The Payoff of Hate: Where We Stand Today

[Sort of a Synopsis:  This post covers a lot of issues that are entangled and usually handled separately, if at all.  But it does make it seem like I'm throwing in lots of different issues and can't get focused.  Let me try

Hate is the basic tactic and underlying disease of the Trump administration.  It's a symptom of how in "the greatest country the world has ever seen' something terribly wrong is happening in families and how kids are being raised.  Without the love and basic decency a happy society needs.  

Enough voters have been raised in dysfunctional families to elect a Trump.  (Assuming Trump's comments about Elon having fixed the election are just bluster.)  The leader of the kids raised without the love and approval all kids deserve is a terrible president.Iran is  like Trump University - it was a threat to something else Trump valued more:  an upcoming election.   

But Iran - and the reflecting pool - another conspicuous and highly visible failure - are only diversions from the Epstein files.  The Epstein files themselves are a diversion from the far right conservative organizations that have filled the Supreme Court with their puppets and had the blueprint for dismantling the US bureaucracy.  

And finally, coming back to hate.  We need to recognize the source of MAGA anger and give them legitimate options to heal.  Many of them probably are too far gone, but fighting hate with hate is to lose to hate.  And to miss the power behind the throne.  

I hope that's a fairly reasonable overview.  The rest is basically the same idea with more detail.]

Post begins here:

Hate.  Slurs.  Constantly demeaning people who don't adore you.  You've heard enough of Trump's invective to know what I'm talking about, so I needn't repeat it.

We're basically shaped by our genes and our environment.  I would argue that it was the hate and nastiness experienced by tens of millions of US voters that drew them to vote for Trump.  People who grew up hating people whose skin color was darker than theirs.  People who watched their fathers verbally and physically abuse their mothers.  People who grew up in households where fights - verbal and physical - were the way to solve problems.  People whose religious leaders lashed out at people who were sexually attracted by people the church thought sinful.  People who suffered at the hands of their fathers, but nevertheless, copied his child-rearing practices.  

Such folks get both genes and environment pushing them toward a life of difficult relationships, lack of skills for peacefully resolving problems.  And that leads to hard lives, to feelings that one is on one's own, that no one will help you.  Some of these folks will lead an economically perilous life. Some will have skills and (maybe an inheritance) that allows them financial security, even serious wealth.  But they are all hurting.   Until a hand reaches out to help them - an addiction recovery group, an evangelical church, or a cult movement led by a bully.  

Despite the odds, not all those folks are fated to repeat what they learned at home.  Some may just figure it out.  That there's a better way.  That they don't want to inflict on their kids what they received.  They may have a teacher who shows them better interpersonal skills.  A pastor or other mentor who cares without expecting something in return.  Or in other ways, discover options they didn't learn at home.  

If I'm right on this, there are millions of women who were not treated well by their fathers, but through some twisted human flaw, seeing those traits in Trump draws them to him.  He may be problematic but he reminds them of their father, who despite his issues, was still their father.

And so today, we have a president who never gives up, never loses.  Heather Cox Richardson has pointed out that even though it appears that his name was taken down from the Kennedy Center, he's covered the space with a tarp so that his missing name is not visible.  Nor is Kennedy's.   He always tries to find a way pretend he didn't lose.  

But there are a couple of examples that would seem to belie this:  The Trump University $25 million settlement and the Iran War.  In both cases I think the same thing happened.  

Pursuing the issue further conflicted with something else he wanted more.  

The Trump University court case was threatening his presidential election bid.  By paying the settlement, he made it go away.  

The Iran War was crumbling Trump's ratings and promising to hurt him badly in the 2026  midterm election.  The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz was causing oil prices to rise and people could see it at the gas station.  He kept announcing victory and peace deals that weren't happening.  That too was getting humiliating (the worst thing that can happen to Trump).  So, like with Trump University, he instructed Vance (I think) to do whatever was necessary to make it go away.  

But even Republican politicians - usually Trump's most obedient sycophants - are pointing out that Trump's peace deal left Iran in a better position than before the war.  A more hardline leadership is now in place, Iran realized that control of the Strait of Hormuz was a great weapon, their nuclear capability was resurrectable, AND Trump was handing them $300 billion in taxpayer dollars to repair the damage the US did with the bombing.  [That's probably, in humanitarian terms, a reasonable thing to do.  After all the US did the damage.  Was it $300 billion worth?  That I don't know.  But it's a good international precedent for Russia when Putin's war on Ukraine is settled.]

But, of course we don't know that this war is actually settled.  Israel is not going to honor the clause that ends their war on Lebanon.  [Years ago when I mentioned how Israel's treatment of Palestinians was costing Israel world opinion, a strong supporter of Israel responded:  "We don't care.  The world will attack us no matter what we do."  And while there is probably some truth in that, it's not a long term winning strategy, but it does seem like it's part of Israeli leaders' thinking.]

Many of the actions of this administration are visible to a relatively few people who are directly affected and the media are doing a terrible job of rooting them out and making them better known.  And they are relatively abstract.  Hard to comprehend. There are so many of them every day that they are quickly forgotten as new outrages replace them in one’s awareness  

But the Iran War has dominated the news and its consequences are clear.  

Trump promised not to start any wars.

Trump criticized Obama for paying Iran $1.5 billion in frozen Iranian assets when they agreed to limit their nuclear program and allow international monitors.  

So now Trump is paying them $300 billion, not in frozen Iranian assets, and there is no real agreement on nuclear weapons.

And the Strait of Hormuz is under Iranian control.  And gas prices have spiked.

All pretty visible.  

Trump started a war at the behest of Netanyahu, and has lost badly.  

Getting out of the war and making it go away was better than letting it drag on through election season.  It's just that Mr. Art of the Deal came out with the short end of the stick.  

And while the Iran War diversion is crumbling, we get the most concrete (as in the opposite of abstract) example of Trump's incompetence, as the blue paint peels off the bottom of the reflecting pool and the pool itself fills with green algae.  This is a relatively cheap (in Trump terms) boondoggle.  

Except.  Except that Trump told us himself that he knows the pool guy and he does great work. [I've tried to change the coding so that it just covers a short portion of this long video.  If it didn't work, I'll try again.  If it does, I'll delete this note.] [It did work, but I'll leave the note anyway because the video on the embed from Bluesky doesn't seem to work here.  But you can click on the Bluesky icon in the lower right and see the video on Bluesky.  He shows us the algae in the pool and pulls out a piece of paint that peeled off the bottom.]

But now, about 49 years and 355 days sooner than Trump predicted (his low end estimate of 50 years) in the video, the pool is covered with algae and the paint is peeling off the bottom in large chunks..  

New blue paint appears to be peeling from the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. So far the algae seems to be winning.

[image or embed]

— Mickey Kuhns (@mickeykuhns.bsky.social) June 18, 2026 at 8:05 PM

I've added the reflecting pool example because this is so very tangible and no one can get lost in the complexity.  "I'm going to fix this pool that no one else has been able to fix and it will last for fifty to one hundred years" and then we see the algae and pieces of the 50 year paint floating in the pool days later.  (Though Trump supporters can claim the algae and paint video is fake, in their heart of hearts, they know it isn't.)

This post started with focus on hate.  Trump and the Republicans have been spewing hate and stirring fear among the MAGA.  And in contrast to Trump's ridiculously expensive, testosterone dripping  cage fight, yesterday's opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago was an example of hope and caring and decency.  

I'm just hoping that even those attracted to Trump because of the hate, can see the utter failure of the Iran war and the reflecting pool paint job.

Afterward:  There is enough content already and this post should end already  so consider this post finished.  But everything is connected  - and that’s partly why it’s so hard to comprehend how terrible the Trump presidency is.  

But as satisfyingly understandable as the Iran war and reflecting pool debacles are, they’re just distraction from Epstein.  

And Epstein is just a distraction from the structure hiding behind Trump that is dismantling our democracy and installing themselves as the new rulers of the United States  Organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, the billionaire oligarchs.  

Chris Hedges makes this point when he criticizes the late night satirists for heaping scorn on Trump and ignoring the power brokers behind him.   Not only does bullying the president move the focus from the people who will take over when Trump is gone, he asserts, it also makes his followers support him more. Clinton wasn't wrong when she called them deplorable, but by insulting them collectively, she united them even more behind Trump.  And that's why I think recognizing them as troubled rather than deplorable is a better approach.  Bernie Sanders and Pete  Buttigieg seem to better understand the pain of the working class and the need to include them in the Democratic messages.

After afterward:  For the folks who want to jump all over me for mentioning Sanders and Buttigieg, I'm just saying one thing about them.  Don't leave messages about them unless it's to provide evidence to disprove the point that they have recognized that Democrats haven't taken working men's grievances seriously.  Thank you.

How to Organize My Books

 

I have books.  There are books in pretty much every room in the house, though we don't keep books in the bathrooms.   

The other day I wanted to show someone a book, but I couldn't find it. (Bob, if you're reading this I did find it just now when I went down to take these pictures.)  I'm also looking for some of my old journals in hopes they can ground me as I write vignettes about my Peace Corps experiences.  This is spurred on by my writing group.  Basically, I took a class through OLÉ - the lifelong education program through the University of Alaska Anchorage.  

I thought signing up for a writing class would help me write the book for my youngest grandchild.  The other two grandkids got their own books already.  This one was going to be about her great grandmother, whom she is named after.  And it worked.  I wrote parts each week and I have the basic text done.  Now I have to work on the illustrations and mesh them with the text.  

But when the class was about over, the convener said that the weekly meetings would continue and that some of the members had been in the class for several years already.  About that time I got an email from the National Peace Corps Association that gave a step by step how-to booklet on writing about your Peace Corps experience - from the writing to finding an agent and a publisher.  

So I started writing.  But while I could find a couple of old journals that covered my Peace Corps time, others were missing.  

So tackling the biggest bookshelf seemed like a good project.  

Organizing books sounds easy.  Do it by topic.  Or should it be by genre - fiction or non-fiction or poetry or travel books?  What about books that span different topics or genres?

I started with topics.  I pulled out the bird books and the ones that help to identify insects and plants, and mushrooms.  This was going fine until I had books that fit the topic, but not the shelf.  Too big.

There's another problem with sorting books - it's hard not to start reading them.  The Shape of Thought is a book about writing - which is relevant to the writing class. 

 Maybe I can add some ideas to the group. (People are invited to read other writing than their own on occasion.) The book says writing has three basic purposes:

1. entertainment
2. explanation
3. convince

Really, is that all?  I have to think about it.  But then the book offers  ten patterns with which to do those things:

1. Basic Structures:  Introduction, Body and Conclusions
2. Narration
3. Description
4. Definition
5. Process Analysis
6. Classification
7. Comparison/Contrast
8. Judgment
9. Cause and Effect
10. Problem and Solution

Each pattern is a chapter with writings of famous and not so famous writers.  I jumped to the last one in the book, written by Art Buchwald that advocated for gun stamps for the poor, because "no American citizen, no matter what his financial status, would be deprived of his right to bear arms."  And "Many of the poor are to blame for this condition [not owning a gun].  They would rather buy food with their money than guns,"   [If it's not obvious, Buchwald was a satirist.]

And I also got distracted by The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Latimore..  I read, and, thanks to a great instructor - Dr. Pasinetti - enjoyed The Odyssey in college.  But I never read The Iliad.  And having toured the remains of the ancient city of Troy last October while we were in Turkey, I had lots of questions.  So I read a few pages of the Iliad but mostly I read the introduction which is 55 pages long.  

The intro covers a number of topics - the plot, questions about Homer and when and where he lived, the Greek Gods' roles in all this, etc.  I just wanted a better sense of the plot.  

"The essential story may be summarized as follows:  Paris, also called Alexandros, was the son of Priam, who was King of Troy, a city in the north-west corner of Asia Mior.  Paris on an overseas voyage was entertained by Menelaos in Sparta, and from there carried away, with her full consent, Helen, the wife of Menelaos.  He took her back with him to Troy, where she lived with him as his wife.  The princes of Greece thereupon raised a force of a thousand or more ships, manned by fighters, with a view to forcing the return of Helen.  The armada was led by Agamemnon, elder brother of Menelaos, the King of Mykenai . . .The fleet assembled in Aulis in Boiotia and made for Troy.  There the Greeks landed after a fight, but were unable to take the city.  For nine years they remained before Troy, keeping the Trojans on the defensive, and storming and plundering various places in the vicinity.  In the tenth year, Agamemnon the most powerful chief, quarreled with Achilleus, his most powerful fighting man.  Achilleus withdrew from the fighting, and kept his followers idle as well.  In his absence, the Trojans, led by Hector (a son of Priam and brother of Paris), temporarily got the better of their enemies and threatened to destroy the ships.  Achilleus returned to the fighting, killed Hector and routed the Trojans."

 

But why did Achilleus and Agamemnon quarrel?  That's revealed later.  

"Chryses, priest of Apollo in Chris, a small place near Troy, comes to the camp of the Greeks to ask for the return of his daughter, Chryseis, who has been captured and allotted to Agamemnon as his concubine.  Agamemnon refuses, and Chryses prays to Apollo to avenge him.  Apollo inflicts a plague upon the Greeks.  When there is no end in sight and the people are dying, Achilles calls an assembly of the chiefs to consider what can be done.  With the support and encouragement of Achilleus, Kalchas the soothsayer explains the wrath of Apollo.  Agamemnon, though angry, agrees to give the girl back and propitiate the god, but demands that some other leader give up his mistress to him, in place of Chryseis.  When Achilleus opposes this demand, Agamemnon takes away Briseis, the concubine of Achilleus. . ." 

Of course, we all know that Troy was sacked to recover the kidnapped Helen.  But from the description it would appear that every 'leader' in Agamemnon's fleet had his own concubine, and Agamemnon appropriates his best fighter's concubine as his own, leading Achilleus to withdraw from fighting which leads to Hector's initial victory.  

In light of the Epstein scandals today, one (at least this writer) can't help but think that men's need for sex objects plays an oversized  role in society and in the suffering of humankind.  After all, they did battle for ten years over a stolen woman!  The Greeks almost had their ships destroyed by Hector, again over a stolen woman (Agamemnon's taking of Achilleus' concubine.).  

In the case of Troy and Greece, there were two powerful entities who fought it out.  And Achilleus had leverage to use against Agamemnon.  But today we seem to have a class of rich men who have found a way to exploit women with little or no counterforce.  (Along with not so rich men who have some other skill that allows them inclusion in the club.)

To be clear, I'm exploring this idea here rather than making firm conclusions.  And while the men of Ancient Greece and Troy may have done battle over specific women, what seems clear from the discussion is that the women had no say in any of this.  Homer translator Latimore tells us that all the leaders of Agamemnon's army had mistresses.  

I'm leaning toward some sort of conclusion that for at least the last 3000 years (the sacking of Troy as related by Homer, whether history, historical fiction, or fiction happened about 1300 BC and women have only gotten the right to vote, the right to an education, to spend money without their husbands' permission, to compete for 'men's' jobs in the last 100 years or so.  (I'm assuming there were some brief periods in isolated locations where women had, for a time, some of these rights.)

Not to mention dragging thousands of others into suffering the wars of the egocentric 'leaders - the soldiers and sailers, the citizens of Troy and surrounding areas, and today the Ukrainians still being bombarded without mercy by Putin's military.  Not to mention the people of Gaza and Lebanon and Iran and elsewhere around the world.  

And in the United States, we now have a president whose treatment of women is not different from the ancient Greeks and that seems to have brought the misogynists out of the woodworks.  This is a more universal problem than USians realize.  Is it built in to men's genes?  Some men's genes?  Is it nurtured by parents, by society?  Is it curable?  

All this from trying to bring order to my book cases.  And that's just a tiny fraction of how I spend my time.  The garden beckons.  Fighting the corruption of the GOP beckons.  My bike and the bike trails beckon.  

Of course, I don't raise questions here, without checking online after I've done my own brainstorming.  Here's a list a ways to organize one's books from WikiHow

1. by genre
2. alphabetically 
3. by color
4. by subject
5. chronologically
6. put rare or valuable books in a noticeable spot
7. by how much you like them
8. by how much you use them
9. by size
10. by date you got them

To a certain extent I use the following:  1, 4, 6, 7, and 9.  It seems to me that organizing by color is for someone who sees books as decoration rather than reading material, but that's just my first reaction and I'm willing to be corrected.  

Why Books? Some New Ones At the Library

 While picking up my next Book Club book at Loussac Library, I went up stairs to peruse the new book section.  In this day of 300 character social media posts, I find books a great place to retreat to a deeper way of knowing about the world.  

So here are, in no real order, some of the books I looked at in the New Books section. 

Hush:  How to Radiate Power and Confidence… by Linda Clemons   (for an audio intro:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FyKL-6OvyE )

I saw Hush first   This is a self-help book to give the reader "power and confidence."  The "without saying a word" more than suggests it's going to be about body language.  There's a link above to an audio intro to the book by the author, who let's you know she can tell all your secrets by the way you hold and move your whole body as well as parts of your body.  

Language is Gesture -  by David McNeill     I saw this second book, ostensibly on an overlapping topic a bit later.  This is more of an academic book outlining this idea that language is based on gesture.

"Abstract:

A new way of viewing language, as a dynamic mode of meaning-making of which gesture is a fundamental part.

When David McNeill began his work on gesture more than forty years ago, language and the action of speaking were regarded as separate realms. But language, says McNeill in Language Is Gesture, is dynamic and gesture is fundamental to speaking. Central to his conception of language, and distinct from linguistic analysis, is what McNeill calls the “growth point,” the starting point of making thought and speech one. He uses the term “gesture–speech unity” to refer to the dynamic dimension of adding gesture to speaking. It is the growth point that achieves this unity, whereby thought is embedded in gesture and speech at the same time.

Gesture is the engine of language. It is foundational to speaking, language acquisition, the origin of language, animal communication, thought, and consciousness. Gesture is global and synthetic and brings energy; speech is linear and segmented and brings cultural standards. The growth point is a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage, the starting point of unifying thought and speech. Growth points create gesture–speech unity by synchronizing a bundle of linguistic features with a gesture that carries the same meaning. This gesture–speech unity is a form of thought, a unique form of cognition."  [From Linguist List]

I found the similarity of the covers of these four books interesting.  

The Rolling Stone's review title is 

"OZZY OSBOURNE’S ‘LAST RITES’ MEMOIR  IS HAUNTING, REVELATORY, AND OFTEN DEEPLY SAD"

Rolling Stone offers 14 things they learned that hadn't been in other Osbourne bios.  There was nothing I needed to know, but if you're a big Osbourne fan, maybe , . .

From Kirkus on Sumner:

"A skillful blend of legal history and biography that honors the 19th century’s foremost champion of civil rights..".

Given today's Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act, perhaps we can bring Sumner back to life to help fight again for civil rights.  The decision is 36 pages.  Kagan's dissent is 48 pages.

 

Also from Kirkus on Lionel Richie's book:

"There’s an abundance of love and gratitude in this wildly entertaining, utterly charming memoir."

Roosevelt, also from Kirkus

"Roosevelt’s forceful life is portrayed as the embodiment of America 'as it was meant to be.'

Baier, chief political anchor for Fox News, is a prolific biographer whose volume on Theodore Roosevelt joins his works on George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan. The author’s portrait of the 26th president draws on Roosevelt’s writings, diaries, letters, speeches, and other biographies. Baier sketches Roosevelt’s transformations to politician, president, soldier, writer, and naturalist. .  .

This portrait of an iron-willed president digs only so deep."

I wonder if the author embraces Roosevelt's trust busting and preservation of natural wonders in National Parks.  

When All the Men Wore Hats, Susan Cheever

 The Cheever book looked particularly interesting, though I've only read a few of her father's short stories.  

From Spectrum Culture:

"When All the Men All Wore Hats, the second study by author John Cheever’s daughter Susan, follows Home Before Dark, her longer 1984 memoir, inevitably repeating some of the material. Both accounts blend candor and tact, respect and pain, as she delves into his sense of never quite belonging to the patrician New England-New York smart-set her father limned.

John came from a checkered New England legacy, one that, like the many floundering characters in his short stories, trended downward. Susan archly observes: “The New Yorker was the stern father who would occasionally hand you a dollar and tell you to go and buy yourself a new fifty-dollar shirt.” Cheever’s standout stories mostly had been published before the 1966 success of the adaptation of The Swimmer into a Burt Lancaster film, and John didn’t publish more than a handful of stories at the magazine that had cemented his mid-century reputation after that."

Cloud Warriors, Thomas E. Weber 

 From Princeton Alumni Weekly:

"As his reporting proceeded, Weber began to focus on why more accurate forecasts don’t necessarily translate into better outcomes, in lives and property saved. Weather satellites, radar stations and the specialized scientific knowledge to understand the data they produce are all important, he concluded — but a key, underappreciated factor is how to manage human psychology.

A turning point came with Weber’s interview with a social science expert who traveled to locations that had recently been struck by tornadoes. As her colleagues were focusing on estimating wind speeds and damage patterns, this researcher was asking community members about the warnings they’d heard before the storm and how they decided to take the actions they did.

“I realized then that there was a huge push in the weather world to start better understanding people, as well as the atmosphere,” Weber says. 'The real issue is, how do you get people to make the safest decisions? You have to communicate that to people in a way that gets them to treat it with a gravity that is appropriate to the danger. It’s a complicated chain of events.'”

Empty Vessel:  The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge, by Ian Kumekawa 

From the New York Review: 

Over the past few decades journalists and academics have chronicled the “lawless ocean,” documenting widespread human rights abuses in the shipping and fishing industries and what might be termed “the outlaw sea.” In Empty Vessel, Ian Kumekawa, a historian at MIT and Harvard, finds that the seas are in fact replete with laws—but that many of them are designed to get around other laws, to exploit or create loopholes, or to obtain regulatory and tax advantages, all with the goal of maximizing profits for shipping companies. This parallel offshore universe of laws and contracts was slowly built up by lawyers, corporations, and territories that function as tax havens, enabling them to reap profit without paying their due—and becoming central to what we call globalization.

Empty Vessel tells the story of a single barge, from its construction at a Swedish dockyard nearly half a century ago to its current status as a rusty, “laid up” accommodation barge for oil workers in the port of Onne in Nigeria. (The book also cursorily follows its sister ship, an identical vessel built at the same time, which had a similar course over the years.) By tracking the ship’s many lives—as a floating barrack for British troops during the Falklands War, as a prison ship moored at Pier 36 in Lower Manhattan and then in Portland, England, and as a temporary housing barge for assembly line workers in West Germany—Kumekawa charts the dramatic transformations that the world economy has undergone since the 1980s: globalization, the decline of manufacturing, financialization, neoliberalism. The ship’s trajectory lays bare both the physical infrastructure of the global economy—in the form of ships, ports, and the workers who operate them—and the invisible legal architecture without which it would be impossible. 

The Injustice of Property - Steven Przybylinski

From Project Muse:

"With the rise of homelessness in many U.S. cities, municipal governments are sanctioning organized encampments as an official strategy for sheltering unhoused people. Examining the shortcomings and consequences of these municipal policies, The Injustice of Property explores how unhoused individuals living in self-managed encampments navigate and organize themselves within and against the confines of liberal property systems. Through ethnographic research in Portland, Oregon, a paradigmatic city in advancing this model of homeless shelter, Stephen Przybylinski details the everyday struggles of self-managed encampments to highlight how key contradictions inherent to liberal ideology maintain property as a means of structuring sociopolitical equality. He argues that justice cannot be realized for unhoused communities within the liberal model of private property due to how liberalism and liberal ideology prioritize the rights and values of property over the personal rights of self-governance.

The Injustice of Property is a conceptually robust and empirically rich account of the limits of liberal thinking regarding what “just” property relations look like for unhoused and housed people alike. The book shows that while encampment communities struggle to establish alternative property relationships to the traditional model of private ownership, the injustices that residents of encampments face provoke a necessary reevaluation of how beneficiaries of property systems influence who can become housing stable and on which terms. This insightful book reveals how the injustices surrounding Portland’s encampment communities reflect the limits and injustice of liberal property more broadly."  

The Cost of Being Undocumented, by Alix Dick and Antero Garcia

From interview on UUWorld:

Dick: I would like people to understand that the decisions that immigrants make were never made lightly. Nobody leaves home by choice. When people read this book, I want them to understand that what happened to me could happen to anybody. It’s a privilege to think that tragedy will never hit you.

A black-and-white portrait of Antero Garcia, couthor of "The Cost of Being Undocumented."

Antero Garcia: Taking the “cost” part of the title, I hope readers see that the costs of undocumented life are so much more than just financial numbers. Sure, we offer a financial estimate of what living undocumented has cost Alix at the end of the book. However, more importantly, I want readers to understand the toll of living away from family, of navigating language and social barriers, of losing the opportunities for youthful joy in a new country. The financial costs also go both ways: while existing economic reports point to the fact that undocumented individuals actually provide a net-benefit to the U.S. economy, Alix’s story also highlights the ways wage theft, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and inaccessible university costs actually extract even more income for the most marginalized individuals in this country.

 I pulled out a few more books, but this is a good enough selection.  In this time of social media, influencers whose test for truth is how many viewers they have and how much money those viewers bring, and a president who's truth is measured by his own perceived best interest, taking a mental vacation from all that and reading a few books feels like a luxury.  

And it's a good time to support your local library.  Most have a new book section.  You can even find a comfy chair and just lose yourself in the library.  

Navigating Social Media - Just Find And Read The Good Stuff

[This starts with an introduction that you can easily skip.  "Starts Here" is where I get into some recommended reading. Not books, Not 280 character platitudes.  But serious, thoughtful articles.]

INTRODUCTION

 'Influencer' as used today is a disgusting word for me.  I was reminded of this last night when we watched Manosphere on Netflix.  Louis Theroux  interviews 'manosphere influencers,' basically men who populate social media on various platforms advocating for a world of alpha-males and subordinate females and showing off their (apparent) wealth.  Basically, it would seem they are using the internet to make as much money as possible.  It doesn't matter to them if they say hateful and stupid stuff; truth and reality are irrelevant.  Just hits and followers.   

As a novice blogger 19 years ago, I quickly learned that various businesses were willing to compensate me to plug their products (always said, no thank you) and that the more controversial my headlines, the more hits I would get.  (That was back in the day of Sarah Palin, and if I mentioned her in a headline, I'd get considerably more hits.)

I wouldn't say the show is hard-hitting, but for people who don't wander off into the darker corners of the internet, it's probably enlightening.  It helps to understand where the White Christian Nationalist and bullying cosplayers in the Trump administration get their material.  The BBC has its own review that highlights some young men who follow the toxic ranters and say, "Wow, I didn't know it was that bad."  Is that supposed to reassure us?  

In the worlds of Twitter, and TikTok, Only Fans, ad nasuem, this has become a way for some folks to make decent money, and has turned what was once a potential international communication, exchange of ideas platform, into a medium whose monetization logic promotes hate and extremism.  

But even among those platforms who offer no hate (well try to minimize it), there's still a good deal of attention seeking and fluff.  You can read a 2013 post explaining my reluctant dive into Twitter. I stopped checking Twitter when Musk bought it and moved to Spoutible and Bluesky.  Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but the toxicity is kept to a minimum and both get me links to stories and articles I wouldn't see elsewhere.  I share a few below.

POST STARTS HERE

There is so much 'news' happening daily that it's almost impossible (and unnecessary) to have a deep understanding of everything.  Rather, I wanted to point out some articles that cut through to the guts of some issues.  

The Worst Acquisition in History, Again: Warner Bros. by SCOTT GALLOWAY

"After six months and eight failed bids, the Ellisons made the Warner Bros. Discovery board an offer they couldn’t refuse. The potential Netflix acquisition would’ve been akin to fusing LVMH and Walmart — HBO’s prestige TV and Warner’s iconic IP, plus Netflix’s scale. Paramount Skydance buying WBD is the fusion of a dog and a car bumper traveling 80 miles an hour. Spoiler alert: It’s not going to end well."

This is an amazing piece that tells a story I did't get about this merger elsewhere.

Also A Review of Habermas - Matthew McManus

Jürgen Habermas died last week at the age of 96.  He'd kept writing almost to the end.  

"To some, Habermas is the greatest philosopher of our time. . . For others Habermas is the court philosopher of the German center-left SPD or perhaps at most the EU."

I briefly dipped into the world of Jürgen Habermas as a grad student.  I was mightily taken by what I read,  but never took the time to delve deeper into his other works.  But he's an important figure in 20th Century thought who, I'm guessing, most people have never heard of.   This is a chance to learn a bit about him in a relatively easy essay on two books about him.  (This is a substack article that while not requiring money, does make you pay with your email address.  I have found putting a fake email seems to work, at least for now.)

Nicholas Field:  Double Book Review: Newsom and Shapiro Memoirs Shed Some Light on 2028 Hopefuls  

 I think Governor Gavin Newsom has been useful in the fight against Fascism, but I wouldn't want him to be president.  I didn't know much about Governor Shapiro beyond election headlines. This article raises some issues we should pay attention to.  In any case, Nick Field gives more background to store as the presidential primaries come into view. 

‘The dream is to be a standup, but everyone who knows me says: Please don’t’ – Riz Ahmed on  chaos, comedy, and defying categorisation"  - Simran Hans

 The arts are important to human life.  I didn't know this performer, but found the interview interesting.

This article includes Riz
in various fashion shots

I'm going to check out Relay on Netflix tonight to see him act. 

Anyone paying attention has noticed the rising number of people of South Asian heritage  in a variety of fields in the US and the UK.  This interview gives a glimpse at what the world looks like from their perspective.

"Ahmed describes Mirza [his wife] as 'a truly creative person' whose writing 'floors me every day', though he says they try not to discuss work too much at home. 'I probably try and hassle her for her opinion on things a lot more than she needs to hassle me for mine on writing. She doesn’t want my GCSE English ideas,' he says, self-deprecatingly.

But while he may wear it lightly, Ahmed’s intellect is no secret. A working-class British Pakistani kid from Wembley who won a scholarship to private school, he got into Oxford to study politics, philosophy and economics, a typically star-making degree favoured by politicians, broadcasters and public intellectuals. He has never felt as if he was a natural fit for the establishment, but has always found a way to navigate it."

A reminder that people of color often have much better credentials than their white counterparts, credentials that belie the claims that somehow they got their positions through 'DEI.'  He sounds like a much healthier male than those interviewed by Louis Theroux.  

"How often does he see his parents these days? 'All right, Auntie. Jesus Christ! You’ve got me on the hook here. Lemme get my calendar out,' he says, pretend-reaching for his phone. 'I try to see them very regularly,' he says. Every week, every month? Ahmed looks at me quizzically. 'Are you Asian?' he says, noting my own Punjabi-Sikh heritage. 'You’d have a chappal flying at you through space and time if it was every month.' A chappal is a slipper, jokingly deployed by Asian parents of all backgrounds as a form of discipline. 'Of course, at least every week. A few times a week.'”

I've got a few more saved up, but this should keep you more than occupied if you follow the links.   

AIFF2025: Sunday Highlights And Monday Schedule

 The calendar has caught up with me.  I was ready for you all up through Sunday and would love to highlight today's offerings, but I also want to say something about two good films I saw yesterday. 

You're No Indian

I'd seen In the Wake of Justice Delayed and Remaining Native on Saturday.  Both are good films which tell important stories about being Native in the United States. They do an excellent job of conveying the emotional impacts of the abuses Native peoples have suffered and the lasting impacts. Their films mention court cases (in Justice)  and historic abuses of boarding schools  (in Remaining.)   Their both solid, important films.

I was wary about You're No Indian because it was about disenrollment.  I co-authored an academic article on Native American Law and I know that topic gets complicated quickly and that there is so

Ryan Flynn and Santana Rabang left

much that most people have no idea about.  How can someone make that into an interesting movie?

They managed to do it.  You're No Indian  powerfully highlights both the emotional and cultural impact of disenrollment and also collects a pile of evidence to show that the disenrollment process in many tribes - particularly those with lots of casino money - is aimed at reducing the number of people with whom they have to divide casino profits and at getting rid of opponents to their power in the tribes.  [Blogger doesn't recognize the term disenrollment and underlines it in red each time I type it.]

They offer shocking evidence of tribal leaders denying the validity of members' documented birth records, and in one case, where the tribal leader's ancestry includes the same ancestors as the people he disenrolled.  

They include those records. They include a historian of Indian records hired by the tribe to do research.  When the expert they hired gives them conclusions they don't want to hear, they reject it.  There's also a Native attorney who is banned from coming into the hearing to represent his client. 

The part that will leave most viewers who are not well-versed on Native American law still scratching their heads, is the lack of a way to appeal the disenrollment decisions.  Essentially, Native Americans have fought over the years to have sovereignty over their own affairs on Indian country.  There are rules about who has jurisdiction over different kinds of cases based on where the infraction occurred (Native land or not), who was involved (Native or non-Native), and the type of crime.  Natives have accomplished a certain amount of autonomy on Native land, which prevents the state from meddling in Native affairs, but this documentary shows how that victory has left holes that allow  tribes to commit serious offenses against fellow tribal members.  

The film and the discussion afterward mentioned that the film makers have received cease and desist orders to stop them from showing the film.  Film festivals have also received such threats (including the Anchorage International Film Festival).  Some festivals are wary of being sued and have not shown the film.  Fortunately AIFF showed the film.  My thought is that when you get such threats, it means you're hitting a nerve.  If they had legitimate legal claims, the opponents of the film would file those claims in court.  

This was the movie I said, yesterday morning, that I hadn't seen yet - the movie that works for me on all levels.  And as I say this, I also acknowledge my own bias for a strong rational argument, which this film presents.  They've simply made a very strong documentary on an important topic.  While some might say this is a pretty esoteric and small group, the film does a good job of pointing out the significance.  

They say 11,000 people have been disenrolled in tribes around the country.  They further point out that the living and future offspring of those 11,000 people have also been effectively disenrolled.  

Compounding this is the destruction of Native culture in the affected tribes.  Money, not cultural traditions, win out.  And the number of Native Americans dwindles.  They also point out that disenrollment was used by the US government to eliminate Native Americans as part of their campaign to assimilate (as in the Boarding schools), remove (from their land to reservations), or eliminate (kill) Native Americans.  In this case, it's Natives doing this work.

A powerful and well documented movie that keeps the audience's attention throughout.  The museum was packed and there were lots of questions and comments at the end.  

A Little Fellow:  The Legacy of A.P. Giannini.

The other movie I want to point out is A Little Fellow:  The Legacy of A.P. Giannini.  I don't have time now, but I will get back to this film which tells the story of the founder of the Bank of Italy in San Francisco, a bank focused on the small businesses and everyday people, who were excluded by most other banks.  There are many amazing stories about Giannini in this film, and about the bank that eventually became, under Giannini's leadership, The Bank of America.  (Though, since 1998, when Bank of America was bought out, no longer practices those principles Giannini set up for his bank.)

It's a generally unknown story, told well in this film.  More later I hope.  

I'm headed out to the Alaska Experience Theater for Uncensored Shorts at 10:30, then The Collaborator at 1pm and then for Female Filmmaker Showcase at 5:30 at the Bear Tooth and then Rosemead at 8:30.  

J took our guests to the 9am meetup and pitch session.  There's also a film maker pizza party later and their meeting the Austrian Honorary Consul General - Katrine is Austrian - and the Consul has been supportive of the film.  

New Inspiration From A Long Time Hero

Just in the opening intro to Robert Caro’s Working, I was inspired to take on a project I’d put off for a couple of years now.  Caro reads his audio book and talks about how when writing the Power Broker he realized he needed to document the human cost of all the parkways and bridges and slum clearance Robert Moses built.  I have such a project to pursue in Anchorage.

I guess I’m getting ahead of myself.  My bookclub is reading Working this month, and while the time zones don’t work out for me to zoom in, Caro has been a hero of mine for just about 50 years.  Caro’s first big book - The Power Broker - is about Robert Moses who created  a mesh of overlapping ‘authorities’ - park authorities, transportation authorities, port authorities - that gave him a working income that he controlled and the power to create public works projects that transformed the landscape of New York City.  I should be clear - Caro never found any indication that Moses was in this business to make money, but rather to fulfill his visions of how to create infrastructure that would improve life for New Yorkers.  They money he made through tolls and bonds went to build his vision.  

Caro tells us in the intro that he wanted to understand how Caro had wielded so much power for close to 50 years, power over mayors, governors, and other elected  officials, though he had never been elected to any office.  He talks about advice he  (Caro) got early on about doing research on documents - read every page.  

Caro worked full time on The Power Broker for over five years.  It came out in Fall of 1974 about when I’d finished my Masters in Public Administration and was working on my doctorate.  And I would have read it right after it came out - maybe the Spring of 1975.  And as I started teaching as a doctoral student, The Power Broker, at least parts of it (it’s over 1100 pages) were part of the readings in my intro class until I retired.  One of the questions I had about the book - as did many others - was how did Caro find out all the stuff he had on Moses.  This book answers that question 

I’ve mentioned “Thick Description” several times lately, and as I listened to Caro talking about the need to get the stories of the people Moses displaced with his projects, I realized this was an example of thick description as well.  (I hadn’t thought about that before since I’d been using Caro’s book long before I’d heard about thick description.). https://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-am-i-who-are-you.

What's Keeping Me From Blogging?

So much . . .

Weekly trips to pick up our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) [It's a USDA website so go quick before the regime either takes it down because it's too 'woke' or it crashes from neglect or incompetence.]

They use salt - some Alaska salt - and mix it with things for use in cooking, eating, and making your house smell better, like in the simmer pots.  

I've highlighted soap artist (seriously, what she does is art!)  Kit before.  She showed me a prototype of a soap she's working on that will have a Rorschach test on it.  I asked if there are psychiatrist interpretations included.  Those, she assured me, would cost a lot more.  Learn more at MirthAlaska.com. 

There was a long line at the WIC table.  This market is in the lowest income area of Anchorage and the Grow North Farm here - sponsored by RAIS (Refugee Assistance and Immigration Service), a part of Catholic Social Services - is an urban farm worked by refugees.  

It was gray and threatening, but not raining all that day, but it finally came down on the ride home.  It was so light it really only got my clothes slightly damp.  And my odometer with drops.

I've gone past my 1600 km goal for the summer - one reason I guess I haven't blogged as much.  All that biking along Anchorage's green bike paths has been good for my physical and mental health during this disastrous time in US history.  

The picture below was on an earlier ride on the Campbell Creek south trail.  And I'm delaying today's ride to get this post up.

The mushroom isn't connected to anything else in this post, but of course mushrooms and fungus in general are connected to everything underground.  You can't really tell but this one was five or six inches across.  Growing right next to the compost pile.  

  
                                                                      

Again, a somewhat random picture here.  Walking down the steps after a routine doctor visit at Providence, I was greeted with the lovely sounds of live piano music.  The acoustics in the huge atrium entrance are great and the notes pulled me over to listen to the end and thank the musician.

Our power, phone/internet went out during the windstorm a week ago Friday.  This downed cottonwood was the culprit.  Chugach Electric had the power back on the next morning when we woke up.  Alaska Communications took until Tuesday or Wednesday to come out and then they didn't have the equipment to fix it right, so while the phone line and internet are back on, the wire is lying on the ground and about two feet off the ground in some places I have to walk.  In what world is that acceptable?  Alaska Communications is so terrible!  The techs I have to call now and then and those who come out to the house are generally very good.  It's just the management that has promised me fiber every summer since 2023 and not delivered that pisses me off.  And the website that has the circle of death spinning hopelessly when I try to pay online, and then they charge me a %25 late fee because I couldn't pay online.  With no grace period.  None.  Visa emails me three days before to remind me to pay my bill.  ACS emails three days after it's due to say, "We screwed you again."  I'm ready to cut that cord forever.  

Got that off my chest.  

Our neighbor did hook us up to his power with a series of extension cords to power the refrigerator since we didn't know how long it was going to take to get the power back.  We decided to go to Queen of Sheba for dinner that night.  Here's David, the owner and chef, chatting with us after our meal.  

Ethiopian food is truly special and delicious.  Anchorage folks, go eat there and keep them in business.  The prices are reasonable for this day and age.  

It's between Northern Lights and Benson - on Dawson.  

So, probably this should have been three or four blog post spread over the week.  

But I'm not done.  I've been reading several books at once, but I'll just highlight Caraval.  This was a recommendation from my 12 year old granddaughter.  When I told her I was number 25 on the waiting list at Loussac Library, she said, "I told you that you'll never get it."

But I got an email saying it was mine to pick up.  I understand why people read it.  Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger of sorts.  And I think the author has synesthesia, because every feeling is associated with a color, some vibrating.  Lots more descriptions of odors than you normally see too.  And I don't think Nancy Drew ever had chills from the touch of a young man's bare chest leaning against her. 

I'd say this teen fiction is the gateway drug to adult romance fiction.  

Moving along - I'm still overwhelmed with the barrage of outrageous statements and actions spewing from the White House.  Here are a few images that I've saved as I try to find new ways to ask my junior US Senator how long he thinks he can wade in this filth before he is sucked under completely.  He gleefully points at what he sees as 'wins' for Alaska, while the president tramples the constitution by kidnapping people off the streets, invading US cities with our military, ignoring judge's orders, bombing boaters in international waters, gerrymandering Texas to squeeze out Democratic house seats, and on and on and on.  I didn't even mention Epstein.  And Dan Sullivan turns a blind eye to all of that in exchange for some oil drilling permits.  

My previous post was on the normalization of the word normalization.  Nothing could illustrate that point better than this post by His Travesty.   

What previous president could have done something like this and not been impeached?  Some say it's just 'a humorous bit' but I did a paper on government humor once.  What I learned was that government humor that is self deprecating is fine, but government humor that punches down is NOT fine.  

And then his Vice Travesty defends another military operation off the coast of Venezuela:

Has anyone seen any evidence that these are cartel members (just like we haven't seen any evidence that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a member of Tren de Aragua gang)?

I copied this one for Labor Day.  We're back to the time when business owners could call on the government to bring in troops to break up labor unions.  And when I say 'break up' I mean that literally.  But they stood in solidarity until they won their rights which have benefited most of us.  (You know, 40 day weeks, paid overtime, health benefits, the right to grieve bad treatment, etc.)  We have to be as brave and persistent now to prevent what's happening today.  

I don't believe ignorance is greater now than it was.  But the propaganda forces of the fascists have powerfully taken advantage of that ignorance, and the latent fears of white America.  They've taken all the damage to the working classes done by exporting jobs and increasing the income gap and blamed it on Black people and immigrants.  

 I remember when the first polio vaccines became available and we got poked at school.  My small pox vaccine scar no longer really shows, but I was inoculated.  

Public health programs have saved more lives than medical treatment of individuals.   As I look for good links to explain the importance of public health to society, I see that some of the most important public health initiatives - clean water and sewage systems - are so taken for granted that they aren't even mentioned.  But we haven't always had clean water and sewage systems.  And parts of the world still don't have them.  

President Nixon famously had an enemies list.  But no president has ever, so blatantly used the powers of the federal government to go after his perceived enemies.  The president is publicly telling the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute people who oppose him.  And as a blogger, I found this cartoon a bit close to home.  

I tell myself I'm just a tiny voice out in the wilderness and they have much bigger targets than me.  But I also notice that Google says my recent posts have way more hits that I usually get.  Stat Counter has always shown far fewer hits than Google, but they also track individual visitors.  I can't tell if I really have more hits or whether there are more bots.  In times past when there were lots more hits, it looked like someone scraping my blog for content, and more recently for AI.  But when that happens you can see a single user going to thirty or more different pages per day.  So many hits on a single page is different.  

In any case, I want people to stay strong and be engaged in fighting this regime to preserve our democracy (not to mention our health and economy and general well being.)  Do what you can.  And take breaks to laugh, enjoy nature, good friends.   Find like minded people.  And know your rights.  

And a teaser for a post I hope to put up this week.  

From Animalspot.net