Diary

With all of the recent political developments, I thought I'd comment on the election again. In my opinion, it's a good thing that Biden dropped out. While, technically, he was a good president, there was little enthusiasm for him, and Kamala Harris is an improvement for the Democrats. She is currently producing enough excitement that she could actually win. During the 2020 primary, I initially liked her, but, since she wasn't much of a policy wonk, I went for Elizabeth Warren. Harris is more charismatic than Warren or Hillary Clinton, and she should do well in the coming election. She does have several negatives, however: she is definitely a Californian, which many Americans can't relate to, and her political experience is still somewhat limited. And then, a dark-skinned woman with foreign-born parents and a Jewish husband would have been unthinkable as president a few years ago. But this could turn out to be a rare opportunity, because of the Trump scenario: for many, he is the most hated president in their lifetimes, and he could potentially become a right-wing dictator if reelected. Furthermore, Harris seems to have enough chutzpah that she might successfully attack Trump in a debate – something he's never faced before. Some say that, as a former prosecutor, she would be good at that. It really is quite unbelievable that a convicted felon, rapist and well-documented liar is the Republican candidate for president. Although it's far from certain, the tide could turn on Trump very quickly.

In other news, in my summer doldrums, I'm having some difficulty entertaining myself. I did, however, have a pleasant surprise last Saturday, after Middlebury College suddenly announced the appearance of Duo Ondine at the Middlebury Chapel. They play orchestral pieces transcribed for two pianists on one piano. One of their pieces was a Debussy favorite of mine. This was quite different from most Middlebury performances. There seemed to be no Middlebury staff present, and the program was in French and looked as if it were printed on a copier. The artists introduced themselves on the stage, speaking only in French. They made a lot of eye contact with me, because I was sitting in the front row.

At home, I'm having a hard time finding new films that I like. Besides Taxi Driver, I watched On the Waterfront, which I still think is very good. I don't get excited by Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, or most of the other leading males now. Russell Crowe and George Clooney aren't much better. Anthony Hopkins is eighty-six! We no longer have the equivalents of Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart or Clark Gable. Jennifer Aniston is no Ingrid Bergman. The newer directors aren't that great either. I've tried several Coen brothers' films, and the only one that I liked was Fargo. So there are no equivalents today of Stanley Kubrick, Éric Rohmer, Milos Forman or Roman Polanski. As I've often said, this is all part of the corporatization of the arts in the U.S. Besides that, the internet and social media seem to be redefining entertainment in a manner that removes psychological complexity and replaces it with a sort of personality blandness that is suitable for children. This is reflected in the Marvel superhero films, and Barbie had the same problem.

I do, however, have a new book to read and will start on it shortly.

Robert Owen

I seem to be past the point when I was interested in finding a better place to live. After I graduated from college in 1972, I stayed temporarily with my family in Connecticut but wasn't sure what I wanted to do or where I might go. For a time, I considered moving to New Zealand, but then I ended up moving in with my girlfriend, who was living in Columbus, Ohio, not exactly a utopia. I unenthusiastically got married, and, after an exploratory trip to parts of the U.S. and Canada, moved to Eugene, Oregon for a year, during which I lost enthusiasm for that part of the country. After moving to Indiana, having children and getting divorced, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky for a couple of years and then, with job changes, lived in northern Illinois for about twenty-four years until after I retired. Then I decided on Vermont and moved here in 2011. While I don't usually get very socially engaged with the locals wherever I live, I find west-central Vermont appealing for a number of reasons. Besides the low population and pleasant scenery, there are still hints of utopianism here. The U.S. became a testing ground for a wide swath of utopian ideas early in its history, but nearly all of them had some level of religious motivation. The more interesting ones to me are less religious and are related to optimal social structures, and those didn't become popular until the early 19th century. 

Robert Owen (1771-1858) was a Welsh textile manufacturer of humble origins who operated a highly successful plant in New Lanark, Scotland. He had worked in Manchester and hated the miserable living conditions created there by the Industrial Revolution and used New Lanark as a testing ground for some of his theories. His main goals at the time were to improve working conditions for his employees and provide them with better educations. 

When I lived in Indiana, I was not far from New Harmony, which I mentioned in an earlier post. At that time it was a tourist attraction, and I visited it. It was a town built by a religious German group called the Rappites, who were productive and successful, but they eventually ceased to exist because they didn't believe in sex or reproduction. It may be that they had expected Armageddon to occur, and when it didn't, they had no Plan B. They had purchased the Indiana land, which was wilderness at the time, in 1814, developed it considerably, and then moved away to Pennsylvania in 1824. Robert Owen purchased the town and surrounding acreage in 1825 with the goal of setting up an experimental utopian community. Owen became a notable social reformer and later influenced Marx and Engels. To some extent I agree with his main ideas, because he opposed religion, private property and marriage. However, his idea of integrating those ideas into a workable society in the early 19th century was unrealistic, to put it mildly. After he bought the property, he arrived in the East Coast to much fanfare and met John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He also gave a three-hour speech to the three branches of government, telling them that he hoped to eradicate every social evil.

Obviously, Owen was completely unrealistic, but it would have been less apparent at the time, since human nature was not well understood then. While he objected to religion, he seems to have been unaware that religion serves a social function – it was religion that supplied the cohesion that allowed America's early settlers to survive collectively. As it was, he recruited a wide range of people to live in New Harmony without paying much attention to how compatible they would be. He seems to have attracted a few scientific people, along with more general intellectuals and artists, and a slew of farmers and tradespeople. They came from different backgrounds and geographic locations. From what I've read, it does not appear that Owen gave much thought to how they would be organized. With his faith in reason, he thought that they would follow a democratic process and figure it out on their own. They couldn't, and the community hemorrhaged money until Owen and his financial partner, William Maclure, abandoned the project in 1827. Some of the residents remained there and did productive work, but Owen's original plan completely failed. Unfortunately, I don't think that any social models much better than Owen's have emerged since then. A good start would be recognizing that people are not fundamentally rational.

Vermont, as I wrote earlier, was once a Congregational theocracy to some extent. That did provide cohesion originally, but has little to do with why I find the state appealing now. Because it never industrialized much and the population remained low, the groups that have lived here haven't been at each other's throats as much as in some other states. There are wealthy outsiders who have moved here and locals with reduced economic conditions that don't see eye to eye with them, but the wealth contrasts are less conspicuous here than elsewhere. And some of the liberals who moved here are similar to Bernie Sanders and emphasize equality as more than a talking point. Under these conditions, people tend to be more cooperative. The local newspapers also have a positive impact by covering all aspects involving the local population, which is more conducive to creating a cohesive environment than national news outlets or the internet in general. So, in my case, even though there are aspects of European culture that I prefer, which are absent here, I am resigned to remaining in Vermont, because I am better adapted to living here than anywhere else.

Diary

I've officially entered my summer doldrums and don't feel like reading much now. At this moment, I don't have many tasks to complete. The Carson McCullers Memorial Tomato Garden was attacked by deer but survived. This was quite unusual, because deer don't generally like tomato plants. I think that the culprit was an inexperienced fawn. The largest plant, which had germinated on time, was hardly damaged, and is still doing very well. Two of the remaining three were damaged but are growing back quickly. The fourth was badly damaged but is also recovering quickly. I should still end up with a high yield of tomatoes, since they will continue growing until October. As a precaution, I installed chicken wire around each plant.

The remnants of Hurricane Beryl struck Vermont, but the damage wasn't as bad as the storms of last July. There was a lot of rain and some flooding. This is expected to be a severe hurricane season, and theoretically there could be more that reach here this year. The worst damage usually occurs on the other side of the mountains in high terrain. So far, the state has been effective in strengthening the physical infrastructure, so, over time, each successive storm may produce less damage. But some locations are difficult to protect. My house is safe from flooding, because it is elevated well above the nearby rivers. The worst that could happen would be that the road or driveway could wash out, since they're gravel. So far, they've held up well. The road could also be blocked by trees if there were very high winds. Fortunately, by the time hurricanes reach here, they're not windy, just rainy.

I'm still not experiencing much heat here and haven't turned on any air conditioners. I think that the location of the house and the construction materials help. As I mentioned earlier, the woods don't build up heat and cool down quickly in the evening. The house looks like a log cabin, but, more accurately, it is a frame house with log siding. I think that the thermal properties of the logs are somewhat better than those of other sidings. It also helps that the roof has a low profile, hence less sun exposure than most houses. On a typical day, it's in the 60's outside in the morning and gradually heats up to the 80's during the day. By aerating the house by placing a floor fan in a window and opening doors and windows in the morning and evening, the house can generally be kept in the 70's all day by closing up when it gets hot. It gets a little hotter upstairs during the day, but can be cooled down quickly in the evening. I think that if it were 90º+ often, I might have to resort to air conditioning then. The basement is never warmer than 70º.

One of my last projects is keeping mice out of the shed. It is dilapidated and rotten in places, and is surrounded by mouse nests. Last winter they chewed off small pieces of paper towels in the shed, presumably to use in their nests. I think I've got them blocked out at the moment. The shed was very smelly until recently. I just removed the large stash of coyote urine that the former owner kept there, presumably to protect her garden. There are still lingering odors, but that seems to have taken care of most of it.

I've also been making extra trips to Middlebury to determine whether William, the cat, has been sighted. The back porch at the house was badly damaged by the storm last winter, and some of the wooden framing for the screens was destroyed. The storm door at the back of the house was also badly damaged. Since there have been no repairs made yet, a gray cat had been going onto the back porch to sleep in a chair. I went to see it myself, and it wasn't William. However, William looks exactly like the photo that I posted earlier, and I believe that he may be in the vicinity. To expedite matters, I put up "Missing Cat" signs in the neighborhood. I don't know whether anything will come of it, but if it was William and he is still alive, he will probably return to the house again. The current owner will contact me if she sees him.

The wildlife here is quieting down for the season, and the songbirds seem to have finished their mating for the year. Yesterday, at dusk, I saw a large black bear ambling up the road past my house.

Politics

Though politics is not one of my favorite topics, because most political discussion is frivolous and this is a serious blog, I do feel obliged to write about it occasionally. To some extent, I have used political thinking as an example of human cognitive limitations, with evidence practically slapping us in the face on a daily basis. In my view, you have to allow that it might be possible for well-informed, rational voters to make viable political decisions, but you hardly have to observe the actual political process to see that rationality plays almost no role in the decisions of most voters. There have been two recent trends in news coverage that make politics especially frustrating. On the one hand, there are news outlets that are purely commercial and take no journalistic responsibility for their news content, and, on the other hand, there are unbiased news outlets that take their neutrality to such extremes that they never report on the strengths and weaknesses of individual political candidates; they prefer to limit their political discussions to poll results. I might add that the "neutral" news outlets usually have corporate and other sponsors, and can therefore hardly be considered completely neutral. With the backdrop of uncontrolled misinformation and intentional disinformation campaigns on the internet, false information has been given a significant advantage and now has a disproportional effect on election outcomes. 

I'll comment on Donald Trump first, because this is probably the best example in American political history of the news media dropping the ball. There was some basis for Trump's presidential victory in 2016. He appeared to be a successful businessman and had the showmanship of a television personality, though, if you had dug a little deeper, even then there was plenty of evidence of his various deficiencies.

He benefited from the weaknesses of Hillary Clinton as a candidate: she was uncharismatic, and her political background connected her to decades of ineffective Democrats who had essentially ignored the growing economic pressures on the middle class. Furthermore, she had lived in such a rarefied, wealthy liberal environment that she did not anticipate the effect of her "basket of deplorables" phrase, which permanently alienated many voters. By 2016, class consciousness was firming up, and she was tone-deaf. Also, this is still a sexist country, and that worked against her. Even so, I think that Clinton could easily have won if the news media had provided appropriate reportage on Trump. In 2016, it was already well known that Trump was politically ignorant, probably didn't even care about politics, was generally a business failure, habitually abused women, and had conspicuous psychiatric disorders related to narcissism. There were many signs of his habitual dishonesty by 2016.

While the 2016 presidential election result may have been a fluke, there is no excuse for those in the news media today who shy away from critiquing Trump or discussing what might be expected if he is reelected. Since Trump isn't really very smart, has little interest in political ideology, and is probably already very tired of politics, he might not do much damage. On the other hand, he has a strong incentive to pardon himself of any potential criminal charges, though the Supreme Court has just relieved him of some of that responsibility. At the moment, the greatest threat of a second Trump presidency could be the empowerment of his wealthy backers, who, through the Heritage Foundation, are supporting the conversion of the U.S. government to a conservative autocracy. This one is really crazy, because a vote for Trump could be a vote for a Russian-style voting system, not to mention the end of free speech. Was this part of our American heritage?

The other major presidential candidate now, Joe Biden, is also problematic, but his weaknesses are fairly obvious, even though the liberal news media, which is now openly anti-Trump, has been somewhat protective of Biden. My view is that Biden was already showing signs of senility during the 2020 presidential primary. I voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primary, but was forced to vote for Biden in the election, with Trump as the alternative. Biden does have a lot going for him, and I think that his extensive political experience has been a benefit to the country. I think that future historians may rank him fairly highly compared to most recent presidents. But he has also been a bit lucky, following the worst president in American history. Furthermore, just from watching him speak, it is obvious that he lacks the mental flexibility to properly address the varied and complex issues currently facing the country. He should be thinking at least twice as fast as he now does in public. My impression is that he tries to speak quickly in public in order to seem sharp, but that this backfires because his brain can't keep up with his mouth. In my view, the Democratic Party has been mismanaged for years, and it should have been developing a replacement four years ago. We are now looking at another Ruth Bader Ginsburg age-denial event that could result in an unnecessary step backwards for the country. Biden may still win if he remains a candidate, but the risks are so great that I don't think that the decision should be left to a senile old man.

There are still several months left until the presidential election, and more positive events could occur by then. I was pleased by the sudden ouster of the Conservatives in the U.K., following the ouster of Boris Johnson. With the design of the American political system, the same could not occur here, but there are ways in which the Democratic Party could increase its appeal.