Americans

 This holiday weekend I moved around to multiple locations, including a spell at San Jose's minor league baseball park to watch an open-air movie and fireworks, where country songs made up the soundtrack.

One was Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American."

It occurred to me that I'm an odd mix of an openly patriotic person who can dig a jingoistic song like that, but still be fiercely opposed to white nationalist BS like what drove those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6th, 2021. 

I'm sure many of the insurrectionists like that song too but we are polar opposites in other respects. So how can I explain this?

Well maybe I can't. Growing up in small cities in Michigan in the 50s and 60s, I did not identify with the coasts or with big-city life at all. My parents were naturalized citizens and we were not rich.

My taste in music was my always own -- my Dad hated country songs and didn't care for rock 'n roll either.. But it was the story-telling in one and the beat in the other that hooked me, along with the schmaltzy emotionality of one and the rebelliousness in both. 

I was a sickly kid and for a crucial period I had few friends. For whatever set of reasons, I always identified with underdogs and outsiders. At the University of Michigan, thanks to a scholarship awarded by Republican Gov. George Romney's administration, I was first exposed to the burgeoning antiwar and civil rights movements.

I quickly morphed into a student activist, then a journalist. I discovered I was ambitious and because of my political activism, which included an arrest, I couldn’t find a job in journalism in Michigan. So I headed west.

Moving to San Francisco in my 20s and developing connections in New York, L.A. and Washington completed my transformation into a midwesterner-in-exile.

By now you really can’t distinguished me from any other Bay Area progressive on the outside, but on the inside I’ve never lost my small-town Michigan roots. I miss it.

Fast forward to present tense, with a  nation and a culture so divided it hurts, people like me actually carry around divided hearts. When it comes to specific political issues I almost always come down on the side of progressives. When it comes to the places I prefer to hang out, it's big cities like the aforementioned.

Meanwhile, I hate the right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists who have developed such a hold on some of the people whose lives I left behind when I moved away from the Midwest. 

Still, many of those back home are good people, patriotic Americans. They've been sold a bad line of goods involving a false sense of resentment, and a demagogue named Trump came along to take advantage of them. They also have had trouble letting go of their biases against the coasts and big-city life. 

They need to get over that. Otherwise, our democracy is at serious risk going forward.

I hold out hope that enough of them will come to their senses and back into the great middle of our culture, reject extremism and embrace the true meaning of patriotism.That once again reason will prevail. Then maybe we can all sing Lee Greenwood's song in the same tune.

***

When it comes to patriotism and democracy I strongly recommend these three articles listed below from The New Yorker from mid-2021.

* Among the Insurrectionists at the Capitol

* What We Get Wrong About America’s Crisis of Democracy 

* This July 4th, Can We De-Adapt from the Pandemic and Trump at the Same Time? 

(Three years after I first posted this (on Facebook) it seems more relevant than ever.)

Try Again

Journalists get portrayed in movies all the time; some films get it right, some don't. 

"The Last Letter From Your Lover," a 2021 film, gets it partly right for me, although you may never meet a journalist exactly like the character Ellie Haworth plays in the film.

If you spend a lot of time around young journalists, you notice certain characteristics. Young reporters typically don't know yet what attracts them to particular types of stories yet, and that's just as it should be.

Some come out of such a specific background that they almost embody it -- a place, a race, a culture, a gender, a religion, an emotional or intellectual environment. But that doesn't mean that they should do stories that only conform with that background.

Anyone who goes into journalism and develops to any significant degree knows that while his or her background matters a great deal, it is hardly the end of the story. It's more like the beginning. We need to do stories despite our backgrounds as much as because of them.

I remember conversations I had with my late friend Raul Ramirez, a long-time executive at KQED, the NPR/PBS affiliate in San Francisco, while he was dying of cancer. He wanted to establish a fund that would support diversity in journalism at San Francisco State University in his final days, and he did.

I promised him I would help supervise the journalists that got internships via that fund as long as I could, and I have done that.

What Raul meant about diversity was in no way confined to representations of only certain ethnic or racial groups, sexual orientations, political perspectives or any of the other categories that divide us one from another.

In the movies and in popular imagination, reporters rarely appear as nuanced as the people Raul wanted to help break into our business. In film, we often are portrayed as heroes ("All the President's Men"), irritants ("Maid in Manhattan"), or naive idealists ("Almost Famous").

And there are many others: "The Post," "True Story," "Official Secrets," etc. 

What I like about the part played by Felicity Jones in "Last Letter..." is she is just an everyday person who makes mistakes, questions the stupid rules she encounters, and never gives up on her investigation. When at one point in the film she reaches an apparent dead-end in the trail, an older man and former reporter himself says bluntly: "Well, you're a journalist. Try again."

She takes his advice and makes the breakthrough that allows the film to reach its resolution. 

In the process, she finds out a lot about herself and also about something she didn't know she was searching for -- how to love and be loved.

That's about as perfect a conclusion as a journalist (or anyone) can hope to achieve. 

(I first published this one when the film was released in 2021.)

HEADLINES:

• Heritage Foundation Head Refers to ‘Second American Revolution’ (NYT)

• The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling has a chilling parallel to the Jim Crow era (MSNBC)

• Support for Biden on Capitol Hill is rapidly eroding, but he isn’t backing down (AP)

• Trump's campaign and some of his allies have launched a pre-emptive political strike on Vice President Kamala Harris, moving swiftly to try to discredit her amid talk that she might replace Biden at the top of the ticket. (Reuters)

• Biden Must Resign (Atlantic)

• White House now says Biden was seen by his doctor days after debate (CNN)

• Biden Tells Allies He Knows He Has Only Days to Salvage Candidacy (NYT)

• Fed officials said strains on lower income Americans are a "significant concern" (Axios)

• Britons vote in an election that is expected to propel Labour to power, (Reuters)

• Israel and Hamas appear on brink of framework agreement for ceasefire and hostage deal, Israeli source says (CNN)

• After fleeing the Taliban, she’ll breakdance on the Refugee Team in Paris (WP)

• How record-breaking Hurricane Beryl is a sign of a warming world (BBC)

• This tree survived the last ice age. It’s now threatened by development. (WP)

• Can the climate survive the insatiable energy demands of the AI arms race? (Guardian)

• Would having an AI boss be better than your current human one? (BBC)

• Employee Lost Like Sailor In Maelstrom After HR Fails To Send Out Quarterly Company Update (The Onion)

 

The Last 4th

 Happy Birthday America. Happy Birthday to your rolling hills, vast plains, mountain peaks, deep valleys, rushing rivers, green forests, blue lakes, big sky, mighty oceans, and the most hopeful experiment in self-rule in human history.

I’m spending this holiday with the San Jose branch of my family. It got up to 103 degrees yesterday, but the temperature fell by 35 degrees over night.

As long as I can remember, July 4th has been our ultimate summer holiday, with family get-togethers, watermelons, barbecued meals and camping trips.

In the background of all of that celebratory behavior is, of course, the formal honoring of our nation as a democracy, a land where no one is above the law.

But this week, in a perversion of the Constitution, a highly corrupt Supreme Court has granted almost complete immunity to the President, making that person the equivalent of a king with almost unchecked power.

The last time I checked, this nation was founded by people determined to escape the power of a king.

But this court acted in defense of a man who has strained our entire political and legal system to its breaking point. A man who would be king.

He seeks absolute power and this court to its eternal shame is willing to give it to him.

Accordingly, this may well be our last Fourth of July. By next year at this time, the Constitution may be in tatters, a free people under the thumb of an authoritarian, and the sweet joys of mid-summer merely a memory amidst the destruction of all we once held dear.

So with that caveat, Happy Birthday America. I hope a free people vote to stay free. 

HEADLINES:

• Hurricane Beryl Hammering Jamaica With Potentially Devastating Impacts, Cayman Islands Next (Weather.com)

• Unprecedented Category 5 Hurricane Beryl Stuns Scientists (Forbes)

• Hurricane Beryl Is a Terrifying Omen (Atlantic)

• Biden ‘absolutely not’ dropping out, White House says (WP)

• Biden Told Ally That He Is Weighing Whether to Continue in the Race (NYT)

• A shift in how Democrats talk about Biden’s dropping out (WP)

• Joe Biden pulls even with his Republican challenger Donald Trump in polls (Reuters)

• Biden’s post-debate crisis is now evolving into a genuine threat to his reelection bid (CNN)

• Biden’s Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome (NYT)

• Bribes, assassination and pardons: Immunity ruling leaves questions on unchecked presidential power (The Hill)

• The US supreme court just completed Trump’s January 6 coup attempt (Guardian)

• Supreme Court ruling could jeopardize California’s environmental rules (LAT)

• 51,000-year-old cave painting may be earliest scene depicted through art (WP)

• Prepare yourself for the AI smartphone wars (Yahoo)

• A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots (NYT)

• Supreme Court Rules Trump Has Immunity For Any Crime Committed Between 9 And 5 (The Onion)

The Plan

While I’ve tried in different ways to say this several times in the past, I’ve never fully succeeded. So I’ll try again.

America is on the brink of becoming an authoritarian state. That means that after almost 250 years, our experiment with democracy would be dead.

This is not hyperbole. This is not scare-mongering. This is not partisan rhetoric. This is reality.

Should Donald Trump succeed, and it increasingly appears that he will, to be elected president in November, our cherished period of self-rule will be over. We will have voted it into extinction.

Armed with this week’s shameful ruling on presidential immunity by a Supreme Court packed with right-wing puppets, the would-be dictator now has the highest court’s blessing to proceed with his plan to dismantle our democracy.

Trump has forecasted clearly how he intends to proceed once elected. He identified which leaders are to be arrested and sent to prison camps.

As reported by the New York Times, “Trump over the weekend escalated his vows to prosecute his political opponents, circulating posts on his social media website invoking ‘televised military tribunals’ and calling for the jailing of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.”

The article continues: “One post that he circulated on Sunday singled out Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman who is a Republican critic of Mr. Trump’s, and called for her to be prosecuted by a type of military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals. ‘Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of treason,’ the post said.”

There is more: “A separate post included photos of 15 former and current elected officials that said, in all-capital letters, “they should be going to jail on Monday not Steve Bannon!” Those officials included Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris, Mr. Pence, Mr. Schumer and Mr. McConnell — the top leaders in the Senate — and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker.”

And; “The list in the second post also had members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including Ms. Cheney and the former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, another Republican, and the Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Pete Aguilar, Zoe Lofgren and Bennie Thompson, who chaired the committee.”

HEADLINES:

• Trump seeks to set aside his New York hush money guilty verdict after Supreme Court immunity ruling (AP)

• Trump immunity ruling poses risk for democracy, scholars say (WP)

• Trump Amplifies Calls to Jail Top Elected Officials, Invokes Military Tribunals (NYT)

• The U.S. Supreme Court's decision that Donald Trump has full immunity for "official acts" he took as president is so sweeping that it opens the door for sitting presidents to do whatever they want without any accountability, legal experts said. “Presumptively, he has the power to assassinate a rival,” said John Dean, White House counsel to former President Richard Nixon. [HuffPost]

• Who could replace Biden as Democratic nominee? (BBC)

• It’s Not Too Late to Replace Biden and Defeat Trump (Politico Mag)

• 4 in 10 Democrats say Biden should not be party’s nominee after debate: Survey (The Hill)

• Trump’s sentencing in N.Y. hush money case postponed until September (WP)

• Rudy Giuliani officially disbarred in New York for Trump election interference efforts (CNN)

• The Center Collapses in France, Leaving Macron Marooned (NYT)

• Hurricane Beryl on path to Jamaica after monster storm with 165mph winds flattened tiny island in half an hour: Live updates (Independent)

• Yes, you should be a little freaked out about Hurricane Beryl (Ars Technica)

• Death toll from India stampede rises to over 100, says official (Al Jazeera)

• California Is Showing How a Big State Can Power Itself Without Fossil Fuels (New Yorker)

• Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Tech Platforms’ Free Speech Rights (NYT)

• Ants can carry out life-saving amputations on injured nest mates, study shows (Guardian)

• AI is learning from what you said on Reddit, Stack Overflow or Facebook. Are you OK with that? (AP)

• Apple’s AI features will create groundswell of demand, says Deepwater’s Gene Munster (CNBC)

• Supreme Court Overturns 'Right v. Wrong' (The Onion)

 

Just Another Word for Love

(Yesterday’s momentous decision from the Supreme Court on presidential immunity was disgraceful. The six justices in the majority should be ashamed. Today, I republish an essay from July 2021.)

“I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.” 
― Jojo Moyes, The Last Letter from Your Lover

***

I'm sure it has long since become clear to regular readers of my missives that for me very little of this is about the past, strictly speaking. That the very last thing I am doing is writing a memoir.

No. If this kind of writing had a name, maybe it would be called a memoir of the future. Everything that has happened until now is prologue, from my point of view, with an unknown outcome.

But time is not a constant, as quantum physics has demonstrated, so what in conventional terms might seem like a comparatively short future may in all the ways that really matter to be the best part of the whole story.

Writing feels perilous when you are doing it truthfully. Telling the truth, not with your brain but with your heart, is a risky business.

Accordingly, I know whenever I have touched on the truth of the past too closely because when I publish that essay I am scared.

The problem with the past, the honest past, is it involves digging up and stirring up old passions, old pains that may never have completely healed.

I am not a psychiatrist, and I'm willing to believe that some good comes of the process of resurfacing painful memories, processing them, recovering from them, if that is actually possible.

But I suspect some good also comes from acknowledging them privately but allowing them to fade away in favor of celebrating the better outcomes of our efforts at leading self-examined lives.

It's just an instinct, not a proposition. Some things stay private.

So I've established for myself that there's enough good and bad in my past to fill a conventional memoir but that would be the book I have chosen not to write.

The wonderful writer Janet Malcolm maintained a staunch belief that people led secret lives behind their public lives. Her writing sometimes explored these secrets, such as her book about the relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

The way I refer to such matters is that we each have a rich inner life. And for me the definition of true intimacy is when one person feels able to share his or her inner secret life with another person, even a stranger. 

To me that is just another word for love.

HEADLINES:

• Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have broad immunity, dimming chance of a pre-election Trump trial (AP)

• Justices give Trump broad immunity, delaying Jan. 6 trial (WP)

• Blinken seeks to reassure US allies after Biden’s debate performance (Politico)

• Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) acknowledged "very honest and serious, rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party" as Democrats continue to consider whetherreplacing Biden would be worth the chaos (HuffPost)

• France’s far right may be on the brink of power after Macron’s gamble backfired. Here’s what comes next (CNN)

• Russia has become so economically isolated that China could order the end of war in Ukraine (The Conversation)

• The national debt is over $34 trillion. It’s time to tell the truth about the U.S. government’s finances (Fortune)

• Border crossings fall to their lowest monthly number of the Biden presidency (NBC)

• Trump ally Steve Bannon surrenders to federal prison to serve 4-month sentence on contempt charges (AP)

• The Youngest Pandemic Children Are Now in School, and Struggling (NYT)

• Caribbean island of Carriacou ‘flattened’ after Hurricane Beryl makes landfall (WP)

• Why Beryl Is a Bad Sign for This Year’s Hurricane Season (NYT)

• A new index is using AI tools to measure U.S. economic growth in a broader way (CNBC)

• Robot with human brain tissue learns how to use arms (Independent)

• Taylor Swift Under Fire For Leaving Idling Plane Double-Parked Outside Store (The Onion)

 

Mattering

Without delving into the specifics, I recently was reminded of my own frailties — which, I should explain for my younger readers, is one of the less pleasant aspects of aging. These moments tend to happen more frequently than one would like.

But just as I was trying to cope with the specifics, a request came for me to meet a film crew interested in documenting the origin of the Center for Investigative Reporting, which I co-founded with Lowell Bergman and Dan Noyes in 1977.

This proved to be a welcome distraction.

As far as I can recall, no one has sought before to get down on film the origin story of CIR, which after 47 years, remains one of our unique journalistic treasures in the Bay Area and beyond.

So many people over the decades have worked to help it survive.

Anyway, returning to my tale, the crew, which is based in Europe, filmed Lowell and me in a conversation that went on for several hours. We recalled the factors that led to founding CIR and the many hurdles we overcame in the process.

We talked about the early years, the breakthroughs, the big stories, the threats, the successes and failures, the people, the awards and what we hope will ultimately be the legacy of all those efforts.

As we talked, I felt the gloom of focusing on my own mortality begin to lift. It was replaced by the desire to help some of our accomplishments live on well beyond us to the benefit of others. I’d like people at least to know the story of what we tried to do and why.

Maybe it will serve as proof that trying to make a difference in ways both large and small still matters.

HEADLINES:

• Caribbean braces as Hurricane Beryl strengthens (BBC)

• Beryl becomes 'extremely dangerous' Category 4 hurricane expected to bring life-threatening conditions to Caribbean (NBC)

• Bewildered by Biden’s debate performance, aides describe thorough preparation (WP)

• Biden’s family privately criticizes top advisers and pushes for their ouster at Camp David meeting (Politico)

• 48 Hours to Fix a 90-Minute Mess: Inside the Biden Camp’s Post-Debate Frenzy (NYT)

• How Biden and his advisers locked in a decision to run again (WP)

• Team Biden tries to quell Dem panic (Politico)

• The Supreme Court vs. the executive branch (Axios)

• Black men helped power Biden’s 2020 Georgia win. Some are wavering. (WP)

• The Digital World Is a Powder Keg. Julian Assange Lit the Fuse. (NYT)

• South Carolina implements one of US’s most restrictive public school book bans (Guardian)

• Four cases backed by conservative activists in recent years have combined to diminish the power of the Environmental Protection Agency. (NYT)

• French far right ahead in 1st round of snap elections. Here’s how runoff works and what comes next (AP)

• See them while you can: Climate change is reshaping iconic US destinations (USA Today)

• A Taliban delegation attends a UN-led meeting in Qatar on Afghanistan, with women excluded (AP)

• Study suggests connection between anxiety and Parkinson’s disease (WP)

• Mark Zuckerberg disagrees how Google and OpenAI are creating one big AI, says it's as if they are creating God (India Today)

• The deluge of bonkers AI art is literally surreal (WP)

• Conservatives Warn Watching Drag Shows Could Turn Children Into Attention Seekers (The Onion)

Non-presumptive

In the nearly 250-year history of this country, we’ve never faced a leadership quandary quite like this one, where the sitting president, who’s also his party’s presumptive nominee for re-election, may prove to be too infirm to proceed.

And so we may be about to find out what that odd term, presumptive, actually means. 

The number of voices from the liberal side imploring Joe Biden to step aside is growing larger and louder, but so far there is no indication he is listening.

My assumption is that Biden and his inner circle will wait until the post-debate polls come in, and the opinions of their major donors are known, to make a decision.

For the 81-year-old president, this has to be an agonizing moment. He has served in public office his entire career, survived endless political challenges, and led the country as its oldest chief executive ever, only to confront the proposition that the best thing he could do now would be to ride off into the sunset.

Among the news clips below are articles explaining how the process would work should Biden step aside, but nobody really knows what would happen, because we have entered uncharted waters.

The vast sea of the non-presumptive nominee.

HEADLINES:

• Behind the Curtain: Biden oligarchy will decide fate (Axios)

• The Reckoning of Joe Biden (New Yorker)

• To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race (NYT)

• Biden Gets Up After His Debate Meltdown (New Yorker)

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial board calls for Biden to drop out 'for the good of the nation' (Fox)

• Fearful and Doubting Biden, Democrats Face an Uncertain Path Forward (NYT)

• How replacing Biden as Democratic nominee would actually work (The Hill)

• The justices just shackled Biden and every future president — and created new messes for Congress to solve (Politico)

• The Supreme Court is expected to rule Monday on Trump’s claim of immunity from criminal prosecution for trying to undo his 2020 election loss. (Reuters)

• Race was once factored into college admissions. Now, it’s factored out. (WP)

• A Den of Spies: Vienna Emerges as Hub for Russian Espionage (WSJ)

• Huge mounds of rotting trash pile up in Gaza (Reuters)

• U.S. Presses to Avert Wider War Between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon (NYT)

• In France’s rebranded far right, flashes of antisemitism and racism persist (WP)

• France’s election stokes far-right-linked violence (Reuters)

• The Supreme Court just downgraded ‘the insurrection’ to trespassing (The Hill)

• Tropical Storm Beryl could strengthen into the season’s first hurricane (WP)

• AI scientist Ray Kurzweil: ‘We are going to expand intelligence a millionfold by 2045’ (Guardian)

• MIT robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks thinks people are vastly overestimating generative AI (TechCrunch)

• The Voices of A.I. Are Telling Us a Lot (NYT)

• Microsoft’s AI boss thinks it’s perfectly OK to steal content if it’s on the open web (Verge)

• Bizarre Airbnb Looks Like Someone Actually Lives There (The Onion)