All posts by Steve Stern

The Monuments Men and Ted Nugent

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings, Religion

Street Art-4

Michele and I saw The Monuments Men, a story about trying to save art looted by the Nazis, a couple of days ago. I kept thinking, How did these thugs take over Germany? As I type that question, it seems more rhetorical than an actual question because I do know the rough outline of how Hitler went from the failed Beer Hall Putsch to Chancellor. I somewhat know the facts, but I have a hard time understanding the undercurrent. They were thugs, afterall, and used the language of thugs; acted like thugs.

I really only know Germany through her artifacts; Audis, BMWs, and Mercedei, Leicas and IWC watches. The Germany of refined passion, of Bach and Run, Lola, Run. Her artifacts are so thoughtful, for lack of a better word. How did that Germany let itself be taken over by thugs?

One of my main tenets is that cultures are different but that people – worldwide – are more or less the same. I have a much better sense of The United States than I do of Germany and it doesn’t seem possible that thugs could take over here. It seems impossible that the Ted Nugents or the Duck Breath guys could gain real power. But, when I really think about it, I think that the first step – to take them seriously – is already here.

Why does the press – what we call The media, now – even acknowledge the ravings of a Ted Nugent? He is like a lunatic screaming in the street – the kind of guy we scurry by, heads turned away – except that he is not in the street, he is on the radio or TV. The media acts as if he actually had something to say. Part of it, I think, is that the media loves conflict, even manufactured conflict. It sells newspaper and airtime.

However, there is something deeper going on here. Huge numbers of Americans – and people worldwide – feel that their lives are getting worse and there seems to be no governmental plan as to how they will improve. Our government seems to be incapable of  solving the problems. Problems that I consider real problems; income inequality, gun violence, and climate change. But also problems that I consider phony problems or, even, actual improvements – but lots of people consider them real – like the diminishing influence of the Bible and Gay Marriage.

I listened to Nancy Pelosi on Jon Stewart and he kept asking her what were the systemic reasons that resulted in income inequality, the failure to control gun violence, and climate change, she kept blaming the Republicans and Stewart kept coming back to the question of the systemic reasons. I don’t think she even understood what he was asking, she just seemed completely befuddled. The crowd even booed her, this is the Daily Show crowd who are liberal, who should be her constituency. I like Nancy Pelosi – in March of 2010, I wrote With all the credit that should go to President Obama – and he has done an extraordinary job of getting the Health Care Bill pushed through – without Nancy Pelosi it wouldn’t have happened. Period! – and I was embarrassed, even pissed, and turned off the TV thinking She is not the solution.

When government loses people like me, when I lose confidence that government is going to solve income disparity or set a rational gun policy or forge a coalition to end destroying the world, it is easy to imagine, that people that didn’t like government in the first place, will look someplace else. Someplace where the people with answers are not part of The Establishment. Somebody who has answers that are easier to understand.

All over the world, people are finding those people. We see it in the anti-gay votes in Arizona and the Stand Your Ground laws in Florida. We see it in the resurging Nationalism movement in Hungary and Vladimir Putin being illegally reelected,  in the new wave of persecution and harassment of the Roma in Europe . We see it in the rise of Old Testament-hate-Christianity and old-time Mormonism, in Fundamentalist Islam and ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Against all that I would have predicted, growing up in the 50s and 60s, a growing minority is becoming more religious and superstitious, less scientific. They are more willing to accept the simple, clear answer over the complex muddled answer.

We are herd animals, it is in our DNA, and we want leaders, most of us want to follow somebody. When our leaders leave a void, the screamers in the street, the Ted Nugents, the Pat Robertsons, the Rush Limbaughs, have room to move in. They get taken seriously.

What I kept forgetting, as I watched The Monuments Men, is that thugs can be smart. Being nasty is not the opposite of being smart, they can go hand in hand. Also going hand in hand with thuggery is the crude – as in simple – answer.

 

Google and the morality of being first

Uncategorized

Indian merchant-3

The first time I flew to Southern California or from Southern California to the Bay Area – I don’t remember which way – the tickets were very expensive, about $40 (in late 1950’s, mid 1960’s dollars). Shortly thereafter, Pacific Southwest, we all called it PSA – not to be confused with Southwest Airlines out of Texas – ramped up and became a major factor in California travel by charging less than $15.00 for a flight between LAX and SFO. As I remember it, their planes were painted pink and had a big smile painted on the front, the stewardesses – and they were all stewardesses then – wore hotpants, and the tickets looked like bus tickets. Other airlines reluctantly lowered their prices. About this time, I flew United Airlines to Southern California to see my dad. He met me up at the airport and was very critical of my choice of airlines saying You should have taken PSA. I said Why? United is the same price. to which Daddy answered Yes, but they wouldn’t be that cheap without PSA and that should be rewarded.

Several days ago, I read the results of an international survey asking what were the most trusted brands. The first was Samsung, the second was Google, and the third was You Tube which is really Google. As an aside, when I ask that question to friends and neighbors, they almost always answer Apple and that was also my answer, so the fact that internationally the most trusted name is not Apple, not even American, is interesting in a not particularly good way. BTW, internationally, Apple ties for fifth. End aside.

Google may not be the most trusted, but, in truth, we all really trust our search engine. At some level, we all know that we are not the customer, we are the product being delivered to the real customer who are the companies advertising to us, and we still trust them. We trust that Google will not abuse that power as we blithely ask Google things we might not even ask our friends, like where to buy pot or a good wig, or, even, a merkin (google it). Even before Google revolutionized search engines by using them to make money, Google revolutionized search engines by making them actually work. They also revolutionized spell check to make them work even better. Google reasoned that the easier it was to search for something, the more searches we would make.

I used to type a word in my blog that the blog software said was wrong, or type a word in an email that Microsoft1 said is wrong. I would ask for the right word and, because my spelling is so atrocious, it would give me some entirely different word with no relationship to the context of the sentence. I would type in kemshi in the sentence We can bring some nice pickled veggies and kemshi. and Microsoft would tell me it was spelled kamahi or kamahis, for example.   Then I would Google the word, and Google would say, Do you mean kimchi? and I would enter the correctly spelled word in my post or email.

I notice that this is happening with increasingly less frequency. I have no idea if WordPress, my blogging platform, uses Google and I would guess that Microsoft doesn’t but Google paved the way to a better spelling engine – for lack of a better word – and everybody else followed along. Sure, it was because Google wanted to make searching easier so they could make more money, but that is why they went into business, just like PSA.

Their search engine became so good, as I read several years ago, that Google didn’t even need to run ads. That has changed now, but Google still doesn’t run very many ads. Most of their selling is the selling its services, like its search engine code or its spell check algorithm which may be why my WordPress search and spelling are better now. After the Golden Globes, I was very taken with the Bing ad and thought maybe I should think about changing but my inner dad said Yes, but Google forced Microsoft to be better and it wouldn’t be without Google.

India is somewhat of the Wild West in terms of search engines and Google is advertising there. I am glad to say that, in its own way, the Indian Google ad is every bit as good as the Golden Globe Bing ad. Check it out.

1. which says that I am still, embarrassingly, using Microsoft Outlook and – it also probably says that I am – using a PC rather than an Apple. Luckily, the areas where I spend most of my time are the same no matter what the operating system.

 

A prisoner release in Afghanistan and American hubris

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

Korea-0010

Last week, CNN reported  Citing a lack of evidence, Afghan authorities released from prison 65 men Thursday over strong objections from U.S. officials, who said they pose a threat to security forces and civilians.

According to the New York Times, American officials had lobbied intensely with the Afghan government, first in private and then in increasingly acrimonious terms in public, to prevent the release.   

I was stationed in Korea fifty years ago, and I still remember how superior we Americans acted. We wouldn’t allow the Koreans anywhere near the radars or missiles, relegating them to lowly jobs like dog handlers, generator operators, and of course houseboys. Let’s face it, there is no American who knows what is really going on in Afghanistan, no American who knows who is really guilty or innocent – with really being the operative word here – no American in the military, no American in the diplomatic core, no American CIA Afghan expert, no old hand who has been there for three tours, and yet, we think we can tell them what to do.

At the Foreign Policy Magazine’s website, on Tom Rick’s Blog – The Best Defense – a former soldier has a post entitled Some reflections on the Vietnam War after visiting where my battalion was cut off and surrounded near Hue during Tet ’68 in which he says, among other things, that while visiting Vietnam,  Not only are there no Americans on the roads, in the air or in the fields, doing what Americans do, the Vietnamese seem perfectly in control of their own destinies. Maybe they were then too, but we were too driven to notice. He goes on to say This makes me think about the American Way of War — maybe best expressed as “you move over, we’re taking over.

Think about it for a few seconds, think about the fact that there are damn few Americans who even know the nuances of what is going on in America. Do you think that John Boehner knows what is really going on? If he did, how did he so misjudge the government shutdown? Do you think Obama does, then why can’t he get an Immigration Bill through Congress? And, if he didn’t because getting an Immigration Bill through is impossible, why did he try? Yet, we come into a foreign country and take over, telling the natives to move out of the way, we know what to do better than they do.

As an aside, the country we knew best when we conquered it, was the South after the Civil War. We spoke the same language, had similar histories, and many of our leaders and the Southern leaders had gone to school together (including the military leaders at West Point). After the North won, we moved military and civilian administrators into the South to run the place. Most school children, especially those in the South, know how badly we bollixed that. End aside.

Sending in carpetbaggers and telling people how to run their country just doesn’t work. It didn’t work in the South, it didn’t work in Vietnam or Iraq, and it won’t work in Afghanistan. We have brought in hundreds of carpetbaggers to run Afghanistan, spent billions of dollars, and about the only thing we have changed is raising the property values in parts of Kabul. There are now so many people in Kabul telling the Afghans how to run their country, that the European-style houses – built during the time the Soviets were there – are now selling for California prices, between $350,000 to $1 million dollars (this in a country with the per capita income among the lowest in the world at about $180 to $190 US dollars). According to the owner of Wazir Akbar Khan Property Agency, Rents in Wazir Akbar Khan and adjacent Shar-i-Naw are now in the range of 3,000 to 25,000 US dollars while the same houses rented for 150 to 300 dollars before November 2001, even under the Soviets.

But if there is one area, in particular, that we shouldn’t tell people how to run their country, it is in the area of who to lock up in prison. We are crazy about putting people in prison. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world – with the possible exception of North Korea – even worse, our rate is so much higher that we even have the highest actual number of people in prison. China is second with 1.5 million people in jail, but with a population of less than one-fourth of China, we have an astounding 2.2 million people behind bars and China is not even a democracy. We put people in prison for almost everything, especially if they are people of color (and, let’s face it, those 65 people in jail are people of color). As an aside, it seems that the only thing we don’t put people in prison for is shooting young black men…that is if you are white and live in Florida. End aside.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the release of prisoners is of no concern” to the U.S, and that the prison in which they were held is a Taliban-producing factory. I suspect that he is right, but I know that I really don’t know very much about it. Lindsey Graham thinks he does, however, and he is outraged, threatening to get Congress to cut off aid. I agree with the cutting off aid part, but more importantly, I don’t think we should be telling anybody how to run their country and we certainly shouldn’t be telling them who they should put in jail.

Happy President’s Day

Americana, Politics

Missing bench-

When I was in college and starting to take classes in economics and government, my dad and I got in several recurring arguments. My dad was a lawyer – more specifically, a criminal defense lawyer – and he was very interested in the technicalities of the law. I thought that they were only technicalities and he thought they were the very foundation and our arguments often swirled around the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law. I have always been a lumper and a spirit of the law kind of guy – unless it was about me and I was trying to get something, I suppose – and my dad, by training and disposition, was a letter of the law kind of guy.

One of the examples he liked to give was a case that went to the Supreme Court. As I remember it – and I may be way wrong on the details, here – in the 1930’s the Federal Government passed a tax on checks over a certain amount, I think it was $50. To get around that tax, a guy wrote twenty checks for $49.99 and one check for $.20 to pay a thousand dollar bill. The IRS taxed him anyway and the guy sued, he lost and appealed, eventually the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court where he won.

My dad’s point was that even The Supreme Court believed that technicality of the law was all that anybody could go by and there was no such thing as the spirit of the law. My position was that there was a spirit of the law and the Supreme Court was wrong. I usually defaulted to Dred Scott v. Sandford in arguments like this, saying that Dred Scott proved how wrong the court could be, and around and around we would go.

One of the requirements of the The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is that businesses with over 50 employees must offer health insurance to full-time employees. I keep reading about companies changing employees to part time to get away from that requirement and I wonder What kind of selfish jerk would do that?

According to an article written by Dr. Clarence Lusane, entitled Missing from Presidents’ Day: The People They Enslaved:

George Washington’s stated antislavery convictions misaligned with his actual political behavior. While professing to abhor slavery and hope for its eventual demise, as president Washington took no real steps in that direction and in fact did everything he could to ensure that not one of the more than 300 people he owned could secure their freedom. During the 10 years of construction of the White House, George Washington spent time in Philadelphia where a law called the Gradual Abolition Act passed in 1780. It stated that any slaves brought into the state were eligible to apply for their freedom if they were there for longer than six months. To get around the law, Washington rotated the people working for him in bondage so that they were there for less than six months each.

I guess the answer to that What kind of selfish jerk question is the kind of guy who might become President of the United States, the kind of guy who might even become The Father of our Nation.

 

Lip service is better than no service

Americana, Current Affairs

Street Art-

My account was hacked and I should have shown better judgement in my initial response and handling of the event. Irina Rodnina, three-time Olympic gold medal winner, five months after she tweeted a racist photograph of President Barack Obama.

When I was a kid, it was OK to be a bigot, people advertised that apartments  were restricted, meaning Jewish people couldn’t live there. In the South, under Jim Crow, African-Americans were barred from everything including drinking fountains and State Colleges.  Then it was more than fashionable to be a bigot, it was expected. All the best people were  intolerant, that was how someone could tell they were quality people.

Today, that is not the case. I don’t mean that there aren’t bigots around anymore, but it is no longer socially acceptable. Today, when someone, like Irina Rodnina, says something intolerant, the world treats them as if they are small and stupid. I know that some of those people attacking Rodnina are just covering up their own intolerance, but that is still much better than climbing on her bandwagon.

Today, it is no longer fashionable to be a bigot or a racist or intolerant. There may be apartments that still will not rent to Jewish people, but nobody is advertising it. Sure, part of the reason is because it is against the law, but a big part of the reason is that it is no longer a popular thing to do. Is that great? No, but it is much better than it was.