Racists Hate Science and Destroy What They Love

Berlin 1945, the end of a racist empire

I just finished a long book about the Holocaust.  The author, Timothy Snyder, begins the book showing that Hitler used the Jim Crow south as a model for the racist state he dreamed of. Hitler also admired America’s long history of betraying and murdering native Americans. He saw the Volga River in Russia as his own Mississippi River and the Slavic people of eastern Europe as the native population to destroy. He would make Germany great and has rich as America by taking over all of eastern Europe and Russia as far as the Volga and getting rid of all the Jews in the process.

Hitler believed that conquest of these lands was necessary because the German land could not support the population of Germany. It is one of the terrible ironies of his anti-intellectualism that he held back the green revolution that would feed all of Europe and much of the world after he was dead, and the fascists were out of power in defeat. By the 1960s every free democratic country could not only feed itself but had surplus food to export. Part of that food surplus went to the Soviet Union because the green revolution there was stopped by the perverse biological beliefs of Joseph Stalin.

In 2016 Trump took control of the Republican Party by being openly racist instead of pretending not to be racist as the party had done since Nixon. Trump has spent three years destroying the environment and laws protecting the environment. He attacks the green new deal and all environmental initiatives as socialism. Like Hitler a century ago Trump is an idiot who could make America better, but his prejudices and hatred of science rule his third-rate mind.  Stupid people are always the most stubborn.

Hitler took control of Germany with the votes and the backing of Evangelical and Catholic Christians by making them so afraid of socialism they embraced Hitler’s racism. The southern churches that backed slavery then Jim Crow laws are now the state church of Trump. They are anti-science, anti-intellectual and they want an apocalypse not a living planet.  If the resistance to environmental progress seems crazy in America it’s because people with vile beliefs and vile goals really are looking forward to Armageddon. 

Snyder’s book: “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” traces the history of the Holocaust in every country that the Nazis controlled. Throughout the book the terrible suffering that racism brings to the world is clear. Also clear is the terrible irony that some of that suffering is because racists are anti-science and anti-intellectual and their a thorough stupidity ruins even their own world.

Out of the Cast, Therapy Begins Today

My high-tech arm brace

Today I had went to see my surgeon and to get my first physical therapy session.  The cast came off shortly after I arrived at the office. I got x-rays. The technician doing the x-rays explained very carefully what the doctor needed to see and did her best to make sure I was not in pain. She could see from the previous x-rays that I was a mess or at least my elbow was a mess.

After the x-rays the surgeon came to the exam room. Even with a mask on he had the look of someone who is very happy with their work. He told me that everything looked very solid. He showed me the plates and screws holding it together my humerus bone and my ulna. He told me he had to break the ulna to fix the joint. So, my broken bone count is 40.

The surgeon said the break in my elbow was not because of fragile bones. He said the break would have been the same in a 20-year-old who hit the ground in the same way. That was good to know.

After the doctor left, two medical technicians put me in the device you see in the photo. They said I should keep this on except in the shower. I was happy to know I can take a shower now. It won’t be comfortable sleeping in this, but it won’t be any worse than the cast and the sling.

After the doctor visit, I went to another part of the building and had my first physical therapy session. I will write more about that soon.

Protesting personal protective equipment is sooooooooo American

These guys don't protest helmet rules

In 1981, I was a staff writer at the Elizabethtown Chronicle. I was assigned to write about the anti-helmet law demonstration at the state capital. I was the only motorcyclist on staff and always wore a helmet, so I was not sympathetic with the demonstrators.

I wrote about the demonstration and reported the opinions of the demonstrators as accurately as I could. I remembered some of their arguments from a decade before when I heard the arguments against wearing seat belts. The protesters insisted that riding a motorcycle was just as safe with or without a helmet.

Since it was a weekly newspaper, I had a chance to update my story the next day with a report of the death of a motorcyclist leaving the rally riding home in the middle of the night with a blood alcohol level that made him legally drunk. He died of massive head injuries. Since he was dumb enough to drive a motorcycle while drunk his lifespan was probably destined to be short anyway.

Personal protective equipment has always been controversial in freedom worshipping America. We are free to be as stupid as we want to be. We do not want people to tell us to wear masks or seatbelts or helmets or safety glasses or wash our hands.

We wear personal protective equipment for ourselves and for those who love us and for those who could be hurt if we don’t as in the case of facemasks. The trouble is there is no dramatic feedback for safety. We wear a seat belt and walk away from an accident that could have killed us.

There is an old proverb that says above all do not become a proverb. Do not be that blind man who refused safety glasses at work. And do not be the motorcyclist who protested helmet laws and died on the way home of massive head injuries. Fifty years post mortem you are still a proverb.

Fighting Frigates and Main Battle Tanks Have Some Things in Common

B-13, "Bad Bitch" my tank, 1975-78

The Movie Poster

Royal Navy frigates in the early 1,800s and modern main battle tanks have a few things in common. For instance, if you want to increase morale on a fighting ship do more got to re-practice. Firing cannons and small arms makes the crew happier.  For the past year I have been reading the Master and Commander Series of novels by Patrick O’Brian. I am now reading the 20^th novel in this series which is the last novel by O’Brian himself. There is a short 21^st novel. O’Brian died while writing it in the year 2000. It was finished by a friend of the author.

I watched the movie long before I knew that the novels existed. The movie Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe debuted in 2003. I have watched it several times sense including just last week. Now that I have read nearly all the books the movie is a pretty good summary.

As I read the novels, I thought a lot about life in a tank. Asked with the frigate the crew is very close together. Both of the main battle tank and a frigate are fighting machines designed around getting their cruise to the battle with as much firepower as possible. As with the movie Fury, many crew members of frigates Think of sailing a fighting ship has the best job they ever had.

In sea battles between wooden frigates can last for hours, but they can also be as short sharp and violence as modern tank battles. The battles are often at very close-range including boarding and fighting hand to hand until one ship surrenders.

In the 4000+ pages of the 20 novels the author spends a lot of time describing sailing in excruciating detail. He knows how every sail on the ship is rigged and used to make the ship faster and maneuver it. He also follows the two main characters through their entire professional lives. Capt. Jack Aubrey and Dr. Steven Mathurin are very different man who develop a lifelong friendship that the novels follow. They go through great ups and downs of fortune and love and loss in success and failure.

And as with the sailing novels my best friends of my life I met while serving as a tank commander.

I had no particular interest in sailing before I read the first novel. But after I started reading the story was so good, I read 20 novels inside of a year. I could not recommend more highly. And if novels are not your thing the movie is wonderful.

Gettysburg: Corona Movie Seven

The next movie in our Corona Virus Film Festival at home is the movie Gettysburg.  Clocking in at more than four hours, we split the viewing between two days. 

I saw the movie when it was released in 1993 and again early in the 2000s on DVD. I had forgotten how long it is and how didactic. Throughout the movie are speeches about why both sides are fighting the war. I think anyone who is sympathetic with the Confederate cause would find these speeches painful. I liked them and I don't like anything about the rebel cause. 

In the course of the movie, the professors who take up arms are treated with respect.  Learning in general is treated well.  There is a strong anti-intellectual strain in American life, but in this movie the learned men like Colonel Chamberlain are treated with respect and last-in-his-West-Point-class George Pickett is the butt of jokes.  The scene in which Pickett denies evolution is wonderful.  The scene in which General Hancock talks to Chamberlain about his friend General Armistead is beautiful and sad. 

For spectacle, the movie is just amazing. Hundreds of re-enactors line up shoulder to shoulder to attack Little Round Top. Thousands march across a mile of open fields at the end of the movie in Pickett's charge.  Dozens of cannon fire rolling barrages from the Confederate guns, answered by dozens more on the Union side. 

A quick search of "Lee Longstreet Gettysburg" shows the deep debate about how the double disaster of Little Round Top and Pickett's Charge happened. It also shows how the disagreement portrayed in the movie and the novel on which it is based could have unfolded between the two men. 

My first visit to Gettysburg was just a year after I returned to America from three years as a tank commander on the East-West border in Germany. We spent a lot of time training at or near the border deciding where our tanks should be placed for the best field of fire. Anytime my tank was on the move in the German countryside, I was scanning for a place to get out of the line of fire of an approaching enemy and looking for where to go if an attack suddenly occurred.

With my head full of fire and maneuver, seeing the route of Pickett's attack was stunning.  How anyone survived that assault, I don't know. 

The movie shows Lee believing his men could cross that mile of open field sloping upward and prevail over men with cannon hiding behind a stone wall. As an American, I am glad Lee was bold to the point of foolishness.  The defeat at Gettysburg was certainly not the end of the will of the slave-owning states to fight, but it was the end of any real hope for victory, and for that I am endlessly grateful. 

Movies in the Time of Corona: Blue, White, Red--A Trilogy

As part of my personal Corona Film Festival, I watched the trilogy Blue, White, Red:  Three Colours. 

These magnificent stories of love are in French, mostly set in France.  The second movie is set more in Poland and with more Polish than French, but begins in France. They have the same Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski, and were released in consecutive years in the mid-90s.  In each of the the three movies, the story is most clear in the face of the star--the three faces you see in the poster above. 

The camera lingers on the faces of Juliette Binoche, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Irene Jacob in each of the three movies.  Each deals with love and loss in ways that surprised me--especially in the second movie, White.

I watched them in order of release but they could be watched separately in any order.  The lead characters express so much with their faces that I am going to watch at least parts of the movies again without subtitles, just to see how much I can understand.  I was surprised as I watched White that I was picking up words and phrases in Polish. I don't know Polish, but it is a Slavic language and when spoken slowly, the sounds of some common words is very like Russian. 

Birthday Rides!!! 67km of Fun at 67 Years Old

The Ben Franklin Bridge, connecting Philadelphia and Camden

For my 67th birthday, I rode 67 km in four separate rides, mostly on hills across half of Pennsylvania.  On May 1, I drove to Philadelphia, stopping about halfway on the 80-mile drive, at the intersection of Pa. Routes 23 and 10.  Just south of that crossroad is a 2.5-km hill I really like. Usually when I travel to Philadelphia I am on a train, but since I was driving I could stop, and ride up and down this hill. 

After that ride, I drove to center city Philadelphia, parked on the Delaware Water Front and rode for a few hours.  I rode back on forth across the Ben Franklin Bridge, then across the city to West River Drive. This four-lane road is closed to traffic on weekends from March to October, but now it is closed to cars all the time.  I rode with walkers, runners and other riders with a lot of space to stay far apart.  I went all the way to City Line Avenue before turning around and taking a different way back to the Delaware River, and riding the Ben Franklin Bridge again. 

On the way home I pulled off the Turnpike at Morgantown to ride the Rt. 10 hill again--faster up and down than the morning. 

Today, May 2, I drove to a small town near Gettysburg to visit my son at a job site where he is working. He is part of a crew that is hanging overhead doors on a loading dock.  They were just finishing hanging 60 doors this week.

Then I drove to Fort Loudon and rode up and down Tuscarora Summit.  I rode the five-mile climb faster than I have since before knee replacement in March of last year.

What better way to celebrate my 67th birthday than riding 67 kilometers and climbing 1200 meters? 

Three Tankmen, Три Танкистa--A Soviet Song About a Tank Crew

There are not a lot of songs about tank crews.  The 75th Anniversary of VE Day is very soon. Here is a song about those of us who are Tankmen: Танкистa!

“The Three Tankmen”

It is a very famous song. It was made in the time when a large danger of a war with Japan was real. 
Japan militaries acted very impudently so the two border conflicts - in the region of the Khasan Lake 
in 1938 and in the region of Khalkhin Gol (in the West it is known as “Nomongan conflict”) in 1939, - 
occurred. In both the conflicts Japanese invasions on Soviet territory (Mongolian one in the second 
case) were repelled by Red Army. It looks like the song was made on the basis of the events in the 
region of the Khasan Lake.

This song was sang in the famous pre-war movie “Tractor men”. A former military gets the post of 
the team-leader of the tractor men’s group, tightens up discipline and learns his subordinates to 
prepare to be drivers of tanks in the case of an enemy invasion.

This song stayed very popular and during WWII. I read memoirs of the WWII veteran who recalled 
how a Soviet tankman played on a bayan and singed this song in a captured German town in 1945.

********************************************************************************************

“The Three Tankmen”

(Translated by Andrey)

Some lowering black clouds move on the state border,
The inclement land is filled by silence.
The high banks of the Amur River are securing by
The sentries of the Motherland who are standing there.
The sentries of the Motherland who are standing there.

A firm covering force is placed there against an enemy.
A valiant and strong unit is standing
Nearly the border of the Far Eastern land - 
It is an armored shock battalion.
It is an armored shock battalion.

Three tankmen, three merry friends, 
They are the crew of a combat vehicle,
Live there like an inviolable firm family –
And the song guarantees that it is true.
Three tankmen, three merry friends, 
They are the crew of a combat vehicle.

Some thick dew fell on grass,
Wide fogs fell on a ground.
Samurais decided to cross the border 
Nearly the river in this night.
Samurais decided to cross the border 
Nearly the river in this night.

But the intelligence reported exactly
And the powerful unit was given by an order and became to move
On the native Far Eastern land -
It was the armored shock battalion.
It was the armored shock battalion.

Tanks were rushing, raising a wind,
The redoubtable armor was advancing.
And Samurais were falling to a ground
Under the pressure of steel and a fire.
And Samurais were falling to a ground
Under the pressure of steel and a fire.

And all the enemies were eliminated - and the song guarantees that it is true, -
In the fire attack
By three tankmen, three merry friends,
Who are the crew of a combat vehicle!
By three tankmen, three merry friends,
Who are the crew of a combat vehicle!

1938

Two Rides, Two Days, Same Time of Day, Completely Different Rides

Riding the same route, the exact same roads, every day on a bicycle can be an entirely different ride each time.  This is certainly true of a group ride where who is on the ride dictates the pace.

For the past month I have been riding alone and settled into riding the same 25-mile out-and-back ride four or five days a week.  I ride just a little east of due south out of Lancaster for nine rolling miles, then up a three-mile climb. I turn around in a parking lot at the top, descend a different hill and go back to my home in the city on the same road just west of due north. 

Yesterday, the wind was out of the North NorthWest at 17mph, a perfect tail wind.  I felt good and rode hard out of the city and up the first long climb and all the way to the top of the three-mile climb at the end.  Eight miles into the ride there is a speed indicator telling people to slow down for construction.  It is on the far side of a bridge and slightly uphill.  Yesterday I first lit the sign up at 22mph then was down to 20 as I passed it.  By the time I stopped at the turnaround, I had covered the 12.5 miles in 48 minutes with more than a thousand feet of climbing. The ride back was a slow slog in a headwind. On the steepest part of the 3-mile descent, I only reached 37mph. 

There are 14 Strava segments on the route, seven in each direction. Yesterday, I made five PRs on the ride south. 

Today, the wind was 10mph out of the SouthWest.  It was a grinding headwind. I rode hard up the the big hill, but it was just over an hour when I reached the turnaround point.  On the way back my top speed was 51 mph, but with the wind 45 degrees off of a straight tail wind. I did not have any record segments on the way back. At the construction sign where I went 20mph and 22 yesterday, I first lit the sign at 13 mph, then 12 today.

Same road, consecutive days, about the same temp, but such a different ride.  Using my heart rate as a relative indicator of effort, yesterday I set all those PRs and had a high heart rate of 143. Today my highest heart rate was 155. 

Salary as an Expression of Equality: Democracy in America

I was listening to a translator of "Democracy in America" talk about how carefully Alexis de Tocqueville chose words to express the depth of equality in America. Harvey Mansfield, the translator, then spoke about salaries in America.

Tocqueville explained how important it is that in America everyone receives a salary, bosses and workers. In an aristocracy, the nobles do not receive a salary. Receiving wages, being a hireling, is something nobles cannot do. The recent royal couple move to North America is confirmation of this. 

Before listening to the talk, I saw a member of Cult45 who was angry that the media do not give her idol credit for donating his salary. After being reminded of Tocqueville's view of salaries, Trump refusing his salary could be yet another indication of how superior he believes he is to everyone else. 

His own words about his intellect would make a peacock blush.In America we are all equal and our salaries, even if those salaries can be described as "princely," are an indication of how class distinction has no place in the America.

Tocqueville visited America for nine months in 1831 to write about prisons. Before the end of the decade he wrote a thousand-page two-volume work that is still the best summary of politics in America in print.

Tocqueville admired much about America, but was also clear about our faults. He visited during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson and found him loathsome. It is no wonder he is Trump's favorite President. Tocqueville wrote sadly and compellingly about the terrible treatment of Native Americans and slaves in America. Tocqueville's companion on the trip, Gustave de Beaumont, wrote about the horrors of slavery after he returned to France.

He also predicted accurately that the 20th Century would be dominated by the conflict between the US and Russia.

Two Rides in Paris; Two Decades Ago

In September 2000 I made two trips to Europe to attend several business meetings.  Both trips took me to Paris, first for three days, then for two.  Because of where I stayed and my schedule, the rides were very different.

On the first trip, I had meetings only on the west side of Paris so I picked a hotel between the meeting site and the best place in Paris for bicyclists: L’Hippodrome:  the horse-racing track next to the River Seine on the southwest corner of Paris in the huge park called Bois de Boulogne.  There is a two-mile road around horse track that is closed every day, year-round from 10 am to dark for bicyclists.  The road varies from one to three lanes wide and actually has about fifty feet of elevation change—uphill on the east side, downhill on the west.  Every day, local cyclists circle this loop in groups varying in speed from casual commuters taking a lap, to groups of fifty or more averaging 25 to 27 mph. 

The fast group is local racers from teenagers to 50+, but as in America, more old guys than young.   These guys ride very orderly pace lines when the groups are smaller than 20.  Bigger groups tend to have three or four guys up front doing about 90% of the pulls.  Once in a great while, in the off season, a current or recent Tour de France rider who lives in Paris will drop in on the ride and take the pack to some painful speed above 30 mph.  I always ride American-flag jerseys or my team kit.  Parisian bike racers are as friendly as American Cat. 1,2,3 racers so no one talks to you anyway, but with the American-flag stuff on, they know I can’t speak French—especially at 27 mph.  Most bike racers in Paris are blue-collar guys who don’t speak English, so the ride is not a social event for Americans.

But it is a great ride—no square turns, and just about any pace you could want will have a group you can ride with.  I was in Paris three days in early September and managed to ride four times.  My hotel was in Suresnes, just across the river from the training ride and half the price of a Paris hotel just because it is outside the city.  From my hotel, I rode down through the center of town, crossed the Suresnes bridge and turned right at the second road to get to the ride site.

On my second trip to Europe in September, I spent two days in Paris and did not ride in the training race.  In fact, I stayed in a hotel near the airport 12 miles northeast of Paris.  One of the days, I had a meeting in the center of Paris and one in a suburb just south of the city.  I rode from the airport to the city center then to the south side and back.  The road to the city is a 4-lane highway.  It was like riding from Paoli to Philadelphia on Route 30—EXCEPT, no one screwed with me at all.  It was flat and dull but not dangerous.  At the city line at the town of Porte de Villette, the way into the city was through a cobblestone traffic circle with 6 intersecting roads and a railroad overpass.  Once through the circle, I rode straight across Paris splitting lanes with the scooters and couriers and having a great time. Again, lots of traffic but no Neanderthals in SUVs trying to kill you.  On the second day, I took a ride through the suburbs of Paris near the airport.

Of course, the best place to ride in Paris is the training race but riding in the city is great if for no other reason than experiencing heavy traffic without the small-minded people with big engines that we put up with on nearly every ride. 

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2020

April 21 is Holocaust Remembrance Day.  If you do not know the history of the Holocaust in some detail, you may think of the Holocaust as the death camps, particularly Auschwitz, where a million Jews died. 

During the last four years I have visited Holocaust sites and Holocaust memorials and read the history of the Holocaust in country-by-country detail.  The numbers tell a much different story than the Auschwitz-centered narrative of the Nazi death camp.  Auschwitz went into operation as a death camp in 1942. Previously, it was a slave labor camp. Half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust, more than three million, were already dead by 1942.

Beginning with the invasion of Poland in 1939, Jews were rounded up and killed by the SS, by German police and by local police in Poland.  When the Nazis invaded Russian in June 1941, SS units spread out in conquered territories. The Nazis told local people in eastern Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Belarus and Russia that the property of Jews could be seized by those who killed its Jewish owners.

Jews were dispossessed and murdered by their neighbors.  Some were killed on the spot, others were rounded up and shot over pits, sometimes the victims dug the pits.  Lviv, Kiev, Minsk, Riga, Vilnius and other cities in the east were the sites of mass shootings of hundreds of thousands of Jews.  The shooting was done by tens of thousands of German police, SS men, local police and sometimes German regular army units.  Thousands and thousands of men pulled the trigger on a rifle or a pistol and watched a Jew die in front of them. 

Almost no one survived the early personal slaughter. By contrast, every death camp had some survivors.  There are tales of survivors of Auschwitz. There are almost no survivors of the murders over pits at Babi Yar and other pits of slaughter.

Also, on this day, those who sheltered and saved Jews are honored.  They deserve the honor, partly because they are vanishingly rare.  There were thousands of these heroes, but they represent less than one in one thousand of the 400 million people who identified themselves as Christians in the lands conquered or controlled by the Nazis during World War II.

In his book “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning” Timothy Snyder says, “The Christians who showed mercy to Jews … were exceptions in the moral catastrophe that was Christianity during the Holocaust.” 

The complicity of Churches began in Germany in 1932 when German Christians supported the openly racist Adolph Hitler who was stoking fear of communism.  German Churches followed Nazi racial laws ejecting Jewish Christians from Churches who had converted, sometimes generations before.  Jewish Christians were almost totally wiped out in The Holocaust with the full complicity of German Churches. 

The Holocaust is a story of mass murder of six million Jews, but from the beginning, the story of the Holocaust of a story of government stripping citizens of rights, it is a story of theft of property, betrayal by neighbors, deportation, enslavement and murder.  The Holocaust was not done by machines. The theft and murder was done by millions of men and women who betrayed, robbed and murdered a person right in front of them.