Time Capsules: A War Between Civilizations

Chrsitopher Hedges

Taking down the decorations from the Christmas tree, my wife opened a box in which she stores ornaments and found a newspaper, used as packing material. It is a New York Times  piece from Sunday, January 1, 1995, 21 years ago.

It was from what was then my favorite section, "The Week In Review." What caught her attention was an article on page E5, "France Wages a Lonely Battle with Radical Islam."  What caught my eye was its author, Christopher Hedges, author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a book published 7 years later.

The article from 1995 was about the French commando raid on an airplane hijacked by Algerian Muslims in Marseilles. The commandos killed 4 hijackers and rescued 170 passengers. 

"France frames the conflict as a clash of civilizations. It has carried the fight into the schools, where Muslim girls wearing traditional head scarves are expelled," Hedges notes. "France fears the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees, swelling the population of Algerians already living in France (now 800,000) and aggravating tensions with three million other immigrants from the third world." 

Hedges adds the French President "has repeatedly warned that Muslim radicals are making inroads among many young Arab immigrants." 

 Remember, this is 1995. 

"French officials also say they can never allow the nuclear research program in Algeria to come under the control of an Islamic state...The religious ethos of the movement has bred a self-sacrificing fanaticism that makes it crueler, less prone to compromise and harder to control."

He ends with, "The Algerian war has now been carried for the first time, to French soil. It may not be the last time."

The rest of the article contrasted the American diplomatic posture, which was then one of accommodation to radical Islam in Algeria, as a reaction to America's own errors in dealing with Iran. The Ayatollah Khomeini had taken refuge from Iran in France while America supported the oppressor of fundamentalist Muslims, the Shah, and the Americans made implacable enemies of these extremists. The Americans now counseled trying to turn away wrath with kindness. Maybe, if you gave the radicals what they wanted...

What Hedges, and the Americans could not know in 1995 is that neither the American nor the French approach would stem the tide.  The French had a clearer appreciation of the threat. 

Intriguingly, when was the last time you heard about an Algerian nuclear bomb?

Christopher Hedges later wrote about  the world of war correspondents, in particular the coverage of another war which involved Muslim vs Christian opponents, in Sarajevo.  Kurt Schork, who grew up in an adjoining town to mine in Maryland, and who married a girl from  my high school, who I and every one of the other 300 males in our class of 1965 idolized, covered Sarajevo for Reuters. He did the story of Bosko Brckic, a Serb who loved a Muslim woman, Admira Ismic, since high school. Trying to flee Sarajevo, Serb snipers cut them down; their bodies entwined a few yards away from another sniper's kill, a man shot five months earlier, decomposing,  and nobody had  felt it was safe enough to retrieve owing to unrelenting sniper fire. 

Sniper kill

The point of Hedges's book was that covering war is such an adrenalin rush, it becomes an addiction. "Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so," General George Patton said. 

Kurt Schork

It may be those young men who stream across Europe, through Turkey, to ISIS feel the same way. 

Christmas 2015

In the movie, "White Christmas"  released in 1954, two couples arrive in Vermont, expecting to find a winter wonderland only to discover temperatures approaching 70. This poses problems for the innkeeper and for the two women who were hired to sing and dance at the inn's showroom because with no snow, the inn is empty.

All this before global warming.

Today, walking around Hampton with the dog, no such dismay registered despite the near 70 degree temperature.  Driveways and neighborhood streets were packed with cars bearing license plates from Massachusetts and even further afield. People were visiting, presumably families getting together, not perhaps returning home to Bethlehem for the census, but the town did have a social feel. 

Oddly, this communion was far more pronounced in the more modest parts of town.  In Glen Hill, which has two to three bedroom homes, often one level, with HVAC trucks and F-150's in many driveways, the homes were hopping and people spilled outside onto decks and patios and lawns; but along  Rockrimmon Road, where stately mansions are set on huge lots with forest between them, long driveways and stone masons have been finding work for long walls and landscaping, the homes were quiet, dark, lifeless.  It is possible the visitors here parked their cars out of sight or the owners may be spending their Christmas in the Caribbean. 

In the movie, snow arrives in the last scene, and we are relieved that the natural order has been restored. Of course, in this movie, the natural order includes not a single Black face, not even among the train porters. There are no Jews identifiable and certainly no Muslims.  This is the America of Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, of night clubs with big bands and songs which never allude to desire.  The closest thing to a torch song is song by Rosemary Clooney who expresses disappoint in her song, but no real passion.  What a light year away 1954 seems from current day America. 1954 was the year the Brown vs Board of Education was handed down, which desegregated public schools (at least for a while.)

It's a different America now, at least outside of Hampton, New Hampshire.Walking past Marston School, the Hampton Academy and Winnacunnet High, I thought about the kids I have seen flowing in and out of these schools. They would look right at home on the sets of White Christmas.  In some ways, Hampton is a sort of Brigadoon, a place out of time, untouched by changes around it.  The people here, though, are not unaware of the changes in the nation which surrounds them. 

What I don't know is what the people here think about those changes.

The Big Lie

“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.” 
― George Carlin

As in so many other things, George Carlin had the best insight. If you proclaim, confidently, something so vast--"Illegal Hispanic immigrants are murderers and rapists" you have shot out of the atmosphere and there is no earthly way to refute what you have said, at least not without resorting to numbers and statistics and explanations of methodology and all those dull, tedious things which make eyes glaze over. It's much more fun to just shout, "U-S-A Number One!"

When you look at your crowd and say "There's something going on with these Muslims! I don't know, but I have to say, we ought to think about this. You know, they're beheading people, shooting people, and when FDR rounded people up and put them into internment camps, well maybe that's something we ought to think about"--you are not citing evidence; you are "just saying."

When you say there were thousand of cheering Muslims on the New Jersey rooftops watching the Twin Towers go down, you don't need evidence if you are telling people what they want to hear.

In "God Is Not Great" Christopher Hitchens marshalls a long list of items which add up to a convincing indictment of the religion of Islam, and make it appear quite vile. Of course, Hitchens has no special animus toward Islam: He compiles  lists for Christianity and Judiasm which are just as horrific.  What he is saying is reilgion, or at least organized religions are by nature perverse, corrupted and harmful.

He does not allow for the possibility that Islam may enrich many lives, provide a sense of meaning and a direction toward virtue. He focuses only on the vile.  Pointing to the idea that sex is depraved outside of marriage for the devout Muslim but eternal sex with virgins in Paradise as a reward for detonating a suicide vest may cause one to question.  That instant marriage licenses for men who wish to have sex with women in a brothel followed by instant divorces tends to taint the idea of the sanctity of marriage is not a difficult argument to win.  That the religious leader of Iran can command murder of an author who has offended Islamic sensibilities, that murder of cartoonists for depicting the Prophet in a derogatory way, that words, disagreement which an Iman finds objectionable should rightly be followed by violence, that disagreement with what one group of Muslim thinkers should not be allowed, that free speech is thought to be an anathema whereas passive obedience is high virtue are all attributes of a "religion" which tend to support Hitchens's view.

On the other hand, as he notes, when Catholic priests forbid the use of condoms even when one spouse has AIDS because this would thwart "God's will," we begin to see he is not inveighing against Muslims so much as against the whole idea of religious authority. Of course, he points to the sexual abuse by priests which was dealt with by transferring troublesome priests to new venues where they could resume their depredations unimpaired. 

Jews have their own problems. Mohels, the men who perform ritual circumcisions will suck the foreskins of the infant boys they are circumcising, a repellent idea, but part of the tradition which, once you get past the image becomes even more of a problem when you learn some of these men had Herpes simplex infections on their lips which quickly resulted in Herpes meningitis in the infants and yet the practice continues to be defended by the religious sect within Judiasm which perpetuates this. 

What Hitchens does not say is this whole story horrifies the vast majority of Jews, just as the overwhelming majority of Catholics is outraged by pedophile priests. 

Can it be that the overwhelming majority of Muslims feel the same way about the things Hitchens depicts about Islam?

When the Individual Is Stained by the Group

It makes my skin crawl to think I may find myself in agreement with anything Donald Trump has to say about Muslims or, for that matter, almost anything, but when he asks, "What is going on there?" I do have to admit, I share his puzzlement.

Samanth Subramanian, writing in the New Yorker (Dec 21, 28) tells the story of several Muslim bloggers in Bangladesh who found themselves on a "Hit List" because they had blogged about their "ardent rationalist"  ideas, one of whom had the temerity to say: "I don't care about whether God exists. Let him do his business and let me do my business."

 It is not clear whether this was the extent of his offense, which got him on the list; he may have been "guilty of using very  filthy language about the Prophet Muhammad;" he may not have. But what is clear is his name was placed on a list of roughly 50 names of "free thinkers" and he was hacked to death by men wielding machetes, as Bangladeshi police, seen on video in the background, did nothing. 

It may also be true the organization Hefazat-e-Islam may have given the Bangladeshi government a list of atheists they wanted executed.  The fact is, there are entire Islamic nations we find to be pretty terrible right now. There are nations like Jordan, which we can embrace, and there are Muslims in Palestine, for whom we can feel sympathy, but it's hard to think kind thoughts about Iran or Saudi Arabia, or Bangladesh or Pakistan.

Indonesia, home to what may be more Muslims than live in the Middle East seems too unconnected by culture and ethnicity to matter much when leaders point to those benign Muslims. Those aren't the Muslims we are thinking about much now. 

On the other hand, there have been prosecutions in Bangladesh for the murders of two of the bloggers.

At least some Muslims consider hacking a person to death for speaking insults or professing atheism to be justifiable, if not laudatory,  and they say they are motivated by what Islam teaches. How do we know, as non Muslims, what "Islam teaches" when we see the actions some Muslims take?

When the only narrative is a story told by Donald Trump about Muslims celebrating in New Jersey as the Twin Towers burned, Islam has, at the very least a problem with the brand.  There were well documented celebrations that day in Palestine.  Trump sites polls, likely bogus, which say American Muslims want to live under Shariah law and endorse violence against infidels. Where is the counter narrative going to come from?

One may ask if this extremism is peculiar to Islam, or is simply the logical outcome of any religion, of the conviction you are in possession of "God's will," where all others are violating God's will.

It can be argued Christians have been every bit as bloodthirsty, if you look back through history, but most of us are not really concerned about what happened 900 years ago. We care about where we have arrived now.

Are Christians now intolerant of those who attack  what they hold sacred?
Consider Bertrand Russell, who said, "There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is He believed in Hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching." Did the pope put him on a hit list for that?

Or listen to Christopher Hitchens: "Why, if god was the creator of all things were we supposed to "praise" him so incessantly for doing what came to him naturally?  This seemed servile, apart from anything else. If Jesus could heal a blind person he happened to meet, then why not heal blindness? What was so wonderful about his casting out devils, so that the devils would enter a herd of pigs instead? That seemed sinister: more like black magic."

Here we have two men, one an avowed atheist, attacking Christ and yet not even the Ku Klux Klan is calling for their names to be placed on a list to be hacked to death.


Is there any other significant segment of any religion today , other than Islam, calling for violence against infidels, unbelievers, non believers or those simply indifferent to the teachings of their faith?  

The big question, of course is: who placed the  men on the list to be hacked to death?  Can these men be seen as "representative" of other members of Islam or are they simply psychopaths using Islam as a cover for their murderous pathological inclinations? 

Cynics have claimed what draws some men to join the police is it allows them socially acceptable cover to exercise their sadistic pathology; can the same be said of those young men rushing to join ISIS, murdering, raping and pillaging their way across the fertile crescent invoking Islamic authority.

President Obama suggested, as a practical matter, American Muslims disavow the idea of killing people for voicing ideas which may insult or contradict Muslim beliefs. 

Some Muslims have taken offense to this: Why do I, as an American Muslim, have to declare my disagreement with these psychopathic fundamentalists? Do you suspect me of this psychopathology simply because my last name is Shah or Al-Azziz? Are you seeing me as an individual or placing me into a group?  Once, all that mattered was if a man was Black. That one characteristic was all you saw, all you needed to know about him. Are you not doing the same thing now to Muslims?

The problem is, you have enough Muslims, even if they are a small minority,shooting, throwing bombs and hacking in the name of Islam to confuse at least some Americans who are personally unfamiliar with Muslims.  After all, it was Muslims who murdered cartoonists in Paris, and Muslims to murdered theater goers and patrons of sidewalk cafe's there. A Muslim cleric, the leader of his Muslim nation,  put the author of "The Satanic Verses" on a hit list. Muslims who set off the bombs at the Boston marathon and Muslims who shot people in San Bernadino, not to mention Muslims who flew the planes into the World Trade Center.  And it is Muslims streaming through Turkey to fight in Syria to establish a caliphate. 

The assimilated, tolerant American Muslim must cringe whenever a new attack occurs, but the fact he does not need to apologize does not mean he does not need to react.

The fact that someone shares one characteristic with you does not mean you share anything else with that individual.  Not every German was a Nazi, nor every Italian a fascist, nor every Jew a member of the group that blew up the King David Hotel. American Jews shuddered when Ethel and Julius Rosenberg turned out to be the people who stole the secret to making an atomic bomb and gave it to the Russians. No widespread reprisals were visited upon American Jews for that, fortunately. But what if that had become part of a series of events to call into question the loyalty of "American Jews?"   

But, fact is, Germans knew how others perceived them after the crimes of the Holocaust were publicized and their government made substantial efforts to denounce the thinking which lead to that and individual Germans for decades understood they had to personally disavow that sort of thinking. Southern whites had to personally dispel any notion they harbored racist ideas, because they knew how Blacks and northern whites perceived them as soon as they opened their mouths and started talking in the accent others associated with George Wallace, Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan.

Sometimes, if you are a member of a group, you have to prove you are an individual and you understand how that group is perceived. Jewish boys have had to show they are not obsessed with money, that that prejudice does not apply to every individual of the group, and not to the group at all.

It sucks that individual Muslims might now have to feel they have to defend themselves against accusations they endorse violence and intolerance against those who do not believe what Islam teaches. But Muslims would not be the first and will not be the last to be put in this position by those who say they speak for their faith or their group. 

When, after the Paris shootings, a Muslim reporter asked the Iman of the main mosque of Paris why he had not organized a million Muslim march to oppose extremism in the name of Islam, he sheepishly replied he had tried but the reply from his assembly was that he did not represent the feelings of the members, especially the younger members. 

We are left asking: What does this mean? Is this an indicator that all Muslims agree with the attackers? Is this a case of Qui Tacit Consentit (He who remains silent, consents)? Or is this simply an index of how alienated Muslims in France feel, a feeling not shared by their more assimilated and successful Muslim cohort in the United States?

The fact is, I know and work with many physicians who are Muslim, although I have never thought of them as Muslim. They are simply doctors, fathers, mothers. It has only been recently, when I got Happy Holidays email cards from these people it struck me--Gee, he's a Muslim. I wonder how he feels about all this?

Probably, it's up to these citizens to tell me, not up to me to ask.

Homeland Instructs

Carrie Mathison

Allison Ruthless Carr

The Donald has a plan to do what Barack Obama has failed time and time again to do--i.e. to extinguish ISIS.  It's very simple, really. We just bomb the whatever out of them.  Ted Cruz would do more, because, of course, Mr. Obama has never thought of this: Cruz would not only bomb ISIS, but he would carpet bomb ISIS and bomb them not just back to the stone age,  but he would bomb them so much the sand under which those camel drivers stand would glow, or melt or turn to glass, or something. 

The Phantom, however knows both these guys are clueless. He knows this because he watches "Homeland" where he has learned terrorists elude detection, despite the fact they all look like Arabs and they live in places like Berlin and Washington, D.C., where despite the prevailing whiteness, they can exploit the new Cosmopolitan look of these cities to more or less melt in. 

What the Phantom has learned from "Homeland" is that bombs are worthless against people who are interwoven with ordinary, innocent citizens. What you need is human intelligence.  To be more specific, you need intelligent intelligence officers who can track down leads based on a single observation, like looking at the wound on Quinn's abdomen and realizing he must have had sophisticated medical care and then tracing back from the spot he was found to find the doctor, who leads you to the room where the terrorists left their maps of the Berlin subway system.

And Carrie does not get faked out by the misinformation floated by other sly operatives who know just how to throw the police off the track.

Horrific as drive by shootings and pipe bombs are, Saran gas in subways (which actually happened once, in Japan and could easily happen here) and dirty bombs (which happened once in the movie "Peacemaker") are even worse.  You can bomb ISIS all you want--it won't help with the nasties who live among us.

Which is why the Donald wants to round them all up and throw them into internment camps. 

Which is really pretty remarkable, when you think about it: Republicans were so terrified of the 30 odd prisoners at Gitmo they refused to allow them to be transferred to maximum security prisons in the USA.  Republicans were so frightened they didn't want any of these scary guys in Alcatraz or Sing Sing or any place on the Continental US of A, because, you know,  one of them might escape. And then where would we be?
But having a million Muslims in camps all over America, that doesn't bother Republicans, or, as we call them in New Hampshire, Republicons, because the Donald calls it the "Democrat" party and because they are contrary and con artists.  but getting back to the Muslims thrown into concentration camps--they would not be scary or even a problem, because, you know, they would be at camp. None of them would get upset about that. If a few escaped, they'd just go back to driving taxi cabs. No harm there. 

What the Donald needs is Carrie Mathison advising him on national security.  Let Ted Cruz make do with Alison Carr, who may not be trustworthy, but she is very cute, and they really are soul mates, those two.

Alternative Universes: Alternative Realitiez

I don't read much fiction any more, but I watch a lot on TV, and there is wonderful stuff to watch. 

One of the powers of fiction is it's ability to allow us to imagine how things might be if only...And once you think about the possibilities, you begin to see the real world differently.

"The Man in the High Castle" has an irresistible premise: What if the Third Reich had got the A bomb first and won the Second World War, and split up the United States with the Japanese? What if Germany held the East and Japanese the West? 

What would the world be like with America ruled by fascists? 

There was a spoof/comedy once about what America would have looked like if the South had won the Civil war, with families in suburban Washington having house slaves and slaves working in the state houses of the South, at country clubs, in factories, on automobile assembly lines. 

We now have a Republican Presidential wannabe telling us 51% of American Muslims want to live under Sharia law, that 21% agree with violent action against infidel Americans and who says he would close our borders to Muslims, even tourists. 

What would that world look like? 

We have Republicans who want to see college students carrying guns around campus, to be ready for the next mass shooter. They want people sitting at sidewalk cafes carrying heat, and of, course, bartenders with the AK-15 behind the bar. We could see all these 20 somethings drinking kegs at frat parties, erupting in shoot outs at the OK corral. Great TV. 

(What I want to know is, when, among all those shootings we have read about has a citizen ever pulled his gun and stopped the shooter and saved the day?  Now, I understand what the National Rifle Association says is the reason this has not happened is we simply don't have enough guns available, but once we have a critical mass, then the shooters will finally get theirs and how. But, really, we have a gun for every man woman and child in the country. How many do we need for someone with a gun to be the first to bring down a sneak attack shooter?)

Of course, I have said frequently, "Give me a baseball bat, and the element of surprise, and I'll go up against your Glock 9 or your AK-15 any day." Which is to say, the reason the shooters are never stopped by the citizen packing heat under his coat is the shooters are smart enough to keep their weapons hidden long enough to gain an element of surprise, so they can shoot without being shot.  I can see scenes where the shooter arrives and lays waste to the well armed young-uns before they can get their guns out of their belts.


In the old Westerns it was called, "Getting the drop" on someone. You draw first. This is an advantage. 

So, in reality, things don't happen the way Republicans and their benefactors at the NRA say they ought to happen. In fiction, anything is possible, but in dystopian fiction it can happen in the worst way imaginable.

Wouldn't you love seeing a dystopian drama about America under the rule of Donald Trump and his adoring haters?  We'd have just so much winning, I know, I know. But think about it:  We'd have airplanes flying off into the skies over Syria, Iraq and who knows where,  bombing the "shit" out of someone. And we'd all be so proud.  

With Ted Cruz as the Secretary of Defense, we'd make the sands glow with all the bombing and winning. Muslims would have to be segregated out because the majority wish us harm, so that would mean internment camps, "until our representatives can figure it out," which could take, well, years.  

There would be round ups of 11 million illegal immigrants, which would make the cattle cars of the Third Reich (which handled only half that number) look like a junior varsity game.  And we'd have that famous wall along our Southern border, and once the illegals figured out that was not a good bet, they would, like water running downhill, start flowing around through the Gulf States, California and hopping transports to Canada, where the unguarded border is a lot longer.  

Oh, that's just the obvious stuff. We could imagine much more:  ISIS now able to enlist far larger numbers both in the Middle East, where they overwhelm the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, not to mention the Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.  Indonesia's millions of Muslims turn radical and turn their attention to Malaysia and Australia.  Beheadings abound, and radicalization of America's previously happily assimilated Muslims results in a resistance with a vengeance.  White Supremacist groups organize through the Dakotas, Wyoming and Idaho and take over the police forces there. The Ku Klux Klan becomes just another Patrolman's Benevolent Association and the police hold their conventions in South America, where they can learn from the masters of a police state first hand.

I don't know, but I could see at least 12 episodes, just in the first season.  HBO, get me David Simon, Aaron Sorkin and Phillip Dick on the line. 

This just can't miss.  

No Fly Watch Lists and the 2nd Amendment

Mad Dog

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
--2nd Amendment


Mad Dog does not believe the 2nd Amendment gives individual citizens the right to own a gun. It is the only place in the Constitution where an explanation for a right granted "the people" is provided--the reason we say this right exists is to provide members of a militia their guns.  

Freedom  Package for Christmas in the name of the Prince of Peace

BUT,  there is another amendment, the 5th amendment, which says nobody shall be deprived of private property without "due process of law."  And that's where Mad Dog finds himself with strange bedfellows. How does a citizen find himself on a "watch list"  and by what process is he denied the ability to travel without a hearing or even knowing who his accusers are or on what basis they have acted to put his name on a list?

Now this star chamber list, of secret origins, is being extended to include other behaviors beyond getting on an airplane, like buying a gun.

I can only agree with that gun loving 2nd Amendment type who objects to being denied the right tohis precious gun because some nameless bureaucrat has put his name on a list. This smacks of the worse abuses of oppressive governments.

Of course, the gun lovers will have to agree their argument would mean the end of the "no fly lists" which may or may not mean terrorists can board and blow up their airplanes, but that is their right. Live free or die, and die.  

Mad Dog goes to the airport and sometimes finds himself whisked ahead of other passengers because his name has, for this flight only, been mysteriously placed on a "TSA pre-check"  list, again for reasons known only to the government, without any explanation.

From the paranoid view of the gun clingers, all the government has to do to deny them the right to buy new guns is to slap them on the no fly list, without notification, trial or explanation and millions could, conceivably, be denied access to their holy implements, those instruments of a vengeful God, those freedom sticks, the guns. 

Don't like those guys, but they certainly do have a point and you have to respect that.

Home of the Brave

The Perfect Image of the Donald

When people are frightened, they want a strong man to protect them.  They want Daddy.  The appeal of the Donald has been said to be he is offering himself up as the strong man. "I'm a winner. Have been all my life."

What this really means is what 38% of likely Republican primary voters really want is to retreat into infantilism and magical thinking. 

Oh, I'm so frightened! Those bad ISIS scum are coming to get me. They kill 50, 100 at a time. 

We are a nation of 300 million.

They knock down two skyscrapers; we rebuild them.

ISIS thugs and lunatics can shoot off their small arms and throw their pipe bombs, and our thoughts and prayers go out and we finish our big Macs, go fill up our F150 gas tanks and go home and watch the football game.  
In Washington and New York, there are grown ups who worry about terrorists getting hold of a nuclear war head and making a dirty bomb or getting some Saran gas into the subways, the way some wackos once did in Japan, but even these horrors would not derail our economy or national well being. When you can bring down the two biggest sky scrapers in New York, kill thousands and see barely a hiccup in American functioning, you have to know, no network of small timers is really life threatening to the Republic.
In our parent's generation, in our grandparent's generation we faced two  separate nations, each with 60 million people, with guns and war planes and submarines, one of which managed to wipe out our entire Pacific fleet in a sneak attack.  Japanese raped and pillaged their  way across China, the Pacific islands right through the Philippines.  Japan was organized and capable of invasion. Germany did the same and worse on the other side of the planet. These were scary adversaries, capable of not just disrupting American life but of completely destroying it. 

We responded to that by putting our Japanese Americans in internment camps, which was a weak and cowardly thing to do, but apart from that, we did not stop going to movie theaters and we went to work, and continued life, knowing there were bad wolves out there hungering for our vital organs, but they were visible and we got organized to defeat them by pumping out 10,000 airplanes a month. 




We did not cower or quake or wail. Not like the people in those crowds who rally for Trump, who, it appears from what you can see on TV, to share certain characteristics:

1. They are frightened, cowardly people. Oh, you've got your skin head, big armed guys, but even these guys are basically cowards. They don't think of themselves as cowards, but they only have the courage to shout out their hate when they've got the big man on the stage giving them cover. They are afraid to live in the real world, so they create their own fantasy world in which Ronald Reagan was the great emancipator, and white, Christian Americans, the only legitimate Americans, a world where these losers "belong" and those they wish to push below them on the pecking order are losers and do not belong.



2. They are the losers of our ruthless economic  system. They are the high school drop outs, the jobless, the marginally employed, not the entrepreneurs or the winners the Donald talks about. On some level, they perceive they are losers and the Donald offers them the opportunity to revolt and join the winner class. As if. 




Now Donald's crowd wants  the school yard bully to protect them.  What sort of people are these? Lip quivering, knees knocking, afraid to live with danger? 


That's President Obama's big problem: He thinks he's talking to a nation of grown ups. The Donald understands who he's talking to. 

Looking at the Donald; Warming to Hillary

Got to say, I have not be a huge fan of Hillary Clinton, until lately.




But now, I've got to watch the Donald every morning.

The Donald

And I imagine having to listen to the Donald for 4 years.

Whenever a demagogue emerges--and the last one like Trump was Spiro Agnew--the haters come out of the woodwork, because now it's okay to say the stuff in public even their over cooked brains somehow were under constraint to hide deep within their amygdala's.  So newspapers got flooded with anti Semetic letters, and letters about the coming race war.  A public figure like the Donald has an unleashing effect. 

Did you spend the night...Alone? 

And I think of Hillary answering the questions from those bottom dwellers, those knuckle dragging Republicans on the committee, particularly the one from that Congresswoman from Alabama who asked Hillary if she had spent the night alone the night of Benghazi, when Hillary finally left the State Department at 2 AM. And Hillary, rather bored, said, Yes. And the Congresswoman, playing a role she had likely been dying to play her whole life, leaned forward and asked, "The whole night? Alone?"
And Hillary, looking across the floor at this woman, seeing perhaps for the first time just how clueless this woman was, Hillary laughed, very wonderful laugh, which said in it all she needed to say about what a dimwit this woman had to be. And the woman said, "Well, I don't see what's so funny."

And Hillary just shook her head, and said, "It's been a long day."

Hillary can be the master of understatement, as she was when Lincoln Chafee suggested she was too unethical to be President and the moderator asked her if she wanted to respond and she simply said, "No."  She knows when the other person has hanged himself with his own rope, or, in the case of the Congresswoman, her own rope. The wonderful thing about that scene is it so sharply delineated the room into those who could get the joke and those who could not. It was pretty much a red state/ blue state thing, in its purest form. The people you really had to feel sorry for were the Republicans watching this from their own homes and, if there are any Republicans left who are not radicalized, they had to be thinking--Oh, my God. Am I one of these people now? 

But how will Hillary handle Trump?   Will she just step back and allow him to rant and free associate and bring him down with a one line zinger? Are her people working on this now?  Where is Aaron Sorkin when you need him?

The Refugee Dilemma: Rachel Aviv in the New Yorker

Rachel Aviv

I can hardly imagine Donald Trump or any of his supporters read The New Yorker : too many words, to much detail and complexity, but that is exactly what is required when we consider the refugee conundrum.

When Mr. Trump announced his candidacy last summer, he made a splash with his nativist, "Know Nothing"  braggadocio concerning Mexican illegal aliens: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." Mr. Trump alluded to numbers:  "If you look at the statistics on rape, on crime, on everything, coming in illegally to the country, they're mind-boggling."

The Washington Post, among others, looked at the statistics, but statistics are numbers, and you have to know how they were collected, what exactly they reflect. Going on the Internet, you see numbers coming from every direction. 

The conservative blogs have numbers. The "American Thinker" says the "Government Accountability Office" says in 2010 "criminal aliens" in federal prisons was 55,00 and in state and local jails 296,000. In 2005, 27% of the total federal inmates were "criminal aliens." This is of a population of 25.3 million non US citizens in the US, of which 10.8 million "without lawful immigration status." In 2009 non citizens came to roughly 8%  of whom almost 4% were "illegal." 

"They" committed 3 million "crimes." The site is not clear if these numbers refer to all non citizens or to illegal aliens committing these "crimes."  A table shows half a million arrests for "immigration" offenses, which are the crime of being here illegally in the first place, but hardly a violent crime against Americans,  and half a million for drug offenses, which could be possession of marijuana--which amount to roughly 35% of all "crimes"  in this group. Then 14% of all arrests of this group for "traffic violations." In categories of crimes involving property around 4%; for "sex offenses" 2%; homicide 1%.  

Screening for eye infections at Ellis Island 

But somehow, the site calculates illegal aliens commit 15 murders, 43 sex offenses and 131 assaults per day, and somehow that illegal aliens make up 3% of the population but commit 22% of the murders, or 10 times the rate for all legal US residents.  Where these numbers come from, how they were calculated is not apparent or even fact check-able.

We'll give these two a new home, happily

The Breibart blog claims 2000 illegal aliens were deported after committing sex crimes and nearly 1000 in Texas committed sex crimes against children "in the last few years." How many is a "few?" If that's 5 years, this comes to 400 a year, which sounds a lot less shocking, although, if it were true, would be nothing to dismiss. Of course, we read "sex offense" as rape, but did that mean an 18 year old male accused of fondling a 16 year old girl?  When I grew up, in the South, a black boy whistling at a white woman had committed a sex offense and was as likely to be lynched as arrested, so maybe we have become a kinder, gentler nation, after all. 

 Breibart also says "illegal traffickers" are responsible for  "90% of the heroin" in America. Of course, by definition, 100% of the heroin should be the responsibility of "illegal traffickers" since heroin trafficking is illegal and all "traffickers" should be "illegal."

This lady arrived with some resources

After saying nearly 39% of "primary offense cases" in the US in 2013 were brought against illegal immigrants, it turns out 76% were "immigration related," i.e., they got arrested fro being illegal immigrants but only 3.8% of all arrested for "sex abuse" were illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants committing 4% of anything hardly strikes me as "mind boggling." 

Arriving at Ellis Island: Not too threatening

The Washington Post which, of course, Mr. Trump disparages until he finds something there he agrees with, destroys Mr. Trump's assertions, mostly by citing the work of various academics, rather than by trying to work with raw numbers, and professors who study crime and crime committed by immigrants from the University of Massachusetts, to Northwestern, to California, to Arizona State all line up disputing his conclusions. "Foreign-born individuals exhibit remarkably low levels of involvement in crime across their life course," is a fair summary of their conclusions. 

Notice the knives; Not disarmed at Ellis Island

So, through all the welter of numbers, you wind up in the same place you started. The numbers don't really help because you know how you present those numbers makes all the difference and if you want to fear immigrants, you will find reasons in these numbers but if you are skeptical, there's plenty of reason to be. Which is why it's so difficult to throw numbers in Mr. Trump's face. He is dealing with belief and fear. No numbers need apply.

Then you read Rachel Aviv's article in the New Yorker about Nelson Kangbo of Sierra Leone, who was adopted by the pastor in his village after his parents died and one day General Mosquito arrived in the village and lined up all the men and boys in one line and all the women girls  in another. He asked the first boy in line whether he wanted to come fight with the general's rebel band or go back to his mother in the other line and when the boy chose his mother, a soldier, without saying a word, put a gun to his head and shot him dead. Every other boy in line chose to join the general.  After four years of carrying an AK -47, being "pumped up" with an injected mixture of cocaine and gun powder called "brown brown," watching the commanders chop off the arms or legs of those boys who tried to slip away and escape, Kangbo got malaria and became worthless as a soldier and was tossed aside.  

Wearing his Tupac T shirt, he wandered back to his adoptive family and he was able to immigrate, legally, to Minnesota, where there is a substantial African immigrant population.  

As you can imagine, the boy was damaged. He was also by this time, quite clearly schizophrenic, as he met the classic definition: He heard a voice commanding him to do one thing or another, telling him he was unworthy of living in America. Auditory hallucinations have long been the sine qua non of schizophrenia.  

Not surprisingly, he tended to react violently when physically threatened.  He impregnated a white girlfriend, who then left him and then he met a Black girl, who liked to party and stay out all night and he impregnated her her three times, and he stayed home days to take care of the children, and worked nights at Burger King. But when she ran off with other men, he argued with her and struck her and was arrested and put on the fast track toward deportation.

You cannot read his story and not feel sorry for this wreck of a human being, but it does make you pause.  You hate to agree with Mr. Trump in any way when it comes to immigrants, but it does make you think about the burden we are taking on when we agree to shelter really damaged people from horrors suffered elsewhere. 

Of course, we took in Holocaust victims, but they really were victims, and had not been tromping around the bush shooting people with AK 47's and bonding with their captors.

The great immigration waves, Europeans who arrived by boat from Italy, Ireland, Poland, Russia were, for the most part joining or bringing with them families and a set of values which governed their behavior, whether rooted in established churches or centuries of tradition of law and social constraint of individual passion. Not to put a fine point on it, however deprived they were, however much they had suffered and been abused, they did not carry the psychological baggage of boy soldiers who were schooled in rape, murder, dismemberment and mayhem. 

Logical Conclusion  of Mr. Trump's Supporters

I am not saying that we should not offer Nelson Kargbo sanctuary, but we have to be clear eyed in what we are offering and to whom. We cannot simply issue him a Green Card and a job at Burger King and wash our hands and feel we have done another good deed. This is not just the wretched refuse of a teeming shore. This is a very troubled human being and if we are offering him anything, we have to offer him quite a lot more than we had to offer the kid who got off the boat with a big card pinned to his collar so he could find his way from Ellis Island to the Lower East Side, where his aunt and uncle and cousins were waiting for him at their cold water flat, and where they will send him to school and feed him and make sure he hews the line, behaves well, develops ambition, refines whatever talents he has and becomes one of those who enriches his new country.

Once again, we must guard on seeing every African immigrant as Nelson Kargbo. A friend from my home town, one of the whitest women I have ever seen, has helped an African lady get her daughter into the United States.  It took a lot of driving and telephone calls to the State Department, but finally, the daughter arrived at Logan, having had her DNA tested to verify she was in fact the woman's daughter. The hoops and hurdles thrown in the way of this family reunion were formidable, but one can hardly imagine this young girl arriving from Africa will be left adrift without resources, guiding hands and protections in the USA. 

We can offer the Syrian refugees, and for that matter, the Mexicans, no less.