Opposing An One-Eyed, Toothless World and Capital Punishment

This cheerful Saturday morning, as Americans of diver's background prepare to drink themselves into a state of greater than normal inebriation in honor of St. Patrick, it would be so easy to reflect on the madness that unfolded half a world away when a white supremacist decided to make his dream of a hegemonic world a reality, but for the feeling that there is nothing left to say that has not been said before, so many times. One man, but a representative of a dangerous larger group, armed with weapons that no individual should ever need for personal reasons, walked into a gathering of his perceived enemies and became judge and executioner upon a group of unarmed and in this respect, innocent, fellow human beings whose only crime was that they were different from the agent of their death. It has played out, time and again, with the cast of actors changing, but ever the same final result.

But this past week, another event with far less publicity but possibly equal consequences occurred much closer to home, when California moved to permanently rescind the death penalty. In my opinion, this is a move long overdue and brings the sunshine back to the Sunshine State with the specter of death banished from above the convicted felons found deserving of death in the past but also releasing the families of the victims of those same felons from what was an ultimately pointless rite. Not entirely unsurprisingly, some of those same family members are not as thrilled with this development and have expressed their anguish over the loss of closure in their bereavement.

Let me say first of all, that I could never understand the pain that these folk have felt and the loss that they will live through every day for the rest of their lives through the untimely loss of a loved one, torn from this world through some violent and senseless act. I have never suffered this loss and I could no more predict how I would feel in such a case than I can tell when the world will end. But, that being said, it is the duty of every thinking man and woman to address this in tranquility for our system of justice requires that judgment be rendered upon an accused perpetrator by a jury of his peers, and there is a reason why the jury is never composed of the families of the victims. We are required to know why we would sentence a man to death, or equally, do the opposite, and we must do it removed from the emotion that surrounds a particular case that our choice may be impartial and rational. Removing the death penalty as a choice of punishment altogether frees the jury to weigh each case differently than if they would be rendering so final a doom.

My main objection to the death penalty is based upon two main pillars. Firstly, if rendered swiftly, it is a terribly final punishment and we should believe in the guilt of the accused beyond all shadow of doubt, for once we execute this form of justice, we will never be able to revisit our decision. And, in too many cases, people have been condemned and in some case, too many by a greater degree if anything, they have been even executed, only for exculpatory evidence to be revealed later that may have stayed the sword of justice or even seen those same condemned men walk free with no stain upon their character. To be sure, there are cases where guilt was indeed beyond doubt, where the accused admitted his or her guilt, even reveled in in, and those cases are different; my reasons for still opposing the death penalty remain as steadfast, but I will discuss that later. But for those who may be condemned unfairly, there is no reprieve as long as their death is the goal of our justice. Sadly, prosecutors and the justice system itself have all too often made the death of the accused rather than the discovery of the truth the main aim and have falsified or suppressed any information that might hint at the innocence of the person they have decided is guilty. In their zeal, whether politically driven or in an overabundance of righteous conviction, they usurp the power of both prosecutor and judge and close their minds to all that would cloud their case. The reasons matter little from a practical standpoint since it results in  a wrongful conviction either way. While the Byzantine system of appeals may stay the execution of the accused for years on end, living with such a threat hanging over one's head is no life, and none but those who have existed under that particular sword of Damocles can truly appreciate what it does to a person. Should they be reprieved or exonerated in time, they will never be truly whole again and we, as a society, can never really right that wrong. If we convict or worse, execute, even one innocent man, that is one too many and far better would it be for a thousand guilty to live than for one innocent man to die to sate our blood lust. Worse yet, for every innocent who languishes in prison, whether on death row or not, the actual guilty party walks free and justice is not served simply because someone paid for the crime, if it is not the true criminal.

It is often said that executing a guilty murderer brings  closure to the kin of the victims, a blood sacrifice to their pain and suffering. I do not pretend to understand what it would feel like to have a dearly loved family member or friend brutally torn away with neither warning nor notice, and so often with no rhyme or reason. But death is around us constantly, be it on the freeway or in airplanes, in bridge collapses or sudden slip. It may feel worse, and may even be worse, to have a face on the agency of death, but does it truly matter? When one's friends or family are gone, no matter how, and they must pick up the pieces of their lives and move on and find closure. I would suggest that tying  healing to the death of the agent who caused their loss is less healthy and in fact transfers power to that person and away from them. If the only way to find peace and solace is to see the murderer die, then they have now tied their well-being to the very person most responsible for their pain and every failure to punish him in the way they desire extends their suffering. If healing and peace is possible when our loved one's die suddenly in other way, sometimes as violent, as meaningless, then even the families of such victims can recover independent of the criminal responsible and may well be better off by doing so in the long run.

Revenge is a very basic emotion in us, perhaps the one emotion uniquely human - a sad commentary on the supremely evolved creatures we think we are - and has long driven the logic of the death penalty. Nearly every civilization through history has had a version of the tenet, "an eye for an eye" and some have taken it further than others. But as we gain more enlightenment, it is worth wondering if we gain anything from wreaking the same fate upon one who has killed. Murder, the main crime that draws the death penalty, is committed for many reasons; personal gain, high passion, ideology and personal pleasure in killing cover most of the cases. Our legal system does address these differently and recognizes that different motives should be treated differently, even if the end result is no different for the victims. We recognize that a killing driven by high emotion is different than one coldly planned in advance, that one triggered by group (or gang) ties is different than one driven by implacable hatred for an entire group of people who happen to share no more than a religion, sexual orientation or skin tone. Even for the kin of the victims, the motive behind the killing matters, if only to help them understand why their loved ones died, to demystify their loss to some extent and aid the process of healing.

It is worth questioning why we would ever execute a convicted criminal. Do we do it as revenge, because they deserve to die in the same way as their victims? Only of course, we don't tailor the execution to the crime, for that would be barbaric and inhuman in the extreme. Another motive for execution is deterrent,  the idea that would be criminals will be less likely to risk the consequences in fear of suffering this fate. However, even ignoring the statistics that indicate little correlation between capital crime and the death penalty, it should be obvious that the deterrent effect would be minor for any of the classes of crime listed earlier. A crime of passion, by definition, is committed by someone who has suspended rational thought and the perpetrator is not in a mental position to weigh the consequences of their actions. Crimes driven by fraternal ties or ideology are likewise committed with little thought to the consequences. It is rather unlikely that too many gang members would be knowledgeable on the status of the death penalty in their neck of the woods and in all probability do not plan very far ahead, certainly not for the consequences of their actions. Criminals driven by ideology are so convinced of their righteousness that they scorn the consequences of worldly and societal justice, if they even live to face our judgment.

Another reason advanced in favor of the ultimate punishment is the idea that we are sending the criminal to face some greater judgment in the next life. This is not advanced so often as it used to be, and this is just as well, since it fails both with those who, like me, disbelieve in an afterlife, and those who do. The problem for agnostics and atheists is obvious, but even theist believers must surely wonder if the best idea is to execute a man, giving him no chance to make amends for his mistake in this life before sending him to eternal damnation. It flies in the face of their own beliefs, especially if one further factors in absolution for anyone who repents before death, but does nothing at all for the actual victims of his or her crime.

In the end, we as a society have to question why we wouldst execute one of our fellows. Do we do it to give revenge and closure to those who have suffered, and if so, is this the most positive way to help them? Or do we do it because we think certain crimes "deserve" a harsher punishment? While many of those crimes might seem so heinous as to warrant the sternest of punishments (as a side note, if a single murder deserves execution as punishment, is a multiple murderer then punished less?), it's always worth considering that the finality of death in fact is contrary to the idea that a correctional system is intended to reform convicts to fit back into society, a goal that remains admittedly further than ever in most nations, despite the change in name from penal  to correctional system, for it turns out that reforming criminals requires a little more than just a change in terminology. If we decide that there is no way for us to ever reform our convicted criminals, we face a challenge as a society to find a way to change that. Simply locking people up and throwing away the key, or in this case, literally burying the criminals is no answer and leads us down a path where life has less meaning. If we value life so much that we would impose death on those who rob others of it, we cannot and should not acquiesce to execution of any one, not even the most hardened criminal and killer. In the words of John Donne, every man's death diminishes me; it matters not if the death be that of a friend or a distant unknown convict. So long as we are all part of this world together, we must find ways to extend, not end life. Lacking any practical reason to support the death penalty, I can only hope that the rest of the world comes around sooner than later to this same point of view.



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Whose Culture Is it, Anyway?

This morning I saw a headline that Gordon Ramsay was being criticized for opening an "authentic" Asian restaurant. Headline hyperbole about Mr. Ramsay being "destroyed" aside, the bulk of the criticism seems to focus on two ideas, viz. that only an "Asian" can cook authentic Asian food and the nebulous charge of cultural appropriation. The first argument is easier to understand and rebut, the second is the one I really worry about and which I want to think about a little more. Cooking food is straightforward, it really isn't some mysterious knowledge that is passed on to select initiates in secret ceremonies. One blends various ingredients in the correct proportions, adding them at the correct time and temperature and voila! you get the desired result. To suggest that only an Asian person can cook Asian food is to suggest that Asians are born with some special gene or inherent ability denied to all other ethnic groups. And what is an "Asian" person anyway? In this case, Mr. Ramsay planned a 1930s Tokyo diner - but Asians include everyone from Lebanon and Syria in the west, through Iran, Afghanistan and India to Vietnam, China and Japan in the east. All these nations, China and India especially each have so many different cooking styles within their borders that make the idea of an "Indian" or "Chinese" chef quite irrelevant in deciding the authenticity of their product. Can an Assamese cook craft a Coorgi dish? Would you assume that a Cantonese chef can create true Uighur food? Every region has its own unique style that can be learned, but certainly are not known to their inhabitants by simply breathing the air as they grow up.

However, while I can easily believe that enough people would trust to Mr. Ramsay's culinary skills to deliver them an over priced plate of excellent Japanese food, the idea that he has no right to open such a restaurant is far more insidious and dangerous. In recent years the crime of cultural appropriation has been widely charged against many people, ranging from college kids to, obviously Gordon Ramsay. At its heart is the idea that culture belongs to a certain group of people born withing that specific ethnic and geographic limit and that attempts by any outsider to adopt the same is a racial crime against the first group. There are many things to unpack in here but let's be clear about a couple of things first off: there are certain circumstances that are charged with historic issues (e.g. blackface) that fall outside the realm of just cultural appropriation and may be opposed for wholly different reasons. I do not always agree with those reasons, but can appreciate that the circumstances may make certain people uncomfortable - those fall beyond the purview of this discussion.

I firstly want to examine the concept of cultural appropriation as something wrong. Across history, cultures have met, sometimes clashed and in those confluences, ideas and habits have been shared between the two (or more) groups. The Silk Road carried trade goods from one end of Asia to the other, but along with silks and jade went ideas, clothing, cuisine, furniture, weapons, architecture and so much more; in short, culture. Would cloves and cinnamon be prized in countries far from their origin if the importing nations didn't learn to use it the same way as the original culture? Would the Chinese monopoly on silk have mattered if other nations hadn't learned the benefits of the material and adopted its use? It wasn't a one way street - horses were domesticated in the Steppes (most likely) but the lessons of horse breeding and horse breaking were carried far and wide. Religious ideas were adopted, sometimes through simple sharing, sometimes by force, but shared they were and it is often hard to separate exactly where a certain religious practice originated. Returning to cuisine, I have seen close parallels in the foods of India and Thailand, as well as India and Ethiopia. Pure coincidence, driven by similar geography, or ideas shared through traders. The ubiquitous trousers were used by Celts and Persians alike, but eventually were shared across the world; the popular jeans were created in the US but can one find a single corner of the civilized world without them?

So the idea of cultural sharing is as old as the history of civilization. Yet, when the same idea is repeated today, there are partisans ready to spring to arms to oppose any shared cultural theme. Generally, the charge is leveled against Caucasian people who seek to borrow ideas from Asian or African cultures. There is a level of imperialistic guilt mixed in, for defenders of those cultures recall the days of European colonialism. But the reality is that European colonialism outside the Americas, probably lasted less than two centuries, far less in most areas, which pales in contrast to the age of other empires - the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires, to name a few - and the cultural exchanges forced upon their colonies were similar to any prior imperial power. The idea that a young person in the West wearing a kimono or borrowing a pattern for a costume or using a tribal tattoo or wearing a turban or sari (hopefully not both) is an attempt to block cultural exchange, and closing off cultural exchange has never worked well for the culture that locks itself away. Japan, during the Restoration, locked themselves off from any sort of cultural exchange, only to find themselves woefully behind in military power a hundred years later and unable to resist external pressure.

Perhaps the outspoken opponents of appropriation fear that the original culture is being insulted or misused. To this I argue that no culture is so weak that it cannot withstand a few people tying their kimono wrong or draping their sari ungracefully. Besides, what is correct and wrong when it comes to clothing? I would say that wearing one's trousers low around the buttocks is wrong, but that does not stop a large group of people wearing them just so for their own reason. Look back in time and what is "correct" today was as likely as not considered just as wrong a few decades ago. Culture needs change or it stagnates. That change can come from within, or it can come just as easily from without. American slaves, cleaved from their African homelands, mixed their cultures and gave us most of the musical influences of the last half century. To be sure if someone wears a specific ethnic dress to mock that group, or adopts a mannerism for that purpose, it's insulting and may be treated with opprobrium. But that's not cultural appropriation, that's racist behavior and would or should be criticized no matter who is doing it, and whether they are white, brown, black or green (assuming Martians may also get into the act).

And who owns a culture anyway? I saw a suggestion once, related to the whole appropriation argument, that a Caucasian schoolgirl could wear a traditional Chinese costume if she got permission from Chinese friends. That got me thinking: who are these friends who are empowered to give permission on behalf of the whole Chinese culture? Is it three friends or does she need five or five and twenty friends to offer permission before it's okay? Does she need unanimous agreement that it's okay or will an eighty percent agreement suffice? If she gets only three in five friends to agree, can she wear the dress but not style her hair to match? Do these people with cultural veto power have to be "true" Chinese, or will third generation Chinese-Americans suffice? Do the friends have to be from the same region of China as the dress in question, or can they be anywhere in the People's Republic? Do they have to even be Chinese, or will any "Asians" do (in which case the girl already has my permission)?

This rabbit hole just gets even deeper and more twisted as you seek the end. If this girl were anything other than Caucasian and American, would she have to meet the same requirements? What if she were an African American girl? Or, "gasp" Korean? Does a Taiwanese girl have the right to Manchu costumes? Can an Indian wear a Kikuyu tunic? What about a Luo in a Xhosa headdress? Does a West European have the right to learn Chinese or Japanese? Or even Russian? What about a person with a mixed heritage, does it matter with which side they identified before that point?

These questions are all absurd, of course. That is precisely my point - the whole opposition to cultural appropriation is foolish. Do I, as an Indian born and bred, but with no deep roots in Indian culture, have more right to wear an Indian costume than any random person on the street in Denver, Colorado? Do I have a right to wear a costume only by virtue of the particular shade of my skin and certain other outward characteristics? I would, I know, do far less credit to any Indian costume than nearly anyone else (my brother excepted, but in his defense, he does no credit to any costume, regardless of the ethnic origin).  Culture grows and flourishes when opened up to wider audiences and outside influences. I have faith that those who would mock a group will fail to truly harm the culture they attack; I'm equally certain, that preventing people from wearing the clothing or symbols of different culture will not stop attacks on the ethnic originators of those symbols. In the end, we are all better when we learn about different cultures. It matters not if we started out simply borrowing an African symbol for a tattoo after a night of drinking, more often than not, it could open us to a wider appreciation of that culture; at worst it leaves us with the Chinese word for soup instead of courage in a place where only our spouses may see it regularly.

As a parting thought, I offer this story about a small bakery I visited in Washington DC. The owner was a music enthusiast and traveled to Senegal to learn about African drumming. He befriended the people of a small village there on his journey. He ended up abandoning his music career and instead returned to DC to open a bakery using grain from the village he'd visited. His friendship and partnerships endure years later and I learned a little about Senegal from his bakery webpage.There are those who would have argued that a white college kid learning West African drumming was cultural appropriation. I would say only that they have not visited West Africa and that they should at least visit Seylou bakery - it just may change their perspective.

The Russian Connection - Success Beyond Expectations

From the day, or at least almost so, that Donald Trump became president of these United States, his liberal critics - and I do count myself firmly in that camp - have clung to the belief and hope that such a ridiculous turn of events could not happen without the intervention of some external agent. In part, we've been unwilling to belief that a majority in a majority of electoral college seats would back a man so evidently unqualified for office, especially over an opponent who for all her flaws was eminently suited to lead the nation in temperament, training and desire. It was hard for Americans of a liberal bent of mind to understand how so many of our neighbors could not only discount all of Ms. Clinton's experience, but also see her long public service as a liability and be willing to believe every and any calumny against her. Odder yet was the fact that this distrust for Ms. Clinton went hand in hand with a child-like trust in the character and motives of Donald Trump. A sizeable minority, if not an outright majority among us is convinced that only the most nefarious interference of outside actors and skull-drudgery can fully explain this collective madness that has enveloped us. Those same hopefuls see the recent spate of indictments from the on-going investigation into Russian interference in the election as their long awaited validation and have begun to anticipate deliverance from this nightmare - they are likely to be as disappointed as they were on the morning after the election.

The most important item that could be gleaned from the indictments was that the Russian interference was not built around a specific candidate and was truly bi-partisan. They were interested in disrupting the US electoral process and attacking democracy itself, and while they may have seen undermining Ms. Clinton as a desirable outcome, they would likely have been quite satisfied with simply hamstringing her presumptive presidency and depriving her of legitimacy and mandate to rule. Hence the support for the burn-it-down outsider candidate Bernie Sanders and the nihilistic candidacy of Trump. It should be remembered that through much of the early and middle portion of the election, it was never doubted that Ms. Clinton would win the Democratic nomination and likely go on to victory in the general election. Keeping that in mind, recall too that the Bermiacs were willing to hate Hillary more than they opposed the right-wing of the Republican party, that many of them had moved from simply supporting Sanders to a fervent hatred of Hillary, and swore that they would never vote for her. Unity at the party's national convention had to be bought through mollifying gestures to Sanders, who several times rejected the truth that both frontrunners for the party's standard had more in common than they had differences (some of my admiration for Ms. Clinton stems from the the very different and gracious approach she took in defeat in 2008, throwing all her support wholly behind Barack Obama, but I also recognize that Sanders had some reason to feel like he had been treated less like a full member of the party he refused to join). The Russians, watching the youthful Sanders supporters refusing to fall in behind Clinton, must have been as bemused as delighted that these self-professed socialists would refuse Clinton, who shared most of their aims, and instead threatened to sit out the election and raise the hopes of a populist, fraudulent candidate like Trump.

Looking back at the Trump candidacy, what stands out most is that never was there a less prepared candidate - not just in terms of staff and planning, but also in terms of what he stood for and offered the nation. And yet, a huge swath of Republicans embraced his platform - whatever it was. They rallied behind his promises to bring back jobs and prosperity, despite the lack of realism in those ideas. They cheered empty rhetoric, like a border wall, ban on Muslim immigration and often contradictory promises - the reasons behind their fanaticism are as complex as varied and explain why the "Trump supporter" so defies clear definition. But most importantly, they hated the elites who seemed to control the main US parties and reposed a blind trust in Trump's cynical and shallow adoption of their deepest aspirations. Once Trump found that attacks on the elite won him easy applause, he tapped fully into that vein and moved ever more into the role of populist - whether is was the establishment of his own party, the billionaires who funded the party, the independent press or Hillary Clinton, he made them all part of a broad target and attacked them relentlessly for cheap adulation. For the Russians, this was the best of all worlds, for even then they probably never thought he would win - but Trump was happily attacking the very foundational pillars of US democracy - not just his vitriol for the press, but critically, his repeated threats to not accept the results of the election. Accepting defeat in an open election is one of the cornerstones of a successful democracy, and Trump's oft reiterated claims that he was being robbed of victory by a shadowy establishment and that he would not concede a victory to his opponent - probably intended only as cover to his own ego in the event of the defeat even he likely anticipated, claims to the contrary notwithstanding - was the perfect foil for Russian interference. President Trump has seized on the timeline of Russian activity to question why his predecessor took no action, but anyone who recalls those months leading up to the election will also remember that Candidate Trump was busy threatening everything just barely short of civil war and that his deluded supporters, fed on a long and heavy diet of anti-government conspiracies, were primed and ready for violence. Ultimately, when the Republican Congressional  leadership declined to treat the intelligence with the importance it needed and refused to join President Obama in a united front that would remove the taint of partisan politics from his action, they all but tied his hands and gave the Russians carte blanche to act with impunity to further undermine the US elections. To be absolutely fair, perhaps Republican leaders were as certain as everyone else that they would be working with President Clinton and were not loath to see her robbed of her mandate to some extent - we are still living with the consequences of that venal political calculus.

In the end, I strongly doubt that opponents of President Trump will see any closure except what they effect  themselves through a resounding message in the upcoming midterm elections. I would be very surprised if there was any criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, beyond what we've seen in the indictments. Perhaps Paul Manafort hoped to actually serve Russian interests when he approached Trump for a role, but the Russians never could have foreseen a clear Trump victory and had little reason to do more to work with Trump or his cohorts. And given that they could so easily manipulate the man, and his supporters without ever getting directly involved, they had no reason to do more. They had already set the scene for a weakened US democracy and their revenge on Hillary Clinton - on November 5, they were likely as surprised as everyone else. In the end, given the lack of coherent thought behind President Trump's actions, they may be almost regretting just how successful they were in their efforts - after all, we are now seriously talking about nuclear was in Korea and the end of the world, and the Russians may be as nostalgic for a return to an adult presidency as anyone else in the world.

Flagged for Notice

It's been some weeks past, as Hurricane Maria (aptly sharing the same name as my sister and just as destructive) pummeled Puerto Rico, and one would have imagined that the government of these United States would be wholly focused on succoring that island. But these are not normal times and this government is not led by a normal man, to say the least. So instead, the President of the US chose to attack a group of professional athletes for protesting police brutality. As in any issue involving this president, there is a lot to unpack, and that section of the populace that supports him unreservedly has turned near instantaneously against their favorite sport and teams. The level to which the president's supporters have truly turned their back on football remains to be seen - and early indications are that the promised boycotts are more noise than action - but if nothing else the protests embraced across the league and still ongoing - albeit more muted - have made it near impossible for anyone to ignore that there is major rift in American society and that at least one person would rather expand than heal this division.

The issues that animate the protesting players first exploded on the national stage more than three years ago and I addressed the underlying tensions back around then; since Ferguson, the spotlight has only illuminated a depressing parade of cases, some similarly ambiguous, others seemingly clear cut. But whether shaded in grey or sharply di-chomatic, they have all one thing in common - they involve police and a (usually unarmed) black man and end with a dead civilian and no consequences for the men in blue. The seemingly unending repetition, with minor variations have animated protesters seeking justice and a conversation on racial inequality and police brutality; some, like Black Lives Matter and their acolytes, demand they be heard but are less interested in a dialogue, while others, like the players of the National Football League have chosen to silently but visibly make their plea for attention to this wrenching and painful issue. From the moment that former Forty Niners quarterback Colin Kapernick started the movement by protesting during the national anthem, he and those who followed suit have faced an intense backlash, especially among their fans.

The protesting players have faced criticism, which largely falls into four categories: the player is terrible at football, he's a nobody/rookie, why are they ruining football with politics and finally, their job is to play football, not talk politics. It's truly difficult to determine which of these arguments is most disingenuous or irrelevant. The footballer's skill at catching a ball or hitting other players trying to catch the ball (to put it simply) has nothing to do with his understanding of social issues, just as the length of his tenure in the league hardly affects his connection to issues that he has usually grown up experiencing first hand (sadly, the fear and disconnect that young African Americans experience with police on a daily basis is so uniquely their own that no one else in America can begin to truly understand it, and it's something that is tied deeply to the color of their skin not the length of their purse). When someone objects to the protests "ruining" their enjoyment of football they are objecting to being forced to confront uncomfortable realities that they would much rather pretend didn't exist; these same believers in the purity of the sport never minded when the NFL made a deal with the Defense Department to line up the players on the field for the national anthem as a prop in a propaganda effort. Perhaps the most insulting though is the suggestion that the players should "stick to football" - this mind you, in a country that just elected a reality TV star with no political experience and routinely disparages politicians - as though political and social issues are somehow divorced from one's everyday life.

Using a public and widely viewed forum to draw attention to a perceived problem is a long and time-honored tradition. Equally, it is hated by those who feel most challenged by the protest, and their outrage is directly proportional to the success of the protest. The raised fists by black Olympians on the medal podium provoked anger, Mohammad Ali's political views were excoriated. And now a peaceful gesture by football players is portrayed as an insult beyond compare against the country, the anthem, the flag and most mystifyingly, the active and retired military. Let's start with the protest gesture itself - back in the land of my birth, I grew up with the idea that the only acceptable stance during the national anthem was standing rigidly at attention. But the world at large accepts many other attitudes of respect. I've watched soccer teams stand with arms over each other's shoulders as their nation's anthem plays, in the US standing with one's hand over one's heart is a popular stance. Kneeling is probably the most respectful stance and its sole objectionable aspect is that it is intended to draw attention. Colin Kapernick started the current round of protests last season, and was joined by a handful of other players; when he first protested he sat on the sidelines, but changed to a kneeling stance after talking to a teammate who had served in the military. The protests, stretching over a year, never overshadowed the national anthem, nor the game - the protesting players knelt silently while the anthem was sung and then put everything else aside to focus on the job for which they were signed and paid, playing all out to win their football game.

Over the off-season the protests receded from public memory and with the new year of football and Kapernick no longer on a roster, it seemed that the world was ready to move on. Until the president, in the middle of what was supposedly a stump speech for a Senate candidate and seemed more like a paean of self praise, decided to resurrect the issue and escalate it into a full blooded attack on all football players. He called for players who knelt during the anthem to be fired. Some have accused him of violating the players' First Amendment rights, but this is a gray area at most. The NFL owners have every right to fire the players (within the bounds of their contracts and league rules, of course) and the players have no First Amendment protections from a corporate employer; but things get a lot murkier when the president uses the prestige and position, if not the power, of his office to call for their dismissal and claims credit for Kapernick's continued lack of employment in the NFL.

The biggest claim in the president's complaint was that protesting during the anthem insults the country and military - a relatively new line of attack on the protesters, inspired perhaps by the lack of traction gained with other criticism. I have long loved Dr. Johnson's famed line that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, and there is a strong hint that Samuel Pepys' friend would have immediately identified the president and all his men as deserving of the epithet. There are no shortage of self-described patriots and retired military soldiers and officers who agree with the president. But peaceful protest is the soul of a democratic society. A lot of critics of the protests say that the protests should be done at some other time or venue; what they actually mean is that the protests should be done at a time when it will be easy to ignore. Kneeling is not an insult  - Quakers knelt outside prisons to protest conditions, democratic protesters have faced down armies by kneeling quietly in front of tanks - and is the most humble and powerful use of non-violent protest and most critics object mainly because it draws the attention of thousands of fans to the protester and forces them to face uncomfortable facts.

There was a chance for the president to rise above partisan divisions, had he so chosen. He could, at the least have ignored the issue. He could have offered a reasoned argument against the protests, though I'm not sure what that might look like. He could, had he desired to go on the offensive for his own reasons, highlighted the many problems with the protest's posterboy and initial instigator - Kapernick has shared deplorable social media posts against police, as reprehensible in their broad attacks as any criticism of the Black community as a monolith, he has worn clothing likening police officers to pigs, which is unhelpful at best and undermines his calls for dialogue, and he declined to vote in the presidential election, on the spurious argument that there was no difference in the candidates (irrespective of one's preferences, it's hard to see the two as indistinguishable, except by buying into the idea that no white politician can ever bring about change for the better on justice for minorities - as insulting as any racist belief and furthermore ignorant of history). The president could have done many things, but chose to pour gas on the fires of racial tension, and history will eventually judge him harshly, his own glowing self reports notwithstanding. Today, with no real end in sight to the NFL protests, or the larger racial divides and social inequalities, this country needs a dialogue - a respectful conversation in which all reasonable voices are heard, in which the concerns of both minority rights and police concerns are addressed, even if only to weigh the relative importance of each. This is a conversation in which neither Black Lives Matter nor the president have any positive contribution - they represent two sides of the same coin, and their shill and divisive rhetoric serve only to exacerbate the already deep divisions that rive the body politic. But assuredly we must find a way to bridge our differences and come together or prepare ourselves for far worse problems. We face enough challenges already and, as Ben Franklin noted, presciently one might say, we must hang together or assuredly we will hang separately. We may not agree with them on all points, but that's never the point. Rather it is to engage and listen to opposing viewpoints when presented thoughtfully, and through dialogue and exchange of ideas, reach an understanding and gradually narrow our differences, heal the wounds and eventually rise to new and greater heights as a unified society.

(I've said several times that we need a conversation and part of the reason that I never lose hope in the idea of the United States, even when they elect a president like Donald Trump is that we have arch-conservative publications like the Weekly Standard that reacted to the president's petty squabble with the NFL players with a thoughtful discussion piece - I may not agree with them on all points, but I love that they addressed the issue in a sober and reasonable tone)

Art of (Botched) Deal - Small Stick, Big Voice

In the eyes of his supporters, President Trump has taken a long-overdue position against North Korea, finally jettisoning years of weak responses to that nation's misbehavior and provocations, and has drawn a bright line with his forceful warnings about the consequences of any further bellicosity from Pyongyang. To his legion of detractors, however, statements by the US president this past week have pushed the world closer to war, a war that could start by mistake or through miscalculation, and in their view, achieved nothing positive while tearing down years of carefully crafted work. The truth, as it often does, lies somewhere between these partisan extremes, but closer to one than the other.

There is a generally universal opinion amongst  defense analysts in the US and allied nations that North Korea has been testing the limits of American patience. In the view of the president, and to a lesser degree among his fellow Republicans, it was the forbearance and (in their view) timidity of the preceding Obama administration that has emboldened Kim Jong Un in his brazen behavior. However, it is worth noting that while never particularly tractable in the past, Pyongyang went to a whole new level of provocation after the Trump administration took office. If anything, Kim's government decided that they could get away with more and establish new boundaries with the new government than they had tried before the change of guard in Washington.

It seems certain that Kim has misread the US government to an extent, and some of the error can be attributed to the lack of communication with and understanding of the US government. Kim Jong Un, handed absolute control of his country like some princeling from a bygone era and accustomed to ruling by decree, appears to imagine that other world leaders enjoy that same unfettered power and sometimes seems unable to comprehend the concept of checks and balances that under-gird a democratic government. Absent direct contacts between the two nations and very limited contact indeed with any outside nation, North Korea must rely on their embassies in the West to explain the world to Pyongyang; wary diplomats, unwilling to tell their masters unwelcome news, have almost certainly provided a slant that suited the prevailing views of the North Korean leadership.

But while the self-imposed isolation may well contributed to the confusion, no small part of the blame must lie at the feet of President Trump. He has spent the six months since his inauguration sending out conflicting and confused signals. He has openly backed away from positions of the preceding government simply because they had been embraced by Obama, from trade and climate change treaties to alliances and strategy. Worse, he has praised despots and undemocratic governments, mused offhandedly about the advantages of nuclear proliferation (suggesting that Japan and South Korea should develop their own nuclear weapons) and casually contradicted his administration officials and even himself from week to week. He demanded Chinese assistance in reigning in Pyongyang, but never offered them a clear deal or a reason to follow America's lead - in this, he followed (and possibly outdid) a long standing US mistake of expecting foreign governments to act in the best interests of USA rather than themselves. Whatever diplomatic push was underway with China may then have been undermined when Trump's government suggested that they had bombed Syria as a gesture and warning to China - a statement and action seemingly designed to block rather than enhance cooperation between the governments over North Korean intransigence.

The Syrian strikes may even have had a reverse effect on North Korea. The impunity with which the US and Israel (and France and other allied nations) launch attacks upon Syrian targets may well convince nations who fear becoming future targets that their best, maybe only hope of survival is to acquire weapons that can deter US action permanently; for North Korea that holy grail is a force of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the US homeland with nuclear warheads and thus buying them the same immunity of the erstwhile Soviet Union or Red China. Bellicose statements early in the Trump administration, provoked in part by North Korean missile tests, possibly reinforced the fear in Pyongyang that Washington sought to overthrow their kleptocracy (a fear that also animates China who wants neither the deluge of refugees that would flee a collapse in North Korea nor the expansion of South Korean and US influence, unchecked, across the entire peninsula). For a regime determined to remain in power the lesson was simplicity itself - obtain the very weapons that USA was so determined to deny them for only by threatening Armageddon (and credibly threatening millions of US lives) could their tiny nation survive American aims upon their future. Vice President Pence when reassuring US allies in South Korea of American resolve in their defense may well have calmed fears in Seoul and Tokyo but likely set off a massive alarm in Pyongyang.

The worst part of American action in the last six months has been the bombast, in the truest sense of the word. The threats are bad enough, when conveyed indirectly to a paranoid government, and unlikely to achieve overmuch success. But threats, when demonstrably lacking in seriousness and backing are worse than no threats at all. When the President famously claimed to have sent a naval armada to confront North Korea, his words rang hollow when the Navy was forced to admit that the ships in question were headed in the opposite direction and that the immediate show of force promised by the president was in fact a week or two from fulfillment. It wasn't that the world expected the ships to be teleported to the Sea of Japan overnight, but when it's shown that plans at the operational level bear no resemblance to their forceful characterization by the commander in chief, the dissonance and emptiness of those threats is what the observers remember. Imagine if you will the effect of Caesar crossing the Rubicon not with the Tenth Legion but just a couple of buddies and a company of infantry, with the bulk of his army to follow the next year.

Time and again, Donald Trump has demonstrated that he does not understand the weight and import of his words as president of the world's greatest power. When he remarks that he would be, in his words, honored to meet Kim Jong Un, it sends a message to all his listeners. The dictator in Pyongyang sees it as acceptance of his actions, his despotic rule and the wisdom of his own bullying and risky strategy. When President Trump makes a threat about vast naval assets arrayed off the Korean coast but the ships are nowhere in sight it robs his words of all meaning and encourages Pyongyang to push ahead with tests as soon as possible, if anything before the US Navy actually arrives in force. Worst of all, by matching North Korea's penchant for bombast and overheated rhetoric, the president has actually lent credibility to Kim's government and awakened fear in the hearts and minds of his own people. The previous US administration followed a policy of studied and calibrated response to North Korea, declining to be drawn into needless confrontation and steadfastly refusing to reward Kim's actions with the recognition he craved. It was rather like the method one might employ with a spoiled child's tantrums, and in my opinion, the best approach (of a set of less than optimum choices) to dealing with North Korea. I have seen at least one report that  Pyongyang, hurt by sanctions and realizing that they would not gain through further provocation, had approached the US to restart talks last last year, an offer that the US rejected over North Korean preconditions but nevertheless a strong indicator that the strategy of patience was paying off. Unfortunately the change of guard at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue led to an abandonment of "strategic patience" and suddenly Kim Jong Un found himself dealing with a US president whose instincts and temperament largely matched his own.

The bulk of the blame for the current crisis lies squarely with Kim Jong Un and his paranoiac coterie, but the US president shares a large enough responsibility for stoking rather than defusing the situation and for making a bad situation worse. At a time when there are still legitimate doubts that North Korea can strike any US territory, leave alone the homeland with a nuclear ICBM, President Trump has legitimized those fears and given Pyongyang the very stature it craves by treating it as an actual threat to the US. Trump's bombastic tone, so good on the campaign trail when bullying political opponents constrained by rules he ignored, is far less effective against North Korea, a nation that wrote the manual on breaking rules. The message from the US government is a far far cry from FDR's exhortation to eschew fear; instead he has raised tiny, impoverished North Korea into a legitimate threat, on par with the USSR and give Kim Jong Un the recognition and importance he craved. To that extent, Kim has already won no matter how this plays out in the weeks ahead. Equally certain is it that the rest of us have lost.

A Hundred Days and Counting

The first artificial and arbitrary deadline for judging new governments was upon us this weekend, and it seemed like a good time for me to reflect on the good, the bad and the all too plentiful ugly that has characterized this period. To be honest, President Trump was absolutely right when he said that the hundred day period is meaningless, though he had set that benchmark for himself repeatedly, and then promptly claimed that he'd had one of the most successful opening acts of all time. That claim, like so many others, is all hyperbole, of a pattern readily recognizable in his utterances. But what is the reality?

As a liberal, I'm not really in a position to render impartial judgment; my own biases ensure that I will judge harshly. And given the chaos that undeniably swirls around this administration, it is easy for a critic to find fault with almost everything that President Trump has done. I will start with the low-hanging fruit - the lack of government appointees (or rather, lack of nominations for numerous positions), the constant overheated rhetoric, the inability to leave campaign mode and settle down to actual governing, the increasingly shrill attacks on the press, the seeming lack of understanding on any and every topic that affects the country, and perhaps most scary of all, the careless and offhand use of military force with no thought of the consequences of any US action. There is plenty to choose from, and be scared by in that list but for me, the greatest failure is that refusal to acknowledge even the slightest need for course correction, or personal accountability, be it in ordering a bloody military raid on Yemen or firing his National Security Advisor for numerous lapses in judgment and behavior, or in making wild and unsubstantiated (and probably totally false) charges against the former president. That President Trump is unprepared for the role he has sought and won is beyond doubt, and his own words admit as such. He has admitted, seemingly with absolutely no self-awareness, that healthcare policy is difficult and then absolutely and casually reversed his position on China as a currency manipulator when he was schooled in monetary policy by the visiting Chinese president - he again quite offhandedly admitted that he'd known nothing about Chinese government policy on a topic that had formed a huge part of his campaign promise. Then just this past week he said in an interview that he'd never expected the job to be so difficult; it is a toss up on whether to be more scared that he is casually admitting this with one breath and claiming undeserved mantles of greatness and accomplishment in the next, blithely ignoring the yawning contradictions in his own statements, or that he truly believed his own campaign rhetoric that the job of president was so easy that an accomplished businessman could walk in and do a better job without even exerting himself.

And yet, I am forced to admit that the apocalyptic terms employed by my fellow liberals are widely off the mark - this president's track record is a lot less terrible than it might have been. Much of what he's done, and most of his cabinet appointees are in line with his campaign promises and general GOP policy line. He has tried to rescind the Affordable Care Act, a promise and priority of both his campaign and the whole Republican Party; and yet, with the whole government controlled by one party, they've failed to even get legislation to a vote in the House, never mind passing it or getting it to a Senate vote. Tax breaks have been a GOP staple for more than three decades. Appointing a climate denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a private school advocate and anti-regulation partisan to the Department of Education and other similarly Orwellian appointments are well in line with prior promises. Liberals need to admit that none of this is surprising and that any GOP president would have done the same; they also need to admit that the US electorate, in their wisdom or lack thereof, has endorsed President Trump's policies. One might claim that Trump did not win the popular vote, or that only 27% of eligible voters (46% of 58% turnout) supported him, but the bottom line is that he won, and over 40% of the electorate did not object to his stated policies enough to even vote. Voters, though endorsement or apathy, also delivered the House and Senate to the GOP, giving President Trump full control of the government. In 2009, President Obama won a similar mandate to enact a liberal policy and did so. It is only fair, that no matter how dangerous we think this president's ideas and actions, we still respect the will of the people. That does not mean standing down and giving the GOP a free hand, but simply acknowledging that much of what is being now enacted is the choice of the American people, through their acts of commission or omission.

It is also important to note that President Trump has not done all that much in overturning the previous administration's policies. There have been some highly publicized executive orders, signed with much fanfare, but in the end, President Trump has not enacted but a fraction of the conservative and populist agenda he promised and most of the acts that liberals most fear have remained in abeyance. This is not a mark of approbation for his restraint however, but a censure of the strongest degree - things are not so bad, because this president is terrible at his job, and not really interested in the business of governing. The GOP sponsored alternative to Obamacare has sputtered in part because Trump is not invested in actually replacing it with a real alternative; unlike Speaker Ryan or the Freedom Caucus, Trump has no strong conviction on the matter and his lack of a core belief impacts his ability and willingness to force new legislation through Congress. For all his talk about making deals, he has shown absolute disinterest in actual negotiations, with holdouts in his party and much more so with the opposition, and is quite happy to see the matter die in Congress so long as he can deflect the blame to someone else. For most part, his impact will be through acts of omission rather than overt commission, a lack of action that certainly shapes public life as much as active intervention, and his largely invisible Cabinet is in keeping with that path. He has appointed people with less government experience to some positions, actually reducing the impact they might have on changing government policy; in many cases, most policy will remain in the hands of career bureaucrats for a while, and things will continue unchanged till his appointees gain full understanding and control of their departments, and that situation is delayed further by the lack of supporting cast for many of those Cabinet members.

The other, and significantly overlooked aspect of President Trump's government is how closely is reflects his own personality and business model. While President Obama won plaudits for creating a Cabinet of Rivals by keeping Defense Secretary Gates, and appointing his party opponent Hilary Clinton to Secretary of State, his cabinet reflected his broad policy vision and was guided by him. By contrast, it is not clear what the corresponding vision is for President Trump, and his closest advisors appear to share very different worldviews on many different topics. His own overriding interest is not public policy or political promises so much as TV ratings and public adulation, and he seems content to pass off photo opportunities and bombastic claims as perfectly acceptable alternatives to actual achievement. At some point he may have to deliver or risk losing the support of his most fervent supporters, but that day is not now and it will be long past a hundred days before the bill is due. Till then, I am simply grateful that his lack of experience and even greater lack of interest ensure that he will do much less real harm than a true believer with skills to match may have achieved.

Wisdom of Balaam

When choosing to get involved in war in the Middle East, consulting a man who has just been chastised by his donkey is as wise a course as any, and President Trump may well have followed just such a course before unleashing a barrage of missiles against the Syrian government last week. To be sure, he couldn't have received worse advice than the counsel that led him to issue an ultimatum within just hours of a reported chemical weapon's attack in Syria. Confounding all conventional wisdom, within a day of his warning, he followed it up with an attack that had plenty of shock and awe but not a great deal of anything else, including if not especially effectiveness.

Not only did the US warn the Russians ahead of the strike, with details of the intended target - a warning that had to be given to avoid unwanted Russian casualties, but which the Russians promptly passed on to their Syrian hosts apparently - but within hours of the strike, the Syrian air force made a point of conducting operations from the attacked air base. And for good measure, they chose to attack the same town that was at the center of the controversy, a studied middle finger to the US military and one that raised questions about the efficacy of the strike. The Pentagon's initial briefing indicated that there was significant damage to planes at the base, but one cannot help but wonder if the Syrians hadn't moved their planes and suffered only cosmetic damage. In the world of smoke and mirrors that is war in the Middle East, we may never know the facts.

But what we do know is that the US president declared that the use of chemical weapons crossed all sorts of lines (a phrase that's sadly reminiscent of Friends' Joey) and then followed up that statement by declaring that US vital interests were at stake in Syria. This is interesting - a charitable view might be that President Trump saw the attack as violation of the agreement made with his predecessor and an unacceptable affront to the honor of the nation. One may also argue that President Trump saw the use of chemical weapons as something that could not be left unchallenged and unpunished for the lesson it may send to other nations. However, both the previous and present Administrations have turned a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons that do not meet the definition of chemical weapons - Assad has used chlorine gas, as well as other equally barbaric methods of war. He has fought his people and his enemies with every weapon and tactic at his disposal and till days before this apparent red line, the Trump Administration had looked benignly upon his actions and even changed the tone of the US policy toward his continued rule.

Even a week after the strike, we have not had any further explanation about how US interests were endangered in Syria, or how the situation had changed from one week before - I would be amazed if we ever got that explanation from this government. Perhaps, more scarily, the government has articulated several different paths going forward, and they do not offer clarity for either friend or foe. The president has argued that it's foolish to elaborate on one's plans ahead of action, likening it to providing the enemy with one's plans, but there is a huge difference between maintaining tactical secrecy and strategic clarity, Today, our allies don't know exactly how the US plans to proceed, whether we will be wading into the Syrian quagmire or standing on the sidelines, or playing a limited role with surgical strikes. The players in Syria are as much in the dark and the danger is that heightened expectations of US intervention on one side, or a feeling by the Syrian government and its allies that the US is just posturing and will not actually act forcefully, or a volatile mixture of both, based on conjecture and false readings could push the Syrian civil war to a bloodier level of carnage. It could also suck other regional players directly into the war, raising the risk of a wider war or destabilizing delicately balanced nations like Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq. It's hard to see that this is in the vital interests of the United States, and this is why the previous Administration chose to remain only marginally involved and was so careful about managing the risks. At this point, no one knows the US policy towards Syria, and that is more dangerous than even the unbridled interventionism of President Bush. At this point, rightly or wrongly, there is going to be a perception that events in Syria are a consequence of this singular US action and we will own the fallout. The one, and only, saving grace in President Trump's unconventional approach to government is that he will likely reject any responsibility for the consequences of his action and simply refuse to own the mess that is Syria.

One of the hallmarks of the last president was deliberation; critics on both sides of the partisan divide were in agreement that President Obama sometimes deliberated too much and too long. One cannot level the same criticism at this president. Decisiveness is often a virtue in a leader, but swift decision should be based on principles. So far, every action of the president this week has been absolutely opposite from his stated position before - the US is engaged with NATO again, involved in the Syrian war, is working with China and has suddenly realized that dealing with North Korea is extremely complicated (kind of like health care policy). And the danger of such sudden changes in direction is that no one can make long term plans - not governments, not businesses and not individual - when one doesn't know if today's ally will be tomorrow's enemy. Winston knew that feeling in 1984, now we all get to learn it.