Obsidian Wings

Robert Pirsig

by liberal japonicus

Immediately after I made my previous post, I saw in my FB feed that Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, had passed away. At the risk of having everyone think that we are going to have more regular postings here, I'm posting something I wrote on Facebook

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Pirsig connected to my life path in so many ways large and small. That book, read on a summer family vacation in high school, was a seed that keeps showing up in my life. That book and a poetry reading by Tony Church of Lough's War Music had me studying Greek and going into linguistics. After my first stint in Japan, ended up in Oregon and taking a trip through Modoc country where Pirsig and his son had their reconciliation. I ended up at this university which has an exchange program with Montana, where Pirsig taught. My mom worked for an orthopedic surgeon, so any talk of getting a motorcycle was short-circuited by filial piety, and my wife has taken mom's role in that.

Passages and ideas from the book always jangle around in my head. Strangely enough, I picked up a used copy around the time my mother passed away and learned that his son Christopher had been killed in a mugging. What he said about that was useful to me. He wrote:

I tend to become taken with philosophic questions, going over them and over them and over them again in loops that go round and round and round until they either produce an answer or become so repetitively locked on they become psychiatrically dangerous, and now the question became obsessive: "Where did he go?" Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. He had a bank account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of books. He was a real, live person, occupying time and space on this planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up the stack at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed back? Was he strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of these answers made any sense.

It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just something in the imagination? When you have done time in a mental hospital, that is never a trivial question. If he wasn't just imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like that? If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in trouble. But if we stay with the laws of physics, then the Chris that disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to run off like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always appear, but where would he appear now? After all, really, where did he go?

The loops eventually stopped at the realization that before it could be asked "Where did he go?" it must be asked "What is the `he' that is gone?" There is an old cultural habit of thinking of people as primarily something material, as flesh and blood. As long as this idea held, there was no solution. The oxides of Chris's flesh and blood did, of course, go up the stack at the crematorium. But they weren't Chris.

What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a pattern, and that although the pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete control of.

Now Chris's body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern was looking for something to attach to and couldn't find anything. That's probably why grieving people feel such attachment to cemetery headstones and any material property or representation of the deceased. The pattern is trying to hang on to its own existence by finding some new material thing to center itself upon.

Some time later it became clearer that these thoughts were something very close to statements found in many "primitive" cultures. If you take that part of the pattern that is not the flesh and bones of Chris and call it the "spirit" of Chris or the "ghost" of Chris, then you can say without further translation that the spirit or ghost of Chris is looking for a new body to enter. When we hear accounts of "primitives" talking this way, we dismiss them as superstition because we interpret ghost or spirit as some sort of material ectoplasm, when in fact they may not mean any such thing at all.

for your weekend reading

by liberal japonicus

Something to prime the pump for the weekend.

All readings of human history have to allow for the possibility of a negative outcome. It haunts us in the zombie movie, the disaster movie, in the post-apocalytic wasteland of films such as The Road or Elysium. But why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages?

I pull that graf, though it probably isn't representative of the piece, but I read someone observing that no author has ever been able to write a decent story about a utopia. And it is a lot easier to write stories about dystopias. Maybe the fault is not in our stars...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun

How did we get here?

by wj

A couple of days ago, Russell wrote a comment that got me thinking**:

for about 50 years in the middle of the 20th C things were progressively (not capital-P progressively, just the normal usage of that word) better for "regular folks", however you want to define that. Not so much for black regular folks, not so much for women regular folks, not so much for regular folks who colored outside the lines in any kind of sociological way. But for garden variety traditional nuclear family white and white-ish folks, it was pretty damned good.

It wasn't evenly distributed, but a hell of a lot of people were able to live their lives without profound financial distress and worry.

We know what made that happen, and for the last 35 or so years we've been ripping it down.

It occurs to me to wonder: How did that happen? How did we get 35 years of popular support for a party which wants to enrich less than 20% (maybe less than 10%) of the population at the expense of the rest? What's the attraction?

Start with a little history. After the Civil War, the Democrats had total control of the "Solid South". For a century. It didn't matter what policies the national Democratic Party pushed. All that mattered was that the Republicans had freed the slaves, so they were anathema to Southern whites. Well, it almost didn't matter. Until the Democratic Party passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Lyndon Johnson is reputed to have said "we have lost the South for a generation." But (if he really said it) he was an optimist -- a century would have been a more reasonable guess, based on past performance. Generations of family tradition, and lifetome habits, aren't cast aside in an instant. But within a decade, the South (specifically Southern whites) became solidly Republican. Again, without reference to what other policies the GOP was pushing.

The point is this. It is a political truism that, absent an actual shooting war, people vote for their pocketbook experience rather than abstract issues like on foreign policy or overall economic proclamations. And comparing those two, that's pretty fair. But the thing is, none of those are really the big factor. The elephant in the room is, people are at least as likely to vote against something as to vote for something. So we were looking at first anti-Republican and then anti-Democrat voting from Southern whites, rather than anything else.

So maybe we ought to look for something like that to explain current voting behavior. The GOP base isn't voting their economic interests, we can see that. And lots of them are outside the South and its overwhelming racial issues, so that's not the real story. So why do they vote the way that they do?

I think it really does come down to what is simplistically referred to as "culture wars." I say simplistically because a lot of cultural change that we have seen in my lifetime has been positive. And a big chunk of even the Republican base would agree with that. They may not be enthusiastic about change for its own sake, but they will be OK with at least some kinds of change. So why those and not others? What are the Democrats seen as advocating that are deal breakers for the Republican base?

I think it comes down to a straight matter of family. Changes which were seen as hurting families, pushed by Democrats, lost them a huge portion of the population, even though those same people were hurt by the Republican's economic policies. Which were those?

Not, perhaps to the astonishment of cultural reactionaries, something like gay marriage. Why not? Because a couple of gays getting married has no real effect on other people's traditional families. The GOP base wasn't enthused about making a change; they are, after all, basically conservative, so changes get viewed with skepticism initially. But neither were they generally hysterical about it once it happened and the world didn't end. (Yes, there are those who are and will remain so. But we aren't talking about them.)

Neither is it support for the poor, even poor members of minority groups. Not so much even for the safety net in general. Obamacare got opposed because all changes get greeted with skepticism. But by now, trying to take it away is a vote-loser. Big time. Because it turns out that it helps families survive, rather than breaking them up.

Rather, the driving issue is this. Democrats are seen as embracing things that really do hurt families. Things like unmarried women getting pregnant and raising families, or couples just not having children at all. Those hurt traditional families, and the social structures built around them. Likewise, they are seen as hostile (or, at absolute minimum, indifferent-to-negative) to religion. And religion is another part of what helps support traditional families.

Granted, far from all Democrats embrace those positions. But that's where the big megaphones on the left are. "Feminism", not as economic empowerment of women, but as women building lives and families without men. And so long as that perception holds, the leaders of the GOP can push damn near any economic policies they like, without having to worry about losing their electoral base. If the pain gets bad enough, the base may scream at their legislators. They may vote them out in the primaries. But they won't turn on their party in the general elections in any significant numbers.

** I started writing this yesterday, but didn't get it finished. Meanwhile, the discussion has kept going under We are truly screwed. Sorry about that.

Immigration Law. Huh.

by Ugh

I saw the recent deportation of someone with status under DACA, which made me wonder how immigration law worked when it comes to proving/contesting immigration status.  Specifically, who has the burden of proof - the individual or the state - when it comes to whether a person is an "alien."  It also made me wonder whether it is Constitutional to deport someone brought to the United States as a child.

On the former issue, here is what appears to be a decent primer on the burden of proof issue.  It appears on the question of whether someone is an alien, the US must show by "clear, unequivocal, and convincing evidence" that the person is an alien.*  But in practice how does this work?  It seems that often the person admits she/he is an alien, which ends the issue.  But suppose you claim you're not an alien (or refuse to answer the question) - the government must then prove that you're an alien, which I believe means it must prove you are NOT a US citizen.  How does that work?  The government can't, I don't think, demand you provide evidence of citizenship and if you don't then use that as proof, can it (as that would mean the government does not have the burden of proof)?  Even proving that you are a citizen of another country wouldn't work because you could still be a US citizen.  Anyway, if anyone out their knows how this generally works in practice or can send me a link, I would appreciate it.

On the Constitutional issue, the person in the above link was brought to this country when he was 9 years old, he was picked up by ICE and deported without (it seems) access to either an attorney or a judge.  Setting aside the rather dark (alleged, I guess) circumstances of his removal by ICE** - how is it Constitutional to do this to someone?  That is, someone who entered the US as a child presumably can't have the mens rea to violate the immigration laws, and so is innocent of any such violation and therefore can't be removed, except, I guess being an alien is a "status" that has no mens rea requirement?  Maybe there's an 8th Amendment violation there to deport someone to a country where they last lived as a minor?  And no opportunity to see a judge or have a lawyer, at least in so called "expedited removal" cases?  

That reminds me of the whole "he's a terrorist so he doesn't have any rights" argument dating back to the Bush Administration.  But, without a trial, how do you know he's a terrorist?  Similarly for immigration status, how can you just deport someone without a hearing on status? Upon further googling, it says here that if you swear under oath to a "border agent" that you have the right to be in the US then you are entitled to a hearing before a judge.  So, there is at least some process provided here, but good luck with that and the border agents under President Trump - it's an awful lot of discretion placed in the hands of a border agent.  

Anyway, the more I read, the more fncked up and outdated this whole area of law seems.  Indeed, it seems perfect for Trump and the Steve Miller/Bannons of the world and their fellow travelers to use as a weapon against people they don't like, whether they are US citizens or not, or here legally or not.  Here is a SCOTUS blog post on an immigration case pending before the Court on other immigration issues.  It's all rather disturbing and frightening.

*this is higher than "preponderance of the evidence" but lower than "beyond a reasonable doubt" - which is, of course, eminently clear....

**which, AFAICT, anyone who lives here who is not white should be afraid of under Trump.

Springing up

by Doctor Science

It's really been Spring here for the past week. I kind of melted down from medication-, Tax-, and Seder-related exhaustion last Monday, but within the last few days I've really perked up. And so has my yard!

We have Goldfinches that come to the feeder all winter, but within the past few days some of the males have put on their summer colors:

Two American Goldfinch males and a female, sitting in the Crabapple tree waiting for their turn at the feeder.

I enhanced the colors slightly, to make the photo look more like my perception.

Lower down in the Crabapple tree we've put up a birdhouse with a very small opening, sized for chickadees or wrens. The Chickadees found it last week:

Chickadee at bird house entrance. I live in the Chickadee hybrid zone, so I don't usually bother trying to figure out which species (or cross, or backcross) my Chickadees are.

I saw some conflict around the birdhouse on Saturday, I think because we put it up in the Crabapple tree. During the bird feeder season this tree is Neutral Territory, used by birds of all sizes and species to wait for a spot at the feeder, or to eat seeds they've taken from it. But clearly the Chickadees that have started to move into the house are going to consider the tree the heart of their territory, and aren't going to be cool with other Chickadee interlopers.

Then on Sunday, as the Chickadees were fussing back and forth over the house, a House Wren showed up and aggressively took over. He[1] hopped inside and started tossing out nest materials, so I figured the nest box was his, now. House Wrens are actually significant predators on other cavity-nesting birds, like Chickadees and Bluebirds.

But today (Monday), the House Wren wasn't around, and the Chickadees were back at the birdhouse, as in the picture above. I haven't heard House Wren singing on our property, but the Carolina Wren who was at the feeder all winter has attracted a mate, and there's been extremely loud singing going on around the human house all week.

At our old house (not far from where we are now), we had both Carolina and House Wrens nesting on the property. Their territories didn't overlap: the Carolina Wrens had the front yard and associated woods and brush (including the garage, where they nested for several years), while the House Wren had the back yard and woods. We'll see what happens here, but I suspect that the presence of the Carolina Wrens may have persuaded the House Wren to go elsewhere.

Also in the past week, Chipping Sparrows have returned and started singing.

I've seen the Eastern Phoebe, but haven't heard any singing yet -- and in the fall we ripped the English Ivy off our house, where she'd been nesting.

The House Finches are singing great guns, but I haven't seen any nesting so far -- they like to nest on Mr Dr Science's office, over the door or on top of the AC unit.

As for plants, last week was bloom-time for the wild Bloodroot in our yard:

Bloodroot growing near Hyacinths in patio garden

Yesterday I saw the first flowers on the Wood Geranium, and the Creeping Phlox is in bud.

The Narcissus bulbs I planted in the fall have come up and mostly flowered:

These are all from Scheepers' Fragrant Narcissus mixture

These are a combination of the Fragrant and Gold Medal mixtures

The variety is rather bewildering. Should I try to figure out which ones are which, and which I like best? Or just say, it's a learning experience every spring, as every spring itself is?

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1. Male House Wrens are responsible for selecting nest sites and starting to build a nest. Once he's done that, he'll start to sing (very loudly) to attract a female. When she shows up, he escorts her to his nest sites, then waits (literally trembling with excitement, I've seen them do it) while she inspects them. If she likes what she sees, she moves in to the hole or nest box she chooses, and he fills the others with sticks to make unusable "dummy" nests.

We are truly screwed

by liberal japonicus

from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/fate-furious-director-tough-cuba-shoot-movies-hell-yeah-moment-993053

Did you have a personal favorite race sequence?

Well, I'll give the filmmaker answer: I loved them all.

But I will say that the New York sequence really stands out to me because for Charlize Theron's character to remotely control a thousand vehicles from a billion-dollar jet above Manhattan, weaponize these cars, and have them flying out buildings and using them as vehicular torpedoes — that was very creative and original and timely.

It's the "timely" that makes that quote. Any other timely things going on?

President Clickbait

by janiem

The screenshot below is from boston.com as of this morning (Thursday 4/13).

In case the text is blurred in the reproduction, the circled headline reads, “Jury in ex-NFL player’s trial to deliberate for 5^th day.”

The headline was there for a couple of days before I realized that the ex-NFL player referred to is one whose name and picture have been featured over and over again on boston.com’s front page in recent years. The guy is a convicted murderer who is now on trial for (IIRC) two more murders.

I’ll probably never know why boston.com suddenly decided to make him front-page-anonymous, but I think it’s a good idea, and I’d like to apply it elsewhere.

Cast your thoughts back to last fall, at the point in the presidential campaign when both conventions were over and the pollsters were mostly predicting a D win. One day, on a whim, I did a pair of control-Fs on the front page of bostonglobe.com (not to be confused with boston.com). My handy browser “Find” feature told me that the D candidate’s name appeared eleven times, the R’s thirty-two.

Some people believe that all publicity is good publicity, and I suspect that President Clickbait is one of them. Would he even be where he is if it weren’t in some sense true?

So to thwart him in this small way, and for other reasons as well, I’d like to propose a National Day of Front- (and back-, and middle-) Page Anonymity for the current occupant of the Oval Office.

We gotta talk, think, and write about him in order to undermine him as much as we can, but we don’t have to name him. Let’s make him, to the extent that we can, the anonymous nobody he should have been all along.

*****

[P.S. This was too tempting to ignore, but next time I’ll revert back to setting politics aside for a bit and writing about something happier – like the fact that the spring peepers are awake, and a fringe of blue water is appearing around the ice that still covers most of the lake across the road.]

Kansas, Bloody Kansas

by wj

Yesterday saw the first special Congressional election since the November general election.  First, let's look at the district.

Kansas 04 is a very strongly Republican district.  It last elected a Democrat in 1992 -- and that Democrat an exception to its historical pattern.  In November, Mike Pompeo (now CIA Director) won with 60% of the vote, as did Donald Trump.  (in 2012, Mitt Romney managed 62%.)

The Democrats' House Campaign Committee made minimal effort this time.  (One last minute burst of get-out-the-vote calls.)  But mostly, the Democratic candidate was on his own -- with whatever external funding he could raise on his own.

Before the vote, on of the DC political pundits (David Beard, Washington Post) gave this analysis:

KS-04 results:
>30: Good for Rs
20-30: Normal given Ds out party
10-20: Good for Ds,Trump a factor
0-10: Amazing! Bback killing Rs
Win: !!!!

And the actual results?  Republican win . . . with a 7% margin (52-46). 

Sure, any win is good, if you are thinking about your margin in the House.  And Governor Brownback is a serious negative for someone who is part of his cabinet (State Treasurer). 

Still, if you are brave enough to extrapolate from a single data point, this looks significant.  If I was a Republican looking to the Georgia 06 election next week, this definitely would not have improved my overall happiness with the world.

Not even going through the motions Open Thread

by Ugh

Well golly, we bombed Syria.  I've seen various reactions from so-called "serious" people on the tweets that this is "not an act of war" and "just a pin prick" strike to "send a message" and "not let thing go unpunished" etc. etc. etc.  As someone else in the twits said, suppose someone dropped 50-60 cruise missiles on the United States, would we consider it an act of war?  Our exceptionalism is striking.

Meanwhile, filibuster go boom (like Syria, I guess).  It would be nice to have a liberal majority on SCOTUS for once.  Also, too, I think Justice Gorsuch the Destroyer is a great name, reminds me of Gozer the Gozerian.  More from twitter:  Dem controlled Senate confirmed Justice Thomas to replace Justice Marshall, GOP controlled senate wouldn't even give Garland a hearing to replace Scalia.  But Dems ruined everything by rejecting Bork.

What else is the going on?

 

Hillary and feminism

by liberal japonicus

Well, I guess we can't tell jokes all the time. This Guardian excerpt from Susan Bordo's book The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is up. Confession: I think she is spot on. A graf:

Sanders’s branding of Hillary as establishment, however, seemed vastly unjust and corrosively divisive to me, especially when delivered to a generation that knew very little about her beyond what Bernie told them. Like progressive, establishment is a pretty meaningless term, particularly when lobbed at one Washington politician by another. Neither Sanders nor Clinton had been working outside the system.

Play nice, please.