The state of my political world

I haven't talked about politics in this space for a long time because, frankly, the state of politics in this country bores the shit out of me. My friend, David Palmer, has tried to get me involved in a couple different efforts in the last couple years. One of them was to help Rashida Tlaib in 2018. Another one was a project oriented around voting patterns and trying to use that info to help campaigns that we were interested in (like Rashida's, by and large.) And, y'know, I was willing to help, but I didn't do either effort any justice, mostly because I've become something of a political nihilist in the 15 years since I got out of regular activity.

When I helped build the Green Party in this state and was its chair for five years, I was still an activist. There were still principles that I was willing to work a second full-time job without pay for. There were principles that I was willing to ruin my marriage for (although that likely should have ended a lot sooner than it did, anyway.) I still hold those principles among the guiding truths of my life. But most other people don't give a shit. Quite honestly, most people didn't give a shit then, which is why I walked away from it, having burned out on doing most of the work myself because everyone else had better things to do when they weren't spending a couple hours a week in a local meeting, thinking that the more they talked, the closer the world came to suddenly transforming. When Tricia and I met up with David after a concert one night, he asked her: "So, what's it like living with an actual revolutionary?" We all laughed because it was kind of a joke. I laughed at least in part because I knew that almost everything I'd done was a complete waste of time. Most revolutionaries at least have the integrity to spend a long time in prison or be assassinated or something like that.

Both of Tricia's kids, Keller and Simone, are Bernie supporters. Being from the current generation, they recognize the obvious injustices of American society and understand, as much as they instinctively understand breathing, that things need to change. I don't know how much of my occasional ranting has influenced that outlook, if at all, since they both seem to have developed opinions on their own based on their open-minded view of society. I remember when Simone was in eighth grade and mentioned that a couple of her classmates had already declared themselves to be transgendered. I just shrugged, but I chuckled inwardly, trying to imagine any set of circumstances where I could've been at the age of 13 where anyone would even consider doing that, much less actually following through. There are many things that have changed for the better on a social level in the last 37 years. And, of course, there are many things that really haven't. Such is life.

But I was having a discussion with a guy I know on that Michigan board I've been hanging out on for 23 years. I don't even watch Michigan anymore, but I've known these people for a long time and they're still worth the conversation. He's a Biden supporter because he's a former Republican, appalled at the party's descent into Trumplandia, and he just wants to remove the game show host from the Oval Office. In other words, "anyone but Trump." That's not an unreasonable position and it's been supported with Biden's victories in most of the primaries and with his support from the DNC that Sanders has continually attacked and derided (possibly not the best strategy when trying to win the party's nomination, as a non-party member. Just sayin'.) But it's also emblematic of the status quo, which is essentially "put things back to where they were", pre-Trump.

Those of you who've listened to Mike Duncan's superb Revolutions podcast will have heard him regularly opine on the difference between a political revolution and a social revolution. The former is what founded this country. It was a bunch of wealthy, highly-educated, landholding White guys who objected to being denied any way to govern themselves and to having their money taken just because they weren't part of a few particular families. It wasn't about slavery or poverty or the inability to find a job or any other basic human right. It was mostly about money. I've always said that America was founded as a way to make money and it has never changed. This event was no different. These guys were part of the Haves in 18th century America, even if they didn't have the coat-of-arms to prove it back in the old country.

A social revolution is a very different animal. It's almost always initiated by the Have Nots who have been denied those basic rights, typically because the Haves have kept those things from them. Why? Because denial of basic rights usually makes money. This class division has existed throughout human history and the consequent revolutions have occurred whenever that chasm has gotten so wide that the Have Nots on one side of it see no way that they're ever going to close it without violence. And here we are.

The trigger event, in this case, may be a global pandemic, which has suddenly kickstarted conversation on topics that were formerly taboo. Could you imagine middle schoolers declaring themselves to be TG in 1985? 1995? Of course not. By the same token, could you imagine anyone talking about a universal basic income on the floor of Congress before the last couple weeks? Or seriously discussing national healthcare as a necessity, rather than a political prize? Or, for that matter, even envision the idea of Congress discussing just giving... money... to people.., that actually need it...? I can't. It violates so many tenets of the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps America that it's hard to comprehend. It's absolute heresy to the give-more-money-to-the-rich-and-they'll-be-kind-and-generous religion. But those are the realities we're facing, as the trickle-down crowd shouts that grandma should be sacrificed to their ever-failing experiment, and they somehow fail to see that "the economy" also won't recover if a good chunk of the population ends up in mass graves instead of, y'know, buying shit on Amazon. And who is our hero to carry the banner of these new, transformative measures in society?!

Joe Biden.

Joe Biden, long-time senator from Delaware, the most corporate-friendly state in the Union. Joe Biden, scion of credit card companies and the leading supporter of the 2005 bankruptcy act that makes student loans non-dischargeable (You may have heard that that's a small issue to many young Americans and Democrats.) Joe Biden, vociferous proponent of both of George W. Bush's decades-long wars, which cost ungodly amounts of money. In many ways, Biden is the model, establishment Democrat. He's the perfect example of what I usually refer to as the "I got mine!" Democrats; giving lip service to a lot of issues, but only really following through on the ones that keep the status quo for the Almost Haves. You may know them as America's diminishing middle class. They have some money. They do OK. They're never going to be a Bezos or a Bloomberg, but they're content as long as things stay the same. In other words, Biden just wants to bring us all back to pre-Trump, when the poor got poorer but there weren't as many kids in cages at the border. And the president didn't act like a spoiled child. And professionals weren't dismissed from government service for making the president feel bad. But, uh, the poor still got poorer and nothing much else really changed, especially for those young people looking to make their way in the world. "Let's get back to the time when you still didn't have much chance at finding the American Dream!" isn't much of a slogan, but it's all he's got.

And now he's the nominee. The Democrats' constant "boogeyman" approach to elections has finally reached the bottom of its barrel. Now it's not just "You have to vote for us because, if you don't, THAT GUY will win!" It's that and "You're going to help us elect a guy whose only worthwhile attribute is that he's not THAT GUY!" Get fired up, yo. And all I can do is look back at the work I used to do and think, again: What a complete waste of time. Because I'm still looking for jobs that I'll hate in order to afford the drugs that keep me alive to be miserable, since Joe doesn't want national healthcare. Most people will never be free of the mild terror of knowing that, if they lose their job, they've not only lost their health coverage but will soon be out of their home because Joe's in favor of our all-or-nothing system. A lot of people are crashing face-first into those realities right now because of that global pandemic and the inaction of the current idiot in the Oval Office. And do you know what Joe's response is?

He doesn't want to fight the president.

Millions are outraged at the president's delays, where he refused to listen to his own HHS secretary, because a health crisis would make Trump look bad. But Joe doesn't want to point that out. Despite the attempts to put a $500 billion slush fund in the emergency aid bill that was directly requested by the White House when Trump realized that 6 of his 7 biggest properties were shuttered by state lockdowns, Joe doesn't want to fight about that. Millions are appalled that news sources like the New York Times and CNN won't simply call the president on his lies, especially when they're indirectly leading to people dying from coronavirus or directly leading to people poisoning themselves with various forms of quinine. But Joe doesn't want to call the president a liar. That would be unseemly.

So, this is where we are. And I think back to David's comment... "Revolutionary." I wish it was still funny.

If all you have is the past, then everything is shiny

Bentley Library

That's a picture of the University of Michigan football team in 1901. That was the first year of Fielding Yost's lengthy tenure at Michigan. They finished 11-0, outscoring their opponents 550-0, inaugurating the title "Point-a-minute" that Yost's teams would carry for the next four seasons. They were recognized as national champions by a number of different committees or foundations that took the role of doing that kind of thing both then and in later years. That's all wonderful and glorious, but it's also 113 years ago when the game was very different.

Bentley Library

That's a picture of the University of Michigan football team in 1964. They went 9-1 that season, losing only to Purdue, 21-20, and they won the Big 10 title and beat Oregon State in the Rose Bowl, 34-7. They didn't win a national title, but they were the best team of a very fallow period for Michigan football and the best one under Bump Elliott, whom everyone agreed was a very nice guy. That, too, is wonderful and glorious, but it's also 50 years ago when the game was very different.

Bentley Library

That's a picture of the University of Michigan football team in 1997. They went 12-0 that season, winning the Big 10 title, the Rose Bowl, and the national title according to everyone but the USA Today Coaches' Poll, who awarded it to Nebraska. That team also had the 1997 Heisman Trophy winner, Charles Woodson, who won the award as the only primarily defensive player in its history. All of that is wonderful and glorious, but it's also 17 years ago when the game was, yes, very different.

Michigan has a wonderful history in the game of football but, in today's Tautology Lesson, that is exactly what it is: history. It has relevance to the modern game only in that people continue to pine for it as an example of how they think things should be if the world were "right", but wishing the world were what you'd like it to be is why they call it "dreaming" and this here's reality.

Sporting News

Brady Hoke, by all accounts, is a very nice guy and clearly loves the program. Brady Hoke is also stuck in the past and all the wonder and glory that comes with it. He was hired with a career sub-.500 record; hardly the record you would expect for a program the adherents of which like to stress is the all-time winningest (based on total wins at the moment, since we surrendered the percentage basis to Notre Dame when we lost to Kansas State in last year's Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl.) Hoke revels in the history of Michigan, even after appalling losses like last night's 26-10 drubbing by Utah at Michigan Stadium. Watch yesterday's post-game press conference. He mentions telling the team that the 1998 team lost to ND and Syracuse and still rebounded to tie for the conference title (Wisconsin, however, went to the Rose Bowl on tiebreakers and Michigan ended up in the Citrus Bowl.) He also mentions Woody Hankins made a great play in the 1996 OSU game. 16 years ago. 18 years ago. It's all in the past. That's where the glory was. None of it has anything to do with the modern game.

The modern game is one where the spread punt formation actually limits the opponent's ability to gain yardage on punt returns. It's a modern approach and the vast majority of college teams use it because it allows them to send more gunners down the field and contain the return guy. Hoke, OTOH, uses the old pro-style formation, which doesn't. That seems to be a rather galling tactical flaw in the first place but it's compounded by Hoke's preferred offensive approach, which is ball-control, power running... and field position. If you're giving the other team an additional 10-15 yards per return, you're surrendering field position.

Rampaging across Twitter from Utah fans

Of course, if you only have 10 men on the field for the punt that Utah returned for a touchdown yesterday, then you have more problems than formation issues...

In that press conference, Hoke talks about how "all our goals are still out there." Those "goals" he's talking about are the conference title and the Rose Bowl. I don't think I need to remind anyone about how wretched the B1G is as a conference at this point and how unlikely that conference title will matter to anyone, mostly because it hasn't mattered to anyone in a very long time. Everyone has talked national title for the past 25 years, if not longer. The last Michigan team that is heralded as genuinely great is that 1997 group above, because they won a national title. The next most recent team mentioned is the 2006 team, which played in a #1 vs #2 matchup with Ohio State that had implications for the national title. The conference title was a complete afterthought, even to former Hoke superior, Lloyd Carr, who thought that his team deserved a shot at the title game even after the narrow loss to OSU. The conference title hasn't mattered to anyone in a long time but it matters to people living in the past when college football was more regional. Those are the glory days: the Ten-Year War between Bo and Woody for the title to the most prestigious conference in the land and the secondary hope of catching the pollsters' eye and maybe getting the not-as-important, voted-upon national title. That latter thing is now the only thing. We even have a playoff to decide it, which the B1G champion will not have access to and Michigan can't even dream of.

It's not wrong to dream. It's not wrong to have goals. It is wrong to not have a plan to deal with the modern game and find a way to actually achieve those goals, instead of just stating them as platitudes. Hoke's ideal image of Michigan football is planted firmly somewhere in the 70s which, like the punting scheme, is oddly contradictory, given that Michigan was mostly an option team (i.e. running quarterback) in the 70s and the current offense is predicated on doing anything but that. Despite having a mobile QB, there were no designed quarterback runs yesterday. Despite Utah loading the box with 8 men and daring Michigan to run, Michigan rarely tried to stretch the field. Again, this is borderline solipsism, where attempting to impose one's belief on a reality that won't cooperate seems to be the only way for this coach to function. Certainly he needs more time than most in order to carry through on his beliefs, since Michigan is the second-slowest offense in the nation. In both losses this season, even while down by double digits, Michigan still took 35 seconds to run almost every play. There is no urgency there because the past is always with us and will always be glorious, no matter what happens now. But the facts say that Michigan hasn't even been in the red zone in two games against real competition. The facts say that Michigan is among the leaders in the nation in turnovers and tackles for loss, just like last year. Facts get in the way of dreams and belief. If you squint really hard, you can imagine there were 100,000 fans in the stadium yesterday, too.

goducks.com

I was talking with Brian Cook of MGOBLOG yesterday and we were mulling over Hoke's almost-inevitable replacement at the end of this year. He suggested Scott Frost, the offensive coordinator for Pac-12 powerhouse, Oregon. As some of you may know, Oregon's offense frequently keeps it in the conversation as a candidate for a national title (i.e. relevant to the modern game.) As some of you may remember, Scott Frost was the quarterback for that aforementioned Nebraska team who campaigned long and loud to get Nebraska a share of that national title. When I brought his name up on the board today, there was one immediate visceral response rejecting the idea because of college football "tribalism" and the actions of not just Frost but his apparently voluble mother, who wrote to Michigan magazines after the Nebraska win in the 2005 Alamo Bowl.

But that stuff is in the past, just like the glory, and it deserves as much credence as that glory does right now. The attachment to "tribalism", notably the "Michigan Man" misnomer, is an enormous part of why Michigan is in the trouble that it is. I loved Bo, too. But Bo is dead and most of his direct descendants in the coaching world have long since left it. Michigan doesn't need a link to the past. It needs one to the future. I don't know if Frost is the right coach. I just know that Hoke isn't and neither is anyone who thinks like him at this point. If all we rely upon to move forward is what we had before, we're not Michigan any longer. We're Minnesota, last relevant to the college game in 1960 and that was 54 years ago, when the game was very different.

A long, long time ago in a town right nearby

I used to attend shows like this and think that I would be making my way in the industry:

Comic Con has changed quite a bit and I am more distant from it than ever.

Land of memories

I spent a week in Hawai'i in 2002, one decade ago this May. Watching The Descendants and its presentation of "trouble in paradise" and the contrast in attitudes between the business-like Matt and his "native-like" (as it were) cousins was redolent with memories about the place. It was the last real vacation I've taken that didn't also have purpose in something else (political meeting, etc.) As an aside, since I've now been able to mine the film for three posts, I'm thinking it may be even better than I first gave it credit for.

We went in May, which is a low period, tourist-wise and, to some extent, temperature-wise. We spent the whole time in shorts and sandals, but it was cooler than you'd expect the typical "tropical paradise" to be. I saw many locals in long pants and jackets. We were going to spend around 5 days on the Big Island and then the last couple on Moloka'i. This was right in the  middle of my tenure with the Green Party and I had a ton of responsibility with the campaign season about to gear up, but we had seen a brief bit on the Travel Channel about the Moloka'i Ranch and it had sounded really inviting. My ex, never one to pass up researching a possibility, poked around and found a travel agent who landed us a pretty good deal, so we decided to go. This was before venturing into the American Dream™, so we actually had money (read: "credit space") to make the trip, even though it took a while to pay off.

This was the first flight I had taken since 9/11 so, of course, the "heightened security measures" were still the order of the day. Remember the "random" searches of passengers?

Between flying out, to and from the Big Island, to and from Moloka'i, and flying home, we had six flights. With my tattoos, long hair, and presence on at least one security list (protesting the elder Bush in 1991; long story), I was "randomly" selected to be plucked from line and put through an additional search every, single time. It was comical by the fourth time, as I'd seen the attendant at the desk in Honolulu take a look at her monitor, look straight at me, and then start the boarding call. I was the walking vision of menace and I didn't even have a keffiyeh.

We had decided to stay on the Hilo side of the island, to avoid most of the tourist traffic which tends to occupy Kona. The difference in climate on the two sides of the island is pretty remarkable, as Kona is "desert island" to Hilo's rain forest. Of course, since you can also ski on Mauna Kea, the Big Island has the gamut of climate covered, I think. We stayed at a bed and breakfast about 15 minutes away from Hilo, up in the hills in the midst of a couple dozen acres of macadamia trees. We arrived pretty late in the day and it was already dark by the time we ventured up the dirt-and-gravel road... without signposts... or lights... and with plenty of hairpin turns and dropaways. So, that was fun. We had taken a room that supposedly looked right out onto the Kulaniapia Falls and a deep pool that the inn was ensconced next to. When we crashed for the evening, we could hear the water. This was the sight right outside the window in the morning:

Yeah. I think we'd arrived.

We spent the next few days running from literally one end of the island- the Waipi'o Valley of the Kings (reputedly where many of the kings of Hawai'i were buried, as with Egypt)

to the other - the green sand beach (the sand is olivine, a volcanic byproduct), which is on a peninsula that is the southernmost point in the US. I called Leigh, who was watching the clan, from there.

The hike to the latter is pretty arduous and begins with a long drive from Hilo, a young boy sitting in a shack and attempting to extort money from people who choose to park in a dirt lot and walk (he said he would "make sure nothing happened to the car"), as we did, rather than drive overland some distance north, and a three mile trek over very uneven lava fields. My wife was in a walking cast at the time, having broken her foot shortly before we left, and I managed to tear my feet up pretty well by the time we got there (a couple groups before us had already turned back.) Getting down to the beach is no easy trick, either, as there's no path and you essentially have to slide down on your butt to get to the cove. Getting back up is a matter of balance and momentum. Once we'd gotten out, I turned to take a picture of the cove which was a perfect replica of one we'd seen in a couple tour guides but that I can't find anywhere on the Web. The camera was a standard film device and had been borrowed from my then-brother-in-law. It was the best camera I've ever used and I have no idea what happened to it.

The journey up to the Valley had its own little quirks, as the guy driving the tour horse-and-cart had been something of a world wanderer whom I mentioned in another post, as he'd been in AA the night Michigan won the national title in basketball. The town in the valley was only a few dozen people and most had generators for electricity, but he was the only person who had an Internet connection so, over the course of a week, everyone in town would drift through his living room to check their email...

We also spent a fair amount of time in and around Hilo and traipsing across Kilauea. After eating dinner that first night, I'll never be able to appreciate mahi mahi again until I end up somewhere that they've caught it a couple hours before it's in front of me. We spent most of the time eating local fare on the run, though, and filling in gaps with a large bag of macadamias that we bought on the first day. I have a hard time feeling satisfied with those out of a jar, too.

Finally, we ended up in Moloka'i.

The island is very much the model for "desert island" as the interior tends to resemble backcountry Wyoming, while the coast looks very much like the above, although often quite mountainous. The Moloka'i Ranch, the biggest hotel on the island, had set up a beach village on the western end with solar-powered, canvas bungalows and self-composting toilets ([shrug] Greens... whattaya gonna do?) which was the initial point for our being interested in the whole trip. Our bungalow was 50 yards from the Pacific and I could see the beach as soon as I opened the door... about 35 yards past the hammock strung between two palm trees. There was a central tent where they cooked meals three times a day and an activities director who tried to entice us into half a dozen different things (it was the off-season, so I think she was pretty bored; there was only one other occupied bungalow out of 40 while we were there.) I pointed to the book in my hand and that hammock and said: "After hiking all over Hell's half-acre for the past week, that's where I'll be for the duration, thanks."

Of course, me being me, I couldn't resist using the main tent's Internet access to check in on the party doings (it was operating largely with Yahoo lists at the time.) I stayed off the lists but emailed the usual series of "Jeebus, no. Don't do that."s and other warnings to a few people, who promptly admonished me for working on my vacation. I find that my memories of the couple days on Moloka'i are pretty dim, as I mostly just remember reading a treatise on Roman legion organization in the hammock, falling asleep in the hammock, waking up to read some more, going to eat, and then coming back and falling asleep again. Nevertheless, I remember thinking that I could do that for just about the rest of my life... Sadly, when the locals resisted the aggressive development plans of the owners, the Ranch closed up shop and left in 2008.

I'm not sure why that trip resonates with me so much, other than the obvious aspect of it being my last real vacation. I suppose it was a period, not only of dramatic difference with most of the locales I'd stepped into in my life, but also when my marriage was still kinda working and the party was near its peak and everything seemed like it held some degree of promise, as opposed to now when it resembles nothing so much as The Road Warrior. I'd still like to go back someday. I wonder how different it will feel.