Is Our Free Enterprise at Risk?

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Most people would agree that America’s strength rests upon two pillars: democracy and capitalism. That first pillar is built upon a duly elected representative government that operates on a check and balance system and an independent judiciary guaranteed by our Constitution. And the second pillar is our special form of capitalism which is based upon a free enterprise system regulated by government to assure economic stability and—ideally—equal opportunity for its participants. Government’s involvement in the business cycle was advocated by James Madison in order to assure business would have a stake in preserving our democracy. Today, the Fed uses various tools at its disposal to monitor and affect two key components of our economy: inflation and unemployment. By design our economic success is an underpinning to our democracy and has always been a key issue in every election. Unfortunately, it has often been used as the main justification for excessive wealth accumulation—a contemporary myth.

President Reagan is quoted as saying that “a rising sea lifts all ships.” Few would disagree with this metaphor when applied to a free enterprise system. Unfortunately, it no longer applies to the state of our current economy. Has the accumulation of wealth in recent decades raised the economic status of a majority of our citizens? Whether you look into the fields of news and book publishing, hydrocarbon exploration and drilling, telecommunications and broadcasting, drug development and provisioning, defense industry manufacturing and contracting, or the airline industry, you find a handful of companies dominating their enterprise sector. This dominance does not serve our economy or our democracy. President Theodore Roosevelt inveighed against the oligarchs of industry and sought to eliminate monopolies not because he was against big business, but because he wanted to preserve the free enterprise system AND our democracy. The roadblock he put in place slowed the inevitable accumulation of wealth that eventually was wiped out by the Great Depression. The unequal distribution of wealth in America at the time of the Depression has recently been replicated just before the great recession of 2008. But on this occasion, it was not the large private fortunes that were wiped out, but the pensions and housing security of millions of average Americans. The big investment banks (with the exception of Lehman Brothers) have actually grown, capturing an even bigger share of the economy since the recession while income inequality continues to become more disparate. The oligarchs of business amass a disproportionate amount of wealth, much like those deep ocean canyons that swallow 40% of the ocean’s water. They are the bottomless pits that consume capital, not for the sake of business growth, but for corporate and personal gain far beyond the needs of any organization or citizen in a democratic society. They are not “job creators,” but “job stranglers,” squeezing productivity out of a workforce despairing of any share in an expanding economy and drying up start-up money for entrepreneurs, seventy six percent of whom now thrive in only three states (California, New York and Massachusetts). Wage earners and small businesses that account for increases in demand and for most new hires, respectively, suffer in this environment. The new metaphor for our era might be “a receding sea sinks many ships.”

Somehow it has become a conservative position to resist any effort to reduce economic inequality. But a conservative is somebody who wants to preserve those values that have made society robust and successful. It is not a legitimate conservative position to support inequality in the world’s oldest democracy. So why do some “conservatives” support a system of growing inequality and decry any attempt to change that system as “socialism?” In Russia, where true socialism hides under the banner of a state controlled democracy, 60% of the economy is state owned. In America, a true democracy, more than 60% of the economy is controlled by a few capitalists and the corporations that represent their interests. Socialism is not our problem; unfettered capitalism or, more specifically, the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs is the problem. Their interest is not the preservation of American institutions and way of life, but of their wealth and its unrestrained accrual. How would I prove this assertion? The evidence is all around us. Corporations are more liquid than at any time in recent decades, yet wages have stagnated. There are more billionaires in America than at any time in history, far exceeding the so-called “barons of industry” from Teddy Roosevelt’s time. Campaigns are costlier than ever, because big pocket donors now dominate the playing field and the Washington agenda. Legislation in Congress can no longer be unencumbered of provisions written by special interest (i.e., predominately “moneyed interest”) lobbyists. Why do you think the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act required hundreds of pages, when it merely had to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act previously revoked by Congress and to establish the Volcker rule? If our political campaigns and legislative process are corrupted by big money, why would we not consider these facts the greatest threat to our democracy? How can we “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” when those democratic goals are subordinated to the wealth accumulation of the few?

I believe it was a famous historian of the 19th century who said that Americans were better than the government that served them. And, yes, it was Churchill who also said that democracy was the worst system of government, except for every other. The problem is not with Americans or with our system of government, but with our will and ability to elect representatives who serve our general welfare and interests. Also, the problem is not with the rich in general. There are many wealthy philanthropists who have supported programs that educate the electorate and that train the workforce for future jobs. But the initiative to learn and train is hampered by a loss of opportunity. Higher education costs are sky-rocketing. Public education is unequal in quality and, in too many cases, encumbered by high administrative costs, subverting investment in actual teaching and education resources. Our investment in infra-structure is at an all-time low at a time when it desperately needs to be rebuilt not only for the purpose of growing the future economy, but also for the benefit of our contemporary workforce denied access to the initial rungs of that economic ladder. There are legislative actions that could alter this picture. But there is also Washington gridlock abetted by power politics and supported by big money where zero-sum is the only game in town and fundraising is its leverage. Elected officials campaign on “getting things done,” “working across the aisle,” and “compromising with the opposition party.” Once elected, they are swallowed by the whale that awaits them in Washington, that is, Party Leadership. Perhaps there was some wisdom in those founding fathers who were reluctant to form political parties. They can too easily become the embodiment of special interests. In our era, they seem to represent campaign donors, lobbyists, and the powerbrokers dangling lucrative post-politic careers rather than you and me, the actual electorate. The issues that concern the general welfare go unaddressed—whether they are on immigration reform, gun control, global warming, wage fairness, education priorities, out-of-control campaign funding, a confusing and misapplied tax system, infra-structure maintenance and restoration, a system of regulatory authority that ranges from excessive to non-existent, or matters of war and peace.

It is true that it is still easier to start a business in America than in many other places in the world. But large mergers are becoming more common, while investment money for new business is becoming scarcer. The specter of a future where only big business remains is a future without free enterprise. In addition, we can easily see how big money is corrupting our democratic institutions. Fortunately, the future is still ours to create. There are reasonable politicians in Washington—the ones rarely given voice by the press because they capture less of an audience than the radicals from the left or right. When you hear talk of reforming campaign funding, investment banking, or the tax structure, give an ear to what is being said and give voice to your concerns. What is most true about America is its ability to salvage a promising future from its own pitfalls, whether it be slavery, suppression of women and minorities, the misadventures of foreign wars or, hopefully, the risks of losing our free enterprise system. The time for a voter revolution is now before that system becomes nothing more than an illusion and our democracy, a sham.

Pelican on the Bay

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Still waters:
No arctic blast from the Northeast;
No tropical breeze from the Southwest.

The Bay rests, an inverted Mt. Tamalpais on its surface,
Seemingly as ageless in its image as in its reality,
But for the soft concentric ripples from a lone pelican
Floating there, creating undulating perspectives.

I too am that pelican in still waters.

AJD, 11/17/2014

A Blossom in the Wilderness

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Blood red on a black canvas: the shock of a blossoming anthurium in a desolate landscape of cold, dark lava.

A couple of years ago I visited friends on the big island of Hawaii. One of the many ecological wonders I witnessed was the vast expanse of old lava flows. What especially caught my eye was the occasional flowering plant that burst forth within this barren wasteland. These hardy plants are called anthuriums or bromeliads. Some years after a lava flow, after the lava has cooled, these plants can germinate their wind scattered seeds and root into the lava rock, somehow mining the nutrients needed to grow and flower into a beautiful, bright blossom. They are the forerunners of many other plants that will take root in the lava beds and eventually of a transformed eco-environment. But the initial process of an anthurium’s genesis takes time.

It also took time for our genesis. In terms of planetary history, the emergence of Homo sapiens occurred in the last tenth of one percent of that history. We humans represent the flowering of self-aware, conscious life, evolving from pristine life forms rooted in the elements of mother earth. But our emergence, like that of the anthurium, is not an end state, but the beginning of a transformed eco-environment. In our case, this new environment is what we create for ourselves and our posterity. Consider how human life has changed in just a few thousand years. The world we inhabit is still one composed of land, sea and air and shared with many varied life forms. But it is also a world of cities, organized agriculture, and civilized societies ordered by laws and cultural prescriptions. The objective world we live in is not just the physical one bequeathed by Mother Nature but the subjective creation of our ancestors and ourselves. And we are only at the beginning of this self-created world.

Some of us think we have arrived at the pinnacle of human existence. We have unleashed the power of the atom, traveled to the moon, begun the exploration of our solar system, mined and harvested earth’s resources to support our accelerated population growth. One might conclude, if allowed such hubris, that we truly are masters of the universe. In truth, we have reached the very heights of tribal warfare (ref. “The Rule of the Primate”), genocide, and the potential desolation of mother earth. Has there ever been a more violent time in human history than the twentieth century? Does not the twenty first century face the gravest prospects for human civilization in terms of global warming, rising seas, and pollution of our most basic resources—air, water, and nutrient-rich soil?

To be clear, I believe in the beauty of the anthurium’s bloom and the future of our kind. Clearly, we humans have come a long way. But we can no longer depend upon our physical evolution to improve our species. We are now—more than at any time in our history—accountable for our future AND the preservation of terra firma. We have the science and the technology to do better. We only lack the will. It took Switzerland decades to remove pollution from its waterways. It required less than a decade for America to reverse the effects of acid rain and for the world to reduce the effects of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet rays. Not only can we do better by our physical environment, but we can also improve our lot as global citizens. Whether it’s tribal conflicts in the Middle East or North Africa, epidemics in West Africa, or droughts in America’s farm belt and California’s central valley, we all have a stake in the outcome.

What is needed is a new state of being in every human: not just subjective, but collective; not temporal, but prescient; not possessive, but custodial. To live without compassion for others is to live without reverence for humanity—which is to live without meaning (“vanity of vanities, all is vanity”). We live in a connected world that spans across time and place. What we extract from the earth, how we farm our food, where we dump our waste are activities that not only affect our present, but the future of our posterity. Just as the evolution of our self-awareness has made us cognizant of our limited lifespans and of the necessity to care for our self-preservation, it also makes us aware of our responsibility to care for the planet that bore us. We do not own this earth. We are born its prodigy and should not be prodigal of its bounty.

Much of what happens within the human body is systemically conditioned and unconscious: our lives are grounded in the very elements and processes of nature as medical science has shown. But, by some miracle, we are gifted with a creative awareness: an ability to reflect and learn from our past; the insight to project our future and even to change it; the creative energy to express our innermost experiences and to project what we conceive in language, in the conduct of our lives, and in our art, culture, and civilization. Consciousness is not just a gift of our creation; it is by its nature a godlike quality. It can transcend time and place and create what never before existed. Perhaps the very experience of living in this awareness is not so different than living in the presence of God. If so, how undeserving is it to waste such a gift and not to put it in service to our shared humanity and to the preservation of the earth that engendered us?

Within the cold, bleak vacuum of the universe, we are that blossom in the wilderness.

Polling for Non-action

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Data mining is based upon algorithms written by analysts. It is governed by the same potential for error that pervades every human endeavor. Analytic errors, however, are the least of the problems with data mining. In a typical algorithm, there are many variables that can be manipulated to attain pre-specified objectives. For example, suppose a large property leasing company wanted to increase its profit margin by raising its income. Among the many variables it might consider—cutting costs, reducing vacancy rates with longer term leases, increasing income by building new units in high costs housing regions, automating lease management procedures, etc.—it might include the universal economic element of demand. One of the byproducts of bloating the demand calculation is that it can be self-fulfilling. Market analysis of demand is behind the co- location of so many fast food vendors within a stone’s throw of each other. Interestingly, co-located fast food chains in malls do seem to increase demand because of their ready availability to shoppers. But in the case of our property leasing company, as much as a 20 to 30 percent increase in rents can be justified by simply tweaking the demand variable. Alleged market forces instead of a desire to increase corporate profits can then be credited for gouging tenants.

Now apply the same principles of analytic data mining to politics, specifically to politically based polling. Electorate data collection and interpretation can be effective in directing a political campaign to win its identified target audience. But do you see the potential problem here? The same process can be easily manipulated to influence public opinion—which explains the contradictions between polls conducted by the opposing political parties in the same political contest. In the last presidential election, for example, both parties told the voting public that their candidate polled better and would win. (One Party went so far as to actually believe their own skewed polls.) Having stated this problem, I’m not claiming that all pollsters are fudging the results. I’m sure there are reputable organizations doing their best to cull data they think helpful to politicians, as well as the electorate. But how should we the public evaluate the usefulness of this information? If a majority of polls agree with me, should I feel affirmed in my position? If they disagree with me, should I merely disavow the poll results as biased? Or should I consider the pros and cons of every campaign issue or candidate on the merits of respective policy positions? In other words, should I just ignore the polls?

My last question seems to imply the obvious answer. But the problem I’m identifying cannot be so easily ignored, for it is both pervasive and even subversive. To be succinct, we are living in an era of massive data manipulation where basic trust in institutions, industries and government is being undermined, often by these very players. The goal is not just to inform or even to influence the public. Within the realm of politics, polls can be used to obfuscate facts and positions, making the development of practical policies nearly impossible. Here are some examples:
➣ According to the polls, a majority of Americans agree that reducing deficit spending and its antithesis, taxes, are both necessary.
➣ According to the polls, Americans want to reform the safety net while neither cutting benefits nor increasing the taxes that support it.
➣ According to the polls, Americans support the Second Amendment and gun control legislation. (These positions are actually not contradictory, though they are presented as such.)
➣ According to the polls, Americans believe in global warming, but not in legislative restrictions on the use of hydrocarbons (e.g., the carbon tax) or in major government investment in alternative sources of energy. (Our government’s spending on these alternatives lags behind many European nations and China, even though Americans seem more than willing to install solar panels and drive hybrid cars.)
➣ According to the polls, Americans believe in sustainable development but not in the role of government to shape it. (It seems likely that sustainable development might not be understood in any relatable sense. It was defined a quarter of a century ago by the World Commission on Environment and Development, as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”)

This list can be extended, but it suffices to make a point. Pollsters can ask questions and manipulate variables to justify positions that are never specified. In other words, the questions answer themselves without ever dealing with actual policy. For example, how would Americans respond to actual legislative bills that would reform specific elements of the tax code, Medicare, and Social Security? Likewise, would Americans support a carbon tax, environmentally sensitive restrictions on development, and investments in alternative energy sources if the costs and benefits to our posterity were fairly presented? Rarely are we debating actual policy formulae. Instead, we seem to lose focus amidst alleged value conflicts. For example, support for the Second Amendment is used as the argument against background checks. The polls that support the right to bear arms are quoted to advance this argument. But these polls are irrelevant to the real problems we face. Recently it has been reported that 30% of the weapons used in the Northern Triangle of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador were purchased at American retail outlets. Do the polls address this issue and its impact on young immigrants from that region trying to escape the violence? And what right of gun ownership belongs to mass executioners here or abroad? Why do we seem unable to form a gun control policy that does not in any way conflict with the Second Amendment? Perhaps we are responding to a pollster’s question that might read as follows: “Do you support background checks that infringe on your right to own a gun and violate your Second Amendment rights?” I have received poll questions with this type of construction. They elicit a desired response based upon strongly held values, but offer no actual policy formula to address the real problem.

I am not a legislator so I probably should not specify possible bills without the debate and compromise required by our system of government. But I think you can see my point: poll data can affirm public opinion as justification for a lack of actual policy. Both sides of the political spectrum can claim public support for doing nothing! Therefore, no legislative action is undertaken. Remember the so-called “grand bargain” that the President and House Speaker had nearly reached several years ago. Its failure seems to be the demarcation between any possible policy compromise and the current situation in Washington. Rhetorical flourish has replaced policy debates. Accusation substitutes for self-examination and accountability. One-upmanship parades as political virtue; and compromise is a political vice. In this surreal context, the polls are used to serve political gridlock and become nothing more than arrows in the political quiver. They justify the lack of policy proposals and the opportunity for any debate on the matter. Without these proposals and relevant debate, there is no opportunity for compromise. Without compromise, there is no policy.

We are polling for non-action. It’s like fishing for dead fish.

Truth in Blogging

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I have been thinking deeply about my reasons for writing this blog. My first blog attempted to define a rationale (“To Blog or Not to Blog”). Now that I am much further along in the process, I find myself once again questioning my initial motivation. Certainly, I was not attracted to the siren call of fame or fortune—that much must be obvious to my readers. Did I have a particular ideology or dogma to articulate? But that phase of my life began to disintegrate at the age of 21. Gradually, I came to realize every ideology is just a singular network of conceptions that form an integrated world picture. To the extent that this world picture overlaps with others, it has some validity. Otherwise, it serves as a healthy delusion, comforting to the degree that it allows one to make sense of his/her life. Dogma, I soon learned, was often hard earned wisdom from past generations that had become calcified into an exclusive set of actions and beliefs. To the extent that one’s personal belief system is lived with openness to its founding inspiration, it has the power to transcend the opaque routine of everyday life. But it can too easily become a prescription for living and thinking that relieves one of any personal responsibility and precludes reasoning or self-examination by its very mandate. The bottom line is that I am neither an advocate for any specific ideology nor an evangelist for any specific religion or practice. So what manner of hubris has brought me to blogging? Perhaps I fancy that I have access to some element of truth whose validity depends upon it being shared.

So what is truth? One person’s truth is another’s fallacy, or so it seems. Can we even recognize truth within the blizzard of its many potential sources? We live in an age when communication has been multiplied by the digital media—the internet, cable news, and various handheld devices to include the ubiquitous cellphones. But are we communicating any better today than before digital transmission ruled the airwaves? Within the realm of science, truth is validated when an hypothesis is tested in a lab and confirmed by repeated tests. Between individuals, I believe, most communications are validated solely on the basis of trust. (Our gullibility in this regard is stupendous, especially when you consider our susceptibility to advertising campaigns and to the promises and propagandized world views of politicians.) We may not have physical labs where every communication can be pre-tested for validity; but we do have the equivalent apparatus lodged in our brains where memories of past experience and the power of reason itself reside. When something you have read or heard “resonates” with you, it seems to flow with the patterns of your life experiences and self-reflection. In an instant, you sense that something true has been communicated and you feel connected with the communicator in a mutual relation. You share a truth which seems further validated by that relationship: a real feedback loop.

If you have followed me thus far, then you might conclude that all truth is relative, with the possible exception of scientific truth. But, actually, I believe all truth is relative, even when validated by objective scientific tests, by the shared experience of others, or by so-called “common sense” (what used to be called “self-evident truth”). There was a time when philosophers saw the world in terms of matter, form and the interplay of causal principles; and scientist explained everything in terms of material substance, energy, and the movement of objects from point “a” to point “b.” But the philosophers never agreed on any one system of philosophy. And science has long struggled with the “grand vision of everything” that might explain the fundamental source of all energy and the underlining mystery of matter itself—the fact that its atomic composition appears to be nothing other than empty space and energy states. My point is simple: all truth changes, including scientific truth, as we amass more experience, real world testing and a common understanding. The only truth that is absolute is the vast area of our mutual ignorance which includes the unknowable—the proper subject of art and religion. “Truth” is that ever-accumulating ball of knowledge and wisdom we persistently push towards a mountain peak forever shrouded by clouds. What has been generally accepted in the West as the accumulation of our knowledge and wisdom is called the perennial philosophy and contemporary science (including, of course, quantum physics, which rather reads as metaphysics). What amalgamates and establishes the various relative truths of ages past is our mutually concurred/verified understanding as expressed in mathematics and, most especially, in language. The latter expression is my entry into writing a blog.

If a tree falls in the forest . . . is there objective truth when no one can testify to its existence? Is consciousness the sine qua non of existence? For us, the answer to that question would seem to be “yes.” For without our awareness, we ourselves would be simply “not there.” Without consciousness, in fact, we would not be in the world-as-we-know-it at all. But there was a time when our species did not exist on this planet. Yet there is plenty of evidence that the earth and life evolved together as necessary precursors to our emergence. So trees fell in many forests around the globe long before humans were on the scene. The force of nature that spins the galaxies and spawns its many life forms on mother earth is that same creative energy that both predates our existence and invites us as active players in its tour de force. We make reality for ourselves by simply being aware of it and more; for we enter into its creative vitality by the decisions we make and the concepts we form and share with one another. The world we inhabit is both the oyster shell we create and, at the same time, that mysterious and unknown force that governs every energy state and enables every creation. So we can agree on some measure of truth that we attain together, but that measure is inconsequential to the absolute that engendered us and encompasses our past, present, and future. Scientists share their results with other scientists in order to make possible the next generation of discoveries. As individuals, we share our personal truth with each other in order to validate/enhance our three-dimensioned/conceptualized perspective on a world in order to gain some wisdom for ourselves and our posterity. Likewise, my “truth” is my entry into writing a blog.

With confidence I can say that my written words are a testimony to my ignorance. When I share with you my self-assumed knowledge and limited wisdom, I am merely casting into the wealth of knowledge and wisdom that already exists in you, my readers. If what I have written resonates with you, then we have attained some measure of truth together. Recently, I have netted many new subscribers. So your apparent interest seems to justify my rationale for writing this blog. I can only thank you for your interest and support.

The Fog of War

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A little more than a decade ago I spent the better part of a year researching the Vietnam War. What motivated me to do so? Did I feel the necessity to finally eradicate the psychological scar that war inflicted on me as one of its combatants? Did I believe that its conduct had not been treated fairly in spite of the mountainous material that had already been published and broadcast? Did I feel that I needed to understand better the context in which I and my fellow soldiers experienced that war in order to gain a more truthful perspective? Or did I think that the time for that perspective had only just arrived with the release of confidential documents 40 years after the war’s conclusion? Basically, my motivation was inspired by all of these questions, but especially by the latter. With the beginning of President Bush’s preemptive invasion of Iraq, I could not shake the image of President Johnson’s preemptive invasion of Na Nang, Vietnam, in 1965. Both invasions were justified on the basis of erroneous intelligence data—the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident and the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction. Both wars resulted in a military occupation, the establishment of a sectarian government, and a violent insurgency that invited a counter invasion from a neighboring country to overthrow that government—in 1966 from North Vietnam and in 2014 from ISIL (Islamic State of the Levant, its more accurate pseudonym). Welcome to our present situation. Now we are once again engaged in a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation, based upon provocative, but unconvincing intelligence of any threat to our nation, and the prospect of instigating a terrorist response to the homeland (instead of an insurgency). At least we seem dedicated to precluding an American occupation which a large contingent of frontline combat soldiers would likely entail. Given that we American citizens might not know much about “actionable” intelligence and the resulting tactical maneuvers until nearly 40 years after-the-fact, what sense can we make of America’s response to ISIL?

I believe it is necessary to question what we are told about policy, goals, and tactics. It is not my intent to personalize an attack on the current administration. I do not believe that President Johnson, Bush, or Obama are warmongers or inveterate liars. But history clearly tells us that our Presidents can be led into a cul-de-sac not of their choosing. (Witness the standoff between Kennedy and Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis.) So, if my readers will allow me some license, let me question some of what we have been told about this latest American incursion in the Middle East.

➣ Our initial involvement was a series of airstrikes designed to protect American diplomats and free a Christian minority trapped on a mountain in Northern Iraq. The bombing continued after ISIL’s advance had been stopped and the refugees on Sinjar Mountain had been declared safe. What interests me is the pretext for this bombing. It is based upon two assumptions: the Kurds were not capable of defending their capital city and there were 40,000 homeless refugees on Sinjar. The former assumption was based upon the Kurds initial withdrawal from combat with ISIL; but we later found out that they were surprised, ran out of ammunition, and withdrew in order to regroup. The latter assumption became questionable when international aid workers finally landed on Sinjar and found only about 5,000 residents instead of refugees. Our State Department explained that apparently the refugees had already been evacuated by the Kurds under the cover of American airstrikes. These assumptions were presented as precursors for American involvement. But do they really represent our “Gulf of Tonkin moment”?

➣ Our President laudably declined to extend our bombing campaign until the Iraqis formed a more inclusive government. This was a brilliant diplomatic ploy, but to what purpose? The obvious answer is to preserve what American investment (to the tune of 1 trillion dollars) has created in the form of a titular republic in Iraq. Also, it was our stated intent to use Iraqi and Kurdish troops to combat ISIL in place of American “boots on the ground.” Their success, however, seemed much less secure unless the Sunnis in Northern Iraq identified with the government in Bagdad and joined forces with the Iraqi military. Therefore, removing Malicki and muting the advance of ISIL with American airpower are merely initial efforts to dismantle a terrorist group—the stated goal of this Administration. Or is there a deeper reason for our interest in saving Iraq from ISIL? In Vietnam, our overall strategic interest was stopping the so-called domino effect of Communist aggression. In the more recent Iraq war, we wanted to expand its contribution to the world oil market. Remember: Iraq still has the largest known reserves of oil in the world. This is a treasure trove the West will not hesitate to protect and to exploit. Today Iraq produces about 1 million barrels per day over its pre-war level. But that increased production has only offset the 1 million barrels per day that Iran has lost as a result of American sponsored sanctions. Now any threat to Iraqi reserves also exacerbates the West policy vis-à-vis Iran. In addition, it just happens to be the case that all of Iraqi oil is shipped to Europe which desperately wants to cut back its dependency on Russian gas and oil supplies even though it supports Iranian sanctions. . As a consequence, ISIL’s initial moves against oil rich Kirkuk and its capture of two oil refineries set off major alarms. Though the Iranians are engaged militarily in defense of Iraqi Shiites, expect them to use the disruptive potential of ISIL as a pretext to breach the imposed oil embargo with Europe and to take a much tougher stand in the ongoing nuclear proliferation negotiations with the United States. ISIL also creates problems for the Sunni Arab states because they want to assume the banner of the Islamic Caliphate. (There can only be one Islamic Caliphate according to Moslem tradition.) But how does this Caliphate declaration affect America? Why is ISIL more of a threat than the Islamic terrorist group in Africa that holds a broader swath of territory and also claims to be the Islamic Caliphate? Are we choosing to fight ISIL because it presents more of a danger to us than other terrorist groups in Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, or central Africa? By my humble estimate they all hate us about the same, though only al Qaeda seems to have the incentive and capability to harm us where we live. Perhaps we should be asking whether our fight with ISIL is more about preserving the production of Middle Eastern oil and our leverage with Iran in ongoing nuclear negotiations than any immediate terrorist threat to America. What is the primary reason for engaging ISIS at this time, rather than before?

➣ America under the leadership of President Obama is attempting to unite the “world” under a new doctrine of collective defense. The United Nations will likely be asked to authorize a collective military response against a non-state group in Syria which may present a threat to the West in the future. (Interestingly, nobody has asked for the collective defense of Ukraine against the present threat of Russian supported separatists.) Of course, the UN is not able to authorize such an action as long as Russia is a member of the Security Council. In fact, America has already expanded its air war into Syria with the support of some members of the Arab League before it even addressed the UN. But if our own Congress is unwilling to declare its support for the President’s initiative—which clearly exceeds the boundaries of his Constitutional authority– then it is understandable that he would seek some measure of international support. Like Woodrow Wilson before him, President Obama may be ahead of his time. The League of Nations died in its infancy, decades before the United Nations was resurrected after World War II. Our current President may be anticipating the Intergalactic Federation of the next century. Unfortunately, we do not as yet have a world body that can squelch bad actors before they wreak their havoc on sovereign entities. And America cannot function alone as the world police. In fact, I do not believe we do, except as a cover for our own state interest. The question here is whether gathering a coalition of nations and seeking some form of a UN mandate is any more than a diplomatic cover. The President has certainly put the “do-nothing-until-after-the-election” Congress on the spot. Is the President building on the Cheney-Bush doctrine of preemptive war? Or is he baiting a Congress that refused to grant him the authority to bomb Syria a year ago?

➣ And, finally, what is the purpose of training and equipping the supposedly moderate rebels in Syria to fight ISIL? For three years now we have claimed there was no moderate group trustworthy enough for anything more than American small arms. Several months ago a broadcast report aired an interview with rebels who had participated in clandestine, US sponsored military training exercises. They reported the training lasted only a few weeks, provided little more than shoulder rifles, and was felt to be totally inadequate for the actual combat they faced in Syria. The President has just asked Congress to provide half a billion dollars to expand this training and bring it into the light (meaning it will no longer be a CIA enterprise, but a fully funded program run by the Pentagon and monitored by Congress). But the program is projected to train only five thousand rebels in the course of a year. Obviously, this effort cannot fulfill the function the Administration has allocated to it. Not only is this trained cadre too small to confront ISIL and not available to deal with the immediate threat; but it would be hard pressed to focus on ISIL when its main adversary is the Assad government. So the obvious question is what is the purpose of this rebel training program? These newly minted moderate rebels may never become the “boots on the ground” fighting ISIL. Perhaps their mission is no more than the survival of a core faction America can support in some eventual diplomatic settlement with the Assad regime. From the beginning, the Administration has stated the civil war in Syria can only be resolved through some kind of political rapprochement. If there is some hidden diplomacy under the table, we may not be privy to its content and reach until some 40 years from now. But we can still question the stated objective of this training program.

Now that we are shrouded in the fog of war, there will be many unanswered questions and many tactical twists and turns that will further befuddle us. Nation states will contest and play by rules that would embarrass an honest and upright person. As I have stated elsewhere (“The Rule of the Primate”), war is a testimony to where we are in our evolution as primates. A nation state can do what an individual or private citizen would consider unconscionable. And yet that very same citizen can bask in the glory of a battle won, for he/she bears no accountability for the detritus of war. Herein are both the bane of nationalism and its appeal. At this moment in our history, perhaps the best that we can do to better our world and advance our evolution is to question the facades and absurdities of nation states. And we can continue to give voice to the hapless civilians who will be discounted as collateral damage in these inane contests for power and resources.

In the Zone

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A four year old boy cries out in the middle of the night. His parents rush to his room and ask what is wrong with him. He says, “I don’t want to die.”

What happened to that little boy is a common experience for anyone of us once we discover what it means to live a human life. Confronted by death we become aware of our existence and of its tenuousness. You cannot experience light without darkness. It is the absence of light that makes it real. For that four year old, however, the stark imprint of an ultimate darkness made his parents’ words of comfort—“you have a long life ahead of you”—not believable. He had just looked into the abyss and already knew that it could devour him at any moment. Moreover, the novelty of exploring his universe could also be taken away, crushing the curiosity that he had so come to relish. Though death had stalked his waking dream with fear and the dread of loss, it was also a harbinger of the life he might choose for himself. That life was not yet present to him where he was—there, crouched under the covers of his bed.

Eight years later, that same boy was engulfed in music, sports, literature, math and science. His “I” was fully engaged with his life until one day when he experienced something unexpected. He had just run the fastest mile of his young life, a full 20 seconds faster than his best time. From the outset of that run, he had hit his stride and never relinquished it as he flew around the track, clocking the same time for each quarter mile. Those who saw him claimed he floated above the track, his feet barely touching the ground. What made that run memorable for him, however, was not his record time, but the experience of running so effortlessly—and something else he would never forget. During the entire mile, “he” was not running. He was the “running.” He had become the cadence of his stride, the impetus of the earth beneath each footfall, the wind in his hair, the coordinated torque of muscle and limb, and, above all, a being possessed by a mysterious force. It was his decision to run that day, but it was this unnamable energy that engulfed his body. Others told him that he was “in the zone.” From his perspective, he could only say that he had never been more present and yet so not “there.”

Twenty years later, that young miler had grown into a man and held his first born in his arms. As he looked into the eyes of his little girl, he knew he was not yet seen. She stared at him without recognition. He was only part of a world yet to be defined. But he could see she found him the most interesting object in her field of vision. What intrigued him though was the fact that he was not there at all, not only in her recognition of him as father, but in his person. He was lost in a relationship to this little being who confronted him with questioning eyes and the burgeoning promise of a life apart from his. She was already another awareness confronting him and an impenetrable mystery. She could not be owned, manipulated or used. She would always be the subject of her own life with the power to pull him out of his ego and into the embrace of an unconditional love. And in that love, he would never be more present and yet so not “there.”

There are moments in one’s life that mark us indelibly. Those that are most meaningful suggest that the art of living is not about what we encounter but the relationships we form as a result. The ultimate experience of living is lost to those who fail to form these relationships. At the heart of every relationship is life outside of the ego wherein all that we possess or control withers and death remains the sole master of our fate. When we truly connect with the people and things in our individual lives, we enter into a reciprocal relationship and become truly present in the moment. Contemplate a tree in its “thereness” and receive the experience of existing alongside that tree. Be fully committed to running a marathon or tending a garden and receive the experience of living in harmony with the energy in your body and the planet that nurtures you. See in another’s eyes a reflection of a shared awareness and receive the experience of a spiritual awakening that only two humans can have. In that moment of connection, you have become more than a self-serving ego: “you” are not there because you are there.

The fate I create is created outside of my ego and defies the sting of death.

Why Fable News?

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The title of this blog may seem like a premise for me to heap verbal abuse on the press. But it would be duplicitous of me to do so, since much of what I have learned comes from the press. There are many journalistic periodicals and newspapers that adhere to the highest code of fair and honest reporting and that provide thoughtful and in depth commentary. Unfortunately, cable news reporting sometimes fails to follow their example, catering instead to the viewing experience. Whether it is the sight of some news anchor bracing hurricane winds or taking position near billowing tear gas, we are taken live to the scene and held captive to our TV set. Sometimes I find myself anxiously anticipating the moment the news maker is blown off my screen or imagining John Stewart in a gas mask directing rioters and police in the street. I suppose this type of reporting has some value in a world where context no longer matters: it is sufficient just to be there vicariously, like a voyeur. Unfortunately, we live our lives in context.

My real problem with some cable news “shows” reaches to the core of their mission. I have labeled them “fable news” and question their relevance to the role of a free press in our tripartite system of government. When the relationship between the legislative and executive branches becomes stagnant or inept at solving problems, we debate them in the public forum where democracies ultimately live and either prosper or die. For us that public space for dialogue is at home, at work, in communities, and via social media. Much of that dialogue depends upon input from the free press. How the news is presented, how unbiased the commentary, how accurate the reporting are all critical to this ongoing dialogue. In our ideal America, we all assume that the press wants that same honest dialogue that we so desperately need. But is that what fable news wants? At times they make little effort to hide their bias and diligently report what they believe their viewer base wants to hear. Why they do so is made obvious by the manipulative information morsel introduced before the commercial break. It is designed to whet your appetite to hear more. They want you to “stay tuned” for their next offering of salacious, scandalous, frightening, repulsive, and/or provoking tidbit of little or no news value. The danger in this approach is that it conflicts with the traditional role of the so-called fourth estate. Fluff reporting may “make news” by creating controversy, but ignores the journalistic code of getting the story right. The latest example of fable news coverage is the characterization of the President’s major failure (at worst) or his “unartful” faux pa (at best) in last Friday’s briefing before the White House press corps. The President is quoted as saying he had no strategy for dealing with ISIS in Syria. The video clip of his statement to that effect has been run on every network ad nauseum, apparently because it supports the current politicized refrain of an incompetent Administration. The problem with this sound bite is that it was taken out of context. It has metastasized into a serious debate spawned by initially inaccurate reporting. The President was answering a specific question that addressed whether the Administration would bomb ISIS in Syria and, if so, whether he would seek support for Congress first. Everybody in that room knew that the President had authorized reconnaissance overflights to determine the feasibility of such a mission. His answer specified what was already obvious: the Administration had not yet concluded that a bombing mission would be effective and, if they did determine such a strategy, he would consult with Congress so that “the people’s elected officials” would have the opportunity to debate his strategy. There was no real news value in distorting the President’s message other than to support what some might think newsworthy, specifically, Administration incompetency. This theme seems to support what the polls show as a declining popular approval rating. Fable news wants to ride the tide of popular perception rather than report actual context or, for that matter, anything in depth. Many questions to paid consultants on these shows begin with “do you think the President’s failure to . . .” or “how would you grade the President’s response to . . .” These leading questions have been used to affix blame. They beg the question by assuming the President failed at something or needs to be graded like a naïve youth still in school and is therefore culpably or naively responsible for some undesirable outcome. They have been used to explain the existence of ISIS or the escalation of the Syrian civil war or the breakup of Iraq or delay of the Keystone Pipeline or the spike in immigrant children at our borders or IRS misguided implementation of tax law or whatever else can be made to support the incompetence narrative. This “piling on” is not truly newsworthy, since it is unsubstantiated. But it feeds the direction of the polls regarding the President’s approval rating. It is also embarrassing since it is more about the reporting of the news than its actual substance. The issues just enumerated can easily be made to illustrate my point. For example, here are a few facts that call this type of reporting into question:

• ISIS is an offshoot of al Qaeda which immigrated to Iraq when our invasion became the pretext for Jihadist to join the fight against the great Satan. Its leader is a former inmate of one of our military jails; and many of ISIS’ cadres are former generals and officers in Hussein’s army whom we disenfranchised and prohibited from any future government role. Was our current President responsible for that invasion or the policies of exclusion implemented during our occupation of Iraq? If not, then he cannot be responsible for the creation of ISIS.
• The supposed failure of the President to back up his stated redline by bombing Syria was the result of two juxtaposed occurrences: Congress did not call for a vote on his request to authorize an attack, as is required under our Constitution; and Assad agreed to give up his chemical weapons (at the urging of Putin who likely sensed the threat to his hegemony in Syria). Given these circumstances what constitutional power would have allowed the President to wage war on Syria? And, if he had been given Congressional support, under what pretense would he execute his threat if Assad had already agreed to remove his chemical weapons? Would we simply have inserted ourselves into the middle of a civil war where most of the combatants were equally undesirable—including ISIS? The President did not bomb Syria because he was not given the authority and because he no longer had cause. Even if he had, it is not clear that bombing would have changed the course of the civil war. Arming and training the rebels earlier, a separate issue, might have had an impact. But the secular moderates were mostly civilians and their leaders, in many cases, were part of the Syrian diaspora and unfamiliar with the circumstances on the ground. It may be that we failed to help them in time of need; but it is not clear whether their fighting ability could have been raised to a level that would have turned the tide against the Baathist generals and seasoned fighters of ISIS. They may have turned over American weapons to ISIS faster than the Iraqi army. It is difficult to make the case that the President is responsible for the conduct of a civil war where there are so many bad actors actually participating in its escalation. Remember: hindsight is always 20:20. We would have done well if we had done more to help the moderate rebels. Whether that assistance would have turned the tide still remains questionable. In any case, using that supposed “failure” as an impetus for invading Syria now opens a much bigger Pandora’s Box.
• No serious analyst would remove Malicki from responsibility for the splintering of Iraq’s government. Even if he had agreed to allow 10 or 20 thousand American troops to remain in Iraq, those troops would not have had any more political sway over Malicki than the thousands of American Foreign Service workers who remained there in the largest American embassy compound in the world. Could the President have violated the agreement already made by a previous administration and used an occupying US military to force our will on a disagreeable Iraqi government? I think not.
• By law, approval of pipelines rests in those States traversed by these pipelines. In the case of the Keystone Pipeline, additional approval would be needed by the US State Department because it is designed to cross an international border. There are also Federal regulations regarding pipelines, including the EPA assessment, that are required by law. At this point, the Keystone Pipeline has obtained all regulatory approvals and a free pass from the EPA. It would be inappropriate and absurd for the State Department to approve of this pipeline before the States affected by it have made their assessment and approved its construction. This is not just a State’s rights issue, but a matter of natural law regarding eminent domain as interpreted in every State’s constitution. The Keystone Pipeline has NOT been approved in one of the States, because the Courts have ruled that its Governor’s use of eminent domain was unconstitutional. The Courts’ ruling has made some local farmers happy and, apparently, has served well the fable news theme about Administration incompetence and indecisiveness. One might understand why a Democratic President would be reticent about aggravating environmentalist before a decision is even warranted. But how would his approval of this pipeline allow its construction anyway without approval of the State? He cannot be blamed for a decision that would be irrelevant at this point because it is not yet a decision he can make.
• By now it should be obvious that the President did not create the violent and abusive circumstances in Central America that drove parents to send their children to America. The fact that smugglers misrepresented a Presidential executive order is not the fault of this Administration. That order only delayed the deportation of children who have lived in America for over 7 years (pending legislation to address the underlying issues). What more can the President do other than follow existing law and asks Congress for additional funds to address the unique challenge of processing children through our immigration corridor? The President is dealing with the hand given him and without any help from Congress. (Note: at this date, Congress still has not acted on the President’s request for funds.)
• The IRS fiasco was the result of tax law that has been misinterpreted by the IRS for decades. Their attempt to apply it in the current environment where so many alleged “non-profit” organizations appear to be political fundraising entities presents an unsolvable dilemma. Are these organizations “primarily” non-profit as the IRS was endeavoring to determine? Or are they “exclusively” non-profit as the law actually specified? Clearly, the latter question is easy to answer, whereas the former presents some difficulty. The IRS, under pressure from Congress, has clearly given up: they are abandoning attempts to weed out the bad actors, that is, political fundraising organizations parading as non-profits. (It should be noted that Congress could easily settle the issue by affirming the law as written. But that action would endanger a significant source of campaign funds, would it not?) Did the President’s policies or actions have anything to do with the IRS handling of this affair? No!

It is not my intent to give carte blanche support to presidential policy. As in every Administration, there have been legitimate failings. . (Think of Truman’s use of the atom bomb, of Eisenhower’s failure to sign the Geneva Treaty that would have precluded the Vietnam War, of Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs disaster, of Johnson’s conduct of the Vietnam War, of Nixon’s Watergate and his politicized extension of that War, of Reagan’s Iran/Contra affair, of Clinton’s impeachment, and of Bush’s lame justification for preemptive war in Iraq. The only recent President not on my list was the first Bush—perhaps because the one thing for which he was severely criticized was the right and courageous thing to do. Yes, that was his raising of the income tax. Remember “read my lips.”) Among the negatives on President Obama’s resume I would include the health care website fiasco and lack of an effective strategy beyond air support for the Libyan insurgency. The problem I’m addressing here, however, is with malfunctioning news teams that foment distrust of government for the sake of “making news” and servicing their sponsorship or corporate bottom line. The current fable news hype is about the likelihood of American combat troops on the ground in Iraq and possibly in Syria. If that does not bring viewers to the news broadcasts, maybe reports on the dangers of an Ebola epidemic or the imminent onslaught of terrorists from the Middle East wars will. The irresponsibility of fable news can be trivial and even harmless when it touches on wardrobe malfunctions and such. But when it purports to address serious matters that affect the governance of our country, the disservice it can render is unconscionable. Matters of state that require attention are made impenetrable for lack of factual reporting. Blame is attributed inappropriately, further obfuscating any possible solution. Irresponsibly promoting distrust in our elected officials can lead to distrust in government. And that distrust can foment either general apathy or violent revolt.

For the most part, I believe cable news wants to perform the press’s traditional role in our democracy which is informing and educating the electorate. Within the political sphere, their function can be critical in cutting through political jargon, talking points, official spin, and position papers to the core issues we need to understand. When functioning within their traditional role, we owe them a debt of gratitude. But for the practitioners of fable news, we need to change the channel. When you hear a leading question that presumes unsubstantiated judgment, change the channel. When a controversial sound bite is presented without context, change the channel. When facts are presented without offering credible sources, change the channel. When you are told the roof is falling, check the supporting beams. In other words, research the facts yourself if you have any anxiety about what has been reported. If you find out you have been duped, email the news broadcaster, his/her show, or the network. And, yes, change the channel. Maybe we can eliminate the “talking heads” spouting their nonsense and pompously reading scripts designed to gain viewer share. The issues I have referenced in this blog are real and deserve serious consideration, not self-serving fables. So I have to ask why . . . ?

A U.S. War in Syria and Iraq (again?)

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The enemy of our enemy is . . . well, still our enemy. How does the United States navigate through the dilemma posed by the Middle East? We could put two brigades on the ground in Northern Iraq and drive the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) into the ground. There are many in Washington and in the American press already leaning towards that option. We listened to that chorus once before, except in Afghanistan we stopped our ground troops at the Pakistani border and in Iraq unwittingly invited al Qaeda to join the disenfranchised and disempowered Sunni insurgency against the American invasion. Perhaps I am just part of the uninformed citizenry in this country, but I have learned something from history. For example, I know that the war in Vietnam could have been avoided if the American administration had simply signed the Geneva Treaty we had negotiated. That Treaty called for a nationwide plebiscite to determine the national leader of a united Vietnam. Also, more recent history has demonstrated that we invaded Iraq under false pretenses. In other words, those two wars—the most costly since World War II—were completely unnecessary and ended in unforeseen negative consequences. We lost nearly 60 thousand soldiers and absorbed over 250 thousand casualties into our VA system while eliminating over a million Vietnamese (mostly civilians). What we won was a Vietnam adversary for over four decades that only recently has begun to normalize relations with our country. In Iraq we spent many billions of dollars (over 2 billion still totally unaccounted for) and lost over five thousand solders while killing (according to UN estimates) over 100 thousand Iraqis (again, mostly civilians) and creating over one million homeless refugees. As a result, we flooded our VA system with thousands of wounded soldiers and found ourselves in support of a sectarian government in Iraq not only antagonistic to our military presence but to our foreign aid-supported pleas for moderation in dealing with the Sunnis and Kurds. In other words, we seem to have abetted the situation we now have in Iraq where the Sunnis, ostracized from power sharing, have welcomed back the latest incarnation of al Qaeda, led by a former al Qaeda operative and self-announced Caliph of a new terrorist state in the Levant. Of course, these results are the unintended consequences of American foreign policy. But they clearly point to the hazards imbedded in policy decisions regarding war and diplomacy. As far as I can determine, here are the options that appear to be before our President and Congress to date:

• As Senator McCain is wont to say, we can “bomb, bomb, bomb (fill in the country here) . . .” The President has already taken this option in Iraq, but only as a limited stopgap measure to halt the advance of ISIS and to enable humanitarian missions. All the military experts seem to agree that the only military option that would effectively drive ISIS out of Iraq involves troops on the ground. But the President is firmly against re-engaging American combat troops. Why? I suspect he is aware of the unintended consequences. Remember the Sunnis in North and West Iraq not only fought us during the last war, but also welcomed al Qaeda to join them in that fight. When General Petraeus negotiated to end the Sunni insurgency and effectively won the American exit from that war, he promised the Sunnis a stake in the governance of a free, democratic state of Iraq. That promise could not be kept. What would motivate the Sunnis to rise up against ISIS (like the so-called Sunni awakening of the last Iraq war) and to accept our military presence? There is evidence that they might be motivated to take the former action, but not the latter. A leading Sunni parliamentarian and outspoken anti-American has already indicated that the Sunnis would willingly drive out ISIS if the government in Bagdad would cease its suppression of Sunnis (basically the de-Baathification policies instituted by the American occupation and resurrected by PM Malicki), free Sunni political prisoners, and allow more local autonomy (perhaps similar to what the Kurds have). The President has already pushed the Iraqi government towards this Sunni position. His first move in that direction was to pressure the Iraqi parliament to oust Malicki and to form a unity government that would include Sunni and Kurds in positions of influence. While this process is underway, the President has provided US intelligence and Special Forces to support the Iraqi military in Ramadi and the Kurds’ Peshmurga in and around their capital city of Erbil. Although the Kurds are already in the fight, they have mainly pursued their own interest which includes protecting Erbil and winning control of Kirkuk, a city long disputed between the Kurds and the Shiites. For the Kurds to fight for all of Iraq, rather than declare their independence, they also will want a seat at the governance table and a resolution of their demands for control of Kirkuk and a fair share of the oil revenue taken from their lands. So the President’s stated policy of supporting indigenous combat troops has begun with the Peshmurga and, to a limited extent, the Iraqi army. But his ability to win over the Sunnis to that fight will depend upon the coming together of the Iraqi political factions. These are the stated policies of the American President to address the ISIS incursion into Iraq. Clearly, the option he has chosen does not include Americans leading the charge in combat, though any US military support mission does not preclude American casualties.
• Syria presents a different type of quagmire in that the Assad government is clearly at odds with America. The only foreign governments that have any influence with Damascus are Russia and Iran, with which we already have strained relations. Do we send troops into the mouth of the Syrian whale? It appears that Assad has set us up to be swallowed into his civil war; for he has deliberately directed his forces (at least until very recently) away from ISIS. Effectively, he has enabled ISIS to combat the other groups that oppose his regime. ISIS has, at the same time, legitimized his claim that he was fighting terrorists while his real intent was to crush his political adversaries. The problem we have in any strategy to push back ISIS is the fact that their command and control exists in Syria. The “hawks” and the press echo chamber have been clamoring about or for US bombing in Syria. When the President was asked about this possibility, he indicated he had no strategy to bomb Syria at this time, though he admitted he had asked for military options. He also said that if he decided on that course, he would consult with Congress beforehand. Is it not likely that he is considering the unintended consequences? Not only would there be collateral damage to civilians at our hands, but the main beneficiary of our bombing would be Assad’s brutal regime. There are also geopolitical considerations that further complicate any military involvement of America in Syria. For example, Saudi Arabia has been a strong financial supporter of Sunni jihadists in Syria (though they claim ISIS was not one of their satellites). Turkey has also been involved in the conflict by allowing jihadist entry into Syria across Turkey controlled borders. And, finally, since ISIS also goes by the name of ISL, the Islamic State of the Levant, their claimed area of control for their concocted Caliphate includes Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. The latter group tangentially, but still strategically, concerns Israel as well. The President’s foreign affairs team is well cognizant of these potential players of interest. The President has ordered his diplomatic team to scour the Middle East to discover the level of their support for whatever action can be taken against ISIS in Syria. What this means has yet to be determined. Could the countries of the Levant provide resources or even ground troops to capitalize on an American air campaign? Further, the President has widened his net to recruit a possible coalition of the willing by partnering with NATO and via a UN resolution that might authorize military action against ISIS. Personally, I cannot imagine any military action against ISIS in Syria without dealing with Assad. His actions demonstrate that he will never step down; and neither Russia nor Iran appears willing to urge him in that direction. But perhaps he could be persuaded to negotiate a truce with the moderates amongst his opposing forces. It would be a real coup for the West if an agreement on some sharing of power with the secular opposition could be reached with the current regime. However unlikely such an agreement might seem now, there is precedent in history. The bottom line: there is no ready available answer to the problem of ISIS in Syria. Simply bombing them there would not eliminate them. Sending American combat troops into Syria would pull us into a civil war with totally unpredictable results. A diplomatic solution without the involvement of Assad does not appear probable. Some form of outside pressure from the UN and Middle Eastern countries, possibly with the threat of a combined military threat, might provide a viable approach to the “ISIS in Syria” conundrum. Apparently, the President’s team is exploring this approach. But, like the Ukraine puzzle, there are no simple answers when players like Putin or Assad are involved. We have seen their like before. Unfortunately, they tend to take down their country with them.

At the outset of this review, I indicated what options appear to be before the President AND Congress. As befits this Congress, their voice has not been heard, other than a few snarky remarks about the deficiencies in the President’s approach or in his words taken out of context. In other words, our elected officials are playing politics while the State Department and the President take all the heat. The press has tried to take up the debate, but it does not have the Constitutional authority of Congress to crystallize policy. Moreover, the press does not have access to the intelligence, briefings, and internal policy debates within the Administration. Congress has both access to this information and oversight responsibility as our representatives. And, finally, only Congress has the Constitutional authority to wage war if, in fact, our military intervention in Syria is the option considered. So the image of a President “playing the fiddle as Rome burns” is not what I see. Instead, before an expectant and silent audience I see an orchestra in which every musician left their instruments at home. That silence is indeed deafening.

The Parable of Ferguson

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A bedraggled congressman sat on the steps of Congress bemoaning his sad plight. Out of earshot to any eavesdropper, he recanted the first lines from Article 1 of the Constitution, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States . . .” But every attempt he’d made to propose legislation for the people he represented was rejected by his Party’s leadership. In fact, nearly every bill proposed to “promote the general Welfare” was tabled. Further, even discussion on matters of national interest was sidetracked into endless debates, whether it addressed immigration, tax reform, infrastructure renovation, a balanced energy use/environment protection plan, or even basic civil rights for minorities and women. He buried his head in his hands in total despair. But a bystander saw his despondency and took pity on him. Placing a hand on the congressman’s shoulder, he asked what troubled the poor man. The congressman replied, “How can I be part of a legislative body that refuses to legislate, a government that refuses to govern? My position is a joke. I think I should just quit.” The bystander sat down next to the congressman and asked, “Have you heard of the parable of Ferguson?” The congressman shook his head from side to side. “Then let me tell you the story,” the bystander continued. “Once upon a time, there was this small town. It was co-habited by two distinct groups. The smaller group held all the positions of power. But one day a member of the ruling minority killed somebody from the majority. The ruling minority appeared unwilling to investigate the circumstances of this crime or determine accountability for the death of one of its citizens. The majority rose up in protests. But the protests drew a draconian response which infuriated the protesters, led to civil strife and violence, and highlighted the underlying problem. Do you know what the real problem was in this town?” The congressman wearily looked up at his storyteller, wondering what this story had to do with his predicament. “Well, I’ll tell you,” the storyteller eagerly carried on. “There was a longstanding lack of trust between the governed and the governing. That’s where the story had to turn. Though they represented nearly 70% of the town, the majority made up only 6% of the voting electorate in municipal elections. In the next election, however, they voted in a more representative local government.” The congressman’s interest was now peaked, prompting him to ask, “How do you think this town’s solution applies to my predicament?” The bystander looked down at the pitiable congressman and patted him comfortingly on the shoulder. “That’s simple,” he answered, “in a democracy the governed have to elect the governing. You’re off the hook, my friend, until the electorate assumes its responsibility.”

The preceding, as you may have guessed, was inspired by the parable of the Good Samaritan, though the parallels are rather uneven. The Good Samaritan “was moved to compassion” for somebody of a different tribe or class. The people in the Ferguson parable are moved to act in behalf of the general welfare of all its citizens, not just the fallen one. The artifice of this parable attempts to encapsulate the story of our American democracy and of its uneven evolution. Past setbacks to securing the general welfare, for instance, started at its outset with an African slave being counted as a 3/5 inhabitant of our new republic. Eventually, that injustice was corrected in law, as were other injustices affecting suppressed classes of people. Since our democracy has always been conjoined with an equally “free” economy (initially called laisse faire), it has brought wealth to millions, a growing middle class, and a standard of living for our citizens that became a model for the world. But, in that free-wheeling economic evolution, we too encountered setbacks, where the excesses of capitalism impinged upon our freedom, creating monopolies, unsafe working conditions, pollution hazards, dangerous products, and so on. These setbacks presented Americans with decision points in our progress. In each case, we rose as a nation with effective judicial, legislative, and executive responses. Of course, those responses are what you would expect of a democratic system whose laws reflect the values of its citizens.

Now a parable is not reality: it is a story meant to teach us something about reality. Ferguson’s reality at this moment appears to be a reawakening of democracy: citizens are registering to vote, 70,000 of them signed a petition for the District Attorney to recuse himself from the Brown case, and many are organizing not only to conduct peaceful demonstrations, but for future campaigns. These are the normal corrective responses to setbacks in a democracy: voters are moved protest, to petition, and to vote for their general welfare, as they can best define it at the time. If special interests or lobbyists write legislation, if paid advertising distorts the facts to dupe an electorate, if politicians carry out their public duties in a way that serves their reelection needs instead of the public interest, if discontent with government becomes an excuse to not participate in a democracy, then democracy is truly put in jeopardy.

A former UN ambassador during the Reagan administration, commenting on the break-up of Soviet Russia, wondered whether the fall of communism was a precursor to the fall of capitalism. More than two decades later, I think we can safely say her comment in no way prefigured what has actually transpired. The US is still, per capita, the wealthiest nation in the world. Its influence by virtue of a common currency and banking dominance has largely created an economic world order in which the European Union, the BRIC nations, and the underdeveloped nations of Africa and Asia have all prospered. Surely capitalism is not in decline, but democracy may be.

Our history has shown us there is a balancing act between capitalism and democracy, rather like a seesaw. When properly balanced, our nation prospers both in its freedom and its wealth. Out of balance, we suffer setbacks in our evolution of what John Adams called an experiment in democratic government. Wealth inequality and congressional gridlock are as much symptoms as problems. Do we need tax reform, elimination of Party-controlled gerrymandering, or campaign financial reform? Absolutely, these are keystone changes that will hold up and extend the life of our republic! But there will be no movement in Washington to address these issues without a groundswell of public pressure around specific policy initiatives. The US as a whole needs to learn the lesson of Ferguson before we succumb to mass disillusionment and the desperation of rioting in the streets. Let’s be clear: our tripartite government does not work until it speaks with one voice; and that voice has to be the voice of the people it represents.

It is commonly said that voters hate Congress, but love their individual congressmen/women. But voting is not a popularity contest! Instead, it is the exercise of a constitutional right to determine the positions and policies that benefit the electorate as a whole. It requires informed judgment. There are many knowledgeable and reasonable prescriptions for change already in the public forum. In my humble opinion, I would vote for any politician who would eliminate politically controlled gerrymandering, advance a fairer tax system, and institute public financing of elections with strict and transparent monitoring of all private money and resources proffered to public or elected officials. The agenda before Congress today, to the extent that one exists, reflects Party over public interest and moneyed interests over the general welfare of Americans. If we Americans allow Congress to dither as they have, we will be party to the devolution of our system of government. And that would be a tragedy not only for us, but for the world.