Saturday, August 06, 2022

Letters

This is the age of instantaneous communication. We are all just one click away from each another. The benefits are obvious. The downsides, perhaps less so. Texts come and go so quickly, they can leave us lonelier than before they arrived.

But there was a previous time, before cellphones, texts, chats and X/Zoom meetings when contacting each other took much more time and effort.

Of course, it is so long ago now that few of us may be able to even recall it. But back then, we wrote letters to each other. Letters take time. Letters take care. We had to compose our thoughts and the use of language truly mattered.

I do not like to admit my age, but I date from the time when words still mattered. Like truth. Nowadays, when I exchange messages, they seem to come and go like the wind.

That’s nice, in its own way, but I miss the permanence of letters.

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Today’s Lyrics:

“This Little Bird”

Sung by Marianne Faithful

Written by John Loudermilk

There's a little bird that somebody sends
Down to the earth to live on the wind.
Borne on the wind and he sleeps on the wind
This little bird that somebody sends.

He's light and fragile and feathered sky blue,
So thin and graceful the sun shines through.
This little bird who lives on the wind,
This little bird that somebody sends.

He flies so high up in the sky
Out of reach of human eye.
And the only time that he touches the ground
Is when that little bird
Is when that little bird

Is when that little bird dies. 

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Friday, August 05, 2022

Democracy on Edge

 In four of the swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada — Republicans have now selected candidates for governor or secretary of state who don’t accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election. 

So let’s do the math. Those four states all went for Biden in 2020 as he amassed 306 electoral votes to 232 for Trump.They accounted for 53 of Biden’s total; without them the result would have swung to Trump by a 285-253 margin.

Should these GOP candidates prevail in this November’s midterm elections, the scenario most feared by those who value democracy over autocracy could well come to pass in 2024. They could throw the election to Trump or whoever the Republican candidate happens to be.

That’s where we are in the United States as of August 2022. Our future as a viable democracy is teetering, potentially dependent now on whether voters in those states elect or reject those four election deniers.

There’s nothing new about the mathematical fact that a handful of swing states determine presidential elections. It’s been like that for quite a while. Nor is it any surprise that the electorate is deeply divided between the two parties. It’s as bad as it’s ever been.

What is frightening and brand new is the willingness of so many Republican voters to buy the conspiratorial lies advanced by Trump and his acolytes that the 2020 election was stolen. I wonder how many of them realize that they are playing with fire.

There is one ray of hope against this dire scenario — the bipartisan effort in the Senate to tighten up loopholes in the Electoral Count Act that Trump tried to exploit in 2020. That might offer some degree of protection should it pass both houses of Congress before November.

Then again, looming over all of this is the hyper-conservative Supreme Court stacked with Trump appointees who could ultimately decide any contested election. And it’s almost guaranteed to be contested in 2024.

If it came down to it, would the six right-wing justices preserve democracy? Or do more like what they did to a woman’s right to choose.

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Thursday, August 04, 2022

Answering JFK's Call

 One of the most consequential moments in John F. Kennedy's candidacy for the Presidency was a spur-of-the-moment speech he gave in the early morning hours of October 14, 1960 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

He was worn out and had intended to go to bed upon arriving, but when he was told that 10,000 students had been waiting patiently for him for hours, he decided instead to go to the campus of the University of Michigan and deliver what became a life-changing speech for me and many others in my generation. 

He proposed creating a new national service for students, and the young crowd roared its approval. After he was elected, he made good on that proposal and formed the U.S. Peace Corps.

I was a naive young man of 22 when I went to Afghanistan as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1969, having never been out of the country before, let alone halfway around the world.

But by then, thousands of young people just like me were answering Kennedy's call  to serve our country not by going to war but by spreading messages of peace.

We were idealistic and naive, yes, but those of us who were male were also trying to avoid the draft, which would have sent us to Vietnam to fight a war we vehemently disagreed with.

Like millions of others in my generation, I was radicalized in college to the point I considered U.S. foreign policy the imperial arm of an expanding empire. 

Living in Afghanistan proved to be a rude awakening about some of my assumptions. I saw up close how mean and brutal people could be to each other in a poor society, including tribal wars, murders, bribery and cruelty like in the "Lord of the Flies."

I also saw beauty, generosity and tenderness -- the whole range of human behavior was on display every day amid widespread illiteracy and ignorance.

The poorest people on the planet would welcome me into their homes to share the one good meal they would have that entire week. Strangers went out of their way to help me when I got lost. 

When I taught high school in Taloqan, many of my students spouted political beliefs shaped by the five booming radio signals that reached our remote town -- Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, and to a much lesser degree, Radio Kabul, the BBC and the Voice of America.

The brightest kids seemed attracted by socialist and communist ideas similar to the Marxist-Leninist thinking I was familiar with on campuses back home. At first I went along with their ideas about how U.S. imperialism was oppressing people in poor countries, but eventually, like any committed teacher, I began to challenge their assumptions, if only to get them to think.

It was easy to see how Soviet and Chinese propaganda was distorting these young minds, and how their views of America were affected by the worst of Hollywood. The stories they repeated about U.S. barbarism were overblown and simplistic. 

U.S. troops had slaughtered innocents at My Lai, it was true, which was awful, but all armies did that kind of thing. Certainly no country had a monopoly on human rights abuses. Meanwhile, there were also many, many Americans like Peace Corps Volunteers who were opposed to the military and dispensing aid, food, clothes, medicine and education instead of guns and napalm.

But to be truthful, I more or less agreed with my students’ political analysis and wanted no part of the dark sides of U.S. policy, What I did wish to share were the better parts of our culture -- our beliefs in freedom, equality, and universal literacy. 

Fewer than ten percent of the Afghans population could read or write. The infant mortality rate was the highest in the world. Women had little access to education, jobs or independent lives.

I knew my students needed a counterweight to what they were hearing on Radio Moscow, but the irony was not lost on me that here I was, an anti-war American, defending my country’s military in some sense as part of my role as a mentor.

Anyway, for Afghans, the problem wasn’t American intervention. The problem was that the Russians were massed right next door. And within a few years of my leaving Afghanistan, the Russians indeed invaded, bombing and strafing the country into submission, or so they thought at the time.

But that ended badly for the Soviets a decade later as they limped back to Moscow in retreat. And once they lost the Afghan war, the entire Soviet empire crumbled as well.

In retrospect our efforts as young Peace Corps workers may have been noble in the moment, but ultimately we were overwhelmed by the masters of war. Just as Afghanistan was about to be once again, this time from an inside force, a year ago when I first published an earlier draft of this column.

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Wednesday, August 03, 2022

Kansas Goes Pro-Choice

From the AP came the big news last night: 

“Kansas voters on Tuesday sent a resounding message about their desire to protect abortion rights, rejecting a ballot measure in a conservative state with deep ties to the anti-abortion movement that would have allowed the Republican-controlled legislature to tighten restrictions or ban the procedure outright.”

This is notable because this is the first state to put abortion on the ballot since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

It’s also a hopeful sign for Democrats that the public may be motivated enough to come to the polls this fall to restore abortion rights and elect pro-choice lawmakers.

Of course, it’s only one state and one election, but Kansas is a deep red, reliably conservative and heavily Republican state. The vote may indicate a large enough backlash against the conservative Supreme Court that could determine which party ends up controlling Congress in the midterm elections.

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Tuesday, August 02, 2022

Shadow Boxing

Almost lost in the shadows of the Russian-Ukrainian War, a very serious crisis has been brewing between the U.S. and China.

It’s over Taiwan, a small country consisting of 168 disputed islands sitting at the intersection of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with China to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. 

When I visited Taiwan on a reporting trip in the late 1980s, I found it to be a beautiful green, hilly paradise with a heavily industrialized section around Taipei, where a dense population exhibited a restless, palpable democratic spirit. Much like the Hong Kong of that era, it offered a sense of what greater China might be like if the Communist Party should ever fall from power.

At the time, I was investigating industrial safety issues for my book “The Bhopal Syndrome.” My host group had sent a charming young translator named Cassie to accompany me as I traveled from place to place around the country. She met me at the airport.

She was naive, sweet, smart and tough, inexperienced but determined, and a committed environmentalist. We quickly became friends and we talked late into the nights over what were probably her first glasses of wine. She explained that her dream was to leave Taiwan to study in America. 

As it turned out, Cassie’s translation services were rarely required, because almost everybody I interviewed spoke reasonably good English. 

We met with dozens of scientists, regulators, plant personnel, and activists to discuss the risks of industrial accidents like the one that had happened at Bhopal in India.

In the process, I discovered that when Taiwanese residents living near chemical plants grew concerned about safety, they would storm the plants in protest, demanding answers. It was hard to imagine that happening in China or even back home in the States. That’s what I mean about their democratic spirit. The Taiwanese people were feisty. And fiercely independent.

They were inspiring. 

On our last night in Taipei, I stayed at a local YMCA. Cassie came to say goodbye, and we hugged. As I watched her walk away, in a free flat-footed way, I hoped that her dreams would come true. 

***

In the years since my one visit to Taiwan, the geopolitical forces surrounding the tiny country have escalated dangerously.

Recently, as China has grown to challenge the U.S. economically and militarily, the tensions over Taiwan have reached the point that an actual war seems possible. In that context, Nancy Pelosi’s planned visit this week is either a courageous statement about U.S. resolve to stand behind Taiwan’s independence or a reckless step risking dire consequences. 

I don’t know which is true, but this week seems like a critical moment.

***

P.S. Cassie eventually made it to the U.S. to study at a college in Texas. She wrote me a letter saying she was happy that “a person like you exists in this world.” The feeling was mutual.

***

Now for some math: I have now played Wordle 200 times and deduced the word 196 of those times (98%). I’ve never guessed the word on my first try but I’ve succeeded 9 times (4.5% ) on the second try, 50 times (25%) on the third try, 83 times (41.5%) on the fourth try, 45 times (22.5% ) on the fifth try, and 9 times (4.5%) on the sixth and last try. That leaves my failure rate at 2%.

Now if that could only somehow translate that into how I do in real life…

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Monday, August 01, 2022

Meta Story

There used to be a hummingbird that hovered outside my window. But it hasn’t been there lately. 

It has been about nine months since I started to transition this little daily essay-writing project of mine from Facebook to Substack and the results are decidedly mixed. As a writing interface, Substack is a much better fit, plus I can provide links to the articles I curate.

Of course, most of those links just smash into paywalls.

And the barrier to entry at Substrack is high — readers have to add my Substack page to their daily reading habits, which only a fraction of the people I know on Facebook have chosen to do.

I get it, totally. Facebook has long since become a daily habit for many people, myself included. It’s free and it’s easy. (Important note: It’s not really “free” because Meta gets our personal data and that is worth billions. But that is in the fine print. And none of us read the fine print.)

The best part about publishing on Facebook is the comment section. Some of the best conversations I ever have about the topics I write about come there. That includes under yesterday’s post, “The Ghosts of Balkh,” which is probably as good a column as I am capable of writing. It drew some great comments.

By contrast, few people comment here on Substack. Writing can often feel like whispering into a vacuum. Then again, at Substack people can “subscribe,’ which is free or paid (their choice) and in return they get an email newsletter every morning.. 

Of course, one more email in your daily inbox is hardly anyone’s idea of an ideal service. It can smack of marketing, or junk mail, of which we all get way too much. 

Come to think of it, why should anyone pay for content? Ever since the dawn of the web, the content provided by journalists is no longer protected by the scarcity or exclusivity of the old media era. 

Those days are gone. The title of my memoir will be “The Last Journalist.”

A neighbor recently mentioned that she saw a hummingbird lying in the street a few days ago, unable to fly. Maybe it had hit something, or maybe a bigger bird like a crow hit it.

Anyway, when she looked again later on, it was gone. 

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TODAY’s LYRIC:

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” — Kris Kristofferson

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Sunday, July 31, 2022

The Ghosts of Balkh (Reprise)

(NOTE: I published an earlier version of this essay last year right after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan. It was then republished by several journals. This version has been edited and updated for clarity.)

This week for me and many others who love Afghanistan has been a struggle. It's difficult to express our feelings about the situation in English; it would be much easier in Dari. That language encourages the intimacy of connection and the pain of loss in ways it is awkward to do in English, as wonderful as our language is in other ways.

English is a language of the brain; Dari is a language of the heart.

When you encounter a friend in a village in Afghanistan, you both stop where you were headed to embrace, hold hands and inquire about each other's heart, body, mind, family, and so on. It can be a long list and if you've not met recently, these greetings may take a while. 

And when you really stop and  think about it, what is it that matters more in life than expressing how we feel about each other?

Money? Fame? Power? Possessions? Accomplishments? Awards?

I don't think so.

In Dari you are able to say "my heart loves your heart" in a way that does not imply romantic love but does capture how much you truly care for each other. It doesn't sound odd at all.

Meanwhile, in America all too often our encounters start with "How are you?" And end with "Fine. You?"

Compratively unsatisfying.

In fact it is so unsatisfying to me that I try, and I know this is weird, to adapt something of Dari rituals when talking with my American friends. Each person is made of specific qualities I value, so despite the limitations of our language, I always try to say what I mean and to mean what I say. 

Especially when I say "I love you," that is exactly how I feel.

***

As a commentator on the news, my main goal is to locate what is hopeful about otherwise crushing developments if I can, but in the case of Afghanistan right now this is difficult.

Some news reports suggest that the Taliban have fundamentally changed, but I doubt that. They say they will extend amnesty to government workers, respect the rights of women, and preside over a peaceful transition of power, but those are empty promises until we see the proof.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of historical precedent for what usually happens when guerrilla forces assume power, and that record is soaked with the blood of innocents.

Sadly, Afghanistan has been criss-crossed by conquerers throughout its recorded history. Just to mention a few of the empires that resulted: Alexander the Great and his Macedonians, the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Indo-Sassanids, Kabul Shahi, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Kartids, Timurids, Hotakis and the Durranis.

In their oral histories, Afghans most often bring up the Mongol invaders, starting with Genghis Khan in 1221. And they talk about him and others as if they are still around the next bend. 

For example, just north of the town of Taloqan is a magnificent mountain known as Ú©ÙˆÙ‡ بز سیاه, which translates as Black Goat Mountain.

While riding in the back of a truck from Khanabad packed with people, goats and chickens fifty years ago, I spoke with a man who recounted stories that have been passed from father to son over the past thousand years.

"When they rode in last time, the Mongols cut off the heads of a million people," he said, repeating a version that I had heard many times before. 

"And they will be back. Just on the other side of Black Goat Mountain there are hundreds of thousands of Mongols waiting to return."

I guess he was referring to the peaceful Uzbek population of Takhar Province, living in what has long been a poor agricultural area.

A few hundred miles to the west of Takhar, during a visit to Mazar-e-Sharif, I heard similar tales about the Hazara population living in a nearby isolated valley. "They will ride in here soon, so watch out."

Nearby are the ruins of Balkh, a legendary city in the pre-Mongol era, with some of the most ghostly remains I have ever visited. Somewhere in my boxes in storage may still be the shards of pottery I collected at the site, which appeared to be many centuries old.

Balkh is where historians confirm that Mongol hordes did in fact decapitate many residents when they struck, and if the eerie winds whistling through the area are not the voices of those long dead, my imagination must have betrayed me.

Among Afghanistan's intractable problems is the stark reality that it less an actual country than the cobbled together homeland for at least seven major tribal groups. Besides the Uzbeks and the Hazara, there are the Tajiks, Pashtus, Turkomans, Baluchis, and Nuristanis.

Plus four or five smaller groups, most notably the Kochi, who are nomads.

The name of the country means "Land of the Afghans," which is what the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, call themselves. That name leaves every other group out, which complicates matters immensely.

My point here is that Afghanistan has plenty of internal problems without outsiders like the British, Russians and Americans getting involved. No foreign occupier ever stays for long anyway, because the local people simply won't tolerate them.

And once the foreigners leave, the Afghans get back to business as usual. What that means is inter-ethnic competition and violence. 

So as of August 2021, after decades of operating as a guerrilla army, the Taliban have to figure out how to somehow govern what many believe to be an ungovernable land. Not only are the traditional tribal loyalties an issue, the big cities, especially Kabul, have modernized over the past 20 years and millions of men and women are now educated.

The educated class wants nothing of the ancient ways. They want what all modern people want — a peaceful life, a better life. Will the Taliban throw all of that progress away and chop off the head of the modernizing society they've inherited? Or will they grow into the moment and embrace the future? 

The ghosts of Balkh have been waiting a thousand years for the answers to those questions.

***

On Friday afternoon, my despair over Afghanistan was counter-balanced by an outing to a favorite spot with a friend. It was a slightly smokey day in the Bay Area from the distant wildfires but the smoke stayed high while we stayed low. 

We stopped at a coffee house for a spell and then she drove us through an ancient tunnel to the edge of the bay where you can smell the salt in the air. 

All of this reminded me how important it is to celebrate beauty and hope and the love of friendship even as we mourn the horror and sadness of the world around us. 

At the end of the day, as the sun shrank to the west, the smoke stayed high, but down at the surface of the earth the air still smelled sweet.

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