Saturday evening, Laura Atkins joined Michele and myself to watch the Warrior vs, Spurs game and we thought it would be nice to have pizza while we watched it. We had picked up some sausage, veggie, and cheese at the Farmer’s market and a ball of dough for two bucks from Howie’s Artisan Pizza. The Warriors lost, although it was a good game, but the pizza was great.
A week or so ago, Malcolm Pearson and I drove down to Los Angeles and back. We wanted to see the newly renovated Peterson Automotive Museum and driving to Los Angeles and back in the same day seemed like the best way to do it even though it makes for a long day, about 18 to 19 hours, with only about one third of it at the museum. That is a long time for two opinionated guys, often on different sides of the political spectrum, to spend together without arguing. We talked about our kids, schools, the Warriors, Donald Trump and single payer healthcare (among other things) and we agreed on almost everything starting with our kids and grandkids being superior human beings.
As an aside, I have a theory on the superior human being thing, and I am serious here, I think our kids and grandkids really are superior human beings, not to their contemporaries, but to my generation. This is a generation whose mothers – not always but alot – didn’t smoke or drink when they were pregnant. and most of my generation were carried by mothers who did both. Living a clean life during pregnancy does make a difference, just like we were told by the government. End aside.
Malcolm is an emphatic Moderate and I am a card-carrying Lefty, so it is easy for our conversations to slip into arguments and it often has during one of our all day trips to some auto related event, but that didn’t happen on this trip much to our mutual amusement and pleasure. Up until a couple of years ago, I always thought of Malcolm as a Conservative but a) I think he has moderated and b) he Self Identifies as a Moderate and c) I believe everybody has the inalienable right to Self Identify. I Self Identify as a Bernie Sanders Liberal because he is the only serious candidate with whom I have totally agreed. “Global Climate Change is the biggest threat to our security,” check; “Single Payer health Insurance”, check; “A living minimum wage,” check; check; check.
On this trip, we had Trump to agree on. We agreed that he is – to quote Malcolm’s daughter, Emma – an “ugly, hairy chimp’s butt”, but we also agreed that Trump didn’t just come out of thin air, we agreed that there is a reason for Trump that most of the political establishment doesn’t want to understand. I get two or three emails a day pointing out something Trump said as proof of how stupid he is. My cue – or whatever it is called – on facebook is chock-a-block full of posts badmouthing Trump and, often, his followers. The political establishment says that the people voting for Trump are stupid and my corner of the netverse agrees. Despite that – or, maybe, because of it – both Malcolm and I agreed that the people voting for the establishment-authorized candidates, expecting to get a different result this time, are really the stupid ones. Trump is the political equivalent of a disruptive technology; if Trump were to get elected, things would change (maybe, probably, not for the better, but they would change and Trump’s supporters want change).
What we are seeing this election season, with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, is two political outsiders trying to take political power away from the Oligarchy. I want to say this as neutrally as possible because I know that Oligarchy is a loaded word, almost always in the negative. In this case, however, I don’t mean it to be. I’m using Oligarchy in the strict definition of a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution, and that is not always bad (or good).
The United States was founded as an Oligarchy with only property-owning white men being able to vote. That was not an oversight, it was done to limit the power of people. In terms of the form of our institutions, we have become more Democratic since then. First the property owning qualification was eliminated giving all white men the vote, then black men were also given the vote by the Fifteenth Amendment. Finally, 130 years after our founding, women were given the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment. Still, there has always been the subtext of limiting what seemed like the people’s power, with literacy tests, poll taxes, picture ID requirements, Citizen United, and in the Democratic Party, Superdelegates.
I don’t want to give the impression that I think the Oligarchy is monolithic, I don’t, however they do have common interests and Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is a threat to those interests and the Oligarchy is fighting back.
“Thanks for making basketball fun again.”a grim immigration agent at the Canada-US Border when Steph Curry went through after playing in Toronto, as reported in a slightly fawning, but stellar, article in this week’s Sports Illustrated.
A couple of weeks ago, we went to Grandson Aggie’s basketball game (well, one of his games). I’ve read that several people have complained that the Warriors are teaching young players bad habits, I don’t think so. To me it seems like Auggie and his friends are running up and down the court, passing back and forth, shooting when they are close to the basket – and the basket is much further away when you are under four feet tall – and having fun. Being kids, they probably didn’t have to learn to have fun by watching basketball on TV, but they might have, because if the Warriors exude anything, it is Having Fun.
I know exactly how that immigration fella, in the quote at the top, felt. The Warriors are on a terrific roll and almost everybody around here is watching; Michele and I sure are. Watching the Warriors is engrossing, nail-biting at times, almost always wildly satisfying, and great fun. Basketball is probably the most athletic mainstream sport anyway, and it can be as graceful as ballet, but it is also a sport that rewards sharing. It turns out that it is fun to watch people having fun sharing.
The Warriors are taking the fun and the sharing to a new place. As the article in Sports Illustrated points out, they are playing with Joy, just the Joy of playing (and winning). There was a time when I looked down on jocks but I am pretty much over that now. I probably started getting over it watching a pitcher in a tight game, in front of a huge crowd, let go of everything but the task at hand. That ability to concentrate, to stay present, astounds me. Over and over again. With the Warriors, and Steph Curry in particular, it is the ability to be present in Chaos.
To be present in Chaos and pass the ball to somebody with a better chance at a basket even if that person is behind you, is a lesson that the Warriors teach every game. That not bogarting the ball, that not shooting yourself if somebody has a better shot, is a great lesson to be teaching young players. Having fun is an even better lesson, even if it is not needed.
(The YouTube below is only three minutes, check it out to see what fun, exuberant fun!, look like. BTW, Curry is number 30.)
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. Will Rogers
The day before yesterday, I was listening to the radio while driving up to Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve to go for a walk. It was NPR and somebody was talking about Trump.
When I was last at Russian Ridge, everybody knew that Trump was a flash in the pan, now he has won his fourth primary and people are starting to say that his nomination is inevitable. I find that amazing, Trump isn’t even really a Republican. His signature position is Keep out Mexicanas and Muslims and the Republican Establishment is pro-immigration (immigration keeps wages down and brings in interesting restaurants so it is a win-win for people who don’t have to compete for jobs). Donald Trump says “We’re going to tax Wall Street….I don’t care about the Wall Street guys, I’m not taking any of their money,” and the Establishment wants lower taxes not higher taxes (on anything). Trump doesn’t even like the Republican’s war, “We shouldn’t have ever gone into Iraq and we shouldn’t there now. It’s just a mess. We’ve spent hundreds of millions that could have been used on infrastructure and schools.” Bush was the anointed one – pro-immigration, pro-war, and a round of tax cuts for everyone, then – with Bush gone and both Trump and Cruz rising – Rubio became the prefered choice, and Trump is raining on that parade. Still, the Republican Establishment seems powerless to stop him.
I think of the Republicans as being the organized party and, like Will Rogers, I think of the Democrats as unruly if not downright chaotic. That is not the case in this election, this year the Democrats have put on an amazing full court press on Bernie. He gets almost no press except for some establishment flack saying that Bernie’s programs don’t work. It is impressive and scary and infuriating.
Meanwhile, I get to Russian Ridge and start out on the trail. I had to walk carefully because of all the coyote scat – although I never did see an actual coyote – and that took my mind far from Trump.
I watched the deer came out of the woods to graze, and got lost in the twilight. Feeling the day end as much as watching the sun set over a very pacific Pacific. 
