Vision Matters

On Monday I wrote about language and yesterday I mentioned Ireland. Today I combine the two. I read somewhere recently that in ancient Ireland it was a greater crime to kill a poet than a king. I can’t find a citation and, although it seems apocryphal, I suspect it’s true, because in ancient Ireland poets had equal status with bishops and kings. At any rate, it helps explain the history of a people who have been far better served by their poets than their rulers and have, as a consequence, developed a rich culture and a strong identity that have enabled them to survive centuries of oppression. Perhaps it’s just his Irish-sounding surname, but I believe that Barack Obama’s appeal in 2008 was to the poetry in us. In his rhetoric, in his persona and in a biography that brought together so many disparate strands of America’s heritage, he appealed across conventional political lines in a way that contrasted with the deeply unpoetic presidency of George Bush. It is ironic that the result has been polarization to the point of gridlock and a Republican opponent for 2012 who is nothing if not prosaic.

Not everyone is enamored of the idea of poet as president. In fact, this election is increasingly focused on management styles and problem-solving techniques. But right now, I think what we need above all is a new vision of ourselves as a people . . . such as Havel gave the Czechs, Churchill gave the British, and Lincoln once gave us.

Democracy

Not long before the first democratic election in Egypt’s long history, an observer said, “I hope they will select correctly.” But isn’t that, by definition, what the democratic process is meant to determine?

Much of America’s foreign policy since World War II has consisted of public demands for free elections and quiet support for autocratic allies. No wonder we view the uprisings in the Arab world and elsewhere with both excitement and trepidation. What we advocate is happening, and we have no control over it.

Who could have imagined:

• In Belfast, Queen Elizabeth, dressed all in apple green, shaking hands with Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s current deputy first minister and former Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army, which assassinated the queen’s cousin, ignited a series of lethal bombings across Britain, and plotted the murder of the royal family.

• In Cairo, Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been banned since 1948, being sworn in as Egypt’s president.

• In Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi released from two decades of house arrest and promptly elected to Burma’s Parliament.

Indeed, the one country where cynicism about the electoral process seems to have taken firmest root is this one. Barely half of America’s eligible voters participate in presidential years, a third in off years. The amount of money unleashed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision undermines our confidence in the fairness of our own elections.

Instead of patronizingly judging the outcomes of elections on the other side of the world, we should focus on fixing what is happening here.

Getting the Words Right

In her review of a new edition of A Farewell to Arms, Julie Bosman writes of the 1958 interview in “Paris Review,” in which Ernest Hemingway told George Plimpton that he had written 39 endings to the novel before he got it right. Many of the early endings, which are in the book’s appendix, were simple and beautiful, and Plimpton asked what the stumbling block had been.

“Getting the words right,” said Hemingway.

Writing is an art form in which each word is as important to the whole as a brush stroke on a canvas or a note in a symphony. And yet we live in a world which seems to have little respect for the beauty of words.

We learn to write with a thesaurus, as if words were interchangeable parts without any particular meaning in themselves.

We mistake $20 words for erudition.

We use words to obfuscate our meaning, to hide our own lack of clarity, to dazzle our audiences.

In political campaigns, candidates are drilled relentlessly to stay “on message,” which means, not to choose the right words in response to a question, but to repeat the same words robotically over and over again.

In doing so, we rob language of its beauty . . . but not of its power, for we become vulnerable to those who manipulate it for their own uses. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty told Alice, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

The difference between the art of writing and propaganda is the truth of the words themselves. It is getting the words right.

Stumble of the Week

My brain stumbled (mightily) this week over Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle” believed to be the foundation of life in the universe. I understand almost nothing about it, and yet its apparent discovery has excited, unsettled and bewildered me.

• The excitement is that of discovery – and the quest to understand the biggest and most basic questions of life. The thousands of scientists involved in this project are literally “out there,” pushing against the limits of what we think we know. This particle was an idea almost 50 years before it was discovered. To pursue something so small for so long is a testament not just to intelligence but to faith.

• Frankenstein’s monster reminds us that not all knowledge is beneficial to mankind; and Faust made a bargain with the devil he eternally regretted. What if one day we do unlock the origins of life? Then what? We must hope that the universe has always one more secret.

• Finally, I am bewildered by the people who turn their backs on discoveries such as this. It didn’t take Higgs boson to suggest that the world was not created in seven days 8,000 years ago, at least as we count time. Yet that is what many school boards want taught in their classrooms and what more than a few members of Congress espouse.

It is, in the end, wonder that sustains our lives: Where did I come from? Why am I here? How beautiful is that flower! Why do I love her?

American Exceptionalism

I believe in American Exceptionalism, the idea that America is a unique nation with a special mission. This does not mean that America is “better” than other places, nor that other peoples don’t have their own exceptional stories. But even before the first European settlers had disembarked on the New England coast, America was as much an idea as a place, and it was a land were people came – among other reasons – to work out their destinies. As Americans continually fell short of their ideals, someone would arise, like a biblical prophet, to call us back to our principles. In particular, four men – writing across more than 300 years of history – remind us of America’s destiny to be a beacon to the world.

• In his 1630 sermon, “A Model of Christian Charity,” John Winthrop urged his small band of Puritans to “be as a city upon a hill,” for they would be judged – by themselves and by the world – on the principles they had come to live by.

• In 1776,Thomas Jefferson looked out on an America that had become a sprawling and diverse land; and whereas Winthrop had stressed community (“we must be knit together, in this work, as one man”), Jefferson wrote that individual equality and liberty must be the foundation of the new nation.

• Eighty-three years later, Abraham Lincoln warned his audience at Gettysburg that the ideals of the Declaration were threatened by war and undermined by slavery.

• And in 1963, at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr. referred directly to the earlier documents to call Americans back to the national ideals we espoused but did not live by.

As we remember America’s founding, it is well, also, to remember the enduring tension between America’s ideals and America’s reality.

The Other Decision

I am the recipient of the Joint Services Commendation Medal, which was awarded to me near the end of my military career 40 years ago. It is not a grand medal in the hierarchy of such things, but it is not the least distinguished either. I don’t remember the word “valor” in the citation, but I do recall, perhaps, an “above and beyond.” I mention this because last Thursday, in a decision that got buried under the reaction to its health care ruling, the Supreme Court overturned the federal “Stolen Valor Act,” which had made it a crime to falsely claim you had won a military medal. I never have heard of anyone claiming to have won the JCSM, to be sure; the Supreme Court’s decision concerned a man named Xavier Alvarez, who presented himself as a Medal of Honor winner at a meeting of California’s Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board. He also said he had played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings and had been married to a Mexican starlet.

In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that Mr. Alvarez’ claims were contemptible but not unconstitutional. Justices Clarence Scalito dissented, saying that lying was not protected by the First Amendment. Clearly they haven’t been paying attention to the current political scene, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact.com has a position on its “Truth-O-Meter” called “Pants on Fire.”

Perjury is a crime. Libel is a crime. Slander is a crime. But braggadocio, however contemptible? Congress has more important matters to address.

Paradigm Shift

While the Supreme Court’s decision last week has spawned a fierce backlash, it did make Affordable Health Care the law of the land – at least for now. This is an enormous step, for it proclaims it a national goal to provide good health care for everyone. As we address the critical question of how to pay for it,  two things are worth remembering: (1) the United States already spends more on health care than any other country; and (2) those currently uncovered either go without care or get emergency treatment at public expense. In either case, the cost to the nation is enormous.

As discussed in a post on Woody Brock’s book, the key is to increase the supply of health-care providers faster than rising demand – something that has not happened under the current system. The source of that new supply already exists, but to take full advantage of it requires a shift in how we think about medical care.

The source is nurse practitioners and the shift is from surgical invasion to preventive and community care. (Full disclosure: my daughter is an NP and I have served on the board of a nurse-managed health center). This is not new. In the 19^th century, surgeons were considered skilled craftsmen; now they command superstar salaries from competing institutions. As someone with titanium knees, I know the value of good surgeons. But the key to universal health care is preventive medicine, good health habits and clinics that understand the needs of their clients. It is the dearth of these things now that is both driving up health costs and damaging the nation’s health.

Stumble of the Week

Mitt Romney. John Roberts persuaded the Supreme Court’s “liberal bloc” to uphold Romneycare, limit the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause, and put a “strict constructionist” stamp on the decision . . . and Romney is still complaining. What does it take to satisfy the man? Standing in front of a sign that read “Repeal and Replace,” he pledged to repeal the act on his first day in office. And replace? Surprisingly, he was a bit vague on those details. Roberts is being compared to a lot of things this morning, but no one has yet mentioned John Marshall, the Chief Justice who established the doctrine of judicial review in a case that appeared to hand a significant victory to his arch-rival, Thomas Jefferson, but actually protected the prerogative of the court. Broccoli. The futures market collapsed when it became clear that we were not going to be forced either to buy or eat it, even though it is good for us. Only Antonin Scalia and Rush Limbaugh continued to insist that the ruling could be so construed.

CNN famously got it wrong, announcing that the individual mandate had been overturned (which it actually had under the commerce clause). Meanwhile, the rest of the world appeared to stand still yesterday, as the American media ignored it for Obamacare. Of course, the rest of the world has never understood how its richest country can provide such lousy health coverage at so great a cost. Yesterday was an important first step toward fixing that.

Gentrification

Everybody needs a little gentrification, but too much of it can turn you into a snob, The same is true for our cities, where empty buildings, collapsed property values and empty space have created opportunities for urban homesteaders and real estate predators alike. Places like Detroit and Flint badly need investment – in their economic base, in their physical infrastructure, in their neighborhoods, in their schools and public institutions, and in their people.

But in their desperation to increase their tax bases, city governments seem only too willing to once again displace their poor. The signs are not hard to see. The downtowns in these cities are relatively safe places, as the first step of most investors is to provide security for the suburban workforce and monied visitors.

“Gentrification wants to move us out, however they can,” said Charity, “Benign and malicious neglect, market forces, erosion of services, even eminent domain.” She knows. Her childhood neighborhood on the river was taken by eminent domain and turned over to a developer. There are gated communities even within the city limits, places that have almost no interaction with their neighbors, who are sometimes only a block away.

The current cliché of the 99% misses all this. In the neighborhoods, where crime is rising and is primarily “black on black,” there is little sense of community, no great solidarity. People talk of the sense of powerlessness and the apathy, the epidemic of alcohol to numb the pain.

Any effort to revitalize our inner cities that once again pushes these people out of the way will fail, as it should.

American Apartheid

For a city that was built by and for General Motors, Flint has the most terrible roads. In fact, its entire infrastructure has collapsed, and there is no money to fix it. One of the city’s most dramatic sights is the 235-acre “Buick City,” which was once the largest industrial complex in North America and is now a vast, deserted concrete desert. Flint belies our image of urban decay. With no high-rise projects, it is a city of tree-lined neighborhoods of single-family houses where 200,000 people once lived and half that number remains. But on those streets are hundreds of abandoned and burned-out houses, which remind you that Flint is the most violent city in America.

Flint’s automobile plants provided thousands of well-paying jobs through the 1970s, and the city attracted a diversity of peoples to work in them. With the need for only a high-school diploma, there was little interest in higher education. “My mother made $18 an hour on the line,” my friend Delma remembers, “which was good money, especially for a Black woman.” But it was exhausting, mind-numbing work, and “she came home miserable every day.”

People sought solace in liquor and religion, and while there is only one grocery store within the city limits today, there are churches and liquor stores wherever you look.

Ironically, the University of Michigan is buying much of the downtown for its fast-growing Flint campus, and the city’s symphony orchestra still plays monthly in the Cultural Center, a peaceful oasis of museums and the library cut off from downtown by I-475 – the bypass that destroyed the city’s most stable Black neighborhood 40 years ago. It’s a small oasis: less than a block away sit abandoned houses on tree-lined streets.

Charity

The History. As you drive along the flat Michigan plain, Detroit rises before you with the power of its past – the city that was built by America’s first cars and went on to build the world’s automobile industry. With the creation of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler at the turn of the 20^th century, the city grew rich, and it grew rapidly through World War II, when it converted its massive production capacity from cars and trucks to tanks, ships and planes, becoming the “arsenal of democracy.” The decline came swiftly. The Horror. Entering the city, the first thing that hits you are the great barren gouges of concrete that let suburbanites come in and out of the city without touching it. And then, the emptiness – the absence of people, the expanses of empty lots, the abandoned buildings whose glassless windows rise 12 stories into the air, the black shells of burned-out houses and charred dreams. Detroit has lost over one million people since 1950, half its population since 1970. Those federal highways began the process by carrying city dwellers to subsidized homes in segregated suburban neighborhoods. The collapse of the auto industry finished it. Ninety percent of the population today is non-white, impoverished and vulnerable. Unemployment is epidemic. Crime and hopelessness have joined hands. “There are people here,” my friend Charity says, “who would kill you without thinking about it.”

The Hope. Rising in the neighborhoods like the grasses that push through the empty sidewalks are small signs of hope. There are 27 urban farms in Detroit, 15-1800 community gardens. “We don’t want Wal-Mart here,” says Charity, who notes that 150,000 people live outside the cash economy. “There is power in these gardens,” she says. “They show our resilience and our resistance.” Imagine: the future of Detroit, once the symbol of industrial power, may rest on local agriculture and small family businesses.

On the Road

Everybody talks to you in Toledo. Or so it seems. I arrived there in the evening, and as I walked along the Maumee River, almost everyone I passed greeted me. Some just stopped to have a conversation.

Toledo is the gateway for my quick visit to Detroit and Flint, Michigan, two of the most devastated places in America. This is fitting, for Toledo, which sits on the western end of Lake Erie, has a long history as a gateway between the continent’s vast interior and the eastern commercial centers. Its faded grandeur speaks of a past when goods traveled by water from Thunder Bay, Ontario, across Lake Superior, down Lake Huron to Erie, as well as by canal from Cincinnati and the interior and then on to both the St. Lawrence Seaway and New York City. Later, it became a railroad link between Chicago and New York.

Its established transportation networks, its proximity to Midwestern cities, and the coal, oil and water that fueled their growth, led Toledo to become a manufacturing center that produced all sorts of accessories for the automobile, particularly glass, which gave it its nickname – “the Glass City.”

From then its fortunes rode with the automobile, which brought enormous wealth until it began to collapse in the late 1970s and left devastation in its wake. Toledo’s population dropped by 25%, and it suffered the high unemployment, white flight and abandoned neighborhoods that have plagued so many American cities.

But it hardly prepared me for what I was to see in Michigan.

Stumble of the Week

African Americans must be bewildered by the current political dance to woo “the Hispanic vote.” Mitt Romney, in particular, has been tiptoeing through the landmines of his party’s need to court Latinos and his hard-edged primary appeal to its right wing, which wants no mercy on the undocumented. Blacks aren’t getting half the attention, even though they were brought here legally, the slave trade being big business in those days. Packed like sardines in the hulls of ships, many did not survive the harsh journey.

Yet one thing has not changed: through the smokescreen of morality, the issue is economics. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said it clearly: “I believe America is in a global battle for capital. If you are a worker who has been here for any length of time, we have to have a path, not to citizenship, but a secure knowledge that they will be able to work.”

It’s not citizenship we care about; it’s cheap labor.

I lived in an area where thousands of Latinos have come in search of work for years. Their stories are harrowing, as they were victimized at every turn, from the “coyotes” who brought them across the border to the employers who ill-used them to their neighbors who resented them.

Yes, their arrival brought increases in crime (they were usually the victims) and poverty. But the diversity they brought to a narrow community, their work ethic, the color of their culture and the steadfastness of their courage have made the area a better place for all who live there.

Maybe It’s Not the Economy

Much has been made – and rightly so – of the almost-40% drop in median family wealth in the United States in the last five years – from $126,400 to $77,300. The main reason was the collapse of the housing market. But the recession has taken its toll in other ways, particularly through high unemployment, much of it unrecorded but obvious to those who see growing numbers of homeless people begging on our city streets. The current election is being fought over two economic visions, as David Brooks described last Friday: the Democrats’ contention that the welfare state got hijacked by the ultra-rich and fairness needs to be reinstated vs. the Republicans’ argument that the welfare state is obsolete and needs to be replaced with something more dynamic that would create “an efficiency explosion.”

In 1972 some people from MIT published The Limits to Growth, which argued that spiraling economic and population growth would soon come up against the limits of a finite world. The thesis enjoyed a short day in the sun, not least because of the first great oil crisis that had people shooting each other waiting in lines at gas stations. Then oil prices dropped precipitously, and the world seemed limitless again.

But maybe the authors were right, and decades of relatively cheap oil obscured the enormous pressures we continue to put on our environment – creating feedback loops of resource extraction and population growth that we cannot sustain and cycles of hunger and poverty that we should not countenance.

Money

Money has been much in the news of late, particularly in Europe, where  the Greeks don’t have enough, which is bad, and the Germans worry that if the Greeks abandon the euro and inflate the drachma, they will have too much, which would be worse. Money is a medium of exchange that itself has no intrinsic worth – the paper of a ten-dollar bill is not worth $10. Backed in the past by precious metals, usually gold, the dollar’s value is now based solely on the assurance of one Rosie Rios, who happens to be the United States Treasurer, that it is “legal tender for all debts, public and private.” But money is also a commodity that is bought and sold, and while the government can say whatever it wants, the marketplace will determine its value.

Clearly, money has enabled humans to accumulate goods and wealth in ways we could not otherwise have done. But it has done so, I think, by making possible the concept of “never enough.” If we are hungry – and lucky enough to have food – we eat until we are sated. Likewise, we fill our other needs until we have enough. To go beyond that is to have an addiction.

It is different with money. Because we can’t get enough of it, we are driven relentlessly to get more. The result is that money has become the opposite of wealth, for it has caused us to extract the earth’s bounty and exploit its people in ways that diminish the value of both.

New Role for the Old

Our granddaughter, Calliope, will be going home today, having spent almost two weeks with us while her parents were in Alaska. We have fallen in love with this small person, who eats practically nothing, hears instructions selectively, and has more energy than we can bottle. Yet I was the last person who looked forward to grandfatherhood.  For one thing, I wasn't old enough. For another, I had thrown my life into raising my own children. I still do – and they are still my reason for being every bit as much as I am, literally, theirs.

So how could I possibly have the time, the energy, even the love for the next generation? I had the rest of my life to lead.

But I now see that my role is different. As a father, I was intent on my children – on loving them, on helping them grow, on protecting them from harm, on preparing them to go out into the world – ever conscious that my desire to protect them from the world might be a disadvantage in preparing them for the world.

It is Calliope’s parents’ role to prepare her for the world. Mine is to use whatever wisdom I have acquired and whatever energy I have left to prepare the world for her.

Maybe we have the cycle of life backwards. The young must navigate the world as they find it. It is up to us, who have been through that, to change the world, in whatever small ways we can, so it becomes a little closer to the kind of place we wanted it to be when we were young.

Stumble of the Week

As Egypt stumbles toward weekend elections, pressure is growing to postpone the vote until mid-November in the hope that Barack Obama might be looking for work. “Obama would make a great president for us,” said Darwishi Hussein, a lawyer sitting in Tahrir Square. “He has the qualifications: he was born in Africa and is a Muslim. And he has very good name recognition. There are lots of Husseins in Egypt”

“If you don’t want him, we very much need him,” said Geb Sawalhi, an unemployed musician. “He has experience running a country filled with politicians who revile each other. And now that our supreme court dissolved Parliament, he won’t have to deal with squabbling legislators.”

Speaking at a Rotary breakfast in Ohio, Mitt Romney said, “Barack Obama says he is an American, and I’ll take him at his word until Donald Trump proves otherwise.”

Reached at his sprawling gated ranch in Trump (formerly Arizona), Trump declared, “The Trumpettes are hot on the trail of the real birth certificate. It’s locked in a cave in Utah.

“You should see what is running around down here at night,” he added. “Obama is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The Obama campaign issued the following statement: “Enough is enough. Mitt Romney destroyed thousands of jobs at Bain Capital. This is one he won’t get his hands on. His policies are fine for the 1%, but even with our electoral college, 1% doesn’t get you elected president . . . at least not since 2000, when Clarence Thomas elected Bush.”

Conversation

The posts over the last couple of weeks have brought a good deal of response, which has been both challenging and gratifying. Much of it has focused on President Obama, and while it may not be representative of the national debate, it is the kind of thoughtful conversation this country should be having. Perhaps unsurprisingly, birthers and Tea Partiers do not seem to regularly follow this blog, and those who write or tell me of their current opposition to Obama are primarily disappointed supporters from four years ago. Republicans of the vanishing moderate breed, they welcomed the alternative of inclusiveness and moderation that Obama offered to eight years of Bush and Cheney’s nose-thumbing partisanship, ruinous wars and financial mismanagement. They were appalled at the emergence of Sarah Palin and what she seemed to signify for their party.

But they are pragmatists, not dreamers, and Obama has not lived up to their expectations, or even their hopes. They cite his poor administrative skills, saying that his lack of executive experience has made him unable to work the system. They think he dropped the ball on Simpson-Bowles.

While I think there is truth to these criticisms, I strongly believe that the vision Obama presented in 2008 remains the best path forward not just for America but for the world. But these are exactly the kinds of disagreements we need to have in this country – a conversation that is both measured and passionate, one that makes each side stronger by the very act of listening to what the other side says. It may not change our minds – and it should not change our principles – but it will surely help us to work together for the common good.

Calliope

I am the co-minder of our granddaughter, Calliope, while her parents are in Alaska. The original Calliope was the Greek muse of epic poetry, She was Homer’s muse almost 3000 years ago when he composed the first enduring works of Western literature. The current Calliope is almost 2. Sometimes when I am with our granddaughter, I think of the future and wonder about the world she will inherit from us. This morning I think of the long arc of history between the first Calliope and ours, and how, through all the immense upheavals and changes in that history, our urge to tell stories and pass them on, to try to make sense of the world and our role in it, of war and peace, of love and death, has persisted. It is our culture, our guide for understanding our past and for charting our future.

Every politician who has ever run for office has talked about making the world a better place for the generations to come. But their conception of the future is too often how much of it they can sacrifice to protect their next election. Long term? It took Odysseus 12 years to get home – the equivalent of six terms in the House.

The promise of Barack Obama, at least for me, was that we could have a longer and a larger view – one that bridged the old divides that threatened to destroy us: race, wealth and poverty, religion, environmental destruction. I believe we can get there. For Calliope’s sake, I know that we must.

Suicide

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.  Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” So opens “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus’ essay on the meaning of life in an absurd world, written as the Nazi atrocities had commenced in France.

Camus’ philosophical musings – which were born of the resistance movements in both France and Algeria – met the modern world head on last week when the Associated Press reported that suicides in Afghanistan now exceed combat deaths among American troops.

Part of the reason is that we are winding down the war: since January 1^st there have “only” been 124 combat deaths. By contrast, there have been 154 suicides, a number that has been rising since 2005.

The Pentagon and veterans groups give several reasons for the increase, one of the primary ones being the ongoing lack of compassion for soldiers who seek treatment for emotional stress. That stress is compounded by the traumas of multiple combat tours and family and financial problems back home.

War is the ultimate theater of the absurd. In it, young people are trained to kill – and taught to die – in defense of life . . . and then discarded. Their isolation is exacerbated in a professional military that is cut off from the people whom it is meant to serve. The old draft kept the army connected to those people, if only because it had to train so many who did not want to be there and because they asked the question that all commanders dread: why are we doing this?