The Pilgrim's War on Terror

I have been reading Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick and have been struck by deja vu. The book is about the Plymouth Colony and its encounters and relationships with the native Americans in the new world. The second half of the book concerns King Phillip's War. King Phillip was the son and heir of Massasoit, the sachem from a local Wampanoags tribe that initially befriended the Pilgrims and helped them survive their fearful first years in America. For a time the relationship between colonist and native American was mutually beneficial, but by the 1670s the native New England tribes were increasingly impoverished and the whites increasingly covetous of native land.

King Phillip's War was a small local dispute that got out of hand and exploded into a regional war with devastating consequences to natives and colonists. The blunders and misunderstandings that caused this bear an eerie resemblance to the modern day "War on Terror". I don't know if there is a tragic defect in the American psyche, but the story seems uniquely American, and there from the start.

King Phillips bears some resemblance to Osama bin Laden. More a financier and facilitator of the war than a participant. King Phillips provoked the war initially by a series of terror attacks on outlying colonial towns. Rather than just dealing with the one unhappy group either militarily or by negotiation, the colonists responded by attacking neutral tribes, bringing them all into the war. To me, there seems to be a obstinate refusal to understand the differences among native American tribes and the political interrelationships that closely resembles the modern American, seemingly willful blindness to tribal, ethnic, and sectarian differences among the peoples of the Middle East. The colonist's response was a traditional military response involving massive displays of power. These strategies seemed over and over to lead them into ambush. Soon all of New England was embroiled in the conflict. All native Americans were treated with suspicion, whether they were hostile or manifestly friendly.

The colonists personalized the conflict. Whenever and where ever the natives attacked European settlements, the colonists were sure that Phillip was there. In reality, King Phillip, like bin Laden, avoided direct conflict. He spent most of the war hiding out in caves in the borderlands between Massachusetts and Vermont.

King Phillip's War even had its own General Petreus figure in the person of Benjamin Church. Church realized the colonists could only prevail by understanding the native American style of warfare. He abandoned set piece battles. He showed a willingness to work with friendly natives and to work to turn unfriendly natives to his side. His approach turned the tide of the war.

By the end of the war a huge proportion of the native population of New England was either dead or had been shipped off the the Caribbean as slaves. The colonists, too, were impoverished, and newly dependent on the English crown for protection. Soon, the Plymouth Bay Colony could no longer sustain itself and was merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

All wars, of course, have elements of this same plot, of course, but it seems to me that the extent to which Americans personalize our enemies and the tendency of Americans to pull bystanders into the conflict are, sadly, characteristic of our approach to the world. It started with the Puritans.

Washing the Car

I washed the car this afternoon, which I rarely do. I wash the car when it needs it, when the accumulation of crud and debris threatens its aerodynamic characteristics. I sometimes joke that I wash it every year, "whether it needs it or not." This is a true description of frequency, but not motive. If it didn't need it, I wouldn't wash it.

While I was engaged in this work it occurred to me that it is quite possible that, since we are in a drought year, someone could be driving by might become indignant about my wasting of water. They might make the assumption that I do this every weekend, as some do. They might wag a finger of approbation.

The thing I was thinking about as I scraped a years worth of bugs from the front grill is that this hypothetical finger wagger is right in the general case. I would agree with him or her. One should not waste water if you live in the semi-desert that is California. You should not do so, especially in a drought year. Its socially irresponsible. Its bad for the environment. Washing cars is one of the ways people waste water. Its just that the wagger's finger might be misdirected in my case.

People make errors of particularization all the time, of course. It probably happens more these days. Our technology permits more and more context free encounters. George W. S. Trow wrote about it in the sixties in Within the Context of No Context. We curse each other on the freeway because of a too sudden stop or a missing signal. This is an example of a great sin: people don't signal as they should. We shake our fist because we have found a sinner. The sinner. But we have never met the person in this car in front of. We don't know what kind of day they are having. We don't know if failure to signal is a chronic problem or an aberration. We have a moral makeup meant to protect the cohesiveness of a tribal village. It loses its bearings in the anonymity of modern life.

- J

What Happened to Litter?

When I was growing up in the sixties, litter on the highways was a topic of national policy. Lady Bird Johnson campaigned against it. Signs on all roads threatened big fines for littering. Yet, shoulders were covered with trash.

Today one will occasionally encounter a "no littering" sign. Occasionally you will see trashy shoulders. But, rarely is litter a subject of public discussion let along political campaigns.

What happened? I don't think the highway maintenance sponsorship programs are responsible. Litter was largely gone before these programs began. If anything, Americans generate more trash while in their cars than in the sixties. When Lady Bird was on the case, McDonald's and KFC had yet to spread across the country. There are orders of magnitude more cars on the roads.

I wonder if air conditioning can account for the change. Americans do not drive with open windows any more, especially on highways. Tossing something carelessly out the window is no longer possible.

Often, technological changes cause changes that cannot be foreseen. Sometimes they are not even seen at the time the changes are taking place, and can only be observed in hindsight.

- J

TV Friends

In a recent This American Life episode, David Rackoff told a story of a man found to have been dead a year in his lounge chair with the television still on. He said that recent studies have shown that television is capable of having the same emotional and physiological effects as friendship. But, he said, at a minimum a friend should be able to reach over and say, "How are you doing, buddy. You're not looking so good, in fact you are looking a little ..., dead!"

Its true that a lot is missing from the emotional connection that people seem to have with people on television, but it is hard to underestimate its power. Political campaigns these days are built around trivia aspects of appearance or behavior while monstrous defects go unremarked. What goes largely unnoticed is that television news, mainly under the influence of the 24 hour cable news channels, has become more informal and conversational. The way people relate to any medium is by correlation to real world social forms. The transition from Walter Cronkite to Chris Matthews is the transition from a professor in a lecture hall to a guy in a bar. A guy in a bar demonstrates his understanding of the world by inferring broad generalizations from small details that others might not notice: a missing flag in a lapel or quirky turn of phrase. In a bar, a guy who has command of facts and statistics is a know-it-all and must have hidden motivations. A guy who can spin a narrative from whether someone wears a flag in his lapel is a regular guy.

- J

Turtle Blues

Lately, if I get a window seat on an airplane I look for humans when the plane is taking off or landing. I see plenty of cars scutting along. I rarely, if ever, see actual humans, even when the planes are low enough to the ground to make them out. We have become a country of turtles or hermit crabs. We spend most of our time under a shell of some kind.

-- J

A little perspective

Balloon Juice:

If you have a memo from Jeremiah Wright to John Yoo showing how we should become a rogue nation, let me know. If you have pictures of Jeremiah Wright voting against the GI Bill, send it to me. If you have evidence of Jeremiah Wright training junior soldiers on the finer aspects of stacking and torturing naked Iraqi captives, pass them on.

"Until then, I just can’t seem to get all worked up about the crazy scary black preacher that Obama has to 'throw under the bus.'"

The media needs to be talking about the important things, not former preachers and lapel pins.

Farley's Blend

Farley's Blend. You can still get it at Peet's, even though it is not on the board. They have to blend it on the spot. Most Peet's blends, it seems to me, are either all Arabica(Asia or Africa) or all Robusto(Americas). This one blends both.

- J

Rubber Rooms

I heard a This American Life story last night about Rubber Rooms. It can be heard here. These are temporary "Reassignment Centers" for teachers in the New York City public school system. Teachers may be pulled from the classrooms for any of a variety of reasons and assigned to a Rubber Room, where the have to show up each workday and sit for seven hours to get paid. Some people are assigned this purgatory for years. It is a bizarre and arbitrary system. In these circumstances, apparently, people quickly begin to behave like people in prison. They played a snippet of what it sounded like on a typical day. It sounded just like a High School classroom when the teacher is out.

- J

Crossed Paths

I have been listening to the Librivox edition of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. In the final chapter he introduced a brief autobiographical moment with "My grandfather's grandmother was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago; and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic, black, little, and lithe, she shivered and shrank in the harsh north winds...." I thought, "I wonder..."

We have traced one branch of my wife, K's, family back to Hugo Freer, one of the twelve patentees of New Paltz, New York, in the late seventeenth century. They were French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution. They obtained their patent from the Dutch colonists. When we visited the Huguenot Street Historic Site in New Paltz we were shocked to learn that the original families kept slaves, whom they obtained in trade with the Dutch. Du Bois is obviously a French name. I wondered if K's ancestor and Du Bois's ancestor crossed paths.

There is this: Per Wikipedia, "W.E.B. Du Bois is said to be grandson of a loyalist descendant of Louis Du Bois' brother who left for the West Indies." Louis Du Bois is another New Paltz patentee. Louis Du Bois, himself owned six slaves, according to records. So, maybe. K's ancestor and Du Bois's ancestor may well have crossed paths.

Strange to think that people fleeing oppression would turn to oppressing others. Strange to think this occurred in the "enlightened" north. New York did not completely ban slavery until the 1820's.

- J

Paul Muldoon, New Yorker poetry editor

Here is an interesting interview with Paul Muldoon, the new poetry editor of the New Yorker. He writes lyrics for his rock and roll band in addition to teaching poetry at Princeton, in addition to his gig at the New Yorker. Talking about formal structure in rock lyrics as a way of talking about formal structure in poetry he says that building a building as a rectangle with four walls happens to be a very useful way to build a house. Nothing mystical. Just figure out a way to make it work. Worth a listen.

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Interspecies Cooperation among Neighorhood Birds?

By this time of year we have finished harvesting the fruit of the hachiya persimmon tree in our front yard. All the leaves have fallen, so the bright orange fruit make a striking holiday display. Besides we like to leave a portion of the harvest for the birds. Birds of several species seem to enjoy the sweet inner pulp, mockingbirds and sparrows especially.

Over the years I have noticed a curious thing: the birds never work on more than one fruit at a time. A bird will make an initial hole in the persimmon's skin, exposing the inner pulp and over the next couple of days the birds will consume the pulp, gradually expanding the hole as the need dictates. Only one bird will eat the fruit at any given time, but I have often noticed several birds waiting their turn. When only the translucent skin from the backside of the fruit remains the birds will select a new fruit and begin again.

Working on one fruit at a time maximizes the period when the fruit is available. If a persimmon fruit remains on the tree and remains untouched it will not readily spoil. If the birds were to open many fruit at once, some would spoil before they could be fully consumed. By consuming them one at a time, the fruit are available longer.

Is it possible that this is what is going on? Are the birds cooperating to extend the harvest season? If so, what is the mechanism?

- J

My Mouth as a Toxic Materials Site

I know there are many obvious jokes about the above post title, but I mean the title to be taken literally and without irony.

I was at the dentist on Tuesday to have an aging amalgam filling replaced. These are the fillings with mercury. When I have had this procedure done in the past it was a pretty normal time at the dentist. They drilled away for a while, then filled, leveled, and smoothed. Like highway work really, only on a small scale.

This time was bit different, though. I could tell when they rolled up a big machine with a flexible fabric tube that was positioned near my head. It looks like a miniature version of the tubes they use to service airliners. This one turned out to be a big vacuum. The put one of those rubber dams around my tooth (to "isolate" it.) In a few more seconds I was breathing from an oxygen mask that had been lain on my nose, and my dentist and her assistant donning gas masks, goggles, and gloves. The gas masks were yellow plastic versions of the World War I masks, with the pair of cylindrical vents, one on each side of the mouth. They cranked up the vacuum and away we went. "Turn towards me", "open wider", and "almost done" all sound pretty much like "mmmmph-mmm-ph-mmm" when people are talking through gas masks inside a man-made windstorm. It was a pretty weird experience. If I am ever abducted by aliens, I will be prepared.

Apparently, this new protocol is completely justified by the risks. Apparently dental office workers have historically had a number of serious health problems that are now attributed to mercury.

It has been less than a hundred years since mercury was thought be beneficial to one's health. A few years ago we visited the New Almaden Park in San Jose. This was the site of the biggest mercury mines in the world (hence the name of the San Jose paper, the Mercury News.) I remember seeing in the museum that people would visit the mine area as a health benefit. The mineral water from the creak that flowed through the mine area was sold as a tonic. This was because it contained mercury, not in spite of the fact.

- J

Sen Feinstein (well, her staff) responds

A bit more than a month ago I emailed Senator Feinstein a complaint about her support of the Mukasey nomination for Attorney General. Today I received a response. Here it is:

Dear Mr. ---:

Thank you for writing about Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination as Attorney General.

After doing my due diligence and carefully reviewing Judge Mukasey's record, I concluded that he will be a strong and independent leader of the Justice Department. I believe that if he was not confirmed, an acting Attorney General, who would not be confirmed by the Senate, would have led the Department for the remainder of the administration. The Justice Department is too important for that to happen.

Therefore, I supported Judge Mukasey's nomination and voted to confirm him. I made a statement on the Senate floor explaining my decision which I have enclosed, along with an op-ed I wrote and op-eds from several newspapers on the importance of confirming Judge Mukasey.

Please know that I appreciate your opinion and hope that you will continue to inform me of your views. If you should have any other comments you want to share with me, or if you have a question I can answer, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

I do not understand why people in her position still fail to see that this is not business as usual. She is aware that the President, like a petulant child, would have likely refused to send up another nomination if he did not get his way, and she doesn't see anything out of the ordinary in this. She is like an indulgent parent of a spoiled child.

In fairness to Senator Feinstein, she has spoken out recently on the subject of torture and made concrete proposals. I hope that she continues to pursue the topic. I hope too that she comes to see before its over that the President does not acknowledge the rules of the game in Washington.

- J

Liquidity Bubbles: Why they keep happening

Dear reader(s), does the following even make any sense? I wrote this a while ago, and did not post it then. I am not sure. When someone says "I am not an economist, but..." I get suspicious. I even get suspicious of myself.

- J

We have yet to see the end of what has become known as the Subprime Mortgage Scandal. There are apparently many more rocks to turn over. Already, though, the dollar amounts are huge. This is the latest in a series of Liquidity Bubbles: lots of cash with no place to go until someone figures out a way to rationalize very bad investments. The first liquidity bubble in modern times, I think was the Savings and loan scandal of the 80's. To a degree, the dot-com bubble was a liquidity bubble.

I am no economist, but it seems pretty plain to me. Starting in the Seventies we turned over to the Fed virtually all the management of economic cycles. At the same time we began a legislative trend that has had the effect of increasing opacity of economic transactions. "Deregulation" and "Free Trade" are opacity increasing activities. What is the economic value of moving manufacturing oversees? To make invisible exploitation of workers and trashing of the environment.

So when the economy slows down we pump more cheap money into it. This is intended to encourage innovation and new enterprise, and it does, but it also encourages fraud. Especially in a loosely regulated environment, old ideas, like pyramid schemes and ponzi schemes are easy to dress up as new, easier than real innovation. So we have bubbles, ordinary citizens are victimized and the government bails out the villains. And so it will go.

- J

California: Land of the Environmental Suckers?

In politics, it is well known that California cares about environmental issues. National candidates who have not mentioned the environment in 49 other states come here and suddenly global warming is all they want to talk about. But, have we become such suckers that politicians feel that this is the only bone they need to throw to the electorate? Are we that gullible?

Dianne Feinstein seems to think so. Last week, literally in the dead of night, she gave her endorsement to our new Attorney General in spite of the fact he refused to disavow well known torture practices. Last week they announced her intention to support retroactive immunity for those who engaged in spying on ordinary Americans. According to polls, these are extremely unpopular positions in California. But, here she is this week, flying out to visit us to make angry speeches about the oil spill. Its called shoring up the base.

Schwarzenegger also seems to exploit the warm fuzzy place the environment has in the heart of Californians. His administration was teetering until he caught on and introduced a number of largely symbolic environmental initiatives. Now he is flying high.

Its alright that California is concerned about the environment but do we have to be such schmucks? A few small nods for the environment should not excuse trouncing with our civil liberties and our nation's good name.

- J

Feinstein Redux

Another letter to one who seems to have lately become George Bush's best friend on the Hill.

- J

Dear Senator Feinstein

I read in the paper this morning that you intend to support immunity for phone companies that are facilitating the government spying on ordinary Americans. I urge you to reconsider. In the article you are quoted as saying the phone companies should not be held liable for complying with requests from the government, that those in government should be held liable. But the effect of this immunity bill is that the facts surrounding the cases will be suppressed. This bill will permit the criminals in the Bush administration to get away scott free. There are so far unchallenged allegations that the Bush administration approached the phone companies long before September 11 about installing the equipment that is at issue. The argument that the parties were motivated by the need to respond to al Qaeda is therefore bogus.

Please reconsider your position Senator Feinstein.

(Image: from wiki commons. The Letter Writer by David Roberts)

Dear Senator Feinstein ...

I sent the following mail to Senator Feinstein today. She was effectively the swing vote permitting the nomination of Mr Mukasey to go forward. I know such letters will have no impact on a Senator that doesn't have to think about her electorate for five more years, but it helped calm me down a little.

- J

Dear Senator Feinstein,

I know you will say that your vote on the Mukasey nomination does not mean you endorse the use of torture. I think you believe your vote was practical and pragmatic; making the best of a bad situation. If not Mukasey, Bush could send up somebody worse.

I think you are wrong. The citizens of California, the citizens of this country, and the citizens of the world are waiting for our government to stand up and begin to restore some of the ideals that we once stood for. Our president says we do not torture but has not disavowed memos that define torture so narrowly as to be meaningless. A number of your fellow Judiciary Committee members stood together to make a clear statement about torture, to draw a line. You would not stand with them. You stood with the president. You stood for torture.

- J

Of the Moon and My IPod

I read somewhere, I don't know where, about why a full moon appears so large on the horizon but shrinks as it climbs the sky. It is not from some refraction effect of the thicker atmosphere. It is simply because near the earth we have points of reference and the moon is large in comparison. High in the sky our only reference is the expanse of sky and the moon appears small. You can demonstrate this to yourself. When the moon is at the horizon, hold out your thumb next to it at arms length. Note how it compares to your thumbnail. Do the same thing when the moon is high. You will find they match.

I bring this up to talk about IPods. People say that IPods or other mp3 players will harm one's hearing. My personal experience tells me the opposite. Ear buds do not shut out or muffle the sound around you like earphones do. As I have walked around town listening to my IPod at a relatively constant volume a surprising number sounds drown out the sound from the IPod. Leaf blowers are loud of course, but they overwhelm my music at a hundred yards. Ordinary traffic noise is much louder than I would have thought and usually overwhelms my IPod.

An IPod is to the hemisphere of sound as a thumb at arms length is to the sky. It is a crude but good enough reference point. We don't ordinarily have reference points for sound. Nowadays, even if my tunes are at home I am much more aware of sources of loud volumes and will go out of my way to avoid them. My IPod may thus save what is left of my hearing.

- J

James Fallows on Chinese Manufacturing

I heard a recent Fresh Air interview with James Fallows about his article in Atlantic Monthly on the Chinese manufacturing explosion. Most of the factories are small and family run. Most owners are from Taiwan. They compete mainly on being agile and cutting costs relentlessly. Most of the work is manual. They employ unskilled youth from the countryside who work for a few years for $100 a month. They then go home where they can live on $100 a year. They are family run because corruption is so endemic and the regulatory system so fragile that owners cannot trust anyone but family members. This keeps the companies from getting bigger.

Years ago Paul Hawken wrote a book, I think, The Next Economy, predicting an era in which small enterprises will drive the economy. Turns out he was right. Just got the country wrong.

- J

Global warming and "personal responsibility"

My last post referred indirectly to a recent trend in the response to global warming, the marketing of products that will help you fight global warming. Everything from compact florescent lights to hybrid vehicles, if you are concerned about global warming these can help. In this, marketers are reacting to global warming the same way they reacted to other environmental trends. Holes in the ozone, crisis in the electrical grid, the energy crisis, droughts, concerns about stuff in the water, concerns about stuff in the air: lets put out happy little advice books, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, pens, and bumperstickers telling you what you can do. Lets sell products that help you solve the problem.

The thing is, though, none of these "personal ethics" oriented tips, even if adopted by millions would even begin to address global warming. Take the big ticket item, buying a hybrid. Nowadays buying a hybrid is all about doing something about global warming. Hybrids are very popular, but suppose they became even more popular to the degree that the gas savings compared to conventional designs became significant relative to overall use. Would that mean that the overall carbon footprint for mankind was less? I doubt it. The hybrids people buy will replace some other car. Odds are good that the other car is an SUV. The gas guzzler doesn't go away. The personal responsibility for the damage to the environment is simply transfered to another in the exchange. It is like a medieval indulgence: absolution of sins with a simple purchase. And the gas not used? Well, gas is a market commodity. If there is less gas used the price will go down. The natural consequence of this would be revival of the flagging SUV market. Just because because one individual lowers their use does not mean the gas will not get used, and if it is cheaper it will be used more wastefully.

I say the above as a proud Prius owner. Why I bought a Prius, if I was aware of the futility of personal ethics will have to be the topic for another post.

- J