Here are this week's thoughts: 7 December 1941; Goldwater revisited; tragedy and sportsmanship; Keillor on Trump; US election mess; one party government?; the end of US dominance; Prime Minister Theresa May (UK); Dakota Access Pipeline; the "post-truth" world; a post-nature world. I close with the Kingston Trio's "Merry Minuet."

A notable memoir. In All the Gallant Men, Donald Stratton writes about being on the battleship Arizona when it exploded and sank at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Stratton's is the first-ever memoir by a survivor from the Arizona. His entire extended family (great grandchildren included) are visiting the memorial on the upcoming 75th anniversary.
     Note: The WW II veterans of Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" are fading rapidly, an average of 600 pass away each day.

Barry Goldwater, 1964. Inigo Thomas writes from across the pond about how improbable Goldwater looked in November 1963 as the probable Republican candidate. (21 November London Review of Books) Interesting, now that November 2016 has produced an equally (?) improbable, but successful, Republican (?) president-elect. 
     Eerily, Thomas writes that 1963, "No one thought he [Goldwater] had a chance of winning, but he appealed to large numbers of white voters opposed to the Civil Rights Movement." How very much like Trump's 2016 appeal to voters who thought their economic plight had been too-long ignored by the political elites, left and right. An interesting read, especially Thomas' remembrance of  noted historian Richard Hofstadter’s 1962 lecture, ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ (published in Harper’s a year later).
      It seems appropriate to note, "Ye reap what ye sow." (Galatians 6:7)

Sportsmanship in South America. Last week all but six members of a Brazilian soccer team were killed in a plane crash in Colombia. Their opponents have offered to concede the game and have asked that South American soccer officials insure that the Brazilian team be made eligible for the next three years as it rebuilds.

Keillor on Trump. Sit back and enjoy the tongue in cheek report from the Minnesota cornfields about Garrison's reaction to his recent columns.

US elections. In her op-ed, Katrina vanden Heuvel says that it was not Putin's Russia and any other foreign power that messed up our election. We did it through a series of laws and decisions that changed our election system for the worse. Her argument is simple: if you are a legal citizen of the United States, the state in which you reside should make it easy for you to register and then vote. That, she say, it not what has been happening around the country. Some states have consciously been making it harder to vote. Fellow columnist Dana Milbank agrees.

GOP dominance. Unintended consequences. At the national level the GOP now controls the presidency and Congress, plus governorships and state legislatures to a degree not seen since the 1920s. Governorships: 31 Republican, 18 Democrat, 1 Independent. Legislatures: 25 Republican, 16 Democrat, 8 split, and Nebraska's bipartisan unicameral. As usual and most importantly, the 2018 elections will determine which party will have the dominant role at the state level in re-drawing the nation's 435 congressional districts.

America and the post-Cold War world. Columnist Charles Krauthammer thinks the less fearful world that we hoped for with the demise of the USSR and the end of the Cold War is no longer possible. In effect, he maintains that the world needs to always be steered and we have abdicated our role at the helm. 

Ms. Prime Minister, after Brexit..... What comes next? Anne Applebaum, seasoned European watcher, is not sure the new PM really knows, and "that's dangerous....Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does government. If no one knows what to do, if there is chaos and indecision, then the person with the clearest vision — for good or for ill — wins the argument. That’s the lesson of the Russian Revolution, of Weimar Germany, and, without meaning to overdramatize [sic] — we are not talking about events on that scale — that’s also the lesson of Brexit Britain.
     With his paucity of experience in foreign affairs, it is probably a safe bet that President-elect Trump has no clue either.

The twisted economics of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The High Country News story headline continues, "It’s not about energy independence or even climate change. It’s all about profit." (estimated cost of one barrel: $8 by pipline, $15 by rail)
     As a former USAF colleague used to say, "It seems intuitively obvious to the most casual observer" that oil from the tar sands will be produced and processed -- the questions are "where" and "how will it be transported?" The two alternatives are by pipeline or railroad and both have their drawbacks and problems. A visit to the NTSB website finds more than a few railroad derailments involving crude oil trains. There are also accident reports involving pipelines.
     Leaving aside the questions about more air pollution, the location of this pipeline, which crosses Native American sacred lands and water sources adds a further layer to this controversy.

Post-truth world. Columnist Ruth Marcos wonders what are we to make of the news that "Oxford Dictionaries last month selected post-truth — “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief” — as the international word of the year." Even Alice in her wonderland might be doing some head scratching.

A post-nature world -- man, science, and the Great Spirit? In his High Country News article, "Hope in a post-nature society," Peter Friederici notes the difference between the past nature-driven disasters (e.g. the1890s droughts) and the current drought that has so drained Lake Powell. Here, he says, "[W]e have to wrestle with the knowledge that we are not only in a tough spot where practical action is needed, but that we have to understand our own complicity....[T]his mess is our new terrain. This is our new task." Indeed!
    Friederici notes that the Hopi have another, more spiritual, view. "Yes, they have heard what the scientists say about fossil fuel emissions and the greenhouse effect. But the real reason for climate change? It begins, not ends, with human behavior. The climate is changing, according to some Hopi people, because of a failure of prayer, of humility. That is the ultimate reason for the physical changes."

"The Merry Minuet." Unfortunately, as I ready today's world news, this 1959 Kingston Trio ditty about world affairs keeps running through my head. The situations changed, but the overall message remains one of uncertainty and chaos in a very troubled world.

They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like anybody very much!!

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away!!

They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't so to us
Will be done by our fellow man     

Songwriter: Sheldon Harnick 

Thank you for reading. Tomorrow remember those who died 75 year ago tomorrow, that "day that will live in infamy."