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wvParticipantKentucky state Rep. Charles Booker has edged ahead of Amy McGrath, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, in the state’s U.S. Senate Democratic primary race to determine who takes on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November.
I looked into Booker a bit, and even made a modest contribution to his “bus people to the polls” campaign. He’s interesting I think.
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Bernie (like Noam) is getting old. He wont last forever.
We need another leftist Senator. Ya know. So it can be 99 to 1 again.w
vwvParticipant——————————–
booker:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/booker-edges-ahead-mcgrath-too-close-call-kentucky-senate-democratic-n1232112
Booker edges ahead of McGrath in too-close-to-call Kentucky Senate Democratic primary
The winner will go up against Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in NovemberKentucky state Rep. Charles Booker has edged ahead of Amy McGrath, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, in the state’s U.S. Senate Democratic primary race to determine who takes on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November.
With 12 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, Booker, whose candidacy has received the support of progressive lawmakers and groups around the country, led McGrath 44.4 percent to 40.4 percent, or by just over 2,700 votes, according to NBC News.
The race remains too close to call, NBC News projects.
The current tally includes only votes cast in person at the polls on Tuesday. Hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that will likely determine the outcome of the race have not yet been counted and will not be for days…see link
June 25, 2020 at 7:31 pm in reply to: updated–Round Three? Robinson’s rebuttal to the rebuttal to the . . . #117116wvParticipantWV,
Does The Rising see “right-populism” in the same way as Kulinski?
He said there are right-populists who support:
Medicare for All
Unions
A living wageAgain, I’ve never bumped into one in any context or format, and it seems to go wildly against the right’s hatred of any public sector program replacing a private sector one . . . or adding regulations to businesses. But, I suppose pigs do fly in parallel universes.
Anyway . . . what’s your take on that? Is he, perhaps, being far too broad in his definition(s)? What is “right-wing” about those three policy ideas, or the purpose behind them?
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Well, there’s this:These are the Trump voters who believe in universal health care
They aren’t the majority — at least not yet.
By Dylan Scott“I do think that’s a human right to have access to health care,” said Kate, a 55-year-old with one child still at home. “It’s like having access to clean water, food, and everything. It’s a basic human right.”
“Having basic health care, I think, should be something that a citizenship should provide,” 27-year-old Devin said. “If you have a sick community, you have a sick workforce, you have sick people. You have death. You have low productivity from it. So I think that as a step back from all of it, then yes, health care I think should be a right.”
“I think everybody deserves [health care],” Cindy, a 45-year-old with a teenage daughter, said.
We’re sitting at a table in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, talking about the prospect of universal health care. There’s just one thing about the people saying these words that might surprise you: Each and every one of them is a Republican who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
Fresh off the GOP’s failed Obamacare repeal crusade and amid the Democratic embrace of Medicare-for-all, we wanted to get a better sense of how voters really feel about the most ambitious health care plan out there: universal single-payer health care. The group’s moderator Michael Perry, who runs the public opinion research firm PerryUndem, started with this basic question: Is health care a right?
Some of the answers didn’t surprise us — GOP voters still harbor plenty of animus for “Obamacare” and “socialism” and warned of the dangers of people getting health care who didn’t work or contribute to their society — but the handful who voiced support for universal health care are a growing minority of the Republican Party.
The Republican Party made a full-throated effort to repeal the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, the most significant expansion of health insurance in 50 years, in 2017. But they soon discovered it was the single-payer aspects of the law that proved to be the most durable: Cuts to Medicaid and the rollback of Medicaid expansion were among the most politically unpalatable pieces of their plan. Most Republican lawmakers still supported it, but a few balked.
Republican voters, as we discovered, seem to have a more complex view than just “repeal and replace Obamacare.” Some of them really believe health care is a right, a perspective shaped by their personal experiences with the health care system. They are starting to think, however reluctantly, that the government might be necessary to guaranteeing health care to every American.
America’s shortcomings are driving some Republicans to believe health care is a rightThe idea that health care is a right has become a growing consensus on the left. Barack Obama famously used the line to defend the Affordable Care Act. And it is the fundamental argument behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) Medicare-for-all plan. His revised plan garnered more than a dozen Democratic co-sponsors in the Senate earlier this year.
Though Democrats are driving the popularity of universal health care, it’s not just Democrats who increasingly support this idea. The number of Americans who said they believed it is the federal government’s responsibility to provide every American with health coverage increased by 10 percent between March and July of last year, according to an AP-NORC poll. The Pew Research Center found the share of Americans who believe in universal coverage was at 60 percent in January 2017.
Support grew from 19 percent to 32 percent among Republican and lean-Republican voters from 2016 to 2017 — outpacing the 8-point upswing among Democrats to 85 percent, according to Pew. Republicans who believe health care is a right are still a minority, but a sizable and growing one.
So we wanted to go deeper. We pulled together two groups of eight Trump voters, 16 in total, for 90-minute conversations last fall about health care in America. We consciously sought an ideological mix of people: some at least receptive to the idea of a government-run system, others totally opposed.
We found that long-held beliefs about America are a real hurdle for some voters when it comes to single-payer health care. But at least a few Republicans were starting to see the value of a universal health care program.
What’s persuading Republican voters to entertain universal health care?What’s perhaps most interesting, based on our conversations in Harrisburg, is why some of these Republicans are coming to believe that health care should be a guarantee, not a privilege.
Among Democrats, as pollsters told me earlier this year, supporting Medicare-for-all is largely a proxy for supporting universal programs, particularly with young voters.
“When you say, ‘I’m for that,’ it says that ‘I’m for equity.’ It says, ‘I’m gonna fight back against the corporate establishment,” Robert Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard University’s public health school, where he conducts polls on health care, told me. “They are not health care voters, but essentially it’s symbolic of these other things which appeal to young liberal people.”
But among Republicans, based on our interviews, believing health care is a right and entertaining the idea of single-payer health care seemed to be founded on their own negative experiences with the current system.
Take Kate. She didn’t like her current insurance, which she got through her employer. “The deductibles have just skyrocketed,” she told us.
Americans like Kate are paying more out of their own pockets for health care, even with employer-sponsored coverage. The average deductible in employer coverage has increased from less than $600 to more than $1,500 since 2006. Since 1999, employee contributions for their insurance premiums have risen 270 percent — while wages have grown only 64 percent, barely above inflation.
Employer insurance is still the bedrock of American health care, but it’s not quite the deal it once was. People like Kate have felt the shift.
She and her husband already sometimes struggle to afford their mortgage. Then her son fell recently, and they had a $400 bill for the X-ray. “Not in the budget that month, but we have to find it because it goes to our deductible,” she said. “It’s a struggle.”
She also knows people who have lost jobs and couldn’t afford insurance. Does Kate, who identifies as a “die-hard Republican,” therefore believe health care is a right?
“I’m conflicted,” she said. “I’m truly conflicted.”
Her thoughts are worth reading in full:
Because you say the government shouldn’t be in medical care, but it is. We have Medicare. We have Social Security. We ultimately have it, for better or for worse, what there is. And the poor have it. The wealthy can afford it. So you’re talking about the lower- to middle-class people who are stuck in the middle, paying a large chunk of their income in taxes that they don’t get to reap any benefits from. I don’t want to say it’s not fair, but I don’t see any way out of that unless you go to a single-payer system.
And I am truly, and I’ll admit it, a die-hard Republican in 99 percent of my views, but over the last year I have really come to think differently about the health care in this country, and I wonder about a single-payer system. Something similar to Canada’s.
That was a repeated theme: People who had struggled in the current system seem more inclined to see health care as a right. Megan, a 42-year-old who works in retail, said she had seen her friends struggle to afford insurance, and she herself had gone eight years without coverage. She was on Medicaid now and getting ready to start a new job that offered insurance.
So Kate, Megan, Devin, and others — “Yeah, I think every citizen should have an innate right to be offered affordable, quality care,” Tara, a 35-year-old victims advocate, said — are part of that contingent of Republican voters who believe health care should be a right for all people.
They represent a meaningful shift in American health care politics. But they aren’t yet a majority in the ideologically conservative party.
Other Republican voters are stuck on who really deserves health careThese few are still, for now, the exception in the Republican Party. Two other strands persisted across our conversations with 16 Trump voters: A strict constitutional view says health care is not a right — and then there is the question of who actually deserves health care.
“Well, you have a right for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Dave, a 62-year-old engineer, said. “Where in the Constitution does it say you have a right to free food, free services, or free health care?”
Charlie, a 42-year-old who said he was very conservative, agreed: “It’s not in the Constitution. Nowhere in there does it say, ‘I guarantee you can go see the doctor.’”
There were the expected objections to the federal government running any kind of universal health care program: It’s socialism. The federal government meddles too much already. People want to have choices in their health care. They’ve heard horror stories about long waits in other countries. They’re worried their taxes will go up to pay for this new health care program.
Throughout the discussion, particularly as the question of costs came up, these Trump voters returned to the same concern, which presents perhaps the most fundamental challenge to health care as a human right: Does everybody really deserve health care?
Some of these folks didn’t sound convinced.
“So if everybody’s paying the same percentage of tax, unemployed people are presumably gonna be free,” Dan, a 52-year-old school secretary, told us. “The more money you make, the more money you’re gonna pay for the same exact coverage that everybody gets.”
Or as Kevin, a 37-year-old who said he liked his current insurance, put it: “My biggest problem is the people that don’t work, what’s the incentive? I’m skyrocketing to help pay for them?”
It permeated the questions they had about a single-payer program.
“So in this, what you just described, a payroll tax, anybody not working is not contributing at all to it? Is that accurate?” asked Danielle, a 33-year-old who said she was a strong Republican.
When my colleague Sarah Kliff clarified that single-payer health care would be financed through a combination of payroll and sales taxes, Danielle added, “Except if you don’t have money to buy things, then you’re not paying sales tax.”
This was a theme, again and again, sometimes raised subtly, sometimes stated outright. I learned that a sizable number of Republican voters are wary of a system in which people who don’t work and make less money would have the same health care as the people who work hard.
Single-payer challenges what some people think America is and should beMedicare-for-all, health care as a human right — these issues are, for people like Rick, a 58-year-old who voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney before Trump, existential questions. America, to them, is not a country that makes no distinction between people who contribute to our society and the people who don’t.
“If you take away all incentives to perform, if you take away Americans’ incentive to work hard, to perform, and to be a little better and not to look down, ‘I can afford this, you can’t.’ I mean, that’s capitalism,” Rick said. “If we tell everybody, ‘It doesn’t matter what you do, this is what you get,’ what do you think is gonna happen to us?”
They aren’t necessarily persuaded by tales of woe from some of their fellow Republican voters either. The system is mostly working for them — all but a few have insurance through their work — and they have very fixed ideas about what is an American notion of health care and what is not.
“I think every employee has a right to health care. We’re not ready for every American,” Rick says. “First off, what is an American? We couldn’t really afford that; we couldn’t bank on that. How can we implement that? Every employee that works in America should have health care, I think.”
Megan, who had gone years without health coverage, interrupted and gestured to Cindy, who had earlier shared a story about a friend with children who was struggling to find work and afford health insurance.
“So you’re saying that her friend, who is a mother of two, she doesn’t deserve it?” Megan said to Rick. “She doesn’t deserve health care because she doesn’t work? What about her children?”
“It’s complex,” Rick offered.
“I have a friend in the same situation,” Megan said. “She just got a job. She’s scraping things together.”
“If you have it that way, now we’re socialists. That’s the way it is,” Rick said by way of a conclusion. “Where we’re at, it’s very complex.”
wvParticipantJust wear a fucking mask, stay the fuck away from me, wash your fucking hands and quit touching your fucking face.
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Do you prefer Floral Patterns,
or perhaps Leopard Prints.
Earth Tones, maybe. Neon Picture of Che?Capitalism.
Vogue:https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/stylish-face-masks-to-shop-nowJune 25, 2020 at 11:26 am in reply to: updated–Round Three? Robinson’s rebuttal to the rebuttal to the . . . #117100wvParticipant=============
The Rising spends almost all of its time attacking the Dems, and next to no time going after Trump — owned as it is by a Trump loyalist fat cat. If corporate controlled media has an impact on the content of that media, and it does, it obviously has an extra-heightened impact when coupled with directly partisan ownership. It’s just naive to assume it doesn’t.=====================
Well, I have wondered for a long time, whether The Rising goes after the Corporate-Dems MORE than it goes after the Reps. It seems like they do, but I dont have any real data on that. And i just pick and choose which vids i wanna watch, so I dunno what is going on, on the vids i dont watch. But i ‘have’ wondered about it.
Also, the ownership has bothered me. I looked up the ownership way back when i heard Bannon said the show “is the real deal.” Anytime Bannon is for something, its a bad sign 🙂
So, I do wonder about The Rising.
But then I consider the Pluses to having Krystal Ball on a popular show. I dont think i need to list them.
All in all, I think there’s good points on all sides of this. I dont think either side can make a totally-winning-case.
w
vwvParticipant….We have:
1. A president and vice-president who refuse to wear masks.
2. The framing of masks as a civil rights issue (which is ridiculous, imo)
3. A refusal to continue financing tests
4. No effort to do any contact tracing
5. Not only a neglect to gather data, but an active effort to distort data – and this one is pretty big because it would be pretty easy to require daily data input of positive/negative tests, demographic information, and severity/symptoms information that could be instantly pooled.
6. They suppressed the CDC guidelines for re-opening
7. They have muzzled Fauci and other health expertsSo…not only are they remiss on encouraging basic precautions to slow the spread of the virus while telling people to go back to work…they are suppressing efforts to fight the disease.
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A utuber also noted the small crowd Trump had at his big get-together. The stadium apparently had the capacity to hold 20,000. Trump drew about 7000 or so.
Now here’s the thing — they squished the 7000 together in a tight-knit grouping.Ah well. Wingnuts.
w
vwvParticipantWell…Commies disappeared, and Mooslims haven’t done anything interesting in 20 years, so…
“Let There Be Antifa!”
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Given leftists propensity for splintering into warring factions,
I am waiting for the first news of a major split among Antifa-ists…Or Antifa-ites.w
vJune 25, 2020 at 8:52 am in reply to: defunding the police … & other legislative responses to the protests #117080wvParticipantJune 25, 2020 at 8:34 am in reply to: updated–Round Three? Robinson’s rebuttal to the rebuttal to the . . . #117079wvParticipantKyle Kulinski weighs in.
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wvParticipantMatt Bowen@MattBowen41
IMO, there are only a few NFL QBs who are truly scheme transcendent — Mahomes, Rodgers, Wilson.
Majority of the QBs are system based players. And Garoppolo is a pretty good fit for Shanahan’s offense.
Timing/rhythm thrower. PA/RPO + in-breakers. Boot. Schemed-up verticals.
============================I suppose this term is a bit over-the-top, but I kinda think its useful: Scheme Transcendent.
And yeah, its great to have one of ‘those’ but there are very few, and you dont need one to win a Ring.
Its an interesting category.
But the more important category is much bigger — The category of QBs who “are good enough to win a ring, if they have a complete team” Half the NFL-QBs are in this category. Nick Foles is THE perfect example. Jared Goff is in this category, imho, though he’ll have to actually do it, to prove it to the casual fan.
Also, note that the 3 transcendent ones all RUN well. They create time/space.
Time-Space Creators. Transcendent.
w
vwvParticipantLuke Savage@LukewSavage
Congratulations to whichever grotesque lobbying firm is about to add Eliot Engel to its roster of consultants====
He’s a member of AIPAC, he could always find work there. Then again, maybe something for the Police.
“…Rep. Eliot Engel became engulfed in yet another controversy on Tuesday after he was overheard on a “hot mic” saying he only sought press attention at a local event on the unrest over police brutality because of his upcoming primary threat.
“If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care,” the New York Democrat told Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, as he asked for time to speak at a news conference on local vandalism….”
link:https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/02/engel-hot-mic-296963wvParticipanti know just where the epitaph should be carved:
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wvParticipantIs everyone reading this??!
I gotta break down this science real quick.
This study compared COVID-19 mortality rates by racial/ethnic group AND age. It found:
Among folks aged 35-44, Black people had a COVID mortality rate 9 *times* as high as whites.https://t.co/WJZINd6Rtt
— Rhea Boyd MD, MPH (@RheaBoydMD) June 16, 2020
wvParticipantDamn. That is not one of those silly Bullshit symbolic ‘reforms.’ Thats a significant reform.
Are we gonna see No Immunity in BLUE states, and immunity in RED states now?
All the racist cops will move to red states? Jeezus how weird this summer is.w
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Colorado:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-colorado/colorado-reform-law-ends-immunity-for-police-in-civil-misconduct-cases-idUSKBN23R05X
Colorado reform law ends immunity for police in civil misconduct cases
Keith CoffmanDENVER (Reuters) – Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Friday signed into law a bill to remove the shield of legal immunity that has long protected police officers from civil suits for on-the-job misconduct, a measure civil libertarians hailed as landmark legislation.
The Colorado state legislature passed the sweeping police accountability bill last week in the wake of nationwide protests over unfair treatment of racial minorities by law enforcement, sparked by the death of an unarmed Black man under the knee of a white Minneapolis policeman last month.
Polis, a first-term Democrat, took the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth, celebrating the abolition of slavery in the United States, to formally enact the law.
The American Civil Liberties Union hailed enactment of the measure, saying Colorado became one of the first states in the nation to strip police officers of a legal defense known as qualified immunity. The ACLU called the police accountability law as a whole historic.
The statute additionally requires police agencies statewide to adopt the use of body-worn cameras by their officers within three years, and bans choke holds by officers in restraining individuals.
Carotid-pressure holds, similar to the technique that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin used when he knelt on the neck of George Floyd in a fatal encounter on May 25, is also outlawed.
The legislation won the support from the state’s police chiefs and county sheriffs’ organizations, which said in a joint written statement that many of the policies contained in the new law are already in place at the local level.
The U.S. Supreme Court recognized qualified immunity 50 years ago to protect government officials from frivolous lawsuits. Attorneys representing police have said the doctrine ensures officers can make split-second decisions in dangerous situations without worrying about being sued later.
Critics have said the doctrine too often lets police brutality go unpunished. The high court this week declined to hear several cases challenging qualified immunity assertions on behalf of police.
wvParticipantFrancis Scott Key in San Fran:
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wvParticipantJust a little blurb i read on Amy Goodman’s wiki page.
w
v
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Arrest at 2008 Republican ConventionDuring the 2008 Republican National Convention, several of Goodman’s colleagues from Democracy Now! were arrested and detained by police while reporting on an anti-war protest outside the RNC.[31] While trying to ascertain the status of her colleagues, Goodman herself was arrested and held, accused of obstructing a legal process and interfering with a police officer,[32] while fellow Democracy Now! producers including reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous were held on charges of probable cause for riot.[33] The arrests of the producers were videotaped.[34] Goodman and her colleagues were later released,[35] and City Attorney John Choi indicated that the charges would be dropped.[36] Goodman’s (et al.) civil lawsuit against the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments and the Secret Service resulted in a $100,000 settlement, as well as an agreement to educate officers in First Amendment rights of members of the press and public.[37][38][39]
==========wvParticipantGoodell made his choice to side with the players, and now he can’t go back without destroying his credibility. Which means he has to let the players protest as they see fit, whenever the seasons starts.
I think we all know where this goes next. By September, the campaign will be heating up, and Trump will again press the anthem button. It should be interesting to see where things go after that, because I really don’t see the players backing down.
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The Nfl(system) will try very hard to find a compromise. They have to please the players and the rightwing-nuts who buy a lot of tickets and merchandise.The Public-Relations boys will suggest some gesture where both sides feel they’ve won something. Maybe kneeling WITH their hands over their hearts. Or kneeling WHILE kissing a cops ass. Or something.
The money boyz will come up with SOMETHING. Just watch.
And the players will buy into it. Cause in the end, the players want the money too. They want the NFL to make oodles of money. Cant scare away too many racists. They buy the merchandise.
Oh, and Goodell HAS no credibility. He has none to lose.
w
vwvParticipantI was thinking about Cigarettes. Cigs kill what, half a million Americans. But the Gov can make laws about ‘where’ you can smoke.
I guess the mask-thing is a bit like that. You are free to not-wear-a-mask in your home, etc, but when it will affect others, its different.
Obviously, the folks that have a deep distrust of the system, are worried that this is a slippery slope, and the Gov is coming to get their guns and blah blah.
So much fear. If we’d actually ‘had’ a more honest Gov all these years, people might not be so distrustful nowadays. Ah well.w
vwvParticipantwvParticipant5️⃣9️⃣6️⃣ Columbus, OH: police pepper spray a double amputee, then *disconnect and take his prosthetic legs*
The man *crawled on his hands* to get medical help while a group of protestors rushed the cops to get his legs back
Today, 21 June 2020
[Reddit: https://t.co/OEK8Nvms43] pic.twitter.com/65ppkbo4dv
— T. Greg Doucette (@greg_doucette) June 22, 2020
wvParticipantIn short, yes they’re different. I wish socialists/leftists in general held power, and worked to end class society entirely, but that’s not in the cards — yet.I wish things were dramatically different, a full paradigm shift, but that’s not current reality. I’d still never vote for a Republican, and I still prefer the Dems over the Republicans at every level. Whenever it’s a choice between the two, I hope a Dem wins.
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How to you explain the batshit-crazy-nightmare
that is the Republican Party?
Millions and Millions and Millions and Millions of Americans
are red-white-and-blue-Republicans.w
v
Billy Truax
wvParticipantYeah? Well…what about Lenin on Lenin crime.
Given that he shouldn’t be so focused on banks.
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I blame Yoko.
w
vwvParticipantOur Next Electoral Nightmare: Half Kentucky’s Black voters live in one county.
It will have one polling place… for 616,000 registered voters.
Today’s GOP knows no limits when it comes to discrimination… and destruction of our democracy. https://t.co/zFkJcMfwPI
— Ben Jealous (@BenJealous) June 20, 2020
wvParticipantIf nothing else, check out the 24 minute mark, and watch a few mins.
w
vwvParticipantQuick bit of input on the question of what being a leftist means. It’s a wildly diverse bunch, so folks differ. But for me the essentials are radical opposition to inequality, tenacious support for true democracy, which must include the economy, and protecting the environment.
I think it’s safe to say all leftists are egalitarians, to one degree or another — though some might argue with me on that. We may have different visions of how to get there, but I think we all seek an egalitarian society. For me, this rules out the continued existence of capitalism as our economic form. I think it, by nature, design and goals, is in direct conflict with egalitarian structures, methods and results.
It’s complicated, of course. Tons more to it than that. But if I have to keep things short and sweet, I think the above is a good start.
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What about Waterfield’s question — are the Dems and Reps essentially the same, or are they different, or…how does one answer that without writing ten pages?w
vwvParticipantPS – Noam-the-Leftist also said “Trump is the greatest criminal in history”
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This reply was modified 6 years, 4 months ago by
wv.
wvParticipantNoam said in 2008 “of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental.”
Neither side is totally monolithic of course. I mean, Bernie is one kind of Dem. And then there’s the other 44 moderate-Republican-Dems.
w
v
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noam:https://chomsky.info/20081010/
2008
…SPIEGEL: So for you, Republicans and Democrats represent just slight variations of the same political platform?Chomsky: Of course there are differences, but they are not fundamental. Nobody should have any illusions. The United States has essentially a one-party system and the ruling party is the business party.
SPIEGEL: You exaggerate. In almost all vital questions — from the taxation of the rich to nuclear energy — there are different positions. At least on the issues of war and peace, the parties differ considerably. The Republicans want to fight in Iraq until victory, even if that takes a 100 years, according to McCain. The Democrats demand a withdrawal plan.
Chomsky: Let us look at the “differences” more closely, and we recognize how limited and cynical they are. The hawks say, if we continue we can win. The doves say, it is costing us too much. But try to find an American politician who says frankly that this aggression is a crime: the issue is not whether we win or not, whether it is expensive or not. Remember the Russian invasion of Afghanistan? Did we have a debate whether the Russians can win the war or whether it is too expensive? This may have been the debate at the Kremlin, or in Pravda. But this is the kind of debate you would expect in a totalitarian society. If General Petraeus could achieve in Iraq what Putin achieved in Chechnya, he would be crowned king. The key question here is whether we apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others.
wvParticipantExactly. I read a book called: Oak The Frame of Civilization.
Its all about that aspect of Oak history. I cant look at Oak the same way i used-to.w
vThe International Writers Magazine:Book Review
Oak: The Frame of Civilization by William Bryant Logan
W. W. Norton & Company, 2005, 336 pp. ISBN: 0-393-04773-3
• A Charlie Dickinson reviewAt first glance, despite the appealing cover of William Bryant Logan’s nonfiction work OAK: THE FRAME OF CIVILIZATION, I was skeptical a book solely about oak trees could be rewarding. One might be more skeptical, though, of Mr. Logan’s subtitle: THE FRAME OF CIVILIZATION. That promises so much beyond the specificity of tree genus Quercus.
Yet it is oak’s ubiquity–north and south, across continents–that Logan asserts made oak the central player in one of two versions of the world: “the world made with wood and the world made with coal and oil. One lasted twelve to fifteen millennia; the other has lasted about 250 years so far.”
The audience for this book is really anyone interested in the march of humanity for millennia told by the story of one tree’s contributions. Moreover, it is a story enlivened by the domain knowledge of a certified arborist. True, some woodworking joinery discussions get technical, but illustrations are used aptly.
Logan first offers a paleobotanist’s opinion for why Quercus, became a dominant tree genus. Oak owes it success to being “nothing special.” Oak never suffered the misfortune of overspecializing in any one environment, and as Logan details in a later chapter, the plasticity of its DNA has made for a few amazing adaptations.
After two brief chapters establish oak’s prowess at worldwide distribution, Chapter Three, “Balanoculture,” (defined as societies whose diet staple is the oak acorn) discusses evidence the oak tree’s earliest contribution to civilization was to feed people. Recent research suggests not all early humans were big game hunters who eventually converted to farming. Some of our human ancestors were balanophagists. As an example, the archaeological site at Catal Huyuk, a settlement 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Turkey), offers clues its residents ground and ate acorns as their diet staple. Once its tannin is leached out, the acorn is highly nutritious and surprisingly filling. (Logan personally sought out Korean acorn jelly and thought it even an appetite suppressant–Slim*Fast(TM) buyers might soon be trekking to their neighborhood Korean food stores.) The crucial fact for theories about what our ancient ancestors ate is acorns are much easier to harvest and store, for calories spent, than chasing animals.
Interestingly, California is home to some of the finest remnants of balanoculture. As an example, if one travels two and a half hours northeast of, say, the Bay Area, one crosses Highway 49 to reach the town of Volcano, where the Indian Grinding Rock State Historical Park preserves a legacy of those early Californians, the Miwoks: some 1,185 mortar holes, the largest collection of bedrock mortars anywhere in North America. Miwoks used pestles in these mortars to grind acorns and did so for five thousand years until early in the twentieth century.
The bulk of OAK, Chapter Four, “The Age of Oak,” spreads over 117 pages. Logan turns from the more speculative evidence early people used the oak as a food source, to human use of the oak as structure. In an arresting statement, Logan writes “One day in the spring of 3807 B.C.,” a group of people living in the fens of southwestern England decided to do something about travelling more directly to their neighbors. With Neolithic ingenuity they built the “Sweet Track,” a boardwalk or plank road, historically the first of many wooden bridges and highways to follow throughout Northern Europe. How did Logan know when the Sweet Track was built? One Mr. Sweet uncovered the trackway in a peat bog in 1973. The recovered oak wood gave a dendrochronology, whose tree ring dating is far more accurate than carbon-14 techniques.
Other topics covered in “The Age of Oak” include construction of the first ocean-going boats by Vikings, vessels which rode the waves with a dolphin-like flexibility designed into their oak structure; discovery of such joinery as the mortise-and-tenon (which allows strong right-angle joining of boards) in a Dutch structure circa 1475 B.C., which in turn led to timber-framed oak houses for the next 3,000 years; the invention of charcoal, a necessity for the advance of metalworking; and Western Civilization’s preferred permanent ink–what Bach used to write his cantatas–derived from the parasitic galls that form on an oak’s trunk.
Chapter Five, “End of the Age,” recaps the centuries sailing ships, typically 90 percent oak, spanned the globe. The principles of timber-framed buildings were applied to ship building and Logan’s genius is he shows the oak tree superbly suited the various specifications for a sailing ship’s structural timbers. As an arborist, he readily explains how, as an example, a forester charged with picking the right tree to cut for a compass timber might make his selection in a forest. Rounding out the chapter is a compelling account of the USS Constitution’s first battle against a British frigate in The War of 1812, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.” Finally, Logan marks the end of the age of wooden ships as the Civil War battle between the CSS Virginia (nee USS Merrimack) and the USS Monitor, an inconclusive standoff between two ironclad steamers.
Chapter Six, “Oak Itself,” is a thorough arborist-wise compendium of the virtues of genus Quercus. Diversity (as mentioned at the outset, the oak avers specialization), Cooperation (for millennia, fascinating mutual dependencies have existed between oaks and jays), Flexibility (plasticity of the DNA), Prudence (the oak conserves energy superbly, regulating the release of new growth), Persistence (oaks make lots of roots), Community (oak roots feed other ailing oak trees), and Generosity (the oak hosts countless species, most notably the gall-making wasp). Logan’s argument on behalf of the oak is quite simple: “There is no structure more supple and sustainable than nature’s, and oaks are among the most widely adapted and successful of all plants.” Logan suggests computer modelling as a useful ally for unlocking and deploying the subtle power of nature’s design. In one example, he cites surgical screws for repair of bone fractures, whose design derives from computer analysis of how an oak tree grows.
In the book’s epilogue, Logan compares the Eiffel Tower to an oak tree. The Eiffel Tower, meant as an icon of the Industrial Age, offers little utility, other than making a lasting impression and for those inclined, a vertiginous look-see from up high. In contrast, the oak tree, a “nothing special” structure, has always meant utility. Logan asks the reader which of the two might we emulate, if we had to choose. By the end of OAK, we know his choice. Arborist Logan might be anticipating the day our dinosaur heritage runs out after a brief 250-year run, and we start casting about for less exploitive, more nature-friendly survival strategies. Read OAK: THE FRAME OF CIVILIZATION for an intelligent and heart-felt survey of one tree species that has served humanity well for thousands of years, and which might still have lessons for our future
© Charlie Dickinson October 2005
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link:https://www.hackwriters.com/oak.htmwvParticipantBlythe is always a fun listen:
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