THIS IS WHAT REAL COMMITMENT LOOKS LIKE

I have talked on the blog in the past about my old friend, Judith Baker, who, after a career in the Boston school system, has devoted many years to promoting literacy among African children.  Some of you may recall my description of her brainchild, the African Storybook Project, for which I was privileged to raise some money through my USSAS network.  I just received this circular e-mail letter from her about her current trip to Southern Africa.  It offers a fascinating insight into the on-the-ground problems she and others face in bringing literacy to African children.

"Hello Family and Friends,

I didn’t have decent enough email in Nigeria to communicate but now I’m in South Africa with a very good connection so I want to write and see how you all are and tell you a bit about my last week.

Travel to Nigeria was very exhausting for me and travel from there to Johannesburg almost as bad. We left the hotel yesterday at 10am and I only got into the B&B here at 6am. Ethiopian Airlines is one of the few that seems to fly to Nigeria these days and it’s certainly not what one calls comfortable, and the food isn’t really edible, so even though I got in at 6, I stayed awake to have breakfast.

But the time in Nigeria was very good. I worked very hard for most of the conference, because even though the host, Reading Assoc of Nigeria, is very capable, conference logistics are sort of a nightmare. People arrive late or not at all, visa problems abound, things begin hours late and the schedule has to be rewritten every half day to accommodate everyone. I think there were over 150 papers scheduled in basically 5 sessions, so I really couldn’t attend many of them because I was too busy assisting. I did manage to get to a few though, and they were quite fascinating. People study all sorts of uniquely African problems in the schools - no books, teacher shortages, no buildings, no electricity, on and on, plus each clan or area has very definite cultural expectations.

Here is one story, shortened, that my friend from the Karamoja area is grappling with: When the British ruled Uganda, in the 1880’s there was an outbreak of cattle disease among a large tribe of herds people so the British decided to vaccinate the cows and wrote down every cow that was vaccinated on paper. However, the cows died anyway. Then in WWI, the British recruited members of this tribe, a very strong and sometimes warlike people, into the army to fight in Europe, and again signed people up on paper using pens. Most of those young men were simply cannon fodder and never returned. So the Karmajong people decided that ink was deadly to them and held a ceremony in which they broke and buried the pens. They vowed never to allow their children to go to school.  Now, the educators are trying to convince them to change their minds, and it has been very difficult to do that.

Another story: Many deep rural cultures have agreed to send their children to school and become educated. But the problem that very often arises is that those children go off to higher education and of course they never return to their home villages. This means that the tribes or clans have been losing their most talented children, the ones who should become the leaders and eventually elders.

So African educators try hard to find better ways to educate without destroying cultures and communities.

Anyway, things are always more complicated than outsiders, even well wishing ones, imagine, and many foreign interventions can be unexpectedly quite negative.

My own experience with the Pan African is that I have made many good friends in many countries by working on this conference. My volunteer job for over 10 years has been to run the google group that sends out announcements. We have almost 1000 people on this list. But when we set it up, it didn’t occur to me that my own name would be what appears on the ‘from’ line - so there are many people who think of me as a friend who haven’t even met me. I did not intend that and I tried to change it so that the conference itself appeared, but I couldn’t figure it out, and now it’s too late.

The conference committee gave me a lovely special thank you for all these years of work, really took time to honor me, and I was very embarrassed but will send a photo - well I guess I’ll have to put photos on FB since I can’t get this to send them by mail.

This week I’m working in Joburg, and Brook arrives Thursday. Next week we go to Zimbabwe to each do our own work, then we’re on to Durban which is too far in the future for me to think about at the moment.

Feel free to share this since I don’t have unlimited bandwidth.

Judith"

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW

I have been inundated with questions about whether I shall do a series of videotaped lectures on Marx this Fall [well, two people asked.]  The short answer is no.  I am thinking of doing a series of six two hour videotaped lectures on Marx on the Columbia campus in the Spring 2018 semester, but that is still up in the air.  Tomorrow I shall make my first trip to Morningside Heights [which is where Columbia is] for some exploratory talks.  We shall see how that all develops.

FABLES FOR OUR TIME

There is an old story about a dirt poor Jewish peasant – let us call him Moishe – who lives in a tiny one room hovel with his wife, his mother-in-law, his two children, and a dog.  His sole possession is a pig, which roots about in the yard.  Moishe is beside himself at the crowding of his little home, so he goes to seek guidance from the rabbi.  The rabbi listens to Moishe’s tale of woe and then asks. “Moishe, don’t you have a pig?”  “Yes,” says Moishe, “he lives in the yard.”  “Fine,” says the rabbi, “bring the pig into your home.”  “But rabbi,” Moishe begins to protest.  ‘Moishe,” the rabbi says sternly, “bring the pig into your home.”  Moishe goes home, shaking his head, but the rabbi is the wisest person in the village, so he does as the rabbi says.  Well, now things are completely unbearable.  With his wife, his mother-in-law, his two children, and the dog, he could barely turn around in his home, and now the pig is rooting everywhere in the tiny room, getting under foot.  Moishe goes back to the rabbi and says, plaintively, “Rabbi, I did what you said, and now my life is even more miserable, if that could be imagined.  The pig is sleeping in my bed! What should I do?”  The rabbi strokes his beard and replies, “Put the pig in the yard.”  The next Sabbath, after services, Moishe grasps the rabbi’s hand, tears in his eyes, and says, “Rabbi, I cannot thank you enough!   Life is wonderful now that the pig is in the yard.”

For the past three months, I have been dealing with increasing pain in both hands and wrists.  The medical consensus is that I have osteoarthritis, not exactly unknown in someone my age.  I have had a series of tests [next week something called an EMG test, in which they put needles in me and measure electric conduction or some such thing, sort of like acupuncture without the incense].  The problem with my hands is not exactly life-threatening, but it does hurt a good deal, and would have a serious impact on my golf game, if I played golf.  Then, last week, during my morning walk, as I was looking up at a hawk perched on a power stanchion, I tripped and took a really hard fall on the pavement.  My main injury was a blow to the inside of my left knee, which swelled way up.  As the swelling began to go down, a big bruise appeared and it began to hurt really, really badly.  When I got up in the morning, it hurt so much I could hardly walk.  I went to the UNC same day clinic, and a young resident, after looking at it and consulting with his supervisor, gave me the official medical judgment:  I had fallen and bruised the inside of my knee.  In time it would get better.  I was, of course, grateful for this high-powered medical judgment, and went home to take some more Tylenol.  This morning, for the very first time, it seemed that the pain was less severe, and I felt a great sense of relief.  This put me in a much better mood, even though the pains in my hands had not in any way diminished.  And so I thought of the story with which I began this post.

Then it occurred to me:  For at least sixty of my eighty-three years, I have been complaining about everything that I find appalling about the country in which I live:  the brutal treatment of African-Americans, the discrimination against women, the exploitation of workers, the destructive imperial adventures of the government.  Now, in what was supposed to be my golden years, I must deal with a despicable fascistic narcissist in the White House and the daily abominations he visits on the world.  I daydream endlessly about what a relief it would be were to resign, or be impeached, or die.  How nice it would be to see him removed from office, so that we could go back to the way things were before he won the presidency.  What a relief to put that pig back out in the yard.

PERHAPS THE BEGINNING OF AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION

At the conclusion of a long and very interesting two-part comment Austin Haigler asks:  “does anyone try to think about how best to communicate and engage the people that they least agree with and MORE SO don't even share the same conceptualization of objects and their meanings with? I know we all can have a tendency to write off conservatives, evangelicals, Trump supporters as uncanny, stupid, backwards, immoral, regressive, etc, but being from the southern rural areas I am from, I see and know the good mixed up with all the bad in these peoples' lives and ideologies. There has to be a way to reach them and it be effective in SOME way.”

This question cries out for an answer, and I am going to make an effort to begin thinking one through in this post.  I invite my readers, especially those who do not usually comment, to chime in.  Although Haigler poses the question in a very simple, direct way, we must not make the mistake of imagining that there is a simple answer, a turn of phrase that will do the trick.  Of one thig I am certain:  a jargon-laden response full of “interpellation” and “dialectical” and “ideological” and “(re)volution” is worse than useless.

Let me begin with an observation.  Most people have a pretty good grasp of the world they encounter in their daily lives.  They know how to get to the grocery store, who the good guys and the bad guys are at work, who in the neighborhood is living high on the hog and who is just scraping by.  They are not stupid and they are not ignorant.  They may have quite bizarre beliefs about things they do not see or hear or smell or touch.  They may think that the universe was created by a sentient, caring God.  They may think human beings once walked with dinosaurs.  They may believe they live in a land of the free and home of the brave.  They may even imagine that they are paid a wage equal to the marginal product of their labor, a belief far more fanciful than any of the others I have just mentioned.  But be that as it may, they are nevertheless able to go to the grocery store without getting lost.

If you try to argue with someone who believes that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and spirited into America as a Manchurian Candidate, you will probably have very little success and will certainly find the experience intensely frustrating.  But if you disagree with him or her about how to get to the grocery store – you saying you turn left off Main onto Elm and she saying you turn right off Main onto Broad – the two of you will probably figure out quite quickly a way to settle the dispute, and once settled, my guess is that the loser in that dispute will not persist in maintaining the truth of his or her directions.

Some disputes are disagreements about the way the world is, and some are conflicts between people with opposed interests.  To take an old example that lies at the heart of The Wizard of Oz, if a nineteenth century mid-western farmer and an eastern banker are arguing over the desirability of the Gold Standard, the farmer, who carries a big mortgage on his farm, will argue for going off the Gold Standard, which will increase the rate of inflation and progressively lighten the burden of his monthly payments in real dollars, while the banker will argue for remaining on the Gold Standard, which will keep inflation down and maintain the value, in real dollars, of the mortgage payments he, as the lender, receives.  This is a genuine conflict of interest, not a confusion on someone’s part over the nature of social reality.

What conclusion do I draw from this archaic example?  Well, perhaps it is best to begin a discussion with a Trump supporter by doing two things:  First, find out what she cares about in her immediate daily life, and tell her what you care about in your daily immediate life; Second, ask her whether she believes that Trump will make it easier for her to get what she wants, and if she says yes, find out why she thinks that.  Then tell her what you care about in your immediate life, and explain why you think Trump will make it harder for you to get what you want.

Now, it may well be that at that point, you will both see that what you have is not a disagreement about the way the world is but a conflict of interests.  But it is at least possible that you will be able to show her ways in which Trump is going to make it harder for her to get what she wants.  [I hesitate to suggest that she might be able to show you that Trump is going to make it easier to get what you want.  I mean, let’s be serious.]

This will clearly be the beginning of a very long discussion.  But it is probably going to be more successful than simply pointing out to her that she is a despicable racist fascist.

ASK AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN, SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND

One of the incidental benefits of having really smart children is that they are a go-to source of wisdom on many subjects.  There has been a good deal of talk about the possibility that Trump would seek to frustrate the Mueller investigation by pardoning everyone in sight as soon as Mueller got close.  TV commentators oponed that should Trump do this, the recipients of the pardons would then have forfeited their 5^th Amendment rights and could be compelled to testify before Congressional committees.  This led me to ask the following question of my son, Tobias Barrington Wolff, who is, among other things, one of the leading experts of his generation in the legal field of Civil Procedure:

“Suppose Trump pardons, say, Manafort, for whatever, and Congress compels his testimony, denying him the privilege of taking the 5th because he has been pardoned.  Suppose Manafort refuses to answer and is charged with Contempt of Congress.  Does Trump have the power to pardon him for that as well?”  Back came the following reply:

“Yes, that lies within the powers of the presidency, but with some caveats. First (and stating the obvious) that would presumably put rocket fuel under the calls for impeachment. The Supreme Court has held explicitly that the pardon power extends to criminal contempt proceedings in federal court. The same ruling would apply to contempt of Congress. In that ruling (Ex Parte Grossman, from 1925), the Court also indicated that an abusive use of the pardon power in such cases, if such a thing were to happen, would be remediable through impeachment:

"If it be said that the President by successive pardons of constantly recurring contempts in particular litigation might deprive a court of power to enforce its orders in a recalcitrant neighborhood, it is enough to observe that such a course is so improbable as to furnish but little basis for argument. Exceptional cases like this if to be imagined at all would suggest a resort to impeachment rather than to a narrow and strained construction of the general powers of the President."

It is entirely possible that the unstable madman in the Oval Office has told Manafort that he should stick by him no matter what and he will engage in extravagant uses of the pardon power, but I think it would result in his removal by impeachment very quickly. In addition, the pardon power can only nullify criminal liability. In that same ruling of Ex Parte Grossman, the Court made clear that the pardon power has no impact on civil contempt proceedings. This is a  distinction that is not widely understood. When a person refuses to testify and gets put in jail until he is willing to comply with the court's order (like in the high-profile cases involving reporters), that is a civil contempt proceeding, not criminal contempt, even though jail is involved. I address this issue in my casebook, as it happens. Here is the section where I lay out the basics of the doctrine:

Contempt sanctions can be either "civil" or "criminal" in nature, though this terminology can be somewhat counterintuitive. The distinction between civil and criminal contempt does not arise from the nature of the underlying proceeding — a civil lawsuit can give rise to either civil or criminal contempt. Nor does it depend primarily on the nature of the actions undertaken by the individual who violates the injunction, nor even on the use of imprisonment as a sanction, which courts can employ in a limited fashion in a civil as well as a criminal contempt proceeding. Rather, the distinction between "civil" and "criminal" contempt refers to the goal that the court seeks to accomplish by imposing the sanction.

Civil contempt sanctions are remedial in nature and aim to secure compliance with the court's order. When a court imposes fines in a civil contempt proceeding, it does so in order to compensate the injured party for the harm it has suffered as a result of the violator's actions, which may include attorneys' fees and other costs associated with enforcing the order. Courts may also impose a prospective schedule of fines to secure compliance and deter future violations, providing, for example, that a party will be fined some substantial sum of money for every day that it violates the injunction going forward. Courts can even imprison a party who refuses to abide by a court's order. One controversial example of this form of civil contempt can occur when a reporter refuses to comply with a discovery order or subpoena requiring her to reveal her journalistic sources or otherwise disclose information she has promised to keep confidential. Jail time is a proper part of a civil contempt sanction only when it aims to secure compliance with the court's order. Thus, a reporter who is jailed in a civil contempt proceeding retains the ability to release herself at any time by complying with the order of the court, and her imprisonment cannot last longer than the underlying proceeding in any event, since the remedial purpose of her imprisonment ceases once the order or injunction is no longer active.
Criminal contempt sanctions, in contrast, aim to punish parties for flouting the authority of the court. The basic tools of enforcement available to the court in a criminal contempt proceeding — fine and imprisonment — are the same as they would be in a civil proceeding, but the sanctions that the court imposes in a criminal proceeding are not limited to strictly remedial purposes. Thus, a court can impose a period of incarceration in criminal contempt proceedings that will last well beyond the termination of the underlying action, and the target of the criminal sanction cannot win her release by agreeing to comply with the court's order in the future. Similarly, when a court imposes a fine as a criminal contempt sanction, the defendant pays the fine to the court as punishment for his actions, rather than to his adversary as compensation.

So, even if he is willing to abuse the powers of his office without restraint, there are some limitations on his ability to subvert the rule of law prospectively — providing that Congress is prepared to enforce those limits. And Manafort, who has real lawyers (unlike the grifter), is probably aware of those limitations.

I think you can take that one to the bank.

ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY

Having taken note recently on this blog of a thirtieth wedding anniversary and a sixty-ninth first date anniversary, it occurred to me that I ought also to observe another anniversary, this one of my service in the U. S. military.  At this time sixty years ago, I was approaching the end of my eight week stint in Basic Training at Fort Dix, New Jersey.  I have devoted an entire chapter of my Autobiography to the experience, so I shall not re-tell my stories of that six month hiatus in my career.  I am virtually the only philosopher I know of my generation or younger to have served in the military, but many of those half a generation older saw real and very dangerous service during World War II.

I can still recall sitting at a table at an annual meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, having a cup of coffee and listening wide-eyed to Sylvain Bromberger and Jack Rawls swap war stories.  Sylvain, born in Belgium, actually fought in the famous Battle of the Bulge in the winter of ’44-’45, and Jack served in the South Pacific.  Sylvain and I were graduate students together at Harvard and then colleagues for two years at Chicago.  He taught for many years at MIT, where he is now Professor Emeritus.  When my first wife and I drove to Cambridge from Chicago so that I could do a visiting year at Wellesley, he helped us load the UHaul van.  Sylvain is one of my favorite people in the world, and I was delighted to visit with him briefly during my talk at MIT a year or so ago.

PASS THE POPCORN

Thirteen months ago, five-time student deferred Donald J. Trump said of John McCain, "I prefer people who don't get captured."  It was a gratuitous, ugly, cheap remark that earned Trump universal condemnation, but of course did not cost him either the nomination or the election.  A few words of background.  John McCain was a young ne'er do well much pampered, the son of a famous admiral when he entered the Navy Air Corps.  He crashed four or five planes before earning his wings, and was then shot down over enemy territory and captured during the Viet Nam War being held a prisoner  for five years.  In the prison camp, he was tortured, as were the other men held there.  When the Viet Namese discovered the identity of McCain's father, they offered to release him as a propaganda move, and McCain refused unless all of the other men were released as well!  You can say anything you wish about the legitimacy of the war, the morality of serving in it, or McCain's long and appalling political career, but that was an act of extraordinary heroism, and he deserves all of the praise he has had from it since.  Has he dined out off it, as we say?  Used it for political advantage?  Of course.  But I don't care.  That was an act of great and totally admirable heroism and self-sacrifice.  So Trump trashed him for it.  And McCain, who was in the midst of a difficult re-election campaign, bided his time. 

Did McCain forget that insult?  Hardly.  Did time heal the wound?  Not a bit.  McCain waited until the moment when Trump's fondest dream depended on McCain's single vote, and then, in the most dramatic fashion possible, he shafted Trump.

Now Trump has pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the first voice to condemn the pardon is that of  John McCain. 

I will offer a prediction.  Every time McCain finds himself in a position dramatically, publicly shaft to Trump -- which, in light of the balance of votes in the Senate may be rather often -- he will do so.  Trump will fume, rage, storm, tweet, and McCain will just keep shafting him.

Pass the popcorn.