Building a Team Versus Firing the Coach

I am a moderate sports fan. Meaning, I enjoy sports, but don’t really order my life around them or let them dictate my mood. 

 

This year was a great year for my beloved Dodgers. I grew up in Los Angeles, and have rooted for the Dodgers since I was a kid. I remember watching Gibson hit it out on television in 1988, as any kid fan of my age probably can. 

 

In thinking about this last election, I was reminded of a phenomenon in sports that I think is applicable here, and mentioned it on a friend’s post. He is a thoughtful guy, and when he agreed that it worked as an analogy, I decided to think a bit more and maybe write about it. 

 

 

Any casual sports fan knows that, while there is only one champion each year, there are other teams that we call “contenders.” They may not have won this year, but they could have, given a bit better execution, a few fewer mistakes, or even (and this is more common than we admit) a few bounces of the ball. 

 

To put it clearly, winning a championship usually requires a bit of luck. But having a chance at a championship is anything but a matter of luck. Thus, the goal of a team should be to put itself in position to win, and then hope for that bit of luck to be the best. 

 

That said, there are teams - like the Dodgers - who are in that position to win every year. And there are teams that….are not. And many of these teams seem to perpetually lose, year in and year out, and no matter what they do, they continue to lose. 

 

Why is that? 

 

It isn’t merely a matter of money - although money certainly helps. It is easier to build a good team if you can pay good players to play for you, but you need more than that. 

 

As an example, the Rangers and the Blue Jays missed the playoffs despite having the 6th and 7th highest payrolls, respectively. The Orioles and the Brewers made the playoffs comfortably despite having the 4th and 8th lowest payrolls, respectively. 

 

Meanwhile, with a mid-level payroll, the White Sox were historically terrible and have been flat-out unwatchable for years. 

 

If you want to switch sports to football, take a look at a team like the Browns, who throw money around wantonly, make bold trades, have high draft picks (because of their terribleness) and yet seem to suck year after year after year. 

 

So why is that? 

 

And, switching to politics: why does the United States currently struggle (and fail) to build a true first-world society? During the New Deal era, through the early 1970s, the United States was a world leader in building a better society, so we have been able to do this in the past. Why can’t we do that now?

 

I believe the same phenomenon is at play in both sports and politics.

 

In order to build a successful team in sports - and a successful society - you have to use long-term thinking. This is what successful teams do, and unsuccessful teams do not do. And this likewise is what successful societies do (and we Americans actually have done in the past), and what failing societies fail to do. 

 

The reason the Dodgers have had long-term success is that they look at the big picture and the long term - and then invest in building the organization.

 

Ever since the days of the O’Malley family ownership, and Branch Rickey, the Dodgers have a tradition and culture of investing in player development combined with looking outside of traditional markets. [Ignore for now the Fox and McCourt eras, when the Dodgers lost their way.] 

 

It is no accident that it was the Dodgers who broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson. It is no accident that Fernando Valenzuela, Chan Ho Park, and Hideo Nomo all signed with the Dodgers. 

 

It is no accident that the Dodgers seem to develop prospect after prospect. 

 

All of this takes a commitment to long-term and big-picture thinking. You have to invest in scouting. You have to invest in minor-league coaching, in medical staff (Again, no accident that it is the Dodgers’ team physicians that pioneered and continue to perform surgeries on players from every team), in analytics, in marketing, and every other facet of the team. The Dodgers do that. 

 

Teams that fail tend to fall back on short-sighted solutions. If you are the Browns, this means throwing millions of guaranteed money at a quarterback with a buttload of sexual assault accusations and a bad attitude. And panic-trade good players. And draft poorly. In a 25 year period, the Browns went through 38 quarterbacks. THIRTY-EIGHT!!!

 

And a lot of coaches too. 

 

If I were to reduce this to a soundbite, here it is:

 

Good organizations build teams. Bad organizations fire the coach.

 

Your team sucks? Just fire the coach. Surely that will turn things around. 

 

There is a tendency to think this way among Americans. I remember after each season where the Dodgers lost in the playoffs, there were calls to fire Dave Roberts. Never mind his successes. Never mind that his players love and respect him. Never mind that the Dodger coaching staff seems to be able to get more out of less with players over and over. 

 

I mean, Roberts looks like a sure-fire hall of famer, and in the conversation for the best coach of the 21st Century so far. 

 

But fire the coach, right?

 

Well, the Dodgers don’t appear to be in a hurry to fire the coach, and even some inveterate media critics had to admit that winning the world series with only three starting pitchers was quite a feat of coaching. 

 

What has also come out is that the scouting did a great job of finding weaknesses to exploit, and the Dodgers were better prepared than their opponents. 

 

See, good organization. 

 

***

 

Coming back (at long last) to this election, some things really stood out to me. 

 

There is a theory that presidential elections in the United States aren’t really about issues. At least for the middle 20% that we call “swing voters.” 

 

Rather, presidential elections are a referendum on how swing voters feel about the economy. 

 

There was a Democrat in the White House, inflation happened and people didn’t like that, so….

 

Fire the coach!

 

This was supported by some real evidence, by the way. A significant number of voters, for example, voted for both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Il Toupee. What? Well, she did some asking, and found that these voters viewed both her and Il Toupee as outsiders looking out for the good of the working class. 

 

Hmm. Well, I’ll save the question of perception versus reality for a future post - nothing the GOP intends to do would help inflation or lower prices - but this sounds very much like a “fire the coach” situation. 

 

Things got more expensive, and I felt poorer, so let’s fire the coach. 

 

Just like in sports, firing the coach may sometimes be the correct decision - some coaches aren’t very good, for example. (Mike Singletary comes to mind…) But firing the coach because the team sucks isn’t going to change the fact that….the team sucks.

 

America’s economic issues aren’t the result of recent decisions so much as decades of bad policy.

 

Our current inequality stems from decisions made when I was a child (mostly by Reagan): tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, stagnant minimum wage, free trade without a plan to ease the hardships on workers, lack of universal health care, and so on. 

 

Our more recent inflation was caused by factors that were never in the control of the president. Covid, followed by supply shortages. If anything, the US weathered these better than other countries. 

 

But fire the coach. 

 

This is the result of short-term thinking. This idea that if we just put in a new coach, all of the sucky things about our economic system would solve themselves. Of course they won’t. It took decades to build in the problems, and it will take hard work - and the investment of tax dollars - to build a more equitable system. 

 

You can apply this to literally every significant social problem in our country or any country. If there were a magic fix, well, someone would have already tried it and the problem would have been solved. 

 

Rather, difficult problems require hard work, investment, and patience to wait for the harvest. If one thinks of it like farming, an economy isn’t like an annual row crop - it is like an orchard that takes years to bear fruit. You have to think long term, and invest now for the future. 

 

Just like we did during the New Deal. 

 

You can’t just fire the coach. You need to build the team. 

 

Obviously, this isn’t the only issue at stake in the election. I have written extensively about the roles that racism, sexism, and xenophobia play in our politics. The opposition to social programs mostly is driven by white people who don’t want black people to have the same access they have. The fear of change in general drives a lot of voters. 

 

But there does seem to be a certain segment for whom issues of policy do not seem to really matter. For those, the mantra holds: Fire the coach.

 

As we are about to find out, firing the coach and hiring back the guy who fucked things up last time isn’t going to magically make everything better. 

 

The Future of this Blog

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me. The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” 

 

~Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago)

 

“It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” 

 

~ Various attributions, but probably a Danish proverb

 

“It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.”

 

~Theodor Reik

 

“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.  You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is.”

 

~Rebecca Solnit

 

***

 

Well, here we go. A slim majority of American voters have chosen to elect a textbook fascist. Where we go from here is a matter of speculation, which is rather pointless compared to preparation for a variety of bad scenarios. 

 

I am not going to get into the issues that face various marginalized groups in this post. I will merely at this point note that I have the skin of family and friends in this, so it is not merely academic to me. 

 

I will mention that the day after the election my wife found a poster up from a neo-Nazi group with “America is for Americans Only” on it - in our neighborhood. And there are already gravy seal sorts out in flak jackets with quasi-military patches on them. Shit just got real. 

 

I also am not going to be giving away specific plans or ideas - all of us who still believe in basic human decency are going to have to find each other and work to preserve whatever we can. 

 

I do want to talk about this blog, however. When I started it in 2011, it was merely a porting of my year-old Facebook notes about the books I was reading. And the blog still remains mostly an ongoing diary of my reading life, which is an important part of who I am. 

 

Eventually, as the result of an argument with a former acquaintance over Doug Wilson (who appears more and more to be a Nazi), I wrote a viral post on the roots of Christian Patriarchy (and Christian Nationalism) in the white supremacist movement. 

 

Soon after Il Toupee’s first election, I and my family left organized religion, and have not returned. While politics and religion are a relatively small part of my blog, my posts on those topics have resonated with a number of people. A small number - I am a tiny minnow when it comes to readership - or maybe a plankton. 

 

In any case, if Il Toupee and the American Fascist Party (as the Republican Party has become) is looking for enemies or dissenters, I have already put a target on my back. Nearly 1500 posts over the last 13 years are ample evidence of who I am and what I believe. 

 

Although, to be honest, there are over a hundred million of us who have at one time or another spoken out online. If there is strength in numbers, we have that, as long as we do not capitulate. 

 

As the quotes above hint, while we can certainly see possible futures, we do not know precisely what will happen. 

 

For one thing, Fascism isn’t just Hitler. It is Franco, and Pinochet, and Mussolini, and Bolsonaro, and Putin, among many others. While there are similarities, the way things played out has been different given different circumstances. Umberto Eco’s excellent long essay is very much on point. 

 

Our particular situation is different from any other which has come before. For one thing, the US is deeply divided, unlike post-WWI Germany. We lefties (or who are considered lefties in comparison to the far right) have the benefit of hindsight in a way Germany never had. 

 

This means we have a better opportunity to resist. 

 

There is also the fact that enforcing widely unpopular laws is nearly impossible. Case in point is our failed war on drugs. Drugs have been winning that one since the beginning, and anyone who wishes to obtain them can easily do so despite our mass incarceration and broad criminalization. 

 

If we hang together and refuse to do what the fascists want, and do what they do not want us to do, we have more power than we think. 

 

Likewise, there is a difference between targeting roughly one percent of the population, and targeting essentially half of it. Or possibly more, given the intended war on women. The greater the number and percentage of people you have to oppress and conquer, the greater the costs of conquest, and the even greater cost of continued subjugation. As every empire ever has discovered. 

 

As Solzhenitsyn notes, and Solnit confirms, the greatest weapon we all have is to refuse to accept the lie, to refuse to go along with the hate, to refuse to roll over and comply. The more of us do this, the more we can preserve, and the better our eventual chance of turning around this moment of collective denialism and delusion. 

 

***

 

The future of this blog will largely depend on what happens in the future. Specifically, how far down the fascist hole we go. At minimum, I expect that free speech as the Founding Fathers intended (the right to express political dissent) will be limited, given the packing of the Supreme Court. How much right any of us have to criticize the Dear Leader and the Party is very much in doubt. 

 

The easiest way, of course, is simply for Il Toupee to pressure his billionaire tech buddies to deplatform dissenters like me. This would not even violate the First Amendment, as it would be private action. 

 

If we go to the extreme, we could see dissenters imprisoned or murdered, as Putin does in Russia. 

 

On the hopeful side, the fact that I am too small of a blogger to matter - most of my posts are read by less than 100 readers, and even my most popular reach less than 1000 - may mean that irrelevance will insulate me. 

 

***

 

I’m not much of a revolutionary. I’m not athletic enough to make a good soldier or guerilla. I’m not going to be literally punching Nazis - that would be either hilarious or a disaster…or both. I’m terrible at lying. I’m not good at conspiracy. I am not a natural leader. I wear my heart on my sleeve and say what I feel. I’m stubborn - just ask my parents.

 

My skills mostly include being organized, thinking things through (maybe overthinking?), working hard, and knowing a bunch of random stuff. 

 

I guess I am the kind of man that women choose instead of the bear, but not yet sure how that translates to troubled times. 

 

Really, the most I can do as one person to resist is not that much, although I intend to do what I can with the opportunities I have. What I do have is words. I am pretty good with words, if I flatter myself. I love teaching, and have generally been successful at that. More than anything, this blog is about education using words. 

 

With my words I will refuse to participate in the lie. The lie that some people (particularly white American males) are inherently more valuable than others. The lie that humanity needs authoritarian power. The lie that hierarchy is necessary. The lie that we can continue to commit ecocide without it becoming suicide. The lie that what God wants is for us to murder each other over our differences. The lie that our problems are caused by the existence of “those people.” 

 

My intent is to continue to write this blog as long as I can. 

 

I may try to use euphemisms a bit more to make it harder for the algorithms to target me. (I already have had to do this with references to male genitalia and sexual slang.) 

 

I intend to download the entire blog and keep it backed up on a hard drive rather than just the cloud. 

 

If for some reason I am deplatformed, I am willing to keep readers updated. (You can email me if you want to be on the list.) 

 

But one thing I do not intend to do is pre-comply. If all of us small voices insist on speaking, the resources required to silence all of us will be vast, and the ability of the fascists to silence us all more doubtful. 

 

Do not take part in the lie. Do not be silent about evil. Care for the vulnerable. Everything we can save is worth saving. 

 

Anyone know where they hand out the “Antifa” cards? 

 

***

 

My suggested anti-fascism reading list:

 

They Thought They Were Free by Milton Meyer

The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death by Albert Camus

We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik

A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill

 

(I’m sure I’ll think of more later.) 

 

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

Sometimes I can’t remember exactly how a book ended up on my “to read” list. I think this one might have come from a review in The Guardian, but I really am not sure. The book is from 2003, hardly new, so I guess I must have run across something about it somewhere. 

 

As with many of my audiobooks, I end up with whatever is currently available off my list. This one happened to be, and I needed something to cover some driving. Also, I am always working to include the voices of women and minorities in my reading - those voices are under attack by the right wing right now (the overwhelming majority of challenged books are by women, minorities, and LGBTQ people.) 

Monica Ali was born in Bangladesh (which was then East Pakistan) to a Bengali father and an English mother. The family moved to Britain when she was a toddler, so she was raised there, and eventually studied (of all things) philosophy at Oxford. 

 

In addition to her writing, she has done significant charitable work, worked with PEN, and even ended up modeling for Mark’s and Spencer’s. An interesting resume to be sure. 

 

Brick Lane is the story of a Bangladeshi immigrant to London, set in the 20 years leading up to and immediately after the 9/11 attacks. 

 

Nazneen is a young woman of barely 18, who is sent by her parents to marry Chanu, a 40 year old man who has immigrated to London. This is precipitated by the fact that her younger sister, Hasina, has eloped with her lover. Best to preserve the virtue of the other daughter. 

 

But there is some emotional backstory here. Nazneen appears to be dead when she is born, and, rather than seek medical attention, they just leave her to live or die as she chooses. She lives. 

 

From there, we see Nazneen’s life unfold. She settles into marriage with Chanu, who is a complicated, deeply human character. The good news is, he isn’t abusive - at heart he’s a pretty decent guy. But he also has a lot of patriarchal baggage, is overeducated for his opportunities (and is thus a bit insufferably snobbish), and is incapable of parenting without screaming and threats. 

 

This naturally causes incredible friction between Chanu and his oldest daughter, who at one point runs away rather than move back to Bangladesh. 

 

The book is a bit all over the place, because it is a messy account of a complicated life. Chanu hopes for advancement, but as an immigrant (even an educated one with good English skills), he refused promotion while less qualified white men are moved up. Nazneen has to make friends, learn English, raise two daughters, and eventually, support the family by taking on sewing. 

 

The couple loses an infant to illness, flirts with bankruptcy multiple times, falls in debt to the local loan shark (who is a great character and a most excellent villain), and eventually separate when Nazneen choses to stay behind when Chanu moves back home. 

 

Nazneen, stuck in a loveless marriage, has a torrid affair with a younger man, but eventually chooses to send him away. 

 

And, while all this is going on, a neo-Nazi group, the Lionhearts, engages in a hate campaign against the immigrant population, and is countered by an Islamic group, the Bengal Tigers, leading to some clashes, but mostly pamphlet wars. 

 

My least favorite part of the book was the meetings of the Bengal Tigers. While Ali does take the time to illuminate all of the internal conflicts and divisions and questions of priorities and tactics, these go on far too long, and stopped the pace of the narrative. 

 

At its core, though, the story is of Nazneen growing up. From a little girl who took from the trauma of her birth and virtual abandonment to fate a belief that one must simply passively accept fate, to a woman who takes control and ownership of her own life and decisions. This is a great story arc, and Ali makes it compelling. 

 

The characters are memorable and well drawn, familiar and foreign at the same time. And, to be honest, a good bit of the foreign feel stems from the setting in Britain. I mean, poor people can just get free health care? What socialist nightmare is this? 

 

I will also note that Ayesha Dharker did a great job narrating - the characters were clear and distinguishable, and she brought out the differences in language the characters use in the book very well. 

 

I may have to check out Ali’s other books as well. 

 

When the Light of the World was Subdued (Part 2)

Source of book: I own this

 

[I am intentionally not yet posting anything about the election. I will eventually, as it may have an effect on this blog going forward. Stay tuned.] 

 

This is the second installment of posts about this collection of Native Nations poetry. You can read the first one here. As I noted in the first post, the book is divided into section based on geography. The first section was the northeast and midwest. This one is the plains and mountains. Within the section, the poems are arranged in chronological order based on the date of birth of the poet. 

 

The Plains nations are ones that are often familiar to us white folk, although often for the wrong reasons. We may know the names of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, the defeat of Custer, the massacre at Wounded Knee. Some of the nations have made it into our vernacular, such as Dakota, Omaha, Cheyenne, Muscogee. Others are familiar: Crow, Blackfoot, Kiowa, Sioux, Shoshone, Comanche. And a few are less so: Ihanktonwa, Kootenai, Anishinaabe, Assiniboine. 

 

Our American mythology often centers around the Plains and Mountains tribes, with white people cast as the heroes fighting off the murderous subhuman savages. Forgotten - or more accurately intentionally suppressed - are the stories of genocide, ethnic cleansing, land theft, broken treaties, and the murder of women and children that are a more accurate characterization of the American government toward the nations of our continent’s heartland. 

 

As with the previous section, this one contains poems about a wide variety of subjects. Certainly there is reckoning with the past, but also hope for the future, and the universal human themes that inspire all humans of good will. 

 

Like the other part, I struggled to select a modest number of poems to feature. So many were outstanding and meaningful, and all I can do is pick the ones that spoke to me the most this time through, and encourage my readers to purchase this book and immerse themselves in it. 

 

Joy Harjo and her contributing editors again did a fantastic job of choosing a wide variety of poems and authors. Women are well represented, as are the many nations. 

 

The first poet featured is Elsie Fuller, born sometime in the 1870s, with an unknown life span. She was from the Omaha nation, and was one of many Native children stolen from their families and forced to learn English and white culture at boarding schools. Oh, and she also was sent to “work” for white families in New England during her summers rather than seeing her family. In another context, we would call this slavery. 

 

In any case, this poem packs a punch. 

 

A New Citizen

 

Now I am a citizen!

            They’ve given us new laws,

Just as were made

            By Senator Dawes.

 

We need not live on rations,

            Why? There is no cause,

For “Indians are citizens,”

            Said Senator Dawes.

 

Just give us a chance,

            We never will pause.

Till we are good citizens

            Like Senator Dawes.

 

Now we are citizens,

            We all give him applause-

So three cheers, my friends,

For Senator Dawes!

 

Shostakovich would perhaps approve of that sarcasm. 

 

Next up is D’Arcy McNickle, of the Metis and Confederated Salish and Kootenai nations. He is probably best known for his work at the Bureau of Indian Affairs encouraging greater autonomy for tribes. He also taught and wrote in a variety of genres. 

 

Man Hesitates but Life Urges

 

There is this shifting, endless film

And I have followed it down the valleys

And over the hills, -

Pointing with wavering finger

When it disappeared in purple forest-patches

With its ruffle and wave to the slightest-breathing wind-god.

 

There is this film

Seen suddenly, far off

When the sun, walking to his setting,

Turns back for a last look,

And out there on the far, far prairie

A lonely drowsing cabin catches and holds a glint,

For one how endless moment,

In a staring window the fire and song of the martyrs!

 

There is this film

That has passed to my fingers

And I have trembled,

Afraid to touch.

 

And in the eyes of one

Who had wanted to give what I had asked

But hesitated - tried - and then

Came with a weary, aged, “Not quite,”

I could but see that single realmless point of time,

All that is sad, and tired, and old -

And endless, shifting film.

 

And I went again

Down the valleys and over the hills,

Pointing with wavering finger;

Ever reaching to touch, trembling,

Ever fearful to touch. 

 

That’s a truly beautiful poem. 

 

I have previously posted about N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), who I really love. There are several of his poems in this collection, which is no surprise, as he is one of the premier Native poets of our time. I chose this one to feature in this post. 

 

The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee

 

I am a feather on the bright sky.

I am the blue horse that runs in the plain.

I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water. 

I am the shadow that follows a child.

I am the evening light, the luster of meadows.

I am an eagle playing with the wind.

I am a cluster of bright beads.

I am the farthest star.

I am the cold of dawn.

I am the roaring of the rain.

I am the glitter on the crust of the snow.

I am the long track of the moon in a lake.

I am a flame of four colors.

I am a deer standing away in the dusk.

I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche.

I am an angle of geese in the winter sky.

I am the hunger of a young wolf. 

I am the whole dream of these things.

You see, I am alive, I am alive.

I stand in good relation to the earth.

I stand in good relation to the gods.

I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful.

I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte.

You see, I am alive, I am alive. 

 

The next one is by Lance Henson (Southern Cheyenne). 

 

Anniversary Poem for Cheyennes Who Died at Sand Creek

 

when we have come this long way

past cold grey fields

past the stone markers etched with the

names they left us

 

we will speak for the first time to the season

to the ponds

 

touching the dead grass

 

our voices the color of watching

 

This one, by John Trudell (Santee Dakota), seems relevant today. 

 

Diablo Canyon

 

Today I challenged the nukes

The soldiers of the state

Placed me in captivity

Or so they thought

They bound my wrists in their

Plastic handcuffs

Surrounding me with their

Plastic minds and faces

They ridiculed me

But I could see through 

To the ridicule they brought

On themselves

They told me to squat over there

By the trash

They left a soldier to guard me

I was the Vietcong

I was Crazy Horse

 

Little did they understand

Squatting down in the earth

They placed me with my power

My power to laugh

Laugh at their righteous wrong

Their sneers and their taunts

Gave me clarity

To see their powerlessness

 

It was in the way they dressed

And in the way they acted

They viewed me as an enemy

A threat to their rationalizations

I felt pity for them

Knowing they will never be free

 

I was their captive

But my heart was racing

Through the generations

The memories of eternity

 

It was beyond their reach

I would be brought to the 

Internment camps 

To share my time with allies

 

This time I almost wanted to believe you

When you spoke of peace and love and

Caring and duty and god and destiny

But somehow the death in your eyes and 

Your bombs and your taxes and your

Greed and your face-life told me

 

This time I cannot afford to believe you

 

I want to send the last two stanzas out to my parents, who I wanted to believe for so long, but have turned out to have lied about all that shit about peace and love and caring and duty and god - it was all just lies they didn’t believe. In the end, it was all just greed and racism and hate, and they threw me away as soon as I stopped validating them. Kind of like Evangelicalism did. 

 

This next poem is by Nila Northsun (Shoshone and Anishinaabe). As someone who has enjoyed cooking since childhood, and who has eaten commodity cheese, this poem resonated with me. 

 

Cooking Class

 

when you’ve starved most of your life

when commodities

the metalling instant potatoes

the hold your nose canned pork

the pineapple juice that never dies

the i didn’t soak them long enough pinto beans

the even the dog won’t eat this potted meat

potted as in should have been buried

in a potter’s field

when the wonderful commodity cheese 

or terrible commodity cheese

that winos tuck ‘neath their pits

and knock on your door

trying to sell it for $5

but taking $3

is all stored in the basdement

or in closets

or left in the original boxes

lining hallways

of your hud house

cause there’s just no more room

you wonder

how can anyone starve

with so much food

but there are other starvations

like developing the taste for

lard sandwiches

or mustard and commodity cheese sandwiches

just cut the mold off the crusts of bread

and boil the tomato juice until it’s usable as

a spaghetti sauce

certainly don’t use the tomato sauce for

your Sunday morning bloody mary

to accompany your blueberry blintzes

or smoked salmon quiche

unless 

you have a major change in attitude

cause the dried egg product can quiche

with the flour

and the powdered milk

and if you’re a northwest coast tribe

salmon or whatever fish

thing is possible

if not

some rich people pay good money

for the antelope or elk you can knock off

in your back yard

why bother with just goose liver pate

when you can have the whole damn canadian honker

blasted from its migratory path?

pheasants and quail are roadkill all the time

it’s just tenderized

it’s all in the attitude

and the presentation

parsley does wonders

for aesthetic contrast to

macaroni and cheese

again

and again

and again

 

I have to include this one, by Heid E. Erdrich (Anisinaabe - Turtle Mountain Band), who is the sister of Louise Erdrich, whose books I have written about several times. Heid also wrote the introduction to this section, which is excellent. As regular readers know, I am a huge fan of Robert Frost, and have been since childhood. That said, his poem “The Gift Outright” is a bunch of Manifest Destiny horseshit, which deserves this response. 

 

The Theft Outright

                        after Frost

 

We were the land’s before we were.

 

Or the land was ours before you were a land.

Or this land was our land, it was not your land.

 

We were the land before we were people,

loamy roamers rising, so the stories go,

or formed of clay, spit into with breath reeking soul -

 

What’s America, but the legend of Rock ‘n’ Roll?

 

Red rocks, blood clots bearing boys, blood sands

swimming being from women’s hands, we originate,

originally, spontaneous as hemorrhage. 

 

Unpossessing of what we still are possessed by,

possessed by what we now no more possess.

 

We were the land before we were people,

dreamy sunbeams where sun don’t shine, so the stories go,

or pulled up a hole, clawing past ants and roots - 

 

Dineh in documentaries scoff DNA evidence off.

They landed late, but canyons spoke them home.

Nomadic Turkish horse tribes they don’t know.

 

What’s America, but the legend of Stop ‘n’ Go?

 

Could be cousins, left on the land bridge,

contrary to popular belief, that was a two-way toll.

In any case we’d claim them, give them someplace to stay.

 

Such as we were we gave most things outright

(the deed of the theft was many deeds and leases and claim stakes

and tenure disputes and moved plat markers stolen still today…)

 

We were the land before we were a people,

earthdivers, her darling mudpuppies, so the stories go,

or emerging, fully forming from flesh of earth - 

 

The land, not the least vaguely, realizing in all four directions,

still storied, art-filled, fully enhanced.

Such as she is, such as she wills us to become. 

 

I’ll end with this one, by Tevino L. Brings Plenty (Minneconjou Lakota). 

 

Ghost River

 

I’m mostly water.

There has been family swept under by raw currents.

 

I’m from planters from the river.

We dredged riverbed bones.

 

Water is faces lined blue.

Red horses bay bodies hooked from fish line.

 

And what was sown, brown hands dug free.

I’m mostly other people. 

 

Family is pulled pail full from source.

I’m from river people. 

 

We prep the light from matted hair.

Water catches flame.

 

The black horses hoof rock, halving them like thin, infant skulls.

And what was sown, brown hands dug free. 

 

In these troubled times, it will be increasingly necessary for those of us who still retain basic human decency to pull together, and keep the voices of the marginalized alive. I strongly recommend purchasing books like this both to encourage publishers to keep publishing them despite pressure from the bigots, and also because there is a significant risk that publishers will cave to the fascists and end their attempts to print books by those other voices. 

Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut

Source of book: I own this.

 

I received a box of books by Vonnegut when a colleague downsized, and I have been working to read through them as I get time. I went with Jailbird because I found a Franklin edition at a library sale, and figured I should read that one next. I also have a cheap paperback from that box, and that is the one I took on a recent backpacking trip - it was light and small, and I really wouldn’t have been particularly sad if it got damaged. (Say, from falling in a lake. Unlikely, but you never know…) 

 

Jailbird is all about the Watergate scandal, plus a bit about the Labor movement a generation before that. The main protagonist is the fictional Walter F. Starbuck, a minor government official, who is wrongly convicted in the scandal because compromising documents were stored in his basement office. 

 

We get Starbuck’s backstory, which ends up involving the Labor movement and Sacco and Vanzetti, his marriage to a holocaust survivor, and his estrangement from his only child. After that, his trial and imprisonment, and his post-prison life which takes a bizarre turn. 

 

A bunch of other stuff is brought into the book during its many digressions. Including the Radium Girls. Surprisingly, the book mentions Roy Cohn in a mildly positive light. (As being a good attorney. Not a good person, which is an impossible case to make. But he was also a shitty lawyer too, a true embarrassment to the profession for his ethical nihilism.) 

 

I also learned a new thing from this book: the cocktail known as a “pousse-cafe.” Have you ever heard of it? I guess they were a thing back in the day. They seem to me to be more about the visual aesthetics than drinkability, but your mileage may vary. 

 

The narrative is strangely linear for Vonnegut, and lacks aliens. Kilgore Trout does make a token appearance, using a pseudonym, and with details that contradict the facts in other books. 

 

I have mixed feelings about the book. On the positive side, it truly sets forth Vonnegut’s political ideas, particularly his support for labor against capital. It also has some brilliant satire of society and government. A few of the characters, including the protagonist, are memorable. 

 

On the other hand, it lacks the human connection that I found in previous books. Slaughterhouse-Five is somewhat autobiographical, as Vonnegut lived through the firebombing of Dresden himself as a prisoner of war. It feels viscerally real. 

 

Likewise, Breakfast of Champions explores mental illness and how people descend into conspiratorial thinking. With characters patterned after Vonnegut’s family, it also feels personal and real. 

 

While I found Starbuck to be a compelling character, his constant dissociation and lack of change meant he felt at a distance. A few other characters flirted with connection, but they were in and out of the book fairly quickly - specifically the four loves of Starbuck’s life, who were fascinating, but then disappeared before you really got to know them fully. 

 

Perhaps this was Vonnegut’s intention - and he himself thought Jailbird was one of his best books. I just found it a bit harder to find that connection and realness that was so apparent in the other books. 

 

This is not to say the book is bad - just not as good (in my opinion) as the others of his I have read. 

 

There are, of course, some great lines - Vonnegut is always incredibly quotable. 

 

Starbuck, after World War Two, admires the new American army and its ostensible goals. Enjoy the snark. 

 

They were to be a thunderbolt with which we could vaporize any new, would-be Hitler, anywhere in the world. No sooner had the people of a country lost their freedom, than the United States of America would arrive to give it back again. 

 

This was written, of course, after the disaster of Vietnam…

 

There is also a digression about a Black prisoner of war held by China. I won’t get into all the details, but this line from the man in question is great. 

 

“They wanted me back, you know,” he told me, “because they were so embarrassed. They couldn’t stand it that even one American, even a black one, would think for even a minute that maybe America wasn’t the best country in the world.” 

 

Some things never change, I guess. 

 

This one is more funny than satirical. 

 

The function of a tuxedo, in fact, is exactly that: to put the wearer into an alternate universe.

 

There is also a strange story about Einstein and auditors (divine auditors, actually), which has an interesting conclusion. 

 

The story was certainly a slam at God, suggesting that he was capable of using a cheap subterfuge like the audits to get out of being blamed for how hard economic life was down here. 

 

The book ends with a rather bizarre twist. I won’t spoil most of it, but there is a bit about the debacle of trying to leave a giant corporation to charity. 

 

What, in my opinion, was wrong with Mary Kathleen’s scheme for a peaceful economic revolution? For one thing, the federal government was wholly unprepared to operate all the businesses of RAMJAC on behalf of the people. For another thing: Most of those businesses, rigged only to make profits, were as indifferent to the needs of the people as, say, thunderstorms. Mary Kathleen might as well have left one-fifth of the weather to the people. 

 

This is a perceptive observation, and gets at one of the reasons that Communism failed. Yes, of course, there are all kinds of problems - Communism was implemented as essentially a religion, and a fundamentalist one at that, rather than as a tool. 

 

But it also retained so much of industrial capitalism that it ended up mostly being a worse, totalitarian form of it. Vonnegut is right - the very structure of industry rigged to make profit isn’t improved because you make the government run it. And hierarchy-based business just changes hierarchies with ownership. 

 

Whether or not you believe that society can go back to a time before industrialization or reverse the trend toward consolidation in business, what is clear is that 18th and 19th Century economic theories and tools have proven wholly useless in addressing the issues we currently face. And that goes for both unregulated capitalism and utopian Marxism. 

 

Vonnegut satirizes both in this book, but doesn’t have clear answers to suggest. I think he is right about that. Solutions will need shifting more power to labor and away from the billionaire class, for sure, but the exact solutions will need to be discovered pragmatically, not ideologically. 

 

Interesting book. Not his best, but worth reading.