2025 A Year of Optimism for Americans

 

A Sense of Optimism About America’s Future is Back: 2025

New Year’s Day again. This time it’s 2025 and I’m looking forward to a better year.

Optimism on Tap

It’s easy to think of the political turmoil of the last year and be grateful that Joe Biden is out of office. Not that politics is everything, but it does set the tone for a lot of people. When we feel better about ourselves and our country, a sense of optimism pervades. When Trump asked Tom Homan to come back and be his Homeland security chief, he came out of retirement. In an interview with Tucker, Tom said that so many retired border patrol officers offered to come back once he was selected. The reason is obvious. We know instinctively that patriots are going to run key positions in DC. They love the country and want to help. It’s knowing that your leadership is for you. That’s inspiring.

Presidents Matter

I don’t buy anymore that the economy isn’t really affected by the president’s policies. The Wall Street Journal and others would always run these snotty articles about how it doesn’t make a huge difference. They think the ‘rubes’ need an education on how unimportant the president is to the economy. I wish it were true, but anti-business moves, flooding the country with illegals and canceling drilling leases for oil companies have trickle down effects.

There may have been a time when policies were similar enough from Republicans to Democrats. In the 90s and even early 00s, the economic policies weren’t that different. Candidates talked like they were. Democrats always sounded like FDR and Republicans like Reagan, but in reality, the big budget stuff was always signed off on. No one was going to seriously threaten social security or defense spending or Medicare. Even today, those programs are fully funded without a lot of fuss. The difference is what the democrats restrict, the climate mullahs have attacked oil and gas by shutting down new leases for drilling. President Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline that’s been hanging by a thread since Obama’s term.

Climate Hysteria and Insurance Fraud

In the same vein, Uncle Sam subsidizes electric vehicles and forces CAFÉ standards on automakers. EV’s come with a discount ($7,500) for the buyer and upwards of $10,000 with the state subsidy. This is an industry that shouldn’t need the boost anymore. But taxpayers still have to shell out for plug ins that are getting less popular by the year.

 Since President Obama’s two terms, the separation of a private and public sector in medical insurance is a joke. Most of the big insurers are owned by the federal government after Obamacare. You may hate insurance companies but they’re hardly even making their own decisions anymore. They signed on to impossible rules that govern their businesses, like covering pre-existing conditions. They also signed up to limit their own profits. Costs continue to go up for the ACA (Affordable Care Act) while Insurers denied more claims than ever last year. They took something complicated, insurance, and wrapped in more red tape. They wanted windfall profits and didn’t care about the future. Obamacare is probably the biggest single reason that the president does make a difference on the economy. It ruined what was at least marginally a private industry.

Somewhere in those Obama years I stopped being a libertarian. It’s laughable to think there exists a sharp distinction between federal and private business anymore.

Rising Pride Lifts all Boats

If investor exuberance can hold the stock market afloat, then so can pride in country boost the mood in future ventures. People need leadership and it doesn’t even have to be perfect. It does however, need to be genuine. Joe Biden was never the duly elected president and he knew it, everyone knew it. Most didn’t admit it. The sense of hopefulness after the Trump win is about the future and progress. It’s difficult to describe a sense of optimism but you know it when you see it.

It’s like when the substitute teacher, who’d been filling in for the sick teacher finally leaves. This particular substitute was teaching Marxism and letting the bullies pick on the other kids. He was deconstructing the whole idea of education and telling lies about the country, God and gender norms. He did real damage. But now the regular teacher is back and a sense of optimism has returned.

Conclusion

Not that it won’t be an uphill struggle. But Trump won a mandate and if he doesn’t root out the poisonous corruptocrats it will be for naught. He has a much better sense of what needs to happen in this term. Hopefully, he won’t trust the swamp dwellers in the Republican party this time. I mostly like his cabinet picks. I’m not completely sold on Kennedy (RFK Jr), but there’s time.

 

General Flynn's Vision for America: Peace Through Strength

What Does General Flynn Think is the Key to Bring America Back Under Trump?

General Flynn was on Though Leaders with Jan Jekielek recently.

More of an overview of his vision for America, it avoided specifics about what Flynn’s role will be in the new administration. He paid a heavy price for his support, and ultimate role in Trump’s first term. As National Security Advisor, he was sidelined immediately by Obama’s outgoing apparatchiks. They had the FBI run him through the same lawfare trap that Trump went through. Flynn had less money to fight the charges and was ruined. He never even got started in the critical role. He was gone before the inauguration. Likely he knew too much about how the intelligence agencies work. They had to cancel him.

Borrowing From Reagan

He's miraculously positive about the future of the country, but aware of the inherent problems of an oversized bureaucracy. He talked about the strength of the country as a means of projecting to the world. This is familiar language to anyone who grew up in America during the Reagan years. The president thought “Peace Through Strength” a critical strategy for stability.  It probably sounds like an aggressive doctrine to those who didn’t.

 Over the last 20 years the idea of “Peace Through Strength” has been bastardized. It used to mean that a strong military was the key to economic growth and freedom in the United States. Reagan used it on the world’s stage to counter the debilitating effect of socialism on a country. In essence, we are better than the Soviet Union because we’re free and secure. But after the long experiment in Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East, it’s taken on a different meaning.

Agreement With Russia

We are less secure and less free but still manage to send our military all over the globe despite its significant depleted strength. Whether this was intentional or just the result of bad policies, it has hurt our capabilities to defend the homeland. In that spirit, the general highlighted a few core principles for the country to get back to stability. Stop pretending Russia is the same big bad country from the post World War II days. They’re a regional power but a diminished one, China is the bigger threat. We can and should come to an agreement with Russia to avoid nuclear war. He didn’t give details, but it’s clear the Biden administration set diplomacy back to dangerous levels. We’re on the brink of war with a nuclear power and no one is talking.

Country First Leaders

Flynn mentioned leadership multiple times. I never got the sense that he thought the world could be a peaceful utopia, free of wars. But he’s also against poking the bear, especially when our military isn’t ready for another conflict. That part is my own editorializing. He didn’t say we couldn’t fight a big war. I’m confident he believes it though. Leadership means cooler heads. It means trying to be diplomatic despite the inherent frustration it brings. It means service to country and not self. Too many of the leaders in positions of authority are corrupt to the core and as a result, think only of themselves. This is particularly true of the intelligence community. They use blackmail and intimidation to get their way. Or, to stave off attacks against their pet projects.

Organizing American Principles

 Our federal system works like a cartel. Multiple agencies and multiple interests all looking out for their special projects, corners, power centers. Effective leadership cuts through the graft. When you hold a few powerful people accountable, the rest will fall into line without a lot of fuss.

Lastly, he mentioned the importance of understanding the “organizing principles” around which the country is arranged. No details were given. I think he means that leaders should understand the core values that made us great. Government is necessary but far from the reason we have a prosperous country. The founders recognized a God given right of individual freedom and enshrined it into the Constitution as a protection against the state. Leaders that act to thwart free people are the problem. The word “freedom” has also been bastardized by those hoping to legalize drugs or avoid taxes. It was always about speech, religion and commerce and what the government could compel.

Conclusion

The influence of communism on the United States since World War II has changed the culture enough that capitalism is a dirty word for many. We must get back to local control and local leadership and that starts with schools and city councils. I’ve summed up most of Flynn’s answers as I remember the interview. I’m sure he’ll have a position with the administration in some capacity. I thought he might have had enough of the legal stuff the last time around, however. He may want to be an informal advisor and nothing else.

No one would blame him for that, certainly not Trump. General Flynn is still a giant in the MAGA movement.   

Camino Ghosts: Book Review

 

John Grisham’s Latest Camino Installment is Dull and Anticlimactic

I just finished reading Camino Ghosts from John Grisham. It’s the third version of this plucky group of literary nerds who summer on an island (Camino) off the Atlantic side of Florida. Grisham doesn’t do a lot of serial type books. He doesn’t have a hero the way Lee Child (Jack Reacher) or Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch) do. But the subject matter is as different as the pacing. Jake Brigance from A Time To Kill would be his closest serial. He’s done 3 stories that I’m aware of. But Brigance isn’t exactly racing around the globe rescuing hostages or fomenting revolution in a South American country.

He’s basically a pro bono lawyer in a country town in Southern Mississippi. Not exactly riveting stuff. It’s great story telling though. I enjoyed the small-town politics and legal wrangling. We learn how the system works and how it doesn’t. We root for the accused.

The Camino stories don’t have the same rich texture. It feels like I should care more about the people in it, but I don’t.

Breakdown and Criticism

Camino Ghosts would have been better as a short story. The first 1/3 felt like an interesting yarn, so I kept going. It flattened out and settled to the bottom like week old Coca Cola after that. The last third was rushed through and summarized like a made for TV movie stuffing in an ending right before a commercial break. It’s almost like he got halfway done doing research and decided it wasn’t worth his time and handed it off to a junior writer to finish by the deadline.

The most compelling thing about the Camino Island crew is how fun it would be to live there and go to their parties. Telling stories about a small group of boozy eccentrics is what holds this series together. The eager book seller (Bruce Cable) with the big contacts and the young author/professor Mercer Mann and her new husband Thomas. A crew of fellow writers and retired busybodies fills out the rest of the island set. Written in an easy, breezy style, their life on the island is focused on books and causes.

Outline Summary

In the early 17^th century, an unknown village in West Africa is raided and the people are sold as slaves by another tribe. Both slave traders and raiding party’s treat the villagers horribly. The women are raped and beaten. The men are either killed outright or separated from the women on the march to the sea. The conditions on the ships are even worse. Stiflingly hot and disease ridden, many die in the tight airless spaces before the ship arrives with its slaves. One particular ship crashes near Florida in a storm. The captured Africans revolt against their captors and escape to a tiny island, Dark Isle. The White slavers are executed in a voodoo ceremony by a captured woman named Nalla. The curse, White men can never set foot on the island and live to tell about it.

Lovely Jackson is the last descendent of the people from Dark Isle. She moved to Camino Island when she was just 15. No one has lived there since. The island is hers. A big developer wants to set up condos on the island but needs permission from the state of Florida. Lovely claims ownership. Tidal Breeze, the developer, needs to disprove her theory of ownership. They have a lot of money and powerful friends. Lovely has the crew from Camino and their vast eclectic mix of writers and environmental lawyers designed to stop corporate development. She needs to prove she owns it to stop the builders.

Any description of the slave trade and its barbarity should force a kind of revulsion in the reader. This description is no different. It’s partly what made me think the story would take rough ride like the crossing that the slave ship endured. Mostly it devolved into a dull summation of the legal questions and Lovely’s memory. The stakes were very low. I kept thinking that the worst case scenario was the developers win the case to build on the island and Lovely dies a few years later. She was in her 80s. It’s not exactly a disaster.

Conservation Angle

For all the camaraderie of the liberal writing crew and their desire to keep the greedy bastards out, someone developed the island they live on. I never fully sympathize with conservationists; most already have their property. The attitude is always, go find your piece of land somewhere else. They love to move in the middle of nowhere and keep everyone else out. I understand the impetus, no one wants a highway or an apartment building near their spread, but it’s not “evil” or “corrupt” to want to develop. In either case, we root for Lovely and the protection of her homeland. Grisham makes a good case legally and emotionally that’s easy for the reader to follow.

I wonder if John Grisham made the connection that Bruce and Mercer and Thomas and the crew were helping themselves more than Lovely. They wouldn't have wanted the development any more than her. For all of their efforts, the real winners would be the ones who live on Camino Island. 

Conclusion

Hoping for a quick end to the story after getting halfway through is a sign your book is too boring. In the end I just didn’t care. It was like being promised an action packed movie with violence and ancient curses and being shown some old photos of the island instead. Not exactly a bait and switch, but it was much flatter than promised.

 

President Trump and the First 100 Days

 

What Will the First 100 Days Look Like for a Newish Administration

The first 100 days of a president’s term are an arbitrary measure of success. But it does give us a glimpse of where the focus will be.

A Victory Lap

Trump and co are going to move fast. They ran a smart, fun campaign in contrast to the Harris camps’ lack of a real message. To be fair, they didn’t have time to prepare given the infighting from the White House. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She was a terrible candidate, and Biden was too old and becoming more senile with every speech and presser. Trump won a clear mandate by sticking to the same issues he’d always talked about. Close the border, punish China with tariffs, promote American industry and stay out of foreign wars.

He pressed hard on the border. It’s gotten demonstrably worse since he left. He said the democrats didn’t care about the country and they went and proved it.

Thanks to Elon Musk, the mainstream media doesn’t have a stranglehold on information anymore. Twitter, or X, is in the free speech camp. Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the “Twitter Files” laid bare the strongarm tactics from the FBI. They treated the social media company like an agency of the government and broke countless surveillance laws in the process. But at least they couldn’t hide critical stories this election year.

Everyone who voted for Trump has a wish list for the first 100 days. Our republic is in serious trouble unless we begin to sort it out. Here are the things I’d like to see get underway right off.

#1 Close the Freaking Border!

The border has been a problem since the Bush 41 days. It’s been a problem for longer than that, but it hit critical mass sometime around the early 00s. The American people were not in agreement with Washing DC on this. American citizens knew were dealing the effects of an open border and resented it. We could be persuaded to go to war in Iraq and spend on Medicare, but we were never persuaded on the border. 

George W Bush desperately wanted a border bill that gave citizenship to millions of illegals, then they'd close the border. But they wouldn’t close the border first. That’s when we knew D.C. wasn’t serious about stopping illegal immigration. It was a “trust me” kind of pledge and we didn’t trust them. Trump saw right through it because he listened to people at his rallies. He listened to Ann Coulter too who said he should make it the signature issue. 

He did run on it, and he never apologized or walked back his stance. It's why we love him so much, for all of his flaws.

An intractable problem with an easy solution shouldn’t be this hard to fix. But if there is an open border we know some constituency benefits. Big business needs the labor, Democrats need the voters and cartels need to move drugs and people to their customers. Sex trafficking is an industry in an of itself. If we’re going to commit soldiers to a war it needs to be on our southern border. A lot of people still think the crossing at the border is about migrants seeking a better life. Ridiculous. But it’s so much more chaotic and evil than people realize. We’ve left an open door to our house at the southern border and thieves are robbing us. It’s time to lock it up and start enforcing the law, like legitimate countries do. 

#2 Clean out the FBI and Department of Justice

The Achilles heel of Trump’s first term was his appointment of too many swamp creatures. From Jeff Sessions (Attorney’s General) and Rex Tillerson (State) to holdovers like James Comey (FBI) they caused irreparable harm. He was learning how to run a government and had to rely on insiders. 2024 Trump is a very different man. There are more loyalists and people of solid character who had front row seats to the inside coup known as the “Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax”. Kash Patel was an investigator in the House of Representatives for Devin Nunes. He has receipts. He litigated the whole sordid affair. Putting Kash in charge of the FBI is like putting Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) in charge of the prison guards at Shawshank. 

He knows it because he’s been victimized by it.

We generally think of the FBI as a professional investigative unit that handles wire fraud and smuggling. They still do that, but they’re mostly a praetorian guard for whichever politicians advance their interests. Blackmail and intimidation is how they gain power. They’re well dressed goons. Time to break them up and rebuild the investigative part of the agency. Rename it if you have to. Did any of the top guys break laws? Throw them in prison. We can’t have these agencies running their own game with endless taxpayer money. Send a strong message or it WILL happen again.

#3 Tighten up Election Laws Across the Country

At least a third of the country thinks the 2020 election was stolen. For a lot of reasons, states either disregarded election laws on the books or got them changed during that year. Remember too, this was the covid year, and the deep state was determined to make mail in ballots part of the process. Why? Because of the Wu Flu and its supposedly never-seen-before-deadliness? Or, maybe they just wanted to overwhelm the swing states with fake ballots. Mark Zuckerberg spend hundreds of millions of dollars on election related issues. You know, just make sure it was completely and totally fair. They got away with it.  

A lot of the election stuff needs to be fixed on the local and state level since the laws vary so much. It’s less clear cut that way but ultimately easier to fix. We don’t need federal laws to change most of it, but we do need accountability for whenever cheating is found. I still hope we can prosecute some of the shenanigans from the 2020 election. But I’m not holding out hope on that.

#4 Fix Efficiency in Spending

It sounds like a contradiction in terms, fix efficiency by using an inefficient system. But efficiency comes in the form of cuts. Cut out redundant agencies, departments, people and offices. Our government is 36 trillion in debt. Clearly we’re spending money we don’t need, for projects and officials we don’t need. There are too many people on the dole. I’m not even talking about people who refuse to work and get free groceries every month. That’s a problem for sure, but waste is everywhere you look. It all goes to a constituency and isn’t easy to take away either.

We ‘solve’ everything with money. Can’t get a vote on your bill, pay off the Senator by adding his pet project to it. Need information from a foreign source on troop movements, bring a suitcase full of money. Want contractors to build bases in a hot zone, break out the checkbook. I’m hopeful about Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s project to cut waste, but I don’t know how much power they have. All spending changes need to go through the House of Representatives, making it tough. But I’m hopeful that they’ll identity massive areas of fraud. There are a lot.

Conclusion

The first 100 days should give us a good idea of how effective Trump’s appointment’s are. This isn’t one of those times in the country where we can keep plodding on, pretending everything is fine. Not to be too negative, but I’m amazed we haven’t had a serious economic crisis yet. We’re top heavy and it’s corruption that’s making us overweight. Argentina seems to have righted their ship for now. This is a time for bold leaders and bold ideas. We can learn a lot from Javier Milei and his bold reforms. 

 

White Christmas is a Must: Holiday Traditions that Won't Die

White Christmas is Love Letter to the World War II Generation

Most people have Christmas or New Year’s traditions. Maybe it’s a shopping trip on black Friday with the whole family, or a night spent playing video games on Christmas Eve. Traditions come and go as new people are added into the mix. Having Christmas in a different city than your own makes people adopt new traditions. Mine is simple. I watch White Christmas every year because it’s the movie I most associate with my childhood. I didn’t like musicals as a kid. I still don’t, but there are always exceptions. As an adult you appreciate things you didn’t as a kid. Dance and music are expressive forms or art. This doesn’t make sense to kids, especially boys. Unless you grew up in a house where music and dance were encouraged, you probably didn’t get it

 I remember fast forwarding through the dance numbers on our overused VCR. As a kid, I thought music got in the way of the story. But with or without the music, it's a movie with a message that a lot of people probably miss.

America the Young

White Christmas is a story rich with gratitude for a generation that fought and died in World War II. Optimism is everywhere. A song and dance team (Wallace and Davis) that met during the war, meet a sister act team (The Haynes Sisters) and head to the mountains in Vermont for some fun. While in Vermont the two men bump into their old general and decide to help him with his struggling bed & breakfast. They transfer the whole show to Vermont for the holidays, hoping to bring some business to the hotel.

I’ve tried to analyze why I like this movie so much. Despite being dated, it’s the optimism of a growing, prospering country that’s so attractive. There is talk of love and marriage and babies throughout. It captures the post war attitude Americans felt toward their future. Because it starts with a scene from Christmas in 1944 at the front, we get to see the contrast between the bleakness of war and the beauty of life away from it. After the bombings and death and misery comes prosperity and life to the full. Broadway shows are a symbol of a prosperous, confident nation.

Kaye the Wonderful

Danny Kaye as Phil Davis is brilliant. Both with his physical mannerism and facial expressions, he steals every scene. One in particular shows him pretending to twist his knee as a ruse to keep the general preoccupied. I read somewhere that Kaye was an accomplished pantomime before performing in musical comedies. It makes perfect sense. Good actors can find the camera even in scenes where their part is secondary. He is surrounded by professional dancers on the “choreography” number, but we look for him. We notice him in every frame because he’s very expressive.

His counterpart is appropriately subdued.

Bing Crosby (Bob Wallace) is in this movie to be the legitimate crooner. The pairing with Danny Kaye is similar to Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Crosby isn’t a great actor but pulls off a solid performance as the career focused leading man. Their counterparts are a sister act (The Haynes Sisters) whose brother served in the same unit as Wallace and Davis during the war. Actress Vera Ellen (Judy Haynes) is the carefree younger sister with dreams of stardom. Rosemary Clooney (Betty Haynes) is the cynical older sibling. Vera was hired for her dancing, she’s clearly a professional. Her IMDB said she was the youngest member of the Rockettes at the time. Everything in the film revolves around these four characters and their connection to each other.

Broadway the Prosperous

White Christmas is an ode to the generation who saved it from totalitarianism. America became a superpower after World War II. Europe recovered eventually, but only after a lot of expensive rebuilding. Japan too, dug itself out and rebuilt its cities after a bombing campaign from the allies that left it a wasteland, a radioactive one at that. American society was poised for a bright future. Its cities weren’t destroyed, Pearl Harbor the only damaged base. But everyone lost a lot of people. Estimates say around 75 million people around the world died. The Soviet Union suffered the most. Between the war itself, starvation and disease they lost close to 30 million. It’s not a surprise that most countries saw a massive boom in growth, both in babies and businesses.

Perhaps because of the heavy losses, military units felt like families.

There is a symbolic phrase that pops up twice between Wallace and Davis and neatly captures the underlying message, “Let’s say we’re doing for a pal in the Army”. Always said after a reluctant decision, like going to see the Haynes Sisters perform out of obligation. It’s a tacit acknowledgement of the value of wartime friendships. It's as concrete as the wall that nearly crushes Phil Davis during the shelling of their camp by the Germans in the first act.

America the Optimistic

You could say this movie is a thank you letter to the men and women who sacrificed during the war. The post war boom is why. No one represents the endless optimism of America in the fifties like a song and dance troupe. Phil Davis saves Bob Wallace from falling debris and injures his arm in the process. Davis uses the injury to guilt Wallace into turning his one-man act into a two-man Broadway juggernaut. It’s a running gag throughout. Whenever Davis wants something he points to his arm as if to say “You owe Me”. It’s played for laughs but contains the core message of the movie to the generation that fought the war--we owe you.  

My favorite scene is at the beginning when both Bob Wallace and Phil Davis are in their dressing room changing after a performance. It’s a scene that feels as rehearsed as one of the many dance numbers. Davis tries unsuccessfully to set Wallace up with a ditzy girl from production. Wallace was unimpressed.

Davis: "Alright they didn't go to college, they didn't go to Smith".

Wallace: "Go to Smith, she couldn't even spell it"

 Their banter and physical timing is perfect. Both men change into different clothes while discarding their shirts and jackets. They toss clothes hangers and shoes to each other, without losing the dialogue’s sharpness. It’s both performance art and witty banter, and it comes off clean like a play.

Conclusion

I think they overdid it just a little at the end. The surprise dinner for the general was a nice touch. But then, the foursome dressed like Santa, brought out the dancing kids and opened the barn door while the snow fell. It’s almost like they saved up all the cheese for the last 2 minutes. In this way it's very much like Hallmark's low budget features of today. It’s also when Bing Crosby sings White Christmas for the second time. Despite the canned finish, it’s a wonderful movie with a powerful message. Post-war America owes its boom to the World War II generation.  I'll keep the tradition alive until I just can't do it anymore.

 

Jordan Peterson Interviews Pastor Greg Laurie

 

Greg Laurie Has Something To Say, If Only Peterson Would Let Him

I saw Jordan Peterson interview Greg Laurie. YouTube had the whole interview minus the Daily Wire subscriber stuff. Greg is the real life character from The Jesus Revolution who was part of the Jesus freaks movement in southern California in the 1970’s. The movie goes into this a little bit. Greg was raised by a single, alcoholic mother who moved around a lot. Predictably he got into drugs and alcohol at a young age. A common theme of the interview was the chaos of his early life. He didn’t have a father figure or even a close male relative to look up to after they moved west. He had to keep his mother from drinking too much and ending up dead.

Anyone who is familiar with Jordan Peterson understands his particular way of conversing. He is a clinical phycologist who talks a lot about hierarchies, motivations and inner turmoil. Pastor Laurie gives straightforward answers about his childhood and Peterson examines it. It doesn’t work. I’ll show my bias toward Greg with this, but nothing is more significant than the gospel. That story of life change, salvation, and sacrifice is the best thing you will ever hear. It cuts across all the cultural baggage and class designations we live under. It’s the truest thing, and as such needs a wide berth. Don’t jump in and try to categorize it along philosophical or anthropological lines. You’ll just muddy it up.

Peterson would do well to just let answers speak for themselves. He can’t help it.

 I’ve seen a few of his interviews now and I find them a struggle to get through. Jordan is a much better interviewee than interviewer. I can appreciate that he has his own methods for evaluating answers and putting new information into his intellectual framework. But not every answer requires deep examination. Also, his question set ups are exhaustingly complex. I found myself scrubbing through his long questions to the part when Pastor Laurie begins to talk. Jordan’s not a classic interviewer, fine. He brings a lot of professional understanding of human behavior into the talk. But the segments have a way of highlighting Peterson and not his opposite.

I’m a big fan of Dr. Peterson however. He knows the importance of the Bible in Western literature. Know one dissects Post Modernism's influence on academia like him. When he’s on the Joe Rogan experience, it’s the best show all year. I’ll put everything on hold. Intuitively he understands the intricate connections between the Old Testament and New. He’s responsible for introducing the scriptures, likely for the first time, to a new audience. Unchurched young men don’t think they have any need for the bible. But Peterson illuminates it like only a scholar can. Most people have never heard it talked about in such an elevated way. He’s probably a Christian himself but it’s not clear because he stays away from hard declarations.  

Still, hearing him add commentary to Greg’s direct and simple answers, left me feeling queasy. Not only is the gospel being shared on this heavily viewed show, but it’s a very moving testimony. Peterson kept trying to shoehorn Greg’s story of redemption into something clinical and cold. I’m sure he didn’t mean to. It was like when your uncle comes home from a foreign trip and regals the family with stories about his time. Every time he finishes another vignette, your younger brother adds a note about what he’s learning in his sophomore Middle East history class.

 I’m not a subscriber to Daily Wire so I can’t complain. I’m not getting this ‘Peterson as interviewer’ thing they’re doing. It’s clunky and awkward. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what the show is supposed to be. They might be trying to do a conversational thing like Rogan has. The problem is all the questions go one way. Peterson asks them. The best  interviews I’ve seen were from Brian Lamb of Q&A on C-Span. I know, that’s an old format and an old style. But Lamb seemed to get that the show was about the person being questioned. He didn’t bring a ‘gotcha’ style or add personal asides.

 When the subject is about the gospel you should sit back and learn something. Or at least, recognize that people watching the interview will be deeply affected.  

Maybe that’s at the heart of my critique. I kept thinking about all viewers who haven’t probably heard a lot of redemption stories. How many will follow Greg Laurie’s example and seek out the one true God? But I’m not giving the Holy Spirit enough credit. Whenever the good news is preached it has an effect. For all Jordan Peterson’s parsing, Laurie’s testimony still finds an audience, the way it always has.

Trump's Big Victory and Charlie Kirk Chases Votes

 

Turning Point and Trump 2.0: New Popular Republican Party

Trump won the national argument last night.

In a landslide that’s still being counted, he won early and sealed the deal. It’s been a brilliant campaign. He did a lot of rallies last time as well as this time, but he managed a few genius public demonstrations this time. He stopped by the infamous bodega in New York that was robbed by a crook. By doing so he brought attention to the crime in the city under the corrupt leaders. He wouldn’t have been in New York but for the nonsensical trial for supposed campaign finance misuse. He worked a shift at McDonalds to bring attention to Kamala’s lie about working there when she was younger.

Old Guard

His campaign rented a garbage truck after Biden called his supporters garbage. That one the campaign pulled off in less than a day. The GOP of Mitt Romney would never do this. They weren’t running as a representative of the people and their interests. We didn’t have an alternative really. Ron Paul was sharp but hardly popular. He was too wonky on policy for the average voter. Trump did the one thing no one else did, he listened. Ann Coulter told him to run on immigration because everywhere she went, people talked about it. It was important to Americans but not politicians.

Whenever they talked illegal immigration it was about work visas. Americans were concerned about crime. We never got an effective border wall because the business class didn’t want it. Trump at least started building the wall. Coulter got squeezed out of the White House and never forgave Trump for it. He never adopted her ideas, which were responsible for his election. He did lean on Mexico to keep a lot of the border crossers on their side. He bulked up the border with ATF agents as well.

Illegal Immigration

I thought about this last night while watching the returns. I chose to watch Charlie Kirk’s Rumble channel. Charlie is responsible for a lot of the get-out-the-vote efforts this cycle. His Turning Point Action group got serious after last year’s steal. They educated locals in key states, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. This election is about how Turning Point turned out the youth vote. They wrested control of the RNC from the old guard once Trump wrapped up the primary elections. They made Laura Trump co-chair of the RNC and started spending wisely.

A big complaint from MAGA republicans is the lack of help they get from the RNC. The old guard (McConnell, Ryan) hate the MAGA movement and refuse to spend money on their races in key states. Money makes a huge difference in close elections. The Washington establishment was letting MAGA world know how they felt about their movement. Turning Point was the lynchpin for moving the Republican party away from its corporate roots and toward a popular movement. They helped Trump organize his ideas from the first term into something more seamless. Along the way they got Elon Musk and RFK Jr to endorse and become full members of team Trump.

Trump needed TPUSA for the ground game. He is clearly the star and popular enough to lead in the polls. But voting is about getting your supporters out to actually mark their ballots for you. This year was no different, except the margin of victory was so much clearer. The Democrats didn’t get their people out.

Wonky Time

I tuned in early last night. I like to hear the analysis. I geek out on elections too. The TPUSA guys are serious data nerds and it’s fun to hear them handicap the race. They talk ballot dumps and county ethnicity breakdowns. They get excited, like toddlers at the zoo, when a swing state like North Carolina flips. They talk over each other constantly, pour over every new tranche of reports from the state and compare each to the last election. Some of the guys tell stories about the past year on the campaign trail. They lost their YouTube feed at one point. One of them referenced a website as a joke and YouTube cut them. I wasn’t sure why this was exactly. Was it a copywrite thing?

Charlie was on edge and extra careful after that.

Right around the time the group called Iowa for Trump, it looked like a fantastic night for DJT. Pennsylvania was still counting but running out of votes for Kamala. Even the New York Times projected Trump would win PA. Then Wisconsin started looking good and Michigan too. Even without  the western states, there wasn’t much of a path for Kamala at this point. Trump had North Carolina and Georgia in the bank. All he needed was Pennsylvania to get the magical 270 electoral votes and secure it. I went to bed content with a Trump victory. His margin was too big to try a middle of the night dump of votes.

New Day

I’m optimistic for this new administration. This is Trump 2.0. Nearly killed twice, he’s under no illusions how important this is. He is a survivor of some of the worst lawfare I’ve ever seen. It’s strengthened his resolve. He has a better idea of who to trust and who not to trust. He hired some real losers last time. His coalition looks strong and atypical. Normally you’d see a list of regular senators and statesmen from previous administrations in the cabinet. We’ll see some of that. But we’ll also see business and tech people. General Flynn will be heavily involved in cleaning out the justice department I hope.

This country needs serious people to start to fix the mess. It’s not just economic either. The Biden and Obama administrations treated the federal government like their own private army. Raiding offices and arresting their opponents; dragging citizens through circus courts and tossing them in jail. There are millions of illegal aliens in the country they need to be escorted back to their country. Something tells me Trump 2.0 is going to be a more serious and effective administration than the last time around.

Conclusion

I checked on some choice video clips from the Turning Point crew this morning. They stayed up all night to analyze the returns. At one point Jack Posobeic, basically, told Charlie to take a bow. It was clear that all the hard work paid off. He teared up for a bit, but being the humble guy he is, wouldn’t take credit.

Trump won the national argument last night, and we can thank Charlie Kirk for his part in it.

The Republican party looks different today. Thank God.

The Old Man: Book Review

Thomas Perry's The Old Man: Why We Love Spy Thrillers

I just finished reading Thomas Perry’s “The Old Man”. The only comparison I have for this book is the TV show on Hulu. It’s why I decided to read this book in the first place. I’m glad I did. Now I’m familiar with this author who I didn’t know anything about before. The Old Man doesn’t exactly go by one name. This holds true in the show as well. It’s kind of his M.O. to use fake identities until he gets burned, then start on another. First he is Dan Chase, then Peter Caldwell, followed by Hank Dixon and eventually takes on the identity of a Canadian citizen named Alan Spencer.

All identities have backstories and passports. This is a guy who knows how to evade notice. It’s the character that draws us into the story. He is 60 years old and owns 2 large dogs. Perry never gets around to describing their breed, except to say some think they’re a cross between a Labrador and a poodle. He calls them “80 pound beasts” at one point. We’re to assume they’re well trained to listen for danger and protect their master. Dan Chase is an accomplished man who pays attention to detail. He’s trained his dogs well. Described in the first chapter of the book, thieves break into the home of Mr. Chase. The dogs pounce and subdue the intruder while Dan kills him. From here the story really begins.

We find out that Mr. Chase is a man on the run because of an incident in Libya almost 30 years ago. I wont spoil it, but it’s the thread that the whole story hangs on. In the long tradition of bad ass covert case officers, this one is mostly different because of the age of the spy. He’s 60 and in shape. The TV show makes you think the plot is convoluted. It’s not. It’s quite simple and follows a linear timeline. About the only flashback is at the beginning to set up the plot. Otherwise, we follow the Old Man through Chicago, California, Toronto and then Libya.

His love interest is a 40-year-old divorced mother from Chicago who follows him into the identity swapping, covert world of running from the US government. He rented a room from her using the name Peter Caldwell and she fell for him. She has a little backstory of her own that makes hiding from the law a comfortable fit.

I checked on the author’s website to see if he had a series devoted to the character. Sadly it’s a one off. I wonder if he will write another one with the success of the TV show. I’ll try not to go into detail about the show because it’s not even remotely the same. Another character that carried over from the book to the show was this military contractor named “Julian”. He’s a black farmer from Jonesborough, Arkansas who gets the assignment to go after the Old Man. He’s irritated with the scope of the investigation and becomes disillusioned with the whole process. He’s a likeable symbol of a man fighting an internal battle on the morality of what he does. If this Old Man character doesn’t get another book, I’d start a new series with Julian.

Julian is in the TV show but doesn’t have the same story. I bought the book to understand the show better. Don’t do that. It won’t help. The TV show has a lot of layers that have only been hinted at. I thought a fuller reading of the book would answer my questions, but no. Especially since Thomas Perry only wrote one book, these are two different stories. The writers of the show cut and pasted the main character and two others, gave them different histories and located them in different parts of the country. This isn’t a problem. Books often get made into movies with little or no connection to the original novel.

 Characters drive stories and when you’ve got a likable character, you tell more stories. Spy novels with international intrigue never get old. We keep reading them, authors keep writing them. From Mitch Rapp to Jason Bourne, it's the danger and violence we love.

I like that Dan Chase (The Old Man) is over 55. Is that because I’m getting older myself and associate with the type? Never you mind that!

I’ve thought about what it is that makes the character so compelling. To me it’s the unassuming nature of a guy with gray hair and a pleasant demeanor. No one expects him to defend those in his orbit with such raw, cold violence. In one instance, the Old Man and his girlfriend hitch a ride with 2 young men who only stopped because they saw the woman. It’s clear almost immediately that the men have bad intentions toward her and don’t think the Old Man can do anything about it. He tries to diffuse the situation by telling them he’s uncomfortable and their threats are inappropriate. He beats them up quickly, and roughly, when they keep commenting on his age and lack of sexual prowess. You can feel the false bravado of the young men right until Chase smacks the driver with a pistol.

He’s a man who’d rather walk away and change identity than get into a scrape. But when he’s confronted with it, he leaps into action. His age suggests he’s more patient with people and gives them a break when other, younger agents, might not. It’s an important part of the story which I’ll only hint at. The Old Man needs someone in the US government to believe he is the good guy.

It's a story about putting the past right and trying to overcome mistakes. It’s a universally appealing sentiment. Who doesn’t want to fix something from the past that’s created an untenable situation in the present? If not an untenable situation, a lot of us would want to make a different decision or take another path. We never get to. But with a lot of money and two 80 pound beasts, you just might.

 

 

Justice Run 2024

 

The Justice Run 2024: The Short Version

I spent the weekend in Fort Worth. I signed up for the Justice Run for the 3^rd Year in a row. Officially it’s a run along the Trinity River Corridor. Unofficially, it’s a fund raiser for victims of sex trafficking in its 4^th year. The run gets bigger every year and the cause becomes more essential, as the number of kids trafficked increases exponentially. I'm happy to join the fight.

My marathon turned into a half marathon quickly.

The race is always on Saturday and this year was no different. I took off work on Friday and drove to my brother’s home outside of Fort Worth. My mom came along as well. My brother took me to the church on Friday afternoon so I could pick up my race packet. They included tank tops this year, which worked out well because of the heat. Mine was too big. Fortunately, I’d prepared and brought one from home to wear instead. The temperature at the start was in the low 60’s. A little warm for a marathon, but at least it wasn’t delayed because of rain. Last year was wet and sloppy and we started later to allow the water to absorb into the ground. About the only nice part of running through a wet park, is the lack of pedestrians getting in the way.

This time the park was packed. That meant strollers and bicyclists.

I knew the temperatures were going to climb once the sun came out. The two previous days I made an effort to drink a lot of water for hydration. I don’t think it’s the heat that did me in though. Whatever it was, I burned out around the 11 mile mark and coasted in at the half way point. Sometimes preparation is a waste of time. I’ve always thought the most important thing about preparing for a marathon is getting the miles in. The diet and energy stuff is a close second, but it’s anyone’s guess how you’ll feel in the moment.

It turns out this day wasn’t my day. I didn’t have enough in the tank. My pistons weren't firing. My thermostat was in danger zone. My metaphors are wearing thin. For whatever reason I couldn’t finish. It’s more accurate to say I didn’t want to finish after feeling spent so early. My lack of energy after the first lap was an indication that the last half was going to involve mostly walking. That’s why I called it. The thought of walking 13 miles with an occasional short jog was too painful to consider.

I did manage to meet a wonderful woman who ran with me for the first 8 miles or so. We talked about everything from travel to politics. She caught up to me a mile or so in and we ran side by side and chatted. We kept a similar pace. Any faster and I wouldn’t have had the breath to talk for very long. She attends Mercy Culture, the church that sponsors the run, and filled in some details about the leadership. Normally I’m in my own world when I’m jogging. Thankfully, her conversation made the early part of the run enjoyable.

The route was roughly the same as last year. The organizers moved the event further down the river by a few hundred yards. It allowed them to set up on a flat, dry parking lot with a spot for vendors inside a warehouse. Apparently, it’s the location they’ve tried to get for the last 3 years. This year they made it a reality. They’re getting better at organizing the run as well. I heard one person complain that he had to find a vendor with water bottles once he’d finished the race. Normally you’re handed a water once you cross the finish line. But there was plenty of water all around, you just needed to go get it. For a small race I don’t think that’s the worst criticism.

The mission of the Justice Run is to raise money for victims of sex trafficking. Mercy Culture Church is trying to build residences to house women and children who’ve been rescued from the trade. Apparently, the neighborhood community (nearby) opposes having the residences built there. But the land belongs to the church; it’s a question of zoning. Does the current zoning law cover the church or not? The building is on hold until the political stuff is sorted out. Sex trafficking is one of those ugly, under the radar type of crimes that take place in astonishing numbers. It’s a ministry whose time has come. I’m proud to support them.

As for the rest of the day, my brother grilled steaks for the family. It’s a tradition now in its 3^rd year. I run, he cooks. Ostensibly a celebration of a grueling marathon, this year we had to amend it slightly. No one wanted to miss the steaks because I didn’t finish the race. We joked about cutting mine in half.

 Whatever happened in the race, any excuse to be with family and grill out is OK with me.

National Sovereignty and Trade Policy: New Directions

 

Is Free Trade Dead? National Sovereignty and Trump Economics

How important is a country’s trade deficit? Are countries just large markets made up of consumers, or are do they have interests' outside of economics?

I had a teacher who liked to talk about how deficits in trade were meaningless. “Does Walmart buy goods from you? No? so you have a trade deficit with Walmart.”

Big Deals

This was how trade deficits were explained to me in my economics class. They’d started calling it Global Economics by the time I was in grad school. “Macro Economics” had gone the way of the gold standard. His point was that some countries buy and some sell, we all specialize in a mature market based economy. Trade deficits aren't a big deal.

My question to him should have been “Aren’t a big deal to whom?” If you sell whisky or cars or beef, it’s a very big deal when you can’t sell into a foreign market. Especially if other industries, like retail, are able to buy shipping container loads of electronics and shoes.

With a country like China we buy more than we sell. Partly because they keep their currency artificially low and partly because our goods are significantly more expensive.

My professor was focused on America’s balance sheet. Since China isn’t the only country we trade with, we make it up by selling to others. Most of our trade is with Canada and Mexico. Both are significantly larger trading partners because of their proximity. Let’s not forget the rest of South America, Europe and Asia. But we do have a massive trade imbalance. Oil is the culprit. We buy a lot instead of producing it here, a mistake for sure. But that’s an article for another day.

Ricardo’s Influence on Trade

The existing framework for international trade is based on the David Ricardo model. If your knowledge of trade theory is a little rusty, here is a quick summary. Countries should trade what they’re good at in exchange for what they aren’t good at. This is all theoretical so bear with me.

Countries with an abundance of grapes will become adept at making wine. Countries with tech industries will become adept at making microchips and smart phones. These countries will trade with each other and focus on what they do best. Both will have a comparative advantage; wine countries shouldn’t try to make microchips and tech countries shouldn’t grow grapes.

 It’s a dramatic oversimplification but it gives us a starting point. The model falls apart when you introduce quotas, tariffs or subsidies. The free traders have tried to get everyone on level field of play by introducing global rules in their game. But it’s like agreeing to play football with multiple sets of rules. Countries can’t agree to exactly the same game because their internal politics are vastly different. And they all have special industries to protect. For some it’s agriculture and for others it’s manufacturing. Add to that, the unions with their own demands.

Tariffs Make a Comeback

But the basic structure of free trade involves removing barriers like tariffs to increase the overall amount of trade. But what if countries ignore the rules or subvert the process?

There isn’t a great mechanism for settling disputes but there is one. The WTO (World Trade Organization) has courts to hear cases between nations. But it takes years and is often unsatisfactory for both countries.

 I don’t hear politicians talking optimistically about free trade anymore. It’s no secret that manufacturing in particular, has taken a beating. Partly this is the fault of the unions. They negotiated sweet deals in past with the auto makers. You can’t blame them for getting the best deal possible, but the legacy costs hurt the auto manufacturers. They also started moving their manufacturing overseas to save on labor. Also, the rest of the world started selling great cars in the U.S. putting further pressure on our industries.

 A lot of the complaints that President Trump has about trade is the lack of transparency in foreign markets, particular China. His thinking goes like this, ‘we open our markets, why can’t you?’ Trump and Peter Navarro (trade advisor) made sure to put a hefty tariff on China for their unfair trade practices like technology transfers (Intellectual Property theft) from US companies. Those tariffs are still in place.

National Sovereignty Economics

It's hard to make an economic case for tariffs. It’s just a tax on foreign goods. The consumer pays it anyway. But Trump isn’t just punishing foreigners, he’s trying to keep industries at home and maybe bring a few back that have left. He’s concerned more for American jobs than cheap consumer goods. The downside is that countries will retaliate with tariffs of their own on our products and services.

But is it really as damaging as we’re told? Liberal economists make it seem like the tit for tat on tariffs will necessarily lead to war. It feels to me like there is a similar historical parallel with the Soviet Union and President Reagan. He bankrupted the Soviets by spending heavily on defense and forcing them to keep pace. Moscow couldn’t afford it. It didn't lead to war.

 What if we invest in our own industries, produce our own oil, grow our own crops and promote American companies abroad?

 China won’t easily find another consumer driven economy to replace what they’ve lost with the Americans. They can’t afford to keep up.

There are probably a hundred things wrong with that example, but Trump thinks in terms of national sovereignty first and economics second. He believes that a strong America is the best thing for the world. For all the criticism he gets about being a bully on the international stage, he does want fair trade. That’s how I read it at least. I’d rather have someone who puts America first. A lot of our leaders are completely owned by international interests. Their trade policies are not significantly different. Ross Perot, who ran for president in 1992, was a critic of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). But he finished a distant 3^rd. The free trade skeptics haven’t had a standard bearer until Trump. Whether you like his tariffs or hate them, Americans need to start having the debate again.

Conclusion

Walmart has certainly benefited from lower trade barriers in the last 30 years. That’s a good thing. Most of us have a trade deficit with Walmart. Individuals can run those deficits forever, but countries need to balance their accounts at some point. Countries are more than just markets, they’re sovereign nations with cultures and religions and notions of progress. We have (or had) a thriving middle class and an upwardly mobile citizenry.

 Does America have the capacity to defend itself if attacked?

That takes a lot of industry to convert to tanks and ships and weapons. This isn’t a big deal until you’re suddenly forced into a war footing.

China has been America’s Walmart for too long. What we don’t get from China we get from other countries. That’s called leverage. They have leverage on us. If you can’t make enough to supply the domestic market, you’re in trouble. Trade can be a liberalizing force between nations, but when it’s uneven it can be dangerous. It’s time to put American industries first again.

Does Anyone Buy Books at Stores Anymore?

 

Shopping for Books and Reminiscing About the Old Way

Looking for books used to be fun, but there’s hardly any reason to go to the bookstore anymore. Of course I read digital copies too. They can be bought quickly and downloaded to a phone in seconds. But I like to hold the book, see the ink on the page and scribble notes in the margins. Our eyes get too much screen time as it is. I’m making an effort to buy more physical books again.

A New Era

I went looking for a copy of A Moveable Feast the other day. Hoping for a discount paperback, I shuffled into Barnes and Noble. It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased anything there. Used to be they had a section for $5 dollar books in a bin. Most were just hardcover copies of whichever Danielle Steele novel was popular years before, a lot James Patterson too. I could always find classics for cheap and in hardcover. Not that I need a hardcover, but it’s nice if you can find it. The bins are gone though. Instead we get racks of calendars, pens, penlights, bookmarks, phone chargers and other reading adjacent knickknacks. Often it's tchotchkes with no relation to the printed word (see above pic). I’m sure the margins are better on booklights than cheap paperbacks. 

I didn’t see any of those lap cushions with the flat wooden top for couch reading but I’m sure they were around.

B&N has a music side too. I realize this isn’t new. I’ve poked my head in a few times in the last few years, but I didn’t imagine they got rid of so much of what made it great. Instead of a messy, bustling place full of families it’s become a minimalist version of itself. Neat shelves with sharp white font letters on dark green backgrounds advertise the genres while large posters of the classics (Ulysses, Homer, The Grapes of Wrath) populate the walls. You can still hear the café blender whirring on occasion. They’ve taken out half the tables so the sound of wooden chairs being slid into place isn’t as frequent either.

A Former Life

The grit is starting to set in the way it does with old stores. The floor tile has gone from white to off-white and the carpets are threadbare in well-tread spots.  

 They haven’t overhauled the way Radio Shack did years ago. Radio Shack saw that consumer electronics were going the way of waterbeds and cassette tapes, there was less interest every day. They tried to stop the bleeding by reimagining their mall stores. They managed a funny Super Bowl ad in 2014 about their 80’s image. In the end it wasn’t enough. Borders, my favorite, went bankrupt in 2010 as well. There wasn’t anything special about Borders but I like the location here in Tulsa. I spent time doing homework a few nights per week in the café.

There was always a group of D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) gamers occupying a corner of the same café. I wanted to complain about the noise but how could I? It’s not let any of us were paying customers. I never bought anything but tea either. Borders never sold much as far as I could tell. I’m starting to see the problem.

Although closer geographically, it always felt like a ‘us too’ version of Barnes & Noble. They decided on Seattle’s Best coffee instead of the superior Starbucks. No one picks Seattle’s Best over Starbucks unless you can’t get Starbucks.

Once digital readers hit the market in 2007, Borders said enough. I’m not sure it was this reason alone but it was clear by this point they couldn’t compete with yet another slap in the face from Amazon. First they offered books for a fraction of the price, then they digitized the experience. Although Books A Million (BAM!) never had one either and they’re still around. Amazon’s Kindle captured the market and only B&N created their own line of e-readers. I have one lying around somewhere. It wasn’t the fancy color one that loaded the page correctly every time either. The black letters were hard to see on the hazy yellow backdrop. The buttons weren’t responsive either. I’d finish a page and hit the button to turn, nothing would happen. I tried again, nothing. Then I mashed it hard and it jumped 20 pages ahead. This happened frequently and I eventually gave up on it, tossing it in the drawer next to my Borders café punch card.

An Unexpected Turn

It's no secret what happened to the book sellers across the country. It’s the same thing that happened to Radio Shack, Circuit City and Toys R Us. Amazon took them out to the pasture like an old mare with a broken leg and put a bullet in them. Online shopping is what we wanted and it’s what we got. Besides, even B&N has an online option. It’s probably where all their $5 books are if they still even exist. It feels like Barnes & Noble is on in the twilight of its operation. I don’t pretend to know what their financials are, but I can’t imagine they’re selling enough in the stores to stay viable. Maybe they’re killing it online, enough to save the stores. If so, it doesn’t make sense to keep the stores afloat. You’d think a handful of warehouses would work better.  

If you grew up in the 90’s you assumed the mega book stores would grind the small sellers into the ground and ruin their business. Nothing typifies this better than "You’ve Got Mail" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. That movie pulled a clever trick on us. It pretended to side with the ‘mom & pop’ seller (Ryan) while actually softening the corporate view (Hanks). But the business dynamics turned out to be something different. Big stores did put small ones out, but also the internet and ecommerce happened. It opened the door for big stores to be dragged out to the pasture in the same way the mom & pops were.

 I’m partial to Barnes & Noble. I worked there one Christmas season for extra money. They bought a large space at the local mall and punched out a wall for access inside and out. We seemed to be marking down older titles constantly and filling every empty space with book displays. The busyness eventually waned when January came around, but it never needed a music section or a Pokémon rack.

Conclusion

But times change and companies do what they must. I’m reminded of a quote from a character in Hemingway’s bull fighting classic The Sun Also Rises.

“How’d you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways, gradually, then suddenly”

I imagine the “slowly” part of bankruptcy is what you see coming, fewer customers and similar competitors. The “suddenly” part is what you don’t see, eCommerce and e-readers. I hope people keep going to book stores but I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t. Will we miss them when they’re gone?

I did eventually find that copy of A Moveable Feast in paperback. At nearly $20 bucks I thought better of it and walked away. I’m sure Amazon has a copy for less.

 

  

Labor Day Monday or Run Day

 

Celebrate The New Bridge With a Run: Tulsa's Gathering Place

Today is Labor Day, September 2, 2024. 

I started with a long run this morning because the weather was nice. It was 68 at the start and only went up a few degrees at most. Moisture and humidity weren’t a big issue today, but usually are in the summer. I’m not clear on which metric is the one I should pay attention to for jogging. Is it humidity or dew point? I finished very sweaty, but I’m sweaty in the winter too. I had enough oxygen to do all 12 miles of the loop, thanks to the cooler temp. I went to the river.

New Bridge New Pathway

Tulsa’s Gathering Place just got a lot more popular this weekend. It’s always a big draw anyway, but this weekend they finished the pedestrian bridge that goes from the park to the electric company across the river. I should've taken a picture. This under-construction image is all I could find online. It’s been closed for years. I have only the vaguest memory of the old bridge that connected the bike path on the east side to the west side, across the river. This time they put in a new dam and a slick walking bridge with a giant bend in it. The west side of the river is lower than the east. To compensate, the new bridge contains a gradual drop from the east bank which is roughly 30 feet higher. I think we can expect the Tulsa Run to incorporate some of the new paths this year.

The new look along the river meant new walking paths on both sides. The pedestrian bridge is part of the Gathering Place project. The largest phase was completed 7 years ago and is as popular as ever. I don’t have the statistics to back it up, but I can promise that foot traffic has increased along the river since. I wasn’t jogging much back then, but it’s the kind of place that demands to be seen. I made a lot of trips to and from there when I drove for Uber. Visitors to the area want to see it as well.  

Old Bridge Old Memories

I moved here in 2008 and made a few trips to the river path before The Gathering Place became a mega attraction. Back then, the Riverwalk in Jenks was a popular spot. I enjoyed sitting along the scenic patio and smoking cigars until late in the night. The half dry riverbed always seemed unnecessary. Why can’t they keep enough water in it? I wondered. I’m hardly an engineer though. Does it make sense to keep the water flowing for purely aesthetic reasons? Probably not. But enough people thought the same thing and so the city has begun managing the water. 

That pedestrian bridge has a new dam underneath it; it also feeds the newly created kayak park. Not to mention, the upstream part of the river now is filled with water again. It’s enough to start hosting raft races and rowing sports.

New Future New Activities

The Arkansas river will never be deep enough for water skiing or boats with motors. But kayaking and canoeing are on the horizon. I saw a few people on those standup surfboards things that you paddle with a big oar. It’s more than we had before and based on the number of people out at the river, it’s something we’ve been waiting for. To me the most important reason for the water is still the aesthetic one. No one wants to stare out at a sandy bottom creek bed while blowing out rich cigar smoke from their Partagas. I’m not one to ask about the cost or the practicality. I guess it’s one of those quality-of-life things that’s hard to slap a price tag on.  

These are things you think about when you have time to jog in great weather and notice your surroundings.

Today, I started at my usual 41^st street parking lot on the east side of the river and ran toward 71^st. Then, across the river at 71^st and up toward Turkey Mountain. There was an organized race happening when I passed through. I saw Fleet Feet banners and a finish line. I guess they were using the trails though, because I had a clear shot down the path and toward the "sh*t factory". It’s a crude description, but also accurate. The path goes right through the sewage treatment plant. Some days I have to hold my breath. 2 miles or so past that is the soccer fields and a detour I used to use because of the work being done on the new pedestrian bridge. I didn’t use the detour this time. It’s open again. The trail runs into the newly added paths on the west side.

Conclusion

At this point I thought about crossing over the new pedestrian bridge. It’s only been open for a day after all.  But instead, I opted to stay on the west side and cross at a farther point. I had a little steam left in the tank and felt like pushing it. When the weather is great and you don’t have a plan for the day, push a little more. That’s my motto at least. Lately it’s been too hot and I’ve been exhausted, also lazy. A cooler morning like this is just what I needed. And what a day for it.

Happy Labor Day (2024) Tulsa!!

All the Light We Cannot See: Book Review

 

Protecting Humanity and Living Through War

I enjoyed this book for its rich descriptions of the war mindset and the loss of place that pervaded the world during this time. At its core, it’s a story of how beauty, truth and humanity must be protected in dangerous times. War’s anti-human nature demands an all-consuming drive toward a common goal. World War II isn’t unique in this, but because of the Nazi push toward control it feels that way. All the Light We Cannot See shows humanity as the hidden, protected thing we value most.

Setting

The author Anthony Doerr does this in a few ways. First, in the person of Marie-Laure and her position as a protected store of value. Second in the character of Werner, the orphan with a technical mind that impresses a senior level Nazi officer.

We know about the ugliness of war, it’s everywhere in the bombed cities and starving citizens. But also the beautiful and transcendent exist in the midst of it. It’s never completely destroyed despite the best efforts of conflict. Beauty must be kept hidden though. It’s too important to treat casually.

Such is the story of the Sea of Flames diamond from the museum where Marie-Laure’s father (Daniel) works as a locksmith. He’s detailed to a fault and skilled at hiding small objects in models he builds. He does this for his daughter, who is blind, and prides herself on unlocking the secret hiding spot for trinkets. He creates miniatures of the city she lives in, first Paris and then Saint Malo. It’s a practical game designed to teach her how to find her way by counting drains in the street.

Separation

They are forced to flee Paris as the Germans threaten to take over the city. They hide out with her uncle, Daniel’s brother Etienne, in the coastal city of Saint Malo in France. He’s a recluse who hasn’t stepped outside his mansion since the Great War. He was a radio broadcaster who sent signals across the country with his massive transmitter. Etienne is a picture of the loss and devastation of war. His broadcasts are meant to communicate with his brother who was killed in the Great War. “…I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me.” (page 161).

Etienne’s radio becomes a transmitter for the French resistance despite his initial reluctance to have any part of it.

Werner and Jutta are brother and sister at an orphanage in Germany who hear the educational broadcasts Etienne created before the war. Werner is an orphan in Germany with a gift for assembling radios and fixing broken parts. It’s a skill he parlays into a position at a school for kids from connected families in the third Reich. The school prepares kids for battle and separates the soft kids from the tough. It’s here that he again, distinguishes himself as an intelligent pupil and gets special placement with an officer who devices a way to triangulate radio transmission and find the location. 

Through Werner’s school experience he sees the cruelty of a wartime footing. The sensitive souls are beaten in submission by the pliable. It’s a necessary transition that turns Werner’s stomach, for a while. His sister Jutta’s voice, the voice of conscience against the Nazi regime.

Arrangement

The book was written by Anthony Doerr in 2014. He got the idea to set the story in Saint-Malo (France) after visiting the city and marveling at how, despite its drastic reconstruction since the war, it still looked ancient. He alternates characters throughout and uses short chapters to keep the reader engaged. I don’t know why this works better than long chapters but it seems to. The story jumps forward and backward a little bit, but never gets confusing. We instinctively understand the timeline and the characters’ places in it. But there is pain, loss and unanswered questions. 

We all like a tidy wrap up with novels but we don’t get always get them. Such is the case in war. It’s grief, acceptance and then new beginnings. Doerr wants us to feel the unfairness and the uncertainty of life on a daily basis.

Characters

The museum that Daniel and Marie-Laure in Paris sent one courier with the famous Sea of Flames diamond to hide it from the Nazi treasure hunters. They also sent multiple fakes. The idea being, no courier is sure which of them carries the real thing. But all are required to hide it. Von Rumpel is the Nazi collector who searches for the diamond after failing to get it from the museum in Paris. He represents the banality of evil and how greed destroys the soul. He's not inherently evil, he loves his family but becomes obsessed in his pursuit and it overtakes him.  

Another character that undergoes a significant change is Frederick, a student at the school Werner attends. He’s a gentle soul with the mind of a scientist. School is very difficult for him. He’s not as athletic, or brutal as the others. Although he is pragmatic about the difficulty, the training is designed to create warriors not scientists. He’s not up to it and the kids are merciless toward him. His character represents the death of innocence and wonder. Only cold killers are allowed to go forward. If you’ve seen Full Metal Jacket, you’ll think of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Private Pyle.

Conclusion

All the light's theme is the connection we seek to those around us, and how we survive without becoming monsters. The “light” we can’t see is about the humanity that animates all people. We can’t see it in war. Our objectives are to survive and protect. In the same Marie-Laure can’t literally see, war closes off our ability to see beauty and worth in others. It closes off our ability to explore for the sake of learning about the natural world. What kind of life would Werner lead if not for the school and the war? But even in the darkness, light gets through. Marie-Laure still reads her braille books and learns about radios from her uncle and problem-solving skills from her father. She represents the light of humanity even without the ability to see.

It's over 500 pages but reads very quick. I recommend it with the caveat that it’s quite dark in spots. Never gratuitous, but the entire story is set in wartime and that mean death and man’s inhumanity to man.