Let's have more reporting on geniuses we don't know about -- we already know more than enough about the other kind

"Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration."  That's according to Thomas Edison, although he might have said 90/10 instead.  Doesn't matter.  Either way, whenever I read something about "a genius" I think of Edison's description.

Edison was a prolific inventor.  With over 1000 patents and a variety of business ventures to his name  he was widely acclaimed in his time.  For good reasons -- think, for example, of the electric light bulb -- journalists reported on him prolifically and sometimes breathlessly as his work brought benefits to the individual and the community.

Edison eventually put his attention, creativity and perspiration to work on building tools needed by the embryonic motion picture industry.  This led to his 1908 formation of the Motion Pictures Patent Company (also called the Edison Trust).  Despite the Sherman Antitrust Act, Edison was attempting to monopolize the production of motion pictures.  

The MPPC's seven year life-span was spent mostly in controversy, conflict and court.  During that time much of the industry decamped to the part of Los Angeles, California known as Hollywood as a way of  putting physical distance between themselves and the grasp of the Trust.  By the time the Trust was broken the players in motion picture production were committed to Hollywood being their base of operations. 

The genius of Edison deserves to be remembered for his positive contributions.  But genius -- especially the type described in Edison's definition -- gets nudged by unexpected events to pop up again and again, providing astonishingly satisfying end results.

Here's a reader's commentary that begins at the intersection of journalism and genius and goes from there to tell two stories that were "news" to me.  -- Garry Herron, ed.

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Dear LWC,

I don’t know about you but I am getting a little weary of hearing about Elon Musk. Yes, yes, I know, he is widely considered a genius and reportedly the richest person in the world. He upended the automobile industry, shoots rockets into space and for $44 billion now controls your ability to tweet.

Good for him, although maybe not so much for the Twitter staff members forced out. Capitalism needs investors, disrupters to shake things up and so forth. But must the media seemingly follow every minor detail of his life? Recently The Washington Post food section “Voracious” was simply gaga (sorry, Lady Gaga, I couldn’t help myself) to announce it had learned that Mr. Musk’s favorite drink is, drum roll, Diet Coke! The Post went on to treat us to a nap inducing history of Diet Coke.

Please, Washington Post, stop. What he does with Tesla, Space X and Twitter is indeed newsworthy but I suspect most of us do not care a whit whether Mr. Musk drinks Diet Coke, Pepsi or Jack Daniels whisky. Oops, I hope I didn’t give him any ideas about buying a whisky company.

I think it’s time to give a shout out to some of our perhaps under appreciated geniuses. My first nominee is Robert Kern, who passed away in November at age 96 in Waukesha, WI. Do you have a portable emergency generator in your garage? You have Mr. Kern to thank for it.

In the mid 1950’s he was working to build motors for the railway industry but lost his job because of increased competition from the quickly expanding airline industry.  He adjourned to his garage and began working on his idea to develop emergency generators. His idea evolved into Generac Corporation which to this day makes 75% of the portable generators you find at Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc. He sold the company for about $1 billion in 2006 and became a philanthropist, donating $100 million to the Mayo Clinic as an example.

Next up is Marcus Urann, a farmer in Massachusetts. If you like to serve beautifully sliced and plated jellied cranberry sauce from a can at your holiday meal, Mr. Urann deserves your thanks. In 1912 he invented it! And, frankly, I think his canned Ocean Spray tastes better than the homemade sauce I make just to show I know my way around the kitchen. It takes 15 billion cranberries a year to make the canned sauce, and here’s a shout out to whoever figured out it takes 15 billion cranberries.

If you’ve gotten this far you might be wondering who I would nominate for my third under appreciated genius.  It would be me, of course, but my spouse might disagree and I certainly don’t want to appear bitter or jealous of Mr. Musk, so I hereby withdraw my nomination.  Elon earned his fame and fortune and he and Twitter can have at it.

To be fair, I first learned the above information about Mr. Kern and Mr. Urann from the reporting of the Smithsonian Magazine and New York Times, so thanks to them. My point is there are lots of under appreciated geniuses in our midst past and present, so perhaps the media could look for more of their stories and histories and report those, and forgo reporting on Mr. Musk’s beverage preference.

Right now I’m going to go into the kitchen and pop open a Diet Coke. Whatever you do this holiday season may it involve lots of time with your loved ones and a meal that includes a delicious can of jellied cranberry sauce!

Sincerely,

Guy Heston

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Support your local social studies teachers

We ask a lot of our teachers, don't we?  Especially high school teachers.  They teach children who morph into "young adults" right before their eyes.  Questions about the studies become more profound.  Children will pester and probe with "why?"  Teenagers will start asking "why not?"  (A personal favorite, shared with my high school buddies and tolerated by an empathetic chemistry teacher who eventually clamped down when a rogue chemical experiment briefly obliterated the school's educational decorum.  The only damage was to pride, and Mr. E's disciplinary action was appropriate.  Provocative questions can take you to unexpected and enlightening places.)

I think this becomes especially challenging in social studies or civics classes.  History, governance, social structures and how accepting individual responsibilities contributes to the community are topics that are wide open for interpretations and challenges.  Those of us who found ourselves at this age during the 1960s and '70s were fond of repelling anything we considered to be intrusive by saying "Stay out of my space!"  If this reminds you of. . .you, well, good.

Public education is expected to explain why a democratic form of government provides the best living environment for the individual.  A successful democratic government responds to the will of the majority to solve social problems, maintain public safety, avoid harm, and achieve progress in making the country better in the future.  Civics and social studies courses take the lead in delivering on that learning experience.

Part of the educator's job is to inform students on how the U.S. Constitution is the basic national law for American governance.  It has been amended, interpreted, bent and massaged for over 230 years.  When this has worked well it has been due at least in part to the fact that the Constitution's authors, and the succeeding congressional representatives, presidents and federal justices, have held to a common understanding of the country's history and how that history provides guidance towards a better future.  

Now we see that recent Supreme Court decisions (and other events) illustrate a gradual but striking loss of the common understanding of American history.  I think that teen students will pick up on this and want to learn what has changed or been lost, why that has happened, and how it will affect them for the rest of their lives.  

Let's take a look at what might merit youthful attention, and conjure up some ideas on where that could lead.

This year's SCOTUS decisions encompassing abortion (also directly affecting personal privacy), gun control and religion seem to me to be intensely personal to the youth, perhaps even more so than with their elders.  The majority opinions in these decisions depend upon historical citations whose anecdotal evidence is of the sort that would be unconvincing in high school debate competitions.  (I know this from long-ago personal experience.)

It won't take much for an inquisitive civics student to dig into the recent SCOTUS decision rescinding the constitutional right for a woman to make a private decision to abort a pregnancy and find that the historical underpinnings of the decision are, at best, wobbly.  Abortion was an individual woman's private decision and part of normal life at the time of the adoption of the Constitution.  The majority professes to be guided by the original intentions of the Constitution's authors, so then why misrepresent its history?

Inquisitive students will go farther on this.  For example, if the 9th Amendment invites the discovery and adoption of individual rights beyond those already identified -- and it does -- why should a right to abortion and to the privacy of that decision not be eligible to be recognized as constitutional?  Suppose a girl asks that question and finds that the anti-abortion answer is founded on religious belief; wouldn't you expect her to counter that with "Why should somebody else's religion be imposed on me?"  I would.

Regulation of private gun ownership and of the availability of certain types of firearms is a real attention-getter for students.  Much gun-related carnage happens in places frequented by teenagers, such as schools, shopping centers and crowded events.  Teachers will be asked why semi-automatic firearms are so readily available even though they are capable of causing far more death and injury than were 18th century cannons, the possession and use of which were reserved for national defense?  Why prefer a demonstrably dangerous individual right at the expense of general public safety when there is a history of limiting the individual's right so as to provide a public benefit?

As for religion, students will learn that one of the foundational reasons for the nation was to escape the coercion and destructive conflicts of a state-sponsored religion.  A public school coach or other employee is by definition part of the state or local government.  If that employee is enabled -- as SCOTUS has now done -- to publicly display religious practices while on duty, isn't that a type of inherent state coercion, and won't it be seen by students as invading their individual space?  And what about U.S. history during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries showing a continual national trend towards the greater separation of church and state?

Yes, I'm putting ducks in a row.  But these ducks are real, not imaginary.  We all can remember enough of our youth to know that we and others around us were capable of challenging the adult status quo.  As parents and friends of parents we know that today's and tomorrow's teens are well prepared to have these discussions, and they have the intentions of doing so.

The SCOTUS decisions overviewed here result in remarkable state-enabled and state supported intrusions into a person's space around personal and private decisions, personal safety and freedom from religious coercion.  I think this will be an underlying motivation for thoughtful student confrontations with their civics and social studies teachers.

Do we want today's students to become tomorrow's engaged adults and national leaders?  We say that we do, but for that to happen teachers, parents and communities ought to be prepared to experience a type and intensity of student activism that has been seen only rarely since the civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Support your local social studies teachers. They will be appreciative, the students will be better prepared to assume and fulfill adult responsibilities, and we will end up with a more successful and better democracy.

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Where Was the Celebration?

By guest author Guy Heston --

In this summer of our discontent (inflation, a new COVID variant, messed up airline schedules, etc.) I thought we actually had a great cause for optimism and celebration but didn’t take it.

On July 11 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known to us as NASA, and in cooperation with the European and Canadian space agencies, sent back the most incredible images from the James Webb Space Telescope.

The images of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 were stunning, incredible glimpses into the universe in which we reside. The White House hosted an event to unveil them. Some of the images from distant galaxies were reportedly from 4.6 billion years ago (I’ll leave it to the scientists to determine how that was figured out). You can find the images at nasa.gov.

To me this event was right up there with the USA landing Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins for the famous July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 moonwalk. It was another giant leap for mankind, viewing the awesome images from the giant mirrored observatory, and with more to come.

I can still remember sitting in our family living room watching the grainy television coverage of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, which you can also find at nasa.gov. It was a moment of great national pride and a cause for celebration. As a nation we held our heads high.

So where was the celebration with these awesome images of our universe? The mainstream media such as the New York Times and Washington Post provided the obligatory coverage and pictures, but from my perspective the coverage was more or less dropped after a couple of days and the top headlines were back to the January 6 hearings, inflation, gas prices and such. The galaxy pictures seemed like a meh moment. (I had to look this one up, too. -- ed.)

As far as I was concerned the images from the observatory were cause for a national party and dancing in the streets to celebrate what we are still capable of if we put our minds and dollars to it. Alas, if I am reading the room correctly, we are apparently not in the mood for a national party. Drat.

I made reference earlier to the July 20, 1969, moonwalk. That isn’t the only anniversary worth mentioning. On that same day in 1976 the Viking 1 landed on Mars and we were treated to wonderful images of our solar system neighbor.

We have many reasons in this summer of discontent to look down and out. Thanks to NASA for showing us how to still look up and out. Let’s celebrate!

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For Putin it is about much more than Ukraine

August 1968

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
-- W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden composed August 1968 immediately on hearing of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.  Fearing the eventual spread of subversion brought on by education throughout its empire, the Kremlin was desperate to exterminate Czech ideas about independence and free thought.  Decades later, the Kremlin and its dictatorial boss are consumed by the same fears and so also employ acts of desperation.

There is so much to be said about Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; it cannot all be said in this one posting.  Questions are asked which can be best answered with the benefit of knowing background and context.  For that reason this essay covers the historical issues that are at the root of the conflict.

Why does Putin want to invade, subjugate and control Ukraine?  What does this mean for the United States, Europe, NATO and democracies world-wide?  Why is this happening, and why now? Why does the enormous and well-equipped Russian army seem to be struggling against the much smaller Ukrainian defense?

Why do we in the West and especially here in the United States find these questions so hard to answer, except by saying that we have no idea of what Putin really wants or how far he is prepared to go in this conquest? What should the U.S., Europe and NATO be doing to help Ukraine?

Writing for The Washington Post about a month prior to the invasion, Michael McFaul, America’s ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, described how Putin once explained to then-Vice President Biden that Russians do not think in the same way as Americans.  For Putin, subduing Ukraine is about much more than just Ukraine.  These are McFaul’s words:

“In the United States, the dominant analytic framework for explaining international relations today is realism. This theory assumes that all countries are the same: unitary actors seeking to maximize their power or security through rational calculations in an anarchic world.”

But, McFaul says, Russia is in fact different.  “Putin does not think like us.  He has his own analytic framework, his own ideas and his own ideology – only some of which comport with Western rational realism.”  Ambassador McFaul continues:

“. . .Putin believes that the West unfairly dictated the terms of peace at the Cold War’s end. In Putin’s view, the West imposed liberal restructuring inside Russia, compelled Moscow to sign lopsided arms control treaties, expanded NATO with no regard for Russia’s interests, and — the greatest sin of all — divided the Slavic peoples of the Soviet Union into separate countries and then “systematically and consistently pushed Ukraine to curtail and limit economic cooperation with Russia.” (Actually, it was the leaders of the three Slavic Soviet republics who signed the agreement dissolving the U.S.S.R. in December 1991, not leaders from Washington, London, or Brussels.) Now that Russia is powerful again, Putin is prepared to risk a lot to revise this so-called American imperial order, especially in Europe. He sees this mission as his sacred destiny.”

I struggle to understand how Putin could show enough commitment to something greater than himself to earn the phrase “his sacred destiny.”  But I embrace McFaul’s insight when he adds (emphasis is mine):

“Preventing Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO is therefore only one dimension of Putin’s revisionist agenda. Even if Biden and his NATO allies wanted to offer that concession, Putin won’t be satiated. He will press on to undo the liberal international order for as long as he remains in power. Normalizing annexation, denying sovereignty to neighbors, undermining liberal ideas and democratic societies, and dissolving NATO are future goals.”

Ambassador McFaul observes that Putin feels threatened not only by America’s support for democratic institutions world-wide, but also by the attraction that those institutions hold for populations at large.  He continues by saying (emphasis is his):

“. . .Putin believes that U.S. support for democracy abroad threatens his autocratic rule. During Putin’s reign, most crises in relations with the United States have been triggered not by NATO expansion, but by democratic mobilizations — Putin calls them “color revolutions” — within countries, be it Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, the Arab Spring in 2011, Russia in 2011 and Ukraine in 2014.

“. . .there is no deal to be had between the United States and Russia as long as Putin is in power. U.S. leaders cannot command other societies to stop wanting democracy. Putin will always fear mass protests and feel threatened by democracies, especially successful ones on his border with a shared history and culture such as Ukraine.”

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine late last month shows that he felt the timing to be good.  Europe had tied itself to Russia for fossil fuel energy supplies and so would be unwilling to jeopardize that relationship by supporting Ukrainian resistance to the invasion.  Former U.S. President Trump’s denigrations of NATO had left that alliance leaderless and dispirited.  Ukrainian defenses were poor and could not withstand a quick assault by the Russian army.  Perhaps he had even convinced himself with his own propaganda that the Ukrainian population would welcome an invasion. 

(I find that last point unlikely, but it is a theory that has been offered by some observers.  A variation on that theme was discussed by U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Tefft, who served in that position during both the Obama and Trump administrations, in an interview with the New Republic’s editor Michael Tomasky.  Maybe I am too cynical.)

Putin was wrong on all those theories.

Europe is not ready to roll over for Russia.  Germany – probably the nation with the most exposure to Russian energy exports – has had a dramatic change of attitude.

Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, was candid about the future of German – Russian relations.  Soon after Putin ordered Russia’s army to invade Ukraine, she appeared in a televised interview and was asked about the recent meetings of Chancellor Olaf Scholz with Putin, and of herself meeting with her Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. 

“We were lied to stone-cold,” Baerbock said.  “The chancellor was lied to, I was lied to by the Russian foreign minister, the entire international community was lied to.”

NATO has found itself with disciplined, consistent and pragmatic leadership thanks to U.S. President Joe Biden and his Administration.  Congress is doing its part by developing and passing legislation to provide massive amounts of aid to Ukraine and to the nations that are accepting Ukrainian refugees.  Trump’s disrespect for NATO and his apparent subservience to Putin is in NATO’s rear-view mirror.

As for Putin’s pre-invasion diatribes – distractions, all of it.  Biden recognized that fact as it was happening – remember that he was Putin’s audience as Ambassador McFaul was watching and listening – and he, I think, shared that with European and NATO leaders.  Biden and his Administration publicly revealed Putin’s falsehoods in the weeks leading up to the invasion.

Domestically, too, Putin needs distractions. 

He has been in charge of Russia for over two decades and has little to show for it except a large and well-equipped military.  Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s; the average Russian is far less prosperous than the average Italian.  Putin’s national economic leadership can only be called abysmal.

Putin’s distractions about Ukraine are warped misstatements of history.  (National Geographic politely calls it “tangled history”.)

Released from Russian domination by the end of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians have had three decades’ worth of independence to develop a national identity.  The events of 2014 that have so disturbed Putin show that Ukrainians prefer a government of liberal democracy.

The Ukrainian capacity for resistance has flummoxed Putin and the Russian army.  Ukrainians now have feelings of national community – to use Ambassador Tefft’s preferred phrase – as well as historical reasons to maintain that community.  Putin does not seem able to appreciate this.

The revolution that ended the Russian Empire was followed by a brutal civil war.  Ukrainian kulaks – peasants who were wealthy enough to own good farmland – were a big part of the losing side.  I once knew a fellow who was a descendant of kulaki farmers, and I asked what he wanted to do with his life.  His response was immediate.  “Go kill Russians,” he said.  Why?  “Because I am kulaki,” he replied.

A decade after the civil war, Soviet leader Stalin and the Kremlin government continued to be dissatisfied with the degree of capitulation shown by the Ukrainian population at large.  Their method of choice to produce full compliance with the Soviet formula was an engineered famine – crops and food were forcibly taken from Ukraine.  Millions perished; some portions of eastern Ukraine were depopulated, providing room for Russian settlers transported in by the Kremlin.

With the Russian invasion, Putin has trampled on the treaty made among Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the U.S. that guaranteed Ukraine’s independence in exchange for it giving up all the nuclear weapons it inherited with the demise of the U.S.S.R.

This is not the stuff of history that creates feelings of Ukrainian good will towards Russian domination.

Most of the rest of the world -- liberal democracies in particular -- will look at the lies and betrayals and arrive at this:  International trust in Putin and his government is a thing of the past.

Putin is not a stupid person; he knows these things.  He might not have appreciated the degree to which Ukrainians are attached to their own national identity.  But he wanted to distract the world.

I think the distractions have been revealed for the lies that they are.  Putin might feel a “sacred destiny” for himself, but there is no honor in pursuing a destiny that hurts the innocent and would destroy a nation’s sovereignty.  Ukraine and its people will suffer for one man’s view of his destiny; unfortunately, that cannot be stopped by anyone except Putin himself, and that seems unlikely.  At this point, Putin seems committed to prosecuting a war against Ukraine that targets and terrorizes the non-combatant population.

Putin (and Russia) will be hurt by Western sanctions and absence of trust.  Without money, the Russian military eventually grinds to a halt.  Without trust – and why would Putin be trusted now? – Russia will be severely limited in its international commerce.

Rapidly replacing fossil fuels with non-fossil alternatives will enable Europe and others to be free of Russian coercion and inflated pricing.  Oil, for example, is priced in U.S. Dollars, but its price is determined by the forces of global supply and demand.  Using electric vehicles instead of those with internal combustion engines will defeat the malevolence of petro-states such as Russia that act to create oil price-induced inflation. We have a second chance now to learn what we should have learned from the politically-caused oil supply disruptions of the 1970s.

Vladimir Putin might not think about these things the way that Westerners do.  But Ambassador McFaul makes the sensible point that not all Russians think in the same way as Putin.  Let’s remember that as we oppose Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

For thirty years those in the world who prefer government of democracy to that of autocracy have been comfortable enough to assume that democracy and free markets had become self-fulfilling.  That period has come to an end -- there are others in the world who think differently from us.  Vladimir Putin is the Ogre.  Such creatures are dangerous, but not invincible.

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The things we can live with less of, if need be

by Guy Heston for LeftWingCapitalist

OK, I admit it. When the pandemic first burst upon the scene, I developed a slight case of hoarding.

A trip to the Smith’s supermarket and instead of buying two cans of soup it was six. I don’t really like canned green beans but soon enough we had six of those as well. Not to mention lots of rice, dehydrated mashed potato mix, applesauce and whatever else might be in stock. Our pantry was a bit overstocked.

There was also the trip to Target. Paper towels on the shelves—well let’s get some of those. Soap, hand sanitizer, shampoo, laundry detergent, toothpaste, etc., and soon enough the cupboards were full of it. I tried not to be greedy, but the truth is I overbought and I feel a bit guilty about it. I certainly did my part to contribute to supply chain disruptions.

As the current omicron variant makes its way around the world, I have once again noticed our local market shelves a bit understocked. Maybe it’s because so many workers are calling in sick, maybe it’s continued supply chain disruptions or a combination thereof. I don’t know but offer a four star salute to every supermarket and Target worker in our great nation, as well as all the good people involved in producing and delivering the goods.

But here is something I do know the pandemic has taught me. I can do without certain things, or at least not so much of them.There is a perfectly good cloth towel next to our  kitchen sink and I can therefore get by without so many paper towels. Do I really need to swish my hands with sanitizer every time I touch something? Can I wait until I have a full load to run the washing machine or dishwasher? How many cans of green beans do I need or want?

Don’t get me wrong. I am one of corporate America’s dream consumers, as evidenced by my Target and Macy’s bills (let’s not even get started about Amazon). I am very thankful for it all and feel blessed to have it within a short drive to the supermarket or a click away on the laptop. There are many others in our country and the world who don’t have such easy options.

My grandparents who survived the Great Depression in small town Iowa knew how to get by with just the essentials, including a backyard garden where my grandmother taught me how to pick rhubarb and greens she had grown. I’m not going to be planting rhubarb anytime soon inasmuch as I live in a desert city. But maybe I could take a lesson from my beloved grandma and get by with a little less. Now don’t ask me to give up my Pledge© furniture polish, but perhaps I could cut down a bit and do my part to loosen up the supply chain and control inflation. I am going to give it a try for the time being.

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Guy Heston writes his observations of U.S. lifestyles from the perspective of his own life experiences that have been lived at the intersection of rural and urban America. He is retired from an executive position at a metropolitan public transit company.