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My
son Jonathan, badly injured in a beating and robbery with an iron bar in
Honolulu’s Chinatown, is recovering physically and emotionally from the trauma, but still
has not recovered sight in his right eye. He likes to wear colored eye patches. It will take some time for the
blood to clear sufficiently for an ophthalmologist to see whether he will
need a retinal repair to restore maximum sight in that eye. But his spirits are good and he is glad to be far from
the scene of the crime.
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As someone who has adopted internationally, namely my son
Jon born in Colombia, I’m someone who had gone against the grain by adopting a
boy, while girls have always been more available, especially in China, though
now that country is shifting away from the almost exclusive permission to adopt girls. (At the
time that Jon came into our family, I already had a boy and two girls.) International adoption
has been shrinking due to many factors: international politics, tighter rules,
greater and more expensive bureaucracy, the trend toward smaller and less
child-oriented families, and the proliferation of new fertility technologies
such as the use of gestational mothers, egg and sperm donation, and fertility
drugs. I know several people who have adopted girls from China, including
single women, but apparently single adoption by women (almost never allowed for
single men) is usually no longer allowed there.
This below is
regarding a drug raid in Honduras in 2012
D.E.A. Says
Hondurans Opened Fire During a Drug Raid. A Video Suggests Otherwise. - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/world/americas/drug-enforcement-agency-dea-honduras.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/world/americas/drug-enforcement-agency-dea-honduras.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
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Not
to be nonchalant about sexual harassment and abuse in light of the Harvey Weinstein accusations (and
those also against Donald Trump, Bill
Cosby, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Clarence Thomas, Mel Gibson, and Roman Polanski, among many many other prominent men). However, being the subject of sexual harassment to a lesser or greater degree is
practically a universal female experience. It’s not something particularly
rare or surprising, so, to me, is not all that shocking when it is revealed;
it’s what you would expect under the circumstances. Whether because of
testosterone, a bullying mindset, macho culture, male financial and political
dominance, or a combination thereof, harassment happens to almost all women
routinely, if even to a lesser extent to most of us than among the rich and
famous, and also because some women aspiring to enter those upper ranks are
complicit in their own denigration. (Anita Hill would back me up on the
universality of sexual harassment of women.) Many of these men, Trump and
Weinstein included, are unattractive to women, even repulsive, so they try to
bully their way into being accepted, at least sexually.
Being
married and having young children, I found to be temporarily somewhat
protective. Getting older also has helped, though not so much in Honduras.
Most women pretty much expect it, take it for granted, and try to avoid it. I
am certainly not condoning sexual harassment, but not so surprised or shocked
when it comes to light. Of course, we women should continue to fight all
types of harassment, reveal it, and avoid it whenever possible. I suppose there
are a few instances of prominent women bullying men sexually or otherwise,
but they are rare and outside the norm, while men harassing and bullying
women is probably an almost universal phenomenon. Perhaps in Scandinavia, the
pattern has been broken or at least attenuated?
Probably
the American president has less control over national and international affairs
than we would like to imagine, but the idea of his (or potentially her) control is somewhat comforting.
Right now, the world feels rudderless, like no one is in charge. Or maybe that
a big old cry baby is in charge. You know who I mean.
Instead
of accomplishing anything constructive and moderately helpful, Trump is enjoying the power and
license to be totally destructive, setting out to demolish Obama’s “legacy”
any way he can, sort of like an overgrown wayward child delighting in
crashing and stomping on whatever lies in his path or captures his flighty
attention. It’s a way for him to demonstrate his power and feel self-important.
He deliberately picks fights, however small, with everybody, maybe to get
attention? He then leaves it to others to pick up the pieces; he often simply
sends a tweet to the Republican Congress just to “fix it” without offering any ideas
about how to fix it himself, whether Obamacare, NAFTA, NATO, Iran, or DACA,
or even what a fix might look like, just saying that the current policy is terrible, a disaster, so fix it. Then
he doesn’t have to think of a solution himself or shoulder much blame should
it go wrong. Trump seems unable to learn either from his mistakes,
experience, or advice, even the advice of the generals with whom he has
surrounded himself, while touting them as being above reproach or human frailties.
General Kelly has disproved this with his awkward defense of Trump.
Trump
himself could go a long toward improving his own image if he would simply apologize
for gross remarks, for instance, say “Sorry” to the bereaved widow whom he
offended.
Trump’s
main modus operandi seems to be pitting “us” against “them,” among the
latter, African Americans, Hispanics, foreigners, Muslims, strangers, gays,
non-English speakers, and Puerto Ricans who are not really Americans--and also women.
That
primitive instinct to stick to the familiar social in-group, evident also in
animals, is something many humans have been able to move beyond, especially
those of us who have lived and worked in other countries or, more particularly,
have joined the Peace Corps. I get do get regular e-mails from Townhall Daily, a very conservative pro-Trump outlet, just to see what the
other side thinks and why. It’s still asking for Hillary to be jailed. I also
read the Washington Examiner,
another conservative outlet which, however, is starting to express some
misgivings about Trump.
If,
indeed, Melania has a body double
(as has been speculated) wearing cap and big sunglasses and not speaking aloud,
more power to her for avoiding travels with her oafish husband, whom she must
regret marrying. Her life may have been tolerable when she and her son spent
their days alone together in their NYC penthouse, but spending more time with
Donald is not something she seems to enjoy. He’s the kind of overbearing,
tone-deaf, overweight middle-aged man who touts his wealth and importance,
someone whom most women would gladly avoid. You have to feel sort of sorry
for such an unappealing guy who probably has no real friends or loved ones.
Now, it’s too late for him to learn new social skills or to discard the habit
of lying whenever it suits him. He (as well as his staff) thinks being a
military general automatically gives someone unquestioned authority. General
Kelly tried to coach Trump on what to say to a grieving widow, but, even so, Trump botched it and Kelly botched it later trying to pick up the pieces. Just repeatedly
saying “I’m very, very smart” is not convincing. Apparently, even in college, Trump was a challenged student.
But
if the guy is unappealing as a man and disastrous playing at being president,
the specter of a President Mike Pence is hardly a more welcome prospect.
Pence is even more right-wing than Trump, already has alliances in Congress,
and has thought through his positions and policies, perhaps making him an
even nastier and more effective foe than Trump. So, we all need to be careful what we wish for. The ideal scenario would be for the Trump presidency
to blow up right around the mid-term elections, giving the Democrats a
majority to confront and counteract either Trump or Pence. If ever we emerge
from the Trump catastrophe and want to look back, I should return to these blog
pages from 2017 and, I hope, not much longer than that.
At
the same time, the proliferation of intrusive e-mails touting Trump’s outrages
and soliciting funds to counter him is getting rather annoying. And they are
preaching only to the converted. And how do we know where that money actually
goes? I would go broke responding to them all and responding to any would
probably disperse my e-mail address to even more political outlets.
Trump
and his minions seem not to realize that Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
are US territories and therefore our responsibility. That allows Trump to act
as though any post-hurricane help offered there is some sort of charity. At
the same time, apart from hurricanes, PR has a fairly moderate climate with
houses that don’t need heat and could get by, if properly prepared, without
electrical power, as do millions of people all over the world. Cooking over a
wood fire is not impossible, as I know from my Peace Corps days and from my annual
visits to Honduras. Folks without electricity can and do use candles,
kerosene lamps, flashlights, diesel generators, and even car batteries for
light. Maybe some such items could be rushed to our Caribbean brothers and
sisters to use (with due caution) while the electrical grid is being reconstructed.
Of course, ideally, electrical wires would be placed underground, as we have them
here in Washington, DC, expensive initially, but promoting protection in the
long run.
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