Las Vegas getaway!

Over President's Day weekend my wife and I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to meet family members.  The string of storms coming over the Pacific through the previous week, part of the Polar Vortex, paused to allow our passage between Saturday's departure and the return on Monday, so that the mountains and deserts had been washed down to their elemental colors, and the sky was a swirl of meaningful whites, blues, pinks and purples, changing hues and messages through the day.  The message I wanted, and received, was, "Come to me.  I will cradle your mind and soul for a while."

Los Angeles was gone!

The air too, always cold and loving, never faltered in its embrace.

Restaurants and retailers along the way have discovered how to stand out in the desert, with gratifying food and flamboyant exteriors.  We stopped at the Mad Greek Cafe in Baker, where I-15 to Vegas meets Highway 127 to Death Valley.  Many eateries in the wild serve dismal, ungenerous food, because there's no competition, but the Mad Greek's fare is plentiful and delicious.  Gleaming white plaster faux Greek statues around the perimeter and within the restaurant engage patrons with their naked torsos every five feet.  Down the road is Alien Jerky, a two-story metal structure depicting a wheeled rover with stereotypical aliens looking out of their control room through a broad upper window.  Within the store were large crowds of travelers browsing many varieties of jerky (e.g., Abducted Cow; Weed Killer Hot Beef).

The desert and its human diversions were enough to slow the downward pull of the news, which reminds us every day that we are at the receiving end; we are to sit and watch.  In past desert drives we looked for NPR news on the hour, hungry for "breaking" developments to counter the disconnected state.  This time the goal was the disconnected state.

Interest in Las Vegas goes way back in my family.  In the 1950's my grandmother would take the Vegas train from L.A. to play Bingo and often came back excited by her winnings.  She had a strange kind of luck.  I tried to emulate her at the Saturday kids' matinee at the Encino Theater, which held ticket raffles.  Once, to my amazement, I won.  My mom and my grandmother picked me up after the show, and I proudly held out my winnings: a cellophane wrapped carton of butterscotch LifeSavers!  My grandmother's response: "Is that all you won?"

As a kid I disliked Vegas, with its gussied-up attempts to distract kids from the grownup gambling.  Then one summer day when I was thirty-something, while my daughter's crayons melted in the car, we walked into the Luxor Hotel and I discovered kitsch!

Per Merriam-Webster, kitsch refers to art objects or designs considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.

The Luxor comprises a pyramid with a black exterior, three-fourths the size of The Great Pyramid of Giza, with a spotlight at its apex shooting a column of light into space (visible from airplanes flying over L.A.) in which bats swarm at night, and a Sphinx two stories taller than the original, and murals everywhere depicting skirted Egyptians looking out of the sides of their heads.

The irony of the Luxor: Its spiritual icons, formerly employed in guiding the migration of souls (at least the royal family's), are now guardians of regular folk hypnotized into giving their money away.

The Luxor pyramid used to be the first Vegas structure we spotted coming in from the west, and it set a playful mood, but now the adjacent Mandalay Bay Hotel, from an upper window of which, on October 1, 2017, a deranged shooter killed 58 people attending an outdoor music festival below, adds somber meaning.  A shadow crossed our hearts as we sped past.

We unloaded at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, glitzy, huge and efficient, but short on stunning kitsch.  What mattered, though, were the remarkably powerful and well maintained elevators that took us to the 57th floor numerous times without crowds or delays.  I also liked the giant pillows on the beds, and the quiet one can find 57 floors up.

Las Vegas was an important location for the Paiute and Mojave tribes because of its natural springs.  Later, for the same reason, it became a pioneer settlement, then a railroad hub, and finally, in the 1930's- recounted by the informative Mob Museum (in the old post office/courthouse building)- it was reborn as the city where organized crime went legit, much like the pharaohs' ancient scam. 

On Sunday morning we drove twenty minutes north to Red Rock Canyon, where stunningly beautiful sandstone strata, oxidized red, erupt in geologic slow motion.  At one point I left our party to wander up a path, following signs to the remains of a fire circle used for festivals by both the Paiute and Mojave. The signs ask visitors not to disturb the surroundings, as the site is holy to Native Americans.  I was sure I could smell burnt wood as I approached, though only whitened stones were visible around the fifty-foot circle.  What is a holy place?, I wondered, finally deciding that it is a place with memory.  This place remembered a life now gone, when the mystery of the surrounding terrain- then mostly devoid of people, unowned- continued on and on, for tens of thousand of miles, all around the earth, interrupted only where humans lived in small, scattered bands.  What did it feel like, to live in that world?  If I think about it too much I start to ache.

I considered the grounds outside the Mandalay Bay, where many people died or were harmed.  Is it, too, holy ground, soaked in memory?  Will people hundreds of years from now stop there and feel a chill, like the chill of loss I felt at the fire circle?

As it happened, both the restaurant we chose that night- the excellent Fleur- and the show we saw, Michael Jackson One (by Cirqe du Soleil) were at the Mandalay Bay.  Insulated within, I felt nothing from the recent horror outside, and I was comforted by the idea that our merriment was designed to heal local wounded spirits. The Michael Jackson One show was riveting, not only because of adept mixing of Jackson songs and images, but because the performers did things with their bodies that most humans cannot do.

The next morning anxiety attended our departure when we read on Googlemaps that all lanes of the southbound I-15 north of Baker were closed due to a crash.  Before GPS, this would have ensured a travel nightmare, but thanks to our newly intelligent car, it meant a short, well-planned detour on two-lane roads through beautiful desert, with adventures en route. 

After a spell on Highway 95 South, my car was low on gas.  The first gas station appeared in Searchlight, a boom or bust mining town and birthplace of Nevada Senator Harry Reid (from Reid's memoire: "We had a little tree in our yard for a while.  It died.").  The station was large, with many pumps, but it was experiencing difficulties related to the closure of I-15.  In addition to much more traffic than usual, the pumps were malfunctioning.  I approached them slowly, angling against other cars hoping to find a pump that worked.  At one point I was behind a white pickup.  The pickup turned left, away from the pumps, so I proceeded straight alongside it, but then the pickup veered right, the driver seeming to change his mind.  The pickup was one second away from hitting the front of my car.  I halted and honked, and the pickup stopped, and a man in the passenger seat turned and glared at me, menace pouring from a hardened face.  My flight-or-fight brain engaged, and I glared back, trying to remain neutral but feeling something involuntary within that boiled and overflowed with drops of rage.  His drops and mine fell to the asphalt below, staining it with memories of hatred towards the other, of self versus non-self.  The drops sizzled and steamed, hopefully evaporating before establishing themselves on earth.  I drove slowly away from the white pickup.

The remainder of the trip was one long exposure to Earth's beauty: dark purple storm clouds in the distance, geologic turmoil frozen in time, Joshua trees thinking their secret thoughts.  When L.A. appeared, it was a sudden jump from empty expanse to millions of humans interacting in a way our planet has not known before in its five billion years.

California in pain and anger

It's 6:30am, Saturday, November 10.  The winds have died down in Woodland Hills, and the "Woolsey" fire, attacking now in Calabasas to our immediate north, has slowed, so at present we don't have to evacuate.  That could change later in the day.  The cold air smells nice, like a wood fire (last night the Santa Ana winds blew the smoke out to sea), but the meaning of the smell is dire.  The gym at my school down the street is filled with refugees.  At the Ralph's, displaced newcomers look for alternatives to Red Cross pizza.

The news media is correct that this fire is unlike any other Southern California fire we've experienced, partly because of its breadth and ferocity, and partly because of two other things: its timing after a mass shooting near its origin and its proximity to a midterm election that left the U.S. in crisis.

I found a strange perspective and further meaning to the fires in a local news report.  A man from Camarillo whose house burned down told a reporter, "I still count myself lucky- I didn't have to go through what they did in Thousand Oaks."  He was referring to the shooting, in which a crazed man with an assault weapon- which he finally used on himself- killed 12 people at a music club. 

Right after the shooting, within a few miles of it, the fire started.  The man with the destroyed house had combined, in his mind, the two catastrophes, so that the shooting in Thousand Oaks and the fires were parts of one attack that struck differently in different places.  After the man spoke in the clip, the news anchor remarked, "Yes, the people of Thousand Oaks experienced the shooting right before this fire erupted around them," understanding what the homeowner had said.  In her mind, too, the shooting and the fires were connected, even as one story.

A BBC reporter who had covered other mass shootings in the U.S. had this observation about Thousand Oaks: "The chilling difference I'm finding here is that, unlike in past shootings, there is no sense of surprise.  It's as if people feel, 'Yes, this is what happens.'"

The resignation and despair plus the blending of the shooting and the fires- and perhaps the sense of uncertainty after the midterm- have induced, I think, an "act of God" feel to the catastrophes, invoking in some, perhaps, a Biblical guilt: What have I done to deserve this?, and in others a guilt infused with assertiveness and anger: Why have I allowed myself, my family and friends to accept a society that has no power over itself, that cannot control weapons or crazy people or much of anything? 

President Trump this morning threw more anxiety into the mix when he insulted hundreds of thousands of distressed Californians by stating that the Woolsey fire and the Camp fire (in Northern California, with over 1,000 dead) were caused by the state's "gross mismanagement," and that the penalty for this should be "No more Fed payments!," an abusive statement reflecting his anger that California refuses to knuckle under to him.

Yet I counsel against putting much energy into anger at Trump, because it won't do any good.  He thrives on it.

Instead, let's take our anger and guilt and direct them at a vacuum, the vacuum where a political party should be.  Democrats and Republicans are done.  They are phantoms floating past the carnage in California, using outrage at each other to mask their ineffectiveness.  We need a new political party, and we need it by 2020.   We should put our anger and/or guilt into that.

[Update, 8/14/21: Obviously we did not get a new party by the 2020 election, but we did get further collapse of the current two parties. I guess I should be glad about that, but I'm trying to be carefull what I wish for.]

The debate game

[This essay made the shortlist in the NewPhilosopher Magazine writing contest, August, 2018.]

The engaging articles in the Summer 2018 NewPhilosopher Magazine, the Play edition, are relevant to my job, which for the past fifteen years has been coaching high school debate (I retired from teaching English in 2009).   The issue explored the dual nature of play, as exercise without purpose beyond itself, and as exercise with extended purposes, and inspired me to revisit two long-pondered questions about academic and political debate:  Do they lead to truth, either for students or politicians running for office, and do they result in accurate ranking of students’ or candidates’ abilities? 

Debate coaches and media networks promoting election debates sometimes suggest that debate entails a search for truth.  We hear about its roots in Socratic dialogue and Enlightenment debate societies, which, in theory, existed to stimulate critical thinking and draw out ideas and underlying assumptions.  However, while formal argumentation may at times display truth, the modern game of debate is not designed to do that; it is designed to determine a winner and loser.  

The winner’s arguments are not deemed “true,” but better argued; the loser’s arguments are not deemed “false,” but not argued as well.  Competitive debate is a sport, a verbal boxing match in which each side pummels the other with “facts” and “evidence,” and a judge then decides who did this with the most facility (debate derives from Latin battere, to fight). Thus, there is never an epiphany on one side in which a debater sees the wisdom of the opponent’s view- in fact that would constitute a loss for the agreeing side.   There are clear benefits to debate- it sharpens important life-skills and brings to light much information and many points of view- but the imperative to disagree impedes its potential function as a search for truth.

The imperative to disagree is also the default mode in public discourse.  Consider the current gun control debate in America.  Below is an exchange using the arguments we hear in the news, as they might be expressed in one of the popular high school debate events, such as Lincoln-Douglas or Public Forum, starting with a resolution, followed by a back and forth between the Affirmative (Aff) and Negative (Neg):

Resolved: In light of recent mass shootings using automatic weapons with high capacity ammunition clips, combat weaponry should be banned from civilian use.

Aff: There is no legitimate purpose in civilian life for automatic weapons.  Such weapons are necessary only for police and military use.

Neg: The founders wrote the Second Amendment to make sure the population has the right to bear arms. Restricting assault weapons is the first step in a slippery slope leading to prohibition of all firearms. The larger question is protection of freedom.

Aff: We are not talking about restricting all firearms. People would still have the right to arm themselves both for personal protection and for recreational uses such as hunting.

Neg: The ultimate purpose, however, is to ban all firearms from the population.

Aff: No it isn’t.

Neg: Yes it is.

Aff: No it isn’t.

Neg: Yes it is.

Of course the last four statements would not be made, but their equivalents would, ad infinitum.  There is no end to the debate.  Although formal rules force closure, the two sides go at it for an implied eternity.

High school debate at least attempts to approach truth through the requirement for "clash," the precise rebutting of an opponent’s argument (referred to also as "hitting").  The public debate on gun control has reached the pointless point, not only because it is at the “Yes it is/No it isn’t” level, but because the Neg, in this case the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its supporters avoid clash.  If the current national gun control debate were a formal academic debate at a high school tournament, the NRA would lose by virtue of its avoiding clash.

For instance, in an academic debate, if the Neg alleged that civilians need combat weaponry to protect against a hypothetical tyrannical government (a common argument), the Aff could counter that our heavily armed citizenry has already given up its 4th Amendment right to private communication without a shot fired.  Such an Aff response would constitute clash, as it directly addresses the Neg point. If the Neg then responded by ignoring the point, which is what the NRA does, then the judge would give the win to the Aff because it clashed and the Neg did not.

Unfortunately in political debate there is no judge to monitor and award points for clash.  One wishes the general public would be as observant to detail as the average parent/judge at a high school debate tournament. 

My second question about debate concerns our use of it to determine the quality of the speakers, whether they are students vying for first place or candidates seeking votes.  How reliable and appropriate is this use?

My observation, from judging debate rounds at many tournaments, is that at preliminary tournaments- the novice and opens- there is substantial validity to ranking students in numerical order of achievement, because at these levels there are large differences in technical proficiency.  At the final rounds of qualifiers the appropriateness of ranking is less clear.  Finalists in a qualifier are highly polished.  There will be differences, but they are harder to spot.

The real problem is in the final rounds of state tournaments, or the national tournament.  In these rounds there is often no observable difference between the top several students.  The rankings first, second and third can be meaningless, generated in the minds of exhausted judges trying to avoid a tie.  When the rankings are announced at awards, however, they are treated as 100% valid. The situation seems unfortunate in a culture where the overriding goal in all competitions is to place first.   I say this as a coach whose students have placed first and second in state.  I certainly wouldn’t petition the league to invalidate those rankings.  My students were awesome and it’s a rush to win big.  But the process is unreliable.

Ranking political candidates based on their performance in public debate is unreliable as well.  After a presidential debate in the U.S., commentators try to decide who "won," as judges do in high school debate, but how would anyone know who won when there is virtually no clash?  The media formula for identifying the winner of a political debate appears to be an estimate of which candidate was most likeable.  Not that there's anything wrong with being likeable, but if that's all the debate shows, it's a formula for picking demagogues, as they tend to be likeable.  

Several of the articles in the NewPhilosopher Play edition look at the contradiction between the playfulness of play and its seriousness.  For instance, in “Being outside yourself,” Simon Critchley and Nigel Warburton consider the exaggerated sense of meaning felt by fans after their home football team either wins or loses, in the context of the essential meaningless of either winning or losing.  Debate too is a mix of play and serious ambition.  To me as a coach, debate is more play than serious, but I would rather not leave it at that.  

Perhaps we can take another look at debate as play, and see how it might serve serious purposes, both academic and public.  Can we structure debate rules to avoid deadlocks of “Yes it is/No it isn’t”?  Do debaters have to insist they are right?  Are “win” (from Gothic, winnan, "to suffer") and “lose” (from Old English, losian, "to perish, be destroyed"} sufficient outcomes?  Must there be first, second and third places that force judges into subjective and even random decisions?

Hopefully such questions will not become moot.  Academic and public debates are indications of a democratic society.  Recent totalitarian trends, if fulfilled, could mark the end of all but cosmetic debate.  If we can hold on to debate in its current, relatively uncensored form, it might be worthwhile to upgrade the rules and goals with deeper understandings of play and its purposes.

When last I looked

Said the captain to first mate
"It must be something that I ate

for when I look across the sea
and think of what it all could be

then taste the salty swell of fate
I find the will to recreate

the empty canvas I did see
when last I looked across the sea."

There's a bard in my yard

What if
though all we teach our young

be naught but dreams we teach ourselves 
so we

in the throes of later-aged ambition

to be more upon the stage

than aged babes 
(domestic ciphers, suckling, passive, small accounted in the public eye, 
sweeping dust to dust and daily circling mile on mile)

in quiet contemplation

hidden watched the generations flow?

While everywhere impetuous glories

spilled from restless minds 
and caused calamitous clash

and magnificent ornament of the soul,

and children 

uprooted on life’s playground

felt the rousing slap

and challenge of the intellect’s 
swampy doubt

and thought not of quiet corners

but of noisy triumph on the field!

Demanding that we set aside

The limits of our scope

And take them on a joyous ride

Of certitude and hope