Category Archives: May You Live In Interesting Times

We Have Met the Enemy

For several years after the end of the Cold War in the 1990’s, we assumed that democratic traditions would take over the world. However, we discovered that democracy was more fragile than we thought. Indeed, democracy requires continued care from the nations who endorse it.

Previous to the Russian invasion of Ukraine early in 2022, the United States attempted to decrease global involvement in democracy. The country’s failures in Afghanistan and its less than stellar performance in the Middle East soured the country on commitments abroad.

Europe, however, was another story, even though Americans weren’t keen on involvement even there until the Russian attempt to take over Ukraine. The obvious desire of most citizens of that country to resist what was obviously an invasion of a sovereign European nation changed American ideas about resistance.

Robert Kagan, of the Brookings Institution, in an article about our change, wrote: “Russia’s invasion has changed Americans’ views not only of Ukraine but also of the world in general and the United States’ role in it. (“A Free World, If You and Keep It,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2023)

This change mirrors the past history of the county. Americans were not keen to become involved in the two world wars of the twentieth century until it became evident that what was happening in Europe and Asia concerned us as well.

Writing about U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt, Kagan said that his “interventionist policies from 1937 on were not a response to an increasing threat to American security. What worried Roosevelt was the potential destruction of the broader liberal world beyond American shores.”

Kagan traces the path of the United States as it grew from this reluctant involvement in affairs beyond our shores to a perhaps belated understanding that if the U.S. doesn’t defend a democratic world order, no one will.

Indeed, Kagan believes that the absence of American involvement in world affairs will in itself encourage dictatorship and great power conflict.

He does not mention one obstacle hindering our acceptance of the continued role we can play toward a more democratic world order. This is the danger of refusing to allow one of our own elections to stand as proved and certified.

As Walt Kelly’s comic strip character Pogo said “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Commuter Rebellion

One thing we learned from the Covid period: American workers dislike the commute. Office workers freed to work at home by the pandemic discovered how much they enjoyed the new found casualness. They also enjoyed the extra time gained by skipping that long ride into the office.

We long ago separated home and office. Now we wonder why workers, having found the possibility of working from home, don’t want to deal with lost time in commutes and other restrictions involved with their office jobs.

Maybe we should question why the long commute happened in the first place. Why did we allow this distance between work and home?

Suburbs were birthed by a rebellion against city life: everything from often less adequate schools in the city to perceived higher crime rates. Suburbs were the answer: mothers and children in a safe environment, while fathers earned the money to make possible the newer, safer life.

However, some women found the safe life also a boring life. They were safe from the supposed evils of the city but also away from its liveliness and excitement, not to mention career opportunities.

The advantages of suburbia faded as more women desired entry into the work force. The idea of dad going off to work in the distant city while mom stayed with the children also has changed with the need for two incomes for many families.

Of course, these are the fortunate families with two parents. Single parent households face the hardships of trying to raise a family on one income, including the often impossibility of affording a suburban home.

Cities, however, are more than job centers. They also are centers for creation: music and drama and often for learning found in city colleges and universities.

The abandonment of the city by many of the middle class certainly increased the problems of homelessness and drugs and mental illness for those left behind . These unfortunates need our compassion and help, but our beleaguered cities need more than that. They also need safe, affordable neighborhoods for workers as well.

 

Did Women Follow the Wrong Example?

The entry of women into the modern workforce did not in itself change our era. What changed was the kind of model they chose. They tended to follow the male model of the past few centuries.

Women have been part of the work force since the beginning of time. Women have worked on farms and in home-based shops for millennia. Regardless of discrimination, they formed an active part of a society’s economic life.

In addition, women did what men could not do but was essential to the survival of the human race. Though men were essential to the act of procreation, they had nothing to do with carrying a child or birthing it. Until the past century or so, the child’s very existence depended on feeding from the mother for its first few months or year of life.

On the other hand, in times past, fathers were less separated from their children in their growing-up years. Even when the men worked, the children were close by for whatever lessons their fathers wanted to give.

Though gender differences were acute, with men having privileged roles, they were at least present while their children grew up.

With the rise of the modern city and its division into city and suburb, women became less a part of economic life, and men became less involved with their children.

In the suburbs, out of the stream of economic activity, some women rebelled against what seemed to them a wasteland, a prison of sorts.

The advent of birth control, safer pregnancies and births, and bottle feeding, meant less attention to the childbearing and rearing role. All women, whether mothers or not, could find purpose beyond traditional roles.

But women still remain essential for continued life, in a way men do not.

Men can more easily leave their role of fatherhood and in some cases never even consider it. Physically, they are not tied to children as the mother is in pregnancy and birthing.

In the sixties, battles were fought over a woman’s worth to society and her right to a place in the job force, equal opportunity in management roles, and breaking the glass ceiling.

The word “house husband” was bandied around. Some men have indeed assumed a larger role in the family.

However, we gave little consideration to the modern separation of jobs and homes. The choice to have children or not to have children is quite proper. But for those who make a responsible decision to have children, the career deck is, more often than not, stacked against them.

Yes, child care can be made more affordable and available. But what about when a child is sick? Has special needs?

Or when a pandemic means the child cannot be in school or child care?

Ultimately, the parents are responsible, career or not.

Perhaps we should question the great separation of the past century or so between work and home.

Some separation is necessary, of course. We don’t wish a family living in a coal mining community to live in a coal mine. Nevertheless, the advent of the office job meant that many jobs were not in dangerous locations. Yet, we emptied families out of our cities for the suburbs and built super highways and faster cars and neglected mass transit.

Perhaps we should consider what happens when cities become childless.

Societies die without children. With children, but without responsible child rearing, societies crumble.

A society cannot function without responsible child rearing. For a vibrant society, children must be taken care of:  loved and listened to and provided proper food, health care, schooling, and housing. Society damages itself when it does not invest in the children and the parents who make its continued existence possible.

“Take as Many Pills as You Need . . .”

Several years ago I had surgery from which I fortunately recovered quickly. While I was in the hospital following the surgery, a nurse brought me pills to guard against any pain I might be feeling. She said I could take them whenever I needed to, as they apparently weren’t habit forming.

Fortunately, I don’t remember feeling much pain. I recovered quickly and soon stopped taking any pills.

Later we learned about the efforts of some in the pharmaceutical industry to push as many pain pills as possible in order to make as much money as possible. Apparently the medication was pushed whether the pills were needed or not or whether they might be dangerously addictive. (As we found in frightening ways, some indeed were.)

Sam Quinones, in his book, The Least of Us (True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth) tells a horrifying story of this shameful part of our past, when addiction was ignored so drug makers could make more money.

The story reveals how we too often see illness or injury as a part of the consumer culture: a way to make money, not as a need for healing.

I champion capitalism as long as it pertains to buying and selling the normal goods of a society and as long as capitalists pay their fair share of taxes.

However, any caring society, it seems to me, will do better if all people have access to safe and basic medical care, whether they are rich, working/middle class, or poor. Children, especially, should not have to depend on the income of their parents to grow in a healthy, safe environment.

That means, for me, seeing certain activities like the healing and treatment of illness as a public good, closely regulated to encourage good health, not to feed our normal capitalist system.

Lessons From Puddleglum and Wulfstan

In C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tale, The Silver Chair, one of the characters, Puddleglum, along with two children, are trapped underground by a wicked witch. She tells them that the good things in the world above, the world of the children’s protector Aslan, are all made up fantasies. Puddleglum, as pessimistic as his name implies, nevertheless leads the children to victory over the witch and her contention that the good things the children believe in are only made up.

Puddleglum answers the wicked witch: “Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones.”

Times of crisis and danger require real life Puddleglums to lead us. Such a time happened in the British Isles around 1014 A.D. In “The Sermon of the Wolf,” (Plough, Summer 2022), Eleanor Parker tells of the English Anglo-Saxons when they were being overwhelmed by the Vikings. Christianity had reached England by that time, and the archbishop of York, Wulfstan, gave a sermon. For him and those around him, it may very well have seemed the end of the world. He did not pretend that the Vikings might not conquer. His aim in the sermon, however, was to call for personal integrity and repentance.

Indeed, the Vikings did conquer. However, Wulfstan continued to work with them also, seeking reconciliation and just laws. Parker writes: “. . . the laws they made formed the basis for many later codes, ties that still sought to hold English society together centuries after Wulfstan was dead.”

Perilous times are nothing new. Bad things will happen. We can choose to give up or perhaps lose ourselves in frivolous pursuits.

Or, as Parker says in telling us of Wulfstan: “Whatever the darkness of the times we live in, some good can yet be done by every turn toward the truth.”

A Small Dog in Ukraine

A small Jack Russell terrier named Patron (the word means “ammo” in Ukrainian) has been trained to sniff out explosives in Ukraine left by Russian forces to maim and kill. Patron is credited with detecting over 200 devices for effective neutralization by bomb squads.

Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, dressed in his casual wartime attire, recently presented Patron and his owner with a presidential medal for their heroism.

“A dog who helps clean our land from the traces of the occupiers, and who also helps teach children mine safety,” he said. “Due to the Russian invaders, this is now one of the most urgent tasks — to teach children to recognize and avoid explosive objects.”

Zelinsky talks frequently to his people with nightly news addresses, but he also walks among them, having refused evacuation when the war began.

Contrast this with the instigator of the war, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, sitting at a huge banquet table, several feet and sometimes more apart from the people he is talking to.

Or consider one of Putin’s earlier meetings with Andrea Merkel when he brought along his Labrador. Merkel, because of an attack by a dog earlier in her life, is extremely uncomfortable around them. Putin later denied that he had brought along his dog to discomfort Merkel.

At any rate, here is this short guy in work clothes giving a medal to a little dog who saves people’s lives by sniffing out explosives so they can be safely detonated.

I have a hard time imagining Vladimir Putin taking time to come out from his big table to present an award to a small dog.

The Elected Dictator

A new crop of dictators has arrived on the scene, but, this time, by way of the democratic process:

“Around the world, from the richest countries to the poorest, a dangerous new crop of leaders has sprung up. Unlike their totalitarian counterparts, these populists entered office through elections. (Moisés Naím, “The Dictator’s New Playbook: Why Democracy Is Losing the Fight,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2022)

Until the past couple of decades, we hadn’t realized that keeping democracy is just as hard as gaining it. For this system to work, we have to be willing to lose to the side that has more votes than we do (whether popular or electoral.)

Losing is easier if the other side still looks and sounds somewhat like us. In the past few decades, more and more people, in the United States and elsewhere, don’t look like the white men who founded the country in 1776 or even the Greatest Generation who won World War II.

One of the playbooks for the new leaders, Naím writes, is vilifying those on the other side as some kind of dangerous force: “Populists work to collapse all political controversies into this ‘noble people’ versus ‘venal elite’ dichotomy, explaining any and every problem as the direct consequence of a dastardly plan by a small but all-powerful group harboring contempt for a pure but powerless people whom it exploits. Of course, if that is the case, what the people need is a messianic savior, a champion able to stand up to that voracious elite, to bring it to heel on behalf of the people.”

Court after court has upheld the election results of the U.S. 2020 election. Probably no voting in the history of the world has been as examined and certified as that election. Doesn’t matter. A myth will serve against hard facts if needed by a would-be dictator.

Gerrymandering districts to filter out any power to groups who might be opposed to the would-be dictator is standard practice.

At the same time, “a pseudo press” is crafted. A news outlet practices, not independent journalism, but political propaganda.

Such is the end result of the inability to abide by one of a democracy’s most important rules: you have to be willing to realize your human imperfection. You have to be willing to accept defeat when your side loses.

Christianity: Servant of the State or of Christ?

In a recent speech to the Russian people, Vladimir Putin “praised Russia’s army with words from St. John’s gospel: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’” This is the army that has killed men, women, and children by indiscriminate attacks on Ukraine’s towns and cities.

Putin attempts what many leaders do: rally a country around religion.

According to a briefing in The Economist (March 26, 2022, “The Cult of War), Putin has revived an “obscurantist anti-Western mixture of Orthodox dogma, nationalism, conspiracy theory and security-state Stalinism.”

To cloak Putin’s desire to revive the greater Russia of the czars in the words of Jesus Christ is surely a horrible repudiation of Christ’s life and message.

The temptation to tie Christ to political causes, however, has been dangled before his followers ever since his life on earth. Indeed, Christ himself was tempted, according to Christian gospels, to worship Satan by accepting Satan’s gift of all the kingdoms of the world. He refused, as his followers been called to do ever since.

Crowds of would-be followers lined up to cheer Jesus toward the end of his ministry. They hoped he would overcome Rome’s rule of their country. Instead, Jesus rode into Jerusalem, not on a charging war steed, but on an humble donkey. A few days later, he allowed himself to be killed by the Roman state.

Throughout the two-thousand years since that death, those calling themselves by his name have struggled with the militant temptation. When they have succumbed, as in the religious wars of the 1600’s, Christianity suffered, eclipsed by more worldly options like Stalin’s communism.

When Christians accepted the more lowly call of service—raising the status of women, freeing slaves, building hospitals, and feeding the poor, Christianity has been strengthened.

In every generation, Christians are confronted with this choice—God as state or God as Jesus.

Overcoming an Attempted Coup

The picture of Russian politician Boris Yeltsin on the steps of the Russian parliament in August 1991 forever symbolizes his finest moment. He and a few supporters overcame a coup attempt to take over Russia’s first attempts at democracy.

Later, after the Soviet Union ceased to exist and Mikhail Gorbachev stepped down, Yeltsin became president of an independent Russia. He was never again as popular or as successful as in those heady days when he led the successful resistance to the attempted coup.

Eventually, Vladimir Putin took over Russian leadership and followed the path toward dictatorship.

A democracy is difficult to bring about and sometimes difficult to keep, once birthed, even in the United States.

During a hot summer in 1776 in Philadelphia, representatives from British colonies in North America declared their independence from Great Britain. They crafted their new republic with a Declaration of Independence.

As it was being declared, an onlooker in the crowd reportedly asked Benjamin Franklin, “What kind of government do we have now?”

Franklin is reported to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

We may look back on January 6, 2021, as the day Vice President Mike Pence stood down an American version of a coup against that republic.

Repeat a Lie Often Enough

“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth” is a saying often attributed to the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Regardless of who first said it, the concept is a well-used strategy of those seeking power with little regard for truth.

Some practice it with respect to the U.S. 2020 election. Numerous cases have been brought before U.S. courts in an attempt to cast doubt on Joe Biden’s election victory. All have found Biden the legitimate winner over Trump.

Nevertheless, the falsehood continues to spread.

A sister lie also making the rounds is that the attempt to defeat the electoral count on January 6 was merely a demonstration of concerned Americans. That was not the case when huddled legislators hid in terror and those “concerned Americans” shouted for blood in the hallways of Congress.

Our system of government is not a pure democracy, of course. We have leftovers from the founding fathers, some of whom weren’t all that sure about allowing ordinary men (women were denied the vote) to have true power. Nevertheless, most Americans today probably think they believe in rule of the majority.

This expressed belief is threatened in times of great change, when what has been the majority view becomes the minority view. The test comes then: do we really believe in rule of the people when many of the people don’t believe as we do?

Easier, perhaps, to shout “fraud.” Easier to lie and spread falsehoods about stolen votes. After all, we must appear to believe in democracy. Thus, we must lie about stolen votes. The only way we can appear to believe in rule by the people is to lie about how the people voted.

I don’t think the founding fathers saw this one coming.

Perfect in Weakness

Plough magazine devoted an issue (“Made Perfect; Ability and Disability,” Winter 2022) to those with special challenges: physically and mentally, as well as one person suffering from a mysterious, intractable illness. The articles remind us of Christ made flesh, experiencing human suffering as we do. He knew the shortness of life, the little time left to accomplish whatever we are here to do.

In his long struggle with what turned out to be Lyme Disease, Ross Douthat talked of faith surviving (“Hide and Seek with Providence”). “To believe that your suffering is for something, that you are being asked to bear up under it, that you are being in some sense supervised and tested and possibly chastised in a way that’s ultimately for good. . . . God brought you to it. He can bring you through it . . ..”

The articles are a blessing at any time, but especially as the Covid pandemic is reminding us of our vulnerability.

I don’t think we are being asked to overcome Covid just so we can buy more stuff. What we’ve lacked most in the recent past, I think, is community. If we have any ability to learn from our long Covid night, surely it’s the need to grow our communities.

We are all vulnerable, handicapped in some degree or another. We are all in need of family, neighborhood, and spiritual communities. When our acquisitiveness runs rampant, as seems often to be the case in these latter years, the pandemic can be a reminder of our more basic needs

Pandemic? When Is the End ‘in sight’?

I loved the cover of The Week magazine on March 26, 2021. On the cover, Uncle Sam had discarded his face masks as he gazed out the window at springtime’s arrival. His solemnity was overcome by a posture of dared hope. The title was: “The end is in sight.”

Businesses might again hold face to face meetings, we thought. School children might return to classrooms. Houses of worship might reopen.

Then the pace of vaccines faltered. About the same time, a new strain of Covid arrived.

Just as we had planned, finally, a return to normal holiday celebrations of families and friends, the virus numbers reversed and crept upward. The new strain of the virus spread. We heard more about “break-through” cases affecting even the vaccinated.

We returned to Zoom. Normal social gatherings were replaced by carry out meals. (Though some workers were unwilling to risk more exposure to the virus and undertake the necessary service jobs.)

What is our path out of this second invasion?

Though Covid sometimes breaks through and infects vaccinated individuals, the vaccinated (especially including those with booster shots) appear, on the whole, to be less seriously ill than the unvaccinated. Vaccination is more important than ever before.

Another lesson is the sharing of vaccines. As some predicted, the new strain of Covid broke through in a country with less access to them. We don’t stop after vaccinating our own citizens but push harder for sufficient vaccines for every country.

Past history indicates our ability to overcome infectious diseases, even in undeveloped countries. In the past, diseases like smallpox ravaged societies. Today, because of worldwide inoculation campaigns, small pox has been eradicated.

We have reason to hope for development of better vaccines against Covid, even while the current ones decrease Covid’s strength. As newer vaccines are found, developed countries must share them worldwide.

By practicing common sense and sharing, we can one day have that delayed celebration we looked forward to in spring 2021.

Dying to Live

At least 27 migrants, including children, trying to reach Great Britain by boat from France were drowned recently in the English Channel when their boat capsized. Four smugglers who are suspected in the attempted crossing have been arrested.

The migrant families came only a few days after British and French authorities reached an agreement to try to stem the number of people taking to the sea. Both countries struggle to handle large numbers of migrants into their countries.

Thousands of people this year have attempted to cross from France to Britain after French authorities closed unauthorized refugee camps in France. Authorities also have cracked down on smugglers attempting to bring in asylum seekers inside trucks crossing through the Channel Tunnel.

Many migrants from countries in Africa and the Middle East prefer Britain as an ideal destination because of its English language, fellow citizens already there, or because the job market is more favorable to them.

On the other side of Europe, multitudes of refugees flowing through the country of Belarus have been blocked by barricades placed by Poland between Poland and Belarus. The European Union has accused Alexander Lukashenko (leader of Belarus since1994) of an organized campaign to use migrants as a weapon. He appears to have encouraged migrants from crisis regions including Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq to fly to Belarus on tourist visas, then cross over into European countries. The migrants thus act as a threat against the countries who have criticized his rule.

Meanwhile, Mexico and the United States are the destination of refugees from Haiti and Central America, fleeing corruption and poverty, sometimes massing at border crossings. For years, American immigration policies have lacked responsible, humane goals and implementation.

Immigration done properly is a boon to developed nations. Immigrants are generally younger than the populations of receiving countries. They often revive economies with younger people and new workers. Massive flows, however, can be dangerous for the refugees and can strain the resources of countries they overflow.

Receiving democracies need co-ordinated immigration policies. Just as important are joint efforts to encourage more humane governments in sending countries to avoid massive outflows of their citizens.

Green Technology Race

“When it comes to climate change, the United States should compete, not cooperate, with its rival.” (Andrew S. Erickson, Gabriel Collins; “Competition With China Can Save the Planet,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2021)

The United States’ relations with China are among the most important in the world today. While the relationship is complicated, the authors suggest one area in which the U.S. should definitely compete, not cooperate.

The authors cite China’s commitment to coal technology, as seen by their continued building of coal-fired power plants. The authors believe that “cooperation” with China in the field of climate change would mean the U.S. would have to give up its own progress toward climate friendly energy generation.

Instead, they suggest, the U.S. should strengthen competition in green energy technology. “Carbon taxation now attracts serious attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and the world’s democracies are generally significantly ahead of China when it comes to both meaningfully pricing carbon and having the industrial energy-sourcing preconditions in place to make the transition to a future of net-zero carbon emissions viable.”

A race to find better energy technology? Much better than an arms race.

Cold War Nostalgia

Reading Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor, I was tempted to yearn for those Cold War days when friends and enemies and goals seemed more easily defined.

Macintyre’s recounting of a Soviet Union diplomat who spied for Britain during the Cold War is both fascinating and a bit nostalgic. We knew who our enemy was. In the United States, Democrats and Republicans actually cooperated for the good of the country.

Most important, World War III did not happen. Unlike the first half of the twentieth century, neither superpower desired a major war, though misunderstandings and challenges brought that war perilously close at times. The spy’s courage in passing information about our enemies may have contributed to this avoidance of a nuclear war.

Yet even while the glory days of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s played out, forces emerged to challenge our smugness. Racial sins haunted and divided us. Respect for our history too often turned into a worship of country. New role models challenged old ideas.

No need to yearn for the past. Struggles, temporarily hidden by those Cold War days, have emerged, requiring our attention, finally.

The problems we face today call for the same courage shown then by leaders of both parties: respect for those with whom we disagree; avoidance of self-serving propaganda; disregard for unfounded allegations spread today by social media.

We are all fallible human beings. No one of us has perfect truth. A respectful coming together with a bit of humility may overcome dangerous trends toward demagoguery.

Touching the Sore Spot

“No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores reacts strongly when someone has the courage to touch the sore and say, ‘You have to treat that. You have to eliminate that. Believe in Christ and be converted.’” (Oscar Romero, Quoted in Plough, Autumn 2021, “Daring to Follow the Call”)

Oscar Romero, a Roman Catholic archbishop, was a critic of armed groups in El Salvador and a spokesperson for the poor. He was assassinated in 1980 by an unknown assailant.

At the same time as I read of Romero, I was reading about bloody religious battles in 1500’s Europe over efforts to reform what had become an unbelievably corrupt religious system. Criticizing established institutions is not a job for the cowardly.

We Americans are like anyone else in our desire to be proud of our culture and our institutions. They are ours. They are us. We don’t enjoy seeing them criticized.

Yet no human institution is without error. To worship an institution or a country or a leader is not only idolatry. It also cuts off efforts to heal and overcome imperfections, to become, never perfect, but better and more useful.

Many sore spots are being touched today. If we are wise, we will not react with hatred or fear but with the ability to listen and change and heal. Perhaps even to love our neighbors as ourselves—including our critics.

Pledge of Allegiance in Saudi Arabia 1991

The first Gulf War, forgotten by most Americans by now, ended when Iraqi forces under Saddam Hussein were pushed out of the small country of Kuwait in February,1991. U.S. President George H. W. Bush chose not to send U.S. forces further north into Iraq but to end the war with Kuwait’s liberation.

Saddam’s forces had taken over Kuwait in August, 1990. The reason for U.S. entry into this regional conflict was fear that Saddam would continue his southern march and send his troops into Saudi Arabia’s oil fields. The Iraqi dictator would end up controlling much of the world’s oil, as well as a country we considered an ally.

I had arrived at my first diplomatic posting in December, 1990, at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The U.S. push into Kuwait began a few weeks later. To say this time was an exciting introduction to working abroad in my chosen profession is an understatement.

No one knew the outcome, of course, when I arrived in Jeddah. Understandibly, Americans, Saudis, and other nationalities greeted our victory—after a short, anxious-ridden few weeks—with jubilation.

That spring, Americans working at the consulate gathered for a Memorial Day ceremony before the consulate flag. I don’t think I’ve ever joined with fellow Americans in a more heartfelt Pledge of Allegiance.

I think about that time in our quibbling over whether some meeting or other opens with the Pledge, or whether this person or that one is patriotic enough. I see such arguments as childish quibbling. Whether one does or does not say the Pledge should be a heartfelt personal choice. We are not, I hope, some dictatorship that requires mouthing loyalty oaths.

Evacuations from Harm’s Way

Following recent events in Afghanistan, I’m reminded of my own two departures from danger zones, as a U.S. Foreign Service officer. Mine were much less harrowing than the departures in Afghanistan.

Mentors for my orientation class in the Foreign Service told us we could expect at least one evacuation experience during our career.

Mine came in Algiers in 1993. Groups wishing to bring back a more fundamentalist government in Algeria began attacks against foreign interests. It seemed prudent to draw down embassy personnel. My job there as an economic reporting officer was deemed nonessential, and I was ordered to leave Algeria.

I flew out on a crowded commercial plane to Paris, where I spent an interesting afternoon and evening exploring the City of Light, attempting to make myself understood in very broken French. Eventually, I was reassigned to the U.S. consulate in Montreal, Canada.

My second exit, from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was a more serious affair. Americans in that country had been killed in attacks specifically targeting them, including one on a compound housing Americans. This followed the beginning of the second Gulf War in 2003. In this one, I managed to remain until my tour was up, then left by a commercial flight after being driven to nearby Bahrain.

Even this one, of course, never approached the danger level of the evacuations in Afghanistan.

I pray for those in danger, foreigners and Afghans. I pray that one day, the country may become a safer place, as well as free for women. I pray for God’s help in figuring out the complex world we live in. I pray for an appreciation of differences and respect for those with whom we disagree.

Syria and Dante’s Inferno

“. . . the Syrian conflict, with its bloodshed, destruction and human suffering, seemed immune to all our efforts to find a diplomatic solution.” (William Roebuck, “Raqqa’s Inferno: A Diplomat Reads Dante in Syria,” The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021.)

Such are the words of a weary U.S. diplomat, retiring after a 28-year career, on his last assignment to war-torn Syria, another country ripped apart by a dictator’s desire to hang on.

My own diplomatic career didn’t take me to places as devastated as he experienced. I was assigned to Saudi Arabia for two wars with Iraq and was in Algeria at the start of civil conflict, but I was never close to the terrible suffering recounted in Roebuck’s article. Nevertheless, I identify with the hopelessness of conflict which never seems to cease.

Lacking easy hookups to the internet, Roebuck caught up on his reading in off hours, including Dante’s classic Inferno. This is Dante’s literary picture of his imaginary journey through concentric rings of Hell.

Roebuck fits his daytime journeys into Syria’s destruction with his evening reading of Dante: “I had never seen anything like it—blocks and blocks where every single building had been hit. Slabs of concrete jutted out at wrong angles, like fractured limbs broken beyond any cast would ever repair. More concrete hung from blasted ceilings, dangling in a mesh of wrinkled steal rebar like insects caught in some horrific, oversized spider web.”

At night Roebuck returned to the Inferno. “Dante’s intense, bizarre, even grotesque imagery seemed to my mind to capture the depth of suffering and destruction in Syria.”

The situation in Syria is still bleak, but Roebuck took some comfort in the defeat in Syria of the Islamic radical group, ISIS, leading to a chance for recovery.

In the Inferno, Dante eventually makes his way out of the underworld, where he then notes a refreshing view of the stars. Roebuck compared that to evidences of life again in the broken towns of Syria: some refurbished schools, a bit of night life, families chatting on carpets outside their homes.

Small Patriotism

“What does it mean to be patriotic and should Christians even want to be?” Bonnie Kristian asks in “The Case for ‘Small’ Patriotism.” (Christianity Today, July/August 2021.)

Kristian identifies with the Anabaptist faith, a group traditionally placing their Christian call ahead of secular allegiance.

She asks: “What does it mean to be an American evangelical, to mark July 4 after January 6, when supporters of our former president—many of them professing evangelical Christians . . . overran the US Capitol in attempted sedition?”

She refuses such a patriotism that would support an “idolatrous civil religion.” Instead, she calls for a patriotism that doesn’t countenance conquest of others. It is more concerned for local communities and for foreigners than is the blustery nationalist kind.

Equating love of country with love of God is a dangerous heresy for Christians. Conquest and global power for Great Britain in the nineteenth century ended in two disastrous world wars in the twentieth.

Christians perform the role, first of carers, then of guardians. Caring includes rescuing the poor among us as well as welcoming refugees from destroyed countries. One generation’s poor refugees became the country’s future scientists and educators and leaders.

Christians also guard against pride misleading us to engage in wars having nothing to do with our survival.

Christian patriotism is an humble, watching patriotism, aware of how easily pride can become sin.