The Crow and the Blue Angels
Flying Dinosaurs and Democracy
August 2024 Introduction:
I posted this story last summer about Seattle's "SeaFair" festival and the annual visit of the Blue Angels, an Air Force aerial acrobatics team. Well, it's August and... they're baaaack.
I knew that the Blue Angels are back because they "practice" a few days in advance - making a lot of noise, swooping high and low over Lake Washington and basically imitating an air attack on "enemy territory."
Long ago, when I was a kid, I found that kind of stuff exhilarating and entertaining. Now I don't.
Whenever I see... and especially hear... these jets breaking the sound barrier and diving as though for an attack mission, I realize that things like this are happening, today, right now, all around the world.
But what's happening today, right now, all around the world is not "entertainment." It's not a video game. They are real missile and bomb attacks on families, on kids, on neighborhoods. It's not fun to be blown to pieces. And, contrary to the patriotic hoopla, it is absolutely not brave, not heroic and not manly to kill women and children and families from high in the sky in a multi-million dollar war machine paid for by you and me. I am not amused.
Planet Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. There was no life at all for about the first billion. Mammalian life came much, much later. Homo sapiens evolved only about half a million years ago - a mere blink of the eye, geologically speaking. Perhaps, some day, some one from another intelligent specie will excavate the remnants of our civilization (so called) and wonder what kind of animals we were.
I think that even today, some critters - like crows - wonder what kind of animals we are.
* * * * * *
I was working in the yard when another formation of the Blue Angels zoomed overhead.
At that moment, a large crow plopped down from a tree above and settled on a rock beside me. "Excuse me," said the crow. "Do you mind if I just sit here for a spell. Such a headache I have, like you wouldn't believe!"
The Blue Angels Navy demonstration team in their F/A-18 Super Hornets streaked by again, low and loud, rattling windows, leaving trails of white smoke hanging in the air. The crow tucked his wings over his head and hunched down. "Oy gewalt! Are they gone?" he asked when the jets had passed, one eye cautiously peeping skyward though his wing feathers.
"I think so, at least for now," I answered the crow as I continued to rake leaves. "Don't like the noise?"
"Such a racket!" said the crow. "You know, birds have verrry good hearing. Whenever one of these flying things of yours show off like that, it's just like a snare drum banging in our heads. And then six of them at once! Not long ago, I even saw some chicks jump right out of their nest, so scared they all were! And the geese! Keneinahora, sometimes when they see these Blue Angels, so called, flying in a V formation, the geese... they're not so very smart you know... these geese get all excited and start honking and then they start flying in a V formation, too. It's going to be a big disaster one day."
The crow took a large cigar from out of his vest pocket. "You got a light maybe?"
"No," I said, "nobody smokes in Seattle. Smoking isn't good for you. It's bad for you and it's bad for the environment."
"That's OK," replied the crow. "I'll just chew on it." The crow bit off the end of the cigar and held the cigar in the side of its beak. "Mind if I have one of those fine looking strawberries you're growing over there?"
I had some misgivings, knowing how crows like strawberries. "Sure... but just one."
The crow pushed the cigar to one side of its beak, picked a strawberry and ate it. "Well, maybe one more strawberry, you know, for later, like for the missus?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Okay. Just one more." Which he promptly took and put in the crop of the lower half of his beak. Or did he swallow the strawberry whole? I couldn't really tell.
The crow tucked away the unlit cigar and drew a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses from his vest pocket. He tipped his dark blue Greek fisherman's cap forward and cupped his head from behind with his wings. He leaned back against the rock. "So why?" the crow asked me.
"Why what?"
The Blue Angels roared overhead for a grand finale. The crow jumped into the underbrush. When the planes had passed, the crow came out and preened himself.
"Why," he said while combing his feathers, "if you Seattle people don't smoke and you are always talking about environment this and environment that, why do you bring in these noisy, polluting flying circuses, eh?
"I mean," the crow continued as he gestured up at the sky, "there's nothing more wasteful than a bunch of fighter jets buzzing around. Each F/18 guzzles fuel at about 162 gallons a minute, not to mention air and noise pollution. So six times 162 gallons equals almost 1,000 gallons a minute. So in a one hour air show, that's about 60,000 gallons of fossil fuel burned up, and that's tons of CO2 and nasty emissions. I mean, you drive around your Teslas and your electric scooters... and then this? The Blue Angeles acoustic load is around 120 db in flight and more than 200 db on take-off, which is rather deafening even at a distance, not including the shock waves. And then you toss in these roaring unlimited hydroplane races on the lake with these boats and their infernal internal combustion engines burning up hundreds of gallons of fuel going round and around and around in circles at more than 108 db... It's enough to drive the ducks quackers!"
I looked at the crow. "How do you know all that?"
"What's there to know?" answered the crow. "You toss away a newspaper, then we pull it out of the trash and read it. Sometimes the newspaper is worth reading. More often, it really does belong in the trash. But there are worthwhile tidbits from time to time. Also, from up in the trees, we can see over your shoulders what there is to see on your mobile phones and laptops. Admittedly, there's not a lot worth reading there, but we can pick up some stuff. And then we all learned about principles of flight and basic reading, writing, world history, philosophy, quantum computing, Latin, ornithology, comparative French fries and arithmetic in public bird school.
The crow continued. "Or, at least we used to learn stuff like that back in the day. Maybe now things are different. The newly fledged birds today seem to be more interested in copying what you humans do than in getting a solid basic bird education. You know, they're always checking their Flitter accounts on their FlyPhones, and making two minute videos for social peck-works like Flap-Flap where they do stupid challenge stunts like mobbing eagles to tug at their tail-feathers and holding raucous rave-in parties singing and hanging out on high tension power lines. And they're always posting silly peeps on Whirlybird.nest.
"Your human influencers, for better or for worse, are influencing all the other animals, too" the crow continued. "The other day, I was speaking to the coyote who lives just down the road from here. The coyote says to me that he met a nice rabbit one evening. But, the coyote says to me, that rabbit wouldn't run. The rabbit just stood up to the coyote as cool as could be and reared back on his hind legs saying, 'I am not a rabbit. I am a grizzly bear. Now, be off you mangy coyote!' And, the coyote told me, that was really curious because even though the rabbit self-identified as a grizzly bear, it tasted just like a rabbit."
I thought I heard the crow caw caw cawing to himself.
The crow scratched his throat where there were a few white feathers mixed in with the darker ones. "But still," he continued after a while. "I really want to know, like with your ‘Blue Angels,’ why do you people always say one thing and then do something else?"
I started to weed the blueberry bushes. This is one obnoxious crow, I thought.
"It's all part of the SeaFair Festival," I explained to the crow. "A lot of cities host festivals like this. They want to promote local economic growth. Economic growth leads to more population density, more tax revenue and more jobs. But the growth also leads to more congestion, more noise, fewer trees and undesirable living conditions which all leads to more people leaving town because they want less congestion, less noise, more trees, and better living conditions.
“The summer festivals also give bored teenagers a nice and restricted venue to relieve their boredom so they won't wreak havoc all over town; at least not until after the festival when they leave the festival grounds and wreak havoc all over town. The cities also hold these festivals every summer in order to discourage drinking and wild behavior while letting the sponsoring corporations advertise to promote drinking and wild behavior.
“The City invites the Blue Angels, of course, in order to provide thrilling and wholesome family entertainment. This thrilling and wholesome family entertainment mainly serves to help recruit young folks to join the military where they learn how to fly jets like F/18s in order to strafe, bomb and kill people. I mean, what's so contradictory about any of that?"
The crow looked perplexed. "You know, I'm just a bird. But I still don't get it. Can you tell me in simple terms why you invite these military demonstrations with the F/18 fighter planes if this is supposed to be such a progressive, enlightened and 'green' city? I mean, to quote a famous raven, you, too, could just say 'Nevermore!' I'm sorry, that's a Poe joke, I know, but it is a serious question."
"Actually, I don't do anything. I didn't invite the Blue Angels and I don't particularly like the SeaFair festival. But nobody asked me. Or anyone else, for that matter." I pulled some dead leaves off the apple tree. "If it were up to me, we wouldn't do this sort of thing."
The crow leaned back and eyed me quizzically. "Do you have any crackers?"
"No, I don't have any crackers. Do I look like I'm eating crackers?"
"No," said the crow. "I just was asking as I listened to you. You know, what you said made me think of crackers."
Or did I mishear and the crow actually said he thought I was crackers? There was that soft caw caw cawing again. Crows don't laugh or make jokes. Only people laugh and make jokes. I must have been mistaken.
The crow coughed lightly and cleared his throat. "So why don't you do something? You do live in a democracy, don't you? At least, that's what your news media always say."
I was rather annoyed with the crow's impertinence and exclaimed: "Well of course we live in a democracy! The two parties -- well, in this state, just the one party -- figures out who it wants to have as candidates for public office. It then puts up a bunch of candidates on the ballot and then we get to vote for whomever we like from the list of candidates that the Party has approved. Oh, we also have the usual and perennial lunatic goof-balls who run for election every year, but they are there just as a relief valve to drain away whatever protest vote there might be. On the whole, however, although it appears as though all the candidates say and promise the exact same things, they all look different. At least on the surface. And that's the important thing in American democracy: the optics of who you get to vote for. The candidates all look different even though they think and act the same."
"Really?" asked the crow squinting incredulously through his nictitating inner eyelids.
"Really. So just this month we had a primary election. We had dozens and dozens of people running for office. They were all pretty similar in terms of their campaign promises, but all different in terms of their appearances. In addition, we have a 'top two' primary system which typically means that by the time of the general elections in November, we get to choose from two candidates - usually from the exact same party - who hold the exact same political positions. But we get to freely choose between those two candidates based on their skin color, their gender or their preferred pronouns."
The crow removed his sunglasses and scrutinized me with one eye. "If that's democracy, brother, then you basically have the freedom to choose between Pepsi and Coke, or between Crest or Colgate, Levi's or Wrangler. Or you can choose which color jellybean you want. You know, I really like jellybeans, but once you get beneath the red, green, yellow and black sugar coating, all jellybeans are exactly the same. How many people vote in your elections?"
"14.2% turned out in my county in the most recent primary," I answered.
"So, that's interesting," said the crow. "A whole 14.2%. Why so few voters?"
"I don't know." I was getting annoyed with this crow. "But it's something we can deal with. There's actual legislation proposed in my state that will legally force people to vote in every election, whether they want to or not. It's far less important who and what people get to vote for, so long as we get to 100% democratic participation. Failing to vote will be deemed a crime."1
"Wouldn't it be better just to have a better choice of candidates?" asked the crow. "Wouldn't more people vote if they had something worth voting for, you know, more and better choices rather than forcing them to choose one color jellybean versus an identical but different color jellybean? Maybe it's like that old Franz Kafka story about the man who starved himself as a hunger artist2 because there was nothing that he wanted to eat? Maybe people don't vote because there's no one worth voting for?"
"No, no, no!" I exclaimed impatiently. "That's why humans are the dominant species. You birds are just the descendants of extinct Jurassic life forms. You don't understand how democracy works."
The crow scratched his head.
The crow said: "I saw on CNN recently that a Republican Party consultant, Jonah Goldberg, by name, commented that small contributors to political candidates are literally bad for democracy. He said that big political donors -- by which I think he means the super wealthy folks who own everything -- actually have a strategic view about politics and the little people just act emotionally. This political consultant was literally concerned that the "people" want to make political candidates actually commit to carry out their campaign promises, which this guy implied is totally irrational. This Republican consultant's comments are an echo of Hillary Clinton's comment back in the year 2016 that half of the demos... which in ancient Greece was the people, the public, the commonwealth... were just a "basket of deplorables" who are like foolish little children who don't really know what's best for themselves.
“So, both your Republican Party and your Democratic Party think alike that working and middle class people should just step aside, eat, drink, work... and die; enjoy the circuses and the spectacles while they last, and let the 'experts' and their 'betters' lead them where they need to be led. Is that how democracy works? I'm just asking because I am just an old bird to whom this sounds more like an aristocracy posing as a democracy."
The crow was beginning to exasperate me. "Everyone knows," I explained, "that although we have free and fair elections in which we can vote for anyone at any time, those who have superior information obviously have to make sure that the electorate doesn't make a dangerous mistake. The way they help us avoid making mistakes is to vet those who would hold public office to make sure only ‘quality’ candidates make it to the final ballot. I mean, clearly, if the bulk of the people aren't sufficiently knowledgeable to make rational choices, then the bulk of the people have to be given the choice - based on external phenotypes and purely irrelevant physical characteristics, naturally - from among the qualified candidates pre-selected for them by the two parties.
"Furthermore, in a democracy, the media is controlled by the same people who control both political parties, so they all coordinate their efforts to subtly manipulate and steer the people toward what knowledgeable and informed people know is in the people's best interests, even if the people themselves don't know that they are being manipulated and steered toward what is in their best interests.
"If you weren't such a dumb bird, Mr. Crow, you would understand that is the way democracy has to work. Otherwise, just imagine what could happen if there was a free-for-all and anybody at all could run for or be elected to a position of authority!
“Wars would break out! There could be famine and fires! There could be rampant crime in the streets. There would be huge disparities in wealth between the top rung of society and everyone else. There would be drug and alcohol abuse. Suicides. Social disorder. Identity confusion. Epidemics. Economic recession. Rising prices and falling life expectancy. A culture of decay, corruption, secrecy, propaganda, deception, surveillance, criminality, greed, exploitation, dissolution and disrespect. Virtuous imbecility masquerading as progress. I mean, really, Mr. Crow, but for democracy as we know it, our world could be that kind of place. And that's why we have SeaFair and Blue Angels air shows!"
The crow tipped back his Greek fisherman's cap and studied me over the top of his sunglasses. "Funny," the crow said, "we corvidae are a very socialized specie of animal and we do things differently. First, we meet and discuss everything. Although we have congress in the trees, it's always on the level, so to speak. We meet regularly to discuss and decide. If we do have a certain pecking order, it's mainly to make sure that we follow Robert's Rules of Order and parliamentary procedures. You see us meeting in minyans of ten or flocks of hundreds.
“It's rather like the Swiss version of democracy at the canton level, and just as noisy. One crow makes a proposal - like where to forage tomorrow or what McDonald's dumpster to visit - and then we all vote on it, one caw per crow. Even votes from the cheep seats count. No opaque electronic voting necessary. No filtered or predigested or manipulated discourse. Look around! You can hear our crow democracy in action all the time.
"Second," continued the crow, "completely contrary to what you humans apparently do, we set out to educate all crows to the highest and most rigorous level possible, young chicks and old birds and from all social and economic strata, so that every bird has an honest opportunity to learn, to know, to understand and to meaningfully participate in and benefit from our highly social lives. We consider all of us to be just birds of a feather flocking together.
“You might say this is the Enlightenment's version of democracy where all animals are deemed capable if they make the effort and are given the opportunity, as opposed to the rather aristocratic and bourgeois version of democracy that you describe.
"So, in sum," the crow concluded, "You humans and we crows see the same problem, but we deal with it differently. The problem is a lack of awareness in the general population. But your political solution is to keep the people down, unaware, ignorant and distracted by absurdities, so that their self-declared betters who are 'in the know' can do what they think is best for all (as they see it); while we crows try to raise our general corvidae population up to the same high standards of awareness, knowledge and understanding so that, all of us collectively, can benefit from the common good.”
I harrumphed and resorted to the highest form of debate: insult and abuse. "Well, that's fine if you've got a tiny bird brain. I mean, you are related to dinosaurs and, after all, they're all now extinct."
"Well," replied the crow while peeking and pecking at his FlyPhone, "I guess it's time for me to head home. Thanks, human, for the strawberries; and thanks for all the insights into your world."
With that, the crow stretched his wings and flew off into the darkening skies joined by thousands of his garrulous colleagues heading home to their rookery. He circled once performing a few aeronautical maneuvers every bit as impressive as the Blue Angels (only quietly). The crow shouted down to me: "You see, we dinosaur relics are still flying around. Maybe we'll fly to the moon one day. Maybe beyond. And as to who goes extinct and who doesn't, well, it's just too soon to tell."3
I haven't seen that funny old bird since then. I've seen and heard crows caucusing up in the trees, but none of them were wearing a vest or a blue Greek sailor's cap. I've put out some strawberries and peanuts and a cigar. I think the blue jays and the squirrels got them.
Maybe the crow will come back for next year's SeaFair Festival. We should continue the conversation. Even if he is an old bird brain who doesn't make any sense.
NOTES:
1 This is not a joke. The bills have actually been tabled in the Washington State legislature.
2 In the original German: https://www.textlog.de/kafka/erzaehlungen/ein-hungerkuenstler
3 It's too soon to tell, Zhou Enlai purportedly said when assessing the long-term effects of the 19th Century French Revolution and the Paris Uprising of 1968.