A Change in the Wind

What Lifts Us Out of Ourselves Helps Us Believe in the Future

Have been reading through a collection of short pieces by the great Rachel Carson, called Lost Woods: The Discovered Writings of Rachel Carson. Turns out Carson wrote the liner notes for a recording of Claude Debussy's La Mer, and subsequently was asked to give a talk on the connection between the arts and the natural world at a benefit for the National Orchestra in Washington, D.C. 

This was in the l950's, during the Korean War. She said:

I believe quite sincerely that in these difficult times we need more than ever to keep alive those arts from which men derive inspiration and courage and consolation -- in a word, strength of spirit... When we contemplate the immense age of earth and sea, when we get in the frame of mind where we can speak easily of millions or billions of years, and when we remember the short time that hman life has existed on earth, we begin to see that some of the worries and tribulations that concern us are very minor. We also gain some sense of confidence that the changes and the evolution of new ways of life are natural and on the whole desirable.

It has come to me very clearly....that people everywhere are desperately eager for whatever will lift them out of themselves and allow them to believe in the future.

What lifts us out of ourselves, gives us strength. Words of wisdom, for yours truly as well...

The End of Something Old, the Start of Something New

David Brooks, I owe you an apology. After your fervent support for the misguided and mismanaged war in Iraq, I thought you had become a neocon. Your seemingly mindless support of the re-election of Bush in 2004 was the final straw for me.

But perhaps I spoke too soon. Since 2005, Brooks has been expressing serious doubts about W., as illustrated best in this remark on Meet the Press from September 2005, shortly after Katrina:

I say that...you always [have] got to go back to competence. And sometimes in my dark moments, I think [Bush] is "The Manchurian Candidate" designed to discredit all the ideas I believe in. And so he has to follow through on that [speech in New Orleans]. That's the crucial thing for the next two years for him.

Not really, of course. Bush's long-forgotten speech in New Orleans led to nothing of great substance except FEMA money (that would have been available in any case). But this remark from Brooks did lead to a little-noticed shift in his rhetoric. Although he never officially declared his support for Obama, Brooks this year hinted that he found Obama a better candidate than McCain, and, more importantly for yours truly, on Monday published a truly remarkable column that marked the end of one era and the beginning of another, for yours truly as well as for the nation. Brooks wrote:

Economically, [this election] marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983. Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980. Generationally, it marks the end of baby boomer supremacy, which began in 1968.

And for me, it marked the end of my career at Paramount Pictures as a story analyst. A secure income and a steady job -- those days are gone, at least for a while. Here comes the free-lance life. But I'm not panicked about it, and suspect the timing might be right. At least I'll have company.

Raised in prosperity, favored by genetics, these young meritocrats [who support Obama] will have to govern in a period when the demands on the nation’s wealth outstrip the supply. They will grapple with the growing burdens of an aging society, rising health care costs and high energy prices. They will have to make up for the trillion-plus dollars the government will spend to avoid a deep recession. They will have to struggle to keep their promises to cut taxes, create an energy revolution, pass an expensive health care plan and all the rest... We’re probably entering a period, in other words, in which smart young liberals meet a stone-cold scarcity that they do not seem to recognize or have a plan for.

It's funny: I have less money, but more belief in my country than ever. I view with equanimity the coming fall...and see its beauty. [pic of a favorite tree to come soon...]

Could Bandwagon Effect Be Driving Obama's Rise in the Polls?

Anyone with the slightest interest in the subject of polls this year has heard about The Bradley Effect, in which polls supposedly under-represented racist voters, so that black candidates were likely to fare more poorly than the polls indicated. My favorite statistical analyst, Nate Silver, argues cogently (here) that this effect did exist in particular circumstances in the past, but is misunderstood. He calls it "a persistent myth." He points out that Obama has actually outperformed his polling this year, for one.

But here's another factor that seemingly has been under-reported, perhaps because it's even harder to assess numerically. Anyone who has ever worked as a vendor knows intuitively about The Bandwagon Effect. It's simply, really. People are influenced by other people. If they see other people flocking to buy something, they will take a look themselves.

This is why baristas salt the tip jar with their own money. It's why movie studios use any possible excuse to trumpet "#1 Movie in America!" ads, no matter how little that phrase means numerically.

Social scientists say this effect holds true with polling too. A l994 study by two sociologists at the University of Kentucky found a statistically significant correlation:

Independents, which are those who do not vote based on the endorsement of any party and are ultimately neutral, were influenced strongly in favor of the person expected to win (Goidel and Shields 807-808). Expectations played a significant role throughout the study. It was found that independents are twice as likely to vote for the Republican candidate when the Republican is expected to win. From the results, it was also found that when the Democrat was expected to win, independent Republicans and weak Republicans were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate (Goidel and Shields 808).

This study, which sadly appears not to be available on-line, can't be quickly boiled down to a quick percentage, especially since a well-designed poll should pick it up as election day approaches.

But one has to wonder: Could this be fueling Obama's recent rise in the Gallup poll? Or is it just statistical noise?

It's probably impossible to know, but hardened lefty Marc Cooper reports from Las Vegas, where the betting on numbers is serious business, that to put a (illicit) bet down on Obama, one has to bet a $1000 to win $100...and it's considered a slam-dunk win. One expert told Cooper that betting on anyone but Obama to win was considered "an absurd wager."

Conservatism Loses Its Head

From an intriguing Los Angeles Times op-ed this Monday:

In the early 1960s, writers at William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review knew that conservatism, like all political movements, needs a head as well as a heart. In a confidential memo, Frank Meyer, the National Review's leading theorist, made distinctions between the "establishment of responsible leadership" and "instinctive" conservatives who followed the call of "know-nothing leaders." A responsible conservative leadership, Meyer said, needed to tame the "vital forces" of the hard-core populist right.

But nearly half a century later, that generation is gone or fading fast, and McCain's campaign choices should make us all wonder who is in charge of America's conservative party now: its heart or its head? It's not clear that anyone on the right has stepped up to become today's "responsible cop of the conservative beat," as one historian described Buckley.

In his 2005 book, "Democracy and Populism," conservative historian John Lukacs expressed his fear that democracy is degenerating into ersatz populism, which tends to unite people more on the basis of whom they despise rather than what they believe in. Contemporary conservatives, he wrote, have learned to muster majorities by evoking disdain not against foreign but domestic enemies. He suggested that the movement is in the hands of two contending factions: those whose "binding belief" is their contempt for their enemies, who hate them more than they love liberty, and those who love liberty more than they fear their enemies.

Sound familiar? Put that book on my Abebooks list...

From Inside the Bottle, a Ray of Hope

Several voices in recent days have pointed out that despite the severity of our financial crisis, there is reason to hope that it could lead to better days. My favorite was the moderate Matt Millen, from the popular political talkshow Left, Right, and Center, who on Friday concluded with this:

On what has been a grim week, when everyone has been looking at the plunge in their 401(k) or their family portfolios, I want to offer a hopeful thought: We're still at only about 6% unemployment, nothing like the 25% or more before the Federal government really took innovative action in the early l930's. And we've got a nearly universal consensus that it is time to take big steps to stem what is a major financial crisis, before it can bleed into the larger economy. The fact that we're on the verge of that, and, if Obama can win, we will be in a situation where all bets are off, in terms of what the policy choices are, means that we could be at one of those creative moments where we reinvent capitalism to honor all the things that all of us want for the long-term.

Amen. Note the comparison with Ed Wilson's concept of "the bottleneck" -- the idea that if we can survive our overpopulation, our devastation of the planet, and its consequent effects in the next fifty years -- we can stabilize and live better, healthier, more harmonious lives. A description of his concept:

But the "bottleneck" of overpopulation and overconsumption can be safely navigated: adequate resources exist, and in the end, success or failure depends upon an ethical decision. Global conservation will succeed or fail depending on the cooperation between government, science and the private sector, and on the interplay of biology, economics and diplomacy. "A civilization able to envision God and to embark on the colonization of space," Wilson concludes, "will surely find the way to save the integrity of this planet and the magnificent life it harbors."

We need this kind of hope, methinks...

Advice for Tough Times (from Loudon Wainwright III)

At the delightful (and crowded!) Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival yesterday in San Francisco, the great wit Loudon Wainwright III concluded with a new song, as yet unrecorded, about the tough times we're in.

First he joked that this was part of "The New Optimism," which he is able to offer because he has been a figure of famous pessimism throughout his career, so when he sees a silver lining to a dark cloud, he has credibility to talk about it. Then he plunged into the song, which has a nice ironic lilt to it, and the chorus:

It's not the end of the world -- just the middle of the night.

Roll it around in your mouth. Try it out on a friend. Could be a slogan for the naughts...

Here's Loudon:

A Great Speech for Tough Times

As some of us have been fearing, the Dow is down nearly 600 points today. If the bail-out fails to pass in Congress, chances are it will fall much further. We may be in for some truly hard times ahead.

This is not a time for happy talk, but it is a time to think of great speeches to buck us up.

Almost everyone has heard the great Tom Joad speech from the John Ford/Henry Fonda movie (which is viewable here). It's virtually identical to a version Steinbeck wrote for the stage (passage available here).

Some consider it the greatest movie speech of all time. Even if you haven't actually seen the movie, or the play, or read the book, you've probably heard some version of the words Tom Joad says to Ma Joad as he leaves her to find his own way into the world:

I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be ever'-where - wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise, and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too

But how many have heard the great buck-up speech from another American classic, A Death in the Family?

Let me share one moment from it. You won't regret it: nor, most likely, ever fully forget reading this.

In this scene, a hard-working brother, Andrew, speaks from the heart to his sister, Mary, giving her all he can, after she has suffered the grievous loss of her husband:

See here...it's bad enough now but it's going to take a while to sink in. When it really sinks in it's going to be any amount worse. It'll be so much worse you'll think it's more than you can bear. Or any other human being. And worse than that, you'll have to go through it alone, because there isn't a thing on earth any of us can do to help, beyond blind animal sympathy.

That's why you're going to need very ounce of common sense you've got. Just spunk won't be enough; you've got to have gumption. You've got to bear it in mind that nobody ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You've got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and that you will too. You'll bear it because there isn't any choice--except to go to pieces. You've got two children to take care of. And regardless of that you owe it to yourself and you owe it to him.

...it's kind of a test, Mary, and it's the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That's all.

The book was written by the great writer, critic, and screenwriter James Agee, and was the basis of a play called All the Way Home. (Have to see that some day.) Here's a picture of James Agee, a favorite writer of my late beloved Grandmother's, and (I'm beginning to think) a source for some of her wisdom.

Meet the New Boss: Progressive Capitalism

I'm not a big fan of David Brooks, and think he's far more of an ideologue and less of a free-thinker than he realizes, but when he's right, he's right. We as a nation have turned a corner.

For better or worse, a new era awaits us: Progressive Capitalism

Over the next few years, the U.S. will have to climb out from under mountainous piles of debt. Many predict a long, gray recession. The country will not turn to free-market supply-siders. Nor will it turn to left-wing populists. It will turn to the safe heads from the investment banks. For Republicans, people like Paulson. For Democrats, the guiding lights will be those establishment figures who advised Barack Obama last week — including Volcker, Robert Rubin and Warren Buffett.

These time-tested advisers, or more precisely, their acolytes, are going to make the health and survival of the financial markets their first order of business, because without that stability, the entire economy will be in danger. Beyond that, they will embrace a certain sort of governing approach.

The government will be much more active in economic management (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Democrat). Government activism will provide support to corporations, banks and business and will be used to shore up the stable conditions they need to thrive (pleasing a certain sort of establishment Republican). Tax revenues from business activities will pay for progressive but business-friendly causes — investments in green technology, health care reform, infrastructure spending, education reform and scientific research.

If you wanted to devise a name for this approach, you might pick the phrase economist Arnold Kling has used: Progressive Corporatism. We’re not entering a phase in which government stands back and lets the chips fall. We’re not entering an era when the government pounds the powerful on behalf of the people. We’re entering an era of the educated establishment, in which government acts to create a stable — and often oligarchic — framework for capitalist endeavor.

After a liberal era and then a conservative era, we’re getting a glimpse of what comes next.

Another example: the Los Angeles Times reports today (see here) that massive changes, staff cuts, and risk reduction is expected on the Street.

Last week's bankruptcy filing of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. and shotgun engagement of Merrill Lynch & Co. to Bank of America Corp. -- after the demise of Bear Stearns Cos. in March -- signal the most dramatic reordering of Wall Street since the Great Depression.

Even if the huge government intervention announced late last week succeeds in stemming the current crisis, Wall Street's basic business model will be revamped, many in the business say, with its earnings, workforce and appetite for risk greatly reduced and its swashbuckling ethos ratcheted back.

The new era of subdued expectations is likely to affect not only traditional investment banks but also hedge funds and private equity firms, which gained high profiles in recent years.

[pic courtesy of Brian T. Murphy, who took it for his brother, who works on the Street]

Mold: Toxic Menace or Life on Earth?

While I was gone, I missed a great (and long) story in the LA Weekly (here) about the mom who turned mold "toxic," creating a storm of lucrative litigation out of fear, misunderstanding, and greed.

Like those who would later join the cause, including Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon, [Sharon Kramer] saw a conspiracy funded by businesses out to end mold claims while risking the public's health. She believed that the well-being of thousands depended on her exposing that deceit. Like the fight waged by McMahon over the death of his dog purportedly from mold, Kramer's belief has consumed her. It has wiped out her comfortable suburban life and financial security and caused her to lose touch with many friends.*

But the great mold scare never rose to the level of accepted epidemic among serious researchers. Despite public hysteria that continues even now, science today finds no direct link between mold and serious illness in people with normal immune systems.

The Centers for Disease Control now says: "There are very few reports that toxigenic molds found inside homes can cause unique or rare health conditions such as pulmonary hemorrhage or memory loss" — the kinds of illnesses claimed in successful lawsuits at the height of the mold rush. "These case reports," the CDC warns on its Web site, "are rare, and a causal link between the presence of toxigenic mold and these conditions has not been proven."

The story resonates for yours truly because we have a guesthouse/trailer that has begun to grow mold in spots during winter rains...meaning we can no longer rent it out. What to do? Destroy? Rebuild? (Or, as one former tenant suggested, simply find tenants with functioning immune systems who don't freak out.)

But the story of Sharon Kramer is almost a Greek tragedy: a woman seemingly deranged by the near-loss of her beloved child. She appears utterly obsessed with mold, which for most individuals, whose lungs aren't thick with mucus, is not a great menace. Even her husband seems fed up.

"Looking back at how a leak from a fridge complicated the last six years of our lives is unbelievable," her husband says. "It doesn't make sense."

You said it, brother. But when it comes to fear, little does.

A Black Swan in White Face (The Great Correction)

Wendell Berry, the conservative poet without a website, has a phrase for the slightly crazed exuberance of American culture in the last few decades. With a caustic shrug, he calls it the "cheap energy mind."

Problem is, our time in this mindset -- and its denial -- seems to have run out with $4.00 gas.

Of course, it's not just gas prices that seem to have changed our psychology. Many have noticed, from art critics to jeremiahs to Western writers to movie-makers. Images of the end of our way of life occur to artists in many genres, many of whom have found startling success purveying the bleakest possible examples of despair. Especially noteworthy is The Joker, whom James Howard Kunstler describes vividly:

The Joker is not so much as person as a force of nature, a "black swan" in clown white. He has no fingerprints, no ID, no labels in his clothing. All he has is the memory of an evil father who performed a symbolic sadomasochistic oral rape on him, and so he is now programmed to go about similarly mutilating folks, blowing things up, and wrecking everyone's hopes and dreams because he has nothing better to do. He represents himself simply as an agent of "chaos." Taken at face value, he would seem to symbolize the deadly forces of entropy that now threatens to unravel real American life in the real world -- a combination of our foolish over- investments in complexity and the frightening capriciousness of both nature and history, which do not reveal their motivations to us.

By the way, forget about God here or anything that even remotely smacks of an oppositional notion to evil. All that's back on the cutting room floor somewhere (if it even got that far). And I say this as a non-religious person.

But in its cruel way, The Dark Knight was compelling. The museum-worthy art that comes from this perception that we have reached an end in our culture is more frightening yet. The incomparable Peter Schlejedahl explains in the fewest possible words, in a column called Feeling Blue.

The critic opens with an eloquent description of the power of Cormac McCarthy''s The Road, which confronts us with "the remains of our own civilization after its extinction."

He then moves on to describe the broader mood.

Something is happening in artists’ studios: a shift of emphasis, from surface to depth, and a shift of mood, from mania to melancholy, shrugging off the allures of the money-hypnotized market and the spectacle-bedizened biennials circuit.

Unable to go to travel to see the exhibit at New Museum, I'll have to take his word for it. But here's my point. Lots of artists in various fields are recognizing this, but the one who has named it best is singer Eliza Gilkyson. Because she comes from Texas, I think, she's too often ignored by New Yorkers.

They're missing something great. Just as E.O. Wilson, one of our greatest living scientists and "environmentalists," has talked of the importance of passing through "the bottleneck" in the way we live, Gilkyson changes the rhetoric slightly...to a metaphor we've heard before.

it’s the bitter end we’ve come down to
the eye of the needle that we gotta get through
but the end could be the start of something new
when the great correction comes

As my significant other pointed out this evening, there's something actually optimistic about this idea: that we will return to the right path, and move on.

But for now, we simply need to open our eyes. The image below is not the one of The Joker that haunts me most from the movie -- that's the one of him walking away from the hospital, in the nurse's uniform.

But this'll give you an idea, if you haven't seen the movie...and here, if I can link correctly, is Eliza Gilkyson's wonderful song, from her 2008 album, Beautiful World.

Download 04_the_great_correction.mp3