To set the stage: A company called Freedom Industries operates a facility on the Elk River, upstream from Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital. That facility is part of the coal recovery and distribution process. To do its work, the company has a lot of chemical products stored there.
The confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers is located right in the middle of downtown Charleston. (A bit of nickel knowledge: That was the site of a winter camp of the noted frontiersmen, Simon Kenton.)
At the Freedom Industries facility, early in January, at least one of the above-ground chemical tanks leaked. About 7500 gallons of one (or possibly two) little-understood chemical were released into the Elk River. Aerial photos taken shortly thereafter showed the sheen on the water as the chemical spill flowed into the Kanawha.
Freedom Industries is upstream from the intake for the water treatment plant of Charleston. Of course, there are also lots of other water plant intakes down downstream from there. Around 300,000 people who depended on municipal water systems were without potable water to drink for more than a week. The water in the system could not be made safe by boiling or any other common means.
The lawsuits have already started and Freedom Industries has filed for bankruptcy.
Let's dispense with the question of fault quickly. Freedom Industries is liable. It is liable using the same reasoning used by Gerry Spence in the Karen Silkwood case, where the issue was a spill of radioactive materials. If you keep a tiger, and the tiger gets out of the cage, you are responsible for the harm the tiger does. Period. Because a tiger is so dangerous, you have a duty to use extraordinary efforts to keep the tiger caged.
Just so, chemical users have a duty to use extraordinary efforts to keep chemicals secure from release into the water or otherwise loose in a way which will endanger the public.
Freedom Industries screwed up big time. It let the tiger out.
But before we feel all shocked, offended and morally superior, let's see the first lesson from the Elk River spill:
There are lots and lots of tigers out there in flimsy cages. We profit from having the tigers and as long as nothing goes wrong, we don’t think about whether or how they can get out of the cage.
A random example: Most communities have some sort of large public swimming pool. Most pools use chlorine as an agent to keep the water clean. Anyone who swims (or does laundry) knows that the odor of chlorine is harsh and uncomfortable even in minute concentrations. Anything more than a minute concentration of chlorine is a health hazard. Chlorine was one of the first chemical agents used in warfare, seeing action in World War I. When the wind was right, the "chemical soldiers” took cylinders forward, opened the valves, and let a heavy and deadly gas cloud spread to the enemy. The inhalation of chlorine was often fatal and when not fatal, often caused grevious and permanent respiratory injuries.
The cylinders used in war are just like the ones which contain the chlorine at big swimming pools. So - Do you know how secure the chlorine is kept as your local public pool? Do you have any idea of the degree of danger of an accidental release? Do you know how - or if - the pool staff has been trained to handle the chemicals? How about the security of the chemical from someone who wants to release it with a malevolent intent?
I didn't think so.
In a typical "Band-Aid" fashion, the West Virginia legislature is "taking action"! We have seen new proposed legislation which increases the oversight of above-ground chemical tanks.
Whoopee.
The Band-Aid approach is hardly unexpected. It shows how deeply the Political Class Cares (so keep those votes coming). Because it is aimed at a very small part of the problem, we can say that it's not that expensive. Besides, they'll figure a way to tag the chemical industry with the cost.
. . . and conveniently forget that the people pay for everything anyway.
This illustrates the main de facto function of the Political Class, to decide how to spend other peoples money so they themselves look good.
The best lesson from the Elk River Spill is that we should look beyond the immediate cause and realize that the above-ground chemical tanks are a tiny part of the danger.
Obviously, those tanks were a problem – Freedom Industries failed to keep the tiger caged. That violated the industry standard of redundancy: If the tiger escapes first cage, there needs to be another cage between the tiger and the people. Or, in the case of chemical storage, there has to be some secondary method of containment.
So we have to deal with the fact that there are lots and lots of bad things which can happen which have the potential for widespread public harm. And when meeting that harm exceeds the capacity of the local responders, we have what's
called a disaster. (Actually, that’s one definition of “disaster.”)
Generally, we have little or no redundancy in our entire infrastructure. But this is an infrastructure upon which we depend for day-to-day functioning and in many cases for basic sustenance.
We as individuals are so dependent on public services – infrastructure – that when any of them go out of service, we as citizens often perceive ourselves weak and unable to cope. And so we look at Big Daddy government to ride in and save
the day.
Like Hurricane Katrina - “You’re doing a great job, Brownie!”
Bad things can happen. There are 200,000+ chemicals used in industry. As to most of these chemicals, the levels which people can tolerate and the effects of long-term low exposure are only poorly understood. We do know that some chemicals – e.g., PCBs and dioxin – are dangerous or lethal in extremely small concentrations. Indeed, dioxin exposure at “safe” levels has led to illness and death of lots of Vietnam veterans. (Including my now-deceased brother.)
Elk River, one incident, took away the clean water source for 0.1% of the American population. That was with one tank. A simple (and inaccurate) extrapolation would say that 350 tanks of the same product could take out the entire nation’s supply of drinking water.
Another infrastructure where there is little redundancy is the power grid. The power grid is a patchwork controlled in many places by antiquated equipment. There is insufficient profit in the power industry to upgrade to robust and redundant control systems. As long as the primary system works, as long as the lights, computers and TV’s are on, the public doesn't notice and wants to keep their power bill down.
Our entire "just-in-time" delivery system is another large infrastructure. To keep shipping costs down, businesses receive products and materials just when they are about to be used. That cuts down drastically on warehousing. Indeed, at WalMart distribution centers, the ideal is that nothing gets stored. Products come from the receiving dock to a sorting area, where they are paletted for immediate shipment to stores.
The disruption of the transportation system will lead to immediate shortages of food and other products upon which we heavily depend. The kinds of things that can take down the transportation system are legion: Deteriorating bridges, weather phenomena, earthquakes, terrorist/aggressor action, and those are just the ones immediately come to mind. Of particular concern are the weak points in the system which can be exploited by humans with a bad intent.
The response to Elk River was immediate and reasonably effective, but it has within it the lesson of inadequate response. This was 0.1% of the American population affected. The effort put in to supply this one commodity, drinking water, to that part of the population was very large and expensive and covered used the disaster response/materials of most providers east of the Mississippi.
Even so, there was a drumbeat that aid was not coming in fast enough or in enough quantities and that the government wasn't doing enough.
All in all, we got lucky this time.
So: What are the answers? Surely there has to be an answer.
Gotcha – Complex problems seldom are solved with simple answers. Certainly, legislation regulating one minute part of the problem is nothing more than a little Band-Aid with a lot of brass band.
The truth is, nobody, no government, no NGO, no private agency has the guts or the insight to forecast the threats, organize them for probability of occurrence and extent of potential harm, and then do what it takes to prepare for them. On so many occasions, we depend on "good old American know how" to come up with ad hoc responses to problems. An ad hoc response (or, in the industry vernacular, picking a plan out of your ass) seldom works. Multiply Elk River by an order of magnitude, then you might exceed the national ability to keep people safe.
This whole lack of planning reminds me of that old song about fixing the roof. The roof leaks when it rains and that's bad, but during the rain, we can't get on the roof. On sunny days, we can can get on the roof, but we really don't need to because it's not raining so the roof is not leaking.
We have a leaky roof. As long as we are unwilling to plan realistically and make the sacrifices in advance, we are going to be subject to disruptions which we can scarcely imagine. Individually, these are improbable in any given year. Taken together, a very bad event is inevitable in any decade.
I wish I could predict a happy ending. But that would take finding a new mindset, or what would look like one everybody except the very old, and to find a spirit of sacrifice
that nobody shows these days. And, worst of all, it would also require guts and truth from the Politcal Class, which have long been AWOL.
There’s a dandy social commentary waiting. It’ll have to wait. Tonight is free-form writing time.
It’s cold in West Virginia. Damn cold. Well, it’s winter, what do you expect? And citizens here and all over the north and east are staying away from the outdoors as much as they can.
As I was driving from Morgantown yesterday, I was reminded that this isn’t possible for everyone. There is a Fellowship which goes extra hard in the cold or the heat or the deep snow.
I was passed on the Interstate by an ambulance with some of my brothers and sisters from Webster County. Presumably, they made an inter-hospital transfer to Ruby Memorial, one of the large teaching hospitals in WV or to Monongalia General, which specializes in some particular kinds of care. The R-mobile has various insignia on it, including the “Star of Life” - the universal emblem of the Emergency Medical Services - front & rear. So as they passed, I gave them a sincere thumbs-up and they gave me a breath of the air horn. That’s just a simple acknowledgement in that Fellowship.
And I know that back in Webster County, more EMS crews were either in stations or out on calls.
And in every other county - ditto. For that matter, this goes for all 2,000+ counties in the United States, and in provinces, shires and so forth around the world.
The people of the emergency services - fire, ems, police - don’t have a choice about their work load and don’t have an appointment calendar. When the alarm comes in, a crewed station will be out the door in 45 seconds or the next due station is put on the call.
Consider that. Folks are at work. There's not a lot of sitting around, there is vehicle prep, house maintenance and training, training, training going on all the time. Those who have called emergency services see fairly calm people in the midst of chaos. That’s because those professionals seldom see something unfamiliar. In the worst of times, they can say, “Do it just like in training.”
So from the warm station, they find themselves out in sub-zero temperatures 45 seconds later. Then there are long walks, long treks carrying heavy equipment, and moving from outside to inside and back over and over. For the fire departments, the “inside” may be several hundred degrees worth of warm. For police, usually there is some level of threat or violence. Among other things, they cannot wear warm gloves because their hands have to be free to defend others and themselves.
The 45 seconds is the rule on midnight shift, too. There, they go from a warm bunk into the cold or the heat or the rain or whatever is out there.
I used to love those calls at night. A fellow I knew, Jim Page, wrote a book on the subject, “The Magic of 3 AM.” Everyone is focused on the call, the location, the problem. But they also have time to feel the different pulse of the city or countryside. In the fog, they see the red lights popping reflections from the mist back toward them. They feel the road through the floorboards and the big breath inhale of the large truck engine as it runs up the gears. On a long response, they have time to reflect -- on the call, on themselves, on picayune stuff perhaps. “What are you doing after we get off?” “Gonna hit the grocery store and then try to catch some zz’s.” That sort of thing.
If they are volunteers or have a second job, the “zz’s” have to wait until the evening. These are dedicated people. Through fatigue, they will function.
I remember one of those fatigue days. I was at the end of trying a murder case that had gone for a week. (That’s a long case in WV.) It was August, hot, and during the trial, I would take a midnight motorcycle ride just to get some perspective and fresh air. We finished the evidence and the argument, and the jury was out for a couple of days. I needed a change of scenery. So after the first day of waiting during deliberation without a verdict, I called my buddy and we found a volunteer station in the county that needed coverage that night. This was in a small town, and it was nearly a “retirement” station at night, a place that you could count on getting a good night’s sleep. At midnight, we had a snack and turned in. At 0010 or so, a call came in for a long response to back up some other crew. We pulled out at 0010:30.
And we pulled back in promptly at 0600, when the shift ended, after running all night on half a dozen long calls. Our principal reaction was, well, we asked for it, and it was kind of funny.
Oh, I got to snooze on a courtroom bench for a hour or two before the jury came back.
This is natural for these people. They do not complain and they find these things funny. There is a certain pride - no, a darn GREAT pride - in doing these jobs well under all sorts of adverse conditions. These are the people who this week have noted that the school systems are raising sissies by calling off for a little bit of bad weather. They have a point: children cannot count on getting easy lives handed to them. Fatiguing stuff, scary stuff and wildly disgusting stuff HAS to be done in our society.
Someone has to clean up shit. Both figurative and literal.
One of the better lessons I learned was from a Chief named John Green. He was a hell of a man. We came back from a call where we’d used a couple of body bags and they needed cleaned out. That’s part of the job. A couple of new guys were there and we asked them to help. They were unused to this and expressed some reticence. John then explained the “code” of service. “Boys,” he said, “it’s OK to get sick. Go ahead. Go loose your lunch. Cry. Curse. Wave your arms around. And then get back here, because we have to clean out the body bags.”
What a wonderful lesson: SOMEBODY has to do the shit jobs. They only get worse if you wait.
I hope that the brothers and sisters from Webster Springs got home and got to go relax at home. You can be guaranteed that if they were called later that day, they went in 45 seconds. That is what the Fellowship does.
Maybe all of us who bitch now and then about our hard lives - the traffic, the kids, our “unfair wages,” the cable going out - need to remember and ACKNOWLEDGE the people who clean up the messes.
Just thinkin’.
Weather remains a traditional and (allegedly) interesting subject of discussion. Despite the fact that we cannot alter the weather, it may be a useful and positive discourse topic. That’s not because we need to care about people's opinions of weather, but because those discussions reveal a lot about personalities and cultural trends.
We can conclude tonight: The current cultural trend is that America has become the Land of the Whining Sissies & the Home of the Cowardly Lions. Let's see Francis Scott Key find fit that into song lyrics. (“Oh, the rockets’ red glare; Flushed the patriots from there . . .”)
Government offices stay tuned to CNN so that they will know what's going on in the world. That may explain things about how inefficient government is. I caught CNN Thursday afternoon when the big "news" was that a winter storm was coming.
On No. 3 EquityCourtTV, the story would have been "Hey, there's a storm coming. It’ll snow. And it'll be cold - Duh.”
Then No. 3 EquityCourtTV would go to some REAL news.
Not so CNN. The announcers were breathless. The "reporters" were giddy. I would have sworn that we were hearing from a couple in the back seat of a car on Lovers’ Lane.
The prose was priceless:
". . . the massive storm barging across the U.S. . . ."
". . . slam headlong into another storm system . . ."
". . .100 million people in the path of the storm . . ."
". . . horribly cold in Chicago . . ." [Possibly windy, too.]
"A snow emergency in Boston…"
["I'll respect you in the morning(?)"]
And, naturally, the storm was named. It was not just any old name, not Bob or Ted or Carol or Alice. This storm is Hercules!
The storm is so big that it merits a handle of mythical proportions. (Did we need to find someone to cut Hercules’ hair and take away "his" power? Wait, I may be confusing my mythical boogy-men.)
The assumption is that if we survive Hercules, it will be because our wise leaders acted boldly. You know, mere CITIZENS cannot deal with snow and cold!
Oh, now I can hear the howls of laughter from Saskatchewan and Alberta.
I have to wonder why weather doom is played up. I’ve thought of a few possible explanations:
- The weather is easy to report, and even easier to exaggerate. It’s exciting. OK, to some people it's exciting. It's not as if this is real news, which requires analysis and may be subject of disagreement.
- Stories of horrific weather pander to the malignant progression of softness of the American body and spirit. Give us a reason to be afraid and then it's OK. It's okay to be scared! After all, Wolf, Robin and "the most trusted names in news" tell us to be scared even though they're not scared. And then, after we have cowered in the storm and it passes, we can pretend that we did something really brave – We survived the attack of Storm Hercules!
I cannot help but picture some Japanese monster movie from the 1960s.
May be we need to strike 100 million little medals, with the legend "I cowered courageously!"
- And, finally, talking about this awful weather avoids the necessity of filling time with news that's hard to gather, harder to analyze and which would be thought-provoking with good reason.
After all, do we really want to hear that 10 members of the American military were killed and 30 injured in Afghanistan this week? What a downer! Besides, if we think of the people actually handling an Afghan winter in the midst of armed enemies, that makes our bravely cowering in CONUS a little bit of weak tea.
Do we want to hear that the Affordable Care Act has attracted less than one half of 1% of the population? Nah.
And how about the annual Congressional extortion racket? Congress just let 55 tax saving provisions lapse. Oh, they will reinstate them, but only after solons have milked interested donors for contributions (tribute?). It's an old congressional scam that’s part of the Let's-make-a-deal-and-score-some-bucks methodology of that Great Marble Whorehouse in Washington.
It's easier to talk about the weather. We do not want a discontented public. We certainly don't want to tell anybody any uncomfortable truths. We never want to hear any "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore" from just people.
So for Heaven’s sake, let's talk about the weather!
Oh, the weather flabbling also gives public "leaders" a little sychophantic boost. If Boston has a snow "emergency" that results in anything other than post-salted-earth Carthage, the mayor, the governor and their cronies have proved themselves bold and brave.
One worry that is been expressed by a number of news outlets is that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio just took office and so is facing his "first big test of leadership." Commentators hope that the new mayor can "guide the city of 8 million through the crisis."
The truth is, should Mayor de Blasio have any trouble guiding the city through the snow, Hizzonor has chosen the wrong line of work.
It won't be the Mayor out driving the Department of Sanitation trucks which are plowing snow and spreading salt. That will be the thousands of sanitation employees who are working 12 on and 12 off as long as there is snow to be cleared. If the Mayor makes any decisions more complicated than "Yes, there’s still snow, so keep plowing," then he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The plans for something like snow are already in the "cookbook." The emergency managers – the people who do the real work and who wrote the plans – simply will execute the plans.
This is not a situation like WTC, where Mayor Giuliani was praised for leadership in an unprecedented and unplanned-for emergency. But if even something with 3000 casualties were to happen today, it’s now covered by emergency plans. The city would not need and sure as hell would not want the Mayor fiddling with the plans. The people who actually need to respond are doing their jobs. They already know what the plans are and practice them regularly.
But if you need to be a victim, now’s your chance. You have Third Estate approval to cower, whine and whimper at the feet of Storm Hercules.
I think I'm going to read a while. This whole weather thing is just way too boring. I just can't get my Cower-Power in gear.
Phil Robertson of the A&E series “Duck Dynasty” gave an interview to GQ, Gentleman’s Quarterly. He was asked for and gave his opinions on a number of subjects. In that interview, he said that he considers homosexual behavior immoral because it is proscribed by the Bible.
That’s a fairly innocuous formula: They ask. He answers.
This is America. We do not have laws against sedition. We do have a First Amendment. He does. We do.
And A&E canned him.
And so we revisit that same old, tired bugaboo, “How dare you say that!” Or, to quote one of the nitwits, “Americans won’t stand for Phil Robertson’s comments.”
Some point out that A&E has First Amendment rights, too. So be it. The “rights” of the soulless still confuse me. I suppose you could say that A&E has the right to disrespect the Constitution just like an individual does.
As to the remarks themselves, it is perilous to talk “about” them. Or to “interpret” them. Let’s just read them:
Question: What, in your mind, is sinful?
[Note: Ol’ Phil didn’t bust into somebody’s home and start forcing them to listen to as sermon. He was asked for a statement.]
Answer: Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.
Don’t be deceived. [He’s loosely quoting the Apostle Paul from I Corinthians, now.] Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers – they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.
Later, after others interpreted this as personal hatred, he expanded:
However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all humanity. We would be better off if we loved God and loved each other.
This “love all humanity” is consistent with Robertson’s past writings and speeches/sermons. It's consistent with Christian doctrine and all of those red words in the Bible.
The whole notion that we would be better off if we loved each other surely is acceptable to anyone responsible. Well, if not, they have First Amendment rights, too.
So here we have a dilemma which has become de rigueur in American society. Someone exercises his/her absolute First Amendment rights and (1) they experience negative consequences such as loss of employment unrelated to the statement or opinion and (2) few people seem smart enough to separate a disagreement of opinion or values from the worth of a person.
Mind you, I disagree with Phil on the merits of the opinion. And I agree with him about a whole lot of things. And I disagree with other stuff he says, too. There’s the “God gave Man dominion” thing. I’m not a hunter and I regret all to hell that people go out and gun down unarmed birds. I won’t do it. I won’t go along on a hunt. I’m not going to write off hunters as evil people or mess with their job because they’re doing something legal with which I don’t agree. [Oh, I’m also a hypocrite - I consume poultry.]
Another aspect of this sort of “debate” is that there is no moderation. Some of us just can’t stand it when somebody thinks differently. And we have little or no degrees of this agreement, just an on-off switch. If somebody agrees with us, they are good. If they disagree, they are the spawn of Satan and should be cast into either the literal or secularly metaphorical lakes of fire.
I regret that the (majority?) of the people, centrists, remain so quiet. That silence is understandable since people with big mouths equate disagreement with disloyalty or betrayal of this or that cause. I can understand why centrists don’t want to bother with the noise. We don’t have to like it.
I wonder if there is room for a “Reality Party” United States. Maybe we could call it the “We Aren't Hotheads Party.”
Here’s a true story of genuine, strong disagreements which don’t become shrill, shrieking, psychotic episodes.
West Virginia, as students of American history should know, was born out of the American Civil War. The counties west of the Blue Ridge were populated mostly by people who felt ignored by the state government in Richmond. In the secession crisis of 1861, there were areas where sentiment was divided. One of these was in Barbour County, West Virginia, where the county seat is Philippi. (Much of my practice is there, and it is a delightful place.) Philippi was the site of the first land engagement of that war.
At the beginning of the Civil War, there were only a few lawyers in Philippi. The general sentiment of public officials was in favor of the Confederacy. From January 1861 until June 1861, the time of that battle, the Confederate flag flew over the courthouse.
Two prominent lawyers practicing in Philippi were Spencer Dayton and Thomas A. Bradford. Dayton was a very strong supporter of the Union. Bradford supported the state’s rights view and placed loyalty to Virginia first. Also, they were good friends. They ran against one another to become delegates to the Richmond secession convention. After that convention passed a secession ordinance, Unionists in town had a secret meeting in a shoe store in the middle of the night to select delegates to a Union convention in Wheeling, near the northern tip of then-Virginia. Four delegates were selected and three of those backed out at the last minute because the way out of town – a covered bridge which still stands – was guarded by Southern sympathizers. Dayton was the fourth. He left his home quietly in the middle of the night. As he approached the bridge, he spurred his horse into an all-out run and got past the guards. He attended the Wheeling convention which repudiated secession and established a “Restored Government of Virginia.”
Bradford, also having the courage of his convictions, was an organizer and Captain of one of the first militia companies to cast its lot with the Confederacy, the “Barbour Greys.” He left town in the spring of 1861 and fought with the Confederacy until the end of the war.
For most of the balance of the war, Union troops occupied Philippi. Then, as now, occupying forces aren’t always very benevolent. The troops were destroying property of Southern sympathizers. Dayton went to Bradford’s now-abandoned office and packed up Bradford’s law library and effects. After the war, Bradford returned and his friend Dayton gave him back the tools to restart his law practice. Later, as a State Senator, Dayton was one of the “Let-Up Republicans,” who supported blanket reenfranchisement of those who had fought for the Confederacy.
All Phil Robertson did was state opinions that he cannot enforce on anyone. He is punished for mere words. Thomas Bradford was received back by his friend after bearing arms against his beloved Union.
That is the essence of the Constitution in America. That is the essence of mutual respect with which Americans should hold one another. If someone holds opinions contrary to yours, his/her opinions are no less sincerely held than yours nor are they entitled to any less personal respect – no matter how loony you may think the ideas. When we confuse the position with person, the idea with the individual, we are promoting social chaos and resolving precisely nothing.
In the meantime, the world goes on as the chattering birds of wounded feelings peck at their own images in the mirror and ignore very much concrete.
By the way, a Methodist minister in Pennsylvania, Frank Schaefer, was fired and defrocked last week because he wouldn’t swear to quit doing gay weddings. One might argue that one a little differently, but really it’s not. He deserves the same consideration as we should be giving Robertson.
Maybe we’re all hypocrites?
The Pope recently published a 50,000 word essay or encyclical or the like, Evangelii Gaudium. As the name suggests (to all three of my Latin scholar friends), the theme is evangelism. In short, evangelism is the assertive spreading of the Gospel, the “good news,” i.e., Christian doctrine.
Among the minor themes is that people in contemporary society go overboard in consuming things, worshiping money, and generally hosing the poor. That theme is hardly a new one in Christian thinking. “Red Letter Christians” – those who seek first the words of Jesus, which are printed in certain editions of the Bible in red – read prominent warnings against love of money and disdain for the poor.
Rush Limbaugh, sturdy feldwebel of American ideology, boldly penetrated the Pope’s shtick this time. Rush assures us that the Pope’s ramblings are pure Marxism. He points to the possibility that leftists (hiding in the Curia?) intentionally mistranslated what Il Papa actually said in the original language. (Spanish?) Or, Limbaugh theorizes, the College of Cardinals goofed and elected a guy as the Vicar of Christ who is really the Shade of V.I. Lenin.
Since the English translation is on the Vatican website, that kind of narrows it down to the "goofed" theory.
So is Francis a Commie-Red-Marxist? Is Rush just not too bright? Or is this Rush’s own propaganda flimflam?
I’m voting “C,” the flimflam option.
The length of this post so far proves how effective the flimflam is. And how easily we can be pointed opposite to the clear teachings of Christ or against the clear imperatives of generally accepted moral behavior. Incidentally, the same teachings are found in nearly every religious/ ethical/ moral system – Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Humanism, whatever. I look at the teachings of Jesus but the flimflam is on all people of goodwill.
So why is calling the Pope “Marxist” such an effective slur? This quick characterization is really good propaganda because it is quick and uses already-existing negative images – and, most importantly, it takes reasoned argument to dispel the fraud. In our sound-bite-Tweet era, if you can’t say it in 10 seconds or 140 characters, 80% of your listeners will lose interest and their minds will wander away.
We Americans don’t like Commies, even now that the “old” Cold War is ended. Without the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, good opinion manipulators are moving the appearance or name tag of Marxism to the American so-called political left. Mind you, that has nothing to do with actual Marxist doctrine.
[Oh, yes it does!, whined someone in Tater Junction, South Elbonia just now. Fine, get out your Classics Illustrated Comic Book on Political/Economic Doctrine and fondle yourself quietly.]
Rush has merely borrowed a term with a high negative index – “Marxist” – and slapped it on someone who mentions money, the poor and, by inference, class. And the tag sticks. But like a pile of manure with icing, it's still not a birthday cake. The beauty of this technique is that the user need not explain or even have the first clue about what the tagline means. Nobody likes Commies, he’s a Commie, q.e.d.
Propaganda is a fascinating subject about which there is a lack of understanding. Propaganda is a toolbox which contains methods of persuasion. Period. The doctrines promoted are not the propaganda. As such, true propaganda is neither inherently good nor bad, moral nor immoral. The subject may be.
Nor does calling something “propaganda” make it so.
If anybody asks, “Who’s the best propagandist ever?,” most people say Goebbels.
Not.
The guy couldn’t use 3 words where 73 would do. Goebbels' information campaigns were successful in that the targeted population kept their opinions consistent with the “party line,” even in the face of eventual good reasons to the contrary. But let’s face it, he started with a very soft target (people in a depression & quasi-anarchy) and had huge resources devoted to “public information.” Eva Braun - a noted Teutonic dim bulb - might have pulled that off.
A few really skilled propagandists immediately pop to mind. There is Reagan (and his writers) – “Evil Empire.” “Tear down this wall!”
Bush II – “… Cowardly [9/11] terrorists.”
Ayatollah Anybody – “Great Satan.”
And with good propaganda, it becomes absolutely offensive to resort to logical reason to disagree: The terrorists were craven cowards!
No they were ideological zealots, morally bankrupt and bat shit crazy. But flying an aircraft into a building – especially when you’re sitting in front – isn’t cowardly.
Right, tell it to the True American.
To refute the sharp tang of propaganda when it is applied randomly and illogically. “What the hell are you talking about?” is an acceptable and reasonable response, but is not very persuasive.
Even Rush has had illogical propaganda used (poorly) against him. Al Franken wrote the quirky book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, where a lot of footnoted facts and reasoning were buried in hysteria. (We have heard little from Franken lately. He became a United States Senator, where he is indistinguishable from the other 99 straight-faced comedians.)
With the response to Rush’s latest, I have to ask: “Rush, what the hell are you talking about?” I don’t think you can warp Marxism out of Frances’ nice (if wordy) exposition of Christian doctrine even if you borrow that other guy’s comic book.
Marxism is a doctrine of materialism which posits predetermined historical forces which supposedly develop in a predictable manner. A primary focus is the relationship of different economic groups to the means of production and how that changes. Bending that into a moral warning against worship of money and consumption and respect for “the least of these” is the non sequitur game-of-the-week touchdown.
Yet some significant part of the American public – 1%? 5%? – will have a reduced respect for this Pope and for a part of Christian/moral doctrine by virtue of this little episode.
Rush’s fault?
Surprise. No.
To paraphrase both our Lord and Savior and Harry Truman, “Nitwit’s will be with us always.” And we need to expect that.
The fault lies squarely with an intellectually and morally lazy and scared American people. Control and naked power used push us around will become more and more heavy-handed until and unless Americans generally develop a habit of thinking and then find the guts to speak up.
Rush, I liked you when you were a nonpolitical and funny DJ on WIXZ in Pittsburgh. These days, you and whoever writes your stuff are poor excuses for citizens.
I will confess to discomfort that I do not faithfully follow my own counsel.
Scribes, I say, should exert the strength of words and ideas toward bringing the vessel of society onto a better course. Almost the universal modus operandi of tinkerers with the alphabet, however, is to point out how rotten, unfair, unjust or hypocritical things are – and then just put it a period there.
I do it to.
For heavens sake, though, there is so much hypocrisy, malignant triviality and general nitwitery out there to identify!
A favorite topic of conversation is the weather. It’s safe. It’s outside our control. We can bitch harmlessly or express content without being seen as run-amok optimists, for those who find that embarrassing.
As a younger version of myself, I enjoyed “matching wits” with Nature and predicting Her behavior over the next day or so. Things like the color of the sky in morning or evening, how sounds carried and behaviors of wild life had meaning. Mostly, it was harmless fun – I never could do anything about the weather.
The advent of satellites and weather radar gave a science nerd like me a few more playthings. Making them available in real time online became positively a distraction.
So lately, I’ve gone back to the color of the sky and so forth.
Not so the harpies of public panic.
Within the past four days, our temperatures have dropped and we’ve gotten a bit of snow. Tuesday, I was cruising various news sources and found a reference to an attack by “Boreas.”
Who the hell is Boreas?
As it turns out, that unidentified “they” has begun naming winter “storms,” like weather services name hurricanes and typhoons.
Maybe one can make a case that this is an improvement over calling this “the snow we got last Thanksgiving.” But I don’t buy it.
This is merely an amalgam of a cutesy trivialization of any slightly technical information and a personification of some new evil to fear and from whom we want to seek protection – by Somebody Else, of course.
The dumbing down of America has been a topic of discussion in these Dispatches and will be again – just not today.
This new brick in the wall of the Wussification of America annoys me.
We got snow and cold. When that happens, we need to respond in certain ways. When I was a kid, that meant we got up an hour early to install tire chains. Nowadays, folks need to dress warmly, sweep sidewalks and so forth.
We are not invading Poland. This is not Gettysburg in July of 1863. We are not being attacked by a pissed off angel who must be confronted in desperate battle or appeased.
It’s winter. Winter happens.
Oh, but if we give it a name, we can fear more! Wringing our hands in our 74̊ homes and wondering if the toilet paper and milk will last out the storm enables us to feel oh-so-victimized and out of control.
And when (whew!) finally the storm abates, we will not have had some snow, we will have “survived storm Boreas.” Just as we didn’t have a bunch of wind in June, we were “hit with the derecho.”
Quick, somebody needs to print the T-shirts.
Our predilection to see things and call it suffering is pitiful. And it does harm to society when it diverts us from seeing actual suffering. It diverts us by leading us to feel sorry for ourselves to the point that we have no room to consider ways of bringing concern for those in need some physical world action.
If our shoulders are stooped, our eyes hooded, and our arms crossed as we stand shivering at the window, we are not going to have room in our minds or hearts for anyone who has to behold the snow without an intervening window. So we’ve given up another little piece of our courage to some public relations engineer.
This notion of some new little demigod, this one named Boreas, means that we voluntarily diminish ourselves.
Pansies are pretty flowers. They make weak building material.
Khat Got Your Tongue?
Reuters two had two separate stories today, totally disconnected, which together create a really delicious irony.
Government health agencies have long targeted tobacco as a Real Bad Thing
Mind you, no Congress or Parliament has the character to go ahead and ban it. So governments take mainly administrative actions.
“Branding” and colorful packaging are familiar targets. The health agency in the UK is proposing that cigarettes will be packaged in plain, white packs, without logos, etc.
That’s tokenism, if you ask me. As long as King Cash keeps making political payoffs (and as long as we tolerate politicos soliciting them or extorting them legally) that tokenism is about all you’re going to get.
At the same time, a government agency in the UK is having a case of the vapors over a proposal to ban khat, a medicinal plant grown in the Horn of Africa.
Khat is a controlled substance (i.e., an illegal drug) in the United States and Canada. You cannot import it, you cannot sell it, you cannot possess it.
Khat has physiological stimulant effects including hyperactivity and increased heart rate and blood pressure. It has behavioral effects including euphoria and depression. It has long-term effects such as a risk of oral cancers (it is chewed like chewing tobacco) and an increased risk of heart attack. And, of course, as with any drug or food product, there is always the risk of hypersensitivity in particular individuals.
It is not unusual that the list of proscribed drugs is modified (usually expanded) over the years. The khat proposal has met with a lot of resistance in the UK.
The reason? It may anger immigrants.
I told you the irony is delicious.
Francis and the Golden Calf
My status as a sort of mainline Christian never ceases to amaze me.
Certainly, Catholicism is in the mainstream of Christianity. But, wow, Pope Francis is right on the cutting-edge. I really, really admire that dude.
One of the middling conspiracy theories of the 20th century was that Pope John Paul I was assassinated because he was too honest and progressive. I’m thinking that the papacy of Francis is putting paid to that conspiracy crap.
The papacy has not been an institution of unblemished honor. I’m thinking there about the Borgia and Medici popes, among others. Francis, on the other hand, appears to be the kind of guy who really does read the red letters. His comments about our worship of Daddy Warbucks as that new Golden Calf needs no improvement. His example of not just talking about but physically embracing the poor, the sick, the deformed, the down and out, “the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on” puts the rest of us pathetic putzes to shame.
Seems chilly in here. I suppose the fire has been unintended for rather a long time.
I’m not sure if it is so much that I have been waiting for something “worthy” to write about or have just mired in some sort of Scriptorium Doldrums. Or perhaps it’s been the time spent chasing ‘round the Halls of Justice. No matter – wherever I go, there I am. (I don’t know who I’m stealing that line from.)
I’ve spent a good bit of time with outlanders & flatlanders lately. So I’ve been thinking about Mother West Virginia. Anyone who’s read a bit of these Dispatches knows that blue and gold are among the colors I bleed. Maybe, for the first time, I get just a hint of the anguish in the heart of Col. R. E. Lee when he had to choose between the Union and the Old Dominion.
And when I hear denigration of these hills, I react with indignation and fury and the wide, booming bombast reminiscent of my friend the late A. James Manchin. As Secretary of State, A. James was the self-appointed guardian of the good name of West Virginia. He was the first person who would sally forth in her defense. And he would always do so in colorful ways, such as inviting an official of some other state to settle the argument while soaking with A. James in a West Virginia-made hot tub.
But all the bombast aside, we Mountaineers have let our vision dim and ears stop up as we became blind and deaf to the creaks of anguish of our Mother West Virginia.
One of our very first, most effective, and most self-deluding mechanisms to explain away our coming in 48th or 49th in nearly every measure of vibrant and healthy living among the states is reflected in that line above about “outlanders & flatlanders.”
We pretend that there is some sort of “Mountain mystery,” or “Hill people ethic” that one has to LIVE before one can be admitted into the secrets of life as a West Virginian. “Oh, you just can’t understand, what with coming from New Jersey/ California/ Florida/ wherever.” There is, we pretend, some kind of innate wisdom in the mountains which is passed to us by some inarticulable process as we grow up.
And the oddest thing of all is that even as I see the ridiculousness of such a thing, I have been steeped in that culture so much, I still believe in it. To an extent, it has a bit of validity and usefulness. When one can walk into the forest and know that whether it’s an hour later or a week later they will walk out happy and healthy, I think there’s quite a joy and a power in that. We seem to pretend that if you ain’t got that joy, you can’t have any joy.
Why not? I remember my friend Dick Sonnenshein who taught literature at Fairmont State College. He was, I believe, from New York City, and one of his greatest fears was being someplace out of view of the works of man. I used to tease him about that just as he used to tease me about the profound lack of culture in Fairmont and I guess we were both right.
Culture. Sure, we have satellite dishes and internet. But there is so little live non-regional music. So little live theater. Virtually no dance (not that I understand the tiniest bit about that.)
One of the cable channel/networks ran a brief “reality” series, the name of which I don’t recall and really don’t care enough to look up, but for identification sake let’s just call it what it was, “Shithead Moron Drug Addicts of West Virginia.” These folks touted their little simplified utopia of mud bogging, weed puffing, random copulating and dreadful speech. And even some moderately intelligent folks hereabouts were amused by the whole thing and amused by the idea that the “city folks” would have a hard time understanding.
Oh, I’m hardly immune from using the good ol’ boy culture and patois. How often did you see the words “ain’t” or “hereabouts” used in ordinary speech or writing?
And perhaps it would all be in good fun if we were not ignoring so much and hiding so much with the rural schtick. We should not be leaning on our bloody flintlocks and toting an actual or metaphorical jug of corn liquor, not giving a tinker’s damn that we are every bit as much cookie-cutter conformists as anybody in the much-maligned People’s Republic of New York. We have a lot more guns. We’re a lot less likely accidentally to shoot bystanders. Beyond that, we’re every bit as pitiful.
The economy of West Virginia is not the hopeful, bright, up-swinging joy that every Rah-Rah Booster pretends to. As interstate highways cross every County line, on the same signpost as the name of the new County is another sign: “A Certified Business Location.” Certified by who? (Whom?) Certified for what? And if it’s certified, where in the pluperfect hell is the business?
Historically, the economy of West Virginia was built upon natural resources. As a practical matter, these were nonrenewable. Yeah, I know, timber, just plant more trees. Bulllllll-shit.
The timber part of the economy of West Virginia was built upon the magnificent stands of hardwoods which were part of the great Eastern Forest. Supposedly, a squirrel could climb a tree near the beach in Virginia and not touch the earth until it came to the Mississippi.
Some of us like a place called the Canaan Valley in Tucker County. I like its very open golf course. (The only real problem with the course is that the Navy still uses it as a waypoint for aircraft training out of Norfolk. You always wonder if an F-18 engine is going to eat one of your chip shots.) The Canaan Valley is wide and open, and it is an unparalleled upland & wetland with unique species of flora and such a natural wonderland.
Not.
One of the first Europeans into the Canaan Valley was a young surveyor, one George Washington of Eastern Virginia. He described the Valley as having the most dense stand of hardwoods that the mind could ever imagine, a forest teeming with bear and deer and species of big cats, a genuine natural paradise.
And then came the timber companies, controlled by non-local ownership, usually from the financial centers of New York. This magnificent forest as well as all of the other magnificent forests were clear-cut and turned into the fine Victorian houses and the expensive furniture you see on Antique Roadshow. Without vegetation to hold the top soil in place, it washed away leaving a swamp. Only the wetland flora species brought in by birds flourished and, presto, instant upland wetland.
And now? Oh, there is a little bit of timbering of sixth generation growth, but only enough for a little economic sideshow. Was it Joyce Kilmer who wrote that only God can make a tree? She forgot to add that it takes even Him several centuries to construct a decent forest.
The other major natural resource was coal. We have a lot to recognize in the history of coal. The bottom line is, our industrial society was built with it. Industry was running out of wood to burn and wood did not reach truly high temperatures anyway. The digging of coal enabled the release of terribly concentrated energy, millions of years of sunlight set free in a few decades. Coal made electrical production feasible, steel production possible, aluminum production possible and provided the energy to grow the American economic colossus and the American population as well as those of many other nations. West Virginia always has been a leader in the production of coal.
Yippee.
Pres. Obama is conducting a war on coal and is driving a stake through its heart. No matter. Coal reserves are faltering, the economic costs and the environmental costs of production soar, and shale gas is filling in the fossil burning needs. The future of coal is dim and restricted. Like it. Don’t like it. Ignore it. It doesn’t matter, reality really is a bitch. And yet we have specialty coal license plates, coal bumper stickers, coal tax breaks, coal taxes, coal festivals and official ass kissing parties for coal companies. None of that’s going to make a bit of difference. We are focusing our future economic plans on a dying technology.
So what do we have? We have people with generally a good work ethic. At least that’s what we say. But research doesn’t really bear that out. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t support that very strongly. We have a people who are used to a low standard of living, many of whom do not feel some deep yearning in their hearts to reach for the American dream.
“But there are no jobs.” In some parts of West Virginia, jobs for young people are going begging. This week I was talking to some folks who do the hiring for a gas drilling outfit. These are large, involved jobs because they are drilling very deep and complicated wells. The jobs are going begging because they can’t find enough healthy people who can pass the damn drug test. We can’t do anything about the drug ravages on the streets of the Democratic People’s Republic of Chicago, but we’re not even trying to do a whole hell of a lot here in our own Mother West Virginia. We say that we are the bold Mountaineers, but we are too lazy and too scared to hit drugs.
And we say we’re proud of that?
I have no grand plan tonight to rejuvenate this place that I love so much. In fact, I know that there is no single grand plan, no single right answer, no simple fix. Anybody that believes in simple fixes is simply a dumb ass. What we face is something much more difficult. That is the need for cooperative and thoughtful effort, done without thought of personal reward or personal office, but with human concern and human respect and human affection for the real people of West Virginia.
This is going to take a long time.
