#^d 2017-03-26 #^h Weekend Roundup

We went to two funerals on Saturday: the first for long-time peace and justice activist Mary Harren (91), the second for my last uncle, James Hull (85), who spent 26 years as a mechanic in the Air Force, and was well known to Wichita Eagle readers as a right-wing crank. Main thing I was struck by was the difference in the crowds: close to 300 turned out for Mary, compared to about fifteen (not counting the Color Guard you taxpayers provided) for James. The former was quite properly a celebration of a long and fruitful life. The latter was rather sad, bitter, and pathetic.

We spent much more time with Mary over the last fifteen years: she was one of the first to welcome us to Wichita's small cadre of anti-war activists; she was quick to visit whenever we ran into troubles; and she was a frequent (and delightful) dinner guest. But she was so active and engaged that even while she made you feel special, you knew that she had dozens of other people and groups she did the same for. And she had been doing this for ages, sometimes regaling us with stories of political struggle over events I only vaguely remember from my teen years.

My interaction with James dates from those same years. Seems like he spent most of the 1950s stationed elsewhere -- Germany and somewhere near Las Vegas are places that stuck in my mind, although he joined in 1950 so was involved in Korea -- but after 1960 he was mostly based at McConnell AFB here in Wichita, and his family stayed here through two tours in Vietnam. After I turned 17 he lobbied me hard to sign up, but by then I was resolutely opposed to the Vietnam War and detested pretty much everything related to the military, so he was one of the first people I can recall arguing with about politics. (I was so withdrawn I'd scarcely speak to anyone, but he was so unflappable you couldn't help but argue with him.) After I moved away from Wichita, I had very little to do with him: while he was always very affable and loved a good (even a dirty) joke, his wife (Bobbie Ann) had terrified me as a child, and was so dim-witted and erratic I actively avoided her (and less actively their two shell-shocked sons -- the younger was what we used to call retarded; he wound up in some kind of special care facility and died at age 21). But I did run into him a few years ago, after Bobbie Ann had died, and he was cheerful as ever. He gave me a book he had written: a memoir plus a compilation of poems and political letters and a piece of his "scholarly" research which claimed that American economic performance correlates with frequency of executions, so to get the country moving again we should execute more felons.

He titled his memoir I Survived!, but there was virtually nothing in it about his wife or sons, so it's hard to imagine readers without personal knowledge making sense of his point. His work, and his bowling, and probably even his politics, make more sense as an escape from a disappointing home life. One pleasing thing about the funeral was that the pastor was a neighbor and friend, as was another person who spoke. So they made an effort to talk about the actual man rather than wander off into the hereafter. And they pretty much agreed that the man himself was a difficult, cranky person to be around.

The most revealing story was one where the pastor asked James what he had been doing today, and James answered "spreading hate and discontent." Asked what he had done yesterday, James answered the same, as he did when asked what he was planning on doing tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly what he thought he meant by that, but his politics was rooted in state violence, something he celebrated both in war and in his obsession over executions. Hate just greases the skids toward violence, which is part of why Trump has escalated the killing in places like Yemen and Syria despite claiming he opposes the disastrous wars Bush and Obama led. You can't sustain those wars without engendering and feeding off a lot of hate.

Another possibility was that James was conscious of how he rubbed people wrong with his crackpot theories. He did on occasion joke about the Secret Service coming after him after letters he wrote to the president. I suspect that in some cases he was contrarian for its own sake. Indeed, like with my father, his sense of humor was often rooted in irony against invisible foes. Still, at some point his right-wing bent hardened, probably egged on by the Fox News cabal. (Several people commented on how every time they saw him he had Fox News blaring -- his father and mine were very hard of hearing, and having worked around jet engines for many years I'm sure he was too.) That he wound up bitter and cranky and full of "hate and discontent" was, I think, baked into his political bent. The contrast to Mary couldn't have been more stark. She was probably every bit as critical of the world as he, but everything she did was imbued with hope and love. Even toward the end, she was full of grace. His pastor talked about grace, too, but it seemed like a long shot for James.

By the way, speaking of crowd numbers, there also was a "Make America Great" rally for Trump on Saturday. The Eagle's headline on the story was Dozens brave cold winds to rally for Trump. Not sure if the numbers are exaggerated, but the adverse weather sure was.

I got into a bit of a Facebook argument with Art Protin, who had posted a meme-pic showing the left half of Hillary Clinton's head and the caption (imagine in all caps): "The next time someone tries to tell you that Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate, remind them that it took the RNC, Wikileaks, the FBI and Russia to narrowly bring her down in an election she won by nearly 3 million votes." Being a reality-based sort of guy, my initial response was to list a dozen or so areas where she had acted or had taken positions that proved detrimental to most Americans, as if voters had been rational in rejecting her. That's not quite it, although we certainly shouldn't neglect the fact that, rightly or wrongly, she's picked up a lot of unfavorable baggage over the years, and that she's been the target of an awful lot of focused political hate -- both personally and due to her association with two Democratic administrations that promised much and delivered little to their neediest supporters. Those things worked to weaken her credibility and to tarnish her integrity, and that's the main thing we mean when we describe her as a weak candidate.

But really, the more glaring proof of her weakness is that she lost to DONALD J. TRUMP, who even before the election had the most negative approval ratings of any major party candidate ever, and who afterwards was subject to the greatest "buyer's remorse" we've seen since Nixon in 1972. Clearly, a lot of people hated Clinton so much that they voted for a guy they didn't like instead. I think a lot of factors entered into that choice, and I don't think any of them were very rational. (Sure, she's dishonest and corrupt and much more, but is she worse in any of these respects than Donald Trump? That comparison should have been laughably easy, yet somehow lots of people didn't realize it.) Given all of the points one could make against Trump, it's pretty much axiomatic that anyone who could still lose to him was an awfully weak candidate.

The meme also has several other faults. Leave aside the RNC for the moment, the other three forces arrayed against Clinton are/were pretty lame: Wikileaks, the FBI, and Russia. What Wikileaks did was one-sided (does anyone doubt that a hack of the RNC would have made them look like buffoons?) and Comey's dredging up of the whole email mess was unfortunate, but it's hard to believe that they had any more than the tiniest of impacts. And I have no idea what Russia did (beyond the DNC hack, and that's not clear) other than to soften the heads of some DNC types, who thought that red-baiting Trump as soft on Putin would be an easy score -- I can't prove it, but I think the net effect was to make Hillary look more recklessly hawkish, and that was something that hurt her. Of course, the continuing Russia obsession of frustrated Hillary-bots means something else: how hard it is to them to admit that they might bear any blame for policies or organization or candidate. Indeed, the whole meme is just another instance of scapegoating.

The three million vote margin is also at risk of being overplayed. Sure, it points to a structural problem (which Republicans will never allow to be fixed), but the problem is not just the structure for how it has been gamed, not least by the Democrats. Trump supporters can point out that they lost in states where they hardly campaigned at all (New York, Illinois, especially California), but the same was true for the 20-30 states Clinton didn't campaign in at all (including a couple she thought she'd carry): the net result being that the popular vote is bogus both ways. I think the net result is a wash, so Trump's failure to gain a plurality is a leading indicator of his unpopularity, but that only gets you so far. As Trump likes to say, "I'm president, and you're not." So while it properly embarrasses him that he only got paltry inauguration crowds, that his rallies regularly play to empty seats, and that he can only get 80 marchers out on a Spring day here in Wichita, it doesn't amount to much.

Biggest story this week was the demise of Paul Ryan's health care bill, which Donald Trump had pledged full allegiance to. Some links:

Some more scattered links this week in the Trump swamp:

Also a few links less directly tied to Trump, though sometimes still to America's bout of political insanity:

Got a late start on this, so it feels more scattered than usual. So much crap to deal with these days. So little time.