The Center Cannot Hold

Recently on Facebook a friend suggested that the recent election of the 41st Republican to the U.S. Senate will now force the parties to dialogue with each other. Apparently he thinks that the disappearance of the Democrats' super-majority in the Senate will require the two parties to actually work together. A nice thought, but it will never happen. The two sides each claim that 2009 turned into a bacchanal of partisanship because of the other. My recollection is that President Obama entered office pledging to work across the aisle, and that within days of his inauguration various Republicans were stating their intention to thwart everything he might try to accomplish. Others feel that the processes of Congress were shortchanged during debates such as on the health care insurance issue. I suppose there may be truth to both versions.

Regardless of the blame game, so redolent of the kindergarten schoolyard, dialogue seems to be the last thing the parties have interest in. W.B. Yeats was prophetic in his 1919 poem "The Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The worst being full of passionate intensity is a spot-on description of American politics in 2010. One need look no further than Fox News. I fear that there is no "center" left in American politics. What part of it Reagan didn't kill, Gingrich and DeLay did. That the left shows little respect for its opponents is undeniable, but the hard right takes fear and loathing to orders of magnitude worse.

The sad thing is that election results have shown for decades that the voter wants these people to work together for the common good. Rabid partisans don't believe in a common good. All of life for them, and especially politics, is seen as a zero-sum game--if you win, I lose, so to hell with you. Grover Norquist really does hate the government--it prevents his schemes of plundering the commonwealth and the naive for his own self-enrichment. (If you doubt this, research his career-long ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.) Glenn Beck is a disgrace to our common faith.

The center cannot hold--mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. These provacateurs of the right have had far more success tearing down the fabric of society than the anarchist Saul Alinsky ever did. The Tea Party types from last summer are sure they will stage an electoral coup in November--a blood-dimmed tide if ever there was one in this country. I hope their dreams of mobocracy fail, but after this week I have no confidence that they will. The problem for me is that the right portrays itself as "patriotic," which I don't recognize in its actions.

Everyone on both sides pays lip service to bipartisanship, while they run away from it as fast as they can. The center cannot hold; the falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Michigan gets another kick in the teeth

I figured that Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox would lose the lawsuit on trying to close the Chicago canals, especially when the Feds sided with Illinois. Let's face it, the President is from Illinois, he is connected to the Daley machine in Chicago, and they are very strong supporters of (doubtless meaning, get a lot of money from) the barge companies.

And let's also be honest, Cox brought the suit as a stunt to boost his chances in the Republican primary for Michigan Governor in August. "I saved the Great Lakes" is a pretty strong claim to election.

Even so, this is a bitter blow to Michigan. The Supreme Court says no to closing the canals. I haven't seen any so-called rationale, but I imagine it has something to do with disruption of commerce and lack of imminent harm.

The fish that the lawsuit was intended to block are Asian carp--silver and bighead varieties. They are voracious eaters who exclude native fish from the food supply. They reproduce rapidly and grow to be 100 lbs or more. They have no natural predators and at present no value as a commercial product. The silver ones don't like the sound of boat motors and jump out of the water at the passing of a boat. Many people have been injured by these flying fresh water rats-with-fins. If they get into the Great Lakes there will be no stopping them. Last week there were traces of a carp in the waterway 1 mile from Lake Michigan. I have to wonder what an imminent threat is if this is not one.

But heavens, closing the canals would be costly for Chicago, which derives revenue and commerce from the barge traffic. It would cost more money to send gravel and the like by rail rather than on the barges. We wouldn't want to disrupt the commercial ventures of important campaign contributors just for the sake of the world's largest bodies of fresh water, would we? No, no, commerce trumps all.

Michigan gets another kick in the teeth. No electric barrier on the locks is going to stop these things from swimming towards a new home, once population pressure builds high enough. Nature finds a way. These things will infest and ruin bodies of water that are natural wonders of the world. But, it's just Michigan. So long as Li'l Richie, Mayor of the President's hometown, keeps his contributors happy, little things like Great Lakes don't mean "squat".

Not that I believe that closing the canals would be a permanent solution; it wouldn't. Nature would find a way for the swimming cockroach to spread. When they were introduced into this country by foolish fish growers in the south, objections were met with the certain assurance that these things would never escape the ponds they were placed in as algae control. In 1993, along came a 500-year flood and the ponds were compromised. Since then, these pest fish have spread throughout the Mississippi basin. There are millions of them, they crowd out all other fish, and there is no practical use for them. And people call H1N1 a potential plague?

There are potential solutions for the carp problem, but they are long term and at least a year or more away from being practical. Let me know if you are interested and I will share information about one of them by a new post.

Meanwhile, what is the long-term solution for the feckless elevation of commerce and money over all else? Does the public good not outweigh the chance for individuals to make a profit? Or is individual profit the only form of "good" we are prepared to recognize?

That last paragraph gives the curious some hint as to what this Red Tory thinks.

I love my Trecento!

I'm a big guy--in several directions. Two years ago I decided to get a "new," or should I say, "different," car. I had a 1998 Mercury Mountaineer, purchased at a time I planned to use it a lot in camping. By 2008 it was clear that my estimate of the need for such use had been vastly exaggerated. The vehicle was very bad on gas mileage at a time when gas prices were spiking, and was unreliable enough to earn it the name, "The Great Green Lemon."

I had a long and frustrating look until I found my current ride. I found that few companies bother to make cars roomy enough to accommodate me. I tried to be a loyal Michigander and looked for cars ostensibly built by my neighbors rather than in some "red" state or overseas. I found that exterior dimensions are no predictor of internal room--neither the Buick Lucerne nor the Cadillac DTS would have been comfortable, for example. Finally I swallowed certain qualms about the Chrysler 300 (rear wheel drive and the strength of the company) and bought one. I found a great dealer--Erick Henkel in Battle Creek--and got a fabulous deal on a wonderful car.

It is roomy enough--I don't even put the seat back all the way! It is well styled, reliable, drives well, and has the power I need--I didn't buy the Hemi, remember I was looking for better mileage, but it still has decent "oomph". And made by a Michigan company, and carrying a certain cachet (at least for me), and not just plain vanilla like so many a vehicle on the road today.

Then last year Chrysler was essentially given to Fiat--not exactly boding well for my ability to buy another 300 when this one wears out. Fiat is not well known for the quality of its products, at least not here in the U.S. My friend Vincent Castelli Westra joked that the next time I go to look for a car, it will be a "Fiat Trecento," not a Chrysler 300!

This morning I heard an expert tell Steve Inskeep that because China has become the largest national car market, we can expect all vehicles to start reflecting Chinese consumer preferences. Even what's left of the Michigan vehicle industry will feel impelled to do so.

I don't know what these Chinese preferences will be. I suspect they will not include the need for as much room as I need. In my experience the free market which is supposed to lead to consumer choice often ends up with every vendor chasing the same demographic--look at cable t.v. This thought fills me with angst. I love my Trecento!

Laptop Lament

Two years ago we bought a Sony Vaio laptop for me at the end of the year. That was when my business was a C corp and I had to spend any potential income to avoid being subject to a punishing marginal corporate tax rate. The Vaio came well-recommended and had the added attraction of its name starting with the letter "V". So does the Vista operating system on it that has been the bane of its existence.

Saturday morning the laptop stopped functioning again. This is the third time in two years. Either I am too hard on it and need to find a more robust machine or it is the sign of yet another Vista blowup. I hate it when my technological servants stop being servants and become tormentors. I think Vista would have been a better product if Microsoft felt the need to make sure it worked before releasing it. They might have if they weren't a monopoly. Monopolies are bad. Monopolists feel they can charge exorbitant prices for whatever they deign to sell. They can discontinue support for old products that work fine, in order to force the consumer to adopt new technology that they don't fully test. If they had meaningful competition, they wouldn't dare foist a piece of dreck like Vista on wary consumers who have no meaningful choice.

Oh well, time to get it fixed again. Did I mention that monopolies are bad?

Introduction

So what is a Red Tory and why am I thinking anyone would want to read this?

Well, we can get into my world view some other time. I'm hoping my friends and acquaintances may find it interesting to read some of my thoughts. I'm hoping as well that by choosing a venue over which I have control, I can avoid seeing the kind of incivility and flaming that characterizes efforts to express oneself on Facebook or in comments to online news articles. If people are interested in what I have to say, they are welcome to read and post comments. I welcome contrary views if they are well stated and not rude or provocative. If you want to bait others, get your own fencepost to stand on--this one is taken!

Let me know what you think.