Category: CULTURE

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Pictures After An Exhibition

The country has now survived  the two packaged events once known as political conventions, and the early indications are that not much has changed in the snapshot of the November contest.  The President holds a several point lead over Mitt Romney that continues to be paced on something obliquely referred to as a “likeability ” factor and a general sense that the President speaks for the everyguy.  Its the “everyguy” that is the facinating feature to me, and how that has changed so dramatically in the course of my lifetime – specifically, what apparently the “everyguy” cares about.

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post has a spot on commentary as to what the Democratic Party image has become as reflected at the convention and is a must read.  The party has morphed into a series of two dimensional pictures at an exhibition, each a specific image of grievances bound together only by the intensity of their sense of grievance.  The African American political activist at one time energized by the fight for civil rights and the concept of individual liberty, now consumed with the fight for monolithic governmental benevolence.  The 30 year old female law student, having achieved equal access to the law, now wanting the law to assure her free birth control as the signature achievement of her educational journey.  The public union leader, who has turned the concept of public service into the responsibility of the public to serve the public official.  All together, strident pictures of an America not founded on elevated ideas of personal liberty and freedom to succeed, but an America that is owed something, and the something that is owed, is owed  by one American to another.

And the framer of all these disparate pictures, the artist in chief, President Obama.  The lofty goal setter of 2008, with a vision of a healed planet and oceans whose rise is slowed, was no where in sight at the president’s acceptance speech.  That Obama was replaced with the plea bargainer, asking for more time to achieve the transformation of America from the united vision of the founders to the land of “at least I got mine”.  There was no mention anywhere of the approaching calamity of trying to support those entitled, on the backs of those who would provide the means for the entitlement.  Rubin states it perfectly:

So then it wasn’t merely that Obama let lose the rent-seekers (and birth control-seekers and free-education-seekers). No, he needed them to fill up the space and the airwaves, to promise that no matter what (fiscal crisis, recession) he will still be there to cater to the whims and demands of the constituent groups. Sure the economy is bad, but whose going to give you free college tuition?

It’s ludicrous, of course. If the economy doesn’t improve and we don’t avoid the fiscal cliff, we’ll be taking away, not handing out stuff. This is the “austerity” against which the liberals inveigh. In fact, they are driving us ever closer to the point where we will will have to quickly and severely cut out the handouts.

It is, as conservatives have said for so long, the Western European syndrome. As we spend and cater to the demanding crowd, we push ourselves closer and closer to the point where both the excessive demands and actual needs will go unmet.

Indeed. Yet the pictures as idealized as they are painted by the President can not hide the crumbling edifice beneath.  The promises of an economy put forth by this President that would equalize risk and reward, and therefore elevate all – the socialist ideal – is sliding into a malaise that may prove beyond any of our control.  The policy of picking winners has led to more and more Americans simply giving up on their efforts to find their way.  August 2012 employment figures show the unemployment rate dropped due to an ever increasing number of Americans who have simply stopped looking for work.  These are the pictures the artist in chief could not reveal – the student graduate in their twenties who can’t get started and the laid off workers in their fifties who have recognized there won’t be one more chance out there to finally get things right.  This country is increasingly looking like just another failed state, with no idea how to move forward and no will to adjust priorities.

The American everyguy used to be someone who regardless of personal circumstances could sense the larger picture, feel when the country was dangerously surging off kilter, and recognize the need to right the ship of state.

The election in November looms large.  We need the “everyguy” to step up and do what is necessary. We need to change the artist, if we have any hope of changing the picture of our future.

 

 

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Neil Armstrong- Our Generation’s Lindbergh… Starbound

     Neil Armstrong lost his battle with heart disease on this day in 2012 and returned to the heavenly firmament he so boldly explored for us over 40 years ago.  He spent most of the years after his moon landing triumph in self determined obscurity, rather than take advantage of the international celebrity status his achievement would have brought him.  In that way, he ended his time on earth much as the great American explorer of the heavens that blazed the way before him, Charles Lindbergh, each separated from the mythic event by a distance from the public that would seek to adulate him.  How each came to be reclusive had as many different spins as could possibly be imagined, but they are weaved into the fabric of what it means to be an exemplary American hero, and what the pressures of mega-celebrity status forces inevitably of great achievers.

Neil Armstrong was the living, breathing representative of the archetype of the American hero. The American Hero was smart, unassuming, competent, brave, adventurous, matter of fact, and most importantly, successful.  When Armstrong was born, Charles Lindbergh was over three years removed from his epic Spirit of St Louis solo flight from New York to Paris and was a mythic figure. At just 25 years of age, Lindbergh singularly accomplished what teams of pilots died trying to do, achieve an airborne connection between the new world and the old using devices that were still in their infancy of development, the airplane. Lindbergh was the most recognized figure in the world – millions had come out to see him as he toured the world, and later with his wife Anne at his side, showed America that flight could be safe and predictable for travel, shrinking the world for all time – and in the process founding Pan Am and TWA airlines.  Lindbergh looked and acted  the part the Americans wanted to see as the very best we could produce – a person who was raised among us, had no special breaks, but through his grit and personal ability achieved greatness – and never acted any differently.   This was the type of hero Americans all hoped their children would emulate themselves after, and the Lindbergh archetype was promoted in the press and on radio so no American boy growing up in the thirties could possibly miss the connection.  Lindbergh’s persona became Jack Armstrong, All American Boy on the radio, very likely playing in the Neil Armstrong household radio in Ohio, a young man who never lied, worked with others, was brave and adventurous, but maintained the ah-shucks attitude that all Americans cherished through hard times.

Young Neil Armstrong, however, would have certainly been exposed to the other side of mega-celebrity, the public’s lust to know everything about their heroes, and invade their personal space sufficiently to uncover their human frailties.  Neil Armstrong growing up in Ohio would have  witnessed the obsessive coverage of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, subsequent trial, and the uncovering of the other side of Charles Lindbergh, the colder, more calculated, and reclusive character that through no fault of his own made him a less sympathetic figure than he by every right should have been.  Lindbergh was stunned with the public access to his personal life and forevermore sought a reclusive existence far away from his adoring public.  He would come forward only intermittently from then on into the public eye, and seemingly only to misstep time and time again, in driving his personal darker views of humanity against the public’s previously unquestioning opinion of him.  The young adult Neil Armstrong could not have missed the Lindbergh example as to how pedestal of celebrity adulation is shaky and precarious to those who would stand abreast it.  It likely impressed upon him that in the unlikely event he would find himself in such a circumstance, he would never permit the exposure to the heat of adulation that brought Lindbergh to such a reclusive end.  He would instead choose seclusion, rather than have it forced upon him.

Neil Armstrong quietly built the resume of an American hero, aerospace engineer, US Navy pilot in Korea, test pilot of the X-15, and subsequently in the very exclusive club of American astronauts, becoming command pilot of Gemini 8.  He was, in short, the epitome of Thomas Wolfe’s definition of The Right Stuff.  As the flight crews became selected for the order of flights for the planned conquering of the moon, it became apparent to NASA that the command pilot who would actually step foot on the moon would need to be above all seen as overwhelmingly competent by his crew, rather than back slapping and gregarious.  No one fit the mold better than Armstrong.  The story of Apollo 11’s epic flight has been told before in Ramparts.  The story of the final three minutes of the landing of the LEM module, with failed computers worthless for computer residual fuel, an analytic Aldrin calling out estimated fuel status and residual flight power calculated on his slide rule, and the flight commander Armstrong determining to land the craft manually on the moon, or die trying rather than abort, is the stuff of legend.  With a quarter of the the world’s population than watching simultaneously and breathlessly back on Earth, Armstrong then calmly planted his foot for the first time in history on another celestial object, just 66 years after man had achieved controlled flight, and only 42 years after Lindbergh set foot in Paris .  “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for Mankind”, Armstrong intoned, and the world gasped at the representative symbolic achievement that had just occurred – the linear path from man’s first wonderment of the heavens, to Armstrong physically claiming it for all humanity.

No one would likely have been positioned to be a more recognized figure, and therefore a very wealthy man, than Armstrong after successfully splashing down on Earth on July 24th, 1969 after his epic voyage.  But perhaps the images of Lindbergh’s fall from grace prepared him to let it go without taking advantage of the moment.  There would be no Senator Armstrong, no President Armstrong, not even retired astronaut extraordinaire Armstrong.  Neil Armstrong was instead perfectly willing to return to the obscurity of normal life, eventually taking a job as a engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati and establishing a farm in Lebanon, Ohio where he kept to himself and his closest friends.  He avoided most controversies and situations where his name and position could be abused by others, and as a result over time lost his status to newer generations as a immediately recognized figure, to his personal satisfaction, and to the loss of younger generations who are starving to know what a real hero looks and sounds like.

With Neil Armstrong’s passing, the cumulative can do spirit of a 1960’s American nation has passed with him.  Modern national goals are partisan and short sighted, and reflect the politicians who pronounce them.  The greatness of Neil Armstrong, and on so many levels he was truly great, is obscured by modern layers  of cynicism and self absorption.  We should ask ourselves if the American Hero model we so admired, and of which Neil Armstrong is an immortal example, should once again have credence in our age.  Neil Armstrong once said that one of his biggest disappointments in life was never dreaming of his time on the moon.  It might pleasure him to know, that he made the dreams of an entire nation and world come true.  God Speed, Neil Armstrong.

 

 

 

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Solving “The American Problem”

I have just finished the fourth installment of Robert Caro’s epic biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and in keeping with the preceding three, it is exhaustive, dramatic, and moving.  Caro has given thirty years of his life in re-inventing the American biography through the persona of Johnson, focusing like a laser through the complex machinations of a immensely talented but flawed individual on the recognition, utilization, manipulation, and abuse of power as the driving force in this individual’s life.  This most recent treatise takes Johnson from the pinnacle of legislative power as Majority Senate Leader in 1958, through the humiliations of the Vice Presidency under a regime that distrusted and disliked him, past the searing intensity of a nation’s stunned reaction and grief to the assassination of President Kennedy, to the achievement of the pinnacle of power of the Presidency with Johnson’s skillful dis-assembling of the logjam that had prevented America from addressing its “problem” , the denial of civil rights to a portion of its people on the basis of their race, codified since the Civil War.  Living through the current administration’s distaste for detail and political discourse, the book The Passage of Power is a stunning reminder of what can be accomplished when the Presidency is in the hands of an individual that understands its legislative checks and balances and the perspective of history in the American Story.

The extent of Caro’s biography, after thirty years on still incomplete in the telling of the story of the majority of Johnson’s Presidency,(still to come), joins the Iliad like treatments of the Civil War by Shelby Foote and the biography of Lincoln by David Herbert Donald as re-framing iconic American moments in journey frameworks for the protagonists.  Journeys as a reality of their origin and completion require chronology and progressive layering to achieve complete understanding of the outcome, and as such, starting Caro’s treatise with The Passage of Power would be ineffectual.  It doesn’t take thirty years to conquer Caro’s biography but it does take some serious hours of concentrated study.  The story starts with The Path to Power highlighted by Caro’s framing of the very essence of Johnson in his unforgettable description of what it was like to live, and survive, in the desolate hill country of Texas at the turn of the twentieth century, forever linking Johnson’s roots to his compelling will to utilize the nation’s resources to attempt to reverse poverty and balance its inequities. This is followed by  Means of Ascent, the shortest and darkest chapter of the biography showing Johnson’s ruthless and desperate attempt to cling to power through any manipulations necessary, including the probable stealing of the 1948 Texas Senate election, barely avoiding his permanent disappearance from the aisles of power.  The behemoth in the biography is  Master of the Senate , Johnson’s meteoric rise to the pinnacle of the Senate as Majority Leader and the skillful positioning of himself as the country’s “inevitable” leader by succeeding at overcoming concrete- hard entrenched Southern interests in accomplishing the first comprehensive civil rights legislation since the Civil War.  Each book builds on the previous until a complex prism of Lyndon Johnson of profound core of understanding of the common man’s personal struggle cracked by egotistical need for blatant, naked power emerges.

  The Passage of  Power is highlighted by the metamorphosis of Johnson almost overnight from country rube to statesman and primordial political force, as he is thrust into the pinnacle of power as President by the stunning horror of the Kennedy assassination.  To the surprise of everyone, Johnson mutes his most overbearing features of bluster, bullying, and undercutting, to rise to the occasion in profound terms.  In the unstable weeks following the murder of the President, he achieves a smooth transition, clarity, and spectacular focus that no one in the Kennedy administration thought he was capable of, and sets out the goal of completing President Kennedy’s stated but moribund goal of universal civil rights by the 1964 elections.  In a few short months he proves to be an eloquent statesman for the cause, magnificent political operative, and powerful executive that leaves the anti-Johnson forces consumed with unseating him and replacing John Kennedy with his brother Robert as President in tatters and retreat.  Within eight months of the assassination the current, and future, President is clearly Lyndon Johnson, in a stunning reversal of the expected ebb of this man’s career though one step short of his life’s goal, the throne of Franklin Roosevelt, in the committed journey of this man from the dusty heat of the Texas back country.

Robert Caro is in his late 70’s and one hopes he does not befall the fate of William Manchester, who fell short by the ravages of age, in completing his multi-volume magisterial biography of Churchill.  Caro states he is in the process of completing the final volume, the presidential years of Johnson subsequent to the Civil Rights achievement of 1964, in which Jonson’s flaws of character eventually overwhelm his re-framing of domestic American life with his immersion in the Vietnam conflict.  The journey so spectacularly told by Caro so far is in mold of greatness in literature, and I wait with great anticipation the final volume, that completes Johnson’s journey as the forces of raw fate  expose his internal contradictions and set the stage for a country’s calamity of which it  continues to suffer the scars to this day.

The blather that passes for great speeches in today’s world show how important a belief system is to the capacity to explain a nation’s course.  Whatever his flaws, Johnson believed in the fundamental rights established in his nation’s constitution and framed his argument for civil rights not on egotistical righteousness, so repetitively displayed by our current leader, but in the strains and choirs of a nation’s historical  reason for existence and foundations of principle. We would do so well to have our current challenges framed in the cadences of another time.

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June 2012 – the Yin and Yang of the Western Ideal

The month of June proved to be an epic month for the forces that will determine the future of western ideals of individual liberty and free will.  As modern society seems to have determined, the forces are not directional, but in direct conflict with each other.  Taoist Chinese philosophy describes an equal and polar opposite juxtaposition of forces, the “dark” and “light” or yin and yang of events or actions.  Western philosophy as expressed in the enlightenment put forth the notion that the individual could take a hand in his destiny through free will and placed protections in the form of contracts with the individual, such as the precursor Magna Carta and the Enlightenment’s masterpiece, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.  These documents placed a firewall between individual liberty and destiny and the external forces that could drive an individual’s fate or shackle his free determination.

June 2012 may have indicated the Chinese philosophers are on to something.   The month began with the dramatic democratic expression of Wisconsin’s June 5th governor recall election, where the voting population under enormous pressure voted to preserve their capacity to dictate how the hard earned resources of the state would be used, rather than a special interest.  The month climatically ended on June 28th, with the Supreme Court of the United States determining the polar opposite,  a constitution wrenching decision that the government has the capacity for the arbitrarily greater good of society to compel people to participate in actions regardless of their individual desire to do so.

We are at this crossroads for the obvious reason that society itself is conflicted.  We are not the confident culture of the founders generation that universally trusted their own work ethic, personal responsibility and faith in God to secure their futures.  We live in a time when personal freedom is oft seen as a burden that too often allows the risk of bad choices and looks for a general blanket of security to protect against failure.  The evident security bargain has led to the “freedom” to obtain abhorrently expensive yet meaningless degrees that celebrate victimhood and security over personal elevation and competitive advantage. All the better to have someone else pay for this false choice then.  It has led to a government that seeks to remove free will from the map of life – whether its the car you own, the type of fuel it uses, the food you eat, or investments you make in your own health.  As it apparently it is no one’s responsibility to make these choices it becomes everyone’s responsibility, and burden.  It has driven us to support our fear of choice to invest in our own security at the expense of future generations, celebrating the perfect society, only to irreversibly sew the seeds of its inevitable collapse.

The Wisconsin election suggested the recognition by the voting public that mandating the future does not preserve the future, is not a dead concept.  Like a morbidly obese person who recognizes that their personal exhaustion and moribund status is related not to the  architecture of their humanity but rather the increased burden excessive weight  places on the usually capable physical machinery,  the Wisconsin voter opted for governmental weight loss, and the result was a state that can breath easier,  walk farther, and more confidently face the future’s challenge.   The Supreme Court decision implies that it remains for the national voter to grasp the effects of a morbidly obese national debt on the nation’s health and energy, and face the hard decisions the Wisconsin voter did.

Chief Justice Roberts failed in one crucial sense when he voted to uphold a law he knew to be adversarial to the tenets of the Constitution he took an oath to preserve.  It was his failure to recognize he became political by suggesting the Court had to be above politics and therefore not interfere in policy.  He stated:

“We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders.”

“Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

Chief Justice Roberts may have been correct when he stated that it was not the Court’s role to determine whether policy was bad or good, but he failed in discerning that whatever the political pressure,  it is the Court’s unique role  to determine as to whether  policy , bad or good, is constitutional or not.  His logic implies an underlying absence of conviction that the constitution as designed with limited and enumerated powers  is good.  Bad or good policy ruled unconstitutional can be re-written  to reflect constitutionality and voted on again.   Unconstitutional policy whether bad or good alllowed to stand destroys the fabric of law enforcement’s constitutional basis.  If the Chief Justice feels it is politically damaging to apply the standard of the Constitution to legislated law, it calls into question why any law should accept the Court’s constitutional role by the founders to check and balance for legislative exhuberance.

The month of June ends with the ying and yang of western civilization becoming ever more acute and pertinent.  Is it the role of western society to evolve in such a way that it evolves itself out of existence?  Are we smart enough, prescient enough to recognize the elements of our own survival lies in trusting the latticework constructed by our greatest thinkers so long ago to guide our future?  Chief Justice Roberts is yin, Scott Walker is yang, and We the People are the inevitable whole that will need to provide the ultimate destiny.

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Triumphalism

 

     Modern politics continued its progressive downward spiral in relevance last night. We were treated with the bizarre circumstance of an American President travelling half way around the world  to give a speech in the middle of an Afghan night to an empty room , fronting his only attendants, some lonely Humvees, extolling his leadership in achieving the triumphant “conclusion” of the war on terror.   And then he flew home.    This was to be the pinnacle of a carefully choreographed week of focus on the Obama commander in chief review.  First, the intense focus on Obama the Warrior, bravely leading a decision to send special forces into Pakistan against Osama Bin Laden, and contrasting it to the supposed hesitation of a President Romney facing the same odds.  Then, Obama the Avenger, with his army of drone assassins seeking out the Al Qaeda fugitives and annihilating them in their hideaways.  Finally Obama the Peacemaker, closing out conflict in Iraq, and the Afghanistan, and standing before the cameras of an empty room declaring victory and closure.

     If only…

     The current president certainly didn’t invent triumphalism.  It was not so long ago that a President Bush found himself landing a fighter on an aircraft carrier, standing before a Mission Accomplished sign and prematurely declaring the end of hostilities.  But there is a uniquely narcissistic character to this President’s framing of himself as the indispensable cog that drives the successes and fashions a compliant world.  It is disturbing and unseemly that the President and Vice President celebrate the “kills” as if they are bounty hunters or democracy’s enforcers.  First, the elimination of Bin Laden, then the “taking out” of Awlaki in Yemen, and now the the President bragging about the erasing of “over 20 of the top 30 Al Qaeda leadership”, continuing today with the evaporation of 15 nameless Al Qaeda militants in the Yemeni desert.

     What is the end game of this triumphalism? When did the policies and international interests of the United States becoming inextricably linked to  a hit-man superhero and a scorecard of results?   History is unfortunately littered with examples of premature crowing and assertions of personal indispensability.  These examples have more often than not ended  in untoward ends for both triumphalist and the cause they so blatantly declared superior.  The American model of being about the philosophy not the individual is being subsumed by a new kind of politics more suited for the propagandistic bellows of a 20th century dictator, and its bound to end ignominiously.  Being the President who has collected the most scalps is unlikely to be a respected leader among those who still have their hair.

     We are left with the scenario of an awkward gladhanding  speech to an empty room have way around the world designed to impress a nation back home.  It does nothing for me, and I suspect intimidates no one who is in this President’s crosshairs.  Triumphalism. Profligate spending.  No budget in three years, and no budget in sight.  Extra-constitutional judicial leanings.  A country in economic wilderness.  The driving force of re-election – I may have accomplished little, but I am great nonetheless.

    Put it all together, consider the delusion of the man and his conceptualizations of the American process and I remain convinced. Worst. President. Ever.

 

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100 Years On, Its Still a Titanic Saga

    

      One hundred years ago today, the world became slowly aware of an unfolding tragedy in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic that resonates in our time as an engrossing saga.  The RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York struck an iceberg at 1140 pm April 14, 2012 of the coast of Newfoundland, and so began a harrowing two and one half hour dance with death that ended with her sinking at 220 am April 15th, 2012.  Of the 2224  passengers, 1514 would not survive the night, making the sinking of the Titanic one of the largest loss of life at sea in peacetime recorded.   The unique confluence of one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century, the tragedy striking the boat on its maiden voyage, and the progressive binding of the world in the communications revolution that wireless provided has led to a story of tragedy of special nature and endurance.

     The RMS Titanic was one of three magnificent ships built by the White Star Line to create a luxurious and rapid transatlantic transport they hoped would make the voyage predictable and repeatable.  The concept was a boat leaving Southampton for New York every Wednesday and an ocean liner back from New York every Saturday, all in the modern convenience and luxury of a White Star craft.  Transatlantic voyages, forever a hazardous and lengthy process in the time of sail, taking up to six weeks to traverse 3000 miles of open forbidding ocean, was becoming through the miracle of steam power a tolerable six days, and in the magnificent luxury of the White Star Line, conceived as a pleasurable voyage. A one time one way perilous voyage was now being conceived of as a repeatable event, where vacations to Europe or America, business on either side of the Atlantic, or moving to American shores while not leaving the family far behind was possible and potentially commonplace.  J.P Morgan, an American financier and primary investor in the cruise line thought so, and in underwriting the building of the Titanic and her sister ships, saw it as just another inevitable triumph of man’s conquering of his environment.

     These were special ships and engineering triumphs.  The RMS Titanic was the largest ship built of its time, over 10 stories tall and 882 feet from stern to bow, displacing over 50, 000 tons.  Her massive reciprocating engines backed by turbine were capable of over twenty knots consistently, driving 23 foot propellers. An army of firemen were required to shovel the 600 tons of coal a day required to drive such engines.   She had 15 watertight compartments, and with the loss of any two, or the partial flooding of any four, the great ship could continue to float.  Over 15000 workers of the Harland and Wolff shipbuilding company of Belfast, Ireland labored 26 months to weld her 2000 6 by 30 foot steel sheet plates together with millions of rivets in the technology of the day. She was designed with a bounty of modern conveniences, designed in essence to be a floating luxury hotel, with spas, swimming pools, premier restaurants, workout facilities, and spectacularly furnished suites and verandas. She was a triumph of her time and the zenith of British shipbuilding capability and know how.

     The Titanic had her sea trial just a week before her planned transatlantic voyage but handled beautifully.  Captain Edward John Smith was senior most of White Star’s executive captains and was selected to oversee her maiden voyage.   The initial voyage contained many celebrities among its passengers, including one of the richest men in the world John Jacob Astor, the owner of Macy’s Department store Isidor Strauss, and the ship’s architect and designer Thomas Andrews.  Leaving Southampton on April 10th, she crossed the English Channel to pick up passengers in Cherbourg, France, headed to Cork, Ireland and then into the expanse of the Atlantic.  The Titanic was approaching Newfoundland on the fifth voyage day, entering the area of the Grand Banks known as “the corner” where ships routinely angle south towards New York.  The night of April 14th was quiet and moonless, and the water exceedingly still. Reports of rogue icebergs in the area were filling the wireless, usually the indication for ships to slow down with such poor visibility, but Titanic was part of a cruise line that wanted to establish predictability to transatlantic scheduling and continued unbounded into the iceberg zone.

      The starboard side impact with the iceberg that felled Titanic was one not envisioned by the designers, a glancing blow that caused only a minor plate buckling that however popped rivets , creating a sliver of water access to the ship’s interiors, transitioned fatally across five compartments. Water poured in at a rate 15 times the capability of the bilge pumps to remove it, and progressively the forward compartments inevitably filled until the stern tipped forward enough to allow water to pour over the bulkheads, filling one compartment after another.  Though the initial impact was so slight the majority of the passengers barely noticed it, the fate of the ship was settled in the original thirty seconds.  The next two and one half hours of progressive terror were inescapable from the initial failure of the rivets.

     The early morning of April 15th was filled with horror as the ship’s demise became progressively apparent and the surrounding dangers obvious.  The water temperature was estimated 28 degrees, creating a scenario of rapid hypothermia and death for any individual forced to contend with unprotected exposure, the lifeboats were too few and the stunned passengers and crew too disorganized to achieve a rapid and measured abandonment of the ship.  As the bow began to reach water line, the end became sudden, as the great ship, with thousands of tons of water pulling its bow toward the bottom, seized and split in half, its stern then pitched vertically with hundreds holding on as best they could , until it too past beneath the surface. Only 700 passengers and crew made it to the boats and those in the water due to the temperatures had no chance.  Despite two hours of distress calls it was three hours after sinking that the RMS Carpathia finally approached to pick up the survivors.

     The indepth story of Titanic’s last hours as told by the survivors was so filled with courage and bravery, terror and panic, chivalry and cowardice, that it seized the attention of the public and has never let go.  The incomprehensible defeat of modernity to the basest elements of ice and water, crushing the light out of a ship declared essentially in just two hours made the loss an especially poignant one.  Men had decided to conquer time and distance for their own needs and pleasures and the flaws in their assumptions had disastrously brought to bear.  There is nothing in the Titanic saga that stopped progress – the incredible speed of a six day voyage is now a seven hour flight from New York to London and many times the population of the Titanic make that trip every day.  But the moral of the story, man’s willfulness and pride in his achievements at times overwhelming his common sense continues to show itself this very day.  In 2009, an Air France transatlantic plane was lost with all on board when the pilots, attempting to navigate through a mid-atlantic thunder storm, mis-interpreted their air speed and in a stall continued to pull their plane’s nose upward, compounding their plane’s loss of air speed until the entirely capable plane was essentially flying vertically and with no forward momentum tumbled out of the sky into the Atlantic.  The vulnerability of man as he continues to stretch the limitations of his earthbound nature will always have potential tragedy shadowing him, as a matter of course.  One hundred years later, the Titanic’s tragic beauty appears before us as in a long ago dream, and reminds us of our own unpredictable journey.

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Sinking Ship

     A progressive frustration is building among those on the goodship United States that are seeing all the signs of a foundered boat and are seemingly unable to divert those who are naively or perhaps deliberately  navigating it toward the rocks.  What to do when you see the ship obliviously heading toward the iceberg and your warning shouts are drowned out in the stiff wind?  How to respond when the reef has been struck, water is pouring in and those in charge state everything is under control and continue to pretend there is no danger of calamity?  Is the ship so far out to sea that deciding to preserve yourself when she sinks ends up with you on a lifeboat with no hope for rescue or shore?  How does one respond when the captain responsible for navigating the ship through dangerous waters plows ahead blindly and when finally appreciating crisis blames all others for the debacle?

     We are rapidly reaching a time of impact for this ship that has been so steady through 230 years and the options for avoiding disaster are becoming progressively more limited.  What can been done when it appears a steadily larger portion of the ship’s population is trading responsibility for security and can not be counted on to work together and consider some sacrifice to right the ship?   Our educational process, which for several centuries has been anchored on the basic instruction of what makes the rights of an individual American unique and to be defended, has over the last decades become mute to the progressive ignorance of these American principles, and has traded them for propagandist causes and the shilling of victimhood.  It has permeated our culture to the point that the very pinnacle of leadership, the President himself, a supposed constitutional law professor, anointed the “smartest man” ever to hold the office, proves himself daily to be inexplicably ignorant of the very constitution he pledged to uphold, protect, and defend.

     The Constitution of the United States was a hard won, painstakingly researched and vetted document of specifically enumerated powers that left a template of easily understandable checks and balances to, above all, limit the powers of the rulers and preserve the powers of the ruled to navigate their own lives.  With few exceptions, it has proved to the world that even in a sprawling country of hundreds of millions, a steady and common sense course can be navigated despite so many competing interests.  In ship of state terms, it has until the very recent past seemed unsinkable, because the population at least had a basic understanding about how such a document protected them, and the government, though tempted, always bowed to the document’s ultimate logic.

    Now we face the unsteady decks of a 16 trillion dollar debt and a spending fetish that allows a self imposed spending limit barely a year before it has been consumed and must embarrassingly be increased because of a complete inability to accept its limitations.  We face the gushing waters of debt pouring into the hold, and the bilge pumps in the form of exhaustive but at the same time insufficient taxation unable to keep with the inexorable flood.  Most insultingly, rather than turn our damaged ship toward the safety of shore our leaders head it out to a deeper, more dangerous sea, as if they were free of the laws of nature, immune to the risk, and ignorant of the fate.

     One can only hope that on this ship of ours there are those of sterner stuff, who will see the crisis for what it is, and restore stability.  I just fear that the majority have forgotten what the original voyage was all about, and rather than man the pumps will look to their own safety and exit strategy.  What a sad loss for mankind it would be – because she was, and still could be, the most beautiful of ships.

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Swing Vote

    

      The 2008 movie Swing Vote  puts forth the premise that as a result of an impossibly splint American electorate and an election night malfunction the entire result of the Presidential election comes down to the single unexpressed vote of a New Mexico ne’er-do-well played by Kevin Costner. The future direction of the United States is implausibly tied to the ultimate “fence sitter” whose personal leanings are essentially unknowable.  Mark Steyn in National Review Online in his typically brilliant style  relates how a similarly absurd process is underway at the Supreme Court hearings into Obamacare, and how the shifting sand ideology of Justice Anthony Kennedy may be the deciding scale upon which the entire future of a United States, balanced or unbalanced upon a constitutional platform, is determined.

     I am not remotely suggesting that Justice Kennedy is a ne’er-do-well. The superficial comparisons with the movie end at the gate of Justice Kennedy’s accomplished career and intellect.  I am suggesting that our society’s ne’er-do-well attitude regarding civilized process has led us to this abyss.  When Chief Justice Marshall ruled in Marbury vs Madison in 1803 that it was the onus of the judicial system to determine the extent to which a legislated act conforms to the Constitution, he could not have possibly imaged that such a consideration would lead us to the calamity we face today. Reflecting upon a set of principles, commitments, and responsibilities outlined in a mere four pages of a Constitution, it was a capable step to interpret how a single action could be reflected in the clarifying single sentences of the various brilliantly crafted Articles.  He would have been dumbstruck to consider the constitutionality of a legislative act of governmental enumerate powers that spanned 2700 pages under the ludicrous title of the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act, a leviathan of a law that seeks to delineate all potential considerations in managing an American citizen’s well being, currently one sixth, or 2.6 Trillion dollars of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States.

     I am additionally not suggesting that Justice Anthony Kennedy is the modern day equivalent of Chief Justice Marshall.  He’s not-Not by a long shot. Justice Kennedy has , however, unfortunately been put in the position, as a result of a perfectly split court reflecting a perfectly split electorate, of determining what will be the American Truth every bit as important as Marbury vs Madison.   I don’t envy his weighty responsibility.

     Oh, to have to assess the potential constitutional conflicts of a law that at 2700 pages already is a temple to conflict with constitutional values.  The legislative crafters of this Noah’s Ark of Health Care, the crafters that nurtured and voted for it, had little if any idea of the consequences of such a blizzard of regulations, organizations, and powers. The main sponsor, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, suggested the best way to find out what was in the bill was to vote for it. The influential congressman, John Conyers of Michigan, suggested the very size of the law assured that he would have no time to read it, and that he felt comfortable voting on it sight unseen, if the people who assured him the law was a good idea would stand behind it. Behind such indepth analysis, the future of the implied contract of freedom of the individual and their relationship to a government with clearly limited enumerative powers hung in the balance.  No worries.  Certainly the justices who would be required to assess the law’s constitutionality would take the time to deconstruct the massive missal to governmental overreach. Actually, no.  A 2700 page law proved beyond their capabilities and as Justice Scalia opined, would represent “cruel and unusual punishment” to any one individual who dared break the seal and read.  So we are left with Justice Kennedy, the deciding vote, determining the very future of the United States, interpreting a law that no one has read, and invoking its future permanence or demise.

     Mark Steyn makes all writers take a back seat when he puts his mind to paper, and in the case of dissonance of writing laws that no one can read, and its effect on a democratic society, he stands as a Zeus:

“Who does read the thing? “What happened to the Eighth Amendment?” sighed Justice Scalia the other day. That’s the bit about cruel and unusual punishment. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages . . . ? Or do you expect us to give this function to our law clerks?”He was making a narrow argument about “severability” — about whether the Court could junk the “individual mandate” but pick and choose what bits of Obamacare to keep. Yet he was unintentionally making a far more basic point: A 2,700-page law is not a “law” by any civilized understanding of the term. Law rests on the principle of equality before it. When a bill is 2,700 pages, there’s no equality: Instead, there’s a hierarchy of privilege micro-regulated by an unelected, unaccountable, unconstrained, unknown, and unnumbered bureaucracy. It’s not just that the legislators who legislate it don’t know what’s in it, nor that the citizens on the receiving end can never hope to understand it, but that even the nation’s most eminent judges acknowledge that it is beyond individual human comprehension. A 2,700-page law is, by definition, an affront to self-government.”               national review online Mark Steyn

      We are left to balance our futures and all that we have on the inscrutable machinations of Justice Kennedy. The careful balance of the three branches of government, so carefully weighted, and so brilliantly expounded by Madison and Hamilton, have been deformed beyond all recognition.  It is up to Justice Kennedy, to free the tethers of the future from the whims of a solitary individual,  and send this immutable mess of a  “law” back ,forcing Congress to do its job of writing laws that invite structured debate and are knowable to all, so that rational choices can be made.  Obamacare stands on the pretense of Accountable Care.  We all know upon reflection that President Obama’s centerpiece is of no account, providing care that is simply uncountable.  That’s no Affordable way for a democratic society to work.

 

 

 

 

 

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All That We Are In One Place

   

       This past week saw a cultural changing of the guard in the defense of civilization’s ramparts.  The Encyclopaedia Britannica company annouced that they would no longer produce a printed version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and that the 2010 printing of the 15th edition would be the final one in book form.  For 244 years, the Britannica stood as the undisputed reference champion as to the accumulated compendiumof man’s acknowledgement and understanding of the world around him.  The first addition, published initially in 1768, by its Scottish founders Andrew Bell and Colin Macfarquhar, contained in three volumes a summary of the natural, historical, and physical world, with the intent to be both scholarly and to educate.  The three volumes were assembled by a single editor, William Smillie.  The final 15th Edition, published in 2010, claimed the contributions of over 100 full time editors, and over 4400 contributors, including many of the greatest reviewers known to their field of interest. Over 40 million words and half a million topics comprise the final printed edition.

     I of course had to own both.

     The pull to personally own the editorial bookends of 244 years of academic effort to summarize in a reference, available to all, the available knowledge of the world was too great for a lover of books such as I.  In physical value, maybe not so intelligent a purchase.  The progressive demise of the printed book after all has been well underway before Britannica’s announcement, and nowhere more acutely realized then in the reference book.  Placing on a shelf a significant investment that almost from the moment of placing the words on the printed page is already a dated set of facts is the inherent fatal flaw of dinosaurs such as Britannica.  The spectacular, universal, and immediately current information now electronically available on the Internet has brought printed references to their knees.  The amateur scholar of today leans on the enormous capacity of search engines such as Google and rapidly updated resources such as Wikipedia to focus his search for fact and underlying truth.  The 2010 Britannica edition in-depth article focused on global warming is immediately obsolete as the facts that form its basis have since been called to question in the East Anglia scandal and contrary evidence since. Similar problems with the permanence of printed truth versus the flexibility of updatable electronic truth inevitably made resources such as Britannica, Compton’s, and World Book a progressively poorer investment for individual research and education.

     Oh, but what a run. The Britannica brought to bear the great minds over the centuries to countless topics that every family could peruse at their leisure.  To review economics with Milton Friedman, Astronomy with Carl Sagan, Relativity with Albert Einstein, or Heart Surgery with Michael DeBakey was the unique calling of Britannica.  The exalted position of Britannica was cemented in 1901 with purchase and movement of the company to the United States, exposing the vaunted treatise to the wonders of market concepts.  The Britannica publishers piggy-backed their book on the concept of door to door sales, and the Britannica rapidly became a status symbol and an indication of the desire for higher learning in many American homes.  People now could know what the privileged few at universities were privy to, the vast expanses of civilization’s knowledge base limited only by the effort and energy required to sit down and read the Britannica.  It became a status symbol to claim to have read the entire set, and some claimed to have read multiple editions.  Whether it was the Aardvark or the Zeppelin that interested you, Encyclopedia Britannica was prepared to make you a learned student of the subject.

     There is of course a certain arrogance to attempting to cover all that we know in a tolerable collection of words.  Arguments over the decades of what was left out and what was left in Britannica were as much a part of the story as the facts within.  And now, the obvious champion is the Internet, with millions of experts and intense and constant vetting of information.  I am a proponent of the Internet and the magical quality it has to bring the freedom of ideas to the entire world, both the privileged and subjugated, in a way that a few volumes never could.  Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledges this, and continues from now on in the more flexible digital form for its subscribers.  The romance of the leather bound books with gold leaf, however, brought a stateliness that the egalitarian Internet can never hope to have, and I mourne its passing.

    The ongoing progress of civilzation often  requires we leave some cherished traditions and concepts behind, but with the purchase of the first, and the last, attempt to place on paper that which we want to know, I have allowed myself a few more decades of the wonderful experience of wondering, reaching, searching, and knowing in the pages of a book.  I look to William Smillie the 1st Edition’s editor to remind us of the value of such actions, in all their glory:

Encyclopaedia Brittannica 1768, 1st Edition

Heaven

“literally signifies the expanse of the firmament, surrounding our earth, and extended every way to an immense distance.

Heaven is considered by Christian divines and philosophers, as a place in some remote part of infinite space, in which the omnipresent Deity is said to afford a nearer and more immediate view of himself and a more sensible manifestation of his glory, than in other parts of the universe.  This is often called the empyrean, from that splendor with which it is supposed to be invested; and of this place the inspired writers give us the most noble and magnificient descriptions.”

     Now, that’s Heaven.

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Bordeauxinsanity

    

      Wine Spectator magazine March, 2012 issue acclaims the 2009 Bordeaux wines a classic, generational vintage. Perfect weather and felicitous harvest timing positioned the most famous vineyards in the world to achieve awe inspiring results for the sophisticated wine assessor to gawk over, with ratings for the 1st growths achieving 98-99/100 scores on initial tastings.  The wine lovers among us should be overcome with joy in celebration of a spectacular vintage, non?

     Non.  The great wines of Bordeaux 2009 will never be something any reasonable wine enthusiast, even one saving his shekels, will ever taste a drop of.  The estimated price per bottle to partake in the experience of the 2009 vintage of the great wine producer Chateau Lafite Rothschild will set you back 1800 dollars.  That’s right –  a case of this wondrous brew put aside for the expected 12 to 15 years required to begin to untap its potential comes at 21,600 dollars. Plus tax.  At today’s prices, for each case of perfection of Chateau Lafite, you could buy 205 barrels of oil,  13 ounces of gold ingot, a Honda Civic with gas money to spare, or approximately a third of a year of a Harvard education (speaking of inflated value).  Lucky enough to have someone else buy the bottle and offer you a glass at cost, it would cost you 5 Packer tickets at the 50 yard line or two shares of ownership.  Fear not, you have almost no chance of making that painful decision to spend so extravagantly, as the available first growths are being swept up by those who see them as future investments as much as contributors to a good meal.  The expansion of deep pocketed purchasers, particularly the recent influx of Chinese millionaires looking to imbibe in the world of luxury purchasing have settled on wine as the ultimate symbol of success and are willing to pay what it takes to participate.

     The exalted position of Bordeaux as the home of the most desired wines in the world came about through historical endurance and exceptional marketing.  The presence of wine grape harvest goes back in the region of Bordeaux over 200o years with Roman growers in the province of Aquitania realizing the value of the beverage to thirsty drinkers from the suffering soldier of Albion (Roman Britannia) to the nobles of Rome itself.  Wine as a trade resource suffered the tribulations of all commodities with the fall of the Roman system  and it was not until the linking of the fortunes through marriage of Henry the Vth and Eleanor of Aquitaine that the demand for Bordeaux wines again took off and became an export commodity.  Demand and Bordeaux’s excellent growing climate and soil conditions led to the expansion of the appropriate land available of expansion of vineyards in the 17th century, and by the mid 1800’s wine stood as a major export product of France itself.  But how to tell the lovingly produced from the slapshod? Well there’s technique, and quality, and taste – and of course, price.  The 1855 French classification system by which the Bordeaux wines have flourished in reputation was weighted heavily on price.  After all, market demand drove the price and must of course have as a prime characteristic of demand quality.  The assumption lead to the 1855 recognition of four growers of Bordeaux as First Growth, the marriage of quality and price – Chateaus Lafite , Margaux, Haut Brion, and Latour. Regardless of changes in ownership, talent, technique, and effort, the first growths have held their exalted, and resultingly pricey position in the wine world ever since, joined only through the incredible pressures over time of the grower Rothschild’s successful lobbying of the entrance of Chateau Mouton Rothschild to join his Lafite chateau as a first growth in 1973.  A classification system based primarily on the prices of wine in 1855 thus rules demand for product and the mark of excellence in 2012.

     The noble qualities of the primarily Cabernet Sauvignon grape of the left bank wines of the river Gironde and the Merlot grape of the right bank (though the blends vary) are not in question.  The question is one of sanity- is a beautifully developed 25 dollar sip of a Haut Brion Cabernet a better experience for the wine drinker  the equivalent 2.50 sip of a California 2007 Paul Hobbs Cabernet or a 25 cent sip of a 2007 Robert Foley Claret?  Do you have to be Robert Parker to tell?  Married with a wonderful Filet Mignon does it matter in satisfaction until the bill comes due?  I had one opportunity at a so-called 100 year wine, a wonderfully kept 1982 Lafite Rothschild at the twenty year mark, of course on someone’s else’s generous dollar, and although I admired its immense depth, silky smoothness, and wonderful complexity, I ended up happy and tipsy as I had with much lesser mortals, and I cant say it changed me much.  I never became a voracious automaton for the perfect drinking experience, and my bank account thanks me.

     I am happy for the hard working wine producers of Bordeaux that in 2012 they are still able to convince a Chinese industrialist or a Hollywood producer that he needs to pay a king’s ransom for a 2009 Bordeaux whose price is based on a 1855 market snapshot to get on with life.  Vive la France!  As for me, I will continue to struggle on with an occasional 2006 Boscarelli that cost 12 dollars of inflated pricing at the restaurant I enjoyed it at in Tuscany. It made me happy, and slightly tipsy – and I still had money left for dessert. Now that’s a life experience worth every penny.