REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE

RELATIONSHIP

Like Proust, Niall Williams draws one into his story to make one think about their past as a child, young adult, and parent.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Time of the Child (A Novel)

By: Niall Williams

Narrated By: Dermot Crowley

Niall Williams (Irish Author, writer of novels, plays, and non-fiction.)

“Time of the Child” is a story of an Irish family in 1962 that lives in Faha, Ireland, a fictional town created by Niall Williams in his novel. It is a wonderfully written story about family relationship. It is written from the perspective of a parent with a marriageable age daughter. “Time of the Child” particularly resonates with those of a certain age who remember their parents, their life as a child, their adult marriage or marriages, and the child or children they have raised.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922, died at age 51, French novelist, literary critic, and essayist.)

Like Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past”, a listener/reader of Williams’ story looks back at their experience as a child, an adolescent, an adult, and for some, a parent. Williams’ focus is on a 70-year-old father, who is the only doctor in Faha. His wife has died. He has a marriageable daughter who handles household duties and assists him in his practice. The doctor is an introverted, somewhat anti-social, person who laconically addresses his patients and acquaintances with reserved attention and respect. This is a person some would interpret as standoffish but pleasant enough as an important part of their community.

After the death of his wife, the doctor goes about his work as he has in the past.

He visits many of his patients at their homes. Some are elderly and nearing the end of their lives. Their maladies range from minor injuries, to strokes, or advancing dementia. Faha has an extended care facility for the elderly that cannot be taken care of by their families anymore, but it has a reputation as a house of death. Many families refuse to use it and cope with the demise of their parents or older family members on their own. The doctor makes house calls to attend some of these families, though little can be done for those who are beyond the help of medication and treatment.

One of these families with a dying parent has a young son near the age of the doctor’s daughter.

The young man is going to America but has shown an interest in the doctor’s daughter which is noted by the doctor as reciprocated interest. The young man leaves for America without overtly addressing his interest in the doctor’s daughter. The doctor recognizes the importance of the young man’s departure to his daughter and decides to send a letter to America advising the young man he should come to see his mother before her nearing death.

Like Proust, Williams draws one into his story that makes one think about their past as a child, young adult, and parent.

One wishes they had a father like the doctor, i.e. a father who understood more than he explained and acted in ways to make other people’s and their children’s lives better. At the same time, Williams’ idyllic picture reminds one of the faults of their parents when they were children, the harshness of their own lives, and the failures they have made in raising their own children. This does not make Willaims’ story less enjoyable to reader/listeners. It makes one recognize their parents did the best they could do, and hope that mistakes they made raising their own children will be overcome.

LIFE’S STRUGGLE

Akbar is showing everyone’s life is a struggle. Self-understanding, acceptance of who you are, and not feeling sorry for yourself can make you whole. Death may set you free, but the struggles of life are a better alternative.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Martyr!

By: Kaveh Akbar

Narrated By: Arian Moayed

Kaveh Akbar (Author, Iranian American poet, novelist, and editor.)

“Martyr!” is a book that is difficult for a prudish American to read but Akbar writes a story that resonates with one who has suffered from addiction, loss of parental guidance, and the exigencies of American life. Akbar’s main character is Cyrus Shams, a poet and writer, who believes he lost his mother in a 1988 plane crash caused by the American Navy when the USS Vincennes fired two surface-to-air missiles at a passenger plane that was mistakenly identified as an F-14 fighter jet.

(The Vincennes’ mistake occurred during the Iran-Iraq War that began in 1980. The USS Vincennes was deployed to the Persian Gulf to protect oil tankers. Prior to the Vincennes commander’s decision to fire the missiles, there were several skirmishes with Iranian vessels. )

The commander’s catastrophic mistake occurs in an atmosphere of military conflict. The commander is removed from his command but remains in the military until he retires in 1991.

US-Iran conflict: US shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 | Daily Telegraph

The Vincennes incident resulted in a $61.8 million settlement to the families of the victims in 1996.

Because Akbar’s main character is the son of one of the passengers of the plane, he receives a financial settlement for the death of his mother. As he grows to become a man, he becomes addicted to drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol, has affairs with both men and women, but decides to kick his addictions. In the process of gaining sobriety, he becomes acquainted with a successful woman painter. After her death, he finds the woman was his mother. She had switched identities with the Iranian woman that was on the plane. Her reasons for abandoning her son are unclear but in a chance meeting at one of her art exhibitions, her son strikes an acquaintance with her. She knows he is her son but chooses not to disclose her story. The son is enamored by her art and seeks her out during the following years of her life. She dies and the son is told by the art exhibitor that the artist he admired was his mother.

Everyone searches for meaning in life.

All who have lived through childhood and maturity know living life is a struggle. Whether rich or poor, personal struggle either breaks you or makes you. The end result is mixed. Cyrus Shams is an addict that chooses to become sober, to become a poet and writer, to honor his mother’s life while making his way as a first generation Iranian American. Akbar is showing everyone’s life is a struggle. Self-understanding, acceptance of who you are, and not feeling sorry for yourself can make you whole. Death may set you free, but the struggles of life are a better alternative.

AGGRESSION LOSES

The war in Ukraine will be settled through negotiation. The same can be true in Gaza with the creation of a Palestinian state. It certainly will not eliminate conflict, but it offers a path for peace.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

All Quiet on the Western Front

By: Erich Maria Remarque

Narrated By: Frank Muller

Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970, Author, German born novelist and survivor of WWI.)

Revisiting Erich Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” is a reminder of today’s wars in Ukraine and Gaza. As a former soldier in the German army of WWI, Remarque explains how brutal war is for soldiers and their families. He shows there are no winners in war. The victims of war are the same whether they are aggressors or defenders. Putin’s ambition to restore the empire of Russia appears as foolish as Hamas’s determination to destroy Israel. The result is injury and death for all. Neither Germany nor defending Allied Powers escaped the loss of soldiers and civilians in the two 20th century wars against Germany.

The estimated injury of 109,000 and killing of 46,000 Palestinian citizens is not justified by the atrocity of October 7, 2023, when 1,200 people were killed and 253 were taken hostage by Hamas in Isreal.

Israeli leadership disagrees because of factions in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon that intend to eliminate Israel from the middle eastern world. Rather than killing and injuring indigenous peoples of the Gaza strip, a diplomatic solution should be pursued to establish a Palestinian State. Every nation-state in the world has militant factions within their borders. Palestine, as a nation-state, would have the responsibility for controlling their militant factions just like every nation-state in the world.

Twentieth century Isreal is formed out of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria after the 1948 Arab Israeli War.

Egypt lost the Gaza Strip, Jordan the West Bank, and Syria the Golan Heights with the formation of Israel. Palestinians, like Israelis, lived in those areas for centuries. With creation of a Palestinian State, International Law and UN Resolutions can aid and diplomatically pressure governments to address nation-state claims.

History of the 20th and now 21st century show war has defeated aggressor governments but at an unconscionable cost to humanity. War’s cost is illustrated by Remarque as injury and death of aggressors, defenders, parents, and children. No one wins and everyone loses. Neither peace nor war have ended human inhumanity. Remarque clearly illustrates the folly of war, but human nature infects peace with a war mentality and ferocity. Diplomacy and negotiation for the creation of a Palestinian state is the only pragmatic solution for peace in the Middle East.

Aggressor nations, as shown by 20th century history, are eventually defeated.

Israel’s military reaction is as dishonorable as the Hamas attack on October 7th. Both are unjustifiable. Creation of a Palestinian state offers a pragmatic solution to the control of Hamas. The need for nation-state control is equally true in Syria’s and Lebanon’s Hezbollah factions. International pressure can only be exerted with nation-state recognition. Only with the creation of ethnically viable nation-states is their hope for peace among peoples of different cultures.

MARRIAGE AND MATURITY

The encompassing meaning of Homer’s “Odyssey” is the maturing of a son and marriage commitment of a husband and wife.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Odyssey of Homer

By: The Great Courses

Lectures By: Elizabeth Vandiver

Elizabeth Vandiver (American classical scholar, Professor of Latin and Classics at Whitman College.)

Professor Vandiver offers an insightful review of Homer’s “Odyssey” in her “…Great Courses” lectures. Each chapter of the “Odyssey” reminds listeners of Homer’s literary skill and his masterful story of Ulyssess’s return to Pennelope and their son, Telemachus, after the Trojan war. Homer’s epic is divided into 24 books, each of which tell of the trials of Ulysses (aka Odysseus) when returning to his Greek Island kingdom of Ithaca after the Trojan War.

The Trojan War is believed to have taken place between the 12th and 13th centuries BCE.

It is said to have been caused by the Trojans when Paris (the son of the King and Queen of Troy) abducts and marries Helen of Troy, the wife of Menelaus (the Greek king of Sparta). When Paris is killed by Achilles, Helen is returned to Menelaus. Ulysses’ return to his Kingdom in Ithaca is the story of the “Odyssey”. The return takes ten years because of his companions eating of lotus flowers that make them forget their home and stay on an island where the flowers grow, his capture by Polyphemus (a one-eyed monster), an errant wind that blows him off course, giants who attack is fleet of ships and destroy all of them except one, a sorceress (Circe) who turns his crew into pigs, a trip to the Underworld to get guidance from Tiresias on how he may return to his kingdom, an island of Sirens who lure sailors to their death, an attack by Scylla and Charybdis (a six-headed monster), his men’s defiance of the sun god who told them not to eat his cattle, and finally, Calypso (a nymph who keeps Odysseus captive on her island for seven years of conjugal ambition).

Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson | Ulysses poem, Ulysses, Poems

Each of Ulysses’ delays are entertainments to reader/listeners of the “Odyssey”. The encompassing meaning of the story is the maturing of a son and the marriage commitment of a husband and wife. Telemachus is twenty years old but has not grown into a man who takes responsibility for his life. Penelope is a wife who has remained true to a husband who has been lost to her during the period of the Trojan war and Ulysess’s unknown fate after his success in ending the war. Because Ulysses has not returned for ten long years after the end of the war, there are 108 suitors for Penelope’s hand in marriage. The suitors are from noble families of Ithaca and surrounding islands who have taken over Odysseus’ palace, consuming its wealth and resources while courting Penelope.

As the son of a great warrior, Telemachus fails to grow into a man that would take responsibility for ejecting disrespectful suitors in his family’s palace.

As the story progresses, and Ulysses returns to Ithaca, Telemachus becomes an ally to his returning father in a plan to kill the 108 suitors. Telemachus takes responsibility for hiding the palace weapons so the suitors would only have weapons they might have brought with them. Though Telemachus fails in his effort to hide the weapons, he takes responsibility for his error in not having successfully kept them from the suitors. Homer’s message is that Telemachus has become a man by showing valor as an ally to his father and a man who takes responsibility for his decisions.

Penelope’s commitment to marriage is illustrated by her many years of waiting for a husband who may be lost. She denies all her suitors because of the possibility of her husband’s return. In a similar vein, reunion with her husband is evidence of a man who loves his wife in the face of a temptation by a beautiful and alluring nymph who offers him immortality if he would stay with her.

Ulysses shows a commitment to marriage by returning to his wife despite their many years of separation, the offer of immortality, and his defense of a marriage between a fellow Greek King (Menelaus) and his wife, Helen of Troy. The Trojan war was an attack on marriage, for which Ulysses risked his and his army’s lives.

Vandiver ends her lecture by noting the German archaeologist and businessman, Heinrich Schliemann, discovered the ancient city of Troy in Turkey.

Vandiver notes Schliemann had a controversial reputation because of his destructive method of excavation and suspicious handling of artifacts. However, Schliemann significantly contributed to the study of archaeology and the understanding of ancient civilizations.

FINANCIAL LITERACY

What Professor Fullenkamp makes clear is information is key to understanding financial markets, but human judgement is the difference between investor’ success or failure.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Financial Literacy (Finding Your Way in the Financial Markets)

By: The Great Courses

Lectures By: Professor Connel Fullenkamp

Professor Connel Fullenkamp (Lecturer at Duke University, economist and director of undergraduate studies in economics.)

“Financial Literacy” may put some listeners to sleep but there is a lot to be learned from Connel Fullenkamp’s lectures. He gives a lengthy description of financial markets extending from Stocks to Bonds, Forex, Commodity, and Derivative Markets. He offers information about how money is used and made in financial markets. Fullenkamp addresses banks, stocks, selling and buying securities, expected returns on investments, how they are priced, controlled, and how information about them is important for personal financial decisions.

It is no surprise to find that banks play a critical role in financial markets.

They provide personal banking services by accepting deposits and providing loans to individuals and businesses. They smooth the flow of money in the economy. Banks can help companies raise capital by offering advice and services for the issuance of stocks and bonds to finance businesses. They offer advisory services for mergers, acquisitions, and other financial strategies. Banks can act as market makers by buying and selling securities for their clients. They can provide asset management services, research and analysis, and ensure legal regulation and compliance with government and international laws. Banks are the backbone of financial markets when they provide efficient allocation of resources and ensure the smooth functioning of the financial system. All of this is true in concept.

However, banks, savings and loan companies, and mortgage lenders are run by human beings who are subject to all the risks of human nature that can lead to catastrophic financial collapse as it almost did in the 2007-2010 mortgage derivative crises.

To be fair to the professor’s presentation, the 2007-2010 crises is not only because of the bad mortgages generated by financial institutions like Countrywide, New Century and Ameriquest. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch investment banks are equally guilty. They packaged bad mortgages with high-risk mortgages to be sold to the public as safe collateralized securities that were far from safe and ultimately unsound. The result was a near worldwide financial collapse.

The government compounded the failure of 2007-2010 by guaranteeing poorly justified mortgages that were included in the packaged securities.

Rating agencies like Moody’s Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch ratings misled investors about the risks of the packaged mortgage securities. Government oversight organizations like the Federal Reserve and Department of the Treasury did not adequately do their job. Ironically, banks like Wells Fargo resisted the mortgage derivatives while banks like JPMorgan Chase bought and sold them but was too big to fail. Ironically, both banks became vehicles for recovery by taking over some of the lenders that had to0 many mortgage derivatives in their portfolios. (As noted in earlier book reviews, many families lost their homes because of foreclosures caused by lenders who originated the mortgages in these securities.) Fullenkamp explains financial markets are based on information. However, as noted by information computer geeks, “garbage in, garbage out” sunk lenders and victimized many investors, lenders, and homebuyers.

In explaining the stock market, Fullenkamp notes an investor becomes a partial owner of a company which gives them a stake in a company’s future profits, either from dividends or market performance.

Stocks have a dual identity. The difficulty for the investor is in understanding the information provided by the company to predict company performance and reap the benefits of stock appreciation. Fullenkamp gives some insight on assessment of that information, but most listeners seem most likely to pay less attention to professors of finance than to their own judgement.

Fullenkamp goes on to discuss Forex (Foreign Exchange). This is a global marketplace for trading national currencies.

Unlike stock and bond markets, a Forex market operates 24 hours a day because currency is an international trading market with centers in different cities like New York, Tokyo, and London. In the case of Europe and the U.S., the trade would be in Euros and US Dollars or in Japan and the U.S., the trade would be in Dollars and Yen. Exchange Rates fluctuated based on nation-state events. Strategic buying and selling based on those events can create profits and losses for exchange traders. Unlike a singular centralized stock market, Forex is decentralized and conducted electronically over the counter (OTC) by a network of banks, brokers, and dealers.

Fullenkamp also defines commodities markets. There are hard and soft commodities. Hard are like gold, oil, and other naturally produced materials. Soft are agricultural products like wheat, coffee, or cotton.

Most commonly, trading in these products is done with futures contracts. Futures are agreements to buy or sell a commodity at a predetermined price on a future date. The investor is gambling on the commodity to be either worth more or less than what the product is expected to cost at the actual time of purchase or sale. There are several exchanges around the world. The participants are speculators that either take the commodities at the agreed upon price or simply gain or lose money based on the actual price of the commodity when it is deliverable.

There is a great deal to absorb from Fullenkamp’s lectures. The last lecture is on “The Future of Finance”.

He suggests the technology of mobile phones has expanded the lending industry to individuals from institutions. It has already begun in less successful economic societies. Mobile money platforms and digital financial services are being used in Africa. Users of these platforms store, send and receive money by mobile phone owners because traditional banking services are not available. Fintech companies are formed to assess creditworthiness of individuals and small businesses. The vast amount of personal information becoming available with the internet becomes a source of customer approval or rejection of small companies and individuals seeking loans.

What Professor Fullenkamp makes clear is information is key to understanding financial markets, but human judgement is the difference between investor’ success or failure.

BELIEF

Extending Harari’s idea of biophysics research and algo-rhythmic programming suggests a potential for immense changes in society. A singularity that melds A.I. with human brain function and algo-rhythmic programming may be tomorrow’s world revolution. Of course, that capability cuts both ways, i.e., for the good and bad of society.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Homo Deus (A Brief History of Tomorrow)

By: Uval Noah Harari

Narrated By: Derek Perkins

Yuval Noah Harari (Author, Israeli medievalist, military historian, science writer.)

By any measure, Yuval Noah Harari is a well-educated and insightful person who will offend some and enlighten others with his opinion about religion, spirituality, the nature of human beings, and the future. He implies the Bible is a book of fiction that is historically proven to have been written by different authors with contradictions that only interpreters can reconcile as God’s work.

“Homo Deus” is a spiritual book suggesting humanity is on its own and has a chance to survive the future but only through the ability of human understanding and effort.

To Harari, the greatest threats to society are national leaders who believe in God, heaven and eternal life who discount human existence and use of science to improve human life on earth. The irony of Harari’s belief is that humanist leaders are the only hope for human life’ survival.

Harari argues science, free enterprise, and the growth of knowledge offer the best hope for the future of human life.

Neither capitalism nor communism are a guarantee of survival because of the increasing potential for error as human beings become more God-like. Advances in engineering, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology may replace the happenstance of human birth. The value of free enterprise is evident in the agricultural, industrial, and technological revolutions of history. However, as science improves the understanding of the mind and body of human beings, the technology of biogenetics offers hope for the future while running the risk of biological error with unforeseen consequences.

Harari’s book is the brave new world written about by Shakespeare in the 17th century and reimagined by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 dystopian novel “Brave New World”.

On the one hand, Shakespeare offers a positive spin as his character, Miranda, sees people from outside her experience and says “How beauteous mankind is! O Brave! That has such people in’t”. While Huxley notes a future society that becomes conformist and lacks individuality and human emotion. Which way society will turn is unknown.

Harari argues capitalism is the best hope for continued scientific innovation because of the incentive it creates for exploration of the unknown.

The conformist demands of collective ownership of property and means of production by communism impede creativity. Capitalism is more creative and dynamic. However, capitalist incentive raises the specter of human nature that only sees financial gain without any concern for environmental or human cost. On balance, capitalism appears more likely to accelerate technology because communism more often follows than changes scientific direction.

The growth of knowledge comes from science and exploration of the unknown, but its use can be destructive as well as constructive.

Some think A.I. will lead the world to greater knowledge and prosperity while others believe it will destroy human life. A sceptic might suggest both views are wrong because A.I. is only a tool for recalling knowledge of the past to help humans make better decisions for the future. The real risk, as it has always been, is human leadership.

Harari believes, like Nietzsche, that God is dead because belief in God is losing its power and significance in the modern world.

Though many still believe in God, it seems more people are viewing God as a myth. The Pew Research Center reports a median of 45% of people across 34 countries still believe in God. However, the variation is wide with Brazil saying 70% believe while in Japan the percentage is only 20%. Harari implies belief in God is in decline.

Harari explains biophysics illustrates that human thought is algorithmic. He argues our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors can be understood to be a result of patterns created in human brains that are pre-determined. There is no “free-will” in Harari’s opinion. This is not to suggest aberrant behavior does not exist, but that human thought and action is determined by our experientially defined brain in the same way a computer is programmed. Experience from birth to adulthood is just part of a mind’s programming.

Harari implies understanding of brain function will change the world as massively as the Agricultural, Industrial, and technological revolutions.

Harari goes on to suggest humans have never been singular beings, but a multitude of beings split into two brains that mix and match their biogenetic and biochemical programming to think and act in pre-determined ways. Experiments have shown that the way the left half of a human brain sees and compels action is different than how the right brain sees and compels action. Each half thinks and acts independently while negotiating a concerted action when both halves are functioning normally. That negotiation between the two brain halves results in an algorithm for action based on the biochemical nature of the brain. The way two halves of the brain interact multiply the person we are or will become.

Imagine the potential of a mind that can recall the history of the world with biochemical programming that has the power to create new thoughts and actions.

WORKER ABANDONMENT

Trump is unlikely to help the middleclass and poor any more than some of America’s past Presidents, but he disrupts the status quo. That is Thomas Frank’s answer to why Trump was re-elected.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Listen Liberal (Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?)

By: Thomas Frank

Narrated By: Thomas Frank

Thomas Carr Frank (Author, political analyst, historian, and journalist)

How could the American people elect a billionaire felon as President of the United States? Thomas Frank offers a compelling answer to that troubling question.

Since WWII, the American people have been misled by the words, policies, and deeds of both Democratic and Republican leaders. No post WWII leader escapes Frank’s frank explanation. Not since Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman have any Presidents effectively reduced income inequality.

Frank embarrasses American voters for complicity in reducing the size of the middle class, ignoring the poor, and making the rich richer. He explains how Presidents of the last 70 years have made the middleclass smaller and the poor poorer. Frank particularly points to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as examples of Ivy League’ wordsmiths that misled the public and instituted policies that moved America away from the working class and poor.

Clinton and Obama represented education as the primary measure of success in the 21st century. They largely ignored the working class that grew the American economy to be the most successful in the world. With that neglect the Democratic party became adjunct to the Republican party by diminishing the contribution and value of working Americans. Whichever party leads America no longer makes a difference to the middleclass’ and poor. Frank argues there is little difference between a Democratic or Republican President. The middleclass and poor realize those who are elected to lead make little difference in American worker’s lives.

Frank methodically dismantles Clinton and Obama administration’s policies to show how they diminished opportunity for the middleclass and poor. Clinton manages to balance the national governments debt on the backs of working America. Clinton’s welfare reform took many off of welfare by demanding employment as a requirement for any help by the welfare administration. That seems laudable but its impact on single parent households left children home alone and at the mercy of their neighborhoods. A child alone is left to the influence of neighborhoods festooned with gangs, drugs, guns and their societal consequences. In reducing the number of people on welfare, poverty increased.

Clinton’s programs for crime control massively increased prison building and prison populations that disproportionately affected African and Latino American communities.

Clinton repeals the Glass-Stegall Act and allows commercial banks to enter the derivative mortgage business that led to the near future financial collapse of America between 2007 and 2010.

Entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to manufacturing job losses in America.

Frank admits Obama helped the middleclass and poor with Obama Care but argues he made the same mistakes as Clinton by supporting the rich at the expense of the middleclass and poor. Obama chose to follow the lead of George Bush’s plan to get America out of the economic ditch of the century by bailing out the financial industry while allowing the working class to fend for themselves. Many lost their homes as a result of banker’s lending greed and mortgage derivatives that came from Clinton’s decision to repeal Glass-Stegall. None of the banks were punished by bankruptcy because the federal government made a deal to keep them in business or subject to acquisition by bigger banks that became even larger. Poverty remained at the same level. Surprisingly homelessness was reduced by Obama’s “Opening Doors” initiative in 2010. However, the trend of aiding the rich at the expense of the working class is re-invigorated by emphasis on higher education and creativity rather than the nuts and bolts of economic prosperity that comes from job creation and a working public.

The trend of aiding the rich at the expense of the working class is re-invigorated by emphasis on higher education and creativity rather than the nuts and bolts of economic prosperity that comes from job creation.

The glaring irony of Frank’s observation led to the election of a billionaire who lauds wealth and power and cares little about the middleclass and poor. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton distorted the truth, partly by lying to themselves but also by purposely lying to the public with political policies and actions that did not make the lives of the middleclass and poor any better.

Trump directly distorts the truth but Obama and Clinton lie to themselves about the value of education as the singular path to improvement for the middleclass and poor. People are not only educated by school.

People are also educated by work and their experiences in life. Not every person in America or the world is interested in having a college degree. Shared economic productivity is the key to reducing income disparity. The brilliant oratorical skills of Obama and Clinton were refined by their intelligence and education but not everyone is blessed with the same skill. Trump is no Obama or Clinton, but he appeals to many who feel they have been left behind or can be benefited by his transactional view of the world.

One may agree that economic productivity comes from creativity, education, and work. However, it does not come from emphasis on one thing but on equality of opportunity for all to be employed.

Franks’ cynicism is overwhelming. By the end of his book, which is published before Hilliary Clinton’s political defeat by Trump, one is depressed by the truth of what he writes. The second election of Trump is proof of the failure of the Democratic party, and the Republican party, to live up to a belief in social equality and equal opportunity.

Creativity is an innate human quality. Education comes in many forms which are both formal and informal.

Being employed is a government, private enterprise, and personal responsibility. It is the job of governance to create public policies that support equality of opportunity for people to be creative, educated, and employed. Equality of opportunity ensures national economic growth and prosperity.

Trump is unlikely to help the middleclass and poor any more than some of America’s past Presidents, but he disrupts the status quo. That is Thomas Frank’s answer to why Trump was re-elected.

CULTURE

Paulette Giles offers a story of America’s unique racial, ethnic, religious and experiential culture.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

News of the World (A Novel)

By: Paulette Jiles

Narrated By: Grover Gardner

Paulette Jiles (Author, poet, finalist for the National Book Award for “News of the World”)

“News of the World” is a story of a young German American girl abducted by Indians in the 1860s, near San Antonio, Texas. She is recovered by a 71-year-old veteran of the Civil War. The author’s contextual research is impressive. Having personally lived in Texas for several years and knowing there is a small Texas town north of San Antonio with a large German ancestral population,”News of the World” becomes immediately credible.

Jiles fictional story is about a young white girl who is 10 years old when she is recovered from an Indian tribe by a Civil War veteran.

The young girl was abducted when she was six. Her four years of captivity were in the formative years of life. She successfully adapts to her tribal environment but does not completely lose knowledge of her younger past. Jiles hero is a Texas oldster who travels the country making a living as a reader of newspapers to citizens interested in news of the world. Many American citizens did not have the money, or the education, to read news of the world. To have that news read to them became an entertainment for many willing to pay a penny, a dime, or as much as a quarter. The former veteran, as an officer in the Rebel army during the war is well educated with experience of combat during the Civil War. That combat experience becomes important in the return of the captive to her German immigrant family.

A bounty of $50 is offered for return of the abducted girl.

The veteran takes the job. Jiles writing is excellent, but the narration of Grover Gardner gives the story an extra level of interest. Experience of life is a trial by fire for most human beings. Imagine being abducted from your family at the age of six by a culture different than your own and how traumatic it would be but how life expanding it could become. This six-year-old represents the melting pot of America. Jiles creates a fictional representative of three cultures, i.e. German, Indian, and pioneer that influences the melding of American culture.

Though Giles may not have meant to illustrate the melding of cultures by her entertaining story, much of what American culture represents is an amalgam of older cultures.

America’s Civil War, the Indian wars, and living life makes American culture unique. Every nation is made up of different races, ethnicities, religions, and experiences that make them unique. Paulette Giles offers a story of America’s unique racial, ethnic, religious and experiential culture.

NO EASY SOLUTION

“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here” is an indictment of American foreign policy. There are no easy solutions for immigration, deportation, or human rights in the world.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here (The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crises)

By: Johnathan Blitzer

Narrated By: Jonathan Blitzer, Andre Santana

Johnathan Blitzer (Author, American journalist, staff writer for The New Yorker.)

“Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here” is an indictment of American foreign policy. There seems a loss of a moral center in America with its support of other governments based solely on government type, national security, or economic interest. That is not to suggest national security and economic interest are not critically important but Blitzer’s history of America’s support of Central American governments is appalling. El Salvado, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua are democracies in title but not in reality.

Blitzer tells the story of migrants from El Salvadore and Guatemala who are imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes raped or murdered by their government’s functionaries.

El Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments purport to be representative democratic republics. They are not. They have been dictatorial and punitive victimizers of their citizens. The picture drawn by Blitzer is that both are highly autocratic and riven with exploitation and arbitrary treatment of their Latino populations.

Some immigrants came to roil American communities with the only tools they were familiar with in their native countries.

Many immigrants came to America to escape arbitrary treatment by their governments. America has benefited from its immigrant labor, but some turned to street drugs and violence because of their poverty and the experience their families lived with in their native countries. Driven by self-interest, a survival instinct, and ignorance, America has deported many Latino immigrants who chose the gang life in the California suburbs. Gang life offered identity and income. Gangs like MS-13, the 18th Street Gang and other street name gangs terrorized L.A. and Southern California. The police reacted with violence by rounding up Latinos based on gathered photographs and lists of their families and friends. Some who had proven records of crime were imprisoned or deported to their families’ countries even though they may have been born in America.

America has financially and militarily supported Central America without regard to human rights.

There is a taint of McCarthyism in America’s communist categorization of Central American countries because false categorizations hides the truth. The truth is that democratic countries like El Salvadore and Guatemala have treated citizens as harshly as yesterday’s Stalin, today’s Ayatollah in Iran, and the two Assads in Syria. Reagan’s willingness to sell arms to Iran in the 1980s for money to send to Nicaragua because communism was allegedly opposed by those in power is an example of America’s political blindness. Nicaraguan, Salvadorian, and Guatemalan leadership was as corrupt as many communist countries that practiced violence, imprisonment, torture, and murder of their citizens. Whether one’s government is communist or democratic, the important issue is how its citizens are treated, not its form of government. Bad forms of government will eventually fall from the weight of their citizens’ unequal treatment, just as Syria fell in 2024. The sufferers are always the oppressed citizens and, as interestingly noted by the author, the government perpetrators who live with the guilt they feel when they retire from their military or government jobs.

What Blitzer infers in his history of Central America is that human rights of citizens should be the primary criteria for American financial and/or military support for foreign governments whether democratic, communist, socialist, or other.

National stability comes from citizens’ support of their government. Stability is compromised when human rights are denied. Blitzer implies–America should only financially or militarily support another country only if the nativist nation and culture is working toward equal human rights for its citizens. The immigrant crises in America and the world is caused by nations that do not work toward equal human rights for their citizens.

One is somewhat conflicted by Blitzers’ argument. The conflict is in an outsiders’ understanding of a foreign countries’ culture.

Human rights may be universal, but culture is made of beliefs, values, norms, customs, language, art, literature, food, fashion, social institutions, and unique symbols and artifacts of particular nation-states. This great host of characteristics is not easily quantifiable. No nation can justify rape, torture, or murder but they do exist in all cultures. Ignorance of culture is at the heart of why any country that invades, or militarily and financially supports another country, risks failure.

There are no easy solutions for immigration, deportation, or human rights in the world.

Energy

Wysession explains coal and gasoline production costs will continue to rise making them too costly for most consumers. He believes energy production of wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power will become more viable and less costly as science advances. From his lectures to our ears, listeners hope he is right.

Books of Interest
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Science of Energy (Resources and Power Explained

By: The Great Courses

Narrated By: Michael E. Wysession

Michael E. Wysession (Brown University and Northwestern University PhD graduate in 1991, chair of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Professor Wysession offers an overview of the world’s energy crises with a detailed history of “The Science of Energy”. It is a daunting series of lectures about the chemical nature and origin of energy with its evolving role in world economies. From a chemical perspective, energy is the capacity to do work or produce change. Wysession identifies the many forms of energy ranging from coal to oil to thermal to biological sources of fossil fuels. He reinforces the belief that global warming is largely the result of growth in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exacerbated by the continued use of fossil fuels.

Wysession explains energy can be stored, transferred, and transformed by chemical reactions and processes. It is the bonding and breaking of atoms in molecules that create energy. He explains there are exothermic and endothermic reactions with combustion that create energy to move machinery and photosynthesis for plant growth.

To some, it is a surprise to hear of Wysession’s optimism about the future. He argues the world’s effort to sequester carbon dioxide and reduce dependency on fossil fuels will abate global warming, maintain, and sustain human life.

His optimism is based on a clear-eyed and educated understanding of how carbon dioxide increasingly damages the environment while fossil fuel use continues to pollute the air we breathe.

Wysession explains carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

That trapped heat is melting the ice caps, raising sea levels, and causing severe weather events like hurricanes, floods, and ironically, droughts. Higher carbon dioxide levels exacerbate respiratory and cardiovascular disease because of increased particulate matter in the air that causes heart attacks and strokes. Rising carbon dioxide levels increase ocean acidification that reduce biodiversity and threaten coral reefs and shellfish. Extreme weather events destroy farm crops and affect the food and water security of millions of people. Wysession notes the world economy suffers because of damaged infrastructure, increased health care costs, and loss of productivity from fossil fuel accidents and health consequences.

Greenhouse gases released by fossil fuels trap heat that causes the earth’s temperatures to rise.

The direct impacts of fossil fuel use and extraction are well known. Fossil fuels create air and water pollution that causes habitat destruction, and ocean acidification. Wysession notes both extraction and use of fossil fuels causes environmental damage from pollution’ accidents and methods of extraction from the earth.

Wysession notes some progress by world leaders in reducing the use of fossil fuels.

Wysession notes advances in renewable energy technology with solar, wind, and battery storage. He comments on the international cooperation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and public awareness of the consequence of failure to address fossil fuel pollution. There are also economic benefits from the jobs created with solar, wind, and carbon capture manufacture. (One hopes but doubts our new President understands and acts on those job creation opportunities.)

Wysession believes it is important to keep in mind the potential of nuclear energy in the world’s future.

He revies the history of nuclear fission and fusion. As is widely known, our sun provides energy to the world with fusion that feeds photosynthesis which fuels plant growth by converting carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen, both of which are critical needs for life on earth.

Fusion is a process where two nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus which releases energy. The energy comes from the kinetic interaction of the nuclei. Though science has not successfully achieved the high temperatures of a sun-like process to make fusion a viable source of energy on earth, it has been done on a small scale. It has not achieved a sustained and economically viable form of energy but its potential as a clean energy source is limitless. In the meantime, fission has worked to destroy people and things while showing it can be harnessed to provide energy to the world. As of May 2024, there are 440 nuclear reactors in operation, with the U.S. having the most at 94.

Wysession acknowledges rising population demands more and more energy but he argues the average energy use of people in the United States has fallen to 10 KW per person and believes it will continue to drop in the future.

Wysession’s drop in energy use per person (whatever that means) may be correct, but the reality is that American population increases show energy use has risen in the 21st century to 94 quadrillion Btu. (Whatever a quadrillion Btu means.)

In the late 20th century, our consumption was 75-80 quadrillion Btus annually. American consumption has risen by 14 quadrillion Btu, i.e., a 17.5 percent increase in 23 years. Though the numbers are incomprehensible, energy consumption in America is rising, not falling.

He notes there are over 70 percent more people on earth than when he was born. The rising cost of gasoline will compel more transition to electric automobiles. He believes coal and gasoline use will continue to decrease for both environmental reasons and consumer costs. Wysession explains coal and gasoline production costs will continue to rise making them too costly for most consumers. He believes energy production of wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power will become more viable and less costly as science advances. From his lectures to our ears, listeners hope he is right.

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