Major Points in John Kerry’s Speech on U.S. Israeli-Palestine Policy 28 December 2016

Major Points in John Kerry’s Speech on U.S. Israeli-Palestine Policy

28 December 2016

Kerry’s Thesis: Peace between Israel and Palestine requires a cessation of the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a region that Israel agreed to return to Palestinian sovereignty in the Oslo Accords. It equally demands a cessation of all aggression toward Israel by Palestinian terrorists, also part of the Oslo Accords agreement.

Note: This speech was part tutorial and part argument for the thesis. This summary includes points made in brackets [ ] for supplementary information not included in Secretary Kerry’s comments. All maps are supplementary information. Kerry’s 1-hour 15-minute speech was repetitive; this summary is intended to be less so.

1. Anti-Semitism in Western Europe rose throughout the first half of the 1900s, culminating in the genocide of Jews during WWII. The first talks among Jewish leaders about the need for a separate homeland were held long before WWII began.
2. The U.N. [created in 1945] recognized the need to create a separate nation-state for Jews in their religious homeland. The U.N. came to a formal decision on the creation of Israel in 1947.
3. Israel officially became a separate nation on 14 May 1948. [Not mentioned: This was the day before the “British Mandate” that controlled Palestine was to end.] The separation gave Israel approximately half the area of land of Palestine, as Palestine had been under the British Mandate. [Kerry emphasized what an imperative implementation it was for Jews to have this holy land.] [Insertion of map for clarity in this summary. Israeli land shown in yellow.]
   
   
4. In 1967, Israel launched the Six-Day War [against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan]. The outcome of that war was that Israel claimed the West Bank [until then, part of Jordan], the Golan Heights [until then, part of Syria], and the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula [until then, Sinai territory]. [Map for clarity in this summary, below. Israeli-claimed territory shown in purple with additional Palestinian territory under Israeli control shown in yellow.]
   
   
5. The Oslo Accords were signed [in 1993 and 1995] by Israel and the representative of the Palestinian state. Two parts of the Accords were an Israeli agreement to turn over the West Bank and Gaza Strip [Golan Heights not focused on here] to Palestinian control and a Palestinian agreement to recognize Israeli’s right to exist in peace and an end to Palestinian terrorism.
6. Neither of these two agreements in the Oslo Accords was fully honored by either side. But as Israel’s Shimon Perez said, “The original mandate gave the Palestinians 48 percent, now it’s down to 22 percent. I think 78 percent is enough for us.” [This quote goes to Kerry's argument about curtailing further settlement expansion.]
7. The U.S. is committed to having Israel and Palestine negotiate their own terms of peace and division of territories. It is not the place of the U.S. to dictate those terms nor will it.
8. The United States is Israel’s most staunch ally and always has been. The U.S. has consistently vetoed U.N. resolutions that demanded changes in Israeli actions, resolutions that often did not demand an equal change in Palestinian actions.
9. The U.S., in supporting Israel’s right to safety and peace, provides enormous amounts of military aid [approximately 3 billion USD]. During the current presidential administration, the amount of intelligence that the U.S. has shared with Israel has been dramatically higher than at any previous time. Israeli leaders acknowledge that this has been a very important augmentation of U.S. military assistance. Joint training exercises and continuous upgrades of Israeli air power are part of U.S. support.
10. The Palestinians absolutely must stop their terrorist attacks on Israel, and Palestinian leaders must openly demonstrate that those attacks are unacceptable. There is absolutely no path to peace until this happens. The current two situations of terrorism and implicit support for it are unacceptable to Israel and unacceptable to the United States. [This was repeated many times throughout the speech.]
11. Nearly all countries agree that a two-state solution is the only solution that can provide sustained peace in the region. This improved stability extends far beyond Israel and Palestine because other Arab countries have stated that they will only strengthen their support for Israel’s sovereignty and expand economic relations with Israel when the two-state solution is implemented. These commitments have been part of the extended negotiations that the current U.S. administration has been part of, with Kerry as the primary U.S. participant during his tenure as Secretary of State. However, further expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank will increase tensions with other Arab countries.
12. “Two nations for two peoples.” [a refrain during the speech]
13. It would be against fundamental U.S. democratic principles to abandon a two-state solution: “Without a two-state solution, Israel can either be a Jewish state or a democracy, but not both.” The U.S. stands with Israel on the importance of Israel being both.
14. Israeli settlements in the West Bank continue to expand strategically, in such a way that a separate and effective Palestinian state is becoming impossible, logistically. However, it is up to the Palestinians and Israelis (not other nations) to work out a mutually-agreeable solution to the Israeli settlements.
15. In a two-state solution, Palestine would continue to be a region without militarization and must include provisions to ensure Israel’s safety against hostilities or aggression by neighboring Arab states.
16. The West Bank Palestinians go through Israeli checkpoints that make normal life very difficult. Access is fully restricted to Israelis in “Area C” of the West Bank. [Area A is Palestinian-controlled. Area B is a Palestinian civil area with Israeli military control.]
    
    N.B. Clear and verifiable facts about the number and distribution of Israeli checkpoints is difficult to come by. Israel posts maps of the walls they’ve constructed, but not the checkpoints (some of which are pop-up checkpoints). Some sources state that there are over 600 checkpoints and roadblocks within the West Bank region, with further restriction of Palestinian movement added after two deadly Intifadas by a group of Palestinians. Palestinian movement does not pass through Israeli settlements. The checkpoint map posted by the BBC uses Palestinian information about major checkpoints. The map of Areas A, B, and C uses a pro-Israeli website's map. Area A is shown in yellow, Area B is shown in brown, Area C is shown in blue.
    
       
     
17. The Gaza Strip people are destitute and have limited access to food or materials with which to create jobs that would enable them to be self-sufficient. Access to medical care in the Gaza Strip is severely limited. Israel has five security-gated crossing points on its border with Gaza. Despite Israeli walls and guarded crossing points to protect Israel from attacks, Palestinians keep tunneling under the walls. This is unacceptable to the U.S. as it reduces Israel’s safety. 
18. The next presidential administration has stated its intentions to support further Israeli expansion into the West Bank. While that is that administration’s decision to make, it should make that decision cautiously, with an understanding that it will essentially kill the possibility of a two-party solution that is Israel’s only hope for peace.

Liberalism's Objection to Objectivism

Why are the ideological positions of Ayn Rand’s objectivism anathema to those committed to progressive/liberal ideological positions?

Objectivism is based on these kinds of beliefs (taken from a definition by Ms. Rand):

• Each person’s purpose in life is to achieve his own happiness.
• Each person is to be respected to the extent that he is individually productive.
• “Reasoning” is the only acceptable means of thinking, drawing conclusions, and making decisions. (fn 1)

Rand’s fiction elaborates on these convictions and extends them to implications for the inferiority of those who don’t have the capacity or inclination to achieve sophisticated levels of reasoning and/or high individual productivity. These inferior individuals are not worthy of the efforts of people who are the paradigm for objectivism, even if we ignore the imperative for each person to be totally responsible for their own well-being. Note, however, that most Objectivists judge individual productivity relative to what the individual has the potential to produce. The open issue is how one defines “potential.”

If you read Rand’s essays, you will see an irony: She was not a very accomplished rhetorician nor was she particularly competent at developing soundly reasoned arguments. I find her fiction to be far more articulate, with clearer questioning of the challenges of implementing objectivism in the larger society.

Progressive ideological positions that parallel the primary positions in objectivism could be stated this way:

• One important purpose in life is to contribute constructively to the collective good of the society.
• Each person is to be respected. Higher degrees of respect are to be afforded to those with an admirable quality of character: honesty, respect for others, compassion, humility, fairness, ….
• People should balance head and heart in understanding sociopolitical issues and other people. They should make decisions in the context of verified facts and logical deductions, but also in the context of compassion for others and categorical fairness. The latter are seen as fundamental— not needing logical arguments to justify their importance.

With the (passionate) progressive value of improving the collective good of people in a society, it’s easy to see why an ideology that prioritizes individual happiness over societal well-being would not be well received. There is a progressive corollary that improving the collective good is of ultimate benefit to us all, but that is not used as a rationale for valuing the improvement of the collective good.

The objectivist position that individual productivity is the measure of a man is insufficiently nuanced, if not outright wrong, to suit progressive thinking. For Progressives, many factors determine one’s productivity, and an individual’s contribution to collective productivity might need to be measured differently from the way that productivity would be measured for individually-produced results by a person who cares about nothing but his own happiness. Here is where the question of individual “potential” has a different interpretation than the objectivist/libertarian interpretation of the term.

Progressives make allowances for those who have had the cards stacked against them-- those with few if any options that would enable them to make more substantial contributions to society and to their own socioeconomic improvement. In other words, their realistic potential is hampered by circumstances that, practically speaking, are beyond their existing ability to change on their own. For Progressives, one responsibility of government and individuals is to assist those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged so that they can overcome their obstacles to equal opportunity. Objectivism makes no such allowances. 

Compassion and other sensibilities that are not in the purview of strict reasoning are fundamental to progressive positions. Reasoning in the absence of those sensibilities is vacuous.

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(fn 1) The metaphysical rationale for this tenet involves propositions about the existence of “reality,” the meaning of knowledge, and related metaphysical considerations. Since this is not where the opposition to objectivism focuses, there’s no need to elucidate further.

An Open Letter to Conservative Comedians

Dear [conservative comedian's name here]:

I have been disappointed in the lack of humor you have displayed with respect to both Conservatives and Progressives in 2016. In fact, some of you have only contributed to laugh-out-loud caricatures of Conservatives by acting like one.

You seem to have struggled most with what’s worth a good laugh about Progressives. I hope you will not give up because there is going to continue to be so much material for Progressives to use for their standup comedy about Conservatives that you could end up not getting on nighttime talk shows. A conservative lampooning show in the style of the progressive satires in The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight cannot happen without you making a better effort to identify and exploit Progressives’ more eccentric traits. Therefore, I am offering a few ideas to get you started.

First: There are some things that are not funny to Progressives or Conservatives. For example, (1) the Progressives’ insistence on equal civil rights for all Americans, (2) the Progressives’ insistence on fair and equitable treatment under the law, and (3) the Progressives’ insistence on the right of everyone to have comparable K-12 education and healthcare access, regardless of socioeconomic class. These are the kinds of things that conservative comedians and commentators have tried to state as being absurd Progressive beliefs. However, many Conservatives would not find it funny that all Americans should have equal civil rights or that everyone deserves equal treatment under the law. Those who believe in excluding the LGBTQ community are dead serious about it. Don’t make jokes about progressive issues and positions that many Conservatives are dead serious about, whether for or against. Those jokes will fall flat (and, as you know, have fallen flat) unless your audience is full of White Nationalists. That’s currently too small an audience if you want to make a living with your comedy act.

What Conservatives could exaggerate for a set of jokes is Progressives’ pounding on the fact that Hillary Clinton “won” the popular vote in a landslide when the U.S. Constitution says that it’s the electors of the Electoral College who elect the next president and vice president (separately). The Electoral College is designed to add weight to the voices of less-populated states, a weighting that is a combination of the proportional representation of the House and the highly disproportional representation in the Senate. Telling Progressives to "read the Constitution" would be pretty ironic, since Progressives tell Conservatives to do the same quite frequently.

Also, December 19, 2016, is Election Day for the president and vice president, not November 8, 2016. Let’s see if Progressives stop whining after December 19, 2016. If not, they are flogging a dead horse and that would make a great political cartoon or a good slapstick comedy bit.

If Progressives want to win the White House, they need to understand the issues that face "Middle America" and convince those people that the Democrats are addressing those issues. And they need to stop using the term "progressive" or "liberal" when talking to farmers, manufacturing workers, manual laborers (electricians, plumbers, et al), and those who've been unemployed for a long time. Kind of makes their recent approach look clueless. Right? That one set of politically clueless missteps could make for a very funny, long sketch-- maybe more. All I can imagine is that they were thinking that presidents are elected by popular vote, but there could be funny alternative, made-up reasons for why they ignored the American Heartland. A decent conservative comedian should be able to come up with three suggested reasons off the top of her head.

Another unending source of jokes about some Progressives is their willingness to sign 85 Facebook petitions a day (often, without reading the text of the petition). Petitions? What do they change? Are they kidding? Another is their insistence that voters should read only reliable news sources that have checked the facts. Get the masses to read? Are they kidding? More than a headline? Are they kidding? Facts like the distortions stated in those petitions? Oh. Many don’t read the petitions before signing. And the petitions are not coming from reliable news sources. There's so much to work with there!

It doesn’t matter that your caricature doesn’t fit all or even most Progressives. The goal is to caricature a visible subset of the Progressives who make for good comedy.

What makes for good standup comedy are jokes about the personality quirks of Progressives—either collectively or individually. And, lucky for you, Progressives will not go quietly into the shadows come January 20, 2017. So, start practicing. If you want a test audience, ask some Progressives to see your act. They know what’s ridiculous about themselves—even those who are the very caricature that you draw. If it’s funny to them, it’s going to be hilarious to a conservative audience.

Sincerely (well maybe not so much),

--Patricia

How Do Progressives Proceed with Respect for the Republican President?

The key for Progressives with the coming Republican White House is to respect the office of the president. There are certain things that simply should not be said by congressional representatives; for example, they should not call future-President Trump a liar when he addresses a joint session— an unfortunate incident that President Obama did experience. It means congressional Democrats do not boo during Trump’s addresses to the Congress. Taking the high road means that Senate Democrats participate in hearings for Trump’s Supreme Court justice nominations, even if they ultimately find the candidates poorly matched to the job. It means that House Democrats on the budget committee do not hold the government hostage just because the proposed budget came from the Republican White House. It means that when changes to the Affordable Care Act are proposed, congressional Democrats participate in the discussion and are open-minded about how to improve the ACA, even though the suggestions might be coming from the Republican White House. Should congressional Democrats want to stage a sit-in to protest policy decisions, that seems quite acceptable. That is not demeaning the president or fellow congressional representatives; it’s focused on the policy decisions they believe are wrong-headed.

All that said, I can’t imagine how to have respect for any person who is a misogynist, racist, religious/ethnic bigot, or an arrogant person who “doesn’t like to read” (quote directly from Mr. Trump)— especially when that person claims he wants to be the president of “all Americans.” That last part, I simply resent. Stating facts as facts (read the definition of a bigot and you’ll see it describes Trump’s statements and behaviors) isn’t in the same league as the recent comment by a Republican voter that First Lady Michelle Obama is “an ape in heels.” That was so far beyond disrespectful that I don’t have a term for it other than “extreme racism.” Anyone who makes derogatory comments about Melania Trump’s immigrant origins is out of line.

The issue of respect by Progressives (whether Democrat or Independent) is whether they can recognize their own bigotries and stereotyping and discipline themselves to stop immediately. Calling Trump supporters “bigots” is just not acceptable. Many people (Democrats, Independents, and Republicans) voted for Trump in spite of his bigotries, but that does not make them bigots themselves. Calling “white people” racists (as if all white people fit into a single category) is not acceptable. Calling blue-collar workers and less formally educated people “stupid” is not acceptable. This is not a matter of showing respect for Mr. Trump; it is a matter of showing respect for fellow Americans. Any Progressive who thinks their own bigotry and stereotyping is okay is the ultimate hypocrite.

Why do Progressives believe that Donald Trump will not help unify the country?

Neither Progressives nor Conservatives are hopeful that the United States (its citizens, voters, or elected officials) is about to unify anytime soon. Divisive thinking is now pervasive in the culture and has become systemic. Systemic conditions are extremely difficult to change.

As an example, a business culture can become so systemic that even getting rid of some of the people in the organization and replacing them with others rarely changes the entire business culture. Often, the new hires (at any level of the company) evolve to conform to the existing culture. Changing the CEO to someone with very different behaviors (a new role model) and a set of articulated, new expectations can help, to the extent that the CEO is strong-willed and aligned subordinates can weed out employees (starting with managers) who won’t or can’t conform to the imposed culture. If the company is sufficiently large, this change can take 5+ years to happen. Meanwhile, the company will be quite divided. Consider Carly Fiorina during her tenure at Hewlett-Packard (a name which she strategically referred to as “HP.”) She was strong-willed and discarded most of “The HP Way,” a statement of values advocated by the founders and embraced by many employees. With Fiorina’s imposition of a new culture, employees left in droves as they were committed to those long-time values—some resigning, others fired. But Donald Trump cannot fire members of Congress. He cannot fire Progressives. Governing the U.S. is not reality television and it is not corporation management. Progressive thinkers have a vote.

Progressives have been watching and listening to Donald Trump’s direct comments and behaviors for a long time. Many believe that the best predictor of the future is the past. In a few ways (not many), President-elect Trump is not as extreme a Conservative as those who are becoming the new establishment, that is, the alt-right and Tea Party Republicans. If congressional Republicans decide their best hope for keeping their jobs is to line up behind Trump, there will be only a very few points of political policy on which there’s a chance for Progressives and Conservatives to find common ground. Mostly, the distance between progressive thinking and conservative thinking is growing as the alt-right cements their power.

Why would even moderate conservative politicians line up behind President-elect Trump’s political positions? They might hope that lining up would reduce gridlock in Congress. Voters are tired of congressional gridlock… and might actually come to realize that if they keep voting for Republican incumbents, that gridlock is not going to go away.

Those who voted for Trump in the primaries were clearly not disturbed enough by his personality and open bigotry to vote for another Republican primary candidate. And 47% of those voting in the general election chose Trump. (Well, actually, it’s the Electoral College, since Secretary Clinton received almost 3,000,000 more popular votes than Trump. But the point remains that 47% of voters chose Mr. Trump.) The division is with the voters. There are people who will accept having a man committed to discrimination and there are people who won’t stand for that in any elected official, much less the president of the United States.

Five days after the election, President-elect Trump announced that he will not totally rescind the Affordable Care Act. I guess he still doesn’t understand separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution, as such changes are the responsibility of Congress. But if he pushes for the ACA to be improved and not discarded entirely, Conservatives in Congress can line up behind that. They don’t have to be 100% opposed to the entire ACA anymore because it can stop being called “Obamacare.” Their congressional home base will not desert them. It remains to be seen who has the most to gain with the modifications: healthcare providers, healthcare insurers, or the populace.

It is on social issues of equal rights, equal opportunities, and equal treatment that Progressives are certain there is no possibility of finding common ground. Progressives know that Trump is closer to progressive beliefs in only a very few of his political positions and that he has been quite the bigot in his own professional life. Many Progressives believe that Trump mostly played to his base of bigots and misogynists to gain prominence with large, admiring crowds and that Trump wants to keep those bigots’ support for another presidential election in 4 years. Appointing Stephen Bannon, well-known white nationalist and alt-right spokesperson, to the position of chief White House strategist and senior presidential advisor says volumes about where Trump is headed on civil rights. It is not toward anything that even moderate Conservatives could support, let alone Progressives.

Trump is not a deep thinker (he has volunteered that he prefers shallow thinking), but he has street smarts and instincts for how to be top dog. Progressives’ biggest concern is that civil and human rights will regress under President-elect Trump’s leadership. Already, we are seeing more hate crimes and hate speech from other bigot, xenophobes, and misogynists who feel they’ve been empowered by Trump. Appointing a white nationalist to a senior position states clearly that President-elect Trump could not care less about being a unifier.

People of color, women, people with disabilities, non-Christians, and people with non-straight gender identities can expect to experience day-to-day discrimination that is more open and more pervasive. Enforcement of existing civil rights legislation and of the U.S. Constitution’s provisions for equality with respect to race, national origin, religion, and gender is not going to become stronger under Donald Trump and his chosen administration.  Will Progressives embrace this? These attitudes and behaviors are repugnant and antithetical to Progressives’ beliefs.  

Capturing the Voice(s) of the United States’ Society

The U.S. does not have “a society”; we have distinct cultures and belief systems. None of these cultures represents a majority of Americans. We are separated by our beliefs about the role of government, how to handle socioeconomic discrimination and the growing wage gap between the richest and poorest Americans, who counts in the list of those who are included in the Declaration of Independence preamble (“All men are created equal with certain inalienable rights”), the role of regulatory constraints in financial institutions and environment management (for example), and what it means for the U.S. to have international leadership. Many people identify with one position in one category but do not like another position that some might call part of the same culture. We can each speak for ourselves, but we cannot speak for an imagined single society in the United States.

Someone who claims to know what “American society” thinks and believes is likely talking just about his personal beliefs or his caricature of those who believe differently. For example, there are many people who voted for Donald Trump for some reasons but found some his beliefs, behaviors, and/or political positions wrong-headed or even reprehensible. Pundits talk about the desire of voters to stop governance by the political establishment. However, despite claims that people want to get rid of the political establishment, they voted for their establishment incumbents for the most part. (One must now include Tea Party politicians as their own establishment, of course. They’re not much different from any other politician demographic; they’ve become “established” too.)

We also have to consider that, in the 2016 presidential election, the popular vote was narrowly for Hillary Clinton. As far as the Electoral College goes, if we had proportional representation (the same number residents per electoral vote across states), the election outcome could have been quite different. For example, Wyoming has about 592,000 residents and 3 electoral votes. California has about 39,000,000 residents with 55 electoral votes. The country does not have a one person, one vote system for president. Wyoming has one vote per 197,000 people while California has one vote per 709,000 people. Of course, even the guidelines for how a state’s Electoral College representatives should vote varies and can be further evidence that we do not have a one person, one vote election process. This adds to a further difficulty in stating anything about our “society” based on who gets elected.

Believe it or not, our global climate is changing.

Talk is that there’s no proof that our global climate is changing much at all. Talk is that, even if the planet’s weather is changing, it’s only a natural variation—not caused or exacerbated by changes in human behaviors.  Some U.S. Congress members proudly say, “I don’t believe in science."-- as if modern scientific research were part of one huge, globally-coordinated conspiracy to trick people who aren't scientists. 

When it comes to a conversation about Earth’s climate trends, some talk show hosts and "news" media conspiracy theorists make their impressive incomes by creating sensational conspiracy theories about scientific research that capture the imagination of millions of conspiracy-lovers. Professional conspiracy theorists have everything to gain and nothing to lose by coming up with these unsubstantiated theories. These popularity-motivated cynics have picked up on something: Many people have so little understanding of science that it is easy to exploit them. Most theorists' followers have no clue about the statistical methods used (legitimately and correctly) to analyze data; nor could they understand those analyses. So, it's easy to imagine that something their target audience doesn't understand could be presented as "suspicious."

For those who don't understand the research to then claim that it's the scientists who are suspect is... well... shameful audacity. Yes, there are a few unscrupulous researchers who take money from, say, the fossil fuel industry, pharmaceutical industry, tobacco industry, or either side of the agricultural products debate and conduct fraudulent pseudo-research. The so-called news media disproportionately latch onto these exceptions, leaving some audiences to assume that these are typical examples of how scientists draw conclusions rather than sensationalized exceptions. We cannot discredit the vast majority climatology researchers just because there are some researchers in some science disciplines with unacceptable professional ethics. 

Here's the deal:

(1) Global climate is changing. Overall, it's becoming warmer. Overall, global weather is becoming more erratic. Climate change does not mean that every year in every location the weather will be worse than the year before. It means there is a measurable trend in the changes. 

(2) Greenhouse gases, regardless of their sources, are contributing significantly to these climate problems. As the planet warms, sea levels rise and more low-lying land areas flood. As sea temperatures increase, some species are not able to adapt quickly enough; toxic algae blooms are more frequent and widespread. 

(3) Some potential sources of climate change are out of human control. Climatologists and those in related scientific disciplines research and analyze the correlation of those sources, including how human-generated greenhouse gasses contribute. Reducing human-generated greenhouse gases is within our control. 

(4) Rather than bicker about the causes, governments need to prepare for continued ocean elevation rise, increased flooding, and other increases in severe natural weather disasters. Those melted glaciers and disappearing Arctic Ocean ice aren't going to spontaneously refreeze anytime soon. In fact, the melting rate is accelerating. Nations around the world have decided to prepare for that future and to reduce the amount of air pollution they produce in an effort to lessen the severity of future damage to the planet.

(5) Human efforts at greenhouse gas reduction probably can't reverse all the damage that's already been done, but they could reduce the magnitude of change in the future. Those efforts most definitely will help... if they are adequate. Look at one photo of smog in Los Angeles in 1960 and another of the same valley in 2015 to see how aggressive efforts to reduce human-caused air pollution can make a positive difference. Los Angeles could not do anything about the Santa Ana winds or the fact that there are mountains surrounding Los Angeles, but that does not mean they should have thrown up their hands and accepted the smoggy “fate” of the region. They tackled the human causes and people there breathe more easily now.

(6) Greenhouse gasses come from an accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gasses. That combination of chemicals traps heat in our atmosphere. This atmospheric condition has been building since the Industrial Revolution but has accelerated steeply since the 1970s. Ozone-layer depletion is already resulting in increased frequency of skin cancer, cataracts/eye disease, and weakening of immune systems, all of which have occurred with the greater transmission of UV radiation that ozone depletion causes.

(7) Burning fossil fuels is causing a severe increase in the amount of carbon dioxide, which in turn is causing ocean acidification, which in turn benefits toxic algae while harming or killing corals and shellfish populations. The entire aquatic ecosystem has been thrown out of balance.

(8) Some of the air, land, and ocean pollutants and ozone depletion are the result of our agricultural methods, not our fossil fuel use. But that does not eliminate fossil fuels from the air pollution equation. It means that human-managed agricultural methods also need to be improved.

(9) Science does not work in mysterious ways. Even if a person can’t understand statistical methods or how “big data” about Earth’s climate is analyzed, they can understand the fundamentals of the scientific method. This is the method that climatologists and those in related sciences use to explore climate changes. There is nothing about the scientific method that one either “believes” or “doesn’t believe.” One might question the data analysis of a particular experiment and, therefore, question the conclusion. But that’s a single experiment that is in question, not the entire body of research, and certainly not all of science.

What is constitutionalism?

When there is an actual dictionary definition for a term, I think the best practice is to use that definition. So, “constitutionalism” is adherence to a form of government based on an explicit constitution.

In most countries with a constitution-based government, the challenges come in what it means to “adhere.” Countries don’t want to be rewriting their constitution as major shifts in mores, culture, technology and such come about. It is up to the legislators to decide which of these shifts is to be respected enough to enact laws “consistent with” the nation’s constitution or for them to ratify an amendment to their constitution. What does it mean to be consistent with a constitution, though?

1. Strict adherence includes interpreting the statements in the constitution literally, despite changes in culture since the time of the signing of that document in interpreting each of the amendments (if there are any in a particular country) literally, as close to exactly as they were adopted. It acknowledges constitutional amendments. In the U.S., an example is that before the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that gave women the right to vote, it was widely believed that “all men are created equal” did not mean that all women are created equal to men in terms of the right to vote. Strict adherence, then, required interpretation of court cases in a different context before and after that amendment passed.
2. Conservative adherence considers certain unavoidable changes in the interpretation of the constitution (including its amendments). For example, the U.S. does not have a constitutional amendment that makes clear what is constitutional regarding the use of technology, so conservative constitutional adherents have no choice but to draw analogies to conservative constitutional precedents in case decisions. Every effort is made to stay as close to a literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as is practical or feasible. Of course, conservative interpretations do evolve over time. The interpretation of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution for nearly 90 years allowed for “separate but equal” treatment of people of different races, including allowance of segregation. Of course, “separate” was rarely “equal.” But the dominant culture had its own interesting interpretation of “equal” that would eventually be seen as not at all equal. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Warren Supreme Court voted unanimously in 1954 to overturn the Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 decision, which had ruled that state-sponsored segregation was just fine. A change in “enlightenment” had occurred in those 42 years.
3. Liberal adherence considers a constitution to be a living document that must pay attention to evolving notions of morality and temporal context, among other things (such as, in the past 50 years, the rapid changes in technology). Liberal adherents require much less lag time between previous interpretations and current interpretations of a country’s constitution. As an example, in the U.S., the sentiment of the majority of adults (as Millennials have come of age) has somewhat rapidly changed to insist that people with a variety of gender identities should have equal civil rights, including the right to a legal marriage-- independent of specific religious beliefs to the contrary. Liberal adherents on the Supreme Court readily saw this moral revelation as a valid interpretation of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, that all people are created equal. What has been interesting to witness is that at least one somewhat conservative justice saw this too— that this is a fundamental and literal interpretation of all people being created equal with certain inalienable rights.

Even nations that do not have a government based on an explicit constitution (e.g., Israel) have to deal with the degree and pace at which their nation will support changes in interpretation.  A country that is governed by religious teachings, for example, also has to make ongoing decisions about contemporary interpretations of their oral traditions and any religious documents that are part of their religious culture— the Talmud, the Q’uran, the Bible, the Vedas, the Tripitakas and Sutras, etc. As we are currently experiencing with radical Islam, a “nation” that is defined by a fundamentalist “strict adherence” caliphate means interpreting the Q’uran as the leaders imagine it would have been interpreted in the 600s C.E.

From these examples, it's easy to see that what constitutes "constitutionalism" is in the eye of the beholder.

Turning Anger into More Effective Action

So many of us are outraged at the way Blacks are treated by the American judicial system, by our public safety departments, and by any individual who stands by and does nothing to change this massive American cancer of discrimination. I’m angry and feeling powerless to bring about a change that has not occurred in the centuries since the first black people were brought to Virginia as slaves in 1619. It is the latter feeling that I must change in my heart and my actions.

Writing passionately about the problem has proven to be a waste of my time and words, except as a sane outlet for my anger. We are not powerless to bring about a tidal wave of change. But it will take all of us-- no matter our skin color or ancestry—to quell this 400-year deadly storm with the power that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed us we have when we unite; when we pressure our federal, state and local government at the ballot box and in accountability for their (lack of) actions; and when we hold our courts accountable for their disparate treatment of black people.

Dr. King showed us that the path to change does not include murdering those who represent discriminatory institutions. The path does not include violent, destructive acts as an expression of determination or rage. Those actions simply reinforce a false stereotype and delay the time when this becomes a nation where all people are created equal and treated as such, a time when black lives finally matter.

Book Review: Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee

Literature-in-the-hyphen, with its characters who have culturally “hyphenated” identities, is now part of the mainstream American education curriculum, as well it should be. The best of such literature draws us in and offers us the opportunity to see the world with a culturally-distinct, binocular vision. The “-American” cultures that imbue these works with essential contextual nuance simultaneously serve as a stand-in for the overall American national cultural fabric. We are born into a culture that claims authority in the person of our family and we are propelled into a stereotype of a national culture that demands adoption.

Native Speaker’s first-person narrator, Henry Park, is the roughly-woven protagonist. The warp and woof of first-generation immigrants can initially produce a somewhat uneven intertwining. The threads of Park’s life tug against each other in ways that leave his blended fabric an awkward fit.

Park’s parents immigrated to the U.S. yet live within their more comfortable cultural community as Koreans first and as Korean-Americans second. His father’s strict adherence to the authoritarian ways of Korean families abrades Park’s developing mixed cultural identity. His resentment of his family’s preservation of Korean ways continues into Park’s adulthood when he feels the strain of his (attempted) adoption of American ways even more deeply. That contrast becomes more striking  with his marriage to an American-born white woman, Lelia. Their child, who has died before the story begins. The circumstances for this loss serve as a poignant trope for bigotry’s sometimes dire consequences. Lee sees that failure to support cultural and racial diversity causes serious rifts among its multicultural components-- rifts that are too often deadly. Henry and Lelia struggle in the wake of the loss of their much loved son. The question of whether their marriage has also died restates an ambivalence about cultural interweaving.  

Park-as-narrator is uncharacteristically open about his personality’s mismatch to the dominant American culture; his extreme reserve is ill-matched to the comparatively open and blunt styles of Americans (such as his wife). And while Park-as-narrator lays bare his wish, yet inability, to transform his personality to become more “American” (especially in his interpersonal relations), Park-as-character is an extraordinarily private man who operates in the dark shadows of a Korean (-American) underworld, working hard to reveal nothing about himself. He methodically adopts professional identities that serve his purpose, then discards them. But even in this, Park has great difficulty with the segregated dimensions of his identity. Again, there is danger-- even death-- if these distinct identities begin to integrate.

The integration of who we are is a challenge for all of us. As with all fine literature, Native Speaker speaks to this larger truth.

Freedom of Speech: us versus them

It was not that long ago that the U.S. electorate was not so polarized. There were very clear and significant differences between the two major political parties, but there was also an assumption that the job of an elected official was to understand other perspectives and to come up with solutions that edged the government closer to that elected official’s long-term goal while incorporating elements of “common ground” goals and negotiating compromises so that all parties would be able to support the resulting legislation.

This particular election cycle has become such a shouting match among certain candidates and voters that even if one wanted to understand diverse perspectives, those perspectives would be difficult to hear amidst the din of demonizing rhetoric.

Today, it appears to be to a politician’s advantage to demonize an opponent and even to instill fear in voters. Inspiring fear pays at the ballot box. Placing blame on anyone other than the voter pays too: Victims! Rise up against those who want to harm you! The psychological notion of “the other” has been at play in societies since before the time of human beings: What’s different and unfamiliar is to be feared. To maintain that fear in contemporary society we must focus on what is different, magnify the potential danger, and ignore all there is that is the same or quite similar. We now see those fears manifested within the populace as anger, echoing a few candidates’ visible, audible display of that emotion.

Because noticing differences is hardwired in our brains, it is the job of the society to remind us of what we have in common and why it’s in our best interest to cooperate (at least to some extent). When those with power in a society choose to fan fear-flames instead, “followers” instincts about fearing “the other” are magnified rather than tempered. Fight or flight? Follow the leader and fight against our fellow citizens. Winner take all.

In the U.S. mythology, people are entitled to their points of view, to what they consider to be priorities, to how they make decisions (through religion, science, deductive logic, emotional appeal, conspiracy theories, simple adoption of the opinions of others, a coin toss). But we also— consciously or not— believe that we are entitled to judge others’ views, priorities, and decision-making processes from within our own value system and approaches to problem-defining and -solving. This amounts to believing that (other) people are “entitled” to have “ignorant, un-American” opinions based on “lies.” While this kind of judgment takes a certain amount of hubris in many situations, it’s nearly impossible to avoid judging another’s opinions against our own hardened beliefs.

How far can we realistically be expected to bend in respecting someone else’s point of view? Even if we philosophically believe that others are entitled to believe what they believe, I think there are limits that most of us still have beyond which we simply can’t respect that person’s beliefs. And if we are convinced that all hope will be lost if another’s beliefs prevail, a certain desperation takes hold that leads to not even believing someone else is entitled to express those beliefs.

Ideally, we would neither shrug our shoulders and say, “You’re entitled to believe whatever you want” (then walk away) nor become enraged and say, “Believe what I believe because you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.” We’d insist on sitting together, without rage, and “seek first to understand then to be understood.” But you know what? People actually have gotten angry with me for suggesting that rage isn’t our best option as a society right now and claim that listening to someone with another point of view will just magnify their rage-- as if they have no control over their own emotional responses.

Because we all know that yelling at someone and making highly derogatory characterizations of him/her is not a convincing way to get that person to embrace different beliefs, it is clear to me that, right now, there is no desire to actually convince anyone to change their beliefs. I guess we're entitled to work that hard to prevent consensus, but from my perspective it's difficult to accept that we can't do better, perhaps quelling that din and dampening those flames with the goal of bringing that U.S. myth closer to reality.  

On Mother’s Day May 8, 2016

Sitting on my bed with you

  Discussing why-we-are-here.

You, so certain.

I, less so.

Your personal convictions are your religion

   Along with your smorgasbord version of

   Catholicism.

I am here, you say,

   To leave this world just a little bit better

      By being kind,

      By listening to those who need to be understood,

      By refraining from judging others…

Even though I might worry about

   The path they are taking,

      Where they might be lost,

   Their inner struggles,

   Their outward trials.

I listened. I tucked your convictions

   Away in my heart, Mom.

And I try—oh I try!

   To be this kind of woman,

   This kind of mother.

  

   

Camellia sinensis

A day dawns.
The aroma of steeping Assam
Raises my sense of peace
At the start of the day.

Astringent, assertive,
Bold, beautiful,
Citrussy...
Compared with Ceylon?

There is an inspiration
In black teas.
They launch us into the day
Without the insistence of
Black coffee…
But an insistence nonetheless.

Literary Noise in the Twenty-First Century

I recently read again Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. This is a novel (or collection of short stories, however you want to label it) that had a profound impact on revered 20^th-century writers such as Hemingway and Faulkner. Literary critics say that this book evolved (I won’t go so far as to say “revolutionized”) literary fiction and, in so doing, inspired other American authors, in particular, to adopt and adapt Anderson's contribution in their own writing.

What does this have to do with “literary noise”?

There is very little literary noise in Anderson’s novel, if you forgive the propensity of prior literary generations in using way more adjectives and adverbs than we are “supposed” to use today. In the intervening decades since Anderson’s book was published, we have moved to worshiping “show don’t tell” in literary fiction and creative nonfiction. Some editors even state that the adverb is or should be dead in literary fiction and that adjectives and adverbs should be replaced by evocative descriptions of what characters are doing, implying what the adjective would have declared.

With the human predilection to believe that if some is good, more is better, we now find writing that is so stripped of modifiers that it requires long passages just to get at what the characters are doing or what can be expressed viscerally about the scene.

"Moderation in all things" would urge that neither the use of modifiers nor of passages that replace them be used to an extreme. I believe the writer needs further latitude. In some stories and styles, multi-paragraph scene descriptions evoke and even reinforce the actions and feelings of the characters.  In Anderson's novel, the colors and weather conditions even substitute for direct descriptions and statements of characters' thoughts and feelings. For me, this is what makes a novel rich and aesthetically pleasing. It is not evocative writing in the minimalist-description sense but in the somewhat indirect way it speaks to the reader. It also, I believe, enhances. 

However, I know avid readers who pass over or skim these passages to get back to the "action." For them, all but action is noise that interferes and stalls the momentum of the story. 

In literature, is what constitutes noise only in the eye of the beholder?

Poetry as Remembrance

John Keats wrote, “Poetry should [...] strike the reader as words from his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.” He elucidates in another text, “The excellency of every art is its intensity.”

Keats’ observations are timeless. The distillation of feeling and “story” is still vivid in the best of contemporary fine arts, performing arts, and literary arts, much as it was thousands of years ago. We need only think of the Epic of Gilgamesh to know that poetry and storytelling were strong within the human race long before written stories came into being. Even a long epic has intensity and distillation of feeling and story. This is literature at its finest and stands abreast of the finest poetry (and prose) today.

What is different from ancient epics is Keats’ notion of poetry as the work of a single poet, a single mind remembering. In past times, poetry was the vehicle for oral history as well as an art form. Epic poetry was created and evolved (a poem is never done, after all) through a community rather than a single person. In that sense this community creation is a much more profound “remembrance” because it is a shared remembrance that contributed to the very culture that carried the poetic story with them over time and place. It is the entire culture that is the poet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poet that I honor as an inspiration for poets like Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth, …, Angelou, Boland, Glück, …, a commitment to taut language, evocative imagery, intensity, remembrance, cadence.

In this sense, the quote from Keats is his own rewriting of the responsibility of poetry that is a contemporary remembrance of poetry’s role since time immemorial.