What I'm consuming #3

Listening 

The Wilderness - Jon Favreau the former speechwriter for President Obama, gives a history of the Democratic party, a diagnosis of what went wrong in 2016, and, with the help of experts, voters, and politicians, a plan of action. As an analysis and a history, I think the podcast does a really good job. But as we run through the Democratic party's laundry list of problems, not to mention the varied interests of the different groups that make up the Democratic coalition, I find myself growing increasingly worried, and I'm not seeing a clear way out of the wilderness. But that's why it's called "The Wilderness": I suppose the goal of the podcast is to bring in lots of different perspectives and reflect on the party's issues. Something tells me, though, that I may leave the podcast with more worries than I came in with. The Democratic party has problems that are many and deep: in branding itself; in dealing with a stupid electorate (who wants universal healthcare yet doesn't); and in dealing with an intransigent Republican party that does a good job at making the Democrats look bad. Right now, going into the 2018 elections, all they have to work with is anti-Trump fervor and the reputation of being the less corrupt party. I’d be surprised if they have a unified message going into 2020. 

Longform Podcast interview with Nathaniel Rich - This podcast interview compelled me to read Rich’s New York Times Magazine piece on climate change, which took up the whole issue, and which I initially put to the side because climate change stories depress the hell out of me. I thought about this a good deal: Here I am, someone who wrote a book partly about climate change, and I'm not at all eager to read an important story on climate change. This got me thinking of the average reader, who is probably even less willing to the read this story. Climate change is, I think, increasingly something we try to keep out of sight and out of mind. I think if we had a more proactive approach to the problem, we'd do better to face our fears in the face, but so long as our government does next to nothing, we have cause to sweep our shame, fear, and disappointment under a rug of apathy.  

Anyhow, I liked how Rich handles his subject with care (both in the podcast and article), but also with unwavering moral clarity. In the interview, he dutifully condemns the modern-day Republican party and fossil fuel companies for their self-interested and unforgivable distortion of the truth.

Revisionist History - I binge-listened to seasons two and three, which are remarkable. Gladwell has a knack for finding one interesting story or character and then zooming out to tell a broader story about the country. 

The Rewatchables (Silence of the Lambs, Jerry Maguire, and Any Given Sunday) - I really enjoy listening to Bill Simmons and his smart friends break down popular nineties movies.

Watching 

Who Is America?, Showtime - I have a weakness for Sacha Baron Cohen. My favorite character is Dr. Nira Cain-N'Degeocello, a self-hating cisgender gender studies professor at Reed College, whose function is to expose the ridiculous extremes of the far left and the out-of-touchness of his gullible right-leaning subjects. I’m not sure if I get much out of his Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr. character. The utility of Cohen's movies and shows is in exposing the ridiculousness of our thought leaders; with Billy Wayne, Cohen makes them look reasonable. (i.e. Corey Lewandowski)  

Death of Stalin - As a big fan of Veep, The Thick of It, and In The Loop, I was really looking forward to Iannucci's latest, but the laughs didn’t come often enough, and the movie's plot never caught my interest.

Wild, Wild Country, Netflix - Sheela is a mostly-likable psychopath and gurus always let you down. I enjoyed every minute of this.

Reading 

Bear, by Marian Engel - I'm thinking about writing an essay about the bear in the North American imagination, so how could I not read this award-winning Canadian novel about a woman's sexual relationship with a pet black bear? It was a hugely enjoyable and page-turning read, and I adored Engel's spare prose. 

Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber - This is a seriously good book about bullshit jobs, useless work, and how the pervading meaninglessness that comes from such work leaves scars on the soul of both the individual and his/her greater society.

It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in Politics - I love big, crazy ideas of any sort, and this book is full of them. A few ideas: 

• The next Democrat-controlled Congress should increase the number of Supreme Court justices to be selected by a Democratic president. 
• Adding eight new senators by splitting California into three states, and adding Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico as states. Some even say that if we break Texas up into several states, we'd add a few more left-leaning senators. 
• Increase the size of the House of Representatives to 870. 
• A constitutional amendment to end lifetime tenure for judges.
• Create automatic voter registration; no registration required. 
• A national election holiday to boost turnout.

What I'm Consuming #1

What I'm Consuming #2

Op-Ed in High Country News

Yesterday, my Op-Ed, about a ridiculous Idaho trespass law, published in High Country News.

Here's the text:

Woody Guthrie’s most famous song contains a stirring sentiment in its refrain — “This land was made for you and me.” Unfortunately, that sort of thinking could get you shot in Idaho.

Idaho’s new trespass law went into effect July 1. Combined with a new “stand your ground” law, it could make it easier for landowners to get away with shooting trespassers.

“Trespassers will be deemed to have nefarious intent upon entry into real property,” wrote Kristina Schindele, then Idaho’s deputy attorney general, in an email to the public. “Such presumed intent would permit unreasonable uses of force against such trespassers by landowners while limiting the landowners’ civil and criminal liability.”

The law, written without any consultation with sportsmen and recreationists, raises the trespassing fine to $500 and makes civil trespass a strict liability offense. Kahle Becker, former deputy attorney general for Idaho, says that trespassers who challenge the law and then lose in court will be responsible for the plaintiff’s attorney fees. This could cost anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000.

“You could bankrupt someone for innocently stepping on some undelineated sagebrush,” says Becker. The Idaho Sheriffs’ Association and the Idaho Prosecuting Attorneys Association noted that the bill was vague and contradictory and difficult to enforce. But it easily passed in a Republican-dominated Legislature, and the governor opted to neither sign nor veto, which meant that the bill, as a quirk of Idaho law, automatically became law.

The bill was sponsored by House Republican Rep. Judy Boyle, a Bundy family supporter who made two trips to the illegal Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation in Oregon. The bill was supported by a coalition of agricultural groups and big landowners, including lobbyists for the Wilks brothers, Texas billionaires whose combined holdings make them the 13th largest landowners in America. They own 702,000 acres and pay private security guards to patrol their property boundaries. In 2016, they bought and closed off 172,000 acres of land in Idaho, parts of which had been open under the previous owners.

This new Idaho law makes me think of Georgian England as I’ve just finished researching and writing a book about land-access rights and how we’re losing them today. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English aristocrats got Parliament to pass laws to make the land their own — a process known as “enclosure.” Aristocrats pushed people off the land and hired armed gamekeepers. They excluded whomever they wished and enjoyed exclusive access to deer and grouse. What were once common lands that supported the livelihoods of many people became personal playgrounds and new sources of wealth for the already rich.

This sounds like the West in 21st century America: billionaire landowners who get what they want from legislatures. Vast areas of land closed off. Privatized wildlife. Armed security guards. This trend extends well beyond Idaho; in Montana and New Mexico, wealthy outsiders can close off access to streams.

Today, frustrated sportsmen and recreationists don’t really challenge the status quo. They advocate for amendments, such as the freedom to cross checkerboard corners of public land or for the privilege to retrieve a downed animal on private land. These do little more than loosen the handcuffs.

We should be looking at the bigger picture. We should be arguing for a full-on right to roam.

The English began to reverse centuries of aristocratic rule in 2000, when Parliament passed the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, which opened up privately owned mountains and unimproved grasslands for responsible public recreation.

There is no reason why the people of Idaho can’t have a similar right to roam. For hunters, anglers and hikers, this would mean being able to legally cross private lands to get to public lands and waters. For landowners, it would mean privacy in and around your home, immunity from frivolous lawsuits, and the right to sue for damages. But it also would mean no more unnecessary “no trespassing” signs, no more hoarding game, no more draconian trespass laws.

When Europeans are freer than Americans, when the moors of England are more open than the plains of Wyoming, and when our laws are crafted for the sole benefit of the landed gentry, we Americans have clearly lost our way. So let’s stop putting up with enclosure for the few and reclaim our old rights, the rights of the many. It’s not their right to exclude, fine and shoot us. It’s our right to roam.

Co-presenting with Bill McKibben

In May of this year, I had the honor of co-presenting with one of my environmental heroes, Bill McKibben, the author/editor of seventeen books, the founder of 350.org, and arguably the principal figure in the worldwide climate justice movement. Bill was an altogether kind and down-to-earth guy.

[Note: It may sound like the audience was being rude by talking in the background (they weren't); that's just people in the lobby of the movie theatre, close to where our talk was held.] Special thanks to the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, VT, for organizing everything.

Book review from Adventure Journal

Roaming in Scotland near town of North Berwick.

Some book-review love for This Land Is Our Land from Adventure Journal:

"My dad, a law-abiding rural county detective, always surprised me with his frequent humming of ‘Signs’ by Five Man Electrical Band: ‘Hey! What gives you the right? To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep Mother Nature in.’ The urge to roam freely might be universal, but the U.S. is veering sharply toward a fenced-in future. Ken Ilgunas earned a following with his 2013 Walden on Wheels, and thank goodness he's back with This Land Is Our Land: part polemic, part American travelogue, and part primer on the history of land use laws. The Swedes call it allemansrätten and in Great Britain it’s the ‘right to roam’—an average citizen’s license to wander on publicly or privately owned land. How often do you encounter ‘No Trespassing’ signs while camping, hiking, or just walking around the block? Before Americans need a membership card to get outside, everyone who moves should read this book.”

What I’m consuming #2

Listening

Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin? Seasons 1 & 2 - This podcast is full of good, practical relationship advice. (One helpful tip from Perel: When discussing a problem with your partner, put your partner’s complaint into your own words and ask her if you got it right. This way, everyone stays on the same page.) Also, her intimate therapy sessions with couples are extremely entertaining.

WBEZ Chicago, Making Obama - This series — about Obama’s meteoric rise — is riveting. If I have any criticism, it’s that the show should have followed Obama all the way to 2008, when he gets elected. Instead, it ends somewhat anticlimactically when he announces his candidacy for the presidency. (It was so good, I wanted more, so this is hardly a criticism.)

The young Obama is someone with great ambition. He was always thinking big. He was thinking years ahead. He was thinking of how he could apply his unique talents to the world. He was brilliant and tactical, but he was also lucky. In different circumstances he could have just been a successful lawyer, professor, or state politician in Illinois. What if he never met Michelle? What if Carol Moseley Braun had blocked his path to the Senate? A few unlucky events could have made the Obama story unfold in a different way. But ultimately his gifts, tactics, and luck worked together, and he got to live life as optimally as a human could.

I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever live a more optimal life. Is this the most I'll ever be—a modestly successful and never-exactly-satisfied writer? I wonder: If I was raised somewhere else, was better educated, was born in a different century, or was just really lucky here and there, could I be something bigger, something that suits me more? Perhaps a colonel in a war, a revolutionary, a politician, a business leader, a South Pole adventurer? I don’t know who I might be under different circumstances, but I do sense that, right now, my qualities as a human being aren’t being optimally utilized, perhaps because nothing is calling for them to be properly drawn out and put into action. Obama likely would have been perpetually dissatisfied if he sensed his qualities weren't being fully utilized, but he lucked out and made it happen.

This podcast made me think of other historic figures who were lousy in ordinary life but amazing in a specific set of circumstances. I thought of Ernest Shackleton and how many people thought that he, in ordinary life in the British Isles, was immature and irresponsible. But Shackleton’s journey to the South Pole provided him with a task that was so enormous and demanding that it became “a touchstone for his monstrous ego and implacable drive,” writes biographer Alfred Lansing. Suddenly Shackleton’s qualities — his ego, his drive, his physical stamina, his leadership — had opportunities to fully express themselves. And Shackleton thrived. We see the same thing with Ulysses S. Grant—an amazing human being who probably would have led an unexceptional life if it wasn’t for the Civil War. 

What is your Civil War? What is my South Pole? I speak of the circumstances that would ask the most of you, that would make you the most necessary and useful and effective human being you could possibly be.

Many of us may never get our South Pole, or even imagine our South Pole. I’m guessing most people never get a chance to realize their full potential. They never get to live the life they were ideally born to live. Instead, they get stuck in a cubicle when they should be a colonel, or they’re gathering nuts with their forest tribe when they should be computer programming. This is the Grant who never gets to fight his war and ends up living an undemanding family life. This is the Shackleton who never gets the funding for his expedition and rots away, resentful, in his rocking chair. Think about all the would-be presidents and doctors and writers and architects who never had the chance to achieve because they died young in wars. Or all the women, who, up until recently, weren't allowed to study alongside men in colleges. Or think about the millions who grow up in poverty, who get a lousy education, who never meet the right people, or who don’t get the right breaks. 

I have a vague, and perhaps mistaken, sense that I could be uniquely useful for something more, but I’m just not sure exactly what, and I have no idea if I’ll ever happen upon my own “South Pole.” Obama found his South Pole in the presidency. Ideally, I’ll find mine (as I am visited with strong callings here and there), but given the good chances of never hearing another clear calling, I think it’s okay to set up for yourself a good secondary life — the life Obama might have had if he’d never risen above a respectable professor or state politician — centered on family, community, and respectable work.

Watching

Netflix, Mindhunter - I enjoyed the first few episodes, but I gradually lost interest and quit. The fun was in the psychology. The serial killers oftentimes had illuminating things to say. And I suppose I liked how the overall story was about the creation of an academic discipline. I quit because of all the window dressing—the boring romance, the sterile setting, the so-so dialogue, the not-so-great chemistry between the two leads.

Annihilation - I gave up about halfway through. Perhaps I’m missing out, but I like sci-fi that grapples with big questions and makes me think (Ex Machina, Black Mirror, Arrival, Interstellar) or that at least thrills (Gravity). Annihilation seemed like a cheaply made, poorly acted, and badly conceived B-movie that did neither.

Reading

Hunter S. Thompson’s The Great Shark Hunt - Even though this book of essays is set in the ’70s and even though it's largely about out-of-date Nixonian politics, the writing, surprisingly, retains its readability and humor. It’s just rough and raw. His prose has an aggressive nature—it’s as if his words are bullets flying out of the barrel. Thompson does not dither or play word games—he is always on the attack, and it’s hard to look away.

The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations” - I just finished The Best American Essays and Travel Writing series for 2016, and Coates’s piece was one of my favorites. I love big, radical, progressive ideas of any sort, and I admired Coates’s approach, which was more history than Op-Ed. By the end, I felt pretty convinced that the idea of issuing reparations to those affected by the legacies of slavery and systemic racism is actually quite reasonable. But I’m also reading Ramp Hollow, about how the Scotch-Irish were run out of their countries, and then their homes in America, and then their jobs in West Virginian coal country, and many are still suffering from generations of poverty today, and it makes me wonder: Don’t they deserve reparations too? The same could be said for any number of groups (regardless of race) who’ve experienced generations of inequality and injustice, even if their struggles were comparatively less severe than African Americans’. 

Practically speaking, I wonder how reparations would go over with the angry white percentage of the population. Will reparations end in more equality, or will it end in more racism, more anger, and more Trumps that will spark a blowback that will lead to even more inequality? Whites already (wrongly) claim that blacks are getting the bulk of the social benefits. What happens to the state of race relations when blacks do indeed get more when the reparation checks are cashed? Overall, I sense that reparations wouldn't help the country, even if reparations are indeed right and just. I suppose that probably means I lean conservative on the issue, though I’m all for pouring resources into disadvantaged communities, which is a vague, though weaker, form of reparation. These, though, are just initial thoughts to a big idea. I’m still openminded on the issue and could be talked into it with the right facts and nuances.

What I'm Consuming #1