The Washington Post has indulged its photographers by publishing two long, beautiful photo essays that chronicle my Congresscritter's extraordinary season of service and party leadership. They are both worth perusing. I hope these links escape the pay wall.
I want to share my own favorite from among my considerable collection of photos of Pelosi in action here on the home front. Because of her leadership role in a Congress far more conservative than her constituents, she's often been a target of San Franciscans who wanted to get their less-heard policy desires across. She's been brave on important unpopular stances: stalwart on treating China as a dangerous dictatorship and leading Dems in voting against George W. Bush's unconscionable Iraq war of choice.
But she's been absent on other progressive priorities that a San Francisco Congressperson primarily responsive to constituents might have championed. Many of my Pelosi shots have been of her striding imperviously past screaming pickets.
This picture is a more subtle contribution to that genre.
In 2014, Ms. Pelosi attended a Holy Thursday gathering at St John the Evangelist Episcopal Church convened by Mission District members of Faith in Action Bay Area. Here she speaks from the pulpit. A faithful Roman Catholic, she participated in the ritual footwashing the day prescribes confidently. But even in this context, she found herself verbally challenged by Spanish-speaking residents, their families, and friends about why the Congress and Obama had failed to enact immigration reform and make DACA the law of the land.
She was graceful, but left abruptly. Despite all her feting by fancy donors and her enormous gift to the city of making the Presidio into parkland, this too has been what Nancy Pelosi's tenure as our Congresswoman has been about: demanding constituents wanting more.
That's what it has meant to represent this city in Congress -- can we make sure that whoever follows her feels the same pressures? San Franciscans will try.
When I share domestic tidbits, I usually know where I think they lead. When it comes to the emerging 21st century global power configurations, I'm a bemused and helpless spectator. Here are some links, some with my commentary in italics.
Atrios: Biden's foreign policy leans towards do the right thing more than any president in my lifetime, as far as I can tell. I agree, feeling concern and consternation amid inevitable reservations.
John Ganz: I am overly given to viewing things in terms of grand clashes of ideologies and social forces to the point that I can sometimes lose sight of the two dominating spirits of world-affairs: stupidity and vanity. A useful caution ...
Nathaniel Rachman - marking Mikhail Gorbachev' passing How politicians deal with opposition, humiliation and defeat is one of the great tests of office. Now more than ever, those in charge of the world’s leading powers struggle to face it. In China, the leadership of the Communist Party has blundered into a disastrous Covid policy, unable to change course for fear of tarnishing its own image. In the United States, a former president has rejected his own electoral defeat, imperiling American democracy. And in Russia, Putin’s vicious resentment of Ukraine’s independence led to this year’s brutal invasion. Unlike Putin, Xi and Trump, Gorbachev’s was a model of leadership defined not by achieving one’s goals, but by accepting their rejection. He is a reminder that even those who fail spectacularly can redeem themselves by knowing how and when to lose. It is a shame so few leaders today seem ready to do the same.
Brad DeLong - the mysteries of British decline My view—which may be wrong—has been that Britain’s long relative economic decline since the heights of 1870 has been due to its persistent refusal to invest in its people and in its technology-driving industries. You can say that the first of these has cultural-ideological-political roots—Tories fearing that if people get over-educated they will not respect their betters, and Labour fearing that if people get over-educated they will not respect their parents—and you could be right. You can blame the second on the British Empire making it just too easy to to invest abroad and count on the power of the gunboats to make foreign investments safe. You can then say that those institutional habits persist to this day, and you could be right as well. Perhaps. ...
John Cassidy: In the past six years, the Conservative Party has jettisoned economic skepticism, and embraced wishful thinking and self-sabotage. Yes, the Tories suck. Or perhaps we see across the pond the natural trajectory of imperial decline?
Meanwhile the far-flung US imperial project grinds along:
Sarah Lazare: In September, the U.S. created a foundation that was supposed to unfreeze Afghanistan’s foreign assets. Yet, interviews with trustees reveal that, in three months, no funds have been disbursed—or concrete plans made—to help the Afghan people.
Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute: While MBS Undermines America, Joe Biden Has His Back on Yemen -- Few people noticed, but the United States Senate came very close to ending America’s complicity in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen earlier this week. But the very same person who had vowed to end that war intervened and stopped the Senate from taking action — President Joe Biden. The White House feared that the Senate resolution would have emboldened the Yemeni Houthi movement. But Biden may have instead signaled the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) that, even as he continues to undermine the United States, America still has his back. We're addicted to both fossil fuels and treating the people of the greater Middle East as pawns in American strategic games. You too Joe Biden.
And so to Russia's imperial dreams:
Someone using the handleDaragh at Crooked Timber: ... in many ways the Russian populace is much like the poor-white farmers of the antebellum south – hugely disadvantaged by the system themselves, but willing to support it because it puts them one or two steps up the ladder of oppression. Changing this mentality will be difficult work – potentially the work of generations. But it's work that needs doing if there is going to be a Russia that isn’t inclined to aggressive predation on its neighbours.
Greg Afinogenov: Unlike the American Baby Boomers, who have retained a vision of themselves as the protagonists of history since their teenage years, the utopians among the Soviet shestidesiatniki (“‘60s-ers”) became the occupants, if not of the dustbin of history, at least of its recycling bin. Too old when the USSR collapsed to forge new lives in its wreckage, they were also too young to have benefited much in its prime.
Ghia Nodia: An Imperial Mindset -- What the outcome of World War One was for Hitlerism, the outcome of the Cold War was for Putinism. ...A bigger problem is that, unlike Germany after World War Two, it will be very difficult for Russia to find a place in the world that would be acceptable for its national self-esteem. Before the war, Russia’s economy and institutions did not allow it to become either a true member of the global elite or an alternative center of power like China. It could only desperately punch above its weight—by invading Ukraine—without a chance of ever being truly satisfied. These underlying conditions will not disappear: in fact, they have been made worse as a result of the invasion. Russia will not become a true member of the international elite any time soon, though it may face a choice between being a poor relation of the West or becoming a junior partner of China. In either case, ressentiment will remain.
So to the Ukrainian people whose admirable, involuntary resistance to tyranny, we use to inspire ourselves:
Tom Nichols: This holiday season, many of us will seek peace and a reset heading into the new year by drawing closer to family, taking a break from work, and observing the rituals of our faith. We tend, during this time, to clear our mind of unpleasant things. But as Americans, citizens of the greatest democratic power on Earth, we must not forget that the largest European conflict since World War II is continuing to burn away in Ukraine. A democratic nation is refusing to be conquered by a vengeful imperial power, and it is paying for it with the lives of innocent men, women, and children. As we celebrate the season, let us remember that the Russians have shown no intention of taking a holiday from murder.
I agree with Nichols here -- but seeking to use our wealth and privilege for peace is always a higher calling than victory, even when the struggle is just. I believe Ukraine's cause is necessary and just. And I don't want to forget that justice is not everything.
When I need to restore my soul, I've long watched massive numbers of these made-for-TV college athletic spectacles. There are something like 41 of them this year beginning December 16. Most are pedestrian, but a few are delights. All offer their moments and their quirks.
But the structures that set the terms for them have changed pretty radically since I last indulged one of these seasonal bowl binges. I thought I'd share some observations and definitions of terms.
Of course, Division 1 NCAA football has long been a business, a Darwinian contest among sports administrators to showcase teams that will excite alumni donors. For decades, that meant attracting promising high school athletes with "scholarships" which rendered them something like indentured peons under all-powerful coaches, subsisting on the favor of their masters (almost all men) -- and perhaps their talent. This might lead to a continued athletic career at the professional level for a very few. And college degrees for about 73 percent of high level players -- slightly higher than their non-athlete peers. These graduation rates are something like 15 percent higher for white players than for black ones.
Legal challenges during last decade have reduced the power of college athletic administrators to keep players in penurious servitude and allowed some direct compensation to athletes from the schools, but even more from booster collectives. But it's the conferences that control the TV money and rake in big bucks.
And it's the NCAA and the conferences that shape post season (bowl) play. Over the next few years, all the accreted anarchic bowls will be sucked into the College Football Playoff National Championship. Forget iconic bowls like the Rose Bowl serving as contests between regions of the country. Which schools play where will be determined by "national standings," not accidents of history. This may make economic sense and even for some less-mismatched, but more exciting, contests, but something is lost.
Something else that has gone bye-the-bye is the expectation that college football players will give their all for their schools in post-season play. Players with strong NFL prospects routinely choose not to risk injury (or have their weaknesses highlighted) by "opting out" of bowl play. Just about every bowl game I have watched this year has begun with a recitation of a list of absentees "preparing for the NFL draft." This is understandable; football is these guys' ticket, not that degree in sports management.
And besides, coaches are doing the same -- jumping to the next job before the post season finishes. This might be one of the most surreal outcomes I've run across:
Wasabi Fenway Bowl - Cincinnati vs. Louisville, December 16 Cincinnati: Head coach Luke Fickell left for Wisconsin and won't coach in the bowl. Kerry Coombs will remain on staff under new coach Scott Satterfield and is the interim head coach for this game. ... Louisville: The Cardinals lost coach Scott Satterfield and a couple of assistants to Cincinnati. Deion Branch will work as the team's interim coach for this game. ...
College football players, their peon status newly loosened, play their own game of musical chairs. In theory, the NCAA has long defined eligibility for its athletes as four seasons in their sport, plus a "red shirt" year when they play little or not at all. Teams red-shirt (hold out) players for development or major injuries and sometimes can squeeze an additional year out through administrative legerdemain; this is why I keep hearing of "six year players." Also why one hears that some athletes are in graduate school for academics while still playing undergrad college sports.
And currently the newly implemented "transfer portal" allows college football players to jump from one academic institution to another, perhaps for a better deal, or better TV exposure, or to follow a preferred coach who made a move. The portal is a database of athletes hoping to make a jump. Until this was put in place, transferring students had to sit out a year at their new digs. No longer. The transfer portal rules are somewhat intricate and evolving. Players who have entered the portal can play in bowl games with their old college, but mostly don't. That's another list of opt-outs announced at the beginning of this year's games.
There's a heck of a lot of money in college football and its post-season. And so long as we don't, as a society, conclude that American football is too lethal to continue to attract masses of customers, there'll be young athletes who want in. I will miss the less blatantly commercial version of the college football post-seasion. But the new one will undoubtedly put on a grand show. Guess I'll have to learn all the new rules. It's more fun when I understand them, at least superficially.
An occasional list of links to thought provoking commentary on the condition our condition is in. I hope over the New Year's week to deliver some "shards" in three parts of which this is the first, more or less US-centric installment.
... I diagnose my condition these days as "depleted." The four months of working to preserve a chance for democracy and freedom through the election has taken something out of me that awaits replenishment. Meanwhile, some offerings ...
Jonathan Chait from New York Magazine: Despite everything, there is still a robust constituency in this country for leaders who are not overtly crazy.
Sarah Longwell, defenestrated Republican, publisher of The Bulwark, and addict of the wisdom of focus groups: With Republicans embracing moral nihilism, Democrats should endeavor to seize the high-ground. Already, the parties are realigning not just on questions of policy, but on questions of character. ... I know our political culture is awash in cynicism these days, but there is still a market for decency. Something I heard over and over again from swing voters explaining why they couldn’t vote for Trump was, “How can I teach my kids how to be decent when the President of the United States behaves this way?” Plenty of Americans still crave moral leadership—or, at a minimum, elected officials they’re not embarrassed to have their children see on the news.
Eric Levitz at New York Magazine: Whatever Democrats can do to facilitate labor organizing and increase access to higher education will simultaneously advance social justice and improve the party’s long-term electoral prospects.
Teri Kanefield at her own site, Books, Law, and Politics: Democracy cannot be saved with autocratic means because the very act of adopting autocratic means destroys democracy. That’s what makes it hard. Democracy is saved with more democracy. Autocracy is created by rule-breaking. ... My advice: Ignore the rage merchants and learn to distinguish expert opinions from emotional reactions. Rage creates apathy and hopelessness and people who are apathetic and hopeless have a hard time finding the energy to do the work required to save democracy.... Learn to love rule of law with all its frustrations and imperfections.
Jill Filipovic at The Guardian: The American reaction to the supreme court’s radical decision on abortion rights is a telling hint of what’s to come. The court summarily taking away a fundamental, long-held, and oft-utilized civil right is incredibly uncommon; it hasn’t happened in my lifetime, or my mother’s lifetime. While most of the rest of the world is moving toward broader respect for human rights, including women’s rights, and expanding abortion alongside a greater embrace of democratic norms, the US is in league with only a tiny handful of nations in making abortions harder to get, and in newly criminalizing them. The nations that are cracking down on abortion rather than expanding abortion rights have one thing in common: a turn from democracy and toward authoritarian governance.
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic responding to Herschel Walker's Senate candidacy: ... the real problem lies with the voters. The Republicans are getting the candidates they want. This is not about partisanship—it’s about an unhinged faux-egalitarianism that demands that candidates for office be no better than the rest of us, and perhaps even demonstrably worse. How dare anyone run on virtue or character; who do they think they are? ... This is a tragedy of insecurity, because what it really means is that GOP voters don’t think very much of themselves. At some point, some of them may realize what they have done, but by then it’s too late. The only thing worse than making a mistake is admitting it was a mistake, and facing the humiliation of being a sucker.
Kevin Drum at Jabberwocking: Practically all the evidence suggests the United States is fundamentally a strong country right now. Probably the strongest in the world, and with the brightest future. It's extraordinary to think of just how good a place it could be if only we could figure out a way to overcome the debilitating fear that so many people still have of progress and change.
Michael Gerson in the Washington Post Many progressives feel cheated by a political system rigged by the Founders against them. Many religious conservatives feel despised by the broader culture and in need of political protection. In the United States, grievance is structural and is becoming supreme.
UniteHERE canvassers and voters they've delivered to polls
Perry Bacon Jr. at the Washington Post The Democratic Party’s voters (not necessarily its leaders) are what we want America to be. They are diverse on a number of dimensions, unified around laudable goals such as reducing economic and racial inequality, and actively trying to make the United States the best nation it can be.
Carlos Lozada in the New York Times One of the great questions of this time has always been whether Trump changed the country or revealed it more clearly. The answer is yes; it is both. He changed America by revealing it. On Jan. 6, Trump was the man who could win the country back for those who yearned for him long before they imagined him. If he can’t do it, someone like him will do. Or someone like him, perhaps, but more so.
Dana Milbank at the Washington Post I admit I’ve thought about where my family might go if the worst happened here. But we’re not going anywhere. The only choice is to stay and fight for our liberal democracy. As my rabbi, Danny Zemel, put it on Kol Nidre: “If there is a Jewish message for our time, it is to support our great experiment with every fiber of our being.”... If it isn’t safe here, it won’t be safe anywhere.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: ... history doesn’t end. We hear a lot about how we might lose our democracy in this election. No going back. That’s not how things work. We might lose it. Or, to be more specific, we might enter a period of degraded or superficial democracy in which the trappings and structures remain more or less in place but are fundamentally subverted. But if we lose it … well, then we’ll have to work on getting it back. This isn’t happy talk or Pollyannaish thinking. It’s reality. History doesn’t end. No matter how bad things get there’s a next day when you have to figure out what you do next. Nothing is ever fully solved or fully lost.
Janeway has chosen a favored spot this winter. There is often heat from the furnace ...
but I'm convinced there's something alive to hunt in the duct work below. She just can't get at it! Patience doesn't serve the mighty hunter. There's more satisfaction when she rips apart spiders that unwarily wandered into the shower. She's a cat ...
This post isn't really about seasonal tree litter, but about the delightful fact that the San Francisco Chronicle has developed a data department which explores measurable realities, fun and not-so-fun.
For example, in a typical year, the city’s 311 hotline receives over 3,000 complaints about Christmas trees. Perhaps not surprisingly, 90% of those complaints happen between Dec. 26 and Feb. 7. People truly get fed up around mid-January. The most common day for Christmas tree complaints since 2015 was Jan. 18, with an average of 183 complaints each year.
The Chronicle, though depleted as almost all local news sources are, nonetheless has become a far more interesting vehicle under current leadership. The City is in a deep bust cycle; the Chron records this round in ways that might help us become a little better.
Janeway's response to the season is simple: wake me up when there is more light and warmth -- when all this is over. And don't you dare move that lap ...
Two Alabama
women have been given suspended jail sentences last week after feeding
stray cats and trapping them so they could be neutered, a common public
health intervention to reduce stray numbers.
Beverly
Roberts, 85, and Mary Alston, 61, of Wetumpka, Alabama, were sentenced
to two years of unsupervised parole and a $100 fine each ...
Here's a contemporary oddment that may be unexpected. Vast quantities of ink and pixels are devoted by sociologists and apostles of church growth about the decline of institutional religious participation in US life. But until Daniel Cox passed along this, I hadn't been aware of the divide pictured in this graph.
Cox equates the education gap with class status.
It has long been presumed, and in some cases feared, that
higher education—and the widespread availability of information and
knowledge via the Internet—would undermine religious commitments. Actual
evidence for this is lacking. While religious doubting has grown in recent years,
the most educated Americans show up to services most often. Even as
they report less certainty in their religious beliefs, they participate
more regularly in worship services. Higher education appears to
reinforce regular religious participation.
He equates ongoing religious attendance with family stability (seems likely) and general engagement in community life.
One thing that seems clear is that the decline of churches will
likely make inequality worse. College-educated Americans are more active
and involved in every sphere of American social and civic life, from
book clubs and PTA meetings, to sports leagues and town halls. On
average, they have more friends, broader social networks, and more
extensive ties to the places where they live. ... Churches offer one way to bridge the gap, but fewer Americans are turning to them.
What this description omits is that the clubby communal culture of institutions which reinforce the class values of the comfortable might be off-putting to the more precariously situated among us. Less education does correlate with less social stability for some people.
I feel abundantly grateful to have happened into a religious institution which knows itself to have a particular vocation to those who have little materially.
On my break from compulsive blogging, I'm doing what gives me great delight at this season: recording and watching at least part of most of what we call the East Armpit college football bowls. These are contests between teams, obscure to me if not to themselves, that match moderately successful mid-range squads where very few players can have legitimate professional aspirations. The players and their fans care so much -- and enjoy spending their pre-holiday break in exotic locations: the Bahamas, Hawaii, Boise.
Yes, that means Idaho on the blue "smurf turf". That one is the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl -- formerly the Humanitarian Bowl and the MPC Computers Bowl. I like the current sponsor better. Take a look at what they are selling:
Good fun from this sponsor.
Not good fun for San Jose State, but hey -- the guys got to travel to Boise ...
Before Russia invaded Ukraine, like probably most people reading here, I had never heard of the city of Mariupol.
Only a year ago, someone made what I assume is a tourism-promotion video, celebrating a municipality that turned itself into a light show for Christmas. What is shown here is gone, blasted to bits, the survivors scattered, a city of about 400,000 people wiped away by conquest.
I am taking time to try to know more about this so-foreign part of Europe. Historian Timothy Snyder's fall lectures at Yale on The Making of Modern Ukraine are available in full and for free. In addition to being a language polymath, he's a charming lecturer. I highly recommend this series.
It's a measure of how fixated I became on gas prices during the recent election that I knew I had to snap a picture when one San Francisco station broke through to $3.99 (cash/regular). I know that in most of the country this seems quite high, but still it seems a milestone here. I'm pretty convinced that for many people, gas prices are THE marker of the health of a dimly envisioned thing called "the economy."
Obviously our responses to gas prices don't help us make the essential transition away from fossil fuels. We've got a lot of anxiety tied up in gas availability and prices, not entirely irrationally. We're just going to have to figure it out before we bake. And I actually think we will.
• • •
Meanwhile, my reaction to this irrational gas breakthrough reminds me that I'm still tired and a little traumatized from choosing to focus for four months so fiercely on winning one bit of a vital election. I need to give myself permission to take the next two weeks to decompress. I will probably post here, but only if I'm feeling it. May everyone enjoy whatever seasonal decompression, if any, comes their way!
The Suffolk University poll found that 65% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they wanted “Republicans to continue the policies Trump pursued in office, but with a different Republican nominee for president,” compared with 31% who wanted Trump to run again.
This is the sort of conclusion that that tells me nothing. What do these voters think were Donald Trump's policies? As a candidate for re-election in 2020, he apparently insisted that the Republicans run without a party platform -- their only promise was to adhere to whatever their Orange King wanted.
Was it Trump's cruelty to migrants that they liked so much?
San Francisco's private Jesuit university -- that's the University of San Francisco -- threw itself a $100,000 holiday party last evening -- and administrative and clerical staff represented by OPEIU Local 29 were on hand to remind guests that the administration is resisting paying a fair cost of living increase to these vital employees after taking advantage of savings from furloughs, benefit concessions, and unfilled positions during the pandemic emergency.
The university president, Fr. Paul Fitzgerald, could not escape this friendly welcoming party.
Members of campus unions including full time faculty, part-time faculty (that's Erudite Partner's union), and building and grounds workers joined the clerical staff.
I like beer. It feels a little transgressive to write that since Justice Kavanaugh made the phrase notorious during his appropriately contentious confirmation. I don't mean it in his inebriated way; I mean I like the taste of beer.
And not surprisingly, that means I have an enthusiasm for winter holiday beers. Not perhaps the most sophisticated choice, but certainly the most accessible of late, has been 21st Amendment Brewery's Fireside Chat.
As we came into the season, I looked out for the familiar illustration showing FDR enjoying a brew.
No such cans appeared on the shelves! What happened to Fireside Chat?
I finally realized that 21st Amendment has resigned its packaging to a more generic holiday theme.
Nice deer with magnificent antlers, but nothing distinctive. Did someone think they could enlarge the market by replacing the beloved Democratic president? Or by leaning into a nondescript winter theme? Or perhaps, have we arrived at a time when the previous image had become so rarely recognized as to get in the way of sales? I don't know.
The beer tastes much as before -- perhaps very slightly sweeter. I feel something has been lost, but that may be just me ...
As so many friends who see these posts know, I'm a longtime supporter of El Porvenir, a grassroots partnership between rural Nicaraguans and North Americans (and others) working to bring comprehensive clean water projects to the countryside.
This year, in this daunting season of fund appeals, the Nicaraguan staff (which is most all the staff) shared what they really need for Christmas.
Janeway looks a little wary, doesn't she? She's peeking out from our loft, where she ran when a delivery person rang the doorbell. Though she's a dominating tiny terrorist much of the time, she can also be timid.
