Twitter Vented On Lisa Murkowski Today

After deciding not to vote for witnesses and additional documentation, Lisa Murkowski tweeted
yesterday:

Everyone should be treated equally under the law. I’ve been working hard with @SenatorCardin to make the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) part of the Constitution.
➡ https://t.co/vMcv0BYtz2 pic.twitter.com/G8cxIn7jem

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (@lisamurkowski) February 1, 2020

The Twitter responses were not friendly.  Here are a few of the one thousand plus responses:

• Shame on you forever.
• So glad to hear this. Looking forward to all the witnesses who don’t have to skip work to testify at trials.
• You don't believe tRUMP should be held accountable. He hasn't been treated equally under the law. You say he is above the law & can commit any crime & any treasonous thing he wants to. You support this dictator & GOP cheating for the 2020 election with help from other countries.
• and NO ONE should be above the law. you didn't allow witnesses and disparaged your oath to do fair & impartial justice. this stain on your legacy is everlasting
• Say What? Constitution, what is that. Law, what law? We are now a lawless Country thanks to the GOP. Shame, shame.
• You're now irrelevant! Go away.
• You've lost every ounce of credibility you ever had by voting no to witnesses. #Cowards
• You forgot to add that this excludes @potus. #impotus gets special treatment and is truly above the law even when our Senators were charged with protecting our country. Your words are meaningless now, Senator.
• Oh honey, from this point forward you own trump and his behavior and corruption. That’s your legacy.
• Oh, WOW!! How can you write that first sentence with a straight damned face.
• #MoscowMitch comes out against it. Then you’ll be “concerned” and “troubled” by his statements, then either vote how he tells you, or pretend to be independent by voting against him when the vote doesn’t matter.
• You betrayed our country
• The Constitution? Really? You always had my support until yesterday. #GOPComplicitTraitors #GOPCorruptionOverCountry
• 75% of us wanted witnesses and documents. What happened to representing the people? You're no better than trump.

First, as negative tweets, these are pretty mild. They are all fact based (Murkowski's vote against witnesses and more documents) and they tend to reflect the opinion/feelings of the writer based on that action. She's not called names or disparaged because of physical characteristics.

Second, I'm guessing most of the comments were not from Alaskans. I'm guessing most of these people don't really know much about Murkowski. Basically, most know that she was considering voting for witnesses, and then changed her mind.

Third, my response to this was that at least people should acknowledge if she gets this changed (is this what she got in exchange for voting no on witnesses?) it would be a good thing, but then raise there anger at her witness vote. (If this was her bargain, she has more faith in her party keeping its promise than I have.)

Fourth,I learned long ago that after a powerful emotional event, it's best to just lie low a bit while people vent their anger. People aren't ready for rational discussion when they are really mad. Just showing her face on Twitter was likely to unleash a flood of anger.

Fifth, people are shouting about how excluding witnesses proves it's a sham trial. But it was obviously a sham trial from the beginning when the head of the jury said he was consulting with the defendant on how to plan the case.

Sixth, allowing witnesses and documents definitely would have prolonged the trial. There's a possibility it would have revealed more blockbuster revelations than we already know about. But enough to win over 16 more Republicans to convict? I doubt it. Even if Senators don't have some hidden shame, they know that Trump can simply make crap up about them and it will blemish them for a long time. And that he would.

Seventh, but I do hope that liberals are really careful about what they see and hear. There are plenty of folks out there focusing on the competition aspects of the Democratic race, rather than on the substance. It's much easier to understand and conflict gets clicks. I'll just say, that if it's about one Democrat being nasty about another one, take it with a grain of salt. Assume it's a troll trying to divide progressives until you get evidence it's not.

Eighth, the same people who said Trump couldn't win four years ago, are giving their opinions about electability now. It's opinion based on selective or just limited data. What polls say now is pretty meaningless. Electability is less about policy and more about charisma. Reagan - a charismatic, well spoken conservative - was followed by Clinton, a charismatic, well spoken moderate. If you have both - ability to speak to the issues and to the voters - you can win. Besides, winning is going to be about getting voters to the polls, countering false reports, making sure voting machines are fixed or hacked. And these responses to Lisa Murkowski's Tweet show that people are fighting mad. If they all can be recruited to each get ten people who have never voted to vote, Trump doesn't have a chance.

Finally, for those of you who have never seen Twitter, you can go and look at it without paying and without becoming a member. Just go to Twitter.com and poke around a bit. I'm going to do several posts on Twitter in the next weeks. At the very least you should know what it looks and feels like. In the search box you can put in topics or names you'd like to see.

"Women in power are targets of abuse"

That's an LA Times headline today.

The article goes on to say that mayors are subject to abuse at greater levels than the average person and

"A recent study published in the academic journal State and Local Government Review found that mayors — women and men — face greater levels of physical violence and psychological abuse than those in the general U.S. workforce, with social media being the most common channel for that abuse.
Female mayors were not only much more likely to face some form of violence or abuse, but they were also more likely to experience abuse of a sexualized nature.
“Women are facing more of this kind of abuse and violence, and more types of it,” Sue Thomas, a research scientist and co-author of the study, told me."

More specifically:

"If you are a woman who is so bold as to inhabit a vaguely public stage, chances are high that you will be called a lot of things that can’t be printed in a family newspaper. And then some.
It’s a truism that unfortunately appears to transcend industry or geography. Exist in public, and eventually an online mob will nitpick your looks, rate your sexual desirability in relation to your ability to do your job, and probably make threats vague and specific — regardless of whether you’re a female journalist, the founder of an indie game studio or trying to run a small city in the Central Coast region of California."

I would argue that one reason Trump's base doesn't shrink any further is that a sizable section of it includes men who are very much like Trump:  they're insecure about themselves, need constant adulation, are abusive to people with less power than themselves, particularly women. Trump is a role model who helps vindicate their own terrible behavior.  Of course they love him and vote for him.

I've long believed that the way to improve people's social interactions is to work to improve parenting.  How we are raised affects how we feel about ourselves and how we deal with conflict.  As much as I dote on my grandchildren, it's also true that babies can be very annoying and exhausting tor parents who aren't prepared for that responsibility. Even for parents who do everything right.   And for parents whose own parents were poor models, learning how to be a nurturing yet firm parent is difficult.

A study published by the National Institute of Justice, for example, states:

"Using carefully developed methods for eliciting retrospective reports of childhood abuse and neglect, a new study of inmates in a New York prison found that 68 percent of the sample reported some form of childhood victimization and 23 percent reported experiencing multiple forms of abuse and neglect, including physical and sexual abuse. These findings provide support for the belief that the majority of incarcerated offenders have likely experienced some type of childhood abuse or neglect."

The National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse posts:

"Based on the reports we have, it's conservatively believed that in today's society 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys WILL BE sexually molested before they are 18 years old -- which means 1 in 5 of America's youth, or fully 20% to 25% of the population !!
In addition, as we mentioned we're concerned here at NAASCA with helping stop ALL kinds of child abuse, including sexual abuse, violence, emotional trauma and neglect, and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) believes that close to 50% of our youth will experience at least one of these.
In it's most recent study, a few years ago, the CDC estimated the lifetime cost to society for dealing with all issues related to the child abuse of just one year's worth of traumatized kids is $585 billion, an astonishing figure that obviously repeats each year !!!" (emphasis added)

I would argue that having loving parents is the best inheritance any child could have.  These are the truly privileged people in our society.  Furthermore it's clear that many people manage to survive and thrive despite forms of childhood mistreatment.  Just assume  kids raised in poverty manage to get financially secure. But they are the exception now.

All of us are guilty of neglecting these kids to some degree.  The Democrats, who championed all sorts of 'outsiders' saw whites - particularly white males - as a generalized privileged group.  They didn't recognize the pressures on males, they didn't distinguish those white males who had been physically or emotionally abused.  And in part that helped build a base for a candidate like Trump.

But the Republican steadfast focus on abortion is also at fault.  Even if the figure cited above of 50% of American youth experiencing some form of abuse is high (and remember, it could also be low), that's huge!   But the pro-life crowd focused mostly on abortion, not on healthy parenting for kids, not on sex education and the prevention of unwanted kids.  

There are a lot of hurting people in the US.  Online anonymity along with an abuser in the White House has increased their opportunities to vent their own self-anger on to others.  

This is not an issue that will be resolved by just cracking down on apprehended offenders.  It needs a much larger societal approach to raising kids and developing a population of individuals who feel good about who they are.  

"The solution was clear, Wendell said: Buy the votes of Senators" - Being Better Citizens Today By Knowing The Past

Alaskans are likely aware of William Seward more than the rest of the country.  After all, he was the man who arranged to buy Alaska from the Russians, and we even have a state holiday honoring Seward.  But that doesn't mean know much about him.  A local journalist, Mike The Man Who Bought Alaska:  William H. Seward.  He also wrote companion book - The Man Who Sold Alaska: Tsar Alexander II of Russia.  The books came out in 2017, to celebrate Alaska's 150th year as part of the United States.
Dunham, made an effort to educate us when he wrote the book

I read the Seward volume flying down to LA.  It's short and easy to read.

I learned that Seward did a lot of other things besides buy Alaska.  And I already did a post on some of that.

This post is to remind us that history is worth studying so that we understand more about the present.  I've got a few quotes that don't need much comment from me.

Immigration Fights

"Prejudice against Catholics,  especially Irish, was perhaps more intense in New York than prejudice against blacks.  Religious instruction was part of every elementary school curriculum and the doctrine taught would be Protestant, with a good measure of virulent anti-Catholicism thrown in.
Irish immigrants balked at sending their children to such schools and, as a result, many children of Irish parents didn't attend school at all.  Seward's efforts to see that educational funding was shared with Catholic schools raised the ire of the anti-immigrant party that took the name "Know-Nothings."  (p. 26)

Ignorant Voters

"To win the big Northern states of New York and Pennsylvania, Clay positioned himself as the pro-immigration candidate, hoping to obtain the support of German and Irish newcomers who tended to vote Democratic.  It backfired.  Anti-immigrant riots broke out in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.  The Know-Nothings backed Martin Van Buren, an unabashed nativist.  Clay lost New York and Polk won the election.
The Know-Nothing movement was to me a source of apprehension,"  Seward said.  "When I saw not only individuals but whole communities and parties swept away by an impulse contradicting the very fundamental idea on which the Government rests, I began to doubt whether the American people had such wisdom as I had always given them credit for."  (p. 30)]

Congressional Relationships I

"The first blows of he Civil War came in May of 1856.  Sumner gave a two-day speech dripping with pornographic innuendo and pillorying South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, comparing him to Don Quixote, infatuated by a harlot.
Two days later, Butler's cousin, Representative Preston Books, stalked into the Senate, found Sumner at his desk and demanded an apology.  Sumner refused, not even looking up from the paper he was writing on.  Brooks used his cane to pummel the Massachusetts Senator nearly to death.
Brooks was exonerated by the House of Representatives. . ." (pp. 39-40)

Bad Supreme Court Decisions

"In March 1858 the Supreme Court gave its verdict in the case of Dred Schott, a slave whose master brought him to a free state.  Scott argued that, as an American citizen in a state that did not allow slavery, he ought to be free.  The court, however, declared that under the Constitution blacks were not and could never be citizens.
Seward denounced the Dred Scott decision in terms that would be considered impolitic if applied to a Supreme Court decision today. "Judicial usurpation is more odious and intolerable than any other among the manifold practices of tyranny," he said, and argued that it was time to reorganize the judicial branch to bring it 'into harmony with the Constitution.'"  (p.  40)

Congressional Relationships II

"Through all the bitterness of the Kansas-Nebraska debates, the attacks in the press and even from friends, Seward remained personally on good terms with members of the other side, dining, drinking, joking and playing whist with them when they weren't in verbal combat on the floor of the Senate.
He closely cooperated with pro-slave Democrat Texas Senator Thomas Rust and even planned a trip around the world with him.  When Rust killed himself in 1857 after being diagnosed with cancer, Seward called it a tragedy for both himself and the country.
In the following year, Mississippi's Jefferson Davis spent weeks in a darkened sickroom because of an eye infection.  Seward visited almost every day, reading the newspapers to him and filling him in on the gossip of the capital."

Impeachment

"Seward took the lead in preparing Johnson's defense.  Working with Democrats and the few moderate Republicans still speaking to him, he obtained a top defense team and raised funds to cover their costs.  He turned to the most powerful lobbyist in Washington, Cornelius Wendell, a man who knew the minds - and the price - of every member of Congress better than they knew themselves.
The solution was clear, Wendell said:  Buy the votes of Senators.  The cost:  a quarter of a million dollars.  Seward raised the money.  Wendell got it to the right people."

Japanese Internment In WWII Is History, But We Can Still Change Border Internment Today

Esther Nishio, according to an LA Times story today, was a guinea pig, a test.  A white family friend, Hugh Anderson, had been fighting against the internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII.  He'd gotten permission for one young Japanese internee - Elizabeth - to come get out of the camp in 1944 and begin Pasadena Junior College.

"When she arrived in Pasadena on Sept. 12, Esther was greeted enthusiastically by the Anderson family, along with the editor of the school newspaper and members of the Student Christian Assn.
She moved into the Andersons’ two-story home with a swooped roof on Roosevelt Avenue in Altadena and was the guest of honor that night at the Eagle Rock residence of E.C. Farnham, executive director of the Church Federation of Los Angeles.
The warm welcome was short-lived. The next morning, newspapers tipped off by the editor of the campus newspaper published articles about her arrival — including the address of Anderson’s home. The story was picked up by Stars and Stripes and published in papers around the world.
Local nativist groups began whipping up a froth. Menacing letters started piling up in the Andersons’ mailbox.
“The only kind of a Jap the people of Cal. trust is a dead one,” an anonymous correspondent from Los Angeles wrote.
Others railed against Anderson as being un-American.
'I have a son in the service who has just recently been discharged.' a Mrs. J.H. Wilson wrote. 'The boys wonder what they are fighting for when the government tells them to kill them and our citizens take them into their homes.'”

It seems appropriate to recount this tale now as the president and his henchmen (why is Stephen Miller still allowed to be working the White House?!) abuse legitimate and legal asylum seekers.  The details are a bit different, but this is a racist policy that intentionally and cruelly treats innocent human beings.  At least back after Pearl Harbor, in the pre-civil rights era, one can sort of understand how people might believe there were Japanese spies among the Japanese-American communities of the west coast.  But, of course, no similar program was set up for the German-American citizens.  And a number of white neighbors were able to profit from the rush sales internees were forced to have before being taken to camps.  

I would also note, that I first learned about the internment camps in 1956, when I transferred to a new elementary school and YF was in my new class.  And in junior and senior high there were a number of other Japanese-American students who had been born in internment camps at the end of the war.  

And as I write this I'm on Bainbridge Island and I've visited several times at the memorial to the Bainbridge Island residents who were shipped off to internment camps.  And I've seen the movie, The Empty Chair, about the how the valedictorian of a Juneau high school's chair was placed on the stage, empty, after he was interned before graduation.  I know that there were whites who essentially stole the property of interned Japanese and there were whites who kept their property safe and returned it to them when they got out.

But this is the first time I've heard about groups of white Americans fighting against the interment camps.  

Fortunately, today, there is a lot more opposition to the internment camps and family separations (which was not part of theWWII policy) that we have now.  Yet that doesn't seem to be ending the practice.  

And today we still have rabid haters who know nothing but their own anger projected out onto suffering people in support of the president.  

We can't send too many emails and letters, or make too many calls to our legislators.  You are right if you think one call doesn't matter.  But 50 people making one call on a topic does.  Particularly in a small population state like Alaska.  At the very least, you can show your grandchildren copies of what you sent and tell them you did what you could.  

This is Thanksgiving weekend.  It's a good time to try to make amends for what Americans have done to the people who helped them survive those first winters in Massachusetts.  (A number of the refugees are indigenous peoples of Central America.)

Why Did Kavanaugh Drink So Much In High School And College?

Here's my short hypothesis:

Kavanaugh was an only child of two well-off and well-connected Washington insiders.  His mother was a judge - and he talked about her at length at his confirmation hearing.  He didn't talk so much about his father, who, according to the New York Times in a long July 2018 bio of Kavanaugh, was

".  .  . a top lobbyist for the cosmetics industry, courting Congress and combating regulations from the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies. (Among his hires for legal work: John G. Roberts Jr., now the chief justice.)
In current parlance, as an old friend put it, the elder Mr. Kavanaugh and his associates were “swamp creatures,” using money and connections to fend off demands for safer products and greater transparency about ingredients. He was a golf partner of Tip O’Neill, the longtime Democratic House speaker, who weighed in to support Martha Kavanaugh’s nomination to a judgeship. He was paid $13 million, including his retirement package, in 2005, his last year at the Cosmetics, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, records show."

So the key thing that triggered this post was Kavanaugh's answer to Sen. Whitehouse, who asked him about whether his 'ralphing' was related to alcohol:

"Senator, I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school. Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School. Worked my tail off."(from The Atlantic)

I'm guessing that Brett Kavanaugh felt a lot of parental expectation on his shoulders. He doesn't tell us how much he enjoyed his academics or his basketball or his football.  Rather he tells us "I busted my butt in school."  "Worked my tail off."  This particular quote doesn't include his volunteer work or his weekly mass attendance.  

Aside from the fact that his response doesn't answer Whitehouse's question, it does seem to raise the question, why did he work so hard?  Why did he have to be on both the football team and the basketball team?  Why did he have to be top of his class?  

What this response of Kavanaugh says to me is this:  Brett Kavanaugh was under a lot of pressure to excel, to create a record that would get him into the best schools, and for some reason, Brett was compelled to meet those expectations.  His parents didn't have other kids to hang their hopes on so all pressure was on Brett.  And we don't know how much time they spent with him.  The Country Club seems to have been an important place for his father's business - playing golf with those he needed to persuade to keep the regulations off the cosmetics industry. 

And with all that pressure, getting really drunk on weekends would be an easy way to release it.   And then there's all the anger he's reported to have expressed when drunk and which he displayed for us at the hearing.  He couldn't, apparently, rebel against his parents, so he lashed out at others.  He had a lot of pressure and a lot of anger.  Beer was his refuge.

I would further add that his self-image of a good person clearly reflects the standards he thinks his parents wanted him to be - a judge (for his mom) and an inside player  (for his dad.)   He's pretty much fulfilled all his professional goals, and now he sees this Supreme Court position as his well deserved right for all his hard work.  

And it doesn't seem like his less admirable behaviors - like the drinking and alleged sexual aggression - have ever gotten him into trouble.  His privileged status seems to have made him immune from all that.  

Until now.  And when you are used to always getting what you want, you begin to assume you are entitled to everything you want.  

One thing I haven't seen mentioned much is his current drinking habit.  How much does he drink now and how often does he become a belligerent drunk?

Kavanaugh Hearings Thoughts - No One Is Entitled To A Supreme Court Seat And This Was NOT A Trial

[UPDATE:  Just moments after I posted this, I see that Sen Flake has called for a week's delay to let the FBI investigate the sexual assault charge.]

1.  Ostensibly, this hearing was about  who is telling the truth.  Dr  Ford or Judge Kavanaugh?
Republicans seemed to have conceded  that  Ford was telling the truth, EXCEPT that she got her assaulter wrong and Kavanaugh was telling the truth when he said he never assaulted her or anyone else.   That takes some tricky brain compartmentalization, but since the Trump presidency, Republicans have gotten lots of practice with that.

Democrats felt Ford was telling the truth including her identification of her assaulter.

My perception, and apparently most people's, was that Ford was very credible  Even the Republicans spoke of her with respectful tones.  The only problem with her testimony, in their eyes, was that she was mistaken about her attacker.

Kavanaugh, on the other hand, provided evidence of what some had alleged was a violent temper when he gets drunk.  Except, I presume, he wasn't drunk.  He certainly seemed to be highly emotional - yelling in obvious fury about the accusations and also crying at times.

I couldn't help but think about the warning:  You don't know how you'll react in a crisis until you are in one.  Kavanaugh was in a crisis yesterday and instead of staying calm and reasoned, Kavanaugh lost it completely.  He was  focused on himself - how unfairly he was being treated.  Although people argue that it is difficult to pinpoint the meaning of 'judicial temperament," what Kavanaugh demonstrated yesterday, surely wasn't it.

And Kavanaugh refused to concede the two things that could have cleared his name.

1. Unlike Ford, he's taken no polygraph.  
2. He wouldn't agree to ask an FBI investigation into the assault charge.  Despite telling Senators he would agree to anything to clear his name,  when they offered him such a way - that he ask Trump to order an FBI investigation, he hemmed and hawed and said everything but wouldn't give a clear yes or no.  
1. He echoed Republican senators that there could have been an FBI investigation if the Democrats hadn't concealed the Ford letter.  (Feinstein said she had done so because of a promise she'd made not to reveal Ford's name.)   
2. He quoted Joe Biden saying that you could prove anything you wanted with an FBI report, that they didn't make any conclusions, only presented facts.  Yet he also said he had been cleared by FBI investigations any number of times when he was up for previous positions.  
3. Kavanaugh also claimed that there was no need for an FBI investigation because the Senate Judiciary Committee was investigating.  Yet each Senator gets only 5 minutes, and a skilled candidate like Kavanaugh who has coached nominees in the past, knows he can eat those minutes up by talking without answering the questions.  FBI investigators can ask for as long as they need.
4. He also said there was no need to have people like Mark Judge testify because he'd already submitted a note saying that Kavanaugh was not involved in the Ford assault.  Yet writing a note - actually it came from his attorney - is clearly not the same as appearing in person and having people ask probing questions and being able to judge how the person responds.  

Overall, the only evidence that Ford was wrong about her attacker was Kavanaugh's denial.  And his claims of inconsistencies in her story, that trauma experts say are normal memory lapses for trauma victims.   That was enough for Republicans.  Even though he, and they, could probably get much closer to the truth with an FBI investigation and him taking a polygraph.

2.  For Republicans, the hearing was about trying to convince people watching, that the Democrats have poisoned the advise and consent process by, 

• hiding the Ford letter until the last minute
• by opposing Kavanaugh from the beginning

Someone even said that from now on Supreme Court nominations will simply be bitter partisan fights, not about the candidates' real qualifications, but about winning and losing.

But, of course, that needs to be put into the context of all the federal judges that the Republicans held up when Obama was president, including never even holding hearings for Merrick Garland.
And the fact that Trump had relatively little trouble getting Neil Gorsuch approved.
The problems are also exacerbated by the elimination of the 2/3 majority requirement for approval of Supreme Court judges.  With that rule, presidents knew they had to nominate a judge moderate enough that some members of the minority could vote for.  With the simple majority rule we have now, a president can appoint a much more extreme judge if he can get all of the majority to vote yes.


3.  Kavanaugh's testimony made this all about Kavanaugh.  He was obsessed with how this process was ruining his reputation, his life, and his family.  All the things that happen to rape and sexual assault victims, he claimed for himself.  Yet as much as he was feeling sorry for himself, many decisions he's made as a judge don't seem to show much empathy for other people who have far more difficult problems in life.  See this overview of some of his decisions.

But this process wasn't about Kavanaugh really.

Yes, he is the nominee, but this was a hearing to confirm a presidential nominee to the Supreme Court.  No one is owed a Supreme Court position.  And no one is 'the only possible good candidate.' The president should nominate the best person he can find that the Senate will approve.  In the Senate's vetting process, some problems have arisen.  Problems, which if true, should disqualify Kavanaugh.

A candidate who had the best interests of the country in his heart, rather than ranting about his victimhood,  might realize that the debate over his nomination was not only hurting the country now, but would hurt the credibility of the Supreme Court if he were to serve.

4.  No one is entitled to a Supreme Court seat.  He acted as if he were owed this Supreme Court position.  It was his and he sees the Democrats trying to snatch it away.  I understand that being accused of sexual assault does have a great impact on one's life.  But far worse things happen to people every day - innocent people get shot by police, others die because they can't afford medical treatment, or they lose their home so they can pay for medical treatment.  Their kids die of violence in schools.  And my sense is that Kavanaugh, as a judge, has little sympathy for their plight.  But, I give him credit that, like all the Republican senators there, he made sure not to insult Ford or to question her integrity.  But one can't help thinking that's because in the #metoo era, they knew it would make them look bad in front of millions.

But Kavanaugh made it clear - this wasn't about the good of the country, it was about him and his entitlement.  He yelled in anger.  He cried in (not sure, frustration?)  And he told us how his life had been ruined.

Most of us have survived not being appointed to the US Supreme Court.  And most of us have been turned down for something we felt was important - whether a job, a marriage proposal, a job.  And we've all been upset for a while and then gotten on with our lives.  Most of us have not had temper tantrums during the job interview.   The temporary fuss over Kavanaugh's confirmation will blow over.   His children will still love him and he will find lucrative opportunities.  In fact, his fallback position, should he not be confirmed, is his current life time appointment as a judge.

5.  This isn't a trial.  Neither Kavanaugh nor Ford were on trial yesterday - though the Republicans hired a woman prosecutor to question Ford for them as if she were on trial.. There will be no verdict of guilty or innocent.  No one will face jail time or other penalties as a result of these hearings.  And because this is not a courtroom, their resolution of which person is telling the truth, need not be "beyond a reasonable doubt."


6.  Kavanaugh was too clever for his own good.

Kavanaugh knows this Senate process well.  He's coached other court nominees when he worked in the Bush administration.  But all rules of strategy are meant to be broken when conditions change.  One rule most judicial candidates have adopted is to be as evasive in answers as possible. Don't let the Senators pin you down.  Kavanaugh has become an expert in not saying yes or no.  As mentioned above, he skirted the issue every time Democratic Senators urged him to ask for an FBI investigation to clear his name.

But in another question - Did he wish that Dr. Ford had never come forward? - he again weaseled.  This really seemed like a softball question.  There was no one watching (I'm sure) who didn't believe that Kavanaugh would have preferred to have his hearings over with without Dr. Ford's accusations.  Yet he wouldn't say yes.  I assume that his training in evasion wouldn't let him acknowledge what everyone knew to be true.   In my opinion, he would have sounded uncharacteristically candid had he just said, "I would love not to have to be here today, so yes."  He couldn't.  All he could do was continue playing dodgeball as Democratic senators kept throwing questions at him.


There was so much to think about during yesterday's hearings.  These are just a few observations I had.

And I can't help but imagine what people who did NOT see the testimony and are relying on news reports might think.  Even reports I heard on NPR seemed to be bending over backwards to not suggest any bias - thus depriving the listener of how different the testimony of the two was.

Two Movies Two Nights, One About Love, One About Anger - Naming and Billboards (Updated)

Monday night we saw Call Me By Your Name, a movie as devoid of violence as you can get.  There was blood - Elia got a nose bleed while eating dinner.  Oscar scraped his stomach in a bike accident.  If there was more than that, I don't remember.  The movie was about love in many different forms from love among family members, friends, and sexual love.  It's about intelligent, well educated, multilingual people interacting not just with civility, but with affection.  It all takes place in a lushly sensual summer in Northern Italy.

The movie has gotten a lot of praise.  The New Yorker has one gushing review and one thoroughly nasty review.  It wasn't merely critical, but relentlessly churlish.  The first paragraph ends with:

"Elio affirms that his parents were aware of the relationship and offered their approval, to which Oliver responds, “You’re so lucky; my father would have carted me off to a correctional facility.” And that’s the premise of the film: in order to have anything like a happy adolescence and avoid the sexual repression and frustration that seem to be the common lot, it’s essential to pick the right parents. The movie is about, to put it plainly, being raised right."

I had thought about how loving Elio and his parents were with each other, and as well as I got along with my parents, this family really had a great rapport.  But to say that the movie was all about being raised by the right parents, hints that perhaps something about the warmth of the family irritated Brody, the reviewer, enough to color his whole view of the movie.  There were things he said that had  merit.  He basically said it was all a tourist promotion scheme for Northern Italy, and I did think, when I saw the waterfall, about all the people who will add it to their itineraries when the go to Italy.  And I thought about his criticism of the camera shots.  There were no point of view shots - and I realized I couldn't remember seeing what was happening from the eyes of the main characters. (I'd have to see it again to be sure.  I'm not sure it's true.  We do see Oscar's arrival from the upstairs window where Elio is, for example.)  That criticism also made me feel sorry for someone so steeped in film making that he sees the film making instead of the film.

I did raise the question to my wife about Armie Hammer's name.  I joked that he was the grandson of the oil man Armand Hammer.  It turns out, according to The Times of Israel that he's the great grandson of Armand Hammer.  The review focuses on the Jewish themes of the movie.


Tuesday night we saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a movie full of violence, foul language, and anger.  The film erases the idea of good guys and bad guys - everyone is flawed, and there's anger deep in all of them.  With one exception.  It doesn't paint a pretty picture of the United States, but it does force anyone watching it to think about our uncivil society and the troubled lives of people who never experienced dependable, unconditioned love.  This is, for me, a movie about anger and how it causes us to do stupid things, to hurt other people as a way of trying to lessen our own pain.

All that said, Three Billboards got a slew of Golden Globe awards Sunday night and Call Me By Your Name got shut out, though it did have a lot of nominations.

This post is for Casey, but he's probably already asleep.

[UPDATE Jan 10, 2017:  I've had a night to sleep on this second film.  What hadn't quite formed itself into words last night:  This is a fairy tale, constructed to make a point about the destructiveness of anger and the importance of forgiveness.  The characters and the town are less real people than constructs to teach a lesson, a parable perhaps.  That's the unease I walked away from the theater with.  Will it work?  I don't know.  This town is in the same state as Ferguson and racism in the police station isn't below the surface.  While partisan politics aren't mentioned, this town clearly voted for Trump and Mildred is probably one of the few who didn't.  The town is divided between troubled whites and others - blacks, a gay guy, and a dwarf.  I suspect the obviousness of that will have many Trump voters immune to the message about the destructiveness of anger and hate.  It will come across like Clinton's deplorable comment did.  With the exception of one (very cool) white resident of Ebbing, the only people who supported Mildred were the outsiders - blacks, a gay, a midget.   But perhaps people who originally side with Mildred will recognize their own obsessiveness.

In a SlashFilm interview, director McDonagh says the screenplay was written eight years ago, so it's not about Trump and current politics, but it doesn't say how much time he spent in small town Missouri.  (Sam Rockwell, in a Vanity Fair interview says the movie was filmed in Asheville, North Carolina, but he spent time in Missouri doing ride-alongs with police.) So I simply don't know how well this reflects the people in a town like this.

All that said, each film maker, each author should make the story they have in them.  Short of intentionally manipulative propaganda, it's not their responsibility how people react.   Riling people up is not a bad thing.  so long as they think about the issues raised and their own positions.]

What's Wrong with Seattle, Alaska, and the US Olympic Team's New Sweaters?

I took this morning off and stayed in bed and read the first half of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette, a book that hovers between trashy and deliciously arch.  Junk food with substance.   Bernadette lives in an abandoned girls reform school in the Queen Anne section of Seattle.  Her husband is a Microsoft star.  Since both my kids spent a fair amount of time in Seattle - and my daughter still lives there - I rationalized this book would fill in some gaps in my understanding of the Emerald City.

Here's Bernadette:

"As much as I try not to engage people at the grocery checkout, I couldn't resist one day when I overheard one refer to Seattle as "cosmopolitan."  Encouraged, I asked, "Really?"  She said, Sure, Seattle is full of people from all over.  "Like where?"  Her answer, "Alaska.  I have  ton of friends from Alaska."  Whoomp, there it is." (p. 132)

Bernadette's neighbor is having a social event and wants her garden perfect, which means getting rid of the blackberry tendrils in her yard.  She calls the guy who had exterminated them recently to come back.  Sorry, he says, those come from your neighbor's (Bernadette's) yard.  Since she doesn't get along with Bernadette, she tries to get him to come over when Bernadette is not home and do the deed.  This book is fiction.  But I know Bernadette's neighbor.

And when I finally got out of bed and looked at the Anchorage Daily News, there was a NY Times story about 'the hideous Christmas sweaters' that Ralph Lauren designed for the US Olympic team headed to Sochi.

Why do people have such strong opinions about what other people do or say or look like?  I know that sounds almost like a naive question, but since we are faced with a seemingly unlimited supply of snark, shouldn't we do more than just accept it as 'the way things are"?  Or figure out how to convert it to usable energy?

This isn't going to be an exhaustive treatise, but at least, let's start with these three examples.

Seattle and Alaska.  Bernadette engineered the move to Seattle after her LA venture went bad.  When Microsoft bought her husband's company, she took the opportunity to escape LA to Seattle.  And when she realizes she doesn't fit in Seattle, it turns out her husband fits perfectly in the corporate playground Bill Gates built.  So there she is.

Her snark bubbles up from the suppressed anger about living in Seattle (and the unresolved LA venture.)   She's more of an introvert and an artist and not very tolerant of superficiality and status.  She's a serious person who has pursued what felt right without conforming to what the world expected of her.  I'd say her snark comes from living in a world that doesn't work for her.  She's impatient with people who (act as though they) love Seattle and, I guess Alaska, in her mind, is Seattle cubed.

The neighbor who's willing to trespass and, in her mind I'm sure, help to clean up Bernadette's unruly blackberries, isn't that different.   Blackberries are the bane of people who need to control.  They symbolize all that is wrong with the world.  Her image of perfection is destroyed by these pesky weeds that spread like some uncontrollable alien creature.  Bernadette is neglectful in not controlling them.  It's almost like a constantly barking dog.  In her mind, trespassing to cut the blackberries is no different from throwing dog biscuits over the fence to quiet the barking dog.  But deep down, she knows what she's doing is wrong, so when she's caught, she attacks.

I think both those examples deal with aesthetics and feeling out of control.  Seattle doesn't match Bernadette's aesthetics for a comfortable place to live and she feels caught there.  Her rants about all the five street intersections in Seattle are not that different from her neighbor's concern with the blackberries.   And in both cases, the problems grate them, in part because they don't have the power to control their environments to put their lives in synch.

And surely the Olympic sweaters are also about aesthetics.  They just don't match some people's notion of what looks good.  Or, turned around, they match the detractors idea of schlock.  Does it matter?  To the extent that the Olympic team represents all Americans, I guess all Americans have a right to express their opinions.

Actually, when I checked online, I found out that the Olympic sweaters are on sale at the Ralph Lauren website for $595.  I'm guessing the snarky NY Times article is just part of the whole Olympic marketing campaign to get people to be aware of the sweaters and other outfits so they will buy them.  I'll have to look at how much Lauren paid the Olympics to get to use the athletes as models on their websites.  (How long will it take for the Olympics to die of their excess?)

But is any of this worth getting all worked up about?  I like Bernadette's advice to the daughter after a confrontation with the neighbor and the daughter gets upset.

"She just held up her hand in my direction.  "It's not worth it."

And ultimately, my concern about people throwing verbal darts at others, goes back to the story of the angry boy I found and posted back in 2007, whose father made him pound a nail into the fence for every tantrum he had.  And then when he finally got over the tantrums, he had him pull a nail out each day he went without a tantrum.  When all the nails were out, the father points to one of the holes left in the fence and says:

When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won't matter how many times you say 'I'm sorry', the wound is still there." 

That old post does find Buddhist uses for anger too.

Buddhist Influence on my Views of Anger

Harpboyak left a comment early this morning on my post suggesting my reaction to Aaron Selbig's righteous lack of compassion for Kohring was not the ideal path:

Gimme a break! Vic is a CRIMINAL who refuses to recognize the reality of his behavior. I agree that he needs rehabilitation, but it won't happen until he admits that what he did was WRONG.

Aaron, me, and everyone else is damned right to be angry and demand retribution from these criminals that violated the public trust and their oaths of office. They gave alway BILLIONS of our oil money to the oil companies!

I guess the three years I lived in Thailand rubbed off on me. Buddhists take a very different view of anger. They see it as weakness, as losing control of oneself. They get embarrassed for you if you lose your temper. I know this is hard for Americans to understand, but I found this story on a site on Buddhism that might help explain my view on this. The link goes to the site which has a lot more on the topic of anger.

A BAG OF NAILS

Once upon a time there was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he should hammer a nail in the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. But gradually, the number of daily nails dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the first day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He proudly told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.
"You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out, it won't matter how many times you say 'I'm sorry', the wound is still there."

But what about righteous anger? The site has something on that too (though probably not as powerful as the story.)

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama mentioned:

"When reason ends, then anger begins.
Therefore, anger is a sign of weakness."

Is anger or hatred ever justified? A direct answer from Allan Wallace in 'Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground up':

"'Righteous hatred' is in the same category as 'righteous cancer'or 'righteous tuberculosis'. All of them are absurd concepts.

This does not mean that one should never take action against aggression or injustice! Instead, one should try to develop an inner calmness and insight to deal with these situations in an appropriate way. We all know that anger and aggression give rise to anger and aggression. One could say that there are three ways to get rid of anger: kill the opponent, kill yourself or kill the anger - which one makes most sense to you?"

Buddhism doesn't have rules in the Western sense. Rather it has teachings that show people how to live a life that will, eventually, lead one to perfection that releases one from the cycle of rebirth, and to nirvana. It is up to the individual to adopt those teachings or not, because it is the individual's life that is affected.

In Aaron's case, the anger was multiplied by broadcasting it over the airwaves. I just was expressing my disappointment that this alternative radio station, in essence, wasn't so alternative. As the quote above says, "anger and aggression give rise to anger and aggression."
He's just doing what his opponents do with a different spin. But he continues the cycle.

Rev. Koun Franz of the Anchorage Zen Community

impressed me at the discussion after the reading of the War Prayer.

The comment that was most enlightening to me was from Rev Koun Franz in response to what a good Buddhist would do if he saw someone violently assaulting another. It would be ok to intervene, he said, if you did it for the right reason, which would be to help both people. If you intervened from moral superiority to punish the aggressor you would cause a short term benefit, but you would be perpetuating what the aggressor was doing. This helps me understand a story I heard the other day about a survivor of the Mi Lai massacre during the Vietnam war. Asked today what she thought about Americans coming to Mi Lai today, she said she was glad they came. What if it was one of the people who killed her family? That would be even better, because then I could forgive them.

Of course, it isn't this simple. We also get this advice

The late Tibetan teacher Chogyam Tryungpa Rinpoche often taught that five kleshas (in the Tibetan tradition, they are greed, hatred, delusion, pride, and jealousy) are in essence five wisdoms. The wisdom side of anger, for example, is discriminating awareness.

How can this be? Anger makes us sharp and quick to criticize, but anger also helps us see what's wrong. Our feelings and emotions are actually serving like intelligence agents, bringing in news from the field of our experience. We should not dismiss, ignore, or repress them.