Olympic Moments

“Jake,” I asked my son recently, “do you think my titanium knees give me an unfair advantage in climbing mountains?” “No,” he said, and returned to his iPhone.

I had brought the matter up because one of the two Olympic stories that fascinated me was that of Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter whose legs were amputated just below his knees when he was 11 months old. Fitted with an unlikely-looking set of prostheses, Pistorius runs fast enough not only to qualify for the Olympics but to have his legged opponents complaining about his “unfair advantage.” Although he has been subjected to batteries of inconclusive tests, the true test seems simple: in a world in which people will go to almost any lengths to gain an advantage, I have yet to hear of anyone amputating his legs in pursuit of Olympic glory.

The other story is that the International Olympic Committee again refused a moment of silence for the 11 Israeli athletes who were taken hostage and murdered at the 1972 Munich games. Meanwhile, Sarah Attar, the first female Saudi track competitor, was cheered wildly for finishing last in the 800 meters, perhaps because her government required her to run covered from head to toe in traditional garb. No one complained about her handicap.

Attar represents a step toward equality in the Arab world, but the continuing refusal to acknowledge the barbaric tragedy that happened 40 years ago in Munich shames everyone who allows it to happen.

Stumble of the Week

“Birtherism,” the cult – whose most famous members are Glenn Beck and The Donald – that insists Barack Obama was not born in America, despite how many iterations of his birth certificate he produces, and is therefore at best ineligible to be president and at worst some kind of Manchurian candidate whom dark forces have made the first communist* president of the United States, seems finally to be running out of steam. But fear not, it has been replaced by “transcripterism,” whose adherents have offered a $20,000 reward to anyone who can produce the president’s transcripts from Occidental, Columbia and Harvard Law School. In an article in Beck’s “The Blaze,” Wayne Allyn Root (Columbia 1983) suggests the reason he never heard of his now-famous classmate was because he rarely went to class, got lousy grades and “attended Columbia as a foreign exchange student.” Oh, well, perhaps birtherism isn’t dead yet. Root, of course, equates the demands for Obama’s transcripts to those for Mitt Romney’s tax returns. * Helder Camara (1909-1999), Catholic Archbishop of Brazil: “When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist” (sent by my daughter, Annie).

Human Justice. In northern Mali where the people now live under Sharia law, an alleged thief recently had his hand cut off and a couple accused of adultery was stoned to death. I’m not saying all fundamentalists are alike. I just don’t want them running my country.

Bleeding Kansas

It didn’t rival the border wars in Kansas territory that culminated in John Brown’s deadly attack on the pro-slavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek in 1856, but Tuesday’s Republican primaries for the Kansas state senate were bitter enough. When the votes were counted, the Tea Party candidates had shellacked the moderates, reducing the latter to a rump group with little clout. Such state and local elections are where the political map of America is being redrawn, largely out of sight because the national media aren’t paying much attention – another consequence of the collapse of the traditional press. And it takes a tiny fraction of eligible voters to make a big difference in these races. In March Rick Santorum’s 15,290 votes gave him 51% of the Kansas vote – crushing Mitt Romney by over 2-1.

This vitriolic infighting is happening across the country. It’s not clear what it will mean for this election, but the Republican right’s distrust of Romney has deep roots. Although it began in 1854 as the party of abolition, the GOP was from the beginning the party of big government and big business – and also of midwestern farmers who were deeply conservative on social issues. Nixon’s “southern strategy” enticed southern whites to the GOP over civil rights, and Reagan attracted working-class Democrats in big numbers. Those constituencies have long distrusted Wall Street and the eastern capitalists who run the national party. They now have the votes to remake the party in their own image. They also have the money. The Koch brothers are from Kansas, too.

Unspoken Words

A friend sent me the following in response to yesterday’s post. Words never mentioned on the campaign trail:

• "the poor"
• "climate change"
• "gun control"
• "reforming financial markets"

I was stunned. These are four of the most critical issues we face. They all have enduring consequences, and the first two go a long way to defining what kind of a country we will be – for how we treat each other, particularly the poor, and how we treat the earth are two sides of a single coin of humanity and survival.

It is not especially surprising that Mitt Romney isn’t talking about these things. Concern for the poor is not a striking trait of the modern GOP. Climate change is a hoax. The Second Amendment is sacrosanct. And the financial markets need liberation not reform.

But Barack Obama could build a campaign around these issues. The poor are a constituency that needs empowerment. Climate change already affects all we do. With Jared Loughner pleading guilty to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting spree and recent bloodbaths in Wisconsin and Colorado, it seems a good time to discuss America’s obsession with guns. And the accusation that Standard Chartered laundered billions for the Iranians is but the latest in a never-ending story of arrogance, corruption and greed in the marketplace.

There are other words that aren’t mentioned much either: entitlement reform, Palestine, community.

In what many call “the most important election in our lifetime,” the candidates seem determined to talk about nothing important at all.

Beyond the 99 Percent

Today’s post is an almost-inadvertent addendum to yesterday’s. In the interim I read a review of The Price of Inequality, in which Joseph Stiglitz describes the consequences of the vast inequalities of wealth that now define America, perhaps more than any other nation on Earth. Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, argues that our two-tiered society has arisen, not primarily because of either the survival of the fittest or the impact of globalization, but because the rich have become increasingly able to control the political system: “While there may be underlying economic forces at play, politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest.” The result, he says, goes beyond unfairness; it undercuts the virtues of a free market system by promoting inefficiencies, reducing the educated labor pool and not investing in the infrastructure capitalism requires. (Yes, Barack Obama was absolutely right to point out that we don’t do it alone.) My concern is that the focus on a two-tiered society obscures what is happening. This entire political campaign cycle now involves rebuking or vindicating the one percent and toadying up to the mythical middle class, which is everybody else – the 99 percent. Once again, the poor, whose lives are as removed from the middle class as they are from the rich, have become invisible – none more so than the urban poor, who are locked in ghettos from which there is little escape. This is a moral calamity. It is also a tinderbox . . . and every time we reduce essential public services, we add fuel for the flames.

Home and Garden

I spend a good deal of time in my car – a beat up old Volvo with 119,000 miles on it – and I can usually find whatever I need in the trunk – sleeping bag, tennis racquet, clothes. Still, I have never actually considered it the equivalent of my home, so I was surprised to read that in Detroit, the birthplace of the American automobile industry, a Chevy Malibu and a new house both cost $21,000. The car may be the better buy. My friend Charity, who has a degree from the University of Michigan, supports seven people across three generations on $12,000 a year. A few years ago, the city took her family's house by eminent domain to build middle-income housing. When she lost her next home to foreclosure, she sold everything she had and bid $2,500 to get the house back at auction. A suburban “investor” bid $3,000 . . . and then took her note for $10,000 in exchange for not evicting her family.

Yet Charity has dedicated her life to saving her city. She focuses on food security because nutrition is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the urban poor, and she spends her days nurturing the hundreds of urban gardens that feed growing numbers of Detroiters. Many have flowers as well as food, and they are tiny oases of beauty in a devastated city.

“I’m trying to starve the ugly,” said Charity. “But I cry.”

She will never give up: “I believe the community will win. We have no choice. The apathy cannot survive.”

Stumble of the Week

Oddities I stumbled on last week: • The latest CBS poll shows that 12% of Americans approve of the current Congress. Meanwhile, a new study estimates that spending on all federal elections will total almost $6 billion this cycle, 77% of it from business interests. That’s a lot of money to buy influence with people held in such low regard. Why not create a lottery for the unemployed, draw 535 names at random and send them to Washington; return the $6 billion to the rich contributors; and raise their marginal tax rates by 10%? Fresh faces, campaign finance reform, fair taxation – done.

• When Lech Walesa endorsed Mitt Romney, he became the first major labor figure to support a Republican since the Teamsters backed Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s. Known for their infiltration by the mob, the Teamsters also supported Richard Nixon in 1972, six months after he had pardoned Jimmy Hoffa and three years before Hoffa disappeared without a trace.

• In response to a contribution to the Obama campaign, I got a letter from the national finance director that seemed more ‘price is right’ than presidential: Thanks so much for your generous donation. . . .We've always depended on supporters like you – not special interests or Washington lobbyists – for every dollar we get. To show our appreciation, here's a special coupon code for the Obama 2012 store.

DEADLINE!

Using that code at checkout will get you 10 percent off orders of $10 or more. But it's only good through August 1st, so swing by the store now.

Lights Out

Two days ago a massive blackout in northern India left 670 million people in the dark, in the heat and, in the case of 200 coal miners, in the ground. Now there is much head scratching over what caused this colossal electrical failure and endless finger pointing over who is to blame.

It seems pretty obvious to me.

Let’s begin with water. India’s monsoon rains are well below normal, which geometrically affects hydroelectric power because farmers are competing with energy producers for ever-scarcer supplies.

Then there are demographics. With half its population under 25 and two-thirds under 35, India is on its way to becoming the world’s most populous country, and its energy production lags well behind – in fact 300 million Indians have no power at all.

None of this has stopped the country’s monomaniacal pursuit of industrial growth that is based on a 19^th-century model of extractive development, including a heavy reliance on coal, and an obsession with economic growth at all costs.

And finally there is the equally old-fashioned corruption, with charges and counter-charges of diverting power to political cronies, demanding bribes for access and selling electricity at prices below production costs.

The conventional solution is to double down: produce more energy to grow faster to get richer to pull more people out of poverty and become a world power. Disregard the troublesome global climate hoax and blame low-level bureaucrats and the Indian culture of corruption.

This strikes me as a foolproof formula for ignoring the systemic causes of the problems, which are global, and reinforcing a positive feedback loop that will ensure they get worse.

Symbiosis

I took several garbage bags filled with a disconcerting number of beer cans and bottles to the recycling center yesterday afternoon. As I placed the aromatic contents in bins swarming with yellow jackets, an old man beside me filled the bed of his rickety red pick-up with unbroken bottles. In Maine, wine and liquor bottles bring 15 cents, all others a nickel – but many small towns don’t have redemption centers, and I realized that this man was taking out what I was putting in. He had spent all day weed eating up in the graveyard. “People appreciate it,” he said, “but when I get sweat in my ears, my hearing aids don’t work.” He had come here to make extra money.

“Last week,” he said, “I took $268 out of here in two days. . . .If we don’t take these, they just end up in the dump.” I redirected my treasure to the back of his truck.

Years ago in Ireland and later in Bhutan, two of the world’s most beautiful countries, I was appalled at the amount of trash by the roadsides and in the streams. Both countries were emerging from poverty into consumerism. The idea of excess was new, and they found themselves overwhelmed by throw-away goods.

“We had no concept of trash,” a Bhutanese official said. “What one person discarded, another had a use for.”

Maine’s 24-year-old bottle bill has reduced litter, promoted environmental awareness, and become a small source of revenue for the state’s increasing and invisible poor. It is also under attack from commercial interests and the governor.

Over the Hill

I’m a bleeder. Blood pours unbidden from old wounds as if I were some St. Gertrude for unbelievers. I attribute it to the 12 pills doctors make me take daily, one of which, I’m pretty sure, is to remember the other 11. So when we arose in the early rain near the top of Dix Mountain, it looked as if I had single-handedly fought off the bear. Worried about our water supply, we eschewed coffee and slogged uphill. We arrived at a face of rock, only 30 feet long, but very steep and shaped like an open book. We could not get up it with our packs on. The moment of truth had arrived. “Do we have rope?”

“Yes, I packed it.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s in here somewhere.”

“Go through your pack again.”

We sent Michael up with the rope, then hooked up the bags and followed ourselves. Soon we were at the top of Dix, where we took in the two-foot view of fog and rain. It would be “all downhill from here.”

When you reach a certain age, that phrase has a depressing ring to it – and it turns out to be true, of hiking as well as life, that coming down is harder than going up. It seemed an eternity before we arrived at a small lean-to on Slippery Brook, where we at last had our breakfast of coffee and sweet-and-sour chicken.

Like many Americans, I have come to expect my wild to be tame – trails marked, nature benign and pretty. And let’s be honest, pretty much it is. But that is because we have made it so. As Michael, Anne and I sipped our coffee, our bond strengthened, our souls revived, our fears behind us, we knew that this had not been just any walk in the woods.

Ah, Wilderness

Nineteenth-century census maps show the American population moving steadily west across the frontier, with a few exceptions: northern Maine, the Everglades, and a large unpopulated circle in upstate New York. The Adirondacks were too inhospitable to sustain life for any but the most rugged people. Today, the 6.1-million-acre Adirondack Park is the largest U.S park outside Alaska. It is famed for its 46 “high peaks” over 4,000 feet, and an exclusive club of “46ers” has climbed them all. As of Wednesday morning I had climbed none of them. By Thursday morning I had quite unexpectedly climbed four, including Dix, the sixth highest in the range.

Wednesday was clear and beautiful when I set off with my friends Michael and Anne, 50 pounds of essential supplies on my back. The first indication we might not be heading into paradise was our arrival at the “the slide,” a several-hundred-foot, very steep open face of rock on Macomb Mountain. Too terrified to look at the panorama unfolding behind us, we crawled our way up, only to find that the mountaintop was still far away. We trudged up and down three peaks along an unmarked “herd path,” and as we slogged up Dix itself, exhausted and worried about our water, it grew dark.

We stopped at a spot far too small to pitch our tents, and when we threw our sleeping bags on the ground, Michael discovered that a chipmunk had eaten through his Ziploc bag of Tang. This rendered bear-proofing preparations unnecessary, and as we settled in for the night, we each adopted a bear strategy: Michael smoked a cigar; Anne stayed awake; and I snored. And of course we put Michael and his Tang downwind.

The rain began at 11:30.

PS For another way to do this, see http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-blissfully-lost-in-the-woods.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Irony

When Joe Paterno, the Penn State football coach, died on January 22^nd, his record of 409 wins was the most in the history of major college football. As of yesterday morning – after the NCAA vacated Paterno’s 111 victories between 1998 and 2011 in the wake of Jerry Sandusky’s conviction for child molestation – he had 298. Perhaps only in our culture would the forfeiture of games played long ago be considered “severe” punishment for enabling and then covering up the abuse of young boys. And it’s hard to see what difference it can make. Joe Paterno is beyond caring about his won-loss record. The players are not going to rewrite their memories of the games they played. Nor are the memories of the men who were victimized as boys going to change.

The college football powers had to do something in the wake of the report from former FBI Director Louis Freeh that “Four of the most powerful people at the Pennsylvania State University — President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno — failed to protect against a child sex predator harming children for over a decade.”

So perhaps it’s fitting in a sordid kind of way that the punishment for pretending something wasn’t happening over all those years is to decree that games that were actually played were never played at all – to change the history of things that don’t matter because Penn State turned a blind eye to things that mattered desperately.

I am going off into the woods for a few days, so I probably won’t bother you again until next week.

Aurora

The killings at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, are a tragedy. For now, I don’t know what more can be said about them, and yet hundreds of reporters continue to turn out millions of words. The city of Aurora is under occupation, as news people seek some new angle, some overlooked teacher of James Holmes or neighbor of a victim, some anecdote that will create a headline.

Every detail will be analyzed for a clue to the motive of the shooter, to his state of mind. My 90-year-old mother keeps saying, “he doesn’t look like a mass murderer.” I know what she is thinking: that he is clean cut, nice looking, white – like Charles Whitman, who shot 48 people from the University of Texas tower in August 1966, like Ted Bundy, who raped and killed over 30 people. My mother doesn’t know what a mass murderer looks like, and neither do I.

We talk about life’s randomness, but most of us cannot stand it. So we grasp at any straw that will let us think we have some control, and we fit people into stereotypes that don’t exist. We hold vigils with recognizable icons – bouquets, teddy bears, the flag – which have become not just outlets for community grief, but national theater for the rest of us.

I believe that thoughtful insights will emerge from this tragedy over time, long after the nation has moved on from this obsession, leaving the victims’ families to cope however they can. I cannot begin to imagine their grief.

Stumble of the Week

Rational Discourse 1. A sign in front of the Baptist Church in Palermo, Maine: “The Big Bang. God Said It. Bang It Happened.” I must admit, that is simpler to grasp than Higgs Boson. Rational Discourse 2: Ron Christie, a former aide to Dick Cheney, defended the voter identification laws recently passed in 10 states by reminding us that “voting is a privilege, not a right.” While the effect of the laws will disenfranchise millions of poor and minority citizens, Christie told NPR that their intent is to “preserve the integrity of the ballot box.” So it must be a coincidence that the laws were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures and the vast majority of those who will be turned away have traditional Democratic profiles.

Christie’s position, however ethically obtuse, has been upheld by the Supreme Court, which has granted the states broad discretion to determine voter eligibility. In the early days of the Republic, most states limited that eligibility to white male property owners over 21. But over the years, we have extended the vote to blacks, women, 18-year-olds, etc. – and we have made “free and fair” elections the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Both here and abroad, people have shed blood for the “right to vote,” and our landmark legislation on the matter is the “Voting Rights Act” of 1965.

A privilege is something that somebody grants me. A right is something that inheres to me as a member of the community. And if voting ought to be a fundamental right for everybody else in the world, it certainly should be one for me as well.

Against All Odds

Jock Hooper was a fourth-generation member of one of the oddest clubs in North America: the Bohemian Club, a 140-year-old organization best known for its Bohemian Grove, a campground north of San Francisco, where many of the nation’s most powerful men gather for two weeks each summer to camp, perform skits and bond. The Grove is a place of remarkable beauty and tranquility, and Jock spent hours hiking its remote 2,700 acres, which hold some of the last stands of old-growth redwoods anywhere. One day he noticed that several of the finest redwoods were marked for cutting, and the more he walked the more appalled he became at what he saw.

Assuming there must be some mistake, he notified club officials, who patted him on his figurative head and told him to mind his own business. Angry, not cowed, Jock kept pushing. He wrote a letter to the members describing what he had witnessed. The president called that “unbohemian,” which is apparently about as low as you can go.

In truth, Jock had loved being a Bohemian. He is a performer who will burst into song with almost no provocation. But in the end, he loved the trees and his principles more. He resigned from the club to carry his fight, which became an 11-year odyssey, during which he was belittled, ridiculed, threatened and shunned. Old friends crossed the street to avoid him. Others wished him well in private but kept silent in public.

Against all odds, he prevailed.

One person can make a difference.

Greetings!

Israel’s “unity government” collapsed yesterday. The issue that brought it down was the draft. Contrary to my assumption, there are lots of exemptions to Israeli conscription – primarily to Ultra-Orthodox Jews who are excused to study the Torah, and Israeli Arabs, whose status in the country is, well, complicated. In fact, Israel’s “universal service” is so laced with loopholes that only half the young people actually serve. The issue has seethed for years below the surface . . . and the Supreme Court declared the system unconstitutional last February.

In this country, which spends far more than any other on its military, less than one percent of the population currently serves, and the growing gap between military and civilian life has: led to multiple tours in war zones for soldiers and families already under great stress; made the rest of us far less concerned than we ought to be with what is happening in those places; and exacerbated a class system in a country that refuses to recognize it has one.

A democracy only works if there is (1) a shared burden (n.b. the rich pay taxes) and (2) civilian control of the military. Both these are threatened by the current situation. The only solution I can think of is national service (with non-military alternatives) for everyone, without exception. There is so much that needs to be done in this country, and we all need to pitch in and do it.

Most of us didn’t want the letter from our draft board that opened with “Greetings!” But it’s time to bring it back.

Shoes

One of my earliest memories is my first visit to the shoe store. Above the doorway hung a sign that read, “I had no shoes and I complained . . . until I met a man who had not feet.” In hindsight the shoe store seems an incongruous place for such a sign, as it counted neither the shoeless nor the footless among its clients. But it made an indelible impression on me. Perhaps the sign was simply aimed at telling kids like me to be grateful for what we had. But I read a deeper message, one that required me to think about my connection to others who had no shoes, or even no feet – and that demanded, not just gratitude for what I had, but compassion for those who had little or nothing.

I thought of that sign as I drove recently to Flint and Detroit, places where large numbers of people have so little and feel increasingly unconnected to the America in which I live. And when I drove back to Maine, where I write this, I was struck by how little we know of – or think about – the people in our crumbling cities.

When Ferdinand Marcos was deposed from the Philippines’ presidency in 1986, the enduring symbol of both his corruption and his detachment was the allegation that his wife, Imelda, owned 1,700 pairs of shoes in a country filled with shoeless people. And I fear for an America where those who have so much are increasingly insulated from those who have so little.

Following the Herd

Americans have long had an antipathy toward “government” . . . except, of course, when we need it for things like growing old, regulating child labor, rescuing the economy from plundering plutocrats, protecting clean air and water, enforcing civil rights . . . things like that. Otherwise we like to picture America being built by rugged individualists clearing the frontier and small businessmen creating jobs, while the scalawags in Washington plot to tax away their life savings.

This election is giving us that image in spades. We have a socialist president pursuing big-government policies that will enshrine inefficiency, class warfare and the herd mentality, opposed by a businessman fighting to unleash the power of the private sector and the creativity of visionary individuals.

So, I was surprised by the bank employee who told the Fed official that Barclay’s reported false interest rates because it wanted to “fit in with the rest of the crowd.”

You might think that, after wrecking the world’s economy four years ago, the big banks might at least pretend to care about the public’s trust or their clients’ welfare. But it’s hard to see a scintilla of shame, as reports in the last three days show:

• Analysts giving advance information on corporate earnings to large hedge funds.
• JP Morgan losing $2 billion in rogue trades. Oh, sorry, $3.5 billion. Well, actually, it’s closer to $6 billion. Um, would you believe $7.5?
• HSBC apologizing for money-laundering.
• Peregrine Financial unable to account for $215 million in customers’ money, going bankrupt and being charged with fraud

The brazenness of the crimes, the baldness of the lies and the pettiness of the excuses reveal a financial system out of control.

Mitt Romney, we are told, should be president because he knows how to run a business. Suddenly, that’s not particularly reassuring.

Stumble of the Week

National Pride. As economists detected a slight uptick in growth indicators at a pace The New York Times described as “sluggish, if not dismal” (which is the first time I have seen "dismal" used to describe a hopeful trend), ABC News was reporting that the sharp new, Ralph Lauren-designed, red-white-and-blue American Olympic uniforms were “made in China.” Perhaps there’s a connection. The U.S. Olympic Committee responded: "We're proud of our partnership with Ralph Lauren, an iconic American company." Perhaps American manufacturers can get a piece of the knock-off business. The Bris. A regional German court’s decision that circumcision of young boys “amounted to grievous bodily harm” has united Jewish and Muslim organizations as no political negotiations have been able to do. The groups, however, took no stance on female circumcision, which is practiced widely in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Communication. When former Irish Republican Army commander Martin McGuinnes shook hands with Queen Elizabeth, whose family he had once plotted to assassinate, he gave her a Gaelic blessing, "Slán agus beannacht." Neither McGuinnes nor the queen speaks Gaelic.

Maturity. It’s only July and already the presidential campaign rhetoric is racing to the bottom, with the Romney and Obama teams squabbling over whether the former left Bain Capital in 1999 or 2002. Ostensibly it has to do with job-outsourcing (see above), but it’s really about petty personal shots most of us left on the playground. I’ve got to believe even Romney remembers the year he left Bain.

Bombs Away

“The United States dropped more bombs on Laos than on Germany and Japan in World War II.” The BBC newsman uttered that sentence yesterday as I was driving along thinking of nothing in particular. He had one of those professional British voices that lull you into a half-listening sense of a world in order – “I say, Jeeves, will you pack the soup-and-fish, and we’ll jump into the two-seater and toodle on down to Blandings.”

Then it sunk in: more bombs on Laos than on Germany and Japan. We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and over just three days in 1945, waves of US and RAF bombers made 15 square miles of downtown Dresden disappear.

We weren’t even at war with Laos. Yet an average of one B-52 bombed the country every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. When we were finished, we had delivered 260 million bombs – a ton for each Laotian – making them the most heavily bombed people, per capita, in the history of the world.

About a third of the bombs failed to explode, and they have killed an estimated 20,000 people since. Hilary Clinton returned to Laos yesterday, the first official American visit since we left Southeast Asia in 1975, and one of those who greeted her was a young man who had lost both hands and his eyesight on his 16^th birthday.

He is what we now call collateral damage. If it happened here, we’d undoubtedly find another name for it.