Sexual Politics

Here in Italy our recent parliamentary elections featured as many as 16 different political parties offering up full lists of candidates for the 918 seats in the two houses of Parliament. While this may represent a wide range of political opinions, issues and interests, it more realistically results from the fact that electoral expenses of all the parties are paid for by the Government. The fragmentation of the electorate has led to coalitions of parties under the umbrella descriptions of center-left and center-right, in order to allow the possibility of alternating administrations, such as the two-party system has historically created in the United States.

Meanwhile, in the US people are clamoring for a third party, or even a move to a multi-party system. Based on the Italian experience, this may not be a fruitful as imagined. The two party system has been made up of Democrats and Republicans since the latter replaced the defunct Whigs in 1860. Republicans traditionally represented business interests and the wealthy, while Democrats have represented put-upon minorities, the term minority originally associated with all people of non-British descent.

Three of my grandparents were of Dutch origin. The two best-known Dutch names in the US are Roosevelt and Rockefeller so I can't say I ever felt the sting of minority status. Nevertheless, I always tended to identify with the underdogs, possibly influenced by my Uncle Martin, a union carpenter who may have been regarded as the black sheep of the family, but who had democratic tendencies rare among his siblings. Our WASP Republican family lived in the New Jersey suburbs, well within the hegemony of the NY Yankees. It must have been my contrarian nature that led me, from an early age, to become a life-long fan of the Boston Red Sox, and equally a foe of the dominant pin-striped Yankees.

While I was spared from minority discrimination myself, I did hear stories of how my German grandfather's delicatessen had been vandalized and my mother's German language lessons curtailed during WWI. For a time Germans were also considered a minority, although I believe their contributions to the US gene pool were even larger than those of the English. In any case, Irish, Italians and Jews all had it much worse, and people of African descent had it worse by another whole magnitude. All have been embraced by the Democratic Party, although for blacks the embrace wasn't extended for a century, until FDR and LBJ came along. I've felt solidarity with them all, with a possible asterisk for the Irish resulting from their unsettling over-representation in local police departments. In any case, I've been proud to call myself a Democrat and vote accordingly.

With the three decade long transformation of the Republican Party from a bastion of the middle class to a single-minded advocate for the richest 1%, one might suppose that the GOP (Grand Old Party for the non-American readers and the very young) would be facing extinction but the One dollar-One vote policies recently enshrined by the Supreme Court have gone a long way toward keeping the party afloat. Most of the above-mentioned groups no longer consider themselves minorities, nor are seen as such, so their Democratic roots have withered. We just don't hear much about Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans or other hyphenated Americans any more. That is not the case for blacks (of all shades) whose stubborness in voting for Democrats at something like a 95% rate has made it easy for them to be gerrymandered or disenfranchised out of political relevance, allowing the outnumbered Republicans to seize the White House in 2000 and 2004. Most humiliating of all, they've been tricked into providing the margin of support needed to get a half black, big business Republican, disguised as a liberal Democrat, elected President, twice. None of the certified GOP Toms, from Alan Keyes to Herman Cain, managed to pull off that trick, but it seems they didn't really need to.

The mainstream media have taken to lamenting that there is no bi-partisanship in government and nothing can be achieved. Whether this stems from naivetè or collusion we can't say but there is bi-partisan agreement on most of the main issues that the US faces today. The need to keep the big banks safe from their own colossal gambling mistakes, the need to keep our military expenditures above those of the rest of the world combined, the need to slash all civilian services and programs; the need for de facto adjustment of the Constitution to accommodate the growing demands of the surveillance state, with the concomitant suppression of whistle blowers; the desirability of preemptive remote-control bombing of possible enemies worldwide; the need to open up trade to obtain the benefits of slave labor; the need to slash taxes and, of course, the need to balance the budget, are all accepted on both sides of the aisle, with minor differences in the details. With President Obama in the White House, Jack Lew at Treasury and Penny Pritzker at Commerce, the big banks are safe.

So with all this unprecedented bi-partisanship around, what can the Democratic Party do to restore its traditions and keep the two-party system alive? There is a fast growing Hispanic minority, exploited and discriminated enough to qualify as Democrats, but it

looks like they will be represented by rich emigrè Cubans, most of whom belong to the GOP.  Eminent Senators have declared, and a number of Supreme Court justices have suggested, that there is no longer any need or justification for affirmative action legislation since the US is now free of racial discrimination.

With racial and ethnic discrimination a thing of the past, in an effort to find new minorities to represent, the Democratic Party has now become the refuge of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender) coalition. The party's entry into sexual politics is hardly a new thing. It's been the standard bearer for all feminist issues for several decades.

The Democratic embrace of the LGBT coalition has been fully reciprocated. In a move reminiscent of that historic moment a decade ago when Colin Powell and Condolizza Rice showed the world that the US Government was no longer just a bunch of old white men lying to and misleading the public, the SF Pride Board Chairman, Lisa Williams, organizer of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, declared that no demonstration of support for gay whistle-blower Bradley Manning would be tolerated, thus putting the LGBT alliance solidly into the ranks of the political mainstream. Manning, who is currently on trial for whistle-blowing, had been named Grand Marshall of the parade but that decision was rescinded, setting off some demonstrations. This event may prove to be closer in nature and historic relevance to the 1968 Democratic Convention, where Chicago Mayor Daley came down heavily on anti-war demonstrators, paving the way for the phoenix-like rise from the ashes of one Richard M. Nixon.

While I welcome the LGBT folks into the fold and I'm happy to see the rights of gay friends as keenly advocated as were those of previous minorities, I do have a few concerns. This embrace does have some electoral logic since the foot soldiers of the oligarchy, as well as its voting base, tend to come from the ranks of gun nuts and non-Muslim religious zealots. Neither of these groups has shown much solidarity with the LGBT movement. Unfortunately, the LGBT vote, even if as solidly Democratic as the black vote, probably doesn't reach 15%, maybe not even 10% of the electorate. Why not build a bigger tent?

Much discussion of same-sex marriage has been mislabeled as “marriage equality” Who's kidding whom? Ask Mitt Romney. His grandfather was run out of the country for his religious beliefs and personal practices regarding marriage. Who knows what might have happened had Mexican-born George Romney, Mitt's father, won the 1968 GOP primary? Republicans may consider Mexico to be an American colony, much like Panama, John McCain's birthplace, but apparently haven't extended such imperial blessings to the State of Hawaii, the birthplace of the current President. What about all those Bin Laden family members spirited out of the country the day after 9/11 during the air traffic lock-down. They may have had special treatment getting out but were their marital rights respected when they entered the country? I doubt it! The US has suppressed the traditional customs of polygamists for centuries, be they Mormons, Muslims or hippies. Let's call them “pollies”. Why don't pollies have the right to marry those they love?

Current progressive thinking is that people are born straight, gay or bi-sexual but no one seems to have considered that some people are born asexual. Asexuals may not have readily identifiable needs nor prominent issues but still, what political entity is speaking up for “Aces”. Without getting into another nature-nurture argument, we can see that people are living longer, eating and drinking more while exercising less, enduring more daily stress, suffering more and more from prostate ailments, and becoming aces at an increasing rate, regardless of their sexual status at birth.  Perhaps people who are more interested in money than sex just naturally gravitate to the GOP, but why should Democrats concede this growing slice of the electorate without a fight?

Once we tended to think of aces as being mostly priests and nuns, as if all aces were born Catholic, but does anyone speak for Protestant and Jewish aces? In recent years it has emerged that many priests haven't been the aces we thought they were. While our culture now glorifies sexuality in all its splendid variety, it struggles to accept that priests have needs too, and that sometimes their love extends to young people of all sexes.  Lonely football coaches have also come in for harsh approbation when their affections or private parts have been exposed. The term pedophile carries heavy negative connotations. Offering sweets to their sweeties has gotten many older men into deep trouble, even though our laws are confusing and conflicting.

Some young women in the teaching profession are now in prison because in addition to algebra they taught their young charges about love. “Sweets” would be a far less negative term for people whose love knows no age limits.

Much has been made of accepting or rejecting gay Boy Scouts. As I recall, the entry age for Boy Scouts was twelve. When I was rejected, it had nothing to do with sex. I simply failed to memorize the Boy Scout Oath or the Boy Scout Code, I can't remember which. With all the chemicals and hormones in the environment, kids are reaching puberty earlier these days, but is sexual identity cast in stone at twelve? The age of consent in the US ranges from 16 to 18 with some states providing exceptions from prosecution when, for example, the older offender is not more than two years older than the “victim”. Girls can now get over-the-counter day-after birth control bills at any age, a big step toward protecting them from unwanted pregnancy but who is working to decriminalize their partners?

Nymphomaniacs, the patron saints of adolescent boys, and another unprotected sexual minority, are often targets of verbal abuse. Calling them sluts or hos should be just as unacceptable as using other terms of derision such as wop, kike, nigger and faggot, but what is the Democratic Party doing about it? With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder becoming an epidemic and more American soldiers committing suicide than being killed in battle, the government could be mobilizing our “nymphs” to restore morale in our ailing troops and letting them live to fight another day. We haven't even mentioned the rights and problems of our professional sex workers but they vote too.

Even with an expanded sexual campaign, the Democratic Party still needs to widen its base. The fastest expanding demographic group is made up of the morbidly obese. “Bigs” are still a minority for the moment but they need representation. Campaigning for larger airline seats and fighting Mayor Bloomberg's anti-soft drink crusade could go a long way toward rescuing this group from the clutches of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie while creating a permanent Democratic majority.

With the expanded battle for full sexual rights and privileges, and support for Big issues, I believe the Democrats can regain control of both Houses of Congress and perhaps even the Presidency. If not, America may see the growth of one issue splinter parties howling in the dark about bank regulation, the environment, habeas corpus, economic justice, job creation, climate change, infrastructure collapse, social security, immigration, war crimes, education, unending war, corporate personhood and any number of other wedge issues. The US could even end up as politically fragmented as Italy finds itself today.

The Italian Election- Part II

The People Have Spoken

And what exactly did they say? They said “Va fannculo”, which more or less translates to “Go fuck yourself” or “fuck off”. This was the campaign slogan of the populist ex-comedian Beppe Grillo, who frequently exhorts his public to say it while flashing a “V” sign with forefinger and middle finger. My apologies for the language but that's Grillo, whose sensibilities run parallel to those of the late George Carlin, never one to use a polite word or phrase when there was a more off-colorful option. Grillo's new party, the Five Star Movement (M5S) led the field, getting 25.5% of the votes for the Chamber of Deputies, leaving 25.4% for the pre-election favorite Partito Democratico (PD), 21.4% for Silvio Berlusconi's Polo della Libertà (PDL), and 8.3% for Mario Monti Lista Civica.

Italy has 20 regions and each has a proportional election to select a bunch of Senators and another to elect a bunch of members of the Chamber of Deputies. Nobody gets to vote for a person. You vote for a party with a list of candidates. Here in Umbria, one of the 20 regions, we had thirteen lists competing for seven seats in the Senate (curiously divided into twenty-two national voting districts) and sixteen lists competing for nine places in the Chamber of Deputies (even more inexplicably divided into twenty-six voting districts) Those seats are apportioned more or less in proportion to the percentage of votes the party receives but clearly most of the smaller parties or lists get no seats at all. The small parties tend to team up with the larger parties, presumably to agree on policies but, if I understand correctly, also to share in the number of seats awarded to the group. How candidate lists and the apportionment of seats are determined remain mysteries to me and, I suspect, to the majority of Italian voters. Thus, while the M5S got a high percentage of votes throughout Italy, the PD, which had the higher totals in central Italy, and the PDL, which won decisively in the northern regions, both took far more seats in both Houses of Parliament than the M5S. That was due in part to their having three or four smaller lists affiliated with them, while the M5S ran alone.

The election rules threw the Va fannculo back in Grillo's face, as you can see from the following:

In the 2013 voting for the Senate the results were:

Grillo's M5S, with 23.8% of the vote, got 58 Senate seats, (19.2%)

Bersani's PD and allies, with 31.6% of the vote, got 113 seats (37.5%);

Berlusconi's PDL and allies, with 30.6 %, got 114 seats (37.8%) and;

Monti and friends, with 9.1 %, got 16 seats (5.2%) for a total of 301 Senators, not counting a small number of Senators for Life, a sort of golden parachute program for respected senior citizens.

In the Chamber of Deputies the breakdown of votes and seats went like this:

M5S 25.5% 110 seats (17.8%)

PD+ allies 29.7% 340 seats (55.1%)

PDL+ allies 28.9% 121 seats (19.6%)

Monti + allies 10.6% 46 seats (7.4%)

617 seats

All this adds to a robust total of 617 deputies deputies in the highest paid parliament in Europe and perhaps in the world. (Note: The charts showing the pre-election division of seats show 291 senators and 580 deputies as opposed to the new totals of 301 and 617. We don't know if the discrepancies represent delegate creep or just that the newspapers have just lost track of how many MPs there really are.)

While we have similar discrepancies in US elections between the numbers of votes cast for a party's candidates and the number of those elected, this result would seem to exceed the wildest gerrymandering dreams of Karl Rove and Scott Walker. The American system confers two Senate seats on each state, whether they be the size of Rhode Island, or of California. In the US House of Representatives the disproportion is even worse, based mostly on gerrymandering, i.e. the manipulation of electoral districts to bundle like-minded voters into a few districts while defining other districts to include just enough of the traditional partisans of the gerrymanderers to assure their control. However corrupt this may be, Americans at least get to vote for a person with a name and a face against another known person. In Italy if you mark a ballot with the name of a person on a party's list, that ballot is annulled. Other than family and friends, nobody in Italy has any idea of who these people on the lists are or how they got there.

Following the election results, all the pundits, parties and newspapers declared Italy ungovernable. Grillo was to meet with Mario Monti, the unelected head of the recent government of technocrats, i.e. bankers, rather than career politicians, whose aim had been to impose on Italy some of the currently fashionable austerity, which has done so much to restore the virtue, if not the efficacy, of governments in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and the UK. Grillo apparently would support an interim government headed by Monti to pass measures limited to two areas, election reform, and anti-corruption reform, before new elections would be held.

His objectives start with his party's own rules for the election:

1. All candidates on his list must not have had past affiliations with existing political parties.
2. All M5S candidates had to agree to accept no more than 25% of their parliamentary salaries, with the rest going to a fund to promote small businesses.

Among his more dramatic and attention getting getting proposals are:

• referendums on Italian adherence to NATO, the EU, the Euro and Free Trade Agreements.
• A citizenship salary of €1000/month.
• Default on the public debt.
• Nationalization of the banks.

However, he also calls for a vast number of measures to save energy, reduce corruption and make the government more responsive to the electorate. Among them are:

• Abolition of provincial governments and the combining of comunes (townships or counties) with fewer than 5000 residents.
• Abolition of governing funding of the election expenses of the (many) political parties.
• Limits of two terms for elected officials.
• Elimination of special privileges for Parliamentarians, including their pensions after two years served.
• Prohibition on parliamentarians from holding outside jobs, or additional political offices, while serving in Parliament.
• Parliamentary salaries to be brought in line with national norms.
• People found guilty of serious crimes shall not be eligible for elective office nor for managerial positions in publicly listed companies. (Many convicted felons, besides Mr. Berlusconi, occupy high office in Italy, although he represents a pinnacle of sorts.)
• All laws must be self-financed when enacted.
• New laws must be published on the internet three months before taking effect.
• Referendum results must be enacted into law regardless of the percentage of voters participating in the referendum. At present they are advisory and non-binding if less than 50% of the voters participate.
• Free internet access for everyone.
• No one person shall be allowed to own more than 10% of any national publication or TV channel.
• There will be only one public TV channel and it shall have no advertising.
• Executive salary limits on all publicly traded corporations and for those with government participation.

How successful Grillo's populist efforts will be remains to be seen. We do have strong doubts about the likelihood of any of the three other competing groups getting anything done to resolve Italy's major problems. The Italian press, and even more the international press, writes of both Grillo and Berlusconi as buffoons unworthy of consideration. We're pleased that, unlike the US, where politicians all seem bent on creating false problems, crises and deadlines while ignoring real problems and running the country into the ground, Italy seems to have at least one political leader who is proposing bold solutions where they are needed.

The Italian Election- Part I

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The Silvio Critiques

On February 24, 2013, the day of the Italian national elections, Frank Bruni published an article in the NY Times on the elections, and in a fit of pique, I responded to it. My comments are logged around noon of Feb.24. Having suggested that it would be befitting for Americans to keep quiet about Italian politics, I will now ignore that prescription. Silvio Berlusconi is the target of many foreign commentators such as Frank Bruni. His position can best be understood by non-Italians by comparing his role to a number of other public figures. It takes many of them to give a full picture and while I do not wish be seen as a defender of Mr. Berlusconi, it must be admitted that he doesn't fare too badly in some of the comparisons.

Berlusconi, the self-made man, came from a prosperous Milanese family and like Donald Trump, another son of a moderately wealthy family, used his entertaining manner and driving ambition to build a large personal fortune. Berlusconi started out as an entertainer on cruise ships then used his friendship with Bettino Craxi to build a real estate empire in Milan before turning to building even larger empires in media and politics. The Donald also had a good deal of success in real estate but at the end of the day, he got into the casino trade in Las Vegas and New Jersey, and starred on a cheesy reality show, whereas Berlusconi has managed to control roughly 90% of the media in Italy, becoming its richest man and, in a manner of speaking, turning it into one big casino.

Silvio Berlusconi is seen by the American press and most politicians and diplomats in Europe as a buffoon. His dealings with Angela Merkel and other European leaders are filled with gaffes and insults, intended or not, to a degree very similar to those of George W. Bush. Silvio's comments are often crude, rude, and insulting, but occasionally amusing. Those of Bush were often also funny, but the comedy was mostly due to his unprecedented mangling of the English language. There have been many books and calendars dedicated to his malapropisms. The major distinction between these two buffoons is that Berlusconi started neither wars nor major recessions.

As amoral, sexual predators go, JFK may have been the real thing. Bill Clinton got the label but, like so many others, from Ike and Wilbur Mills to Gary Hart and John Edwards, he succumbed to the allure of ambitious young women, themselves seduced by the proximity to power. Where others have denied their involvements, Silvio has, except when under indictment, bragged of his exploits, perhaps creating a womanizer image magnified out of all proportion to reality. Whatever his perceived sins in this area, he has never approached the hypocrisy of a Newt Gingrich, who publicly attacked Clinton for his sexual peccadillos while informing his cancer stricken wife in the hospital that he was divorcing her to marry his mistress.

With regard to conflicts of interest, it's more difficult to find anyone with a comparable issue, since Berlusconi's interests are so vast. Collectively the entire US Congress comes to mind. They are paid base salaries of $176,000  with generous benefits for working 126 days per year to represent the American public, but a large majority appear to be more richly rewarded by corporations for representing their interests in Congress. The ruling majority of the Supreme Court, which declared money speech and corporations citizens, seems to enjoy similar conflicts. Clarence Thomas's wife is highly paid to lobby for organizations dependent on favorable outcomes of SC decisions but we don't recall Justice Thomas (or his radical right brethren on the Court) reclusing himself on any such cases.

Being tall is a big advantage in politics. Both Presidents Washington and Lincoln towered over their peers, physically as well as metaphorically. It's virtually impossible to imagine Mitt Romney getting to run for any office if he stood at under 5'-8”. However, small men, from Napoleon to Michael Bloomberg, driven by ambition, talent, intellect, arrogance or presumption, have striven to make themselves great, sometimes with mixed results. Silvio Berluscono fits that mold.

The closest comparison to Berlusconi by any one man would have to be with that other media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch. Both men are active in numerous countries. Murdoch started in Australia, expanded into England and then metastasized into the US. Both have taken respected publications and turned them into trash. Berlusconi's operations have also expanded outside his native Italy. Although it did suffer setbacks in France, his TV empire has stretched into Spain and other European countries. Both men have successfully maneuvered to expand their media holdings, in opposition to anti-monopoly laws, to further their their political goals and personal fortunes. In their TV programming both have used attractive young women to bolster their ratings. Berlusconi's mostly appear semi-nude and dance, while Murdoch's blonds dress well and read Goebbels-style propaganda in the guise of news. Just imagine Murdoch buying up the NY Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, Time Magazine and the Dallas Cowboys, then starting his own political party from scratch, calling it “America's Team”; then taking over Congress and getting himself elected President, and you get some idea of Silvio Berlusconi's place in Italy.

Richard Nixon faced scandal as Vice President, serving under President Eisenhower, but he managed not only to extricate himself from that scandal and survive an unsuccessful run against Kennedy, but to come back from the political graveyard to be an almost two term President, before his paranoia-driven propensity for criminal activity terminated his presidency. Italy's own Comeback Kid has faced prosecution on many charges, been convicted on several, but has always managed to use Italy's bizarre rules regarding appeals and statutes of limitation to keep him out of harm's way. Last Fall, after his conviction, he announced his withdrawal from politics, but by February's elections, he was back in the fray, leading his party to a third place finish.

Karl Rove comes to mind as the only other present day political figure comparable to Berlusconi in wanting to win at any cost. The most recent charge against Berlusconi is that he paid several million Euros to a politician to switch to his party. He's also been known to bring expensive-to-defend lawsuits against journalists who have reported too accurately on his activities. Rove tends to favor raising obscene amounts of political “donations” to support chosen campaigns. He also is expert at inventing voter suppression measures. Both men suffered setbacks in the past year. We're unaware of any other achievements of Rove, but should they team up, he and Berlusconi could be a dangerous team.

Finally, in the New Face of the Year category, there are many candidates, but the best match I can come up with for a comparison to Berlusconi's penchant for spending vast wealth on cosmetic surgery of dubious value would be Jocelyn Wildenstein. The pictures speak for themselves.

Cat People and Cats

For the first time in twenty-five years our house has no kitty litter box. Tina, the last surviving member of our household feline population, which grew to a maximum of nine back in 1995, died on the third day of the new year. She was no longer mobile and clearly in considerable pain so we had the vet come and administer her terminal medication. Tina was a member of the family for seventeen years after our eldest daughter rescued Tina and her brother Teo from an abandoned litter in Perugia. Besides naming her, I tended to give her the nickname of Miss Italia because, with her velvety charcoal gray fur, she struck me as unusually beautiful. We miss her but at the same time I'm reminded of a joke our friend Jake Gruber once told us. A Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew were discussing theology, and the issue of when life begins came up. The Catholic says that life begins at the moment of conception. The Protestant says no, we believe that it starts at birth. The Jew then says no, you're both wrong; life starts when the dog dies and the children move out. At times like this, such feelings do emerge, along with a little guilt about having such feelings. 

Most of my closest friends are, or have been, dog owners. I've never held it against any of them, even though I've never managed to bring myself to share their enthusiasm. With cats, it's different. I become blind to any defects I might otherwise be irritated by in people when I know they are good to cats. A case in point. Some time ago a man in our village named Crispoldo died. For years he had fought with his relatives and he had been rather hard on his immediate family, which consisted of his wife and their adopted niece, both of whom, as fate would have it, had predeceased him. He was a tough landlord and not a particularly friendly neighbor. And yet, Crispoldo loved his cats, and he was good to them. When he ate, they would eat first, or right along with him. While Crispoldo and I were not close friends, we got along better than there was any logical reason to imagine. 

This week we got the sad news that another long-time neighbor, Antonello Aglioti, had passed away. Despite his living just down the hill through the woods from us, I only met or spoke with him on a few occasions, most recently a year ago when I asked him if he could provide a little creative spark for our summer festa. Unfortunately, I never followed up on that. Antonello was a theater and film director and set designer, as well as being a journalist who recently had his own TV interview show on RAI. Here in the village, he didn't mix very much. The most vivid memory I have about him was of a spectacle he invented, produced and directed during the town festival in Baschi some years ago.. The entire Comune (township or county) of Baschi, which includes about a dozen villages besides Acqualoreto, only has a population of 2800, but his show, which integrated music, dance, lighting, figures on stilts and fireworks, seemed like something you might see in Paris or New York. Amazing! 

 Besides his talent and imagination, the other thing I knew about Antonello was his love for cats.   My wife's sister-in-law Graziella, took care of his house and his cats. When he was in Rome, he would call up to see how the cats were doing.   She respected him and appreciated his concern and consideration.   Graziella herself is second to none in the care and feeding of cats.   Besides Antonello's large herd of almost a dozen, she feeds half the cats in Acqualoreto. 

Antonello leaves yet another house vacant. Several years after his death, Crispoldo's estate has not been settled and his two houses remain unoccupied.   In an earlier piece I mentioned losing three members of our local international community last year.  At least two of them had cats.   Their houses remain unoccupied and their cats dispersed.   I saw a story in the New York Times about a woman from Italy who runs a cat refuge in North Carolina. If only she could come back to Italy and do the same thing here! Among the blogs I often read, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York documents and laments changes to the city, as businesses are forced out by gentrification's many pressures. As one business closes, another rushes in to take its place and sometimes, those leaving are pushed. Such constant change can be disorienting and demoralizing but change, whether good or bad, inevitably happens everywhere. Our problem in Umbria is hardly a too rapid turnover of people or businesses. When people here die or simply go somewhere else, they typically leave vacant houses behind, and those houses often remain empty for years, if not for decades. On a commercial level, we see the same in Todi, where many storefronts have stood vacant for twenty years or more. All these uninhabited places get to be a little depressing for those who remain. It's worse than depressing for the cats! Antonello is gone. May another Antonello appear!

Blind Justice

Pfc. Bradley Manning's trial moves ahead- slowly. He has agreed to plead guilty to various charges of releasing classified information, while not accepting a guilty plea for charges such as espionage or aiding and abetting “the enemy”. The information he released revealed criminal and unethical activity by personnel within the Department of Defense and the State Department, as well as criminal activity by private military contractors. No evidence has surfaced that Manning profited in any way from his actions, or that he was motivated by any prospect of personal gain. Rather, he felt compelled to act to reveal evidence that he had access to of outrageous activity of the part of people working for the US Government. Some of the activities revealed were simply routine diplomacy, i.e. duplicitous acts and statements by diplomats of the US and countries it deals with, and the revelations may have caused some embarrassment all around. However, more central to the activities unveiled were torture, murder, incitement to torture, and official cover-ups of criminal acts. For his actions Manning was held in solitary confinement without charges for a year and a half and he remains in custody today, with no possibility of bail. While his living conditions have improved significantly after a public outcry over his treatment, which a number of psychiatrists have said amounted to torture, he now faces formal charges which could lead to life imprisonment, if not the death penalty that some members of Congress and other media luminaries have called for. The formal charges were only lodged in late February of 2012, nineteen months after his arrest. To the best of our knowledge, there has still been no prosecution of any of the perpetrators of the crimes that were disclosed, and there seems little desire on the part of the Department of Justice to investigate.

Against that backdrop, the news has emerged that HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, has agreed to pay a large fine, described by different sources as either $1.25 billion or $1.9 billion, for illegal banking activities over a three or four year period in which the bank laundered money on behalf of Mexican drug cartels and Al Qaeda Given that the US is in a permanent War on Drugs and another permanent War On Terrorism, this would seem to qualify as aiding and abetting the enemy, if anything can ever be considered as such.

Loretta Lynch, US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, issued the following statement:

Loretta Lynch: We are here today to announce the filing of criminal charges against HSBC Bank, both its U.S. entity, HSBC U.S., and the parent HSBC group, for its sustained and systemic failure to guard against the corruption of our financial system by drug traffickers and other criminals and for evading U.S. sanctions law. HSBC, as you know, is one of the largest financial institutions in the world, with affiliates and personnel spanning the globe. Yet during the relevant time periods, they failed to comply with the legal requirements incumbent on all U.S. financial institutions to have in place compliance mechanisms and safeguards to guard against being used for money laundering.

HSBC has admitted its guilt to the four-count information filed today, which sets forth two violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, a violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and violation of the Trading with the Enemy Act. As part of its resolution of these charges, HSBC has agreed to forfeit $1.256 billion, the largest forfeiture amount ever by a financial institution for a compliance failure.

The Justice Department has allowed the bank to avoid prosecution. Old habits die hard. None of the top officials of the bank will face charges, much less be seized and thrown into solitary confinement. If you want to see more detail on this case, see the entire Matt Taibbi article here.

It seems that Pfc. Manning's worst crime was to not make enough money through his whistle-blowing disclosures to buy his way out of jail. With the government strapped for cash these days, $1 billion clearly buys a lot of immunity. Who knows, perhaps a few million would have been enough to swing our laissez faire Department of Justice. Maybe, with a little more cash, Manning, like HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver, could have just apologized for his actions, handed over whatever profits he'd made through his actions, and promised to do better in the future.

It's the Imagery Stupid!

In the aftermath of the US elections, as my friends were celebrating and I was breathing a sigh of relief, I couldn't help but wonder how it could be that nearly half the voters of the US actually voted for a vulture capitalist and a sociopath, paragons of the forces that have consigned most of those same voters to the economic scrap heap. Why do so many people vote against their own interests?

Tastes may explain the phenomenon as much as do economics. My aesthetic preferences could have as much to do with my being a Democrat as do any ethical, economic or practical concerns. As a kid, without any real political considerations, I thought that elephants were much more appealing, both as symbols and as animals, than jackasses, so my early instincts pushed me toward being a Republican, but with time I've gotten over it and learned to draw Republican leaders with elephant feet. I guess if cats were the Republican symbol and dogs were the Democratic symbol, I'd still be calling myself a Republican, no matter how I voted.

Growing up in a white Protestant family in a white Republican suburb, I may now be considered by some in the family as a traitor to my origins but it didn't start with politics. The pop culture of my youth focused on movies starring Doris Day and John Wayne, and cartoons by Walt Disney. Despite the heavy handed indoctrination, I grew up with a lasting distaste for professional virgins, white-hatted cowboys, and rodents. From about the age of 14, I was bored to death by the sylvan suburbs. The persistent images I keep from there are of the acres of perfect lawns, battle grounds of the on-going War on Crabgrass, and the twice daily parade of gray-suited, briefcase toting men walking between home and the train station.

More interesting memories remain from visits to grandparents in industrial Paterson, where one grandfather terrorized the family with required Sunday afternoon country drives in his gorgeous pre-war Packard. Once he even drove it through the back wall of the garage. The other grandfather would take me to the magical firehouse where he had worked to see the two-driver hook and ladder. While nowadays everything from video games to Twinkies is described as “awesome” by children of all ages, the Passaic Falls did inspire awe in me, and the Victorian silk mills were far more imposing than the stateliest of homes in Ridgewood's fabled heights. Grandma's Sunday chicken came from her chicken coop, not the supermarket, and how could anybody not love a grandma who shot rats off the chicken coop fence with a b-b gun from her kitchen window and who had made dandelion wine through the dark days of the Prohibition era.

We're all exposed to a constant array of images and most Americans, indeed most people, seem to prefer bright, sunny, happy images, especially when surrounded by a grimmer reality. Perhaps, growing up in the privileged suburbs, I craved exposure to the earthier side, just as many of my fellow Americans living in tornado ravaged trailer parks in the plains states may need a sunnier vision. “My Favorite Things”, which I believe was introduced by Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”, became one of my favorite things only when I heard it played by John Coltrane. No matter how often I've heard Billie Holiday sing “Strange Fruit” I still get goose flesh when I hear it, and I keep going back. No one will ever confuse her with Doris Day singing “Que sera sera”.

The last time I was working in New York, I was called on the carpet twice for being too honest with clients. “When they ask you something about schedules, costs, etc., never admit that we don't know. Just make something up. You may be wrong but we'll cover you.” That was good advice, probably even better in medicine or politics than in architecture. People just want to be reassured and they like reassuring images.

In the earlier phases of the overlong presidential election campaign, I was concerned that Mitt Romney would get the Republican nomination. Not because he was more misguided, stupid, or repulsive than Rick Santorum, Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich, but because he was better looking (Rick Perry may object) and might actually win. Mitt is one inch taller than Barrack Obama and, although a long career as a vulture capitalist has left him looking a little like a caricature of an undertaker, at sixty-five, with his whitened temples and jutting jaw, he still conforms to popular notions of a handsome man. His wife, despite a history of serious health issues, retains the classic look of the pretty, untroubled blond American, which recurs in cheerleading squads, centerfolds and popular telefilms more often than in real life. In a country where 3/4 of the population is overweight and about 1/3 is morbidly obese, a couple like that is reassuring. We all want to be like them, tall, handsome or blond, and rich.

The people at Fox News have understood this better than most. While they have their share of celebrity repulsives, most of the routine propaganda is read by remarkably good-looking young women, more or less out of the same mold as Mrs. Romney. The Wall Street cable channels have all emulated them. No matter how many Gordon Gecko-like swine appear on them, virtually all their shows are hosted by shapely, well-dressed, soulless thirty-somethings.

At reunion time every five years or so, I get a number of emails starting with: “remember when.....” followed by images from the 50's and 60's meant to conjure up happier times, although I haven't yet seen Charlie Parker appear in any of them. I do remember these images and artifacts; they just don't stimulate the intended nostalgia. Among the Americans I've most admired were Thomas Jefferson who, besides being father of the Declaration of Independence, the separation of church and state, and the University of Virginia, also apparently fathered a long line of less than pure white Americans, and then, from my own lifetime, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jim Brown and Michael Jordan, all IMHO the best ever in their respective fields. Later, my personal American Idols were headed up by Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and John Coltrane so it may not be so surprising that, unlike the majority of my old white male American peers, I would support a man for president who is only half white (although the media continue to insist, per American tradition, that he is black).

Changing demographics are blamed by many Republicans for their recent lack of success at the polls. They are partly right but I'd say that the only thing that's kept them in the game at all is the old imagery and appeals to the values of Ike's America, which the oligarchs, the new owners of the GOP, have been able to bombard the public with, courtesy of Citizens United. If you live in an area where most of your neighbors are cows or pigs, you may prefer old Saturday Evening Post images of America to the ones likely to show up on the evening news.

For their part, if Democrats want to help poor people, unemployed people, homeless people, and there are still a few Democrats who do, then they'll have to realize that desperate people aren't usually as photogenic as Mrs. Romney or the Foxettes, so their images will have to be used discretely. It can be done! We've all been moved to compassion by images of beautiful Afghan waifs with missing parts; not so much by images of older Americans subsisting on cat food, or educated young Americans, debt-ridden, unemployed and angry. Maybe the party is more savvy than I give them credit for. Neither poor people nor global warming were ever mentioned at the Democratic National Convention, nor were they mentioned during the campaign. While morally reprehensible, that may have been tactically sound. Nobody wants to see nasty images or hear bad news or be associated in any way with the unfortunate. While we're at it, I see we've kept those messed up suicidal war veterans mostly out of sight while the NFL military flyovers and musical tributes to America's heroes keep getting bigger and more frequent.

Both major parties have spewed an amazing quantity of phony optimism this year. Thank God the election is over. Now it's time to see if the Republicans will continue to create obstacles to the economic recovery or if Democrats will grow a spine and stand up for the people they've been elected by. With a little luck we might yet get to see some positive images derived from reality rather than hype. There are signs of hope. Rand Paul, of all people, has taken a big step to burnish his image. He gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor last week calling for the elimination of American citizens being subjected to unlimited detention by the government without trial. Amazingly, the Senate voted with him, cleaning up their own image a bit as well.