Glenn Beck, Evil, and Us

I am convinced that there will be no virtue in Hell. It will not exist there. Not even a residue of it.

Glenn Beck has the Lord's Prayer upside down: "On Earth as it is in Hell."

I say this because Glenn Beck compared the young victims of the Norway massacre to Hitler youth. The blogger who reported this (see below) states that Beck did not condone the killing. But Beck dips his finger in the water before he jumps in. For example, he claimed on Fox News that President Obama hates White people. He backed off when even his Fox News cohorts balked at his offensive accusation. But before he backed off, he offered this accusation to the world.

As to the Norwegian victims: before their toe tags had been taken off for burial, Beck gestured to a shadow of a justification for their assassination by a right-wing, Christian fanatic.

This sickened me.

1. Even Glenn Beck is complicated.

Yet I believe that human beings are complicated. To see someone as a cartoon villain instead of as a person with good and evil inside is wrong. My commitment to seeing complexity in humans makes me try to understand how Beck can be say something so sickening.

This goes against my instinct. My instinct is to say that when the Evil One speaks, Glenn Beck’s lips move.

But that would be wrong. So here goes my meditation on Glenn Beck.

2. Beck is disoriented by a mix of conservatism, Christianity, and evil.

Somebody deeply decent that I am related to condones torture. I was dismayed when I learned that. But I know that he strongly identifies with the Republican Party and with George W. Bush. This relative could see no evil in his president or party. So Bush’s endorsement of torture moved him to endorse it, too. I believe that the shallowness of President Bush is a falling light that caused shadows to rise among those who admired him. These shadows rose in my deeply decent relative. They took the form of considering a great evil to be a great good.

If he had been willing to see evil in the president – even if he saw good, too – my deeply decent relative’s morality would not have been darkened by Bush.

This shows how some people might idealize persons, and therefore not be able to see evil in them, to their detriment.

Now Beck. Beck does not so much idealize a single person. But he idealizes persons, like the assassin, who have qualities of Christianity and conservatism. To Glenn Beck, Christianity and conservatism, which the assassin embraces in the extreme, are good things. Perhaps to Beck, if Christianity and conservatism are good things, extreme Christianity and extreme conservatism are extremely good.

Could it be that Beck cannot recognize the evil effect of these things in the Norwegian assassin? Like my deeply decent relative, Beck might see a person as good or evil, not good and evil. Because he is a conservative Christian, this assassin, Beck might deep down want to see him as good or as mostly good.

If so, it must disorient him to see Christianity and conservatism and murder exist together in the Norwegian assassin. To restore his own mental equilibrium, Beck must find a way to reconcile this perceived goodness with murder. That involves contriving a way to make the death of the scores of victims not a bad thing, but somehow a good thing.

Naziism is a premier evil, so it becomes a handy label with which to blacken the blameless. Beck immolates the memories of the dead to preserve his ideology.

3. Beck might be acting out of anxiety for his followers.

Another explanation. Perhaps Beck considers his ideology to be an ark in dangerous seas. Himself an extremist, perhaps he worries that this proof of the evil of extremism, Christian extremism and conservative extremism, will demoralize his followers. Beck might fear that this demoralization will make some of his followers jump off his ark, to their peril. So it is out of compassion that he stains the memory of the dead – compassion for those who listen to him.

4. But that doesn’t make defaming the dead right.

This is the best that I can do to explain what Beck has said. I know that what I write is shallow and unsatisfying.

Even though I try to explain what Beck has said, I don’t justify it. Evil with a reason behind it is still evil. To say that there is some compassion or logic mixed in with what Beck says is not to say in any ultimate way that he is a good person. It only acknowledges that he is a complicated person.

5. Making peace with Glenn Beck.

But to say that Beck is complicated is to concede his humanity. To say that Beck is complicated is to say that he is like me and like every person that I know. We differ only in degree, because nobody is entirely good or entirely evil.

The Norwegian assassin had one kind of extreme Christianity. Another extreme Christianity – let me distinguish it by calling it radical Christianity – calls us to recognize our universal moral poverty before God. With the prophet Isaiah, we are called to say:

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. [Isaiah 64:6.]

Isaiah calls us to know our universal moral poverty before God. Having in mind this universal moral poverty, a Christian does not look upon a Glenn Beck and say, "There but for the grace of God go I." A Christian says, "There I go."

And if I look at Glenn Beck in this way, then I must say, "Glenn Beck is me."

_________________________

My source for Glenn Beck’s statement:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/a-madman-and-his-manifesto/

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yasser Arafat

I’m resigned to America's debt ceiling not being raised. America will default on her debt. Our credit rating will tumble, and the dollar will take a running jump toward losing it dominance among currencies. China and the Chinese stand to gain as the makers of the world’s future high-value currency.

America will transfer an additional trillion dollars to lenders’ hands to pay for her preexisting debt, because of the fall of America’s credit rating. This will make it more expensive for America to raise money. Obviously, we could have used this wealth for better purposes.

I became resigned when I saw House speaker John Boehner respond to president Barack Obama’s televised speech on July 25.

It reminded me of something that happened in 2000: the Camp David summit between Palestinian Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat and Israel’s president Ehud Barak. To win peace, leftist Israeli president Barak made painful concessions. But Arafat rejected the best deal by far ever offered by Israeli negotiators. At the time, some people expressed that Arafat was perfectly happy to reject any deal, because refusal to compromise would win him the admiration of his constituency among the Palestinians. So peace floated into the ether, and Arafat let it float away.

John Boehner is playing Yasser Arafat in these negotiations. If the debt ceiling is not raised, because he insists on getting everything he wants and conceding nothing, Boehner becomes beloved of the hard-core Republicans who would hold the debt ceiling hostage to prevail in their position that only a minority of Americans share. Their position is that the long-term debt should be overcome solely with budget cuts, not with additional taxes on the wealthy. Republicans reject a ratio of budget cuts to new revenue of 83% to 17%. The new taxes would fall on the rich, who have benefitted disproportionately in increased income in recent years. Some of these very wealthy persons pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.

So the government becomes dysfunctional.

Of course, Boehner wants it both ways. He won’t compromise, but he blames Obama for the coming debacle. This is from a party that lost all credibility when they proclaimed that the Health Care Reform Act had death panels. (Will someone please show me the death panels in that legislation? Because what was claimed to be death panels was only a provision (now removed) paying Medicaid doctors for doing what they otherwise would do for free: counsel elderly patients about advance directives for end-of-life decisions. That’s no death panel. If the death panel is something else, would someone please point it out?)

As Boehner blamed Obama in his speech, he told his story that there was almost an agreement, but Obama changed the terms of the agreement, and the summit fizzled (actually, Boehner walked out). I don’t believe him. I’m predisposed to disbelieve Republicans in Congress after the death-panel lies. And I watched Boehner closely as he told this particular story. I saw a glint in his eye as he told it.

That told me that Boehner is not only Yasser Arafat; he is also Lord of Facts. He arrogates to himself a godlike power to create facts in his own image.

This upsets me deeply. I shouldn’t be shocked; this is only a worse incarnation of what I’ve seen before. It’s playing politics with our future; it’s lying to play politics.

Maybe this is the moment of America’s final decline. Maybe this is the moment where ideologues in the minority rob America of her economic recovery and start the slide to a weak, dysfunctional republic. It sickens me. It disgusts me. It literally robs me of sleep.

The Republicans act as if they believe that when America capsizes, only Democrats will get wet. That won’t be the case.

A metaphor: in Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of Trojan King Priam and Queen Hecuba. Apollo empowered her to see the future, but, when she wasn’t sufficiently grateful (in a particular way), he cursed her with the fact that nobody would believe her. She foresaw the fall of Troy, but she couldn’t convince anyone that her prophecy would come to pass.

I feel like Cassandra. Never in politics have I felt so frustrated. I foresee disaster brought about by corrupt practices. If Republicans are going to wreck the economy, let them at least be honest about their willingness to do so. House Majority Whip Eric Cantor was at least so honest when he said that the Republicans would not compromise on the budget, because they believe that agreeing to raise the debt ceiling was their compromise.

Remember that, and lay blame accordingly.

Ireland, Norway, America, and Hope

Something green is happening in Ireland. I hope it grows deep roots, but it’s too soon to tell.

1. Radical independence in Ireland.

Ireland’s prime minister gave a dramatic speech condemning the Vatican’s interference in the investigation of priests who molested children their under their pastoral care and protection. The prime minister said, basically, that the Catholic Church had wolves all the way up.

This is radical. Ireland is a country that has gone to war over religion. The Irish have spilled Irish blood because of their beliefs. Irish Catholics have fought, died, and killed out of loyalty to Catholicism.

Now this.

It’s a time of upheaval for the faithful in Ireland. Like an abusive spouse who’s wickedness is exposed, the Catholic Church may threaten and intimidate Ireland to return to it’s former deference. It recalled its Irish ambassador after Ireland issued a report highly critical of the Vatican. If the Vatican coerces Ireland to turn its eyes from the corruption of the Church, it will be a failure of justice in Ireland.

God be with the Irish. May they not waiver. If the Vatican tries to turn them back from their defiance, may Ireland say, "Go with God, but go." I’m betting that they will.

Then perhaps the Irish can bond more closely with some of their local prelates, who responded with greater clarity to the harming of children than the Vatican did.

What Ireland is doing is hard. That’s not obvious to someone outside the Catholic Church, as I am. But old ties have hard knots; they resist being loosened.

It’s comforting to think of the ancient Church as a wall that you can put your back to in hard times, who’s protection is constant and reliable. It’s so attractive to think that way that it takes courage to see clearly, to know that the wall of protection deserves a "danger" sign. The Irish might yet prove to be like the Israelites, who, long after fleeing from Egypt, trusted Egypt of old alliance, rather than trusting the unseen God.

Courage to Ireland.

2. Norway’s tragedy may instruct America.

And courage to America. Particularly, courage to those American conservatives who until now have taken the easy road of hatred of Muslims in response to the death of 3,000 of our own on our own soil.

We need courage as we look at Norway. Norway is reckoning with the unimaginable. One of their own has assassinated scores of their young people.  The assassin did this out of a fear of both Islam, a hated enemy, and liberalism, a hated (supposed) friend of Islam.

It’s tempting to dig a cognitive moat between the psyche of the Norwegian killer and our own intolerant minds. So a friend of mine quickly called the Norwegian assassin "crazy". I respect my friend’s opinion, and I don't accuse her personally of intolerance, but I think her explanation is too easy in every sense.

Another cognitive moat: Fox News’s website quotes an anonymous police official, who might or might not exist, to say how puzzled the police are to find no connection between the killer and Norwegian Nazis. By crediting this puzzlement, Fox News insinuates a connection between Naziism and the killer. This is a connection that nobody who will attach their name to their words has drawn.

There's no proof to connect the Norwegian killer to insanity or to Naziism. But he clearly hates both Muslims, and, because they do not share his hatred, liberals. I’m not saying that all intolerant persons are would-be killers. But intolerance does kill. The proof of that is the Norwegian killer.

Because the Norwegian killer admits that his deadly actions came from his beliefs about Muslims; in a word, intolerance. Norwegians aren’t to blame; it was fringe thinking that led to the massacre. But intolerance was a strong component of that fringe thinking. So the massacre calls us to examine our own intolerance, and to decide whether we will permit intolerance to repose in our own minds

And for the intolerant, it takes courage to look upon intolerance and to see it for what it is: hatred, pure and simple. It’s what Christ of the Christians urged his followers to shun. ("[D]o not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also." (Matthew 5:39.) "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you . . .." (Luke 6:27.))

The question is whether we will absorb Norway's trauma and purge our own intolerance.

3. History has cleansed us before.

We’ve turned from intolerance before. Anti-Semitism and racism were widespread in America before World War II. World War II changed us. In the Nazi death camps, we saw the effect of bigotry, and we were filled with revulsion. So we in large measure separated ourselves from intolerance.

I believe that this revulsion caused by the Nazi death camps was a tectonic plate that shifted in our psyches, that contributed to the rise of the great civil-rights movement of the last century.

4. Not an end to debate; a transformation of debate.

Tolerance doesn’t mean we must love the radical, fundamentalist Muslims who plot to harm us. (That would be a truly radical Christianity.) But it’s always wise, and it’s never naive, to see complexity in others.

So, rather than see Muslims as always the same, one to another, we can choose to learn about them. We can learn that Muslims vary from one to another as much as Christians vary from one to another. This isn’t easy. It takes effort. But revulsion to the massacre in Norway spurs us to that effort. Because Norway is the logical end-point of hatred, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens here.

And if we shun intolerance, that doesn’t end debate about national security or immigration policy. It just means that those debates continue without easy, harmful stereotypes.

5. Hope.

Ireland has gone through trauma. The revulsion of what they now know causes them to cast off an old, unquestioning deference. Good for them.

And good for us if we look upon Norway’s tragedy and make their revulsion our own, and use it to turn ourselves to our better natures.

In Praise of Older Women

The first and best praise of older women is a famous letter by Benjamin Franklin, who would know. But here, for the 21^st Century, are my dozen praises.

1. Almost anyone who has lived for a time knows that hard times come. It’s good to have a wise ally in hard times. This is more likely to be the seasoned woman than the unseasoned one.

2. Meeting high expectations is draining. A seasoned woman’s expectations are based on reality; a younger woman’s might be based on hopes and dreams.

3. Seasoned women have been through a lot, and they’ve survived a lot. This often gives them a reservoir of self-esteem, a sense of moral momentum.

4. Seasoned women are more loving. They’ve learned to love with children, husbands, long-time friends. Young people, less so.

5. Physical decline is compensated by moral improvement and all of the other advantages of age. And physical appearance is overrated. Often, even young people don’t keep themselves up. Yet some older women do. A fit older woman is special. A less fit older woman is often no less fit than many younger women.

6. Time gives accomplishments to the seasoned women. Maybe they have developed a love of language. Or they have a time-honed sense of humor. In their years, they might have added to their knowledge of the world. They might be well traveled. They might be professionally skillful. Attention over time might make them politically aware. Their life and times likely have supplied them with a collection of stories, and the judgment to know which stories to tell. They are better conversationalists than younger women.

7. Seasoned women are less self-centered and more interested in other people. They’ve grown exhausted with self-obsession as years passed by, and they’ve become connoiseurs of others. If they dance in front of a mirror, they’re more likely to look at their partner than themselves, compared to a young person. They’re likely to be generous, and to have generosity of spirit. Because at a certain point, their lives stopped being all about them.

8. A seasoned woman is more likely to be a seasoned lover. They not only have knowledge of physical love-making; they’re also more likely to know how to make a relationship work.

9. Seasoned women are more direct. They know that time won’t last forever. They’re more likely to get to the point. They’re less likely to waste time. That’s true if a relationship isn’t working. Or, if it is working, they’re more likely to call attention to their realistic wants, needs, and hopes.

10. Romance can be more spontaneous, because you are less likely to be surprised by children, in any sense.

11. Seasoned women judge less. They’ve made mistakes themselves. They know their own frailties. Therefore, they’re less likely to look down on others.

12. The passage of time gives a woman, more likely, a gentler grip on a relationship. They’re more likely to have had relationships that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. They know the arc of a relationship. They understand that not all relationships last forever. So they’re more likely to savor a relationship in the moment, without trying to store it for the future like a squirrel stores an acorn. But if a relationship lasts from day to day into forever, they know enough to cherish the specialness of that.

So older women are worthy of praise.

And somewhat the same could be said about older men.

Capsizing

1. Ships that can’t be righted.

A large capsized ship can’t be righted.

As a wave pushes a ship over, it’s crew might hold their breath in mute terror, waiting to see if the ship reaches the point of no return, the point when all is lost. Sometimes the ship returns to upright to take on the next wave. Sometimes it doesn’t.

I say this because the right wing in America risks to capsize the country. It risks this for political gain. The odd thing is that they seem to think that when they capsize the country, only the Democrats will get wet.

2. Capsizing the economy.

So with the debt ceiling.

The dollar is the world’s premier currency. It has rivals in the yen (Japan), the yuan (China), and the euro (Europe). China, particularly, agitates for countries to "balance" their foreign reserve holdings with other currencies aside from the dollar. China hopes to start a trend that ends the dollar’s supremacy.

China has allies in America. They aren’t moles in banks who cut secret, treasonous deals for their own enrichment. They are the Republicans in Congress.

Congressional Republicans are holding the debt ceiling hostage to their own uncompromising position on debt. They use the vote to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to get their way -- and get their way 100% -- on the budget.

The debt ceiling is the legal amount of indebtedness that America can have. If we reach our statutory debt limit, we cannot borrow more. Then, we cannot pay our debts. We’ll default on something: our sovereign debt (what creditor countries lend to us); soldiers’ salaries; social security checks. The damage from this will ripple through the economy.

Ripple might not be the right word. Tsunami might be more correct.

The Economist is a socially-liberal but fiscally-conservative magazine ("newspaper" in British English). They champion debt reduction. They have criticized Obama for not doing enough about debt. Even this week they said, "Mr. Obama had been deplorably insouciant about he medium-term picture, repeatedly failing in his budgets and his state-of-the-union speeches to offer any path to a sustainable deficit."

But here’s what The Economist says in an article in this week’s magazine called "Shame on them."

This newspaper has a strong dislike of big government; we have long argued that the main way to right America’s finances is through spending cuts. But you cannot get there without any tax rises. In Britain, for instance, the coalition government aims to tame its deficit with a 3:1 ratio of cuts to hikes. America’s tax rate is at its lowest level for decades: even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed to do so.

Here’s more from The Economist:

And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the Republicans look. Earlier this year House Republicans produced a report noting that an 85%-15% split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical evidence. The White House is offering an 83%-17% split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer.

The Economist expects serious damage to the economy when America defaults on its debt.

The Obama administration proposed an 83%-17% ratio of cuts to increases. They basically said Yes to the Congressional Republicans’ own proposal. But The Republicans wouldn’t take Yes for an answer. They walked out of discussions.

The New York Times speculated that the Republicans might want to exploit, for political gain, the economic turmoil that will come after a debt-ceiling default. That might be. They might stick to that plan, unless they can get something better. If they follow that plan, then they are making all of us – all of us who aren’t rich – unfortunate pawns in their grand strategy to rise to the top.

3. Capsizing political debate.

The Russian-roulette game over our economy isn’t the only way that the right wing gladly risks disaster.

Political debate is in recent years sullied. But Republican leaders and Republican media reached a new low by whipping up fervor against "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors).

Nobody can point to death panels in that bill, because they aren’t there. The closest thing to that was a part of the law (taken out) that paid doctors to do what they have been doing for free: advising patients about end-of-life choices.

Most people don’t want to be irretrievably comatose and on a feeding tube or a heart-lung machine. Advanced directives that come from these doctor-patient discussions keep a patient’s children or spouse from being burdened with the guilt or expense of making that decision without a clear statement of the patient’s preference.

Accusing the Democrats of legislating "death panels" to "pull the plug on grandma" so poisoned political conversation in this country that I don’t know that it ever can recover. It went far toward capsizing political debate.

4. Capsizing the legitimacy of the Republic.

And Republican media and Republican politicians take aim at the Republic itself. Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry talks about seceding from the Republic. Here’s a guy who literally would fight to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; "indivisible"– not so much.

This attitude has trickled down. On Facebook, I have seen a post that compares democracy to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

It’s funny in its way, but it’s more frightening than funny. After all, democracy is fair, and fair is the opposite of wolflike-ness. It’s the ultimate way that a government can have legitimacy. Democracy reflects the will of the people – or at least most of the people. That’s right and just. It’s more right and just than any other form of government.

And there are safeguards against the so-called tyranny of the majority. Under the Constitution, majority rule is subject to checks and balances. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional – as might happen to the Health Care Reform Act, which will one day come before the Supreme Court. And before a bill can become law, it has to pass in the House of Representatives (where congressmen are elected by districts that have roughly equal population to each other – this give more power to large states); and the Senate (where each state gets two Senators – this gives more relative power to citizens of smaller states). Then, usually, the President has to sign a bill into law (but Congress can override his veto).

This is the most perfect (but not perfect) form of government. Other forms are less fair.

And we have a vigorous press in which all opinions can be expressed, And, compared to most of the world, we have little official corruption.

But the right wing is revving its chain saw at the base of the living American tree – disputing the fairness of our democracy – because they aren’t happy with political outcomes. When they do that, the right wing risks much to our Republic. Because when people dispute our Republic’s legitimacy, when they urinate on our Constitution, they weaken the Republic. But the right wing seems willing to risk this capsize.

5. Capsizing justice and political restraint.

As much as the right challenges the legitimacy of government under Obama, the real scandals of governance have taken place under Republicans.

In the Bush administration, U.S. Attorneys asserted that they were fired for partisan reasons. David Iglesias, for example, refused to politicize prosecutions. He said under oath that Republican politicians directed him to target Democratic officeholders because they were Democratic officeholders. When he refused, he was fired. The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General backs his assertion.

An official from the Bush administration asserted her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself in the investigation of the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal. After getting immunity, she admitted to feloniously using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs. She also testified that many Bush-administration officials had lied under oath about the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal.

The Wisconsin Republican governor and the Wisconsin Republican legislature passed a law to weaken public-employee unions. Now, there is in Wisconsin no counterweight to corporate money. Other Republican states are following.

Under Bush, America was Ukraine. And under Republican governors, Ukraine continues among us.

6. Capsizing freedom of speech.

A former ambassador investigated the charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellow-cake from Niger. He published an editorial in the New York Times that accused the Bush White House of knowingly lying to the American people. In fact, the Bush White House did not know of his report; the report didn’t travel up from the CIA, which had sent him on his fact-finding mission.

But that’s not the point. The point is that high Bush-administration officials swiftly retaliated against the former ambassador by disclosing to several reporters that his wife was a CIA employee –Valerie Plame. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak outed her. In fact, Valerie Plame was a covert operative who specialized in nuclear proliferation. America became less safe after she could no longer do her job.

7. Speak up!

Some of my right-wing friends are adamant that Muslims must renounce the terrorists who share some form of their own religion. Where are my right-wing friends when their political brethren threaten our welfare and disparage our Constitution?

Unless you hate Obama more than you love America, speak up.

________________________________

Selected sources.

A conservative columnist for the New York Times says that Republicans should shake hands with Obama and declare victory on the budget. He says they’re nuts not to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A neutral referee discusses so-called "death panels" in the Health Care Reform Act. It’s hogwash:

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/

Governor Perry wants to lower Old Glory in Texas forever:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html

U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General report on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. It says Rove and others wouldn’t cooperate with investigators about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias:

http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0809a/final.pdf

See, especially, p. 186-187; 190

U.S. Department of Justice official Monica Goodling invokes the Fifth Amendment in Congressional hearings.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html

Monica Goodling admits using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052300728.html

The outing of Valerie Plame (Book):

James B. Stewart, Tangled Webs (The Penguin Press 2011)

Liking the Life that I Have

I’m odd.

                   1. About me.

I’m a believer. But unlike other believers I know, I assume that I’m not going to heaven.

I spend evenings reading and liking books like Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order. I’m now also reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Melville’s Moby-Dick, and a book about perjury cases called Tangled Webs.

I subscribe to many magazines. Among these are The Economist and Rolling Stone. I read The New York Times.

I write essays and post them on my blog.
2. A brief recent history of my dating disappointments.
I dated a lawyer from Long Beach for a while. It was a swift relationship. It was swift to start and swift to end. As the proverb says, "Riches quickly gained are soon lost."

She wasn’t a communicator. While we dated, she never told me that she was unsatisfied. But one night she fled my home as if she were being whipped by demons, and I didn’t hear from her for a couple of weeks. By the time she formally dismissed our relationship, I had had time to go through all five stages of grief. She gave me reasons for breaking up, but the real reason was that she didn’t love me.

I’ve dated since then. The women have been Christians. In one case, I was strongly drawn to a woman, but the relationship broke on my certainty about my damnation. That doesn’t appeal to women who have their eyes fixed on the modern mirage of certainty of salvation.

I dated a very kind woman. She also broke up with me. We’ve talked since then. But if it takes aggressiveness by me to overcome the barriers between us, then those barriers won’t be overcome, because I won’t be aggressive. With her, I don’t know but that she might one day actually enter heaven. And I don’t want to be the millstone around her neck that drags her down.

Sometimes, I’m protective of a good woman, and the first thing I want to protect her from is me.
3. What I look for.
So I’m odd. With my oddity, finding a soul mate is a challenge.

I know men who have made choices of wives that they regret. So I won’t marry except with my eyes open to the likelihood that we’ll be in love and have harmony to the end.

If I marry, I must marry a kind woman. And I must marry a woman I can share ideas with – someone who won’t lift Fukuyama’s book from my chair and wonder Why?

Realistically, Christianity is optional. A sense of humor is mandatory.

If she were wise, that would be welcome.
4. Acceptance.
But, realistically, today is the best predictor of tomorrow. Today I’m single.

Fine.

My life as a single man is better than I have a right to expect. I find stimulation in ideas, and in language, and in good books. I have leisure to enjoy these things.

I have access to a good swimming pool where I work out. This restores me when I’m tired or anxious or irritable. It gives me self-confidence.

I have a job in which I help people. That can’t be taken for granted. In my thirty-year career, there are things that I’ve enjoyed about work; but consistently I’ve enjoyed making life better for people. It has been a joy to be their expert scout through the (to them) trackless justice system.

I’m grateful for these good things, and I hope that they last while I live. If they are not added to, still my life is (as to these things) fortunate.

I cannot be so obsessed about loneliness that I overlook so many good things.
5. Benediction.
So I say goodbye to the soul mate that I never met. I wish her well. I wish her happiness. I wish I met her, but I’m content to be a stranger to her, because I cannot spend the rest of my life shaking door nobs to doors that do not open, when there is so much in life to be grateful for.

Joy in the Water

After you’re born, movement is progress. You spend years improving your competence in mobility. I think that’s a secret beneath the joy of exercise. Exercise is movement. It makes you feel good because, deep down, it stimulates the joy of movement that you discovered when you were little and learning to be active in the world.

That’s true of hiking, running, swimming, and biking. My sport is swimming.

Swimming might seem weird to some people – especially pool swimming. They think that the scenery never changes. They see swimming as just going back and forth and back and forth.

But that point of view overlooks some things. Again, remember the downright joy of movement.

And often the scenery does change. As I swim, I spend a lot of time looking at other people in the pool. They are my scenery. I admire good swimmers. I critique strokes, something that I’m good at. Sometime I look at subtle things, like the position of someone’s head as they swim. Sometimes there’s an obvious need for improvement, like when people swim almost vertically.

As I swim, I admire fit swimmers – particularly the women.

I check out other people’s swimming equipment. Personally, I wear goggles and a swim suit, and I use a kickboard for part of my workout. But some people buy all sorts of swimming gear. Fins are common. It’s funny to see swimmers with big-ol’ fins that they do not need because they do not move their feet. Some people use snorkels. (Better for a reef in Hawaii.) Varieties of hand wear are not uncommon. They create more resistance for the arms, building muscle faster – but too much resistance can injure you!

Sadly, I used to see and resent the older folks who would amble up and down the lanes, talking with this or that friend. I thought that they were wasting valuable lane space. But I decided that any exercise is good exercise; and even though they don’t get much exercise (they never seem to tire), I can’t say that they get no exercise. And these are old guys who fought in wars and raised children and held down jobs until they retired. If they want to stroll through the water in their years of rest, good.

The greatest joy that I get from swimming is the sense that I do it well. My parents put me on a swim team when I was seven. I swam competitively until I was 18. I was on a masters’ team in Pasadena years ago, and the coach gave me good tips.

So I know what I’m doing in the water.

And after a two-year cycle, I’m strong. I swim 2,700 yards in a workout. (That’s the length of 27 football fields.) Other people swim farther, but that’s still a decent distance. And 850 yards of that is butterfly.

When I finish a workout, I feel like I’ve accomplished something that a lot of guys my age couldn’t do, or wouldn’t do. That’s pride, that’s vanity, but it’s also a source of self-confidence.

I’m vain enough that I like it when people compliment my swimming. My friend Bob is somewhere upward of 74. He’s in great shape. We swim at the same pool. He compliments my butterfly.

And sometimes I’ll greet the young lifeguard before jumping in the pool (they change from day to day). She might reply with obvious bored indifference. After all, I’m 55. But sometimes – sometimes – after I’ve worked out in front of her, she’ll be friendlier. I’m not immune to indirect complements.

Swimming does me good. I might be stressed; a workout soothes me. I might be tired; swimming energies me. I might have a problem; laps sometime bring a solution.

Lately, I’ve competed at masters’ meets. The difference between me at a swim meet at 17 and me at a swim meet at 55 is this: when I was 17, I worried about my races. But now, races are 99.98% pure fun. Sure, I want to do well. But I have perspective now.

And I’m learning, or re-learning. I’m learning when to push and when to pace myself. And when I go out too fast, I learn to gut it out, stroke by stroke, until I touch the wall at the end of the race.

And I’m making friends at the swim meets.

We older Americans usually don’t get much exercise. And sometimes there seems to be no time to work out. But if you do, it rewards you.

It doesn’t have to be swimming. It can be hiking, it can be running, it can be a good walk around your neighborhood. It can be dancing.

My best advice is twofold.

First, pace yourself. When I started, I went short distances. I worked up to my present distance over two years. It’s easier to go from – say – one-thousand yards to two-thousand yards, than it is to go from zero yards to one-thousand yards. You have to understand that, and you have to pace yourself.

That’s true because a lot of short, easy workouts over a long period are better than a long, hard workout that exhausts you so much that you don’t do it again. So be patient with yourself. And be realistic about what you can do.

Second, find a sport that you like. As I said, I like to swim, and I’ve been good at it for a long time. But some people like to lift weights. Others like to hike. I know lawyers who are fanatics about racquetball. Golf is popular. Or biking. Or aerobic classes. When my brother Peter exercises, he runs on a treadmill. My brother Erik learned soccer when he was young, and he enjoys playing it to this day.

Find your sport. You won’t necessarily like what your friends like, but if you find your sport, you’ll keep at it.

How I Learned that I Wasn’t Thinking Clearly.

Their stories provoked my sympathy.

On Countdown With Keith Olbermann and in the New York Times, I heard from or read about hardworking people, desperately seeking work, who would lose everything if unemployment benefits weren’t extended. These were my avatars of the long-term unemployed. Because of them, I strongly supported extension of unemployment benefits.

But some of my friends had a different point of view. To them, the long-term unemployed were long-term slackers who had no reason to look for work, because it was too easy to suck on the government teat. I discounted my friends' point of view, and I'm sure they discounted mine.

Then I had a conversation with a friend, a former employee. She talked about her brother. Her brother is out of work, and he is not seeking a job, because he is happy to coast on government support.

I knew then that I had stumbled. I had ignored something obvious. That is: you rarely err when you embrace complexity over simplicity in human affairs.

That is: the long-term unemployed fit no simplistic mold. How people respond to loss of their job is as varied as human beings. How people respond to government benefits depends on who they are, and one person is different from another.

Certainly, I know complexity in my profession. Lawyers are mostly different. Some are ethical. Some aren’t. Some work hard. Some are lazy. There’s a smart-stupid continuum. Some care about what happens to their clients. Others look at clients like a trapper eyes a pelt. I like some lawyers very much. Others I loath.

I’ll bet you can say the same thing about your profession.

I comprehend complexity among people I know, so why do I discard it when I think beyond people I know?

Real people have a way of extinguishing avatars. I understand that the gay community has agitated for its members to reveal their gay-ness. Usually, it's harder for people to reject civil rights for gay people when they know someone who is gay. Vice President Cheney’s daughter is gay, and he supports gay rights; though if you didn’t know about his daughter, you wouldn’t expect him to take the liberal position.

But here’s complexity again: gay people can be anything from loving to predatory. And sometimes the same person has both qualities.

In our ideological battles, skirmishes are fought over the idea of who a group is. No radio talk-show host talks about the diversity of Hispanics. Instead, for example, LA’s John and Ken boil over with rage about some odious Hispanic criminal. But it’s not fair to Hispanics to tout the worst of their kind as emblematic of all of them. That’s not fair to illegal immigrants either, John and Ken's nominal targets. Nor Muslims. Remember, complexity.

We’re suckers for oversimplification. In an ideological age, we seek confirmation of our beliefs. Avatars are handy when it comes to confirming our ideologies. Sometimes, these avatars are called stereotypes.

And they aren’t fair.

Not to oversimplify, but Americans cherish fairness. It may be appealing to decide an issue based upon an unverified over-generalization, but we can’t do that if we cherish fairness.

How do we then make up our minds about controversies if we can’t rely on simplistic stereotypes?  We just have to think harder, probe more deeply. Maybe we should think longer on fewer issues. Unless you’re running for office, there’s no disgrace in confessing, "I don’t know. I just haven’t made up my mind yet." I respect a person who confesses that he or she has suspended the act of forming an opinion, pending more facts and more analysis. I’m exasperated with people who are certain without a basis for their certainty.

Uncertainty is underrated. It’s proof of humility.

So, let me boast of my humility: I've decided that I’m not at the end of my analysis of the issue of aid to the long-term unemployed. Two ideas move me toward my former position, however.

First, without generalizing about who are the long-term unemployed, studies show that payment of unemployment benefits stimulates the economy very effectively. This is true because the aid-recipients spend the money. In contrast, rich people who get tax cuts that they don’t need statistically tend to save a higher percentage of the money, which doesn’t stimulate the economy. When we help the long-term unemployed, we help ourselves.

Second, I think of Abraham. Abraham famously bargained with God and got God to agree that if there were among the people of Sodom ten righteous men, then, for the sake of those ten, God would spare that city. (Genesis 18.) That shows how God is willing to show mercy to the unrighteous to show mercy to the righteous. Amen to that. (Also remember the story of the tares and the wheat (Matthew 13).)

I infer, therefore, that it's better to suffer the slackers for the sake of the conscientious, than to let fall the conscientious lest we help slackers. My friends who are atheists don’t see the point in settling issues by citing the Bible. But there's wisdom in that book.

The Decency Dilemma

Does decency have to be justified or explained? I recently wrestled with whether it was right to show professional courtesy to a government lawyer.

1. A client seeks relief from the harsh conditions of Jessica’s Law.One of my clients seeks relief from Jessica’s Law. He doesn’t want to have to find housing more than 2,000 yards away from a school/park/place where children "congregate", even though he is a parolee and a registered sex offender.

The law is hard to comply with. It’s hard to find such housing. Few houses are that far away from those locations. And local ordinance frequently forbids more than one un-related sex offender from living in one home. So sex offenders can’t live with other sex offenders when they find rare compliant housing, and that adds to the burden of finding a place to live.

So my client filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus for relief from Jessica’s law. I was appointed to represent him.

2. The government blunders.Now, after my client filed his petition, the judge ordered the government to file a return. That’s a document that states that they oppose my client’s request for relief, and it explains why. The government didn’t file the return.

So the judge issued an order for the government to explain why he shouldn’t grant the petition because the government failed to file a timely return.

I was in court for the hearing to determine whether the judge would grant my client’s petition for failure of the government to file a timely return. The attorney for the government is a nice women. I’ve dealt with her before. I spoke with her, and, without going into detail, I thought that her reasons for her failure to file a timely return were plausible.

Our case was called. We went up and stood before the judge. The judge scolded the government lawyer. Then he turned to me and asked for my position on whether he should grant my client’s petition because the government failed to file a timely return.

3. My memory greens.Now, let me back up. Let me go back almost 30 years.

I was a young deputy district attorney with big ambitions and a boss who hated me. One day, there was a hearing on a petition for a writ of habeas corpus that a colleague of mine had failed to file a timely return to.

My boss loved him, my colleague, as much as she hated me. So, on the day of the hearing, she sent him to handle the calendar at a remote court. She ordered me to attend the hearing on his failure to file a timely return to the petition for a writ of habeas corpus. If the case blew up, it would blow up in my face, not my colleague’s.

At the hearing, the judge gave my office another chance to file a return. But before he announced that, he chewed me up. I knew I wasn’t at fault, but the judge so skillfully humiliated me that I felt shame.

Now, the habeas petitioner’s lawyer was at that hearing. He was old, and he was old-school. He tried to tell the judge that I was not the lawyer he had been dealing with, that I was not the lawyer who had failed to file a timely return. But the judge proceeded to crush me between his judicial teeth anyway.

But when the judge started to chew me up, the petitioner’s lawyer came over to me, and he stood by me as I was being chewed on by the judge. He did this to show solidarity with me. I have always remembered that lawyer as deeply decent.

This story percolated under my skull as I waited for the recent hearing to start. I even shared this story with the government lawyer.

4. I act based on my memory of decency shown to me.This story was on my mind when the judge called the recent case and the lawyers went forward. It was on my mind when the judge asked for my opinion about what he should do. When he asked for my opinion, I took no position. The judge seemed mildly surprised. Then he gave the government one more chance to comply. That’s what I thought he would do.

5. Moral dilemma?But my conscience has been pricked by my failure to argue for granting my client’s petition. I think I did the moral thing, but it’s an open question whether I served my client well. After all, if I had argued for the immediate granting of my client’s habeas petition, maybe the judge would have ruled the other way, and maybe my client would have then and there had the relief from Jessica’s law that he sought.

Maybe this is what’s called a moral dilemma.

 It wouldn’t be a moral dilemma for some lawyers. Once, our co-counsel, an enormously talented trial lawyer, became ill just before trial started. We tried to postpone the trial so that he could become well and participate in it. The other side opposed the postponement and convinced the judge that our co-counsel wasn’t really ill. That was horseshit. Of course he was ill. But we had to proceed to trial without him, because the judge rejected our request for a postponement.

Later, in a court filing, the other side acknowledged that our co-counsel was in fact ill. Their claim that he had been malingering had been opportunistic.

I consider their actions indecent – misleading the judge about their true opinion and exploiting our co-counsel’s illness for tactical advantage. They would have had no trouble deciding what to do if they had stood in my place at the hearing on granting my client’s habeas petition.

The attorneys who falsely claimed that our co-counsel was malingering acted like a great many lawyers would. There was a time when professional courtesy was common. It’s rarer now.

6. My practice.This is the position I routinely take: I show professional courtesy to lawyers whom I consider ethical. To hard-edged lawyers, I show a hard edge. That’s the line I draw.

So a few years ago, a lawyer won a motion against my client. He won by lying to the commissioner about a telephone conversation with me. A few weeks later, he missed a court hearing. The commissioner asked me whether he should dismiss the lawyer’s case against my client. That isn’t the usual practice when a lawyer misses a court hearing; but for some reason, the commissioner did not follow the usual practice of postponing the hearing and ordering the missing lawyer to be present. My heart did not beat once between the moment that the commissioner asked me this question and my answer that, yes, I wanted the case against my client dismissed. The commissioner dismissed the case. I never lost a minute of sleep over that.

In that case, I was glad to exploit an unethical lawyer’s calendaring error to bring an end to his client’s case. In the recent case, the lawyer’s decency made me forbear.

             7. My practice justified.

Now, was my client harmed in the recent case by what I did? I don’t think so. I don’t think the judge was going to deny the government one last chance. I believe that. I could be wrong. But I think he wanted me to be part of his pageant of piling on this government lawyer without actually ruling against her.

So I don’t think I harmed my client because I didn’t join in turning the screws. But I can’t be sure.

On the other had, I believe that my clients benefit from my good reputation among honorable lawyers. That’s a strategic benefit that my clients have because I routinely extend professional courtesies to lawyers of good will on the other side.

These benefits are intangible but real. As a young prosecutor, I usually knew the reputations of the lawyers I dealt with. And I cut breaks to lawyers with reputations for decency. I think other lawyers did too. I remember a colleague saying, "When some lawyers show up, you assume their clients are guilty; but when [lawyer with a reputation for good character] shows up, you assume that his client is innocent, or that his client is over-charged [meaning charged with crimes too serious for what really happened]."

I think that some government lawyers think like that today. I want to the like those lawyers I knew when I was a young lawyer, who got breaks for their clients based on their good reputations.

I believe that I should not sacrifice that ethic that benefits my clients for the sake of a possible tactical advantage at one hearing in one case.

So I think I did right. I think there’s a practical justification for what I did; and a moral justification; and a justification in a dying-but-still-clinging-to-life ethic in the legal profession.