American Soul

With Donald Trump, who is the sort of demagogue the founders feared, now the leader of the Republican Party, it’s time to examine our “exceptional” credentials. And it’s not just Trump who reveals a country at odds with its self-image. In New York, the Democratic Assembly Speaker is on his way to prison, with the Republican Senate leader close behind. In Chicago, a judge pronounced the former Speaker of the House a “serial child molester.” In two new books, Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, the authors describe a nation with the highest rate of incarceration in a world that includes Russia, China and Iran; where one of every three native-born black men will go to jail; where three times as many mentally ill people are in prison as in a hospital; where economic disparity and voter repression proceed unabated.

I’m happy that Trump will be the nominee. Not just because the singularly repugnant Ted Cruz has departed, at least for now. Not because I think Trump will be trounced in November, because I fear he won’t. But because the overarching American myth on which we have been nourished for generations is unraveling before our eyes – and it should, for while it may have reflected our aspirations, it does not describe our reality.

We now have a candidate who appeals to the basest parts of our national character, and if that doesn’t galvanize the rest of us to get involved, I don’t know what will.

“Let’s Do the Numbers”

From a talk this week by David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee and former British Foreign Secretary:

• 20 million refugees have fled their country in fear of persecution for racial, ethnic or political reasons.
• 40 million people are internally displaced within their country.
• 200+ million migrants have left their country in search of a better life.
• 1% of all refugees went home last year.
• 17 years is the average duration of exile.
• 86% of refugees and displaced people are in poor countries.

With states collapsing, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, the increase in horrendous violence and disrespect for humanitarian law, and “the absence of legal routes to hope and dignity,” this is a crisis no wall can contain. Globalization isn’t just a political policy, it’s an international reality; and “America First” code language is not the answer – particularly if you consider these numbers from Steve Phillips’ Brown is the New Black:

• In the last 50 years, people of color have increased from 12% to 37% of the U.S. population.
• Latinos have grown from 9 million to 54 million; Asians from 2 million to 18 million.
• Our population increases by 8,000 people a day, 90% of whom are non-white.

Clearly these are unsettling numbers for the dwindling white majority – even if they are a fulfillment of America’s self-image: a melting pot; a nation of immigrants; a land where all men are created equal and anyone can grow up to be president. Maybe it’s a cause for celebration instead of fear. And it seems a good time to recognize how much we have in common with the rest of the world.

Anzac Day

One-hundred-one years ago today began the Gallipoli campaign, a devastating eight-month battle that produced over half-a-million casualties and yet remains the defining national myth for both sides: Turkey and Australia and New Zealand. Such is war, a time of carnage and valor – and the central reality of human history. “If we were to take any random hundred-year period within the last five thousand years,” writes Caroline Alexander in the introduction to her new translation of the Iliad, “we would find on average ninety-four of that hundred to have been occupied with large-scale conflicts in one or more regions of the globe.”

By chance, I was reading her words when an old friend sent me “My Vietnam Song,” his 46-year journey home from Vietnam, where he had arrived as a Marine 2^nd lieutenant not long after his college roommate had been killed. It’s a moving story of his struggle to understand himself and make sense of his war, a poignant antidote to today’s reflexive “Thank you for your service,” five words he never heard. Achilles would understand, writes Alexander. Far from “glorifying war’s destructive violence,” the Iliad “makes explicit the tragic cost of such glory, even to the greatest warrior.”

“I am tired and sick of War,” said William Tecumseh Sherman, a warrior who scorched the earth from Atlanta to the sea. “Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”

And it endures.

Trading Up

The $20 bill just got more valuable, not, to be sure, as a measure of exchange, but in its intangible value for America – because yesterday Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that a likeness of Harriet Tubman will replace that of Andrew Jackson on the bill’s face. An escaped slave who was cruelly beaten as a child, Tubman returned frequently to the South and guided so many slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad that William Lloyd Garrison dubbed her “Moses.” During the Civil War she became a Union spy and an armed scout, leading an expedition that freed over 700 slaves. Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, was considered one of its greatest in the history books of my youth. But his star has rightly dimmed, particularly because of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which forced tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands to Oklahoma along the deadly “Trail of Tears,” one of the saddest, most shameful events in our history.

There will, no doubt, be cries of political correctness, as we replace a white man, both president and general, with a black woman – laments that, in our efforts to conform to multi-cultural demands, we are rewriting our history.

Well, good for us. We are recognizing a part of our history we have too long ignored. We are honoring a woman of courage, faith and accomplishment who dedicated her life to equal rights and women’s suffrage. And maybe we are insisting, in a small way, that our money reflect our values.

Patriots’ Day

As a one-time American history teacher, I wrestled with the deficiencies of textbooks, which are as much the product of Texas politics as historical scholarship and challenge teachers to breathe life into dull prose and dead people. In fairness, the text is hard to put together. When I was in school, ours ended with the Korean Conflict, traced the westward movement of Europeans across the continent, and relied on documents written by educated white men. Quite a bit has happened since then, including an array of tools enabling historians to uncover the long-stifled voices of marginalized peoples. Such changes have not sat well with everyone. In the recent tiff over Advanced Placement history standards, for example, some school boards, and the Republican National Committee, demanded changes in textbooks to extol patriotism and “American exceptionalism” and to show America in a more positive light – what we used to call propaganda.

Which brings me to newly unearthed histories at two of America’s most prominent universities: Georgetown’s sale of 272 slaves to plantations in the Deep South to raise operating funds and Harvard’s embrace of a eugenics movement that promoted racial purity and the forced sterilization of those who, in the words of U.S. Chief Justice – and Harvard pillar – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “sap the strength of the State.”

Shouldn’t the historian’s role be to uncover and confront the truth of our past, however painful, as Georgetown, and, I hope, Harvard, is doing, rather than airbrush it? True patriotism can’t be built on lies.

Grace, ‘The Final Chapter’

Winston Moseley died last week. He was 81 and had spent the last 51 years in prison for killing Kitty Genovese the night of March 13, 1964 in Queens, N.Y. It was a murder that seared America. Dozens of people heard Kitty’s screams but “didn’t want to get involved,” a response now known as the “Genovese syndrome,” which led to the adoption of 911. The original reports are in dispute, but not the horrific rape and murder (and not necessarily in that order) nor the hours-long agony of the 28-year-old woman. Kitty’s brother Bill was 16, and the murder of the sister he adored affected every aspect of his life. Not wanting to be an 'apathetic bystander,' he enlisted in the Marines out of high school and lost his legs in Vietnam. He spent the rest of his life trying to understand what happened that night in Queens, always seeking closure.

Yesterday his search came to an extraordinary end, which I lift verbatim from The New York Times.

To the Editor:

With Winston Moseley’s death comes, maybe, the final chapter in the tragic story of the events of the early morning of Friday, March 13, 1964.

As my mother would have wished, my family’s “better angels” do now express our condolences to the Moseley family, most especially to the Rev. Steven Moseley, one of Winston’s sons, a man of faith, love and courage, who struggled in his formative years with a stain and dilemma undeservedly forced onto his being.

May the spirit, in whom I believe that Kitty, and now Winston, reside, help resolve the eternal question: What do we owe to all our fellow beings? This is a question that each human being must strive to answer, one moment at a time. Let us join with the hope of shared egalitarian equanimity.

William J. Genovese

Washington, Conn.

Tip of the Volcano

Iceland is magical place.

Geologically, it’s the youngest country on Earth: its newest volcanic island erupted from the ocean in the mid-1960s. It’s a land filled with raging waterfalls and bubbling roadside hot springs, which together create a nation powered almost solely by renewable energy. The Althingi, founded in 930, is the oldest national parliament in the world; and its wonderfully named poet and political leader, Snorri Sturluson, was murdered in 1241 by the King of Norway to make way for Iceland’s annexation.

A normally conservative people, with the world’s highest literacy rate, Icelanders fell hard for privatization in the early 1990s. They went on a debt-fueled spending spree, as their per capita wealth exploded and the country’s three banks became casinos for foreign money. In 2008 the banks defaulted and the economy collapsed. Icelanders kicked out their government, let the banks fail, indicted the bankers and handed out mortgage relief. It worked. The country recovered, presumably sobered.

Yesterday, Iceland’s prime minister resigned, the first victim of the Panama Papers – and certainly not the last.

The just-released numbers are staggering: 214,000 offshore accounts; 14,000 clients; over 200 countries and territories (not bad, as there are only 196 countries in the world); “leaders” from every walk of life; 11.5 million documents; 2.6 terabytes of data. Putin’s favorite cellist is worth $100 million, and FIFA is back in the news.

The 1% – or 0.1% – is not an American exception but a worldwide disgrace, uncovered by the kind of investigative journalism that has become an endangered species.

I think Bernie’s on to something.

In Other Words

“The line of ‘Make America great again,’ the phrase, that was mine. I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody’s now using it. They are all loving it. I don’t know, I guess I should copyright it. Maybe I have copyrighted it.” Maybe? According to The Daily Beast’s Michael Daly, Donald Trump filed to copyright Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan six days after Barack Obama’s reelection. Farsighted for someone who has only “been a politician now for eight months.”

“Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. in his last speech. “And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be . . .to make America a better nation.” He was murdered the next day, 48 years ago today. He was 39.

“America will become great again when we can demonstrate that we truly care about our fellow human beings, when the growing disparity between the haves and the have nots is meaningfully diminished, when legislation is created by people who represent us instead of whoever has the most money and when the White House and Congress consists of folks who are truly thoughtful and care more about this country than they do about their own legacy. Clearly that's not going to happen if the likely Republican candidate prevails.” Phil Crossman, a motel owner on Vinalhaven, Maine, columnist for the Penobscot Bay Pilot, and lifelong Republican.

Trust the Young

I’m just not feeling the Bern. It’s probably an age thing. The young are flocking to Sanders’ revolution. They want to change the world . . . or so I’m told. At my age, it’s hard just summoning the energy to try and tweak it. Back in the 1960s when we didn’t trust anybody over 30, we too set out to change the world. But along the way we gave up or we gave in or we dropped out. The world changed, but not because it bent to our will. Still, I read with hope that today’s 18-29-year-olds are among those who most disdain Trump – and most strongly support Sanders.

I’m not yet ready to join them. For one thing, I believe in the power of a free – and fair – marketplace to effect change. Not the one where corporate cartels – too big to fail and too entrenched to regulate – ride roughshod over the common good, but the one where start-up businesses breathe new life into their neighborhoods; where impact investing is a powerful social, environmental and economic tool; where young entrepreneurs bring their creativity and passion to Detroit, intent on making not just a fortune but a difference. Will they stay? Will the dig in? Will they hold onto their visions? With the young, you never know. But it's exciting.

The young are the future, and they have historically been the forerunners of change. Though I’m not ready to join them on Bernie’s bandwagon, I support their journeys, and I look to them to lead the way.

Magic Carpet Bombing

Scott Atran, a French-American anthropologist who lives in Paris, is a thoughtful and challenging expert on terrorism, who argues in “ISIS is a revolution,” that “we are not only failing to stop the spread of radical Islam, but our efforts often appear to contribute to it.” Michael Jetter, a German-born, US-educated economist who teaches in Medellín, Colombia, has found that “media attention devoted to terrorism actively encourages future attacks.”

Atran contends that, however brutal and repugnant ISIS is to us and most Muslims, it speaks directly to people who “yearn for the revival of a Muslim Caliphate and the end to a nation-state order the Great Powers invented and imposed” and who long “for something in their history, in their traditions, with their heroes and their morals” – in other words, marginalized people seeking a homeland. This is not the first quest for a homeland in the region, and it has fired adherents around the world “in the service of some indomitable moral and spiritual force” – and created “the largest and most diverse volunteer fighting force” since WWII.

Jetter found that “one additional NYT article [increases] the number of attacks in the following week by 11 to 15 percent.”

Together, the studies suggest we: (1) rethink strategies, such as the “tired call to shore up the broken nation-state system;” (2) recognize that bellicosity, fear mongering and sensationalism play into ISIS’ hands; and (3) realize that retreating into Fortress America makes the world – and America – a more dangerous place. Finally, the authors’ multinational perspectives underscore how our xenophobic fears keep us from understanding a world in which borders are increasingly outdated.

I am grateful to friends who sent both articles.

Gunfight at "The Q"

Next Up: Packing heat in downtown Cleveland. As of yesterday, over 35,000 people had signed a petition demanding the Republican National Committee close “Quicken Loan Arena’s unconstitutional ‘gun-free zone’ loophole.” No candidate has denounced the petition; Donald Trump is studying its “fine print.”

Can you imagine a Republican convention with Trump and Cruz supporters bristling with hardware, ready to protect the honor of their hero’s wife – egged on by two of the most repellent presidential candidates in American history, one of whom has predicted riots if he doesn’t win? But the delegates will be ready for ISIS; ready for protesters who have different ideas of how to make America great again; perhaps even ready to walk Cleveland’s nearby streets where the nation’s truly forgotten people live.

I spent last week in British Columbia’s Selkirk wilderness where I was reminded that the natural world is a majestic place largely indifferent to its strutting bipeds.

So I missed the titillating details of the newest chapter in American exceptionalism, the one in which we are no more the city on a hill but the laughing stock of the world.

As the laughter dies on our lips, may the ridicule these guys deserve give way to a determination to reclaim our public discourse.

And for those who look at Trump and Cruz and say it cannot happen here, consider the words of H.L. Mencken: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

Dirty Waters

Flint’s water is back in the news, now politically as well as physically toxic. “The Birthplace of General Motors” is perhaps the most beleaguered city in America: 40% of its people in poverty; crime and unemployment almost triple the national rates; a city unrecovered from the 2008 housing catastrophe. It’s a place you leave if you can (its population is half what it was in 1970) – but that’s not easy for homeowners facing plummeting housing values.

Two years ago, the state-appointed emergency manager switched Flint’s freshwater source from Lake Huron to the Flint River for one reason: to save money. Dirty water should be cheaper than clean water, right?

Not in Flint, which has the most expensive water in the country. As in much of America, both urban and rural, poverty and environmental vulnerability go hand in hand.

Clearly, Flint requires a lot of economic investment, much of it to rebuild its decayed infrastructure, but don't hold your breath in these anti-government times. But we should think beyond vast engineering projects. Particularly when it comes to water, using nature’s infrastructure is a far better way to go – for if we take care of our upstream watersheds, their streams and rivers can actually process pollutants and clean their own water.

Almost 20 years ago, New York City also faced a water and financial crisis. Instead of building a multi-billion-dollar filtration plant for its 9 million users, it invested a fraction of that amount to protect its water sources up to 100 miles away. The result is cleaner and cheaper water.

In the long run, Flint’s water doesn’t need more chemicals; it needs cleaner sources.

Holy Smokes

Friday’s post brought quite a reaction, particularly after my social-media consultant (who in real life is my daughter Annie) spent $50.00 to “boost” the post on my blog’s Facebook page. I’m not exactly sure where the money went, or why, as I’m challenged in these matters, but measured solely by “cost per insult” we definitely got good value. Things started out well. Some people agreed with me, others didn’t. It seemed that a civil conversation might actually break out. “I respect your views but do not agree,” wrote Adelina Clonts in a decided understatement. “I’m glad [Obama] has someone who thinks of him respectfully. Thank you for sharing your view.”

“I’ve read all the entries since mine,” wrote Joann Williams, “and am pleased that dialogue was taking place.”

Which turned out to be the red flag in front of the bull. “You’re a moron,” responded Matt Wargny, and we were off. As the disputants turned on each other with escalating and expletive-laced ferocity, I seemed to fade into the background.

“That’s probably not a bad thing,” said Annie. “But you are still the cause of their vitriol.”

As the process took on a life of its own, and more and more Obama denigrators joined in, it started to feel like a Trump rally – although Annie assured me I wasn’t in any immediate danger: “Nah, they just want to hear themselves talk.”

Facebook has a Compassion Team to make personal interactions “more human, and more humane.” Maybe they’ll launch a political arm.

Subterranean Samaritan

“I am an invisible man . . . invisible, understand simply because people refuse to see me” (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man). On the train heading north beneath Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, the woman slumped across two seats, clutching her belongings in her arms, three more paper bags on the floor below. She wore a ragged winter coat, and her eyes were closed as she slept, oblivious to the rest of us in the crowded car. It’s an all-too-familiar sight on New York subways, particularly on winter nights when the cars provide refuge and a little warmth for some of the city’s homeless. Standing above her, a tall African-American man prepared to get off at the next stop. When the doors opened, he reached over, put a $20 bill inside her coat and wordlessly left the train. No one saw his act except me. The woman slept on, and I imagined her waking up, perhaps at the end of the line, and finding the money hidden in her coat.

I don’t know whether this single act of kindness made much of a dent in the woman’s life, let alone in the matter of New York’s homelessness, now at its highest level since the Great Depression, with an estimated one in every 147 New Yorkers currently homeless. Nor do I know how many other acts of kindness were happening across the city. All I know is that the world seemed a kinder, more hopeful place.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise (Luke 10:36-7).

American Idyll

I remember thinking, while stationed many years ago at SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) in Belgium, that my European friends seemed disappointed in me for not living up to their image of an American: a big, jovial man in a ten-gallon hat, a little crass, largely unread, and out of his depth in Europe – but good-hearted, a figure almost larger than life. It was an image straight out of the movies, but grounded in the enormous gratitude Europeans still felt for their American liberators 25 years after the end of World War II. By contrast, my New England understatement and diffidence made me seem like a junior-varsity Englishman, although without the English arrogance that so annoyed the rest of Europe. To many Europeans then, America was a magical place – perhaps even “a city upon a hill.” An Irish emigrant, who set sail from his homeland long ago, once said to me, “I actually believed New York’s streets were paved with gold.”

A friend who has lived in Europe for many years and is an astute observer of cultural nuances recently told me he thought the European romance with America ended for good in 2003, when a faux Texan with a twang and a cowboy hat invaded Iraq and put the last nail in the illusion of American exceptionalism. Now, he said, Europeans are watching, with a combination of horror and disbelief, as Hollywood’s good-natured cowboy morphs into a snarling demagogue who inflames his followers' basest instincts. They have seen it before.