Civilian Airplanes Shot Down by Warriors

Flip Wilson did a riff in which an irate woman standing in front of the baggage claim at LAX  fumes, "If you could fly this plane 3,000 miles across the country, in the fog and sleet and rain,  and find Los Angeles, then you can find my bag!"

We take for granted that people who are competent enough to do such amazing things as being able to fly a plane at 35,000 feet or to shoot a missile at a plane flying 35,000 feet--and hit it--would be competent enough to not shoot down a large, lumbering passenger plane by mistake.

In 1988, the United States Ship Vincennes, a missile firing ship, shot down an Iranian passenger jet with almost 300 people on board. All were lost.

This was not the first or the last time a passenger plane has been blown out of the sky by a warrior.

But in the case of the United States, we quickly admitted our error and paid millions in reparation.

Mr. Putin cannot admit his responsibility for the killing of those Dutch and Malaysian passengers because of his own insecurities, his own smallness of mind. There is such a long tradition of lying in Russia, it would be antithetical for a Russian leader to actually be honest:  Yes, we supplied the weapons and the people to fire that missile and they were not well enough trained to trust with weapons of such power. We are sorry for this, will pay reparations.  As for reconsidering our policy, well, that is another matter. We will think about how this might affect our behavior in Eastern Ukraine, but however unfortunate this mistake is, our strategic interests have not changed, our commitment to Russian speaking peoples has not changed.  Or words to that effect.

But you cannot make people be better than they are. 

Mr. Putin is a small man leading a big nation. He is clearly not a big enough man for the job. 

Nothing we can do will change that. 

So Dutch babies fall out of the sky and lives are wasted. 

Such is life.

P.S.
    In response to Ms. Maud's observation (see Comments): The Phantom has been able to interrogate the Web

L'enfer est les autres: On the virtues of solitude and other people

Chop Suey--Edward Hopper

 Buried in a story in the New Yorker this week, a woman mentions she had emailed a man she had never met, about an issue connected to the use of the Internet,  and he replied at  3AM and either that night or some other they met in a bar, and talked for 5 hours and became "almost best friends."

Which made the Phantom think: Is there anyone he could actually sit down with, in the same place, without becoming terminally squirmy, and simply talk for five hours and not get bored, disappointed, and want to leave after one or two hours?

In his whole life?

Maybe, when he was younger and the person in question was a woman with whom he had not yet slept, and the conversation, which may have ranged over a wide variety of topics, still was, on some level, about whether or not they would go to bed.

But what about just talking ?

A college roommate, who the Phantom never talked to after college, would spend at least 5 hours every night in the lounge of the Humanities Reading Room, a space separated by a glass wall from the reading room, and in the lounge, in the mid 1960's you could smoke and take a "study break." 

But for the roommate it was always break, never study. He talked about Sartre and Camus, in whatever language he felt like that night--he was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and he seemed able to pick up new languages talking to the cabbie on the way in from the airport.  He never seemed to actually study. The Phantom felt superior to this slacker, who only talked, but of course that was then. 

Now, the Phantom thinks, what a remarkable person--he was unfailingly kind to the Phantom, whom he very rarely saw because the Phantom was always at the library, and they would  nod to each other, when the Phantom came down from the stacks to use the bathroom in the lounge. 

One of the women this roommate talked to was an intimidatingly brilliant and quite exotically beautiful young lady--Japanese father/ Austrian mother--and this coed, hearing the roommate's description of the Phantom as someone who never talked to anyone, just studied, expressed an interest in going on a date with the Phantom.

When the Phantom got home that night, he knew something was very up. His roommate often sat around the room with a few friends, smoking, talking about Andre Gide or whomever, but when the Phantom got home at eleven, the friends knew to clear out, and the roommate joined them in someone else's room. The Phantom needed to be in bed by eleven-thirty, so he could be at the library the next morning, when it opened.

But this night, nobody moved. "Eva wants to go out with you," the roommate said, in very pregnant tones.  He explained that every red blooded male on campus would give his right arm to have a date with Eva and now the Phantom had this golden opportunity and nobody was leaving the room until the Phantom placed the call. The Phantom saw this could be a prolonged debated and he calculated he could ask her out and bail out later, so he walked down the hall to the pay phone at the other end, flanked by his guard and placed the call. Fine, I've got the date, now get out of my room.

As it turned out, for a variety of reasons, the Phantom did go on the date--he was a junior in college and had never gone on a college date, although he had had girlfriends in high school.  He talked to Eva for at least five hours, at a play, afterwards on the patio of the dorm, but he could not get as much out of her as he wanted. She kept deflecting the questions back to him and he had the distinct impression she learned much more about him that night than he did about her. 

This may have been partly because, early on, when she asked him about his hermit life and why he hadn't dated in college, he replied, honestly, he was not at college to have a good time. He was at college to get past college and into medical school. A girlfriend, any friend, would be a distraction and require time. There would be time for people, later. 

She gave him an appraising look and said, "Well, that sounds like a plan."

As it turned out, that one date did more for the Phantom's academic success than any single event in his college career, ironically enough. The one time he carved out to not be studying on a Saturday night, and it bought him more academically. During the intermission at the play, the Phantom, with his Asian looking date, ran into his organic chemistry lab instructor, a Nigerian, black as night, who was there with his girlfriend, a Swedish blond, another grad student, who would be the Phantom's organic chem lab instructor the next semester. So, there we were, all chatting amiably, the only racially mixed couples at the Trinity Theater in Providence, Rhode Island that night. Thereafter, the Phantom never got less than a 95 on any organic chemistry lab.

The Phantom could never be sure, but he thought Eva probably had something to do with his election into Phi Beta Kappa--Eva had been, of course, elected as one of the very few juniors into that honorary society.  

The Phantom never saw Eva after that night, not even in the library. He heard she had a boyfriend, a poet, by her senior year. 

Friends 

The Phantom was right about one thing that night--there would be  time for people later. In medical school, in New York City, the Phantom had friends and time to enjoy them, sitting around on call rooms, in the Emergency Room, on the wards, talking. 

But talking for five hours, to one person?  One hour, maybe.

When the Phantom met his wife, they talked and talked.  Friends said they were "chatty." But it was more than chatty. She had opinions, and judgments which the Phantom thought were forcefully put and well defended.  There have been a few other people--his brother and his brother's wife--but, for the most part, the Phantom has not met many people who were worth more than a hour.

Every Thanksgiving, the Phantom hikes up Mount Major with his sons, and they talk the whole way up and back, but that is not like sitting across from someone for three hours, in one place.

The Phantom's wife dragged him off to Italy once--under protest. But there in the piazzas, the Phantom saw Italians sitting around outdoor tables over small cups of coffee and tiny pastries, just talking. Those Italians talked for hours, into the night. (When they worked remains a mystery.) And, of course, the Phantom could not understand what they were saying, but they seemed absorbed, not angry, not agitated, just interested in what they were talking about.   

Connect and Die

In college, the Phantom felt vaguely superior to students who seemed afraid to be alone, who seemed to need contact with other people. The Phantom was secure in his solitude and read Walden and other accounts of solitary life. 

In Lady Chatterly's Lover,  Lady Chatterly spies Mellors, the game keeper, washing up outside his cabin. She watches him, fascinated, from the woods, entranced by a man who lives alone and who seems fine with that.  Her world is one of too much company--her husband, who depends on her, his friends, her friends, her family. She never has time for herself.  But this man, living alone in the woods on her husband's estate, has quite a lot of time for himself. And she envies him that, and she respects his independence. 

In "Huis Clos," Sartre's play about three people locked in a room for all eternity, they come to understand, "Hell is other people."  Of course, Sartre did not mean it that simply--he was talking about the angst of seeing yourself through the eyes of other people, a process of depersonalization.  But the point holds--either way you think of it.

And that is the human condition:  Women (or men or simply other people)--can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Foundlings: And The Poor Have Children

The Ultimate Parent

At last, today's Sunday New York Times has an article about what is driving the exodus of children from Central America, in particular Honduras. 

The author, Sonia Nazario, has actually been reporting from these countries and she draws a distinction between "immigrants" and "refugees," which I infer means "immigrants" leave a country which is pretty bad, seeking greener pastures where "refugees" leave a country because the drug cartel will kill them if they stay, or Adolph Hitler's willing accomplices will kill them, or Fidel Castro will kill them or somebody we really do not like with kill them. If it's somebody we may have a relationship with who may kill them, say the government of Egypt or Russia or Brazil, well, then we may not call these people "refugees." 

A considerable number of these kids are not sent by parents, still back in Honduras, parents who can "get the message" when a planeload of kids arrives back in Honduras, having been sent home by the Republicans.  Their parents, in fact, are already in the United States, and the kids were trying to get to them. 

The other thing, which cannot be said too often, is that the whole Republican mantra of "gaining control of the border" or "being effective at interdiction" or "building an effective force to patrol the border"  would make sense if these children were trying to sneak into the United States, if they were trying to avoid detection. In fact, these kids are throwing themselves at the first American uniform they see (as Gail Collins has said.)  So putting the National Guard on the border as John Boehner has suggested, or lining up every soldier, sailor and marine we've got, all holding hands from one end of the Mexican border to the other, would not help because the kids would only too happily run into their arms.

Which is another way of saying Mr. Boehner has not the foggiest idea what he is talking about.  He, of course, blames it all on Obamacare.

The Last Baby Mailed and Delivered by the US Postal Service

Campus Rape, Again

Anna

Above the fold, Sunday New York Times, another story about campus rape.  Again, the paper takes the tack every news organization takes on this subject: We are the muckrakers; we will tell the world about this simple, monstrous wrong which is being swept under the fraternity house rug by college administrations either too clueless to pursue rape charges or motivated by more venal things, like the desire to protect star athletes who are worth millions to the college.

And again, the story involves an 18 year old  coed who has A/ Gone to a party  B/ At a fraternity or some other place which is all about sex  C/ Drinks enough so that when she tries to tell her story, she has to admit there are significant parts of the evening she cannot recall.  Similar stories have come out of the Ivy League, the US Naval Academy--all across the college spectrum.

This particular story includes a comment from "Anna," the accuser, which may be relevant:  She finds herself at a college which is very "preppy" where she finds herself in competition for boys with girls who are "blonde and wear $500 sunglasses."  Does this suggest she may have behaved in a way to encourage male libidinous advances because she thought herself to be less attractive than her competition, or was this simply her way of trying to describe her situation?

When a woman is not at a college, and goes to a bar and meets a man who says, "Your place or mine?"  or "Would you like to come home with me, to look at my etchings?"  She knows she is being "propositioned."  That means, she knows she is not leaving the bar, getting into a car or a cab or walking home with a man to admire his furniture. She has accepted the idea of having sex with him. Or at the very least, she is agreeing to put herself into the position where she will be alone with this man, you wants to have sex with her.  This does not mean she cannot back out, once she gets there, but surely she bears some responsibility for what may occur next.

In Anna's case, she describes having danced by "grinding" her pubic bones into the pubic bones of the boy who she says raped her. She says she left the main dance floor to go up to a more "private" party in the bedrooms upstairs. 

She does not recall being bent over the pool table while the football player penetrated he from behind--an act witnessed by a friend, and apparently videotaped by others. She had drunk too much. 

But she does recall being traumatized.

Every case, the Phantom realizes is different, but there are some common factors here:  1. A woman who drinks so much she has impaired judgment and memory  2. A visit to a place where sex is known to occur at a time when sex is likely to happen.

Of course, if a man goes to a brothel, he ought not complain about women asking him for money, once he has sex.  If a woman goes to a fraternity party, and gets invited to a boy's bedroom, can she complain if he attempts to have sex with her?

Of course, nothing quite holds a candle to the infamous Brown University case where a fraternity brother returned to his room during a fraternity party to find a drunk, naked coed in his bed, he had never met before. He had sex with her, he admitted. They exchanged phone numbers the next morning, she admitted. Then she accused him of rape and the university committee hearing the case expelled the fraternity brother in his junior year.  

Tell me: What is the Phantom missing here?  Somewhere between "she had it coming; what did she expect" and "she was defenseless against this brutal assault" lies some area of sanity.  

That is not an area we inhabit now.

The Conundrum of Immigration

 We occupy this ground, we draw these boundaries and we say who can set foot on this ground and who can stay. 
Comanches living in the Great Plains had no such concepts of ownership of geographic territory. They were nomads, which meant they packed up their tepees and moved on, following the buffalo and they did not think, as far as we can say, in terms of ownership of land.
Europeans, with kings, built forts and kings "granted" land to strong men who controlled who lived in their realms. These European kings even "granted" land in North America, and those men, like Calvert and Baltimore, then "owned" what would later become entire American states. Napoleon "owned" the entire continent from the Mississippi to California.
The United States planted a flag on the moon, which might be thought of as claiming a sort of ownership. 
In some sense all this "ownership" of land is a bit bizarre. Birds, dogs, deer, fox don't recognize these ownership rights. They poop wherever they want.
But the idea of a "country" does involve drawing lines, boundaries. Your brother may have drawn a line down the back seat of the car (in the days cars had seats which were not "bucket" seats) and if you crossed that line, you had invaded his space.

But one of the central ideas of nationhood has to do with who "belongs," who is permitted to simply live and sleep in a territory.

Of course, once you live in a place, you may act to avail yourself of the "grid" which other people, which the government ruling there, has constructed--water, power, schools, healthcare, police protection from men with guns. And the people living there claim the "right" to rule on who gets in on this bounty of space and services.

So, we have immigration laws. 

Look at the children photographed here, from Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century. 
Would you want to deny these people a place in the club?

But, how about these folks?

 And how about these?

If you found yourself subtly drawn a little more to the cute little blonde Dutch kids, but less to the people who look less like you, then you begin to see the problem.

In 1939, Cordell Hull, the American Secretary of State sent back a ship called S S St. Louis to Germany with over 900 souls aboard and they all died in concentration camps. The passengers were Jews fleeing Hitler and the Third Reich.

Cordell Hull 

In 1940, Hull's Assistant Secretary of State, Breckenridge Long, a fair haired boy, a Princeton graduate, upper class type,  tried to send back the SS Quanza but Eleanor Roosevelt (who was a genteel antisemite in her youth) intervened and over a hundred Jews were saved.

Long sent a memo to his underlings at the State Department describing how to prevent more Jews from getting into the United States, as Wikipedia recounts:

 "We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas."^[2] Ultimately, the effect of the immigration policies set by Long's department was that, during American involvement in the war, Ninety percent of the quota places available to immigrants from countries under German and Italian control were never filled. If they had been, an additional 190,000 people could have escaped the atrocities being committed by the Nazis. ^[3]

In November 1943, when the House was considering two bills that would have established a separate government agency charged with assisting the rescue of Jewish refugees, Long gave secret testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee saying that the majority of 580,000 refugees admitted from Europe were Jewish, and that such legislation would be a rebuke of the State Department in wartime.

Breckenridge Long 

So, at the extremes of behavior--when we are sending people back to certain death or dismemberment--we can see the villainy. 

But, what about when we send people back to Honduras, or places where life is violent, short and brutish? What about sending people back to the famine and Shariah law in Somali?   

On the other hand, China has a billion people. That's 1,000 million. We have 300 million. Suppose 10% of the people living in China decided to come live in the USA--that's 100 million people. That would mean 25% of all people living in the USA would speak Chinese. How would we cope with a 25% increase in our population, people who don't even speak English?

So, do we have the "right" to turn people away from our shores?
If so, how do we make those choices?

It all seems very clear to some people. Rush Limbaugh has no doubts. Neither does John Boehner or Mitch McConnell or any Republican.

But, as Bertrand Russell once observed:  "The trouble with the world is the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt."