Presidential Pronouncement: Pretend Proposal

Portland Women's March 01/19/19

I didn’t hear the president’s remarks when they came fresh from his mouth. I was engaged in demonstrating in support of rights that his administration has put in jeopardy: women’s, environmental, racial equality, immigration, LBGQT+, voting… in short, all of the rights that U.S. citizens have fought for through the years and apparently must now fight for again.

I heard about the remarks, and today, as a strange series of weather wave shifts —sleet, snow, freezing rain—argue about which should dominate through wind gusts, I listened to the proposal. Now, you have to understand that I assumed that the point was ending the government shutdown.

I admit it: I thought the crisis to be addressed was the economic sledgehammer coming down on federal employees and those who depend on them, directly (like their families) and indirectly (small businesses, lenders, services…), an economic impact that will ripple out beyond those now immediately involved as time goes on. In my naiveté, I was waiting for the president to acknowledge a problem well on its way to affecting everyone in the country in one way or another and to propose its solution.

Instead, I learned that the president has suddenly discovered that the conditions his policies cause on the border have created a humanitarian crisis. This isn’t news to anyone who has been following the situation pretty much since the president was elected, but evidently it wasn’t clear to him. The other border problems he referred to are ongoing and hardly constitute a crisis; moreover, a wall won't do a lot to forestall them for multiple reasons I won't regurgitate here.

When the president's remarks were finished, I was left perplexed and a little angry. The anger strengthened when I listened to specific parts of his comments again, just to be sure I didn’t miss what I was looking for.

First, in this nationally broadcast statement, in the midst of a government shutdown that is, among other things, on the verge of being a national security crisis (if it isn’t already), the president’s reference to it was limited, and never did he speak to or of the men and women that bear its heaviest burden. At the start of his remarks, he described his plan as providing a “path forward to end the government shutdown”; toward the end, he said his plan “immediately opens government,” and then he talked about how, “once the government is open,” his administration would take bipartisan steps toward a consultation on comprehensive immigration legislation. How this works in practice regarding the shutdown is apparently that Senator McConnell will “bring up legislation that would immediately reopen the government and incorporate President Trump’s proposal to offer temporary protections to some immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion for his border wall,” this according to a McConnell staffer. [ Emphasis added; New York Times on line, 20 January 2019.]

Second, insisting he was being reasonable and that the Democrats had been taken over by radicals supporting open borders, the president urged acceptance of his "common sense" plan. But the only people I’ve heard talk about "open borders" are those  fixated on a border wall from sea to shining sea. The president made it sound like anyone who opposes his wall opposes any border security at all. Yet the Democratic Party platform provides "Democrats will continue to work toward comprehensive immigration reform that fixes our nation’s broken immigration system, improves border security, prioritizes enforcement so we are targeting criminals – not families, keeps families together, and strengthens our economy.” [Emphasis added.] I've heard no Democratic spokesperson refute this principle. (Interestingly, in a kind of footnote no one seems to have remarked, the president appeared to imply that the border would be more or less open for agricultural workers as he conceives border reform, saying that "lawful and regulated entry into our country will be easy and consistent" for them so "our farmers and vineyards won't be affected.")

500 year old wall, Machu Picchu

So why am I angry? Because the cynicism and political gamesmanship of this “solution” is so clear. The president’s only concession is an indication that his wall will be built at strategic locations rather than trying to follow the entire border. (How "strategic locations" are actually defined should be closely watched in the language of any relevant legislation.) Most importantly, he still insists on 5.7 billion dollars for wall construction, without further detail, before he’ll agree to sign anything that will reopen the government.

But the Senate Majority Leader bears responsibility for this situation as well. His cynicism in coupling the president’s plan with the reopening of the government in an effort to force Democrats to agree to the 5.7 billion is transparently obvious. If they don’t do so, presumably the GOP will claim (as they’ve been doing), that the Dems are obstructionist and for “open borders.” McConnell COULD just allow the spending bills both houses previously approved to go to the Senate floor for a vote, and the Senate could exercise its constitutional duty by a veto-proof vote. Even McConnell must see that the precedent of allowing a president to hold the entire country hostage through a government shutdown is unacceptable and contrary to every principal of good governance to which we supposedly adhere!

Perhaps McConnell feels that upholding his oath of office would cripple the president who, among other things, is giving him the judges he wants.  McConnell’s already managed to reshape the U.S. federal court system significantly. He should take his wins and run. It's past time for him to do his duty and reopen the government. The immigration and border security aspects of the president’s plan can then be debated, discussed, negotiated and settled--without harming federal public servants who are now being punished for choosing to serve us. Because, in case anyone's forgotten, WE--all of us, whether or not we voted for the president--are the boss of all of these people. Including the occupant of the White House.

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.