Traitor or Hero?

Hero: no contest.  That's what I think of Edward Snowden joined by 31% of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll compared with the 23% who consider him a traitor.  The poll used "patriot", but as you will see, I prefer hero.  Interestingly, Snowden himself says, "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American". 

There are moments when someone has to step forward with the courage to question what our government is doing — doing in our name.  Barack Obama wouldn't be in the White House were it not for courageous women and men who challenged the accepted way of doing things and that included established government policy.  Perhaps those responsible for our nation's security don't see, or have lost sight of, the disconnect between their approach to protecting us and the values they are charged to protect.  This is not to suggest that they mean to undermine our democracy or that they are dishonorable.  Rather I see them as captives of the "war on terror" mentality put in place by our collective over reaction, especially after 9/11.  In my last post I suggested that, as a result, Osama lives.  The light that Edward Snowden has shown on how we are being monitored suggests not only that he lives but also that in some measure he lives victorious.  We can't be happy about it.

The same Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 46% (the largest grouping) didn't know if Snowden is a traitor or patriot.  My guess is that some, likely many, among them were unaware of who he is or what he has admitted to having done.  It's just another example of our limited national attention span and perhaps more limited, sometimes non-existent, interest span. If you want to know how deep this apparent lack of interest is just consider a the Huffington Post report, that "only 47 US Senators bothered to attend a closed-door briefing on the National Security Agency's surveillance programs" held in the aftermath of the disclosures. Are we to assume that they didn't want to know, or perhaps didn't want to take responsibility?   You make that call.

According to a Times story, Snowden has some questions of his own.  “Society really seems to have developed an unquestioning obedience towards spooky types", he wrote.  "Did we get to where we are today via a slippery slope that was entirely within our control to stop, or was it a relatively instantaneous sea change that sneaked in undetected because of pervasive government secrecy?”  Snowden isn't necessarily a hero because he leaked information about the NSA's surveillance activities but because of the questions he asks and how his actions may have forced us to ask them as well.  Snowden did exactly what whistle blowers are supposed to do.  He has forced us to think about and hopefully to engage in a conversation about the "sea change" that we have all known to be in place and have de-facto accepted.  President Obama told Charlie Rose that he welcomes such a discussion.  Whether one will really take place, and more importantly if it will be substantive, is yet to be seen.   I have my doubts.

The more likely scenario is that the Snowden story will be played for all its political and media worth and then will slip away in the face of the next "compelling" story.   Do many Americans even remember — if they ever knew — what was contained Bradley Manning's information dump on Wikileaks?  Bradley who?  Right.  Manning is currently being tried by the military and may well spend much of his life in prison, in part I'd think because his disclosures were literally a dump of documents rather than Snowden's seemingly more carefully self-vetted disclosures.  Also the Wikileaks were as much about who said what, when and to whom as putting the light on policies that directly impacted on us all. 

Snowden's material was classified, but any careful reading of legislation that can be found on the Internet coupled with a sense of what technology can do puts it into the category of "nothing new".  As Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker put it, "These were scoops of a high order. Yet they were more in the nature of confirmations than of revelations."  Moreover, there are serious questions about whether these materials, specifically the existence of these programs, merit being "classified".  Indeed, the President has ordered a review of what should and should not be given that designation.  It is also fair to ask how secure our classified information is when 1.4 Million individuals have the same top security clearance given to Edward Snowden.  That's really playing things close to the vest, isn't it?

One of the most vexing questions raised by the Snowden disclosure surrounds President Obama's continuation in whole or in part of programs that have their origin in the Bush-Cheney years.  Eagar to weigh in on the situation, Cheney flew to New York from Montana to tell Fox News that Snowden is a criminal and a traitor.  He also said Obama has no credibility in part because of Benghazi.  Wasn't this one of the duo that ignored intelligence that predicted 9/11 and who later spread unsubstantiated information portrayed as absolute fact in the run up to Iraq?  Cheney also suggested that Snowden might be a Chinese spy.  That too is unsubstantiated if not absurd but hey, strengthened by a new heart, the man remains true to himself.  Obama in his Rose interview said he would not comment on (or obviously characterize) Snowden who is the subject of a Justice Department investigation.  There is a difference between these two men.

I join with many others in being deeply disappointed by Obama's continuing these and other programs and in his inability thus far to close Guantanamo.  He has made a vigorous defense of the surveillance program and stressed its limitations and compliance with both the law and its intent.  Hopefully those statements will be fully vetted and the implications of the program seriously discussed.  Hopefully, because as already indicated, I'm not holding my breath.  Without letting Obama off the hook, I do think that we should consider what put him in this situation, why he hasn't closed down these programs.

It takes considerable time to build a house or an office tower.  It takes, sometimes only seconds, to destroy one.  Consider flattening of neighborhood by the 2013 Oklahoma tornado or the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001.  Not so with government programs.  Yes it may take some time to put the legislation in place (less so to sign executive orders) but once enacted these programs are, if not indestructible, certainly very hard to set aside.  The good news is that for all the talk about the Affordable Care Act, undoing it will be very difficult if not impossible.  This resistance to overturn what is in place explains a lot about Obama's continuing the surveillance program.  And he is not the first president to carry forward what a predecessor left behind and what one would have though he might abandon. This resistance to change is built into government and to some degree gives us the very continuity that we all want, that we demand.   In fact, we can't function without it. 

Every morning presidents are given a national security briefing, prepared of course by the security community.  It's filled, one must assume, with a lot of scary stuff, the things that are going or could go wrong.  Consider if you were exposed to that every day and know that your decisions have a direct impact on the country's safety.  Consider the implied risks. Eisenhower was concerned about the Military-Industrial Complex, which incidentally is still very much in place, thank you, more than 50 years on.  Today we have the Security-Contractor Complex.  Snowden worked for a contractor not for the government and many of those 1.2 million with clearance work for private companies who have an economic stake in keeping these programs in place, just as do aerospace companies who want us to maintain our air fleet.  I don't have to paint that picture for you.

Democratic presidents, most especially those who are assumed to lean ideologically left, carry a special credibility burden.  The Right has been successful in painting them as weak on defense and national security for decades.  It took a Nixon to open relations with China; Johnson could never have pulled that off.  Obama is caught in circumstances he didn't create.  Again, it doesn't mean we should give him a pass, but he does deserve our acknowledgment of his reality.  Let's also not forget that we play a role here, that we get the government we put in place or allow to be put in place (too many of us don't vote).

As to our hero, Edward Snowden, we still know very little about him.  In the first days some press reports stressed that he was a high school dropout both to diminish him and to raise questions about how he could have gotten so far.  That's ironic coming from the same people who just weeks ago reported than another even younger high school drop out David Karp had sold the company he founded to Yahoo for $1.2 Billion.  Many of the creators of todays leading tech companies are dropouts.  What should get our attention is not that he is a dropout but that Snowden, like Manning, is young.  You may equate that with being immature, but I think it more accurately reflects a new generation that, with more information at their disposal, sees the disconnect between the simplistic picture often painted of our democracy, the flag waving, and reality.  They see it, and for all of our benefit, they aren't going to take it any more.  That makes Snowden a hero, whatever the disposition of a case that is likely to be brought against him will be.  We owe him our thanks.

Osama lives.

Osama bin Laden was killed two years ago, but he lives on in having a profound impact on our lives.  It's no accident that Osama focused on the World Trade Center (twice) and seemingly only secondarily on the Pentagon and (assumably) the Capital.  The Twin Towers lay at the epicenter of the money machine that fuels our and other economies.  Its destruction, he was confident, would have a devastating and far-reaching effect.  It did.  Al Qaeda’s leader may have hung out (we thought) in rustic caves, but he clearly had a deep and sophisticated understanding of how the world functions and, most important, of the American psyche.  He assuredly knew of our tendency to overreact to dramatic events, hyped by a compliant press and ginned up opportunistically by people in power.  George W. Bush was in command on 9/11, a time when his leadership was in question.  He badly needed and got a boost.  It's hard to know what another president, including Barak Obama, might have done in the same circumstance.

Osama wanted to change the very nature of America, a society that he saw as overly powerful, self-satisfied, complacent and ungodly — perhaps mostly ungodly.  His success, particularly in laying low the West's most emblematic city proved that his kind of war-waging had legs.   It had legs and, because it had no locatable fixed center or national vulnerability, it was extremely difficult to combat.  America, and for that matter any other nation, had experience fighting organized State armies in hot and cold wars.  It had none with the kind of forces under bin Laden's command.  Moreover, its two most recent wars — Korea and Viet Nam — had proved both wildly unpopular and unwinnable.  Americans elected Eisenhower in 1952 on the promise of exiting Korea and Nixon sixteen years later in the hopes (unrealistic) of quickly ending Viet Nam, the most hated war in modern US history.

Bin Laden was right about overreaction.  Afghanistan, Iraq and perhaps even more so the Patriot Act were all facilitated by post 9/11 hysteria.  I will return to that legislation.  Given his prime target, it's clear that Osama wanted to disrupt our, and probably Western, economies.  An added bonus for him of course would be the possible impact on his nemesis, the Saudi monarchy, which might sustain losses and be weakened by any downturn.  Whether he knew that Bush would actually invade Afghanistan — Clinton had limited retaliation to selective bombing — is unclear.  It probably would be far fetched to think he expected that we would quickly turn our attention to and expend huge resources against Iraq, which had no skin in the 9/11 game.  Whatever his calculation, he was right in thinking a direct hit on our financial center would have negative (direct or indirect) economic consequences.  That America would devote so much treasure and sacrifice, so many lives, must have given him more pleasure than he could ever have anticipated.

On the other hand, if he was looking at Korea and most especially Viet Nam as examples of how our national will would collapse in the face of inevitable protests, he was dead wrong.  Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq conflict in particular, there were no comparable challenges in Washington or on the streets of our cities.  And, despite tepid support, we have stayed the course (misguided or not) in Afghanistan longer than in any other war.  Our national inertia is a mystery, but maybe not completely.  Looking back at the tumultuous 1960s, many Americans now regret one of the terrible unintended consequences of protest.  It wasn't enough to vent our frustration on the leaders who got us into that quagmire, we ended up disrespecting the troops who followed them, this despite most of them having been drafted into service.  Viet Nam Vets came home to an ungrateful nation, many of them effectually cast into a dustbin of neglect.  It took a long time for the military and its top brass to get over the defeat of Viet Nam.  So, too, did we endure a long national depression, compounded by guilt for our misguided poor treatment of the warriors.  What bin Laden didn't know is that we had learned a bitter lesson and are unlikely to ever again diss those who stood in harms way.  Quite the contrary, we admire our troops and the military is one of the few institutions that have our trust.  Guilt is a powerful thing.

That brings me back to the Patriot Act, perhaps more damaging to our society and way of life than the economic or human losses that followed 9/11.   In some ways the America will never be the same phenomenon begins with Osama's audacious attack.  Beyond the shock that our mainland, always considered invulnerable, was successfully violated, the idea that it was done by stateless terrorists threw us off balance.  It instilled in us a national unease, one that was recently reinforced by the Boston bombing carried out by individuals in broad daylight with a heavy police presence in place.  We were, the government told us, in a Global War on Terrorism.  Since the weapons used in destroying the Twin Towers and damaging the Pentagon were commercial aircraft, the way in which we approach air travel was immediately changed.  To put is simply, travel is not what it used to be and perhaps never will be.  Osama lives. 

To be sure, while many of us travel by air many of us don't.  On the other hand try to visit a museum in New York or Washington, be sure that you will have to go through security.  If you're carrying a bag, in the case of women that means virtually everyone, expect it to be inspected.  And speaking of New York, most large office buildings require ID before stepping on to an elevator.  Osama lives. 

But these inconveniences are minor compared to what the Patriot Act, passed in a moment of national hysteria, wrought.  The Act gave the government a wide range of powers, ones that could turn the ordinary citizen into a criminal with little or no rights in an instant.  And it allowed a broad array of surveillance, albeit authorized and monitored by a (secret) court.  After Patriot, any idea of privacy was nothing more than a naive elusion.  Osama lives.

Part of that illusion was broken wide open by the revelation that the government was monitoring each and every one of our telephone calls, even if we accept that this did not include (without specific court approval) listing to the conversations.  The idea that big brother was aware that my son called me today or that I called my sister last week seemed, and is, a gross invasion of assumed privacy.  It's not necessary to draw out these examples; you get the point.  Nor am I telling you something you don't already know or have thought about.  The broader question here, and the immediate reason for all the fuss, is whether we in fact did know or could have known that such a program was, or was likely to be, in place.  Perhaps equally important is whether we wanted to know.

Apparently member of Congress in both houses were informed of this program and given access to fairly broad information about its nature and scope.  Leaders and one would assume members of the Intelligence committees certainly knew what has been going on, or have no excuse for not knowing.  It appears that many rank and file members had access but didn't bother to make use of it.  In a sense one could say they were derelict in duty, but the truth probably is that they really didn't want to know.  The Patriot Act was not merely passed by our elected officials but it was renewed.  In each case, while the bills were certainly pushed by conservatives, all members knowing the national mood and fears, had to think hard about their individual votes.  Let's be honest, our opinions and any lack of real protest, made them do it.  We too are culpable.  Osama lives.

We need to be honest in admitting that fighting an asymmetric "war" with stateless and often individual adversaries requires navigating in still somewhat uncharted or at least uncomfortable waters.  When you are unsure, it's not unexpected to throw out a wide net, a net that is likely to ensnare as many or more innocents than guilty.  It's a fact that we Americans have a very low tolerance for the kind of thing that happened in Boston.  As a one-off, we may show some resilience, but not if it were to happen more frequently.  Remember bombings of this kind are the every day in the Near East, something that surely none of us would want here.  So what is being done under the Patriot Act reflects what perhaps most of us want.  No violence, regardless of the cost.  That desire of course conflicts with what we have always seen as our national character.  And it is our national character that is currently being threatened — we seemingly have lost our bearings.  Osama lives.

America is not the same since 9/11 and the Snowden leaks are not so much a revelation of what we already knew or should have assumed, as they are a wakeup call.  Our character is changing and we have had no serious discussion about what that means, how far we want to go and what price we are willing to pay.  The digital age has facilitated actions that security people could only have dreamed of in years past.  We embrace what it has done for us, but often without much thought.  It's all happening so fast, and we have yet to adjust, to know that along with everything else our age of innocence is long gone.  Special forces killed Osama bin Laden, only we can prevent him from living on.  It's time we took on that task.

Against Atheism

Considering that 20% of Americans have left religion behind, it may be surprising that only 2.4% of Americans identify as atheists.  This low reported number might be attributable in part to the powerful cultural forces that impact on our lives and the perceived correctness of our opinions.  Ours is a country where God is regularly invoked even in largely secular contexts.  Atheism, characterized as such or not, seems somehow disloyal.  So I have taken  responses to pollsters' "God question" with a grain of salt, seen them as suspect. 

How entrenched the assumption that God exists and plays a role in events, especially those branded Acts of God, can be seen in an exchange between CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Rebecca Vitsmun, a victim of the devastating Oklahoma tornado.  Jessica Ravitz reprises it in her recent CNN Belief Blog:

“I guess you got to thank the Lord, right?” he (Blitzer) asked.

“Yeah,” she mumbled, smiling and looking down.

“Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?” he continued.

“I, I, I,” the 30-year-old stay-at-home mom stammered before adding, “I’m actually an atheist.”

Notice that Ms. Vitsmun's first and reflexive response is "Yeah" and that the second, declaring she is an atheist, was so unusual as to go immediately viral.

While unsuccessively trying to reach Vitsmun, Ravitz writes that her friend Waylon Flinn "...shed some light on who she is.  She and her husband, who Flinn said is also an atheist, aren’t the sorts who advertise their beliefs or throw them in people’s faces.  When she agreed to go on camera, it wasn’t for that platform; she didn’t even see the Lord question coming." 

The Vitsmun's don't talk much about or flaunt, their atheism.  I'd guess they aren't active in any organized atheist group.  In fact, what stands out here is that Rebecca volunteered anything about her beliefs.  In a moment of refreshing candor, she effectively challenged conventional wisdom — God's involvement in the tornado and intervening on her (or anyone else's) behalf.  Few people are willing to acknowledge that, especially in such a public way.  That's too bad because very many of us, even among those religiously identified, don't believe God has anything to do with disasters or much else that comes our way, nor do we necessarily believe there is a God.  Some atheists, declared or not, may wish there was such a being and even reflexively pay it lip service (including in responding to pollsters), but God plays absolutely no part in their lives or daily thinking.

Of course, billions of the world's people identify with a religion largely premised on God and participate in some or many of its rites.  Relative to that, organized atheism, to the degree that it exists, is a total bust even among professed atheists.  Why is that so?  Let's start with the fact that many of our most visible public atheists are, or are seen, as provocateurs, often-angry provocateurs at that.  They write books, pen articles, occasionally are heard on PBS and give talks or engage in public debate.  Their books, in part because they are (often purposefully) provocative, sell — sometimes are best sellers.  We may respect their intellect, agree with their bottom line conclusions but they aren't necessarily our natural role models.  We don't share their anger or necessarily their often-dismissive animus toward religion.  So, to some degree, the lack of a robust atheist movement — followers generally in the hundreds, even thousands, but not millions — may not reflect an ideological problem but a messenger problem.

This may be a factor but a much more profound and fundamental is that most of us, whether in managing our lives or say casting our votes, find it very hard to rally around a negative.  Belief in a god — for God — is a positive and thus compelling, disbelief — against God — not so much.  A god-belief fosters and promotes some degree of action.  Gods demand attention, often lots of it, we think.  Because God is seen as somehow connected with putting our world, not to mention us, in place, we are moved to express our appreciation, to give thanks.  Moreover, gods are seen to have transcendent powers so we ask for their intervention or at the least seek their guidance and strength.  God is there to protect, to invoke and to rally around, a flag to salute.  Customs to observe and milestones to celebrate formalize and regularize the relationship.  They serve to build community.  In theory at least, God provides us with answers, even to the seemingly unanswerable questions.  Above all, God testifies to the idea that there is something beyond ourselves and by implication perhaps there is more to us, an enduring/eternal more.  You may place little value on any of these; see them as wishful thinking.  Perhaps, but atheism offers none of them.

As suggested in my book Transcenders and in these posts, trying to prove the unprovable — namely that God exists or doesn't — is a hopeless exercise.  For the vast majority of the religious a belief in God is all that is required and, most especially, wanted.  God is a given.  Some theologians may spend time trying to prove God's existence, but that kind of thing doesn't play or compute at the ground level.  When Rebecca Vitsmun's fellow disaster victims and people like them thank God for saving them or their families or say that what hit them was "God's will and way", they are expressing a heartfelt belief that invites no further documentation.  Their church, synagogue or mosque will reinforce their faith; their clergy will dutifully confirm that God is with them in their hour of need, that those who have perished are now protected under the divine wing.

Most of those who believe there is no such thing as God don't spend much if any of their time testing or trying to prove their belief.  So Rebecca likely looks at the tornado that hit her home and community scientifically — the result of a collision of incompatible moist and dry with hot and cool weather systems.  She is no less devastated by the tornado, no less grateful that her family escaped with their lives.  She was saved by her own instincts and the smarts that drove her to take her baby and run for their lives; not being in its path saved her husband.  Their home was destroyed not because it was God's will but that it couldn't take the action she did and, unlike her husband, it was in the tornado's path.

Like the Vitsmun's, I'm an atheist.  I don't believe in the existence of a god but admit that my belief, however real and relevant it may be to my life, is no less or more an unsubstantiated belief than those who believe in God.  Of course, as with theists, there are many consequence that follow from my belief.  There was no Creator involved bringing about either our universe or us.  There is no one to thank, to blame or from whom to seek intervention.  The only reason that we're here is that our parents had sex at the right moment for conception, the only reason we do whatever we do is because we made a decision to act or had to respond to circumstance.  This life is all we have, and when it ends it's over — no soul or eternity.  Needless to say, there is much more that follows and impacts on our lives from being atheists.  Atheism is not one of them.

That brings be to another reason that atheism (as a movement) is a bust relative to religion.  Many of those who have left religion behind, have also abandoned the idea that beliefs have to be embodied in an organization.  They have rejected the institution of "church" and the notion that they need some sort of group guidance on how to live their lives.  For sure mysteries abound in our world, but we look to science for answers/solutions whether it be on matters of the weather that caught the Vitsmun's in a tornado or cures for cancer and AIDS.  As to matters of behavior and morality or insights into what makes us tick, philosophers, psychologists and novelists, among others, serve us well.  What does atheism bring to the table that we don't already have, and have in abundance?  Nothing really.

In fact, if atheism makes any claim on being able to guide us, let's say on matters of morality, then it claims a credential that is no more valid or viable than that of religion.  This is not to put down religion or to discount its meaning/relevance to the vast majority of our fellow humans, but to say that atheism adds no value to the atheist, nothing she doesn't have or can't acquire on her own.  Secular humanists have organized themselves around faux churches, offering tepid copies of religious programming but without God.  Perhaps some people need that or have succumbed to a societal message of "organize" because "that's the way we do things around here".  Perhaps they want/need a sense of likeminded community, what my friend Doug Smith calls "thick-we's".  For me, being an atheist is enough especially when such great life-teaching resources are at hand and always accessible.  Atheism isn't needed and doesn't cut it.

_____________________

My book Transcenders: Living beyond religion and the religion wars is available in print and as an eBook.  Both versions are available at Amazon; the electronic iBooks version can be found at iTunes; a Nook version at Barnes & Noble.

Immigrants

Let's admit that you and I still know precious little about the brothers Tsarnaev.  Yes, the press is trying to patch together bits of information in constructing some semblance of a narrative.  Yes, we're told that Tamerlan was the classical big brother, Dzhokhar the loyal younger sibling.  The older seems to have achieved most (but not enough) in the boxing ring, the younger was apparently the better student with a seemingly active social media life.  But this "information" is largely second hand and thus as biography it remains largely conjecture.  There are also supposed reports of what Dzhokhar told his interrogators, but no journalists much less any of us were in his hospital room.  It is going to take some time, if ever, for us to know the whole story or the real motives of these two allegedly murderous young men.  Tamerlan is dead.  Perhaps Dzhokhar's trial (if there is one) will provide such insights, but even then perhaps only at the periphery.

Incorporated in the still emerging narrative is a tale of immigrants, especially Tamerlan, who were having significant problems adjusting to their home in America.  He is said to have been disconnected and alienated — friendless.  Attachment to the "old country" remained strong, perhaps loyalties at best divided.  How much of that played into their alleged criminal act remains to be seen.  Whether Tamerlane’s trip back to Chechnya and Dagestan somehow fueled anti-American feelings or actually provided guidance on how and where to act is unknown.  But the immigrant aspect of the saga should interest us all.  In fact, many of us can easily relate to it.

Coincident with the Boston tragedy, a Senate committee was beginning its consideration of long overdue immigration reform.  In an almost reflexive and predictable reaction to the tragedy that great sage Senator Charles Grassley suggested that the bombing should give us pause as we consider the bill.  He has since been walked back from that idea.  But the confluence of Boston and the immigration reform does present an opportunity to consider the state of immigrants and most especially the difficult task of balancing their past, present and future.  The brothers Tsarnaev may have taken their adjustment or lack of it to a very bad place, but the balancing problem, including a degree of disconnection, is hardly unique.  In fact, it always comes into play.

It may sound tired and trite, but we are truly a nation of immigrants.  Take Boston as a case in point.  The city lies at the geographic and in many ways ideological epicenter of our incipient national story.  Bostonians were there well before and at the moment of creation.  They were forefront independence fighters.  John and then John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts were our first father and son presidents — both were personally and directly informed by the revolution.  But when we think of Boston today, we think Irish as much as sons and daughters of the Revolution.  The not so distant ancestors of key Boston families came here, often penniless, to seek refuge from bad times in their native land.  Today, even those in the third and fourth generation still maintain strong identification with and ties to Ireland.  Not long before his death, President John F. Kennedy made an emotional journey to his family's ancestral home.  In the same vein, Barack Obama spent years searching out his African roots.  Immigrant adjustment is integral to our American story.

I was born one month after my immigrant parents arrived on these shores from Nazi Germany.  In 1776 my ancestors weren't any where near the place Boston celebrates on Patriot's Day but in various parts of Germany — we can trace them back to the 1600s.   So despite being a native born American, I grew up in an immigrant family adjusting to a new land.  My adult relatives all spoke with some degree of a foreign accent.  Since my mother still spoke no English at my birth German was my first language.  She quickly learned but my parents and their close circle of extended family and friends spoke a lot of German among themselves.  How much, I can't tell you because both languages were so natural to me and spoken interchangeably in our home that it's impossible to remember which one was used when and to what degree.

Our story is likely not that different from any other immigrant family, especially for those coming from non-English speaking countries.  For sure Mexican, Italian, French, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Turkish families among others all know it well.  But it isn't only language, it's also cultural orientation, customs and, of course, food.  I still cook some dishes that come directly out of my family tradition, things my mother and grandmother would serve at their tables.  And how happy are we when our town has a food store that carries ingredients or a restaurant that serves food from our heritage world.  The aisle at Whole Foods with Asian products, the meat case with Italian sausage or a variety of tortillas in the cooler make us feel "at home".

I always marvel at how my extended family, many of whom arrived as adults, totally rebuilt their lives in America.  They experienced a personal "refresh" long before that word became part of the digital age's language.  My mother's English was accented but fluent.  From the first days, my father who made his reputation as a gifted orator in Berlin now made his living making equally compelling speeches in what he had learned as a second language.  He was fortunate both in knowing English and in having academic credentials (including a rabbinical ordination) that were transferrable.  But many of his friends had to struggle.  There were doctors and lawyers who, in order to continue their chosen careers, had to literally go back to school.   Many others had to find new lines of work or had to adjust to a vastly different economic circumstance.  It was extremely hard and for sure they often felt disconnected, some undoubtedly alienated.

Not everyone could make the adjustment cut, or make it without extraordinary pain.  Some older people never could learn the language, or really didn't want to.  Call it a fear of losing identity or just a kind of obstinacy every one of us who comes from an immigrant family can remember or knows the relative who still speaks the old tongue and, to the degree possible, lives the old way.  There was the grandmother who only spoke Yiddish or Italian, the dad who found a way to keep working while holding fast to his Chinese.  Ethnic neighborhoods, especially in larger cities like New York or Chicago, facilitated this kind of cocoon existence.   Little Italy and Chinatown are in New York, but in a way not so much.  For a long time and even today they are a protected slice of somewhere else.  And that doesn't only happen in America.  My paternal grandparents, for example, landed up in Palestine and lived to see the creation of the State of Israel.  But they lived in a tight German-Jewish conclave and never learned or spoke Hebrew.  The world is small and repetitive when it comes to the immigrant experience.

In working through the immigration bill, members of Congress should not be thinking of the brothers Tsarnaev in the sense of what harm people from other places ("people who don't belong") can do, but rather should understand that all immigrants face huge challenges.  The terms of adjustment including learning and using a new language, adopting new customs, working in a different environment and often with heretofore alien mores doesn't come with a snap of the fingers.  Good, peaceful and highly productive people will at times yearn for the old place and will have some degree of mixed if not dual loyalty.  That's true for our immigrant population today, but no more or less than was the case when my family and others settled in this new place.  That it was a wonderful place in reality as well as in the abstract took some time to discover and a considerable amount of adjustment.  But we would all be less — yes, less American — without them.

Bloody finish line.

One of the great joys of my life was running in Central Park.  Regardless of the season, Fredrick Olmstead's patch of constructed nature in the middle of the great bustling metropolis is a work of continuous wonder, an oasis of almost instantaneous calm.  I mostly ran the track surrounding the Jacqueline Onassis Reservoir, but getting there from home meant first moving through a good section of the park.  In the winter, when the track was either muddy or icy, I ran the perimeter road that encircles the park's entire 778 acres.  Living only blocks away, the park was always integral to my life.  Long before my late start at running, my daily routine included a refreshing trek from West to East on my way to work.  I got to know the place pretty well. 

In the late days of Autumn Central Park is a buzz with activity and anticipatory excitement.  Work crews begin preparations for the New York City Marathon, held on the every first Sunday in November.  Bleachers are erected adjacent to the park drive near the iconic Tavern on the Green.  A bridge-like structure emerges spanning the road at what will be the finish line.  Parallel to all the physical preparations, the number of park runners, some in the final stages of training, increases.  Each day is measured by progress and signs of the race that will soon upon us.  As the first Sunday of November draws closer, I find myself running along side people speaking with a wide range of regional American accents and a multitude of languages.  Unlike me, these are real runners. I can't possibly keep up but they provide an incentive to do better, if only in my own mind.  Every year it's the same, an annual rite of passage the City and the park.

I no longer live in New York, no longer am part of this autumnal ritual.  Before Ieaving my running had already morphed into speed walking I now do.  It's easier on the body, but much less fun.  This past November's NY Marathon was literally washed out by Super Storm Sandy.  To be sure, Central Park stood at the ready but a violent act of nature robbed the city and the runners of their glory and joy.  For obvious reasons I was thinking about this throughout the past week.  Less obvious was that what happened in Boston also brought to mind one of my most memorable experiences in making my way around the reservoir.  It was on a particularly glorious and crystal clear day when a fellow runner stopped me to report that a plane had hit the twin towers.  It was September 11, 2001.

The other marathon — Bostonians would call New York's "the other marathon — got off the ground and for four hours ran smoothly.  Patriots' day couldn't have been more festive: excellent weather, the Red Sox winning their specially timed morning game and a stream of dedicated runners.  And then, in an instant a man made storm full of sound and fury.  Perhaps it lacked the dramatic destructive power of 9/11 but tell that to the three families who lost a loved one or to the innocents who have lost legs or who are still fighting to recover some semblance of health.  To be sure, what happened at the marathon was no 9/11, not even close.  While we still no little there seems to be no link to a larger conspiracy, no Osama bin Laden in the picture.   Yet we got another reminder last week of the kind of violence that has come to characterize our lives in the twenty-first century.  In our time, so much damage is inflicted on us by individuals rather than by governments or even movements.  It was more than ironic — no it was infuriating — that the Senate killed even the most modest attempts at gun control just a day after Boston.  As we have now learned, the brothers Tsarnaev were armed to the teeth not only with homemade bombs but with unregistered fire arms and plenty of ammunition.  Maureen Dowd in a piece called No Bully in the Pulpit blames the President who, while doing a lot to bring the public arouind, didn't coddle or arm twist enough legislators.  Nonsense.  It seems if Obama concentrates on the Hill, he's blamed for not engaging the American people and if you does that he's blamed for engaging Congress.  The fact is that any senator who wasn't moved to act after all the Newtown’s we've seen in the last years has no excuse.   These are adult elected officials with responsibilities to fulfill are they not?  They are the ones who should be ashamed.

What's striking about our modern violence — what happened in both Boston and the Newtown's — is that it always seems to be directed at totally innocent people.  Just as are large magazine empowered assault weapons, bombs are designed to harm multiple victims.  This time around they were put in place precisely when the most people would be gathering at the finish line.  This is something about which government and law enforcement officials should be deeply concerned, but even more so something each of us should take personally.  This isn't some theoretical war against terrorists; it's a battle being engaged for the most part by individuals against you and me. 

The mantra voiced by NRA types that, "guns don't kill, people do", has worked as a slogan because it contains a literal grain of truth.  But people can't kill the way they do, can't kill the innocent, if they don't have guns.  The gun lobby says that gun safety laws are meant to undermine the Second Amendment, that we want to take their guns away.  The truth is that guns should be denied and indeed taken away from the irresponsible, a word that I use in the broadest sense.  I don't happen to think we should own guns, but recognize that our right to do so is built into the Constitution and moreover that the vast majority of gun owners are responsible.  That doesn't mean that the presence of a gun doesn't increase the chances that it may one day inflict harm — often self-harm.  What is incomprehensible to me is that gun owners shouldn't welcome universal registration, shouldn't see that we all have a right to be protected by it.  No one can drive a car in this country without a license.  Licensing hasn't stopped us from owning cars.

What happened in Boston was tragic and disheartening.  What happened in Washington during the same week was outrageous (there can be no excuse) and even more disheartening.  This may be a great country — the people in Boston bore witness to that — but we're not in a great place right now. 

Newton reigns supreme.

The death of Margaret Thatcher comes at the beginning of a week that will see Obama's budget proposal and possible next steps in the crafting of gun and immigration legislation.  Thatcher was known as the figure that transformed British politics and life shifting both to the right in a monumental way.  She was dubbed the "iron lady", a term that spoke to her determination but I have always seen as a sexist moniker.  Who would describe a determined male Prime Minister as "iron man"?  Ladies, don't you know you are supposed to be soft lace not iron.  Well, that's a whole other conversation.

Thatcher's legacy is controversial.  In her determination to bring the UK into the conservative camp she alienated liberals and virtually destroyed much of the country's labor movement.  The prosperity that she sought was claimed to be universal but was in fact lopsided.  Her friend, and American counterpart, Ronald Reagan traveled the same path and for many of the same reasons.  He achieved what Barry Goldwater could only dream about; somehow transforming what had been largely fringe politics — extremism — into the mainstream.  Reagan, as George HW Bush might have put it, was (perceived as) a kind and gentler version of Goldwater. 

Thatcher, while unceremoniously ousted by her own party, remains an icon for the British Conservatives and understandably so.  Even Tony Blair, whose free market policies were in large measure an extension of her legacy, owes her a considerable debt.  The disparity between the rich and everyone else only grew further under New Labour.  Reagan of course is the only Republican past president ever mentioned by his own party and his conservative stewardship has the same, if not greater, iconic status on this side of the pond.  Thatcher and Reagan were figures with strong (and often unbending) conviction and while their once fringe views became mainstream in one sense, they also were the harbingers for the "my way or the highway" politics that now prevails, most especially in our country.

When it comes to politics and governance, we have choices to make.  I think it comes down to two choices: following the advice of the prophet Isaiah or being governed by Isaac Newton's third law of motion.  You may remember that Isaiah's counsel (1:18), "Come let us reason together".  As noted in an earlier post, Lyndon Johnson's employed it while addressing Congress but most importantly made it the touchstone of how he so successively interacted with legislators on both sides of the aisle.  Newton's third law of motion states, "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."  Isaiah seems to have no place in today's politics.  In 2013, Newton reigns supreme.  

Presidential budgets are always taken as policy statements, goals the White House wants to achieve.  Only Congress can craft and pass a budget.  So saying that a presidential budget is "dead on arrival" is not that radical.  In a literal sense all the budgets that come from the White House might fairly be characterized as such.  But in the current environment, the response is not so much DOA as it is, drop dead!  Consider the source is the only thing that pertains in this Newtonian environment.   Everything is an action that awaits only a certain "opposite reaction".  So here we are, another election behind us with a president who did in fact get a substantial mandate (much larger than W's) and the only thing upon which our elected officials can agree is that they disagree — totally.  The result is not only a kind of rhetorical ugliness; it is that we find ourselves unable to move forward on anything.  And by the way, Paul Ryan's budget was greeted with a similar "drop dead" reaction.  Whether these budgets are of equal merit is not the question — I obviously stand more with the President — but that Isaiah has no place at the table.

Thatcher and Reagan played a significant role in bringing us this sorry state.  Thatcher was never  a consensus builder.  In contrast, some might argue that Reagan had the capacity of reasoning together (roll out the Tip O'Neil example), but it was he who popularized the "L word", making liberal a pejorative.  Not only has that notion prevailed among conservatives; it has influenced how liberals talk about (and often see) themselves.  Republicans proudly self-identify as conservative, Democrats as, well, Democrats.  Leaving self-description aside, today you are either on one team or  the other and any move toward "reasoning together" is seen as selling out.  Obama proposes entitlement reforms of even a modest level at his own peril and Republicans hold the now often Tea Party line in mortal fear of being "primaried". 

Altogether the outsized role that primary elections have taken in our politics is troublesome to say the least.  Making the most out of gerrymandering, primary elections are often much more determinative than the general.  Not only do primaries draw far fewer voters, participants are from a party's hard core.  The Tea Party didn't get its power in a series of November contests but in the primaries that select candidates.  And primaries are also being used by legislatures for sham expressions of democracy.  Here in North Carolina, as I've noted in other posts, a constitutional amendment baring marriage equality was "put before the voters" in a May primary when Democrats had no presidential contest.  The result was that 20% of the electorate effectively changed not merely a law but the State's core document.  Here, too, as the sides were drawn Newton's law prevailed.

Why does Newton rule?  Well there are probably a number of answers to that.  Hard economic times and controversial wars tend to push people apart, probably at the very moment when they most need to come together, to reason together.  The election of the first African American president can't be discounted nor can the growth of the Latino community — a president who "doesn't look the part" and an awful lot of folks who "don't talk like us".  The possibility of a woman reaching the White House, of an "iron lady" sitting in a "man's seat" may extend the Newtonian atmosphere.  Let's not even mention that LGBT citizens are being considered "brothers and sisters" not adopters of a lifestyle.  It's all too much for many of our fellow citizens to take, a sense of alienation when those who have gotten so used to being in control find themselves losing groudn.  Things are not as the used to be, or in the minds of some, what they should be.

It's hard not to despair of where we are, what's become of us in these last years.  I truly think the reign of Newton is perhaps our greatest threat, a condition that if continued is bound to have dire consequences.  It is already doing great damage.  But I am not without hope.  The demographic tables are turning, perhaps not quickly enough, but inescapably so.  Most significantly, young Americans across all strata of our society have a different view than their elders.  They don't see those who look, speak or function differently as "the other", but as an integral part of "us".  They lack some of the deep prejudice that has so plagued this country, in some respects from its inception.  When their parents or their parents' generation, obsess about things like marriage equality or the loss of WASP dominance, it just doesn't compute.  They know, almost instinctively but also out of experience that we're all in the same boat, share similar problems as aspirations.  They know Newton's way is getting us nowhere.  Perhaps a larger percentage of them have left religion behind and are governed by science not faith.  Nonetheless, my guess is that when it comes to moving forward they are more in tune with the prophet Isaiah than the scientist Isaac Newton.  Let's hope so.