My political "evolution" - part three A (xvii)

Writing about wealth and business has made me think about how money and power played a role in my "evolution" from a "liberal" into a "conservative."

I've written before about how I came to be a "liberal" because of seeing the injustices of apartheid when I was growing up in South Africa but how I slowly realized that I was not a "liberal." It was not a sudden realization or an epiphany. It happened incrementally over years. Most of the time I was not even aware of my political "evolution". It's only with hindsight that I can see how it happened.

When I left South Africa, I went to live in the UK. The class-warfare culture was completely new to me. Of course I knew about the British "class system" but I had never really been exposed to anything like it in South Africa (unless you count apartheid as a "class system" which it was to some extent.) White South Africans are as egalitarian as Americans but, in Britain, I had to deal with the fact that I was "working class" and could never hope to be anything else because I had not gone to the "right schools" like Eton or Harrow. Add to that the fact that the British look down their noses at "colonials." I was a nobody and, with my heavy Afrikaner accent, I was obviously not British. After eight years of their stifling "class system" I returned to South Africa just to breathe freely once more.

(I lived in the UK before Thatcher tried to get rid of the "class system." She succeeded to an extent but it's very old and is hard to eradicate completely.)

After two years back in South Africa, I realized that I still could not stomach apartheid so I immigrated to the USA. At that time I still regarded myself as a "liberal" and an anti-establishment rebel. But slowly I got rich and one day realized that I was part of "the establishment."

I saw that American society is so free and fluid that it no longer made sense to be a rebel. I had enough power to bring about change from within if I wished. In South Africa, I was regarded as a rebellious uppity outspoken opponent of apartheid. In the UK, I was regarded as a rebellious uppity and eccentric "colonial" but, in the USA, I was just another American - free to be and do whatever I wanted. I fit right in with the "establishment" movers and shakers and go-getters. It finally became obvious to me that I was no longer a "liberal." I was no longer a powerless victim (as "liberals" insist we all are) but the master of my own fate.

I was home at last.

Just call me "mister"

Last night on NBC news, Brian Williams read some emails from listeners. One email said something like this: I found it really annoying that you kept calling Bill Clinton "Mr President" when you interviewed him. Clinton is no longer the President.

Williams commented that he had received many emails expressing a similar view and then added: "Mr President" is the correct way to address former Presidents because they are Presidents for life.

Actually this is also one of my pet peeves and I was glad to see that others find it annoying too. Sorry but no one is "President for life" in the USA. Maybe Mugabe can be "President for life" in Zimbabwe. It's fine to call someone Mr President while he's in office although I don't see what's wrong with just calling him Mr Bush (or whoever.)

I don't even like calling anyone "sir." I know it's polite in the South but the last time I checked, "sir" is some kind of aristocratic British title.

Even worse than calling ex-Presidents "Mr President" is calling retired (or defeated) Congressmen (or cabinet members or Governors) by their former titles such as "Senator" or (even more fawning) "Mr Secretary." How obsequious can you get?

To tell you the truth, I don't like calling politicians by any title whether they're in office or out. It's also silly to call people by their job description. By that logic, why don't I call my plumber "Mr Plumber?"

I also don't like calling retired military officers by their ranks such as "General" or "Captain." You're "Mr" to me once you're out of the military.

Anyway what's wrong with plain old "mister" especially since it's not used in everyday parlance anymore and everyone calls each other by their first names nowadays?

I was only ever called "Patrick" by friends and family and in elementary school. After that I was called "Conlon" in high school and "Mr Conlon" in college and the work-place until I came to the USA. Suddenly I was back to elementary school again being called "Patrick." Even worse I was expected to call my boss by his or her first name.

It seems that we have lost a sense of proportion in the amount of respect we owe each other. I don't know which is worse: the kowtowing and fawning usage of fancy titles like "Mr President" or the overly familiar use of first names in the work-place.

I especially don't like being called by my first name by doctors. Who do they think they are? We're expected to call them "Dr" but it's fine for them to infantilize us by using our first names. Nope.

And while I'm on the subject of doctors let me add that I do not like to be called a "patient." Sorry, but I am a "customer, client or patron." Take your pick but I am never a "patient." I don't have the patience or the humility to be called a patient.

Just call me "mister."

Why I called this blog "Born Again Redneck"

Obviously I'm not a real redneck. I wasn't born in the South and I don't live there. So why use that phrase?

My extended family was a real mixture of wealthy educated cultured folks at the top and trailer trash at the bottom. My immediate family fell somewhere in the middle - but closer to the bottom so we did not have much to do with the rich relatives. Most of my uncles and aunts worked menial jobs on the railways and in the post office or as waitresses and store-clerks. My richest uncle was a motor-cycle traffic cop. The next richest was a foreman in a coal mine but our closest cousins were what are known in South Africa as "poor whites" and they lived in a trailer park.

My dad was a a professional wrestler before he went into the airforce as a mechanic during WWll. After the war he bought a hotel with his savings but was not a good businessman and soon had to sell it. He then worked as a part-time door-to-door saleman and managed hotels for other people. (Yes, I lived in hotels for most of my early childhood and still love hotels to this day.) My mom was a nurse which, in those days required no college education - she was trained on the job. My parents had middle-class aspirations but did not have enough education to better themselves.

After I became a Catholic at the age of 7, I begged my dad to send me to Catholic school. Eventually he agreed and I went to the Marist Brothers boarding school. Then my dad got sick and could no longer work and I had to go to a government school for my final year of high-school. In those days all school kids wore uniforms - even government school kids - and I had to get a new uniform for the new school. My dad did not have the money to buy a new uniform - a new blazer, boater hat and tie cost as much as food for a month. The eldest son of a friend of my mom had recently graduated from that school and I was given his old uniform. The elbows in the blazer were worn out and had to be patched. The boater hat was dented and no longer crisp and white and the tie was blotched with stains.

I stuck out like a sore thumb on my first day in the new school in my grubby second-hand clothes amid all the shiny new uniforms. I tried desperately to hide the patches in my elbows by crossing my arms and covering the elbows with my hands. But there was no escaping the sneers of my fellow pupils. I resigned myself to a life of humiliation and coped with it by adopting the role of an eccentric and playing the class clown. I go into detail about this because it was such a big turning point in my life and turned me into a rebel.

Despite the fact that I was obviously not a rich kid, I was a smart kid and the other smart kids liked me and befriended me but I was wary about bringing them home. I was educated beyond my parents and ashamed of them. Every time that I did bring new friends home, I could see that they were shocked by my family - especially my dad who would sit at the kitchen table studying horse-racing "form" without a shirt on; all the while smoking like a chimney, coughing and lifting his thighs to let out shameless farts. It didn't help that he always called my friends "goddamned pansies and poofters." Okay so some of them were but dad called all "cultured" people "pansies and poofters" including me.

By the time that I graduated, I was really good at literature, history and Latin and wanted to study to be a teacher but there was no money to study "useless nonsense" as my dad called it. My best friend was going to study pharmacy and I discovered that there were scholarships available for pharmacy so I applied eventhough I was no good at science or math. The head of the pharmacy department called me in for an interview to let me know that my science and math grades were not good enough for a scholarship. He asked me why I wanted to do something that I was obviously not suited for. I told him my predicament - sick dad, no money to study "useless nonsense" etc.

He told me that he could see that I was smart enough to get better at science and math and that he would lend me the money to study pharmacy out of his own pocket and I could repay it slowly over a number of years. I went out and got a part-time job in a drugstore and began to study science and math seriously for the first time in my life. I did well in pharmacy school and started to pay off my debt to my generous benefactor. When I graduated, he told me to stop paying him; that he was forgiving the rest of my debt. (What a saint. How blessed I was to have known him.)

Now, the kind of people who study pharmacy are not the most cultivated people in the world - they're mostly practical sensible folks - and most of my friends in college were those who studied literature; the artsy-fartsy types. I read all the books that they read like Marx and Proust and became fairly educated. But there were big holes in my education because I was self-taught. I realized that I could not keep up with my artsy-fartsy friends when I mispronounced words like Leviathan and hegemony - eventhough I knew what they meant.

But still I gravitated toward the arty-fartsy types. The only classical music that I had been exposed to as a kid was Tchaikovsky - we had an old 78-rpm record of "Swan Lake" which I adored - but my friends could argue about whether Wagner or Verdi composed the greatest operas and they would snicker when I told them my favorite opera composer was Puccini. Slowly I improved myself in their eyes till I was almost as smart as they were - almost but never quite as clever. And that's been the story of my life - struggling to rise above my trailer trash beginnings but never quite making it.

Eventually I gave up after I moved to San Francisco and met a very wealthy lawyer who introduced me to the city's richest and most influential people. I learned to enjoy fine wines and French food and, God forgive me, even some Wagner. But it was in this setting that I realized that still preferred Puccini to Wagner and barbecue steaks to French food. You can take the trailer trash out of the trailer park but...

I'd known rich people before. For some reason they liked and trusted me - probably because they knew that I admired them and was not envious but meeting this wealthy lawyer coincided with my realization that I was no longer a "liberal" like my rich and educated friends. They were protected from the harsh realities of survival while I was still struggling to make ends meet. They were insouciant about cutting off the branch of capitalism on which they were sitting while I was still struggling to gain a foothold on it. I wasn't quite lowbrow trailer trash anymore but I certainly was not highbrow bourgeois. I was just a regular middle-brow middle-class middle-of-the-road average Joe - not quite a redneck but no longer ashamed of my humble roots.

Then about 6 years ago I met a guy on the internet through the anti-cult forum to which I contributed. Like me, he too had been in the guru cult and had seen through it. He was a career military officer and, like me but unlike the other ex-cultists, he was politically conservative. He posted under the nickname, New Age Redneck - a reference to the fact that he was not one of the hoity-toity leftists eventhough he had, like me, been sucked into a New Age cult at an early and impressionable age.

So, when it came time to give my blog a name three years ago, I took my inspiration from him. "Born Again Redneck" means that I was born as trailer trash but moved away from my roots only to rediscover them later and be born again into acceptance of my middle-brow mediocrity. Sure I like expensive wines and have even learned to enjoy haute cuisine and can now pronounce Leviathan correctly but I still can't stand Proust and Marx.

PS I've changed the name of the blog a couple of times because I know that calling myself a redneck is inaccurate and pretentious but I keep reverting back to it because I don't want to give up the links that refer to me. I added the "yogi" bit to make it funnier - and a little bit more accurate.

Now, I'm off to barbecue some possum and decant some fresh moonshine - er, I mean finish listening to Brahms' "German Requiem" before I go prune my roses and transplant some violets. Maybe I should call this blog Schizophrenic Bourgeois Redneck.

Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die

Boy, I'm a lucky fellow. I'm really getting to enjoy having three-day weekends since I decided to take Fridays off a few months ago.

For dinner tonight we had fresh trout. It's early in the season so they were smallish (under a pound each - just enough to serve one fish per person) and were baked whole with just the guts removed and replaced with some sliced onion, garlic, butter, salt and pepper. When they're served, it only takes about five minutes to remove the skin and lift the delicate flesh from the bones. All it needs is a squeeze of lime.

We had it with pasta and pesto, asparagus (we've had two harvests already this year) and a loaf of warm crusty pugliese bread all washed down with a bottle of Oak Knoll Oregon chardonnay - a feast fit for kings. (Note to people who don't like fish - like Right Wing Prof - trout does not have a fishy smell and is not muddy-tasting like catfish.)

Now I'm just taking a break while the boys wash dishes and feed the dogs and then we'll have a dessert of fresh pears, strawberries, whipped cream and rich buttery Umpquah ice-cream with Andy's home-made oat cookies. He makes them with a very buttery dough where half the flour has been replace with ground walnuts and they're chock full of dark chocolate chips, raisins and dried cranberries with a smidgen of orange zest. It's time to break out the KWV 1985 vintage South African port.

Locke - Grandfather of the American Revolution

John Locke lived from 1632 to 1704 and most of his writings were published nearly a hundred years before the American Revolution but his philosophy was the foundation stone on which the Founding Fathers built the Constitution.

From "Two Treatises of Government":

Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence.
[...]
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
[...]
The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.
[...]
The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.

From "Second Treatise on Civil Government":

Government has no other end but the preservation of Property.
[...]
Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

From "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding":

When the spirit brings light into our minds, it dispels darkness. We see it, as we do that of the sun at noon, and need not the twilight of reason to show it us. This light from heaven is strong, clear, and pure carries its own demonstration with it; and we may as naturally take a glow-worm to assist us to discover the sun, as to examine the celestial ray by our dim candle, reason.
[...]
It is of great use to the sailor, to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is well he knows, that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him. Our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures, whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in this world, may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge.
[...]
Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural facilities: Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives, that they come from God.

It's the beginning of summer

I've posted this graphic before only to be told that summer does not begin on May 6th but on June 21st. I've watched enough weather to know that the cycle of seasons differs quite a bit from place to place depending on a lot of things: mountains, vast plains, rain-forests, distances from the moderating influences of the ocean (or even large bays, lakes and rivers.)

Being a mere dilletante weather-watcher, obviously I'm compressing a lot of variables into a big generalization when I talk about the weather or climate. Also this is a pretty rambling and not particularly well organized look at the subject.

My theory about why summer begins on the West Coast on May 6th and not later as it does elsewhere is that the biggest influence on our coastal climate is the sun's "position in the sky" (that is obviously not a scientifically correct description). Of course the Pacific Ocean has an influence too but not as dramatic as the inland mountains and plains. The sea and the coast are so linked that there's not much difference between them but, as the weather moves eastward, it is altered drastically by the dry mountains and plains.

So, the sun is the real "engine" of our weather and here on the coast the sun has a "purer" effect than it has inland. By that I simply mean that it's "position in the sky" affects us more "purely" as it has not been altered by mountains and plains.

When I first posted this graphic last year at this time and was contradicted, I referred to Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" He continues" "Thou art more lovely and more temperate; rough winds do shake the darling buds of May and summer's lease hath all too short a date."

May was summer to Shakespeare. His western England has a similar climate to the Northwest (as do Wales, western Ireland and Scotland.) They call it a "maritime climate" and they refer to inland Europe's weather as a "continental climate" which - except for the three coasts - is what the USA also has. (The west coast of Britain and Ireland are further north than here but they have a warm current coming up from the south that moderates their climate.)

The Mediterranean Sea has it's own influence on southern Europe which is said to have a "Mediterranean climate." Southern California has the same climate as southern Spain. Los Angeles is actually on the same latitude as Morocco. By the time you get to San Francisco the climate is like Portugal's and Oregon's climate is like that of Bordeaux - halfway between Mediterranean and maritime - which is why we produce such fine wines here.

So anyway, as I was saying: the sun has a more straightforward and "purer" effect on us at the coast since it is not yet effected by mountains and plains. It's "position in the sky" determines our seasons.

On December 21st the sun's effects are concentrated on the southern hemisphere and, here in the north, we only have a weak southern sun for about 8 hours a day. It's midwinter. Once the sun has "reached the furthest south" that it can go, it begins its "journey northward" and, by February 6th, it has once again begun to concentrate its energy on the northern hemisphere. Our days are 10 hours long. The sap starts rising in the deciduous plants. Tiny almost invisible buds appear. It's the beginning of spring.

By March 21st the sun's energy is equally divided between the two hemispheres and we have 12 hour days. By May 6th when the sun begins "to move even further north" we're having 14 hour days and every flower that can bloom is. It's the beginning of summer.

By June 21st the sun is as "far north as it can go" and it's permanent day at the North Pole. At our latitude, we have 16 hour days. It's midsummer and, from then on, it's down hill all the way. The days get shorter. By August 6th they've shrunk to 14 hours. The weather is balmy because the earth has been warmed for three months by now and everyone thinks "Ah, finally summer!" But really it is the beginning of fall and autumn is, as Keats said, a "close bosom friend of the maturing sun."

By September 21st the sun's energy is equally divided between the two hemispheres and we have 12 hour days. By November 6th the sun begins "to move even further south" and by now we're having only 10 hour days and the earth is starting to cool off. The sap begins to retreat in deciduous plants. It's the beginning of winter.

By December 21st the sun is as "far south" as it can go and it is midwinter - back to square one.

That's what I mean when I say that the sun's "position in the sky" is the biggest influence on our coastal weather. Between here and the East Coast there are all sorts of other influences. Mountains and plains have a big influence but probably the biggest difference between West Coast weather and the rest of the USA is because of the influence exerted by the Gulf of Mexico. The Great Lakes also alter the "pure" influence of the sun's "position in the sky." And the closer you get to the East Coast, the more influence the Atlantic has on the weather too.

But here on the West Coast our weather is "purely" a matter of the sun's "position in the sky" and our summer begins on May 6th as it did last Sunday when it was a balmy 70F and the mayflies, midges and mosqitoes suddenly swarmed.

By Monday it was 80F and the other major West Coast weather phenomenon began to kick in - wind. Yep, "rough winds do shake the darling buds of May." This wind happens whenever it's sunny here. As the air inland heats up and rises, cold air from the Pacific rushes in to fill the void. Without the wind, our temps would be over 90F most of summer. (The air from the Pacific is cold because of the Alaskan current which moves south along the coast and keeps the ocean below 50F all year round.)

But you really know that summer has arrived when the "fog" (or more correctly the "marine layer") is blown in from the ocean. (The "marine layer" is a fog-bank which hangs just off the coast over the cold Alaskan current all the time.) After two or three days of sunny, warm and windy days, the fog comes rolling in and keeps our summers cool and moist with daytime temps around 65F and night-time temps of 50F.

This is what the "marine layer" looks like from about 600 feet above sea-level at the top of the mountain on whose western slope I live.












The top of the "marine layer" hovers at about 300 feet above sea-level. My house is 170 feet above sea level and is completely enveloped by the fog. It's like living in a cloud-forest most of the summer.

Pied Beauty

by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

I was doing a search for this poem on my blog and saw that I've posted it many times in the past three years since starting to blog. Well, it is my all-time favorite poem by one of my favorite poets.

Skies of couple-colour:














A brinded cow:























Rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:















Fresh-firecoal chestnut-fall:















Finches’ wings:























Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough: