Reflection on The Enigma of Clarence Thomas by Corey Robin

               In this book, Corey Robin investigates Clarence Thomas’ jurisprudence through three lenses: race, capitalism, and the Constitution. Robin is a liberal, and he offers a critical look at Thomas’ opinions, though I think he also does a good job of explaining them in a fair way. I finished the book with a greater understanding of and more respect for the Supreme Court justice. You learn a lot about Thomas the judge and Thomas the person because his upbringing, according to Robin, had a big effect on his philosophy.

               Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia and lived in that community until he was about seven years old, when his family moved to Savannah. He lived the rest of his childhood and teenage years there before moving to Massachusetts to study at and desegregate Holy Cross College. Robin writes that, “In college, Thomas wore a Panthers-style leather jacket and beret. He sported Black Power buttons, including one that said, “No Vietnamese ever called me Nigger” (attributed, wrongly, to Muhammad Ali). He signed his letters “Power to the People.” He championed the cause of Black Panther leaders and of Communist Party member Angela Davis, in flight from the government after being charged in connection with a politically fraught kidnapping and murder.” He was truly a radical on the left wing of the Democratic Party. But during college, he became disillusioned with liberal ideas for race relations. He decided that racism would always exist and that he preferred the racism of the South, which was obvious and apparent, to the racism of the North, which was hidden. He preferred that cruel honesty.

               Thomas is not a big believer in integration if he believes in it at all. For example, he dissented in one case in which the Court ruled against racial segregation in California prisons. Thomas argued in his dissent that it is reasonable to respond to the social reality of racism by segregating prisoners, which he thinks keeps them safe. Thomas sees separation as necessary to black success. He points out that under Jim Crow, blacks could become successful and develop their own capitalist middle class. Under integration, they ended up buying most products from white people. He would perhaps support optional integration, rather than the legally enforced integration of Brown v Board. Thomas is quoted when speaking of his own youth that, “the problem with segregation was not that we didn’t have white people in our class. The problem was that we didn’t have equal facilities. We didn’t have heating, we didn’t have books, and we had rickety chairs.… All my classmates and I wanted was the choice to attend a mostly black or a mostly white school, and to have the same resources in whatever school we chose.” The author Corey Robin writes, partially quoting Thomas that, “Thomas believes that the very fact of race mixing can be a harm to black people. When white liberals trumpet the benefits of diversity—thinking mostly of the white students who will go on to lead a diverse society, or of abject black students in desperate need of exposure to the mind and manners of whites—they overlook the fact that ‘racial (and other sorts of) heterogeneity actually impairs learning among black students.’” I understand Thomas’ perspective as trying to get out from under the system to create a parallel, rather than rising up within the system. It makes me think of Jews and Native Americans, who tend to be pushed out, rather than just down in white society.

               There’s a really strong theme in the book of the powerful and defiant black patriarch, which Robin sources to Thomas’ maternal grandfather, Myles Anderson. He respected that his grandfather created his own business and succeeded under Jim Crow and developed a preference for a free market, entrepreneurial economy, because black businesses offer ways to achieve autonomy and control. Thomas recalls his grandfather telling him that, “Once you accept [aid from the government] they can ask you whatever they want to. They can tell you whatever they want to. They can come into your home whenever they want to. They can tell you who can come and who can go, and I’d prefer to starve to death first,” and that “I never took a penny from the government because it takes your manhood away.” Robin says that Thomas’ goal is to persuade black people and especially black men to give up the idea that politics can improve their situation since they are such a small part of the population and to focus their effort on the economy, which offers African Americans more opportunities. This is where I really couldn’t understand Thomas, since the economy and politics are so closely tied together. Power in one is inherently tied to power in the other. I do, however, understand the basic idea of manhood and why taking government money can diminish that. That idea of the “defiant black patriarch” as Robin calls it comes into Thomas’ analysis of the Second Amendment. Robin writes that, “When white conservatives think of the right to bear arms, they imagine sturdy white colonials firing their muskets at redcoats and then mustering in militias, or modern-day whites guarding their doorways against government tyranny and black criminals. Thomas sees black slaves arming themselves against their masters; black freedmen defending their rights against white terrorists; and black men protecting their families from a residual and regnant white supremacy.”

               This is a highly recommendable book to anyone interested in Thomas or constitutional law. Thomas has very unique opinions on the law and is at least interesting to probe what they are for someone like me who doesn’t really agree. He seems to be an impressive thinker, though the book still leaves me with doubts. For example, if Thomas doesn’t believe in a government role in helping black people, why is he so accepting in a government role in punishing and harming them? I suppose he views the government, even in racist actions, as improving people by punishing them, but it feels inconsistent to me. This is a great book that is very clearly written. I really liked Robin’s style and he made case law come to life.

Reflection on Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time by Jeff Speck

               In Walkable City, Jeff Speck, an urban planning consultant, lays out lots of different techniques cities can use to improve their walkability and why that is a worthwhile effort. For example, in a city without walking, the social scene is only accessible by invitation. There are no chance encounters on the street when you’re in a car. Many people want ow live in walkable downtowns but cannot afford to. Speck cites on study that finds that 47% of people would prefer to live in a city or in a city or a suburban neighborhood with a mix of houses, shops, and businesses and only one in ten say they would want to live in a neighborhood with houses only. Clearly, walkable spaces are very desirable. Speck quotes the former mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, who says, “God made us walking animals—pedestrians. As a fish needs to swim, a bird to fly, a deer to run, we need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy.

               Speck lays out “The Ten Steps of Walkability” and spends over half the book explaining them. They are organized as The Useful Walk (Rules 1-4), The Safe Walk (5-6), The Comfortable Walk (7-8), and The Interesting Walk (9-10):

• Put Cars in their Place
• Car ownership means a lot of fixed costs. Just getting the car is the most expansive part and even with high gas prices, $4.00 a gallon will just never feel as much as the $18,000 you just spent on the car. The cost of an individual trip will not really keep a driver home since they already are paying up front, so a city that wants to be walkable just needs to make certain areas off-limits from drivers and/or stop trying to fight congestion. The more you fight congestion the more people drive.
• Mix the Uses
• There needs to be a balance in cities of housing to shopping to working so that people can reach the gym, the park, their kids’ school, and their job within maybe a half an hour walking or using public transit.
• Get the Parking Right
• Speck quotes one of his friends who says that, “parking is destiny.” If a city builds lots of parking, people will drive. If it doesn’t, they won’t. It takes up a lot of land and kills walkability since no one likes walking across a big parking lot.
• Let Transit Work
• Without good transit you can only have a few good walkable neighborhoods. A walkable city needs to invest in its transit to get people out of cars and around the city on foot. Something kind of disappointing is that better transit doesn’t reduce traffic. The only way to reduce traffic is to reduce the size of roads, making it worse and getting people off the road.
• Protect the Pedestrian
• It is very obvious, but protecting pedestrians means shortening the size of blocks, cutting down the width of car lanes, changing the geometry of roads when possible, and putting barriers between drivers and walkers like cement bollards, trees, or a row of parallel-parked cars.
• Welcome Bikes
• Bikeability makes driving less necessary and goes hand in hand with walkability.
• Shape the Spaces
• There needs to be balance in public spaces. People want to be able to see a long way but to also fee enclosed. Think of Central Park- in a park that big, it’s nice to have tall buildings around it. In a smaller park, those buildings would feel like a cage, but not so in a bigger park.
• Plant Trees
• Trees have huge value as barriers that protect pedestrian, actors against the urban heat island effect, and just look beautiful in a city.
• Make Friendly and Unique Faces
• The enemies of lively streetscapes, says Speck, are parking lots, drugstores, and star architects, all of whom favor blank walls. Beautiful and detailed facades invite more walking.
• Pick Your Winners
• Cities should be realistic about which streets and neighborhoods to make walkable. No city is 100% walkable and there are always uninviting neighborhoods. Cities should not try to make everywhere walkable but rather focus on the few places with the most potential.

In sum, this is a great book with really amazing facts and interesting ideas for changing cities for the better. For example, Washington, D.C. gives pedestrians five second head start on lights so that they can claim the crosswalk. Some cities are paring down roads with two driving, one left turn, and one right turning lanes down to three because it is actually no more efficient to have the second driving lane. This opens up more space on the sides. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in cities, transit, and psychology.

Reflection on Margaret Thatcher (The Authorized Biography): Volume One: Not for Turning by Charles Moore

               This is the second multi-volume biography that I have begun since picking up the Lyndon Johnson series by Robert Caro. Charles Moore is similarly meticulous and detailed in his writing and I found his first volume to be illuminating with respect to the United Kingdom of the 1950s-80s, the economic difficulties confronting the country in the late 70s and early 80s, and the Falklands War. This book begins with Thatcher’s girlhood and takes the reader through her rise in the first half through school and politics. In the second half, I would say that Moore covers three distinct but related climaxes in Thatcher’s life. The first is the 1979 Parliamentary election. The second is the economic crisis that Thatcher and her team weathered. But these two are really just the buildup for the true culmination of the book’s action: the Falklands War, which takes up the last two chapters and about 150 pages of the book. While it had its boring parts, I really enjoyed the book. It is sympathetic to Thatcher but not sycophantic. I would say that it seems like as fair a portrayal of various actors as you can get in a book written essentially from Thatcher’s view. That is to say that the author explains all of Thatcher’s thoughts, actions, and reasoning without going too deeply into the lives of others.

On A Personal Level

               Thatcher was from a middle-class and proper family in Grantham, England. While she could never truly fit in with the aristocracy that led the Conservative Party, she always aspired to be one of them. She probably had some sort of a superiority complex as a girl, being remembered by her contemporaries as someone who had grades at the top of the class but was not above rubbing it in. For all her intelligence, she had little self-knowledge. The author reflects on how strange it is for him to analyze Thatcher so deeply when it appears as if she never or only rarely did so herself. She consciously avoided introspection and tried to keep busy with clear tasks and solid goals.

               Margaret Thatcher was always very religious. Moore writes that, “And to the end of her life she retained the words of scores of the classic English hymns in her mind. At Denis’s [her husband] funeral in July 2003, when her anguish and mental confusion were such that she was not sure whether it was her husband’s or her father’s coffin in front of her, she was seen to sing all the hymns, word-perfect, without looking at the service sheet.” The author himself was a witness to this.

               It seems like her relationship with her husband, Denis Thatcher, was not particularly passionate. She had also been seeing another man while she saw him but picked Denis because he was younger (though still older than her) and was serious about marriage. Denis remembered later that when he proposed, “She didn’t leap at it.” She concealed her engagement during the 1951 election, as engagement was considered the end of a woman’s career at the time. Despite having twins in 1953, the young Margaret Thatcher (28 when she gave birth to Mark and Carol) had no intentions of ending her political career. Both Margaret and Denis Thatcher expressed regrets later in life that they had not given more attention to the twins when they were children. With Margaret’s political career and Denis’ business travels, the children were mostly raised by a nanny.

               Her relationship with her parents was explored pretty deeply in the first third of the book. Her mother died in 1960 and it seems like Margaret did not grieve much for her. The author says that Margaret had probably consciously tried not to be like her mother, who was very much a stereotypical housewife. Moore writes, “This context, perhaps, helps to explain her remarkably frank comment to Winn about the mother who had died only a few months earlier: ‘I loved my mother dearly but after I was 15 we had nothing more to say to each other. It wasn’t her fault. She was weighed down by the home, always being in the home.’ There can be no doubt of her desire to escape some of her background, particularly that part which, had she stayed in Grantham, would have circumscribed her because of her sex. To her father, even as she forgot to send him a birthday present, she paid tribute. ‘He made me read widely,’ she told Winn, ‘and for that I owe him everything.’” She also did not have much patience for her mourning father, who was staying at her and her sister’s houses. It seems like she just didn’t have a lot of time for personal and familial relationships.

Her Rise to Power

               Thatcher first got on the Conservative list in 1949 for eligibility in the 1950 election. In the British system, the parties interview and choose all their own candidates, so it is critical to be chosen and to be selected for a friendly constituency. Margaret was lucky enough to meet and make a good impression on John Grant, who was an influential Conservative in the constituency of Dartford. She was just 23 years old when they met. Unfortunately for her, it was a strong Labour constituency, and despite doing far better than expected and shaving 6,000 votes off the Labour incumbent’s lead, she lost by a significant margin. There was another election in 1951 in which Thatcher (then Roberts), concealing her engagement to fiancé Denis, lost again, though shaving the Labour lead by another 1,300 votes.

               With her new last name under which she would become widely known, Margaret Thatcher (nee Roberts) studied and practiced law, being called to the Bar in February 1954. After some years practicing law, Thatcher got onto the Conservative list for the Finchley constituency and won. Always a strong speaker and a good candidate, she increased the Conservative majority in the constituency and won handily. By 1961, she was a minister, serving as the parliamentary under-secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, perhaps because it was seen as a “womanlier” post. In 1964, the Conservatives went into the opposition, which must have stung for Thatcher as she lost her job. Despite that setback, she continued to perform well and gain recognition for her youth, ambition, and effectiveness. In October 1967, party leader Edmund Heath made her shadow minister for fuel and power. In 1970, thanks to a Conservative victory, Thatcher entered  the true cabinet for the first time, not just the shadow cabinet. She was to be Education Secretary from 1970-74.

               Thatcher got in trouble when she tried to cut free milk in British schools to save money, which did not end up happening due to popular resistance, and afterwards she was nicknamed “milksnatcher.” She looked even worse when she toured a school on TV and talked to students about silver breakfast spoons as if they were normal to have in the home. She was looking bad. That said, her perception inside of the Conservative party was getting quite good. The Heath government from 1970-74 was not a very right-wing government, and many backbenchers grew frustrated at the fact that they weren’t cutting the size of the state. When the Conservatives lost in 1973 and Labour took over in 1974, a movement began to push the party to the right. Thatcher, then the new Environment Shadow Secretary, was not involved, but may have been secretly harboring ambitions, as she certainly sympathized with the right wing of the party.

               Originally, Margaret Thatcher wanted a mentor of hers, Keith Joseph, to replace Edmund Heath, but Joseph was soon out of the running due to a poor speech. With Joseph out, she decided to go for it, urged on by the right wingers. She had Airey Neaves, another MP, run her campaign to become Leader of the Opposition. The guy was good. One typical trick that the author puts down is this: Neaves says to an MP, “Margaret assumed you must have turned down a job offer from Ted [Heath].” The MP asks, “Why?” And Neaves tells him, “Oh, because you so obviously should have one if you want it.” Thatcher won on the second ballot, and in 1975 became the leader of the Conservative Party, shocking the world who knew the Conservatives to be stuffy, sexist, and elitist. It was very surprising to see a middle-class-born woman, then, leading the party. It was really a huge deal to have a major party led by a woman in 1975, especially the Conservatives, and Moore does a really good job of analyzing the role that her gender played in Thatcher’s leadership.

               Thatcher brought in a lot of old enemies within the party into her cabinet. I think that this makes a lot more sense in the UK system since the “government” is a much more united group that rises and falls together. A new PM will not find it very hard to get the loyalty of their own cabinet versus a President of the United States would with the leaders of the legislative branch. It was also useful to Thatcher to keep people in place since she didn’t have many followers from earlier. She didn’t really have anyone to bring in. She also didn’t reshape the civil service, choosing to let it remain as it was. Moore writes that she met with difficulties in leadership due to a “cultural gulf” between her and more aristocratic members, her gender, and her high need for privacy. All of these things cut her off from fellow party members and leaders. That said, she had at least one great strength: “She had a burning sense of mission.” She was ideological and her clear philosophy served as a guide for her and for the Conservative Party for the next 15 years. As a leader, her overwhelming hunger for ideas led to a huge movement toward the right in the Conservative party. It was simple. “Thatcher was the most clamorous customer in the ideological marketplace.” Young policy wonks did not find the left of the Conservatives or the Labour party looking for new research and ideas, but they did find Mrs. Thatcher. When it came time to do research or get a job at a think tank, they went right-wing.

               The Conservatives benefitted from the breakdown occurring in the late 70s between public sector unions and the Labour Party. The fundamental promise of Labour government was that its connections to unions and workers meant no labor strikes, yet these happened regularly in the late 70s. Industry was in uproar over pay increases not keeping up with inflation and it was an awkward situation as Labour found itself in management. In 1979, the Conservatives delivered defeat to Labour, winning 339 seats against Labour’s 269.

Economic Difficulties and the Budget of 1981

               Britain had been struggling economically for years and went into recession in the early 1980s. The Conservatives focused on trying to defeat inflation and allowed unemployment to reach 3 million, its highest level since the 1930s. They managed to get inflation down from 18% to 8% in 1982. They passed through difficult times though and in December 1980, Thatcher’s approval rating dropped to its lowest at 23%. Compared to Reagan, Thatcher was more serious about deficits and less-so about tax cuts. While the Americans ran huge deficits to pay for tax cuts, Thatcher was much more serious on deficits and seriously worried about Reagans high spending habits.

               1981 was a bad year. In July there were riots in major cities and budget cuts during the recession were very unpopular. Despite that, she and her Chancellor of the Exchequer were united and stood firm on the budget. At this difficult time, the Prime Minister received a document from her research group titled, “Your Political Survival.” Moore writes, “The ‘blockbuster’ was quite possibly the bluntest official document ever seen in Downing Street. Although it recognized that ‘your Government has achieved the beginnings of a near-revolution in the private sector and especially in Industry,’ and ‘things in the economy are better than people realise,’ the note warned that ‘it is exactly at this moment that colleagues’ nerves begin to crack and internal revolt (now clearly recognised in all the newspapers), threatens your own position.’ Hoskyns told her that ‘Your own credibility and prestige are draining away very fast.’ The most likely outcome was ‘you as another failed Tory prime minister sitting with Heath’, but it was a serious possibility that she would be simply thrown out before the next election. He then listed her faults. ‘You lack management competence’ was the headline of one paragraph. ‘Your own leadership style is wrong’ was another. He warmed to his theme: ‘You break every rule of good man-management. You bully your weaker colleagues. You criticise colleagues in front of each other and in front of their officials. They can’t answer back without appearing disrespectful, in front of others, to a woman and to a Prime Minister. You abuse that situation. You give little praise or credit, and you are too ready to blame others when things go wrong.’ ‘The result’, the next paragraph was headed, ‘is an unhappy ship’: ‘This demoralisation is hidden only from you. People are beginning to feel that everything is a waste of time, another Government is on its way to footnotes of history. And people are starting to speculate as to who might reunite the Party, as Macmillan did after Suez, if you go. But no-one tells you what is happening, just as no-one told Ted.’ To survive, ‘you have an absolute duty to change the way you operate.’” Thatcher reshuffled her cabinet and stayed afloat. By 1983 the economy was improving but she was politically saved before then by a foolish Argentinean dictator.

The Falklands Invasion

               Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands came with little warning for Britain. While there had been some disputes for many years where Britain seemed to signal willingness to transfer the islands to Argentina, it had not happened, frustrating Argentina. The Islands had been British since 1833 and were settled by 1,800 English-speaking people. Most leaders wanted to use diplomacy to resolve the invasion but Thatcher, in her gut, did not want to do that at all. She was helped by the fact that Argentina’s junta was a fascist regime, so the Labour Party, led by Michael Foot, had nothing good to say about them. It put the United States in an awkward situation as an ally of both countries.

               On the diplomacy front, the UK was able to pass Security Council Resolution 502, which called for the “immediate withdrawal” of Argentine forces and urged both sides to come to a peaceful and diplomatic resolution. Meanwhile, Britain prepared for war. They met with initial failure, as helicopters crashed on a glacier in South Georgia, though none died. Initially thinking that as many as 17 men were dead, Thatcher wept. Upon hearing the better news, she was relieved, but disturbed that the crash could be an omen of further failure. British submarines started to attack Argentine destroyers armed with Exocet missiles and managed to clear a way for an amphibious landing. Throughout the operations, Britain systematically offered terms to Argentinean dictator Galtieri, and when he refused them, they published the documents, embarrassing Argentina. British ships were sunk, but after the landing, British soldiers won back the islands, taking 11,000 Argentine troops captive. 255 British servicemen died along with 649 Argentines, and three Falkland Islanders. Argentina never abandoned its claim to sovereignty but didn’t cause any more problems until the 21^st century, when oil was discovered.  As a result of the debacle, Galtieri’s government fell.

               Moore writes that the Falklands crisis brought out the Prime Minister’s best qualities: her courage, conviction, and resolution are well known, but also in evidence were her careful judgment and restriction of her own passion for fighting, her modest approach in which she listened to others, and her lack of vanity. While on other occasions she could be long-winded, she started no digressions during this crisis. Thatcher would later judge individuals based on where they were during the crisis. Ronald Reagan, French President Mitterand, Chilean dictator Pinochet, New Zealand Prime Minister Muldoon, and King Hussein of Jordan were all foreign leaders who gained her respect. Moore writes that, “The British Antarctic Survey, who had advised her on the terrain, became such favourites that not only did she ensure they received more government money, she also listened to them when, years later, they warned of the damage to the ozone layer caused by pollution.” The PM also gained “a soft spot” for Leader of the Opposition Michael Foot, who she thought had been patriotic. By projecting force 8,000 miles across the sea, she forced the USSR to recognize the will and capacity of the West.

Her Relationship with Ronald Reagan

               Ronald Reagan, in preparation for his 1976 presidential run, went to a few foreign countries to improve his foreign policy credentials. In the UK, he was sure to visit Thatcher on April 9^th, 1975. Denis Thatcher had seen Reagan speak in 1969 and gave him high praise. They had only planned to meet for 45 minutes but stayed to talk for an hour and a half. Thatcher recalled being won over by his charm and Reagan recalled that it was immediately evident that they “were soul mates when it came to reducing government and expanding freedom.”

               When she won the premiership in 1979, Reagan was the first foreign politician to call her. Since he wasn’t too important at the time, the switchboard didn’t even put him through, though they managed to talk a few days later. Always close, it seems like Thatcher was the dominant partner in the relationship. Everything I read about Reagan, this book included, seems to suggest a general lack of respect from others regarding his knowledge of the issues. A great leader and communicator, he was out of his element when discussing specific policy issues and Thatcher exploited this to get her way.

Conclusion

               This meticulously researched book is very well-written and an engaging portrait of the early years of the future Prime Minister and her early challenges in the important role. I really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Miscellaneous Facts

• The first time Thatcher was called the “Iron Lady” was in Red Star, the newspaper of the Russian Red Army. They were trying to insult her by comparing her with Bismarck, known as “The Iron Chancellor,” but she liked the nickname and took it as her own.
• Politicians in Britain bring some of their own staff, but most are staffed by the civil service and the party.
• In 1982, Mark Thatcher, the PM’s son went missing when on a race through the deserts of Algeria. He was thought missing but found after a few days in his broken-down car.

Reflection on Astroball: The New Way to Win It All by Ben Reiter

               Astroball is a business-data-baseball book that is directly inspired by Moneyball, which detailed the first efforts by a major league team to integrate data science into its process. Astroball is sort of a follow up from 10-15 years later as the Astros integrate the Moneyball analytics sweeping the league with the gut intelligence of their scouts and other immeasurable factors to rise from the ashes to become a championship team. Reiter says that Astros GM Jeff Luhnow did not see scouts and analytics as an either/or competition, despite the fact that conflict emerged. He saw each as a way to complement the other.

               A crucial intangible that may be the next frontier in data measurements is the effect of certain personalities in the clubhouse. For the Astros, a major key to their World Series Championship season in 2017 was 40-year-old veteran Carlos Beltran. Beltran was not at the peak of his career anymore, but he used his baseball knowledge to make other players better. He spent hours watching tape of pitchers and analyzing all their movements to see if they had a tell that would “tip” what pitches they were going to throw. He would share his discoveries with teammates, an improvement not often reflected in any statistic. As a bilingual player, he was especially helpful. He would advise Spanish-speaking teammates on how to handle post-game interviews and serve as a bridge between players. A player who not only speaks two languages but wants to serve as a friendly connection between those two worlds is a huge asset to a team beyond their batting average.

               Some of what is suggested about the future is a little strange. For example, two professors who worked with the Astros and now work with NASA on the effects of various personalities on a team want to install cameras in the clubhouse to analyze every interaction and conversation. They would even like to use biometric devices to record stress levels and heart rates to better study the interactions. While I’m sure that interesting data could be gained, it doesn’t look good for the future of people’s privacy. Despite that, the book ends by telling us that “there would always be a role for gut feels.” I would say that this is true but remember that gut feels aren’t based on nothing. Our intuition is based on connecting what we already know, so collecting data only makes our gut decisions better. At the edge of quantitative data, there must always be an interpreter.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Not even ten percent of the baseball players drafted will ever step onto a major league field for a single inning.

Reflection on Do What You Are (Fifth Edition): Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type by Paul D. Tieger, Barbara Barron, and Kelly Tieger

               This was a book all about how to pick a career through the Myers-Briggs Test. I got ENTJ and learned a bit about the personality type. I feel like these types have interesting results, but that it ends up like astrology where you can basically justify whatever answer you get. That said, I identified with my type and found it interesting. The book advises me to “Slow down, focus on the details, and tune into others’ needs.” I think I do the third well, but I could work on the first two. It says that I will be happiest in independent or leadership positions where I can do analysis.

Reflection on Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United by Zephyr Teachout

               Zephyr Teachout’s Corruption in America asserts that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States have been marked by the return of corruption that had been strongly legislated against by the founders. Teachout argues that modern definitions of corruption require far too high a threshold for proof of bribery and other crimes. I am obviously given to agree with her. In an age when Hilary Clinton gave speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars and Donald Trump hosts his the G7 at his own hotel, the United States’ political scene is dominated by open corruption.

               One important source of corruption is the job of an American ambassador. From early times, ambassadors have accepted gifts from the heads of state where they lived. In the early USA, this was considered corrupt and banned, since while accepting a gift from a foreign head of state does not prove corruption, it certainly gets into dangerous territory. It is a crucial part of Teachout’s argument that the founders therefore understood corruption as something that can occur without any quid pro quo agreement that explicitly states what will be given and received. However, even today ambassador appointments are given politically so that only major donors can get the best ones. Teachout points out that while Justice Antonin Scalia has stated that there has always been a quid pro quo requirement to prove corruption or bribery, the phrase was not mentioned in relation to corruption until the 1970s, with the Buckley v Valeo case.

               One major problem of corruption is that under common law, bribery is something considered to taint the judiciary branch, but not the legislative. While common law developed protections against payment to a judge, it was long considered that Parliament would deal with its own people, something that transitioned over into the American system. The result is that few laws have existed to monitor the legislative branch, showing that legislators in America have not exactly been eager to regulate themselves.

               In the 19^th century, there were many cases that upheld the right of the government to restrict and even ban lobbying, as Georgia did in 1877. While the laws were never directly struck down, they were slowly chipped away into meaninglessness. First, state courts started to call lobbying contracts professional contracts instead of selling personal influence. Second, judges stopped ruling on the moral content of contracts and acted more as impersonal arbitrators, taking the default approach that lobbying contracts were legitimate. Third, the general view of the first amendment began to change to allow spending to count as speech.

               The 1976 Supreme Court case Buckley v Valeo was critical in changing the laws to allow for greater spending by non-persons in politics. It ruled that spending money on elections is a First Amendment right, that campaign contributions are presumptively valid, and that campaign expenditure limits are presumptively invalid. While it acknowledged that in the name of stopping corruption it may be important to infringe somewhat on these new “rights,” that has not happened much since. Things got really bad in 1999 when the court ruled that over $5,000 gifts given by the company Sun Diamond to the Secretary of Agriculture could not be proven to be bribery since they could not be conclusively connected to favor that the secretary gave to the company during his tenure. So even though the acts may happen on both ends, the law now required an explicit statement of the trade. Teachout writes that, “Sun Diamond makes it nearly impossible to prove a violation of the gratuities statute for any gift given before an official action.”

               With the Citizens United case, which gained a lot of infamy, the Court ruled that the First Amendment protects speech regardless of the identity of the speaker. It also found that “no sufficiently important countervailing governmental or constitutional goal was served by limiting corporate political advertising.” Teachout writes that nowadays, “corruption does not include undue influence and cannot flow from donors trying to influence policy through campaign contributions, unless these donors are utterly crass.” Basically, the court has accepted that all citizens will be very selfish and that the richest may have the privilege of purchasing policies that benefit them. This is hugely harmful to our democracy as it defeats the idea that all people should have an equal hand in the political process.

               Teachout defines corruption as any instance where public funds are used for private gain. She argues that SCOTUS, which used to have many more members who had been in elective offices, no longer appreciates the corrupting influence that campaign donations have on a politician. They accept the corruption as something inevitable when it is not. Teachout advocates public financing of all elections and trustbusting against monopolies as ways to cut corruption out of public life.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• The Tillman Act of 1907 banned corporations from contributing to political campaigns

Reflection on GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation by Deborah Dash Moore

               This is a really cool book that I picked up on Yom Kippur about the Jewish men who served the United States in World War II. It covers the gamut of the ways they thought about themselves and the war and the ways that they were perceived by their fellow servicemen. There were obviously stereotypes to be overcome and anti-Semitism but there was also support from their fellow soldiers and many transformed in a way to become both more American and more Jewish.

               One example of an event that made many men more Jewish was the discovery of the Nazi death camps. One soldier described entering Mauthausen as his “bar mitzvah, his emancipation, his baptism all rolled into one.” It hit him that he would be a Jew for the rest of his life as he met the suffering people inside the camp. Another noteworthy incident mentioned in the book happened to another Jewish soldier. In Paris on leave after the war had ended in Europe, he found a group of Parisians chanting “Down with the Jews,” opposing the right of Jews to return to their old homes and properties from before the war. He would be inspired to help create a Jewish state so that the Jews could be treated as an equal among the nations. He sent guns to Israel as they waged war against the Arab states that sought to drive the Jews into the sea. This was a really great book filled with interesting anecdotes. It is very readable and recommendable.

Miscellaneous Facts:

• September 1939, the same month that Hitler invaded Poland, also began a new century in the Jewish calendar, 5700.

Reflection on A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

               So this book is really just a continuation of A Feast for Crows (AFFC), which had been the same book until Martin split them up. I think it’s really a masterpiece as Martin takes us mainly to Essos and the North, following Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen above all others. It really feels like Daenerys’ biggest book since A Game of Thrones (AGOT) and she goes through more big transformations in her character. The book also follows Tyrion on his adventures across Essos to Meereen. I’m going to write about four big characters who did not appear in AFFC.

Daenerys’ Story

               I think that of the major characters in the book, Daenerys has the most interesting storyline in ADWD. I am mainly just a sucker for her as a character and she is my favorite, but I think that the final chapter of the book is such a good culmination of her arc. I think that while in Westeros the first three books are one comprehensive story, for Daenerys it is different. In AGOT, she transforms from a weak little princess, sold by her own brother to the Dothraki, to a khaleesi, to a widow, to the mother of dragons. In ACOK, she is tested in Qarth by temptations to go east and by the House of the Undying and comes out triumphant. In ASOS, she finally becomes a conqueror, freeing the slaves in Slaver’s Bay. In ADWD, she struggles with ruling over her city until finally she flies away with Drogon into the Dothraki Sea, where she has major revelations about who she is. I think that with this book ends one major story in her life and begins the next.

               In the Dothraki Sea, she finds that Drogon has made his own little home there in the place where he was born. Daenerys realizes that like Drogon, she needs to return to the place she was born. If the parallel wasn’t clear enough, she names the cave where he had been living for the whole book and where he took her “Dragonstone.” After some time there, she decides to leave without Drogon and goes walking in the Dothraki Sea. She reflects that in Daznak’s Pit only her hair was burnt and that she was unharmed by the dragonfire. That early part of the chapter is spent in her thoughts on the scene in the pit, the flight from Meereen, and the people who awaited her in the city.

               Then, she is visited by Quaithe, who tells her, “Remember who you are Daenerys. The dragons know. Do you?” Quaithe reminds he of the riddle about to go north, go south etc. Daenerys then dreams of Viserys. He is cruel to her and blames her for his death. He tells her that he would have taught their enemies the meaning of “fire and blood.” She awakens with her thighs “slick with blood.” Does this mean that she can bear children again? She thinks of Jorah, who also tells her that she should remember who she is and remember her words. These three visitors: Quaithe, Viserys, and Jorah all make it clear that Daenerys must embrace the destructive power of dragons. But is that a good thing? Was Daenerys so wrong in ADWD to try to plant seeds and create peace? As we saw in the show, her embrace of the Targaryen words will lead to huge destruction. By “remembering who she is,” Daenerys may achieve all she ever wanted but at a great cost. At the end of the visit by Jorah, Drogon finds Daenerys in the grass. She is then discovered by Khal Jhaqo’s khalasar, but the situation is very different from the show. In the show, she was alone. This time she has her dragon with her.

Jon’s Story

               Jon Snow’s goal in this book is to forge a peace between the wildlings and the Night’s Watch before the Others arrive. He brings wildlings south of the wall but is eventually betrayed by his brothers. In Jon I, Melisandre tells him outright that he should keep his wolf close by band that she sees “daggers in the dark,” but he does not listen to her. Melisandre also prays to see Azor Ahai but says that “R’hllor shows me only Snow.” That’s very interesting… The big question for the living on the Wall is what will happen to the peace between the Night’s Watch and the wildlings? Will Alliser Thorne return to try to kill them all or will Tormund kill all the Night’s Watch first? I really don’t understand why Jon didn’t talk about the Others more. He brings them up a few times, but he is not a very good Lord Commander. He doesn’t make his reasoning clear to the others and treats them kind of disrespectfully I think.

               I also wonder what will happen to the host of men that Jon was about to lead to attack Ramsay? Will they join with Stannis? It seems clear that Ramsay is lying in the pink letter about having defeated Stannis because he does not have Reek or Jeyne. We, the readers, know that they are with Stannis and unless they left right before the battle, Ramsay should already have them. But where would they go? I think Stannis and his men are alive and well, that Ramsay captured Mance and the spearwives and that Melisandre will sacrifice Shireen to bring back Stannis because she will think that he’s dead. Instead of bringing back Stannis, Jon will come back to life. That is not an original theory, I read it yesterday on r/ASOIAF.

Tyrion’s Story

Tyrion gets a lot darker in this story, and he even self-identifies as Joffrey’s murderer even though he wasn’t. He revels in the title of kinslayer and while he still has the same wits as always, he is a lot crueler than before. In Tyrion VII, he says that the only reward for his services that he offers Daenerys is that she let him “rape and kill” his sister. He also lets Penny’s dog and pig die so that they can escape slavery, which is honestly really cruel. Those animals weren’t just her livelihood but her friends and her connection to her old life. Tyrion tricked her for his own benefit. I like Tyrion a lot less and find him a lot less sympathetic than in the first three books.

Bran’s Story

               Bran also comes back in ADWD and meets the three-eyed raven, also known as Brynden Rivers, a bastard Targaryen uncle to maester Aemon. The visions he has are so cool and I just gotta say that he has some of the coolest chapters in the book. I really want to see what his adventures are in the next one.

Things I noticed:

• The Horn of Joramun and the horn of dragon-binding are very similar, both being very huge and covered in runes. However, Joramun is black and covered in the runes of the first men. The horn of dragon-binding is red and covered in Valyrian script.
• Tyrion VI: I think there is some foreshadowing in here. Tyrion is thinking about how to attack Volantis by land and he says to himself that, “If I were khal, I would feint at Selhorys, let the Volantenes rush to defend it, then swing south and ride hard for Volantis itself.” I can’t help but think that this will be played out in TWOW.
• The Wayward Bride: A master of house Glover “protested noisily” but then Lorren, an Ironborn hits him with a mailed fist. This is funny because the mailed fist is the sigil of House Glover.
• Melisandre at one point thinks to herself that the free folk “were a lost people, a doomed people, destined to vanish from the earth, as the children of the forest had vanished.” That would seem to suggest that the wildlings will all die, though on the other hand we know that there are still some children of the forest who live.
• Tyrion VIII: Tyrion asks Moqorro about others that he’s seen in his fires and Moqorro describes “A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.” I can’t figure out who this is. The one black eye makes me think of Euron, but I can’t figure out ten long arms, unless that refers to the Greyjoy sigil, a kraken with ten tentacles…
• Bran III: Some good lore we get in this chapter is that the children of the forest used to send messages by raven and taught the way to men. However, when the children did it, the birds talked.
• Bran III: There is some R+L=J stuff when Bran sees his father praying that “they grow up as close as brothers” and that hos “lady wife find it in her heart to forgive…”
• Bran III: Bran has some very interesting visions from the perspective of the heart tree in Winterfell. First, he sees his adult father playing. Then he sees Lyanna and Ned as children fighting with sticks (and they reference Old Nan, meaning she was old even then). Then things get faster and he saw a naked pregnant woman begging for a son to avenge her. Who is this? He sees a “brown haired girl slender as a spear” who goes on her toes to kiss a knight as tall as Hodor. Could the knight be Duncan the Tall? Then he sees a “dark eyed youth, pale and fierce” who takes three branches off the weirwood to make three arrows. I have no idea who this is. He starts going really far back in time and sees a bearded man force a captive onto his knees and a white-haired woman cutting his throat with a bronze sickle. These are some very interesting sights we get to see through the perspective of the tree in the Winterfell Godswood.
• Prince of Winterfell: There’s a really sad moment in this chapter when Theon thinks about how the ravens have Winterfell as their home. Martin writes, “Theon wondered what that would be like, to have a home.”
• Jon X: What the fuck is going on with Patchface??? I cannot figure out a single relevant thing he says but then Melisandre randomly drops, “That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood.” Skulls always mean death in Melisandre’s visions, so I wonder what’s gonna happen.
• Cersei II: It is mentioned that Littlefinger offered to marry Sansa, but it was impossible since he was too lowborn. That is definitely his goal from the beginning, so I wonder what his plan will be with Harry the Heir.
• Epilogue: The inner moat of the Red Keep has three feet of snow in it. That is something the show never really represented. Winter is coming hard!

Reflection on From the Maccabees to the Mishnah by Shaye J.D. Cohen

               I have been slowly reading books covering different periods in Jewish history and this book covers the period from the Maccabean revolt around in the second century BCE to the completion of the Mishnah in the second and third centuries CE. I always find it interesting to see how Judaism has evolved. In this period the Tanakh was canonized and the Pharisees began to develop into the order of Rabbis, moving into synagogues, a process that would not be completed until the 6^th and 7^th centuries.

               I think it’s so strange how much I thought I knew about Judaism is not based on the Tanakh. For example, there is no prohibition on intermarriage in the Tanakh, except with seven Canaanite nations that no longer exist. Other nations were not bound by any prohibition, yet many modern Jews will tell you that a prohibition exists. It was only in Maccabean times, four hundred years after the destruction of the first temple, that circumcision gained prominence as a marker of Jewishness. Circumcision had been given importance in the Tanakh but was not an essential mark of Jewish identity until later. I learned that in the time of the Second Temple, the high priest rose in power as there was no more king, only a governor of the Persian Empire holding secular power. By the fourth century BCE, the Persians were gone and the high priest had become the head of the Jews, not just the temple. This one really blew my mind: “The word ‘orthodox’ was not applied to a variety of Judaism until the nineteenth century, when the opponents of reform organized themselves under the banner of ‘orthodox and Torah-true Judaism.’ These Jews, in order to delegitimate reform, adopted the historical perspective that the medieval rabbis had turned against the Karaites.” I had never really thought about it, but they only call themselves “orthodox.” There is no real connection between “orthodox” Judaism and to some sort of perfect Judaism that has always been practiced.

I learned other things that couldn’t change my prior ideas because I had never even thought about them in the first place. For example, in Exodus 34 and Numbers 14, God explains that punishment can be deferred from parents to children. This can be explained as a way of showing why sometimes good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Later on, Ezekiel (Ezek. 18:20) explains that children will not be punished for their parents, which is the opposite. It became a major debate in Judaism whether there was an afterlife where people would be rewarded and punished, a major influence in Christianity. It’s weird to think about, but the initial passages in Exodus, while seeming bad to us in an individualistic society, can be interpreted as a form of mercy for the parents. Later on, this was determined to be unjust, especially from the point of view of the children, which must be why Ezekiel said what he said. I also learned how important Ezra was. When he “published” the Torah, he democratized Judaism by making it available to the masses and not just something in the hands of priests. That was a big step in Judaism becoming a religion of the book. The author also points out that the destruction of the Second Temple was not nearly as traumatic as the destruction of the First because Judaism was already being democratized and that the Pharisees, who would later become the Rabbis, were already “ambivalent” to the Second Temple when it existed. The rabbis then began a long process of influencing Judaism more and more. They moved slowly and would not control all the synagogues in Israel until the sixth century.

Reflection on A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

               In A Feast for Crows (AFFC), Martin sort of begins a new story. There is lots of resolution in the third book, A Storm of Swords (ASOS), and AFFC has lots of beginnings. There are 8 big stories told in it. There is Cersei, who rules King’s Landing terribly and finds herself imprisoned in the end. There is Jaime’s time in King’s Landing before being sent off to pacify the Riverlands. Sansa and Arya develop more as independent people who are forced to rely only on themselves in the Vale and Braavos respectively. The Iron Islanders elect King Euron and attack the Westerlands and the Reach. Samwell Tarly travels to Oldtown. The Dornish plot against each other and against outsiders. Finally, Brienne of Tarth continues to search for Sansa but only finds Lady Stoneheart. At the end of the book, though we’ve seen nothing of Daenerys, we know that the Victarion Greyjoy, Quentyn Martell, and Marwyn the Mage are all heading to Slaver’s Bay to try to bring Daenerys back to Westeros to serve their own ends. I kept this post short because I am very excited to start the next book. I mostly just wrote interesting little things I noticed.

Cersei Blowing It in King’s Landing

               As soon as Tywin dies everything really goes wrong for House Lannister. Cersei is a dangerous combination of being very stupid, drunk all the time, and thinking that she is very smart. The one smart thing she wanted to do was make her uncle, Kevan Lannister, the Hand, but he tried for a power play to demand that he be regent too and Cersei would not allow that. He has good advice to offer about taking Tyrell man and making them theirs, but Cersei does not follow it. Cersei ironically becomes more and more like her late husband Robert, having sex with many different people and getting very drunk all the time. She is casually drinking whole flagons of wine.

The Oldtown Plot

               Oldtown only comes up in the first and last chapters of the book but it is very interesting. We learn that this mysterious Marwyn who has been to Asshai and even met Mirri Maz Durr has managed to light a glass candle (dragonglass). One of his books is also mentioned to Asha by Rodrik of Harlaw. We meet a few young men training to be masters of whom the most interesting are Pate and Alleras the Sphinx. Pate dies in the end of the prologue, killed by a faceless man, and then we meet him again in Sam’s final chapter. The faceless man managed to get a master key to the citadel from him. What is this guy doing and who is he trying to kill, if anyone? Is he the same man who met Arya earlier? If so, why was he in the black cells in the Red Keep? Of course, the Pate that Sam meets must be the faceless man, so now he has infiltrated the Citadel. Very interesting stuff indeed.

Things I Noticed

• The Prophet: There’s a story about a captain of the Iron Islands who wins a boat in a bet thanks to a literal pissing contest and he named it Golden Storm which made me laugh.
• Tywin probably hates Tyrion’s whores so much because of his father’s mistress. After his father died, Tywin made her walk through the streets of Lannisport naked. Tywin must be reminded of his father by Tyrion. That walk is also foreshadowing something that will happen to Cersei…
• Samwell I: In this chapter we learn more about the Others. We learn that the Children of the Forest used to give a hundred obsidian daggers to the Night’s Watch every year and that the Others ride dead animals into battle. In one account of the Long Night the last hero slayed Others with a blade of Valyrian steel.
• Brienne II: One of Duncan the Tall’s shields is resting in Evenfall Hall in Tarth, as we learn from one of Brienne’s memories.
• Bloodraven went with Aemon Targaryen to the Wall.
• Samwell II: Sam notices that the Red Wanderer/The Thief is still in the sky, which I think is the same red comet as before.
• Cersei III: Cersei thinks to herself that Balon Swann has a secret task besides going to Sunspear to deliver the Mountain’s head to Prince Doran. What is it?
• Littlefinger brings back Robert Baratheon’s tapestries to the Vale. Why does he do that? It is mentioned a few times.
• Brienne Finds Arya’s boat that she had gone to Braavos in, much like she finds a small boat that Arya and Gendry take in the Riverlands in ASOS.
• Sam and Arya literally meet each other in Braavos.
• I thought it was funny when Jaime was thinking about a really religious lord that he was talking to he calls him “Baelor Butthole” in his head. Lol.
• Lancel Lannister claims that fucking the King’s wife is not treason unless you come inside.
• Euron, like Bran, had dreams that he could fly as a boy.
• While everyone is looking for the Prince that was Promised, they could also be looking for a Princess, as Aemon noticed. He, like I, thinks that Daenerys is Azor Ahai and the one to defeat the White Walkers.
• Nasty Moment: When Sam and Gilly finally do it, he suckles on her breasts and drinks her milk. That’s a real strange detail Martin included. I think that this man is obsessed with boobs. He is always talking about them.
• Sansa has been kissed by only three men in her life: The Hound, Littlefinger, and Robin Arryn. Very unlucky girl.