I’m Camping On The Left

Is This The Right Camp?

For much of my life I’ve been a Democrat. There was a long period when I had no party affiliation, and even some several years when I thought I was a libertarian. But that was before I realized libertarianism is a fraud, and while I was still under the influence of a misunderstanding of self-sufficiency.

And voting  for Jimmy Carter in 1980, I got swept up in Reaganism enough to vote for him in 1984. I was, I admit, a fool about politics and power, and suffered from Dunning-Kruger, although I don’t think that term was yet to be coined by those gentlemen.

My infatuation with libertarianism was behind my registering as an independent, and it took some years to overcome it. I give all the credit to my discovery of critical thinking and skepticism. This gets more important as I go on.

It is important because prior to that it was fairly easy to persuade me of anti-government positions with the rhetoric of the tea party. The hidden cabals of international power, the deep conspiracies behind the Federal Reserve System, and even sovereign citizenry were topics that grabbed my attention with the power of religion. And really, it was like religious belief that it held me.

Eventually I recognized a lie. And when I looked deeper the walls cracked, and the new tool of critical thinking led me to skepticism. It was during that time I came to realize that I had no real means of telling truth from lies, or fact from fiction. Apart, that is, from who was telling me. And since I was predisposed to distrust the government, whomever was the opposite gained credibility. I was truly amazed at what looking things up could tell you. That is, looking things up with a checklist to guide me.

It is the usual agents of who and what, and why one should be trusted. It is verifiable data and consensus of experts. And it is seeing yellow and red flags.

The first one that really started to break me free was about the Great Depression. In learning about the gold standard and sound money, I read a lot written by people from the Austrian School of Economics. And there is much of what they think that is right, especially if you consider inflation the greatest evil in economics. I don’t. But really it is simply an economic agenda for the libertarian wealthy. And to say that it opposes Keynesian Economics is a gross understatement. The Austrian School loathes the Keynesians.

I won’t dwell on the economic differences between them, partly because I am unqualified to do so with any grace, but mostly because it isn’t important to this paper. Suffice it to say that our re-emergence from the Great Depression and the robust economy of the world in the decades since is the result of Keynesian economics. What is important is what one of those libertarian economists wrote about the Great Depression. (No, I can’t remember with certainty who said it.) He wrote that most people did very well during the Great Depression. Butter sales went up. Yes, he used butter sales as an expression of good times.

We all are familiar with the Great Depression. It began shortly after the Wall Street crash of 1929, and as the market value of so many companies collapsed, businesses closed and laid off workers. Since they had no income to make purchases, the businesses they frequented also suffered, leading to more layoffs. Soon a quarter of the entire American workforce was without income.At the time there was no widespread unemployment insurance, no Social Security program for seniors, no government food stamp or welfare programs. The people who lost in that cycle, tens of millions of them, were left at the mercy of the grace of charity of individuals and private organizations, such as churches.

Government spending, following the economic advice of Kenneth Galbraith (A Kenyesian), gradually pulled the country from the pits of depression. World War II came along and soon everyone was working more than they wanted.

The Austrian School was largely Laissez-faire. Let this natural cycle work itself out and eventually the problem would go away. Of course, while we waited people were dying. Those opposed to government intervention wanted the problems to be solved by the private sector, and voluntarily at that. That didn’t and wouldn’t work. The path they were on would lead to civil unrest and likely end (as it did in parts of Europe) with authoritarian government.

So you can see that for the Austrian School to be right, the story of the Great Depression had to be different. The idea that people’s lives were less important than the unregulated markets and no holds barred capitalism, was a bit too cold a sales pitch for the public. Better to make the depression sound more mild. Tell the people that it only affected a few, and well, perhaps it was their own fault.

And since some stats showed that butter sales had gone up, and butter is something that seems as more a luxury than a necessity, it follows that the Great Depression was good for most people.

There were many other points included in the argument, all crafted and cobbled together to create the impression that things were better than we were told, and that perhaps we were lied to about the horrors of that depression. Lied to by a Keynesian government that was trying to control you and take away your freedom! (Insert sarcasm emoji here.)

And here’s where critical thinking really took a-hold of me. It grabbed me by the collar and demanded that I see it for what it could do, and especially how it could show me the error of revealed truth. You see, the story I was being told was convincing because it was enlightening me to the story of the global bankers and their plot of world domination. (See Rothschilds, International Jews, and maybe even the Illuminati.)

It began as revealed truth. A story with a plot, some villains, and a way out.

But they needed to address the Great Depression, which was decidedly defeated by Keynesian economics and support directed at the bottom of the economy.

But I grew up hearing first hand accounts of the horrors of those times. And had read and studied a great deal about how FDR had pulled us from the brink. The story the Austrian economists were telling didn’t seem to reflect what I knew. But the mention of butter was really a red flag. Well, all farm products really.

World War I ate up (pardon the pun) a lot of food resources, as wars will. Great amounts of food were sent overseas to feed the troops, as well as to support the allies. And to meet this greater demand, farmers seeded more land. And with that came new and more modern equipment that could increase the amount of food that could be raised. Farmers took advantage of this and bought expensive equipment, planted more crops, and bred more animals. Diary animals. Have you smelled where I’m heading?

For some years after the war we continued to export some of this produce, but in the 1920s, those markets diminished. The abundance that was welcome less than a decade before, had no market now. Prices began to collapse, and many dairy farmers threw away some of their crops. Butter was cheap. And butter also had competition from oleomargarine. This was a new product made from vegetable fat. It was a double whammy. (As a side note, Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, passed laws prohibiting oleomargarine from being sold in a yellow color. Butter was yellow, margarine was white. The margarine producers had to include a packet of yellow food coloring the customer could mix into the margarine to get the butter color.)

Butter had never really been a luxury item per se, but it wasn’t free. But when prices tanked it became an easy source of cheap calories. For the three-fourths of the workforce who still had jobs, and for that smaller percentage whose income had not gone down, butter, and food in general, was cheaper. This was compounded when you add the huge numbers who had little to eat.

And here’s where this red flag has meaning: The people telling me this were economists. They knew why butter sales were up, but still tried to suggest it was something different. While they weren’t lying exactly, they were certainly using this economic reality to suggest the Great Depression was a positive.

When you find the people you are listening to resort to deceit to make their point, you have good reason to be skeptical of their message.

As I mentioned earlier, I was swept up in conspiracy theories at that time. The whole concept of an international cabal of bankers working as puppet masters to the world governments was presented as an explanation of why the average person wasn’t getting ahead, or even at times, not even keeping up. International organizations, both NGO and governmental, were pilloried by those I was listening to. The United Nations, The World Bank, The Trilateral Commission, and others were all lumped together as examples of the One World Government that the masters were trying to create. Once achieved, this government could enslave all the people. (So the story went.)

Amongst the NGOs, the Bilderberg Group was lambasted by writers and conspiracy advocates.

The Bilderberg Group is an annual meeting of business, NGO, and governmental leaders that meet annually. They are represented at a two-thirds, one-third ratio of Europeans and Americans respectively. They are named after the hotel where the first meeting was held. I’ll get to what they do in a bit.

And it was from Alex Jones that I became aware of them. Alex Jones runs a website called InfoWars. Always loud, always bombastic and seemingly on the edge of panic about these international devils, Jones showed up at the entrance to their conference sticking microphones into car windows and asking them loaded questions that they ignored. Jones then portrayed them as a cabal meeting in secret to plot their evils for the coming year. They would be manipulating markets and creating crises they could use to gain power and wealth. Jones told us that this group was completely shrouded in secrecy. Few of the members were known, their meetings were moved annually to hide them, and everything discussed was a secret.

I ate it up. For a while.

Then critical thinking kicked in. If this was all so secret, how was Jones showing up, and how did he know what they talked about?

 I looked them up. You can too. The Bilderberg Group has a website. They formed in the early cold war period in an effort to build international cooperation as a check against future war. After seeing Europe suffer through two world wars, the first one the worst war ever, but only until the second one. And that second world war ended with the clear understanding that a third world war would likely end civilization and could wipe out humanity.

The people who started these meetings sought to promote western style capitalism, trade, and democratic governments as the best check against future conflict.

But are they lying? Is this just a cover as Alex Jones tells us?

Well, they tell us when and where the next meeting will take place. They tell us who the permanent members are, and who is invited to their next meeting. And the subjects they discuss are not secret.

Where’s the secret part? Chatham House Rules.

Chatham House Rules are a set of rules covering meetings that encourages contemporaneous speech and open dialog. This is best achieved if the speakers don’t have to worry that they will be misrepresented in the press at home. So no one is quoted. The attendees make tell whomever they like what was talked about, but not who said what.

So, it became clear to me that Alex Jones was either the most incompetent researcher ever, or he was lying to further his agenda.

In any case, what is clear is that Jones is not a reliable source of information. And it is also clear that this grand conspiracy that he pitches doesn’t hold much water.

Yes, world and business leaders from various NATO aligned countries meet annually to discuss the best approach to build a future free from the threat of large scale conflict. Particularly the type that would result in a thermonuclear exchange.

If I haven’t laid the path I’ve followed well enough, I apologize. But perhaps the reader will get the idea that in using critical thinking and skepticism, I’ve begun to see that those who complain most about the economics of Keynes, or the motives of international organizations, are quite willing to mislead and even lie to promote their agenda. Once someone does that, it is a pretty good sign that their message isn’t that good.

When the great thinkers spoke about the Marketplace of Ideas, they were addressing free speech mostly. The idea is that in such a marketplace, truth will prevail. This goes back to poet John MIlton in the 17th century, and followed the discourse of many great people through to today. Thomas Jefferson said we can tolerate “error of opinion […] where reason was left free to combat it.”

But lies? Mark Twain offered that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has its shoes on, or something like that. That so many people are credulous to conspiracy and sheer nuttery is maddening.

Back to the point about the Great Depression, and The One World Government conspiracies, and all the rest of those conspiracies. They’re all promoted from the libertarian right. The libertarian right thinks we should have a strictly limited government, if any at all. They think that they should be left to pursue their agendas and their profits and their quest for power unchecked by the mass of the people. But this is a hard sell as straight talk. The late 19th and early 20th century was called the Gilded Age, and the most gilded of the people were the robber barons. The unfettered capitalism of that time led to widespread poverty and suffering. It led to a great disparity of wealth between the richest and the rest of the people. And ultimately, it led to the Great Depression.

Look around us today, and we have tent cities all over the country and great, long lines at food pantries. And it is only the injection of money from governments along with some charity that keeps the current crisis from exceeding the Great Depression in its effect.

A stat released the week I began this paper said that 10% of the people own 89% of the stocks in American business. And it is the stock markets that lead and end the economic reports on the news.

This is the result of capitalism without checks.

We went through this at the turn of the previous century and we got horrific poverty for many, and astounding wealth for a few.

Then reformers and progressives like Theodore Roosevelt muscled up and checked the power of the few, pushing it back to the people. A decade later the few took the power back, and we got the Great Depression and horrific poverty for many, again.

Then FDR and the New Deal brought the people back into power, and spread the wealth around. Poverty declined, the middle class grew, and average people got a better share of the national wealth that they had helped create.

This lasted through a few decades and along came Reagan to give the few back the power, and create a larger gap between the rich and the poor.

Since then few of the elected officials have done enough to check this. Even some of the Democratic party leaders coddled the wealthy.

And again we have astounding wealth for a few, and horrific poverty for many.

And here we have that wealthy segment of the population agitating racial wars and left/right identity politics.

For decades now, the wealthy have convinced half the working class population that their suffering is the fault of other working class people.

They foster a culture war, while we should be fighting a class war.

America Was Not Built On Morals

America wasn’t built on morals. It was built on reason.

I reject everyone’s morals universally. All but my own. And everyone else should do the same.

Morals are personal beliefs that guide your life. They establish the base conduct for one’s self, or at least the standard to which one aspires.

But one should reject any morals that are assigned to them from others. Should I or anyone else tell you what your morals should be, I or they are wrong. Both in the content and the intent. And while people may share some or many moral views, this is and should be solely because of coincidence or because those morals align with reason in how it promotes the well being of people.

And when I say that America wasn’t built or founded on morals, I do not mince words. The USA was founded on reason, and our Constitution says so in the preamble.

In order to form a more perfect union.

This says in striking clarity that we are not following the dictates of some arbitrary authority, but rather that we are building a nation, a union of many, that can and should grow better as it ages.

The founders rejected the rule of those that claimed prescribed authority. In its place they put the will of the majority, as negotiated by democratically elected representatives who used reason to achieve the desired results.

What were those desired results?

Establish justice.

Insure domestic tranquility.

Provide for the common defense.

Promote the general welfare.

Secure the blessing of liberty.

Not a lick of morals to be found here. None. And this isn’t because the founders were amoral, though by today’s standards we must conclude that the ownership of other humans as chattel can hardly be considered moral. And it should be noted here that in forming a more perfect union we ended that practice. See how well this framework of government works?

And it isn’t because the founders didn’t have personal morals to guide them. Everyone at every time has had personal morals to guide them.

The founders recognized that no one set of morals could be accepted by all as a framework for government. And that if it was to be a government of the people, it could not be one that selected the morals of a particular group. And they made that clear in the Constitution as well. After laying out the branches of government and the duties of each branch, they added ten amendments. These first made clear where the power lies (with the people,) and also established that amending the Constitution was the method of making the union more perfect.

The first amendment made clear that there would be no state religion, nor would anyone be prohibited from practicing any religion they choose. Herein it was made clear that morals are personal, and that it doesn’t matter how many people agree to a certain set of morals, it cannot be allowed to use them to establish law.

How then, do we do so?

By asking if the law helps in establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty.

This is the core of what we built, and should ever remain the core.

We The People.

These are the first three words of the Constitution. And their importance cannot be overstated. More than anything written in the Declaration of Independence, the opening of the Constitution was world changing. It was the first time in all of history that a government was formed by the people, and designed to govern with the consent of the people. There are no three words that are more important in the history of government.

People forming a government to see to their own needs. Not a king declaring his authority by virtue of birthright. Not an emperor by right of conquest. Not a theocrat claiming divine authority. Not even, as in ancient Rome, a body of senators from a single class who had formerly been advisors to kings. The American experiment is The People selecting from among their body, representatives to speak and make laws on their behalf. And in so doing they put trust in the basic concept that most of the time, most of the people will agree on the right thing. And the one exception is dealing with the rights of the others.

Here the concept is referred to as majority will; minority right.

That is, the majority gets to select the leaders and in that way agree to the structure of government and the laws of the land. But they do not get to use their majority to deny or abrogate the liberty of the minority.

A minority can be a race, an ethnic background, or even the losing party in an election, as they become the minority simply by not winning. As an example, a majority cannot strip the minority of their right to vote. The majority cannot vote to install themselves as a permanent government, as it denies the right of the people to vote for a different government in future elections.

After the formation of the US Government, Ben Franklin was purportedly asked what they had created, and his famous response was, “A Republic, if you can keep it!”

But why might we not be able to keep it? What might wise old Mr. Franklin have envisioned that would put the new Republic at risk?

He, as with the rest of the founders, were schooled in reason. They were steeped like strong tea in the understanding of power and the tempting elixir that it represented to those who seek it. It is the nature of power to concentrate. It is the duty of a republican government to ensure that it does not.

The power is and rightfully belongs to the people. If there is one constant and unassailable truth of the United States it is this. Remember the first three words of our governing charter, of our Constitution: We The People.

The founders spread the power out and to the people. The first branch of government is the Legislature. That is the largest body. The People’s representatives. They are tasked with making laws. And in a body of people representing the whole of the country, it is all but impossible to find a set of morals that all would agree to abide by.

This means that they have to argue and debate the benefits and detriments of proposed laws, and determine how they measure up against the five checks from the preamble. Establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.

Reason and persuasion.

Is it perfect? Not yet, but then, no one claimed it was – only that we work to make it more perfect.

Could it ever be perfect for everyone? No, unless everyone accepts that it must work for everyone, and sometimes that means it doesn’t benefit you.

And when this country was founded, we had a lot of “more perfect” to work on. Then, only white, property owning men could vote. By today’s standards it was abhorrent. It was misogynistic, racist, and classist. But it was a much broader base of power than it had been before. And over the years we saw the errors of our ways, at least somewhat and to some degrees, and we made it more perfect. We have near universal suffrage today. I say near universal, because we do still deny by law the voting of certain groups of people, such as prisoners in many states. And all three branches of government are populated to various degrees by members of every group. And yes, that is a good thing.

Who would accept a government made up entirely of people who were different than them? Would a white supremacist accept a government entirely black? Would a man accept a government where men weren’t allowed to vote?

So the opposite must then be true. The basic element of our government is The People. And thus the people, all of them, must participate. And if someone does not like a particular color, gender, sexual identity, or other, having a say in our government, or having one’s own identity group have only a minority say, then they must come to reason. They must accept that it would be wrong for any individual or group to be denied participation by dint of some feature or condition. In short, they must get the fuck over it.

And we should all want every group to participate, and all the peoples voices heard. It cannot be the America that is best if we have preferred citizens and secondary citizens. We cannot stand long with some group owning control of government and considering largely their own wishes first. And when it comes to morals, some people and some groups are so certain of the morals prescribed for them, that they abandon reason and demand national adherence to those beliefs.

We, all of us. We The People, need to make certain that the government is Of, By, and For All of The People.

What They Are Afraid Of

The political right has been using the word “Socialism” as a pejorative against the left for more than one hundred years. And to be sure, much of what has been promoted by the progressives in the US, from the Teddy Roosevelt “Square Deal” Republicans to the Franklin Roosevelt “New Deal” Democrats, aligned with much of the platform of the various incarnations of the Socialist Party over that time. Socialism was what they called every progressive policy advanced in the 20th century. Whether it was worker compensation, child labor laws, unemployment insurance, social security, or any number of other measures that were taking to alleviate suffering of the people.

And while it is easy enough to see that a government of the people ought to be able to make government work for the benefit of all of the people, and while setting in place some solid footings from which the people can strive for a better life seems to be a policy that only the most cruel and selfish would find issue with; the political right is using that word differently. After all, conservatives also rely on all of those benefits placed there by the elected government over the years. And all one has to do is review the political platforms of Republicans during the middle 20th century, which included Eisenhower’s term, as well as that of Nixon, and you’d see positions that could only be called leftest today. Whether beefing up Social Security or creating universal healthcare, Republicans of old were more like moderate Democrats today.

And of course politics change over time, and the political parties have switched places on some issues, and independently changed as well. I’ve written before of the timeline of the big flip of the parties in the US and how we ended up with Republicans embracing white supremacy and supporting the interests of the corporate and billionaire class, while the Democratic Party became aligned with labor, women, racial minorities, and the “others” so routinely maligned by the right.

And when we hear conservatives cry “Socialism!” at every turn of Democratic lawmaking, we are mostly aware that most of the common people who are saying it have little real understanding of the political philosophy of socialism; or communism, Marxism, or capitalism either, but are instead parroting the words issued by their media mouthpieces, who in turn, are saying so on the orders of the billionaires and corporations. (Of course, not all billionaires or corporations, but enough of them, and especially enough of a handful of committed actors.)

But since Roosevelt championed progressivism in the wee years of the 20th century and used government to curb corporate power, break up monopolies, and bust trusts; and then the social progress made by that second Roosevelt to pull us from the Great Depression, billionaires never stopped being a thing. It is true that more wealth was held by the middle and working classes after World War II, and the tax on top earnings was very high, regardless of which party was in power, the rich were still plenty rich. There was no communist equality of wealth created, and the rich did not suffer a lick.

Why then have they spent such earnest efforts into breaking the democracy and egalitarian trend of centrist politics over the last forty years?

It would certainly seem that some of them, or perhaps many, would like to see a less democratic Republic in this country. Many have openly advocated for authoritarian government, and even the practical elimination of effective liberal politics.

During the early days of the Franklin Roosevelt administration, a Marine Corps Major General named Smedly Butler went to Congress and in front of a microphone to the people and told of being contacted by an agent of the billionaire class with a plot to stage a military coup to replace the liberal Roosevelt with a fascist government. You see, Butler had been the go to guy when the monied interests wanted the US government to use its military muscle to overthrow democratic governments in Central America and install puppets sympathetic to their interests. They thought he was still their man. Butler had enough of it.

And do not miss the international nature of big business even in those days. Adolph Hitler had gained the support of that same class in Germany by attacking democracy as a path to political and economic security. (I will bring this up again later.)

They were the same people, in spirit if not in practice, and the same spirit lives today.

But what is it about democracy that so terrifies them? In 1933, we might understand their fears better. The Soviet Union was gaining power, and the control of industry and wealth had fallen under the control of the Communist Party. It should be noted here that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics weren’t actually socialist; nor were they communist or even Marxist, though they carried elements of each of those philosophies with them. That was Stalinism. It was nothing more than another form of authoritarian government. But the view from the west seemed to show that the results of Communism would lead to an eradication of capitalist power.

But by the turn of the 21st century, those labels were no longer valid. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and the Communist Party that held complete power in China was simply a different version of authoritarianism, but with the benefit of capitalism for those willing to submit to the party.

All across Europe the governments had built substantial economic safety nets that supported their entire populations. Universal healthcare became ubiquitous. A high standard of living for the people, substantive protections of people rights, and minimal intrusions on liberty are the norm. And none of those countries were close to the ideals of communism, nor were they an existential threat to capitalism or capitalists. And the rich were richer than ever before. Even the various modest proposals from the left wouldn’t change their lives at all.

So why did billionaire and corporations support a populist and aspiring authoritarian like Trump? Why are they seemingly willing to fund a coup against democracy? What do they see that is so frightening that they would dismantle the American Republic and replace it with an unknown?

The answer is found in racism.

To be specific, the Great Replacement Theory.

Earlier I mentioned Hitler gaining support from Germany’s wealthy industrialists and bankers. He did this with an attack on democracy and in support of fascism. He was creating National Socialism (another misuse of the word socialism) to stop the horror that democracy would bring.

What was this horror? Equality.

What Hitler proposed, and what is believed by scads of people in both political and economic centers of power, is that democracy at its core is egalitarian, and with the spread of democracy a day would come when white people would no longer hold sway over the planet. It would eventually happen that the votes of blacks in Africa would have equal value to those of whites in North America and Europe. It was this fear of loss of racial power to what they believed to be inferior races that motivated the economic leaders to adopt fascism. That, and the perceived threats from communism, which too promised greater equality.

We are all aware of Hitler’s fascination with racial superiority, and the ideal of the Arian race. Too many of us think that such a belief largely died with him in a bunker in 1945. Too many think that the democratic ideals of international unity are on a permanent upward trajectory. Too many think that deep-seated racism and racial segregation linger only in some few southern states, those of the rebellion of the 19th century. And outside of those states, is limited to the poor working whites scattered across the more rural areas of the country.

But to think this is naive.

Racism. Deep, committed racism is widespread in America, and crosses all economic lines. There is no such thing as curing racism with higher education. It has been, and continues to be true, that a decent person traveling off to college and encountering widespread racial diversity for the first time may well abandon the racial teachings of their parents and neighbors, and have a much more inclusive view of race.

But this is not universal, or even close. One can find in colleges and universities today, as was present in days past and long past, groups that advocate for racial superiority and segregation. Groups that foster these racial sentiments among other whites who enroll at those schools. Groups that form clandestine fraternities, based entirely on white power and continued hierarchy in America.

I saw a segment of a news program, where being interviewed was a former white supremacist. He made it clear that the racial superiority crowd was well represented in every economic class.

We don’t have to look too hard to see that in America. Our former President spent years attacking his predecessor with calls to prove he was a real American. Which was an absurd challenge at face, one without merit. Trump was also the man who called for the death penalty for a group of black men that were convicted of the murder of a white woman, only to be later exonerated. The real shocker to decent people was Trump’s refusal to recant his call for their execution after this revelation. And he was the same man who, with his father in the real estate business, illegally blocked African Americans from renting apartments in his buildings. He said they brought down the real estate value. And he is the same man who as President, said there were “many fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist protest against the removal of Confederate statues, that resulted on the killing of a counter protester.

A hundred years ago President Woodrow Wilson was an avowed racist and segregationist. Even FDR didn’t do much to improve racial integration. We make steps, but have not completed the walk.

The Great Replacement Theory holds that increased birth rates of minorities will cause the white people to be replaced as to the power and status that they hold.

The part about the numbers is true. Estimates say that by the middle of this century the United States will be a majority minority country. White people will still be the largest number, but they will be less than half of the total, with the combination of other races coming into majority.

And white supremacists fear this. They fear that should they fail to stop this demographic shift, they will be replaced and reduced to second class status. A position they have no problem seeing other races hold.

And the real surprise of this is to find that feelings of racial superiority are pervasive in America. People with no apparent aversion to other races catch themselves with a twinge at the thought of losing majority status. People I know who admired Muhammad Ali as a fighter and would treasure a handshake or autograph from him, find themselves instinctively rooting for the white guy in a boxing match between two unknown fighters.

People who interact with various races on a regular basis, and who even have black supervisors, will still find, while taking a deep dive into their own soul, the belief that their genetics has made them better than others.

Prior to the Civil War, a small landowner in the South could view himself on equal status with the rich plantation owner by dint of their shared condition of owning slaves. Even if he owned just one slave they were superior, and ending slavery took that away.

There is no reasonable basis for the belief in racial hierarchy. None. It is a social construction to perpetuate positions of power. But you won’t convince racists of this any time soon. And in truth, if we measure people by character, the folks who seek to apply skin tone as a mark of superiority only drive down their own status. The bare idea of assigning yourself a top rank because of your skin color is in itself a mark of an inferior intellect.

We shouldn’t ignore race in America. The reality is that racial equity and justice have not been achieved. Racism is a national sickness. And you cannot cure a sickness until you treat it, and you cannot treat that sickness if you pretend it isn’t real.

To come around again to the front of this piece I say, the entrenched racist power is afraid of democracy for exactly the same reasons it has always feared it. It puts them on equal footing and erases the illusion of the superiority that they hold.

And fascism, to use that word for the current American brand of authoritarianism, is not going to make America great. It is only going to make rich, white people great. The poor and working white are closer in situation to the poor and working classes of the other races than they are to the rich people of their own color.

But like the poor southern farmer who likens himself to his plantation ruling neighbor based on their mutual participation in “That Peculiar Institution,” many in today’s white population are guiled into thinking they share some upper status with the billionaires.

And just like in days of old, it is a lie, a trick by the moneyed elite to keep the lower classes down. The rich have been telling the working class that the obstacles to their happiness are other working class people. And until that changes, and people abandon racism, this will be the model of our future.

Pelosi’s Chess Move

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi showed her strategic brilliance again in the multistage chess move on staffing her Select Committee on the January 6 Insurrection.

After appointing Liz Chaney straight away because of how badly her own party had treated her; which sent the message that she was ready for honest political rivals to participate on this committee, she then gave House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy the opportunity to do the right thing and appoint sincere Republicans to help get the answers Americans want. He didn’t, of course, and tried to sabotage the committee with a couple of human hand grenades in Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. But Pelosi held a reverse card and vetoed those two choices. McCarthy then pulled all of his appointments in a move he probably saw as clever. It wasn’t.

Now she appoints Adam Kinzinger, An Illnois Republican and military veteran who is seen by all but the cultists as a stand up guy whose loyalty is to the country. This raises the esteem of the committee in the eyes of independents and moderate Republicans.

If you don’t think that Pelosi had this figured from the start, realize that she could have appointed Kinzinger straight away, a job he would have certainly accepted. But doing so at that time would have done little more then label him as an anti-Trump RINO, and left the committee looking more partisan. It is this timing, apparently thought out well ahead, that shows her brilliance. Build a committee without Republican input and it looks partisan; let the Republicans make a blatantly partisan move, and the respond with a measured selection that solidifies the sincerity and gravitas of the committee.

Somewhere in this piece I should remind all of who in the public Pelosi needs to impress with these choice. Everyone on the left is already on board. They’re all just glad that this committee is formed and will investigate. And those in the cult of Trump are unreachable by any means. That leaves independents and moderate Republicans. Years of polls show that people in the country don’t split down the middle in party identification. With a small fluctuation from time to time the country is typically about 30% Republican, 30% Democratic, and 40% independent. That slides up and down for both parties, but the shift isn’t from one to the other, but back and forth between one party and independent. Currently the trend has shown more D and less R, with the R being only 24% in the Gallup poll covering the first half of June, 2021, which was the latest at this writing. In that poll Democrats placed at 30%, and independents at 44%. This isn’t a record, but on the high side for independents over time. But the survey always shows independents being the largest group. And while these people skew left and right and all over the place at times, the reason they identify as independent is that they would rather pick the person over the party. This doesn’t mean they are always politically savvy, or even well informed. But it does mean that they see themselves as open to information, and decidedly not loyal to a party.

These are the people the Pelosi needs to appeal to. Not only will they decide the next election, one where democracy itself may hinge on Democrats retaining majorities in both houses, but they will influence their Representatives and Senators in how they vote on legislation. Thus it is crucial for this select committee to be view by independents as earnest and non-partisan. The right has tried to dismiss the need for an investigation at all, and spent a lot of effort in trying to paint the actions of January 6 as benign; an effort that came across insulting to the intelligence of the public, and a clear attempt to gaslight the people. Others suggested that since there were some police and FBI investigations going on, there was no need for Congress to take part. This was a better counter-argument, because most Americans are not civically literate enough to understand the greater powers Congress has to subpoena evidence and compel testimony versus what police agencies can do, and the amount of time it would take for them to do so. Nor are they astute to the kinds of recommendations such a committee could make to prevent future such attacks that law enforcement would be reticent to do, as those policies would be the purview of Congress. But still, support remains for Congress investigating this attack on the Capitol in a manner similar to our 9/11 Commission. And people in the middle seem to have a growing suspicion of those who are trying so hard to stop it.

The play House Minority Leader McCarthy made early was to put the kibosh on a bipartisan Congressional Commission, by lobbying Senate Republicans to filibuster it. They did, and that Commission died. That Commission would have been equal in all parts between the parties, and included both the House and Senate, but with Trump being against it McCarthy and other Republicans fell in line. Their forecast was that any committee set up by Democrats alone would look as partisan as their own Benghazi Commission that spent four years smearing Hillary Clinton, only to decide in the end she did nothing wrong.

But here they have failed, because of the masterful strategy of Speaker Pelosi. It is now more likely that independents will pay attention to this investigation with a favorable eye towards its findings. And McCarthy’s attempts to turn it into a circus are raising more eyebrows. I suspect that independents and moderate Republicans are more inclined to think certain Republican elected officials have something to hide regarding the actions of January 6.

What to expect now from the right is continued attempts to delegitimize the committee through innuendo and accusations of anti-Trump sentiment. But they now have a taller hill to climb. It is quite possible that the more they complain and holler, the more distrust they bring on themselves. To paraphrase a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, me thinks though doth protest too much. And the minority leader now is saying that House Republicans will form their own committee to investigate various elements of political violence that transpired around the country the previous year. But because of the actions already taken, this looks the the distraction it is intended to be. It will have some effect, but after this exchange over the select committee I judge that it will not get the kind of attention McCarthy wants.

Congratulations Madam Speaker, you have established credibility in this commission that few thought possible. I look forward to seeing the findings.

Charge Him, Arrest Him, And Fight The Rebellion That Follows

Let’s keep this simple. Forget about Trump wanting to be a kingmaker, or drive the future of the Republican Party. His first priority is staying out of prison.
That’s it. Everything he does has that as a motivator.

With criminal investigations going on in several states and at the federal level, and the statements made by former confidants and employees, it seems a good bet that  we could see charges against him in the near future.

And he really only has one tool left. The threat of his base becoming violent (again) and the civil unrest that would follow. This is why he is keeping his base stoked and continuing the false claim about the 2020 election.

For those who don’t understand why some of those on the right keep defending him, understand that they know what he will do, but think appeasement will work. They can see as easily as anyone else that Republican Party unity is impossible with Trump in the picture. Yet they won’t give him up.

Yes, there are plenty of them who are willing to throw in with abandoning lawful elections and adopting authoritarianism. But many others will just pretend that the lies are true out of fear of some socialist boogeyman, and accept fascism as necessary.

Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen correctly predicted many of the actions Trump has taken, including that Trump would never peacefully concede power. He has since predicted that Trump will flee the country before facing justice in court.

I say we need to include him launching a civil war to try and stop justice as a possibility. Will he do it? Yes. He is a psychopath that lives by the motto of when you are hit, hit back harder. There is no good reason to think he would put anything ahead of his own safety.

I once called for making a deal to stop that potential conflict. But I no longer think that is sensible. Nothing Trump has ever done should lead anyone to think he will keep a deal. And we have seen him get away with crimes and become encouraged to do more. Hello Senator Susan Collins, did he learn his lesson yet?

We have a long road ahead of us, and we are no longer in a country where the masses accept the outcome of elections when they lose. We now have a substantial minority who feel they are entitled to win, and that anything other than winning is fraud. Those who disagree with them are now the enemy, and no longer their fellow countrymen.

Too many of those will become an insurgency, and when Donald Trump is charge and arrested, they will become violent. Maybe not that day, but as certain as the sunrise they will.

But what we face is a loss of the Republic, and a future of dictatorship. Not just of Trump, but of those would be tyrants who wait in the wings to take the reins.

Appeasement cannot and will not work.

We must slay the dragon, and conquer his cult of followers.

An Atheist On National Prayer Day

In 2008 The Freedom From Religion Foundation sued the US Federal Government over National Prayer day, arguing that the ability of the government to assign a day to prayer amounted to an endorsement of religion, and that it could cause harm to those who do not believe in deities by stigmatizing them.
They lost on appeal as not having standing, the court ruling that no requirements were in place to pray. Any individual could not participate.

The impulse for atheists is to object to such promotions on national scale, as such actions subordinate the people to whatever deity they imagine is real. The power of a democracy, in this case the American Republic, is the willingness of the people to come together and solve our problems with solutions built on reason and practical value. Prayer on the other hand, may give people the illusion that god (whatever that is) will take care of it. By surrendering our responsibility as citizens to the hand of providence we are in reality shirking our duty and simply accepting whatever occurs; whether that happens by chance or by the control of those who would abuse our trust for their own gain.

The atheist sees that in a democracy, the people are responsible for making things right and that to submit ourselves to the divine is futile. After all, the same god that spared the house from the tornado also brought that tornado. To pray for god to protect one from a pandemic seems to ignore why we accept a god who brought that pandemic in the first place.

Epicurus once asked:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. 

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. 

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? 

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” 

This question has never been satisfactorily answered. The default for those who believe is to advise that god works in mysterious ways. This empty platitude illustrates the weakness of the belief. It is surrendering to imagination when reason fails to provide answer.

On the National Day Of Prayer, people across the country will bow their heads and, while invoking the power of their preferred supernatural being(s), wash away some of their fears of what might happen, and relinquish some of their responsibility to affect that future.
And what they pray for will vary. Some will pray for personal guidance, some will pray for those who lead, some will pray for divine intervention, and some will pray for support of some endeavor they intend to undertake (whether that be for good or ill.)

But today I will join them.

Of course I do not believe any gods exist, and so I do not pray to, but rather for.

I will pray for peace. I will pray for my fellows of this land, that they may come to see their duty to each other. That they may accept the hard choice to engage with each other to make this a better world. I will pray not that others give up their gods, but that they see that their gods would want them to help heal the world. I will pray that people will use their own minds to see others as their fellows and not as their enemies. To find the common ground we share, and to see how much better it will be for them if everyone shares in the bounty that we (whether or not a god is behind it) have brought forth.

But as I pray I know that the only one my prayer will effect is me. But perhaps I too need to practice what I ask others to do. Perhaps in this prayer I gain some strength for my efforts at helping others.

The Stoics understood that we can only control our own actions. We cannot control what others do, but only how we respond.

It may be that my view of prayer is different from that of others. Perhaps it should be called meditating, or positive affirmations, or even just hope. But if my desire is for this country to come together and share in the efforts at solving the problems we face – that the world faces, then it falls on me to do my part in the coming together with others.

Today others are praying. So today, I too will pray.

The Flipping Of The American Political Parties

Okay folks, it’s time to clear up an issue of party identity.

The Republican and Democratic Parties have flipped over the years.
They did so in two stages, economic first, racial ideology second.

The Republican Party was formed before the Civil War as an abolitionist party. And the Democratic Party was the party of Andrew Jackson, and became the party of the Confederate South.
Today, the Democrats are removing Jackson from the $20 Bill and replacing him with a former slave; and the Republicans are defending that former slaveowner.

Jump to the 20th century.
President Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican. He was the trust buster and anti-monopoly champion of the working man. He wanted to give them a Square Deal. When he decided not to run for a third term, he endorsed Taft, who won. But Taft wasn’t progressive enough, so Roosevelt formed a third party, called the Progressive Party (see a theme here?) It it often called the Bull Moose Party, after Teddy himself and an interesting story that digresses from the point of this post.
When he left the Republican Party he took most of the progressives with him. After that, the GOP was big-business conservative. But still home to many blacks and descendants of abolitionists.

The Democratic Party adopted many of the progressive platforms and picked up many of those who allied with Roosevelt. But they still had the white southern vote.
By this time Jim Crow laws had effectively nullified the southern black vote, and the Democratic Party was where you found the KKK and other white supremacist groups.

The Republicans held the Presidency from after Democrat (and racist and segregationist) Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921, until the stock market crash and onset of the Great Depression ushered in Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats. The Democratic Party won wide support throughout a country that wanted support for the working man and the poor. But southern whites were still working men, even if they were also racists. (Some, I’m sure were not.) So the white South remained loyal to the Democratic Party, while the north jumped aboard also.

This started to crack when Harry Truman began advancing a civil rights agenda. In 1948 Democratic Governor of South Carolina, Strom Thurmond, ran as President as candidate for the States Rights Democratic Party. They opposed civil rights.

Over the next couple of decades Democrats in the South, often called Dixiecrats, turned away from the party as it become more progressive on civil rights issues. During this time we had Republican Barry Goldwater win part of the core of the Deep South running against civil rights in 1964, and Alabama Governor and Democrat George Wallace form the American Independent Party to win much of the South in 1968, again, opposing civil rights.

By then the Democratic Party was fully advancing racial equality. The Republicans under Nixon campaigned for the southern votes by appealing to racial fears and prejudices.

This is where those parties are now. With The Republican Party supporting big business, Wall Street, and increasingly authoritarian government; They endorse Christian nationalism, and Euro-centric racial superiority. Though there are certainly large numbers who do not. They appeal to the idea that they are in favor of personal liberty.

And the Democratic Party is supporting racial, sexual, and gender equality, along with government focused social support programs such as health care. Though they have in recent decades also supported Wall Street, Banks, and Big Business, the trend is toward increased taxation and regulation of those entities, and more help and aid for working and poor peoples.

The Democratic Party is now progressive and multiracial, and the Republican Party is now conservative, and white. Though, of course, there are representatives of all people in both parties.

The ideological shift might best be expressed through two southern Senators. Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond, both Southern Democrats. Both early opponents of integration and civil rights.
Byrd saw the error of his ways, and by the 1970s had publicly repudiated his previous stance on race, and remained in the Democratic Party;
Whereas Thurmond continued to oppose civil rights and integration, and left to join the Republican Party.
Thurmond is well known for the longest filibuster in Senate history when he stood and spoke for more than 24 hours in opposition to the Civil Rights Act.

Democracy or Dictatorship, The Choice Is Ours

During his press conference the other day, President Biden spoke candidly about his substantive conversations with Xi Jinping. He told us that Xi is a proponent of authoritarianism, and that he feels democracy is failing. And he said that Xi is among many other world leaders such as Putin in Russia, who favor authoritarianism. They feel that democracy is not suitable for today’s world.

Biden made it clear that he is going to show that democracy is better, and that we can out perform those countries because of our democratic foundation.
And he made note that the world is facing this challenge between these two ideologies.

We faced something like this before. While the world was struggling through the Great Depression, countries around the world were turning to dictators and generalissimos to lead them. Those autocrats lead their people into war and destruction.
We were lucky, because President Roosevelt believed he could achieve a recovery through democratic means, though to be honest, those trying times tempted him to consider autocratic authority.

In the end it was our democracy that prevailed, and we thrived because of it. We became the great country we are in that moment, and the world today, with democracy the gold standard where the people are the most content, and where people have the most opportunity.
But do not take this message as a celebration, but instead as a warning. We too face a challenge today between those same dark forces that challenged us eighty years ago. Just as we had the American Bund, a National Socialist Party here in America in the 1930s, we face the ugly face of fascism in our midst today.
And just as then we have mouthpieces that speak the same rhetoric of division, and we have the same attacks on our press. And just like then we have had in our midst our own Il Duce, our own Franco; a would be dictator insisting that he alone could solve our problems.

Our democratic ideals rose to the occasion last year and put that would-be dictator out of power, but we did not put to rest that ideology.

There are still many Americans, who, lured by promises of a return to some imagined greatness of days gone by, are still longing for that champion.
And don’t let those last words suggest that we weren’t great, or that we are not still great, we are, without a doubt. But we can see by honest examination of our history, that the greatness we had before was denied to many of our countrymen. Those that with us held the jobs, and stood on the picket lines; those who bore arms against our enemies and voted in elections. Those who played on the parks and sat in the churches were not given the same rights and opportunities as those of us whose ancestry were of European descent – those of us whose ancestors may have held title of property on the ancestors of those others. Those others too were Americans. And today we can continue our greatness, and even grow to be better. We can again be the model of greatness for the world, but this time we have to include all.

But still there are those who are mislead to think that our division is about culture, as if we don’t have room in this great nation for many cultures. And there are many who fail to see that the party they have held traditional allegiance is no longer the party that supports them. They have been seduced by promises of some mythical greatness their parents knew. They have been frightened by imagined threats against their traditions and their culture. In truth all that is happening is an acknowledgement and acceptance of the traditions and cultures of those others, those who earned that place alongside the rest of us in trenches and foxholes, factories and churches.

Make no mistake. I will not mince words. That party of old is not the party of Lincoln, or Eisenhower, or even of Reagan. That party is the party of Trump. And the goal of Trump is the same as the goal of Putin and Xi and all the other autocrats who have replaced the Mussolinis and the Francos and the Hitlers of our day. Those that oppose democracy and favor authoritarianism have lured many to their side. And they have blinded others to their true nature; those who do not see what they are, and only hear their grandiose proclamations.

Today we have two main ideologies: That which favors democracy and that which favors authoritarianism.That is the whole deal right now.

Those who cling desperately to the Republican Party are supporting turning our country into an autocracy, like Putin’s Russia or Xi’s China. I beg of you to step away. You may think it is going to get you some longed for happy day, but that is a smokescreen, a lie to trap you, like the good people of Germany were trapped by the false promises of the Nazis.

We are great because we are diverse, and because we are democratic. It is the foundation that gives confidence and support to all people.
And like our ancestors did in eight decades ago, please abandon the Republican Party. It can reform around better ideals and come back. But when it lead in the early twentieth century, it was beholden to the wealthy and robber barons, and fought against the working people and their pleas for a better life. Today they are the same as back then, and the same oligarchs rub their greedy hands together and picture you as serfs under their lash. Tax breaks for the billionaire class, and bread crumbs for the working people. And all the while telling you that other working people were coming to steal your bred crumbs. Telling you that others were going to force your children to become gay, or cancel Christmas. All lies to make you afraid, and all the while promising a few more crumbs once the job creators got rich enough.

Like staunch conservative Bill Kristol said recently, in this moment we must all be Democrats. That is, until we save democracy, we must take power away from the Republican Party. And we must not let them have it back until they are again champions of democracy and the Republic that our founders built.

In Praise Of Long Wing Bluchers

Vintage Mason Gunboats

For many shoe enthusiasts, these shoes have special meaning. Whether it reminds them of their father or grandfather, or if it is the invincible feeling they get when they put them on, the long wing bluchers (LWB) are icons of American menswear.

Some definitions for those who haven’t yet learned these things. First, the shoes have brogue, which is a pattern of holes in the outer layer of leather. Brogue, which actually means shoe in Scotland, may have had some practical purpose in the early days of footwear, when the holes were cut through to facilitate draining. I am not convinced of this, but we’ll let it stand, apocryphal though it may be. Today it is ornamental. And in the ranking of shoes on a formality scale, more brogue actually makes the shoes more casual. Plain toe black shoes are more formal than shoes of other color or with added brogue.

Some shoes have brogue that forms a W on the toe, and is called a Wingtip. Typically those “wings” turn down and terminate where the uppers (the pretty part of the shoe that wraps across and around your foot) meet the sole. But on some, the wings continue around the upper and join together at the back seam. These are called long wings. A fairly obvious term once you see them.

A blucher is a type of shoe construction that has an open lacing system. That means that the eyelets of the shoe are on flaps that are above the vamp (the part of the shoe that stretches across the top of your foot) of the shoe. This is similar to a Derby style, but subtly different in that the eyelets are on small tabs that are attached to the leather, rather than punched into those flaps. For all practical purposes, derby shoes and blucher shoes are the same, but they both differ from the Oxford style, which has the portion of the upper that contains the eyelets under the vamp of the shoe. That difference makes oxfords more formal than the other two styles mentioned. (So many rules in fashion!)

Whew! That is the hardest thing to explain, and since I probably explained it poorly, I recommend to all those interested to go to gentlemansgazette.com and search for oxfords, derbys, and bluchers for an excellent video describing this.

As you can see from the picture above, this shoe has the wings that go around the back, and has the tabs at the lace closures.

Another feature of the LWB is the double oak soles.

Double Oak Sole

The leather is tanned in oak bark to produce the finished leather. No, it is not made of wood.

As you can see, the leather sole is two layers cemented together. And then both are sewn onto the Goodyear welt (more on that later.) In this picture, note the slight difference in texture of the edge of the leather sole. It is particularly easy to see near the toe of the shoe. There are two thicknesses of leather.

These leather soles are oak tanned and doubled for durability. All soles will wear out giving enough walking and time. And leather wears out faster that some other materials, particularly if you walk on wet concrete. The doubling of the leather adds more than double the life of the sole.

And these shoes are built using the Goodyear welt construction method. The welt, a thick strip of tough leather, (which can be seen above the sole and against the upper) is sewn onto the upper (actually to some fabric called a gemming, which is glued to the upper), and the midsole, and then sewn to the outsole (which you walk on.) The result is a shoe that can have the sole replaced without punching new holes in the upper. To understand this better, consider that before this method came about, most shoes were made by sewing the uppers directly to the outer soles. When the soles wore through, you would have to replace them, and this would mean punching new holes in the uppers. This would obviously deteriorate the leather upper and they would be ruined after one resole.

The Goodyear welt method allows for numerous resoles, and as long as you care for the uppers (which is the expensive and labor intensive part of the shoe), you can plan on keeping those shoes for many years.

Okay, Goodyear welt.

This was developed by Charles Goodyear Junior. No, not the Goodyear who first (at least in America) vulcanized rubber, but rather his son. The process revolutionized shoemaking in the industrial age, and is considered by many to be the gold standard of shoe construction.

In addition to allowing for repeated resoles, this construction method makes the shoes superior at keeping water out of the inside of the shoe.

LWB Soles

Above you can see some wear in the leather soles of these ancient shoes. (More on that later.)

The reality of Goodyear welted construction is that it takes more time, materials, and craftsmanship to do. When you find new shoes at retail stores these days, they are most often cemented construction. They really can’t be resoled, and you wouldn’t anyway as the leather (if leather at all) is poor quality. The idea of buying a pair of dress shoes for fifty bucks seems okay to some, but they will not survive much wear, and will need to be replaced often. In addition to piling up in the landfills, these shoes will end up costing much more than you think after many replacement pairs.

This style of shoe was first constructed by Florsheim Shoes in 1959. At the time Florsheim held the spot as America’s finest mass produced shoes. They were solidly built in America by skilled workers using the best materials available.

Less than fifteen years after the end of World War II, the American man happily slid his feet into this style of shoe. Strong and well crafted, solid and heavy, they were to your feet what America was to the world: A stable and reliable base to build a future around. These were a man’s shoe, worn with suits, sport coats, and casual wear alike. Some men might have several pair in different colors. Black, Brown, Burgundy, Walnut, to fit the rotation good shoes should get. (Don’t wear shoes more than two days in a row, and be sure to store them with cedar shoes trees to draw out the moisture your feet produce.) Shine up the brown ones to take the wife out to dinner, maybe the burgundy for Sunday services.

These shoes took on a nickname that remains to this day: Gunboats.

In researching for this post I found numerous misunderstandings of the meaning of this name. Some thought it was the weight or the solid construction that gave the name. Some thought it the double oak soles, which has lead many to incorrectly refer to numerous other styles as gunboats because of it.

The truth is, like so many other nautical references, much simpler than that. They get the name purely from resemblance.

USS Maine

Above is a picture of the USS Maine (yes, the one which blew up and sank in Havana harbor and touched off the Spanish American War.) One can see the row of portholes running most of the length of the ship.

Likewise the long wings of the Gunboat Shoes have a similar row of holes that run parallel to the sole. The name reflects the look.

Vintage Mason Gunboat

Florsheim isn’t the company they were in those days. I’m not going to explore their history here, but briefly stated, they moved operations overseas, and cut the quality of materials they used. They are not alone, of course. The trend away from classic mens styles and long-lasting quality towards inexpensive disposable products doomed many traditional American brands. And they weren’t alone in building gunboats for American men to slide their feet into.

This particular pair was made in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin by Mason Shoes, probably before 1980. That makes these LWBs over forty years old and still going strong. I found these at Goodwill, and they needed some cleaning, conditioning, polishing, and shining to bring them back to the appearance you see here. I have every reason to believe they will last me as long as I am wearing shoes, and may see life as footwear for another generation after that. Talk about sustainable practice and environmental responsibility.

Mason no longer makes shoes, or even sells shoes that meet any standard of classic wear. But when they did, they used scotch-grain leather for these uppers, and O’Sullivan rubber heels for support.

O’Sullivan Rubber Heel

O’Sullivan is another American success story worth noting.

In Lowell, Massachusetts in 1896 an Irish Immigrant named Humphrey O’Sullivan was running a printing press. To ease the leg strain from long hours on his feet on the stone floor, he nailed two pieces of rubber matting to his heels. A few years later he patented this idea into a rubber heel company. It expanded into other things, but before Humphrey sold his interest, he had turned himself into a multi-millionaire. These are the original heels on these shoes. Mason commonly used O’Sullivan heels, and they were seen as an upgrade for many brands. And yes, though stacked leather heels were and are still popular and a sign of quality footwear, these rubber heels really are comfortable to walk in.

The only other pair of Long Wing Bluchers I own is a pair of spectator golf shoes.

Fiddler Golf Shoes

These were made in Spain for a Swedish based company named Fiddler. Yes, it has come to searching the globe to find a pair of Goodyear welted golf shoes at a reasonable price.
But if the idea is to channel golf legends like Harry Vardon and Walter Hagen, these two tone spectator shoes are a must.

The term spectator likely comes from this being a style commonly seen on the feet of men who were spectators at sporting events, such as the horse races. They were, in the early days of men’s fashion, considered quite casual, and suitable for sporting events.


But mens shoe styles are in flux these days. Despite the resurgence of interest in classic menswear, the overall trend has been toward more casual options. It is more common to see men in trainers than in oxfords, and that might be best as clothing has been similarly relaxed, even to the point of sloppiness. Recently I heard an ad for T-shirts that were “dressy” enough for date night. This is the reality of the world today. Though when these Mason’s were made, a man would be far more likely to have a coat and tie on, then to go without a collared shirt on a date.
Even the venerable standard of American shoes, Allen Edmonds, who still hand makes shoes of fine quality in Wisconsin, has dropped their LWB style MacNeil, except in Cordovan leather.
They must do what they must to keep in business, and that has been to follow the casual trend towards sneakers. The latest fad is dress shoe uppers with white, wedge outsoles. These appear as a cross between sneaker and dress shoe, which seems like a trend that will pass. If a sneakers are okay, than wear sneakers. If they aren’t, than wear a dress shoe. I am not a fan of this look, but accept that other like it. In practice, I doubt anyone will ever notice that I am not wearing a trendy fashion look.


But whether it is the golf shoes or the vintage Mason’s, the appeal of these shoes come with putting them on and walking around.
These are heavy, solid shoes that make you feel invincible. They are substantial, and pack authority. Anchored as you are to whatever ground you stand, you are the captain of your personal ship, and nothing can conquer you in a pair of gunboats.

Some People Should Not Own Guns

As most of you know, I support the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. I believe the purpose behind this right being enumerated in the Constitution is intended to invest the People with the tangible means of enforcing the power that does belong to them. To us. We are the people, and we are also the government. Through representation as outlined in the Constitution, we are a Republic that has the people as the base of power. And it is the People owning and possessing the means to enforce that power that could, under some extreme circumstance, prevent some tyrant from usurping the People’s government.
But in placing that protection and right in the Constitution, the founders were not intending that people abuse that right and murder each other in random attacks. It is clear that the founders would expect us to take steps as needed to protect the people from each other. And I cannot imagine that they would have endorsed allowing all persons to have access to firearms.

The killings in the cities is often associated with other crime, such as gang warfare and criminal drug syndications. Those are serious issues and I believe they need to be first addressed by addressing inequity and opportunity in our nation. It is no small matter to notice that the kinds of violence seen in most of those locations is virtually non-existent in affluent and middle class neighborhoods. Fix that, and the related shootings will shrink.

But when it comes to these mass killings, we are in a different territory. Here it is persons who must be considered, by any reasonable standard, mentally unhinged. We all know this. This isn’t an 800 pound gorilla lurking around the corner, it is plain to see. Who but a deranged lunatic would do such a thing? All of us, regardless of view of the Second Amendment, or political party, or any other difference can see this.

There are some people who should not have dangerous weapons.

I am a gun owner. A responsible gun owner. They are safely stored, and properly kept away from anyone who should not have them. And I know many, many others just like me. And there are about a half-billion guns in this country owned by people just like me. These guns, including tens of millions of the semi-automatic rifles that look so very similar to the rifles carried by our military, are owned by responsible people just like me. These are not the guns that are killing people. Because these are not the people that would go out and do this. These are responsible gun owners who have reason to own them, even if the rest of us don’t know their reason or if we disagree with those reasons. The first thing to note is that they are not harming anyone.

But there are people who should not have guns like these, and yet they still get them.

This is the nut of the problem that needs to be addressed. It isn’t the type of gun that we as a reasonable and responsible people should be allowed to own. We have already demonstrated that you are not in danger from those people owning guns.

It is the people who should not have guns but who have them anyway that is the problem.

It is time to address this issue. And everyone, especially those who strongly advocate for private gun ownership to come to the table and bring solutions.

How do we keep those lunatics from getting guns? And what mechanism should we have for getting them away from those who become lunatics?
It seems to be that universal background checks, waiting periods, and red flag laws should be an obvious start. The potential benefits of these regulations would far surpass the potential negatives.
And perhaps requiring an advocate. Someone from your community who would vouch for you.

In any case, we cannot in any practical way remove the guns from the masses of people. That path leads inevitably to civil war, and rolls over impossible legal and political hurdles on the way.

But we must address the question of who has them. The People have the right to conduct themselves in the affairs of life without fear of rampaging lunatics.