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)