Category Archives: May You Live In Interesting Times

Listening to Elders

Retired U.S. military officers as well as diplomats have recently voiced alarm over Donald Trump’s presidency.

General James Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense, finally broke a long silence and wrote in an article for The Atlantic:

“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try,” Mattis wrote. “Instead he tries to divide us.”

Further, he wrote: “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort,”

Mattis is one of several retired officers who have spoken of their alarm at what they see as Trump’s damage to American democracy.

Retired diplomats also have spoken out against politicizing the U.S. Foreign Service. Writes a former assistant secretary of state with over three decades of diplomatic experience:

“By using his public office for personal gain, Trump has affirmed Putin’s long-held conviction—shared by autocrats the world over—that Americans are just as venal and self-absorbed as they are, just more hypocritical about it. For dictators, Trump is the gift that keeps on giving, a non-stop advertisement for Western self-dealing.” (William J. Burns, “Demolition of U.S. Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs, 14 October 2019.)

What are we to make of this unprecedented outpouring?

Pointing to a way out, Mattis. writing after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, said, “We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

Protester to Voter

From these days of pandemic and protest, the story touching me the most was that of a man, a black American, and his walks around his neighborhood. He always brings his dog with him, as well as one of his daughters. This way, he hopes, people will see him as a pet owner and as a father first rather than as a black man.

To me, it was amazing what a black man must do simply to walk safely out of his home.

As a white person, I thank the protesters for underlining how much I need to repent of my blindness toward the suffering of black men, women, and children since the first slaves were brought to this country.

Unfortunately, protests alone won’t solve the problem of racism. Also unfortunately, anarchists sometimes take advantage of peaceful protests to hurt us all.

Maybe it’s time to turn protests into voter registration drives. Protesters turned workers could register every American of color they could find.

They could also turn their attention to the voting process itself—checking where polling places will be as well as hours and what it takes to bring every one of their friends and acquaintances to vote.

They could work for voting by mail for those who wish to do so, especially if the coronavirus remains active.

Yes, we need awareness, but change will come sooner if compassionate, honest candidates are elected come this November.

The time is short.

Church and Pandemic and Evolution

“The virus is accelerating a trend away from organized religion.” (“Dechurching; The Sunday Slump,” The Economist, May 23, 2020)

This article chronicles the financial problems of some churches due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Like theaters and other public places, church gatherings have halted because of the risk of spreading the virus. Weekly collections, the main source of funds for many churches, have plummeted for some, creating financial crises for them. A significant number of churches, the article predicted, might close for good.

Church attendance in the United States already was declining. The article predicted that the pandemic’s effects may accelerate this trend.

Interestingly, on the same page in this issue of The Economist is a short article about the scientist Francis Collins, the man who worked on the sequencing of the human genome (“Jesus is not his vaccine.”)

Dr. Collins was born into a secular family but became a Christian at the age of 27 after reading C.S. Lewis and discovering in other writers “a rich vein of philosophical and theological thinking.”

Dr. Collins suggests science answers the “how?” questions while Christianity answers the “why?” questions.

Back in the 1800’s, the church suffered a crisis due to the new theory of evolution and other scientific discoveries. It seemed that the church, many of whose members clung to a literal seven day theory of creation, would eventually die out.

The church did not die but eventually found new life when such theories as evolution actually indicated a magnificent creator, far more complex and awesome than previously imagined.

Indeed, the church has suffered growth, decline, then rebirth over the centuries ever since the Christian missionary preacher Paul began spreading the radical belief that the religion of Jesus was something entirely new, for Gentiles, too, not just another school of Judaic thought.

Who knows what a revived and reborn Christianity might arise out of Zoom meetings and long-distance learning, no longer subject to enclosure by physical buildings?

Information—New Game Changer

“. . . rival states compete in the twenty-first century as much over information as in any other terrain.”  (Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy. “Making Cyberspace Safe for Democracy,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2020.)

Democracies see the free flow of information as a right of the people. Authoritarian regimes view information as a weapon to control.

Rosenberger believes the United States and other democracies lack a proper understanding of this difference. Thus the U.S. was vulnerable to Russia’s attempt to influence U.S. elections in 2016.

In another example, a manager of the Houston Rockets tweeted support of Hong Kong democracy protests. The National Basketball Association had to apologize to the Chinese government. Otherwise, they would have been refused access to the Chinese market.

While U.S. newspapers are folding at unprecedented rates, Russia and China invest in media outlets in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

The United States must wrestle with tradeoffs: “maintaining the country’s technological competitiveness, and keeping data flows relatively open while preventing that information from falling into authoritarian hands.”

Above all, the American people must guard against the “weaponization” of politics by nondemocratic hard left and hard right forces in our own country.

Rosenberger ends her article by ominously warning: “Democratic leaders who weaponize information and disregard the principles of democratic governance will make their societies less resilient, fail to demonstrate an alternative to the authoritarian model, and accelerate the very degradation of the information space that authoritarians seek. In the information contest, the United States cannot advance a democratic vison if its leaders do not embody it.”

Home Work Plus and Minus

For most of recorded history, economic activity centered in the home or in nearby shops. The industrial revolution changed that. Men left wives and children to work in factories.

Then came the office age, increasingly in city centers. Homes moved to the suburbs, taking women and children away from economic activity, as well as further from male breadwinners.

Schools began preparing children for a more complex world. Over time they added to basic education many tasks once the exclusive duty of parents: social skills, citizenship, and so on.

Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic, those parents fortunate enough to have higher skilled jobs are working increasingly from home. They may add the oversight of their children’s education, lessons now taught over the internet.

Stories abound of frustration as the new order continues (or perhaps a return to the old?)

Parents find it difficult to work and raise children all day and evening. Single parents are increasingly challenged. Grandparents, once part of chores and child raising, now may live in distant places, unable to visit or help out because of their vulnerability to the virus.

A few people, particularly introverts and/or those who want more time with their families, find some aspects of their new work life pleasant.

Nevertheless, no sane individual wishes the situation to continue, forced by a deadly sickness. But perhaps from all the horror, we may learn to better balance our lives and our society.

The times call for the more fortunate to examine attitudes toward career. Too many have seen work’s main purpose as an accumulation of wealth.

Thus, we lost our recent years of plenty as a chance to build up our society and prepare if for the years of famine. We could have increased healthcare and modest housing and a surplus for unemployment programs. We ended up with a society divided between haves and have nots, the have nots strained to the breaking point. Now many are falling into an abyss of desperation.

Well, if nothing else, we can use the lessons learned to change.

Your Money or Your Life

Governors of various states are faced with a stark choice: Lock down the economic activities of their states or watch hundreds, sometimes thousands, of their citizens die in a pandemic.

Social distancing is the term for greatly reducing human contact to avoid spreading the Covid-19 virus, the main way it is spread. Since buying and selling products and services require much personal contact, economic activities are greatly curtailed by social distancing.

This painful social distancing, including lock downs is, however, slowly decreasing the number of new Covid-19 cases.

People hurting from job and income loss are understandably impatient for their jobs and incomes to resume. We can entertain differences of opinion about how long and how strictly we enforce social distancing.

What is dangerous, as well as absurd, is using the social distancing as evidence of some wild plot.

No governor wants to use social distancing. Every governor wants a strong economy for their state. It is absurd to encourage wild calls for “taking back your government” when social distancing is reluctantly taken to protect citizens.

We don’t need to make it harder for those on the front lines to stem the pandemic. State governors are on the front lines.

This past Sunday, I listened to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo address the people of New York about the Covid-19 situation in his state.

He didn’t gloss over the horror still happening: lots of people still sickening, some dying, loved ones in mourning. But he gave hope because he was feeling what his people were going through.

How different from those who knock down governors and health experts and others fighting to heal and overcome and find the right path.

Governor Cuomo did not use the address to pander for political gain. He wanted his people safe and free from the horrible sickness.

The man in the White House could take some lessons.

Covid-19 and Americans Overseas

In a recent press conference, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said U.S. missions in foreign countries had overseen the evacuations of more than 45,000 American citizens back to the U.S. due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A thousand things have to be considered in evacuations. In this case, what airports are still open in the different countries? If commercial flights have been halted, special flights must be set up.

Is the country in lock down? Where are U.S. citizens located—in urban cities or in remote areas?

How many Americans want to leave? Some citizens keep changing their minds. American officials must deal with filling empty seats when some suddenly decide to stay.

I watched a video of the U.S. ambassador to Algeria thanking the Algerian government for their help in evacuating American from that country. One of the benefits of American missions to foreign countries is that lines of communication are already set up between American and foreign officials.

Each U.S. embassy and mission in the world draws up emergency evacuation plans. They can vary in how up-to-date they are. Obviously, evacuations from Japan would differ from evacuations from Tibet.

I was in Saudi Arabia during both Gulf wars and participated in constant meetings to review and revise emergency plans as situations changed. The eastern part of the country was targeted by Iraqi missiles during the first war, and wartime restrictions created an added barrier.

U.S. officials often must deal with the stress of caring for their own families. They also must deal with reduced staff as missions are drawn down to essential personnel.

The World Slows

We take more walks now, my husband and I. The local beach or a local trail is probably about as safe as anywhere else in this time of pandemic.

Even outdoor on the sidewalks, where we greet neighbors from time to time, seems reasonably safe.

My husband and I share more conversation, too, and read more books. We find time now to think and write. We lack the pressure of a certain hour to attend a meeting, much as we miss our various gatherings.

I increase my emailing with family and friends, including those living without family members close by. It’s a sharing which, despite its electronic distance, may bring back a bit of the old neighborliness, the checking in.

I find more time now to pray for those who have no time, the health professionals, other emergency personnel. People who cannot work from home. The laid off workers with too much time who wonder how they’ll buy food and pay rent. The homeless, the mentally ill.

More time to pray for many things without hurry.

Even from something as horrible as mass illness and death, we snatch good things we had not known for a while.

When this time passes as God willing it will, may we keep the good things we are learning.

Guarding Democracy

The newer democracies—the Philippines, Turkey, Tunisia, Argentina, Russia, for example—find it hard to maintain their democracy against strong men like Putin.

The United States is one of the oldest democracies, but even this country struggles against undemocratic trends.

From an article by H. David Baer:

“ . . . ancient tyrants used their rule to pursue private gain with complete disregard for the common good. In Aristotle’s view, tyrannical regimes, dedicated as they were to personal self-aggrandizement, combined the worst features of democracy and oligarchy (Politics, Book V 1311a10).

“Like democratic leaders, the tyrant appeals to the people, but he does so through self-serving demagoguery. The tyrant’s true aim is that of an oligarch, namely, the accumulation of wealth. So, too, in our time, modern autocrats employ populist strategies to disguise the kleptocracies they create, which they use to accumulate massive personal fortunes. “

(H. David Baer: (“The Return of the Tyrants and the Price of Democracy”; The Cresset; Trinity, 2018.)

“So this is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause.”

These words were spoken by Natalie Portman in her role in a Star Wars movie, The Revenge of the Sith, in 2005, as an autocrat took power. Some have taken to quoting the line as “So this is how democracy dies, to thunderous applause.”

The Star Wars franchise, as we all know, has made millions for its creators, a capitalist enterprise that has done well.

But perhaps its staying power, beginning a generation ago in 1977, is due to its light versus dark struggle. Its timing mirrors clashes in the real world between falling empires and ideologies: collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s; a war in Iraq in 1991; the 9/11 attacks in 2001; the following wars in Afghanistan and later Iraq; and more recently, engagements with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, not to mention China and North Korea.

In a recent review of the book How Dictatorships Work, the reviewer writes: “…today’s would-be dictators . . . go after the courts, intimidate the press, hamper civil society, and use parliamentary majorities to push through new laws and constitutions. . . . Even in places where formal institutions are more robust, such as the United States, the informal norms that uphold democracy have become fragile.” [The book is by Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz; the review is by Anna Grzymala-Busse in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2020, “Paths to Power.”]

The reviewer’s “informal norms” suggest a certain decency, a regard for one’s opponents, a healthy humbleness.

No better example exists of regard for these norms than the late Senator John McCain’s concession speech on losing the presidential election to Barack Obama on November 5, 2008.

He said in part:

“Tonight — tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Sen. Obama, I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.”

How would you judge each presidential candidate today beside McCain’s example?

White Evangelical Reckoning

Two editorials in Christianity Today, one by Mark Galli, editor of the magazine, and the other by Timothy Dalrymple, president and CEO, rocked the evangelical world and sent waves into the secular media.

The off-quoted figure of white evangelicals who supported Donald Trump in 2016 is 81 percent. On December 19, Galli called for the removal of Trump from office following his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. So many people tried to sign on to the magazine’s website, that it temporarily went down.

On December 22, Dalrymple wrote his own thoughtful opinion piece. He spoke of the reaction by the magazine’s readership to Galli’s editorial. Some readers were moved and said they no longer felt alone. Others were incensed and insulted.

Speaking of Galli, Dalrymple said: “While he does not speak for everyone in the ministry . . . he carries the editorial voice of the magazine. We support CT’s editorial independence and believe it’s vital to our mission for the editor in chief to speak out on the issues of the day.”

He went on to say, “We are happy to celebrate the positive things the administration has accomplished. The problem is that we as evangelicals are also associated with President Trump’s rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees; and more. The problem is the wholeheartedness of the embrace.”

Long before Trump, some evangelicals shifted toward politics to enforce a religious agenda.

As white American evangelicals began to identify with political parties, their young people drifted away and attendance fell in their churches. Rightly or wrongly, they are associated in many people’s minds with a particular political agenda, not with the good news of Jesus.

A religion seeking to use secular power to enforce its beliefs almost always becomes corrupted by that power. Witness what happened to European Christianity during the Middle Ages. Eventually, religious wars devastated the continent and led to a weakening of the Christian faith.

In a democracy, individuals vote, and Christians certainly have the duty to vote wisely, and to become involved in government. But all human activity is subject to error and should be undertaken in humility and with respect for those who disagree. Holding up any political party as chosen by God is, I believe, a dangerous position.

Jesus knew the dangers of worshiping power. When people wanted to make him a king, he sent them away. When finally the time came for him to present himself publically, he entered Jerusalem, not on a charging white steed, but on a poor person’s donkey.

Christ’s model is not political power. It is healing and kindness and the embrace of outcasts. It remains the model for today.

Survival Migration

“What Europe saw in 2015 and what the Americas are witnessing today are not simply refugee flows or market-driven population movements but rather ‘survival migration’ . . .” writes Alexander Betts (“Nowhere to Go,” Foreign Affairs, November-December 2019).

According to Betts, many refugees today aren’t traditional refugees fleeing persecution nor are they economic migrants seeking jobs. They are fleeing “failed or fragile states, violence, and economic insecurity.” They are seeking to stay alive.

The governments of the countries from which they flee, whether to the United States or to Europe, are often incapable of governing. Corruption and crime are high and dominate politics and business. In addition, drought and crop failures increase food insecurity.

Betts suggests international cooperation to fight crime and develop stronger local governments, including economic development in home countries.

Some have suggested a “Marshall Plan” to overcome radical need as for Europe after the devastation of World War II.

Whether such strategies succeed over the long term probably depends on whether large numbers of citizens in developed nations realize the need for global answers. Perhaps enough citizens may finally understand how survival migration affects the world as a whole.

Citizens of more prosperous nations might also be moved by simple human kindness.

Not the Differences, but the Tone of the Differences

“What is dangerous is not that people have serious differences. It is the tone—the snarl, the scorn, the lacerating despair.”
–James Mattis, “The Enemy Within,” The Atlantic, December 2019

Suppose we stop treating supporters of Donald Trump like ignorant fools? Suppose we stop calling the impeachment inquires a witch hunt?

Suppose we listen with sympathy for those touched by the need for women to control their own lives? Suppose we listen with equal sympathy for those touched by vulnerable life in the womb?

Why do some call those who testified in the impeachment hearings unpatriotic? They were serving their country. Honest disagreement with conclusions is acceptable. Insulting the integrity of the witnesses is not.

Concern with the source of news is valid. Calling respectable newspapers “fake news” is not.

Yes, of course extremists exist, but the opinions of the vast majority of citizens spring from reasonable assumptions, results of needs as they see them. The differences are honest, not perfect, always in need of constant revision, but worthy of honest consideration, not condemnation.

As Mattis goes on to say: “Virulent, take-no-prisoners attacks on the media, the judiciary, labor unions, universities, teachers, scientists, civil servants—pick your target—don’t help anyone.”

Lowering the Refugee Ceiling

“Many non-Christians seem to think the idea of an evangelical who cares about refugees is oxymoronic. They are aware of a poll showing that just 25 percent of white evangelicals believe the US has a responsibility to welcome refugees, far lower than any other religious demographic in the country. We’ve become known—fairly or not—as heartless and xenophobic.”

So writes Matthew Soerens in Christianity Today (“Don’t Underestimate the Impact of Lowering the US Refugee Ceiling,” 30 Sep 2019).

Soerens writes to express his sorrow at the lessened number of refugees the United States will be letting into the country in 2020. The average ceiling for refugees has been around 95,000 for the past four decades. In 2020, the number has been reduced to 10,000.

Recent wars, famine, and violence have contributed to massive numbers of refugees, yet we are choosing to help fewer of them. Not only are we ignoring desperate needs. Our example influences other wealthy nations to ignore refugees as well.

Soerens is World Relief’s US director of church mobilization. He has co-authored a book, Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate.

Soerens is not advocating “letting everybody in.” He is not advocating open borders.

What alarms him is reducing to practically nothing the reasoned, systematic intake of those who have always strengthened our country and contributed to its success.

In so doing, we are throwing away one of the foundation stones of this country. Welcoming a fair share of desperate men, women, and children who have lost homes, livelihoods, and safety is part of our DNA that has blessed us and blessed the world.

Wars Forever?

Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy professor at Johns Hopkins, lists contenders for power faced by the United States today. He names them as Russia, China, and Iran. (“The New Containment; Handling Russia, China, and Iran,” Foreign Affairs; March/April 2019)

He suggests we apply the lesson we learned so well in our dealings with the former Soviet Union. We persevered in that contest through containment. Thankfully, though we engaged in smaller wars on the planet, wisely or unwisely, we never engaged the Soviet Union in an all-out war that no doubt would have devastated the planet.

Our problems differ with each one of today’s contenders. Russia nibbles at countries close by like Georgia and Ukraine. China wants hegemony in her area of the world, but the U.S. and China are huge trading partners. Our interest in Iran is limited to containment of conflict in the Middle East.

Mandelbaum did not mention North Korea. That county exemplifies the dangers of rogue nations developing nuclear weapons.

His reasoning involves working with allies, not abandoning organizations like NATO. Nor should we abandon allies like Japan and South Korea and Taiwan.

The widespread use of sanctions against North Korea is one example of smart power. Many nations signed on to the sanctions because of the obvious danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of someone like Kim Jong-un.

The rise in populism endangers our dependence on allies. It would be unwise for populists to scrap the global role of the United States in the world, especially since the current setup calls, not for military action, but careful tuning of U.S. partnerships with allies.

Cautions Mandelbaum: “Should the country turn decisively away from its global role and allow the revisionist challenges to advance unchecked, however, Americans’ happy detachment from the world beyond their borders may disappear. And by the time they realize what they need to protect, it may be too late to do so without great difficulty and high cost.”

How Do We Prevent Another Rwanda?

The African country of Rwanda was devastated by horrible massacres of one ethnic group by another in 1994. An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 were murdered in genocidal attacks merely for being born into a particular ethnic group.

The Nazi genocide of European Jews remains the best known example of this kind of atrocity—the attempted extermination of one group of people by another. People are hunted and murdered merely because they are born into that group.

David Rawson, the U.S. ambassador to Rwanda when the massacre occurred, discussed the need to better understand and prevent such atrocities.(“Predicting and Preventing Intrastate Violence; Lessons from Rwanda,” The Foreign Service Journal, September 2019)

He states: “Great powers are reluctant to intervene, especially in little countries off the radar scope of their national interests.”

After all, with the results of our now-regrettable intervention in countries like Iraq, who wants to send our troops to yet another trouble spot?

Writing in the same issue of The Foreign Service Journal (“Getting Preventive Stabilization on the Map”) , David C. Becker and Steve Lewis suggest a cheaper way: going after movements before they become conflicts.

Neither article is especially optimistic, but the idea of prevention suggests a glimmer of hope. Prevention includes the requirement to work with local partners “and a willingness to take modest risks with meager resources.”

An example was cited of a few aid agency groups in Indonesia who encouraged talks between Christian and Muslim community leaders. The talks led to the realization that outside groups were trying to encourage violence, leading the locals to repudiate such violence.

A quote based on conversation attributed to Winston Churchill says: ““Jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.”

Talking is certainly less expensive in lives and resources. And who knows? It may work.

Second Amendment? What About the First Amendment?

Leonard Pitts Jr plays on the words from one of Shakespeare’s plays: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

This Shakespearean line, spoken by the character Dick the Butcher, is a back-handed compliment to lawyers, who may impede tyranny.

Today, Pitts suggests, some are trying to kill all the journalists. (“Trump’s anti-journalism hit squad,” The Seattle Times, Sep 1 2019)

Apparently, a group is targeting journalists unfavorable to President Donald Trump’s administration, searching for any less than admirable episodes in their past lives. The goal is to blacken and render suspect any journalist who writes against the policies of the president.

Trump himself has tweeted against reputable news organizations as “enemies of the people.” He has called The New York Times, winner of over a hundred Pulitzer prizes for excellence in reporting, “an evil propaganda machine.”

Evil propaganda machines certainly exist, mostly the sort who seed the internet with unverifiable rumors. Newspapers who engage in research, who send experienced reporters to the far corners of the earth, and whose reporters sometimes have died to bring the truth to their readers, do not fall in the category of an evil propaganda machine.

Reporting on government, popular and unpopular, is, in fact, the job given the press by the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Press freedom is right up there with freedom of religion and of speech and of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition their government for wrongs done them.

If you want to see what happens to a free press as a democracy is stifled, read an article, in The Economist (“The Entanglement of Powers,” August 32, 2019) about Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban.

Orban has virtually taken over all three branches of Hungary’s government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. He has been able to do this in part because his party also controls most of the country’s newspapers, turning them into a propaganda machine for Orban.

Times of change and turmoil, as the world has been in at least since September 11, 2001, tempt people to look for simple solutions. Deep reporting on real issues may conflict with nostalgia for easy answers, but we need it all the more.

On Court Prophets and Wilderness Prophets, Christian Responses to the President

That’s the title of an article in Christianity Today (Timothy Dalrymple, July 19 2019). The author talks about those prophets who worked inside the royal court and those who didn’t.

According to the two examples given, court prophets work for a king’s repentance. Wilderness prophets cry out against sin far from any seat of power.

I invite you to read the article for its insights. I found the following passage especially thought provoking:

“As for me, I wonder if we have too many court prophets in an era when wilderness prophets are needed. I also wonder if our court prophets are willing to call out sin when they see it. Whether you view Trump as a David or an Antipas, whether you serve at the court of the resplendent king or stand over against the court from the wilderness, one thing Nathan and John the Baptist held in common was that both were willing to condemn unrighteousness in their rulers—even if it cost them everything.”

Community After the Shootings

After the horrible double shootings recently, I found comfort in the community of my church.

With all the current commentary about the decline in Christian churches, I find no other comfort as healing as this community.

We sorrow, of course, and rage, too, at the continued evil that targets innocent people. Then we find purpose in the story of a man who preached love but was himself targeted and killed. Yet, he overcame.

Indeed, two thousand years later, this man’s followers persist. They tend to refugees and feed the hungry and comfort those who mourn. Some of them are killed, too, but where their message is lived out, people regroup and stubbornly conquer by loving even one’s enemies.

Luis Velez and Trump’s Tweets

Have You Seen Luis Velez? is a beautiful story of a seventeen-year-old boy and an elderly blind woman connecting with each other and finding a way out of their loneliness.

The story is set in New York City, with its mingling of indifference and the occasional surprise of caring strangers. The story weaves a subtle tale of tribalism but also times when tribalism is overcome. Thus it is a tale of hope.

I read the novel as hate flew back and forth in news stories about four young congresswoman of color, their liberalism riling even some members of their own party.

It wasn’t the stands they took or opposition to those stands. No one has perfect knowledge. Our political system is supposed to provide a way for differences to be lived with and for solutions to be hammered out that work.

Instead, many descended to pure hatred.

I was angry, but something worse joined my anger. For the first time, I became afraid that this country I love will be lost.

I began to fear this tribalism, this unAmerican belief that one group of people is intrinsically superior to all others. It sneaks up on us in our fear of change—the belief that a few people deserve to rule all the rest. It seems so safe, so beguiling.

Are white Europeans superior? That’s the people who, after centuries of bloodshed and fighting, finally began the two worst wars the world has ever seen.

For the first time, I’m afraid too many of us may succumb to hatred.

Yet, as in Luis Velez, it may be possible to step across that fear and hatred. Possible, perhaps, to listen and search for wise and just answers, not those born of knee-jerk hatred against the stranger.