Buiding a WW2 bomber

by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

I listen more than I read these days, usually to videos while I am working. My latest interest has been tales of military and industrial heroism from World War Two. Most recently YouTube's algorithm has been feeding me stories of unauthorized modifications of equipment made by soldiers (airmen, etc.) in the field: the plane was too heavy so they made it lighter by removing "non-essentials"; the machine gun fired better from the back of the jeep when a spring mechanism was added to cushion its mounting; a higher octane of fuel extended the fighter plane's range... All of these changes went against the rules and were grounds for court martial. But the official channels, the military bureaucracy would have taken years to approve them, if they ever did... and without them, soldiers were dying unnecessarily every day.

Ideally, the capitalist system rewards such individual initiative. The free market is democratic, and that's good because you never know who is going to come up with the next innovation, the next genius idea. In contrast, communism empowers bureaucratic, top-down management of the economy. The problem is that, as in the former Soviet Union, it's less efficient for a central committee to establish the price of copper than it is for a free market, a multitude of buyers and sellers, to do so. Will rent control and government run grocery stores work in New York City? After last week's election I guess we'll see.

Very recently I took a brief detour from my World War Two stories to listen to Shelby Foote, the southern gentleman with the luscious Mississippi drawl featured in Ken Burn's documentary "The Civil War." The algorithm (no doubt following my penchant for war stories) presented me with a little over two hours of the raw footage of Burn's interview with Mr. Foote. (I darn't call him Shelby.) There or in one of a few other videos with Foote which I later watched, he lamented certain aspects of Southern culture that were lost, to the country as a whole, after the war.

Historian and author Shelby Foote
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Chief among these are Southern manners: honor, courtesy, your word being your bond... Foote says that the attack upon Southern culture, during and for decades after the war ("There was no Marshall Plan") gave free rein to Northern industry, to rapacious capitalism, and the dictatorship of money.

I just returned from a month in the South, visiting my daughter in New Orleans. There, getting back to her car after dining at her favorite Thai restaurant, three black folk, who were sitting up on the porch of the rooming house in front of which we had parked, wished us good evening. These were not educated people, but their manners were much better than some of the Americans who visit San Miguel. Even some of our resident Americans are guilty of discourtesy. In general, we may have more money, but we have less courtesy. We may be better capitalists, but we are worse human beings.

the view from my daughter's front porch swing
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I was sitting in a bank the other day opening an account when a well-dressed older woman, who having just finished an interaction with a teller stopped as she was walking away, and call out, too loudly, both to compensate for the distance already between them, and also to convey her enthusiasm, "Thank you very much!" If this lady were so grateful, then she should have said, "Muchas gracias."

Using the language of the country, speaking Spanish in Mexico (or trying to), is fundamental. It conveys a baseline respect, and it gets you the same. Mexicans change, relax and become friendlier, when I change to speaking their language. Even those who want to practice their English like it when you speak Spanish.

There are many forces at work in politics, many reasons why Zohran Mamdani, a socialist, was just elected the mayor of New York City. Much of his support came from younger people, who have no skin in the capitalist game. While I was visiting her, my daughter made some comparisons of what things (houses, doctor visits...) cost today versus when her mother and I (both of us doctors) were starting out, and how little real wages have risen over the same period of time. When you are 35 years old and still living with housemates, capitalism doesn't seem so wonderful.

Some call what we have "crony capitalism," insisting that the market isn't really free. Covid measures did cause a tremendous concentration of wealth; why were big box stores (Walmart, Target...) allowed to stay open, while mom and pop stores had to close? The shutdown also greatly increased the younger generation's reliance on the internet; that's the only place where they could visit with friends.

Zohran Mamdani
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My Lokkal project is a simple solution to both the ugliness of capitalism and the toxicity of the internet. Now a calendar of events, magazine and newsletters, Lokkal will evolve into a local social network (like Facebook) and a local search engine (like Google) all in the public domain. Already a non-profit, Lokkal is designed to be a voluntary socialist platform (maybe someone should tell Zohran Mamdani?): "Thank you Big Tech, but we can present our own city to the planet." Local, public internet, Lokkal will capture some of the advertising revenue currently being extracted by the most successful business strategy ever (Facebook and Google), and keep that money circulating locally, where it blesses every pair of hands through which it passes, creating a kinder, more equitable capitalism - www.lokkal.com/about

San Miguel still has values which have been lost up north where cash is king. Down here there are other measures of wealth, besides how much money you have. We still have the courtesy and community that Shelby Foote notes have largely been lost in the United States. What they sang about the South then could still be sung about San Miguel now, "old times there are not forgotten."

Foote acknowledges the horror of slavery, but believes it could, should and would have been stopped by compromise (involving economic compensation for slave-holders) instead of war. With that proviso, perhaps we can understand his wistfulness for the Lost Cause with its "moonlight and magnolias." Very aware of his romanticism, Foote tells us during his interview with Burns:

Before the War
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During the Civil War, and for a long while after, southerners would often wax nostalgic for how it was antebellum, before the War. They would lament, "I wish you could have seen it before the War," whatever "it" happened to be at the moment. Just so, once two people were sitting on a front porch watching a full moon rise over the tree line. One said, "That's a beautiful moon." His companion replied, "I wish you could have seen it before the War."

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, public internet, building community, strengthening the local economy. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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