I'm With California

Once a decade or so, California takes legislative initiative that I actually agree with.   99 percent of the time, California is busy banning plastic straws, de-criminalizing knowingly passing on HIV and criminalizing incorrect gender identification and other such woke legislation.  But this time, California got it right.

Last week, California signed into law the Fair Pay to Play Act, which permits college athletes to keep the earnings from their images, names, and likeness.  The law puts California in direct conflict with NCAA rules that prohibit student athletes from receiving such payments.  South Carolina is about to introduce a similar bill and word has it that Illinois may as well.

The NCAA has threatened to bar California schools (a completely empty threat), and has threatened to sue on the grounds that it interferes with interstate commerce, so the matter may be tied up in the court system for years.  Critics claim that it will taint amateurism of the sport and cause problems with Title IX.

I’m all for it.  I similarly supported the efforts of Northwestern University players to unionize.  That attempt was batted down by the NRLB ( https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-unanimously-decides-decline-jurisdiction-northwestern-case) a couple of years ago, which ruled that the players were not statutory employees, and therefore, not entitled to NLRB protections.

Who is kidding whom here?

The N.F.L over the years has carved itself out sweetheart deals with the government.  It was granted exemption from anti-trust laws in 1914, which permitted the league to bargain it as a unit and obtain fat television and cable contracts.  Those dollars, in turn, led to the explosion in players’ salaries (in the 60’s, many players had jobs in the off-season and many went to work after their careers were over).   Teams also get tax advantaged financing and other goodies at the local level to build their stadiums.  Finally, the league has a tax subsidized minor league that IT DOESN’T HAVE TO PAY FOR—the university system.  How sweet.

Despite drawing millions for their schools, through the collusive rules of NCAA eligibility, players “salaries” are capped at tuition, room and board and a small stipend, say, the total cost is $60,000 per year (less than a good legal secretary).  And only about 1.5% of these players make it into the N.F.L.  The schools piously argue that they “get a free college education.”  But if you look at what actually happens at most places, playing football is their full time job.  While the NCAA boasts that graduation rates have improved, they are 17.8 lower than the general student population and athletes are often steered into worthless majors (https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/7/9/5885433/ncaa-trial-student-athletes-education).  

Furthermore, coaches are the highest paid state employee in 37 states; the four coaches in the football playoff system made more than all 50 governors combined.  These coaches will make more than the vast majority of DI players.

I was incensed that the NCAA sanctioned Ohio State when some player sold their championship rings, autographs and other memorabilia.  It was THEIR property.  There is no property interest more intimate than one’s own name, likeness and image.  It’s high time we call it like it is—a collusive labor arrangement that fixes labor costs, forcing the players to be amateurs but the schools, coaches and the N.F.L. are free to rake in the dollars.  

This time, California got it right.

Wake Up, N.F.L.

I attended the Green Bay Packer game against the Philadelphia Eagles last week at storied Lambeau Field last week.  It was a pleasant evening and the tailgating was fun and festive.  Lambeau is like a shrine with the twin statues of Curley Lambeau and Vince Lombardi standing like sentinals out front.  Perhaps the only other sports venue so steeped in tradition and legend as Lambeau is Fenway Park.

The Packers lost a close game that wasn’t decided until the last drive.  As a lifelong football fan, the entire experience should have been a memorable one.  But it left me uneasy about the future of the game and fed into the current narrative, that N.F.L. football is on the way out.

On the first play of the game, Packer running back Jamaal Williams was hit with a vicious head to head tackle by Eagle defensive end Derek Barnett and left the game strapped to a stretcher.  The Eagles got a penalty but a decision to toss Barnett from the game was reversed.  The game was held up for quite awhile while the medical team examined him and lifted him carefully onto the stretcher.  Eagle cornerback Avonte Williams left the game on a stretcher as well, although not because of an illegal hit.  And later in the game, Packer punt returner Darrius Shepard failed to make a fair catch and was “earholed” by an Eagle player in helmet to helmet contact after which the Eagle player danced and strutted around.   The hit was so loud that it made me cringe in the stands, and was totally unnecessary.

Some of the fans joined in the blood lust.  After one Eagle player went down, the guy behind me yelled, “I hope he ripped his ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).”  I turned and glared at him and it took every bit of self-control not to say, “Why would you say that, you fat slob?”

A few weeks ago, Gregg Easterbrook wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled, Football is Here to Stay (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/nfl-football.html?searchResultPosition=3).  I’m not entirely sure I agree. 

Head trauma haunts the game.  Numbers are already dropping in high schools across the country.  Even in football crazed places like New Jersey and Texas, coaches are beginning to have problems filling out rosters.  As much as I love the game, the brutal (and some illegal hits) I saw last week made me uneasy.  The vicious and illegal hit by Oakland Raider Vontaze Burfict on Sunday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqacb2fF_eY) seemed to cap off the weekend.

Physics is also at work.  While some rule changes have been implemented to protect players, the players of today are so much bigger, faster, stronger and well trained than a few decades ago.  Recently, I saw an old photo of Dick Butkus in a t-shirt.  In his day, he was the most feared player in the league.  He looks nothing like the bulked up, chiseled players of  today.  Force equals mass times acceleration.  Today’s trained players are hitting with tremendous kinetic energy.

This weekend convinced me that if the N.F.L. does not move more aggressively to clean up the unnecessary brutality, the game will be in trouble.  Already, it is rippling through at lower levels.  Participation rates are down.   Some grade school programs have ceased.  In the Chicago Public School system, some teams are down to 15-16 players and that will dry up soon.

The suicides of Dave Duerson, Andre Waters  Junior Seau and others loom as large as the heroes of yesteryear like Walter Payton, Bart Starr and Joe Montana in the annals of the sport.

The game is a tough, physical game and will always be.  But the N.F.L. must get much tougher and aggressive in policing and penalizing gratuitously vicious hits with long suspensions like Vontaze Burfict’s, and should consider banning repeat offenders like Burfict from the league.  Without tough action, football will become a small, niche sport like boxing, and perhaps worse, since it requires so many participants to make it fun.

Later, I mentioned this all to a friend and said I was deeply concerned about the survival of the game.  He simply responded, “They got rid of the gladiators, didn’t they?”

Fun House

If you were hoping that the lunacy would have loosened its iron grip on the West last week, you’d be sorely disappointed.  If I had to come up with a theme for last week, it would be “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Justin Trudeau.  Truly comical.  Conservatives smugly tweeted out their schadenfreude as the uber progressive Canadian prime minister twisted in the wind when photos of him appeared with a darkened face in a turban at a party.   Trudeau, who paid damages to an Islamic terrorist and admonished a girl for using the term “mankind” instead of “peoplekind” and who is fond of labeling Trump a racist got hoisted on his woke petard, to the pleasure of many.  While I question whether this is truly racist (a subject of another post), I admit it was fun to see him squirm.  Trudeau’s  response was predictable:  Let’s talk about gun control.

Newberry Library.  Last week the august Newberry Library morphed from a research library to a wokeness center.  The old, stuffy icon of Chicago over the past few years has successfully transformed itself into an intellectual center, engaging the community with such delights as the 100^th Anniversary celebration of Carl Sandburg’s poem Chicago and a special exhibit of Herman Melville with a 26 hour Moby-Dick read-a-thon (which I participated in).  But alas, wokeness has infected the stately old lady.  Last weekend, the library hosted a Drag Queen Story Hour, targeted specifically at children ages 3 to 8, in which drag queens would read aloud to them.  The purpose?  Incredibly on the Newberry website, it says it “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood” (I was playing with trucks, tanks and little green army men)  and “gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.” (I’m not sure those are the role models I would want for my little boy).  This looks suspiciously like grooming.  Borrowing from Pink Floyd, my reaction is, “Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone.”  Newberry promises to hold a second installment on November 2.   

Climate Protests.  Continuing with one of the major themes of child exploitation this week was the Climate Protests.  The protests were led by wunderkind, the autistic Greta Thunberg, who somehow has gained sufficient status to be nominated for a Nobel Prize, testify before Congress, and gain a meeting with former president Obama.   It’s simply stunning to watch people enthralled by an autistic little girl whose qualifications don’t even include a ribbon at a school science fair.  Her performance at the Climate Summit was so overdone as to lose credibility.  At least David Hogg was on site during the Parkland shooting, and that, I suppose granted him a sort of license.  Little Greta has no such qualification that conveys any authority whatsoever.

Kavanaugh.  The new Kavanaugh allegations are almost comical.  He allegedly went to some party with his winkie hanging out and a friend grabbed it and put it in some woman’s hand.  There are a number of credibility problems with this assertion.  First, it was being made by  Clinton lawyer Max Stier. Cough. Cough.  Second, the woman in question has no memory of the incident.  Third, is a practical one.  If a man grabs another man’s winkie, this is not how the story usually ends.  Fourth, as an Irish friend relayed to me, “This presumes a winkie of certain size.  The Irish are not known for that.  Faced with a choice of a large organ, we chose liver.”  This outlandish attempt to delegitimize Kavanaugh will fade from the news cycle quickly.

Trump and the Ukraine.  There allegations that Trump pressured the Ukraine government to investigate the corruption of Joe Biden’s son (of course, on hearsay evidence).  But Joe himself is on record stating that he threatened to withhold aid from the Ukrainian government if it did not fire the prosecutor that was looking into the corruption of his son and the company his son was involved with.  Of course, Hillary has been weighing in, no stranger to using foreign political influence to fill the family coffers.  If Trump asked a foreign leader to look into the corruption of a political family, so what?  Here, companies must comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  It looks like the Bidens and the Clintons think they’ve been granted an exemption. 

It all seemed like Theatre of the Absurd.  Yet, there were glimmers of hope and normalcy.  Baseball legend Carl Yastrzemski was on hand at Fenway to see his grandson hit a home run in his first major league game at Fenway Park.  Billionaire Robert Smith followed through on his pledge to make a gift to pay off students’ student loans at Morehouse College and expanded it to $34 million.  And the Chicago Cubs spied a young boy with a homemade Cubs jersey and enlisted Twitter’s help to identify him and graced him with a new, authentic jersey.

Even amongst the madness, we see glimpses of the greatness of our heritage.

Mad Dog

John Bolton's departure from the White House last week (we don't know if he quit or was fired) brought me a measure of relief.  While Bolton's realism was a voice that should be heard, particularly with respect to the nature of the Iranian regime, having him in a position to actually make important decisions was a bit too much.  Bolton is much too quick to employ a military option to every problem.

Mattis was a different story, however.  I felt that his departure was a loss for this administration.  His was a sober voice, bolstered by decades of service on the ground. 

I had an opportunity to hear Jim Mattis speak last week at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week.

He did not disappoint.  Two aspects of his talk immediately earned my respect (as if my respect for Mattis needed much bolstering).

First off, he did not talk about Trump much at all.  He spoke of a "duty of quiet" and said there is a long military tradition whereby military officers don't pass political judgments.  No such restraint, however, is owed with respect to past administrations and he was critical of the Bush administration's lack of post-combat planning in Iraq and Obama's inaction when Iran attempted an assassination of a Saudi diplomat on our soil-- a clear act of war.

Second, he took ownership of his mistakes. He took responsibility for Osama bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora.  He had a well conceived plan in place to net him, but did not communicate his vision up the chain, used local troops, and never got the authority to get the 9/11 perpetrator.

His silence regarding Trump (I am skeptical whether Bolton will follow suit) and his willingness to accept responsibility speaks to his integrity.

His criticisms of Trump were oblique.  He was generally supportive of the Iranian nuclear deal although admitted the timelines were too short and that the inspection regime needed to be "tightened up."  But said, "The world never comported itself to my satisfaction" and the regimen was functioning "well enough."   Mattis is always good for a memorable quote and as to Iran, he said, "The Iranians haven't won a battle in 500 years and haven't lost a negotiation in its history."

He also indirectly criticized Trump for his neglect in nurturing our relationships with our allies. "The only thing worse than going to war with allies is going to war without them.  Yes, they are a pain in the neck.  We could have said to them 'We're done with you' after our second intervention in 25 years.  But instead we helped them get back on their feet with the Marshall Plan and pledged the lives of 100,000,000 Americans to defend them."  He reminded us that "Good ideas come from other people too."

With regard to his view of the greatest threats to us, he divided it into internal and external threats.

North Korea remains a problem and is a nuclear power that is a declining nation.  Terrorism is an ambient threat but cannot change our way of life.  China and Russia can.   Our premises-- that if we opened up trade and liberalized commercial relations with China--were not correct.  But he also said there is no Thucydides Trap (as Graham Allison has posited).

Mattis instead focused more on the internal threats and quoted Lincoln that if we were to die it would be by suicide. 

We are loading up our younger generation with an unsustainable debt load.  "You young people should be mad as heck about it."  "No nation can keep its liberty without its financial house in order."

Second, he is very troubled by the contempt Americans are showing for each other.  The lack of civility and friendliness "worries me a lot."  "I don't mind a good name calling election, but when it's over, we come together."

Finally, Mattis spoke about and gave advice to young people.  He said he loves being around young people and it's "the only reason I stayed around in this low paying outfit."

His nuggets of advice:
-Make sure you spend most of your time defining the problem.
-Stop being so hard on each other.
-And above all, stay humble.

90 minutes with Mattis was time well spent.

Voices to be Heard Part 2

My list of interesting thinkers and people that have something to say of last week was incomplete. There are a few others that I think warrant attention and are worth your while.  Again, I rank them in no particular order, but include them for their clear-eyed and/or novel thinking or writing.

Deirdre McCloskey

McCloskey is an unusual talent.  She was transgender before it was chic, a brilliant University of Chicago trained economist and historian.  She is a highly skilled writer and her tome Bourgeois Equality, while long, is an indispensable read for anyone that wishes to understand the evolution of capitalism in a historical context.  I had the pleasure of having lunch with McCloskey last summer at the Printers Row Lit Fest and it was a real treat to interact with a brilliant mind that has a handle on so many disciplines.

What makes her special:  An ability to merge the quantitative with the historical along with excellent literary skills.  Who else could write an economic history book and bring up Willa Cather and Fyodor Dostoyevsky?   She also is able to make a compelling argument as to why capitalism is more compassionate than the alternatives and why it is consistent with her Christian faith.

Quotes:

“My Marxist friends, they walk by the evidence, the evidence of reason, the historical evidence, the economic evidence.”

“Righteous, if inexpensive, indignation inspired by survivor’s guilt about alleged ”victims” of something called “capitalism” and envious anger at the silly consumption by the rich, does not invariably yield betterment for the poor."

"Betterments require disobedience, creative destruction, an overturning or remaking or redirecting of what already exists, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates challenging Big Blue, autos replacing horses—not a bigger centralized computer or a faster horse.”

Deficiencies.

I don’t know that I would call them deficiencies, inasmuch as I see them as things that McCloskey has had to overcome.  Gender reassignment, especially at the time she did it, would have been a difficult thing, and it apparently alienated her family.  She also stutters and that would have been a difficult hurdle to overcome for a person that made a living in part by lecturing.

Pat Condell

Pat Condell is a brilliant comedian that fearlessly defends the West and its culture with his YouTube videos.  Sharp, witty and biting, Condell, like Jordan Peterson skewers the postmodernists, the EU and the culture of grievance mongering.  Lambasting political correctness, globalism and multiculturalism, he takes the gloves off in his defense of Western values.  His passionate advocacy for free speech and America’s 1^st Amendment leaves me embarrassed that there are no Americans that can support our own Constitutional protections so eloquently (His solilioquy The Anti-American Dream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uz19w7tf1U) is among his best.

What makes him special.  His wit, courage, and bluntness puts him head and shoulders above any other cheerleader for Western values. 

Quotes:

“Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of identity.  This is my Holy Trinity, each one an intrinsic aspect of my god: Freedom, the Holiest of Holies.”

“Suspicion of, or dislike of Islam is not a phobia.  It’s an honest, healthy reaction to the evidence that has been provided.”

Deficiencies.

Condell, I think, sometimes goes overboard with Islam and does not distinguish between Islamism and Islam.  But, in his defense, he is contemptuous of all religion and has often poked at Christianity, too. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk4AJ1BgQX8)

Raghuram Rajan

I like Rajan mostly because of his even-handedness.   He is fiercely nonpartisan and if you listen to him, it would be impossible to know where his vote would be cast.  No mere academician, Rajan has a truly global view and has real policymaking experience.  He worked at the IMF and  his most recent post was as head of the Reserve Bank of India.  His book on the Great Recession, Fault Lines was among the best of its kind.  Rather than finger point, Rajan took the view that the crash was caused by systemic problems, that all actors were, in fact, acting rationally.  I have just begun to read his current book on the crisis of community, The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind. 

What makes him special.  Rajan tries very hard to be a neutral observer without an agenda to push.  When asked about the rise of Trumpian populism, he responds by saying that there is plenty of populism on the left as well.  His diagnoses are very accurate and incisive.

Quotes:

“In India, we say one thing, and we do something else.”

“The more that everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, the more society will tend to accept some receiving disproportionate rewards. After all, they themselves had a chance to be winners.”

Deficiencies. 

Like his colleague, Randy Krozner, who I also like and respect very much, Rajan can be a little dull.  He is a good, but not great writer, and a good, but not great speaker.  And because he is so technically proficient, this can translate into a little dullness if you are not an aficionado for wonky policy stuff.

o, that’s my list of interesting voices.  There were others that could have made it.  Peter Theil, for instance. But McCloskey, Condell and Rajan are a good start.  Rajan’s new book is out now and I eagerly await McCloskey’s new book, is due out October 15, Why Liberalism Works.  Condell posts periodically on YouTube and his own site patcondell.net.

Voices to be Heard

Over the next few weeks I am going to highlight some current thinkers and writers that have something important to say.  This is not to suggest that I am, in each case, an acolyte, but they are interesting people with an unique point of view, which necessarily means that each is a bit controversial in his or her own right.  But it’s good to remember that you can buy their ideas a la carte; you don’t necessarily have to buy the whole package.  Also beware that I do have a bias in favor of people that I have actually met and interacted with.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Taleb gained prominence with his work The Black Swan, which has been called the most influential book since WWII by the Sunday Times.  Taleb is a Lebanese immigrant and former trader that is now a mathematician and essayist.  In addition to The Black Swam, Antifragile was an excellent book..  

Quotes: 

“True equality is equality in probability.”

“People whose survival depends on qualitative ‘job assessments’ by someone of higher rank in an organization cannot be trusted for critical decisions.”

What makes him special:  Taleb is very skilled at mixing quantitative concepts and anecdotes and making risk and probability accessible to non-quant jocks.

Deficiencies.  Taleb can be extremely arrogant and dismissive.  He claimed that Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler was “very ignorant of probability” and labelled him a “creepy interventionist.”  While I disagree with Thaler on some things, and got into a Twitter exchange with him over the 2^nd Amendment, I do not like the name calling.

Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes, the son of Reagan advisor Richard Pipes is a Middle East expert that came to prominence after 9/11, after warning the world for years about militant Islam.  Pipes runs The Middle East Forum, an “activist think tank” in Philadelphia.  Pipes is one of my intellectual mentors and I had him when I was an undergraduate in his first year of teaching, when he co-taught a class with the great William H. McNeill.  This does not mean I always agree with him, however.  I was, for instance, supportive of Netanyahu’s decision not to permit Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar entrance Israel to use his country to advance the BDS movement.

What makes him special: Pipes has deep historical knowledge of the Middle East and has the courage to call out the darker side of Islam, call for Israeli victory in the Middle East and has been supportive of the nations of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland (those nations he calls “Civilizationists”) in their rejection of Islamic immigration.

Quotes:

“Ultimately, there is no compromise.  Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult or blaspheme or not.”

“Diplomacy in general does not resolve conflicts.  Wars end not due to a peace process, but due to one side giving up.”

Deficiencies.  This is easy.  Pipes is too soft spoken.  He is so soft spoken that even when you are in a small room with him in a small group, you have to strain to hear him.  His ideas are worth a megaphone, and they sometimes get lost because of his shy demeanor and quiet voice.

Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia was mentored by the great Harold Bloom and it shows in her writing.  Paglia has great range in the topics that she can write about authoritatively.  She is at her best as an art and film critic, and her recent book, appropriately entitled Provocations was a delicious potpourri of essays.  Paglia defies categorization, is a self-styled feminist, calls herself transgender but is wholly supportive of capitalism.  Her positions (anti- third wave feminism) earned herself a petition from the uber progressive students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia to have her removed from the faculty (the school’s administration stood behind her).  The controversy was recently written about in the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-feminist-capitalist-professor-under-fire-11567201511).  

What makes her special.  Paglia has an incredibly wide range-- culture, art, politics, and more. Paglia has one of those wonderful minds that cause you to think differently with every essay she writes.

Quotes:

“Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.”

“Pursuit and seduction are the essence of sexuality.  It’s part of the sizzle.”

“I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power.   There should be no protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly whose physical frailty demands society’s care.”

Deficiencies.  Like Pipes, Paglia is a better writer than a speaker.  She speaks with a very quick cadence and sometimes staccato voice.  Again, like Pipes, she is worth the effort to listen to, and some of her podcasts and YouTube videos are real treats.  Paglia’s resistance to categorization lends itself to contradictions—she claims to be a capitalist but voted for Bernie Sanders.

Jordan Peterson

I wrote a post on Peterson after seeing him live last May (http://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2018/05/jordan-peterson.html) and believe that Peterson can be one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the West. His fierce attacks on post-modernism and political correctness are intellectually courageous.  His passion for his core message is evident– finding meaning in life through taking on responsibility – and is a message that needs to be heard by young people.  He is Jungian and pulls symbols from religious texts, film, fairy tales and literature.  My personal favorite lecture on his view of oppression is available on YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XvI6Y5Yq8o) and I have seen it multiple times.  If he has staying power, Peterson can be a powerful figure in our culture.

What makes him special.  Peterson is an engaging speaker, quick on his feet, and, like Paglia, has a tremendous breadth of knowledge.  His experience as a clinical psychologist sets him apart as he has experienced the real world and is no mere academic.  He has been unafraid to take on the citadels of government and academia.

Quotes:

“It’s in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life.  It’s not in happiness.  It’s not in impulsive pleasure.”

“I don’t tell people, ‘You’re okay the way you are.’  The right story is, ‘You’re way less than you could be.’

Deficiencies. Peterson sometimes engages with people that are not intellectual peers and/or have checkered reputations like Milo YIannopolis and Ben Shapiro.   Engagement with them does not enhance his reputation.  He also said that Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh should have resigned as soon as he was confirmed, which would have been an awful mistake.  So Peterson is not immune from occasional lapses in judgment.

Taleb, Pipes, Paglia and Peterson are interesting thinkers and people worth watching.  But wait, there’s more. Next week I will have another installment of Voices to be Heard.

A Little Hope

In keeping with my summer writing semi-sabbatical and my vow to steer clear of topics concerning politics, economics and international affairs for a few weeks, last week I wrote a short piece recommending a wonderful memoir that would immerse you in nostalgia for an American society that has almost disappeared.

This week, I want to write about hope, and I want to draw on a couple of personal experiences this week that gave me some hope for the future.  Much is being written about our divided country.  The MSM and social media would lead you to believe that we are nearly at each other’s throats much of the time.  Twitter mobs and Antifa marches and the clash between CNN and FoxNews portray a fraying country on the brink of becoming unglued.

But on the ground where it counts we most often see an entirely different picture.  This week I personally observed a couple of incidents that told me (to paraphrase Mark Twain) that reports of the demise of American society have been greatly exaggerated.

On my way to an industry group golf outing, I stopped at a gas station and convenience store to fill up and pick up a few small items.   The fellow at one of the two registers was a young Indian man and we engaged in a brief conversation about where he was from.  He apparently was from Bhuj, a town near the Pakistan border.   Then pointed to the other fellow that was working the other register and said that he was from Karachi, directly across the border in Pakistan.   He said they should have never partitioned India and Pakistan.   He took a step over to his fellow employee, put his arm around him, smiled broadly and said, “See, we go home and we fight.   We come back here and we best friends.”  Had I been a little more aware, I would have whipped out my cell phone of these two guys working together and grinning and clearly enjoying working together.  And he is correct.  In another context, these guys might well be taking potshots at each other.

And then later in the week, I stopped by the Chicago Botanic Garden to enjoy the scenery and listen to some evening summer music as the season winds down.  I stopped by the beer garden to get a glass of wine and the bartender was a young African American woman. 

“What would you like, sir?”

“A cabernet, please.”

“A glass or a bottle?”

I laughed, “Given the week, I could probably use a bottle, but the police get mad when you do that, so a glass will be fine.  I’m driving.”

She laughed and then motioned over my shoulder and said, “I really hate to see that.”

I turned and there was an old woman picking through the trash bin and pulled out a basket with some potato chips left in it from a previous patron.

The young bartender immediately went to the back, filled a basket with nacho chips, sour cream and salsa to bring out to this woman. 

I took the chips, and said, “Just wait on your customers.  I will take them to her.”

I brought them out and offered them to the bag lady and said, “These are on the house.  If you want a hamburger or something else, I’m buying.”  

She refused me and said, “These are plenty for me, thanks.”

I tried again but she wasn’t having it.

Despite her refusal though, I was moved by the actions of the young black woman that was working the bar.  She cared enough to pay attention to this woman and try to do something about her plight, and at least relieve the woman’s hunger for one day, a person that was a total stranger to her.

This is the America I love.  People from different cultures, different races, and sometimes from places where they would otherwise be sworn enemies working together and assisting each other. 

Ironically, I had just this week started reading Raghuram Rajan’s new book, “The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind.”  Rajan is one of the thinkers I follow closely and he is deeply concerned about the erosion of community in our society.

I am too, but this week I saw some tangible evidence that it is not quite dead yet, and it gave me some reason to hope.  Does bigotry and racism exist?  Sure. But in our day to day lives the proportion of acts of compassion, empathy and kindness to acts of bigotry runs overwhelmingly in favor of compassion, empathy and kindness.