A more factual synopsis of the Reagan presidency might read like this: that Reagan was a transformative figure in American history, but his real revolution was one of public relations-meets-politics and not one of policy. He combined his small-town heartland upbringing with a skill for storytelling that was honed on the back lots of Hollywood into a personal narrative that resonated with a majority of voters, but only after it tapped into something darker, which was white middle-class resentment of 1960s unrest. His story arc did become more optimistic and peaked at just the right moment, when Americans were tired of the “malaise” of the Jimmy Carter years and wanted someone who promised to make the nation feel good about itself again. But his positive legacy as president today hangs on events that most historians say were to some great measure out of his control: an economic recovery that was inevitable, especially when world oil prices returned to normal levels, and an end to the Cold War that was more driven by internal events in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe than Americans want to acknowledge. His 1981 tax cut was followed quickly by tax hikes that you rarely hear about, and Reagan’s real lasting achievement on that front was slashing marginal rates for the wealthy—even as rising payroll taxes socked the working class. His promise to shrink government was uttered so often that many acolytes believe it really happened, but in fact Reagan expanded the federal payroll, added a new cabinet post, and created a huge debt that ultimately tripped up his handpicked successor, George H W Bush. What he did shrink was government regulation and oversight, which critics have linked to a series of unfortunate events from the savings-and-loan crisis of the late 1980s to the subprime mortgage crisis of the late 2000s. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 helped paper over some less noble moments in foreign policy, from trading arms for Middle East hostages to an embarrassing retreat from his muddled engagement in Lebanon to unpopular adventurism in Center America. The Iran-Contra scandal that stemmed from those policies not only weakened Reagan’s presidency when it happened, but it arguably undermined the respect for future presidents for the Constitution because he essentially got away with it. Over the course of eight years, the president that some want to enshrine on Mount Rushmore rated just barely above average for modern presidents in public popularity. He left on a high note—but only after two years of shifting his policy back to the center, seeking peace with the Soviets rather than confrontation, reaching a balanced new tax deal with Democrats, and naming a moderate justice to the Supreme Court. It was not the Reaganism invoked by today’s conservatives.

On this day in 1469, the great political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli was born. I’ve been amazed over a very long time that a lot of people seem to be under the impression that he was some kind of bad guy like Vlad the Impaler. I’ve always found The Prince to be the work of a wise older man just explaining how the world works. We tend to think of the recent history of the British monarchy where power (such as it is) flows peacefully from father to son. But in Machiavelli’s time, a monarch was much more likely to be someone who stole the throne. It is the first important contribution to realpolitik.

There is most likely another side to The Prince. Machiavelli was an important government official in the Florentine republic up into his forties. Even though he had much success after that (most notably as a comedic playwright), he saw those earlier times as the best of his life. The Prince was likely intended as an implicit argument in favor of republicanism. So maybe it is all of us who are the cynical ones and to him it was obvious that he was lampooning the monarchy by showing the best case for the latter.

What Machiavelli brings to my mind is the duty of citizenship. Here in America, we mostly think our republic is something that we are entitled to. It simply is and we get the benefits of it. But that’s not true. It is something we constantly have to fight for. And if we don’t, it will devolve into an oligarchy, as it pretty much has. As Chris Hedges discussed in Death of the Liberal Class, it used to be that the upper classes (minus the rich) paid for their privilege by managing the state and not letting the oligarchs take over. But they have really fallen down on the job and now have almost no more power than the lower classes. Now our only hope is that all the citizens will bind together and use their democratic power, although even if that happened (doubtful), I’m not sure the oligarchs would allow it. Things haven’t changed much since Machiavelli was writing. He sees America today as clearly as he saw Medici Florence then.

Happy birthday Niccolo Machiavelli!

I am hopelessly mono-language. But I find I am constantly dealing with other languages, so I always have my Latin, Spanish, and French dictionaries close by. And, of course, I use Google Translate because it is one of the very greatest things about the internet. Often, it is so good that I don’t even have to use the books. About the only time it isn’t enough is when I’m translating very old Spanish or French, which is more common than you might think.

But I am constantly amazed at just how terrible Google Translate is at detecting languages. It basically never gets it right. I understand that it has a lot of languages, and if I entered large chunks of text, it would doubtless do a better job. But it really is pathetic.

I took a little bit of Horce’s famous Ode iii.2, “solvat phaselon; saepe Diespiter.” I don’t think you have to be a genius to realize that this is Latin. But what did Google Translate think it was? Afrikaans. Really. And not only that! It translated it into English as, “solvat phaselon; saepe Diespiter.” That is to say: it didn’t recognize a single word as Afrikaans, but it still said it was an Afrikaans phrase. If I go in and manually select “Latin,” it translates the phrase correctly, “pay to the boat; often Jupiter.”

Now if we put that English phrase into Google Translate and ask it to translate into Afrikaans, we get, “skenk aan die boot; dikwels Jupiter.” If you are really drunk and you squint really hard, that kind of looks like the original Latin. So I’m willing to admit that the Google Translate auto-detection is as good as a drunk squinter.

The system is just as bad with obvious phrases. Put in “cri de coeur” and Google announces, “Romanian.” And again, it translates it into English as, “cri de coeur”! But this time the English, “cry of heart” gets translated into Romanian as, “strigăt de inimă.” That doesn’t look anything like it, although it does have the same “de,” so there’s that.

I suspect what is really going on is that the program to do auto-detect just doesn’t work very hard. But you would think that for default English speakers, it would try French and German first. I get that Latin might be the last thing it checks. But not getting “cri de coeur” is really amazing.

I like to think that I don’t lose perspective on things. Despite my rants and ravings, I know what is important and what is not. And yesterday, a really important article flashed across my screen. It was by Joseph Stromberg over at Vox, How to Use Science to Win at Rock-Paper-Scissors. You may be one of those ignorant people who think that the game is random. But I know from years of experience that people are very poor random rock-paper-scissors generators. Bad players (which in practice means most players) repeat the same kinds of patterns over and over again.

There was one bit of news in the article that blew me away: there is an official league for rock-paper-scissors competitors. It is called the US Association of Rock, Paper, Scissors. I’m sure that these people would crush me like a pair of scissors. After all, I don’t take this stuff any more seriously than I do any of the hundreds of other odd fascinations I suffer from. And clearly, these are very serious people because some of them have actually systematized the game.

The only absolute rule that I knew, was the first one they mentioned: throw paper first. Actually, they say that you should throw paper first against guys. This is because guys tend to subconsciously think that nothing is as strong as the rock. This is not my thinking at all. Rock is the default throw. The first time that people go, they are kind of disoriented. There’s the whole counting thing (1-2-3…) and then you have to change the shape of your hand. It isn’t natural. So a lot of people panic and do nothing, which is the same as throwing rock.

The second rule is quite clever, although they do a bad job of explaining it. The essence of this rule is that people predict the future by looking at the past—but it works differently for winners and losers.If they just lost to rock, they will assume (without knowing it) that they are going to get rock again; so they throw paper. But if they just won with rock, they will go with it again because they assume their opponent will throw the same thing. So if you just lost to rock, throw paper; if you just won with rock, through scissors. And when you win, laugh maniacally. (Of course, if you both do this, the last winner will win again.)

The third rule is a classic from statistics. If you toss a quarter a hundred times, there is a very good chance that it will come up heads six times in a row. People’s ideas about randomness do not brook much actual randomness. The truth is that three heads in a row will happen one out of eight times when you toss a coin three times. So it isn’t surprising that most people won’t, for example, throw scissors three times in a row. So if you opponent has thrown scissors twice, they are very unlikely to throw scissors a third time.

The article provides a fourth rule, but I think it’s a pass: close your eyes. This is based upon one study, so make of it what you will. There is a related issue, however: decide what you are going to throw before you start! Not doing that is what makes most players bad.

Of course, all of these rules will only improve your chances. I haven’t been able to find any competition results, but I assume that players aren’t doing more than a couple percent better than others. So if anyone wants to do a rock-paper-scissors with you to decide something, make sure you make it the best out of a hundred.

Afterword

There are many freaks like me. That is why some people developed the game rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock. It has more interesting rules like, “Scissors decapitate lizard” and, “Paper disproves Spock.”

On this day in 1895, the great lyricist Lorenz Hart was born. I can safely say that he is my favorite lyricist. He wrote very clever and complex and playful lyrics. For example, in “Manhattan,” he wrote, “The city’s clamor can never spoil; the dreams of a boy and goil.” Throughout the rest of the song, he rhymes with “boy,” so that reversal really works. Of course, this kind of stuff doesn’t exactly distinguish him from Cole Porter. But Hart’s work is wedded to a sadly romantic view of the world that devastates me as much today as ever.

Hart was a tragic figure. It’s well known that he was gay and an alcoholic. But according to Stephen Holden, he was also very short and considered himself ugly and unlovable. He was so unstable in his life that Richard Rodgers would generally write the music for shows first and then trap Hart in a room and force him to write the lyrics. I’ve always thought this is why his music from this period was better than his work with Hammerstein, although I understand that most people don’t feel that way. Regardless, Rodgers was the great technician and Hart the tortured artist.

Still, despite all his drinking, he still managed to outlive F Scott Fitzgerald by four years. And when he died, it was from exposure, not liver failure. (Admittedly, the exposure came about because he was drunk.) But I don’t know what would have happened to him had he lived. Rodgers had given up on him. But I’d like to think he would have made peace with his demons and gone on to be happy and productive. Or at least happy.

There are two people who I think have done the most with the Rodgers & Hart songbook: Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. So let’s listen to Sinatra do “I Could Write a Book” from Pal Joey:

And here is Fitzgerald doing “Dancing On The Ceiling”:

Happy birthday Lorenz Hart!

Afterword

As great as they are, I’m not much of either of the following singers, but this is just too wonderful not to share. Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga do “The Lady is a Tramp,” even using Sinatra’s old “chick” variation:

It is May Day: the original Labor Day. In fact, it still is International Workers’ Day. It is the day that we celebrate the the working class. Is it any wonder that in America we are anywhere from a bit queasy to hysterically fearful of the term “working class”? Generally, people say this is because Americans don’t think in terms of class. Or as conservatives like to say: the poor are just the future rich. These are nice thoughts and talking points, but I’m afraid that the truth is darker and simpler: the American ethos so devalues work that it is thought to be a terrible thing to be part of the working class as a final destination.

Thus we get the fetishization of the middle class. Because in the United States the middle class is no class. Ask a rich person what class they are in and they will usually say, “Middle class,” but sometimes say, “Upper-middle class.” I remember reading an interview with Bill Gates when he was by far the richest man in the world. He was asked, “Do you consider yourself rich?” And as I recall, he responded, “Well, I’m certainly not middle class.” This was just before he built his $63 million mansion with change he found under the sofa cushions. It used to be the poor would claim they were “lower-middle class,” but times are so bad they (We!) seem to have given up the pretense.

But by not embracing the working class that the vast majority of us are in, we yield a great deal of ideological ground. It has allowed us to go on an almost four decade long adventure to take from the poor and give to the rich. And it doesn’t seem like there is any end in sight. The “liberal” party wants to slightly raise the minimum wage and tax the rich just a tiny bit more. The conservative party wants to abolish the minimum wage and eliminate any form of progressive taxation. This is why things are so screwed up in America: the framing of our thinking is completely skewed.

Here’s an example. A year and a half ago on Labor Day, Eric Cantor tweeted this out:

I have no problem with starting a business. I am involved with three right now that I’m part owner of. But Cantor isn’t really celebrating that. He’s pushing the idea that somehow starting your own business is more valid. And not just that: starting your own successful business. The truth is that the working class is filled with people who have previously had or currently do have their own businesses—successful and not. But Cantor isn’t celebrating them. Actually, he’s not celebrating anyone really. He’s just trying to co-opt the only official recognition we have in this country of the existence of the working class. He is trying to insult the entire working class without being obvious about it.

I think that May Day is a good day to think about our places in the world as workers. I think most of us are dissatisfied with our positions. Part of that—a large part—is the pay and working conditions. But there is also a substantial part that is simply that our society doesn’t seem to value what we do. One of our parties gives us an insincere tip of the hat and the other party can barely stop from disemboweling us. But stay strong, because we do matter. They would be lost without us. And at some point they may learn that.

Happy May Day!

David Frum tries to answer an interesting question, Why Gun-Rights Backers Win While Other Conservative Causes Lose. He mentions a very things but basically he comes down to the idea that gun rights are basically the only conservative issue that is populist in the sense of not explicitly helping the rich.[1] I think there’s much to that. And I think this is something that the Democratic Party ought to take note of.

The truth is for the white male contingent that make up the hardcore gun rights folk, the Democrats don’t offer anything that they can get excited about. Democratic social policy doesn’t appeal to them because, being white and male and straight, they are not a minority, even if they whine about “white racism.” And Democratic economic policy is only “not quite as bad as the Republicans!” Republicans offer then not only gun rights but the idea that their issue is important. They aren’t just a bunch of yahoos with guns, they are the modern equivalent of George Washington!

There is perhaps an even more important issue related to the way the Republicans pander to this small and rapidly shrinking slice of the American electorate. The Republican Party is dependent upon a couple of coalitions: single issue voters like the people in the anti-choice movement. By and large, these people are not well served by Republican policy in any other area. So this means that even though the gun-nut coalition may only be 5% of the electorate, the Republican Party desperately needs it. Losing it to the Democrats would be as devastating as losing the much larger anti-choice vote; both would result in the Republicans becoming a permanent minority party.

Of course, it is not even true that “other conservative causes lose.” The conservative movement has been extremely successful in getting what it wants. In the last thirty years, the top marginal tax rate has been cut in half. Abortion rights have been chipped away and in many places effectively eliminated. Welfare has effectively been destroyed. The list goes on and on. But the greatest sign of just how much success conservatives have had is shown by the fact that they think anything less than total victory means that they lost.

And a good example of this is found with the hardcore gun community. Notice how the militia movement only becomes highly visible and noisy when a Democrat is in the White House. Now part of this is the media. When a Republican is in the White House, liberal media organizations do not promote their most extreme members the way conservatives do when a Democrat is president. But it’s also the case that there is a qualitative difference in the rhetoric of the crazies. Armageddon is not just around the corner when a Republican is in the White House.

The question Frum is really trying to answer is why gun rights advocates are so much more successful than other conservative causes. But it may be a mirage. The truth is that we don’t constantly have the Republicans’ success in cutting food stamps thrown onto the nightly news, “Three children were killed today because of lack of food.” But every few days there is some guy with a gun who goes around killing multiple people. Every day (Every hour!) someone is murdered with a gun. So it constantly reminds us, “Conservatives are winning.” And that just isn’t so obvious on other issue, even when the Republicans manage to eliminate the Estate Tax altogether.

[1] Abortion rights is an economic issue. But then, gun rights is too. The NRA is not so much about the rights of individuals to own guns but the rights of gun manufactures to sell them guns.