Right Funding Our World

In the weeks since the murder of George Floyd tore the lid off the long simmering discontent with the way we police ourselves, one term has been gaining significant traction and by virtue of its pithy concise framing has become the rallying cry in city after city across the nation. From sea to shining sea, the people, in significant numbers have raised their voices to cry out, "Defund the police!" and this is no idle demand, nor the anarchistic slogan feared by its opponents. As is my wont, I waited to acquaint myself with the topic in greater detail before giving voice to my opinion, believing that so significant a subject is worthy of deep consideration and that it were better to offer no words in place of hasty or ill-thought ideas. Whether the time was well spent or ill is not for me to say, but suffice to say that I have sought to see the subject from different angles and deal with it accordingly.

The problem with all slogans in a world with short attention span and even less appetite for nuance is that they convey a wealth of meaning. Defunding the police, as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez so eloquently explained, is not abolishing the police, but rather restoring to our police the duties it was created to fulfill and removing the many tasks assigned to them by resource-starved cities and towns. This is an important matter to remember and one that I will return to discuss in a minute. The idea behind the slogan is not wholly misplaced, though opinion is somewhat divided on which services should be pulled from the police and assigned elsewhere.

The funding issue is the first question that must be addressed. Whenever cities or towns face a budget shortfall, the gap is closed by defunding some of the social services. Police unions (ironically the one type of union on which the traditional political positions of GOP and Democrats are flipped) not only guard their budgets zealously, but in modern America, no politician is willing to be "soft" on crime by slashing the police department. Cutting funds for libraries or community centers, after-school programs or prisoner rehabilitation are easier sells, rarely debated too long, easy to pass public muster and quickly forgotten. Even when budgets recover, the money rarely flows back to the defunded programs. The default agency left to deal with myriad problems from stray critters to truant children are then the police and it is worth noting that their funding is not increased to cover the additional workload. American police already receive shorter training than their counterparts in many developed countries, and they are now tasked with far more roles, roles that they have not been trained to tackle.

This is actually not in the interests of the police, and while the "defund" tag has posited them as antagonists in this discussion, it would actually be far more in their own interests and the public's if they were to team up with the defunding proponents to find a better solution to the problems in our cities. As Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez explained, the suburbs already enjoy the sort of policing that would result if cities "defunded" their police force, i.e. assigned the many services not suited to law enforcement officers to people trained to fulfill those roles. And more importantly, it would assign those alternate agencies the funding needed to actually perform their duties. Imagine an effective crime prevention program in place of arresting and incarcerating thousands of youth. Imagine after school programs that helped kids tap into their talents and follow their dreams instead of curfews and harassment that provide no solution. Imagine positive action and positive role models in place of fear and confrontation.

The police are not, I believe, inherently racist. The policemen who stood by as George Floyd was murdered included an Asian American; Black policemen have acted as rough with Black men as their peers. Police have killed white people, albeit at a lower percentage, but nevertheless the color of skin does not protect a person from harsh police action. The police are simply a reflection of the world they come from, and in that world racism and classim are closely entwined and institutionalized. Our society was designed to keep Black people down; it was really designed to keep various groups suppressed at different points - Irish, Italians, Chinese, Japanese - but the Blacks were the one group that couldn't cross the divide. They were too large a minority and too heavily targeted, in far too many places and ways to break through as a whole. And that is why Black people in middle class neighborhoods attract suspicion. For far too many of us, the idea of a successful Black person - a Michelle Obama or Kamala Harris - is more than we can comfortably fathom and so we react negatively, aggressively challenging their right to be in "our" neighborhoods even to the point, increasingly, of summoning our police to remove their interlopers. Note that these are not cases of police racism, and that more often than not the police react with far greater wisdom than the complainants. Our police, like our society as a whole, is classist rather than straight up racist. And we have a very set idea on what a poor person must look like, and a corresponding idea of where a Black person fits on that economic scale - the high overlap in those two images is why so many interactions between police and Black people are negative.

In our society today, a poor man is in the wrong, because to start with he's poor only because he's lazy and refuses to work - that is the primary lie we tell ourselves to explain away the privileges we have set in place for ourselves; being so deficient in character, it follows then that poor people simply want to steal our wealth and so we can justify harsh police action, without proof. And we have created police to protect the privilege of the rich against any attempts by the poor to raise themselves. Privilege is very real, and it's why a dark-skinned Indian like I have less to fear than a Black person - Indians have been permitted into the good place, people do not question my presence in upscale neighborhoods and the worst stereotyping I face is the assumption that I work in IT. It's why police begin by assuming the worst of poorer people and why they act with so much violence towards them; the decades, centuries of oppression have ensured that the poor and Black people are often the same group. Eric Garner was selling cigarettes on a street when he was accosted and murdered by the police; I never saw police even bother the college kids hustling tickets in downtown State College PA on gameday. Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun in a park when he was murdered (whether the policeman shouted at him to put the gun down is irrelevant) while white men parade in Texas with rifles - the difference is that they are obviously middle class jerks. It's why Daniel Shaver, a blue collar pest control technician was murdered by police in a Mesa La Quinta but armed protesters can march into the Michigan congressional buildings without fear.

It's why we have to right fund our cities and government services. It's not about defunding police, it's about assigning resources to agencies that can do a better job because they are trained for those situations. It's about no longer having police handcuff eight year old kids because that's the only way they are trained to react (I suppose we should be glad that they did not taser the kid!) or have police threaten a victim of domestic violence with arrest for not inviting them into her home without a warrant - that footage, from the now discontinued show "Cops" shows everything that is wrong with our police services, I believe. The victim and the alleged perpetrator were white, but clearly lower middle class at best. The policeman requested to enter after a 911 call about a wife beating, but the woman wouldn't let him in; he ended up dragging her out and threatening to arrest her. There was no one to help the victim, but plenty of police with enough weaponry to re-enact Kitchner's slaughter of the dervishes, and that is why we need to change the way we fund our city government. Heavily armed police do not reduce crime; more officers with more interaction with communities they police may help, but only if they walk the streets and know the people. Instead the police are now an alien force, serving the privileged and not considered a part of the lower classes of society. We have to change that and for a simple reason - we have tried it the other way and it has failed so clearly it's time to try something new.

Mornië Alantië (A Promise Lives Within Us Now)

These may seem like darkness has indeed fallen, when Americans are being attacked while exercising their most fundamental freedom to protest, and the attackers are the agents of their own government. There have been some violent protests with destruction of public and private property, and a disproportionate number of attacks by heavily armed police on crowds marching to protest, ironically, the excessive use of force by the police. The president of the nation, in words reminiscent of Tsarist Russia or any absolutist government of your preference, has threatened to unleash the military against the civilian population, in the name of restoring "law and order"; one's attitude to this proclamation depends strongly on one's existing trust in his leadership. But a good sign of his true thoughts were revealed when he advised the states' governors that they needed to "dominate" their citizens through use of overwhelming force. Even more telling, however, was his statement in that same meeting that failure to crush the protests would make the governors look weak and foolish. And, so even as Washington DC is flooded by faceless but heavily armed paramilitary forces to help the president show his strength and courage, even as police cars mow into crowds of civilians, even as peaceful protesters are subjected to pepper balls that are not technically "tear gas" despite having much the same effect, even as crowds of Americans are attacked by police with batons and pepper spray, even on those nights when the nation burned and the shining city on the hill tethered on its foundations (seemingly made of sand, rather than the rock we always imagined), even in these darkest of times, I could not help but feel that things were never better, and was already smiling in anticipation of a much brighter tomorrow.

Let me start by saying that it's much easier for me to brush past the institutional racism suffered by most Black Americans. As an Indian, and a graduate engineer, I enjoy a position that is denied to black Americans who have been born in this country. But I am rejoicing not for myself, but for all victims of injustice in America. This is not the hopeful dream of a perennial optimist, but a reading of reality. As an outsider, I have the advantage of seeing the bigger picture in a way that is hidden to those living, and suffering, through the actual events. As a person, technically, of color (a term that I have the privilege to brush off without consequences, a privilege denied to black or Hispanic Americans), I do not suffer the burden of white Americans who struggle with the guilt of not having solved the obvious issues of racism and injustice, with the guilt by association of having family and friends who voted Donald Trump into power. Neither black or white Americans are free enough of their involvement in this tragedy unfolding before them to see that the dark clouds enveloping them have not a silver lining but that in fact the dark cloud is but a spot in a much larger bank of dazzlingly silver clouds.

The world has changed tremendously in the last dozen years. For black Americans, and for white Americans who are capable of human empathy, it may seem that the last eight years have seen nothing but a wall of shame covered with a mosaic of murdered Black men and women, people cut down for the crime of being black rather than any crime they may have actually committed. No crime deserves a death sentence, much less one executed before trial and with chilling finality. Eric Garner was selling cigarettes illegally,  Michael Brown had stolen a box of cigars using force, Walter Scott had an outstanding warrant over child support payments but not since medieval times have we executed people for such minor crimes; Trayvon Martin was walking home when a (non-police) vigilante followed him and an ensuing scuffle ended with him being killed, Philandro Castile was shot in a routine traffic stop, Tamir Rice was shot and killed for playing with a toy gun, Breona Taylor was shot in her home by police executing a "no knock" warrant (at the wrong place, just to make it worse, but that detail shouldn't even be important). On the face of it, George Floyd may seem like just another name on a long, endless and shameful list. But each death has moved the weight of public opinion towards its watershed moment. For the dead, for their families and for many in the communities that suffer and fear each day, the movement may seem glacial, and long overdue, and I cannot deny the justice in that sentiment. But I prefer to look at how the majority of the country is waking up to the injustice perpetrated in their name and finally they stood up and said, "No more!"

When Ferguson, MO exploded in anger, the right-leaning press could highlight that the race of the protesters and use that as rationale for ignoring their demands for justice. When Baltimore burned after another Black Man was shot by police, President Trump could insult the whole city and its black citizens and despite some objections, he could get away with it. But today, there are white people marching in the streets besides their black brethren. Liberal stalwarts of course have spoken up in the past, but too many other people sat quietly and allowed a matter of justice for all become by default a matter of the color of one's skin. When whites and Asians sat on the sidelines, the only voices raised in a demand for change were black and it was easy for their opponents to recast this as racial battle and racial issues make everyone uncomfortable and so too many of us walked on by like the priest on the road to Jericho. But not this time! Finally, we have seen that this is not just a matter of race, it is a matter of justice and equality and simple humanity. Of course, race played a role in the events that led to the murder of George Floyd and Breona Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery but they deserve justice, not because they were black or their killers white, but because no one should be killed the way they were murdered and finally America has realized that we are only as good as the worst of our responses. And so a chorus of new and powerful voices joined those who have struggled alone for years. Taylor Swift, once raised up as paragon of white womanhood by white supremacists (without her consent and against her desires) has gradually thrown of the shackles of fearful silence. She has found her voice now and leaped to the front lines (metaphorically) adding the power and reach of her enormous pulpit to spread the message.

One of the most uplifting and hopeful stories came from Minneapolis after the first nights of violence. A Bangladeshi immigrant restaurant owner saw his life's work burnt to the ground, and his response was, "let it burn, we need justice for George Floyd". He understood that the violence was not against him, that this fight was not just the fight of the blacks but a struggle for justice and as such it was  fight for all Americans - and coincidentally his restaurant was named Gandhi Mahal, honoring the greatest apostle of non-violent advocacy in modern history. The same sentiment was articulated by Hasan Minaj, in one of the rawest, most powerful segments of his Patriot Act I have ever seen. Now Hasan is not a surprising supporter of justice and equality but he turned the spotlight inward and challenged each of us, especially those with brown skin, to face up to our inner racist. Racism is not an easy issue, and is rarely defined in black and white, or between blacks and whites, but all Americans are now thinking of this, and only good can come from this introspection.

When Colin Kapernick knelt to protest police brutality, he was pilloried as unpatriotic and somehow the fight for justice morphed into respect for the troops. The only men who stood with him were black and white America complained that they did not want to see their football sullied with such unpatriotic behavior. That was three years ago, but today the world has changed and we have Carson Wentz and Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady speaking up for justice, voices that were conspicuously absent in the past. White coaches in the NBA like Greg Popovitch and Steve Kerr supported their black athletes, but the NFL remained tightly focused on their bottom line. Till today! Now we have thoughtful statements from a long line of football executives from Bill O'Brien to Brian Flores to John Elway admitting the mistake of their past silence. The few discordant statements from Vic Fangio and Drew Brees have been contested and since withdrawn - to be clear, they have every right to have their opinions, but they have been challenged and corrected on facts and have been forced to acknowledge reality. College coaches too have added their voices in support of change. For decades, the colossus that straddles the professional wrestling world has been a bastion of conservatism, and Vince McMahon has never been shy about casting all political positions he dislikes as unpatriotic and using the theater of the ring to humiliate those fictionalized and conveniently buffoonish enemies. But today a legion of his stars are standing proudly for justice, and some of them have marched in solidarity with the protesters. Like the NFL, other corporations are flocking to be counted on the right side of history, from Amazon to Nike to Uber and Lyft and United Airlines and Target and Snapchat and Twitter.

The swing in sentiment in Corporate America is telling. Corporations, and the NFL is one of them, have no moral compulsions, they do not make decisions because they are morally right. It is not a knock on corporations, per se - they are (with deference to the US Supreme Court) not people, they are amoral entities designed to maximize profit. They have not joined the calls for change because it is the morally right thing but because they realize that to oppose it, or even pretend that the problem does not exist, is against their own interests. The NFL and every other corporation are soulless but they depend on their workers and patrons and they have seen the signs - the public mood has shifted and it is time to align with the new winds of change or suffer loss of both staff and consumers. The change in the corporate mood is a sign that American sentiment has moved towards the light and the smarter and more nimble corporations are proving that reality.

The final, and most important proof that change has come, that it is now inevitable, is provided by no other than President Trump. His determination to crush the protests, his insistence on demonstration of strength stem for sheer terror on his side. He is scared, frightened that he can no longer bully the country nor gaslight them into apathy and his every move proves his weakness. When George Wallace threatened blacks during the civil rights movement, when Hosni Mubarak sent his army into the streets of Cairo, when Ferdinand Marcos did the same in Manila, when Indira Gandhi suspended the Indian parliament in 1975, when the Communist Politburo attempted a coup against Gorbachev in 1991 as the USSR crumbled, they were none of them acting as leaders secure in their position and they all fell before the strength of popular protests. Donald Trump is scared, as all those leaders were scared and his fantasies (and may they remain fantasies) of unleashing the military against American citizens stems from his knowledge of his own weakness, not matter how he may try to dress it up as strength. Strength never needs to strut and demonstrate its nature, a strong government has no fear of its own people. And in a democracy, the strength of a government derives from the support of the governed, not from the number of jack-booted stormtroopers it can line up in the streets.

Sometimes, governments manage to crush their people, as Deng Xiopeng did in Tienanmen Square. But the United States is still a democracy and I believe in the American Experiment. Despite all the damage done over the last three years, I believe in people and I believe that today a critical mass of the population has moved past sitting silently and passively while their fellow citizens suffer. And with each act of violence by the police, the case for change is made ever more clear. Perhaps Trump will survive this, perhaps the protests will dissipate, but I do not think it will be that easy. Change is coming and in the words of Viktor Lazlo (Casblanca), "This time I know we will win!"

When the night is overcome, may you rise to see the sun!

Reality Strikes Back

It's been a long while since I've blogged, not because of a lack of material nor even a lack of things to say, but it's been a soul crushing three years and counting. In 2016, the people of the United States decided that a conman and liar, who also happened to be a really bad businessman and very possibly enmeshed in myriad deals of dubious legality, was the best option to run the country, over a woman whose resume included being First Lady, US Senator and Secretary of State. It is at this point quite worthless to go back into what drove nearly half the country to choose certain ineptitude over proven skills, but enough people in enough places did so, and so this country will forever have Donald Trump in their history books as the forty fifth president of the republic.

The bigger question is whether time has led to a change in viewpoints, and strangely enough it appears that a very significant, perhaps even an overwhelming majority of his original supporters have not changed their minds at all and have simply doubled down on their support despite a long litany of failed promises and dismal incompetence, always playing out against a backdrop of corruption and pettiness. Through it all, the core supporters of the Republican Party have stood staunchly behind Trump and in doing so, ensured that no GOP representative or senator should feel a sudden twinge of duty to the country they pledged to serve. They stood shoulder to shoulder through the generally pointless trade wars - many of them may believe that the US is winning the trade deals, and it is unlikely that facts would sway them. They've not even blinked at the policies enacted or embraced by this administration that are polar opposites of what was promised by Trump while campaigning. They've been unfazed by insults and worse heaped upon uniformed military officers by a man who claims to be the biggest supporter of those same soldiers, not to mention their glee at the insults directed at all other perceived opponents, which basically means everyone who does not kiss the ring their leader. The principals of democracy have been undermined at every turn, and like Senator Mitch McConnell, they care not whit. But worst of all, they've shrugged at the continuous loss of trained professionals from every department of government.

Sadly, the GOP for the last forty years, starting at least with Reagan, have distrusted people who are experts in their field. This has allowed blowhards and conspiracy theorists to rule supreme in the non- elected circles that exert such massive influence over the party. Such disdain naturally extends to all people of science and this party would rather believe in miracles and magical ideas than embrace reason. So much so that any scientific position that disagrees with their established worldview is suspect, and scientific theories backed by mountains of emperical evidence are treated at best as no better than articles of religious faith - never mind that one does not "believe" in science, one understands it or one doesn't - and far more often, science is held to levels of proof and scrutiny that none of their preferred claims ever do.

Now we are seeing what happens when a modern government purges its ranks of all apolitical experts who refuse to bend to the injudicious and sometimes unethical, even illegal, whims of a president woefully unequal to the challenge of the office he holds and surrounded by a cabinet of spineless yes-men. Scientists and professional administrators have been forced out and not been replaced, their expertise lost forever and dismissed with a wave of the hand by the president. For three years, we dodged disaster mostly by luck, but the COVID-19 pandemic has left us with nowhere to run, with no fig leaf to shelter behind.

It didn't have to be this way. To be sure, few countries have covered themselves in glory through this pandemic. It's true that the World Health Organization has made mistakes and stumbled quite badly, and only time will tell if their early mistakes were coerced by China in part, or just an honest oversight. But the US was supposed to have it's own premier organizations that would either reinforce or critically examine WHO guidance and act as an additional line of defense. The teams that were set up specifically to study pandemics and identify them before they became too big to handle were disbanded or shunted aside; whether they were ignored or incapable of identifying the problem remains a question to answered in the future, but it appears that well before the wave of the epidemic hit American shores, there were warnings from the intelligence community. One has to wonder if a more independent cabinet might have insisting of engaging the president if he was dismissive of the threat, or if a more mentally acute and engaged president might have recognized the magnitude of the threat gathering on the horizon. It is tempting to believe that former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton, would have been more aware, not only because they are more intelligent, more engaged in the world beyond their immediate family business and would have certainly listened to their intelligence briefing attentively (not to mention that their briefing would have been more detailed by their choice).

If facts have any meaning the sudden sell-off by several GOP congresspersons who heard classified intelligence briefing of looming stock market weakness must count as one of the more amazing coincidences of modern history. Yet the US government did nothing to prepare for the real problem and even when the virus had begun to spread within the country, the government reacted with nonchalance and bluster, led by the president himself who likened it to the normal flu and insisted that it would vanish in a week or two. Perhaps the real revelation in Trump's statement that the fifteen cases in the US at the time of his infamous statement would soon resolve to zero is that it shows how little he understood of the nature of the problem - he either didn't know or didn't understand that we had not tested people who had been in contact with the infected patients and that there was no way to realistically predict that the cases would immediately reduce. Of course, this president has never cared for reality and his supporters have rewarded his lies with blind belief - from claims that the testing shortage had been solved long before it was (even now we don't have the ability to do contact tracing and have pretty much abandoned that approach) to claims that Russia and Saudi Arabia were about to make a deal to save the oil industry (Russia rather cavalierly denied any talks had even started), Trump has lied casually about any and every issue. But while his lies may comfort his supporters, reality has finally broken past is wall of denial and while he may use the power of his position to petulantly to uncomfortable questions or profess total ignorance about the problems plaguing ever more cities across the country, the reality confront the country can no longer be really ignored. That initial denial of reality was all the way back in late January, when we had a dozen cases or so. The US did not cross a thousand cases till nearly mid-March, six weeks time during which we watched South Korea and Taiwan implement successful counter-programs, while Italy showed us the dangers of poor preparation and inadequate reaction. This was a time when we could have mobilized to to be ready. We would have still faced thousand of cases - the US is too big and too open a country, to factitious to marshal the same way as was done in Taiwan or South Korea. But we could have been prepared a lot better and maybe we would not have gone from one thousand to three hundred thousand in barely three weeks.

This a failure of massive proportions, and  Trump is not solely responsible, just as he is not solely responsible for the racism and xenophobia now running rampant in the country. But just as he pulled away the curtain and released those forces into the open, and acted as cheerleader for them, in the same way he presided over a weakening of the government, he tore down the institutions that informed the country and raised himself as the sole voice of government and whether he declares that he is not responsible for any failure (though he is quick to claim credit even when none is due and he is the only one offering himself plaudits), history will judge him far less kindly and will lay the eight thousand deaths (and counting) and the massive wrecking ball taken to our lives and economy squarely upon him. Would that the country had been spared this by seeing the inevitable in 2016 but we can only hope that we emerge from this nightmare in 2020 with a renewed understanding of the importance of science, intelligence, expertise and above all, empathy.

Remembering 1989 - From Tiananmen Square to the Berlin Wall

Thirty years ago, I was a sophomore in high school, watching wide-eyed as the world around me changed in ways beyond my wildest imagination. I'd grown up with the world divided in two between the West and the Soviet bloc. Admittedly, India and a few other nations claimed to occupy a middle space between those two blocs but it was a position that even we Indians considered little more than a lot of posturing and talk devoid of real policy; after all most of India's advanced weapons came from the Soviet Union and our government tended to back Soviet policy more often than not. Even our economy was patterned heavily on the Soviet model, to the chagrin of many middle class Indians. By contrast, outside the bureaucracy and a few elite schools, many Indians had a positive view of America and we dreamed of opportunities in the West, especially America.

In the latter half of the Eighties, I was still a little young to follow the world news but I'd heard words like "perestroika" and "glasnost" (perhaps because we were not in America, I heard less about Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech) and was beginning to realize that Mikhail Gorbachev was a leader unlike any other USSR Chairman. But in India, we still had many other problems to focus on, far more immediate than the seemingly small changes in policy within the Warsaw Pact nations - India was still in the middle of the violent Punjab secessionist struggle and its attendant terrorism, while the Kashmir insurgency was in its nascent stages (little did we suspect that the Punjab violence was about to end while thirty years on, Kashmir still burns), while a government elected with so much hope in 1984 (naive hope, it must be admitted and based on more emotion than facts) had set new records in corruption while failing to generate any economic change (and sadly had set in motion other events that would haunt India for the next three decades); closer home, for a kid interested in warfare, there was the Iran-Iraq war and the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgency.

But I remember the news when Solidarity and Lech Walesa were allowed to dethrone the Communist Party in Poland and suddenly things began to happen all over the world. I avidly followed the news daily that spring as Chinese students flooded Tienanmen Square, demanding reforms and democracy and for a few breathless weeks it seemed that the largest communist nation might bow to popular sentiment. But in June that dream was brutally and bloodily crushed beneath the treads of tanks in the kind of crackdown that I never dreamed possible (I had clearly never heard of Hama, or Iraqi Kurds at that time). For a dark moment, the forces of freedom and democracy were stymied, but if China's Deng Xiaoping was willing to keep his throne afloat on a sea of his people's blood, in Eastern Europe Gorbachev and most of his fellow strongmen were more circumspect. As the year drew to a close, the foundations of the iron curtain crumbled before the desire of people to be free and in November the greatest symbol of that curtain, and ironically the greatest symbol of communism's failure was torn down in an unplanned and explosive outpouring of popular sentiment. I will never forget that evening, as I listened to the BBC reporter describing the scenes as Germans tore down the physical barrier that divided their national soul.

It was a moment of hope, the kind of moment that comes but once in a lifetime. Hope, for a free world; hope, for a brighter future; hope for actual peace in our time; hope, for a world without walls and fences to divide us; hope, for a single world united in brotherhood. What fools, what hopeful fools we were! to dream of peace and universal equality. If the Prague Spring had ended too soon, this time surely, with the Soviet Union tottering, that bud would survive and grow into a great flowering tree of peace.

And yet, we should have known better. The signs were there, if not so clear on that day in November, soon enough in the weeks and months that followed. While the majority of East European nations were able to throw off the shackles of their communist oppressors, they had a stable history that predated their communist governments. But the Balkans showed how the loss of communist control also released the demons of sectarianism and reopened wounds still fresh and painful. And that was in Europe's backyard. Beyond Europe, there were myriad warlords that had survived by currying favor of either the US or USSR; now robbed of their importance, they clung to power through violence against their own people or through nationalist rhetoric. Ancient, and not so ancient enmities were awakened anew, and while the world has generally contained the more overt outbreaks of violence, we remain far removed from that dream of 1989. Can we ever return to that point? To be honest, I don't know if we ever were quite at that point as I imagined it. For me, that year was part of such a profound upheaval in my world, and I was still learning that my naivete imbued that moment in November 1989 with far greater hope than it deserved. But if the dregs that followed that drought of sweet hope were bitter regret for what might have been, nevertheless, I will never regret that first blush of excitement or the very real change that rung in across Europe that night. In the end, it was not the moment that lied, but that we failed our test in history and continue to pay the price today.

Who Else Must Go Back to Where They Came From?

Two years ago, I was saddened beyond description when America chose Donald Trump as it's new president. Like millions of others, I wondered how such a thing could happen, and in search of answers, I devoured every scrap of information possible. The fact, however, is that there were no simple answers, that the amazing support Trump enjoys from the most fervent and active members of the Republican Party defies all simple logic. It would be easy to say that Trump is a racist, a nativist (whatever that might mean in the USA), that he panders to the lowest common denominator in his party. But he enjoys the support of almost four of five Republicans, and it's actually very simple to see why no one from John McCain to Mitch McConnell to Paul Ryan to John Kasich dare to oppose him. Those who ventured to get off their knees for even an instant, like Bob Corker or Jeff Flake - and their defiance was beyond weak and fleeting - were instantly destroyed and run out of Congress, a stern warning to anyone else who would dare even to dream of standing up for what was good and right anymore.

But if Trump's power comes from his popularity with the rank and file of the party, what does it say about the party itself? How can so many Americans cover their eyes and ears in the face of his ignorance and hate-filled rantings? How can the people around me, people I know and work alongside and who seemingly respect intelligence and accept me as a person, yet smile and shrug (or even cheer loudly) when he tells women from racial minorities to "go back to where they came from"? Plenty of ink has been metaphorically spilled in pointing out the sheer ignorance of telling American citizens to "go home", but that misses the point. Trump never cares about the accuracy of his insults or his jibes, only whether they connect, and it is a time-honored tradition in America to tell immigrants, whether first or second generation to "go back home" when they do not conform to the appearance of the more established immigrants of three or more generations removed. The chant is even louder when the immigrants have temerity to hold ideas that they are entitled to the same rights and freedoms of their fellow citizens. The jibe is never intended to address whether its target is born in the US or a naturalized citizen or a permanent resident. No! it is intended, always, to de-legitimize the targets, to strip away their rights and cast doubts upon their legitimacy.

It's a trick old as time and played out across the world, time and again. Immigrants, minorities are always questioned - are they true citizens? Do they love this country as much as they should? We don't need to look back to the most horrific practitioners of this game, not when we have examples of it all around us. A hundred years ago, the Italian immigrants in New York faced the same taunts, echoing the charges leveled at the Irish before them and the Japanese after them faced the same trial by fire. Now it is the Hispanics and the Somalis and Iraqis whose patriotism and love of America are called into doubt, not because of anything they've actually said or done, but because of the color of their skin and their claim to their fundamental rights.

The tragedy is not that Trump and his circle of advisers have raised this terrifying shibboleth to assert their power over immigrants they dislike. The real tragedy is that all those nice Americans we work beside daily are acquiescing in this deceptive game. They pretend that it's not about race, that it's about the "anti-American" statements (incidentally non-existent statements that were never made by these women, and a particularly ridiculous charge to be made against four elected Representatives of the people), that it's just a "love America" call, that there is nothing chilling to tell immigrants that they should leave the country if they don't like it. The reason it's really a tragedy is because this is the kind of behavior that really sets us along the path of no return, when a demagogue can say anything without consequence, and when any minority can be targeted at will. It's a tragedy because these people should know better, they should know that this hatred targets their own neighbors, friends and co-workers. How can my Midwestern girl friend's mother wish me well, yet agree with Trump? How can the guy who sits across from me, smile and joke with me at work and yet support a "send them back" chant? How can a man whose daughter is married to a Chinese immigrant support an idea that immigrants do no love this country? That people in some mythical flyover counties and small towns may support Trump's racist rhetoric is sad but understandable; that people who know (and in some cases love) the immigrant co-workers and friends and family members will still support Trump in this naked threat against those same people is a tragedy beyond understanding.

When Trump was elected, I deplored the fact that his liberal opponents had ignored so much of the electorate as unworthy of their attention, basically abandoning them to Trump's (and Russia's) propaganda. I did not believe that they were bad people then, and I don't believe they are bad people now. They can be dragged out of Trump's orbit, but it takes a lot of work. It takes us, Trump's victims on the immigration front-line, to give a face to his hatred, to show our co-workers and acquaintances that when Trump targets minorities, it's not some distant faceless group, but every single one of us who is his victim. Perhaps many of them will still support him, but I'm willing to bet that there are more who will turn away from their worst instincts and show themselves more honorable and more reasonable than we credit them. But they must see, that Trump is not just threatening poor, weak immigrants who try to cross the Southern border, it's not just them that he would put in cages, but all of us. We have much more that binds us together than divides us, but we need to reach out and embrace those who share some ideas that we do not like, that we do not agree with; just as we have ideas that they dislike. But dislike need not be hatred, ideological differences should not be a reason to break off contact, for it is that contact that's most important. We need to know how policies, laws affect our neighbors, and they need to see how we are affected - when we see our friends suffer, we do not support the laws that make them suffer. Politicians of Trump's ilk (and make no mistake, he is a politician at heart despite what so many of his supporters think) need us to split and see his targets as the "others", that is the secret of their power and that is the key to their defeat. When influencers oppose Trump, it's easy for his supporters to brush them aside as elitists, as socialists, as communists. But I have faith in America, in the people I see around me - if they see that we are the face of Trump's targets, they will turn away and stand beside us rather than stone us. In the words of Captain America, "I am willing to bet that I am not alone" in this.

Contrary Trade Winds

This morning brought news that the United States and China have declared another "truce" in their on-going trade war and resolved to resume negotiations on a final agreement. This is both good and bad news, since an escalating war between the world's biggest economies and trading partners can never end well, not just for the direct protagonists but for everyone else no matter how removed from the original quarrel. But having entered into this war, we have little option but to prosecute it vigorously now and eke out the best deal possible.

Unfortunately for that latter aim, we need a clear and well-defined strategy, and at least at the highest levels of our government, we seem lacking in clarity and defined goals. Or rather, the defined goals do not match up with our rhetoric or demands. I admit, freely, that I am not a fan on this current administration and that my dislike of their policies and politics may well cloud my judgment of their approach to trade. However, I think that on the whole I may muster a reasonably balanced and objective review of their trade policy and its consequences, seen of course from the viewpoint of a layman.

My first and foremost criticism of President Trump's trade policy is that he conflates trade deficits with unfair trade practices. Deficits by themselves are not a problem, especially for the US - if we import more than we export, it's because other nations have goods we desire at a cost that is better than what we could manage domestically. It ensures that we enjoy cheaper products locally and fuel our own consumption. I may be mistaken, but given that these goods are imported by private companies, the US government has no direct loss if we import more than we export as long as the US dollar remains the global currency. Governments of other nations may suffer in similar situations since the payments drain their foreign exchange reserves, something the US clearly doesn't face in the present or foreseeable future. But the president is fixated on trade deficits as a marker for other countries exploiting the US and enriching themselves at our expense. No major (or even minor) economist has endorsed his opinion on deficits, but that has not deterred him. Critically he has tied the trade deficits in manufactured goods to the loss on American jobs, especially in the Rust Belt states. But as critics have pointed out, US manufacturing output has increased steadily over the years, even as the total number of jobs in that sector have fallen. Even if we stop importing all those products - iPhones and shirts, LCD displays and toaster ovens, solar panels and MAGA hats - the number of jobs would not recover; the only reason we do import so much from China, and Vietnam and Bangladesh, is that those countries can produce goods cheaper than we can do here. Forcing manufacturing back into the US must lead to inevitably higher costs for us, without the higher paying jobs needed to afford them.

Now there are definitely many things that fuel trade deficits and many of those do tilt the field against the US. But the Administration has barely mentioned items such as lax environmental laws or working conditions that enable other nations to undercut our prices, except to seek to reduce our own protections. There is a political side to this position, since many modern conservatives dream of gutting our own environmental protections and returning workers to an utopian slave-like status; to push other countries to enact laws like our own would undercut the GOP position and stem the evisceration of unions in the US. So these issues are not part of our trade position, or at least are not a prominent or strongly held position in our negotiations.

China, more than our other partners, cheats in the realm of intellectual property rights and uses their government muscle to force one-sided deals on their corporate partners. These corporations, lacking the same government support on their side, acquiesce in order to gain a foothold in the largest emerging market, but in doing so hobble themselves for the future.  So we have a German company handing over Maglev technology to the local train corporation in return for the contract to build the Shanghai Maglev, or Google agreeing to government censorship in return for access to the Chinese internet. But these are private corporations selling out their future and/or their principles for short-term gains. By principle, the US has limited interest in these deals and it would be smarter for international companies to make common cause against such Chinese policy; something they will not do, since our current markets reward short-sighted temporary gains over long-term losses.  Other Chinese laws, or lack thereof, allow trademark piracy and open theft of intellectual property. On this front the US can and should fight back, and yet it is precisely this issue that is left on the backburner and given little importance in the Trump trade war.

Possibly a major reason for talking about deficits over intellectual property rights is politics and perception. The president views everything through the prism of reality TV and ratings and he knows that ranting about manufacturing job losses plays well to his supporters, even if he doesn't know or doesn't care that no trade deal is going to bring those jobs back to the country. Moreover, the deficit in absolute numbers makes for an achievable aim in a trade war, even if it has no meaning in the long term prosperity of the US, and in fact may hurt the US should we succeed.  In many ways it is hard to believe that the president is serious about a real deal for the US as a country or he would have followed a very different course. To start with, he would not have demonstrated from the start that he sees treaties and deals as meaningless. He talks of negotiating a new deal with China, even as he tore up a free trade zone deal with Canada and Mexico and renegotiated it with threats of wrecking the economies of all three nations if they didn't agree. (Fortunately for him, his bluff worked, though it's hard to say if anything new or substantively better for the US was actually added to the new deal - Canada and Mexico worked out a deal largely similar to the last with some concessions rather than wreck their own economies to make a point), But in the end, even if he should succeed in negotiating a deal that is tilted in the US' favor - and make no mistake, despite all the talk of "fair" agreements, Trump's insistence on bilateral rather than multilateral agreements makes it clear that he wants to bully smaller economies into one-sided trade deals (only his overly simplistic view of global economics stands in his way of actually blowing up global trade) - there is nothing to keep China from tearing it up as soon as conditions favor them in a tough negotiation. Trump has made clear that as in his personal business dealings, he sees nothing binding in an agreement and that the only right is the power to get away with one's actions, legal or otherwise.

It is a safe bet that this president has never read the teachings of Sun Tzu or Lao Tzu or he would never have chosen to follow quite the course he has so far. If he really wanted to address the true unfair trade practices in China, he would have made common cause with Europe, Japan and Korea to maximize pressure on the one lawbreaker instead of opening wars on every front. Pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a treaty designed by previous US trade representatives to constrain Chinese intransigence, was short-sighted to say the least and a signal to the world that the US had no long-term strategy to trade. Criticism of the WTO is a similarly strange approach to achieving one's aims, but all part of Trump's muddled view of global trade and economics. He has continually conflated different issues, most recently pushing the idea that some Chinese companies pose a cyberthreat to national security - how stupid would the UK feel if they followed US urging to expel Huawei from their markets, only to see today that in Donald Trump's view those dire claims were just a negotiation tool and that today he is perfectly willing to raise US sanctions on that company as part of a trade deal. Canada must be definitely feeling cheated having aided in the arrest of Huawei's chief executive and drawn the ire of the Chinese government in return, only to see the US hang them out to dry while negotiating with China. If this company poses a threat to US security, that should be a redline in talks with China, possibly not even included in the trade negotiations. But the US government has mixed all these issues together, robbing them of separate importance and actually ceding an advantage to China. China after all has some issues that are much less open to negotiation and we would need much more pressure to force changes in their policy. But we not only fail to understand these issues (at the highest level, since I think our career officials at the Commerce Dept understand the case better), we make it clear that we see most issues as equal and that all that matters to us is the overall trade deficit and rise of the stock markets. In effect, we have signaled to China that we will accept any deal that reduces the trade deficit, an issue that they will gladly cede in return for the chance to continue stiff-arming foreign companies and benefiting off the intellect of the rest of the world. The stock market of course will rise on any agreement that ends the danger of a trade war and not care about the long term risks to the US - it is neither their interest or job to worry about how we hamstring ourselves, nor do they care about one country over the other. So we may well give China what it wants most in return for mere window dressing, concessions that they will feel quite willing to cede if they hold their core interests. Meanwhile, we have weakened the entire world trade system and handed our allies over to China's power to be dealt with at leisure once the war with the US is done. Sun Tzu couldn't have plotted it better - for China.

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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