Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1214
Cameron and Nancy, Tolkein Legendarium reading order, a long response to a FB comment about our current state of politics, Daddy School does statistics
Good morning! Hello! How are you, what is up, what in god’s green earth am I listening to, let me check? OH RIGHT. I am listening to the Singles soundtrack, it is great. I threw it in my “To Investigate” playlist to revisit it a few months ago and it really brought me back and I keep listening to it. Except I always forget about this band, The Lovemongers. Real odd one out on a soundtrack where literally every single other artist has achieved rock and roll immortality. I don’t know a single thing about the Lovemongers, I think today is the first time I have even ever thought about them, and I’ve owned this soundtrack for thirty years. Okay well, let’s look em up. Oh my god, I was thinking while listening to them that the singer sounded like a Nancy Wilson rip-off. But it is Nancy Wilson! Keanu woah. Singles came out in 1992. Cameron Crowe and Nancy Wilson got married in [checks Wikipedia] 1988. Okay so this was not part of his seduction process, it was nepotism! The more you know.
Also I keep forgetting that Cameron Crowe and Nancy Wilson got divorced it is too depressing really thought they would last forever. Have you ever heard the director’s audio commentary to Vanilla Sky? It is so good. Cameron prattles on while Nancy noodles on an acoustic guitar along to his prattling and at one point their toddler daughter pops into the room and interrupts the proceedings like any toddler does and the patiently deal with her, like any good parent, all while keeping the commentary going. That’s some good content, right there.
Finished The Hobbit re-read last night and it is still kinda dumb book and I do not especially like it. I am thinking I should have started this whole read-the-legendarium business with the Silmarillion because even though it was published posthumously it is the real roots to the whole Middle Earth mythology, and The Hobbit was shoehorned into it and so was, to an extant, Lord of the Rings. I regret my decisions already. So now I am faced with a dilemma: do I do the Silmarrilion next or Lord of the Rings (again)? What is the proper reading order of this whole legendarium brouhaha and why does Apple keep telling me I am misspelling “legendarium.” Let’s copy and past the word from Wikipedia: legendarium. Yes, shit it Apple, it is correct. Learn spelling.
You know Apple is anti-book not because of all those book lawsuits back in the day (oh, we remember) because of all the BS they sync via iCloud to your various devices, they still do not let you sync your custom dictionary. Worst thing about ever getting a new computer.
So, I got a comment on my FB edition of yesterday’s post and I laughed it off, but I guess I am going to write about it here today because it’s a solid touchstone for a lot of things going through all of our minds! Also, debating things in Facebook comments is a waste of time, fun fact. Seize the means of production, people: do your stupid internet arguing on your own email list.
The comment:
Oh Rick. You are so much smarter than this. :) Joe has been self-serving for 50 years and stepped down bc he was forced to do so rather than for some broader sense of patriotism. Both parties are terrible, as well as their candidates, and the more we sit back and accept the actions of the power brokers that pull the strings the less and less our votes and voices will matter (they already don’t). I find the state of America and American politics just so depressing bc many are still pulling for their ‘side’ versus awakening that the whole game is rigged against us all. It probably has always been that way but not to the extent it is today. We don’t even have a discerning media anymore and very few truly decent people in DC.
So, items!
I agree Joe has been self-serving his whole life, which is why he flip-flopped so often on so many consequential issues through the years: his moral compass was pretty f’d up in his younger years. Maybe it is still! I don’t know. And, more importantly, I don’t care and I don’t think it matters. For several reasons:
Clearly self-interested people can do good for the larger populace. I don’t care why people do good. I am not a philosopher and I think it’s a waste of time to delve. If they do good, they do good.
He has gotten older and I suspect that changes people, maybe, it is sure changing me, but again, even if to the bitter end he was self-serving (and obviously this is untrue, given that quitting doesn’t serve his interests at all), that is fine with me.
I don’t think anyone could force Joe out if he didn’t accept it. Joe has shown, self-serving or no, monumental fortitude through his life, clinging to his goals in the face of huge personal tragedy (his son) and humiliating defeat (being kicked out of the presidential in the past). Of course Joe was facing profound pressure from some (but not all) of our “elite,” but in the end, it was up to him. I’ve known and worked with people from the last four, maybe five administration/campaigns. The author of this comment knows full well I know enough power brokers to know that I can say with authority there is no single-minded cabal. Some very powerful people wanted him to stay in. In the end it was and could only be his call. And, again, see #1: you make the right choice, even for selfish reasons (and, seriously, what selfish reason could there be for quitting the most powerful job in the world), you still get the credit in my rule book.
Both parties are terrible is such a boring and trite thing to say. There is truth to it — the same way I can say right now that America is terrible and all Americans are terrible because 90% of them drive while texting and stay in the left lane while going 0.1 mph faster than the person in the right lane. There are terrible things about both parties, but it is absolutely facile, boring and completely irrelevant to reality to say they’re “both terrible.” It means nothing. They are manifestly different, and those differences make profound, huge differences in the lives of millions. If you are not impacted by this decision, hey, welcome to the club. I’m not either. So thank your lucky stars you’re not, oh, I don’t know, one of the 10 million child-bearing women in the state of Texas. Or an immigrant. Or on Social Security (which I am sure you will happily collect some day since fun fact, even the most hardcore libertarian still takes the check when the time comes). Yes the Democratic party is terrible but it is, at this moment in time, pedestrianly terrible whereas the other party is malevolently terrible, at this moment in time. These things change through the years. Shit, Trump could go to jail or die any moment now and maybe the Republican party will morph back into pedestrianly terrible. That would be great. Mitt Romney was a perfectly fine governor thank you for our Romneycare, sir.
“the more we sit back and accept the actions of the power brokers that pull the strings the less and less our votes and voices will matter (they already don’t).” I’m not following this, exactly, because lord knows I do not in any way sit back and accept the actions of the power brokers that pull the strings, but also I know that, glory be, the power brokers are also like Coke and Pepsi or anything else in nature, they naturally sort themselves into two opposing powers mostly sniping at each other. Controversial theory but it’s based on the real world evidence I’ve seen hanging with them. But that’s a tangent. I would ask you: which of the two of us is sitting back and accepting the actions of the power brokers: the cynic who gave up or the one who still endeavors to make a dent any dent? Which one are you and which one am I? Have I missed your political actions of resistance to power? Consider me a willing audience for any future proselytizing on this subject.
“ I find the state of America and American politics just so depressing bc many are still pulling for their ‘side’ versus awakening that the whole game is rigged against us all.” I find a lot of truth in this, almost complete agreement. So hey, common ground. And in politics I think a lot of Americans conflate disagreeing about the problem with disagreeing about the tactics. In this instance, you and I agree about the problem. But we disagree about the tactics. There’s a world of difference in that distinction. So I suppose it’s worth saying: I do not worship the Democratic party or follow it blindly. I yearn to once again live in a world where you could vote against it without fear of the planet or country dying (oh god, I really took those years for granted). But at this moment there is no alternative to stopping Trump, and that is my priority. Even that! If someone had a rational plan for the country surviving a second Trump administration, well, I could be swayed. Not to vote for him, but for it to not be my policy #1. But no one does! There are the people who say “it won’t be so bad,” without offering any plan on how marginalized people can survive it. That’s kind of it. I am rambling. tldr; of course American politics is depressing and of course the two sides thing is a drag. No shit. Finding it depressing is not a reason to ignore it and give up. I find getting up at 7AM to make breakfast for my kid every day depressing but I’m not gonna smugly opt out and say the trick is to not play the game.
“It probably has always been that way but not to the extent it is today.” Any student of history will tell you it has always been this bad, it has often been worse. BUT, I think the difference is now this is one planet, one world, one economy, one ecosystem, and the stakes are much higher. Started with WWII and has gotten worse since then. But yes, god, the US political system has been a shitshow since the country was founded because the founding fathers fucked up. They made so many mistakes. They (mostly, probably) did their best, they put in a mechanism to improve things (amendments) but it got fucked. They did not protect the masses from the powerful enough. They focused on kings and not plutocrats, because they were plutocrats. It’s a shitty system that has produced Trumps the whole time: Jackson, Coughlin, Lindbergh, Ford, so, so many. Which leads to…
“We don’t even have a discerning media anymore and very few truly decent people in DC.” Oh boy, the media. Okay, my position on the media flows from two points:
Internet is not just media. Social media is not “the media,” even if the two are often confused.
There has never been a time in the history of America where the media was good.
The media has always been garbage. It is part of growing up to realize that the media is not an honest broker, and we confuse our own awakenings with cultural insight. The media now is arguably better than it ever was. Read any history of New York — it is extensively covered in The Power Broker but especially, most comically, in Burrows’ and Wallace’s magisterial history of New York, Gotham, The New York Times has been so, so bad for its entire history! It has been wrong on far more major historical events of consequence than it has been right. The New York Times of today is as terrible as it’s ever been and as good as it’s ever been. It’s better than it was 40 years ago, marginally.
I find it very interesting how everyone thinks the media sucks but they have some magic lens into it. They can tell the truth, they and only they know the difference between the good media and bad. And yet most people routinely conflate the op-ed page with the news. Most people don’t read bylines, most people don’t know what an editor does or is. Most people have maybe a C- sense of media literacy, but think they are good at parsing the media, but think they are qualified to talk about the quality of our media, and haven’t read a history except for maybe a pop-culture presidential biography, since college. It is absurd.
And then on top of it they voraciously consume social media and think they can parse the difference.So, I ask you like I ask all the people who want to take us back to the good old days, when did we have a discerning media? Was it really discerning? Because Cronkite and his ilk manufactured consent like there was no tomorrow. We used to overthrow governments through fruit companies and it didn’t even make the news. I mean how freakin insane is that?
So. All that being said, there’s a lot to agree with in this comment. The only thing I really actively disagree with is that Joe was “forced” or, I guess, the meaning of “forced.” I contend he didn’t have to go, you seem to not to, but we both agree the pressure must have been monumental. Aside from that, I think our main disagreements stem from what this all means for us choosing our own path forward.
If I were to sit here and put some light between mine and Kamala’s politics, boy, there would be a floodlight shining through, but I do not care right now. Kamala and I agree on enough at the moment, including my current main political issue, stopping Trump, that we are gonna be buddies for now. I do not believe Trump is a unique new baddy, the greatest threat in the history of the world. I believe he is a pedestrian, predictable, run-of-the-mill-happens-constantly-through-history baddy. But I believe not all the baddies of history have been stopped, and when you stop the baddy (Coughlin) it is better than when you do not (Hitler).
We are like that scene in your favorite sci fi movie when the bad guy and the good guy team up to stop the bigger baddie. In the sequel, provided we hit the numbers, we’ll be at odds again, but we’ll have a bit of lovable, roguish chemistry from here on out.
Also if you are one of those tax-obsessed people who thinks about voting for Trump because of taxes, I will just say Kamala has not historically been known for taxing the fuck out of your capital gains and carried interest. So, hey. It won’t probably even cost you to vote for her.
Daddy bedtime last night and we did Daddy School and I taught her the basics of statistics and it went shockingly well. Girl loves to tally and ask questions. We polled the cat stuffies on the color pink. After adjusting our sample size to make sure it was statistically significant (we needed about ten cat stuffies to decently offset the law of small numbers), we determined that:
70% of the plush kitties at our house (sample’s gotta be random) liked the color pink.
The average plush kitty at our house gave the color pink 3.2 stars
If we toss the high and low rating, statistically speaking, we predict that a normal house plush kitty gives the color pink 3.4 stars.
Man that girl loves interviewing plush cats.
What a great night.
Got a noise and metal playlist for you today. Listening to the Locrian song right now it is so great. Someday I am going to perfect the metal scream just you watch. I’ll be like 60. Man I really hated metal in high school and college. What a world, what a world. Offers up new wonders all the time.
Talk tomorrow!
"I agree Joe has been self-serving his whole life, which is why he flip-flopped so often on so many consequential issues through the years: his moral compass was pretty f’d up in his younger years."
The way I think about it is that Biden is not, has never been, an ideologue. He's been through his career basically the median Democrat - which as you note, in his early days led to some gnarly positions, e.g., opposing school busing. But because he is not an ideologue he has *moved* with the party as it's become more diverse and open-minded. That's good! Lots of people want politicians who Have Always Been Right About Everything but that's not a) a kind of person that exists or b) a politician that will ever get elected. Politicians representing their constituency is *the whole point* and Biden has understood this very well.
I'll also just say that by my lights (someone who worked in politics when I was younger, has followed it too much ever since), the Democratic Party is infinitely and almost unrecognizably less-terrible than it used to be (even as recently as the Obama admin, where a Senate "supermajority" was rife with absolute, worse-than-Manchin dreck). Generational replacement takes time but the quality of electeds on that side of the aisle is just way, way better on average.
And yes +10000 to the "there has been no good time in the media." I am in fact working on a project about this very thing!
Speaking of Tolkein...as a kid, my brother gave me 'Bored of the Rings' from 1969! Back when parody meant something. It's short and fun (and probably hard to track down).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings