Wednesday, August 20, 2025
D+285/213/-1249
1953 General Fazlollah Zahedi arrested the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a CIA-supported coup d'état
1968 During the night, 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to put down the Prague Spring
2020 Former adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, was arrested and charged with fraud over a fundraising campaign to build a wall on the Mexican border
In bed at 9, up at 5:50, body all a-achin', etc. Long dream of a surprise reunion (?) of my MU undergraduate class, including Ed Felsenthal, returned from the dead, which had me crying in the dream. 68°, high of 73°.
Meds, etc. 'Morning' meds at 1:50 p.m.
Geri has been sick all day, although the harsh coughing has abated. She has sore ribs, etd., from days of coughing. The painting above is one I did many years ago of her, unhappy about something. It was one of a pair, the other being a painting of her broadly smiling.
Backlash: Revenge of the Whites. A DJT post on Truth Social yesterday:
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Mr. Trump said in a social media post. “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
More mind control, thought control, history twisting, more 1984 and Big Brother: ‘War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.’
What hath Bezos wrought? Here is a list of the opinion contributors on today's WaPo op-ed page: Adam Aleksic, Elsayed Talaat, Fred Mednick, Adam Leshinski, Andrew Clarens, and Max Boot. Max Boot is the only name I recognize. Since Jess Bezos killed the draft endorsement of Kamala Harris in the last presidential election, Robert Kagan, David Hoffman, and Molly Roberts have resigned from the editorial board. Additionally, the following columnists signed a joint letter condemning Bezos' decision: E.J. Dionne Jr., David Ignatius, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin, Karen Tumulty, Perry Bacon Jr., Alexandra Petri, Colbert I. King, Drew Goins, James Hohmann, Michele Norris, Kathleen Parker, Catherine Rampell, Jason Willick, Lee Hockstader, David Von Drehle, Eduardo Porter, Josh Rogin and Christine Emba. Since Jeff Bezos’s decision in October 2024, the newspaper has also experienced a significant decline in its subscriber base. Reports indicate that over 250,000 digital subscribers, including my daughter, canceled their subscriptions by late October 2024, representing approximately 10% of the Post’s total paid circulation of about 2.5 million, which includes both digital and print subscribers. I still subscribe, but I'm wondering why.
Driving through Mequon to pay Cliff Bergin $377 to inspect and test our sump pump last week, I noticed how many small businesses, including Cliff Bergin's, are located in that suburb, which was found last week to be the wealthiest suburb of Milwaukee, richer than River Hills and Elm Grove. I also noticed and admired how many very large and very expensive homes on large and very expensive lots there are there, and I thought, as I always do when driving through rural Ozaukee County, how could anyone expect the people who live here to vote for Democrats? I thought too of my comments in this journal on August 15 about David Brooks's essay in last week's New York Times ("America's New Segregation") about what he claims to be a "caste system," and a recreated Jim Crow system in the U.S. Brooks argued that (1) the dominant dividing line among Americans today is education-level, i.e., college graduates vs high school graduates, and (2) the division has led to de facto segregation or something like social apartheid in the country, and (3) the division has led to the rise of Trumpism and right wing populism. Perhaps he's right on all that; I don't know. In any event, he argued that what the country needs to fight this new Jim Crow, class or caste divide in the country, is some kind of undefined educational reform in the country, government investment of some undefined sort "into those job categories that don’t require college degrees" and "[m]ostly it will require [some sort of indefined] ground-up social reform." Then he concluded:
The rest of us can do something pretty simple: join more cross-class organizations and engage in more cross-class pastimes. Even something small makes a difference. This summer I’ve been wearing a New York Mets hat. As is their wont, the Mets have been trampling all over my heart for the past few months. But over that time, in places all around America, I’ve had scores of people from all walks of life come up to me to talk about the Mets, which often leads to conversations about other things. My Mets hat has reminded me of a nice reality: We still could be one nation, despite all the ways we’ve segregated it up.
These recommended solutions to our "new segregation" seem to me to be great examples of why I am not a fan of Mr. Brooks. In this journal on August 1 of this year, I wrote:
I have written in these pages before that I just can't warm up to David Brooks, in large measure because he seems so smug. He purports to see issues from 30,000 feet, looking down with x-ray vision, seeing problems and their root causes, and offering solutions in grand, broad terms. Although there are, as there always are, some basic truths in his analysis, like American society has many very serious problems, he writes about them at such a level of abstraction that he makes his proposed solutions useless, mere blather.
"Educational reform" of some sort, "government investment" of some sort, and "ground-up social reform" of some sort. All in favor, say "aye." Isn't this useless blather? On the other hand, Brooks's comment about wearing a Mets hat did resonate with me. I've never been one to wear sports fan clothing, being possibly the only man in the state of Wisconsin never to have owned a Packers hat, jacket, or sweatshirt during his 62 years of residency in the state. Packer gear is so ubiquitous, however, I doubt that wearing any of it would prompt many occasions of conversations with other Packer fans. On the other hand, I do regularly wear my baseball cap reflecting my service with the 1st Marine Air Wing in Vietnam. I can't count how many conversations that hat has promped with fellow former Marines and Vietnam veterans. They always start with a "Semper Fi" or "Semper Fi, brother," followed by at least a brief conversation: When were there, where were you, with what unit, etc. Sometimes the conversations are longer, but whether long or short, I appreciate the temporary connections. Many, perhaps most, of the veteran patients at the VA Medical Center 'show their colors' by wearing some paraphenalia showing their branch of service and perhaps the place or era of service. This is true mostly of Vietnam vets, perhaps because we comprise most of the patients there. I think I have seen only one old vet with a cap reflecting service in World War II, but a few who served in Korea. Most of the younger vets served in Iraq or Afghanistan and it's interesting that I see almost no paraphenalia reflecting service in those two long and unsuccessful wars. I have however seen some gear reflecting service in Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 short and successful Gulf War in Kuwait. But getting back to David Brooks and blather, I find it hard to imagine the millionaire business owners and managers, doctors and lawyers and corporate executives in Mequon wearing some equivalent of a Mets hat to encourage "cross-class conversations" at the local Home Depot or Costco. Nor can I envision them opting to sit in the bleachers or upper grandstand seats at Brewer games rather than box seats, or to choose seats in the end zone at Lambeau Field rather than better seats in order to schmooze with the truck driver in the next seat.. Nor can I imagine such brief encounters doing anything to lessen the pretty rigid social stratifciation that comes with significant differences in education, employment, and social status. So I agree with Brooks agout the deep stratification of American society, his suggestions for combatting it strike me as unrealistic blather.
No comments:
Post a Comment