Non-Essential: Galapagos III

The Galapagos Islands remind you that you’re a member of a nonessential species on the planet. But they also bring home the fact that the planet and its ecosystems are essential to you. We tend to stride over the earth as if we really do “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth….” (Genesis: 1:26) And we do, in fact, have the power and the means to dominate much of the natural world, to extinguish other species, to make the earth uninhabitable for humankind.

The Galapagos have been conveying the true relationship of nature to humans and vice versa since they were discovered in 1535. Bishop Berlanga reported their inhospitable characteristics so far as human beings were concerned. In the 16th C., what made land desirable were first mineral riches—gold, silver, copper—followed by indigenous populations to provide labor to exploit the riches or to work agricultural land, in the case that mineral riches weren’t available. (And of course, to bring into the Christian fold as part of the ongoing crusade to prepare for the second coming…but I digress.)

When humans stopped by—as did the occasional merchant ship, pirate and later, whaler—they did so to take on water and provision with such meat as could be hunted or carried. Fur seals and sperm whales were the attraction to being in the vicinity. No one worried much about conserving stocks for the needs of the next ship, much less future generations. Case in point: the whaling ship Essex, of Herman Melville fame, put into Floreana in 1820 to pick up some tortoises to augment its food supply. Whether as amusement or to facilitate the hunt, the crew set the island on fire. In doing so, they managed to almost entirely eradicate the tortoises on the island.

Whalers and fur sealers ransacked the archipelago. According to the Galapagos Conservancy, “Sperm whale, fur seal, and giant tortoise populations declined precipitously during the 19th century. By 1890, the Galapagos Fur Seal was considered commercially extinct.… Between 1784 and 1860, whalers took more than 100,000 tortoises from the islands…. The California Academy of Science 1905-06 expedition found that tortoises were very scarce on Española and Fernandina; by 1974, Pinta was added to the list of islands where tortoises could not be found. ”

Fish market, Pto. Ayora, Santa Cruz

By the time of the California Academy studies, settlement of the islands was making headway.  Added to the environmental pressure caused by species depletion through hunting came habitat destruction due to human activities.

Floreana was settled first, in the 1830s.  Domestic livestock was brought in to support the colony and highland forests were cut for pasture and cropland. When the colony ultimately failed, it left behind a devastated landscape no longer fit to sustain Floreana’s native wildlife.

But the scientific interest in the archipelago aroused by Charles Darwin’s visit in 1835 continued to seep out into the world, even as small groups of people emigrated from the mainland to find a life harvesting tortoise oil, or salt, or fish. In 1959, Ecuador created a national park to protect the archipelago, expanded by a marine reserve added in 1998. The protected area was further extended with a marine sanctuary decreed in 2016. Conservation and protection were enhanced by designation of the archipelago as a World Heritage Site in 1979; the archipelago and its immense marine reserve are considered  a unique “living museum and showcase of evolution” by UNESCO.

The Ecuadoran National Park Service has worked with the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) since the beginning in 1959, thanks to an agreement with the Ecuador’s Government. The CDF’S Darwin Research Center has a mandate to pursue and maintain collaborations with government agencies by providing scientific knowledge and technical assistance to promote and secure conservation of Galapagos.

UNESCO raised a warning flag in 2007, when tourism development and immigration pressures were threatening the islands, by including the archipelago on its list of World Heritage in Danger. It was a warning that Ecuador heeded, to the extent that in 2010, the Galapagos were removed from the endangered list. Strict rules govern tourist visits to the islands; fishing is stringently regulated; and research efforts have incorporated sustainability of human activity into investigations—in other words, research into how humankind might live in balance with the natural world.

All of which is to say that the Galapagos experience offers a model of how our species might redefine its approach to, and place in, the world on which we live. It’s actually an old model, since most indigenous peoples have used it for eons. It recognizes that in order for us to survive, we have to contribute to and protect the survival of the rest of the natural world.

We humans are arguably ecologically unnecessary. Think about that for a moment. So far as ecosystems go, we seem to have a place only as a top predator, which is one of the least important positions on the web of life. If we all disappeared tomorrow, the worst that could happen to the rest of creation would be that our leftover garbage would get in its way for a time… Certainly the Galapagos Islands got along without us quite nicely until 1535; currents and winds brought life to the islands against incredible odds, and it thrived and reformed and worked out a unique ecosystem. We are privileged today to walk through it, to catch a glimpse of what an existence devoid of humankind might look like… to recognize, in all humility, our proper place in the scheme of things.

[For anyone interested in the work of the Charles Darwin Research Center and Foundation, check out https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/; this is the English language link.]

Power of Change: Galapagos II

Among the many things that the Galapagos Islands have to show us is the magic and the miracle of our planet, its power to shape and form, its power of change. We forget the power of our earth at our peril.

In September of 1985, I was sleeping in an apartment in Mexico City when the rumbling of an especially large truck going by on the periferico woke me up. Except it took way too long to pass… I rolled out of bed and braced in a doorframe in the realization that what was shaking the building was an earthquake. Innocent as I was, when it stopped I went on with my usual routine. Earthquakes weren’t all that unusual, though this one had seemed awfully long-lived. It wasn’t until I got out onto Avenida Reforma, a block away on the far side of the ring road, that I saw the damage that 3 - 4 minutes of earth movement wreaked: frontless buildings displayed the interiors of offices and apartments; partially collapsed structures dotted the avenue… I caught a cab for my downtown appointment, still disoriented as to how to proceed.

The cabbie and I traveled down Reforma. As the damage along the avenue got worse and worse, we gradually realized how our reality had shifted. When we reached the area I was going, the office where I was supposed to be wasn’t there any more:  a mountain of rubble piled on the ground was all that was left of the structure. Across the street, the remains of a hotel burned. I considered asking the cabbie to turn around, just as he told me he needed to drop me; he needed to get to his neighborhood to find out how his family had fared.

Simply, in less than 5 minutes, the entire cityscape had changed irrevocably; some 5000 lives had ended, or were ending in darkness, under tons of concrete. No one who was there remained unscarred. Too many had forgotten, or ignored, the physical limits the planet imposes, the physical demands it makes. It is never in stasis, it is ever altering.

The Galapagos Islands offer a graphic laboratory of this characteristic of our planet. They're geologically quite young, created by overheated magma meeting the Nazca plate. As the plate drags itself across the hot spot, the extra heat melts the crust, causing volcanoes to emerge from the ocean, seemingly out of nowhere. The volcanoes erupt to form islands.

Sitting some 600 miles out to sea from Ecuador, they remained unsettled for much of the period after they were officially—and inadvertently—discovered by the Dominican friar, Fray Tomás de Berlanga, Bishop of Panama, in early 1535. His account describes the giant tortoises and cacti, the inhospitable terrain, and the difficulty of finding water, hardly an inviting prospect for homesteading.

The early Spaniards reportedly called the islands Las Encantadas, the Enchanted (or perhaps, Cursed) Isles, because strong changeable currents made them seem to shift location. Or maybe, because volcanic eruption and uplift changed their forms, suggesting something other than what had been seen before.

This activity is no less present today than it was in the past. There should be no particular surprise at smoke appearing from the top of the volcano on Fernandina, youngest of the islands.  A volcanic burp, so to speak: a little ash rolled out, and a light plume of vapor rose into the sky. The Galapagos Conservancy reports that as recently as 1968, there was an explosive eruption that collapsed the caldera of Fernandina’s La Cumbre Volcano, causing it to fall  approximately 350 m.

Nearby Isabela Island is a conjunction of six shield volcanoes that shape its land mass into a form that from above looks much like a seahorse. At Urbina Bay, in 1954, 6 km. of coral reef was raised up 5 m [15 feet] by volcanic action, stranding coral heads above sea level. The new coastline was more than a km away from where it had been. There is little left of the coral heads, which have deteriorated from exposure to the air, but here and there, some small shell reminds you that you’re standing on what was 15 feet under the ocean within your lifetime! This creation of new land, emerging in a very short period from where wave and wind had reigned, serves as an exclamation point on our approach to the natural world even more than volcanic eruption or earthquake.

The earth has its own dynamic. It is absolutely indifferent to human kind. In our arrogance and ignorance, we are capable to destroying ecosystems and elements that we need to survive. But the planet will go on, with or without us. Change happens, whether or not we wish it. The sea floor may rise, or the oceans may rise; neither is remotely affected by whether the occurrence is favorable or unfavorable to our species.

Indeed, species come and go. The Galapagos remind us that we are, in the end, just one of many species. Our success and survival aren’t foreordained. And the planet doesn't care whether we're here or not....

In Time and Place: Galapagos I

Galapagos naturalist guides refer often to the Galapagos archipelago as “paradise.” This evokes the biblical garden, where, we are led to imagine, all was harmony. Except, of course, for the one prohibition, and the snake that tempted Eve to ignore the prohibition. Leaving aside for a moment all questions pertaining to the presence of that snake (which would involve a digression of major proportions!), let’s look at the tree of knowledge.

It seems particularly apropos that a tree grows in the Galapagos island paradise—elsewhere as well, but that’s another story—called the “poison apple tree” (manchineel or manzanilla de la muerte, little apple of death). It produces a little green apple-like fruit. The tree looks unremarkable, with rounded green leaves. However, you are warned to touch no part of it, not leaf, not branch, not fruit. The naturalists accord it great respect; in the highland mist, a guide steered us away from its deceptively attractive cover against falling drizzle. The mist could collect traces of the poisonous sap, he said, and carry it to fall on our susceptible human skin… It offers no harm to the non-human species that may alight in its branches or feed on its fruit.

If you think about that tree in that environment, it's a fairly clear case where, if you defy the prohibition, consequences will be swift and painful, and possibly, lethal.

Otherwise, the islands’ flora and fauna are mostly benign, with few exceptions. There is a venomous Galapagos Black Widow spider. According to the Galapagos Conservation Trust, there’s no record of a human being bitten, but the spider “is probably best avoided.” (It’s endemic to the archipelago, but there’s little information on line about it. The Galapagos Archipelago is home to 150 known spider species, 60% of which are found nowhere else. The Black Widow is the only one mentioned as possibly being harmful to humans.)

A different threat is the Darwin’s Goliath Centipede. It can be as large as 43 cm and is likely the most feared animal in the islands. It’s a nocturnal hunter, withdrawing into arid zone cracks and crevices during the day.  Insects, lizards and even small birds are its prey, taken by a poisonous bite from a large pair of jaws. Galapagos hawks, night herons and mockingbirds hunt it, in turn. The Conservancy says that its bite isn’t lethal to humans "but is very painful.”

Finally, there are the two species of Galapagos Scorpions. Both are relatively common but “neither has a particularly serious sting for humans.” They hunt at night, preying on other invertebrates which they seize in their claws and sting to death.

That’s it. The four snake species are dangerous for hatchling marine iguanas, but not for humans. They have a mild venom that helps to disable their prey so they can apply the constriction which is their primary weapon. (For an exciting illustration of this particular survival struggle, checking out  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv9hn4IGofM is worthwhile!)

All of which suggests that the locals’ characterization of the islands as paradise—or at least, a paradise—may not be too far off.  Especially if you replace “harmony,” with its romantic connotations, with the word “balance,” a more neutral concept.

A week in the archipelago isn’t nearly sufficient to claim knowledge of them; it’s no more than a taste, a passing whiff, a glimpse. But as the characteristic sands of each island’s shore endure your passing footstep for the moment they must, the rhythm of the place gradually takes hold. Sea lion pups frolic on the rocks, waiting for their mothers to come in from hunting off shore; little ones may come sniff at you, nudge a walking stick or a leg. Frigate birds, both Great and Magnificent, engage in courting, breeding, nesting, brooding, feeding young… and dying.

Once mature, there isn’t much to harm the denizens of the Galapagos in the way of natural predators. But every fledgling or immature creature won’t make it to maturity. Beside the trail on North Seymor, a young frigate bird lay motionless on its side. It was alive, but showed no interest in passing feet. For whatever reason, its survival was unlikely, lying there, though no vultures or gulls would finish it off. The crabs might come for its flesh, once it began to fester after death, but it might just slowly dry out and disintegrate in sun and wind. After the group moved on, it lifted its head and gazed around. It didn’t seem to be resisting its condition, just taking a last look before it again dropped its head to the ground and went on with its dying.

Live and let live; die and let die. All things in their time and place. Some hatchling iguanas make it to the rocks; others feed the snakes that converge to try to feed on them. Some frigates grow to breed; some die, unable to manage their great wings for effective flight. The gift of the Galapagos isn’t swimming with sea lions, or approaching tortoises to view their somehow grumpy faces up close and personal. It’s seeing how our world could be, if we allowed nature to take its course without harvesting more than we need, without poisoning the land and water we share with other creatures.

The islands are, in fact, an intimation of Paradise.

October's Close 2018

Today is the first of the Days of the Dead. In Mexico, it’s a time for creating altars to deceased loved ones in remembrance. Many small villages practiced a tradition of scattering flowers to mark the way from grave to door, an invitation to the spirits to visit, catch up on the latest doings. 

Altar from 2016

Since living in Mexico and learning about this tradition, if I’m home at this time of year, I like to gather items my dead enjoyed and arrange them around photographs and candles, inviting my departed to stop in. It didn’t happen this year; I thought about it, then let something else take my attention. Yesterday I realized why. It's a comfort to know that my parents, who were deeply engaged in political action, are not here to see what’s happening to our country. It’s a relief that a cousin by marriage who experienced life under a fascist regime in Europe, is resting in his grave. Another beloved relative with whom I enjoyed no end of argument is spared seeing what “conservative” has been reduced to.

Race. Politics. Religion. All have become distorted in our current reality. Each apparently supported an attack last week, amidst the turmoil of the approaching mid-term election.

On Wed., Oct. 24, a man in Kentucky went off the rails and after failing to get past the doors of a predominantly black church, went into a grocery store and shot a black man in the head. Then he went into the store’s parking lot and shot a black woman. A white witness reported that the alleged shooter, Gregory Bush, told him, “Please don’t shoot me and I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.”

CNN reports on pipe bombs

Meanwhile, a series of pipe bombs addressed to targets of the president’s rants (Barak Obama, CNN, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, etc.) were discovered from New York to Florida. They were allegedly made and sent by one of the president’s super fans, judging by the van that belonged to him and pictures he’d had taken at Trump rallies.

Finally, on Sat., Oct. 27, a shooter went into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg and shot eleven people before engaging in a gun battle with police that left him wounded, but alive and in custody. This shooting apparently served two objectives: an attack on Jews because they were Jews, and an attack on Jews because they extended aid to refugees trying to cross our borders.

When this president was elected, I hoped it was an aberration, a protest against an admittedly flawed Democratic candidate. (I’m not saying Hillary Clinton wasn’t qualified, but we all knew at the outset she was carrying a lot of baggage; anecdotally, I know several people who didn’t like Trump, but just couldn’t vote for Clinton). I prayed that people had ignored his rhetoric as nonsense, “just Donald being Donald,” and that they, like me, hoped that’s all it was: rhetoric. 

But we’ve seen, over the past two years, that the president’s rhetoric is a tool he wields with purpose. His calculated claims are like mold on the body politic. No one is scraping it off, so it spreads, filament by filament. Now we’re hearing the president say that he can unilaterally repeal a constitutional provision—citizenship as a birthright: “we can do this by an executive order,” he said on the lawn of the White House on Halloween. Cherry-picking bits and pieces of past actions, he tried to justify the basis for such an assertion, using unapologetically imaginary numbers.

Proponents of the president point to the promises he’s kept. “Less government regulation,” they say; good for business. Except a closer look shows that instead of applying a scalpel, his administration has slashed regulations imposed for the health and safety of citizens along with marginally necessary rules. “Stopped China from cheating!” But his tariffs are causing harm to average Americans, from family farmers to lobster fishermen, and he seems unwilling to negotiate in good faith. As to standing up to foreign countries and America being Number 1—by disrupting our alliances, we now seem to be first in a line that didn’t exist until we turned an international united front into a single file line. We may be in the first position, but it’s like being the first domino in a string of dominoes: if we’re pushed, no one stands beside us for support. Instead, we stand alone, and if we fall, it will be against the next block, and so on until all lie prone.

Watching a segment from a presidential rally, I was struck by this president’s cynical dismissal of his audience’s intelligence. I’ve heard some reports that among attendees are folks just there for the show; whether they actually support him is open to question. But clearly many of those chanting in his crowds do support him. 

I’ve tried to engage some of them in conversation on line. It’s an eye opener. 

For example, I posted the following on a Trump page: “This country was based on the understanding that everyone has different views, and from honest and open debate about issues, we can reach solutions to problems that consider the complex factors of a diverse population living in diverse environments. So the fact that ‘no one is going to hand’ the administration its agenda without debate and questioning is exactly the POINT of our democracy. Let's keep it by voting for candidates who think deeply and ask questions.”

It generated responses like “STAND BY OUR MAN, DONALD JOHN TRUMP. VOTE RED ALL THE WAY” and  “I might do that but first, do three things for me and 63 million other Republicans. Open Obama's records, Do not send unarmed soldiers to the border, send an armed deterrent, and thirdly arrest Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder for Treason!”  While there were also murmurs of agreement, I couldn’t find any comment that responded to my point. So much for discussion.

Now the president of the United States, who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, is threatening to issue an executive order directly contrary to a Constitutional provision. I get that complex times inspire fear. People look to a leader who can steer them safely through. But this time, it’s looking more and more like folks don’t want a leader; they want a dictator. There's a strong current that, rather than embracing the opportunities of change, seize on demagogic expressions of certainty. "What he says," the president's supporters seem to be saying--without examining what, exactly, he says, hearing it only as what they want to hear.

Two years ago, I asked the country to chose hope, not fear. It didn’t. We have another chance now, an opportunity to curb the irrationalism and scrape away the filaments of authoritarianism before they take hold. Fear does NOT make you free! We’re so much stronger together confronting whatever may come than we are divided against each other in the service of our worst fears and instincts. 

Please vote! And vote blue, because at this point, it’s the only defense—the only wall, as it were—against the narcissist in the White House. Any illusions that may have existed as to hyperbole, or rhetoric, are long gone. If the Republic is to stand as our forbearers intended it, we have to stand for the Republic. 

Missing the Maverick

        The week of farewells to John McCain unspooled in a thread running from Sedona, AZ to Annapolis MD. My foreign friends had little (well, really, nothing) to say. I get that; I’m woefully ignorant about political figures in Spain and Mexico these days. At the same time, some of my friends here in the U.S. tended to dismiss the senator without much regret. As one woman put it, “Perhaps he should have realized his mistakes sooner.” I think that saddened me as much as anything I heard during the week of remembrances.

              McCain called himself a “maverick.” Technically—and hardly remembered now—that word refers to an unbranded cow found on the open range. It derived from the practice of one rancher, Samuel Maverick (1803-1870), who didn’t brand his cattle though everyone else did. With time, the term circled back to its beginnings, so to speak: it now refers to a person who, like ole Sam, goes his/her own way despite custom or label.
               McCain’s claim to being a maverick derives essentially from the fact that he thought for himself. This isn’t to say he wasn’t a good conservative Republican. He was (though today, he passes for a centrist; more on that in a minute). But he wasn’t a docile party sycophant, nor was he an ideologue. By and large, he’d forge his own path if he thought that was right. Sometimes it got him into trouble. As far as I’m concerned, one of his best maverick moments was his desire to name Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, as his running mate when he ran for president in 2008. One of his worst was allowing himself to be talked out of it and naming Sarah Palin—who also styled herself a maverick—instead. I think she opened the way for our current president, but that’s another tale.
  Senator McCain planned his memorial services. It was clear that he was trying to convey a very specific message. It’s noteworthy that Ms. Palin was not invited to participate. It’s also telling that the current president was expressly asked to stay away. Instead, former President George W. Bush was invited to deliver a eulogy, as was former President Barack Obama. Both had defeated McCain: Bush for the GOP nomination in 2000, benefiting from an ugly negative contest against McCain in South Carolina with racial undertones and scurrilous rumors; Obama, then a quite newly minted senator from Illinois, for the presidency itself in 2008.
          Listening to these two men, along with the Senator’s daughter, Meghan McCain, it became clear to me why I felt such a profound sense of loss at the Senator’s passing.
I return to the woman who faulted him for not recognizing his mistakes soon enough. I reply: in a diverse polity, we don’t all agree; indeed, we may disagree fiercely. That does NOT mean we aren’t equally concerned for the welfare of our country. While I might share this woman’s general political positions, I will not denigrate someone who in good faith disagrees with me, and will applaud that person if they are persuaded they’re wrong and admit it, or (equally important), if they agree that positions need to be modified in order to reach an acceptable outcome.
McCain understood that political and philosophical differences were healthy. They’re how we learn. Debating them clarifies both the issues and their possible ramifications. Achieving consensus after heated (but fair! That’s critical!) discussion goes a long way toward solving difficult problems, to the extent solution is possible.
President Obama disclosed in his eulogy that John McCain and he sometimes met in the Oval Office of the White House and just talked: about family, about politics, about policy. They might fiercely disagree, but they did not insult each other by ascribing anything except genuine concern for the public interest to any given position. Nor did they sugar coat or bend the facts, as they understood them, to bolster an argument.
John McCain might have held conservative positions, but he was not a racist or a bigot; he did not hold grudges without cause. In 2008, he stopped claims by his supporters based on false rumors (Obama was Muslim; Obama was Arab; Obama was born in Kenya…), stopped such claims in his Town Halls cold. Some of his advisors wanted to use ads against Obama stressing strident speeches by his church minister. McCain refused. His running mate, Palin, wasn’t above such tactics, but he never agreed to or supported them.

from Maya Kathryn Bohnhoff blog

               The way we do politics is as important as what we are trying to achieve. The ends truly do not justify the means, as we now see every day in our national political life. Senator McCain tried to live faithfully in accord with his principles, to listen to opposing opinions, to treat his opponents with respect, and to practice civility in the public square. He truly did dedicate his life to public service, and was genuine in his efforts to make our nation a better place for everyone according to his beliefs.

He believed in the tenets of the Republican Party, the party of limited government and of individual accountability, the party that held to a moral standard. He did not believe in Trumpism, or what his party has become under the leadership of the current president. If he could sway the upcoming midterms, he’d look for young conservatives to take down the trumpeters—but if they aren’t able to because of the sway this president exerts over the GOP, I don’t think John McCain would mourn a blue wave in November. Not if it means a check and a restoration of balance. As the founders intended.

Real or Not Real?

    The story I’ve been working on since, it sometimes seems, forever, has experienced significant changes as it’s evolved.  It began as historical fiction, but now has moved into the realm of speculative fiction.
    While working in the framework of history, I learned a number of things. First, I’m hung up on fact. This isn’t to say that an historical novel can’t imaginatively elaborate on events or characters, but I find that for me, the essential facts have to be accurate. Even if you're writing an alternative history, it has to start from actual known fact.

Clementinum, Prague

     If facts are unknowable right now, but potentially discoverable—that is, at present there’s no record, but buried somewhere in an archive, a record may exist—I’m uncomfortable filling in that gap with imaginary facts.
    Second, truth is as important in fiction as in non-fiction.  Truth isn’t the same thing as fact, although they’re related.  I understand truth as essence, the core of meaning. A novel, even if set in a world that objectively never existed except in the author’s imagination, can be true if the created world and the characters who occupy it conform to the reality that defines their context.
    Since the world I was originally writing about involved historical places set in a specific historical era, subject to objective facts I couldn’t nail down, I decided to let it go. The option for telling the story I want to tell was to create my own world and imbue it with facts that would form a coherent reality. This isn’t an easy process! In pursuit of the truth that is at the core of this imaginary world, I still have to align the facts in such a way as to create a reality that works—even where the fantastic or the surreal may intrude. In other words, I can’t just pick facts I like and ignore the logical implications flowing from those facts. If a river is unpredictable and changeable in chapter 3, it can’t suddenly become navigable and calm in chapter 5 absent a reason for the change: wizardry, engineering, natural disruption of some kind… there’s got to be a reason or the story loses its credibility.
    These concepts—truth, fact, reality—pretty much govern my perception of daily life in the world where I live: present day Maine, a chilly corner of the United States, in the early 21st century. Which is why over the past few months, whenever I look at what’s going on in my culture, in my country, I find myself severely disoriented: there’s a major dissonance between what the facts are telling me about reality, and what my government, especially the executive branch, is telling me about reality.
    The withdrawal from the Iran agreement is a case in point. According to the president, it had to be scrapped because the United States and its allies are unable to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon “under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement.” Yet the U.S. Defense Department affirmed Iran was abiding by the agreement, the U.S. security agencies agreed, and U.S. allies also assert that Iran is in compliance. Compliance, by definition, means Iran is not building nuclear weapons. So the objective fact is that nuclear weapons are not being built, and therefore, there’s no inability to stop Iran from building them—although it is true that you are unable to stop something that doesn't exist in the first place.

    The truth of the reason for withdrawal seems to me to lie in the close of the remarks by the president when he announced it: a statement explicitly directed to the “long-suffering people of Iran.”  He said:  “[T]he future of Iran belongs to its people. They are the rightful heirs to a rich culture and an ancient land, and they deserve a nation that does justice to their dreams, honor to their history and glory to God.” This sounds suspiciously like a call for Iranians to rise up against their government, which has by implication denied them their rightful inheritance.

AP (September 2017)

    If that’s the case, the president seems to be making up facts according to what he wants reality to be: that somehow Iran will throw off the yoke of the imams so they can realize their dreams. What he means by the reference to honoring their history and doing justice to the “glory to God” isn’t clear.
     Or maybe the remarks were just meant to inspire Iranians to somehow force their government to renegotiate an internationally accepted multilateral agreement because one party doesn't like it.
    But maybe I’m being overly generous. Maybe the president doesn’t have any vision, no matter how distorted, of the reality of the Iranian situation. Maybe it really is just a case of undoing anything his predecessor did because he can.
    Whatever the case, it doesn’t make the assessment of noncompliance true, it doesn’t change the actual terms of the agreement into something that was never agreed, and it doesn’t alter objective reality or the facts that constitute it. It instead injects a dangerous delusion into the complex tensions of the Middle East, even as it puts the U.S. in the position of a rogue nation, that is, one that ignores the obligations of international law, thereby continuing the downward spiral of America’s credibility… one hopes not irretrievably.
     In the novel Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, Peeta Mellark, after he's subjected to severe brainwashing, suffers from an inability to interpret his memories according to what happened in actuality. The tension between his memory of real facts used to build false interpretation of what they mean and those false interpretations is profoundly disorienting to Peeta, who must repeatedly ask
when a memory surfaces, "Real? Or not real?"
   It is our responsibility amidst the current barrage of misinformation, to ask the same of what we are told. We may not like the answer, we might wish the real world were other than it is, but we ignore reality and its truth at our peril.

Presidential Privies

Remember last month, when the president seemed unhappy about refugees from certain countries and caused a kerfluffle that lasted longer than the usual one-day news cycle? It had to do with disposal of excrement, and where that might be done.

A bunch of people evaded discussion of the actual words used, apparently possible because of mis-reporting of the second syllable. Does it really matter whether he said  “shithole” or  “shithouse”? A privy is a privy.

What on earth makes a country a privy? A privy, just to be clear, is a toilet located apart from a dwelling or other building and is also known as an outhouse. Words being interesting in and of themselves, another meaning for the word is in the legal field:  “a person having a part or interest in any action, matter, or thing.” The origins of the word lie in Latin, privatus, meaning to be withdrawn from public life; this morphed into Old French, “prive” meaning private, and thence to the English “private.”

So in thinking about the deeply disturbing characterization applied by the president to Haiti and apparently, “African countries,” if we can get away from the vulgarity, we can remove the baggage because all a privy implies is withdrawing from public to undertake a private act—or, more intriguingly, someone (let’s say, a country?) that has a part or interest in any action, matter or thing, such as perhaps, Somalia and Libya are privies in the fight against terrorist organizations. (Strange right? But check the Oxford Dictionary; this is really a thing in legalese!)

The president, at the very least, should have availed himself of the first definition and removed himself from the company of other public servants if  he considers whole swathes of the community of nations to be no more than disposals for excrement and wants to say so. This is a reprehensible position, but as a private citizen, he's entitled to whatever misguided opinions he may have. As president of the United States, he's not entitled to inject such opinions into policy considerations.

Making a political demonstration (Albania)

Now that I’ve belabored the language beyond anything it merits, I’ll get to my point: why was this still a major talking point several days after it was said to occur? Not that I don’t agree that it’s a shocking statement. But there’s nothing new in the president denigrating people, either individually or collectively, in often appalling terms. Did observers just then notice? We can all be as affronted as may be, but it does beg the question why we haven’t been affronted before. And if we have, why is Congress not calling him on it? I don't mean a censure or a speech; I mean taking action that separates the nation from such irresponsible statements, something that clearly says "This is not the position of the United States."

Now a month on, in the context of immigration (which is where the comment arose) what is more to the point is the president’s erraticism on the underlying issue: in the public performance piece on January 9, 2018, where Congressional leaders and the president negotiated immigration in a televised meeting, the president said he’d let Congress decide what to do and would sign whatever Congress brought to him, so long as it addressed his four identified concerns.

When Congress suggested a bipartisan compromise solution (that did address those concerns) on January 11, the president said it was unacceptable, citing specific things that he wanted which were not being offered. In other words, Congress wasn't just to address his concerns, it was supposed to address them in the way he wanted them addressed. A wall, gosh darn it, is a big, beautiful physical wall and all the money for it has to be provided RIGHT NOW, for some reason, even before the hugely expensive prototypes have been fully evaluated or costed out.

So much for leaving it up to Congress.

He then claimed that Democrats had failed to negotiate, and were the reason that there was no progress. This again is a typical technique employed by this president: invite opponents to stand on a rug, then pull the rug out from under them, and say as they fall that they’re somehow responsible for the rug’s sudden removal.

In all the furor, Democrats ended up trying to force the president’s hand by shutting the government down. This was both heavy-handed and stupid; a good deal of the public support they'd garnered from the president's outhouse remarks was flushed straight down the sewer drain. Hard as it may be to do, Congress has to keep to the high road (or maybe it’s more accurate to say Congress has to FIND the high road).

Now the president's come up with his own solution--never mind what happened to his relying on  Congress; it's gotta be his way--which is cleverly designed to offer more than the Democrats asked for on DACA recipients, while draconian on all the other immigration issues.

This president, claim the members of his party, has to be worked with because, like it or not, he is the president, and besides, some of the GOP members like his policies. But here’s the thing: if everyone takes a deep breath, and realizes that they’re all privies to the U.S. national interest, and that the president is harming that interest, they might find a way to work together and work around the president, for better legislation that actually responds to the interests of ALL of the electorate. A veto can be overridden, after all.

It’s probably asking too much. It’s entirely possible that the actual outhouse might be Congress… though the excrement there is more in the nature of that excreted by large farm animals.

If All the Trees Fall, The Forest Disappears...

Harpswell forest, 2017

       You know that old saying about failing to see the forest for the trees?
       Listening to the latest wrangling and speechifying, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone’s noticing the trees are falling. If we keep it up, there may not be a forest to see at all.
        Let me back up. Someone recently questioned an observation I made about the president and his apparent disregard for the rule of law. I was asked, “Can you please tell us where Trump has ignored or crossed the line to negate the rule of law?” The question was civil, and made me stop and think about how to answer it in kind, leading me to give some thought to the concept of “rule of law.”
        The clearest example I could come up with of the president ignoring  what I understand as the rule of law is the pardon of Joe Arpaio. Readers may remember that the former Arizona sheriff was convicted after a bench trial of contempt of court for failure to comply with a court order. (The Sheriff’s people were using racial profiling to detain Latinos they suspected might be illegally in the country, and the court ordered them to cease doing so.) Upon conviction, there was a process available: first sentencing for the criminal conduct, then appeal, which if accepted, would lead to review on appeal.
          Before sentencing occurred, the president issued a broad pardon that included not only the conviction at issue, but also any other offense with which Arpaio might be charged thereafter in connection with the case.
          There are two rule of law issues here that concern me. First, Arpaio, as the record shows, blatantly ignored the court order and continued to perform in a manner contrary to law. Second, the president implicitly ratified that behavior by pardoning him. Moreover, rather than letting the judicial process play out, he issued the pardon even before sentencing.
          Whether you believe racial profiling is warranted to find illegal aliens or not, in fact the law does not permit it, and the sheriff is sworn to uphold and enforce the law. He did not do so, but arbitrarily substituted his own judgement for the law. And the president in essence ratified that abuse of authority and violation of his sworn duty to uphold the constitution.
           Fast forward through the woods to the Nunes memo concerning FBI investigatory procedures and possible bias by certain FBI personnel. If Joe Arpaio represents the felling of a single, fairly small, tree, the Nunes memo would take out a whole stand of trees.
           First, it’s a memo! It is not a report, hashed out and debated by the full committee. Due to its nature, it cannot support its claims and arguments with underlying evidence and citations; and there is a charge, which seems to concern some in Nunes’ own party as well as the opposition, that the wording approved by GOP representatives for the memo’s release was changed before it was submitted to the White House for review. If that were true, not even the GOP members on the committee approved the draft in the form in which it will be released.
           Second, there is another memo meant to stand against the Nunes memo and point out what the opposition feels are its inaccuracies. This memo must go through the same vetting process as the Nunes memo. Which means the White House has to approve its release. It may end up doing so, though I doubt it, but in any case, by that time, the damage from the Nunes memo will have been done. As I understand it, the House hasn’t approved release of the opposition memo.
           Third, the FBI has expressed grave concerns about release of the memo. I don’t know what the memo says, but based on Rep. Nunes’ history, it seems safe to presume it is drafted in a way that emphasizes anything that could bring the FBI as an impartial fact finder into question; if the complaints already heard about the memo are, in fact, the case, Nunes manipulates innuendo to reach a desired conclusion. Process isn’t empty. If the House Intelligence Committee has real concerns about the performance of the FBI, it should carry out an investigation. Release of a memo that everyone acknowledges is partisan serves no national interest.
            Watching this administration and its friends, we often learn eventually that where claims and charges they make are loudest, they themselves have engaged in the conduct they attribute to their opponents.
            All of this begs the broader question: is ANYONE in authority in Washington even remotely concerned about the fact that a very powerful foreign adversary has been and continues to play games with our national interests? Whether there was conscious collusion by GOP operatives to gain the presidency or not, there was interference by the Russians, and continues to be. Ferreting out these efforts is part of the FBI’s work and critically important to our future as a democratic nation. I’m not saying the FBI, or any organization, is perfect, but there are institutional ways of dealing with imperfections without cutting down the forest to obtain a specific tree.
             Or, perhaps the GOP is willing to let the forest go—they certainly seem prepared to see actual forests go—in favor of securing profits. Russia has built a fairly successful oligarchy, and our current president noted in a passing remark at the GOP retreat on 1 February that he’d accomplished more with regulation (getting rid of them) than a president who served 16 years…         Now, it’s rare for presidents to mention FDR’s length of time in office when rallying their troops, so the reference took me a bit aback.
             Then the story teller in me popped up: Is he thinking ahead? Why should a little constitutional amendment that sets a term limit on the president bother him? There’s a national emergency, after all, all those dark-skinned illegal immigrants, all that carnage… or if there isn’t an emergency yet, he’s sure there will be. It’s how we’ll unify and come together, he says….
             I don’t write horror tales, but if I did…
  
  

   

Living With the Tax "Reform"

A year or two ago, I visited my cousin in Belize, and was impressed by the ferry, mostly hand powered, that got us across the rivers near her home. Simple and effective, if not fast. No doubt cheap to both set up and to run. Was it tax or privately supported? No idea and had no reason at the time to ask. But…

Nobody likes to pay tax. Just like employers don’t like to pay wages, and homemakers don’t like to pay the grocery bill and young people don’t like to pay for music or movies. We all know we have to pay, but we want to pay as little as possible, right?

Taxes are one of the more complicated expenses we have to deal with, and how you come down on them depends on how you see yourself and your community… and your government. The recent “reform” of the federal tax system gives one cause to think about one’s view of the federal government.

If you see yourself as part of a national community, and your government as a sort of operations manager for that community, you may grouse about taxes and how they’re spent (military vs. foreign aid, developing fossil fuel or developing alternative energy, etc.) but you don’t have a problem with paying your share to keep the enterprise going.

Ferry, New River, Belize

If you see yourself as self-made and independent, and government as a limited objective adjunct, like an on-call expert for specific circumstances in a community that otherwise ought to be unrestricted, then there’s minimal reason for paying taxes. Gotta keep a standing army for defense, but no need to support education or take care of old folks. Local government can do that, right? In fact, parents can provide education and children can take care of their parents.

Of course, nice as it may be to imagine that Norman Rockwell, small town vibe, returning to it may have some consequences that are a bit less appealing than your kid learning the value of a dollar by having a paper route. (For one thing, even were we to end up pretty much an undeveloped country, it’s unlikely there are enough actual newspaper subscriptions to hire kids to deliver them. Although, with net neutrality gone, who knows? Maybe the physical newspaper would make a come back and kids can carry them door to door. But I digress.)

Government agencies are designed to implement what are primarily legislative rules. It’s impossible for Congress to pass a comprehensive law like a tax code, a commercial code, or an environmental protection law, that includes all the nuts and bolts necessary for the people on the ground to implement and enforce it. We’ve been largely fortunate in the U.S., despite the hysteria from those who just don’t think government should function as an arbiter or regulator, to have had a generally honest, very hard-working bureaucracy of professionals who perform these duties.

Taxes pay for their performance. If you have questions about whether we need these professionals, just look at our new tax bill. No one had read through it completely when it was passed, and even if they had, they couldn’t have analyzed every section. Now the IRS will have to both implement and enforce it.  Before it’s even gone into effect—which it’s doing in a frightfully short time, given its complexities—the IRS professionals are having to issue cautions about probable interpretations concerning questionable provisions. By the way, there will no doubt be lawsuits to urge differing interpretations when the time comes, which will also involve expenditure of tax money to pay for the government’s defense of its interpretations.

Since I think the federal government has an important role in making the country functional and in smoothing out potential chaos among the several states, I don’t mind paying taxes. But under this new scheme, I have considerable doubt about the harm that we all may face because the tax cuts increase government debt, which lessens government ability to perform the functions I think it should be performing.

And I confess that I resent it when I’m paying tax—which I will be—and the current inhabitant of the White House and his family are not only not paying tax, but are getting a windfall. My own circumstances are such that I won’t be awfully hurt by the changes financially, but I certainly won’t be helped.

To those who celebrate their tax cut but who aren’t corporate persons? Take a long look at what the real effect is of the so-called middle class tax cut, especially how it may look when it ends in eight to ten years. Be sure to invest some of that additional money in water filters and perhaps breathing masks, depending on where you live, because enforcement of what air and water quality standards remain in the wake of gutting the Environmental Protection Agency will be spotty due to lack of funding.

Plan your travel carefully, as infrastructure continues to deteriorate. Where taxes aren’t available to pay for improvements,  private investors will be invited to  build roads and bridges. They’re going to want to get a return on their investment, probably as tolls. But if the roads and bridges don’t promise a profit, investors may be hard to come by. Maybe we can get local ferries running again, in the less traveled parts of such rivers as the Kennebec or the Androscoggin in Maine?

And for heavens sake, DON’T get sick! Between a weakened Food and Drug Administration and the burdens on states by “reforming” Medicare and Medicaid, already hard-pressed hospital services will become more curtailed or more expensive or both. You should probably start growing your own food, too, just to be safe.

Or, alternatively, in November, let’s just get rid of these folks who talk a good talk that bears little relationship to reality, and get the country back on the track the majority of us thought we were on in 2016 and still support. It’s not a bad thing to learn we can’t take our founding principles for granted. Now that we’ve done that, let’s take the lesson to heart and turn out this coming November.

Or be ready to invite Belizean ferry operators to show us how to build low cost, low tech ferries to get our cars across the upriver inland fords.