I love to read. BA from SUNY Potsdam, MEd from University of Arizona at Tucson. I write about books to remember them and to share my memories of them. After you read hundreds of books it is nice to be able to have a reference to refer back to that reminds you of how the book affected you.
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch won the Booker Prize. That would be enough reason to read it, but the dystopian nature, reflecting America’s possible descent into authoritarianism, makes it essential reading. Eilish and Larry Stack are having a perfectly ordinary night with their children (except the oldest boy who like most teens does not always get home on time). Bailey and Molly are in front of the TV and Ben is breast-feeding, as the author muses on behalf of Eilish,
“The night has come and she has not heard the knocking, standing at the window looking out into the garden. How the dark gathers without sound the cherry trees. It gathers the last of the leaves and the leaves do not resist the dark but accept the dark in whisper. Tired now, the day almost behind her, all that still has to be done before bed and the children settled in the living room, this feeling of rest for a moment by the glass. Watching the darkening garden and the wish to be at one with the darkness, to step outside and lie down with the fallen leaves and let the night pass over.
But the knocking… ” (pg. 6) (Paul Lynch’s writing would drive Grammarly crazy which doesn’t make it wrong.)
This proves to be one of the last ordinary nights the Stack family ever has. Who is at the door? The police, but not the ordinary police, these are the police of the new order, the order that is making up rules against every aspect of the state in which the people have lived for decades, perhaps centuries.
What do these people want, these people who were once neighbors, fellow citizens but are now, somehow, the police who can come to anyone’s door and make them disappear? It seems that they want nothing except power over you and your family. As Eilish struggles on her own, once her husband is rounded up and his fate becomes a mystery, she at least still has a job. Soon her job too falls afoul of whatever it is the new government will tolerate and she loses her grasp on the equanimity that routine offers. Everyone tells her to leave but she can’t imagine leaving while her husband is still being held, while her oldest son is off fighting with the revolutionaries against the new government which sees all citizens as enemies. Why? There appears to be no why, but just a quest for absolute power. These new leaders seem to offer nothing to citizens. Eilish’s sister wants her to come to Canada, but she wants to wait it out, believing it to be a temporary upheaval.
This is a disturbing book that we still ought to read since our senses tell us that this is something that could happen in America right now. Who would know better than Ireland (where this is set) what can happen in a divided nation? What would you do if the stormtroopers, no matter how polite they seem and how officially they are dressed, were to start appearing at doors across America warning you about mysterious transgressions that you were accused of committing? What would you do if family members were taken into custody and never returned? Suppose no information about their whereabouts was forthcoming? Would you leave America? Where would you go? You would have to be quick about it before the rules got too stringent and security measures forced you to find illegal ways to travel. It’s chilling to read about it, but it would be far more chilling to live it. A very timely book and a warning to all of us.
In Absolution by Alice McDermott, we travel back to the days when America was first getting involved in the war in Vietnam, perhaps hoping to solve the issues between north and south with diplomacy while using private corporations to get South Vietnam ready for war. The story is told through the vivid memories of a woman who was only just married to her husband Peter at 23-years-old when he is sent to Vietnam as a consulting engineer. Tricia goes with him. She describes her aspiration at that time was “to be a helpmeet for my husband.” Her father told her on her wedding day to “be the jewel in his crown.” She doesn’t exaggerate. This is the way daughters were raised at that time. Like Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice who had five daughters to find husbands for, my mother had six daughters to marry off. I was once presented to the pots and pans salesman as a potential bride. I confess that I disappointed my mom.
This is a story of another time, of the time many wish we could recapture, although not necessarily the part where we venture into Vietnam. Tricia describes her days as an endless round of cocktail parties bringing together men (and their families) from the military, the government, and corporations. Women, being helpmeets for their husbands, spent hours wearing gauzy cocktail dresses over iron-clad undergarments at garden parties in humid, hot discomfort, attempting to look cool and pretty. She begins her story by telling what a typical day was like. Wives would bathe in the morning, staying in their bath until noon. Then they would do their nails, send out little witty notes to other wives, burn joss sticks to perfume the heat. After that they would apply face powder, rouge, lipstick, pin dress shields in the chosen cocktail dress, don undergarments and stockings, add shoes, and spray some perfume. Tricia says that she would be “faint with heat in my column of clothes.”
Obviously, Absolution is not a book about the Vietnam War. It offers a peek into something we never thought to wonder about. What was daily life like for the wives of the men who were trying to make peace while preparing for war. America tends to turn the foreign countries where it spends time into spaces that resemble America as much as possible. Except for their servants and shopping in the marketplaces these wives saw little of what life was like for the Vietnamese. Tricia describes the Vietnamese women who passed them by as “girls we passed on the streets…were like pale leaves stirring in the humid stillness, sun-struck indications of some unseen breeze, cool, weightless, beautiful.” Alice McDermott is a good writer.
Charlene, who befriends Tricia, is a mother of three and “a seasoned corporate spouse.” She practices the small charities that she would have pursued if she was still in America, taking baskets of small gifts into hospitals for example. She comes up with the idea to dress Barbie dolls in Vietnamese attire and she sells them to help her buy the supplies for her baskets or she gives them as gifts sometimes. Tricia, although shy, is easily persuaded to help the beautiful and confident Charlene with this and other activities. Tricia is having a crisis of her own as she attempts to be the perfect helpmeet and partner by making a family, having a child. She has a series of miscarriages that make her feel guilty, damaged, and which undermine her own confidence.
It’s a little gem of a book that too many might dismiss as a “girl book.” The way the author immerses us in the mores of the 1950s and 60s, the evocation of a world and a time most of us have never experienced makes this novel well worth a read. Some key scenes have been left out of this review to make them fresh when you encounter them for the first time. While it would have perhaps had more universal appeal if we also followed the husbands as they lived out their days, there is no way for most of these women from these times to have any intimate knowledge about that.
“But how I wished that there existed someone to whom I could say I was sorry.” says Tricia in the Epilogue, quoting Graham Greene from The Quiet American.
While The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu is not great literature, this novel epitomizes the discussions of AI that dominated 2023. It also does that thing that sci-fi does so well. It offers commentary on modern and future society and politics.
Shantiport is a once-prominent city with a port that was busy and thriving. It is now a backwater decaying city that has internal problems which keep it in existential danger of dying out completely.
We wonder how we will ever become home to multicultural societies which should be easy for us because we are all humans. Shantiport wants to become a multicultural oasis which seamlessly protects the rights of both humans and bots. The bots seem to exhibit the same propensities as humans for violence, elitism, and tribalism. In this case the Tiger clan is warring against the Monkey clan.
The bot characters are well done and are as appealing, at least those who are main characters, as the human main characters. In fact, we find that those main characters, both bot and human, are a family unit as in brothers/sisters/ancestors. When the “jinn” is recovered from where it was hidden (Aladdin of legend) the one who holds the jinn gets three wishes. If your goal is to restore Shantiport to its former glory and make it a truly multicultural city what would your three wishes be? Be careful, it’s a very tricky jinn.
The same difficulties apply if you are trying to profit personally and don’t really care about the fate of Shantiport. This may not be literary fiction, but it is fun, and inspires thoughts about our own present and future dilemmas.
Sadly, not many Americans will read Tyranny of the Minority by Levitsky and Ziblatt. It’s not difficult to understand, but it is dense with historical evidence/proofs to back up the authors’ points. Still, this is an important book, and all citizens ought to read this treatise or at least read a summation of the points these two now-famous authors make. They are neither revolutionary nor extremist, but rather scholars who study democracies – why democracies work, how they work, and what dismantles them or makes them less democratic.
Americans revere the founders and our documents, the authors say, but our founders knew our Constitution would need to be revised and updated. Certain antique features that have remained as facets of our republic, which democracies that formed later did not include in their founding documents, have allowed a minority party to exploit these anti-majoritarian features to keep power even though their numbers are in the minority.
Chapter 1: Fear of Losing opens with a lesson from Argentina and the Peron family. This is a discussion of the peaceful transfer of power. At the time when our nation was formed handing over power was not the norm anywhere in the world. Also discussed is the struggle between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson when the Federalists wanted to hold on to power and Jefferson contemplated the use of violence. “Outsized fear of losing turns parties against democracy,” says one source. Examples from the German terms in office of Angela Merkel and from modern Thailand are also discussed.
Chapter 2: Banality tells the story of the crisis of a French party in 1934. What are the expectations of those who are loyal to democracy?
1. To respect the outcome of free/fair elections.
2. To reject the use of violence to stay in power.
3. To always break with undemocratic forces and watch out for semi-loyal democrats who play a passive role in democratic collapse.
2. Sever all ties with groups that back anti-democratic behavior.
3. Loyal democrats must unambiguously decry violent acts and condemn them publicly. Semi-loyalists try to have it both ways.
4. Join forces with rival democratic parties to defeat authoritarianism.
Examples from Spain in 1936 are used to make their point along with Joe McCarthy’s Unamerican Activities campaign in America.
The authors list four ways to subvert laws:
1. Exploiting gaps or loopholes (Ex. denying Obama chance to name a Supreme Court Justice – had never happened before)
2. Excessive or undue use of the law (Ex. presidential pardons meant to be used sparingly, also impeachment).
3. Selective enforcement of laws.
4. Law-fare (as in warfare) – laws are used to target the opposition.
Orbán’s journey towards illiberal democracy in Hungary is summarized:
1. Voting system was changed
2. Purged and packed the courts.
3. Expanded numbers of judges in their supreme court.
4. Passed a law changing retirement age for justices. By 2013
the judiciary was a puppet of the government.
5. Media became a government propaganda arm.
6. Used constitutional hardball to change the way seats were filled on Electoral committees and retained control of parliament regardless of the popular vote.
Chapter 3: It Has Happened Here brings to our attention a time after the Civil War when freed Black men began to fill important positions in the government of Wilmington, NC. This seemed to open the door to multiracial politics until a group of prominent white Democrats launched a violent crusade to restore white rule (remember those Democrats are now Republicans as the parties switched in the 1960’s). It’s not a pretty story but you should know about it. The prospect of multiracial rule angered the South in part because it upended social and racial hierarchies.
Chapter 4: Why the Republican Party Abandoned Democracy
During the term of Lyndon Johnson and the passage of the 1964-65 Civil Rights Bills these reforms passed with votes from both parties. 60 years later, the authors say, the Republican party has become unrecognizable. He reminds us that Republican Mike Lee called for “liberty, peace and prosperity” but not democracy. They inform us about VDEM which issues an annual illiberalism score. The GOP’s illiberal score soared after 2000. Examples include the Republican’s “Southern Strategy” and State’s Rights and the added White Christian strategy of the “Moral Majority.” Once again the rise of multiracial society threatens the White party, the Republicans.” This chapter offers up the current situation in America.
Is the entire Republican Party anti-democratic? Answer these questions to determine their Democracy grade.
1. Did they sign on to the amicus brief to nullify votes in 2020?
2. Did they accede to manipulations of the Electoral College votes?
3. Did they cast doubt on the legality of the election?
4. Did they vote against Trump impeachment?
5. Were they against an independent commission to investigate 1/6?
6. Did they refuse to hold Steve Bannon in contempt for ignoring a subpoena?
Chapter 5: Fettered Majorities begins with a discussion of the disemboweling of the Voting Rights Act pre-clearance section in Shelby County v Holder and the 26 states that subsequently passed restrictive voting laws. Although Dems had total control when the John Lewis bill came to the floor the bill died again and again and finally two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kirstin Sinema, killed it. A partisan minority is currently blocking majority power the author tells us. It can’t be too easy to change the rules in a democracy and it can’t be too difficult to change the rules either. We protect minority rights, but we are learning that there can also be a tyranny of the minority. In addition, one generation can tie the hands of future generations far into the future.
Chapter 6: Minority Rule begins with a discussion of German “bread lords” and the urban/rural divide in Germany at that time. Political institutions were frozen in place despite demographic and social changes. We are experiencing that same situation in 21st century America. Only in the 21st century have counter-majoritarian rules benefited a single political party. This is due to the same urban/rural divide encountered by the Germans in the 20th century. We now have a rural state bias in the US Senate, the Electoral College, and the Supreme Court. As a result, say the authors, “we run the risk of descending into ‘minority rule’.” They explain in some detail.
Chapter 7: America The Outlier explores how a country (America) that set out to find an audacious new idea for government has now fallen behind other democracies on scores determined by Freedom House. Most countries dismantled undemocratic sections of their constitutions. Elections would no longer be determined by “first past the post” rules. Upper chambers of government were no longer elitist, but either more representative or no longer existed at all. Cloture rules were simple as opposed to our filibuster rules which allow minorities parties to delay cloture altogether. Judicial review which allows Supreme Courts to overrule legislative laws is an area that has not been reformed. Other nations have laws about term limits for judges or specify a retirement age, which we do not. We have made some changes to rules to make them less counter-majoritarian as with the laws that allow direct elections of Senators, but we have kept most of the laws mentioned above. “The US” the authors say, is a democratic laggard.” We have the hardest constitution to change and are now the least democratic of the world’s democracies.
Chapter 8: Democratizing Our Democracy is necessary because in America majorities do not really rule. Remedies are offered up by the authors and most of them have to do with upholding the right to vote. I should not steal the author’s thunder by offering potential readers a comprehensive list. You really should read the book. However, here are a few of the suggestions:
1. Establish automatic voter registration.
2. Expand mail-in and early voting
3. Schedule elections on weekends or holidays.
4. Restore national voting rights with federal oversight.
5. Ensure that elections results reflect what people want.
6. Abolish the Electoral College
7. Reform Senate to be proportional to the population.
8. Eliminate partisan gerrymandering.
9. Abolish the Senate filibuster, etc.
10. Make it easier to amend the Constitution.
This is an important book, and it is well-researched. I did not get to read a print version because I was having cataract surgery (which has turned out well). Listening to an academic book that reads like a text is not ideal. Page numbers to give attribution for direct quotes are not available and some quotes get missed because they go by too fast. This is a book that would be best added to your library in print so that you could refer to it as necessary. I had to take notes. These two authors will most likely not be heard by those who need to hear/read these truths because of our current partisan divide but Levitsky and Ziblatt are fighting along with many of us to save our democracy. Their academic approach adds gravitas to the points those of us who love democracy are trying to make.
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron is a sort of spy story, but it’s not James Bond. No loveable Moneypenny or Q here. No clever devices that look ordinary but have magical abilities to save an agent in dire straits. In fact, half of the characters are not even spies, but their story begins when the Berlin Wall falls and an actual spy comes out of the East and meets a grieving wealthy man who lost his sister and who knows what happened to her and who did it. Who is Max and why is he being chased down the Green Lanes as the book begins by people who seem intent on killing him?
You will have to spend some time in the Regent Park Office in London where a group has been set up to find what kinds of unethical business the hired hands in the spy business have been up to. The committee’s remit is called Monochrome, which perfectly describes how Griselda Fleet and Malcolm feel about being assigned to this investigation. Both thought they were headed up the ladder to plum assignments and both are unhappy and worried to have been shunted sideways. They did not even have access to documents from Regent’s Park where actual scandals might have been expected to lurk. If you happened to read any bits from David Foster Wallace’s unfinished book, The Pale King, which takes place in the IRS, then you feel right at home in the home office.
Don’t get too bored because you are going to have all the action you can handle in Berlin (the spook’s zoo). They are a depraved bunch who have seen it all and are jaded and deep in the aftereffects of WWII. Myles has been embedded in East Berlin and has experienced the peak moments of postwar Soviet spying, the dossiers, the imagined crimes, the real crimes, the Stassi, the paranoia, the tattling, and the terrible repercussions of the tattling. Into this foreign office enters Allison, a young intelligent innocent who had expected to work at a desk and now finds herself pretending to complete assigned paperwork. At the same time, she does the real work assigned her which is to spy out what is going on in Berlin. However, the crux of this matter is personal, not professional. So, not about true spying at all, although it feels exactly the same. It’s about people, people who will surprise you. I can’t tell you; it’s a spy story, sort of.
Clearly wars do not end when treaties are signed, when spoils are divided, when horrendous war crimes are turned up, when revenge is planned and eventually taken. Names change, years pass, people age and disguise themselves and become unrecognizable. Justice gets done but not in a court. First Desk proves to be not all talk and no action. The author knows how to set a scene. Don’t you just love a good spy story. This one is very good while you are reading and great after contemplation. Don’t just move on to your next book until you have sat with this one for a bit.
You know the story. Boy meets girl. Girl and boy spend time together, grow up together. It’s a love story – no, not Romeo and Juliet, not that kind of love story, It’s complicated.
In Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Sam Mazur and Sadie Green meet at a hospital. Sam has already experienced two traumas that would mess up anyone’s mind. Sadie has a family member in the hospital so has a fair bit of trauma in her life also. Her sister had cancer, but it has responded to treatment and Alice is there for more routine reasons. Sadie is getting ready for her Bat Mitzvah. Sam is tuned into his own grief. He lost his mother in a car accident and crushed a foot in the same car accident. Sam and his mother had moved from New York City to Los Angeles after a bizarre accident in that city seemed like a warning of danger. Moving obviously didn’t work. Sadie only spends time with Sam reluctantly at first, but they become close friends for a while. When Sam learns that Sadie is counting her time with him as community service for her Bat Mitzvah he is hurt and angry. They lead separate lives until Sam runs into Sadie at a train station.
What Sam and Sadie have in common is gaming. Sam’s Korean grandfather owns a pizza shop with a Donkey Kong machine he hoped would attract customers. Sam had permission to play as much as he wished. Since Sadie kept getting kicked out of her sister’s hospital room, Sam and Sadie played computer games, passing Sam’s laptop back and forth.
This may not be a conventional love story and it is not, despite the title, a literary novel. It is however a great gamer story and there is love and betrayal, and anger, and possibly undeserved blame. There are relationships, there is the passage of time, and there is more trauma.
My own gaming experiences are limited to the maligned “shooters” which Sadie and Sam find unartistic and antisocial. The games I played were Pac Man, Snood, and Space Invaders, shooters all. Sadie’s favorite game was Oregon Trail. In college she had as her professor Dov, a young Israeli game designer who had created and successfully marketed a popular game.
Sadie and Sam eventually create a game called Ichigo – a game with a child lost at sea who must be rescued. The game has beautiful graphics and becomes iconic. Sam’s college roommate Marx Wantanabe, is a wealthy guy with amazing social skills. Marx provides upfront money and resources for Sadie and Sam while they code and look for an engine that will drive the graphic results Sadie pictures in her mind. Marx and Sadie share a love of art and literature, especially Asian art and Shakespeare. These gamers are all very young, they drop out of college for a semester to create Ichigo. By the time they are out of their twenties, they are financially successful which seems to affect their lives very little. Love and friendship are far more difficult to maneuver through though.
You can enjoy this novel as a story. The characters are immersive. Or you can enjoy this book as a blueprint to reach gamer stardom. It’s a coming-of-age-story with a twist. It’s also a success story. I am still waiting for eye surgery, so I am still reading on Audible which I am getting used to. It doesn’t put me to sleep anymore. Although I am too old to be the intended audience for this book, I still enjoyed it. We all have a bit of the entrepreneur in us along with a taste for romance. For me the relationships seemed more like they were mapped out by a game creator than offering the personal involvement with love that readers can sometimes experience. There was always a distance between even the characters who did get intimately involved. Not my favorite book ever, but I looked forward to listening each time I got the chance.
After reading Alex Jones’s book, The Great Reset, which takes readers down the “New World Order” rabbit hole it seemed important to read someone who might get readers out of that endless antisemitic rabbit hole and back on the solid ground of more reasonable levels of paranoia. Mike Rothschild’s book Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories was published in 2023. Mike Rothschild tells us that his family is not genetically connected to the wealthy and famous (infamous) Rothschilds.
This well-researched nonfiction book is packed with details and is practically a textbook about the Rothschilds. Mike Rothschild explains that he did try to interview people who are descendants of Mayer Amschel Rothschild. M. Rothschild had a problem though. He was trying to prove a negative, that there was no Rothschild conspiracy to take over the world through control over its financial institutions, that the Rothschilds did not finance both sides of every war, that they did not back both sides in the Civil War, or plot to divide America between Britain and France – that while some Jewish people may have prodigious talents in understanding and profiting from economics and finance, and although they may head many world banking institutions, there is no plot to bring about a “New World Order”. (introduction)
His chapter headings show his journey through the evidence he unearthed. Although Mayer Amschel Rothschild and his very successful son, Nathan, left behind very few records, there were many other primary resources to study. Ch. 1 talks about Greedy, Cheap and Blessed: The History of Jewish Money Tropes, Ch.2 covers A Brief History of the Rothschilds, Part 1, 1565-1868. In Ch. 3 we learn about the Waterloo Canard: the Rothschild myth to end all myths, Ch. 4 tells us about The Satan Pamphlet, and Ch. 5 A Brief History, Part 2, 1868-1933. Ch. 6 summarizes Rothschild myths in America and Ch. 7 talks about the Rothschilds during World War II. Ch. 8 is titled Calling all Crackpots: Rothschild Conspiracy Theories in the Postwar World, Ch. 9 covers the “Disinformation Superhighway”, Ch. 10 is about the Rothschilds in popular culture, Ch.11 talks about Jewish conspiracy theories around the World, Ch. 12 immerses readers in the most recent sections of the “rabbit hole”, Rothschild Conspiracy Theories in the Age of Trump, and Ch. 13 suggests how George Soros became the Rothschilds of the 21st Century.
Sources covered by Mike Rothschild are varied and he tells us that he is not creating a bibliography to guide our reading. He also tells us that the contents of some of these materials are distasteful and often almost incomprehensible. He is saving us the effort of reading hate-filled ranting. He discusses a 1947 film called Gentlemen’s Agreement which he describes as a blunt examination of the banal nature of antisemitism in upper-class America. But this source is mild compared to others. He tells us in some detail about the activities of the poet Ezra Pound. Then we learn about Pound’s acolyte, Eustace Mullins (born in 1923) Mullins wrote “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve” which was finally published with that title in 1983. He wrote a pamphlet entitled, “Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation”, and another called “The Biological Jew, Murder by Injection: The Medical Conspiracy Against America. “Mullins,” says the author, “bridged the gap between Pound and Alex Jones.”
In fact, Alex Jones called Mullins “the great-grandfather of the movement against the Federal Reserve and the New World Order.” (p. 145) Mullins did not die until 2010. Glenn Beck promoted the “Secrets of the Federal Reserve” in 2010 “to attack the Fed, George Soros, and Obama-era monetary policy.”
M. Rothschild cites Willis Carto who published a newsletter called The Liberty Letter. He was a Holocaust denier. He attacked “all manner of Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Communists and Carter, and Bankers, and Rich People and the Trilateral Commission.” (p. 146) Mike cites Conde McGinley in 1947 – 1972 writing a publication titled “Common Sense“. In a 1970 issue, Mike tells us, McGinley wrote about “Rothschild Bank Syndrome” as “the cause of all modern woes” – “Rothschild banks have financed both sides of every war.” McGinley’s publications were made possible through the Christian Education Association. All modern sources harken back to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which came out of the antisemitism of Tsarist Russia in 1900.
“To understand Kanye West ranting on Alex Jones’s show about how great Hitler was requires understanding the influence of that John Birch Society speechwriter Gary Allen’s 1971 book, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, had on Jones, an effect which he has spoken of many times. Allen’s book, which sold millions of copies by attacking Jewish ‘insiders’ like the Rothschilds, was inspired in part by Secrets of the Federal Reserve (xv) which can be traced back to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
Of course, the most titillating bits of the book are in the last chapters. In chapter 12 Donald Trump enters the arena. M. Rothschild tells the story like this. “The Tea Party movement exploded in the US during Obama’s first term, fueled by conservative terror over imaginary wealth confiscation and the looming specter of Marxist control and/or martial law.”… “Patriotism-tinged allegations of Jewish/New World Order/Communist/Leftist domination were nothing new,” the author goes on to say. (p. 223) … “But one American celebrity, mulling over the idea of throwing his considerable cultural and financial weight into politics was paying attention… He noticed the power and appeal of the movement’s unhinged conspiracy theories, vague accusations of a global super-government, and ‘us versus them’ rhetoric when they were unleashed by radio talkers and blogs on disaffected Republicans angry about the Black president with a foreign-sounding name. And Donald Trump wanted in.” (p. 226) Next chapter, George Soros.
Here is the reason the Rothschilds gave for not agreeing to be interviewed by Mr. Mike (who is not from ‘those’ Rothschilds). The Rothschilds declined because they would be forced “to do something that essentially can’t be done, which is prove a negative. They would have to prove that they don’t have $500 trillion, that they didn’t conspire to use the Civil War to divide the United States between Britain and France, or that they didn’t sell their Austrian hunting lodge in a rush because QAnon found out they hunted humans for sport there.” They go on to say that “[t]he accusers won’t believe them anyway.” (p. xvii)
Will the accusers believe Mike Rothschild? Although he makes a strong case that these theories are “unhinged,” and he uses sarcasm and innuendo to embarrass those who at least pretend to be convinced by the persistence of the conspiracy theories and by their admiration for their fellow believers (perhaps a mutual admiration society), this detailed discussion may not change the minds of the convinced or of those who have become wealthy through keeping these conspiracy theories and the antisemitism they give credence to alive.
“For many Jews,” says Mike Rothschild, “the Rothschilds have been a beacon of hope in dark times, a reminder that anything is possible with unity and a steadfast devotion to family and tradition.”
“Any minority with its own language, customs, clothing, and culture is bound to be resented by the majority. But historically only Jews have found outsized professional success through that majority – loaning it money, managing its finances, settling its legal disputes, entertaining it, and the like. And they’ve suffered outsized resentment because of that success. Antisemitism and Jewish wealth are bound up in each other, and Jewish success is at the core of the conspiracy theories about them.”
Good job, Mike Rothschild in collecting all this information in one book, for making us think about where we stand on a set of conspiracy theories that has lasted for centuries. We do think it is quite possible that the wealthy tip the global scales towards policies they favor, but we do not all necessarily think that this is a strictly Jewish endeavor. Sometimes people who are trying to commit an unethical cultural act project the blame onto others to detract from what they are trying to do. Perhaps in our times, the right-wing in American politics wants to become the New World Order and the world’s central bankers and they think that blaming the Jewish people is convenient because of the long history of this particularly paranoid antisemitic conspiracy trope. If the Jewish people were/are so talented it seems that they would have taken over everything long ago. If they already have taken over, we might expect the world to be running a bit more smoothly than it is.
Disclaimer: I had just finished this book when Hamas attacked Israel and it is perhaps not the best time to discuss the materials covered in this book. However, the conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds are not directly connected to the current atrocities. This discussion has far more relevance to the diaspora than it does to the existence of a Jewish state or a Palestinian state except to say that for people who were exiled and who belonged to new nations only temporarily, the talents of Jews seem even more amazing and perhaps resulted from their dispossession, their lack of aggression, and their steadfast cohesion as a group.
I hesitate to write about The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride because so many readers already have done so, but I do like to obsessively keep track of the books I read. Besides, there are things to say. I know, that’s what Julia Roberts said in Notting Hill. Now you all know that I have watched that movie too many times.
McBride’s tale takes place in Pottstown, Pennsylvania in 1936. The fact that his points, and there are points, intersect with where we are now in the twenty-first century is both surprising and rather shameful. James McBride is a musician and a writer of fiction, a rare crossover. He won a National Book Award in 2013 for his novel, The Good Lord Bird.
We are not surprised that Jews and Black folks were American scapegoats in 1936. Hitler had just begun his awful politics in Europe and many Jewish people, perhaps already aware that they were about to be persecuted once again, left Europe to settle in America. Black folks have been persecuted continuously in America. As the tale begins some work on the Pottstown water system turns up a mezuzah and a human skeleton at the bottom of a hole where there is a connection to the local water reservoir. The rest of the story tells us how the mezuzah and the body got there.
Moshe had wandered down to Pottstown from New York City. He was a Jew who loved to party. He opened a theater, invited Klezmer musicians, and sold tickets to people to come in and dance. He became well-known to other agents who also booked musicians, and he had a brother, Isaac, who ran a very successful theater operation in Philadelphia.
Moshe also owned the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. He married Chona, a beautiful woman who was not considered marriageable because she had a disability. Chona loved the other people who were their neighbors on Chicken Hill, even though they were black folks. They were her customers at the grocery store which she ran after her marriage to Moshe. Many of the Jews from Chicken Hill had moved to town, but Chona refused to leave Chicken Hill or to close the grocery story. She knew that human warmth and loyalty were worth more than social climbing. Her customers loved her and were protective of her.
In 1936 in America, people who were immigrants themselves from all over Europe looked down on Jews and considered Black folks a threat. These were the times when Germans chanted “Jews will not replace us.” We heard this refrain recently in America in Charlottesville when Trump was President #45. It was given a more general scope when some chanted “You will not replace us.” The only Americans indigenous to this continent are not European immigrants and yet the chant of “blood and soil” was also transplanted from Europe as if there are Americans who can authentically lay claim to being the “real” Americans (hint: they mean white Christian Americans).
If you read Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste, or Matthew Desmond’s books, Eviction, and Poverty by America, these authors speak of their belief that countries tend to need scapegoat groups, untouchables so to speak, for reasons such as holding onto power and hoarding money. Jewish and Black folks are our scapegoats in America, although not necessarily for the same reasons. They are easy to target because they stand out, one based on religion and the other based on skin color. These groups cannot easily hide or blend in with white or Christian Americans. Many of us are disgusted by this tendency, yet we see that these biases are kept alive by stereotypes, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. This prejudice ties those early Hitler years to present-day attitudes that persist in America. In contrast to the supportive relationship between Jewish and black people in McBride’s book, there are attempts made in this century to divide these two groups, to make Jews targets of hate and to turn black folks into people to be feared.
Chona often needs to see a doctor because she has seizures. The only doctor in Pottstown is white and he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Everyone knows this because he also has a limp. Dr. Roberts went to school with Chona, and he has always desired her. In a key moment, Dr. Roberts sexually abuses Chona as she lies unconscious from a seizure in the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. Dodo is the nickname of a child rendered deaf from a stove that blew up in his home before he became homeless. Chona and Moshe have taken Dodo in, and Dodo sees what Dr. Roberts does to Chona. Soon he finds himself committed to a local institution for homeless, deranged, and disabled people. Dodo is a black child. Nate, his wife Addy, and the entire black community of Chicken Hill are touched when Moshe and Chona take on this good child.
Thus begins a chain of events that comes to a head on the day of the Memorial Day parade. Besides the plans for rescuing Dodo, another problem is addressed on this same day. It is related to the question, “Why is there a bullfrog in the mikvah?” The rescue of Dodo from the clutches of a monstrous man called Son of Man and the institution at Pennfield, and the explanation for how the mezuzah and a dead body got in the hole with the town’s water pipes depends on events that happen on this same chaotic Memorial Day occasion. It’s a great story that also highlights how little we have learned about our common situation as humans on this earth. Social commentary and social justice occur all in one fell swoop of the pen of James McBride. We should heed the lessons this tale teaches us with humor and also with its descriptions of shameful human behavior. You may end up saying along with Dodo, “Thank you, Monkey Pants.” I listened on Audible and since this book is full of dialects it was a pleasure.
From a Google Image Search – Columbia School of Arts
Today there was a powerful earthquake in Morocco and the internet tells me that over 1000 people are dead. We live in a world where existential events seem to be occurring with frightening regularity. And I have just finished reading a book called Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter which perfectly echoes the instability of the present moments of our life on this planet. It doesn’t read like a book about climate change, but extinctions are the bass line that runs through Leichter’s amazing fiction book.
My mind got tangled in the time shifts. What would a family tree of these characters look like? “Terrace” is the first chapter of the book, It describes the home and the relationship of Ann, Edward, and Rose. It’s a tiny space until Stephanie, a coworker of Ann’s, enters their lives. Stephanie was born with the odd ability to enlarge the space around her. As Stephanie tries to deal with her own separateness, as she carries the blame for her sister’s death, as she crashes through the lives of those around her, as she is betrayed over and over by Will the world keeps changing. Relationships don’t last. Couples who seem well-matched part. Trout go extinct, Salmon. Shrimp. Crows. This is a story of climate change and how it might affect people. “People are dropping like flies,” the author tells us. “It’s the latest trend.”
From the “Terrace” to the “Folly” to the “Fortress”, which is both a person and a place, to the “Cantilever” this is a unique work of fiction – fascinating, disturbing, brilliant, confusing – with time and space all bolloxed up, making it difficult to tell who is related to whom and where anyone is.. There is a story of a Queen, a King, and a Hermit created from the ruins of a folly encountered at a funeral attended by Ann’s mother and father. Ann’s mother wrote about extinctions. Her father was a professor of medieval history. Lydia and George, Ann’s parents are separated when George is seduced by his graduate student, Patricia. It’s complicated but engrossing. Do the relationships matter, or just the extinctions? Perhaps the relationships exist so that extinctions have some meaning and so that there is a sense of time.
Anyway. Mind Blown. I am still listening to books (waiting for my eye appointment). I had to listen twice. I loved this book. Perhaps you will too. It ends in the new suburbs in space. It ends almost at the end.
Matt Desmond has, once again, given us a textbook on poverty, just as he gave us a textbook on evictions, in his newest book Poverty by America. He offers factual evidence to prove his point that an affluent society such as our does not have to allow such poverty to exist, that poverty in America is made in America and serves no purpose except to create a permanent underclass. Then he offers many ways to end poverty if we will only implement such solutions. We live in a society that increasingly turns a deaf ear to inequality and even makes policies to make sure that poor people, especially poor black people, stay poor. We build walls between “us” and “them” and then turn down policies that might “tear down those walls.”
What Desmond said.
In his Prologue/ Matt Desmond asks, “Why are so many Americans poor? Why is there so much hardship in this land of abundance.” He talks about his childhood in Winslow, Arizona, and his pastor father. His father lost their house to foreclosure, and they survived but life was difficult. Eventually Desmond attended Arizona State University where he often hung out with homeless people. What he saw around him was so much money. In Tempe, he remembers, they built a fake lake two blocks away from a homeless area. Desmond describes his work in Milwaukee and tells us that he has met poor people around the entire country. We are, he says, “the richest country on earth with more poor people than any other democracy.” “More than one million of our school children are homeless.” “More than 2 million families don’t have running water or flushing toilets.” “America’s poverty is not about lack of resources.” “The most fundamental question is why some lives are made small so that others may grow.” To resolve this poverty problem requires that we become “poverty abolitionists.”
Chapter. 1 The Kind of Problem America’s Problem Is /A person is considered poor when s/he can’t afford food, shelter, and basic needs. Molly Orshansky set poverty thresholds such as one in 2002-$27,750 for a family of four. Desmond tells the story of Crystal Mayberry born prematurely when her mother was stabbed. Both survived. Her mother smoked crack cocaine. She left Crystal’s father and moved in with another man who molested her. Crystal ended up in foster care. She argued with other girls in group homes. Crystal put on weight. She stopped going to high school. At 18 she aged out of foster care – went through 25 different foster care situations. When her mental problems were diagnosed, she qualified for SSI. She found an apartment which took 70% of her income. She got evicted. She lived in shelters. She walked on the streets in the day or rode busses or the subway. Then they took away her SSI and left her with only food stamps. She turned to prostitution.
Poverty is an endless piling on of pain. Desmond talks of toxins in work and home environments. He speaks about no dental care. He reminds us that the poorest Americans don’t qualify for Obamacare. Their lives are marked by violence.
Chapter. 2 Why haven’t we made more progress/ We cured smallpox, invented the internet and cell phones. Graphing poverty shows a gently rising and falling line. How do we account for poverty? After all poor people have access to cheap sweets and cheap entertainment from TV and movies. However, Desmond says, access to appliances does not prove that there is no longer poverty – costs of health care and rent have increased. Utilities increased 115% in price. Michael Harrington said in his book The Other America, “It’s much easier in America to be decently dressed than to be decently housed or afford decent health care.” Reagan cut back on housing but was unable to shrink antipoverty spending. The spending grew precipitately. The greatest increase was on healthcare. The US has not become stingier over time which makes it even more confusing. Examination shows that much of aid never reaches the poor because it is given in the form of block grants which often get diverted to other expenses. Desmond gives examples of how some of these funds have been diverted. He looks in detail at TANF dollars. It’s eye opening.
Chapter 3 How we undercut workers/ We blame the poor for their own poverty. It’s popular these days to trace poverty back to big changes like deindustrialization and other social causes. If arrangements that infect the poor have existed for decades, doesn’t it suggest that it was intended to be this way. People benefit from poverty in all kinds of ways. “Who gets eaten and who gets to eat”, Steven Sondheim said as a comment on the Darwinian aspects of wealth and poverty. Think about how landlords make a living by renting inferior properties to the poorest Americans. Complexity is the refuge of the wealthy. They claim that the matter is complicated. “One man’s poverty is another man’s opportunity.” “Do employers have to pay so little. Would paying more lead to higher unemployment?” Stigler said that if employers had to pay people more per hour unemployment would rise and he made this statement without collecting any facts. Subsequent data showed that raising the minimum wage has negligible effects on employment levels. Stigler was wrong. Between 1940’s to 1970’s progress on wage raises happened and America experienced one of the most equitable periods in its history. Unions are credited with this effect. Black workers were excluded. Women were not a force in the job market. Labor was blamed for our subsequent economic slump. Desmond talks about the firing of all the air traffic controllers which taught corporations to ignore unions. Corporate interests insured unions remained weak. An arsenal of tactics has been developed to prevent unionizing.
Chapter 4 How we force the poor to pay more/ There are many ways to be exploited such as underpaying workers (labor exploitation), raising prices and interest rates (consumer exploitation) and more. Rentals exploded in price and apartments got partitioned into smaller units – apartments in poor areas can cost more than those in more affluent areas – ghetto boundaries were written into law. Ghetto landlords had a captive rental base so they could take advantage and they did, especially absentee landlords. Money made slums because slums made money. Rising rents is not just about lack of housing. Poor people and particularly poor black families don’t have much choice about where they can live. Desmond quotes a study estimating landlord’s profits. Landlords in poor areas make twice the profit of landlords in affluent neighborhoods. Some landlords will rent housing and let it get rundown and then just move on to another city.
Chapter 5 How We Rely on Welfare/ In this chapter Desmond talks about shutdowns during COVID = March 16, 2020, millions of people needed unemployment so the government stepped in and expanded unemployment benefits and other benefits – poverty did not increase during our economic shutdown; in fact, these payments cut child poverty by half. A percentage of Americans blamed our slow recovery on stipends which assuaged poverty. Kevin McCarthy said that Americans weren’t getting back to work because they were receiving too many benefits. States that cut benefits were experiencing a loss of consumer spending. We did not look for other reasons why people didn’t return to work. Capitalists decry any attempt to aid the poor. They protect one kind of dependency, dependency on work and speak out against supposed dependency on aid. End welfare as we know it was the advice of conservatives. The propaganda of welfare says that if you help people by making sure they have enough money to live on through welfare, they will not work. Another study showed there was not much long-term dependency on welfare. Welfare is insurance against temporary misfortune. Welfare avoidance is a far bigger problem. Why do needy people say no to billions in federal aid each year? We are all on the dole. He gives facts and figures. Far more aid goes to affluent families than to the poor, but it is often invisible. We accept the current state of affairs because we like it.
Chapter 6 How We Buy Opportunity/ The early aughts have been called the Second Gilded Age. Many of us are colossally rich. We are much richer than other countries, even other rich countries. Yet people feel so deprived and anxious. Our perspective prevents us from seeing what is going on. Working class people bear the costs of our amusements. Rich folks complain that Russian oligarchs are gobbling up the east side of NYC. How many Russian oligarchs are there? We don’t even call our own oligarchs, oligarchs.
What happens to a country when people with such different resources live alongside each other. This same problem was reported in ancient Rome. Galbraith said in The Affluent Society that personal fortunes grow while public services decay. Money brings independence from the public sector. “We used to wish to be free of work, now we want to be free of bus drivers,” Desmond quips. We see violent juxtapositions of degradation and affluence or, using different words, private opulence and public squalor. We spend more on private consumption and less on public investments. Desmond brings up the tax cuts and says a major driver was the tax cuts of 1981 resulting in growth of the deficit. In 1982 Reagan raised taxes a bit. Tax cuts are the main engines of public squalor and private opulence. Proposition 13 in California led to a revolt, an angry response to white people being forced to share public spaces with black people. White people withdrew from public spaces. Taxes came to be considered compulsory donations to black people so then white people came together to protest taxes. City public schools lost almost all their white students. “More for me, less for we,” says Desmond. Forced busing didn’t work. Housing vouchers did not move the poor out of their neighborhoods. Then we thought perhaps we could provide opportunities to these communities. Each program had effects, but no program has changed stubborn poverty areas. Local zoning ordinances tell you all you need to do about cities. Residential 1 (R1) districts do not allow multifamily housing or apartment projects. People want more public housing, but they don’t want it in their neighborhood. One group’s gain does not have to come at another group’s expense. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
Ch. 7 Invest in Ending Poverty/ In this chapter Desmond talks of Tolstoy who moved to Moscow in the late 19th century and who was shocked to see the grueling poverty coexisting with opulence. He concluded that poverty resulted from those who hoarded wealth. Even in America someone bears the costs of opulence. We could help solve this in part by collecting taxes that the wealthy should but don’t pay. The rich ask, “but how can we afford it?” We could afford it if we paid taxes. Affluence breeds affluence, poverty breeds poverty. There is a wall between the wealthy and the poor. Starvation and dignity do not mix well. We could make sure people get the welfare they qualify for. People don’t take advantage of aid because we have made it hard and confusing. Even using a better font makes a difference.
How much would it cost to end poverty? 177 billion dollars is a good start (number of people below the poverty line x amount to bring them above the poverty line. There are many advantages. Start with the IRS cheaters. IRS estimates that they owe 1 trillion dollars. Companies are doing everything to avoid paying what they owe. Tax shelters and offshore accounts for example. Bump up the top tax rate. Tax an investment banker differently than a dentist. Put it at 35%, or 46% as it once was. Evidence does not back a drag on the economy from raising taxes on top earners. Desmond tells us where we could get the money to end poverty. Expand the Earned Income Credit. Invest in new and public housing. Invest in public transportation. Make UBI less polarizing, make the nation more politically stable. Back bigger tent programs that cover a broader spectrum of low earners -“targeted universalism.” Different groups require different kinds of aid. Fundamental message – make policies that kindle cooperation rather than resentment. Redistribution is not a helpful way to look at this. Why are we so focused on helping the wealthy? Rich people – pay your taxes. We need more poor aid and less rich aid. Emergency Rental Assistance during COVID cut evictions in half across the US. It was amazingly effective. But when it worked it got little attention. The program became a temporary program, and now we are back to seven evictions every minute. When we refuse to acknowledge what works we risk the message that these things don’t work. We don’t just need more anti-poverty investments; we need different ones.
Ch. 8 Empower the Poor/ Choice is the antidote to exploitation. Offer the poor more choices about where to work, where to live, and where to shop. Raise the minimum wage. Sponsor humane and periodic reviews of the minimum wage. Congress should outlaw degrading wages. We should promote worker empowerment. A new economy calls for new labor laws. New labor must be inclusive. Make organizing easy. Right now, workers must organize one Amazon warehouse or Starbucks at a time. We must go about this in more collaborative way – Sectoral Bargaining. Come up with a Clean Slate for Worker’s Power. Use the results of the 2020 convention or meeting to make suggestions for new ways to organize. Subsidized housing has advantages for the children who live in such settings. Banks have shown little interest in funding subsidized housing. Government could provide on-ramps to home ownership. Image a post-poverty world by looking to people who are already working on this – (“Commoning”). Tenants buy apartment buildings from landlords – coops. Examples are IX organization and the landbank in the Twin Cities. Devise ways to fight exploitation in the housing market. Adopt a singular goal to end exploitation of the poor in work, housing, and banking. Expand low-income people’s access to credit beyond predatory lenders like pay day lenders. Reproductive choice – women’s empowerment was tied to their reproductive empowerment-freedom to pursue a career or a college education. There is a history of enforced sterility or contraception among black women which works against this dynamic. Desmond cites the Turn Away Study from Southern California. Those forced to give birth were found to be in lower income groups four years later. The children suffered too. A nation as wealthy as ours could use our funds to make sure that women and children have the supports they need. Poverty in America is something we all contribute to. Become a poverty abolitionist. It’s easier to change norms than beliefs. Advertise private acts of poverty abolitionism.
Ch. 9 Tear Down the Walls/ “Our walls, they have to go!” Still, we act as modern-day segregationists by living in separated neighborhoods. Even policies like UBI (Universal Basic Income) don’t affect segregation. Segregation poisons our minds and souls. It brings out the worst of us making us fear each other. Integration means we all have skin in the game. It interrupts poverty on a spiritual level and eventually may do the same for integration. We need to be advocating more housing options. Author says he has never heard of an empty low-rent apartment project that was located in a nice neighborhood.
Rucker Johnson studied kids who experienced an integrated education vs kids who did not. Black students experienced positive outcomes while white students did not experience negative outcomes. Even when we expand the budgets of low-income schools the advantages are not as great for students as in integrated schools. Corruption of opportunity can end with us.
Replacing exclusionary zoning laws allows us to build kinds of housing low-income people need. Passing inclusionary zoning makes mixed development likely (and offers a density bonus). New Jersey leads the way on this in the US. When affordable housing is built to blend into the surrounding community and is well-maintained it does not have to affect property values.
Those who wish to stay behind their walls should get no help for this. George Romney came up with these ideas about inclusion and lost an election. White homeowners would not have it. They elected Richard Nixon. Pro-segregationists have worked hard in local politics to keep the walls. They are often the only voices.
Society improves only when citizens do the difficult things. Charity is already important but it’s not enough. Funding scarcity is something we have legislated. It’s not real. It will cost us to fight poverty but it’s easier to stomach raising property taxes on the rich than stomach increasing homelessness and stubborn poverty – (fabricated scarcity). What we have now is white worker against black, Native worker against immigrant. Blame anyone you can except those who are really responsible. We are a land of bounty. No one in America needs to be poor. Why do we continue to accept scarcity when there is no need? Lift the floor. Rebalance our social safety net. Turn away from segregation. Change is painful. There are costs to better economic balance. There will be tensions and arguments. We could give up the shame of perpetuating poverty. Ending poverty would not end income inequality. However, it would bring a net gain in our feelings of positivity.
These are things that Matt Desmond said in Poverty by America, but since I was listening to the book on Audible and since it was difficult to keep up while taking notes at speed, direct quotes may be mixed with paraphrasing. The problem with a spoken book is that you don’t have access to the text to double check what you put in your notes. Still, I believe I got this essentially right. The doctor has given us a prescription to cure the disease. Will we heed it and take the cure? The outlook is not good, but things do change. Thank you, Matt Desmond for speaking truth to power.
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 