Wayward Landlubber

                 DAVID BROOKS IS HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS David Brooks has long been a New York times columnist. During all of that time, with the exception of recently, with the first Trump administration, Columnist Brooks has been a happy right wing polemicist. He is no longer happy. Not with his Republican party. Not with Trump, not with the quality of thought on display in Republican polemics today. One Whitehouse staffer actually said that, “we are building the rocket as we launch it.” Irony is lost on the Republican party. It is not lost on David Brooks and it must have him chewing antacids like chocolate kisses. Mr. Brooks now sees himself as a Democratic party centrist. He is like the hiker who sits on a nest of ants, surrounded by poison oak, with other unseen dangers awaiting, unsure where to go next. I’m sorry for him. Like John McCain in the 1990s, he has watched his party move too rapidly towards respect for dictatorship. Or in...

I've always enjoyed reading. I pretty much read everything from an early age on. From cereal boxes to adventure stories to biographies and autobiographies, and of course the great political writers of a distant time. Mostly I thought about writing as a talent above my capabilities. It may still be, though I'm not the one to prove it either way. Great writing is a gift to good writers. Good writers are an inspiration to lesser writers. Really bad writers grow up to be Republicans. That is the order of the universe. Order, in this case, means a lineal ranking; not the Republican kind. It's really easy to write, now that I've tried it and practiced it for a few years. A fellow by the name of Red Smith is remembered for this classic homily, when asked if it was hard to write: "why no, you just sit down at your typewriter and open your veins and bleed". A typewriter, by the way, is a mechanical writing device with no memory. Sort of like Marjory Taylor Greene. Whos...

Shine a light in any building, or cave for that matter, and you will see people who claim to think about stuff. Some of them think a.lot about stuff. Among that small group can be found philosophers. They have academic credentials. They may not have the whole story, yet, but they can tell you who among their predecessors said stuff and its relevance to the great questions before us. They are also more likely to be able to help you with those moral ambiguities. Like, is moral outrage even moral? Does a moral imperitive need to be moral? Or imperitive? A much larger group are the philosophizers. This group extends on a continuum between those actively studying philosophy, but not yet awarded their PhD, to libertarians who are actively trying to find answers to those great mysteries, but are constrained within some Randian code of Objectivism. Beware of people who are under the delusion that Objectivism is a real, honest-to-goodness philosophy. Their search for truth is interrupted by the...

There's a joke among economists and Civil Rights activists: Q: What is the difference between libertarians and civil libertarians? A) We're civil. You Leonard, graduated from Cornell University and Cornell Law School. That's a prestigious higher education. Many of us wonder how someone with such distinguished scholarship can speak with such imprecision. Is it because you are a Republican? They seem to have a distance to travel between word usage and word meaning. Do we have evidence to bolster our statement? Yes! You people give us plenty of examples. You even elected an example this year for president, after an undistinguished first term. For someone of your credentials to speak with the level of intolerance that we have come to expect from you people means, either you are speaking down to us, or you do not care to speak with us. On a recent day you were interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition. In that interview you said quite explicitely that you want to "crush libe...

A friend of mine, a retired teacher and swimming coach, asked me what we do now. This query was prompted by the recent presidential election, which in the future may become more like Russia's elections. Or Hungary's. We are now faced with a president who fancies himself a 21st century Hitler. As this letter is written, he is assembling a cabinet that is filled with unqualified people ready to swear fealty to this demigogue-to-be. An attorney General who has been credibly charged with drug abuse and sex-trafficking. A Director of National Intelligence who has not exhibited intelligence, and has been accused of being uncomfortably close to Vladimir Putin. A Director of Homeland Security who shot her puppy because he wouldn't behave. That is only three of close to two-dozen of the least competent people to lead massive public bureaucracies, and growing daily. A paranoid observer might think this is being done by design. As if the objective is to disassemble the administrative ...

It was nearing closing time at our county Democratic HQ. She walked in the door carefully, not advancing towards the desk where I sat, or the work table where Juli and Margo sat, but staying close to the door. She wanted a paper, 'I voted sticker'. It was her first time voting. Upon hearing that, we congratulated her and asked her some of her first impressions. She is an 18 year-old Hispanic girl who pre-registered at 16. She has been waiting these two years for this day. Juli bought her an I VOTED Button so she can save it in her scrapbook. " You Will remember this day all of your life", Juli said. We then shared our own first-time voting experiences. What a mixed bag of voting experiences this young Hispanic girl must be experiencing. My own first time, I voted to re-elect Tom McCall, a Republican, for governor. I have never regretted that vote, even as I detest the party he was part of. In subseqent elections I would vote to re-elect Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood....