From a Google Image Search – West Vancouver Memorial Library
The movie is streaming online, and I am just getting around to reading Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. This is not a literary book. Indeed, it’s a bit dry in style and involves many names, mostly of men. And not for the most part good men. However, the content is anything but dry; it’s still shocking even if you believe that recent events have made you unshockable.
The story begins with the Osage Indians, continues with oil and gas discoveries, and ends with plots, murders, greed, theft, and the formation of the modern FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. The US government had treaties with indigenous people which they frequently ignored. That’s how the Osage tribe ended up far away from Kansas and found themselves in Oklahoma. (Next stop Pacific Ocean?) Each family was given allotments of land that depended on the size of the family. When oil and gas were discovered, it turned out that the Osage did not own their allotments, but they owned the mineral rights under them. Each member of the family was given a “headright” to profits from any wells on his/her property.
Although the Osage had those headrights, the government (in its infinite wisdom) sought to “protect” the naïve owners of these headrights. They assigned white folks to act as guardians. That, rather than offering protection, opened the door to human predators who had no moral boundaries. The greedy guys did not even stop at killing someone or paying someone to do it for them. To make sure the headrights came to a white person, marriage was required.
The story begins when two members of the tribe have been killed by a bullet in the back of the head. Charles Whithorn had been missing for a while and Annie Brown’s body was found quickly due to pressure from Annie’s sister Molly. Annie and Molly were quite different. Annie liked to party and so she was given short shrift by the authorities, her life undervalued and disrespected. Molly lost her sister Minnie who seemed to get progressively sicker for no discernible reason, as did Mollie’s mother Lizzie. For the time being, Mollie’s married sister Rita seemed fine. Mollie was married to Ernest Burkhart, a white man. He was related to William Hale, a man who seemed overly present in the lives of certain members of the Osage.
The machinations of bad actors are what makes this tale both shocking and engrossing. Can you guess which characters are the slimiest? Remember, these are all real people.
Some books get under our skin, and we credit the author for being such a spellbinding writer. We become a fan, and we want to read every book that author has written and any future books s/he writes. That is what happened to my friend when he read Revolution Song: The Story of American Freedom by Russell Shorto. He was so excited that I agreed to read Shorto’s book. Not long ago I read George Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow so I expected that I would just find Shorto covering familiar ground. But the Chernow book was published in 2011 and Shorto’s book was published in 2018. The latter book is informed by a whole lot of recent political scrutiny.
Shorto’s history does not just cover the role of George Washington in the American founding. He invites some less well-known Americans into the mix (along with a few Brits and Washington’s great friend, Lafayette, a Frenchman).
We follow a slave stolen from his native land and brought to America, going by his slave’s name, Venture until he finds his way to freedom, the raison d’etre for the Revolutionary War and a common thread among the characters in Shorto’s book. It is a long time before most African Americans achieve freedom.
We follow a Native American, member of the Six Nations, Cornplanter, who treats with leaders who are French, British, and American and who temporarily finds his little piece of freedom.
Margaret Coghlan stands in for all the women whose freedom was ignored in this war for freedom and individual liberty.
“Margaret Coghlan felt this pull of freedom that was in the air in the eighteenth century, but she realized, too late, that it did not apply to half of the human race. History does not record what became of Coghlan’s children, the poor waifs she dragged around with her as her tragic life wound down, but her ideological descendants span the history of the women’s movement, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Gloria Steinem, and for that matter includes people like Amelia Earhart, Ellen DeGeneres and every woman who broke a gender barrier.” (p. 506)
Abraham Yates was a conservative who felt that America should be a loose affiliation of states without a strong federal government. He began with almost nothing and had to work very hard to win whatever personal power he could fight his way in society for. He eventually became a lawyer and then a public servant and he had gathered enough clout to be included in the Constitution Convention to rewrite the Articles of Confederation. He had better reasons to back state’s rights than slave owners had but George Washington and his rival Alexander Hamilton favored a strong central government, taxation, and a federal bank. Yates was able to force the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution
Our founders saw the mismatch between promising to honor the belief that “all men are created equal” and the belief of many slave owners that slavery was necessary for the economy and that black men were savages and therefore not equal to white men. No one even considered for a minute the rights of women. They worried that this philosophical lie that lay at the heart of our government would one day destroy the nation.
“At the outset of the war they had gotten a proper scare when news reached them that hundreds of slaves in Jamaica had attempted an uprising. Even more troubling, the Jamaican slaves had apparently been inspired by the very ideals of freedom that Washington and his fellow rebels proclaimed. The Jamaican rebellion had been crushed, its leaders executed and either burned alive or had their bodies displayed as a public warning. For a man like Washington, the affair underscored the dangerous double-edged nature of the ideology the Americans espoused. Uprisings were a nightmare that all southern slaveholding families lived with. To give weapons to people they had been systematically abusing for generations was beyond his comprehension. Freedom was what Washington was fighting for, but not for them. Not now. It was an irony, an incongruity, a flaw in the American project of bringing true individual liberty into being: he did not deny that. But he couldn’t solve it. He was not a philosopher. (p. 352)
We are still dealing with the aftermath of this founding dilemma, and it seems to be tearing the nation apart even though slavery is no longer legal. Racism, the news shows us, is still alive and well in America to our shame and it may yet end our long flirtation with liberty.
Washington was also conflicted about whether America should have a strong central government or give autonomy to the several states. We are still fighting about which of these governmental designs would offer the most freedom and individual liberty. Washington chose to use his reputation and fame to back a strong central government, but he was not at all sure that it was the correct choice.
“In June, Washington wrote a circular letter “to the army,” but really to the leadership of the state governments. He had spent the entire war enraged at Congress’s mismanagement of finances and the underfunding of the army. There had been a power vacuum in the American government throughout the war; now it threatened to open into a chasm. In the letter, he expressed his happy astonishment that what they had fought for had actually been achieved: that Americans were now “possessed of absolute freedom and Independency.” But he stressed that the structure for maintaining that freedom was lacking. Taking his cues from Madison and Hamilton he suggested that what was needed was “an indissoluble union of states under one Federal Head.” This required that the individual states “suffer Congress” to exercise authority. Without this “everything must rapidly tend to Anarchy and confusion.” (p. 402)
Washington shows his prescience when, as the author reports, he says,
“Sounding much like Yates, Washington said he now saw that periods of turbulence would “gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of Public Liberty.”
My friend was right. Russell Shorto nonfiction book was a worthwhile addition to books that cover the era of the American Revolution, and it is important because it discusses the challenges we face right now as we decide anew whether to choose freedom, even if it is only relative freedom, over autocratic rule. (Even those unusual characters in Shorto’s book are real people and there were documents telling the stories of their lives, with attributions given in the end notes.)
[John McHenry’s journal echoes Washington’s statement, “A Republic, if they can keep it.”]
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.
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.
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.
I made a new friend who said that he liked Alex Jones and thought that everyone should listen to what he has to say. I wanted to say a few choice words about Mr. Jones but when I searched my Alex Jones schema in my old gray matter, I found that my scaffolding was shockingly full of holes. What I did know is that he claimed on his media platforms that the Sandy Hook massacre of twenty-six school children, teachers, and staff never happened, that it was “fake news.” He was convicted in a civil suit of defamation and ordered to pay a very large financial penalty ($473M). This factoid certainly doesn’t work in favor of Jones in my estimation, but my friend is, in fact, a genius, and he thinks this guy is brilliant so, in an attempt to fill in the holes in my brain, I decided to read Alex Jones’ book The Great Reset and the War for the World.
It turns out that Alex Jones is either very paranoid and is offering us a timely warning, or has been misguided by his right-wing leanings (or both). His book is written in the style used in Bible studies as an exegesis of books by other authors. He begins with a detailed discussion of Klaus Schwab’s book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Klaus Schwab is the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum which sponsors the annual meeting of the wealthy and powerful from around the world in Davos, Switzerland. Jones quotes a section of Schwab’s text and then reacts to it. His theory is that these world leaders are up to no good in Switzerland, or whenever they speak together. He sees “globalization” as a danger to ordinary humans. He is talking about global government rather than global trade although he does address global trade later in his book. Jones warns us that world leaders plan to rule over all nations and will destroy all national governments, economies and cultures replacing individuals with essentially human clones. They will do this through surveillance, fear, threats, whatever it takes. They will be free, we won’t.
Jones’ paranoia extends to the area of vaccines. Vaccines could be used for nefarious purposes. They could be used for mind control. They could be used to control overpopulation. They could just be toxins that are slowly killing us on behalf of the rich and powerful.
He expresses the right-wing paranoia about strategies that are supposed to be designed to improve livability factors that are being challenged by climate change. If climate change is made up or if, as right-wingers contend, humans didn’t cause it and nothing we can do will fix it, then perhaps the issue is simply being used, he suggests, as more tactical ammunition for globalists who want to corral us all into cities where we will be easy to spy on and where we can be put to work at menial tasks which limit any time we might have to exercise freedom of thought or action.
Another chapter is dedicated to the messages that environmentalists are putting out about our food. Without nitrogen-based fertilizers, the manufacture of which releases lots of CO2, we will not be able to grow enough food to feed the growing earth population. Bill Gates, for example, has a factory/research center to design plant-based meats that can replace beef, chicken, and pork because all of these animals are sources of methane emission, and contribute more to global warming than things that release CO2 directly. “What if,” asks Alex Jones, “even what is going on with our food is part of the global takeover by the wealthy class?” (Not a direct quote). He asks the same question about the supply chain.
We can all tap into this paranoia about what the rich and powerful are up to. We all would like to believe that climate change is a made-up crisis. We may not make millions or billions from fossil fuels as many of the rich and powerful have, but we have kept warm in winter and cool in summer fairly predictably with fossil fuels and we’re not sure that alternative energies are up to the job or will offer the same comfort. But we suspect that we cannot trust people in the oil and gas industries to speak the truth in these matters. Those who argue about changing our habits to lessen our CO2 emissions do not seem to have a dog in the fight as the oil and gas people do.
How paranoid should we be? Can we stop these guys from world domination? How would we go about that? Would we be willing to give up our freedom if our creature comforts were protected? Would we be willing to fight for our freedom when we have such a nebulous grasp of what freedom means that we think wearing a mask to protect us from disease is a true risk to our freedom?
Whether you believe Alex Jones’s paranoia is justified and an important forewarning of a future we always hoped to defend against or not, this man, with only an associate degree from a community college in Austin, Texas has managed to make a fortune on social media and podcasts and radio, etc., preaching the gospel against globalism and blaming everything bad on the left, while the right-wing chooses dictators as cohorts, dictators like Orbán in Hungary and Putin in Russia.
Is he a “shock jock” with a suitably raspy voice and the disheveled grooming of a modern philosopher, is he a true philosopher, or is he just a guy who knew how to exploit the gifts life gave him. I find him confusing. He says things we have all thought about the rich and powerful but attributes the policies that will help the globalists win to the Left, while we can clearly see that it is the Right protecting the hoarding of money with tax cuts, giving money human rights as in Citizens United v the FEC, and thus growing the power of the wealthy.
Perhaps the rich and powerful do not divide the world into left and right; rather simply by rich and not rich. I have not become an Alex Jones devotee, but I have learned more about him. If making a fortune is the test of brilliance, then well-done Alex. However, simply accruing wealth does not offer absolute proof of genius, or at least it didn’t used to. Perhaps we no longer know what true genius is. None of our heroes seem able to pass the tests of a divided nation/world.
Bill Gates recommends books for me to read. Well, okay, not just for me but for millions of people who subscribe to his Gates Notes and to the letters from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Sometimes I recommend books to him, in the comment section on his Linkedin page. I assume he takes my suggestions seriously. (Just kidding.) He may never look at the comments. So, it was at the behest of Mr. Gates that I decided to include Vaclav Smil’s book, How the World Really Works, written during COVID home isolation, on my reading list. Now that I have finished Smil’s book I can’t say that I loved the things he had to say, but he is a polymathic professor at the University of Manitoba and my elder. (only by two years) He has several areas of expertise, all related to knowledge that is important to solving climate change, ocean pollution, and uneven distribution of fresh water. Although you may experience a Smil downer, the theses in this book must be taken into account as we try to approach getting to zero carbon emissions while still housing, feeding, and quenching the thirst of a global population that is still growing (despite lower rates of reproduction in many nations).
By methodically and numerically talking us through the 4 pillars of modern culture, steel, ammonia, cement, and plastics Smil shows us a series of daunting tasks. It is illuminating to read about how completely fossil fuels are entangled in almost every aspect of making these four key products that cannot be easily replaced.
“The real wrench in the works: we are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determination of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.
Complete decarbonization of the global economy by 2050 is now conceivable only at the cost of unthinkable global economic retreat, or as a result of extraordinarily rapid transformations relying on near-miraculous technical advances.” (pg. 5)
Smil takes us through the intricacies of agriculture and of fertilizing soil. Without fertilizers to replenish nitrogen in our soils we would never be able to grow enough food to feed the 8 billion people who now inhabit the planet. This is where ammonia comes in. It is important in helping nitrogen take a form that plants can use.
Smil says, “None of the people reading this book will relocate to Mars, all of us will continue to eat staple grain crops grown in soil on large expanses of agricultural land, rather than in skyscrapers imagined by the proponents of so-called urban agriculture, none of us will live in a dematerialized world that has no use for such irreplaceable natural services as evaporating water or pollinating plants. But delivering these existential necessities will be an increasingly challenging task, because a large share of humanity lives in conditions that the affluent minority left behind generations ago, and because growing demand for energy and materials has been stressing the biosphere so much and so fast that we have imperiled its capability to keep its flows and stores within the boundaries compatible with its long-term functioning.” (pg. 3)
Makes you want to prove Vaclav Smil wrong, doesn’t it? Before you set out to do that you had better read the book. He has done the math for you. First chapter covers Energy Fuels and Electricity, second chapter covers Food Production: Eating Fossil Fuels, third chapter covers Our Material World: The Four Pillars of Modern Civilization. fourth chapter covers Globalization Engines, Microchips, and Beyond, the fifth chapter covers Understanding Risks: From Viruses to Diets to Solar Flares and the sixth chapter covers Understanding the Environment: The Only Biosphere We Have.
In the last chapter Smil talks about how we are swinging between apocalypse and the singularity.
“Apocalyptic visions of the future–with assorted hells offered by major religions–have been strongly revived by modern promoters of doom, who have been pointing to rapid population growth, environmental pollution, or now, increasingly, to global warming as the sins that will transport us to the netherworld. In contrast, incorrigible techno-optimists continue the tradition of believing in miracles and the delivery of eternal salvation. It is not uncommon to read how artificial intelligence and deep learning systems will carry us all the way to the “Singularity.” (pg. 213)
Vaclav Smil is basically telling us that there are far too many places and procedures that still rely on fossil fuels to get to zero or to decarbonize even by 2050. He also chastises us for not having done our due diligence over the many decades that we have known about climate changes like global warming, damages to our oceans and the unequal distribution of freshwater resources. We could still, if we worked together design a plan that might involve, for example, making sure soil in Africa has adequate supplies of fertilizer and fresh water to grow their own food and enough steel and concrete (made with cement) to build housing that will protect them from hot spots. Given that we cannot all agree that we need a wider, more global plan our situation looks bleak but Smil believes that earth will stay livable for many years to come.
Is this a wake up call or and admonition? Have we done too little and left things until too late? We will have to live it to learn it. Meanwhile, I assume and hope that environmentalists will keep plugging away. If they stop believing we are in big trouble.
Whenever Bill Gates’ name comes up in conversations on social media these days it calls forth mostly haters who probably only know whatever social media tells us about him. We know he’s a billionaire. We know he co-founded Microsoft. We know his wife Melinda left him because of some behavior she could not tolerate. We know that when she left it was revealed that Bill Gates had been to Jeffrey Epstein’s island where Epstein allegedly trafficked underaged girls to rich and famous men. We do not know if Gates did anything disgusting but Melinda Gates sure sounded disgusted when she made her public announcement about the divorce.
Should we all shun Bill Gates because he might have gone beyond the pale? Perhaps once again we should take our cues from Melinda who is staying active in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates, whatever his sins, still possesses one of the most rational minds of our era and his logical solutions to modern problems seem unclouded by a political agenda, very rare in an era of divided and passionate politics.
When Bill Gates wrote about climate change in his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, he used terms like “net zero” and “carbon neutral” to lower the heat on discussions of environmentalists and to erase blame. This objective approach allowed him to discuss lowering carbon emissions as a universal problem that we all have a stake in.
In How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, Bill Gates once again avoids politics and recriminations, although he does try to draw logical conclusions from contrasting public health choices. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been involved with public health in developing nations for years and has worked to control diseases like polio, AIDs. Ebola, and malaria by funding vaccination teams in remote areas. Polio has been almost completely eradicated worldwide in locations where vaccines have been allowed which seems to be everywhere except a small area in Pakistan.
Gates’ combination of logical thinking, access to experts, his long involvement with research and treatment of diseases, and his name recognition may help us take public health measures out of control of politics and allow us to use reasoned, unemotional steps to address future pandemics more efficiently. It could take America decades to heal our political divisions especially with so many conscious efforts being made to widen gaps between political parties.
Gates tells what worked and what didn’t for an airborne infection. He’s not saying anything new, just summarizing what worked with COVID and what turned out to be not as important. Masks worked, social distancing worked best with masks, worrying about germs on surfaces or on our hands and face were not as important in controlling this airborne virus. Gates advocates a global body to keep track of outbreaks and a GERM team – Global Epidemic Response and Mobilization team, which already seems problematic in today’s political environment since it contains the word “global.” Gates likes contact tracing but admits that it is also a problem given American politics, and he admits that this worked better in authoritarian societies. Even then it was still not perfect and there were definitely some human right’s issues.
Should we throw out the wisdom of Bill Gates because he is possibly flawed in ways that may be morally unacceptable? I see nothing earthshattering in Gates’ well-informed and realistic suggestions except that people may not be so willing to accept wisdom from a man they perceive as “damaged.” We cannot expect Melinda to air her objections to Bill in public, but we may be thinking the worst when the actual situation is quite different.
There is another problem with offering such rational solutions to us at a moment when we seem anything but rational. Looking at what we have managed to do to stop climate change we see that we seem to be moving backwards due to the war in Ukraine and its effect on gas and oil supplies from Russia, broken supply chains, an oil industry that underproduced in the pandemic and now claims that it can’t get up to speed as fast as we would like, and because of inflation. Currently we are talking about producing more oil and gas, opening old wells, and drilling new ones. The oil and gas industry argues that we do not have enough alternative energies to end our dependence on fossil fuels and clearly that is true at this moment. It is possible that fossil fuel companies are doing things, or not doing things, to make that so. The same may be true for pandemics. If we tried to take Bill Gates’ advice and use his well-reasoned approach to staying ahead of future pandemics the public health culture wars would make it impossible to apply public health initiatives throughout America, let alone throughout the world. In either the case of climate change or pandemics we may have to look for approaches that are not quite so reasonable, that in fact are greater challenges to individual freedom than telling people to wear a mask, or to stay home..
I picked Madhouse at the End of the Earth by Julian Sancton late one night thinking it would be a sci-fi book. In small print the cover said “The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night” which would have been a clue if I had read it. But it ends up that this journey, one of the first to Antarctica reads like science fiction, although it is a factual account of an expedition to a piece of our own planet that has an environment as alien as any you might encounter in space. It has air humans can breathe, but the behavior of an ice field is treacherous, the cold temperatures are unfriendly to human life, and isolation and severe weather take a toll. What drives men to go on risky adventures, to put their very lives on the line for fame and fortune, science, and curiosity? What drives them to want to simply be first?
Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery of Belgium does not want to do as his family expects. De Gerlache wants to go to sea. Belgium has a tiny navy consisting of only two ferries, but de Gerlache finally is allowed to earn credentials as a navigator after which he joins the navy. King Leopold, his king offers to send him on an expedition to the Congo, but de Gerlache wants to go to Antarctica. He raises money, finds a ship (the Belgica), hires sailors and scientists and after three years of planning sets sail for Antarctica. He wanted to use an all-Belgium crew, but it proved impossible. He left with his friend Danco, Georges Lecointe (28), his captain, an experienced Arctic explorer, Amundsen, and a crew that spoke a variety of languages (French, Dutch, Norwegian, German, Polish, English, Romanian, Latin). The best bit of luck de Gerlache had was when he took on Dr. Cook who met the group in South America and saved many lives on the ship by his Arctic experience and his great good sense.
From a Google Image Search – Wikipedia
De Gerlache made a fateful decision to spend a winter frozen into the Antarctic ice pack because he wanted to continue when summer returned to find the Southern Magnetic Pole. Early adventures on the ice revealed a lovely canal that opened between glaciers where perhaps the expedition spent too long collecting scientific data. By the time they moved on winter was upon them. Thankfully there were men on this expedition who loved to pit themselves against nature, the harsher the better. De Gerlache, suffering from scurvy, never having trekked the cold places, was not one of them, but he was an excellent navigator. He made the decision to spend the winter in the ice pack deliberately and the hardships that ensued should have been laid at his feet, but he never reaped the criticism he deserved, although he did not come off unscathed either.
The expedition undertaken by de Gerlache for family, nation, and science was intended to give Belgium a place on the world stage and it did succeed somewhat in this regard. But it was the Order of the Penguin, the risk-takers, the experienced polar travelers who saved the lives of the men of the Belgica and the reputation of de Gerlache. Lecointe, the 28-year-old captain, Amundsen and Cook, the Arctic explorers brought experience to bear.
Even so, trapped in an ever-changing field of ice and watery channels that opened and closed at a whim, trapped in a season without sun day after day, riddled with scurvy due to a lack of fresh food, life aboard the creaking ship became a madhouse in the sense that holding onto sanity became a challenging legacy of ice and night that no one had foreseen. Obviously, the mental state of participants in extreme conditions presented explorers of Antarctica with information on a subject they had not included in their scientific considerations and studies. Madhouse at the End of the World is a well-researched and detailed presentation of the journey of the Belgica and of the men who went on that expedition. It is also an engrossing read.
Jane Goodall and her work with chimpanzees in the wild always fascinated me because it seemed brave for a woman raised far from the African bush to adjust to living with the heat and the bugs so close to the soil where she had to sit for hours and hours among the chimpanzees in Gombé to get them to accept her as part of the landscape and eventually befriend her.
Jane Goodall tells us in The Book of Hope from the Global Icons Series, in conversation with the author Douglas Abrams, that she often got discouraged, suffered scratches and sores, and once had a near death experience when she fell down a hill in the company of an enormous rock which could have crushed her. Although she had worked with Louis Leakey on his digs in Africa looking for human bones and animal bones that might offer clues to evolution, she was often afraid that her grant money would run out. Interesting to note that as a woman could not venture out into the African forests by herself, Jane’s mother went with her in the early years and was a great help. But how did she continue to hope that one day she would be able to interact with the chimpanzees in their wild habitat? She is perhaps the perfect person to talk to us about hope in these times that seem hopeless.
The book is full of anecdotes which makes it very personal. Storytelling often spices up deep philosophical discussions and takes them from the realm of the sublime and esoteric to a level that makes the abstract real and comprehensible. As the local people started to challenge the ability of the chimpanzees at Gombé to survive, as locals began to cut down the forests that provided habitat for them, as they began to hunt them for food and capture baby chimps to sell as pets, the numbers of chimpanzees dwindled and extinction looked imminent. Rather than criticize the local residents, Jane tried to understand why this was happening. She came to an awareness that this was due to the poverty of the residents, and that unless the poverty was addressed the extinction trend would continue. Through an agency she and others founded, microloans offered to help residents buy farm animals or seeds, to help them accumulate wealth and build schools and maintain fresh water supplies. Once the standard of living rose nature was left alone to bring back the forests and bush lands that the chimpanzees needed to survive and thrive. She shows us how her intimate knowledge of the needs of the species allowed her to made decisions that were wise for both humans and animals, and incidentally for the environment.
Jane Goodall says that we must solve four great challenges and that working on solving these challenges will offer us hope for the future sustainability of all living things on this earth. Even plants are alive. All things on earth, under it, and above it are interconnected.
#1 First we must alleviate poverty. “If you are living in crippling poverty, you will cut down the last tree to grow food. Or fish the last fish because you’re so desperate to feed your family. In urban areas you will buy the cheapest food-you do not have the luxury of choosing a more ethically produced product.”
#2 We must reduce the unsustainable lifestyles of the affluent. Let’s face it, so many people have way more stuff than they need – or even want.
#3 We must eliminate corruption, for without good governance and honest leadership, we cannot work together to solve our enormous social and environmental challenges.
#4 We must face up to the problems caused by growing populations of humans and their livestock. There are over 7 billion of us today, and already, in many places, we have used up nature’s finite natural resources faster than nature can replenish them and by 2050 there will apparently be closer to ten billion of us. If we carry on with business as usual, that spells the end of earth as we know it. (pg. 59-60)
Jane Goodall tells us she was shy, and she describes the first speech she gave in public and says that now she speaks to people all around the world. She tells them and us, her readers, that these environmental and cultural challenges are not insurmountable. She blames our current dilemma on a “disconnect between clever brains and compassionate hearts.” “True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with our hearts.” We are left with the feeling that we could solve the problems facing us and wondering if we will find the wisdom to do it.
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 