Dec 13 Here are this week's thoughts: a presidential reading list; One China (?):Trump and Carrier; Rosa Parks : US :: Viola Desmond : _?_; Islam, religion or political movement; the death of Old Nashville, aka "Music City;" finally, John Glenn and David Grinspoon.

President-elect Trump's "should read" list. Conservative columnist Michael Gerson recommends these three: Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Second, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” Last, George Washington’s “Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island.”

One China? Columnist Marc A. Thiessen writes the contrarian response to Mr. Trump's call to the President of Taiwan. The call was roundly condemned, especially in the establishment foreign policy community. But, Thiessen writes, 

The phone call with President Tsai Ing-wen was reportedly carefully planned, and Trump was fully briefed before the call, according to The Post. It’s not that Trump was unfamiliar with the “Three Communiques” or unaware of the fiction that there is “One China.” Trump knew precisely what he was doing in taking the call. He was serving notice on Beijing that it is dealing with a different kind of president — an outsider who will not be encumbered by the same Lilliputian diplomatic threads that tied down previous administrations. The message, as John Bolton correctly put it, was that “the president of the United States [will] talk to whomever he wants if he thinks it’s in the interest of the United States, and nobody in Beijing gets to dictate who we talk to.”  

The President-elect's Sunday morning tweets seemed to leave little doubt about his seriousness, that the phone call was well thought out, not an "off-the-cuff" incident.

President-elect Trump and Carrier. George Will takes a dim view of Trump's first foray to "undo" a company's move to Mexico. The end result: some jobs saved, some lost to Mexico, and a significant tax break from Vice President-elect Pence's home state. Will writes,
     "This represents the dawn of bipartisanship: The Republican Party now shares one of progressivism’s defining aspirations — government industrial policy, with the political class picking winners and losers within, and between, economic sectors. This always involves the essence of socialism — capital allocation..."

Fallows on November 2016. The Atlantic's seasoned reporter, correspondent, and columnist, James Fallows, has written a thoughtful piece on the whys and wherefores that led to President-elect Trump's victory. Fallows and his have spent most of the last 5 years moving around America's small towns. He talks of the hope and determination he and his wife saw in Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Wyoming, Kansas, Minnesota, California, and others. He notes a recent study and the prophetic words of Walter Lippman. 

PEW study in 2014 found that only 25 percent of respondents were satisfied with the direction of national policy, but 60 percent were satisfied with events in their own communities. According to a Heartland Monitor report in 2016, two in three Americans said that good ideas for dealing with national social and economic challenges were coming from their towns. Fewer than one in three felt that good ideas were coming from national institutions." One variation of Tip O'Neill's famous dictum: "All politics is local" ....Nearly a century ago, Walter Lippmann wrote that the challenge for democracies is that citizens necessarily base decisions on the “pictures in our heads,” the images of reality we construct for ourselves. The American public has just made a decision of the gravest consequence, largely based on distorted, frightening, and bigoted caricatures of reality that we all would recognize as caricature if applied to our own communities.

Rosa Parks' counterpart. Viola Desmond, "a black woman often described as Canada’s Rosa Parks for her 1946 decision to sit in a whites-only section of a Nova Scotia movie theater will be the first Canadian woman to be celebrated on the face of a Canadian [$CN 10.00] bank note." WOMAN TO APPEAR ON CANADIAN BILL

"Tweets and theater entertain, but Congress is main event." Columnist Charles Krauthammer is correct. The Constitution's separation of powers was meant to insure that no one branch could go too far. President Obama's many uses of executive orders/actions was meant as an end run around a Republican-controlled Congress. Once in office President-elect Trump may undo those with which he does not agree, maybe even issue a few of his own. However, as Krauthammer points out, all roads to legislation lead through Congress. Then, as Tip O'Neill famously said, "All politics is local." Between the Senate and House, that's 535 kinds of local.

The real Islam? General Michael Flynn is President-elect Trump's choice as his National Security Adviser, an appointment not requiring Senate approval. Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor for the Washington Post writes, "Flynn has said [Islam] is a cancer, a political movement masquerading as a religion and the product of an inferior culture. 'I don’t believe that all cultures are morally equivalent, and I think the West, and especially America, is far more civilized, far more ethical and moral,' he argued in a book published this year."
    Does the President-elect agree with Flynn's view? If so, what does this portend for Muslims in America? Suspect, second class citizenship? Worse? Internationally? Civilizational war? Strengthened backing for Middle Eastern dictators?

Music City, here today gone tomorrow. It's developers vs preservation, money vs history. In Nashville, are the "House of David," and similar well known, long time music studios n the way out? Jeffrey Brown's PBS segment reviews the continual tension between past, present, and future in Nashville. Designation as a "National Historical Landmark" can save a site -- or be condemned as an impediment to development.

On this earth, the last of the "Mercury 7" and David Grinspoon. The passing of John Glen was duly noted in multiple venues. Glen was 95 and could rightfully claim to have seen earth, big and small. First, about Glen and the view of Earth from above.
     Most readers, my self included, were unaware of Ms. Glen's problems with a severe stuttering problem. Once as the press crowded around him, Glen watched his wife, who was among the handicapped in the audience, and commented, “That’s what you should be covering."
     On 11 December, CBS's Sunday Morning program had a segment that noted the largely unknown cooperation during WW II between Glen, a Marine fighter pilot, and Charles Lindbergh. "Lucky Lindey" had gone from American darling to pariah because of his opposition to our entry into WW II. Lindbergh was, in short, then portrayed as pro-Nazi; no military branch would accept him. Glen's and Lindbergh's volunteer unit devised, tested, and used the latter's system for early in-flight refueling on  long range bombing missions.
     Now, about Earth from another point of view. In a recent essay, astrobiologist David Grinspoon notes with wonder,  

We suddenly find ourselves sort of running a planet — a role we never anticipated or sought — without knowing how it should be done.We’re at the controls on planet Earth, but we’re not in control....A planet with brains? Fancy that. Not only brains, but limbs with which to build and manipulate tools. We are just beginning to come to grips with this strange new development. Like an infant staring at its hands, we are becoming aware of our powers but have not yet gained control over them.

"Running a planet." A heavy responsibility and as flyer and astronaut Glen might have said in an earlier era, "It's time for someone to grab the stick."

Thank you for reading. Enjoy the week ahead.