This week's thoughts: the Optimist; Thailand rescue; NATO, the EU, and Putin;   Russia, past and present; a Europe without the US; hate crimes; paid family leave; working at the UN; cave and Cup;

Optimist, 15 July. Link here.

Thai cavern rescue. The world rejoiced at the successful rescue of the young soccer team and their coach. Even as he was being pilloried on social media as wildly irresponsible, the coach wrote a note of apology to the parents (delivered by a Thai seal team rescuer). One foreign editor allowed as how in America there would already be a lawsuit. David Scott Clark of the Christian Science Monitor wrote, "But what may linger long after the headlines is a global lesson from Thai parents in how to practice respect and forgiveness."

NATO. Before the meeting, a story in the Christian Science Monitor asked pointedly, "Does squabble over NATO's cost mask more fundamental US shift." President Trump is not the first to raise the "cost" question. "A larger question for Americans, though, is whether NATO is still relevant today. Some national security experts concur with President Trump’s campaign pronouncement that NATO has outlived its purpose and is too bureaucratic and unwieldy."
     More succinctly, does America view the European alliance as central to our 21st century geopolitical interests? Stephen Walt notes that President Trump "...falsely claimed that the EU was created 'to take advantage of the United States.' (This last statement raises an obvious question: Does Trump know any history at all? The answer appears to be no."
     Which calls to mind the famous caution by philosopher, George Santayana, about the folly of not remembering the past. "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Many teachers would characterize the president as an inept student.

Russia, past and present. Columnist David Von Drehle takes a sobering look at what Russia has done over the last several hundred years with all the wealth at its disposal and discusses this statement: "No nation in the world has squandered its opportunities as thoroughly as Russia."
It might also be worth remembering that when he visited America in September 1959, USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev specifically asked to visit a particular farm in Iowa. Like many other Russians before him (Czarist and Soviet), Khrushchev wanted desperately to learn why its vast, rich farm lands, including Ukraine, were not able to produce as much as the farms in Iowa.

Europe without the US. Long-time European-watcher, Anne Applebaum, thinks it is time for European nations to start planning their new future. "[T]he question now facing America’s allies in Europe is both fundamental and unanswerable. It is this: Are Trump’s threats, as well as the lies and hyperbole that accompany them, just tactics intended to strengthen the Western alliance? Or does Trump actually want the alliance to die?" Is this the same sort of watershed moment that  Europe and the US faced when Stalin began the Berlin Blockade on 24 June 1948?
     Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, says, "Things will not be okay," if our relations with Europe are not attended to. President Trump is now the "owner" of preceding years of mistakes, a responsibility he cannot duck. He should curb his rhetoric and act to set things right, to mend a deteriorating situation. The Europe of 2018 is not the Europe of 1948. Today's rising right-leaning populist nationalism must be dealt with. A 21st century Russia must be dealt with.

Emmett Till and James Byrd, Jr. In the CSM, Yvonne Zipp, twenty years on, relates the stories of the hate crimes that resulted in the deaths of Till and Byrd. The open-casket funeral, demanded by Till's mother, sparked the civil rights movement, as did the 3-mile dragging death of Byrd. Neither family wants this blighted past to be forgotten.

Federalism in action. This story about paid family leave highlights an increasingly common event in America social history: in the absence of federal action, individual states and companies are taking action.

Americans at the UN. No, not everyone should apply! The "Vino Vixen" has to vet your application before you are on "the Trump administration's loyalty list." Blogged or written disparagingly about.....?  You're out! Sound a bit like the list Senator McCarthy's waved about -- his 200 or so commies? This from the Foreign Policy article: "The form contains no questions designed to assess candidates’ technical fitness for a U.N. post or whether they have relevant experience in their field. Instead, it focuses on the candidates’ public statements and writings that might reveal their political leanings."

     "Under the terms of the U.N. charter, international civil servants are supposed to pledge their loyalty to the world institution and are prohibited from seeking or receiving 'instructions from any government"....The questionnaire asks potential candidates whether they have ever run for political office, served on a local or state political party committee, or addressed a political conference hosted by the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, or any other political organization.

Better burn that copy of 1984 on your bookshelf! 

Cave and Cup. What do the Thai cave story and World Cup have in common?
Important parties to both stories are refugees. Young (undoubtedly cold and frightened) Adul Sam-on acted as translator for the British rescue divers.
Croatian team captain Luka Modric was a refugee who survived the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. 

Thank you for reading. No post next week.

This week's items: the Optimist;a noted passing; neo-isolationism; ballot box safety; freedom of the press; commitment to freedom; military preparedness; urban battlefields; more Central American refugees; political myths; the Western alliance; July 1948; home-grown refugees; ducking the issue?; Putin and Trump in Helsinki.

Optimist, 8 July. This week's link.  Bone marrow 16 years ago for the child that was now the flower girl at her wedding.
     National Donor Day is February 14th. Have you "marked" your driver's license (you can in CO and other states) or otherwise signified that you are will to be a donor?
     A "found mother," now 100 who lived only 80 minutes away. A very different kind of loving family.
     Remember that 8' x 3' stolen bike sign in NYC. These and other stories.

A noted passing. Claude Lanzmann was the producer of the much praised 9 1/2 hour documentary, Shoah, the unflinching examination of the Holocaust. In his Washington Post obituary, Harrison Smith wrote,

To many critics, Lanzmann’s work was an unflinching rejoinder to Theodor Adorno, the German philosopher who declared, “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” With “Shoah” (1985) and five companion films that followed, Lanzmann made movies that seemed to come further than any other director — perhaps any other artist — in capturing the enormity of the Holocaust.

     Movie critic Roger Ebert wrote, “There is no proper response to this film. It is an enormous fact, a 550-minute howl of pain and anger in the face of genocide. It is one of the noblest films ever made. ... It is not a documentary, not journalism, not propaganda, not political. It is an act of witness.”
     Fittingly, Lanzmann's last Holocaust-related documentary, "The Four Sisters," was released the day before he died.

Trumps's isolationism. Economics-oriented columnist, Robert J. Samuelson, does not think President Trump's neo-isolationism will not work.

The great delusion of Donald Trump’s presidency is that we can thrive by embracing nationalism even though major economic and political events are increasingly driven by international forces. Trump is an isolationist in an era of globalism. It won’t work.

     All else aside -- good and bad -- about the president's personality and tendencies, Samuelson says, " 'Make America Great Again' is a brilliant slogan that captures a nostalgic urge to resurrect an allegedly more glorious past." But, really, is America's "beautiful, great" past possible in today's radically changed world? A return to a nostalgic past would seem to be a fond desire for much of Trump's supposed base. But, is that not just a pipe-dream?
     Two examples. You cannot turn back America's ethnic clock. Census Bureau figures consistently confirm that the birth rate among America's legal non-whites is out-pacing that of Anglo families, who are having too few children. Neither, can you turn back the economic clock to a less prosperous past. "Since 1960 the average income (gross domestic product per person) has roughly tripled after adjusting for inflation. In 2017, that was $59,484." Much of America's current "middle class" has not kept up.

Safety of the coming November mid-term elections.  Just how safe are our 51 voting systems? (Remember? The good news, we have federalism; the bad news, we have federalism! Hence, 51+ voting systems: 50 states + Washington, D.C. and overseas territories) In an article from the Christian Science Monitor, Warren Ritchey examines this question. For openers, consider just one state's experience: “ 'We average 100,000 scans on our [computer] systems a day,' Missouri’s secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, told a recent Senate panel examining election security. He was referring to unauthorized probing of the state's networks."[emphasis added]
     In CO, our secretary of state was one of few overseers of a state's voting system that who could confidently say, "We're safe here."

Annapolis, MD. Long-time columnist Leonard Pitts (Miami Herald) reflects on the killings of five employees at the Annapolis Capital Gazette amidst today's confrontational climate of real vs. fake news. Many citizen may not realize that He notes,

... it seems fitting that we're having this discussion now. This week, after all, we celebrate the 242nd birthday of these dysfunctional, disjointed and disunited States. So it's a good time to remind ourselves that there's a reason the Founders made the press the only profession protected by name in the Constitution. They understood its critical role as the people's watchdog.

Freedom is hard to imagine without a free, courageous, unvarnished press.

Enduring commitment. Dana Milbanks notes, "Every 75 years or so in our history, Americans have renewed their commitment to freedom." Consider: 1789, Founding Fathers', Bill of Rights; 1863, Lincoln's "a new birth of freedom"; 1941, FDR's "Four Freedoms." Now in 2018, Who, what?

Military unpreparedness. DOD officials (USAF and USN) are concerned about -- and baffled -- by recent unexplained problems experienced by American fighter pilots. This has added to questions of our fighter air forces' preparedness (USAF, USN, and USMC).

Today's urban battlefields. It used to be that war was largely "rural," fought outside the city. Increasingly, though, the front lines are urban, largely in an nation's densely settled slums. The tragic resulting rise in casualties comes as no surprise. Antônio Sampaio writes, "We are [now] in a world grimly reminiscent of that predicted by Marxist urbanist Mike Davis in 2006, where, “Night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions.”

Nicaragua. As is well known, more than a few immigrants fleeing Central America have arrived at "The Wall" or found their way into America. The Trump administration is not dealing well with this mini-crisis. Orlando J. Pérez writes in Foreign Policy that recent election-related actions taken by Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega may unleash another round of violence and send more refugees fleeing northward.

The upcoming Russian summit meeting. George Will considers President Trump's recent summit the Kim Jong Un to have been a largely lackluster, empty photo-op. Will is not at all optimistic about what the president can expect in dealing with President Putin, an even more experienced, steely-eyed unflinching autocrat.

As the president prepares, if this time he does prepare, for his second summit, note all that went wrong at the first. If he does as badly in his July 16 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Finland as he did with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the consequences could be catastrophic. [emphasis added]

 Will notes that

Nicholas Eberstadt, [American Enterprise Institute] writing in National Review (“Kim Wins in Singapore”), says the one-day meeting was for the United States 'a World Series of unforced errors.' The result was that North Korea 'walked away with a joint communique that read almost as if it had been drafted by the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] ministry of foreign affairs.'

     The assessments by Eberstadt and Trump are about as far apart as you can get. Were they talking about the same meeting? "Singapore was, Eberstadt believes, probably the greatest diplomatic coup for North Korea since 1950 and a milestone on 'the DPRK’s road to establishing itself as a permanent nuclear power.' ”
     If Kim was the concert master, then Putin will be the not-to-be-outdone maestro, both autocrats know full well how to "play" our narcissistic president/deal-maker.

The three myths of politics. E.J. Dionne believes we Americans, being normal human beings, are clinging to three major disproved myths. All are incorrect, he says.

First, that political polarization is primarily a product of how elites behave and not the result of real divisions in our country.

Second, that a vast group of party-loathing independents can be mobilized by anti-partisan messages.

Third, that Republicans and Democrats are becoming increasingly and equally extreme, so they should be scolded equally.

 Dionne makes reference to Alan I. Abramowitz’s latest book, “The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump.”

"Over the past two decades,” [Abramowitz] writes, “the proportion of party supporters . . . who have strongly negative feelings toward the opposing party has risen sharply. A growing number of Americans have been voting against the opposing party rather than for their own....When politicians are nasty to the other side, they are mirroring the attitudes of their supporters. Polarization, in other words, is not just an elite thing. It reflects deeply held opinions among voters themselves.” 

     Are too many people, including Dionne, Abramowitz, and yours truly, living in our bubbles? Not hearing, not critically considering, not responsibly responding to what others are saying? Ya' think?

The Western alliance. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, many assumed that the Western Europe, the EU and NATO were "home free." Most certainly, the US had worked to create all this partly in its own self-interest. And, indeed, the rapid expansion of NATO and the EU into Eastern Europe and the Baltic seemed to underscore a more placid future.
     Alas and alack,

"[Today t]he mood before the NATO summit in Brussels on July 11th and 12th is poisonous. As President Donald Trump accuses the Europeans of bad faith and of failing to pull their weight, they accuse him of crass vandalism....Even if the two summits pass off without controversy—as they might, given how Mr Trump delights in confounding his critics—the differing priorities, divergent beliefs and clashing political cultures will remain. The Western alliance is in trouble, and that should worry Europe, America and the world.

Defense spending levels, the Iranian nuclear deal, bias for/against Israel, trade policies, R&D spending, cyber security, political meddling. All are concerns for the future of the alliance.

July 1948. George Marshall and his plan. The audacious -- and successful -- plan to rebuild Western Europe as named for him. The joint efforts kept the Soviets penned in Eastern Europe behind Churchill's "Iron Curtain." This 70-year edifice is now under siege by the country that helped create it. The USSR may be dead, but a revitalizing Russia has taken its place. In 2018, Vladimir Putin is as determined to stir the pot as was Joseph Stalin in 1948.  

Justice Kennedy's last hurrah. In the New York Review of Books, David Cole allows that the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii contented itself with lecturing, but declined to hold the president accountable for unconstitutional acts.
     Monday evening, President Trump announced he had nominated Appellate Justice Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Kennedy. Let the jousting begin!
     In his op-ed, David French, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, for one, thinks Trump should have nominated Appellate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. French said Barrett "is 'a mother of seven kids, an outspoken Christian and a graduate from a 'normal' non-Ivy League law school [albeit Notre Dame]'...The base-motivating, electrifying pick was right there, in the palm of his hand. Then he went establishment." You know: male, white, Ivy League....

Putin and Trump. David J. Kramer has these "before" the Helsinki summit thoughts, about the "con" he believes will occur. He believes that Putin can be expected to

• praise and flatter Trump, follow the Kim Jong Un model that worked;
• blame all of the current US - Russian problems on Obama, which is the ongoing Trump theme;
• agree with Trump's "wrecking ball" approach to the past 70 years of international order, which can only be to Russia's advantage.

Kramer: "We can only hope that Trump’s unpredictability proves this dire forecast wrong. And, if none of that works, well, Putin has some [beautiful Crimean] beachfront property he can offer Trump."

Thank you for reading.

This week's musings: the Optimist; improbable events; happy places; fact vs. fiction; more unintended consequences; a Democrat - Socialist victory in NY; civility and the social fabric; immigration; Iran; after populism?; the Supreme Court after Kennedy's retirement; immigrant detainees; Estonia.

Optimist, 1 July. This week's link. New drivers on the road.
     In Saudi Arabia it is not more males, but any old-enough woman who has taken and passed her driving test. Can the first female driving instructor be far away? Or is that just too radical?
     That long-lost sister you have been searching for over the years. However improbably, she turns out to be your new next-door neighbor.
     There was this elderly grandmotherly gambler next door -- the one who left me $50,000 in her will. How her money changed my life.

Other improbable events. The 11 World Cup venues in Russia have provided a continuous stream of "Would you believe?" Some soccer powerhouses ousted, other not-likely teams advanced. The losing Japanese team (Belgium 3 - Japan 2) and their fans set a very unusual example for a sport, too often in the news for the hooliganism in the stands. Japanese fans cleared trash from the entire stadium; the Japanese team left their lock room spotlessly clean and included a "Thank You" sign for their Russian hosts -- in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Happiness, heart, home. This Atlantic article talks about what "happy places" have in common. Krishnadev Calamur begins, "The happiest places in the world are those where enlightened leaders shifted their focus from economic development to promoting quality of life." Unfortunately, this does not always describe the United States with President Trump at the helm.
     Last week I blogged about Our Towns by James and Deborah Fallows. Like Mr. Calamur, they, too, found that those towns succeeding in "coming back" were most often led by insightful residents willing to take what was at hand to remold the town.

Fake news? A recent survey by the PEW Research Center investigated how well Americans separated fact from fiction. Among the factors were respondents' political awareness, party identification, trust in sources, technological expertise.

A dying U.N.? This Foreign Policy article surveys what happens to the U.N. as the US retreats from the world stage. Perhaps to the chaotic post-WW I world that existed before President Wilson's attempt at a League of Nations?
     "As the United States retreats from the world, Moscow and Beijing seek to gut U.N. programs, cut staff."  Especially, those U.N. organizations primarily tasked with overseeing human rights matters.

Wither the Democratic party? Does the very unexpected victory of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young, democratic-socialist candidate in NY's 14th congressional district, herald a new era for the Democratic party? If elected, Ms. Ocasion-Cortez would become the youngest member of the House. Her victory immediately upended the party's leadership ladder --  the defeated Joseph Crowley was the fourth-ranking Democrat. Her youth also could not help but spotlight the advanced ages the ranking Democrats: minority leader, Nancy Pelosi (78) and minority whip, Stenny Hoyer (79). Obviously, Ocasio-Cortez's youth will provide a "talking point" for her Republican opponent.
     For the record: Rep. Crowley raised/spent $1.2M+; Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, approximately $127,000. Apparently, Crowley's twenty-year House tenure and money counted for little.

The social covenant. Here are the thoughts of an African American columnist, the Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts, on what he thinks holds a society together. It is more than mere civility.

Immigration. David Nakamura wonders if the decision in will embolden the president to attempt to make further changes to the nation's immigration laws. Will his narcissistic bent mean he will claim victory and press on with executive actions to ban immigrants deemed "dangerous," "harmful," "unworthy?"
     “Who’s going to be next?” asked Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), whose state brought the case against the travel ban. “Is the president going to issue an executive order against Mexicans? Is he going to issue an executive order against people from Honduras? Guatemala?"
     As to new, re-vamped legislation, too many congressional Republicans fear bucking Trump and the Democrats see this as an issue they can use to recapture the House in 2018. Meanwhile, three young Yemeni children and their mother wonder when, if ever, they will be able to emigrate and join their American father. Or, like their grandmother, will they die while waiting?

Iran.  The assessment of US military capabilities/liabilities in this article is sobering, to say the least. It's opening thoughts about Mattis's growing distance from the president's inner-circle is also very troubling. The president's civilian inner-circle, especially national security advisor Bolton, have not a clue about our military's true readiness, how truly tired and stretched our forces are. (e.g. that 30% of all USAF fighter aircraft are not "mission capable;" that the US armed forces have been on a virtual war-footing since 9/11.)

Greek populism. What comes after populism? Long-time foreign affairs columnist Anne Applebaum thinks that the Greeks may offer some glimpses and it is not a pretty picture. One Greek academic she talked with feared the worst.

"[He] told me he feared Greece would crash out of the euro currency overnight, that there would be no money in the banks in the morning, that there would be food shortages and then riots: “Greece is a middle-class country,” he told me. “I didn’t think we would be able to cope with the shock.” Several others told me that they had genuinely expected the arrival of a Venezuelan-style dictatorship, perhaps with tanks on the street....Greece was governed then — as it still is now — by a strange coalition of far-left and far-right extreme populists. At the time it was formed, this coalition seemed just as weird and jarring as the new Italian far-left and far-right government does today....Greece was governed then — as it still is now — by a strange coalition of far-left and far-right extreme populists. At the time it was formed, this coalition seemed just as weird and jarring as the new Italian far-left and far-right government does today....[However, the return to normalcy] also triggered the opposite reaction: a small but growing attempt to revive economic liberalism, for the first time in recent memory, and to celebrate liberal democracy as well."

New Supreme Court. For a look at a "long-term" conservative's view, this column by David Von Drehle is instructive. Liberals and progressives are viewing President Trump's list of "potential greats" in terms of the future justice's views on abortion and gay rights. Looming, too, is the past actions by Republicans actions to block President Obama's choice until after the 2016 election.
     Now, as a former colleague liked to say, "It's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer," that the Senate Republicans want to rush through Trump's choice before the 2018 election, in case they loose control of the Senate.

Immigrants, America. Unanswered questions: where, how long, families together?  Even the administration is not always sure and some in various government departments are uneasy with the lack of a definitive plan of action. Certainly Justice, ICE and Homeland Security are between a rock and a hard spot. But, what did they expect? That immigrants and their advocates were going to be quiet as families were separated and children shipped off?

Estonia. This small Baltic nation has quietly become one of the most dynamic and forward thinking EU members. The US ambassador, James D. Melville, Jr., is a 33-year foreign service veteran (6 presidents, 11 secretaries of state).  Melville announced he is resigning 29 July, saying, “For the President to say the EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go..." 
     Melville's resignation may well have an impact at the upcoming NATO meeting, 11 & 12 July. Amid continuing discord between Chancellor Merkel and President Trump, it has again been rumored that he is considering removing our forces from Germany. Any resulting unrest in the Baltic and NATO will be welcomed in Moscow. President Trump is currently scheduled to meet with Putin immediately after the NATO meeting.

Thank you for reading. I hope your 4th of July was grand!