A Well Writen Sentence?

It was September 28, 1960, in Fenway Park. Ted Williams, one of the greatest hitters of all time, came to the plate in the eighth inning. It was his last at-bat. He was retiring. The Red Sox bomber, at age 42, faced a 1-1 pitch that he blasted for a career-ending home run, memorialized by a local sportswriter: “It was in the books while it was still in the air.”[i] That is a good sentence!

Alison Roman of the New York Times recently wrote about her favorite lamb ragout, which she likes to make on cold February days: “This recipe is a… very lamby, tomatoey sauce that tastes like how a good sweater feels.” That is a good sentence!

Hemmingway, in A Movable Feast, told us that he would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think to himself, “Do not worry. All you have to do is write one true sentence and go on from there.” It’s not that easy!

We learn about sentences early in our school years. We start with easy three word sentences: “See Jane run. See Spot run.” We go on from there. The lucky ones among us had a Miss Clark in the 12^th grade to help us hone our writing, sharpen our sentence structure, whittle away the redundancies. Nevertheless, we tended to be a bit mechanical.

In college, we met Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style,[ii] filled with rules about proper grammar and good writing. Stanley Fish[iii] commented that Strunk’s “Little Book” was for people who already knew the mechanics of writing, of which there are few anymore.  

Lawyers need to write mechanically so that they can say, precisely, what is is. Essay writers need their first sentence to be a “hook” that pulls the reader further into the subject matter. Book authors need to create first chapters that seduce the reader to see what chapter two has to offer. It’s about good writing, not mechanics.

I came across a new term the other day that I had never heard of before: Countersinking, also known as “expositional redundancy.” An example is that I had never heard of before in the previous sentence. The author of the article used this sentence as an example: “We need to hide,” she said, asking him to seek cover. Reducing redundancy produces “We need to hide, she said. I had a professor that taught us to edit our work with three simple words: cut, cut, cut. I wasn’t very good at it.

Truth be told, expositional redundancy served me well over the years. When asked to write a 500-word essay on who-knows-what, it always seemed that the 500 words were more important than the content.

Churchill spent hours writing and editing each segment of a speech, choosing each word carefully, looking for impact, for shortness, for clarity. I heard that he said something to the effect that if you wanted him to give a two-hour speech he was ready. But, if you wanted him to make a two-minute extemporaneous comment, he would need a week to prepare it. With that kind of consideration to his every word, his every sentence, he kept the enemy at bay, kept his nation and the world focused on victory at any price, and led the Allies to end a world war.

The Gunning Fog Index, one of the many tools that measure effective writing, suggests that most authors should aim for an eighth grade level of writing. I ran this piece through the index; it rated at 7^th grade. It doesn’t like three syllable words; too complex for the average reader, it claims. Syllable and average are too complex? Enemy, victory and other simple words are too complex. Really!

The struggle, the quest for a well-constructed sentence, continues. It will never end, I suppose because there will always be expositional redundancy, like extra words and mixed metaphors. Many sentences just won’t grab the reader.

The concluding sentences of a tract should summarize, restate, or punctuate the points made in the body of the article. I’m going to work on that as soon as I master, or at least feel comfortable about writing good first sentences. If I can hook the reader with the first sentence, they might stay with me to this point!

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[i] Stanley Fish – How to Write a Sentence: and how to read one – January 2011

[ii] William Strunk and E.B. White – The Elements of Style – Macmillan Publishing – 1979

[iii] Ibid 

Killing Fields?

Sometimes information just ups and hits you in the head! Sometimes you just cannot ignore it! Sometimes you just want to do something about it! What?

Last Sunday’s Sacramento Bee[i] ran a front-page story about the shooting and killing of children in the U.S. On February 14, 2018, a gunman entered a high school in Parkland, Florida and killed 14 students and three adults. The nation agonized and wondered why. On this anniversary of Parkland, we still wonder and we still agonize.

The Trace, a nonprofit news organization, recruited 200 journalists, many of them young people, to write short portraits of every victim, 18 years and under, who died from gun-related incidents in the last 12 months. The Bee reported about the project in a lengthy front-page article that continued to the two center pages of Section A. There you came face to face with the names of 1,200 children killed in the last 12 months by people using guns.

Think about it: ten of those children were 1-year-olds, 31 were 2 years old, and 24 were 3 years old. How many of us have children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren in that age group?

How can this happen in a civil society? But it goes on: 17 were 4 years old, 13 were 7 years old, 107 were 15 years old, and it goes on and on. In case after case, the shooters are people who should not have been able to own guns because of their criminal background or medical history. Every time there is a school shooting, we wring our hands and say something needs to be done to tighten up the gun ownership laws. Some argue, however, that there are already too many laws on the books; they just need to be enforced. The trouble with that argument is that background checks are not required for all sales of firearms and ammunition. In most states sales between private owners, within families, or sales at gun shows do not require background checks.

A Bill passed in the House of Representatives that calls for universal background checks for all gun purchases. The NRA’s response, in the latest issue of its magazine, shows a picture of the Speaker of the House and former Congresswoman Gifford (shot in the head a few years ago) with the headline “Target Practice.”[ii] It has been roundly criticized for lack of taste and its potential to spur civil violence.

 Now the bill goes to the Senate where it doesn’t stand a snowball’s-chance-in-hell of ever coming to the floor for a vote. The Majority Leader and most of the Republican Senators are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the NRA and wouldn’t dare vote against it.

Other countries have effective gun laws that in no way would violate our Second Amendment; police investigations, doctor’s authorization, licenses to purchase ammunition, etc... Why can’t we have effective background checks as well?

Canada experienced four school shootings since 1999. The US has had 288 school shootings since 2009. Across the country, we see schools with armed guards carrying assault weapons. We see school districts wanting to arm teachers. We have active-shooter training for teachers and school kids. Children in many parts of the country are afraid to go to school. And, we wonder why? And after the next shooting, we will agonize anew.

How long are we willing to let our schools remain killing fields?

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[i] Sacramento Bee – February 17, 2018 – Kevin G. Hall

[ii] Chris W. Cox – The American Rifleman – March 2019

Voting in America

In a democracy or a republic, the people’s voice echoes from the ballot box. If you want to stifle that voice, you make it difficult to register to vote and make it difficult for people to actually vote. Somehow, after hundreds of years of trying to live up to our Founding documents, there is still a dark underbelly of American politics does not want everyone to register to vote or to, wait for it, to actually vote.

Voter suppression permeates our history. The Reconstruction Period did not end the practice, the Poll Tax limited voting, and voter registration requirements in many states precluded all who were non-White from voting. The practice still exists in many areas of our country: regulations make it difficult to register, gerrymandering guarantees the continued election of one party, polling places are limited in areas with a plurality of minority voters, and the list goes on. The young, progressive, and newly influential members of the 116^th Congress will have none of it.

The first bill introduced in Congress this year was “For the People Act of 2019 (HR-1). It calls for a national overhaul of the voting process for federal elections. It is voluminous. It seeks more than it can get. It points in the right direction. The Senate Majority Leader calls it a major power grab so it may be dead on arrival in his chamber. You see, he knows that if minorities get to vote, his party members stand a good chance of losing power. What does it contain that is so onerous? What makes it a power grab?

In the Citizens United case, the Supreme Court ruled, in simple terms, that large Political Action Committees (PACs) can funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into election campaigns without revealing the names of its contributors; dark money. HR-1 would overturn that ruling and require PACs to publish the name of anyone who contributed over $10,000.

State legislatures usually design the congressional districts for their states. As expected, they draw the districts to give ruling parties the advantage. HR-1 will require that states draw congressional districts in such a way that they represent the people in the district: race, nationality, gender, etc., the start to the elimination of gerrymandering.

Many states make it difficult to register to vote. HR-1 calls for automatic registration systems across the nation, with an opt-out provision. When the county administrators cannot control voter registration, it will change the dynamics at the polls. HR-1 will also allow all voters to update their registration online; change their name, address, or party affiliation.  

HR-1 provides for uniform early voting practices across the country. It eases the requirement to vote by mail, and outlaws the practice of paid party hacks going door to door to gather unsealed ballots in poor regions of some states.

HR-1 calls for Election Day to be designated a national holiday so that everyone has a chance to vote. It is a call for transparency and fairness in voting practices. It calls for a new awakening for the most powerful voice in the country, the vote.

How is that a power grab?

A More Perfect Union

Building a more “perfect union” is not easy! People with divergent beliefs about government’s role in our lives push and pull against each other during political campaigns, go to the polls, and elect other people to represent them. Every couple of years we are reminded that we are a republic, not a democracy.

On January 3, 2019, those elected to the 116^th Congress gathered in their respective chambers. I watched the opening session of the House of Representatives. The mosaic struck me. Old white men in dark suits, the traditional solons, were conspicuous in their looks and demeanor. The newer members were vibrant, colorful, younger, enthusiastic, and ready to make us more perfect. The current Congress has at least 89 new Representatives. It has 102 women, 13 Republicans, and 80 Democrats. Its members include Muslims, LGBTQ, military veterans, lawyers, and a bartender.

Like new members in the past, they want to change our politics. I want them to succeed, I hope they succeed, and I encourage them to bring about change. It makes me a little uncomfortable because I do not know if the nation is ready for their hopes and aspirations.

Most of the new members are progressives, willing to act quickly, but with little experience in governing at the national level. Effective legislating requires coalition building, strategic maneuvering, and intellectual debate with the opposition. Some veteran members have told them to wait their turn. They have said no, they won’t wait to bring about change. They, however, may learn quickly how the process works. A couple of them were denied desired committee memberships for campaigning against the Speaker.

At his second inaugural on January 20, 1937, Franklin Roosevelt said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Those words introduced New Deal efforts to bring Americans out of the Great Depression’s poverty. It was not a call for the redistribution of wealth so much as it was a clamor to raise up a middle-class. However, for the more conservative at the time, those words were heresy, leading us down the road to socialism or worse. And, yet …

George Bernard Shaw wrote, “You see things, and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were and ask why not.[i] These young, inexperienced lawmakers look at the country and the world and wonder why? Why can’t we have equal education for all our children? Why can’t we have a free college education? Why can’t we have universal health care? Why can’t we have clean air? Why can’t we take people to Mars? Why can’t we have a solid infrastructure? Why do we allow less than one percent of the population to control 90% of the nation’s wealth? Why don’t we pay living wages? They ask, they expect answers, and they are determined to change the status quo. Are we ready for this much change?

Few people argue that we should not have universal good health care; we just don’t know how to pay for it. Few people would argue against clean air, we just don’t agree on how to pay for it. These young and new members of our Congress don’t understand why we can’t make progress. They think differently than the older members in the chamber. They communicate differently; they read the news from different sources. They are connected 24/7. A 29-year-old freshmen Representative from the Bronx, a bartender a few months ago, already has a major influence on the national agenda. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) has 1.54+ million followers on Twitter (more than all freshman representatives combined,) and tweets 8-12 times per day on various issues. [ii] She is training older members how to tweet and use Instagram. She is setting an agenda for the country. A recent poll indicated that over 70% of Democrats would vote for her for president if she were old enough.[iii]

The Progressive wing is pushing the Democratic Party to the left; Bernie Sanders started a movement and the Revolution caught on with young people, particularly. They are now taking their seats in the halls of power around the country. Buckle up; you’re in for a wild ride for a couple of years.

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[i] G. B. Shaw, Back to Methuselah, act 1, 1949

[ii] Chantal Da Silva – Newsweek 12/10/2018

[iii] Axios – January 21, 2019

When Adults Leave the Room!

Good managers lead. Bad managers push. Good managers set achievable goals. Bad managers shoot the moon with no plan. Good managers create a culture of achievement, respect, and trust. Bad managers create a culture of fear, unpredictability, and forced loyalty. Good managers hire people smarter than themselves and use that brainpower to move mountains. Bad managers think they know more than anyone else does and micromanage. You seldom see the lack of managerial skill, ill behavior, and lack of cohesiveness that our national government exhibited the week before Christmas, 2018.

The government shut down, based mostly on temper tantrums. The President announced troop withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan by Tweet, after little or no discussion with the Departments of Defense, State, and our allies, especially the Kurds. The resignation of the Secretary of Defense sent shock waves across the world because he was "the last adult in the room." Markets plunged on the news. Our adversaries publicly rejoiced while allies panicked.  

Since, at least, the first day of the primary season leading up to the 2016 election, people knew that Donald Trump was a very different candidate. He had never managed a government entity, was reported to dislike security briefings and didn’t read much. His was a transactional world. His was a relationship world. His was about the art of the deal. He lived in a zero-sum world. The people elected him in spite of his limitations or because of them.

The real world is nuanced. Personal relationships are important but not as important as the factors that determine the relationship between nation-states: safety, security, trade, and protection from known enemies. And yes, sometimes national values need protection. Because a President has a good relationship with the president of another country doesn’t mean that the two nations have a good relationship.  

Most world leaders tolerated the uncertainty emanating from the White House because they knew that there were a few people, adults, who could keep it from making bad decisions. General Kelly, his Chief-of-Staff was one of the adults. He is leaving. Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State was another. He is gone. General Mattis is gone. By outward appearances, only the sycophants remain to manage the country.

Soon after his victory in the 2016 election, the President-Elect told his aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.[i] A retrospective of the last two years comes into clearer focus when considered as a daily battle, a daily need to win, a daily need to put people down, the daily need to create news about one’s self, or to bolster a fringe element of society.

Some might say that we need not worry about the lack of adults in the room since their influence has been negligible anyway. General Kelly came to the White House with the expectation that he could bring order and rationality to the place. He couldn’t. General Mattis was not consulted on many military decisions. Rex Tillerson wasn’t consulted all that much about foreign policy and failed to reorganize the State Department. So why worry?

The 2018 mid-term election gave us a hint that the American public can only take so much of one person’s daily messaging and diatribes. Whoever heard of a president scolding the Attorney General in public, in a tweet? Whoever heard of major allies finding out about our war plans in a tweet? Which president tried to use the AG’s office for a personal lawyer instead of the nation’s justice department? Which president has threatened to fire the head of the Federal Reserve Bank, an independent agency over which a president has little authority and no influence?

We should worry, in my opinion. Forget about serious policy differences between parties and party leadership. That is why we have political parties. We should worry about the fact that our elected leader is not an effective leader; rather than unite, he divides; rather than compromise, he grandstands; rather than treat people with respect, he debases; rather than honor the office, he focuses on himself. Many people are glad that he is what he is. They wanted someone who would shake up the system, “drain the swamp.” Fine and good, but that should be a process of well thought out strategies, planned steps, wide communications, and consensus building. We should worry that no more adults will step forward to fill the void.

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[i] Haberman, Thrush, Baker – “Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation” – NYT December 9, 2017 

Gentler & Kinder

The nation stood still, flags at half-mast. Banks closed, markets shut down, government offices stood empty. George H.W. Bush, forty-first President of the United States had died. President Trump declared Wednesday, December 5, 2018, a National Day of Mourning. For a few days, we became, what “41” had hoped for us; we were a gentler and kinder nation.

The news of the President’s death was not a surprise. Failing health was visible for a couple of years. Seven months before, Barbara Bush, his partner for 73 years passed away. The events that followed showed the extent of the planning that had gone into this week of mourning. President Trump’s immediate proclamation, while he was at the G20 meeting in South America, was soothing and eloquent. Air Force One was sent to Houston to transport the body and the family back to Washington. The Military’s preparation for the reception of the casket, for transportation to the Capital, for standing guard, and for other events was precise.

No one would be surprised if public memories faded in the twenty-five years since he had been in office, but they evidently did not. Lying-in-State in the rotunda of our magnificent Capital, scores of thousands of people stood in line for hours, in freezing weather, to spend a few minutes viewing the casket. It lay on the same catafalque used for the viewing of Abraham Lincoln, and only 32 others in the history of the nation.

The memorial service at the National Cathedral in D.C. was a combination of reverent Episcopal liturgy and civic ritual. Attended by 2,000 or so invited guess, it was very much a public ceremony for the country. The “private” service at St. Mark’s in Houston was a more personal funeral for his family, and his friends. From Houston, the President went by train to his library on the campus of Texas A&M for burial. The seventy-mile route was lined by thousands upon thousands of people wanting a last glimpse, wanting to say goodbye, wanting their children to savor the experience, wanting the family to know how much they respected “41.”

The theme of the week, peeking through all of the military ceremony and liturgies, was palpable: family, honor, and service. He served his country well and history books tell the story. He was a man who prized family, who embedded in them a sense of duty, for to whom much is given… He taught constantly, he gathered the growing clan at every chance and he let them know they were loved.

George H.W.Bush was one of the country’s most prepared servants: decorated war hero, Member of Congress, Envoy to China, Director of the CIA, Ambassador to the U.N. and Vice President. He is thought to be the most effective and important one-term President in our history. He presided over the downfall of the Soviet Union, the reunification of Germany, freed Kuwait from occupation, and much more. Political accomplishments, however, no matter how high or how important, pale in comparison to how he will be remembered in the end: he was a “good man.”

There is no higher achievement.

The Reds and the Blues

Look at any red and blue map of the U.S. It will show which political party dominates in each county across the country. It will also show the extent of the political and cultural divide of the nation. The mid-term election results are clear. A large number of Republican districts flipped in favor of the Democrats who will control the House. The Senate Republicans picked up seats, continuing their majority. The map won't tell the whole story, but it is a start.

If we allocated congressional seats based on territory instead of population, the Democrats would not stand a chance, even in California. But, we don’t. It is normal for the President’s party to lose big in the mid-term elections. It happens to the best of them. What is so striking, however, is the continued divide between the heartland and the two coasts, between the rural areas and the metropoles, between the highly educated and the less highly educated sections of the country, between the highly skilled work sites and those losing jobs in low skilled areas.

The new Congress will seat over 100 women, 25 will be under 40 years old, and two will be under 30 years old. The Congress will be the most diverse in history, with the first Native American women, about 27% people of color, and Muslims. The average age of House members will be 10 years younger than the last Congress.[i]   Change is on the way.

Large metropolitan areas and the ex-urbs’ issues differ from those of the heartland. The center of the country and rural areas in general still does not think that they have their fair share of the American dream. The question remains about how well the coastal Democrats can relate to and do something for those in the middle of the country and rural areas. On January 3, 2019, the slog will begin anew, but to what end.

A recent national survey confirmed the depth of the divide:  most Democrats think the Republicans are racists and sexists and most Republicans think Democrats are ignorant.[ii] That does not bode well for attempts to bring the nation together to work for the common good.

Mid-America, bombarded with the identity politics of the coasts, which it dislikes, and change that is too rapid to absorb is straining local institutions: schools, churches, and civic groups cannot keep up, so they dig in to preserve what once was. They could use some jobs. Amazon, however, chose to put their two new “headquarters” facilities in coastal metropolitan areas: Crystal City, Virginia, across from DC, and in Long Island City in Queens, New York. Those two facilities expect to hire 25,000 employees each. To be fair, its unlikely Amazon could find 50,000 high tech employees in one spot in the heartland. This continues a trend. Seventy-two percent of all new jobs created since the great recession has been in dense urban areas.[iii] In smaller cities, employment opportunity has decreased.

The population spread across the country divides us even more. Nine states account for 50% of the population.[iv] The 82 Senators, who represent the other 50% of the population, control what happens in the Senate. As a result, DC accomplishes little and respect for major institutions continues to dwindle.[v]

Cable-news doesn’t even try to hide its bias or its agenda of maintaining the divide. Sean Hannity, when discussing the late-vote counting in some states on his Fox News show implied that ballots still to be counted were “found” by corrupt officials trying to ensure a Democratic victory. When referring to the Senate races, he stated; “We won those races.”[vi] He is the “journalist” who spoke at Trump campaign rallies during the mid-terms. Hannity is not the only person creating the divide. Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC is as strong in his partisanship for the left as Hannity is for the right. Oddly, CNN appears to be the middle-of-the-road cable news channel.

The Democratic leadership already has a list of 85-100 investigations into the Trump administration. Those few that deal with corruption and malfeasance are legitimate. The party, however, is acting like a sore winner. They give every indication that they want to make Trump suffer rather than accomplishing positive things for the country. If they have any interest in winning the 2020 election they need to deliver practical programs to the people who need help. I doubt that an “I hate Trump” agenda will win the day.

It would be helpful if Congress concentrated on rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, which is falling apart more and more every day. Bridges need rebuilding, the grid is antiquated, the water and sewer systems are crumbling, the roads are giant potholes, and transportation systems inadequate. The nation’s healthcare and education systems need to catch up with the rest of the industrial world. We need a national strategy for AI. These types of programs put people to work, increase tax revenues, improve local economies and help us keep our competitive edge in the global economy.

The majority of people can get behind these types of programs. Action in these areas will show that those inside the beltway can achieve bipartisanship and can help the heartland. I suspect that the new, younger, and more diverse members of Congress will demand action from the old guard in leadership positions. Some have already protested outside leadership offices. The next two years should be interesting times.

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[i] NPR -11/08/2018

[ii] Axios – Survey Monkey Online Poll 10/30-11/2/2018 – 11/12/2018

[iii] Clara Hendrickson, Mark Muro, William Galston – Countering the geography of discontent: Strategies for left behind places – Brookings Institute – November 2018

[iv] California, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, and Florida – US Census, 2000

[v] Confidence in Institutions – Annual Survey – Gallup – 2018

[vi] YouTube – Fox News – Hannity Show – 11/12/2018