The California Drought ---- What Should Be Done

A gentleman in my town has publicly proposed “the perfect solution to California’s drought.” It is the idea that all 37 million of us shall pray to god for drought relief. I would say this is an absurd idea, but the gentleman is a religious leader. So since he is invested in the enormous “god industry” that somehow manages to prevail into the 21^st Century, I can’t really blame him.

What we need to realize --- not even all 37 million of us --- is that the natural environment of California was never likely to support 37 million people anyway. Indeed, in pre-mission times, the landmass that we call California supported around 330,000 people quite nicely. But ever since statehood, landowners have sought to “develop” their land --- a sneaky way of talking about profiting from your land holdings --- by encouraging Easterners to emigrate and buy “developed property.” One sections off a parcel of land, builds a house on it, and promises access to water, sewage, and public education, as well as police and fire protection. It’s interesting how the community as a whole turns out to be responsible for providing the water, education, and protection, while the landowner rolls off with the profits. Anyway, that’s been the story of California for a long time now, and we are just about at the breaking point.

As Wallace Stegner and other authors of the West have eloquently announced, the West is inherently dry compared to the humid East so it takes very much more land to support an individual out here. (Read, for example, Wallace Stegner’s “Beyond the Hundredth Meridian” or the recent book by David Gessner, “All the Wild that Remains”). What can we do? Well, we should stop acting as though access to water is free for the taking. People who want to profit from land development should be required to develop appropriate water resources. That, I must say, would stop development in its tracks --- not something that the “city fathers/mothers” are likely to be enthusiastic about, since they make much of their money off of development too.

What Californians can hope for, right now, is that an El Nino condition will bring lots of rain and snowpack to California this fall and winter. We can hope that we refill our reservoirs over the next couple of years. But then, the biggest thing that 37 million Californians can do is conserve water even when the reservoirs are full. The history of our state is to worry about water when we don’t have it and then use it well beyond need when we do have it. Also, when we do have it, we tend to forget everything and stop building improvements to our conservation infrastructure. In the LA area, for instance, enormous amounts of rain water just runs out into the ocean. In drought times, we wonder why we don’t trap this water, but when the good times come again, we forget about the whole matter.

In my observation, people tend to thank god whenever something good and unexpected happens to them. Baseball players thank god when they make a hit and get to base successfully. Tornado victims thank god for saving their homes and their lives. What I don’t tend to see people doing in wondering why god let them strike out or let the outfielder catch a fly ball. Nor do I see tornado victims asking why god killed the other people and destroyed their homes and businesses. It seems we take this “omnibenevolence” idea very seriously. But when it comes to droughts and disasters, we either say “god acts in mysterious ways” or just ignore the question. Face it, the big guy just isn’t responsible for everything that goes on. We need to do our part --- and that doesn’t mean just begging him (or her).

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking gave a lecture in Australia last week (although he attended by a remote link from England). In his talk Hawking suggested that humanity will probably not survive the next millennium. So he suggested that humanity must find another habitation somewhere in the universe.

I have little doubt that Hawking is a brilliant scientist but his occasional pronouncements about human life and humanity are naive. Let's examine the present suggestions.

I suspect that Hawking is probably correct that humanity is in a desperately declining situation on earth. If global warming and its consequent climate charge continue at the present rate. Humanity will be significantly stressed by the end of this century. Meanwhile, our careless style of life on this planet will continue to drive other animals into extinction. Given that, I am wondering why we should do anything to resist our own extinction. Why should humanity be special? We are, after all, just another animal species for which life on this planet is becoming impossible (ironically because of our own thoughtless behavior).

Hawking is by no means unique in suggesting that we should colonize another planet-like place in the universe. But no one ever seems to think about how this would actually be done. Of course, there is the technical problem, but everyone believes that can be solved. What is ignored is the enormous social problem. That is, who will go? Naturally, so far as our country is concerned, only the really wealthy dudes will get to go. 99% of Americans can just give it up. But who is to say that Americans have much to do with this. What about all the other people who make up "humanity"? And will this new habitation be populated with Christians or Muslims or Buddhists? Who gets to say what happens there? Frankly, we'd all be best off is religion is not allowed at all! Shall we take all our guns? Will we take some animals with us?

OK, I see a lot of space here for science-fiction writing, but I don't see our dysfunctional political world dealing with it in any rational way. If we can't manage our own nice earthly world, there's little hope for managing some substitute world.

So-called "religious freedom"

So Arkansas and Indiana have both passed laws that allow religious groups to claim "religious freedom" as an excuse for acts over which they might be sued. There is, of course, no point in enacting "religious freedom" laws in the states since religious freedom is already guaranteed by the U S Constitution. Hence, the only reason for state legislation is to allow more "freedom" than allowed by the Federal system. Obviously, the "freedom" involved has to do with discrimination, including gay and lesbian lifestyles.

The Constitution promises that citizens may freely worship according to the beliefs and traditions of any religion. (And at the same time the government will not institute any state religion.) But the key word here is 'worship'. Worship is a private thing or, at best, a thing that happens in a special community of worshippers. When a person owns a business in a wider community and closes the business to gays or lesbians, for instance, that is not an act of "worship". The Constitution does not offer religious people the freedom to abuse other people in their communities on the basis of their private religious beliefs.

One might want to ask the State of Indiana if they are prepared to protect conservative Muslims who believe that adulterous women should be stoned to death on religious grounds. Of course, they are not because this is just a case of Christian bigotry to protect Christians who are opposed to legal abortions and LGBT lifestyles! It has nothing to do with religion in any wider sense.

The Hidden Flaw

I have come to understand that there is a hidden flaw in humankind. It is “hidden” because I do not know what it is exactly; however, it is clearly there, doing its mischief in human affairs. It is when we take a sober look at what humans do and how they act that we understand the flaw’s existence and the danger that it poses.

Let’s look past all the sweet little stores about being God’s special creatures and take a realistic view of what actually happens in the world. First and foremost, creatures breathe oxygen in order to fuel their inner organic systems. [OK, fish don’t exactly “breathe” but they still extract oxygen out of water through their gills.] However, second most important, all creatures require “food” in order to build and maintain their bodies. What humans like to ignore is that “food” is actually us. Food is really just the whole collection of insects, plants, and animals. All living things get eaten by something. Perhaps humans do not get eaten very often nowadays but they were in the past and there still are animals higher in the food chain. The “food chain” . . . it’s like a comprehensive menu of who eats whom and what. Of special interest, and significance, is the lack of waste in this process. Killing is done for food and if the killer doesn’t want all of its prey, there is always someone else who will take the rest.

There is one animal that violates this law constantly, thoroughly, and grotesquely. That is the human; and that is where we begin to sense the existence of a flaw. Humans try to hide the nature of food by industrializing the process of killing animals and, in the process, they waste enormous amounts of food. But there is a much greater failed behavior of humankind and that is the killing of other humans. For the most part, humans do not even kill other humans for food (which is a legitimate reason in the animal world) but rather they kill other humans for sport, in revenge, out of hatred, and by command. The human dead are mutilated, burned, and buried. 

In my lifetime, I have witnessed the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the First Gulf War, the War in Afganistan, and the Second War in Iraq. Countless human civilians and military personnel died in these epic clashes and one can only ask why. But we never seriously ask why; instead, we invent mythic excuses that elevate democracy, freedom, defense in order to hide the money-making, profit-taking, economic ambitions, and political fantasies that really underly the command to kill. 

It is not clear to me where and when all of this began in the long history of humankind. What is clear today is that humans have worked science, technology, and invention to the point that this inner flaw can now do enormous damage to humankind as a whole as well as to all the rest of the world. The 21st Century is off to a terrible start, and if we do not get some insight into why we do these things, I fear the century’s end may bring humanity’s end as well. 

Cuba

Well, I never believed that it would happen in my lifetime but now Barak Obama has done it. I am very happy that we will now start being at peace with these people. We may not like their government, but we have held the people of Cuba hostage for way too long.

And for those who are angry about this, let's remember that the US had no problem supporting Fulgencio Batista for years-and-years. Batista was an evil and repressive dictator, but he was a friend of Capitalism. Led by Fidel Castro, the Cuban people rebelled against this repression, but Castro was a Communist. So there it all is --- America's age old hysteria about Communism vs. Capitalism. How many people have suffered on the horns of this dilemma?

When we listen to those Miami Cuban exiles rant about Obama making peace with the Castros, we need to remember that they are "Cuban exiles" because they were friends of Batista. Yes, he was a "great leader" --- a friend of mine in Berkeley in the late '50s left Cuba after the Batista regime mailed her brother's head in a box to his mother. That's the kind of guy we supported down there. But now we bawl and complain about Castro's human rights violations.

Some day I will figure out what America really is.

Police in America

Obviously this is a topic of concern today. However, it has been an issue in one way or another for well more than a century. Ask an early trade unionist about the police and you will get an ear full. 

Today, the obvious issue is using lethal force against young black men. But young brown men are scarcely better off. And recent history shows that you don’t necessarily have to be young. The problem? A) police use lethal force in cases where lethal force is not warranted, and B) they are never taken to task for their actions.

Now, it is clear that we need to have police in order to enforce our laws and protect our citizens. It is also clear that serving as a policeman is a dangerous and demanding task. It is also a sobering task. Young police officers see a very bad side of society. The problem, I think, is that police are trained to focus their attention on that “bad society” and they are not fully trained in the “protect and serve” motto that ought to embrace their relations with the whole community. Junior deputies in the Los Angeles Sheriff”s Department, for instance, are required to serve five years in the jails. That’s a great way of getting them involved in communities. No wonder the new officer on the street looks at everyone with suspicion. It’s like saying, as a part of training, “these are the guys we put in here; go find more.” Of course, since most of the young men in jail are either brown or black, it is easy to become a racist without even knowing it. 

But another aspect of police training is at fault here, I believe. Police are trained to draw their guns under almost any circumstance. In contrast, in the military, troops are trained that a gun is drawn and pointed at someone only if their is a real intention to shoot and kill. I once walked into a gasoline station and found myself standing next to a policeman just inside the door with his automatic pistol aimed straight at a young Mexican man who was standing at the counter. The man had no weapon; there was no body lying about; he was, in fact, quite docile. There is no way that he had committed a crime requiring a death sentence, but he was facing deadly force.

Even if Michael Brown was not a very nice kid and bullied his way out of a store with a fist full of cigarillos, he had done nothing that would deserve a death sentence. But he died of multiple gun shot wounds from an officer’s weapon. What brought that about? Unfortunately, we will probably never know unless there is a Federal prosecution. The officer claims that Brown attacked him. But it is also easy to imagine the officer pulling up and shouting some racist thing — like, “Hey Ni…rs get your asses up on the sidewalk” to set up the dynamic. The fact is that the county prosecutor used the Grand Jury as a way of trying Brown without a defense by putting all of his own “evidence” before them and never allowing cross-examination. And this is how police are protected in the system. Police need protection sometimes, but not when they have done bad things. 

I am glad to see the protests all over our country. It’s about time people got fired up enough about something to get out into the streets. Obviously, I am not glad to see a small minority of others jumping into the action and doing violence. All that does is reinforce the police vision of what people are like. I hope that the protests will produce change, but I have to admit that I doubt they will. The police are way too set in their ways to change.

Perhaps the next issue to bring people into the streets will be the complete breakdown of democracy in America. If we don't start reacting to that, it will become a permanent state of affairs.

November 5, 2014

How do the Republicans, who operate in the interests of about 1% of the people, succeed in convincing 55% of the people to vote for them? How stupid can Americans be!