After 3 weeks of so-called "machine development", the LHC is back up and running, providing stable proton beams to all the experiments. Here we were sitting at the end of August all the way till now with three lonely inverse picobarns ("3/pb") of data, gathered from all the running that occurred starting March 30th, when we had hoped to achieve 100/pb this year. This time they've been working on commissioning "bunch trains" where some number of proton bunches (currently 8) are injected in rapid succession with a certain spacing. Now that they have bunch trains commissioned, they plan to try to make up some time by rapidly increasing the number of bunch trains. Only two lengthy "fills" per injection scheme, each fill lasting around half-a-day, before they go for an increase in the number of trains. With no problems (which is optimistic), we hope to have collected 30/pb before they shut down the proton beams and switch over to heavy lead ion beams for one month before the winter shutdown.
Geneva weather for the past 2-3 weeks: absolutely perfect.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Hello, all,
So how about that Tea Party, huh? Amazing. I'm very heartened by the recent primary results, but I'll have to explain why.
According to my reading a lot of people that don't normally think about politics have suddenly gotten interested, because of all that's going on. Of course I was already interested in politics and have been pretty much since the early-mid 90's. You could reliably put in "R" behind my name ever since I entered the electorate.
So when somebody would say (as did Gov. George Wallace in 1968) that "there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties", I would discount their opinion as too simplistic, an excuse not to have to think further about it. But more recently some otherwise respected "R" would say or do something that made me start to wonder. For instance:
In 2004, then-President George Bush and traditionally rock-ribbed conservative Rick Santorum supporting liberal Arlan Specter for U.S. Senate from PA over the more conservative upstart Pat Toomey. It was clear from that point that party mattered to them more than principle. The thanks they got was to see Arlan Specter switch parties more recently because this time he saw no chance of being elected as an "R" - he even admitted as much. Tellingly, he was then supported by current President Obama against grassroots opposition and still lost the "D" primary for reelection.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago...my last blog entry had a link to this article by Angelo Codevilla. It's gotten me to rethinking a lot about American politics and the two-party system as it currently stands. In case the length of the article intimidates you, please allow me to excerpt a few quotes.
...Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust...Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits...Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.
The two classes have less in common culturally, dislike each other more, and embody ways of life more different from one another than did the 19th century's Northerners and Southerners -- nearly all of whom, as Lincoln reminded them, "prayed to the same God." By contrast, while most Americans pray to the God "who created and doth sustain us," our ruling class prays to itself as "saviors of the planet" and improvers of humanity. Our classes' clash is over "whose country" America is, over what way of life will prevail, over who is to defer to whom about what.
...the notion that the common people's words are, like grunts, mere signs of pain, pleasure, and frustration, is now axiomatic among our ruling class. They absorbed it osmotically, second -- or thirdhand, from their education and from companions.
The ruling class's appetite for deference, power, and perks grows. The country class disrespects its rulers, wants to curtail their power and reduce their perks. The ruling class wears on its sleeve the view that the rest of Americans are racist, greedy, and above all stupid. The country class is ever more convinced that our rulers are corrupt, malevolent, and inept. The rulers want the ruled to shut up and obey. The ruled want self-governance. The clash between the two is about which side's vision of itself and of the other is right and which is wrong...One side or the other will prevail. The clash is as sure and momentous as its outcome is unpredictable.He cites one example of many as evidence to these sweeping generalizations: the reaction of the two classes to the economic crisis of 2008. Whereas President Bush and McCain and Barak Obama all agreed that large sums of money had to be thrown at failing banks and car companies, the rest of the country disagreed by a large margin - but that disagreement didn't matter.
It really clicked for me when someone pointed this out: McCain infamously said in 2008 of his opponent to his own supporters, "You have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency" (even if that were true, who ever says that about their political opponent? message received by us peasants: "pick me, pick him, it doesn't matter, we'll both rule you in the same way. I'd rather preserve my ruling class bona fides than identify with the likes of you"). By contrast in 2010 he portrayed conservative challenger Bob Hayward in the direst possible language; Arizonans had plenty to fear from him...
That's what this year's election is doing for people who are paying attention: never before has it been so clear that we no longer have as substantial a divide between the two parties as we do between both parties and the rest of the country. Never before has it been so clear that the establishment politicians - "the ruling class" - are arrogantly posing as superior, unaccountable, and not to be questioned or challenged, when in fact they have no justification for taking such a stance. It's not that there's no difference between the parties, it's that what difference remains between them is essentially irrelevant.
Another case in point: after Christine O'Donnell defeated Mike Castle in the Delaware Republican primary, none other than Obama and Biden called to commiserate with him - really? That's all? Just to commiserate? With a Republican? Why then is Castle now considering a write-in candidacy, just like defeated incumbent Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) - and Senate Republicans are protecting Murkowski from suffering the consequences of this blatant breach of party rules? Because the ruling class protects its own and rejects any contribution from the country-class, the grassroots conservatives whom it simultaneously fears and patronizes. As far as Obama, Biden and Reid are concerned, the "R" behind Castle's (and Specter's and Murkowski's) name stands for essentially nothing. He is one of them.
An inexorable corollary of all this must be the resentment felt by the ruling class that it has to play this game every 2,4, or 6 years, coming hat in hand to the electorate to retain their position. Be assured that they find our democracy a tremendous inconvenience and would do away with it if they could, if given half a chance. They've already been eating away at the edges for years...
Therefore my take is that the "anti-incumbent mood" is far more important than the temper tantrum it is commonly portrayed to be - tantrums are the province of children. More people need to catch and sustain this posture - an unremitting hostility to the political status quo, to being so "ruled" by a bunch of posers - because our liberties and our country's future depends on it. One might even argue that the elitism, ruling-class mentality, and hatred for the country-as-founded that permeates Washington, all three branches of government, as well as the media, is the more fundamental issue that America faces. From it springs many of the other daunting challenges - the out-of-control spending, the mountains of debt, the high unemployment, the collusion of big business and government, the polarization of society.
So let the passion for freedom of the original Revolution of 1776 breathe again, just as it did in the first Boston Tea Party. Let the torch be carried forward by "we the people" in 2010.
Sarah Palin is another big piece of the puzzle; her ascension precedes and sets the context for this year's Tea Party successes. Well does Codevilla point out in another place that the elitists essentially made Sarah Palin, by mocking her. Though she doesn't seem to have the quintessential ruling class qualification of "intelligence" -by which they seem to mean glib expressions of ruling class values (cf. "hope and change"), wonkish command of policy details and an Ivy League indoctrination - she exhibits a commonality and love for America with most of us great unwashed in the American populace.
By contrast the willingness to express common cause with America at large is the one new essential job qualification as far as the country class is concerned; "essential" because so few others have shown themselves willing to do it. Don't be ashamed to identify with us. Stand up to the elites and say you're not going away. She didn't have to blow away Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric with her superior knowledge; she just had to laugh it off and keep coming. Her unapologetic identification with the country class simultaneously earns the red-hot derision of the ruling class and their supporters and the full-throated cheers of others who have experienced that same derision and don't like it. She's a stand-in, a surrogate for the rest of us who would like to tell the rest of "them" where to get off. This is the crux of the Palin phenomenon that eluded me before.
For movie buffs like me, an analogy: It puts me in mind of the famous "blood test" scene from "The Thing" - not for the squeamish if you go searching for it on YouTube. Palin was the hot poker that got plunged into the body politic and produced a violent but most revealing reaction across the political spectrum.
Same thing now with Christine O'Donnell. Whatever you think about her qualifications, the fact remains that she and Sarah are being used by grassroots American voters to poke the ruling class in the eye. Repeatedly. Until they run home crying to their mommies!
I can't stand elitist thinking. It's one of my biggest pet peeves. One day when I was pondering on all this I blurted out to K that I suddenly wanted to be a redneck. "But honey," she replied, "you already are a redneck." "Yes, I know, but it makes me want to be even more of a redneck. Suddenly I want to move the whole family into a trailer park. Our trailer would be festooned with lava lamps, velvet Elvis portraits, dogs playing poker. The floor would be so strewn with empty beer bottles (or should I go with cans?), kids busted-up toys, half-eaten pieces of pizza and trashy periodicals you could barely walk. I'd wear a white tank top with my chest-and-pit hair sticking out. You'd have the big 'do and smoking cigarettes. The kids would be running around in naught but their diapers with spaghettios smeared all over their faces."
And then, as if to confirm this sudden redneck proclivity I looked out the window - and what did I see parked in the lot just below our balcony?
Yeah, baby! Now that's what I'm talking 'bout... Looks like I gots me some company.
"But P," you say: "don't you hang out with elites? After all, you live in hoity-toity France (home of the SmartCar), work in monied Switzerland -- and CERN is pretty rarified atmosphere for anyone to be working." Please, don't remind me. All summer I was going to work wearing a (semi-decent) t-shirt, shorts, white tennis shoes and a baseball cap, even though I'm getting into the high side of pudgy midlife (don't worry, I put on a golf shirt when there's a meeting to go to). Everything screams "He's an American redneck!" And this gives me book title: "An American Redneck In France."
K's preferred subtitle: "There and Back Again".
Take care,
-PKBGD
No comments:
Post a Comment