The Old Nativity Set

By C. U. Douglas

Born and raised in Oregon, I've lived most my life on the West Coast, save three years near Minneapolis, Minnesota. I survived four years in the hellish paradise that is Santa Rosa, another two in a land where "Keep Portland Weird" is the first commandment, and I am happily married and living in Utah. I am an electrical designer, Protestant, and a huge nerd. I am a brand new father, and I can't shut up about it. I abuse ellipses with wild abandon.

| December 23, 2017

15 COMMENTS

I think I have shared several stories of the Christmases of my youth. In fact, I did several last year when I did a “Christmas Song of the Day” series. There is something youthful about Christmas, I suppose. I can see this now that I have a family of my own. My little girl gushes about each new addition to our Christmas decoration. She excitedly points out Christmas lights to us while we drive. She’s gotten her first taste of Christmas specials this year. In fact, she still randomly shouts, “Happy Birthday!” after watching Frosty the Snowman. It’s pretty infectious, if exhausting.

I can recall having some of that enthusiasm when I was a boy. We played John Denver and the Muppets’ A Christmas Together so many times I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents burned the album after we moved out of the house at last. Decorating the tree was a fun and fractious affair – strong branches were always prime real estate for our personal ornaments we had been collecting over the years. And of course, every year we broke out the nativity set.

I happened to love that old nativity set. It was a beautifully painted set. The Magi from the East I recall in particular having rather handsomely colored robes and equally bedecked camel. Tiny, fake (I can safely assume) gemstones adorned each. But we also had Mary Mother of Jesus, Joseph, the shepherds, a few pieces of appropriate livestock – sheep and a donkey and the like – and of course, the baby Jesus. We always found a place for them every year. Or my parents did, usually in places harder and harder to reach yet I still managed to reach. See, there was another feature of this old nativity set: I’m pretty sure they were all made from plaster and thus prone to getting chips.

This is a problem when your family includes a young lad that loves that nativity set, who’s constantly arranging and rearranging the pieces, who’s constantly playing out the nativity scene as he understands it with quality-painted plaster figures that are dropping tiny parts after each performance. As a result, these poor, abused figures took a lot of punishment from a young boy who treated them like his own personal Action Jesus Manager Playset.

Yet even though I did this, I don’t recall ‘embellishing’ on that story. My Star Wars and G.I. Joe action figures never paid respects to the Christ Child or held off Darth Vader and Herod’s Stormtroopers as they searched for all the baby boys in Bethlehem. Maybe that’s a missed opportunity? Maybe, but I think it was my love of the Christmas story that held my attention even when I was just a little child that kept me from adding to it.

Even then, the story held my attention. The concept of God the Father eternal coming down into and restricting himself the temporal as God the Son, the miracle of the virgin birth, God’s interventions to preserve and assure our salvation – all these things were too compelling to add to. Moreover, there was the knowledge that they were true that kept me from adding to this. Other action figures would be interlopers, fictional characters trying to impose themselves on what I know as an event in time. They were not welcome there to steal the limelight from the real star of that story, a humble baby lying in a manger.

When I grew older, I took a lot of my personal decorations with me. I requested that old nativity set as I never saw my parents use it anymore. I can’t recall what exactly happened with it, but by the time I asked the set was already gone. Most likely it was thrown out as being too damaged from little enthusiastic hands. Today my little family has not one but two nativity sets: a Playschool Little People set we bought and a Veggie Tales set that my parents sent us. They have existed on the same table sometimes without fighting. I suppose the latter set understands they are just actors performing the roles and thus don’t need to fight over who’s depicting the real story. Both sets have the advantage of being made of more durable material – something that can survive the handling of two toddlers aged two and a half and one, but they are more toys than a display.

One day I hope to have a display set. I eye them every time I pass through a Christmas aisle in any store that might have them, no matter how early it is. I may not get one as nice as the set I imagine our family had those years ago, but every year as I share in my child’s enthusiasm, I recall the wonder of the Christmas Story as well. Even with the sets we own, I like to set them up and display them, once again showing that wonderful scene so long ago. Once again, I like to contemplate and wonder at the event that changed the world forever in such an unassuming way.

Merry Christmas to all. God bless.

All Joking Aside – Or Maybe Not

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| November 18, 2017

13 COMMENTS

We’re living in humorless times. It’s not that things are particularly unfunny, it’s just that every joke we tell seems to be accompanied by a Greek Chorus explaining why it’s actually not funny at all, why we should feel bad about ourselves, and why killing Agamemnon was a bad idea.

Wait, scratch that last part; wrong chorus. Where was I? Oh yes. Our humorlessness is prominent. When a film asks the question Can We Take a Joke? and the apparent reply is “no,” there’s a problem. We now live in an age of neo-puritanism, where self-styled moral authorities inform us what activities we can and can’t do, and which jokes are not funny no matter how much you try to laugh. We even have neo-puritanical witch hunts where people are metaphorically burned at the stake for humor-crimes. Luckily neo-puritans haven’t given us ridiculous hats with giant buckles. How did we get here?

The answer is with ridicule. That is the answer to the Appeal to Ridicule logical fallacy, not that the answer is worthy of ridicule. Or maybe it is. I’m writing this, after all. In any case, the Appeal to Ridicule works like this: If I mock your argument, then I have demonstrated your argument is false. It’s a fallacy of course because it does nothing to disprove anything of the statements being argued against. The statement may or may not be true, but mockery of the statement demonstrates nothing of its veracity. As of late, however, we as a culture have embraced the Appeal to Ridicule as argument.

The most prominent example, of course, would be “The Daily Show” once hosted by John Stewart and now by Trevor Noah. The show gained much of its popularity during the Bush administration where Stewart would report on a story, mock the behavior or conclusions of the administration and Republicans, then proceed as if this proves the Right’s arguments are false.

Now, there are several shows like this, and some who started on The Daily Show and its various cousins have continued on to their own shows or late-night television. This has further metastasized through the culture in social media, where any commenter can make a meme that mocks the opposition. And even though this started most demonstrably on the Left, many on the Right have embraced this Alinsky tactic as their own. The basic rule of Alinsky is shown to be this: fallacies work (h/t @misthiocracy).

“But CUD!” you might say, “We’re laughing at all this ridicule! We totally have a sense of humor!” Well, yes, but herein lies the problem: Once you accept that ridicule disproves an argument, you cannot take ridicule lightly for fear of having your own arguments disproved. To avoid this embarrassing situation, we declare that making jokes about our argument is not only invalid and officially unfunny but simply not allowed. Note that this may not be a conscious thought process; in fact, I believe it is not, but it’s an underlay to our refusal to accept humor against our own sacred cows. We can’t even allow people to mock themselves, for fear that someone else will take that self-mockery as disproval of a greater set in which the individual is a part.

I’ve experienced this phenomenon recently. I used to enjoy sharing Andrew Klavan’s opening monologues. I enjoyed his irreverent takes on the news of the day. When I shared his take on the statue protests, boy, did I get a dressing down. One of my more lefty friends lectured that if we found this so funny, we clearly didn’t care about the statues and should just let those who want to tear them down to do so because, for them, this is serious.

Essentially, she was informing me that I was not allowed to mock or share someone else’s ridicule of the issue. Never in the course of my sharing of the video or the dressing down was it established that tearing down statues was right or wrong. Only that Klavan (and I, in sharing) found something inherently humorous about the situation.

What do we do? The best solution I can imagine is that we learn to take our drubbings when we get them. The simple rule used to be, “If you can dish it out, you can take it.” We need to learn to take it. We also need to hold that all the laughs we take neither prove nor disprove what we have to say and that our own laughter is held to similar rules. And then we have to get approximately 1 billion people to do the same. Easy, right?

Full Contact Pinochle with My Family

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| October 21, 2017

35 COMMENTS

Growing up, games were always a part of family life. I think Sorry and Trouble caused more fights between us siblings than just about any other point of contention. I don’t specifically recall any fistfights over Candyland, but that doesn’t mean they never happened. If they did they were never started by me, that’s for sure.Of course, when it came to getting the whole family at the table, from kids to grandparents, card games were the go-to entertainment and, yes, they caused just about as many fights and probably even more laughter, and the occasional sullen sulk. There were no fistfights, though.

Of course, when it came to getting the whole family at the table, from kids to grandparents, card games were the go-to entertainment and, yes, they caused just about as many fights and probably even more laughter, and the occasional sullen sulk. There were no fistfights, though.

The card game that we would play the most was Pinochle. Pinochle is a trick-taking game played with a deck of cards called a Pinochle Deck. Huh, how coincidental. Anyway, the Pinochle deck has all four suits with cards from the Ace to the Nine, two of each in every suit for a total of 48 cards. Aces are always top card value, then it’s Ten, King, Queen, Jack, and Nines at the bottom. Yes, Tens are worth more than Kings. This is the crazy mixed-up world of Pinochle where nothing makes sense.

Each round has three phases: bidding, meld, and trick-tacking. There are two versions of the game I’ve played, one we called “Racehorse Pinochle” where there’s a card-trading phase between bidding and meld. We played the good version. Keep your own dang cards. Rather than start in order, I’m going to work backwards. That’s how badly the “Tens are worth more than Kings” has messed me up.

Trick taking starts with the bid winner. The objective is to take cards that earn points: Aces, Tens, and Kings. The team that lost the bid is trying to pass off all their non-counters to you, because you have to earn those points, buddy. They are also trying to get as many counters as possible for themselves to make the bid-winners go under, in which they will crow and gloat about it for much of the game until something bad happens to them. This typically happens next round. The bid winner will have announced the Trump suit with help from the Russians. Trumps will beat any card of any other suit. Thus, a Nine of the Trump suit will be an Ace of non-Trump. Just like life.

Meld is shown after the bid. This is where you earn points by having certain cards in point winning combinations. An Ace or a face card of every suit is worth a good amount (generally called “Aces around, Kings around, etc.”) Having a Queen of Spades and a Jack of Diamonds is called a “Pinochle” and worth a good amount of points. “Double Pinochle” is worth more than double that and we’ll never know why.

The bidding round takes both of the above into account. If you’re playing the correct, non-card trading version that all decent Americans should, bidding serves two purposes: it takes command of the trump suit, and it signals to your partner what you can do. Oh yes, forgot to tell you that Pinochle is played with four people, partnered in teams of two. Bidding starts at “15” (which really means “150” but apparently we like to divide by 10 a lot in Pinochle), begins at the dealer’s left, and goes clockwise.

Bid scores generally mean something like this:

16: I have some meld, but not a lot of playable cards.
17: I have some Aces to help.
18: I have decent meld. Feel free to consider going nuts.
19: I have aces and meld to help, because I’m just that cool.
20: Oh yeah, now we’re looking at serious meld.
21: Serious meld? Well I’m looking at a strong suit! In your face “serious meld” guy.

Okay, maybe when you play, the commentary isn’t implied, but it sure is in our family. Bidding over 20 typically tells the table you have great cards and you want to win the bid. Bidding 24 tells the table you have Aces around which is a lot of points in meld and powerful in play. Bidding 25 means you have a run in the trump suit – Ace to Jack. Seriously, if you have a run in something, you generally want that bid because if you lose it, that means someone else names trump which is most likely not your run suit. Losing bid on a run generally makes those cards worthless (save, say, the Ace) and causes much wailing and gnashing of teeth. In our family, if this happened, the people watching football in another part of the house knew. We’d consider throwing cards in disgust but since after losing a bid we have two more phases of the round, that kept things from getting out of hand like certain Settlers of Catan games I’ve played. I totally wouldn’t be the guy throwing dice in childish anger. No. Never.

Of course, there were wrinkles in the bidding. A couple of family members ignored convention and instead just threw out numbers that sounded good to them. This was a constant source of frustration. In fact, my mother’s side of the family takes Pinochle very seriously (they are more competitive than me) and more than one player has been banned from that table for not communicating properly. If a 19 doesn’t mean aces and meld, if a 19 could mean anything, we have recreational chaos! What’s next?! Same-sex marriage?!

Despite groans of getting multiple terrible hands in a row while the opposing team’s luck seems golden, despite going “set” (failing to make as many points as bid), we played this game multiple times. Partners would switch and rotate. We would chat and laugh. My dad’s mother never played but she always loved watching us play with each other (her position in the fifth chair is missed). I suppose our excessive competitiveness and ups and down were entertaining. It was definitely a game that drew our family together. We would always be up for another game, even if we lost – especially if we lost. After all, our luck had to change eventually, right, and we had to win at least one!

My grandparents are gone. Our families don’t seem to meet nearly as often as we used to. Memories of Pinochle remain instead of actual games. And even though I could be the most sullen of anyone in the family after receiving the fifth terrible hand in a row, I would love to play Pinochle with them all again.

Maybe later I could explain Cribbage and how cutthroat we would get with that game.

Half-Elves, Third-Orcs, Gilgamesh, and Infinity

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| October 19, 2017

149 COMMENTS

In one of the less-reputable areas of Ricochet – you know, the areas your mother warns you about – a conversation went something like this… (Spoiler alert, this post gets nerdy so fast, all the other posts will threaten to take your lunch money just for reading the next sentence.)

Person 1: What races do you usually play in Dungeons & Dragons? (See? Told ya. Cough up that money.)

Me: Oh, half-elves, half-orcs, halflings.¹

Person 2: Wait, that adds up to one-and-a-half.

Me: Well we can’t play third-elves, third-orcs, and thirdlings,² as that would imply infinite ancestry.

Screech! That’s everyone hitting the brakes and asking, “say what?” So, for gits and figgles, let’s look deeper into that statement by going seriously mathematical. (Any lunch money left? Keep reading and you won’t.) Let’s go with elves, because going with orcs goes into weird, unpleasant places and not the Fifty Shades of Gandalf the Grey places.

Let’s take a human and an elf. Now they love each other very much, get married, and have a baby. Because humans are generally the baseline race of any fantasy world, we call their offspring a half-elf. This half-elf falls in love with a human, they get married, and have a child. Now, genetics doesn’t work with such precise ratios, but for the purposes of this exercise, we’ll say this child is one-quarter elf.

Our one-quarter elf then falls for an elf (and hopefully not the same family as his elf grandparent because awkward³), they have a child and this one is … okay since we’re sticking with precise ratios, we can calculate about five-eighths elf. Yes, we’re getting complicated. It’s going to get worse. Because this mixed breed falls for a human and their child is five-sixteenths elf. And this goes on, back and forth.

Since we’re following elf blood, the progression goes something like this:

1, 1/2, 1/4, 5/8, 5/16, 21/32, 21/64, 85/128, 85/256, etc., etc., and so forth.⁴

To demonstrate this in decimals, we can quantify it thusly …

1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.625, 0.3125, 0.65625, 0.328125, 0.666015625, 0.3330078135, etc., etc., and so forth.⁵

Note that we’re dancing around two decimal approximations here, that is 0.33333… and 0.6666… That is, 1/3 and 2/3, respectively. But because each ratio has a numerator that is an exponent of two, we never really get to those. Or, to go all Calculus on you guys, the limits of both as they approach infinity is 1/3 and 2/3. Thus, someone who is 1/3 elf requires infinite ancestry.

Great, CUD, you say, you just wasted all the time it took me to read this for a theoretical diatribe about your fantasy game bloodlines. I regret reading this, I regret thinking anything you write is worth it, and I regret joining Ricochet.⁶

“But wait!” I say. Don’t leave yet, as this goes beyond my narrow scope. We have to go back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, that ancient Babylonian work. Gilgamesh is described as being one-third god. What was an absurd little exercise for me was a major character description of Gilgamesh. By our calculations, this means the Babylonian writing this epic implies Gilgamesh had infinite ancestry.

“Whatever,” you might say. “Those rubes probably had no idea.” Actually, I would disagree. Given that Babylon had extensive architecture and were also avid astronomers, we can infer that they had rather extensive mathematical knowledge. Although decimals weren’t invented yet, they did have a strange, somewhat base-60 numbering system⁷ that sounds incredibly complicated, but in fact opens up a very large number of ratios for that mathematically inclined people. Many more ratios than our simple base-10 does.⁸ It would not be entirely unreasonable to assume that they knew very well what was being implied when describing Gilgamesh as one-third god.

It is believed by some that many of these ancient cultures believed in a world that repeated constant cycles. A base observation of the world would seem to back that up. The sun rises and sets. The seasons cycle through spring, summer, autumn, and winter. For archeologists studying ancient Babylon, this has proven a problem. They did keep documents, but they are never organized chronologically – there was perhaps no perceived need to assume the cycles did not change.

Such thinking may even have stultified invention and scientific thought some. If what you have now is what you had before and will have in the future, why seek what is new? If it is something we had before, we’ll have it again when the cycle comes. In fact, the first breakaway from this way of thinking is recorded in Genesis in the story of Abram.

We are introduced to Abram and Sarai by way of cycles. A predecessor marries, has children, lives a little longer and dies. This is repeated again and again until we are introduced to Abram and Sarai and we are told Sarai is barren.⁹ The cycle of this introduction is broken. The story begins. Abram is then commanded to go to the place G_d will show him. Uncertainty – something antithetical to the concept of cyclical existence – is not only introduced, but embraced as Abram goes forth. There is a definitive beginning and definitive end to this story. There is no cycle.

This idea spread through the embrace of Judeo-Christian ideas in the West and the world, which is why the idea of infinite ancestors sounds so foreign and unreal. There’s no way this could be as we know the universe has a beginning and an end.

And we got there discussing elves and orcs. You’re welcome.¹⁰

¹Yes, halflings aren’t really a half-breed. The original D&D actually used Hobbits, which are a breed of Men in Middle-Earth Lore. However, the Tolkien family sent a little cease and desist action that way and thus “Halfling” was created as a separate race which looked suspiciously like Hobbits but didn’t have enough specifics to be sue-worthy.

²Still not a mixed-breed. It’s a joke. Work with me, people.

³Elves are commonly a fantasy race that’s long-lived. We’re talking centures, if not around a millenium or even immortal. There, that’s something you know.

⁴Writing fractions in text is not pretty.

⁵Writing lists of decimals in text is less pretty than that.

⁶Don’t regret joining Ricochet. It’s great here. If you’ve lasted this long you’ve only yourself to blame.

⁷It was actually more complicated than that. It had aspects of base-10 and base-60 together.

⁸Base-10 gives you 1/10, 2/10, and 5/10. You don’t even get a quarter out of this. Where’s your fancy metric system now, buddy?

⁹Genesis chapter 11.

¹⁰No refunds on your lunch money, by the way.

Quote of the Day: Which Way?

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| September 28, 2017

16 COMMENTS

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” – Proverbs 14:12

If there’s a sentence in philosophy and religion that can sum up our times, it’s this. When I consider the path we take politically, culturally, and socially, so much today involves following the path that seems right. It’s why I’ve found standards so valuable. Many seem to want to do away with standards, but without them how can we even posit what might be the right course of action? For me, the standards I have held have been the Bible and those who have studied and gone before me. These are gifts not to be ignored, but to be embraced and referred back to frequently. Today it seems we compared ourselves with ourselves and are surprised at how far off course we are.

Why Is the West on Fire?

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| September 6, 2017

34 COMMENTS

Let’s go back to the turn of the century. No, not the 20^th/21^st centuries, but back to the 19^th/20^th century. It was then that the National Park and National Forest services began, then quickly expanded later by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt. The former set aside national wilderness as federally managed land for the public to enjoy, the latter as federally managed land to maintain wilderness, agriculture and the timber industry. That last part is important: The National Forests had an aspect towards maintaining the timber industry.

For about a hundred years, this had gone pretty well. The timber industry harvested in the national forests and replanted so they could go back around again. Several decades back, the industries overplanted figuring once the trees grew to maturity they’d have even more to harvest. The result are the dense forest lands I grew up with in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, one of the first engineering firms had several projects with the National Forest Service, and our contact was from the East. She hated Oregon forests because they were so dense. Well, this was by the timber industries’ design. Then we come to the late eighties/early nineties.

Environmentalism was on the rise, and in the Pacific Northwest one of the key designated villains were the timber industries. We were told that the industries just wanted to clear cut all of Oregon’s forests and leave nothing. The Spotted Owl was paraded around as needing the old growth trees. It didn’t help that almost a century later, no one remembered there was a distinction made between national parks and national forests – a fact the environmentalists exploited to their favor. Popular opinion against timber industries rose, and it didn’t take long to find a sympathetic judge to block timber harvesting.

This is already creating a problem. By overplanting, the industries were making forests unnaturally dense. They normally wouldn’t be this way, but since the plan was to remove most of those trees in their near future it wasn’t considered too much a problem. Except they didn’t anticipate being blocked from harvesting the trees they planted. As the trees choked each other out, that created more and more deadwood.

Here’s something fun, have you seen a rotting tree before? It’s not mushy like vegetables. No, it’s dry and crumbly. Now the timber industry typically had a plan for this as well. They would routine go through the forest and find deadwood and salvage it to be made into useful products. But guess who came in again? Right – the environmentalists again succeeded in blocking efforts.

Growing up, I understood Oregon to be a timber industry state. It was our main export. My dad’s dad worked at the lumber mill in Lebanon, Oregon. Last time I had been in that area, the mill had closed. The timber industries’ loss meant job losses down the line, furthering the decay of small towns like the one where my grandparents lived.

But beyond job loss, we can see the problem, I believe. Dense forests and dry, rotting deadwood are just a tinderbox waiting to happen. The federal government supposedly manages these lands now, but we can see how well that’s going. All it would take is one spark to get the fire started and it would be disastrous. And it is. The Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia Gorge turns out to be started by a teenager and his friends who were messing around with illegal fireworks. Just a spark is all it would take and it seems we got much more than that.

This is a prime example of good intentions paving the road to hell. Environmentalists who knew little about forest management relied on their own judgment and feelings as they vilified the people who understood and practiced forest management on a daily basis. The federal government is wholly incapable of maintaining the large swaths of land it lays claim to on its own. And now we had the results. And now my home state and its neighbors are on fire.

Just kidding. It’s really all the fault of Climate Change.

Baseball and the American Spirit – Two Children’s Books

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| August 29, 2017

8 COMMENTS

Growing up I’ve always heard baseball described as “America’s pastime.” As a boy, I didn’t really understand it. In the seventies, baseball was one sport among several in the year, and so I just understood it to mean Americans love baseball. Later years proved that not to be the case, so I remained confused until I learned of its earlier days, when just about darn near everyone played baseball. There were the major league teams we know today, but there were semi-pro teams, local teams, local clubs, baseball games for all ages and all types and just about everyone took part. In the past year my two-year old girl who loves books found two stories of unique players I’d never heard of in the history of baseball.

The first book, Queen of the Diamond, tells the story of Lizzie Murphy, a ball player in the early twentieth century. Her father played on a team, and taught his kids to play. The story follows this plucky girl who loves baseball so much she pursues opportunities to play, even getting on a semi-pro team. Sheer determination and skill work in her favor and she plays before crowds. Interestingly, it’s her father and brother who encourage her in the early days. Her mother is constantly worried about how unladylike playing baseball is, but her father and brother both recognize Lizzie has talent.

Lizzie navigates the man’s game cleverly. She starts as the equipment manager for her brother’s local boys club. When no one save Lizzie remembers to bring a ball to the game, she takes her opportunity, offering to let them use hers if she gets to play. The manager reluctantly agrees, urged on by Lizzie’s brother. This starts her playing and she eventually signs on with a semi-pro team. The manager sees dollar signs: having a woman on the team will bring people in to the seats. Lizzie sees this as her big opportunity.

When the manager doesn’t pay her for her first game, again she bides her time. At the next game, she refuses to get on the bus to go until she gets paid. The manager is full of bluster, but eventually he’s caught by his own words and pressure from the team to pay her what she’s owed. Both these turning points are remarkable in that Lizzie doesn’t make demands she can’t back up. She’s a skilled player and proves herself on the baseball diamond again and again. The team, like her brother, recognizes that she is an asset to them and deserves what they have. She doesn’t set herself against them in the narrative, but rather demonstrates her value.

The other book, Barbed Wire Baseball takes place mid-twentieth century and follows Kenichi Zenimura. As a boy, Zenimura’s parents immigrated to the United States from Japan. At the age of eight he sees his first baseball game and knows this is what he wants to do with his life. Not only did he play, but he organized barnstorming tours in Japan and even helped negotiate Babe Ruth’s trip to Japan.

Of course, remember I said this was mid twentieth century. With other Japanese Americans, Zenimura and his family were sent to Internment camps, Zenimura at the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona. There, Zenimura begins to not only painstakingly build a baseball diamond and stands, but organizes teams and manages to get uniforms made and negotiates equipment. His hard work pays off and in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the war, Zenimura and his fellow Japanese Americans are playing baseball. It’s a remarkable story, and though it takes place in what today we call a black mark on our history, it’s a story of triumph. Zenimura overcomes the ill circumstances through strength of will.

It’s notable that in Gila River, the administrators show understanding and compassion. There is no way this project could go without notice, and yet Zenimura is never stopped or even reprimanded. Gila River was considered one of the least oppressive camps.

I enjoyed both of these stories, and found them both a great demonstration of the American spirit of the time. Unfairness abounded, but that did not stop either Murphy or Zenimura from overcoming those in one way or another. It’s something that at one time, we understood. Hardship – man made or otherwise – will come and go. The true test of a person is not what happens to him or her, but rather how he or she deals with the circumstances given. Sometimes that involves waiting for the right moment. Sometimes that involves making the right moment.

Cordelia enjoyed both of those books, and loves getting books about baseball. As these stories’ narratives portray them, I can’t imagine better books to not only instill a love of the game, but to introduce people in whom she could find traits to look up to.

School of Life; School of Fish

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| June 27, 2017

11 COMMENTS

As a boy, one of the great joys in life of which I have fond memories is of going fishing for perch on the Oregon coast with my dad. Though a lot of fun, this is never really an easy endeavor for a young boy. A coastal fishing trip always involved waking up very early on a Saturday morning. In hindsight, it was worth it. At the time, as a boy it was hard to appreciate getting up at 5 a.m. on Saturday for anything other than Saturday morning cartoons.

The reason for such an early wake-up time was because there are really two things you need to successfully fish for perch. The first thing you need is a good supply of sand shrimp. The sand shrimp is a nearly transparent pale or ash grey shrimp that can be found in the shallow areas of the ocean buried within the sand. We’d get up early to catch low tide. Then we could walk out into the sands normally under the waves and pump out the hiding shrimp.

The pump was just a handheld device. As you walk out along the sands you are looking for a small hole. You cram the open end into the wet sand over that hole, pull up on the hand, pull the pump out and push the handle down. After a couple of pumps, you hit shrimp and your fishing companions would gather up the tiny critters fast as can be before they can recover from shock and bury themselves again. Repeat until you have a bucket full.

Then we’d drive out to the rocky jetty in Newport Oregon, just before you hit the ocean. We’d find a good spot and set up our poles and put a shrimp on the hook.

See, perch don’t like much of your typical bait. Worms … fish eggs … lures – to these your typical perch will look at it and reply, “don’t care,” and move on. Sand shrimp, however, was a sure thing. Put on of those babies on your hook and if you find just the right spot you’d get a perch almost as fast as it takes you to cast. The question is: what is the right spot?

That’s the second part of successful perch fishing. Perch like to travel in schools. So much of perch fishing is looking for that school. You can spend a while looking for just the right spot, casting out, maybe getting a nibble, and casting again. They didn’t like to make it too easy – not right away. But if you hit a school you hit pay dirt. You can cast out to that spot again and again and get several before the school got wise to your shenanigans and moved on. Then it’s just a matter of finding a school again.

For a boy, it’s immensely satisfying to catch so much. It’s a lot of work to get to that point, but once you’re there you have it made. Is that a good metaphor for life in general? Maybe – maybe not. But of the things I’ve done in my youth, that’s stuck and it’s something I’d like a chance to share with my children as well.

A Deadly Struggle; An Implacable Enemy

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| June 20, 2017

24 COMMENTS

There was a young woman I would like to say I was close friends with once. I suppose we both might have wanted something more than just friendship, but at the time I lived in Oregon and she in Maine. In the nineties, though the internet was booming, getting closer online was still difficult. More ways to communicate would rise in the coming years, but there was something else that interfered in our friendship. Sara was an alcoholic.

I hear a lot of comments about addiction, but in my experience, it’s a brutal master. Addiction hates you and wants to destroy you. It tells you that you don’t deserve anything better because it doesn’t want you to leave. It tells you that you can’t deal with the pain, so here’s an option that you deserve. I’m personifying it, yes, but this is a summary from Sara’s own description of her struggles. She drank to dull the pain of past abuses. She drank to dull the pain of the world around her.

When she was sober, she was intelligent and had a great sense of humor. She had dreams: she wanted to counsel children who were victims of sexual abuse. She lived with her sister and niece and adored the latter. When she was drunk she was given to abject despair. Instead of taking the pain away, alcohol just replaced the pain with severe self-loathing. She wanted to stop, but couldn’t find a way out to pursue her dreams.

In the end, she died in an auto accident, wrapping her car around a tree. Though I never heard the details, it wasn’t hard to guess all that was involved.

I write this because recent news came out that Carrie Fisher’s autopsy revealed she had several drugs in her system when she died. I almost didn’t write this because of the preemptive scolding coming from many social media friends. The need to tell the story outweighs mild consternation, however. When I heard of Carrie Fisher I thought of Sara and the struggle she had – a struggle she lost. Addiction is brutal. Addiction is deadly.

For those of us who never dealt with substance addiction, it’s easy to pass judgment on those destroying their lives. Those who struggle daily with addiction need our compassion and understanding. God bless the family of Carrie Fisher. God bless Sara’s family. God bless those who struggle this day. May His grace shine through.

Endings: A Farewell to Many Worlds

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| March 3, 2017

11 COMMENTS

Even though I have finished my thirty days of books, I suppose you can count this as a bonus epilogue to that. That’s why I picked this day, really. See, I have a confession to make. I read several series when I was a boy, but my readings all had one thing in common: I rarely finished the last book in the series until many years later. There. I’ve let my secret out. Hoo boy, what a burden I’ve released. Yes, The Prydain Chronicles I wrote about? I read most in 4th grade and finished it many years later. I was an adult by the time I read The Last Battle, last of the Narnia books. I just couldn’t finish that last book.

I suspect it’s because on some subconscious level, I understood something: the ending of this last book would change the series setting forever. It would never be the same. Narnia changes a lot in the series, but The Last Battle goes several steps beyond that. The High King (of The Prydain Chronicles) ends with magic departing and the world changing with it. The Lord of the Rings builds up to the retreat of the elves, and the Age of Man. These remained great changes that for some reason my young mind just wouldn’t deal with.

I loved these created worlds, and once the last book is read, that world is gone. In the sense of the narrative, enough has happened to change that world for good (or sometimes ill). It’s not the familiar place I grew comfortable reading about. In a real sense, that meant there was no more. I could re-read, but I would now know what was coming. I would always know that ending was inevitable. As boy perhaps this was just too much to take. Or perhaps in my immaturity I just wanted it to never end.

But things do end. Some series I’ve read end but the world is preserved in one manner or another. But the strength of the kind I’ve avoided is that they present a reality: all things come to an end so that something new might arise from the former. An end means goodbyes to those we have grown to love, but that love is preserved even if the presence is not. Childhood must end so that new and greater things can be realized. Each end can create a new beginning. If I were to tell my younger self something, it would be that: don’t fear an end, as what follows can be new and wonderful.

30 Days of Books: “The Iliad” by Homer

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| February 18, 2017

38 COMMENTS

Last week I discussed my love of the Greek myths. Read the myths long enough, and eventually you’ll get around to reading the stories about the Trojan War. As a boy I read several versions of the story, as well as a version of The Odyssey that was written for younger ages. I knew so much of it, and yet it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I actually picked up The Iliad for the first time.

Now imagine my surprise when the story started in the middle of the entire Trojan War. Wait, this wasn’t a complete account? It seemed like such a long book, surely there was the whole war? Right? Right? Did I accidentally pick up an abridged version like the time I picked up The Romance of the Three Kingdoms which summed up many chapters into brief transitional paragraphs? Maybe I did the same thing here. Maybe?

No. See, despite immersing myself in the myths for so long, I was still ignorant of what literature survived about any of this event. The Iliad is just a section of the greater story. Written by Homer, it begins with a crisis in the Greek armies. After having to return priestesses taken as slaves due to an angry gods’ plague, Menelaus insists on taking Achilles’ favorite concubine, Briseis. Achilles is the greatest warrior in the Greek armies, but this demand causes him to abandon the fight altogether. Instead he hosts a never-ending party on his boat and lets the Greeks twist in the wind as they fight the Trojans.

Thus we have an impasse. For a large portion of the book, the war goes back and forth. No one gains an advantage for long. So I look for a book about the Trojan War, and get the Trojan Stalemate. Not to say there’s no fighting. The Greek Heroes led by Menelaus struggle against the Trojan heroes led by Hector. Occasionally Paris who started the whole mess jumps in, but frequently finds this too much and runs off again. His father, King Priam, is never impressed with Paris.

It was a fascinating story, actually. Although I had to wonder: is giving very precise descriptions of how weapons pierce one’s foes a Greek thing or just a Homer thing? I recall reading it and wondering just why Homer felt compelled to be so detailed about this. Other than that, we have War. Occasionally we get a scene amongst the gods who are bickering over this war as much as the mortals. Heaven is just as divided as the Greeks and Trojans. Perhaps this is a way for Homer to present how great a war this was: the two ethnically similar sides were so split, only a severe disagreement amongst the gods could fuel such a thing, perhaps.

As Hector pushes the Greeks back to the ships, the Greeks start to beg Achilles to join the fight again. Achilles, though, is showing no inclination to join the fight once more. As far as he’s concerned, he’s done. It has been prophesied that he’ll either die young and famous or old and obscure and right now the latter seems more attractive. His “best friend” Patroclus, however, is moved by the Greeks and borrows Achilles armor.

For a moment, Patroclus pushes the Trojans back as the latter fear Achilles has returned to the battle. Hector, however, eventually confronts him and Patroclus is soon dead by the great Prince’s hand. Now Achilles is ticked. With the loss of his “friend” Achilles returns to the battle and challenges Hector to duel. At first Hector flees, but the gods have deemed this is his end and nip that in the bud. Hector finally fights Achilles and loses. The Greeks go wild with excitement. They host their own mini-Olympics and parade Hector’s corpse around.

I’m going into a lot of detail, but all this was new to me at the time. I had to learn the story before I could delve into its deeper meanings. One of those depths comes from Priam. For most of the book, what we see is men demanding the honors they are due. In fact that’s what causes the whole mess in this chapter of the war, and ultimately what brings the death of Patroclus and Hector. But King Priam does not take this path. Instead he approaches Achilles’ tent in disguise, reveals himself and begs the hero to return the body of Hector. Moved by this display, Achilles relents. It’s a moment of humility on both sides that contrasts with the demands of honor and respect. It is solidly amongst my favorite moments of all literature.

I suspect this is why I picked up the classics and other books that most consider too much a chore. It can be a lot of work at times, but the reward is as great as the labor for certain. I’m not afraid of classical literature now, nor do I shy from works of Russian literature I’ve discussed (I’ll finish War and Peace someday). I am finding those polished gems of great price that are worth every struggle.

Note: This is part 18 of my series, “Around My Shelves in Thirty Days.”

On My Failure to Snark

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| February 3, 2017

91 COMMENTS

Every so often, I remind my faithful reader (that’s my lovely wife; hi, honey!) that I spend time on Facebook. As most know, Facebook has devolved from a way to keep tabs on friends and family and their daily activities — accompanied by pictures of what they are eating — to a storm of political posts from whatever news source the poster happens to prefer. Even though I have many friends on the opposite side of the aisle, I’ve yet to defriend anyone from my list. I even read a lot of what they post.

One post that recently struck me was posted by a young woman from a church I was a part of in Oregon. For a while, we were in the same Bible study group. Just recently, she had her first baby, about a month before my wonderful son was born. So I’ve been following her, watching the progress of new mom and baby. Of course, she’s politically motivated on the opposite side of the aisle. Below, is a full quote from a post she made (note, it is a bit long):

Religion as well as political views are some of the most sensitive topics you can address with other individuals as most people hold a lot of emotion behind the two. For this reason I do not usually openly share my political views, especially on a social media outlets, but these points are too real not to share… do yourself and your country a favor and educate yourself.

If you voted for Trump because of Hillary’s email “problem” but are not upset that the Trump administration is using a private email server and unsecured phones, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe Jesus was a persecuted refugee fleeing Herod, but support the ban on Syrian refugees, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe life begins at conception, but support defunding the country’s number one source of prenatal care, Planned Parenthood, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe the mainstream media lies but believe Trump when he spouts verifiable lies, that is hypocrisy.

If you dismiss the AP, Reuters or NPR as biased media but accept everything Fox News says, that is hypocrisy.

If you think all life is sacred, but do not support reasonable gun control, that is hypocrisy.

If you think children are the future, but support reducing funds for SNAP, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe in education, but dismiss evolution or climate change as hoax, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe in the sovereignty of the United States, but support forced incursions on Native American lands, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe that we need to drain the swamp in Washington but support Trump’s cabinet picks, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe in the Constitution, but support indiscriminate detainment and torture, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe that unborn black babies lives matter, but black lives don’t matter, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe that we deserve life, liberty and happiness, but support taking away healthcare from millions of American, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe that the practice of your religion is more important than the practice of no religion or a different religion, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe in equal rights under the law, but don’t support marriage equality and non discrimination for LGBTQ+ Americans, that is hypocrisy.

If you are glad that California or New York do not decide national policy for you, but insist on forcing your red state policies on others, that is hypocrisy.

If you believe in the first amendment, but call people who peacefully protest the President hooligans, that is hypocrisy.

If you are an American but think dissent is disrespectful, that is hypocrisy.

If you think that anything that has happened over the last week is normal or acceptable, then you have not been paying attention.

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

-MLK

**I will delete comments as I see fit, you don’t like that, keep movin along

As you can expect, I was annoyed and irritated. I wanted to sit down and argue each statement point by point. I wanted to point out all the straw men, ad hominem attacks, and oversimplifications with wild abandon. Of course, noting the length, I quickly realized that was a losing endeavor (thankfully). Mentally, I followed up with a couple of witty rejoinders, and even found a video clip for one that was perfect. I thought about posting them, but something gave me pause.

I went to a forum where snark abounds in spades and noted this. I even shared part of the above post. I showed my witty rejoinders. Doing so achieved a sort of catharsis for me. But I also expressed my unwillingness to reply, requested someone talk me down from the ledge. On cue, the little shoulder angels and demons popped up on either side encouraging me one way or another. In the end, I chose not to reply. But I don’t think that resolved anything.

Let me put it this way: There’s a divide in American thinking, but it can’t be remedied by demanding the other side approach me. It certainly can’t be remedied by throwing rocks/spears across the divide, as I intended in my initial responses.

But, as a man who seeks to follow Christ, I know I am called to come together with others, especially my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Part of what frustrates me is not just that such things anger me but that, by silence, I do nothing to bridge the divide. My friend, whether she realizes it or not, clearly expects the other side to come to hers, hat in hand, begging forgiveness. And I can’t really fault her for doing so, because don’t I often do the same thing? Wouldn’t it be satisfying to demand the other side approach me and tell me I was right all along?

So there is the dilemma: There will always be political and social disagreement, and my desire is to do what I can to lessen the divide, rather than leave it be or (worse) to increase it. But I am not sure how. I am only in control of my own responses. I’m willing to accept that political stances aren’t dictated in the Bible, but it would seem she does not. At the very least, she seems to accept the Biblical analysis popular with the secular Left. She’s been rather vocal lately, and has (more than once) been among those Progressives who like to declare who is and is not properly Christian.

On the other hand, she is a sister in Christ. If I am to say something, I should say it in a way to build bridges, not burns them, even if she seemingly has poured gasoline all over the timber. By no means should I bring my matchbook with me. So, what to do?

I can take comfort in knowing my identity in Christ supersedes my political identity. Indeed, as one member noted, Christ had Simon the Zealot (a violently anti-Roman faction in Israel) and Levi the Tax Collector (who profited greatly from working for Rome) among his twelve apostles. Can you imagine some of the conversations they had at the table? Yet they remained together, united not in politics but in our savior, Christ Jesus.

We can do similarly, but it is going to be hard. I am not sure how. I only know that I can only affect my own actions and my own responses to other people’s actions. I’m done being divided on this. I only have one thing to consider: How do I proceed?

The Deceitful Numbers – Great and Small – of the ACA

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| January 18, 2017

54 COMMENTS

If you’re like me, and I know I am, you waste a lot of time at the office reading Ricochet and looking at your friends’ posts on Facebook. Wait, no boss, I’m not online at work at all. I’m reading Ricochet and Facebook at home! I made a joke about America’s unhealthy love of the internet! (Is he gone? Okay …)

For several days, at least since the new Congress began the repeal process for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), my liberal and Progressive friends on Facebook have been engaged in full bore linear conniption fits over the vote. It’s hard to sort through these because they are frequently nested within full bore linear conniption fits over cabinet member hearings in Congress, and so on.

The primary arguments against the action of Congress can usually be boiled down to three major points: that repeal will leave 20 million people without healthcare, that this one person here greatly benefited from the ACA, and that a black president passed the law.

Let’s start with the first, that 20 million people will lose their coverage. I’ve heard other numbers as well, 25 million, sometimes 30 million. The number tends to inflate with time which already raises alarm bells. I’ve also seen that repeal will leave 8.5 million children without health coverage. There we have it, the “do it for the children” argument.

The problem isn’t just the inflation, it’s that there’s no breakdown of this 20 million. The basic assumption made is that these consist of 20 million people that prior to the ACA, these people wanted health coverage but were unable to get it. This reflects arguments prior to passage, that there was something around 25-50 million people without health insurance, again spoken to imply that these poor people just couldn’t get it. Except that wasn’t the case…

That number broken down made all the difference. There were wealthy individuals who didn’t need it. There was a very large of number of young people who just didn’t see it as a necessary expense and so didn’t bother (many of these could get a major-medical plan for dirt cheap at the time), there were several who were eligible for Medicaid but for their own reasons chose not to, and then there were a large number of immigrants who entered the US illegally and thus had different barriers to coverage. Once you weeded out those numbers, the actual number of people who needed health coverage but were entirely unable was down under a million. Still large, but a less impressive number. Rather than find a way to help a million, the ACA was imposed on the entire population of 309 million.

The 20 million can likely be broken down similarly. For example, among those are people who had individual plans that were cancelled as non-compliant, and then had to go to the ACA to get a compliant plan. To Pres. Obama, those counted as “now getting insurance”. Those young people who didn’t think they needed insurance still aren’t getting insurance, at least not as a whole, so we can assume a fraction now have coverage they really didn’t plan to get. Also, there’s a not insignificant number that take advantage of the pre-existing rules to get a plan when a serious problem arises, then cancels the plan as soon as they don’t need it any more. They’re counted too. Let’s not ignore a large percentage of those who were just shuffled into Medicaid (a program that’s in financial trouble by the way). The problem is that the more we break down this number, the more likely we’re going to get around a million, and it will be increasingly difficult to condemn the 310 million to a bureaucratic morass to service that million.

The other argument, here’s someone who benefited from the ACA, is on the other side of the spectrum. Unfortunately, though the stories can be poignant, the evidence there is anecdotal. There’s one showing how his father had a prescription he paid three dollars for that the receipt shows the actual price was $1003. Thanks Obamacare! Clearly if you’re against the ACA, you want this man to suffer and die (actually this is a frequent theme with anti-repeal proponents).

The problem with anecdotal cases is that they can be countered by similar cases on the other side. In fact, there was a lot of this prior to the ACA’s passage. Proponents would wheel out people who needed help in some way, while opponents would wheel out cases where bad or fatal things happened to people under government run systems. Both sides were demonstrating valid cases, but neither really made the case definitively because of them.

And unfortunately, a lot of these cases need vetting. Much like the sudden rise of incidences of racism after Trump won – many of these proving to be hoaxes – the veracity of the claims remains indeterminate. The above example, for instance, shows on Facebook as a close-up of the two numbers, but we don’t see all that picture to get an idea of what went on.

Moreover, as Ricochet Moderator Midget Faded Rattlesnake points out, what you actually pay for medical care, what you’re billed, and what all this actually costs can be separate and wildly different things nowadays. Actual costs and benefits are obscured to hide the former and tout the latter. Yes, in this instance we can see benefit, but more information is needed and we need to be able to verify the story.

The last should be a trivial argument, but because it’s been ingrained for the duration of the Obama Administration, it needs be addressed. I mainly have seen a post from Black Lives Matter advocate, Shaun King, stating that when he talks to opponents of the ACA, they can’t list any reasons why they are against it other than it was designed by Pres. Obama. Thus, racism is why they support repeal. This really isn’t an old argument. Prior to passage, the ACA’s opponents were labelled racist. Tea Party protestors were pilloried in the mainstream media and social networks as unreasonably racist. This was never proven, other than the tautological reasoning of “only a racist would be against the ACA.”

This ignored any of the origins of the various Tea Party groups which began to spring up during the Bush administration as a protest against runaway government spending. The fear was that the ACA would bring about even more runaway spending. The CBO scored it as “budget neutral”, but when it was revealed that the ACA’s neutrality was based on ten years of funding stuffed into eight years of spending, it was clear the books were cooked and in fact we’re finding it was quite the case.

The arguments against it today are a-plenty. We were bald-faced lied about being able to keep the doctors we liked and the health plans we liked. We were bald-faced lied about rate increases. The president promised rates would go down, but they did the exact opposite of that. The entire act depends on national coercion – it requires you purchase a product. And not just that, it’s as if the government passed a law “everyone must buy a car every year. You can buy any car you like as long as it’s a Cadillac.” There’s no way such a plan could be sustained without serious pocket book trouble.

And they are not even honest about alternatives. Pres. Obama has defined health coverage as “anything that covers everything the ACA requires”. Thus, if a Republican alternative doesn’t, for example, require the elderly to cover maternity costs, it’s not counted as health coverage and he declares “they have no alternatives.” Using language this way has been a major theme of the Obama administration. You can win any argument if you change definitions of words mid-discussion to fit your purposes.

Oh, by the way, do you love giant corporations getting big favors from government? Well if you do you’ll love the ACA! The last several years have seen more and more smaller insurance companies falling under the wings of the giant health care companies. In five states, there’s only one insurance carrier available for anyone – thanks for all the competition, ACA! Because the government now determines what must be covered and by how much and how they can do it, smaller companies can longer operate. They can’t offer smaller, better products with better service, because they’re bogged down in red tape.

We can easily go on. The argument that there are no complaints against the ACA is either willfully ignorant or wholly dishonest. In either case, it’s not worthy of arguing. This is a microcosm, really, of most Progressive arguments today. They will never give the other side the benefit of doubt or assume we argue in good faith. It’s far easier for them to argue ad hominem.

It can be summed up like this, really. Recently my Progressive friends have been sharing an article saying that Trump got the most votes in states with the most people with Obamacare. It’s intended as a, “What’s the matter with Kansas?” piece – why did all these voters vote to screw themselves and their fellow man? If they could argue in good faith, they might see the other side’s perspective. Perhaps Trump got so many votes because these people know very well what the ACA is doing and they don’t like it.

Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, Dead at 96

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| December 27, 2016

26 COMMENTS

The family of Richard Adams reports that he died Christmas Eve at the age of 96. Adams is the author of Watership Down, his first book, published at the age of 52. He wrote a small number of novels including The Plague Dogs, of which that and Watership Down were made into animated features. The announcement of his passing included a quote from the end of his most well-known work:

“It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses.

“‘You needn’t worry about them,’ said his companion. ‘They’ll be alright – and thousands like them.”’

Personally, I remember reading this book when I was in the fifth grade, and it has stayed with me ever since. There are few works of fiction that have held such a place as I’ve grown. He will be missed. He has had a full life.

Elections and Cakes Have Consequences

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| December 17, 2016

23 COMMENTS

The dust is settling on election season, mostly. The Democrats have been doing their best to kick it up as much as they can in the presidential election, but that’s proving to have dubious results at best. Of course in the states, the Democrats have lost a lot of ground. In many ways, they are being pushed back to their coastal strongholds to lick their collectivist wounds. But even those are not safe. Though Oregon is mostly a one-party state, and almost all major offices are held by Democrats, Republican Dennis Richardson managed to take the Secretary of State’s office in a race against Brad Avakian.

That last name might be familiar to you if you’ve followed social politics at all. Brad Avakian is the administrator who was knee-deep in the Cake Wars here in Oregon. He was the one who ruled against Aaron and Melissa Klein who owned Sweet Cakes by Melissa – the same Kleins who refused to make a wedding cake for a same sex couple.

Note that this was not a trial by any sense of the word. In Oregon, these complaints are decided by the bureaucratic administration in which there’s no right to face your accuser, innocence is not assumed, and there’s not even a guarantee that the judge has a modicum of even-handedness in the matter. Avakian at the time of the ruling had long been an advocate of same sex marriage, had expressed a desire to change Oregonians’ minds about the topic, and during the investigation was in frequent contact with a SSM-advocacy group in Oregon.

Before the case was even picked up by Oregon, the Kleins had been run out of their brick-and-mortar shop and harassed. Over a year after losing their business, Avakian ruled against them and placed a fine just short of $150,000 on them. Already in dire financial straits, the Kleins looked to fundraising to help them. When they didn’t cough up the money by the deadline, Oregon placed a lien on their home. Now the lesbian couple in question expressed emotional trouble because of the refusal, but still had their wedding – note, with cake – and went on with their lives.

But most of us know all this. It was suggested that Avakian was planning to ride this case into the Secretary of State’s office. It seems that assessment was mostly correct, but he failed to take office. The question now is, what does this loss say? I suggest two things:

One, the loss of the office is huge. Democrats have owned Oregon’s executive administration for some time. The Secretary of State effects several things in the election process that the Democrats have abused for some time. Oregon has a measure system where Oregonians can offer legislation and constitutional amendments for a vote. The Democrats have spent the last several elections using weird wording and placement to create confusion with the various measures. Frequently, if the SecState’s office doesn’t like a particular measure, they’ll word it so if you support something you should vote “No” and if you are against it you vote, “Yes.” That’s the tip of the iceberg. Oregon has enjoyed having the most partisan Secretary of State for years. That’s been taken away from the Democrats.

Two, social progressivism is not quite the juggernaut they think it is. It’s been suggested that though they are currently winning victories, there’s a silent majority that dislikes the totalitarian streak that seems to run through the social progressive mindset. Though SSM was sold on the “live and let live model” – I frequently saw posts saying, “Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t have one!” – there’s no intention whatsoever for the SSM advocates to let opponents be. They don’t just demand tolerance or acceptance, they require approval.

The growing problem is that people don’t like this totalitarian attitude. Even my conservative friends who supported SSM (they are basically decent human beings who can’t see refusing a couple on moral stances the latter might not ascribe to) are unhappy with the way small business owners have been bulldozed for refusing to offer service for a single event.

It may be that the social progressives have once again assumed too much. They’ve assumed that now they’ve won, everyone will soon be on their side. That the attitudes that have drifted in their favor will continue to drift upwards and all they need do is eliminate the last few stragglers out there. It’s quite possible they’ve done themselves far more harm than good.

At least in Oregon, they’ve paid something of a price for the next four years.

The Eastern Border – An Important Podcast

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| December 7, 2016

15 COMMENTS

Having grown up in the seventies and eighties, I distinctly remember the time when the Soviet Union was A Thing. I remember when nuclear arms were always to the front of our minds, and the policy of assured mutual destruction was supposedly the only thing that kept us from assured mutual destruction. It was such a reality that about a decade ago, when discussing history with a few people younger than me and some professors older than me, I was surprised to see what they understood about Soviet Communism and its place in history.

For many, they have less information on the atrocities of the Soviets and more on the ideals those atrocities were supposedly performed for. I recall discussing the fall of the Soviets with my history of film professor who lamented the fall of Communism when it was the only politico-economic philosophy that supposedly cared about the common man. I was surprised to hear that, as I understood there was some great atrocities against these common men they philosophy supposedly lifted up. Such objections were usually brushed off with claims moral equivalency that today still wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny.

For the older generation, they may not have hope. If you’re older than me and you still don’t see clearly what the Soviets did and the havoc they wreaked upon the world, then you might never see. You want to believe what you believe regardless of facts. For some younger people, there’s hope. It’s possible they just don’t know.

For them, and for the rest of us too, I highly recommend The Eastern Border Podcast. This is a modern history podcast as told by native Latvian Kristaps Andrejsons. He tells not just the events, but speaks of attitudes held by those under the Soviet regime and life in the Soviet Union. He speaks with the knowledge of experience – that of his immediate and close family, and those of his countrymen.

There’s some experienced humor in the early episodes as he speaks of how day-to-day life for citizens was affected. There’s some decidedly dark episodes as well. It’s rather horrifying to see how Soviet Communism caused and exacerbated the Chernobyl disaster. The sheer disregard for human life is also demonstrated as he describes the Soviet space program. More recently in several episodes he’s discussed the utter cruelty of the Soviets in how they punished citizens.

Occasionally he does an episode with other podcasters. Some of the younger of that crowd are a bit surprised at his confirmations. In a recent episode, Death and Ideas, Kristaps interviews with the members of the Dead Ideas podcast. More than once they repeat what they take for just American exaggeration or propaganda of the Soviet Union only to find out that, no, no that’s exactly what it was like.

For example, the podcasters mention how churches noted the lack of religious freedom and how you could be punished for going to church. Rather than contradict, Kristaps confirms that yes there were Soviet officials posted outside churches on Sundays noting anyone who attended and that those people could face repercussions for attending. Lenin hypothesized that if people believed in paradise after this life, they would not be motivated to try to make paradise here on Earth.

He is not shy about his feelings towards modern day Russia either, and his impressions are not just that of a citizen of a former state under the Soviet Regime. He regards the current Russian political leadership with a keen historian’s eye and has criticized as he sees it needed. As a result, he has received not a small number of death threats. In a recent episode, he’s even noted that his podcast just might stop one day as it may be seen he’s too much a liability to allow to live.

Understanding the history, the societal and cultural effects of, and the modern repercussions of the Soviet Union and Russia today is important. If you are looking to add a podcast to your list, I highly recommend this. If you aren’t, I would ask you reconsider and discover more about an important part of world history. This may be one of the more important podcasts of our time.

The Ballot Box Blues

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| November 8, 2016

8 COMMENTS

Ah, Mail-in Ballot, my old arch-nemesis. I thought I had escaped you when I fled Oregon, but here you are in Salt Lake County, staring at me with those dull, non-existent eyes full of judgment and poor choices. What fool thought it a good idea to invite you here? And why don’t you have better options? I mean, sure, we’ve talked about Trump and Clinton and their various minor opponents nipping at their heels like puppies, but I figured if I let you marinate for a couple of weeks you’d at least come up with a better option.

“I’m not Hillary!” shouts one candidate; “I’m not Trump!” shouts the other. “We’ll make America more better!” they both shout. “How?” we collectively ask. “By not being the other candidate!” they reply. “We’re neither candidate!” shout the puppies, their voices drowned out by Trump’s bluster and Clinton’s fake laughter. What a mess. At this point I turn up to the rooftops and shout, “Save us!” to which Rorschach looks down and replies, “No.”

“Supreme Court Justices!” shout the candidates’ various supporters, telling us who the true rulers of our nation are. We live and die by their pronouncements. Every social fad is now up to comparison with the Constitution. It’s not enough that we have to accept changing fashion with an understanding nod, now a vocal minority wants these fads codified into law. “Inter-species marriage is totes in the Constitution,” say our rulers, “and by the way, ‘Totes’ is in the Constitution as well.”

It’s bad enough these pronouncements from on high come as often as they do, it’s worse that we’re expected to pretend that the world prior to these pronouncements never existed and everyone must behave as such. “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” We’re supposed to accept that the two major candidates, both of whom have shown streaks of totalitarianism would give us justices that support freedom, but even our most liberty-loving presidents haven’t been able to muster much more than a 0.500 batting average. It’s impressive in baseball, not so impressive with freedom.

The state doesn’t offer much consolation. Do I want to vote for the single-party ruler who shows just about as much corruption as just about any single-party state executive does, or do I want to vote for the opposition party who wants to tie us to the corruption of the nation at large? That’s our choice: State-level corruption or National-level corruption. At least I can vote Libertarian here. Hey, first thing on his campaign website is reforming Utah’s rather involved liquor laws. Vote booze! Well I’m in.

The US Senate race is my only consolation. There is Mike Lee, a man I’ve come to respect more and more weekly, if not daily. He deserves a lot more than he gets, that’s for certain, but he’s getting my vote. Like any good arch-nemesis, the write-in-ballot recognizes that a worthy opponent must be given a breather on occasion – just enough hope that he might be crushed later.

The US Representative race brings us back to the crushing. Do I vote to re-elect rather unspectacular Rep. Mia Love or choose someone else? There’s no good option here, but for the last several weeks someone has paid for an ad that we get on Hulu that tells us just how Rep. Love wastes taxpayer money and is irresponsible. Isn’t that what they all do? I’ve seen that ad so much I’m ready to vote for Love just in the off-chance that whoever made it finds out and gets ticked off.

This is where we are, Mail-in Ballot? Am I voting a straight party-line ticket for the “Disgruntled” party?

The state congress race offers little much else. The Republican state representative for my district has sent us plenty of ads and mailing, all which read like he copy-pasted his name on a standard campaign ad form and left it there. At this point, I’m relatively certain State Rep. Jensen is not a real person, but an internet construct formed of a composite of lackluster Republican candidates.

The other state offices barely register with me. Such is the power of the Mail-in Ballot’s withering attack this year. Only my power of apathy helps me muscle through a list of judges I might want to retain or not. By the end I’m starting to vote no on anything because who cares?

At last the ballot is dropped off. It’s out of my sight and I need a stiff drink or two or three to get through the day. I hope the Libertarian wins so I can get said stiff drinks.

You’ve won this round, Mail-in Ballot. God help us all.

Small Screen Reviews: Luke Cage

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| October 11, 2016

73 COMMENTS

Luke Cage: Punching crime with the might of the Seventies!

So let me say this up front: Marvel and Netflix are a match made in Heaven. They should stick together and have many superhero drama-children as long as they both shall live until death do they part. Okay, now my review is getting confusing, and it’s not even the end of the first paragraph. But I think that’s a decent summary already. It’s just one service I provide. Okay, it’s the only one. This time.

Luke Cage is the latest Marvel-Netflix offering along with Daredevil and my so far personal favorite, Jessica Jones. The title character was introduced in the latter of these two series, a super-strong, nigh-invulnerable man with a lost love and a past he’s reluctant to discuss. After being compelled to battle to the death with Jones, Cage leaves to get his own tv-streaming series. Good deal.

Unlike the Marvel films, which take place across the globe and even the galaxy (only when accompanied by your Guardians), the Netflix shows have taken place in neighborhoods of New York City. DD and JJ in Hell’s Kitchen, Luke Cage in Harlem. This is one of the many strengths of the Netflix shows: the local story focuses on the character of the neighborhood as well as the character of its protector, exploiters, and destroyers.

Knowing Luke Cage was to be set in Harlem, I was a bit cautious at first. It could easily go bad in so many different directions. It could have devolved to black-on-black violence caricatures. Or power-broking white antagonist caricatures. Instead the direction keeps a story which, despite featuring super-powers, maintains a level of verisimilitude that does not talk down to any view regardless of race. Moreover, it’s done in such a way that I just couldn’t see the roles played by whites. Doing that yet making the story engaging and compelling takes a lot of care and talent that can be appreciated by anyone.

The story begins simply. Luke Cage, still in hiding from his dark past, works as a dishwasher at a nightclub and an assistant at a barbershop with a man who proves a great mentor and teacher. Poor guy. We all know what happens to them. Anyways, when two of the young men who frequent or work at the barbershop try to rob Harlem’s homegrown crime boss, they set in motion events that lead to disaster and force Cage to decide whether he will stay hidden or stand up and use his abilities to bring down those who exploit and abuse his home town.

Well this being a tv series he decides the latter, of course, and this is where the super powers come to play – Luke Cage muscles his way through various criminal spots, invulnerable to bullets and with super strength. If it weren’t for those, this show could fairly strongly stand on its own as another story where a man has to decide whether to stand up and act for his community or not. The body count is high, and there’s a couple of twists and turns here and there.

Ricochet member Henry Castaigne elsewhere mentioned this might be one of the most conservative shows Netflix has to offer. I’m not certain about that, but it is indeed refreshing to see a show like this not to default to making straw men arguments and scolding the audience. I find it refreshing in a similar way to how I find Adult Swim cartoon “The Boondocks” refreshing: The truth is presented with little decoration. The writer might project a few of their own biases, but never so much as to dilute the truth too much.

If I have a complaint, it’s perhaps that for some time I don’t find its villains as fascinating as in other series, at least not until the very end of the series. The primary antagonist believes himself in a Cain-and-Abel type relationship with Cage (though I find that an Ishmael-Isaac relationship would be a far better analogy), but I just don’t find it compelling. But this is really a small complaint for me. Nobody really matches the sheer intensity of D’Onofrio‘s Fisk, or sociopathic hedonism of Tennant‘s Killgrave. There is an ruthless intensity in Mahershala Ali‘s Cottonmouth, but … well I am avoiding spoilers here.

Though I don’t find this as good as my favorite, Jessica Jones, or Season 1 of Daredevil Luke Cage remains a strong addition to the Netflix-Marvel series. I anticipate more, and I really can’t wait for even more. Great show, go watch it. Just look out for violence. Seriously, all of these are like being in an ice cream parlor. Sure, I have some flavors I favor over others, but it’s still all ice cream and delicious.

The Wage Gap and Its Fallacies

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| September 8, 2016

86 COMMENTS

So for whatever reason, I hang out on Facebook and argue with liberals because take that liberal friends! Any case, today one of the more reasonable ones (a guy who appreciates a chance to argue ideas with people opposing his own) posted this picture:

jokehaha — Ohoho! It’s funny because it’s liberal.

Words ensued. Wage equality is a big issue on the rise right now. Clinton has spoken out in favor of it. Arguing that it doesn’t work just gets you sneers of derision from liberal-folk because you suck, bigot. Or something like that. Since many of the typical arguments were showing up, I didn’t feel obligated to add other than that this policy would result in less jobs for women.

My friend countered that there’s little evidence this would happen. So I noted this will mean less jobs in general for everyone, and women are a part of everyone. His reply was this was an acceptable trade off considering the benefits. After all, it seems to have worked out for Affirmative Action. So me being me, I couldn’t let that lie.

“Seems” is a loaded word, and the conclusion from your statement speaks to Frederic Bastiat’s Broken Window story. The problem here is that there are trade-offs once you start meddling in the economy, and though you can justify it with how things appear at present because the losses involved are invisible. One person might get a job or promotion, but another won’t. A lawsuit might encourage a company to promote or hire certain protected classes of people, but it might also discourage them from hiring or promoting anyone at all until absolutely necessary. Is the loss smaller than the gain? There’s no way to tell. Sociological experimentation lacks active ways to compare. We don’t have a parallel universe to observe what happens when District Manager Schrödinger is trying to fill a position.

And here we run into the basic conceit of these policies: That a third, outside party has better judgment about how to run a business than the actual business owner. In this case, we’ve taken statistics that focus only on one output, wage and salary comparisons between the sexes, and assumed that there is only one input that has any consequence: sex. But these comparison tables beg the question. They separate the sexes and assume that any disparity exists only because of this ultimately arbitrary grouping. They ignore or dismiss as inconsequential any other inputs.

And the problem is, there’s as many varied inputs as there are individuals. If we were to take two individuals of similar pay rate in my office, you’d get two entirely different pictures of why they are paid that rate. Likewise take two people of similar experience and seniority and you’d get two different stories of why they are paid differently. It is almost arrogant for a third party to look in and say, “Well this person is paid less because you don’t like his race/sex/curly hair/dashing good looks.” (I’m the last by the way.) This is precisely what such legislation and regulation does, and shifts the burden of proof the employer to prove otherwise — guilty until proven innocent.

Moreover, these comparison tables rely on a false premise that such disparity is not only unfair, but systemic. There has to be some unspoken agreement somehow that all businesses, big and small, would agree to such disparities — at least on average. It defies self-interested reason even. The only way such disparities in the past have been able to be enforced just about anywhere is to encode it in the law, putting the force of government behind it. Otherwise there’s almost always someone who can figure out there’s more to gain in bucking the system than to go along with it.

This is a short-sighted policy that has good intentions but ignores any possible trade-offs or long-term consequences. Moreover, it removes the right of two individuals to negotiate a contract to their satisfaction, placing a third party with their own agenda forcing decisions in a way they approve. It’s going to cause problems.

Essentially the part of the pay-gap argument that drives me nuts is that it ignores anything at all about the individuals involved. The employee’s contributions, achievements, and abilities are ignored. The Employer’s needs, ability to pay, and company vision is ignored. It’s all distilled away until only one thing remains: gender (or biological sex because words no longer mean anything). This is the essential fallacy Progressives hold to: that an individual’s accomplishments and needs are inconsequential to the collective they belong to.

People will argue that if you take a man and a woman with the exact same employment history, skills, talents, and abilities, the man will obviously be paid more because misogyny. But this is a spherical chicken of uniform density argument: IT’s a hypothetical that can’t happen and only exists for exposition alone. In reality, you will never see such a pair that their only difference will be their biological sex. It’s impossible as each individual’s human experience will vary from person to person.

Progressives want you to believe that not only does this highly improbably situation exist, but it exists en masse on a frequent basis such that only intervention from a third party will fix things. But of course, with Progressives it’s never ultimately about fixing things. It’s about giving more power to the State.

The Stand in Iowa

By C. U. Douglas

Thatcher

C. U. Douglas

| July 7, 2016

163 COMMENTS

I suppose we could at least say “We told you so,” though I fear the phrase has lost the sense of smug, self-satisfaction it had when we were younger. Now, I once again see myself empathizing with Jeremiah, who had to constantly tell the people of Jerusalem how bad things would get while competing with many false prophets, even as things went exactly as Jeremiah predicted.

If anything, the current situation in Iowa only confirms what had been long predicted: The government — through bureaucracy and extralegal panels — has moved to compel religious organizations (including churches) to comply with the new progressive political morality. The religious concession supposedly in the laws isn’t even that, as a government hostile to religion and religious thought is now in the business of deciding what constitutes a legitimate religion. The more vocal and aggressive wing of the LGBT movement controls both that movement as well as the media. They will suffer no opposition, and require endorsement. Everything not forbidden is compulsory.

The [Iowa Civil Rights Commission] is interpreting a state law to ban churches from expressing their views on human sexuality if they would “directly or indirectly” make “persons of any particular…gender identity” feel “unwelcome” in conjunction with church services, events, and other religious activities. The speech ban could be used to gag churches from making any public comments—including from the pulpit—that could be viewed as unwelcome to persons who do not identify with their biological sex. This is because the commission says the law applies to churches during any activity that the commission deems to not have a “bona fide religious purpose.” Examples the commission gave are “a child care facility operated at a church or a church service open to the public,” which encompasses most events that churches hold.

The live-and-let-live crowd was either dangerously naïve or dishonest from the get-go. The progressives had no intention of allowing anyone to think other than how they required. When progressives hold power, they are the sole arbiters of what is right and wrong, of who is innocent and who is guilty. The fact that the church yields to an authority greater than Man is unacceptable. First, society must yield to progressive moral pressure, then the schools, and now the church. Soon, the family will follow, losing any rights before an ever-expanding progressive state.

Religious liberty is now where we stand, and the progressives are acting the aggressors.

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Conservative Conversation + Podcasts

C. U. Douglas

@cudouglas

The Old Nativity Set

All Joking Aside – Or Maybe Not

Full Contact Pinochle with My Family

Half-Elves, Third-Orcs, Gilgamesh, and Infinity

Quote of the Day: Which Way?

Why Is the West on Fire?

Baseball and the American Spirit – Two Children’s Books

School of Life; School of Fish

A Deadly Struggle; An Implacable Enemy

Endings: A Farewell to Many Worlds

30 Days of Books: “The Iliad” by Homer

The Deceitful Numbers – Great and Small – of the ACA

Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, Dead at 96

Elections and Cakes Have Consequences

The Eastern Border – An Important Podcast

The Ballot Box Blues

Small Screen Reviews: Luke Cage

The Wage Gap and Its Fallacies

C. U. Douglas

@cudouglas