I Can but I Won't

I'm as guilty as anyone of romanticizing the Greatest Generation.

But—just as millions of today's Americans are jerks about mask-wearing—many of the Greatest Generation were jerks, too.

Jerks about rationing.

Three months before Pearl Harbor, FDR signed an executive order intended to curb households' consumption of commodities. He knew they'd soon be in short supply. 

Commodities like cars, tires, gas, oil, coal, wood, towels, linens, clothes, shoes, meat, fish, catsup, mustard, butter, milk, cheese, coffee, sugar, jelly, shortening, canned fruits, canned vegetables, chocolate bars, candy bars, and bubble gum.

Americans were asked by their government to accept sacrifice—all for the good of the coming war effort. But millions never did. Millions hated rationing—as they did FDR—and cheated.

They cheated by stealing and counterfeiting ration coupons; buying coupons from relatives, neighbors, and the Mafia; hoarding goods; and buying them from bootleggers, black-marketers, and crooked merchants.

The Americans who complied with rationing, for the most part, ignored those who didn't, although one government official said the latter were "secretly in sympathy with Hitler or Hirohito."

Plus ça change.

A Nation of Neurotics

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

— Sigmund Freud

What's wrong with everyone? 

Covid-19 is a moving target. 

The CDC's advice about shots, mask-wearing and social distancing merely moves in response.

Better and better news comes out every day.

Yet everyone wrings their hands.

Riders on the Storm

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. 

Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

— Samuel Butler

We're about to see Joe Biden try to replace deprivation with comfort—or at least the opportunity to achieve comfort. And we're about to see Republicans try to block him.

I was raised to be a New Deal Democrat and cannot sympathize with anyone—except the rich—who supports the other party; and I can hardly sympathize with the rich. (My tender feelings fizzle fairly fast for households earning $300K+ a year.)

Biden's plan is bold because justice is at stake.

Justice is simple.

If you're a Republican, when it comes to defining justice you're on the wrong side of history—or two centuries behind the times, anyway. Your notions of rugged cowboys and laissez-faire capitalists are as outdated as frock-coats; so are your miserly notions of producers, moochers and looters. But you don't care. You're too busy dodging taxes and griping about socialism.

But if you're not a Republican, you know justice is about fairness, not self-interest, not ownership—and certainly not ownership of you (the gripe of Republicans is that taxes equate to Stalinist "forced labor"). Fairness means you don't trammel others' rights, including the right to a fair opportunity—a "fair shake," as Biden prefers to say. 

What's so complicated about that?

Now, Congressional gridlocking aside, the realist in me recognizes that giving everyone her fair shake won't be easy. 

First, some rich people will have to pay more taxes. Tough turkey. If you earn over $300K, I won't cry for you.

Second, some poor people will waste their opportunity. That'll be no one's fault but their own. I won't cry for them, either. Justice, after all, assures inalienable rights; even the right to screw up.

Dasein ist geworfener Entwurf, as Heidegger said: into this world we're thrown.

Thrownness is the human condition, our lot in life, the hand we're dealt. We're all born "situated," as Sartre said. Some are born haves, some have-nots; some White, some non-White; some abled, some disabled; some competent, some grossly not so. Justice seeks to throw off our thrownness.

We're all just riders on the storm. 

Why don't Republicans get that?

Some Things are Nonnegotiable

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.

― George Orwell

In The New York Times this week, conservative columnist David Brooks observes that the gospel of woke has already reached the remainder shelves, its freshness expired.

The proof, he says, lies in the fact that corporate America has co-opted it.

Corporations have the uncanny ability to productize progressive ideologies, Brooks says, "taking what was dangerous and aestheticizing it."

He cites the example of a nearly laughable pamphlet for math teachers, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.

The pamphlet urges teachers to shun "racism in mathematics."  

"White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when there is a greater focus on getting the 'right' answer than understanding concepts and reasoning," the pamphlet says.

"Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity," and objectivity is racist.

Objectivity is racist, the pamphlet insists, because it's paternalistic, provoking fear and self-hatred among math students unaware of the correct answers.

Brooks might find this stuff silly and harmless; I don't. 

There are tens of thousands of teachers imbibing this swill.

Mathematical truth—what philosophers call realism—is apodictic, immutable and—as harsh as it sounds—nonnegotiable. 

Mathematical truth may be the last bastion of white supremacy, but I'll defend it to the end. 

Otherwise, truth is only that which is trouble-saving.

Do you want your grandkids crossing bridges engineered by snowflakes unable to add two plus two?

Not me.

Inimitable

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

— T.S. Eliot

There's theft and there's appropriation. 

Theft is like porn: you know it when you see it. I recently sent an article to the editor of Successful Meetings; the following week, my article—poorly recast—appeared under a staff writer's byline. 

That's theft.

Andy Warhol, on the other hand, made imitation boxes of Brillo, not for display in grocery stores, but in art galleries. 

That's appropriation.

Whole books have been written about Bob Dylan's penchant for appropriation.

He's appropriated melodies from folk singers, blues players, country artists, and English balladeers; lyrics from novelists, playwrights, scriptwriters, and fellow composers; and paintings from other painters.

Critics are quick to call Dylan's borrowings theft, but even Shakespeare was hardly above appropriation, as T.S. Eliot noted.

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal," Elliot wrote of Shakespeare. 

"Bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."

Dylan has appropriated from plenty of others; but he's welded what he's taken "into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn."

His way of welding makes him inimitable.

NOTE: Bob Dylan turns 80 this month. He resumes touring in June. A retrospective of his paintings opens in November. His archives opens to the public next May.