Story: Replacing John

***

1

“Hi, Red,” John’s pleasant voice said on the telephone. “I was wondering if I could come right over.”

That’s odd, Red thought but he simply replied. “Sure, John. Come ahead.”

John Kinolden was one of Red’s best supervisors. He had almost twenty years experience, ten of which he had collected working for Red. He was knowledgeable in his field and good at his work. He was loyal to the organization, demanding both of his staff and himself, and well-liked and -respected by just about everyone. He also worked well with Red and his vice-presidents, accepting direction amiably, yet not hesitating to express and explain any concerns he might have. His suggestions, moreover, were always reasonable and practical; Red took most of them.

So, it was with mixed feelings that, later that day, Red accepted John’s resignation, with an unheard-of six months notice, so that he could move up with a larger firm in a city about three hundred miles away. Replacing him seemed impossible; appointing a suitable successor would be difficult enough, especially in the small town where Red had his little business.

“John, you know we have come to depend on you and I’ll be sorry to lose you,” Red said, trying to focus on saying just the right things for his long-time colleague’s benefit rather than expressing the wave of disappointment (and panic) that swept through him at first. “But it sounds like a great opportunity for you and your family.”

“I sure think so, Red,” came the reply. “You’ve been just about the best boss I ever had, and I wouldn’t take just any old thing that came along.”

Red acknowledged the comment, and started a brief discussion on how to break the news to John’s staff and then other colleagues. John wanted to meet separately with each of the four professionals who worked with him and then meet with the six hourly staff as a group. Red could inform the others however he thought best after that had been taken care of.

“I could be there, you know John, to show my support or address any fears…”

But John wanted to handle it himself. Fine.

No one else in the department, Red thought, was in a good position to be promoted to the supervisor position, even Vera Marjotes, his long-time second-in-command, and John said – as Red was later able to confirm – that none of them would want the extra responsibility, despite the raise that would come with it.

So the search began right away, with detailed ads placed in the appropriate regional papers and trade journals. (This was in the 1980s, before the Internet was a primary resource when recruiting.) John helped write and place the ads. Red knew he could be counted on also to provide detailed information about the position to prospective successors as the search went on.

“I only hope,” he said to his wife, “that we’ll be able to have someone on the job before too long after John leaves.”

“Would you have to step in yourself, Red,” she said, “if the search goes on too long?”

“You know it, kiddo!”

2

Slowly, it seemed, applications began to come along. Most were from people just out of Business School and who lived far away, or from close-by but without the required credentials. That was the result Red had expected, but he didn’t feel good just because he had been right about that.

Then there was one, two, and finally three applications that looked pretty good. All were folks younger than John but who had enough of the right sort of experience to be considered seriously. Things might be turning around, Red thought cautiously.

Hiring the right person for a middle- or high management position, Red felt, was just about the most important work he did. He had telephone conversations with each of the three promising candidates. Two seemed a good long-term match for the community; the third less so, but she said all the right things about wanting to move and so on.

But the fact was, Red had to acknowledge, that one of the top three stood head and shoulders above any of the others, both on paper and over the phone. Red called this young man’s references first, then references of the other two. All recommendations were fine; none were blow-aways. So, Red selected the two he liked best to invite for interviews.

The front-runner was a young man with about 10 years experience in the field. Philip Temple was working just up the road in the only nearby city; his wife had decided to stay at home with their two young children, at least until they were both in school. When that happened Philip said she would be happy to commute up to the nearby city, since they both agreed that a small country town was the best place to raise their family. He was currently manager of only a unit within the comparable department, but his staff was the same size – perhaps one larger – than John supervised in Red’s business. The salary Red had in mind would be a modest increase for him, so Red’s hopes were high – despite his usual caution –going into the interviews.

The second-ranking candidate seemed okay and had grown up in a small town. He and his wife were childless but were said to be looking for a country home where they could garden and maybe even have a horse. But neither Red nor the staff were really excited about the prospect of his taking over. One of the professionals thought he didn’t seem as committed to the team approach to “supervising” as John had been; John himself articulated Red’s own feeling, saying it was good to have identified a real possibility, but looking ahead to Red’s front-runner. Red had not identified him as such, except in his own mind; he hadn’t even told his wife.

So the young fellow came down for a full morning the following week. John had still about a month left before moving on.

3

“I think we’ve found our man,” Red sang out to his wife when he came in for lunch early that afternoon.

“He worked out?” she said.

Red briefly reviewed the interview, and went over it in his mind again in more detail back in the office. John was expected to come in for a wrap-up late in the afternoon.

“I’m Philip Temple,” the young candidate had said cheerfully, sticking out his hand as the secretary ushered him in. He was good-looking, fit and energetic. He and Red exchanged preliminaries before reviewing the essentials of the proposed position. John was brought in after a few minutes, and introductions made; then, the two of them went off to the plant to look things over and to meet the others in the department. Red would join Philip in John’s office in a couple of hours.

That private exit interview had also gone well, Philip asking good, relevant questions as Red gave him the opportunity. He did verify that his wife and family would be covered by the company health insurance plan, but other than that, all his interest seemed focused on the work to be done. On his side, Red asked him – casually – if he’d ever had a “boss from hell.” He had found over the years that was a good way to see whether or not the applicant had any major authority “problems.”

“No,” Philip replied, laughing, and then added, “I guess some would say I’ve been lucky that way. I’ve always thought I was there to help the ‘boss’ rather than the reverse. So no, no ‘bosses from hell.’”

After 35 minutes of spirited conversation, Red told Philip he would telephone him in two or three days to see if anything had come up and sent him on his way.

That afternoon, John said Philip seemed like a very good candidate and mentioned that his staff thought so too.

4

And indeed, everything went well at first, better than Red had thought possible in the first weeks of John’s replacement’s tenure. Red’s wife invited Philip and his family over for a picnic supper in the second week, and all the adults took on the project of finding the newcomers a suitable home there in town. The kids were well-behaved too, and seemed to have a reasonably good time.

Red and Philip established a regular routine of weekly meetings, as Philip settled in. After an uneventful first two weeks, Red suggested the meetings take place in Philip’s office at the plant, thinking it would give him a regular reason for personally looking things over in that area. He’d gotten a little out of the habit…

“Hey, Red,” Philip said when he stuck his head in. “Could I ask you to walk around and say Hi to the staff before you go?”

“Great idea!” said Red, his usual reply to any suggestion he had already decided on.

First, though, they sat down around Philip’s old steel desk. Red noted that everything looked exactly the same as in John’s day. Tidy, neat. Even a couple of small framed family photos occupied the same spots on the desk. As usual, Philip mentioned a couple of upcoming activities, saying – when Red didn’t immediately offer his advice – what he was thinking of doing. Red was supportive, even when he made different suggestions. Philip was catching on quickly, he thought. One thing he brought up was a visit they were expecting from a new prospective client the next week, going over what he wanted Philip to do.

Afterwards, Philip walked around with Red but he hung back and let everyone have the opportunity to chat with the boss. That went well, too.

5

“Yeah, you’re right,” Vera, Philip’s second in command, told Red later that week. He had taken the initiative of seeking her out to check to see if Philip was doing as well as he seemed to be. ‘It’s still early on,” she said, “only about a month… But he’s a real nice person.” Red thought she was hanging back a little, so he made a mental note to continue to seek Vera out now and then to ask her how she thought things were going.

He didn’t have to seek her out two weeks later. Red had sent Philip to a one-day management seminar in the near-by city where he used to live. Vera appeared at his office door. “Got a minute?” she asked.

Red waved her in and finished a note to himself. “And how is Vera this morning?” he asked.

“Well, I’m fine, I guess,” she said looking intently at Red’s eyes. “I’m okay, but it’s really bad, Red. I thought I should tell you.”

“Vera, I’m glad you came by,” Red closed the office door. “You know, every time I’ve seen you around I’ve asked you how it was going – I asked a couple of others over in your operation too – and you all said Fine. …So is it Philip, or something else?”

“Did you hear what happened when those visitors were here last week?”

Red was again surprised. “Well, everything seemed to go well. We’re expecting a sweet contract in a couple of days…”

“No,” Vera said. “I mean with Philip.”

“He said the tour had gone well. The visitors seemed well-disposed.”

“You didn’t know he had fallen down, right there in front of them?” It was evidently Vera’s turn to be surprised.

“He didn’t mention it,” Red said.

“Well, everyone knows it,” she replied bluntly.

What she was referring to, it turned out, had happened as Philip escorted the three visitors from the opening little welcome in Red’s building to Philip’s plant across the campus. Apparently on the uneven ground in the little park there, Philip had gone right down. He popped up immediately and laughed it off.

“So, did he hurt himself, Vera? Made a bad impression, or something like that?”

“No, no. We don’t know anything about that. It’s a bad sign, you know. He just fell over.”

6

“So, how was the seminar, Philip?” Red poked his head into Philip’s office the next morning. He hadn’t gotten much from Vera, but thought he should check it out anyway. No one else from the firm was with them when the fall had taken place, so there was only one he could ask.

After a few brief sentences exchanged about the seminar, Red added: “Oh, you know, don’t you, it seems to be going well with our visiting dignitaries from ten days ago? You told me that was your impression. Marianne says they were very complimentary and appear ready to sign up with us.”

“I did know that, Red. Good news.”

“I heard you took a tumble,” he asked, smiling.

Philip seemed a little surprised, perhaps a bit embarrassed. “You knew about that, did you? Ha! well it wasn’t my finest moment,” he laughed. “I tripped over something, I guess, but… no harm done.”

“I just wanted to check if you were okay… ‘Are okay,’ I should say.”

Philip said he was fine. His tennis game was no worse, he said.

Why, Red wondered, had Vera thought Red should know about the incident? For himself, he had no lingering questions.

Then, a month or so later, Vera called to ask Red to come over when he got a chance. Philip was again away on a company errand, Red went over to Vera’s work area a couple of hours later, wondering if the young new supervisor had stepped on a few veterans’ toes. He was grateful to have Vera keeping him informed.

7

“This is serious, Vera, and I will take appropriate action,” Red was saying as his conversation with Vera was coming to a conclusion.

Vera had looked grim when he had come over to her area. There was enough surrounding noise that they felt comfortable being frank with one another without having complete privacy.

“It’s as bad as I said,” Vera started out.

Red didn’t think she had told him it was particularly bad, but he just waited for her to continue.

“We just can’t go on like this,” she said.

“The staff is having trouble getting along with him?”

“Oh no, no. He’s so nice. He’s kind and sweet. We all love him. But…”

When Red asked Vera to give him some examples of what Philip was doing wrong, she replied: “Well, he just shuts himself up in that office. For hours at a time.”

“Is this a problem because you don’t have access, he ignores you, doesn’t provide the leadership we need? That kind of thing? I’m just trying to understand, you know, Vera.”

“Well no, not exactly…”

“Doesn’t he do any work? Has he dumped his work on you or on everybody, something like that?”

“Umm, no. He gets the work done, I guess. He’s got the team operating efficiently. He knows what’s going on, and he tells us what he wants…” and she paused again. “It’s just… What does he do in there? He locks the door, you know. Why is that? We’re all worried about him, Red. He has a great wife and two young kids…”

“Vera, what are you afraid he might be doing? Is he alone in the office.”

“Well, drinking, Red! That must be what it is. Remember his falling down?”

“Does he ever smell of alcohol?” She shook her head. “Slur his speech? Or seem ‘out of it’?” She was still shaking her head, looking sad and frustrated.

Philip’s secretive behavior did seem odd; so Red said as he stood up to leave: “This is serious, Vera, and I will take appropriate action. But, you know, I won’t be able to tell you exactly what I am doing. That will have to be just between the two of us. But you can be sure I will not be doing nothing. Okay?”

He must have said that a dozen times over the years, whenever there had been a personnel complaint.

“In the meantime,” he added. “Do let me know if he gets any worse or anything like that. Can I count on you for that, Vera?”

8

Fortunately, the next weekend was one when the whole operation at Red’s firm shut down all the way through Monday. Philip had checked in with Red when he got back from his errand, saying everything was on track. On Friday, too, the new contract had been finalized. The future looked pretty good.

After thinking it over, though, and without mentioning the concerns about Philip to his wife, Red told her Sunday evening he had to go over to the office for an hour or so. He had decided he’d better check out Philip’s office for himself, just to see what there was to see… if anything.

Everything was as quiet as Red had expected. It was dark enough at twilight for any offices occupied to be easily visible. If he ran across the watchman, it wouldn’t be the first time he had been in for a private look-see.

Everything was on the master-key plan. The watchman crew and Red had the only Grand Master keys, so Red was outside Philip’s office upstairs in no time. He waited at the door and listened carefully. Nothing. How long had Philip been on the job, he asked himself, a little over a month now?

“Hey, Philip,” he called out as he softly rapped on the door. “Philip, are you there?” Again, nothing.

So he turned the key and flicked on the flashlight he had brought from the glove compartment. He closed the blinds over the one window behind the desk, and then turned on the desk lamp. Everything looked just as it always did when he came over for his weekly confabs with his new supervisor.

The desk was clean. No papers or files left out (as Red always did himself!). So he glanced around at the one metal bookcase across the room. It too looked just the same as usual; Red had checked it out before, noting a couple of popular management books and a few small stacks of trade journals. The family photos were only those two on the desk. The framed print on the one wall was the one John had left, but was hung in a different position and not so high.

Trying not to make even a slight noise, Red hesitantly pulled back the lap drawer. That’s where the photos were, rather a lot of them. But they weren’t of family. They were of sexy naked women, cut from men’s magazines. That was a surprise. Were there other secrets to be found in the other drawers?

He first opened the bottom drawer, which was about twice as deep as the other two.

It was filled to the brim with empty whiskey bottles. Sh-t, Red sighed. He closed up, turned out the light, opened the blinds, and got out of there.

9

“I’ll call them right now,” Red said into his office telephone. “And thanks, Duncan!”

First thing after the long weekend, Red had called an old school friend, a clinical psychologist. “I’m not asking you to do anything, but I do need some advice. Okay? I’ve got a real good supervisor who’s got a serious drinking problem. I absolutely know it, even though he’s very good at covering it up.

“I know this is a disability and I can’t discipline him just for being an alcoholic, but I can direct him to get help, right?” After that was confirmed, Red asked Duncan if he could recommend someone for Philip to be required to see. He was surprised to learn that the county health service got Duncan’s highest recommendation, and he also gave Red the name and number of another not-for-profit agency downtown that was highly thought of too… in case it didn’t work out with the health service. He told Red how to handle it with the county.

So, without even putting the phone back in its cradle, Red dialed the county service’s number and was put right through to a counselor, a certain Dr. MacDonald. They worked out a plan.

“You know, sir, you’re in a specially good position to help this young man,” Dr. MacDonald concluded. “It seems like a funny thing, but most people with alcohol dependency are willing to give up friends and connections in the community; they’ll even give up their wife and family before trying to kick the habit. It’s too important in their lives.

“But the very last thing they would hang onto… is their job. For some reason. Which puts you, the employer, in the position of having the most leverage that anyone has. So, you’re doing important work here.”

10

“Hey, Philip,” Red said an hour later. “Thanks for coming over. Have a good weekend?”

“Just great,” the younger man replied. “We took the kids up to Teri’s parents’. Everybody had a great time.”

“Sit down, Philip. I have something very important to discuss with you. This is hard stuff now, do you understand? And absolutely private. Just between the two of us, okay?”

Philip seemed on his guard now and had a puzzled look on his face. Red went on: “Philip, you have a great background for your position and you’ve gotten off to a very fine start. You know?”

The younger man nodded slightly, warily.

“Philip,” and Red leaned forward: “I know you have a problem with alcohol. It doesn’t matter how I know. I know it for sure, do you understand? You don’t need to respond. Hear me out.

“We all like you and all of us want you to succeed. I most of all want you to succeed here, but you won’t if you don’t get professional help. I mean it: professional help. And I hereby direct you, as a requirement of your continuing here at this firm, to engage a counselor now, today, and follow all of his or her directions. Do you understand?

Philip was completely quiet, but with a slight nod, he indicated he did understand.

“Now, here’s what we’re going to do, Philip. I am right now going to pick up that telephone on my desk and I’m going to call the county health service. It’s just out of town on the way up to the city. They’re expecting my call. And I’m going to hand the phone over to you and you’re going to make an appointment. See? An appointment for today. You will sign a waiver form there, giving me the right to know if you’re keeping your appointments and following your counselor’s advice.”

He reached for the telephone. “And Philip, you have to keep this appointment, or you will be fired. I really, really don’t want to lose you, Philip. You’ve got all we need… if you can just get this thing under control.”

“If they …,” Philip had to clear his throat. “If they tell you I don’t have a problem…?”

“I’ll take their word for it. But they’re not going to say that, Philip.”

Red placed the call, and Philip very professionally made the appointment with Dr. MacDonald.

“I’m going at two this afternoon,” he told Red handing back the phone.

“That’s a good start, Philip. I’m going to stick with you all the way on this.” And Red and Philip shook hands,

11

Philip and Red touched base every morning. In a conversation in his office Red made it clear he didn’t need to know any details. Just if Philip was okay and was keeping his appointments and doing what his counselor said. Red had talked with Dr. MacDonald himself after that first appointment. He and Philip had made a weekly appointment.

Red asked if it would be contrary to Philip’s waiver for the counselor to tell him if Philip really did have an alcohol dependency.

“I can tell you,” he replied patiently, “that we have made a weekly appointment. …And I can tell you that I think it is likely I will also recommend a weekly support group.”

Red absorbed that. “You mean like AA?”

“Like that, yes.”

“So how are things going today?” Red asked.

“Oh, every day is pretty much alike,” Philip said. “It’s going okay, in other words.”

“Anything unusual going on with the staff?”

“No, we’re fine. The family’s fine too…”

“Good. Well, I’ll be over to your place tomorrow, for our regular business meeting.”

12

And everything did seem to be going well. Vera seemed somewhat relieved, when he purposely crossed paths with her and asked, “Anything going on, Vera? Anything good?”

“Oh, it’s good,” she would say… and then she would mention something specific they were doing over in Philip’s area.

“Well, we’ll keep on truckin’, okay?” Red would say, or something similar.

In one of his reports, Dr. MacDonald mentioned that Philip seemed to think he owed Red a lot. That too seemed positive, didn’t it?

And then, early one afternoon, Philip called: “Say, Red. I was wondering if I could come over for a minute.” Red didn’t know what to expect, but Philip’s tone sounded normal, smooth.

Philip handed him his letter of resignation, telling Red that he was moving on, taking a position as a department head, as he had been before, in a large city in a different state.

“What a waste,” his wife said at supper that evening. “You did what you could, Red.”

“Yeah,” he said. “So much for leverage.”

***

Humor

***

1

I heard a corporate President tell this as a true story:

The corporation became concerned at some point that the hourly workers were too uncouth or poorly mannered and started a low-key campaign to introduce some civilized expectations into the workplace. Signs were posted in all the restrooms: "All employees will wash their hands before returning to work."

Soon afterwards, a supervisor was using a restroom just off the floor with the assembly line, when a worker came in, used the facilities, and walked over to the door.

"Hey!" the supervisor gestured to the sign. "Can't you read?"

The worker turned and said, a bit defiantly: "Yes, I can read. But I'm not going back to work... I'm going to lunch!"

2

Have you ever known someone who seems to know personally everyone else, and who in one way or another keeps reminding you of that fact?

Well, I live in a small city, and even I know such an individual: his name is Neil Deane. One time, for instance, a famous U. S. Senator was going to speak in the town just up the road and my friend couldn't make it, but he told me to say Hello from him to the Senator!

I wasn't going to do that, of course, but when I did have the opportunity to shake this man's hand, he asked me where I was from. When I told him, he said, "Well, you probably know my friend, Neil Deane."

That was sufficiently annoying. Then, on another occasion, for a national charity drive a retired athletic star came through our own town, and Neil and I both had the chance to tell him Hello. Only when he got to Neil, he said: "Hey, how's it going? How's your wife... Sam, is it?"

So when the two of us won a raffle to go to Rome at Easter, we went several hours early to St. Peter's square so that we could get a good look at the Pope. There were a lot of people already there, but we got a great place to stand, with a good view of that little balcony up high in the wall of the basilica.

After we had stood there a little while, chatting a bit with the others who came in around us, Neil said: "I'll be back in a little while" and disappeared into the crowd. I was thinking he should have taken care of that before we left the hotel.

Well, time went on, and Neil didn't come back. The crowd was becoming more and more packed in. I figured if we did get separated, we could each find our way back to the hotel, and was enjoying my conversation with a man from Africa who had recently arrived. He was very dark and tall and skinny, and he was wearing a very brightly decorated cloth covering his whole body. He spoke English very well, and had a British accent.

There had been no sign of Neil, when the heavy red curtains were pulled back and the Pope stepped out (to a huge ovation, of course) but among the several people standing with him... was my friend Neil!

The African gentleman leaned down to ask in my ear: "Can you tell me who that lad is in the white dress with the conical hat...

...standing next to Neil Deane?


3

A girl was being examined by her doctor. Her blouse was unbuttoned as he listened to her heart and her lungs with his stethoscope.

After a minute, he said: "Big breaths, Louise."

And she said: "Yeth, and I'm only thixthteen!"

4

Just about everyone - I suppose - has heard that, as we get older, our most prominant features simply become still more pronounced. Those who are a little stubborn, as they age, tend to become more stubborn. Those who can be irritable become more irritable.

In general, that is, those qualities that tend to characterize us the most earlier in life, tend to become more and more prominant as we grow older.

So, personally...

...I'm looking forward to becoming handsomer and smarter!

***

In Times of War, Times of Recession (essay)

***

1
First, we need to review some simple, basic concepts.

In a healthy, stable economy the consumers’ demand for the goods and services produced is more or less satisfied by the supply available. Prices stay more or less the same, because neither the supply nor the demand is too big or too small. When it happens that people want more goods and services than the economy is producing at that time, prices go up. The relative scarcity of goods and services makes them more valuable and makes the people willing to pay more for what they want and need. The rise in prices is called, of course, inflation.

When it happens that the economy can produce more than the people want or can afford, the goods and services become less valuable. People have less money – or are unwilling to spend enough of their money – to keep the economy going at its current level. There is more being produced than can be purchased, so those firms producing the goods and services compete more among themselves for customers; the surest way for them to compete effectively, attracting more customers than their competitors, is to lower prices. This opposite state of affairs from inflation is called recession, as prices “recede” from their former levels.

Often, either kind of these imbalances between demand and supply corrects itself in a little while: when prices go down, people become able, or willing, to buy more. At the same time, as all prices go down, producers are able to spend less on the goods and labor needed to make their products. Producers provide fewer goods and services and people buy more, until a relative balance between the supply produced and the people’s demand is again achieved.

When prices go up, people become willing or able to buy fewer goods and services than they had been, reducing demand. At the same time, the prices the producers themselves have to pay for the materials and the labor required to produce their goods and services also go up, so they cut back on the supply they are providing. These two processes continue at the same time until again a relative balance is achieved between the demand and the supply available.

However, this self-correction rather often seems not to work, at least not right away, and serious problems arise.

If people continue to have or gain more money than what producers can provide to meet rising demand, prices will continue to rise. Still more goods and services will be produced; more materials will be bought and more workers will be engaged, providing people with still more money and driving prices up still further. In this situation, it often happens that some individuals prosper less than others; sometimes many are able to afford less and less because the prices they are seeing grow higher and higher, while a few can afford to buy more and more, continuing to drive some prices - such as real estate prices - further and further upward. This is sometimes called an inflationary spiral.

On the other hand, if prices go down so steadily that small adjustments in the supply of goods and services are not enough to restore stability, producers will have to take extreme measures. Some firms will be strong enough to keep up with the falling demand by laying off more and more of their labor force and by making continuing reductions in the materials needed to provide the goods and services. They may have to stop providing some things altogether. And other, weaker firms may have to go out of business completely.

As the purchase of materials and the payrolls of workers shrink further, the suppliers and the workers have still less to spend on what they want and need. That drives prices still farther down, producing more cutbacks and more layoffs, reducing the value of people’s savings and their homes and other assets, which in turn cause still further reductions in the money available to buy, and so on. A downward spiral of this type is called a depression, which is an extreme case of recession.

In 2008, all the economies of the world – including the United States’ economy – experienced a sudden, significant recession, the effects of which promise to stay with us for a long time: high unemployment and prices not high enough to stimulate resumption of production.

2

At least since the worldwide, Great Depression of the 1930s, it has been well known that national governments can intervene in the operations of the economy with beneficial results for all, in ways that are temporary and reversible. As a result of such adjustments of national governments’ fiscal policies, the economies of the world have been relatively stable and self-correcting since World War II.

The basic principles are easy to understand:

In times of inflation, relatively too much money is available in the economy for a healthy relative stability; so what is needed is a group of measures reducing the amount of money available. The actual amount of money, dollars and cents, produced by the national government can be reduced and higher interest rates can be paid for national bonds; private banks too can raise their interest rates so that people will be inclined to save more, also reducing the availability of money to drive prices up and up.

There are always schools and roads to be built, bridges to be maintained, national debts to be repaid, libraries and museums to be expanded, and in general, infrastructure to be upgraded; so another tried and true method of controlling inflation is to raise taxes, thus directly and surely reducing private demand. Finally, the need for controlling so-called “runaway” inflation creates a clear opportunity for paying down the level of national debt.

In times – like ours – times of recession, national governments can increase the supply of money entered into circulation, up to a point. They can also reduce interest rates up to a point so that more businesses can borrow what they need to keep going, thus continuing to buy materials and pay workers.

And a time of recession, or depression, is a perfect opportunity for a national government to add to its debt, borrowing new moneys so that our government can itself provide additional goods and services – like upgrading public infrastructure and the like – in order to give producers business and to pay workers wages which together cause more money to enter the marketplace and to raise demand for goods and services.

Such stimulation of the economy by government spending, stabilizing prices and putting workers back on the job, will remain temporary, in effect only to the level needed and for the time required to restore a relative balance between the supply and the demand that can be sustained within the private economy.

3

In a time of war – like our own time – it is obviously necessary for a national government to spend more than in times of peace with a relatively stable economy.

To be able to do so, a national government usually increases its debt, perhaps selling war bonds to the general public as well as borrowing on the international money market. It often seems to happen that the extra money spent on the war effort does not stay within the nation’s own borders and the extra military money also tends to go to large corporations, their executives and stock-holders, rather than to the wider public who are somewhat more likely to spend it. In cases like this, the extra spending does not produce the rise in prices, the inflation, that war spending sometimes produces.

We are now at war, and at the same time we are trying to recover from the most widespread and profound recession since the 1930s. To pay for the wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), for years we have been running up our national debt. To attempt to promote a rise in the value of our labor, our goods and services, our savings and other assets, we have also increased the money supply (as much as we prudently could) and lowered interest rates just about as far as they will go; and we have done a little – not much – so-called stimulus spending in hopes of injecting temporary government money directly into the economy.

The end of the war effort is not really in sight; we will have extraordinary military expenses for at least a decade. The economy is no longer descending toward depression, but is not making much progress either.

It seems obvious that this is a time when we need to increase the national debt substantially further. The U. S. government still seems to be to the safest public investment available in the world, so we do not now seem close to an excessive debt. Another bad side effect of high national debt is sometimes inflation, but we are so far from seeing prices rise significantly that to be concerned about inflation now seems laughable.

In short, everything indicates that now is a time to look to our government to engage in a truly extraordinary level of spending, as much of it as possible right here at home. Basically, there are only two ways for governments to raise the level of money available for such spending: increasing the national debt and raising taxes.

If we are reluctant to raise the taxes paid by those relatively few individuals and corporations with extraordinary levels of revenue and accrued assets, then we must increase debt.

On the other hand, if we are reluctant to further increase the national debt, then we must raise taxes, perhaps beginning with the wealthiest individuals and corporations who can afford it most easily and whose day-to-day spending will decline less than the immediate spending of those less financially comfortable.

Facing the indefinite continuation of both our time of war and our time of recession, our government – if it is responsible – will inevitably raise its expenditures beyond current levels; this is the greater good in our time. To finance this additional spending, we should consider a modest raise in the national debt and a modest increase in the taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

***

Reminiscence: Listening to Radio as a Child

***

Although my radio listening today is limited to classical music, NPR, baseball games, and an occasional old radio show online or on MP3 CD, it is still probably true to say I have listened to radio just about my whole life, now almost 70 years long.

1

From the time I was a toddler in central Texas and during summers even after I had started school, I spent mornings with my mother and our maid Clorey as they did the routine housework. The radio seemed to be always on, starting with Arthur Godfrey Time every morning (often after Don McNeil and The Breakfast Club). I also remember Mother working around the house while listening to favorite soap operas, many of which ran for 15 minutes daily, such as Our Gal Sunday, Just Plain Bill, Ma Perkins, and in the afternoon, Young Widder Brown and Pepper Young’s Family. As Mother got supper ready each evening, in my memory One Man’s Family was always playing on the ivory-colored, bakelite Philco radio on the kitchen shelf.

Our family sometimes listened to early evening shows like Truth or Consequences, Life with Luigi, Twenty Questions, or Lum and Abner (I could never figure out why that was Mother’s favorite). I remember sitting at my grandparents’ house about 200 miles north of our home beneath a tall old radio console with a small lighted-up orange dial, listening to Pappy Lee O’Daniel: “Pass the Biscuits, Pappy!  [” This must have been after 1948, when he finished his term in the U S Senate.]

2

At some time during grammar-school, I got my own radio. The first was perhaps a crystal receiver which did not require electricity; I remember fooling around with the ear phone and this small green plastic torpedo-shaped toy that was tuned by pulling out or pushing in a little copper-colored shaft which when fully extended was about four inches long. I listened to snippets of whatever I could tune in, I suppose.

Soon I had my own, real radio in my bedroom. On many a long summer afternoon, I could be found there working a jigsaw puzzle, or drawing and coloring a picture, while listening to The Game of the Day, with play-by-play announcers like Buddy Blatner, Lindsay Nelson, Al Helfer, the old Scotsman Gordon McLendon, and Dizzy Dean – each on a different day, of course. The Yankees were the dominant team in baseball, and they seemed to be on more often than anyone else with Rizzuto, Jerry Coleman, Berra, Gil McDougal, Mantle, Gene Woodling, Bauer, Ford, Lopat, Alllie Reynolds (“The Chief”), and all the others.

But National League games were carried too, so I could hear about Musial, Banks, Kiner, the great Dodgers, and all the rest. I don’t know why, but Eddie Stanky was one of my favorites back then. (Later, I switched to Rizzuto because his name was on my glove… It was black!) And what about Feller, and Rosen, and Nellie Fox?

A distant but powerful big-city station would sometimes come in pretty well, for some reason carrying every Chicago White Sox game; maybe their local minor league team was in the Sox’s farm system. The nearest minor league team, the Pioneers, was not affiliated with any major league club, but they played teams in the Big State League who were. Their games were on almost every night, and there was a year or two when I listened often, noticing how the crowd background noise always seemed the same and how the announcer would sometimes fall silent. There was sometimes a clicking noise in the background. (Much later I learned that the announcers did not travel with the team and gave the play-by-play from a teletype machine, while speaking over recorded ballpark sounds.)

3

By the time I was in high school, my radio listening habits had changed. On weekends I eagerly plugged into western dramas and cops-and-robbers shows, often on a little portable I took with me as I did my required yardwork. Favorites included Have Gun/Will Travel with John Dehner and Gunsmoke with William Conrad and Harley Bair, The Green Hornet, Mike Hammer, Suspense and Inner Sanctum… And of course there were the comedy shows: Amos and Andy, The Jack Benny Program, Ozzie and Harriet, Phil Harris, Martin and Lewis…

I was no longer waiting all week for Saturday morning to get underway with Sparky’s high-pitched voice calling out, “No school today!” or for Let’s Pretend (but I probably would sneak in a listen now and then.)

The little tabletop radio belonging to someone else in the family somehow had its case broken, and I adopted it. I set it up on the bedside table right next to my pillow. Eventually it had no case at all, so at night when the lights were off I could see the warm glow of the vacuum tubes in the dark.

By this time, I had discovered that radio musical accompaniment helped me to focus on “boring” homework assignments. Now that I come to think of it, I wonder if back then in the late 1950s evening network programming wasn’t becoming limited to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights – and in about 1955, when I was about 12 or 13, the Pioneers ceased to exist! – so that on the radio, music was about my only alternative.

Although my tastes at this time were not absolutely catholic, they were at least “episcopalian,” as I enjoyed listening to pop, country and western, and – it seemed unusual in my crowd – rhythm and blues. Where I lived in Texas, the strongest stations were the Austin ones: KTBC, KVET, and KNOW … plus one other that I will describe in a minute.

4

I can’t remember what I tuned in shortly after supper (surely, gasp, I didn’t endure just… silence!), but I believe it was eight o’clock on week nights when a program of country and western music came on called “Western Cavalcade.” They advertised a popular night spot just north of Austin called the Dessau Dance Hall where in fact many of the stars of the day performed, whose latest hits were played each evening on the air, people like Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, Ferlin Husky, Rex Allen, Slim Whitman, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Snow, and others of course.

Women’s names don’t flood back in my memory, but there must have been songs by women on “Western Calvacade,” at least Patsy Cline. Jim Reeves and George Hamilton IV were favorites, I seem to recall, as well as a new recording of “The Streets of Laredo” whose young artist – with a big, deep voice (no, not Marty Robbins) – I can no longer remember.

And I have been saving the best till last.

Every week night, at nine which was my usual bedtime, I could hear from Austin a local D J who called himself “Dr. Hepcat.” As I lay there with the case-less radio murmuring next to my ear, this older African-American gentleman would say, with “Sweet Georgia Brown” playing behind him: “Hello, chappy. Hello, chick. This is your old friend Dr. Hepcat…” (I eventually came to discover that the good doctor’s real name was Lavada Durst.)

So almost every night - as I remember it - I would drift slowly off to sleep listening to Dr. Hepcat’s current favorite singles by the likes of Al Hibbler, Fats Domino, Ben E King, the newcomer Sam Cooke, Jackie Butler (“The Ice Man”), The Clovers, Etta James, Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, maybe eventually The Platters, and Chuck Berry. As I remember it, Dr. Hepcat played the better known, more mainstream R and B performers…

But that was not so much true of the D J who, on Austin’s KTXN on Saturday mornings, played Little Willie John, Big Joe Turner (“Boss Man of the Blues”), The Robins, The Charms, Ruth Brown, Big Mama Thornton (“Hound Dog” makes a lot more sense coming from a woman), The Midnighters and The Cadillacs, Little Walter, Bull Moose Jackson, Lavern Baker, Ella Mae Morse, the young Ray Charles, Little Richard, The Gladiolas, Roy Hamilton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and so many others.

KTXN was a little, mostly Spanish-language station that was on the air only during the daylight hours. I understood it was located on Austin’s east side (where Mexican- and African-Americans lived). Jockey Jones’s show was - I believe - the only KTXN program that was not in Spanish, and even some of Jockey Jones' commercials were en espagnol. His principal sponsor was a market called Guajardo’s, whose special seemed always to be H and H Coffee.


How I wish I could tune in again this morning to Jockey Jones and to the Mutual Game of the Day this afternoon, with Dr. Hepcat to look forward to tonight. What a treat that would be!

***

The Simple and the Complex

***

Simplify, Simplify!

1

To put it simply: Life is complex. Reality is complex. Human individuals are complex, and human societies are complex. Truth is complex, and accurately perceiving it is complex. Explaining one’s perception of “the truth” is complex too, and understanding another’s explanation of “the truth” is more complex still.

Yet we prefer to simplify.

To act, or at least to interact, requires us to proceed as though we knew that reality does exist, not just in our minds but “out there,” independent of anyone’s mind. We know that what we usually perceive all around us – and perhaps within as well – is chaos, but we want to believe that “underneath” the complexity, there is an underlying order.

We wonder about complex questions; we may ask others complex questions. Yet we prefer simple answers.

Isn’t that true?

2

When it seems more than likely that the reality within which all human beings have ever lived,

...and when we know with certainty from our own experience that the reality in which we ourselves live is not simple, and is hard to understand or to know well,

......why do we settle for relentless repetitions of definitive, uncomplicated statements of what’s supposedly true and what’s supposedly right …

.........rather than insisting upon the kind of provisional, convoluted descriptions of our world that we have every reason to know are more likely to correspond accurately to the complex reality in which we live?

Why is that?

Are we too dim-witted to prefer complex answers to complex questions, to choose complex statements about our complex world over answers that are too simple to be true?

Are we too lazy to concentrate long enough to hear complex answers explained fully, or to think hard enough to grasp the meaning of complicated statements?

Our political leaders and, even more ominously, our radio, television, and newspaper elite seem to think so, don’t they?

3

Politicians must appeal to a majority of voters. Media sources of “information” must appeal to large numbers of consumers. What we find most appealing today seems to be emotional stimulation. The politician whose campaign can elicit feelings of affection, respect, and camaderie are the ones most likely to be elected. The media outlets whose programs and publications can elicit the most entertainment, the most titillation, the most fear or the most outrage are the ones most likely to outpace their competitors.

What do we know about emotional stimulation?

Whether fellow-feeling or anger is the emotion in question, it tends to be short-lived. Thus, in order to achieve lasting success, the politician or the media outlet must keep stimulating and re-stimulating emotion. The television channel or network that presents the news of the day in a straight-forward, matter-of-fact tone without emotional commentary does not succeed. The politician who explains his position without oratorical flourish or appeal to love (family, patriotism, the Divine) or fear (the enemy, the evil-doer, an approaching cataclysm) does not succeed.

An uninflected, several-part statement of either fact or opinion is mockingly called “professorial” by media critics or political commentators and just “boring” by the rest of us. Such an appeal not to emotion but to reason – one would think – would not require frequent repetition, but the popularity of a candidate or of a reporter does require frequent stimulation of the expected emotion of the day.

4

Another thing: we are just too busy to pay that much attention or to give that much effort to prefer the truer and the more realistic (i.e. more complex) statements of what we face in our lives over simplistic platitudes, especially ones we have heard over and over.

Our jobs, our families, the business dealings necessary for our daily private lives, and our needs for stress-relieving or health-promoting activities require our immediate attention. We tell ourselves we can think carefully about the harder, long-term issues that affect us “when we get a break.”

And since the long-term issues tend to be problems, it’s no fun to think about them either.

5

Harry Truman is remembered for “plain speaking” and for saying, among other things, “Give me a one-armed economist" – one who would not answer a complex economic question, “Well, on the one hand…”

But President Truman’s witticism merely expressed a whimsical wish that the most important facts in our lives were not themselves complex, requiring multi-part statements and explanations. As a responsible leader, he recognized that they were in fact not simple and straight-forward.

We need today leaders and newscasters who are bold enough to tell us that the world we have to deal with is not simple and easy, but difficult and complicated. They can flatter our vanity by saying to us, “I know you would prefer to be moved, but it is more important for you to be informed.” But whether they flatter us or not, they need to appeal to our highest ideals and our highest abilities, our abilities to listen and to learn, to seek the real truth rather than the “simple truth,” to seek to become fully informed and to think for ourselves.

If we continue to prefer simple platitudes to careful explanations, if we continue to prefer to have our leaders appeal to us through emotion rather than reason, we have little hope of adequately facing up to the hard realities surrounding us.

***

Story: What'd I Say?

***

1

“Please order whatever you’d like, Robert.”

Dr. D------ was Academic Vice President and Dean of a small residential college in the upper Midwest. He had decades of experience hiring faculty members and academic administrators. He thought he had seen just about everything.

And then there was the time he and his wife A-- took a library candidate to dinner.

Late one Spring the college was looking for a new Head Librarian. An effective interview process had been pretty well developed by that time. A Search Committee collaborated with the Dean in sifting through the applications received and selecting the top candidates. If a telephone interview and reference checks went smoothly, the Dean would select the three top candidates to actually invite to campus.

The candidate would arrive in time for an informal dinner with Dr. D------ and his wife, who would try to put the candidate at ease and make the point that the college wanted all personnel to succeed. They would also describe as honestly as they could the distinctive features of the position, warts and all, so as to avoid nasty surprises for the candidate the next day.

In this case there was nothing to be concerned about: the new person would be replacing a Head Librarian in good standing who had held the position for 25 years or so and was well-liked. There were no colleagues to warn the candidate about, as there rather often was, which meant that it was important to point out, as Dr. D------ had already done on the telephone, only that this really was a full-time job requiring 50 hours a week or so (and why that was true).

So the process was well-defined, but this particular event occurred at a time before the Internet had become an integral part of every professional activity or undertaking. But it was about to become a regular part of Dr. D------’s hiring routine.

After the dates of the candidates’ interviews were determined, about a week before the day itself came, Dr. D------’s secretary sent to everyone involved in the interview process a copy of the schedule to which a copy of the candidate’s resume was attached. In this case, early in the afternoon on the day when one of the Head Librarian hopefuls was scheduled to arrive, one of the other, current Librarians showed up in Dr. D------’s office.

2

“I thought I ought to show you something,” she said, holding up several printed papers. “To prepare for the interview tomorrow,” she went on, “I thought there would be more to talk about if I could find anything on the Internet about Robert…

“And I found this.”

They were now seated next to each other at Dr. D------’s little conference table. The Librarian placed her papers side-by-side. On the left was Robert’s resume, and on the right was a little stack of papers with a copy of a group photo on top. It was a picture of the staff of a college library in the Northeast. There in the caption, among the other names was “Robert Donald.” Counting from left to right along the row indicated, Dr. D------ identified a young African-American man as the candidate due to arrive later that afternoon.

“It’s not that Robert’s black,” she said, although that had never crossed Dr. D------’s mind.

“This library isn’t listed on his resume.”

“Hmmm,” Dr. D------ said, taking this in.

“On the resume,” she went on, “he says he was still working as Reference Librarian at this other college.”

Sure enough, the Northeastern college wasn’t mentioned at all in the resume. The date on the website was only a few months ago, and the end date of his previous job in the Midwest was listed only as the current year, with no month indicated (so – the Dean was thinkng - while leaving out the Northeast connection was peculiar, it wasn’t necessarily damning). Also, Robert’s references at the Midwestern library had given no indication to suggest that what Robert said on his resume was not accurate.

“Now, if you go to the previous page on their website,” she continued, pulling out another sheet, “it says that he was the Head Librarian there. Looks like he would mention that, since he’s applying for a Head Librarian position here.”

Dr. D------ agreed. “I’m glad you showed me this,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be fair to draw any conclusions at all now,” she said, “but I thought you might want to ask him about it.”

“Can you leave all this with me?” Dr. D------ asked.

3

“What would you like to drink?” the waitress asked that night.

Dr. D------ jumped in, saying to the candidate: “Please order whatever you’d like, Robert.” And then to the waitress he said, “Ice water for me. A--?”

“Ice water for me too. No lemon.”

“Sir?” the waitress asked Robert.

“A Coke,” he replied after a second or two. (Ordering a drink, especially hard liquor, would have been a bad sign.)

They were seated in a relatively quiet back table in the neighborhood restaurant near the Dean's home. In the car on the way from the dorm with the VIP rooms where Robert was staying, they had already covered how his air trip had gone, what route he had taken, and that kind of thing. Now all three of them were fingering the bulky menus the hostess had given them as they were being seated, so A-- said (as she often did at this juncture): “We should give you a little time to look over the menu. We come here often and we know it by heart.”

Robert started looking it over. He did not ask, as many do, if his hosts had any recommendations.

“What will you have?” A-- asked her husband.

“The Viener Schnitzle, naturally,” he replied with a smile.

Robert put the menu aside.

The drinks arrived as A-- and Dr. D------ began to go through their usual routine with candidates.

They paused long enough to tell the waitress what they wanted to eat, and then continued with their spiel. Robert listened and smiled whenever they said something intended to be light-hearted. The evening was going normally enough; Robert seemed like a nice enough, intelligent enough, professional enough young man.

4

About halfway through their meal, Dr. D------ leaned a little forward and asked Robert what he knew about the Northeastern college that had published his picture as their Head Librarian.

Robert did not react oddly. He said simply, “Well, it has a good reputation…”

A-- mentioned another topic, and the meal continued. After a short while, Dr. D----- said with his usual sympathetic smile, “I asked you about _______ College a few minutes ago, because I understand you were employed there for a time… But it’s not mentioned on your resume.”

Robert became somewhat more animated and expansive, “Oh, well, you know, in fact I never did work there. I was hired as an intern and I had even moved out there, but it didn’t work out. My wife just wouldn’t move to that little town, you know? So I never actually started.”

“Oh, that must have been awkward,” A-- said.

Dr. D------- chuckled a little and asked, “I suppose that now before you go out on any interview, you and she talk about it first. She wants for you to get this position, I guess?”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Robert said. “There is no problem like that. That’s all behind us now.”

Dr. D------ put the website pages on the other side of his plate and took a drink of water. The casual conversation resumed.

5

Fifteen minutes later or so, during coffee, Dr. D------ said, “You know, Robert,” he said. “Here’s a curious thing,” and he showed the younger man the copy of the second website page from the Northeastern college where Robert was identified as Head Librarian. “Head Librarian,” Dr. D------ said.

Robert looked down. “I felt awkward about it,” he admitted. “But after I had moved out there and everything, my wife just said No, she wouldn’t come. I didn’t want to work there while she was still here…” and he looked up at Dr. D------ and included A-- in his glance: “But this time we got that all straightened out beforehand. She is behind me all the way,” he said firmly.

“Good!” A-- said approvingly.

“You see, Robert,” the Dean said, “not mentioning this other position – at least in our conversation on the telephone – makes it seem like you had something to hide. Something serious, I mean.”

“I see,” Robert said, nodding slightly.

6

Twenty minutes later, Dr. D------ got out of the car with Robert outside his dorm, reminding him of the time when a Library colleague would be meeting him the next morning there at the front steps.

Robert got out his interview schedule and peered at it a moment. As they approached the steps he got out a pen and asked for the Dean’s telephone number.

At 7:30 the next morning as A-- was cleaning up after breakfast, the telephone on the kitchen counter rang. The Dean answered.

“Dr. D------,” Robert’s voice said, “I have booked my return flight in an hour this morning, and a taxi is on the way to pick me up.

“You were right, Dr. D----, he said. "You were right.”

“I see, Robert," the Dean replied. "Thank you for calling. Good luck.”

After he had hung up, A-- said, “I told you the interview wouldn’t happen, didn’t I? What did he say?”

“Yes, you did,” her husband replied. “He said I was right.”

***

Reminiscence: Taking Our Friends to the Swimming Pool

***

This is how I remember it, the first day clear and in detail. My report here about day two is accurate, although I do not really remember any details, which may mean I only heard my father telling Mother about it at the supper table that second night.

1

It was a hot summer Sunday afternoon in the Texas city where I grew up, maybe in July. It would have been around 1950, when I was not yet in junior high.

A worn and dusty old cream-colored station wagon picked my Dad and me up at our curbside. We had rolled up towels with our bathing suits inside. The wagon was the kind with wood on it and would have been really spiffy when new.

In the car were four African-American men (except that was not what we or they themselves would have called their race back then). They seemed a little younger than my Dad but not markedly so and were no more athletic. They had rolled-up towels with them too. They helped me scramble into the little baggage area behind the second row of seats. The driver introduced each of them to Dad, and they shook hands. Then we drove off.

I knew we were headed to the favorite swimming pool in town. It was the biggest and there was a nice, big park all around it. The pool was fed by natural springs, and the water was always cold. In those days I preferred the little neighborhood pool, where the water would get warm by afternoon and it seemed to have just a little too much chlorine most of the time. But it was familiar. And this was a special occasion. I was glad to be included.

“It’ll be crowded today,” Dad said.

“Yeah, yes,” they all agreed. “Packed!” one of them said. They seemed glad of that too, though I was not.

It was hot in the car with all those men inside. The windows were all open. But I don’t remember being uncomfortable, no doubt wearing short pants and a thin little shirt. All the men were dressed in good slacks with colorful short-sleeved shirts. Dad too. He was asking each of them about themselves, where they lived and what they did for a living… making conversation.

After a while, we arrived in the parking lot outside the pool. We waited while a nice, new dark-blue car that had been parked right in front of the entrance backed out so that we could drive into that prime spot. “That’s Mr. Long,” Dad said giving a little wave. “He must have been here early.” The other car drove off slowly. The man inside waved back.

All of us got out of the station wagon. The air was already cooler under the big live-oak trees. There was a little soda stand right where we parked, where I sometimes bought a Payday bar, but no one mentioned it. We walked casually up to the entrance, where you paid, Dad leading the way.

“I’m ‘C----- Derrick,’” he said. (Dad always introduced himself.) He looked around at the rest of us standing close together right there behind him. “Please, that’ll be three… or wait, there are four of us, aren’t there, boys. So, four adults and one child.” He smiled at me. “That’s my son, ‘Byron,’” he added as he got out his wallet.

The young man sitting behind the glass to take the money was frowning now, looking down, and was silent a minute. Then, he said it would be just a minute please and went a few feet away and spoke to a man at the back desk. We didn’t hear their voices. They both went off together into the office at the back on the side of the women’s dressing room.

Dad looked at the others. “’Just a minute, please’,” he said, reporting to us what the guy had said.

The men shuffled their feet a little but stayed together up there close behind Dad. One of them took my hand.

After a short time, a new man came up briskly to the front window with a sign in his hand. “I’m sorry, folks.” By this time, there were one or two others waiting to pay. He addressed everyone; “I’m sorry, but we have a little problem and have to close the pool for the day.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Dad said to him. “I have my friends here with me from out of town. Can you tell us what’s wrong?”

“A technical problem, I’m afraid. We have to keep everyone safe.” The sign he put up was the printed one in a plastic sleeve that said: “Pool closed.”

Dad led us back toward the little soda stand, but instead they all turned to look down at the pool. Sure enough, lifeguards and the three men we had seen in the front office were approaching the folks sunbathing or standing near the pool. Most of them were teenagers or college students. Everyone started gathering up their belongings.

“They’re really going to close,” one of us said.

When we were driving out of the parking lot, my Dad said cheerfully, “I wonder how much money they lost today.”

The others thought that was funny. I didn’t see the joke but laughed too.

“Lots of cash!” one said.

2

The next Sunday, the same old station wagon came and got us. I don’t know if I had been swimming since the last time, but probably had. It was still hot, of course.

Dad said, “Well, let’s give them another chance.” The others quietly assented. We drove most of the way in silence (except for the roar of that old engine).

The same guy in the same blue car was parked in the same place out front. This time he was standing next to his car while waiting for us. He gave us a look and nodded our way. Then, as we waited he got in his car and drove off.

We went over to the window as we had the week before, Dad in the lead with me among the next two. The other two came up beside us. I thought everyone was looking a little grim.

The older man was sitting at the window; the sign next to him said how much it cost to swim there. “There are four of us,” Dad said, “and one child.” He started getting out his wallet.

The man said how much it would cost and gave Dad his change. The younger man appeared and brought up baskets with safety pins that had numbered tags attached, one for each of us. In the men’s bath house, as we put on our suits, Dad was the only one who spoke at first. “Well, fellows,” he said. “Let’s us have a nice little swim.”

“I hope that water is really cold,” one of the others replied. No one smiled or anything.

We stayed about a half-hour at the pool, retrieved our clothes in the baskets at the wide window where we had turned them in, and showered before getting dressed. If I’m not mistaken, a man with his two young boys was just coming in as we got ready to leave. “Well, hello, 'C-----',” he said heartily and shook hands. I don’t remember my dad's introducing his friends to this other dad.

3

A small picture on an inside page in that Monday’s newspaper showed the pool where we had been but without anybody present. The headline said, “City Pools Integrated, Parks Commissioner Says.” It was a small notice next to the photo.

***

Story: Alison’s Father

***

1

David’s letter left him rather bewildered. He didn’t know precisely what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t anything like what he’d gotten. For one thing he had written to the address in Paris that David had sent him on a postcard the preceding fall, and David’s letter had come from England. Of course, he hadn’t said anything about Alice and wouldn’t have wanted David to. He winced now, thinking that. But the crowd of emotions jumbling and dancing around the edges of the page as he had written his weak little note two weeks before seemed to Jon to call for something more than David had written back. It seemed so impersonal in a way, or at least not about the two of them as persons.

Jon didn’t even know who this Alison was, let alone her father. Maybe David thought he had written about her before. It was something to get a letter, though. And it was interesting in a curious way.

Jon looked the letter over again. It was remarkable that David could write so small and evidently so quickly, on both sides of that thin airmail paper too, and yet you could read every word. David even seemed to reveal something of a flair for writing now and then, even if most of it was simple description.

That was what was most curious to Jon. Here David seemed to be describing that scene in the London restaurant or pub or whatever it was - totally unrelated to Jon and only distantly touching David himself as it seemed at first. And yet, he really seemed to be writing about himself after all. That’s not impersonal, is it? It seemed important to David to understand the scene and the man who starred in it. That was it, Jon thought; David wasn’t writing about himself, but he was writing for himself.

That was what disappointed Jon. He wanted David to write something for him.

“Jon--” the letter began simply. “So glad to get your note. Congratulations! a B. A. in three years is a pretty good score. What are your plans now? I wish I even knew what my major was going to be when I get back in school next fall. My senior year too!”

See there? Jon thought to himself. He starts out thinking about me all right (as a letter-writer should think about the one he was writing to, isn’t that so?), but then he goes right on about himself. Jon couldn’t help getting interested, though, and that puzzled him. He enjoyed reading the letter somehow anyway. In fact, he was almost sure now about his own plans for study in Paris next fall, even if his friend Paul didn’t want to go too. Yes.

But David didn’t bother to mention why he was in London, or who Susan was. “Susan and I are booked on the same boat for New York in August. We plan to spend a good deal of the intervening time together. I don’t know if we’ll get to Scotland, but we’re going off to Wales and Ireland already this afternoon.” That was the way he ended the letter, after mentioning this person Susan only once before to say that she had been there at the pub that night in London too. But Jon didn’t really care about that after all, since he was beginning to think kind of angrily and weakly that it wasn’t unusual for everyone else to have a girl even if he didn’t himself and never would. What he did find himself wondering about was this Alison person herself.

That was odd, because David didn’t describe her at all in his letter. They must have, though, to her father since he evidently had only a small passport photo from some time ago. And yet Jon was more interested in her than all of them were. David, for example, seemed more concerned about her father.

“None of us knew why we’d been invited,” the letter read in one place. “We didn’t recognize the name on the invitations left for us all at American Express, because Alison had always used her mother’s maiden name. Her father had gone away so completely and finally after Alison had been born that he didn’t know until this year that her mother had died while Alison was still a small child. He was a fairly plain man, especially suited as he said to deal with simple, practical matters. He couldn’t explain how he felt about things, or even how he had felt about Alison’s mother those many years before. Maybe her family’s wealth had helped to complicate everything. Maybe it made her more fascinating and distant, and then less possible after their marriage. He never said how he had made his own fortune by now. We didn’t want to ask.

“But he did say it wasn’t that he felt guilty. And I don’t think it was. He had just suddenly realized one day that he had been thinking for a long time about his daughter, his little Alison. He didn’t know why. He had left her almost twenty years before feeling frustrated and weak and angry. But he didn’t feel that way anymore, and he was curious about Alison. Even more than he had been about his wife. He explained it all very simply and without many details. But something in his manner convinced all of us, I think, that he was sincere.

“At first, he would have been satisfied merely to hear the bare outlines of her history. Her schooling and so on. But the more he had learned, the more he had become enchanted with Alison. And now that her family had momentarily lost track of her and her boyfriend Tom, he had decided to look for her himself. No one was worried for her. But he didn’t want her to disappear suddenly like that, even for a while. He had lived for so long depending somewhere in his mind on the thought that his wife and child were going along normally in their own lives and in their own world that learning about the early death of Alison’s mother left him a little, oddly, shaken. And he didn’t want the same to happen with Alison herself.

“None of us could help much, I’m afraid," David wrote.

“Let me say some of this in detail, Jon.” (There, he had managed at least to mention Jon’s name. But the details of the restaurant surely couldn’t matter. Not to Alison. The balcony around the edges was perhaps important since the other people there had evidently become interested in the scene below them, on centerstage as it were, the middle-aging man and his table of American traveling students… But not the rest of it that David told. It was only vaguely interesting to Jon how they all had seemed to draw together as the evening went on, and how they had grown cheerful and talkative with the beer and wine the rich gentleman served them.)

“He listened intently and patiently,” David had written to Jon, “to each of our stories about Alison. Maybe Susan’s was the best. But none of them could really help.” (Why didn’t he say more than that? Jon thought. What were the stories like? What was she like?)

“The whole thing did seem very strange,” David said in another place. “No one thought Alison was lost or anything. She has often forgotten to write to anyone for longer than it has been now. He wasn’t really looking for her, then. Or at least not yet. He was looking for a kind of understanding of her instead. Something about it all did bother him. Fascinated him, he said.”

Oh get on with it, Jon wanted to say.

“He was never able to describe the way he feels. But once, after he had already had more than enough to drink, he tried to make a comparison. He said that sometimes now when he didn’t sleep or when he had been drinking, he had a sudden vision of a picture. It was Alison, a little like she looks in the passport photo, except that this picture was made of tiny, odd-shaped pieces of colored glass. It was beautiful. The light seemed to dance off the blue and green glass. But he just couldn’t make out Alison’s real face in it. Or behind it, as he said himself."

Jon paused at this passage. He hadn’t thought Alison’s appearance itself mattered very much to the others, but now he wasn't sure. David didn’t seem sufficiently interested, in any case.

“By then, I think,” he had written in another place, “we all cared. It was no longer just a free and liberal meal with good friends and plenty to drink. That was why we tried to say some things about Alison herself, even though we knew we couldn’t really describe her anymore than he could see her face in his wierd dream. It was all very strange. Like the round of drinks someone at the table upstairs bought for us, and saluted us after we raised our glasses to them in thanks. They were total strangers too. But the oddest thing of all was the mixture of our own feelings.

“The more I think of it now, the sadder the old man seems.” Jon didn’t think he cared about that but found himself angry that David hadn’t seemed to think it true before. Of course, it was sad. That was why it was interesting at all. If it weren’t, it would be awful. It would be laughable, in fact.

“But it wasn’t that way last night.” Jon wasn’t skipping now. “At the other end of the table, some of our people were often laughing and joking as they always had in Paris. And it wasn’t at all embarrassing, if you can imagine that. It did have the feeling of a festive outing after all.” Jon didn’t understand anything about that. “Only one of our group did not seem to feel that way. One of Alison’s roommates when she had still been in Paris, named Lucy. But even she stayed with us all the evening long… which was not really like her.”

Now he was off again on something else. Jon admitted that the reactions to the man’s story were strange. But the story itself was more interesting than that. David didn’t manage a conclusion either, leaving it all as quickly as he had begun it. Jon didn’t understand the whole business in the slighest.

Pooh, he thought. It’s no good anyway, no matter how often I look at the letter again. He tossed it aside on his desk and moved across the room to his bed. Maybe David would get back home before he and Paul would leave and they could talk about it all some more. But then again, what did it matter? Especially to him. Maybe he could nap again, until his mother came up to call him to supper.

2

“It was just a day, you know?" Susan had said during that odd dinner with Alison's father. "And just two things that happened quite by accident so close to each other that I remember them as a pair. I’m sorry I don’t tell things better because I may not be able to make it clear how or why I’ve remembered them and why I think they’re important to Alison. I know I won’t be able to explain that. It may even make her look foolish or weak, or even callous. She’s not that way at all, as I’m sure you know by now. She wouldn’t interest all of you so much if she were, you know.

“Anyway.

“Lucy wasn’t in Paris at this time because she was traveling in Germany. Alison had gone with her, in fact, part of the time but had grown homesick for Paris. A good many of us who were at school together saw each other a lot even during vacations, so Alison never had to feel lonely here. On this day I’m thinking of, I hadn’t gone out at all. Reading or just being lazy. Alison went late in the morning to be with some of our friends for lunch at the student restaurant. I didn’t know she had come back, in fact, even pretty late that afternoon when I somehow became aware that she had already been in her room across the hall for a long time. Maybe her door was usually open, but I realized that it had been closed for a while.

“That just wouldn’t be like her, you know, to sit in a closed room alone. It would be so unlike her that I felt vaguely there might be something wrong. Unless she wasn’t there after all.

“She doesn't make noise, you see. And she doesn’t come to you either, or not often. And doesn’t call at least to her girlfriends to come to her. But you always seem to know Alison’s there. She attracts your attention. I think that’s why some of the girls don’t like her. Not because they’re jealous either. They don’t see that she offers that much. Not really.

“There. I’m off the track already.

“So, she was in her room that day. And not sleeping or reading or doing anything as far as you could tell. When I opened the door a little and peeked through, she was sitting very still but not stiff on the edge of the hard chair that went with her desk. But she was facing the center of the room. She hadn’t turned on any of the lamps, and the outside light that reached the tiny window at the opposite end from the door was just strong enough to put the whole scene in twilight. It was even a little chilly. Alison usually was the first to get cold. She liked wearing soft, thick winter clothes or pulling a puffy blanket around her.

“Maybe that’s why I remember all of this. That little picture through the doorway. She didn’t seem frightened, and she didn’t even seem sad. But there was something almost alien there. I have it! She seemed alone. That’s what it was and it’s not like Alison. And, even though her room Lord knows was small enough, that day in that kind of light it seemed to spread out around her like a vast amphitheater or something, she looked so small inside it.

“My thought then was that perhaps I should leave her undisturbed. She seemed quite unapproachable. But it made me too curious, I guess. I called to her from the doorway to see if anything was wrong. She wasn’t startled, but I don’t think she really expected anyone to come be with her that time. She was sad then, as I found out, but I don’t think she was frightened. That was the difference.

“But anyway. She was willing to talk about it after all, and I went in leaving the door open because it wasn’t so cold in the rest of the house. There’s no reason to tell it all here even if I could remember it. It was just a beggar that she had seen in the park. You know, there are a good many of them all over town, and even Alison was repelled by most of them after a time. So it was a little strange that it was only a beggar that had bothered her.

“He hadn’t even approached her, I don’t think. She just saw him by himself a while and then talking to a few others. What made her so sad evidently was that he was quite a young man. She said that several times.

“She tried very hard to convey to me the poignancy of the scene itself. But really it was inside her that the whole scene had happened, and since she was describing only things that she had seen outside herself, it didn’t really come across. He must have done something a little unusual at any rate, or looked like someone, or something else, or she wouldn’t have noticed. But I never knew what it was. I did make sure, though, that he was not hurt or crippled or anything. Not even sick necessarily. That all made it worse for Alison, that he was young and physically sound. That made it all the more sad.

“All right. That’s one thing that happened. And it’s trivial enough by itself. But there was another sad event that same day too. One of the members of our school was called back to the States that day. Nobody knew anything about it even at the school or among the group of us here who always saw so much of each other, until pretty late in the afternoon. Longer after Alison had started back home after lunch and had seen her beggar in the park. So the first thing we heard about it was at the dinner table that night. She and I had got to talking about one thing or another in Alison’s room after I interrupted her that way, trying to cheer her up a little, and so didn’t see any of the other girls until we sat down to eat.

“To an outsider there wouldn’t have been anything that seemed unusual in what happened there. The girl who had to go back was a lot of fun and was even very intelligent and so got along with everyone, male and female, wonderfully well when we were together for meals at the student restaurant or in class. But she lived all the way on the other side of Paris and so far had been more interested in getting to know French people than in pursuing our friendship. So she was not an especially close friend. She had been notified to come back to the U. S. because her father was dying of cancer. Mouth or throat, I think. There had been no warning before the telegram came.

“That’s right, you wince now yourself not even knowing this girl. Sure, it’s that much of a thing that you can’t just not notice. And since we all knew this girl, it was a little more than that. When they told us about it, then, we must have said a few things about it. Must have asked for more details, for example, about when she was leaving and if we could help. Her roommate was going to send most of her things over later, but she herself had probably already gone, seeing no one but the roommate across town since the telegram had come. And so on. Even the French boarders around the dinner table expressed their sympathy, and perhaps someone told of a similar happening to one of their own friends.

“But after a while, naturally, the meal went on pretty much as usual, and we talked about other things. About a play that was supposed to be pretty good, for example, or a party someone had been invited to. Alison hadn’t said anything at all really while we had been talking about the friend who was going to have to go home. Or she might have said that it was too bad she would have to miss the rest of her year in Europe on top of everything else. But she didn’t avoid speaking. She was often quiet like that in larger groups.

"But when the conversation changed, Alison just about took it over. As the meal went on, she became more and more eager to chatter about one thing or another. She’s quite pleasant when she does that, you know, because she certainly never forcibly dominates anyone. It’s just that after a while most of the comments anyone would make seemed to get directed toward her. And she would laugh lightly and reply with something that didn’t matter at all but that was pleasant enough just from the way she said it. The two younger Frencg bachelors at our boarding house always found Alison charming and that night were pleased to talk primarily with her. They would ask her something, and when she answered, they would smile and look around at the rest of us as if they were showing her off.

“Then after a while, before we were served our cheese or fruit for desert, Alison excused herself and went to make a telephone call. Some of us sat around the table after dinner talking, and when I did go back down the hall to my room later to get a coat for a walk some of us were going to take, I saw that Alison had gotten all dressed up and was excited and still ready to chatter gaily about things, as she was going off to the theater with our David here.

“It was only after she had left that it struck me that there was something a little out of shape in that. At first, it was just pleasant for her to be happy. But then she seemed - looking back - a little nervous rather than just content. For a while I thought I must have imagined it. The next morning and from then on, she didn’t say anything at all again about the beggar she had seen or about the girl who was going home. She seemed to have forgotten, and when Lucy got back it was me who told her about our friend’s leaving, even though she was Alison’s roommate at that time, not mine, and she had been back for several days.”

3

When he awoke the next morning, he felt awful. Not only was his head in sad shape and his stomach very queasy, but even before he was fully conscious why he was that way, where he was, and how he’d gotten back to the hotel the night before, he knew also that he was wretchedly embarrassed. He must have been too far gone as they helped him to bed - he did not like to think of that - even to take the pills he usually took to prevent the next-day headache.

He tried to move very slowly and smoothly out from under the sheet, off the bed, and across the room to the bathroom. It is more difficult to do that in an unfamiliar room than at home, but he managed it pretty well. He was trying to concentrate intently and solely on the facts of the present moment. How did his head feel? Could he sleep some more? If he didn’t, if he dressed and tried to read or even eat something with his coffee, would he be sick? He decided by the time he was noticing in the mirror above the sink that, to his surprise, he didn’t look a bit different from the way he looked every morning, though it felt as if his head was larger than normal and that the skin was pulled too tight and too thin around it.

The water didn’t look very inviting even though the warmth of it felt good on his face. His mouth was parched, but he would wait until he could have coffee. (Why had it happened anyway?) So that he left the water running and went across the room, feeling a little steadier in the head at least, to call for some coffee to be brought up. He told them he would be in the shower, and they said there was a note for him.

It was still pretty early, he thought.

But when he first stuck his head under the hot shower faucet, it was as if not only the steamy water was rushing over him and making his eyes looking down feel puffy and full. His consciousness of the night before, and the strength of his humiliation, washed over him too. He had been their host, and they were only kids besides. He was not an emotional man, he thought, and besides he had not been saddened or even excited by what they had told him. Perhaps, he thought, he had simply relaxed himself with them, had become something of a child himself who needed someone else, someone outside, to suggest he should drink less or more slowly. That was his deepest humiliation. He was not like that. All his life had indeed been contrary to that kind of childish weakness.

He found himself staring stupidly at his feet as the hot water flooded over his ears and down his back. He shook himself.

But those kids, friends of his daughter too, would never know that. They had enjoyed themselves certainly, and were sympathetic enough to be grateful for that. But they must have been embarrassed for him too. He did not know why it was important to him for them to care about what he was doing, but - as he dried himself and felt still better - he felt certain now that they wouldn’t, even if they were able to understand what he was doing. He hadn’t quite realized before, that that was why he had looked up all of the ones he could find in London at that time… Not really to learn from them, but to enlist their support. Yes, he had wanted them behind him. No one he knew at home understood at all.

The coffee they had left him helped even more, and he thought he might go downstairs soon for soft-boiled eggs.

And even though everything had gone so well at first he had lost them anyway. What a ridiculous old buffoon he must have seemed! He felt frustrated by it. But there was nothing to be done anymore. That part was over, forfeited. He accepted his humiliation, knowing that he would never have to face any of them again. At least there was that. But he hated it. And most of all, he hated the loss it meant for him from now on.

He went back to the bathroom and felt that even his stomach was beginning to return to normal. If he waited a while to see if it really was all right, he could have lunch downstairs instead. He wanted some lean, rare beef to put himself right again. He sat on the bed. He still felt very tired.

In what seemed only a few seconds, he awoke once more. He felt a little strained lying backwards on the bed with his feet still dangling off toward the floor, but as a whole, he felt better. His stomach was all right now, he thought, only hungry. As he stood up to toss his robe away and dress, he realized that he must have slept for more than it seemed, and crossed the room again to the bathroom.

But they had said, hadn’t they? he remembered there, that someone had left a message for him. From his office, he thought, and that would be all right. He wanted to leave the other thing behind him for a while. That was too bad - he was slipping on some clean shorts and tearing the laundry band off a shirt - too bad that he couldn’t go on and think of it now. Just because he had been so stupid and childish... No. It was unfortunate since they had said a lot about his daughter and some of it might help him to know what to do when he finally saw her for himself. Was that what it was after all? Was that what he was trying to do?

The note was in a hotel envelope and was not sealed. He had thought it might even be a letter. He would have liked that. But it was written on a small piece of lined paper as if from a pocket notebook or an address-book.

“Thank you,” it said in pencil, “for a wonderful evening. All of us appreciated it so much, and we were happy to get to know you too.” It looked very strange somehow, and he found it hard to associate it with the young man who had sat next to him the night before. “All of our plans are different, of course, but Susan and I are off tomorrow morning” (which would mean today, he thought) “to Wales and Ireland. And then all of us will be going home soon. Perhaps some of us might see you again there sometime.” That, he thought reading it, must be a mere convention. He liked it, but didn’t think - even so, even though he might have been wrong before about how they felt - that he’d really want to see them again.

“Again,” the other side of the tiny page went on, “Again, let me thank you for our dinner and conversation. When you see Alison, please” and he had marked out the word give, “please tell her we often think of her. Goodbye now, David and Susan.”

Well, they were polite… But did they care?


***

Dealing with Fanatics (essay)

***

Don't believe all you think!

1

Our Founding Fathers do not seem to have had to work or struggle with fanatics. They themselves were not motivated by dogma, bias, certitude, superstition, anger or fear, and – apparently – neither were those they had to work with and against, not even the British. Thus, the Founders were able to operate on the basis of observation and experience, reason, knowledge, wide reading (even outside their own culture), practicality, and what they would have called “enlightened self-interest” – a reasonable and predictable interest in providing sufficiently for themselves and their families - and they seem to have been confident of the likelihood that others would operate the same way...at least more often than not.

Another defining trait of the Founders was their optimistic expectation that individuals and also societies could be expected to improve or make progress.

As the decades passed, our forebears spread all the way across the continent, reaching their geographical limits, and the nation apparently became less confident in the future and more vulnerable to intermittent waves of fanaticism. But unlike most others of the basic realities we still face today, this does not seem one for which the Founders of the United States can provide us much guidance.

Americans' vulnerability to fanaticism has made it even more difficult than it would have been otherwise to maintain the republican democracy that is the most precious gift we have received from those who created our nation.

2

Just about all of us pride ourselves on our heritage of democracy and the republican forms of government that facilitate democracy. The fanatics among us claim to do so as well, but as true fanatics, they do not in fact believe in liberty (or justice) for all but only for those whom they perceive as like themselves.

Despite pious claims to the contrary, they do not seek to emulate the Founding Fathers; and, unlike Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and the others, they are not motivated by knowledge and wide learning, observation, reason, and practicality but instead by emotion, belief, dogma, bias, superstition, force, and their own superiority to their compatriots.

For democracies to work, most citizens must be confident in the basic decency, the common sense, and the good will of most other citizens. Not believing that the majority have these qualities would be to question the wisdom of democratic rule itself. Those of us who prefer not to think or behave like fanatics do not want to undermine rule by “we the people.”

3

The fanatics who threaten our essential institutions and conventions look back to forerunners who believed (or claimed) to find truth not by looking around them and by learning from the observations and experiences of others, but instead by looking within. Like all religious men and women, they were more interested in eternal truths than with the everyday facts that surrounded them and surround all the rest of us. Those capable of finding within themselves the higher truths, then as now, may be educated or not, predictable or not, public-spirited or not, disingenuous or not.

They are convinced and passionately believe that they know the one and eternal truth and that the rest of us do not. This is the basis of their elitism; in matters of debate, their position is right, and differing opinions are wrong.

We can tolerate this snobbish, anti-intellectual stance in a democratic republic and have in fact done so for generations. When a majority of Americans have agreed with the view espoused by the fanatics, we have passed laws and have taken other actions along the lines they believed were right. When the majority of Americans have not agreed with the fanatics’ opinion, however, we together have done something different. Then and now, what they do in their own lives is their business, not ours; but as a society, the majority are surely going to adopt policies and allow personal behaviors that the fanatics deem wrong, contrary to their "higher truths." We have muddled along well enough in this fashion for 150-200 years.

In our time, however, we are facing several circumstances that underline the threat to democratic rule posed by fanatics.

4

Fanatics gain true and certain knowledge from looking within. They proceed by starting with the truth they have discovered in this fashion and then look for facts or knowledge gained through observation or by experience of others which supports or confirms the truth with which they began. An old joke seems to fit them: they use information as a drunk uses a lamppost - for support, not for illumination. Once they have found an observation or a fact that can be interpreted to support the a priori truth with which they began, they sometimes use the techniques of reasoning – or at least rhetoric – in order to convince others.

Since they begin from the premise that they have superior knowledge, of moral truths as well as others, fanatics think it is their duty to convince others. This usually takes the form of exhortation or their kind of argumentation, appeal to emotions, and warnings of dire consequences for those who do not come to believe as they do.

But none of this is new to American culture. For generations, fanatics have tried to convince others of the truth of their positions and values by “reason,” inspiration, and attempts to instill fear (or what could be called intimidation). What appears to be a growing threat now is that more and more fanatics are seeking to impose their views on others by force.

5

Fanatics are ruled by emotion, not reason; in our time it is fear that seems to rule them most often. Since the others in the world are not in touch with fanatics' eternal truths, they cannot be trusted. In fact, they should be seen as a threat and every expression of opinion contrary to the fanatics' way of thinking should not only be rejected but stamped out, destroyed, since it is viewed as an attack.

The high degree to which the fanatics among us today think and act this way is new. Not only is it in direct contrast to our Founding Fathers, who respected others' opinion even when they disagreed; it also inhibits the discourse that must be allowed to fluorish if our republican democracy is to thrive.

And the emotion that typically follows fear is anger. If you are significantly different from me, I despise you; I hate you. If you try to say something blatantly contrary to my eternal truth, my canon, I will angrily shout you down. I will call you ugly names. Secretly or publically I will condone violence exacted upon you or your sort, and I will take every opportunity to promote such violence in the future. If you oppose my personal values, you are my enemy; I not only fear you; you and your allies make me furious!

6

Since our time's fanatics are so susceptible to fear and so easily moved to anger, they are particularly vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation. To win their support and gain power over them, a cynical would-be leader need only express passionate adherence to one of their cherished tenets or behaviors, using their vocabulary when it already exists and, when it does not, creating emotive and simple phrases designed to capture their passionate conviction.

Such phrases need simply to identify the particular threat to their tenet in question and identify it - or those who support it - as the enemy to be feared and reviled. The fanatics' emotions may then be enlisted in support of a policy or an action that the would-be leader wants, even if he or she wants it for an undisclosed reason, perhaps merely for personal gain. In this fashion, the fanatics' proclivity to fear and anger is rather easily manipulated in support of actions and policies of which they are unaware.

Since their form of "reasoning" starts with emotion, no evidence challenging their conviction or their leader can threaten their allegiance to the leader's cause. Only observations or facts that can be used to defeat the odious enemy are credible since they alone are in tune with the emotional commitment the fanatic has already made.


7

Fanatics are essentially spontaneous, moved by passions, but those who have the power to exploit them - by hypocrisy, intimidation (appealing to their built-in fear), and manipulation (appealing to their anger) - are free to operate by a long-range plan designed explicitly to prolong their own control.

Many fanatics themselves are not particularly self-interested – to an astonishing extent – but cynical big businesses and the media that big businesses now control are essentially greedy, for both money and power. This is a critical source of the prudent concern that today our repulican democracy, pursuing "liberty and justice for all," is in peril.

Since so many, loud, media voices today espouse the views fanatics are known to hold and to identify as enemies to be hated and attacked opponents of these views - though fanatics remain in the minority - they are mobilized by self-interested big media to "defend the faith."  They can thus be unwittingly used to support the policies and actions that their leaders secretly pursue for personal gain and extension of their own power. And since they are convinced it is their duty to impose their views on others, fanatics are willing to use force and violence when necessary to do so, extending their leaders' control or at least influence over others.

Through intimidation and manipulation, fanatics can be led to espouse a cause that more reflective individuals - like the humane and rational Founding Fathers whom we all profess to venerate - would probably see as distinct from the fanatics' own cherished beliefs, seeking to force not only their adherents but all of us to follow their narrow dictates and in so doing to bring us under the control of leaders whose goals they do not accurately perceive.

***