Happy Independence Day

 Happy Independence Day..

My Jigsaw Puzzle of the Golden Gate Bridge

 

Here's the final of the seven jigsaw puzzles I put together from the box depicting different notable American scenes I got last year...actually, it's the first one of the bunch I did.  The Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco with Sausalito and northern California is another of those symbols of American engineering prowess.  I've never been there, but that climactic scene in the James Bond thriller A View to a Kill was impressive to watch.  This was the biggest of the puzzles at 1000 pieces, and that undifferentiated sky took up way too many puzzle pieces to be enjoyable.  Guess it's time to go get some more puzzles...

Recently Assembled Jigsaw Puzzle of Mount Rushmore

 

Mount Rushmore, near Rapid City, South Dakota, is one of the places I'd like to visit some day.  Situated in the state's Black Hills, the huge faces carved in granite depict four historically-significant US presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.  This National Memorial was sculpted, after US government authorization, by Gutzon Borglum, but the use of federal lands whose ownership is disputed by Indians has made the project, starting in 1927 and completed 14 years later, somewhat controversial.  My experiences with Mount Rushmore are tightly connected to the climactic scene in the great 1959 Alfred Hitchcock movie thriller North by Northwest, in which hero Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flee there to escape the murderous bad guys, led by James Mason and Martin Landau.  The irony of it all is that the actual "Mount Rushmore" footage was done on models created for filming in Southern California!  Yes, I'd dig going over to South Dakota to check it out, as well as the nearby memorial to Crazy Horse that has been under construction since 1948 and still is far from completion.  Anyway, Mount Rushmore was the setting shown in one of my seven Americana jigsaw puzzles, pictured above...

My Jigsaw Puzzle of Hoover Dam

 

In the box of assorted jigsaw puzzles of Americana that I got a few weeks ago is one of Hoover Dam, the giant engineering project during the Great Depression years in the early-to-mid 1930's connecting the Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations.  Bordering Nevada and Arizona, it takes the Colorado River and functions as flood control, irrigation and a source of hydroelectric power.  Many lives were lost during its construction, but it stands as a "can do" symbol of American know-how and potential.  I've never been to Hoover Dam...have you?  I'm guessing that most visitors have other places on their travel agenda as well, the Grand Canyon probably one of them.  Thanks to Wikipedia for the information about this dam...

Popular Vote Winners in Last Eight Presidential Elections

Here are the popular vote winners in the American presidential elections since 1992.  Since we're supposedly a republic governed by the people's voice in democratic elections and a fair, unbiased system of laws, you might think that our policies and government would reflect the below trend...but you'd be wrong...

1992    DEMOCRAT

1996    DEMOCRAT

2000    DEMOCRAT

2004    REPUBLICAN

2008    DEMOCRAT

2012    DEMOCRAT

2016    DEMOCRAT

2020    DEMOCRAT

Now in 2024, do you think anyone really cares about what is going on in this campaign except within a small number of swing states like Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania?  Because of our electoral college system, if you live in California, Texas, Florida or New York...our country's most populous states...no one cares about your opinion.  A losing president can call the chief elections officer of a state he closely lost and ask him to manufacture nonexistent votes to turn the results around, or the losing party can maneuver in states they lost...but legislatively control...to have those legislatures overturn those results.  Who cares what the rest of the country thinks, as long as they get their power.  Of course, as an individual my degree of influence is strictly limited, which is why I haven't been ranting and raving on this blog like others do on their social media outlets.  After all, we now have a Supreme Court that treats one side as its client interest: even if the doddering and incoherent incumbent nobody had a voice in choosing this year as the nominee wins those swing states, will they turn around and negate the results? Democracy is an illusion, both in Russia and now, sadly, here in America.  I have my own life, with the choices I can make that actually have effects on myself and my loved ones...electoral politics provide no hope in that regard...

Just Finished Reading American Idolatry by Andrew L. Whitehead

The full title of the book I just read, by Andrew L. Whitehead, is American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church.  It just came out this year and expressed some concerns about conservative evangelical Christianity in this country that I have been feeling for some time.  The author also went a little too far is pushing his conclusions, in my opinion.  Whitehead is a professing Christian from his youth, attending the very types of churches he discusses in this book.  The American flag is prominently displayed in their sanctuaries, and much is made of the United States always having been a Christian nation, established on Christian principles.  He disapproves of the flag being there and disagrees with America's Christian heritage.  In fact, he seems repelled by both the word "heritage" and its common companion "traditional", since they usually imply that the social values of the "good old days" were better and more noble than our society in the present time.  But slavery lasted until 1865 and then afterward legalized discrimination against the former enslaved blacks was practiced until the US Supreme Court struck it down just two years before I was born.  Still, the struggle has continued for African Americans to get a fair shake in our country.  As for Native Americans, the push for much of our history had been to eliminate either them or their culture, with a strong push toward Christianizing the population, especially children.  I'm totally in agreement with Whitehead's grim assessment of these facets of our history...they should be taught in all the schools without any attempt to cover anything up.  Where I do have a problem with his book is that he tends to repeatedly emphasize something that, while true up to a point, has some sinister connotations: the notion of privilege, which he applies to whites whether they subscribe to Christian nationalism or not.  Historically, different groups of people have been collectively scapegoated for society's problems by essentially being accused of being unfairly privileged: this has long been a recurring theme with anti-Semites when railing against Jewish people.  Careful: attacking or criticizing people for being born a certain way crosses an important line and can place you in the company of those who are prejudiced...well, by its very nature it is prejudice.  Also, I don't like whole groups of people lumped together and judged by a few in their midst who espouse objectionable views: I think I know of quite a few Christian nationalists in churches I've attended...and quite a few much more tolerant and open-minded folks...should I automatically judge Muslims because some among them have radical notions?  This book is nevertheless an appropriate response to the type of Christian nationalism pushed by, of all people, a thoroughly secular reprobate who once as President had federal troops tear-gas peaceful demonstrators so that he could walk from the White House to a church he never attended and...in front of it and numerous cameras...hold up a Bible he never read, much to the adoring approval of Christian nationalist Franklin Graham.  The sad thing about it all is that the very people who need to change their attitudes the most are thoroughly (and happily) brainwashed and will only double down on their convictions.  Still, I thought the book was a worthwhile effort despite some of my disagreements.  Whitehead made a very good point of contrasting Jesus' walk on Earth and his ministry and sayings with the political, bellicose attitudes of many today who liberally invoke his name while violating his principles.  There's a fork in the road for Christianity, for sure: which way will it go?

Just Finished Reading Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Our Missing Hearts, the 2022 novel by Celeste Ng, is the third book I've read of hers since Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You...click on the titles to read my previous reviews on this blog. In this latest work of hers, it is sometime in the near future in an America painfully recovering from an abrupt economic downtown as Chinese people are unfairly targeted as scapegoats for the crisis. And a new set of repressive laws, P.A.C.T., has been enacted that justify discrimination and censorship against Asian-Americans, even to the point of the government taking away their children as punishment for dissent.  It's a dreary, heartbreaking world as young Bird, a little boy whose mother Margaret, a Chinese-American dissident poet, has protected him from being taken away by leaving him and his father.  But Bird wants to find her, and she leaves a clue that he follows with the aid of his local librarian, a sympathizer to the resistance.  It became quickly clear to me not far into the book that this story is a combined reaction by Ng to (1) the way after 9/11 that Muslims and Middle Eastern people in America were often stigmatized following that traumatic event, and (2) the tendency for China...and by irrational inference, Chinese people in general...to be blamed for the Covid-19 pandemic that broke out in 2020.  The big difference as I see it between the two is that the American president at the time of 9/11, George W. Bush, took great pains to prevent any kind of bigoted reactions while during Covid, then-president Donald Trump made a repeated point of scapegoating China and the Chinese.  It's very clear that Celeste Ng, of Chinese ancestry but born and raised here in the United States, had a message to convey regarding what is ultimately not just an American problem with prejudice and scapegoating but a human problem of which history over the ages has provided extensive examples.  Yes, it's a depressing tale, this book, and I'm afraid that just about every society on Earth has elements within it that will gladly trample on someone else's rights because of their own fears and willful ignorance.  I didn't enjoy reading Our Missing Hearts, but I don't think that was the author's intention anyway...

Quote of the Week...from President Biden

The State of the Union is strong...because you, the American people, are strong.  We are stronger today than we were a year ago...and we will be stronger a year from now than we are today.

                                                  ---Joseph Biden, President of the United States

So concluded our president in his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress this past Tuesday evening.  Although I did not watch it, I later heard that it was widely regarded by the American public in a positive light, garnering a 78% approval rating in one poll.  He touched among a number of topics, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, infrastructure, voting rights, climate change and inflation.  His delivery from the highlights I did see later seemed good and he had a natural kind of folksiness that Democrats hadn't seen from one of their presidents since Clinton in the 1990s.  But his above quote, which he made at the end of his speech...while sounding appropriately optimistic in the setting of any State of the Union address...did not ring true to my ears.  I don't agree that the state of our union is strong.  Fascism is on the sharp rise, with a frightening level of the electorate poised to endorse their own party's overturning of any election result not going their way.  The cult personality worship of an incredibly flawed, authoritarian individual, namely Donald Trump, just won't go away as we approach the 2022 midterm elections in which he stands to gain de facto control of Congress if Democratic voters do what they are known to do every time they elect a president of their own party...which is to sit out the following election and passively allow the Republicans to win control of Congress and state governments.  And in light of the Covid-19 pandemic that has devastated our country (and the world) over the past two years, it has been very dismaying for me to witness the utter selfishness and disregard for public health on the part of such a broad swath of our population as they refused to wear masks in public or even vaccinate against this scourge that has to date killed nearly a million people so far in our country alone and caused many, many more long-term health problems.  Issues like global warming and racial reconciliation are now being treated as highly controversial by a major political party as we find ourselves as a country receding into backwardness, with anti-science and prejudice on the upsurge.  And people now tend to seek out the news sources that are biased to fit their own preconceived views while mass and social media accommodate this increasing refusal to face the reality of what is going on around them...

So no, Mr. President, although I support you and want you to succeed, I'm afraid and sad to say that it's we, the American people, who are going to let you down as we continue to slip further and further into weakness, not strength.  Sorry for the downer today, but I'm just calling it as I see it...you and Jill are still welcome to come over for some coffee and chat...

Quote of the Week...from Frank Zappa

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.     ---Frank Zappa

I've seen comic Bill Maher get on his HBO show and often joke about how much he likes to smoke pot (years before eight of our states legalized casual use) and has had guests on the air who seemed to be stoned...and then I look at the statistic of over 600,000 people arrested for simple marijuana possession last year. Not that I'm a fan of marijuana: I've never used it and never will...and am skeptical of those who practically idolize the weed. Still, I have to disagree with the substance of late avant-garde rock musician Frank Zappa's above quote although I agree with its spirit: our laws are not randomly enforced...if they were, things would be fairer.  For Kamala Harris, current U.S. senator from California and that state's former prosecutor, to kid around about having smoked pot after she prosecuted others for the same offense isn't random enforcement, either: it's elitism, saying that some people in society are to be judged by different standards under the law than others.  And when you see this circus of result-oriented Federal and Supreme Court judge nominations that has been going on during different administrations during the last couple of decades at least (from both political parties), it becomes apparent that "justice" and the "law" are now being interpreted in a very political and ideological way that diminishes fairness and elevates agendas...

I don't think that police treat the upper class in our society like those in low-income areas...that's not random enforcement in the strict meaning of the word "random".  And in the courts the rich can afford better attorneys...along with private investigators...than the poor, who often must resort to whatever pro bono legal assistance the court provides them...that's not random justice.  The randomness in law enforcement is real, though, when laws are on the books that are violated so much by people at large that the police cannot possibly catch everyone and must then take violators in a more randomized fashion...traffic speed traps are a good example of this strategy.  But, of course, if profiling is going on in the mind of the stationed law enforcement officer, even that isn't truly random, either...

As for the first part of Zappa's quote stating that laws are badly written, just keep in mind that when a politician is elected to a legislature, be it local, state, or national in scope, he or she will naturally feel the pressure to "do" something...and that means becoming an active part of lawmaking.  Like the Geico commercial, it's "what you do" when you're a politician.  So a legislative body will brag about all the bills they submitted or passed and politicians will run for reelection touting their list of accomplishments.  And sometimes they'll pass laws just to say they passed them...after all, one of the most common election-season rallying points is that the other party is a bunch of  "do-nothings".  So as a result we often end up saddled with some pretty crappy laws as our elected officials struggle to justify themselves to the next round of voters...

Quote of the Week...from George H.W. Bush

We don't want an America that is closed to the world. What we want is a world that is open to America.                                                   ---George H.W. Bush

I'm not sure when and in what context our 41st president, who just died a week ago, made the above statement, but it is very relevant to what is going on today with the current administration and its "America First" mantra. Bush, for his part as president, was a big advocate for the United States being in networks of alliances and trade treaties...in the Persian Gulf War, he had as allies both Israel and Syria: now that's an accomplishment! Contrast that with Donald Trump's skepticism about standing alliances and trade treaties: he prefers to deal with other nations on a bilateral basis, understanding that in doing so the United States is almost always the stronger party and cannot be voted down by a bloc of others. His trade disputes with other countries, most particularly China, are not based on wanting to isolate or close us from them but rather to confront them with their policies which prevent or greatly restrict our goods being marketed and sold there.  He ultimately wants...and I agree with him on this...truly free trade between the countries of the world, not just on our side, and he has been using his speeches, Twitter, and tariffs as a means to pressure these other countries to reform their unfair trade practices.  Also, some of these nations steal American innovations without compensation...I guess in that way they're open to America!

As for our borders, I also tend to side with our current president for stronger border security.  As an American I can't just pack up and go to any other country I want without documentation or that country's implicit permission...the same should apply for others seeking entrance into my own country, from whatever source it may be...south of our border, England, Russia, China, or elsewhere.  I guess in all of this I want a level field between us and the rest of the world and not one in which it almost always seems to be the United States that must make concessions to others.  So with regard to our recently departed former president's quote, I would agree with both parts: I don't want America closed off from the world, and I want the world to be open to what we have to offer it.  But I don't want us in the process to be ripped off, either...

Quote of the Week...from Regina Spektor

They made a statue of us
And put it on a mountaintop
Now tourists come and stare at us
Blow bubbles with their gum
Take photographs have fun, have fun

---Regina Spektor, from her song Us

Given the furor and controversy going on today about statues...particularly any glorifying the Confederate side in the American Civil War, Regina Spektor could well add a stanza or two to her great 2004 song Us, which has statues as one of its themes. The push has been on in recent years to remove old statues honoring soldiers and politicians on the Southern side...and for obvious reasons: the Confederacy was fighting to uphold the institution of slavery, and for that reason alone the statues represent an affront to every African-American and only serve to further divide an already too divided country.  Those who claim that it's only history and that folks shouldn't be so sensitive need to understand that it is the revision of history itself that is the root of the problem with these monuments...

A Facebook friend recently posted a short film of historical interest: a promotional movie for Gaineville, Florida made around 1960.  It covered a lot of ground, just about every aspect of the city I live in...except of course that everything was a lot older, the city was smaller, and the businesses were different.  Oh yeah, one other detail: in spite of the myriad Gainesville residents depicted in this "historical" movie, not a single one of them was black!  Now, on one hand...as with the issue of the statues...you can argue that this film was of historical interest.  But very telling in both cases was the censoring of the experiences, accomplishments...and ultimately the presence itself...of the African-American community.  And so it is with both film and statues: they tell more about the historical mindset of those who produced them than they do about what they depict: an all-white Gainesville with recognition and glory to those war heroes who fought to continue the subjugation of a very large segment of the population...and to erase that segment's historical memory.  I don't want that sort of presence in my community...at least on public land.  It reminds me of a bumper sticker I read a few years ago: Your "Heritage" is my Slavery...

But then again I have a built-in bias against statues anyway: they all tend to bum me out.  I suspect that Regina Spektor, who was born in the old Soviet Union before moving with her family to America, was referring in her song to the old Communist Party "heroes" like Lenin and Stalin and how every town had to have a statue of them...and then Stalin fell out of official favor in 1956 and the regime itself fell in 1991, after which these statues became controversial.  My disdain for this form of public idolization is for that very reason: I strongly oppose making idols of anybody.  It especially riles me to see football players and coaches glorified in this manner on college campuses...that current prima donna Alabama coach is the worst example.  On the other hand, once a statue is up it's easy to mock it: there's an old statue of a historical University of Florida figure sitting there near the main library...from time to time a prankster will put a whiskey bottle in his open hand...

The Union's Civil War Victory: Strategically Inevitable, Politically Precarious

I was watching a couple of history specials this afternoon on PBS about the American Civil War.  The first was an episode of Ken Burns' documentary series and the second was about the Battle of Gettysburg.  After watching both programs, I came away with the feeling that there are two camps of thought about the inevitability of the Union victory over the Confederacy...

One group of folks seem to be of the opinion...like my old college American History professor...that the North had too many advantages over the South, with its greater population, industrial economy, and control over the high seas.   Their strategy over the course of the war was to blockade the Confederacy by sea and then carve it up by taking control of the Mississippi River throughout its course, bisect the South by cutting through Georgia to the seas, and starving out Robert E. Lee's Virginia army.  And as far as I can see it, they have some very good points...the Rebels were definitely suffering from severe shortages and broken communication and transportation lines by 1864.  And as long as the conflict remained on southern land, those living in the north did not feel physically threatened by the conflict reaching their towns and farms.  But the analysts holding the view that a Union victory was a slam-dunk from the start fail to take into consideration the political angle to the war and how close...from the Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863 to the conquest of Atlanta in July, 1864...the northern population came to turning against Lincoln and rejecting his presidency in the 1864 presidential election in favor of peace candidate George McClellan. Had Longstreet's more prudent strategy prevailed over his superior Lee's of massive attack against Union positions around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the third day of battle or had the Confederates gained the high ground as they came so close to doing on that second day, a Confederate victory on Union territory could well have tipped the political scales against Lincoln: as it was, an invasion into Pennsylvania by Lee's forces was in itself traumatic enough.  But although the North was slowly starving out the South through sieges such as at Atlanta and Petersburg (Virginia), the downside was that the war was dragging on, seemingly endless.  And the country was weary of it all, with no final victory in sight...

So strategically the South didn't have a chance...but politically they came very close in 1864 to changing the North's political landscape in their favor.  Had McClellan won that fateful election, who knows what would have happened. But Sherman was able to take Atlanta (due in part to Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his ill-advised replacement of the competent General Joseph Johnston with the incompetent John Bell Hood) and Lincoln's popularity rebounded on to his reelection that November...

John F. Kennedy's 100th Birthday and Memorial Day

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the first president in my memory (although I was born during Dwight Eisenhower's tenure), would be 100 years old today had he survived his assassination more than 53 years ago.  That he might have lived to today is problematic, for according to Kennedy historian Robert Dallek he suffered from numerous health problems, including the serious Addison's Disease as well as severe pain from osteoporosis of the lower back.  On the other hand, his mother Rose lived to the age of 104.  JFK only served in the White House a little less than three years, but made an enormous, positive impact on both our country and the world at large.  He not only faced down the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but also began the process of peace between the cold war rivals with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty the following year.  Many of Kennedy's social proposals, such as civil rights legislation and medical care for the elderly that would be eventually known as Medicare, were held up in Congress and wouldn't be passed until his successor, Lyndon Johnson, an experienced arm-twister with legislators, aggressively pushed the bills through.  And John F. Kennedy gave this nation two great worldwide images: one was the Peace Corps with American volunteers going abroad to help others...the other was the goal of landing people on the moon and returning safely...within ten years.  It was a terrible tragedy when he was murdered on that Friday afternoon in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963...I heard about it back then right after coming back to my second-grade classroom after lunch.  In my estimation, John Fitzgerald Kennedy has been the greatest president during my lifetime and I doubt that there will be one greater than him in the future...

Today was John F. Kennedy's birthday, but this year May 29th lands on a Monday, so it is also Memorial Day.  Thus we also pay our respects to the many brave and most honorable men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice...with their very lives...in order that we may enjoy living in freedom, both to express ourselves and to pursue our own dreams and beliefs.  I saw President Trump on TV earlier at Arlington National Cemetery, presenting the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier...he displayed the solemnity and respect that the ceremony entailed, an admirable job...

I for one am sorry that the tendency has been in the last few decades to diminish the practice of pledging allegiance to our American flag on different public occasions and standing in a respectful, attentive manner at the playing of the National Anthem.  Our national symbols stand for the values that those brave soldiers who died for the United States of America in combat fought to protect...for us and for future generations...

Just Finished Reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods

The novel American Gods, as Neil Gaiman puts it, was inspired by this British writer's trips to the United States and his attempts to understand its culture...especially that which differed from his homeland.  He decided to tell a story in which two often opposite viewpoints of religion and gods are combined.  Those who worship deities tend to believe that their gods exist in the real world and are independent of their believers...albeit usually jealous of other deities.  Skeptics, on the other hand, claim that gods are a creation of the believers: their existence only extends to their followers' worship, in their own minds.  But suppose that both views were true to an extent...suppose that gods truly existed in the real world but were there only because people had created them and then followed and worshiped them.  And that, like other entities, they can weaken and die, too.  Only with them, their decline owes itself to progressively fewer and fewer people following them as they are replaced by new, modern idols...

In American Gods the country, the population of which now largely "worships" the new gods of media, hedonism, computer technology, etc. to the detriment of the traditional gods brought over from the Old World by their immigrant ancestors, finds itself the site of a cosmic struggle...and ultimately a war...between the old and new deities, with them appearing as people living among the human population.  In the middle of it all is the main protagonist, a young man named Shadow who, after serving a short prison term, finds his wife has died in a car crash along with his would-be employer...and he finds himself completely disconnected from his expected future.  Enter an enigmatic man named "Wednesday" who hires him on, and the gods start piling into the story...

While reading American Gods, I found myself going down two different mental trails.  One was trying to keep up with all of the gods and religious traditions Gaiman introduced to the story, spanning thousands of years and crossing over all kinds of cultures like native American, African, Norse, Irish...and especially Russian.  I could see quite plainly that the author put a lot of research into this book, and if you're someone who might be interested in exploring various cultures and their old religions and myths, American Gods would be a good read if only for that purpose.  However, my other mental "trail" made it a much more compelling story: that concerned was what was going to happen to Shadow...and who exactly was this man, with his resigned gloominess combined with a natural compassion for others.  At times I felt that Shadow is a role model for dealing with adversity and conflict (which he is continually experiencing)...and at others, he just seems far too apathetic about the bizarre events transpiring around him.  A most peculiar and compelling character, he is...

American Gods is one of those stories, once you realize what the author is trying to do, that expects you to temporarily put your own views about religion on hold while reading it.  That doesn't mean you've forsaken your own beliefs in that area...it just means that you're entertaining someone else's ideas for a little while.  Besides, Neil Gaiman himself didn't believe in the fantastic figures he inserted into this novel: he was simply doing his best to explain his own take on America, from the viewpoint of someone having grown up across the ocean.  I recommend American Gods, but I feel that some folks may have some difficulty with the religious themes...