Laid low

El Cabrero hasn't been much of a blogger lately, due in part to what seems to be a bout of noro virus, which is pretty nasty. So far, it knocked me out of attending my grandson's birthday party and completing a 10 practice trail fun, not counting other stuff I can't remember.

At one point, it was so bad that I must have fainted, getting a nasty knock on the back of my head. That was one of the more pleasant symptoms.

I wouldn't wish this on....well, that may be best left unsaid.

FIRST SOME GOOD NEWS. Ohio's governor, a hardcore Republican who opposed health care reform, supports expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Now if only WV's Democratic governor would do the same.

THEN SOME BAD. One veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes.

and now, for something completely different,

HIS KINGDOM FOR A HORSE. A skeleton found under a parking lot has been revealed by DNA tests to be that of English king Richard III, immortalized--not in a good way--by Shakespeare.

RANDOM FEVER INDUCED THOUGHT. I think I'll name my next dog Eponymous.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW

How not to kill yourself

Every so often I teach a college class in sociology, often on the topic of "Deviance and Social Control." One of the topics usually covered is suicide. Sometimes I bring in literary readings, including Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech (soliloquy being too difficult a word to spell); a section of Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (not to be confused with the 70s rock group); and good old Moby-Dick.

Of the three, Moby has the best practical advice for people who may have self destructive thoughts but want to avoid acting them out. He has a safety plan. Safety plans are familiar to people working in the field of domestic violence. Potential victims are encouraged to devise a plan for escape if things ever get bad enough. As I understand it, even batterers undergoing treatment in intervention and prevention programs are encouraged to use safety plans when they feel the tension level rising. It's a way of getting the hell out of a situation when before the situation gets to you.

Ishmael, the windy narrator of Melville's classic, has his own safety plan when he gets a bit too morbid:

 Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

Maybe going off to sea on a whaling ship isn't the best option for people today when the hypos get the upper hand, but the basic idea is a good one. When things go bad, break the pattern.

We're just on the first paragraph of this greatest American novel and there's already been a potentially life saving tip. Who knows what else we'll find.

HERE'S ANOTHER GOOD IDEA: to wit, how not to give away the store and wind up with nothing when it comes to economic development incentives.

GOVERNMENT: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? Here are some ideas

SPEAKING OF READING, here's a look at how important it can be for the brain development of children. I say, make the little ones read Moby-Dick! (Actually, I think I did read a kid's version when I was young, which might explain a lot.)

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

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Not to be

Here's a bit of a downer dug up by researchers at West Virginia University: suicide has now surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of deaths by injury. Further, as Science Daily reports, the number of deaths by injury have increased even while deaths by disease have decreased. The suicide mortality rate was 15 percent higher in 2009 than in 2000.

I find myself wondering to what extent this change is due to the skyrocketing increase in military suicides. My guess is that it is a significant factor.

The French sociology pioneer Emile Durkheim was probably the first to systematically study suicide. His 1897 work on the subject is still extremely influential. One major take home point from his work is the argument that this most seemingly individual of acts is a reflection of larger social facts or social currents going on within a given society.

To coin a phrase, there's something happening here.

A turning of the wheel

Imagine having it all--fame, status, respect, wealth and more--and then suddenly losing it. (Some people are going through that right now.) How do you think you would deal with a big reversal of fortune (or Fortuna)?

That was pretty much the real situation of the Roman patrician Boethius (circa 480-535), who held high office in that twilight zone between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

Rome had fallen under the power of the Ostrogoths, although for a time much of daily life remained unchanged. Boethius fell afoul of King Theodoric and was stripped of wealth and position, imprisoned and executed in what no doubt was a pretty nasty way.

It was during this period of imprisonment that he composed a classic work, The Consolation of Philosophy. As he bemoans his fate, Lady Philosophy visits him in prison and instructs him in wisdom so that he can face his end with composure. While that might sound contrived in a work of fiction, Boethius' situation was all too real.

The book is interesting to me largely for its view of the role of Fortune in human affairs. As Richard Green wrote in the introduction to his translation,

The conception of Fortune as the feminine personification of changeable, unpredictable fate is drawn from pagan sources, notably from the Roman poets and moralists, where she is described as blind, vagrant, inconstant, meretricious. But, as Seneca had observed, there are limits to her power: she cannot give a man virtue, nor deprive him of it, and so virtue becomes the wise man's weapon against her. She represented fate as a random, uncontrollable force, to be feared or courted, opposed or despised, according to the theological and philosophical dispositions of those who, largely through the experience of misfortune, felt her power.

A basic point of the book is that it is the very nature of Fortune to change. Those who put themselves in its/her power by basing our happiness on things that aren't within our own power to keep are helpless when things change--as they will.

Fortune herself is quoted by Philosophy as saying

Here is the source of my power, the game I always play: I spin my wheel and find pleasure in raising the low to a high place and lowering those who were on tip. Go up, if you like, but only on condition that you will not feel abused when my sport requires your fall.

There is a very old wisdom tradition among many cultures that while we can't control everything that happens to us, we can control our own responses and thus acquire a degree of independence from fortune.

Too bad that's easier said than done.

THE AMERICAN DREAM of social mobility seems to have migrated to northern Europe, according to a new report on economic inequality.

A GOOD QUESTION. Have there been any pay cuts on Wall Street for CEOs since the bailout?

NOT TO BE. The US suicide rate is increasing for the first time in a decade. Women have shown the largest increase.

URGENT ANCIENT DINOSAUR/BIRD UPDATE here. You really have to see the picture.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

BELIEVING IN WHAT?

A few years ago, none of the members of Jay Leno's audience could name any of the twelve apostles, as Stephen Prothero notes in his 2007 book Religious Literacy. If that wasn't bad enough, the most frequently quoted "Bible verse" in America is "God helps those who help themselves," which we owe to Benjamin Franklin.

I don't know how many times I've heard people attribute the Declaration's "all men are created equal" to the Bible.

Among the factoids Prothero notes in his book are the following:

*Only half of Americans can name even one of the four canonical Gospels;

*Most don't know the name of the first book of the Bible;

*Only one third know that it was Jesus who delivered the Sermon on the Mount;

*Most didn't know that Jonah was a book in the Bible (check Goat Rope archives for a long series on that little book).

The sad part is, those questions refer to religions embraced by the majority of Americans. When it comes to knowledge of other faiths, the picture is even worse.

Prothero points out that in today's world, regardless of one's own beliefs, some basic knowledge of religions is a necessity of good citizenship. He even came up with a basic religious literacy quiz that he started giving to students but now is sharing with the general public. How do you think you would do?

Find out by clicking here.


TO BE OR NOT TO BE. Here's Barbara Ehrenreich on the human toll of the debt crisis.

THE END OF AN ERA? This item argues that the end of the Bush era will also mark the end of right wing anti-government ideology.

THINKING BIG. Here are 10 big ideas that changed history.

URGENT MALAYSIAN SHREW UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

He meant to do that.

In the 1950s, members of a UFO cult were convinced that the world as we know it was about to end at a given date (sound familiar?) When the date came and went, members were in a quandary.

They were in the distinctly uncomfortable situation of holding two conflicting ideas at the same time. On the one hand, they believed strongly that the aliens were going to come at a given time--except that the aliens didn't show.

They could have said, "Jeez, what was I thinking?"--but they didn't. Instead, they began to proselytise aggressively for their new religion, something they had never done before. After all, the saucer people were nice enough to spare us, right?

You can read about all this in psychologist Leon Festinger's engaging book, When Prophecy Fails.

Festinger called that conflicted state of mind "cognitive dissonance." It's a complicated idea but a commonplace reality. Here's the abbreviated Goat Rope version:

People don't like to think they were really, REALLY wrong about something and, as a way of avoiding that situation, they often construct elaborate rationalizations to justify things.

Let's take a hypothetical case. Suppose a national leader led his country to an unnecessary war and it turned out that the justifications for it were bogus. (Remember, this is just a hypothetical situation.) The leader could say "My bad." That would be a gutsy leader. Or, more likely, he could hold forth about "staying the course."

(Aren't you glad stuff like this never really happens?)

To use another scenario, suppose you have rounded up a bunch of prisoners and have begun to abuse them. Most people would be very uncomfortable thinking that they were abusing a random assortment of folks. It's a lot easier when you tell yourself and the world that these are dangerous terrorists.

For that matter, it's a lot easier to justify enslaving a group of people if you can construct an ideological justification for it. For this reason, some researchers have argued that slavery led to racism rather than vice versa.

In any case, cognitive dissonance and our attempts to escape from it contribute vastly to the world's violence, evil, and misery.

I'LL TAKE ONE! A British think tank is calling for a "Green New Deal" to confront the world's economic and environmental woes.

BULLY FOR YOU (NOT). Investigators have found a link between bullying and being bullied and suicide in children.

A SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC MOMENT? From the AFLCIO blog, here's a report from Netroots Nation about how the US may be on the edge of progressive reform.

NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON. Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the US is slipping on the development index in terms of life expectancy, health and other factors.

MIRROR, MIRROR. Take a look.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TWO BIRDS

Metaphors are an important and inevitable way of looking at the world. Some cognitive scientists think we're basically wired for metaphor. I even remember reading a book about the American Civil War that suggested one reason why the Union prevailed was that Lincoln made better use of metaphors than Jefferson Davis.

(The author had a point, but I tend to be of the same mind as the ill-fated Confederate General George Pickett, who mused that "the Union army had something to do with it" as well.)

We need good metaphors if we're going to start thinking and moving in the direction of a just and sustainable economy. I stumbled across a pretty good one in the introduction to Bill McKibben's book Deep Economy:

For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. That's why centuries since Adam Smith have been devoted to the dogged pursuit of maximum economic production. The idea that individuals, pursuing their own individual interests in a market society, make one another richer and the idea that increasing efficiency, usually by increasing scale, is the key to increasing wealth that has indisputably produced More. It has built the unprecedented prosperity and ease that distinguish the lives of most of the people reading this book. It is now wonder and no accident that they dominate our politics, our outlook, even our personalities.

But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest. That changes everything. Now, if you've got the stone of your own life, or your own society, gripped in your hand, you have to choose between them. It's More or Better.

STICKING WITH THE THEME, perhaps the "age of heroic consumption" is at an end.

GROW IT. Local food banks are urging gardeners to donate fresh food to help feed the hungry. Beware the flood of zucchinis!

SPEAKING OF FOOD, this article argues that sustainable farming is the way to go and that globally we can expect women to take a leading role.

REST, REST, PERTURBED SPIRIT! Insomnia and poor sleep quality has been linked to suicidal symptoms in college students. I think it's nap time.

SPACED OUT. Here are a couple posts from Wired Science about how the location of extraterrestrial life, if it happens, might affect religion.

MEDICAID. This Gazette story discusses the current state of Medicaid in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE OTHER AMERICAN IDOL

Nicolas Poussin's Adoration of the Golden Calf, courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero was recently asked to give a talk on the economy to a Catholic rural ministry conference in my beloved state of West Virginia. The diocese has made a special priority of health and well-being and it occurred to me that that's not a bad lens to use in thinking about economic issues.

Religiously speaking, I'm a theologically laid back Episcopalian with periodic Buddhist and Taoist inclinations working for a Quaker group. (I kind of like the Greek gods too, but try not to talk about that in public very much.) I have a great deal of respect for the economic and social justice teachings of the Catholic Church and have found the diocese to be a valuable ally in working on public policy issues.

Lincoln once said that while he'd like to have God on his side, he had to have Kentucky. When I'm working on economic policy stuff, I'd like to have God on my side but need the Catholic church. Not that I'm saying they're mutually exclusive or anything...

Anyhow, it occurred to me that when it comes to the economy, idolatry is alive and well. I'm using the term in the non-sectarian sense of both elevating any relative good to the level of an absolute and in the sense of worshipping a human creation. Although people make the economy through their own actions, we often act and speak as it it were some kind of god ruling over us.

More on that tomorrow.

SAD NEWS. The number of Army suicides increased again last year, with about a quarter of those taking place in Iraq.

GOOD QUESTION. This item asks why America executes people with mental disabilities.

OH THE WATER. You've heard of peak oil. What about peak water?

BAD "FARMING." Here's a good editorial from the NY Times about the horrible way our industrial food system treats animals in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). It's bad for workers, the environment, consumers, and causes a great deal of unnecessary misery for the animals involved.

A SEA CHANGE? Here's yet another indication that the religious right no longer has a lock on evangelicals.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

IT HITS ALL BY ITSELF

Old Chinese image of Shaolin monks practicing martial arts, courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope this week is how to apply some peaceful lessons from the martial arts to writing and working to make things better or a little less bad. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

Yesterday's post was about thinking defensively, as in talking, acting and writing as much as possible in a way that doesn't leave an opening for one's opponents to exploit.

Today's lesson comes from karate and can be summed up in two Japanese words: kime or focus and kyusho or targeting vital points.

Here are two liberating insights. Even though the forces we're up against may be more powerful than we are, if we can focus our energy at the right time and place we can improve our chances for success. And no matter how powerful they are, every person and every system has weak points. Putting one and one together, if you focus your energy at the right point when an opportunity occurs, you can be successful even if the odds are against you.

Kime or focus is like sunlight concentrated in a magnifying glass as opposed to ordinary sunlight. It's the difference between being hit with 5 pounds of force by a basketball or by a needle. Kyusho is the difference between being poked in the shoulder or in some tender spot that I will leave to the Gentle Reader's imagination.

Now here's a caveat. Usually one can only target a vital point when an opening exists. One's opponents aren't usually nice enough to leave themselves totally open--if they're any good that is--, although sometimes they do. That means you have to pay attention to a constantly changing reality and take advantage of openings as they occur.

So how do you apply that outside the dojo? First, don't waste energy. A good karateka is completely relaxed until the instant of action. Second, have a clear vision of what you're trying to accomplish (hint: it helps if it's realistically possible). Third, when you write or act, aim at a specific target. That means in part being accurate and timely. Fourth, pay attention!

All periods of time are not created equal. Sometimes, windows of opportunity or openings occur. When they're gone, they're gone. Examples may be a vote that's about to take place, an event that raises public awareness about an issue, a scandal, an anniversary of a significant date, etc. You can't always know in advance when such an opportunity will occur but you can practice paying attention and developing your capacity to act when the time is right.

The goal is to be able to respond to events in the manner expressed by the late great Bruce Lee:

When the opponent expands, I contract, When he contracts, I expand, And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit--it hits all by itself.

HERE'S A SHOCK. Some states are trying new ways to help low income working families. I won't hold my breath for anything new like that in my beloved state of West Virginia.

SAD PROJECTIONS. Bloomberg reports that some experts are predicting that the number of suicides by US Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over time may exceed combat deaths.

THE BIG SQUEEZE. This item talks about the economic squeeze millions of Americans are feeling.

THEY OBVIOUSLY WEREN'T TALKING ABOUT GOATS. Here's yet another article on the health benefits of pet ownership.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

Caption: This man is a poor player that struts and frets his hour on the stage.

One of the more interesting sociologists of the 20th century was the legendary Erving Goffman (1922-1982) whose best known work is The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which first came out in 1959.

It's not exactly a barrel of monkeys to read but the El Cabrero was shaken the first time I waded through it. I tend to think of myself as a fairly straightforward person without a lot of pretense. But Goffman makes a pretty convincing case that we're pretty much all acting pretty much all the time.

It's turtles all the way down.

His approach to social interaction has been called dramaturgical, which is a fancy way of saying based on the theater. And we all have a part. According to Goffman,

when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interests to convey.

Sometimes, Goffman says, we are taken in by our own performance. When a person does that, "he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality." That's one extreme. At the other end of the spectrum, people may be cynical about their performances and only engage in them to accomplish some specific goal (even if it's amusing oneself). Most of the time, we're somewhere in between.

Sometimes we "act" with more or less sincerity in groups or what he calls performance teams. An example is a group of people in a workplace that serves the public or a couple at a party. Sometimes performances come off smoothly, say when a combative husband and wife appear in public as a happy couple; sometimes performances break down.

Many locations, such as classrooms, treatment rooms, offices, etc. are in effect stages full of props intended to create an impression. Just like any stage, there are front and back regions. In the front region, the performance team confronts the public, while the back region, such as a staff lounge, is a place where people can relax and take off the mask--or at least put on a different one.

The thing that makes reading Goffman a little exasperating is that he seems to think we're all masks all the time with no face behind them. On the other hand, maybe there's something to ponder in the fact that the English word for person comes from the Latin persona, which means a mask worn by an actor.

SUICIDES SURGE FOR MIDDLE AGED AMERICANS. The NY Times reported yesterday some disturbing trends in patterns of suicide:

A new five-year analysis of the nation’s death rates recently released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the suicide rate among 45-to-54-year-olds increased nearly 20 percent from 1999 to 2004, the latest year studied, far outpacing changes in nearly every other age group. (All figures are adjusted for population.)

For women 45 to 54, the rate leapt 31 percent. “That is certainly a break from trends of the past,” said Ann Haas, the research director of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Veterans now account for one in five suicides.

This is a sad subject no matter what the age of those involved, but previously more attention has been focused on suicide in the young and elderly.

POVERTY ON THE BRAIN. Here's more about the report on poverty and child development mentioned yesterday. Here's an extract from the Financial Times:

Neuroscientists said many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development. That effect is on top of any damage caused by inadequate nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins.

Studies by several US universities have revealed the pervasive harm done to the brain, particularly between the ages of six months and three years, from low socio-economic status.

It seems to hit language and memory hardest.

IN THE SPIRIT OF FAIR PLAY, congratulations to WV Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard for endorsing the idea of some kind of committee to oversee recusal decisions made by judges. Maynard was the center of a WV media storm (with some national spillover) when he was photographed with Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship in Monaco after the court agreed to hear a case involving the company.

GOT GOAT? El Cabrero can relate to this one.

BEELZEBUFO!!! We interrupt this blog for an important announcement:

A frog the size of a bowling ball, with heavy armor and teeth, lived among dinosaurs millions of years ago _ intimidating enough that scientists who unearthed its fossils dubbed the beast Beelzebufo, or Devil Toad.

It weighed 10 pounds and was 16 inches long. When this froggie went a courtin', he rode first class.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: If the colon (punctuation mark) went on strike, would this shut down the writing of academic papers and research reports?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

AMONTILLADO?

Caption: This is Poe's black cat or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Pretty scary, huh?

Welcome to the last day of Edgar Allan Poe Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier posts. You will also find links and comments about current events.

El Cabrero can't think of a better way to wrap up the week than with his selection of Greatest Hits from Poe's short stories.

Here goes:

*Cask of Amontillado. This tale of revenge by burial alive is a hoot. It's probably Poe at his most darkly humorous. I love the first paragraph:

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

Aside from beautiful dead women, Poe had a major fixation about live burial. It was even better for him when a not quite dead beautiful woman was buried alive. Something like that happened in The Fall of The House of Usher.

*The Masque of the Red Death. A little justice is done by Death in this story, which shows that even rich folks have to pay the piper. Here are some first lines:

THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."

But the Red Death had the last word. I love the last line:

And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

*The Pit and the Pendulum. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, much less the hapless narrator of this tale.

*The Telltale Heart. Although El Cabrero's taste for the theme of heats has diminished in the wake of his own cardio problems, this one is still a keeper. Again, some great first lines:

TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.

I didn't include The Black Cat as I am a friend to the feline.

Did I miss any of your favorites?

CALLING IT A WIN. The United Mine Workers is declaring victory after an NLRB judge ruled in their favor in a dispute with Massey Energy at the Mammoth mine in Kanawha County, WV. Here's hoping it's over. Massey will appeal.

GASSING DOWN. A new study suggests the US could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent with relatively little costs.

SHINY UNHAPPY PEOPLE. El Cabrero's beloved state of WV comes within a hair of leading the nation in depression and suicide. Basic economic justice issues seem to be a major factor:

People who are college educated and have health insurance are less likely to be depressed or suicidal, the study concluded. About 245,000 of 1.8 million West Virginians are without health insurance, and roughly 16 percent have college degrees.

West Virginia also has a relatively low number of mental health professionals compared to other states. West Virginia has about eight psychiatrists and 10 psychologists per 100,000 people, compared with 22 and 83, respectively, in neighboring Maryland, one of the healthiest states in the country.

In addition, more than 17 percent of West Virginians report being unable to afford health care, about double the rate of South Dakota, which had the lowest depression rate.

CALAMITY JANE. This one from alternet suggests we move beyond the Jane Austen vogue. El Cabrero, however, is a big fan.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE MAKING OF A RADICAL

Debs with attorney and socialist William A. Cunnea. Credit: Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0003451. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, by way of the Library of Congress.

Welcome to Eugene Debs Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on earlier posts.

Debs was on his way to a successful career by the 1880s. He served as city clerk of Terra Haute and was elected to the Indiana legislature, where he sponsored several progressive bills that never saw the light of day. In 1885, he married Kate Metzel. She was devoted to Debs, although the marriage would prove to be something of a mismatch.

He was an officer and editor in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, a generally conservative and respectable labor organization.

As time went on, however, Debs came to see the limitations of this kind of organization. In the railroads, for example, each trade had its own brotherhood with pretty limited loyalty. There were brotherhoods for conductors, engineers, brakemen, etc. Unskilled workers had no representation at all. This led to situations where division equalled defeat and even where one brotherhood would scab on another.

He came to see the need for a union organized along industrial rather than craft lines and laid the foundation for the short lived American Railway Union. The ARU was launched in 1893 and won some early and promising victories. Workers flocked to join almost faster than they could be signed up.

And then it happened: against his better judgment, the ARU was drawn into a strike against the Pullman Car Works Company, which was owned by robber baron George Pullman and which made the famous sleeping cars. The ARU refused to handle Pullman cars or the trains attached to them, which brought down the wrath of the nation's employers and the federal government and military. The strike was crushed and Debs began his first stint in jail as a result.

The experience was revelatory for Debs and the beginning of the birth of a socialist. He came to believe in the economic organization of the working class through unions and the political organization of the working class through a party devoted solely to its interests through peaceful and democratic means. He believed that nothing could be more senseless than for a working person to vote for the same candidate a robber baron.

He later said,

I was to be baptized in socialism in the roar of conflict. In the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every rifle, the class struggle was revealed...This was my first practical struggle in socialism.

He laid out is vision of a cooperative and democratic society many times, but here are some samples:

The issue is Socialism vs. Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society—we are on the eve of a universal change.

and...

The earth is for all the people. That is the demand.

The machinery of production and distribution for all the people. That is the demand.

The collective ownership and control of industry and its democratic management in the interest of all the people. That is the demand.

The elimination of rent, interest, profit and the production of wealth to satisfy the wants of all the people. That is the demand.

Cooperative industry in which all shall work together in harmony as the basis of a new social order, a higher civilization, a real republic. That is the demand.
The end of class struggles and class rule, of master and slave, or ignorance and vice, of poverty and shame, of cruelty and crime -- the birth of freedom, the dawn of Brotherhood, the beginning of MAN.

That is the demand.

Debs was one of the founders of the American Socialist Party and was its candidate for president in 2900, 1904, 1908, 1912 (his peak year) and 1920. The last one deserves special mention since he "ran" for office as an inmate of a federal prison. He got nearly a million votes that year.

Debs also remained devoted to the labor movement, serving at various times as a special organizer for the United Mine Workers of America and helping to found the Industrial Workers of the Word (the Wobblies) in 1905. He later became disillusioned with the IWW because of its direct action tactics.

He had such an appealing personality that many people who thought his political ideas were crazy loved him personally and his oratorical ability was such that it could move people to tears who didn't understand a word of English.

"ALL WE WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS A GOOD ECONOMY." This op-ed by Marie Cocco is worth reading for the title alone. The rest is pretty good too.

CHANGE HAPPENS. Here's a good resource pile from Wired Science about dealing with skeptics of climate change and evolution.

DISTURBING NEWS. In 2005, veterans committed suicide at the rate of 120 per week, twice that of other Americans. According to CBS (by way of Wired Science),

Veterans aged 20-24, who are those most likely to have served during the War on Terror, are killing themselves when they return home at rates estimated to be between 2.5 and almost 4 times higher than non-vets in the same age group. (22.9 to 31.9 per 100,000 people as compared to just 8.3 per 100,000 for non-vets).

ARCHIVEGATE. This is a local tempest, but the recent firing without notice and generally unsportsmanlike dismissal of a dedicated state archivist by the Manchin administration, along with possible plans to change the archives library, has led groups to plan a protest. El Cabrero remembers from his library days that you don't want to mess with genealogists.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED