Millennial Thinking

“Jamie, assuming that you do another piece on the Syria bombing, you might want to consider the fact that this will be the first time in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives that the RAPTURE will be a significant if unstated force in favor of passage.” The Rapture is the evangelical belief that the elect will be swept up into the clouds to meet Jesus when he returns to dispense ultimate justice to the rest of us. It was brought to prominence in the New World by Increase and Cotton Mather, the father-and-son team of 17^th-century Puritan divines who were the driving force behind the Salem Witch Trials. When you have no doubt of your own righteousness, you have little fear of Judgment Day.

Remember, in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions that followed, how horrified we were by the epidemic of suicide bombings that killed thousands of innocent people? Who could do such a thing, we asked? Only zealots, we were told, young men (mostly) who had been drugged or blackmailed or, above all, promised a paradise filled with dark-eyed virgins just for them. Such fanaticism, we were assured, is the foundation of radical Islam. This is not a clash of civilizations. We are engaged in a war between civilization and barbarism.

For those who are convinced of their place in heaven, the fate of the earth becomes less important. We should beware of going to war for those who eagerly anticipate Armageddon.

It’s Only a Phrase

“There are 78,000 abandoned buildings in this city standing in various levels of decay,” the article begins. “Services have fallen into dysfunction, and debts are piling ever higher. Yet for all the misery, Detroit’s bankruptcy gives an American city a rare chance to reshape itself from top to bottom.” “From top to bottom.” It’s only a phrase, I know, but what if the reporter had written of rebuilding Detroit from bottom to top? Consider the difference in our images of what is happening in that distressed city. In one we picture planners, experts, outsiders, people with the answers imposing their solutions from above. In the other, we start with the struggling communities and impoverished people seeking to nurture whatever will help them survive. We need both approaches, to be sure. Detroit cannot heal all the wounds inflicted by 50 years of disintegration and misrule without a lot of help, but how you describe the problem determines, at least in part, how you define the solutions.

Half a world a way, in the remote villages of Dertu, Kenya, and Ruhiira, Uganda, Nina Munk reports on Jeffrey Sachs’ quest to eradicate poverty from Africa. Yet “with almost every intervention,” writes Joe Nocera, “she documents the chasm that exists between the villagers and those running the project.”

For whom are we building villages and rebuilding cities if not for the people who live in them?  Words matter. You do not build a community from top to bottom. You build from the ground up.

Sneak Attack

I once watched Tiger Woods stop his golf swing a nanosecond before hitting the ball because a spectator had clicked his camera. Woods swings at 128 miles-per-hour, so his back-wrenching reverse was mind-boggling to watch – much like Barack Obama’s back-wrenching reverse on Syria. First, contrary to all theories of the importance of surprise, Obama declares we will attack Syria. He’s a little fuzzy on why – take “a shot across Assad’s bow”? Salvage America’s “credibility”? Reinforce the “red line” against gas? Send a proxy message to Iran? But he’s clear the missiles are coming. Then he pulls the rug out from under everyone, particularly John Kerry, by announcing he will submit the question to Congress, which (a) is on vacation and (b) hasn’t passed any meaningful legislation in years. Yet, with this stroke of inadvertent brilliance, Obama restored the Constitution – which gives Congress the sole power “to declare war” – and placed Congress in a pickle. For how can they shut down the government if they are simultaneously going to declare war? I believe that internationalism and human rights should be foundations of American foreign policy, and there is horrific suffering in Syria. But I don’t see what sending missiles to enforce rules of civilized slaughter in a war in which the good guys may well be worse than the bad guys will accomplish, beyond escalating the carnage. Congress has not declared war since 1941, an interval filled with disastrous efforts to impose American values at the point of a gun.

A Fable

Once upon a time long ago, there was a republic known for its civic tolerance, diverse cultures and passion for innovation. The glue that held it together was the people’s belief in an open political system and a tradition of civic debate. But hard times hit, and the republic went into a recession. The old communal bonds weakened. Parties purged their ranks of dissenters. Moderates became an endangered species. Demands for ideological purity triumphed over pragmatic efforts to build the coalitions required to govern in a pluralistic society. Voters increasingly turned out in support of extremists, and eventually the commitment to maintain the republic itself was called into question. There was plenty of blame to go around, but one right-wing group was especially relentless in pursuit of its agenda. Under the banner of patriotism, its members manipulated national symbols to vilify foreigners, non-whites, gays, Jews. They actively sought to shut down the government and ultimately to bring down the republic. Few took them seriously at first. They seemed a laughable bunch of bombastic buffoons, ranting against a society that was leaving them behind, shouting down their political opponents. One day powerful interests asked the leader of the party to become the leader of the nation so that order could be restored. And that’s where the fable ends. Because the rest is history: Immediately after being named Germany’s chancellor, “Hitler rushed to his headquarters and told Goebbels with tears in his eyes, ‘Now we are on our way.’”

(Drawn from Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman by Jeremy Adelman)

A Disturbing List

24/7 Wall Street published a list of America’s ten fastest-growing jobs over the last decade. They are: (10) Skin Care Specialists; (9) Personal Care Aides; (8) Personal Financial Advisors; (7) Coaches and Scouts; (6) Human Resources Specialists; (5) Massage Therapists; (4) Interpreters and Translators; (3) Music Directors and Composers; (2) Petroleum Engineers; (1) Service Unit Operators, Oil, Gas and Mining. There are lots of ways to interpret this list – the authors point to an aging population and “non-conventional” fuel sources. But what jumped out at me was the absence of any jobs focused on building communities, or on building much of anything, really. Instead, I see a people absorbed with taking care of ourselves, both physically and financially, while becoming increasingly oblivious to – and dependent on – extractive energy policies that threaten the health of the earth, which is the ultimate source of our own well-being. I was heartened by the presence of composers as evidence that we still value the creative arts, until I read that one “factor driving job growth for this occupation is the expected greater need for original music scores or transcriptions used in commercials.” We need translators because globalization has exposed our weakness in other languages, a weakness we exacerbate by insisting that good Americans only speak English.

Reading this less-than-robust list, I kept thinking of the decline of Rome, destroyed by the self-indulgence of a people no longer involved in their own governance. And that music, I wondered? Could it be the sound of Nero fiddling?

Early Morning, Low Tide

The sea is so calm this morning. I sit on the rocks sipping my coffee, looking out the “western way,” which lies almost due south between Cranberry Island and the Manset shore, the silence broken only by the sound of a few birds and the occasional melancholy clang of a bell buoy. Later the water will be filled with boats, both working and pleasure, but now I can see only two small sails far in the distance, one carrying its passengers away, the other coming toward home. A handful of gulls skim soundlessly above the water’s surface, landing without effort on a rock or the waveless sea. Somewhere, out of sight, a boat’s motor breaks the silence. There is just enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes at bay, and it is so clear that I look far out to a horizon, which the Episcopalian burial liturgy tells us is “nothing save the limit of our sight.” Or more fully, “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing, save the limit of our sight.” I imagine what lies beyond, but am mostly immersed in my surroundings here, so absorbed that my coffee has gone cold. I think, I don’t have the words to describe this, which suits me because they would limit what is limitless. My religion taught me early on to fear God. I sit in awe of this.

What Next?

“As I transition into the next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female.” With those words, issued through her lawyer on yesterday’s “Today” show, the former Bradley Manning began a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth. Tactically speaking, I’m not sure I would have made that particular announcement as I was entering a federal penitentiary, but this is a person who apparently believes that we need to know everything. I write this, not to belittle Chelsea Manning, but to wrestle with a case that is at once heartrending and bizarre. I believe: (1) Manning launched an important discussion about our government’s actions and secrecy by disclosing a lot of information we have the right – and the need – to know; (2) the length of the sentence is unjust; and (3) Manning has every right to assert her own identity. None of this makes me especially comfortable with an army private, struggling with huge personal issues, deciding unilaterally what government secrets to release to the world. Clearly, our government operates in far too much secrecy. I’m not sure I trust Manning’s judgment on where to draw the line. In other news, Anthony Weiner went one up on former Australian legislator (and chair of the Parliamentary Ethics Committee) Peter Dowling, who had acknowledged texting his mistress a photo of his, um, wiener in a glass of merlot. Weiner admitted in Wednesday’s New York mayoral debate that he had texted while driving.

And All That Jaz

As we all know, Al Jazeera is not really a news organization; it is a terrorist group. At least that’s what former co-President Cheney insisted during the Iraq war, calling it “a platform for terrorists.” In 2003, a U.S. jet fired on Al Jazeera’s Baghdad studio, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. So you wonder what Cheney was thinking yesterday afternoon when Al Jazeera America launched its daily cable television news program from New York City. Despite the Bush administration’s demonization, Al Jazeera has long had an international reputation for balanced, innovative and on-the-spot reporting. It was the only news channel to have live coverage of the outbreak of war in Afghanistan. It is known for airing dissenting, and often controversial, views on its Middle Easter stations. And both Salon.com and Hilary Clinton called its coverage of the 2011 unrest in Egypt superior to that of the American press.

Al Jazeera’s aim for its new channel is to “air fact-based, unbiased and in-depth news.” Its competitors seem unfazed by a challenger offering 14 hours of serious news each day to an audience that is hooked on entertainment, celebrity sightings and reality TV. But the deeper question is whether a channel with an Arabic name and an imposed reputation for Islamic bias will have any appeal to an increasingly insular and nativist America. We live in a world bathed in American brands, from Coke to The Wall Street Journal, and in a country awash with Japanese cars and Chinese clothes – and yet remain disturbingly closed to “foreign” ideas.

Three

My granddaughter, Calliope, and I play a game in which she sneaks into my chair and says, “Come sit in your chair, Poppy,” and I wander over, saying how tired I am, and sit down on Callie. And then I jump into the air, shouting my surprise, and she laughs and laughs. Sometimes I introduce a variation . . . I’ll lure her off the chair and then slip in by another way and get to the chair first. Usually, though, we play the same game over and over, because much of her pleasure derives from anticipating the outcome she knows in advance – and while I may tire of the game, she never does, and if I try to end it, she sometimes gets into a fuss. Callie is three. As it happens, the 2010 Congressional class is the same age. That was the year Republicans, many of them astonishingly right-wing, recaptured control of the House, and they have been playing childish games ever since. For example, they have voted to repeal Obamacare 40 times, even though they know the outcome in advance. Under the banner of “No,” they reflexively oppose initiatives, even from their own leadership, that might facilitate better governance, and their real goal seems to be to shut down the government itself. Their age-appropriate behavior, however, is missing a critical component. Calliope is forever asking, “Why?” She is curious, constantly on the edge of wonder, wanting to explore and understand the world. This Congress never seems to ask why? They just vote no.

e pluribus unum

What accounts for the differences between the “March on Washington” fifty years ago this month, which produced significant changes in American life, and the current protests in Cairo, which have produced a bloodbath? It is tempting to point to the evolution of western democracy. And there is truth in that. But the 1960s – America’s equivalent of the “Arab Spring” – witnessed far more violence than we like to remember, including urban riots that brought tanks onto the streets of our cities and a bloody response to protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention that was later declared a “police riot.” I think two factors are critical to understanding the differences: the commitment to nonviolence and the appeal for inclusion. Faced with intimidation, beatings and murder, civil-rights protesters were trained to “stand their ground,” unarmed, in one of the most remarkable displays of mass courage in history, demonstrating the power of moral suasion to effect lasting change. And civil-rights leaders appealed, not to tribal differences, but to our common humanity. In his speech before the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King invoked the two most important documents in American history – the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address – to demand that we live up to the ideals we espouse: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” King’s dream was the American dream – for all people, in all our diversity, bound together as one community. This is “American exceptionalism” at its best.

Trail of Tears

On this day in 1842 the second Seminole War came to an end, followed by the last forced march of Native Americans from the southeastern United States along the “trail of tears” to what is now Oklahoma. The relocations, which began right after Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, involved the resettlement of tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands to federal lands west of the Mississippi. The motive was simple: the expanding population of European-Americans wanted the land; and the Act, which overturned the nation’s earlier policy of respecting Native-American homelands, legitimized decades of removals across the continent. Wars of conquest and the subjugation of native peoples are not confined to 19^th-century America. They are how empires are born. But in America it is hard to square the historical reality with the principles on which the country was founded – we are, after all, both the land of the free and the home of the brave – and so we ignore the unpleasant parts of our past. Witness today’s self-proclaimed patriots, who trace their political lineage to the Boston Tea Party, when “Sons of Liberty” dressed as, yes, Indians, dumped English tea into Boston Harbor. They talk of “American exceptionalism,” the idea that America is a unique country with a special mission, a "city on a hill." And it is exceptional the way they hold high the torch of liberty in one hand, while papering over 100 years of genocide with the other.

McDynamo

I write in praise of a horse and of his owner. Michael Moran’s McDynamo was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame on Friday, after a career that included winning the Breeder’s Cup Grand National five times and the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Steeplechase horse three times. He didn’t always look like a champion – he finished last in his first race and had such claustrophobia in a starting gate that he dumped his jockey, jumped the fence and ran wild for 20 minutes. That was McDynamo’s last race on the flat, and Michael asked Sanna Hendriks to train him as a steeplechaser. Most of horse racing is a shameful sport, in which the animals are routinely injected with performance drugs and painkillers, the races often fixed, and the horses run into the ground until, when they can no longer run at all, they are discarded as trash. They are, in short, treated the same way so many other professional athletes are treated, without the possibility of a big contract. Their role is to perform, and their bodies increasingly break down under the pressures of doing so.

But McDynamo loved to run and jump, and Michael and his wife, Anne, an Irish-born horse whisperer, treated him with something you don’t much see at the track: love. They admired his talent and honored his spirit; they never pushed him beyond his limits; and when his career was over, they brought him home to live out the rest of his life in peace.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Two of the oldest and best newspapers in America sold this week for a fraction of their recent value. Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, bought The Washington Post for $250 million the day after Red Sox owner John Henry bought The Boston Globe for $70 million. In 1993 The New York Times paid $1.1 billion for The Globe. That’s quite a drop. It’s also a trend, as scores of once-venerable papers have gone bankrupt, shut down or sold for a pittance. So the question is: where we will get our news? For even as they close far-flung bureaus and slash budgets, newspapers remain our primary source of independent reporting. The idea of non-partisan news reporting is relatively recent. Nineteenth-century papers were blatantly one-sided, usually little more than mouthpieces for political parties. Then two critical firewalls developed: one between editorial content and advertising; the other between news and opinion. The pressures against those walls were relentless – advertisers wanted only good coverage, politicians only editorial support – and they have collapsed in recent times, as publishers seek to appease advertisers, politicians and, yes, readers, by putting platitudes above professionalism. Now we have thousands of outlets where readers get only what they want, and ever fewer where trained journalists are trying to give us what we need. Whatever you may think of the opposing editorial positions of the Times and the Wall Street Journal, both news staffs are committed to piercing the political and corporate veils of bluster and secrecy in search of the true story. Without them, who will watch our “custodians?” Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Boehner Praises Obesity Report

John Boehner paused long enough from his August vacation at the Koch brothers’ Reclaiming America boot camp to take credit for the decline in obesity among very poor young children. “You can sum it up in one word,” said the Speaker. “Food stamps.” Flanked by Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Boehner cited a report just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that showed a small but perceptible drop in obesity rates among low-income children between the ages of two and four. “Our caucus sent a strong message in last month’s Farm Bill when we uncoupled food stamps from actual food,” he told reporters. “And that message got through. It’s clear that the Republican Party’s tough love toward poor minority kids is working.”

“It’s very hard on our members to vote 40 times to repeal Obamacare,” said Cantor. “But middle-class taxpayers are tired of this administration trying to shove socialized medicine down our throats. We need real deficit reduction, and we need to put the nanny state to bed and turn off the lights.”

“This is not about being mean to kids,” added Ryan. “It’s about teaching them to take personal responsibility. The American people are tired of Michelle Obama telling their children to eat their vegetables and Mike Bloomberg trying to take away their right to a big Pepsi.”

“The phrase,” said Cantor, “is not ‘poor, fat and happy.’ It’s ‘rich, fat and happy.’ Fat and happy are not government entitlements. You have to earn them.”

Domination, Stewardship, Communion

On June 30, 1864, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, which protected the beautiful California valley from development, the first such use of federal power in history. In 1984 Yosemite National Park was designated a World Heritage Site. Today, even with 95% of the park protected as wilderness, the National Park Service has proposed changes to soften the human footprint on the vulnerable landscape. The debate about how accessible and commercial our parks should be is not new, and it affects every park in the country. It is part of the broader question of humans’ relationship with the natural world, and over the last millennium three distinct attitudes have evolved. The most powerful is domination, which sees nature as existing for human use. It has its origins in monotheistic religions whose God exists outside the world, most famously in the Book of Genesis, where God tells Adam to subdue the earth. Because humans have proved pretty good at that, there arose a movement to mitigate it. Accepting man’s dominion, it emphasized the need for stewardship to protect Earth’s resources for future generations. Finally, the belief that we are an integral part of the natural world asks us to hold it, not as a collection of resources, but as the source of all life, including our own. It is an attitude “realists” condemn as naïve and mystical, and yet it may ultimately be the only way to protect the earth from our power to destroy it.

Too Big to Fail

Remember the huge, corrupt, rapacious banks that were deemed too big to fail despite the spectacular damage they wrought during the last market crash? That drama may have been just a dress rehearsal for something much bigger, which is now lurching under the weight of exponential growth and colossal corruption: China. And just as we were told in 2008 that it was essential the banks survived, so we are now being told the same about China. This concern stems from no particular fondness for the Chinese – any more than our support of Middle Eastern sheiks, whose kingdoms sat on top of our oil, belied affection for Arabs. It is because American economic well-being is entwined with China’s stability, which is now threatened by the side-effects of unrestrained growth and a mind-boggling corruption that has brought huge disparities in wealth to a country that still mouths the platitudes of socialist solidarity. As a net energy exporter – and a net exporter of oil for the first time since 1949 – America is no longer dependent on energy imports, despite what the drilling zealots insist. Now we are dependent on Chinese money and manufacturing, and once again our foreign policies are dictated by our domestic addictions. China has become the Walmart of the world, promising cheap goods while hollowing out our communities and the local economies that sustain them. I wish no ill to the Chinese, but we have got to redefine the good life in terms other than never-ending growth and more cheap stuff.

Three Lives

I read obituaries for the light they shed on living. On Monday, three men with little in common reminded me of the diversity of our travels from birth to death: Bud Day was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and endured five years of living hell in the Hanoi Hilton prison. He never broke, and his courage inspired his fellow prisoners, including John McCain. I consider personal courage among the highest virtues; I just wish our culture would uncouple it from warfare and honor it in all its manifestations. And I was saddened to read that Colonel Day later supported Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in their efforts to smear John Kerry, a sad postmark to a brave life.

Garry Davis, also an army aviator, embarked after World War Two on a quixotic journey when he renounced his American citizenship to become a “citizen of the world.” “The nation-state,” he wrote, “is the breeding ground of war” – a point worth thinking about as our government insists that secure national borders are the key to peace in Palestine, where the shame of the Israeli settlements is less that they infringe on Palestinian sovereignty than that they are an inhumane response to the tragic squalor of Palestinian camps.

J.J. Cale’s life celebrates the importance of making music. A musicians’ musician and writer, Cale didn’t need the bright lights on him. “I’d like to have the fortune,” he wrote, “but I don’t care too much about the fame.”

Detritus

Early one morning, as I was walking near the campus of Kean University in Union, New Jersey, I happened upon a garbage truck picking up the neighborhood trash, black plastic bags neatly piled on the curb. It was the start of a 98-degree day, the three men were already sweating, the garbage smelled, and the truck was obnoxiously loud. I was offended by this assault on my tranquility and resented the garbage men who caused it. That evening I showed my class Poet of Poverty, a film about Camden, New Jersey, one of the most blighted cities in America. Camden is, literally, the garbage dump for the state. Because its people are powerless and poor, the legislature has put in its neighborhoods the state prison, the county’s trash-to-steam incinerator and the sewage treatment plant. “It is,” said Father Michael Doyle, who has served in Camden since 1968, “as if all the toilet bowls in the county are lined up on Camden, and every flush says – to Camden, to Camden, to Camden.” The stench, particularly on a hot summer day, is overwhelming, and Camden is an assault on America’s image of itself.

Neither the garbage men nor Camden create the stench we blame them for. Their role is to get it out of the noses of the rest of us, so we can continue in the belief that we take care of ourselves when we put our trash in black plastic bags and set them on the curb for removal from our neighborhood.

Public Rights and Private Parts

Those who insist the Supreme Court did not eviscerate the Voting Rights Act last month, when it declared a key part of it unconstitutional, argue that the five-justice majority simply demanded that Congress update the data to reflect the realities of 2013 instead of 1965. They believe the South is being unfairly labeled as racist long after it has changed its ways. Maybe so, but much of what I read makes it clear that if you are poor and black, you do not want to live in the deep South – although it's pretty hard to get out. The latest case in point: a study of upward mobility, released by the Equality-of-Opportunity Project and analyzed by 24/7 Wall Street, found that the 10 cities in which the poor are most severely trapped in poverty are: Memphis, Tenn; Clarksdale, Miss; Greenville, Miss; Columbus, Ga; Auburn, Ala; Wilson, N.C; Montgomery, Ala; Albany, Ga; Spartanburg. S.C; and Atlanta, Ga. All 10 are in the old Confederacy and all have significant African-American populations. Does this prove they violate the Voting Rights Act? No. But it does help us understand why Congress left the old formula intact when it extended the act for 25 years in 2006. The increasingly activist court majority overturned that legislative decision in June. Meanwhile, we learn that Anthony Weiner, under the sobriquet of Carlos Danger, continued to text photos of his crotch to unsuspecting women while undergoing therapy for texting photos of his crotch to unsuspecting women. And while he is polling second in New York’s mayoral race, it’s not even fun to make fun of him anymore. He needs help, not attention.

Black and White

A president has perhaps no more important role than to embody the contradictions of our national conversation: Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence while owning hundreds of slaves; Abraham Lincoln, who set out to hold the union together and ended by emancipating the slaves; Dwight Eisenhower, the warrior who warned us against the military-industrial complex; Barack Obama, who is black and white in a country where legally and demographically people are black or white. We have made much progress on the issues of race since Jefferson’s time, but the issue itself will not go away because we refuse to address it openly – until it rears its head, as it inevitably did again after Trayvon Martin’s murder. Race is implicit in so many of the issues with which the country wrestles: the immigration debate is about people of color; the bankruptcy of Detroit reflects the apartheid of our inner cities on which we have turned our backs; the growing disparity in wealth, in which whites own 20 times more than African-Americans, and aspiring blacks are urged to choose class over race, while impoverished whites are taught to identify with their race, not their economic condition.

The president cannot duck these issues because he is a target of them. And when he addresses them – as our national leader and a human being – as he did in 2008 in Philadelphia and last week at the White House, I remember, again, why his presidency is so important for our country.