Imperfection: Live With It.

Extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda are unable to accept an imperfect society. By force, ISIS would bring in its conception of the perfect society, the Caliphate. The followers of ISIS believe their perfect knowledge justifies killing innocents to attain power.

Less extreme versions exist in democratic societies. My brand of politics isn’t just better than your brand—your brand is a threat to democracy. Only my brand works. I will accept money from any source whatever if only my candidate will win and enact our own Perfect Society. Those who disagree with me are communists or fascists or red necks or whatever epithet will show my absolute disdain for anyone who dares to disagree.

When we can no longer compromise in government, we’re fated to know paralyzing dysfunction. When we require our society to be perfect, we risk losing it.

Betting on the Losers to Lose

I took out a mortgage and bought a condo in my single days. I had a good job and good credit and put down a sizeable down payment. I got the condo, lived in it for several years until I joined the Foreign Service, then sold it.

I thought everyone bought homes this way. They saved money for a down payment, worked up a good credit record, then chose a house that suited their income. Bankers wouldn’t lend money on a house that the buyer couldn’t afford, I thought.

Several years later, after my mother died, my brother and I sold her home. The buyer sold a smaller house to buy hers. That fitted into what I understood was one way to buy a house—to build up equity in a smaller one, then sell it.

However, the buyer of her house bought it with a 100 percent mortgage, no money down. It was the first time I knew of someone buying a home without the requirement to pay a portion of the price as a down payment.

Not long after that, the housing bubble burst. Lots of people, it seemed, had underwater mortgages. They owed more on their houses than they were worth.

The drop in house prices was a major reason, of course, but some of it could be traced to the owners not being required to invest more in their houses before they bought them.

So why did the lenders not require home buyers to make sufficient down payments?

Lots of mortgages, it seems, were packaged together. Some included mortgages which shouldn’t have been made under the old rules, but, supposedly, other mortgages to able buyers would balance them out. Lenders would make more income than ever from lending more money, even to unqualified buyers.

So it was okay to set up a home buyer for failure. It was okay to lend to folks that lenders knew weren’t going to be able to continue in their homes, who would fail. It was okay to do this because it would work out, for the lenders, at least.

Only it didn’t, and thousands of homeowners suffered. People who were conned into thinking they’d finally reached their dream of home ownership dropped into a nightmare.

Elie Wiesel and Others Died This Week

During the past few days, hundreds have died violent deaths in the Middle East and South Asia. Other deaths included five police officers in Dallas, a man in Minnesota, and the named sniper of the police officers. A survivor of the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel, also died naturally at the age of 87.

Of all of them, Elie Wiesel knew the most about hatred. At the age of fifteen, he and his family—Elie, father, mother, and two sisters—were forced into cattle cars and taken to Nazi death camps. His mother and two sisters were taken from him. His mother and one sister died; the other survived. He saw his own father die in the camp, pleading for water.

Elie Wiesel did not kill anyone in revenge. Instead, he dedicated his life to a search for the meaning behind such senseless inhumanity. He earned the Nobel peace prize, and his writings are read widely.

He helped establish the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He set up a foundation to pursue human rights in Cambodia, Bosnia, South Africa, Chile, and Rwanda.

Wiesel did not seek revenge. Instead, he worked to save others from suffering as he had.

Crisis Contest: How Would You Handle This Crisis if You Are President?

Thomas L. Friedman’s column in The New York Times (“Trump’s Miss Universe Foreign Policy”) suggests we’re not asking the right questions.

Friedman asked, “What are the real foreign policy challenges the next president will face?” He cited a few of them: What happens to the spillover from spewing crises in Syria and Iraq? Besides being human tragedies, they destabilize our allies in Europe and give Russia’s Putin all sorts of opportunity to make mischief.

What will happen if China’s economy runs into more trouble? Another global recession? What might that do to our own economic recovery?

What happens if wildfires in Canada and the western U.S. consume not only our valuable forests but also the funding set aside for fighting them?

What about hurricanes and rising oceans that threaten many costal areas?

The fact that crises will happen during the next presidency is a given. Candidates—all of them—owe us meaningful statements detailing how they would handle them, not just campaign pablum. They might give us better answers if we, the people, were aware of the problems and asked the right questions.

Was the Fourth of July Necessary?

The founding of the United States gave substance to the ideal of representative government. It remains a work in progress. The U.S. Constitution wasn’t written until several years after George Washington and his colleagues won the American war for independence. It did not even abolish slavery until almost a century after delegates met to write the Declaration of Independence that hot summer of 1776.

Yet the country born in 1776 (or in 1790, if you believe the U.S. Constitution was really the beginning) put flesh and blood on the skeleton sketched out by eighteenth century thinkers.
During those times, Thomas Paine wrote:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered . . . “

It struck me that Paine’s words are very eighteenth century. Few kings are left today, and those who remain in Europe, including the ones Paine railed against, are constitutional monarchs. Britain’s parliament (its legislative body) passes the laws. The monarchy is more a symbol of the ties that bind the British together than the possessor of power.

The Declaration of Independence and Thomas Paine’s writings are woven through with the unjust actions of Britain’s soldiers and government of the time. Canada stayed on in the British sphere of influence and today is one of the most respected free nations of the world.

The crown erred, and the colonists, who had some good ideas, reacted with anger. Too bad the two sides weren’t able to reconcile.

What if Politicians Practiced Solitude?

Frank Bruni wrote an op ed piece a few years ago for The New York Times on the need for solitude, even for politicians—what a stunning idea.

I recently attended a writers’ conference in a woodsy retreat center. Established writers flock to it because it gives them time to wander in the woods or find a quiet spot to think. One afternoon is defiantly unstructured, allowing time for the inner life. This unstructured time emphasizes solitude as essential for any meaningful outer life, whether we write, lead the country, or use other talents.

What if all of us, yes, including politicians, practiced it once in a while? What if elected officials and political candidates regularly withdrew to explore honest leadership? To dedicate themselves to less divisive, more meaningful campaign rhetoric? To explore what is meant by our term public servants?

City Street Lights and Brexit

Our small town plans to replace the city’s street lamps with bulbs that last longer and use less electricity. One type of light is being considered, but residents in some cities with these lights have criticized the emission from the bulbs as “too harsh.” Thus, one such light was installed on a corner for residents to examine its effects and decide if they want them all over town.

Since we’re little more than six square blocks, most residents can easily walk over after dark and check it out. They are then invited to email the mayor with their observations. A yes or no decision suits this kind of situation.

Not so with Brexit, the vote by the British to leave the European Union. The European Union was formed over several decades following World War II. The goal was the formation of a closer union to avoid more war and brutality between the nations of Europe, especially between Germany and France. Anybody who has read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah or All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr understands the tragedies of those wars.

Few deny that the European Union has made mistakes, including, some say, the creation of a single currency before adequate institutions were built to manage it. Others cite mistakes in handling the mass migration into Europe from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Nevertheless, critics of the Brexit referendum complain about a complex question being put to a yes or no vote. Such a contest pushes citizens into warring camps, leading to sensational claims and unfounded accusations. It may have contributed to the death of a member of the British parliament, perhaps by a mentally deranged man, too easily angered.

Issues like immigration or job growth differ from decisions about street lights. The answer normally is not a simple solution, but perhaps a compromise between several ideas. Labeling and name calling those with whom you disagree is best avoided. The dream of one right answer is a delusion.

It’s Okay to Disagree

Fifty-one diplomats within the U.S. State Department recently signed a document dissenting from the current U.S. policy on Syria. They wish a more activist policy against Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s leader. They believe the U.S. should do more to stop Assad’s brutal treatment of his civilian population by barrel bombs and other atrocities.

The dissent channel of the State Department allows any diplomat to disagree with a current U.S. foreign policy. Retaliation to the dissenter’s career is forbidden.

The dissent channel was established in the 1970’s during the Vietnamese conflict to allow challenges to official policy. The idea is that dissent is not a weakness in a democracy but a strength: all views should be aired. No one person has all knowledge or wisdom. We benefit when different opinions can be expressed, whether we agree or disagree with the dissenter.

In the midst of all our self-criticism, we can be proud that underlings are encouraged to speak their views and not suffer retaliation.

Smoothing Out Life’s Ups and Downs

“When the flames of devotion are within your soul, it is wise to consider how it will be with you when the light is taken away. And when the light is extinguished, remember that eventually the light will return.”

–Thomas à  Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, compiled and edited by James N. Watkins

I confess little enthusiasm for old classics, especially the spiritual ones. Many, when I read them, leave me bored with what seems to me only Middle Age piety.

Recently, I discovered a modern translation by James N. Watkins of the book attributed to Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. I’ve been hungering lately for deeper meaning, and this book has met some of that craving.

Yes, the book sometimes talks of our nothingness before God. We post-moderns consider such thoughts heretical, arrayed against a we-must-feel-good-about-ourselves mentality.

Yet, the book speaks to me when I feel failures staring me in the face, ambitions unrealized, loved ones hurting.

It also touches me when I’ve triumphed. It keeps me from riding so high that I think life is always going to be this way, a never-ending victory.

As à Kempis says, “And do not depend too much on spiritual emotions, for they can quickly turn to the opposite feeling.”

Once More With Hatred

After a gunman killed forty-nine people in Orlando, Florida, Jen Christensen wrote an article for CNN (June 12, 2016). According to Christensen, the United States has five percent of the world’s population, while about thirty-one percent of the mass shootings occur in the U.S.

No one reason appears a motive for a mass killing. Mental illness is sometimes involved. Terrorism is a motive at other times. Racial hatred also has been a factor. The shooting in Orlando took place in a gay bar, and the gunman is reported to have expressed anti gay feelings.

Christensen listed several differences between U.S. shootings and others worldwide. In the U.S., they more frequently happen at work or school, versus near military installations in other places.

The U.S. shooter is more likely to have more than one firearm, but the global shooter usually has only one.

Of course, with news focused on mass events, we forget how many people are killed in less publicized shootings. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2013, deaths from firearms in the United States stood at 33,636.

I Joined a Student Protest Once

College students made the news recently at one of the universities in Seattle. They are demanding curriculum changes. They say they want fewer courses centering on “dead white men” and more courses from a diverse set of writers.

I took part in a student protest once. Unfortunately, I can’t claim to have been led by noble purposes. The strike protested food in the college cafeteria. I joined because spring had arrived, and it was a fun thing to do.

Organizers worked with car owners to drive all students who wanted to participate to off campus eateries during lunch.

The college president met with us in meetings. He lost his temper in the group I was in. His mistake, I think, was in supposing that the protest was about our rejection of the food.

The protest wasn’t about food, not really. It was a way for us, the students, to believe we had a part to play in the ordering of our lives, to believe we counted.

I make no judgements today on the arguments of the students or the curriculum they protest. The protests do mirror those of youth in the 1960’s. Then, students were inspired by the election of John F. Kennedy to the White House. Through tragic circumstances, the Kennedy generation was eclipsed by the older generation of Lyndon Johnson. The younger generation felt betrayed.

Perhaps today’s younger generation, some of whom are campus protestors and many of whom support Bernie Sanders, were similarly disillusioned when the promise of Obama’s election was followed by years of political infighting.

People Who Have Jobs Buy Things

The journalist Hedrick Smith has written a book, Who Stole the American Dream? Smith recently spoke to a group in my hometown in a lecture series.

In the 1970’s, Smith said, corporate America began shifting from the stakeholder model to the shareholder model.

Shareholders invest financially in a company. Financial gain is their foremost goal.

Stakeholders may also be shareholders, but stakeholders are interested in the products of the company beyond financial gain. Examples are workers who depend on the company for jobs or customers who depend on the products. They want the company to succeed over the long term.

In contrast, shareholders who are not stakeholders are interested in how much income they can make, not in the product itself. They may move investments to other companies if they do not experience short term gain. They are not invested in the company itself, only in the income from the company.

Investors fund many of our businesses, but investment is only a part of our system. If workers make money, they can buy things. If workers lose jobs, they obviously buy less, encouraging the economy to go into a recession. That’s not only bad for workers, it’s bad for businesses as well.

In other words, the stakeholders—the workers and consumers—are as important to a healthy capitalist system as are the shareholders, the investors.

Who Fights Drug Resistant Diseases?

A few years ago while in the hospital recuperating from surgery, my brother developed a drug resistant infection. Only intense treatment with powerful new drugs defeated it.

Recently, articles have reported the discovery of still more drug resistant infections. Who develops newer drugs to fight these powerful infections?

Pharmaceutical companies, according to one report, no longer are as interested in newer drugs for infections. The reason, according to the article, is because such drugs do not make a profit like drugs to treat chronic conditions. Antibiotics are only used for a short while, then stopped when the infection is defeated. By contrast, those with chronic conditions like diabetes use drugs all of their lives.

This would seem the perfect example of the need for what is called a “mixed economy,” that is, an economy which includes both private capitalism and government involvement. Government research has long funded studies leading to medical breakthroughs in the fight against diseases like cancer. Such research may not be profitable initially, yet paves the way for eventual recovery and less long term care.

Private enterprise is efficient in ordering much of our economy. However, not all problems can be solved with the profit model.

Why Did We Fight a War in Vietnam?

Watching reports of President Obama’s recent visit to Vietnam, I wondered why we fought a war there, beginning in the 1960’s. Many Americans and Vietnamese lost their lives. Others suffered injuries and emotional trauma.

Why? We are now forging economic and cultural ties with Vietnam, though it remains a country ruled by one party. It is not a democracy.

Other countries are not democratic. Yet we do not go to war with them. We have relations with most of them.

In the Cold War era, Soviet Russia was an undemocratic, communist nation. The danger from the Soviets was not imagined, especially in Europe. Yet, we found other ways to protect ourselves that did not include fighting a war with them.

We went to war in Vietnam because we chose to believe that losing Vietnam to communism was a danger to us. Other nations in the region, so we believed, would become communist, and, by popular definitions of the time, become our enemies also.

After losing Vietnam, we discovered how tragically wrong we were in our assessment.

Our involvement in Vietnam sprang, not from a threat to us, but from a blanket fear of communism. We failed to see the Vietnamese insurgency as a desire to be free of colonialism, as practiced by the French, whose place we took in entering the conflict. In the eyes of many Vietnamese, we also were imperialists.

We failed to differentiate between true threats and other movements, repugnant to us but not directly threatening us.

Don’t Straightjacket Fiction by Genre

The Grantchester books by James Runcie are a mystery series. Yet this designation alone straitjackets them. These stories of an English priest in the decades following World War II are also about relationships and cultural change.

How do you classify the Mitford series by Jan Karon? An American minister in his sixties falls in love with the divorced woman next door. A romance series? Small mysteries weave in and out, too. Are the books an example of the romance/mystery genre? Family relationships play an important role in the stories. In fact, for me, relationships are the key to the series. Family saga perhaps?

New designations for fiction like the Mitford series, the Grantchester series, and other novels of this type include the terms cross-genre and upmarket (a type of hybrid commercial/literary fiction).

My chief difficulty in marketing my novels is settling on a genre to place them in. Mystery? International intrigue? Love story? Family relationships?

In pitching fiction, writers are told, they must state the genre. Why? Because to market the book, a seller, whether owner of a physical bookstore or an ebook distributor, must know where to place the book—the shelf or category.

Genre is a marketing tool. It works well for novels like straight detective stories or romance or horror. It works less well for mixed stories. If they must be marketed by genre, at least the back cover copy can hint at a story beyond the genre straitjacket.

Francis Marion, South Carolina’s Swamp Fox: Lessons for Today

Francis Marion was a South Carolina guerrilla leader who fought Britain during the American Revolution. The British forces were one of the most powerful armies in the world at the time, but they were never able to capture Marion. He knew the South Carolina swamps and back paths, because the region was his home. The British saw the colonies as their possession, not their home.

Francis Marion and other American leaders didn’t destroy the British empire. They freed their country from foreign rule and gave it the opportunity to create a better society. Marion himself was a slave owner. Almost a century passed before slavery was abolished.

Interestingly enough, after defeat in the war against the American colonials, Britain went on to become an even greater power. The British were successful militarily, but they also began social reforms to lift the working classes and the desperately poor of Britain out of poverty. More Britons had a stake in a prosperous country.

New military tactics constantly evolve against a militarily superior foe, as the Vietcong knew when they wore down American forces, as they had the French before them. They saw Americans as merely followers of the French imperialists.

In contrast, Americans succeeded in World War II. Their foe was obvious. European allies cherished similar ideals. True values were at stake.

Americans did more than militarily defeat the enemy. After World II they raised education levels and increased job opportunities. The country prospered, becoming a world leader, as much because of its vibrant opportunities as for its military prowess.

Defeating an enemy militarily only buys time. Then begins the hard job of building a society for all citizens.

Vote Anyway

This popular video on YouTube mimics the agony of many Americans when faced with the choices their political parties have given them:

How do we change a flawed process for next time?

I support my U.S. representative, who has publicly endorsed campaign finance reform. I have talked personally with my state senator in a community meeting about my desire for financing reform at the state level.

In addition, I’m learning about the system as it now exists: political parties, caucuses, primaries, and the electoral college (as opposed to the popular vote). What changes will I support?

Meanwhile, I’ll examine the candidates, then vote, even if I don’t wholly agree with all of their positions. And I’m grateful for the privilege. If you don’t think voting is a privilege, note the many countries of the world where free elections are nonexistent. I have lived in some of them and have concluded that our imperfect system remains a winner in comparison.

The system we have is imperfect, but it beats the choices available to a good many people in the world. Use it. Then change it.

Macklemore Speaks Out on Addiction

Macklemore (Ben Haggerty), the rap singer, recently teamed up with President Barack Obama in the president’s weekly radio address. (Reported in The Seattle Times on15 May 2016.) The two discussed growing drug addiction in the U.S.

Drug addiction is no longer a disease mostly of the poor or of minorities. Some have criticized the country for a lack of concern about addiction when it was perceived as a problem for poor blacks. Regardless, addiction is a tragedy needing attention. It robs the victim of a meaningful life while robbing the country of gifts the addicted could give to society.

Macklemore, in noting the cost of addiction disease, speaks from experience. Though sober now, he has struggled with prescription drugs and alcohol.

Addiction is not a new problem—alcoholics have been around since drinks were fermented to preserve them. However, all sorts of new ways to inebriate oneself now exist. The emphasis on pleasure as our main goal in life has fed the search for self gratification.

We no longer raise our children to “amount to something”—to serve. We want them to be happy—surely a goal no one can consistently reach. No wonder we consider unhappiness as an intruder with no right to trespass on our psyches. We must end it with a pill or a drink or an injection—even if we threaten our own self-destruction.

Concerned with the needs of the physical self, we forget to strengthen the inner self.

Aware in Saudi Arabia, Clueless in America

In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1992, those of us working at the U.S. consulate watched via television with Saudi citizens as Bill Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush for the presidency. Many U.S. embassies and consulates around the world provide space for local citizens to watch results of major U.S. elections.

The elder Bush, father of later President George W. Bush, was popular in Saudi Arabia, having led a coalition of countries to free neighboring Kuwait in 1991 after Iraq’s conquest of the country and threat to Saudi Arabia. Saudis were disappointed at George H.W. Bush’s defeat. At least one Saudi remarked that the world ought to get a vote in U.S. presidential elections since the U.S. plays an influential role in world affairs.

Citizens of many countries follow the progress of U.S. presidential elections. On the other hand, many Americans appear clueless about events in the rest of the world.

Presidential campaigns lack serious attention to foreign policy issues beyond shallow posturing. Foreign issues don’t play well in Peoria. Yet global events constantly surprise and challenge us, from Pearl Harbor to twenty-first century terrorist attacks.

After World War II, the United States was one of the few democratic nations with its economy intact. Sometimes with crass self interest and at other times with true sacrifice, we accepted leadership in encouraging a world of democracy and justice. We can opt out now if we choose, but leadership may fall to others without those values.

Allowing Ourselves to Say We’re Guilty

Michael Yandell, an Iraq War veteran, wrote an article “Hope in the Void,” published in Plough, Spring, 2016. He talks of moral injury, an injury he suffered as a result of incidents he experienced and witnessed in that war.

He found out, he said, that he was not the good person he thought he was when he went into that war. “I must come to terms with who I am and then must look toward becoming something new,” he wrote.

Throughout the article, Yandell, stressed that one must be allowed to recognize guilt in order to build something new. “If a veteran enters your church, your synagogue, your mosque or your temple, be the eyes and ears to see and hear her.”

Places of faith, he says, “can serve as pathways of hope through individual and collective guilt. . . Do not,” he cautions, “allow the sufferer to bear their guilt alone.”

We don’t just listen to another’s confession of guilt. We share in his or her guilt. It is society that sends its members into harm’s way. Society is obligated to shepherd them home.