Thieves of State by Sarah Chayes

thieves of stateWhy Corruption Threatens Global Security: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes (2016)

I finished the book a while ago and meant to do the write while it was fresh but got distracted.  It is a very depressing read, but probably important to know the arguments she makes so I’m going to go MUST READ on this book. The focus is on governmental and corporate corruption so obviously no good news with that focus. The problem is that there seems to be an endless supply of corrupt people, or good people stressed or tempted  or coerced and turned corrupt. Or willingly ignorant. Or simply evil. I guess it depends on what you believe the core of people is: good or evil? Since I spent childhood ducking and covering under my pathetic school desk (while realizing that it was going to be of no use at all), and my father was a bomber pilot who was absolutely a good man but he dropped bombs and people died. Of course they were scum sucking Nazi’s, but before the demagogue Hitler incited them to hate, they were just bakers, or shop clerks and so on. These same people closed their eyes to the deliberate seizure of their property and then themselves of Jews (or whomever Hitler deemed degenerate races including slavs and gypsies and of course gays) rounded up into synagogues right there in the towns and burned them alive and the synagogues to the ground. And of course the death camps. How can anyone believe in a god after the Holocaust?

So the point is, corruption is also at the heart of so many people that I am not sure it can be stomped out no matter how many whistle-blowers try. The forces of corruption are so great, and wealthy, and rationalized, and dog eat dog, or everyone else is doing it so just looking out for themselves. This is, in essence, the Tragedy of the Commons written by ecologist Garrett Hardin (no relation) in 1968.

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The Life of the Parties by A. James Reichley

The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties (2000, 1992)

the life of the partiesThis link is to the 2000 edition, the one I am reading is 1992 but not as dated as one might think given that it begins at the beginning of America’s founding and all the information up to then and is extremely detailed and analyzed and described very well.

This book answers the many questions I have had over the years of how we ended up with an essentially two-party system that is run like two warring corporations for a monopoly of the United States government as the prize.

I knew that the Founding Fathers had not begun nor wanted political parties, but apparently not “until they began running parties themselves.” Thomas Jefferson was pro-party. Alexander Hamilton “associated parties with ‘ambition, avarice, personal animosity.'” I’m going to side with Hamilton on this point. James Madison “wrote in Federalist Number Ten of ‘the mischiefs of faction. John Adams expressed ‘dread’ toward ‘division of the republic into to great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other.'” Now that was prescient!

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Rocket Girl by George D. Morgan

Rocket Girl: The Story of Mary Sherman Morgan, America’s First Female Rocket Scientist (2013)

rocket girl

This creative non-fiction book is a good read (written by her son) about another unsung and thankfully not forgotten woman who made a difference but got no credit for for her invention of the rocket fuel that propelled the first US rocket into to space to launch our first satellite. Who knew!? Certainly not in the history books, but everyone knows the ex-Nazi Werner von Braun, also working on rocket projects. Yes, she worked among a team of 900 other men (literally the only woman) but as is described in the book when her position was up for discussion, her supervisor told his boss (who wanted to take her the project because she was a woman) that yes, he had all these other brilliant men working for him but that Mary was the best. This boss was like so many others with their egos and disbelief that a woman can be smart, indeed, smarter than the men.

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Sisters in Law by Linda Hirshman

sisters in lawSisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World (2015)

O’Connor discussion
I have been hostile to Sandra Day O’Connor ever since I read that it was her language that gave the states the ability to regulate abortion as long as it was not an “undue burden” to pregnant women. And today’s hundreds of abortion restrictions stem from this language. But I thought it was just me that hated her for being a republican first and a woman second.  I thought she was always hailed for making choice the law of the land, but in fact it would seem that she was not progressive on the issue either.

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Strangers Drowning

Book cover of strangers drowningStrangers Drowning by Larissa MacFarquhar has received notable reviews. I was planning to read it carefully, but alas another person has it on reserve at the library so I decided to give it a fast look and decide if I wanted to put my own second reserve on it.

The subtitle : Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help is what really caught my attention. Many of the things that most make me horrified and crazy are things that, upon examination, refuse to fit my ideals. I cannot even read of the death of a cat in a book without weeping and feeling the loss for days, I love my own cat(s) so much. (Still not really accepting one of my two died last year after I did everything I could to save her.)

So I was curious about this book’s approach and as it happens, it is too full of sorrowful circumstances that in my ideal world should not be but that are actually sometimes realistic facts and the facts require inevitable acceptance of bad and sad things.

I am not good at accepting things I cannot change. I get really really depressed and angry that I am powerless to solve the smallest problems sometimes. Like after my cat died, I decided that my remaining cat who is very territorial would not appreciate any newcomers, foster, kitten, or otherwise. I had also made myself a promise not to take on full responsibility for any more cats other than on a temporary basis because I have multiple sclerosis and it is harder and harder to do things and I don’t want to tie and have a beloved cat be left homeless. I have made provision for her in my will, but still, when I do my usual catastrophizing (no pun intended), I have these horrible thoughts that what if the new people taking care of her don’t know how she likes to play “hide my toy” or that she hates being forced to do anything, especially being made to sit on a lap but she loves to cuddle my shoulder, or sit adjacent to me curled in my arm. So they might think her cold. And she knows her name, not kitty kitty, so that would engender no response. What if she fails to respond to the new circumstances and they yell at her and smack her. She will not understand and will be hurt and bemused. And this kind of shit happens to animals every single day.

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