Robber Barrens

Two centuries before Tony Soprano, New Jersey's Pine Barrens—a million acres of coastal woodlands—harbored gangsters during the American Revolution. 

Known as banditti, they used the desolate woodlands as a base of operations, from which they robbed citizens' homes and smuggled contraband into and out of New York City, in open defiance of the Patriots fighting to separate the colonies from England.

The roughest and toughest of the banditti was John Bacon.

A shingle-maker by trade, Bacon began raiding the homes of Patriots in Forked River in the summer of 1780, carrying off everything of value that he and his men could find. In December of that year, Bacon upped the ante when he shot and killed a Patriot militia officer in Tom's River, as the soldier tried to arrest him.

Bacon's reputation as a robber blossomed a year later, thanks to an incident that became known as the “Skirmish at Manahawkin.”

When it learned he was leading a raiding party in the area, a group of local militiamen assembled to ambush Bacon at a Manahawkin crossroads. But when Bacon didn't materialize by 3 am, the militiamen retired to a tavern to get drunk. Bacon's party arrived at daybreak and shot and killed one of the militiamen as he fled the tavern. 

Bacon was indicted for high treason, as a result; but that didn't deter him. He continued raiding homes the Barnegat Bay area throughout 1782, "taking whatever he wanted—money, food, and clothing—at the muzzle of a musket or point of a bayonet," a one historian has written.

In October that year, Bacon perpetrated the "Massacre of Long Beach Island," during which he used bayonets to kill or wound 21 Patriots from Cape May, as they salvaged boxes of tea from a derelict British ship.

New Jersey's governor then put a £50 bounty on Bacon's head.

Hoping to earn the bounty, a Burlington County group of militiamen set out in search of Bacon on Christmas Day, but were waylaid by his band at Cedar Bridge, where two were killed and another wounded.

Two months later, the Revolutionary war ended. Most New Jersey bandits fled the Pine Barrens for New York City, but Bacon, fearing arrest, remained behind. 

That was a mistake. 

In April 1783, the same bounty hunters he bushwhacked at Cedar Bridge found Bacon in a tavern in Tuckertown, and executed him on the spot. The governor awarded the killers the bounty.

John Bacon was the last man to die in the Revolutionary War.

This Bird

In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, Tufts poli-sci professor Daniel Drezner justified his attendance of an in-person conference that will take place this weekend by claiming it will allow him "to see old friends, but also to meet new colleagues."

Despite the health risks posed by attending, Drezner wrote, "my benefits far exceed my risks."

Five thousand of Drezner's colleagues disagree. 

The conference he will attend normally attracts 7,500 attendees. But only 2,500 poli-sci professors have registered—and many are cancelling, as opening day approaches.

Live event organizers in every field ought to take notice: poli-sci professors represent the canary in the coal mine.

When two of three customers drop you overnight, it's time to question your value proposition. It's time to stop acting like an ostrich.

Poli-sci professors, after all, aren't fools: they're experts in risk-benefit analysis. And two of three have rendered their judgement: the conference simply isn't compelling enough to ignore the dangers.

Birds of a feather flock together.

This bird has flown.

If the value you provide isn't compelling, yours will, too.

Out of Their Hats

Nothing annoys me more than uninformed people 

not considering the effects of what they say.

— Charlotte Ritchie

The Golden Age of Hollywood is a delightful Facebook group that posts "lost" movie-studio stills.

A still posted yesterday showed an ashen and attenuated Humphrey Bogart, riding on a swing with his seven-year-old daughter. 

One inconscient commentator wrote, "How could this pipsqueak ever have been a romantic interest in film? I will never understand."

Her comment unleashed a predictable torrent  of rejoinders to the effect that Bogie had been the heartthrob of millions, and that the poignant still had been shot only days before the beloved actor's early death from throat cancer.

Granted social media gives a grandstand to goofballs, I still must ask: why do so many uniformed nobodies feel the need to tear down adored icons? 

And why do they always seem to be speaking out of their hats?

The reason is deep-seated: iconoclasm is a handy form of ego defense, a band-aide for wounds received in childhood at the hands of critical parents, caretakers, siblings, and peers.

When those wounds go untreated, the child grows up to be an asshole: an unrestrained critic of all the things others hold in esteem.

And she can't help but come off as a mean-spirited fool.

Cabbage

Twenty years ago, I was devoting four solid days a week to writing a Civil War novel that I never finished.

The novel was set in 1861, the first year of the war.

Two hundred pages in, I was deep into a scene in which the characters (civilians all) conversed over a sumptuous lunch, when I suddenly realized I didn't know how they'd pay for it.

So I dug into the topic of cash in the 19th century.

I learned that in 1861 people used banknotes, issued by local banks, to pay for most purchases.

Until the following year, the only form of legal tender in circulation was the federally issued coin.

Federally issued scrip—later known as the "greenback"—didn't exist. 

If you wanted to use paper for purchases, you used banknotes. 

Banknotes were convenient, but had a serious downside.

If you carried them, instead of coins, you ran the real risk they'd become worthless overnight, should the issuing bank fail. 

And banks failed all the time, especially during financial "panics," which occurred like clockwork every 20 years and whenever a blip in the economy occurred.

China this week put the kibosh on 2021's version of banknotes by banning all transactions that rely on cryptocurrencies. 

China's crypto crackdown is based on the premise that cryptocurrencies, by being unregulated, foster illegal transactions.

That may be true.

But even if it's not, I'm troubled by cryptocurrencies, myself, perhaps because their fans—who are avid—remind me of the people who advised me in the early 1980s to invest all my savings in Cabbage Patch Kids (and a decade later, in Beanie Babies.)

Cryptocurrencies are supposed to be money; but money for the past century has been printed by governments, which control its supply and, more importantly, guarantee its worth.

No reliable entities backstop cryptocurrencies.

Money, moreover, allows us to make purchases of any amount at lighting speed, with no extra fees and relative anonymity. 

Cryptocurrencies allow none of those conveniences and, in addition, are easier to steal.

So what's the allure?

Beats me.

I'll stick to cold, hard cabbage.

Fluff

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

— Mark Twain

Verbose writing is frilly, flowery, frivolous and fluff-brained. A thing, at all costs, to avoid.

But some fluff is tasty.

Take, for example, the kind used to make a Fluffernutter.

The Fluffernutter was invented in by one Emma Curtis, who with her brother began making and marketing Snowflake Marshmallow Crème in 1913 in their home-state of Massachusetts.

The great-great-great-granddaughter of Paul Revere, Emma knew to keep watch on her competitors, of which there were scores.

To outdo them, she published brochures packed with recipes for marshmallow-crème treats, and advertised the brochures in newspapers and on radio. 

One, published in the middle of World War I, contained Emma's short recipe for the Liberty, a marshmallow crème and peanut butter sandwich.

The Liberty became her all-time hit.

But, sadly, Emma was not to reap all its rewards.

A local competitor, Durkee-Mower, trumped Emma, not by running ads, but by sponsoring an entire radio show. 

Named The Flufferettes, it aired in the half-hour spot before The Jack Benny Show and featured comedy, music, and recipes—including the recipe for the Liberty.

In 1960, Durkee-Mower's ad agency renamed Emma's sandwich The Fluffernutter, and rest, as we say, is history.

A Catholic Conundrum Cleared Up At Last

Faith may be defined as an illogical belief in
the occurrence of the improbable.

— H. L. Mencken

As Whole Woman's Health v. Austin Jackson proves, right-wing Catholics on the Supreme Court are a clear and present danger—to women. 

By recriminalizing abortion, they will increase women's misery beyond calculation.

Believe what you will about fetuses; that's your right.

But recognize the Roman Catholic Church, following Aristotle, for nearly two millennia held that a fetus had no soul until it was six months old—and therefore couldn't be murdered.

Early-stage abortions weren't sinful.  

Only a modern bit of dogmatic gymnastics changed the Church's position on abortion.

And the change came about ass-backwards.

Before 1854, Catholic canonists had struggled with a thorny riddle: how could Jesus have be born of a woman stained by Original Sin?

It's uncanny! 

To solve the riddle, Giovanni Mastai-Ferretti (Pope Pius IX) declared that Jesus' conception was "immaculate" because Mary was born without sin.

Problem solved!

But Mastai-Ferretti's solution also led him to declare all abortions a mortal sin.

Why? 

Because Mary's sin-free life began not at viability, but conception.

Logically speaking, it had to.

Or so said the infallible Mastai-Ferretti.

So we've arrived at the bottom line:

Because an Italian decided 150 years ago that a Jewish woman was born without sin 2,000 years ago, no 21st century Texan can have an abortion without exposing her accomplices to fines and criminal penalties.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Thanks Amy, Brett and Neil, for clearing that up!

We look forward to your future legal decisions.

NOTE: Just so you know, I single out Catholics and exclude Evangelicals from blame for recriminalizing abortion for a simple reason: no Evangelical is intelligent enough to receive a Supreme Court appointment.

UPDATE: Amy, Brett and Neil didn't dawdle. We learned in May 2022 that they plan to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Above: Judging Amy by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas board. 10 x 8 inches. Not available in Texas. 

What Happened to Leaning In?

The ambition and focus that propel you to success
can also be your downfall. 

— Judy Smith

Schadenfreude is unhealthy, but I nonetheless relish watching the once high and mighty humbled.

This month's fallen angel is Elizabeth Holmes, wunderkind and Steve Jobs wannabe.

Once the the world's youngest female self-made billionaire, Holmes now stands trial for defrauding investors of $400 million and faces 20 years in prison if convicted.

In 2013—the same year she reached the top of the world by selling her company's fake blood tests to millions of unsuspecting consumers—Holmes' Silicon Valley neighbor Sheryl Sandberg popularized the phrase leaning in.

Facing a prison cell, it appears Holmes is no longer leaning in, but weaseling out.

While the Northern California DA alleges she committed fraud, Holmes is trying to walk between raindrops, claiming she was only following Silicon Valley's "playbook," and that an "emotionally abusive" boyfriend led her into temptation (he will also go on trial for fraud next year).

Hogwash.

Hey, Liz, now that you've been caught with your hand in the till, how about leaning into the truth a little?

Why dodge your actions and blame others—and why blame a boyfriend?

An op-ed in The New York Times insists Holmes is the innocent victim of the "male-dominated world of tech start-ups" and the "boys’ club that is the tech industry." No man would be put on trial for swindling investors.

More hogwash.

If you want to lean in, lean in. There's no in betweenin'.

UPDATE, NOVEMBER 30, 2021: Holmes testified yesterday that her boyfriend drove her to commit her crimes.

UPDATE, JANUARY 3, 2022: Holmes was found guilty of fraud. "The Svengali Defense didn’t work," said journalist John Carreyou.

Going to Pieces

We all could use a little mercy now.

I know we don't deserve it, but we need it anyhow.

— Mary Gauthier

No surprise here: a Gallup poll shows our esteem for Internet providers has tanked.

In the relentless pursuit of profits, these companies have turned a modern miracle into the vilest of cesspools.

Lies, vulgarity and stupidity are the rule, rather than the exception.

In a civil war of words, brothers fight brothers; sisters, sisters; husbands, wives. 

And everyone goes to pieces.

But there is a way to keep it together: do some good.

“I was once a fortunate man, but at some point fortune abandoned me," the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote. "But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.”

Don't just stand there: do something good. Today. Tomorrow. The next day. And the next. 

If you expect the trolls to surrender, don't hold your breath. 

If you hope to fix stupid, fuggedaboutit.

Just refuse to be implicated in the lies and the ugliness and do some good.

As the proverb says, "Let not mercy and truth forsake you; bind them about your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, and so find favor and good understanding in the sight of God and man."

Souvenirs

Maine photographer Peter Ralston treated my wife and me last week to a half-hour's exploration on foot of Widow's Island, a 15-acre island in Pensobscot Bay.

We took home with us old bricks as souvenirs.

They came from the ruins of an asylum that once operated on the island, torn down by the WPA in 1935, long after it had ceased to serve its original purpose.

The US Navy built the asylum in 1888 to quarantine sailors sickened with deadly yellow fever. The brisk seaside climate was thought to aide recovery.

But the building never housed a single ailing sailor, because naval surgeons found a new treatment for yellow fever—inducing diarrhea with purgatives like mercury, coal tar, castor oil, and caffeine—the following year.

The Widow's Island Naval Sanitorium was another $50,000 federal boondoggle. 

The Navy donated the empty asylum to Maine in 1904, which turned it into a summer retreat for lunatics interned in asylums in Augusta and Bangor. 

As part of the land transfer, the state renamed Widow's Island after a local judge, and the asylum became known as the Chase Island Convalescent Hospital.

But locals continued to call the place Widow's Island.

The lunatic asylum only operated for a decade, after which the building was used as a school for the children of lighthouse keepers, and again as a naval hospital during World War I.

When the WPA tore down the building, it intended to recycle the thousands of bricks, and piled them neatly on the island's shore. 

That was a mistake.

Light-fingered lobstermen stole the bricks to weight their traps, pave the walkways around their homes, and line their chimneys.

Fortunately, they left a few for souvenir-hunters like us.

Just Dessert

I don't know what is to set this world right, 

it is so awfully wrong everywhere.

— Mary Merrick Brooks

"The most beautiful young lady in town," one bewitched bachelor said of her.

Mary Merrick of Concord, Mass., spent her youth waving away suitors, until, at 22, she finally chose one, marrying Nathan Brooks, Esq., a wealthy estate lawyer, in 1823.

Harvard-educated, Nathan was a polished and devoutly political animal. And Mary was his perfect match.

But they were different people.

Nathan, unwilling to risk his lawyer's reputation, elected to keep mum on the big issue of the day—slavery.

Mary did anything but.

She spoke out, and led the town's charge against the institution, founding the radical Concord Ladies' Antislavery Society, and organizing stops on the Underground Railroad.

Although divisive, slavery was flourishing in the 1820s, legal in half of the 24 states and the District of Columbia.

Slave-owning infuriated Mary (her own father had been a slaver in South Carolina before moving to Concord, so she knew the practice first hand).

She channeled her indignation into fundraising for the cause of Abolition—more accurately, for the cause of "Immediatism," which insisted that Black slaves everywhere be freed immediately, without national debate or compromise, or reparations to their owners.

The money Mary raised was used to pay for speaking visits to Concord by rabble-rousers like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown, and for subscriptions to radical newspapers like William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator.

A hands-on fire-eater, the clever Mary searched for a fool-proof recipe for fundraising, hitting at last on sales of a tasty confection she named the "Brooks Cake."

The Brooks Cake comprised one pound of flour, one pound of sugar, half a pound of butter, four eggs, a cup of milk, a teaspoon of soda, a half-teaspoon of cream of tartar, and a half pound of currants.

Concord's society women ate it up. 

For decades, none would dare hold a lunch or afternoon tea without serving a fresh Brooks Cake—no matter her stand on slavery.

Let Go

Let go that which burdens you. Let go any acts of unkindness or brutality from or against you. Let go one breath into another.

— Joy Harjo

Known locally as "Massholes," they drive mostly black SUVs and oversize pickup trucks.

While driving in Massachusetts, I must remember Joy Harjo's poem. 

Maine Attaction

I'm tagging along with my wife in Maine this week while she studies landscape photography under the Wyeth family's official photographer, Peter Ralston.

Dogshead Island

Coastal Maine deserves its reputation as an über-romantic spot, and in mid-September teeters on Indian Summer, one of my favorite times of year.

Yesterday, we island-hopped for 14 straight hours in Peter's 37-foot lobster boat, The Raven, as he directed my wife in shooting hundreds of photos of skiffs, schooners, sailboats, shorelines, shacks, shanties, and seals. 

And lobstermen. Hundreds of lobstermen.

Our two-hour stop on Vinalhaven Island reminded me we were only miles—31, to be exact—from Monhegan Island, where artist Jamie Wyeth spends his summers.

Monhegan Island, known as the "Artists' Island," holds an esteemed place in American art history, having, before Wyeth summered there, been the summer home of Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Robert Henri, and Rockwell Kent. Jamie Wyeth in fact now owns and has lived in Kent's former island home.

Vinalhaven Island

Kent was drawn to Monhegan Island in 1905, and summered there off and on until 1953. Wyeth bought his home in 1968, but later moved to neighboring Southern Island, to escape the summer tourists.

In his lifetime, Kent was one of America's most revered artists; but Joe McCarthy put an end to his career. The witch-hunting senator accused (falsely) Kent of being a Communist. As a consequence, every museum in the country took down his paintings.

Jamie Wyeth, on the other hand, is the darling of American museums—and rightfully so. 

I love Wyeth's work. 

Serendipitously, Jamie Wyeth loves Rockwell Kent's work (most of which today is in Russia, gifted to that country out of spite by the beleaguered Kent) and collects it. He keeps his collection in his Southern Island home.

I love Rockwell Kent's work, too; maybe more.

Maine may be über-romantic, but it wouldn't be Maine after all without some weirdness. (It's the home of Stephen King.) 

Jamie Wyeth's homage to Kent, Portrait of Rockwell Kent, hints at that weirdness by including the contour of a woman falling from the rocks to her death in the background.

That's Kent's mistress, the New York socialite Sally Maynard Moran, who either committed suicide or was murdered in 1953. 

Her body was found in the ocean off Monhegan Island three weeks after her mysterious disappearance one night.

Nobody knows, to this date, what happened to her.

Above: Island Library by Jamie Wyeth. Watercolor, 28 x 20 inches. Wreck, Monhegan by Rockwell Kent. Oil on canvas panel. 7 x 13 inches. Portrait of Rockwell Kent by Jamie Wyeth. Oil on fiberboard. 34 x 26 inches. Maine photos by Robert Francis James.

The Prickly Pump

 

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

—H. L. Mencken

I had to gas up my car in Massachusetts yesterday and pulled into a Sunoco station. 

I removed my credit card from the pump's reader before answering all its dozen questions. 

A huge mistake.

The pump went full-scale ballistic, flashing READ! READ! READ!

I've never been verbally assaulted by a gas pump before.

My hunch: the pump has built-in AI.

Through machine learning its has acquired a wicked Boston attitude.

Lovely

We don’t need a little bit of lovely somewhere,
we need a lot of it everywhere.

— James Rebanks

On this mournful day, we need a lot of lovely everywhere.

It was medieval bloodlust that drove bin Laden's berserkers to attack the Twin Towers. Like impotent boys who realize they can't win the competition, they scattered all the blocks.

Who knows what symbol they'll knock down next? Probably the Internet. Impotence makes weak children rageful.

Today, put them aside.

Remember their victims and find a lot of lovely everywhere.

Fire the Writer

Well, that's putting your foot in your mouth. Or your toe in your mouth.

On its website, the amateur-league baseball team Savannah Bananas boasts that "we toe the line."

We are not your typical baseball team. We are different. We take chances. We toe the line. We test the rules. We challenge the way things are suppose to be.

The writer doesn't know the meaning of "toe the line." 

The idiom means do what is expected or act according to another's rules.

You can't both be a maverick and toe the line.

Dear Writer: strike one, you're out! 

NOTE: Toe the line comes not from baseball, but track and field. Officials used to shout, "Toe the line!" Now they shout, "On your mark!"

Real America

WARNING: Content may be offensive to some audiences.

Rep. Jim Jordan retweeted video from a Wisconsin football game yesterday with the comment, "Real America is done with Covid-19."

The phrase "Real America" is Jordan's equivalent of ein Volk, a phrase popularized by Adolph Hitler in the 1930s.

It's best defined not by what it means, but by what it doesn't.

Real America is not...

Real America is not Civilized America—those pain-in-the-ass weirdos who insist on wearing masks.

Real America is not Immuno-compromised America—those annoying wimps who worry they'll catch Covid-19. 

Real America is not Black America—those whiney, dangerous, hip-hop lovin' ingrates.

Real America is not Latino America—those lazy, foreign, Catholic beaners.

Real America is not Asian America—those creepy gooks who want our jobs.

Real America is not Indigenous America—those all-time champion losers.  

Real America is not Gay America—those unrepentant degenerates.

Real America is not East Coast America—those latte-sippin' socialists.

Real America is not West Coast America—those tree-huggin' communists.

Real America is not Jewish America—those overeducated loudmouths.

Real America is not Muslim America—those people who're worse than Jews.

Real America is not Poor America—those welfare-squanderin' weaklings.

Real America is not Homeless America—those whack jobs who foul the land beneath our beautiful freeways.

Real America is not Disabled America—those embarrassing feebs. 

Real America is not Old America—those wrinkled, funny-smelling people.

Real America is not Female America—those witchy pretenders to equality.

Real America is not Expert America—those Commies with doctorates from fancy-pants universities.

Real America is not Liberal America—the true enemies of Real America. You know, Democrats.

My advice to Jim to is simple: grow a toothbrush mustache. 

You'll complete the outfit.

NOTE: Fascism is hardly new in America. Learn more.

Incredulous

Like most small-bore, pretentious men, he shows the tendency to strike an emotional attitude and then, using that prejudice as a base, draw vast, unreasonable, philosophical conclusions.

— John D. MacDonald

The more closed the mind, the more open the mouth.

I encountered this phenomenon on Facebook recently. 

A philosopher posted an op-ed he'd published in Newsweek that argued for adding philosophy to elementary school curriculums.

Philosophy will improve kids' ability to think critically, he promised. 

"Absolutely not," one comment said. "The ability to think critically is not philosophy. Philosophy is not meant for everyone and is totally not needed for most."

No evidence. No source. Just bluster.

An argument like the one offered in the comment is known among philosophers as an argument from incredulity. It holds:

I don't know a thing to be true;
therefore, it must be false.

Arguments from incredulity are moronic, but we hear them all the time:

• "Vaccines can't be safe. Nobody should get one."
  
  
• “Humans could not have evolved from a single cell. Darwin is bunk."
  
  
• "No one would work if the government paid him not to. Socialism is wrong."
  
  
• "Immigrants shouldn't be allowed here. They're not like Americans."
  
  
• "It's always cold here in North Dakota. Global warming is bullshit."

• "Philosophy is not meant for everyone and is totally not needed for most." 

People prone to arguments from incredulity can't imagine that many true things are unimaginable. (Take, for example, that brick walls aren't really solid; that we're moving through space at 1.3 million miles an hour; or that matter is essentially mental. 

Our convictions, however strong, don't make a statement false. 

Only buffoons believe they do.

Condemnant quo non intellegunt, as the Romans said.

"They condemn that which they do not understand."

Bad Marketer, No Cookies for You!

What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself?

— George Orwell

Since Apple, Amazon and Facebook's recent admissions to eavesdropping, I interject blather into my phone calls, so marketers waste money targeting me.

For no earthly reason, I drop random nouns like "Kumquat," "Flag Day," "Jeggings," "Aardvark," and "PT-73."

As Orwell said, when the lunatic is more intelligent, what can you do?

In 2021 alone, digital marketers will spend over $455 billion on ads. With financial clout like that, we're powerless to stop them from targeting us.

Our phone calls are likely to become the primary tool they'll use in the future, because today's leading tool—cookies—are going the way of the dodo.

Data-privacy nudniks are taking cookies away, denying marketers the ability to track you on line. (Ironically, socialists in the EU are to blame.) 

Apple's Safari already blocks cookies by default. Mozilla's Firefox does so as well. Google's Chrome will begin to do so in 2023.

Bad marketer, no cookies for you!

But ubiquitous, AI-powered surveillance won't end simply because cookies go away.

 

Cookie-less, marketers will of necessity turn to phone calls for clues to our desires. 

Phone calls will provide our fingerprints.

There is, of course, a high road marketers could take to target you. 

It's called "consent management" (sounds like something an overworked lecher does.)

No—trust me—marketers will take the low road; they always do.

And Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google will be delighted to collect the tolls.

Web of Lies

No amount of belief makes something a fact.

— James Randi

Goebbels Didn’t Say It may be the best blog ever. 

Nearly a decade old, Goebbels Didn't Say It is an effort by two professors to explode myths and "put a small dent in the amount of nonsense on the Internet."

The professors have chosen to call BS on the effusion of fake quotes attributed to Hitler's chief propagandist.

"We want to reduce the incidence of a fabricated quotation by Joseph Goebbels," the professors say.

Demanding exactitude on behalf of a liar is an odd mission, but a worthy one, nonetheless.

My hat's off to these two tireless debunkers, saboteurs at loose in the falsehood factory.

The Elephant in the Room

When we don't tell the truth, and others don't tell us the truth, we can't deal with matters from a basis in reality.

— Jack Canfield

A cheerleader for the event industry recently begged organizers to avoid any mention of what's foremost on exhibitors' minds: attendance.

In an industry that's touted—and inflated—attendance numbers for 70 years, that suggestion isn't merely ironic; it's absurd.

But, as writer Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

When you're the one who's in charge of the circus, there's little sense in denying the elephant in the room.

Exhibitors aren't that stupid.

Whigs One, Tories Nothing

Sapere aude (Dare to know).

— Horace

Yesterday marked a big win for the Whigs.

Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled that the governor can remove the Robert E. Lee Memorial from Richmond's Monument Avenue.

In a seven to zero decision, the court cited testimony from historians who said the statue memorializes nothing but the Jim Crow South, a time and place anathema to the majority of Americans today.

"Values change and public policy changes too," the court concluded.

The 60-foot high colossus will be removed from its pedestal and trucked to a warehouse, according to the governor's office.

Throughout English history, the Whigs have stood for dissent (even the Americans who rebelled against the crown in 1775 were called Whigs).

The Tories, on the other hand, have stood for the natural order (the monarchy and aristocracy).

Yesterday, the Whigs won.

I'm no Tory, but when I read the breaking news about the Virginia Supreme Court's decision (on Facebook), I was saddened—saddened to learn that this particular monument would disappear from its place in public.

I read a slew of the Facebookers' comments below the news story (more than 250 of them) and noticed that the overwhelming majority were gleeful about the court's decision and echoed the historians' testimony.

Silly me, I joined in, expressing my sadness about the decision and saying that the monument shouldn't be erased, but allowed to stand as a cultural reminder of America's troubled past.

My comments unleashed a barrage of repudiations. The sameness of the angry comments was striking. Almost all were misinformed. And almost all were circular arguments that sounded like this:

Everything Southerners ever did was a form of Black suppression. Southerners erected the memorial; therefore, the memorial is a form of Black suppression.

I tried to counter-argue—to no avail—that the Robert E. Lee Memorial was unique among all the Confederate monuments, and a special case worth preserving in situ:

The Lee Memorial was erected in 1890. Lumping it in with all the rest of the Confederate monuments built by White Supremacists in the 20th century disregards its unique nature. Confederate veterans paid for it—raising $52 thousand ($1.5 million in today's money)—not to intimidate Blacks, but because they idolized Lee for his self-sacrificing conduct during the war. At its dedication, the speaker said, "Let this monument, then, teach to generations yet unborn these lessons of his life! Let it stand, not as a record of civil strife, but as a perpetual protest against whatever is low and sordid in our public and private objects."

But—no more than you can fight city hall—you can't argue with an angry Whig mob (just ask George III). It will only respond with Whiggishness.

Whiggishness insists that history represents unfolding progress—progress toward perfect equality, the end of hierarchies, and the triumph of liberal democracy.

Whigs believed this in the 19th century, as did Hegel and Marx.

Whiggishness is also a form of presentism, a foolishness known to historians as the nunc pro tunc (now for then) fallacy.

Presentism projects our current values and ideas onto the past, condemning people who preceded us for not sharing those values and ideas.

Presentism, for example, condemns Union physicians for not knowing germs spread diseases (they thought gases did) and Confederate veterans for idolizing Robert E. Lee (they weren't woke to the fact that, in defending the Confederacy, he was defending slavery).

I'd love to believe Whiggishness were true; but I cannot. History is full of dead ends, mistaken beliefs, failed theories, and lost causes.

It's why I hate to see history—and this particular memorial—erased. 

Sapere aude.

UPDATE, SEPTEMBER 8, 2021: The statue of Lee was removed today.