Trump’s Victory and its Ramifications

Posted on 10 November 2016 by Carol

I woke this morning at 6:30 AM, a mere three hours after going to bed wretched from Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.  She had failed to gain the needed 270 electoral votes to elect her President of the United States.  I had gone to bed tearful, exhausted and deeply saddened.  Although the possibility of a Trump victory had frightened me for months, until last night it had an abstract and improbable feel to it.  Like the pollsters and political commentators, I thought a Clinton victory the more probable outcome.  She’d obtained plenty of funding, had organized her followers at the grass roots, had name recognition and plenty of experience, she was intelligent.  I was excited by the prospect of…finally…having a woman in the oval office and I knew I was not alone in this.

I, like so many others, watched the votes roll in, state by state, horrified as they went, one after another, to Trump’s column.  The implications of a Trump presidency were too awful to contemplate.  We were electing a man who had consistently denigrated anyone even remotely different from mainstream white American; had insulted women and demonstrated his lack of respect for our rights over and over again; had promised to build a wall with our neighbour to the South; had refused to inform the American people of his true financial worth (all the while claiming his wealth as a basis for his ability to lead the country); hadn’t bothered to deny his failure to pay US taxes over many years; had expressed his disbelief in climate change and his disregard for science; had demonstrated his lack of self-control repeatedly—something rather important for the person who holds the nuclear codes and could embroil the world in nuclear war; had changed his policy prescriptions apparently at random (which most would consider lying and dishonest—the traits he consistently attributed to Hillary Clinton); not to mention his simplistic and vulgar language that is anything but presidential.

Yet, here we are, the morning after, facing four years of government led by such a person.  My sense of betrayal by my own people is difficult to bear.  What about our history of welcoming all (‘Give me your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free’)?  What about the progress we’ve made (or thought we’d made) opening up the halls of power, education, opportunity to those long disenfranchised?  What about our hopes for a return to education that is truly available to all? Do we lose the progress we’ve made toward affordable health care for all?  Can it really be that my fellow citizens don’t value such things?  Can it really be that they find Trump’s blustering egotistical manner and racist and sexist attitudes truly appealing?  Can they really believe that such a man can lead our country (and the world, for that matter) in a desirable direction?

And what about the international scene?  His links with Putin have been worrying all along.  Will he join forces with Putin to invade more countries?  What about his attitudes toward Muslims?  Will he act on his plan to keep Muslim refugees out and register American Muslims?  We don’t know how much of his isolationist talk he will actually try to implement.  But the fact that both houses of Congress have Republican majorities means that he may have a fairly free hand to wreak whatever havoc he chooses. 

There was a time when American values were appreciated around the world, when elements of the American democracy represented a shining light that those combatting tyranny looked to for inspiration.  People in other countries admired our economic success, but they also admired the political system in which transfers of power were peaceful, elections were generally fair.  There was a sense that we were free to pursue our dreams whatever those might be.  This sense of an ideal America has waned, perhaps disappeared altogether, as times have changed, social analysis has deepened, and vastly enhanced communication has made our warts more visible.  Trump’s rallying cry, ‘Making America great again’, taps into this changed view of America, but it looks inward and proposes solutions that push us further from these ideals rather than in any sense returning to them.

The only bright spot, and it is a small one, is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote (by a small margin).  Slightly more voters seem to have opted out of Trump’s agenda—though our system, relying on the electoral college to make the final decision, means that this win carries only symbolic weight.  It certainly doesn’t give her the presidency.

The other element of my own disappointment, and that of many American women, possibly women around the world, is the broadening of opportunities that Hillary’s election would have opened up for our daughters and granddaughters.  We imagined that breaking this particular glass ceiling would be powerful symbolically for the young women of the country.  They could feel in a more visceral way that any job was open to them.  This slap in Hillary’s face—-after she’s shown her political savvy by accomplishing great things, gained abundant political experience, demonstrated her intelligence, long worked for the public good—tells women that no matter what they accomplish, they are likely to run up against the powerful barrier of sexism.  How many will conclude, why bother?  If they do, we are losing out, we are not catalyzing the creativity, the enthusiasm, the capabilities of roughly half the population.  It’s a waste and it’s criminal.

Wallowing in sorrow and grief will not change the situation; but yesterday’s result has increased my own sense of global danger—physical danger of more war and poorer health, danger to the gains we’ve made in gender and other kinds of equity, and ironically given Trump’s appeal to the under-educated and disenfranchised, danger (near-certainty) of enhancing the income gap between rich and poor.  Our system has dealt with bad presidents before and managed to endure.  But I think in this case, we will need an alert and vigilant populace, more vigilant than has been the case of late.  There are too many parallels with Hitler’s Germany for complacency.  Let us learn from history.  In Maya Angelou’s words, ‘Let us rise’ from our sadness and go forth with vigilance and perseverance.

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Eva Taylor: A Woman to Admire

Posted on 6 November 2016 by Carol

I stood in my friend’s living room this morning, doing yoga with three other older women, as I do several times each week—driving over the hill on Ringwood Road, through the brilliant yellows, reds, oranges and browns of autumn leaves, from my nearby home in Etna, NY.  As my eyes chanced on her fireplace, I was transported back to Quilcene, Washington, to the home of Eva Taylor in the spring of 1973.  I’d been thinking a lot about friends in that community where I lived for three years in the 1970s.  I plan to return for a couple of weeks of research next spring.  By happenstance I linked with Eva’s niece on Facebook and learned, with sorrow, that Eva had died not long ago.

My first introduction to Eva did not bode well for a good relationship.  She’d written us a rather aggressive letter, basically asking what the hell we were doing at the school.  My (now ex-) husband and I were involved in a large research project to ‘monitor and evaluate’ an experimental schools program there—one intended to be designed by the local community.  Before responding, we discreetly asked other people about her and learned, for instance, that she was a member of the John Birch Society (an organization with political views about 180 degrees from my own) and a consistent opponent of the school’s yearly levies (elections called to raise taxes for the school).  These facts, combined with the rather hostile tone of the letter, led us to anticipate our interview with her with some trepidation.

She lived out in the country, and we joked that perhaps our pickup truck would reduce her sense of us as ‘educated idiots’, perhaps slightly mollify the antagonism she apparently felt.  Maybe it did and maybe it didn’t, but once we met her, our preconceived notions were blown to the winds.  She welcomed us and listened very politely and with apparent interest to our explanation of what we were trying to do.  She asked intelligent questions and had responses we considered reasonable.

As we got to know her, little by little, we discovered a woman of depth, intelligence and with a genuinely adventurous spirit.  At the time, I was deep into the radical feminism of the 1970s, struggling personally with the many ways in which our culture strengthens and reinforces sexist attitudes and behaviour.  Here was a woman whose whole life was a tribute to women’s capabilities and strengths—without any apparent influence of this 1970s resurgence of feminism.  She was a real inspiration to my 27-year old self, and continues to inspire me whenever she comes to mind.

Eva had homesteaded in Alaska with her husband, who was a bush pilot there.  She had built an amazing and beautiful fireplace of giant rounded grey stones reaching to the ceiling of her living room (the image that came to mind this morning).  She had found the stones, brought them home, and built the fireplace on her own.  She had ridden all the way across the country on a mule with a woman friend.  She invited people, including us, to her home to sing and play the piano, the fiddle.  Her relationship with her husband appeared to be one of unusual equality and mutual respect.

An interchange I expected to be brief—and feared would be painful—turned into a series of pleasant memories that have stayed with me these four decades and more.  Eva Taylor, who held political views I definitely did not share, still managed to inspire my admiration and respect.  She was a real pioneer, a woman of great strength and determination, and a role model for the young women who knew her.  She will be missed, but she’s left a legacy that will live on. 

In this year of political turmoil, I find it good to remember that people of any political persuasion can be reasonable, admirable, worthy of our respect.  We will need to keep that in mind as we try to come together again as a nation after this divisive election campaign.

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An Ode to Vivien C. Smith

Posted on 20 October 2016 by Carol

I woke a few mornings ago, feeling light and happy, enjoying the beauty of the Northeast’s autumn.  Innocently I turned to Facebook, to pass a bit of pleasant time reading what family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances might have to say that fine morning.  But the first message, from the day before, was from one of my nieces announcing that her “beautiful mother, Vivien C. Smith passed away at 9 PM tonight.”

Vivien C. Smith was the second of 12 children, 11 surviving when I knew her best, in the summer of 1968.  I was pregnant with Megan, my first child, and spending my first and only summer with my in-laws in Maine.  Vivien (and her sister Pat) lived in Greene, Maine, down the road from my husband’s parents at whose home we stayed.  Although Vivien had not come often to my mind over these years, the news of her death hit me like a brick falling out of the sky.  It shouldn’t have surprised me.  After all, she was almost as old as my own mother who is now 92—so I suppose she was in her 80s, but in my mind of course, she remained in her 40s.

I remember her inviting me into her traditional old Maine farmhouse, and accepting me, this strange academic young woman from the West, with open arms.  She lived on the top floor of a two story farmhouse, with her mother in law and father in law on the first floor.  Oddly, the two parents in law didn’t speak to each other, and hadn’t for years.  She’d refused to marry her husband unless he agreed that she should have her own kitchen, run her own life, and focus on the house rather than the farm.  She and her husband were both filled with curiosity about everything, and quickly looked up any topic that arose at the dinner table, in their encyclopedias.  She would surely have loved the internet, if she had a chance to become familiar with it.  And she loved opera.  In her youth, she’d played a motherly role to my ex-husband, her brother (number 8 in birth order), and inserted her cultured interests into his brain from an early age.  Surely her influence was felt as he sought and obtained a PhD.

They’d been raised on the banks of the Kennebec River near the small town of Hallowell, Maine.  Their father had been a strong union supporter, and the result had been that he was often unemployed.  They’d had to ski to school some significant distance, and they’d not always had enough to eat.  Michael, my ex-husband, wouldn’t touch rhubarb, because one summer that was all they’d had to eat.  Vivien had surely grown up in times of hardship, probably worse than my ex-husband endured.

But, where some grow bitter or hardened by want, Vivien remained caring, hospitable, and open to new people.  My mother and father, who had been working in Japan the previous year, came that summer to visit us.  They’d stopped in India, where my mother had contracted hepatitis, though at the time we weren’t sure what she had.  The obvious severity of her illness  frightened my parents-in-law, who rather heartlessly insisted that my ex-husband throw them out (causing my ex-husband great grief and embarrassment and my parents significant inconvenience and dismay).  As my mother lay, possibly dying, in the hospital and my worried father stayed in the van that we’d ‘babysat’ during their year abroad, Vivien (and Pat as well) came to visit her in the hospital. They brought the wonderful fresh tomatoes that only Maine can produce; and they brought their kindness, sweet words, and hospitality—all balm to our troubled souls.

I remember sitting at the long table on the ground floor of Vivien’s house, having Sunday supper, which was always popcorn served like cereal, with milk and sugar—a use of popcorn that was new to me.  Many things in Maine were new to me.  I delighted in people’s ways of speaking; I loved their accent. I sat in Vivien’s sister Pat’s kitchen snipping beans and shelling peas.  I learned how to knit from my mother in law.  My brothers in law delighted in my ignorance with regard to cow pies (one of which I stepped on, probably at their urging, thinking it was a stone).  And the whole family was amazed at both of our farming ignorance: Knowing we were in PhD programs, they assumed we would know a lot about the things that interested them (technical details of drilling wells, farm-related knowledge about which we were both utterly clueless). 

Through all these cherished memories, Vivien’s smiling friendly face recurs.  I learned from her about love apples:  the local word for tomatoes, believed to cause cancer and other bad things.  This resulted in my having access to all the tomatoes I could possibly eat that summer—quite a few!  And underlying all this fond personal experience was the love that my ex-husband felt for her.  She’d been a strong presence in his childhood, and I quickly learned to share his love for her.

So….it was not with happiness that I read the news of her death.  The depth of my sadness has surprised me, given that I have not seen her for decades—but my memories of her are cherished and tears flow as I contemplate her death.  The world is a poorer place without her.

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“The Boys in the Boat”: A Review

Posted on 9 October 2016 by Carol

I never thought that I would choose to read a book about a sport.  I’m just not sporty!  But so many people recommended The Boys in the Boat that I took the bait….and I was caught, hook, line and sinker.

Maybe it was because it’s about my neck of the woods (the Pacific Northwest).  The central character in this true story is from Sequim, which is a town near Quilcene, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula where I did ethnographic fieldwork for three years in the 1970s.  Maybe it’s because a lot of it takes place at the University of Washington, where I got my PhD, and in Seattle, where I and also my daughter have lived over the decades.  There are segments in New York State, where I now live; and in Princeton, New Jersey, where I spent my ‘junior year abroad’ (as one of 9 ‘guinea pig’ girls on a then all-male campus).  Maybe it’s because the boys in the boat make their way to Europe by ship (which I did several times in my childhood—going back and forth between Turkey, where I lived in the 1950s, and the US, where I had and have my roots). Maybe it was the interweaving of European politics in the 1930s, the rise of Hitler’s power, into the Olympic story.  It made for frightening comparisons with the politics of the present-day Presidential contender, Donald Trump. I don’t know, but I found it an extraordinarily fascinating and moving book.

It is the story of the 8-man crew that won gold at the 1936 Olympics in Germany, though the protagonist is one member, Joe Rantz.  The book starts with his difficult childhood, which includes the early death of his mother, his rejection by his step-mother and his father’s inability or unwillingness to protect him from her, the poverty of the 1930s, and the necessity for him to ‘make it on his own’ from the age of 15.  Throughout, however, Joe maintains a positive attitude, meeting each challenge with both resolve and sadness but without apparent bitterness.  With persistent effort he manages to do well in school and get accepted at the University of Washington, where again persistent effort is required to obtain and maintain a spot on the unusually talented crew team.  The book tells the tale of the team’s various challenges from other schools, their excellent record of wins, their growing teamwork,  culminating with the Olympic race in Germany.

Woven throughout the book are other admirable characters:  Joe’s demanding but likable freshman coach; the  strong, silent head coach; the knowledgeable shell-maker from England who also coaches informally in the background; and Joe’s faithful girlfriend from Sequim who joins him in Seattle, working her way through college as well.  We meet his team mates, and gradually build up an understanding of how their respective and varying talents contribute to the success of their shared endeavours.  None of these young men is from a wealthy family; they hail from loggers and dairyfolk and farmers—yet they are competing in what is seen as an elite sport, from England and from the eastern seaboard. 

A background element is the desire to bring Seattle, then seen as a backwater town, into the limelight and gain recognition for the city and the state as worthy of national attention, producing serious competitors.  There is also a strong democratic undertone, a recognition of the traditional American value that ‘anyone can do it’ if they work hard enough and stick to it long enough.  The book recognizes and praises the boys’ persistence; and it manages to convey the emotional components of good teamwork.  Besides the boys’ individual abilities with an oar, they need to work as a single unit if they want to move the shell through the water with the greatest speed, to find their ‘swing’.  They are led in this by the coxswain who sits in the back barking out commands and his ‘stroke man’, whom the other rowers follow as they determine their shared rowing speed.

There are long segments in which the reader follows the progress of individual races, but the prose is so compelling that, even with no initial interest in the sport, my attention never wandered.  Sprinkled into the words about rowing speeds and technique were insights about the individuals’ characters, childhoods, struggles and accomplishments.  The background of national or regional pride, personal competitions between coaches and schools, and between elites and the working class enliven such narratives.  It is a gripping personal story, an explication of important American values, and a commentary on 1936 politics that bears reading about today.

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On ‘Composing a Further Life’ and Affiliate Faculty Positions

Posted on 31 December 2015 by Carol

Three bits of information prompted these thoughts:  First, I heard the sad story of a young, affiliate faculty member and mother, working part time in three universities, widely spaced on the landscape.  She is under-paid and under-recognized at work, and over-worked in both work and home settings, seriously undermining her morale and enthusiasm.  Second, I considered both my own comfortable semi-retired situation as a visiting scholar at one university, rather comparable in some respects to an affiliate faculty member, without pay; and my husband’s similar comfortable, now also unpaid affiliate position.  Third, I’m reading a book entitled Composing a Further Life, by Mary Catherine Bateson, a sort of sequel to her earlier book, Composing a Life. 

In both books, Bateson uses long, indepth interviews with a small number of people to reveal the variation in ways that people are making and have made peace and satisfaction within their lives as they age.  In the earlier book, she follows the lives of a number of successful women, most of whom have had their own careers and plans disrupted, sometimes repeatedly, by career-dictated moves of their husbands.  She uses the patchwork quilt as an analogy for the creative ways these women have crafted useful and successful lives, despite (perhaps even because of) these interruptions.  In the more recent book, she examines by similar methods the lives of a variety of people later in life.  She first proposes that we recognize a significant global demographic shift with wide-ranging repercussions, due to our longer lifespan.  Where in the past we recognized three stages—childhood, adulthood, and old age—she proposes that we now have a fourth stage, which she called ‘adulthood II’, characterized by ‘active wisdom’.  In this later book, she uses the analogy of adding a room on a house.  The added room does more than simply add to an intact structure; rather its addition results in changes in the uses of all the other rooms in the house.  Just so, she argues, the addition of this fourth stage, adulthood II, changes the ways that we structure and value the other stages and elements in our lives.

While reading this book, I’ve been cogitating on the ubiquity of affiliate faculty positions in the US and on their differential impacts, depending on the life stage of the individual so categorized.  Although an affiliate position could, in theory, be a perfect solution for a parent of a young child, in fact, as currently structured this situation is typically oppressive and unfair. For young people, just beginning their work lives, in need of recognition, income and time, an affiliate faculty position may be better than nothing, but it is usually in no way ideal.  If the person has a young child or children, the low rate of pay is likely to do little more than pay for childcare and possibly transport.  The need to show continuing academic/professional involvement on one’s resume provides a powerful incentive to accept such employment, despite the common lack of financial profit, recognition, and other evidence of appreciation where one works.  Compounding this adverse situation is the felt need to ‘prove’ one’s commitment to one’s profession.  The academic world (indeed, society in general) does not acknowledge the value of childcare, the socialization of children, seeing rather any time devoted to this truly life-sustaining activity, as proof that one is not committed to one’s profession. 

If one is in adulthood II (and financially sufficiently secure) however, an affiliate position may indeed be the perfect solution.  Older adults typically have less need of money—-they may have already furnished and own their home, have a paid off car, have adult children who take care of themselves, and have fewer work-related expenses.  At the same time, older adults have less energy than is ideal in a full time job.  Still, they are likely to want to continue contributing the knowledge and experience they have gained over what was once a lifetime (an age of ‘three score and ten’).  Under such conditions, an affiliate position can provide a chance to continue contributing, at an appropriately reduced rate, while slowly adapting to eventual full retirement.

In anthropology, a fair amount has been written since 1965 about the ‘image of limited good’ (introduced by George Foster).  This concept, common in many cultures, postulates that there is a certain amount of ‘good stuff’ out there, that whatever you get is lost to me, and whatever I get is lost to you.  There are indeed situations like that.  If I take the last piece of pie, you can’t have it.  However, in my own view, this concept is applied far too widely (e.g., with regard to faculty positions at universities).  Knowledge, universities’ claim to fame, is not like pie (discussed fully in Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of the Mind).   One can certainly argue, as many have done, that my providing free labour at a university is taking an opportunity away from a young person (even without my being paid).  I agree that the way universities are currently structured, this can well be the case.  But this kind of argument (and reality) is based on the ‘limited good’ notion, which we should not be applying to universities. Surely there is more need for people who can teach* young people than is currently supplied by our university systems.  Surely there is sufficient need in the world for input and sharing from both the old and the young. 

I struggle with (at least) three difficult  questions in this regard—both impinging on my own life and the lives of people I love: 

> How can we allow these aging purveyors of ‘active wisdom’ the opportunity to continue contributing their experience and knowledge—a process that is currently hindered by both a system based on the image of limited good and the ageism we know exists? 

> How can we develop systems that adequately compensate and recognize young professionals, systems that do not oppress those whose professional needs are so much greater and so different from those of the aging?

> How can we facilitate societal recognition of the vital role of enculturation of the young (and care of the truly elderly), in such a way that both men and women can find a meaningful work-life balance that adequately accomplishes such goals while not interfering with their prestige and future opportunities in their profession?

I do not have the answers to these questions; but I think we need to be seriously considering how to answer them—probably including tearing down conceptual barriers like the image of limited good, which can freeze our thinking in tired old pathways inappropriate for our new conditions.  I want us to be creating a world in which young parents can enjoy and care for their children at the same time that they are making reasonable progress in their work lives; a world in which those growing old but not yet truly infirm can make beneficial use of what wisdom and experience they have garnered over the decades.  I have been fortunate myself in being able to remain active at a suitably reduced level, but I know many whose knowledge and skills are sitting on a shelf, unrecognized and unappreciated—-what a waste!

—————–

*As I write these words, I am reminded of Tania Li’s fascinating 2007 book, The Will to Improve.  In this book, Li shows how our ‘will to improve’ the conditions of others has led to all sorts of problems (in Indonesia).  One can see ‘teaching’ as motivated by such a ‘will’—but I’m imagining a situation in which what we have called teaching is really the process of creating contexts and conditions in which others can learn most effectively, a sharing of experience.  The problem with our will to improve, comes, in my view, when we want to improve others, according to our own views of what they need.

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A Letter to Sign: Incompatibility of Intolerance with American Values

Posted on 22 December 2015 by Carol

I just signed an open letter by Prakash Kashwan of the University of Connecticut, to be submitted to the New York Times by 23 December 2015 (Please click the link here to sign). It justly rails against the growing intolerance directed at Muslims in this country.  He notes, for instance, how fear is growing apace.  Drawing on US history, he observes that fear can

“…disconnect us from reason and have devastating consequences. The reduction in immigrants’ rights codified by the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the restrictions on free speech established by the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-18, and the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII were all policies born from fear, and all resound throughout history as stark contradictions to American values.”

A more recent example of this kind of contravening of dominant American values was what is now termed the McCarthy era.  In the 1950s, the fear of Communism grew so great in this country that anyone suspected of Communist (or even Socialist) leanings was branded as an enemy of the state.  The House Committee on Un-American Activities, initiated in 1945, grew in power and influence, reaching its heights of oppression in the early to mid-1950s, with Joseph McCarthy leading the anti-Communist crusade, supported enthusiastically by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.  Their victims were denied due process of law, lost their jobs, and were discriminated against in ways that we now recognize as patently unjust (see e.g., http://www.trackedinamerica.org/timeline/mccarthy_era/intro/).

Let us hope that our fears of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban do not stimulate a repetition of such shameful policies and behaviour.  Islamic extremism, like the Communism of the mid 20th century, carries with it actions and policies that we also abhor; but that does not mean we should paint all Muslim citizens and immigrants, most of whom are peaceful good people, with this damning brush.

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On Trump, Hitler and other Tyrants

Posted on 19 December 2015 by Carol

We had a visit last night from an interesting young man.  He was here as an exchange student, getting an MBA at Cornell.  Of German stock, he is bright, articulate, and—amazingly—interested in discussing all sorts of topics with an elderly couple!  He helped us put the finishing touches on our Christmas tree.  He stood on a stool and carefully draped strands of ‘icicles’ over each branch, high up toward the top, while I continued putting them on the back of the tree.  As we worked, he told me about his grandparents’ experience of World War II.  One grandfather had been pressed against his will into service in the SS, the dreaded Nazi band of soldiers.  Because of his grandfather’s reluctance, he had been branded on the chest, with the letters SS, so that he could not later deny his involvement or avoid continued service.  His other grandfather was in the regular German Army, and had been captured by the Americans and put in a prison camp.  The young man said that Hitler had come to power in a legitimate election, but that immediately on gaining power, he had obliterated his political opponents, and taken absolute power in the country—against the will of much of the populace. We discussed the draw for many of being the world’s most powerful nation and a member of an elite group, set apart from others; how seductive such claims seemed for some people, for many people.

Our conversation strengthened a worry that has been growing in my own mind as I have listened to the claims and aims of the US Republican candidates.  The most recent Republican debate (17 December 2015) further reinforced my worries.  The topic throughout was terrorism, with an occasional sidebar on immigration.  The antagonism to and fear of Muslims was pervasive.  Some called for an absolute ban on all Muslims coming into the country and an expulsion of those refugees who are already here.  Donald Trump was the most  dramatically anti-Muslim.

  •  Is this not similar to Hitler’s ideas about Jews, and other ‘undesirables’ like Gypsies and gays?  Does it not go against our own traditions of welcome?

He compounded this repugnant thought with similar ideas about Mexicans and others who come to this country from the South.  He planned to make an impenetrable wall between the US and Mexico to keep out these ‘undesirables’ as well; and to deport immediately all those currently in the country illegally.  What irony that candidates, Cruz and Rubio, children of immigrants, are among the most bombastic against America hospitality to those in need.

  • Think of the Soviet building of the Berlin Wall, and all the pain and suffering that went along with that attempt to control people’s movements across borders. 

But these were sidelines. 

The center pieces of Trump’s proposed policies and those of most other Republican candidates included their intention to ‘make America strong again’, to take back America’s role as the ‘leader of the (free?) world’; and to do this by bombing Syria and ISIS to smithereens.  Trump said it more clearly in Iowa: “They have some [oil fields] in Syria, some in Iraq. I would bomb the s— out of ’em. I would just bomb those suckers. That’s right. I’d blow up the pipes. … I’d blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left.” (http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-bomb-isis-2015-11).

  • What about the populace in those areas? we may ask. 

Trump went further, suggesting we hold the families of US enemies hostage, to force their compliance. This echoes the reasoning of the anti-hero Trotsky:(http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/red-guard-into-army/red-guard-into-army-texts/order-of-the-chairman-of-the-revolutionary-war-council-of-the-republic/). 

  • Do we really want to emulate Trotsky?  Is this really the kind of leader the US populace wants our president to be?  A killer of innocents?

How are these plans and goals different from the goals of the German and Russian demagogues whose goals and practices the US has long decried?  We fought World Wars against Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II and Hitler; and we engaged in decades of a global Cold War with Russia, fighting against policies and practices similar to what Trump and his cohorts propose!  We deposed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in large part because of his treatment of his own people (also partly defined by religion) and his invasion of Kuwait. 

  • How would this differ from keeping Muslims out of America and invading Iraq and Syria?

Many of the Republican candidates (Trump, Carson, Cruz particularly) speak in simple language, reducing complex conditions to absurdities, yet apparently this resonates with a portion of our own populace.  Cruz speaks of the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’, planning to obliterate the ‘bad guys’.  Trump speaks in short sentences composed of very simple words (cf. sample above).*  Are they appealing to ‘the uneducated masses’?  Perhaps.

Noticeably missing from this debate was evidence of the Christian faith of the candidates, a standard stock in trade for many Republicans—pulled out with remarkable regularity to impress believers.  Perhaps the clear incompatibility between what they were saying and genuine religious feeling was one reason for the omission.  Compare their responses with those of the current German leader, Angela Merkel, who, unlike her historical predecessors, is opening her arms and her country to those in need. 

To me, these Republican candidates are appealing to the baser impulses of humanity:  racism, religious intolerance, machismo, fear, and a love of power.  They are dangerous in the same ways that Hitler was.  We must remember the parallels and guard against them.

 

*I’d guessed 3-4 word sentences might be the average, but the typical quote above averages nearly 6 words, probably a more accurate estimate.  Just out of curiosity, I wondered how long the average word was: In the 7 sentences above, the average word length was 4.2 letters, ranging from 2-7 letters.  The 7 letter words were ‘suckers’ and ‘nothing’.

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Are We Moving Toward Genocide in the US?

Posted on 19 November 2015 by Carol

Magnus Fiskesjö, a professor of Anthropology at Cornell University, just gave a talk entitled  “The Future of Genocide in Asia: Burma and Elsewhere”.    He began with a discussion of the unique human nature of genocide, in comparison with other animals (which do not commit genocide); and spoke at some length about our human perceptions of reality being our own varying creations, in interaction with some true reality, that our capacity to create also means we can imagine or create unrealistic fears about other human beings.  This was setting the stage for his foray into genocide in Southeast Asia.  

His primary example was from Burma, where some influential people have been maligning the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, some of whom came from Bangladesh.  The government has passed legislation designed to curb births and marriages among them (an action that is counter to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).  Using the Burmese example, he noted how persons in authority (religious, secular, local) were, in some cases, able to counter such tendencies, downplaying the purported dangers posed by the maligned group.  Until recently, when Aung San Suu Kyi was elected in a fair election (attested by many international observers), Fiskesjö had feared the nation was moving toward genocide—partly because of the failure of the previous military government to downplay or counter outrageous and inaccurate claims made against the Rohingya.  He has become encouraged by her election.

However, I was in fact frightened by the patterns he identified, from his more general study of genocide globally.  He provided examples (of both true genocide and tendencies in that direction) from Germany, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, China, and the US.  He then examined genocide historically, and laid out some of the typical pre-existing conditions that led to the occurrence of actual genocide:

  • countries at war—resulting in a portion of the population used to considering enemies less than human
  • an ignorant and isolated populace
  • governed by something other than a ‘stable democracy’
  • worrying changes in the terms of reference used in daily speech (use of language that dehumanizes the potential victims)

He argued persuasively for looking to history to identify these patterns, and for being alert to signs of these patterns in our own country and others.  This was what frightened me.

  • The US has been in one war or another for decades; we have accumulated many people who have been exposed to the dehumanizing effects of war. 
  • Although we have had in the past a comparatively good educational system, concerns about its current quality have emerged, and our media do not provide the kind of balanced and accurate coverage that was the case when I was young—resulting in quite amazing ignorance of the rest of the world, given the communication infrastructure available in the country.  A case can be made for a level of ignorance within large sectors of our population that is worrying.
  • Our political system, once an excellent example of a stable democracy, has ceased to function as intended.  The two main parties are poles apart, unwilling to compromise about anything, with resulting failure to govern.  Our ‘stable democracy’ may in fact be a thing of the past.
  • Most worrying of all is the speech of Republican candidates for president—perfect examples of ‘people in authority’ whose words are listened to.  The terms they have been using, about Mexicans, Syrian refugees, Muslims, fit perfectly into the kinds of speech identified as a precursor in cases where genocide was an ultimate end-point.  Obama and other Democrats strive to counter these remarks, but there is no denying that these hate-mongers have a stage on which to speak.

History suggests we should beware of these tendencies, taking every opportunity we have to counter this kind of speech, to restore our democracy, to reduce ignorance, and to work toward global peace.   As individuals, of these goals, we have the most power to counter this kind of speech; and to be aware of the dangers these patterns pose.

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A Mini-Upswing and a Mini-Downswing in American Politics

Posted on 14 October 2015 by Carol

Last night, on 13 October 2015, the five leading Democratic candidates for President of the United States had their first debate.  I sat glued to the TV for two and a half hours, interested in what they had to say, pleased with the collegiality and substance of the discussion.  I embarrassedly admit that, if I had ever heard of Jim Webb, Martin O’Malley or Lincoln Chafee, the three lesser known candidates, I did not remember anything about their positions—so I wanted to know what they thought.  The tone of the debate was sharp but never vindictive.  The candidates expressed their own plans (loosely), they critiqued each other’s records and ideas, highlighting differences among them; but their mutual respect seemed unanimous.  The moderator, Anderson Cooper, generally asked questions with substance and relevance for the American people (Hillary Clinton’s emails aside). The debate was informative and….civilized.  I came away with clear pictures of what the candidates wanted to do on key issues:  gun control; the Middle East and military involvement; climate change; Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act; Wall Street; crime; social justice; immigration; and women’s rights. 

The contrast between this debate and the Republican one a few weeks ago could not be more stark.  The Democratic candidates spoke civilly to each other.  They were generally truthful in their pronouncements.  They informed the audience of their perspectives and their differences. They shared their ideals for the country.  They focused on substantive issues that we all care about—identifying existing problems and suggesting ways forward to address them.  The passions these Democratic candidates exhibited had to do with their ideas about how to move the country forward, not about their antagonisms to individuals, competitors, or groups (like Planned Parenthood, which has become an underserved whipping post for the Republican Party).

After listening to all candidates, I find myself still torn between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  That Hillary has the experience, intelligence, and inclination to lead is without doubt.  I consider also the fact that she would be our first woman President; that is worth something to me as a feminist.  Although she is a little too much ‘establishment’ for my taste, a little too moderate, I could very easily live with her as President. 

I knew little about Bernie Sanders until this campaign began, but I have received his regular pronouncements on Facebook and have been increasingly impressed.  He focuses on issues of social justice, and his ideas about how to reduce the disparities that so severely plague us these days speak to me.  My own substantive inclinations are closer to his than to Hillary’s.

But Hillary may have a greater chance at beating the Republicans in the general election.  This is at least the common view.  Given the purported American hostility to the idea of ‘Socialism’ and Bernie Sanders’ explicit espousal of elements thereof, this view may be correct.  Yet, his campaign has gained momentum from the very beginning.  He urges the American people to rise up and join him, to fight back against injustices, to require our government to address inequity and iniquity.  And he is raising money from ‘the little people’, not from the industrial magnates and lobbies.  I find his goals consistent with my own.  But ultimately we must have a candidate who can beat the Republicans.  Seeing the two debates, one after the other, has made that ever clearer.  The Republican candidates, without exception, express views that would be dangerous for the world, for the American people, and for generations to come.

The debate precipitated an upswing in my mood about politics.

This morning brought me back to reality—the downswing.  The headline on the front page of The New York Times, a newspaper that many Republicans consider the PR wing of the Democratic Party, was ‘Hillary Clinton Turns Up Heat on Bernie Sanders in a Sharp Debate’.  Although the article, if read in full, gives a more accurate and balanced portrayal of what transpired, many readers will stop at the headline.  The authors, Michael Barbaro and Amy Chozick, go on to outline many of the issues discussed, concluding that the discussion “…was thick with foreign and domestic policy concerns, rather than the personal insults and colorful exchanges that have characterized the Republican forums.”  But the slighting of Bernie Sanders’ campaign and debate status are clear.  It sounds as though he wasn’t able to respond, when in fact, he was;  Hillary’s ‘seat’ was just as hot as Bernie’s.  Bernie Sanders had included the ‘corporate media’ among those causing problems in the American political system; one can easily imagine that this headline is a mini-payback for his remark.  In my case, at least, and probably for anyone who actually listened to the debate, it backfired—reducing my respect for the NYT, reminding me of the dangers and power of biased media.  A related fear comes from the fact that we have allowed our media to be owned by a very small number of corporations, which  now have inordinate power to influence the news we receive. We used to have laws against such near-monopolies.  It’s time to bring those laws back!

So…the political beat goes on.  American politics is not dull.

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On Water and Tranquility

Posted on 11 October 2015 by Carol

As I sat cross-legged on my cushion, preparing for my yoga session, a gentle voice urged me to “Think of a peaceful time when you were filled with tranquility.  Focus your awareness on that experience and keep it in your mind as we carry on.”  I was flooded with such images: 

*I sat on a bench in a rough structure, high on the banks of the Telen River in East Kalimantan , enjoying the comparative cool of late afternoon after a hot day working in the rice fields with my hosts. I watched the wide brown river slowly meander around the bend to the South.

*I paddled alone in a simple wooden canoe around Danau Sentarum Wildlife Reserve in West Kalimantan.  The day was calm, and I could see the low brushy trees reflected perfectly in the still lake water.  Each canoe stroke disturbed the image as it entered the water, but the perfect vertical symmetry soon returned—reality above, reflection below.  The silence was only disturbed by the canoe paddle breaking the water’s surface and an occasional cry of a kingfisher—a brilliant turquoise flash—as it swooped across the water before me.

*I lay in a hammock strung between two tamarind trees on the island of Alor in eastern Indonesia.  Waves broke on the beach a few feet away, and I could see other islands in the distance, beyond the white sand and beautiful clear blue sea. A light breeze kept the air at a pleasant temperature, and I had an interesting book in hand.

I was unable to choose, so I simply imagined all three.   

Today, I began reading a book entitled Blue Mind, by Wallace J. Nichols (Back Bay Books, New York, 2014).  Its subtitle initially put me off: ‘The surprising science that shows how being near, in, on, or under water can make you happier, healthier, more connected and better at what you do’.  But I’m finding it fascinating, especially so in light of the recent experience at yoga, when I selected such water-focused experiences as times of outstanding tranquility.  The book’s author contends that we have a special affinity (and emotional need) for water, based partly on our evolutionary background (we came initially from the water).  He argues that the time has come to incorporate more serious attention to emotion as we examine ourselves scientifically.  The book is full of interesting findings from neuroscience (and elsewhere)—only recently available because of advances in medical technology—that support the idea of a special human connection with water (and also with the color blue).

As I read, I wonder how much the shortage of water in the Middle East might contribute to the perpetual conflict that seems to bedevil the region.  An interesting thought…I read on.

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