Vulnerable And Resilient

 

"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)

***

I woke the lion
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 forgiven
Now everything's forgotten, just look at you
You're shining like a falling
Shining like a falling sword

Nowhere don't know how it ends

For both of us

-- Snow Patrol htt

-30-

Lest We Forget

As neurologists gradually uncover the secrets of the brain, we have been learning more and more about how we make, store and recall our memories, specifically how individualized they appear to be. Even when multiple people witness a single event, their individual recollections almost always contradict each other in major details.

Tis renders eyewitness testimony in court or to journalists problematic. Yet both the courts and journalists continue to rely on it, for understandable reasons.

The flip side of memory is forgetting, and medical science is hard at work on that subject as well. With dementia, Alzheimers, and plain old-fashioned forgetfulness recognized as social issues, researchers seek the causes and possible solutions to the problem of forgetting.

Part of forgetting seems to be a matter of choice. We'd prefer to bury unpleasant memories, so we do that. 

What interests me more than the individual issues, however, is the collective forgetfulness rampant in our society. It feels to me that we all now are yearning to forget the past four years, when IMHO we suffered the equivalent of a near miss by a political asteroid. We dodged it, for now, but we simply cannot afford to forget the outrages that we have witnessed under Trump.

Because they are still happening and they will continue to happen.

I fear that all we have gained by electing Biden is a temporary respite from the onset of authoritarianism in America. 

Right now we have just lived through the opening chapter of a dangerous moment of history, and our duty is to examine it and remind each other and commit to stop the further erosion of democracy however and whenever it recurs.

Otherwise this will have been a pyrrhic victory and we will be doomed to find that after missing us that asteroid swung around and is headed our way again.

***

Thursday was the 36th anniversary of one of the world's worst industrial disasters at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. And although I noticed an article in the Hindustan Times, I didn't see any mentions in the U.S. press.

The explosion at the facility was not only an Indian problem; it was an American problem. Union Carbide was an American company using American technology, which was demonstrably inferior to the safer methods developed by German and Japanese companies.

As I described in my book "The Bhopal Syndrome," when they heard the emergency alarm ring, villagers living in the shadow of the plant ran toward it, to try and help out, not away from it, which would have saved their lives.

Thousands died as a result.

In the aftermath of the disaster, it was revealed that Union Carbide never told the people living nearby how dangerous the chemicals mixed there were, nor how to protect themselves should an explosion occur.

It's a shameful date in American history; one we cannot allow ourselves to forget or forgive. In my book, I concluded that the solution to preventing similar disasters was more democracy in the form of freedom of information (FOIA) about chemical plants and the right to know (RTK) what is happening inside manufacturing facilities nearby.

Two simple tools and two of the key building blocks of democracy. The world has embraced those principles to a greater extent in recent decades but chemical plant explosions still occur.

We cannot afford to forget that.

*** 

The latest news to remember:

* 2,596 Trades in One Term: Inside Senator Perdue’s Stock Portfolio -- The Georgia Republican’s stock trades have far outpaced those of his Senate colleagues and have included a range of companies within his Senate committees’ oversight, an analysis shows. (NYT)

* Georgia Republicans Contort Themselves to Avoid Trump’s Fury -- Many in the state G.O.P. are expending significant effort to seek cover from the president’s outrage over his defeat, hoping to retain the support of his base. (NYT)

* Sidney Powell, a former lawyer for the Trump campaign, told Georgia residents to boycott the Senate runoffs on Jan. 5 because their state’s voting machines are archaic and cannot be trusted. The conspiracy theorist made the eyebrow-raising remarks during a “Stop the Steal” rally in Atlanta. The two runoffs will decide which party ends up controlling power in the Senate. [HuffPost]

* Among first acts, Biden to call for 100 days of mask-wearing (AP)

* Covid Shrinks the Labor Market, Pushing Out Women and Baby Boomers -- Nearly four million Americans have stopped working or looking for jobs, a 2.2% contraction of the U.S. work force. A smaller labor market leaves fewer workers to build machines and clean tables, restraining the economy’s long-term prospects. (WSJ)

* This pandemic has exposed our nation’s broken caregiving system (WashPo)

* The official serving as Trump’s eyes and ears at the Justice Department has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, three people familiar with the matter say. Heidi Stirrup, an ally of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, was quietly installed at the Justice Department as a White House liaison a few months ago. She was told within the last two weeks to vacate the building after top Justice officials learned of her efforts to collect insider information about ongoing cases and the department’s work on election fraud, the people said. (AP)

* As Hospitals Fill, Travel Nurses Race to Virus Hot Spots -- Demand is rising for nurses who work on contract. It is a nomadic existence and, in a pandemic, a high-risk one. “I was totally unprepared for the reality,” one recalled. (NYT)

* Former President Barack Obama said he planned to take a COVID-19 vaccine, possibly on television in an effort to encourage Americans to do the same, if officials said it was safe. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton also said they'd support a vaccine deemed to be safe by public health officials. Bush’s chief of staff told CNN: “When the time is right, [Bush] wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated.” [HuffPost]

* Millions of Californians will likely find themselves under a regional stay-at-home order once again under new restrictions announced Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The new order will take hold in regions where hospitals are feeling the squeeze on capacity to treat the incoming surge of Covid-19 patients. A strict stay-at home order will go into effect 48 hours after hospital intensive care unit capacity drops below 15% in one of five regions the state is divided into: Northern California, Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. (CNN)

* Pompeo invites hundreds to indoor holiday parties after State Dept. subordinates are warned against hosting ‘non-mission critical events’ (WashPo)

* Powerful gusts pushed flames from a wildfire through Southern California canyons on Thursday, one of several blazes that burned near homes and forced residents to flee amid elevated fire risk for most of the region that prompted utilities to cut off power to hundreds of thousands. (AP)

* Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sparred over COVID-19 relief funding during a House Financial Services Committee hearing. Porter questioned Mnuchin’s plan to claw back $455 billion in unspent stimulus package funding to the Treasury’s general fund, which would make it harder for his successor to access the money. She noted that funds can't be transferred back to the Treasury sooner than Jan. 1, 2026. "Is it currently the year 2026? Yes or no,” Porter asked. [HuffPost]

* U.S. to withdraw some Baghdad embassy staff as tensions with Iran and its allies spike (WashPo)

* The parents of at least 628 migrant children who were separated from their families by the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018 still haven’t been located, lawyers tasked with reuniting the families said in a court filing. The affected children — whose families were torn asunder under the Trump administration’s so-called zero tolerance border policy — have now been without their parents for at least two years. [HuffPost]

* Mexico has counted more than 79,000 missing, reflecting a collapse of order in America’s neighbor (WashPo)

* Barry Gibb Has a Mission: ‘Keep the Music Alive’ -- The last Bee Gee looks back at his wide-ranging catalog of hits, and ahead to an album of duets that spotlights his first love, country music. (NYT)

* LeBron James signed a two-year, $85 million contract extension with the Lakers. [ESPN]

* 4-Year-Old’s Optimism Just Making Things Worse For Area Family (The Onion)

***

You Don't Own Me

Lesley Gore

You don't own me
I'm not just one of your many toys
You don't own me
Don't say I can't go with other boys

And don't tell me what to do
Don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display 'cause

You don't own me
Don't try to change me in any way
You don't own me
Don't tie me down 'cause I'd never stay

I don't tell you what to say
I don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you

I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

And don't tell me what to do
Oh, don't tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don't put me on display

I don't tell you what to say
Oh, don't tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That's all I ask of you

I'm young and I love to be young
I'm free and I love to be free

Songwriters: David White / John Madara

-30-

The Voices of Truth

 

When I first paid attention to "The Hunger Games" trilogy, it was because my youngest children were volunteering in a local branch of the city library, and reading the books to younger children. As I became familiar with Suzanne Collins' work, I realized this was the successor to the "Harry Potter" phenomenon. 

But these books interested me much more than J. K. Rowling's, because they clearly were dystopian visions of a world gone mad in ways that felt all too familiar. Over the past decade-plus, an eerie feeling that the novels were predictive has revisited me again and again.

There are so many parallels: Reality is only a TV show; there are vast disparities of wealth between the capital and the districts; climate change lurks in plain view; the sacrifice of younger generations is celebrated; young women emerge as heroes; players in the system need to have rich sponsors from the overlord class; there is ubiquitous surveillance and tracking; rebellion bubbles to the surface; and an authoritarian government has arisen to contain it all.

Within the story are the insights that when it comes to the masses, the only more powerful emotion than fear is hope and the need for a populist leader to marshal that hope into action.

Living as we do, day to day, watching each iteration of the newsreel as it flickers by, it may be difficult to grasp what is happening in our world, but we could do much worse than to listen to the voice of our artists.

Collins is one of those voices. Since these are ostensibly young adult fiction books, it's not surprising that many adults may not have read them. But there is an easy, cheap alternative -- just rent or buy the first of four films in the series, called "The Hunger Games."

In it, the actor Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, a reluctant hero who emerges from obscurity to wage war against the evil empire. In real life, I am reminded of young Greta Thunberg and her global campaign to combat climate change.

And as we sift through the wreckage of our political system usurped by Donald Trump these past four years, one point that is crystal clear is that we have already come horribly close to the rise of authoritarianism.

Even as his protracted battle to overturn the democratic results of the election are portrayed by national media as a joke, I'm not laughing because what concerns me is where this society is headed, more than where we have just been,

By demonizing the Republican officials certifying the votes in the states that swung the election away from him to Biden, Trump is educating his fanatic followers as to what they can do in the future. If QAnon activists take over the electoral college system in a. few states, future elections may indeed be subverted, and an authoritarian state could formally emerge.

No we are not out of the woods yet, and just as in the film, there are fires coming -- both wildfires like those that devastated the western states this year but also the man-made fires that nearly consumed young Katniss as she struggled to survive.

An artist has spoken; we all would be wise to listen and prepare for a very difficult future that lies ahead.

***

Look at the news:

*On Oct. 30, the student news site of duPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky, published a bombshell of an investigation: While training officers, the Kentucky State Police had used a slideshow that quoted Adolf Hitler. The reporters behind the story were 16-year-old Satchel Walton and his younger brother Cooper. On the day the student site published the story, Satchel decided to quiet his nerves by going to play cards with a friend in a park. But soon, his phone rang: The governor’s office was calling and wanted to offer a comment. The brothers first learned about the slideshow from their dad, an attorney who was working on a case representing someone who had been shot by a police officer in eastern Kentucky. The legal team gathered the training slides that featured quotes from Hitler and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as part of the discovery in that case. When he saw the slides, Satchel immediately knew it was an important story. “I thought that it needed to be out there and it needed to be out there quick. And so I said, ‘I can do that,’ ” says Satchel, speaking over Zoom from his family’s attic. (Reveal)

* California's first Gen-Z lawmaker, Alex Lee (25) was elected to the state assembly. He’ll also be the first openly bisexual person to become a state legislator. "I think there’s a different relationship once you understand the world is utterly screwed unless we do something about it. Why not go down swinging as hard as we can and go fight the big fight?" (NYT)

* The Grit and Glory of Dolly Parton -- More than 50 years into her legendary career, she’s still capturing America’s particular mythology — its dreams and its disappointments — like no other. (NYT)

* 9-1-1 Emergency Call System Reaching Breaking Point (CNN)

* Ivanka Trump questioned under oath in lawsuit over use of inauguration funds (Reuters)

* Newly Pardoned Flynn Calls for Martial Law and a New Election (CNN)

* A Hotter Planet Is Already Killing Americans, Health Experts Warn -- A new report presented climate change as an immediate public health danger and urged lawmakers to curb greenhouse gas emissions. (NYT)

* Big Companies Urge Biden, Congress to Take Action on Climate Change -- More than 40 corporations, including Amazon, Citigroup and Ford, said in a letter to Congress that they supported the U.S. rejoining the Paris climate accord. (WSJ)

* As an extreme year for hurricanes, wildfires and heat waves comes to an end, the head of the United Nations challenged world leaders to make 2021 the year that humanity ends its “war on nature” and commits to a future free of planet-warming carbon pollution. With new reports highlighting 2020’s record-breaking weather and growing fossil fuels extraction that triggers global warming, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered yet another urgent appeal to curb climate change. It was tinged with optimism but delivered dire warnings, as the UN gears up for a Dec. 12 virtual climate summit in France on the 5th anniversary of the landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement. (AP)

* Climate change, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the West, U.S. officials said Tuesday. (AP)

* World leaders pledge sustainable ocean management (NHK)

* Biden’s early Cabinet picks fuel concerns that he has weakened his vow to put Black officials in top roles (WashPo)

* Attorney General William Barr, who has served as Trump’s right-hand man and protector, waited nearly an entire month after the 2020 presidential election to publicly state the obvious: Trump doesn’t have evidence for his conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told The Associated Press on Tuesday. [AP/HuffPost]

* Researchers around the globe are investigating whether vitamin D, known as the sunshine vitamin, can help reduce people’s risk of catching the new coronavirus and even aid in treating patients with Covid-19. (WSJ)

* Researchers @UCBerkeley Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas found a high percentage of Monterey County farmworkers they surveyed were unsure or unlikely to get #COVID19 vaccine. Main reasons? Concern about side effects, fear of getting COVID, distrust of government. (KQED)

* Interpol warns that COVID-19 vaccines could be targeted by criminals (Reuters)

* Trump’s Longest-Serving Cabinet Official May Start a Revolution -- Betsy DeVos’s assault on public education has provided a chance for major policy renewal. (NYT)

* Before he ousted longtime Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel in a stunning primary win earlier this year, Rep.-elect Jamaal Bowman was a public middle school principal in New York City. Now, as he prepares to enter the House, Bowman hopes to push Biden to choose a secretary of education who would understand the struggles faced by public school educators. [HuffPost]

* Enrollment By International Students In U.S. Colleges Plummets -- The pandemic is a major reason, but the number of international students has been falling for years. (NPR)

* The Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for use in the U.K. and will be made available starting next week, allowing Britains to get the shot developed by a U.S.-based drugmaker before Americans. Studies have shown the shot to be 95% effective and it works in all age groups. No safety concerns arose from clinical trials. [HuffPost]

* Vaccines should go first to health-care workers and nursing home residents, CDC advisory group says (WashPo)

* Barr has given extra protection to the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, giving him the authority of a special counsel to complete his work without being easily fired. Barr said U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation has been narrowing to focus more on the conduct of FBI agents who worked on the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane. [AP]

* New ‘BTS Law’ Is Passed in South Korea. An Army of Fans Rejoices. -- The oldest member of BTS was saved at the last minute from having to join the military under the country’s conscription system. (NYT)

* Trump administration sets wave of executions for days leading to Biden inauguration (WashPo)

* Trump has raised many tens of millions of dollars with the promise of overturning his election loss, but his donors are actually pouring money into a fund he could use for Big Macs, golf equipment and, if he wants, even more hush money payments. Unlike political campaign and party committees, Trump’s “Save America” is a so-called leadership PAC with far less stringent rules regulating its spending. [HuffPost]

* Frightened Don Jr. Asks If He Can Sleep In Dad’s Bed After Bad Dream About Being Indicted (The Onion) https:/

***

"The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say - we will never forgive you." -- Greta Thunberg

The old man turned off the radio
Said, "Where did all of the old songs go
Kids sure play funny music these days
They play it in the strangest ways"
Said, "it looks to me like they've all gone wild
It was peaceful back when I was a child"
Well, man, could it be that the girls and boys
Are trying to be heard above your noise?
And the lonely voice of youth cries "What is truth?"

A little boy of three sittin' on the floor
Looks up and says, "Daddy, what is war?"
"son, that's when people fight and die"
The little boy of three says "Daddy, why?"
A young man of seventeen in Sunday school
Being taught the golden rule
And by the time another year has gone around
It may be his turn to lay his life down
Can you blame the voice of youth for asking 
"What is truth?"

A young man sittin' on the witness stand
The man with the book says "Raise your hand"
"Repeat after me, I solemnly swear"
The man looked down at his long hair
And although the young man solemnly swore
Nobody seems to hear anymore
And it didn't really matter if the truth was there
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair
And the lonely voice of youth cries 
"What is truth?"

The young girl dancing to the latest beat 
Has found new ways to move her feet
The young man speaking in the city square
Is trying to tell somebody that he cares
Yeah, the ones that you're calling wild
Are going to be the leaders in a little while
This old world's wakin' to a new born day
And I solemnly swear that it'll be their way 
You better help the voice of youth find 
"What is truth"

-- Johnny Cash

-30-