After the Ivory Tower Falls by Will Bunch

Hardcover, 320 pages, Pub Aug 2, 2022 by William Morrow & Company, ISBN 9780063076990

Of all the theories I’ve examined in the past several years that might explain the ghastly social and political division in our society, the one proposed by political commentator and opinion writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer Will Bunch was one I hadn’t considered. His thesis, the insistence that we all attend college at age 18 or our employment futures are doomed, is one he insists is wrong-headed. The fact that colleges have become profit centers for bankers should give all of us pause. The lack of financial assistance and the subsequent vast raft of unpaid college debt is surely a burden on us all.

After WWII, the GI Bill offered inexpensive educational opportunities for returning servicemen and was so popular that the federal government attempted to extend similar possibilities to the general population in conjunction with state schools.

As Bunch explains it, Ronald Reagan was one of the first to express disdain for the leftist student protesters in the 1960s that the country was basically funding to go to school since the Second World War. Reagan tried to impose tuition increases and reminded taxpayers that ought not “subsidize intellectual curiosity,” but should focus on workplace development, an attitude that entered Republican consciousness and traveled underground until we saw it rear its head in 21st C Wisconsin with the rise of Scott Walker.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker left college in his third year, he was so set on school being a road a to a job. Once he got a job, with the Red Cross, what need did he have of an education? [Many of us, looking at his career and justifications for policy set while he was governor, might have much to say on this subject.] His under-financing of state schools within Wisconsin since his ascension to the governorship had tremendous impact on staff and educators, to say nothing of students. To witness the impoverishment of a state, one need look no further. The rural folk complained about the clueless ‘educated,’ all the while the actual educated were leaving the state to its misery by getting jobs elsewhere.

“College started becoming more expensive and less accessible right at the very moment it became critical for getting a job,” writes Bunch. Funding for higher education fell routinely in the 1980s and continued that trajectory: “in 1980, a Pell Grant covered 75 percent of the cost of attending instate public university, but today it’s roughly 30 percent.” No longer was higher education considered ‘public good.’

Funding was withheld from colleges and universities so that the promise of advancement via a debt-free education crumbled. If education were no longer available to ordinary folks without extraordinary funds, they claimed to become centers for “meritocracy.” The deserving, whether exceptional in talent, brains, or need, became the focus of college admissions.

Those with lower incomes “couldn’t afford” school that didn’t promise immediate employment; those with slightly higher risk profiles but no more money entered the debt economy. The change in prospects for younger folks put increasing pressure on their parents to pay for educations whose costs increased annually while state funding decreased in direct proportion.

Bunch suggests the rise of radio was a contributing factor in exacerbating division in rural America. All-day national talk radio was some of the only programming rural folks in many states could access, broadband not being universally available in the countryside. Blanket broadcasting is still happening in Pennsylvania with its wide rural expanses and radio talk show hosts appear to be hyped-up evangelists for grievance about the college-educated.

By the mid-2000s the college dream of meritocracy and affordability had come apart. High-wealth individuals like Jared Kushner were entering the best universities (Harvard) without proven intellectual gifts. College was a business, a business the entire country was paying to keep afloat. Goldman Sacs was even purchasing student debt by the early 2010s, not unlike their willing exposure to sub-prime housing loans. This was the currency of our disablement, the scam of higher ed.

The collapse of trust in the basic agreement—I pay tuition and you give me a job—parallels the widening gap between college graduates and high-school graduates. Political attitudes appear to be defined in its greatest sense by whether or not one attended college or simply high school. Bunch, a father himself, finds the whole discussion about college costs absurd. How can 18-yr-olds ever get out from behind the debt? High school students are essentially blank slates who have little clue what the world offers. Bunch suggests that perhaps instead of paying their debt, we give them a chance to earn their way into college through national service.

It is a good idea, an idea whose time has come and gone and come again. The idea will probably be the source of much further division among political parties, but if there were people seriously thinking about how to go about it, I think it may be time to get it started. Perhaps the naysayers can keep their kids on the corporate track, if they want. The rest of us can give our high school leavers the chance to spend a little time learning about the world firsthand, earning a wage, learning how to work, figuring out what they don’t want to do while thinking about 1) how to negotiate a better deal, and 2) how to keep the world from coming apart at the seams. It wouldn’t be time wasted. Count me a supporter.



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We're Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America by Jennifer M. Silva

Hardcover, 224 pages Pub Aug 1st 2019, Oxford University Press, ISBN13: 9780190888046

I don’t quite know what to make of this book. I read it because I now live in a state a large portion of whose population is deluged with far right TV and talk radio. A large number of people do not have broadband and therefore often do not know there are newspapers and TV stations which make an effort to substantiate news.

There is a disparity in information: the rural areas have been kept the equivalent of “barefoot and pregnant” by a state legislature that couldn't figure out how to fund failing schools and provide broadband.

This book is a study of Jennifer Silva’s time interviewing residents of a former coal town in Pennsylvania, finding out what their lives are like, how they see their personal and professional trajectories, and who they vote for and why.

Not being a social scientist, I found the stories Dr. Silva shares with us confounding. Maybe someone can come up with solutions for these folks, but the reason they don’t vote is that they basically don’t trust anyone after the life they’ve led. In one of the first couples described to us, Silva writes,

“They are not single-issue voters who prioritize social issues such as abortion or fund control over economic interests, not do they place themselves into clear-cut categories of Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. Most of the time, as they attempt to come to terms with their past traumas and future anxieties, they do not think about politics at all.”

Right. Silva’s mentor/thesis advisor might have anticipated this and suggested a less-stressed environment. If Silva was just wondering what was going on in towns like Coal Brook, I would understand that, too, but she admits she’d been hoping to find out what white rural conservatives were thinking about politics when she began.

Soon enough she found out her interviewees were unschooled and inarticulate on the subject of “politics.” She did hear, though, these white residents’ dissatisfaction with Black and Latin “newcomers” to the coal region, former city dwellers and immigrants. So she changed her focus a little to include the newcomers. That was smart, and refocused this work into something approaching Arlie Russell Hochschild’s award-winning Strangers in Their Own Land.

Maybe someone, after reading outcomes for poor white folks who grew up in an abandoned coal town or poor city dwellers who moved in to live inexpensively and get away from inner-city violence, will figure out a way to point these folks in a different direction, in the direction of a life that is more fulfilling and less crushing. But this is way outside my wheelhouse.

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American Carnage by Tim Alberta

Hardcover, 688 pgs, Pub July 16th 2019 by Harper, ISBN13: 9780062896445

Tim Alberta is a strange creature, a political nerd seemingly without a party. Reading him, at times he appears to have sympathies for old-time conservatives, libertarian outrage, and the broader liberal message. He is chief political correspondent for Politico but covered the 2016 election for the National Review and National Journal. He has reported for the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal as well. He came to Washington, D.C. at the end of the 2nd Bush administration, and had a front row seat at the self-described “Republican civil war.”

The most stressful part of the book revisits the horror show of the past four years—those stomach-churning moments when you wonder how any of us will survive this headless, brainless dog-and-pony show. At points in the book we hear John Boehner say “There is no Republican Party” and Alberta himself conclude, “The party itself was contracting.”

Alberta quotes several people important at one time or another to the party, giving a lot of space to the man I once held responsible--as a poster child--for the damage wrought in the past twenty years: Paul Ryan. I don’t know the man, I just know the aura that surrounded him…’youngest’ ‘brightest’ ‘budget wonk’ slavishly flipping through a dogeared copy of von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. It is enough to make you detest the folks so eager to pass on all effort (and blame) by declaring the hungriest should figure it all out while they watch. The Fall of Rome comes to mind.

One thing I appreciate is Ryan’s definition of a ‘paleocon’: isolationist, protectionist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, “kind of what you have now.”

The end of the book has Karl Rove saying the party is forever, unchangeable by Trump. Kellyanne Conway insists the GOP is now a Trumpian party, which is absurd on its face since no one except Trump can pull off that particular sleight of hand—thank god—so it will die with him. Younger members of the diaspora of the destroyed center predict a third party. Of course there will be a third party, but just how and when it will manifest will be the struggle of the future. What I wonder is how many consequential parties there will be.

What struck me about the story of this internecine GOP battle is how the regular GOP was not supportive of the argumentative and politically insane Tea Partiers that preceded Trump, and they actually hated Trump. One had to suspect it—I mean the guy is a destructive loser—but given Republicans general intransigence and lack of coherence over the years, it was difficult for an outsider to discern.

Their unwillingness to deep six Trump’s candidacy—something they could have done with an iota of moral fortitude, makes me unwilling to give them much brain space. They deserve to participate in the funeral for their party in their own way. I am surprised at my disgust at how deep the rot goes. I suspected both parties were bankrupt, but it has been confirmed by those I blamed for the problem: Paul Ryan again.

Alberta tell us a principal reason that Ryan quit is the he found it impossible to set a good example:

”The incentive structures are too warped, the allure of money and fame and self-preservation too powerful, for individuals to change the system from within.”

We get disturbing glimpses of the Democratic party, another example of the rot in the system. Eric Holder told a group of Georgia crowd that Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high,” wasn’t right. “No,” Holder said. “When they go low, we kick them.” Cripes.

The Republicans were clever with the Red Map strategy in 2010. Too clever by half, perhaps, but they did figure out a way to win a huge proportion of seats legally, if unfairly. You mean to tell me we can’t do better than the team that is so full of their own crap they couldn’t win a race fairly? It’s not money, folks. Money makes you comfortable, so in a way, that makes it is a little harder. Get ready to be uncomfortable.

Justin Amash, the Michigan congressman elected in 2010 who defected from the Republican party, is quoted in 2018 as saying

"The Tea Party is gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. There just aren’t that many Republicans now who are that concerned about spending, about debt, about big government."

If only that were true. They’re dead, they just don’t know it. Mouths with no brains. The Undead.

So in the end I feel worse about both parties and our political future. I know it will all change and there will be the dysfunction of trying to operate a new party with the corruption of the old ones. One just has to be able to stand back and assess from a position of strength, and for that we need to be smarter. When they defund your schools, throw them out. Don’t be ignorant. You’re gonna need every edge you can get.

Below please find a really interesting YouTube recording of Alberta's book promo at the Washington, D.C, bookstore Politics & Prose:

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Unrigged by David Daley

Hardcover, 320 pgs, Pub March 17th 2020 by Liveright, ISBN13: 9781631495755

David Daley wants us to feel good about ordinary citizen attempts to push back on states and national political parties for constraining our voting rights, documented in so many states across our Union.

But in doing so he also shows us how the fight in many states has become more and more bitterly partisan, particularly when savvy grassroots organizing leads to galvanizing wins…and then to resurgent attempts by a weakened party apparatus to find legal grounds to reject the changes sought, reneging on promises made.

A win in this climate is not really a win. It is a way station on a mountain path, a peak not yet crested. Perhaps that is the lesson of this endeavor: we never arrive but must fight for our democracy every. single. day.

Daley has an entertaining style that distracts little from technical, tactical battles being fought in each state. New Voter ID requirements, hurdles to ballot initiatives, restrictions on voter registration or absentee balloting, egregious gerrymandering: these are the things voters around America are worked up about, and fighting against.

Each state has different objective conditions, but in each it appears that the popular resistance is fighting a statewide battle while legislators seeking to preserve their position are receiving instructions and money from their national party. The fight is unequal in funding and reach but also unequal in ingenuity and persistence. It is heartening to see that better funding is not always the sign of a winning hand.

The gerrymandering battle fought in deep-Red Utah resulted in a win for the ballot initiative in 2018 but in 2020 the legislature forced Better Boundaries, Utah’s anti-gerrymandering group, to accept a compromise solution that allows incumbent information to be used when creating maps, and instituting the requirement that legislators do not have to accept proposed maps. This shows the weakness of ballot initiatives. They are easier to pass…and easier to repeal.

In Michigan the redistricting reform petition led by a youthful reformer profiled in the recently released documentary Slay the Dragon got onto the ballot in 2018 and passed with some 61% of the vote. Since then however, the Republican-dominated legislature first tried to defund the commission and then filed in federal court declaring the commission unconstitutional. A call went out early 2020, nonetheless, to all eligible voters in Michigan to apply to become a part of the new redistricting commission. As of this writing in April, over 6,000 citizens have responded to the call to establish a 13-member commission. Applications close in July.

Daley shows us that “when voters are given a choice, fairness wins…more than a three-quarters of the congressional seats that changed hands in 2018 were drawn by either commissions or courts. Fairer districts led not only to more competitive races, but also to election results that were responsive to a shift in public opinion.”

Missouri voters initiated a constitutional amendment mandating fair maps and the state legislature immediately proposed an amendment to disarm the citizens’ initiative. New commission requirements adopted in Ohio continue to give a role to legislators, and to require a role for judiciary if commissioners cannot agree.

At the risk of sounding despairing, I will note that I am a member of the rebellion…in Pennsylvania…to end partisan gerrymandering. We were in the last four months of an accelerating squeeze on the state legislature to pass legislation that will allow us to create an independent redistricting commission based on the California model: eleven commissioners randomly-selected from a vetted pool of regular PA citizenry. The corona virus stopped us cold.

Daley mentions Pennsylvania among his descriptions of states fighting back against legislative overreach, describing the astounding win handed to anti-gerrymandering forces by the State Supreme Court in 2018 who ruled that the 2010 congressional maps and the remedial map were badly skewed to protect ruling party interests in the state. A special master from out-of-state drew new maps used in the 2018 election for congressional districts, leveling the playing field a little. The fix was temporary and left state legislators free to do it all again in 2021.

The fight for fairer state legislative district maps continues in Pennsylvania and that is where we left it in early March when corona came calling. At least now we have time to look around at the changes elsewhere and see where we stand. Zachary Roth of the Brennan Center thinks states are winning the fight against gerrymandering, and I want it to be true. It is a never-ending battle, and we need all those who value liberty to stand with us and demand protection for our rights.

The end of Daley’s book leaves all of us reformers across the country in the same unsettled place. Daley interviews conservative, former Republican writers and pundits and comes to the conclusion that the party is so changed and susceptible to authoritarianism that it may not survive its own evolution. Our democracy probably won’t survive their evolution, either.



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Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

Hardcover, 312 pages Pub Jan 28th 2020 by Avid Reader Press / Simon Schuster, ISBN13: 9781476700328

Ezra Klein does pick a side, but his great gift is disengagement to the extent we can see how ordinary Americans got to where they are ideologically. It is not enough to point to our sources of news and draw conclusions from that, though that is clearly a factor. He points to the way political and non-political people experience politics: the least engaged voters tend to look at politics through the lens of material self-interest (What will this policy do for me?) while the most engaged look at politics through the lens of identity (What does support for this policy say about me?).

It is the discussion about identity politics which really moves our understanding of his thesis and makes it relevant to my understanding of what is happening in Pennsylvania, where I live. I am a volunteer with a group determined to end partisan gerrymandering. Almost no one—no one I’ve met—supports partisan gerrymandering, even legislators. It is a perversion of the democratic process and in the words of SCOTUS Chief Roberts, “excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust.” I’d thought it was the root of our discord, but Klein shows me it is just another symptom.

But I did learn something about how opponents of our nonpartisan attempt to end gerrymandering have countered our language: they have increasingly relied on attempts to polarize by painting our team as an offshoot of the Democratic party. Even though most voters (of both parties), most township officials, most legislators oppose partisan gerrymandering, when legislative leaders, in this case Republican, claim we are Democrats-in-disguise, the out-group mentality takes over autonomous decision-making in downstream party members. They can’t not oppose us.

A fascinating study Klein cites is one by Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University’s Political Communication Laboratory in collaboration with Dartmouth College political scientist Sean Westwood. When two people competing for a scholarship at a university added political affiliation on their resume, that political affiliation trumped all other criterion, including test scores, GPA, even race. Why?

Iyengar’s hypothesis is that partisan animosity is one of the few forms of discrimination contemporary American society not only permits but actively encourages…”The old theory was political parties came into existence to represent deep social cleavages. But now party politics has taken on a life of its own—now it is the cleavage,” says Iyengar.

Another example of how political affiliations structure how we think about problems is a question that could be used on a standardized science comprehension test but with a politicized theme. Even those good at math got this question wrong when the answer predicted an outcome that clashed with their political views. Partisans with strong math skills were 45 percentage points likelier to solve the problem correctly when the answer fit their ideology. “The smarter a person is, the dumber politics can make them.” If we needed any convincing…

Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at New York University, says the role that an individual’s reason plays in political arguments is a little like being White House Press Secretary: there is no way they can influence policy, so they merely find ways to justify that policy to listeners. This is why, Haidt argues, “once group loyalties are engaged, you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.”

These discussions presume a level of political engagement. What about among people truly uninterested in politics? They have access to more information—of all kinds—than ever before but are not necessarily more informed politically. “Political media is for the politically invested,” which leads to further polarization in our thinking about the out-group, even the motives of our own in-group.

Political consultants have noted the shift since the early 2000s from trying to convince independents or swing voters to mobilizing one’s base, further evidence of the strength of in-group out-group polarization. Klein cites a drop in ‘true independents’ who don’t know who they will vote for but doesn’t mention the numbers leaving the parties. Since 2006, according to the Pew Research Center, political affiliation among Democrats has stagnated at 32% of the electorate while, it should surprise no one, those identifying as Republican have fallen to 23%. What is heartening to me is how many are leaving either party, refusing to buy into black-and-white dichotomies the parties dish out.

“Parties are weak while partisanship is strong,” is an insight garnered from Marquette University political scientist Julia Azari. Partly this is allowing an intense slice of the electorate to choose the party candidate in primaries and partly it is campaign finance. Small donors, it turns out, can be polarizing. Klein cites Michael Barber’s study of which states limit PAC contributions: in states where the rules push toward individual donations, the candidates are more polarized. Where the rules open the floodgates to PAC money, the candidates are more moderate.

I wasn’t expecting this outcome, but thinking about it, it makes sense, if only it weren’t contradicted by Pennsylvania’s case. There are practically no restrictions on campaign financing in PA and a fiercely partisan Republican team has a stranglehold over which legislation moves in the state which appears to follow in lockstep with national, perhaps a little like Wisconsin politics. The animosity seen there is simply not local. Everyone seems to have a larger agenda or is playing on a larger stage, not taking into account objective facts on the ground. What is happening here?

Klein saves his pyrotechnics for the end, insights coming fast and hard in the second half. The weaknesses in local or state parties is partially due to the nationalization of party politics, easily seen in PA for those able kick back and enjoy viewing the bloodsport of this election. “Three-quarters of Republicans identify as conservative, while only half of Democrats call themselves liberals—and for Democrats, that’s a historic high point. Self-identified moderates outnumbered liberals in the Democratic Party until 2008.” But that ‘conservatism’ of the Republican Party is not an ideology so much as an identity.

Below I am attaching an interview conducted by Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro. I am not a fan of right-wing media, just as conservatives, Klein tells us, become more conservative after listening to what they perceive as left-wing media. But this was an interesting interview, if somewhat confusing with the two of them agreeing with one another so often. Listen.





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An Elephant in My Kitchen by Françoise Malby-Anthony with Katja Willemsen

Hardcover, 336 pgs, Expected pub: Nov 5th 2019 by Thomas Dunne Books (first pub June 13th 2019), ISBN13: 9781250220141

For those who find animal emotions and inter-species friendships absorbing, this is a wonderful story about the ways rhinos, hippos, and elephants connect with each other and with humans.

Françoise Malay-Anthony was wife to the original Elephant Whisperer himself, Lawrence Anthony, who wrote a book of that name with famed nature-writer Graham Spence about his experiences creating an animal preserve in South Africa, called Thula Thula. At first Thula Thula was simply a preserve for herds of elephants whose habitat was disappearing. Soon it became apparent that poaching of elephant tusks and rhino horns was leaving vulnerable and traumatized babies to fend for themselves in dangerous territory.

Thula Thula gradually became known for emergency treatment of large animals prematurely separated from their mothers. A dedicated team of young volunteers from around the world worked hard to save endangered rhinos and baby elephants abandoned by their herd.

Leadership for this turn in the direction of Thula Thula, also a game reserve with hotel and bush drives for tourists to bring in money, came at the instigation of Françoise Malby-Anthony after the death of her husband, a time when she was anxious about managing the property without the extraordinary skills her husband possessed.

We learn of her vulnerability in light of world-class scam artists who sought to divert from her goal to make the environment better for animals in the wild. Her education in the ways of the wild—the wild world of tusk and horn poaching—is painful.

The viciousness of poaching by unscrupulous actors with enormous cash reserves has changed the entire focus of those in Africa seeking to preserve large animal habitat and populations. Trained security has had to devise ingenious methods of divining poachers plans and methods. This change in focus from trying to create a nurturing environment to defending territory and wildlife against indescribable violence is a disheartening change and a difficult way to live.

Compare those horrors with a young male elephant seeking the limelight—turning his rump to a jeep full of camera-toting watchers and twerking for the crowd. And an exploration of the character of rhino surprises readers utterly for what it tells us of their fearfulness and gentleness.

We likewise meet a hippo initially very suspicious of being asked to step into a green wading pool with a scant amount of water. We meet the handlers who become these distressed animals’ best buddies, teaching them to play despite their trauma, and protecting them as best they can from the nightmares that plague them.

If readers enjoy the stories in this book, one absolutely must make an attempt to locate a copy of The Elephant Whisperer referenced above because of what it adds in richness to the story and the description of the environment and told by a world-class raconteur.




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Coventry: Essays by Rachel Cusk

Hardcover, 256 pgs, Pub Sept 17th 2019 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published August 20th 2019), ISBN13: 9780374126773

When I heard about a new book of essays by Rachel Cusk, I had two conflicting reactions: one was joy and one was sadness. Cusk is one of my favorite authors. She thinks deeply and can straightforwardly, analytically discuss her perceptions in involving prose but her characters can also demonstrate wildly ditzy intellectual fadeouts. I was sad to think I’d never have the quietness of mind in the current worldwide political upheaval to read her work in peace.

Then I saw a review by Clair Wills in the September 26 issue of The New York Review of Books. Cusk explained she also was experiencing a disconnection with something she is obviously attached to: writing. The review begins

“Rachel Cusk is fascinated by silence. About five years ago she announced that she had given up on fiction. A prolific writer, she had by then published seven much-praised novels and three memoirs but, she explained, she was done with both genres…Fiction now seemed to her 'fake and embarrassing. Once you have suffered sufficiently, the idea of making up John and Jane and having them do things together seems utterly ridiculous.’”

Ah. She caught me again. That’s exactly the way I feel about fiction when the world is burning.

Cusk doesn’t pander, doesn’t claim to be more than she is, and generally she stands firm on the ground she occupies but she does make tiny acknowledgements of fragility or uncertainty. Her opening essay, “Driving as a Metaphor,” starts out brassy with surety: “Where I live, there is always someone driving slowly on the road ahead.” We immediately get the impression this writer has much too many important things in her day without calculating in an extra five minutes for safety along a curvy coastline. Later in the same essay, she lets her attitude down a little and admits

“At busy or complicated junctions I find myself becoming self-conscious and nervous about reading the situation: I worry I don’t see things the way everyone else does, a quality that otherwise might be considered a strength. Sometimes, stuck on the coast road behind the slow drivers while they decide whether or not they want to turn left, it strikes me that the true danger of driving might lie in the capacity for subjectivity, and in the weapons it puts at subjectivity’s disposal.”

Ah, once again. How can one not read Cusk when she writes like this, writing whatever she claims she cannot write. We need this particular mixture of vulnerability and steeliness to reassure us we are not mad about the apocalyptic shakiness of what we’d taken as firm ground.

She displays something of this heady teenagery cocktail of self-doubt and disdain in the title essay of her collection, “Coventry.” She describes boarding school and parents who could be aloof for reasons she never really understood. Their silence towards her she calls “being sent to Coventry.” Cusk may have felt she was sent to Coventry again as an adult by the reading public after her 2012 memoir, Aftermath, in which she gave voice to resentment over her divorce. But she was not wrong to concentrate on her own feelings in that memoir. How could she possibly know or consider her husband’s feelings in the midst of the personality destruction that is divorce?

In the NYRB review, Claire Mills writes that Cusk

“is not only willing to admit to her darkest instincts; she seems to revel in the anger they produce in others. How else to interpret the fact that—seven years after the ‘creative death’ that the response to Aftermath precipitated in her, she has republished the essay on which Aftermath was based in Coventry, her new collection of essays?”

Mills’ interpretation of Cusk’s insistence on including this essay is not one I agree with. Were I to guess the reason, it would not be asserting Cusk persists in equating truth with honesty or truth as the opposite of stories. My guess would be that Cusk is asking us to think about truth and honesty, reality and fiction and see if there is much overlap. We are in the midst of a truth revolution, after all, and I feel quite sure she is just positing the question rather than supplying the answers.

This book of essays is divided into three parts, the first of which includes new work and the longish essay “Aftermath.” Part II is called A Tragic Pastime and includes a discussion of the sculptor Louise Bourgeois and a discussion on women’s writing called “Shakespeare’s Sisters,” among other things. Part III, entitled Classics & Bestsellers contains reprints of essays published earlier, including reviews of Edith Wharton & D.H. Lawrence, on Olivia Manning’s work, on Natalia Ginzburg, on Kazuo Ishiguro.

Cusk knows her writing has a lashing quality sometimes. She is comfortable with that. I am, too. Hey, life is not always a basket of cherries. She has been nothing but forthright that she will write what she thinks and feels, and you should take it or leave it. She would prefer you do not slam the door on the way out, thank you very much.

Below please find my reviews of Cusk's earlier work:
Saving Agnes, 1993
The Temporary, 1995 (not reviewed yet)
The Country Life, 1997
A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, 2002
The Lucky Ones, 2003
In the Fold, 2005
Arlington Park, 2006
The Bradshaw Variations, 2009
The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy, 2009
Aftermath: On Marriage & Separation, 2012
Outline, 2014
Medea, 2015
Transit, 2016
Kudos, 2018
Coventry: Essays, 2019






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The Internet is My Religion by Jim Gilliam

Paperback, 194 pgs, Pub by NationBuilder (first published January 1st 2015), ISBN13: 9780996110402

You’re probably going to think a free memoir isn’t much—not interesting, not well-written, not worth bothering with. I picked it up at a conference not knowing it was a memoir. It sat around my house cluttering things until I decided to throw it out—but not until I glanced through it first.

Much later the same day it is all revolving in my head, leaving me feeling wonder, awe, thunderstruck surprise, joy, awe again. This is one helluva story, a creation story. a bildungsroman, an odyssey. And our hero—yes, emphatically, hero—emerges an adult, a moral adult caring about his fellow humans. His fellow humans care about him as well.

He is not bitter, or cynical, or any one of the things that lesser people may experience along the dark and scary road that can be our lives. His life surely trumps that of most of us, simply in terms of size: he is 6’9” and was down to 145 pounds at the height of his death-defying illness.

Since he tell us of his illness in the first pages, I am not giving away the story. No. That honor is still reserved for him because the bad things that happen are not really, ever, the story. It is what we did after that. And what Jim Gilliam did was to grab every bit of life he had left and use it.

By then he had discovered that God was not to be found in some cold pile of cathedral rocks somewhere or in the thundering denunciations of false prophets on TV. For him, God showed when we gathered together, in person or connected online, caring about and for one another, working towards a better, more perfect future. He calls that finding of connection a holy experience, and he is not wrong.

Gilliam is a technologist, and as such, one would expect his skills would not lie in writing. But this book, even if he had help, is beautifully done, full of moment, real insight, propulsion, and discovery. In a way, it is the tale of every man, though not every man has gotten there yet.

He will describe the moment he discovers falseness in the lessons taught him by his religious teachers, the moment the world begins to unravel around his family, the moment he discovers he must, no matter what, follow his own path to understanding.

What is so appealing about this journey is that Gilliam is guileless. He is not trying to teach us anything. He is explaining his journey, what he saw, and tells us what he thinks about what he saw. It is utterly fascinating because he has so much understanding of the events in his life.

Gilliam’s father and mother both were math majors and computer scientists of sorts in the computer field's early days. For business reasons his father lost an opportunity to develop one of the first software programs for personal computers at IBM and consequently turned to fundamentalist religion.

Gilliam grew up steeped in the language and an understanding of what computers could do, but was restricted from taking full advantage by the religiosity of his parents. He himself was very good at thinking like a scientist and took advanced classes while in high school so that he could enter college as a sophomore.

The hill separating him from his intellectual development became steeper just as he was finishing high school. I am not going to spoil the story arc. At no point did this 180-page small format paperback ever become weighted down with intent or causation. We just have the clean progression of one boy into man into—that word again—hero.

His understanding that there is something godly in human connection, in striving together for good, is exactly what people discover in moments of human happiness and fulfillment. While he rejected the morality in which he was raised, as I did, I wonder if somehow it wasn’t good preparation for recognizing morality when he saw it, finally.

Personally, I can’t think of a more absorbing, unputdownable story. Get it if you can. It is a wonderful, thought-provoking personal history.



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Gerrymandering in America by Anthony J. McGann, Charles Anthony Smith, Michael Latner, Alex Keena

Paperback, 272 pgs, Pub July 11th 2017 by Cambridge University Press, ISBN13: 9781316507674

This academic look at gerrymandering—how to measure it, how one does it most effectively, and what exactly are its effects—was published in 2016 by Cambridge University Press—yes, the British one. One author, Anthony McGann, is from Glasgow. The other three authors, Charles A Smith, Michael Latner, and Alex Keena, are all professors from CA institutions.

For someone new to the term gerrymandering, this definitely won’t be the easiest entry, but to someone more familiar, it has enlightening bits. They talk quite a lot about Pennsylvania, one of the worst gerrymandered states in the country. You may have heard the State Supreme Court in PA deemed the congressional maps so egregiously gerrymandered they ended up providing a new map to a recalcitrant state legislature in 2018.

After 2011 redistricting, though Democrats had won over 50% of the votes for congresspeople in the state, they managed to win only 5 of 18 congressional seats. After the State Supreme Court passed down the new maps in 2018, Democrats won 9 of 18 seats.

Actually, depending on where Democrats reside, there is no reason why 50% of votes should necessarily translate into half the seats. No one really cared if they didn’t. It was the relative skew that was offensive, and the ugly fact that the state legislators in office did nothing with their supermajority but pass innocuous resolutions, e.g., Dec 12 is Polar Bear Day, and Sept 13 is Healthy Heart Day, and avoid talking about the 18 cities in PA, including Pittsburgh, with lead levels higher than Flint, Michigan.

In Pennsylvania (and Wisconsin and Michigan and…) today, voters must face the horrible problem of having their state legislative districts so gerrymandered that no one will even run against incumbents. We can’t even vote the crooks out.

After the June 2019 SCOTUS decision not to deal with any more gerrymandering problems in federal courts, disenfranchised voters will be forced to bring maps redistricted after the 2020 Census through the state courts again. Meanwhile, nonpartisan volunteer organizations are blanketing the state with petitions to urge legislators to “do the right thing” and voluntarily give up their constitutional right to draw district lines, for the sake of fairness and democracy. So far, legislators haven’t shown interest in anybody's constitutional rights beyond their own.

Claims have been made by some that the self-sorting voters do along partisan lines into cities and rural areas is responsible for the bias in results, not the intentional gerrymander. However, these scholars have concluded self-sorting is not responsible for the extent of the bias in results, and gives examples of several states also with city/rural dichotomies that do not exhibit partisan bias. Many states exhibit extreme partisan bias, Pennsylvania among them.

There is a trade-off between seat maximization and incumbent protection. Regions with competitors packed into one district have extraordinary non-responsive voting blocks in the surrounding districts.

"Put bluntly, if you can pack your opponents into a single district where they win 80% of the vote, you can create [surrounding] districts where you have a 7.5% advantage. It is notable that the number of “incumbent protection” districting plans declined sharply between 2002 and 2012. It seems that more states are districting for national partisan advantage, even though it makes their incumbents slightly more vulnerable.”

The authors make a distinction between partisan bias and responsiveness. “If there is partisan bias, then one party is advantaged over the other…If a districting system has high responsiveness, then it gives an advantage to the larger party, whichever party that happens to be.”

Worst of all, in reviewing what I wanted to say about the pitiable position Pennsylvania’s manipulative legislators have left us in, near the top of the Top Ten Exhibiting Partisan Bias… worst yet is that the states above Pennsylvania in #4 place are states we never hear anything about. No, they are NOT Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin North Carolina, or Maryland. They are Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, states with large populations of African American voters so used to being beat up and beat down they don’t even protest anymore. Of course the government is going to steal their vote. Oh, it is enraging.

“...districting is mathematically a very, very difficult problem...”

The California independent redistricting commission may have been partly modeled on the British iteration, called Boundary Commissions. Boundary Commissions are explicitly forbidden from considering partisan data when deciding their maps. This has actually led, in CA as well, to skews that were unintentional but partisan in fact. As a result, CA commissions have made the unusual request that they must consider partisan data in order to avoid it.

A summary of the difference between Boundary Commissions and U.S. election districts and commissions: 1) Britain is not two party, which makes a huge difference in the attempt to gerrymander. People have been known to calculate their vote in order to stymie any gerrymander. That is, there is tactical voting. 2) A source of bias is not a gerrymander but is caused by differential turnout. “Labour tends to win when fewer people vote.” 3) Districts are not the same size nor same population as is required in U.S. congressional and legislative districts. This presents a small bias towards Labour. 4) The authors are not sure what the last advantage is: “If there is something about geographical distribution of support that has given Labour an advantage, it is not clear what it is.” One explanation…is that Labour appears disproportionately successful at winning close races.

Anyway, they conclude there was a partisan bias in Britain for whatever reason after 2010, but it seems to have disappeared by 2015. The Boundary Commissions have no real effect at preventing partisan bias because it explicitly cannot take partisan bias into account: “Fairness between the political parties is not a factor that can be considered.”




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Gerrymandering by Franklin L. Kury

Paperback, 132 pgs, Pub May 4th 2018 by Hamilton, ISBN13: 9780761870258

Franklin Kury is a former member of the Pennsylvania State Senate, serving 1973-1980. Just last year he published a book about Pennsylvania’s bout of gerrymandering after the 2010 census, documented as one of the worst in the nation.

The League of Women Voters challenge to the maps yielded a win for voters. In 2018 the state Supreme Court handed down what has turned out to be a landmark ruling:

“For the first time, those seeking a new Congressional districting plan went to the state courts and relied solely on state law.”

SCOTUS relied on this ruling as they looked at gerrymandering in their decision handed down at the end of June 2019. SCOTUS decided it would not decide gerrymander cases through the judiciary at the federal level because it is inherently political. They cited the PA decision to show that state courts can decide these things, effectively handing the fight back to the states.

Gerrymandered states wonder what exactly that means. If the judiciary at the federal level can’t make the call on what is a gerrymander, why can the state courts decide these things? This is the source of the disagreement between the assent and dissent on the latest SCOTUS decision concerning gerrymandering.

Kury’s book came out before the latest SCOTUS decision, so is merely speculative on how the court would weigh in. Meanwhile, he describes the problem Pennsylvania continues to have with gerrymanders in the electoral districts for state legislative offices. According to the PA constitution, “municipalities and counties should not be divided more than is required by population plus one.”

By that criterion, Pennsylvania’s Butler County should have three state house members, but has seven. It also has three senators, when it should have only one based upon population. Montgomery County should have 13 state house members but it has 18 and twice as many senators -- 6 v. 3. The list goes on. And that doesn’t even touch the problem of cities, chopped to bits, pieces of which are roped in with their rural surrounds.

Pennsylvania’s legislative electoral maps effectively shut out all but one party in power. That party, the Republicans, have such a firm hold on their caucus they don’t even primary their candidates. They hold private local meetings wherein they choose who will go on the ballot. There is only one candidate per office when it comes time to primary. And of course the general has that same single candidate once again.

The minority challenger party can have a raft of candidates to choose from, but because they are not using ranked-choice voting, sometimes a less desirable candidate comes up higher on the list than anyone wants. And since Republican ballots are single candidates, Dems with more than one candidate per office will suffer the count. Don’t even mention Independents or third-party voters: they can’t vote in primaries unless they register with one of the major parties.

Kury’s book explains where the term ‘gerrymandering’ comes from and moves quickly to discussing RedMAP and the Republican attempt to take back the House of Representatives, which they calculated might be done by focusing on ‘cheaper’ state races and controlling redistricting. By ‘cheaper’ they meant less expensive purchases of advertisements, events, and media influencers than trying to put in national candidates the same way. They were right about that.

What is riveting about gerrymandering is that it is so clearly unfair. Pennsylvania is a state that used to take its fairness and integrity seriously. Once awakened to partisan gerrymandering, it is difficult not to see it everywhere. Even states who have tried to fix the problem by instituting an independent citizens redistricting commission have been accused of gerrymandering because of their mapping choices. Kury writes up a few of the more famous instances of independent commissions, which it turns out, come in many different sizes and with a wide range of decision-making authority.

Best of all, Kury’s book lists resources that will help any individual struggling with redistricting issues in their own state to find what happened elsewhere. He discusses redistricting software and some of the issues that arise when one tries to map districts from scratch. That’s the thing with gerrymandering: one wants to see how others dealt with it to see if their solutions will work. For Pennsylvania, the struggle to claw back voters rights continues.

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Beating Guns: Hope for People Who Are Weary of Violence by Shane Clairborne & Michael Martin

Paperback, 288 pgs, Pub March 5th 2019 by Brazos Press, ISBN13: 9781587434136


Shane Clairborne, Christian activist and motivational speaker, and Michael Martin, former Mennonite pastor and founder of RAWtools.com, a company that turns donated weapons into gardening tools, wrote this book about the work they do together. Tired of gun violence in America, the two are traveling the country and speaking out to remind us we are not where we want to be as a country.

Research shows that most Americans already agree with them. Why are our children still dying in mass shootings? We are being help hostage by a profit-making industry that cares little about the lives lost to inadequate gun controls; our “religious right” is actually wrong and has only been mouthing Christianity and not living it; there is a skewed religiosity and a profit motive among preachers and teachers as well, like Jerry Falwell Jr at Liberty University. The words of these two authors reassure me that my reason has not been deceived: I have long thought there is a rot somewhere in traditional religions that is killing the source of our morality.

This long conversational history rounds the bases on reasons we should consider turning our guns into garden tools and shares the sources of the authors’ own decision to spend their energies on this effort. They teach, better than any pastor I’ve heard in many years. They quote the Bible, Jesus, and leaders of nonviolence movements in the past, pointing to the undeniable bottom line that Christians are not meant to arm themselves against those who come to hurt them. They are meant to do as Jesus did during his years on earth: defuse the situation, change the subject, turn the other cheek, and yes, die for one’s beliefs. Because the idea for which he died will never die.

Every few pages, like tombstone markers, pages describe one or another incident of gun violence, naming the victims and reminding us of the circumstances. Most of these twenty or so tombstones are as familiar to us as our own names, horrific and shocking incidences of unnecessary and impersonal violence by people mad with delusion. It is hard to understand how our politicians dare stand in front of us; dare to speak a word to us without offering to protect us by controlling guns.

Shane and Mike have done their research on the NRA, and do not hesitate to point to the ways our nation’s dialogue has been warped by the nominally nonprofit’s profit motive. The NRA boasts some five million members. If we do the math—one-third of 325 million U.S. residents are gun owners—over 90 percent of gun owners are not represented by the NRA. But their lobbying arm keeps politicians flush with cash for their campaigns. This trade-off should be outlawed, but even our courts have refused to look after the people’s interests with regard to this matter.

A chapter detailing “the absurd” of pride in gun ownership recount instances of folly: an instance where a groom posing with a rifle at his wedding accidentally shoots his photographer. Or the Hello Kitty assault rifle handled by a seven-year-old that managed to kill a three-year-old.

In a chapter named “Mythbusting” the authors address things we might be persuaded to believe without evidence, like “Stranger Danger.” Actually, we’re far more likely to be killed by people we know well. Regarding the old standby, “Guns Keep Us Safe,” the argument is so shopworn by now that statistics start to sound like “the absurd” chapter. The men discuss race and guns, veterans and guns, women and guns, and they quote Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court as saying the Second Amendment is “a relic of the 18th century.”

This is a worthwhile book, giving us the language and statistics we will need to surprise our opponents into silence, unable to find a reasonable comeback if we are using logic and not emotion. The U.S. has about 270 million guns in circulation, 42% of guns in the world, or 90 for every 100 people. Forty-four percent of Americans personally know someone who has been shot, accidentally or intentionally. Christians are challenged to explain the fact that 41% of white evangelicals own a gun, compared to 30% of the general population. The authors ridicule the defenses they’ve heard for gun ownership among religious people and point out that Jesus teaches countering aggression with creativity, not submission:

”evil can be opposed without being mirrored…oppressors can be resisted without being emulated…enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed.”

Finally the authors remind us that the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. They explain that “fear not” is the most reiterated commandment n the Bible and that powerful people who are afraid are the most dangerous elements in the world. We really do have more to fear from fear itself. We need courage to stand in front of armed neighbors and say no to guns, but these men are handing us the tools.

Shane Clairborne is a Philadelphian when he’s at home, and is founder of The Simple Way, a social services organization in Philly. He is President of Red Letter Christians, a Christian group which mobilizes individuals into a movement of believers who live out Jesus’ counter-cultural teachings and tries to combine Jesus and justice.

Michael Martin teaches nonviolent confrontational skills in addition to beating weapons into ploughshares. These are the kind of Christians I like and admire and would travel to hear.



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The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates

Hardcover, 273 pgs, Pub April 23rd 2019 by Flatiron Books, ISBN13: 9781250313577

Melinda Gates has a famous name and job, but who knows what she actually does? Running a foundation with assets exceeding that of many countries must carry enormous stresses, particularly for people who understand that injecting cash into a problem may actually make the problem grow. What courage it must take just to try.

This had to have been a hard book to write, what with a crushing schedule, children, and weighty responsibilities, to say nothing of the disparate and discrete problems of women on different continents. I am not saying there aren’t similarities among women’s experiences the world over; I’m saying that, perhaps for the purposes of this book, on each continent Gates honed in on a different critical problem among women that she might be able to affect. In Africa, she showed us women responsible for field work and cultivation. In South Asia, we look at sex workers. In America, it was education. In every country the message was about empowerment and equality.

Gates sounds tentative and naïve to begin which may help her audience connect with her experience. But she has some insights sprinkled all the way along as we follow her progress from Catholic-school Texan to one of the few female programmers at a gung-ho win-at-any-cost Microsoft. Two early insights:

“I soon saw that if we are going to take our place as equals with men, it won’t come from winning our rights one by one or step by step; we’ll win our rights in waves as we become empowered…If you want to lift up humanity, empower women.”

Gates wonders how she could have missed these two insights early in her foundation work, and I did, too, considering this was something Hillary Clinton hammered pretty hard during her years as First Lady and Secretary of State. Both Gates and Clinton had international reach and the massive resources to understand exactly where the latch was to unleash potential and creativity. Why Gates never mentions Clinton is a mystery, unless she is trying assiduously to avoid any political fallout. That can't be right, though, as Gates is pretty fearless weighing in on religious issues which have become political.

When speaking of her Catholicism and her support for birth control, that is, the notion that women must be able to control their own births, Gates says that religion and birth control should not be incompatible. She feels on strong moral ground and welcomes guidance from priests, nuns, and laypeople but “ultimately moral questions are personal questions. Majorities don’t matter on issues of conscience.” Drop mike. My hero. She gives me language to speak to critics who wish to roll back women’s right to choose. It’s not an easy decision but it is a woman’s decision. Otherwise, Christian critics, why did God give this ability to women alone?

Melinda shares some empowerment struggles of her own—in a company and in a household with Bill Gates. She was intimidated, but can you blame her? With support from Bill and from colleagues and friends, she managed to develop her innate ability to cooperate and thereby manage high-performing teams, both at the company and later at the foundation.

Later, Gates asks how does disrespect for women grow within a child suckling at his mother’s breast? Gates places the blame squarely on religion: “Disrespect for women grows when religions are dominated by men.” That is a brave stance, the articulation of which I am grateful. I also came to that conclusion, and it felt a lonely one. I wondered how my moral grounding felt so strong when I learned what I had in the Catholic tradition also. Perhaps our reactions are something along the lines of the questioning, probing Jesuitical tradition?

“Bias against women is perhaps humanity’s oldest prejudice, and not only are religions our oldest institutions, but they change more slowly and grudgingly than all the others—which means they hold on to their biases and blind spots longer.”

When she is wrapping up, Gates shares something that will help all of us in this country as we struggle through the next period, trying to avoid the dangers of political and ideological attacks (from within!) on our constitution and on our future development and ability to face the existential dangers of climate change. She gives examples of women who have brought peace to warring factions in their country and says

”Many social movements are driven by the same combination—strong activism and the ability to take pain without passing it on. Anyone who can combine those two finds a voice with a moral force.”

This, I submit, could be the very key to unlocking the potential of our future. Conservatives complain relentlessly about the yapping left. Essentially, I agree. We have to stop going to the least common denominator.

Women! stand up and show them how to both nurture and progress. Democrats and Republicans, we have way more in common as women than we have differences as political animals. And we have as much at stake. Those who are already empowered can make decisions on their own, so aren’t intimidated by women who may occasionally disagree. Isn't this how we learn? Those who seek empowerment can find it with other women, so join us. I definitely think there is room to work together to achieve something we haven’t yet managed here in the U.S. and need badly: coherence.

Gates’ last point is one close to the hearts of every mother, teacher, groundbreaker:

“Every society says its outsiders are the problem. But outsiders are not the problem; the urge to create outsiders is the problem. Overcoming that urge is our greatest challenge and our greatest promise."

The Left is in agreement with the Right that every member of society must contribute something. No one wants to think they do not contribute. It is up to us to find ways for everyone to do so. And to those who insist they “got where they did by themselves,” well, go live by yourself. Praise your great wealth by looking in the mirror.

Gates has written a thought-provoking and generous book, sharing much of what she has been given.



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The Making of a Justice by Justice John Paul Stevens

Hardcover, 560 pgs, Pub May 14th 2019 by Little, Brown and Company, ISBN13: 9780316489645

Justice John Paul Stevens appears to me to be one of those old-timey conservatives, the kind whose judgment I may not agree with but whose opinions I can respect. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen such clear thinking on the part of anyone who calls themselves Republican.

Stevens served on the Supreme Court thirty-four years, from 1975-2010. He did an awful lot of deciding in all that time; what I notice most is that these decisions, or at least the ones he discusses in detail, are ones that made a big difference in the life of ordinary Americans. We all knew the Supreme Court was important, but how quickly the perception of partisanship has begun to erode their power.

Stevens names time periods in the court for the newest member because that individual alters the balance of power. He discusses important decisions each new justice has authored that might be considered to define that justice’s body of work and places his own assents or dissents beside them.

One of the earliest discussions he wades into is the abortion debate. Stevens was seated two years after Roe v. Wade and says at the time the decision had no appearance of being controversial.

Criticism of Roe became more widespread perhaps in part because opponents repeatedly make the incorrect argument that only a “right to privacy,” unmentioned in the Constitution, supported the holding. Correctly basing a woman’s right to have an abortion in "liberty" rather than “privacy" should undercut that criticism.

Just so.

The 2003 case involving a challenge to the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s 2002 congressional districting map, Vieth v. Jubelirer, is close to my heart. Hearing Stevens articulate why deciding partisan gerrymanders are not a heavy lift gives succor to like-minded in light of the devastation of a final refusal by SCOTUS to hear any more such cases.

Why is it any more difficult than deciding a racial gerrymander, he asks. Why can’t the Court stipulate every district boundary have a neutral justification? There are no lack of judicially manageable standards; there is a lack “judicial will to condemn even the most blatant violations of a state legislature’s fundamental duty to govern impartially.”

Stevens remained puzzled by his failure to convince his colleagues on the Court of his argument, an early echo of Justice Kagan’s distress this year that the blatant partisanship of the Court has broken out into the open and split the harmony with which they argued for so many years.

Stevens does not leave out decisions he wrote that were disliked by the country. Time never disguised the ugly truth that in Kelo v. The City of New London , a multinational pharmaceutical corporation looking around for a new development used the notion of eminent domain to take the homes of two long-time residents of New London, and then, within five years, closed up shop and left town. “…the Kelo majority opinion was rightly consistent with the Supreme Court’s precedent and the Constitution’s text and structure [but] Whether the decision represented sound policy is another matter.”

After the Citizen’s United decision with which he disagreed, Stevens tendered his resignation.

“…it is perfectly clear that if the identity of a speaker cannot provide the basis for regulating his (or its) speech, the majority’s rationale in Citizen’s United would protect not only the foreign shareholders of corporate donors to political campaigns but also foreign corporate donors themselves.”

By hardly ever mentioning fellow Justice Sam Alito Stevens shows his animus. After this decision, Stevens describes Alito sitting in the audience during Obama’s State of the Union. When Obama mentioned that the decision allows foreign corporations to have a say in American elections, Stevens writes Alito “incorrectly” mouthed the words: “Not true.”

He revisits Alito’s record later, when he is wrapping up, to point out “especially striking” disagreements he had with him over interpretation of the Second Amendment. “Heller is unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Court announced during my tenure on the bench,” he says. [Alito] failed to appreciate the more limited relationship between gun ownership and liberty. Firearms, Stevens argues, “have a fundamentally ambivalent relationship to liberty.”

It probably wasn’t the Citizen’s United decision itself that brought the Stevens reign to an end; he may have had a small stroke after the pressures of that January decision and then playing a game a tennis. He was replaced by Elena Kagan, with whom he has professed to be delighted. Stevens didn’t so much change as a large portion of the country who once, and still do, call themselves Republicans moved to the right. Stevens never did and he was right where we needed him for thirty-four years.



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Lead from the Outside by Stacey Abrams

Paperback, 256 pgs, Pub March 26th 2019 by Picador (first published April 24th 2018), ISBN13: 9781250214805

Stacey Abrams learned to not always kick directly at her goal. Watching her stand back and assess a situation can be a fearsome thing. You know she is going to do something oh-so-effective and she is going to use her team to get there, those who mentored her and those she mentored herself. I just love that teamwork.

This memoir is unlike any other presidential-hopeful memoir out there. Abrams has not declared herself for the 2020 race, but running for president is on her to-do list. I read the library edition of her book quickly and wondered why she’d write it this way; she’s a writer and this is written in a workbook self-help style. But something she’d said about ambition was so clarifying and electrifying that I ended up buying the book to study what she was doing.

“Ambition should be an animation of soul…a disquiet that requires you to take action…Ambition means being proactive…If you can walk away [from your ambition] for days, weeks, or years at a time, it is not an ambition—it’s a wish.”

Ambition is not something you can be passive about. You feel you must act on it or you will regret it all your days. Ambition should not a job title but something that helps you to answer “why”.

Now I know why Abrams wrote her book like this. After all, she could have written whatever kind of book she wanted. Her ambition is to have readers feel strong and capable enough to do whatever they put their minds to, whether it is to aid someone in office or be that person in office. She learned a lot on her path to this place and she doesn’t necessarily want to get to the top of the mountain without her cohort. Her ambition is not an office, it is a result.

What Abrams relates about her failures is most instructive. After all, none of us achieve all we set our minds to, at least on the first try. But Abrams shows that one has to be relentlessly honest with oneself about one’s advantages and deficiencies, even asking others in case one’s own interpretations are skewed by fear or previous failure. By writing her book this way, Abrams is unapologetic about some areas she could have handled better, personal finances for instance, that could have been used as a weapon against her. She explains her situation at the time and recommends better pathways for those who follow.

A former member of the Georgia State Legislature, Abrams found herself a different breed of politician than most who had achieved that rank. She was less attuned to social sway than she was to marshaling her intellect to overcome roadblocks to effective legislation. This undoubtedly had some genesis in the reactions she’d gotten her entire life as a black woman. She wasn’t going to wait for folks to accept her; she planned to take her earned seat at the table but she was going to be prepared.

She found that she needed both skills to succeed in business and in politics. She needed the support of a base and she needed an understanding of what would move the ball forward. And she learned what real power means.

“Access to real power also acknowledges that sometimes we need to collaborate rather than compete. We have to work with our least favorite colleague or with folks whose ideologies differ greatly from our own…But working together for a common end, if not for the same reason, means that more can be accomplished.”

Abrams discusses strategies and tactics for acquiring and wielding power and reminds us that “sometimes winning takes longer than we hope” and leaders facing long odds on worthy goals best be prepared for the “slow-burn” where victory doesn’t arrive quickly. But every small victory or single act of defiance can inspire someone else to take action.

If defeat is inevitable, reevaluate. Abrams suggests that one may need to change the rules of engagement so that instead of a ‘win’ one may be happy to ‘stay alive’ to fight another day.

The last fifty pages of the book put words to things we may know but haven’t articulated before. Abrams acknowledges that beliefs are anchors which help to direct us in decision-making but should never be used to block critical thinking, reasonable compromise, and thoughtful engagement.

“Collaboration and compromise are necessary tools in gaining and holding power.”

The GOP also believes this, but I think they use the notion within their coalition: they use discipline to keep their team in order and members may need to compromise their values to stay in the power group. Democrats must hold onto the notion of compromise within and without their coalition to succeed, while never compromising values.

It is difficult to believe there is anyone out there who doesn’t admire Stacey Abrams’ guts and perseverance. Her friends stood by her in times of stress because Abrams made efforts to acknowledge her weaknesses while not allowing them to break down her spirit. She built every pillar of the leadership role she talks about and can stand before us, challenging us to do the same. She is a powerhouse.




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Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg

Hardcover, 352 pgs, Pub February 12th 2019 by Liveright, ISBN13: 9781631494369

Since beginning Buttigieg's book, I have travelled across the country and spoken with lots of folks outside of my usual cabal. Nearly everyone I spoke with had heard of Buttigieg, current Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, running for President as a Democratic candidate. Only one of the people I spoke with mentioned his homosexuality as a reason for his possible failure to connect, and the same person was also skeptical about his age.

Buttigieg himself would remind voters that his age has been the thing that conversely has energized people, particularly older voters, who recognize that their generation left his generation with a big problem when it comes to climate change. Older people who have no stake in what will come are unlikely to move the needle as far and as fast as it needs to move. Time to step aside and hope for fresh ideas. At least that is what Buttigieg is peddling.

When I listen to him talk, I agree. I just want all the old men and women who have left both parties in a shambles with attempts to hold onto power (What power do they exhibit, may I ask? It’s positively derisive.) to leave the stage asap.

This book is easy enough to read, though does not rank with Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father which broke the mold on literary presidential memoirs. Truthfully, I picked up the book in the midst of an infatuation with Buttigieg’s calm sense and blunt assessments, and before I finished, I felt the bloom had left the rose. I still admire him and definitely consider him a frontrunner but I am not infatuated anymore. This is a good thing. I go into my support of his candidacy with a clear head.

Buttigieg is genuinely talented in languages, and it makes one wish we learned what he did from his linguist mother. One of my favorite of his stories is when he told Navy recruiters that he’d studied Arabic in hopes of landing an intelligence job at a desk somewhere and they wrote down that he’d studied “aerobics.” That is classic SNAFU.

Buttigieg describes the feeling at rallies for presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The two rallies had the ambiance of a party, but while Bernie’s parties seem joyous and goofy—Bernie with the finch, Bernie riding a unicorn, buttons featuring glasses and hair—Donald Trump’s parties have a edge, like a party where “you’re not sure if a fight will break out.” This is good storytelling. We know exactly what he is saying and can feel the roil.

What kills me about Buttigieg is that he is so quiet about some of his biggest accomplishments, e.g., he applied for a Rhodes scholarship and got it, he decided to run for president and he is a frontrunner. He doesn't thrash about explaining his calculations: a nobody mayor of a small city calmly and quietly declares an exploratory committee and begins criss-crossing the country before anyone else has even thought to get into the race and captures a lot of press because of his youth and his self-possession.

He could see the Democratic party had lost its way, punctuated by the loss in 2016, to say nothing of the turmoil in what used to be a Republican party. He could see that sitting back and watching ‘the clash of the white hairs’ was not going to advance us because these folks appear bewildered by where we have landed. He thought he could be useful, pointing out the obvious and taking steps to address some of our most urgent issues. Gosh darn it if he isn’t.

One of the more startling and interesting things Buttigieg said about government is that

“some of the most important policy dynamics of our time have to do with the relationships, and the tension, between state and local government.”

I pulled that quote out for you to see because I think this is something national pundits and talking heads miss completely.

Way back in the 1970’s and 80’s Lee Atwater, a Republican strategist, figured this out and moved to capturing the heartland. That strategy has brought us gerrymandering and court-packing and other state-level indications of one-party dominance. But local governments are finding that counties walking in lock-step to the state does not always work for their particular conditions. There is great inequality as a result of GOP leadership at the state level. What is government about anyway?

A Koch Brothers-funded think tank called the American Legislative Exchange Council is pointed to as generating model legislation for adoption in state legislatures and finds sympathetic state actors to carry the bills.

“Legislation is often nearly identical from state to state—so much so that journalists sometimes find copy-paste errors where the wrong state is mentioned in the text of a bill. Tellingly, by 2014, ALEC had decided to expand its model beyond the state level—not by going federal, but instead targeting local policy through a new offshoot called the American City County Exchange.”

Democrats must be willing to compete in red zones—many times it is only because they are not competing that they have less support.

Buttigieg makes the point that many folks got involved in local and county government as a matter of course in their lives, as one aspect of community participation, and they chose the most organized party to help them on their way. That would be the Republican party. They are pretty inculcated with the party line after a few years, but they may not agree with everything the party posts. That is why Indianans could vote for both Mike Pence and Pete Buttigieg. Voters really can read, think, make up their own minds.

We have to be in it to win it. I am more and more reluctant to declare myself Democrat after seeing some of the shenanigans local, state, and national leaders get up to. But I’ll be damned if I’ll sit by and watch the plotters and weavers poison the well. If ever there was a time to stand up and participate with your voices, now is that time. Choose your issues, decide at which level you can intervene, look to see where you might have some degree of influence, and get engaged. No more cheering from the sidelines.




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Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer

Hardcover, 291 pgs, Pub Jan 29th 2019 by Random House, ISBN13: 9780812995701

I just love this book. When I first heard Terry Gross interviewing Dreyer on NPR’s Fresh Air, I thought he was trying too hard to make amusing something that can be utterly stultifying. However, when I had the chance to listen to Dreyer reading the book, published by Penguin Random House Audio, I was entranced and delighted. How can this be, you ask. It is counterintuitive that reading a style book on writing would be amusing.

Dreyer’s delivery is dry, dry as a bone, so-o-o dry that I would be laughing aloud, missing his next entry, as he lined up all the stupid stuff we write—the adverbs, extra adjectives, and the ‘very unique’ emphasizers. I was amazed Dreyer could read this text aloud and make sense, filled as it is with examples he needs to capitalize or spell a certain way. I could follow it! And it was interesting. He rarely read from his footnotes, which are copious and useful and also funny, one good reason to get both the book and the audio.

One can even make the case that audio is an excellent format for this material, as rules run into one another and it is complicated and time-consuming to both separate the rules and look them up. Dreyer just gives it to us conversationally, in context, without taking out the ruler.

Practically all of us are writers—indeed, publishers—now, whether we write blogs, notes to friends, or posts for social media. We need to take care our words communicate what we want them to say and not what we did not wish to say. We all must be copy editors as well, and we need Dreyer to tell us what we really mean.

Benjamin Dreyer has worn a lot of hats, all at the same company. He began as a freelance proofreader, moved to Copy Editor, then Production Editor, and finally Copy Chief at Random House, now one of the largest book publishers in the United States. In this B&N podcast interview, Dreyer describes the distinction between those jobs and how, after he moved into management, he had an opportunity to circle back and spend time highlighting discrepancies between good and bad writing. He’s awfully good at it, he’s funny, and he’s seen it all in his nearly thirty years in the business. I kept thinking how much there is to know about using language, even for native speakers, and how useful this material is to all of us. So I went and bought the hardcopy.

Dreyer admits to hating grammar, that is, he hates grammar jargon. Which is just fine because I usually just skip those parts. What the heck, I figure. If I haven’t learned it yet, what good will it do me? I am not a completist. I tried to follow his rules in this review so far as I recall them, having laughed through half of them and listened with half an ear when he hit on something I'd worried over in the past…my memories probing that sore place like a tongue in the socket of a lost tooth. How reassuring it is to me to know that the past tense of wreak is wreaked, something with which I have struggled.

There was a point on a long drive when I started laughing uncontrollably at the sometimes stupid stuff he says. In this case it was

GRISLY/GRISTLY/GRIZZLY/GRIZZLED
Gory crimes are grisly.
Tough meat is gristly.
Some bears are grizzly.
Mistaken references to “grizzly crimes” (unless committed by actual bears, in which case OK) are extremely popular, although good for a chuckle, and to be avoided strenuously.
“Grizzled” refers to hair streaked with gray—and by extension, it does make a decent synonym for “old.” It does not mean, as many people seem to think it does, either unkempt or rugged.

It’s okay if you didn’t laugh at that. I’m telling you, Dreyer’s wit is cumulative. If you have ever seen those old books by Richard Lederer, I recall one was called Anguished English, you’ll know exactly what I mean. Three generations of my family sat shouting and crying with laughter at the difficulty of writing well.

People who write for a living won’t want to miss this. Journalists, novelists, public speakers, politicians, business people who write reports, social media junkies: When he actually points out our common errors, we admit with chagrin it looks, and sounds, silly.

Below is a sample of Dreyer reading from the book. You can listen to this on a commute, can't you?




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