Things were looking up on my recent Adirondack trip. The rain had stopped. I hiked to the top of Bald Mountain with my friend Dan. Then, on the way down, I fell and hurt my ankle, seemingly a sprain, and gingerly walked down the rest of the steep trail. I spent the next couple days with my foot elevated when possible, applying ice intermittently, which gave me ample time to contemplate matters large and small.
I stepped out at night off Big Moose Lake and saw one of the starriest skies I’ve seen in years. The Milky Way was visible as a faint glow. The star Vega—memorably evoked in the movie Contact with a crowd holding signs such as “Hitler Lives on Vega” after a broadcast of the Fϋhrer was relayed back to Earth—was overhead, identified through Google Sky Map. It’s unclear if the Milky Way will collide with its neighbor Andromeda billions of years from now, a recent study reducing the chance to about 50 percent.
I thought about the Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies that I’ve rarely seen as they’re visible only from the Southern Hemisphere. A few years ago I noticed a movement starting to form among astronomy grad students to rename these galaxies, and other things named after Ferdinand Magellan, on account of his violent encounters with Indigenous people and that his explorations enabled later colonialism. This effort got some negative attention last year, but the controversy remains in deserved obscurity, with a search on “Magellan campaign” revealing a positive evocation of his name in an effort against dyslexia.
Incidentally, regarding the capital “I” in “Indigenous” above, it happens that I’m partly responsible for the adoption of that stylistic detail at a science magazine I work for, recommending it as increasingly common and consistent with the magazine’s decision to capitalize “B” in “Black” as a racial category. Both that “I” and that “B” have an ideological coloration, implying an overdue respectful acknowledgement. Others resist such tendentious capitalization, and its exaltation of race and ethnicity. I’m inclined toward a placid attitude about such struggles over nomenclature, seeing them as a useful diversionary activity for people who might otherwise engage in more-harmful pursuits.
My self-affixed ideological label of recent years is “centrist.” I’ve written extensively about parting company with the right, and recently contrasted my ideological evolution with the Bourbon kings of France, reputed to have learned and forgotten nothing over 40 years. Still, continuities come to mind, as I note that complaints from right and left that Kamala Harris has the support of “neocons” are accurate, and that “neocon,” like “libertarian,” isn’t just a former part of my identity, but something that still shapes my thinking. I think it’s a dangerous world, in which America needs the “most lethal” military; and admire that neoconservatives, early on, had an ideological flexibility and empirical bent, in contrast to the rigidities of the leftism they’d abandoned and the conservative movement they were joining.
I was an early jumper on the Harris bandwagon, weeks before Joe Biden stepped aside, when Kamalamentum was a distant hope. Subsequent developments—her rise in the polls, and skill at coalition-building, combined with Donald Trump’s flummoxed and erratic responses—have exceeded my expectations. The possibility that RFK Jr.’s withdrawal from the race and shift to open support for Trump might turn the tide strikes me as unlikely, but in any case, Harris should take as a badge of honor the opposition of that anti-vaxxer, who disgustingly portrays himself as a defender of children’s health.
A growing trope on the right is to decry the Kamalanomenon as smoke and mirrors, a slick PR campaign shielding a vapid candidate from public scrutiny. This takes no account of that candidate’s success in rapidly organizing her campaign and unifying her party, and also is oddly discordant with the notion that Joe Biden’s long been mentally deficient, which presumably would’ve placed some burden on the Vice President to step into executive decision-making. On this right-wing theory, amid coming interviews and debates, Harris’ grasp of policies and command of facts will soon be exposed as lacking, particularly in comparison with those of Trump, a man of substance and cool decision-maker. I can’t discuss this any further, because I’m laughing too hard.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on X: @kennethsilber