Whitcomb: The Thirst for Tyranny; States and Drugstores; A Way for More Housing?

Whitcomb: The Thirst for Tyranny; States and Drugstores; A Way for More Housing?

Mr. Macklin takes his knife

And carves the yellow pumpkin face:

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Three holes bring eyes and nose to life,

The mouth has thirteen teeth in place.

Then Mr. Macklin just for fun

Transfers the corn-cob pipe from his

Wry mouth to Jack’s, and everyone

Dies laughing! O what fun it is

Till Mr. Macklin draws the shade

And lights the candle in Jack’s skull.

Then all the inside dark is made

As spooky and as horrorful

As Halloween, and creepy crawl

The shadows on the tool-house floor,

With Jack’s face dancing on the wall.

O Mr. Macklin! where's the door?

-- “Mr. Macklin’s Jack O’ Lantern,’’ by David McCord (1897-1997), American institutional fundraiser and poet

 

 

“I used to think that everyone was just being funny. But now I don’t know. I mean, how can you tell?’’

--  Andy Warhol (1928-1987), American artist and film director

 

 

‘’Jokes are grievances.’’

--Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), Canadian philosopher and modern-media scholar

 

 

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If trees could think and feel, you’d think that with some of their green foliage hanging on, but with many of their leaves yellow, brown and dry,  they’d want to get on with it and finally lose all their leaves now to prepare space for the new ones to arrive next spring.

 

The whispering sound of the wind blowing fallen leaves down the roads is very soothing.

 

Crickets chirp later in the fall than they used to. But it’s supposed to be around freezing tonight around Providence. That may be the end of this season’s chirping.

 

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So far, we’re allowed to disagree openly in our semi-democracy/plutocracy about this or that policy on, say, taxes, crime, health care,  migrants, foreign affairs, and so on, even on such world-historical issues as trans rights (involving a gigantic 1 percent of the American population).

 

Our opinions, we would hope, change as the facts/circumstances change.  As  goes the old quote, probably misattributed to the great economist John Maynard Keynes, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?” Keynes did often change his mind as facts changed. His  fellow famous economist Paul Samuelson is reported to have said the same thing about the duty to change your mind as new data roll in.

 

Sometimes our opinions win and sometimes they won’t. I myself am content if I find I agree with, say, 60 percent of a politician’s positions, which inevitably change over time, and happy that maybe half of those positions are enacted in some way. And always remember politicians are just people, not miracle workers.

 

For example, many liberal Democrats are moving away from diversity-promotion programs because they realize that many voters these days are tiring of identity politics. Likewise, they’re getting tougher on border controls where many were too weak before, mostly because of humanitarian concerns of course not shared by MAGA (a nativist fascist movement). Indeed, the Democrats tried to pass a tough immigration bill earlier this year with some Republican helpers, but Trump ordered it killed because he thought that the measure would hurt him in the election.

 

My family background is Republican, by the way. But the national party is now a cesspool of cowards, liars, looters and other opportunists and is anything but “conservative.’’ It would be ironic if real conservatives ended up narrowly electing Kamala Harris, offsetting the  intense fascist vote for Trump. (I would have chosen someone like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer – both very capable executives and political moderates -- instead of Harris as the nominee, but of course, everything happened too fast as Biden finally bailed out last summer. If only he had withdrawn from the race last year!)

 

Whatever, our opinions won’t count for much in a dictatorship run by a psychopath whose only goals are unlimited power, wealth and sadistic revenge and put into office by millions of cultists  (some calling themselves devout “Christians”) supplemented by election fraud and the threat of, or actual practice of, violence. Then power would be exercised with the help of cynical and amoral people in the dictator’s circle who want the thrill of access to the maximum leader and the money and luxury that go with being in the core of a kleptocracy. Recalling German businessmen helping Hitler, note that some billionaires have been assiduously making deals with America’s wanna-be Fuhrer to further enrich themselves when and if he takes power.

 

This is what America faces now as tens of millions of people plan to vote for a traitor, Hitler and Putin admirer, thief, rapist and all-around con man. Trump is the personification of the moral squalor that has swept America in recent years and the cancer that is celebrity culture. He seems likely to take power, with the very smart moral cipher/industrial-strength phony J.D. Vance ready to succeed him. Civically slothful, willfully ignorant and wishful-thinking Americans would have themselves to blame since Trump’s character has been a public record for decades. Trump is everything that the Founding Fathers feared.

 

The fact is that millions of Trumpers love how bad he is because he is the vessel for their hatred, racism, nihilism and thirst for social revenge against those, in “the elite’’ or otherwise, who have humiliated them by being more civilized and/or successful than they are. They’d like to be like him. It’s the triumph of barbarism.

 

And yes, of course, millions blame  Biden administration policies for inflation, ignoring that it was a worldwide problem primarily caused by the pandemic and the urgent need to respond to it to avoid another Great Depression.
 

Anyway, if some of Trump’s supporters decide they don’t like his policies when they’re implemented, tough luck for them. Dictators do what they want.

 

And don’t complain about him. You could end up in prison or dead, maybe by falling out a window in a “tragic accident,’’ of which there are plenty of examples in such paradises as Russia, whose regime Trump would like to emulate, albeit in a more chaotic way than the very disciplined tyrant Putin.

 

Of course, an increasingly big question mark in all this is to what extent Trump’s growing senility, interacting with his pre-existing mental illness,  would result in people in his regime taking away more and more of his direct power as the months go by. Then, one day,  his death or resignation results in J.D. Vance taking over; Vance can hardly wait.

 

Still, there might be the mitigating factor of the incompetence of Trump and his lackeys (who must be corrupt to work for him) compared to such practiced murderous regimes as Putin’s Russia.

 

Here’s a report on how Trump and his people would try to overturn the election if Harris won:

 

Trump regime policies would include eviscerating environmental, health-related and financial regulations and huge tax cuts for the richest Americans. The last two items would lead to a speculative boom, followed by a crash and deep recession, a la what the George W. Bush administration caused.

 

Last week, Trump called America a “garbage can.’’ The rise of low life like him suggests that he has a point.

 

 

Pharmacy Deserts Redux

The states, not the federal government, will have to decide what polices to enact to slow the closing of those essential institutions called pharmacies. In particular, they may have to enact tax breaks to keep independent drugstores alive, and thus lessen the dependence on such chains as CVS and Walgreens that answer above all to Wall Street, not local loyalty, as they weigh store openings, closings and staffing.

 

This is a very serious public-health issue. After all, in-person pharmacies serve as a key part of the American health-care “system,’’ such as it is. For some patients, their pharmacists play roles that are as important as those of their physicians and nurses.

 

This becomes all the more important with the aging of the population.

 

 

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State officials are now talking about moving RIPTA’s bus center from Kennedy Plaza to near the train station. It’s unclear what land would be taken, but the idea is sound. Putting bus and train connections in the same area creates a great convenience. Consider Boston’s South Station train and bus complex.

 

Such a move would improve things in downtown Providence.

 

 

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It would be nice if Rhode Island had an Office of the Inspector General to study what happened in the Washington Bridge fiasco. The state would need a Constitutional Convention to create the post. So please vote yes on Question 1 on the Nov. 5 ballot.

 

 

To Build More Housing

Addressing the housing shortage will require much ingenuity.

 

One new approach I came across in Commonwealth Beacon magazine is to build structures with three to six units with only one stairwell, instead of two.

 

In Massachusetts and some other states, including Rhode Island, building codes for three-to-six story structures require two points of egress. The magazine reports that  a new proposal requiring only one stairwell “is accompanied by additional fire safety requirements such as sprinklers, fire-treated materials, less distance to the point of egress, and windows that meet emergency rescue escape requirements.’’

 

“A report estimates that doing away with the second stairwell could cut construction costs by 15 to 25 percent and add about 130,000 new homes on undeveloped small- to mid-sized parcels near public transit in the Greater Boston area.’’

 

Here’s the referenced report, “Legalizing Mid-Rise Single-Stair Housing in Massachusetts.’’

 

Here’s the magazine article:

 

 

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Good news for consumers upset about those little green crabs that love global warming and are eating so many shellfish and eroding coastal wetlands with their digging: The crabs, while they don’t have much meat, are quite tasty. (They’re great for soups.) And they’re fine fertilizer.

 

Those are incentives to harvest as many of them as possible, which would be very good news for clam and oyster lovers as well as for environmentalists and others trying to protect marshes that host so many creatures and that act as buffers against storm surges.
 

Read this:

 

 

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We note that whenever there’s, say, a cold snap that global-warming deniers intensify their denials, in the face of science. But there’s always something called “natural variability’’ in such broader long-term phenomenon as climate change. Obviously!

 

 

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The news media have been reporting the apparently increasing incidence of memory problems among younger adults. A big reason is the distractions, and so difficulty of paying attention and remembering, that go with using electronic media.  Memories would improve if we turned off our phones and computers a lot more and gave our minds more time to recover from the gyrations on screens.

 

And started reading books again. Let’s revive our capacity for developed thought, even without recourse to ChatGPT.

 

Okay, I admit that this probably won’t happen….