Category: Thoughts

This letter was published in the Greenfield Recorder, a wonderful forum for community opinions. It’s not meant to endorse any actions on either side of the current Middle East situation, but merely understand at least one Arab’s point of view.

(Note — Salmon Falls is at the center of Shelburne Falls and was a place for Mohawk and Penobscott Native Americans to hunt salmon in peace.)

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I read that many think anti-semitism is behind a lot of the Palestinian aggression. I believe this is a mistake, caused by our own experience with anti-semitism in this country.  It is a pervasive, nasty undercurrent in a lot of our society. A real estate agent once told me a good reason to buy in a certain Boston suburb was “there is no temple, if you know what I mean.”  Another time, in a different suburb, after having bought a house from a Jewish family, we were told by the neighbors how glad they were to see Christmas lights again.

Whether, in fact, one is themself an anti-semitic, or offended by anti-semitism, it is easy to look at the Arabs attacking Israel and nod in understanding.

It probably goes to our religious heritage, with a strong European Christian component bearing prejudice against those of a more middle-Eastern Jewish heritage.  In fact, there is European and US prejudice against many middle Eastern cultures.  The Holocaust also wiped out most of the Roma in Europe, and today, anger at Muslims is high in both Europe and our country.

Maybe Jews and Muslims have more in common, with their middle Eastern roots, than Jews and Euro-centric Christians.  Maybe something else is going on there that we don’t relate to.

I was talking with an Arab friend once about the Middle East, and curious about his views on Jews and Israel.  It turns out he had a profound respect for both Jews and Judaism.  He expressed a deep understanding of their religious beliefs and the life style they live based on those beliefs.  This was a respect that I had never heard in this country, even from my Jewish friends.

I’m thinking he saw the similarities between those of each faith who live by an understanding of the way God/Allah works in one’s life.  Both Judaism and Islam are peaceful religions, emphasizing an individual’s relationship with their God.

But my Arab friend continued, “no, I have no issue with Jews, it’s Zionism I hate.”

The problem, for him, was that land was granted to Jews for a Jewish state, and that Arabs were displaced from that land to make it possible.

I think we can understand this sort of feeling with issues in our own country.  Take affirmative action.  These programs were put in effect to help correct our history of racial injustice, to give Blacks better access to, say, college.  Now, take a white family trying to get their kid in college.  They might be upset that they are the ones being asked to make a sacrifice, in a lowered chance for their kid, to correct racial injustice.  It doesn’t mean that they’re racist (although they might be), it means they’re mad that some government decision said that they’re ones who should have to sacrifice to fix racial injustice.

The same can be seen with the ACA mandate.  People were being forced to buy insurance that they didn’t want to buy, in order for the insurance companies to make enough money to provide cheaper insurance for those less fortunate.  The issue, again, is that they didn’t see why they should be the ones to have pay the price of fixing a societal injustice.

For many of us in this country, knowing of the history of persecution of the Jews, we think, yes, fantastic, there should be a Jewish homeland.  The problem is the Arabs who lost their land to make that happen are upset that they’re the ones being asked to sacrifice to remedy years of Jewish persecution.

I know many non-native Americans are bothered by how we treated the Native Americans, but I can’t say as I know of anyone who has offered to give their home, their small bit of land, back to a Native American family.  I don’t think those of us in Shelburne Falls would be particularly happy if the government, a thousand miles away, decided we had to move out in order to give Salmon Falls and our village back to descendants of the Mohawks and Penobscotts.

Dennis Merritt
Shelburne Falls

The Economist columnist, Johnson, recently wrote about the advantages of pencil and paper over computers for writing and note taking. I totally agreed, and wrote this letter to him/her.

Dear Johnson,

There are four sections I read without fail in the Economist.  The Obituary, the bottom right letter to the editor, Lexington, and your column, Johnson.

You recently wrote about the advantages of pencil and paper over a computer.  I’m writing to tell you how much I agree, and share some of my experiences.

First, let me say that, I might be reading too much into this, the column you hand wrote on the subject was—I don’t want to say better, the columns are always excellent—but it had a smoother feel to it.  It flowed and the words, the turns of phrase, had a gentler more organic? touch.

Crosswords

We (my wife and I) do the New York Times crosswords, but we don’t do them online like many do.  We find it much more satisfying to fill in the boxes with a pencil.  Now, here is something you might want to note.  Pencils are very cheaply made these days, and it’s worth investing in good pencils.  I highly recommend Mirado Black Warrior #2 pencils and an electric pencil sharpener.  I also put artist quality erasers on the ends to make the writing of answers, and the subsequent erasing of the wrong ones, a pure joy.

For some perverse reason, I save the pencils when they get too short to use.  I enclose a picture of our retired pencils and a puzzle.

Accounting

My father was an accountant and one of the things passed on to me on his passing, along with old check stubs and the like, was accounting paper.  When (my wife and I) started our own small business, I did all the accounting using a pointy pencil and my dad’s accounting paper.  Eventually she said we needed to move to a computerized product, which we did, but it wasn’t the same.

I found I had a much better feel of the business when hand writing in the expenses and the sales, adding up the columns, creating the balance sheets, etc.  Something felt disconnected when we had the computer generate those numbers.

Software Development

Software was, back in the day, designed on paper, with boxes and lines and arrows and whatever, and multiple sheets with the different sections spread out across the desk.  I was working for a software company that was a pioneer in the development of computerized software design tools.  I remember the head of development talking about the work and holding up a pad of paper and a pencil, saying that was the competition.

Using the computer for design work, he pointed out, would be like designing software with blinders on.  It’s as if you had a mask held over the desk that would only let you see part of one piece of paper at a time.

Writing

I do some writing as well, and use both paper and pencil and software.  Here is a paragraph from the acknowledgements I wrote in my book, “Jazz Chords for Baritone Ukulele”:

“I’d like to acknowledge two excellent software tools I used. Sketch for making it easy to create all the diagrams in the book, and Scrivener for providing beginning-to-end tools for organizing, editing and compiling the manuscript. (However, for working out early ideas and organization, no software tool can compete with 1/4 sized sheets of colored paper and Mirado Black Warrior pencils.)”

And the back cover picture in the book:

Best Regards,

Dennis Merritt

Shelburne Falls, MA, USA

Let’s think about our trial system, and how it might apply to our democracy itself.

In a criminal trial, there is the “prosecution,” made up of advocates for proving the defendant is guilty, and the “defense,” made up of advocates for proving the defendant is not guilty.  These advocates argue their sides of the case, presenting evidence as available to support their stances.

It then goes to the jury, twelve unbiased individuals tasked with weighing the evidence and seeking the best, most fair outcome.  The idea is the jury can balance and weigh the arguments pro and con, debate those arguments, and try to reach a consensus on guilty or not, based on the evidence.

Imagine if you will though, that instead of twelve random individuals, each side got to place six advocates.  So in the jury room there are six jurors aligned with the prosecution and six with the defense.  How would that go?  A hung jury.

What if then only a simply majority, rather than a unanimous decision, could decide the case?  Well with our six and six, still a hung jury.  What’s more, because the jurors are all advocates, they would not put much weight on the evidence provided in the trial.

What if the prosecution had seven members and the other side five?  We’d get guilty verdicts all the time.  And if the defense had seven?  Nobody would ever be found guilty.

Imagine civil trials where each side could “buy” jurors.  This is why jury tampering is such a serious crime.

So no, we wouldn’t want to have juries filled with advocates for one side or the other.  That would be no way to get a fair and reasoned verdict for any particular case.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  The laws of our land are made in Congress.  Who makes up Congress?  Advocates.  Advocates with allegiances to one or the other of our two political parties.  This has no better chance of working well than trying to get a fair verdict from jury of advocates.

Why didn’t the founders think of this?  They knew you needed jurors for fair trials, but didn’t think elected congress people would be a problem?

Well they hadn’t counted on the rise of political parties.  And money being spent to get advocates for some position elected.

Aaron Burr, in the earliest days of our democracy, saw the gain to be had by actively electioneering to get a position he could then use for his personal gain.  Shortly thereafter we got the first political parties organized to get advocates for (does this sound familiar) larger or smaller federal government.

Why are such vast sums of money being spent on political campaigns?  Because the results are worth it..

Is there a better way?  Can this be fixed at this late stage of the game?

Yes.  Replacing Congress with a random selection of unelected individuals would be great, but that’s not practical.  What is practical is something called a Citizen’s Assembly (CA).  Like a jury, the individuals in a CA are selected to reach a decision on a specific issue.  They are selected at random, just like a jury.  After reaching a decision on an issue, the CA is disbanded.

Congress, or any legislature at any level of our society, could convene a CA to decide on, say, Alaskan oil drilling, or whether to fund a new fire station in town.  The advocates would make presentations, experts would be brought in, evidence would be gathered, and the CA would deliberate and make a recommendation.  The legislative body could then make the recommendation law.

Given what I’d read about TikTok, the Chinese app that’s captured our country, that it’s silly videos of teenagers lip-syncing and dancing, I didn’t have much interest in it.  But I had created some instructional videos on YouTube about chord scales for jazz guitar that I was looking to get wider exposure for, so I thought I’d try TikTok.

How my videos did is one story.  Relatively quickly they all had around 400 views.  Here is a key point.  Those weren’t 400 people who decided to watch, but rather 400 times that the TikTok algorithm decided to put one of my videos in someone’s queue, based on what it thought they might like.

Why 400?  And why did it stop there? Well it appears what the algorithm does is pick, say, 10,000 people and use them as a trial group for a new video.  Then it watches how they react.  It’s not looking for “likes” but rather how long someone looks before swiping to the next video.  Clearly, based on those responses, TikTok decided not to expand my audience.  Had there been a good response, then it would have increased the viewership.

This is how some videos get a million views very quickly.  But notice, those million views are not a million people choosing to watch it, but a million people TikTok decided to send it to, watching, learning, studying how they react.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.  Of course I decided to see how it works for me, and started watching.  Sure enough, silly videos of teenage lip syncers. I swiped passed them.  Then some other stuff, things I had no interest in, but, in very short order, TikTok’s algorithm said, well if you don’t like those, how would you like to see Bob Dylan at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival?  When he first went electric.

I doubt anyone much younger than me, 76, really has any clue as to how big that was.  Bob Dylan was the star of the folk music rebellion against top 40 hits and glitz, the idol of all us hippies to be.  And he trades out his acoustic guitar for an electric?!  At the biggest folk festival in the country…

Oh yeah, I want to see that.  (I’d never seen footage of it before.)

OK, so I’ll scroll some more.  OMG, look at the size of the wave that guy’s surfing!  And in very short order TikTok figured out that I like surfing videos, clever chess traps, how to play guitar licks, ladies falling out of their tops (no porn, they never actually fall out), the latest news, stories about how dumb Trump is, really cool poker show downs (like when two players each had pocket aces, but then four hearts showed up in the flop so the guy with the ace of hearts won.)  And swing dancing, tango dancing, peaceful scenes with music I like (it never plays anything with rap or techno in it for me), and the news from Iran.

Iran. Lots of current video of this women led revolution against the theocracy.  They’re using social media to appeal to us to share the names of those arrested, to make it more awkward for the government to execute them.  Heavy, heavy stuff.

All of this is mixed up and presented in a way to just keep you interested in “one more.”  I was about done the other day, gonna put it away, and it says, before you go you want to see Secretariat winning the Kentucky Derby?  OK, I’ll watch that.

The thing is, I believe the TikTok algorithm knows me better than I know myself.  And I’m not a teenager scrolling at my desk in school.

I understand how TikTok is now getting more views than FB or YouTube or anything else.  I understand how it’s totally addictive.  The problem is, it’s not just wasting my time.  I was up-to-date on all the election news through TikTok faster than through my Washington Post or New York Times online accounts.  And learned some great chess tricks to use against my grandson, and how to play some classic rock guitar licks.  And interesting science facts, like explanations of quantum entanglement. Neil DeGrasse Tyson constantly shows up in my feed.  Is it bad the kids are exposed to him?  But are they?  Or does he just show up to people like me?

I understand how scary this is to those in charge.  My TikTok feed totally reinforces my views that the Republicans are bad, Trump is a threat, and the Iranian revolution is a good thing.  How hard would it be for it to start to influence me in some other directions?  Would they want to?  I can’t say as I’ve seen anything about politics in China.

I never liked Roe v. Wade.

It never seemed right to me that nine, politically appointed, individuals should decide the law of the land on a topic like abortion.  That should have been Congress’ job, to meet and deliberate, weigh all sides of the issue, and come up with good law that reflects the will of the people, the people they represent.

But no, that’s not what politicians do.  Instead they try to make an issue like abortion divisive.  They want us to be in Pro-Life or Pro-Choice camps, and get mad at each other.

Those very labels completely cloud the issue.  We have a word, “fetus,” which we use because there is nothing else like it.  The Pro-Life people want us to think a fetus is just the same as a new born infant, who we all agree has a right to live.  The Pro-Choice people want us to think the fetus is just like a blemish every woman has a right to remove from her body with elective surgery.

But the truth is, it’s not an either or situation.  I don’t think even the most adamant Pro-Choice person thinks an eight month pregnancy should be aborted.  Nor are there many Pro-Lifers, except the hard core, who think a morning after pill is a bad idea.

Instead, it’s a question of where you draw the line.  Even the Texas law says abortion is OK in the first six weeks, and Roe v. Wade said states could ban abortion in the third trimester.  Most of the people in the country kind of agree abortion should be legal in some situations and not in others.

As I said, Congress doesn’t deliberate on issues like this.  But there is a better way, and it was done in Ireland, and it worked.

Like here, abortion was a volatile issue in Ireland, with demonstrators and politicians doing the sorts of things they do here.  As an alternative to that, a Citizens’ Assembly (CA) was convened to study the abortion issue and make recommendations on what abortion law should be in Ireland.  The CA was made up of around a hundred people drawn from all walks of life who got together to listen and discuss the different sides of the issue, and make a recommendation on what the law of the land should be.

All well and good in theory you might say, but can it work for real?  Yes it did.  People with wildly differing initial opinions, came together on a middle ground recommendation.  How did it become law you might ask?  Well the Irish legislature decided to put the CA’s recommendations up to a national referendum, and the people voted, and it easily passed, and those recommendations, from a demographically diverse group of citizens, without a financial or political stake, became law.  Law that, according to various surveys, closely matches public opinion.

In a way, this was quite freeing for the politicians, no longer having to worry about taking a stand one way or the other, of offending some voters at the expense of others, no longer having to frame such a complex issue with sound bites for their base.

I highly recommend Googling “When Citizens Assemble” on YouTube to learn about that particular CA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjpuDk9_BWI  The video was shot before the final ending resolution became law.  And to further research democracywithoutelections.org, sortitionfoundation.org, and helena.org to learn more about how CAs are being used today for other issues around the globe.  This is actually happening, it can be done.  It’s not pie in the sky.

Instead of people gathering and protesting with Pro-Life and Pro-Choice signs, I’d love to see them gather to demand a Citizens’ Assembly be convened to write the law of the land, and not nine, politically appointed, individuals.

Pat Hynes, on the anniversary of Hiroshima, wrote an op-ed piece in the Greenfield Recorder about work to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and looked to the way a forest of trees cooperates as a model for human behavior.

In that same issue of the Recorder was an article about a couple with a prominent BLM sign that keeps getting defaced. Previous issues had articles about John Turner’s massacre of a Native American village as people wonder if Turner’s Falls is really such a good name for that local town.

This is the op-ed piece I wrote referring to all that.

I share Pat Hynes’s horror at the current state of global nuclear arsenals.  I also share her wonder at the ways the trees in the forest communicate.  I mean even the tomato plants in my garden are talking to each other for their mutual benefit by sending chemical messages through the soil.

But I think the forests also illustrate the real problem with nuclear proliferation.  Those amazing technologies employed by the trees to help each other is also used to wage war amongst the different species.  The evergreens and the deciduous trees are fighting for control of the forest, just as my tomatoes  are battling the weeds for my garden.  The forest pines have no problem using their needles to create a soil inhospitable to oaks.

The lush variety and wonder of our local woods has come about due to a balance of power, as each species uses its own weapons and networks to compete with the others.

In much the same ways different cultures have both lived and fought through human history.  In much the same way the nuclear powers co-exist today.  But, as Pat Hynes points out, it really has gone too far, it really is very scary.

Let’s go back to the Japanese and Americans in WW II.  Comparing us to trees, the question then is, were we just common members of the same species who should work for a common good?  Or members of different species who see each other as threats?

Clearly at that time we saw each other as threats and used our technologies accordingly.  Them at Pearl Harbor, us at Hiroshima.

Clearly if we want to save the planet as being fit for human habitation we need to do the equivalent of having oaks and pines agree to work together.  This will not be easy.

The problem with Japan and America at the end of WW II is we didn’t understand each other.  A Japanese friend of mine once recommended a book to better understand Japanese culture and thinking.  It was called the “Chrysanthemum and the Sword” by Ruth Benedict.  The book itself is interesting and informative, but what I found even more interesting is how it came to be written.

It was written by an anthropologist who was hired by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1946.  We really were looking for answers, for clues to understand the “them.”  Did it work?

Well I believe it did, for it shaped the thinking of American – Japanese relations after the war.  Unlike my father who witnessed the death and destruction in the Pacific caused by the clash of our nations, I only knew a World where the Japanese were our friends.  It’s actually hard for me to imagine the Japan that my father knew.

I believe it is this sort of cross-cultural understanding that will be vital in curing our global ills.

I just finished reading “Mayflower” by Nathaniel Philbrick.  It is all about understanding the cultural clashes between the Puritans and the Native Americans.  And just as Pat Hynes points out about WW II days, there were those then that understood and tried to reach less deadly solutions to the conflicts.  But the majority simply didn’t understand, or even care to understand.  The atrocities of King Phillip’s War, on both sides, were the result of that.  What John Turner did to the Native Americans at what is now Turner’s Falls was exactly the same as what we did at Hiroshima. And for the exact same reasons.

Sigh, it goes on and on.  Robert McNamara, a main architect of the Viet Nam War, later went to North Vietnam to try to better understand his counterpart there.  Guess what?  There was a big misunderstanding.  We didn’t understand that it really was just a civil war in a small country.  They didn’t understand why giant America cared so much about their small civil war.  They didn’t grasp the weight of the Cold War on our psyche.

We were worried about nuclear Armageddon and saw Viet Nam as part of that.  I grew up practicing hiding under my Long Island desk in case a nuke was dropped on NYC, which seemed a real possibility at the time.

Can we learn to understand each other on a global scale?  Bringing it closer to home, can the left-leaning people of Massachusetts learn to understand why the right-leaning people hate us so?  Can the owners of the BLM sign in Orange understand the person who keeps defacing it?

A recent letter to the editor outlined what the author thought would be a reasonable approach to immigration reform. It got me to thinking about what a friend of mine had explained to me about Citizens’ Assemblies, a form of sortition.

What’s sortition?  It turns out the Athenian Greek democracy did not elect representatives.  Instead they were chosen at random from the population.  That’s sortition.

For some, the very fact that we elect our representatives is at the core of the problems with our government today.  They argue that if congress were made up of randomly selected, demographically representative individuals then a lot more would get done, and get done better.

Why?  Because the representatives would focus on the issues, not the visibility of the issue and how it affects their fundraising and chances for re-election.

That’s clearly not going to happen to our Congress any time soon, but there is a variation on the idea that is happening in places and could happen on a national level.  It’s called Citizens’ Assemblies.

A Citizens’ Assembly is a group of randomly selected, demographically representative individuals brought together to address one particular issue, hopefully to make law, but at least to make recommendations.  These could be relatively large groups.  They would take input from various stake holders and experts.  After making their decision, they would disband.

An example of a Citizens’ Assembly is a jury.  Random people together to solve one particular issue.  It works reasonably well, even for contentious issues.  Imagine if Derek Chauvin’s fate was to be decided by Congress, rather than a jury.  The vote would be split down Republican/Democrat lines with no-one particularly caring about the particular facts of the case, like the medical testimony on what actually caused George Floyd’s death.  All that would matter to the politicians is how their base, their colleagues, and their party perceives their vote.

They can be used at any level of government.  Imagine a town wanting to come up with a sign ordinance governing what sorts of signs stores can put up, balancing the town’s esthetics and the need for local merchants to advertise.  A great problem to form a Citizens’ Assembly to solve.

On a national level, take immigration.  Imagine that a number of individuals, such as the letter writer mentioned above, were gathered together and asked to come up with an immigration policy that made sense.  Not anyone looking to get re-elected, but people from all walks of life getting together to discuss, analyze, think about a plan that might work for the country.

They would listen to current experts, to immigrants, to employers of immigrants, to the Dreamers, to those who’s jobs are threatened, to those unhappy with changing neighborhood demographics, medical experts on disease, law enforcement, etc. etc.

It wouldn’t take that long for such a group to settle on a reasonable path for our country.  It could then become law, and, since it was decided by a Citizens’ Assembly, the politicians could wash their hands of it.

Maybe every 5 or 10 years the issue would be revisited in a similar way?

My friend points out that politicians don’t actually want to solve these sorts of contentious issues.  Both sides need the issues to fire up their bases.  Immigration has been used as political fodder since, well, since forever.  Build the Wall!  Children in Cages!  Vote for us!  That’s how each side gets the voters out.

Abortion.  A Citizen’s Assembly could study and come up with a path that best reflected the conflicting opinions of the country.  And when they did, well there goes another get out the vote slogan, no more Pro-Life!, Pro-Choice! being used to get votes.

Health Care.

Gun Control.

Environment.

And so on for the issues of the day, leaving the politicians to do the more mundane work of running our government.  And getting elected based on how well they do their job, and making more visible how they do it and what’s really going on when they’re not actually doing anything about the issues they campaigned on.

Opinions on the optimal mixing of condiments.

Ham Sandwich

When making a ham and Swiss and tomato sandwich with mayonnaise and mustard, it’s nice to arrange the ingredients in such a way as to maximize tasting pleasure when they mingle in the mouth.

Clearly the ham should be in one layer, the tomato in another, and the cheese in between separating the two.  The mayonnaise and mustard should be separated as well, with the mayonnaise on the slice of bread touching the tomato.

The mustard, however, should not be spread on the other slice of bread.  Instead it should be spread directly on the ham, preferably in between two ham slices so that it does not touch the bread.

Why?  If the mustard is spread on the bread, its taste gets absorbed in the bread and when the sandwich is bitten into, the mouth experiences mustardy flavored bread in the vicinity of the other ingredients.

But if the mustard is shielded from the bread, then the mouth gets to experience the bite of the mustard directly with the ham in some very exciting mouthfuls.

The same is true of a hotdog.  Spread the mustard directly on the hotdog and it’s exciting to eat.  Put the mustard on the bun first and it becomes a boring mush.

Oatmeal

You’ve got a steaming hot bowl of oatmeal.  It’s ready for the butter, brown sugar, raisins and milk.  How best to add them to maximize the enjoyment of each bite?

If you mix the brown sugar and butter thoroughly in the oatmeal, and then add the milk, all the excitement of those ingredients is lost, as they just offer a blended sort of taste, and you might find yourself wanting to add more and more sugar.

There are other options.  One is to very slightly mix the ingredients.  Then each bite will be different.  Some will have just oatmeal, and others a blast of sugar.  Sort of like when eating a layer cake, some bites are pure cake and others have a ton of icing.  Fun!

The other option is to pour the milk on top of the sugar and butter before it’s mixed in and let it sit.  Now when you mix it the oatmeal tastes like it’s in flavored milk, also a fun sensation.

I’m not sure which I prefer.

As to the raisins, well they keep pretty much to themselves but I like to have enough so that I can get one in every bite.

The last ingredient is salt.  You need some salt in the oatmeal, but unlike the sugar, you don’t want to get a bite with a spike of salt in it.  So the salt should go in before it’s cooked so it gets totally blended in and is barely noticeable.

Salt and Eggs

Unlike in the oatmeal, it’s fun to get a nice taste of salt on scrambled eggs.  For this reason it’s better to hold back on the salt while cooking, leaving some room for the tastebuds to encounter fresh salt sprinkled on the eggs while eating.

Somebody was famous for saying he would make hiring decisions based on whether someone tasted their food before salting it.  I’d say I wouldn’t want to work for someone who didn’t understand different people’s preferences, and that some like to encounter a fresh salt taste in their bites rather than a boring blended saltiness throughout the food.

A rather conservative thinker in our area wrote an editorial in our paper a while back about an argument he had with a millennial. His point was people should be self-reliant and not ask for government handouts. These were my thoughts on the matter.

Mr. O’Rourke wrote a thought-provoking My Turn column, maybe a month or even two ago.  He talked about a debate he’d had with a millenial friend and he made the point that people shouldn’t whine and ask for handouts, but instead rise up and do what it takes to carve out a living for themselves.  It is classic Emerson, and I must say I totally agree with him.  Ironically though, I suspect it is exactly individuals who exemplify his ideals that have lead to the national discord that might have fuelled his millenial friend’s opinions.

Since moving to Western Mass. I’ve met many of the self-reliant individuals he describes.  The rural nature of this area doesn’t provide a wealth of economic opportunity, yet the people here take care of themselves.  They make art for the tourists, do landscaping, sell wood, work the farms or tap our maples for syrup.

There are the owners and employees of independent businesses, like restaurants, shops, and car repair garages, and those who commute to Greenfield to work in the medical industry, or a bit further south to work in the universities.  All self-reliant people working with what’s here.  And those that want something different, well just as Mr. O’Rourke suggests, they go to our colleges and move to places that support high tech, big business or mass entertainment.

I like to think that I exemplify his ideals as well.  I was raised in a middle class suburb of New York, Levittown.  It had excellent public schools that I took advantage of to get into an Ivy League school, which my parents could afford back when tuition wasn’t so crazy.  The contacts I made there led me to a career in software development, my own small company and my retirement in Shelburne Falls.  I worked hard, and my hard work, while not making me rich, led to a satisfying and comfortable life.

I’m thinking Mr. O’Rourke’s debate with the millenial was about Black Lives Matter.

I compare my path in life with George Floyd’s.  For one, it was only years later that I learned Levitt, who built Levittown, wouldn’t sell to Black families, so that particular path would have been closed.

From what I’ve read, for people who grow up in neighborhoods like George Floyd’s, there aren’t local schools that lead to good colleges.  Even if there were, it’s unlikely his parents could have paid the bill.

But lack of education aside, there’s plenty in Western Mass. who fend for themselves cutting wood, waiting tables, making syrup.

What, then, are the similar opportunities for an enterprising young person in the inner city?  One who exemplifies Mr. O’Rourke’s ideals?  One for whom welfare handouts can’t answer the drive to succeed, to make something of oneself?

Drugs, prostitution and petty crimes are some.  These are where self-reliant individuals can turn to make their own way in the world.  Gangs, the equivalent of corporate America for the inner city, provide both support and a livelihood, organizations where through hard work one can rise up and get ahead.

It’s those enterprising, self-reliant Blacks from the inner city who take advantage of these opportunities that wind up in conflict with the mostly white police.

There are currently something like two million young Black men in our prisons, at a cost in the billions to our society.  These aren’t lazy welfare cheats who were looking for a government handout.  These are men who wanted to make their own way in the world, who took advantage of the economic opportunities available to them.

Wouldn’t we be better off if all that self-reliant, Emersonian energy had been channeled into more socially productive areas?  Wouldn’t a great start be to provide equal educational opportunities to all?  To stop funding public schools with real estate taxes, and instead fund them on a state level so everyone gets the same quality education?  To get rid of the concept of “good school districts” available only to those who can afford to live in them? 

And shouldn’t college be affordable as well, and health care available to those who don’t work in corporate America?

These aren’t handouts for those who don’t want to work, but rather investments in the futures of those who do.  I’d rather see us spend billions on education than incarceration.  I’d like to see us tap into that self-reliant human spirit which is, as Mr. O’Rourke points out, the very essence of America.

My self selecting circle of Face Book friends are overwhelmingly against Trump.  Many ask, how can anyone still support this guy?

I, personally, don’t like him. But I like to try to understand different points of view. I have some sympathies with conservative political views, and the few Trump supporters I know are not xenophobic neo-Nazis, but intelligent reasonable people.

So this is me attempting to explain how I think Trump supporters might think, and why they can continue to support him, to the tune of around 40% of our country.

More than anything else, I’d say a Trump supporter, like many others, is sickened by the way our politicians all seem to be bought, how government does not work for us.  Every time he did something that pissed off the career politicians, I’d say Yay Trump!

Trump supporters are probably on the conservative side of the spectrum.  Not necessarily evil gay bashing, white supremacist conservatives, but people who would prefer a government that supports personal freedoms, is smaller rather than bigger government and one that is fiscally responsible.

Such a person would have for years been offended by the liberal bias in the main stream media. (And it’s real, I have some conservative roots and the bias can be really annoying.)  So they would get their news from Fox News, which, like the other main stream media, is NOT fake news, but news, like the other main stream media, presented with the unavoidable bias of it’s owners.

Every time Trump did something that got the liberal media all up in arms, I’d say Yay Trump!

A Trump supporter might very well hate the ACA. (He might call it ObamaCare, but Obama wanted either national health, or totally individual free markets.  Instead he got Congress’ terrible kludge that kept the insurance companies happy.)

The basic facts of this issue are simple. If we want to subsidize the cost of insurance for those who can’t afford it, then someone else has to pay for it.

The Trump supporter might very well be one of those people.  A healthy young person working in the building trades, just barely making ends meet, deciding not to buy health insurance, and then being forced to so others could buy it?  That would burn my ass too.  (I don’t care though, I’ve got Medicare, shouldn’t everyone?)

The Trump supporter might have a growing small business.  A lawn business that’s getting close to 50 employees, but can’t grow his business because if he gets 50 he’ll have to become an expert in, not only lawn care, but health care benefits.  And incur the added costs.  That would frustrate me too.

So, when Trump says he’s going to kill ObamaCare, I’d say Yay Trump!

When Congress wasn’t able to kill ObamaCare, see first paragraph on disdain for government, I’d be really frustrated with our government, so when he decides to dismantle it himself, I’d say Yay Trump!

A Trump supporter might like to see a healthy environment, but might very well think things have gone too far. Spotted owls?  Fairy shrimp? Stopping real work from getting done?  The kind of work those who work with their hands outdoors do? Every time Trump rolled back some of those ridiculous rules, I’d say Yay Trump!

A Trump supporter probably sees through the liberal’s constant idea that all these benefits we want to give people will be free, because we’ll tax the corporations.  The Trump supporter might very well realize that if government adds an expense to a corporation, the corporation will still follow it’s soulless economic algorithm of ensuring income exceeds expense by a certain percent, and compensate for the added expense by either increasing the price of products, or cutting jobs and or salaries.

Taxing corporations is really just a way to tax the people without them seeing it, making the corporation work as tax collector.

The Trump supporter, a working person, probably realizes that everyone’s financial situation is either directly or indirectly dependent on the wealth created by corporations.

So every time Trump loosened a restriction on corporations, I’d say Yay Trump!

Depending on where they live, Trump supporters might have watched their neighborhoods change over the years.  They might not be the xenophobes they’re painted out to be, but might feel that there’s more and more Spanish being spoken. Well some immigrants are OK, but we have laws to control our growth through immigration, and all those people just flaunting the rules, sneaking into the country, and then being catered to by the liberals?

Every time Trump clamped down on illegal immigrants, I’d say Yay Trump!

Internationally, a Trump supporter might think that our government has gone out of it’s way with foreign aid, and special trade deals, and would see more and more work moving to cheap labor markets and be really tired of having taxes pay to benefit countries other than our own.  Why do we have to give up so much for, say the Paris Climate Accord?

Getting out of it?  Yay Trump!

And what about what’s happening on college campuses, the ridiculous extremes of political correctness?  Dis that stuff?  Yay Trump!

And Football!  Come on, this is the Trump supporters place to get away from all the issues above, to get away from the divisive politics of our country, to get away from the non-stop news of, say police killing black people. And now some athletes want to bring politics into this one sacred place, to use it for some more of the consciousness raising bullshit that the liberal media tries to force feed us all the time?

Call them out on it.  Yay Trump!  Oh and is the liberal media having a cow over it?  Double Yay Trump!

But for me? I can’t stand the guy.  I simply don’t like his personality, the way he does business. But more than anything else I hate how he’s taken all of the issues above, political issues that reasonable people could discuss, and used them to tear the country apart.  I’d like to see dialog on these issues, how to fix health care? How much environmental regulation?

But every time he drives another wedge… Boo Trump!