The revolution in the "shithole"

This is the first long weekend of a new year; Monday is Martin Luther King Day.  Therefore, I will continue to focus on the slavery history of the United States in Jill Lepore's book.

I have written--many times--even in this blog, that I have no idea how African-Americans live without always being angry at the white folk who proudly claim their slave-owning history.  Or, when they openly talk about white supremacy.

Lepore gives me plenty to get angry about--despite that I am not an African-American, and was raised with Brahmin privilege in the old country.  I have no firsthand experience of being the underclass ever, and I am pissed off!

Consider this, for instance: The American Revolution of 1776 echoed across the waters with the French Revolution in 1789.  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Right?

It was the same France that had colonized Haiti, which was then known as Saint-Domnigue. It was "the largest colony in the Caribbean, and the richest."  Whites on the island were outnumbered by slaves, whose population was eleven times the population of whites.

A "democratic" revolution in the nearby United States, and another in the colonial power.  So, of course, Haiti's brown people rose up in 1791.

The leaders of the American revolution did not support the revolution in Haiti.  Instead, they attacked it.  Not just with words: "Between 1791 and 1793, the United States sold arms and ammunition and gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid to French planters on the island."  Yep, the young republic set a precedent way back then by sending money and materials to a war, not to help the downtrodden but to support the white and the wealthy!

American newspapers did not cheer the Haitian Revolution, but instead reported it "as a kind of madness, a killing frenzy."

America reinforced itself not as a land of liberty, but as a land of slavery.  How awful!

When George Washington called it quits and headed back home, some of their slaves fled.  Washington "sent a slave catcher" after one of them, who offered to return only if she would be granted freedom.  "Washington refused, on the ground that it would set a "dangerous precedent.""  When Washington died, blacks outnumbered whites in that room, Lepore writes.

Nearly 230 years after that revolution, the sitting President of the United States casually and callously referred to Haiti as a "shithole".

"For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men."

We the people ... which people?

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued his famous presidential proclamation, freeing slaves.  He was the 16th President.  Why didn't any of the previous fifteen issue such a proclamation?  For that matter, why didn't the first president, Washington, issue one?

Jill Lepore writes:

What would have happened if he had decided, before taking that oath of office, to emancipate his slaves? ...
[Yet] he would not, could not, do it.  Few of Washington's decisions would have such lasting and terrible consequences as this one failure to act.

Lepore doesn't sugarcoat her interpretation of history.  Good for her!

Of course, Washington was acutely aware of the deal that was struck--the three-fifths clause--for the Constitution.  He knew how the slave-owning southern delegates felt about slavery, slaves, and blacks. Like William Loughton Smith of South Carolina, who opposed emancipation "by insisting that if blacks were free they would marry whites, "the white race would be extinct, and the American people would be all of the mulatto breed."

Such bigotry exists today, even nearly 230 years later.  Iowa's long-term representative, steve king, has been saying such crap for years before trump jumped on that hatred and made it a winner!  When trump boasted to king about how much money he had raised for him, king's reply was telling: “But I market-tested your immigration policy for fourteen years, and that ought to be worth something.”

Washington set a precedent: In politics, leaders will compromise on morals and basic human decency for the sake of money and power.  It should not surprise us then that the GOP and 63 million voters prostrated before trump! 

During Washington's time, and later too, slaves were, after all, "property" and, therefore, wealth.  The leaders treated their fellow humans as less-than-human even though they fully knew otherwise.  And they compromised.

They all knew well what they were doing.  Which is why the framers of the Constitution "tried to hide it. Nowhere do the words "slave" or "slavery" appear in the final document."  They tried to hide it.  But, they knew that the truth will reveal itself sooner than later.

Easy truths ...

Of course we have differences of opinions on various aspects of the human condition, within our countries and across the world.  I might disagree with you, dear reader, but I will not lose respect for you simply because we disagree.

However, there are issues where there is simply no fuzziness.  Some issues have only one correct answer each, and everything else is wrong.  And on those issues, if you choose, and advocate for those wrong answers, I lose respect for you. trump is one of those in these contemporary times.  

Three hundred years ago, it would have been slavery.

Even with all the understanding that I have, I simply cannot imagine how one group of humans decided that another group of humans was not not really human.  And, therefore, there was nothing wrong in making them slaves. Raping them. Torturing them. Branding them. How sick does one have to be in order to think this way!

The more Jill Lepore gets into slavery--I am yet to reach 1776 in the book--the faster that I am losing respect for the revered white men.  George Washington, who inherited his first human property as a ten year old, was no exception.  While I have, of course, known about the founders' slave-holding, it feels strikingly new when I read sentences like this:

George Washington's slaves had been running away at least since 1760. At least forty-seven of them fled at one time or another.

Let's recap. Washington, the ardent military man who is already engaged in self-governance for the colonies, is fully aware that his slaves are also willing to risk their lives for freedom by running away from his estate ... and the guy does nothing!

In December 1765, George Mason wrote--an essay--to Washington "in which he argued that slavery was "the primary Cause of the Destruction of the most flourishing Government that ever existed"--the Roman republic."

Towns here and there voted in favor of abolishing slavery.  But, these were in the minority.

As the armed conflict between the colonies and the British worsened, Lord Dunmore "offered freedom to any slaves who would join His Majesty's troops in suppressing the American rebellion."  The bastards were no noble saints; it was merely their bloody divide and conquer strategy at play here too.

In doing so, Dunmore tipped the scales:

Edward Rutledge, a member of South Carolina's delegation to the Continental Congress, said that Dumore's declaration did "more effectually work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies--than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of."

The symbolic Boston Tea Party didn't launch the revolution. Rather "it was this act; Dunmore's offer of freedom to slaves, that tipped the scales in favor of American independence."

To quote from Shakespeare, "For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men."

A final piece from Lepore wraps it all up:

If all men belonging to civil society are free and equal, how can slavery be possible? It must be, Virginia's convention answered, that Africans do not belong to civil society, having never left a state of nature.

Terrible!

By now, shouldn't we not even know about something called measles?

When we kids came down with chickenpox, I came to understand all the more the wonderful life that we had compared to decades past when the first sign of a bubble on the skin panicked people about the dreaded smallpox. Thus, it was no surprise when the family thanked the "amman" goddess after the recovery, despite the life in an industrial township amidst all the science and technology.  When I returned to school after the few days off, my class teacher exempted me from attending the school assembly under the hot morning sun, which was quite a reward! ;)

There were worries about mumps and measles too, when we were kids.  After hearing about a kid who died from diphtheria, I had one more addition to my vocabulary of dreaded diseases even though I had no clue what any of those ailments were.

Life, even a few decades ago, was an obstacle race.  Viruses and bacteria were always waiting to trip people of all ages down and with any one obstacle the race could end.  We have quickly forgotten how difficult existence was a mere generation or two ago, in any part of the world.

A virus or a bacteria doesn't forget, however, as long as it is given a chance to live.  If those suckers live, we die.  Which is what happened recently a little bit north of where I have now made my home for more than a decade:

In Clallam County, Washington, a woman has died of complications from measles. This is the first U.S. death from measles since 2003.

In more than a decade!

She likely contracted measles when she visited a health facility; a person who was later identified as having measles was there at the same time. The woman who died was apparently taking a series of medications that lowered her immune system’s ability to fight off disease. Although she didn’t present a rash or other obvious external symptoms, she died of pneumonia caused by the measles infection.

She was only twenty years old.  How awful!  Awful because measles is preventable.  

Measles, the world’s most contagious virus, was all but eradicated in the United States fifteen years ago, and it shouldn’t make anybody sick, let alone cause deaths.

Almost eradicated from the country.  Yet, now this death.  What happened?

But in 1998, a British physician named Andrew Wakefield published an article in the medical journal The Lancet concluding that there was a connection between the childhood measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism. Wakefield’s results have never been replicated, throughout a wide variety of studies, several of them involving thousands of children, and an investigation by the British General Medical Council found that Wakefield had violated ethics rules and shown “callous disregard” for the pain of children in his research. In 2010, The Lancet retracted the article, and Wakefield became a pariah in the medical world. Nonetheless, the paper had set off a wave of fear of vaccinations, first in England and then throughout the Western world, which has never fully subsided.

Wakefield is worse than the uninformed and ill-informed rural "leaders" in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigera thanks to whom polio eradication is taking a tad longer than it should.  In contrast to those Pakistanis and Nigerians, Wakefield was a trained physician. A man of science!

Nearly two hundred thousand children in the developing world died from measles last year. The number of deaths worldwide has fallen dramatically over the course of the past decade, as a result of an intense vaccine drive led by the Gates Foundation and GAVI, the global vaccine alliance. Most Americans, however, have never seen a case of measles, and neither have most practicing pediatricians. That has made it difficult to convey the dangers of avoiding vaccination.

What a tragic irony that Washington-based Gates Foundation goes around the world vaccinating kids while parents resist vaccination in their own backyard in Washington and the US!  People have forgotten the nasty, brutish, and short lives of a few generations ago.  But then, those who forget history are bound to relive it; unfortunately, they make the rest of us also relive it sometimes to the point of dying from it :(

On Mandela, Nehru, and Washington ...

Given the news about Nelson Mandela, here is a re-post from a few months ago:

Every year, it seems like I always end up remembering that November 14th is Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary.  It is etched so deep in my memory that it can never get erased perhaps?  Maybe it is also because it comes only days before the birthday of my closest friend from high school?  

When India became independent in 1947 and, became, thereby, the world’s largest democracy, Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister.  While India continues to function as a democracy, there is a distinct possibility that Nehru’s continuation in that office until his death in 1964 precluded a natural growth of leadership and made possible, though not by his design, the family dynastic politics which characterizes the country now.

Nehru, his daughter—Indira Gandhi—and grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, have all together governed India for 37 of the 65 years!  Nehru’s great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, is currently being actively groomed for the premiership even as his Italian-born mother, Sonia Gandhi, serves as the party chief.

But, at least, throughout all these, India plods along in its experiments in democracy.  India’s sibling, Pakistan, has had more years under military rule than as a free society.  In the years since the end of the Second World War, which rapidly terminated European rule over colonies in Asia and Africa, very few countries have had democratic governments.

In contemporary times, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela does appear to be a rare founding president.  In 1994, Mandela became the president after the collapse of the apartheid regime that had imprisoned him for almost three decades.  With all the national and local goodwill behind him, Mandela, too, could have remained in office for a long time.  Yet, he opted to exit the stage in 1999 after serving only one term.  Mandela’s shine becomes infinitely brighter against the backdrop of the likes of Mubarak, who was the president of Egypt for 31 years, and Ben Ali’s 24-year reign over Tunisia! 

As we scan the rest of Africa, half the sub-Saharan African countries are authoritarian regimes.  The most notorious among the rest is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who has been the country’s leader ever since he successfully led the country to its independence in 1980.  In the process of cementing his rule, Mugabe has managed to convert what was the breadbasket of southern Africa into a living hell. 

The fact that democratic governance cannot be taken for granted even a decade into the twenty-first century, is quite a reminder of how much the eighteenth-century thinking of the framers of the American Constitution was way ahead of its time. 

America was an untested political experiment in the final decades of the 18^th century.  In a world that was defined by kings and queens who claimed that divine right granted them the authority to rule over people and wage wars, America was setting up something completely different.  

Even in this setup, in a time period when victorious generals automatically became kings, George Washington, as America’s general who led the war to secure its independence and firm it up, made it clear that he would be no king. 

As if that much trailblazing was not enough, Washington, unlike his contemporaries who died on their beds as kings, unless defeated in wars, voluntarily walked away from the presidency even though there wasn’t any real threat to his office.  When Washington officially retired, it was not only from the presidency but, for all practical purposes, from politics itself. 

Washington's farewell address is a testament to his humility that comes from strength; he notes that he might have made mistakes, which were unintentional, and hoped that “after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”   

Awesome!

I wonder how India's story might have been if after completing two terms, in 1957, Nehru had walked away from the office of the prime minister and from politics itself. Given that he was a serious student of politics, I wonder why Nehru didn't draw that lesson from Washington.

If only Nehru had been a Washington?

Every year, it seems like I always end up remembering that November 14th is Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary.  It is etched so deep in my memory that it can never get erased perhaps?  Maybe it is also because it comes only days before the birthday of my closest friend from high school?  

When India became independent in 1947 and, became, thereby, the world’s largest democracy, Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister.  While India continues to function as a democracy, there is a distinct possibility that Nehru’s continuation in that office until his death in 1964 precluded a natural growth of leadership and made possible, though not by his design, the family dynastic politics which characterizes the country now.

Nehru, his daughter—Indira Gandhi—and grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, have all together governed India for 37 of the 65 years!  Nehru’s great-grandson, Rahul Gandhi, is currently being actively groomed for the premiership even as his Italian-born mother, Sonia Gandhi, serves as the party chief.

But, at least, throughout all these, India plods along in its experiments in democracy.  India’s sibling, Pakistan, has had more years under military rule than as a free society.  In the years since the end of the Second World War, which rapidly terminated European rule over colonies in Asia and Africa, very few countries have had democratic governments.

In contemporary times, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela does appear to be a rare founding president.  In 1994, Mandela became the president after the collapse of the apartheid regime that had imprisoned him for almost three decades.  With all the national and local goodwill behind him, Mandela, too, could have remained in office for a long time.  Yet, he opted to exit the stage in 1999 after serving only one term.  Mandela’s shine becomes infinitely brighter against the backdrop of the likes of Mubarak, who was the president of Egypt for 31 years, and Ben Ali’s 24-year reign over Tunisia! 

As we scan the rest of Africa, half the sub-Saharan African countries are authoritarian regimes.  The most notorious among the rest is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who has been the country’s leader ever since he successfully led the country to its independence in 1980.  In the process of cementing his rule, Mugabe has managed to convert what was the breadbasket of southern Africa into a living hell. 

The fact that democratic governance cannot be taken for granted even a decade into the twenty-first century, is quite a reminder of how much the eighteenth-century thinking of the framers of the American Constitution was way ahead of its time. 

America was an untested political experiment in the final decades of the 18^th century.  In a world that was defined by kings and queens who claimed that divine right granted them the authority to rule over people and wage wars, America was setting up something completely different.  

Even in this setup, in a time period when victorious generals automatically became kings, George Washington, as America’s general who led the war to secure its independence and firm it up, made it clear that he would be no king. 

As if that much trailblazing was not enough, Washington, unlike his contemporaries who died on their beds as kings, unless defeated in wars, voluntarily walked away from the presidency even though there wasn’t any real threat to his office.  When Washington officially retired, it was not only from the presidency but, for all practical purposes, from politics itself. 

Washington's farewell address is a testament to his humility that comes from strength; he notes that he might have made mistakes, which were unintentional, and hoped that “after forty five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.”   

Awesome!

I wonder how India's story might have been if after completing two terms, in 1957, Nehru had walked away from the office of the prime minister and from politics itself. Given that he was a serious student of politics, I wonder why Nehru didn't draw that lesson from Washington.

Oregon is Pakistan. So, Washington is Greece?

From The Economist: (more at this interactive site)

Map of the day: where the elephant gained

The note at the source (ht),

The other side of the equation can be seen in the Pacific Coast states (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington). Despite the Red wave sweeping America, the net House gain for the GOP in these five states was zero (+1 in Washington and -1 in Hawaii). The Pacific states of California, Oregon, and Washington have become a Blue sandbar that can withstand even a Republican tsunami. Strong GOP candidates for Governor in Oregon and California were defeated. Credible Republican Senate contenders in California and Washington could not oust Democratic incumbents. With 53 House berths, not a single Golden State seat changed party hands. Back in 1994, the last GOP landslide year, Republicans picked up three seats in California. The story is worse for Republicans in Washington State, which was ground zero for the GOP in 1994, when the party won six House seats and held their Senate seat too. All the state’s House seats save one were impervious to a Red tide this time around.

Remember a key Democratic loss in 1994?

Foley became the first sitting Speaker of the House to lose his bid for re-election since Galusha Grow in 1862.

No significant GOP inroads since ... no complaints :)

The sharperning red-blue divide

It is not only across the country, but within states as well.

A couple of years ago, Bill Bishop argued in his book, The Big Sort, that Americans seem to choose where to live based on their political beliefs.  (I would think that my own small neighborhood does not represent Bishop's view--we have everybody from the Tea Partiers to the peace-loving left.  Bishop's point does seem to be valid at larger geographic units.)  This election underscores that geographic clustering within states:
Exhibit 1, which is a letter in the local newspaper, on the election of the Democrat John Kitzhaber as governor:

Probably comes across as sour grapes, but Gov.-elect John Kitzhaber was not elected by the state of Oregon. He was elected by two ultraliberal counties, Lane and Multnomah. Lane, with the University of Oregon and The Register-Guard, and Multnomah County combined for 67.9 percent for Kitzhaber and 32.1 percent for Dudley. The other 34 counties voted 43.6 percent for Kitzhaber and 56.4 percent for Dudley. Doesn’t exactly come across as equal representation. Of the 36 counties, only seven voted in favor of Kitzhaber, and 29 counties were a sea of red for Dudley.

Exhibit 2, which is a short essay in the New York Review of Books, on the re-election of the Democrat Patty Murray as Washington's senator:

Democrats inhabit the low shores of Puget Sound, mostly on its eastern side, in a ragged trail of port-cities that stretches from Bellingham, close to the Canadian border, through Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma, to Olympia, the state capital, at the southern end of the sound. In Seattle, our very liberal Democrat congressman, Jim McDermott, is being returned to D.C. for his twelfth term with a majority (so far) of 82 percent of the vote, which is a tad down from his 2008 figure. In fact, most of western Washington’s Democratic candidates for the House (four successful, one unsuccessful, and one yet to be decided) defended the administration’s record in their campaigns. But when you drive eastward over the Interstate 90 bridge that crosses the long and skinny Lake Washington, to Bellevue and beyond, you enter Republican territory, whose redness steadily deepens over the next three hundred miles to the Idaho border.
The north-south line of “the mountains,” meaning the Cascade Range, forty miles east of Seattle, is a rigid political frontier. On November 2, all twenty counties east of the mountains voted for Dino Rossi, while Patty Murray’s support was concentrated in the urban settlements on Puget Sound.

Update: This letter in the newspaper from the state's capital reflects the view expressed in Exhibit 1:

As long as the "states" of Portland and Eugene have their say, there will be no such thing as a two-party state. They dictate what goes and what doesn't.

Healthy states, not weak states, getting stimulus?

Here in Oregon the economic picture is gloooooomy. Reading this in USA Today makes it gloomier, with respect to stimulus getting the state out of the recession.

States hit hardest by the recession received only a few of the government's first stimulus contracts, even though the glut of new federal spending was meant to target places where the economic pain has been particularly severe.

Nationwide, federal agencies have awarded nearly $4 billion in contracts to help jump-start the economy since President Obama signed the massive stimulus package in February. But, with few exceptions, that money has not reached states where the unemployment rate is highest, according to a USA TODAY review of contracts disclosed through the Federal Procurement Data System.

In Michigan, for example — where years of economic tumult and a collapsing domestic auto industry have produced the nation's worst unemployment rate — federal agencies have spent about $2 million on stimulus contracts, or 21 cents per person. In Oregon, where unemployment is almost as high, they have spent $2.12 per capita, far less than the nationwide average of nearly $13.

That money "is needed nowhere more than it is needed in Michigan," says Leslee Fritz, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Economic Recovery Office, which is coordinating stimulus efforts in that state. She said officials are generally satisfied with the pace of federal aid, but added, "We certainly feel very intensely the need to move quickly."

The $787 billion recovery package was intended to help turn around the economy using federal money to create jobs, especially in places where the recession has taken the most severe toll. Most of that money goes directly to states to pay for work such as highway repairs, but federal agencies also will spend billions of dollars to do everything from fixing runways and improving national forests to cleaning up nuclear waste.

The report has an interactive map that is quite good. According to that map, Oregon's jobless rate is 12%, and the per capita stimulus funding so far is $2.12. In neighboring Washington, with a much lesser unemployment rate of 9.1%, per capita stimulus funding thus far is a whopping $216.02!

Ducks and ducklings. An "awwwww" moment :-)