My Point Exactly

That's why I brought up those silly carp, because I knew that issue was not high on you list of priorities, just like the colored folks are not high on my list. It's only natural that you should care more about the colored folks than I do because you live among them and see them every day. If I was to care about a racial issue, it would be the Indians, but they haven't been on the war path lately, so they aren't a big concern of mine anymore either. Truth be known, I don't care that much about the carp myself, but I was looking for something to illustrate my point, and I think I did. I was a little surprised, though, that you seem to know as much about those carp as I do, probably because you follow the news more than I do.

I tend to agree with you that it's probably too late to stop them from entering the Great Lakes, and that closing off the Chicago River would be too drastic a measure regardless. The Great Lakes have been over run with invasive species for a long time anyway. It started when they opened the Welland Ship Canal around Niagara Falls, and intensified when they created the St. Lawrence Seaway. Some of those invasives were even brought in on purpose, like those goofy salmon that eat up all the other fish and then die. It has occurred to me that the salmon might be able to keep a lid on those carp, since they have already eaten up most of the alewives, smelt, and perch. I wonder if anybody else has thought of that.

I don't feel guilty about the Asian carp problem either, because I didn't cause it and I can't fix it. That's another point I was trying to make, it makes no sense to feel guilty about something that somebody else did. You can be interested, you can be concerned, you can even try to help, but there is no way you should feel guilty about it. In your Shelbyville scenario, there certainly was some wrong doing, but not by me. The fact that I benefitted from that wrong doing is not my fault because I had no part in it, and wasn't even aware of it until it was over.

Frankly my dear Beagles, I don't give a damn.

The question was not so much if you were guilty, as if you felt guilty, but I guess you answered that as well since you obviously feel no guilt.  Just as a thought experiment, why would you have given up the prize if you had found out that the game was rigged before you received it?  If it had been wrong before you accepted the prize, why was it not wrong after you accepted it?

Of course the carp will eventually get into the lake (I think there is some DNA evidence that they already have), it is just a matter of slowing them down.  And I have to tell you frankly my dear Beagles, I don't give a damn.  I don't boat, and I don't fish, and I don't even eat fish.

The commercial fisherman can teach people to love Asian carp.  I hear they are quite a delicacy.  And as for those asshole boaters, they can slow down so their boat doesn't make so much Goddamn noise, and what's their hurry, they're not going anywhere anyway, and half of them are dead drunk.  If a fish doesn't hit them, they'll probably fall out of the damn boat.

See now, if I knew that those upper great lakes people were charming liberals like myself, and felt that guilt which impels one to try to make a better world for everybody (even if that attempt doesn't go much beyond flapping their jaws on obscure blogs and almost always voting democrat), and thus they were interested in the problems of Chicago and trying to solve them, why then I could happily feel their pain, and I could get out there and make a spectacle of myself trying to get taxes raised so that we could build a great wall against the Asian carp.

But my experience on obscure blogs has taught me that they are a bunch of bible-quoting libertarians who feel no guilt because they are convinced that they have never sinned ftpotd, and whenever things get too morally messy, they just detach.  They have no concern with Chicago's problems, why should we have concern for theirs?

Again, if they were nice liberals, we could be assured that they would be helping us, and why not, since we would be helping them.  It is a great principle of human nature, nay, of humankind itself, that one hand washes the other.  But if one hand thinks it is already clean, it is not going to wash the other hand.

Now commences the weekend, and the following week a friend of mine is coming to town and in the middle of the week we will be going down to Indianapolis, so I may not be responding for the next ten days.  I will keep an eye out though, and if I can maybe I can get in a short response from time to time.

Still Not Guilty

Even if I found out about it after it was too late to decline the prize, I'm still not guilty because I didn't do anything wrong. The wrong was done by other people without my knowledge or consent, so all the blame belongs to them. The fact that I profited by it is irrelevant. I saw an opportunity and took advantage of it, not knowing that, by doing so, I was depriving someone else who was more deserving than I was. If I hadn't accepted that prize there is no guarantee that the jury would have given it to the Shelbyville guy anyway. If there were only the two of us competing, and if the jury really didn't want the Shelbyville guy to have the prize, they might not have given it to anybody.

None of advantages I enjoyed in real life were unfairly taken from anybody else with my knowledge or consent either. No political power ever gave me a job, unless you count the year or so I operated the State Street drawbridge in Cheboygan. Drawbridge operators in Chicago might use political influence to get their jobs, but that's not the way they do it around here. I put my name on a list at the unemployment office and was called in for an interview. I don't know how many other candidates applied for the job, but I would be surprised if any of them were Black because not many Blacks live around here. If there had been a Black candidate, he might even have been given preference over me but, to my knowledge, there weren't any.

Asian carp are an invasive species that were accidently released from a fish farm when a flood broke down the levy that separated their pond from the Mississippi River. They reproduce and grow so quickly that the native predator fish can't keep up with them, and they have become the predominant fish species in much of the Mississippi watershed. I think they are vegetarians, and were originally brought to this country to clean up excessive weed growth in farm ponds. The concern is that, in more northern waters, where the weeds grow slower, they might eat up so many weeds as to adversely affect the whole food chain. (Weeds provide habitat for bugs and stuff that the small fish eat, and the small fish provide food for the bigger fish.) I'm not sure how much damage they have already caused, but I have read that they give the commercial fishermen fits because, when they pull up their nets, all they get is Asian carp, which have almost no commercial value.

Conditions in the Great Lakes are different than in the Mississippi River, so the threat posed by Asian carp is largely unknown, but that doesn't stop people from worrying about it. They want the Army Corps of Engineers to physically close off the Chicago River, which would adversely effect navigation and trade. The Corps has promised to study the issue for another couple of years, but the anti-carp people want action like yesterday. Meanwhile, electric barriers have been put in place that are suppose to keep the carp out, but their effectiveness is a matter of dispute. If the City of Chicago is spending money on this, it's likely because they don't want their river shut off and are desperately looking for alternatives.

All boaters are not fishermen. Getting a large fish in the face while you are piloting a boat is more than an inconvenience, it can be dangerous. I don't know if any serious accidents have been caused yet but, if not, it's only a matter of time. The only good news seems to be that a leaping carp provides a challenging target for a bow and arrow. I understand there are tournaments and everything.

guilt, like a carp in the face

Hypothetical scenarios are kind of tough because they can never quite frame the issue that you want them to, and you never know when the person is going to take them too literally.  How about in the Bliss Fest one you didn't find out that you had been awarded the prize because the jurors didn't like Shelbyville, until after you had been on the tour, and had lived in the cabin for a few years?  Would you feel guilty then?

Of course this represents our youth, growing up in Gage Park (the cabin) and having access to jobs (the tour) that the political powers (the jury) awarded us that they wouldn't give to Shelbyvillers (blacks). 

How about if I were visiting Cheboygan and went to the contest and later found out that it was rigged?  I would think it was wrong, of course, but I wouldn't feel any guilt, because I wasn't part of the Cheboygan elite, and it wasn't me who got to go on the tour (let's go along with the finding out later scenario).

Of course we should be against all wrongs, but maybe we should be even more against the wrongs that we have profited from.  I am not sure that that is logical, but I will go with that because you were wondering where liberal guilt comes from.  What one should do because of that guilt is a matter for later posts.


Asian carp.  That is an issue here, not a pressing one for me, but I see where the city is thinking of spending 18 billion to keep them from getting from the river into the lake.  I'm not sure where that money is coming from, but probably out of my pocket, for something that doesn't make any difference to me.  But then the city recently put in this nice riverwalk on the other side of the river which I enjoy immensely, but some people never go downtown. 

Anyway what is the problem here?  From what I know they are not a problem for commercial fisherman, and I don't think they endanger any species.  From what little I know, and correct me if I'm wrong, the problem is that they jump out of the water and if you are cruising in your speedboat they can hit you splat in the face.  Well couldn't you just drive your speedboat slower?  Aren't you fishing after all, do you need a speedboat to fish?

But let's say that the spread of these Asian carp is some kind of evil.  I certainly didn't bring them here, I didn't invent the survival of the fittest.  On the other hand, is it not incumbent on all us great lake states (and of all humanity in general) to be good neighbors?  As a democrat I am pretty good about paying my taxes.  I don't get irate everytime they go up or vote for some jerk who promises that he will never ever, even if widows and orphans are in need, raise taxes.  So when I pay my taxes aren't some of those going towards that 18 billion?  So am I then not helping take care of the problem?  So shouldn't that make me guilt free?

But maybe 18 billion isn't enough.  Maybe I should be marching in the streets demanding that we spend a hundred billion to keep those speedboating fisherman from getting a carp in the face.  I would feel a little guilty about that.  Another thing about liberal guilt is that in addition to feeling guilty about profiting from ill-gotten gains, we always have a general feeling of guilt that we are not doing enough to make the world a better place.

I don't know about that leaders without followers thing.  You seem to be saying that you tried to lead people to the path of righteousness, but you looked over your shoulder and they were gone, probably in some tavern, maybe they got hit in the face by a land Asian carp that those cheap Chicagoans didn't spend enough money to keep out of Michigan, but whatever, they were gone, and so you shrugged your shoulders and detached. 

I suppose that works fine for you sinless libertarians, but we liberals think you can never give up, you have to keep on trying until you are laying in your grave and your tombstone reads 'Joe Liberal, he never did enough,' and you writhe beneath it in your guilt-soaked shroud, just the way we liberals are.

No Guilt - No Tour

I wouldn't feel guilty on the tour because there would be no tour. As soon as I found out that the contest had been judged unfairly, I would have declined the prize. If the organizers of the contest didn't want a Shelbyville stranger to win the prize, they should have limited the contestants to Cheboygan residents only. Of course they wouldn't have known ahead of time that the Shelbyville guy was the best, but they should have taken that possibility into account. By the way, I usually don't like hypothetical scenarios, but this was a particularly good one. My compliments to the Dungeon Master.

In the Marquette Park incident, the rock throwers were obviously wrong, but I'm not sure about the marchers. What they did was deliberately provocative, but it was consistent with their code of non violence, so I'll give them points for that. If we judge their action by it's consequences, well even the authors of the book considered it a failure. Nevertheless, they displayed courage in standing up for their cause and they didn't break any laws doing it. If the marchers and the rioters were running against each other in a political contest, my vote would go to the marchers.

I'll admit that the setting of priorities might be construed as trying to weasel out of doing something but, let's face it, you can't do everything. Why should I put my agenda on hold in favor of somebody else's agenda? Would they do it for me? If you want to feel guilty about something, you should feel guilty about all those Asian carp that your people are letting into the Great Lakes. You don't, do you? That's because you are not a fisherman. You wouldn't deliberately plant those carp in Lake Michigan, but if they get in because of somebody else's negligence, it's not your fault.

I can see your point about feeling obligated to lead your people in the paths of righteousness, I used to be that way too. The problem is that we are leaders without followers. If we tell them what to do, and they refuse to comply, that's not our fault. As a teacher, I'm sure you encountered kids that just refused to learn no matter how good a teacher you were. It's like the old saying, "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think." There is also a lesser known saying that I picked up in the army from a son of Georgia: "Some people don't know nothin', some people don't want to know nothin', and some people don't even suspect nothin'."

I may have told you wrong about how those treasury auctions were conducted. The more I think about it, I think the bonds have a face value, representing the principal and the interest (which they call "coupon") that will accrue at the time of maturity. So, if it's a hundred dollar bond, with a coupon of ten dollars, the face value would be $110. The bond is auctioned to the highest bidder, and the difference between what he pays and the face value represents his profit if he holds the bond to maturity. Your right, though, that buyers will not pay as much for a flaky bond as they might pay for one they perceive to be more reliable, which means that the flaky bond issuer, for all practical purposes, pays more interest. That still works out to my advantage because my money market mutual fund currently holds a lot of short term government debt. They will buy private sector debt as soon as it becomes more profitable than government debt. Either way, I make more money if interest rates go up. Well, maybe not, because higher interest rates generally have a negative effect on the stock market, which is why it's a good idea to own some of both.

those Shelbyville strangers

Let's try this one.  Bliss(?) Fest announces a contest for the best song.  The jury is your friends and neighbors.  Not only does the winner get the big prize, but they get a well-paid gig touring the lower peninsula (just in passing I want to give you Michiganders a pat on the back for having two peninsulas, most states don't  even have one), and you get to live in the Bliss Fest cabin right on the grounds, surrounded by nature to inspire you to ever greater heights of inspiration. 

Of course you enter the contest, and you do pretty well, if you do say so yourself, and you do.  But you are worried about this guy from Shelbyville, damn his fingers sure flew across the strings, and his voice, like an angel.

But the jury chooses you, and there you are, moving into that fine little cabin and checking the calendar for those well-paying gigs, and your pal, who is helping you move in, and was on the jury, says, "Beagles you are the best folksinger in Cheboygan."  "And in the Cheboygan-Shelbyville area as well," you reply. "I did win the contest."  And your pal admits as how that Shelbyville guy was really better, the whole jury had agreed, but damned if they were going to give the prize to some Shelbyville stranger.

So, are you going to feel any guilt on the tour?  Are you going to campaign to get a new jury or to make their deliberations open to the public?

Regardless of whether you would have gotten involved, who do you think was in the right, the Marquette Park rock throwers or the marchers?

I've always been skeptical of that, I call it an excuse, of having to much on your plate.  Of course it's true in many cases, but politicians are always using it as a way to dodge and issue.  We are too busy fighting terrorism to worry about the Keystone pipeline or gender equality.  Usually the issue they are too busy to deal with is one that they are against, but don't want to come out and say it.  I don't see much of a difference between apathy and detachment, they both come down to the same thing.

I will admit this guilt thing is a little odd.  ISIS is certainly treating it's captives unfairly, but I don't feel guilty about that.  Maybe I did fall for that grade school crap about how Americans rule themselves and try to make this the best country ever (actually in grade school it was a given that we were the best country ever, but I guess we were obligated to keep it that way), so that when America was found to be on the wrong path then it was my duty to try to lead it to the right path.  And  neglecting that duty made me guilty. 

The question of what to do is problematic.  I admit that I don't do much.  Mostly I just flap my jaws on this blog, and I have to admit that I feel guilty about not doing much more.

One of the factors in buying bonds is the possibility that they guys you buy them from are too flaky to ever pay them off.  The flakier we appear, the more worried the buyers are that we will be able to pay them back, and the less we get when we sell our bonds.

Detachment and Apathy

I think I see your point now about societies and sets. I guess I'm kind of paranoid about the word "society", probably because I have seen my mother and others use it as a way to get people to do something, or not do something, that is not covered by law or other duly constituted authority.

Detachment and apathy are not exactly the same thing. Apathy is for when you just don't care, while detachment is for when you care, but there isn't much you can do about it, so there's no point in getting all worked up over it. It's also for when you've got other things on your plate and you can't do everything. When most of that racial stuff was going on, we were just kids. It didn't effect us directly in our daily lives. We read about it and saw it on TV, but it wasn't part of our immediate environment. People around us talked about it, and apparently that bothered you more than it did me. People talk about a lot of things, and a good share of it is just bull shit. Another reason I never got involved in it was that I knew I would be leaving Chicago after graduation and, let's face it, it is an urban problem. That thing in Marquette Park happened when I was in the army and, by the time I heard about it, it was old news. I learned more about it from the book than I ever knew before. Looking back on it, I don't know whether or not I would have gotten involved if it had happened while I was living there. I certainly wouldn't have been throwing rocks with the White guys, but I don't think I would have cared enough to go marching with the Blacks. Be that as it may, I still don't understand how you can feel guilty about the actions of other people. You didn't do it, they did it, so let them feel guilty about it.

According to National Geographic, about one third of the national debt is held by foreigners, one third is held by U.S. citizens, and another one third is just government agencies borrowing from each other. I believe that the foreigners get the same interest rates as the U.S. citizens, it all depends when you buy the bonds. Actually, there are three classifications of government debt: notes, which are short term instruments, generally less than a year, bills, which are medium term, but I forget how many years, and bonds, which are longer term. All three are commonly referred to as "treasuries". The government periodically issues treasuries and sells them at auction to the lowest bidder, that is whoever offers to charge the least amount of interest. Most of these buyers are dealers who will eventually sell the treasuries to other people. I think the interest rate stays the same no matter who is holding the paper at the moment. People buy and sell these things for more or less than they paid for them but, when the government redeems them, they will only pay the price they were originally sold for. Interest on other debt, like home mortgages, might run approximately parallel to the prevailing interest on treasuries, but it doesn't necessarily have to. The only interest rate directly controlled by the Federal Reserve is the Fed Funds Rate, which is the rate that banks charge each other to borrow money for very short periods of time. All other interest rates are generally determined by market forces, but the Fed can influence them by buying or selling government debt, thus manipulating the supply and demand.

A fake government shutdown, or the threat of one, can send both the stock and bond markets into a tizzy, but they soon recover after the crisis is over. I remember once they were talking about a shutdown, but it didn't happen. One of the bond rating services downgraded U.S. treasuries slightly in anticipation, and it sent the stock market tumbling. Ironically, most of the money being pulled out of the stock market was being put into treasuries which was exactly where the perceived problem originated. You'd think it would have gone the other was around, but it didn't. Of course a real shutdown would have devastating effects on the economy, but they're not going to do that. All they will do is make a public spectacle of themselves like they did before.

My opinion of Trump has not changed. I will not vote for him in the primary and, if he gets the nomination, I might vote for the Libertarian candidate. Unless, of course, I think that's exactly what they want me to do, in which case I will vote for Trump just to spite them.

detachment, or abdication of responsibility?

I don't think you remember the new math.  It came out after you had left academia, caused a bit of a stir, and then faded away.  What it was about was sets, which is what the big time mathematicians were interested in at the time.  I think the idea was to get kids in tune with the glory of math rather than tedious and pedestrian arithmetic, but the parents couldn't understand their kids' homework, and rithmetic was the third hour wasn't it?

Anyway the new math was about sets, and I guess that's kind of like societies.  One society is the set of all the people in the world, another society is the set of nobody, another would be the set of all white people, and another would be the set of all people whose social security numbers end in 7.  That last wouldn't be much of a society in the sense that the people wouldn't have much in common.  The set of white people would have a lot in common compared to the set of all black people.

Thinking back, and I am too lazy to go through the posts to find it, when I spoke of my society as being all the people in the world, I meant something like I feel for all the people of the world.  I didn't mean that that was Society, I meant it was the particular society (set of people) I was talking about at the time.

I think we can agree that the white society was running almost everything when we were growing up.  And one of the things that the white society was trying to do was keep it that way, trying to keep the blacks from 'taking over,' by denying them good housing and jobs.  Not that we, Beagles and Uncle Ken, were running things.  Within that society (set) of all white people only a subset were the ones actually running things.  Were we better off because we could live in Gage Park, and that we did not have to compete with blacks for jobs?  Probably.  These benefits were provided to us by the white guys who were running things because we were also white guys.  Some of us white guys, the liberals, felt guilty about that.

I don't think I care for this concept of detachment.  If you are having beers with a bunch of your friends and for some reason they start beating up some guy, can you just detach yourself from them instead of trying to stop them?  Whenever you are in a group, set, society, and they make a wrong turn, isn't it your responsibility to try to fight that turn rather than turning away? 

I guess it depends.  I am thinking of church dissidents.  You can fight to change the church, or you can start your own church.  I guess what you do depends on the situation.  You probably fight to change it at first, and then if that doesn't work you start your own church. 

Now that I think about it.  In That Book, did you think those guys marching in Marquette Park had a legitimate grievance that should have been settled or do you think they were just making a spectacle of themselves and trying to take over?

The racist jokes that I remember were pretty mean, they were based on the idea that blacks were stupid and inferior.  I did like the Polack jokes however, which were mostly about how stupid Polacks were.  The difference was that most people didn't believe that Polacks were really stupid, but they did believe that blacks were.

The interest in your accounts is not the interest that will be effected by the fake shut down.  The interest that will be increased is the interest foreigners charge us when we borrow money from them.  Your overall gains from stocks will be decreased, they would be higher if we were paying foreigners a lower interest rate.  Nobody has been coming after your guns in eight years.  They will, of course, keep raising the taxes on your cigs, but they will never take them away because then they would lose those taxes.

Maybe, if you really believed in something, it might make sense to hold the budget hostage if there was a chance you might get your way.  But if there is no chance, and Cruz and his ilk know there is no chance, then you are just fucking with the economy for no good reason.  And voters can see this, so everytime they do this Republicans take a hit, so I'm kind of on your side on this one Beagles, I love to see the Republicans take a hit.

How is the Donald looking to you these days?

Detachment

I'm still having a hard time understanding how you can put everyone in the world in the same society, and now it seems you are having difficulties with the concept yourself. That's all society is, you know, a concept. The people are real, but society is just a figure of speech. You can't see it, it has no address, no telephone number, and no board of directors. I think most sociologists would require that the people in a society should have more in common than just being human but, since it's your society, I suppose you can include anybody in it that you want.

When I claim that I am not a member of any society, that doesn't mean somebody can't arbitrarily put me in one for the purposes of his study model. I guess what I really mean is that, while I may be in somebody's society, I am not of it. I think the word I have been looking for is "detachment". They say you can choose your friends, but not your relatives. You can't really resign from your family, but you can move far enough away from them that they don't bother you anymore. That distance may or may not be measured in miles, it might be just an emotional detachment. You are still there among them, but you no longer consider yourself to be one of them. I never had that issue with my family, but I think the same concept can be applied to society, any society.

I heard a lot of racist talk when I lived in Chicago, but I mostly just blew it off. There were some racial jokes that I considered worth repeating, but they weren't mean jokes, they mostly made fun of the way Whites and Blacks relate to each other. I'm sure I repeated as many Bohack and Pollock jokes as I did Black jokes, so I was an equal opportunity joke teller. I doubt that I understood the meaning of detachment in those days, but I must have had an intuitive ability to practice it because, looking back on it now, that's what I was doing. It sounds like you didn't develop that ability until later in life, if ever, because you say that you identified with the Whites you knew, even though you didn't like their attitude towards the Blacks. It would have been  difficult, if not impossible, to renounce your Whiteness and become a member of the Black community, but you could have detached yourself from the racism and the people who were expressing it.

I don't know what to think about those Planned Parenthood movies. Of course that stuff can be faked but, just because it can be faked, doesn't mean that it was faked. I was more interested in the organization itself. My ilk says that it's just an abortion mill, while your ilk says that it is a provider of women's health care services and that abortion is only a small part of what they do. In Michigan, we have the State Health Department for that, but I'm not sure about the abortion part. Maybe they would refer a woman to an abortionist if that's what she needed, but I don't think they perform abortions on their own premises. They do give out free birth control, and I think they still pay for surgical sterilization of both men and women. I suppose it's not the same in all states, so maybe there is a need for Planned Parenthood in some jurisdictions. I still believe that, if the government wants to do something, they should do it with their own facilities and personnel. When they use a third party like this, it makes it harder to hold anybody accountable.

Another fake shutdown? Ho-hum! An increase in interest rates can only benefit me because I have about a fourth of my money in interest bearing accounts. The rest of it is in the stock market, which probably will take a hit, but only a temporary one. It would be a good buying opportunity for some people, but my portfolio has rode out these little upsets before, and I have no plans to rebalance it. One thing good is that, while they are arguing about something like this, they are leaving my guns and cigarettes alone.

guilt

I guess I do identify with white people.  I am white and so are most of the people I hang with.  We are dominant in American society, and here I am separating people into societies, something I have preached against previously, maybe I'll address that later, just bear with me for the moment.

There is no doubt that white society has treated black people poorly.  I think we agree that slavery is morally repugnant.  We did the wrong thing, we shouldn't have.  But I don't feel guilty about that, it was before my time, I didn't do it, groups of people have treated others bad throughout history, it is the human natural.

Let's go back to the way things were when we were growing up.  I think we had different experiences or different memories, but I remember the white people around me as very racist, they talked about black people as being inferior, and they just didn't like them.  They didn't want to be around them, they didn't want them as neighbors and they didn't want to work with them.

So I guess I identified with the white people, and I thought they were doing the wrong thing by not hiring or selling their houses to black people and that's where I get my  liberal guilt.

In the example of the black people marching in Marquette Park, I think the issue is power.  The white people have all the jobs and all the nice houses and most of the money, and they have the power to share it or not to share it, and the only power the black people have is the power to complain.

I don't know what you mean by the hispanics being a buffer zone between the whites and the blacks.  They have helped us keep our population steady, without them migrating here we would+lost population

It seems like Mexicans began migrating here in large numbers in the seventies or eighties, not sure exactly when or why then.  I imagine they came here for the jobs which Detroit no longer had at the time.  And Chicago has kind of central location in the country, and we are kind of a transportation hub.

I've been following that planned parenthood thing.  Are you talking the movie or planned parenthood in general?  The movie seems like a lot of hype and basically dishonest.  The promoters of the movie tend to tout it as proof that planned parenthood makes a profit selling fetus parts, which is not true.  Maybe you're right that the government shouldn't be funding private organizations, but I think it does that kind of thing all the time.  Right now it looks like it will lead to another 'fake' government shutdown, the tea party is calling for it, cooler heads among the republicans are trying to avoid it.  Right now it looks to me like the tea party has the edge.  The reason you should care is that everytime this happens government bonds get down rated, so that we pay higher interest and America is a little poorer.
       

Social Guilt

Okay, I suppose I am a member of society by your definition of society. No point in arguing definitions, so let's move on. Now see if you can explain to me how being a member of society can  make you feel guilty. You didn't ask to be born into the human species. There are billions of other people all over the world with whom you have little contact or common interests. You can't control what they do and they can't control what you do. At any given point in time, these diverse people are doing all kinds of things, most of which you are not even aware. Are you saying that you feel guilty for what they do? What about when two people, or groups of people, are doing two opposite things at the same time? Do you feel guilty for one or both of them?

Example: A bunch of colored people are marching through Marquette Park in support of open housing, while a bunch of White people are throwing rocks at them. Both of these groups are part of society, by your definition. I'm guessing that the White people are making you feel guilty, and the colored people are not. But the colored people are part of society too. If society is to blame for this situation, and we're all part of society, shouldn't the colored people make you feel guilty too? How can society be picking on the Blacks when the Blacks are just as much a part of society as everybody else? Are the Blacks picking on themselves?

Old Neighborhood: I have heard people say that the Hispanics kind of saved Chicago by becoming a buffer zone between the Blacks and the Whites. Why do you suppose something like that didn't happen in Detroit? What was the attraction that drew Hispanics to your city?

New subject: What's your take on this Planned Parenthood thing? I have read a little on both sides of the question, and it's like they're not even talking about the same thing. I don't believe the government should be funding private organizations of any kind, but that's just me. Do you think this will lead to another fake government shutdown? Why should I care?

Beagles is not an island

Of course I don't believe in God, Mother Nature I see as a personification of the physical universe, which does exist even if she, as a person, doesn't, and my society, which is all people certainly does exist. 

Your parents are members of society, as are taxpayers, and the government too.
The people in other countries probably made some of the food you ate, some of the clothes you wore, etcetera.  Of course we paid for it, but then they paid us for whatever we sold them, it's called trade, it's an element of society, and it's a good thing.

I mention this because I think you have this crazy idea that all other countries are supported by our foreign aid.  Your ilk always gets their panties in a bunch over foreign aid which is a pimple on the ass of our budget and a much teenier pimple on the ass of the rest of the world.

So what I am saying is that Beagles is not an island.  I suppose you could say you paid for everything you have, but without society you wouldn't have anything to buy.  You could hunt deer all year round, but you would be doing it with a pointy rock on the end of a stick.  Probably not even that because the caveman learned how to do that from his society.

And there we go with cannibalism again.  I do declare you have a fascination with that.  And you seem to have an intimate knowledge of their structure and moral codes.  If I am ever on a long trip across the frozen north, you can be sure that I will not be staying at the Beaglesonia Bed and Breakfast, because I would rather eat than be breakfast.

Oh I've told you, I like politics the way some people like sports, I just like to see people playing the game.  I'll watch the democratic debates too, but not with such relish.  I love to see what idiots the people on the other side are, but I am not that fond of seeing what idiots the people on my side are.


The old neighborhood looks good.  The houses are kept up, the lawns are mowed, everything is, well, tidy, the way I remember it growing up, except that all the signs are in Spanish and when you nod to people they say buenos dias.  Elsdon is some kind of Ghanian Adventist Church, Talmans is obliterated, Saint Gall is San Gall with a big image of Our Lady of Guadeloupe on the front door.  I went by the Lutheran Church on 61st where I used to be a boy scout, and there was a big line of people waiting for a food pantry to hand out food.  Last year there had been a similar line outside St Gall.  There was nothing like that when we were kids, but I think blue collar people are worse off now than they were then.

In a Manner of Speaking

In a manner of speaking, you could say that all that stuff came from society, just like, in a manner of speaking, you could say that it all came from God or Mother Nature. That's not the way I look at it though. In my view, the food and clothing came from my parents. The "free" schooling was also paid for by my parents, and a bunch of other people's parents, and other taxpayers who didn't even have kids in school. Similarly, the public roads and Social Security was funded by taxpayers, of which I am one. The government organized all that stuff, but we the people paid for it, and also paid the salaries of the government people who organized it. The poor people in Bangladesh, who you include in your society, didn't pay for any of it. Indeed, the American people paid for some of the stuff they  have in Bangladesh. With the modern conveniences, it's a little different. First all that stuff had to be invented by somebody, produced by somebody, transported by somebody, and sold by somebody, all of whom were doing it to make money. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Society is not a real thing anyway, it's just a figure of speech that is used to describe the collective behaviors of a bunch of individual people. Sometimes these people may be acting collectively on purpose, and other times they may be each acting independently with no thought of how their actions will affect the collective outcome.

When my mother used to lecture me on the expectations of society, I think she just meant social expectations. If there were any legal expectations, I think she would have told me, "It's the law.", which would have carried more weight. Social expectations are only valid if you consider yourself to be a member of that particular society. In some cultures there is a social expectation that people should eat other people (not in a nice way). Outside of those particular cultures, there is the social expectation that people should not eat other people. If you were to visit one of those cannibal tribes, they probably wouldn't expect you to eat anybody. If you wanted to stay and become a member of the tribe, however, they would most certainly require you to eat somebody as the price of admission. In a manner of speaking, then, I am just visiting all you people and, if you want me to do something that I don't want to do, I'm outta here.  

You spent five hours watching that Republican debate? You're not planning to vote Republican, so why do you care? I wouldn't spend five minutes watching it, or the Democratic one either, but that's just me. More people than you must be interested in that stuff, or they wouldn't put it on prime time TV. I suppose there are worse things you be doing with your time, at least it keeps you off the street.

you ungrateful wretch

I think in that context of society I meant who I wished well, and whose fortunes I favored, who I felt like my efforts should make a better world for.  And of course I am being pretty hypothetical because I don't do that much anyway, but just in general.  I think you have to be careful when breaking up humanity into societies because they are not distinct.  It's not like everybody is in either one or the other, there are a lot of people in between.

So as a little kid you are clothed, fed, have modern conveniences, have free schooling, etc, and you don't feel that society has done anything for you?  You ungrateful wretch.  Well society, the way you are using it, is kind of like a team with leaders who can make rules that the others will obey. 

I've read a couple books by Tocqueville, and right now I am finishing up one by Trollope and their views on this phenomenon of America, and they are both pleased and appalled by how everybody is sort of equal.  Well you know we were generally aggressive, independent, types or else we would have stayed in the old country.  And then there was that frontier where anybody who didn't like what was going on could pack up and head for the woods where nobody could tell them nothing.

So we had our leaders, I assume you mean the gummint, but they didn't have control over everybody, and they had to stand for election, so they had to worry about that.  It's not like the gummint could pass laws where there would no longer be rich and poor, although I seem to be pushing for that don't I?  Well mainly I don't want the poor to be too poor, oh and that they should have a good chance of getting out of poverty.  I don't feel guilty because I am richer than some others, I feel guilty because I have become richer than them by having advantages that they weren't given, that were unfairly denied.  And it's not like I can say, it is these other guys (Them?) who disadvantaged them, not me, because, like Gabe and Walker, I believe we are all in this together.

And even now where you live in the freehold which is accessible only by taxpayer funded roads, and you collect that social security check, and so on, and yet you think you are not a part of society.  So you are still an ungrateful wretch.

I went out to the old neighborhood yesterday morning, Sawyer, 55th Street, St Galls, the old bungalow, Tonti, 59th and 63rd and Kedzie and even a little of the Marquette Park golf course.  Observations tomorrow and I will send you some photos by email.  Did you watch the debates last night?  I watched all of five hours of them and by the end I was just tired.  This morning I will be reading what the pundits had to say.

Everybody in the World?

I've heard a number of definitions for society, but I don't believe I've ever heard that one. How can everybody in the world be in the same society when they don't all speak the same language and are always fighting and squabbling among themselves? Well, I suppose if you're going to be a collectivist, you might as well be a global collectivist.

I got to thinking after I signed off yesterday that maybe my "they" and your "society" are one in the same thing, but now I'm not so sure. For me, "they" are a bunch of unidentified people who seem to be in control of everything, and I think that's what my mother used to believe society was. I know she was always telling me what society required of me, but I don't remember her ever saying that society was going to do anything for me. You, however, seem to have a different take on it. You seem to be saying that society is everybody, from the leaders to the followers and everybody in between. So whose fault is it that some people are rich and some people are poor if your society includes both the rich and the poor? And what is the source of your guilt in this matter? You, who are neither poor nor exceptionally rich, yet still consider yourself to be in the same society with both of them?

Well, I don't consider myself to be part of any society. To me, society means "other people", which is also what I mean when I say "they". As far as I'm concerned, they cause all the problems in the world, so they should be responsible for fixing them. I've got enough to do solving my own problems, some of which are my fault and some of which are their fault. If I ever get caught up with all of that, I might consider helping other people with some of their problems. I have tried that before in my life, and it usually doesn't work because they don't listen to me but, being an incurable optimist, I might try it again someday if I ever get the time.

I don't have caller ID, but I have read more than once that those Cardholder Services guys have the ability to cause your caller ID to display a false phone number, which is one reason the feds have a hard time tracking them down. Be that as it may, do you only answer calls from people that you know? Does your machine display the name of the person calling as well as his number?

We used to get a lot more telemarketer calls before we put our number on the National Phone Registry. I have to admit that I didn't have a lot of faith in that thing, but it has cut our spam calls down considerably. Too bad they exempted politicians and charities, but it was better than nothing. Of course, if guy is a crook to start with, he probably doesn't hesitate to break one more law. It's like they told us in the army, "A lock won't stop a thief, but it will keep an honest man honest."

debate night

I just picked the word ideology, what i meant was whatever standard you have that other people are always falling short of.  The fact is that neither of us does anything much in terms of the rest of the people in the country.  We do get out to vote, something old folks do pretty reliably which is why nobody is touching our social security.  I voted for the first time in 1970, and since then I've voted in every two year election, regular and primary.  I've done a little contributing.  I'd like to get involved in those getting out the vote drives, but around here they leave it to the professionals and they don't want any amateur mucking it up. 

I've written a few letters to the editor but mostly the newspapers only want short crackpot letters and have rejected most of my thoughtful wordy ones.  Well fuck 'em.

I do get those annoying phone calls.  I assume they are all done by crooks overseas, so that there is nothing the feds can do about it.  Probably the best thing to do, if you want to strike back at them is to tell them to wait a second and then never come back to the phone.  I've got a little window on my phone which tells me who is calling, so mostly I just don't answer. 

That FTC contest didn't sound right to me and I was all set to do an I do declare where does Beagles get his outlandish ideas, but then I remembered how I had doubted you on Michigan, so I googled it and I guess it is true.  I had some guys that called me a couple times saying they were from Microsoft and they could see that my computer was under virus attack and I needed to go to their website right now, and I strung them along a little, and it did feel pretty good.

Oh you anti abortion guys are always such bleeding hearts when it comes to the baby in the womb, but when that baby grows old enough to need a free breakfast or something like that you never want to pay for that.   And for the hundredth time when people make a spectacle of themselves wanting to have the same rights you do, it is not taking over, it is just getting even.  We should all be even, Steven.

When I say i consider myself a part of society, I mean everybody in the world.

Tonight is the big second debate.  I will be laying in the beer and popcorn.  The happy hour debate will probably be a little slow, a bunch of nutball nobodies clamoring for attention, and without Perry to spice it up.  And the big boy debate will be all about Trump, I expect they will be a bunch of baying hounds, each one wanting to be the Trumpslayer, except maybe Cruz and Huckabee, who want to sidle up to him and suck up his followers when he falls.  But what will Trump do?  I can't imagine that he won't just fight back off the tip of his tongue which seems to work for him, and with everybody clamoring after him, will that just make people love him more.  And what about Carson?  Nuttier then most of them, but he talks in such a calm clear voice.

Well I await.

Doing it My Way

I don't know if I even have an ideology anymore but, if I had to pick one, I suppose it would be libertarianism. Mostly I just try to figure out what they want me to do and do the opposite, if it's not too much trouble. I wouldn't do anything that I really didn't want to do just to spite them but, if it's something easy like voting, I'll do it. I guess that makes me a contrarian, but a lazy contrarian. Mostly I just do what I want to do and try to stay out of other people's way. I have found that, if you don't bother other people, they usually won't bother you. Of course there are exceptions.

Do you get those robo-calls from Cardholder Services in your neck of the woods? I used to just hang up on them, but now I push "1" to talk to a human, and then I try to harass them. They usually just hang up on me, but at least they had to pick up the phone like I did. I think it bothers them a little bit because I had a guy last week who signed off with, "I really don't understand you Americans. Go fuck yourself!" I looked them up yesterday and found out that there is more than one outfit doing this. The first one that was shut down by the feds a few years ago sold their recordings and equipment, and the scam has since proliferated. Every time the feds shut one of them down, another one pops up to take its place. Last I heard, the FTC was offering a $50,000 reward to anybody who can hack into their system and sabotage it. I don't have the ability to do anything like that, but at least I can jerk their chain a little. It may not do any real good, but it makes me feel better. So you see, I'm not always anti government. In this case I happen to be on the government's side because they seem to be on my side.

I've got nothing against women, in fact I generally prefer their company to the company of men. I don't like abortion, but that involves more than just a woman's choice. I'm not particularly fond of children, but that little baby inside hasn't done anything to deserve capital punishment. I've got nothing against gays and colored people, but that doesn't mean I want them to take over the country, although it's probably too late to worry about that.

You said that you consider yourself to be a part of society. Which society? Maybe that's the difference between you and me, I gave up on all those societies a long time ago.

I seem to remember that the movie I saw about Livingstone was on PBS. Of course that doesn't  make it true, but I have read about the Islamic involvement in the slave trade more than once. I just looked Livingstone up to be sure. His real name was David Livingstone (1813-1873) Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa. I think Stanley was the guy who, when he finally found the lost Livingstone after months of searching for him all over Africa, walked into his camp and calmly pronounced, "Doctor Livingstone I presume." There are three Stanleys in my dictionary's bio section, and the most likely candidate is Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) British explorer.

Our deer season is not open yet, but bow season starts on October 1. General firearm season opens on November 15, and muzzle loader season is in early December. Small game season opened today, but hardly anybody hunts small game around here anymore.

a piece of paper

Right, ideology is just a bunch of words on a piece of paper, dragged out every now and then for some pompous occasion, and read before a crowd, some of whom are rolling their eyes and some of whom have eyes stained with tears of sincerity, but none of whom are going to let it guide their behavior.  So why bother, is what I am asking.  What does it matter if your ideology is communism or libertarianism or whatever, if it is never going to happen anyway?  Why spend a lot of time thinking about it?  Just throw a dart at the board and then go shoot a deer.

Is is that season? 

So what is your ideology?  Some parts libertarianism, mostly the anti government part and then a lot of identity politics of the we white straight guys have to stick together to keep the nonwhite nonstraight guys and women from taking over.  Come to think of it I am not so sure of the woman part.  You are against them getting to chose an abortion, I'm not sure where you stand on their getting contraceptive medicine, or equal pay for equal work, or anything like that.

There is a phrase for it: liberal guilt.  Surely you have heard it before.  Generally we liberals are pretty well off, but then we see that others are not so well off, and then we realize that they are not so well off because the deck is stacked against them.  And we can't see ourselves as blameless as a Beagle because we know that we have benefited from these unfair laws, and even if we could somehow argue that we didn't make these laws, we feel like we are part of society and we want it to be a just society, so we feel it's our responsibility to try to make it more fair, and there it is.

I imagine in that movie the reason Stanley was getting spears chucked at him was because some Hollywood guy thought it would make the movie more exciting.  The real Stanley may or may not have had spears chucked at him, but you will never find that out by watching a movie. 

I am tired, I am weary.  It seems like we just keep going round and round over the same issues like that little whirlpool in the bathtub after you pull the plug.

Remember back in high school when you would ask your buddy if he was going and he would ask where, and you would say, down the drain with the rest of the shit?

Those were the days, huh?
 

It's the World's Fault

If my "finely crafted ideology" doesn't affect the world, it's the world's own fault for not listening to me. All kidding aside, I didn't invent any of this ideology, it was planted in my brain by people who had been entrusted to teach it to me. Then they turned around and made a mockery of the whole thing. This was not the ideology's fault, it was their fault. If there was something wrong with the ideology, they should have fixed it before they presented it to me. It was their ideology after all, but once I internalized it, it became my ideology and I felt compelled to defend it, even, no especially against those who imparted it to me in the first place. No ideology will work if people don't do it right. A wise old philosopher once said, "Communism did not fail in Russia, Russia failed at communism and, if democracy and/or capitalism fails in this country, it will be for the same reason."

I think this collective guilt over the actions of other people must be a liberal thing. It's kind of like Original Sin, but not exactly. Some of my ilk go to the other extreme, kind of a "blame the victim" thing. I try not to do that either. I never felt guilt while traveling through the ghetto. I could see that those people had problems, but I didn't cause them, and I couldn't fix them. The only thing I felt was caution. I had been told that those neighborhoods were dangerous, so I didn't go through there without a good reason, and then I made it a point to not do anything that might put me in jeopardy unnecessarily. Whenever I have dealt with colored people in my life, I tried to relate to them the same way I would relate to anybody else. If they didn't want to do that, I tried to avoid them, the same as I avoided anybody with whom I didn't get along. It's like one of my old army buddies, who happened to be Black, used to say, "Don't start no shit and there won't be none!"

You're right that slavery in North America began with the Spaniards, but I was talking about the more familiar scenario on the cotton plantations of the Old South. Actually, I think the sugar plantations were even worse. They were in the really deep South, which led to the expression "sold down the river", which was something that nobody wanted to happen to them. At any rate, all those slaves came from Africa. At first they were prisoners of wars that were fought between the African tribes. Some of them were enslaved by their conquerors, and the surplus was sold to Islamic types who brokered them to Yankee ship captains. As the demand for slaves increased, the ship captains often went on capture raids themselves, with the assistance of other Islamic types they hired for the purpose. I remember seeing a movie once about Stanley Livingston, of "Doctor Livingston, I presume." fame. He was exploring the Congo River in the late 19th Century accompanied by some Islamic security guards. I couldn't figure out why the natives were so hostile to him, he had to fight his way past every village he encountered. Then it dawned on me that, here are some White guys, accompanied by some Islamic guys, sailing through Black territory only a few decades after the slave trade had been abolished. No wonder everybody was chucking spears at them! Livingston would have been well advised to take some lessons in Chicago street smarts before setting out on his journey of exploration.

morality of the right and left

I think I get the message of your seminal blue jeans experience.  Maybe the lesson you should have taken away is that an ideology or set of principles is only as good as the people who implement it, and if nobody implements it it is just a bunch of words on a piece of paper and doesn't mean a damn thing.  What is the purpose of having a finely crafted ideology or set of values if it will never effect the world?  Well that is the stoics way, they really don't care if the world goes to hell as long as they keep themselves blameless. 

There, I think I was trying to bring up that subject about three weeks ago, about how conservatives are stoics and liberals are utilitarians.  Or maybe it was something else.  I forget.

As I recall what they taught us was that America was the best country in the world, and had never done anything wrong.  We were on the right side of every war we fought in and our soldiers were the bravest and our flag was the most beautiful.  What was his name, Parker, Parkhill?  He taught this advanced placement history course where you could take a test afterwards and get college credit.  And that course kind of opened my eyes.  It was kind of neutral about America, just this happened and then that happened without all that rah rah America all the time.

I guess i have liberal guilt.  Whenever we drove past the ghetto, I always felt guilty about the people there living in poor conditions.  There's no reason to feel guilty if you are smarter or stronger or better looking, but if you have advantages in where you get to live and work that others don't have, well I feel guilty about that, but maybe people who have never sinned don't feel guilt either.

Slavery didn't come from Africa.  All civilizations have had slaves.  When Columbus came here he enslaved the Indians.  The Spanish enslaved all the Caribbean Indians and worked them to death and then brought the Africans to replace the dead Indians, and from there they came to the continent.  The unusual thing about American slavery was that it was limited to one race and included almost everybody in that race.  The more the slaves outnumbered the white people, the more nervous the white people became and the harsher they treated the blacks.

Think What You Want, But Do as I Say

I thought I made it clear in my blue jean story that real issue wasn't about blue jeans, it was about the way they made a mockery of the democratic principles they had recently taught us. Don't feel bad if you didn't get it, I don't think anybody else who read that story got it either. Maybe it's me, maybe I was the only one in that school, or in any school, who took those teachings seriously. I naively thought when I wrote the story that it might make a difference in the way people look at things like that, but I should have realized that one little story was unlikely to overcome decades of conditioning. Looking back on it, maybe those teachers were not communist agents after all, maybe they were just ordinary apathetic Americans who didn't know any better and could care less.

Another thing they did wrong was that, when they were teaching us about our inalienable rights, they should have explained that, as minor children, we were not entitled to the full exercise of those rights until we reached the age of majority. Meanwhile, our rights were being held in trust for us by our parents and the state. It was their responsibility to look out for us until we were deemed capable of looking out for ourselves. If they thought we were too young to understand that concept, maybe they should have considered us too young to learn about democracy in the first place. Like some famous guy said, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

That English teacher who told you there was only one way to interpret a writer's work, "Because I say so", might have been more competent to teach math than English Lit. I'm not sure, but you seemed to be saying that he wanted you to believe that about real life a well as creative literature. If that's the case, he wouldn't have been much of a philosophy teacher either. I seem to remember that teachers weren't very well paid in those days, so I suppose the administration had to take what they could get. Wasn't that about the time the teachers started to unionize?

One thing they did teach us correctly was that we should feel fortunate that we were born in America instead of war torn Europe or Asia. That's fortunate, not guilty. I don't think the concept of feeling guilty about being better off than others, through no fault of your own, was introduced until college. I don't remember hearing that in any school I attended, and I seem to remember that my memory was pretty good in those days. Do Black guys feel guilty about having big dicks? I think not! Then why should I feel guilty about having certain advantages that they don't have.

Okay, government finally solved slavery in the U.S., I'll give you that one. I was going to say that government caused slavery in the first place but, the more I think of it, I don't think so. I think that slavery was brought to this country from Africa, where it was common practice, by unregulated commercial interests. You know, it's people like that who give capitalism a bad name.

school incidents

So your criteria for a good authority figure is how loyal they are to their beliefs and how competent they are.  I have heard the part about competency before but i think this is the first time I've heard about staying true to their beliefs.  Just as a thought experiment, if that teacher had said no blue jeans, because I said so.  The hell with democracy and the hell with what you want.  I have been put into this position by people with authority higher than mine who I obey without question, and likewise it is your duty to obey me without question.

That would make her true to her ideals, and I assume she would be competent, so then would that make her a good authority figure?

Was that blue jeans experience that strong with you?  The way you mention it so often it seems like a seminal experience, or maybe it's just something you use as a metaphor.

I had a somewhat similar experience in high school.  It was an English teacher, a younger guy.  I think we liked younger teachers because we thought they would be more like us than the usual fossils.  Anyway the discussion subject of the day was some writer who had some theory like every cloud has a silver lining, and some good and some bad falls into each of our lives and it all evens up in the end. 

That didn't sound right.  Earlier we had been discussing Poe, or somebody like him, somebody who had setback after setback and died relatively young, and I was all, what about this guy, and what about guys who everything turns up roses?  Surely each life doesn't turn out equally sunshine and rain for everybody.  And I said as much, but he disagreed, and I disagreed with him, and finally, in so many words, he said because I said so.

In retrospect maybe I don't have the issues quite right, and maybe it had been a long day for the guy and I'm sure I was always a pain in the ass, and maybe he just wanted to go on to the chapter four review which would be on the test.

But it just sat wrong with me.  I never liked being told what to do, but I was kind of used to it, and I could see where there was some utility to it, but being told what to think seemed to me a much greater wrong.  What to do is just your body, but what to think is your mind.

It wasn't a big deal for me like your blue jeans incident, but it has stuck in my mind while so many other things have fallen away, and I thought I would mention it.

You should feel guilty about advantages you had growing up.  Many of your privileges were not available to others and you profited thereby.  But we have squabbled over that many times before, and seeing as how you have never sinned ftpotd, and are an excellent human being and somewhat humble to boot, I am going to give you a pass on that.

In the long run I suppose no problems are ever solved, we have pretty much the same problems we had back in biblical days, but I think governments can make situations right or wrong in the short one.  How about slavery in the USA, didn't government solve that one?

Hemmed in by hostile people?  Why these are all my friends.  As everybody knows the good people of Chicago live together in peace and harmony.  We do worry about Beagles though, all alone on that icy spot so close to a foreign country bigger than the USA, and so full of all those wrongheaded ideas, and led wrong by one of our very own educators at a tender age.  We feel guilty.

Even now, out my window, I can hear the hammers and sinews as the armada is being built for the big sail up the lake so that we can all comfort him and lead him unto the right path.  And of course that gay dog will be following the fleet in a little rowboat.

Guilt, What's it Good For?

I thought I made this clear, but apparently not. The way to tell a good authority figure from a bad one is by observing how loyal he is to the ideals he professes to believe in, and by how effective he is in putting those ideals into practice. As Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." What part of this don't you understand?

I don't believe I saw any Black people in Alaska, but then I wasn't looking for any. To my knowledge, there was no law or social custom that prevented Black people from entering the state. If they weren't there, I assume it was because they didn't want to be. I only had a few hundred dollars in my pocket when I left, and I had earned most of that myself working part time during my senior year of high school. My father slipped me a c-note as I was boarding the plane, although I didn't ask for it and didn't think I would need it. Being a good Bohack, I started a savings account with it at the National Bank of Alaska in Anchorage the day after I arrived. When I came back to Chicago, my net worth was about the same as when I left, if you count the old car I had bought while I was there, so I figure that I broke even on the trip.

I don't know why I should feel guilty about any advantages I had growing up. Nothing I had was wrongly taken from anybody else. Of course I have felt guilty from time to time in my life, but I didn't like it and tried to avoid it by not doing anything that I thought would bring it on. I think that some people like to wallow in guilt, but that never appealed to me. You got that right about me wanting to keep my conscience clean. What's wrong with that? Remember, I didn't say that I've never done anything wrong, just that I don't do it if I believe it to be wrong before I do it. If I come to the conclusion that it was wrong after I do it, I try not to do it again. I never said I was perfect. Actually, I used to be perfect, but everybody said it was making me too arrogant, so I cut back to merely being excellent. It took some getting used to, but I think it has made me more humble and easier to live with.

The best thing about charity is that it's voluntary. Of course it's not going to solve all the world's problems, but neither will government, which is not so voluntary. My parents gave much more to charity than I ever did, which is fine because nobody was forcing them to do it. I don't give anything anymore because there are a lot of scam charities out there and I figure the best thing I can do is make sure that nobody will have to give me charity. Adding one more poor person to the rolls is not likely to make the rest of them any less poor.

I used to worry about the country, but I gave that up because it doesn't do any good, for me or the country. I only have one vote, and I can't help it if other people vote the wrong way. I can't control the actions of other people, all I can control is how I respond to those actions. Sometimes the best response is to turn and walk away. It doesn't interfere with anybody else's rights, and it helps preserve my own. Nobody seems to care what I do in my swamp, which is fine with me.

I do worry about you a little, though. It recently occurred to me that you are hemmed in by hostile people on three sides, and by Lake Michigan on the fourth side. You don't want a gun or a car, so you might consider getting a fast boat for yourself. I believe you could dock it right under your condo. Be sure keep the gas tank full and the battery charged up. When the shit hits the fan, try to make it as far north as you can, then give me a call and I'll come pick you up in my pick up truck. It can only trailer 4,000 pounds so, if your boat is bigger than that, you might have to abandon it on the beach, but at least you'll be alive.

must be nice to be without sin

After all these posts it is still unknown how you, as a child could distinguish between a good and a bad authority figure, so I guess we will just never know.  I don't suppose it matters, since you have never treated anybody unfairly, and have never sinned ftpotd. 

As an enemy of original sin, I certainly don't cotton to holding the sons guilty for the sins of the fathers, but doesn't it bother you that as a young man you had privileges (knocking around Alaska) that a black man wouldn't have had?  Certainly it wasn't you that set up the world so that it was that way, but didn't you benefit from that?  Well we've been over all that.

That was a little weak on my part about housing the poor.  Of course we have public housing.  But not everybody gets into public housing.  My assumption was that the Russkies housed everybody where we only housed some, but I don't know if that's true or not.  I should have done some research, but I let myself get swept away in a wave of rhetoric. 

I don't know about charities.  They come and they go and they are liable to pick and choose and they tend to indoctrinate.  As I have often reminded you, your heroine, when asked who will tend to the poor sniffed, "Well you can, if you want to." 

I suppose you have always been a guy who preferred the preaching to the practice.  You like to have your airy Beaglesonian libertarian philosophy to hold everybody up to, and if they fail, as everyone except you does, then you are not invested in them.  I suppose unless Trump sparks you, which I expect he might, you will vote for Rand Paul, who is really beneath you and has zero chance, but is the closest thing to a libertarian in the race, and you don't really care about winning, just keeping your conscience clean.  If the world goes to hell it is not your fault, you did the right thing, you stoic you.

Myself after dallying with Bernie in the primary, I will vote for the big girl, with all her blemishes, because I am sure the republican nominee will scare the shit out of me, and I have to worry about what goes on in this country because I am surrounded by seven million people and not on the icy edge of the country.

It's Still Not My Fault

Whether it happened in another century or in my lifetime, I never did any of it. I don't believe that I ever picked on anybody in my life, except when we were just mutually kidding around and, even then, I would back off if I thought it was really bothering the guy. Now that I think of it, there was some unpleasantness between my sister and me when I was too young to know any better, and I regret that to this day. I certainly never picked on anybody for racial or ethnic reasons. The only thing I ever did against the gays was to vote against same sex marriage, but I don't think that counts as oppression. All I did there was refuse to give my approval of something that I believed was wrong. Withholding approval is not the same thing as picking on someone. Of course it would be a better world if we all loved one another, but we don't and it's not. I usually try to go the extra mile with people unless they really piss me off and, even then, the most I do is refuse to help them. I'm sure I've told you before that I have had Black friends in my life. I didn't like them because they were Black, or in spite of their being Black, if I liked them, I liked them, and their race had nothing to do with it. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?

How can you say that "we" have done nothing to house the poor in this country? There are a number of government programs designed to address that issue and, if that doesn't work for you, there are religious organizations like the Salvation Army who will take you in, and try to save your soul in the process at no extra charge. My grand daughter recently told me about an organization called "WOOF", World Organization of Organic Farmers. They will feed you and give you a place to stay if you work 20 hours a week on one of their farms. They don't pay you, but you can use the other 20 hours a week to work a Mc-Job and provide for incidental expenses. And what about all those high rise housing projects they built all over Chicago? I understand that some people don't like them because they don't provide a sense of community, but what do they want for free?

I guess you're right that I have something in common with that Russian hockey player. He didn't become disillusioned with his country, just with the people who were running it. It was the same with me in the blue jean incident. Now that I think of it, that was probably the first time I concluded that an adult authority figure was not on my side. I was always leery of kids who tried to be self appointed authority figures, but I don't remember having any problems with adults until that day. I suppose a lot of guys in that situation would have become disillusioned with American democracy, but I just became disillusioned with people who don't practice what the preach. I don't know why I accepted the preaching and rejected the practicing, maybe because I heard the preaching first.

Smile on your brother, Red Beagles

Maybe leader was not the term I wanted to use.  What I was referring to was when you said a few posts ago that you followed the good authority figures and not the bad, and I wondered how, at that tender age you could distinguish who was a good authority and who was a bad authority.  I didn't think so much of their methods as I did what direction they were taking you in.  Now I remember.  You were remarking about how I resented all authority figures (which is true enough), whereas you followed only the good authorities and I wondered how you could tell the difference between the good and the bad.

It is a natural inclination to favor We vs Others.  I wanted to say Us vs Them, but we've been using Them to refer to the secret cabal that runs the country behind the scenes.  But it's not right.  I believe it says so right in the constitution.  Oops, the constitution has that unpleasant thing about slavery.  Well I just wanted to prop up the idea that the world would be a better place if we all treated each other decently, if We treated the Others as if they were We.  What if we could wave a wand, and all of us looked like we were in the same race?  There would be no more looking at Others with disgust and fear, there would be no more resenting Others because they looked at you with disgust and fear.  The world would be a better place. 

Rather than going along with the old bad system, you should be fighting for the new better system.  In the words of that stirring anthem of the sixties, "C'mon people smile on your brother/Everybody get together and love one another/Right now/Right now."

I see where you are claiming that all this oppression happened before your time and thus you Beagles, are, as always, blameless.  When Jesus was making that little speech about casting the first stone, He had to look around to make sure Beagles was not in the crowd.  But I don't think we can deny that we have had the benefits of white skin.  I'm sure my rebellious years would have gone a lot worse for me if I was black, and I can't see you knocking around Alaska the way you did if you were black.

Of course the red hockey players didn't haul rifles around.  Back in the cold war we used to complain about their hypocrisy in calling these guys amateurs, but our amateurs were all backed by corporations and government agencies so that they could spend all their time practicing their sport also.  I think they don't even bother with trying to distinguish who is an amateur and who is not in the olympics. 

Well the olympics, like hockey, who gives a fuck?  But like I said hockey was just a metaphor for um, life.  I was wondering earlier what Beagles would be like if he were born in Russia, and it strikes me that he would be a lot like Ivan.  He loved his country and its ideals, but then when he found the politburo really didn't follow those ideals he became disillusioned with them.

I thought there was also an interesting thing when he was talking about the four families living in one apartment and waiting in lines all the time, and how we pointed fingers at that as a failure of the soviet system.  But you know they were a poor country.  At least they bothered to try and house their poor unlike well, us.

Why We Need a Leader

The function of the leader is to coordinate the efforts of the team members in order to direct them towards a common purpose and to maximize their effectiveness. The leader may also be called upon to make decisions and mediate disputes. Generally, the longer the team has been together, the need for leadership diminishes. Everybody knows what they and their team mates are supposed to do, and they can count on each other to do it.

There are three main styles of leadership: authoritative, developmental, and manipulative. Most leaders seem to have a favorite style, but they may employ one of the other two styles if the situation calls for it. I can work well with an authoritative or a developmental leader, but I don't care much for the manipulative style. Ironically, the Bliss Fest organization seemed to favor the manipulative style but, over the years, I developed techniques to work around it. What kept me there for some 20 years was my desire to see the festival continue, because I like folk music, and it's not generally available anywhere else around here. As the percentage of folk music declined and the percentage of that modern crap increased, it finally got to the point that I no longer found it worth the effort. Plus, as I got older, it became more of an effort for me to do everything. I had to establish priorities, and Bliss Fest just didn't make the cut. I didn't regret the time I had already spent there, but I felt it was time to move on.

Human equality is a noble aspiration, but it is seldom to be found in the real world. Even in social situations, where it's not generally necessary, people tend to organize themselves into groups and assign various levels of status, both to individuals within the group, and collectively to their group in relation to other groups. White Europeans dominated the civilized world for centuries, both politically and economically and, to some degree, socially. Nothing lasts forever, and the other groups have been increasingly asserting themselves in our lifetimes. Many of these others seem to be trying to get even for the oppression of their ancestors. I can't blame them for that, I would probably feel that way myself in their position. Most of this oppression, however, happened before our lifetimes, and we certainly played no part in it. Whether or not it's fair to punish us for the sins of our predecessors is debatable, but I have no intention of voluntarily submitting to it regardless. Defense of life, liberty, and property is a natural human instinct, and I am, after all, just a  natural sort of guy at heart.

Not that I care about sports, but I seem to remember that, during the Cold War years, the amateur status of Russian Olympic athletes was frequently called into question. As you said, they were all members of the military and, while they were technically not being paid for athletics, they were given time off with pay from their military duties to participate. I don't remember how, or even if, it was ever resolved. I think you got it right the first time: "Hockey, who gives a fuck?"

the red army

When I asked how you distinguished a good leader from a bad leader I meant incompetent as well as evil.  If you can determine by yourself whether a leader is incompetent or evil, then what do you need a leader for?  You can just lead yourself.  Why should you listen to some jerk just because he is your sophomore English teacher.  Well of course you should listen to him as far as the English class goes, but it seems like They (the whole school structure) were interfering in our lives beyond the classroom, how to dress, how to act, how to think.  They had this whole rah rah school pride thing they were pushing at us at every opportunity.  I didn't like it.

Later in life I came to the conclusion that it wasn't just the bad guys who were against me, it was everybody. Wait, that didn't come out right! It's not that everybody's against me, it's just that they are not particularly for me. They have their own agendas as I have mine

It sounded like you were saying that everybody, not just some people, weren't going to cooperate with you on your agenda.  Well it's tit for tat.  When you joined with others for the music festival, that didn't mean you were going to vote their way and they yours, or that you were going to cooperate in any other way then bringing about the music festival.  If you hadn't done this there wouldn't be any music festival so you were all winners.

Are you saying that the goal of our (white Americans) predecessors was to dominate the scene (lord it over nonwhites), and that the goal of Others (nonwhites) is to lord it over us whites?  What the hell kind of country do you think this is?  A lot of Americans, I daresay most, but anyway my ilk, never wanted to dominate the nonwhites.  We wanted everybody to be equal.  We still do.  We assume that that is what all Americans, white and non-white, want, so we don't fear at all becoming a minority.  See it's like when we were talking about the Other.  If you fear and distrust them, you will have to assume that they fear and distrust you, but if you don't feel that way about them then you don't think that they will feel that way about you. 

I'm sure that you know that the founding fathers didn't like political parties either, and yet there they were at our second or third election, and there they have been there ever since.  Maybe nobody in Cheboygan has to say what party they are affiliated with, but I suspect everybody knows.  It is silly when some of these local government campaigns take on issues like gay marriage, when all anybody cares about is getting those damned potholes fixed.


The Red Army is a documentary about the Russian hockey team from the cold war until the present.  I know you aren't interested in hockey, but I think we can take it as a metaphor for life.  Okay this guy, I don't remember his name, let's call him
Ivan, grows up in cold war Russia.  His family shares a tiny apartment with four other families, there are lines for everything.  But it's that way for everybody and as Ivan remembers it, we were happy.  He is a good hockey player.  His family sacrifices to buy him a stick and skates and a helmet and all that stuff.  To play on the national team you have to be a member of the army so he joins that.  He loves his family and his country and hockey.

Soviet hockey is different from other hockey.  It is more team oriented, they have systems, they work together, they don't shoot every time, they pass to the player who has a better chance of shooting, or of passing it to a player who has a still better chance.  They come to North America and they whip the NHL.  The North American mouths are agape.  The Soviet team is proud and happy. 

And then, they don't really explain this, the soviet team gets whipped by a bunch of American amateurs in the olympics.  I remember the event, people were waving those tiny American flags and chanting "USA, USA," and I was like hockey, who gives a fuck.  Anyway their lovable bear of a coach is replaced by somebody associated with the politburo, who is a complete asshole, makes them practice all the time, they never get to see their families, just treats them like crap and there is nothing they can do about it. 

Meanwhile Russia loses the cold war.  Things fall apart.  The new Russia is not like the old Russia and Ivan doesn't like it as much.  They go back to America and whip everybody again, but now that the Russia is in tatters, one of the players defects, and then the Americans are bidding for the rest of the Russian players.  Desperate for money the government will let the players go, but they want most of their salaries.  Ivan negotiates, the percentage goes from 90 to 80 to 75, but he can't get it down any further.  Pissed off at this new coach and the politburo, Ivan just quits.

At some point the interviewer asks him if he just thought of defecting, and Ivan says, "Never."  Others make deals and finally they let Ivan go and they are all in America playing hockey.  But American hockey is different than the soviet stye, it is more individualistic, guys shoot instead of passing.  The Russians aren't good at this kind of hockey.  Some guy with the Red Wings figures it out, he hires one, two, three, eventually he gets five Russkies together on the team and they kick ass.  Here is this Detroit team, and it is all Russians, their former enemy, and the fans are wild because they are winning.

After his career is over, Ivan and some of his teammates go back to Russia.  They can't get used to America, and they love their country, even though it is different from what it was, and they love hockey.  They become like head coaches working hand and glove with Putin, and they are happy.

I may have some parts wrong, but I think the general gist is solid.

Searching For the Origin

Well, it's only a theory, but I was speculating about how you and other people grow to resent authority. We have discussed this before. I said that I couldn't understand how you used to resent all authority figures, regardless of whether they were telling you to do the right thing or the wrong thing. "Wrong" doesn't necessarily have to mean "evil", it can also mean something that is counterproductive or erroneous, as in "taking a wrong turn". If a leader is supposed to lead you out of the swamp, and he just leads you further in, then he's a bad leader, regardless of whether he does it on purpose or through incompetence. If, on the other hand, he indeed leads you out of the swamp like he's supposed to do, then he's a good leader, at least on this particular mission. He might not be as good at leading you out of the mountains, that doesn't necessarily make him a bad person, but he still would be a bad leader for that particular job. If his boss knew that the guy was no good at mountain trekking, and he put him in charge of the mission anyway, then it is his boss who is at fault. In my opinion, blind defiance of authority is just as bad as blind obedience. Does this make any sense?

I wasn't shocked to find out that other people had different agendas than I do, I just learned by experience that many people want you to help them accomplish their agendas, but are not interested in helping you accomplish yours. Maybe that isn't relevant to the concept of "us and them", but it seemed to be when I wrote it. I think what I was trying to say was that you're usually better off keeping your own council than looking to others for advice and help.

Yes, it would be okay if the Blacks or any group took over the country if they were all "good Americans", but I suspect that many of them just want to dominate the scene like our predecessors dominated their predecessors. This may be fair in the grand scheme of things, but it is not in my best interests, so I will vote against it if given the opportunity. To me, voting does not mean choosing what's good for other people, it means choosing what's good for me. I expect that the other people will vote for their own interests as well. Isn't that what democracy is all about?

The purpose of the primaries is to decide which candidate will carry the party banner in the general election. I don't think they've always had primaries, I think that the party bosses used to make that decision behind closed doors in smoke filled rooms. All the states do not conduct their primaries the same way, and the presidential primary is usually distinct from the regular primary that nominates candidates for all the other positions. I don't know why this is, or why we need to have political parties at all. The City of Cheboygan elects their mayor and city council on a non partisan basis. The candidates may or may not be members of any party, but no party names are listed on the ballot. If you want to get on the ballot, all you need to do is get a certain number of registered voters to sign your nominating petition. I don't know how that would work on a national scale, but I don't think that Cheboygan is the only town that runs its local elections that way.

coming soon, the red army

I don't think I understand your concept of Others.  There is this concept of The Other in sociology, which is something like yours.  There are people who are in our tribe and people who aren't.  The people in our tribe are alright because we all love each other (ha!), but people in other tribes are suspect, and doubly so since if we are suspect of them, it follows like night the day they must be suspect of us.  This normally applies to countries and races, but it could also be religion or political beliefs or something like Cubs vs White Sox fans.  It is particularly striking to me in those gangs like the bloods and the crips who are like mirror images of each other, and yet they are willing to shoot each other at the drop a hat.

But extending this across generations seems a little strange to me, I mean we live in the same families.  I resented the fact that some adults had power over me, but that didn't extend to other adults who were fine by me.  I will say that during the period of the book it was more plausible that there was a Them running things, inasmuch as there was like the guy said, only three television networks, and everything was just more ordered, and it seemed like there was a template for how to be, and anything you did that didn't fit in (like you not going to college) was suspect.  There had to be something wrong with a person like that.

There was a general consensus in how people should be, but I think that was blown apart in the sixties.  Now there are many different ways to be, and I suppose the different groups see each other a little as Others.  But people generally belong to several different groups and they overlap, so it's hard to see where there could be one Them.  There is authority and power and people who wield it more than others, but they are like the Greek gods, constantly joining up with each other and just as often fighting each other.  I don't believe there is any one true Them Who controls everybody, and I think it kind of limits one's thinking.  To me it is like astrology.  It might be fun and maybe one likes to think of oneself as an Aries or whatever, but it doesn't get you anywhere and it is just plain dumb.

You'll have to explain to me how you knew who were the good and bad authority figures.

How were you shocked when you discovered that other people had their own agendas that were different from yours, when all along you had your own agenda that was different from theirs? 

We have open primaries here.  When I go to the polls they ask which ballot I want.  There is always talk of people crossing over in primaries to maybe vote for someone on the other side that they like or to sabotage the other party.  I've never done that, and from what I've read it just doesn't happen very often.  I suppose I could cross over and vote for Trump because I think he would have little chance of winning, but I would be risking the chance that he might actually win. 

You know it strikes me that maybe they should let people vote in both primaries.  The way it is now candidates have to hew closely to the party line to win the primary and then once they have won it they have to race to the center.  Maybe if a candidate could appeal to both sides when running in the primary we would have more appealing candidates.  I have been thinking of who I would vote for in a republican primary in the last two elections, and it seems like there were a few moderates at the beginning of the elections who didn't last, and in the end I felt like maybe I could sort of stomach McCain or Romney, but I don't know if there is anybody in the current crop that I could sort of stomach.  Maybe Kasich.

They didn't change immigration in favor of Asians and Hispanics, they changed it to make it equal to those snow white Europeans you seem to favor.  Whenever somebody nonwhite or nonstraight wants the same rights as everybody else your ilk always cries bloody murder that they are trying to get more favorable treatment.

What is it with you and white people?  If some other group, blacks, hispanics, asians, whatever, becomes the majority, as long as they are good Americans who cares what color they are?

Remember when I asked you what you would have been like if you were born in Russia?  I saw a very interesting movie Saturday night, Red Army, about the Soviet hockey team.  Very interesting.  I'll go on about in the next post.