James M. Redwine

Gentle Reader

Lip Service

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Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia and some other members of Congress took a fifteen-minute recess from regular duties to raise money for the National Republican Committee. One hundred thousand dollars was raised in a quarter of an hour when Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy pulled out his tube of used cherry flavored Chapstick and auctioned it off. McCarthy is from California so such economic disequilibrium is not surprising to Americans who follow reports of calls for five million dollar per person reparations in San Francisco and especially when Georgia’s Greene was the winning bidder.

This impromptu fundraiser took place in the halls of Congress on Tuesday, May 23rd. Such tangential matters as the then impending default on our 31 trillion dollars national debt and the 30 billion dollars worth of military armaments we have given to Ukraine pale in significance to the issue of chapped lips. Perhaps fifteen minutes spent on funding social security or avoiding a nuclear war with Russia could be squeezed into Congress’ agenda. It is certainly impressive how the essential matter of financing political campaigns could be so quickly addressed by our politicians.

Of course, America is not the only country that pays lip service to grave matters while politicians and the news media, including newspaper columnists, concentrate on bruised lips and egos. Meghan Markle sought to bring down the British monarchy before she had even joined it by demanding to use Kate Middleton’s Clarins Natural Lip Protector during a February 28, 2018 meeting of the Royal Foundation Forum. Kate and William were shocked and Meghan and Harry were offended that Kate and William were shocked. A toppling of the throne was averted by Meghan squeezing some balm out of the tube onto her finger instead of applying it directly to her lips.

The backdrop for Meghan’s royal faux pas was the first public event to initiate the Royal Foundation Forum which was established to help fund charitable causes such as mental health needs. Naturally, the failure of British etiquette by the plebeian American received more coverage than the fund raising. Harry even saw fit to highlight it in his family confessional book, Spare.

I suppose it is too much to expect the British public to be less concerned with the battle among the royals over lip gloss than the Battle of Hastings. Nor should we be surprised if our Congress can find time to quickly fund political campaigns but not the national debt. But, Gentle Reader, wouldn’t it be refreshing and bring smiles to our faces if such topics were the fodder of columnists instead of chapped and colored lips?

It’s Just A Number

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An ABC News/Washington Post Poll taken Sunday, May 07, 2023 of likely voters in the 2024 Presidential election had 68% of Americans saying Joe Biden is too old to be president next term. The same poll says only 44% think Donald Trump could be too old to serve. Biden is now 80 and Trump is now 76.

Joe Biden is claimed to have a fetish about sniffing the hair of women who are not his wife. Trump is alleged to have sexually assaulted several women to whom he was not married. If the American public’s fascination with sexual activity by characters on TV, in movies and books is considered in the choosing of our political leaders, we can postulate there may be a virility factor in play in choosing between our current and former president.

Apparently, the four-year difference in what will be two octogenarian relics by the end of the next term is of material importance to most voters. Neither old guy is the John F. Kennedy sex symbol he may see himself to be but the public appears to prefer its senility a little more virile, at least by reputation. Of course, it is possible neither Biden nor Trump will be on the ballot in 2024 as some dark horse may yet rush in to take all the perks of the presidency.

Of course, sexuality is only one element of a candidate’s character. We should examine the policies and performance of both Biden and Trump. In that regard, some like Trump’s stance on immigration and some like Biden’s. The same is true on the economy, cultural issues and international relations among many other issues. That is why we have elections and campaigns. But just as the coronation of King Charles III seemed to find the media concentrating on which crowns and robes Charles and Camilla donned as well as which handbag Kate carried as opposed to the substance of Charles’ vision for Great Britain’s future, it will not surprise any of us if the national media miss all the policy differences any of the candidates may have as the media focuses on the titillation of each person’s peccadilloes. Of course, the reason the media will do this is because that is what most of us are interested in. Policy is just so common.

Superannuated lotharios may be past their prime but they are more interesting than policy differences. As for me, Gentle Reader, for personal reasons, I choose to believe either Joey or Donnie or some other codger or even a 35-year-old could serve okay if the only consideration is age. Now whether we happen upon anyone who should lead this great country for the years 2025-2028, well, I must leave that lucky guess to each of you and the fickle folly of fate.

 

The Scarlet Bills

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Congress is demanding a code of ethics for the U.S. Supreme Court. So is the national news media. Congress and the media may not see eye to eye on much but they do agree that the Judicial Branch should be controlled by the Legislative Branch. It appears the ideology of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has infiltrated the American Garden of Eden with a poisoned pome and Congress is champing to chomp.

Congress teaching ethics to the Supreme Court is like Helen of Troy teaching matrimonial loyalty to Hamlet’s mother. If Congress were medical advice providers we might say, “First heal yourselves.” Be that as it may, there is little doubt the Supreme Court could use some ethical lessons. However, as a separate and equal branch of our three-branch democratic republic, I prefer the courts remain independent even if they sometimes teeter on a fulcrum between questionable personal behavior and unquestioned legerdemain. Such cases as Dred Scott in which the one-time slave holder, Chief Justice Roger Taney who did not recuse himself, decided the Negro Dred Scott had no rights that America’s white society was bound by law to recognize come to mind.

No, Congress should not be looking for the log in the eyes of the Supreme Court but should be initiating a Constitutional amendment that would ensure America’s citizens, not a few highly partisan politicians, would have the choice as to who and for what term judges would serve. I do not know, Gentle Reader, if you have read my numerous columns on electing judges to one fairly short term. I only know for sure that Peg read them because I refused to comply with her many varied domestic demands until she did. However, if by some chance you did read them you know my preference is a truly democratic judicial selection process.

Non-partisan elections of competing, qualified judicial candidates for one 10-year term and life-time pensions are my suggestion. Advice on ethics for anyone from our Congress rings hollow.

Undermining the Courts

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At 3:30 am on Thursday, April 20, 2023 I was watching cable news anchor Alex Wagner of MSNBC, who was analyzing the controversy involving two conflicting federal court rulings concerning the abortion drug Mifepristone. Wagner pointed out the federal district judge in Texas had been appointed by President Donald Trump. Ms. Wagner did not refer to the federal district judge in the state of Washington having been appointed by President Barack Obama. Wagner opined that these diametrically opposed court holdings and the U.S. Supreme Court’s attempts to reconcile them, “Could undermine the legitimacy of the courts.”

Naturally, Gentle Reader, your first thought is what was I doing watching television at three thirty in the morning and why would I watch MSNBC at any time? As to why I was awake, hey, I’m frequently responding to urges I never had when life was new. As to why MSNBC, I watch the news with my finger on the remote so I can attempt to outmaneuver the commercials. MSNBC happened to have the court story on instead of some offer of products guaranteed to enhance weight loss and other things, so I listened in.

It was Wagner’s views on the court system, not any exposition of Mifepristone, that piqued my attention. She said on national TV what may be a sub rosa thought with many Americans, “Why should we have confidence in the independence and reliability of our federal judges?” Are federal judges acting as Socrates demanded or are they deciding cases politically? Does a federal judge’s ruling depend more on the facts and the law or the judge’s political views and those of the president who appointed them?

In his trial before the Athenian judges, Socrates admonished his judges, “To do justice, not make a present of it.” In other words, a judge’s duty is not to repay his or her appointing politician, but:

“To hear courteously; to answer wisely; to consider soberly; and to decide impartially.”

Americans have for over 200 years supported the right of judges to be a separate and independent branch of our government. However, in our current national environment, many decisions from, especially the U.S. Supreme court, but more and more frequently also from the lower federal courts due to wide-ranging injunctions from one-person federal district judgeships, are seen by many Americans as political pronouncements.

Virtually every national debate about federal judicial decisions begins with a reference to the politics of who appointed the judge or judges and the history of the judge’s political leanings. It may be difficult to recall, but before our current turbulent social environment seldom was it alleged that, as justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said in dissent to the abortion decision of Dobbs vs. Jackson, “Today the proclivities of individuals (Supreme Court Justices) rule.”

When even one third of the members of the U.S. Supreme Court publicly and in print accuse the other two thirds members of deciding cases for political reasons, it sounds an alarm about an independent judiciary. An independent judiciary is essential to maintaining our democracy. As long ago as 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville noted, “In America, practically every political question eventually becomes a judicial one.” De Tocqueville meant that Americans have confidence in the impartiality of our courts so they take their disputes to courts to be resolved.

It would be a shame if now de Tocqueville might have to conclude, “In America, practically every federal judicial question becomes a political one.” Perhaps next week, if I am still awake at 3:30 am, we might further address these volatile issues including some suggested remedies.

The Mass Shooting Tocsin

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The definition of a “mass shooting” in the United States is a moving target based on the source of who describes an incident. While there is no neutrality on the issue of guns, the non-profit organization, Gun Violence Archive (GVA), defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people, not including the shooter, are killed from gunshots. Applying these criteria, the GVA has published its figures for the period of January 01, 2023 to April 10, 2023 and compared it to the same time for 2014. In 2014 there were 59 incidents of mass shootings in the U.S. and in 2023 there were 146.

While those who announce the statistics may have motives to mischaracterize the figures, the statistics starkly establish an alarming trend upward. In a country of 330 million people where more people commit suicide with guns than commit mass shootings, and more than 30,000 die in vehicle accidents each year, it may appear that mass shootings in America are not out of control. But the tocsin should sound to alert us to a possible greater danger of a change in our national character.

It is not the inanimate objects of firearms that may be our greater concern but the animus we feel for one another. The most significant issue we should concentrate on is not the number of guns in our country nor who can access them, although these are important. What may be in play is why are we as a people engendering a degree of nihilism in some members of our society that so devalues oneself and others that “death by cop” and the deaths of unknown others is preferable to living.

I own guns, have since I was a boy. We had long guns in the pantry right next to our family’s dining table. There were no locked gun cabinets and no need for one. If I wanted to go hunting, I pulled back the curtain on the pantry, grabbed one of the guns and went hunting. Every boy and man I knew owned or had access to guns. Guns were not a means to achieve attention. We knew approval came from school and work and how we treated others, disapproval too. National attention was not on our radar but if it had been we knew it would need to come from helping others not indiscriminately murdering them. Our family was like most others and if we ever achieved any news media notoriety it was for some small contribution to local culture. It did not compute for most people that fame and infamy were equally desirable as long as they spelled the names right. So, what happened? What went wrong and how can we fix it?

The news media is not to blame for fostering a climate of “If it bleeds, it leads.” As a newspaper columnist for 33 years, I am a member of the media and I deny responsibility for anyone else’s behavior. I have enough to do being responsible for my own. No, the media is simply following the demands and interests of the American public. Movies, songs, video games and television shows that garner ticket sales and awards for ad nauseam renditions of pornography and senseless violence are the harbingers of what news sources people will pay attention to. CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and others are in business. They follow the demographics and those demographics are that what sells is the denigration of our politicians and blood from our citizens. What does not sell is any mention of good character and acts of kindness.

So, what does a disaffected, depressed, detached and marginal person conclude from the media? If one wants to matter, he or she must denigrate others or spill the blood of innocent strangers and themselves. I realize we will not return to the Andy Griffith Show and Walter Cronkite country we transitioned out of when all politics and all news was local. However, we can reevaluate how we report, not comment, on people with whom we disagree or, perhaps, even despise. The facts should be enough. Adjectives as to a politician’s motives should be eschewed. If the object of a news story is wrong, the public can reach that conclusion without some news anchor repeatedly claiming, “That’s a lie!” A lie requires intent and how does the news anchor know one’s intent. It should be sufficient to state the evidence and leave it up to the viewer or reader to decide if it is a lie or a mistake or even a difference of opinion.

A gradual turning away from a culture where, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”, might be a good place to start. Or, if not Shakespeare, how about our mothers’ advice, “If we can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all?”

I get it that this approach might take years to help assuage our epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings. But I ask you, Gentle Reader, do you think the problem will be solved by continuing to vilify everyone we disagree with? Maybe, at least, respectfully hearing out opposing views before we label someone a crook or a liar might pour oil on troubled waters and help reduce our national tendency to assassinate character. Such an approach of just reporting the news may tend to discourage people teetering on the edge from taking up arms and actually assassinating innocent people.

Artificial Intelligence

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Congressman Ted Lieu of California has a college degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. Stanford is famous for having students whose parents went to jail for trying to buy their way into the school. There is no allegation that is why Lieu was accepted. It is assumed that unlike many college students Lieu actually went to class and learned something about computers, including Artificial Intelligence.

Lieu recently used his knowledge to have an Artificial Intelligence computer program draft a Congressional Resolution to regulate Artificial Intelligence. Surprise, the Resolution, “… [G]enerally expressed support for Congress to focus on AI.”

As wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East and millions of people are in need of food, water and shelter across the globe, including California, Congress has seen fit to concentrate on the projected evils of TikTok and now AI. One has to wonder about the psyches of government officials who find danger and disaster behind such artificial issues while real humans are suffering from so many real man-made and natural disasters.

Putting government in control of AI is much more frightening to me than allowing private entrepreneurs to apply their imagination and genius to enhance technology. Such government regulation reminds me of those Luddites who during the Industrial Revolution sabotaged new textile machines out of fear the machines would replace the workers. What they found out was there were more good jobs created by the new technology than were replaced by it.

I imagine there were many such retrogressive thinkers a few thousand years ago when some cave man tinkerer showed his neighbors how he had fashioned a round thing to help him roll his possessions to a new cave. Probably to many of his fellow cavemen and cave women he was seen as a destroyer of local culture. But when the armies using wheeled chariots began to conquer those who still dragged things along, the round thing caught on.

Then about the 1930’s when plastics were becoming ubiquitous, people still stubbornly clung to lead pipes and bowls until the danger of lead and mercury were recognized. Now I am appalled by plastic trash littering our highways and our waterways. However, I do not hesitate to use plastic utensils and water pipes and reap the benefits from countless products fashioned from plastics. The fact that many people are too lazy to properly dispose of plastic refuse is not the fault of plastic. If we did not have the usefulness of plastic, trashy people would just toss out other products. Yes, plastic needs to be properly recycled and deposited but that is a behavioral problem, not a plastic one.

Humanity never advances by failing to go forward. We need to use AI, not fear it. I would rather Congress concentrate on real issues such as college athletes making millions from deals for Name, Image and Likeness while ticket prices are rising faster than stock market returns, or perhaps, such lingering issues as why we spend trillions on warfare as we attack poverty with heart-felt speeches.

Maybe AI will out smart us; it will not be that hard to do. But if AI is put in charge of problems we humans have not solved in 200,000 years, what is the worst that can happen? I say we might want to revisit that old observation from when computers first began to integrate our society. You remember, Gentle Reader, a team of scientists had just completed the world’s most advanced computer and they could not wait to ask it the age-old burning question, “Is there a god?” The computer with AI answered, “There is now.” I suggest we should not grovel before technology as if it were our god that might save us from ourselves, nor should we cower from it as though it might doom us to Hades. Humans can harness technology to help us do what we cannot do with just the talents nature gives. A nice place to start would be inventing nuclear batteries that need neither recharging nor replacing. Or how about a way to give used plastic an economic benefit such that people would not just dump it out their vehicle windows?

In other words, we should not look to AI to save us from ourselves nor fear it will punish us for trying. AI should be neither worshiped nor feared and it certainly should not be the victim of Congressional postering.

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