Whitcomb: Lessons of 2020; Carbon-Tax Start; Tribute to Boston City Hall; Cult Leader Keeps Churning

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

“We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

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would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.”

“Archaic Torso 0f Apollo,’’ by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), Bohemian-Austrian poet. This was translated by Stephen Mitchell. The last sentence is famous.

 

 

“The young have aspirations that never come to pass. The old have reminiscences of what never happened.’’

--“Saki’’ (H.H. Munro, 1870-1916)

 

 

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On and about New Year’s Day we talk about time more than usual – past, present and future. But what is the present since we’re always moving through time?

 

So what have we learned, or relearned, in this crummy year? Well, on the list might be:

 

That there are far too many variables in heaven and earth to confidently make predictions about big stuff. You can only try to mitigate your vulnerability to an infinite number of risks. And most of us have big failures of imagination -- e.g., the possibility that a bunch of terrorists could fly airlines into skyscrapers and that we’d have the biggest pandemic since 1918 -- and so we don’t adequately prepare for many disasters that are inevitable but whose timing can’t be known.

 

(I’m waiting for a really big earthquake hereabouts.)

 

That in-person communication is almost always better than via a screen.

 

That many of us have learned to appreciate more than we had certain small pleasures that we had too often ignored before, such as  walking outside on a mild, sunny morning.

 

That, generally, sitting in restaurants with your friends is better than getting takeout.

 

That global warming and its effects are moving along at a faster pace than expected.

 

That our ability to pollute the earth grows ever wider – consider that microplastics have been found in the placentas of babies, with unknown health risks – and that thrown-away face masks are making a mess on land and in the water.

 

See:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/22/microplastics-revealed-in-placentas-unborn-babies

 

That reading a book – especially a good, solid hardcover one --  can be much more satisfying than watching TV.

 

That investing in dry-cleaning stores is unwise.

 

That having lots of locally based shops and eateries within walking distance of where you live is a gift and that it’s worth supporting them as much as possible.

 

That sidewalks should be widened so that more of our social and commercial life can take place outdoors.

 

That America needs more trades people – plumbers, electricians, roofers, carpenters, etc. – and the apprentice programs and vocational schools to train them -- than it needs more college graduates. Indeed, bring back “shop’’ classes in the public schools. Our COVID house arrests have reminded millions of how many things  need fixing in our homes and how few people are available to fix them.

 

That, as we’ve seen in who shows up on TV as victims in the COVID crisis, there are far too many single-family households, led only by the mother. America needs a revival of marriage and of holding fathers economically and otherwise responsible for the children they help create.

 

That so many Americans own big expensive cars, especially SUVs -- even poor people lining up in their cars for food pantry stuff.

 

That tens of millions of Americans will devoutly follow a sociopathic/psychotic demagogue, whatever the easily ascertainable extent of his lies and viciousness, suggests that the future of the American democratic experiment may be in deep peril.

 

That science’s ability to save us is vast (consider the super-fast invention of COVID-19 vaccines!) even as science applied by evil people can threaten us.

 

xxx

 

Let’s hope for a grand reopening by June, anti-vaxxers permitting.

 

And maybe the best New Year’s resolution is to decide to tolerate who we have become and to look at the roads that brought us here more clinically than emotionally.

 

xxx

 

I have a pile of old magazines – Life, Look, etc. -- from the ‘50s and ‘60s that I like to browse from time to time. It’s a bit of an education in cultural change, both the ads – lots of them are for cigarettes and gasoline and now bizarre- looking health products –  and the often stilted language of the articles.


Too bad that most print magazines have died. People 50 years from now would enjoy seeing in a physical format what Americans in 2020 were like.

 

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Gov. Charlie Baker (R-MA)

A Carbon-Tax Start

“By partnering with our neighbor states with which we share tightly connected economies and transportation systems, we can make a more significant impact on climate change while creating jobs and growing the economy as a result.’’

-- Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker

 

Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island and the District of Columbia have signed a pact  to tax the carbon in vehicle fuels sold within their borders and use the revenues from the higher gasoline prices to cut transportation carbon-dioxide emissions 26 percent by 2032. Gasoline taxes would rise perhaps 5 to 9 cents in the first year of the program -- 2022.

 

Of course, this move, whose most important leader right now is Massachusetts’s estimable Republican governor, Charlie Baker, can only be  a start, but as the signs of global warming multiply, other East Coast states are expected to soon join what’s called the Transportation Climate Initiative.

 

The three states account for 73 percent of total emissions in New England, 76 percent of vehicles, and 70 to 80 percent of the region’s gross domestic product.

 

The money would go into such things as expanding and otherwise improving mass transit (which especially helps poorer people), increasing the number of charging stations for electric vehicles, consumer rebates for electric and low-emission vehicles and making transportation infrastructure more resilient against the effects of global warming, especially, I suppose, along the sea and rivers, where storms would do the most damage.

 

Of course, some people will complain, especially those driving SUVs, but big weather disasters will tend to dilute the complaints over time. Getting off fossil fuels will make New England more prosperous and healthier over the next decade. For that matter, I predict that most U.S. vehicles will be electric by 2030.

 

Eventually, reactionary politics will have to be overcome and the entire nation adopt something like the Transportation Climate Initiative.

 

Cheap Thrills

“Snow is snowy when it’s snowing.
I’m sorry it’s slushy when it’s going.”

--  From “Winter Morning Poem,” by Ogden Nash (1902-1971), American writer best known for light verse

 

Why do local TV stations hype even fairly minor snowstorms, such as the recent one, whose deposits, I’m happy to see, were washed away by the holiday tropical-storm-style tempest? It’s because it’s easy to get free videos of storm scenes and because everyone in an area is affected, even if mostly in insignificant ways. Snowstorms and other weather events are handy ways to try to hold onto aging viewers with minimal  journalistic staffing.

 

Inside Municipal Government

Those cynical about government’s capacity to help people would do well to watch famed documentary-film maker Fred Wiseman’s new movie, City Hall, about municipal government in Boston. That government, now ably led by Mayor Marty Walsh, as it was before him by Tom Menino, has been a fine example of city officials who listen to all parts of the vastly diverse population that it’s charged with serving.

 

The film, sometimes tedious, sometimes fascinating, shows city employees at all levels doing their often difficult and frustrating jobs with dedication. And the higher-ups don’t sugar-coat the city’s (one of America’s wealthiest) racial, socio-economic and other disparities while providing specific ways to address them.

 

There’s a moving segment with Mayor Walsh, in front of a veterans group, discussing his past struggles with alcoholism. He’s not particularly articulate but he’s very open.

 

As for the partisan remarks in the film, Mr. Wiseman says:

 

"City Hall is an anti-Trump film because the mayor and the people who work for him believe in democratic norms. They represent everything Donald Trump doesn't stand for."

 

Woodland Wars?

“People ask me how I do it
And I say, ‘There's nothin' to it
You just stand there lookin' cute
And when something moves, you shoot!’
And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now
Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow.’’

-- From “The Hunting Song,’’ by Tom Lehrer

 

Since COVID erupted, the number of hunting licenses has jumped in rural New England as has the number of hikers. Sounds like a dangerous problem in the woods.

 

xxx

 

A sign of spring!   Nesting season has already begun for great horned owls, which are singing their courtship songs.

 

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Trump Rally in Worcester in 2015 PHOTO: GoLocal

How to Cultivate a Cult

 “Cult leaders use a variety of tactics to recruit and indoctrinate followers. Trump has mastered many of these techniques — sowing fear and confusion, distracting and deflecting, creating alternative realities, outright lying, shunning and belittling critics, and perhaps most effective, promoting a black-and-white, us-versus-them mindset.’’

-- Steven Hassan, in The Boston Globe. He’s a licensed mental-health counselor and author of The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control.

 

To read his Globe column, please hit this link:

 

Trump’s Dangerous Deutsche Bank

I hope that she has police protection!

 

Rosemary Vrablic, Trump’s banker at Deutsche Bank, and her colleague Dominic Scalzi have resigned.  Deutsche Bank is infamous for its money laundering and connections with Russia, and has been the one big bank still willing to lend money to the Trump mob, other banks having been burned too often to want to have anything to do with him.

 

Deutsche Bank has lent Trump billions of dollars and introduced him to Russian oligarchs close to dictator Vladimir Putin who are anxious to keep their real-estate dealings secret, including in New York City. Some people in the position to know about shady stuff involving powerful Russians tend to die before their time. Accidents happen!

 

One big reason that Trump has been trying to stage a coup to stay in office, besides his unlimited narcissism, is his fear that once he no longer has the protections provided by the presidency, he will face criminal charges, at least in New York State and perhaps in other states and at the federal level, too. After all, he’s been a thief and a con man all his adult life.

 

Why did Trump  throw in at the last moment a monkey-wrench proposal to raise per-person COVID relief payments  to $2,000 from the $600 set in the bipartisan relief bill, and imply that he’d veto  the measure if the increase  (which the Democrats’ congressional leadership loved the idea of!) wasn’t in it.

 

It’s obvious what’s going on: He wants to stay at the center of attention, and after all, he’s actually no “conservative”! He’d like nothing better than to send $2,000 checks to Americans with his name on it, as if he, and not the taxpayers and the bond market, are paying for it.

 

It’s amusing to see how congressional Republicans, who favor even more goodies for the rich, not for average Americans, tie themselves in knots over Trump’s latest gambit. Most of them are industrial-strength political cowards who fear doing anything to antagonize him and even more, his millions of suckers/followers.

 

xxx

 

“Lie to cover up for the president? You get a pardon. Corrupt politician who endorsed Trump? You get a pardon. Murder innocent civilians? You get a pardon.”

-- Adam Schiff (D.-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Trump’s big round of pardons

 

And then Charles Kushner, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and….and….and

 

You can’t keep a solid crime syndicate down! What role models for the young!

 

 

Our Writers

Writing New England: An  Anthology from the Puritans to the Present {2001), brilliantly edited by Andrew Delbanco, has, as you’d think, many treasures. He’s a professor of American studies at Columbia.

 

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