Whitcomb: Fluctuating Families; Energy Prices; Memos From Moscow

Whitcomb: Fluctuating Families; Energy Prices; Memos From Moscow

“Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.’’

-- “The Unknown Citizen’’ (1940), by W.H. Auden (1907-1973), Anglo-American poet

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

Here’s the whole poem:

 

 

“Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.’’

-- Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), German-American movie star and singer

 

 

“Communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.’’

-- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), English politician, statesman and writer

 

 

The grass on lawns takes on a very pale green, almost gray, color this bland time of year, now that we’ve had hard freezes. Then come a couple of mild days and it darkens, reminding us how tough Nature is.

 

Around the Table

It’s interesting to watch America’s changing demographics as expressed during the holidays.

 

For instance, as families have shrunk, you tend to see fewer kids at the Thanksgiving dinner table. In no small part because of the expense of raising children, couples are having fewer kids, if any. And a lot more older single people are living alone. They join their friends but maybe no relatives for the holidays. But what happens as those friends die off? And who will look after them after they get very old and frail if they have no children (or none who feel responsible for them)?

 

The decline of marriage, including among those with children, also plays a role in changing holiday dynamics. Commitments tend to be looser and relationships more fluid.

 

But in what may become a countervailing force in some ways, the climbing cost of everything seems to be boosting the number of low-and middle-income households in which extended families (uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, etc.) share expenses with nuclear families (two parents and their children) and single-parent (usually the mother) families.  This can be good or bad, perhaps depending on one’s susceptibility to claustrophobia as against the wider range of emotional and other support that can be offered in large multigenerational families, which were very common before World War II.

 

In any event, holiday gatherings like those depicted in Norman Rockwell’s pictures for such magazines as the old Saturday Evening Post have become relatively fewer. Those Rockwell-style pictures were usually centered on nuclear families plus benign-looking grandparents. But then, Mr. Rockwell admitted: “I paint life as I would like it to be.’’ (Some of his pictures took on a harder edge late in his career as grappled with social issues.)

 

Mr. Rockwell and his wife, Mary, an alcoholic, were both treated for depression at the famous Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Mass. That psychiatric facility was why they moved to Stockbridge from Vermont. Ah, the stories behind everyone!

 

Will most Thanksgiving  celebrations eventually come to be mostly on Zoom?

 

xxx

 

We had a mellow adult survivors’ Thanksgiving in a gorgeous village along Buzzards Bay. The weather was crystalline and just cool enough to bring a little pink to our conventionally “Caucasian” cheeks.

 

“Notch up another,’’ we thought, driving back home. “Who would have thought we’d make it through so many?’’

 

xxx

 

While most food prices have been surging, the price of turkey, long seen as the semi-official holiday main course, has fallen (which Trump has crowed about). This is a sign of a slow, long-term decline in turkey purchases as consumers have come to favor other animal proteins more.

 

Regarding animal protein, how many readers have seen cattle, pigs, sheep, chickens, and turkeys being slaughtered?

 

xxx

 

As we embark on the industrial-strength holiday season, in which even more of us than usual must drive long distances than in the rest of the year, I think of the remark that “everyone else on the road becomes a potential enemy when you’re behind the wheel.

 

This book is well worth reading: Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, by Aaron Naparstek, Doug Gordon, and Sarah Goodyear.

 

 

xxx

 

The animus toward renewable energy of the Trump regime, in which the fossil-fuel industry holds sway, is no surprise.

 

Thus, Rhode Island Energy has withdrawn from negotiations with the SouthCoast Wind project even as the cost of our electricity rises because of higher natural-gas prices (not higher renewable-energy prices). Natural gas – all of it from outside New England -- is the dominant energy in our region.

 

Obviously, if we had more energy sources, we’d have more price competition. In any event, renewable energy and nuclear will win out in the end, whatever the bribes to politicians from the oil, gas and coal moguls. But it will take a couple of decades to fully get off the Earth-cooking stuff.

 

This piece looks at what you could do if clean energy gained dominance: READ HERE

 

xxx

 

I remain pretty sure that Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, with his poll numbers many fathoms underwater, will decide not to run for re-election, leaving former CVS executive Helena Foulkes as the most likely Democratic candidate, though that could change, if, for example,  House Speaker Joe Shekarchi decides to run. It would be nice to have a thoughtful slightly right-of-center Republican to run next year, but given the moral, ethical and legal squalor of the MAGA-run national Republican Party – led by a truly bad man --such a person would have heavy baggage.

 

In this situation, seeing guilt by association seems acceptable.

 

xxx

 

The proliferation of men with beards in the past decade has been something to behold. How much of it is due to (insecure?) men wanting to seem more “masculine,’’ such as also by yakking a lot about pro sports – especially football (violent tough-guy stuff!)  ---  and how much because of the inconvenience and/or discomfort of shaving?

 

I notice more right-wing politicians with them than ones leftward. Of course, beards tend to be cyclical. Look at all those bearded Victorians.

 

Foreign Blues and News

“The Constitution isn’t adequate to deal with a President as evil as Trump. Trump’s abuses of power are unprecedented. He’s committing war crimes in Venezuela, in Colombia. Soldiers should understand they don’t have to follow illegal orders.’’

-- Ty Cobb, who was a member of Trump’s first-term legal team

 

The ongoing attempts by Trump, our kleptocratic and tyrannical traitor, to curry favor with Vladimir Putin by betraying Ukraine and the Western Alliance will – amazingly! – not benefit America.  The recent “peace proposal’’ – basically written by the Kremlin, presented by the pathetic and servile official Secretary of State Marco Rubio as messenger boy, has the aim of drastically weakening the victim of Putin’s bloodthirsty aggression.

 

Since Trump and his gang of con men/women climbers and camp followers around him don’t care about protecting democracy but rather only about access to power and money (which pump up each other), we shouldn’t be surprised that their regime would try to follow Putin’s order to let Russia permanently take lots of land from Ukraine, slash the size of its army and bar it from joining NATO. Putin’s aim is to make it easier to eventually seize all of Ukraine and use it as a base from which to more easily threaten democratic Europe and seek to take over the Baltic Republics and other land in Eastern Europe.

 

Thus, Ukrainians have been fighting for the democratic West as well as for their own country. But the U.S. is no longer a full member of the democratic West. Its government doesn’t share the values of the system of liberal democracy that has protected human rights and created resilient economic prosperity. Instead, it’s transactional and aimed above all at benefiting people in the regime and the rich and powerful folks who support it.

 

A more-threatened Europe will not be good for America, including economically. Whatever the Trump Tribe hopes for in secret or open business deals with Putin and his circle, the economic importance of the European Community for U.S. will always be far greater.

 

And betraying Ukraine sends a message to other big dictatorships (which our wanna-he dictator usually sucks up to) to engage in, or expand, their aggression. The most notable example is China, to which Trump’s Ukraine policies signal passivity to a Beijing trying to decide whether to invade Taiwan, a vibrant democracy. Given, among other things, that island nation’s world-leading semiconductor industry, that would be a disaster for the world economy.

 

New York City developer and Trump and Putin pal Steve Witkoff is the prime U.S. negotiator in the Ukraine nightmare, the de facto secretary of state and effectively a Russian agent.

 

Anyway, the more you give into a bully, the more he or she will demand, perhaps after a cosmetic interval.

 

Michael Goldfarb’s essay “Why Europe Slept’’ offers a fine review of the war in Ukraine in the wider European/U.S. context.  

 

xxx

 

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup to stay in power.  The physical attack on government buildings that he ordered, and the official start of the legal charges and conviction, occurred after his term ended, but the plotting for the coup took place while he was still in power.

In any event, the rule of law triumphed, unlike in another  big country, to the north, in a similar case.

 

xxx

 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that the recent G20 summit “brought together nations representing three-quarters of the world’s population, two-thirds of global GDP and three-quarters of the world’s trade, and that’s without the United States formally attending. It’s a reminder that the center of gravity in the global economy is shifting.” Mr. Carney has been working to strengthen trade with other nations to dramatically reduce his country’s reliance on a corrupt, unreliable and sometimes menacing United States.

 

xxx

 

The U.N. estimates that, on average, about 100 civilians are killed daily in the Gaza “ceasefire’’