Law and Order, Trust, Spin & Which Legal System Applies

 

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

LAW & ORDER!!!

5:04 AM · Aug 30, 2020

As you watch confrontations of left and right, as conflicts between “always Trumpers” and protesters against racial injustice – often accompanied by violent and even fatal confrontations – rage across the land, the new GOP rallying cry of “law and order” generates two big questions: which law and whose order? RNC Virtual Convention: Pounded by one speaker after another, the mainstay of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech, “law and order” meant repressing urban protests against racial injustice across the country. All on the property of “all Americans” – the White House lawn – that legally was never allowed to be used for purely political campaigning… used here exclusively for political campaigning.

Trump-world: Angry and well-armed “fine people” who assemble to confront protesters addressing a glaring racial divide are patriotic Americans. The protesters against racial injustice are not. While left and right generally agree that those engaged looting, vandalism and arson are criminals, the right has conflated all such racial inequality protests as acts of radical leftist criminals that need to be stopped, by force if necessary.

Those who believe in deep state conspiracy theories, who simply deny statistics and scientific facts about the pandemic and those who take up arms against those opposing Trump’s politics are true Americans. Those trying to correct America’s shortcomings, as our Constitution was created to support, are part of a great leftist conspiracy, led by Godless radical Joe Biden, aimed at tearing down America. Trump flaunts/defies the law, more than any president in American history, provokes violence and thrives on polarizing, divide-and-conquer, politics. Self-admittedly, Trump is not President for all Americans… just to those who support his agenda.

On August 19^th, President Donald Trump went so far as to give admiring support to believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory, which maintains that the president is secretly fighting to save the world from an elite satanic pedophile network, calling them ‘people that love our country. On August 26^th, Fox News host and unabashed Trump mega-ally, Tucker Carlson, lent his support to Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who killed two Wisconsin Black Lives Matter protesters and maimed another. Carlson suggested Rittenhouse felt he “had to maintain order when no one else would.” Right wing Trumpers added another shooting death to their well-notched holsters on August 29^th… another Portland protester killed.

There must be a parallel America with a different constitution and a different set of statutes than those contained in the US Constitution and the United States Code that I studied in law school. I see lots of laws and constitutional prohibitions against what Donald Trump advocates and not so many laws and constitutional enablements in support of autocratic executive orders, misuse of public trust properties, deploying US forces in contravention of clear legal mandates to the contrary and what many describe as “inciting” violence. Trump has achieved a level of scofflaw we’ve never seen in an American president.  As Shakespeare admonished: “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.” Say the words and do the opposite. The Trump legacy.

I’m watching police departments and their all-powerful unions defying public oversight, denying access to body cam footage and relevant internal reports, dealing in internal reports of faked evidence and “cop-gang-vigilantes” waging an extralegal wars against those it deems probable criminals, excusing over-reaction in arrests as necessity, and implementing law enforcement  dressed in military fatigues, rolling in with armored personnel carriers and deploying urban warfare military tactics. I see excuses, denials and misinformation. I understand why some may believe that the police should be defunded and perhaps disbanded, although I passionately disagree with those sentiments. We need to fix the problem, for sure, not destroy this necessity.

We need police. They need to be relieved of the “there’s nobody else doing it” obligation to solve social problems, from mental illness, drug addiction, homelessness, and most forms of domestic disputes. They can’t be adjuncts to our military. They are civilians, uniforms notwithstanding! They are the most direct public servants that most Americans will ever see. They need our respect and support… but they also need to earn that public respect and support. Most of all we have the dual crisis of defining what social values police are obligated to “protect and serve” and how they must earn and maintain the universal public trust that is currently anything but consistent.

Perhaps nothing has exposed police failings and exacerbated the erosion of public trust like ubiquitous cell phone videos. Spin and denial are facing the beginning of an end. If there is to be trust, truth and transparency must prevail. But police are gravitating towards Trump extremism, one that just does not question police excess as a matter of policy as their unions provide blind support in of what many of us would describe as undeniable on-camera brutality. In the end, technology will make that resistance impossible. And the number of voters who are no longer convinced of police justification is growing fast. Still police departments and police unions are spending serious money to spin what our own eyes see and our ears hear into a false exculpatory narratives.

“As cellphone videos increasingly draw people to the streets to protest law enforcement, police public information officers are under more scrutiny, with some critics saying their reports protect the image of officers and taint people targeted by police. In the wake of protests over the killing of George Floyd, there are growing questions over whether these units are serving the public with unbiased facts or are getting in the way of the truth.

“‘We’re spending good money to be lied to,’ said Reuben Jones, a criminal-justice reform advocate and executive director of Frontline Dads, a group supporting formerly incarcerated people in Philadelphia. ‘Do the police need their own communications teams simply to craft a narrative that best serves their interests?’

“Inaccurate police accounts are sometimes due to the information fog of a fast-moving event. But critics say police press units nearly always put forth a story line that makes officers’ actions appear justified. And when police spokespeople publicize the prior criminal history of people killed by law enforcement or call them ‘gang members,’ it amounts to an insidious form of police abuse, they say.

“Recent polling shows there is growing support for more extensive, independent oversight of police behavior. Some say this should extend to press shops, which should focus less on advancing a narrative and more on relaying facts without spin. That includes the timely release of footage from body cameras, details about officers who discharge their weapons and other information requested by community members — even if it doesn’t necessarily make the department look good.

“Law enforcement agencies argue that their public affairs teams are essential to getting out vital information quickly and defend the tactics and size of the units. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had 42 people in its information bureau as of last month, at an annual cost of about $4.8 million. The strategic communications director at the time of Robertson’s killing earned $200,000 a year; the bureau’s captain last year made $218,000. The Los Angeles Police Department spends about $3.29 million a year for 25 people in similar units, as of last month…

“The media play a significant role in amplifying statements by police and allowing law enforcement sources to be the primary — and sometimes the only — voices in a story. And even as news organizations are trying to revamp their coverage of police, cuts in the industry mean there are fewer journalists to respond to scenes and develop diverse sources, at a time when there is more pressure to provide instant news.

“Many police officers feel misrepresented in the media. But unlike victims of police shootings, law enforcers have public funding at their disposal to generate favorable narratives about themselves. Sometimes that means bolstering the public affairs staff with outside communication firms, at considerable cost.” Maya Lau writing for the Los Angeles Times, August 30^th. The story is pretty much the same across the country. Not to mention the billions of dollars spent every year in “settlements” paid out by state and local governments to victims of police excess. It’s time to open the doors and stop wasting taxpayer dollars to prevent taxpayers from knowing the truth.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and we either fix the system or the system will fix us.

No Lives Matter – Pandemic Nonsense

 

The novel coronavirus is a strange lurking but highly infectious agent; it absolutely affects different individuals in dramatically different ways. It can be a fearsome killer, crushing the life out of victims with intense pain and discomfort, crippling others with strained recoveries and often permanent impairments. Or nothing. No symptoms at all. As my August 16^th The COVID-19 Lottery blog makes perfectly clear, the 40% of those infected with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic are still carriers of the disease. Since identifying and isolating these secret carriers are obviously at the core of containing the virus; testing (and contact tracing) obviously need to be increased, probably exponentially. But if you believe in that GOP agenda of opening the economy wide now – damn the consequences – more testing is obviously going to identify more infections… and bad numbers make reopening the economy difficult to justify.

Think of all the college, primary and high schools that have opened up to in-person instruction, only to have accelerating new cases explode resulting in shutdowns or at least additional quarantines. Or those college students unable to resist maskless indoor partying. For states that care, a resurgence of COVID-19 infections is reason to slow down and perhaps retrench those reopenings. Like Hawaii: “Four weeks ago [end of July], Hawaii had a total of 1,688 confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and was reporting an average of 45 new cases per day, according to an NBC News analysis. [Hawaii then lifted some of its travel restrictions.]

“Since then, the total number of COVID-19 cases has reached 6,700 and public health officials are now reporting around 200 new cases per day. During this time, the death toll has also nearly doubled, jumping from 26 to 49, the figures show… Hawaii is the latest state to see increases in cases; the Southern and the Sun Belt states have been experiencing an explosion of new cases and deaths in recent months following many reopening in May at the urging of President Donald Trump just as the pandemic was picking up steam in those areas.

“The death toll in the United States climbed to more than 180,000 Wednesday [8/26] and the number of confirmed cases was fast approaching 6 million, according to the latest NBC News figures. Both are world-leading numbers.

“While Hawaii’s numbers are low compared to the rest of the U.S., they have set off alarm bells and Gov. David Ige, a Democrat, has given the green light to a second ‘stay-at-home, work-from-home” order for the island of Oahu. It begins at 12:01 a.m. Thursday [8/27] and will remain in effect for two weeks.” NBC News, August 27^th.

It seems as if those silent carriers are indeed transmitting the virus, threatening the effort to reopen the economy to “normal,” a powerful push from Trump and the GOP who need the economy to at least look as if it were recovering before the November election. As has been the case with GOP states like Arizona and Florida, where right-wingers have reconfigured once reliable COVID-19 statistics into confusing and misleading presentations, the feds seem to have embraced that same philosophy under orders from the White House. The noble response would have been for the relevant medical experts to resign in protest, putting public health ahead of their government careers. They haven’t. Instead, they bowed to medically dangerous political pressure.

The federal government, even those trusted purportedly neutral federal medical agencies (like the Centers for Disease Control) noted above, is obviously intent on suppressing bad numbers, even if accurate numbers are the only current path to contain the pandemic. “Trump administration officials on Wednesday [8/26] defended a new recommendation that people without Covid-19 symptoms abstain from testing, even as scientists warned that the policy could hobble an already weak federal response as schools reopen and a potential fall wave looms.

“The day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the revised guidance, there were conflicting reports on who was responsible. [Despite denials] Two federal health officials said the shift came as a directive to the C.D.C. from higher-ups at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.” New York Times, August 26^th. The Republican Congress, reluctant to support workers staying home even in hot spots by providing continuing income support, has forced too many Americans back to jobs and school without remotely the necessary precautions or providing the costly support that school districts absolutely need to create any semblance of safety (if that is even possible in many venues). Standby for the second wave, even as we are watching re-escalating numbers in what’s left of the first wave.

So far, the smart play for states with higher infection and mortality rates is simply to ignore “all things Trump,” and that includes those once trustworthy federal agencies that are willing to bend to political pressure and reverse what they clearly stated earlier were necessary and prudent practices. There is no way to contain this pandemic until there is a widely available effective vaccine… without a uniform, actively enforced policy of containment, including mandatory wearing of masks where risks are present, safe distancing, exceptionally wide testing and contact tracing. The Trump administration, constantly touting unproven or even dangerous “treatments” and “cures,” opposes “all of the above.”

California, which the Trump GOP has labeled a rogue state of radical leftists, understands that to protect its residents, it must ignore this failing, Trump-mandated set of scientifically incorrect practices and guidelines. “The CDC is no longer recommending a 14-day quarantine for travelers. After the government issued a mandatory quarantine for travelers arriving in the U.S. from Wuhan, China, in February, the guidance that travelers isolate for two weeks was adopted by several states and encouraged by local officials as a key tool in mitigating the spread of the novel coronavirus — especially among people who may be asymptomatic.

“[California] Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday [8/26] said he disagrees with the CDC’s new guidance and insisted that it will not affect California… ‘I don’t agree with the new CDC guidance. Period. Full stop,’ he said. ‘We will not be influenced by that change.’

“Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said those traveling to places with high transmission rates should be mindful of the potential to contract the virus and expose others to it. She also reminded residents that L.A. County is a COVID-19 hot spot and that traveling from the community could present a risk to outsiders… ‘My message really is: Whether you’re flying or staying home, you need to be mindful that we have to reduce our transmission,’ she said. ‘The way we do that is by reducing exposure to other people.’

“The CDC also is no longer advising those without symptoms to be tested, even if they have been in contact with an infected person. Ferrer, however, said the county’s recommendation still stands: Anyone who has been exposed to someone with the virus should get tested and self-quarantine… ‘This is particularly important if a public health official or doctor tells you to get tested,’ she said.

“Newsom said Wednesday [8/26] that California had signed a contract with an East Coast medical diagnostics company to more than double the number of coronavirus tests that can be processed in the state, eventually expanding capacity to roughly a quarter of a million tests a day… Under the $1.4-billion agreement, a new Santa Clarita lab will be able to provide testing results within two days, far quicker than the average five- to seven-day processing times offered by other labs.

“The expanded testing capacity and quicker results will increase the ability of health officials to quickly isolate people who test positive for the virus and to track down and test those who came in contact with them, Newsom said, steps that are crucial to slowing the spread of COVID-19.” Los Angeles Times, August 27^th. We’re all in this together, except for that rather significant contingent of Trump believers who are not in it at all. See you in the second wave! The virus itself continues to be unimpressed with the politics of denial.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and we doomed ourselves to the worst possible COVID-19 outcome when we substituted mythology, denial and disbelief for medical reality and scientific facts.

 

An Unfortunate and Unnecessary Schism

 

Anyone who wants to defund and disband the police may be making a statement: “the existing system is too corrupt with embedded authoritarian practices that it cannot be fixed.” We have some serious rogue police officers just as some of our best and most dedicated, selfless individuals are also police officers. It’s hard to work in a police unit, constantly scanning for signs of criminal activity and seeing some of the worst of humanity, and then avoid a cliquish “us vs them” mentality, seeing “civilians” as potential “perps.” Cops are trained to keep their eyes open, looking for what needs to be fixed. And above all, perhaps worst of all, cops adhere to rule one: never rat on a fellow officer… no matter what.

Yet, the story of excessive police use of force just seems to repeat itself. This time, on Sunday, August 23^rd, in Kenosha Wisconsin. Another blue on black shooting. Protests morphed into violence as the governor declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard. A young black man, Jacob Blake, had been shot by an officer seven times — “apparently in the back while three of his children looked on — [which] was captured on cellphone video and ignited new protests over racial injustice in several cities, some of which have devolved into unrest. It came just three months after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police touched off a wider reckoning on race.” Associated Press, August 25^th. Why does this still happen? Why aren’t police officers standing by held accountable?

29-year-old Blake is likely paralyzed and will never walk again. And by the third day of protests, a white 17-year-old vigilante, purportedly in support of the police, had shot and killed two protesters. It must be obvious to all but the most callous among us that something is seriously wrong with the entire system. It always seems to start with an overly zealous police finger on the trigger.

Even when legislators try and make a change, they face stiff resistance. Legislation in Sacramento that would make cops who fail to intervene, in excessive or questionable tactics from fellow officers, liable as criminal co-conspirators should there be a resulting crime assessed against an officer. That bill is stalled in committee. Juries tend to believe the cops anyway, so it is very difficult to get convictions no matter how egregious the misconduct. That such misconduct, when discovered, can lead to undoing convictions over many years is a very serious consequence… not to mention the millions and millions of dollars of settlements Los Angeles (County and City) have to dole out every year to civilians wronged by police misconduct.

Rogue cops have no place in law enforcement, and those who enable rogue cops need to accept responsibility for inaction or coverups or be discharged. Here in Los Angeles, the Compton Sheriffs Station is being investigated. “At the Compton sheriff’s station, it’s called a ghost gun: a weapon a deputy says he spots on a suspect but that is never found when colleagues respond to the scene and search for it… That’s because the call-out is based on a lie. The deputy didn’t actually see a gun, but his suspect could turn out to be armed and an arrest or recovered firearm could pad his reputation.

“It’s the kind of behavior that plays out regularly at the station, according to a whistleblower who worked there for five years and recounted other sensational allegations in a recent deposition obtained by The [Los Angeles] Times in a federal civil rights lawsuit… ‘In reality, they’ve never seen the gun,’ L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Austreberto Gonzalez said under oath. ‘And then at the end when their containments are set up, you know, the gun is never recovered. You know, they’ll call it a day and say, ‘Thank you for rolling. We’re going to call it,’ and a gun was never recovered.’

“Gonzalez says the scheme is employed in Compton by tattooed deputies who call themselves the Executioners, the clandestine gang many say runs the station… His allegations add to a growing body of information about the Compton clique, one of several tattooed deputy groups within the Sheriff’s Department with names such as the Grim Reapers, Banditos and Jump Out Boys... The Sheriff’s Department has been aware of the groups for decades but has struggled to crack down, despite repeated internal and independent investigations and instances in which members are accused of misconduct.” Los Angeles Times, August 20^th.

Police unions, good at whipping up their membership in a frenzy of purported loyalty often blindly supporting any cop accused of most anything, aren’t doing the public relations job with taxpayers that they should. Except for law and order diehards, this unquestioning “loyalty” is precisely what riles the public most. And most of the public does not want to defund the police or disband their underlying structure. Most of us are acutely aware of how valuable police officers really are. We really do not want to defund police or disband police departments. But we also want fairness and commonsense with less police use of force.

Signs of military repression are seldom subtle. The police deployment of armored personnel carriers, the use of military tactics, fatigues, body armor and weapons, and their seeming acceptance that even as “non-lethal” weapons can still maim and kill, tell us that these “normal” processes and procedures are approved for general usage. To many, all these factors are hallmarks of callous enforcement, particularly when they are called upon to shut down political expression. As long as weapons are labeled as ‘non-lethal,’ they are used all the time. Killing and maiming still. Stirring up crowds to escalate violence. In the 1930s, sensing the impending uber-repressive dictatorship, a German organization called Antifaschistische Aktion rallied to oppose the rise of Nazism. They were brutally repressed, but that anti-fascist mantra was later adopted by groups who believed that fascism anywhere needed to be stopped. Antifa.

Portland, Oregon has always been the city that best expresses this struggle between those seeking equal justice and freedom and those who simply believed in white supremacy. They soon embraced this anti-Nazi call to justice. Melissa Etehad, writing for the August 25^th Los Angeles Times, explains: “Militant protest in the name of racial justice has deep roots in Portland… It dates back to the 1970s, when leaders of the hate group Aryan Nation and other organizations dedicated to creating a white ethno-state began encouraging their supporters to move to Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

“Racist skinhead groups became a growing presence in Portland over the next decade, making the city an increasingly dangerous place for Black people… In 1988, after three skinheads beat an Ethiopian student — Mulegata Seraw — outside his apartment, activists began to fight back… Many of them came from the city’s heavy metal and punk scene — skinheads with a different mission… ‘There was a lot of organizing between the Black community and white allies after the murder of Mulegata,’ said Walidah Imarisha, a Black historian and activist who lives in Portland.

“Newly formed groups such as Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice and the Coalition for Human Dignity began tracking neo-Nazis and white supremacists and outing them to co-workers and police… They also believed that sometimes violence must be met with violence and engaged in brawls with far-right extremists… ‘There was some direct confrontation at protests and rallies,’ Imarisha said.

“The activists also found common cause with Black residents in calling for accountability for police who killed unarmed Black men or engaged in other mistreatment… For a time, it seemed like the activists were winning. Far-right groups stopped holding rallies and largely disappeared from public view…

“The election of President Trump in 2016 gave the activists a renewed sense of purpose and brought the conflict back into the open… White supremacists saw the president as an ally — even if he denied it — and began staging rallies again, often targeting liberal cities. The activists pushed back with their own demonstrations. Clashes were common.

“In Portland, police often stepped into the middle, arresting protesters and deploying tear gas and rubber bullets to break up rowdy crowds — and in the process deepened long-standing resentment from the left… Increasingly, the activists came to believe that their fascist and racist enemies included not only white supremacist groups but also police departments and other government institutions.”

Portland is hardly representative of America as a whole. But in a world where the President of the United States is forcing individual Americans to pick a side and dig in, he has provoked the very eruption of protests and riots he claims to be against. Since the essence of Trumpian politics is to divide and conquer, political division is his most basic calling card, we must recognize that he needs those violent protests to have a shot of winning the election… no matter how destructive that behavior might be for the very survivability of the nation. He will continue to provoke, and those fearful of fascism they seem embodied in all things Trump will continue to supply the President with exactly what he wants. Violence and great visuals for his political ads.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and for all those who want harder, harsher repression against protestors, exactly how do they really believe such efforts can work… that the United States as a whole will benefit?

The Impact of COVID-19 on Changing Red-Blue Attitudes

 

Although many of my left-of-center “blue” friends might not like to hear this, there is a beauty to a conservative rural culture of self-reliance, belief in local community, patriotism, freedom from government interference and deep and abiding faith in God. Accepting God’s gifts and working the land. It is part of our DNA, and like it or not, these values are what had defined the United States from its inception. No rain. Drought. Flooding. Catastrophic natural disasters and cycles. Unpredictability. God. 

All of these factors push souls to reach for a connection to a higher power, one that man and science just might not comprehend. “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” And that ubiquitous: “In God we trust.” Farms separated by distances united on Sundays for church service. Protecting oneself, alone with no visible and immediate neighbors, against marauders and predators gave rise to our connectivity with guns. It was about survival, learning and cherishing survival skills and passing that knowledge from generation to generation. 

When the United States was formed, the economy was 94% agrarian. Even as Alexander Hamilton sought regions with waterfalls (like Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey) to power a strong and growing manufacturing sector, President George Washington admonished him that the United States was and would always remain primarily an agricultural economy. Hamilton was undeterred. Today, significantly less than 5% of our total workforce works the land. 

Those of our Founding Fathers who owned massive agricultural estates, and that includes slave owning George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for sure, were suspicious of traders, manufacturers, bankers and those who work was not linked directly to farming or mining. Hamilton was on the wrong side of that belief. Benjamin Franklin was charged with helping design a democratic system that would prevent urban-dominated states – where vast concentrations of people could grow on relatively smaller tracts of land – from overwhelming the political system and drowning out the voices of sparsely-populated farmland. 

The resulting New Jersey Compromise gave each state, regardless of population, two US Senators. Today, California with around 40 million residents has the same Senate vote as Wyoming with around 600,000 residents. Two each. Ratification of treaties and confirmation of federal judicial and other high-level governmental appointments were relegated solely to the Senate. A Senate term was six years. The House of Representatives, elected every two years, was based on population. Individual districts and presidential electors – determined by state processes – were treated as separate political units as they sent representatives to the House. All appropriations bills were required to emanate from the House. 

The net effect of these allocations and the relegation of establishing voting districting to the states themselves has today given those rural states amplified voting power; effectively one rural vote carries about 1.8+ times the weight of one urban vote. Yet the nation rallied as one, urban and rural, when the United States was attacked by a foreign power. Uniting to fight wars was one of the contributing factors to bringing America back together after the Civil War. Civil rights and southern power began to change in a dysfunctional sea of political transitions a century after that great internal struggle. 

Starting from the late 1960s onward, the Republican Party (which had become the party of big business) realized that without a huge additional constituency, they faced the likelihood of never being able to elect any national office. By challenging the assumed iron grip of the Democratic political machine in the South with a religiously driven effort that embraced those rural values, Republicans slowly pushed Democrats down and out of that vast and socially conservative part of the nation. That rural appeal traveled west as well. 

Socially conservative constituents were slowly coopted into a blurry and non-sensical merger of patriotism, religious values and the notion of governmental laissez faire whereby the rich were taxed and regulated less. Even as government benefits, from healthcare to Social Security, were powerful contributions to the daily lives of those social conservatives. Faith-based constituents were willing to vote against their own self-interest in the name of God and American patriotism. That seemed to be an unbreakable bond. 

Even before the pandemic, the tide among Millennials and younger was turning. 59% of Millennials have at least some post-secondary education. Not having been raised during the era of anticommunism, the Cold War and the Red Scare, these younger and rising political voices were faced with unaffordable housing, absurd costs of higher education (a credential that replaced high school graduation as the entry level requirement for a good job) with horrific levels of student debt, and a series of economic collapses that tanked both opportunity and pay levels for entry level employment. 

“Socialism” and governmental support for tuition and housing were not scary concepts to this group. Racial, gender, religious and ethnic intolerance was not the going-forward value for most young people. A few extremists, sitting on the outside looking in, may still harbor those anachronistic “old person” values, but the tide was turned. There was a generational schism, a chasm that was cracking just based on age. Older, diehard anticommunists and vehement social conservatives were beginning to die off, but those who remained dug in their heels, encouraged to maintain uncompromising divisiveness by a new populist political force: Donald Trump. Those undereducated elements among the young realized that time was not their friend… maybe the President would fix that. He didn’t. 

Then came the pandemic. Everything that pushed federal power against local control hit a wall where only a centralized federal response could stem the medical and economic damage that COVID-19 was wreaking. Countries that embraced a unified nationwide governmental response to contain the pandemic were faring substantially better than those without solid, centralize guidelines and direct mandates to limit social contacts. Donald Trump’s marginalizing the severity of the pandemic, posing “cures” with unknown or horrible side effects, pledging a rapid fading of the disease, his shifting responsibility for a national and international crisis to individual states, pressing for a “who cares who dies and gets sick” reopening of the economy to make pre-election numbers look better and his belittlement of doctors and scientists were welcome at first. 

But when the elderly seemed to bear the brunt of the disease – disproportionately dying in huge numbers – and when what rural constituents believed was a “city/blue state” disease began to penetrate the rural reaches of the deepest red states, something changed. The Trump ethos, simply, had failed. Dramatically. Not too many studies have sampled demographics in conservative districts to measure these changes, but the Farrell Lab: North American West Initiative from the Yale School of the Environment took a statistical look at conservative pockets in the Western third of the United States. Over a thousand polled in 278 rural Western counties. The survey, released on August 20th – IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON THE RURAL WEST Material Needs, Economic Recovery, Political Attitudes – reflected some of those attitudinal changes.

Some of their basic findings:

·         Covid Experience: Nearly 30% of residents in the rural West have had direct experience with Covid-19 either personally or through family, friends, or acquaintances.

·         President Trump in a Conservative Region: In 2016, President Trump won 75% of counties in the rural West. Approval for his handling of the pandemic was split, with 43% of respondents approving and 44% disapproving.

·         Support for More Government Spending: There was strong bipartisan support for government relief spending on healthcare, housing, infrastructure, small business, and direct payments to individuals. The only exceptions to this broad support for spending were for oil and gas companies and large businesses, for which rural Westerners wanted a cut in spending.

One of the leading authors of this study, Associate Professor (Sociology at YSE) Justin Farrell, added (in YaleToday, August 26th): “Rural Westerners have always had a convoluted love-hate relationship with the federal government, but the pandemic may be breaking down some of these historical political patterns… We are only beginning to understand the social, economic, and environmental impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, but our new survey suggests that a realignment of political preferences is taking place… If these patterns hold – and we’ll know more after our second wave of the survey with the same people in Spring 2021 – it will have far-reaching policy impacts.” Will these changes impact the political messaging from Republican candidates? Can they afford to alienate Donald Trump base and his core platform? 

“While rural communities in the U.S. West have historically relied on federal government programs, they also have tended to express attitudes of self-reliance and anti-federalism. According to the authors, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted these attitudes, revealing that rural Westerners openly support sustained — and/or increased —government spending. In somewhat of a reversal of traditional regional attitudes, the only areas where rural Westerners want to see a decrease in government spending is for large businesses and oil and gas companies.” YaleToday. Will these changes stick? If the GOP does not respond to this shift, is it doomed… sooner or later? Are the Democrats remotely in a position to take advantage or is the polarization just too severe to correct?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and there is no way for any social structure to endure in rigid inflexibility in the face of massive social, environmental, economic and demographic change.

As the President Lets Go of the Reins

 

“The North Koreans would much rather see Trump than Biden… Trump is the perfect mark: loves the show,doesn’t care about substance and hates the alliance [with South Korea] — the polar opposite of Biden.”

Victor Cha, President George W. Bush’s negotiator with North Korea.

The GOP Convention is upon us. Hoopla! Self-congratulations! Optimism! Recasting failure as success. Distorting numbers. Denying facts. Making promises, most of which cannot be kept. Trump’s foreign policy buddies are having the best time. President Xi of China, once a “best friend” is now the cause of all of our woes and needs to pay for it.

Nothing “China” in Trump’s efforts paid off. The trade agreement, hardly determinative when made, fell apart. China is clamping down on Hong Kong, decimating basic liberties. It is also making clear that the South China Sea is their sphere of influence to the exclusion of the United States. But they are continuing their Uighur concentration (“reeducation”) camps with over a million people being “processed” behind walls and barbed wire… to which Trump gave a wink of support. 

The United Arab Emirates – which depends on links to Western trade and financial institutions – seemed to have made a big concession to recognize Israel. Israel, which never formally implemented any West Bank annexation move, agreed to take that plan off the table… for now. Huge foreign policy victory for Trump. Israel gave nothing, really. Why did the UAE do this? Ah… it seems that they have been lobbying for state-of-the-art stealth F-35s to counter Iran. And it seems that this back-room deal is happening. So, arming an Arab country with the latest and the greatest is the subtext. 

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin continues to direct his military intelligence units to amp up their assault on the US election, an effort that seemed to begin with the 2016 election and only increased from there. Hacking candidates and parties that do not serve Moscow’s interests – like anyone opposing Trump and the GOP – and releasing those hacked files (real and doctored) to a hungry Western press, rapidly becoming extensions of Russia’s propaganda efforts. Planting seeds of disinformation and voter manipulation, even seeking direct access to voting machines, are all part of this sinister effort. Oddly, virtually all of these efforts are focused on taking down Democrats with no serious efforts to disparage and disqualify GOP candidates. Never happened according to Trump, contradicting every US government inquiry into the matter. Forget about the federal indictment of 12 Russian military operatives accused of hacking. 

And then there’s North Korea and Kim Jong-un. Trump claims he avoided WWIII and the release of the North’s nuclear arsenal against targets inside the United States through his efforts. Really? North Korea would have launched an attack that literally assured its own obliteration? Maybe but unlikely. It’s really hard to prove what didn’t happen. 

Kim got international recognition, elevated to important enough for a US President to meet with him… three times… including in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the 38th parallel between the two Koreas. And Korea hasn’t given up anything at all. They’ve tested more, built more weapons and delivery systems and scoffed at Trump’s efforts to contain them. Even as Trump brags about his “special relationship” with Kim Jong-un, it has been a one-way street. 

“Almost four years after that meeting at the White House, as Trump faces the prospect of possibly turning over the presidency to Joe Biden, there is little evidence the danger has been reduced, despite the most sustained and aggressive diplomacy of Trump’s tenure… If anything, North Korea poses a greater threat, according to Korea specialists: The country has tested and developed more weapons; its leader, Kim Jong Un, has become less isolated; and international resolve to confront North Korea has weakened after Trump’s three meetings with Kim. 

“Victor Cha, who negotiated with North Korea for President George W. Bush and was once considered for a top post in the Trump administration, warned in a recent podcast of ‘the big choice that’s coming down’ as North Korea’s weapons program advances… Soon, he said, North Korea may reach the point at which American leaders will have to consider tacitly accepting the country as a nuclear power in exchange for limits and verification of Pyongyang’s stockpile. 

“Cha did not advocate that approach, which would be a fundamental change from decades of American insistence that North Korea drop its nuclear program entirely. But the fact that he broached it points to the lack of options America has in dealing with the secretive and autocratic adversary. 

“North Korea wants to be ‘like an India or Pakistan,’ both of which developed nuclear weapons in violation of international anti-proliferation efforts, said Jung Pak, who helped with transition efforts at the CIA when Trump took office and is now an informal advisor to [Joe] Biden. ‘Everybody just looks the other way.’… Kim ‘needs periodic bouts of tension and military aggression to maintain his rule,’ Pak said. ‘So he doesn’t want peace.’… 

“Trump’s declaration in 2018, after his first meeting with Kim, that North Korea is ‘no longer a nuclear threat’ rings increasingly hollow, according to experts who served administrations of both parties…. In John Bolton’s recent memoir about his time serving as Trump’s national security advisor, he portrayed the president as ill-informed about history, unwilling to prepare for talks with Kim and obsessed with media coverage — with Trump telling Bolton that he was ‘prepared to sign a substance-free communique, have a press conference to declare victory, and then get out’ of Singapore. 

“Kim and his ruling circle ‘think they’ve got Trump’s number,’ said Susan Thornton, who served as acting assistant secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific during Trump’s first 18 months in office. 

“The North Korean autocrat has sent several signals suggesting he wants Trump to win in November, labeling Biden ‘a rabid dog’ that needs to be beaten. Some Korea analysts believe the North is making a calculated effort to refrain from provoking the United States during the campaign, even as Pyongyang takes aim at South Korea, blowing up a joint liaison office in Kaesong in mid-June… ‘They want Trump to be able to keep saying he has basically fixed the North Korea situation ... glossing over the notion that they’re still building up weapons, and they’re still shooting off short-range missiles,’ Thornton said.” Noah Bierman writing for the August 24th Los Angeles Times. North Korea wants a different dog in the White House, one where they hold the other end of the leash. And the President has long since let go of the reins. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as the GOP Convention spins and twists to find successes, their glaring failures in international relations seem that much more dangerous to the security of our nation.

Running Against Phantoms

 

 “Oh God… In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”                     

Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Magazine, January 6, 2020

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party watched as conservatives – from a 95-year-old WWII veteran, Colin Power and John Kasich (who remain Republicans) to a litany of former Republicans rejecting Donald Trump – formed the backbone of individual presentations at the Democratic Convention. Sure, progressives were given their moments in the sun – AOC and Bernie Sanders included – but the overall tenor of the Convention was dominated by a message in the middle. As Donald Trump famously embraces his base, caters to their whims and pretty much reject most of the rest of the country, Joe Biden touted his commitment to be a president for all Americans. He even suggested the “C” word: compromise, a concept that is apostacy to almost every Republican in Congress.

The promise of an optimistic Republican Convention, a contrast to the campaign against the GOP-imposed “darkness” repeatedly described at the Dems’ event, seems a bit forced. A law and order agenda, refocusing on building an unpopular wall in lieu of a coherent immigration reform package, continuing to dismiss the rising toll of COVID-19 victims under an obvious lack of federal leadership and bragging about a stock market rise amidst the worst slam on individual workers and small businesses since the Great Depression required more. How about a radical, lawless, Democratic Party unable to accomplish anything (but they weren’t the party in power?), fomenting riots, crime in the streets, an erasure of cultural heritage (like slave owners and those who fought for their right to keep slaves) about to confiscate everyone’s guns ready to give away taxpayers’ money to people unwilling to work for a living (Jobs? Now? Really? Where?).

That would work for those who have kept their heads buried in right-wing sand… but since that isn’t remotely what the Democrats are or what their Convention reflected, what to do? Since not too many diehard Trump followers wasted their time watching the Convention, choosing instead to believe the distorted summaries of that political event delivered by Fox News anchors and analysts, reality could easily be ignored. Simply: Fabricate a Democratic Party “antifa” enemy of American patriotic values and run against that! What a concept. Ignore the real Dems and run against this fake image of Dems. How about continuing to deny the pandemic damage, blame Democratic governors for any failures, take credit for real or imagined “success” (even if statistical evidence of that “success” requires additional distortion and fabrication), and deny and denigrate data that contradicts any of the above. It worked in 2016 and during Trump’s entire reign, so why not stick with that strategy.  

Observers from overseas continue to be aghast. They look at the United States as a rogue nation that has taken a truly bad situation and made it so much worse. Nothing screams American incompetence – really the failure from the top – like the Newsweek chart above. A significant number of older Trump supporters have watched nursing home fatalities at staggeringly horrible levels. No amount of GOP grandstanding can negate their fears, their repugnance at the false Trump platitudes, even snake-oil “cures,” that substituted for viable solutions as elders were the largest single segment of US pandemic fatalities, have simmered to the surface. Oh, and their
Social Security checks and Medicare shipments are stuck in a shutdown post office somewhere. A gift from “vote-by-mail” opponent Donald John Trump.

The political polarization of scientific and medical containment practices – those who took precautions were instantly labeled Trump-opponents focused on shutting down the economy to make their leader look bad – were found to be shocking evidence to the rest of the world of the danger of a thoughtless, cavalier United States. Absent a compelling justification, American travelers are banned from entering countries all over the earth, particularly in most of Europe. America has become the great contaminator, singlehandedly able to rekindle that dreaded second wave of the novel coronavirus.

Nothing illustrates this fear, this reviling of America, like the behavior of US soldiers stationed in Okinawa, a small island at the southern reach of the Japanese archipelago. Americans brought their rejection of science and medical reality to a nation that was totally committed to facts and containment efforts. “Shortly after July 4, a video emerged online showing crowds of revelers dancing at a party on one of Okinawa’s beaches. The event to celebrate American Independence Day was hosted by a former U.S. Marine, and not one person in the video was wearing a face mask .

“To ordinary Japanese watching on social media — who had spent four months in self-restrained voluntary lockdown — it was a stunning snub to the nation’s efforts to keep the coronavirus under control… ‘We’re all being extra cautious not to allow any infection, so to see that video made me so angry and disappointed,’ said Chieko Oshiro, who heads a residents’ group in Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost island… ‘We’re all being extra cautious not to allow any infection, so to see that video made me so angry and disappointed,’ said Chieko Oshiro, who heads a residents’ group in Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost island.

“The virus outbreaks since, which have made Okinawa the hot spot of Japan’s second wave of COVID-19, may not have been directly linked to the party — or the others like it held on the island that evening — but in the court of public opinion, it was the smoking gun… It has stoked anger within Okinawa, where the heavy presence of U.S. military bases and the behavior of the 20,000 Marines and other military personnel stationed there have been a long-standing source of tension… ‘Trust in the [Japan-U.S.] security alliance is on the brink of collapse,’ Denny Tamaki, Okinawa governor and a former leader of the anti-U.S.-base movement, warned on a recent TV program.

“In theory, Okinawa should have been well placed to manage the spread of COVID-19. Visitor numbers plummeted after Japan declared a state of emergency in April, and the military bases that dominate the island should have been shining examples of discipline and control… Instead, many Okinawans were left feeling betrayed by two governments — Japanese and U.S. — that they believe rarely work in their best interests.

“There was Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ill-conceived campaign to reignite domestic tourism that led to more than 100,000 arrivals in June from cities such as Tokyo and Osaka undergoing their own outbreaks… Islanders also watched in dismay as more than 340 U.S. military personnel tested positive for the virus in the months after the first confirmed case on one of the island’s bases in late March.” Kana Inagaki and Leo Lewis writing for the August 23^rd Financial Times. This is the legacy of Trump’s failed leadership, the GOP’s continuing embrace of that failed leadership, and the undercurrent that not only defines Trump’s political legacy but ripples beneath every aspect of the Republican Convention. If you are rich and do not have empathy or if you prefer mythology and despite facts, Trump is for you. If you are anyone else….

            I’m Peter Dekom, and facts just are, will continue to operate without care of political unpopularity, and they will take out non-believers with super-efficient disdain for their beliefs.

 

 

Smokin’ and Chokin’

 

It’s an interesting question: what are an individual and sovereign nation’s moral and legal responsibilities to the rest of the world in managing its own natural resources? By way of example, I remember in my travels to view animal species in their indigenous habitats – preserved in game parks that catered primarily to foreign tourists – being asked by a Masai leader: “Why should Kenya preserve and maintain its game parks and wilderness areas to preserve unique species (and their habitats) – which are visited mostly by rich foreign tourists able to afford travel – when the Western world got rich by ripping open the earth to resource extraction, industrialization and large-scale corporate farming that decimated their wilderness areas? Why are we the custodians of your playgrounds?”

The issue is equally confounding when it comes to tearing down forests, or allowing them to burn, in order to open more land for possible mineral exploration or agribusiness expansion. Most folks concentrate on the loss of oxygen production (oxygen is a vital 20% of our atmosphere) as the major consequence, but in truth, oxygen levels would probably remain fairly stable even with serious reductions in rain forests.

What really goes wrong, however, is that without rain forests, jungles, etc., the ability to take excess and rising carbon, mostly as carbon dioxide, out of the global ecosystem plunges. Carbon that solidifies that atmospheric lid of greenhouse gasses that is steadily warming the planet. The big controversy today is what is happening in Brazil right now, but before I address the politically distressed quagmire in that country, it is worth understanding what the stakes truly are.

Writing for the August 27, 2019 Newsweek, Aristos Georgiou explains: “‘The Amazon is a carbon sink, which slows the rate of carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere, and thus climate warming,’ James Randerson from the University of California, Irvine, told Newsweek… ‘Deforestation and fire-driven forest degradation affect the carbon cycle in two ways. First, there is a direct release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the conversion process. Second, the loss of forest reduces the ability of the forest as a whole to absorb carbon. More forest fires in the Amazon will accelerate the buildup of greenhouse gases and we will have higher levels of global warming,’ he said.

“Ecologist and author Sandra Steingraber from Ithaca College said that around half of the carbon dioxide that is pulled out of the atmosphere by the earth's biosphere on land is sucked up by tropical forests. But in the face of deforestation, the Amazon, at least, may be losing this ability… ‘The Amazon is a big carbon sink but its ability to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is declining,’ she said. ‘This will contribute to climate chaos, turning tropical forests from a global carbon sink to a global carbon source is perhaps the most important consequence of destroying the Amazon.’” Amazonia contains roughly 20% of the world’s forest covering, so the impact of anything that seriously reduces that blanket impacts the entire planet.

Mirroring Donald Trump’s policies in the United States, downplaying the spread of COVID-19, keeping as much of the Brazilian economy open without restrictions and opening up public lands to accelerated development (mining and agriculture being the targeted industries), President Jair Bolsonaro has wreaked havoc across the nation, pitting governors from his own party against him.

As world leaders pressed Bolsonaro to take responsibility to contain the massive wildfires set to clear forests for these commercial uses, the Brazilian President told them to mind their own business; Brazil, he maintained, had every right to do as it pleased with its own territory. Even as millions of dollars have been funneled to Brazil by European nations as payments to save rain forests, the devastation continues. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has become the master of mixed and often contradictory messages.

As global pressures mounted, as his own constituents expressed their alarm at this decimation of their rain forest heritage, which also threatens indigenous peoples and unique species of increasingly rare wildlife, Bolsonaro relented. “A year ago this month, the forest around the town of Novo Progresso erupted into flames — the first major blazes in the Brazilian Amazon’s dry season that ultimately saw more than 100,000 fires and spurred global outrage against the government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the rainforest.

“This year, President Jair Bolsonaro pledged to control the burning, which is typically started by local farmers attempting to clear land for cattle or for soybeans, one of Brazil’s top exports. Bolsonaro imposed a four-month ban on most fires and sent in the army to prevent and battle blazes… But this week [third week of August] the smoke is again so thick in Novo Progresso that police have reported motorists crashing because they can’t see.

“As smoke wreathes Novo Progresso, this year’s burning season could determine whether Bolsonaro, an avid supporter of bringing more farming and ranching to the Amazon, is willing and able to halt the fires. Experts say the blazes are pushing the world’s largest rainforest toward a tipping point, after which it will cease to generate enough rainfall to sustain itself, and approximately two-thirds of the forest will begin an irreversible, decades-long decline into tropical savanna…

“Bolsonaro is sending mixed signals: He greenlighted an army-led operation to fight Amazon destruction in May, but this month he denied that the region’s trees can catch fire. Speaking at a video summit about the Amazon with fellow South American leaders, he also touted a year-on-year decrease in July deforestation data, omitting the fact that it was still the third-highest reading for any month since 2015… ‘This story that the Amazon is burning is a lie,’ he asserted, even as smoke from more than 1,100 fires wafted over the region that day…

“The Amazon has lost about 17% of its original area and, at the current pace, will reach a tipping point in the next 15 to 30 years, said Carlos Nobre, a prominent climatologist. As it decomposes, it will release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making it ‘very difficult’ to meet the Paris agreement’s climate goals, said Nobre, a scientist at the University of Sao Paulo’s Institute of Advanced Studies… He added that signs of change are emerging already: The dry season in the southern third of the Amazon — where Novo Progresso is located — has reached nearly four months, up from three months in the 1980s. It’s grown hotter, too.’ Associated Press, August 22^nd.

There’s a reason climate change issues have resonated so much more around the world. As Millennial and younger generations become voting members of their nations, clearly the case in the United States, they have sensed that it is they who will bearing the accelerating consequences of past political leaders’ decisions to prioritize uncontrolled economic growth without containing the increasingly obvious devastating effects of resulting climate change. Even as alternative energy offers untold numbers of new opportunities and job growth.

Incumbent corporations and older voters figured that the anticipated damage from that prioritization of existing power-generating and land use practices would mostly occur after their passing. They preferred the “here and now” to some abstract future cost… perhaps one that technology just might solve. They ignored the floods, increased intensity storms, droughts, wildfires, migrating insects, mass migrations of peoples no longer able to pull a livelihood from their land… it was too abstract, too easily bypassed by relying on religious beliefs and denigrating scientific truth. They were wrong. And now, younger generations are demanding a big change.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and if we are ever to grapple with the serious consequences caused by callous and ignorant politicians, we just might have one last chance… now.

 

 

 

Far from COVID & American Politics, a Continuing Unraveling

 

As serious as our pandemic issues might be, as tumultuous as the American political climate has become, there are two huge stories that are getting short shrift in global, particularly American, attention: the acceleration of climate change and the challenge of brutal dictators (focusing now on Belarus, a CIS bloc nation). These issues seem distant, lacking the immediacy of a pandemic that has killed close to 180 thousand Americans (a number that will rise significantly by the November election). As foreign fires rage – from the PRC repression of Hong Kong’s freedom seekers to the seeming ongoing execution of political opponents by the Putin regime – the struggles of one more nation to oust one of the last remaining European dictators are lost in the tsunami of American issues. Voter suppression. Post Office impairment. Red vs Blue.

But the world hasn’t otherwise stopped. Climate change is mounting fast. And the uber-violent repression in Belarus is just one more reminder of the malevolent harm that repressive autocrats continue to inflict on their peoples. In an over-connected world, we are impacted no matter how much we believe we are isolated from the rest of the planet. The first story takes us to that climate change barometer, Greenland, where this year’s loss of glacial ice to the oceans exceeds the prior record of ice loss by a whopping 15%.

“Over the past 30 years, Greenland's contribution to global sea levels has grown significantly as ice losses have increased… A major international report on Greenland released last December concluded that it was losing ice seven times faster than it was during the 1990s… Today's new study shows that trend is continuing.

“Using data from the Grace and Grace-FO satellites, as well as climate models, the authors conclude that across the full year Greenland lost 532 gigatonnes of ice - a significant increase on 2012… The researchers say the loss is the equivalent of adding 1.5mm to global mean sea levels, approximately 40% of the average rise in one year.” BBC.com, August 21^st. Climate changes is already reconfiguring coastal communities everywhere. Try getting a new 30-year mortgage for beachfront property in South Florida. As coastal buyers drive to their bank through routinely flooded streets, they probably won’t do better than 15 years.

That’s the “inconvenience.” It is more than an inconvenience to those who face flooding and violent tropical storms and storm surges with increasing frequency, whose coastal properties are slowly slip-sliding away while others face wildfires, drought and disease-laden insect migration. That’s just here in the United States. Wars incented by the inability to grow food, migrations from now fallow regions and giant resulting shifts in wealth will strain our military and political systems the world over.

The recent “election” in Belarus, where the major opposition candidate, Siarhei Tikhanovskaya was arrested on May 20^th, morphed into an international debacle. Tikhanovskaya’s wife (Svetlana) ran in his place. Minsk reported a landslide to reelect the incumbent dictator, President Alexander Lukashenko. His sixth consecutive term. The immediate protests from Svetlana’s followers were met with severe beatings and military/police assaults on protestors; the violence spread. The streets were soon overflowing with people demanding that Lukashenko resign and that new and fair elections be called. No one believed the results except Lukashenko’s cronies, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Deep concern rippled through the nation that Russian forces might intervene in support of this deeply unpopular brute. Fearing for her life, Svetlana fled to Lithuania, where she continues to address her constituency. While some of the violence subsided, Lukashenko was not yielding ground.

“Prosecutors in Belarus opened a criminal investigation Thursday [8/20] against opposition activists who set up a council to negotiate a democratic transition of power amid massive protests against official election results that extended the 26-year rule of the country’s authoritarian leader.

“Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who has dismissed the protesters demanding his resignation as Western puppets, had threatened opposition leaders with criminal charges. Following up on his warning, prosecutors opened an inquiry against the new council’s founders on charges of undermining national security.

“The Belarusian Prosecutor General’s office said the creation of the Coordination Council that met for the first time Wednesday [8/19] violated the constitution… ‘The creation and the activities of the Coordination Council are aimed at seizing power and inflicting damage to the national security,’ Prosecutor General Alexander Konyuk said.

“The council members have rejected the accusations and insist their actions fully comply with Belarusian law. The United States on Thursday [8/20] urged the authorities to engage in a dialogue with the opposition council and described the Aug. 9 presidential election that handed Lukashenko a sixth term as neither free nor fair.” Associated Press, August 19^th.

Belarus has worked closely with NATO and the European Union in the past, but those relations are now strained. After this election and the violent repression of protestors, “The EU declared that the imprisonment of opposition figures and protesters contravened human rights laws, and imposed new targeted sanctions on major Belarusian officials and businesspeople.” Wikipedia. Global pressure against Lukashenko was mounting, but time will tell if any of this makes any difference.

The headline for the United States is for us to get our political and economic house in order, to rejoin the world in fighting common enemies and common issues. We cannot go it alone anymore, and we cannot be so self-absorbed that we fail to recognize the complex puzzled interaction we have created among nations and people… that defies isolation and separation.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and there is no shelter from global complexity and there is no unilateral reshaping of the earth through mythology and denial.