Reform or revolution

    Like a lot of you I've been watching the riots every night on television, in my living room. When I look out at the protesters and the criminals who hide out among them I see ,not so much misery, but a lot of miserable people. That's somewhat understandable. After two months of lockdown emotions are subject to swings, most of them downward.
     For such miserable people they do seem to be having the time of their lives. Nothing rewires the circuitry of boredom and underlying discontent half as well as facing a phalanx of riot police shields ,catching the sting of tear gas in the air, and listening to pepper pellets whizzing past your ears. If the police charge into the crowd, so much the better, it's you and your brothers and sisters against the fascist armies of Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, the defenders of confederate statues and Jim Crow. Now what could be more exciting than that? Is there a better cure for that ennui you need to scratch but can't quite reach? Ennui is not a rash, except metaphorically in this case. It's French for boredom and yet it means more. It implies an deeply routed discontent. The only cure is excitement, a major break from routine. And still they're not much of a cure . They only distract and allow you some passing relief. The ennui is deeply routed afterall. Real relief occurs only when you face real problems inside yourself, but that's hard work that most of prefer to shirk. It's no coincidence that the rioting tearing apart our cities is happening now, after these months of lockdown and after so many unmanaged ,undiagnosed, untreated personal issues have had time to reach a boiling point.
      I'm not saying that demonstrations in behalf of Floyd Brown, or calling for greater accountability and reform in law enforcement are illegitimate. I'm not saying they can't perform any useful purpose. I'm saying that that is not what we're seeing . Why was the officer who's now been arrested for kneeling on the neck of Floyd Brown still a cop after a long record of abuses to the public. It's not because he was popular with other policemen. That's really unlikely. No one has more to loose than the good cop from having bad cops on the street. Good cops overwhelmingly out number the bad ones but a police force will be judged on the basis of the worst conduct of its worst cops. There's nothing cops would rather see than all the bad apples driven out. Systemic racism, really? Why tilt after imaginary dragons and monsters when there are actual systemic disfunctions that need to be dealt with like the ones that keep bad cops on the force? The local chapter of the policeman's union might a good place to start.
     That the protests we've seen up till now are not asking these questions is an indication of another agenda at work despite the importance of real reforms called for by this and other incidents. The calls for the police to be defunded and disbanded and prisons to be closed is not going to happen. Society as a whole has not lost it's mind as the more radical of the protesters have. There are anarchists at work in these protests. They have planned them and trained for the confrontations with police, the destruction of their vehicles, and all the sideshow that occurs at night. Their disdain for the institutions of law and order is equal to their disdain for capitalism. The businesses they destroy are not collateral damage in their war on cops ,it's part of the point. What do they have to offer in place of the institutions that sustain us? Not much. Maybe they'll get around to that after our cities are a smoldering ruin and the economy looks little better.

Running amok

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Running amok
From: David Brankley <kleybran@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2020, 5:42 PM
To: "editor@telluridedailyplanet com" <editor@telluridedailyplanet.com>
CC:

    " It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run 'amok' against society, but I preferred that society should run ' amok' against me, it being the desperate party . "
     Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

      Here in New Jersey, the second hardest hit state by covid-19, there seems to be a lot of civil disobedience going on. A lot of people are ready to come out in the open again. The roads are full of cars. People who haven't seen family or friends in many weeks,  are seeing them now. You can only keep people apart for so long. Sooner or later the dam  bursts. Pennsylvania is undergoing a similar transformation. Many local officials are announcing that their towns and counties are coming out of lockdown despite state orders. Many businesses are opening up again in defiance of the governor and his henchmen.
     Maybe those ruled  possess more wisdom than their rulers. I say rulers, because that is what many governors have become . Their power is near absolute. When did you ever imagine that some day elected officials and state health bureaus would ban all church services, all businesses from operating except a chosen few, bar public gatherings and close public land, or surveil our movements, order us to disperse with talking drones.  I'm guessing you could never have imagined it until now. The list of grievances drawn up by the American colonies against king George in 1776 reads like a ledger of trivial complaints in comparison.
     Nobel prize winning chemist and professor of structural biology at Stanford, Michael Levitt, has said " There is no doubt in my mind that when we come to look back on the damage done by lockdowns it will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor ". Dr. Levitt has studied the data coming in from all around the world that indicates  that the virus follows a consistent pattern of growth and decline that is independent of our attempts at intervention. He recommends a Swedish style approach where the most vulnerable isolate themselves while the bulk of the population gets on with living and working. Sweden will very likely achieve herd immunity sometime this summer with 60-80% of their population infected. If you are sceptical of the Swedish experiment just wait a while. Viruses often come in waves. A second wave could ravage nations on Sweden's borders while Sweden is spared the worst.
     I don't know if he's right. At least one experiment in loosening the national shutdown seems ,so far ,to be vindicated. You may remember that three weeks ago Georgia was out ahead of the rest of the country in allowing businesses to reopen . At the time there was universal condemnation, even from the Whitehouse. Georgia was said to be headed for disaster. They hadn't even bothered to wait for caseloads to decline . Despite all the dire predictions Georgia has done very well . Governor Kemp announced last week that the number of new cases requiring hospitalization was falling.
     I know that most experts were wrong back in March. Their understandable ignorance led to the shutdown. There was so little reliable data available then.  They were wrong about mortality rates. Back then it was assumed that there was a 4% or higher chance of dying if someone became infected. In fact the chances of dying are low unless you are obese or suffer other co- morbidities . Antibody testing has revolutionized our understanding . Among the general population the mortality rate ( deaths per infection ) appears to be far less than 1%. If you are healthy your chances of dying are tiny, far less than .1%.
     We've faced pandemics with similar lethality before. Like this one they've all been terrible, none were cataclysmic. Forget the Spanish flu, which carried away tens of millions. That flu arrived before the advent of modern medicine and antibiotics . More comparable viruses arrived here in 1968 and 1957. They are estimated to have cost around 100,000 American lives each. The current virus will soon match that death toll and will certainly exceed it ,but keep in mind the population at nursing homes was only a fraction of what it is now, and nursing homes are kindling to the covid-19 lit match. Nursing homes contribute 40% of the deaths in some states . We're living longer. We're an older, frailer population.
      Why haven't you heard about the pandemics of 1968 or 1957 ? It may be because ,despite their lethality, no nation thought to close itself down until the virus had run its course, or was reduced by vaccination. The world was a saner place back then. We've begun an unusual experiment; can a nation ,can a planet ,shut down this thoroughly for weeks or months and still survive? Can we invite depression and costly disruptions without lasting terrible consequences ? I'll be interested to see.

Chaos and order

     On my way from Grand Junction to Philadelphia by Amtrak last fall I met a gray bearded Amishman while waiting for transfer at Union Station in Chicago. He introduced himself as a blacksmith, kept busy by the ever growing demand for buggy parts. This led to an explanation of why Amish folk shun modern improvements like automobiles and cell phones. He said that sticking to the old ways promoted cohesion and harmony in the family and community, and most modern innovations did the opposite. He said that new ways and new inventions were often considered and sometimes adopted, but each congregation decided how far to go in that direction. 
    It's funny, but after all these years of meeting the Amish on busses and trains, or seeing their buggies rolling down rural roads, I'd never thought to ask why they choose to live the way they do. The blacksmiths explanation was a good one. I'm sure it will do. I imagine it's sufficient for most Amish people but I can't help wondering if there's more to it.
     In my last column I talked about the bushcraft movement, and how I was spending some of my time in confinement watching bushcraft videos on YouTube. Since then I've  seen more and thought more about the values they express. They're really not far from the values practiced in Amish homes. The society that a modern bushcrafter comes from, and is still lives in, is the same as mine. It's the same as yours. It's not much like Amish society at all. If you asked a bushcrafter why they carry an axe around in the woods, or pitched a tarp for sleeping under instead of a nylon ,fully bugproof tent  I doubt they'd say it is because tarps promote social cohesion. They might say something about harmony, but the harmony they'd be talking about is with nature, not a congregation. 
    I'm so happy some of these traditional methods of accessing nature are still around and gaining traction with a new generation. I'm so happy some are still going out in the woods despite of the lockdown, maybe even in answer to it. One bushcrafter with a  camera and a YouTube channel went out for a night to sleep beneath a tarp and enjoy a late season snowstorm. He talked about how happy he was to get away from all the pandemic pandemonium and spend a little time again in the real world. While snowflakes brushed his camera lens and built up on the tarp overhead he made a toast with his " bushcraft Tom Collins " , " To the unrivalled human spirit to overcome adversities ".
    A marine who calls himself " the Corporal " slept a rainy night on ( not under ) a broken tree. Before the rain began he made dinner and talked about the forecast. " If it ain't rain'n ,it ain't train'n " was his catch line. He had a lot of those.  He cooked a spectacular meal with a large baked potato stuffed high with bacon ,sauteed onion, shredded cheese, and sour cream, inspired by something he once had at Wendy's, then proclaimed it OUTSTANDING! Then came a bite into a raw onion as if it were an apple. " Take that Coronavirus" , then confided that this was his way of ensuring social distancing.
    When it comes to defeating the virus with treatments and vaccines we'll have scientists to thank. In the meantime we're grateful for the selfless work of the doctors and nurses in our hospitals, aids at nursing homes working extra shifts, volunteers at food pantries, national guardsmen, and many other front liners I forgot to mention. But when it comes right down to it it's the population at large that determines how well and how soon we dig ourselves out from all this. It's not the disease I'm thinking of ,it's all the numerous knock- on effects of the virus. Over the coming months and years we'll inevitably be dealing with the aftermath of covid-19, not the epidemic but the measures taken to deal with it . Things may get ugly. We're being tested. Some of that gung ho, come what may, can do attitude of folks like the Corporeal will be crucial now and in the future. It has everything to do with what that future will look like.
   In thinking about what binds the Amish world to the bushcrafter I believe the word is order. It's a keen sense of order that drives one person to live outside modern consumerism and another to revive old ways of camping. In their own ways they manage to keep chaos at bay; the chaos inherent in the modern world  exposed by a tiny virule germ

Not the news

   I learned from reading the Washington Post this morning that this has been the warmest decade in Earth's history. Anyhow, that's what I learned from the headline. Reading into the article itself I learned that this ,instead, was the warmest decade in the era of modern weather data collection, which isn't the same thing at all. A quick google search tells me that the Earth is 4.54 billion years old with an error range of 50 million years. Modern weather data gathering has only been around for about a hundred years. I'm not saying the Washington Post is printing fake news, afterall ,they clarify the length of the Earth's history they're actually referring to in the first line of the accompanying article, but wouldn't it have been nice if the WaPo cared a little more about getting things right ? I'll just answer my own question ; yes, it would have been nice,  but that's not what the Washington Post is all about.
     
       During most of Earth's four and a half billion years of existence the planet was much hotter than today . Carbon dioxide levels have often been much higher . There were also periods of cold, when Co2 levels were quite low. Temperatures effect Co2 levels and vice versa. It's a complicated relationship. During one  period the entire surface of the Earth is thought to have been covered in ice from pole to pole.
     Luckily ,we have only been around for a short time in this long perilous history. We've managed to miss the worst of it. But even over the past 200,000 years Earth's climate has been anything but stable as sudden catastrophic fluctuations have come close to wiping us out. What we are experiencing now is a sweet spot. If the Earth continues warming at the present rate it may be difficult adjusting to temperature increases predicated to amount to +2 C over the next century, but those adjustments are not impossible, nor unprecedented, necessarily catastrophic, or unavoidable.
    The ' avoidable ' part is something we all should be happy about. whatever prescriptions to reverse or modify climate change we endorse. Many activists call for banning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use has brought us to the level of prosperity we enjoy today. Banning them guarantees less prosperity, especially in the third world.  Some proposals would do this gradually, some more abruptly. Those of us who believe that banning them would have catastrophic effects on the world's economy look to other means to the same end such as carbon sequestration. Technologies to  reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already exist . Deploying them on a large scale is expensive but  nothing near the prohibitive costs of proposals like the Green New Deal. In the meantime we could plant more trees. Millions of new trees across the planet will improve our lives in many ways while soaking up Co2. It's a low tech example of carbon sequestration, and highly effective.
       The Washington Post occasionally reports on these softer but effective solutions but gives greater weight to solutions that are less practical and more disruptive. It's as if a complete reordering of society from top to bottom is the real goal. " Never let a serious crises go to waste ", to quote Rahm Emmanuel in another context. Scaring people into rash action seems to be working. Look at the climate proposals of every leading Democratic presidential candidate.
      Strangely, I didn't intend to focus this column on global warming. That was just an aside that got out of hand, a digression. I wanted to write about the Washington Post as an example of advocacy journalism. It hard finding any other kind of journalism. Whatever happened to reporting the news? Where's the objectivity? Who's reporting the news fairly or agenda free? The Washington Post is only one newspaper among many but it's a leading paper and representative of the industry. 
     Reading the Post you could be forgiven for mistaking a news article for one of its opinion pieces. There's so little difference. I have no problem with bias, or opinions .I'd just like to see them outside the news pages. If the Washington Post wants to frighten us into reigning in climate change then let them ring that bell as loud as they wish. Just don't call it the news . Fudging stories on climate change is  a small part of their program. The same lazy style of journalism crops up elsewhere. Politics dominates the Post's reporting. Their political reporting  is equally shoddy.  It's a shame. We need a press with more rigorous standards . We need it now more than ever.

Trauma drama

        The left often refer to their ideological opponents on the right as Nazis, Fascists, and racist. For them ,it seems the right is not about ideology at all. The right may propose smaller government, greater autonomy for individuals, reversing destructive trends in government and culture , etc., but they're really all about keeping disenfranchised and marginalized groups in their place, and advancing the interests of the already powerful. The rest is just a smoke screen. For their part, the right replies with claims that the left misunderstands everything it sees, often projects it's own pathologies on opponents, exalts feelings over facts, and disregards reality wherever reality contradicts what they wish to see. When the left claim offence ,or feeling threatened by the actions or words of the right, they're dismissed as " pearl clutchers " and " snowflakes ". I sometimes wonder how much all this apparent offence taking is sincere.
       Last Sunday the Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper at  prestigious Northwestern University published an editorial, signed by It's editor and chief and seven other editors of that paper, including it's chair of inclusion and diversity. I wonder how many newspapers have a chair of inclusion and diversity?  I have a feeling that the diversity they are encouraging doesn't extend to diversity of ideas. Gender identity, racial identity, and god knows what else have siezed the day, and cancelled out that quaint consideration. The world of identity politics has swepped aside everything in its path. What makes this particular editorial interesting isn't the number of signers, it's the apology it contains from the paper to the student body. The editors are sorry for their coverage of a recent speaking event on campus by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. They're sorry for posting photos of some of the protesters who showed up to shut down the event and prevent Sessions from speaking ( an outcome they were largely successful in causing ), and for their reporters gathering student comments .The editors were sorry that the paper did it's job, because in doing what newspapers do, and are supposed to do, some students felt threatened, and that their privacy was compromised.
        The editorial is available online. For me it's entire contents are fascinating to read. I'd love to quote fully, but it's longer than I have space to include. Here are excerpts from its last paragraph, at least, " Although the paper desires to document the gravity of the events that took place on the campus, the editors have decided to prioritize the trust and safety of students... We feel that covering traumatizing events require a different response than many other stories. While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring our fellow students feel safe- and in situations like this, that they are benefiting from our coverage rather than actively being harmed by it. We failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry. "
       The word that stands out above others is " traumatizing ". Apparently the short visit by the former A.G. from the Trump administration to the campus was traumatizing, particularly to " those who identify with marginalized groups " as earlier mentioned in the editorial. I get it that many Northwestern students might not agree with Sessions, or the president he represented, but how could his presence represent anything remotely traumatizing? And if by some flight of imagination it could be construed as traumatizing to anyone, weren't they free to stay away ? What made some students feel compelled to shut down the event? If, instead, the taumatization refers to some student activists finding their faces connected with the protest then that" trauma" was easily avoided as well by their being somewhere else on that day.                                                                 Why do many students across the country feel similar compulsion to shut down the speeches of conservative speakers? Why must the University's hosting these speaches spend many thousands of dollars, millions all together, to secure the safety of conservative speakers and not for anyone else ? When did these bastions of free speech become antagonistic to the whole notion. When did free inquiry go out of fashion there, and why? When did the dogmas of the left become unassailable ? When did questioning the left's hegemony in these institutions become so sacred that it requires violence and heckling to defend? 
       Yeah, I've got lots of questions. I'd like to know when answering to the baying mobs became the chief duty of journalists, forcing basic reportage and truth telling to the back seat? 
        I was raised generations before child car seats and widespread helicopter parenting. College students today are from a more sheltered generation.  I suppose their expectations of protection and coddling are considerably higher than what I'm familiar with.  I guess providing safe spaces for their pampered students is increasingly considered the University's highest calling and the press must play along. Good luck with that.

The missing bicycle

       The trickiest bit about traveling with a bicycle isn't the riding, it's the conveying. Bikes take very well to being ridden. They seem to take umbrage at being transported.  True to their passive aggressive nature they take their revenge by tossing off washers and bolts, or anything else left unsecured while your'e not looking. Bike touring is pretty straightforward. You strap everything to the bike you think will be useful and sit on the seat and peddle. But, every once in a while you get as far as you can easily get by peddling and throw your contraption on to some other machine and trust that you'll both get to your destination unscathed.  That doesn't always work out. Things can go wrong. For me, they often have. I've had my bikes bent and made unrideable by careless baggage handlers. I've made them unrideable myself when I've lost or overlooked necessary pieces of hardware . Once I even got at my my destination only to open the box I'd placed my bicycle in finding that I'd left the wheels behind. I've sometimes left out the pedels. I can't even count the number of times I've botched reassembling the headset and had to take it in to a bike mechanic for adjustment. The last time this happened the mechanic took pity on me and showed me that all I had to do is remove the handlebars and I could leave the headset alone. Traveling with a bike in tow has involved a lot of trial and error, but mostly error.  
        I'm traveling Amtrak as I write this. The train has stopped for ten minutes or  to pick up passengers in Johnstown Pa. I rode to Grand Junction by the scenic route and I'm taking the train from there to New Jersey to see my family. Amtrak supplied me with a large box to carry the bike and most of my camping gear in. It's so large that I didn't have to remove the wheels to fit the bike into the box, so there's no danger of leaving them out but I'm wondering what I did with those peddles. I'm not so worried about what happened to them as I am worried about the bike generally. There have been two transfers on this journey. Can I really expect Amtrak to get it right and move that precious box at the right time to the right location? I don't know. It's out of my hands. A traveler has to live by faith the same way that your garden variety saint does. You need to trust that things will work out, and if they don't, you need to trust that works out too. You could try traveling without faith, maybe put the responsibility on a travel agency, have everything planned and reserved for you. I'm not sure how much that resembles  traveling the way I do it. It sounds like  all the real traveling has already been done for you. The only interesting part for me is the uncertainty. If I wanted certainty I would have stayed home. But what do I know? I'm the guy that packs his bicycle without noticing that I've left out the wheels.
       The train has just crested a mountain range. Which is it ,the Tuscarora, the Blue Ridge, the Kittatinny , Allegheny? It's very misty up here and overcast. I can see a freeway winding it's way through the mountains below.  Most of the trees still have leaves attached with colors  from deep red through all the hues of amber, to bright yellow.  Oak is the dominant tree on these mountains, especially white oak. There's also maple and hickory. The conductor has just announced that we are now rounding " the world famous horseshoe curve".  I know train spotters think highly of this landmark. The scenery is great here, especially with fall colors, but the horseshoe curve isn't so impressive. The evening before last the California Zephyr was descending the front range into Denver. That was a more spectacular descent by far, including an unannounced horseshoe bend. The view was vast. The drop immense. There was a foot of newly fallen snow.  Behind the peaks the sun was setting  casting a golden glow over everything, the city ,the plain, the mountains.  The scale of the West is so far beyond anything in the East . An obscure eroded cliff or gully, a little noticed mountain, in the Western U.S. wouldn't pass unnoticed in the East. It would attract tourists. It might be named a National park. 
       Here's a postscript ,written the next day. Surprise, surprise, the bike didn't make it. Amtrak just called to say they have it now.

The fourth is nearly here and the town is filling with visitors already