A Few Random, Perhaps Interesting Ideas
I was flattered to be asked to participate in another Zoom call (this our eighth) with about 12 members of my high school class of 1973. A few take-aways I thought I’d share.
For the first time since the end of World War II, the U.S. national debt exceeds its GDP (~$22 trillion vs. ~$20 trillion). Those who would have otherwise expected progress on social issues under the incoming administration should realize that the U.S. is in a very unenviable financial position at this point. Of course, we spend more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars on our military each year, and progressives have been calling for cutbacks there for generations, though without any success whatsoever. A life-long physics professor added, “Do we remember when we were promised the ‘peace dividend?'”
One of the Jewish participants explained that his wife, whose family suffered torture and degradation at the hands of the Third Reich, is incapacitated with fear of the proto-fascism that marks American politics right now. They’ve applied for dual citizenship, with Israel.
A central issue under discussion was the nation’s prognosis for recovering some of its former sanity, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence that it appears to have lost over the last four years. A vascular surgeon mentioned that 77% of Republicans believe Trump actually won the election, which means that a total of about 35% of all Americans live in this alternative universe. This in and of itself is a very large and potential intractable problem. What can be done about 55 million voters, mostly armed and infuriated, who are completely certain, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Biden usurped the presidency?
An author and consultant in environmental sustainability (who could that have been?) pointed out that his mother believes that her son’s strident anti-Trump messaging to the readers of his blog is counter-productive, as these words effectively call upon Trump supporters to admit that they have been fools, which is not going to happen. Mom has a good point there, as I have admitted to her.
Regarding free speech, an Ob-Gyn asserted that social media’s taking down apps like Parler is the equivalent of Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” in 1984. The problem he faces is that Parler was the site of huge swarms of people planning seditious attacks on the U.S. federal government, a tiny version of which we saw at the Capitol, and society has a right to protect itself from lethal insurrections.
The president of a large university in Texas led a discussion of the proper role of government in a modern democracy, pointing out that private enterprises throw off externalities, e.g., pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and individuals are therefore required to absorb the cost of cleaning up the long-term environmental damage. I used this as an opportunity to promote the Carbon Fee and Dividend concept of which I am so enamored.
A recently retired investment banker surmised that the rollout of the vaccine and the common American’s return to work will act as a salve, cooling off tens of millions of people who may be under too much stress to regain their normal modes of thinking and behavior. A former psychiatrist, now a professor at Georgetown Law School, agreed, and went on to explain how those suffering from schizophrenia, who have experienced the shutdown of large regions of their prefrontal corticies, tend to do better if they are moved to rural regions, and worse in urban areas. The fewer offensive stimuli, the better.
As I like to tell these people, “I learn more from you guys in an hour than I do from all other sources in an average month.”
