David Leonhart has a good column in the New York Times discussing how the economic recovery in the United States compares to that taking place in other countries. Other countries’ recovery tends to feature corporate profits that are still lagging but with much less unemployment. By contrast, here corporate profits have improved 12% over 2007 level but we remain mired in high unemployment.

There is a good argument to be made that critics of government policy are right – Obama and the Democrats have not been sufficiently focused on jobs; but it’s not because they’re unfriendly to business, but because they’re too friendly to corporate interests.

The gross domestic product here — the total value of all goods and services — has recovered from the recession better than in Britain, Germany, Japan or Russia. Yet a greatly shrunken group of American workers, working harder and more efficiently, is producing these goods and services.

The unemployment rate is higher in this country than in Britain or Russia and much higher than in Germany or Japan, according to a study of worldwide job markets that Gallup will release on Wednesday. The American jobless rate is also higher than China’s, Gallup found. The European countries with worse unemployment than the United States tend to be those still mired in crisis, like Greece, Ireland and Spain.

The column makes passing mention of the nation’s disability system. It’s one of those things in which I’ve taken an interest without doing much research. My knowledge of the Social Security Disability program comes from questioning debtors about their income and assets. A non-trivial number of them tell me they’re in the process of applying for disability. Obviously, I’m not privy to their medical records, but a fair number of these look able bodied and sound enough of mind to me. And the process takes an extremely long time. The backlog is measured in terms of years, I’m told. Leonhart has this to say:

Reforming the disability insurance system so it does not encourage long-term joblessness would help. “Once people enter the system,” as Mr. Katz of Harvard says, “they basically never come back.”

A disability check doesn’t mean riches, but it’s a steady check and, for a lot of folks, it beats working. The system needs to be quicker to discard the deadbeats, quicker to care for those clearly in need, and better at following up to determine if continued support is necessary. Whether that’s at all feasible, I don’t know.

When I think of progress in race relations in the United States, I think of Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Both were murdered for their trouble. I’ve heard Slavery called America’s Original Sin and Abraham Lincoln its Christ-figure. But, Lincoln was no son of God, so I guess it took Dr. King’s death and might well take a few others before we’re rid of the taint. There always seems to be a Bull Connor or George Wallace available for the part of the Enemy and the odd John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray available as trigger-men.

The Slacktivist has, I believe, a compelling post about the disconnect between words and action in political rhetoric. He ties together the shootings in Arizona with something very similar to what I’ve said in the past about abortion. (I don’t think I picked up that theme from him originally, but who knows? I read a lot and don’t always know how ideas creep into my brain.)

He’s not saying that the violent rhetoric caused the shooting of Rep. Giffords or that the comparisons of abortions to the Holocaust caused abortion clinic shootings. Rather, he’s saying that you have to be crazy to take such rhetoric at face value. Because, if you compare such speech to the speaker’s actions, the two don’t match up.

They do not believe their own nonsense. We know that they do not believe it because they “don’t behave” in accordance with what such beliefs would entail — what such beliefs must entail.
. . .
The substance of what they say demands “a radicalized citizenry.” If we are in the midst of a “Holocaust,” then we are obliged to respond more vigorously than simply waiting four years for the next opportunity to cast a vote for a candidate who tells us he sympathizes with our opposition to this “Holocaust.”
. . .
They do not behave as if they believe what they say. We are thus forced to choose between believing their words or believing their actions. We cannot believe that both are true. We cannot believe that both are honest. If their actions, their very lives, are sincere, then their words are dishonest. If their words are sincere, then their lives are monstrous.

Neither alternative is pleasant, but these are the only options allowed to us.

The same goes with Palin and “death panels.” “If you really believed that some kind of government Gestapo was being sent to euthanize your elderly neighbors, then opposing these forces would not be a matter of choice. It would be a moral obligation.”

I have no time to develop this thought, but I was chewing on it a bit as I was shoveling the driveway this morning. It seems to me a lot of heated rhetoric takes the form of apocalyptic or revolutionary narratives. The listeners are asked to view themselves as special people in special times. I wonder if some of the effectiveness has to do with the trouble folks have in coming to grips with the vast scope of time and space. In the grand scheme of things, we are trivial. And this is daunting. (Alluded to by Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex). As Jon Stewart put it in his Rally for Sanity Speech, “We live in hard times, not end times.”

John Carney, in a CNBC column, paints a plausible scenario about why it could be tough for banks to foreclose in Massachusetts in the wake of a couple of state law decisions about the documentation necessary to proceed with the foreclosure. I haven’t read the decisions, but apparently the Massachusetts state courts have decided to be a little more picky about the documentation necessary to foreclose – not unduly so, but given the sloppiness that apparently took hold of the home loan financing industry, possibly more than they can accommodate. (And, Matt Taibbi has pointed out that the sloppiness was probably more of a feature than a bug for some of the upstream parts of the home finance casino).

At the state level, the originating lender probably recorded their interest then assigned it to a purchaser who also probably recorded the interest. Beyond that, things get fuzzy. At some point in the chain, there was probably a purchaser who was part of MERS or some system where there was only a nominal recording – the real party in interest kept changing as the loan was bundled, securitized, and sold hither & yon. The court wants the foreclosing bank to be able to prove a chain of title that keeps the note of indebtedness with the mortgage. (Without the mortgage, the note is an unsecured IOU with no special attachment to the real estate.)

So, anyway, getting proof of that assignment could present practical difficulties with folks back down the chain two or three links or more: a) not knowing if the person making the claim is really the true owner; and b) more importantly, not wanting the hassle or liability associated with verifying and executing an assignment.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

This is a line from Wilhelm Stekel quoted in The Catcher in the Rye. I wish I had held on to it, but when I was a freshman in college, I recall reacting fiercely to this in an essay. I recall feeling at the time like it robbed me of something essential, something having to do with the right to go out in a blaze of glory if I chose. Forty has a hard time of remembering twenty, so I can’t explain, let alone justify, that feeling; but I do remember that it was strong, and it was visceral.

I am reminded of that feeling when I’ve been reading online the reaction of some people to the notion that, particularly in the wake of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords they should abstain from gun and violence laden metaphors in their political rhetoric.

Now, before anyone gets the vapors at the suggestion that violent rhetoric is connected to this incident of violence, I will stipulate that I know nothing of the motives of the shooter, and I will further stipulate that her political opponents called only for metaphorical violence and not real violence. When Sarah Palin used crosshair imagery and “targeted” Congresswoman Gifford, she did not have a particular desire for actual bullets to be used. And when teapartiers talk about “Second Amendment solutions,” they are just being blowhards. And when they talked about political opponents being traitors, dictators and agents of tyranny, they were just talking out of their asses.

My personal suspicion is that this shooting does not happen in an environment where political debates are fact based, policy oriented, and lacking in violent rhetoric. But, again, I can’t prove this. Demonizing your opponent as an intolerable Other is more emotionally potent than boring old debates about the relatively modest distinctions between mainstream politicians. But, I also think it’s dangerous. Creating a narrative in which the very soul of a country beset by evil is at stake is probably useful in motivating your supporters; but it also tends to give license to other, potentially darker, political fantasies.

Giving up these narratives is emotionally difficult. When you suggest that people give up spinning those fantastic narratives and abstain from violent metaphors in political rhetoric, I’ve seen a very strong reaction in some quarters, as if you’re asking them to castrate themselves. As if such rhetoric is so vital to self esteem (or, I suppose political viability) that it’s worth the attendant risks. There is vehement denial that there is even the potential for attendant risks. It’s absolutely fair that, for example, Palin and her supporters should react strongly to the suggestion that her rhetorical crosshairs had anything whatsoever to do with the subsequent literal crosshairs. There isn’t any proof. But, there’s something more. You didn’t see the meticulous concern for factual accuracy when allegations about Obama’s “death panels” were the talk of the day.

There is visceral, emotional attachment to violent rhetoric and these political narratives invoking battles between Good and Evil that reminds me of whatever it was that so offended me as a young man by the suggestion that a mature man should be more concerned about living humbly than dying nobly. It’s probably time for us and our political discourse to grow up. However, I doubt there are many votes in that, and, again, it’s emotionally difficult; so pigs will undoubtedly start flying before that happens.

This incident, as well as (more locally), the overturned conviction of grandmother-stabbing Gary Galloway based on insanity concerns (pdf) and, I’m sure, plenty of other incidents; should really be leading to a discussion of how we handle mental illness in our society. But, that won’t happen either. Dealing with mental illness is complicated, expensive, and, again, interferes with a cherished narrative. In this case, the narrative is that we all rise and fall pretty much solely through exercise of our individual will. Recognition of mental illness seriously muddies the waters of our perception of free will and, consequently, issues pertaining to personal control, blame, and even our relationship to good and evil.

I had a legal writing teacher who was warning us about how tough it was to be vigilant when proofreading things we had written. “The brain is a wonderful thing, it just wants you to be happy.” In doing so, the brain creates blind spots to issues that might make you unhappy. In legal writing, that can make you glaze over weaknesses in your arguments. I think the same applies when cherished myths have an uncomfortable relationship to reality.

My recent trip to South Carolina has made me resolve to be more gentle in my treatment of Southerners. In particular, while staying over night in Ashville, NC, I met a nice gentleman and his daughter from Atlanta. (I was a bit amused as my children introduced themselves to these folks as “Lincoln” (his full name) and “Harper Lee.” If I’d had a third child named “Sherman,” it would have been even better.)

Contributing even further to the improvement of my estimation of Southerners was an encounter with a guy named Mike at a bar in South Carolina. I was at a table watching the Colts game against the Raiders. Mike walked in and had a Colts hat on. There were only a couple of TVs showing the Indy game and the seats near those televisions were scarce. I was the only one at my table, so I invited him to have a seat if he wanted. Turns out he was a huge Tennessee Volunteers fan and followed the Colts because of Peyton. Anyway, he shared his onion rings and, unexpectedly, picked up the tab for one of my beers as he left. Very few things are better calculated to improve my disposition than onion rings and beer.

Still, the decency of modern day Southerners notwithstanding, I think it’s important to push back against myths about the Civil War that might tend to soften our views of that dark period in our country’s history. James Loewen has a column in the Washington Post deconstructing five myths about the Civil War: 1) The South did not secede for State’s Rights – if anything, they were against State’s Rights before Lincoln’s election when they were pushing for federal intervention on issues like being allowed to travel in the North with their slaves; 2) Secession was not about tariffs and taxes – those may have been an issue 30 years prior, but just before the Civil War, tariffs and taxes were pretty much set by the South and the Southern states were silent about them when explaining their reasons for secession; 3) while most Southerners didn’t own slaves, that doesn’t mean they weren’t fighting for its continuance – people too poor to own slaves aspired to some day become wealthy enough, and, with slavery, poor whites at least knew they were better than someone; 4) Lincoln did not go to war to end slavery – his personal hope was to have slavery end, but as an official matter, he was clear that if he could preserve the Union by not freeing any slaves, that’s the course he would take; and 5) Slavery would have died out on its own – it’s tough to prove a negative, but the entrenchment of slavery and the wealth it provided to the Southern elite makes it difficult to believe it would have died out on its own accord.

O.k., maybe it wasn’t all Newton’s fault. I’m reading Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society. It’s a series of essays by various articles on the subject of the Royal Society in commemoration of it’s 350th anniversary.

The most recent one I finished was Margaret Wertheim who reflects on the impact the scientific revolution had by taking away the place where God lives. (I simplify). In particular, Newton proved that the laws of physics are universal – in other words, things like gravity are going to work no matter how many miles away we travel. We take this for granted, but there are some aspects we probably haven’t quite come to grips with when we think about God. Even today, it’s fairly common to have people point up to the sky when they’re talking about God. (Watch a lot of NFL players after touchdowns, for example.) Back before we really understood what was going on with stars and planets and whatnot, there was a whole cosmology developed around it.

The four terrestrial elements of earth, air, fire, and water were imperfect – subject to deterioration. Stars and celestial objects were made out of the quintessential element which was superior. The closer you got to God, the better stuff was. But Newton and his contemporaries ripped open the sky. God had to move. And we’re still coming to terms with that.

It’s an interesting notion, anyway. For those of you who have a more philosophical, cerebral approach to religion, it probably doesn’t matter too much. But, it’s probably an issue at some level with those for whom religion is a more emotional, character-driven affair with an anthropomorphic God then not having a nearby place for Heaven probably creates some psychological trauma.

Fred Clark, writing about the Tim LeHaye “Left Behind” dreck specifically, but offering thoughts on life generally, has a good post with some discussion about temptation. Now, I’m not a religious person and don’t particularly believe in personifications of good and bad, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe there are moral choices to be made.

Clark talks about the big flashing warning light that should go off when people find that their spiritual feelings about God’s will matches exactly their own earthly inclinations.

I don’t think either the authors or the members of their Tribulation Force appreciate that temptation doesn’t always announce itself as temptation, doesn’t always look like what it is. But that’s not really the problem here. The temptation to which Rayford is succumbing here looks exactly like temptation and not like anything else. Rayford is lying here, basking in the prestige and luxury of his position, congratulating himself and never questioning why what he “felt in his spirit” as God’s leading should be so remarkably congruent with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.
. . .
But we haven’t addressed quite as much the spiritual peril of these job offers or the way that peril is compounded by the self-serving rationalization that working for the Antichrist might be what God wants you to do.

This is a rather important point because it’s the most realistic aspect of these books so far. Nearly all of the action in this story is implausible and impossible, but this is something that can and will happen to every person who reads these books and to every person now reading this blog.

At some point in your life, the Antichrist is going to offer you a job.

Don’t take it.

And especially don’t delude yourself into imagining that taking it might actually be God’s will because, conveniently, God’s agenda for you and the Antichrist’s agenda seem to perfectly overlap. The job offer itself is a trap set for you by others. The rationalizing delusion is a trap set for you by yourself. Just say no.

A small, but significant part of my childhood has passed away. Connie Marker died at the age of 87. Connie was the proprietor of the Richmond Greek restaurant, “Connie’s House of Marker.” And, to me, Connie was the grandfatherly man in the front room of the restaurant sitting in a comfortable chair, watching TV, and smoking a pipe.

My parents were regulars at Connies. They went there most Wednesday nights. They’d leave the phone number to the restaurant out so that we kids could get in touch with them if we needed them. I still remember that number (966-2016). On special occasions (e.g. celebrate good grades), they’d take us too. The Greek salad was one of my favorite foods ever, and they made a mean fried chicken. I recall some pleasant nights slurping down coke after coke as my family sat around a big round table. I remember my Dad’s sketched picture on the wall with many such pictures of the regulars. I remember my folks having their own custom mugs at the restaurant. And, one of my most vivid memories of my Meemaw (who died when I was 10 or 11) is her and my Dad having a friendly but earnest battle over who was going to pick up the check.

Connie himself was a son of Greek immigrants and proud of his heritage; a devoted Shriner; and a professional boxing referee. In any event, his restaurant was just a unique place in Richmond, and I’m glad to have known it and him.