Roosevelt in 1937 and us today

I don’t put a lot of political stuff on this blog, but I’m going to make an exception — if indeed it is an exception — because of the way I came to this, and the striking light it casts on our current situation.
I was at the Monticello visitor center last week, browsing expensively through their excellent bookshelves, and I bought A Patriot’s Handbook, a thick reader compiled by Caroline Kennedy, packed full of essays, poems, speeches, history, all on various aspects of the American experience. A wonderful treasure-trove. I have it on my dining room table, available for reading little bits while I eat. Today I came to Franklin Roosevelt’s Second Inaugural Address, and I was struck by how much it applied to us. (I am not a whole-hearted admirer of FDR, but I do believe he did his best according to his lights, and which of us can hope to do more than that?) Because I imagine that few people are familiar with this speech, i quote it here in full. Parts of it you will want to skim, probably. Other parts may hit you as hard as they did me, because again, I read this with 21st-century America’s plight in mind.

Roosevelt’s second inaugural address, Jan 20, 1937
When four years ago we met to inaugurate President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first.
Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.
We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.
In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book of self-government.
This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Constitutional Convention which made us a nation. At that Convention our forefathers found the way out of the chaos which followed the Revolutionary War; they created a strong government with powers of united action sufficient then and now to solve problems utterly beyond individual or local solution. A century and a half ago they established the Federal Government in order to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to the American people.
Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same objectives.
Continue reading Roosevelt in 1937 and us today

Is Another Human Living Inside You?

Read this in light of the Rita material.

Is Another Human Living Inside You?

You may think your body and mind are your own. In fact, you are a fusion of many organisms – including, potentially, another person. Words by David Robson, photography by Ariko Inaoka.

• By David Robson
18 September 2015
Once upon a time, your origins were easy to understand. Your dad met your mum, they had some fun, and from a tiny fertilised egg you emerged kicking and screaming into the world. You are half your mum, half your dad – and 100% yourself.
Except, that simple tale has now become a lot more complicated. Besides your genes from parents, you are a mosaic of viruses, bacteria – and potentially, other humans. Indeed, if you are a twin, you are particularly likely to be carrying bits of your sibling within your body and brain. Stranger still, they may be influencing how you act.
Continue reading Is Another Human Living Inside You?

Life after antibiotics

After antibiotics, then what do we do?

You might think this entry is going to celebrate my finishing the course of two antibiotics prescribed during my hospital stay last week, but that isn’t it. The timing merely makes this story (via SchwartzReport, as so often) hit home with greater emphasis. But I’ve known for years about the looming crisis because of their overuse. We as a species got along without them before they were concocted and presumably we will get along without them after they cease to be effective, but it’s going to be one more major change in the way we live.

Here is the URL, and, in case you can’t pull it up, the story is beneath.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2015/09/antibiotic-resistance-report
Continue reading Life after antibiotics

Specifics versus principles

As I watch the political and ideological arguments swirling around us, I really do try to understand why people argue past each other, even when I am one of those arguing. Lack of knowledge of logical fallacies is one reason. Anger is another. But in the middle of the night (I seem to do my best thinking when I’m not here!) I awoke with another. Often one person is arguing from specifics and the other is arguing from general principles.
The example that came to mind was health insurance.
The *principle* is – why should we as individuals have to buy into such a system? Why should we be compelled to have health insurance for the sake of society in general? People should stand on their own feet and not rely on the government all the time. I agree with that principle.
But the *specific* is that Bob Friedman, after my recent hospital stay, said he hoped I had health insurance beyond Medicare, as a big enough hospital bill could destroy me.
Well, I don’t. I resent the cost of insurance, and I think as a nation we are over-insured. When I was an employer, I was always staggered at the cost to the company of paying to provide health insurance for our employees (including ourselves). But, it’s true what Bob pointed out. After a long lifetime of frugal living and productive work, I have savings and investments that should be sufficient, with the help of Social Security, to see me out. But one illness, or a series of illnesses, or some sufficiently great medical emergency could bankrupt me.
It doesn’t even make sense economically, because as soon as I was bankrupt, presumably I would be a charge on the taxpayers as a welfare client.
So there you are, and you can’t resolve the conflict by logic, nor even by insulting all the people on the other side of the issue. If you could, we could resolve all our political issues in battle by facebook, and eliminate the need for insulting each other in election campaigns.

Hating America

[I put this on Facebook first, reversing the usual procedure.]

Listening to the emotion behind people’s rhetoric, rather than the specific words, I have been trying to figure out why so many Facebook posts are so negative, so angry, so certain.
Sure, politics and ideology are often matters of strong opinion. But these days, they are reaching the point of hysteria. I have been wondering why.
Here’s a tentative conclusion: Everybody on the left and right (and even a few people at the center) shares one characteristic. They hate America.
Oh, they don’t think so. They love THEIR IDEA of the America that OUGHT TO exist. But the America that actually exists, which is shot through with flaws, they hate. And it’s a short step from hating imperfection to hating those you see as being responsible for that imperfection. Add fear of losing your imagined love permanently, and you have a recipe for just what we’re seeing.
I was going to list particulars, but perhaps it’s better for everybody to make their own lists.
An old saying has it that “the best is the enemy of the good,” DeMarco’s corollary (made up just this minute) states that an idealized image held too closely leads to hatred of reality, which is always imperfect.
And that, in turn, leads to an uncomfortable question for us all: How much am I letting my love for an idealized America turn into hatred of the America that actually exists? And what can come from hatred but more hatred?
Carl Jung said that condemnation always isolates, and only acceptance heals. Perhaps it is time we stop blaming each other for the fact that America isn’t what it should be, and start holding and spreading our vision of what it yet could be.

[I added a follow-up]

Do you hate America?
I know you don’t *think* you do, but —
Can you love America while hating its people?
Can you love its people if you only love *some* of its people?
Can you love America if you hate those Americans who hold ideas you hate?
So, do you love the *real* America — the one that exists, warts and all — or only the edited version you wish did exist?