"May"

 The photo: flowers outside our entrance at Essex Meadows, welcoming us to spring and to the month.

 

Amidst all the turmoil in the world, it is nice to take a moment to reflect on the month of May, and on our great good luck to be living in this nation at this time.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“May”

May 1, 2026

 

“There is May in books forever;

May will part from Spencer never;

May’s in Milton, May’s in Prior,

May’s in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer,

May’s in all the Italian books: – 
She has old and modern nooks...”

                                                                                                                “May and the Poets,” c.1812

                                                                                                                Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

 

May is named for the Roman goddess Maia, daughter of Atlas and mother of Hermes; thus the right month to celebrate Mothers’ Day, as we will on May 10. Maia was the nurturer of plants and was associated with fertility and springtime. Students, cooped up in dorms and classrooms during the long winter, would, on the first of May, chant: “Hooray! Hooray! Outdoor sporting starts today!” It is a month when newly-blossomed flowers offer thanks for April’s showers. It is the month for graduations – a granddaughter’s from high school this year, along with a granddaughter and grandson from college. It is the month in which my parents were married eighty-eight years ago, and one in which a brother and granddaughter were born. 

 

While the summer solstice arrives on June 21, whiffs of summer appear in May. It is when Connecticut’s state flower, mountain laurel, bursts into bloom, and when lilacs and rhododendrons provide fragrance to a newly-wakened Earth. It is when trees become fully clothed, in their summer-green finery.

 

May Day, the first of May, commemorates the fight for labor rights. Its origin stems from the May 4, 1886 Chicago Haymarket Affair, when a confrontation between striking workers, primarily from the McCormick Harvester Machine Company, and the police turned violent. It was a date usurped by the Soviet Union to display socialist solidarity, industrial achievements and military strength. As an aside, the distress signal “Mayday! Mayday!” has nothing to do with the month. Instead, it originates from the French phrase m’aider! m’aider!, meaning help me.   

 

May is a month celebrated by poets, like Leigh Hunt, in the epigraph above, and a month noted in history: On May 10, 1869 the Golden Spike was driven into a rail tie at Council Bluffs, Utah, completing the first transcontinental railroad. Sixty-two years later, on May 1, 1931, construction on the Empire State – then the world’s tallest building – was completed. After causing the deaths of almost 40 million people over five and a half years, Victory in Europe arrived on May 8, 1945. Nine years later, on May 6, 1954, medical student Roger Bannister, became the first man to run a mile in under four minutes. And on May 25, 1961 President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon. Five years later, on May 30, 1966, the unmanned Surveyor 1 landed on the moon. (It would be another three years and two months – July 20, 1969 – before Neil Armstrong and Aldrin actually walked on the moon.)

 

.............................................................................

 

And, as this essay was begun on a cold March day, I know that one of the best things about May is that it is not March.

"Elitism"

 The photo was taken in the summer of 1951, with me on the far left. My youngest two brothers were yet to be born. We are in the backyard, sitting on a rock on which is mounted a granite carving of mother and child, which my father had sculpted ten years earlier. We are holding examples of my parent’s artwork.

 

I included the photo, as this essay incorporates a little of my personal (and unique) non-elitist upbringing.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Elitism”

October 29, 2025

 

“When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn.”

                                                                                                Mark Twain (1835-1910)

                                                                                                A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1889

 

The word “elite” has roots in both Latin and Old French, meaning to choose. As an adjective it meant “elected,” or “chosen.” While the word appeared briefly in Middle English (1100-1500AD), it only reappeared in the mid-19^th Century, meaning a “choice or select body.” The word is not in Webster’s 1828 dictionary. Wikipedia defines the word: “A small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group.” Nevertheless, when used today to describe the politically and financially powerful, the word is often used as a pejorative. 

 

................................................................................................

 

Just as cream floats to the top of an unhomogenized bottle of milk, the brightest and most talented, left untethered, will rise to the top of society. That is nature’s way. It is when position and power are used to enhance and protect one’s privileged status that corruption ensues. 

 

For most of our Country’s history, elites who ran our financial and industrial businesses, who educated our young at prestigious universities and who governed our Country were drawn from east coast, WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) families – those who were wealthy, educated and civic-minded. They embodied the concept of “noblesse oblige,” but they protected their position through discrimination in education, in business opportunities, and in their social lives. However, time caught up to them. Their wealth, singular education, and political influence began to wane following the Depression and World War II. Like today’s elites, they had little in common with the average American. In a recent issue of The Spectator, Madeline Grant wrote of how WASPs are now in their twilight years, as “meritocracy and modernity” have edged them out. Ms. Grant, in my opinion, is late with her analysis, as I believe this transition has been underway for eighty years. While our nation was better off when merit replaced privilege, today it feels like the same game, but with different players. 

 

I had a seat to this transition. My parents were born into wealth and privilege – my mother’s family in New Haven and my father’s in a Boston suburb. They grew up in large houses with servants, separate summer residences and had traveled abroad. My maternal grandfather, however, fell victim to the Swedish financial swindler Ivar Krueger in 1932, the same year my father left Harvard, after four years but without a degree. A budding sculptor and artist, he had no interest in following his father into the world of finance. My parents met five years later while studying sculpture in Gloucester, Massachusetts and were married in 1938.

 

They raised nine children in an early 19^th Century farm house owned by his parents in circumstances quite different from their upbringings. There was a woodstove in the kitchen for cooking and heating and another in the dining room for heat, along with a fireplace in the living room. A coal furnace furnished hot water and an oil burner in the stairwell provided some heat to the upstairs. Horses were a vestige of their prior lives, but goats and chickens provided milk and eggs. When visiting grandparents, I saw the other side. 

 

When a vacuum develops, as it did with WASPS fading from halls of political power, nature requires it be filled. Washington’s progressive politicians, bureaucrats, along with their Wall Street friends, Hollywood’s hypocrites, and union leaders were ready. In 1962, President Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, which gave the right of collective bargaining to federal employees. Today, two unions represent 930,000 federal employees, or about 15% of total U.S. union membership. In 1960, the average federal employee made about 15% less than a private sector employee in a similar job. Today, the average salary for a college-educated federal employee is higher than his private sector equivalent, and with better benefits. It is unsurprising that three of the five wealthiest counties in the United States are in the Virginia suburbs: Loudon, Falls Church and Fairfax.

 

Everything in Washington has become grander and more expensive, as a new class of “progressive” elites assumed the mantle. They wanted bigger government. The cost to win a seat in the U.S. Senate has risen by 50 to 100 times over sixty years. While accurate statistics are not available, I am informed by AI that “Congress,” in 1960, “was generally more representative of the country’s economic makeup” than it is now. Today, the median net worth of members of Congress exceeds $1 million. Again, and again according to AI, a 2022 analysis found “97 lawmakers [out of 535 members of Congress] or their families traded stocks in industries that could be affected by their committee memberships between 2019 and 2012.” Both major political parties are guilty. Using inside information for personal gain is one area where there appears to be consensus among Party leaders. As well, and fueling charges of elitism, about 17% of Congress have Ivy League degrees, while the comparable number for the U.S. is roughly 0.3%. Turnover in Congress has declined, as re-districting has limited interparty competition. One-Party states have become more common. For example, in New England where about one third of voters are registered Republicans, there are no Republicans in the House of Representatives and only one Republican Senator, Susan Collins of Maine. 

 

It is my belief that we are in the early stages of the diminishing influence of identity politics and the progressive elites who have dominated our schools, big businesses, and government for the last twenty-five years. Today’s Democrats are reminiscent of postbellum Republicans in their maintaining and continuing positions of privilege and political power. In admissions to the country’s oldest and finest universities, progressives replaced meritocracy with a preference for race, diversity and inclusion. (WASPs had shown a preference for their own kind.) In the classroom, they denigrated conservative opinions. They forewent a belief in a universal Judeo-Christian morality and advanced the concept of moral relativism. In Washington they favored politically palatable industries, and they used lawfare to disparage the democratically elected President Trump throughout his first term.

 

Whether Mr. Trump represents the peak of moral relativism and the end of progressive elitism, I don’t know, but my sense is that we are at a turning point. Regardless, in time progressive elitists will, like their WASP predecessors, be relegated to the dust bins of history. But whoever replaces them they, too, will eventually fall into the same trap, for human nature is unchanging. They will use their influence to maintain their positions, bring along their allies and political preferences, and they will foil and delay change. Creative destruction – when driven by merit and where change leads to improvement – is positive, not just in the world of business, but in personal and political lives. When that next batch of elites becomes pervasive, forego accountability, and when they feel irreplaceable – that they are deserving of their unearned positions – it will be time for still another change.

 

If I am correct that the current ephemeral elitism of identity-fixated progressives, hastened by what looks to be the election of the Socialist and anti-Semite Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s next mayor, is being propelled, gradually, out of the ring, we may well be in for a few years of relief. One can hope.

"The 1960s - For Me"

 

The photo is of my wife and me on April 11, 1964.

 

In his forward to his 1977 collection of essays, The Essays of E.B. White, Mr. white wrote: “The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest...Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”

 

Truer words I have rarely read, and the attached is exhibit ‘A.’

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The 1960s – For Me”

October 22, 2025

 

“The sixties produced an archaic mind-set that is

great for imagining a world not yet in existence.”

                                                                                                                Walter Isaacson (1952-)

                                                                                                                Steve Jobs, 2011

 

The third decade of one’s life is, perhaps, the most transformative. One’s first decade is composed of blissful childhood. During one’s second decade, one moves from childhood to adulthood through the challenging teenage years. By one’s third decade, parenting has (mostly) been done; it is the time when one rises (or falls) as an individual, an adult. 

 

For those born in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the 1960s were our time, just as the 2020s are for our grandchildren. It was a chaotic time, one that followed the perceived gentler and more conformist 1950s. 

 

The ‘60s began on a note of hope, with the election of John F. Kennedy as President, the first born in the 20^th Century. Then things fell apart: His assassination in November 1963 was followed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King in April 1968 and two months later of Robert F. Kennedy. As well, civil rights advocates Malcolm X, Medgar Evans and James Chaney, among several others, were killed. It was the decade in which Vietnam divided the country and gave birth to the anti-war movement. That movement led to the 1968 tumultuous Democratic Convention in Chicago and two years later to the Kent State shooting. It was the decade when the Beatles first appeared, when Abbie Hoffman formed the Youth International Party (YIP). It saw the rise of the sexual revolution, with Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinham. And the decade ended on mixed notes – with Woodstock, a four-day rock concert attended by an estimated half a million drugged-up, narcissistic young people. And then, in July 1969, we watched with patriotic pride Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon. 

 

For me, that decade was metamorphic. Born in January 1941, I was twenty in 1961 – an unfocused student who had dropped out of college. I spent the summer of 1961 working in a Canadian nickel mine and then as a lab technician for a metallurgical company outside of Boston.

 

The next ten years changed me. On New Years Eve of 1961 I met Caroline, and my life improved. We were married two years later, and two of our three children were born, one in 1966 and the second in 1968. However, Caroline lost her one remaining grandparent in 1965 and her father in 1969. I lost my three remaining grandparents in 1961, 1963 and 1969, and my father died in 1968. I finished college, completed my military obligation, began a real job. I changed careers in 1967, beginning forty-eight years as a stock broker. 

 

There is no grand design to life. Preparation, diligence and hard work are positive traits, but life is largely serendipitous. In 1960, I could not have predicted how things would change for me, any more than I could foresee how the country would change. There was death, but there was also life. With Caroline as my wife and new-born children, while I mourn the deaths, I look back on the 1960s with fondness.

"The Lesson of Charlie Kirk"

 This has been put together quickly, so I am sure there are errors and omissions. Nevertheless, this is my say.  In certain respects, I feel an interloper in that I did not know much about Charlie Kirk before his assassination. But he was obviously an extraordinary young man. He has been compared to a youthful William Buckley, but Buckley had the advantage of wealth, a prestigious family and a Yale education. Kirk, without those advantages, reached out to young people, to high school and college students, to get them to think about politics and their beliefs. Like Buckley, he eschewed violence. And he was enormously successful in what he did. And he died far too early, a young husband and father, at age 31. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“The Lesson of Charlie Kirk”

September 13, 2025

 

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible

will make violent revolution inevitable.”

                                                                                                                President John F. Kennedy

                                                                                                                Alliance for Progress

                                                                                                                March 13, 1962

 

Until his assassination last Wednesday, I never knew much about Charlie Kirk. But from what I have read, I believe his life and message provided a roadmap for a better Country. He loved to debate ideas and was a passionate believer in free speech. Sadly, he was killed exercising that freedom. 

 

Most everyone agrees that our Country has become divided, that extremism, on both the left and the right, has voided those things most of us have in common – a belief in a nation of infinite possibilities, a belief in the wisdom of our founders and the Constitution they bequeathed us, a Judeo-Christian heritage and its traditions, our history, and an appreciation for the benefits the Enlightenment brought to a darkened world. 

 

Self-righteousness of the Left and Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) have, in my opinion, brought great harm: Political correctness, despite its claim for doing good, censors speech, and inhibits freedom of thought and expression by denigrating and denying opposing opinions. Some words may offend sensitive feelings, but they do not beget violence. Identity politics has divided us by race, religion, and gender. The long-standing motto of the United States, E pluribus unum, seems no longer to apply.

 

How to subdue the flames of partisanship that consume us? Charlie Kirk believed the way forward was through debate, not lectures and certainly not violence. On college campuses, he invited those who differed to express their opinions, to debate him. It was, he believed, a better substitute than anger and violence. Ironically, it was during such a forum he was shot and killed.

 

How do we dampen those flames. The most expedient way to address the intolerance that permeates our politics would be for political leaders to act like responsible adults – to stop vilifying their opponents, and then temperately and respectfully debate the issues, as Kimberley Strassel advised in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. It would be helpful, but probably even less likely than politicians assuming a measure of maturity, if the media, rather than sanctimoniously blaring opinions, focused on news. I don’t know about you, but I have pretty much stopped watching cable and network news.

 

In my opinion, the best long-term answer to the political division and hatred that runs amok and mars our politics is to focus on education. Besides all the critical STEM programs, children, from an early age, should be taught to read history – to know our history but also that of other countries, especially that of Rome and Greece, the world’s first attempts at democracy. For perspective, they should read classical fiction, to imbibe the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, the Brontës, and others who have influenced generations of teachers, philosophers and politicians. They should be taught the history of wars, for sometimes wars must be fought – why they began, how they were conducted and how concluded. They should process all they have learned so that they can form and articulate independently-arrived opinions – with the understanding that a democracy can only function when a citizenry is informed.

 

Sadly, that is not happening. The nation’s report card, the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), yielded the worst fourth grade reading outcomes in twenty years, with 40% of students scoring below basic proficiency. For eighth graders, reading scores hit an historic low, with a third of the students performing below basic proficiency. In the meantime, chronic absenteeism was up, as were grade inflation and misbehavior. Teachers, administrators and their unions should be held accountable.

 

In high schools and colleges, students should be taught the rudiments of debate, and he encouraged them to debate issues respectfully and intelligently. When I was on a high school debate team, we were assigned topics and then told as to whether we would be arguing the affirmative or the negative. And we had to be able to debate both sides. Teachers and professors should leave their opinions in the cloak room, unless they are welcoming disagreement and debate. As Charlie Kirk would say, teachers should then ask: show me why I am wrong?

 

It is that which is the lesson of Charlie Kirk. Be passionate in your beliefs but don’t let passion morph into hatred and violence. Befriend those with whom you disagree. Be willing to listen to what they have to say and be comfortable debating your differences. I hope we never reach a point where we act like sheep, where we all accept, without debate, which policies are best. Neither the Right nor the Left has an exclusive on the correct way forward. But together, in discussion and debate, we should find the route most compatible to most people. Remember our motto; it still fits: Out of many, one.

"End of Identity Politics?"

 Here we are in early December, almost a quarter of the way through the 21^st Century. Growing up in the mid-part of the 20^th Century, I thought I was living in the future. The 19^th Century – the past – was ever-present in grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and older neighbors. The “future,” foretold in books like The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and movies like The War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, provided fanciful entertainment, but hardly accurate predictions.

 

But the world does move on, and change is one constant we can count on.  Politically things change. The Party of Lincoln lost the black vote. The Party of segregation became the party of civil rights. Today we are going through another political change, as the Party of the working class is becoming the Party of elites, and of those dependent on government, and the mindless woke. And the Party of Lincoln, the Party of opportunity, is beginning once again to make inroads among the nation’s minorities.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“End of Identity Politics?”

December 2, 2024

 

“If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of ‘race’ or ‘gender’ alone, then by the exact

same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. You see how

this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.”

                                                                                                  Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

                                                                                                  Letters to a Young Contrarian, 2001

 

Mr. Trump’s victory on November 5^th may have marked the end of identity politics as we know it. Economic class, the election showed, mattered more than ethnicity, race or gender. Identity politics is based on the natural tendency for people of a specific race, ethnicity, gender, cultural, or religious group to band together, in friendship and to rectify past injustices. But that tendency has been employed and advantaged by politicians who, with the assistance of allies in the media, have divided people into oppressors and oppressed. Identity politics has led to an absence of focus on issues more relevant to individuals. 

 

The election showed that the American public is receptive to merit being the determinant to earned rather than “deserved” reward. DEI and ESG have fallen from favor. With the election, they fell further, defeated by common sense and real-world issues like the border, inflation, crime, disarray overseas, and excessive government intrusion and spending. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist historian, wrote in the November 21 issue of American Greatness of culture wars: “The age of flashing pronouns, renaming iconic landmarks, statue toppling, trashing the dead, vandalizing with impunity the campus library, or spouting anti-Semitic venom is passing.”

 

But the going is sluggish. While a CBS News/YouGov poll found 59% of American adults approve of how the Trump team is preparing its return to the White House, the Progressive Left is in denial about the election, as they continue to genuflect at the altar of Wokeness. Many believe that America remains racist, a society divided between victims and victimizers – that its history must be expunged and re-written; and that, for the nation’s redemption, taxpayers should continue to fund government departments of diversity, equity and inclusion. And they feel convinced that Mr. Trump symbolizes all that is wrong with the nation. But who is out of touch with America’s electorate? Mike Gonzalez and Armen Tooloee wrote in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: “Donald Trump’s most effective campaign ad featured the tagline, ‘Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’”

 

In any event, is it accurate to call Mr. Trump a racist, sexist, bigot? Piers Morgan, in the November 23 issue of The Spectator, noted that he received “so many new votes from black, Latino, female, Jewish and Muslim voters, and celebrates by dancing on stage to the Village People’s gay anthem ‘YMCA’.” Empirical evidence suggests the answer to the question is no.

 

Democrats have created a bell-bar approach toward their Party – the elite (the media, the entertainment world, college professors and administrators, coastal tech and Wall Street billionaires) on one side, and those financially dependent on government on the other. It is a policy that ignores working class people, including legal immigrants, those who had once been the backbone of their Party. It is policy that downplays the role of aspiration, dedication, and effort – traits that lead to economic success. Having lived in Connecticut for almost sixty years, I have witnessed this change – wealthy enclaves and country clubs that were once dominated by Republicans have become bastions of Democratic group-think.

 

Politicians have long campaigned by compartmentalizing the electorate. The Marxist Left Review, a semi-annual publication, in August 2021, defined the term: “Identity politics is a set of ideas and practices that aim to build recognition of and expand representation for particular identity groups” to elevate them “to moral and political pre-eminence.” The second half of the 20^thCentury saw the emergence of such large-scale political movements: women’s rights, Black Civil Rights, gay and lesbian liberation, native American movement. They were all, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, based on claims about injustice having been done to them. And their claims were, largely, valid. 

 

But while these issues were imperative sixty years ago, the world has moved on. Those legitimate arguments have morphed into demands that male athletes be allowed to compete in women’s sports, that tampon dispensers be placed in men’s rooms, that school children should be allowed to take hormone-altering drugs without parent permission, and universities where students are fearful of expressing conservative opinions because of retaliation from professors and other students.

 

Despite what we read, see and hear in and on mainstream media and despite claims by Progressives of disinformation from conservative social media outlets, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia have been in retreat. Are there still bigots? Of course. There always will be, but they are less ubiquitous than before. Given that the percentage of votes cast for Mr. Trump among blacks, Hispanics and youth increased suggests that the United States is approaching the goal which Martin Luther King sought – that the color of one’s skin is less important than the content of one’s character. The election was an affirmation that merit, aspiration, effort and ability are critical to success, and that affirmative action is yesterday’s answer to yesterday’s problem. The election’s outcome found that economic class was more critical to voters than race, gender or ethnicity. The U.S. is becoming more of a melting pot.

 

People should be judged by ability, effort and their accomplishments. We are each an individual. Today’s identity politics has led to racial and gender discrimination. It was the excuse Nazis used to persecute Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, and it is what Chinese Communists do today to tyrannize Uyghurs. Its ugliness is seen in anti-Semitism on college campuses. And it is what led the ICC (International Criminal Court) to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant. 

 

I hope my optimism about witnessing the dying embers of identity politics is not pollyannish – that its setback is not just temporary. On February 18, 1958 Senator John F. Kennedy spoke at Loyola College Annual Alumni dinner in Baltimore: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our responsibility for the future.”

 

Read and re-read Christopher Hitchens’ wise remarks that preface this essay. Once anger over the election’s outcome has subsided and common sense returned, cooler heads should prevail. In an interview with Jason Riley in last Wednesday’s The Wall Street Journal, Shelby Steele said, the election was “…a vote for individualism over group identity.” And that it was “… a real note of progress for black America politically.” Aspiration, ability, effort are not characteristics exclusive to one’s gender, race, or ethnicity. But they have not been meted out equally, which explains differences in outcomes. Each of us is unique. Government should support the concept of equal opportunity, and individuals should be encouraged to take advantage of their God-given talents. Merit, regardless of who the individual is, should be the deciding factor in college admission and job offers. If we do, we will put “paid” to the belief in identity politics, at least as we know it; and then we can concentrate on today, the future and new problems that confront us.

"Age and the Passing of the Torch"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Age and the Passing of the Torch”

September 23, 2023

 

“At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel,

at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty a nothing at all.”

                                                                                                                                Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658)

                                                                                                                                Spanish writer and philosopher

                                                                                                                                The Art of Worldly Wisdom, 1647

 

For Queen Elizabeth, 1992 was her annus horribilis. I had my own – far less significant – diem horribilis last Sunday. Unlike Elizabeth’s year, some of what happened to me was, surely, age related. I had tested positive for Covid that morning. Then, feeling groggy and with slurred speech, I fell twice. Apart from a bumped head, bruised hip and ego, no damage was done. Nevertheless after the second fall, we called health services. Shortly thereafter I was taken by ambulance to a clinic and later to Middlesex Hospital. Tests showed no signs of a stroke or brain injury, and on Tuesday I came home, with a cane but that was because of the bruised hip.

 

The effects of age are not necessarily chronological, and they differ greatly from one individual to another. My father died at 58, while his father died one day shy of 90 and his mother at 92. While they became physically frail, both had their wits until they died. Cancer, heart disease, and senility are more common as one ages. Muscles lose tone and bones become brittle. But there are those like Henry Kissinger who are physically able and mentally alert at 100. Many people don’t let age stop them.  The Wall Street Journal, last June 25^th, published an article, “Why High-Powered People are Working in Their 80s.” In it they quoted data from the Census Bureau that roughly 650,000 Americans over 80 were working last year. My younger brother who turns 81 in October continues to work as a partner in an investment firm. My father-in-law went to work most every day as an admiralty lawyer, until he died at 77. Old age, mental acuity, and employment are not incompatible. For some, but not for all.

 

While Republicans have been vocal about the President’s physical and mental failings – based on visible evidence of dementia – the question of age has now been raised by Independents and Democrats. An August CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that “roughly three-quarters of Americans say they’re seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence…” On the other hand, Alex Keyssar of the Harvard Kennedy School takes a more nuanced view. According to the July 17, 2023 issue of the Harvard Gazette, he “believes Democrats who cite age as a major election concern are probably really expressing ‘a desire for energetic leadership, a force for new ideas, new spirit, and new energy.’” Perhaps. But it seems more likely that the Democrat leadership is concerned that fibs, gaffes, and stumbles now define Mr. Biden – not good for his re-election chances, especially when his Vice President’s approval numbers are lower than his.

 

With Donald Trump currently leading the battle for his Party’s nomination, Republicans are caught in the same vise; thus a rising, bipartisan, interest in younger leaders. At his January 21, 1960 inauguration, John F. Kennedy spoke of “passing the torch” to a new generation. That happened. Eisenhower was the last President born in the 19^th Century. Franklin Roosevelt was fifty when he was elected in 1932, the first President younger than my grandfather. Kennedy was elected at age forty-three, the first President younger than my father. Bill Clinton was the first President elected younger than me. My grandfather, father and I were all in our 50s when the nation first elected Presidents younger than we were. Today, our three children are all in their 50s.  It is time to pass the torch. Following a recent TV interview in which President Biden touted his ‘wisdom’ and ‘experience’ as reasons to vote for him, Bonnie Wong, director of the neuropsychology program at Mass. General, allowed that there is some validity to the idea that with age comes wisdom. On the other hand, there are those who feel differently: H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote in his 1919 book Prejudices: Third Series, “The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” Age does bring perspective, but drifting minds are not compatible with wisdom. Nevertheless, it now appears that the 2024 election will consist of two, deeply flawed, old men, both accused of corruption and neither wise. We can picture them “yodeling,” as Lance Morrow wrote in Thursday’s The Wall Street Journal, “across the valley at one another: ‘Not guilty! Not guilty!’” Or, as P.G. Wodehouse more colorfully put it in The Inimitable Jeeves, the prospect resembles “…when Aunt is calling Aunt, like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps...” This is not a prospect most Americans want.

 

It is not just the last two Presidents – both running for re-election – who are old. The average age in the U.S. Senate today is 65. Political leadership in Washington resembles the Soviet Union’s Politburo of 1982 when the average age was 70. But age, alone, is not the issue. We all know octogenarians and even nonagenarians who are mentally alert and physically spry. While he was writing of women, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words are universally applicable: “The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.” Having cognizant-alert, elderly advisors has merit, as they can provide a sense of continuity and, despite Mencken’s warning, offer wisdom to new generations of more energetic politicians who will listen to, respond to and be honest with the people.

 

We who are older must adapt to life’s challenges. As J. Alfred Prufrock says, in T.S. Eliot’s eponymous poem: “I grow old…I grow old. / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” But that does not mean that our political parties should make the American people choose between one old man who is riven by an oversized personal ego and who speaks hatefully of those who cross him, and a second, even older man who trips boarding airplanes, who cannot speak without a teleprompter, and who utters non sequiturs that baffle his audience and his advisors.

 

Watching President Biden makes one wonder what it would have been like to observe President Woodrow Wilson after his October 1919 stroke? That was not permitted, as his wife and doctor kept him hidden from prying reporters. That cannot be done today. However, the White House keeps the President’s appearances to a minimum, and mainstream media, out of deference to the office, remains mute about Mr. Biden’s deteriorating mental capabilities. But our allies and enemies are aware of what is happening. Not a good look for the most powerful nation on earth. Age matters, but what is most important is how one ages. In the U.S. today, it is time to pass the porch.

"Hope"

 It is fitting that an essay on ‘hope’ should be sent during the week we remember the 79^th anniversary of the Normandy invasion, for it was hope for its success that filled the hearts of the millions of those who for most of a decade had lived under the boot of Nazism.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Hope”

June 9, 2023

 

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.

Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”

                                                                                                                                Helen Keller (1880-1968)

                                                                                                                                Optimism, 1903

 

Hope is a verb and a noun. It reflects one’s optimism and posits one’s positive, achievable goals. It should not be confused with Walter Mitty-like grandiose dreams. It speaks of the possible. Hope has been around as long as humans. Speaking to the Corinthians five decades after the death of Jesus, Paul spoke of the need for faith, hope, and charity. Helen Keller, blind and deaf since age two, wrote the words quoted in the rubric above while a student at Radcliffe. Two months before his death, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in Washington, D.C.: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” 

 

Politically, hope has been absent in the U.S. for almost a generation. From the end of World War II until the assassination of President Kennedy, America was filled with promise. We faced challenges. Bomb shelters were built for fear of nuclear annihilation, and the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik lent concern that the Soviets were leading in the space race. But our nation’s response was positive, and we felt safe. On May 25, 1961, in a speech before a joint session of Congress, President Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade – a goal the nation achieved when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon’s surface on July 20, 1969. Sadly, Kennedy did not live to see this, but the U.S., during those years, had a can-do spirit, driven by admiration for Country, self-confidence, and hope.

 

In the second half of the 1960s, with Vietnam, student riots, and a drug-infested and sexually voyeuristic Woodstock, hope dissipated.  Malaise set in during the 1970s, as the country experienced Watergate and the first ever resignation of a President, the ignoble evacuation of Saigon, an oil shock, inflation, prolonged recession, and a stock market that treaded water over ten years. The confidence we felt in those post-War years was gone. But by summer’s end 1982 a feeling of relief spread across the land, and the stock market began to rise. The dragon of inflation had been slain by Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, at the cost of a short but steep recession. Ronald Reagan, a gifted speaker filled with optimism and confident in America’s future, had been elected President in 1980. His “morning in America” persisted into the 1990s, only to be impaled by a tech bubble and the attack on September 11, when Islamic extremists flew four airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing almost 3000 civilians.  

 

In the ensuing twenty-two years, with credit and bank crises, spiraling debt, inflation, and political division, we have never regained that sense of confidence and hope. Many thought the election of Barack Obama signaled such a return. But unfortunately, he chose to deepen racial divide. Today the nation is filled with anger, despair, and a sense of helplessness. Even Moms for liberty is seen as a hate group. We are divided by race, gender, and sexual orientation. Identity has replaced merit. Equality of outcome is deemed more equitable than equal opportunity. Urban politicians, dependent on donations from teachers’ unions, refuse to offer school choice to their cities’ poorest residents. For too many, persistent and rising welfare benefits lead to dependency. Instead of two-parent families, it is said to “take a village” to raise a child.

 

Police are under attack and crime has risen. Our southern border is porous. Cities like San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia have lost not only their charm but their livability, as stores are shuttered and the homeless defecate on streets. A sense of impending doom has descended on the nation’s young, as climate scaremongers say we face an existential crisis, if we persist in using gas stoves and do not drive EVs. Drug use is up, as are suicides, especially among the young. Teachers’ unions have become the most important financial backers of Democrat politicians, yet student scores keep declining, affecting most seriously the poorest in inner cities. Blacks are told to express their grievances, that their fate is to be a victim, dependent on government largesse. Whites are told they are oppressors. The ladder that allows for ascension up the socio-economic steps has been yanked away by the political left. 

 

One consequence has been a decline in birthrates, which, more than climate change, pandemics, or AI, threatens mankind. Exponential economic growth depends upon exponential growth in the labor force. Fertility rates below 2.1, needed to maintain a population, mean an aging and, ultimately, a declining population. Some of that can be made up with immigrants, but, as Malcolm Collins wrote recently in The Telegraph, those in the U.S. “…often don’t realize the pools from which they draw (Central America, South America, and the Caribbean) collectively fell below the sustainable rate in 2019.” This is a problem for the West. Mr. Collins added: “Western countries are like farmers draining an evaporating pool to keep their crops healthy, and ignoring the situation because the pond is unlikely to totally dry up in their lifetimes.”

 

Government, not individual initiative, is seen as the answer to all problems. “We have to paint a dark, bad picture because that’s what justifies more spending,” said Robert Doar, who once ran social services for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an interview in last weekend’s The Wall Street Journal. Joe Biden projects the image of a doddering old man. Donald Trump, a man I supported twice for President, looks backward, focused on retribution, rather than a brighter future. E Pluribus Unum, the 1782 motto of the United States, is no longer applicable, replaced by the metaphor of a salad bowl, which emphasizes differences, rather than what we have in common. 

 

But the future is never clear. Habits and attitudes change. What climate fear mongers overlook is the ability of species to adapt, and for the Earth to adjust through, for example, what is known as the Iris Effect, which exerts “a significant negative climate feedback that stabilizes tropical temperatures and limits climate sensitivity.” This according to Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi, writing in the February 2022 issue of Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences. They were quoted by Andy Kessler in the June 5, 2023 issue of The Wall Street Journal. Cyanobacteria, one of the earliest known forms of life, has been around, according to microbiologists, for 3.5 billion years. Ctenophores date back 700 million years, Sponges 600 million years, Horseshoe Crabs and the Elephant Shark over 400 million years. Man first evolved in Africa between two and six million years ago, during the late Cenozoic Era. He has lived through myriad temperature changes. Adaption, not scare tactics, should be part of any environmental plan.

 

Man is almost infinitely resourceful and adaptive. He is aspirant, and, when allowed by the political system under which he lives, he is creative, and innovative. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, in the depths of the 1930s Depression, in the early days of World War II, at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, in the jungles of Vietnam, after the attack on 9/11, and during the credit crisis of 2008-9, it was hard to be confident of America’s future. But those earlier periods – the two decades after World War II and the 1980s-1990s – showed what was possible. We need leaders today who are honest about our challenges, not issuing canards to deflect the truth. We need leaders who, unafraid to acknowledge our faults, emphasize our goodness. We need leaders who offer hope, not fear. At the start of the Civil War, but in a posthumously published poem, Emily Dickinson wrote; “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul/ And sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”

"Self-doubt"

 What the Durham trial has exposed is not getting the press it and the people deserve. The decision by the Clinton campaign to deliberately instigate a false story of Russian collusion by Donald Trump – no matter what one thought of him – was the dirtiest trick ever played in Presidential politics. It tells us what sort of a President Mrs. Clinton would have been. Why is this not getting more coverage? Can you imagine the headlines if roles were reversed?

 

Sydney M. Williams

30mBokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Self-Doubt”

May 24, 2022

 

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

                                                                                                                                Robert Hughes (1938-2012)

                                                                                                                                Art critic

                                                                                                                                Time magazine, June 10, 1996

 

Self-doubt is usually considered a negative. And when it dominates one’s activities it is. In Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare has Lucio speak to Isabella: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might win, by fearing to attempt.” A recent article in National Review, signed by 59 conservatives, was titled “America’s Crisis of Self-Doubt:” “Our traditional values of fair play, free speech and religious liberty are trampled by inflamed ideologies determined to impose their will by force and fear.” That is all true, but the real problem is the over-confidence of the woke who, with religious zeal, see society “as archaic, unfair, and racially biased.” As a governor of impetuous behavior, self-doubt is a positive.

 

Questioning one’s beliefs can lead to changing one’s opinions, or to strengthening one’s resolve. Self-doubt is akin to skepticism; the former is the questioning – not the dismissal – of one’s abilities, while the latter seeks proof of an allegation. Recall the story of Jesus and the Apostle Thomas, known as “Doubting Thomas.” He refused to believe in the resurrected Jesus until he could see and feel Jesus’ crucifixion wounds. As a skeptic, he wanted evidence to justify his belief. Abraham Lincoln was plagued with self-doubt regarding his ability to manage the Civil War, yet doubt caused him to work harder and to achieve a better understanding. John F. Kennedy had self-doubt as to whether he could live up to the expectations of his father and the memory of his dead brother. But he gathered inner strength, as doubts faded and confidence was restored. More recently, Elon Musk’s evolvement from a “moderate Democrat” to a “moderate Republican” was a consequence of doubting his loyalties to a party that hewed too far to the left.

 

Self-doubt, when one is weighing competing political policy options, is healthy, as it allows one to use logic, reason and common sense to overcome skepticism before reaching a conclusion. Extremists, who see no need for self-doubt, have taken over our politics, especially on the left. In an interview with the Claremont Review of Books, Norman Podhoretz was quoted regarding the struggle within our country’s culture: “One side…believes that America is a force for good in itself,” while the other side claims, “America is evil in itself…” As neither party tries to understand the other, compromise is impossible. Quoting Daniel Bell, Barton Swaim wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal: “The tendency to convert concrete issues into ideological problems, to invest them with moral color and emotional charge is to invite conflicts which can only damage a society.” A plethora of moral certitude and a lack of self-doubt is common among those on the left dubbed “virtucrats” by Joseph Epstein – a term he defined in his 2002 book Snobbery: The American Version as “any man or woman who is certain that his or her political views are not merely correct but deeply, morally righteous in the bargain.” – “Often wrong, but never in doubt,” defines the path they follow.

 

Self-doubt would have questioned the claim that on-line radicalization and racism were the sole motivations behind Payton Gendron’s decision to kill ten black people in Buffalo last week. Self-doubt would have asked: Did not mental illness also play a role? Why have politicians left the mentally ill to live on streets in cities like San Francisco, Lon Angeles, New York, St. Louis and Austin? Self-doubt would have been a good thing for members of the media who accepted without question the now debunked Trump Russian collusion story, a story created by the Clinton campaign in 2016. Self-doubt may have prevented the Biden Administration’s embarrassing creation of the Orwellian-named Disinformation Governance Board, which has now, thank God, been abandoned. Media and political leaders could learn from William Butler Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming:” “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

When I was in high school, members of the debate team were assigned which side of the resolution to argue. If assigned the affirmative, the next week we might have to argue the negative. While the purpose was to hone one’s debating skills, these guidelines served to remind us that there are two sides to issues. Being able to see two sides – a trait abetted by self-doubt – plays a vital role in composing intelligent and defensible opinions and may change or reinforce one’s beliefs.

 

My purpose, in this essay, is not to suggest that fervency in one’s beliefs is wrong, but that opinions should be based on empiricism, logic and common sense. Self-doubt plays a role in better understanding the issues we face, and it is always most wanted where it is least exercised. It is the antithesis of self-doubt, the religious-like zealotry of extremists, that is the most dangerous. Mainstream media does a good job of calling out the far-right, but they ignore the self-anointed far-left who see themselves as the rightful determiners as to what to read, speak and believe. That is where danger lurks.