 years and much bloodshed to arrive at a workable and clear balance between liberty of expression and assembly and public order. And it still a synthesis that remains subject to occasional challenge, as illustrated by the gilets jaunes and the recent occupation by pro-Palestinian demonstrators of Science Po -- the elite private, largely tuition-supported college-level institution that draws heavily on relatively privileged students imbued -- like  their American counterparts -- with the righteousness of their cause.

But overall the relative clarity of thought implicit in the French experience should inspire hope that the ideological confusion in the U.S. in dealing with the encampment movement will similarly dissipate. So, while I have no tolerance for the “righteous cause” school, I am also mindful of the need for patience and persistence in order for the sweet reason of the Enlightenment ultimately to prevail.

 

 

Footnote:

 *As the First Amendment only protects freedom of speech and assembly from infringement by governmental  action, these First Amendment principles are enforced on private college campuses only insofar as they are incorporated into college codes of conduct. 

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Grass Roots Campaign

Fair is fair. 

Today we look at the contributions and expenditures of the supporters of the ballot measures. Yesterday I looked at the campaign of the opponents.

The group advocating for a change in the county charter, Jackson County for All, is an authentic, grass-roots movement.

Jackson County for All Website

Yesterday I wrote that the local good ol' boy network coalesced to oppose the charter change.  Being "good ol' boys" doesn't make them wrong. It makes them loyal to the team. Opponents of the measures have every right to use the tools at their disposal -- money -- to get endorsements and to fund a campaign. I realize it looks like a self-serving, crony situation, but that is the way of the world. It is the right of companies that have multimillion dollar contracts with the county to give to a cause important to the client. For the businesses, whether it is three commissioners or five commissioners, partisan or nonpartisan, paid $150,000 a year or paid less, is of little consequence. But it is important to the commissioners, and since they approve their contracts and franchise agreements, of course the businesses say yes if asked to contribute to their campaign in opposition.

It is the same with the county sheriff who wrote a statement saying that if the county finds office space for two extra people it might reduce the money going to the sheriff -- that in a $600 million budget. It is nonsense, but nonsense the commissioners want to hear. It makes sense for the sheriff's department to be a team player with the people who approve his departmental budget. I think the sheriff is short-sighted. Maybe with five commissioners rather than three, and with them doing a better job of getting out into the public, both listening and explaining the current jail dysfunction, they won't do what the commissioners did four years ago, when they offered up a tone-deaf 800-bed lockup facility for public vote. (The public rejected it 71% to 29%.)

The campaigns for and against the measures are very different. The supporters are a classic example of a citizen movement. The 200-plus people who gathered the petitions were all local citizen volunteers. There is no paid staff. It is reflected in the contributions and expenditures report.

The opponents' list of campaign contributions and expenditures that I presented yesterday was short and sweet. How different from Jackson County for All. Their Orestar report is cluttered with multiple donations, many of them small and aggregated. Then a large number of contributions in larger amounts -- $100-plus -- from retired people and people with no recognizable business connection to county government. There are dozens of little expenses for campaign supplies paid for and reimbursed to the campaign's manager, Denise Krause, and other volunteers. These are payments to Staples for campaign supplies, to local media for advertisements, to sign venders for those Yes! Yes! Yes! signs. Go to Orestar and enter Committee ID# 23119, and click on the Campaign Finance Transactions on the left:

This goes on for five more pages. A diligent reader will see that my name appears twice, making a total of $2,000 in contributions. I made the contributions happily and proudly. I was an early supporter of this charter change effort. My primary motivator was not the salaries, even though 44 years ago that was an element of my own campaign, when cost of living increases had pushed the salary from $28,000/year to a little over $30,000. I said commissioner salaries were becoming an issue for voters, and we ought to scale them back. Nor was it the move from three to five commissioners, although this is overdue. 

My primary motivation is the partisan issue. Local issues don't split on the partisan divides that roil the state and nation. Candidates should run nonpartisan races. I served with Hank Henry, a veteran journalist before he won election to the Board of Commissioners. He was a Republican. In two years, with perhaps 1000 votes on matters of significant controversy and substance, there was exactly one vote on which we disagreed. He and I saw eye-to-eye on local issues, although we would have disagreed on presidential and congressional politics. There is no need to bring the partisanship at the national and state level here to the local level.

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