Failed States

 

After two wars, Americans are exhausted financially and morally. We have pulled out of Iraq completely and are drawing down from Afghanistan. Though Iraq technically was not a failed state, at least not until we entered it, our involvement there appears part of our desire to change regimes and rebuild nations.

Michael J. Mazarr wrote an article in Foreign Affairs discussing our involvement with “failed states.” (“The Rise and Fall of the Failed-State Paradigm; Requiem for a Decade of Distraction,” Foreign Affairs, January-February 2014.)

At the conclusion of the Great Power struggles of the Cold War, we confronted the “non-state” terrorist. Our entry in the 1990’s into Somalia and our intervention in other failed states since then came about, Mazarr suggests, because we wanted to cut the poverty and corruption out of which terrorists come.

Certainly, many terrorists come from failed economies and societies. The leaders, however, are more likely to emerge from a fairly well-off middle class. Often they are incensed at government corruption or at decadent habits (pornography, broken homes, etc.) that they perceive as drifting in from Western cultures.

In the current world scene, the United States is unlikely to engage in invasions of other countries or to become embroiled in land wars, because we perceive that these policies haven’t worked. Should we than turn our backs on violent human rights abuses, as is happening in Syria?

Perhaps we should choose a more patient path. That includes working with other nations in painstaking efforts to build trust between enemies. Efforts include talks that seem endless—in other words, in tasks that may continue into our grandchildren’s time. But sometimes if we stand in the wings, we can take advantage of war weariness to find workable solutions. We have to be present. We do not have to invade.

We Are No Longer the World’s Greatest Polluter

 

China has overtaken the United States in pollution levels. We are no longer the world’s greatest atmospheric polluter. Chinese cities recently have suffered dangerous levels of smog. China is discovering a darker side to becoming the world’s second greatest economic power.

A half century and more ago, some cities in the United States suffered smog equal to what China is experiencing now. In 1948, toxic smog from industries in Donora, Pennsylvania, is reported to have killed twenty people and left thousands sickened. Concern over air pollution grew and eventually led to the Federal Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. This was the first national law designed to improve air quality. This and other legislation means that the U.S. continues to lead the world in most economic spheres but not in pollution.

We still are the world’s second greatest polluter. Interestingly, the Chinese now seek leadership in another area of development. They are investing in what is called “green” technology, that is, technology which encourages growth with less pollution.

A race to develop green technology is blessedly different from an arms race. If we invest in such technologies in this country, we might continue to lead the world economically without the scourge of pollution. In addition, the development of sustainable energy would lessen our dependence on unstable parts of the world for fossil fuels, an added benefit.

Homeless Diversity

 
Several years ago I saw a play about homelessness—produced by homeless individuals. Listening to them speak, I realized “the homeless” are a diverse population, no more the same than all teenagers or college students or senior citizens are the same.

The play revealed at least four reasons people are homeless, though the list isn’t exhaustive. It was meant to start us thinking.

Some homeless people abuse alcohol and other drugs, which prevent them from finding and holding jobs and becoming responsible members of society.

Some are hard working but make poor decisions. They spend salaries too freely and don’t save when they earn money beyond the essentials. They fall prey to shysters who promise easy money. They buy housing beyond what they can afford, then can’t keep up payments—especially when caught in a recession not of their own making.

Some manage their lives and income fairly well but can’t find low cost housing to match their minimum wage jobs, especially if they have families.

Others become homeless through circumstances beyond anyone’s control, like an illness or accident or disappearing jobs in a recession.

Obviously, different reasons for homelessness call for different solutions: low cost housing; substance abuse programs; counseling for those who abuse money rather than drugs; jobs that pay adequately—to scratch the surface.

The homeless are us, making choices any of us might make given certain circumstances: abusive homes, irresponsible families, lost jobs, medical illness, physical or mental handicaps, inadequate education, terrible personal adversity. Some will always struggle, requiring tough love and continuing commitment from those who would help them. Others can find their own way if given better housing or job training or decent wages or medical attention. We don’t all have to be social workers to help. A responsive, caring community does require us to be aware of the need, willing to give even a small boost to those community programs which we judge most helpful.

Marriage? Who Would Have Thought?

Kathleen Parker, in a column for The Washington Post, (“To Defeat Poverty, Look to Marriage,” January 14, 2014) points to marriage as a poverty fighting measure.

Others weigh in. Jerry Z. Muller in his article “Capitalism and Inequality; What the Right and the Left Get Wrong” (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2013) writes: “Abundant research shows that children raised by two parents in an ongoing union are more likely to develop the self-discipline and self-confidence that make for success in life . . .” He cites quickness of mind, character, social skills, and knowledge as products of such upbringing. All, Muller says, “are increasingly crucial for success in the postindustrial marketplace.”

Children as emotional capital? Have we returned to a model recently ignored in our modernizing West?

We should not down play measures that improve schools and encourage jobs that pay a living wage. Such programs, however, require political agreement and compromise. Marriage is a personal choice.

The bottom line for those who think in terms of dollars and cents: Successful families strengthen society; dysfunctional families weaken it.

Why Do Older Adults Read Young Adult Books?

 
Young adult books have seen phenomenal growth since the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. These books aren’t just read by young adults but older adults as well. Analysts are asking why.

One reason, they say, is to read them along with their children.

Other reasons? Maybe some crave a literature that doesn’t include the explicit sexual scenes found increasingly in “adult” fiction. Maybe they wish to escape the darker novels that predominate today.

Is such reading an escape from reality? We all know, surely, that the good guys don’t always win in this world. We know the innocent sometimes suffer and end their lives still suffering.

Fairy tales don’t happen in real life, we say. And so they don’t, but sometimes the lessons found in them do. People like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. and multitudes of others not so well known show us the necessity for hope in a less than perfect world. We need hope as well as reality, perhaps a little “redeeming” value.

Farewell, Big Brother

 

He was seven years older than I, so I knew him my whole life. I never remember his showing the slightest bit of jealousy for my coming along and knocking him out of his position of only child.

We did fight in my youngest days, I the bratty kid sister who followed him around. Once I threw something at him, and he had the good sense to duck behind his bedroom door. I believe the dent remains in the door to this day where my missile hit it.

We were together in the same school only one year, when he was in the eighth grade and I in the first. The winter was especially frigid that year. One particularly cold day, we first graders were allowed to take our small chairs and gather in the front of the warmer eighth grade room. My nose was running, and I had no handkerchief. I saw my brother go to his teacher and say something. Then he brought me a tissue.

Our father died when I was thirteen and my brother in college. As we grew older we became friends, kindred souls, if you will. We could meet after months, even years apart, and begin talking immediately about things that were important to us.

We married and had children who became friends. He and his wife Nancy saw me through a divorce. They accepted my wanderlust that took me to accept work in the Middle East, even as a war began there. They welcomed my remarriage. Our mother died, then his beloved Nancy. He continued working. He taught a Bible study class in our childhood church.

This past Monday afternoon, I called to check on him. He sounded good, said he had slept well the night before. Despite the brutal cold in Nashville, he had gone in to work to keep a business appointment that morning. He was enjoying laying back in his easy chair in the living room, he said, keeping warm. We said we loved each other, the way we always ended our telephone conversations.

A friend came to check the next day when he didn’t answer the phone. He had died in the night, peacefully it seems, still sitting in the easy chair.

Thank You, Lord, for my big brother. May I be as much of a blessing to others as he was to me. For the first time in this life, I will be without him.

Sanity in a Connected World

 

Cell phones, email, and constant news updates proclaim the digital world. In contrast, a farmer in rural Tennessee in the early part of the twentieth century recalled hearing of President McKinley’s assassination weeks after it happened.

In this second decade of the twenty-first century we are instantly bombarded with the tragedy of tornadoes, hurricanes, and volcano eruptions as well as terrorist attacks, mall shootings, and the actions of drunken drivers. If we do not exercise control over this deluge, it will control us. On one hand, we may become despondent and feel hopeless. Or we may become so used to suffering, that it no longer bothers us.

How control? Basically, by controlling the time we spend on them. An article in The Seattle Times by Ricardo Gomez, a professor at the University of Washington, and a recent graduate, Stacey Morrison, suggested that some are pushing back against the technology that binds them.

They state: “If we fail to make our own informed choices about use of technology, technology will make the decisions for us. . . . We can each take a stance. There’s no need to go cold turkey and drop out entirely . . . we can all do a better job at managing our use of technology to reclaim control over our time, our relationships and our daily lives.”

Bookshelves Cleanup: I Give Up

I couldn’t fit any more books into my bookshelves. The time had come to clean them out.

I buy a lot of digital books now, but I continue to buy books I really like in print format. I keep thinking of the ones I want to pass down to my children, not to mention how I’ll need print books if the electricity grid goes out or fries my Kindle collection or whatever.

The print books included old textbooks, outdated reference books, travel guides from overseas places where I had lived or visited and would never see again, and novels from the three book clubs I belong to.

After weeks of sorting, I got rid of the outdated textbooks, some of the ancient references, and a few book club novels that I absolutely hated. Most of my collection remained. I can read old favorites for the rest of my life. I’ll save them for the time I don’t have anything to read. (LOL)

I constantly refer to classics, poetry, books pertaining to my spiritual journey, background for current events in my blogs, the novels I write, and so on. So I saved those.

I threw out some non-book junk and made more room.

The shelves are still crammed, but a bit of space remains for new purchases. I’ve promised myself that if I know when I’m going to die and am still functioning, I’ll really clean them out then. I certainly don’t want to ever be bookless.

Gabe Habash in Publishers Weekly discusses his problem of too many books.

Boomer Recessional

 

The baby boom changed every age group it passed through because it was so large. Now the last baby boomers are passing through their forties, and the vanguard are retiring. Social services for the elderly are a major topic in analytical articles. How will we pay for their medical needs? How much of the national budget will go for social security?

Other issues relate to the gap in experience left by the Boomers’ retirement. Much expertise will walk out the door when they leave. Boomer numbers insure that they will be a force to be reckoned with for a while longer.

However, the current age that includes the Arab Spring, Wikipedia, and Facebook tinges the decades of the sixties and seventies with a sepia patina of nostalgia. In comparison with the changes since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the baby boomers’ time on stage appears almost innocent.

The Soviet empire, so easily identified as our enemy, is gone, replaced by an amorphous al-Qaeda and its offshoots. Organized religion is challenged by the “nones.” The booming suburbs are replaced by underwater mortgages and the resurgence of downtown living.

The children of the Boomers are not as child centered. Some wonder if they will even replace themselves.

The Boomer generation, so confident that their numbers would prevail in the ideological struggle with their parents’ world, is fading. We are still assessing the confused times they leave behind.

Place Lovers

 

We are creatures of place. In novels and movies, the setting of the story can prove as important as any character: the Russian Jewish community of Fiddler on the Roof, or Gilead’s Iowa religious setting, or Flannery O’Conner’s southern gothic background in her short stories. We are shaped by place, even in this era of generic fast food restaurants and blockbuster movies.

Place is felt strongly by the displaced. The first who felt it were the native Americans in the United States who were displaced by European settlers. The English who left homes in the British Isles for America experienced their own displacement as they tried to make early colonial America a subset of their former home. Germans moved in among the English-speaking communities. Jewish, Irish, Polish, and Italian immigrants arrived. The descendants of freed slaves moved north after the Civil War. Southern whites dealt with an increasingly changed landscape. Asians, Hispanics, free Africans, and Caribbean islanders came. Recently, Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners have wandered in.

Love of the old place, left behind family, and foreign heritage compete with attachment to the new place. Volumes have been written about the hybrid-American young adult seeking identity between two cultures.

Both old and new communities lay obligations on us. Americans of long duration in this country do well to recognize the gifts that newcomers bring, from the crop picker to the Ph.D. engineer. Newly-naturalized Americans retain pride in former cultures yet owe an allegiance to this country that supercedes allegiance to the old.

Not so much a bland melting pot as a rich-hued tapestry, somber tones alternating with cheerful ones.

Our Un-Wired Christmas

 

A huge storm a few years ago plunged much of Washington State’s Puget Sound region into electronic deprivation just before Christmas. My husband and I, along with the small island community where we live, faced the third of three nights without power, just before our church’s Christmas concert.

Word was passed that the concert would take place as planned. My husband and I walked to the church through dark and hushed streets in an atmosphere in tune with the real event in Bethlehem. The church had no heat, but no matter. The community packed the sanctuary and sat close together in parkas, stocking caps, gloves, and lap robes (like gatherings in earlier churches, I imagine).

A small generator provided a single light for performers. The choir sang as joyously as ever, accompanied only by the piano. The bell choir needed no electronic aid. The accomplished soloist and the cellist lifted us from ordinary lives.

I have seldom seen an audience so touched, so appreciative. When the concert ended, no one moved for several moments. We did not want to leave but finally made our way back to our darkened homes.

The next day, Sunday, power remained a distant dream. Still in our winter garb, we trooped back to church and watched the children’s Christmas pageant. After the service we gathered in the fellowship hall for the children’s “birthday to Jesus” party.

The candles were lit on the birthday cake, appropriately iced with the words “Happy Birthday to Jesus.” As we sang “happy birthday, dear Jesus.” my husband looked up and pointed. The electric lights had just flashed on. Not that we needed them now. We’d celebrated the season without them, thank you very much.

Come to think of it, the angels didn’t announce the birth of God’s son over the Internet. The three kings didn’t send gift certificates by email. Joseph didn’t even have a flashlight to guide him in assisting his young wife with the birth of her first child or modern plumbing for washing up.

Christmas came anyway.

What Drives You?

 

In her autobiography, My Beloved World, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor shares what has guided her life and work. She grew up in housing projects, raised most of her childhood by a single mother. She recognized, nevertheless, that many gifts had been given her: loving relatives, a good mind, the chance for scholarships to prestigious schools. A “synergy of love and gratitude, protection and purpose, was implanted in me at a very young age,” she says. “And it flowered in the determination to serve.”

The desire for happiness or material pleasure or prestige are the chief ends for many of us. A few, by contrast, choose the joy of service as the driving force in their lives.

These deviations from the normal self-centered life may result from the influence of parents or friends or gifted teachers. For all the knocks that traditional Christianity has taken in the last few decades, not all undeserved, the church has often been the catalyst for service. Christ, for whom the religion is called, said, “I am among you as one who serves.”

Hanging on to the Weird

 

Francis Spufford’s book, Unapologetic, isn’t the type one might review for a Christmas gift. He begins: “My daughter has just turned six. Some time over the next year or so, she will discover that her parents are weird. We’re weird because we go to church.”

spufford coverThis book is not the sort of writing expected of Christians. It isn’t just that the book contains a lot of four letter words not usually found in books written by Christians. It’s also, as Spufford says, not an “apologia,” a defense of Christian ideas. It’s a defense of Christian emotions “of their intelligibility, of their grown-up dignity.”

Older Christians may look askance at Spufford’s unorthodox treatment of Christianity. Younger Christians on the verge of giving up Christianity may find it refreshing.

Christianity calls for perfection, Spufford says. Since none of us is perfect, we are all failures. The flip side of this belief is that it’s very realistic. Any brand of Christianity that attempts to “circle the wagons of virtue” against the others has it wrong. We are the others. We’re all messed up. (He uses another word.)

From the beginning of Jesus’ group of disciples, Christians are a community of the messed up. The one hope is that Jesus really is a God of love like he said, who’s willing to work with his people, comfort them, lead them. It makes perfect sense that messed up people go to him.

Doubt is accepted as normal in today’s mixed mash of competing cultures and religions and no religion. Spufford emphasizes the Jesus who remains as he has always remained throughout Christianity’s spread through diverse cultures and ages. The Anointed One, God in his creature’s image, come to live among the creatures. The one we begin to know by faith.

Ritual Comfort

 

The only time I remember my family turning on the oddly-shaped lights over our fireplace mantel was on Christmas Eve. We gathered in those hours before the celebration and the presents and the big meal and turned them on and read Luke 2:8-14. Just those verses. I don’t remember why only those. It began, no doubt, in my brother’s childhood, before mine began.

A family, a nation, a tribe—whatever community we are part of—needs rituals. The playing of “Hail to the Chief” during presidential inauguration ceremonies—first for the departing President, then for the new one—symbolizes our peaceful transfer of power.

A child’s choosing of a favorite story at bedtime is a ritual that gives comfort before entering the dark hours.

A phrase repeated by a couple, a family, or a group of friends may mean nothing to an outsider but for them it brings memories they enjoy recalling. “Remember Foggy and Sweetheart?” for years reminded my family of the time our car broke down on a lonely country highway at night and a somewhat weird couple answered our call for assistance and fixed the car. Nothing major—just a tingling reminder of black highway uneasiness and the repair that enabled our family to continue our journey together.

Understanding Iran

 

Iran, ancient Persia, is a Muslim majority country whose inhabitants speak a derivative of Persian, not Arabic. The recent agreement between the United States, Iran, and five other nations on Iran’s nuclear capabilities is our first significant exchange with the country in over three decades. Iran agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for limited sanctions relief. Opinions differ, to say the obvious, on how effective the deal is.

Drop out of the news for a while and read fiction to better understand this unique culture. Digging to America by Anne Tyler, for example, presents a touching international blend of an all-American suburban family and an Iranian-American one. They meet in an airport while waiting for the arrival of their adopted babies from China. The story follows the families through the years, allowing the reader glimpses of the Iranians’ past lives and their adjustment to America.

Or try a nonfiction book. We have not had diplomatic relations with Iran since 1979, when radical Iranians, followers of the theocratic leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took U.S. diplomats hostage for 444 days. All Fall Down, by Gary Sick, an official in the Jimmy Carter administration during the Iranian hostage crisis, gives a fascinating blow-by-blow description of the events. The hostages were released literally in the last few hours of Carter’s time in the White House.

Or listen to one of the former hostages, Michael Metrinko, held captive and treated badly at times. He was quoted earlier in the fall as saying, “I happen to like Iranians . . . I had a lot of close Iranian friends and still do . . . I don’t like the government of Iran. Politically, I despise it. But it’s there. Almost 80 million people. Vast resources. We as a country, a government, absolutely have to have relations with Iran. Deal with them in business, international relations, politically. Let people move back and forth. The world is too dangerous a place not to do this. Not doing that is crazy. We have to be able to talk to them quickly if the need arises.”

Remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day (December 7) and World War II: A Tale of Mercy

 

Visiting a relative’s grave site in a Nashville cemetery, my brother pointed out a nearby grave for a neighbor of our family. He told me a story pulled from our family’s history. Our relative, call him Odis, too old to fight, sold insurance during World War II.

As is common, friends and family depended on him for their insurance needs. The neighbor, call him Edward, had insured his house with Odis before he left to serve with U.S. forces, part of an air crew that made regular bombing runs over Europe. His wife lived in the house, hoping for her husband’s return, whenever that might be.

One day Odis noticed that Edward’s policy was due for another payment. “Don’t send out the notice to his wife,” he said. “We’ll wait as long as we can. Her husband’s plane was shot down over Europe, and he’s reported as missing in action.”

I waited for my brother to recite the rest of the story, for surely there was more. Yes, the plane had been hit by enemy fire. The crew bailed out. Edward, the last one, discovered that his parachute was defective. He jumped, resorting to his emergency chute. It deployed, almost knocking him out with its force. He revived to see a German fighter plane with his sights on him. For whatever reason, Edward never knew why, the German pilot did not fire on him but buzzed past. I like to think the pilot chose to show mercy.

Edward landed in a field, where resistance fighters picked him up before the Germans could find him. They got him out through enemy lines, his final rescue being by boat, and he returned to America.

A few weeks after the report that he was missing in action, Edward walked into Odis’ office and paid his insurance bill.

His grave and that of his wife, dates of death sometime in the 1980’s, rest within sight of the graves of Odis and his wife.

What Is An American?

 

What makes someone an American citizen? As a consular officer with the U.S. State Department serving overseas, I interviewed many parent couples seeking to claim American citizenship for their children.

In general, anyone born in the United States obtains American citizenship at birth. This is called jus-soli, “right of soil.” Many Americans are not aware that citizenship in some countries is determined by parentage, not by birth in that country.

American citizenship is granted through naturalization to legal permanent residents who have resided in the United States for a period of time and meet other requirements.

A child born abroad also gains U.S. citizenship if both of the child’s parents are U.S. citizens.

U.S. law is more complicated and has changed over time when only one parent is an American citizen and the child is not born in the U.S. If the parent has lived in the United States for a certain number of years, the child obtains citizenship from that parent. The number of required years has changed over the time.  (Ten years, then five.) I had difficulty explaining to some parents why one child in the family was not an American citizen and another one was. Between the two births, legislation had changed the law specifying the length of U.S. residency for the parent.

Some children I saw were not born in the U.S. and had no U.S. citizen parents but had spent most of their childhood here. Thus, they were not entitled to U.S. citizenship, though they had absorbed more American culture than many born abroad to two American citizen parents.

A child born in the U.S. to foreign parents but who grows up in the country of the parents’ nationality can become a difficult subset, one who is legally a U.S. citizen but may know little of the culture gained by living here.

What makes an American? The issues are complex. They deserve our unbiased consideration in this era of a world grown smaller by social networking and complex immigration movements.

Yes, Washington, There Is A Democracy

 

Our dysfunctional Congress sometimes moves even the staunchest supporter of democracy toward errant thoughts. This is democracy? This is what we are trying to encourage in the rest of the world? This week an event in my local Island County (state of Washington) commission meeting restored my belief in government by the people.

A packed house at the commission meeting on continuing a conservation futures levy resulted in a 3-0 decision by the commissioners to continue the levy. Two of the commissioners are Republican, and one is a Democrat.

According to the local South Whidbey Record, hundreds of the county’s residents contacted their commissioners in support of the levy. The levy uses taxpayers’ money to buy easements for conservation purposes in the county. Commissioners had considered placing the levy on hold.

The meeting to consider continuation of the levy was packed. One attendee said, “It’s interesting that we have a packed house. There’s bigger value in life than a dollar sign.”

Amen. The other Washington, as the place on the Potomac is known here, might want to take notice.

American Idol Politics

 

Americans tend to judge their leaders like they judge contestants on American Idol—spur of the moment. I thought about this when I read an article in Parade Magazine (November 2, 2013) about former President Jimmy Carter.

Carter left office in disgrace, haunted in the last year of his Presidency by Islamist students’ seizure of the U.S. embassy in Iran and the taking of hostages. Forgotten was his work with Egypt and Israel, leading to Egypt’s diplomatic recognition of Israel, the first by an Arab nation.

Today, Carter is one of the most respected of living presidents. According to the interview, Carter is enjoying the longest post-presidency in history and one of the most productive.

He began the Carter Center, which “wages peace” through various initiatives, many of them dealing with the eradication of diseases that so plague poorer nations. He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” He is often called on by world leaders for his opinion. He teaches once a month at Emory University in Atlanta. He writes books. His wife, Rosalynn, is involved in mental health issues. Their marriage has lasted sixty-seven years.

You can do worse than that. May all our presidents be this successful.

 

WikiLeaks and the 24-hour News Cycle in the Digital Age

 

In the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, certain records remained sealed for years. Researchers are only now combing them for insight into the tragedy. It’s hard to imagine the information remaining unavailable for that long today. No doubt Julian Assange would have released it the next day on Wikileaks if he and the Internet were around then.

Formerly, a memoir at the end of one’s life or the discovery of letters after a death allowed time for passions to cool and a more balanced view of an event to emerge before background revelations. Today, what is whispered between two people is shouted from the housetops on the next hour’s newscast. Classified emails, texts, and top secret communications become entertainment on our tablets or phones as we munch breakfast.

News of thousands killed in a storm passes off the radar like a dream on awakening. A terrorist incident is old news the next day, eclipsed by the latest celebrity scandal.

We have gigabytes of information but a scarcity of wisdom. Wisdom requires time for reflection.