"We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. " -- Ben Bradlee to Woodward and Bernstein (All the President's Men)
As we move through this dangerous transition period from a would-be dictator to a career bipartisan dealmaker, I'm alert to what role journalists can and are playing in this process. For inspiration, I returned to the familiar classic, "All the President's Men," which all journalism films have to be measured against.
What strikes me now, four-and-a-half decades after Watergate is both how vulnerable and resilient our Democratic institutions have proven to be.
Vulnerable and resilient -- that would be the ideal state of our youth when we send them out into the world, which is exactly what we do with our ever-youthful democracy.
***
Nine months ago, as the pandemic was just getting underway, my daughter and her children drove to a nearby farm in Sonoma to purchase 16 domestic quail chicks. The kids were excited, they gave the chicks names and speculated which would turn out to be boys or girls.
As they raised them indoors in cardboard boxes under a heat lamp, their father built a quail run out back, using wood pallets and wire fencing. My granddaughter Sophia, who is nine, worked along side him day after day, learning to use saws and hammers and levels to construct the building at the rear of their lot.
The chicks grew into adults, and the family gave away most of the males to other families, keeping one male and the three females from the original group. As the weather warmed, the females started laying eggs, some brown-spotted and some baby blue in color. We ate the eggs, they were delicious.
Well into the summer, something remarkable happened. Sophia discovered that one of the females had built a nest and was sitting on some of the eggs, not only her own but those of her sisters. This was strange because this breed of domestic quail is known for dropping their eggs nilly-willy and never returning to care for them.
Eventually, one of the eggs hatched and out came a baby quail, soft and furry. This seemed like a miracle, and Sophia, who has an entrepreneurial streak, envisioned raising the baby and perhaps others who would hatch to launch a new business of providing quails that would raise their young to other families in this town.
Word of the miraculous birth circulated and the mother and baby became the objects of interest and affection to her friends in the area.
On one occasion, Sophia discovered a neighbor child had left the door to the quail run unhitched and all the birds had escaped. All of the adult quail lingered near the door of the structure, but the baby was nowhere to be seen.
Sophia, who'd been keeping. close eye on the mother and baby for weeks, quickly noticed that the mother was calling for her baby and the baby was responding from the other side of the fence dividing their yard from the neighbor's. My son-in-law sprang into action, went next door and rescued the baby even as a blue jay was perched nearby, eyeing it hungrily.
The danger from predators was constant, as raccoons and rats and probably other creatures visited the exterior of the quail house at night, but they could never figure out a way to get in.
Then one day last week, my daughter came in and said all of the quail were gone. We had been out late the night before, celebrating Thanksgiving in the city and this was the first time since then that anyone had checked on the birds.
The news was not good. A small hole far outside the building led to a tunnel into the quail house. Under a pallet were piles and piles of fathers and the headless bodies of the four adult quail. The predator had eaten their heads.
The baby was missing.
The bodies of the adults had been dragged by the predator until a spot where they were too big to fit and there they lay. The baby had apparently been dragged to another place to be consumed.
Thus ended the experience of raising these birds and Sophia's dreams of starting a new business. And if the mother and baby represented some sort of beneficial mutation toward a new type of domestic species, that ended that night too.
My granddaughter was sad, naturally, and she told me she's been crying a lot. But she also said, "Next time we get quail we have to fix the house so that a determined enemy can't tunnel into it."
In America at large, that next time is now, and we have to fix our democratic system so that a determined enemy cannot tunnel into it.
Our collective fate hangs in the balance.
***
Here are the headlines.
* In the Bay Area, we are under a new stay-at-home order starting tomorrow. (DW)
* Vaccines offer hope for end to pandemic, but brutal months lie ahead -- By early next year, there could be more than a million doses administered every day in the U.S. But it will take time to change the trajectory of the epidemic. (WashPo)
* Cyberattacks Discovered on Vaccine Distribution Operations -- IBM has found that companies and governments have been targeted by unknown attackers, prompting a warning from the Homeland Security Department. (NYT)
* New research out of Canada finds that one-third of children diagnosed with COVID-19 are asymptomatic. (LitCovid)
* ‘Field of Broken Dreams’: London’s Growing Taxi Graveyards -- Confronted with deserted streets during the pandemic, drivers are turning in their rented black cabs by the hundreds. (NYT)
* China poses the greatest threat to America and the rest of the free world since World War II, outgoing National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe said Thursday as the Trump administration ramps up anti-Chinese rhetoric to pressure President-elect Joe Biden to be tough on Beijing. (AP)
* Footage and animation from Chinese state media show China’s Chang’e-5 ascender taking off from the moon’s surface. The spacecraft departed Thursday after collecting soil and rock samples for scientists to study. (Reuters)
* With hospitals slammed by covid-19, doctors and nurses plead for action by governors (WashPo)
* Gripped by surging pandemic, U.S. employers cut back on hiring (AP)
* The U.S. marked another grim milestone, hitting the highest number of deaths from the coronavirus in a single day since the pandemic began. Just over 2,800 people died of COVID-19 on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data, higher than the previous record of about 2,600 people dying one day in mid-April. [HuffPost]
* Iran says it will accelerate underground uranium enrichment (Reuters)
* Trump campaign groups spent $1.1 million at Trump properties in the last days of reelection bid (WashPo)
* For some patients dealing with Alzheimer’s disease, the first noticeable signs of mental decline don’t appear until it’s too late to really fight off the condition. Now, scientists in Ohio say they have developed a drug that may treat the most common form of dementia decades before symptoms even appear. (StudyFinds)
* The rapidly advancing Bond Fire forced mandatory evacuation orders in parts of Orange County. The fire grew to over 7,200 acres by Thursday afternoon with zero percent containment. Much of Southern California is subject to dangerous fire conditions as Santa Ana winds are expected to whip up through the weekend and utility shut-offs affecting hundreds of thousands of people are planned. [Los Angeles Times]
* Firefighters battling a blaze in a Southern California canyon made some progress toward containment but were up against more high winds and low humidity on Friday, which threatened to stoke the flames as they tore through wooded hillsides. (Reuters)
* Under Biden, NOAA’s profile is set to rise as climate change takes center stage (WashPo)
* Wall Street at record high as dismal jobs data spurs stimulus bets -- The main indexes jumped to all-time highs on Friday as data showing the slowest jobs growth in six months reinforced investors expectations for a new fiscal stimulus bill to help revive the economy from its worst downturn in decades. (Reuters)
* How to Build a Home on the Moon -- A small-scale replica of a lunar habitat is taking shape at Purdue University. The goal is to prepare for life in a hostile environment—including our own. (WSJ)
* Mayor London Breed of San Francisco and Governor Newsom are just a few of the politicians who were recently shamed over their actions during the pandemic, but there’s a larger pattern of state leaders flouting social restrictions. [Politico]
* Stevie Nicks Sells Stake in Songwriting Catalog -- Music publisher Primary Wave takes 80% interest in Fleetwood Mac star’s catalog, which is valued at about $100 million, according to people familiar with the deal. (WSJ)
* A federal has judge ordered the immediate full reinstatement of DACA, giving access to ~300k who are currently blocked and extending renewals for ~700k currently protected. But the status is still temporary and Trump could continue this legal battle until the clock runs out. (Gaitlin Dickerson/NYT via Twitter)
* Nursing homes prepare for a monumental task: Vaccinating residents, staff (WashPo)
* Jupiter and Saturn to align in the sky this month as 'Christmas Star' for the first time since the Middle Ages (Fox)
* Tony Hsieh’s American Tragedy: The Self-Destructive Last Months Of The Zappos Visionary (Forbes) An immensely sad, revealing story (DW)
* New Report Links Nationwide Decline In Mental Health To Not Being Able To Eat Inside Hard Rock Cafe (The Onion)
***
You woke the tiger
Inside, inside
Don't want to be this far
Don't want to be so far from you, from you
Now everything's forgotten, just look at you
You're shining like a falling
Shining like a falling sword
-- Snow Patrol
-30-
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