Rumors of Far Despairs

Pendulums

Posted on November 20, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

England swings like a pendulum do
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two
Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben
The rosy-red cheeks of the little children.

Roger Miller, England Swings

I am an unabashed liberal. I am liberal by nature, but not by upbringing. Where and when I grew up the word “Democrat” was a swear word, and probably still is today for many who live there. That word doesn’t really suit me much anyway, since I prefer my independence to being pinned under a glass dome by labels.

In the heat of this moment, I find myself being alienated by many of those who self-identify as liberals. They are caught in a vortex of post-election despair, loudly lamenting the loss, complaining of the unfairness of the Electoral College vs the popular vote, searching not for answers but for whom to blame. While grieving is inevitable after a significant loss, when it begins its mutation into blame it is time to give it up and start anew.

I have lived a long time, long enough for my demise, whenever it happens, not to come as a profound surprise to anyone. And during that long life I’ve often been struck by the fact that societal matters are the subjects of frequent pendulum swings: that which is popular, conventional wisdom today will surely be tomorrow’s discarded newspaper lining the floor of someone’s birdcage. Pendulum swings are how human society operates; a swing to one extreme is inevitably followed by a swing to the other in correction of the excesses of the first.

In the case of certain cultural pendulum swings, there seems to be yet another goal. Whenever cultural swings are strong enough for their momentum to physically move the pendulum’s midpoint either to the left or to the right, the counter swing will no longer travel in the other direction as far as it once did. But swing it will, nonetheless – to allow enough time for the cultural laggards on the other end of the spectrum to rest, adjust, and catch up just far enough that they aren’t left too far behind. This is one of those times.

I would go so far as to argue that pendulum swings are necessary in an integrated society. The human condition exists across a wide, three-dimensional spectrum. While we are all members of the same species, we are not all hard-wired identically nor were we all taught the same things by our parents or by the local culture in which we were raised. In short, each of us exists as a point located somewhere along the lengths of a great variety of sliding scales: from the brave to the coward; from the genius to the dolt; from the strong to the weak; from the moral to the immoral; from the religious to the atheist; from the liberal to the conservative; from there to here and back again. We occupy a place upon so many different sliding scales that their prolixity renders the results of a Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test nothing more than an educated guess.

If I am right in this belief, it is time for liberals to accept the inevitability of what we consider an ugly reality and get on with it. The Age of Trumpery will happen whether we like it or not, and how nasty it will turn out to be from our point of view depends, in part, upon our future behavior as well as the dignity and integrity of those conservatives we deem honorable. While the latter may seem tepid reassurance to most of us when things as vital as Medicare and Social Security are at stake, we ought to be able to rely upon the first – upon ourselves – to do what we can to mitigate the coming excess.

But can we rely upon ourselves? We can certainly rely upon many to weep and wail on our behalf; they already are. But the rest of us need to quit it and get back to work. No matter who is President, there will always more chores to be done after we’ve attacked the wood pile with the best intentions and the strongest will.

So it will be harder for us liberals in the Age of Trumpery, so what? Evil always seeks center stage; every age has to be diligent and work hard to keep it at bay. Some ages bear a greater burden in that regard than others. While many liberals see a real possibility of evil in the coming Age of Trumpery, it may well prove to be nothing more than an era of widespread pillage of the national treasury. As bad as that will be, pillage on such a scale is nothing new when it comes to American politics. We’ve seen it before at regular intervals, and we’ll surely see it again when the Age of Trumpery has passed.

This is not to say that vigilance will be unnecessary in the Age of Trumpery. To crib John Donne: “They also serve who watch and speak.” But if that is to be your role, speak with linguistic clarity and focus; speak with pride; tell the truths you see. Don’t find conspiracies when all you see is collective selfish behavior writ large, but do decry the behavior and clearly explain why it’s wrong in your opinion; don’t gnash your teeth over possibilities, but do identify and focus your spotlight on incipient evil whenever you see it actually at work. The Age of Trumpery will certainly be a time for Strider, for the ethical warrior-watcher.

So what is a socially conscious person, whether liberal or conservative, supposed to do in times like these other than watch and speak? The answer is simple: fight. Fight for what you believe in. Fight by words, deed, and the use of your treasury. If words are all you have, fight with intellectual analysis and protest rather than by name calling and innuendo. The time for complaining is over; it’s time to go back to work. Find an issue you believe in and have a passion for and get your hands dirty.

The need for assistance in all areas of society is enormous. I have worked with others to raise money needed to fund programs dedicated to increasing access to justice for all people for well over two decades, and no matter how much money we raise it’s never enough to fulfill the entire need. Food banks need money and help delivering goods; the homeless still live on our streets. I could go on and on and on, but if I do I will surely be castigated by someone for leaving out some worthy cause near to their heart.

So pick your battle. Pick something, anything for which you feel a passion and help however you can. We don’t need to develop a consensus as to where to spend our money and expend our effort when there is so much to be done. While it is true that a societal-wide campaign focused upon one major issue would be more worthwhile than a flurry of individual effort on all sorts of things, it is also true that the debate necessary to identify that issue and the agreed-upon means of its resolution would be extremely time consuming, unlikely of success, and assuredly useless for the target population during its pendency. Only the likes of Bill Gates can mount and sustain that kind of effort.

Me? I’m just little guy, and nothing if not impatient. I’ve never known crying over spilled milk to accomplish much. I find it better to vote with my heart and my hands to get something – anything – done. The only weeping and wailing I want to do is over the need for others to quit their weeping and wailing and get on with it, whatever it is.

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Memories of War’s Aftermath

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

When I was growing up, the veteran landscape was much easier to navigate. The 1950s were truly a simpler time; we didn’t have to consider the veterans of so many different wars that happened in places with strange, exotic names. Our relevant wars were three: World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.

Of course, we were aware of other, earlier wars. But the last Civil War veteran died in 1963 (the year I graduated from high school), and the remaining Spanish-American War veterans were, like the title of this blog, mere rumors of a far despair. We knew no one who’d fought in either of those long ago wars. Their survivors seemed more like exhibits in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum than real people – wax figures representing a history we could only read about in our text books.

The Korean War veterans were young enough to be college students, and many of them lived in a fraternity next door to the house in Walla Walla where I grew up. Since many of them were absolutely determined to date my teen-aged sister, they cultivated me in hopes that I might introduce them to her. They even gave me a pledge pin in furtherance of the effort. I was only 6 or so at the time, and dumb enough to think their focus was on me.

World War I veterans had pride of place as our grandparents. They were still alive in sufficient numbers as not to be a rarity, and we honored them more for our family ties than for their status as veterans. They never talked about the war, and, if asked about it, would likely opine that all that was best forgotten. Then they’d smile, pat our heads, and tell us to go outside and play while there was still enough light.

It was the World War II veterans who enjoyed pride of place in our world. They were our parents. We interacted with them on a constant basis, and came to feel that we knew that war – that we had personal experience of it even though those in my high school class were born only as the war was ending. But that war was immediate to us in time: there was plenty of living history to represent it, and writings aplenty to thrill us whenever we were in need of a good adventure story to tide us over the boring bits.

But what there wasn’t much of was an oral history of the War. Whenever we asked our parents about it, we were generally advised by our mothers not to inquire for fear of upsetting dad and, if we ignored her advice, were rewarded for our continued effort by dad’s grunt of irritation. My own father had no military experience to offer; he had worked on the construction of Liberty Ships in the Columbia River shipyards across the way from Portland, Oregon. His only escape from death occurred when the bosun’s chairs that he and a fellow worker were riding to paint the inside of a ship’s funnel were hauled up hurriedly after someone had turned off the ventilating fans thinking them finished with their work, and someone else noticed that the ropes holding them were still tight with their weight. They were found unconscious, but suffered no further injury or loss. It wasn’t much of a tale to tell my friends, but it frightened me nonetheless.

Accordingly, my memories of World War II are derivative. Even though I consider myself a child of that war in the sense that I was conceived during it and born just prior to VE Day and was 5 months old when the Japanese surrendered, I have no conscious first hand experience of it. And even if my father had been a veteran, he would not likely have spoken about it. PTSD was not a known medical term. Instead, stiff upper lips were the order of the day – even though there was no more need to worry about sinking the ships my father helped build.

But I do have first hand experience of the War’s effects. I endured the cheap housing thrown up after the war; I was taught by veterans of the military and of the concentration camps; a plethora of my friends had fathers who were veterans and known to me from backyard play; I read any fiction about the War with breathless interest: The Cain Mutiny, Away All Boats, A Bell For Adano, The Thin Red Line. These works caused me to read any books about any war that I could find in our Carnegie-endowed public library, from Hemingway to Hiroshima and everything in between or on either side.

Until I became Bob Weiss’ law partner, these works were my main experience of war. I had my own personal brush with the Vietnam War, but I fought that War in a courtroom in Detroit, Michigan while a student at the University of Michigan Law School. If you wonder what all that was about, search on-line for Ellis vs. Hershey and learn the boring details. I suffered no fire fights, only a barrage of words from an unfriendly government who thought me little more than a traitor to my country for litigating. The only personal cost I suffered as a result of the Vietnam War was the considerable stress of the litigation itself, a loss of job prospects whenever I told an interviewer about my history and the inevitable “he” abruptly terminated the interview, and the careful but deliberate saunter by some in my hometown to the far side of the street when I first returned following my law school graduation.

Bob was the source of my real education about World War II. We enjoyed a long partnership and friendship together until his death last year at age 92. My last visit with Bob occurred at the interment of his mortal remains in Grave 450 of Section 76 of Arlington National Cemetery. He accompanied us to that gravesite in spirit. His presence was everywhere that day, staying with us until he finally lay down to sleep among his fellow warriors.

I have many memories of Bob and our friendship that involve WWII and its aftermath.

Telling him on a plane to Calgary soon after I joined the firm he founded about my draft litigation, worried that he, as a veteran who’d won a Silver Star at a place called Hill 314 in Mortain, France, might be disgusted. He surprised me by dismissing my worry that it might affect our relationship with: “Not at all. In fact, good for you. You did the right thing.” But when I followed up by asking him about the events that earned him a Silver Star, he gave me his standard 30 second answer: “We were on a hill outside Mortain when the Germans counterattacked with a Panzer Division. We were surrounded for six days and nights without food or medical supplies, but we had water. I was a forward artillery observer and called in fire to defend the hill, and eventually we drove the Germans away.” Nothing about the fact that his was the only working radio on the hill and that he was the only one calling in the protective fire in a battle that many military historians consider the only one won by artillery fire; nothing about the idea to switch radio batteries frequently and putting the spare battery in the sun to allow its lead core to recharge; nothing about rolling out of his foxhole to give it to Sergeant Corn for his shift and Corn dying soon after when a shell hit; nothing about standing atop the rocks at the crest of the hill to draw German fire so he could radio in the coordinates for return fire on the position of their guns. Just “we came, we fought, and then we fought some more.”
My first experience of his command voice after a head on collision in which the car we were riding was totaled. I was out yelling at the arrogant teenager who hadn’t even applied his brakes before impact when a loud, irresistible, powerful voice told me to knock it off and stand down – we had other things to think about.
His tears at a dinner we both attended with his close friends in San Francisco when I told the hostess that I and others had been egging Bob on to write about his Mortain experience because we thought it would be good for him to let go and for the rest of us to know more about it; tears that told me just how hard it was for him to endure the constant onslaught of entreaty that we were engaged in to get him to relieve the all-too-obvious pressure of his walled-up memories.
His telling me one day after I’d read the first draft of a concluding chapter of the book he decided to write (Fire Mission) not to call him during the first two weeks of any August, because he would be back on Hill 314 with his comrades in memory – all 600 or so of them, not just the nearly 300 who’d survived – and did not wish to be disturbed.
His sharing of the many drafts of his book as he finally wrote it, seeking input on his writing.
His sharing of the mock-up of the very first cover for his book, a rather garish green and orange affair that featured a picture of him as a 21-year-old Second Lieutenant on the back page. He’d sent it up by interoffice mail (he was in Portland; I was in Seattle). I had no sooner opened the string tied envelope when he called to ask what I thought. I told him it was a bit garish but had the advantage of drawing attention, and he said that had been the idea. Then he added: “What do you think of the picture? I can’t believe how young and innocent I looked.” When I hesitated, he demanded “what?” in a gruff challenge I could not refuse. “That’s not what I thought when I saw it,” I tried. When he demanded to know more, I had to be honest: “I took one look and said to myself ‘what a cocky looking son-of-a-bitch’.” There was silence for a moment, then a delighted explosion of laughter. “You look like a street fighter who is relishing the opportunity to take on the entire German Army singlehandedly,” I added in hope of further redemption. “Maybe so,” he said when he was able to stop laughing, “but it didn’t look that way to me when I chose it.”
The look of pride on his face as the French Counsel from San Francisco hung the medal denoting him a Chevalier in the Ordre National de la Légion d’honneur around his neck at a private ceremony in Portland.
The laugh we subsequently enjoyed after Helen’s and my search for a lapel pin representing his Legion of Honor medal because he disliked wearing the real thing in public for fear it was too ostentatious. Helen and I were on our way to Paris, and he told me about a small shop where lapel pins could be purchased. We worried about whether I had the right to buy one since I wasn’t a member, so he wrote and signed a letter of authorization. But when Helen and I went to the suggested location, there was nothing there. After a brief search, we found a medal shop by sheer accident, and when I presented the letter they shrugged it aside as irrelevant, asking only which level of honor should the pin represent; and when we walked out of the shop that sold us the pin and turned left, we found ourselves in front of another medal shop next door to the first.
The joy he took in telling his story once the walls holding it in had fallen – especially the joy in his voice when he told me about being invited to be the guest of honor at the annual Marine birthday party held by their detachment in Denver, with the charge to speak of his war experiences; the wonder that he expressed afterword that they had made the effort to honor a mere Army grunt like him.
His announcement at dinner aboard the river boat on which Bob, Norma, Helen and I were traveling on from Amsterdam to Constanta in 2013 that he was going topside at 1:00 AM that morning so he could be awake when the ship passed the location where he’d crossed the Rhine during the War. When I asked if he’d like me to join him there, he gave a laconic reply that I could if I wished. As I thought about his reply, I realized he would have plenty of company without me and that I would only be a distraction. I left him to his colleagues of memory.
The large wreath sent to his memorial service by the Mayor of Mortain, and the message of gratitude for Bob’s life from the Mayor read aloud in French and English by the Mayor’s emissary – both evidence that despite the size and quality of our friendship, he’d always meant much more to the world than he ever could have meant to me.

Why am I writing this piece? After all, I’ve often written about Bob. You can use the search engine for this blog to find numerous pieces.

The truth is that every year on Veterans Day I wrote or called Bob to thank him for his service, for keeping our world safe in his time from the tyranny that is always with us, that is always seeking to dominate center stage. Grave 450, Section 76, Arlington National Cemetery has no phone, and I no longer have an address to which to send an email. But I can write this piece knowing that he is looking over my shoulder while I do, muttering, as he always did whenever I praised his service, that I am making far too much of something that he and his fellow citizen soldiers did out of patriotism.

But the rest of us know that I’m not.

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The Meek New World

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

I’ve woken up in a new world. Not a brave one; one created by insecure people afraid of a future they’re unable to understand. The view of this new world from Humptulips County is mixed – mostly bad, but with just enough dash of good in the mixture to allow me hesitant optimism.

Since I think visually, I have to explain my reaction in pictures.

The first and most immediate is of the state of being two weeks before a high school senior prom for which the biggest of the school bullies has managed, through intimidation and determination, to be elected King of the Prom. Me? I am a nerd without a date for the prom, afraid to ask anyone and justifying my failure by noting that it is unclear how the prom will turn out given such an inauspicious beginning. The prom might turn out to be a lark, but this is highly unlikely given that all of the ingredients for disaster are in place.

But as true to life as this image may be, it is unhelpful. While in my daydream I can avoid the hypothetical prom by giving into my fears of rejection with the use of a facially rational excuse, I have no means to avoid the next four years in America except by means I do not care to contemplate, much less consider, for as much as a nanosecond.

My second daydream is that I have magically become a resident of some European colony of the 1950s in the heart of a continent deemed backward and downtrodden by its colonial occupiers. I am trapped in European skin, but don’t buy into the prevailing beliefs of the colonial culture. My fellow Europeans, convinced of their own enlightenment and of their superiority over the natives they supplanted and cowed by the force of arms, are secure in their dominance – unaware that trying to hold the inevitable at bay by force is a short-term strategy guaranteed to implode in some not-so-distant future; unaware of the irony that prevails in thinking themselves dominant in a land and climate for which their culture and ways are ill-suited. Their refusal to see the inevitability of impending change is dense and deliberate. Not only are their heads in the sand up to and including their collar bones, their collective asses are waving in the air in invitation of illicit and painful usage. And I, who looks but does not think like them, am without a passport and must make my way to safety by thought rather than action, even though the odds are heavily against my success.

But wait! This isn’t a daydream at all. It is a nightmare – a nightmare that has returned, and will return, generation after generation because humans, regardless of color or culture, never seem to learn the lessons of experience. I toss and turn looking for a dreamscape exit, hoping at some visceral level of incomprehension that I will wake up and consign the nightmare to my subconscious for a few hours or days of relief. But I am not allowed any respite from this nightmare, no matter how temporary.

I am not even allowed to tell my friends and neighbors about the night’s absurdities: far too many of them will not view it as a nightmare but as a welcome return to an imagined, fifty year old cultural norm stripped of its ills and illnesses by their fevered longing for the happier times of childhood when all responsibility was someone else’s obligation, and those possessed of a bullying nature will see it as a wet dream of opportunity. And I cannot tell one from another; cannot identify who I might reason with.

This isn’t a nightmare after all. It’s the new reality. The meek new world.

The dash of good? I live in Humptulips County, a place where billionaires cannot buy judges with their money no matter how much of it they spend, a place where my friend, an openly gay Hispanic/Asian/American woman, can be elected by statewide vote to our Supreme Court because of her energy, wits, humor, practicality, and intelligence, a place that is truly a melting pot of flavors and cultures from which I am privileged to partake, a place that is a stew of humanity as interesting, as flavorful, and as subtle as a fine red wine partaken at its peak. A place whose watchword is hope.

I already live in the future that others dread. I thank God for the mercy that it is beyond my comprehension to understand why they fear it.

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The Freedom Not To Listen

Posted on November 5, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

WARNING: This piece contains no specific reference whatsoever to Donald J. Trump (although you are perfectly free to imply one). Given Rule No. 5, perhaps it should.

I have been thinking about the subject of this piece for many weeks, considering both the logic of my beliefs and the implications of their application. You will find out more about these as you read, and I am especially interested in any thoughtful feedback you may have. You will find that there is a reason for my emphasis on the word thoughtful – but only if you finish the piece.

Free speech was deemed so important to our Founders that when it came time to write the Bill of Rights they decided it ought to share primacy of place in the First Amendment along with the freedom and non-establishment of religion, the freedom of the press, the freedom to assemble, and the right to petition government for the redress of grievances. But there are other rights contained in the First Amendment as well. While they are not specifically stated, they are the rights which are correlative to those specifically granted.

For example, while we enjoy the freedom to assemble, no one other than a despot would argue that we are required to attend any particular gathering or, for that matter, any gathering at all. Similarly, we are not obligated to petition government whenever we have a grievance; we are allowed to whine instead. We have the right to adhere to no religion whatsoever and abstain form attending any church. That we are not required to read a newspaper or other source of legitimate journalism is all too evident in these days of the Internet and its plethora of wacky conspiracy websites; in fact, their popularity implies yet another right – that of self-imposed stupidity.

The correlative right to freedom of speech is the right to listen or not to listen to someone else’s speech. I wish to focus upon the latter. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires us to listen to the ravings of another, or, indeed, to his or her reasoned logic. In fact, freedom of speech allows us to disagree with either the ravings or logic of another and to speak out in opposition to either as often and as loudly as we wish. And there is nothing that requires us to have actually listened to or read whatever the other person said or wrote as a precondition to doing so.

In my opinion, the freedom not to listen is the most dangerous of the correlative rights inferred from the First Amendment, even though it is basic to our understanding of free speech itself. Choosing not to listen can have incredibly poor consequences to ourselves and to our society. A grade school student who chooses not to listen to his teachers will likely suffer a lifetime of poor jobs and low pay; a legislator who chooses never to listen to the opposition’s point of view has a profound misunderstanding of the concept of politics and will serve our country poorly. The current gridlock in Congress is ample proof of the latter proposition, but while the congressional deadlock is roundly criticized by almost all American citizens, many of the critics blame those holding opinions differing from theirs as its sole source – thereby evidencing that they, themselves, are guilty of not listening any better than their elected representatives. When everything is the other guy’s fault, legislative listening is not only dismissed as an obligation our representatives ought to possess, it is also roundly decried as a socially unworthy skill which requires dismissal from office whenever manifested.

Nevertheless, the freedom not to listen is an important right. None of us has an obligation to listen to the ravings of a maniac or the inanities of a dunderhead. If anyone were to attempt to make us do so on a regular basis, the frequently promised revolution would likely occur much sooner than one resulting from our community denying us the right to speak out about unpopular topics. The noise and noisomeness of being made to listen to someone we deem to be just this side of idiocy would drive us quickly to anger and retaliation. By comparison, we tolerate our neighbors’ smack downs of our beliefs much more easily; after all, they have a fundamental right to disagree with us.

Note that I refer to maniacs and dunderheads. This reference is important for two reasons: First, the definition of who is a maniac or a dunderhead is personal to the listener. While a definition of the terms themselves can be found in any decent dictionary, the right of application of the terms to others belongs solely to the listener. In other words, I have the right to decide who is and who isn’t a maniac or a dunderhead when it comes to my own listening habits, just as do you when it comes to yours. Whenever we make this decision we rely upon our education, experience, preferences, sense of cultural norms and decency, and – yes – our listening habits.

The second reason for the importance of the terms lies in the fact of the first reason: if we shut out all discourse with anyone of a different opinion from ours, we impair our ability to learn, we deny the importance of empathy in a civilized society, and we guarantee the deadlock Congress presently displays. It is clear that choosing not to listen is a right that needs to be exercised with the greatest of caution; in fact, it is clear to me that the right not to listen should be exercised as sparingly as humanly possible if one’s goals include any combination of learning, education, and personal success – to say nothing of being a good citizen.

Nevertheless, when someone’s discourse becomes too shrill and evidences no reasoned intelligence or the merest iota of common sense, not listening is my preferred method of maintaining my sanity. In most instances of shrillness in the context of the 2016 presidential election, I have endeavored mightily to listen carefully to the first utterance of some seeming inanity in order to determine what it is I find objectionable about it; I feel obligated to assess my reaction intellectually, and come to a reasoned conclusion about what makes the assertion objectionable. But once I have made that determination, I feel no obligation to listen to further rants about the same nonsense. In fact, I carry my determination to the extreme of not reading and not watching – but with the caveat that I should read or listen to any reasoned exposition of the objectionable opinion if it is being offered anew by someone other than the original spewer, someone who has taken the time and pains to consider the logic of the opinion, or its sources, objectively and carefully.

While I am comfortable with each of my specific decisions not to listen, I always find myself uncomfortable whenever I undergo the decisional processes that lead to one. I worry that I might decide not to listen too often, or, indeed, to develop the skill of not listening into my de facto reaction to anything which I disagree with on its face. As I grow older, I am conscious that my parents got less flexible in their listening habits as they aged. Because of that fact and my own advanced age, I have decided to observe a set of rules which must be met before turning off my hearing aids.

Rule No. 1: Presumption Of An Obligation To Listen. The right not to listen should be exercised sparingly, if at all. Consequently, a strong presumption exists in favor of the validity of a speaker’s opinions and of the underlying reasons which caused him or her to utter them. This presumption is different from their right to utter their opinions in the first instance, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Rule No. 2: We must Listen Before Choosing Not To Listen. We must always listen carefully to an opinion which we find objectionable, employing great care and empathy in an attempt to understand the nature and logic of, and reasons for the speaker having reached, the opinion. Each refusal to listen should be based upon intelligent and thoughtful analysis of the opinion itself, of our reasons for finding it objectionable, and of the reasons the speaker saw fit to utter it.

Rule No. 3: We Must First Try To Seek Common Ground Before Shutting Anyone Out. This is a corollary to Rule No. 2. If the speaker is known to us and has a legitimate basis for having said something we find objectionable based upon our own ethical system, our first task is to discuss our disagreement with the speaker in an attempt to find common ground or an alternative solution to the problem which the speaker addressed that would satisfy both of us even if it might contain a perceived flaw from our point of view. Having made that effort, if an objectionable opinion continues to be uttered by a relative, friend, or colleague, we should first attempt to counsel him or her to speak and behave otherwise for the sake of whatever relationship we enjoy. We should only proceed to dismiss a friend, relative, or colleague from our lives if we have first exercised the personal courage to confront them with reasoned argument against that which we deem objectionable.*

Rule No. 4: Avoid All Classifications Unless Manifestly Earned. Not everyone who has an opinion we refuse to listen to is a bigot, a terrorist, a lout, or some other beyond-the-pale classification. We must acknowledge that there are otherwise good people who hold specific opinions which we find anathema. We are entitled to refuse to listen to the specific opinion which we find objectionable, but shunning someone entirely for a single opinion is a step beyond reasonableness. Shunning someone requires lot more than a single instance of disagreement.**

Rule No. 5: Applications of Well and Truly Earned Bad Classifications are Imperative. As a corollary to Rule No. 4, we should never abide authoritarianism, bigotry, or the sort of knee-jerk communal hatred and filth that is spread around with a paint roller by complete assholes. Whenever the bigotry of any speaker becomes too loud, too forceful, or too dangerous, public recognition by us of him or her as a bigot becomes a civic obligation. Only this kind of public naming and shaming can prevent the rise of despots and preserve our shared cultural norms. Such persons are worthy of our attention, but only in the sense that we should shout them down loudly and collectively. Very occasionally – even more sparingly than exercising our right not to listen to them – a person such as Timothy McVey should be punished when he translates his opinions into harmful behavior extending well beyond his own inherent right to freedom of speech. While it is appropriate to call some opinions bigotry and to protest them publicly and even confrontationally, it is not appropriate to refuse the right to speak to those doing nothing more than uttering that which we deem blasphemy.***

These are my rules, all of them. I can only hope they cover the applicable waterfront. Others may well disagree with some or all of my thoughts and logic, or think the rules themselves inadequate in some manner. Some may even do so thoughtfully.

I can well imagine that many will quickly come to the conclusion that my premise that we have the right not to listen is faulty in its inception. Even I must admit there is a certain educational heresy to the notion. But I know one thing for certain: there isn’t a shred of doubt that each of us closes our minds to others’ thoughts and ideas on occasion, and many do so all too frequently. Therefore, I am much happier having made the attempt to discover a reasoned way of doing so in future.

Feel free to have at me and/or my ideas, logic, or perceived lack thereof. My very own rules (at least I think they are mine, because I didn’t bother to read anyone else’s ideas on the subject before writing this piece) require me to listen to you or to anyone who cares to comment one way or another – for at least a little while, anyway.

*This is also called the “Who Made Me God?” rule.

**This is also known as the “Frequently Wrong But Never In Doubt” rule after the following concluding chorus to Cheryl Wheeler’s eponymous song:

And I guess I’ve forgotten since I was a kid
I don’t know why we loved him I just know we did
And he was easily riled, likely to shout
Frequently wrong but never in doubt

***This is also called the “Westboro Baptist Church” rule for reasons which ought to be obvious to anyone who possesses even an ounce of sanity and decency.

Posted in 'Tis a Puzzlement, Civics | Comments Off

Learning to Laugh

Posted on October 26, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

“Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

Forward!”

Walt Kelly, Introduction to The Pogo Papers

A funny thing happened on my way to my Facebook page the other day: I found a message from a high school classmate to whom I haven’t spoken in over fifty years congratulating me on something I’d recently posted. We exchanged friendship invitations, and I quickly learned that he is currently running for public office as a Democrat in a very conservative western state. During our ensuing message exchanges, we briefly touched on the subject of partisan politics. In the course of that discussion, I told him that I used to split votes among candidates regardless of their party affiliation, based upon whichever candidate I believed was best suited for the post being sought given my estimation of their intelligence, their moral and work ethic, and their ability to generate common sense, workable ideas within the legislative context – things that I would broadly categorize as “character” for purposes of this piece.

I no longer split my vote. I vote the Democratic party line, instead. My reason for no longer splitting my vote is not because of all the grief that my stalwart Democratic friends once gave me. That sort of ardency has never appealed to me. No, I no longer do so because of the stridency and zealotry of those on the right who hold public office. A candidate’s character no longer matters to me when all elected officials toe the same line because they must, when every single one of them seeks to gain advantage by shouting their memorized, standardized rubric more loudly than the other guy shouting his, when no elected official is allowed the freedom and luxury of independent thought for fear they will be voted out of office by their own electoral base if they fail to religiously toe their party’s line down to the last comma and period.

Note that I said I no longer split my vote because of those on the right who hold public office. When I say this, I am talking about today’s version of the political right. Today’s political right is not the same thing as a thinking conservative. Thinking conservatives have no place in today’s politics. They are unelectable and nearly extinct. They’ve been shunted aside by bullies and bigots, and haven’t any competent political venue in which they can be heard. Their brand of conservatism is limited to being broadcast by a few journalistic opinion writers, obscure academic or quasi-academic publications, or in discussions among copacetic friends during and after a good home-cooked meal. Their brand of conservatism is no longer viable in a caustic climate because it entails a willingness to compromise with those to their left in order to find solutions that are palatable to each – or, more likely, mutually unpalatable.

While the left is trending in the same direction, I have greater hope that it won’t complete the journey. Perhaps I am blind to possibility.

The notion of the loyal opposition is, for now, dead on arrival in the these not-so-United States. The best evidence for this is the ever-pending appointment of Judge Merrick Garland to the United States Supreme Court which the Republican Senate will not deign to consider. Whatever the political spin doctors might have you believe, this refusal is unique to this time and place and is utterly contrary to historical constitutional practice. One can legitimately wonder, as many already have, whether the current Republican majority in the Senate has any respect for our Constitution. One should be very careful when first practicing to deceive for fear that his or her deception might prove to be a boomerang.

The source of this historic impasse is simple: it’s the lack of any demonstrable ability of the leaders of both parties to laugh at themselves or, more importantly, to laugh at the foibles of the opposition. Instant condemnation has replaced laughter as our political standard.

It is inarguably true that any political belief or theory has, if taken to extremes, laughable offshoots and consequences. This is true for the same reason that economics has been dubbed the dismal science: human behavior is not capable of being scientifically analyzed or readily categorized. Just when you believe you have absolute certainty what the next step taken by an acquaintance will be, he or he will dazzle you with hypocrisy and bendable ethics. Each of you reading this piece knows this to be true, because, like me, you’ve also zigged at times when logic told you to zag. Far too often, that’s what we do, and, when we do it, we take secret pride in having been unpredictable.

This sort of behavior in others ought to make us laugh, if only because we can imagine ourselves doing something similar and can easily understand the kind of forces that caused it to occur. When we lose the ability to laugh at others, we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves; and when we’ve lost the ability to laugh at ourselves, we lose our ability to laugh together with those of contrary belief in head-shaking amazement over the inherent inanity and common foibles of the human condition. And when we can no longer laugh together regardless of our respective political beliefs, we lose the ability to understand or employ the power of empathy.

Only when we are able to empathize can we compromise, and only when the body politic is able to compromise can it pass useful, momentarily meaningful legislation. When mirth disappears, so does respect; it is replaced by castigation, bullying, and the inability – no, the unwillingness – to carefully listen not only to what an opponent is saying but, more importantly, for the underlying reasons and concerns that are causing him or her to say it. For while an opponent’s actual words may possess little merit in a politician’s estimation, the reasons and concerns underlying those words have a great deal of merit for the simple reason that they enjoy an honored place on the spectrum that is the human condition.

In thinking about this, I found myself remembering The Jack Acid Society, Walt Kelly’s delightful spoof of all things on the far right fringe of his day. He meant his cartoons to be funny, but yesterday’s jokes, yesterday’s fringes, have become today’s truths for the simple reason that we’ve lost the ability to laugh out loud with him. There is a part of Walt’s personality that may have accepted this mess as inevitable. After all, he is also the author of that most famous of Pogo Possum’s utterances: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Jeez, Walt, lighten up. Learn to laugh, will ya?

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Politicians and Other Lower Life Forms | Comments Off

The Impending Change of Scene

Posted on October 12, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

It is a lovely soft mid-fall morning here in Humptulips County; the sky is light blue, speckled with clouds and tinted with the rose hue of a still rising sun, and the hills I can see from our library window are suffused with the merest hint of October’s proprietary blue haze.

But tomorrow will be different; heavy rains and winds are predicted to begin in earnest then, ushering in the start of autumn’s annual war with winter. Winter will win in the end as it always does, but there is ample vitality remaining to the current season as evidenced by the fact that not all of the leaves, needles, and pinecones have yet fallen to earth. Indeed, not all of the leaves have even begun turning, and there is still plenty of green to go around.

Fall never concedes to winter without a damned good fight. The upcoming battle will be drenched in drama; the winds will roar their challenges and the rains will pound on our roofs to demand entry. The outdoors will retain a share of our focus even as we hunker down within the safety of our four walls, turn up the thermostat, and turn our attention to indoor pleasures, but only in the way that excellently produced stage spectacles can grab our attention if well played by the principal actors; gone will be the shared intimacies between lovers that dominated our relationship with the outdoors during the last few months. In the upcoming scene, each of us will be reduced to bit players with occasional walk-on roles; its inherent drama and passions are much too great for us to play anything like a starring role.

Indeed, our best place is in the audience. We are well suited for membership and take to it instinctively – as does all manner of life. This upcoming scene is meant to be enjoyed for its classical drama and music, for its power and passion, for its rapacious highs and dreary lows, and it needs an audience for that purpose; a sophisticated audience that is well aware that all will end happily when those in starring roles are laid to rest under the sparkling quilt of early winter.

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Another Country

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

I love these raw moist dawns with
a thousand birds you hear but can’t
quite see in the mist.
My old alien body is a foreigner
struggling to get into another country.
The loon call makes me shiver.
Back at the cabin I see a book
and am not quite sure what that is.

Jim Harrison, “Another Country”, Dead Man’s Float

It is early autumn in Humptulips County, and the fog has returned to grace at least some of our days. It slips into the occasional morning like a hesitant visitor to a neighborhood bar trying to determine whether its ambience suits her. Because of her shy smile, you know, even if she yet doesn’t, that she will become a regular within a week or two.

While we wait for her to make up her mind, our bird population works at its seasonal transition. Adult goldfinches have already gone, leaving the nettle feeder half full until such time as I choose to empty and clean it, a task that awaits the elimination of all uncertainty as to their continued presence; all that seems to remain of them are newly fledged goldfinches drinking their fill from the depressions in our tarmac. Nuthatches, juncos, and chickadees have returned to seasonal dominance, augmented by our resident flock of ever-voracious Steller’s jays who anxiously decorate the green boughs of our pines whenever we choose, after suitable intervals to protect the sanctity of our pocketbook, to put out whole, unshelled peanuts; by the harsh, staccato calls of the crows as they defend their territory or exercise their perpetual, innate curiosity; by the bright red splash of the flicker’s underwings; by the occasional star turns taken by our pair of mated pileated woodpeckers, or by those of their new offspring who has grown too large to be fed by them but remains too awkward for us to be assured of his or her continued existence.

In this season, I sometimes go outside to our front porch in the hour just before dawn whenever the fog is present, still in my pajamas and before I make my breakfast. I try not to wake Helen whenever I do so, but this is much harder than it sounds. Our front door sticks and must be yanked hard to be opened, especially on such moist mornings. I could fix it I suppose, but the opening ritual has become an essential part of our daily routine and I worry that the repair might approximate a sin.

Once outside, I listen for the first hesitant birdsong that will swell into the grateful chorus that will transform the fog into a living essence infused with the mystery of joy. And when this transformation is complete, I will be as if blindfolded, listening to Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus through noise cancelling headphones that block everything but song, and I will join their ecstasy over having been granted yet one more morning to welcome.

Posted in Humptulips County, Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off

A Passion For Retirement

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

And chances are, like me
You want to slow down too, I can tell
Take on fewer things, fewer things to do
And do them well

Maybe that’s the key to set us free
Maybe that’s the key to the prison of time
I’m looking for the key to the prison of time

Eric Bibb, Prison of Time

When I first heard Eric Bibb’s Prison of Time a week or so ago, something about the lyrics fascinated me. I put my car’s CD player on repeat and listened to it eight or nine times in a row on my way home from a meeting in Seattle. I only repeat a new song in this fashion when its melody is entrancing and its lyrics are trying to tell me a truth of some kind. As soon as I arrived home that day, I studied Mr. Bibb’s lyrics to see what they were trying to tell me. This post is my interpretation of their message.

When I was working, I faced my retirement with suspicion, wondering what it was I would do when the time came. I’ve always been a busy person who kept working at jobs as if I were an accomplished plate spinner plying his skills on stage. I even have a name for the tactic: “walking the high wire.” I achieved a substantial ability to walk that high wire; it served me well during my time as a practicing lawyer.

The practice of law is not a 9 to 5 job. Clients’ worries and problems do not pay any attention to the clock. As a member of a service industry, a lawyer needs to be available whenever crises affect his client, whenever the client’s anxiety becomes too much for the client to bear alone. And if you want the privilege of serving those clients and the freedom to be yourself and practice as you like that comes with having them, then you must go out into the community in which you live and work and be seen. The best way to be seen is to give something back to the community that nourishes you, and that requires more hours of service dedicated to things that compensate your soul rather than your pocketbook.

To live a successful partner’s life in a law firm requires many long hours. If you enjoy a life of service, those hours are not burdensome. They are only a burden for those lawyers who want the job to be ruled by the clock, for those lawyers who believe that, because they went to law school and have three more years of education than the average college graduate, they are somehow owed a living. There is a place for such folks in the profession, but it is not always a happy place. Their place depends upon the other lawyers who provide them work; this dependence generates anxiety arising from their lack of control over their flow of work and their place in the firm, an anxiety often accompanied by mental health and substance abuse problems.

When I began my career, it seemed to me that it was better to use the energy that would otherwise be wasted on such anxiety to live my professional life to the fullest. That’s not to say that I was the best or most successful lawyer in Seattle; but it is to say that I held my own and was successful in accordance with, and in adherence to, my personal standards and ethics.

As I neared the time when I would have to make the leap from the cliff into the ocean of retirement, I began to listen and watch my mentor and friend, Bob Weiss. He constantly reminded me by his actions and words that retirement is best when one indulges his passions to the fullest. For Bob, those passions were writing, traveling, and serving his community; he wrote and published plays, poetry, a memoir, a book of short stories, he got involved in a local music series in his home town, both as a sponsor and an attendee, he kept in touch with his mentees and friends and continued to serve them as role model, confidante and consigliere, and he traveled the world searching for knowledge rather than relaxation. He taught me that indulging your passions in retirement is not sinful; indeed, it’s the key to success.

So when I retired, I decided to write the novel I have always longed to write. It wasn’t so much that I had a specific subject on which I wished to expound; it was more that I wanted to see if I could write something – anything – that would hold together and tell a story complete with plot and an engaging narrative. My goal was not publication – although I have discovered that the characters in your novel become friends who want their story to be read by others. But whether or not Fortunate Son is ever published, the writing of it has informed and delighted the first three years of my retirement: all of the long hours I’ve spent on its manuscript have been times of learning and growth; all of the money I’ve spent on editors has been well spent due to the education I received; all of the hard work of writing has been time spent lost in the delights and wonders of a newly revealed world. There is nothing finer or more fulfilling than pulling finished product from thin air by the use of mental muscle alone. Gandalf and his staff have nothing on me!

Mr. Bibb caught this idea in his lyrics. Not that he has slowed down much. I believe the album in which Prison of Time appears (The Happiest Man In The World) is his third album in the last year. But I suspect that music is his passion and his profession, and there are no boundaries – no cliffs – between his professional life and retirement. Some are lucky that way; the rest of us must jump and find a way to swim.

In some ways, Mr. Bibb and I are not so different. I wrote extensively during my legal career – contracts, letters, briefs, articles, and all the other forms of writing demanded of a busy lawyer. But legal writing has its own rules and rhythms, and I knew I would have to unlearn them if I wanted to write fiction well. So I began this blog in an effort to learn a different writing style, only to find, when I retired and began writing Fortunate Son in earnest, that though I had a head start, I still had a long way to swim.

Fortunate Son is done now – as “done” as a novel can be before a publisher gets its hands on it. I arrived at that finish line two weeks ago when I realized I was incapable of reading the manuscript again after having read and revised it so many times. I have no idea if the novel will ever be published; I have no wish to self-publish and pester my friends to buy the product, so will content myself with the seemingly never-ending search for a literary agent. The search for an agent requires extensive writing in and of itself, since each agent has a personal style and your query letter (as the publishing industry calls your elevator speech on behalf of your work) to him or her must take that personal style into account. But writing an endless string of query letters in search of the ineffable agent is not enough to fulfill anyone, so I have begun work on another novel and have an idea and notes for a third.

While publication of Fortunate Son remains elusive, it was never my true goal. My real goal was to challenge myself, to see what I would be able do, to see if I could produce a work in which I could take personal pride. My real goal was to indulge my passion for writing to the utmost. I have done this to my satisfaction, and publication would simply be the icing on the cake I’ve baked.

Baking that cake has been my key to the prison of time.

Posted in Books and Stuff Like That, Our Place in the Firmament | Comments Off

A Path Through The Worlds

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

We have lived in our present home for 20 plus years, and the lower part of our driveway consisted of dirt and gravel until two weeks ago. We finally decided to pave the driveway up to the point of the existing asphalt because we kept having to re-grade and re-gravel the lower portion every three years or so, and the process was expensive and doomed to never-ending repetition. Our logic (or, perhaps, mine alone) was that while paving was more expensive, once it was completed the driveway would outlast our tenure here and would improve the value of the property. In short, the decision was taken as the result of an abundant application of common sense.

Visually, our new driveway is a thing of beauty – black and healthy, stretching around a corner into invisibility when viewed from the lane adjacent to our property. It draws the eye forward and empowers the imagination to wonder what might lie around that curve. And, since we also applied a new coat of sealant to the portion of the driveway that was already paved, the sinuous black thread continues around that corner and up the hill to the house, drawing visitors past our barn and further into the hidden pleasures that surround and fill our home space with so much grace.

I am satisfied with the resulting visual effect, but find that I miss the crunch of the gravel when I walk to the mailbox. Since its roadbed is three inches above the ground, walking the newly paved driveway is like being abroad on an inverted river (an outie, if you will)passing through the pines; I always hear Joni Mitchell’s River playing in my mind whenever I walk to our mailbox now, regardless of temperature or weather. The effect of Joni’s lyrics is surreal in the context of these waning days of summer, and I wonder if their sensation will pale with the seasoning of time or if Billy Joel’s lyrics to The River of Dreams might take the place of hers for at least some of the year.

Walking the former dirt and gravel portion of the driveway always took me back to a time before our residence in this place; in truth, to times before either Helen or I were born and to places well beyond the borders of this piece of ground on which we live. The sound of my sandal-clad footsteps on gravel in summer inevitably took me to ancient paths winding through the worn-down mountains and deserts of the middle east, making me wonder how perennially ill-shod ancient travelers fared over the course of long, hot, dusty days spent under an unrelenting sun; the crunch of gravel during cold winter months always made me think of travelers wearing handmade moccasins or boots beating their way through my imagination and the forests of a northern wilderness, their presence made known by the sound of footsteps on hard ground, the harshness of breathing through a cold-ravaged throat, and our shared enjoyment of the beauty cast by a pale sun as we walked our respective roads together separated only by the irrelevance of time.

Since it seems that even common sense comes at a cost, I will be forced to miss my fellow travelers on future walks unless I engage in the simple expedient of walking through our fields to our mailbox instead. If I do take this alternate route, the only loss I will suffer will be the lack of a real, honest-to-god road, but I assume that my imagination will be up to the task of providing the kind of path needed to enjoy their world again. Or, perhaps, the lack of a path will prove to be an even greater stimulation of my mind and a more accurate simulation of their realities.

Whichever the case may prove to be and despite my usual pride in its use, I take great solace in the notion that the use of common sense – even abundant applications of the stuff – can be easily thwarted by a small dose of imagination.

Posted in Our Place in the Firmament, Ponderings on the Meaning of Things | Comments Off

The Case Against Trump For My Republican Friends

Posted on August 10, 2016 by Gavin Stevens

To a liberal, the prospect of a Trump presidency is the stuff of an Orwellian nightmare. Being a liberal who counts several staunch conservative Republicans among my friends, I have struggled with how to make a rational case which might allow them to ignore their usual views and vote against The Donald – “voting against” being defined as anything they might like: everything from withholding their vote entirely; to voting for any other third party candidate they care to choose; or even engaging in that most unholy of acts from their vantage point – voting for Hillary Clinton. I will not make a case for Clinton in this piece, since that may well be a bridge too far for many of them.

While my Republican friends and I disagree about many things of a political nature, I know that we emphatically agree on many issues commonly found in daily life, especially the values of civility and living an ethical life in accordance with the dictates of a firm personal creed. And while our personal creeds may differ somewhat about matters of the political mind, the differences are matters of degree rather than stark contrast because we share many of the same convictions of the heart. I know this because I don’t make friends with zealots of any stripe, since zealots are tiresome at best; at worst, they are dangerous because their zeal so often conceals their view of whatever ethical horizons they maintain other than the object of their zealotry.

It has finally occurred to me to offer my Republican friends a technique that I long ago adopted for myself when faced with difficult decisions. Everyone knows what it’s like to be faced with difficult decisions – the worry and the stress and the sleeplessness of getting it right when so much is on the line. Everyone also knows what it’s like to wake up the morning after having made a difficult decision, only to realize there is no going back, that things somehow and sometimes look very different on the other side of a just-crossed line of no return.

My own technique for dealing with difficult decisions is simple: I do my very best to imagine myself over the decisional line before a final choice has to be made, to consider how each potential option then available to me might look from the other side. This is hardly a new idea, but my implementation takes it to systematic and rigorous excess. I do this option-by-option, rolling each perceived world it creates around on my mental tongue to see whether it tastes bitter or sweet, and I keep doing so until one option prevails over all others. I don’t always get things right using this technique, but I have found that it manages stress more effectively and materially reduces disappointments, as long as I stay calm and rational while making the attempt.

So for the benefit of my friends who haven’t voted for anything other than a Republican in eons, I would like you to imagine a Trump victory in which you voted for him and consider the possible effects of that upon your personal situation.

Let me help you.

For the teachers and educators among you, imagine the effect upon your classrooms and the playground of having a recognized, certified bully as president. Imagine the credibility his election will lend to his most prominent behavioral trait. All of the hard work you have put into anti-bullying programs could well be lost overnight, especially given the boasting and roasting which would inevitably follow election day. Some parents have told me that they have seen this effect already. Losers will abound in a triumphant Trumpian universe; the only qualification needed being to have voted against The Donald. How many of your students will be the children of losers? How will the children of the “winners” be inclined to treat them? How much more difficult will your job become?

For those members or alumni of the armed services among you, imagine the effect of having a Commander-in-Chief who considers vacillation an art form to be used to maintain control. What is it going to be like to be a member of that class of public servants who voluntarily and routinely put themselves in peril on behalf of our country to have a man in charge who doesn’t seem to understand why we cannot use nuclear weapons in every instance of conflict? How many places are you likely to be sent to fight for the sake of his latest whim? How often will our soldiers, sailors, and airmen be asked to bully little guys as a means of performing the solemn duty they’ve sworn to their country?

For all of the retirees among you, imagine what the effect of his election will be upon whatever savings you’ve taken a lifetime to create. I strongly suspect that the stock markets will go crazy – and not on the upside. Foreign stock markets will undoubtedly crash on the news of his election, since most foreigners are already in a state of disbelief about what they are hearing about our election; when foreign markets fall, they usually drag the domestic markets down with them. And that fact says nothing about how our own markets will be inclined to act on their own initiative. Remember that Henry Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush and the former chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, is already on record as opposing Trump; remember that he knows a good deal about domestic stock markets. He’s voting for Hillary. As he said in a Washington Post opinion piece: “The GOP, in putting Trump at the top of the ticket, is endorsing a brand of populism rooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-it-comes-to-trump-a-republican-treasury-secretary-says-choose-country-over-party/2016/06/24/c7bdba34-3942-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.b9d1809cf063) What effect do you think that might have on your savings account? Nothing good, I can assure you.

For all of my fellow attorneys, imagine the effect of having a president who not only likes to bully judges, but does so primarily in the pursuit of his own ends. Then imagine the kinds of federal judges he is likely to appoint. The greatest worth of our federal judiciary has always been its independence, its relative freedom from lobbying and interference. Even when we disagree with a particular decision or a general judicial outlook, we have always admired the courage shown by strong, independent jurists. If, as I suspect he will, Trump will seek to appoint only toadies to all levels of the federal bench, think of how much we will we have lost; think about the length of time that loss will endure; think about its effect upon the upcoming generations of lawyers.

For all of my Republican friends in business, think about having to conduct business in an atmosphere of constant uncertainty over what the rules might be tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, under a president who cannot seem to maintain any particular position longer than a nano-second. There is nothing worse than trying to conduct business during times of uncertainty. Imagine four or even eight years of constant uncertainty driven by the whims of a narcissist. Even those certainties which you dislike yield ground rules by which you can operate while you bitch and complain about them. Everyone in business knows that profit results from taking risks, and every one in business knows how hard it is to plan for even ordinary risks. So think about the quantum jump that risk levels take when times are uncertain. Think what the effect on your supply chain will be when Trump inevitably turns his bullying on any nation who says unkind things about him, as you must know he will. If you are inclined to argue the point with me, remember Trump’s performance during Brexit, and think again.

For all of those who value rational democratic discourse no matter how different our basic beliefs may be, consider this conclusion reached today by Thomas Friedman in a New York Times op-ed piece entitled “Trump’s Ambiguous wink wink to ‘Second Amendment People’”:

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated.

His right-wing opponents just kept delegitimizing him as a “traitor” and “a Nazi” for wanting to make peace with the Palestinians and give back part of the Land of Israel. Of course, all is fair in politics, right? And they had God on their side, right? They weren’t actually telling anyone to assassinate Rabin. That would be horrible.

But there are always people down the line who don’t hear the caveats. They just hear the big message: The man is illegitimate, the man is a threat to the nation, the man is the equivalent of a Nazi war criminal. Well, you know what we do with people like that, don’t you? We kill them.”

(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/opinion/trumps-ambiguous-wink-wink-to-second-amendment-people.html)

I could go on, but space limitations prevent me from doing so. The point is that whoever you are, whatever you do, think carefully before casting your vote this November and before you vote try to imagine what your life will be like in the still-pretend Trumpian age. While it is never easy to cross a decisional line using your imagination, there is one advantage that each of us has in making the attempt in the context of the upcoming election: Trump’s failings are so many and so obvious that they don’t require expert interpretation; they are so clear at ground level that they stand out clearly whenever you peer into the fog of the future.

So my Republican friends, make your decision about how to vote on the basis of your own ethics, sense of civics, and self-interest, not on the basis of party or mistaken loyalty. After all, we still have a secret ballot in this country, and you don’t have to tell anyone – not even me – how you voted.

Listen to your heart; or if you consider that to be advice which can only have come from the soggy mind of a self-professed liberal, listen to your gut instead. They both are saying the same thing in this instance.