November 2

 Looks like we may get more sun today. The temperature on the patio is in the mid-20s. Some plants are still struggling to stay green. Most of the snow has disappeared. It was a very wet snow so the wet conditions we have had this fall, so far, continue. For the last few years I have not cut back or pulled the plants in late fall because the remains provide a ground cover and helps protect tender shoots when the perennials try to come back in the spring. I still haven't decided what seeds I will get for next year. I hope to get some things set up so I don't have to drag out the hose at all. I got it on the faucet last spring but couldn't get it off without help this fall.

I caught a bit of a NY Times article on China and its policies about women and childbearing. Unfortunately, a part of it is behind a pay wall but reading what they so generously (sarcasm!!) put up I wondered how soon we might be following in their footsteps. For about three decades China had a policy mandating only one child per couple and enforced it by compelling late term abortions and restricting public services to the offending couple. They succeeding in reducing the birth rate until they were concerned by the other effects. About thirty years ago I read articles decrying the rise of the "little emperors," that is, children spoiled by dotting parents who were not going to have any more. Then, around 15 years ago, the stories about the problems of a large number of embittered men who were losing out on the marriage race because the one child policy resulted in far more male children born than female. Even though the government had policies that discouraged using ultrasound to allow prospective parents to abort unwanted female fetuses and tried to improve the prospects of girls children (educational benefits, inheritance of father's positions etc.), Chinese couples still preferred boys to girl and found ways to ensure their child was the desired gender. However, the birth rate continued to drop and, in recent years the population declined for the first time in memory. In 2021, the government rescinded the one policy to allow two and then, a year later, modified the policy yet again to allow three. Now the government wants women to "get married and have babies." In other words, go back home, take care of the kids and elderly, and out of gainful work. It will be interesting to see what happens.

I wondered above how soon it would be before we go the same route. With all of the efforts by, especially, Republican politicians to enact increasingly draconian anti-abortion measures and with a certain Senator holding up military promotions over regulations for women to seek health care out of state if they are stationed in an a state that bans abortion, it occurred to me there is no more effective way to restrict women's participation in activities outside childbearing and child rearing. When the Chinese government "liberalized" its policy by allowing a second (and, later, a third) child, women found it more difficult to get jobs. Employers didn't mind hiring a woman who had one child when that was the legal limit but balked about hiring a woman who had only one child when she could become pregnant again. We had a long struggle to support women in the workforce and prevent discrimination on the grounds of possible pregnancy.

I remember accounts I have read of the effects on women in Germany when the NAZI party gained control. Almost over night, women disappeared from the political arena when they had a sizable presence before. They also started to disappear from education, especially the colleges and universities. It didn't take long at all.

Robert Reich posted this piece this morning about The Former Guy The Mob Boss. I wrote about the NAZIs in the last paragraph and Reich reminded me that there is another feature of the Party's ascent to power was the Brown Shirted SA thugs (predecessors of the SS thugs)rampages designed to intimidate voters and other perceived enemies (i.e., Jews). We aren't really taught history in this country. A commentary circle on one of the news/talk shows yesterday lamented the fact that people didn't understand that the universities that didn't say anything about virulent demonstrations against Jewish students discriminated against Jews only a few decades ago. I remember reading that Harvard restricted the number of Jewish students entering the university to 5% of the student body in the 1920s and 1930s. They lamented the fact that people didn't really know the circumstances around the establishment of the State of Israel. I am not so surprise. Israel was born in 1947; two years before I was. I'm now 74. To put the issue another way: if you consider a generation to be about 20 years, three and a half generations have been born and grown to adulthood in that time. And to go back to the conditions that gave rise to  NAZI Germany and, a bit later, WWII--between 4 and 5 generations separate those events. We don't remember them and they have passed into popular culture. We get snippets of them in books like Leon Uris' Exodus or episodes in the graphic novel V For Vendetta or scenes in musicals like Cabaret. And now we have the problem that if anyone calls attention to any uncomfortable episode in our history they are castigated as Woke.

I don't often agree with Joni Ernst but yesterday she told Tommy Tuberville as he continued to object to military promotions "I don't trust a man who doesn't keep his word." There I agree with her. And I go farther: I don't trust a country that doesn't keep its word either.

Arnold Isaacs has a thought provoking piece on Tomdispatch.com today. Some of us have looked on stumped by the chasm that has opened up in our society. The sides on any topic seem to be shouting past each other and refusing to acknowledge the possibility that the other might have some facts on their side.

The Weather Channel had a piece today that reflects and confirms some suspicions we had here: the weather this year has put a lot of pressure on food supplies. During the summer India banned export of rice except for basmati rice. The summer has been brutal for European food production. The reporters interviewed a soybean farmer in this country who thinks he might break even although he lost around 15% of his crop. I saw a report by, I think, the Department of Agriculture which projected a decline in the corn, wheat, and soybean crops because of the heat this year. They did put a bit of a rosy gloss on the report by insisting that the decline didn't indicate we would have any shortage. We looked at all this over this year and knew we should brace for increased food prices. We haven't been surprised.