Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Moderation at risk in US politics today
President Obama revised his long-standing position on the need for corporate tax reform to come closer to the Republican position and the other side continues to define compromise as cowardice.  This remains our single most important challenge today, if there is to be a future for democratic governance in America.

Boehner steps up to admonish one of his own
While immigration reform may remain stalled, the fact that Boehner told Republican Rep Steve King that "there is no place in this debate for hateful or ignorant comments from elected officials" is a potentially very good sign that perhaps more moderate voices within the party can still emerge.
Poverty rates for white Americans are rising faster than rates for Black Americans, slightly closing the gap, according to a recent AP survey.  Will our leaders now make race more salient, following the trend analyzed in New Jim Crow of offering a racial bribe to distract working class whites from a focus on class?  Or, President Obama has been recently highlighting, will we rediscover MLK's call to focus on the ways poverty and violence threaten us all, regardless of race?

Monday, July 29, 2013

Compromise is Everything
Talking with relatives, especially new in-laws, who see the world differently that I do is always a challenge, though one I increasingly welcome.
Unexpected questions or comments are commonplace, usually in the form of either the same tired sound bites that have been fact-checked repeatedly or in the form of really smart and interesting ideas I have not thought of because I was missing something.

In general—keeping in mind that these exchanges occur in context, while sharing beers and overeating, playing cards and watching baseball—the best responses will:

1.      Start with some form of ‘fair point…, but have you considered…’

2.      Speak to and with the person who just spoke, rather than repeat what I have said before

3.      Express disagreement as recognizing an open question, where I could be wrong

Pope Francis is living within these conversations as he tried to remind a right wing Catholic hierarchy about Vatican II.  And he is a role model of both communication and perspective.  Today the Pope called for the church to rethink sexual orientation.
A colleague of many years whom I respect deeply, John Green, similarly walked this fine line, demonstrating how to disagree without being disagreeable.  This is a skill I rejected as selling out when I was a student (most of my life), but now recognize as one of the most important pillars upon which democracy is built.

John Green and co-author remind us that Ray Bliss said “everything is compromise.”

Sunday, July 28, 2013

A Presidential Agenda
President Obama is turning up the heat.  You can watch (or read the complete transcript) his most recent speech at Knox College, which has been attracting a lot of attention in the media, at this NewYork Times page.

The right is focusing on a story about ten College Republicans wearing t-party t-shirts who were prevented from entering for security reasons.
The president noted that it was a growing middle class that was the engine of US prosperity and innovation after WWII, and that… 
“…over time, that engine began to stall…the link between higher productivity and people’s wages and salaries was broken. It used to be that, as companies did better, as profits went higher, workers also got a better deal. And that started changing. So the income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, but the typical family’s incomes barely budged.”
The president calls attention not only to the growing income inequality gap (largest since 1929), the fact that US worker productivity continues to rise while wages have been stagnant since 1979, and worse yet that even the recovery since 2009 remains unstable because our economic fundamentals have yet to be addressed. 
But it is important to hear his reminder of the recovery we have just passed through…despite an obstructionist Congress:
·        We saved the auto industry and

·        Passed a private-sector driven remedy to our health-care system

·        Invested in ‘all of the above’ energy technologies for energy independence

·        Issued tougher rules for big banks, credit card companies, and mortgage lenders

·        Reformed the tax code to cut taxes for 98% of Americans

·        Ensured that the top 1% pay more to support the American dream

·        Created 7.2 million jobs in the past 3 ½ years

·        (Which is the strongest private sector job growth since 1999)

·        Increased foreign investment and job creation in the US

·        Increased exports of products Made in the USA

·        Increased oil and gas production

·        Slowed the rise in the cost of health care to lowest rate in 50 years

·        Ensured that deficits are falling faster than anytime in the past 60 years

·        Cut deficit by 50% as a share of the economy since he became president

·        Increasing manufacturing jobs in America for the first time since the 1990’s

·        Put in place a recovery that is faster and deeper than in any other industrialized country today
While a patriotic Republican Congressional delegation would have allowed the government to do a lot more, this is still an impressive list of accomplishments.  All the more so, given the near-treasonous obstructionism and sound-bite sabotage from the right.
But, he also reminds us that we need to do more. 
“Even though our businesses are creating new jobs and have broken record profits, nearly all the income gains of the past 10 years have continued to flow to the top 1 percent. The average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 40 percent since 2009. The average American earns less than he or she did in 1999. And companies continue to hold back on hiring…
…more students are earning their degree, but soaring costs saddle them with unsustainable debt. Health care costs are slowing down, but a lot of working families haven’t seen any of those savings yet. The stock market rebound helped a lot of families get back much of what they had lost in their 401(k)s, but millions of Americans still have no idea how they’re going to be able to retire.
So in many ways, the trends that I spoke about here in 2005 -- eight years ago -- the trend of a winner-take-all economy where a few are doing better and better and better, while everybody else just treads water -- those trends have been made worse by the recession. And that’s a problem.”
He is, again, correct.  These are the problems we should be focusing on, the conflicts our leadership—as the president is trying to do here—should be making salient and putting on the top of our policy agenda. 
But, despite the president’s ongoing efforts to reach across the aisle (including embracing so many Republican ideas that progressives in his own party worry), addressing these economic problems is made more difficult because of problems in our political system that the president wrote about in Audacity and Mann & Ornstein analyzed in It’s Worse Than It Looks. 
This speech highlights the fact that this president has been consistently moderate, and consistently focused on reaching across the aisle to forge pragmatic approaches to solving our most pressing problems.
So, he focuses on what we need to do now, starting with rejecting the ‘endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phone scandals’ that insist America will not pay its debts, ensure opportunity or fairness that will protect retirements and provide health care and education and jobs.
Happily, the president will (again) seek a bipartisan effort to problem solve, but in this speech he also makes clear that if obstruction is the only response in Congress he is preparing Executive Branch action on his own…on several fronts, including implementing the Affordable Care Act.
If you have health care you do not need to change, but your situation improves with free checkups, mammograms, discounted medicines, no lifetime limits, plans competing for your business (market solution) reducing costs, and no denial or extra charges for pre-existing conditions. 
“…despite the politically motivated misinformation campaign, the states that have committed themselves to making the Affordable Care Act work are finding that competition and choice are actually pushing costs down.
So just last week, New York announced that premiums for consumers who buy their insurance in these online marketplaces will be at least 50 percent lower than what they’re paying today -- 50 percent lower.”
How will States refusing to participate explain their leadership failure to their own citizens?  I would expect them to continue to bullshit, spreading carefully constructed falsehoods about the Affordable Care Act.
Read or listen to the speech.  It is a good place to start to prepare yourself for the misinformation from the right, should Congress continue to choose obstruction over problem solving, party over patriotism.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Not interested in the royal birth
How does Mitch McConnell face the voters in his state?

And if you hate government as much as Mitch and friends...why run for office?

But while they fiddle, others are out there fighting to good fight, struggling to improve our world

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Nate Silver Moving to ESPN!
Very good news for those who like to analyze politics and baseball.  You might recall that in the most recent presidential election Fox News and the rest of the noise machine pounded the drum that analysts were skewing the polling data.  The fact that many Fox viewers (and even Romney) were so shocked by the electoral results indicates just how deeply they believed their own bullshit, because it turned out that Nate Silver predicted all 50 states accurately.  As usual, the only skewing was rooted in Fox and friends.  He is a very smart guy; worth bookmarking his blog for analysis of politics and now baseball.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

President Obama on Zimmerman Verdict
President Obama spoke for about 17 minutes, without notes and in very personal terms, about our response to the Zimmerman verdict.  You can see him sharing his thoughts here.
Our heart goes out to the families.
Legal issues are complex and ongoing, but once a jury speaks that is how our system works.
And yet our response also includes a lot of very real and understandable frustration, in part because the context for this verdict is often unacknowledged or even denied.
Like Trayvon Martin and his peers today, the president and African American boys and men 35 years ago, it is common to be followed in a store, to hear locks click upon your approach, to feel like you are painted with one broad brush.
These experiences, and the history of racial violence in America, including the disproportionate application of violence through the criminal justice system to African American boys and men…it is through these that the African American community interprets the Zimmerman verdict.
These experiences and this history cannot justify any individual action, but to deny the relevance of these experiences adds frustration to the pain felt in African American communities.  The context matters because it lends meaning to events and actions...and because our circumstances, contexts, can be changed.
There are things we can do, and the president considers a few, including searching our own souls, individually and in our families, so we might continue to become a more perfect union.
That was the basic structure of his brief comments.  Thank you Mr. President, for sharing your thoughts and feelings on this important issue.  Coates is, as usual, worth listening to on this as well.  And a very good friend sent me this lament from a white father.  Of course, the Daily Show gets it right as well.

 

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Gasland II
Another HBO offering well worth watching.  "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition," James Madison, Federalist #51.

 
One of the things that disturbs me most, as an observer of politics, is when elites on both sides are on the same side and average communities on the other side.  Fracking.  Genetically Modified Foods.  Lyme disease. Campaign Finance Reform.  Less Distorted Daily News.  Just the first items that come to mind; I am sure the list is longer and there is room to disagree about including this or that conflict on the list. 

 
We depend on competition between organizations designed to protect the public interest lead by those who are willing and able to publicize the conflicts causing the most harm in ways that enable citizens to weigh in meaningfully.  When the elites on both sides do not compete, do not present thoughtful alternatives in comprehensible and illuminating ways, democracy is in trouble. 

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Storytelling and Relationships

Life is Made Up of Stories...Storytellers, good storytellers, draw us in.  We want to listen; we care what they think about us.  My brothers Tom and Ray are great storytellers. Julie is a great storyteller.  Philip and Brian are superb storytellers.  Others I have known have similarly captured my attention with their stories.

I am not a good storyteller.  Not sure why, maybe Catholic school or just something in me, but looking back on my growing up with this insight in mind, I think one of my unstated goals/fears as a child was to avoid having stories.  It seemed that stories were associated with being in trouble, at least in my mind.
Stories meant my parents or the principal were paying attention to me, and not on familiar and safe terms (like algebra), but instead asking questions that made me feel defensive and off-guard.  I felt like it was safer to have no stories; everything went well today, nothing to report, no need to worry about me.  This is not the droid you are looking for? 
My failure to learn this skill meant I did not pay attention to the details like a storyteller might.  I did not learn to see relationships beneath the surface as well as I might have or others did.  I get lost in my head, in the moment, and forget a lot of the stories of my own life.  I am very, very good at being 100% present in the moment and that ain’t nothing.
I do not recall consciously deciding to avoid stories and fly below the radar, with only me straight A report cards and no stories as what people noticed about me.  I do think that this is one reason I am not the best storyteller and that I can be too easily put on the defensive because I am not very skilled in rapid fire conversational exchanges. 
My communication skills have improved a lot, and I am pretty good at some things others are usually weaker on, like seeing both (or multiple) sides to a conflict, but I am not usually very good at describing it…at that time…if it is about me.  I can be a skilled observer and listener for themes across stories.  And I have gradually been able to replace frustrated or angry efforts to get my voice out there with more productive, kind, and loving ways of speaking, balanced against listening.
This is not a story about regrets; this is a story about seeing myself more clearly.  I am not a great storyteller and that is likely one reason I have never been great at maintaining the network of relationships that the great storytellers invariably enjoy.
This might also be why I like the story circle project so much and is certainly one reason I feel so fortunate to have found a network of relationships that matter.  I am learning about stories and relationships, and from experience I can now affirm that, in my view, life is made of stories, because life is about relationships and stories are holistic, capturing the multiplicity and overlap and ambiguity of relationships. And I love good storytellers.  I even like to tell stories, though I am not so talented at it and usually rush back to enthusiastic listener role!
While for years I lived as if the opposite was true, and I still can forget it at times, I have come to see the truth in the statement that every conversation is sacred.  Listening to everyone’s stories, living within them, making time for them and me and us is the heart of seizing the day, being in relationships, and it all starts with stories. We study what we need to learn.

Democracy requires working together in both Islamic and Christian societies

Harvard Law Professor, Noah Feldman, compares Arab Spring government buildinng in Tunisia and Egypt to demonstrate that the conflicts are rooted in leadership failure--and not Islam--and in a type of leadership failur that plagues America right now as well. Pay attention to how Feldman frames this analysis.
Noah Feldman: Don’t blame Islam for Egypt’s troublesJuly 07,2013 02:24 AM GMTNoah FeldmanBloomberg View Copyright 2013 Bloomberg View. All rights reserved. Harvard Law Professor, Noah Feldman, compares Arab Spring government building in Tunisia and Egypt to demonstrate that the conflicts in Egypt grabbing the headlines today are not because Islam and democracy are incompatible.  The conflicts are rooted in leadership failure in Egypt, a type of leadership failure that plagues America right now as well.  Pay attention to how Feldman frames this analysis.Harvard Law Professor, Noah Feldman, compares Arab Spring government building in Tunisia and Egypt to demonstrate that the conflicts in Egypt grabbing the headlines today are not because Islam and democracy are incompatible.  The conflicts are rooted in leadership failure in Egypt, a type of leadership failure that plagues America right now as well.  Pay attention to how Feldman frames this analysis.

“The Arab Spring started in Tunisia, and within a few weeks it had spread to neighboring Egypt. Today, 2 ½ years later, Tunisia is close to ratifying a democratic constitution with well over two-thirds’ support in the constituent assembly. Egypt, as the world knows, is in the throes of a military coup that removed the democratically elected president.  
The obvious — and crucial — question is: What’s the difference? Why has democratic constitutionalism worked relatively well in one North African Arab country while it has crashed and burned in another? And what will the answer tell us about the future of democracy in the Arabic-speaking world, from Libya to Syria and beyond?
You might think the answer has something to do with Islam. But remarkably enough, it doesn’t. In both Tunisia and Egypt, the first democratic elections produced significant pluralities favoring Islamic democratic parties.”
Feldman asks the right question and anticipates the wrong-headed conventional response, which he then shows to be a self-serving distortion.  First, absorb the details of the conflict here, as concisely summarized by Feldman.   
“Ennahda, the Islamist movement whose political party won in Tunisia, is ideologically similar to the Muslim Brotherhood, and is a kind of associate of the Brotherhood’s loosely affiliated internationale. Both parties believe in combining Islamic values with democratic practice. Both accept a political role for women and equal citizenship for non-Muslims, even if in practice they are both socially conservative and seek the gradual, voluntary Islamization of society.
The contrasting personalities and styles of their leaders, however, have pushed Ennahda and the Brotherhood to behave differently when negotiating religion with secularists in their respective countries. Rachid Ghannouchi, the spiritual leader of the Tunisian Islamists, has emerged as the closest thing to an Islamic Nelson Mandela. During his decades in exile, Ghannouchi wrote extensively about the compatibility of Islam and democracy and developed a relatively liberal vision of how Islam and the state should interact.
Skeptics then claimed that Ghannouchi’s views were a cover for a more radical agenda; and some Tunisian secularists still think so. But the evidence thus far is sharply to the contrary. When Islamists called for inserting a reference to Shariah into the Tunisian constitution — usually the sine qua non for any Islamic political party — Ghannouchi took seriously the opposition from secularists. In a dramatic showdown with members of his own party’s leadership, he reportedly threatened to resign unless they dropped the measure.”
Feldman sees the value of leadership willing to take on its own internal extremism…if we want democracy to work, this is the kind of courageous leadership that is needed.
“This may have been the turning point in Tunisia’s constitutional process. Ghannouchi’s position is straightforward: He wants Tunisians to adopt Islamic values, but piety means nothing if imposed by coercion. Islam, he believes, will succeed in persuading people to adopt its truths more effectively if they don’t have its teachings shoved down their throats.
Ghannouchi’s diehard critics would say that omitting Shariah from the constitutional draft was only a tactical retreat, not an ideological one. But if they are right, that is yet another reason why Tunisia’s constitutional process is working: Leaders have displayed willingness to compromise in the face of ideological opposition.
By contrast, when Mohammed Morsi was president, he proved disastrously unwilling to negotiate during Egypt’s truncated constitutional drafting process. The Brotherhood could have shown its good faith by moderating the various Islamic provisions it sought to incorporate. It wouldn’t even have had to omit Shariah, a reference to which was already included in Egypt’s pre-revolutionary constitution. Instead, the Brotherhood went further, giving constitutional authority to the clerics of al-Azhar.
Compromise alone wouldn’t have forestalled the protests that led to Morsi’s overthrow. But it would have signaled a willingness to govern on behalf of the whole populace, not just those who voted for the Brotherhood.”
Second, we can now see compromise and moderation as the heart and soul of a thriving democratic culture…in an Islamic or Christian context, and perhaps particularly in societies with deeply held religious views.
“The willingness to share governing responsibility is probably the single most salient factor separating Tunisia’s relative success from Egypt’s disaster. Ennahda has governed as part of a coalition with secularist parties, whose members filled the positions of president and speaker of the Assembly alongside Ennahda’s prime minister.
This so-called troika of parties has often been dysfunctional and has failed to take decisive action on the economy, which is the most important national issue and the impetus to the Arab Spring in the first place. But the symbolic power of the coalition has helped ensure that frustration about the slow pace of economic change hasn’t focused solely on Ennahda, but on the government more generally. In contrast, Morsi failed to appoint a coalition Cabinet with any meaningful breadth. Anger at shortages and a failing economy then fell squarely on him and his party.
This isn’t a new problem. Autocratic government has been the curse of Arab states since decolonization. The Arabic-speaking public lacks a political culture experienced in democratic power sharing.
The tradition of unchecked presidential power explains both how Morsi could have tried to govern without compromise, and how the protesters could have come to see him as a dictator worthy of being deposed, even though he was elected democratically. Both sides somehow imagined that an elected president would be a bit like an unelected one: all-powerful, all-responsible, and the sole focus of positive and negative political energy.”
It is worth repeating a key insight here: The willingness to share governing responsibility is probably the single most salient factor, that is, the willingness to look beyond party and short term presenting conflicts to see the larger ebb and flow of events and power and policy debates in a democratic society. 
And the expectations average citizens bring to politics and leadership, which are cultivated by public and private sector elites, has a real impact on the outcome of these conflicts. Feldman then uses this comparative analysis to make an observation about how democracies work that the leadership of our own political parties (following Mann and Ornstein, particularly our Republican Party today) should think about. 
“Democracy requires parties to learn to work together and take account of one another’s interests. Those out of power must believe they will eventually be re-elected, and those in power must know they, too, will cycle out. That alone creates incentives to treat the opposition with political consideration and moral respect.”
Yes it does; yes we can.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Red Sox Best in American League

As a life-long Sox fan, I did not expect my team to be playing so well this season.  But the front office put a premium on getting guys who play the game right to go with Pedroia, Ortiz, Bucholtz, Lester, Ellsbury and Salty.  Some from the farm system, some via trades, none as big-ticket free agent purchases.  Nice to see the Lackey of old back on the mound.



It's early?  Of course.  I am not predicting a ring at this point, but I love the team and applaud the GM and manager for figuring this out...adding David Nava, Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli and bringing up Iglesias.  Maybe Middlebrooks will even start to show some power when he comes of the DL, but Iglesias' bat may have already made Middlebrooks trade bait at this point.  Go Sox.

Reading Francona: The Red Sox Years...fun read.  A few passing references to my childhood hero, Yaz, make me wonder if there is some sort of Yaz-Sox feud going on.

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Consider this...

Let's start with a colorful graphic and poetic reminder that a house divided cannot stand...


And reflect back on our founding generation...remembering they did not define freedom in the trivial ways we celebrate it today...

Which does not diminish the joy of dancing and singing, but reminds us that freedom depends on democratically elected representatives working to address the most important conflicts we face... together


But instead of living out loud, embracing the change and risk that is innovation, we are afraid...

And our fears are rooted in elites, public and private sector, who distract us and dissipate public energies on more trivial conflicts, rather than focusing us on the most important conflicts (in part, because this highlights elite failure and, in part, because it highlights policies that would require more shared sacrifice).

 
 
There is no doubt our public leadership is paralyzed, but the extreme anti-government response is superficial and, if that is all we do, self-defeating...
 
 
Because public sector disfunction is not random, but systematically favors the uberwealthy
 

 
 
But our public debate is distorted.  So much so that if we add up the injuries and usurpations made salient by the extreme anti-government forces today, Somolia is the place to find the American dream.
 
 
 
 

Freedom Rings

The Beacon headline today is "Freedom Still Rings in Clear, Bold Tones."  The article is then a series of individuals describing what freedom means to them.  One narrow-minded pastor stretches this question to respond it means the freedom to protect the unborn.  A 27 year-old advertiser says it means the ability to sing the national anthem any way a singer wants.  A gun owner says it is freedom to carry heat. 

Our freedoms are (as always) tenuous, but what is worse is that we no longer have even the slighted idea what freedom means or how we might best protect it.





Others in today's Beacon, like my UA colleague and friend Walter and Greg Coleridge, are more thoughtful, but I was stunned to see these included with the former, on equal footing.  Journalist's tendency to confuse objectivity with a requirement that they treat any insane idea as just another idea, and to always suggest 'both sides are equally right or wrong on this one,' even squanders our July 4 news.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Race and Power

Race and Power
On July 1, 2013 Ta-Nehisi Coates posted his blog in The Atlantic titled ‘Manhood Among the Ruins.’  He tells a story about the ways that being power-poor or powerful—as in the capacity to exert some degree of dignity preserving control over your own life—makes a difference, transforming the same set of circumstances in one case into a devastating humiliation and, in another case, a bump in the road.

‘This morning I rode through Englewood, on Chicago's South Side with the Cook County Sheriff's department's eviction team. Most of the evictees were long gone. They'd left behind trash, mattresses, children's clothes, blaring radios, food and dirty linen. But we stopped at one house where an entire family was set to be sat out on the street.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's office is more progressive than most. (You can click here and get a running tally of the county's jail population and breakdown of its cost.) They'd brought a social worker with them, and the officers were generally polite. But an eviction is an eviction and the fact of the law making you homeless can't really be massaged.

The adult male in the family, who was at home, seemed to grasp this. He argued with the officers and bucked in a way that was very familiar to me. He was in the living room with his spouse and their two kids. He was being emasculated in front of all of them. He had no power. His family was about to be sat out and there was nothing he could do. The officers escorted him outside. They told him to leave the immediate premises or be arrested. Outside there were men hired to haul the family's stuff into the streets.

The social worker took the mother to the back along her two kids. She asked the mother if she had a place to go. She offered referrals for shelter. One of the children, a beautiful brown boy, maybe two years old, wandered back out. "Alvin and the Chipmunks" was on TV. A bowl of cereal sat on the table. The beautiful brown boy kept yelling "chipmunk!" over and over and laughing. I thought of my father who came from home from school at age six, and found his entire life in the street. He lived on a truck with his father for two weeks after that.

When we left, the beautiful brown boy was standing on the sidewalk next to his parents. His mother held the baby on her hip. She said nothing. One of the officers wished them good luck. The man yelled in response, "You talk about us like we dead. We ain't dead. We still a family. Good luck to you." He said it in such a way that he seemed to be trying to convince himself.

Rousseau contrasts moral slavery, "the impulsion of mere appetite" with moral liberty, "obedience to the law you have set yourself." For much of American history the franchise on this kind of "moral liberty" has belonged to men. But it has never belonged to black men as much as it has belonged to white men. And in this day and age, it is increasingly not the strict franchise of men at all. This is as it should be. The past was not better. Still our notions of what men should be remain.

When I saw the father today, I saw a man without the power to set his own laws. I've seen the same pose out in the streets where men yell and threaten violence. I used to think such a display fearsome, but people who must show their power through threatening violence inhabit a low rung. They are not unprivileged. Even the threatening connotes the idea of some natural right which has eluded them, sort of like the phrase "poor white trash."

I've observed this before about the housing riots in mid-20th century Chicago. Those with the most power segregated black people through a dignified "urban renewal." Those with the least were reduced to brick-throwing, arson and riot. A few weeks ago my wife asked me if I would ever engage in cat-calling. I told her that as I am now--respected writer with a son in private school, a wife studying at an Ivy, and latte at the ready--I would not. But had things gone some other way (as they easily could have) I can't say what I'd do. Street harassment is a kind of implied violence, a tool most embraced by those who lack the power to set laws, men who are in doubt of themselves. Real men objectify women with dignity and decorum.

The macho pose, the loud talking, the insistence on violence as resolution, the boastfulness, marks the formative portion of my life. The men who participated in this behavior were, no more sexist then the men I know now. But they lacked power. And they came from generations of men who lacked power. And they came up in society that claimed such power as the essence of manhood. The father standing with his family barking, homeless, was attempting to restore some of that power, to assert his dominance in the face of all events. The beautiful brown boy was watching him.’