Several hundred people (428 people from 40 nations, to be precise) concerned about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza organized a flotilla to bring humanitarian aid to the region. Israel illegally intercepted that flotilla and is now abusing today’s equivalent to righteous gentiles.
The “righteous gentiles” (or “the righteous among the nations”) who helped Jews escape the Holocaust during World War II are celebrated and honored at Yad Vashem in Israel. Perhaps the most famous (because Steven Spielberg made a movie about him) was Oskar Schindler.
It is one of history’s great ironies that Israel is abusing and punishing today’s version of the righteous gentiles who sacrificed so much to help Jews being persecuted and murdered by the Nazis in World War II.
The Israeli government naturally insists the flotilla is aiding “terrorists,” pretty much the same sentiment of the Nazis who punished and often killed those who helped the Jews during the Holocaust.
It’s all so profoundly sad and tragic because “never again” (never another Holocaust) has been shown yet again to be an empty sentiment.
I’ve been thinking about the power of belief, of faith, its ability to inspire us, to bring us together for collective action. Of course, belief, faith, or ideology can easily be used to inspire or justify murderous collective action. Still, just because belief and faith can be misused doesn’t mean it has no use.
I was raised Catholic and though I no longer attend church, I still consider myself to be a Christian. By that I mean I believe in the Beatitudes, I believe in Christ as a man of peace, I remain inspired by the Gospels and by Christ’s parables. I don’t concern myself with the intricacies of dogma and doctrine, debates about the right time and form of baptism, whether it’s transubstantiation or consubstantiation. Those debates don’t worry me, and indeed I find them distractions from the central message of peace, charity, love.
In the bad old days, I was taught salvation outside the Catholic Church was unattainable. This strikes me today as nonsense. Whatever salvation exists in this world of ours is available to anyone with a kind, loving, and generous heart. Even Protestants! (Just kidding, my Protestant friends.)
My opposition to war is based in part on its murderous waste but it’s also grounded in my sense of right and wrong, which in itself is based on what I learned reading the Gospels. Anyone who finds support for aggressive warfare and killing in the New Testament is preaching heresy of the worst kind.
You have to admire Jesus the man, who came to help beggars, to heal the sick, to comfort the afflicted. Jesus in his day hung out with workers, fishermen, and the like, and he was remarkably open to giving women from all walks of life a place at the table. (Not an openness that was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, mind you.)
What concerns me is the extent to which the power of faith and belief is being twisted and almost monopolized by so-called christians who are thirsty for war, power, and money. There is far too much emphasis on apocalyptic visions and end-times prophecy and not nearly enough on core tenets such as loving thy neighbor.
I don’t think it’s wise to cede Christianity to the zealots who use it as a kind of sanction for men like Donald Trump. Again, the misuse of religion doesn’t mean that religion has no use.
I’ve never tried to proselytize, never tried to convert anyone. To me the efficacy in any system of faith or belief is the good works it inspires. Many people throughout history have drawn deeply from a well of faith and belief to change the world for the better. Think here of Martin Luther King Jr. or Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day, among so many others.
Ministers Pray Over Trump in the Oval Office (Reuters)
It pains me to see evangelical ministers praying over Trump in the White House because I believe in the separation of church and state. I also believe religion and faith should not be tied to any one nation or political party. Those who misuse religion — well, let us judge not, lest we be judged. But I’m not going to turn away from the New Testament because it’s being cited and misused by fools, the power-hungry, and heretics.
Christ’s Beatitudes are easy to understand and should form the core of any faith that labels itself as Christian. Getting back to that core should concern all Christians everywhere.
The Beatitudes
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Along with this bonus passage:
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Of course, Christ’s teachings here are incredibly demanding; no human can be perfect. They are meant to be aspirational—they are meant to be arduous, in fact unattainable, and that is their point. We must strive to be better, we must believe we can be better, we must have faith in ourselves and our ability to do better, knowing we’ll fall far short of perfection.
The idea or the belief in a better, more humane, more compassionate, world is fundamental to making it so, however imperfectly or incrementally we achieve it.
Faith can help move mountains; a twisted faith may remove mountains, as in an apocalyptic nuclear war. A faith based on love of neighbor, a humble faith, a faith built on respect for life and that celebrates peacemakers as the children of god is surely a faith that is worth celebrating. Or so I believe.
And if you think religion is gibberish, or if you believe it is insidious and harmful, I take no offense. It’s not organized religion itself that motivates me: it’s the basic teachings of love, tolerance, compassion, and the rejection of hatred, murder, greed, and war. Plenty of people who reject the idea of a higher power are guided by morals and ideals that are consistent with the better angels of our nature.
It’s not about being a holy roller, and it’s certainly not about being holier than thou. It’s about reverence for life—a love of life in all its forms. For if we truly embraced a love of life, how could we possibly justify the pursuit of mass death that is so painfully manifested in America’s incessant imperial warmongering?
In God We Trust? A warmongering state makes a mockery of that motto. Yet why do the self-avowed Christians connected to Trump embrace war so tightly to their chests? Some would say this is why religious faith is so dangerous. But just because someone says they’re born again doesn’t make them children of God. Make peace and then I’ll call you a Child of God. Make war and I’ll call you a warmonger.
With some trepidation, I welcome your comments. (Wouldn’t it be something if comment sections showed compassion and generosity of spirit?)
How representative of the people is the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court? If you’re a corporate-friendly lawyer aged seventy or older, the U.S. government truly represents you and your interests.
There are 24 members of Congress who are 80 or older. About 120 are 70 or older. 184 members of Congress have law degrees, including 47 Senators, or nearly half the Senate.
Out of curiosity, I asked our kindly AI friends how many members of Congress had some experience with firefighting? Exactly two. How about plumbers? Exactly one. How about nursing? Exactly three. How many janitors? Exactly none. Surprise!
Three nurses, two firefighters, one plumber, no janitors, and 184 lawyers. There’s a very bad joke in there, somewhere, and the joke’s on us.
Of course, all members of SCOTUS have law degrees, but what matters is their allegiance. Recent “conservative” judges like Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett were elevated to their positions because of their corporate-friendly policies and positions. The Roberts Court will never issue a decision that challenges the corporatocracy in the United States. This is entirely by design.
Thomas and Alito are approaching their late seventies with no urge to retire soon. SCOTUS has a strong 6-3 majority that will support corporations against all efforts to limit their power.
Meanwhile, SCOTUS ruled yesterday against the Voting Rights Act with a predictable 6-3 vote. Basically, the court argued that efforts to ensure greater equity in minority representation within Congress amount to “racial gerrymandering.” But the main issue isn’t about race, it’s about greed. SCOTUS doesn’t care much about Black, brown, or white. Like Congress, what it cares about is green. Money. Profit. The supremacy of corporatism.
The effect of SCOTUS’ latest decision is likely to be more white Republicans (and corporate-friendly lawyers) elected to Congress and fewer minorities. Again, the main issue here isn’t white supremacy but corporate supremacy.
A government of the people, by the people, for the people is a noble ideal. It’s obviously not what America has.
Sorry—we have no janitors to clean house in Congress.
If you’ve spent time on social media, you know it can be quite unsocial.
Profane, angry, hostile posts and comments can be dismissed for what they are. But what about more subtle threats to the free and civil exchange of ideas? Social media sites aren’t necessarily designed to encourage such exchanges. They’re not primarily designed to educate us, to challenge us to think critically, while promoting tolerance and an open mind.
Instead, they are designed primarily to capture and command our attention, to keep us “on the app,” reading and clicking and doom-scrolling in an addictive way. Sites keep track of what we read, what we share, even what we pause over, and feed us more of the same. An information silo is created controlled by algorithms that feed you more of what you like, or more of what angers you or titillates you or otherwise occupies your attention and time.
It’s easy to end up in an echo chamber that confirms your biases, one that reinforces the idea that people who think differently from you must be willfully misguided or stubborn or maybe just plain stupid or even evil. If you already dislike or distrust “the other side,” social media will tend to make you dislike or distrust them even more.
We’re warned about going down the rabbit hole, but we’re not warned about the information silos being created for us without our knowledge or consent.
All this has been on my mind after I watched this short and stimulating TEDx talk by journalist Ryan Biller.
As Biller notes, social media can impoverish human interactions. It can serve as a hostile wall instead of a transparent window or an open door. I wrote to Biller to thank him for his talk and to share my perspective on echo chambers, siloed information, and the like, and he wrote back that social media can create “a merciless cycle and feedback loop that has a psychological ‘funhouse mirror’ effect; in other words, it exaggerates and distorts reality in, I think, a really negative way.”
We need to recognize how social media apps, sites, and algorithms manipulate us; how they’re designed to keep us clicking, scrolling, and otherwise (over)stimulated. And how these interactions are, in a way, dehumanizing. Or, if not dehumanizing, how they bring out the keyboard commando in some people.
With respect to echo chambers, what I do to combat that is to read a range of sources daily. I get daily updates from mainstream media sites like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. I check sites like the British Guardian, NBC News, and BBC News. I occasionally turn to Fox News to see how certain events are being covered.
And then there are a range of alternative sites and podcasts that I’ve found useful, such as TomDispatch.com, Judging Freedom, Antiwar.com, Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald, and Caitlin Johnstone. I listen to (among others) Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Briahna Joy Gray, Max Blumenthal at The Grayzone. Of course, I don’t listen to all of these, all the time, nor do I listen to them because I always agree with them.
In having this site, Bracing Views, I contribute to this complex informational ecology, putting my own spin and exhibiting my own biases. I deeply appreciate my readers and commenters who have largely avoided the often unsocial nature of social media.
When I need a strong dose of humor and reality, I return to George Carlin. I am reminded that telling one’s truth in a provocative and humorous (and even profane) way can have great value.
Finally, remember that sometimes the best social interaction is sitting down and breaking bread with the people around you—even the people you disagree with. For I continue to believe that we can agree to disagree, that we can disagree in ways that aren’t disagreeable, and that sometimes disagreement can become agreement, and that common ground can be found.
Addendum: I shared the comment below in response to a reader who noted that manipulation is nothing ne
Absolutely. As I.F. Stone said, all governments lie. Propaganda is everywhere. But social media is more insidious because there’s an illusion of control. People think they’re the ones doing the picking and the clicking.
Not only are you often “swimming in the shallows” online–those shallows are more like a puddle whose boundaries are set by algorithms.
It’s fascinating to think of the ocean of information that’s out there even as some people are figuratively drowning in puddles partly of their own making.
Note to Readers: Here’s an article I wrote for the LA Progressive as America marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
When I look back at my old parchment from 1976, I see noble words written by courageous but deeply imperfect men. We remain imperfect as well.
This article is part of the series that addresses the question whether it was hypocrisy or hope when 250 years ago we stated in our Declaration of Independence that “All Men Are Created Equal.” Hypocrisy because more than half of the declaration signers were slaveholders. Plus, how about women, Native Americans, and the unpropertied? But also hopeful because sometime in the future those groups might (and would) be given the vote.
I was thirteen during our nation’s bicentennial in 1976. To celebrate, I had a parchment reproduction of the Declaration of Independence, something that meant a great deal to me at the time. I still remember John Hancock’s glorious signature—defiant, oversized, unmistakable. Take that, King George III.
Of course, declaring independence in 1776 didn’t make it so—history rarely bends simply because words demand it. The thirteen colonies had to fight a long, debilitating, and often brutal war for nearly six years. Even after Yorktown in 1781, George Washington and others struggled to keep the fragile new nation from collapsing into acrimonious division. True independence came only in 1783, when the British Empire formally recognized the former colonies through treaty. Even then, conflict lingered. The United States would fight Britain again in the War of 1812, a war that included the burning of Washington, D.C., underscoring how precarious American independence remained.
Rereading the Declaration later in life reminded me of the cleverness of its authors. They framed their cause in terms of noble ideals, which was smart, but they also personalized their grievances by casting blame on an allegedly tyrannical king, which was even smarter. By the standards of the eighteenth century, King George III was neither unusually cruel nor especially despotic. He expected obedience to the Crown, wanted the colonies to pay for their own defense, and sought order over disorder. If anything, he may not have been tyrannical enough to enforce compliance.
Still, the founders skillfully appealed to Parliament and to English citizens’ jealousy for their own rights—life, liberty, and property (or, as Thomas Jefferson famously revised it, the pursuit of happiness). This was the Age of Reason, after all, a time when the divine right of kings no longer went unquestioned. Even so, the Declaration often reads like a laundry list of complaints against the king—complaints that were not always fair or fully convincing.
Most colonists, at least early on, were not seeking a radical break with Britain. They wanted the traditional rights of Englishmen, especially as educated men who owned property. No matter how “enlightened” they considered themselves, these were men of their times: slaveholders like Jefferson, men who saw no reason to extend the right to vote to women, to enslaved Black people, or even to white men without property.
Yet embedded within the Declaration was a promise more radical than its authors likely intended. The assertion that all men are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights planted a seed that women, Black Americans, and other marginalized groups would later seize upon. Like the colonists themselves, these groups had to fight for those rights. Power, as the saying goes, concedes nothing without a demand—and rarely concedes much without sustained struggle.
The same remains true today. Declaring America to be a democracy where all are equally respected does not make it so. Our country is more oligarchy than democracy, a land divided between the haves—and the have-mores—and the have-nots, rather than a nation that shares equitably in its collective bounty. We may have won independence from Britain, but we did not win freedom from the forces of history or from the imperfections of human nature.
America remains a place of contention, where the meaning of the American Revolution is still argued over and fought about. Yet there is enduring, aspirational nobility in the idea that we are all in this together, still striving to form a more perfect union. That goal is not achieved through declarations alone, no matter how brave or eloquent. It must be pursued, defended, and renewed every day—against tyrants large and petty, foreign and domestic.
When I look back at my old parchment from 1976, I see noble words written by courageous but deeply imperfect men. We remain imperfect as well. The question is whether we can regain the courage, fortitude, and commitment of the founders—not to idolize them, but to continue the unfinished work they began. I believe we can. To believe otherwise is to abandon the very spirit of America’s declaration in 1776. Why not work to make it so?
Who the hell wants to talk about genocide and man’s inhumanity to man?
I taught courses on the Holocaust, where I came across a two-volume encyclopedia of genocide (see list of references at the end). We humans have a remarkable record of killing each other (usually couched as killing the “other,” the “bad” people). That a two-volume encyclopedia of genocide exists says something truly horrendous about the human condition.
Far too often, a chosen people, a “master race,” decides to eliminate barbarians, inferiors, primitives, race enemies, whatever words are used to demonize other humans. Often, it’s said we must kill them before they kill us, so mass murder is defined and defended in terms of safety and security. The “bad” people force us to kill them. We don’t want to do it—they make us! And we hate them all the more for making us kill.
At the same time, mass murder is often quite profitable for the killers. In the Holocaust, the Nazis systematically stole everything from the Jews they were killing. They stole their houses and apartments, their businesses, their furniture, their jewelry, their clothing: everything they could get their greedy murderous hands on. In Gaza today and on the West Bank, we see Israel stealing land and most everything else from murdered and displaced Palestinians. The Israeli government justifies mass theft and mass death as a defensive war against barbaric terrorists, just as the Nazis saw themselves as being at war with inferior Jews and other racial undesirables like the gypsies.
The Nazis claimed the Jews were an existential threat to the “master race,” thus all Jews had to be killed, even women, children, and babies. The Israeli government claims Hamas is an existential threat to Jews and that all Palestinians are, more or less, members or supporters of Hamas and therefore must be eliminated (murdered or expelled). Women, children, babies: they’re all Hamas.
America has its own history of genocide. Various Native American peoples were murdered, shunted aside onto reservations, sent to “civilizing” schools that denied them their history and identity, most of their land stolen from them. This had to be done, the white man claimed, because the Indians were brutal savages, demonically so.
Today, there is great resistance (certainly among U.S. politicians) to the idea that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza. Most U.S. politicians prefer to think of it as a morally justifiable war against Hamas, and even if they don’t completely buy that, they give Israel everything it wants, weapons and money, to facilitate that genocide. Like Pontius Pilate, they wash their hands of blood shed in Gaza, blaming Hamas (or, perhaps for a few, quietly blaming Israel without daring to say it).
Anyhow, these musings came to me as I contemplated a short encyclopedia article I wrote on genocide about 25 years ago. What follows is that article.
GENOCIDE: Legal term coined in 1944 initially to define and condemn Nazi efforts to destroy, deliberately and systematically, Jews as well as Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) in the Holocaust. The term encompasses not only ethnic- and racially-motivated extermination but also cultural, national, and political. Although the term is fairly recent, genocidal practices are nearly as old as recorded history. Witness the Roman annihilation of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War. Yet genocide as a category is usually applied to events of more recent history, with the Turkish persecution of Armenians during World War I providing a paradigm of ruthless and wholesale murder to extirpate an entire people. Accusing Armenians of being pro-Russian and envying their domination of eastern Anatolia, Turkish officials forced them to emigrate east across mountains in winter. Hundreds of thousands died of exposure, starvation, or in massacres; perhaps 1.5 million died in total from 1915 to 1923.
Josef Stalin’s persecution of Ukrainians in the 1930s also constituted genocide, as Stalin distrusted their political loyalty. By confiscating crops and seed grain and preventing emigration, Stalin consigned five million Ukrainians to early graves. Nazi extermination policies were more racially oriented, as Adolf Hitler considered Jews and Gypsies to be irredeemable biological menaces to the purity of Aryan blood. The machinery of death employed by Nazis—railroads and cattle cars, gas chambers and ovens—and the systematic pillaging and gleeful humiliation of victims set a despicably new standard for human barbarity. Six million Jews and half a million Gypsies died at the hands of this evil regime. The post-war Nuremberg Trials prosecuted a few of the more prominent architects of the so-called Final Solution, but many others escaped judgment.
Although the United Nations’ Genocide Convention (1951) made genocide a crime under international law, lack of military forces and international criminal courts to enforce the convention has crippled efforts to deter or punish perpetrators. Acts of genocide continued, whether by the Khmer Rouge in the Cambodian “killing fields” in the 1970s, where one million perished, or by Hutu extremists in 1994, who massacred 800,000 Tutsis in a matter of months as the international community wrung its hands. Events closer to Europe that endangered Western stability drew greater scrutiny. Thus in 1993 the UN created a War Crimes Tribunal to prosecute practitioners of “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia. Despite a handful of convictions, prosecution and prevention of genocidal crimes remain serious challenges facing the international community in the twenty-first century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bartov, Omer. Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity, Oxford, 2000.
Charny, Israel W. Encyclopedia of Genocide, 2 vols, Santa Barbara, CA, 1999.
Power, Samantha. “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, New York, 2002.
Rosenbaum, Alan S., ed. Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Boulder, CO, 1998.
I was reading an article by James Baldwin today from July 11, 1966 about the “Harlem Six” and his thoughts on policing. His words resonated as I thought of recent events in Minneapolis and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
James Baldwin
Here’s what Baldwin had to say in 1966:
This is why those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect. [Emphasis added.]
Yes, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, indeed all Americans expect the law to be our servant. We don’t expect the law to be our murderer.
President Trump is now saying Good and Pretti’s deaths shouldn’t have happened even as he’s also said they were no angels (hinting that maybe their murders were justified, or that they somehow were responsible for their own executions).
Of course, Trump and members of his administration have said far worse, reflexively denouncing Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists” while suggesting the people who’ve suffered the most have been the ICE agents who shot and killed them!
Claims such as these are an insidious form of authoritarian madness.
ICE agents, like all elements of law enforcement, are supposed to be public servants, upholders of the law, not a law unto themselves. When the law becomes a torturer and a murderer, it becomes a moral obscenity, as Baldwin noted.
If we are to make any progress in America, we need equal justice for all; we need to stop blaming the victims; and we must stop kowtowing to murderous authority.
The AI hype train is here and is speeding ahead like the fastest Japanese bullet train. It’s a “revolution,” and AI is going to change everything and/or doom us all. Or maybe it’ll usher in a glorious utopia? New technologies always seem to mobilize both the doomsayers and the utopian dreamers.
Amazingly, ChatGPT is already recording 800 million weekly active users. Meanwhile, investment in AI races ahead—not without serious implications. Today, I noted these two stories at the New York Times:
So, the demand for chips may inflate the price of your next computer even as investors in AI continue to throw money at its promise.
Given the nature of the corporations and governments making decisions about AI and its future, I’m not optimistic for an AI-driven utopia. Count me among the (guarded) pessimists.
Why? Here’s one snippet I gleaned from the New York Times the other day:
28,000,000,000
— That’s how many liters of water Microsoft said it would use for its data centers in 2030, according a report obtained by The Times.The company had promised to cut its water use, but big tech companies are guzzling water during the A.I. frenzy.
That’s an enormous quantity of water when water scarcity is a major issue for our climate change-driven future.
Along with that, I saw where the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to nuclear Armageddon. In their statement, the scientists cited the rise of AI and its application to weapons and war as one reason for the clock’s creep toward midnight.
So, what gives with this “AI frenzy”? My guess is that AI is being harnessed by the powerful for their purposes. They’re not investing big money to help the little people. This is not to say that every AI application is nefarious and evil. But I think the general trend will be AI-driven “efficiency,” meaning lots of people losing their jobs, along with AI-driven surveillance and control, in the name of greater “safety and security,” naturally.
One thing is certain: we shouldn’t blame the technology. Whatever AI is or becomes, it will be a manifestation of us—but, more worryingly, a manifestation of the agendas of the capitalists, the corporatists, and the warmongers among us, those who are always seeking dominance, even “full-spectrum” dominance, including AI and everything it’s capable of, “guardrails” be damned.
I’m a Mutt-American. I’m half Italian, 3/8th English, and 1/8th Swedish. But I’ve never thought of myself as other than 100% American.
Ancestors on my mother’s side go back to the 1630s when they came across the Atlantic to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Surnames like Wilder, Bird, and Hayward. I’ve been able to trace them back to England and to specific regions, even to ship’s names that they took in emigrating to the New World. At least one of my mother’s ancestors fought in the American Revolutionary War. Take that, J.D. Vance.
Another ancestor on my mother’s side, surname of Johnson, came from Sweden in the 19th century. He was a janitor. Other ancestors were reverends, clockmakers, and tanners, among other occupations. Again, typically American.
On my father’s side, his parents came from Italy in 1902 and 1913, so in that sense my American pedigree is more recent. That said, my father and his two brothers all served in World War II, my dad staying stateside as his two brothers served overseas, one in Europe, the other in the Pacific.
I think my family background is about as typical, as unexceptional, about as “normal” as they come. Unless you are of Native American ancestry, your roots here in America are fairly shallow, relatively speaking. A few centuries at best—not much on the cosmic timescale.
I mention all this because of the Trump administration’s vilification of immigrants, notably so-called illegals. Yes, I think people should immigrate legally to this country, but I don’t think anyone should be demonized.
Ilhan Omar, American (official portrait, 2019)
Trump in particular likes to attack Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is a Somali-American. His harsh rhetoric against her is dangerously irresponsible as well as hateful. I see Omar as akin to my Italian grandmother, who proudly became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1945.
Trump is a remarkably puny man—a man who thinks he can puff himself up by belittling others. It’s shameful behavior. He should be impeached by Congress and removed for his un-American attacks that endanger other lawmakers—that demean others, that sow discord.
So many immigrants came (and come) to this country seeking a better life, a fresh start, a land where you really could be judged by the content of your character. In its attacks on immigrants, the Trump administration has shown itself to be characterless and wanting of the true American spirit.
Unless you’re Cheyenne or Pawnee or Iroquois or some other kinship group drawn from indigenous peoples, you’re a recent American, and probably a Mutt-American like me. As Americans, we’re all in this together—all equal under the law, all striving to form a more perfect union.
Well, except for Trump and his tribe of dividers. It’s high time they left America. Perhaps Elon Musk has a few rockets ready to send them to the Moon and beyond.
“America’s children are unwell.” From the New York Times this morning:
Nearly one in four 17-year-old boys in the United States has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In the early 1980s, a diagnosis of autism was delivered to one child in 2,500. That figure is now one in 31. Almost 32 percent of adolescents have at some point been given a diagnosis of anxiety. More than one in 10 have experienced a major depressive disorder, my colleague Jia Lynn Yang reports.
And the number of mental health conditions is expanding. A child might be tagged with oppositional defiance disorder or pathological avoidance disorder. “The track has become narrower and narrower, so a greater range of people don’t fit that track anymore,” an academic who studies children and education told Jia Lynn. “And the result is, we want to call it a disorder.”
Why did this happen? A lot of reasons. Kids spend hours on screens, cutting into their sleep, exercise and socializing — activities that can ward off anxiety and depression. Mental health screenings have improved.
And then there’s school itself: a cause of stress for many children and the very place that sends them toward a diagnosis.
I can’t read the main article since it’s behind a paywall. The gist of the article is that American schooling is hyper competitive, constricting, perhaps too demanding, and therefore a big part of the problem.
Maybe. Schools are also chronically underfunded. Teaching remains an underpaid profession. Classrooms can be overcrowded. Standards vary widely. And parents are stressed as they try to get their kids into the “right” schools. It’s not hard to see how that educational ecosystem might amplify distress.
But the explosion in ADHD diagnoses, autism, and anxiety is surely also driven by Big Pharma.* “We’ve got a drug for that” should be the motto of these companies. Americans are bombarded every day with drug ads promising to change our lives. I’m not a parent myself, but if my kid had trouble focusing or otherwise had behavioral issues, I’d explore medication as an option. I’m guessing it’s easier to get a prescription for Adderall or Ritalin than for kids to get wise treatment and sustained counseling from a psychiatrist or other mental health specialist.
Not just “mother’s little helper”
Some parents may even feel that particular diagnoses confer a kind of status— confirmation that their child is not merely struggling but exceptional in some “high-functioning” or creatively gifted way. That, too, reflects broader cultural forces.(“Annie is autistic and really too intelligent/creative/artistic/sensitive for this world.”)
But beyond parental dysfunction, omnipresent screens, school pressures, and pharmaceutical marketing, there’s a deeper question: Are our kids simply mirroring the broader dysfunction of American society? We live in a culture marked by relentless competition, materialism, polarization, and chronic stress. There’s little about our adult world that could be described as calm or balanced. If our society itself is unwell, why would we expect our kids to feel—or behave—otherwise?
I know it’s not easy, but surely kids need to unplug more (especially from social media, with all its pressures). They need to get outside more. They need to play more—they need more unstructured time. They probably need less stimulation—and arguably more time to be, in a word, bored. To find their own way to play, their own hobbies and interests to pursue, their own path in life.
A dysfunctional society produces dysfunctional kids. If that’s true, how do we make a society that better serves everyone? If American society and culture is uniquely disorienting and destabilizing, can’t we change that? Can’t we make a better saner world for our kids?
Grim factoid: In 2008, Americans consumed 80% of the world’s opioid supply. Though that percentage has dropped to roughly 40% today, what is it about American life that is so painful? Why are we so addicted to (legal and illegal) drugs? And now our kids too?
Readers, what do you make of all this?
*By no means am I dismissing mental illness; my brother Stevie had his first schizophrenic episode when he was sixteen in 1973 and never fully recovered from it. I have friends with a daughter with severe Asperger’s syndrome. My concern here is the vast increase in ADHD, autism, and similar diagnoses and the potential reasons for this.
Bracing Views 