11.9.2-24 – did as the man said –

did as the man said –
one does what one is, then one
becomes what one does

It was the Austrian writer, Robert Musil, who said:

One does what one is; one becomes what one does

A lot of people have been explaining to how they voted in the last election.

They didn’t agree with the guy.

They felt the guy was less than perfect or maybe imperfect.

That other lady had so many things wrong with her (this is one that threw me as why did it count against her and not against him?).

But I don’t agree in this case.

I felt that the guy, regardless of any benefits, was unfit for office.

And I could not bend my mind or my standards enough to allow myself to consider voting for him.

A lot of people have tried to explain to me that that was how they voted but it wasn’t who they were.

I couldn’t get there.

You had to get on his train and go where the train was going.

I feel sorry for those people who think otherwise.

You see, one does what one is.

And one becomes what one does.

I hope you can live with yourself.

11.6.2024 – Democracy – the

Democracy – the
recurrent suspicion that
the people are right

In July of 1943, the Writer’s War Board (According to wikipedia, the Writers’ War Board was the main domestic propaganda organization in the United States during World War II. Privately organized and run, it coordinated American writers with government and quasi-government agencies that needed written work to help win the war. It was established in 1942 by author Rex Stout at the request of the United States Department of the Treasury) reached out to E.B. White at the New Yorker Magazine and asked for a statement on the meaning of democracy.

Mr. White started out by writing, “It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. Surely, the board knows what democracy is.”

Mr. White continued:

It is the line that forms on the right.

It is the don’t, in don’t shove.

It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; the dent in the high hat.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.

It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths; the feeling of communion in the libraries; the feeling of vitality everywhere.

Democracy is the letter to the editor.

Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.

It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet; a song, the words of which have not gone bad.

It’s the mustard on the hot dog, and the cream in the rationed coffee.

Democracy is a request from a War Board – in the middle of the morning, in the middle of a war – wanting to know what democracy is.

On the one hand, I feel called upon to play my part of good loser.

Fought the good fight and lost but ready to go on.

I want to admit that maybe, just maybe, Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right, more than half of the time.

But I can’t.

I feel the picture Mr. White paints of America in World War 2, believe or not, was a much sunnier place, a much more hopeful place than America today.

I wish my feeling for Democracy had the elasticity that the faith of those on other side has that allows them to bend their faith and their beliefs to embrace that guy.

I want the country to feel the feeling of vitality everywhere.

But it sure seems we are, to quote Mr. Churchill, about to enter a new dark age.

I am going to have faith in the Constituion.

And hang on and hold my breath for the next 4 years.

Still thinking about 1943 and the era Mr. White writes about that FDR won again, again and again.

I am reminded of an anecdote that I have written about before.

I like the story, but I cannot recall where I read it or the citation for it but here it is.

This author was a kid during WW2 and grew up in the Republican strong hold of Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

He reminded a spring evening once where all the people in the neighborhood built bonfires and danced in big circles, joining hands around the fires to celebrate.

Looking at a calendar, he puzzled out that this had to have happened in April or May of 1945 and he asked his mother if she remembered and was the celebration for VE, Victory in Europe, Day, the day Germany surrendured.

“OH NO,” said his mother, “We danced because Roosevelt was dead.”

11.5.2024 – build triumphal arch …

build triumphal arch …
build it out of bricks – something’
convenient to throw

Based on the line, “When ye build yer triumphal arch to yer conquering’ hero, Hennessy, build it out of bricks so the people will have something’ convenient to throw at him as he passes through,” attributed to Mr. Dooley.

Sorry but I cannot find a better citation.

According to Wikipedia, Mr. Dooley (or Martin J. Dooley) is a fictional Irish immigrant bartender created by American journalist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne. Dooley was the subject of many Dunne columns between 1893 and 1915, and again in 1924 and 1926. Dunne’s essays contain the bartender’s commentary on various topics.

Also according to Wikipedia, Finley Peter Dunne (born Peter Dunne; July 10, 1867 – April 24, 1936) was an American humorist, journalist and writer from Chicago. In 1898 Dunne published Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War, his first collection of the nationally syndicated Mr. Dooley sketches.[1] Written as though speaking with the thick verbiage and accent of an Irish immigrant from County Roscommon, Dunne’s fictional “Mr. Dooley” expounded upon political and social issues of the day from behind the bar of his South Side Chicago Irish pub.

I just feel like throwing bricks today.

I have also been looking for a specific snap shot of history and while looking for it, I came across this other snippet.

This is reported in the diary of John Colville, one of Winston Churchill’s private secretary.

This happened in May of 1940 just a week after Churchill took over as Prime Minister and led the showdown against Nazi Germany.

Mr. Colville writes that: Mrs Churchill who said that the preacher at St Martin-in-the-Fields had preached such a pacifist sermon that morning that she got up and left.

“You ought to have cried ‘Shame’,” said Winston, “desecrating the House of God with lies!”

I love that but that wasn’t the story I was looking for even though it fits a bit.

The story I wanted was in the Prophet of Truth.

Book V in Martin Gilbert’s multi volume biography of Mr. Churchill.

On the day Neville Chamberlin brought back the infamous Munich agreement, an agreement that allowed Germany to take over Czechoslovakia, an agreement that Mr. Chamberlin waved from his balcony, Mr Gilbert writes that:

Throughout the morning the British Government urged the Czechs to accept the ‘Munich’terms; at noon Beneš agreed to do so. That afternoon Chamberlain flew back to London. ‘Vast crowds in the streets,’ Oliver Harvey recorded in his diary, ‘hysterical cheers and enthusiasm. PM on balcony at Buckingham Palace. But many feel it to be a great humiliation.’

In an unpublished note written ten years later Churchill recalled how, that day, ‘My wife and Lord Cecil solemnly discussed marching themselves with a select band to Downing Street and hurling a brick through the windows at No 10.’

I have been thinking about bricks today.

How there are some people and some windows I would love to throw a brick through.

Instead, I voted.

And I have to say that when I fed my ballot into the machine, unlike any other time I have ever voted, I felt like I had thrown my brick.

I hope he felt it.

11.2.2024 – he knew no jury

he knew no jury
darken honest man’s future
with unjust verdict

When the charge of election bribery was brought against an Illinois senator, he replied, “I read the Bible and believe it from cover to cover”

When his accusers specified five hundred dollars of corruption money was paid in a St Louis hotel bathroom, his friends answered, “He is faithful to his wife and always kind to his children”

When he was ousted from the national senate and the doors of his bank were closed by government receivers and a grand jury indicted him, he took the vows of an old established church

When a jury acquitted him of guilt as a bank wrecker, following the testimony of prominent citizens that he was an honest man, he issued a statement to the public for the newspapers, proclaiming he knew beforehand no jury would darken the future of an honest man with an unjust verdict

Implications by as printed in Good morning, America, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1928.

Mr. Sandburg titled this poem, Implications.

The online Oxford Dictionary defines implications as “the conclusion that can be drawn from something although it is not explicitly stated.”

Mr. Sandburg published his poem, Implications, back in 1928.

I am startled not by the implications, the laundry list of wrongs or implied wrongs, that has been going on forever.

But that the Senator in question was backed and continued to be backed, regardless or in spite of evidence to the contrary, by ‘prominent citizens‘ and the Senator’s self assurance in his knowledge beforehand that the jury would be swayed by the testimony of the ‘prominent citizens.’

You could bet cash money this poem had been written yesterday, not 100 years ago.

Who needs social media?

Who needs influencers?

PS: 3 days out of the last 4, I have turned to Mr. Sandburg. If he were alive today, he wouldn’t stop throwing up.

10.27.2024 – had fallen asleep

had fallen asleep
year ago and woke up today,
would have missed little

Adapted from the opening paragraphs in the New York Times Opinion Piece, The Election Is Happening Too Soon by David Brooks.

Mr. Brooks wrote:

I had hoped this election would be a moment of national renewal. I had hoped that the Democrats could decisively defeat MAGA populism and send us down a new national path.

That’s clearly not going to happen. No matter who wins this election, it will be close, and this is still going to be an evenly and bitterly divided nation.

In retrospect, I think I was expecting too much of politics. When certain sociological and cultural realities are locked in, there is not much politicians can do to redirect events. The two parties and their associated political committees have spent billions this year, and nothing has altered the race. The polls are just where they were at the start. If you had fallen asleep a year ago and woke up today, you would have missed little of consequence, except that it’s Kamala Harris leading the blue 50 percent of the country now and not Joe Biden.

It’s clearer to me now that most of the time politicians are not master navigators leading us toward a new future. They are more like surfers who ride the waves created by people further down in the core society.

When I was in college and studying the history of the United States, a theme pounded into my head by one of my favorite Professors was that the number one job of the President was to ‘educate the people’.

This Professor felt that with the correct information, the people would understand and support the President’s goals and the current administration’s efforts to reach those goals.

Another way to put, was that the President’s role was to provide leadership.

What a concept.

Leadership.

Mr. Brooks writes, “Politicians, especially when running for office, are professional opportunists, trying to please voting blocs. They are rarely visionaries.”

I like that.

Professional Opportunists.

Even when its seems both parties are just a bunch of lemmings running in opposite directions and the reason there are running in that opposite direction is mostly because it IS the opposite direction, with both sides heading for the cliff, the candidates see which way the crowds are moving, get in front of their group and yell, ‘Follow Me (to the cliff’s edge).’

When certain sociological and cultural realities are locked in, there is not much politicians can do to redirect events.

The two parties and their associated political committees have spent billions this year, and nothing has altered the race.

The polls are just where they were at the start.

And this is how we choose our leaders.

It sure doesn’t seem to be because of any leadership qualities on where we might, as a country, be going.

As Mr. Thurber reminds in his Fable, The Wolf who Went Places, “Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.”