Bronny James. And Elon Musk. We Are At a Disadvantage.

Bronny James (son of Lebron James and his wife) is a student athlete (basketball player) at the University of Southern California.  Last week, James (Jr) suffered what has been publicized as a "cardiac arrest" while playing basketball.  He was resuscitated, and appears to be recovering well.

Elon Musk, who is an entrepreneur in various fields, has opined that James' cardiac arrest was due to James' having been vaccinated against the coronavirus, which Musk says is associated with various cardiac problems, including cardiomyopathy, which can cause cardiac arrest.

No one has said James did not receive a vaccination against the coronavirus, and most people with brains have been vaccinated, so we can assume that James was, in fact, vaccinated.  But the question is about James' heart, and what could affect it, and how Musk knows what could or did affect it.  Cardiomyopathy is a very uncommon, but not at all unknown, condition, it has existed long before the coronavirus vaccine, and rarely, athletes die of cardiac arrest, from one cause or another, very possibly including cardiomyopathy.

So, to phrase the question a little differently, for how long has Dr Musk been treating Bronny James, what methods of evaluation has he employed, and what were the results?  I have not heard that Dr Musk has made public the medical records he keeps of James, were there any murmurs, what were James' blood pressure and pulmonary artery pressure (which I have every confidence Dr Musk would have checked, if James had had any relevant symptoms), and what Dr Musk found James' echocardiogram showed.  I'm assuming here that Dr Musk is either a cardiologist or at least a knowledgeable general internist, and would naturally have pursued these areas of concern regarding his patient.

The unwelcome alternative is that Elon Musk is not a doctor, and is just blowing smoke out of his ass.  In all honesty, it was not my understanding that Musk is in fact a medical doctor, and we'd all have to think back to see if there has been a pattern of his blowing smoke out of his ass.  If there has, he should keep his ass blocked, and his mouth shut.

"To Quote Adolph Hitler"

There's a colloquial "rule," generally used by people who would be most disadvantaged by the act, that says that if, during an argument or debate, anyone likens his or her opponent to Hitler, then the argument is over, and the person who used the Hitler reference loses.  It's kind of a dumb manipulation, or rhetorical trick, but I've encountered people who trot it out.

I bring this up, because I got an e-blast from some group called everylibrary.org, and it included the title of this post.  Specifically, it talked about another group called "Moms for Liberty," which was described as a "well-funded dark money organization," and the quote (supposedly from Hitler) was "He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future."  "Moms For Liberty" used that quote.  No one manipulatively interpreted them as being like Hitler.  I included the upper case letters, because that's what was written in the e-blast.  If this really came from Hitler, and it was something he said, then there were no upper or lower case letters.  If it was something he wrote, then there would have been.

And then, everylibrary tells you terrible things about "Moms for Liberty," wants you to sign a petition, and wants you to donate money.  (No matter what anyone says, doesn't say, does, or doesn't do, someone wants you to donate money.  As I always say, if I donated the minimum requested amount to every organization which I myself consider very worthy, I'd go broke fast.  So I pick the ones I pick -- which I realize are arbitrary, I donate monthly, I don't donate to the others -- not because they're unworthy -- and I don't increase the donations every time any of the organizations to which I donate says they have an emergency, which all of them always do.  I don't have that kind of money, and I just can't do it.  As it is, most of my credit card bill every month is donations.)

Anyway, let's think about the quote attributed to Hitler.  Assuming Hitler said that, which he very well might have (I looked it up on Bing, and it was "attributed" to Hitler in 1935.  But there were no upper case letters in the attributed quote, so if it came from Hitler, he must have said it, not written it.), he wasn't the only person to have recognized the critical importance of capturing the youth market.

The tobacco industry very famously hit upon the same approach.  My favorite Kevin Smith movie is "Dogma," and when a group of the good guys were trying to appeal to George Carlin's character, Catholic Cardinal Glick, and mentioned the tobacco industry, Carlin's character said "If we only had their numbers."  It's certainly true that the religions recognize the same importance of capturing the youth market.

In fact, whether it's religion, politics, or any of a number of things, people tend to stay with what was in their upbringings.  I know of some exceptions, and so do you, but that's the tendency.  As I have said a million times, we don't call childhood the "formative years" for nothing.

Whether or not anyone has "gained" the futures of young people depends in part on how much they "owned" them when they were young, and how much these erstwhile youngsters achieve independence.  One of the things all or almost all of my patients have heard me say (some repeatedly) is that it is the job of children, from as soon as they're old enough to start doing their job, to become capable and independent, including independent of their parents, and it is the job of parents to permit and even encourage their children to become capable and independent, including independent of them.  And I tell them that if they have no other way of thinking about this, they should realize that if everyone gets his and her wish, the offspring will outlive their parents.  If the offspring are not capable and independent, including independent of their parents, by the time the parents get old and die (and the offspring are now in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or maybe 70s), the offspring are in deep trouble.

I never owned my children.  I never wanted to.  I set an example for them.  If it appealed to them, and they wanted to follow it, fine.  If not, they found their own paths.  I'm not they, and they're not I.  That's as it should be.

Hitler would be very disappointed to find out that the German people have come to agree that they made a terrible mistake in the 1930s and WWII, they've been remorseful, they've paid reparations to the people Hitler told them were the antichrists, and they're doing vastly better now.  Germans today insist that students learn about the Nazi years.  Hitler may or may not have "owned" their youths, but he did not "gain" their futures.

My Daughter Doesn't Get It.

My daughter and I have a close relationship.  But it got strained last year, because I moved up to Massachusetts for five months, as she asked me to do, it was a huge disruption and expense, it didn't turn out as I expected, I sold the apartment I bought (this was supposed to happen every summer), and I think she got mad at me.  But we're still close.

I have solar panels, and my daughter got solar panels.  (My son's are on order.)  I have an electric car, and my daughter and son-in-law want an electric car.  We don't agree about various things, and that's fine.  They parent their way, and I parented my way.

Some weeks ago, I got an e-mail from some company that is auctioning off a new electric car.  There are choices, and two of them are trucks.  My son has agreed to accept my Tesla sedan, and my daughter and son-in-law want a truck.  The auction tickets were $200 each, and I bought five of them.  Yesterday and today, I've gotten e-mails saying that fewer than half the tickets have been sold, with about four weeks to go before the auction, and they're urging people to buy more tickets.

So I called my daughter to ask her if she'd like me to buy some more tickets.  No.  She wants me to save my money.  I asked her, in effect, for what.  Whatever I have is for her and my son anyway, and if they're more likely to get a new electric car of the type they want if I spend more money, then I'm inclined to do it.  Still no.

My daughter wants me to be able to take care of myself, and she's worried I'll need more money than I have to do it.  (The alternative, of course, is that if I get in trouble, I'll call my son and daughter, and ask them to help me.  Which maybe they don't want to have to do.)

But I told my daughter to forget about that, and forget about me.  My interest is my offspring, not myself.  I manage.  I suggested my daughter think of me as garbage that can be disposed of.  (I'm 73, my offspring are in their 40s, I work because I like to, and because I'm good at it, not because the world needs more psychiatrists.  My "job" is done.)

My daughter said "yeah, you're a piece of shit, and we don't want you."  I corrected her, and I said "no, I was successful with you, and you don't need me."  

If I reared two successful offspring who are entirely independent of me, then I did exactly and completely what I should have done as a parent.

I outlived my parents.  My offspring will outlive me.  My grandchildren will outlive my offspring.  That's the way it goes, and that's the way it's supposed to go.  That's actually what everyone wants.  That's why hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years ago, there were other people, and hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of years from now, there will be different people.  Unless we continue to fuck up each other, and the planet, and interfere with the whole process.  We're supposed to care enough not to do that, but at the moment, it's not looking good.  But I'm still going to do my part.

Ronnie DeSantis Needs to Be Less Clumsy About Making His Point.

I'm not sure how I escaped this.  My birthday is in March, and during the three years I spent in junior high school, there must have been at least one day I was in school, and in PE, on my birthday.

One of the coaches made it his business to find out who had a birthday on a PE day.  He would snag that student coming out of the shower, and he would paddle the student, naked and wet, to the beat of "Happy Birthday."  The paddle was covered in formica, and it had holes in it, so it had maximum effect.  Maximum effect included that the student had very red buttocks after this paddling.  At the end, the coach smiled at the student, shook his hand, and asked him what do you say when someone gives you something: "Thank you."

Ronnie DeSantis' newest suggestion was that slavery was actually a benefit to slaves, because it taught them skills they could "parlay" into trades (if and when they ever got freed from slavery).  Clearly, at first blush, this comes across as, oh, I don't know, heartless, cruel, and completely lacking in human feeling and decency.  But I think we have to consider the possibility that DeSantis was more inept than necessarily strictly wrong, per se.  So, here's how I think Ronnie can do a better job of making his point.

We can enslave the DeSantis family, and everyone they know.  They can pick oranges or strawberries or something.  We can do this for 400 years' worth of generations.  We can control their lives completely, flog them when they do something that doesn't completely satisfy us, and arbitrarily break apart their nuclear families, selling off a younger and stronger male, or the young'uns when they're capable enough to do something useful, or a female, if anyone thinks she'd either make a good brood "mare," or at least be appealing enough to rape.  (If she gets raped enough, she'll learn how to please a man.  That could be a good skill to know.)

And then, at the end of 400 years, we'll let all of these slaves go, although we'll continue to make their lives difficult in as many ways as we can.  Maybe we can brand them, so we'll know which ones are DeSantises, etc.

And if we find out that during 400 years of generations, any of these DeSantises, etc, have learned any kind of skill that will be of any value to anyone, or to them, we'll reassure ourselves that we not only did the right thing by enslaving the DeSantises, but that we actually did them a favor.

For which they should naturally thank us.  Ronnie just hasn't learned about teaching people gratitude.  We should probably teach him, and his wife, and their children, and everyone they know, for many generations.  I'm sure Ronnie, his extended clan, and their heirs, will be deeply grateful.

"Sicko"

I'm generally a big fan of Michael Moore's documentaries.  The only one I hadn't seen, and one of the two I don't own, was "Sicko."  Both lapses have now been corrected.  It's as great as all of them, except "Fahrenheit 11/9," which was somewhat disorganized, and not as perfect as the rest.

"Sicko" is about American "health care," or the lack of it.  Moore hits every note perfectly, and he compares American "health care" to health care in other/real countries.  He focuses on Canada and France for his information about real countries.

Here are the essential highlights: in real countries, everyone has access to health care.  Even visitors/tourists do.  They're not charged money when they get treated.  (Moore at one point asked about a sign that said "Cashier," that seemed to belie the assertion that patients don't pay.  It was explained to him that some patients arrive at the hospital on an emergency basis, and when they get released, like from the ER, they have no way to get home.  The "Cashier" doesn't charge them money.  It gives them money, to cover the cost of the ride home.  The fiscal structure of the country pays for everyone's health care.  And it's good care, too.  (Medical care in this country costs far more than it does in any other country, and our results are worse than many.  We just pay too much, and we don't get our money's worth.  Do you know that the commonest cause of personal bankruptcy in this country is and always has been an inability to pay medical bills?)  People/patients in real countries don't get care they don't need.  (I might have told this story some years ago, but I have a right wing cousin who worked on Wall St -- one of the many VPs of whatever -- and part of his benefit was luxury "health care."  Whenever he had a cold, he marched himself to his PCP, and demanded an antibiotic, which his PCP dutifully prescribed, even though antibiotics don't do anything for colds.  Once he had made so much money that he couldn't think of a reason to bother to go to work any more, and he retired, he had pedestrian "health care."  Now, he had to pay a co-pay for doctors' visits, and for prescriptions.  He quit going to the doctor every time he had a cold, and he quit taking useless antibiotics.)   Importantly, doctors in real countries are not doctors so they can feed at the money trough.  They certainly make enough to live on, but they don't get rich inventing and treating conditions that aren't going to get any better with pretend treatment, and for which this superfluous activity serves to enrich the doctor.  And most importantly, people in real countries actually care about each other, and they want each other to be well, so they pay taxes.  That's how the real countries get the revenue to support their health care systems.

And no, real countries don't only control the costs of having doctors.  They also control the costs of medications and everything else in health care.

Real countries have a huge advantage we don't have, and it makes this kind of societal evolution possible.  In this country, campaigning lasts a really long time, and it costs a huge amount of money.  Candidates who need that much money are very beholden to whoever gives it to them.  In France, for example, the campaign season lasts two weeks.  In the UK, it's about five weeks.  In Canada, it's 36 days.  In Italy, it's 45 days (about six weeks).  In Spain, it lasts a long time -- up to nine months.  But when you have to hurry up and get your agenda out there, and not rely on drowning the voters in exposure, it just doesn't cost that much, and you don't need that much, and you don't owe anyone (except the voters) much.  That's why in real countries, electeds focus on the wishes and needs of the public, and in this country, candidates only care -- only have to care -- about the wishes and needs of their real constituents, which are the donors (not the voters).  Many of those donors and paid lobbyists come from the "health care" industry.  When candidates take that money, which they generally feel they have to, they've been bought, and are owned, and have to deliver.  And what they're required to deliver is not what's in your or my interest.

If you have a DVD player, you're welcome to borrow my "Sicko" DVD.  I just want it back.  You can also borrow my copy of "Un Traductor," which is based on a true story of a Cuban guy who was an academic, and studied Russian, and got assigned to a children's hospital which was treating Russian children who had been damaged by the Chernobyl disaster.  It's a different focus, but a great movie.  I want that back, too.

"No Labels" Sounds Good, If You Don't Think About It.

There's a new third party out, and they call themselves "No Labels."  There are a couple of ways of understanding this brand.  One is that the public shouldn't get distracted by "labels" (Democrat, for example, or Republican).  Another, which seems to be "No Labels'" scheme, is to blend the major parties, so that the result will be what they call "moderate."  Not "extreme," one way or the other.  Occasionally, they've talked about running a presidential candidate from one party with a vice presidential candidate from the other party.  As if they would sort of average each other out.

"No Labels" won't reveal essentially anything about its intended platform.  And this concealing has led to speculation about what "No Labels" is really about.  And who funds it, which they also won't reveal.  Frankly, the predominant suspicion is that it's a right wing stealth group.  Which it might be.  Or maybe not.  Although they're also generally loath to name names, they have let slip that Joe Manchin could be a headliner, or even, perhaps, their presidential nominee.  (They also won't reveal what process they intend to use to choose nominees.)

Here's an article about "No Labels," and it might shed some indirect light.  One fact it mentions early on is that third party candidates don't do well.  So they're skating on thin ice.  No Labels Board Member: If MLK Were Alive, He’d Be a Centrist (theintercept.com)

But here's the real problem with "No Labels," and with American politics.  If you take away the boatloads of "dark money," and the tortured gerrymandering, and the conspiracy theories, and the lies, and instead, you honor what survey after survey says the public wants, we'd have a left wing or center left government.  You don't need to invent a hypocritical or dishonest right wing, or a "No Labels" kind of compromise. This, of course, is not in any way to say we all want the same thing, and that everyone would vote the same way.  But the right has had to work very hard to confuse or distract people from voting for what they want.

Lately, I've seen lots of petitions urging abolition of the Electoral College.  The Electoral College is a conglomeration of ways of not giving the people what they want.  In Alabama, right now, there's an effort to gerrymander the hell out of voting districts, so that only one district will represent African-Americans, even though African-Americans are much more prevalent than one district's worth.  The SCOTUS told Alabama they couldn't do this -- the very far and supermajority right wing SCOTUS! -- and Alabama is resisting.  They just don't want African-Americans' votes to count much (didn't we turn away from that discounting of African-Americans and the values of their votes 150 years ago?), which means they don't want the people, assuming Alabama considers African-Americans people, to have what they want.

But that's sort of our whole point.  That's why this country was established in the late 18th C: why we have a democracy, or republic, or whatever you want to call it.  It's why we have presidents, and senators, and congresspeople, and all other electeds: so the people can have what they want.

And if Joe Manchin, or anyone else, doesn't feel like a representative of the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, he can run as an independent.  He wouldn't be the first.  And not all of them have lost.  We just don't need this mysterious pretense of a "No Labels" party.  Whatever it actually is.

Harvard, Huh?

Ronnie DeSantis graduated from Harvard.  So did Teddy Cruz.  And Clarence Thomas.  Little Joshie Hawley graduated from Yale.  Either these universities are dramatically careless about whom they admit, or they're actually looking for kids like these.

Florida is hurting as it becomes 'where empathy, decency and kindness go to die': columnist (msn.com)

This article talks about the damage Ronnie DeSantis is doing to this state, and how "younger Floridians" are high-tailing it out of here.  I'm not a younger Floridian.  I was born at Jackson Memorial Hospital in 1950, and I, too, want to leave.  The "younger Floridians" have the advantage of being younger, and for me, I feel too old, and it feels like too much trouble to find a real place to be, pack up my stuff, and get out of here.  I didn't much mind dealing with ill-tempered children when my offspring were adolescents.  It was part of the deal, part of the process, and I could assume they'd grow out of it.  Ronnie DeSantis isn't growing out of anything any more.  He's a somewhat younger version of Donnie Trump, who also isn't going to grow up any more.

I've known Harvard students, and there was nothing wrong with them.  There were some who attended Harvard undergraduate and Harvard Medical.  We used to call them "Preparation H."  But the ones I knew were good people and good doctors.  For a long time, I thought I made a mistake by going to Tufts.  It was a very nice and small campus in Medford, it was easy to get to downtown Boston, or Cambridge, or anywhere else, and all the classes were taught by professors, instead of by graduate students as they would have been at Harvard.  But it was so small that they didn't have enough choice of classes.  Now, though, I'm glad I went to Tufts.  Who knows what kind of inane riff-raff could have been my classmates if I'd gone to Harvard?  My Tufts girlfriend, who later became my wife, had been accepted at Tufts (Jackson) and Harvard (Radcliffe), and she chose Tufts.  I never asked her (or I don't remember), but I now wonder what instinct she might have had to have led her to go to Medford instead of Cambridge.  They're only a few miles apart, and she and her parents could have visited each other either way.

It's not just the students they choose, either.  Bernie Madoff ripped off a lot of people.  One organization he suckered into "investing" with him was Harvard University.  Harvard makes more seriously bad choices than anyone would automatically expect they would.

I suppose one way to explain the problem is that Harvard is a sucker for self-assured people.  People like Ronnie DeSantis, and Bernie Madoff.  Nobody would argue that Harvard is not self-assured.  When I applied for psychiatry training, I applied in the Boston area.  Two of the places I applied were Harvard Medical School affiliates.  It's been a long time, and I don't remember what vibe I got from them, but I chose the Boston University system instead.  In my opinion, I made the right choice.

So, Ronnie DeSantis is now running people who are not haters and dimwits out of Florida.  I really can't say I'm surprised, or that I don't understand it.  Frankly, he's got me thinking again about leaving.  In the past year, I've interviewed for jobs in Georgia (I know), Texas (I know), and California.  But my sister desperately needed a place to live, she asked if she could live in my house, and she's a higher priority to me than is escaping Florida, Ronnie DeSantis, and the selfish dimwits.  Ronnie and his legislative stooges, who it appears are afraid of him, are turning this into a dysfunctional and two-bit state.  If my sister gets settled down somewhere other than my house, and I get out of here, I'll try to remember to say goodbye to you.  My daughter lives in Massachusetts, which is way too cold, my son lives in Colorado, which is probably too cold, and I was very recently watching "Peter Tosh: Stepping Razor/Red X," which reminded me how much I wish I lived in Jamaica, where I think I could do some good.  And the extra good news is that there are probably few Harvard graduates there.

I Don't Think Rep Anna Luna Understood the Correct Point She Was Making. She Backed Herself Into the Wrong Argument.

House Democrat LOSES IT On Matt Gaetz During Floor Speech: ‘You Are Exhausting!’ (msn.com)

Rep Anna Luna (R, Fla) doesn't appear in this video until 4:36.  By that point, Steven Horsford had complained about Matt Gaetz's amendment, Gaetz demanded a point of order, because Horsford addressed him directly, which is not permitted, instead of addressing the Chair, and Gaetz then described Horsford's argument as childish, which is an ad hominem criticism, which is also not permitted.  (Gaetz is selective about which impermissible kinds of interactions he objects to.)  Then, Gaetz yielded to Luna.

Luna, like Gaetz, is very opposed to Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion.  Even more than that, they're extremely opposed to initiatives that promote DEI.  To illustrate her point about how unnecessary, and ridiculous, DEI initiatives are, Luna offered a sort of personal example.  

She began generally by pointing out that everyone of whatever race or ethnicity bleeds the same (color).  Boy, was she right about that.  And to bring her point home, she mentioned her husband (Luna is Caucasian, and she didn't say her husband wasn't also Caucasian) who was stationed in the middle east, got wounded, and most certainly didn't concern himself with the race or ethnicity of who evacuated him to safety, evaluation, and treatment.  And that's great, that he didn't have to worry about the race or ethnicity of the people who saved him.

If Luna's husband is in fact Caucasian, it might not have occurred to her that not everyone can make the same assumption about being evacuated that her husband could.  The sense of camaraderie might depend on more than the uniform.

Luna's husband, and Luna, can confidently assume, for example, that if they have a tail light out, and the police notice it, the problem will be brought to their attention.  It's possible they'll get a warning, and unlikely they'll get a citation.  Luna might not realize that some people will get assassinated by police over something like that.  And whether they do or they don't will depend on something a lot more superficial, and immediately obvious, than the color of their blood.

I think Rep Luna makes a good and important point: we're all in this together.  But if she gets too glib and careless about it, and forgets how many people don't look at it that way, then she's really just encouraging antisocial behavior.

The Failure(/Refusal?) to Assimilate

I'm still stuck in the middle of James Kirchick's The End of Europe.  I just get busy, and I don't give myself enough time to read.  Actually, I'm essentially exactly in the middle of this 230 page book, and the section where I'm bogged down is called "The European Union."  The immediately preceding section was "Germany," and Kirchick isn't done talking about Germany, even though he's switched to a new section about the EU.  Kirchick's writing is gorgeous, although somewhat dense.

At the moment, he's talking about emigration from middle eastern countries into the EU.  Frankly, he's describing some bad behavior on the parts of the immigrants, and he's parsing the possibility that it would be unfair and inaccurate to ascribe this bad behavior (mostly misogynistic, but also represented by unemployment) to the Muslim culture, instead of just to comparatively uncivilized individuals.  The theory he's challenging is that Muslims are misogynistic and possibly lazy people, who want everyone else to adopt Muslim customs, and they impose their cultural deficiencies on the people, and countries, around them.

This got me thinking about experiences I've had, personally and as a citizen of this country.  On a personal level, I was born into a Jewish family, but I have never believed there is such a thing as "god," so I eventually gave up thinking of myself as Jewish, since I don't have the entry-level criterion: thinking there's such a thing as "god."  And I have no affection for or connection to the non-religious cultural features of the "community," so there was nothing to hang on to.  Am I a "mensch?"  I certainly hope so.  Am I a "goniff?"  I certainly hope not.  But this is because I care about other people.  It has nothing to do with religion.  And even if I did care about religion, what's that got to do with anyone else?  The fact is that I have never known any religious person who was true to the tenets of his or her religion.  They always manipulate, so they can do what they want, and find some excuse for it.  Among the Jews, which is what I know best, it's called "rabbi-shopping," where someone wants to do something the rules of Judaism tell them they're not supposed to do, so they ask enough rabbis until they find one who tells them the rule can be interpreted to permit the person to do what he or she wanted to do, and that becomes their permission to do it.  As best I can tell, the religions are sort of all like that.  Unless the supposed adherent doesn't even bother to shop for an accommodating cleric, and they just do what they want anyway.

Anyway, to get back to assimilation and Kirchick, as of Kirchick's data as of publication (2017), he started this part of the discussion talking about how terribly women are treated in the middle east, then extending to some of the residual bad ways EU women are treated, seemingly by middle eastern-origin men.  Kirchick, for his own reasons, is careful to try to propose that the ways these men/boys treat women may be unrelated to their Islamic culture.

But what if it was?  What if people, in their "formative years," learned a number of things, including how to treat other people (they unquestionably do: that's my metier), and that's why they treated women in the EU the ways they and their families treated women back in the middle east?  This raises much broader, and frankly more provocative, questions.  If Muslims, for example, feel free to expect the world to function as if it were a Muslim place, why would we not say precisely the same thing about Jews (the more Orthodox, the more insistent), or about Christians?  Muslims, Jews, Christians, or anyone else are welcome to live their own lives as they wish, but they seem unable to resist demanding that everyone else live as they themselves wish to live.

In various parts of various countries, Orthodox Jews live in relatively tight communities.  Part of this is logistical, because they walk to synagogue on Friday nights and Saturdays, so they can't live far enough from the temples, and from each other, that they couldn't walk there.  And maybe it's no big deal if you can't get a cooked lunch at an Orthodox-owned restaurant on a Saturday, because they don't cook on their Sabbath.  You can eat somewhere else.  But there was a time in parts of Israel where if you were driving during the Sabbath, the Orthodox vigilantes would stone your car.  You have to live the way they want to live.

What's in many ways worse is the United States, where we anticipated this kind of problem, and we very explicitly separated "church" from state, and specified that there would be no government-backed religion.  You can talk yourself blue in the face explaining that to the Christians.  There's a population of them who will tell you this was always intended to be a Christian country, and it is one, and it should be run according to Christian tenets, as those tenets are massaged.  That is very forcefully to say that you should behave as a Christian person might wish to behave, whether or not you're Christian.

It's not only religion, either.  Many years ago, I was the Psychiatric Medical Director for a Community Health Center in what had become the traditional Italian section of downtown Boston.  There were enough patients who didn't speak English, despite having lived in this country for decades, and translators were sometimes too busy, that I took Italian lessons in night school so I could communicate with the patients.  I had a job to do, I couldn't not do it, and I couldn't always get a translator.  In our area, there are loads of people who have been here for several decades, and still really only speak Spanish.  Several people have suggested to me I learn Spanish, so I can communicate with them.  Because they can't be bothered to learn English.  About two nights ago, I was having dinner at the restaurant of a friend of mine, and I delivered one of my more common flirts to the waitress.  She managed to ask how the food was, and I told her it was the second best thing in the restaurant.  Usually, they smile, get the joke, or ask what's the first best thing.  She was blank.  My friend, who knows I do that, explained that her English is not very good.  And she's a waitress in a restaurant that welcomes people like me, who don't speak Spanish.

Kirchick also talks about unemployment among immigrants.  As I said, in the chapter I'm reading, he focuses on the EU, but he offers illustrative comparisons.  "Across the EU, 15% are [were in 2017] unemployed," which he says is 5% higher than the unemployment rate of native born Europeans.  Interestingly, he compares this to the US, where "just" 5.8% of immigrants are unemployed.  This is/was 1% lower than the unemployment rate for native born Americans.  So with respect at least to employment, immigrants seem to do better here than do Americans.  They find ways to assimilate better, at least regarding employment.  (It would still be nice if they learned English, but many of them do, and all of their offspring do.)

It's a mixed curiosity, then, about people and assimilation.  As it turns out, Americans assimilate poorly, even in the US.  They can't accept their own Constitution, they are tenacious about insularity, and they appear not to work as hard as do immigrants.  And this is in the country where even born and reared Americans will boast of the promised fruits of work, and the endless possibilities.  They can say it, but they can't bring themselves to do it.  Not as well as can immigrants, who assimilate in whatever ways they can.  Which is why they come here.

"A Soros Judge"

‘What Happened?!’ Fox’s Maria Bartiromo Confronts Ron DeSantis On His ‘Failure to Launch’ in Blunt Exchange (msn.com)

Maria Bartiromo of Fox "News" started her interview of Ronnie DeSantis sounding tough, challenging, and dismissive.  By the end of this interview, she seemed more content.  She seemed to like Ronnie's tough talk, and his reassurance that he had the ambition and the means to beat everyone else up.

She pointed out that a Politico poll showed 56% support for Donnie Trump, only 22% support for Ronnie, and 5% or less support for each of a few other declared candidates.  Chris Christie was not listed, for some reason no one addressed.

But Maria wanted to know what made Ronnie so confident.  Well... Ronnie did make clear his schoolboy bully style, he happened to mention that he has $150M in thus far untouched donations, he reminded Maria that he had dismantled Charlie Crist in the last gubernatorial election, and he listed his Rep/con bona fides.  He didn't use the phrase "drain the swamp" up there in DC, but that's what he meant.  Oddly, he didn't mention that Donnie did use that phrase, and, according to Ronnie, failed to do it.  So he sort of left as an unanswered question how he, the next Rep/con non-DC denizen, was going to do what the last Rep/con non-DC denizen couldn't do.

But he did give as examples his view of cleaning up messes in Florida.  It was during that discussion that he talked about having gotten rid of "a Soros judge" from Tampa.

I don't know a lot about George Soros, apart from that he's one of the Reps/cons' favorite effigies (along with Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden), but I looked him up.  He is described in Wikipedia as being "Hungarian-American," although his family first fled the Nazis by going to the UK, and having worked typical kid jobs until he figured out a better way to earn money, through investing.  He got himself an advanced degree, too.  I assume, because he's referred to as "Hungarian-American," that he lives in this country now, but I don't know where.  He's said to have a worth of $8.6B, which is far more than most people, but far less than the wealthiest.

So, for one thing, what does Ronnie think he means when he refers to a judge in Tampa as a "Soros judge?"  Soros has nothing to do with nominating or confirming judges.  Soros appears to have liberal leanings.  Is Ronnie whining that the judge in question made a ruling that would appeal to liberals?  Or is this just a dog whistle intended to provoke the mindless people who are susceptible to dog whistles?

For another thing, if Ronnie thinks Soros has any kind of influence over some judge in Tampa, and he thinks that's a bad thing, is he so enraged as to be in orbit over the gross and blatant influence pedaled to SCOTUS Justices?  He didn't mention that.

And as for his independence and swamp-cleaning, by which he seems to mean that he's not anyone's agent, from where did he get the $150M he hasn't used yet?  That wasn't a whole lot of $5 bills.  Does someone expect something for donations like that?  Has Ronnie reassured them that if he's elected, they're going to get what they paid for?  That's the swamp Donnie and Ronnie propose to drain.  If you depend on the swamp for your welfare, it's unclear how you're going to drain it, or why you'd want to.

Then, Ronnie goes on to some other rant about "censoring."  He won't have it, and he specifically refers to Hunter Biden.  Ronnie seems to think that Hunter Biden did something wrong, but that his misdeeds were covered up (that, presumably, is the censoring).  Setting aside the mindless fixation on Hunter Biden, I agree with Ronnie here.  Anyone who does something wrong should be held to account for it.  Donnie Trump almost made a career of threatening to "lock [Hillary Clinton] up" for some imagined misdeeds.  He had four years to do it, and he didn't do a thing.  I'm guessing Ronnie doesn't emulate Donnie's failure to hold the supposedly guilty to account.  But setting aside that incoherent crusade, what, exactly, is Ronnie's complaint about "censoring?"  We're talking here about Ronnie DeSantis, who bans books, and won't let teachers teach their curricula.  He proposes not to let people say "gay," and he makes fun of anyone who is concerned about an epidemic, urging/coercing them not to wear masks.  This is the kid who doesn't like "censoring?"

And then, there's this: DeSantis’ Iowa gaffe is indicative of a bigger problem (msn.com)  It seems that the population of people who think Ronnie is an inept loser with no social skills is growing.

I'm not sure where Ronnie thinks he's going with this, but no one except him thinks it looks promising.