The Final Phase of Feminism

I didn’t know anything about feminism when I was in high school, back in the early sixties, nor, apparently, did any of the girls I dated. At least, it never came up in the conversation. Mostly, I was too busy thinking about sex. Thinking, not doing, because aside from a little kissing and petting, I was unable to achieve my ultimate goal, the Holy Grail of lust and desire. Eventually, I began to think that either it did not really exist, or I was not destined to partake of that mystery. Overhearing my lament one day, one of the guys sitting at my lunch table took pity on me, and decided to give me the benefit of his wisdom. “Listen here, boy,” he said. “I’m going to tell you about women. You have to find ’em, feed ’em, fuck ’em, and forget ’em,” he said with the authority that comes from being six feet tall and having broad shoulders.

The last one puzzled me. “Forget ’em?” I thought to myself. “Why would I want to do that?” I knew that if I ever managed to go all the way with some girl, I would never forget her. In fact, I would probably hold on to her for dear life. But the second one, “feed ’em,” I completely disregarded. I figured it was there merely for the sake of fourfold alliteration: he needed four words beginning with “f” to make it sound right. Years later, I read a column by Miss Manners, where she said that when it came to courtship, many things had changed over the years, but one principle remained inviolate: the gentleman must take the lady to dinner. But at the time, I regarded it as completely unnecessary. “Better to eat before you went out on a date,” I thought. “Then you have more time for sex.”

When I got to college, I was still a virgin. Though I would never have admitted to anything so disgraceful, yet one of my fraternity brothers could tell that when it came to girls, I was floundering. So, he took me aside and said, “Listen here, boy. I’m going to tell you about women. When you take them out on a date, you’re going to have to go to a really nice restaurant and slap that money down.”

That was most unwelcome advice, given my impecunious condition. I had a small allowance from my father, which was enough to take a girl to a drive-in movie, and spring for a couple of Cokes and a bag of popcorn, but this dinner thing was out of the question. To afford that, I would have to get a part-time job. It was all I could do to take twelve hours a semester in my exacting major of philosophy without adding that to my schedule. In fact, it was at this point that I first realized that as much as I wanted sex, I dreaded work even more. So, as with the advice I had received in high school, I once again disregarded the idea that I would have to “feed ’em.” There had to be another way.

Fortunately, there was. It was the sexual revolution. Now, I know some people say that there was just as much sex in the old days, but people just didn’t talk about it. Well, if that is so, they sure had me fooled. When I was in high school, just getting to third base, where articles of clothing were actually removed, was something a guy could take pride in; and as for going all the way, that was so rare that when tales of such were told, one had good reason to doubt their veracity. So, this theory that the only effect of the sexual revolution was conversational is one that does not accord with my experience or the experience of my friends. In fact, the difference was profound. When I started college in 1964, every girl I knew was adamant about the importance of being a virgin when she got married. And my fraternity brothers were in complete agreement on that point: it was important for a girl to be a virgin when she got married. Four years later, any girl on that campus who was still a virgin was trying to do something about it. So, in the sexual anarchy of the late sixties, I finally managed to lose my virginity, notwithstanding the fact that I had yet to pony up for a steak dinner.

What saved me was the fact that the girl who took my virginity already had a boyfriend, who was stationed in Vietnam, and so I was just filling in for him while he was out of town. And that meant that a drive-in movie, a couple of Cokes, and a bag of popcorn were all the expenditure required of me to finally enjoy the ultimate embrace.

In fact, as I later discovered, a paramour operates under different rules from that of a woman’s boyfriend or husband. Several years after I got out of college and went to work (ugh!), I began a flirtation with a married coworker, and things had advanced to the point where it was time for me to make my move. A guy that I worked with could see what was going on. “Are you and Sally fooling around?” he asked.

“Well, I was thinking about asking her out to dinner,” I answered, figuring it was high time that I took the advice given to me twice before.

“You can’t take her to dinner!” he said, alarmed. “The night has a thousand eyes,” he explained. “I made the mistake once of taking a married woman to dinner, and while she and I were looking at the menu, who should walk in the door but one of her friends and the guy she was dating. Of course, we invited them to sit down and have dinner with us. And, of course, I ended up picking up the tab. And not just for the meal, because every time a round of drinks was bought, I bought four.” Therefore, he concluded, it was neither necessary nor advisable to take a married woman to dinner. “All you need,” he said, “is a room and a bottle. And since you are a bachelor living alone in an apartment, you already have a room. Just find out what she likes to drink.”

Now, I know people who cannot think about socializing except in the context of food and drink. And thus it might be argued that many people simply enjoy this sort of thing for its own sake, and not just as a necessary prelude to sex. But that does not mean that the man should foot the bill. And this leads me, finally, to the issue of feminism. The final phase of feminism will be achieved when either it is no longer necessary to “feed ’em” in order for sex to take place, or, if dinner is desired for its own sake, the woman pays for her own meal and drinks.

Over the years, I have debated several women on just this issue. I remember one woman in particular, one of my dancing partners, with whom I had just such a discussion. She didn’t mind going out Dutch treat, because we weren’t having sex. I was of the opinion, however, that the one did not necessarily imply the other, and I thought it would be nice if we made our already enjoyable relationship even better. To this, she took a dim view. “You make me pay my own way, and now you want a kiss?” she asked, shaking her head at the audacity of my presumption.

I explained to her that by so doing she would achieve the final phase of feminism. “No woman can count herself a complete feminist,” I averred, “until she goes Dutch treat with a man with whom she is sexually intimate.” We discussed the matter at length, during which time she pointed out that it was against all human nature, or, at least, all female human nature, to behave as I suggested. She noted that it had been firmly established by sociobiologists that the way to a woman’s heart was through her stomach, that a man must let a woman know that he will provide for her and take care of her in order to gain her favor. In fact, she went on, this principle even extended back into the animal kingdom, and did not originate with cavemen.

“But the whole point of having a big brain,” I replied, “was to be able to override our bad instincts. True feminism can hardly be grounded on the mating principles of the Stone Age.”

I could see her squirm. Finally, she went for the ultimate justification of behavior, beyond which there is no appeal: “I can’t help it,” she said. “It’s the way I was raised.”

Boy, had I heard that one before! But I knew that people could be very selective about parental influence. “Listen,” I said. “Were you raised to have premarital sex?”

“Uh … no,” she answered hesitantly.

“And didn’t you tell me you started screwing when you were fifteen?”

“Uh … yes.”

“Well,” I said, as I prepared to deliver the coup de grâce, “the way you were raised didn’t count for much there, did it?”

So, you see, I won that argument. That is to say, an impartial debate judge would undoubtedly have scored more points in my favor. Unfortunately, there is another sense in which I lost that debate.

There is no doubt that women have come a long way in the feminist movement. But I lay it down as an absolute that the final phase of feminism will not be achieved until the “feed ’em” part of the formula has been eliminated once and for all.

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Gentleman’s Agreement is a story about a journalist who pretends to be a Jew in order to find out what it feels like to be a Jew. The journalist is Phil Green (Gregory Peck), a widower who lives with his mother (Anne Revere) and his son Tommy (Dean Stockwell). The three of them have moved to New York, where Phil has been hired by John Minify (Albert Dekker), editor of a prestigious, liberal magazine, Smith’s Weekly, to write a series of articles on anti-Semitism.

Minify is pushy. He invites Phil to come to a social gathering at his place, having decided that Phil needs to meet some people, and when Phil tries to beg off, Minify insists. We also find that Minify finishes people’s sentences for them. He not only knows what he wants, he knows what he wants people to say, and he is in too much of a hurry to let them say it.

At the party, Phil meets Kathy Lacy (Dorothy McGuire), who is divorced. Her ex-husband is also at the party, and they are on friendly terms. As Minify says, with a bit of contempt, their relationship is “civilized.” Now, I’ve always made an effort to remain on good terms with an ex-girlfriend, but I never wanted to be at a party where I knew she would be, where I would doubtless have to watch her put on a show about how happy she was with another man, while I would have to pretend that I was completely indifferent to it all. However, the point of their relationship is to show how polite these people are, polite even in their prejudice against Jews, as we eventually find out. This is kind of anti-Semitism this movie focuses on, as opposed to that which is rude and obnoxious. Hence the word “gentleman” in the title.

Kathy also is Minify’s niece. She has to remind Minify that she is the one who has been after him to publish a series of articles on anti-Semitism for almost a year, after a Jewish school teacher was forced to resign. Phil says it’s “funny” that she was the one that first suggested that series of articles. In response to this remark, Kathy suggests that Phil makes up his mind about people too quickly, especially women. This apparently inspires no reflection on Phil’s part, because the next morning, at breakfast, Phil mentions to his mother that he will be writing a series of articles on anti-Semitism, and again he says it’s funny that Minify’s niece suggested it originally. His mother responds, “You don’t say. Why women will be thinking next.”

In both these scenes, we side with Kathy and Phil’s mother in their bringing attention to a prejudice Phil seems to be harboring about women. Maybe Phil should pretend to be a woman to find out what that feels like. In all seriousness, these scenes make it clear that we in the audience are more enlightened than Phil is regarding women, and by extension, about prejudice in general. As we watch this movie, in which Phil struggles to write that series of articles on anti-Semitism, the movie places us in the position, not of being lectured to, but rather of patiently waiting for Phil to reach a level of awareness in such matters as we have already achieved. Having been so flattered, we are more likely to express our approval of this movie.

Tommy asks what anti-Semitism is, and Phil explains that some people don’t like Jews. When Tommy asks what a Jew is, Phil responds that Jews are people that go to churches called “synagogues.” That has to be the most superficial definition of a Jew I have ever heard. That’s like defining a woman as someone that uses the ladies’ room. Although, now that I think of it, maybe that is the definition of a woman nowadays. Anyway, I was waiting for Phil to say something to the effect that Jews are descendants of the people written about in the Old Testament, who believe there is just one God, whom they call Yahweh, but who don’t accept the idea that Jesus is the son of Yahweh, and thus are not Christians. But we get nothing of the sort. A lot of Christians in the audience of 1947 might have been offended to hear such a definition, which consists, in part, of a denial that Jesus is the son of God, thereby stirring up the very feelings of prejudice against Jews that this movie is hoping to avoid. So, it’s safer to be superficial.

Phil is having a difficult time figuring out how to approach the subject. He tells his mother that he is getting nowhere: “When I think I’m getting onto something good, I go a little deeper, and it turns into the same old drool of statistics and protests.” Then he thinks about his Jewish friend Dave Goldman (John Garfield), wishing he were here with him, realizing he’d be the guy to talk to. This leads to him to a new line of thought:

Hey, maybe that’s a new tack. So far, I’ve been digging into facts and evidence. I’ve sort of ignored feelings. How must a fellow like Dave feel about this thing? …Over and above what we feel about it, what must a Jew feel about this thing? Dave. Can I think my way into Dave’s mind? He’s the fellow I’d be, if I were a Jew. We grew up together. We were the gang. We did everything together. Whatever Dave feels now, indifference, outrage, contempt, would be the feelings of Dave, not only as a Jew, but the way I feel as a man, as an American, as a citizen.

His mother suggests he write Dave a letter. He sits down at the typewriter. But then he sees the futility of it all, imagining himself writing a letter, expressing his frustration in doing so to his mother:

What do I say? “Dear Dave, give me the lowdown on your guts when you hear about Rankin [a racist member of the House of Representatives] calling people ‘kikes.’ How do you feel when Jewish kids get their teeth knocked out by Jew-haters?” Could you write that kind of letter, Ma? That’s no good, all of it. It wouldn’t be any good if I could write it. There’s no way to tear open the heart of another.

Let us call this problem, as Phil understands it, the inadequacy of words to communicate feelings. There are two senses in which words might be used in an effort to communicate feelings. One is to use words that denote feelings, such as “outrage” or “contempt.” The other is to use words to describe situations that might induce feelings in the person hearing or reading those words, as in “Jewish kids get their teeth knocked out by Jew-haters.” Both types were mentioned by Phil above, but neither is capable of successfully communicating the feeling a Jew has, according to Phil’s way of thinking.

In some cases, people will insist on the inadequacy of words even when they are the ones using words to describe their situation. It is not uncommon for someone, listening with a sympathetic ear to his friend’s troubles, to say, “I know just how you feel,” only to have that friend respond, with irritation, “You don’t know how I feel!”

Eventually Phil comes up with the idea of pretending to be a Jew, as the only way to find out how it feels. When he finally reveals that on a previous occasion, he pretended to be an Okie in order to write about the plight of the Okies, and that on another occasion he pretended to be a coal miner in order to write about coal mining, we are a little incredulous that it took him so long to think about pretending to be a Jew. Having done this sort of thing twice before, it should have occurred to him right off.

And yet, in the end, this really doesn’t make much sense. Essentially, what Phil is getting at is that all Dave can do when asked to write back a letter telling how it feels to be a Jew is to provide what may be called a verbal description of his feelings. That is, he can write about his experiences, all the discrimination he has encountered, the hatred others have for him, and the humiliation he feels, but these will still be just words. The words will denote feelings or describe situations that might induce feelings, but there can be no way to ensure that the feelings expressed by the words he uses will be effectively communicated to Phil when he reads them. That is why Phil believes he must pretend to be a Jew, so that he can experience the feelings himself and know for sure what feelings those words are supposed to communicate, but which might not actually do so when they are written by Dave, and Phil merely reads them in a letter.

But in that case, we are getting nowhere. After Phil goes to all the trouble of pretending to be a Jew, when his sits down to write those articles, all he can do is provide another verbal description, one not much different from the one Dave might have written. The people who read Phil’s articles will be in exactly the same situation that Phil would be in reading Dave’s letter. They will read the words, but they cannot be sure that what Phil felt when he pretended to be a Jew is being captured by the words he uses to express those feelings. Following Phil’s reasoning out to its logical conclusion, the only way the Gentiles that read the articles he writes can know what Phil really felt is for them to pretend to be Jews themselves.

Anyway, when he finally does start pretending to be a Jew, he is shocked by all the prejudice he encounters, as when he tries to check into a high-class hotel and is refused service because it is “restricted.” Well, what did he think was going to happen? In fact, he seems to know less about anti-Semitism than anyone else in the movie. We get the impression that the person most ignorant about anti-Semitism has been picked to write an article about it. But again, this is the movie’s way of allowing us in the audience to regard ourselves as more enlightened on this matter than Phil is.

Even though Phil has decided that the inadequacy of words to communicate feelings precludes the possibility of learning anything by talking to Jews, we nevertheless cannot help but suppose that he might actually get a little insight from such discussions, not only from Dave, who knows Phil is not a Jew, but also from his Jewish secretary, Elaine Wales, who believes Phil is a Jew. Basically, she passes for a Gentile, having changed her name from Estelle Walovsky. Had she not done so, she says, she would never have been hired at Smith’s Weekly. The fact that Phil was hired doesn’t surprise her, because she says it’s different for writers than it is for “small fry,” employees like her. When Phil finds that out that there is a tacit policy on the part of the personnel department not to hire Jews, he tells Minify about it, who is ashamed he didn’t know this was going on in his own magazine, a policy he immediately changes, requiring an ad be placed in the newspaper for a secretary, stating that religion is a matter of indifference.

Thinking Phil is a Jew like her, Elaine says she worries that this change in policy will allow the “kikey ones” to be hired, the vulgar ones that are loud and use too much rouge. This is something most of us have encountered with other races, religions, or nationalities, where someone is embarrassed by his own people, so to speak, when they act crude and low class. It is to be noted, by the way, that there are no Jews in this movie that are loud or wear too much rouge. That sort is only described, not depicted. Just as Elaine wants to exclude them from where she works, so too are they being excluded from this movie. Otherwise, we might end up being sympathetic with Elaine’s attitude, and that certainly would never do.

Phil never knew there was a form of anti-Semitism among Jews themselves. In other words, he definitely had something to learn from Elaine. But instead of pretending to know what she is talking about, and agreeing with her somewhat in order to get some more insight in the matter, he becomes angry and demands that she not use words like “kike.” Having done so, Phil can be sure that this is last time he will learn anything about what it is like to be a Jew from Elaine. You can’t find out what someone is truly thinking and feeling if you act shocked and disapproving at what he or she is saying. In fact, Kathy has commented on this trait of his, saying, “Your face takes sides, as if you were voting for or against.” A journalist like Phil would do far better cultivating a cosmopolitan manner, presenting a face that feigns sympathy with whatever someone is saying, no matter how much he might despise it, as the best way to learn more about how that person thinks and feels. Instead, we are treated to one of Phil’s displays of righteous indignation, which forecloses the possibility of his gaining any further insight from Elaine or any of the other people in this movie who dare to express prejudice in his presence.

Later, Phil meets Professor Lieberman (Sam Jaffe), another Jew, but one that is not religious. He is philosophical about anti-Semitism, making jokes about it. And when Dave finally arrives in town, we see that he is not especially interested in anti-Semitism. In short, three very different Jews are depicted in this movie, each one of which has a different attitude about anti-Semitism. In other words, Phil’s quest to find out what it feels like to be a Jew is compounded by the fact that it all depends on the Jew.

Dave has an opportunity to move up in the firm he works for as the eastern representative, but he will have to find a place for himself, his wife Carol, and their children to live in the New York area. This may be a challenge, since there is still a housing shortage, owing to the war that has only recently ended. After much effort to find a place to live, however, Dave gives up, telling Phil he will have to turn down the promotion and stay in California.

By this time, Phil and Kathy have become engaged. She owns a house that she had built while she was married, though she and her husband got divorced before they actually lived in it. It would be perfect for Dave and his family, but since they are Jews, Kathy says she cannot rent it to them, explaining that people with houses in nice neighborhoods have a gentleman’s agreement not to sell or rent to Jews. She deplores the whole business, but she is not up to being ostracized by everyone in the neighborhood for breaking that agreement. As a result, Kathy and Phil quarrel, and they break off their engagement. But this raises the question, why is it that Kathy knows about this sort of thing, while Phil has never heard of it before? Maybe Kathy should be the one to write the series of articles.

Better still, why not have a Jew write the articles? A Jew would have a lifetime of experience about anti-Semitism and not have to rely on just a few weeks of pretending to be a Jew. And while it might not be possible to find Okies or coal miners capable of writing a series of articles on their experiences, for they would likely be poorly educated, there should be no shortage of Jews with the writing talent needed to put their thoughts on paper. It would still be just a verbal description, with all the limitations noted above, but it would likely be a better, more informed verbal description than the one composed by someone who was just pretending to be a Jew for a few weeks.

The reason is clear, though no one in this movie dare give voice to it: the articles would not be regarded as legitimate unless the Jewish experience could be validated by the testimony of a Gentile. Christians reading the articles would not trust a Jew. They would suspect he was lying about the abuse he has suffered in order to make them feel guilty, thereby gaining an advantage over them.

In that case, instead of hiring a Gentile to pretend to be a Jew, Minify should have hired a Jew to pretend to be a Gentile. He could have hired someone like Dave to write the articles, who would then sign them under a name like Phil Green, claiming that he only pretended to be a Jew so he could know how it feels to be one, thereby giving the articles the needed cachet of Christian authenticity.

Doing this would solve another problem, which is that there is no guarantee that by pretending to be a Jew, Phil would have the feelings that Dave has on account of his actually being a Jew. Since Phil is not a Jew, it is hard to believe that he would feel the effect of prejudice the same way a Jew would. Phil acts deeply offended when he encounters prejudice, but it is still from the secure position of someone who knows that this charade is only temporary, and he will soon return to his place in society as a white Anglo-Saxon protestant. The inadequacy of words to express feelings is only made worse by the fact that Phil is not likely to have the feelings that Dave does anyway. Or the feelings that Elaine has, or those of Professor Lieberman.

Furthermore, if I had pretended to be a Jew in order to be able to write about anti-Semitism, every time someone “offended” me, I would gleefully sneak off to the restroom to write down notes, thinking, “Boy, this is going to be good stuff for that series of articles I’m going to write.”

In the end, Kathy realizes she has been wrong to go along with anti-Semitism, so she rents her house to Dave. As a result, Phil is willing to forgive her and marry her. The series of articles promises to be a great success. Phil’s mother suggests that as a result, the twentieth century may turn out to be “everybody’s century, when people all over the world, free people, found a way to live together.”

Or maybe not.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum was published just before the turn of the twentieth century, and years later was made into the classic movie The Wizard of Oz.

In the introduction to his book, Baum says that while children have always loved fairy tales, “the time has come for a series of newer ‘wonder tales’ in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.” Therefore, he says this book “aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.”

It is not clear that his tale is as much of a break with the past as he imagines. In place of the dwarf, we have the Munchkins. The Good Witch of the North and Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, would seem to fall into the fairy category. However, I really have to wonder about his claim to have left out the “heartaches and nightmares.” The Wicked Witch of the West seems comparable to the one in the story about Hansel and Gretel or Sleeping Beauty.

In both the book and the movie, the moral of the tale is that there is no place like home. And in both the book and the movie, home is dreadful, though each in its own way. In the book, Dorothy lives with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in a pitifully small house of just one room. Outside the house, things are just as bleak:

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.

As for Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, things are even worse:

When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child’s laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy’s merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.

Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.

The only friend Dorothy has is her little dog Toto, who makes her laugh and whom she loves. It is interesting that Baum made Dorothy an orphan, when it would have been just as easy to make her the daughter of Henry and Em. In a lot of fairy tales, such as the one of Cinderella or Hansel and Gretel, there is a stepmother, with the suggestion that the child or children are unloved and unwanted. Once again, Baum does not seem to have distanced himself from the traditional fairy tales as much as he imagined.

I don’t know if tornados were called “cyclones” in Kansas in the nineteenth century, but that is how the book refers to them, one of which suddenly starts coming their way. There is a trap door in the house leading down to a small hole to hide from such cyclones. Dorothy tries to follow Aunt Em down the hole, but the house is lifted into the air before she and Toto can get down there. Eventually, it drops the house down into the Land of Oz.

Because the house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her, the Munchkins she ruled over are most grateful. The Good Witch of the North gives Dorothy the silver shoes that the Wicked Witch used to wear. Then she tells her that if she wants to go back to Kansas, she will have to follow the yellow brick road to Emerald City where the Wizard of Oz may be able to help her. Later, after she has met the Scarecrow, who decides to accompany her in hopes that the Wizard will give him a brain, he asks her why she wants to go back to Kansas:

“I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.”

“That is because you have no brains” answered the girl. “No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

The Scarecrow sighed.

“Of course I cannot understand it,” he said. “If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.”

I suppose it makes sense that a little girl like Dorothy would feel that way, for young children are terrified of being separated from their parents. But if she were a few years older, a teenage Dorothy would probably have said, “Kansas sucks. I’m never going back.” In any event, the ultimate moral of many fables and fairy tales is that we should accept our place in life, an agreeable sentiment for most people, inasmuch as they have no choice.

In the end, the Wizard of Oz agrees to take Dorothy back to Kansas, but his hot-air balloon accidentally leaves without her. Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, tells her that she need only click her silver shoes together, and she can go back to Kansas whenever she wants. Too bad the Good Witch of the North didn’t know about that, or Dorothy could have gotten back to Kansas that afternoon.

But at least that makes sense. In the movie, there is only one good witch, Glinda (Billie Burke), the Good Witch of the North. When the Scarecrow asks her why she didn’t tell Dorothy (Judy Garland) before that she could go back to Kansas any time she wants, Glinda replies, “Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it herself.” In other words, we are being asked to believe that if Glinda had told Dorothy that she could return to Kansas right away, something like the following conversation would have taken place:

Glinda: Now that you are wearing the ruby slippers, you can go back to Kansas any time you want by clicking your heels together.

Dorothy: I don’t believe you.

Glinda: Just try it. You’ll see.

Dorothy: No!

Glinda: Well, in that case, I guess you’ll have to follow the yellow brick road to Emerald City and ask the Wizard of Oz for help. He might be able to get you back to Kansas.

Dorothy: Sounds good to me.

Anyway, in the book, Dorothy clicks her heels and winds up back in Kansas, telling Aunt Em, “I’m so glad to be at home again.”

As an aside, before Dorothy leaves the Land of Oz, each of her three friends, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, end up ruling over some of the inhabitants of Oz, with the suggestion that this is a happy ending for them and for those that are to be ruled over. All four witches ruled over some portion of this land, at least until the wicked ones were dispatched. And, of course, the Wizard ruled over Emerald City before he left. In short, there is no such thing as democracy in the Land of Oz, nor any hint that having a democratically elected leader would be desirable. Here, too, we find that Baum is in line with traditional fairy tales, which always seem to take place in a kingdom, not in some democratic republic. When the traditional fairy tales were first told, kingdoms were the norm. But as Baum was an American citizen claiming to present a modern fairy tale, one about a girl living in Kansas, we can only assume that his reason for not making the Land of Oz be a democratic republic is that he believed that being ruled over by an absolute monarch is something dreamy and wonderful. A lot of people seem to feel that way.

In many ways, Dorothy’s home in the movie is a better place than the one in the book. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em seem nice enough, even if they are too busy saving chicks to listen to Dorothy when she tries to talk to them in the opening scene. And we get the sense that there is a town nearby, within walking distance, so the farm is not so isolated.

However, there is one sense in which home is worse. There is a Miss Gulch (Margaret Hamilton) in the movie, whom Toto has bitten. As a result, she has gotten an order from the sheriff to take possession of Toto and have him “destroyed.” Toto manages to escape, but Dorothy realizes that Miss Gulch will be back. As a result, she decides to take Toto and run away from home. But at the end of the movie, she seems to have forgotten all about that. She talks as though it was foolish of her to run away from home:

If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any farther than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.

But her “heart’s desire” was to save the life of her little dog. As Dorothy lies there in bed, saying how she is never going to run away again because there’s no place like home, we know that Miss Gulch will be back the next morning with that same court order to take Toto away.

In the book, Dorothy’s adventures in the Land of Oz really happen, but in the movie, it is all a dream. When the cyclone hits, Dorothy is knocked unconscious, and Oz is just a place she dreams about. The three hired hands that work on the farm in the movie become the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion; Miss Gulch becomes the Wicked Witch of the West; and Professor Marvel becomes the Wizard of Oz.

Margaret Hamilton said that when her agent told her that MGM wanted her for The Wizard of Oz, she was thrilled, since that was her favorite book as a child. But when she asked what part she would be playing, he said “The Witch. What else?”

But maybe the answer to his question, “What else?” should not have been as obvious as he thought it was. When Dorothy first lands in the Land of Oz, Glinda arrives and asks Dorothy, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Dorothy denies being a witch at all, saying, “Witches are old and ugly.” Glinda laughs, saying that she is a witch. Dorothy apologizes, saying, “But I’ve never heard of a beautiful witch before.” Glinda replies, “Only bad witches are ugly.”

Apparently, that is what Margaret Hamilton and her agent assumed as well, otherwise, she might have asked him, “Which witch?” And that raises the question, why not have Margaret Hamilton play Glinda and let Billie Burke play Miss Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West? Some might argue that it would be too much to expect a child to understand that someone who is ugly may be good and kind, while someone who is beautiful may be evil and cruel. But notwithstanding Baum’s remark that children do not need to be taught a moral in a modern fairy tale, would not this be the most important lesson a child could learn?

In any event, some people might suppose that Toto is safe, arguing that Miss Gulch died during the cyclone, because she also corresponds to the Wicked Witch of the East, who died when the farmhouse landed on her. And just for good measure, as the Wicked Witch of the West, she dies again when Dorothy throws a bucket of water on her. Well, Dorothy may have killed off Miss Gulch as a witch in her wish-fulfilling dream, twice even, but that is no reason to think the real Miss Gulch is dead. In the dream, the farmhouse had been picked up by the cyclone and had landed on the Witch, crushing her. But nothing like that happened to the farmhouse in the real world. So there may be no place like home for Dorothy, but it’s the dog pound for Toto, at least for a few days until he is put to death.

As noted above, the sister of the Wicked Witch of the East, the Wicked Witch of the West, threatens Dorothy and her friends until Dorothy accidentally throws water on her, causing her to melt. Once the Witch is gone, her minions, the Winged Monkeys, are quite happy about the situation. It turns out that they were not evil themselves, but only did the Witch’s bidding because they were afraid of her. Now that she is dead, they can be good Winged Monkeys.

Condensing all the evil into a single person, the Wicked Witch of the West, and then eliminating that person is all right for a fantasy movie, but it is simplistic thinking like that that has serious consequences in the real world. I suspect that George W. Bush and his advisers believed that Saddam Hussein was a “Great Man” like the Wicked Witch, and that all they had to do was get rid of him, and the citizens of Iraq would start singing “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” as they established a Jeffersonian democracy.

In the book, we soon realize that the Scarecrow, who hopes the Wizard of Oz will give him a brain, is actually smart; that the Tin Woodman, who hopes the Wizard can give him a heart, is actually kind; and that the Cowardly Lion, who hopes the Wizard can give him some courage, is actually brave. They just lack self-confidence. So, the Wizard gives each of them something that will make them feel better about themselves: some bran mixed with pins and needles to stuff in the Scarecrow’s head; a heart made of silk and stuffed with sawdust to place in the Tin Woodman’s chest; and a bowl of liquid from a green bottle for the Cowardly Lion to drink.

In the movie, instead of relying on the power of suggestion, the scriptwriters took a slightly different tack, one that contradicts the Great Man theory referred to above, implying instead that no one is any better than anyone else. Because the Wizard of Oz is a fraud with no special powers, he cannot give the Scarecrow a brain, the Tin Man a heart, or the Cowardly Lion some courage. But being a fraud, the Wizard believes that the people who are supposedly intelligent, philanthropic, or brave are also frauds themselves. College professors are no smarter than anyone else; they just have diplomas. Philanthropists are no more generous than anyone else; they just have testimonials. Heroes are no braver than anyone else; they just have medals. So, he gives the Scarecrow a diploma, the Tin Man a testimonial, and the Cowardly Lion a medal. And now they are just as smart, generous, and brave as any of those so-called college professors, philanthropists, or heroes. I suppose this must be reassuring to those that are not all that smart, charitable, or brave, which would presumably include most of the people that watch this movie. In a way, this is a piece with the no-place-like-home theme. Just as the latter is intended to make us accept our lot in life, so too is the depreciation of professors, philanthropists, and heroes intended to make us accept who we are.

Once the Scarecrow gets his diploma, he believes the Wizard and thinks he is just as smart as all those college professors. Suddenly inspired, he enunciates what he takes to be a theorem of geometry: “The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side. Oh joy, rapture! I’ve got a brain!”

It sounds as though the scriptwriters were thinking of the Pythagorean Theorem, which applies to right-angled triangles, not to isosceles triangles. But even if we allow for that correction, substituting “right-angled” where he says “isosceles,” it is still wrong. It is not the square roots of the sides that are related in that way, but the squares, to wit: The square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. In fact, it does not matter what kind of triangle we are talking about, there is no triangle that satisfies the condition that the sum of the square roots of two sides will equal the square root of the third. It is an impossible triangle.

As the Pythagorean Theorem is something known by most high school students, let alone by college professors, maybe a diploma counts for something after all. Fortunately, even if you do have a brain, you can still enjoy The Wizard of Oz, provided you don’t use it too much while watching this movie.

Addendum

And if you think I’ve been taking this movie way too seriously, now I’m really going to cross the line.

To be proven: There is no triangle such that the sum of the square roots of two sides is equal to the square root of the third.

Assume there is such a triangle of sides a, b, and c:

√a + √b = √c

Square both sides:

(√a + √b)² = (√c)²

Expand the binomial:

a + 2√a•√b + b = c

Now, it is clear that

a + 2√a•√b + b > a + b

And for any triangle, the sum of the lengths of any two sides is greater than the length of the third:

a + b > c

Combining the two, we get the following:

a + 2√a•√b + b > a + b > c

Therefore, by transitivity:

a + 2√a•√b + b > c

But this contradicts the conclusion arrived at above that the two quantities were equal.

a + 2√a•√b + b = c

Therefore, by reductio ad absurdum, there is no such triangle. Q.E.D.

On the Different Types of Agnosticism

The first time I found out that there was such a thing as atheism, I was in high school. From a strictly logical point of view, that made things pretty simple. There were two kinds of people: those who believe that God exists, called theists, and those who do not believe that God exists, called atheists.

When I got to college, I met someone who called himself an agnostic. He said he was so filled with doubt that he did not have any belief about the existence of God one way or the other. It was then that I realized there was a distinction between not believing God exists on the one hand, and believing that God does not exist on the other. From this I concluded that:

A theist believes God exists.

An atheist believes God does not exist.

An agnostic has no belief about God’s existence either way.

Given these definitions, a stone would be an agnostic, for having no beliefs at all, a stone has no beliefs about the existence of God. Therefore, we must restrict our consideration not only to people, who are capable of having beliefs, but also to people who have some idea of God and have thought about whether he exists or not.

So understood, these three concepts were mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive of the ways in which one could have or not have a belief regarding God’s existence. The distinctions were clear and easy to understand. All was good.

Somewhat later, I met another person who said he was an agnostic because he did not know whether there was a God. I was not sure what to make of this at first. Up till then, I had understood these concepts in terms of belief, and here this person was introducing knowledge into the subject. Now, sometimes people say they do not know something when all they mean is that they have no opinion on the matter. For example, assume someone asks me, “Did Bob ever get married?” If I say, “I don’t believe he did,” I will be understood as saying that I think Bob is still single. The syntactical form of my answer may make it appear that I deny having a belief, but the meaning conveyed will be that I do have a belief, and it is the belief that Bob did not get married. To indicate that I have no belief one way or the other as to Bob’s marital status, I must answer, “I don’t know.” In like manner, it might have been that this person was using an expression about not knowing only to indicate a lack of belief.

On the other hand, it could be that he meant to say something more than just what he did or did not believe, that he was stating an absence of knowledge as his reason for counting himself an agnostic. In that case, he was saying that an agnostic is someone who does not know whether there is a God. But this throws things out of kilter. Given that sense of the word, the three terms no longer neatly partition belief or lack of belief about God; for it might be that no one knows whether there is a God, in which case everyone is an agnostic, from the most devout fundamentalist to the most militant atheist, from the Pope to Richard Dawkins. Any definition of agnostic that includes everyone is too broad.

Perhaps we should amend this to saying an agnostic is someone who does not claim to know whether there is a God. But that is still too broad a definition. I do not doubt that there are atheists who claim to know there is no God, and I have known a few religious people who claim to know there is a God, but most people make neither claim, whether they are theists or atheists. In other words, this definition of agnostic gives the result that a lot of theists and atheists are also agnostics, provided they make no claims about knowledge regarding God. But this is not the way most people understand these terms. Whatever else these words may mean, we expect their meanings to be mutually exclusive. But when “theist” and “atheist” are defined in terms of belief, while “agnostic” is defined in terms of knowledge or claims about knowledge, there will be substantial overlap, and the presumed mutual exclusivity will not hold.

Similar consideration applies for those who, like T.H. Huxley, emphasize claims about certainty rather than knowledge. We get the same problem, which is that theists and atheists can be considered agnostics provided they make no claims about certainty, even though most of those same theists and atheists would take exception to being so classified. In any event, we need not linger over Huxley. He may have popularized the word, but I am more concerned with how the word is used today.

Until now, I have considered only those definitions of “agnostic” that apply to an individual. That is, my definitions have been of the form, “an agnostic is someone who…,” followed by “does not believe…,” “does not know…,” “does not claim to know…,” or “does not claim to be certain….” But some definitions go beyond the individual and extend to all of mankind. In such cases, it is “agnosticism” rather than “agnostic” that gets defined. In particular, one definition of agnosticism is the doctrine that God’s existence or nonexistence is unknown. In other words, it is the doctrine that nobody knows whether God exists. And another definition is even stronger, claiming that God’s existence or nonexistence is unknowable, thereby making a claim not only about how things stand today, but for all time.

The traditional definition of knowledge is justified true belief. Let us assume just for the moment that God exists. That means the second condition for knowledge of God’s existence has been met: the proposition that God exists is true. A theist is someone who believes that God exists, and thus the third condition has been met for him. Therefore, it must be the first condition where the problem lies as far as agnosticism is concerned. That is, according to this doctrine, the theist is not justified in believing that God exists. The same holds for the atheist if we assume that God does not exist. In that case, what the atheist believes is true, so it must be that he is not justified in believing there is no God, if agnosticism understood as denying knowledge in this area is correct.

In other words, if the agnostic were to allow that a theist is justified in believing there is a God, and if it is true that God exists, then all the conditions for knowledge will have been satisfied, and it will follow that the theist knows that God exists. Likewise, if the agnostic were to allow that an atheist is justified in believing that God does not exist, and if it is true that God does not exist, then all the conditions for knowledge will have been satisfied in this case, and it will follow that the atheist knows that God does not exist. Therefore, in order to assert that no one knows whether God exists, the agnostic must maintain that no one is justified in believing in God’s existence or nonexistence. Now, to say someone is not justified in having a belief is to say that he ought not to have it, because it is foolish to go around believing stuff without any justification.

This results in a paradox. At first blush, it appears that agnosticism is a modest, humble position, simply making no claims about God’s existence. But now we find that on this interpretation of agnosticism, it appears to be rather contentious, for it asserts there is no justification for believing that God exists or for believing that God does not exist. And if such beliefs are not justified, then there is something inherently wrong with being either a theist or an atheist, quite apart from the question of whether there is a God. And this is a far cry from the kind of agnosticism we considered in the beginning, defined solely in terms of belief, in which an agnostic might say, “I have no opinion about the existence of God, and everyone is entitled to believe whatever he wants.”

Thus we see that agnosticism can range in meaning from mere lack of belief regarding the existence of God to an assertion that God’s existence or nonexistence is intrinsically unknowable. The former allows the terms “theist,” “atheist,” and “agnostic” to partition the possibilities of belief regarding God; the latter does not. The former is a mere statement of one’s lack of belief; the latter impugns the beliefs of others as not being justified. Either of these meanings can be embraced, and the corresponding positions consistently maintained. Unfortunately, these different meanings are not always carefully distinguished.

Jules and Jim (1962)

Jules and Jim is one of those foreign films that the critics rave about, directed by François Truffaut, one of those directors that critics rave about, and so, in keeping with the idea that I should be knowledgeable about such movies and directors, I decided one afternoon that it was high time I viewed this masterpiece.

Oscar Werner and Henri Serre are the Jules and Jim of the title. They are friends. They meet a woman named Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), whom they both fall in love with. She carries a bottle of sulfuric acid around with her to throw in the eyes of men who lie to her.

Stop right there. There is no need to go any further. You now know everything there is to know about Catherine. She’s insane! Long after I have forgotten the rest of what happens in this movie, long after I have forgotten who starred in it, and long after I have forgotten the very title of this movie, I will remember that. And yet, strangely enough, it appears to be the one thing that everyone else has forgotten. I have searched through the reviews of many critics, professional and amateur, but this all-important fact about Catherine hardly ever gets mentioned, let alone treated as having any significance. The question is, Why do so many people who watch this movie seem to think that this business with the acid is too unimportant to mention?

Had I been Jim, as soon as I found out about that bottle of acid, I would have walked right out the door and never had anything to do with her again. In fact, for the next six months, I would have been peeking out of my apartment window to see if she was lurking about with that bottle of hers, just in case she was holding a grudge against me for refusing to have anything to do with her again. Instead, Jim simply talks her into getting rid of it, figuring that will make everything all right. But that is like thinking that if you take the butcher knife away from Norman Bates in Psycho (1960), there is nothing to worry about anymore. Speaking of Psycho, the premise of a man-hating woman who carries around a bottle of sulfuric acid to splash into the eyes of any man who lies to her could be the basis of a pretty good horror movie, and maybe even become a cult film like Ms. 45 (1981), but that is not what we have here. In any event, with regret, saying, “I was really counting on using this bottle,” Catherine pours the acid into the sink. She does not bother to turn on the water so that the acid will be flushed out of the system, so we see the vapors rising as the acid eats into the sink as she and Jim walk out the door.

As I was saying, Jim is not worried, and Jules even marries her. In all fairness to Jules, he may not have known anything about that bottle of acid, because Jim seemed so unconcerned that he may not have bothered to tell him about it. Catherine cuckolds Jules again and again, but fortunately for her, he is a doormat, and not the kind of guy who would throw sulfuric acid in a woman’s eyes for cheating on him. Since she is having sex with other men, she naturally stops having sex with Jules, but the only thing he worries about is that she might leave him. In fact, he is so afraid of losing Catherine that he encourages Jim to have sex with her on condition that Jim will let Jules see her once in a while. Better than that, Jim moves right into their home and starts sleeping with her, so now Jules can see her all the time.

Catherine wants to leave Jules and marry Jim, but Jim gets fed up with her nonsense and refuses to marry her, so she pulls out a pistol and tries to shoot him. He manages to get away, but he still has not learned his lesson, which is to stay away from that nutcase, because when Catherine and Jules run into Jim some time later, all has been forgotten, and they are all best friends again. Catherine talks Jim into getting in a car with her, and then she purposely drives off a bridge and kills them both. Poor Jules, he probably feels all left out.

To return to my question as to why so many people seem to discount the bottle of acid, I think that it has something to do with the mindset of people who know they are watching a foreign film. In a Hollywood movie, something like that could never be ignored, and the audience would be horrified. But when it comes to watching a foreign film, people tend to think of everything as being symbolic, or as having some kind of deep, philosophical meaning, and so things like that are not really taken as having literal significance.

On the Efficacy of the Will

It is a commonplace in the movies, when a man is near death, for someone to say that his recovery depends on his will to live. For example, toward the end of the movie Hud (1963), Homer Bannon (Melvyn Douglas) is lying by the side of the road, dying from an injury, when he is discovered by his son Hud (Paul Newman) and his grandson Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde). After the old man dies, Hud says, “Anyway, he couldn’t have made it another hour,” to which Lonnie replies, “He could if he wanted to. You fixed it so he didn’t want to any more.”

In many cases, the assertion that a person’s life depends on his will to live is made by a doctor, giving it the authority of medical science. I have only a limited experience with deathbed situations, so I cannot say how often this happens in real life, but it seems to me I have heard people say something to this effect when watching the nightly news. An alternative way of expressing this idea is saying that someone is a “fighter.”

There is, of course, a trivial sense in which the will to live is important to one’s survival, and that is if one’s survival depends on one’s actions. If the patient does not care enough about living to take his medicine, for instance, then he is less likely to survive than a comparable patient who does want to live and takes his medicine exactly as prescribed. But what is intended by the assertion of a causal connection between the will to live and survival transcends such mere actions as ordinarily understood. The idea, the metaphysics of it, if you like, is that the will can actually permeate the body and operate within it, causing beneficial physiological changes that make the difference between life and death.

If any of that is true, then I am in trouble, because I have never been a fighter, and my will to live is qualified. I mean, before I go to a lot of trouble and effort to survive, I need to know, “What’s in it for me?” If I am in danger of dying, say, of cancer, I can see myself opting for surgery, getting radiation treatment, or going through chemotherapy, but if I also have to exert my will to live, I just don’t know that I’ll be up to it. Part of the problem is that I don’t believe in it. The way I figure it, the will to live may be more of an effect than a cause. It is not that a person dies because he lost his will to live; he lost his will to live because he was dying.

This belief that the will is effective, aside from merely being the cause of our actions, goes beyond its imagined role in making the difference between life and death. In The Hot Spot(1990), Don Johnson, a used car salesman, tells Charles Martin Smith, a coworker, “I’m gonna sell one of these [cars] to the first sucker that walks in here today.” When Smith asks him, “How do you reckon to accomplish that?” Johnson replies, “Sheer willpower.”

I suppose we could write this off as merely an expression of determination, which probably is a good attitude for a salesman to have. But if we take this seriously for just a minute, we have to imagine that Johnson’s character in that movie supposes not merely that he will apply high-pressure salesman techniques to overcome the customer’s resistance, but that beyond what he does or says, his will, as a kind of psychic force, is going to shape events directly.

Once again, there is likely to be a confusion of cause and effect. Don Johnson’s character is not a good salesman because of his sheer willpower; he believes in sheer willpower because he is a good salesman. A lesser salesman, like the character portrayed by Charles Martin Smith, is probably more aware of his limitations and is more likely to believe that he just has to do his job and hope to make a sale.

We have a successful salesman running for president. That would be Donald Trump, of course. And like Johnson’s character, Trump believes in sheer willpower. Pointing out that Trump does not have specific plans to do the things he says he will do may be a perfectly legitimate criticism, but it might also be a failure to understand the psychology of the man being criticized. Trump does not believe he needs a plan. He only needs the strength of his will. And that is what a lot of Trump supporters believe as well.

In order for people believe in the will of Trump, it is not enough that he be rich, nor is it enough that most of his wealth be the result of his success in business. He must brag! A man who brags and then is able to back it up inspires awe. For most of us, modesty is not merely a virtue. It is a matter of prudence. We are just not that good at anything we do. Furthermore, bragging is obnoxious. When someone brags about how good he is at this or that, we figure he is due a comeuppance. And when people around you want to see you fail, you are likely to do just that.

But there comes a point at which bragging has the opposite effect, when it induces in the minds of others that one has special powers, and instead of wanting to see that person fail, there is a tendency to believe in that person, to want to follow him and be a part of whatever he is. I am not a baseball fan, but I understand that Babe Ruth, while standing at the plate, once pointed to which part of the stadium he would hit his home run. And then he did it. At that point he was no longer merely a great baseball player. He became a god.

Cassius Clay took braggadocio to new heights in the world of boxing when he announced, “I am the greatest!” and then went on to win the heavyweight championship of the world. Of course, he might have been knocked out in his next fight, and then he would have been thought a fool, one who got what he deserved. And no one would remember him. Alternatively, had he become a champion without any accompanying rodomontade, he would have been regarded as just another boxing champion. But he broke through that aversion most of us have for braggarts and came out on the other side with a mystique of greatness not seen since.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher of the will to power, understood this connection between will and arrogance. For the title of his biography, he used the expression, Ecce Homo, used by Pontius Pilate to direct the crowd’s attention to Jesus, but which Nietzsche used to direct attention to himself. And as if that were not enough, some of the chapters of that autobiography are, “Why I Am So Wise,” “Why I Am So Clever,” “Why I Write Such Good Books,” and “Why I Am a Destiny.” In that same book, Nietzsche says, “I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous — a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.”

Whether one agrees with Nietzsche’s self-assessment or not is beside the point. It is fitting that the philosopher of the superman would present himself the way a superman would, as a man of will, as a man whose greatness is so manifest that nothing short of bragging would seem appropriate.

Finally, part of what makes Donald Trump unique is the way arrogates to himself the privilege of doing what other politicians must not. It is sometimes said of the Clintons that they believe the rules do not apply to them, that they think they are special. It is one of the reasons, some have speculated, that Hillary set up a private server while she was Secretary of State. And the question now is whether this email business will hurt her in the upcoming election. But when Trump breaks the rules, he not only gets away with it, but he benefits from it as well. It is not that his politically incorrect remarks have failed to ruin his candidacy. The fact that he says such things proves, in the eyes of his followers, that he is superior to the ordinary politician.

As we all know, incest taboos are universal. And to be guilty of incest, even if it be between consenting adults, is to bring upon oneself the disgust of mankind. And yet, as has often been observed, what is forbidden to man is permitted among the gods, Zeus and Hera, as brother and sister as well as husband and wife, are the most well-known example. It is argued by some that incest is universally forbidden because it is a pleasure too great for man to enjoy, and thus only the gods are worthy enough to partake of it.

For most of us, violating a taboo, be it incest or anything else, is something best avoided, lest we suffer the obloquy of mankind. But under the right circumstances, violating a taboo can be a proof of superiority, the mark of godlike status. Just as Trump would not be doing as well in the polls if he did not brag about how great he is, so too would his popularity be less if he did not take for himself the privilege of being outrageous and offensive. By establishing himself as someone who is superior, by pointing to his past success, by bragging about how smart he is, and by violating political taboos, Trump is able to make people believe that he will be able to overcome all obstacles in “making America great again” through sheer willpower.

In other places at other times, men like this have risen to power, but it will not happen here. Although it may not seem that way at times, Americans have too much common sense and practical reason for such a man even to win the nomination, let alone the election. But he definitely has his true believers, and I suspect for years to come, long after someone else has become president, they will be talking about how great things would have been if only Donald Trump had been elected.

In Defense of Skepticism

Though it would be natural enough to infer from the title of this essay that it will be a polemic against religion, yet it is really not religion that concerns me, even if it is inevitable that the subject of religion will be a part of it. What I wish to defend is skepticism understood in its broadest sense, which arises from a general disinclination to believe.

One of the things that always bemused me when watching The X Files (1993-2002) was the sign over Mulder’s desk that read, “I want to believe.” And as if to make sure we understood that this attitude was the quintessence of Mulder’s character, it was even included in the title of the 2008 movie based on this series: The X Files: I Want to Believe. Now, this represents more than just being open-minded, in which one is willing to consider it at least possible that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and that some of it visits us from time to time. No, this is much more than that.

Had Mulder’s sign read, “I hope it’s true,” that would have been perfectly understandable. Alternatively, had his sign read, “I want to know,” that would have been understandable as well, and it would have been an attitude with which Scully would have been in complete agreement. In that case, the difference would have been between Mulder, who hopes that there are aliens from other planets visiting us in flying saucers, and Scully, who thinks the whole business is just wishful thinking; but in either case, whatever the truth of the matter, they would both want to know it. But Mulder did not want know. He wanted to believe. What does that mean?

I said this essay would not principally be about religion, but it is necessary for me to note that there is one sense in which I understand wanting to believe, and that is the case with religion. Of course, not all religions have the same attitude toward belief. It is my understanding that Judaism is not about believing things; it is about doing things. I have even read that one can be a Jew without believing in God, provided one observes the Sabbath, eats kosher food, wears a yarmulke, and so on. That may be a rather extreme interpretation of Judaism, to which many may take exception, but the relative importance of doing over believing is probably correct. At the other extreme are the religions of Christianity and Islam, in which belief is paramount.

Regarding Christianity, children are usually told that good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell, because getting children to behave is a difficult challenge, and parents are not averse to using a little superstition to fill in for them when they are not around. But as one grows older, one learns that belief is the sine qua non of salvation. Christians may debate whether faith alone is sufficient for salvation, or whether both faith and works are necessary; but in either case, without faith, there is no salvation.

There are two reasons for this. First, by their very nature, religious beliefs are not acquired by observing the world around us. The only reassurance people have that there is a God or an afterlife is that from the time they were five years old, they found themselves surrounded by other people who also believed those things. Therefore, any encounter with disbelief is extremely disconcerting, because it undermines their faith. Religious belief is a house of cards in which each person’s belief reinforces the beliefs of others. Disbelief is a puff of wind that with so little force can collapse the entire edifice. It is for this reason that there is so much hostility to the atheist, the infidel, and the apostate.

Second, if the priest is to have power, it is essential that people believe. Whether they sin or not is a relatively minor consideration. In fact, sin may even conduce to the power of the priest, provided people feel the need to turn to him for forgiveness. To this end, the doctrine of original sin guarantees that everyone is so sinful from the moment of birth, or even while in the womb, according to St. Augustine, that only by believing that Jesus died for one’s sins can one be saved. Therefore, the power of the priest is not weakened by sin, but strengthened by it. Disbelief, on the other hand, is a threat to his power, and cannot be tolerated.

So important is this need to have others believe, that those who do not are threatened with eternal damnation. Unfortunately, since belief is largely involuntary, this can lead to a great deal of stress for those who find themselves unable to believe the teachings of childhood, but are unable to rid themselves of the superstitious fears instilled by such teachings. They are persuaded by Pascal’s wager that there is not much to lose by believing in God, even if he does not exist; whereas there is a lot to lose by not believing in God when Hell yawns before you. When such a person says, “I want to believe,” that is something I completely understand.

But what does it mean when someone like Mulder wants to believe, even though there is no punishment for not believing? For some people, like those who dabble in the occult or New Age philosophy, I suppose beliefs must be like delicious morsels, just waiting to be tasted. As for me, I have never wanted to believe anything in my entire life. Ultimately, I end up believing something only when the alternatives require more credulity on my part than that about which I might have some initial doubts. For example, I believe there is an external, physical reality: by nature, because it is instinctive to do so; and philosophically, because I would otherwise have to believe something preposterous, such as Descartes’ evil genius, Berkeley’s God, or the solipsistic hallucinations of my own mind.

And now I arrive, finally, at my skepticism regarding science. Let me begin with global warming. I regard the issue of climate change as a complex subject, which, quite frankly, I have no interest in, have not studied, do not intend to, and am content to have no beliefs on the subject whatsoever. I have a friend who adamantly denies that human beings cause global warming, and, as she has advanced degrees in science, she becomes exasperated with me when I refuse to accept her authority on this matter. By the same token, there is an equally hostile attitude on the other side of this issue toward those who do not enthusiastically embrace the doctrine of climate change, calling them science-deniers, and comparing them with people who do not believe in evolution.

The point of this comparison is to make people ashamed to confess their doubts on the subject, lest they be lumped in with Christian fundamentalists. Of course, there is a world of difference between the two, and it goes back to my point about physical objects, which I believe to exist as a kind of default position. In other words, if it turns out that there is anthropogenic climate change, I will not be surprised, because that will mean that the scientific consensus was correct. If it turns out that there is no anthropogenic climate change, I will not be surprised, because scientists have been wrong before. My overall world view will not be affected one way or the other. With evolution, on the other hand, the matter is quite different. I would like to say that I believe that life evolved owing to the courses in biology I took in high school and college, along with the half-dozen or so books I have read on the subject since, but that would not be true. I accepted evolution as true when I first heard about it at the age of eight, mostly for lack of any credible alternatives. To reject evolution, one must either believe that there is spontaneous generation, in which, for instance, worms spontaneously arise out of the mud; or one must accept some cockamamie nonsense, like that found in the Book of Genesis. So, unlike the case with global warming, if it turns out that I am wrong about evolution, and that in fact, the world is only six thousand years old, and Adam and Eve are my ancestors, then I might just as well quit thinking altogether, except, perhaps, for trying to figure out how to avoid going to Hell.

An important consideration in my skepticism here is that there is nothing I can do about global warming, even if I were interested in the subject enough to study it. I could spend the next several years mastering all the mathematics and science needed to evaluate the papers that have been written on the subject, and it would have no practical consequence whatsoever. What the world does or does not do about climate change will not be affected by what I know or merely believe. Hypothetically, if it were up to me, or if we were taking a vote on the subject, I would, in a manner similar to Pascal’s wager, vote to assume that there is man-made global warming, and institute things like cap-and-trade; for regardless of the truth of the matter, there is more to lose by not doing what needs to be done, than there is by doing something that turns out to be unnecessary. Unlike Pascal’s wager, however, it would not be necessary that I believe, only that I act. And whereas beliefs are largely involuntary, our actions are mostly under our control.

Another issue in which one is likely to be castigated for being a science-denier concerns genetically-modified organisms, in particular, the corn that has been modified by Monsanto in order to tolerate Roundup, which is a herbicide. Here too I am skeptical, but in this case, there is something I can do about it, thus justifying some effort on my part to become knowledgeable on the subject, although not enough, unfortunately, for me to reach any definite conclusion. Nevertheless, I can buy organic corn. And my ability to avoid this modified corn would be further enhanced were there mandatory labeling of such, but there is a lot of resistance to that, which only makes me suspicious. At the present time, I will not buy corn unless it is organic, just to be sure. This is not because I believe that the corn is bad for me, for it may well turn out to be harmless. But neither do I believe the studies that conclude that this corn and its associated poison are safe, science notwithstanding. Once more this is like Pascal’s wager, only applied to actions rather than beliefs. I have more to lose by eating Roundup-laced corn should it turn out to be dangerous, than I have to lose by eating organic corn only, even if Roundup turns out to be harmless.

In short, I am perfectly content to be skeptical about science, especially when corporate profits and political power are at stake, and will gladly endure the obloquy of those who find my skepticism in such matters intolerable. And even when I am forced to act, and must choose to do one thing rather than another, I can remain skeptical while I do so.

Finally, there are certain propositions about which the expression of even a hint of doubt is absolutely forbidden. Even to bring such subjects up, as something doubted by others, though not oneself, would incur the wrath of the mob. On these matters, it is prudent to be silent. Fortunately, there is no Hell for having doubts, and one can always be skeptical in private. And this suits me fine, because I do not want to believe.

What Dreams May Come (1998)

A lot of people used to believe that marriages were made in Heaven. Today, people speak of being soul mates. Whatever expression one uses, that is the idea behind the marriage of Chris (Robin Williams) and Annie (Annabella Sciorra) in What Dreams May Come. They have two children who die in a car crash, leading Annie to have a mental breakdown. They almost get a divorce. A year later, Chris also dies in a car accident.

He eventually makes it to Heaven, which is a wonderful place shaped by the imagination. But since Heaven is created by the imagination, so too is Hell. According to traditional Christianity, people who commit suicide go to Hell, and New Age philosophy is apparently in agreement on this point, if the movie What Dreams May Come is any indication. In this movie, people do not go to Hell because they are evil, but because they got confused and committed suicide. When Annie kills herself, she is trapped in Hell by her confusion. Her husband Chris manages to rescue her, but all the other suicides remain in Hell for eternity. Too bad for them.

Anyway, Chris and Annie make it to Heaven where they are safe. But Chris suggests that they be reincarnated so that they can meet each other again and experience another life together. Of course, that means taking a chance of becoming confused, committing suicide, and going to Hell, with little likelihood of there being another rescue. Who in his right mind would chance it? But the idea is that life is so wonderful that it is even better than Heaven, even worth the risk of committing suicide and being eternally damned.

Of course, that wonderful life involves such things as having your children die in a car accident, having the marriage deteriorate to the point of almost getting a divorce, and then having a husband die in an accident. Who wouldn’t want the chance to experience something like that again? Who wouldn’t forgo Heaven and risk Hell to experience such misery and suffering once more?

Why I Hate Quantum Mechanics

In the movie Duck Soup, Chico and Harpo are spies. As they confer with the ambassador of Sylvania about spying on Groucho, a secretary rushes in with an important telegram. Before she can hand it to the ambassador, Harpo grabs it from her. He looks at it, starts frowning, and then tears it up, throwing the pieces into the trash can. Chico turns to the ambassador and explains, “He gets mad because he can’t read.” That is exactly how I feel about quantum mechanics.

Seeing is believing, but there is very little of that in the world of the quantum. When I was in high school, the physics teacher evacuated a bell jar with an alarm clock in it, and we could hear the sound fade as the air was removed. I never doubted that there is no sound in a vacuum, but seeing it demonstrated had a powerful effect compared to which merely reading about waves of molecules simply lacked. Neither did I doubt that all objects fall at the same speed in a vacuum, but when I saw the feather drop like the lead weight right beside it in that same bell jar, I gasped. As for angular momentum, it was just a concept that I accepted, and regarding which I could perform calculations, but it was only when I tried to turn a gyroscope at right angles to the plane of rotation, and felt it push back against me, that this concept became truly real for me.

Some experiments I have never seen, but reading about them is a reasonable substitute. I have never seen a double-slit experiment, but I can imagine myself seeing it, and that is almost as good. A lot of experiments, however, are persuasive only if one already knows, or at least accepts, a great deal of physics. A physicist can look at a cloud-chamber photograph and say, “There goes an electron,” but to me it is just a line on a piece of paper. I am willing to take his word for it, but now there is an intermediary between me and the phenomenon. For the physicist, the photograph is evidence of the existence of electrons. For me, it is the photograph as interpreted by the physicist that constitutes evidence. It is the beginning of my estrangement. No longer is the observation enough. Somebody has to tell me what it means.

The Aspect experiment proves that the universe is non-local. At least, that’s what they tell me. I have never seen the experiment carried out, but even if I had been in the room at the time, it would not have made much difference. Where the physicists would be “observing” things like entanglement and polarization, I would be seeing a bunch of people attending to an apparatus, making calculations, and talking about Bell’s inequality. At this point, I am not merely estranged from the evidence. I am totally alienated.

Finally, there are the thought experiments, which have the drawback of not actually being carried out, but have the advantage of imagining observations that I can understand without an interpreter. The most famous thought experiment is the twin paradox of relativity theory. I can easily imagine waving my twin brother goodbye as he gets on a spaceship when we are young. Then, when I am seventy, he comes back and is not much older than when he left. That is pretty straightforward.

The most well-known thought experiment for quantum mechanics is Schrödinger’s cat, of course. But in this case, the observation is worthless, even though I would understand what I was seeing. I would see the cat being put in the box, containing an apparatus that might result in his death. Time would pass. I would look in the box and see the cat, alive or dead. So what? I am told that while the box was closed, the cat would be both alive and dead, or neither alive nor dead, depending on which law of logic you prefer to violate. In other words, I would get to see everything except the one thing that I would need to see to believe it. The theory makes claims about unobserved reality, which by its very nature cannot be observed.

Sometimes people point to technology as proof of a theory, but we have to be cautious. When James Watt was developing his steam engine in the eighteenth century, the theory of caloric probably entered into his reasoning. And if someone in the nineteenth century had doubted the luminiferous ether, he would very likely have been referred to the wireless telegraph as proof.

But even so, the wireless telegraph must have been pretty impressive when it was first invented, and so I am naturally curious about any technology that is supposedly dependent on quantum mechanics, since it might just provide me with something that satisfies my desire to see things for myself. I had heard about quantum tunneling and quantum computing, so when I came across an article plus a video discussing such, I decided to check it out. The video showed me a lot of gadgets and devices, and I heard a lot of people talking about how the computer can solve optimization problems, but to my untrained mind, it just sounded like some computers work better when they are really cold. I guess they suspected I might not be impressed, because they also showed a lot of eyeballs and pictures of the stars, while musing about intelligent life on other planets. And it was all accompanied by much hand waving, because the English language was proving to be inadequate. Needless to say, I was not impressed. You might just as well point to an eggbeater and tell me it works through the superposition of virtual particles.

There being no observation, real or imagined, that I find compelling, I am reduced to reading about quantum theory in books, and taking the word of physicists. Unfortunately, they talk about a lot of weird things that I find hard to believe, such as multi-verses and observer-created reality. Some of them even speculate about time travel, when they are not denying the existence of time altogether. Books I can put back on the shelf, but if the subject of quantum physics comes up in a conversation, I find myself in a box. I don’t want to agree with what is being said, but if I call any of it into question, I end up sounding like a science-denying ignoramus.

And this is where I get to the part about this theory that I deplore: the way it can turn an ordinary conversation into a New Age free-for-all. I have always noticed that there is a pent-up fascination for a lot of strange stuff that people ordinarily keep to themselves. They might carry on a discussion on a variety of topics, with a modicum of sanity and common sense. But if one person so much as mentions something the least bit odd, such as mental telepathy, immediately there will burst forth a whole raft of loosely connected subjects, not just other types of ESP, like clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis, but also Tarot cards, astrology, the lost city of Atlantis, and ancient astronauts.

A good example of this sort of thing is the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which Steven Spielberg lumps together parapsychology, the pilots from Flight 19 who went missing in the 1940s, UFOs, Eastern religion, and a ship in the desert. He even manages to work in the parting of the Red Sea, not by connecting it logically with anything else, but simply through the association of ideas: we see The Ten Commandments on television while Richard Dreyfuss compulsively constructs a model of Devil’s Tower. The subliminal message is that it was not God, but ancient astronauts that helped the Hebrews escape. As an ominous precursor of how all this will be connected to modern physics, when the space-aliens produce the still young pilots, someone says, “It looks like Einstein was right.” In response, someone suggests that Einstein was actually one of the space-aliens. In other words, merely being intelligent would not have been sufficient for a mere human to come up with relativity theory. Einstein had to be a mystical space-alien with ESP.

As with Einstein and his theory of relativity, quantum physics also has the potential of unleashing paranormal fascination, as may be found in What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? I thought the movie might be worth a look, since the title seemed to represent my sentiments exactly. It is part documentary, part narrative, in which the protagonist is a female photographer who is deaf. I immediately became suspicious, since such things are only put into movies for a purpose. Her being a photographer is supposed to be a criticism of people like me, who need to see in order to believe. As for her being deaf, the idea is that though she cannot hear, yet by understanding quantum physics, she will perceive more deeply into reality than will the ordinary person possessed of all five senses.

She is also divorced and taking anti-depressants, so we are to assume that her life is a mess, especially since she seems to be irritable, frustrated, and unhappy. But it is quantum mechanics to the rescue. Not only will her understanding of this theory help turn her life around, allowing her to get off her meds, but it will improve her basketball game as well. Not that she plays basketball, of course, but the idea is that her understanding of quantum physics will allow her to control physical reality in a way that surpasses those of us who are limited to ordinary methods. So, she needs to go back to college and major in physics, right? Wrong. Just the most superficial acquaintance with the theory will suffice for her to commune with the cosmos, conveniently provided by the running commentary of the movie itself.

I should have lived in the nineteenth century, when a man could breathe the clean air of hard science. Back then, physics took no prisoners. It declared, without apology, that we live in a materialistic, mechanistic, deterministic universe, which was deliciously meaningless, and doomed to end in a cosmic heat death. There were, of course, people who believed in the occult, theosophy, mysticism, and the like. But they believed in such things in spite of science, not because of it. They knew their place, and pretty much kept out of the way. But now there is no living with them. Armed with what they believe to be the blessings of modern physics, they will take a conversation right through the looking glass at its first mention. And like Harpo, all I can do is sit there in silence.

Caveats for Caregivers (8)

This is my eighth essay on caregiving, first published on another website on February 3, 2013.

As may be inferred from the title to this diary entry, this is my eighth essay in this series about the problems I had to deal with when my mother went into a nursing home, along with some advice that I have to offer regarding those problems. In general, this essay presupposes much of what has already been written; in particular, it is especially connected to my seventh essay recently published. That diary entry covered my desire to keep my mother in a private-pay nursing home as long as possible, before transferring her to a Medicaid facility, which I knew I would have to do when she ran out of money. My reason for doing so was that private-pay nursing homes are for rich people, while Medicaid nursing homes are for poor people, and, as is invariably the case, rich people are treated better than poor people. That previous essay also discussed my efforts to protect my mother from noise, which meant finding her a roommate that was relatively quiet or paying extra for a private room. Although I touched on some of the financial aspects already, they will be the principal focus of this essay.

The monthly cost for a private room was $7,800; for a semi-private room, $6,500. The rates were about the same at the private-pay facility as they were at the one that accepted Medicaid. Then there were the extras: telephone service; cable TV; beauty parlor; dentist; podiatrist; optometrist; the cost of an attendant to accompany us when she went to the doctor, in case she had to use the restroom; supplies not paid for by the nursing home; medicine not covered by insurance; and so forth, all of which averaged out at about $500 per month.

Given my mother’s income and assets, I knew she would be able to afford a private room for a year, or a semi-private room for eighteen months. After her money was gone, there was always the possibility of my using my own money. There would be no way I could pay all of her nursing home costs, but there was the possibility of my using my money to supplement Medicaid in order to keep her in a private room. In other words, Medicaid will only pay for a semi-private room, but if I could kick in an extra $1,300, I could keep her in a private one. That, plus the $500 worth of extras, would run me $1,800 per month.

If I had known for certain that my mother would live, say, one year after getting on Medicaid, I could have afforded to pay the difference, without too much of a dent in my net worth. But there were no such guarantees. I met a woman whose husband was a patient at the nursing home where my mother was staying. She said that when her husband was first diagnosed with some kind of brain disease, the doctors told her he had three months to live. “And that,” she said, “was seventeen years ago.” With that kind of uncertainty, I knew that in order for me to start paying for a private room, I would have to go back to work to make sure I did not impoverish myself. The daily visits to my mother, lasting four-and-a-half hours each, would then no longer be possible. My visits would have to be fewer and of shorter duration. As my mother was extremely dependent on those visits, the option of my paying extra for a private room once she got on Medicaid was out of the question.

Because any extra money I could get for my mother would allow me to delay the day when I had to transfer her to the Medicaid facility, I applied for the Aid and Attendance benefit through the Department of Veterans Affairs, which I discussed in my fifth essay. Unfortunately, it took the VA ten months to approve the application, and by that time I had already transferred my mother, since I was not sure she would get it. In any event, after I had moved her to the Medicaid facility, the benefit was finally approved for $1,700 per month, which she started getting immediately. However, since it took them ten months to approve the benefit, they owed her for that period, which amounted to $17,000. For that, the VA said I would need to become my mother’s representative payee, which I also discussed in my fifth essay. They said that would take about forty-five days. After a couple of months, I called them, but they said they were still processing the application. A few weeks after that, my mother died. I notified the VA, and they told me that as a result, the $17,000 was no longer payable. If I had been a spouse or a dependent child, the accumulated benefit would have been paid. Or, if I had spent my own money taking care of my mother, and had the receipts to prove it, the money would have been paid. But none of this applied to my case.

Let me say at the outset that I really did not care. The main reason I wanted the money was to keep my mother in the private-pay nursing home as long as possible, and once I had moved her to the Medicaid facility, it really did not matter anymore. Although I would have inherited the $17,000, which ain’t hay, I humbly confess that I have enough money to last me for the rest my life regardless, and I have no real need of more. Besides, as far as I am concerned, the money never really belonged to me to begin with, so it is not as though they took something away from me that was mine. However, I thought it might be important to relay this information, since others may not be as financially independent as I am, and they might find themselves counting heavily on something that may suddenly vanish.

Therefore, anyone who applies for the Aid and Attendance benefit should be aware of the situation regarding the accumulated amount. If the VA had approved the application in the forty-five days they said it would take, the money would have been deposited in my mother’s bank account. When she died, I would have inherited it. But since they did not finish the application before my mother died, the money was no longer payable. Normally, this does not happen. If Smith owes Jones money, and Jones dies, the debt does not die with him. Smith still owes the money to Jones’s estate. If Corporation XYZ is sued, and before the suit can be litigated, the plaintiff dies, his heirs may pursue the case. With regard to the Aid and Attendance benefit, however, the government saves money by being inefficient. I do not say that anyone intentionally used dilatory tactics to avoid having to pay the claim. But the fact remains that the longer it takes the VA to process an application, the less likely they are to have to pay it.

When I reported my mother’s death to the VA, I was informed that I could apply for a $600 death benefit to help cover funeral expenses. By that time, I was so tired of dealing with the VA that I decided it just was not worth it. However, the woman I spoke to on the phone assured me that it would be no problem, and so I filled out the form and sent it in. I still have not heard from them. I doubt if I ever will. I don’t care.

Because my mother died before she ran out of money, I never had to apply for Medicaid in her behalf. Nevertheless, in anticipation of making that application, I did become aware of a few things that might be of interest. In particular, there is the matter of qualifying. In order for my mother to get Medicaid, I knew that she would have to run out of money, which means that her bank balance would have to drop below $2,000, and her income would have to be deposited in a qualified income trust, also known as a Miller trust.

In anticipation of this eventuality, a lot of people decide that it would be a shame to let grandma’s money go to waste. Rather than allow the nursing home to deplete her assets, they decide to do it themselves. With a little encouragement, grandma signs a few checks, reducing her substantial bank balance to the more modest amount of a few hundred dollars. Then, they figure, when she does go into the nursing home, she will immediately qualify for Medicaid, inasmuch as her bank balance will be below the required ceiling. Needless to say, the government does not approve of such cleverness.

When the application for Medicaid is made on grandma’s behalf, an investigation is made of her finances, covering a look-back period of five years. If there is any hint that she has given away her money, they want it back. In other words, any large cash withdrawals that cannot be justified will be disallowed. So, if grandma gave away, say, $100,000, then her children will have to pay for $100,000 worth of nursing home costs themselves before Medicaid will begin making the payments. I read a story about a woman who applied for Medicaid on behalf of her mother. When the civil servant handling the case looked over her mother’s bank statements, he found a $10,000 cash withdrawal. The woman explained that her mother had had her roof repaired a couple of years ago, and she had paid cash. But she did not have a receipt. So, the $10,000 was disallowed, and the woman had to pay that amount of nursing home expenses before her mother could qualify for Medicaid.

Because neither my mother nor I have ever itemized expenses on our tax returns, the standard deduction always exceeding whatever could have been realized by itemizing, neither she nor I have ever worried about keeping track of expenses. Income, yes; but expenses, no. So while we each had records regarding such things as wages, interest, dividends, capital gains, and annuities, neither one of us really had any records regarding expenses. Since, like me, my mother preferred paying cash, and since, like me, my mother saw no need to hold on to receipts after the warranty period expired, there were almost no receipts for the five-year look-back period she would soon be facing. Fortunately, she had no really large cash withdrawals, like that of the woman whose mother had had her roof repaired, but only routine withdrawals that could easily be justified as money paid for groceries, sundries, gasoline, and the like. At least, so I hoped. Since I never had to find out, I cannot be for certain. Therefore, when it comes to nursing homes, keep in mind that justifying cash withdrawals is as important to Medicaid as reporting income is to the Internal Revenue Service.

Because of the importance of satisfying Medicaid that grandma has not given any of her money away, I advise you not to have any joint accounts with her. I know that it is tempting to do so, because it makes things easier. A friend of mine had a joint checking account with his mother, with whom he lived. When she became incapacitated, he was able to pay her bills simply by writing checks. As a result, there was no need for him to have power of attorney. But if she had had to go into a nursing home and apply for Medicaid, distinguishing between his money and hers in that account could have proved messy. I did not have a joint checking account with my mother, but we did have a joint safe deposit box. We originally got the box for important papers, and there was no need for us to have two separate boxes. During the 1990s, I started buying gold coins, and as the average cost of those coins was only $350 each, I just stored them in a jar in my apartment. But as the price went up after the turn of the century, their increased value began to worry me, and so, without giving it a thought, I put the coins in the safe deposit box. When I started anticipating the day I would have to apply for Medicaid, I looked at the application form, and naturally there was a question as to whether my mother had a safe deposit box, to which I would have to say, “Yes.” Then they would want to know if she had anything of value in it. They might even want to look inside, just to check. If so, I wondered if I would be able to explain, to their satisfaction, that the gold was mine and not hers. Now, I know what you are thinking. Why didn’t I just take the gold out? The answer is, they would probably ask me if anything of value had been removed from the box. Maybe you could look them right in the eye and deny that you had removed the gold, and then sign a document testifying to such, under penalties of perjury, but I have been cursed with an inability to lie in such circumstances. Oh, I can lie to be polite, or to protect a lady’s honor, but when it comes to lying to the Feds, forget about it. I knew I would start channeling my inner George Washington: “I cannot tell a lie. I took gold out of the box.” I consulted an eldercare attorney, and he told me just to be honest about it, tell them it was mine, and everything would be fine. Although I was glad to hear such reassurance, I was unable to be equally sanguine in the matter, and thus I continued to worry. As it turned out, I never had to find out if he was right. But the moral of this tale should by now be clear: do not have any joint accounts with grandma.

Even if all went well, I knew that from the time my mother qualified for Medicaid until the application was approved would be two or three months. The woman I talked to at the Medicaid office said it only took forty-five days, but every social worker I talked to said it would take two or three months. Now for the catch-22: During the application period, before Medicaid started paying, my mother would be responsible for the $6,500 per month it cost her to stay in the nursing home. But since her bank balance would have to be below $2,000, and since her income would not even come close to paying that amount, her being able to make those payments would be arithmetically impossible. I asked the woman at Medicaid if I could get the application approved in advance, so that everything would be ready to go when my mother finally ran out of money. Now, I know that you know that the answer to that silly question was “No,” but I was tired that day and not thinking clearly.

For someone like me, the obvious solution was that I would pay for the nursing home costs until Medicaid approved the application, at which point I would be reimbursed. But it was my good fortune to have the financial resources to bridge that gap. Many were the times that I asked myself along the way, “What do poor people do?” In this case, I suppose that people who are really poor are already on Medicaid, and so there is no problem. But there must be plenty of people who are not already on Medicaid, and who do not have children with enough money to make those payments, or possibly have no children at all, and thus are left in the lurch. One woman, whom I got to know at the nursing home where her mother was also a patient, wondered about this problem as well. “What if I were to just walk away?” she asked, theoretically speaking, of course. I speculated that her mother might then become a ward of the state. More ominously, there was the possibility of being sued by the state under filial-support laws, which can be used to compel children to pay for expenses incurred by their parents. These laws vary from state to state, the worst of which is Pennsylvania. Although there do not appear to be such laws in Texas, where I live, this may change. When the politicians begin cutting Medicaid funding, more laws of this nature may be enacted. When they are, I can almost hear the politicians waxing nostalgic of the way things used to be, when family members took care of one another, and speaking glowingly of how these filial-support laws will help bring back those good old days.

In any event, one thing a poor person might do is avail himself of a nursing home that accepts Medicaid pending, in which the nursing home allows a patient to stay in a room until the application is approved, at which point it is reimbursed. But none of the nursing homes I considered offered such. It is my guess that the ones that offered Medicaid pending were either 150 miles from where I live, which would have made frequent visits impossible; or they were located in a part of town I would not have wanted to drive through in the daytime.

Some of these problems can be handled by eldercare attorneys. They can set up a Miller trust, help you apply for Medicaid, and arrange for allowable transfers of money that can then be used while waiting for the Medicaid application to be approved. But all this costs money. So once again, I ask myself, “What do poor people do?” I hope I never have to find out the hard way.

disinterestedspectator

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