Category Archives: Marc Grober

The Horse Behind the Cart

by Marc Grober

Some weeks ago, Kathleen McCoy spent not a few column inches of the local rag  in her puff piece lauding UAA’s Terry Kelly, “Ethicist handles heavy issues with a light touch.” Unfortunately, one can only conclude that this is further evidence that UAA is not a real educational destination.
horse-cart

UAA’s Terry Kelly must be more a stand-up comic than an ethicist. According to McCoy, he argued, in the most bizarre example of political correctness to date, that if you act in such a way as to make some one else be suspicious of you, you have acted unethically. Yes, you heard me. By way of example, Kelly offered a homily where a husband and wife pledge to be sexually faithful, and then hubbie goes off to spend Friday nights reading at the whorehouse. Kelly claimed that hubbie is acting unethically because his pathetically insecure wife is banging her head against a wall. Really?

Kelly then went on to confuse matters with a retelling of the Clinton/Lewinsky gaffe, misrepresenting the facts and of course drawing the wrong conclusion. He finally tackled his real target (after an unfortunate attempt to hijack the theory of cognitive dissonance), which appeared to be the impact of government officials receiving gifts. He apparently closed with something along the lines of “trustworthy behavior is persuasive behavior, and untrustworthy behavior is unethical.”

Yes. Instead of arguing that trust is based on ethical behavior, he argues that ethical behavior is based on trust. Very inventive. Or delusional. The word trust comes from the Norse “traust” and is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “to have belief or confidence in the honesty, goodness, skill or safety of a person, organization or thing.” Trustworthy of course is to be worthy of trust. Ethics, per the Oxford Dictionary, are, “moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity”, and the entry goes on to explain:

Schools of ethics in Western philosophy can be divided, very roughly, into three sorts. The first, drawing on the work of Aristotle, holds that the virtues (such as justice, charity, and generosity) are dispositions to act in ways that benefit both the person possessing them and that person’s society. The second, defended particularly by Kant, makes the concept of duty central to morality: humans are bound, from a knowledge of their duty as rational beings, to obey the categorical imperative to respect other rational beings. Thirdly, utilitarianism asserts that the guiding principle of conduct should be the greatest happiness or benefit of the greatest number

So we can take ethical to mean, depending on the system to which you subscribe, compliance with some code of conduct. In sum, we may have confidence that others may conduct themselves ethically, but if we lack confidence how can that possibly change whether the erstwhile target of out attentions is ethical or not?

What Terry Kelly has proposed is nothing less than a feedback loop, a neurotic echo chamber where what is real is not what you do, but what someone perceives you to do. While in a very primitive form this may hearken back to the social psychology of the ’70s and the concept of the social construction of reality, it beggars the concept of ethics, for it renders ethics dependent on the feedback loop and enables insecurity. You can only be as ethical as you convince your observer you are. He has turned philosophy into advertising, for under his rules, one becomes ethical not by adhering to a code, but by convincing others that one does, and after all, that is what our politicians try to do today, and is exactly opposite of the point we think Kelly was trying to argue. Kelly has shifted the subjective lens, and lost sight of the situation entirely.

Only His Hairdresser Knows for Sure…..

by Marc Grober

A year or so ago UAA Nursing Students decided to put the question of whether the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of Vitamin D would produce adequate blood levels to the test and found that the RDA came nowhere close to ensuring adequate Vitamin D. Alaskan doctors are now suggesting 4000 IU daily (combined with Magnesium and Calcium) while many foolish Alaskans complain or suffer from the conditions listed below and do nothing about it.

Now a Republican Alaska State Senator has announced he is interested in doing something about this. Senator Seaton wants to test newborns for Vitamin D, while the Republican Administration dismisses concerns over the impact of inadequate Vitamin D. HB90 would create a “temporary” program for testing newborns at delivery. The text of the Bill and the Sponsor statement (available here) is well worth the read.

A big problem, however, is that Alaska hospitals have made a habit out of turning parents of newborns into criminals as they surreptitiously turn maternal blood test results over to OCS and State police over even the legal presence of anything “suspicious” in the blood, and let’s face it, Seaton’s colleagues seem much more interested in regulating wombs and criminalizing female behavior than in addressing any health care issue. Moreover, it would clearly be more important from all perspectives to have pre-natal data from pregnant mothers than on new born children, but Alaska is certainly not interested in ensuring that all women have adequate prenatal care.

The wing nut right fail to see this as one might argue the GOP caucus does (as a way to seize further control of women) and look at it instead through delusional Lockean glasses, arguing that Seaton is intruding into the individual’s privacy and that the legislature has no business addressing public health issues (except when it is someone else.) Of course, this is in no small part because though they scream and yell that we should be complying with the Constitution, they have never read that document (save perhaps to support amending same to fund religious schools.) The Constitution mandates 1 that the Legislature must address the general health and welfare, which is clearly challenged by the gross inadequacy of Vitamin D.

What a mess! We seem to have an unholy alliance of liberals and conservatives to wrest control of pre and post natal care from parents while failing to really acknowledge the underlying health issues facing Alaskans and the need to boldly address same (Governor Sean Parnell, is even an embarrassment to Governor Brewer, who finally admitted that her state needs to get onboard with the ACA.) The GOP legislative caucuses are VERY busy rushing ALEC based repressive legislation in to law, and really can’t be bother with health policy.

So we all have a dilemma, here in the far north. Is Senator Seaton et al really concerned about the health of Alaskans, or are they merely looking for a way to ensure that all mothers get drug tested? The shortsighted nature of the policy and the questionable ethics of the caucus suggests that one look beyond the purported purpose of the Bill, but is Seaton really that much of a prat? Well…….

Impacts of a Vitamin D deficiency 2
1.) The flu – In a study published in the Cambridge Journals, it was discovered that vitamin D deficiency predisposes children to respiratory diseases. An intervention study conducted showed that vitamin D reduces the incidence of respiratory infections in children.

2.) Muscle weakness – According to Michael F. Holick, a leading vitamin D expert, muscle weakness is usually caused by vitamin D deficiency because for skeletal muscles to function properly, their vitamin D receptors must be sustained by vitamin D.

3.) Psoriasis – In a study published by the UK PubMed central, it was discovered that synthetic vitamin D analogues were found useful in the treatment of psoriasis.

4.) Chronic kidney disease – According to Holick, patients with advanced chronic kidney diseases (especially those requiring dialysis) are unable to make the active form of vitamin D. These individuals need to take 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 or one of its calcemic analogues to support calcium metabolism, decrease the risk of renal bone disease and regulate parathyroid hormone levels.

5.) Diabetes – A study conducted in Finland was featured in Lancet.com in which 10,366 children were given 2000 international units (IU)/day of vitamin D3 per day during their first day of life. The children were monitored for 31 years and in all of them, the risk of type 1 diabetes was reduced by 80 percent.

6.) Asthma – Vitamin D may reduce the severity of asthma attacks. Research conducted in Japan revealed that asthma attacks in school children were significantly lowered in those subjects taking a daily vitamin D supplement of 1200 IU a day.

7.) Periodontal disease – Those suffering from this chronic gum disease that causes swelling and bleeding gums should consider raising their vitamin D levels to produce defensins and cathelicidin, compounds that contain microbial properties and lower the number of bacteria in the mouth.

8.) Cardiovascular disease – Congestive heart failure is associated with vitamin D deficiency. Research conducted at Harvard University among nurses found that women with low vitamin D levels (17 ng/m [42 nmol/L]) had a 67 percent increased risk of developing hypertension.

9.) Schizophrenia and Depression – These disorders have been linked to vitamin D deficiency. In a study, it was discovered that maintaining sufficient vitamin D among pregnant women and during childhood was necessary to satisfy the vitamin D receptor in the brain integral for brain development and mental function maintenance in later life.

10.) Cancer – Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC discovered a connection between high vitamin D intake and reduced risk of breast cancer. These findings, presented at the American Association for Cancer Research, revealed that increased doses of the sunshine vitamin were linked to a 75 percent reduction in overall cancer growth and 50 percent reduction in tumor cases among those already having the disease. Of interest was the capacity of vitamin supplementation to help control the development and growth of breast cancer specially estrogen-sensitive breast cancer.

1 Alaska Constitution Article 7  http://ltgov.alaska.gov/treadwell/services/alaska-constitution/article-viiA096A0health-education-and-welfare.html

2  Geib, Aurora. “The 10 symptoms of vitamin D deficiency you need to recognize” Natural News, 2/10/2012 Web http://www.naturalnews.com/035089_vitamin_D_deficiency_signs_symptoms.html

Mediating Self Medication

by Marc Grober

Screen Shot 2013-02-20 at 3.01.56 PMDr. Gabor Maté argued to Alaska that, “The first question in addiction is not why the addiction, but why the pain? And if you understand a human being’s pain, you cannot look at their genes.” You can listen to his presentation at http://www.alaskapublic.org/2013/02/15/addiction-from-heroin-to-workaholism/ .  While the proposed historical basis for his arguments are dubious, and the jargon makes one shudder to think of Fritz Perl voodoo and the modern profit center of “mental health”,  there is a good deal to be said for a functional approach to addiction, and under the patina of the sloppy academics and loose jargon, that is, after all, what the good doctor is talking about.

Maté, like some medical analog of D’Souza’s “nemesis”, argues that western imperialism is responsible for “addiction”, in that while tribal people may use psychoactive substances, they do so reverently and with cultural approval, and therefore not addictively. Apparently the pervasive and ubiquitous use of betel nut, coca leaf and other similar substances   (Sullivan and Hagen), are overlooked by Maté. Maté only has eyes for noble savages, while Anthropology retired that trope years ago (Ellingson, Grinde et al., Hames.)

But the presentation, ”The Hungry Ghost: A Biospsychosocial Perspective on Addiction, from Heroin to Workaholism” based on the book “In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction“, can be forgiven the blood libel. The important bit is that Maté effectively makes the case that addicts are not necessarily the insane and mentally ill, nor deviant fiends bent on breaking the law; they are as likely to be persons doing their best to essentially self-medicate themselves to states in which they can survive.

And THAT serves as an excellent indictment of both the criminal justice approach to addiction AND the mental health approach to addiction. The former punishes the addict for attempting to comply with other’s  rules, and the latter denies the rationality of the user.

I don’t want to sink in to some ridiculous libertarian rant about natural rights; that is not what this is about. What we have done, though, is created a religion in which the MDs are high priests and BigPharma are the keepers of the sacraments. If I can manage what ails me through moderate use of caffeine and marijuana, why should I not be permitted to do so? Is the threat of societal implosion from a 7% solution so extraordinary that we must so vehemently denounce so much of our world?

Perhaps what we need more of are not the empty chairs of Gestalt Therapy (yes, Clint was engaging in classic Gestalt therapy during the GOP convention) nor private prison beds (rendering Puritanism a profit center), but effective mediators.  Once upon a time I think we called such people social workers; persons who went out in to the community and assisted others in coping with a society whose demands were in some respect more than one might be able to manage. We don;t need to talk about defective genes; we need to talk about a dysfunctional society, and what we can do to recognize and perhaps moderate the responses of some to that dismal fact of life. No, there are no silver bullets,  but having some understanding of the underlying circumstances, and abandoning the Puritan intolerance that drives even those who deny same, will be a start.

 

 Work Cited

Ellingson, Ter. The Myth of the Noble Savage. University of California Press, 2000. Print.
Grinde, Donald A., Bruce Elliott Johansen, and University of California, Los Angeles American Indian Studies Center. Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy. American Indian Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991. (http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/EoL/index.html)
Raymond, Hames. “The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate.” Annual Review of Anthropology 36.1 (2007): 177–190. Web http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123321. 20 Feb. 2013.
M.D, Gabor Mate. In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. North Atlantic Books, 2011. Print.
Sullivan, R. J., and E. H. Hagen. “Psychotropic Substance-seeking: Evolutionary Pathology or Adaptation?” Addiction 97.4 (2002): 389–400. Web http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1360-0443.2002.00024.x/full. 20 Feb. 2013.

Martin Luther King and the Roots of Western Narcissism

by Marc Grober

While a significant portion of the Unites States electorate, intoxicated with a heady brew of  Lockean liberalism, decries “socialism in America”, many have suggested that in the possessive individualism underlying this rhetoric lies the root of our social narcissism and the ultimate failure of our society. MacPherson wrote 40 years ago that,

“…the difficulties of modern liberal-democratic theory lie deeper than had been thought, that the original seventeenth-century individualism contained the central difficulty, which lay in its possessive quality. Its possessive quality is found in its conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to to society for them. The individual was seen neither as a moral whole, nor as part of a larger social whole, but as an owner of himself. The relation of ownership, having become for more and more men the critically important relation determining their actual freedom and actual prospect of realizing their full potentialities, was read back into the nature of the individual. The individual, it was thought, is free inasmuch as he is proprietor of his person and capacities. The human essence is freedom from dependence on the wills of others, and freedom is a function of possession. Society consists of relations of exchange between proprietors. Political society becomes a calculated device for the protection of this property and or the maintenance o an orderly relation of exchange.” C. B. MacPherson. The political theory of possessive individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford University Press, 1969

MacPherson goes on to note that we seem to obtain no satisfaction from the having,  but instead are firmly fixed on the getting. Of course, those that have more find it easy to get more, and that invariably means that those that have less always get less.

Perhaps it was Hobbes who truly wrote Golding’s Lord of the Flies, painting a truly ruthless picture of mankind in his natural state, Ecce Homo! I was taken with the rather human mechanics of the following observation

Subordinate birds have to look for food whenever and wherever they can find it, and carry fat on their bodies to hedge against unpredictable rations. Dominant birds, which can push subordinates off food, can choose when they eat and so lessen their odds of being eaten themselves.

From Convention to Van Buren, Jefferson’s party railed against a Hobbesian solution. Yet under Madison they murdered Federalists in Baltimore, under Jackson they murdered thousands of Indians, and they finally forced this country into its greatest domestic convulsion, resulting in the virtual destruction of the South and the termination of that curious institution upon which their agrarian utopia was based.

Martin Luther King, though he dreamed wondrous dreams, understood perhaps as well as any Nobel Laureate economist (for example, Joseph Stiglitz) that the root of inequality was economic injustice. While King’s Dream continues to challenge and seems resonant with most Americans, there is a dissonance of alarming degree between the Lockean liberalism which is argued to anchor this country, and the socialism which we see in King’s oration. In fact, you may well find that Dr. King has more in common with that “villain”, Niccolo Machiavelli, than with Jefferson’s “Saint”, Sidney Algernon.

Machiavelli has been disparaged for centuries. Frederick the Great wrote,

  Machiavel’s The Prince is to ethics what the work of Spinoza is to faith. Spinoza sapped the fundamentals of faith, and drained the spirit of religion; Machiavel corrupted policy, and undertook to destroy the precepts of healthy morals: the errors of the first were only errors of speculation, but those of the other had a practical thrust. The theologians have sounded the alarm bell and battled against Spinoza, refuting his work in form and defending the Divinity against his attack, while Machiavel has only been badgered by moralists. In spite of them, and in spite of its pernicious morals, The Prince is very much on the pulpit of policy, even in our day.

Frederick takes on Machiavelli AND Spinoza (leaving us to wonder why he failed to indict Hobbes) for their attacks on the virtue that he seems to believe leaps, as did Athena, from the godhead. Frederick’s argument is based on the superstition inherent in the supernatural, while his targets labor in what Hobbes called the state of nature, the real world. A place called Wall Street.

Madison’s Constitution is very much of that real world. Machiavelli would be very comfortable with Connelly’s view of Madison and vice versa.  In fact Machiavelli argued,

I say therefore that all the (previously) mentioned forms are inferior because of the brevity of the existence of those three that are good, and of the malignity of those three that are bad. So that those who make laws prudently having recognized the defects of each, (and) avoiding every one of these forms by itself alone, they selected one (form) that should partake of all, they judging it to be more firm and stable, because when there is in the same City (government) a Principality, an Aristocracy, and a Popular Government (Democracy), one watches the other.

Machiavelli is no idealistic and impractical Jefferson, howling at the moon while Madison cleans up the mess, and Madison, complaining himself centuries after the publication of The Discourses, writes in Federalist #10,

Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true.

Neither is Machiavelli some foolish aristocrat like The Mandragola‘s Nicia, ensnared in what detractors might claim is a Ligurio’s web of deceit.  The fact of the matter is that Machiavelli’s conceit ends with what might be considered economic justice for all. In a society where this is a scarcity, each (as the Stones, writing in the same year as MacPherson, might put it) might not get what they want, but if they try real hard, will get what they need.

We have been awash in Sidney Algernon’s small “r” republican Saints and their  moralizing Reformationist brethren who have bequeathed to us not the generous philosophy of social justice Jefferson ascribed to Jesus to which he claimed to subscribe, but a grasping self-involvement where the three operative words are all too familiar to the parent of any two year old: me, mine, and more.

But Machiavelli sets the same table as Teddy Roosevelt, though The Prince may be seen as a manual for the basest policies and Square Deal the acme of American values. Unlike the Mad Hatter’s table, there are seats for all here and arm in arm with Teddy and Niccolo, we come full circle to King. Yes, Dr. King may have been troubled by much of Marx’s message regarding the ill effects of religion, but in the real world, we see man’s religious institutions arguing economic injustice, while we see Marx arguing that workers should own the means of their production.

As Alice suggested, “I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, released in 1967, is a graphic reminder of the importance of making room at the table, and that if we purport to make room at the table, then we had best be prepared to welcome and feed all comers.

 

The State Militant; militia in the 21st century

by Marc Grober

With the rise of the “militia movement” in Alaska ( http://www.alaska.net/~cadrecc/index.html, http://anchoragemilitia.com/, http://www.centralalaskamilitia.com/ ) it is time to effectively address this potential threat to our civil society. That is to say that the federal prosecution of the members of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, being reactive, is inadequate on its face. See the Fairbanks Newsminer for a discussion of Shaffer Cox and his role in this militia.

Not withstanding the bizarre ideation of these groups, the US Constitution puts all militia under federal control. The US Constitution, Article I Section 8,  in pertinent part, authorizes Congress:

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

The US Constitution reserves to the states certain responsibilities with respect to militia.  Under the Alaska Constitution, that authority is largely exercised by the Governor of the State. Alaska Constitution Article III § 19. Military Authority provides:

The governor is commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the State. He may call out these forces to execute the laws, suppress or prevent insurrection or lawless violence, or repel invasion. The governor, as provided by law, shall appoint all general and flag officers of the armed forces of the State, subject to confirmation by a majority of the members of the legislature in joint session. He shall appoint and commission all other officers.

In sum, the Governor would clearly be the commander of our various self-proclaimed militias, and as command-in-chief the Governor has ultimate responsibility for command of these organizations. Either the Governor must command these organizations,  or they must be disbanded as unauthorized frauds and dangerous gangs; thugs in paramilitary drag.

It is clear that the Governor HAS NOT taken his responsibilities via-a-vis Article III Section 19 seriously, not having seized command of these organizations (or in the alternative, not having ordered the Attorney General to terminate their activities as apparent criminal enterprises or otherwise.) In having failed in those responsibilities it is high time the Governor was called to task for his oversight, negligence, or malfeasance (the last case perhaps recommending impeachment)  for putting our society in danger.

Perhaps most heinous, is that while the Governor seems to continually wish to take power from the federal government (he has inordinately invested in lawsuit after lawsuit, attacking the role of the federal government on matters ranging from wildlife management to health care) he has failed to wield the responsibility the federal Constitution affords him, with the result that the Department of Justice was forced to prosecute those in such organizations apparently engaged in preparing to commit acts of homicide against our judges. For shame, Governor! For shame!

aknatlguardpatch

Twixt Scylla and Charybis

by Marc Grober

Alaska’s Governor, Sean Parnel,  would have Alaskans agree to oil tax reform. Many read this tax reform and an effort to move revenue from the State’s ledger to that of BigOil. As one expect, this results in a polarization and we end up with an all or nothing paradigm.  The Greeks saw their world in very colorfully and it is from them that we inherit the concept of sailing twixt Scylla and Charybdis, and we have been referencing that method of recognizing that we are on the horns of a dilemma in those terms for centuries.

But this essay is not an attempt to scold the Governor for taunting Homer’s Charybdis despite Circe’s warning (so many others have already done that so effectively,  to no avail), though in any discussion of matters Alaskan, natural resource policy is on the table. The focus here is on another aspect of “the middle”;  as  Euclid has revealed to hundreds of thousand of students, the middle is equidistant from the poles.

And at this point you are no doubt wondering whatever could be the real point, and whether we might not get to it before tea. The point, as those of you who are clever have likely already guessed, is that industry arises at those places convenient to the resources necessary. The Rust Belt, by way of example, did not arise magically. If one considers a map of the US Northeast and note the location of the iron ore, the location of coal deposits, and the transportation resources in the area,  it becomes quickly apparent why steel became king there.  And the king drove the economies of the region and the country to incredible heights.

Alaska sits on a number of prodigious reservoirs of natural gas. There are some, their eyes lit with a green glow,  who would (as quickly as someone else’s money might allow) ship all this natural gas elsewhere. Unfortunately, such a policy produces the least possible economic benefit for the people of the State of Alaska. Why?  Because the failure to use the resources in-state means Alaskans do not get the additional multiplier effects that would arise if the gas were consumed in-state.

The challenge or Alaska is not to figure out how to get rid of the gas as quickly as possible, despite the advice from BigOil accountants. The challenge is to find industries, local industries, that are viable because the gas is HERE. Japan’s growth is a reverse example of this situation. Japanese growth was largely based on Japan’s ability to import energy. Alaska has that energy in abundance, but those wishing to use that energy elsewhere want Alaskans to believe that we must sell off that energy to those smart enough to use it.  Are we, as Alaskans, really that ignorant?

Let’s compare the two policies.  On the one hand the argument is that the only way to address this resource is to pump it out and sell it as quickly as possible. Perhaps this will provide a decade or two of revenue, and there will be jobs, largely for those who come to Alaska specifically to take advantage of this policy.  On the other hand, if the resource never leaves the state,  it could fuel a variety of local industry for a much longer time period, increase Alaska’s economy by many more times, and keep the state from continuing to be a boom and bust economy, slave to the extraction industry. As Dr. Lee Huskey has often noted, a robust northern economy needs to be differentiated, and there is no escaping that means keeping BigOil in its place.

So we are on the horns of another dilemma. The safe course, the middle way, is to be the middle. Be the focal point. Be the cauldron of Alaska’s future, not the empty husk that once feted BigOil. Is Alaska up to charter its own destiny? Perhaps not as local politics suggest that those in power are short-sighted quick-buckers, preaching independence, but effecting paternalistic policies socially and economically. Perhaps John Coghill needs to have a sit-down with Jack and talk a bit about local economics…..

scylla_and_charybis

The New Arms Race

by Marc Grober

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states in pertinent part, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” What are we to make of this? We are besieged today by “textualists” (not withstanding Paul McGreal’s cogent argument) arguing that a personal armory is the salvation of democracy. If we don, for a moment, the texturalist’s robes, what do we see in this Amendment? The Amendment says “people” – not voters, residents, citizens, adults, or ‘white men of virtue who own property and are well liked’.

Who are these “people”?  People are, generally defined as “humans”. [NB: Cicero fans may now attempt to interrupt to argue populus versus civitas, and while this dispute might offer some intriguing questions for future discussion, we don’t like these elitist pedants, and, as either view’s result proves the point that kids are people too (certainly, if an embryo is a person, a kid must be a person), we will rule these classicists out of order and move on.]

Where were we? Ah, yes. And if kids are people, then we had better not infringe on their right to keep and bear arms, as that would clearly be unconstitutional. To take that one step further as the textural positivist is want to do, if our Propounding Pops thought it was so important to make sure no one disarmed kids that they Amended the Constitution to note it, then the extension of that concern would surely be an unwritten endorsement that the more kids armed, the safer our society.

Certainly arming the kids makes more sense than trusting kids’ safety at school to “a bunch of union thugs”, and trusting the thugs’ judgment as to whom to shoot. Do you really want an NEA member (someone known to you to be a communist) taking out (as in offing, not sending to the office) YOUR kid because he pulled a Nerf gun at lunch? Why put the safety of kids in the hands of Bolsheviks, when you can arm the kids, nay, MUST arm the kids?  To look at the larger picture, if we can’t keep kids off university campuses with guns, we clearly can’t keep kids out of public schools with guns, and if that is the case we had better make sure that every kid showing up for Kindergarten has a Glock on each hip.

Extra chocolate milk if the guns are clean and loaded.GattlingStroller

An Open Invitation to the Anchorage Museum

by Marc Grober

I recently went on a tear about the Anchorage Museum refusing to publish the images of the work submitted but rejected by the selected juror. The question was quite rightly put to me, “Why should the Museum make those images available publicly?” Below are my initial thoughts on the matter.

In a place like Alaska art can light up he dark days of winter and and reflect the exhilaration of our summers and it does artist and art viewer immense emotional good to share that experience, and as many have argued (including the Alaska State Council on the Arts,  the Arts are good for the economy.

But sharing one’s work is just not that easy in Alaska. Dozens and dozens of Alaska artists are desperate to have the public see their work and have no outlet for showing it.  Even those who are lucky enough to have a gallery agree to carry their work re limited in their reach.

And that is not the worst part. The worst part is that despite the existence of ASCA, there is no place where Alaskan artists can publicly exhibit their work to a public that is hungry to see what Alaskans can do. This is especially the case if an artist does not produce “Native” art or “Alaskana”.

Yet in soliciting submissions for Alaskan in EFF and All-Alaska yearly, the Anchorage Museum receives hundreds of images of work being produced by Alaskans every year. Work for which the artists are only asking acknowledgement.

Every year I ask the Museum about making those images public, and every year the Museum comes up with another lame reason to refuse my request. Every artist understands the caprice inherent in a juried show (especially where there is only one juror) but when such shows are at such a premium because they are so few, it is simply inexcusable that the submitted work is not made available to the public for viewing.

This year the excuse is particularly lame;  the Museum doesn’t have the staff to accomplish this.  I immediately piped up that I wold be happy to take that on but was essentially ignored. Moreover, I am sure that others would be just as glad to volunteer to take on the burden that the Museum believes is so heavy. I think it might take all of a day (and that only because it is my guess that the Museum has yet to enter the 21st Century vis-a-vis their handling of the images, lol.)

No,  I am not advocating that the Museum manange the shows in any way differently than they have been, save that they make the images of the work that was rejected available for public review online. Whatever the argument for this kind of juried show, I am not disputing the Museums efforts to go forward with what it  wants to do, whether or not it has anything to do with art, the public or anything else. I am simply suggesting that if the Museum is going to encourage hundreds of Alaskan to submit their art, then the public should be entitled to see what is not selected. Whether that reflects somehow on what the Museum does or doesn’t do or impacts what the Museum might do in future is some other issue for some other person.

The Museum should not be promoting the skewed tastes of this or that juror; it should be celebrating the breadth and depth of Alaska’s creativity and productivity. If juried show accomplishes that, so much the better, but many artists have already given up submitting work to such exhibitions in that there is no rhyme nor reason in selection, as has been acknowledged with respect to juried shows across the nation.

It would be nice if Alaska for once was the exception in the arts, and promoted its artists, as opposed to discouraging them.

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Thank You, Mr. President

by Marc Grober

This was written for NPR’s Three Minute Fiction as an historical exercise.  I hope you enjoy it.

Thank you, Mr. President

I stood looking down at Momma’s grave. At the end she’d said she’d seen a white light. “Providence come to take me to the Lord:”, she’d said. Then she smiled like a spring day and was gone. Seemed to me that every time Providence showed up, something terrible be a happening….. Looking up I seen Sheriff drive up and wave me over. Providence seemed to me to be most persistent this May of 1932.

As I walked over to the Sheriff’s car I thought about all the stories Momma told me. ‘Bout how we were mostly Cherokee from a place far to the East of Missouri and how we survived a death march. How we came to be slaves then freed. But the end of every story were the same; Providence had seen us through. She’d said my doubts bout Providence would lay her low one day.

“How old are you, boy?”, the Sheriff asked, driving t’ Smith’s. Momma and I sharecropped there, and worked his farm too.

“12 Sunday, sir.”

“Boy, Smith and the others are selling out. Money’s in the bank, none of you colored own the land yonder and you need to clear out. No trouble now. Get your things and move on.”

We’d only gone a few dozen yards but I knew there weren’t nothing to go back for.

“Stop the car Sheriff, I’m getting out.”

The Sheriff let me off in front of the Bank, and just as he drove off a rush of folk coming running through the doors of the Bank. The first one run right into me and knocked me clear over and I landed on my face in the dirt. I seen them tear down the street and the Sheriff round and tear after them, with most of the town after him. Getting to my feet I realized I’d fallen on a small canvas bag. Inside was full of green paper I’d never seen before. I got to my feet a bit dizzy and made my way back to the colored church.

The Pastor’s wife screamed, “Oh bloody terror!” and fainted away. Old Jake, the handyman, told me to sit myself down. He seen to the Pastor’s wife and run off to get the Pastor.

Jake and the Pastor got to cleaning me up and it was then they seen the bag. “What you got there, boy?”, Jake barked. I’d near forgot that I had it and the story come tumbling out. Jake told me to sit and rest awhile and he and Pastor Wright went to talking quiet like and left the room.

Pastor and Mrs. Wright drove Jake and me to Joplin that very day. Jake had worked the trains and had family in Chicago, and he would take me to them. We boarded the colored car, there was some shouting and with the Pastor and his wife waving good-bye, the train gave a lurch and we were on our way. I watched out the window as everything I’d ever known disappeared behind us.

And here I was. Jake snored next to me as old men do. He said the bag of 100 new 20s was a “windfall”, but Momma knew what it really was. I felt in my pocket for the one bill Jake let me hold on to, and looking around to see if any one was watching, I snuck another look. I read the name on the bill, ANDREW JACKSON. and smiled.

“Thank you, Momma. Thank you, Providence. And thank YOU, Mister President…..

A Republican Epiphany

by Marc Grober

Sometimes, especially I suppose when we are annoyed with a specific problem, what should appear obvious to us is hidden by our very focus; we have simply dialed out what benefit we might obtain from Occam’s Razor and forgotten our Holmes. And that is how I twisted in trying to explain the zealousness of GOP proponents who are of traditional minority ethnicity and race.

Suddenly I realized that what we had here was a subscription to the concept of a societal lottery.  No matter that only 1 in a million will be able to make it up the economic ladder,  the promise of America is only that you have that one in a million chance, and that is supposed to provide contentment to the masses, and just as in the case of the Lotto,  the balance of the population is supposed to feed the kitty so that someone, in scraping the cream off the dear financial tithes of the poor for themselves, can fund that  one in a million opportunity.

This is the siren call offered by Mia Love and the other high priests of the GOP Promise, to be contrasted with the pains and perils imposed by the Democratic party in its attempt to shackle the poor in an eternal state of being redistributees,  slaves to their own penury. In the dsytopic vision of the GOP, hope has been slain and promise drawn and quartered by the supposedly helping hand of the left, a hand which appears velvet but imparts the iron of a failed fascist society. Lions and tigers and bears!

Love et al can’t rationally expect anyone to buy the concept that everyone in the US can rise (though they are willing to accept the devotion of the silly and the true believers.)  So they offer up the Lottery System of the US (undoubtedly to be found in the US Constitution,  but I will have to get back to you on that) to replace the historic concept of the roll of government in the US, the American System. The GOP will give you the same hope that you get from the Lotto, and that should be enough for anyone.