Culture – Page 4 – Pat the Expat

A College Football Requiem

Astute friends will note we’re several weeks into the college football season and I have yet to write my annual paean to my favorite obsession. Never fear, it’s here. But this year is different.

This year, my favorite team (Notre Dame), has Marcus Freeman returning as head coach. Last year was a roller-coaster ride of emotions ending well with a bowl game victory and a 9-4 record. That record included a pantsing (it’s a sports term, look it up) of Clemson and a comeback victory over South Carolina. Something bad happened at Southern Cal (often does), something inexplicable happened against Marshall, and something insufferable happened against Stanford. As I said, a mixed bag.

But the coach seems to be an upright dude, is growing into the role (4-0 this year as I write this), and says all the right things. He is a credit to the university, which is refreshing after he replaced the insufferable prick who preceded him. I railed on about the former coach for ten years, only to have him prove all my charges against his character with his later behavior. I’m sorry to the LSU Tigers and their fans, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

But why the sad title, if things are going so well for my team? The sport that is college football is dying before our eyes, and it–as we know it–will be gone in under five years. Money killed it, as is so often the case. To use a Clue metaphor, it was ESPN on the Gridiron with a roll of Benjamins.

Most people don’t know this, but once upon a time, there was no NFL. Oh, there was a professional football league, but it had all the glamour and cachet of women’s field hockey. Back in the 1920’s & 1930’s, American baseball reigned supreme, with boxing (!) and college football vying for number two. College football won out, and continued to gain in popularity. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world: universities, centers of education, field teams of student-athletes (properly pronounced ATH-UH-LEATS). Why? Back in those days, colleges were overwhelmingly- or all-male, and sports provided an outlet for all that testosterone. Obscure traditions developed, rivalries over imagined slights or for ridiculous trophies were born. It was local, silly, but intensely passionate.

Something about the “ideal” of an amateur going all out for his school on Saturday was seen by the masses as good and wholesome, while the men who played professionally on Sunday were seen as failures who didn’t have real jobs. In fact most did, as they made practically nothing from football. This dichotomy, that amateurism was good and professionalism bad, was key to the sport’s success. It used to be the same with the Olympics, too, once-upon-a-time.

I put those quotation marks around “ideal” because some cynic out there (I’m looking at you!) will point out the many exceptions: college players who got paid with “golden handshakes” after the game, boosters who gave mom & dad jobs if sonny went to Enormous State U, and the like. And there were cheating scandals, gambling scandals, gut-courses, and plenty of young male bad behavior, up to and including the criminal. But there were also thousands of players playing the game, so the vast majority never got paid, never acted the boor, usually attended class, and sometimes even graduated. The deal was free tuition, which amounted to something, even for an ATH-UH-LEAT.

But its popularity continued to grow, and with television, so did revenue. The NCAA, the governing body comprising all the schools, used to limit how often a team could play on television: in those more genteel days, it was considered to be an unfair advantage. But the rise of ESPN created an insatiable demand: every team is on TV every week, and the money rains down.

Being forward-thinking, the NCAA instituted a unique form of revenue sharing, putting money in accounts for players who could retrieve it upon graduation. It allowed schools to cover things like special diets, health insurance, and even pay the players a stipend since they spent so much time preparing for games that they couldn’t work jobs like other students. No, wait, that’s not what happened at all. The NCAA member schools kept all the money for themselves, and went on a spending spree that would have embarrassed Scrooge McDuck.

Behind the scenes at NCAA headquarters

Schools spent money on stadiums, coaches, luxury boxes, football dorms, coaches, football-only recreation centers, special training facilities, coaches, boondoggle trips, football administrative staffs, recruiting, and even coaches. Many schools spent more than they made, because winning football can be very expensive. But the orgy of spending went on. Players got some benefits, like those special dorm rooms and rec centers. But they got little or no direct money. Even when they wanted to market themselves, separate from the football team, they couldn’t do it. Regular students could make money using talents they had, but football players? Oh, no, they mustn’t. Coaches moved around, sometimes failing up. My favorite team hit a bad patch and “bought out” two coaches in a row, telling them to move along but agreeing to continue paying their contract salary as long as they went away. Three coaches on the payroll at once? Priceless.

Eventually the amounts of money got so large, and the imbalance so obvious, players began to take legal action. Cases have gone all the way to the Supreme Court, and it looks like the NCAA is a dead man walking in its ability to manage the sport. Nothing to mourn there, except for the problem that soon there will be no rules at all. Under the current interim situation, boosters can pay ATH-UH-LEATS using a fig-leaf called a Name, Image & Likeness (NIL for short) contract. There are verifiable cases of high school recruits offered millions of dollars in NIL money to attend Big Tech State. Rules on whether players could transfer–which deterred them from doing so–have been loosened. Now there is a “transfer portal” which includes over 8,000 players!

Explains so much

And of course with the imminent demise of the NCAA, the rules on whether the players need to actually be students have practically disappeared.

Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, the conferences and rivalries which were the heart of amateur athletics are also up for sale. You could cheer through losses all year for your pathetic alma mater, as long as you beat your in-state rival. Now, those rivalries are disappearing, as teams flee one conference for another with a bigger TV rights pay out. How crazy is it?

The Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives formed in the late 19th Century and its athletic league was called the Western Conference, as it represented the western edge of football civilization. It comprised mainly large State universities, with the exception of little private Northwestern and Chicago, which left when it became apparent sports (not academics) were king. You know it as the Big Ten. Or the B1G, where the G might be a 6, since it has grown to sixteen members and stretched all the way to the State University of New Jersey (SUNJ, which some call Rutgers). Oh, wait, it’s eighteen teams, and it goes coast-to-coast. Sure, the women’s volleyball team at Southern Cal will enjoy those red-eye flights to Piscataway. I call them the BIG-N, or The Integer for short, as it is less specific.

So you’re thinking, “Pat, stop yelling at the kids to get off your lawn and just sit back and enjoy the fifty or so games every weekend.” Well I will, only because the game still resembles its former self. But change is only beginning. The B1G and the $EC (the South East Conference, not to be confused with the smaller financial organization known as the Securities and Exchange Commission) will soon choose a third partner to negotiate with to replace the NCAA. That third partner will likely be some hybrid clone of one of the other conferences (the ACC, the BIG 12, the American, but of course not the PAC-12, which has only two members), which continue to change shape like John Carpenter’s version of The Thing:

Look!, Its the Big Atlantic American Conference!

What could go wrong? To get a glimpse of the future, join me on a quick trip to Boulder, Colorado, home of the University of Colorado Buffaloes. First off, let me note that Colorado has the best mascot in all college football, and the sight of that beast dragging its handlers around the field before a game is must-see TV. It’s a once very good football program which has fallen on very hard times (how hard, you ask? 1-11 last year). It left its historic perch in the Big-12 to chase TV revenue in the PAC-12, but like Rick in Casablanca, it was misinformed: no one cares enough about college football on the West Coast.

PAC-12 Championship? I thought this was a wine & brie tasting!

To resurrect the program as it returns to the Big-12 for more money (no really), Colorado hired away Deion Sanders, head coach of Jackson State University in Florida. You may know him as “Coach Prime” or before that, “Prime Time” as an NFL All-Pro with the Cowboys et al, while also playing Major League Baseball for the Atlanta Braves, or even “Neon Deion” as a star player with the Florida State Seminoles. He is at least the best athlete of his generation, the only man to have both Super Bowl and World Series rings. Beyond all that, he has proven to be a master motivator, an above-average coach, and a genius at self-promotion, perhaps only behind Steve Jobs in the modern era.

Wait, wasn’t this supposed to be the bad-news part? Sanders is succeeding beyond anyone’s expectations thus far, and his success will bring imitation. Yes, he’s great at recruiting ATH-UH-LEATS. Young men want to play for him, and he motivates them to play their best. His teams win, although not so much that anyone is calling him one of the best (maybe later this year, as most hype-meters have to go to 11 to even measure him). So what’s his secret? He treats the game as a professional would. He encourages wholesale transfers: He sent seventy-one players into the portal when he arrived, and picked up thirty-five. He appears to be genuinely concerned for his players as players, but as students, well, they come to win at football. He scoffs at the hypocrisy of the NCAA, which merits his disdain. But his approach, as entertaining as it is, is a hundred yard dash to the semi-professional model.

As others adopt it, the ATH-UH-LEATS will become employees. Can’t fire an employee for performance unrelated to their job, so how are you going to make them go to class? And if football players aren’t student-athletes anymore, then they don’t create a Title IX compliance nightmare either: eliminate eighty-five male football scholarships and SHAZAM, every university is suddenly fully compliant evermore. Of course, when you eliminate college football revenue, which will go off university books, most all non-revenue sports will suffer. The resulting semi-pro “college football” league will house about fifty or so programs, shedding those (regardless of whatever conference they were originally in) who don’t bring in revenue. We’ll have free agency starting senior year of high school (that will go well with programs like Miami of Florida, where “hookers and blow” was a locker room tradition).

I await the day Coach Prime’s team is behind at half time and simply has the opposing team’s quarterback switch sides during the game for an NIL envelope full of cash at midfield. Can’t happen, you say?

“Show Me the Money!”

So while we wait for the inevitable, I’ll enjoy what little college football is left. Kind of like RJ MacReady at the end of The Thing:

See what happens

What Just Happened: The Israeli Protests

If you keep up with the news, you probably know that the current ultra-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Bibi) is trying to turn Israel into a fascist state by eliminating the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court. The opposition has delivered large crowds, huge protests, a threatened (rather promised) general strike, and even some resignations among the Israeli military’s famed reserve forces. Democracy hangs in the balance, as Bibi presses forward.

Of course, all that is a caricature of what’s really happening, which is far deeper and actually more profound. Democracy has nothing to do with it, as I will explain. This is a debate about the what Israel is and what it should be, one that has been simmering since it was born in conflict in 1948.

Israel has a fairly pure representative democracy. That is, it has only one legislature (the Knesset), designed to form governments by either a straight majority vote of the people or a coalition-building political process. No one is questioning that. Israel also has a Supreme Court which is independent of the elected government. Its members are chosen by a committee of nine: four representing the sitting government (two Knesset, two from the Prime Minister’s cabinet) and five lawyers (three sitting Supreme Court Justices and two members of the Israeli Bar Association) It takes seven votes to select a nominee, who then must be approved by Israel’s ceremonial President. In practice, Israel’s highest legal body selects itself.

The Israeli Supreme Court staked out its authority to review government actions and policies much like the US Supreme Court did in Marbury v. Madison. One interesting difference is the Israeli Supreme Court decided that one criterion it could use to overrule the government was “reasonableness.” While that sounds reasonable, try defining it in a consistent, coherent way. It didn’t prove to be an immediate problem until the last few years, when the court overturned policies and even prohibited the government from choosing a specific cabinet minister. In any event, the Israeli Supreme Court acted as a check on the government, and some would say the only check on it.

Remember now that the Israeli Knesset is a democratic body, both in how it is selected and how it acts. And the court is a check on it. Got it? Which is why this is not about democracy.

Lately, the Knesset has had an unstable series of short-term governments, as the Israeli electorate is evenly divided between liberal/progressive and conservative factions. As in most parliamentary systems, there are numerous small, often-extreme parties which can play the role of king-maker (or more appropriately, Prime Minister-maker). Such is the one right now which has Bibi back in the chair with extreme right-wing or religiously conservative partners.

So is this all about politics, not democracy? No. For years, politicians on both sides have indicated the Supreme Court needed to be reformed, as both feared it was becoming too powerful , too insulated (as it chooses itself) and more importantly, too arbitrary. Parliamentary governments are inherently unstable, and they become almost impossible when an outside body (i.e., the court) can rule who can be a cabinet minister. Liberals/Progressives switched to opposing any change now because of who is in the ruling government: if the court’s ability to restrain the government is limited right now, they fear the ultra-conservatives will run wild. They may not be wrong, and they are certainly correct to fear such an outcome. But all that points to the real issue, which is neither democracy nor politics: it is the Israeli polity.

The modern state of Israel has always represented an uneasy alliance between two competing visions: a larger group of secular/progressive Jews (Zionists) looking for a haven from a hostile outside world, one where they can enact their idea of a peaceful, communitarian paradise, and a small set of religious Jews (Haredim) who seek to return to being God’s Chosen People, and only that. In-between those two groups were pragmatic Jews (smaller than the left, larger than the ultra-orthodox) who might not want to chant Torah all day, but weren’t convinced by the promises of socialism. For decades, these groups set aside their differences to deal with the unrelenting hostility of Israel’s Arab neighbors. It doesn’t make sense to argue about whether busses can run on Shabbos when there’s an Arab army marching on the town!

Here’s where demographics plays a card. The ultra-orthodox, correctly called Haredim, were content to get special favors from the government for a long time. They were a small group, and as long as the government left them alone, they agreed to merely complain about the rest of Israel not abiding by Halakha (Jewish religious law). The government agreed to exempt them from military service, allowed them to run their own schools, and even granted them extra social benefits. The Haredim and their way of life were subsidized by the Israeli government, whether conservative or liberal.

A funny thing happened. Haredi families average six children and holding steady. Secular Jewish families (whether politically conservative of liberal) average two children and falling. Government data show 1/4 of first graders in Israel are Haredim. So the Haredim have risen to almost thirteen percent of Israel’s population, and parties representing them have gained an important number of seats in the Knesset. And since they are continuing to grow, they are on target to reach almost forty percent of the population by mid-century.

As they have grown, they have protected the benefits they previously secured from the government, but have begun to demand more implementation of their views on social issues: separate spaces in public for men and women, stricter Shabbos observance, restrictions on advertising, more funding for and support of their way of life. This has predictably led to conflict, as the liberal and progressive Israelis see the Haredim as people exempt from the military, learning nothing but Torah in their schools, and coddled by the government. The Haredim respond that their faith is what is protecting Israel. As one young Haredi man said, ‘if everyone was learning Torah and praying with us, God would protect us.’

Why is this playing out over the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi’s government is willing to grant the Haredim greater rights and privileges. Yet of the court can simply rule such things as “unreasonable,” it can stop that process. The battle is really over what Israel is: a secular democracy or a more religiously-inclined one.

Here’s the even more interesting part. The Biden administration is conducting some high-level negotiations (right now) with Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration brokered the Abraham accords, which normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. That was little noticed but important, because it represented the first major normalization among Arab states not directly in contact with Israel. The contact states like Egypt and Jordan came to the table long ago; Syria (and the Syrian puppet government in Lebanon) never will. Most other Arab states held back, waiting to see what the Saudi monarchy did.

The Saudis are looking for a NATO-style commitment from the US for protection (not the backroom handshake deal which has been in effect since FDR) and a US-provided civil nuclear program. Bibi wants Saudi normalization as a feather in his cap, and to establish the basis for an Israeli-Saudi anti-Iranian coalition. The Biden Administration wants to reassert US leadership in the Middle East, push out the Russians and Chinese, and draw a line in the sand with Iran.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, the man President Biden called a pariah (maybe) and a murderer (certainly), is the power behind the throne (literally) in Saudi Arabia and is leading the Saudi side of the negotiations. The Times and Post have started briefly commenting on the talks, which were secret until now. Saudi King Salman (MBS’ father) has apparently insisted that Israel make some offer to the Palestinians as part of the process, and specifically that promising not to annex the West Bank is insufficient. The fact that such things have leaked suggests to me the talks are far along, and neither Bibi nor MBS is willing to let the issue of Palestine derail the agreement.

What’s this got to do with the Israeli Supreme Court? Bibi is dependent upon the Haredi and ultra-conservative parties because he has a narrow majority in the Knesset. The Biden administration has reportedly told Netanyahu not to go forward with changes to the court’s rules and composition without first securing an agreement with which the majority of Israelis agree. How to square the circle? What if Netanyahu secures a grand deal with Saudi Arabia, gets increased American aid, throws the Palestinians a bone (it wouldn’t need to be much, since there is no reliable partner to negotiate with right now), and offers to bring some liberal/labor parties into the government to negotiate a better set of court reforms, while letting the Haredi and ultra-conservatives choose to stay or go?

It’s a high-impact, low probability scenario, I admit. The shoals of Middle Eastern politics are filled with the hopeful shipwrecks of American and European peace plans, and this may be one more. But the US Secretary of State isn’t shuttling around the Middle East (repeatedly) to sample falafel. Stay tuned!

Failing at College

The Supreme Court recently made two important decisions affecting (not impacting) post-secondary education in America: eliminating the use of race as an admissions tool, and denying President Biden the authority to waive accumulated student debt. Both are major changes, and welcome ones in my opinion. But both the policies in question and the courts decisions addressed the symptoms of our failing system of college and university education, not the sources. There is a real post-secondary educational problem: there are too many students, paying too much tuition, and receiving too little education. Those students accrue too much debt, which is currently federally-secured. You can see the problem: they’re never going to pay it off, and you and I are on the hook for it. How did we get here?

All this for $50,000 a year? I’ll take it!

Like most debacles, it’s not just one thing, but there is one important and often-overlooked cause: failing to understand the dynamics of the situation and correctly define the problem. What is post-secondary education for? Why does it even exist? Universities developed out of Catholicism in the Middle Ages, seeking the scholastic trinity of “truth, goodness, and beauty.” Traditionally, there were two aspects to this search. One was to give certain highly-specialized fields of study the time and attention they deserve. Think doctors, lawyers, engineers: you want them well-trained before they ever start in their profession, and you want their professions to grow and deepen.. The second was to provide for a well-rounded individual, thus the Humanities curriculum. Leaders of tomorrow, whether they be politicians, businessmen, or any of the specialties mentioned above, need to have an understanding of human nature, history, civics, psychology, etc. Why? You don’t want a politician who doesn’t understand that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” You don’t want an engineer who only worships efficiency and neglects comfort. You want a surgeon with empathy, not one who sees his patients as slabs of meat to cut on. Pretty obvious, no?

People who underwent such education were a limited lot. The local butcher, shopkeeper, and policeman were fine without it. Because of the vicissitudes of history, such education was usually reserved to white men of property. It obviously didn’t have to be that way, but it happened nonetheless. And the result of that education played out in an obvious fashion: graduates of this system fared much better than those who did not have access to it. The fact that those graduates also had access to all kinds of other advantages which played a part in their later success was obvious, but sometimes forgotten.

In the mid-to-late twentieth century, the gradual liberalization of society led to calls for greater diversity in college admissions: more women, more people of color. After all, there was no legitimate reason to deny them access as they were just as likely to succeed. The fact that in most cases they were disadvantaged only strengthened the argument.

A little later, state governments decided to remove the stipends they paid to public colleges and universities. Budgets were tight, and politicians saw costs increasing markedly as more people went to college, while the majority of the population still did not attend. Using public funding for the benefit of the few at the cost of the many seemed like a poor policy option. The argument that a more educated populace was better for all sounded vaguely like an analogue to “trickle-down economics.” State governments encouraged state colleges and universities to rely on tuition and to compete, on the theory such competition would improve the results: less cost, better education. But post-secondary education was hardly a free market: high barriers to entry, limited suppliers, limited governmental oversight.

And there were still some proponents of college-for-all. They posit that if a college degree results in higher lifetime earnings, then everybody should have access to it, as that is only fair. See how this view misses the point of post-secondary education as it originally existed: a finishing school for a subset of the population. Most people didn’t need it. But college-for-all types viewed a sheepskin as a credential, not a learning experience: get the degree, make more money. Except that’s not what a college degree represented. It was an education, not a credential.

Meanwhile, the federal government, responding to the notion that college should be available to far more people (if not all), and the fact that a marketplace of colleges competing for students would probably decrease overall attendance, decided to become the guarantor of student loans.

Here’s where the economists are face-palming.

You create an increasing demand for college education, with a limited supply (you can’t generate new schools overnight). You fuel the demand further by offering generous loans packages (rates and repayment schemes no bank would ever offer an eighteen year-old with no job) guaranteed by the federal government (you know, the people who literally print the money), and you tell colleges to compete for students.

The prospective students don’t care about return on investment (ROI), as they haven’t even learned about that yet. The colleges have no reason to limit tuition, since price is no longer a determining factor due to federal funny-money. And since students are the ones making the choices, they look for name-recognition and perks. They’re young adults, they want to impress and be catered to. So colleges which previously took the position “we have an education you need to learn or else” transitioned to “help us find your idea of education (and be comfortable doing it).”

Voila, as they say, you have insane tuition that no one really pays, except the federal taxpayers who get socked after the fact for student debt relief. You have colleges eliminating core curricula and instead offering a smorgasbord of trendy electives which amount to fast-food degrees (high cost, little value). You get serial students with hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in debt and degrees in non-marketable subjects (they never do learn ROI, so they don’t even know what they don’t know).

And here we are. Add in for-profit rip-off institutions, racial gamesmanship, and elite university endowments which border on the obscene, and you have the modern American post-secondary educational disaster. Oh, there are still a small number of professionals earning useful degrees and preparing to be the doctors, lawyers, engineers and leaders of tomorrow. That system still exists. But the rest of the contraption is a very expensive Rube Goldberg device of little value and high cost, in terms of money, utility, and social damage.

As bad as all this sounds, it’s even a little worse because it isn’t that hard to fix. First off, stop treating a college degree as some magic ticket which makes one wealthy. To re-purpose an old campaign phrase, “it’s the education, stupid!” College is not for everyone, and jobs which require a college degree should have some legitimate reason for doing so. People who go to college should pay their own way. Colleges should compete on tuition and graduate performance, and enforce common knowledge standards. Students should be held to standards if they receive any form of financial support. You want specifics?

Eliminate government subsidies for any colleges with massive endowments. The elite schools can literally afford to cover all their students tuition in perpetuity. Make them do it, or have their students’ rich parents do it. And tax those endowments, please!
Enforce expanded minimum core curricula for all degree-producing schools as part of accreditation. This is probably still the case, but the standards have become too lax. Every graduate needs to understand human psychology, American history and government, macro and micro-economics, for example. Electives should be the cherry on the top, not the bulk of the meal.
Require detailed reporting on college costs and outcomes. What percentage graduate, with what debt burden? What are the average salaries of specific degree-holders at the five and ten year point?
Re-imagine admissions to negate racial, legacy, athletics and other considerations. Applications must be on a common form which erases who the student is, from where they come, etc. Just classes and grades and test results, and if the college so chooses, standardized testing scores. AI can probably help in this process. Use an essay (similarly scrubbed and de-personalized) for a better understanding of the individual.
Support the growth and success of community colleges. Here is where governmental funding should be targeted, especially for technical topics (e.g., coding, health-care services, law enforcement) and common curricula (finishing school for those not sure whether they want to go the full baccalaureate route). This also provides a window of opportunity to late-blooming students who would benefit from a four-year degree program.
Tie federal subsidies to compensatory service as an alternative to repayment. You want to pay off your loan, great. If not, you start working for the federal government (or allied state programs) for a few years, either as a pause on repayment or eventually a waiver for it. I keep hearing Millennials complain there aren’t good jobs with great benefits like pensions anymore, while I read pages of empty federal job vacancies. Maybe they haven’t heard of the internet?
Want to get really radical? Throw out all athletic scholarships (an oxymoron even more ridiculous than military intelligence). All sports at colleges and universities are club squad/intramural/extra-curricular. For the big money-makers, men’s college football and basketball, make the teams simply affiliated with the universities through a financial agreement. The one-and-dones in basketball and the NIL shenanigans in football should be enough to convince even the most ardent fans that student athletes are mostly a thing of the past. This is where the NCAA and courts are headed anyway, so why not embrace it?
Not radical enough? Tie any federal funding (e.g., research grants, tuition) for colleges and universities to concrete standards promoting the common good. What has your institution done for the local community? How have you enabled academically-gifted but financially-disadvantaged students to enroll and graduate? How are you leading by example in terms of promoting free speech and diversity of ideas? Let the institutions publish their plans and their results, with the government solely giving them an annual pass/fail grade to make them eligible for federal funds.

Tuition costs have increased almost 180% over the past forty years, well beyond the effects of inflation. That spending has gone into endowments, athletics, administrative positions, infrastructure, and student services. Note what is missing: education. No one seriously argues today’s American college graduates are better educated than graduates of the past; they’re just much more expensive. The system as it is is failing.

America is at an inflection point. While more people want to go to college (as a percent of the population), the overall number of young people is declining. Small schools, private schools, and liberal arts schools are in danger of disappearing, as they did not prepare for the future and don’t want to now. The American post-secondary educational system was the envy of the rest of the world. It still is, in an elite sense: twelve of the top twenty universities in the world (according to Times Higher Education) are in America. Those elites who seek advancement are still attending the best schools and getting the best education. The system works for them; it just fails the larger talent pool of American students, their parents, and the taxpayers. Fix it. Now.

Currency Speculations

In discussing the cost of living for expats here in Mexico, I have at times mentioned the exchange rate. I’ve never spent much time discussing it, because I have always felt it’s an environmental condition, or as the saying goes, “it is what it is.” Over the six years we have been expats, I have noticed many expats who are fixated on the exchange rate. It obviously does have some implications, but perhaps not for the reasons many expats think.

Here’s a handy chart showing how the Peso had varied with the dollar over the period we have been visiting/living in Mexico. We bought our first home here in 2012 (just off-chart), but the Peso had been steady at around 12 MXP – 1 USD for several years. We finally retired and moved here in February, 2017, and the Peso had depreciated to 18 MXP to the dollar.

US Dollar to Mexican Peso conversion rate, 2013-Present (from Xe )

Now we had done our research and knew that the cost of living in Mexico was already less expensive than in the United States. But by the time we arrived to live as expats, Mexico was on a half-price sale. And with a few perturbations (more on those later), it stayed there until the pandemic hit.

Those were very good days to be an expat, especially if your income, pension, or investments were denominated in dollars. The only exception to the rule was for American products. For example, what if you wanted to buy a jar of Skippy’s Extra-Chunk Peanut Butter, labelled in English and imported from el Norte? If the domestic price there was $8.00 USD, you would incur a mark-up and tax leading to $10.00 USD total price, but you were buying it in Mexico, which meant the price also had to be converted to Pesos. At a 12:1 rate, your cost would have been $120 MXP, but at an 18:1 rate, your price was now $180 MXP! Basically, the stronger your dollar was, the more expensive any US products you wanted. But in general, buying local products and services, expats with dollars benefited from a strong dollar.

What causes those spikes and drops in the chart? It’s a complex process, which leads most investment advisors to caution against currency speculation: there are just too many variables which are entirely out of one’s control. For example, if a country undergoes political disruption, that causes investors to pull money out of that country, weakening the currency. The same goes for if a national leader starts doing things like nationalizing industries, or decides to devalue a currency overnight to fight rampant inflation. While there are warning signs of such events, they are hard to read, and can be disastrous to currency traders or investors.

There are also some pretty consistent factors affecting the relative strength of a currency. In addition to monetary and political stability, there is remittance flows, foreign direct investment, the overall state of the nation’s economy, and foreign demand. These combine in the case of the US dollar to keep it the world’s (unofficial but real) reserve currency. Everybody wants dollars when exchanging goods and services, because they know the value of the dollar is strong, stable and universally respected. That’s also why that factor is unlikely to change in the near future, and certainly not quickly.

In the case of Mexico, remittances from Mexican migrants (legal and otherwise) in the US are at a record high. Jobs are plentiful, pay is increasing, and they are sending more money back to their families than ever before. Large chunks of foreign direct investment (FDI) are moving to Mexico as part of the move towards friend-shoring, that is, moving manufacturing to closer, more friendly countries rather than places like China. Mexico’s inflation rate is slightly less than in the US, and Mexican banks are offering high interest rates on savings/investments. Which makes the Peso stronger against the dollar.

Those with dollar reserves notice they don’t go as far, but they don’t notice that US products are a little cheaper, too. It all depends on what you spend your money on. Some expats live on fixed incomes and can really feel 10-20% price swings. Others try to buy extra Pesos (by exchanging at an ATM) when the rate is favorable. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you have a secure place to store them and you take into account the fees you might incur with the bank. The thing is, even if you’re exchanging $500 USD at a time, the difference remains small. At 20:1, you received 10,000 MXP; at 16:1 you get 8000 MXP. Most people are exchanging far less.

Some expats try to get around the currency changes by having their income/pension/social security deposited directly into Mexican accounts as Pesos. Of course, the bank is either charging a fee or determining your exchange rate, and they’re making money either (or both) ways. Not to mention for American expats, there is the issue of FATCA and FBAR compliance if you have foreign accounts. Never heard of it? You should!

FATCA is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Essentially, it requires banks to submit data on any foreign accounts held by Americans. It’s why some American banks discharge expat accounts or refuse to permit expats to open accounts, because the banks don’t want the headache of the reporting requirement to the IRS. FATCA also requires expats holding more than $50,000 USD in foreign accounts to file a report to the IRS and pay taxes on those accounts.

FBAR is the Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, a form American expats are required to file annually (with their taxes) but this report goes to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), not the IRS. This report is mandatory if you have a total of $10,000 USD in any number of foreign accounts (bank, mutual fund, bonds, etc.) at any time during the year. Since this is a tool to combat financial crimes (not for tax purposes), the US regards failure to file as a very serious offense (likewise, conscious attempts to avoid filing, like manipulating transactions to stay below the $10,000 USD limit). The US also does not recognize ignorance as an excuse for failing to file the FBAR, although there are ways to avoid criminal penalties through voluntary make-up reporting. Needless to say, all this is a lot of work to go through.

Post-pandemic Peso-Dollar exchange rates settled in around 20:1, which was really great as it was easy to mentally calculate (drop one digit from the Peso price and divide by 2= Dollar price). Lately the Peso has strengthened to under 17:1 to the Dollar. To me the biggest change is mental (dividing by 17? Fuggedabouit!). Mexico is still inexpensive at this exchange rate. So I have to make my Skippy Extra-Chunk last a little longer? No problema!

Malta

Continuing our tour of obscure European locales which merit your traveling attention, we bring you: Malta.

Valletta is all ups-n-downs (note the famous enclosed Maltese balconies)

Again you’re thinking: “wait, I know this one! It’s an island. It’s small. It played some role in World War II. It has knights.” All true, and although the knights are all gone, their effect is lasting.

Located midway between Sicily and Libya at a narrow point in the Mediterranean, and also midway between Egypt and Gibraltar, Malta is the epitome of strategic location, whether in the age of knights, corsairs, or U-boats. The island boasts amazing weather, reminiscent of lakeside: sunny, warm, with a rainy season primarily in the winter, although it doesn’t get very cold here. Befitting its history, Malta is an odd mix of cultures, languages, and traditions. It has some of the oldest standing archaeological structures in existence, an amazing port, oodles (a technical term) of history, beaches and resorts. There is something for everyone here, and plenty of sunny weather to go and do it.

Cuisine is a mix of Italian and north African, with a dollop of recent English on top. The language is unique: it is Semitic, heavily influenced by Italian and French. It reminds me of Italian written by someone on a keyboard with the letter “x” stuck. But since the English grabbed Malta after Napoleon briefly had it, everybody understands English, although the locals all speak Maltese, too. They’re part of the EU, so travel is easy and the Euro is the currency.

Three of the embattled forts overlooking the Grand Harbor

St. Paul’s wrist on the left, part of the pillar where he was beheaded right

For thousands of years, Malta was a simple place most famous as a refuge for ships in its grand harbor. During the Roman Empire, Saint Paul was shipwrecked here on his way to Rome. He converted the locals, and other than that, it was a cozy, sleepy island in the sun. When the Ottoman Empire eyed the White Sea (their term for the Mediterranean) and Rome, Malta became contested territory. This led to Suleiman the Magnificent’s Great Siege of Malta in 1565 (Muchas Gracias to my friends who recommended the book Empire of the Sea!), an epic land battle where a few thousand Knights Hospitaller (formerly Knights of Saint John, later Knights of Malta) and Maltese militias held off tens-of-thousands of Muslim Janissaries, Sipahis (cavalry), cannons and ships. The land battle preceded the great naval battle of Lepanto which left the Ottoman Empire in control of only the east and south, with various Christian rulers in the north and west of the Mediterranean. The Knights built a new city/fortress in honor of their victorious commander, Jean de Valette, and Valletta was born.

Malta resumed its quiet history until World War II broke out, then it played a vital role preventing Axis’ domination of the Mediterranean. A German-Italian blockade brought the island and garrison within two weeks of surrender due to starvation, but it held out, and later was the headquarters for Eisenhower’s largest amphibious operation, Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily. (Great bar trivia bet: Husky was indeed larger–more troops, larger landing zones– than Overlord!).

Saw an open Church door, went in, found this stunner

But enough of all that history! Malta today is a thriving, independent nation. It is a very Catholic (literally) place: the only city where we saw as many churches as Valletta was Venice, and here the churches aren’t museums or art galleries, they’re active parishes! We stayed primarily in Valletta so we could walk around and take in the sights slowly. The challenge of driving a stick with the wrong hand on the wrong side of the road (apologies to my British friends) seemed unrelaxing, what?

The most surprising structure in Valletta is the co-Cathedral of St. John’s, the Knights’ own headquarters. From the outside, it is just another sandstone building, but when you enter, you’re confronted by a degree of baroque extravagance that is hard to fathom. The church was initially rather plain, befitting a military order full of men who took a vow of poverty. But as the Knights accrued wealth in their military campaigns, they donated it to the order, which kept adding to the opulence in their headquarters. This was the result:

The many side chapels belong to the national groupings and were decorated by them. The entire floor of the chapel comprises Knights’ burial plaques :

Finally, I can’t depart without showing Caravaggio’s Beheading of John the Baptist, a legendary work of chiaroscuro located in the Oratory:

Malta’s other military endeavor is also well represented by the Lascaris War Rooms, a series of underground bunkers which the Allied forces used to manage the defense of Malta and later the Sicily invasion. Like Churchill’s War Rooms in London, the facility has been restored to its original setting and is an impressive still-frame of history before the age of computers, satellites, and instant communications.

Belying the notion there is nothing new to see, we chanced upon a monastery housing a group of cloistered nuns who opened their original rooms for tours. . . for the first time in 400 years. Still no interactions with the Sisters, but we got to see how they lived and dedicated themselves for those centuries:

We took advantage of the English heritage to access some cuisine lacking at times back in Mexico: Chinese and Middle Eastern. But we also indulged local flavors:

Foreground: full English brekkie, background: Steak, egg, cheese Ftira

The nation of Malta includes three primary islands: Malta, Comino, and Gozo. Gozo is the less developed little brother with just as much scenery and history. We took a jeep (no really, a jeep, not a Jeep Wrangler) tour that left me with flashbacks from my Army days, but some stunning shots, too:

There were too many museums, forts, churches, and cafes to list. We enjoyed Fort St. Elmo and rabbit, the grandkids liked the Malta 5D experience with moving seats, wind gusts, and water spray.

The saluting battery, still used twice daily, this time set up for a wedding

We didn’t hit the resorts or beaches, but there were numerous ones to visit. I think water sports in general are a big thing here, and there are many small boat/sail tours which provide a day of sun, swim, and snorkel. We did enjoy the sights and tastes including rabbit, which comes close to being the national meat of choice:

Slovenia

Shhhhhhh. I’m going to let you in on a secret, but you have to promise not to tell ANYONE, OK? Covid is gone, or should I say, we’ve stopped caring about it, and travel is back with a vengeance. And that means the crowds are back: the tourist buses, the cruise crowds, the extended families in matching outfits traipsing through the museum. Add in social influencers taking selfies as if the whole world is their stage (“isn’t it?”) and digital nomads turning any neighborhood into an Air BnB wasteland, and well, you get the picture. The only thing missing at this point is the mega-tours of Chinese travelers, but wait another six months and they’ll be back, too.

The secret? Oh, that. You don’t have to deal with all of these travel annoyances. And you don’t have to be rich to avoid them. You just have to know where to go, and where NOT to go. The throngs tend to, well, “throng” at the same places at the same time. They don’t do their research, don’t consider their options. They travel as much to say they’ve been there as to experience anything in particular. If they visit a place no one else recognizes, it defeats the whole purpose for them. But this presents an opportunity for the savvy traveler.

A prime example is Slovenia. No, not Slovakia. You know, that little country directly east of Italy up by the Alps? Yes, that one!

It was a small but prosperous part of Yugoslavia until that country broke apart in 1991. It was ethnically distinct (Slavic and Catholic) and geographically compact, so after a brief ten-day “war” Yugoslavia let it go independent. Which was a real blessing, as Slovenia escaped all the bloodshed and turmoil witnessed by Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, et al. Slovenes instead busied themselves joining the EU and NATO, trading freely and building up their infrastructure.

What does Slovenia offer?

First off, convenience. It is centrally located in Europe and easy to get to. It’s small with an excellent road system: you can drive across the country in three hours. It uses the Euro, and because the education system incorporated mandatory English language classes, nearly everybody speaks English. Yes, the place names and Slovenian language are a challenge, but the Slovenes we met were happy with a “hvala” and “prosim” (thank you and please).

Second, it’s beautiful on multiple counts. Like rolling farms with vineyards and meadows? Check. Alpine hiking and views? Check. Pristine streams and lakes? Check. Hiking trails, ski resorts, caves? Triple-check. Quaint villages and local diners? Check. If you like your travel to include amazing landscapes, Slovenia has one specifically to take your breath away.

Third, it’s interesting. The cuisine is a mix of influences: Balkan, Austrian, Hungarian, Italian. The ingredients are very natural and organic: locals are interested in making and having the best of their produce, not labeling it, marketing it, and selling it elsewhere. Its history is Europe’s history. There are Roman, Venetian, even Byzantine ruins, little known World War I battlefields, baroque architecture recalling Vienna, and pieces of Yugoslav Communist kitsch.

Fourth, Slovenia is small-town friendly. There are only about two million Slovenes. Theirs is a developed nation with a rich history, but they don’t care to crow too much about it. Furthermore, they haven’t been inundated with tourists yet, so we’re still welcome here.

Fifth and finally, Slovenia is on sale. Being off the beaten path, undiscovered on TikTok, means prices are still reasonable. How so? Farm-stay bed-and-breakfast with huge breakfast buffet: 80 Euros a night. Dinner for two with apps and drinks: 60 Euros.

We stayed in the karst region, with all the caves, for three nights at the already-mentioned farm. It made for a leisurely pace to visit the massive caves at Postonja and the impressive castle at Predjama, which are only about ten kilometers apart. Postonja Jama (cave) is touristy in a good way: easy to get to, easy to park at, with a dual track mini-train doing the hard work of getting you deep into the system, and back out again, and solid audioguides to explain what you’re seeing. But as with any natural wonder, perhaps it’s better just to sit back and take in the beauty. No “turn out the lights” tricks or claims about ghosts, pirates or aliens; just a pretty, large, natural wonder.

Wheeeeeee. I enjoyed the train ride best.

Predjama castle bills itself as the “world’s largest cave castle”: who knew that was even a thing? It is an impressive structure with (of course) a medieval legend about a Robin Hood-esque knight. The tour highlights how the castle, built over and into the mouth of a cave system, provided safety above all else. But it also emphasized how ingenious the builders had been to make the place as livable as possible.

We did a day trip to Lake Bled, which may be the photo op extraordinaire of Slovenia. No doubt you’ve seen the pictures, even if you’ve never visited! The day was overcast with some light rain. We took the traditional pletna boat (rowed out to the island). There is no color/warmth editing in these photos:

You could easily walk around the lake in a few hours. . . you could, we didn’t, as the occasional rain told us to find a restaurant with this on serve:

Foreground: my pork filet over polenta. Background: Judy’s Slovenian style pizza, always with Union unfiltered dark beer!

It only took us thirty minutes to drive from Lake Bled to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. The old city is small and nestles around the river under a cliff-top castle. While the city has modern neighborhoods that sprawl out from there, the center is very walkable with good transportation options, including a free mini-bus even in the pedestrian zone. The influence of centuries under the Hapsburgs shows in numerous cafes and pocket parks. There are also interesting elements of baroque architecture (especially the Cathedral of St. Nicolas), art nouveau, and even brutalist buildings from Tito’s reign.

Sadly, the steady rain followed us from Lake Bled, so we spent the next few days dashing about under umbrellas and rain jackets. Happily, there are many (many) cafes and bars to duck into for a forced cappuccino or Aperol Spritz!

The old town area is achingly cute. You can barely turn a corner without seeing something quaint: a museum, a restaurant, a curio shop.

Slovene cuisine tends toward meat (especially sausage and game) and potatoes, although I did find a restaurant with pizza rolls in the menu, a sure sign of highly refined culinary culture!

Foreground: veal cheeks with dumplings, background: bacon-wrapped pork loin with roasted potatoes

There are a number of good museums covering music, art, natural history, national history and the like.

Ljubljana was a real winner in our book. Good food, great scenery, and a walkable environment. We met service staff that were very friendly, and others who were bored with their jobs. Tipping is minimal here, so perhaps that plays a role. Three days is a good visit, and that leaves you time to visit the natural beauty of the coast, the vineyards, the lakes, and of course the mountains.

But go soon, as Slovenia keeps popping up on travel sites as one of the next big things!

Tuscany

Most travelers either have gone, or someday plan to go, to Italy for the Big Three: Roma, Firenze (Florence), and Venezia (Venice). We’ve done it, and highly recommend it, staying at least three days in Rome, two in Florence, and one night in Venice. Such a visit is fairly easy to accomplish, with easy access to either end from international airports, and excellent train connections between them. And of course all three welcome tourists, although Venice has become a little more circumspect of late. It is well worth it, and each city presents unique and complementary aspects.

But I’m blogging today on a different kind of Italy visit: getting off the well-trod path of the Big Three and seeing the Italian countryside in a more personal, less touristy way. You can pick almost any region of Italy to do this kind of visit, but we’re staying in Tuscany, so that’s the example I will use.

Under the Tuscan clouds is none too shabby, either

What makes this kind of slow, local travel more interesting? First off, it’s the absence of the checklist effect. You know, the Rome? Colosseum: check. Vatican museum: check. Forum: check. And so on until you can’t remember what-you-saw-where or what-you-ate-when. The funny thing about staying in a small village or region is that there will still be nice museums, great restaurants, amazing views, friendly locals, cozy enotecas (wine bars) and pizzerias. You might not be at the one everybody else is doing TikTok videos from, but the one you’re at will be (1) less crowded, (2) less expensive, and (3) just as good.

The interesting thing about staying local in Italy is nearly every region, every village, has something interesting to do and very good places to eat. Italians take pride in how they live, and that extends to all aspects: a bad restaurant is an affront to the village, not just the owner. And as any Stanley Tucci fan knows, every region has unique local cuisine that must be tried and enjoyed. So don’t fret about staying in an out of the way place: it will be great!

What’s with the lion? I dunno, he just seemed to demand my attention

But where to stay, if you’re not in a tourist-friendly hotel chain near the center of a big city? I’d recommend choosing either a castle-stay or an agriturismo. Many entrepreneurs have renovated castles, keeps, or watchtowers into boutique hotels in Italy, and they are comfortable and available. They might be a little on the expensive side: you’re paying extra for the experience. And you might have to carry your bags across the moat. But then again, you’ll be able to complain about having to carry your bags across a moat. Who gets to do that?

As to agriturismos, these are government-regulated farm stays. To qualify for the government funding, the property must be an active farm which provides some measure of room and board. There are such farms which welcome you to join in the chores, and many more with a bed-n-breakfast(+) design. You’ll get farm-fresh meals, cozy accommodations, and a chance to meet real locals. While there are a wide range of prices, they can be very affordable.

Once you’ve selected a region and settled on a home base, now comes the fun part. Ask for local recommendations for things to do and places to eat, and limit how far you’re willing to drive. Did I mention driving? Many caution against driving in Italy, and I fully understand why. But that prohibition stands mostly for the big cities. Italian drivers are aggressive (not dangerous, just not defensive), city streets are narrow, parking is limited, gas is expensive, and there are ZTLs (Zona a Traffico Limitato): places where only registered locals can drive, where you as a tourist can get a big fine. But to get around the countryside, driving is fine. Here in Tuscany, the local roads are wind-y, narrow, and full of cyclists. Car trips take time, and the driver doesn’t get to enjoy the beautiful scenery as he/she dodges italianos bent on breaking a personal best on their Colnagos. Remember, the town, castle, or restaurant two hours away is probably no better (just different from) the one five minutes away. Stay at home and visit, and limit the driving.

Now go back to the same places at different times. In a week, you can become a veritable local at the village osteria! Or work your way down the village square hitting every local establishment. Ask for different gelato flavors every day at the nearby gelateria. You can drive yourself (literally) crazy chasing after the next-better wine tasting in Italy, since wines like Chianti Classico and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo aren’t that far apart. And that’s just the DOCs: don’t even try to compare vintners within each DOC: your liver will never make it! (I know, I tried).

We’ve stayed local in Tuscany twice now, and it’s been very rewarding. There are those little hang-ups which make the trip more memorable. Ever have a multi-hundred Euro heating bill at the Hilton? Of course not, but if you heat your castle room with propane, you might! But you forgot to bring your servants and firewood to the castle, now didn’t you?

My dear wife has made it her life’s work to eat Ribollita, the hearty (almost a stew) Tuscan vegetable-and-bread soup at nearly every restaurant; she can even discern the differences in which vegetables and bread are used! For my part, in smaller villages, I’ve found it possible to dress up a little bit and not have everybody automatically think I’m an American. . . of course, the minute I open my mouth . . .

You can still day-trip into those more famous places, experiencing those crowds and selfie-stick hordes, secure in the knowledge that when you’re fed up with it, you can hop back in your Fiat, motor off into the countryside and breathe!

Ever wish they would let the horses loose randomly, in the middle of the day?

The Cruellest Month

My very literate friends will immediately recognize the line from “The Waste Land.” T.S. Elliot began his epic poem with the line “April is the cruellest month, breeding. . .” With all due respect to the great poet, he must never have visited lakeside, for here all know that May, not April, is the cruellest month.

Now in most of the rest of the world, if you ask for a “bad-weather month” you might likely receive December or January in temperate climes, maybe August in tropical ones. Most of the Northern Hemisphere is quite nice and Spring-like in May, the Southern likewise Fall-ish. Lakeside is famous–even if erroneously so, since National Geographic magazine NEVER called it the second best climate in the world–for having great weather. And that much is true. But among all those sunny, dry, comfortable months, May stands out as the worst.

You see, May is the last full month of the dry season. We have not seen measurable precipitation since October, which is the norm. June will herald the arrival of the rainy season, not to be confused with a monsoon. Rather, here it is simply an acknowledgement that it will rain. After seven months without it, it is always welcome. People wander outside during the first real rainstorm just to feel it, much as the MesoAmericans must have with great thanksgiving. No more human sacrifices, though. There might have been a day in those seven months with a shower; for example, the day before yesterday we had a few drops for a few seconds. But that is not rainfall. It was more like what you’d expect if you turn on your yard sprinkler and realize it’s aimed directly at you. Splash, and then gone.

The mountains are uniformly brown, with a splotch of green here and there, from some uniquely-evolved native plant or tree which resists nature’s regulatory palette. The yards and the gardens remain green with an explosion of well-watered and cared-for flora. There is an omnipresent thin coat of dust which settles on all horizontal surfaces, and which magically recreates itself after each sweeping/cleaning. Wearing white or black pants is a newbie’s mistake.

May is the hottest month lakeside. Our average daily high temperature is 85° Fahrenheit, with a low of 60°. May stretches that high into the mid-90s. Now it’s true that temperature is for full sun exposure in the middle of the afternoon, which is why the culture has a siesta: only mad dogs and Gringos go out in the noonday Sun, as it were. And it’s also true the temperature moderates quickly down to a comfortably sleepy level by early evening.

You’re reading this and thinking, “Pat, you’re whining” and you’re right. We are spoiled by a great climate, or as I prefer to say, we just don’t have weather here. Which makes the few negatives stand out all the more. I have transitioned into a local for climatic purposes. I still use Fahrenheit over Celsius, but I swear that the metric measurement for temperature is superior. Why? Because there is no reason for temperatures below zero. We should just stop at 0° Celsius and say, “enough, it’s too cold, stop measuring it.” I haven’t taken to wearing gloves and ski jackets below 6o° as the Mexicans do, but I can see it in my future.

Therefore May is the perfect month to venture out of the slightly uncomfortable paradise at lakeside to the far ends of the globe. Most of the United States is lovely now, although there is the occasional hail of bullets. Europe is in shoulder season and at bargain prices. Heck, even Canada has ice-free roads (for a day or two).

May also heralds the departure of the snowbirds, those semi-annual visitors from up north, who begin returning home in April and finish up in May, leaving us year-round expats with time to savor unclogged roads and restaurant visits without reservations. Like the rain, after seven months we’ll even miss them and want them back!

I admit there is something magical about the four seasons as one experiences them in northern climes. Spring is especially welcome, what with the signs of new life. But June and the rainy season play a similar role here: it is a different world once the rains come. They are eagerly anticipated. Local legend has it that once the rainbirds (aka cicadas) start singing, the rains will come too. Some overly-eager (or is it literal) types compete to announce the rainbirds’ song. Perhaps they confuse correlation with causation. We did have dark clouds, wind, and a few drops the other day, and the rainbirds are giving tinnitus a run for its money.

Or as Eliot later wrote,

Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain.

There is a green cactus in there, but that don’t count!

Progressivism: . . . and the Ugly

Today’s Progressives seem to have all the good intentions of their earlier believers, but they seem to have learned little from their history. What makes the outcome ugly is their stubborn insistence that ‘this time it will be different’ married to the quasi-fervor that their ends justifies the means.

Today’s progressives remain true believers in science, but that “faith” has edged over into scientism, the belief that science can settle all questions, and can in fact itself be “settled.” Science can’t unlock the secret of love nor can it explain the evil mind. Science is settled only until it’s not, and if the recent pandemic taught the average person anything, it was to be very careful about expert opinion. Science is great at explaining how (and sometimes why) things work. It’s not so good at determining policies affecting people’s lives.

Another place where Progressivism today is worse than its predecessor is in its adoption of another -ism: presentism. Presentism is the belief that people today are superior (morally, ethically, intellectually) to those who came before, and we should judge the past by our superior standards. While today’s technology is undeniably better, I see no data which suggest people today are superior. Where’s today’s Jefferson, Michelangelo, da Vinci? Ranchers one-hundred years ago knew ecology better than most ecologists today. Farmers two centuries past produced surplus crops without modern irrigation or drones. Common people during the Middle Ages spoke a vernacular language as well as Latin, and they mastered trade skills as a way of life. Humanity today has better tools, but human nature remains unchanged. Societies can be more or less humane, but progress there is not certain.

As an example of presentism, I often mention that family structures in the US were more stable in the 1950s. I barely can finish posting that on social media when Progressives will retort that I “long for the patriarchy” or “forgot Jim Crow” or want to send people “back into the closet.” That’s presentism rearing its ugly head. Yes, all those things happened in the 1950s, including stable family structures. Now there is no evidence to suggest that limiting anyone’s freedom contributed to more stable families. I would argue stable families happened despite those challenges. Especially for black families, who faced so much oppression, yet were remarkably stable. Not any more. What happened? If you’re a progressive today, the notion there was anything good in the past has to be rejected, as only today, and the better future, matter.

You can hear presentism whenever a Progressive talks about being on “the right side of history.” Christians believe history has a direction, which is what led the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to famously say “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But that’s a religious proposition, not a progressive one. Ultimate belief in one’s righteousness about ‘the side of history’ has been at the core of many of the worst examples of inhumanity in the past century.

Finally, Progressives also retain their fondness for change. As they have seen their ideas rejected by the courts and the voters, they now opt to argue for changing the system in toto. Progressives are proposing eliminating the Senate (because it equalizes all States and thus currently favors Republicans), enlarging the House of Representatives (because, yes, everybody agrees we need MORE politicians in Washington), term-limiting the Supreme Court (not mentioned when the octogenarian RBG wore the robes) or simply ignoring its rulings when they are not consistent with Progressive values (did they not learn about the South’s Massive Resistance in the 1960s?).

“We’d all love to change your head”

Rather than learning humility from their failed history, today’s progressives double-down on their beliefs. I still don’t question their motives. The original progressives were just as self-righteous, but they had an excuse in that history had not yet shown them their follies. Perhaps Progressivism will learn, change itself, and survive as a movement. But there’s a difference between being blind, and refusing to see. That’s from a really old book, but most progressives wouldn’t want to read it.

Progressivism: The Good . . .

I have friends of every political, religious, and ethnic stripe. I like to think it reflects kindly on my inclusivity, although I admit it reflects poorly on my friends’ judgment of character. Be that as it may, I often irritate my Progressive friends with my persistent questioning of their beliefs. I make an observation about some trend or incident in the public space, they respond with a mixture of shock and disgust that anyone they know could think the way I do. Rinse-n-repeat.

Today I want to try a different tack. Part of the problem is we all assume that others must see the world as we do, which leads us to jump to conclusions when we see an opposing opinion. People think, “you must see the world as I do (since I’m objectively correct), so if you disagree with me you must be ________ (stupid, evil, etc).” To help break through this cycle, this post will cover what I believe are the positive aspects of Progressivism in its American form. The next post will be on its negative components. I’ll leave it to your imagination where the third post will go. Let’s get started!

Progressivism grew out of the Enlightenment. Its basic belief set is that mankind can do better: through technology, through good government, through better education, through being more inclusive. Thus Progressives are the most optimistic pessimists on the planet. They look at what is today, or what was yesterday, and think “how can anyone have let this happen? We must do better.” And they imagine a future–never that far off–when best will arrive. So the first point for Progressives is their passion. They really want to make things better, and they won’t rest until things are.

The second point for Progressives is their compassion. Since they are always looking to improve things, they focus on the least fortunate among us: the poor, the sick, the mentally-ill, prisoners, women, children, immigrants, anyone marginalized by the system. It bears repeating that everyone should be focused on these groups and what places them at a disadvantage. It is undeniably good to be a voice for the oppressed, the misused, the abused.

The third positive aspect of Progressivism is its willingness to change. If you believe things can be better, you must be willing to suffer change. Question things. Don’t accept “that’s how we always did it” or “That’s just the way it is.”

The Progressive Anthem?

Progressives will never be satisfied with the status quo, nor are they afraid of change. Their constant challenges bring vitality to any political environment.

Finally, the Progressive movement is inclusive and bipartisan. My Republican friends may be scoffing at this, but hear me out. Progressives are happy to have any group join in their quest for improvement, and they are willing to extend their ‘big tent’ to newly-identified groups who are marginalized by society or government. And while Progressives almost exclusively occupy the left-wing of the Democratic Party in America today, they originally grew out of a different wing of the Republican Party in the early twentieth/late nineteenth century. I’ll talk more about this in my next post, but Progressivism flourishes when there is broad social/technological change.

In summary, I truly believe Progressivist theory has society’s best interests at heart, that it wants to improve things, that it is open to new ideas and concepts, that it will work tirelessly to achieve a better world. Why am I not then a Progressive? Part Two!