Screaming at the Storm, or a Quiet Port in the Tempest
My good friend Noah Barnes captains the Stephen Taber, a coasting schooner built in 1861 that sails weekly in season from Rockland, Maine. The oldest documented sailing vessel in continuous service in the United States, and a National Historic Landmark, sailing aboard is a lifetime experience. Join him if you can.
I once asked Noah what he does during the occasional Atlantic storm. “I send all passengers and crew below, stand at the helm and scream at the storm, it’s among my best moments.”
Noah’s scream at the storm is metaphor for our present political experience.
The alternative is seeking a quiet harbor, which enhances the quiet mind of deep contemplation, and there is a place for that as well. In that regard, I recommend sitting down with Jeffrey Sachs, and there are many YouTube opportunities for that. Jeffrey is an American economist, public policy analyst and professor at Columbia University.
According to New York Magazine, Sachs's ambitions are hard to overstate... "His ultimate goal is to change the world—to 'bend history', as he once said, quoting Robert F. Kennedy", Nina Munk wrote in The Idealist, a biography of Sachs. By the early aughts, he had risen from wonky academic to celebrity public intellectual.
According to Munk, people in Sachs's inner circle affectionately called him a "shit disturber", someone whose ego was offset by selfless genius and a penchant for challenging orthodoxies. "There's a certain messianic quality about him", said George Soros, one of his patrons.
I wish I could count him a friend, as is Noah. Instead, a mentor of political observation will have to do, as he shapes my respect for his personal truths, plainly spoken.
According to Stuart Lau and Luanna Muniz, writing in Politico, Sachs is a "long-time advocate of dismantling American hegemony and embracing the rise of China." He has argued for closer relations between the US and China and warned of the danger of tensions between them.
On the subject of tariffs and financial manipulation, a speech delivered by Sachs during a U.N. session discussing the impact of unilateralism and bullying practices is of interest.
So, there are those who grip the wheel and scream at the storm, and those who contemplate humanity from the safe harbor of thought and investigation.
Most of the rest of us struggle with our lives and have little time for either. Not that we’re shy about expressing our distaste with social media at the moment. According to an Oct 25, 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of US adults now get their daily misinformation on social media, simultaneously stoking the algorithms to feed them more.
We already have Jon Stewart to scream, and he does it a decibel or two too high for my taste, but he’s widely heard. Jeffrey Sachs is more my guy, because there’s far too much rampant opinion in these troubled times and not much reasoned thought. There are those, and I have no quarrel with them, who prefer the gut to the brain. 54% if we can believe Pew.
It's impossible to track how many followers Sachs has, but if it’s any comfort to the ignorant of the world, he gets $50-100,000 for a speech and Bezos gets fifty times that. ‘Money talks, but it don’t sing and dance.’ We have Neil Diamond (and Jeff Bezos) to thank for that.
Sachs is worth a look on YouTube.
Go look, and agree to disagree.