Disaster in Chief

President Trump's son-in-law appeared on Fox News on Wednesday to declare victory over the coronavirus:  "We're on the other side of the medical aspect of this," Jared Kushner said.  "We've achieved all of the different milestones that are needed.  The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story."  Really?

Over 65,000 Americans dead and the number climbing.  States, hospitals, and nursing homes desperate for equipment.  Testing widely unavailable.  No cure, no vaccine.

If we're truly on the other side of this, let's give the Disaster in Chief credit for his accomplishments:

1. He ignored the warnings contained in the President's Daily Brief as early as January, failing in his fundamental duty to protect the American people.

2. He downplayed the danger, saying on February 26, "You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero."  We currently have over one million cases.

3. He failed to manage testing for Americans.  When asked about this on March 13 he said, "I don't take responsibility at all."  Instead Trump blamed--you know who--Barack Obama.  We still don't have enough tests today.

4. He fomented xenophobia and racism, calling the virus the "China virus" and continued to defend his use of the term.

5. He failed to coordinate the purchasing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the states, leaving them to compete with each other and with the federal government, driving up prices more than 1,000%.

6. He attacked, and continues to attack, the press, calling them "horrid," "nasty," and "third-rate."  His belittling, abusive language demeans us all.

7. He promoted unproven and dangerous treatments: think bleach, UV light, and hydroxychloroquine.

8. He criticized governors as they attempted to manage the crisis on their own.  "She doesn't get it done," he said of Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer, and Jay Inslee of Washington "shouldn't be relying on the federal government."

9. He incited, and continues to incite, violent protests against state stay-at-home orders.  Calling on protesters to liberate Michigan, Virginia, and Minnesota on April 17, he also defended the mob in Lansing on Friday as "very good people."

10. He communicated clearly about the danger that lies ahead, saying on April 29, "If it does come back--it's not going to come back--and I've spoken to 10 different people, it's not going to be like it was . .  . If we have embers of corona coupled with the flu, that's not going to be pleasant, but it's not going to be what we've gone through in any way, shape or form . . . You may not even have corona coming back, just so you understand."  Huh?

So go ahead, Jared.  Declare victory and see what happens.  Wasn't it George W. Bush who famously said, "Mission Accomplished?"  Now how'd that turn out . . .

Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day and I'm not sure what to write.  I've had an uneasy sense of this holiday for much of my life, seeing myself as a pacifist.  The two most recent American wars, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, have seemed so misguided to me.  And re-reading Margaret Mitchell's masterpiece Gone with the Wind has reminded me of the devastation that the Civil War wrought throughout the South, devastation that still reverberates today.

Yet I realize that those who fight in our wars, whether they're relatives or friends or strangers, fight on my behalf whether or not I agree with the cause.  They've given of themselves in ways that I would not.  On this holiday, then, I'm reminded every year to offer up thanks and remembrance for those who have served.

The Language of War

How we love to wage war in America. In addition to our war on terrorism, we've initiated wars on cancer, drugs, and poverty. Another war, the one that rages every 4 years, has already begun: our presidential campaign. Consider the language: Which candidate has the bigger war chest? How will the battleground states vote? Who has more field offices established? Have the campaigns enlisted their armies of volunteers?

In one sense the outcome of this war will be clear: either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will win. But in another sense, the outcome will be fuzzy. For in modern America the winners of wars are those with the most money. Defense contractors, for example, reap victory in Afghanistan and Iraq; drug companies, hospitals, and high-tech medical manufacturers triumph in the war on cancer; drug cartels and weapons manufacturers continue to win the war on drugs; and all of us but the poor sweep the war on poverty.

The winners in 2012? The big donors, the super PACS, the people we don't know and don't elect who dictate how the rest of us live. For in this war corporate America--especially energy, finance, and health care interests--brings out its big guns and mows everybody else down.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see who's left standing when the air clears.

You May Say I'm a Dreamer

The killing of 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, by an American staff sergeant last week brought us to a new low in the war in Afghanistan. But we've been here before, many times. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam comes immediately to mind; having occurred almost exactly 44 years ago, it was more horrific in scale but otherwise a similar crime.

When we put people in brutal situations, we must expect brutal behavior. So why are we shocked when these events happen? Commentators are now analyzing Sgt. Bales' life and his 4 deployments over the last 10 years. Was his marriage stressful? Did the fact that he'd seen a buddy lose his leg the day before affect his state of mind? Did he have Post-traumatic stress disorder?

Tell me, who doesn't have PTSD who's been sent off for the sole purpose of killing fellow humans?

It's not right. War is not right. Call me naive, but it's time to stop the killing. Every time we send a young man or woman to Iraq or Afghanistan, we set in motion a cascade of destruction. Atrocities committed, lives lost, families separated, dreams ruined--all for what?

John Lennon had it right:

"Imagine all the people
Living life in peace. . .
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one."

The End of the World

I laughed (along with lots of people) at Harold Camping's apocalyptic prediction this week. On Sunday afternoon I told my family I would be leaving them soon, and at 6:00 that night--when the rapture was supposed to start--I said, "I feel like I'm floating." The jokes about these supposed ends of the world are themselves endless.

But then on Tuesday The New York Times ran two articles together: one on Camping's revised prediction that both the rapture and the world's end will arrive now on October 21, and one on the aftermath of the Joplin tornado--the search for the living and the dead. In reading the articles I realized that the monster tornado hit Joplin around the same time that Camping's saved souls were supposed to be ascending to heaven. At around the same time that the rest of us would begin our hell on earth.

Which is exactly what happened in Joplin, Missouri.

We don't need firebrand preachers and Bible-waving soothsayers to remind us that the end of the world arrives every day for someone somewhere on the globe. If we forget, we're quickly reminded by storms or by illness or by death.

If the rapture ever comes, it will surely take all of us for none of us deserves the suffering we endure. It's part of being human.

The Bogeyman

As a child I worried about the bogeyman. If I left my bike outside overnight, the bogeyman might take it. If I walked home in the dark after playing outside, the bogeyman might get me. I never saw him, but he was always there.

It didn't occur to me until this week that an entire nation might fear the same bogeyman. Yet we did. His machinations created the stuff of nightmares: jumping from burning buildings; being buried alive; knowing you're about to crash.

I didn't think much about Osama bin Laden in recent years. But I realize now that he was always there, lingering in the dark. Now that he's gone, though, I wonder what fears will take his place. For when the child learns that there's no bogeyman, she feels relief, yes, but soon learns that danger itself is ever present in ever many forms. Though the devil is gone, evil remains.

Are we safer today than we were before Sunday night? I doubt it. But maybe now that we've gotten the bogeyman and buried him at the bottom of the sea, we can regain the balance and vision we need to move beyond September 11 and its disastrous legacy.

Free Speech

Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling that protected hateful protests at military funerals brought home the gravity of our first amendment.

A caller on NPR's Talk of the Nation named Brian, whose brother died in the war on terrorism, explained what free speech means to him. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at his brother's funeral, he told listeners, but "the counter-protest of over 400 people completely muted anything they had to say . . . While personally it was very distressing and personally they crossed the line, I know that my brother was defending the Constitution. . . and I believe we need to keep it intact."

I especially appreciate our nation's freedoms--those that we often take for granted--when someone like Brian articulates what's at stake.

Reflections on the SOTU

Part I. John Boehner seemed oddly uncomfortable throughout the speech. He didn't fit his new clothes as Speaker of the House, and certainly didn't resemble someone riding a wave of change. He looked liked he'd eaten something sour. I wonder what this means for the work of this Congress.

Part II. President Reagan's idea in 1982 to honor ordinary heroes at the SOTU was brilliant. I love watching the people who sit with the First Lady; Tuesday night was no exception. They're the only ones in the room who look like the rest of us and seem to have a clue of what living in this country is really like. Especially wonderful was the woman from Forsyth County, North Carolina, who has returned to school to pursue a degree in biotechnology. When President Obama began speaking about her, she turned to those around her and said, "That's me! That's me!"

Pure spontaneity is not what these speeches are about.

Part III. The long, thunderous applause for our troops disturbed me, not because they don't deserve it. They do. But the applause was like the bumper stickers that say "Support our Troops"; these feel like lip service paid to people who give up their lives in ways that the rest of us can't imagine and aren't called on to do. We're not even asked to pay more to support their work. All we need to do is clap every so often and all will be well.

Part IV. I was glad to see President Obama dispel the arrogant notion of American exceptionalism without giving up on American idealism. Finally someone told us from the top what we need to hear: China is now home to the world's fastest computer, South Koreans have greater internet access than we do, our own engineers give our infrastructure a "D," and we have sunk to 9th place in the percentage of college degrees held. So much for an America that's better than the rest of the world.

Yet the President reminded us at the same time that "we are the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook." He called this our Sputnik moment and challenged us to do better. I liked his message. We may have talents as a nation, but these aren't automatically handed to us. We need to work hard and to think imaginatively to reclaim a special place in the world.

Part V. Nobody called out, "You lie." Maybe we're moving, gradually, to a better place.

Eisenhower Wisdom

Guess who said this?

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

Imagine any Democratic president saying this today, let alone a Republican. Where is Ike when we need him?

Perhaps it takes a man from the battlefield, and a person of unusual humanity, to understand truly the senselessness of war.

Veterans Through the Ages

The North Carolina Monument at Gettysburg honors our state's 14,147 soldiers who fought there in 1863. Close to 6,000 North Carolinians lost their lives in 3 days at Gettysburg, over 1/4 of all Confederate casualties.

To date, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have claimed nearly 5,800 American lives.

Does it matter how many die? Civil War numbers boggle the mind. Iraq and Afghanistan numbers, in comparison, seem like mere skirmishes. Many of us don't know anyone who's been killed this time around; I doubt if many southerners could say the same in 1863.

The dead, no matter how many they are, ask little of us. We, in turn, pay almost no attention to them. Perhaps on this Veteran's Day we can be reminded of the simple request made clear by this monument: May "[our] valorous deeds [be] enshrined in the hearts of men long after these transient memorials have crumbled into dust."