Commentary & Pubs

Then and now, how different is it?

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

When I was growing up, it was a turbulent time. Being a child of the 60s and 70s, I saw some thrilling scientific advances, as well as numerous disturbing events throughout my childhood. Both the positive and negative had an impact on how I viewed the world, but I always thought that things would continue to get better for society overall.

We had lots of books at home – both of my parents were avid readers of all sorts of material, and they instilled in me a healthy love of learning. We had numerous academic texts (both of my parents were medical professionals, so they had an extensive medical library), and we had our Encyclopedia Britannica along with the Great Books as more general references. We even had the Children’s Stories Great Books collection to round out things from the literary side. We had numerous dictionaries, lots of history books, and shelves overflowing with literary works including both fiction and nonfiction on countless subjects. We also had our library cards for both pleasure and for those times when our research needs exceeded what was available at home. Learning was fun. Continue reading →

A landline alternative

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Some services that have been around for more than a century have improved over time. Unfortunately, sometimes that improvement stops and regresses the service, and we lose something we didn’t used to think about not being there when we needed it. A good old-fashioned telephone can be one of those things. Growing up, we always had a phone with multiple extensions throughout the house. At first they were clunky rotary phones that weighed a lot more than it seemed like they should, but they worked even when the power went out which happened frequently for a time. It seemed like if the wind blew, we’d lose power. If it rained, we’d lose power. But even when it was dark, our phone worked. Continue reading →

What is imagination?

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs ,

By Ande Jacobson

Some time ago, a friend and colleague posited that religious fundamentalists and extremists, which he equated to cult members, had no imagination. He said that’s what locked them into doggedly following their leader’s demands without question no matter how extreme or dangerous those demands were. While he was specifically talking about some egregious situation surrounding the rabid political divisions between the far-right extremists and pretty much everyone else, I started thinking about the concept of imagination overall. What is imagination? How is imagination employed? What are the benefits of having an imagination? Does a lack of imagination make somebody more susceptible to fundamentalism or cult participation, or more perilously, does lacking an imagination make somebody dangerous? For the purposes of this discussion, consider the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of imagination thus:

“imagination n. the faculty or action of forming ideas or mental images. > the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.”

From this definition, imagination, or some level of it at least, seems to be required for any substantial amount of learning in human society. Continue reading →

Difficult lessons to learn

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

I recently shared what I thought was a cogent, albeit satirical take on the choice before us this November. It was a David Sedaris quote posted by Mark Acres. A friend shared Acres’ post on their timeline, and I shared it to mine.

Several friends commented on the post. Most were either close to retirement or in retirement save for one who posted a somewhat provocative take based on his own demographic – a very smart, engaged, well-educated younger voter who is scared and angry about the future of our country, idealistic, and concerned that he is not seeing the Democratic Party reaching out to younger voters in a way that shows they are listening to their concerns. This sparked a heated exchange between several commenters including me. The older generation was trying to explain the lessons we’ve all learned through hard-earned experience and why a protest vote in this particular election could be very dangerous. To be fair, my younger friend lives in a very blue area of a very blue state, so his vote if he chooses to use it as a protest probably won’t do much damage, but the general concept is one that got me thinking back to my young, idealistic college days and the hard lesson I learned in the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter ran for reelection against Ronald Reagan. It was clear at the outset that Reagan was trouble. He had already shown his stripes as the Governor of California years before when he made some changes that caused serious problems that the state is still struggling with today. I definitely didn’t want to see Reagan become president of the nation and impose his cruel economic policies on the country as a whole. While I thought that Carter meant well, he was struggling with bad press, and policies that faced strong opposition from the growing moderate and conservative movements. Like many other young, idealistic college students at the time, I ended up voting for John Anderson who, after having lost the GOP primary, ran in the general election as an independent. He was billed as a liberal alternative to Reagan’s hard-right policies. Anderson stood for many of the things I thought were important, though in the end while he garnered millions of votes, he didn’t win a single state, but more than that, he siphoned off most of his votes from Carter rather than Reagan.

The hard lesson learned from that election was that in our two-party system, like it or not, in presidential elections, a third party or independent candidate will pull from the major party candidate they are most like and help the other major party candidate win. Of course, in 1980, I didn’t consider my vote a protest vote. I really thought that Anderson could win at the time not yet recognizing that impossibility in our modern political climate. A third party or independent candidate might win a regional or congressional election, but they cannot win a national presidential contest.

In 1992, Ross Perot played the role of spoiler costing George H.W. Bush a second term and giving Bill Clinton a decisive victory. I personally didn’t mind this result, but it’s still instructive to the pattern.

In 2000, Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election and while the Supreme Court ultimately decided that contest, had Nader not been a candidate, it likely wouldn’t have been that close. Gore won the popular vote that year, but not the Electoral College once the Supreme Court stepped in an put their thumb on the scale.

In 2016, while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a sizable margin, third party candidates propelled by protest votes siphoned off enough of her votes to cost her the Electoral College win and gave us Donald Trump. We know what happened from there.

Now in 2024, while the presumptive major party nominees are Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden running for reelection and GOP candidate Donald Trump, this isn’t a normal presidential contest. In 2020 when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, Trump wouldn’t concede and still hasn’t publicly accepted those results. For the first time in our nation’s history, Trump refused to support the peaceful transfer of power to his successor. Trump has since been indicted in multiple jurisdictions on 88 criminal charges, and he’s also lost multiple civil cases adding up to about a half a billion in judgements against him so far. The first criminal trial is currently scheduled to begin in mid-April 2024.

While the party platforms are normally created at the conventions for the general election, and in 2020, the GOP didn’t bother with a platform, the records and policies of the two major candidates couldn’t be more different.

The Biden/Harris administration has an impressive record for their first term so far, in spite of razor thin Congressional majorities the first two years and a hostile and dysfunctional House lead by MAGA extremists since January 2023. Theirs is a multicultural administration that reflects the country as a whole.

In contrast, the GOP has their Project 2025 playbook, a step-by-step guide to creating a white nationalist, theocratic autocracy in place of U.S. democracy. It is a guide to further widening the divide between the vast majority of people, and a very small, rich, white, male elite who wants to run everything.

For political norms, if a sitting president chooses to run for reelection, that’s normally the end of the discussion for the party holding the White House. President Biden has chosen this path, and the DNC is supporting his reelection campaign, although officially he’ll be selected at the DNC’s summer convention to launch the general campaign. Biden has been an incredibly effective president despite the hostility he’s faced in our hyper-polarized country. He hasn’t accomplished everything he set out to do, but he has accomplished a great deal of it, and he does the work. He’s not flashy. He’s not begging for headlines, but through his experience and acumen he and his administration have accomplished much of their agenda through tough but fair negotiation, and he’s provided world leadership in the face serious threats to U.S. security and democracy worldwide. Few could have brought together the international coalition he and his team did to support Ukraine, a must for world stability. He’s also come a long way in repairing our nation’s international reputation after the damage done by the previous administration. Still, world leaders are very aware that could change if Trump were to regain the White House.

So what does this have to do with the contentious debate on a Facebook post? It’s a symptom of a larger problem and points to another difficult lesson. My young friend claims that the DNC’s messaging is deaf to the concerns of his cohort when younger voters and workers are the future of the country. They have economic challenges that older generations haven’t fully faced. Housing, education, healthcare, and transportation concerns all weigh heavily on younger people early in their careers. Many may never be able to work off the debts they’ve accumulated by their mid-twenties for things that most in older generations have had for a far more reasonable cost.

Climate change is only getting worse, and the brunt of the changes caused by the billions of people on the planet will be felt most heavily by the younger generations.

The Biden administration has started to repair some of the damage of the last 40+ years of GOP economic policies. They’ve also started to address some of the structural problems facing the nation through the bipartisan infrastructure law, but none of this can be cured in a single administration, particularly with a hostile Congress in the mix. The lesson here is that compromise and cooperation are key to getting anything done. We’ll never get everything we want, but in exercising our vote, we have to look at the issues with clear eyes. We have to understand not only who has a chance of winning, but who is in the best position to accomplish a more favorable overall result on the issues we care about. Between Trump and Biden, that choice for most should be self-evident.

A protest vote, while it might feel good in the moment, really isn’t a solution here. A protest vote against Biden because he hasn’t done everything somebody might want will only help Trump win. The same goes for casting a protest vote for a GOP Senatorial candidate because the Democratic candidate isn’t one’s first choice. The Congressional balance matters. If we want to make forward progress given the extremism of today’s GOP, we need Democratic majorities across the board.

If we value democracy and forward progress to help the vast majority of people, Biden and Democratic candidates for Congress are the clear choices here.

References:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/
https://www.project2025.org/playbook/
https://agoodreedreview.com/2023/08/25/wear-a-raincoat/
https://agoodreedreview.com/2024/02/13/book-a-firehose-of-falsehood-2/
https://www.history.com/news/third-party-candidates-election-influence-facts
Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American
Jay Kuo’s The Status Kuo
Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse
Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist
https://terikanefield.com/

Teri Kanefield’s blog series on disinformation:

A Good Reed Review also gratefully accepts donations via PayPal to help defray the costs of maintaining this site without creating paywalls. 
Donate with PayPal

I’m done with the rage merchants

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , , , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

2024 is shaping up to be a year to remember. Watching the chaos swirl across the country with respect to our upcoming election in combination with the extraordinary legal proceedings in play is at times maddening, and at other times hopeful. One way to stop being affected by the highs and lows is to disengage from the rage merchants. That means ignoring pretty much every news show – be it on cable, broadcast television, streaming video, or radio. In most cases, the news isn’t actually news but is instead a compendium of rage mongers trying to outdo one another to gain audience. The hosts are performing for their audiences, intentionally angering them because high emotion sells and keeps people coming back for more. Continue reading →

2024 – A Leap Year to remember

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs ,

By Ande Jacobson

29 February only occurs in years divisible by 4, and for centennial years, only those divisible by 400. This little oddity has been written about in verse in that famous poem that has become a favorite mnemonic for remembering how many days each month contains:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

Growing up, leap years were exciting in a good way. We had the Olympics, both winter and summer in leap years. Because of a decision made by the Olympic committee in 1986, starting in 1994, the summer and winter games alternated in even years. That means that now only the summer games are held in leap years. In the summer of 2024, that extravaganza will take place in Paris, France.

U.S. presidential elections are held in leap years (barring the non-leap year centennials of course). While presidential elections always have the potential to be a little dicey, until relatively recently, the differences meant some potential policy shifts, but it didn’t really seem as if democracy itself was on the line. This leap year just like the last one, democracy’s fate is as yet undetermined. Continue reading →

2024 is going to be a long year

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Here we are almost a month into a new year, and it’s been eventful so far. 2024 is a consequential presidential election year with democracy on the line, something that’s fast becoming a mainstay of our political process. It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when the two major parties may have preferred different approaches to solving the nation’s problems, but they worked together to try to make things better for everyone. FDR’s New Deal and Eisenhower’s Middle Way were two sides of the same coin from a Democratic and a Republican president respectively. Both held that the government had a role in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and aiding in making the U.S. a more fair and equal society. Continue reading →

Books matter

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

Something unexpected happened recently.

Almost a year ago, I wrote an essay about a controversial post I made on Facebook with a simple thesis. Reading and listening are not the same thing. In the course of my background reading for that piece, I dug into some of the research surrounding the differences between reading and listening as it pertained to absorbing and processing written material. One interesting note came to light during that investigation, that being that there’s also a difference in comprehension and retention based on how you read printed material. There was some study evidence that reading an e-book isn’t quite as good for comprehension as reading a physical book. Given that wasn’t the focus of my previous essay, I noted it, mentioned it in passing in the essay, and set it aside. Continue reading →

2023 is finally ending

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,

By Ande Jacobson

So many things happened in 2023 that were unforgettable, many of them things that we wish weren’t happening. By the same token, there has also been some good to come out of 2023, though sometimes it seems harder to find the good given the preponderance of bad news filling the airwaves and the internet on a daily basis.

So what good has happened? Locally, the arts have been recovering and in some respects have just about reached their pre-pandemic levels. San Jose’s Saxophone Christmas had 190 saxophone players making lovely holiday music for those willing to venture out into the uncertain world despite the risks of infection swarming around us. Theater has also returned locally with many lively productions, and music is in the air all around even beyond the return of the saxophones to San Jose. Continue reading →

The 29th Annual San Jose SaXmas recap

A Good Reed Review Commentary & Pubs , ,
Dad’s sop sax

By Ande Jacobson

On Saturday, 16 December 2023, the 29th Annual San Jose Saxophone Christmas (or SaXmas for short) happened. Sax players of all levels got together as they do each year (except in 2020 for obvious reasons) and made holiday music together on saxes of all shapes and sizes. For some players, this is the only time they bring out their saxophones, while for others, it’s one of dozens (or possibly even hundreds) of gigs they play each year.

First, the ensemble rehearsed for a couple of hours down in South San Jose playing through this year’s concert selections. Then they broke for lunch and reconvened in downtown San Jose to play their first concert at Christmas in the Park. They then moseyed over to Eastridge Shopping Mall for their final concert of the day. Continue reading →