Saturday, October 31, 2020
Friday, October 30, 2020
The Epigenetic Secrets Behind Dopamine, Drug Addiction and Depression
As I opened my copy of Science at home one night, an unfamiliar word in the title of a new study caught my eye: dopaminylation. The term refers to the brain chemical dopamine’s ability, in addition to transmitting signals across synapses, to enter a cell’s nucleus and control specific genes. As I read the paper, I realized that it completely upends our understanding of genetics and drug addiction. The intense craving for addictive drugs like alcohol and cocaine may be caused by dopamine controlling genes that alter the brain circuitry underlying addiction. Intriguingly, the results also suggest an answer to why drugs that treat major depression must typically be taken for weeks before they’re effective. I was shocked by the dramatic discovery, but to really understand it, I first had to unlearn some things.
“Half of what you learned in college is wrong,” my biology professor, David Lange, once said. “Problem is, we don’t know which half.” How right he was. I was taught to scoff at Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory that traits acquired through life experience could be passed on to the next generation. The silly traditional example is the mama giraffe stretching her neck to reach food high in trees, resulting in baby giraffes with extra-long necks. Then biologists discovered we really can inherit traits our parents acquired in life, without any change to the DNA sequence of our genes. It’s all thanks to a process called epigenetics — a form of gene expression that can be inherited but isn’t actually part of the genetic code. This is where it turns out that brain chemicals like dopamine play a role.
All genetic information is encoded in the DNA sequence of our genes, and traits are passed on in the random swapping of genes between egg and sperm that sparks a new life. Genetic information and instructions are coded in a sequence of four different molecules (nucleotides abbreviated A, T, G and C) on the long double-helix strand of DNA. The linear code is quite lengthy (about 6 feet long per human cell), so it’s stored neatly wound around protein bobbins, similar to how magnetic tape is wound around spools in cassette tapes.
Inherited genes are activated or inactivated to build a unique individual from a fertilized egg, but cells also constantly turn specific genes on and off throughout life to make the proteins cells need to function. When a gene is activated, special proteins latch onto DNA, read the sequence of letters there and make a disposable copy of that sequence in the form of messenger RNA. The messenger RNA then shuttles the genetic instructions to the cell’s ribosomes, which decipher the code and make the protein specified by the gene.
But none of that works without access to the DNA. By analogy, if the magnetic tape remains tightly wound, you can’t read the information on the cassette. Epigenetics works by unspooling the tape, or not, to control which genetic instructions are carried out. In epigenetic inheritance, the DNA code is not altered, but access to it is.
This is why cells in our body can be so different even though every cell has identical DNA. If the DNA is not unwound from its various spools — proteins called histones — the cell’s machinery can’t read the hidden code. So the genes that would make red blood corpuscles, for example, are shut off in cells that become neurons.
How do cells know which genes to read? The histone spool that a specific gene’s DNA winds around is marked with a specific chemical tag, like a molecular Post-it note. That marker directs other proteins to “roll the tape” and unwind the relevant DNA from that histone (or not to roll it, depending on the tag).
It’s a fascinating process we’re still learning more about, but we never expected that a seemingly unrelated brain chemical might also play a role. Neurotransmitters are specialized molecules that transmit signals between neurons. This chemical signaling between neurons is what enables us to think, learn, experience different moods and, when neurotransmitter signaling goes awry, suffer cognitive difficulties or mental illness.
Serotonin and dopamine are famous examples. Both are monoamines, a class of neurotransmitters involved in psychological illnesses such as depression, anxiety disorders and addiction. Serotonin helps regulate mood, and drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are widely prescribed and effective for treating chronic depression. We think they work by increasing the level of serotonin in the brain, which boosts communication between neurons in the neural circuits controlling mood, motivation, anxiety and reward. That makes sense, sure, but it is curious that it usually takes a month or more before the drug relieves depression.
Dopamine, on the other hand, is the neurotransmitter at work in the brain’s reward circuits; it produces that “gimme-a-high-five!” spurt of euphoria that erupts when we hit a bingo. Nearly all addictive drugs, like cocaine and alcohol, increase dopamine levels, and the chemically induced dopamine reward leads to further drug cravings. A weakened reward circuitry could be a cause of depression, which would help explain why people with depression may self-medicate by taking illicit drugs that boost dopamine.
But (as I found out after reading that dopaminylation paper), research last year led by Ian Maze, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, showed that serotonin has another function: It can act as one of those molecular Post-it notes. Specifically, it can bind to a type of histone known as H3, which controls the genes responsible for transforming human stem cells (the forerunner of all kinds of cells) into serotonin neurons. When serotonin binds to the histone, the DNA unwinds, turning on the genes that dictate the development of a stem cell into a serotonin neuron, while turning off other genes by keeping their DNA tightly wound. (So stem cells that never see serotonin turn into other types of cells, since the genetic program to transform them into neurons is not activated.)
That finding inspired Maze’s team to wonder if dopamine might act in a similar way, regulating the genes involved in drug addiction and withdrawal. In the April Science paper that so surprised me, they showed that the same enzyme that attaches serotonin to H3 can also catalyze the attachment of dopamine to H3 — a process, I learned, called dopaminylation.
Together, these results represent a huge change in our understanding of these chemicals. By binding to the H3 histone, serotonin and dopamine can regulate transcription of DNA into RNA and, as a consequence, the synthesis of specific proteins from them. That turns these well-known characters in neuroscience into double agents, acting obviously as neurotransmitters, but also as clandestine masters of epigenetics. (...)
To put it plainly, the discovery that monoamine neurotransmitters control epigenetic regulation of genes is transformative for basic science and medicine. These experiments show that the tagging of H3 by dopamine does indeed underlie drug-seeking behavior, by regulating the neural circuits operating in addiction.
And, equally exciting, the implications likely go well beyond addiction, given the crucial role of dopamine and serotonin signaling in other neurological and psychological illnesses. Indeed, Maze told me that his team’s latest research (not yet published) has also found this type of epigenetic marking in the brain tissues of people with major depressive disorder. Perhaps this connection even explains why antidepressant drugs take so long to be effective: If the drugs work by activating this epigenetic process, rather than just supplying the brain’s missing serotonin, it can take days or even weeks before these genetic changes become apparent.
“Half of what you learned in college is wrong,” my biology professor, David Lange, once said. “Problem is, we don’t know which half.” How right he was. I was taught to scoff at Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and his theory that traits acquired through life experience could be passed on to the next generation. The silly traditional example is the mama giraffe stretching her neck to reach food high in trees, resulting in baby giraffes with extra-long necks. Then biologists discovered we really can inherit traits our parents acquired in life, without any change to the DNA sequence of our genes. It’s all thanks to a process called epigenetics — a form of gene expression that can be inherited but isn’t actually part of the genetic code. This is where it turns out that brain chemicals like dopamine play a role.
Inherited genes are activated or inactivated to build a unique individual from a fertilized egg, but cells also constantly turn specific genes on and off throughout life to make the proteins cells need to function. When a gene is activated, special proteins latch onto DNA, read the sequence of letters there and make a disposable copy of that sequence in the form of messenger RNA. The messenger RNA then shuttles the genetic instructions to the cell’s ribosomes, which decipher the code and make the protein specified by the gene.
But none of that works without access to the DNA. By analogy, if the magnetic tape remains tightly wound, you can’t read the information on the cassette. Epigenetics works by unspooling the tape, or not, to control which genetic instructions are carried out. In epigenetic inheritance, the DNA code is not altered, but access to it is.
This is why cells in our body can be so different even though every cell has identical DNA. If the DNA is not unwound from its various spools — proteins called histones — the cell’s machinery can’t read the hidden code. So the genes that would make red blood corpuscles, for example, are shut off in cells that become neurons.
How do cells know which genes to read? The histone spool that a specific gene’s DNA winds around is marked with a specific chemical tag, like a molecular Post-it note. That marker directs other proteins to “roll the tape” and unwind the relevant DNA from that histone (or not to roll it, depending on the tag).
It’s a fascinating process we’re still learning more about, but we never expected that a seemingly unrelated brain chemical might also play a role. Neurotransmitters are specialized molecules that transmit signals between neurons. This chemical signaling between neurons is what enables us to think, learn, experience different moods and, when neurotransmitter signaling goes awry, suffer cognitive difficulties or mental illness.
Serotonin and dopamine are famous examples. Both are monoamines, a class of neurotransmitters involved in psychological illnesses such as depression, anxiety disorders and addiction. Serotonin helps regulate mood, and drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are widely prescribed and effective for treating chronic depression. We think they work by increasing the level of serotonin in the brain, which boosts communication between neurons in the neural circuits controlling mood, motivation, anxiety and reward. That makes sense, sure, but it is curious that it usually takes a month or more before the drug relieves depression.
Dopamine, on the other hand, is the neurotransmitter at work in the brain’s reward circuits; it produces that “gimme-a-high-five!” spurt of euphoria that erupts when we hit a bingo. Nearly all addictive drugs, like cocaine and alcohol, increase dopamine levels, and the chemically induced dopamine reward leads to further drug cravings. A weakened reward circuitry could be a cause of depression, which would help explain why people with depression may self-medicate by taking illicit drugs that boost dopamine.
But (as I found out after reading that dopaminylation paper), research last year led by Ian Maze, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, showed that serotonin has another function: It can act as one of those molecular Post-it notes. Specifically, it can bind to a type of histone known as H3, which controls the genes responsible for transforming human stem cells (the forerunner of all kinds of cells) into serotonin neurons. When serotonin binds to the histone, the DNA unwinds, turning on the genes that dictate the development of a stem cell into a serotonin neuron, while turning off other genes by keeping their DNA tightly wound. (So stem cells that never see serotonin turn into other types of cells, since the genetic program to transform them into neurons is not activated.)
That finding inspired Maze’s team to wonder if dopamine might act in a similar way, regulating the genes involved in drug addiction and withdrawal. In the April Science paper that so surprised me, they showed that the same enzyme that attaches serotonin to H3 can also catalyze the attachment of dopamine to H3 — a process, I learned, called dopaminylation.
Together, these results represent a huge change in our understanding of these chemicals. By binding to the H3 histone, serotonin and dopamine can regulate transcription of DNA into RNA and, as a consequence, the synthesis of specific proteins from them. That turns these well-known characters in neuroscience into double agents, acting obviously as neurotransmitters, but also as clandestine masters of epigenetics. (...)
To put it plainly, the discovery that monoamine neurotransmitters control epigenetic regulation of genes is transformative for basic science and medicine. These experiments show that the tagging of H3 by dopamine does indeed underlie drug-seeking behavior, by regulating the neural circuits operating in addiction.
And, equally exciting, the implications likely go well beyond addiction, given the crucial role of dopamine and serotonin signaling in other neurological and psychological illnesses. Indeed, Maze told me that his team’s latest research (not yet published) has also found this type of epigenetic marking in the brain tissues of people with major depressive disorder. Perhaps this connection even explains why antidepressant drugs take so long to be effective: If the drugs work by activating this epigenetic process, rather than just supplying the brain’s missing serotonin, it can take days or even weeks before these genetic changes become apparent.
Bruce Springsteen
There's No Art in This White House (spoken word)
[ed. See also: When Disaster Is an Invaluable Lesson (Hedgehog Review).]
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Karen O & Willie Nelson
[ed. Interesting arrangement. Willie is sounding a little frail these days.]
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Anatomy Of An Outbreak: Once Unleashed, The Coronavirus Moved Swiftly On Lanai
No one knows exactly when the coronavirus arrived on Lanai. The first recorded cases on Oct. 20 were detected in a health care worker who had traveled to Oahu and three employees of the Four Seasons Resort Lanai at Manele Bay.
But those were just the first visible cracks in a growing public health crisis that has shattered this island’s distinction as the state’s lone coronavirus-free sanctuary.
In six days the infection count shot up from four to at least 79, stoking fears that this tiny isle of fewer than 3,000 close-knit residents could be on the verge of a coronavirus free fall. Health workers say they expect the positive case count to continue to climb as hundreds of results trickle in from a massive weekend testing drive.
The virus has infected numerous kupuna, including some with preexisting health conditions, which, along with their age, make them more vulnerable to the deadly disease. At least 15 students at Lanai High and Elementary School are also infected. Some of these students brought the virus home, spreading the contagion to family members.
With one school, one gas station, two grocery stores and less than 30 miles of paved roads, health officials worry the island could prove to be the ultimate petri dish.
As health workers rush to uncover how deeply the virus has pervaded the Lanai population, many residents say what they fear as much as the virus is the unknown. How many people have been infected? Is it even safe to hunker down with other family members at home?
“We don’t have a plan for how we’re going to handle this,” lamented Butch Gima, a state social worker. “We’re in dire straits here and we’re still in reaction mode.”
On Monday Gov. David Ige approved a request from Maui Mayor Mike Victorino to send the island into a strict shutdown. Starting Tuesday Lanai residents and visitors will only be permitted to leave their homes or hotel rooms for essential purposes, such as grocery shopping or to see a doctor.
Over the weekend many residents started sheltering at home preemptively. Those with second homes on the mainland boarded airplanes and fled.
“We have a friend who flew in Wednesday thinking that he’s coming to the one place in the United States that doesn’t have COVID,” said Manele resident David Green. “Of course, he had very bad timing.”
Coronavirus Free Fall
The fact that the island was COVID-free for the first seven months of the pandemic led some residents to gradually relax their vigilance. People loosened their adherence to mask-wearing and physical distancing guidelines. Some residents resumed having baby showers, birthday parties and children’s sleepovers, according to a dozen residents and health care workers interviewed for this story. A Civil Beat reporter traveled to Lanai last week to document the public health crisis that was just beginning.
“We were locked down here for so long, it felt like prison,” said Neal Byumanglag, a 59-year-old construction worker, referring to longstanding travel restrictions that kept most Lanai residents confined for months on end to the island’s 140 square miles.
“It’s like putting a dog in a cage,” he said. “What do you think that dog’s going to do when you open the cage back up? It’s the same thing with people here.”
But it was more than island fever. Many Lanai residents depend on regular trips to Maui to access cheaper prices on food and supplies at Costco and other big box stores.
When travel restrictions eased in mid-October to allow Maui County residents to bypass the mandatory 14-day quarantine when traveling between Maui, Mokokai and Lanai, some Lanai residents resumed regular trips to Maui to shop or see family and friends.
The return of tourism to the island on Oct. 15 signaled another psychological shift toward normalcy. Hundreds of hotel workers returned to their jobs for the first time in months.
So when the virus finally seeped onto the island, it met a population that had largely let down its guard — and it exploded.
by Brittany Lyte, Honolulu Civil Beat | Read more:
Images: markk
[ed. My beloved island. Larry Ellision (of Oracle fame) owns 98% of the island, why can't he use a small portion of his $75 billion net worth to help out, at least with off-island transportation?]
But those were just the first visible cracks in a growing public health crisis that has shattered this island’s distinction as the state’s lone coronavirus-free sanctuary.
In six days the infection count shot up from four to at least 79, stoking fears that this tiny isle of fewer than 3,000 close-knit residents could be on the verge of a coronavirus free fall. Health workers say they expect the positive case count to continue to climb as hundreds of results trickle in from a massive weekend testing drive.
The virus has infected numerous kupuna, including some with preexisting health conditions, which, along with their age, make them more vulnerable to the deadly disease. At least 15 students at Lanai High and Elementary School are also infected. Some of these students brought the virus home, spreading the contagion to family members.
As health workers rush to uncover how deeply the virus has pervaded the Lanai population, many residents say what they fear as much as the virus is the unknown. How many people have been infected? Is it even safe to hunker down with other family members at home?
“We don’t have a plan for how we’re going to handle this,” lamented Butch Gima, a state social worker. “We’re in dire straits here and we’re still in reaction mode.”
On Monday Gov. David Ige approved a request from Maui Mayor Mike Victorino to send the island into a strict shutdown. Starting Tuesday Lanai residents and visitors will only be permitted to leave their homes or hotel rooms for essential purposes, such as grocery shopping or to see a doctor.
Over the weekend many residents started sheltering at home preemptively. Those with second homes on the mainland boarded airplanes and fled.
“We have a friend who flew in Wednesday thinking that he’s coming to the one place in the United States that doesn’t have COVID,” said Manele resident David Green. “Of course, he had very bad timing.”
Coronavirus Free Fall
The fact that the island was COVID-free for the first seven months of the pandemic led some residents to gradually relax their vigilance. People loosened their adherence to mask-wearing and physical distancing guidelines. Some residents resumed having baby showers, birthday parties and children’s sleepovers, according to a dozen residents and health care workers interviewed for this story. A Civil Beat reporter traveled to Lanai last week to document the public health crisis that was just beginning.
“It’s like putting a dog in a cage,” he said. “What do you think that dog’s going to do when you open the cage back up? It’s the same thing with people here.”
But it was more than island fever. Many Lanai residents depend on regular trips to Maui to access cheaper prices on food and supplies at Costco and other big box stores.
When travel restrictions eased in mid-October to allow Maui County residents to bypass the mandatory 14-day quarantine when traveling between Maui, Mokokai and Lanai, some Lanai residents resumed regular trips to Maui to shop or see family and friends.
The return of tourism to the island on Oct. 15 signaled another psychological shift toward normalcy. Hundreds of hotel workers returned to their jobs for the first time in months.
So when the virus finally seeped onto the island, it met a population that had largely let down its guard — and it exploded.
Worst Case Scenario
If cases continue to mount, a frightening set of challenges could be in store for the sickest patients.
The island’s only hospital is a three-bed emergency department with no critical care beds or specialists. The hospital has a ventilator, but no respiratory therapist trained to operate it. Patients who develop COVID-19 symptoms severe enough to need hospital care must be flown off the island.
On Friday, Medeiros said he tried unsuccessfully to gain clearance to fly several coronavirus-infected kupuna with less acute symptoms to Maui or Oahu, where there is readily available hospital capacity to treat them should their conditions deteriorate.
“I was told they don’t do just-in-case scenarios,” Medeiros said. “So you want us to just wait until they need to be on a ventilator to ship them out?”
There are risks involved in transporting critically ill patients. But this has always been the case when someone on Lanai suffers a heart attack or loses blood in a car wreck.
The unique quandary posed by Lanai’s COVID-19 outbreak is a numbers problem. What happens if several Lanai residents who’ve contracted the virus fall ill and need critical care all at once?
If cases continue to mount, a frightening set of challenges could be in store for the sickest patients.
The island’s only hospital is a three-bed emergency department with no critical care beds or specialists. The hospital has a ventilator, but no respiratory therapist trained to operate it. Patients who develop COVID-19 symptoms severe enough to need hospital care must be flown off the island.
On Friday, Medeiros said he tried unsuccessfully to gain clearance to fly several coronavirus-infected kupuna with less acute symptoms to Maui or Oahu, where there is readily available hospital capacity to treat them should their conditions deteriorate.
“I was told they don’t do just-in-case scenarios,” Medeiros said. “So you want us to just wait until they need to be on a ventilator to ship them out?”
There are risks involved in transporting critically ill patients. But this has always been the case when someone on Lanai suffers a heart attack or loses blood in a car wreck.
The unique quandary posed by Lanai’s COVID-19 outbreak is a numbers problem. What happens if several Lanai residents who’ve contracted the virus fall ill and need critical care all at once?
by Brittany Lyte, Honolulu Civil Beat | Read more:
Images: markk
[ed. My beloved island. Larry Ellision (of Oracle fame) owns 98% of the island, why can't he use a small portion of his $75 billion net worth to help out, at least with off-island transportation?]
Monday, October 26, 2020
Matthew McConaughey's Guide to Life
The biggest question in the universe, writes Matthew McConaughey in his new autobiography (of sorts) is “WHOWHATWHEREWHENHOW?? – and that’s the truth. WHY? is even bigger.” With Greenlights, his love letter to livin, McConaughey attempts to answer these questions and others, such as why he never puts a “g” on the end of “living” – “because life’s a verb”.
Greenlights is not a memoir, though it tells true stories from his life in chronological order. Nor is it “an advice book”. It is “an approach book”, bringing together McConaughey’s insights from 35 years of writing journals, and more of collecting bumper stickers. These “philosophies can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted”. A few are shared here.
‘The value of denial depends on one’s level of commitment’
“Like a good southern boy should”, McConaughey begins with his mother. When McConaughey is eight years old, she enters him into the Little Mr Texas contest. He wins, and his mom hangs a framed picture of him holding his trophy on the kitchen wall. Every morning at breakfast, she gestures to it. “Look at you: winner, Little Mr Texas, 1977.”
Now 50, McConaughey is an Oscar-winning actor, a bankable star and still one of the most handsome men in Hollywood. He has been up and down, endured boom and bust, gone from livin on easy street to trailer parks. He has weathered hard winters of the soul, and long professional droughts. Through it all he’s always been Winner, Little Mr Texas, 1977.
Last year, McConaughey came across the same photo in a scrapbook. The trophy reads “runner-up”. When he confronted his mother, she said the winner was wealthy and won with his fancy suit. “We call that cheatin. No, you’re Little Mr Texas.” McConaughey calls this the lesson of “audacious existentialism”.
‘To lose the power of confrontation is to lose the power of unity’
This proclamation, on a bumper sticker reproduced in the book, captures the young McConaughey’s home life: full of love and also violence. (“I’ve always loved bumper stickers, so much so that I’ve stuck bumper to sticker and made them one word, bumpersticker.”)
McConaughey’s parents divorced twice and married thrice, to each other. His father broke his mother’s finger four times, “to get it out of his face”; he later died from a heart attack mid-intercourse, as he’d always said he would. “Yes,” writes McConaughey, “he called his shot all right.”
At dinner one Wednesday night, his father asks for more potatoes. His mother calls him fat. His father overturns the table. His mother breaks his nose with the phone receiver while calling 911. She pulls out a 12in knife. His father grabs a 14oz ketchup bottle. They circle each other, him slashing her with sauce, dodging her knife.
Their gazes meet, “Mom thumbing the ketchup from her wet eyes, Dad just standing there, letting the blood drip from his nose down his chest … They dropped to their knees, then to the bloody, ketchup-covered linoleum kitchen floor … and made love. A red light turned green. This is how my parents communicated.”
Don’t lose your truck
High school for McConaughey was summer time, all the time. He got straight As and dated the best-looking girl at his school and the other schools. He had a job, no curfew, and a golf handicap of four.
He had two years of acne, brought on by a cosmetic called Oil of Mink that his mother was selling door to door – but, blighted by whiteheads (“blistering geysers of pus”), he was still voted most handsome in his year. “Yeah, I was catching greenlights.”
McConaughey was the fun guy. Not for him, leaning against the wall at the party, smoking and looking cool. He engaged. He took the girls four-wheel driving in his truck, and flirted with them through a megaphone: “Look at the jeans Cathy Cook’s got on today, lookin gooooooood!” “Everyone laughed. Especially Cathy Cook.”
One day he trades in his truck for a sports car that he knew the chicks would dig even more. He gets to school early each day and just leeeaaans against it. “I was so cool. My red sports car was so cool.”
But after a few weeks, he notices a cloud has cast across his summer sky: “The chicks, they weren’t digging me like they used to.” They were out four-wheel driving with someone else. It hits him: “I lost the effort, the hustle, the mudding, and the megaphone. I lost the fun.” He gets his truck back. (...)
‘When you can, ask yourself if you want to’
McConaughey lands an agent and parts in Angels in America and Boys on the Side. He adopts a puppy – Ms Hud, a lab-chow mix who becomes his longtime companion – and rents a quaint guesthouse on the edge of a national park in Tucson, Arizona. The house comes with a maid, who cooks and cleans.
McConaughey can’t believe his fortunes. “She even presses my jeans!” he raves to a friend, holding up his Levi’s to show her the crisp, starched-white line. His friend smiles, then says something McConaughey would never forget: “That’s great, Matthew, if you want your jeans pressed.”
“I’d never had my jeans pressed before,” he writes. “I’d never had anyone to press my jeans before. I’d never thought to ask myself if I wanted my jeans pressed … Of course I wanted my jeans pressed. Or did I?
“No, actually. I didn’t.” (...)
‘Truth’s like a jalapeño. The closer to the root, the hotter it gets’
As Hollywood’s go-to romcom guy, McConaughey is at first unbothered by the fact he is a critical write-off. “I enjoyed making romantic comedies, and their pay checks rented the houses on the beaches I ran shirtless on.”
In July 2005 he meets his future wife, embraces family life, and becomes increasingly unsatisfied by his parts. He tells his agent: no more romcoms. And he waits.
He gets offers of $5m, $8m, $14.5m for two months’ work. He turns them down. For nearly two years, he refuses to give the industry what it wants from him – and one day he is discovered again.
The offers come in droves, almost as many as after A Time to Kill in 1996 – from Linklater, Soderbergh, Scorsese. While shooting The Wolf of Wall Street McConaughey thumps his chest and hums to relax before each take. Leonardo DiCaprio suggests he do it in the scene.
Greenlights is not a memoir, though it tells true stories from his life in chronological order. Nor is it “an advice book”. It is “an approach book”, bringing together McConaughey’s insights from 35 years of writing journals, and more of collecting bumper stickers. These “philosophies can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted”. A few are shared here.
‘The value of denial depends on one’s level of commitment’
“Like a good southern boy should”, McConaughey begins with his mother. When McConaughey is eight years old, she enters him into the Little Mr Texas contest. He wins, and his mom hangs a framed picture of him holding his trophy on the kitchen wall. Every morning at breakfast, she gestures to it. “Look at you: winner, Little Mr Texas, 1977.”
Last year, McConaughey came across the same photo in a scrapbook. The trophy reads “runner-up”. When he confronted his mother, she said the winner was wealthy and won with his fancy suit. “We call that cheatin. No, you’re Little Mr Texas.” McConaughey calls this the lesson of “audacious existentialism”.
‘To lose the power of confrontation is to lose the power of unity’
This proclamation, on a bumper sticker reproduced in the book, captures the young McConaughey’s home life: full of love and also violence. (“I’ve always loved bumper stickers, so much so that I’ve stuck bumper to sticker and made them one word, bumpersticker.”)
McConaughey’s parents divorced twice and married thrice, to each other. His father broke his mother’s finger four times, “to get it out of his face”; he later died from a heart attack mid-intercourse, as he’d always said he would. “Yes,” writes McConaughey, “he called his shot all right.”
At dinner one Wednesday night, his father asks for more potatoes. His mother calls him fat. His father overturns the table. His mother breaks his nose with the phone receiver while calling 911. She pulls out a 12in knife. His father grabs a 14oz ketchup bottle. They circle each other, him slashing her with sauce, dodging her knife.
Their gazes meet, “Mom thumbing the ketchup from her wet eyes, Dad just standing there, letting the blood drip from his nose down his chest … They dropped to their knees, then to the bloody, ketchup-covered linoleum kitchen floor … and made love. A red light turned green. This is how my parents communicated.”
Don’t lose your truck
High school for McConaughey was summer time, all the time. He got straight As and dated the best-looking girl at his school and the other schools. He had a job, no curfew, and a golf handicap of four.
He had two years of acne, brought on by a cosmetic called Oil of Mink that his mother was selling door to door – but, blighted by whiteheads (“blistering geysers of pus”), he was still voted most handsome in his year. “Yeah, I was catching greenlights.”
McConaughey was the fun guy. Not for him, leaning against the wall at the party, smoking and looking cool. He engaged. He took the girls four-wheel driving in his truck, and flirted with them through a megaphone: “Look at the jeans Cathy Cook’s got on today, lookin gooooooood!” “Everyone laughed. Especially Cathy Cook.”
One day he trades in his truck for a sports car that he knew the chicks would dig even more. He gets to school early each day and just leeeaaans against it. “I was so cool. My red sports car was so cool.”
But after a few weeks, he notices a cloud has cast across his summer sky: “The chicks, they weren’t digging me like they used to.” They were out four-wheel driving with someone else. It hits him: “I lost the effort, the hustle, the mudding, and the megaphone. I lost the fun.” He gets his truck back. (...)
‘When you can, ask yourself if you want to’
McConaughey lands an agent and parts in Angels in America and Boys on the Side. He adopts a puppy – Ms Hud, a lab-chow mix who becomes his longtime companion – and rents a quaint guesthouse on the edge of a national park in Tucson, Arizona. The house comes with a maid, who cooks and cleans.
McConaughey can’t believe his fortunes. “She even presses my jeans!” he raves to a friend, holding up his Levi’s to show her the crisp, starched-white line. His friend smiles, then says something McConaughey would never forget: “That’s great, Matthew, if you want your jeans pressed.”
“I’d never had my jeans pressed before,” he writes. “I’d never had anyone to press my jeans before. I’d never thought to ask myself if I wanted my jeans pressed … Of course I wanted my jeans pressed. Or did I?
“No, actually. I didn’t.” (...)
‘Truth’s like a jalapeño. The closer to the root, the hotter it gets’
As Hollywood’s go-to romcom guy, McConaughey is at first unbothered by the fact he is a critical write-off. “I enjoyed making romantic comedies, and their pay checks rented the houses on the beaches I ran shirtless on.”
In July 2005 he meets his future wife, embraces family life, and becomes increasingly unsatisfied by his parts. He tells his agent: no more romcoms. And he waits.
He gets offers of $5m, $8m, $14.5m for two months’ work. He turns them down. For nearly two years, he refuses to give the industry what it wants from him – and one day he is discovered again.
The offers come in droves, almost as many as after A Time to Kill in 1996 – from Linklater, Soderbergh, Scorsese. While shooting The Wolf of Wall Street McConaughey thumps his chest and hums to relax before each take. Leonardo DiCaprio suggests he do it in the scene.
by Elle Hunt, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Wolf of Wall Street/Alamy
So Trump Loses. What Happens Then?
Okay, I admit it, I’ve been worried -- and no surprise there. In this world from hell, it’s not hard to worry about untold numbers of things going wrong. Let me, however, lay out my own large-scale version of worry about this America of ours. What if Joe Biden does win? The world -- at least the world I know and read and watch and talk to -- has one giant anxiety then: that Donald Trump will declare the election a “fake,” refuse to leave office, send the lawyers into the courts, the troops or the dreaded feds into the streets, and call out all those armed Trumpsters for support. You more or less know the scenario(s) yourself, I’m sure, and whether the U.S. military then would or would not decide to literally remove the president from office, it would indeed be a nightmare.
Still, something else has long been on my mind: not what Donald Trump could try to stop from happening, but what he could actually do between November 3rd and January 20, 2021. This is, after all, the head of an administration that has tried to roll back nearly 100 environmental regulations, turning this country into a potential hell on earth. His people, now undoubtedly fearing defeat, are already moving fast to make sure that the U.S. will, in the worst sense imaginable, remain Donald Trump’s land until that hell freezes over.
My worry: what, in those months, could The Donald do to ensure that, when Joe Biden sits at that desk in the Oval Office for the first time, he finds himself waist deep in you-know-what (including potentially a future Great Depression) that he and his crew might never be able to shovel themselves out of? With that in mind, I asked TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon to consider just what shape we might find ourselves in economically in the Biden moment (if it ever arrives). So get your shovel ready and dig in. Tom
So Trump Loses. What Happens Then?
Still, something else has long been on my mind: not what Donald Trump could try to stop from happening, but what he could actually do between November 3rd and January 20, 2021. This is, after all, the head of an administration that has tried to roll back nearly 100 environmental regulations, turning this country into a potential hell on earth. His people, now undoubtedly fearing defeat, are already moving fast to make sure that the U.S. will, in the worst sense imaginable, remain Donald Trump’s land until that hell freezes over.
My worry: what, in those months, could The Donald do to ensure that, when Joe Biden sits at that desk in the Oval Office for the first time, he finds himself waist deep in you-know-what (including potentially a future Great Depression) that he and his crew might never be able to shovel themselves out of? With that in mind, I asked TomDispatch regular Rajan Menon to consider just what shape we might find ourselves in economically in the Biden moment (if it ever arrives). So get your shovel ready and dig in. Tom
So Trump Loses. What Happens Then?
Donald Trump isn’t just inside the heads of his Trumpster base; he’s long been a consuming obsession among those yearning for his defeat in November. With barely more than a week to go before the election of our lifetime, those given to nail biting as a response to anxiety have by now gnawed ourselves down to the quick. And many have found other ways to manage (or mismanage) their apprehensions through compulsive rituals, which only ratchet up the angst of the moment, among them nonstop poll tracking, endless “what if” doomsday-scenario conversations with friends, and repeated refrigerator raids.by Tom Engelhardt and Rajan Menon, TomDispatch | Read more:
As one of those doomsday types, let me briefly suggest a few of the commonplace dystopian possibilities for November. Trump gets the majority of the votes cast in person on November 3rd. A Pew Research Center survey found that 60% of those supporting the president intend to vote that way on Election Day compared to 23% of Biden supporters; and a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll likewise revealed a sizable difference between Republicans and Democrats, though not as large. He does, however, lose handily after all mail-in and absentee ballots are counted. Once every ballot is finally tabulated, Biden prevails in the popular vote and ekes out a win in the Electoral College. The president, however, having convinced his faithful that voting by mail will result in industrial-scale fraud (unless he wins, of course), proclaims that he -- and “the American people” -- have been robbed by the establishment. On cue, outraged Trumpsters, some of them armed, take to the streets. Chaos, even violence, ensues. The president’s army of lawyers frenetically file court briefs contesting the election results and feverishly await a future Supreme Court decision, Mitch McConnell having helpfully rammed through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to produce a 6-3 conservative majority (including three Trump-appointed Supremes) that will likely favor him in any disputed election case.
Or the vote tally shows that Trump didn’t prevail in pivotal states, but in state legislatures with Republican majorities, local GOP leaders appoint electors from their party anyway, defying the popular will without violating Article II, Section I, of the Constitution, which doesn’t flat-out prohibit such a stratagem. That was one possibility Barton Gellman explored in his bombshell Atlantic piece on the gambits Trump could use to snatch victory (of a sort) from the jaws of a Biden victory. Then there are the sundry wag-the-dog plots, including a desperate Trump trying to generate a pre-election rally-around-the-flag effect by starting a war with Iran -- precisely what, in 2011, he predicted Barack Obama would do to boost his chances for reelection.
And that, of course, is just part of a long list of nightmarish possibilities. Whatever your most dreaded outcome, dwelling on it doesn’t make for happiness or even ephemeral relief. Ultimately, it’s not under your control. Besides, no one knows what will happen, and some prominent pundits have dismissed such apocalyptic soothsaying with assurances that the system will work the way it’s supposed to and foil Trumpian malfeasance. Here’s hoping.
In the meantime, let’s summon what passes for optimism these days. Imagine that none of the alarmist denouements materializes. Biden wins the popular vote tally and the Electoral College. The GOP’s leaders discover that they do, in fact, have backbones (or at least the instinct for political survival), refusing to echo Trump’s rants about rigging. The president rages but then does go, unquietly, into the night.
Most of my friends on the left assume that a new dawn would then emerge. In some respects, it indeed will. Biden won’t be a serial liar. That’s no small matter. By the middle of this year, Trump had made false or misleading pronouncements of one sort or another more than 20,000 times since becoming president. Nor will we have a president who winks and nods at far-right groups or racist “militias,” nor one who blasts a governor -- instead of expressing shock and solidarity -- soon after the FBI foils a plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap her for taking steps to suppress the coronavirus. We won’t have a president who repeatedly intimates that he will remain in office even if he loses the election. We won’t have a president who can’t bring himself to appeal to Americans to display their patriotism through the simple act of donning masks to protect others (and themselves) from Covid-19. And we won’t have a president who lacks the compassion to express sorrow over the 225,000 Americans (and rising) who have been killed by that disease, or enough respect for science and professional expertise, to say nothing of humility, to refrain from declaring, as his own experts squirm, that warm weather will cause the virus to vanish miraculously or that injections of disinfectant will destroy it.
And these, of course, won’t be minor victories. Still, Joe Biden’s arrival in the Oval Office won’t alter one mega-fact: Donald Trump will hand him a monstrous economic mess. Worse, in the almost three months between November 3rd and January 20th, rest assured that he will dedicate himself to making it even bigger.
The motivation? Sheer spite for having been put in the position -- we know that he will never accept any responsibility for his defeat -- of facing what, for him, may be more unbearable than death itself: losing. The gargantuan challenge of putting the economy back on the rails while also battling the pandemic would be hard enough for any new president without the lame-duck commander-in-chief and Senate Republicans sabotaging his efforts before he even begins. The long stretch between Election Day and Inauguration Day will provide Donald Trump ample time to take his revenge on a people who will have forsaken, in his opinion, the best president ever.
More on Trump’s vengeance, but first, let’s take stock of what awaits Biden should he win in November.
[ed. Sorry. I try not to polute this blog with more politics than necessary, but it is that time.]
R.I.P., G.O.P.
Of all the things President Trump has destroyed, the Republican Party is among the most dismaying.
“Destroyed” is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerated his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out shell devoid of ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its own power even at the expense of democratic norms, institutions and ideals.
Tomato, tomahto. However you characterize it, the Republican Party’s dissolution under Mr. Trump is bad for American democracy.
A healthy political system needs robust, competing parties to give citizens a choice of ideological, governing and policy visions. More specifically, center-right parties have long been crucial to the health of modern liberal democracies, according to the Harvard political scientist Daniel Ziblatt’s study of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe. Among other benefits, a strong center right can co-opt more palatable aspects of the far right, isolating and draining energy from the more radical elements that threaten to destabilize the system.
Today’s G.O.P. does not come close to serving this function. It has instead allowed itself to be co-opted and radicalized by Trumpism. Its ideology has been reduced to a slurry of paranoia, white grievance and authoritarian populism. Its governing vision is reactionary, a cross between obstructionism and owning the libs. Its policy agenda, as defined by the party platform, is whatever President Trump wants — which might not be so pathetic if Mr. Trump’s interests went beyond “Build a wall!”
“There is no philosophical underpinning for the Republican Party anymore,” the veteran strategist Reed Galen recently lamented to this board. A co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee run by current and former Republicans dedicated to defeating Mr. Trump and his enablers, Mr. Galen characterized the party as a self-serving, power-hungry gang.
With his dark gospel, the president has enthralled the Republican base, rendering other party leaders too afraid to stand up to him. But to stand with Mr. Trump requires a constant betrayal of one’s own integrity and values. This goes beyond the usual policy flip-flops — what happened to fiscal hawks anyway? — and political hypocrisy, though there have been plenty of both. Witness the scramble to fill a Supreme Court seat just weeks before Election Day by many of the same Senate Republicans who denied President Barack Obama his high court pick in 2016, claiming it would be wrong to fill a vacancy eight months out from that election.
Mr. Trump demands that his interests be placed above those of the nation. His presidency has been an extended exercise in defining deviancy down — and dragging the rest of his party down with him.
Having long preached “character” and “family values,” Republicans have given a pass to Mr. Trump’s personal degeneracy. The affairs, the hush money, the multiple accusations of assault and harassment, the gross boasts of grabbing unsuspecting women — none of it matters. White evangelicals remain especially faithful adherents, in large part because Mr. Trump has appointed around 200 judges to the federal bench.
For all their talk about revering the Constitution, Republicans have stood by, slack-jawed, in the face of the president’s assault on checks and balances. Mr. Trump has spurned the concept of congressional oversight of his office. After losing a budget fight and shutting down the government in 2018-19, he declared a phony national emergency at the southern border so he could siphon money from the Pentagon for his border wall. He put a hold on nearly $400 million in Senate-approved aid to Ukraine — a move that played a central role in his impeachment.
So much for Republicans’ Obama-era nattering about “executive overreach.”
Despite fetishizing “law and order,” Republicans have shrugged as Mr. Trump has maligned and politicized federal law enforcement, occasionally lending a hand. Impeachment offered the most searing example. Parroting the White House line that the entire process was illegitimate, the president’s enablers made clear they had his back no matter what. As Pete Wehner, who served as a speechwriter to the three previous Republican presidents, observed in The Atlantic: “Republicans, from beginning to end, sought not to ensure that justice be done or truth be revealed. Instead, they sought to ensure that Trump not be removed from office under any circumstances, defending him at all costs.” (...)
As Republican lawmakers grow increasingly panicked that Mr. Trump will lose re-election — possibly damaging their fortunes as well — some are scrambling to salvage their reputations by pretending they haven’t spent the past four years letting him run amok. In an Oct. 14 call with constituents, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave a blistering assessment of the president’s failures and “deficient” values, from his misogyny to his calamitous handling of the pandemic to “the way he kisses dictators’ butts.” Mr. Sasse was less clear about why, the occasional targeted criticism notwithstanding, he has enabled these deficiencies for so long.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, locked in his own tight re-election race, recently told the local media that he, too, has disagreed with Mr. Trump on numerous issues, including deficit spending, trade policy and his raiding of the defense budget. Mr. Cornyn said he opted to keep his opposition private rather than get into a public tiff with Mr. Trump “because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”
Profiles in courage these are not.
“Destroyed” is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerated his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed-out shell devoid of ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its own power even at the expense of democratic norms, institutions and ideals.
Tomato, tomahto. However you characterize it, the Republican Party’s dissolution under Mr. Trump is bad for American democracy.
Today’s G.O.P. does not come close to serving this function. It has instead allowed itself to be co-opted and radicalized by Trumpism. Its ideology has been reduced to a slurry of paranoia, white grievance and authoritarian populism. Its governing vision is reactionary, a cross between obstructionism and owning the libs. Its policy agenda, as defined by the party platform, is whatever President Trump wants — which might not be so pathetic if Mr. Trump’s interests went beyond “Build a wall!”
“There is no philosophical underpinning for the Republican Party anymore,” the veteran strategist Reed Galen recently lamented to this board. A co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a political action committee run by current and former Republicans dedicated to defeating Mr. Trump and his enablers, Mr. Galen characterized the party as a self-serving, power-hungry gang.
With his dark gospel, the president has enthralled the Republican base, rendering other party leaders too afraid to stand up to him. But to stand with Mr. Trump requires a constant betrayal of one’s own integrity and values. This goes beyond the usual policy flip-flops — what happened to fiscal hawks anyway? — and political hypocrisy, though there have been plenty of both. Witness the scramble to fill a Supreme Court seat just weeks before Election Day by many of the same Senate Republicans who denied President Barack Obama his high court pick in 2016, claiming it would be wrong to fill a vacancy eight months out from that election.
Mr. Trump demands that his interests be placed above those of the nation. His presidency has been an extended exercise in defining deviancy down — and dragging the rest of his party down with him.
Having long preached “character” and “family values,” Republicans have given a pass to Mr. Trump’s personal degeneracy. The affairs, the hush money, the multiple accusations of assault and harassment, the gross boasts of grabbing unsuspecting women — none of it matters. White evangelicals remain especially faithful adherents, in large part because Mr. Trump has appointed around 200 judges to the federal bench.
For all their talk about revering the Constitution, Republicans have stood by, slack-jawed, in the face of the president’s assault on checks and balances. Mr. Trump has spurned the concept of congressional oversight of his office. After losing a budget fight and shutting down the government in 2018-19, he declared a phony national emergency at the southern border so he could siphon money from the Pentagon for his border wall. He put a hold on nearly $400 million in Senate-approved aid to Ukraine — a move that played a central role in his impeachment.
So much for Republicans’ Obama-era nattering about “executive overreach.”
Despite fetishizing “law and order,” Republicans have shrugged as Mr. Trump has maligned and politicized federal law enforcement, occasionally lending a hand. Impeachment offered the most searing example. Parroting the White House line that the entire process was illegitimate, the president’s enablers made clear they had his back no matter what. As Pete Wehner, who served as a speechwriter to the three previous Republican presidents, observed in The Atlantic: “Republicans, from beginning to end, sought not to ensure that justice be done or truth be revealed. Instead, they sought to ensure that Trump not be removed from office under any circumstances, defending him at all costs.” (...)
As Republican lawmakers grow increasingly panicked that Mr. Trump will lose re-election — possibly damaging their fortunes as well — some are scrambling to salvage their reputations by pretending they haven’t spent the past four years letting him run amok. In an Oct. 14 call with constituents, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska gave a blistering assessment of the president’s failures and “deficient” values, from his misogyny to his calamitous handling of the pandemic to “the way he kisses dictators’ butts.” Mr. Sasse was less clear about why, the occasional targeted criticism notwithstanding, he has enabled these deficiencies for so long.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, locked in his own tight re-election race, recently told the local media that he, too, has disagreed with Mr. Trump on numerous issues, including deficit spending, trade policy and his raiding of the defense budget. Mr. Cornyn said he opted to keep his opposition private rather than get into a public tiff with Mr. Trump “because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well.”
Profiles in courage these are not.
by Editorial Board, NY Times | Read more:
Image: The Shining, Barry Blitt
Sunday, October 25, 2020
What Happens in the West Wing
The cast of the West Wing recently reunited after 14 years for a one-off special called, rather awkwardly, A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote. (“When We All Vote” is an organization.) The special, filmed at the historic Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, combines a reenactment of the Season 3 episode “Hartsfield’s Landing” with a series of PSAs from cast members and celebrity guests (Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Samuel L. Jackson) on the importance of voting and the means by which one can register.
The West Wing is one of the most highly acclaimed television series of all time. Set in a fictitious presidential administration, it influenced a generation of Democratic politicos. Over seven seasons, the series provided a kind of liberal “alternate universe” presidency during the Bush years. It’s sometimes called a “fantasy” about an “idealized” Washington, because its White House is populated by educated, witty, well-intentioned technocrats who are both progressive and patriotic. Martin Sheen’s President Bartlet is a Nobel Prize-winning economist with an uncommonly good memory, a firm grasp of policy, and a noble soul. He is patriotic and religious while firmly loyal to the Democratic Party. He is also a good dad.
Left critics of the show have noted the shortcomings of the show’s political ideal, which celebrates “governance by the good and intelligent.” Sorkin himself called the show “a Valentine to public service and to American institutions” about people who “all seemed to wake up in the morning and come to work wanting to do good.” Luke Savage, in an excellent analysis of the show printed in this magazine several years ago, said that in the West Wing, “the mundane business of technocratic governance is made to look exciting, intellectually stimulating, and, above all, honorable,” and that by “recreating the look and feel of political processes to the tee, while garnishing them with a romantic veneer, the show gifts the Beltway’s most spiritually-devoted adherents with a vision of how many would probably like to see themselves.”
This is certainly on display in the episode picked for the new reenactment. It’s actually one that Savage quoted, due to a scene in which the White House communications director tells President Bartlet that he should stop pretending to be “folks,” and should wear his intelligence on his sleeve. “Make this election about smart and not, qualified and not,” the communications director tells the president. As he says this, Bartlet is in the middle of winning chess matches against multiple White House staffers at once, and resolving a seemingly impossible military stand-off with China, because he is a genius who can “see the whole board” while others cannot. (...)
I went back through some of the West Wing recently because, like Savage, I see it as a very useful guide for understanding the aspirations and ideology of a certain kind of “technocratic liberalism.” Two conclusions stuck out: first, it is a very good show in lots of technical aspects, and this is important for understanding how horrible values can come to seem compelling and why talent and virtue are not synonymous. Second, it is not a depiction of an “unrealizable fantasy,” but an extremely realistic depiction of liberal governance that just needs to be interpreted correctly rather than in accordance with the intentions of its creators and the self-perceptions of its characters.
There is a tendency to believe that art with bad values is bad art, or that the people who produce it are stupid. I see this in some of the criticism of J.K. Rowling: people assume that because she is transphobic and has bad politics, the Harry Potter books are bad and trite and stupid. That may be true (I think the books are very good, as pieces of children’s literature) but people with horrible values can also be extremely talented and even “smart.” The West Wing is a compelling piece of television. The characters are memorable and seem like real people. (Pious know-it-alls like Bartlet are not rare, but quite common.) The dialogue is snappy, the political issues are well-researched, the jokes can be good, the plots are tight but intricate. I do not think the problem with Aaron Sorkin is that he is a bad writer. In fact, I think the problem with him is that he is a good writer who has appalling and ignorant values.
The West Wing, far from being unrealistic, was prophetic. It did not depict an administration that “could not exist.” In fact, the very thing it aspired to came about shortly after. Two years after the West Wing went off the air, the country elected Barack Obama, the brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning academic liberal president, who made “hard choices” and surrounded himself with the best and brightest. (He was also a good dad.) And what we found out is that just stuffing the West Wing with the “wisest,” most “pragmatic,” most “well-intentioned” people does not produce needed political change. Being a natural compromiser is not actually “pragmatic”—it just helps the other side win. It sells out our core moral values and gets nothing in return. It is neither good nor effective.
What’s interesting is that all of this was depicted in the West Wing, but the people making and watching the West Wing did not appear to notice. Because Aaron Sorkin is a good writer and artist who observes how people talk and act and does his research, he presented a fairly accurate picture of how a certain type of high-minded technocrat really behaves. I am reminded here of The Toast’s feature “Women Having A Terrible Time At Parties In Western Art History.” Male artists throughout the ages depicted the facial expressions of women with scrupulous accuracy. They just didn’t necessarily realize that the women they were painting were bored out of their minds, because they didn’t know how to interpret what they were representing. Sometimes it is true that Sorkin simply writes female characters badly, but other times he writes true-to-life characters and simply does not seem to grasp or care what is really going on between them.
President Bartlet is actually a dreadful president, and the show portrays this. As Savage points out, “after two terms in the White House, Bartlet’s gang of hyper-educated, hyper-competent politicos do not seem to have any transformational policy achievements whatsoever.” Bartlet’s speechwriting team, like Obama’s, is stuffed with Ivy League white guys who are great at talking and bad at listening. These men are sexist and smug. They rationalize bureaucratic inertia as pragmatism. They think reeling off statistics about agricultural subsidies is “doing politics.” They strut down hallways looking purposeful, without having any idea of where they’re going.
The West Wing, then, can be understood as a rather brilliant show that does offer a crucial political science lesson. It goes through issue after issue and shows how liberals fail on each. To see the reality, all we have to do is watch the show with a critical eye. When we do that, we gain a profound insight into why Sorkin’s (and Obama’s) politics are compelling to people, because we see what they appear like from the inside looking out. We see how important issues come to seem secondary, how defeats can be spun as victories, how government officials can be distracted by the trivial and neglect what actually matters. Sometimes the West Wing is contrasted with Veep, because the former supposedly portrays competent and moral government officials while the latter presents bumbling and venal ones. But this is false. Both shows depict bumbling and venal government officials, and do it beautifully, but the West Wing offers a more profound (if accidental) study of why people who do horrible things don’t notice that those things are horrible.
The West Wing is one of the most highly acclaimed television series of all time. Set in a fictitious presidential administration, it influenced a generation of Democratic politicos. Over seven seasons, the series provided a kind of liberal “alternate universe” presidency during the Bush years. It’s sometimes called a “fantasy” about an “idealized” Washington, because its White House is populated by educated, witty, well-intentioned technocrats who are both progressive and patriotic. Martin Sheen’s President Bartlet is a Nobel Prize-winning economist with an uncommonly good memory, a firm grasp of policy, and a noble soul. He is patriotic and religious while firmly loyal to the Democratic Party. He is also a good dad.
This is certainly on display in the episode picked for the new reenactment. It’s actually one that Savage quoted, due to a scene in which the White House communications director tells President Bartlet that he should stop pretending to be “folks,” and should wear his intelligence on his sleeve. “Make this election about smart and not, qualified and not,” the communications director tells the president. As he says this, Bartlet is in the middle of winning chess matches against multiple White House staffers at once, and resolving a seemingly impossible military stand-off with China, because he is a genius who can “see the whole board” while others cannot. (...)
I went back through some of the West Wing recently because, like Savage, I see it as a very useful guide for understanding the aspirations and ideology of a certain kind of “technocratic liberalism.” Two conclusions stuck out: first, it is a very good show in lots of technical aspects, and this is important for understanding how horrible values can come to seem compelling and why talent and virtue are not synonymous. Second, it is not a depiction of an “unrealizable fantasy,” but an extremely realistic depiction of liberal governance that just needs to be interpreted correctly rather than in accordance with the intentions of its creators and the self-perceptions of its characters.
There is a tendency to believe that art with bad values is bad art, or that the people who produce it are stupid. I see this in some of the criticism of J.K. Rowling: people assume that because she is transphobic and has bad politics, the Harry Potter books are bad and trite and stupid. That may be true (I think the books are very good, as pieces of children’s literature) but people with horrible values can also be extremely talented and even “smart.” The West Wing is a compelling piece of television. The characters are memorable and seem like real people. (Pious know-it-alls like Bartlet are not rare, but quite common.) The dialogue is snappy, the political issues are well-researched, the jokes can be good, the plots are tight but intricate. I do not think the problem with Aaron Sorkin is that he is a bad writer. In fact, I think the problem with him is that he is a good writer who has appalling and ignorant values.
The West Wing, far from being unrealistic, was prophetic. It did not depict an administration that “could not exist.” In fact, the very thing it aspired to came about shortly after. Two years after the West Wing went off the air, the country elected Barack Obama, the brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning academic liberal president, who made “hard choices” and surrounded himself with the best and brightest. (He was also a good dad.) And what we found out is that just stuffing the West Wing with the “wisest,” most “pragmatic,” most “well-intentioned” people does not produce needed political change. Being a natural compromiser is not actually “pragmatic”—it just helps the other side win. It sells out our core moral values and gets nothing in return. It is neither good nor effective.
What’s interesting is that all of this was depicted in the West Wing, but the people making and watching the West Wing did not appear to notice. Because Aaron Sorkin is a good writer and artist who observes how people talk and act and does his research, he presented a fairly accurate picture of how a certain type of high-minded technocrat really behaves. I am reminded here of The Toast’s feature “Women Having A Terrible Time At Parties In Western Art History.” Male artists throughout the ages depicted the facial expressions of women with scrupulous accuracy. They just didn’t necessarily realize that the women they were painting were bored out of their minds, because they didn’t know how to interpret what they were representing. Sometimes it is true that Sorkin simply writes female characters badly, but other times he writes true-to-life characters and simply does not seem to grasp or care what is really going on between them.
President Bartlet is actually a dreadful president, and the show portrays this. As Savage points out, “after two terms in the White House, Bartlet’s gang of hyper-educated, hyper-competent politicos do not seem to have any transformational policy achievements whatsoever.” Bartlet’s speechwriting team, like Obama’s, is stuffed with Ivy League white guys who are great at talking and bad at listening. These men are sexist and smug. They rationalize bureaucratic inertia as pragmatism. They think reeling off statistics about agricultural subsidies is “doing politics.” They strut down hallways looking purposeful, without having any idea of where they’re going.
The West Wing, then, can be understood as a rather brilliant show that does offer a crucial political science lesson. It goes through issue after issue and shows how liberals fail on each. To see the reality, all we have to do is watch the show with a critical eye. When we do that, we gain a profound insight into why Sorkin’s (and Obama’s) politics are compelling to people, because we see what they appear like from the inside looking out. We see how important issues come to seem secondary, how defeats can be spun as victories, how government officials can be distracted by the trivial and neglect what actually matters. Sometimes the West Wing is contrasted with Veep, because the former supposedly portrays competent and moral government officials while the latter presents bumbling and venal ones. But this is false. Both shows depict bumbling and venal government officials, and do it beautifully, but the West Wing offers a more profound (if accidental) study of why people who do horrible things don’t notice that those things are horrible.
by Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs | Read more:
Image: West Wing
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Hornet's Nest
Image: uncredited. More pics here.
Jerry Jeff Walker (March, 1942 - October, 2020)
“We had an independent record and we used it to the nth degree. It wasn’t this independent deal where you find a producer, go up to Nashville and record in a studio. We actually applied it to being here, made in Texas for Texas,” says Walker, now 76. “It’s still the quintessential Texas album as far as explaining how it all was before Austin City Limits.”
“It set a fine example for singer-songwriters and everything that followed. It was more Texas than, say, Willie [Nelson], who was a Nashville product. He had the whole Nashville record company sheen behind him,” says Gary P. Nunn, the author of “London Homesick Blues” and then a member of Walker’s Lost Gonzo Band, which played with him on the album. “It made a statement and created an image of what Texas [music] was and could be.” (...)
“The people in Texas, if they heard a new song, they were so excited and eager to play on it. They just wanted to try things,” says Walker, whose voice has worn into a hoarse and painful-sounding rasp. His seat-of-the-pants approach never fit well with his first label, Atlantic Records. “The studios in New York, they don’t want to sit through that. They’re on a time schedule. You got to have all that shit worked out in advance.”
In the Lost Gonzo Band — a name cribbed from his friend Hunter S. Thompson and a perfect encapsulation of the group’s countercultural ethos — Walker found his vehicle for an eclectic mix of country, folk, rock, Tex-Mex and Tejano, all of which were native to Texas but rarely used together in Music City or the Big Apple. “Somebody told me ‘gonzo’ meant taking an unknown thing to an unknown place for a known purpose. I always thought, ‘Yeah, we don’t know where the fuck we’re going, but when we get out there and do it, we’ll know it,'” he says.
by Jeff Gage, Rolling Stone | Read more:
Image: Paul Natkin/ArchivePhotos/Getty Images[ed. See also: Morning Song to Sally. And, Running Wild with Jerry Jeff (Texas Monthly).]
Friday, October 23, 2020
Imagining the End of Capitalism
An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of more than twenty books, including New York 2140, Red Moon, and the Mars trilogy. He talked to Jacobin about his latest work, his vision of socialism, and why we must fight to imagine the end of capitalism rather than the end of the world.
A speculative history of the next few decades, the novel revolves around an international ministry assembled to help implement the Paris climate agreement. The novel’s action spans the globe, featuring popular uprisings, ecoterrorism, asymmetrical warfare, student debt strikes, and geoengineering. Green New Deal–style programs in a number of the world’s biggest economies feature prominently — with a post-BJP India leading the way — and the commandeering of many of the world’s key central banks to finance the work toward a just transition off fossil fuels is explored.
This is the meat and potatoes of the long transition — that which has dismissively been called “a cookshop of the future.” But while it may not service as a political blueprint, it is undeniably fertile ground for a novel. And genre disregard for the subject matter has been to Robinson’s gain.
Looking backward from the mid-twenty-first century, The Ministry helps open our minds to a world in transition away from capitalism. Imagining is a necessary precondition for solving the ecological crisis of our times. It provides the pivot for leveraging the horizon of the possible. By envisioning possible routes forward, Robinson has done us an invaluable service.
Jacobin’s Derrick O’Keefe, a Vancouver-based organizer and writer, caught up with KSR to talk about politics, economics, climate change, sci-fi, and the journey from now to the future.
This past month, Vancouver, where I’m based, has had a few days with the worst air quality in the world, thanks to the smoke from the California and West Coast wildfires. This was an appropriate backdrop for reading The Ministry of the Future, which opens with a catastrophic weather event. That event, which takes place in India, helps trigger a wave of political change and climate action worldwide. Do you think it’s going to take something really extreme to trigger the changes we need?
KSR: I think we’re already there, with the pandemic and with the fires and hurricanes — the level of extremity has brought a sense of general awareness that something is going to have to be done, and the sooner the better. That said, I think we’re on the brink of even worse events happening, as the book makes clear. It’s been a memorable year, a traumatic year — so this may be a stimulus to the start of some changes.
I wanted to ask you about the now-famous quote attributed to Jameson, which is actually a bit of a paraphrase: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” It strikes me this book is coming out in a year when it’s become pretty easy to imagine the end of things, and that the real challenge is to imagine the beginnings of some kind of socialist system. As much as The Ministry is about the future, it suggests that those beginnings we need are already here with us now and that it’s really a matter of scaling up some of those alternatives.
KSR: I’m a novelist, I’m a literature major. I’m not thinking up these ideas, I’m listening to the world and grasping — sometimes at straws, sometimes just grasping at new ideas and seeing what everybody is seeing.
KSR: There is a polemic for sure. First, I would want to make a distinction between economics and political economy, because by and large, economics as it’s practiced now is the study of capitalism. It takes the axioms of capitalism as givens and then tries to work from those to various ameliorations and tweaks to the system that would make for a better capitalism, but they don’t question the fundamental axioms: everybody’s in it for themselves, everybody pursues their own self-interest, which will produce the best possible outcomes for everybody. These axioms are highly questionable, and they come out of the eighteenth century or are even older, and they don’t match with modern social science or history itself in terms of how we behave, and they don’t value the natural biosphere properly, and they tend to encourage short-term extractive gain and short-term interests. These are philosophical positions that are expressed as though they are fixed or are nature itself, when in reality they are made by culture.
Political economy is a kind of nineteenth-century thing, a more open-ended idea where we could have different systems. And that accounts for a lot of the struggles of the twentieth century. But capitalism likes to pretend that it’s nature itself, and that’s what economics is today, largely.
Take the term “efficiency.” In capitalist economics, that’s just regarded as almost a synonym for “good,” but it completely depends on what the efficiency is being aimed at. You know, machine guns are efficient, gas chambers are efficient. So, “efficiency” as such does not mean “good.” It is a measure of the least amount of effort put in for the most amount gotten out.
One of the things you’re seeing during the pandemic is that the global system of creating masks is efficient, but it is also fragile, brittle, and unreliable because redundancy, robustness, and resilience are all relatively inefficient, if the only rubric of efficiency is profit.
Capitalist economics misunderstands and misjudges the world badly, and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in — caught between biosphere degradation and radical social inequality. These are both natural results of capitalism as such, a result of the economic calculations we make under capitalist axioms.
by Derrick O'Keefe, Jacobin | Read more:
Image: uncredited
***
The Ministry for the Future is Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest attempt to fill in a major gap in the utopian fiction tradition. Rarely dealing with the transitional phase toward a better and different society, speculative fiction of this type instead explores the final stages of a utopian experiment. The Ministry is an exception to this tendency.A speculative history of the next few decades, the novel revolves around an international ministry assembled to help implement the Paris climate agreement. The novel’s action spans the globe, featuring popular uprisings, ecoterrorism, asymmetrical warfare, student debt strikes, and geoengineering. Green New Deal–style programs in a number of the world’s biggest economies feature prominently — with a post-BJP India leading the way — and the commandeering of many of the world’s key central banks to finance the work toward a just transition off fossil fuels is explored.
Looking backward from the mid-twenty-first century, The Ministry helps open our minds to a world in transition away from capitalism. Imagining is a necessary precondition for solving the ecological crisis of our times. It provides the pivot for leveraging the horizon of the possible. By envisioning possible routes forward, Robinson has done us an invaluable service.
Jacobin’s Derrick O’Keefe, a Vancouver-based organizer and writer, caught up with KSR to talk about politics, economics, climate change, sci-fi, and the journey from now to the future.
This past month, Vancouver, where I’m based, has had a few days with the worst air quality in the world, thanks to the smoke from the California and West Coast wildfires. This was an appropriate backdrop for reading The Ministry of the Future, which opens with a catastrophic weather event. That event, which takes place in India, helps trigger a wave of political change and climate action worldwide. Do you think it’s going to take something really extreme to trigger the changes we need?
KSR: I think we’re already there, with the pandemic and with the fires and hurricanes — the level of extremity has brought a sense of general awareness that something is going to have to be done, and the sooner the better. That said, I think we’re on the brink of even worse events happening, as the book makes clear. It’s been a memorable year, a traumatic year — so this may be a stimulus to the start of some changes.
I wanted to ask you about the now-famous quote attributed to Jameson, which is actually a bit of a paraphrase: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” It strikes me this book is coming out in a year when it’s become pretty easy to imagine the end of things, and that the real challenge is to imagine the beginnings of some kind of socialist system. As much as The Ministry is about the future, it suggests that those beginnings we need are already here with us now and that it’s really a matter of scaling up some of those alternatives.
KSR: I’m a novelist, I’m a literature major. I’m not thinking up these ideas, I’m listening to the world and grasping — sometimes at straws, sometimes just grasping at new ideas and seeing what everybody is seeing.
If we could institute some of these good ideas, we could quickly shift from a capitalism to a post-capitalism that is more sustainable and more socialist, because so many of the obvious solutions are contained in the socialist program. And if we treated the biosphere as part of our extended body that needs to be attended to and taken care of, then things could get better fast, and there are already precursors that demonstrate this possibility.
I don’t think it’s possible to postulate a breakdown, or a revolution, to an entirely different system that would work without mass disruption and perhaps blowback failures, so it’s better to try to imagine a stepwise progression from what we’ve got now to a better system. And by the time we’re done — I mean, “done” is the wrong word — but by the end of the century, we might have a radically different system than the one we’ve got now. And this is kind of necessary if we’re going to survive without disaster. So, since it’s necessary, it might happen. And I’m always looking for the plausible models that already exist and imagining that they get ramped up. (...)
I don’t think it’s possible to postulate a breakdown, or a revolution, to an entirely different system that would work without mass disruption and perhaps blowback failures, so it’s better to try to imagine a stepwise progression from what we’ve got now to a better system. And by the time we’re done — I mean, “done” is the wrong word — but by the end of the century, we might have a radically different system than the one we’ve got now. And this is kind of necessary if we’re going to survive without disaster. So, since it’s necessary, it might happen. And I’m always looking for the plausible models that already exist and imagining that they get ramped up. (...)
Amidst and between all the action of The Ministry, there are some polemics carried out, is that fair to say? One recurrent polemic is against mainstream economics, a theme running throughout the book that there’s a need for new metrics and new indices both to quantify the biosphere and to express what we truly value rather than just GDP and the stock market.
KSR: There is a polemic for sure. First, I would want to make a distinction between economics and political economy, because by and large, economics as it’s practiced now is the study of capitalism. It takes the axioms of capitalism as givens and then tries to work from those to various ameliorations and tweaks to the system that would make for a better capitalism, but they don’t question the fundamental axioms: everybody’s in it for themselves, everybody pursues their own self-interest, which will produce the best possible outcomes for everybody. These axioms are highly questionable, and they come out of the eighteenth century or are even older, and they don’t match with modern social science or history itself in terms of how we behave, and they don’t value the natural biosphere properly, and they tend to encourage short-term extractive gain and short-term interests. These are philosophical positions that are expressed as though they are fixed or are nature itself, when in reality they are made by culture.
Political economy is a kind of nineteenth-century thing, a more open-ended idea where we could have different systems. And that accounts for a lot of the struggles of the twentieth century. But capitalism likes to pretend that it’s nature itself, and that’s what economics is today, largely.
Take the term “efficiency.” In capitalist economics, that’s just regarded as almost a synonym for “good,” but it completely depends on what the efficiency is being aimed at. You know, machine guns are efficient, gas chambers are efficient. So, “efficiency” as such does not mean “good.” It is a measure of the least amount of effort put in for the most amount gotten out.
One of the things you’re seeing during the pandemic is that the global system of creating masks is efficient, but it is also fragile, brittle, and unreliable because redundancy, robustness, and resilience are all relatively inefficient, if the only rubric of efficiency is profit.
Capitalist economics misunderstands and misjudges the world badly, and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in — caught between biosphere degradation and radical social inequality. These are both natural results of capitalism as such, a result of the economic calculations we make under capitalist axioms.
by Derrick O'Keefe, Jacobin | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Paid Patriotism
The broadcast booth, like the press box, is always located in an elevated area of an arena or stadium.
And on Sunday, it allowed FOX’s Joe Buck and Troy Aikman the perfect vantage point to see just how ridiculous the NFL’s continued faux patriotism is, just weeks from Election Day.
There was a pregame military flyover before the Tampa Bay-Green Bay game, as if fighter pilots and football go together like baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.
Aikman: That’s a lot of jet fuel just to do a little flyover.
Buck: That’s your hard-earned money and your tax dollars at work!
Aikman: That stuff ain’t happening with [a] Kamala-Biden ticket. I’ll tell you that right now, partner.
The comments were caught on a hot mic, and the off-the-cuff remarks point to a lie that the NFL has been trying to push down the throats of Americans for years. Because if the NFL was so patriotic, then they wouldn’t have accepted cash from the Defense Department to disperse to teams for the purpose of waving the stars and stripes around.
Besides 9/11 and the Super Bowl, teams weren’t even mandated to be on the field for the national anthem until 2009. But then, there was an initiative that included at least 14 NFL teams getting paid to put on “elaborate patriotic salutes” between 2011 and 2014.
Check this out from a 2017 article from ThinkProgress.com.
In 2016 – the year of Colin Kaepernick and Trump – it was reported that the NFL would pay back taxpayers more than $720,000 for the “paid patriotism” that the teams took from the military. At the time, Roger Goodell admitted that an audit discovered that $723,734 “may have been mistakenly applied to appreciation activities rather than recruitment efforts” in a four-season span.
by Carron J. Phillips, Deadspin | Read more:
Image: Getty
And on Sunday, it allowed FOX’s Joe Buck and Troy Aikman the perfect vantage point to see just how ridiculous the NFL’s continued faux patriotism is, just weeks from Election Day.
There was a pregame military flyover before the Tampa Bay-Green Bay game, as if fighter pilots and football go together like baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie.
Buck: That’s your hard-earned money and your tax dollars at work!
Aikman: That stuff ain’t happening with [a] Kamala-Biden ticket. I’ll tell you that right now, partner.
The comments were caught on a hot mic, and the off-the-cuff remarks point to a lie that the NFL has been trying to push down the throats of Americans for years. Because if the NFL was so patriotic, then they wouldn’t have accepted cash from the Defense Department to disperse to teams for the purpose of waving the stars and stripes around.
Besides 9/11 and the Super Bowl, teams weren’t even mandated to be on the field for the national anthem until 2009. But then, there was an initiative that included at least 14 NFL teams getting paid to put on “elaborate patriotic salutes” between 2011 and 2014.
Check this out from a 2017 article from ThinkProgress.com.
“Overall, the Defense Department spent at least $10.4 million on ‘marketing and advertising contracts with professional sports teams’ across the board between 2012 and 2015, although, the report noted, the department ‘[could not] accurately account’ for the full number of contracts and payouts it had awarded. ‘It only reported 62 percent (76 of 122) of its contracts and 70 percent ($7.3 million) of its spending in its response to our inquiry,” wrote Arizona Senators Jeff Flake(R) and John McCain (R).And they add this.
“Even with that disclosure, it is hard to understand how a team accepting taxpayer funds to sponsor a military appreciation game, or to recognize wounded warriors or returning troops, can be construed as anything other than paid patriotism.”And according to CNN, the Department of Defense spent $6.8 million on “paid patriotism” between 2012 and 2015 amongst 50 teams from the NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS, and NASCAR.
In 2016 – the year of Colin Kaepernick and Trump – it was reported that the NFL would pay back taxpayers more than $720,000 for the “paid patriotism” that the teams took from the military. At the time, Roger Goodell admitted that an audit discovered that $723,734 “may have been mistakenly applied to appreciation activities rather than recruitment efforts” in a four-season span.
by Carron J. Phillips, Deadspin | Read more:
Image: Getty
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Mute, Sweet Mute
Image: John Park
[ed. It's worth stopping for a moment and thinking - isn't it amazing that the upcoming Presidential debate has a mute function because the current occupant of the office might wingnut off at any time and try to dominate the airwaves with more lies and bombast? Dysfunction has become so normalized these days that this seems like a reasonable solution. We'll see.]
A Shift in How Some Conservatives Talk and Think About Abortion
“One of the things that I think has been different and has surprised me are the number of Christians, particularly Christian women, who are talking about abortion in a different way,” said Amy Sullivan, a journalist who has covered the intersection of politics and faith for the past 20 years.
Sullivan said she has noticed an “awakening” among Christian women who feel they have been “manipulated” by male leaders in their community.
Too often, Sullivan said, the abortion issue has been “a trap that makes them feel like they have to vote Republican.”
Some anti-abortion conservatives are deciding they don’t want to be trapped. They cite data that suggests the abortion rate has declined under Democratic presidents just as much as it has under Republicans, and is now lower than it was before the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal.
And they argue that the broader set of Democratic policies — greater access to health care, and to birth control, comprehensive sex education, funding for foster care systems and a strong social safety net — reduces unwanted pregnancies more effectively than the GOP’s efforts do.
Image: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
[ed. Predictable. Suddenly some people have a much more nuanced perspective on a lot of issues now that Trump appears to be losing. Where were they when this atrocity happened: Parents of 545 Children Separated at the Border Cannot Be Found (NYT).]
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Denver: Support Team Assistance Response Program
A concerned passerby dialed 911 to report a sobbing woman sitting alone on a curb in downtown Denver.
Instead of a police officer, dispatchers sent Carleigh Sailon, a seasoned mental health professional with a penchant for wearing Phish T-shirts, to see what was going on.
The woman, who was unhoused, was overwhelmed and scared. She’d ended up in an unfamiliar part of town. It was blazing hot and she didn’t know where to go. Sailon gave the woman a snack and some water and asked how she could help. Could she drive her somewhere? The woman was pleasantly surprised.
“She was like, ‘Who are you guys? And what is this?'” Sailon said, recounting the call.
This, Sailon explained, is Denver’s new Support Team Assistance Response program, which sends a mental health professional and a paramedic to some 911 calls instead of police.
Since its launch June 1, the STAR van has responded to more than 350 calls, replacing police in matters that don’t threaten public safety and are often connected to unmet mental or physical needs. The goal is to connect people who pose no danger with services and resources while freeing up police to respond to other calls. The team, which is not armed, has not called police for backup, Sailon said.
“We’re really trying to create true alternatives to us using police and jails,” said Vinnie Cervantes with Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, one of the organizations that helped start the program.
Though it had been years in the making, the program launched just four days after protests erupted in Denver calling for transformational changes to policing in response to the death of George Floyd. (...)
The team has responded to an indecent exposure call that turned out to be a woman changing clothes in an alley because she was unhoused and had no other private place to go. They’ve been called out to a trespassing call for a man who was setting up a tent near someone’s home. They’ve helped people experiencing suicidal thoughts, people slumped against a fence, people simply acting strange.
“It’s amazing how much stuff comes across 911 as the general, ‘I don’t know what to do, I guess I’ll call 911,’” Richardson said. “Someone sets up a tent? 911. I can’t find someone? 911.”
The city has touted the program, still in its pilot, as an example of progress as it is barraged with criticism during and after the protests.
“It’s the future of law enforcement, taking a public health view on public safety,” Denver police Chief Paul Pazen said. “We want to meet people where they are and address those needs and address those needs outside of the criminal justice system.”
Instead of a police officer, dispatchers sent Carleigh Sailon, a seasoned mental health professional with a penchant for wearing Phish T-shirts, to see what was going on.
The woman, who was unhoused, was overwhelmed and scared. She’d ended up in an unfamiliar part of town. It was blazing hot and she didn’t know where to go. Sailon gave the woman a snack and some water and asked how she could help. Could she drive her somewhere? The woman was pleasantly surprised.
This, Sailon explained, is Denver’s new Support Team Assistance Response program, which sends a mental health professional and a paramedic to some 911 calls instead of police.
Since its launch June 1, the STAR van has responded to more than 350 calls, replacing police in matters that don’t threaten public safety and are often connected to unmet mental or physical needs. The goal is to connect people who pose no danger with services and resources while freeing up police to respond to other calls. The team, which is not armed, has not called police for backup, Sailon said.
“We’re really trying to create true alternatives to us using police and jails,” said Vinnie Cervantes with Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, one of the organizations that helped start the program.
Though it had been years in the making, the program launched just four days after protests erupted in Denver calling for transformational changes to policing in response to the death of George Floyd. (...)
The team has responded to an indecent exposure call that turned out to be a woman changing clothes in an alley because she was unhoused and had no other private place to go. They’ve been called out to a trespassing call for a man who was setting up a tent near someone’s home. They’ve helped people experiencing suicidal thoughts, people slumped against a fence, people simply acting strange.
“It’s amazing how much stuff comes across 911 as the general, ‘I don’t know what to do, I guess I’ll call 911,’” Richardson said. “Someone sets up a tent? 911. I can’t find someone? 911.”
The city has touted the program, still in its pilot, as an example of progress as it is barraged with criticism during and after the protests.
“It’s the future of law enforcement, taking a public health view on public safety,” Denver police Chief Paul Pazen said. “We want to meet people where they are and address those needs and address those needs outside of the criminal justice system.”
by Elise Schmelzer, Denver Post | Read more:
Image: Rachel Ellis, The Denver Post[ed. See also: Unbundling the police: Why Are the Police in Charge of Road Safety? (Marginal Revolution). To which I'd add, why are police officers directing traffic around road construction projects. Additionally, see: Seattle's LEAD program: here and here.]
Stephen Stills
Empire of Emperors
What Is China, and Why You Should Worry About It: An excerpt from David Goldman’s new book: ‘You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World’
Lyndon Johnson apocryphally told Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that it was hard to be president of three hundred million Americans. She replied, “It’s harder to be prime minister of three million prime ministers.” Xi Jinping might add that it is even harder to be the emperor of 1.4 billion emperors. We tend to think of the West as individualistic and China as collectivist. In some ways that’s true, but the notion can also be misleading. As individuals, the Chinese are the most ambitious people in the world. Ambition is the sinew that holds together the sprawling, multi-ethnic, polylingual empire that China has been since its founding. For 5,000 years, China’s ambition has been constrained by the limits of nature. The great flood plains of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers supported a larger population at higher living standards than any other part of the pre-modern world. But China’s riparian civilization was also fragile, subject to periodic drought, famine, and flood, leading to civil unrest, barbarian invasion, and prolonged periods of chaos.
All this compelled China to turn inward. Its forays into the broader world were brief and abortive. No more; China can feed itself and control natural disasters. It has turned outward to the world and is seeking its place in the sun. This is a grand turning point in world history. For most of the past five thousand years, China has been the world’s most populous and wealthiest civilization in the world, but largely indifferent to events outside its borders. Now its ambitions are turned outward. Its 2,500-year-old system of elite formation now embraces the ten million students who take the annual college entrance exam. It has absorbed tens of thousands of the best Western scientists and engineers into its project for technological dominance, above all through Huawei, its bridgehead in the world market. And it proposes to extend its imperial principle of assimilation through infrastructure to the whole of the Eurasian continent, through the Belt and Road Initiative.
Western observers often attempt to draw a bright line between the good Chinese people and the nasty Chinese government. That is an unsubtle form of condescension, and wholly misguided. The character of China’s state is shaped by the ambitions of the Chinese people. Sadly, the distinction between “good people” and “bad state” is a misjudgment on which America’s China hawks and China doves agree. Since the late Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping introduced market reforms in 1979, the liberal foreign policy establishment has argued that economic liberalization inevitably would lead to political liberalization. That didn’t happen. The China hawks argue that the Chinese people will rise up and overthrow their Communist overlords if the United States applies sufficient pressure, by placing tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States. That won’t happen, either.
The Liberal Illusion That Prosperity Promotes Political Reform
China doves promised that China’s economic success inevitably would lead to political reforms. Prominent among them is former Goldman Sachs President John L. Thornton, now a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and chairman of the board of trustees at the Brookings Institution, Washington’s oldest and best-funded think tank. In 2009, Thornton told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that China was making progress towards democracy:
American hawks have argued that the Chinese political system is fragile and that the Communist Party can be toppled by outside pressure. Prominent among them is Gordon Chang, whose book The Coming Collapse of China appeared in its first edition in 2001. “The People’s Republic is a paper dragon,” Chang argued. “Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao’s death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society.” That was 18 years ago. In the meantime China’s per capita GDP has quintupled. Chang continues to provide newspaper and television commentary predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese system.
Hawks and doves are both wrong because they share the same false premise: For a society to succeed, they both believe, it must look and act like the United States of America. The doves thought that China would evolve into something like a Western democracy and succeed, while the hawks thought China would remain authoritarian and collapse. In fact, China remained authoritarian and deepened its economic success. Hawks and doves suffer from a sort of narcissism. They cannot conceive that a society so radically different from ours can flourish.
China Is in a Golden Age
But China has flourished. As Francesco Sisci observes, China is in a Golden Age, the first time in history that no one need fear going hungry. Since 1986, household consumption in China has risen seventeen-fold—that is, 1,700%. That isn’t a fabrication of Communist Party statisticians. Chinese now in their thirties, spent their early childhood in homes with dirt floors and outhouses. They now live in newly built apartments with central heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing. In 1986, just 3% of Chinese had access to universities or professional schools. That proportion grew to 50% by 2017. One-third of new labor force entrants have university degrees, and one-third of those are engineers. The Chinese buy 400 million smartphones a year and 25 million automobiles. Chinese commute to work in Shanghai on high-speed trains that reduce the distance from Wilmington to New York City to a 45-minute interval. We will take a closer look at China’s economy in another chapter.
We have to stop viewing China through a half-silvered mirror that reflects our own image back at us, and understand China on its own terms. It isn’t a pleasant picture, but we need to take a hard look at it.
Lyndon Johnson apocryphally told Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that it was hard to be president of three hundred million Americans. She replied, “It’s harder to be prime minister of three million prime ministers.” Xi Jinping might add that it is even harder to be the emperor of 1.4 billion emperors. We tend to think of the West as individualistic and China as collectivist. In some ways that’s true, but the notion can also be misleading. As individuals, the Chinese are the most ambitious people in the world. Ambition is the sinew that holds together the sprawling, multi-ethnic, polylingual empire that China has been since its founding. For 5,000 years, China’s ambition has been constrained by the limits of nature. The great flood plains of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers supported a larger population at higher living standards than any other part of the pre-modern world. But China’s riparian civilization was also fragile, subject to periodic drought, famine, and flood, leading to civil unrest, barbarian invasion, and prolonged periods of chaos.
Western observers often attempt to draw a bright line between the good Chinese people and the nasty Chinese government. That is an unsubtle form of condescension, and wholly misguided. The character of China’s state is shaped by the ambitions of the Chinese people. Sadly, the distinction between “good people” and “bad state” is a misjudgment on which America’s China hawks and China doves agree. Since the late Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping introduced market reforms in 1979, the liberal foreign policy establishment has argued that economic liberalization inevitably would lead to political liberalization. That didn’t happen. The China hawks argue that the Chinese people will rise up and overthrow their Communist overlords if the United States applies sufficient pressure, by placing tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States. That won’t happen, either.
The Liberal Illusion That Prosperity Promotes Political Reform
China doves promised that China’s economic success inevitably would lead to political reforms. Prominent among them is former Goldman Sachs President John L. Thornton, now a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing and chairman of the board of trustees at the Brookings Institution, Washington’s oldest and best-funded think tank. In 2009, Thornton told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that China was making progress towards democracy:
Premier Wen Jiabao consistently advocates for the universal values of democracy. He has defined democracy in largely the same way as many in the West would. “When we talk about democracy,” Premier Wen said, “We usually refer to the three most important components: elections, judicial independence, and supervision based on checks and balances.”China remains quite as authoritarian as ever it was, and technology has vastly increased the ability of its government to monitor and control the details of everyday life. The government of China knows where every smartphone is at all times, and can verify that it is carried by its registered owner through a vast network of facial recognition cameras. Soon it will require Chinese citizens to log on to the internet through facial recognition to police the online activity of the whole of society.
Premier Wen’s emphasis on universal values of democracy reflects new thinking in the liberal wing of the Chinese political establishment. He likely represents a minority view in the Chinese leadership, but like many other ideas in China during the past three decades, what begins as a minority view may gradually and eventually be accepted by the majority.
Now let me move to the second issue: New and far-reaching economic and socio-political forces in present-day China. Let me briefly mention three such forces, the first is the new and ever-growing middle class, the second is the commercialization and increasing diversity of the media, and the third is the rise of civil society groups and lawyers. These new players are better equipped to seek political participation than the Chinese citizens of 30 years ago …
Political participation through institutional means remains very limited. Yet, the ongoing political and intellectual discourse about democracy in the country, the existence of a middle class, commercialization of the media, the rise of civil society groups, the development of the legal profession, and checks and balances within the leadership are all important, contributing factors for democratic change in any society. In all these aspects, China is making significant progress.
American hawks have argued that the Chinese political system is fragile and that the Communist Party can be toppled by outside pressure. Prominent among them is Gordon Chang, whose book The Coming Collapse of China appeared in its first edition in 2001. “The People’s Republic is a paper dragon,” Chang argued. “Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao’s death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society.” That was 18 years ago. In the meantime China’s per capita GDP has quintupled. Chang continues to provide newspaper and television commentary predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese system.
Hawks and doves are both wrong because they share the same false premise: For a society to succeed, they both believe, it must look and act like the United States of America. The doves thought that China would evolve into something like a Western democracy and succeed, while the hawks thought China would remain authoritarian and collapse. In fact, China remained authoritarian and deepened its economic success. Hawks and doves suffer from a sort of narcissism. They cannot conceive that a society so radically different from ours can flourish.
China Is in a Golden Age
But China has flourished. As Francesco Sisci observes, China is in a Golden Age, the first time in history that no one need fear going hungry. Since 1986, household consumption in China has risen seventeen-fold—that is, 1,700%. That isn’t a fabrication of Communist Party statisticians. Chinese now in their thirties, spent their early childhood in homes with dirt floors and outhouses. They now live in newly built apartments with central heating, air conditioning, and indoor plumbing. In 1986, just 3% of Chinese had access to universities or professional schools. That proportion grew to 50% by 2017. One-third of new labor force entrants have university degrees, and one-third of those are engineers. The Chinese buy 400 million smartphones a year and 25 million automobiles. Chinese commute to work in Shanghai on high-speed trains that reduce the distance from Wilmington to New York City to a 45-minute interval. We will take a closer look at China’s economy in another chapter.
We have to stop viewing China through a half-silvered mirror that reflects our own image back at us, and understand China on its own terms. It isn’t a pleasant picture, but we need to take a hard look at it.
by David P. Goldman, Tablet | Read more:
Image: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty
An Easy Way To Remember the High Point of Any Trip? Set It To Music
I was watching zebras drink from a watering hole in the Rwandan wilderness when I turned to my safari guide and asked him to play me his favorite song.
Wherever I go, I collect “song souvenirs.” On one level, it’s an easy way to find common ground with people from other places, but the practice also never fails to firmly embed a place in my mind. Science backs me up, too: A 2015 study published in the neurology journal Brain found that musical memories are so strong, they can even be preserved in patients with advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
On this day, though, I also wanted to lighten the mood. Between sightings in Akagera National Park, my guide, Johnston Mbanzamihigo, had been telling me about his time fighting in the Rwandan Patriotic Front against the perpetrators of the country’s 1994 genocide.
He opened his phone and cued up Ntawamusimbura, a sentimental track sung in Kinyarwanda by the local singer Meddy. It has a lightly autotuned but vulnerable Ed Sheeran-like vibe; the title means “No one can replace her,” Mbanzamihigo translated. As he closed his eyes and swayed with his arms outstretched, I joined him, knowing that every time I heard this song later, it would transport me straight back to this moment on the savanna.
by Jennifer Flowers, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image: Marc Majewski
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