OLD MEN’S VICES
I’ve got to hand it to Inyo CAO Nate Greenberg and Inyo County Counsel John Vallejo. Their approach to staffing and compensation of Inyo County Public Defenders has won the day.
On Friday, Elizabeth Corpora’s contract for Public Defender services is on the Inyo Supervisors special meeting agenda.
If approved, that would be the 4th and final contract for the 4th and final slot.
Rory Kalin, Bryan Mack and Gerard Harvey have already signed.
The Kalin hiring, covered in The Sheet’s March 23 issue, was controversial because of Kalin’s past history in Humboldt County – which led him to sue Humboldt (his former employer). But it appears to have served as the domino to get others to sign, lest they get shut out and have to (gulp) rely on private clients.
Other news in Inyo. Talk about a Family Affair. Since Trina Orrill became District 1 Supervisor, the county has hired her brother (public works) and her sister-in-law (tax collector’s office).
I’ve been reading D.J. Taylor’s terrific successor biography, “Orwell: The New Life” to the first biography he published in 2003.
As Taylor writes, “Like Dickens, his [Orwell’s] message can be reduced to the slogan ‘Behave Decently,’ which, as he himself pointed out, is either a gigantic cliché or two of the most important words that you can say to anybody about anything.”
And as Orwell wrote in an essay published in 1944, “There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with modern man’s feelings that life here and now is the only life there is.”
Which I interpret, 80 years later, as, “The future seems a bit hopeless, so I’m gonna ‘live my best life’ (whatever the hell that means, but it apparently relates to travel and IG posts and living comfortably and a sprinkle of general ostentation) and not worry too much, if at all, about others.”
Which is fundamentally depressing.
I think about my YMCA summer camp motto from umpteen years ago. “God First, the other fellow second, myself last.” So quaint. God, the other fellow, and Elvis have long left the building.
I have a copy on my refrigerator of a poem by Gayla Wolf’s late husband Martin Wolf, who in his later years fashioned himself a biker/philosopher.
And the poem has this refrain in the first three stanzas. “Don’t be difficult. Do what is right.”
And in the final stanza, “You will never get any credit for what you didn’t do/And very little credit for what you did do/So, what are you going to do?/Do it for the right reason and forget about it.”
Behave decently.
I look at Mr. Rogitz’s letter on page four, and it’s funny … it pretends to address my editorial from last week, but doesn’t.
When reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future, I was moved mostly by Robinson’s thoughts on economic inequality and how it warps people’s outlook and behavior.
And then at the end, I quoted Bill McKibben, who said of Robinson’s work, “The point of his books is to fire the imagination.”
But the mere mention of the name ‘McKibben’ – because who is McKibben but a stereotype, a hologram – fired in Mr. Rogitz a passionate defense of a personal philosophy which apparently goes something like this: Doing whatever the hell you want, when you want and how you want is the highest, best thing we can aspire to – you know, a defense of one’s unalienable rights against any and all who would suggest … moderation, or limits.
I think of Prince Feisal’s last remarks to Lawrence in the film “Lawrence of Arabia” as Feisal and the British divide the spoils of Damascus.
“There is nothing further here for the warrior … we drive bargains. Old men’s work. Young men make wars and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men – courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace and the vices of peace are the vices of old men, mistrust and caution. It must be so.”
Framing last week’s editorial as an argument over climate science is a wonderful diversion.
But it won’t stop younger generations from continuing to circle back to the increasingly stubborn belief that the old folks are being a bit too selfish and have stacked the deck a little too unfavorably.
Just today, Milender played a recording of Scott Galloway, who just wrote a book called “The Algebra of Wealth.” And he appeared on MSNBC to talk about it – and I say MSNBC just because I know the mere letters will drive Mr. Rogitz to distraction because anything emanating from MSNBC must be woke and skewed.
Galloway said this is the first American generation in history where a 30-year old man or woman isn’t doing as well as his/her parents were. Which he describes as “the social compact breaking down.”
I am not of the younger generation. But I can tell Mr. Rogitz and anyone else over 55 that we better behave decently. They’re coming for us.
