Morning Fog

Meaningful Holidays - And A New Calendar For Them

I've long thought that Thanksgiving, now just two days away, was the quintessential "American" holiday because of its non-denominational aspect.   All of us celebrate Thanksgiving in one way or another, regardless of religious beliefs.  It's something we all have in common, and something we all share.  Further, Thanksgiving remains the only holiday that has not (yet) become just another excuse to go out shopping.  It has by and large preserved its meaning.

Now, however, Thanksgiving is under attack.  First, with the supercommittee on the deficit seemingly at a bitterly partisan dead end, it begins to appear that Thanksgiving is the ONLY thing we all share these days.  Can it survive in today's politicized environment?  Further, the greater threat is that commercialism is slowly gnawing its way into Thanksgiving, seeking to turn it into yet another shopping spree.  The Tin Lizard recommends boycotting the barbarians, but it's not likely they will be stopped. 

Nearly three years ago I wrote my ambitious new calendar of American holidays.  No one has seen fit to implement it yet, but with Thanksgiving under attack, it seems this may be an opportune time to revisit it, which you can do here.

Enemies Again

Was I too hasty last week in writing about two sets of our nation's enemies, different yet eerily similar at the same time?

Yes.

There are more eerie similarities, in that both are devotees of radical religious concepts, and both have the idea that it's possible to undo the present and return to the past.

Enemies

Seeing President Obama present the Medal of Honor to Marine Dakota Meyer the other day, I was struck by the complex of similarities and differences represented there.  At first glance, it might appear that Obama and Meyer had little in common; Meyer the committed military man, Obama never having served; differences in age, experience, and cultural background.

Yet both have been confronted with determined enemies.  Meyer has dealt with his with some finality; Obama's struggle continues.  But here the similarity emerges:  Enemies steeped in ignorance and hate, rooted in outmoded concepts, bent on destroying America.  And the difference: One from outside, one from within. 

Costs Of Daylight Time Outweigh Benefits, Says Morning Fog

Regular readers by now might think I had not noticed that the U.S. went on daylight saving time last Sunday.  Rest assured that I didn't.  

Yes, spring is in the air, the witch hazel bloomed as usual in February, the forsythia has sythed, the crocuses have croaked, and daffodils are poking out, the birds are getting more active -- and across all this timeless scene of cheer and renewal, we choose to cast a pall of darkness.   One day the morning walk is pleasant, and the next, it's back to stumbling around in the dark.

I've pointed out many times that "daylight saving" saves nothing, least of all energy, a fact that even Congressman Ed Markey's skewed attempt at self-justification (a Department of Energy study) has been unable to refute. 

We need to realize that any infinitesimal saving of energy that might result from "daylight time" (accidental and random, if any) is counterbalanced by more measurable negative effects:

• The increase in heart attacks as we shift from daylight to "normal" time and back again has been documented.
• Working folks who need to get their exercise before going to work (or who are just plain early risers) are deprived of sunlight, which stimulates the body to produce essential vitamin D.  What are the health consequences to the nation?  Will we all look as pasty as Congressman Markey?
• The time and effort involved in running around setting our clocks forward and back, if it were studied, would surely turn out to be significant.  Of course the electronic gadgets reset themselves automatically these days (unless you're the owner of an iPad, apparently) but oddly, the number of those that do not is also growing.  In the latter category, around my house, are the microwave (admittedly old), security system (likewise), and four recently installed thermostats, all of which must be reset manually.  Not to mention a half-dozen clocks, two or three wristwatches, and the clock in the car.  It takes an hour to get to them all.  And that's just a single home.  Multiply by millions.  Multiply by adjustments needed in factories and workplaces.  It's huge, and it far overshadows those much-touted but fictitious benefits we derive from "daylight saving."

Tucson

One thing I notice about the sad events of this past weekend in Tucson, Arizona - beyond of course the human tragedy of several innocent people being killed, or the civic tragedy of yet another political assassination attempt -- is how quickly commentators and politicians have rushed to protect their favorite right-wing cause (be it Sarah Palin, the tea party gang, or Republicans) from being blamed.  Typical of the genre are Mark Thiessen's "Stop Blaming the Tea Party for the Arizona Tragedy," and Jennifer Rubin's blog defending Sarah Palin.  

Such defenses aren't altogether incorrect.  When political violence occurs, the perpetrator is often a nut job who has lurked in the shadows for years unnoticed, until something set him off.  It's an easy call:  None of us should, and few have tried to, blame specific individuals for such unpredictable and unpreventable crimes, heinous though they may be.

That said, however, I also cannot escape the conclusion that Rubin and Thiessen (and others) are both missing something.   Politicians can't avoid stating their positions, just on the off chance they might upset some wacko.  We do need civil discourse.

But let's keep it civil.  In a culture where we know we have plenty of those off-the-rails types running around with loaded weapons, we should do what we can to dampen, rather than provoke, their less reasoned thoughts and actions. Public figures should avoid incendiary language that has no purpose other than to incite people; they should avoid deliberately concocted lies and misstatements merely to stir controversy. 

And in that connection, I do blame the likes of Sarah Palin, for purposely trying to create anger and hostility with her irresponsible talk about "targeting" and "reloading," her scare claims about "death panels," and even her attempts to politicize a basic, nonpartisan issue like obesity.   While others defend her, Palin herself seems to have been rather silent these past few days, not publicly "refudiating" her more extreme statements.  This suggests to me that maybe she herself accepts a bit of blame -- or more cynically, she just hopes to rescue her political aspirations by lying low. [My guess on that last part? She's too late.]

Palin isn't the only one, of course.  It's not just the tea-party rank and file.  Nor just the birthers.  I would charge the political right in general, over the past couple of years, with consciously seeking to create an atmosphere of hate, rage, and fear that served to hide their lack of serious policy proposals and which they hoped to - did, in fact - exploit politically.  While succeeding at the polls, they also succeeded in poisoning the political air, creating the sort of atmosphere in which the slightly imbalanced are encouraged to leave their shadows, grab a gun, and venture out into the open.

Some will say the left has been guilty too.  There have been cases of overreach among Democrats, but I'd argue they have been isolated, rather than a blanket campaign.  Besides, it's not Democrats who depend for support on NRA members, or who are helped along by the many voices of hate radio.  

Is Sarah Palin, or Ron Paul, or Mitch McConnell to blame for the shootings in Tucson?  By no means.  Are they and their cohort largely responsible for the vitriolic tone of public discourse that enabled the assassin?  And have they helped perpetuate the absolutely ridiculous free market in weaponry that's also an enabling factor for violence?  I'd say yes.

Republicans Look Out

Members of the Republican Party!  Be forewarned.!  (Because forewarned is four-armed, like one of those Indian gods).

I heard tonight on the news that latest reports indicate 2010 was a year of job growth.  Slow, yes, but growth.  And some economists say that at the current rate, we may get back to "normal" within four to five years.

We know, from your recent words and deeds, that this is not something you want for America.  So it's time to spring into action, restore the tax cuts, kill those job prospects, work all the harder to turn the clock back, before people realize that the policies of the past two years have succeeded in reversing the squalid effects of your eight years in power. 

On the job-killing front, the experience of the past decade demonstrates that you're the real experts.  I recommend Steven Pearlstein's column today on this topic.  Pearlstein, by the way, echoes my concern that you may not yet be ready to abandon partisanship, forgo fear-mongering, and turn to practicalities of governing.   

Dark Age

For at least three weeks now, in my neck of the woods, the lengthening hours of darkness have cast their shadow on morning walks (bringing depressing blackness to the 5:30 AM sky) and on those evening activities for which we supposedly invented Daylight Saving Time (preventing us from being able to see what's on the grill, or whether it's done, at 7:00 PM). 

Obviously, it's that time of year again, the time when summer time has outlived its usefulness (if it ever had any) and we revert naturally to "regular" time as God and the Greenwich Meanies intended it.   We get our light in the morning, and we get our darkness at dusk.  How neat!  Just as the hours of daylight and dark become about equal in the fall, we switch back to standard time... 

Except that we don't.  Instead, we are in thrall to a handful of Congressional idiots who, unable to conceive any sensible actions to reduce our energy consumption, dreamed up instead the unproved and unprovable proposition that we are "saving energy" by staying on "daylight" time.  As I have pointed out earlier, even Congress's own commissioned study was unable to come up with convincing evidence that daylight time saves anything at all.  

Thus we remain condemned to suffer through another six weeks of artificial and needless light-shifting, all the way through Halloween.  (By the way, parents: It's supposed to be dark when the kids go out trick-or-treating.  That's what makes it scary and fun!)

But in consolation, keep your eye out for the reports, when we do set our clocks back again, of all the energy that was saved while we were on daylight time.  You won't see any such reports, of course, but you can look for them if you like.

Supreme Court Votes NRA

It was predictable.  It was predicted.  The Roberts court has struck down handgun restrictions that have been in place in Chicago for some years, using the completely insupportable argument that "bearing arms" is a fundamental right, and ignoring the context in which the framers asserted that right, to wit, the "well-regulated militia."  Note that this qualification of the right to bear arms was apparently so important to the framers that they stated it up front, even before specifying the "bearing arms" bit they were talking about.

Such blatant and purposeful disregard for the letter of the Constitution is to my mind, malfeasance by at least five justices of the supreme Court.  At the very least, as I said in February, it should dispel any claims that Roberts and his benchmen don't want to "make law," and just want to get back to the basic texts of the Constitution.  But then, we already knew that, didn't we?

The Message Of The Burning Bush For Republicans

I hate to sound like a broken record* but on the other hand, our Republican Party leaders don't seem to let that concern stop them, as the GOP drags out its worn drum again to complain that the Obama administration's budget is all wrong and they won't support it.  So I'll just reiterate that the huge deficit they're so worried about was created by their President - the one who left office just a year ago.

It's interesting how seldom we hear that guy's name (except from the Democrats, of course).  For Republicans, he's a black hole in the party history; they prefer to deny his existence.  If you have a Bible (I'm partial to the Ishka bible myself) you can find there the tale of Moses and the burning bush.  The latter was an attention-getting device to assure that Moses heeded an important message (as in later years, as the old joke runs, you had to use a 2x4 to get a mule's attention). 

Now, what was that last President's name?  .... Bush! Yes, that's it!  Glad you were able to recall it, because unlike the biblical bush, this one seems to have been consumed by the fire.  As the administration of George Bush caught fire and went down in flames, the modern-day Moseses of the Republican Party (for example, take minority leader Mitch McConnell...please!) were either too oblivious even to look (the mule syndrome) or they got the message garbled (e.g., many say the problem with Bush was he wasn't conservative enough, he should have cut taxes even more and that would have saved the economy, for sure.)

Regrettably, many people today seem willing to let "Dubya" slip unobserved and unlamented under the waves of history.  But I would still be very doubtful about relying on this crop of Republicans to lead us out of the wilderness.

  * How many expressions such as "like a broken record" will disappear in the next 10-20 years? For readers under 40 or so, I'll just note that back in the dark ages, music came on things called "LPs" which were different in two ways from today's digital downloads: (1) you had to pay for them and (2) they could stick in one groove and endlessly repeat some little phrase or snatch of music.  Some people still acquire music on LPs, or collect old ones, but even I'm not that retro. 

While we're on the subject of the ancients, Ishka Bibble and Henny Youngman were comedians of a very different era - my dad's more than mine - yet they don't seem so out of date in the context of today's Republican leadership.  I'll bet Mitch McConnell remembers them! 

Solstice Day - A Christmas For Everybody

Is Christmas obsolete?  No, but it's certainly changing.  Even the staid old Washington Post recognized, in an editorial a couple of days ago, that "Christmas" has increasingly become an ecumenical, even secular, holiday, one that's observed in some fashion or other by far more Americans than are card-carrying, practicing Christians.  According to the Post, we might want to blame or praise Irving Berlin for this trend.  His song White Christmas, appearing in 1942, got us all thinking about the holiday in a different way. 

More accurately, of course, Berlin simply put into music and feeling that was already a part of our collective consciouslness.  At its best, Christmas these days is a spirit of goodwill and giving in which many non-Christians, and even the areligious, get caught up.   Christian religions should be pleased to take credit for this aspect.  At its worst, the holiday is an exercise in mass-crass commercialism, and orgy of buying each other stuff we often don't need.  People of all beliefs get caught up in that, too; and our fundamentally commerce-oriented culture can (and does) take credit for that aspect. 

Some time ago, a not-so-famous blogger suggested that we need to redefine and re-calendar some of our official holidays to better adapt them to our changing multicultural society.  Specifically on Christmas, he wrote this:

....Christmas.  Although it's a Christian holiday, it is commonly observed in various ways by people of many faiths and persuasions.  I have known Hindus and Muslims in this country who put up a tree and exchange gifts as a secular tradition of the season.  To non-Christians and even many Christians, it has become more about gift-giving than anything else, and of course for retailers, it's lifeblood.  The date is arbitrary -- we celebrate Christ's birth at this time of year because it roughly coincided with pagan rites accompanying the winter solstice.  My suggestion:  December 22, Solstice Day, a time of rejoicing, a festival of cheer and light that chases away winter doldrums; a time, too, of gift-giving and of the all-important end-of-year extravanganza of buying that drives our economy. Maybe the change would also help move some of the commercialism away from the "real" Christmas on December 25.

It's still a great suggestion.  The time is nigh.