Another America

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I fear the growth of two Americas, so removed from each other that we are losing our ability to communicate. Not Republicans and Democrats, but two countries in which words mean different things, no common mythology holds us together, and we listen only to our own. In this second installment of her response on terrorism, my friend describes her America. Our America – yet a country many of us has never seen. Perhaps we have not looked. “[French Prime Minister Manuel] Valls proposes that there is a fundamental difference between democracy and terrorism. From my life experiences and observations, living in this skin, there is no difference between “democracy” and “terrorism – not when “democracy” all but wiped out First Nations, promoted slavery, sustained Jim Crow and institutional racism (still alive and well); has maintained a prison-industrial complex with a majority of men of color and a post-incarceration system that does not facilitate re-entry into the society to be productive and contributory. This is terrorism to me. To only have access to inferior education, sub-standard housing, removal of boots and their laces so that there is nothing with which to pull one’s self up – that’s our democratic process, which Congress fights to maintain. That is terrorism to me. Living in fear that every time my nephews (young black men) go out or drive up from Florida or across from Indiana, we may never see them again. Democracy? That feels like terrorism to me. Barriers to voting, intimidation of voters. Democracy? That is terrorism to me.”

Seeking Common Ground

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“Obama Defends Islam, Slams Christianity at Prayer Breakfast.” The religio-political firestorm unleashed by the president’s reference to the Crusades and slavery in his remarks on ISIS last week is the latest example of how we intentionally misunderstand each other and lash out without listening. I’d like this blog to be a commons, however small, in which we listen to other voices – not judging them, not dismissing them, simply trying to understand them. In my next two posts, I print a response to last week’s blog on French Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ speech on terrorism. It came from a friend, a nurse practitioner who has spent her life working on women’s health issues in Africa. As she grapples with the violence, both in the Middle East and America, she offers a different perspective. May we take her words seriously, and may they challenge us. I just went to see “Timbuktu” by Abderrahmane Sissako yesterday evening; it has been nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film. I can’t say that I “liked” it – it is a hard film to watch, but it made me think about the portrayal of the jihadists, which I trust Sissako (Mauritanian) to have represented accurately. Their behavior and interpretation of “Islamic law” (substitute any adjective) was to me the same as the behavior of colonizers and missionaries, e.g., dismissal of existing cultures and cultural norms, unwillingness to learn the local language, a sense of superiority through their interpretation of a particular ideology, and the use of intimidation. It seems ironic that your piece touched on a similar vein.

I agree that words inform thought and that linking “radical and jihadist” with Islam taints Islam, for what we are seeing is NOT Islam – these are extremists. And yes, the war for some may be against terrorism not religion, but the media do not bear that out. Islam is demonized by our careless use of language.

Continued Wednesday.

Scientific Republicans

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What is it about the Republican base and science? They seem to have such a toxic relationship. The latest example is the 2016 presidential hopefuls’ tap dance around measles vaccinations, which climaxed with Rand Paul’s proclamation: “The state doesn’t own your children. Parents own the children.” Apparently, property rights die hard on the GOP's right wing.

The history of reflexive opposition to scientific data contains a dose of religious fundamentalism, mixed with anti-regulatory and anti-intellectual fervor, and a splash of paranoia, all wrapped in a conspiracy theory.

We’ve seen it in climate change, where Rick Perry castigates “scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects.”

We’ve seen it in evolution, which Georgia’s Paul Broun labels "lies straight from the Pit of Hell,” adding, for emphasis, that "Earth is about 9,000 years old” and “was created in six days as we know them." Reassuringly, Broun served on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

We’ve even seen it lately in restaurant hygiene, where North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis improbably singled out requiring employees to wash their hands after using the toilet as an illustration of government over-regulation. “I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy,” Tillis added, “as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom.'" Brilliant, but somehow the original regulation seemed simpler.

I cannot wait for the primary season to begin.

“We Are at War”

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A friend, whom I have come to know solely through this blog, sent me a video of French Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ speech to the National Assembly after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Valls spoke with a clarity of language – and of purpose – that penetrated even my sorry French. Both have been too-often absent in our own leaders. “We are at war,” he said, against radical Islamic jihad. We are not at war against any religion, but against terrorism.

Surely, he is right. If we didn’t believe so yesterday, we must believe today, after the unspeakable immolation of the young Jordanian pilot.

Valls spoke with resolve. France has accepted the reality of this war; it has not launched its own. This is not Bush’s “global war on terror,” with its indiscriminate bombings, invasions and torture. In this war, Valls said, we do not jettison our values, we assert them. “There is a fundamental difference between democracy and terrorism.”

Finally, he spoke of inclusion to a deeply divided nation. We have suffered an attack on our people, he said, all our people – and on our values, “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Not all French people accept those values, and France doesn’t always live up to them. But Valls took the moment to reaffirm them.

A speech is only words. But words matter. They call us to our ideals, even as they reveal our continuing distance from their reality. And they call us together.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .”

Perils of Parenting

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In what some might consider an odd approach to parenting, whenever a friend of mine came down with the mumps, my mother took me over and plopped me on his bed. I never got mumps, although I got all the others – measles, German measles, chicken pox, rheumatic fever (which almost finished me). But mumps was special because if you got it as an adult, you could go sterile. So, before the arrival of the MMR vaccine (1971), my parents engaged in a kind of homeopathy, believing that once I’d had these diseases (except rubella), I would be immune. Precisely the theory behind vaccinations. In early 1950s America, many common childhood diseases were no longer the killers they had once been (with the lethal exception of polio), and many parents thought it better to get over them while young than worry about them later.

In the current measles outbreak, parents give all kinds of reasons – from religious beliefs to irrational fears – for not vaccinating their children. Those that jump out for me are the “largely wealthy and well-educated families” who, The New York Times reported, "are trying to carve out ‘all-natural’ lives for their children.” The descendants of the 1960s back-to-the-land movement, they try to immunize their children against the “toxic” products of pharmaceutical companies and corporate agriculture – of modern life.

They're easy to ridicule – certainly my first reaction – until I remember our own anguished dilemmas about how best to keep our children healthy and safe.

The Real Cost of Oil

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Oil Cash Waning, Venezuelan Shelves Lie Bare read this morning’s headline describing the hardships ordinary Venezuelans are enduring as plunging oil prices deepen an already-deep recession. President Nicolás Maduro reflexively blames right-wing enemies, both internal and external, and especially the United States. But most economists blame policies, launched by the late and unlamented Hugo Chávez, which stifled private economic initiative and squandered one of the world’s largest gold reserves. The real culprit is oil. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven reserves, and oil constitutes 95% of its exports. Twenty-five years ago, when Venezuela was a very rich country, Ivan Maldonaldo predicted its future.

He was then an old man, one of the most interesting I’ve ever known. Convicted at 16 of plotting to overthrow the dictator, he was sentenced to a chain gang and later exiled. He ultimately got a veterinary degree in Czechoslovakia and returned home, on his father’s death, to take over his ranch in a remote corner of the country. He was a visionary who protected all wildlife as he built Venezuela’s largest cattle operation and went on to become one of its richest men. His politics shifted rightward, but he never lost either his curiosity or his empathy.

Ivan watched his country become addicted to oil – become an importer of food and other goods it once exported, a nation whose diverse and vibrant economy died while it giddily drowned in petrodollars – and he watched the return of the dictatorship he had sought to overthrow 60 years before.

The Libertarian’s Dilemma

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“In the broadest sense,” write the feminist pioneers of Our Bodies Ourselves, “violence against women is any assault on a woman’s body, physical integrity, or freedom of movement inflicted by an individual or through societal oppression.” Broad as that definition is, it says little about assaults on a woman’s mind, spirit or workplace equality. But it underlines the significant, if incomplete, advancements in women’s rights since the 1960s, progress based on the belief that a woman’s body should be protected from coercion from both individuals and the state. That’s precisely what Cassandra C. claims in a recent essay in The Hartford Courant: “This is my life and my body,” the 17-year-old wrote, “not the state’s.” Cassandra, however, was writing about Connecticut’s efforts to force her to take chemotherapy for her Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She and her mother call chemotherapy “poison,” but doctors testified that it gives her an 80-85% chance of recovery and without it she will die. The state asserts that Cassandra is a minor, overly influenced by her mother. Cassandra insists it’s her decision. When she turns 18 in nine months, the state cannot intervene, but her chemotherapy will probably be over.

Meanwhile, down at Guantanamo Bay the doctors’ response to widespread hunger strikes is to force-feed prisoners, which many human-rights advocates consider, not a life-giving intercession by the state, but torture.

Belief in the inviolability of a person’s body and mind is the foundation of an individual’s right to be free of state coercion. We continue to probe its limits.

The Progressive’s Dilemma

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The plunging price of oil has already had a number of consequences, including:

Perhaps above all, $45-a-barrel oil threatens to aggravate the historic liberal divide between those focused on social justice and those dedicated to environmental protection. At least as far back as John Muir’s battle to stop the Hetch Hetchy dam, economic and environmental progressives have had a wary, often antagonistic, relationship. The latter’s emphasis on wilderness and endangered species protection has often seemed in conflict with the social and economic needs of the poor and unemployed. The environmental justice movement arose to bridge that divide, arguing that the poor suffer disproportionately from environmental degradation and insisting that the fate of the earth and the welfare of its people is not about choosing one or the other.

But cheap gas has a way of making people ignore the real costs of energy consumption; and so today we do have a choice: we can burn these momentarily cheap fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow or we can use this fortunate interlude to build a better one.

We could start with a gas tax.

Nora Webster

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When I finished Colm Toibin’s celebrated novel, Nora Webster, I had the humbling epiphany that I didn’t understand it. I sensed this coming when I felt the novel running out of pages before the author had made his point. Yet the book mesmerized me, and the realization I didn’t get it made me feel kind of dumb. So I read some reviews, figuring they would at least give me a coherent explanation of the plot. But I discovered that the reviewers didn’t understand Nora Webster any better than I did. They, however, were not about to admit it – and instead unapologetically explained for me a novel I had not read.

Nora Webster is a book in which nothing happens – nothing, that is, except life. Set in Ireland during the early years of “the troubles,” it is a story about ordinary people trying to cope with their lives. They are unheroic and inconsistent, often impenetrable. And Toibin doesn’t try to explain them for us – indeed, we end up knowing little about them, about their motivations or their inner feelings or even whether we like them or not.

This, perhaps, is the point I had missed. Toibin is not a sociologist. He is a storyteller. He doesn’t want to make his characters comprehensible. He wants to make them human. And as we are absorbed into the story of Nora’s life, we come to know her as we know everyone else, which is to say, hardly at all.

The Steel of Freedom Does Not Stain*

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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is remembered above all for its soaring rhetoric, delivered in the flowing cadences that black Baptist preachers had transformed into an oratorical art. I heard King speak in February 1963 when he was working out his August speech. I had never heard anything like it. But I was long troubled by two paragraphs, near the beginning of the speech, whose language seems not melodious but mundane. “[W]e’ve come to our nation's capital to cash a check,” King said, “a promissory note [that] guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ [But] America has defaulted on this promissory note.” For people of color, the check bounced.

King labored over his speeches, leaving little to chance, and his language in this, his greatest speech, was no accident. His intent was to locate the civil rights movement firmly in America’s political tradition. Despite all we have endured, he said, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

He evokes directly the language of America's two seminal documents, the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address; but he grounds their philosophical rhetoric in the no-nonsense pragmatism of Poor Richard’s Almanack.

We have folded King safely into American history because we want to forget how revolutionary he was. His message was simple: Words are important, but let’s get real.

He came to redeem more than a check, and he was threatening enough to get himself killed.

* From Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again

Charlie Redux

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Today Charlie Hebdo published its first issue since the massacre. As I look at my own and others’ struggles to make sense of what happened, our reactions seem surprisingly varied for an act so easy to condemn. Opinions diverge as we debate the inviolability of free speech and the demise of civil discourse; the “delicate balance” between legal tolerance and social restraint; the difference between skewering the powerful and bullying the downtrodden; the dangerous delusion of pitting civilization against barbarism; the political role of art. I find myself agreeing with people who disagree with each other. I have argued for more civil discourse in our own politics, and yet nobody ever accused Charlie Hebdo – whose tagline is “journal irresponsible” – of civil discourse. I believe that ridiculing each other ultimately debases us all, and yet I know no more effective way than satire to prick the (al)mighty. The problem is not simply external: we can’t reconcile our own beliefs.

Today’s cover features a cartoon of Muhammad, a tear falling from his eye. He holds a sign that says “Je Suis Charlie.” Above his head are the words, “All is Forgiven.” It’s not clear, at least to me, who is the forgiver and who the forgiven. So I infer that the journey toward reconciliation must begin with forgiveness, not of murder, but of each other. It is Charlie Hebdo’s most courageous cover, standing firm and reaching out. It will inevitably, even intentionally, be misunderstood. In fact, it is already under attack.

The Great Hoax

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I believe that almost everyone who runs a large organization is taking steps to cope with the threats posed to that organization by climate change. I believe that the leaders of countries from China to the U.S. to Europe, the governors of most states and the mayors of large cities, and the CEOs of major corporations are drawing up contingency plans – just in case the beliefs of 97 percent of the scientific community and the ever-more-sophisticated climatology models turn out to be true. I believe this includes ExxonMobil and other energy conglomerates, despite what their lobbyists are peddling. They would be fools not to. The exceptions are governors of energy-dependent states, Millennialists of all persuasions who can’t wait to get to paradise – and the Republicans who control both houses of Congress and who have made denial a litmus test of political orthodoxy, like the tax pledge, intelligent design and abortion. But members of Congress don’t run anything, and they are responsible for the future of no organization other than their reelection campaigns.

Although most Republicans actually believe climate change is real, the number of their Congressional representatives who publicly say so is shrinking. This is not based on new evidence, of which there is none, but on politics. “I think it's part of the phenomenon of the polarization of the Congress,” said former GOP Congressman Jim Greenwood.

And so while responsible people make plans, just in case, those responsible for our “general welfare” stick their heads in the sands.

Correction: A typo in Friday’s post listed Charlie Hebdo’s normal circulation as 6,000 copies. It is 60,000.

The Pen and the Kalashnikov

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The only thing more destructive of democracy than censorship is self-censorship, more destructive ultimately than two brainwashed jihadists with machine guns. In fact, while the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and their police protectors (one a Muslim) is an attack on free expression, the killers seemed more intent on punishing those who had insulted Muhammad than making a statement about press freedom – although it’s hard to imagine in whose holy book their act would constitute “an eye for an eye.” The result, when the civic squares have emptied and the symbolic pens put down, will be a greater public commitment to free speech and an increase in small acts of self-censorship.

With censorship, at least, you know who your enemy is, even if you feel powerless to fight it. For the press, censorship comes in many guises. The worst is that of governments, and almost the first act of any totalitarian regime is to shut down the independent media. But it is more ubiquitous: threats to pull advertising; political demagoguery; a rock through the window.

But the threat of murder makes us pull our punches. Do I really need to write that?

“[W]e don’t want to publish hate speech or spectacles that offend, provoke or intimidate or anything that desecrates religious symbols or angers people along religious or ethnic lines," an AP executive told The Washington Post.

That’s a broad brush.

Charlie Hebdo is publishing next Wednesday. Not its usual run of 60,000, but one million copies. That’s commitment.

The King

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In memory of Judge John H. Mason (1945-2004), who loved the King

Here’s something to make us feel a little older: Elvis Presley would have turned 80 tomorrow. (Former English students, note the use of the future perfect subjunctive.) I remember, in the fall of 1956, watching his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan had said only three months earlier that he’d never have Elvis on his show, calling him “unfit for family viewing” and suggesting he wore “a Coke bottle” inside his pants. But 60 million viewers changed his mind. Among them were my sister and I. She was 13, I was 11. Elvis had barely warmed up when my sister emitted a little squeal. I think she even startled herself. Then she lost complete control. “I can’t help it,” she said apologetically, as she screamed at our small black-and-white TV. I was just disgusted.

Not for the last time did I find myself on the wrong side of history.

Elvis went on to sell 600 million records before he died, a prescription-drug-addicted zombie His last years were enormously sad. He made terrible movies and shallow songs, becoming a bloated, bespangled caricature of a star. He seemed so old. He was 42. But his early music lives, not just in the songs he recorded, but in all the diverse influences he absorbed into it and then sent out in completely new forms. Some resented him for usurping and profiting from black rhythms; others for mongrelizing white country. But he embodied both in a respectful but revolutionary way, one that empowered his music to transcend his biography.

The Public Employee

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On New Year’s Day, as I arrived with my car packed with evidence of our “family activities,” he emerged from the building, putting on his gloves. A quiet man of medium height, with shoulder-length hair, a stubbly beard, and an earring, he oversees the town’s recycling efforts. Recycling here is a community habit. Only ten states still have “bottle bills”. Half of those are in the far northeast, where you pay a nickel deposit for soda, beer and wine bottles. Because stores long ago stopped accepting returns, local governments established recycling stations with separate dumpsters for cardboard, plastics, glass, paper and metal. The Boy Scouts set up bins for redeemable bottles and cans, which is both a source of revenue for them and, I imagine, a peephole into grown-up life.

I initially resented this recycling czar, as he instructed me what went where – “this is plastic; paper bags go with the cardboard” – thereby dragging out what had seemed to me a pretty uncomplicated operation. So I’d try to go when I thought he wouldn’t be there. Like New Year’s Day.

“You’re working today?” I heartsinkingly asked.

“I work almost everyday,” he said. “I took Christmas off.” He added as an aside, “I don’t get paid for the holidays.”

But wait. Where is the stereotype we are endlessly fed – the arrogant, apathetic public employee, mindlessly punching a clock until he can collect his budget-busting pension? He takes his work seriously. He believes it’s important.

"Thank you," I said.

Spring of Hope, Winter of Despair

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On the last day of the year, the cusp between past and future, I turn to Charles Dickens to make sense of a world that seems filled with hope and progress even as it seems to be falling apart. By many indices, the world is a far better place than ever before. Millions have escaped poverty; life expectancy has increased markedly; war, discrimination and violent crime are at historic lows. On the other hand, climate change, resource depletion, widening wealth gaps, exploding populations, insecure nuclear arsenals, seething inner cities, global terror all portend disaster.

So which is it? It is both, as it has always been. The conflicting scenarios aren't just matters of opinion. They are matters of fact: the world and its human inhabitants are all these things at once. It isn’t easy to hold onto such contradictory realities, and in our efforts to make sense of the world and our lives, we reject views that differ from our own. This is how we build communities of people we trust. Yet, as we separate ourselves into groups of like minds and familiar lives, we give up something important: the ability, even the desire, to truly understand those who are different. Our ideas are the best ideas, our facts the real facts, our religion the only path to salvation.

The spring of hope blooms only when we listen to each other. For how can I convince you of the value of my ideas, if I will not listen to yours?

The Pilot

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Perhaps no image from 2014 seared itself into my mind so forcefully as the face of the young Jordanian pilot being taken into captivity by ISIS fighters. He looks traumatized, terrified and very young. He has not been heard from since. First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh is a soldier, a warrior, trained for war. Yet he’s hardly more than a boy, 26, younger than my youngest son. His training had stressed that capture – that torture – was possible. But he could not have been prepared for this. He was married in July, a proud, handsome young pilot, now paraded before the world without his pants. His is the face of war, as much as are those of his hooded captors. And this is what war does. It devours our young.

If ever there were a just war – by which I mean a war waged to stop a greater evil such as genocide, slavery or conquest – the fight against ISIS seems to meet its definition. But too often a just war morphs into a holy war, waged to impose a particular set of beliefs on others. Even now the lieutenant’s family appeals “to the jihadists to welcome him as a fellow Muslim.” I would do anything to save my family, but Kasasbeh’s fate should be a matter of his humanity, not his religion.

The Pilot

 

Sony Hires Dennis Rodman, Cancels ISIS Musical

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Amid growing accusations that it had “caved to terror,” Sony has reportedly named Dennis Rodman vice president of its newly formed North Korea Office for Friendship and Internet Security. The Hall-of-Fame basketball player has made several visits to the isolated country and calls Kim Jong-un his “friend for life.” The media giant also canceled plans for a musical extravaganza, “Holiday on ISIS,” in the wake of rising Internet chatter about John Travolta’s alleged portrayal of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as “the dancing caliph” and rumors of female dancers in Lululemon chadors.

As North Korea escalated its rhetoric, announcing it is now targeting “all the citadels of the US imperialists who earned the bitterest grudge of all Koreans,” Sony insists it did not cancel “The Interview” out of fear.

Others agreed. "It seemed like a simple marketing decision,” said an anonymous reviewer from an undisclosed location. “I mean, honestly, would you attend that movie’s opening, and I don't care where they held it?”

Instead, Sony is reportedly considering a script on the 2016 Olympics. “Intrepid Dribbler” depicts the inspiring journey of the North Korean basketball team, led by Rodman and point guard Kim Jong-Un, from ostracism to Olympic gold. In the title game’s final seconds, Kim dribbles through the heavily favored U.S. team, elevates over an astonished LeBron James and pounds down what the announcer calls “a nuclear dunk.”

“It’s like an Asian ‘Field of Dreams,’” said a spokesperson. “We think Mr. Kim will be pleased.”