Happy New Year, ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
Folks like Donald Trump, aggressively using
the greeting “Merry Christmas” and spreading a false narrative about a “war
on Christmas” are probably really lamenting the falling support for
organized religion, especially among Christians.
Speaking of Christmas, I spent the week with son
Jonathan in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, the charming small town
where he has lived for the last 18 months. He is the only one of my kids now
living within reasonable proximity to DC. He was house sitting a cat and had
use of the owners’ car, so was able to pick me and take me back to the train in
Martinsburg, some 25 miles away. Jon is an animal lover who regularly takes
friends’ dogs out for walks and plans to enroll in a veterinary assistant
course in January. His attitude toward animal pets is typical among Americans,
but is a contrast to what happens in Honduras. There, dogs and cats
remain strictly outside in fenced yards or patios. The weather can get hot or
cool or rainy, but is never very cold. These animals are not really pets,
rather, they fulfill utilitarian roles and are often not named, nor are dogs
taken out for walks on a leash. Rather, dogs are guardians scaring off would-be
robbers and cats are kept to eat rodents and insects. Animals are rarely spayed
or neutered or given shots or medical checkups, except maybe when owned by a wealthy
city family. Honduran friends who have dogs and cats would consider it bizarre
to let them inside their homes.
Yes, the recent shooting at a Texas Baptist
church did show that a “good guy” with a gun could actually take down a bad
guy. But would the bad guy have gotten a gun so easily in the first place (especially
with a long felony record) and managed to kill two people first if more restrictions
had been in place and fewer guns in circulation?
Not so long ago, before
Donald Trump was a serious threat to our democracy, orthodox political opinion
leaned toward considering the Castro government in Cuba to have been quite favorable
for afro-Cubans. That was the narrative proclaimed loudly and often by Fidel Castro
himself. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Jesse Jackson, and other
American black political figures duly made pilgrimages to pay homage to Fidel.
But my afro-Cuban friend Jorge Luis Garcia
Pérez, "Antúnez," during his visit to
the US in 2015, tried to disabuse African Americans of that idea. He
had been an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience for 17 years. Congressman
John Lewis of Georgia, alone among members of the Congressional Black
Caucus, bucked this orthodoxy by agreeing to meet with Antúnez, as
shown in this photo.
With the help of an interpreter, they exchanged prison
experiences, though, of course, Antúnez’s experiences were much longer and far
harsher. In gratitude to Lewis for agreeing to the meeting, I sent him a copy
of my Confessions book where Antúnez appears in an early chapter and
which Lewis thanked me for in a personal note. I am sorry now to hear that such
a principled man is fighting for his life
Back to impeachment, which is still on
the agenda: why would the novice president of Ukraine be expected to admit
publicly that he felt any pressure from the president of the United States
before military aid was released? Be real, of course, when asked, he knew he had
to say “no.” His statement is a ridiculous defense being used by Republicans
and, privately, they know it. It’s quite true that impeachment has become
highly partisan as Republicans allege, and it’s hard to envision a remedy or any
common ground on that. Republicans accuse Democrats of disliking the president,
which is true, but that dislike goes well beyond his quirky and mean-spirited personality. And he is not disliked just
because he’s a Republican, as that identification is doubtful anyway, since he
falls within no known political category. What seems incontrovertible is that
his loyal base is pretty solid, and Republican lawmakers dare not alienate
those voters, especially in the primaries. Republicans also know that Mr. Trump
has been watching their testimony, keeping score, ready to swoop in like a hawk
if they show any deviation from slavish loyalty to him. But Trump is so
unpredictable--his trademark--that it’s hard even for allies and citizens to
trust him, as he often goes back on his word. Is there any way to deal with
Donald Trump that would help make his behavior more socially acceptable? More
reasonable, kinder, and more empathetic?
As the impeachment hearings continued, each
side got dug in deeper, talking to their own constituents, with Republicans
also talking directly to Donald Trump, who apparently stayed glued to the TV
screen, sending out frequent and garbled tweets. Though much has been made of
Democrats’ dislike of Mr. Trump, what has he done to become more likeable? Has
he made any effort to reach out to the other side? Few minds have been changed
by the impeachment hearings, with each side supporting their own team. I, for
one, will vote for any Democrat running against Trump, even someone I’m
not enthusiastic about. Get rid of Trump first, as no one in public life could
conceivably be worse; then we can afford to worry about policy. I must admit
thinking that GW Bush was the worst president ever until Trump came along. Republicans
accuse Democrats of trying to overturn the 2016 election, but too late for
that, as three years of damage have already occurred and must be repaired. We
cannot get those lost years back now. The divisions being seen in the nation
and in the electorate are partly the result of resentment over a presidential
victory being awarded by the Electoral College to a candidate who lost by
millions of votes.
Is it anti-Semitic, as Donald Trump alleges,
to allow “Boycott Israel” movements to exist on college campuses? He is proposing measures to curb such
expressions, which are matters of free speech. Can free speech be muzzled in
the name of combatting anti-Semitism? Supporting Jews in the US or elsewhere
does not automatically require support of Israel, whose actions toward the
Palestinians so many of us oppose, just as we oppose many of the Trump
administration’s pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian actions. Trump appears
tone-deaf when addressing American Jews, stereotyping them in the worst way.
Who is the real anti-Semite?
Releasing Stephen Miller’s racists e-mails
is anti-Semitic? Logic is turned on its head.
Poor Don Jr., in his recently
released book, wallows in self-pity because of the terrible prejudice he has
suffered just for being born white, male, and rich. His book briefly reached
the NYTimes best-seller list when the Republican National Committee and
Trump donors bought up massive numbers of copies to give away.
Health care is already an election talking point,
but current stakeholders, not only insurance companies and drug companies, but
doctors, nurses, and other practitioners who enjoy salaries far above those in
counterpart countries, are going to put up a fight. While administrative costs
could be saved by a government-run or single-payer system, all those
administrators are not going to go quietly either. Any change-over will have to
be done step-by-step. with opposition at every step of the way. Modest co-pays
for care might be advisable to prevent overuse, with exemptions for low-income
folks. But that would require more administrative costs than in a totally free
system.
Dec; 10 was International Human Rights Day. While I have been a
human rights activist with Amnesty In’l now for over 38 years and feel
that we do have some worldwide impact, that impact is also on ourselves. We
take satisfaction in doing something we consider positive, however small, as whenever
we give talks, attend rallies, write letters, and visit members of Congress. We
are thus expressing the human desire, as articulated by the Occupational
Therapy Association where I worked for 16 years before joining Peace Corps, namely
that each person seeks meaningful activity, as subjectively defined. That
desire seems imbedded in our DNA, even appling to animals in zoos, whose food treats
are often hidden by staff to require the animals work to find them.
Apologies if I previously misspelled the last
name of teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was named TIME’s
2019 Person of the Year.
(Her last name has sometimes been misspelled
in on-line reports.} Her honor is certainly deserved. Trump advises Thunberg to
enroll in anger management. Look who’s talking!
How the Trump administration has intervened
in the asylum process www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/23/us-immigration-trump-asylum-seekers
Honduras [this is a totally absurd idea]
Report: US to
send asylum seekers to Honduras, blocking them from making a claim in America, USA Today https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-us-send-asylum-seekers-041906871.html
[So, let’s
just move people around] US to send
Mexican migrants to Guatemala as part of asylum deal, Fox https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-to-send-mexican-migrants-to-guatemala-as-part-of-asylum-deal
South Sudan [Another country close to my heart ever since my mission there in 2006] South Sudan Kiir Says A Ubity Gvernment Will Be Formed, Reuters https://www.yahoo.com/news/south-sudan-president-ex-rebel-111053009.html
At a recent party, I met a woman my age, also
named Barbara (a popular name in our day), who also has a son
adopted from Colombia, as well as being a birth mother like me. Her son,
like mine, was born in Bogotá, the capital, where I had lived as a teenager.
He is one year younger than my son Jonathan. It was a happy
coincidence to have met her. We lamented that international adoptions have
been declining in recent years, stifled by excessive but well-meaning
requirements and costs meant to safeguard children that have ended up with
fewer finding permanent homes. The local agencies on whose boards I once
served, Children’s Adoption Support Services and Holy Cross have, both closed
their doors. Another factor in the decline has been the growth of assisted
reproduction and surrogacy.
Whether one ascribes to the Hegelian
dialectic, namely, in simplified terms, that a philosophical or political
position contains the seeds of its ultimate demise, nonetheless, it’s certainly
true that nothing is forever. And while Trumpism may have been a backlash
against the political status quo, by the same token, Trumpism is creating its
own backlash, which cannot come soon enough and may already be underway. Let’s
hope Trumpism has run its course!
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