The Inquiring Manatee

Welcome to Weimar

    The atmosphere in this country is beginning to smack of the Weimar Republic between 1919 and Adolf Hitler's accession to power in 1933.

    In that era of turmoil, German defeat, crippling inflation and worldwide depression, the struggling German democratic government based in Weimar was faced with repeated challenges from both left and right -- in the end, most strongly from extreme nationalists whose message of blame, scapegoating and hate appealed to lower-middle-class masses who felt threatened by change and by economic loss.
    In the United States at that time, and even more so through the Franklin D. Roosevelt years of the 1930s, democracy was under attack from the same populist Know-Nothing elements that have arisen in every national economic crisis dating back to the Whiskey Rebellion. Demagogues ranging from Huey Long and Father Coughlin to Fritz Kuhn of the German-American Bund kept the pot of civic discourse boiling with hatred.
    Nowadays, just as Nazis and their growing bands of sympathizers could not accept German defeat in World War I and the costs imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, suddenly booming extremist groups do not accept the legitimacy of the 2008 election, President Obama or any policy proposal of the Democrats. In short, having lost in 2008, they trumpet their loyalty to democracy but refuse to let the winners govern. We are witnessing the temper tantrums of ignorant, noisy, easily led children.
    Have you had enough of the wildly anti-government "tea party" types and "Christian warrior" militias like the vicious, deluded Hutaree? I have. It's time to call these intolerant, screaming mobs what they are. If they are not fascists, they are fodder for fascists. Spittle, insults and bricks flying, they are out of control -- and getting excessive media attention that attracts even more of the mentally unstable to their ranks.
    The stench of fascism is in the air. These people want to destroy the elected American government as the Nazis wanted to destroy the Weimar Republic.

    To which I say: Never again.

Two Nut Cases: Compare and Contrast

    On the face of things, writer J. D. Salinger and doctor-killer Scott Roeder could not be more different. Salinger made great contributions to society. Roeder at best was a competent airport shuttle driver. Salinger had talent. Roeder had nothing but a Sunni suicide bomber's God-smacked obsessions.

    Salinger died Thursday. Roeder was convicted, justly and on his own chilling, matter-of-fact testimony, of first-degree murder in the vicious Kansas church shooting of Dr. George Tiller.

    What Salinger and Roeder had in common was a neurotic refusal to follow the social norms of humanity. Their mental wires were crossed, though in differing ways.

    Salinger, who landed in Normandy with the Army on D-Day, was mentally shaky for years. His extreme reaction to fame and "invasions of privacy" -- withdrawing from the world and writing only for himself after 1965 -- was understandable but deeply unfortunate. Hermitage may have given him some mental peace but was a loss to the rest of us. A thinking writer, which Salinger decidedly was, has a responsibility to share his or her insights with the world. Writing is not a masturbatory exercise. It is sharing or it is nothing. 

     Salinger's family and executors owe it to readers, to literature, to now publish Salinger's hidden works. Apparently he stopped short of burning them. Let us begin seeing them now, for better or worse. Salinger's literary reputation is safe forever.

     Roeder no doubt has a murderous form of mental illness -- delusions of grandeur and a cocksure sense that he is the savior of humanity with his gun of vengeance. His testimony that he had stalked Tiller for years, and had considered cutting off the doctor's hands, was stomach-turning. His moral and mental flaw, however, does not meet the legal definition of insanity. Roeder knew right from wrong. Otherwise, if he were so sure he had done a meritorious act, why would he have fled -- jumped in his car to drive hundreds of miles to escape? Why not drop the gun on the church floor, surrender and wait for the police to arrest him, instead of, as he testified, wrapping the murder weapon in a cloth and burying it in the woods, where it hasn't been found to this day? Roeder was nothing but a coward.

    Roeder, a roadside bomb on legs, was convicted of premeditated murder because he committed one of the most obvious premeditated murders in recent history. The judge validly ruled out the defense attempt to get the jurors to consider voluntary manslaughter. Kansas law defines that lesser degree of homicide as based on an unreasonable but honest belief that killing would prevent "imminent harm" to another. Imminent means right then, on the spot. Tiller was in church on a Sunday. Roeder entered a house of God to kill in the name of God, placing himself above God.

    I have a degree of compassion for functionally insane people, but only up to the point that they harm other people. There is no excuse for premeditated murder. How would anti-abortion zealots like it if abortion-rights supporters could walk up to them in a public place with loaded guns and blow their brains out over a political dispute? (If it's religion that puts voices in people's heads to kill, that is a clinching argument for atheism.)

    Rest in peace, the misguided J. D. Salinger. Do some thinking in prison if you can, Scott Roeder.

   

Paranoia and Loathing in Las Vegas

      Johnny Lee Wicks, 66, was an extremely screwed-up African-American retiree. Whether before or after he suffered a stroke, moved from California to lower-cost Nevada and had his monthly Social Security benefits reduced by $317 a month under the law, he blamed all his troubles on racism -- as hotheaded Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. did when a police officer had the nerve to investigate a report of a break-in at his house.

    Wicks would have been just another harmless paranoiac without his gloriously all-American access to a shotgun. Exercising his Second Amendment "rights," Wicks shot up the Las Vegas federal courthouse where his ridiculous, illiterate complaint alleging that Social Security had acted solely because he was black had been tossed out by judges. He killed a security guard and wounded another guard. Other guards chased Wicks across the street and killed him. He died in the bushes of an old school building.
   Violent events like this happen almost daily in gun-loving America. What drew my attention to this one was its setting. Years ago I had some sordid personal dealings with a federal official who probably works now in that downtown courthouse. When I read first reports of the gunfire I wondered whether that official had been hurt -- not that I would have wanted it, despite the unpleasantness of our old relationship (the unprincipled guy wrecked my first marriage). Luckily for this official, the brave guards protected his unworthy butt. He and all of us owe the guards our thanks for their courage in potentially facing inglourious basterds like Wicks every day.
    My only caveat here is that the slain guard was 72 and perhaps couldn't react quickly enough with his handgun to the sight of Wicks opening an overcoat and displaying the shotgun; maybe there should be a cutoff age for guards, or tests of Wild West gun-toting agility.
    What are the other lessons? Too many guns out there, too readily available to the crazily violent. Too much insanity among people who blame racism for their problems, when most of their problems probably were caused by failing to study in school. 

    Another great start to 2010.

South Carolina: The New California for Weirdness

     First it was the married Gov. Mark Sanford, caught "hiking the Appalachian Trail" -- translatable as visiting his Argentinian mistress, Maria Chapur Belen, in Buenos Aires -- on the South Carolina taxpayer's time.

     Next, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina bellowed "you lie!" at President Obama during a healthcare address to a joint session on Capitol Hill.
     So it comes as no surprise that it was a South Carolina man, Rodell Vereen, who was sentenced Wednesday to 3 years in prison for having sex with a horse. The conviction was on a charge of buggery.

    The horse was named Sugar, so presumably it was a mare. I'd hate to think of the alternative.   

    The horse's owner in Conway, S.C., videotaped Vereen in the act after, she said, she noticed her horse acting strangely. Turns out Vereen previously had been arrested in 2007 for sneaking into the stable for sex with the same horse. He was ordered to stay away from the stable, but apparently he had husbandly feelings. It's animal husbandry, if you ask me.

    Theatrical agents are descending on Vereen with offers for when he gets out of stir. Though he is said to have mental problems, he's a natural for the national touring company of "Who is Sylvia?", a play about a guy who's having sex with a goat. 

    Meanwhile, South Carolinians, those wonderful people who gave us Fort Sumter, are burying their heads in their manes -- uh, their hands. Migration to North Carolina is up by 20% this year.

Kill Your Kid for Your Culture

   Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, will be charged with murder in Peoria, Ariz., for running over his daughter with his Jeep in a parking lot because he thought the 20-year-old woman had become "too Westernized" and was bringing shame to the family -- presumably by dating a young man who was also of Arab background.

    Almaleki, an immigrant from Iraq, originally was charged with aggravated assault after the Oct. 20 attack on his daughter, Noor, put her in a coma. She died Monday and charges will be upped to murder, police say.    

     This type of "honor killing" is all too common abroad and also among the immigrants who import the concept when they come to the United States. To call it un-American is to understate the case. Killing your own children -- no matter what the reason -- should shock the conscience in those societies back home and doesn't belong even in those backward places, not to mention here.

   Almaleki himself apparently had become Westernized enough to flee to Britain after running down his daughter. If he was so proud of his "honor" crime, he should have stuck around and bragged about it. Instead, he showed up at Heathrow Airport, where authorities turned him around and put him on a plane to Atlanta. There he was arrested and brought back to Arizona.
    One point I want to make about this horrifying case is this: Here is a man who brought his family from Iraq to America -- to the West. Did he not expect Westernizing influences on his family here? If he was so hung up on Iraqi culture, why didn't he simply stay in Iraq? He should have known that America is a very different society from Iraq, especially when it comes to women's freedom.
    American consular officials who clear Iraqis for immigration here should sit them down at a seminar, teach them American mores and get them to sign pledges to abide by our laws and customs. If they don't agree, they don't get to come to America -- where parents are not legally considered to own their children to the extent of having life or death power over them.
     In short, Third Worlders from patriarchal cultures: If you don't like the West, stay in the East.

   

Fallout From the Tsunami in American Samoa

      The tsunami tragedy in American Samoa and Samoa is even worse news for fans of the National Football League. The South Pacific U.S. territory and neighboring sovereign nation are where all the linemen with the exotic names come from. I hope all those enormous guys could run fast enough to get to the high ground so they'll be around for next year's college recruiting and NFL draft.

Summer in Southern Vermont

     

WILMINGTON, Vermont -- Rain, endless clouds, lightning and thunder dominate the summer of 2009 in this friendly town of 2,000, midway between Bennington to the west and Brattleboro to the east.
      My wife Irma Hawkins and I arrived with our cat and two dogs on July 2. Since then, there has been but one day of unalloyed sunshine. We usually bring sunny weather with us from California for our eight-week stays here -- indeed, we are all but contractually obligated to do so, and our friends are duly grateful -- but this year, Jupiter Pluvius is the resident god in the Green Mountain State.
       Here is our lake under typical conditions this month:
        Still pretty, though, isn't it?
     This summer promises to be something short of idyllic. Aside from the problematic weather, my back hurts and I haven't been able to run my usual 5 miles on Highway 100, going north toward Canada. Carrying one of Irma's heavy steel sculptures up the stairs of our house in Venice, Calif., did me in. With luck and a few Tylenols, I hope to resume running tomorrow. Got to get ready for next April's Boston Marathon.
      Speaking of Boston, we arrived at Logan International Airport there after a red-eye flight from L.A. As we drove our rented SUV (an excellent Ford Edge) out of town on I-90, the rain was coming down in such torrents that we could barely see Fenway Park's Green Monster wall off to our left. As we moved northwest to our destination, 144 miles away, the rain let up. But new storms moved in later, and still more after that.
       Luckily, most of the Fourth of July was clear, allowing us to view the all-American small-town parade up in Wardsboro, Vt., a 25-mile drive from Wilmington, and also Wilmington's public fireworks display that night amid a bundled-up crowd. Here is a photo from the parade:
       That's the Grafton (Vermont) Cornet Band. There were antique cars, homemade floats, booths selling homemade apple pies. The real Vermont. There's no place like it.
     The price you pay for small-town life is the need to drive at least 20 miles to find goods and services that you need. As near as I can figure, for example, Wilmington has no dry cleaner. For big-box stores, there's the Walmart in Hinsdale, N.H., which I try to avoid on ideological grounds, and the giant malls of Keene, N.H., a 35-mile drive. We hit Keene yesterday and came home with a new printer, a photo tripod, clothes from Target and T. J. Maxx
      In recompense for our remoteness, we get quiet, time to read, time to think, time to catch up with old friends and help them with their troubles as they have helped us in the past.
      That's life at a summer place. Life in Vermont. It lives and thrives, rain be damned. And even in the height of a lightning storm, there is unparalleled natural beauty in how it lights up the lake.

The Manatee's Seasonal Migration

   

As of Thursday, July 2, The Inquiring Manatee's home waters will shift for the summer from the human-made canals of Venice, Calif., to the human-made Lake Whitingham, Vermont. Let's see if this blog's perspective changes as it moves East.
    Wish the Manatee luck with the weather, please. Manatees, native to the Sunshine State of Florida, don't particularly like a lot of rain, and that is what the East, and New England in particular, has been having this year.

Pet Pronunciation Peeve: "Cregg," "Creggslist"

   

My teeth were on edge this morning as I heard KPCC-FM's superb talk show host, Larry Mantle, presiding over a discussion of the controversy over the "erotic services" offerings on Craigslist, which apparently have led to one or two murders of people who advertised their availability for hanky-panky. About half the time, Mantle properly pronounced the web site as "CRAYGSlist," but he also followed the nails-on-a-blackboard trend of pronouncing "Craig" as "Cregg" and, therefore, calling the site "Creggslist."
    When did CRAYG turn into CREGG? The bizarre habit seems to have started about 25 years ago and to have embedded itself in American culture. I can't see any reason for it. It's jarring and silly. "Craig," properly pronounced, is a perfectly fine and honorable name, and easy enough to say.
     If somebody wants to call himself Cregg, he can jolly well spell it "Cregg." (There's an affable, veteran Washington, D.C., journalist named Cragg Hines who works for a Texas newspaper. I don't know any Creggs.) If you see the name spelled "Craig," pronounce it in the traditional way as "Crayg." That goes for Craigslist.
   Whew! Feels good to get that off my chest at last.
    

Supporting the Airline "Fat Tax"

   

We've all had the nightmare flight where the fleshy forearm and giant thigh of the oversized woman or man in the next coach seat intruded into our space, slopping over the armrest and leaving us to scrunch in a miserable corner. You don't know true hatred until you've had moments like that.
     I've thought of asking enormous seatmates to fork over cash on the spot to reimburse me for a proportion of the cost of my ticket. Alas, I've been too polite to make a fuss.
     Now, the airlines are taking their own vengeance. Starting with Southwest and now spreading to United and other carriers, airlines are asking the severely overweight who can't fit into a standard coach seat to pay for two seats.
    From the airlines' viewpoint, it's not just that these passengers are ruining another passenger's flying experience (United says it received 700 complaints from squeezed passengers last year); they're also causing the plane to burn more jet fuel, which isn't cheap these days. It's discrimination, sure, but not without a valid reason.
    Call it a penalty, call it a punishment, call it a "fat tax." Under whatever name, the plus-sizes are squawking. As for me, I back the airlines. The need to pay extra, take a less crowded flight or upgrade to roomier seats will encourage the overweight to eat less, or even, God help us, to get some exercise. (Confession: I'm a skinny distance runner and a hopeless snob about fitness.) The same social message that smokers get when they're exiled from office buildings and barrooms -- change your habits -- is now landing on the willpower-challenged.
     But what about people who are fit but very tall and naturally large? They could be exempted from the extra charge, but it's a moot point. Passengers fitting this description are all NBA or NFL players. They make so much money that they can afford to fly business class or first class.
     I'm sorry if corpulent folks are offended, but there's a certain rough justice to the double-charging policy. Work harder on your diet, try bariatric surgery or do something aerobic. Of course, you also can choose to stay the same wonderful (if misunderstood) person you are and avoid humiliation by booking a business-class seat. It's literally the price of bigness, and you'll have a nicer flight. So will your fellow travelers.