I honestly don’t remember if I voted for Ronald Reagan for president or not. I do remember watching some clips of Reagan telling jokes and laughing, including laughing at himself.
As serious as is the office of U.S. president, having a president who can laugh, even at jokes about himself (or, eventually, perhaps, at herself,) should be an unofficial requirement for office.
Recently, two pictures caught my attention: one from a London subway shelter in World War II, another from a Kyiv subway in 2023, Both sets of citizens obviously awaited an all clear to resume their lives. Both called forth a similar respect for ordinary people surviving efforts to subjugate them. Other than picturing more people awake and examining cell phones in the second, both highlight the ability of ordinary citizens to win fierce fights simply by patient endurance: simply waiting out the all-clear to resume their lives and their struggle for independence.
Indeed, Russian citizens, when threatened with a Nazi takeover in World War II, showed a similar resistance to subjugation. Perhaps more Russian people than we know may sympathize with the Ukrainian desire for freedom.
What a hope—that one day, Ukrainians and Russians, both politically free, will discover true friendship between two free and independent states.
First, my suitcase had been lost in transit. Second, my feet hurt. I had traveled for a couple of days in and out of airports from New York City to the Middle East.
In my battered travel shoes and worn outfit, I wandered around the U.S. consulate complex in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, finally finding my way to the gathering held to introduce me, the new U.S. consular officer, to my new neighbors, as the first Gulf war loomed in the background.
I was older than most Foreign Service officers, having finally been accepted into the Foreign Service as I was approaching fifty years old. I also spoke with a decided Southern accent. Previous foreign travels included a couple of days in Canada when I was a teenager, plus a quick trip across the border to Mexico when my brother was stationed at a U.S. army base in Arizona.
Somehow, I survived. A few days after the consulate gathering, I attended a Christmas celebration with a small number of mostly expatriate Christians, then went on to complete several Foreign Service tours against the background of momentous changes in the Middle East that we still are living with.
What if less and less people are born, leading to the buying of less and less things?
Some observers suggest that after centuries of population growth, the earth could be entering a time of population decline.
What would population decline mean to our economic systems? For centuries, the goal of many of those systems has been to sell more and more things to more and more people.
What happens if merchants and businesses have less customers?
What happens, for example, if our purpose for buying housing is not to build an investment but only to have shelter and perhaps create a home?
How do we build a successful society in such radically changed circumstances?
Such a time might be awful, of course, with economic depression and empty houses.
Of course, we might decide to use such a time to build better communities. We might begin programs to buy empty houses and replace them with community gardens or even farms. We might emphasize inter-generational housing and smaller, close-knit neighborhoods. We might encourage small businesses, many of them family owned.
Change could be seen as an opportunity rather than a catastrophe.
One of the things I admire about our country is the humor and enjoyment we are sometimes capable of, even in the middle of political conflict. No Kings Day was one of these times. We’ve seen much heavy political fighting in the past few years. Nice that we could just gather and enjoy peaceful gatherings, in a light-hearted way.
I hope we never lose the ability to laugh at ourselves. Not mean humor, just joking the way close knit families do.
A nation with the ability to laugh gently and not take life too seriously promises the gift of overcoming our disagreements and the continuation of building on our past accomplishments.
Friday morning, October 4, 2025
I’m writing before I’ve checked today’s news. I don’t know what’s going on in Washington, D.C. or in Seattle, Washington, the nearest city to my home, or in any other place on the globe. When I checked yesterday, U.S. government offices were still closed, and people were protesting in various places in the U.S. Various threats were made by various people, political groups, and political leaders.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about is the time the government shut down when I was stationed at a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia in the early part of this century (an age ago, it seems.) We were concerned about people needing emergency visas or new passports to travel to the U.S. How closed were we to those folks? And were we stuck forever in our foreign posts, with no orders coming out of the State Department? Eventually, things were sorted out, and normalcy more or less returned.
We’re concerned now about where federal troops may be stationed in the United States and who of our neighbors may be carried off and forcibly returned to their countries of origin, even if they may face persecution there for their political or religious beliefs. We don’t know what to do about our seeming inability to live within our means.
Pray and take care of your neighbors until we sort things out.
The invention of moveable type opened a world of affordable books to anyone who could read, not just an elite leadership. But lies as well as truth could be printed and spread more widely and cheaply.
Automobiles allowed us to visit places we only dreamed of and expanded our horizons. Used in large numbers, they contributed to pollution and armed conflicts over oil.
Television gave us access to a wider world. It also led to less physical exercise for many of us and less interaction with others.
Cheaper ways of producing and transporting food mean fewer of us go hungry. Some of us also gain unhealthy weight because we eat more readily available junk food.
And because of the internet, we gain information instantly. However, we may neglect to develop deeper truths that might come through reading and studying a subject on our own. We can follow news instantly. We can read about anything that interests us. However, if we don’t exercise self-discipline, we end up using all the time we saved with a computer to reading stuff we don’t need, probably more than the past generation spent in front of the television set.
The many inventions of the digital age still call for that elusive habit known as self-discipline.
A community needs a continuing source of new members in order to flourish. Otherwise, over time, it stagnates and dies.
For obvious reasons, the only community assured of continuing renewal is the family. It’s the only community which creates new members—provided young women and men continue to join in responsible relationships.
Simply having babies doesn’t count. Babies and children need care from parents and the larger community. The young are helpless and cannot flourish without care. Children without care drain a community’s resources.
Other communities besides the family also may welcome children. Religious communities are often gatherers of the young. Recently, the growth of youth with no religious affiliation has led to some decline of these communities.
Today, associative types of communities—popularized by digital membership—grow rapidly. So do casual relationships.
How will we meet our needs for the more traditional physical and emotional joining?
A popular question in current political and news magazines asks: “Is America a declining nation?” Have we, after wielding perhaps the greatest power in the western world since the Roman Empire, finally gone over the top and are now started on our way down?
An article in Foreign Affairs discusses this question in “The End of the Long American Century; Trump and the Sources of U.S. Power (” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2025.) President Donald Trump, the authors say, “misses a major dimension of power. Power is the ability to get others to do what you want. This goal can be accomplished by coercion, payment, or attrition. The first two are hard power; the third is soft power. In the short term, hard power usually trumps soft power, but over the long term, soft power often prevails.”
America certainly made mistakes in the last third of the twentieth century, when the Soviet Union declined and disappeared while western nations increased economically and politically. However, most of the world saw the United States as basically a force for good in a struggle with the Soviet bloc. I have in my files a picture of young Europeans clustered around American diplomats visiting Europe shortly after the Soviet Union fell, the young people eager to discuss ideas with them.
We and the allied powers, survivors of World War II, had now defeated the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist as of December 25, 1991, without war.
We played a good hand and won, but now other conflicts are following on the heals of that victory: Israel/Palestine; Ukraine/Russia; China/Taiwan; conflicts in Mali and other African nations.
The need is not for armies but for peacemakers and persuaders. Can the U.S. remake itself again, into the soft power now called for?
The quote caught my attention: “ . . . the downside is immediate while gratification comes years later.” The article in a recent issue of a professional journal spoke of the diplomat’s responsibility to work toward long term diplomatic solutions to global problems even if the solutions may be unpopular at the time.
Solutions to many problems may initially be difficult, even unpopular, yet preferable to a quick fix. A fix immediately solves a current problem but may lead to tougher problem later: instant gratification versus longer term solutions.
Political problems are said to be “kicked down the road,” always waiting until after the next election. Meanwhile they often grow worse.
Our health in later life may suffer because of poor choices requiring self discipline earlier: lack of exercise, overeating, smoking.
Instant gratification tends to choose immediate pleasure over the development of the inner self and of community. What makes us feel good is preferred to that which steers us to healthier bodies, deeper understanding, and stronger communities.
Politics becomes part of the problem. Voters may be unable to understand that the best candidate may be the one offering the hardest solutions.
That quote came from an older American, years ago, during the height of the cold war. Our foreign aid program was increasing, due to Soviet aggression in eastern Europe and a changing China in Asia. Perhaps our aid could be seen as enlightened self-interest. We were paying for a stronger defense that included nations on the periphery, hoping that our aid might swing the balance our way.
Perhaps much of our foreign policy can be seen as a mixture of self interest and true altruism. Particularly in the years immediately following World War II, altruism was foremost. Remember those old pictures of children waiting for American food drops after the Berlin Wall isolated eastern Germany? People were literally starving as countries suffered from the results of broken trade and bombed out cities.
Perhaps our evolving foreign aid was a step up from the wars Europe was saddled with for centuries, wars for obvious conquest. Still, it’s not always certain which attitude is paramount in our aid. Help for needy populations or one more weapon against our enemies?
Also, what influence in other countries will our colleges and universities continue to have, dependent on the numbers of young foreigners coming for higher education in the United States? We are becoming aware of how much our foreign students have contributed to paying for our schools. Now, less aid to higher education, in the form of halting grants and tax breaks threatens those schools. We have seen some of the most influential medical research in the world coming from scholars, paid for by federal grants. What will happen if such grants are decided by how much deference is given to our political parties?
Political parties and election grandstanding are inevitable. Certainly, public tax money should be subject to review. However, grants that serve obvious public good, such as medical research, need the certainty that public funds will allow continuation in the public good until finished, not subject to political whim.
Growing up in Middle Tennessee, I remember huddling under the covers of my bed when one of those powerful summer thunderstorms rolled through the area at night, loud flashes and crackling booms waking me from sleep.
My parents, in their bedroom down the hall, seemingly never stirred, but I was terrified of those storms, sure lightening was going to strike the house, immolating us in our beds.
None ever did, but I breathed a sigh of relief when high summer was replaced by a cooler, drier late summer, followed by the welcome colors of autumn.
For a period during that time, stories terrified me of other horrors: nuclear warfare and the possibility that whole continents would be devastated. I remember the silence of the audience as we left “On the Beach,” a movie about the world as a fictional nuclear war destroyed all life except in the far south, Australia and New Zealand, even as radiation slowly made its way there.
Then the Soviet Union vanished. Some nuclear warheads were dismantled. Was it possible that we had dodged the bullet of nuclear annihilation?
But now I again feel at the mercy of forces I have no control over: forces that kill little children in their beds in the Middle East, exploding drones and bombs, shifting safe places that disappear. Alliances and the possibility of peace talks change from day to day. Those in high government offices attend meetings, but fighting goes on.
The South African leader against apartheid, Desmond Tutu, was quoted as saying he was a prisoner of hope. Well to remember, even as white South Africans today are welcomed as immigrants to this country, and darker skinned intending immigrants are turned away.
What gives us hope in this mixed up fun house we now inhabit?
We always have a choice to hope and continue to work, even if we may not see the end of things in our lifetime. We make choices according to our principles. Things have changed and can change again.
Munther Isaac is a member of a Christian group that we American evangelical Christians have sometimes ignored. He’s a Palestinian Christian. I’ve recently read his book The Other Side of the Wall, A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope.
When I was a teenager, I was enamored, as were many of my Christian friends, with the movie Exodus. Stars included Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, and Sal Mineo. Included in the plot is the story of the founding of the modern state of Israel, which included many survivors of the Nazi Holocaust attempt to destroy the Jewish race.
That a nation with many Christians allowed the Nazi regime to come to power should warn us of how insidious is sin—including the power of sin to tempt us to categorize any group as “bad” or “good,” instead of taking care to see individuals and avoid the trap of labeling.
I think I came away from that movie, and my later reading of the novel, however, with no nuance about the actual inhabitants of Israel. I didn’t realize that Palestine includes Christian descendants of churches going back to the early days of Christianity, as well as practicing Muslims.
Some Arab extremist groups have committed atrocities against their Jewish neighbors but we commit a further sin if we label all Arabs as members of these groups. Arabs have suffered from Jewish extremists as well. And Arab Christian churches have a long history of perseverance and endurance over many centuries.
The Jewish prophet Jonah had to learn a bitter lesson before he understand that God cared for Nineveh just as much as he cared for Israel.
I invite you to read The Other Side of the Wall, by Munther Isaac. He has also made appearances on various interview shows.
Or, to state it more positively, study those who succeed.
We are rightly concerned for the troubled young people who have problems—those who use drugs, those who are troublemakers in school, and those who run away from home and wind up on the streets. Of course, we should be.
Along with these rightful concerns, however, perhaps we could also spend some time studying those who do well in school, those who enjoy healthy friendships, those who show interest in causes outside of themselves. Not just “why did these young people go wrong,” but also “why did these other young people succeed?”
Perhaps we could increase what works along with correcting what doesn’t.
These words were written to Franklin D. Roosevelt by Herbert Hoover on Roosevelt’s overwhelming win over Hoover in the 1932 presidential election. The country was experiencing the Great Depression, when unemployment was over 20 percent, one of the highest in U.S. history. One might have thought Hoover would have been somewhat bitter over his loss. Yet he reacted as most losing candidates in the United States are expected to do. He congratulated his opponent and wished him a successful time in office.
Indeed, that’s what Biden did on losing to Donald Trump in 2024: “President Biden expressed his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition and emphasized the importance of working to bring the country together,” the White House said.
Yet after Biden’s win in 2020, Trump was quoted as saying, about Biden’s win: “He won because the election was rigged,” even though evidence indicated the election was fair and Biden’s win uncontroversial.
Strife and controversy appear to have overtaken much of our government lately. After the latest election, government workers have been fired and are supposed to stay away from their jobs. No, they haven’t been fired and are supposed to report to work. But if they try to obey and come to work, can they get in? Are the offices open? What part will an unelected Elon Musk play? Court cases have begun in an attempt to sort out the mess, but that will certainly take time.
Meanwhile, much of our foreign policy appears to be on hold. What about Ukraine? What about the Israeli/Palestinian fighting? What about tariffs? Canada does not appear amused about suggestions that they become a part of the United States and have strengthened their ties to Europe, not the U.S. What about the Panama Canal?
It’s hard to be optimistic that Congress might offer help, since the Republicans barely have a majority and would have difficulty even being united themselves. The Supreme Court appears slightly more unified than in the past, but court cases also take time.
The only thing I can think of is prayer for healing from anger and hatred and pride.
According to an article in The Economist (“Gen Z has faith,” March 1st 2025, p. 22) “a long decline in the number of Christians has levelled off.” The article says the slight increase in Christians is found among Gen Z’ers, now entering or into their twenties.
Perhaps the Covid-19 epidemic contributed to the modest change, although Covid-19 is more likely to carry off older people than younger ones. Just the fact of a greater chance of dying, however, might be more unsettling to the young than to the old, who may be more likely to have accepted their ultimate mortality.
Perhaps the unsettled political times have contributed. Aging American presidents may give younger voters less faith in our political systems. Political alignments also are shifting all over the world. The United States is no longer as popular and perhaps doesn’t appear to be as firmly committed to political freedom for all as in the past.
Also threatened are the possibility of change through education and a job market seemingly made for bright young people, now becoming chaotic. Elections sometimes lead to power for unelected titans. Elon Musk appears to be a very powerful person, despite holding no elected office.
Perhaps the fact that more people, including younger ones, lack committed family ties is taking a toll. The drug epidemic surely is harder to avoid when one has fewer emotional supporters.
The Christian faith has gone through multiple lows, especially following periods of prosperity and geographical change. Yet, it has usually not only survived, but found new ways of ministering, finding in its namesake such values as purpose, meaning, and care for others.
The teachings of a genuine moral leader who not only lived but died for his teachings, summed up in “love God with all your being and your neighbor as yourself,” perhaps is simple enough to inspire in an age betrayed by the worship of technical toys.
“. . .These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.”
(From T.S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”
It seems several of earth’s lifetimes must have happened between 1990, the year I joined the U.S. Foreign Service, and today. The early 1990’s were an exciting watershed. The Soviet Union fell apart, and it seemed the old Cold War had ended without the devastating world war all feared. East and West Germany unified. The Berlin Wall between East and West Germany was destroyed, and tourists grabbed pieces to take home. The Baltic countries declared their independence.
Iraq invaded Kuwait, but the invasion would lead to the Gulf War the next year, with the U.S. and its allies sending troops to defeat Iraq.
In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
China was coming out of the destruction following the Tiananmen Square protests.
Democratic values, it seemed, had triumphed world wide.
In the technical world, though, technical advances would soon overturn our ordinary lives. The internet was on the horizon.
What happened as tech and the rest of the country overcame those bright beginnings?
Even as the world appeared militarily safer in the decades following, it seemed that in the U.S., people and their government became more and more divided between political parties and beliefs, leading to a deeply divided country.
Politically, we seem now to have found our way to chaos. Government agencies mandated by Congress fall at the drop of a hat—especially Elon Musk’s hat.
In these pessimistic days, it seems impossible that any sort of spiritual discipline could break out. Indeed, religious disciplines seem abandoned by more and more Americans, only a few practicing active religion these days.
But could those “dry salvages” or cargoes surprise? Is this salvage, a name for something preserved, waiting somewhere to be discovered?
The United States, like many developed nations today, is facing population decline within its native born population. Fortunately, lots of people would like to immigrate here. Many of them have skills we need, such as nursing skills for an aging population and agricultural workers for our farms. Some have computer and other skills for higher level jobs.
Meanwhile, paths for legal immigration are narrow. The desire to immigrate, with no meaningful legal line to join for many, feeds irregular migration, leading to its control by gangs and sometimes drug dealers.
“States that focus on border restrictions, mass deportations, or the abrogation of legal protections for asylum seekers will fail to solve the problem. They will simply redirect it while creating a new host of problems that will, in the long term, feed the problem rather than solve it. They will empower criminal networks and black markets while leaving their own economies worse off. The system will continue to decay.” (“Migration Can Work for All; A plan for Replacing a Broken Global System,” Amy Pope, Foreign Affairs, January/February, 2025.)
Our current system feeds irregular migration, as family members migrate irregularly to stay with those already in the U.S. “That so many migrants who are undocumented find jobs in the informal markets of their destination countries signals an imbalance between legal immigration pathways and economic need . . .”
The author suggests one approach is for countries with labor shortages, such as the United States, to set up programs within the refugee sending countries to train would be immigrants for jobs needed in the receiving country. This would include preparing them for legal migration.
If reasonable pathways to migration are in place, countries will have more justification for shutting down the illegal ones. The idea is not to stop migration but to channel it, then work to shut down illegal migration traffic.
Migration from places with less possibility for improving one’s life to ones of greater possibility has been the norm since civilization began. Better to work with it for good.
My Oxford English Dictionary defines hubris as “excessive pride or self-confidence.”
Pride in one’s nationhood is patriotic; excess pride can lead to harm for that nation as well as others. Nations as well as individuals can be tempted by hubris. Even as we begin new political terms for the presidency and members of Congress, we might consider the history of other countries when they reached new heights of power.
In the waning days of the 19th century, Britain indeed stood at the height of world power, her empire one on which the sun never set. In a few decades, however, the world would suffer two world wars as well as the rise of new political movements, bringing great changes to former world powers. Kipling’s poem would caution any world power, including the United States, to consider responsible uses of that power while they are able to do so.
Recessional
By Rudyard Kipling
1897
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Recently, some American politicians have resurrected a policy from the past: colonialism: that is, nations annexing other less powerful nations. An idea was floated suggesting America might annex Greenland, and perhaps even Canada. Needless to say, neither Greenland nor Canada was amused. In fact, a few Canadians are now suggesting joining the European Union, perhaps less enthused about North American alliances.
Why this reversion to days when countries grabbed territory without permission from the inhabitants? Countries expended wealth and even worse, the lives of citizens, theirs and those of the other country, in decisions by often unelected officials to expand territory.
No sooner did Columbus and other explorers discover the New World, as well as rediscovering Asian nations, than European leaders began thinking of the new territories as theirs to exploit as they wished.
The concept of self rule by all citizens was just beginning to be discussed by a few. At the time, customs accepted throughout history were generally retained. In the past, strong leaders often led armies to take over weaker neighbors—sometimes for slaves, sometimes for products the other country produced, sometimes for strategic geographic advantage.
However, as the Middle Ages waned, a few thinkers began exploring something new: the idea of more citizens having input into leadership. In the beginning, this new concept didn’t include everyone but only an elite—only owners of land, perhaps, or only descendants of kings and nobles. One of the earliest was England’s Magna Carta in 1215, in which the king signed a document stating that the English king was subject to the rule of law.
These new forms of governance were far from our idea of democracy. Often left out were those without white skin or European origin. But even if they were imperfect, they expanded the control of many ordinary people over their lives.
Eventually, after two world wars, ideas like self rule for others outside Europe and North America gained traction, even if never perfectly carried out. The United States led in many of these movements.
Now, however, some Americans seem to be questioning self rule for all nations. Do we want to return to the days of nations battling nations with no regard for what the people caught in between might wish for their future?