Report from the April 8, 2024, Solar Eclipse

Report from the April 8, 2024, Solar Eclipse

John Pearson

            Time is speeding. I set my alarm for 6:00 a.m., and was on the road by 7:10, my backpack supplied with my cameras and tripod, a cooler of Diet Mountain Dew to keep me awake, and my phone to play some of my favorite albums out on the road. I was in need of and ready for a good solo road trip. My sister Jan was going to join me but is still recovering from hip replacement and wasn’t up for an all-day car ride.

            I set out at latitude 41.86686°, longitude -88.09169°, and altitude 198 meters above sea level. I knew only that I was chasing the total eclipse, the path of totality. I’d experienced it once before, in 2017, and wasn’t about to miss what could be the only other chance I’ll have in this realm.

I had managed to get sleep by 10:00, or to bed anyway, so I had eight hours of shut eye before setting out from home in Wheaton, IL. I had about 240 miles to get to the band of totality, mostly straight south and a bit east of my starting point. I picked out Olney, IL as a starting goal—from there I could head east towards Vincennes, IN, which was right in the center of the path of totality—and GPS said it was just over 5 hours on the road. The back roads, that is. I avoided the interstate, cause that’s no fun, and would likely be full of traffic. With motel rooms near the path of totality going for ten times their normal rates, there would be a lot of people on the road.

 I took the back roads because that’s what I do, remembering the book Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat Moon, which was published shortly after I got my undergrad degree and felt the call of the road. I’d set the GPS to avoid toll roads and highways, and I enjoyed the trip through farmland. I saw lots of large wind farms, lots of small solar farms, and endless barren ethanol farms awaiting the corn planting, which isn’t far off. Just under a third of the corn grown in Illinois is used to make ethanol, while only seven percent is used to feed livestock.

When I was 150 miles south of my starting point, I could tell that traffic was picking up. There were a lot more cars than you would normally see on back roads through small town Illinois on a Monday morning. I did go through some small cities, including Charleston, where I saw the grand old castle-like main building on the campus of Eastern Illinois University.

I kept on south towards Olney, with a population of about 8,000, but 24 miles north of Olney, I got stuck in Newton, a town just under 3,000, where traffic was backed up in every direction and traffic cops were out trying in vain to keep things moving. A couple blocks past the main intersection and perhaps the only traffic light in town, I stopped at a Casey’s to stretch my legs and use the restroom, which at that point had a short line. They would get much longer. Coming out I looked both ways down the road, looked at the map on my phone, and decided that continuing south towards Olney would be a mistake.

I decided to just go east out of Newton towards Oblong and then Robinson. Oblong had long been one of my favorite eccentric town names, but I’d never been there, so it seemed appropriate. I had to go back north a couple blocks to the light, to turn right and go east on IL 33. As soon as I turned out, I thought, uh oh. Traffic was backed up to the light, and there were semi-trucks in abundance. It took a few minutes to make it 30 yards, and then I turned right on the first side street and wound my way through the neighborhoods, such as they were, of Newton, IL.

Here I crossed the Embarras (yes, that’s how they spell it) River for at least the 3^rd time. It winds around a lot. And I crossed the Embarras River on at least the 2^nd Burl Ives Memorial Bridge of the day. Turns out Burl was born in rural Jaspar County, outside Newton. And like small towns rightly do everywhere, they take and celebrate their celebrity wherever they can.

Almost no one was going east out of Newton. I’d found my path. Oblong was 15 miles east, Robinson about the same past that. And Robinson was only ten or eleven miles from the Indiana border. Oblong would have 3:35 of totality, which was almost two hours off, so I was right on time.

Oblong was exactly as expected, a spread out sleepy little town of 1500 or so, incorporated in 1883, that has seen better days yet was far from a ghost town. Robinson was over 7,000, so I was hoping to find a forest preserve somewhere along route IL 33.

Sure enough, about halfway between Oblong and Robinson, there on the north side of the road was a sign that said Crawford County Forest Preserve, which has a little nature center, a gravel parking lot with about a dozen cars and room for that many again. I pulled in and parked, got out to stretch my legs and see if this would work.

It was perfect. Woods around, a small lake, a grand clearing of an acre or two with a path around it. I walked around and got my bearings and went back to my car and got my gear and chair and water and headed out to the clearing, chatting with folks along the way. There was a large picnic shelter with a few groups having pre-eclipse cookouts. Out in the clearing there were a couple large groups settled in to watch, a few smaller gatherings, some couples, a few other solo acts. Bikers and roller bladders with their dogs were making good use of the path for exercise.

I got set up, my tripod and camera ready to aim at the sun, and sat down to take it all in. Just over an hour to totality, a good minute longer than I saw in 2017, and only 23 seconds or so shorter than the maximum, which would have been another half hour to hour drive with no promise of finding a spot as perfect as this.

Not long after I got there the partial began. I didn’t have eclipse glasses—they don’t interest me as much as watching around me, seeing how nature reacts. Seeing how the light changes. Every Casey’s and other gas station I stopped at on the way had big handwritten signs in their doors announcing, “We Don’t Have Eclipse Glasses!!!”

Shortly after I sat down a guy walked by from one of the big groups and asked if I wanted some glasses, he had a bunch of extra pairs. I said I was okay, and he walked on towards other groups and on his way back asked again and said I should take them as a souvenir. I said sure. He was from the southwest but was visiting friends in Kentucky, so they just had a few hours’ drive to get here. He too had seen the 2017 one and wasn’t about to miss this.

I tried the glasses, and they worked fine, and it is sort of interesting to see the moon begin to block the sun. It’s not really noticeable, unless you really look closely, that the light is changing until it’s a good bit past halfway. One second before (or after) totality the sun is 10,000 times brighter than during totality. It is a switch that goes off and then on.

There was a little bit of haze in the sky. Not cloudy, just some really high hazy wisps that shouldn’t interfere with the eclipse, and as it turned out, didn’t. It wasn’t crowded, maybe 50 people or so, and we had a lot of land, a lot of open land, a lot of trees, and water. There were birds singing, and there was a frog pond back in the trees on the other side of the clearing from the lake, and they were croaking away and going at it the whole time, light or dark, they didn’t care. They were just having a good time.

I was set up at 39.00389° latitude, -87.83644° longitude, and 121 meters altitude. It was 198.26 miles from where I started, as the proverbial crow flies. I’d driven a bit over 240 miles, which was pretty direct. The meridional circumference of our planet is 24,859.73 miles. So I had traveled less than eight one thousandths, 8/1000, of the way around the globe to reach totality. I felt lucky to be that close.

The moon and sun each appear to cover about a half a degree in the sky. So if they were beads across the sky, you’d need 720 of them to go all the way around the sky. And they don’t follow the same orbit. It is indeed rare that they happen to line up overhead. In the 20^th century there were a mere 228 solar eclipses on earth. Only 71 (the numbers are slightly fluid as there are some variations in the kinds of eclipses that are sometimes counted differently) of these were total eclipses. The rest were partial or annular. They are cool, but they are like going to a peewee baseball game where a total eclipse is game seven of the world series. And even that comparison pales.

And I was about to witness the second of these wonders in one lifetime. I felt immensely blessed. Once upon a time I had been an astronomy major in college but was done in when I was assigned a calculus professor who was a week over from China and spoke not a word of English. Who knows how life would have gone with a different professor. It may have been very different, though that is a story for another day, and in the end, I’m sure a part of me was destined to be like the narrator of Whitman’s poem “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer,” who drifts out of the lecture hall to be captured by the poetry of the heavens. And here I was, about to witness another grand epic poem.

Once the sun is about two thirds covered by the moon you can definitely sense the light is different. As can the birds, as can the world. The chirping seems slower, as if asking questions. The light is unlike anything else I’ve ever seen. The closest I can come is the strange light before a big storm moves in, but while that is ominous, this is somehow peaceful yet mysterious. The world begins to quiet, preparing for something.

Light itself is being wrung out of the world. The overwhelming flood of photons is being squeezed and compressed, ultimately to almost nothing.

About ten minutes before totality it is getting very dim, a compressed end of day. The exterior lights on a house in the distance are on a sensor and they come on.

The temperature quickly drops a good fifteen or twenty degrees. It had been in the mid-70s, and suddenly I wished I hadn’t left my sweatshirt in the car. But I knew the cool wouldn’t last long. If only it could, but this was a 3:35 wonder.

I could sense everyone there anticipating, getting ready for what, for something. The best metaphors about a total eclipse that I’ve read are in Annie Dillard’s classic 1982 essay “Total Eclipse.” She writes that the difference between a partial solar eclipse and a total solar eclipse is “the difference between flying in an airplane and jumping out of an airplane,” and “the difference between kissing a man and marrying a man.” Wonderful metaphors, and very much capture the difference between the two things. Yet that doesn’t get at it, really, what the thing is itself. The metaphors are comparative. How do you explain something that there simply is nothing to compare to. As I said, one second before totality the sun is still 10,000 times brighter than at totality. A comparative metaphor doesn’t quite get at the thing itself. A line from a Bruce Cockburn song keeps playing in my head, “But this, this is something other.”

Then it hits and you feel time rush.

No one is prepared for it. You hear exclamations, you feel your own jaw drop and you mouth hang open. You stare, right at the sun. We’re used to a ring around the moon, but this is a ring around the sun. I glance around and everyone’s face is pointed towards the sun, like a field of sunflowers that follow the sun across the sky every day. We all stood there; our faces aimed towards the wonder.

This was a ring around the sun, but not the sun, just a ring, around the darkest black hole I will ever see. It’s the moon, but the blackest black. It gives the sense of staring through the universe, a hole to the past, or the future, or to some place where time itself doesn’t exist. We are all startled.

And in a rush. I bend down to my camera, aim, set the 10 second timer and begin to take pictures. 3:35, it will go fast. There are times in life when waiting ten minutes can seem like an hour, and this is a time when 3:35 I know will feel like 35 seconds if I’m lucky. With my other camera I take a panoramic photo of the 360° sunset that I think is only seen during an eclipse like this.

Orange glow on the horizon in any and every direction you look. There is no east or west, no north or south. There’s a Bible verse or hymn that uses such a phrase, I think, but there is no time to search the memory banks of my mind and try to find it now. The clock is ticking. I stare at the ring. A smooth glowing diamond surrounding a hole in the universe.

I listen, and there is no cacophony of crickets. Too early in the season, I think. At the fist eclipse I saw the moment of totality was a switch that turned on countless crickets, offering a loud nighttime concert for exactly the duration of totality.

A few birds sing; not those that were singing before, but birds that sing in the night. I think it may have been a whippoorwill. My mind races, how to take it all in? The Cockburn line keeps playing in my head, “But this, this is something other.” I need a new word. Other doesn’t cut it. I stare at the sky. Venus shines bright below and to the right of the ring. Other stars are out, though with this particular eclipse the sky isn’t as dark as with some.

That’s largely cause the sun is active, throwing out more light than usual into the corona. I stare at the corona in wonder. A perfect ring, a pearl in the sky. I look close, stare, and at the bottom of the ring, a bright red ruby. A refraction trick of my glassed, I think, smiling at the thought that many will wonder if the red dot is an alien spaceship.

There are smaller red rubies around the light, on the inside edge, but the one at the bottom is the largest, brightest, ruby on the briefest, most valuable jewel in the world. On my photos later, the large ruby stands out well. And what is it?

A solar prominence. Like a solar flare, though a flare leaves the sun, spewing bright material out into space. A prominence remains attached to the sun and can last up to several months; it’s a bright bump of material bubbling up on the sun’s surface, reaching beyond the moon’s shadow. Our star is in an active phase, and prominences aplenty sparkled on the surface of this nearest fusion engine to our home planet.

The totality photos, when I got home and blew them up on the computer, at first looked nothing like what my eyes sensed in the moment. The photos showed what seemed to be a lens flare, light spreading out ragged all around the circle. My vision showed a much better-defined circle of light, with much lighter flares spreading beyond. I thought it somehow wondrous that there are things our eyes can detect that our technology isn’t up to.

When I looked closer at the photos though, they do show that defined ring. They just show the ragged light spreading farther a bit brighter than my naked eyes did. It was a matter of degrees, not a difference in kind in what my eyes and the camera saw. Perhaps, the more ways of seeing the better, in that way getting closer to the whole.

What the camera cannot capture is the whole field of vision, the orange sunset, the stars, the people gazing up, the trees in silhouette, and at the center above that portal to wonder, that hole in the universe. Such wide-angle photos just show a dimmer light in the sky—they can’t capture both the surrounding in full and the detail of the corona and black center that our eyes can. Nor are they supposed to. Photographs, all art in its way, give us a frame to see things through. The eclipse is beyond framing, it is the whole. The best I could do is breathe and take in the whole as best I could for 3:35 and try to capture a few framed parts of that whole as quickly as I could, to help me remember. I looked….and looked, and hoped I saw.

I’d taken several photos of totality, I’d taken a panorama of the 360° sunset, I’d listened to the birds, I’d watched those around me staring upward, jaws dropped, I’d noticed the lack of crickets, the stars, the night-time bird song…and still, we had totality. Amazing. The clock was ticking, the earth racing. I’d no idea how many seconds were left.

I looked up, staring at the jewel, looking through the eye of the universe, spread my arms to the heavens, and was at one with the totality. Eternity in a moment, as we say, though of course the earth will spin. I tried to take it all in, embrace the moment, remember every detail, slow down, sink into the moment of eternity.

And then it is over. In one second, the sun became 10,000 times brighter. And brighter. And brighter. We all got out our eclipse glasses and watched the moon begin to uncover the sun. An eclipse teaches me more about how bright the sun is than anything else has. And it kept getting brighter. The air quickly warmed up again. The day birds slowly began to sing, sure that whatever it was that just happened had passed. A few of the people around sat down again, a few started to pack up and prepare to depart.

We’d just had a compressed sunrise…what normally takes an hour or two, from first light on the horizon to full daylight, we had just experienced in about five minutes. Time is speeding. Life is fleeting.

Fifteen or twenty minutes after the sun burst out from behind the moon, I packed up my chair, tripod, and cameras, and slowly walked through the preserve to my car, looking up at the wispy clouds that were appearing, feeling the warmth of the sun, amazed at how different everything was compared to twenty minutes before. Sometimes change happens fast.

On the road I was looking for even backer back roads than on the trip down. East a few miles, then north. Ten miles on a small town with a Casey’s, so I stopped to use the restroom. At least fifteen people were in line and I stood there more than ten minutes and it didn’t move at all, so I left, hoping at the next town and next Casey’s we’d be far enough from the path of totality that the lines would be down. And so they were.

Even on these back county roads, there were a lot more cars than would normally be there on a Monday afternoon, but the traffic moved fine. The only time it got slowed down was when I hit a crossroad where traffic didn’t stop. The first two of those took a good ten to fifteen minutes to cross, waiting in a line of twenty or more cars, while steady traffic streamed from east to west on the crossroad.

The third such intersection like that I came to, when I got to within five cars or so of the stop sign, a black pick up from the right slowed, and held up the traffic behind her as the driver leaned out the window and waved us through! She was filled with good eclipse karma! As each of us drove through the stop sign, we waved our thanks. I don’t know how many cars she waved through, but it was a wonderful coda to the day with the eclipse community.

From there, to avoid traffic I really wound through back farm roads, some nearly one lane roads for a few miles until they found their way back to a county highway.

Every little town I went through had its welcome sign with the date the town was incorporated. That part of the state appears to have been largely settled in the 1870s and 1880s judging from the signs. When I was a kid, or even in my 20s, I’d see signs like that, and it would seem so long ago. At the time it would have been close to 100 years ago, five times or more as long as I’d been alive. Now at 64, 1880 doesn’t feel nearly as long ago. Indeed, it’s less than three of the lifetimes I’ve lived to this point. The older I get the closer history comes to me. Time is elastic, malleable. Perhaps that is what comes from seeing an eclipse and thinking about time.

As I drove, the world kept spinning. Through the eclipse that is obvious. The eclipse shows us just how fast the world spins. That is one of its greatest lessons. I’d now seen two total eclipses. How blessed and lucky I am. I may not see another. I’d have to travel much farther around the globe to see another, and as I’ve said, in any case, they are quite rare.

Twelve hours on the road today was nothing to see an eclipse. I’d go ten times as far without a second thought if I had the chance. But they are rare and scattered on the globe.

Today reset my spirit, got me back in tune with the earth, with creation. Experiencing a total solar eclipse is a great gift. Sometimes you have to go a ways to put yourself in position to receive a great gift. And so I traveled, if not nearly as far as millions of my fellow eclipse hunters. I rejoice. I am alive today. I witnessed a wonder. Life is fleeting.

The Orange Lid

Several columnists have noted the folowing: when you compare poll numbers with vote tallies, they seem to show that Trump has a voter ceiling. NBC News, Amy Walter, Chris Cillizza, for starters. That is, there ain’t much beyond the votes he does get.

I’m wondering about what this means to the various voter categories:

His base of supporters are certainly committed. This is his floor, the baptised cult members. But this group is not growing. Seemingly, the group even stands to shrink if he keeps losing in court.

There are, let’s call them traditional Republicans, with conservative principles and values, but may have som doubts about Trump. Any issue from his age, indictments, the insurrection, his immoral behavior, lies, foreign policy might put them on the fence. Nikki Haley satisfies some of these people, Biden might do better form some others, and none-of-the-above might be their option.

A voter who is on the fence between Biden and Trump is a real puzzle to me. I can’t understand how you could like both, but, To each their own. Undecideds are unlikely to go for Trump, I am not alone in thinking.

I think the Dems in general certainly benefit here. The portion of lefties who think Biden has not done enough for them is certainly present. Their issues span from student loans, climate change, Israel’s conduct in their war, and others. This bunch may grow, but their options are limited. In the general election it’s Biden or worse.

Let’s criticize the press at this point too. JP, I trust you can augment mine. They want to characterize it all as a horserace; that keeps the public buying media. But it’s really not. Biden is in good shape, if he doesn’t stumble – literally or figauratively.

Dialogue, at least argument, thrives on oversimplifying the other side.

Names are a form of defining. This is all for the purpose of communication; a certain amount of lumping needs to be done, a certain amount of splitting needs to be done. Still, we all probably come from this point of view:

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good; Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.

For the record, I follow some rightist media too. Their most effective tactic is to oversimplify the Left: we’re anti-competition, abortion on demand, anti-semites, open borders, pushing woke values, disrespecting religion, etc.

Let me split hairs on this comment you made: And of course, we all dream the worldviews can be reconciled and that America can continue as an idea and a reality. Do we all? I like to think both of us do. A worldview that is based on (let’s be generous here) healthy competition may not dream of reconciliation. A worldview that is so hopelessly cynical would seek destruction before reconstruction. If you cross the line once, or just a few times, how stained are you for eternity?

As for science: Isn’t that what science is? You see a mystery in the world, you ask questions, observe, experiment if possible, and try to learn and uncover what is behind the mystery? Yes, it poses questions and looks for data that leads to answers. The best science is completely blind, letting the facts lead where they may. But the act of posing a question narrows the outlook and requires some foresight and assumptions which are necessarily not purely objective. The more data, the better the certainty about a conclusion. Science, over time, steadily removes prejudice.

There’s a million speculations about why Nikki Haley hangs on, despite the polling numbers and delegate count. I truly hope she’s hanging on because Trump will implode. She can’t say that in public of course, but I’m not alone in the hope he’ll run out of money to buy ads because of legal bills and fines. Or better yet, he can’t campaign from a prison cell. But what will remain? Nikki’s message, which is, no doubt, very conservative, just not as critical of Trump as Liz Cheney. Trump’s cult may disperse; some to Nikki, a very few labor union members to Biden, and some to – what? Will Ron DeSantis (or Ted Cruz, Kevin McCarthy, MTG, or take your choice) resurrect? Or maybe militia?

I don’t want to jump to conclusions here, but I must say, I think the real elephant in the room is that many of us think Trump’s cult is a dangerous bunch. If they don’t get their man in office…

Or am I labelling too fast? Are these people souls whose intentions are good?

Perhaps I criticize too fast

Let me rephrase, Mr. Defensive. You know the problem with the media. Your exhaustive coverage created a pool in which I would not choose to swim.

The Media

JP, you have a media problem. Watching MSNBC, then you expect it to cover the news objectively? I mean…you know better.

Then you immerse yourself not only in John Stewart’s ride back to MediaLand on a white horse, standing among the crowd of fans and wonder why there’s so much coverage of him? You should know better.

The same goes for the rest of the fanclubs you’ve joined, Krugman, Simon Rosenberg, Charles Blow, maybe Bernie Sanders too?

Sure, you’d do worse watching Fox or Dennis Miller. But, what do you expect?

I’m guilty too. My diet is mostly NPR, WaPo and PBS. I’m a fan of Jennifer Rubin, EJ Dionne and David Brooks.

Our media choices say a lot – too much – about our points of view. We all get the pablum of our choice in the variety of POW camps of the modern media sphere.

Like MLK, I have a Dream

I’m responding to this paragraph, JP:

That’s true whether they were true heroes like perhaps Kennedy and Oppenheimer, or true villains, like Nixon and soon, we hope, Trump. There are a lot of people still in his grip, and they will turn on him, and it will be beautifully brutal when they do. I just hope it is in time–before the election. It remains the greatest mystery I’ve seen in my time on earth how anyone can still support him or believe him or think he has their back. 

First, sure, it’s natural to see history as prologue, analogous to the present; swapping characters and looking for implied insights. But nobody is an absolute villain, it would seem. Humans are complicated, subtle. Your prose seems to indicate, though that Nixon was an absolute villain and Trump could become one. I submit it’s just the opposite, if that can be. Nixon created the EPA, opened doors to China, for example. Trump is and has always been overtly, pathologically, and nearly completely a horrible person. Winning in 2016 made him worse. He is the closest thing I can imagine to absolutely a villain.

I confess, I have a dream. A dream that one day, children will see the orange face and hair be complemented by an orange jumpsuit, and shiny handcuffs replace the cufflinks.

Regarding the Greatest Mystery to which you refer, here is a key difference between us. I do want to understand the right, though I certainly disagree with them. Perhaps understanding can lead to bridging differences. You are mystified by them, and – granted – their behavior is more and more difficult to justify.

To the right, competition is critical to nearly everything.  The government should compete.  We compete with each other. Business is competition, power.  Government should behave like business. Anyone who breaks the rules should suffer the consequences – that is if they break the rules in a way that mitigates my situation or offends my worldview. If they break rules that simply give them power or money (seemingly “not hurting anything”). well, that’s smart, that’s freedom. All that necessarily implies that it’s about winning. And about being better.  Those are the givens.  The lens they see the world. That’s the state of the world,  competition. The goal is to win.

This Elvis Costello line from Suit of Lights comes to mind:

If it moves then you fuck it
If it doesn’t move you stab it

It’s all about oneself, do what you can. These are the Dodge Charger and Ram assholes who barrel down the road cutting off normal drivers. The ones who are fine with chaos in Congress, in fact, that’s the most desireable state for it; they’re all corrupt bastards. Sure, these people make no logical sense, sure, their stance is ultimately self defeating.

Costello goes on to say,

And I thought I heard “The Working Man’s Blues”
He went to work that night and wasted his breath

JP, you say it goes back to Reagan, who articulated and fertilized the wants of Barry Goldwater.

Reagan made winning a realizable goal. Winning the dream of Father Knows Best. He brought that kind of hope. His party bought that bill of goods, and left the Great Society out of it. The mainstream left couldn’t relate.

The left is more idealistic,  visionary,  seeking holistic progress. They look for data to influence choices that yield net improvement. The goal is to improve. 

Gingrich took the next step, and had a great time enacting the idea that winning is the only thing, leaving any sort of social improvement to rot on the side. Limbaugh profited from it, and profited more by creating fans. Fox made that art into an institution.  Jim Jordan, Hannity, Mccarthy, MTG, Gaetz and Santos all rode the momentum to profit politically and materially. 

Order and social improvement are important to the left, but remain, to the right, cynical libtard engineered byproducts that should and probably will pass. They care not. They’re happy with the competition. 

I agree with what they say: the right is getting what it has asked for… the dog has caught the car. The Republicans are collapsing on themselves. Trump is more a leader of a cult than a political movement, though the sychophants can’t nor do they want to see the difference.

Sure, JP, a part of the solution is to vote. There are (albeit tiny) signs that Nikki can beat the Donald. The woke need to be awake. Another part, and I see it as critical, is justice. The crimnal narcissist needs to face the consequences of his behavior. The courts, perhaps the last standing bastion of democracy, need to do their job, before the True Believers get their way in the ballot box (if they win, the election was free and fair; if they lose, it was rigged).

Can these two worldviews be reconciled? Just asking the question shows my perspective and my dream.

Weekend Thoughts

A few weekend thoughts, Jim, as I think about reviving this blog a bit for this election year.          

I watched Oppenheimer last night. It’s well done, but even at three hours felt rushed. That’s partly, I’m sure, because I just finished the book, and it’s such a huge story, so many characters, so consequential. I kept envisioning Strauss as Jim Jordan, especially when he got his comeuppance. We’ve always had such characters. Small men with no self-worth, who, for a while, until they get crushed, are willing to do the bidding of the powerful to keep their position. I also thought, perhaps strangely, about the Phil Ochs song “The Crucifixion,” which was metaphorically about the Kennedy assassination, but more broadly about how our society likes to build up heroes only to then tear them down.

That’s true whether they were true heroes like perhaps Kennedy and Oppenheimer, or true villains, like Nixon and soon, we hope, Trump. There are a lot of people still in his grip, and they will turn on him, and it will be beautifully brutal when they do. I just hope it is in time–before the election. It remains the greatest mystery I’ve seen in my time on earth how anyone can still support him or believe him or think he has their back. 

Measles outbreaks are happening all over the country. And FL wants to make sure a lot of people there get infected, because of course they do. They’re Florida. Sleepy Florida, the opposite of being awoke. I don’t think it’s just that I’m getting old; it really does seem like there is more madness today than 20 years ago. We’ve never had 60% of the voters in one party believe the lie that the election was rigged…and then I remember, oh yeah, the Civil War.

To our current dilemma—as I say about so much, and I believe it is true—the problem goes back to Reagan, who told people the government was the problem. I’ll give him this, he started to make it so, and his party has been working hard to make the government the problem ever since.  

Silly MSNBC last night breathlessly gives us the “breaking news” that Trump won the SC primary—something they’ve been assuring us would happen for months. So how is it breaking news? And again they breathlessly question why Haley stays in the race—while simultaneously reporting on Trump’s four upcoming trials and half a billion dollars in fines. To say Haley should drop out means believing there is a 0% chance that any of Trump’s legal, financial, cognitive, age, or health issues catch up with him. They may or may not, and it certainly seems like a non-zero chance that they will. To believe there is truly a 0% chance of anything happening means you’re still suffering from 2016 Trump PTSD. I guess I can’t blame you for that, but the media should know better. Of course, they just want clicks and views and more ad revenue, and you get that by keeping people scared and freaked out.

One of the worst things about the news coverage is they give you the percent of vote that Trump won by, around 60-40%. They never tell you how many people actually voted or compare that number to previous elections in the state. To be fair, some did report on that in Iowa, only because the turnout was so historically low. But if people know that they might not be as scared, so they can’t report that part again. And to be fair, I can’t say for sure, ha! I didn’t really watch the “breaking news” coverage, just had it on with the sound off for a bit, because experience has taught me the news isn’t breaking, and they have nothing new to say. That is, they have no news. (As Bill Moyers used to say, “News is what powerful people want to keep hidden. Everything else is just publicity.”) Steve Kornacki looked like he was in spring training at the white board, hunched over excitedly analyzing the county returns and exit poll data…. even though it is one state primary, and there were no surprises.

The wars rage on in Ukraine and Gaza, and the Republicans continue to do all they can to help Putin and the Russians. And that is new. Nixon and his Republican party did try to steal a presidential election, but they didn’t seek the Kremlin’s help. Or offer their help to the Kremlin.

It is all a lot to get a grip on and try to figure out. No wonder the story that hit so many, including me, the hardest yesterday, was the death of Flaco the owl in New York. May his spirit live on.

The Jon Stewart Problem?

After watching the first two episodes of Jon Stewart’s return to the Daily Show, I find myself filled with two thoughts. 

One, I laughed a lot—and the reason I watch The Daily Show, whether with Stewart or anyone else, is to laugh. Nothing more.

Two, I feel like I watched an entirely different show than some of the people I’ve heard comment on Stewart’s return. 

Having watched the entire two episodes, I don’t remotely think Stewart is “both-siding” the issue of Biden and Trump, or offering a false equivalency, as so many have claimed. It was very very very very clear to me that he sees, as I do, Trump as the threat. He said it was clear Trump is not fighting for you! And apparently, observing that Trump is evil, corrupt, delusional, criminal, and weak, means we cannot also observe that yes, Biden is 81. Unlike the generic “old” jokes I’ve seen on SNL, Colbert, and Kimmel, I found the ones Stewart offered actually funny. And on target. Biden’s silly Tik Tok video at the Super Bowl did not seem helpful to him. And I did not see Stewart as saying see, they’re equally bad, but rather saying, Joe, do something! Show the people you’ve still got it. 

And in that he’s right. No surrogate coming out and telling us how focused Joe s in meetings, how sharp he is, etc. matters. I think those comments are true, and the only way to convince people is for Joe to speak to the country and prove it. And I hope and think he will at the upcoming State of the Union.

The biggest cognitive dissonance I have with the whole thing though, is this. All these critics, from Keith Olbermann to Mary Trump to Bob Cesca (who have all used language to attack Stewart that they had previously reserved to attack Trump!)—they all seem to believe that it somehow matters what Stewart says, as though he is somehow speaking to people on the fence or to Trump supporters who are trying to decide who to vote for. 

I’m sorry, but I don’t see any evidence for that. One, nothing that happens in February will be remembered by November or have any impact on the election (remember the freak out that impeaching Trump a second time would doom the Dems….and by election time it wasn’t in the top 20 issues) And two, neither Jon Stewart, Mary Trump, Keith Olbermann, or me, or you, are making anyone change their minds on who to vote for OR whether or not to vote. We are all singing in our own choirs, nothing more. 

Show me evidence that these things are being said somewhere by someone and then let’s talk. As far as I can see, these things are being said by exactly no-one in America: “Honey, I know we were going to vote for Joe again, but Jon Stewart just reminded me he’s 81 and he reminded me that Trump is 77 and a fraud and a criminal and has no ideas to help America, and he wants to be a dictator to stay out of jail. Maybe it’s time to rethink who we’re going to vote for.” “After the Dobbs decision I knew I had to vote for Biden again to have any chance to preserve my rights and bodily autonomy, but Jon Stewart reminded me that Biden is 81, and that must be the same thing as being a 77-year old dictator? I’m so confused. I guess I just won’t vote.”

Sure, if it makes you feel better to take out your ire on something Stewart said, go for it. But please don’t worry. He’s doing no damage to Joe, nor helping the Don. He’s a comedian. If he makes you laugh, watch. If he doesn’t, don’t. 

I find him as funny and liberal as ever, and if being able to hold two thoughts at once—-in this case that Trump is the most dangerous candidate in our history, and that Biden is the oldest man ever to run for president—is an unforgivable sin, well, watch something else. Pretending one of those two things isn’t true doesn’t make it so. And no, I don’t see how one can watch the Daily Show and think it is equating the two things. It’s making funny. That’s the only reason it exists.

I think that saying we have to pretend Biden’s age isn’t an issue is giving Trump way too much power. I’ll spend my time reminding everyone I talk to of the great things Biden has done in his first term (best inflation response of G7 countries, unemployment at a 50 year low, record job creation, record number of people with health insurance, CHIPs act, the Inflation Reduction Act, doing more to combat climate change than any president, student loan relief, more black women judges appointed than all other presidents combined, and on and on—and yes, that the only thing the other side can lay at his feet is that he’s a little bit older than their guy), and I’ll remind all what a weak, horrible candidate Trump is (facing a half billion and counting in fines, facing four criminal trials, unable to speak a coherent sentence, dictatorial delusions, believes he is above the law, hawks $400 sneakers instead of saying anything that he would do to help non-millionaires, and on and on and on. And that in every special election the last couple years, Trump’s candidates have lost. He’s very weak.)

And to keep my energy up to do all that, I’ll watch Jon Stewart and have some hearty laughs. You should watch whoever makes you laugh. I feel like we all still have Trump PTSD from 2016. We are acting way too afraid of Trump. Yes, if he got in the White House again and had his way, it would be disastrous. AND, that is not likely. He is weak, a horrible candidate, very different than the situation in 2016, and the entire GOP has gone mad and is mostly broke. We need to remember, he’s on a long losing streak since then, and there is no reason to think his losing streak won’t continue. That he won the electoral college in 2016 is the outlier (thanks again, James Comey). Living in fear and tearing apart people trying to make us laugh gives Trump way too much power. We need to keep at it, work hard, and remember that we are in the far far stronger position. (I get the electoral college danger, and fail to see what Jon Stewart has to do with that.)

When I want to laugh and be entertained, I’ll watch Jon Stewart, sometimes listen to Keith Olbermann. When I want cogent, serious political analysis I’ll go to Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles. When I want economic analysis, I’ll read Paul Krugman. And so on. And I’ll remind myself that none of them are reaching anyone on the other side of the political aisle. We are all singing in our own choirs.

I wish Jon Stewart had a tenth as much influence or power as all these critics seem to think he does. I find it interesting that none of the critiques I’ve seen take on the substance of what Stewart said in his first two episodes. It’s more like, how dare he remind us that Biden is 81. He’s not reminding anyone. We all know it, and we all know he is an infinitely better choice than Trump. At least those in my choir know that!

I’ll try to remember Stewart’s close to his first show back, where he reminded us, echoing Jefferson, that if we want a world more like one we want to live in, we have to work and fight every day between now and the election, and every day after. He was speaking to the choir on the left, of which I am part, and I will try to heed the call. That’s true whether 81 year old Biden wins reelection or some magic happens and a much younger Gavin Newsome is the next president. That is laughably unlikely, of course, though Ezra Klein in the New York Times suggested Biden must step aside despite the fact he is doing a good job and has shown he can do the job. Klein has gotten very little blowback compared to Stewart—and tellingly he didn’t call for Trump to step aside. I guess cause we now hold our comedians to higher purity standards than our journalists?

What I Meant Was…

The mainstream media is, perhaps, biased. They assume we can live in a world where everyone, regardless of skin color, religion, geography, sexual orientation, and so on, has rights, and deserves a chance. They assume the government – elected officials and the agencies they oversee – should be competent. They see validity in the research and development by scientists, and report the benefits that come from it.

The younger generation are, by and large, hopeless idealists, who have been dealt a bad hand. They live in the aftermath of 9-11, were handed the sham invasion of Iraq, innocent of the Great Recession, and hrown into debt with skyrocketing college, healthcare costs. Plenty of food, sweetened coffee, steady pay and monthly bills surround them. Because of and despite all of this, they are hopeless idealists. They have internalized the values of their parents, and expect others to practice what they preach. That’s a truly colorblind world, with liberty and justice for all. They want a government that delivers, or perhaps a new government. They want police to protect, to serve, and enforce laws equally. Their lives are intertwined with ever-improving technology; as toys or tool, but an extension of themselves.

I don’t think everyone – probably myself included – understands the depth of their values. I hear the biting sarcasm and disdain for others whose outlook doesn’t meet their values standards. Biting dualistic irony – of their ideals versus the sad reality of inadequacy that surrounds them – is as normal to them as breathing, they are entirely used to it. But it only deepens their internal commitment to a better future.

Doggedly, their commitment to a truly better future is unwavering. In the meantime, they find comfort in messaging each other, grouping as Libertarians, Progressives, Capitalists, Socialists, and many other labels. All while fiercely protecting their right to be individuals, fully and completely themselves, living besides others who, though different, are just as independent.

A portion of the world is a coalition who believes such things as there is only one source of truth, and it comes from the Bible, or they have been taught that the majority of the world not only doesn’t share their values, but seeks to destroy the world as they know it. Their media echo chamber stokes and strokes this fear and loathing vantage.

Some of this counter-group shares the egalitarian dream that the media and youth espouse, but most have no need for it. Justification for them comes from the choices God makes, and the rewards reaped from hard work. The hell with whatever God or capitalism allows to fall through the cracks. What we should value is what is enshrined in the millenia-old Bible. Though most of the adherants have grown past its acceptance of slavery, they have not yet seen past some other developments in the world. Their consultants, ministers, pundits and representatives are well paid in a growth industry, one that shifts its battle cry to push against whatever THEY are for. Resolve of this resistance is trained to be a counter equal in depth to fight the Brave New World.

Our era, then, is some majority of us who see and are determined to get a world of justice and , and a fierce minority that wants anything but that.

The Present Era

I previously wrote about zooming out; the idea that we can get a bigger understanding of things. As we are consumed by the political stories of our time, let’s look at the present “era” of our politics.

I remember how common it was to tell Pollock jokes when I was a kid. And later, to be called gay was a pretty effective insult. “Queer” was really bad.

These are the things that historians might refer to generations from now. These are the priorities and the worldview of young people right now that will become understood in the future, as if things were always that way. But right here and now, these are frontier issues and struggles. These are the implied points of view of left and mainstream media; the questions they ask, the goals they work toward.

When we read about political change of the past, we wonder, “Was it really like that? How could they have it that bad back then? How could people not see it the way we see it?” So, it’s good to record various points of view about issues. The following book is a great example of a true history snapshot of our era:

Our Hidden Conversations; What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity, by Michele Norris: “The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Thoughts. Six Words. Please Send. The answers, though, have been challenging and complicated. In the twelve years since award-winning journalist Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox. The stories are shocking in their depth and candor, spanning the full spectrum of race, ethnicity, identity, and class. Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor. Responses such as: You’re Pretty for a Black girl. White privilege, enjoy it, earned it. Lady, I don’t want your purse. My ancestors massacred Indians near here. Urban living has made me racist. I’m only Asian when it’s convenient.” Excerpted from the publisher’s book description.

Here, we get honest, even curt statements. Perhaps these are more revealing than nonpartisan surveys, though those are quite revealing as well, especially when they show trends of change. We’re not there yet, but the (possibly hidden) agenda of this book is to show where we are, compared to where we want to be. How subtle racism is still pervasive, though the dominant cultural desire is to get us beyond that. 

So we are, these days, seeking a truly post-racial world. The goal post is where people are people, where King’s dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” becomes the norm.

Certainly, the part about “not be judged by the color of their skin” is far more salient than the finer points of what Dr. King or we mean by “the content of their character.” But young people think about that too. 

Long ago, we referred to “virtues.” There was, “enlightened.” Then it became “character.” For a short while, before the backlash, we had, “politically correct,” and then the same happened to “woke”. It seems we are afraid to coin a term right now, beyond simply “good”, for fear of being jumped on. There was a period where simply letting someone know they were offending you was enough to put the kibosh on any expression. Many people still feel that not offending anyone is a standard of “good.” The right has toughened their resistance to certain kinds of morality and they quickly defend their own right to harbor certain opinions. To them, certain less dominant values need protecting: accountability, patriotism, competition, faith, or less socially acceptable ones, like prayer, right to life, being straight or white.

A world that truly accepts a variety of points of view is a balancing act. The world sees biology and medicine superseding what used to be thought of as choices or points of view. One’s right to be gay or trans comes first to mind. What if you harbor fringe opinions? Is that okay too? The dominant point of view towards traits like integrity, honesty, courage, loyalty, fortitude, and other important virtues that promote good behavior seems hard to knock, but the devil is in the details, so to speak. Just what does honesty become brutal? Loyalty at the expense of justice? When is courage actually stupidity or inconsiderate? When does free speech become freedom to be a jerk?

 In the 90s, the Seinfeld oft-repeated joke was telling: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” It was used in reference to race, sexual orientation, and a few other hot buttons. Those are – largely – less hot buttons these days, but it seems we have normalized the joke past cliche’ status, to the status of not mentioned.

From Time Magazine: October 2010: Obama starts ‘evolving’ on gay marriage: At a Q&A session with progressive bloggers, Obama says that while he has been “unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage,” times are changing and “attitudes evolve, including mine. And I think that it is an issue that I wrestle with and think about because I have a whole host of friends who are in gay partnerships. I have staff members who are in committed, monogamous relationships, who are raising children, who are wonderful parents.” Then in 2015: “As Americans, we respect human dignity,” he said. “That’s why we defend free speech, and advocate for political prisoners, and condemn the persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.”

The right, with the help of its own media universe, has coalesced around a resistance to these progressive values. They vainly attempt to maintain values that never change. Ron Desantis invited them to “Where woke goes to die.” But live on, wokeness does, in the public sphere. This is why elevator chitchat, checkout line sidebars and sidewalk discussions are truncated anymore. These days, we’re afraid of offending each other, afraid of the rumored civil war.

Still, when the Get-Off-My-Lawn Boomers and their Cranky elder relatives die off, the world will see more civil rights. We’ll scratch our heads when people say, “they used to think being gay was a choice.” We’ll wonder what it was like before Congress looked like the demographics it represents. 

The issues of today will be the norms that are hard to recognize as new of tomorrow. The most prescient of us can even see the issues of the future, those that will be so hard to see in the rear view mirror.