Why I Loved THE AMERICAN MISSION

The American Mission, by Matthew Palmer, is the story of a young U.S. diplomat in Africa. The diplomat, Alex, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder after witnessing a massacre he was unable to stop, in Darfur, one of the troubled regions of Sudan.

The disorder has damaged Alex’s career. In his new assignment, he deals with a corrupt African government, as well as his own betrayal by some of his colleagues, and his progress toward redemption.

I loved the story for many reasons. Readers love a decent but damaged hero who struggles to overcome the forces of evil. As a former U.S. Foreign Service officer, I also personally identified with the settings.

Finally, someone has written a realistic story (with certain novelistic liberties, of course) about the U.S. Foreign Service. Palmer has taken U.S. diplomats out of the realm of striped pants cookie pushing and created a more realistic picture of what they do.

Matthew Palmer should know. He is, in fact, still an active Foreign Service officer. I watched a video interview with him about his newest book, The Wolf of Sarajevo, which I look forward to also reading. Palmer, of course, can write realistically about diplomats in the Balkans, as well as other places, because he served there.

Palmer said he cringes at popular perceptions of diplomats in the literary world. He had difficulty getting his novels accepted by a publisher. Publishers had problems with the “foreign” element of the story. A story about Americans in Africa? they asked.

I sympathize. In pitching my novels, at least two editors told me they would have difficulty pitching a story set in a foreign locale to their American readers.

This perception is changing. Several such novels have become popular with American audiences. (Books by Khaled Hosseini, set in Afghanistan, come to mind. In a lighter vein, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith are popular.)

Even U.S. political campaigns seldom explore foreign policy in any depth. Perhaps the publishers and the politicians are missing a newer population, more interested than they had supposed in countries beyond our shores. After all, Americans should know about the countries where they send their soldiers to die.

How Religious Pluralism Strengthens Faith

Peter L. Berger, a professor at Boston University, wrote an article, “The Good of Religious Pluralism” (First Things, April 2016).

What’s good about it? Doesn’t pluralism undermine faith?

Berger says no and lists four benefits of religious pluralism:

It becomes more difficult to take a religious tradition for granted. Acts of decision become necessary.

Freedom is a great gift, and pluralism opens up new areas of freedom.

If pluralism is combined with religious freedom, all religious institutions become in fact voluntary associations (whether religious believers find this theologically congenial or not).

Pluralism influences individual believers and religious communities to distinguish between the core of their faith and less central elements.

Religious pluralism, it seems, encourages personal commitment to a faith rather than blind obedience.

What’s So Great About the Forty-Hour Work Week?

My current work in progress is the third in a series. A new mother puts her career on hold to start her children “on the right path,” as well as provide a break from her stressful job. Now she’s going back to work, and her husband is considering taking off a couple of years from his career to parent them full time until they’re a little older.

The career theme pops up in my writing, both blogs and novels.

I keep returning to the need many of us have, whether parents or not, to take a rest from our careers. We want to do something different or pursue an idea or take care of others. The sabbatical is a part of some professions because it is deemed worthwhile.

Obviously, barriers prevent most working people from taking sabbaticals. Money is the main obstacle. A single person needs a hefty bank account, usually impossible for most singles without a spouse to back them up. And even couples struggle on one income, with rents or house payments taking a significant percentage of their earnings.

Second is the impossibility for most folks of having a job waiting, certainly the same job, if they decide to take a “sabbatical.” The work must go on. Somebody must do it. Employers may also see a request for a year or so of leave as evidence of laziness or lack of dedication. Certainly, it rarely makes the supervisory job easier.

Also one must consider career advancement. Leaving for a year or two or more can put one behind the power curve for career development.

We need new career models, not the one formed during the suburban decades of post World War II, centered on the single male breadwinner.

Innovative employers could consider changes in career models. Now that we live longer, some of that longer retirement could be used in the middle of life rather than all on the elderly side. Employees might work more years if they have breaks in between paid work. “Retirement” might come to mean merely a longer break.

America’s Gift to Exiles

The country of Turkey, a NATO ally, has issued an extradition order to the United States for Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish national living in Pennsylvania.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently put down a coup attempt by Turkish military officers to overthrow him. Europe and the United States condemned the coup, an attempt against a democratically elected leader.

In 1999, Gulen broke with Erdogan in an apparent power struggle and took refuge in the United States. Many Turks, including Erdogan, believe the coup was masterminded by Gulen. They want him brought back to Turkey for trial.

Some have deplored the harshness with which Erdogan is dealing with suspects in the coup plot, suggesting Erdogan is using the coup as a means to consolidate power, even become a dictator. They also wonder if Gulen could receive a fair trail in Turkey, if he is indeed guilty of the charges. Is Erdogan merely using his current popularity for putting down the coup as a way to get rid of an old antagonist?

The United States says it is considering the extradition request and has asked for absolute proof that Gulen is indeed guilty. He says he had nothing to do with the coup.

This is not the first time dissidents have sought refuge in the United States. More recently, Yu Jie, a Chinese dissident, settled with his wife and son in Washington, D.C. to continue his writing. Yu Jie, a Christian, writing in First Things (August/September, 2016), cites Christianity’s growth in China and predicts that “Christianity is China’s future.” This is probably not the future desired by current Chinese leaders.

Gullen’s fate is still to be decided as of this writing. Has he been guilty of aid to a coup against a democracy? Or is he one of a long line of persecuted dissidents the country has taken in, from religious nonconformists to political exiles?

Another Shooting, Closer to Home This Time

A young man, apparently angry at being dumped by his girl friend, killed her and two other young people and seriously wounded a fourth. This one took place only a ferry ride away from where I live.

According to reports, when his girl friend did not agree to restart their relationship, the young man purchased an AK-15 assault rifle and a manual on how to use it. He later returned for more ammunition.

At a gathering of alumni of a local high school, the young man saw his former girl friend with another man.

He returned to his car and studied the manual. Then he came back to the gathering with the AK-15 and shot his former girl friend and others that he knew as they ran for cover. The police later caught him as he sped down Interstate I-5.

Young men have always had trouble controlling jealousy. Before, they broke up parties with fist fights. Why does any young man, too young to legally purchase a six pack of beer, now choose an assault rifle to vent his anger?

Loving What Is Not Used Up

Material things—our clothes, our iPhones, our gourmet meals—aren’t in themselves evil, but they are finite.

The problem with material things is the emphasis we place on them. The saying “money is the root of all evil” is incorrectly quoted. The correct admonition is: “the LOVE of money is the root of all evil.”

Excesses of material things—harvested fruits or wealth—are not to be loved or hoarded but shared as well as enjoyed. The Hebrew Old Testament enjoins the people of Israel against too much efficiency. They are not to reap to the borders of their fields but to leave the leftover for the poor to gather.

Our nonmaterial resources follow different laws. They are not “used up.” One learns to enjoy music. To reach higher levels of musical understanding brings greater enjoyment and does not take from anyone else.

The good gifts don’t decrease with use, but grow with use.

If Winter Comes

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”
–Percy Bysshe Shelley; “Ode to the West Wind”

Many years ago, I watched a television interview with one of the American hostages of the 1979 Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The hostage, released with the others in 1981, spoke of her ordeal. She impressed me with her courage and resilience.

Later, after I joined the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service, I worked with another former hostage. I also served with one of the Americans who escaped capture, the basis for the fictionalized movie, Argo, winner of the Academy Award in 2013 for best motion picture.

In security seminars, required before we left for our foreign postings, other former hostages passed on to us the lessons they had learned during captivity. We were aware that, as embassy officers, we would probably be evacuated at least once or twice from a post threatened by terrorism or insurrection, if not worse, in our careers. (The magic number for me was two evacuations.)

No surprise, then, that Mark Pacer, the protagonist in my new series, beginning his State Department career in the late 1970’s, would be affected by the 1979 hostage crisis. If Winter Comes takes place from 1977 to 1981.

The hostage taking and its aftermath form a major part of the book. It’s a story of the crisis, but also of how one couple deals with the resulting threats to their marriage.

My Kind of Escape Reading

My reading is more or less divided into two camps: stretching and escape. Most of my nonfiction is of the stretching variety, magazines and books I read to learn and to encourage ideas.

My fiction tends to be of the escape variety. Recently I’ve discovered a detective series that suits my kind of escape reading. It’s Charles Todd’s Ian Rutledge novels. Rutledge is a detective from Scotland Yard, well beloved locale of many British novels.

Rutledge, however, is a wounded hero. He suffered trauma during World War I as a commanding officer for four years. In his imagination, he carries on conversations with one of the men, Hamish, a Scottish soldier Rutledge sent to his death for disobeying orders during the terrible Battle of the Somme.

Seeking to recover from what we now call post traumatic stress disorder—as well as he could recover—Rutledge suffered a broken engagement.

His investigative work is his salvation. He struggles to quiet Hamish’s sometimes accusing voice; yet Hamish provides a foil against which Rutledge can bounce off his theories as he attempts to solve complicated crimes.

Though grim deaths are a part of the plot, violence is not glorified, nor is sensuality.

I enjoy the fight for survival the hero makes, the cynical comments that are honest but not overwhelming, and especially the small lives of villagers and ordinary characters drawn well by the author.

The series is my kind of fiction: realistic, yet not drowning me in despair. Occasional kindness. An imperfect hero, yet with high standards. Bringing me out of my everyday world, but not, as my mother would say, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth. Enough hope that I check out the next one.

Representative Government: a Dangerous Experiment

Representative government is a balancing act between our sense of responsibility and our selfish natures. This is as true of the often silent majority as it is of the elites.

When times are good, the majority are content to let the minority—the elites—run things. They are more interested in their individual lives than in what elites are doing with the country.

When times are bad, the majority rebel.

When the elites have power, they must understand that they act for all, not for themselves alone. Else, the majority may decide to throw elites out of office, the wise and the unwise, the corrupted and the dedicated.

During those times when the majority choose to reign in the elites, they must temper their anger with a grain of calm reflection. It is easy to vote angrily on one or two issues. Better to explore more deeply. Elections aren’t about  our emotions. They are about our responsibility to elect wise leaders, a responsibility many in this world do not have.

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.