August 2018 – Into the Woods

Time flies

While retrieving my passport from the lock box, I flipped through all my old passports. There are five passports altogether. It was in April 1984, I was reminded, that I made my first trip to the United Kingdom, including my first trip to Scotland. What a trip that was!

At the time, I had a Welsh friend, now deceased, who was a solicitor practicing in London. He was a political wonk, and though he was descended from Welsh coal miners and felt guilty about it, he was a supporter of Margaret Thatcher. He had requested tickets from his member of Parliament, and we attended the Prime Minister’s question day in the House of Commons, with rather amazing seats in the Sergeant at Arms’ private box. Somewhere in my archives I still have the front page of the next morning’s Times of London. The newspaper would supply the political context, controversial at the time, which I have forgotten. But I will never forget the most dramatic line of the day. A member of the opposition party asked the Prime Minister a long and hostile question. Mrs. Thatcher’s reply was very short a brought a round of laughter: “I do not speak for Mr. Haig.” I can almost still hear her voice.

My upcoming trip to Scotland will be only my second trip to Scotland. I’ll be in Edinburgh and the isles of Mull, Ulva, and Gometra. I have enough memory cards for about 2,500 photos. When I return, I’ll be at risk of boring you all with Scotland posts. I probably will not be able to post while traveling, because I’m taking a bare minimum of electronics.

Catholicism in Ireland, R.I.P.

Saint Patrick, Wikipedia

One of the newspapers that I check each morning is the Irish Times. Today’s paper has a very fine essay by Fintan O’Toole. It’s an obituary for Catholicism in Ireland:

It’s too late. Not even Pope Francis can resurrect Catholic Ireland

Catholicism in Ireland had a long run — from the 5th Century to around 2000, after the many atrocities of the church were exposed starting in the 1990s. Now that Catholicism is dead in Ireland, it’s fair to ask the question: What did Catholicism ever do for Ireland? If newspapers are the first draft of history, then O’Toole’s essay suggests that history will take a dim view of Catholicism in Ireland. It’s a question for historians. I’m not a historian, but for what it’s worth, I have an opinion. That opinion is that Catholicism in Ireland, during its 1,500-year run, did very little good and a great deal of harm.

It’s necessary to start with some historical questions and to try to answer those questions as best we can: What did Christianity displace in Ireland? Was the church better than what it displaced? The church, everywhere it goes, destroys what it displaces. So we know much less about early pagan Ireland than we ought to know. But some evidence remains. For example, there was the Brehon Law, which gives us a pretty good picture of pre-Christian pagan ethics in Ireland. The pagan Irish were doing just fine before the church took over. I’d take a Brehon over a bishop any day. So would most of the Irish, but ultimately the Irish weren’t given a choice — until now. And the church lost.

While the church has been dying, Ireland has been undergoing a powerful cultural (and economic) renewal. The Irish Times has regular features about the reversal of the Irish diaspora and the Irish returning to their homeland.

Again, I’m no historian, and weighing the record of the church in Ireland is above my pay grade. But insofar as I know anything about the Irish, and insofar as I know anything about the church, my view is that the Irish people would have been much better off if the church had never existed. One of the greatest skills of the church is, and was, making white people (and their cultures) dull, dumb, and despicable. I don’t think that “despicable” is too strong a word, given the crimes of the church in Ireland that have now been exposed and which surely went on for centuries.

Now if only I live long enough to read the obituary of white fundamentalism in the American South.

Loyalty vs. justice

Matthew Trudeau Photography via Wikipedia

Regular readers here know that I find Jonathan Haidt’s “moral foundations theory” a very useful tool for understanding the minds of conservatives vs. the minds of liberals. However, I part company with Haidt when Haidt asserts that the moral foundations of conservatives and the moral foundations of liberals are equally valid but just different. My claim is that the moral values of conservatives are inferior. For my previous posts on this subject, search this blog for “Haidt.” But, just as a quick reminder, Haidt’s theory identifies liberals’ primary moral values as justice, fairness, and caring. The primary moral values of conservatives are authority, loyalty and purity. In this post, I want to raise a new complaint against conservative moral values: Conservative moral values are pervertable. But liberal moral values are sound, even under stress.

Yesterday was Aug. 21, 2018, the day Paul Manafort was convicted and Michael Cohen pleaded guilty. Those who previously were too blind to see the criminality and treason of Donald Trump (and of those who surround Trump) ought to have a clearer picture now of what Trump is. Trump’s “Tweets” today reveal a great deal about the conservative notion of loyalty. Trump praises Manafort and calls him “brave” for refusing to “break.” In Trump’s mind, loyalty (to Trump, naturally) is a higher and braver virtue than justice under the law. In Trump’s mind, to betray the conservative value of loyalty for the liberal value of justice means that a person has broken. The depravity of such a view is flabbergasting, but most conservatives won’t even think to question it.

Here is the New York Times headline:

My claim is this: The primary liberal values cannot be perverted. Justice will not harm those who have done no harm. Fairness will not harm those who are fair. Caring will not harm those who care, nor those whom they care about. But the primary conservative values all have a lurking dark side. Where does loyalty to the wicked lead? When authority is wrong, where does loyalty to authority lead? What if an idea is pure, but also wrong?

Conservative values can be valuable if they can yield to higher values. But in our Trumpian age, conservatives can hardly even see the higher values of fairness, justice, and caring. Authority, loyalty, and purity are what matter in their world.

A simple case study: How propaganda works

There are very few exceptions: Right-wingers and the Republican Party cannot win elections or have their way without lying and cheating. Without a sophisticated propaganda system (and, increasingly under Trumpism, the demonization of the responsible media), the right wing would be exposed as what it truly is: A radical minority with a highly unpopular agenda, and no principles, that gets its way only insofar as it can get away with lying and cheating.

This is an interesting case study, because Ken recently had an article in High Country News (a newspaper for the western U.S.) that explains what is really going on. The article is here:

‘No trespassing’ laws create personal playgrounds for the wealthy

The video above shows how right-wingers and Republicans use lies to enact laws that benefit the rich while pretending the opposite. This video — unlike more sophisticated right-wing propaganda with more subtle or hard-to-detect lies — actually is an example of bad propaganda because it’s relatively easy to detect the deception and the attempt to use fear to manipulate people.

In the video, we have a typical American family of three going about their morning routine in a typical American home. Clueless hippies and hikers are encamped on their front lawn, even though there’s a white picket fence. Sheila is out in the yard cooking hot dogs on someone else’s Coleman stove. A man is fishing in their swimming pool. We are given to understand that this is what will happen to typical Idaho families unless the Idaho legislature approves what may now be the most radical trespassing laws in the country.

But the easy-to-see truth is that a typical suburban Idaho family (are there even suburbs in Idaho?) is at no risk. Existing laws already have got them covered. The real story (as Ken shows in the article) is that this is a billionaire’s law.

There are more subtle messages in the video that are very disturbing. One is that nice people don’t camp and fish. Those who do camp and fish (that is, if they’re liberals) are careless and clueless and utterly disrespectful. Nice people, of course, stay in their atomized suburban homes and see the world only on their televisions, or maybe through a window if they ever open their shutters and curtains. The young daughter of the family raises her hand and starts to wave to the fisherman. But her dad pushes her hand down and says, “No; no, no.” The message is that nice people don’t even associate with people like that. That is probably the ugliest and most subtle message contained in this 47 seconds of propaganda: Civility can be dangerous if extended to the wrong people. Civic involvement is one of the last things Republicans want (unless its done through an organization controlled and financed by right-wing money, such as the Tea Party). Nice people stay home, watch television, believe what they’re told, and don’t get involved. Liberals are not only clueless, they’re also a threat to nice normal people. Why doesn’t the dad of the family just go out and ask the campers to leave, or call the police? Because the ad wants people to believe that, unless a new law is passed, the dad has no right to do that — a rather blatant falsehood.

Contrast this with how progressive political elements try to get their message out. This propaganda video is a nice contrast with something I posted two days ago, Environmental justice: The people fight back. The method used in that case was to leverage the media power of famous people to tell the stories of poor people who otherwise are ignored. The most important part of the news conference that I wrote about was not the speechifying by Al Gore and the Rev. William J. Barber (though they gave great speeches). The most important part, rather, was the parade of ordinary people who told true and verifiable stories of devastating illnesses and early deaths caused by living in proximity to coal ash.

For progressives, the challenge is how to draw attention to the truth. That’s what Ken was doing with his op-ed in a Western newspaper, on a subject on which he has done a great deal of research and written a book. For right-wingers, the challenge is designing effective lies, connecting those lies to an emotion such as prejudice or fear, and pumping those lies into the propaganda system.

I propose a game. The Nov. 6 election is coming up. Soon, television screens all over the country will be full of right-wing political ads. Analyze the ads as propaganda. Look for the lies. Were the lies obvious, or was some research required to expose them? Keep your list of fallacies handy. How many fallacies can you identify? What does the propaganda assume that people don’t know, so that it can take advantage of ignorance? What emotions does the propaganda try to stimulate? Whom does it demonize? What is the propaganda’s overt intention? Are there also disguised intentions? Is divisiveness intended? If so, who is being played against whom, based on what element of distrust or fear? Who paid for the ad? Whose interests does it serve? Google them and see if you can follow the money (that may be hard!). Feel free to apply the same checks to ads for liberals, and do your best to apply the same methods to scoring liberal vs. right-wing political ads.

Environmental justice: The people fight back

Al Gore

This is a rather long photo essay. I hope you’ll bear with me.

People sometimes ask me why I choose to live in a rural and seemingly backward place like Stokes County, North Carolina, after 18 years in an urbane place like San Francisco. Stokes is a poor county in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s mostly white, and it’s mostly Republican. But it’s also a beautiful, green, un-suburbanized place with mountains, a river, and forests that — as far as I can tell — reach all the way up the Appalachian chain to Quebec. It is an unspoiled — and also very livable — piece of rural America. I love rural America and refuse to cede rural America to Trump deplorables, because rural America can be better than that.

I also learned pretty quickly that I am needed here. The progressive people in this county are greatly outnumbered. But we are fierce, and we stand up for ourselves. We have become so effectively organized that we caught the attention a few years ago of progressive forces outside our little county. That’s why Al Gore and the Rev. William Barber were here today. For the Rev. Barber, it was his second time in Stokes County.

Many of the readers of this blog are in Europe, so you may need to be reminded that Al Gore was vice president of the United States from 1993 until 2001, with President Bill Clinton. Gore ran for president in 2000 and won the popular vote nationwide by half a million votes. But because of peculiarities in the American constitutional system and a disputed vote count in the state of Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the presidency to George W. Bush. Gore, a true statesman, said in his concession speech, “[F]or the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.” Since then, Gore has made environmental activism an important part of his life.

Readers in Europe, and some American readers as well, may need to be reminded that the Rev. William J. Barber II has been president of North Carolina’s NAACP since 2006. He is a theologian with degrees from Duke University and Drew University. I consider him the Martin Luther King Jr. of our day. With his “Moral Monday” resistance tactics in North Carolina, he has become a thorn in the flesh of the right-wing and utterly despicable North Carolina legislature. If rich people want it, the North Carolina legislature is for it. The rest of us don’t matter, except insofar as we can be made to pay for the things that rich people want, such as tax cuts.

The environmental justice issue here in Stokes County is a huge coal ash impoundment at a coal-fired electricity-generating plant operated by Duke Energy. The pollution of ground water, and the air, near this plant have sickened many people and caused many premature deaths. Most of those people are poor and black. They still are fighting for clean water. But they have gotten organized. (There is little need to worry about the residents of the abbey. Luckily we are some miles from this problem, and we are both upstream and upwind. But we care about our neighbors downstream and downwind.)

But this is a photo essay, not a political post.

Photojournalism is in my DNA. So I am very mindful of how photographs can be used to tell a story. I love taking photographs of people, so public events are a great excuse for pointing my camera at people’s faces and getting away with it. I shot 932 photos today, but I selected those that I thought told the story best, those that represent the main characters, and, hopefully, those that contain a bit of emotion.

This is my county. And I love it.

Karenna Gore (daughter of Al Gore) with one of our local activists

A local activist (and excellent fundraiser)

Al Gore

Rev. William J. Barber II

Local activists (and good friends)

A local activist and, I hope, a future candidate for political office

A local activist (and son of a local activist) and Al Gore

A local activist

Karenna Gore, daughter of Al Gore

A local activist

Stacks of the Belews Creek Steam Plant. The lake is primarily for cooling the steam plant’s water.

A local activist

Rev. William J. Barber II

Al Gore

A local activist

Hands during the breakfast invocation

You can’t have too much abelia

The bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies would agree: You can’t have too much abelia.

Abelia shrubs bloom almost all summer long. There are thousands of little dime-size blooms. Abelia is an old-fashioned and out-of-style relative of honeysuckle, though it’s not as fragrant, and (thank goodness) it doesn’t climb.

This abelia bush, now nine years old, stands in front of the abbey’s bay window.

Nearby, under the front porch, the hostas are in full bloom. ⬇︎

⬆︎ Hosta blooms. Click here for high-resolution version.

If only we had more of these

My guess would be that there are very few stiles remaining in America, though I also would guess that there were never that many in the first place, except possibly in New England. Most Americans probably don’t even know the word. Even I, born and raised a country person with roots in the Appalachian Highlands, know the word only from English literature.

I encountered this stile yesterday on one of the hiking trails at Rocky Knob, which is one of the camping areas along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s near Floyd, Virginia. The guide sheet for the Black Ridge trail calls it a “ladder.” Had the guide sheet used the word “stile,” few would have understood the instructions for getting across the fence (though the use of a stile is pretty obvious once you see it).

The near-loss of the word says a lot about our cultural loss. I’m guessing that city people these days walk far more than country people do. Cities have walking infrastructure; rural places have lost it. In my day, I’ve gone over and under my share of fences. But yesterday was the first time I’ve ever encountered a stile outside of a novel. Needless to say, I was delighted. There actually are two stiles — one leading into the pasture, and the other leading out.

The Black Ridge trail at Rocky Knob, by the way, is a remarkable little trail. It’s only 3.5 miles, but it has some of everything — deep woodland beside a small stream, a wee ford where you might find stepping stones if you’re lucky, highland meadows, cows, old farm roads worn deep by erosion and by the wagon traffic of many years ago, and the crossing of a ridge with views to both north and south. It’s all very Shire-like and picture perfect. I could imagine running into Frodo (out gathering mushrooms) or even Gandalf (surveilling the trouble afoot caused by Saruman’s agents inciting Trump supporters by telling them lies) at any moment. We’d have plenty of work for Gandalf in these parts these days.

Speaking of words, the Park Service employee who gave me the guide sheet and pointed to the trailhead said, “If you come across any cows, they’re innocuous.” That pleased me greatly, though it might have frightened those with poorer vocabularies. Probably as few Americans are familiar with the word “innocuous” as with the word “stile.”

Scratch a Park Service employee, bless them, and you just might find a lover of literature.

The word “innocuous,” by the way, comes from the Latin word innŏcŭus, which means “un-noxious,” or “harmless.” French cognates include noceur and nocif. But I suspect that the word “innocuous” came to us directly from Latin, since the words sound just the same. Related English words include “innocent,” and, of course, “noxious.”

While we’re at it, “stile” derives from the Old English word stigel, which is related to the word “stair.”

Readers in Britain: If you have nearby stiles, please send photos!

⬇︎ Update 1: A reader in the South Downs of England has sent these two photos of stiles, which she says are common in that part of England. I can’t say that I have ever seen anything like it. I think I’d call them plank stiles. Thanks for the photos!

Update 2: This Mother Goose rhyme has been running through my head all day:

There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Reviving Asimov’s Foundation series

I regularly search for promising new science fiction to read. It’s shocking how little I find — based, at least, on reviews and on-line lists. When I can’t find new science fiction, I return to the classics. At present, I’m rereading Isaac Asimov’s 1951 classic Foundation.

Now is probably a good time to read (or reread) the Foundation series, because Apple is reported to be developing a series based on the Foundation books for the new Apple streaming service that is to start up next year. It was reported in 2014 that Jonah Nolan was working on a Foundation project for HBO. But, as far as I can tell, that never happened.

Just intuitively, I suspect that Apple’s focus on the high-end market is more likely to get Foundation right than would HBO (or, heaven forfend, Netflix). HBO would try to make an action spectacle of the story, and Netflix would dumb it down. Though there certainly are opportunities for visual spectacle in Foundation (it was Asimov who first thought of a vast galactic empire with an imperial capital planet that was one huge city), what’s remarkable about Asimov’s novels is that there is very little action. Mostly, the story consists of very smart and very powerful people sitting in offices or conference rooms and having highly intelligent conversations. That’s not exactly HBO or Netflix material.

Foundation is as timeless as any science fiction I’ve ever read. One of the few things that make the story feel dated is that Asimov seemed to assume that nuclear power would be the future’s answer to its energy needs. Asimov got that one wrong. Otherwise, Asimov’s imagination has held up brilliantly for 67 years. I believe it was Neil Goble, in the 1972 book Asimov Analyzed, who says that Asimov came up with the idea of the galactic empire after reading Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the first volume of which was published in 1776. (Newer histories of Rome, I suspect, would have led Asimov in somewhat different directions.) It was certainly from Asimov that “Star Wars” got the idea of galactic empire. It’s an idea that has dominated fictional views of the galaxy ever since then (though often there are backwaters in the fringes of the galaxy where galactic power is weak and where outlaws and rebels can hide).

And let it not be said that I am the only science fiction writer who stomps on religion (a good way to get vindictive 1-star reviews on Amazon). In Asimov, religion is useful for manipulating the ignorati into doing what elites want them to do (ahem), but otherwise Asimov uses a wide range of insulting words to describe religion. Asimov is often quoted as having said, “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” On the other hand, “Star Wars” took the galactic empire in a very different direction, with an elite mystical cult based on “the Force.” Asimov is 100 percent free of such magic. I’ll even venture a prediction here. The day will come when “Star Wars” will begin losing its mythical power, as the idea of “the Force” becomes increasingly dated and hokey.

As we learn more about the galaxy, and as we try to understand our failure to detect intelligent life on even one other planet (let alone a vast galactic civilization), I suspect that the idea of a vast, high-tech, militarized galactic empire is another idea that science fiction writers ought to be re-imagining. As we try to understand, even on our single planet, the dangerous consequences of globalization, specialization, unsustainable exploitation, and long supply chains for the necessities of life, the more it seems likely that a galactic empire, if there is one, might be too wise for all that.

Asimov understood the dangers of dependency on long supply chains. In Foundation, he writes: “All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for the complications of the task…. Daily, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought the produce of twenty agricultural worlds to the dinner tables of Trantor…. Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by siege. In the last millenium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous revolts made Emperor after Emperor conscious of this, and Imperial policy became little more than the protection of Trantor’s delicate jugular vein.”

What might a sustainable galactic empire — and its laws and regulations and technologies — look like?