Whitcomb: Long-Weekend Lemmings; R.I. Gun Psychos Keep at It; Getting More on the Bus; Stronger NATO

Sunday, July 03, 2022

Robert Whitcomb, Columnist

 

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Robert Whitcomb, columnist

“O high New England summer, warm
and fortified against the storm
by nightly nips you once adored,
though never going overboard….”

-- From “Fourth of July in Maine,’’ by Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

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Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
        spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
        and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack
        mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying
        in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields
        to a razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
                                     Many ways to spell good night.

--- “Good Night” (1920), by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), a corny but at one time very popular American poet

 

 

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.’’

-- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), English writer famed for, among other things, his aphorisms

 

 

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Traffic in Newport PHOTO: Will Morgan

In the Haze of a Holiday Weekend

I’ve long been curious as to why so many people decide to travel at the same time on long holiday weekends, such as this one. The roads and airports are packed, and millions of folks spend more than half these weekends in transit, amidst other, often angry and frustrated, travelers. Further, travel-related prices are jacked up for such times. Very unpleasant -- and even worse than usual this year.

 

I’d guess that the major factors are that many people feel compelled to do things simply because that’s what so many other people are doing – the lemming effect – and they have the fear of missing out (FOMO), even if they know at some level that what they might miss would probably be less agreeable than doing something else, like staying at home and popping open a cool one in the backyard.

 

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PHOTO: file

I used to love fireworks, the more explosive the better. Cherry bombs! M80’s! My boyhood hometown sounded like a war zone. Nowadays not so much because they terrify animals, and kill some, and the world otherwise has gotten too relentlessly noisy. Leaf blowers, lousy bad rock in stores…. And consider those loud fireworks are very upsetting for many war veterans with PTSD, who make a plea every year for quiet.

 

 

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The rage of Trumpian gun fanatics! Around here they’ve been going after the likes of Rhode Island state Sen. Josh Miller for his support of a state high-capacity gun magazine ban by attacking his two restaurants, in Providence – Trinity Brewhouse and the Hot Club -- with fake negative reviews, phony reservations and harassment of his employees. High-capacity magazines, of course, make it much, much easier to kill dozens, even hundreds, of people with just one military-style rifle. Isn’t it comforting to know that some of our twitchy, insecure neighbors only feel safe, or at least strong, when they have them?

 

 

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Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker seeks to lure some companies to relocate to, or at least expand in, the state since the U.S. Supremes’ anti-abortion-rights decision has led to effective bans in Red States. I’m skeptical that the Bay State’s (and other New England states’) abortion-rights stance will be all that important for economic development. We’ll see over the next year. Better recruitment tools include that New England’s public education and other public services are generally much better than in Red States, as are its private institutions; poverty and gun violence are much less, and, increasingly, global warming’s effects down South and, related to that, that we have lots of fresh water. The anti-gay animus in Red States would be another lure.

 

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With the state of the international economy fragile, voters seem likely to give the GOP/Anon control of Congress in this November’s election. But what are their specific policies, besides lower or no taxes and fewer environmental and other regulations for their billionaire funders? What’s their platform? They had none in 2020.

 

Here’s the latest ranking of gasoline prices by country:

 

And ranking of inflation rates:

You might find this interesting, too:

 

 

 

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Released last week

Read this entertaining new book: Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, by Tim Miller.

 

 

 

 

Beefing Up NATO

The most important international news of last week was NATO’s official agreement to admit Sweden and Finland as members. They have always been Western countries, at least culturally, and for years have engaged in some military coordination with the alliance but Russia’s attack on Ukraine has reminded them of the growing perils they face from Vladimir Putin’s regime. Finland, by the way, with its long border with the mass-murderers next door, seems particularly well-prepared to fight despite its small population.

Kudos to Joe Biden for facilitating this.

And good work in his arranging for the first permanent U.S. military presence in Poland and boosting troop strength in Europe to 100,000 from the 80,000 before Feb. 24, when Putin’s war began.  (Will we eventually have to bring back the draft?) “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,’’ including in America, which itself has been facing the threat, seasoned with real violence, of a fascist dictatorship.

 

While it’s at it, NATO should move fast to tighten relations with Japan, which, with Australia, is NATO’s most important Asia/Pacific ally, to help confront both Russia and the aggressive Orwellian dictatorship of China, at least a partial Russian ally. (Think Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1940.) The Japanese, with the world’s third-biggest economy and a healthy democracy, very much needs and wants that closer relationship with the West.

 

 

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PHOTO: GoLocal

Busy Fare-Free Route

It was good news to learn that the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, following the lead of experiments in Worcester and Boston and a smaller one in Central Falls, will provide fare-free service on RIPTA’s most important bus service – the R-Line, starting Sept. 1.

 

This should help reduce congestion (and expensive road wear-and-tear) a little bit on RIPTA’s busiest route, which runs from the Cranston-Providence line through downtown Providence and the East Side and ends at the Pawtucket Transit Center, across from Slater Mill. This will also, of course, reduce the burning of earth-killing fossil fuels, if only slightly. Yes, the experiment will lose the state some fare revenue but it could offset that with less wear and tear from cars on the roads and by boosting its economy (and thus tax revenues) by making it easier for people, especially low-income folks, to get to work, shop and so on. That would be good for business.

 

 

Energy Bright Spots

In other energy-related news (I keep harping on this sector because it’s so central to the environment, economics, U.S. politics and international geopolitics),  there’s increasing hope that biomass technology can play an important role in reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Biomass technology uses decaying farm and food waste and municipal garbage to create a fuel that could replace standard fossil-fuel-based aviation fuel, whose use is a substantial contributor to global warming and air pollution.

 

As I learned in a recent article in Science magazine, in March 2021 chemist Derek Vardon and his colleagues “detailed the biomass technology in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences along with calculations revealing the resulting jet fuel could be nearly as cheap as the petroleum-based version. Because the carbon it contains originated in plants, which drew it from the atmosphere, the net emissions from bio-based jet fuel would only be a fraction of those from fossil fuel.’’

 

Hit this link to read the Science article:

 

Meanwhile, let’s note that much of the current natural-gas pipeline network in New England can be repurposed to carry such green energy as hydrogen, renewable natural gas (RNG) and geothermal energy.

 

Of course, we’ll need a variety of options to escape the intensifying environmental and geopolitical catastrophe of fossil-fuel burning and  to boost national and regional energy independence. They will help us weaken our petrostate enemies abroad and reduce the corrosive political and economic power of those far-right-run Red States (most of them subsidized by federal income taxes paid in Blue States) producing most U.S. oil, gas, and coal.

 

 

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Trump on January 6

Mob Business as Usual

Consider Trump’s threats against witnesses called by the committee investigating the volatile thug-in-chief’s ferocious attempts to stay in office, by any means:

 

One still publicly unidentified (and presumably fearful) witness told the committee: "What the {Trump servants} said to me is, as long as I continue to be a team player, they know I'm on the right team ... I'm protecting who I need to protect, you know, I'll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World. And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceeded through my depositions and interviews with the committee." 

 

Another witness said someone called him/her and was told that an unnamed person "wants me to let you know that they are thinking about you. He knows you're loyal, and you're going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition."

 

He’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse?

 

Good old-fashioned witness tampering – a felony, by the way.

 

Ah, the cowards, dissemblers and grifters who keep Trump World going, with the help of far-right billionaire businessmen (recalling the Krupps, etc., who backed Hitler), millions of moronic/ignorant voters/suckers looking for a leader who speaks to their fears and resentments as the wider world changes too fast for them, and, from time to time,  the likes of Vladimir Putin, an early Trump political promoter, operating in the nightmare swamp of social media.

 

Having watched Trump and his low-life lackeys for decades, I can tell you that nothing that happened on Jan. 6, 2021, surprised me all that much after I thought about it for a few minutes.

 

By the way, here’s a common definition of traditional conservatism: a cultural, social and political philosophy that seeks to promote and preserve traditional social institutions and practices and a wariness about dramatic policy changes. I don’t think that the Trumpers quite fall under this definition.

 

 

Let Us Pray

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that a Washington State public high school football coach has the right to pray on the 50-yard line of the field after games was no surprise. The current far-right-packed court favors evangelicals and Catholics. And of course, the coach’s public prayers come with implied coercion: Most players feel compelled to please the coach.

 

Whatever….

 

It will be amusing to see what happens if a Muslim or Jewish coach tries to conduct such prayers. And I wonder what the Founding Fathers, who tended to be Deists, would have made of the coach’s actions (and of football, for that matter).

 

No wonder so many of the young are losing respect for organized religion.

 

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I was slightly irritated the other day to hear a former illegal alien from Mexico complaining on the BBC about the pressure on herself and others to assimilate themselves into American life. Well, without a lot of assimilation our crazy, fragmented country would cease to be a country. We need to encourage assimilation and national coherence through a big expansion in mandatory English language and civics instruction. And yes, the porosity of our long southern border, under both GOP and Democratic administrations, makes America harder to govern and the country more politically unstable. Many U.S. businesses love illegal immigration because it provides lots of hard-working, very low-wage people.

 

 

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We were driving through the spiffy town of Manchester, Vt. (in the shadow of mighty Mount Equinox), the other week, where we enjoyed electronic speed-limit warning signs that flash  “thank you’’ for staying within the limit. Vermont nice  -- and good marketing. Manchester also has the fabulous Northshire Bookstore, the big Southern Vermont Arts Center, with museum, and Hildene, which was the grand summer home of Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s son, and his wife, Mary Harlan Lincoln.

Robert Whitcomb is a veteran editor and writer. Among his jobs, he has served as the finance editor of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris; as a vice president and the editorial-page editor of The Providence Journal; as an editor and writer in New York for The Wall Street Journal,  and as a writer for the Boston Herald Traveler (RIP). He has written newspaper and magazine essays and news stories for many years on a very wide range of topics for numerous publications, has edited several books and movie scripts and is the co-author of among other things, Cape Wind.


 

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