In Which We Discuss the Mideast, the VFW, Literary Protests, Refugees, and the Fear of Dying Unnoticed

I have an MPA, a masters in public administration.  When people ask what that means, I (half) joke that an MPA is like an MBA for people who don't like money.  It's not like there's an actual job title, "public administrator."

Or so I thought.  Turns out, "public administrator" is a thing--at least in New York City, where the euphemistic title goes to someone whose job it is to manage the final affairs and distribute the estates of those who die alone, unknown, unnoticed.  Makes me think they need to change the title of the degree.

At any rate, a front-page novella-length story about the final disposition of a virtually anonymous New Yorker did accomplish its no-doubt-intended goal of inspiring your old pal The Solipsist (oh, heck, we've known each other so long--just call me "The") to pick up the laptop again and start tapping away.

My problem of late has been twofold: lack of time combined with lack of inspiration.  Not much I can do about the former.  As an economics professor once explained, time is the scarcest resource, the one thing you cannot get more of no matter how much you try.  Of course, this economics professor seemed to hold the opinion that a functioning economy could be built around guns and butter, so we must take her pronouncements with a grain of salt--unless of course we are talking about rural Iowa where, if the local populace is any indication, guns and butter may, indeed, be the primary commodities.  What was my point?  Ah, yes.

The second deficiency, though, the lack of inspiration, is, I think, more manageable.  After all, if I do nothing more than riff on the day's events as outlined on the front page of the paper of record, I should be able to find enough to talk about, right?  I've been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks.  Each day, as I read through the news of the day, my conscience would prod me to get to it, open a new tab, type in The Solipsist URL, and start writing.  But such prodding was no match for my will power, which held firm in resisting those urgings.  Today, though, reading about the lonely death of George Bell, so detached himself from the world that his passing went unnoticed and largely unmourned, I couldn't help but think, "This is what the Times considers front-page material?!?"  But then I also thought, I can wait 'til I die alone like George Bell to have a trivial impact on the world, or I can get back to solipsizing and have my trivial impact here and now.

Easy choice, really.

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What a surprise: The Middle-East remains violently dysfunctional.  Today's update features aggrieved Palestinians in East Jerusalem, lamenting the crackdowns put in place by Israeli security forces after a series of stabbing attacks by Palestinians on Jews.  Can't blame the innocent for feeling aggrieved; but you can't blame Israel for attempts to suppress the attacks, either.  A no-win situation.... Intractable.... Yadda yadda yadda. 

But that's the thing, really--the thing that's so frustrating: The situation really isn't intractable.  I mean, the solution is simple, right?  Some land for Palestinians, some basic security for Israel.  You would think that the greatest minds in diplomacy would be able to make that happen.  And yet. . .

I don't really have anything funny to say about this, ore even anything particularly interesting to add to the discussion.  All rather depressing, really.

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Not your father's VFW hall.  When I think of VFW halls, I don't.  But if pressed, I would probably describe a dimly lit, wood-paneled rec room-type space.  Folding tables and chairs.  Some flags.  Old men in funny hats drinking beer.  Now, however, in an effort to attract younger members, the Veterans of Foreign Wars has introduced new programs at some lodges.  Yoga, photography classes, child care.  Come to think of it, it all kind of sounds like the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, only the JCC doesn't mandate yarmulkes, so the funny hats are optional.

Why is the English transliteration of the traditional Jewish skullcap, 'yarmulke'?  I've never heard anyone pronounce it that way.  It's "yahmika."  Like in the joke:

Guy goes up to his friend, "Hey, why the long face?"

"I've had the weirdest day.  This morning, I'm walking down the street, and I see this hat lying on the ground.  I pick it up, and inside I find a ten-dollar bill.  So, y'know, I think this is a sign.  I go to the track, and in the first race, there's this horse--Fedora--hundred-to-one odds.  I figure, what the heck.  I put the ten-dollars down, and sure enough the horse wins!  Well, in the next race, there's ANOTHER horse--Brown Derby--also going off at a hundred-to-one odds.  I bet--and I win!"

"Wow, that's incredible!"

"Yeah, but I should have quit while I was ahead. . . . In the next race, I bet another hundred-to-one shot with a 'hat' name, and he came in dead last!"

"Oh, man.  What was the name?"

"Chateau."

"Idiot!  'Chateau' is a house, not a hat.  You're thinking of 'chapeau.'"

"Damn!  Wish you'd have been there to talk me out of that bet.  I'd have a hundred thousand dollars right now."

"Yeah, too bad.  Say, what horse won the race, anyway?"

"Oh, some Japanese horse named Yahmika."

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In India, to protest the government's responses (or lack thereof) to recent attacks on writers and other citizens by Hindu nationalist groups, several prominent authors have returned literary awards they received from the Indian National Academy.  This, to me, is unimaginable: A country where literature is valued enough to make the returning of literary awards a meaningful protest.

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I'd make a terrible refugee.  Here you have these poor people, displaced by ceaseless violence in Syria, gathering their families and what few belongings they can carry, and undertaking arduous and sometimes life-threatening journeys by rickety boat or treacherous land routes.  They trek through Turkey, through Croatia, hoping to get to Hungary and eventually to Austria and parts West.  They face all manner of obstacles, not least of which is hostility from the authorities in the countries through which they travel.  If they're lucky, they find themselves in a relatively safe country, where they can hope to start rebuilding their shattered lives.

Meantime, I get invited to a birthday party in the city?  I'm spending all afternoon mentally debating whether or not it's worth the drive.  For what it's worth, I'd probably also be all kinds of useless in a zombie apocalypse.

Thoughts on Cecil

As Dr. Walter J. Palmer has surely realized by now, karma's a bitch.  The Minnesota dentist, previously hated only by non-flossers, has over the last couple of days become Internet Enemy Number One.  His crime: killing Cecil, a beloved lion in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, who as far as I can tell spent his life napping and posing for tourists' snapshots.  The online backlash against Palmer has been swift and severe.  Palmer has (temporarily?) shuttered his practice as a result of the negative publicity.  How bad is it?  Let's just say that Laurence Olivier's character from "Marathon Man" would have an easier time getting dental referrals.

It's hard to feel sorry for Palmer.  So hard, in fact, that I don't.  I can't help but find something disingenuous about the whole backlash, particularly the number of his current clients who have abandoned him in the wake of Cecilgate.  After all, this was hardly Palmer's first kill: He's an avid hunter--was even profiled in the New York Times a few years back for his proficiency with a crossbow.  I find it difficult to believe that all these patients are only now finding out about his proclivities.

Palmer has "apologized" after a fashion: He apologized, essentially, for killing a lion he wasn't supposed to kill.  I'm willing to take him at his word that he didn't realize that this lion, y'know, had a name and was actually popular with the tourist folk.  At the same time, the apology is somewhat undermined by the fact that Palmer is not apologizing for killing a lion, just for killing this particular lion.

Now some people are saying--not unreasonably--that it's kind of ridiculous that the entire online world is inflamed over the killing of one lion, when every day thousands of people die because of starvation, preventable diseases, religious intolerance, etc.  We should certainly pay attention to these societal ills, as well.  Still, there is something about this story that rankles more than your run-of-the-mill tale of human inhumanity.

I think it comes down to money.  Because even putting the best possible spin on the events, we have one inescapable fact: Palmer paid about $50,000 for the opportunity to kill something.  That's not a typo.  Fifty. Thousand. Dollars.  You could do a lot of good in this world for $50,000.  I look around at the students at my college: $50,000 would pay for associate's degrees for about 20 of them.  It could pay for a lot of meals for hungry people.  Hell, it could pay for Palmer's own kids' educations--or cars!  ("Gee, Dad, if you had just gotten me that Camaro for my graduation like I asked for, you'd still have a dental practice!")

I imagine, even for a formerly successful dentist, $50,000 is not exactly pocket change, either.  So this guy just really, really, REALLY wanted to kill an animal.  He's like a character from "Hostel."  You didn't see it--nobody did.  But this Eli Roth torture-porn flick revolves around a club where one-percenters pay exorbitant sums for the right to torture and kill random strangers.  I guess we should be thankful that Palmer only got a shot at a lion.

A Sincere Question

I have a sincere question for my Republican friends--I'm sure I must have one or two: When you guys think about the 2016 presidential election, what do you think of the Democratic "fringe" candidates?  Or, to put it more simply: Do you guys look at Bernie Sanders the way we look at Donald Trump?

In recent polls, Trump is receiving about 12% of the vote for the Republican presidential nomination, while Bernie Sanders is receiving about 15% of the vote for the Democratic nomination.  In other words, they seem to be roughly equal in their relative "fringeness."  They are both from the Northeast, and they both. . . um. . . well, I guess they both elicit numerous jokes about their hair.  In other words, as of this moment, Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Donald Trump.

But here's the thing: Bernie Sanders is a twice-elected United States Senator, whose "insane" ideas include things like narrowing the wealth gap among Americans and getting big money out of politics.  Donald Trump is a questionably successful businessman and television personality whose platform includes things like building a massive wall along the southern US border and calling Mexicans "rapists."  It says something about the debased state of American politics that both candidates are considered to have about the same chance of being elected president, but let that go for now.

Obviously, as a Democrat, I think Donald Trump is a joke and an embarrassment to our country--and, in fairness, I am sure that the vast majority of Republicans feel much the same way.  But I am truly, truly curious--and I come back to my earlier question: Do Republicans look at Bernie Sanders the same way?  And if so, our politics may be even more debased than I thought.

Here's to Your Health (Cont.)

The Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare, or As You Like It, or What You Will) has once again survived the Supreme Court.  The Court has ruled in favor of the Obama administration in a case that many people (including many supporters of the ACA) felt might prove the undoing of the healthcare act.

At issue was whether people could receive subsidies to purchase insurance from a federal insurance exchange if they lived in states that had decided not to set up their own state-run health insurance exchanges.  The ruling hinged on a single phrase in the ACA, which stated that people could only receive subsidies for buying insurance on “an exchange established by the state.”  Opponents of Obamacare seized on this loophole in their ever-more desperate attempts to find some way--any way--to eliminate a law they found abhorrent, after losing consistently at the ballot box and, overwhelmingly, in the court of public opinion.

Common sense would suggest that the law's intent was always clear.  Common sense would further dictate that, if the offending phrase really DID create confusion, the simplest remedy would be to revise the text of the law to eliminate ambiguity, e.g., "an exchange established by an individual state or the federal government, you nitpicking pedants."  OK, maybe I'm embellishing.  But of course common sense plays little role where politics are concerned, and a Republican-dominated Congress would certainly balk at putting forth even minimal effort to salvage a law that had provided health insurance to hundreds of thousands of previously uninsured and/or uninsurable citizens because. . . Well, because that's how they roll.  Furthermore, if the phrase was, in fact, found to forbid subsidies to people receiving federal health insurance, that would effectively destroy the law, as people in states without exchanges of their own--millions of people--would suddenly find themselves once again unable to afford insurance.  The fate of Obamacare, in other words, rested in the hands of a largely conservative Supreme Court.

Thankfully, the majority of SCOTUS acted conservatively--in the truest sense of the word--and opted not to eviscerate a law that has, overall, helped millions of people and, despite semantics, is functioning pretty much exactly as Congress intended.  In the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that, “In this instance, the context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.”  And while I celebrate the ruling, I cannot help but feel that the whole "controversy" over the phrase has been overblown.  Indeed, a close reading of the phrase suggests that, in fact, subsidies for federal exchanges were always kosher.

For what does "the state" refer to in a piece of federal legislation?  Sure, it can refer to any of the 50 states, but it can also clearly refer to the United States of America as a whole, in much the same way that the State Department--the "Department of STATE"--refers to an entity that represents the country as a whole.  Now, if the relevant phrase had said, "an exchange set up by the stateS" or "an exchange set up by A state," the plaintiffs might have had a more plausible case.  But, to this erstwhile English instructor at least, both the law's intent and phrasing were abundantly clear.  Let's be thankful the Supreme Court saw it the same way.

Just Letters, Just Sound

Amidst all the uproar over President Obama's utterance of "the N-word" on Marc Maron's podcast, one extremely salient point seems to be getting lost: As Gayle King pointed out on last night's "Nightly Show," the president did not use the n-word; he said it.  This is a more-than academic difference.  It's the difference, for example, between my calling someone a kike and pointing out that the word "kike" is an anti-Jewish slur, used by Nazis, skinheads, and other troglodytes.  Not only is my use of the word not meant to be offensive--it is not offensive.  Period.  It is a word offered to provide explanation, a word separated from its meaning, a signifier divorced from its signified.

Hearing the word--the k-word, the n-word--may certainly provide a jolt, but so would hearing a car backfire.  And the president's use of the word in that context was exactly as offensive as a backfiring car would be.  Which is to say, not at all.

So Many Unnecessary Deaths

Interesting factoid: The most common proximate cause of workplace violence is, perhaps unsurprisingly, being fired.

The second most common proximate cause of workplace violence, however, is reaching for a paper clip and pulling out an entire daisy chain, put together by someone with far too much time on their hands, who lacked even the minimal consideration or foresight to pause and think that maybe--just maybe--someone might one day need a freakin' paper clip and be in a hurry AND NOT WANT TO DEAL WITH DISENTANGLING ONE FROM A SURPRISE, SERPENTINE, PAPER-CLIP CENTIPEDE!!!!

Just sayin'.

Why Is This News?

I just read this article--front-page, top right corner of The New York Times--reporting that former representative Dennis Hastert (R-Ill), who served as speaker of the house for much of the early 2000's, has been indicted over activities designed to hide past "misconduct"--the word placed in ominous quotation marks right in the headline.

Now, today's title notwithstanding, I understand why this merits press coverage: Hastert is (or at any rate, was) a prominent public figure, apparently the longest-serving Republican speaker ever.  In that sense, any major events in his life merit some public scrutiny--in the same way that a Kardashian wearing a tacky dress apparently merits scrutiny.  But front-page, above-the-fold coverage in the national paper of record?  Even if Hastert is ultimately found guilty, his "crimes" hardly seem worthy of such blaring coverage.

The crimes themselves sound pretty bad: Lying to federal investigators and engaging in shady banking practices.  But the shady practices themselves seem to be that he withdrew money from bank accounts--apparently, his own bank accounts--in amounts that were designed to evade bank-reporting requirements.  He was giving the money to an unspecified person to compensate for unidentified instances of "past misconduct": In other words, it sounds like he was a naughty boy in the past and was now paying someone off to keep his naughtiness quiet.  When his banking patterns did draw the attention of regulators, and Hastert was subsequently questioned by the FBI, he denied paying anybody and claimed that he was just holding onto the cash himself because he had lost faith in the nation's banking system.  (And, heck, the way Congress operates, who wouldn't believe such an excuse?)

So, OK, if he did everything he's being accused of, he did break some laws.  But in the annals of criminal justice, his crimes hardly rise to Dillinger-esque proportions: He used his own money, to pay off someone for something he did, long after he was no longer involved in government, and--presumably out of embarrassment, he tried to hide the fact that he was making these payments.  He should certainly face punishment, but unless there is substantially more to this story than we're hearing so far, I imagine that punishment will probably amount to little more than some fines--and of course the suffering of the shame that he had tried so hard to avoid.

At the risk of sounding like a Fox News enthusiast, though, the "liberal" New York Times' trumpeting of this story from its most-prominent platform, makes me wonder if the editors are engaging in their own inappropriate glee at the downfall of a prominent Republican.  Not that I don't enjoy that as well, but I could wish for the Times to tone down its Schadenfreude.