The Democrats Need to Fight the War

It Could Be a Cold Civil War. I Hope It Is.

Gandhi and his spinning wheel.
Margaret Bourke-White, 1946.

I've been singing this tune for a while. After Obama was elected in 2008, he sent his street army home. I was told that Rahm Emmanuel, the man he had selected to explain the inner workings of Washington to him, had told him he needed to concentrate on the inside-the-beltway game, and he no longer needed masses of people in the street, all across the country.

I don't know if that's true, but I do know that he sent us home. When we organized to support the Affordable Care Act, it was without a central directorate. I volunteered with an organization that was associated with the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and the UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers). When a group of us walked from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., our SAG (support and gear) bus was purple. We called it the Barney bus, after a cartoon character of the time who happened to be purple. Purple is the color of the SEIU. 

The disappearance of the Obama field organization meant that the next, more local, elections reverted to the control of local political organizations, who in my opinion have always preferred low turnout elections - a space where the people who do turn out are probably loyal followers of the local machine. (See Politics in the Rain.) 

Then the Tea Party people showed up, mimicking what we had done in Obama's election, and they caught us flat-footed. The enemy, funded indirectly by petro oligarch David Koch (1940-2019),  had placed an army on the battlefield we had just vacated. It was then that we, the foot soldiers on the front line, knew we were in a war, albeit a nonviolent one, and that we needed to oppose the enemy at every turn. 

This is a lesson that many senior people in the Democratic party have yet to learn. I don't have access to the kind of thinking that goes on in the Democratic party's Fortress of Solitude, but I will say that I believe I have waited patiently, and I have been disappointed in the outcome.

Let's skip ahead a few years to Merrick Garland, who I'm sure is a fine man, an excellent lawyer, and an outstanding judge. However, when it came to prosecuting the perpetrators of the January 6 insurrection when he was Attorney General, I have to say that, in my opinion, he face-planted. 

He actually did pretty well with the low-level offenders. (See Riley Williams Sentenced to Three Years.) I hadn't expected him to do that, but he did. And then Trump got back in and pardoned them.

More importantly, perhaps, what happened to the mid-level people like Bannon and Stone and Giuliani and Manafort? These men are, in my opinion, traitors to their country. Who among them has received his due?

And finally, what happened to the kingpin, Donald Trump? He slipped free, got reelected, and is now trying to wreck the country and the planet.

When your opponent is fighting a war to overthrow the Constitution, and possibly civilization itself, you need to go to war as well. However uncomfortable it is for so many of the judges and lawyers and entrenched politicians and their many well-compensated consultants, you do not bring a quill pen to a knife fight.

Of course, people have been fighting against Trump all along. Many lower level judges have emphatically done the right thing, and they have tangibly slowed Trump's rush to fascism. But the movement has lacked unity and leadership. That may be beginning to change. The migration of the Texas Democratic legislators to various points out of state, the strong stand California governor Newsom has made to counter the Texas gerrymandering plot - these are good signs. We'll see what happens in Congress when it returns.

This all puts me in mind of an episode in the Revolutionary war, when a minister named John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg gave a sermon to his congregation on a theme from Ecclesiastes: "To every thing there is a season ... a time of war, a time of peace." Then he declared, "And this is the time of war," and opened his clerical robes to reveal that he was dressed in the uniform of a Revolutionary colonel. He served throughout the war, most notably at Valley Forge, the battles of the Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, and finally at Yorktown. 

It's time to fight.

________

Historians debate the Muhlenberg story. It was first reported by a great-nephew well into the nineteenth century, and there does not seem to be independent evidence from the time of the event. The counter to this would be that it would have been a family story, cherished and faithfully passed on at family gatherings, with elders correcting the embellishments of impetuous youth. I will not throw aside the Muhlenberg story. A main reason is that it fits Muhlenberg's character. He was a very colorful, even theatrical, fellow. The story fits. 

________

For more on the picture at the beginning of this story, click here.

See also Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Having Fun Reforming Health, We Were There All Along, For Athena.

Will Mike Johnson Actually Turn on Trump?

I've been waiting, but my belief level has been low.

Mike Johnson presumably thinks that pedophilia is bad, or at least feels he needs to say that when he's back home in Louisiana, where bible-thumping hypocrisy permeates the soil, the air, and the water. So will he turn on Trump if it turns out that there is a video of Trump and Epstein taking turns with a fourteen-year-old girl?

I don't know. Is there anything that Mike Johnson won't swallow from Donald Trump? Would he swallow cannibalism?

The picture above suggests to me that the Speaker of the House may be experiencing some role stress. His precipitate flight to his safe place, hailed by some as a masterful strategic move, may have been motivated primarily by panic. So is he frozen in place now, like a deer in the headlights, or will he run? And if he does run will he leap onto the windshield of a car, causing significant damage to the windshield and also to his internal organs? I just don't know. 

There are three gangs out there - Johnson's evangelicals, JD Vance's tech bros, and the poor Maga masses. The Maga masses are incendiary in their unhappiness with the way things are going. But how will they topple Trump? On the other hand, the tech bros have their man, JD Vance, as first in line for succession to the presidency. The tool of the theocratic fascists, Mike Johnson, is only second in line.

I had thought that the tech bros would move on Trump first, and I thought they would be the ones to topple Trump. But now I'm not so sure. The techies currently seem to be in the business executive's favorite stance of watchful waiting. This is also called sitting on your hands.

(Sorry, Vance's failed meeting at the Naval Observatory doesn't count as an actual move. Although a little bit of squirming is a definite sign of life.) 

I think Elon Musk's flameout may have unsettled the tech bros. They learned that presidents can be dangerous.

Maybe Johnson and his evangelicals will get there first. I don't think there will be a telegram from God telling them to dump Trump. I think the outcome depends on how much humiliation Mike Johnson is willing - and able - to stomach.

Jimmy Swaggart died recently. If you want to know about religion in Louisiana, you should read about him. To see his biography in Wikipedia, click here.

Jimmy Swaggart: "I have sinned."

See also Just Another Picture.

Access to Bainbridge

South Street Will Be a Happier Place

The foot of the South street bridge.

Recently the City reversed the direction of LeCount street between South street and Bainbridge. This block of LeCount is a little, narrow street; it is just one block from the foot of the South street bridge. 

The flow on this block of LeCount had been southbound, and the traffic had become increasingly problematic: Motorists who had just come off the bridge were looking for a way to flee the traffic congestion on South street and were turning abruptly right from South onto LeCount, endangering, in their recklessness, the bicyclists and scooter riders in the bike lane there and also the pedestrians in the crosswalk. 

Both the bike lane and the sidewalks here are heavily utilized, particularly at the morning and evening rush hours. I infer, from the number of people in scrubs and others with their ID tags around their necks, that the core of this traffic is going to and from the medical city that lies on the other side of the bridge.

So the flow on the block of LeCount between South and Bainbridge now runs from south to north, and there are no motorists making abrupt right-hand turns from South onto LeCount. (Who am I kidding? This is Philadelphia.)

However, I do think there is a danger that we have not made this problem go away,  but have simply moved it two blocks east to Bambrey. I'm very hopeful that the city will soon reverse the course of Bambrey street, which lies just the other side of 26th street and currently runs north to south; 26th street here has been running south to north for a long time.

When I first heard that drivers on South street had decided to turn LeCount street into a lane in a bowling alley, I was surprised. There's an easier and less dangerous way to get to Bainbridge, and it gets you off South street a block earlier than LeCount. And it's simple: at the foot of the bridge, turn right. I know it's a hairpin turn, but be calm: It takes you to Schuylkill avenue, headed south. Go one block on Schuylkill, turn left, and you are on Bainbridge, quite possibly all by yourself. The rest of the crowd is still over on South.

That, of course, is the attraction of Bainbridge: It is a seriously underutilized street.  

Why aren't more motorists doing this? Well, let's slip behind the wheel of a small, reasonably maneuverable sedan and spend of few bewildering, hair-raising moments navigating down the slope at the east end of the South street bridge.

IMAGINE that you are a motorist who has just fled the Schuylkill expressway at 5:30 pm on a hot summer weekday. You're tired, a bit distracted, maybe a bit sweaty, possibly still frightened by the behavior of a particularly deranged motorist who lunged across several lanes of traffic to get to the Vare avenue exit. 

By the way, I'm describing myself here. I commuted to Claymont, Delaware, for five years during the middle oughts. 

But let's say that you are not me. Instead, you're coming from out of town to visit friends who have recently moved to Philadelphia, and you have never been on the South Street bridge before. As you come down the long slope that leads to the foot of the bridge at 27th street, you are confronted with the scene in the picture at the beginning of this story.

Here's another view, a little higher up on the hill.

Aside from the pedestrians and the bicyclists, is there anything in this picture that a red-blooded American motorist from the suburbs might find unusual? Take a closer look at the signs.

I think these signs tell motorists a lot about what they can't do, but tell them very little about how to get where they want to go. There is a sign that says Schuylkill avenue, and there is an arrow. But there is no indication of the existence of something called Bainbridge street, let alone any guidance as to how to get there.

Why aren't more people going to Bainbridge by way of Schuylkill avenue? I think it may be because they have no idea this option exists. Certainly the signage at the foot of the bridge isn't telling them.

I think we should have a sign that gives the motorists their options. I was thinking about what that sign should look like. I happened to be on the New Jersey turnpike while I was doing this thinking. For some strange reason, I had an inspiration. Why don't we design something like the signs we see on the interstate?

A sketch for the sign.

I'd actually make two of these signs. I'd put one at the foot of the bridge, and then I'd back up and put the second sign at the spot where a ramp and stairs connect to the Schuylkill river trail. This sign would give the motorist some advance notice of what he is about to confront. There is also a one-legged gantry here for the traffic lights. You could hang the sign on the arm that holds the traffic lights.

You'll notice in the picture that there is another set of traffic lights further down the hill. (Click on the picture to enlarge it.) Why not put the sign there? It's too close to the spot where a motorist must make a series of decisions very quickly. The two motor-vehicle lanes are about to split. The first thing that happens is the big sign painted on the surface of the right-hand lane, saying that the right-hand lane has just become a right-turn only lane. 

And then the bike lane suddenly jumps away from the right-hand curb and snuggles itself between the two motor-vehicle lanes. So if you are a driver in the right-hand lane, and you suddenly figure out that the lane you are in will not take you to South street, and you wanted to go to South street, you panic and you may very well muscle your way across the bike lane and into the left-hand motor-vehicle lane.

You could, of course, stay in the right-hand lane and go to Bainbridge. But you don't know you can do that. Nobody has told you.

Here's another view of the bike lane that you have to muscle through to get back to the left-hand lane.

Adding a few signs here would, I think, greatly improve life for motorists, but it would not solve all the problems on this section of the bridge. I personally think that the downhill bike lane should stay at the curb. And I think there should be only one downhill motor-vehicle lane. This would, among other things, make more space for the uphill side of the bridge, where large vehicles frequently have trouble making the turn from 27th street, causing them to enter the uphill bike lane at the corner and occasionally even jump the curb onto the sidewalk.

As currently constituted, this space at the foot of the bridge, created by humans, just keeps throwing curve balls at the motorist, the cyclist, and the pedestrian.

I personally don't think any of these proposed changes to the layout of the lanes here will ever happen. But I do think the signs we've been talking about here would be a meaningful improvement, and not just on the bridge.

I also think that the basic issues we're talking about here go well beyond the redesign of one intersection. We have a group of pleasant residential neighborhoods living in the shadow of the bridge, and we need to balance the needs of those neighborhoods - for safety, and also for peace and quiet - with the need to move large numbers of motor vehicles through a key part of the city's street system. For this we need a camera with a wide-angle lens, as well as a microscope. 

I'd suggest a comprehensive look at South street and the surrounding areas, running from the foot of the bridge at 27th street down to 21st street. What you do on Bainbridge street at Schuylkill avenue will have an effect when Bainbridge enters the intersection with 23rd, 24th, and Grays Ferry avenue. This, too, is a very interesting intersection. It pulls together four streets instead of the usual two. Even at the foot of the bridge, there are only three streets that you need to tangle and untangle.

I've been showing you a lot of photographs of boring black asphalt. As a palate cleanser, let me offer you an orange - or at least an orange garage. It's on Schuylkill avenue. You can just make out where the letters for Tint Shop used to be. The owner would tint your car windows, for a price. Why this space doesn't sport a new million-dollar home, I do not know. I remember the shop well, and also behind me, where the Children's Hospital buildings now stand, there was an enormous Quonset hut where people sold beer. The roof leaked. A lot. It was another time.

See also Civilizing the South Street Bridge, No Turn on Red, Put Traffic Lights on the Schuylkill Expressway, Morning on Lombard Street, Something Good Happened, Is It a Curve or Is It a Turn?

Move Fast and Break Things

Uh, Maybe Not

Aldine Press logo.

Mark Zuckerberg adopted the phrase above during the early days of Facebook, and the idea now seems to be part of Silicon Valley's DNA. Elon Musk's DOGE venture, or his Mission to Mars, or pretty much anything he does, including trying to populate the world with little Elons, all resonate with impulsive recklessness. 

I greatly prefer a much older epigram: Make haste slowly. It was a favorite saying of the very first Roman emperor, Augustus (r. 27 BC - 14 AD). I've traced the idea as far back as Plato, who, in his Republic (7:528d), drops the following comment: "... for in my haste to be done I was making less speed." 

The Latin phrase is festina lente. I originally associated it with the Roman orator and teacher of rhetoric Quintilian (ca. 35 AD - ca. 100 AD); it appears he never actually used the phrase, but he did something bigger: he embodied it. 

Over the years I've read a bit of classical rhetoric in translation - Demosthenes and Cicero, and Aristotle's Rhetoric. Quintilian, I knew, was out there, challenging me. He came after the golden age and wrote the big book that summarizes everything. His Institutio Oratoria is five volumes in the Loeb Classical Library, and I'd reconciled myself to the thought that Quintilian was one mountain I would not climb. Then one day I stumbled across a curious little book called Quintilian as Educator (Frederic M. Wheelock, ed., 1974.) The Free Library was kind enough to lend me a copy and also let me hold onto it for quite a while.

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a schoolmaster as well as a masterful orator. We don't actually know a whole lot about him. He was born around 35 AD in Hispania, the area now occupied by Spain and Portugal (and Andorra). He went to Rome to pursue his studies, moved back to Hispania to teach rhetoric; moved back to Rome in 68 AD at the behest of Galba, who had been governor in Hispania and who became emperor after Nero committed suicide. Assassins were soon to dispatch Galba (this was the year that Rome had four emperors), and at some point during this chaos Quintilian set up his own school. For about twenty years, under the calming influence of the emperor Vespasian and his successors, he both taught his students and pleaded in the courts, retiring around the year 90; in his retirement he wrote the Institutio Oratoria. He tells us he had a wife and two sons, all of whom died young. We seem to know less about when he died than we do about when he was born, but there is a general feeling that he left us sometime around 100 AD. 

Professor Wheelock's little book performs a very useful task. It extracts the parts of the larger book that deal with childhood education, and we find ourselves looking at a surprisingly modern approach. Quintilian thinks that a child's education begins at birth - "a child's mind should not be allowed to lie fallow for a moment." (I.i.16) 

He sees the child's nurse as the first teacher, and he desires that the nurse should be of good character and speak well. He feels the same way about parents, childhood playmates, and someone called a paedagogus, a member of the household whose job was to follow the child around and keep him out of trouble. (I.i.4-11.) 

Just to back up for a minute, Quintilian was talking about education for children of the upper crust in a country that was largely ruled by an emperor, although relics of the former republic continued to exist. However, I think his discussion is applicable to a democratic society, where we need an education that prepares every child to participate intelligently in government. Today, I think this would include exposure to the variety of the American people - a multiracial, multilingual, and multiclass society. The widespread desire to associate only with people just like you leads to the trap that we are currently in.

Okay. Quintilian also strongly favors bilingual education in Latin and Greek. (I.i.12-14.) Greek was important in ancient Rome because many of the ideas in its intellectual world came written in Greek, and many of the people in the Roman empire spoke Greek as a first language, quite likely including your doctor. Today, I think a bilingual child will have an advantage in a world that is increasingly multilingual. For many years, Americans have assumed that others will learn English. As our status in the world declines, we are going to need to be able to speak to others in their own language. I suggest Spanish, which will be useful both domestically and in much of the rest of the world. 

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Three Epigrams

That brings us to to my search for epigrams. I had originally thought that Quintilian was the source of festina lente, but I soon learned I was wrong. Not only that, but he appears never to have used the phrase. (No, I didn't break down and read all five volumes. I went to the Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University and searched Quintilian and festina lente. No results.) 

There was another favorite that I had attributed to him: "First we entertain, then we educate." I can't find that one either, but again, the idea permeates his teaching. 

Here's one that was new to me, and that he actually wrote: "... write quickly and you will never write well, write well and you will soon write quickly." (X.iii.10.)  

Quintilian's Afterlife

The Institutio Oratoria was clearly well received in its time and in the following centuries. Professor Wheelock notes that "Quintilian appears as one of St. Jerome's favorite pagan authors" (p. 18). St. Jerome, who died in 420 AD, is best known for translating the Bible into Latin. 

As the Roman world entered the early middle ages, sometimes called the dark ages, mentions of Quintilian (and a lot of other things) declined. That doesn't necessarily mean that he was forgotten. In the ninth century a monk and well-known scholar named Lupus Servatus (the wolf that was saved) "wrote to the Pope asking for a copy of the full twelve books of the Institutio Oratoria, saying that he had only incomplete copies of the work" (p. 18). 

The Lupus Servatus story leads me to guess that a lot of people were doing what Professor Wheelock did - excerpting from a very long book the parts they found most interesting. My further guess is that interest in Quintilian, however fractured, continued through the middle ages and into the renaissance, when something wonderful happened in 1416: A manuscript hunter and official of the papal court named Poggio Bracciolini found a complete copy of the Institutio Oratoria in the monastery of St. Gall in what is now Switzerland. (During his time at St. Gall he also found a copy of the De Architectura by Vitruvius.) 

And so we come to the age of the modern printed book and particularly the Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius, whose logo appears at the beginning of this story. The dolphin winding around the anchor is a visual representation of the classical epigram "Make haste slowly," or festina lente. The dolphin is the rabbit, and the anchor is the turtle. 

It was a time of new beginnings, and Aldus was one of the prime innovators in his field. And yet he was also a stickler for detail, proofreading himself and even bringing Desiderius Erasmus into the printshop in what has been described as "a now almost incredible mixture of the sweatshop, the boarding-house and the research institute.” 

So, an innovator with a great logo (apparently adapted from an old Roman coin) who had the patience to be thorough with the boring bits. I think I'll take him over Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk any day. 

Convention Hall, Asbury Park, 1928-1930.

During my research I stumbled across an interesting law review article; it suggests that today's law schools might benefit from incorporating a number of Quintilian's ideas into their curriculum. To see it, click here.

See also Sandy's Book.

Politics on a Very Hot Day

And still they came. And stayed.

On the sidelines, Philadelphia City Hall.

The John Lewis rally in Philadelphia started at 6 pm on Thursday, 7/17/2025. The temp was 92 at 6, with a feels like of 104.

I found myself thinking of the battle of Monmouth, 6/28/1778. That, too, was a very hot day, but it appears nobody had a thermometer.

It's said that Molly Pitcher brought water for the troops and, when her husband collapsed from the heat, took his place serving a cannon. (There are many versions of this story.)

Molly has a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike named after her.

As we now strive to fight for rights that we thought were inalienable, and as we strive to do so peacefully, I think it's important to recognize that you don't have to tote a gun to earn the thanks of a grateful nation.

See also What a Cold Civil War Feels Like, Politics in the Rain.

Bookends: Making Good Trouble

Guest essay by Lois West

It was 90+ degrees with over 90% humidity. My husband and I decided to break up the mile walk to the John Lewis Make Good Trouble Rally at Philadelphia’s City Hall on July 17 by stopping for an early supper at Pizzeria Vetri at the half-mile point.

The couple sitting next to us, about our age (old!), asked us if we had eaten there before. They then explained that they were Iowans visiting Philadelphia – one of the destinations on their bucket list. We had a lovely conversation with them – about, to us, the strangely enormous interest in college wrestling in the Midwest, about Civil War battlefields (also on their bucket list), and about baseball (the wife adores Kyle Schwarber, especially after his three homers in the All-Star Game). They commented on the sign I was taking to the rally – “My Dad Liberated Dachau. He’s Rolling in His Grave.” The husband said, “He must have had lots of stories to tell.” I replied, “No. He wouldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t.”

We recommended some of our favorite Philly restaurants and historic sites to them, we shook hands, and said good-bye.

At the rally my sign evoked two reactions. One was a grim, knowing nod. The other was a look of confusion and the question “What is Dachau?” – usually mispronounced as Daitchaw. The question was most often asked by 20-somethings.

As we left the rally, a woman approached me and asked me what my sign meant. As I began to explain what Dachau was, she interrupted me and said, “I know it was a concentration camp. I’m Jewish like you.” (She had noticed my star of David.) She continued, “But are you saying that ICE is like the Gestapo? If you are, don’t you feel like you are dishonoring Jews killed during the Holocaust? ICE is not killing anybody.”

I was taken aback. I replied, “ICE is like the Gestapo, like the East German Stasi, and like the French police who rounded up Jews in Paris on July 17 – 83 years ago today. And, you know, it never starts with a gas chamber.”

She shook her head, turned her back on me, and walked away. I have to say that my pre-rally conversation with friendly tourists from Iowa was much more productive and uplifting than my post-rally encounter with a member of my own tribe. Go, Hawkeyes!

See also We Will Not Let Them Down.

This Does Happen

In Case You Had Doubts

Will wonders never cease?

Wednesday, July 16, 2025, 10:07 am. 1700 block of Pine. 

In the end, the moving van was not towed; instead it moved from the bike lane to one of the new loading zones. 

See also Sweeping the Bike Lane, Loading Zones Are the Key Thanks to All.