Buffoon

Great men have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

English borrowed the oft-used word buffoon from the 16th century French word bouffon, meaning a professional clown, joker, or comic fool.

The French borrowed their word from the Italian buffare, meaning "to puff out the cheeks," a routine gesture performed by jesters. 

Jesters would swell their cheeks and slap them to expel the air, producing a noise resembling a fart.

After so many stolid US presidents, it's refreshing to have one so ready to look vulgar and ridiculous, though I'm not sure the 130,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19 would wholeheartedly agree.

Coffee Black

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

― Albert Camus

Hardship's on the horizon for millions of Americans, who will learn in July that the landlord's leniency is fairly short-lived.

Debt is about to displace one-third of the nation's homeowners, as it did during the Great Depression, when lenders foreclosed on 1,000 homes every day.

And millions more are about to lose their over-leveraged luxuries–boats, RVs, second cars, and second homes.

It's time to "stop and smell the coffee."

Thoreau understood. 

On his 28th birthday, he built a pine cabin near Walden Pond and began to spend his days gardening, walking, writing and pondering the "mean and sneaking lives many of you live."

Awash in debt, "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," he noted.

Americans are drunk on debt. 

Many are about to hit bottom. 

Thank goodness there's coffee.

Painting "Coffee Black" by Lyn Boyer

Facts Suck

Sometimes to do the right thing,
we must keep a promise we never made.

– Robert Breault

A friend objected to my latest post, "I Deserve Reparations, Too," where I argued that slaves' descendants should receive cash reparations only if wage-slaves' descendants do as well.

"Black slaves in America were promised reparations," she wrote. "Whether it's fair or not that just one group of people whose ancestors were slaves (or wage-slaves) receives reparations is subjective."

Facts suck. They're as stubborn as a mule.

My friend was right to remind me of the fact that our government promised slaves what became known to historians as "40 Acres and a Mule." It made no such pledge to wage-slaves.

At the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln confiscated 400,000 acres South Carolina, Georgia and Florida farmland owned by Confederate planters, promising to distribute it to the emancipated slaves. But Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor and a Southerner, rescinded the deal six months after Lincoln's death and returned the land to the planters.

The promise of reparations was made–and broken–a century and a half and six generations ago.

Does it still have full force and effect?

It does.

US laws hold no arbitrary right exists to rescind a contract. A contract can only be rescinded on the grounds of fraud, duress, material mistake, insanity or habitual drunkenness.

Unless you can credibly argue Lincoln's confiscation of planters' land was illegal, by returning it to the planters, Andrew Johnson acted arbitrarily.

The deal still stands–and I can't insist it must now include wage-slaves as a party.

Crap. I was so looking forward to my first reparations check!

To my friend: Trisha, thanks, you pointed out a fact I overlooked. My argument for wage-slave reparations wasn't merely subjective, it was illogical.

Keep smiling!

I Deserve Reparations, Too

All of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors. 

― Damon Knight

The current unrest has sparked renewed talk of cash reparations to slaves' descendants.

Gallup, not surprisingly, reports that, while three of four Black Americans support cash reparations, two of three White Americans do not.

I'm one of the minority of White Americans who support cash reparations―with a proviso. It goes as follows: Should the federal government award cash reparations to slaves' descendants, it must also award them to wage-slaves' descendants.

Of course, Americans descended from immigrants who arrived on these shores after 1940―when wage-slavery ended―will object; and so will descendants of builders, bankers, farmers, merchants and industrialists.

Tough rocks.

I justify my the proviso as follows:

• Activists favoring cash reparations grant special status to slaves, as opposed to wage-slaves; but history shows that any differences between the two kinds of servitude were trivial. History in fact shows that wage-slaves suffered privations, injustices and outrages just as heinous as those inflicted on slaves.
  
  
• Cash reparations, activists say, are meant to redress slavery, not race; so in fairness they should be paid to all descendants of slaves―including wage-slaves―regardless of race.

At this point, the activist would cry, Wait, cash reparations aren't meant to redress slavery so much as present-day inequities that can be traced to trauma―400 years of it. Trauma due to slavery and trauma due to injustice (segregation, discrimination, redlining, lynching, police brutality, etc.).

If that's the activist's argument―and it is―then cash reparations aren't meant to compensate only for slavery, but for systemic racism. But if that's true, doesn't every Black American deserve cash reparations, even one, say, fresh off the boat from Cameroon? To deny that individual payments is in effect to say, "cash reparations are only for slaves' descendants; no other Blacks need apply."

Which loops us back to the simpler claim, that cash reparations are meant to redress an historical event, slavery. And I would insist we add wage-slavery.

So who were these 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century wage-slaves I mention? 

Largely my forebears, the Irish.

Irishmen, working for slave-wages, built America's infrastructure. We owe their descendants cash reparations.

It's as clear as day, as these three examples will tell you:

• From 1828 to 1850, Irishmen dug the C&O Canal, a 200-mile waterway between Washington, DC, and Cumberland, Maryland. Equipped with nothing more than shovels and picks, they spent 15 hours a day moving dirt, while mired waist-deep in cold, muddy water. Hunger, disease, maiming and death shadowed them, and employers routinely shorted their wages―or paid none at all.
  
  
• From 1850 to 1856, Irishmen laid the 700-mile Illinois Central Railroad. They dug out the roadbed, built up the ballast, put down the cross-ties, and laid, bolted and spiked the iron rails―every mile of the way―by hand. If injury or cholera didn't kill them, the same men continued for 30 more years to lay track through the adjoining states of Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado.

• From 1919 to 1927, Irishmen dug the Holland Tunnel, the one an a half-mile underwater tube connecting New York and Jersey City. Thousands of them cut rock for long hours in dark, pressurized chambers built on the bed of the Hudson River. Over 500 men got the bends and 13 perished from overwork, one of my ancestors among them.

If, as activists claim, America's wealth was built on the backs of Black slaves, its infrastructure was built on the backs of the Irish.

I rest my case―and eagerly await my first check.

Postscript: If your forebears were German, Swedish, Polish, Italian or Chinese laborers here in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, you deserve cash reparations as well. But you'll have to stand in line behind me.

Murder Most Foul

It is what it is and it’s murder most foul.

― Bob Dylan

I'm listening to Bob Dylan's new album and remembering the trauma that gripped most Boomers and their parents when JFK was assassinated.

Placed alongside successors, JFK was incomparable. Reagan, Clinton and Obama came close, but none was as influential as JFK.

JFK was young and lithesome; a wounded combat veteran and war hero; a dashing, thoughtful, cultured, funny and articulate politico; someone you could idolize.

The week after the president died, I recall, my dyed-in-the-wool Democrat father bought a life-size bust of JFK and put it on the mantel in our living room, where it sat for 30 years.

JFK not only steered us safely through near-Armageddon, but taught American men important lessons by example, such as why they should speed-read (they'll be better informed); why they should go hatless (they'll stand out from the crowd); how to look chic while sitting (sit in a rocking chair); who's the best contemporary fictional character (James Bond); and how to love your country (volunteer for pubic service).

And then there was Jackie. 

She taught American women by example, too. Jackie taught them to wear suits and pillbox hats; to decorate their homes with antiques; to learn foreign languages and attend concerts and plays; to devote themselves to their children's education and―most memorably of all―to conduct oneself with dignity and aplomb, no matter how foul the deck.