Early Fireworks, GAO Graduation, Cuba, Nicaragua, Avoiding Military Service, Empathy, Breast Milk, Heat Wave, Abortion

On July 3, with my son Jon (now living in West Va.) and a long-time friend. I watched early fireworks in Berkeley Springs, W. Va, where my friend has a vacation house.

I can see why rural, small-town life appeals to my son. It offers a nice respite from the bustle of city life.

My visitors from Bhutan graduated from the GAO program. 

A Saudi woman in the program was very excited about being able to drive when she returned, expecting her husband to surprise her with a new car. She had already learned to drive outside the kingdom. 

An Indiana man was cleaning his gun when it fired and killed his 6-year-old daughter. Enough said.

Cuban environmentalist Ariel Ruiz, recently hospitalized after a hunger strike, has been released, thanks to everyone's efforts. Our Caribbean person stationed in Mexico City has spoken to him by phone, where he is recovering at his sister's home. Amnesty International was able to speak with Ariel Ruiz Urquiola, who has been released from prison and is with his sister. We have yet to review the document which sets out the terms of his release. Ariel said: “Thank you (Amnesty International) for all the help you have given my family, and me, to achieve this. Without you I don’t think this would have been possible.”

The dire clash in Nicaragua continues with over 300 deaths, including of a 10-year-old, but has aroused little international attention and next to nothing has been heard from the Trump administration. Perhaps Trump fears encouraging Nicaraguan refugees?

The Trump administration has suspended the 20,000 annual US immigrant visas available by lottery, closing off even that small door of hope in a big blow to Cuban citizens’ aspirations.

Trump's grandfather 'kicked out of Germany for avoiding military service'

https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/trump-grandfather-germany-friedrich/index.html

Sounds like avoidance of military service runs in the family.

Fortunately, after at first refusing to order flag lowering for the victims of the Annapolis newsroom shooting [fake news!], someone must have talked Trump out of that petty decision and so he was convinced (by the outcry? By Ivanka?) that those victims deserve recognition after all. But the US still apposed an international measure promoting breast milk, that most basic of infant foods, I suppose to promote the purchase of formula, which in developing countries has led to infant malnutrition and death. For Trump, breasts are for pinching, not for nourishing babies. In the Peace Corps, we promoted exclusive breast feeding for at least the first year. Trump’s administration is not only cruel, but incompetent, unable to reunite all the kids summarily taken away from their parents.

Trump is basically a shallow showman, a shock jock, putting on a wild and crazy performance for the headlines, then pulling back to a more tenable position, leaving his advisers to pick up the pieces. Maybe that’s a tactic that often worked for him in his business life. Republican lawmakers don’t know how to deal with him. They certainly are worried about his tariffs and some of his other decisions, but fear upsetting his base.

After Trump’s disastrous private meeting with Putin, who knows what he gave away?—only the interpreter may know. He trashed Britain and Europe, glorying Putin, perhaps even thanking him for helping him get elected.

If mental illness is a reason for gun deaths, how about making more and better mental health treatment available, as well as drug treatment instead of sabotaging Obamacare?

Trump and Sessions have both warned parents not to cross the US border illegally if they don’t want to be separated from their kids. But crossing to ask for asylum is not illegal. They talk about obeying the law, citing the Bible. What about having them start obeying the law on asylum? Now the administration is blocking ports of entry where asylum seekers must submit their requests. And all those talking about borders, as if they were sacrosanct, forget that Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and much of California was once united with Mexico.

Trump and his supporters are outliers nationally and internationally, folks whose beliefs, bullying, and rapacious behavior are at odds with those of most civilized people, repugnant to the majority, so it should be no great surprise that Trump and his officials are repudiated and heckled when they appear in public and when Trump himself is mocked, as with the baby Trump balloon floated over London. They act shocked and call for civility but don’t offer to change their own actions to merit civil treatment. I keep looking for something within this administration to support to encourage them to continue along those lines, but have yet to find it. I am hoping that big money is not everything in the mid-terms and that Democrats and independents turn out to vote against the Republicans, recognizing that Trump himself is the main conveyor of “fake news.”

A report on NPR highlighted research showing that people who acquire wealth and power are less generous and empathetic than poorer, less well known, folks. That has certainly been my own experience, both in the US and abroad. Honduran rural people are the most generous, offering you a tortilla, a cup of coffee, or their last soft drink. Trump has been very far removed from feeling any empathy with others, including with his own family and staff, who can be dismissed or disregarded on a whim. My Confessions book actually started after an argument with a Trump-like friend who denied the existence of empathy and denigrated my charitable impulses. As for Trump’s continuing popularity within his base, it must be based on identification with someone who can lob all manner of outrageous and prejudiced insults at others and get away with it.

But thank goodness that Scott Pruitt is finally out, after taking all he could get. All his appointees whose last names begin with Pr (Priebus, Pruitt, Price) have been especially problematic. Most Trump officials and Trump himself seem to have no inner conscience or empathy, only unfettered greed and lust for money, power, and praise. The man himself is gratuitously cruel and thoughtless, as well as incompetent and intellectually challenged. Taking migrant children away from their parents and summarily discharging non-citizens and transgender recruits from the military (which desperately needs more recruits!) are efforts to punish people simply for being who they are. His tariff war, decimation of Obamacare, and even opposition to the promotion of breast feeding, of all things, show a deliberately cruel and destructive side, but fearful Republicans mostly dare not oppose him. Since his base adores him no matter what, Trump could really afford to be a tad kinder without losing support. “Why did so many working-class voters choose a selfish, thin-skinned, petulant, lying, narcissistic, boastful, megalomaniac for president?” asks Robert Reich in Salon, (July 7, 2018). He really doesn’t have an answer. Trump and his underlings complain about the public’s “viciousness” toward them, but what about their own viciousness toward the majority of their fellow Americans, including Democrats, women, children, immigrants, Muslims, LGBT folks? The rest of us should just meekly and politely bow down to their assaults in the name of civility? Isn’t civility a two-way street?

Probably the main reason for Trump’s most recent Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh, is that he seems to consider the president above the law, at least when we are talking about a Republican president. “The law” is sacrosanct for everyone except Donald Trump. This would-be justice would also tip the court majority definitively to the right. When Bill Clinton was president, Kavanaugh pushed for impeachment, but now he has declared himself against the very idea of presidential impeachment. Hints are that Trump made this deal with Justice Anthony Kennedy when talking him into retiring, as Kavanaugh had apparently clerked for him. So interviews with other candidates, including a woman, were just for show. Kavanaugh was a done deal from the beginning and helped Kennedy to decide to retire now—or so it appears. The Democrats were outfoxed again. They/we need to become more devious and Machiavellian, just like the Republicans. Can Democrats’ anger and sense of grievance at “unfair play” overcome Republican gerrymandering, money, continuing Russian interference, and other electoral Republican advantages in the midterms?

The best current economic-political system, I believe, is that of the Nordic countries, a market economy and a strong social safety net (requiring substantial taxes)—the reverse of the direction we are going in the US under Trump.

On Monday, July 2, I had a 4 pm interpretation assignment at an office located about 12 blocks from my home, so decided to walk, having no other way of getting there. But it was 98 F in the shade and very humid. May I say that was longest 12 blocks I have ever walked and the same was waiting for me on the return. I stopped frequently in the shade along the way, caught my breath, and drank from a water bottle, but was still a bit shaky when arriving to do interpreting for a family. And when I got home, I collapsed and couldn’t even prepare or eat dinner.

Sometimes I find my foreign visitors annoying and vow to stop accepting them. But this message just came in from a former Nigerian visitor: I really miss your motherly care and rich experience-filled company. I always pray to have another opportunity to visit you soon.

Contrary to my “liberal” and certainly Democratic Party stance on most issues, my readers know I am lukewarm on “abortion rights” after the first trimester and especially after 20 weeks, when the fetus certainly can feel pain and might survive outside the womb. It seems cruel to dismember it and pierce its skull in the name of abortion rights. No one is talking about criminalizing women seeking abortions, no one except maybe Trump himself. Most Americans of all political persuasions would agree with me, according to polls. Although my Democratic Party has clung obsessively in support of Roe and of a woman’s “right to choose” at any point in her pregnancy and using the politically-correct term “anti-abortion rights” instead of “prolife,” I think abortion requires a more nuanced discussion and policy consideration. I have personal irons in the fire, being both a birth and an adoptive parent. Here is an article along the lines of my thinking by a Washington Post contributor, but whose article actually appeared in the Dallas News: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/07/05/time-let-roe-go

And here’s another one: heweek.com/articles/784193/im-prolife-woman-but-im-worried-about-postroe-america

Most Americans do support “abortion rights,” but only in the first trimester, so why not keep that firm, but allow changes—maybe made by states—after that? Of course, gestational age cannot always be precise. I’ve tried to put myself in the mindset of a woman unexpectedly pregnant, feeling, “I just cannot do this right now. This is a huge mistake.”

Bhutan Visitors, Border Policy, Justice Kennedy’s Retirement, Nicaragua, South Sudan Peace Efforts, Ghana Schools, Shrinking White Demographic

My Bhutan visitors wore their native dress for a cultural day at GAO, where they are taking a short course, shown here with couple of colleagues outside GAO headquarters. They tell me that the king of Bhutan has decreed that all residents, both men and women, wear native dress whenever they leave their home or go to the office. 

 They will soon be going back to Bhutan, back to their small, isolated, and protected kingdom, but not without extra luggage, as they have been on a shopping frenzy.

We also had a visit from California relatives, actually a niece and her family on my late ex-husband’s side, if you can follow that. My niece remembers being in my house when visiting DC as a child. Her husband, in addition to still being a dancer like her (that’s how they met and he has managed to prolong his career on a part-time basis unlike his wife because male dancers are in such short supply), is also a professor of Spanish and we sometimes speak and write to each other in Spanish. One of their daughters, my great-niece, is following in her parents’ footsteps by also training as a classical ballet dancer—she has been accepted into a 5-week course at the Kirov here in DC and so the family came to give her a good send-off. She is staying in a dorm near the school out by Catholic U and may be invited to come back for a longer period, in which case she may stay with me. She and other family members are vegan, so we ate at a vegan restaurant. One of my daughters was vegan for a time, as was a fellow PC volunteer in Honduras, so I know that can be challenging, but there are new vegan options being added to menus daily (i.e., vegan yogurt, milk, and cheese). A restaurant we chose was deliciously vegan.

 

Trump apparently enjoys conflict so a trade war is right up his alley. However, the stakes are much higher than he is used to and involve almost the whole world, not just him and his family’s holdings.

Although the misguided policy of separating parents and children at the border has been officially rescinded, some parents have already been deported without their kids. What a political mess and humanitarian crisis that has been deliberately created by the Trump administration! Immigration problems need to be tackled in an orderly and lawful manner, not helter-skelter. Obama actually deported more people than Trump. And while crossing the border without authorization is illegal, it is a misdemeanor, like jaywalking. It is not a high crime and is now reportedly diverting resources from more serious drug and weapons smuggling. Instead of either separating or jailing families together, why not outfit parents with ankle bracelets, much cheaper and more humane? Of course, to the extent that refugees arrive at the border with the help of smugglers, family members in the US are paying.  

Trump engages in lots of show and bluster without actually doing anything, then brags about his accomplishments. If he is criticized, that’s fake news. And as for the bogeyman he has created with MS 13, I don’t deny the violence of that gang, but the threat is mostly concentrated on teenage Latino boys who may resist joining its ranks. It’s not some national organized crime syndicate.

FYI, according to the Washington Post, Trump’s grandfather came this country from Germany as unaccompanied minor

Damn, did Justice Kennedy have to retire right now? Does he have a terminal illness? Couldn't he have waited until November? Since he has always been a swing vote, he apparently decided to swing to the right. Reportedly, Trump administration advocates talked him into doing it now, very strategic. Also, his son apparently has financial ties to Trump enterprises. As my readers know, I am not averse to some modification of how Roe vs. Wade is applied especially after the first 3 months but am concerned more about a lot of other issues, such as immigration, health care, food stamps, social security, relations with Iran and Europe, a trade war, the deficit, climate change, national parks, public education, gerrymandering, and gun control, to name just a few. And, on the subject of abortion, if so-called pregnancy support centers are to inform women of where to get abortions, then likewise, abortion providers should be obligated to tell them about the pregnancy support centers. If “choice” is the key for pregnant women, it should work both ways, but I am pretty much alone in my efforts to bridge that gap.

Hannity of Fox News is now not blaming inadequate gun control or “fake news” accusations, but rather Maxine Waters, for the 5 recent gun deaths in Annapolis. “Lock her up,” let’s charge Maxine with murder. Of course, Fox itself is not fake news. I’m not crazy about Maxine because of her support of Fidel Castro and her shunning of Afro-Cuban dissidents, but that she has encouraged a public calling out of Trump officials has not been connected in any way to this most recent mass shooting. Now, let’s see if Trump picks up Fox’s cue. The incessant criticism of the mainstream media by Trump and Fox may well be involved. And with the proliferation of guns and no controls, we are all at risk.

I am not so anxious to impeach Trump, though it would be a great relief to get rid of him. The problem then would be that we’d be stuck with Mike Pence, a more normal politician with more savvy about how government really works and with more alliances in Congress. On the other hand, he is not as subject to adoration from the base as Trump.

More than 200 killed in Nicaragua—Daniel Ortega, you’ve overstayed your welcome once again, time’s up.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-06-24/how-ortega-has-stayed-in-power-in-nicaragua

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article214125179.html

Glad that at least for now, Kiir has patched things up with Machar in the South Sudan peace effort. Ethnic loyalties have proved destructive in the new nation of South Sudan, where I’ve felt a kinship ever since my mission there in 2006. When all southerners got behind getting independence from the north, ethnic loyalties took a back seat. Now they have reemerged, but let’s hope this agreement holds. South Sudan needs so much, it can hardly afford an internecine squabble. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-06-22/south-sudan-peace-deal-attempt-fails-as-kiir-rejects-machar

I heard in Ghana about an outside funded teaching experiment relying more on imagination and non-rote, non-punishment learning that was supported by parents and kids alike, but when funding ran out, it stopped and the school system reverted to its previous pattern. I have long opposed the rigid, unenjoyable, and ultimately less productive methods used in schools in most developing countries, including Honduras. It’s hard to change that system. Many kids survive into adulthood with apparently minimal damage. But those methods are so unnecessary, unproductive, and even painful, especially when kids are hit or publicly shamed. When I was a Peace Corps volunteer giving educational talks, I tried to make them fun, memorable, and full of useful information and I trained local women to help me, but my small contribution hardly changed the school system. If we can ever get a library going in El Triunfo, I’d like to give some talks to staff and patrons about how to benefit from a library and it’s not just by copying texts.

I have testified telephonically many times in asylum cases, but, come to think of it, but a few months ago, though my written testimony was apparently accepted, I could not testify by phone. I was surprised, as this had never happened before. I don't recall the court or judge, but it was in NY State. Denial of telephonic expert witness testimony may be a new tactic being used against asylum applicants. I have also done interpreting for many “credible fear” interviews, both telephonically and in person.

If a wedding cake baker can refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, I would think a restaurant could refuse to serve a Trump official.

Now for the first time, it appears not only that the native-born Caucasian percentage of the US population is shrinking, but that their/our sheer numbers are diminishing as deaths outnumber births. So the fears of Trump supporters of becoming a minority “in our own country” are real. I am one of those aging white persons of European descent who will soon disappear from the national scene, born in Boston of a mother of Swiss and German heritage and a father born in Canada of Scottish descent. But I have personally defied Trump norms by marrying a man of Korean background and raising mixed race children, including an adopted son born in Colombia, whose “23 & Me” profile shows him, like most Colombians, to have Spanish and indigenous heritage. And my grandchildren are of mixed ethnicities, including African American contributions. So, our family is the face of the nation’s future. Trump supporters, you’ve had your place in the sun for the last couple of years and have loudly expressed your desires and laments of frustration, but now it’s time to move over and accept reality—high time for you to stop inflicting suffering on the majority, To mix metaphors, too late to turn back the clock, the horse has already left the barn on the national complexion and orientation.

The writer below completely expresses my own views on the Trump administration: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/opinion/letters/article_47c2e08e-74d7-11e8-98ad-5bbd728c81a1.html

It looks like hardcore Trump supporters will -implacably resist changing their minds. Like cult members, their faith in their guy won’t budge, even if he tells them to drink the Kool aid. When their guy is attacked, they coalesce around him to defend him. They feel they have the only truth which the conspiratorial outside world, according to Trump, is deliberately trying to keep from them. They, in turn, give him validation at closed-door rallies in a mutually re-enforcing feedback loop. He and they are inextricably bound together, a self-isolated beleaguered minority confronting what they consider a hostile, unlawful, un-American outside world. Any attacks on Trump or his policies are considered proof of bias against him. There are calls for civility when Trump & Co. are being attacked, but how about a little civility from Trump, Sessions, Conway, etc.? While the majority should not tyrannize the minority, the minority should not tyrannize the majority either, as is happening right now. How did we and they get to this point? There is no longer any use in trying to meet the Trump side halfway or getting them to examine their arguments or to modify their position nor has Trump given the majority any reason for us to modify our position. Defeating them is the only way and too bad if they continue to feel misunderstood—they’ve already had their chance and we cannot allow them to take down our country and the world with them. Much remedial work will then lie ahead.

Barack Obama, though he achieved quite a lot despite implacable Congressional opposition, still deported a lot of people, too many, in my opinion—I saw them dejectedly deplaning every time I was at the Tegucigalpa airport and some were deported in error. He was simply in charge if a more competent government. Obviously, our nation cannot have open doors. There is a limit on how many refugees, asylum seekers, and even pre-authorized immigrants the country can accept and absorb, though with our falling birth rate and employment demands, in point of fact, more immigration, not less, is actually called for, preferably by legal means. Waiting 15 years for an authorized immigrant visa, as some have done, is too long. I know of applicants who have died while waiting. And I must also put in a plug for the continuance of the visa lottery, with which I have personal experience, as per my books.

There are reasonable fixes to immigration and other problems, but Trump and his slavish followers are diehards unwilling to sit down and try to work matters out. We need to feel sorry for Donald Trump and his followers. We are all flawed human beings, making mistakes in judgment and actions, but Trump has taken

personal failings to an unacceptable level. He is woefully deficient by almost any measure in character, intelligence, judgment, and empathy. So we do need to feel sorry for him and his supporters, but still to fight back. Whether his personal defects are due to a combination of nature, nurture, and accidental circumstances, they are not going to be remedied; now in his 70’s, he is never going to become Mr. Nice Guy. Negotiation and persuasion may have worked with someone like Gorbachev, but Trump shows little or no signs of becoming a reasonable leader or a normally thinking person, so he needs to be soundly defeated. 

If my ruminations here wander all over the map, that’s partly because my experience and imagination wander as well. I do appreciate the chance to express my various mental wonderings, thoughts, and frustrations, which I hope have some resonance with others.