Forty Years Before The Mast

Nephew Craig and Don

Q: You have been writing about politics in Connecticut for forty years. Happy fortieth!  You are, by your own account, a small fish in a small pond. What keeps you going?

A: I’m tempted to respond as another journalist, Chris Powell, did when I asked him that very question.  I was marveling that he had written editorials and columns long before my appearance on the scene. And yet, I said to him, even though much of what you have written is lucid and politically necessary as a corrective tonic, only a handful of thoughtful people seem to be paying attention. What keeps you going? Chris has a sharp sense of humor, rarely visible in his writings. “Spite,” he said.

Spite, like other human virtues, is useful. It’s difficult to write, day after day, about the obtuse human carnival without feeling a bit spiteful. But I’m certain that what keeps him going – though retired, he’s still slogging away -- is his sense of humor, indulgent but arousing. Humor, you know, is the closest thing we journalist have to illicit sex. An Englishman, asked what he thought of coitus, responded, “Sir, the posture is ridiculous.” We journalists tend to avoid it as much as possible.

Q: You describe yourself as a contrarian, one who writes on water.

A: Yes, the next moment always comes and washes the sand castle away. Though, not at all oddly, the next moment, despite the positive changes evolution holds out to us, is remarkably similar to its predecessor. Human nature doesn’t change all that much. I recall writing that a noxious political character in the state was the modern equivalent of Genghis Khan, who thought the greatest joy a man can have is to dance on the body of his enemy. The politician, by the way, took the remark as compliment. It’s the only thing you’ve said about me, Pesci, that’s indisputably true!  The rest is all feeble conjecture and lies.

Q: Do you get much of that from politicians?

A: Tons. Dishonest politicians always strive for a convincing semblance of honesty, and this usually arrives in the form of a hot face-to-face dispute, preferably in the presence of some lackey who records it all.

Q: So, what’s right and wrong with Connecticut?

A: The right things are always unalterable. The geographical placement of the state is right. It is not likely that some reformist politician will carry Connecticut on his broad shoulders to, say, Vermont. The small size of the state is a benefit. I can get in the car, not yet outlawed by rabid environmentalists, and drive anywhere within a couple of hours. The state’s gleaming lakes, its winding roads, the tunnel of trees one meets on country roads, its fieldstone fences – they make good neighbors -- its shoreline, its unsimilarity to Boston and New York, its deep rooted modesty, are all joys that may be with us for a while. It’s the changes that are wounding, the leveling reformist instinct that William Graham Sumner wrote about so luminously in his essay “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over.” That was published by Yale University Press in 1911. Alas, Yale itself has evolved. Sumner today could not be invited to Yale to recite his essay without being hooted down by schooled but uneducated, ill-mannered barbarians.

Q: Manners are important to you.

A: Of course. Bill Buckley used to say the trouble with bad manners is that they sometimes lead to murder.

Q: Let me read some headlines to you, all of them taken this week from “Capitol Report,” an aggregation site. Let’s see if we can provoke you. The first one is this: Judge rules life sentence too ‘cruel’ for former death row inmates.

A: Yeah. One of the federalists, I forget who, said that the Supreme Court of the United States could never be more powerful than the governor of New York. That bit should be tattooed on this judge’s forehead.

The Connecticut Supreme Court recently did away with the state’s capital punishment statute, declaring it unconstitutional because, the court reasoned, Connecticut had undergone a cultural change of mind concerning the death penalty. Not true; one expects appellate judges to judge; they should not be dragging the culture onto the psychoanalyst’s couch in their decisions.

Anti-death penalty legislators were arguing at the time the death penalty was abolished that it did not deter murderous activity. No kidding -- a punishment never applied will never deter. An anti-anti-death penalty legislator noted that those who supported this view – how is it possible to determine that a punishment has or has not deterred a future crime? – were really making a sound argument for the abolition of all punishment because, if the most severe punishment does not deter, lesser punishments such as life in prison can hardly be expected to do so. We give out traffic tickets to deter speeding. An extension of this ambulatory reasoning would abolish traffic tickets – probably not a bad idea.  In any case, most of the legislators and judges were simply posturing, batting their eyes fetchingly at the TV cameras. At the time the death penalty had been abolished under orders from the state’s supremely ahistorical court, some legislators had argued implausibly that life in prison was a more severe punishment than the death penalty. This judge in this case apparently had a ticket to the farce, because he now has ruled, citing these obtuse objections, that life in prison is cruel and unusual punishment and therefore a violation of the 8^th amendment. These are matters that ought to be decided by legislators, subject to election and unprodded by questionable court decisions – not judges for life.

Q: Another headline: “Unions favor controversial highway tolls; opposition continues...”

A: Is anyone surprised? Public employee unions are fed with tax dollars. Therefore, any attempt to control spending reduces the food in the public trough. More tax increases = more food.

Q: Move-to-Miami site to target tax-burdened NJ, CT...

A: The title is self-explanatory to anyone who can think, which unfortunately does not include congressmen, about whom one of Hartford’s better writers once said, “Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues” – Mark Twain.

Q: What advice would you give to up and coming young controversialists?

A: Otto von Bismarck offered this piece of wisdom: “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”

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ADDENDA -- FACEBOOK

William Hosley That is a very good question. Why not just throw in the towel & move like so many others?

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  Don Pesci In no order of precedence 1) The bones of my family -- most of my relatives now have left the state -- sweeten the ground in Windsor Locks. I intend to join them. 2) You probably know the story of Shiloh. It was a mess of a battle, not quite as bad as Gettysburg, but close. Soldiers on both sides, north and south, had to tramp over what Lincoln called “the honored dead” to reach each other with their bayonets. And the battle was inconclusive. For the first and only time Grant retired to his tent and wept. Sherman later caught up with him, smoking his cheroot by a shattered oak tree. Intending to commiserate with him, he said, “General Grant, this was not a good day.” Grant: “Yup… Get’em tomorrow.” 3) Connecticut Commentary is a record of the destruction of my state, perhaps in more detail than some would wish. But we have Grant as an exemplar. 4) At the end of a work of destruction, there is only silence whispering over graves -- and implacable, unconquerable spite.