The hidden powers that are killing democracy


Source: Wikimedia Commons

To the global super-rich, the rest of us are little more than just another natural resource to be exploited, no different in any meaningful way from industrial chickens or pigs. To a significant degree, though, the super-rich are afraid of the masses. The masses can be a bit more threatening than chickens and pigs. That’s because, if the masses are poorly controlled and insufficiently deceived and distracted, the masses can be very dangerous to oligarchic power. Taking to the streets is the last resort of the masses. But the power of the masses is most threatening to the global oligarchy when the power of the masses is coldly and quietly organized around a few formidable institutions that are the enemies of oligarchy: the law, democracy, and deep and truthful sources of information.

As long as some fear of the law remains, criminality and corruption must remain disguised and secret. And yet, given that the No. 1 project of the global criminal oligarchy at present is to corrupt the United States, to disable the American democracy, and to bring down the American rule of law, that project cannot be accomplished entirely in secret. All of us can see the tip of the iceberg in the daily headlines, as Trump and his criminal syndicate do everything they can to corrupt the rule of law and cripple American democracy. It is terrifying that the global criminal oligarchy even got — and seized — an opportunity to take down the United States. How that happened is a question for another day. But that such an opportunity even exists can only mean that democracy and the rule of law have become weak, and that the global criminal oligarchy have become strong.

The global oligarchy surveil the masses very carefully. But normally the masses have very little ability to surveil the global oligarchy. But, two days ago, we the masses got a rare leak of information on the vast amount of money (and therefore the vast amount of power) that oligarchs depend on. That leak provided some hints on where the money comes from and where it goes. Clearly a corrupted U.S. Treasury Department is part of a coverup, while doing little or nothing to enforce the law. But no reasonable person can doubt that a great deal of money — mostly Russian money — has been directed to Trump, to members of Trump’s criminal syndidate, and to the Republican Party. They are actively working to corrupt the rule of law and to neutralize the institutions of democracy — in short, to turn us into Russia. The law, actually — and Trump’s attorney general has made terrifying progress with that part of the project — is to be used against the enemies of the regime and to cover up the crimes of oligarchs. There is nothing new in this project or in its tactics, except that now they’ve come for the United States. Money gained from looting Russia is now being invested in making it possible to loot the United States.

Even many who carefully follow the news from day to day remain mostly unaware of the titantic struggle beneath the surface. It takes a historian’s perspective and depth of sources to penetrate the murk. I have previously mentioned Heather Cox Richardson as an essential daily source of information. She is a Harvard historian who posts daily on Facebook. (To find her on Facebook, search for her name.) In today’s post, she brings this leak to our attention:

“For all that these stories are important, my favorite candidate for the story we’re not supposed to notice is last night’s leak of suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by banks with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN. This agency combats money laundering. The documents, leaked to BuzzFeed, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, found that banks flagged more than $2 trillion in potentially laundered money between 1999 and 2017. The leaked documents, which make up less than 0.02% of the more than 12 million SARs filed with FinCEN between 2011 and 2017, show a world awash in money from criminal activity. They paint a picture of a world of fabulously wealthy oligarchs and criminals, operating out of our sight.

“There is nothing specifically about Trump or his company in the leaked documents, and being flagged in a SARs does not necessarily mean wrongdoing. But transactions involving $1.3 trillion at Deutsche Bank, Trump’s bankers, made other bankers nervous enough to flag them. In one of the documents, Bank of America raises concerns about the amount of Russian money flowing into the U.S. in 2016 through Deutsche Bank.”

Richardson understands how important this is. And yet the media have mostly ignored it. That the leak went to a tawdry little site such as BuzzFeed, as opposed to, say, the New York Times, is very revealing about how easily the media can be manipulated to distract rather than inform. The New York Times, though, did write a brief story about the BuzzFeed leak. As for who leaked this information and why, it would be safe to assume that the leak came from a principled insider who was exasperated by FinCEN’s and the U.S. Treasury’s failure to enforce the law. The leaker knows, of course, that when corruption has blocked enforcement of the law, then the only hope is that the masses will act — assuming that the masses have the information to act on, and assuming that democracy and law are sufficiently intact to empower the masses to act effectively.

This vast flow of international criminal money is something we must keep on our radar screens. Most of Trump’s hundreds of crimes and coverups are sideshows compared with this. His scam university, his bankrupt businesses, the pilfering of his foundation and campaign funds are nothing compared with this — working with the international criminal oligarchy to destroy the American democracy, to loot its resources, to exploit the population like pigs and chickens while providing social services at the same level as Mongolia, and to create a corrupt economy in which criminal syndicates can suck up 25 percent of GDP, while getting away with it all, as they do in Russia.

Donegal tweed


Click here for high-resolution version.

I seem to have become a collector of vintage Harris tweed jackets, after a visit to the Isle of Harris and Lewis in 2019. That’s a slippery slope, because, before long, the tweed habit leads to Donegal tweed as well.

Much has been written about Harris tweed. Less has been written about Donegal tweed. As far as I can tell from Googling, it was Harris tweed that came first and led the way. According to an article in Gentleman’s Journal: “Although the story of tweed began in Scotland, it quickly migrated to Ireland where, in 1900, Robert Temple bought off John Magee’s business and started weaving the illustrious Donegal tweed.” More about Magee in a moment.

County Donegal and Scotland’s Isle of Lewis and Harris have a lot in common. They both have rugged western coasts facing the North Atlantic. Though I have not been as far north in Ireland as County Donegal, the terrain, climate, and economic potentials are very similar — sheep-friendly, and a sparse population of cottagers in need of work and an income. What worked economically for the Isle of Harris also worked for County Donegal.

My understanding is that, by law, Harris tweed is produced only on hand-operated looms. The label on my 1970s Magee jacket says that the tweed was handwoven. I don’t disbelieve that, though this article says that the production of Donegal tweed today is dominated by power looms. The Magee company acknowledges the use of power looms in this article on their web site. The article also says that they continue to produce handwoven tweed, though when I spot-checked fabric and clothing for sale on their web site, the descriptions said, “All tweeds are woven in our mill in Donegal, Ireland.”

In any case, a single company — Magee — seems to have dominated the Donegal tweed business since the beginning. They are still very much in business today. Men’s jackets seem to average around $600. They have stores in Donegal and Dublin, and they ship to the U.S.

It’s very unlikely that I would ever buy a tweed garment new. What would be the sport in that? As I mentioned in a post here on Harris tweed last year, there is a good market on eBay for vintage tweed clothing. Sellers are usually very good at providing the information buyers need to judge a men’s jacket. Usually there will be 10 to 12 photos from multiple angles. If there are flaws such as rips, there will be a photo of it. Best of all, they provide measurements that I have found to be accurate. Jackets in great condition can be had for $40 up. Typically I pay $60 to $100. The cost of alterations may add another $100, so a nice jacket ends up costing less than $200. Tweed just doesn’t seem to wear out. A jacket’s lining will be the best indicator of how much it has been worn. I always look for jackets with like-new lining.

My article on Harris tweed has gotten quite a few hits from Google, mostly from readers in Europe. There seems to be a growing interest in vintage tweed, at least in men’s jackets. For those who are interested in collecting, I’d make two suggestions. First, you need access to a tailor or someone with tailoring experience who can do a proper job of alterations. And second, you should keep your own measurements handy when looking at jackets. eBay sellers will typically lay a jacket flat and use a tape measure. You should do the same to get your own measurements, using a jacket that fits you well. It’s the same as buying clothing off the rack (the only kind of clothing I’ve ever owned). Some alterations are easy; some are difficult or impossible. Don’t buy a jacket unless the shoulders are just right, because shoulder alterations are not worth what they’d cost, even if it can be done at all. Letting out or taking up sleeves is no big deal. But if sleeves need lengthening, you’ll need to know how much fabric there is in the sleeves that can be let out. No jacket will look good on you unless the chest and waist fit well. Tightening the waist and chest of a jacket are not a big deal, but there will be limits on how much letting out can be done, depending on how much fabric is available to do it.

I’m trying to honor a new rule to try to keep my collector habit under control. That’s to buy only jackets that are of high quality and in great condition, to buy only great bargains, and to try to buy only jackets that need no alterations. The jacket in the photo, for example, fits great without any alterations, though I plan to move the buttons about 3/4 inch to slightly tighten up the waist.

County Donegal, by the way, is part of the Republic of Ireland, to the west of Northern Ireland. I have never been north of Dublin, and I have never been to Northern Ireland. I certainly hope to get to Donegal someday.

My post on Harris tweed from August 2019.


This jacket was quite a find — made by Magee in County Donegal, from handwoven tweed, from an American seller, and little or no alteration needed. I would guess that this jacket was made in the late 1970s.


The measurements I use when browsing for collectibles on eBay.

Horatio Hornblower


Ioan Gruffud as Horatio Hornblower

Most of my old DVDs are in a box in the attic. But the boxed set of Horatio Hornblower DVDs is always on the TV stand, ready for an emergency escape from the here and now.

The series ran from 1997 until 2003 on ITV in the U.K. and A&E in the U.S., with the Welsh actor Ioan Gruffud as Hornblower. The series is based on the novels by C.S. Forester.

It seems strange to me now that I don’t recall ever seeing the Horatio Hornblower novels in a school library. I think I would have read them as a boy if I had come across them. Recently I sampled a bit of one of the Hornblower novels and found it a bit too young adult to enjoy reading. But for whatever reason, not having read the novels, the television series comes across as fully adult.

The first Hornblower novel was published in 1937, and the last in 1962. The novels are set during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The Wikipedia article on C.S. Forester doesn’t tell us much, other than that he was British (born in Cairo and later moved to London) and that he moved to the United States during World War II, where he worked for the British Ministry of Information. After the war he ended up in Berkeley.

Forester doesn’t seem to have lived a life of adventure. My guess would be that, in writing these novels, he was largely compensating for an adventureless life. There also is a didactic element in the Hornblower books, I suspect — teaching young men about honor, duty, and hard knocks. The Wikipedia description of the Hornblower character is apt enough: “Hornblower is courageous, intelligent, and a skilled seaman, but he is also burdened by his intense reserve, introspection, and self-doubt, and is described as ‘unhappy and lonely.’ Despite numerous personal feats of extraordinary skill and cunning, he belittles his achievements by numerous rationalisations, remembering only his fears. He consistently ignores or is unaware of the admiration in which he is held by his fellow sailors. He regards himself as cowardly, dishonest, and, at times, disloyal—never crediting his ability to persevere, think rapidly, organise, or cut to the heart of a matter.”

The filming budget for this series was adequate, if not extravagant. I’m thrilled by images of ships under full sail. This series has plenty of that, but there’s not much wind in the sails, and the water is usually flat. Still, a Horatio Hornblower DVD guarantees an hour and a half of escape from the here and now.

Virtual emigration, anyone?


My 20-year-old Sony headphones, well worn but still working

Ken, who is now back in Scotland after being stuck in the U.S. for six months during the Covid-19 lockdown, writes: “I can’t tell you how detoxed I already feel from U.S. politics…. No more Trump signs, no more awful religion, no more right wing madness…. It feels good to be away, honestly.” Luckily for him, Ken has two passports. One of them is a beautiful red British passport, the ones I admire most while standing in the immigration lines. Meanwhile, here I am, with only my useless American passport, unable to breathe the free air of Europe this year, if only for a couple of weeks.

Republicans, while doing such great deeds to make America great again (with generous Russian assistance), say that we liberals would turn America into a flaming hellscape. Actually, what we liberals will do is make America much more like Europe.

We liberal Americans are torn in two directions right now. On the one hand, we’re obsessed with the news, terrified at how far right-wing Americans and their little Hitler will go to get the right-wing dictatorship they crave. And on the other hand we try to preserve our mental health by trying to shut it all out.

This post is about shutting it out.

Technology can bring us all the news (and propaganda) we can eat. But technology also gives us ways to shut out the public madness to protect our mental health. I actually have come to love my Covid-19 masks. I especially love my Covid-19 masks when I’m in a place where right-wingers are maskless. So far, I’ve not been harassed for wearing a mask, but there is a lot of that going on. My mask says to the glowering maskless: I don’t want to be around you. I suspect that’s part of why mask-wearers gall them so badly. It makes them feel low and dirty, when what they want is to feel superior and powerful. I’m considering wearing masks in public for the rest of my life, actually.

Unlike viruses, noise won’t kill you. But too much noise damages our hearing, and too much noise damages our mental health. Noise is not a huge problem for me now, given that I live in the woods. Nor do I find myself in noisy places much anymore. But, partly because I’m so accustomed to silence, I have a low tolerance for noise. I have come to be disgusted by the sound of loudspeakers blaring country music, for example. Once upon a time, country music could express vitality, energy, and optimism. Consider Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” (1958), or the stunning performance of “Cocaine Blues” by Joaquin Phoenix in the film “Walk the Line.” (See footnote for a musical factoid.)

The country music that I’m exposed to in public places these days is always about whining and masochistic suffering. The whining voice, apparently, is supposed to convey emotion. I find myself mocking it and making fun of it behind my mask, or muttering, “Why don’t you just go die and get it over with.” Some cultures are rotting all right, and not the ones in Europe.

Noise was a huge problem when I lived in San Francisco. It was sirens, buses, trains on Market Street, and loud motorcycles. Eventually I refused to go to restaurants, or at least the noisy ones, where the sound level was often over 100 decibels. I also fought the noise with some noise-canceling headphones. I bought headphones that were of poor quality, though, and they didn’t last long. (The headphones in the photo are good headphones, but they don’t do noise canceling.)

I was very excited when I heard that Apple is going to make some over-the-ear noise-canceling headphones. Apparently they’ll be called “Airpods Studio,” and the rumors at present are that they’ll be available in October. The price is said to be $349 or $399. That’s pretty pricey, but my guess is that they’ll be worth it.

Apple has figured out how to get amazing sound quality (and a wide range of frequencies) out of small devices, with low distortion. I’ve never used ear buds, because they don’t fit my ear well, and because buds can’t do noise canceling. For noise canceling, the ears must be covered with sound-suppressing padding. Another virtue of the Apple headphones, I’m sure, is that they’ll integrate well with other Apple devices — iPhones, computers, and watches. The headphones will surely have a microphone. And Apple knows how to make products that are hard to break and don’t wear out.

It’s a sad thing when we have to protect ourselves against the environment we live in. And yet, we don’t fret about protective items such as caps (against sun damage) and gloves (against skin damage). For now, more options are needed. Masks defend against viruses, and, as a bonus, tell maskless right-wingers that you’re not one of them. Noise-cancelling headphones not only keep out the ear-damaging noise and the soul-damaging music, they also help build a virtual bubble, one’s own private Edinburgh.

A musical aside: The Folsom Prison scene from “Walk the Line” contains a fine example of what musicians call “vamping.” Vamping is what accompanists do while they wait for the vocalist to start to sing. The accompanist(s) just keep an eye on the singer and repeats a short musical phrase, maybe only one measure long. In the Folsom Prison scene, the band vamps while Joaquin Phoenix delivers a monologue that sets his audience on fire. Then, at 0:51, he breaks a glass, signaling the band that he’s ready to go. When Phoenix returns to the microphone, a guitar cues the singer with a chromatic sequence of four eighth-notes, dominant to tonic. Then Phoenix proceeds to kill it with “Cocaine Blues.” Hollywood, on the dreaded and liberal West Coast, knows how to do this. Nashville seems to have forgotten how.

Update: Even in Edinburgh, noisy restaurants are a problem. From the Scottish newspaper The Herald: We shouldn’t have to wear ear defenders when eating out.

The Door Into Summer


Heinlein with (I believe) Pixie, c. 1953. Wikipedia photo.

The Door Into Summer, by Robert A. Heinlein. Original publisher: Doubleday, 1957.

When I can’t find any newer science fiction that seems worth reading, a classic Robert A. Heinlein is always a good bet. The Door Into Summer is delightful.

I’m certain I’ve complained here before about writers who don’t know how to write. The science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon made an axiom about that. It’s called Sturgeon’s Law: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” Sturgeon was responding to the criticism that science fiction was usually of low literary quality. The point he wanted to make is that most fiction is of low literary quality, so why pick on science fiction? I have certainly found Sturgeon’s Law to be true in a long life of reading. It’s why I fling so many books after fewer than 30 pages. On Amazon, it’s why I move on after spending a few minutes with “Look Inside.”

Robert A. Heinlein could write. He’s often called “the master” by lovers of the science fiction genre, because few writers have been able to match his skill. Heinlein rarely bends the rules that apply to classical story structure, which is a great virtue. There are many reasons why some writers can’t write. But one of those reasons is that bad writers often imagine that they are too creative and too literary to be constrained by classical story structure. That kind of writing stinks so badly that you can smell it and fling it within three pages. To my taste, the stricter the form, the better the art, as long as one can master the form. The analogy I use is fugue form, one of the strictest forms in music. And yet, working within that strict form, J.S. Bach can blow your mind. As can a Heinlein novel.

The Door Into Summer is a story about extreme injustice followed by justice and revenge. Much of the charm comes from a character who is a cat. Heinlein’s dialogue can be counted on to be as good as his plots. The dialogue with the cat in The Door Into Summer is not just funny, or clever in how it serves the plot and the characterization. Anyone who knows cats will also recognize it as a true reflection of how cats think (and talk).

The cat character sent me to Google, wanting to know more about Heinlein’s cats. It seems that, in Grumbles from the Grave, a posthumous biography of Heinlein assembled by his wife and published in 1989, there is a letter to Lurton Blassingame, a literary agent. In the letter, Heinlein writes:

“Pixie is dying … uremia, too far gone to hope for remission; the vet sent him home to die several days ago. He is not now in pain and still purrs, but he is very weak and becoming more emaciated every day — it’s like having a little yellow ghost in the house.”

I believe Pixie died in 1957, and I believe Pixie was the cat that Heinlein wrote about in The Door Into Summer.

Not quite what the 2nd Amendment crowd expected


Inside a Ruger gun factory, from a Ruger “how it’s made” video

We’re starting to get data on who has been buying so many guns this year in America. Guess what. It’s not just old rural white guys. It’s women and African-Americans and liberals.

A news release on Aug. 24 from the National Shooting Sports Foundation says: “NSSF surveys revealed that 58 percent of firearm purchases were among African American men and women, the largest increase of any demographic group. Women comprised 40 percent of first-time gun purchasers. Retailers noted that they are seeing a 95 percent increase in firearm sales and a 139 percent increase in ammunition sales over the same period in 2019.” Also this month, Outdoor Wire reported on a survey of new gun owners and why they bought guns this year.

The white guys for whom the Second Amendment is the only part of the American Constitution that matters must have thought that they had a patent and a monopoply on owning guns. After all, liberals (or so they thought) not only won’t touch guns, they want to take them all away. And it seems not to have occurred to those white guys that, if they want to refight the Civil War or go around waving their guns at people, then African-Americans have the same rights as everyone else to own guns, to learn to use them, to acquire concealed carry permits, and even to acquire semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15’s that the militias have.

Yes, this is crazy. Let me hasten to say that I don’t want to live in an America in which both sides of the culture war are armed to the teeth, while the occupant of the White House and the Republican Party try to incite division and conflict. But even less do I want to live in an America in which only one side of the culture war is defenseless while the other side starts showing up in caravans of armed militia men, enraged by Republican propaganda, and where the police take sides.

After Barack Obama was elected president, gun sales in the U.S. went way up, because the right wing wanted to raise a bunch of money and stir up rage by telling people that Democrats would take away their guns. After Trump was installed in the White House, gun sales at first went down, because gun lovers felt safe. But that began to turn around as the situation darkened and as those who oppose Trump began to rethink things.

First came the Socialist Rifle Assocation, in October 2018. This group states its purpose as: “[T]o provide an alternate to the mainstream, toxic, right-wing, and non-inclusive gun culture that has dominated the firearms community for decades. We seek to provide a safe, inclusive, and left-leaning platform for talking about gun rights and self defense, free from racist and reactionary prejudices, while providing a platform for the working class to obtain the skills necessary for all aspects of community defense.”

A Reddit group for liberal gun owners seems to have been around since 2012. But its membership has surged under Trump. This group says about itself: “Gun-ownership through a liberal lens. This is a place for liberal gun-owners who want to discuss gun ownership absent the ‘noise’ of most right-leaning pro-gun forums. ‘Liberal’ here is ‘left-of-center,’ in U.S. political terms. Liberal/Leftist/Progressive. This is a place for those who would identify as Democrats, Progressives, Socialists, etc. That does not mean ‘classical liberal’ or libertarians.”

As much as we might wish for an America that is not armed to the teeth, it is not irrational for those who are despised by armed right-wing Americans to start acquiring their own guns. Though I had owned a pistol for ten years that mostly sat in a drawer, I too started rethinking things after Trump. I did a lot of shooting practice, and last year I got a concealed carry permit. I also bought (gasp) a semi-automatic rifle, and I know how to shoot that gun, too. As I see the political situation in which we now find ourselves, the American oligarchy, represented by the likes of Trump and inspired by the likes of Putin, has found its brownshirts. If some Americans seek to intimidate other Americans with guns, it probably was inevitable that those who are being intimidated will start working to level the playing field.

Still, I had a lot of concerns about the ethics involved, not to mention joining in what feels like cultural regression and a dangerous symptom of the erosion of American civic life. But, as I tried to think it through, I came across an article from the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. The article is written in the usual dense language of philosophy, but I got the gist of it: It would be better if no one owned guns. But, if some people own guns, then others are justified in also owning guns, lest they become subject to domination and control. I concur with that argument. And, speaking only for myself, I don’t tolerate intimidation well.

Incidentally, during this election, I will be working with the voter protection project organized by the Biden campaign and the Democratic Party in my state. Here in my county, we have a history of voter intimidation of Democrats by Republicans outside the voting places. I’m afraid that is likely to be worse this year.


I took this photo in a recent election in the county where I live, outside a voting place. The truck belongs to a militia. That’s the Christian flag on the back.

A flood of new data about prehistory

Who We Are and How We Got Here. By David Reich. Oxford University Press, 2018. 368 pages.

During the past ten years, gene sequencing machines have become available that are thousands of times cheaper to operate than earlier machines. The analysis of human genes can yield an astonishing amount of information about prehistory, an area that until fairly recently could be investigated only through archeology and linguistics. Using these new machines, labs such as David Reich’s lab at Harvard University have been extracting DNA from thousands of bones from all over the world that were contributed to the project by archeologists. New data is becoming available faster than it can be analyzed. The scientists doing this work are publishing papers too fast for even specialists to keep up with them all, and the papers are too technical for non-specialists to follow. David Reich’s book is one of the first, and few, books on this area of research for general readers.

In writing about this book, I first should confess that my interests are Eurocentric. My own Y-DNA shows that I am descended from Celts and that my paternal ancestors were almost certainly in Ireland centuries ago. In fact I have the genetic marker for descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages, a semi-historical Irish king who seems to have left almost as many descendants as Genghis Khan. Reich actually mentions Niall of the Nine Hostages in this book as an example of inequality — how genetic research shows that powerful men were able to leave far more descendants than less powerful men. What is frustrating to me, though, is that when my Celtic ancestors first appear in history, it’s a history written by Romans, whose treatment of the Celts actually was a genocide in Gaul, and a cultural genocide elsewhere. The Celts make a brief and surely distorted appearance in ancient imperial histories, and then the trail goes cold.

Until geneticists got into the study of prehistory, our sources were archeology and linguistics. Those fields have done a remarkably good job of throwing a light on Iron Age and Neolithic prehistory in Europe. But many mysteries remained. Not long ago, I wrote here about two important works in this area — David W. Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language; and The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World.

By merging what we have learned from genetics, archeology, and linguistics, we now have a pretty good overview of the migrations and innovations that shaped Europe. That story is of course too complicated to get into here. But briefly: The story of European prehistory goes back to the times when modern humans, as we call them, lived alongside Neanderthals, tens of thousands of years ago. In fact, many Europeans have up to 2 percent or a little less of Neanderthal genes. But it was the two most recent waves of migration that mostly made Europe what it is today. The first recent wave was about 10,000 years ago, as glaciers receded and Europe grew warmer. That wave of migration brought farming to Europe. The second wave was about 5,000 years ago. That wave brought the wheel, wagons, horses, and the Proto-Indo-European language. Europeans today are largely of two genetic haplotypes — R1a in the east, more toward Poland, and R1b in the west, peaking in Ireland and the west of Britain.

Though the archeologist Marija Gimbutas had found strong feminine influences in parts of Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe, there is strong evidence from genetics that the migration that brought the wheel to Europe was male-oriented, hierarchical, and often violent — little different from the Europe of recorded history into the 20th Century. Still, evidence is strong that, around 50,000 years ago, humans developed the capacity for complex behaviors and conceptual language. And here we are today, still struggling between enlightened and primitive behavior, cooperation and competition, caring and cruelty.

Though I am Eurocentric, David Reich is less so. There are interesting chapters on India, as well as Native Americans. And there is a fascinating chapter on inequality.

Reich’s book was not well received by some scholars. The book gets too close to hot-button issues such as racial differences or the lack of them, and the concerns of marginalized people. There are those who would shut down this kind of research. Reich’s book contains an extended argument for the necessity of accepting hard science, wherever it leads. There is no doubt that this area of research is being mined by thugs such as white supremacists. Reich very much acknowledges the projects of those thugs and shoots down many of their fallacies. But anyone interested in this area should be very wary in particular of what turns up in Google searches. It’s an area infested by crackpots who troll each other with crackpot theories.

So far, we have only scratched the surface of what we stand to learn. When I was halfway through this book, I already was feeling a frustration that no scholarship is available that seeks to connect written ancient history with what we know about prehistory from archeology, linguistics, and genetics. Near the end of this book, Reich clearly describes the work that needs to be done to write precisely that book. Many scholars are working in that direction. Within the next ten years, I expect such a book from — who else — the Oxford University Press.

The neighbors in the woods

The three sets of neighbors who own land contiguous to mine have sworn to leave the deer alone. One neighbor has spoiled them by feeding them and taming them. There are two bucks in this group. Bucks usually stay deep in hiding during daylight. If you have deer for neighbors, you can forget about such things as day lilies or azaleas. But, after all, it’s their woods, too.

Oxford, Tolkien, and the fair speech


From my visit to Oxford, August 2019

A few days ago I finished my third reading of The Two Towers, and now I’m on book 3. The landscapes of Middle-earth are lucid in my imagination. And yet I find myself thinking again and again about Oxford. This story (the best story, I believe, in English literature) was born out of the imagination and knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien. But Tolkien’s imaginary world could never have existed if our real world did not have the University of Oxford in it.

Yes, Oxford is one of the greatest seats of privilege in the world. Oxford has drawn heavily on the power and wealth of the British Empire. But that shows us, I believe, that no empire can sustain itself century after century — at least in any form that can do some good in the world along with the harm that empires do — unless it invests in all the things that the University of Oxford stands for.

Part of what I marvel at and am extremely grateful for is that it has been my privilege that the language of Oxford is my mother tongue. That is one thing that I can share with Oxford, though otherwise I have never had scrap nor morsel of its privilege. No matter how many languages a person may learn to speak later in life, it is the mother tongue that is connected most intimately with our minds and emotions. For years I have said, partly as a joke, that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings would be impossible to translate into French. Tolkien’s story, and Tolkien’s language, are Anglo-Saxon to the bone, alien, like oil and water, to Latin.

In book 2, The Two Towers, I found myself re-reading and savoring the passages in which Faramir interrogates Frodo, and in which trust develops between them as Faramir decides to give Frodo as much help as he can, though they both are far from home. Faramir speaks “the fair speech.” Others in the story speak the fair speech, too. The elves for example. But though hobbits are to some degree hicks, Frodo acquired the fair speech, from his mentors.

This dialogue between Faramir and Frodo is some of the most perfect dialogue in the story. Tolkien polished every word and phrase. Consider what Tolkien as an Oxford professor was able to draw on, all products of Oxford: the long history of the English language all the way back to German and beyond; the refinements of English diplomacy; the conventions by which the privileged (Faramir was a steward’s son) expressed (or displayed) their noblesse and fine breeding. I’ll make another joke at the expense of the French. To be polite in French, one must double the number of words. It’s difficult in French to be both courteous and concise. Whereas in English a high rhetorical tone can get straight to the point.

On the train from Edinburgh to Oxford, as the train approached Oxford, a Ph.D. student whom I had talked with on the train said, “I speak acquired English.” I replied, “I understand that, because I speak acquired American.” It was not just language that we had in common. It also was a kind of language that we had in common, an echo of the “fair speech.” Americans are quite capable of the fair speech, scarce as it is these days in our public discourse.

I have heard it said about us American Southerners — at least a kind of Southerner in short supply hereabouts — that, when there is conflict, whoever is most polite wins. If that is true, then I suspect it is something we learned from the English. Pray that we all can keep it, even though, as with many Southerners who have an aptitude for language, I will cut a person to shreds with my tongue when I think they need it. Too many do. And you can get shot for mere words, these days more than ever.

Even if we have to turn to literature to hear the fair speech, it’s something we ought to do from time to time. In dark times such as these, there is something that is encouraging and healing about it.

Are you a prepper now?


I am 60 miles to the east of the epicenter of this earthquake.

What next? We are in the midst of a pandemic that is getting worse in many areas, including the state I live in. A severe tropical storm just moved up the Atlantic coast. That was only the first blow from what is likely to be a long, and severe, Atlantic hurricane season. The country is on edge, because of the American political situation, which, when it doesn’t create turmoil, creates paralysis and rewards incompetence. And this morning, to remind many of us on the East Coast that nature bats last, North Carolina, where earthquakes are pretty rare, had a 5.1 earthquake that was felt from Atlanta to Washington. It was the strongest earthquake in North Carolina since a 5.2 earthquake in 1916 — not very dangerous, but disturbing. Many times, having living in San Franciso for 18 years, I have felt buildings shake in moderate earthquakes. This was the first time I’ve felt this little house in the Appalachian foothills shake.

I was pretty well prepared for the lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic. But being prepared is an ongoing project. Being prepared costs money, so most people have to go about it incrementally. There are many guides on “prepping” to be found, so there is no need for me to reinvent that wheel here. But let’s think about what we have learned from the Covid-19 lockdown.

For one, there will be shortages as supply lines are disrupted and people begin to hoard things. Whatever was hard to find in your location should now be on your radar screen for future preparedness. Once the hoarding and panic buying begins, it’s too late. It’s necessary to think about these things in advance.

One of the things I’ve learned during the Covid-19 lockdown is how beneficial it can be to coordinate with your neighbors. Many things can be shared, which reduces the expense of being prepared and increases your security. We should all try to establish preparedness pods with our most trusted neighbors. It takes a village. If you have neighbors with lots of tools and know-how, as I do, then you are very lucky. And I can do things that they can’t do, such as handling communications, by Morse code if need be. I have things, and know-how, that they don’t have.

Everyone should be prepared to get by without outside help or outside supplies for at least three weeks or so. We should increase that time at an affordable rate. And we should look at ways of extending our independence for everything that is essential — food, water, and energy, to start.

For years, I’ve considered the greatest risks in the area where I live to be, first, pandemics; and second, widespread or grid-down power failures. Sooner or later, no matter where you live, you’re probably going to lose electricity. Candles, batteries, and flashlights will get you through short outages, such as the outages caused by thunderstorms. For longer outages, you’re going to need a generator, and some solar, if possible. (To be able to get by without electricity other than solar would be ideal, but that would involve some advanced prepping.)

When I built the abbey, I had a house-size, code-compliant transfer switch installed, waiting for the day I acquired a generator. Since then, though, I have soured on the idea of whole-house generators. This is because those generators — except for those that are extremely expensive — don’t put out clean power. Rather than a sine wave, the output will be a “modified” sine wave or even a square wave. There is no way I would expose my refrigerator, heat pump, well pump, etc., not to mention my electronics, to such dirty power. The risk of damage, as I see it, would be too high.

An affordable compromise is an “inverter” generator. These are smaller, but they’re adequate for refrigerators and most appliances. They’re safe for computers and electronics. They contain a small, gasoline-powered engine, an alternator with rectifiers (much like the 12-volt system in your car), an inverter to convert the direct current to 60Hz alternating current, and a capacitor circuit to smooth the wave form into a decent (if not perfect) sine wave. I bought the Westinghouse WH2200iXLT because its specifications are explicit about a promised THD value (total harmonic distortion) of less than 3 percent. As with many prepper items, once you need these things, it’s usually too late to buy them, because they sell out.

If you’re not yet a prepper, now is a good time to think about your situation, and then to get started. A three-week time line is a requirement. Six months is a good goal. I’m a liberal prepper. It’s not about guns. It’s about providing for yourself, and working with your community to be as locally self-sufficient as possible.