Birther Skeet

Sometimes I think that president Obama might be having a little fun.

Perhaps you have seen the utter waste of air time and column inches that concerns Obama’s skeet shooting habits. In a January 27 interview for the magazine New Republic, the interviewer asked the president whether he had ever fired a gun. He responded, “Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time.” This is a plausible claim, depending on one’s personal definition of “all the time.” It shouldn’t have caused a ripple in the media pool.

Of course, humanity being what it is, there was an eruption on the right. It was a ballistic version of the birther nonsense. Did the president really shoot skeet? Where were the photographs of him shooting skeet? Where was the evidence? The president’s press secretary was asked about it and gave a vague answer referring back to the president’s original statement. Fox “News” and Right Blogostan were in a spittle spraying frenzy, mocking and accusing.

Not one, not two, not three, not four, but five days later the White House released a photo on Flickr of the president firing a shotgun, presumably at a flying clay pigeon.

So then the Photoshop accusations began. The whole thing smells highly of birtherism, a concept acknowledged by administration allies.  From the New York Times: “Attn skeet birthers,” David Plouffe, the former White House senior adviser, wrote on Twitter as he posted a link to the photo. “Make our day — let the photoshop conspiracies begin!”

 Here’s my general take on these things:

 Obama: "I breathe air."

Conservative Screech-fest: "Show us the videos! Why are there no videos?"

Obama: "Here's a video of me breathing."

Conservative Screech-fest: "You're just moving your stomach in and out."

Obama: "A panel of scientists has attached air flow meters to my mouth and nostrils to show that I am breathing. Happy now?"

Conservative Screech-fest: "They were paid off to fake the results."

Obama: "Look, I've got an executive branch to run. Breathe into a paper bag until you stop hyperventilating and then find a therapist, ok?"

The question of why the White House waited five days to release the skeet photo reminds me of the long lag time between the beginning of the birther idiocy and the White House releasing the president’s long form birth certificate. (The authenticity of which, I should note, was then questioned by the same birthers.)

I’m thinking that Barack Obama ignored the birther movement at first because he rightly regarded it as trivial and foolish. Then he ignored it because he enjoyed watching his staunchest opponents stake their reputations on an obvious falsehood and then foam at the mouth about it on national television. Finally, right when most Americans were getting rightly sick of them, he snapped the rug out from under them.

With the skeet shooting thing, I can imagine him rolling his eyes and then saying to Jay Carney, “Say something vague and we’ll wait a few days. When the conservative pundits have enough drool on their ties, release a photo. Just one.”

There is a class of moronic bigots who wouldn’t believe that Obama was born in Hawaii if you showed a film of him emerging from his mother’s birth canal on Waikiki Beach, with hula dancers in the background and Don Ho standing next to her singing “Tiny Bubbles.” These same moronic bigots, and the servants of the arms manufacturers, are now crying “Photoshop!” I think Obama is more than ok with this. I think he’s smiling a little smile as his opponents dig themselves deeper.

Two Fantasies

I have hesitated about writing a piece on gun control. In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting the amount of emotion swirling around this is so deep and turbulent that it is almost useless to use reason to analyze it. I’ll stay away from the policy end of things for the moment, but I’d like to address a couple of points in this debate that have been bothering me. They both involve what psychologists call motivated reasoning – starting with the desired result and consciously or unconsciously working backwards to that point. They also both involve a 35 year campaign by firearms manufacturers to maintain sales volume despite a declining customer demographic. These manufacturers have a problem – they make discretionary goods that can easily last a century, and they are up against market saturation. Through a number of mouthpieces, notably including the NRA, they have been promoting two fantasies: The individual rights interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment and the concept of personal self-defense with a firearm.

The Right to be a Joiner

The Second Amendment was written to address a major concern in the 18^th century that is essentially irrelevant now. It defines a right that is neither entirely individual nor entirely collective.

The recent Heller decision by the Supreme Court used a tangled and sometimes self-contradictory train of reasoning to establish, for the first time since 1789, an individual rights interpretation of the 2^nd Amendment. Keep in mind that even the National Rifle Association itself didn’t start promoting this interpretation until its schism of 1977. The president of the NRA testified before Congress during deliberations on the National Firearms Act of 1934. A congressman asked him whether there were any 2^nd Amendment issues with the law and he said that he hadn’t even considered the possibility. Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative Republican, called th e individual rights interpretation “one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” Why would Justice Burger say this?

Let’s look at the text of the 2^nd Amendment. It is important to see both what it does say and what it doesn’t.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."

Hmmm, that’s not quite right. That is the original text of the amendment, as submitted by James Madison. It was later reversed and edited down to the form we know today. The first section is familiar – it is now the second clause.

Look what Madison says in the rest. First, that a well armed and well regulated militia is necessary for national security. Second, that people whose religion forbids military service will be excused from “bearing arms,” expressed as synonymous with “military service.” No doubt it was a concession to the Quakers. It gives us a window into what the men who wrote the Constitution meant when they wrote “bear arms.” The earlier constitutions of Vermont, Pennsylvania and New York have near duplicate religious exceptions, using “bear arms” as synonymous with “military service.” Steven Krulick makes the point (with a few too many capitalizations), that “bearing arms” had a military meaning in 99.9% of contemporary citations.

Most of those involved in writing the Constitution viewed standing armies with suspicion. They had good reason at the time. Europe was dominated by monarchies with large standing armies doing the bidding of the monarchs. Despite the generally poor performance of the militias during the American Revolution, many viewed them as the small-r republican solution to our military needs. A number of the 18^th century state constitutions make mention of the militia being preferable to a standing army.

I should also note that at that time a militia was not an ad-hoc group of self-selected gun owners. Militias were organized by municipalities, authorized and mobilized by state governments, and often financed and equipped by state governments as well. The Constitution federalized the militia in Article 1, Section 8, giving Congress the authority to “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia” and also “for calling forth the Militia…”

Then there are the dogs that didn’t bark. Many people read into the 2^nd Amendment the concepts of self-protection and resistance to tyranny. The men who wrote the document neglected to put those words in the amendment. Quite the opposite, in the case of resistance to the government. In Article 1, Section 8, the three reasons for the federal government calling forth the militia were “to execute the laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and repel Invasions;” It is logically impossible to reconcile suppressing insurrections with fomenting insurrections. It is odd that I even had to write that last sentence, but for some people out there I think I did.

As for self protection, that is the dog that really shut up on us. Three earlier state constitutions mention the right to bear arms, and two of them in reference to self defense.

North Carolina: “XVII. That the people have a right to bear arms, for the defence of the State;”

Pennsylvania: “XIII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state;”

Vermont: “XV. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State;”

 The other early state constitutions either make a reference to the necessity of militias or neglect the subject entirely. Still, the men at the Constitutional Convention had the Vermont and Pennsylvania documents as precedent. They could have slipped in “for the defence of themselves” if they had so wished. They didn’t.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Translated: We need militias to protect the country, so people can arm themselves in order to serve in militias.

It’s an odd right, neither purely individual nor collective. It is analogous to our right to peaceably assemble. I have the individual right to go to a political demonstration, but if I am there alone I am not assembling. The 2^nd Amendment prohibits the federal government from infringing on our right to belong, armed, to a state organized and federally deployed militia. Whether your interpretation is originalist or textual, that’s how it comes out.

No, You Will Not Save the Day

“If only a law-abiding citizen had been there with a gun.” We hear that after every shooting rampage. The evidence shows this to be wishful thinking.

People can’t shoot worth a damn in a combat situation. The very existence of the .223 rifle that Adam Lanza used in Newtown is evidence of this.

Back in 1948, the U.S. military was interested in developing better body armor for the troops. The research team decided to first study gunshot wounds – where and how soldiers were shot, and what the risk factors were. They studied data from about 3,000,000 incidents and published an extensive report that contradicted the conventional wisdom. They found that the supposed marksmanship of the shooter and the accuracy of the rifle and bullet were meaningless. The chances of a soldier being shot were related to the surface area of his body exposed, the duration of exposure, and the number of shots fired in his general direction. In small unit encounters, whichever side fired the most bullets in the shortest time won. Lethality is a volume business.

With much resistance from traditionalists, the U.S. military converted from larger caliber, lower capacity rifles to smaller caliber (.223/5.56 mm) rifles with larger capacity magazines and faster firing rates. The smaller bullets allowed a soldier to carry more and shoot more, making up for the absence of combat marksmanship.

Peacetime shooters are no more successful. A number of ongoing studies have investigated the accuracy of police officers using firearms in the line of duty. Here are some representative nuggets:

From a lecture by M.T. Stevens, an Assistant Professor of Criminology at California State university:

Pistol qualification usually requires at least a 84% proficiency score on two or three consecutive runs of the Practical Pistol Course (PPC), and shotgun qualification usually requires 80% proficiency (which is also the passing score on most written tests).  Officers who shoot at proficiency levels in the 90's usually become firearms instructors.  Some departments exist that allow qualifying scores in the 70-80% range, and another small number of departments require all their officers to qualify in the 90-100% range.

However, there seems to be a consensus among practitioners and researchers alike that police marksmanship in real-life (scene of a crime) situations is less than desirable, something along the order of one hit for every six shots (Morrison 2002).  This means that in gunfighting with actual criminals, the average police officer effectiveness is at the level of 17% proficiency.

The officer's own gun is used in about 12% of all murders.

From what limited research exists, we know that the average ordinary adversary effectiveness is something around the order of 10% proficiency (Morrison 2002).

From an article on “point shooting” technique:

HIT POTENTIAL IN GUN FIGHTS

The Police Officer's potential for hitting his adversary during armed confrontation has increased over the years and stands at slightly over 25% of the rounds fired. An assailant's skill was 11% in 1979.

In 1992 the overall Police hit potential was 17%. Where distances could be determined, the hit percentages at distances under 15 yards were:

Less than 3 yards ..... 28%

3 yards to 7 yards .... 11%

7 yards to 15 yards . 4.2%

From a New York Times article on the NYPD:

While officers hit their targets about a third of the time over all, far fewer bullets generally found their mark during gunfights. In 1999, only 13 percent of bullets fired during a gunfight were hits.

By contrast, in 2006, 30 percent of the shots fired during gunfights were hits, an unusually high percentage.

 In Los Angeles, which has 9,699 officers, the police fired 283 rounds in 2006, hitting their target 77 times, for a hit ratio of 27 percent, said Officer Ana Aguirre, a spokeswoman. Last year, they fired 264 rounds, hitting 76 times, for a 29 percent hit ratio, she said.

So far this year the hit ratio in Los Angeles is 31 percent, with 74 of 237 bullets fired by officers hitting the target.

These are people who train regularly and are tested regularly. They train in marksmanship, tactical shooting, shoot/don’t shoot decision making, and weapon retention. These are people who are used to stressful situations. Even so, they only hit their targets 17-34% of the time. That 84% score on the range is irrelevant. Their civilian assailants manage to get one out of ten shots on target.

This kind of failure of marksmanship in real life is not so much of a concern in military situations. Just fire a few hundred more shots and call in an air strike. It becomes an essential problem in the situations where we are supposedly going to defend ourselves in our homes, businesses, or schools. Missing Adam Lanza or John Holmes in a room full of bystanders has consequences. Bullets go through walls while retaining deadly force. Outdoors, bullets can travel a mile or more.

Let me re-emphasize that skill at the shooting range has no relationship to success in a gunfight.  It’s more probable than not that an armed bystander at the Sandy Hook Elementary School would have accidentally shot several students before being gunned down by Lanza’s superior fire volume.

But, don’t millions of law-abiding Americans successfully defend themselves with firearms every year? Apparently they don’t. At least, the evidence doesn’t slant that way.

The NRA and similar organizations will point to national polls that ask people about defensive firearms use. These polls of several thousand people are extrapolated out to numbers of defensive incidents on the order of 100,000 to 2,000,000 per year.

Some researchers at Harvard dug deeper and found a different picture. In one study, anyone who claimed to have used a firearm defensively, either by firing it or merely brandishing it, was asked “What happened?” In response to this open ended question they collected narratives of the incidents. The researchers assembled a panel of criminal court judges and asked them to review the accounts. Were these justifiable defensive incidents, or something else? In about 20% of cases there was insufficient evidence. In a slight majority of cases the judges decided that the firearm use was illegal, an act of intimidation or unprovoked assault. And this was from reviewing the shooter’s (or brandisher’s) own self-justifying account. With independent witnesses and forensic evidence, the likelihood is that a large majority of the gun use would be ruled unnecessary and criminal. The researchers also note:

 “If we have as little as 1% random misclassification, our results could be off by orders of magnitude. It appears we can obtain substantially higher rates of self defense gun use if we ask respondents about events in the previous six months rather than the previous five years. On the other hand, we can obtain substantially lower rates of self defense gun use if we eliminate the handful of respondents who report the vast majority of uses, the various respondents who report uses that do not appear to meet reasonable criteria for actual use, or the respondents whose use appears offensive rather than defensive.”

In other words, those large self-reported self-defense numbers are political and statistical artifacts, not science. In fact, three times as many respondents reported being threatened with a firearm than reported (probably falsely) that they had used a firearm in self-defense.

But still, you say, that’s not me. I want a firearm to protect myself in case of assault. Perhaps you don’t. A case/control study by University of Pennsylvania researchers found that the possession of a firearm during an assault increased the risk of getting shot by 4.5 times. It’s the real life manifestation of that stock phrase, “Your money or your life.”

Marksmanship aside, there are other snap decisions to be made. Let’s say you are an armed citizen. You hear a commotion and come around a corner to see two men struggling over a gun. Who is the criminal? Or, you hear shots, draw, and come around a corner to see two men shooting at each other amidst a crowd of screaming people, some of them shot. Which man is Jared Loughner and which is your fellow armed citizen? The decision of whether to shoot and who to shoot at is one that police officers train for and still get wrong.

Also, unlike police officers, most civilian firearm users don’t carry around nightsticks or pepper spray. There is no forceful response available to them in between a fistfight and a shooting. The confrontation between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin should never have happened, but paranoia mixed with gun-based confidence made it so. Even then, without a gun present it could have stopped at a tense standoff or an entirely forgettable fistfight.

Secret Service agents are selected from a rigorously screened pool of applicants, mostly experienced law enforcement officers. Then they receive even more rigorous firearms training, including shooting while moving and shooting at moving targets, shoot/don’t-shoot training, the works. They train every day they aren’t actually working, because these skills deteriorate otherwise. Then an even smaller group is selected as shooting specialists. They are the ones up on rooftops with rifles during big political events. Key point: These specialists among specialists are rotated out every three years because the stress of the job reduces their capabilities over time. A civilian with a concealed carry permit can’t be rotated out of everyday life every three years.

Other key point: John Hinckley Jr. walked up and emptied his revolver into President Reagan and others before a crowd of Secret Service agents, best of the best, could react. And your average citizen, after a one day concealed carry course, would do better?

Read the opinions of firearm instructors such as Massad Ayoob, who teach firearms skills for concealed carry purposes. (Here, here, and here.) The short version is that when a human being, any human being, gets into a crisis situation, he or she loses most of the physical and mental functions necessary for using a firearm properly. The flood of adrenaline and cortisol, the restriction of blood flow, and other involuntary physical reactions cause the loss of fine motor control, loss of hearing, tunnel vision, trembling, and loss of higher cognitive functions. Extensive, realistic, and continuous training can partially overcome this, but even the pros make deadly mistakes, and 99.9% of us aren’t pros.

So no, the recent decision of a politicized court aside, the Constitution does not grant you the right to possess anything outside of the context of a federalized militia. You are constitutionally welcome to join the National Guard to put down insurrections and defend the nation.  This is just as well, because an ordinary citizen who doesn’t receive ongoing combat training should not be relying on a firearm for self-protection.

An average citizen with a readily accessible firearm, even one who is well practiced with a firearm, is a bad gamble. In terms of protecting against personal loss, an average citizen would be better off buying insurance than a firearm. Actually, an average citizen would be better off buying a lottery ticket.

Fiscal what?

Everyone is talking about it, the you-know-what that will do something unfortunate if the Congress doesn’t make a deal by the end of the year. A few important points:

First of all, as Paul Krugman points out, if you even use the term “fiscal cliff” you are being partisan and tendentious. It’s a scare term, and an illogical one at that. If Congress does nothing, then on January 1^st….. nothing happens. At least, nothing noticeable, for a while. The law changes, but the effects won’t hit until people actually start filing their taxes. There would be a slow escalation of effects as current departmental budgets run out. A less inflammatory term would be “fiscal slope.”

Second, this is just the second battle in an ongoing war, set up by the debt ceiling fight a year ago. Neither side could really gain what could be called a victory, so the reckoning was put off. Congress created a scenario with something to deeply dismay both sides; deep military cuts and tax hikes on the wealthy for the Republicans and social services cuts and tax hikes on the middle class for the Democrats. It’s an artificial crisis designed to stampede Congress into a “compromise” that is actually a capitulation to corporate interests.

The annual debt ceiling adjustment itself is ridiculous, as nobody can put a fixed number on what level of debt would be dangerous. The Japanese, for example, have twice our debt to GDP ratio and they are still borrowing money (as of this posting) at 0.715% interest. Given the inflation rate, people are paying Japan (and us) to store their money.

Third, Social Security is irrelevant to this discussion. It is separate from the rest of the budget, self-financed, and in surplus.  If we do absolutely nothing, zip, bupkis, then in 2037 benefits drop by 25% and life goes on, albeit more miserably for the elderly. Raising the upper income limit on the Social Security tax would solve the problem.

For the numbers and details read Krugman and see James K. Galbraith. I can’t explain it any better than they can.

In terms of political strategy, I have to note the anguished tone of those pundits who kowtow to wealthy and corporate interests. In their world, letting the sequester (for that is its official name) go into effect would be akin to the massive asteroid strike that offed the dinosaurs. Maybe for them and their patrons. Given their fear of the event, I’d say the best strategy is to let the supposed asteroid strike.

The Bush-era millionaire tax cuts would go away, along with the middle class tax cuts. The military budget would be hacked, along with various social services. If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wanted to be canny, he would start by eliminating the filibuster so he could pass things with 51 votes, as stated in our constitution. Then he could start putting things on the table one by one and daring the GOP to say no. Here are the middle class tax cuts – yes or no? It would be political suicide to say no, so win-win for Harry. Start with the most popular programs, like Medicare. Restore Granny’s benefits, or no? And so on.

There’s a great negotiating technique based on the trade-in vs. price focus in buying a car. Car salesmen know that most buyers either focus on a getting a good price for their old car or getting a deal on the new one, but not both. The smart buyer starts out by focusing on the trade-in. Hammer the salesman hard on that. He’ll slowly cave because he expects to nail you on the price of the new car and make that money back. Get the trade-in price in writing. Then turn to the new car price and hammer on that. At some point he’ll probably protest that he gave you a great price on the trade-in. Thank him briefly, note the irrelevancy of his statement, and keep swinging the hammer.

The Democrats should agree to discuss future concessions on military spending and the like as they lock in the middle class tax cuts and the preservation of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. No votes on the Pentagon boondoggle money until we get ours. No grand bargain, just spoonful by spoonful. Start it all in the Senate and then let the House Republican majority try to explain why it wants to hit up your average American family for four grand in taxes. Once the political suicide subjects have been won, the core of the Republican leverage is lost.

Of course, this assumes that a majority of the Democrats truly want to do something for ordinary citizens, and haven’t joined the Republicans in service of Wall Street and the 0.1%. Probably a bad assumption. They are still cast by the same machine. We’ll very likely see them “reluctantly” make concessions that gut the social safety net and continue to enrich the already enriched.

Perhaps, though, the recent election could be seen as the turning of the tide? All that independent campaign spending on attack ads made for some close races, but close doesn’t get you a seat on the appropriations committee. I’d like to think that some politicians are nervously looking over their left shoulders.

The Archer of Rouen

As Tony Robinson puts it, history is fragile. Some of the things we think are set in stone are actually written in water.

I just watched a fascinating documentary by Tony Robinson, the actor whose most popular character was Baldric in the Blackadder series on British television. After that series he started hosting and writing programs on history and archeology, notably Time Team, which ran for more than a decade. He also made a series of television specials dealing with historical myths, including a revisionist take on Richard the Third.

Most people know, or “know” about King Richard from the Shakespeare play. His character is an amoral grasping schemer, killing his way to the throne. Among his victims in the play are the princes in the Tower, the sons of his brother, Edward the Fourth. He not only has them killed, but he has one of his people announce that Edward, their father, was illegitimate.

Richard III, Act 3, Scene 5

Tell them, when that my mother went with child

Of that unsatiate Edward, noble York

My princely father then had wars in France

And, by just computation of the time,

Found that the issue was not his begot,

Which well appeared in his lineaments,

Being nothing like the noble duke my father;

The accusation is that, calculating back from Edward’s birth date, The Duke of York was nowhere near his wife around the possible time of conception. The added piece of evidence is that Edward in no way resembled his father. A nasty piece of slander, to be expected from a character like Richard.

But was it more than slander?

Elizabethan plays aside, there were rumors in Edward’s time that he was illegitimate. Those rumors pointed to an archer in the English garrison in Rouen France, named Blaybourne. Edward’s mother, Cecily Neville, had been at Rouen while the Duke of York was on campaign elsewhere in France.

Robinson spoke with a British historian who had been researching the English/French wars of the 15^th century and came across something startling in the records of Rouen cathedral. The cathedral’s chapter book records daily prayers for the Duke in July and August of 1441 – prayers because he was away fighting. Edward was born April 28^th, 1442. Forty weeks gestation gives us an ideal date of conception of July 29^th, 1441. Edward would have to have been a month late – impossible – or a month early, which would have elicited much comment. Premature babies had little chance of surviving in the 15^th century. There are other pieces of evidence, including a statement by Cecily herself that Edward was illegitimate, but an impossible birthdate clinches it.

So what does this mean? Edward the Fourth being illegitimate, so were his offspring, including his daughter Elizabeth, who Henry Tudor married to legitimize his own illegitimate claim to the throne. The entire Tudor line becomes illegitimate, and so on down through the Georges and Queen Victoria to Elizabeth the Second, now on the throne.

It sounds ridiculous. It’s the British Royal Family, right? Elizabeth, Philip, Charles, Harry, and Andrew. Kind of troubled and out of touch, but royal. However, the two qualifications for royalty are 1) legitimate birth, and 2) a royal ancestor. You can be evil, barking mad, or thick as a roast beef sandwich, but with a direct line back to a royal, you’re in. If 17^th-Great Grandma jumped the fence you’re out.

With the present occupants of Windsor Castle being squatters, who actually has a claim? The answer lies in Edward’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, legendarily drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine. His daughter Margaret had five children before being executed on trumped up charges by Henry the Eighth. Those charges were fabricated due to the fact that her family’s bona fides rivaled those of the Tudors. Margaret’s line winds down and around till it joins with that of the rich and powerful Hastings family. Their fortunes collapsed in the late 19^th century.

Robinson traced the Hastings line into the 20^th century and ended up in the outback of Australia. There he met one Michael Hastings, a middle aged agricultural researcher. King Michael the First, as Robinson calls him, was born in England and grew up in a small house in the shadow of the ruined castle that once housed the mighty Hastings of old. Actually the 14^th Earl of Loudon, Michael was happy living as an ordinary citizen of Australia. He died this last summer at the age of 71, but left a royal family behind, including Simon the First, the new pretender to the throne.

It’s a solid piece of genealogical detective work, brought about by a chance discovery in a church record book. But what does it really signify?

Even if Richard III had prevailed at Bosworth Field, someone would occupy the throne. The names would have changed, but the turmoil and geopolitical forces would have been much the same. The royal line has enough backstabbing, usurpation, upset victories, and infant mortality that the chances of any branch of the British royal family were probably as good as any other. In 1066 that fateful arrow could have missed Harald and hit the guy next to him. So Elizabeth II is descended from an archer and not a Plantagenet – so what? She’s not about to pack up the Corgis and shog off. A properly descended monarchy would be just as archaic and ridiculous.

Perhaps this is a joke of the fates, a victory for the ordinary schmo. The commoners have taken the throne.

It makes no difference to me who waves to the crowds in London. What makes this story interesting is the way that a deep dive into history can turn supposed truisms upside down. The more important a piece of history is to people in power, or to a people’s self-image, the more likely it is to be fiction. Our own popular history in the U.S. is a cob-job of essential truths and essential myths.

The words “history” and “story” were not differentiated until the late 15^th century, and perhaps the eventual distinction was naive. Fiction is designed to satisfy our need for entertainment, for narrative cohesion, and in many cases, for closure and comfort. History, written by the victors and edited by the zeitgeist, adds the needs of power and social cohesion to the mix. History, real history, based on hard evidence, tends to annoy people, even enrage them. Part of the annoyance is that when done properly it leaves uncomfortable gaps.

From this I’ll postulate Minor Heretic’s Rule of Historical Narrative: If a particular bit of history makes you feel comfortable and satisfied, it’s almost certainly a crock of shit.

Saratoga

Ok, so Obama got reelected. I’m truly happier than if Romney had gotten in, but I’m not leaping out of my chair. In fact, I barely give a damn.

Back to my coffee cup metaphor: Let’s say you have a machine that makes disposable cardboard coffee cups. You hit the button and out comes a cup. You pour in hot coffee and it leaks out a hole in the bottom, burning you. You curse the cup, pitch it aside, and hit the button again. Same result – pour, leak, burn, curse, discard. And again. And again. Sooner than later you should get the idea that the machine itself needs fixing. Simply cycling through defective products is going to get you burned.

Always remember that the same political machine produced both Romney and Obama. Our president may have more progressive views on social issues, and he may talk a good line on economic issues, but there are boundaries he won’t cross. The banks will have their way and the security-industrial-prison-surveillance juggernaut will roll on.

I’m interested in some of the non-presidential battles lost and won.

There is a bump in gender issues. Maine, Maryland, and Washington held referenda on legalizing same-sex marriage, and all three won. Minnesota held a referendum on an amendment to the state constitution that would have prohibited same-sex marriage. It lost. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin (home of Paul Ryan), Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay member of the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican Tommy Thompson. Thompson’s campaign tried a couple of anti-gay shots but had to walk them back. As a bonus, her vacated House seat was won by openly gay assemblyman Mark Pocan. I am thinking that the descriptor “openly gay” is slowly on its way out in reporting on political campaigns. There are many places in red state America where sexual orientation is still a political issue, but fewer.

Similarly, we have seen a couple of right-wing Republicans gaffe themselves to defeat over women’s issues. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s comment on “legitimate rape” and his sad ignorance of middle school level reproductive biology contributed to his defeat. So too, Senate candidate Richard Mourdock sank his candidacy with his statement that pregnancy resulting from rape was “God’s will.” My theory is that many voters, even somewhat conservative voters, are having “holy shit” moments when they realize just what dinosaurs these guys are.

In other races, Allen West, single term Tea Party favorite and commie-under-the-bed hunter is out. Also in Florida, former single term progressive and fighter Alan Grayson is back in. Ultra-right-wing-nut Michelle Bachmann held on, but by a hair-thin margin, despite outspending her challenger 12:1.

Oh, and Elizabeth Warren. The Harvard professor and bankster-bashing consumer advocate edged out Republican Scott Brown. Sweetness. I am looking forward to her causing some serious trouble for the Masters of the Universe.

Closer to home, New Hampshire booted some single term Tea Party types and swung a bit to the left. Vermont had a Democratic near sweep in statewide races, the exception being Lieutenant Governor and low-key moderate nice guy Phil Scott. Our governor hung his hat on single payer health care and won in a landslide. The Republicans in Vermont headed hard right and generally got their buttocks handed to them in fine silver tureens. Republican financier Lenore Broughton spent around a million dollars on half a dozen Vermont races without success.

Lenore’s role model, billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson, dumped $53 million into conservative national super PACs with a similar lack of success. Mitt Romney, George Allen, Allen West, and Schmuley Boteach lost, despite Adelson’s millions. Karl Rove’s organizations spent $390 million of millionaire money on far-right candidates and got near zero return on investment.

Nationwide, people got a close look at ultra-conservatism and most didn’t like it. They also got a look at the billion dollar fallout from the Citizens United ruling and they didn’t like that either.

On the Drug War front, Washington and Colorado legalized the possession and recreational use of marijuana. Massachusetts, as an addendum, became the 18^th state to legalize medical marijuana. This is huge.

Remember when Vermont instituted civil unions for same sex couples? Remember what a big deal it was at the time? How progressive and brave Vermont was for doing something that in retrospect was a half measure and a no brainer at that? My prediction: marijuana legalization will evolve the same way. The sky hasn’t fallen in states with legalized medical marijuana, and it won’t fall in states with legalized recreational marijuana. Those states will see their tax revenues rise slightly and their law enforcement and prison costs drop.

None of these are comprehensive victories. A rational health care system will take time and multiple defeats. The federal government will push back on legalization. Bigots will push back against equality. We’ll need a constitutional amendment to really get the millionaires and corporations out of or electoral system.

And yet, a couple of years ago, who woulda thunk? I’m looking back to Occupy Wall Street, when it was first pointing a finger at the banker-criminals and bringing the 99% vs.1% divide into general consciousness. We’re talking about income and class now. We’re talking about political money in a critical way.

Those of you who have studied early American history have probably twigged my title by now. Perhaps I should have been more cautious and titled it Valcour Island.

Back in 1776, the British had a plan to win the war with their rebellious colonies. They would send an army down the Champlain Valley from Canada, down the Hudson River, and cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. This required control of Lake Champlain. Benedict Arnold (yes, him) organized the building of a fleet to match the British one being built in Quebec. An outgunned and outnumbered American fleet took on the world’s greatest navy at Valcour Island – and got its ass kicked. Utterly. The British took the lake.

Even so, this victory cost the British time. The colonists had another year to prepare. When the British came down in 1777 they were picked apart, harassed, and ultimately defeated at Saratoga. The war went on for years, with many setbacks for the Americans, but the seeds of the outcome were planted at Valcour and Saratoga.

I’m hoping we are past the getting-our-ass-kicked-by-the-British-navy stage and into the picking apart the British army stage, but I’m not counting on it. Whatever the setbacks to come, I think that this election was the battle where the balance started to shift.