Eric The Blue

London calling Katherine Kersten

Writing yesterday in the Star Tribune newspaper, Katherine Kersten explains the recent rioting in London to puzzled auditors here in the Upper Midwest.  It is all to be attributed to a falling away from religion.  Here is the evidence:

• The pope says so.
• The chief rabbi of Great Britain says so.
• Though they come from different religious traditions, their diagnoses are "strikingly similar,"  and it would be a miracle if a Jew and a Catholic were both wrong.

The details are not very much more coherent.  According to the rabbi, anarchy has been brewing in the UK for half a century.  In the 1960s, you see, the West "abandoned its traditional ethic of self-restraint."  Having "tossed the Judeo-Christian moral code out the window," you could count on rioting in another fifty years. 

It had indeed been brewing for a long while.  The effect follows so tardily upon the cause that those not predisposed to accept the argument will never be persuaded.  For the argument is rooted not in logic but in the psychology of those who advance it.  They think morality depends upon religion and do not want to make it too hard on themselves to prove it.  Why now?  And, since they keep talking about "the West," why London?  Perhaps in another thirty years there will be a riot in Paris and this, too, will be attributed to the "moral vacuum" following upon Europe's rejection of religious values.

Kersten proceeds to the similarly turbid views of the pope before closing with a call for the "remoralization" of society.  In general, beware of arguments that lean upon made-up words.  And beware of those eager to perform sociology whenever some big event occurs.  This tendency to detect in Everything That Happens more evidence for one's own most cherished beliefs is a sign of a mind having fallen off a hinge.

Netflix: Heartburn

Stars Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, which, together with the fact that neither Amanda nor I had seen it, is what made it attractive in the menu of Netflix selections available for streaming on our TV.

It begins with the two principals, a political columnist (Nicholson) and a food writer (Streep), neither one of whom ever seems to have to go to work, meeting at a wedding.  At the end, they're married, he's been cheating, and she puts a pie in his face at a dinner party, then gets on a plane with their little kids.  She is woman, hear her roar.

You might be wondering about the scene in which she discovers he's having an affair.  It's at the hair dresser's.  The beautician is complaining about her fellow's sorry subterfuges and it all falls into place for the Streep character.  She races home, her hair undone, and quickly uncovers irrefutable proof in the center drawer of his desk.  What a scoundrel!  And she's so likable!  Well, of course, the script is by Nora Ephron, and it's based on her autobiographical novel of the same title.

The most interesting thing about the movie is the cultural artifacts.  I'd almost forgotten how large phones were in 1986.

Trades

My Twins, who have scored one run in five consecutive games, and who were shut out in the game before that, have traded slugger Jim Thome to the Indians for a player to be named later: maybe they think they can score a run per game without him.  Meanwhile, on my Blog Roll I've traded Majikthise for John McIntyre's You Don't Say.  You got redirected when trying to link to Majikthise, and anyway I am the kind of dweeb who takes an interest in the questions that occupy copy editors like McIntyre.  Plus he is another Johnsonian.  About one post in ten makes mention of the man whom James Wolcott has called, in a post that introduced me to McIntyre, a "poet, critic, journalist, lexicographer, biographer, extemporaneous genius, befriender of the ragged and accomplished, and sputtering misshapen force of nature."  Not to mention: "one of the greatest men to grace mankind."  (McIntyre would probably say that Wolcott probably should have written "one of the greatest men to have graced mankind.)  According to Wolcott, McIntyre is the "Dave Brubeck of the art and craft of copy editing." Quite the epigram maker, he.

I know, I know, language and copy editing: what could be duller?  Who cares where or whether you place a comma?  However:

I. I didn't marry Bob because I wanted a settled family life.

II. I didn't marry Bob, because I wanted a settled family life.

The words are the same, but you will perceive that, while the speakers are in agreement about the potential for enjoying a settled family life with Bob, (I.) married him and (II.) did not. If this is not the kind of subject matter that swells your corpuscles, there is a lot of plain good sense and a video joke of the week that's usually so bad it'll make you laugh.

I. Shameless self-promotion; and II. At the fair

Eric the Blue has taken note of the fact that his competitors in the CBS Minnesota Most Valuable Blogger Awards 2011 are shamelessly trolling for votes at their sites.  The particular category is "Local Affairs."  I'm late to the game but it's time to fight back.  Go here and vote for Eric the Blue.  I'd really like to do better than Pawlenty did in the Ames Straw Poll, and for that to happen, only two of my competitors can get more than twice as many votes as I. 

On the newsy front, I have the day off from work today, and the five of us went on a pilgrimage to the Minnesota State Fair.  Remember last year when my experience was ruined by having to hear some right-wing talk radio while standing in line for a pronto pup?  The most memorable event of 2011 was the man spotted in the Midway, in the seventh decade of life and about 30 pounds overweight, sporting a tee shirt with the message: "I'm not a gynecologist, but I'll take a look." 

Some modest proposals in re political reform

The other day I was sipping a latte while listening to NPR and wishing I could afford a Prius, simultaneously worrying about the Tea-Party drift of affairs in the land and whether we might be running low on brie in the upstairs fridge, when a story came on about the super-sized significance of Iowa and New Hampshire in presidential politics.  Of course the opinions of various people were quoted, mainly "experts" but including also random attendees of the Iowa state fair.  I liked best, by a long way, the remarks of a fair-goer who said, Yes, it is ridiculous that Iowans should be able to decide so long before the general election who might be fit for the presidency and who definitely isn't, especially since it's clear that the collective judgment of the most "engaged" Iowa Republicans on these questions is cloudy (Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul together got 56% of all votes in the Ames Straw Poll) but that's far from the only ridiculous thing in sight.  And he ticked off the items.   The electoral college.  Michele Bachmann.  The Senate filibuster.  Rick Perry.  The influence of corporate money.  Michele Bachmann.  The mad over-representation of small states (and, thus, of rural and small-town white Americans) in the Senate.  The decision of the Supreme Court in Citizens United.  Rick Perry. That Lincoln did not have the good sense to let the South go.  And so on.  I'm paraphrasing loosely, filling in gaps in my memory with things this  sensible Iowan would surely agree with. 

He might have added to his list safe congressional districts.  How is it that, in a supposedly "fifty-fifty" country, there are so few competetive elections for US House?  The result is a Congress full of long-serving ideologues who could not possibly lose an election if they succeeded in causing the country to default on its debt.  I guess people like me, who vote reflexively for Democrats and who would not live more than five blocks from a coffeeshop or five miles from a skyscraper, are part of the problem.  We make it easy for the enemy to cordon us off in a single congressional district just by drawing a circle through the inner-ring suburbs of Minneapolis.  Then they can own the rest.  Obviously my congressman, Keith Ellison, is not going to compromise with Michele Bachmann.  What would that even look like?  Both voted against the debt ceiling compromise, one because it gave away the store to Republicans and the other because it didn't give Republicans enough.

The political boundaries and demographics of the Twin Cities area are reproduced in urban centers around the country and are a leading cause, I think, of our troubles.  Ellison regularly gets 70% of the vote.  In the district just to the east, where there is another circle drawn around the city of St. Paul, another liberal Democrat, Betty McCollum, gets two-thirds of the vote.  There are three other districts that take up the suburbs and all have been represented since time immemorial by Republicans.  The region as a whole is reliably Democratic.  In the last three presidential elections, for example, the Democrat's share of the vote in the five-district area has never been below 51%, and has averaged 53%.  Yet Republicans' share of the congressional representation has held eternally constant at 60%.  We have two 67% Democratic districts and three 57% Republican ones.  When these five representatives are "responsive" to their constituents, and the pattern is repeated across the more populated states, you have in place the basic ingredients for the wreck that is the US Congress, especially when you add in the absurdly undemocratic rules requiring a supermajority to accomplish anything in the Senate. 

It wouldn't have to be exactly like this.  Alexander Hamilton, a guy in Iowa, and I agree it's ridiculous that each state, no matter how large or small, gets two senators.  We're stuck with that, but the Senate rules are just the Senate rules: they could be changed.  When you put together the need for a supermajority with the fact that all states have two senators, the potential exists for senators representing 12% of the population thwarting the will of the 88% that can be represented by as few as 59 of the 100 senators. 

Regarding the one-sided congressional districts: that's not necessary, either.  Instead of rings, the districts could be shaped like pieces of pie narrowing as they converge on the urban center.  If that were the case with the five districts in the Twin Cities metro area, there is probably not a single current representative who could win in any of them.  Bachmann would be out for sure.  Moderate Republicans could be competetive, but it's possible all five districts would often be represented by standard-issue Democrats.  Which is why it won't happen.

A review of my review of Johnson; or, Johnson & Quoheleth

Having come to the end of Bate's first-rate biography of Dr Johnson, it is natural to scan again my own brief review of Johnson's life, in my Authors category, and to contemplate possible corrective measures.  I think my nod at the end in the direction of his orthodox Christian faith was too easy.  He indeed was the author of the Prayers and Meditations I mentioned.  Bate however points out that theological subjects are hardly ever the immediate subject of his diverse work product; also, that he confessed to being, as a young man, "a lax talker against religion"; and that in the last days of his life he destroyed large portions of a journal in which he may have confided some measure of skepticism.  Whatever his faith was, it wasn't serene.  Bate I think would say that Johnson, perhaps because he knew his own mind, and put a premium on honesty, deliberately chose not to address himself to religious themes.  Philosophical themes, yes.  And the recurring motif here puts one in mind of the Book of Ecclesiastes rather more than anything written by Paul or one of the evangelists.  Quoheleth, the preacher of Ecclesiastes:

Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness.  The wise man has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness; and yet I perceived that one fate comes to all of them. . . .  So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a man who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not toil for it.  What has a man from all the toil and strain with which he toils beneath the sun?  For all his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation; even in the night his mind does not rest.  This also is a vanity. 

Johnson:

Enlarge my Life with Multitude of Days,
In Health, in Sickness, thus the Suppliant prays;
Hides from Himself his State, and shuns to know,
That Life protracted is protracted Woe.

Quoheleth:

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.  For man does not know his time.  Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds which are caught in a snare, so the sons of men are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

Johnson:

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promise of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia. . . .  Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

I first found out about Ecclesiastes in a college course on the Old Testament.  We had made our way through the Pentateuch, and the historical books, and the prophets, and coming now to Ecclesiastes, the instructor related an anecdote concerning how, in a previous year, a student had at this point in the term visited him in his office and said: "Finally, something I can believe in!"  It's hard to know how this slim masterpiece was admitted into the canon, and in a similar way the works of Johnson are bracing in comparison to the conversation of the confident Tory and Church of England stalwart immortalized by Boswell.

Pawlenty makes a call, followed by Eric the Blue

You might have thought, faithful reader, that to say something nice about Tim Pawlenty I'd have to be quoting my mother.  But see if this counts.  By trading Tim Pawlenty for Rick Perry, the Republicans managed over the weekend to increase the batshit-bonkers to sober ratio in their Presidential Sweepstakes. 

No?  Pawlenty's grip on reality is stronger than that of either of the people who finished ahead of him in the Iowa straw poll. 

C'mon!  Give it to me!  He's never spoken wistfully of seceding from the Union, like Perry. He blames Obama for not having led the country out of the fetid swamp he found it in, which distinguishes him from Ron Paul, who thinks it is not the job of the federal government to solve any of the country's problems.  And, compared to Michele Bachmann, he is well-spoken, well-informed, and well-married. 

I have to believe it's going to be Romney.  He's acceptable to the party establishment.  I've been listening to the man-on-the-street interviews among the Republican rank-and-file in Iowa, so I know they are loons, but there are so many loons for them to choose from!  For well-dressed country-club types who aren't sure  their daughters and mistresses shouldn't be able to get an abortion, there's no alternative to Romney.  It'll put him over the top.

Giants on the earth

Sunk, courtesy of W. Jackson Bate, in Dr. Johnson's London, it is hard to resist the notion that there were formerly giants on the earth, and that we do not ourselves measure up.  When Dr. Johnson was in the middle of his long life, the population of Great Britain was around 6 million, about the same as present day Massachusetts.  These six million included, besides Dr. Johnson, the philosopher David Hume, the author and statesman Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon (author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire), and Adam Smith (author of The Wealth of Nations).  Meanwhile, on our side of the Atlantic, the population of the American colonies was around 2.5 million, and we all know some of their names: Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Jay, Hamilton, Washington.  I haven't mentioned John Adams, who was good enough to deserve a PBS miniseries, and would have looked good, or maybe perplexed, between Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann on a stage in the middle of Iowa.  Pray, don't even contemplate what Edmund Burke might think upon discovering himself linked to those mollusks by the term conservative. 

In The Southwest Journal

The neighborhood newspaper, Southwest Journal, delivered to our house today has the page 1 headline, "Minneapolis property taxes higher than most other Minnesota cities."  Hardly a surprise.  Those "other Minnesota cities" do not have on their payrolls homicide detectives, their public schools do not have to teach English as a second language, and their cops do not work overtime 81 times a summer when the Twins have a home game.  That the article was silent about such facts might have left readers with the impression that Minneapolis policy makers must be free-spenders. 

The article is deficient in other ways, too.  "In Hennepin County, property taxes generally get lower the further from Minneapolis," we are told.  The sentence is not grammatical, and the truth of what the reporter is trying to say depends upon an expansive definition of "generally."  In the suburb of Edina, which abuts south Minneapolis on the west, the annual property tax on a $200,000 home is $2275, whereas in Minneapolis it is $3142.  Meanwhile, in Brooklyn Center, which borders Minneapolis on the north, the tax on a $200,000 home is $3340. 

Allow me to indulge myself in what wingnuts call "class warfare."  Edina is a very affluent suburb.  Hardly any of its homes are worth only $200,000, and probably most are worth at least twice that.  Brooklyn Center is a different story.  If your home-buying budget is $110,000, your realtor might say, "How do you feel about the Brooklyn Center area?"  But, of course, the things that cities supply--police protection, fire department, street maintenance, snow plowing, public library, parks and recreation programs--are all purchased in the same market.  Brooklyn Center can't cut a deal on account of its comparatively low tax base.  It has no choice but to tax at a higher rate. 

Well, it can cut out Iibraries and parks and recreation, and skimp on the steet repair--but it will still have to tax at a higher rate than Edina.

When it comes to local property tax rates, distance from Minneapolis is not as important as tax base.  I guess maybe it is impolite to say so but still it is true.  The property tax system is a way of stomping on people when they are down, and awarding them for having already succeeded.  If you live in a modest home in Brooklyn Center, you'll have to drive on pockmarked streets past the closed library to get to unkempt parks--and pay higher property tax rates, too.  That makes it a less attractive place to live, which further reduces  property values, which makes the problem yet worse.  Edina is in comparison highly desirable--if you can afford it. 

Once, Minnesota state government, recognizing this problem, awarded "local government aid" to struggling municipalities.  But then we elected Tim Pawlenty governor during hard economic times.  Of course he'd promised "no new taxes no matter what," and, faced with a gaping budget deficit, he balanced it with a mix of accounting tricks and actual cuts.  The actual cuts were almost entirely limited to local government aid.  When the tricks didn't work, he instituted new ones and cut local government aid further.  This resulted in much higher property tax rates in places like Brooklyn Center (which formerly had received local government aid) but not in places like Edina (which had never been a recipient).  So the budget was brought into balance by tapping the resources of people least able to afford it.  More and more, that is the American way. 

On the lighter side, the Southwest Journal also prints a crime report, which this week included the following item:

2800 block of Girard Ave. S.
July 19, 6:00 p.m.

A legally blind 18-year-old man met a homeless man on a bus and agreed to allow him into his apartment for a glass of water.  While inside the apartment, the suspect stole several items.  The victim was still able to provide some suspect information.

A baritone, perhaps, who could have been wearing anything.