Bikram, my GAO fellow from Bhutan graduated from the program and now you
might say I have an empty nest, which is fine for now. I enjoy knowing folks
from all over the world and offering them temporary shelter, but it’s hard on
the facilities and puts me in a constant mama/nagging mode. Again, to quote
Greta Garbo, “I want to be alone!”
Hurricane Barbara, my namesake, became the 1st major hurricane of 2019, to be followed by
many more.
The
Trump administration tried to scrap the Peace Corps in the next federal
budget. But by a vote of 110 – 315,
the House of Representatives soundly defeated Trump’s effort to eliminate all Peace
Corps funding in the federal fiscal year that begins next October.
Fires on the Hawaiian island of Maui threaten
the native Silversword plant discovered and named by my biologist
son-in-law, who works often on that island. My younger daughter, his wife, is
also a biologist.
As emotionally
wrenching as that photo is of the young father and toddler daughter drowned in
the Rio Grande (aptly called Río Bravo—Angry River—in
Spanish), last Feb. when I was in Honduras, the rumor was that crossing the US
border with a child meant you would be freed sooner to return to court later
and would also have a better chance of obtaining asylum, one reason so many
are now traveling with young children. Maybe the publicity around the
death of the Salvadoran father and his child will discourage them now? Other
migrant families have drowned without being photographed.
Because of longer life expectancy and lower
birthrates in our country, our population is aging, so we do need much more
immigration by younger people. The Trump should welcome more of the families
with children arriving at the southern border. Increased immigration alone cannot
make up the demographic shortfall, though it would help. Certainly, any mass
deportation of undocumented residents would be devastating economically and
socially. Even Mr. Trump’s enterprises rely on undocumented workers, who have
appealed to him to protect them.
The census citizenship question was
designed to disadvantage states with lots of non-citizens, whether documented
or otherwise. But apparently Trump wasn’t
willing to let the matter go. Though he did not win the day on including the
question on the census, he can still use it as a rallying point for his
anti-immigrant presidential reelection campaign. However, because he is so
unpopular, so reviled in many areas of the country, his raids have less local
cooperation than has been the case for other presidents, including Obama, who
was given the dubious title of “deporter-in-chief.” Trump announced his raids
in advance to make sure his loyal base knew he was getting tough on immigrants,
while at the same time, arousing his many opponents, further dividing the nation.
He makes no effort to expand his base or to bridge the political divide, quite
the contrary.
With El Paso at the border-crossing’s
epicenter, I am reminded of my childhood days in El Paso, when my Dad was a US
Army officer at El Paso’s Fort Bliss, then was sent over to Europe during World
War II. I remember attending kindergarten and first grade in local schools and
singing daily, “The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the live-long day; the eyes
of Texas are upon you, you cannot get away.” I really thought some giant unseen
eyes were looking down on us. I recall movie theaters being divided into white
and “colored” sections, or sometimes films being shown to each racial group on
alternate days. We used to walk easily across the bridge to Juarez to shop or
eat Mexican food on that side. It was a fun excursion to easily enter an
alternative world where another language was spoken and to become immersed in different
sights, scents, and music.
Leaked information indicates that Trump’s
efforts to scrap the Iran deal and probably his push against Obamacare are
fueled by his resentment of the greater popularity and obvious ability of his
predecessor rather than by any concern for the good of our nation or the
world. He is a petty, childish guy, deeply insecure, fueled by resentments based
on real and imagined attacks on his feelings of self-worth.
Chaos theory seeks
to explain what is not obviously predictable. It deals with chance, surprise,
randomness. Most of the time, when we go out walking in our neighborhood or get
into a car, we get where we intend to go. Rarely, there is an accident and we
don’t arrive. Some “accidents” or surprises are lucky ones, others, not so much.
Often, these “chance” events have started with a small deviation from the norm,
like the example from my last blog of a driver who suddenly switched from
turning off a highway to veering back onto it and caused a 5-car pile-up behind
when all slammed on their brakes, including the car my daughter was driving and
I was riding in. Chaos theory cites the theoretical example of the butterfly
that flaps its wings and starts a reaction that ends up as a hurricane
elsewhere.
Donald Trump’s elevation to the US presidency
is an example of chaos theory in action. Russian election interference,
coupled with the skewed Electoral College system, along with big money
donations to the Republican Party, allowed Trump to win the presidency even
though he fell 3 million votes short. Since then, he has deliberately fostered
more chaos and uncertainty by his impulsive and unpredictable actions, engaged
in partly because he has no actual plans, but also to deliberately keep both
allies and adversaries off-guard, allowing him to imagine that he alone is in
control. He might be called the king of chaos, but the American people and
other political leaders, as well as citizens and leaders of the world, are
getting pretty tired of it all. There is enough that is unpredictable and
uncontrollable in life without having Trump deliberately making it worse. His
tactics end up achieving little or nothing because he acts alone, makes no
plans, and brings no one else on board. Twitter is the perfect medium for him
to express his unfiltered and impulsive thoughts. Any of the current Democratic
hopefuls would be better than Trump, but will they screw up again by fighting
among themselves and not being prepared against interference?
Trump highjacked July 4, making it a
campaign rally and his own vanity project to try to appear presidential. The
guy, after phony draft deferments, is tying himself to the military in a
pathetic effort to bolster his own image and self-esteem. If he were an
ordinary citizen, we would just feel sorry for him, but because of his
authority and the slavish deference of Republican lawmakers and appointees, his
whims are causing a lot of grief and damage, not only in the US, but worldwide.
Efforts to fly the Baby Trump blimp at July
4th events ran into some obstacles. The blimp inflated with air was seen
at ground level, but not allowed to be floating above the crowd. In a brilliant
move to counter MAGA hats worn by Trump supporters, his opponents can carry
around Baby Trump balloons.
I avoided July 4th events, but because
I live on Capitol Hill, I did hear the flyovers and fireworks. Apparently,
Trump got mixed up giving his speech, forgetting that there were no airports
back in revolutionary days. But that he did not even notice and correct his
own gaffe again reveals his mental failings. Yes, Trump
flubbed his big moment speaking from the Lincoln Memorial when he referred to
the revolutionary forces securing the airports. Any normal person, after making
such an error, would have joked about it and corrected himself immediately, but
Trump didn't respond until the next day, saying that raindrops had fallen on
his teleprompter. His staff must have endured a heart-stopping moment when he
misspoke, but the fanatically loyal base and most Republican lawmakers acted
like it didn't even happen. The most merciful out for Trump himself and for the nation would be an
illness that prevents him from running for a second term.
The Trump/Kim
handshake photo-op, something that may have popped into Trump's mind just at the last minute (leaving
everybody scrambling to please him, as usual), was probably a good move after
Trump had walked off from the last talks. Trump knows how to keep himself in
the spotlight and remain the center of attention. Daughter Ivanka took
advantage of the occasion to appear there too. Shaking hands is fine, but North
Korea is not halting, much less ending its nuclear pram, its only source of
strength. Kim must be delighted to be playing Trump so easily. Just give the
guy a photo-op and continue whatever you were doing.
Here are a few news
items f interest to me as volunteer Caribbean coordinator for Amnesty Int;l USA
Raped,
widowed, homeless: Haiti's slum women abandoned to gangs
Pompeo
Highlights the Importance of Democracy in the Dominican Republic https://www.yahoo.com/news/pompeo-highlights-importance-democracy-dominican-021801854.html
Global
Voices advox*, July 5, 2019
Censorship
Is Cuba trying to outlaw independent media?
A new decree will prohibit foreign web hosting
It
is also illegal to host "news media" sites locally.
By
Ellery Roberts Biddle
The
spread of wireless service has given rise to a new class of netizens, who are
organizing in a manner not seen since the Cuban revolution. And the government
is responding, sometimes.
Chinese authorities must be anxious to prevent
the idea of mass protests spreading from Hong Kong to the mainland,
confronting them with a Tiananmen-type situation.
Family
separations are not only happening at our own
southern border but also among China’s western Muslim Uighurs in a
system similar to the residential schools for indigenous children of decades
past in the US and Canada, schools designed to teach the children English and
assimilate them into the mainstream. I have had the good fortune through my
volunteer work with Amnesty International to meet Uighur activists here in the
US, where their plight is not well-known. https://www.youtube.com/user/bbcnews
Pregnant Women and Children Massacred in Papua New
Guinea, Police Say NY
Times, 7-10-2019
This
headline caught my eye because, about 20 years ago, a visitor from Papua New
Guinea stayed at my house. He told me that tribally based revenge killings were
common in his country (at least at that time) and he hinted that he had engaged
in helping carry some of them out. However, he assured me that my family and I
were safe, as we were not members of a rival tribe. Such killings were initiated
by men and usually focused only on males
of rival tribes, he said, but apparently men were not the only victims in the
recent case reported by the Times. Apparently, revenge killings are
still occurring there, though perhaps international attention will help them
die out. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/world/asia/papua-new-guinea-massacre.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
American Samoa is a
tiny island country in the south Pacific where apparently most inhabitants do
not want full citizenship because of fear of an assault on their native customs
and language. However, other regional islands, like Guam and Micronesia, are territories
whose inhabitants are full American citizens, able to travel freely anywhere in
the USA and to vote in national elections. What American Samoans may need to
join them is a guarantee of some indigenous protections like those afforded to
Native American tribes on the mainland, which could give them the best if both
worlds.
The
fate of South Sudan has been of special interest to me ever since my
mission there in 2006. So sorry that tribal rivalries have now replaced the
unity that led to independence in 2011. An additional comment is that most
people in South Sudan are close to being truly black, unlike so-called “black”
folks here in the US, including members of my own family, who are more
“blackish” than “black.” Here is lady I met in South Sudan. [Orange lady]
Heard a radio documentary offering a rather nuanced
take on the Me-Too movement, a situation where a college-age young man and
a young woman seemed to have different views of whether their sexual encounter
was consensual or not. The man thought it was; the woman said it was not. Some
such situations are ambiguous and do not fit a pattern of outright rape
involving force or threats of bodily harm, but, rather, involve steps toward
intercourse that may be hard to turn off once underway. If alcohol is involved
that’s a further complication, though it was not a factor in this case.
Likewise, there was no prosecution or other penalty for the man, except for his
apology and trying to try to make amends. Seduction and foreplay may involve
persuasion, but when does that move over into unfair pressure?
Cultural differences also
come into play. Muslim women cover their hair and don’t touch unrelated men.
Male Buddhist monks in Thailand cannot even take something from or directly converse
with women; I have communicated with them by writing notes that each party lays
down to be picked up and read by the other. But in Latin America, men typically
greet women with an embrace and kisses on both cheeks. Is that a Me-Too
violation?
Of course, when I was young eons ago, the
Me-too movement did not exist and women tried to avoid even getting into
compromising situations. There was no on-line dating. Homosexuality was
illegal. College women like me lived in all-female dorms with restricted access
and curfews. Rape and even consensual sex by unmarried people were largely
hidden and there was no easily available or effective birth control and
certainly no legal abortion. Young women went to Mexico to get abortions and
babies were given up for adoption in secret to couples like me and my late ex-husband,
though I subsequentially had a biological child. We sometimes forget that mores
were different then and that not all long-ago actions can be strictly judged by
today’s standards. The same may be true regarding race relations and other
matters and is certainly true of many cultural differences in the present day,
though because of the internet and mass media, practices are moving more quickly
toward greater universality. Unfortunately, because of his age and long life, Joe
Biden is getting caught in this bind.
When men in this situation have been defended,
particularly by women, critics who still hold them to today’s standards have
coined a pejorative term for the attitude of such apologists “himpathy.”
Time to get into gear for 2020, become totally partisan, and
prepare to vote a straight Democratic ticket. Right-minded, genuinely patriotic
Americans must work together to make sure Trump doesn't get a second term, Each
of us needs to talk about, contribute, and campaign for Democrats
running not only for the presidency, but for the Senate, the House, and state
offices, all down the line. We need to especially support Mitch McConnell’s Democratic
opponent, Amy McGrath, an outspoken former fighter pilot whom the senator is already trying
to tarnish. He is such a sly, unprincipled guy, we need to throw the book at
him, though he will probably survive ine ruby red state of Kentucky.
And though we don't always like voting for the lesser of evils
or for candidates whose views we don't totally espouse, we currently have a
binary system where usually there are only 2 viable candidates for each
office. It would be better if we had a system whereby a voter could also
indicate a second choice with lesser weight, as exists in a few places
elsewhere, but we don’t have anything close to that here as yet. Too many
voters last time failed to vote because they didn’t like something about
Hillary Clinton, partly because of false narratives about her health or
personality, or they just didn’t like her voice or her appearance in a pants’
suit. If Joe Biden should be the Democratic candidate this time, objections to
his age, changing stances, attitude toward minorities and women, personality,
etc. will arise. Too bad, folks, if Trump is his opponent, vote for Biden
anyway and don’t sit out the vote just because you don’t particularly care for
him. If the alternative is 4 more years of Trump, that is much, much worse, We
do not live in the best possible of all worlds.
It would be great to get rid of the Electoral College and
Republican gerrymandering--issues to work on, but not achievable by the
next election. Nor can we soon breech the bitter partisan divide to reach
“common ground.” So we just have to soundly beat Trump and overcome his voters
at the polls, despite their hurt feelings about being ignored by the “coastal
elites.” Beat them soundly in the voting booth and let them lick their wounds
and continue to wear their MAGA hats and look back nostalgically to the glory
days when their hero Donald Trump was in office, but is there no more. Four
more years of Trump and his gang is simply unthinkable. The world cannot
tolerate it. Then we have to work to undo much of the damage that has been
done. I hope to live long enough to see that happen.
