One Professor, Two Books, Two Americas

Space and Time in Special Relativity  by N.David Mermin

Two very good books on Special Relativity were written by the same professor at the beginning of his career and at the end of his career.  Together they show how much America has changed between 1968 when the first book was written and 2004 when the second was published.  

In the late 1960s during the zenith of science in American culture, N. David Mermin, a young professor of physics at Cornell University wrote SpaceTime and Special Relativity. I love this book. 

Mermin wrote the book after hosting a summer seminar for high school physics teachers. He taught the group special relativity with the goal of giving them the information they needed to teach special relativity in their high schools. Mermin’s book was published the year before the moon landing. 

He believed that special relativity could be taught and understood at the high school level because the only math required is algebra and trigonometry. In 2005, as he neared retirement, Mermin published a new edition of the book titled It’s About Time. 

It's About Time

The new edition reflected almost 40 years of teaching a course in science for non-science majors. In the preface, he also wistfully admitted his dream of high school kids learning special relativity had evaporated. The new edition is a better book with better examples, but I prefer the first one. 

Mermin has an interlude between chapters 10 and 12, a "Relativisitic Tragicomedy" in which he makes fun of Absolutists. He attacks his anti-science enemies with the same confidence and brio he brings to the subject of the book. For me the book helped me to see the real flaw in the Young Earth Creationist arguments and at the same time gave me a picture of God in the universe that Einstein gets beautifully right and the Creationists get horribly wrong. 

Before the new book was published, I wrote Mermin a letter telling him what I saw in his book. He wrote a long letter back telling me he was happy to hear what I found in the book and saying if he writes a new edition, it would not have a Chorus. It doesn’t.

Thinking about these books together reminded me how different Life, the Universe, and Everything looked when America was the world center of science and innovation.

Paragon Becomes Moral Relativist

The moral absolutes of peace and prosperity can melt like snow in the Sahara when faced with a threat--real or perceived. A man devoted to love and the Kingdom of Heaven fifty years ago now believes the election of Democrats will be the end of Christian America.  

When I got to my first active-duty base in October of 1972, I got a roommate.  Since my first service was the Air Force, I only had one roommate, not eight or a dozen.  My roommate was another 19-year-old named Don.  

He was unlike anyone I had known growing up in a northern suburb of Boston.  I never knew a teenager who was seriously religious.  I grew up nominally Jewish, but did not have a Jewish mother, so most Jews didn't think I was Jewish.  

Don was in Church Sunday morning and evening, Wednesday evening and maybe more than that if he could.  He took the Bible literally and seriously and wanted to tell everyone about Jesus.  He was also a great roommate. He was clean, neat, did not play loud music and was gone a lot--at Church.  

If Don had been a soldier, he could have been "Bible" in "Fury." Don was that sincere about his faith.  I lost touch with Don when I left the Air Force in 1974.  In 2019 he saw a post I made on and Air Force veteran Facebook page and called me.  We talked a couple of times, but we did not continue speaking.  He was a clearly a Trump supporter so we stopped talking before we had a dispute over politics.

This week, with Trump out of office and the impeachment trial underway, I thought I would ask Don what he was thinking about the state of the country.  

I called and left a message.  His phone flipped to voice mail and the greeting was "For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten ... " ending by identifying the words read as John 3:16 and asking me to leave a message.  

The next day he called.  I first told him the impression he made on me 49 years ago.  All the rest of us in the barracks lived to get high and get laid, but he had a higher purpose.  In 1972 he was against sex outside marriage, smoking, drinking, gambling, drugs, greed, lying, and all the other Thou Shalt Nots of the Bible.  

So I asked him how he and other Christians could support a perpetual fountain of sin like Trump.  His first reason was abortion, we would return to that every few minutes.  The other was Israel.  He acknowledged Trump lies, but said all politicians lie and believes Trump is no different.  

After we exhausted all of the various reasons why it was the right thing for Christians to attack Bill Clinton based on character while excusing Trump, he got to the central issue of his support for an unrepentant and bragging sinner.  Don believes the country went wrong in the 50s when prayer started to be removed from school.  He said America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles and that America stopped honoring God and chaos followed: sex, drugs, rock and roll, abortion, and defeat in the Vietnam War.

I asked how he felt about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  America was an apartheid state until Jim Crow laws were dismantled. He thought a white man was always at a disadvantage now because of quotas.  And he was very angry about political correctness--that if he says the wrong thing even in jest and someone is offended he could lose his job or worse. 

When we talked about January 6 and Trump's attempt to steal the election and take power as a dictator, Don said he would not support that. If the coup had succeeded support would not be an issue, I said. Free and fair elections would have ended in 2018. He said the election of Democrats this year would mean there would never be another free election, that Democrats would rig the elections going forward. 

For me, January 6 very nearly ended American democracy. For him, democracy did end on that day.  At one point, I asked him if he could tell someone about Jesus with a MAGA hat on.  Forty-nine years ago, Don could and did tell people about Jesus in chow hall, in the latrine, at bus stops, and anywhere else he could.  

Nixon was President when we were roommates. Watergate unfolded during that time. I can't remember caring about it. I don't remember ever talking about politics with Don. At that time Pentacostals like him were more likely to be apolitical than concerned with politics.  

But nearly fifty years later, a country with legal abortion, legal gay marriage, and what he perceives as cancel culture is not his country. Trump, as I have heard in many focus group reports, is the choice of people who believe fake history conjured by the likes of Michael Barton  whose books have been debunked by historians. He and others like him have created the myths that fill the minds of Believers when they hear MAGA.  America was great in the 50s. America was great in the Antebellum south. America was great when Andrew Jackson broke treaties with Native Americans.  

So Don voted for Trump in 2016 to save America from Hillary Clinton. He voted for Trump in 2020 to save America from Radical Agenda of Joe Biden.  And after listening to the blizzard of lies from Trump, he believes it is the Democrats who will be stealing all the elections from this day forward.  

Somehow Don's moral certainty of 1972 has slid full-throated support of a man was willing to overthrow the government and cheering when it almost happened. 

Trading the Kingdom of Heaven for the Tyranny of Trump seems to me a very bad deal, and sadly, one made by millions.

Field Guide to Flying Death: Dumb Bombs, Russia and Syria

US Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortress dropping "dumb" bombs 

on Germany in World War II

 During World War II and for decades after, "dumb" or unguided bombs were the only way to put explosives on target from the air.  Beginning in the Gulf War, America and other nations started using "smart" or guided bombs.  

In 1999 when American B-2s bombed Belgrade, Pentagon spokespersons said they could not only hit a specific building, but put a bomb in a specific doorway of a building. 

Beginning in September 2015, Russian strategic bombers flew from Ossetia near the Republic of Georgia in Southern Russia and bombed targets in Syria.  They claimed to be fighting ISIS, but hit civilian targets, causing thousands of casualties. The Russian bombers dropped "dumb" bombs.  Various news outlets at the time speculated that the Russians used dumb bombs because these bombs are much cheaper than guided weapons. Up to 100 times cheaper.  The Miami Herald wrote this.

From top: Tu-95, Tu-160 and Tu-22 Strategic Bombers

In his book The Road to Unfreedom Timothy Snyder said Russia began bombing Syria three weeks after Germany announced it would take in a half million refugees. 

"Russian aircraft dropped non-precision ("dumb") bombs from high altitudes. ... Russia was not targeting ISIS bases. Human rights organizations reported the Russian bombing of mosques, clinics, hospitals, refugee camps, water treatment plants and cities in general." (pages 198-199)

Dumb bombs made the refugee crisis worse. Putin's goal, according to Snyder, was to destabilize Europe. By making the refugee crisis worse in Europe, the Russian bombing campaign played to the xenophobia of the fastest-rising candidate in the American Presidential election. That candidate would eventually take the side of Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies.

The dumb bombs were dropped by a man with a smart plan.