Dead Reckoning

The dead are facing a new reckoning in this era of "woke."   But is it fair?  And was Columbus really only 15 when he crossed the Atlantic?

I mentioned in a previous posting that Italians are pissed-off that Columbus Day is being thrown under the bus, not so much because they love Columbus, but they are losing a holiday of ethnic identity.  I mean, suppose it was found out that St. Patrick was a real jerk?  It is not that anyone even really knows or cares who St. Patrick was, or even St. Nicholas (the real saint, not the marketing icon).  These are just props for national holidays.

But in that posting, I said in half-jest that Columbus was a racist genocidal maniac.  And there is evidence to suggest that he was a cruel and inhuman person, interested more in personal glory and riches than in "exploring" the world.  He went West to find riches, not to make friends with the natives, who he stupidly called "Indians" - creating a name issue that plagues us even today.  But he killed people - or his minions and associates did - and forced the natives to dig for gold, which he stole, or even dive for pearls, which he also took.  How many were murdered and how many died of disease is hard to say.  One thing is sure, the arrival of Columbus was nothing for the natives to celebrate.

But was he particularly evil or just typical of his day - or even today?   If Columbus hadn't crossed the Atlantic, someone else would have - as the Vikings did.   Of course, we all know that Vikings were a peace-loving people who never hurt anyone, so surely they came to North America to peacefully trade with the natives.

Speaking of America, its very name is Italian - Amerigo Vespucchi - while the Italians were one of the few countries not colonizing the "New World" but not for lack of trying.   Almost every country in the world has tried its hand at colonialism, and those who haven't, well, only didn't do so because they didn't have the means or wealth to conqueror others.

But it is interesting that Columbus Day became this Italian holiday, when the voyages Columbus made were financed by Spain, and it was Spain that became the conquering force in much of the New World, its galleons of pilfered gold travelling from Mexico to Spain during hurricane season, with predictable results.   Spain wanted to acquire wealth, and I wonder if in fact it didn't backfire.  By increasing the supply of gold in Europe, one could argue that the value of gold decreased.  It would be like chasing your tail.  The more gold you accumulate, the less it is worth.   And it seems sort of horrific that people would travel halfway across the planet, enslave people and kill them, just for a few bars of a metal that at the time had only ornamental purposes.

But should we condemn Columbus for his actions?  What about other historical figures who were notable, but less-than-perfect?  Franklin Roosevelt lead us through a depression and World War II.  He gave us the New Deal and the Atomic Bomb.  He incarcerated Japanese citizens and turned back a shipload of Jews, who were later executed in Auschwitz.   Which Roosevelt do we honor?  The man who created Social Security and helped "the little man" or the man who let the Navy remain segregated during the war?   And if it wasn't Roosevelt that was elected, would it have been another President doing about the same?  This shit gets complicated.

A reader writes:

That's a rabbit hole I don't think anyone should be going down; Columbus was a product of his times, no different than anyone else; and I doubt "racism" or "genocide" were ideas that even registered with them.

They were Catholic Christian, and anyone who wasn't was either objects for conversion (for the sake of their souls, and they believed that without irony) or their enemies, servants of Satan who needed to be destroyed. The zeal with which they pursued either course of action was not enhanced by "racist" notions; they would just as willingly turn fire, blood, torture and mass executions on fellow Europeans who they considered to be heretics as they would on people of other races - see the Albigensian Crusades, in southern France and Northern Spain, as examples.. 

Columbus, in fact, probably had more of a conscience than the Hidalgos who accompanied him on his later voyages; he at least wanted to preserve and convert the Indians (err..."indigenous peoples") and considered them innocent, children of nature; the Hidalgos, in contrast, were by and large hard bitten, experienced veterans of the reconquista, many of them "second sons" coming to the new world to make their fortunes, not by "work" but by the exploitation of the indigenous peoples. Many of them had no interest in conversion or "race"; they were motivated by greed - and, they would have been just as brutal if turned loose on the populations of Europe, as the depredations of mercenary armies in the Italian civil wars of that period prove - and which escalated exponentially during the wars of religion - see the effect of the 30 years war on the population of what would eventually become Germany..

And, those attitudes were hardly unique, or confined, to Europeans; the depredations of the Ottoman "Akinji" (unpaid, irregular skirmishers and foragers raised for campaigns, whose only reward came from what they could loot) were infamous; the Ottoman practice of forcing a "tax on christian children", selecting sons to be taken from their Christian families and  raised as the Sultan's slaves; the practice of Moorish corsairs to swoop in on Christian villages, loot everything and take entire populations into slavery on a huge scale are no less brutal than what is blamed on the conquistadors; and neither of them can match the unparalleled psycopathic brutality of someone like Timurlane, who slaughtered and killed an uncountable number of people, regardless of race or religion, if they opposed him.

And, let's not forget that, by and large, the "indigenous peoples" of the Americas were no innocent children of nature themselves; contemporaneous with the arrival of Columbus, the Aztecs were atop a civilization in the valley of Mexico that was slaughtering (err, "sacrificing to their Gods") uncounted thousands of people each year in the name of "religion"; that the descendants of the Maya had nearly reduced themselves to extinction through brutal internecine warfare. Or that the slavery imposed on black Africans was ony possible by the eager participation of other black Africans themselves, who delivered huge numbers of captives to the European slavers in exchange for trinkets. 

Bottom line, brutal and cruel and greedy as the Conquistadors were, they seem to have been pretty typical of the state of mankind across the globe at the time. They didn't, by and large, intentionally slaughter the "indigenous peoples", as someone like Timurlane might have; they actually needed and wanted the natives to live, as they depended on their labor to make their system work; what devastated the native populations was the introduction of European diseases, but that was hardly intentional.

So, I don't know; is Columbus deserving of a Holiday? He was brave, resourceful, and determined; and he was first among his contemporaries to discover the existence of the Americas; so for that, I think he does. Was he a saint? No. Was he any worse than anyone else would have been? No, I don't believe so. We should celebrate his achievement; it did "Change the World"; he doesn't have to a "perfect person" to do that.

Those are all good points and my reader certainly knows his history.  Native Americans, or the people-who-were-here-before-Columbus (Pre-Columbian Americans?) were by and large a violent lot.   In school we learned that the various tribes in New York State came together to form the Iroquois Confederacy - which ended years of bloody wars between the various tribes, which lead to retributions and so forth.  Once united under one banner, well, they could go after those no-good Algonquins!

In the Southwest, you can see the ruins of the Anasazi people - the "cliff dwellers" who built inaccessible homes under cliffs for no apparent reason.  Oh, right, they did this to fend off invaders.  Years later, the Navajo people came to the area, and when asked what happened to the cliff dwellers, demurred, "Dunno, they were gone when we got here!"   Or maybe something else happened.

The same is true in Latin and South America - wars among various nations, human sacrifice, and so on.  The Aztecs, I believe, were the ones who would play soccer with your head, if you were captured in war.   Nice folks, you surrendered and you were just executed en masse.   There are no innocents when it comes to tribes of human beings.

Of course, some want to sell another narrative - that Pre-Columbian America was a place of peace and harmony, where the Indians lived in rhythm with nature.  They used every part of the Buffalo, never taking more from the land that it could give.   Except - well, not.  In the West there are many places named "Buffalo Jump" which are cliffs the Indians would stampede the Buffalo off to kill en masse.  To do this, they would start huge prairie fires - talk about carbon footprint.  The only reason they didn't kill more Buffalo was that they didn't have repeating rifles and railroads to transport the carcasses to cities.

In other words, our reader is right to a certain extent.  Nations, races, peoples, who do not commit atrocities are not "innocents" necessarily, they are just people who didn't have the opportunity.   The blacks sold into slavery in Africa were not "caught" by white slavers, but by other tribes of Africans, who then enslaved them and sold them for hard currency to Americans, Spanish, and yes, British.

This does not excuse the actions of whites in the slave trade - far from it.  But then again, it doesn't mean there is a collective "white guilt" that people should feel because someone in their genetic background once did something naughty.  Germans born after 1940 have no reason to feel guilty about World War II - they were either children back then, or weren't even born yet.  Yet some feel that the sins of the fathers should be paid by the children.   We see the same thing here in America with talk of "slave reparations" and other forms of "restorative justice" where injustices of centuries past should be addressed.

Talk about a rabbit-hole.  How far back do we go and how significant are the injustices to be addressed?  And who gets retribution?  The Romans crucified Jesus, but since he didn't have any kids, and thus no descendants, does that mean no reparations?   Does an immigrant (or their descendants) who came to this country in 1908 have to pay slave reparations, even though they never enslaved anyone, and arguably were exploited themselves?

BUT... on the other hand, is this argument just a way of saying, "Hey, everyone was bad back then, we shouldn't judge using today's standards!"   And if you accept that argument, then you can't really say much about any historical figure, ever.

The image above is from a children's story book about Columbus.  It pretty much reflects my education about Columbus in the third grade in 1968.  "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue!" we sang, and "History" was all about remembering that date - 1492, as well as 1776 and 1865.  The Speedwell leaked.  That is what history is all about, right?  Rote memorization of names and dates.

And back then, without exception, all the historical figures were heroes, with the exception of a few villains, who were purely evil.  There were no gray areas in our education.  Any day now, we'd win the Vietnam war, and send those Commies packing - if only LBJ would let us use nukes!

And as for Indians, well, there were two kinds, the "friendly Indians" (like Uncus, who was probably gay) who gave you corn and whatnot (they called it "Maize") and then the other kind, which needed killing.   We lived in a black-and-white world, in more ways than one.

So, is it a bad thing that we re-examine these "truths" and find out that things weren't as we thought they were?   I mean, until a few years back, my understanding of Columbus was that he came to "America" and made friends with the "friendly Indians" and then said "I'll be right back!" with no mention of plundering of riches.   I mean, I think we read he died poor and went to prison, but that was sort of not important.

Understanding history, I think, means understanding all of it.  This means we need to examine the reality of our past, and not some sanitized version of it, where people worship the false Gods of the "founding fathers" who knew what was best for use 200+ years ago.  And by the way, they would be horrified to find out that today they are worshiped in some parts as infallible oracles of Democracy.

But given all that, do we "cancel" Columbus Day or tear down his statue or re-name "Columbus Circle"?    That is a more interesting question.  Some argue that restorative justice requires this, others claim it is "cancel culture."  Frankly, I don't have an answer.

I don't think that Italians celebrate "Columbus Day" for the genocidal aspect.  Rather, as I noted before, it became an "Italian Day" in many cities with large Italian populations, which again, is ironic, as Columbus was leading what was, a Spanish expedition (and no one expects the Spanish Expedition!).

Confederate statues and celebration of confederate holidays and the confederate flag are a different issue.  The folks who put up these statues, often did so during reconstruction or during the Civil Rights era, and they knew what they were doing was wrong as evidenced by the fact that they passed laws at the time preventing the removal or relocation of these monuments because they knew, down the road, someone would want to.   We had one in Alexandria, Virginia, and by law, the City could not remove it, without permission of the State legislature.  They knew what they were doing when they put that statue up - it was a message sent and received.

And many of these Confederate "heroes" were little more than terrorists - raiding small towns in West Virginia and killing women and children.  It must have worked as the State of West Virginia - formed because they wanted no part of the war or slavery - is home to more racists than ever.

Would anyone today defend a statue of Hitler?  Of course not - but some still celebrate his birthday, in Germany, pining for the "good old days" and papering over the bad ones.

I am not sure it is right to "cancel" Columbus on the one hand.  But on the other, I am not certain it is right to excuse his actions on the grounds that "if not him, someone else woulda done it!"

Like anything else, it isn't a simple issue, one that can be broken down into right and wrong to fit the confines of a children's history book.

Monkey See, Monkey Do.

It is funny how we all copy each others' behavior.

We are in one of these resort trailer parks, where most of the people here are permanently settled in Park Models, and the next largest group is "seasonals" who come here for months at a time to get away from Northern winters.   A few of us are "transients" and are largely ignored.

What is always interesting to me about these trailer parks - all of them - is how people exhibit conformist behavior.  In this park there are a lot of rabbits, so someone figured out that if you buy a collapsible laundry bin from the dollar store and put your tomato plant in the collapsible fabric bin, it will keep the rabbits away.   Well, once someone figured that out, they all jumped in, and each campsite, or at least every other campsite, features one or more of these white collapsible laundry bins with a plant inside.  They even make pop-up "insect screens" (as shown above) for the same purpose, although I suspect they cost a lot more than the hampers sold at the dollar store.

It got me thinking, though - always a dangerous pastime.  These trends wash through the trailer parks on a regular basis.  Someone hangs a lamp from their awning made of an old milk jug and some Christmas lights, and before you know it, everyone in the park has one.   A while back, it was these "fascinators" which rotated slowly in the wind to reveal different patterns (one looking like the star of David).  These trends swell and ebb with time, and the "must have" trailer accessory one day becomes so much dumpster fodder the next.

And we all do this, too.  Whenever we are in a situation where we are not sure what proper behavior is, we look around to see what others are doing - the "normative cues" in our lives - and then follow that behavior.  Following the herd has a number of positive effects.  First, you blend in and are not noticed, which in a group situation can be helpful.  Groups turn on the outliers, regularly, so you don't want to be the nail that stick up (as they say in Japan) or you will be hammered down.

But also, even though the grass at the center of the herd is pooped-upon and trampled down, it is safer there, at least initially.  So if you go with group behavior, when in an unfamiliar situation, it may be a good move for you personally - at least for the time being.   Staying with the herd, however, rarely is profitable.

Herds can be stampeded off a cliff or wander off into the desert.   You "follow the herd" during an evacuation of a burning building, you may find yourself as one of the corpses piled up behind the locked fire door.   It pays to think for yourself, most of the time, even if the herd instinct is strong in all of us - and is there for a reason.

In the RV world, conformity is the norm.  Most RVs are built the same and look the same, and whenever a new design comes out, people view it with mistrust or think whoever buys it is a nutjob.  A few years back, the "A-Liner" trailer came out, which was like a pop-up but had hard sides that folded up to make an A-frame-like trailer.   At first you didn't see many, and the few you saw were owned by people who were.... different.   You know, hippies and those spry elderly people who go on hikes instead of watching one of the five televisions in their 40-foot 5th wheel, all tuned to Fox News.

But over time, they became more of a common sight, and eventually the Patent must have expired as other manufacturers started making them.   So they are no longer looked upon as "weird" or their owners viewed as possible Hillary supporters (yes, RV'ers can tend to be conservative, sometimes blindingly stupidly so).

Our current camper - and our last one - suffered from being "different" as they were made of fiberglass like a boat hull, and not of sticks and staples with a thin fiberglass or aluminum veneer on the outside.  The Casita was also viewed as "odd" because it was so small, and indeed, it does tend to attract odd people.  We've met folks who live full-time in a Casita, which if they were prisoners of war, would be deemed a violation of the Geneva conventions.   Tiger cages in Vietnam had more room in them.  But over time, the Casita people have made more and more of them, to the point where they are a somewhat common sight on the road these days, and viewed more like the A-liners, a small camper but not necessarily "weird".

But getting back to Monkey-See, Monkey-Do, we all fall victim to this effect over time, whether it is fashions, or music, or food, or television shows, or other fads or trends.  Some are good things to let into your life, others are merely value-neutral.  Still others are a waste of time and money, and yet others harmful to your very health and welfare.  Doing drugs, for example, is something that can start as a Monkey-See, Monkey-Do kind of thing.   I noted before, if you hang out with drug friends, you'll end up doing drugs.  And while pot might not kill you, when my friends started smoking crack and snorting coke, well, I had to walk away from that.   I wasn't going to "Monkey-Do" my life away.

Of course, we live on a retirement island and there is a lot of M-S, M-D going on.   For example, everyone has a golf cart, which you can drive on the road.  But many of our friends went out and bought golf carts and then promptly parked them in the garage, never to be driven.   They are so used to driving in the car, that using the golf cart seems, to them, to be odd.   Plus some have range anxiety, even though a golf cart with the weakest batteries can generally circumnavigate our island on one charge (and we have recharging stations all over the island).

We jumped on that bandwagon, but I was hesitant to spend $5,000 to $10,000 on some fancy cart from the Kart King or wherever.  We bought a well-used cart for $300 and fixed it up (total cost, about $2300 so far) and use it a lot.   We use our clapped-out golf cart more than many friends who have far newer and more expensive "buggies".   Why bother buying a golf cart just to clutter your garage?   Oh, right.  The herd.

I guess it is part and parcel of human nature.  Not something bad or good, just is.   In one of the neighborhoods on our island, everyone has an American flag flying in front of their house, by the road.  On trash day, it is funny to look right down the street and see the rows of American flags and recycling bins next to them, all standing at attention as if to salute, all perfectly aligned.  We make fun, but do you want to be "the guy" without the American flag or with his garbage "wheelie bin" at a cocked angle?  Of course not, which is why we are glad we don't live on that street.

Manicured lawns are also a normative cue and again, in some neighborhoods, it becomes a competition to see who has the best lawn.  Our street faces the marsh, so we don't look out at other people's houses or lawns.  Funny thing, not many people on our street have elaborate lawns, plantings, and whatnot.  But on the streets where houses face each other, it seems the lawn competition heats up.  I guess if you look straight at your neighbor's manicured garden, your sandy lot of weeds looks pretty shabby in comparison.   It is funny how we are motivated by these things.

Well, another "house moving day" is in order.   Time to hitch up the trailer and move on to a new place.  It will be interesting to see what all the folks there are doing in unison!   I am sure we will fit right in.

St. Patrick's Day is Racist?

My peeps are being dissed, once again!

I have mentioned that there is a dichotomy in our family as to whether we are Irish or Scotch-Irish or Scottish (the real Irish would view the latter two as the same thing).  At one time in this country, there was no advantage of being Irish - or Catholic for that matter - and many folks, including my own Father, passed as "Protestant Scots" in order to get ahead in the world.

But that has changed dramatically over time. There is less prejudice against Irish-Americans these days, although anti-Papism is still virulent among the KKK and the like. We've only had two Catholic Presidents in the history of our country, and one of those was shot.

But today is St. Paddy's Day, a holiday celebrating all things Hibernian. It is akin to what used to be Columbus Day, which became an Italian holiday celebrating all things Neapolitan. Now that Columbus has been discredited, perhaps they need to institute a new holiday for Italian-Americans.  The Italians objected to the censuring of Columbus, not because he wasn't a racist genocidal maniac (he was) but because they lost their signature holiday.

Italians, by the way, faced a lot of the same prejudices as the Irish.  And the stereotypes of Italians, even today, are not flattering.  The whole idea that anyone Italian is somehow connected to organized crime, for example, is insulting.  And of course there are a litany of slurs and slang words used against Italians.

With the Irish, the stereotypes are many - as are the slurs.  But for some reason, on St. Patrick's Day - the day we celebrate Irishness - most Americans wallow in the indulgence of Irish stereotypes.  We are all drunkards, of course, and willing to fight at the drop of a hat ("Getting his Irish up!" they say) unless of course, we become maudlin and start reciting poetry.   They even have a team named "The Fighting Irish!" but no one is talking about changing that team name, are they?  We are great musicians, of course, but only in fiddle-based country jigs.   And the Irish are great dancers - they just aren't allowed to move their arms, of course.  Oh, and like with Italians, we're part of the mob (or a mob). And we have 20 children.  And Leprechauns.

All are stereotypes and all are wrong and harmful. Yet to some extent, it is the Irish themselves, or at least Irish-Americans (which given our genetic diversity, almost anyone can lay claim to being these days) who perpetuate these stereotypes.   Tempest in a teapot?  Perhaps.

But consider this:  Imagine a holiday for African-Americans which uses similar tropes about them.  Stereotypes about music, dancing, dress, appearance, alcohol and drug habits. Instead of Guinness, the bars are serving Malt Liquor.  People dressing up as black and pretending to be black, while using it as an excuse to get blind drunk.  Instead of mascots like "Paddy O'Hara" we have Stepin-Fetchit, smiling at you from a plush doll for sale on the souvenir stand.

Or instead of a lucky Leprechaun selling cereal, we have a Mammy-figure selling pancakes.  Oh, wait, we already went down that road, didn't we?  That sort of illustrates two things, I think.  First, maybe getting all worked up over Aunt Jemima is kind of silly - particularly as her image as used on the packaging, has been updated over the years.  On the other hand, no one ever enslaved Leprechauns, although the Irish were exploited in other ways.  But the second thing is, I guess, that stereotypes are never helpful.

Of course, as I noted before about my Scottish Peeps being dissed, it helps when you are part of the dominate culture and own everything.   While the Irish faced discrimination in the early days, today, they are part and parcel of mainstream society. We can afford the stereotypes used against us.  Few kids will grow up today thinking, "I'm Irish, I should be a drunken lout - or a Leprechaun!"

O'Kelly's take - from The Onion.

The Dark Side of Mr. Rogers

Did Fred Rogers, the most beloved children's entertainer of all time (and Marine sharpshooter!) have a dark side?  Sort of.

In my posting about the stupidity of the Dr. Seuss brew-ha, which to recap, is the GOP taking a "study" done by two obscure academics, and claiming it is "cancelling" the beloved children's author, I said, sarcastically "there's coming for you next, Mr. Rogers, you white supremacist bastard!"

Well, there is no evidence that Mr. Rogers was a white supremacist, and no, he wasn't a Marine sharpshooter who killed 20 North Korean soldiers on Porkchop Hill in Korea, either.  But like anyone else, his life had its ups and downs, and like any other parent, he had the usual problems in raising kids, which was made worse, no doubt, by his fame.

In the movies A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Won't You Be My Neighbor? as well as his Wikipedia page, it is alluded that he had some trouble with his two sons, who today, choose to retain their privacy and haven't commented on the matter.  But as teens, apparently there was some sort of rebellion, although they seemed to reconcile with their Father before his untimely death. Pretty standard stuff, really, in families.

But no doubt it was made harder by the fame of their Father.  You can imagine what it must have been like to be Fred Rogers' kid.  At school, the other kids would mock you, talking in an imitation of their Father's voice, and no doubt implying the kids were sissies or gay.  The accusation that Fred Rogers was some sort of pedophile, has been made, at least in jest, by some.  And that sort of "humor" apparently really hurt his feelings, as opposed to say, Eddie Murphy's ghetto rendition, which he apparently enjoyed.  Others have tried to make Fred Rogers a bisexual hero.  We can't leave the dead in peace, it seems.  Poor Lincoln - first gay, then Asperger's.

Being the child of a famous children's entertainer is hard, and to some extent, I experienced this on a minor note.  You may recall that the guy who wrote the comic "Dennis the Menace" (which later became a television show) had a son named.... Dennis.   And he had to endure a lot of name-calling and teasing as a child and was estranged from his Father for much of his life.  He just wanted anonymity and to "do his own thing" and not be known as "Dennis the Menace" - some kid with an anger-control problem.

The son of A.A. Milne was named..... Christopher Robin, and he endured a lot of taunting in their "Public School" which of course was private.  You know, it seems the Brits have everything wrong - public schools are private, they drive on the wrong side of the road, the monarchy, Brexit - the works.  They once ruled the world, and now they rule a collection of council flats and people on welfare.   So a mighty empire falls - food for thought for Americans who think Socialism is keen.  But I digress.

My own brush with fame occurred in Chicago in 1966.  Back then, the FCC mandated "local content" on each station, and most stations produced afternoon kiddie shows, dragooning members of the news team to dress up as clowns.   In Chicago, I guess it was WGN or something, they put on a local version of the licensed "Bozo the Clown!" show, which we kids watched, if only for the cartoons.  At the end of one episode, one of the kids actually read the closing credits and noticed that the guy who played Bozo in Chicago was named "Bob Bell!"

Well, my life ended at that point.  From then on, all the kids called me "Bozo!" and not as a compliment.  It  upset me so much that my parents actually got tickets to the Bozo Show and we sat in the audience for one episode.  My Brother was chosen to play in one of the contests they had, and I think he won a board game or something.  After the show, I was invited up to see Mr. Bell in his dressing room, but my Mother declined, saying we would meet Mr. Bell in the studio.  It was a shock to see him without his makeup, just an ordinary guy.   He introduced himself to me and said he understood we had the same name.  "Yea, and all the kids called me Bozo!" I said.  He thought this would be a compliment, but I tried to explain to him it was not.  I probably hurt his feelings.  While we all loved the Bozo show, no one wanted to be called Bozo.  Fortunately, it all ended a year later when we moved back to New York, and no one there knew about my Bozo connection.  Now you know.

That is as close as I can get to understanding what it would be like to have Fred Rogers as a Dad - or Hank Ketcham, or A.A. Milne, or some other famous children's star.   Fortunately for kids today, most of the stars on kids shows are people in elaborate fur suits, so there is little chance of being "outed" as the Son of Barney or something like that (which would be the good name for a serial killer, come to think of it).  No word on the children of The Wiggles.

Compounding the problem is having a famous or famously successful parent, as I have noted before.  When you are a kid, you can act goofy and stupid and not take life too seriously - something you won't be able to do for another 50-60 years when you retire.   But as an adolescent, you have to navigate the rough waters of the transition from childhood to adulthood.   College and other schools were once the way to accomplish this, but as of late seem to instill perpetual childhood into most students.  As a result, many are learning harsh lessons in their late 20's when the bills from their extended childhood come due.

But if your Mom or Dad are famous or very successful, it is even harder to navigate these waters.   If Dad is a neurosurgeon making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, how are you, as a snot-nosed teenager ever going to even approach that kind of success?   And often the parents, seeing their kids as half-formed failures, instill this message even harder.   Look at me, I am successful.  You will never achieve as much as I have.

Even worse, if Mom and Dad have even a modicum of money, the temptation - the decision matrix - favors inaction.   Why risk an inheritance trying to do your own thing or invest for the future, when you can just wait around for Mom and Dad to die, and then inherit?   The sad thing about this tactic is that Mom and Dad might not have as much money as you think, they may disinherit you, they may live a long time, or Dad may re-marry a stripper and leave all his dough to her - the latter I have seen.

So having famous parents or wealthy parents isn't always the advantage it may seem.  Some posit that if your parents are wealthy, the odds of you being wealthy are far greater.  But I think this can backfire, to some extent, if your parents are too wealthy or too famous.   If you come from a middle-class or upper-middle-class home where values such as hard work and education are encouraged, you are far more likely to become successful.  On the other hand, the children of the idle rich can, at best, hope to inherit a fraction of their parents' wealth.  A few choose otherwise, though.

In the case of famous parents like Fred Rogers, you can understand why the kids wanted to get away from all of that and start their own lives and not be known as "Mr. Rogers' kid" for the rest of their lives.  Some do become part of the family business (like the children of Jim Henson or the son of Bob Ross).  You either have to go all-in or get out.

It illustrates that family estrangement isn't all that strange.   Yet some folks - who often mean well, but are being particularly evil - act as though not being "one big happy family" is a sin.  They pontificate about this, but don't understand how difficult it is for some people in families where physical, financial, emotional, or sexual abuse occur.  You should forgive and reconcile with your abuser!  Well, maybe Fred Rogers can forgive like that, the rest of us find it a lot harder to do.  And even if your family isn't abusive, if you don't want to be a part of what they are all about, you have to leave, at least for a bit.

Much is being made today about the "Royals" and Prince whathisname and his American wife and how they are "estranged" from one of the strangest families on the planet.  As a reality television show, it keeps getting renewed, season after season, even though it is stultifyingly boring.  One can understand, however, why someone who has no real interest in being a "royal" (other than the money part) might want to walk away from all that and lead a simple life of their own - a life of their own choosing.  But to hear some tell it, this is an awful thing - that one's obligation to "Family" trumps all, and your desires in life mean nothing.   Maybe if enough people walked away, that would put an end to the monarchy.  They could do something different, say, for example, elect a new King or Queen every four years.  It's been known to work, but not without a hiccup here and there.  But I digress again.

Or did I?  The trials and tribulations of Megan Markle and her husband are case in point.  Having a celebrity family is fine, if, like the Kardashians, you want to milk that for all its worth and don't mind hanging out with your family members.  But if you don't, and just want to live your own life, well, people will come after you.   And to some extent, it isn't easy to break free.  After all, how can a Prince and Princess (or Duke and Duchess or WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT TITLES ANYWAY?) make a living on their own, particularly when they've been raised to do little more than cut the ribbon at the opening of a new Tesco.

You can see where the pressure of having Fred Rogers as a Dad comes in.  People expect you to be like him - even-tempered and nice.  Or they expect you to have aspirations for acting or television - you know, the way people see a baby touch a few keys on a piano and then declare them to be the next Chopin.   It's a lot easier to be left alone.

That is one area that Mark and I have in common.  As last born (last born rocks!) you are pretty much left alone.  Parents realize that their half-assed parenting skills didn't help much with the previous kids, and that maybe just letting the last ones free-range might work out just as well, if not better.  So my parents, absorbed in their own lives, pretty much left me alone as a teenager, only worrying that I eventually leave home - for good - at age 18, and the feeling was mutual.

Mark's Dad, after Mark's Mother died, gave him the checkbook and the keys to the Jeep and told him to watch the house for a few months, while he went to Florida.  Mark was 14 at the time.   Miraculously, he managed to stay out of trouble (but put on awesome dinner parties) and he learned a lot of "adulting" in a short period of time.   That is the nature of being a teen - you want to live life like an adult, but of course, don't necessarily have all the skills, and usually not the money.  In fact, until you are 18, you basically are still property of your parents.  Sadly, it seems some want to extend this to age 21 - and beyond.

But getting back to Fred Rogers.  Did he have a dark side?  Well, we all do.  Like myself, he was bullied as a kid and made fun of, and this hurt him a lot, but probably created the persona he had.   Our life experiences, even the negative ones, make us who we are.   And his kids, even if they struggled with being "Fred Rogers' kid" and struggled for their own independence, were also shaped by those experiences, whether they were positive or negative.

My own brush with fame being called "Bozo" taught me a few things.  Being teased or name-called only works when the person being teased reacts to the teasing.  The kids kept chanting "Bozo! Bozo!" the more I told them to stop - and the more I cried about it.  It was only when I ignored it, or actually embraced it that they gave up.   It is akin to the teenage girls these days, going on Facebook religiously, to see the latest horrible thing the "popular girls" said about them today, and then caring about what other people say about them or think about them.   Funny thing, once you stop caring, they stop caring, too.

I was at a potluck supper in a campground the other day (Mark hates potlucks - he calls them Salmonella buffets) and a neighbor in another camper we befriended saw us.  He said he didn't know anyone else at the party and felt nervous - as if everyone was looking at him and wondering who he was.  I explained that no one probably even noticed him, so just get some free food and free booze and be happy.  It is funny, human nature - we think we are at the center of things, when we aren't even on the radar.

It is only when you draw attention to yourself (such as the Sussexes are doing) the you invite ridicule and abuse.  If you react to negative things, chances are, more negative things will happen.

But that is a hard lesson to learn - and one we all continually re-learn in life.

PayPal and Bitcoin - Really?

You wonder who is bidding up the price of Bitcoin, and then you realize it isn't the "whale" buying $5M of coin, but lots of little people paying $10 for a "taste" of the action.

In the mail this morning (and yesterday morning and the day before) was this missive from your pals at PayPal:

Robert Bell - Discover crypto at your own pace. View Online

Crypto for the people is here Get a $10 reward when you buy $10 or more ‌in crypto with PayPal Save Offer Open to first 80,000 participants who click and save offer by 3/27/2021 and redeem by 4/30/2021. PayPal Cash or Cash Plus account required. Terms apply.

Buying and selling cryptocurrency is subject to a number of risks and may result in significant losses. PayPal does not make any recommendations regarding buying or selling cryptocurrency. Consider seeking advice from your financial and tax adviser.

How to get your $10

Step 1 Save offer to your account by 3/27/21 Step 2 Buy $10 or more of crypto with PayPal by 3/30/21 Step 3 Use your $10 reward by 4/30/21

You see the pitch here - you can get in on this crypto gig for only ten bucks!  Even the most serious slacker in our society can scrounge up that much - or put it on a credit card!  And with one click, you can be buying and selling Bitcoin.  OK, just buying, right?

PayPal is clearly struggling here.   While it was a quick and easy way to pay online in the early days, today it is just as easy to use your credit card information, which Amazon helpfully stores for you (just as PayPal does).  So no doubt, PayPal is struggling with decreased revenues, and hence the constant haranguing to open a checking account, credit card account, or crypto trading account with them - they have to expand beyond being an add-on to eBay.

I had written before about PayPal's struggles over the years - and their lack of moral compass.  A lot of people made a lot of money from PayPal - you are not one of them.  The people who started it and ran it and sold it all cashed out.  The rest of us paid user fees and got a service in return, most of the time.   But today - selling crypto to the plebes?   Doesn't the SEC regulate this sort of thing?

Well, apparently not, so you are on your own in this Wild-West of 21st Century investing.  People are pushing all sorts of sketchy things as mainstream investments - things that even hard-core experienced investors shied away from in earlier years.  Commodities, such as gold, were viewed as risky - now they are sold on cheerful YouTube videos.  Options?  Derivatives?  Stuff that only serious Wall-Street traders were involved in, and even then, with trepidation.  Today, we are encouraged to sell a stock short or go long, and put it all on a credit card.  What could possibly go wrong?  Is $200 a share too pricey for your pocketbook?  No worries, someone will sell you a fractional share - allowing the grocery clerks of America to "play the market" and drive prices to insane levels.

And now crypto - the "investment" which is based on an artificial perception of scarcity, not of anything at all, but scarcity itself.  In a way it is genius, cutting to the chase with the laws of supply and demand - supply of nothing, demand of nothing,

But now maybe you see why Bitcoin is skyrocketing in price.   When the guy working at Burger King can be an "investor" for $10, then all bets are off (quite literally).   Again, stock prices, gold prices, Bitcoin prices, don't represent necessarily the value of a stock or whatever, but what the last sucker who bought in paid.   Particularly when bubbles are involved, this is true.  Much hay is made in the financial press of "Market Cap" as if multiplying the number of shares outstanding in a company by the latest stock price represents its actual value (without even subtracting debt obligations!).

The point is, what drives share prices isn't the underlying value of a company or a commodity, but what people are willing to pay, which is often based on emotional factors and skewed perceptions.  And in today's markets, where "influencers" hype stocks and other investments, it isn't hard to skew perceptions.  After all, we plebes can be readily manipulated by making us fear of missing out on the next big thing!

In fact, if you want to tell if something is a scam, ask yourself if the persons pushing the "investment" aren't using FOMO to get you to act - as Motley Fool routinely does.  If they are using FOMO to push a sense of urgency (one of the five steps of any salesmen - instill a sense of urgency in the prospect) then chances are, it is a scam.

The plebes buying Bitcoin on PayPal aren't going to lose a lot of money.  $10 here, $100 there, maybe $1000 from a Wall Street Bets "playa".   And maybe a few more will spend even more.  But the folks cashing out on this deal, including PayPal, will make millions - maybe Billions as Musk has done, merely by announcing he is buying Bitcoin.   Nice work if you can get it.

But again, if you want to starve the 1%'ers, it begins with your pocketbook.  They didn't "take away" all your money through nefarious schemes, or the Federal Reserve, you gave them your money.  Whether it was a new monster truck lease, or the latest refinancing of your home to pay off credit card debts, or buying arsenals of guns and survival foods, the reason why you are poor and they are rich is that you gave them your money.   Stop doing that and you will become wealthier - not by a lot, but by a little.  And if everyone did that, well, the Bezos of the world would be broke - not that I expect that to happen, as the plebes, being driven by emotion, think they can buy their way to wealth, or failing that, stock-pick their way to success.

And this Bitcoin nonsense is just the latest phase of all this.

UPDATE:  A reader writes with his perspective, some of which echos what I am saying here, some of which I think is a little far-fetched.  My comments in italics:

It should be noted that PayPal's crypto trading scheme is nothing more than a speculative investing vehicle, and definitely not a way of buying actual cryptocurrency. You might even go as far as calling it a scam.

If you look at their FAQ, they make it clear that purchased coins can't be used for making payments or transfers to third parties. PayPal also won't give you your coins' private keys, which means you can't transfer them into your private digital wallet or an independent crypto exchange. In fact, all you can do with your PayPal crypto is hold it or sell it back to PayPal. Like trading stocks, only you're not allowed to move your portfolio to a different broker or take actual possession of your holdings.

In other words, you are buying the idea of Bitcoin, not actual Bitcoin.  In fairness to PayPal, this is really the same thing.  When you are buying Bitcoin, you are buying an idea. 

I have a computer science degree and have been following cryptocurrencies since 2013. It's a very exciting technology that may end up redefining the world of finance. If successful, it will enable us to automate a huge number of tasks, rendering the jobs of today's accountants, financiers, and lawyers obsolete. The underlying fundamental ideas are actually quite solid, though of course these days they're over-hyped.

This seems a little far-fetched, as the whole point of contract law is that it isn't automatic or executed by computers.  No one in their right mind would sign a contract that would be automatically executed by a computer, without even the hope of arbitration.   Note that many aspects of inheritances can be "automated" to some extent by naming beneficiaries for your IRA or putting your house in Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship.  This does still require you to submit hard copies of the death certificate in order for the properties to "automatically" convey.  They do this to prevent fraud.  And yes, people do fake their deaths to collect on insurance policies.

Bitcoin's major problems are its low transaction volume capacity (approx. 5 transactions per second) and long confirmation times (10 minutes to several hours for large amounts). This makes it unsuitable for anything other than major transactions. You can use it to buy a house, for instance, or to make a big investment. But the hassle (and fees) would be too much for anything else.

This is what I said in my posting.  It is not a currency anymore for small transactions.  For paying ransoms and buying and selling illegal things, maybe yes.  Buying a house?   No, there are easier ways to transfer money in local currencies.  A wire transfer is cheaper, easier, and faster to use today.

Ethereum looks promising, not so much as a means of payment, but as a smart contract platform. You can use it to code things such as loans, swaps, wills, etc. and the system will execute their terms automatically, at the right time and given the right circumstances, without human intervention and without any chance of error or fraud (provided your code is bug-free). Yes, this is already happening, and yes, it does work. Ethereum doesn't have Bitcoin's long confirmation times problem, as its transactions are typically executed within 15 seconds and are considered safe after a few minutes. It still has a volume capacity problem though, as do virtually all coins that exist today.

In fact, volume capacity is the single major problem that must be solved before crypto can be widely adopted.

Again, I am skeptical that people will be willing to sign "automatic" contracts that are executed outside the legal system.   But then again, who knows?   But once again, we see that even with Ethereum, it is not a practical replacement for VISA/MC just yet - if ever. 

Another problem, which is systemic rather than technical, is the question of governance. Right now, the vast majority of coins are regulated by their "core developers". That is, the schmucks who do the maths and the coding are also the ones who get to make decisions on what the maximum transaction fee is, or how many coins there will ever be. This, of course, is neither fair nor safe. It also causes mistrust. Ethereum, for instance, lost most of its value in the later half of 2018, after some actions of its founders caused doubt about their intentions. Some newer projects, such as Polkadot, are now trying to introduce voting systems that allow the coin's stakeholders to make such decisions instead. (Polkadot is going about it in a weird way though, using voting algorithms that aren't very democratic.)

Well, that is the real issue.  You are buying a pig-in-a-poke with these things.   It is like an insurance or annuity contract - all fun and games until the company that wrote the contract goes bankrupt and takes all your money, as used to happen in the past.  Today, these things are regulated by governments, and in some States, insured.   Can we say the same for "crypto?"  And is the SEC going to dirty its hands trying to regulate it?   It is the Wild West, and like banks in small mining towns, they can go bust, overnight. 

Cryptocurrencies might also face another problem soon: the development of a working quantum computer. If someone manages to build one, it will immediately render many of today's cryptographic algorithms ineffective. And this will probably be the end of crypto.

I suspect it will end before that, crashing under its own weight.  If it can't be used for any LEGAL purpose, what use is it?  How long before "exchanges" are shut down, at least in developed countries?  The SEC could argue this is an unregulated "investment" vehicle and those selling it are selling securities without a license.

For example, PayPal.