"Thoughts and prayers ain't enough"

 

    Cynicism comes so easily nowadays. The country is divided by hatred and mutual incomprehension, our divisions longstanding and entrenched, our leaders paid off or impotent. Lies spewing from corrupted news sources, with no agreement which is fair, which foul. Our president is a superannuated infant, reflecting the worst among us, astounding even the most jaded every single day with his bottomless baseness and continual bad faith. 
     What hope for progress is there? Haven't we been steadily deteriorating for years, decades? 
     Umm no, not really. Fifty-eight Americans were killed Sunday by mindless violence. When I was growing up, that was a good week's casualty list in the Vietnam War. The last administration did actually catch the will-o-the-wisp of health care, not in an ideal form, but one much improved, available to millions of people, heretofore cut-off. The unexamined hate that used to be just accepted, the stage convention of our public life, the curtains and the scenery, now seems glaring wrong, in many quarters, and is challenged. We can't avoid the horrors, they fill our vision. But the good is there too, if we look for it.
    Or bumble upon it. I was walking the dog Tuesday morning and there was Lee Goodman, who lives a few blocks down my street. Writing on his garbage can. Which is something he does, getting the word out. Lee quit his practice as a lawyer a couple years back to devote his energy, full time, along with his wife Nancy, to repealing the 2nd Amendment.
    A quixotic quest, in an era when even discussion of the possibility of discussion is shouted down by paid lackeys in government and their duped constituents. But he's doing it. He wrote a book, outlining his ideas. Tuesday he emblazoned his garbage can with a sign: "Thoughts and prayers ain't enough," a rebuke to the hypocritical pro forma pieties that our leaders mouth in lieu of actually doing or saying anything. 
     In one light, a futile act. How many people go down Center Avenue and see a garbage can? In another, a testament of faith in the ultimate victory of rationality, of goodness. The internet has raised communication to a howl, where reaching a million pairs of eyes is nothing. Only a start. Still, there are those quiet voices speaking to anyone who will listen. Even an empty street.
     We talked a bit. The new Dick's Sporting Goods on Skokie Blvd., he said, is carrying long guns. He led a protest there the night before, and was pleased with the turn-out. Hunting rifles and shotguns are not the problem, in my view, and opposing them only gives credence to the right wing canard that the left wants to ban all guns everywhere. Lee goes over the line, sometime, in my view, such as when he protested the installation of an old Army howitzer by Village Hall. 
     But Lee's committed anti-gun, no half measures thank you very much, and I understand the purity of his stand. If all the people pushing for silencers and armor-piercing bullets can cash their checks and mail out their hyperventilating fundraising appeals, then Lee can organize his quiet protests and deliver his trash day messages. If there were more people like him, then maybe our country wouldn't be in the mess it's in.
     He isn't bowing his head in resignation at our national disgrace, but is doing whatever he can to combat it, and I have to respect that, and add what little boost I can, barely more than a sign on a garbage can, but it's all I've got.
     After I wrote the above, I noticed this tweet, from my friend Rory Fanning, which sums up what I was trying to say better than I could manage:

Before Americans can talk gun control they have to have empathy

     Hiking is fun. It's exercise amid nature, among trees and birds.
     There is also the sense of being far from civilization. Though that was blunted Saturday at Starved Rock State Park, where there is a problem with visitors blundering off cliffs. So many boardwalks and railings have gone up that I felt, at times, not so much like a pioneer striding through virgin forest as a cow being herded through a chute into a slaughterhouse.
     As we walked, talk turned to the constant staccato pops drifting from across the Illinois River. "What is that?" a trail mate wondered. Small explosions in a quarry, maybe? he ventured.
     "Gunfire," I replied. "Some big gun range with people blazing away at old refrigerators." Bingo, I later discovered, online. The Buffalo Range Shooting Park in Ottawa, with rifle and pistol ranges, skeet and trap, and a shooting pit.
     Also fun. Though it was eerie Monday to hear that exact sound — the stutter of automatic weapons — on the videotapes from Las Vegas, where a deranged man fired on a country music festival, killing 59 and wounding 525, the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
     Facebook immediately lit up with people wondering whether this latest horror is enough to nudge us, finally, toward meaningful gun control. It was all I could do not to start time-wasting Facebook spats by jumping in with, "No, of course not."
     Why? Well, it never is — not in recent years — though sensible gun laws would still be useful, and sponsors of a bill loosening restrictions on silencers pulled it, for now. I'd like to imagine restricting high-capacity magazines might come next, but I doubt it. It's imaginable.      While firing streams of bullets at old washing machines is certainly fun, balancing that fun against increasingly common slaughters, a unified and rational country might come to that decision, the way we decided to require seat belts even though, at the time, men complained they rumpled their suits. I don't like the chutes at Starved Rock, but I understand their purpose.

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You can hear me talk about this column with WGN's Justin Kaufman here.

The Monty Hall Problem

     Monty Hall died Saturday, a fact I learned after it was posted on the Facebook page of my brother-in-law, a retired math professor.

      And if you're wondering the connection between the host and creator of "Let's Make a Deal" and mathematics, then you are not familiar with The Monty Hall Problem, a simple yet vexing statistical puzzle. 
    Simple, if you see it, and vexing, if you don't, particularly for those trying to explain it.

     Remember the show: Would-be contestants in the audience came to see the show in outrageous costumes, waving signs and props, hoping to catch Monty's attention and be selected to compete. They would swap what they had brought, bartering their way higher and higher, hoping to get to the final challenge, which involved three doors, cleverly named Door No. 1, Door No. 2, and Door No. 3.  Behind one of the door was a new car.

     The lucky contestant would be asked to pick one of the three doors—let's say she picked Door No. 1. 
    Then Monty would announce that he would let that contestant stick with the door she picked, or choose another door. But first, he'd say, let's see what is behind one of the doors you didn't pick. He would open, let's say, Door No. 3, and reveal a burro, or a goat, or some such thing.

    Now, Monty would say, do you want to stick with the door you picked, Door No. 1? Or would you like to take your chances with Door No. 2?

    What should the contestant do?

    The average person trying to puzzle through the problem might say, "Okay, the chances of getting the new car are one in three at the beginning and, tossing one door out, become one in two, but that holds for either door, so it doesn't matter whether you stick or switch. 

    That's wrong.  

    According to statistics, the contestant should always switch. The odds are better with the other door, and not just a little better, but twice as good. 

    How can that be?

    The quick trick to understanding is to imagine two types of strategies: Always Stick, and Always Switch. 

     In order to get the car, what must Mr. Always Stick pick in order to end up with the new car? He must pick the door hiding the car because later, given the chance to switch, he won't, and is left with his initial choice. To get the car, he has to pick the car right off of the bat.

    And what are the chances of picking the car first thing? One door in three, or 1/3.

    Now thinks about Always Switch. How does Miss Always Switch get the car? By picking the car? No, because if she picks the car, she'll later switch away from it. So to get the car, she has to pick one of the donkeys. And what are the chances of picking a donkey? Two in three, or 2/3. 

     So Always Stick's chances are 1/3, and Always Switch 2/3, or twice as good.

     Do you see it? No? Don't feel bad. My experience is that people often don't. A lot of people. Twenty-five years ago, after "Ask Marilyn" columnist Marilyn vos Savant presented the problem, up to then the stuff of obscure mathematical journals, in her popular column in Parade Magazine, readers deluged her with mail claiming she was wrong. 

      Many people I've tried to explain the problem to just can't get it, to my eternal frustration. What throws them off is the final choice, between two doors, seems like it should be 50-5o, because they know one door has a car and one a burro. They are forgetting the winnowing process, the throwing out of the third door, which affects the odds for switching. The odds for sticking remain what they were at the beginning—one in three; but tossing out one remaining door changes the odds considerable for taking the door that isn't thrown out.

      Let's put it another way. I am going to give you a choice between two wallets, and your goal is to find the wallet stuffed with cash. Wallet A is picked from a pair of wallets, one containing cash, one empty. Wallet B is selected from a group of a hundred wallets, only one of which contains cash. Of the two wallets I offer, which wallet should you pick? Even though you are being presented with two wallets, you should always pick A, because the odds of B containing any money are very small. Thus can the odds of picking between two things not be 50-50.

     Very confusing, I know. And I probably should have addressed the slaughter in Las Vegas instead. But honestly, at least this problem has an actual solution that can, with the application of brainpower, be solved. The other one seems merely impossible, at least for now and the foreseeable future. 

And that's why Trump is president

I don't watch Fox News. I don't have to, I can discern its talking points just by what my readers parrot back to me. For instance, on Monday I wrote about Trump's racist air horn—"dog whistle" implies a subtlety he no longer feels required to adopt—and I got in response emails such as this, thoughts planted in their heads by Trump and Fox News, sprouting as neatly as rows of seedlings in garden.

Neil,

President Trump definitely should not have sent the tweet, "they have to have everything done for them." PR suffers a catastrophe and his tweets never help any situation. He was wrong.

I think he is frustrated, as I am, with a US territory so horribly in debt caused by mismanagement and overspending by its local government. Didn't Congress just give them $100 billion of our tax dollars? They could have and should have since they are on an island, been better prepared for a hurricane, by improving their infrastructure over the years. Instead the local government borrowed and wasted billions. In effect, they didn't do anything to help themselves. The PR citizens seem to be completely different from the citizens of Houston, all over Florida, New York, New Jersey, etc. All those other communities and local governments seemed to have the "pull ourselves up by our bootstraps" mentality, unlike PR

—Mike K. *

Yeah pal, I bet the fiscal management of Puerto Rico has been a big source of frustration to you...

Racists—and I haven no idea if this reader is one, though he does an amazing impression—are also cowards, so don't express their hatred directly. Rather they hock up reasons, even nonsensical, hypocritical reasons. Our national debt is $18 trillion. His reasoning—Trump's reasoning—that nations in debt should not get relief, or are somehow responsible for their own woes, would mean that nowhere in the United States is worthy of help. Which perhaps is what he's going for. Anyway, I had to share this.

But why stop here? Let's look in my Spam filter, for readers I've previously blocked because I just don't want to have their spew irritate my eyes.

Some 80% of them are on disability or welfare. 80 billion in debt. .  Federal oversight needed as bankrupt. 65% obesity rate .  Write about that.  So yes. These “ brown skinned “ folk. Are welfare dependent pigs .
—Bill G.

You want more? There's more. But that's enough for now, though I reserve the right to add more as the day progresses. Sheesh. 

* I decided to shield the writer from being publicly associated with his thoughts, as a kindness, because even if he isn't aware enough to be embarrassed, he should be.

Trump's Puerto Rico tweets show we are heading away from who we are

     UTICA, Ill. — Sometimes people ask if I ever write columns in advance, to have one in the can. I tell them the truth: You really can't, because they go stale so quickly. Events have a way of hurtling past.
      For instance. Say so you hope to slip away for the weekend by tramping around Starved Rock State Park. So you write a column Friday morning, oh, suggesting that Donald Trump will be president for another seven years and change, so the best thing sentient people can do, rather than howling in horror at each new jaw-dropped lapse, is to tend your own garden, live your own rich life, baking English muffins and keeping track of the slow-motion train wreck in Washington only periodically, out of the corner of your eye, through latticed fingers. Otherwise it's just too disturbing.
     Then Saturday morning arrives to find our president lashing out at the beleaguered people of Puerto Rico, writing a sentence so freighted with racism that will go down in infamy, or should:
     "They want everything to be done for them," Trump wrote. "When it should be a community effort."
     Ignoring that isn't an option; being disturbed isn't a distraction, it's a patriotic duty.
     "They want everything to be done for them." Let's unpack that sentence. "They" are . . . who? Not hurricane survivors in general. Not the people in Houston and Florida. "They" are Puerto Ricans, 3.4 million American citizens, a status Trump no doubt discovered a few days ago.
     "Everything." That would be recovery efforts, restoring electricity and rebuilding infrastructure after Hurricane Maria ravaged their island Sept. 20. "Done" that would be their government snapping into action, instead of the president mocking them from his golf course in New Jersey. "For them" — these lazy, entitled brown folks, the ones he's been ridiculing since Day One of his camp...

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And I didn't even mention the death of Hugh Hefner

     I had two columns in Friday's paper: a cultural look at Hugh Hefner (that had begun as an obituary and then morphed as the needs of the paper changed) and this reaction to Gov. Bruce Rauner signing House Bill 40, and thus spiking our state's 40-year-old "trigger law." It was one of those quickie, reap-the-clicks pieces ordered up at the last minute and batted out. But not without, I hope, a certain charm. I did think of tucking Hefner's passing into the lede as the third good thing that happened to women this week, but didn't want to risk  celebrating the man's death, though he may have deserved it.

     Talk about a good week for women. Talk about progress.
     On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia announced, in a royal decree, that next year it will tip-toe into the 20th century by finally allowing women to drive automobiles, as if they were fully cognizant human beings.
     Then on Thursday, Illinois' Gov. Bruce Rauner, whose record of inertia, wheel-spinning and fencepole-sitting is second-to-none, revealed that he would wrap his fingers around a pen and sign House Bill 40.
     HB40, you should know, is the law that establishes that should the religious fanatics that Republicans have been stuffing the Supreme Court with actually reverse the widely popular Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, the "trigger law" that the bowl haircuts down in Springfield passed in 1975 would not automatically ban the procedure in Illinois.
     Most women in Illinois no doubt did not realize that the trigger law, formally 720 Illinois Criminal Statute 510, was dangling over their heads all this time, ready to ban abortion the moment Roe v. Wade was overturned,
     The only other states with such a law are Kentucky, Louisiana and South Dakota.
     The new bill, sponsored by state Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, was filed almost three years ago. Rauner, who ran in 2014 stating he would not delve into "social issues" either by pushing to restrict abortion, or to reduce the ability of state-employees or poor women to get the procedure, began waffling publicly like Hamlet.

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An agnostic goes to synagogue

Leonardo DaVinci, "St. John the Baptist"

     Yom Kippur is today. 
     This ran five years ago—five years ago today, in fact—in the Sun-Times. It is particularly relevant, alas, now that Alabama Republicans have chosen Judge Roy Moore to be their senatorial candidate, a religious fanatic who thinks his idea of God should trump our nation's law. It also mentions Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz who, double alas, passed away in 2014.

     Every columnist has a few hobbyhorse causes he likes to ride. One favorite of mine is the idea that government shouldn't promote any particular religion. I like it because, despite being so obvious—a diverse nation of many faiths, we can't exist in harmony if the law backs just one—many folks still can't seem to wrap their heads around it.
     Raised in their own insular worlds, they lurch upon the national stage with their great idea—prayer into public schools!—never pausing to consider whose prayer will be put in school (theirs, naturally; is there any other kind?) It is satisfying to inform them that, yes, there are other people who believe other things, a half dozen faiths per classroom, and adding prayer to schools would make them more chaotic than they are now.
     Such reasoning can't be merely accepted—that would involve changing their minds, and most are hardwired to prevent that—so instead they accuse me of hating religion. People to whom fairness is unfamiliar still perceive, in a foggy general way, that fairness-based arguments can work, so they want to grab at that advantage themselves. They say: You're disagreeing with me! You must hate me in a fashion similar to how I hate you! What about tolerance of my bigotries?
     For the record: I think religion is swell. Life is a long time, you need help to get by, and faith is perfect for that. Religions tend to be old and are embraced by many, so there's tradition and company, plus food and music.
     OK, not always food. Yom Kippur was earlier this week—the holiest day of the Jewish year, a fast day. Not that I'm the sort who believes that God Almighty is peering down from heaven, quill pen poised over the Book of Life, waiting to see whether Neil Steinberg toddles off to synagogue or not. But my wife announced she was going to services at the Lubavitch Chabad of Northbrook. That was different. The Lubavitch are a highly observant branch of Judaism—think beards, black hats, fringed garments. Typically not the corner of our faith that my wife and I would snuggle in. But unlike most synagogues, they don't charge a fee to worship on the high holidays—typically most synagogues see it as a chance to make hay.
     Our previous temple membership fell victim to the recession. So free helped. Though in my secret heart, I felt distant from the process, brooding as I put on my suit: Every year this stuff seems more ridiculous. I could be attending an animistic goat ritual performed by Ghanaians and couldn't feel less affected.
     I didn't say that aloud. I'm trying not to complain so much, and when I had shared similar thoughts in previous years, my wife just smiled and replied, "You always say that, but you end up getting something out of it."
     I had never been to a Lubavitch Yom Kippur service; I expected it to be all in Hebrew, expected a scene from Vilnius in 1754, the low drone of ancient syllables uttered by men in prayer shawls. I would slink in, as out-of-place as a peacock among penguins, perch awkwardly in a corner for a few hours, and then flee unchanged, grateful to be gone.
     That's not what happened. A surprising amount was in English. They not only weren't hostile but warmly welcomed us freeloaders. Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, director of Lubavitch Chabad in Illinois, gave a sermon that I didn't transcribe, but can be summarized thus: We're glad you're here. Because Orthodox or Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist, whatever, we're all Jews. We should be Jews together and do Jewish stuff. We should be good to people, give them m'vater - space, respect.
     "We're not judgmental," Moscowitz said, a concept that many faiths, still hoping to convert the entire world, by persuasion if possible, by law if not, might want to contemplate. Religion should be voluntary. Moscowitz said the Lubavitch are here, doing the things they believe in, and hope other Jews will come and join them and see that they're good. (And maybe kick in a little something. He did allude to having electric bills to pay, a soft-sell invite to those present to help, which of course we will; we're not utter schnorrers, as they say in Yiddish, not mooches).
     But that isn't why I'm writing this; that wasn't the surprising part. The surprising part was, when I was done, after ... geez ... five hours over Tuesday and Wednesday, I felt better. Not that I felt so bad going in, but I felt better. Life seemed more palatable. I will forever deny that grace or God or anything like that had any part. It was just nice to sit in a room among other people and hear familiar prayers and think about being a better man for a few hours, with no email or Facebook. I came out renewed, though not—and this is important— also feeling the laws of the United States should be changed to funnel people into Lubavitch services. In all candor, the place was packed, and if none of you ever go, that's fine with me.
     My wife merely smiled at my glowing report. "You say that every year," she replied.

               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 28, 2012