Tag Archives: Ann Gaylia O’Barr

The Last Line of Defense

According to reports, hundreds of U.S. State Department employees are signing a “dissent” cable.” This dissent cable is a communication to the acting head of the State Department indicating disapproval of the recently signed order by President Trump halting the processing of refugees into the United States.

Many of these signers have worked overseas with refugees and immigrants to the U.S. They are aware of our honored place in the world as guardians of the unwanted (“wretched refuse” as the Statue of Liberty proclaims) from other nations, including the grandfather of President Trump.

A dissent cable allows the expression of views differing from the official one of any political administration, not just the present one. One of the more recent ones dissented from President Obama’s decisions on Syria. It supports the discussion and frankness that a democracy, at its best, encourages.

White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said dissenters should “get with the program or they should go.” In reaction, the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, has pointed out in a letter (January 31, 2017) to President Trump: “The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual prohibits reprisal or disciplinary action against anyone who uses the Dissent Channel.”

Laura Rosenberger, a retired State Department officer penned a plea to career officials in the U.S. government to stay in their jobs. (“Career Officials: You Are the Last Line of Defense Against Trump,” January 30, 2017, Foreign Policy)

Many State Department officers have the experience and education to find jobs with higher salaries and less hassle. Please don’t, Rosenberger says: “Your jobs have never been more important. You are patriots who work for the American people, largely out of sight and with little recognition or glory—and your job remains to keep them safe and secure, as you have always worked to do.”

Wall Street Is Doing Well; What About Main Street?

The bull market is setting records. As might be expected, putting one of their own into the White House appears to have excited Wall Street. Good times are here again, at least for them.

What about Main Street? Some on Main Street are excited about Wall Street elites replacing government elites. Surely Wall Street will look after them better than government elites? Of course, wasn’t it Wall Street who came up with the idea of those bundled mortgages that contributed to the Great Recession?

Some on Main Street are concerned about losing health care. Various plans have been floated to replace the Affordable Care Act. One is to replace it with some kind of catastrophic health insurance. Individuals would pay their own health costs until they reached a certain amount, then catastrophic health care would kick in for them.

The problem is how much the person would have to pay and how well they could afford this amount.

Members of Congress, who will decide on healthcare, could probably afford such a plan. For someone on minimum wage, it could be disastrous.

Whatever replacement is finally decided on, members of Congress will most likely have access to adequate healthcare coverage.

I don’t object to members of Congress having their healthcare. I don’t imagine Wall Street has to worry about healthcare, either, which is fine. I just don’t see why Main Street should have to worry about it.

America First

The original America First was a movement appearing shortly before the entry of the United States into World War II in 1941. It was the ending act of the American withdrawal from foreign commitments after World War I.

Americans had rejected President Woodrow Wilson’s idea for a League of Nations to prevent future wars. World War I had seen an awful slaughter of young men, and Wilson wished to avoid such conflicts in the future.

Most Americans, however, wanted to rid themselves of the world beyond their borders and concentrate on life in the golden twenties and eventually the miseries of the Great Depression.

As Europe slid toward yet another war, the suffering of Europeans touched some Americans. But the America First movement said the war wasn’t ours. Instead, we should put America first and stay out. A few, like the aviator, Charles A. Lindbergh, even found much about Hitler to admire.

Regardless, sentiment against involvement ended with the Japanese attack on the U.S. navy installation at Pearl Harbor.

Some paint the current America First movement as the proper reaction against the cost of money and lives the United States has paid in championing, first, the free world against Communism and lately the democratic world against terrorism.

In fact, our foreign policy has always put “America first.”

The money spent by the United States on defense and foreign policy for the safe navigation of oceans and skies benefited us more than any other nation. It gave American businesses access to other countries. It assured plentiful oil for our country. What we spent was, first and foremost, for us.

We can withdraw again, of course, and pretend we don’t need to concern ourselves with the needs of anyone but ourselves. It will only be so long, however, before reality calls with a Pearl Harbor or a September 11th.

Leadership Is Not About You

Prudence Bushnell was the ambassador when the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, was bombed by terrorists in 1998. Over 200 people were killed. The majority were nearby Kenyan civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Forty-six of Bushnell’s colleagues, Kenyan and American, died in the embassy itself.

“Leadership is not about you,” Bushnell wrote recently in The Foreign Service Journal, (January/February 2017 issue “Notes to the New Administration.”)

“The lesson that practicing leadership means getting over yourself to focus on others came as a whack upside the head a few weeks after the attack. I was asked to speak at an unexpected remembrance ceremony for a beloved colleague. I was burned out from funerals, memorial services, anger, and sadness. Physically and emotionally exhausted, I actually felt a stab of resentment. Whack: This is not about me.”

Some of the employees of the United States government that President Trump will supervise have, like Bushnell, seen what it means to sacrifice for their country: military personnel who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, Foreign Service officers who have been through bombing attacks, intelligence officers who risk lives to keep the U.S. government informed of dangers, and a lot of ordinary employees who come to work every day proud to serve as administrators and organizers of the vast amount of information and decisions required to serve over 325 million citizens of their country.

President Trump, it’s not about you. It’s about them and the citizens they—and you—serve. You are a servant.

Harry S. Truman, an Example for Donald J. Trump

Donald Trump, President-elect as of this writing, due to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States in two days, tends to issue orders.

Some have applauded Trump’s style, believing that Mr. Trump will operate the U.S. government with the same authoritative style that he used in ordering around employees in his companies.

Unfortunately, a couple of centuries of government under the Constitution, its amendments, and laws passed by the U.S. Congress may stand in his way.

President Harry S. Truman, very much a strong executive, serves as an example.

In 1952, in order to avoid a strike by American steel company employees, President Truman ordered the seizure of the steel companies. The President argued that the strike would affect the ability of the United States to wage war. (The country was in the middle of the Korean War at the time.)

The employees sued the government. The government lost its case when the Supreme Court found that, in seizing the mills, the president had exceeded the authority given him by the U.S. Constitution.

One of the Justices, Robert Jackson, wrote in upholding the court finding:

“With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.”

The Russian Bear and the American Eagle

In the early 1990’s in Saudi Arabia, during my assignment at the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, the Saudis and the Russians opened diplomatic relations. The U.S. and its allies, officially including Russia, had just won the first Gulf war to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi occupation. The days were full of optimism and enthusiasm. Russia had emerged on the world stage shorn of the Soviets, and we believed democracy had won the Cold War.

For a while, it looked as if a glorious new age was born, when the countries of the former Soviet Union would be overtaken by democracy and capitalism. A Russian official visited our U.S. consulate in Jeddah, and we all basked in cooperative civility.

Alas, it was not to be. Today, Russia and western nations, including the United States, back client conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, like the old days of the Cold War.

U.S. intelligence about Russian hacks interfering with the American election have opened a frontier of grave concern.

Raymond Smith, a U.S. diplomat in Moscow during that early time, writes in a recent issue of The Foreign Service Journal (December 2016), “The Russian people, giddy from the collapse of the corrupt, oppressive regime under which they had labored for generations, hungered for a normal relationship with the rest of the world and believed that the result would be quick and dramatic improvement in their lives. . . . I wrote that these expectations could not be met, and that a period of disillusionment would inevitably follow.”

It did, indeed. For one thing, the golden age desired by the Russians did not materialize. Instead, “Russians saw criminality, disorder, poverty and the emergence of a new, corrupt and astronomically wealthy class of oligarchs.”

Former European nations of the Soviet Union desired the expansion of NATO as a guard against the reestablishment of any future Russian dominance over them. Russia saw the expansion of NATO as a humiliating attempt to force on them an international system managed by the United States, with Russia no longer allowed a role on the world stage.

How to avoid these adversarial roles? Smith suggests coming together on common causes, such the defeat of ISIS. If we have reasons for defeating the terrorist group, Russia has even more: they wish to defeat the groups before they begin attacking the Russian homeland.

The trick is to find those areas of common interest while we stand firm on issues important to us. Foreign interference in our elections is not open for negotiation. We will fight it. Other issues. like the brutal bloodletting of the Assad regime, must be recognized as evil.

Nevertheless, Smith ends on a positive note: “Unlike during the Soviet era, the two countries are not ideological opponents. There will be areas where our interests conflict. Resolving those conflicts constructively will require both countries to understand the limits of their interests.”

Why Buy Health Insurance or Pay a Fee?

Healthy people should buy health insurance or pay a fee for two reasons. One reason is that good health is not a given, even for those folks who keep their weight down and exercise. Accidents and unplanned illnesses happen.

Also, the expenses of those who become ill or injured and have no insurance are paid by you and me and other taxpayers when whatever savings they have are exhausted.

Another reason that all should buy health insurance or pay a fee is for the same reason that people with no children should pay taxes to support public education.

Our country works better if we have an educated population. An uneducated workforce drags down the entire country.

The country also works better if we have a healthy population.

For selfish reasons as well as unselfish ones, everybody should have health insurance–or pay a fee for not doing so.

Suffering Uncluttered

This day, scenes of suffering will float across our computer screens: perhaps atrocities in Syria, or a kidnapping in Nigeria, or a terrorist attack somewhere in the world, or an earthquake in southeast Asia, or the homeless caught in freezing weather in one of our cities. We are bombarded with scenes of suffering, both in our home towns and in other hometowns all over the globe.

The Morse Code, leading to telegraphic communication, was invented in 1839. In the early 1860’s, Matthew Brady was able to take photographs of people and places in America’s Civil War.

The concerns of the average American until the first decades of the twentieth century were mostly local, those of his or her community or, for some, a missionary speaker in a local church.

Today, we are bombarded with multiple needs. How do we cope when human suffering meets us every hour?

Some of us become callused. The suffering bounces off with no more effect than a baseball score in the minor leagues. Others of us live in guilt, overwhelmed.

A better way is to choose a few areas of need and concentrate on them. We give either time or money or both to a few causes that we have investigated and that speak to us. We do not give to every need that lodges in our email or feel guilty when we can’t. Instead, we practice disciplined giving as a part of our lives.

In the same way, we set aside certain times of the day for news. We don’t click on news stories every time a teaser headline rolls across our screen as we leave our email or finish a check of the weather.

We’re finite individuals. Best to channel our sympathy and not become either frozen or unmoved.

On the Way to War, Peace Broke Out

I grew up in the shadow of nuclear war. During my lifetime, the Soviet Union and the United States fought each other in proxy wars all over the globe from South America to Vietnam.

If the past history of nations and weapons were any guide, the two powers would, at some time, have used their ultimate weapons, and the world would have known nuclear catastrophe.

But it didn’t happen.

Somewhere along the way, a few diplomats and politicians decided to take the first steps away from the chasm and begin tentatively to trust each other.

Some of those people are widely known and some known only by those who closely followed the process. U.S. president Ronald Reagan, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and diplomats George Schultz and Eduard Shevardnadze were among them.

In an interview published in The Foreign Service Journal (December 2016), George Schultz cited a small, early breakthrough involving successful negotiations between the U.S. and the Soviets for a Christian religious group in Russia. The group had fled to the U.S. embassy in search of freedom to worship as they pleased. The negotiations were successful, and though they did not involve a lot of publicity, they led to the beginning of trust between the Soviets and Americans.

The trust grew until bigger negotiations involving nuclear weapons resulted in a rollback of those weapons.

In the decades since, we have seen a return to suspicion. Armed conflicts have broken out in Ukraine, not to mention the awful slaughter in the Middle East. Hope has too often changed to despair.

Nevertheless, that earlier time remains an example of what can happen when a few leaders are courageous enough to risk small steps toward trusting each other.

No More Protected Space

In North America, we have for centuries lived in protected space because of the physical distance between us and the rest of the world. That protection began to break down with telegraphic communication and newer means of transport. After two world wars, air travel and television became part of our lives.

Today, mobile phones are as well-known in Africa as they are in Europe. The videos of an ISIS leader in the Middle East can be watched by a young woman in Idaho.

We can no longer seal off our societies from others, those we deemed in the past as strange and threatening. Today, they come to us, if not physically then electronically, but our ability to speak to each other has far outstripped our ability to speak wisely to each other.

Sometimes old values are strengthened by new insights. In the past, the new ideas of the Renaissance and the Reformation led to wars, but they needn’t have. The ideas ultimately strengthened older institutions when those institutions began to address their failings.

We grow or die, and new challenges can renew us if we use them to spur the changes we need.

Corporate Boss Versus Public Servant

The Economist, in a recent issue (December 10, 2016) , pointed to signs that Donald Trump’s presidency would follow a business model.

Leaders of corporations are not elected by the people. In a sense, company heads are dictators, as far as the everyday running of the company is concerned. They may answer to stockholders, but for most businesses, profit is king. Only very enlightened CEO’s believe that they exist primarily to serve their customers.

But if the government of the United States, as Abraham Lincoln famously said, is “of the people, by the people, for the people,” it exists to serve. It exists for the people, not for the leaders or their political parties.

Trump, in his business dealings, can hire and fire at will. He decides, and his companies do what he orders.

Can Trump adjust to being a public servant? Can he, for example, with no experience in airplane building, order Boeing to come up with a cheaper airplane? Can he discriminate based on religion, even though the U.S. Constitution forbids it?

It will be interesting to see if Trump intends to use the dictator model or the constitutional model as his guide.

War and Peace, Rome and Jerusalem, Hope in Bethlehem

“Jews as much as Romans viewed war as a natural condition but, unlike Romans, they sometimes expressed a hope that this might change. . . . the biblical prophets Isaiah, Micah and Joel all looked forward with longing to a time when there would be no more war at all.”
–Martin Goodman, as quoted in “King David,” Meir Y. Soloveichik, First Things, (January 2017)

“He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.” (Micah 4:3-4, NRSV)

“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79, NRSV)

On this Christmas, when multitudes are refugees, when innocent men, women, and children are murdered and maimed, may we, more than ever, be renewed to work and pray for peace.

Why Did Women Vote for Trump?

About forty-one percent of women voted for Trump in the November election, according to numbers from The Washington Post.

Why would a significant percentage of women vote for Trump, despite his recorded remarks toward females which many consider sexist and disparaging?

Why would they not vote for Clinton, a woman who surely epitomizes women’s search for respectability and equal status with men?

For professional women, Clinton is a role model. But many women in the United States, just like many men in the United States, are not professionals. They work at their jobs because they need the money to live.

Such women might be interested in equal pay, but their careers, as for some men, are not geared toward success in the professional sense.

Many men and woman yearn for a past time, sometimes mythical, but whose loss they feel. Just as numbers of working white men are angered at the loss of well-paying jobs, so some women are angered at feeling pushed toward the career model when they really prefer more time at home tending to family or engaged in community service.

Not all women are interested in crashing the glass ceiling or working at high stress careers. Some prefer part time work after the children are past the toddler years. Their main focus is still on their families, (including aging parents) as well as religious and community service. The high cost of living in today’s world creates barriers against this kind of life.

Of course, many men might wish for more time off to be with family. Some men and women are not drawn to the role model of the elite professional, though it is a commendable goal for many. It just isn’t the goal for all men and women.

The irony is that Clinton favored more family leave and other family-focused policies. Is the new administration aware of the need for such policies?

Homelessness Is No Community

Writing in First Things (“Homeless,” June/July 2016), R.R. Remo talks of the homelessness felt by so many in today’s world. The obvious homeless increasingly sleep on streets or in encampments in U.S. cities. The refugees flooding into Europe are homeless, as are many who cross national borders in North America.

Homelessness is not limited to the physically homeless. People drift spiritually from communities that sheltered them in the past. Old beliefs are called into question.

Even the well off may lead rootless lives, leaving little room for lifelong friendships or family support. As couples increasingly have only one child or no children, terms like aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins pass from use. Our connections tend to be temporary.

Rootlessness affects our political situation also, Remo says. “Rejecting established leaders, voters who feel abandoned are vulnerable to manipulation.” They may flee to “strong men who promise protection.”

How fight homelessness? Solutions require some exchange of self interest and the acceptance of risk for the sake of entering into community, including communities of family, faith, neighborhood, and even addiction recovery.

The Cost of Saving Money on Health Care

Grays Harbor County, in my home state of Washington, cast the majority of its votes for Donald Trump in the recent presidential election. According to Danny Westneat, columnist for The Seattle Times, it’s the first time in almost a century that the county voted Republican instead of Democratic.

According to state unemployment rates for October, 2016, Grays Harbor County had an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, considerably higher than the state rate of 5.4 percent. So perhaps high unemployment encouraged a Trump vote, as it appears to have done in other parts of the nation.

Westneat quoted some interesting facts about Grays Harbor County. Several years ago nineteen percent of the population had no health insurance. Today, mainly because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the rate of uninsured dropped to nine percent. One in five adults in the country signed up for it.

If the Trump administration abolishes the ACA, as Trump has said it will do on several occasions, what will happen to those people who have gained coverage?

In a more recent column (The Seattle Times, December 12, 2016), Westneat chronicles the case of a young woman with diabetes and fibromyalgia, which causes severe muscle and joint pains. Before the ACA, she often lacked money for medications to treat the pain and missed work.

When the ACA became law, the woman, no longer barred by her previous medical conditions, signed up. She was able to afford the payments because of the subsidy that came with the plan. Eventually, with her chronic conditions treated, she returned to school and received a graduate degree from Seattle Pacific University. She’s now interning in her chosen field.

What happens if this woman and others lose their medical coverage? What if their chronic conditions go untreated?

Saving money by abolishing continuing health care will cost more in the long run. And that’s only the financial cost.

Thoughts After Reading THE TERROR YEARS by Lawrence Wright

The Terror Years; From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State by Lawrence Wright is a thought-provoking book. Its somber analyses ring true. Especially disturbing is his chapter on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Each side believes retaliation is justified. Carrying out what one believes is justified, however, sparks an endless cycle of killing and violence. Each year the conflict sucks more and more nations into its rapidly spinning whirlpool.

Only if you are elderly, do you have any memory of a time when Israelis and Palestinians were not in conflict. Each group—Israeli and Palestinian—has reasons for hating the other. Each side has reasons for wanting to murder and maim the other. Each could cite the saying: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Consider, however, dialog from one version of the play Fiddler on the Roof:
FIRST MAN: We should defend ourselves. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
TEVYE: Very good. And that way, the whole world will be blind and toothless.

Much of terrorism today is the result of resentments long buried but never extinguished, only waiting to be uncovered. Perhaps the only solution is the teaching taught by one who lived in the Middle East over two-thousand years ago. Somebody must sacrifice righteous vengeance and begin a virtuous circle of forgiveness.

What Happens if the Jobs We Want to “Bring Back” No Longer Exist?

Years ago I worked for the Coca-Cola Company at its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. The company gave an orientation tour for the new employees. As part of the tour, we visited a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

I was amazed at the small number of workers employed in the plant. A few people tended the bottling machines. Since then, even more manufacturing jobs in diverse industries have been lost to machines.

We can talk about bringing jobs back from overseas. Indeed, transportation costs and other factors have led some U.S. companies to return operations to the States. However, they may be employing less workers than before due to the machines that have taken over.

Jon Talton, writing in The Seattle Times (November 27, 2016), observes: “. . . so much manufacturing is automated today. In 1980, generating $1 million in manufacturing output took 25 workers. Now it takes about 6.5.”

The five fastest growing jobs listed in the Department of Labor Occupational Outlook Handbook are wind turbine service technicians, occupational therapy assistants, physical therapist assistants, physical therapist aides, and home health aides. As you can see, technician and service occupations predominate.

Changing our work force for today’s jobs will require more than bringing back “manufacturing jobs.” Our work force needs job training, and it will need continuous training.

Actually Leaving Facebook?

A news columnist, Froma Harrop, announced her intention to leave Facebook. She’s leaving because she believes Facebook has become a platform for fake news.

At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook, has posted (on Facebook) an announcement that his company is acting to curb false news stories. It is, he said, developing new tools to detect and classify “misinformation.” Further, he has said, the company won’t accept adds that are “illegal, misleading or deceptive.”

Possibly the problem is with the “friends” concept. Facebook may fit comfortably among a group of actual friends, brought together by some kind of kinship. It runs aground when it becomes an advertising center for businesses or political parties. Calling customers or potential voters our “friends,” when we do not even know them, degrades the word.

For the moment, I am still on Facebook. I have decided, however, that I will not like or click approval of any product or any unknown opinion piece. In fact, I will limit my viewing to personal notes from actual friends. And my time on Facebook will be minimal.

Wanted: Thick-Skinned Politicians

Barack Obama was named “Comedian in Chief” by news columnist Timothy Egan.

Obama joked a lot and never complained about cartoons emphasizing his big ears. Donald Trump will have to get used to the lampooning of his hair and physical characteristics.

Even more, Obama managed to respond with civility to outrageous insults. When Philippine President Rodrigo Duarte used a vulgar epithet for Obama, Obama responded that Duarte “was clearly a colorful guy.”

A politician’s family must cope with comments about him or her that go beyond mere humor. Trump’s ten-year-old son Barron will now face what Obama’s daughters have endured for eight years.

Michelle Obama taught her family: “When they go low, we go high.” Hopefully the Trump family will practice this as well.

Trump will need to take “Saturday Night Live” spoofs and political cartoons in his stride and laugh along with the public. Americans like politicians with a sense of humor.

I think it was the newscaster Harry Reasoner who said he wouldn’t trust any politician who lacked one.

Post-truth Age?

“Post-truth” is Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2016.

Post-truth means circumstances where “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

The growth of a post-truth environment is heightened by the speed with which digital media can ramp up emotions with misleading information.

More than a few conservative and liberal media sites stretch the truth or bury it. The Seattle Times columnist, Danny Westneat, wrote about his city’s Bipartisan Report, which Westneat named a “click bait” site for liberals.

In response, the site founder said he was only following the successful formula used by Fox News. “What Fox does is accurate to a point. It’s based on facts and reporting, but, at the same time it’s giving people only the parts they want to hear. .. it’s not lying, but it’s leaving out critical information.”

The choice is ours. Plenty of news outlets lean conservative or liberal (usually within their acknowledged opinion pieces) without reporting dodgy news stories. We have a choice between reputable news sites or entertainment that stokes our prejudices.