45 had no trouble choosing to assassinate a foreign leader. All it seemed he needed was the option of doing so, as news reports indicated. Some of his associates were shocked that he would pluck that out of the bag without consulting about possible consequences, but this is the way he is: He, in fact, is Alfred E. Neuman, whose favorite phrase was "What, me worry?"
Once the decision was made, it was just a matter of when. Apparently, Secretary of State Pompeo had recommended such an act weeks beforehand, so it's not as if the concept was freshly hatched. The justification has been vaguely stated in terms of the "imminent" danger of an attack that Soleimani had been planning--the specifics of which have still not been revealed. The word "imminent" is supposed to mean "about to take place," but these people have been playing with definitions for a while now.
But the moral issue has long been vetted. Remember, Obama had a chance to capture Osama bin Laden and bring him to trial, even though Clinton had already tried to kill him. Though Kennedy had wanted Ngo Dinh Diem to be safely transported out of South Vietnam and put into exile, he could not stop Diem's murder. And the CIA arranged for Chilean President Salvador Allende to be overthrown and murdered by a coup supporting General Augosto Pinochet in 1973.
Nevertheless, in "The West Wing," this particular fictitious president is struggling with the final decision of assassination. He's in New York City, ostensibly watching a Broadway musical. The hours turn to minutes. He steps out of the theater and into a foyer. His chief of staff, who must actually communicate the order if there is to be one, follows him because he has to know now:
President: Civilians get trials.
Leo: I know. He's not a civilian. So said the Attorney General.
President: They're gonna find out it's us. We're gonna make it look like the plane went down, but they're gonna find out it's us. I'm gonna be running for re-election while I'm fighting a war against Qumar.
Leo: (with some incredulousness) That's why you want to say no?
President: I want him tried.
Leo: That can't happen.
President: I understand.
Leo: Would it be helpful if I provided you a list of all the names--
President: What do you want from me?
Leo: Who is the monk that wrote: 'I'll always know the right thing to do. I think that the fact that I want to please you pleases you.' You have two minutes, sir.
President: This isn't a matter of religion.
Leo: Isn't it?
President: I recognize that here's evil in the world.
Leo: Exactly, sir.
President: Doesn't this mean we join the league of ordinary nations?
Leo: (again, rather incredulous) That's your objection? I won't have any objections to saying the pledge of allegiance tomorrow.
President: That's not my objection.
Leo: Sir?
President: It's just wrong. It's absolutely wrong.
Leo: I know. But you have to do it anyway.
President: Why?
Leo: Because you won.
President: (pausing for one last moment) Take him.
And he is taken. The president's right: The cover-up fails. The press does its job. All hell breaks loose.
So when 45 simply decided to kill Soleimani and didn't bother to hide it, were we better off? Is the bare bones admission that we've assassinated a bad foreign actor and managed to connect it with the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq starting more than a decade ago (and might have included a student from the high school where I taught, the son of a teaching colleague. He was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) as were several hundred by such weapons. Soleimani is given credit for improving IEDs to be larger and more effective, as in the film "The Hurt Locker.") sufficient for us to walk away knowing that the war in Iraq was also fought against us by an Iranian who more than likely fought against Iraq in the mid-'80s, under the banner that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?
Is it "imminent" enough that we caught him in a vulnerable spot and got him? And is the obvious ruse of an inaccurate Iranian missile retaliatory attack enough to provide enough of a conclusion that for now, this matter is at an end? Does that sufficiently steal the thunder from the press, who can only now speculate upon the imminence, since for "security reasons" nobody else is going to know the "real" reason it was done? As if there actually is one beneath the surface appearance that, in the middle of an impeachment hearing, something of a similar magnitude had to take place in order for a severe distraction to work?
Beyond that, which is bad enough: What bothers me, and will continue to do so, is that 45 fairly leapt at the option provided for him by advisors to commit to the assassination, and would probably not have done so had he not known that it was on the table, although considered such a severe solution that he would obviously not take it (Considering 45's track record of temper loss, I'm not sure how anyone could have concluded that.).
Compare that to the admittedly fictitious president above, who fought ethical and moral restrictions until he simply couldn't any longer. Defenders might say: Never mind, snowflake. He reached the same conclusion anyhow. The guy was dirt. He had to be removed.
Such defenders might chortle that any enemy of ours has to beware that our reach is too long to hide anywhere, and that makes us safe. No, it doesn't, and we've known that for some time now. There's no way to know that such a person as 45, someone of that same knee-jerk reaction to everything he touches, had any thought that the same exact lesson might be delivered to us someday, not by Iran itself but by proxies it has all over the globe.
To the simplistic minded (like him) who would ask, What can they do to us? would be the simplistic answer: One hell of a lot. They can do it a little at a time. They can do it anywhere they want. They don't need to invade anyone or attack any ship. In a phrase from a later "West Wing" show: They can lie in the tall grass and wait. They can wait for years. They can wait until after 45 leaves office so the attack is tied to someone not at all responsible for creating the conditions behind it, which would be exactly what 45 would want and quickly try to explain away.
Here's a phrase that hasn't been used in a while: Dirty bomb. And the nuclear agreement with Iran has now been trashed.
Either way, the complete lack of perspective that reportedly informed 45's decision to go ahead with the assassination should be chilling. We have, in the most powerful position in the history of the world, someone who doesn't feel he needs to discuss or even consider whether or not such a score can even be settled. He's dead, right? True, but he's already been replaced. Iran launched missiles and missed? Uh-huh. Think they're just bad shots? (And it's now been confirmed that somebody pressed the wrong button and apparently shot down a Ukrainian jetliner the same night of the missile attack. All the more reason for concern. Those who create chaos cause chaotic reactions.) Or is that government, too, trying to placate its citizens to play a longer game?
Do you want a president who actually cares about all this, who considers this the loneliest decision, who is still filled with angst because while this is admittedly a bad person he's dealing with, he's still a person, a fellow member of the human race? Or someone who doesn't, who is too cold-blooded to hesitate, too anxiously gleeful to announce a "win" over an adversary? We have another chance to elect someone else this November. That's one of the questions that should be kept in mind.
Because once upon a time, we thought we had a country that was an outstanding exception: That acted on principles first; that believed that because it had moved the world by declaring and then winning its independence against a dominant kingdom; and that because it created a government that worked because no one could gain too much power at any one time, it became the model for many subsequent governments.
Once upon a time, we thought so. Once upon a time, we had reason to believe we would never belong to the league of ordinary nations. Once upon a time.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Thursday, January 9, 2020
How Another President Did It, Part 1
I have the complete series of "The West Wing." I watch it now with wistfulness. We are so very far from the admittedly fictitious portrayal of life inside the White House. But the people who made it did their homework, and what they put on rubbed up against reality here and there, in terms of How Things Are Done. Outside of the personal issues, it had that genuine feel.
The series did depict how an assassination of a foreign leader might have taken place--at least, before this abomination of a president took stranglehold of all that is decent and good about our country's governance and consign it to the trash heap. I took a few minutes to find it, in Season 3.
It begins with a Situation Room meeting. The White House has learned that the Defense Minister of Qumar (fictitious Middle Eastern country), with whom the U.S. has had at least a diplomatic relationship, got caught trying to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge (Something that I believe Iran is now planning through its proxies, if they hadn't done so before. The phony and intentionally misguided missile attacks on our troops in Iraq is the same kind of ruse that this fictitious country fictitiously faked on facilities near the White House itself, hoping to draw our attention away while the real terrorism takes place across the continent. Iran knows better than to take on our firepower directly; they want us to think that it's all evened up now. It's not, and anyone with a sense of proportionality knows it.). The policy pursued is obviously on shaky, unprecedented ground, since this president has issued an executive order banning assassinations:
Leo McGarry, the President's Chief of Staff: Where did we get the wires crossed? He's meeting with the guy in the Oval Office.
Fitzsimmons, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We didn't get the wires crossed. He was always gonna do that.
Leo: It wasn't cancelled?
Fitz: No way.
Leo: The White House cancels a meeting at the last minute.
Fitz: He's gonna have somebody testin' his food for a month.
The President walks in. There are eight people at the table, who stand. He says "hello" rather portentously. He knows why they're there.
CIA or Defense Dept. operative #1: Mr. President, we wanted to lay out some of the rules.
President (rather flippantly): There are rules to these things?
#1: Uh, yes, sir. The first one being the National Security Act, which says that only the President can trigger a covert action. This isn't a situation where you need to know as little as possible. The law requires that you know everything.
President: Doesn't the law require that I not assassinate someone?
#1: Yes. Political assassinations stand by executive order--two executive orders, as a matter of fact.
President: I know. One of them was mine.
Leo: The executive order was law but it was made up by the executive and the executive can ignore it.
President: Assume for a second I say yes. How do we do it? Fitz walks up to him with a gun?
Fitz: No, you can't do military.
President: Why not?
Fitz: The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the military from civilian law enforcement--and it can't happen on American soil.
President (shaking his head slightly): The things we choose to care about.
CIA/Defense #2: Mr. President, I should mention that if you give the order, the law insists that you inform what we call the Gang of Eight. That's the leadership on (sic) both parties in both houses, and the chairpeople and the ranking members of the two intelligence committees.
President (cutting him off): If it can't happen here, then why do we care that (Qumari Defense Minister) was delivering himself?
Fitz: He's flying back tonight in his Gulfstream. The pilot will be one of our people. They'll experience a mechanical failure about 90 minutes into the flight, and set down in a remote airstrip in Bermuda. It's really not much more than a road in the grass.
President: The British say yes?
Fitz: Yes, sir.
President: How many over there know about this?
Fitz: Three.
President: And some people in Bermuda.
Fitz: Yes, sir.
Leo: This is as big as the club gets, all right?
President: Okay. Well, surely, this is the most absurd meeting I've ever sat in, and friends, that is saying something. (Gets up to leave; all stand)
Defense/CIA #3: Sir, will you be exchanging gifts with [minister] when you meet this afternoon?
President: Yeah, I'd imagine.
#3: We'd like you to give him this (reaches behind; brings a pen over to President)
President: What does the pen do, squirt poison?
#2: It's got a small recording device in there. He'll probably throw it in the trash, but you never know: You might get lucky. He sticks it in his breast pocket for the flight home.
President: (With a knowing look at Leo, he drops it on the table)
#3: Sir?
President: Tell them to put it in a box. (Leaves; scene ends)
Okay, so--This president is actually injecting some gallows cynicism into the situation. Would you be happy with that? Or is he trying to fight off the reality that even he can't believe he's now involved in? He's about to enter a high-stakes problem that by its very nature involves situational ethics. He's not happy about it.
Think, too, of the legal justification. This president has to pull an executive order he's already issued to justify an assassination. That means that the president has the power of life and death over someone who threatens the republic, no questions asked (although questions will be asked; back to you a bit later). No court has ruled upon it; it's based on intelligence. Are you happy with that? It doesn't make executive orders look very solid, does it?
For Congress to nullify a law it had passed, it has to go through the entire law-making process: committees, hearings, mark-ups. It takes months, but it's absolutely necessary in order for federal marshals to stop enforcing it. On the other hand, to nullify an executive order that has equivalent legal standing, all a president has to do is either sign a piece of paper or just shake his head. That looks, well, monarchical.
And someone has had to reach all the way back to 1878, to a law passed just after Reconstruction ended, to provide legal cover. No Congress has nullified it, so it's still enforceable. But it's now the 21st Century, and the reasoning behind it could be considered arcane. Isn't this the ends justifying the means, to put active meaning into words that grew to have none?
This will have three parts. Part 2 will be tomorrow. Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
The series did depict how an assassination of a foreign leader might have taken place--at least, before this abomination of a president took stranglehold of all that is decent and good about our country's governance and consign it to the trash heap. I took a few minutes to find it, in Season 3.
It begins with a Situation Room meeting. The White House has learned that the Defense Minister of Qumar (fictitious Middle Eastern country), with whom the U.S. has had at least a diplomatic relationship, got caught trying to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge (Something that I believe Iran is now planning through its proxies, if they hadn't done so before. The phony and intentionally misguided missile attacks on our troops in Iraq is the same kind of ruse that this fictitious country fictitiously faked on facilities near the White House itself, hoping to draw our attention away while the real terrorism takes place across the continent. Iran knows better than to take on our firepower directly; they want us to think that it's all evened up now. It's not, and anyone with a sense of proportionality knows it.). The policy pursued is obviously on shaky, unprecedented ground, since this president has issued an executive order banning assassinations:
Leo McGarry, the President's Chief of Staff: Where did we get the wires crossed? He's meeting with the guy in the Oval Office.
Fitzsimmons, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We didn't get the wires crossed. He was always gonna do that.
Leo: It wasn't cancelled?
Fitz: No way.
Leo: The White House cancels a meeting at the last minute.
Fitz: He's gonna have somebody testin' his food for a month.
The President walks in. There are eight people at the table, who stand. He says "hello" rather portentously. He knows why they're there.
CIA or Defense Dept. operative #1: Mr. President, we wanted to lay out some of the rules.
President (rather flippantly): There are rules to these things?
#1: Uh, yes, sir. The first one being the National Security Act, which says that only the President can trigger a covert action. This isn't a situation where you need to know as little as possible. The law requires that you know everything.
President: Doesn't the law require that I not assassinate someone?
#1: Yes. Political assassinations stand by executive order--two executive orders, as a matter of fact.
President: I know. One of them was mine.
Leo: The executive order was law but it was made up by the executive and the executive can ignore it.
President: Assume for a second I say yes. How do we do it? Fitz walks up to him with a gun?
Fitz: No, you can't do military.
President: Why not?
Fitz: The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the military from civilian law enforcement--and it can't happen on American soil.
President (shaking his head slightly): The things we choose to care about.
CIA/Defense #2: Mr. President, I should mention that if you give the order, the law insists that you inform what we call the Gang of Eight. That's the leadership on (sic) both parties in both houses, and the chairpeople and the ranking members of the two intelligence committees.
President (cutting him off): If it can't happen here, then why do we care that (Qumari Defense Minister) was delivering himself?
Fitz: He's flying back tonight in his Gulfstream. The pilot will be one of our people. They'll experience a mechanical failure about 90 minutes into the flight, and set down in a remote airstrip in Bermuda. It's really not much more than a road in the grass.
President: The British say yes?
Fitz: Yes, sir.
President: How many over there know about this?
Fitz: Three.
President: And some people in Bermuda.
Fitz: Yes, sir.
Leo: This is as big as the club gets, all right?
President: Okay. Well, surely, this is the most absurd meeting I've ever sat in, and friends, that is saying something. (Gets up to leave; all stand)
Defense/CIA #3: Sir, will you be exchanging gifts with [minister] when you meet this afternoon?
President: Yeah, I'd imagine.
#3: We'd like you to give him this (reaches behind; brings a pen over to President)
President: What does the pen do, squirt poison?
#2: It's got a small recording device in there. He'll probably throw it in the trash, but you never know: You might get lucky. He sticks it in his breast pocket for the flight home.
President: (With a knowing look at Leo, he drops it on the table)
#3: Sir?
President: Tell them to put it in a box. (Leaves; scene ends)
Okay, so--This president is actually injecting some gallows cynicism into the situation. Would you be happy with that? Or is he trying to fight off the reality that even he can't believe he's now involved in? He's about to enter a high-stakes problem that by its very nature involves situational ethics. He's not happy about it.
Think, too, of the legal justification. This president has to pull an executive order he's already issued to justify an assassination. That means that the president has the power of life and death over someone who threatens the republic, no questions asked (although questions will be asked; back to you a bit later). No court has ruled upon it; it's based on intelligence. Are you happy with that? It doesn't make executive orders look very solid, does it?
For Congress to nullify a law it had passed, it has to go through the entire law-making process: committees, hearings, mark-ups. It takes months, but it's absolutely necessary in order for federal marshals to stop enforcing it. On the other hand, to nullify an executive order that has equivalent legal standing, all a president has to do is either sign a piece of paper or just shake his head. That looks, well, monarchical.
And someone has had to reach all the way back to 1878, to a law passed just after Reconstruction ended, to provide legal cover. No Congress has nullified it, so it's still enforceable. But it's now the 21st Century, and the reasoning behind it could be considered arcane. Isn't this the ends justifying the means, to put active meaning into words that grew to have none?
This will have three parts. Part 2 will be tomorrow. Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
How Another President Did It, Part 2: Consider Yourselves Notified
We know now that 45 couldn't bring himself to meet with the Gang of Eight before launching his ill-advised (literally) attack on Iran's Soleimani last week. In this episode of "The West Wing," though, that president followed protocol. Although he wasn't at the meeting, his closest advisor was.
The idea, supposedly, is to prepare Congress for a tension-filled moment and hopefully to garner support for a difficult decision, as committing the nation to a warlike stance, even if temporary and even quick, is deemed necessary. Questions might be asked and answers might be provided. In any event, it's done according to the National Security Act. It's the law.
Note that in the last "West Wing" script featured, the president's advisory council said that "the law insists" that that meeting take place before whatever military action happens. In real time, 45 didn't bother. I'm quite sure he could make the excuse that, since few if any on the other side of aisle like or trust him, they'd be very likely to spill the beans and blow the cover.
The problem with that is that it would put the president into the position of saying that the other party, perhaps even his own in Congress, too, would actually go to the trouble of putting American lives at stake just to get in the way of his plans. That this smallness is typical of him doesn't advance the idea that the country, for at least a fleeting moment, can act as one, especially when national security is at issue. There were no leaks, for instance, when Clinton attacked Osama bin Laden in 1998, right before he was to be actually impeached. The Republican leadership must have been seething to have heard of such plans, and probably lurched out of the meeting incensed that Clinton might have been "wagging the dog" and creating a diversion based on national security. But to the best of my recollection, nobody leaked the information. The attack, though it failed, went on unannounced.
Nevertheless, here's the script of the Gang of Eight meeting. That it was supposed to take place on the very same day as the Situation Room meeting, the meeting with the Qumarian defense minister, now possibly marked for death, and his supposedly fateful, final flight, is taking a bit of dramatic license. But that's TV for you:
The Scene: A very small, very private meeting room, ostensibly in the White House. A single light hangs. In the room are the Gang of Eight; Leo McGarry, the president's chief of staff; and Fitzsimmons, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs. He says that based on 'overwhelming evidence,'
Leo: ....provided by foreign and domestic intelligence agents, the president has requested the intelligence finding you have in your hands right now. That finding has been signed off on by the directors of NSA, Central Intelligence....
Fitz: (jumping in)....subsequently submitted for review and approval by the National Security Advisor, Secretaries of State and Defense, the Attorney General, White House Counsel, and finally myself.
Member of Congress #1: How are you getting around 119.05?
Leo: The president's rescinding his own executive order.
Member of Congress #2: He's on U.S. soil right now. Why can't the FBI act on it? (The FBI hasn't been mentioned by anyone to this point)
Leo: The FBI's role is investigatory. They're not allowed to engage in police action.
Member of Congress #3: And the military?
Member of Congress #4 (seems like a very big player): Posse Comitatus. You're killing (minister).
Leo: I don't know (which is a lie or at least very disingenuous, because that's the purpose of the meeting. But POTUS hasn't actually decided yet.).
MOC #4: What does that mean?
MOC #2: Leo, when does the president give the green light?
Leo: At the last possible minute. Consider yourselves notified.
End of meeting.
Note:
The idea, supposedly, is to prepare Congress for a tension-filled moment and hopefully to garner support for a difficult decision, as committing the nation to a warlike stance, even if temporary and even quick, is deemed necessary. Questions might be asked and answers might be provided. In any event, it's done according to the National Security Act. It's the law.
Note that in the last "West Wing" script featured, the president's advisory council said that "the law insists" that that meeting take place before whatever military action happens. In real time, 45 didn't bother. I'm quite sure he could make the excuse that, since few if any on the other side of aisle like or trust him, they'd be very likely to spill the beans and blow the cover.
The problem with that is that it would put the president into the position of saying that the other party, perhaps even his own in Congress, too, would actually go to the trouble of putting American lives at stake just to get in the way of his plans. That this smallness is typical of him doesn't advance the idea that the country, for at least a fleeting moment, can act as one, especially when national security is at issue. There were no leaks, for instance, when Clinton attacked Osama bin Laden in 1998, right before he was to be actually impeached. The Republican leadership must have been seething to have heard of such plans, and probably lurched out of the meeting incensed that Clinton might have been "wagging the dog" and creating a diversion based on national security. But to the best of my recollection, nobody leaked the information. The attack, though it failed, went on unannounced.
Nevertheless, here's the script of the Gang of Eight meeting. That it was supposed to take place on the very same day as the Situation Room meeting, the meeting with the Qumarian defense minister, now possibly marked for death, and his supposedly fateful, final flight, is taking a bit of dramatic license. But that's TV for you:
The Scene: A very small, very private meeting room, ostensibly in the White House. A single light hangs. In the room are the Gang of Eight; Leo McGarry, the president's chief of staff; and Fitzsimmons, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs. He says that based on 'overwhelming evidence,'
Leo: ....provided by foreign and domestic intelligence agents, the president has requested the intelligence finding you have in your hands right now. That finding has been signed off on by the directors of NSA, Central Intelligence....
Fitz: (jumping in)....subsequently submitted for review and approval by the National Security Advisor, Secretaries of State and Defense, the Attorney General, White House Counsel, and finally myself.
Member of Congress #1: How are you getting around 119.05?
Leo: The president's rescinding his own executive order.
Member of Congress #2: He's on U.S. soil right now. Why can't the FBI act on it? (The FBI hasn't been mentioned by anyone to this point)
Leo: The FBI's role is investigatory. They're not allowed to engage in police action.
Member of Congress #3: And the military?
Member of Congress #4 (seems like a very big player): Posse Comitatus. You're killing (minister).
Leo: I don't know (which is a lie or at least very disingenuous, because that's the purpose of the meeting. But POTUS hasn't actually decided yet.).
MOC #4: What does that mean?
MOC #2: Leo, when does the president give the green light?
Leo: At the last possible minute. Consider yourselves notified.
End of meeting.
Note:
- The purpose of the meeting is consultation, not approval: That would have to be done with the entire Congress. That obviously takes too much time and of course makes things way too public, so the decision is already made and the required consultation is taken.
- At least the Congressional leadership has a chance to actually ask questions, not criticize, although I can't imagine that everyone in the room during any of these situations has passed on the opportunity to do so. That being said, there are enough voices in the room (eight) to be able to cover most bases before the decision is actualized.
- The idea of the Constitution's checks and balances concept is flirted with but not exercised. The bottom line is that the president is taking action, like it or not, and he has to tell, not ask, someone in Congress. The law requires certain people to be in the room, no more and no less.
- Expediency is the most frequently offered explanation (and in this fictitious case, it certainly applies), but it matters little. Consulting with members of Congress beforehand is the closest offer to intragovernmental cooperation that can be made, but 45's decision to avoid that until afterwards even disposes with that pretense. He's got power, he's going to use it, and to hell with everybody else.
In these national security matters, would this be the best way to do things? One of the first reactions made after the Soleimani attack was the simple fact that Congress had not been previously notified. That's a violation of the National Security Act, plain and simple. Is it serious enough to be added to what might be additional impeachment charges?
Could that be answered in hindsight, based on results? Or is the principle enough? The House has now passed a measure under the War Powers Act, attempting to limit 45's immersion into any subsequent military action without Congress' approval. Even if enough Republican Senators manage to shake loose from the bonds they believe they are in and approve, it's hardly veto-proof. It seems futile and almost a waste, but well--Nancy Pelosi's doing what she can with the majority she has.
Let's wait and see what happened to our fictitious president, who still hasn't actually decided whether to engage in political assassination. He thinks he has to ask some questions himself, and he waits until that last minute to do so. That's also in direct opposition to what we have now. We'll also discuss that in Part 3 tomorrow.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Monday, January 6, 2020
In for A Penny, In for A Pound: The New Hostage Situations
You just have to shake your head. It's so reminiscent.
In 1998, at the very cusp of being impeached, Bill Clinton ordered an attempted missile assassination of Osama bin Laden, who apparently was in a meeting in Sudan. Bin Laden, if you recall, tried to blow up the World Trade Center the old fashioned way in 1993 and roughed it up a bit, killing a few people. The missile missed him by ten minutes, though, and he came back to finish the job he started. 9-11 was the result. It killed more than a few people.
Now we have 45, waiting for Nancy Pelosi to deliver the House managers and the actual impeachment charges, coming up any day now. He has made a stunning attack upon perhaps the number two political/military leader of Iran, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and succeeded. In doing so, we have made a serious step toward becoming the number one purveyor of terrorism in the world.
Of course, 45 never informed anyone about anything, never told Congressional leaders of either party. He was probably paranoid that it might have been leaked to the press, though that's pretty rare (In fact, Scotty Reston of the New York Times knew that Kennedy was about to send a force to Cuba in 1961, the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and JFK asked him to sit on it until it was done. Reston complied. After the disaster--which would lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis--Kennedy admitted that Reston should probably have gone ahead and printed it anyhow.). Never mind, though. Consequences be damned.
Soleimani was a bad guy, yes, but we will pay for this. Count on it. Escalation is guaranteed. There will be a kind of backdoor attack that will be delightfully vengeful in Iran (Remember the shooting down of the Iranian jetliner during the Reagan years? That was apparently done by mistake. No matter: A jetliner was sabotaged over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a comparable number of Westerners. Measure for measure.). In the meantime, at least emotionally, 45 has made our whole country hostage to his act.
Iran is also getting out of its nuclear deal. Once gone, a new discussion will be impossible, as opposed to what 45 said he wanted. I personally don't believe that and never did; he lied about that as well as he's lying about not wanting a war but stopping one. 45 wants war with Iran to make himself look fantastic. He has a desperate need to put himself in a place in history where no one forgets him. He'll certainly get that.
How could the Democrats remove him now, when he seems so irreplaceable to his faithful? That question will reverberate through 45's favored, filtered media. How could they even consider it?
More to the point: How could any Republican even think about doing anything but whisking the process through a divided Senate in a token, even half-hearted effort to satisfy those who cluck their tongues about due process?
Even more to the point: How will Pelosi manage to keep the country's attention on the process of impeachment proceedings with the ultimate deflection, a rising military commitment to the Middle East (again!), well underway?
Rationality has now been taken hostage, too. It will return if and only if we manage to get 45 out of the White House and reduce Mitch McConnell's power to that of Just Another Senator. Both are necessary. Neither can happen until November, unless John Bolton (a) is allowed to testify and (b) he says something so completely outrageous that at least Republican Senators have no choice but to convict to save the integrity of the chamber--though I can't imagine what that might be at this point to risk getting a primary election shoved in their faces back home.
The other hostage situation is the extent to which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, and 45 himself believe that God is working through them to expand the influence of Israel just before The Rapture. They are caught without rationality themselves. They will see a wider war as not only inevitable, but necessary. They will see casualties as collateral damage as long as they aren't part of them.
If all of this lures Iran to attack Israel, so much the better. Then the Ultimate Showdown will happen. It's why Pompeo, as opposed to the blustering, belching 45, never has to raise his voice. It's all happening according to The Plan. Watch him. He almost can't avoid grinning.
If you're wondering why 45 is so quickly running to shore up his evangelical base, it's to make the irrational seem rational. After all, not nearly as many of them live in large cities, where attacks are likely to take place (the exception being where the mega-churches stand). The longer all this continues, the closer we stand to such a possibility. They aren't in for a penny, as the British say: They're in for a pound, or in all the way. As actual war approaches, watch for the frenzy to peak. They're being held hostage, too--emotional hostage.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
In 1998, at the very cusp of being impeached, Bill Clinton ordered an attempted missile assassination of Osama bin Laden, who apparently was in a meeting in Sudan. Bin Laden, if you recall, tried to blow up the World Trade Center the old fashioned way in 1993 and roughed it up a bit, killing a few people. The missile missed him by ten minutes, though, and he came back to finish the job he started. 9-11 was the result. It killed more than a few people.
Now we have 45, waiting for Nancy Pelosi to deliver the House managers and the actual impeachment charges, coming up any day now. He has made a stunning attack upon perhaps the number two political/military leader of Iran, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and succeeded. In doing so, we have made a serious step toward becoming the number one purveyor of terrorism in the world.
Of course, 45 never informed anyone about anything, never told Congressional leaders of either party. He was probably paranoid that it might have been leaked to the press, though that's pretty rare (In fact, Scotty Reston of the New York Times knew that Kennedy was about to send a force to Cuba in 1961, the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion, and JFK asked him to sit on it until it was done. Reston complied. After the disaster--which would lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis--Kennedy admitted that Reston should probably have gone ahead and printed it anyhow.). Never mind, though. Consequences be damned.
Soleimani was a bad guy, yes, but we will pay for this. Count on it. Escalation is guaranteed. There will be a kind of backdoor attack that will be delightfully vengeful in Iran (Remember the shooting down of the Iranian jetliner during the Reagan years? That was apparently done by mistake. No matter: A jetliner was sabotaged over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing a comparable number of Westerners. Measure for measure.). In the meantime, at least emotionally, 45 has made our whole country hostage to his act.
Iran is also getting out of its nuclear deal. Once gone, a new discussion will be impossible, as opposed to what 45 said he wanted. I personally don't believe that and never did; he lied about that as well as he's lying about not wanting a war but stopping one. 45 wants war with Iran to make himself look fantastic. He has a desperate need to put himself in a place in history where no one forgets him. He'll certainly get that.
How could the Democrats remove him now, when he seems so irreplaceable to his faithful? That question will reverberate through 45's favored, filtered media. How could they even consider it?
More to the point: How could any Republican even think about doing anything but whisking the process through a divided Senate in a token, even half-hearted effort to satisfy those who cluck their tongues about due process?
Even more to the point: How will Pelosi manage to keep the country's attention on the process of impeachment proceedings with the ultimate deflection, a rising military commitment to the Middle East (again!), well underway?
Rationality has now been taken hostage, too. It will return if and only if we manage to get 45 out of the White House and reduce Mitch McConnell's power to that of Just Another Senator. Both are necessary. Neither can happen until November, unless John Bolton (a) is allowed to testify and (b) he says something so completely outrageous that at least Republican Senators have no choice but to convict to save the integrity of the chamber--though I can't imagine what that might be at this point to risk getting a primary election shoved in their faces back home.
The other hostage situation is the extent to which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, and 45 himself believe that God is working through them to expand the influence of Israel just before The Rapture. They are caught without rationality themselves. They will see a wider war as not only inevitable, but necessary. They will see casualties as collateral damage as long as they aren't part of them.
If all of this lures Iran to attack Israel, so much the better. Then the Ultimate Showdown will happen. It's why Pompeo, as opposed to the blustering, belching 45, never has to raise his voice. It's all happening according to The Plan. Watch him. He almost can't avoid grinning.
If you're wondering why 45 is so quickly running to shore up his evangelical base, it's to make the irrational seem rational. After all, not nearly as many of them live in large cities, where attacks are likely to take place (the exception being where the mega-churches stand). The longer all this continues, the closer we stand to such a possibility. They aren't in for a penny, as the British say: They're in for a pound, or in all the way. As actual war approaches, watch for the frenzy to peak. They're being held hostage, too--emotional hostage.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Education Isn't Transactional, Either
An Arkansas state legislator has introduced a bill that would reduce breakfasts for students in schools that don't meet certain reading goals.
To wit: We're not gonna pay for food if the kids can't read. So there.
That'll fix 'em. Darn kids. Think they can get away with free food. They just stand by the trough and scarf. We're teaching them to be socialists, by golly.
Not that simple and he knows it. What he wants is better test scores, so then the cereal boxes can be opened wider. Making them starve a little for their breakfasts will teach them that there are no free lunches, darn it. Either.
This is what happens when first, we have a president who considers all wishes to be achievable through trade-offs and is thus open to having his methodologies copied up and down the line; second, when someone who follows him blindly thinks kids think the same way; third, we are tied to test scores as a measurement of learning so tightly that all deals can be made with them at the centerpiece; and fourth, that anything that ties something extra to government money spent justifies that attachment.
Underlying it all is, of course, race and the assumption of laziness that accompanies it. You're just not trying hard enough, is the hidden message here, as if to really try to read will gain the results it desires, especially with kids 6 or 7 or 8 years old.
What are they supposed to do, stare at the words longer and somehow they'll sink in, the way parents figure that if the kids sit at the dinner table and are made to stare at the liver longer, it'll somehow taste better? (It's good for you! Trust us!) Do the standardized tests get to be more fun with better concentration? That's not always easy to do.
I worked with union and teaching staff in Little Rock early during the last decade. I watched the results of standardized testing on both teachers and kids. It wasn't pretty.
Testing can go on for hours without a bathroom break. If you have to go to the bathroom while performing any task, don't you get a little uncomfortable? Don't you find it difficult to concentrate? And don't you finish what you're doing as fast as possible in anticipation of that bathroom break, perhaps making mistakes along the way?
Uh-huh. Doesn't that skew the test results? Too?
I mean, what if two kids had to go to the bathroom at the same time and, because they couldn't care less about yet another standardized test, they told each other the answers? And what if those answers were actually correct? Yikes! They might be mistaken for being--smart! (And they would be smart, the same way 45 is smart: smart at scheming to get around a system) Besides, that would also be evidence of cooperative learning, which is--breathe deep now--socialism!
The real kicker took place, and perhaps still does, when a test monitor (most likely a teacher) in Little Rock made the horrendous (?) mistake of directing a confused student toward a particular page. Apparently, they weren't supposed to do that. That supposedly skews the test averages because it makes one student's scores better than they would otherwise have been if they'd have taken extra time to find the correct page and, just maybe, finished all the questions instead of gaping around confused and using up the time--as if that would make the whole school look so much better.
With the swiftness of certainty that they had breached some kind of a locked-down chamber, the offending adults were escorted out of the building immediately and took weeks to get back inside. Why? Because the total average of scores would mean the difference between whether a school, and thus a district, received the aid they would have otherwise gotten, or not gotten. Once again, it was all about the scarce money, and the very idea that eight- and nine-year-olds might be pawns in this much bigger game of zero-sum, succeed-or-dry-up mentality. Trying to be helpful, therefore, is fundamentally dishonest, even though that defines teaching: It's what we do and what parents want us to do.
I had to represent some of these people. It still boggles my mind. And the one argument I couldn't make--that standardized testing is there for each individual and not to determine the competence of an entire school or district--was the one that would blow all this up and put it back where it belongs.
Small wonder about the enormous scandals that took in places like Chicago and Atlanta, where teachers were guilty of giving test questions to students ahead of time. My reaction was then and is now: What did you expect to happen? Who do you think you were kidding? The teachers might have been doing that out of compassion instead of greed, the likes of which might be lost upon conservatives who believe that competition should determine all outcomes.
And yet, and yet--Arne Duncan was appointed Secretary of Education partly because he blew up the scandal in Chicago. It was Obama's admission that the country had gone the standardized route and that it needed a tough overseer--to legitimize the testing, not to question, challenge, change or diminish the effects of it. The ugly monster in the room was too big to eject--wasn't worth the energy it would have taken after No Child Left Behind left that legacy behind--so it kept its seat at the table.
Both parties, then, contributed to our losing perspective about the meaning of standardized testing because both tied money to its results. It only stands to reason that someone, at some point, tries to tie it to paying for food, to dangle it in front of children so that they fill the bubbles correctly on those score sheets. If you're stupid, the thinking goes, you'll starve. So then you won't be stupid. Will you?
But at the other end of the economic spectrum, in the affluent place in which I taught, where table manners at banquets were the only food issue, I saw deals being cut between parents and students so that certain privileges would be given or removed according to grade improvements. And they worked for a while. They always work for a while. But never forever, because education is its own gain and has its own value. And can't be quantified.
So I get where this legislator is coming from. But if education becomes transactional the way this president wants to make everything else, we've completely missed the point of it. I haven't heard Betsy DuVos raise an objection to this awful proposal. Have you?
Once you go down the stairs, there's always the basement. We're just about there in education. Too.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
To wit: We're not gonna pay for food if the kids can't read. So there.
That'll fix 'em. Darn kids. Think they can get away with free food. They just stand by the trough and scarf. We're teaching them to be socialists, by golly.
Not that simple and he knows it. What he wants is better test scores, so then the cereal boxes can be opened wider. Making them starve a little for their breakfasts will teach them that there are no free lunches, darn it. Either.
This is what happens when first, we have a president who considers all wishes to be achievable through trade-offs and is thus open to having his methodologies copied up and down the line; second, when someone who follows him blindly thinks kids think the same way; third, we are tied to test scores as a measurement of learning so tightly that all deals can be made with them at the centerpiece; and fourth, that anything that ties something extra to government money spent justifies that attachment.
Underlying it all is, of course, race and the assumption of laziness that accompanies it. You're just not trying hard enough, is the hidden message here, as if to really try to read will gain the results it desires, especially with kids 6 or 7 or 8 years old.
What are they supposed to do, stare at the words longer and somehow they'll sink in, the way parents figure that if the kids sit at the dinner table and are made to stare at the liver longer, it'll somehow taste better? (It's good for you! Trust us!) Do the standardized tests get to be more fun with better concentration? That's not always easy to do.
I worked with union and teaching staff in Little Rock early during the last decade. I watched the results of standardized testing on both teachers and kids. It wasn't pretty.
Testing can go on for hours without a bathroom break. If you have to go to the bathroom while performing any task, don't you get a little uncomfortable? Don't you find it difficult to concentrate? And don't you finish what you're doing as fast as possible in anticipation of that bathroom break, perhaps making mistakes along the way?
Uh-huh. Doesn't that skew the test results? Too?
I mean, what if two kids had to go to the bathroom at the same time and, because they couldn't care less about yet another standardized test, they told each other the answers? And what if those answers were actually correct? Yikes! They might be mistaken for being--smart! (And they would be smart, the same way 45 is smart: smart at scheming to get around a system) Besides, that would also be evidence of cooperative learning, which is--breathe deep now--socialism!
The real kicker took place, and perhaps still does, when a test monitor (most likely a teacher) in Little Rock made the horrendous (?) mistake of directing a confused student toward a particular page. Apparently, they weren't supposed to do that. That supposedly skews the test averages because it makes one student's scores better than they would otherwise have been if they'd have taken extra time to find the correct page and, just maybe, finished all the questions instead of gaping around confused and using up the time--as if that would make the whole school look so much better.
With the swiftness of certainty that they had breached some kind of a locked-down chamber, the offending adults were escorted out of the building immediately and took weeks to get back inside. Why? Because the total average of scores would mean the difference between whether a school, and thus a district, received the aid they would have otherwise gotten, or not gotten. Once again, it was all about the scarce money, and the very idea that eight- and nine-year-olds might be pawns in this much bigger game of zero-sum, succeed-or-dry-up mentality. Trying to be helpful, therefore, is fundamentally dishonest, even though that defines teaching: It's what we do and what parents want us to do.
I had to represent some of these people. It still boggles my mind. And the one argument I couldn't make--that standardized testing is there for each individual and not to determine the competence of an entire school or district--was the one that would blow all this up and put it back where it belongs.
Small wonder about the enormous scandals that took in places like Chicago and Atlanta, where teachers were guilty of giving test questions to students ahead of time. My reaction was then and is now: What did you expect to happen? Who do you think you were kidding? The teachers might have been doing that out of compassion instead of greed, the likes of which might be lost upon conservatives who believe that competition should determine all outcomes.
And yet, and yet--Arne Duncan was appointed Secretary of Education partly because he blew up the scandal in Chicago. It was Obama's admission that the country had gone the standardized route and that it needed a tough overseer--to legitimize the testing, not to question, challenge, change or diminish the effects of it. The ugly monster in the room was too big to eject--wasn't worth the energy it would have taken after No Child Left Behind left that legacy behind--so it kept its seat at the table.
Both parties, then, contributed to our losing perspective about the meaning of standardized testing because both tied money to its results. It only stands to reason that someone, at some point, tries to tie it to paying for food, to dangle it in front of children so that they fill the bubbles correctly on those score sheets. If you're stupid, the thinking goes, you'll starve. So then you won't be stupid. Will you?
But at the other end of the economic spectrum, in the affluent place in which I taught, where table manners at banquets were the only food issue, I saw deals being cut between parents and students so that certain privileges would be given or removed according to grade improvements. And they worked for a while. They always work for a while. But never forever, because education is its own gain and has its own value. And can't be quantified.
So I get where this legislator is coming from. But if education becomes transactional the way this president wants to make everything else, we've completely missed the point of it. I haven't heard Betsy DuVos raise an objection to this awful proposal. Have you?
Once you go down the stairs, there's always the basement. We're just about there in education. Too.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Thursday, January 2, 2020
Keep It Alive--and Yourself--This Year Through Activism
I heard a familiar voice the other day: Jane Fonda.
Yeah, that one: Hanoi Jane. She's never lived down her outward support for North Vietnam, even though indirectly aimed at ending the war. She picked a poor way to do so. I interviewed an American POW, and he told me she was one of the two people he and his fellow prisoners absolutely hated (the other being Ted Kennedy).
Fonda has been involved in support for lots of liberal causes since, and not nearly as antagonistically so. I heard her discuss her latest passion on NPR the other day: climate change.
She's been rather depressed lately, she said. The reason? She hasn't been as active on the issue than she believes she should be.
This is after she's been arrested more than once for her political activities, mostly centered around demonstrating to bring attention to climate change in place the police don't prefer. In fact, she went out of her way to describe the process by which she was legally processed after her arrest.
Her voice, ever resonant and naturally portentious, underlined the seriousness with which she's taking this. Just hearing it over the radio makes one take the subject with the gravity it deserves.
Consider this, though: Jane Fonda is 83 years old.
At 83, not only is she not finished bringing attention to our number one existential issue, she made it clear that she's just getting started. At 83.
She's doing it, in fact, to ward off depression. It's a signal to all of us, regardless of age.
Activism makes one feel vital.
Activism makes one feel relevant.
Activism brings attention to a cause worth battling for.
Activism makes one feel as if they're making a difference.
Activism gives one energy and sends it out to others.
Activism brings people together and projects hope.
Activism creates communities.
I'm not recommending that you go out and get yourself arrested--she says, for instance, that although her group of protesters didn't resist, they were handcuffed very uncomfortably and got herded into a kind of garage for seven hours while being processed; doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me--but showing up for protests and informational gatherings gives oneself, and others, the attitudes that there might just be a chance to overcome this strange and cultish mentality with which we seem to be confronted.
With that, there's the inspiration to do it again and again. Sooner or later, we'll be looking around at each other and seeing many more people than we thought would ever arrive. And that, my friends, is a mass movement.
Fonda's efforts are being characterized as being kind of a boutique brand of protesting because other famous people like actors are joining her--thus it's turning out to be a place to see and be seen (Like the garish, snarky inclination noted by Mark Leibovich in his book This Town, when newsman Tim Russert's 2008 funeral turned into a chance to get close to Morning Joe and Mika--this before they became a "thing" unto themselves), as the Washington Post says today. Maybe that claim's being done to diminish its effects, or at least that's the effect that it might have. But her example seems genuine and she really is getting herself arrested and is thus sincerely involved in the climate change movement.
In the meantime, start your own. Get behind candidates you favor, get involved in a presidential primary if one comes to your state, and get some talking points ready to discuss and counteract the nonsense you might be hearing. Try this one: snowflakesfightback.com. It's put together by Yale students. You could do worse.
Above all, stay active this year. Stay involved, keep reading. Attend something at your public library, or a discussion group. Someone out there wants you to stop thinking, just listen to them instead, and do what they say. Be a good American citizen and don't do that. (For instance, there's room to respond to what you're reading here. I'm good with that. You're likely to hear back.)
What we're confronted with won't be wiped out, nor will it even disappear. But it can be turned back. That means an approach to democracy that we're not used to adapting--one that's definitely non-passive. That's for a bit later, but meanwhile, this is a pivotal year. When we come back here in another 365 days, let's be sure to say we did what we could.
Jane Fonda will sure be saying that. And she's not getting any younger either.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Yeah, that one: Hanoi Jane. She's never lived down her outward support for North Vietnam, even though indirectly aimed at ending the war. She picked a poor way to do so. I interviewed an American POW, and he told me she was one of the two people he and his fellow prisoners absolutely hated (the other being Ted Kennedy).
Fonda has been involved in support for lots of liberal causes since, and not nearly as antagonistically so. I heard her discuss her latest passion on NPR the other day: climate change.
She's been rather depressed lately, she said. The reason? She hasn't been as active on the issue than she believes she should be.
This is after she's been arrested more than once for her political activities, mostly centered around demonstrating to bring attention to climate change in place the police don't prefer. In fact, she went out of her way to describe the process by which she was legally processed after her arrest.
Her voice, ever resonant and naturally portentious, underlined the seriousness with which she's taking this. Just hearing it over the radio makes one take the subject with the gravity it deserves.
Consider this, though: Jane Fonda is 83 years old.
At 83, not only is she not finished bringing attention to our number one existential issue, she made it clear that she's just getting started. At 83.
She's doing it, in fact, to ward off depression. It's a signal to all of us, regardless of age.
Activism makes one feel vital.
Activism makes one feel relevant.
Activism brings attention to a cause worth battling for.
Activism makes one feel as if they're making a difference.
Activism gives one energy and sends it out to others.
Activism brings people together and projects hope.
Activism creates communities.
I'm not recommending that you go out and get yourself arrested--she says, for instance, that although her group of protesters didn't resist, they were handcuffed very uncomfortably and got herded into a kind of garage for seven hours while being processed; doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me--but showing up for protests and informational gatherings gives oneself, and others, the attitudes that there might just be a chance to overcome this strange and cultish mentality with which we seem to be confronted.
With that, there's the inspiration to do it again and again. Sooner or later, we'll be looking around at each other and seeing many more people than we thought would ever arrive. And that, my friends, is a mass movement.
Fonda's efforts are being characterized as being kind of a boutique brand of protesting because other famous people like actors are joining her--thus it's turning out to be a place to see and be seen (Like the garish, snarky inclination noted by Mark Leibovich in his book This Town, when newsman Tim Russert's 2008 funeral turned into a chance to get close to Morning Joe and Mika--this before they became a "thing" unto themselves), as the Washington Post says today. Maybe that claim's being done to diminish its effects, or at least that's the effect that it might have. But her example seems genuine and she really is getting herself arrested and is thus sincerely involved in the climate change movement.
In the meantime, start your own. Get behind candidates you favor, get involved in a presidential primary if one comes to your state, and get some talking points ready to discuss and counteract the nonsense you might be hearing. Try this one: snowflakesfightback.com. It's put together by Yale students. You could do worse.
Above all, stay active this year. Stay involved, keep reading. Attend something at your public library, or a discussion group. Someone out there wants you to stop thinking, just listen to them instead, and do what they say. Be a good American citizen and don't do that. (For instance, there's room to respond to what you're reading here. I'm good with that. You're likely to hear back.)
What we're confronted with won't be wiped out, nor will it even disappear. But it can be turned back. That means an approach to democracy that we're not used to adapting--one that's definitely non-passive. That's for a bit later, but meanwhile, this is a pivotal year. When we come back here in another 365 days, let's be sure to say we did what we could.
Jane Fonda will sure be saying that. And she's not getting any younger either.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Wednesday, January 1, 2020
Stop Parsing the Concept! Terrorism Is Indivisible
So a guy bursts into a house in New York state where a rabbi lives on a well-observed Sabbath, and starts stabbing people. He gets to five, and then he leaves.
Hate crime? Okay, if you want. But it's terrorism.
So a guy bursts into a school in Connecticut and starts shooting little kids. He gets to twenty, then he kills himself.
Hate crime? No. It wasn't done with racial or gender or sexual orientation intent. But it's terrorism.
Domestic terrorism? NO. Terrorism. Sudden, random violence with no other purpose than to destroy people.
Boko Haram kidnaps young girls in Nigeria and elsewhere. The men rape them to produce future troops for their evil purposes. They submit to rape or they're killed.
Domestic terrorism? No. Hate crime? Depends. Terrorism? Of course it is.
Terrorism is why I have a plan, however futile it may be, in case someone walks into my church and starts shooting a gun at members of the congregation (This just happened in Texas, and a trained person took out his concealed gun and killed the assassin, but not before two people died. This is allowed in Texas. I'm starting to think it isn't that bad of an idea.), even though we have a hired, armed security person on hand.
Terrorism is another Big Reason why I'm glad I don't have to teach any longer. Oh, yes, the topic of some kid walking into school with a gun came up every so often. I recall the first time. It was during the '70s, and I in a school district considered to be in the top ten in the state. I wasn't around the week after Columbine when someone scrawled a post-massacre threat onto a girls' bathroom wall, but once that word got out, plenty of traumatized parents--still recovering from the jolt of such a mass shooting happening in exactly the same kind of community theirs was and connecting with the possibility that the phrase it can't happen here no longer applied--freaked out and personally came to escort their kids out of the school. That was in the spring of 1999, now more than two decades ago.
Terrorism is why I don't go to big stores very much. It's why I wonder about my own sanity when I walk into a movie theater. It's why there should be little wonder at the immense growth of Netflix.
Terrorism is why Osama bin Laden won. Okay, we caught and killed him, but he won because 9-11 frightened us so much that we changed the way we look at the world and each other, and he continues to win every day we have these kinds of attacks. What he planned not only worked, but infused a mentality upon us that endures and proliferates, not in the sense of protection but in the sense of lashing out in revenge.
And Muslims--more than three million of whom live here--have almost nothing to do with it anymore. Has anybody noticed that the ethno-religious attacks now seem to be centered on Jews, and that non-Muslims are attacking them?
Anyone who's been paying attention knows that where, and when, terrorism happens is irrelevant to its specific description. It lives on. Every time it happens here, it perpetuates the notion that the greatest (though not the only) threat to our domestic peace is itself domestic and always has been.
Due to the legacy of 9-11, though, the legal community has seen it fit to parse terrorism and domestic terrorism, as if the two somehow have, in the end, different origins and effects. They don't. It's an easy, mindless leap to perpetuate fear of foreigners and then, mislogically, fear against those who look foreign, in some kind of mass whitewashing that's futile and pointless. One more time: Within twenty years--assuming humanity hasn't been completely ruined by climate change--the population of this country will be majority non-white--and there's nothing that can be done about it.
Let's start the year of 2020 with a vow that "living and let living" should be the watchword for us all, not wiping out people just before oneself is wiped out. Let's remember to be good to each other because, after all, the life you save could be your own.
Be well. Be careful. Happy New Year. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
Hate crime? Okay, if you want. But it's terrorism.
So a guy bursts into a school in Connecticut and starts shooting little kids. He gets to twenty, then he kills himself.
Hate crime? No. It wasn't done with racial or gender or sexual orientation intent. But it's terrorism.
Domestic terrorism? NO. Terrorism. Sudden, random violence with no other purpose than to destroy people.
Boko Haram kidnaps young girls in Nigeria and elsewhere. The men rape them to produce future troops for their evil purposes. They submit to rape or they're killed.
Domestic terrorism? No. Hate crime? Depends. Terrorism? Of course it is.
Terrorism is why I have a plan, however futile it may be, in case someone walks into my church and starts shooting a gun at members of the congregation (This just happened in Texas, and a trained person took out his concealed gun and killed the assassin, but not before two people died. This is allowed in Texas. I'm starting to think it isn't that bad of an idea.), even though we have a hired, armed security person on hand.
Terrorism is another Big Reason why I'm glad I don't have to teach any longer. Oh, yes, the topic of some kid walking into school with a gun came up every so often. I recall the first time. It was during the '70s, and I in a school district considered to be in the top ten in the state. I wasn't around the week after Columbine when someone scrawled a post-massacre threat onto a girls' bathroom wall, but once that word got out, plenty of traumatized parents--still recovering from the jolt of such a mass shooting happening in exactly the same kind of community theirs was and connecting with the possibility that the phrase it can't happen here no longer applied--freaked out and personally came to escort their kids out of the school. That was in the spring of 1999, now more than two decades ago.
Terrorism is why I don't go to big stores very much. It's why I wonder about my own sanity when I walk into a movie theater. It's why there should be little wonder at the immense growth of Netflix.
Terrorism is why Osama bin Laden won. Okay, we caught and killed him, but he won because 9-11 frightened us so much that we changed the way we look at the world and each other, and he continues to win every day we have these kinds of attacks. What he planned not only worked, but infused a mentality upon us that endures and proliferates, not in the sense of protection but in the sense of lashing out in revenge.
And Muslims--more than three million of whom live here--have almost nothing to do with it anymore. Has anybody noticed that the ethno-religious attacks now seem to be centered on Jews, and that non-Muslims are attacking them?
Anyone who's been paying attention knows that where, and when, terrorism happens is irrelevant to its specific description. It lives on. Every time it happens here, it perpetuates the notion that the greatest (though not the only) threat to our domestic peace is itself domestic and always has been.
Due to the legacy of 9-11, though, the legal community has seen it fit to parse terrorism and domestic terrorism, as if the two somehow have, in the end, different origins and effects. They don't. It's an easy, mindless leap to perpetuate fear of foreigners and then, mislogically, fear against those who look foreign, in some kind of mass whitewashing that's futile and pointless. One more time: Within twenty years--assuming humanity hasn't been completely ruined by climate change--the population of this country will be majority non-white--and there's nothing that can be done about it.
Let's start the year of 2020 with a vow that "living and let living" should be the watchword for us all, not wiping out people just before oneself is wiped out. Let's remember to be good to each other because, after all, the life you save could be your own.
Be well. Be careful. Happy New Year. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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