Guru #4

 

Is Obama a Wimp?

The Guru and I were in his winery's bottling room gluing labels on his attractive, dark green 375 ml icewine bottles.

"Those damn people at the Liquor Board held up the bottling by three weeks", he complained as we readied the bottles to go under the filling spout.

He explained that the wineries can't print their labels, which have to show the alcohol content, until the Board has tested and ruled on the amount of alcohol in the wine.

"My lab equipment is as good as theirs, in fact it's probably better, and I knew it was 11.4%. But I couldn't get the labels printed until I had their results---which came in at exactly 11.4%. I can see the need for government testing to keep everyone honest, but why should it take three weeks?"

After we had finished bottling ten cases, we sat at a table in the sunny lab, overlooking his vineyard. He poured glasses of a charming Riesling wine---not icewine---from a neighbouring winery and we began to talk.

"What happened to that Op-Ed you were going to send to the New York Times on community employment programs?", he asked.

"They told me that they get dozens of Op-Eds a day and they can't print them all, etc. etc. etc. Nice letter, though."

"What did you think of Obama's Jobs Act?", he asked.

"I liked it, especially the component for summer jobs for youth. And I liked how he plans to pay for it, with revenue from the wealthiest. But he's taking a beating from both the left and the right. All those claims that he's a wimp."

"He's no wimp. It's just that people don't understand his secret strategy for re-election."

"And you do?"

"Of course." The Guru is nothing if not self-confident.

"Could you explain it to me?"

"I will but first you will have to promise not to publish it in that blog you're writing. You don't have a large readership (not like my monthly newsletter!) but I would hate to have someone leak the strategy to Obama's enemies. I want to see him re-elected, not because I like him particularly---I never got caught up in the Obama frenzy---and not because I like the Democrats, a hapless lot most of the time. But because he seems to be the only adult in Washington, and the only person who fully understands the danger of the income gap. So don't publish, OK?"

"Agreed."

I am used to being amazed at the Guru's capacity for analysis and exposition but the next 15 minutes left me in awe.

"It's a brilliant strategy, but will it work?", I asked.

"That's hard to say, it depends on the greedoholics"

(In Posting #1 in this blog, the Guru defined what he means by the word 'greedoholic': "That's what I call the billionaires and special interest groups who are so hooked on greed that they have lost all sight of what is good for the country---if they ever had it. And they have also lost sight of what is in their own self-interest as capitalists, but they are too hooked on greed to see that."

( Later, I asked him this question: "You aren't saying, of course, that all wealthy people are greedoholics?"

(And he replied: "No, certainly not. Take Warren Buffett. He has a good bit of greed about him but you wouldn't see him upgrading his yacht (if he had one) because it has just one heliport and he needs 'his and her' helicopters, like the hedge fund manager he plays golf with. I think Buffett is sincere when he complains about a tax system that means his secretary pays federal tax at a higher effective rate than he does. He's a Democrat but there are wealthy Republics who aren't greedoholics---some of them are my clients---who understand that the income gap is dangerous, but they are afraid to stand up to the greedoholics. It's sad---they know that an income gap this huge is bad for the country and bad for capitalism.")

(Although he didn't name any of the greedoholics he is worried about I think it is clear that the brothers whose family name sounds like a popular drink would be included.)

The Guru continued, "The greedoholics  have many advantages---we've talked about that before---and the economic situation inside and outside the US is so bleak that even a brilliant strategy may not be enough. But think of Eisenhower on June 5th 1944 as he pondered what would happen the next day when hundreds of thousands of troops would cross the English Channel and try to invade France. He had put together a daring and ambitious invasion plan but so much could go wrong. But it turned out well. Success has to start with a clear goal and a brilliant plan, and I think Obama and his people have both of those."

"Is there anything at all that I can tell my readers?", I asked.

"Well let's see. You could tell them to study Sun Tzu, and also read up on the Ground Sparrow".

"I'm not sure that would be very helpful to my readers, as intelligent and discerning as they are. Can you elucidate a bit, without giving away the essential features of the strategy? Perhaps by starting with Sun Tzu and his "The Art of War", which I know you keep on your bedside table."

"Well, Obama's strategy that I just outlined shows that Obama has read and absorbed "The Art of War". Let me choose one lesson that your readers might like to think about. Sun Tzu argued back in about 400 BC that a wise general will always choose the battlefield that he wants to fight on, not the one his enemies want him to fight on. Now, think about Obama and how he bypassed several possible battlefields, for example the Republican threats to close down the government in December 2010 and April this year, or the Debt Ceiling issue in August. His enemies taunted him and tried to get him to fight on those battlefields. Instead, he compromised and his enemies and even some of his allies called him weak, and a wimp."

"You talk about 'his enemies'. Who are you referring to?"

"Oh, the greedoholics, they have the money, and they pull the strings. Not the Republicans, they do what the greedoholics tell them. By the way, isn't it tragic to see some of the 'adult' Republicans being forced to grovel and recant by the greedoholics. As for the Tea Party members, they are unwitting pawns of the greedoholics."

"So, if the greedoholics are the enemy, are you saying that Obama's goal is not just to win re-election but to trounce the greedoholics?"

"That's it. The US can't begin to correct the income gap until the greedoholics are beaten, or at least have their wings clipped."

"So that brings us back to the questions of a battlefield. Are you saying that Obama has chosen a battlefield?'

"Yes, and he's fighting on it right now. The Jobs Act, the components of which the majority of Americans support, is part of it. The other part consists of the deficit and debt proposals set out in his speech in the Rose Garden on Monday this week, in which he said that he will veto any deficit/debt plan that doesn't include tax increases on the wealthy.  That's again a policy that most Americans support."

"That's not a battlefield that the greedoholics would have chosen, some pretty tough terrain for them." I added.

"Exactly, and that's why you see such weak, ineffectual attacks on Obama's proposals. 'The plan is too large' or 'It's just another stimulus program', or "It's class warfare'---the last from people who have been stealing money for years from the working and middle classes through lobbyist-inspired tax loopholes and concessions!"

"But aren't some Democratic representatives and senators opposing Obama's proposals?"

"The greedoholics are powerful, and it is understandable that some Democrats are frightened of, or beholden to them."   

"How long will the battle last, do you think?", I asked.

"That's the beauty of this as the battlefield. The greedoholics could decide in the next few months that they are being beaten and decide to retreat to fight another day. The Obama proposals could then be adopted by Congress, which would be good for the country---and by the way, give him a victory he could take into the election. It is more likely that the greedoholics will see the proposals as the thin edge of the wedge and opt to battle them right to the election in the hope that they can defeat Obama."

"And by that time", I added, "you hope that the American people will have made a choice about what kind of country they want. And the battle will have stripped away the camouflage and the subterfuges that the greedoholics have used, thus permitting the public to see how they have been manipulated by people who are only interested in lining their own pockets. "

"That has to be Obama's hope. But the greedoholics are tough, with tubs of money and many influential allies, so the battle could go either way. Closer to the election, I will be warning my readers that if Obama loses the election, the 'lame duck' period from November 6th to the inauguration of a Republican president on January 20th, 2013 is very likely to be a time of great social unrest."

"That's a sobering thought. So, getting back to what I can report in the blog, I will not discuss what you covered in our private talk but will cover the conversation we just had. OK?"

"Agreed".

"Now what's this about the Ground Sparrow?"

" When I was a kid, there was a vacant field next to our home. Sometimes when my friends and I walked through the field a little sparrow would appear and then limp ahead of us. Thinking it was injured, we at first tried to catch it to help it by fixing its wing or its leg. But it always stayed just a little ahead of us. After we had gone a hundred yards or so, it would fly away, in a perfectly healthy way. We learned that the Ground Sparrow, the Killdeer and some ducks use this ruse to lure people away from their nests and fledglings."

"So what does that have to do with Obama?"

"Think! What is Obama's most important legislative achievement, his baby, his fledgling?"

 "The health care reform."

"Exactly, and 'his baby' is getting stronger by the day, with regulations being developed, agreements with states and insurers being formed, and so on. All of this while Congress is being distracted by discussions of debt, deficit and jobs."

"So you don't think Obama is a wimp?"

"Like a fox!"

"I hope you are right, but even foxes sometimes get outwitted."

"We'll just have to see, won't we?"

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If you have any comments, please leave them below or drop me a line at johnpathunter@gmail.com. The Icewine Guru postings will appear from time to time---when I have something on my mind. The Letter from Virgil postings (http://letterfromvirgil.blogspot.com/) appear weekly, on Sunday mornings.

Guru #3

 

Covered Faces

The Guru and I and our wives had just been seated at the Grill on King, a restaurant in Niagara-on-the-Lake that the Guru had recommended.

It was our first visit and my wife and I looked around.

I said, “It has a warm ambiance and is surprisingly busy for mid-week.”

The Guru nodded, “We have been here once or twice and enjoyed it.”

When a waiter asked if we would like drinks, I looked at the Guru and asked what he was going to have.

The waiter cut in, “Mr Guru will be having a small draft Stella Artois.”

Grinning, the Guru said, “Maybe we have been here more than once or twice.”

We gave the waiter the other three drink orders.

Before I describe our meal, perhaps I should introduce our wives, the Guru’s wife, Gloria, and mine, Paula (These are not their real names---and to help keep everyone straight, I have chosen pseudonyms that have the same first letter as the husband’s. So, Gloria for Guru, and Paula for the Professor---the Professor, that's me.)

I met Paula while we were part of the Oxford University contingent at a huge ban-the-bomb protest in London in the 1960s. At one point the police charged the parade and Paula was knocked to the pavement, spraining her ankle. Her Oxford friends got carried away by the crowds and it was left to a fellow from the colonies to help the pretty damsel in distress.

I managed to get her to an A and E (Accident and Emergency) department of a nearby hospital and then to the Oxford train.  (Paula comes from a prominent London wine merchant family---Tories the lot---and she didn’t want to call them for help and have to admit she was ‘a ban-the-bomber’.) We talked all the way to Oxford, and have kept on talking ever since.

After she got her doctorate---in biology---we married and returned to Toronto where she joined the biology department at York University.

The Guru met his wife, Gloria, in the 1960s during a lecture he was giving at UCLA on the reasons behind the tumultuous happenings on the streets and campuses of the US at that time. In the question and answer session, she told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.

After the talk, she came up to carry on the argument. He invited her for a drink to discuss their differences, and they discovered they had a lot in common. The rest is history.

Gloria is a sociologist---she writes articles and lectures on her specialty, the sociology of world religions---and helps manage the Guru's consulting business.

As we finished our drinks the waiter came back for our appetizers and entrees. Gloria said that everything on the menu was good but she could recommend the lamb shanks, which were slow cooked and served with garlic mashed potatoes.

Salads and lamb shanks sounded good to all of us.

The Guru laughed and told the waiter, "We are all going to be sheep and have the lamb".

I imagine---or at least hope---that Gloria gave him a kick under the table. He tends to get carried away with his little witticisms.

I asked the Guru and Gloria about their recent trip to France---the Guru had given a lecture in Paris and then they had gone to the Bordeaux Region to sample the wines.

He said they had had a fine time, the speech had gone well and the weather had been great.

Gloria agreed but said she was upset at the tensions between the French nationals and the Muslim immigrants, which had become focused on the face coverings worn by some of the Muslim women. Right-wing political factions were using the face-covering issue to win support among French voters and it seemed to be working.

Gloria said she was deeply opposed to forcing women to cover their faces but was troubled by the government’s efforts to pass legislation banning the wearing of face coverings. She wasn’t sure that legislation was the right answer, either in France or  in Quebec, which she noted has also been flirting with the idea of banning face coverings.

The Guru said, “But the wines in Bordeaux were great and the vintners expect that this year’s crop will produce truly remarkable wines.”

“You’re trying to change the subject”, Gloria blurted, “I hate it when you do that!”

“But”, the Guru responded, “if we carry on discussing Muslim rules about women’s dress we’ll end up talking about San Francisco's attempt to stop rabbi’s snipping bits off new-born boys.”

“Look, we are talking about Muslim dress not circumcision!”

I noticed that the people at nearby tables were tuning into our conversation.

But, the Guru protested, "Muslim dress and circumcision are both based on religious tenets. They are based on faith and belief, not rational thought, and I don’t find it very useful to try to have a productive discussion of them.  If you try to argue with adherents, they will point to a book they consider sacred---the Koran, the Bible or whatever---and for them that’s it. The matter is settled. Case closed.”

“But I agree with Gloria’, Paula joined in, “that forcing women to cover their faces is awful. Why can’t we cut out talk of circumcision---the pun is intended---and focus on face coverings?”

“Thank you, Paula!”, Gloria said. “I keep thinking of that Harvard philosopher, John Rawls, and his book, “A Theory of Justice: Justice as Fairness”. You remember how he argued that when people were considering whether a law or behaviour was just and fair, they should imagine themselves behind a 'veil of ignorance'. Behind this veil, they should imagine that they were not yet born and that the details of their eventual birth were unknowable, details such as their gender, time of birth, location of birth, wealth of parents and so on. In that ‘pre-birth’ state, people should ask themselves what sort of laws and societal rules and customs they would consider just and fair”

“Your point’s  a good one”,  I said, “if we honestly played the ‘behind-the-veil-of-ignorance’ game no one at this table, and probably no one in the restaurant would want to be born into a situation in which they were  forced to wear facial covering, no one would agree that that was just and fair. But the issue we should be talking about is: what should be the role of government, if any, in trying to correct that?”

“Now, that’s something we can have a rational discussion about’, muttered the Guru who had been playing with his salad---a little peevishly, I thought. “It’s a really complex issue and to make it easier to discuss, can we agree that we are talking about women who have moved to a ‘Western’ country----Canada, the UK, France, Australia etc--- and continue to wear face coverings, and that we are not talking about women in the Saudi Arabia’s of this world. What if anything we should do about those women in their countries of birth is another matter. Can we agree on that?”

“Agreed, dear”, said Gloria, “now can we just discuss whether the wearing of face coverings in Western countries should be made illegal?”

I felt I had to join in, “I’m not sure I should be commenting on something in your sociology bailiwick, Gloria, but it seems to me from my study of the history of the integration of immigrants in Canada that there is something at work that is similar to what physicists call entropy---you know when systems break down. I call it 'social entropy'. We have taken in Doukhobors , the Amish, the Mennonites and other groups who came with highly ordered, even rigid beliefs and behaviours but gradually most have shed them. Can I give you an example of what I mean by social entropy? Recently, Paula and I were in a waiting room in the Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, a hospital with many Sikh patients---and Sikh donors!. We watched as little family clusters went by. There would be an elderly couple, who looked as they would have looked back in their native countries---men in their turbans and women in long tunics and matching trousers. Then there was the next generation, probably the original immigrants to Canada, who had sponsored their parents. Some of the men in this generation wore turbans but some didn't. In the third generation, few of the men wore turbans and their wives wore designer jeans.”

Gloria responded, “Are you saying, Professor, that we shouldn’t do anything, just let time and this social entropy do their work, and in the meantime, we let thousands of women be forced by men--- their fathers, or husbands---to swelter in the heat, and be unable to participate fully in the opportunities our society offers?”.

“No, I’m not ruling out legislation, but I am saying that governments should be careful not to hinder the working of social entropy. Legislation that looks mean-spirited and discriminatory can create resistance and martyrs, and slow down beneficial changes that are already taking place.”

The waiter took away our plates and asked about dessert. After the richness of the delicious lamb shanks we chose light desserts---two champagne sorbets, and two small caramel crème brûlées.

The Guru picked up the discussion, “When looking at legislation to change social behaviour, everyone points to Prohibition. 'Temperance' groups and some churches forced the passage of legislation that was, to use the Professor's phrase, ‘mean spirited and discriminatory’. They denounced drinkers as immoral and unchristian. In the end they got their way, booze was banned, many people got criminal records, some people died of poisoned hooch, and some bootleggers got rich enough to create wealthy and socially respectable dynasties. And then the law was repealed because the voters decided that it was causing more harm than good."

"But", Paula said, "what about smoking in public places like this---those laws have worked?"

"It's marvellous", Gloria said, "to enjoy a meal like this without smoke. Compare it with Asia, especially China, But there was a lot of softening up of society before laws were passed---public service announcements about the dangers to your health etc---and then the laws were phased in. First there were non-smoking zones and when everyone realized how ridiculous they were, full bans were imposed."

"That's true. Is there any way we could use that approach to deal with face coverings?", Paula asked.

"When we started talking about this" Gloria responded, "I said I wasn't sure whether law was the answer. I guess I'm becoming convinced that it isn't. If we ban face coverings in public, then we ban those women from an education, a career, a life outside the home. We keep them locked in a ghetto. I'm wondering if the government could encourage a change. Could it have public service messages that have the theme, 'Welcome to Canada. We want to get to know you and want you to have a full role in our society. But that can't happen when people can't see your face." And have pictures of smiling Muslim women in head scarves."

"I'm not sure about that", Paula said,  I feel so sorry for those women who are being dictated to by men. But when I think about it, I get just as angry at our media and fashion industry that are objectifying women. I honestly don't know how teenage girls can grow up with any self-esteem with all this emphasis on boobs, bums, beauty and sexiness. In a sense face coverings and western objectifying of women have the same source---the need to reinforce the male ego. And that's so wrong. But at least with western objectifying, women have a choice, if they choose to exercise it---women can decide not to play the 'T and A game'. In the case of face coverings, it is men who decide, men who have the power.  I still think there is a place for a law that bans face coverings, perhaps after some public relations campaigns---as in the case of smoking---to win public support."

The waiter took away our dessert plates

The Guru said, " I'm not sure we have settled anything, but it's been a fine discussion. In honour of that I would like to suggest we end the meal with some coffee and a glass of icewine." He whispered to the waiter.

The waiter appeared with coffees and a bottle of the Guru's latest vintage.

I had helped the Guru bottle the icewine and having, of course, sampled it as we went, I knew it was excellent, full of subtle fruit flavours---apricot, peach and apple. 

We tasted the wine and raised our glasses to the Guru, "Superb", we said.

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If you have any comments, please leave them below or drop me a line at johnpathunter@gmail.com. The next Icewine Guru posting will appear on September 25th. The next Letter from Virgil posting will appear on September 18th.