Tim and Joe Reap What They Sow

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the Boston sociopaths has been summarily despatched to wallow for eternity in the company of those of his brothers who better understand him. His brief and tortuous journey through life's trials and tribulations led him to seek less rather than more, and this goal he accomplished.

As for his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, his unhappy trails and trials have just begun. It is a bitter shame that this newly naturalized American citizen chose to follow the paths of homicidal maniacs, rather than the road taken by so many millions of  immigrants who chose not to dismiss the following inspirational words:

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Experience Can't Be Taught

In Martin Amis' memoir, Experience, he includes a letter that he wrote to his father, Kingsley, and his stepmother, Jane. The letter contains the following passage:


There are only 4 days to go until the Oxford interviews and, since I haven't received a telegram, it seems that I've passed the first hurdle. There are now about three serious candidates for every place. I am rather dreading the interviews: shall I be refreshingly different, stolidly middle-brow, engagingly naive, candidly matter-of-fact, contemptuously sophisticated, incorruptibly sincere, sonorously pedantic, curiously fickle, youthfully wide-eyed? ... Should I play the profound truth-seeker, the seedy anti-hero, the crusty society-observer, the all discerning beauty-appreciator? No, I suppose I shall end up...just...being...myself.

I realized upon reading this confession that Martin Amis and I share more than just the damnation of dental dilemmas. I have observed that I constantly choose to show any and all of those characteristics he listed whenever I am simply asked the time of day, or when commenting on the current local weather conditions. Experience has taught me that I can be all of those things, and more, and still be myself. I couldn't, if not wouldn't, have it any other way.

The How and Why of the Now and Then

Although I am no economist, just a former blue-collar working stiff,  I have a pretty good idea what has caused the wage stagnation during the past 3 or 4 decades, because I had been a middle-class member of the workforce before, during, and after those years.

As a pre-boomer (1942 was less than a bumper crop), I started working full-time in 1959 as a printer's devil in a unionized typesetting shop (btw--the only kind that then mattered.)

 By 1969, I  was armed with a New York City public high school education, and was a certified journeyman member of my trade union. 

Within 4 years, at the age of 31, I bought the house in which I still live.  I got married, had two kids, and two cars.

My wife didn't work outside the home until our kids were in high school. During my fifty years of working, we never earned more than $46,000 in one year.

So, what has brought about the changes that are causing the younger generations from reaching their financial goals? Why has it become so hard for them to achieve the American Dream that they have heard so much about?

Since I saw it develop, that is, the formula for creating the incredible wealth gap and inequality that now exists, I suppose I ought to mention it.

I witnessed the exponential world-population growth, the amazing computer speed-memory-availability-usage growth, and the tremendous increase in the amount of women entering the workforce (at lower wages than their male counterparts). Now, if you'll take this formula's results and add to it the technological advances in the science of capitalism, the subtle refinement of the art of consumer-marketing, and the utter conquest of materialism over flower-power (remember Industrialism's victory over Agrarianism? Urban over Rural?) and you have the makings of a serious case for planning for the future the next time around.

I think our children are at least 'entitled' to know what has happened to their future, don't you?

And one more thing: Don't forget to vote.

Just Keep on Truckin' on the Shining Path

Professor Allan Bloom posed the following in The Closing of the American Mind:

Indignation is the soul's defense against the wound of doubt about its own; it reorders the cosmos to support the justice of its cause. It justifies putting Socrates to death. Recognizing indignation for what it is constitutes knowledge of the soul, and is thus an experience more philosophic than the study of mathematics...So it may well be that through the thicket of our greatest corruption runs the path to awareness of the oldest truths.

News Flash: From the Villages

by Matthew Arnold, an excerpt from "Dover Beach"

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

GOP Revolts: Switches to Coffee for 2016

The truce that was called to end "Class Warfare" was the U.S. Constitution.

Wouldn't it be nice if all members of Congress would at least read

and commit its "Preamble" to memory.

The  "makers" and "takers" diatribe being spouted by the radical right just doesn't cut it.

It doesn't account for a very important consideration: The truth of the matter.

The true "takers" are the ones who have bought the House of Representatives, lock, stock, and barrel, in order to have its members serve as their personal lobby masons. These block shoppers have used money they've stockpiled while plundering the world's economy to lay mines in the path of upward mobility for the poor and middle-class.

The foxy guardians of righteousness have attempted to steal a couple of elections, lost the last election, and they will lose the next, because their greed and lust for power has not taken into consideration the law of diminishing returns: specifically, the tax returns of the actual "takers".

The real "makers" are "We the People." Today's Republicans shiver when they hear that phrase. People acting in concordance? How scary that sounds to them. They have names for people who want harmony. They call them "takers", because they cannot seem to use the "S"-word while keeping a straight face. 

Ryan, Jindal, Cantor, Rubio, et al, good luck with healing your party's tone deafness. You know you really should listen up when your constituents are talking to you, unless your wish is to meet your "maker" again in 2016.

A thought for the ages:

"There is no such thing as was—only is.

If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow."

     --William Faulkner

Happy 307th Birthday, Dr. Franklin

Benjamin Franklin, was born on this day in Boston, New England in the year 1706.

In his autobiography this great American listed some virtues and their precepts that he, as a young man, tried to achieve in his conduct of life. Whether he succeeded, or not, is irrelevant, for Franklin is nearly universally regarded as the kind of man who has earned the respect of all humanity.

These names of Virtues with their Precepts were

1. TEMPERANCE.

Eat not to Dulness.

Drink not to Elevation.

2. SILENCE.

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself.

Avoid trifling Conversation.

3. ORDER.

Let all your Things have their Places.

Let each part of your Business have its Time.

4. RESOLUTION.

Resolve to perform what you ought.

Perform without fail what you resolve.

5. FRUGALITY.

Make no Expence but to do good to others or yourself:

i.e. Waste nothing.

6. INDUSTRY.

Lose no Time.

Be always employ'd in something useful.

Cut off all unecessary Actions.

7. SINCERITY.

Use no hurtful Deceit.

Think innocently and justly;

and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. JUSTICE.

Wrong none, by doing injustice or omitting the Benefits that are your Duty.

9. MODERATION.

Avoid Extreams.

Forbear resenting Injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. CLEANLINESS.

Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Cloaths or Habitation.

11. TRANQUILITY.

Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or unavoidable.

12. CHASTITY.

Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring;

Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own

or another's Peace or Reputation.

13. HUMILITY.

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.