New Year's Day is an arbitrary date

On the cusp of a new year, gray clouds hover overhead, and a cold breeze chills my aging bones. The January 1 date for turning the calendar's page is an arbitrary choice. No celestial or terrestrial event marks the date. Many businesses use a different calendar to divide their years (July 1 to June 30 is a popular choice).

On this night, people will celebrate the dawn of the new year, as if something had changed. But 2018 melts into 2019 imperceptibly. The death of one year and the birth of another brings fireworks, resolutions, and hope, but Jan. 1 is seldom noticeably different from the day before.

It is natural to wish for a better year as the old year ends. Many people will make resolutions to do better, do more, be better, be more helpful, be more generous and caring. But the resolve of Dec. 31 slowly dissolves into the hustle and bustle of 2019. Few resolutions and few hopes for the new year are followed or fulfilled. The year may change, but we remain the same.

A few years ago, as I toasted the new year quietly at home with my wife, she said, "I hope next year, no one we love will get sick or die." It was a deeply felt desire. In the previous consecutive several years, we had faced the deaths of parents, siblings and good friends. It was difficult to be hopeful about a new year that did not include our departed loved ones. She expressed that hope about the new year twice before a year finally came when we didn't travel to a funeral.

We all hope for a new year that was better than the last one or less painful than the last one. But pain inevitably comes, and as we grow older the pain of lost family and friends grows more frequent. Still, we wish for others and for ourselves a happy new year, a year without death and despair, a year with happiness and fulfillment, with comfort and achievement.

This is the day, an otherwise ordinary winter day, when we resolve and wish for what will come.

Who benefits in withdrawal from Syria?

If you're wondering why President Trump would abruptly and without consultation with administration advisors or international allies pull 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, I'm glad to have your company.

Syria has been a disaster for years, and many U.S. decisions only made matters worse. President Obama threatened the Syrian government against use of chemical weapons but then did nothing when the Assad regime murdered its only citizens with poison gas. Obama allowed Russia to take the lead in Syria and take advantage of the lack of a clear strategy for the U.S. coalition fighting ISIS and other groups.

Trump's rationale (if you can call an irrational person's thoughts a rationale) is that ISIS has been defeated, so our troops should come home. As military and diplomatic officials have pointed out with great alarm, it's not that simple. ISIS has been pushed back by U.S. allies as well as the Russians and Syrians, but it hasn't disappeared and can swiftly regain enough footing to carry out devastating terrorist attacks.

Who benefits from Trump's rash decision? Syrian dictator Assad, sure, but also Vladimir Putin's Russia. By salvaging Assad, Putin has gained great leverage in the area and a foothold on the Mediterranean. Trump's sudden decision to withdraw troops directly benefits Putin in both the short and long term. It's a decision that could more logically come from the manipulative, conniving Putin than from anyone who cared about U.S. strategy and prestige. Abandoning besieged allies, as Trump is doing in Syria, will cast all U.S. promises into doubt with terrible long-term consequences.

There has been no reporting that I've seen linking Trump's announcement to Russian suggestions or messaging, but if I were Robert Mueller, I would ask for White House visitation, phone and email logs just to make sure the seed of this strategy wasn't suggested by the Kremlin.

Christmas comes again this year

Can it be that Christmas is less than a week away? It has come quietly this year, without so much of the hurrying, the planning, the buying, the addressing of cards, the baking, the worrying, the wondering if we've done all that we should be doing.

Like other things, Christmas grows quieter, more nostalgic, more home-centered as we grow older. My wife and I have done the Christmas thing (or things) for more than 45 years. We've transitioned from the two of us to the five of us to the addition of grandchildren, around whom Christmas has been focused the past dozen years.

Christmases have come in three distinct phases: (1) Childhood Christmas, when excitement over new toys, bountiful candy and an air of cheerfulness permeated our reality; (2) Christmas with children, when our joy in seeing the happiness on our children's faces exceeded all of the excitement we had known as children; and (3) Christmas with grandchildren, when we see ourselves in our grown children's faces as they experience the sheer joy of making their own children ecstatically happy.

Now, we seem to be facing another phase, when we face Christmas as aging grandparents with grandchildren grown too big for excitement and too independent to cuddle with old folks. At our age, the excitement and joy of Christmas have been tempered by the sadness of losing relatives and friends who had been integral to our Christmas happiness. We have lost parents, siblings, cousins and dear friends, whose memory haunts our Christmas revelry. We even count the years in actuarial tables to see how many Christmases we might reasonably expect to have remaining.

This Christmas will be a quieter holiday at our house. We decided not to revive our once-annual tradition of a Christmas open house. Although we are retired and should have been able to plan the party, send the invitations and do the preparations needed to get dozens of people into our home with cheerful greetings of "Merry Christmas," but we couldn't seem to get it done, and now it's too late.

Still, we intend to make Christmas a festive time, as well as a sacred time. We will attend Christmas Eve services, and we will eat a special meal, even if it is only for the two of us. We will celebrate another Christmas, and it will be one, like all the preceding ones, like no other.

Merry Christmas.

 

A nightmare scenario for 2020

As the mid-term elections fall behind us and the 2020 election campaigns are already under way, here's the nightmare scenario that is making me lose sleep:

1. President Donald Trump runs a spirited campaign for re-election much like his 2016 campaign and his rallies in support of Republican candidates in the 2018 mid-terms. He shouts and threatens and insults, and his cheering throngs love it. They love him. They love everything he says and everything he does, not matter what. He is convinced and they are convinced that he will easily win re-election. After all, who could not love such a successful, determined president, the greatest of all times. Just ask him!

2. The Democrats, meanwhile, slowly recognize that their strategy of playing to the many interest groups — racial, ethnic, gender, educational levels and philosophical — is not winning them the votes they need from the disaffected, working class, struggling, left-behind, frustrated, angry voters who abandoned caution in 2016 and swung to Trump. The Democrats develop a new strategy of listening to the disaffected, and not just the poor (another of their faithful interest groups) but especially the workers who have seen their adjusted income and standard of living plummet, their children unable to find work, and the despair all around them that leads to opioid addiction and suicides.

3. So the Democrats get smart and select a presidential candidate who can appeal to the working class without alienating their traditional voters. I cannot see who that might be; the Democrats on the horizon seem to be leaning toward more protective promises for the interest groups instead of attending to the legitimate needs of the workers who have been left behind.

4. Having found the new strategy and the appealing candidate, the Democrats cruise to victory on Nov. 3, 2020.

5. Then all hell breaks loose. A defeated Donald Trump cannot admit defeat. He proclaims that the election was rigged against him, that his second term was stolen from him, and he will fight to right this wrong. A new president has been elected, but Trump has 78 days as a lame-duck president until the new president's Jan. 20 inauguration, and he can wreak havoc like never before. If you thought he was encouraging violence at his rallies before, just wait. He can suggest that voters should rise up to defeat this electoral theft. He's already proclaimed that he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue and never lose a supporter or face consequences. His 2016 supporters were so sure he would win that some threatened massive resistance if the vote tally went against Trump. A president who already sees himself as above the law would have no problem with taking drastic measures to ensure his position.

6. Trump can declare martial law to jail his political opponents. He can waive restrictions on search and seizure. He can create crises that "only I can fix." The country can be divided like no time since 1861. Federal judges will rule against him, but Trump has already undermined trust in the judiciary. Their rulings will just anger the Trump faithful more than ever. Trump can accuse the justices of prejudice and unfairness. He has already done that with far less at stake. Any federal employee of the Justice Department who attempts to enforce the courts' rulings can be summarily fired by the lame duck president. The newly elected Democratic president can file lawsuits, but court victories will be useless if no federal officials are around to enforce the rulings.

7. The United States government crumbles with Trump opponents jailed ("Lock Them Up!") and career federal employees replaced by Trump toadies. Trump's friends in Moscow, North Korea, Saudi Arabia can recognize the Trump victory as legitimate. American democracy will be overthrown.

University bungles Silent Sam controversy

Trustees of the University of North Carolina seem determined to make a bad, no-win situation worse. For months, the university's board and administration had dithered over what to do about "Silent Sam," the statue memorializing the UNC students who put aside their studies to serve in the Civil War. Their procrastination served to embolden the Silent Sam protesters, whose actions grew louder and more violent until a mob pulled down the 100-year-old statue in August.

They continued to delay a decision about what to do with a fallen statue, which has been removed and stored in a secret location. This week, the board announced its solution for Silent Sam's future: They want the university to build a $5 million off-campus building to house the statue and spend $800,000 a year in maintenance and operational costs to keep the building safe and intact.

Rather than solve the controversy over Silent Sam, this plan would enshrine the statue without ever settling the arguments for and against it. To opponents of the statue, the proposed building is a temple to the Confederacy and to white supremacy. To defenders of the statue, the plan leaves unresolved how the university and the state should view Silent Sam.

Opponents of the statue cite one man's racist speech at the dedication of the statue as cause for obliterating the statue, ignoring the thousands of donors who helped fund the statue as a memorial to the students who gave up their education to defend their home state and the clear intent of donors to honor not racism or the "lost cause" of the Confederacy but to honor those who died in a misbegotten war that devastated North Carolina.

The university's initial mistake in the Silent Sam controversy was to look the other way while protesters vandalized the statue and its pedestal. Had the university and the town of Chapel Hill acted swiftly to charge those protesters with destruction of public property, this destructive bent might never have snowballed to its conclusion.

Having made it clear that vandalism, destruction of public property, conspiracy, and inciting to riot would not be punished or even opposed, the university has transferred authority to the mobs. The cowering administration of the university should be replaced by leaders who are unafraid of controversy, supportive of free speech and unwilling to give in to mob rule. This prolonged indecisiveness has increased the divisiveness of this issue and made a sensible, just resolution less likely.

Acknowledging George Herbert Walker Bush

President George H.W. Bush's funeral was held Wednesday, and he is finally receiving the recognition and accolades that he deserves. He will likely be judged by historians as an important if not great president, but you'd hardly know it from the public perception of him during his one term in office.

As the president succeeding Ronald Reagan, Bush faced an unenviable task in persuading the public to love and respect him. Reagan had finished his two terms with a loyal following and an easy charm that made him a favorite on the national stage. Despite all his accomplishments and qualifications for office, Bush never seemed comfortable as a politician. His speaking style ranged between stiff and awkward. He was not an eloquent speaker, nor a spell-binding story teller. He always seemed self-conscious on the podium and refused to brag about himself, no matter how justifiable. Texas governor Ann Richards said Bush was "born with a silver foot in his mouth."

Some critics even suggested he was a coward. But as one Navy aviator put, anybody who does night carrier landings cannot be a coward. Bush flew 58 combat missions in World War II, landing on a rocking, moving aircraft carrier that is a mighty small refuge in a vast ocean. When he pointed out his grandchildren in a crowd to Ronald Reagan as "the little brown ones," he was accused of being a racist. A man who loves and is proud of his Hispanic daughter-in-law and her children is not prejudiced.

After succeeding Reagan, his next challenge was running for office against one of the best political charmers the nation had ever seen. Bill Clinton was glib, charming, empathetic, eloquent at times and willing to do whatever it took to win. The Democrats in 1992 portrayed Bush as a bumbling old man who didn't speak well and was out of touch with the electorate. Clinton's campaign hammered Bush on the economy ("It's the economy, stupid!), although any president's influence over the economy is limited, and the economy had begun improving before 1992 votes were cast.

Bush's accomplishments as president are only now being appreciated. He helped arrange the world order as the Soviet Union collapsed and Soviet bloc states declared independence. He saw to the reunification of Germany and the expansion of NATO. He negotiated and got approved a nuclear weapons treaty, and he led the push for the Americans with Disabilities Act and a civil rights bill.

But what he may be best remembered for is his personal dignity and kindness. He never called attention to himself. He refrained from criticizing others. He was sincere and genuine, never pretending to be someone he wasn't. He famously sent hand-written notes to friends, relatives and new acquaintances, thousands of such notes that are now cherished and even compiled in a book.

America is at last acknowledging the greatness of George H.W. Bush

Reading obits for high school classmates

Ronnie Horne is dead. The not entirely unexpected news came via an email from a fellow high school classmate. He was my age. These notices have been coming with increasing regularity. My 121-member high school class has been trimmed by about half. Ronnie, with whom I shared classrooms from 1955 to 1967, was just the latest.

The funeral is tomorrow at a church I've never seen and is about a four-hour drive away. Forgive me for missing this one. I've found it difficult to attend the funerals of any of my classmates. While many of them stuck close to the rural communities where we grew up and attended a countywide consolidated high school, I have been gone from those landmarks for some 50 years.

I've felt an obligation to attend some memorials — Punky Morton, my best friend in high school; Barry Dellinger, a very close friend in lower grades; but I mourned the others from a distance — a high school girlfriend; a kind girl with a last name, like mine, beginning with T, which placed us in neighboring desks in many high school classes; the class clown everyone loved for his optimism and friendliness, and all the others; a football teammate who heard our coach tell us we'd never forget our teammates (but we did).

Our 50th reunion was held 14 months ago. The teenagers of 1967 gathered in groups to hug and shake hands, to discuss jobs and retirements, to compare grandparenting experiences, to complain of ailments and limitations, to reminisce, and, mostly, to celebrate having made it this far in life.

We do not fool ourselves into thinking there is anything unique about our experiences. Fiftieth reunions are held every year. Someone's long-lost classmate passes away every day. Millions of people my age read the obituaries every day, silently judging who's my age and who has departed far too young.

The worst aspect of aging is the loss of friends, neighbors, siblings, parents, and others who had shaped our lives and who cannot be replaced. All we can do is remember. Rest in peace.

Generations shift at family reunions

Family reunions are more than periodic opportunities to reunite with relatives you seldom see or barely know. Family reunions are also lessons in the steady advance of time. These events reveal truths we are reluctant to recognize, that we age into new roles without acknowledgement or intention. We become not only our parents but also our grandparents and great-grandparents.

In the past two months, I've attended reunions of my mother's and my father's families. My mother's family, comprising six siblings, was especially close-knit, it seemed to a youthful me. The five sisters and one brother, with all their children (a total of 13 grandchildren for my grandparents) gathered every Sunday afternoon at the home my grandfather built on a small farm after he retired from the cotton mill. While the adults sat and talked, my cousins and I had free run of the farm with its fields, pond and barn. At this year's reunion, only eight of the 13 cousins were still living, and not all of them attended the reunion.

My father's family seemed less adhered. The ten siblings scattered farther away from the mill village where all were raised. Some sought better jobs or followed ambitions or circumstance to distant places. One son, the youngest, never returned from World War II, though his brothers survived.

Now, when families gather, the remnants of my father's family seem closer and more eager to reunite. When I look around at either reunion, I see my contemporaries, my first cousins, and their children and grandchildren and realize that I am now where my grandparents were in my youth — elderly, a little insecure, and overjoyed, filled with gratitude, to see the children of our children. The old pictures we pass around show our parents in middle age or later, and we take pictures of our generation, at that same vulnerable age, distinguished from our parents primarily by this year's color photography, which contrasts with the black-and-white light and shadows of the old pictures. The faces are not so different. We, who once tugged on the pants and skirts of parents, now look down at the toddlers who have assumed our earlier roles, impatiently tugging for attention.

We are constantly teetering on that instability of being the playful kid, the cocky teenager, the ambitious, confident young adult, while also being the elderly, time-limited, slower, fading people we saw our parents become. Can we possibly be the same person? We don't recognize the bell curve of life until we are plummeting on the downward side, unable to stop it or slow it down.

The best way to spend a rainy, cold afternoon

The temperature is in the mid-40s and rainy outside this morning. It's a day — and maybe a week, according to the weather forecast — to spend inside. These wintry days are perfect for curling up with a good book, perhaps near the fireplace or in bed with a quilt covering me.

My wife and I had anticipated for years the many things we'd be able to do once we retired, once we were no longer tied down to a job and an office and responsibilities. Not the least of those anticipated things was the chance to read, not just at night just before falling asleep but at various times of the day.

About 30 years ago, a local retiree told me that the best thing about retirement could be summed up in one word: naps. He has been dead for years, but we share his retirement insight. We've adopted a modified siesta plan. Almost every day after lunch, we settle onto our bed or into a comfortable chair and read, sometimes for only 15 minutes, but sometimes for an hour. And sometimes, reading leads to napping, an unintentional but welcome goal for the afternoon.

While some people occupy their idle time by binge-watching television shows or movies; we prefer a good book that we can read for hours of put down and return to as needed. We have succumbed to a few of the multi-segment productions available on streaming services, including "The Staircase, "Downton Abbey," and a few others. The suspense that keeps viewers glued to these serials have a downside — heart-pounding confrontation and suspense are not relaxing. A good book is more satisfying and more comforting than any video production I can think of.

Later today, when the rain still falls from the overcast sky and the chill in the air makes it a challenge to feel sufficiently warm, I'll be absorbed in a book, oblivious to the chill or the rain, feeling instead the comfort of ink on paper, of descriptions that bring distant scenes to life, of events that happened only in an author's imagination.

It's the best way to spend a rainy, cold afternoon.

Petitioning the government by screaming

The First Amendment protects "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." This right has been broadly interpreted to allow almost any sort of assembly and petition, from million-man marches, to flag-burning protests, to neo-Nazi parades passing through neighborhoods populated by Holocaust survivors.

The Trump era and the "Resistance" movement have refocused attention on the right to protest. Democratic leaders have not questioned the aggressive protests and shouting-down of speakers, but the mid-term elections indicate that many moderate voters find the behavior at some protests rude, uncivil and crude. During the committee hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, Americans saw opponents of Kavanaugh's appointment shouting down the senators conducting the hearings with coordinated screams of "Shame On You!" "Shame On You!"

As a career newspaper editor, I am accustomed to defending the right of free speech (and press), but I have difficulty classifying shouted insults as speech worthy of constitutional protection. Is it really "petitioning the government" when you verbally attack public officials and call them names?

What's worse, insofar as the protesters are concerned, they are failing to sway the public officials they are "petitioning" and the voters who tend to be turned off by the shouting down of elected officials, regardless of the issue involved. President Trump and other Republican officials used uncivilized, disrespectful behavior of the screaming protesters to ignite the passions of GOP voters.

Democratic leaders would be wise to disavow the aggressive shouting-down tactics and the tendency to portray every judicial or executive appointment as an Armageddon. Those tactics (which are also used by Republican leaders) are not succeeding. Voters are not so foolish as to believe the hyperbolic claims against individual nominees or specific bills. Has Neil Gorsuch been that bad for Democrats? Would Merrick Garland been so disastrous for Republicans?

Americans are sharply divided on many issues, but the behavior of advocates on both sides is doing nothing to bridge the divide and resolving the issue through  mutual agreement and compromise.
 

More of a bubble than a wave

That's not a wave on which you can surf to 2020 victory.

Going into the mid-term elections, Democrats were predicting a tangible "blue wave" of electoral victories, but that tsunami turned into a ripple in most places Tuesday. Democrats did regain majority control of the U.S. House, but they failed in some of the most high-profile races that they had bolstered with money and attention — failing to topple vulnerable, mercurial Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, failing to win governorships in Florida and Ohio (key states in 2020) and failing to hold onto Senate seats in the Republican-dominated Midwest.

President Donald Trump is claiming credit for the Republican showing in these races, and his influence on campaigns across the country is hard to deny. Trump took his comedic road show to states where Republicans were vulnerable, and he fired up the GOP base with warnings about an "invasion" of illegal immigrants from Mexico, higher taxes under a Democratic Congress (although the GOP majority in the Senate makes that nearly impossible) and (of course) news professionals Trump is convinced are conspiring against him. In many places and in many minds, Trump's effort to exaggerate, prevaricate and conjure false "facts" worked well. His one-man shows (it's hard to consider his boisterous, insult-filled, narcissistic extravaganzas political rallies in the traditional sense) were effective in getting his base excited about the mid-terms. Democrats won enough seats to gain a majority in the U.S. House, but their victories were limited to a bubble here and there in mostly moderate- or left-leaning states, not a sustained wave of turnovers.

Democrats did not put themselves into an appreciably better position for the 2020 election. They failed to win key governorships and state houses that will help determine both the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 redistricting of House seats. Democrats still have a lot of work to do to regain the power they enjoyed in the past (e.g., 1932-1952, 1960-1966, 1974-1978).

The most troubling aspect of the mid-terms to anyone outside the legions of Trump loyalists is the impact on the Mueller investigation of the 2016 election. By firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replacing him with an apparent sycophant who has cast doubts on the entire investigation, Trump has connived to void any possibility that America will get to the bottom of Russian influence in the 2016 election and the allegations of coordination between the Trump campaign and a foreign power. This scenario is comparable to what would have happened if Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" had succeeded in stopping progress on the Watergate investigation. Winning a majority in the House gives the Democrats an opportunity to re-open the laughably incomplete House investigation into the 2016 election, but even the subpoena power of a congressional committee cannot compare with the indictment and plea-bargaining possibilities of a criminal investigation.

The net result of the 2018 mid-terms is that Trump has gained the advantage in 2020 and owns the Republican Party.
 

Grand D-Day Memorial disappoints

My wife and I took a brief trip to the Virginia mountains for a relaxing getaway and to see the fall color. Besides hiking up several peaks and visiting some historic sites, we went to the little town of Bedford, Va., about 10 miles from our lodging at Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We spent the morning touring Bedford's D-Day Memorial, which we had planned to visit on an earlier trip but ran out of time.

Although the memorial is in many ways magnificent, we came away with an empty feeling. The memorial was grand but not very informative. It was a memorial in bronze, granite and concrete rather than a museum of facts and wonderment. It consumes dozens of acres of land on a knoll just outside Bedford, a town that suffered more D-Day casualties per capita than any other American town or city.

A combination of human grief and civic boosterism, along with the determination of one D-Day survivor from Bedford, made the $25 million memorial happen. Although I admired the scope and magnificence of the memorial, I wondered whether the investment would pay off for Bedford. Most of the people in our one-hour guided tour were military veterans (like me) and their spouses. School groups come to the memorial, but what do children born in the 21st century know or care about D-Day? It's ancient history. Sadly, they won't learn a great deal from the Bedford memorial.

The memorial includes some magnificent statuary depicting soldiers battling their way ashore on June 6, 1944, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of the liberating armies. Perhaps the grimaces on the faces of the soldiers can inspire young visitors to learn more about World War II, but watching the first few minutes of the movie "Saving Private Ryan" would show them more than the statuary at Bedford does.

D-Day remains a touchstone of American military history. It is honored with every passing June, although the veterans who waded ashore that day are almost all departed. It was the largest amphibious landing in history and will probably never be exceeded because today's military tactics and strategies would make such a landing unnecessary. D-Day helped hasten the end of World War II and rid Europe of the Nazi scourge, but it directly impacted only one part of a global war. The war in Europe would continue for another year. The war in the Pacific lasted another 15 months. German losses on the Eastern Front, as any Russian will tell you, had already made the fall of the Third Reich inevitable. Russia lost 20 million soldiers and civilians in the war.

We extol the D-Day anniversary far more than we honor the Pearl Harbor bombing, the battle of Midway, the North African, Sicilian, Italian and southern France victories or VE Day or VJ Day.

Bedford has a claim of honor for its casualties on D-Day, but those casualties do not come to life in the way casualties on actual battlefields do. I have been far more moved by visiting Gettysburg, Antietam, Manassas and other battlegrounds. The Bedford memorial has some similarities to the expansive World War II Memorial on the Washington Mall, which has little of the tear-choking emotions of the simple honors of the Vietnam War Memorial.

I would not tell anyone to not go to the Bedford memorial. It's worth seeing, but it lacks the impact of, for example, the Appomattox battleground a few miles away, where 30,000 bedraggled Confederate soldiers surrendered, ending a war that took 600,000 American lives and changed America forever.

Words are the parents of bombs

My wife and I recently watched a segment of the CNN series "The Nineties" and were reminded of just how violent a decade the 1990s was. The segment spotlighted the Waco, Texas, gunfight with the Branch Davidians cult; the Unabomber ,whose mailed bombs killed several and worried thousands; the Oklahoma City bombing; and the initial attempt by Al-Quaida to topple the Twin Towers. We breathed a sigh of relief that the 1990s were two decades behind us.

Days later we read the reports of pipe bombs that had been mailed to public officials in Washington, New York and other locations. It seemed like we were back in the worrisome days of the 1990s or the aftermath of 9/11.

What was most troubling about this week's spate of attempted bombings was that the target list seems to have been taken from President Trump's speeches and tweets. Bombs were sent to Hillary Clinton, former President Obama, former CIA director John Brennan, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and liberal activist/donor George Soros. The link between all these targets is that they are Democrats and have been criticized viciously by President Trump.

To his credit, Trump issued a carefully worded statement calling for national unity and conversation, not violence. But this same president has called some of these targets "crooked," "dumb," and other ambiguous but mean-spirited adjectives. He enjoys leading chants of "Lock her up" at his rallies, calls news reporters "enemies of the people" and praises a congressman who body slammed a reporter who had the temerity to ask him a simple question about a national issue.

Trump supporters deny that his venomous criticisms had anything to do with the pipe bombs. Some even claim that the mailed packages were a Democratic plot to cast blame on Trump. But words matter. A kind word turns away wrath. An angry, hateful word promotes violence. Regardless of whether the person or persons responsible for these attempted bombings took their cues from the president's words, those words have debased our society and ruined political debate.

Throughout history, words have mattered. Thomas Jefferson's words helped launch a new republic. Adolf Hitler's words led to World War II and 20 million deaths. John Kennedy's words challenged Americans to put men on the moon. Franklin Roosevelt's words helped reassure Americans despondent because of the Great Depression. Abraham Lincoln's words redefined the Union's war goals and defined the principles of American democracy.

Because words matter, they should be chosen carefully.

What has happened is not amusing

One of the transformative books I've read and frequently recommended to others is Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death." It is an indictment of television programming and the American public's complicit debasing of American culture and politics through mass media.

Writing in the early 1980s, Postman was disturbed with what was passing as entertainment on the pervasive, ubiquitous television set, which was replacing cogent conversation, reading, and personal relationships. Postman warned of this in an age before cable services offered hundreds of "entertainment" options that had Americans hypnotized by such choices as "Survivor," "The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette," "Naked and Afraid," "The Apprentice," and so forth.

I was wondering what Postman might think of the 2016 presidential election and television's impact on the most important office in the nation. The selection of a television "reality show" star to run this nation of 300 million is in line with Postman's apocalyptic view of the future for an American populace entranced by the ridiculousness of watching people savagely compete for a job, a romantic date, a cash prize, or a chance to survive. When more Americans know the names of the "Friends" stars than know the names of their senators, governors and congressmen, society has gone wrong.

I recently found that my concern about Postman's view of 21st century American politics has already been noted by Postman's son. A 2017 article in The Guardian reveals that Postman's son had the same concerns I did about television culture's influence in the 2016 election.

It didn't have to be this way. A utopian novel of the 19th century, "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy, predicted a much more favorable (and even less realistic?) view of the future. In Bellamy's 19th century view of the future, automation would give Americans nearly unlimited leisure time, which the public would use to read, study, learn and uplift themselves and their communities. Although Bellamy could not predict the advent of cable television or the internet, he did foresee a means of connecting American homes to quality programming via a kind of audio tube that would pipe concerts and great lectures into every home.

That's a far cry from what free enterprise, democratic government and public choices actually gave us. I read "Looking Backward" as background for an editorial writer's conference in the early 1980s. I read "Amusing Ourselves to Death" at the suggestion of a newspaper contact a few years later. Their views of the future could not have been more different. We are living with a world that is amusing itself to death.

Ten years after being laid off

Ten years ago this week, my three-decade career as a newspaper editor came to an abrupt halt. My boss, the publisher, came into my office and told me he had to "let you go." My layoff was one of dozens at that newspaper and one of many thousands nationwide as newspapers across the country, shaken by steep drops in advertising revenue and falling circulation, shed workers en masse.

My immediate reaction was, "I'll lose my house," which we had moved into just five years before. I had been determined to pay off the 15-year mortgage in 12 years so that I could plan to retire debt-free. That now seemed impossible.

My second thought was, "I will not be bitter." It was a financial decision — one that could have been handled differently but it was out of my control. Getting angry or holding a grudge would only hurt me, not those who were casting me adrift after 29 years at the paper.

My immediate concern was surviving until I could find another job. It was obvious that I would need to change careers or move to another city — or both. My wife and I quickly decided that it made no sense for both of us to seek new jobs in an unfamiliar city. She had a good job that she enjoyed with a company that treated her well. It would be unfair to make her change jobs because I was laid off. I searched for jobs related to journalism — teaching, public relations, writing/editing services — as well as jobs unrelated to the work I had done before. I considered commuting to jobs in Raleigh and Clayton. I was flexible in my goals. I searched diligently for work while collecting a few months' severance pay followed by unemployment insurance. But finding a new job when you're 59 years old is nearly impossible. Age discrimination in hiring is illegal, but try to prove you were discriminated against. I was told that I had a good claim that my layoff resulted from age discrimination (I was replaced by a younger man), but I was also advised to be prepared for devoting my life to the discrimination lawsuit for at least 10 years. 

No thanks. I kept job hunting. I remained unemployed for a year and became deeply depressed at times and frustrated. I finally landed a job managing a nonprofit's Wilson office, at about half my newspaper salary.

In the past 10 years, I have settled into a new career, changed jobs to manage a second nonprofit and quit thinking about ideas for news stories, how to cover public issues and how to redesign newspapers' business strategy to make newspapers profitable again. I am still a voracious reader of news and follower of political issues. I'm only a spectator now, and that is fine. I rarely see or think about the friends I knew in newspapers across the state. I've closed that door behind me. A year ago, I retired, began collecting Social Security and signed up for Medicare.

I read; I write a little; I work at maintaining our house, which we didn't lose after all (the state's unemployment insurance provided just enough to pay the mortgage, and my wife's salary covered our other expenses). I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get to close out my newspaper career on my own terms, but nothing in life is guaranteed. I'm happy where I am now, and I am grateful every day for the way things have turned out. 

The truth is, I don't know, and neither do you

Like nearly every single person in America, I do not know whether Christine Blasey Ford is telling the truth about an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I do not know whether Kavanaugh is telling the truth when he categorically denies the accusations. Many people say they are certain, one way or the other, but their firm beliefs are only opinions. They do not know whether their belief is factually accurate.

That said, I am bothered by the accusations against Kavanaugh. They are either deeply disturbing peeks at some well-hidden character flaws or desperate attempts at character assassination. I don't know which is the correct judgment.

I am bothered by the lateness of the allegations, and the handling of Blasey Ford's accusation by Sen. Diane Feinstein. The timing, if not the accusations themselves, seems to be aimed at postponing Senate confirmation of Kavanaugh. The GOP, on the other hand, has been too eager to push the confirmation through before mid-term elections, which might make a Senatae confirmation more difficult. After the Senate Judiciary Committee held a week of hearings on the Kavanaugh nomination, the accusations of a 35-year-old sexual assault were tossed into the nomination process.

A great many women have come forward to say they believe Blasey Ford, but their confidence is based on their belief that women are frequently abused by powerful men. They do not have first-hand knowledge of the alleged incident at a teenagers' house party. Their cry of "Believe the Women" has been invoked as an axiom for sexual assault cases, and in the "Me Too" era of revelations of sexual misconduct that can even turn "America's Dad," Bill Cosby, into a perverted criminal, that mantra makes some sense. However, that mantra should be used carefully. Thirty years ago, advocates were urging America to "Believe the Children," who allegedly had been sexually abused in several day-care scandals across the country. The children offered details and seemed certain in their testimony. Day Care owners were convicted by juries who "believed the children," although the children had also testified to trips to outer space, savage murders of children at the day cares and "secret rooms" where abuse took place — none of which was true.

Politically speaking, ignoring for the moment the accusations of misconduct, I worry about confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Although he was typically coy in responding to questions about judicial issues, Kavanaugh seems to be a proponent of nearly unlimited executive power. He doesn't seem bothered by assertions of presidential powers that are not mentioned in the Constitution and which seem to usurp Congress' legislative powers. If I were a senator, I would probably lean toward denying Kavanaugh's confirmation, not based on his personal conduct but on his judicial philosophy.

This week's upheaval in the Senate Judiciary Committee is a symptom of a wrecked confirmation process for federal judges. The Founding Fathers tried to insulate the judiciary process from politics, but the courts have grown more and more political over the past 30 years, and so has the confirmation process. We assume, even before a the nomination process begins, that the confirmation vote will be decided along party lines. That is not what the Founding Fathers intended, nor has it always been this way.

Many will point to the divisive 1991 hearings on nominee Clarence Thomas as a turning point in politicization of the judiciary, but I think the genesis of this new era was the 1987 Robert Bork hearings. Before the confirmation hearings began, Sen. Ted Kennedy proclaimed, "Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of Americans.”

Ted Kennedy was a smart, experienced senator. He knew very well that putting Bork on the Supreme Court would not — could not — bring about the nightmares he claimed. He also knew that Bork could be rejected if a grassroots hysteria succeeded in turning Bork into a pariah. Democrats organized opposition to Bork and succeeded in denying him a seat on the highest court. A new word was coined. He was "borked."

Since that time, most Supreme Court nominations have been political contests similar to elections. The Republican Party has even made the Supreme Court a key issue in presidential races and has allowed the refusal of the Senate GOP leadership to even acknowledge a legitimate nomination to the court by a Democratic president.

The courts, intended to be a sort of final arbiter of conflicts between the executive and legislative branches, has become too much a child of political confrontation. The Senate's duty is to "advise and consent" on judicial nominations, not connive for political advantage.

A hurricane prepared for; a flood that can't be avoided

A week after we completed our hurricane prep, the sky is blue, the yard is raked and the fallen limbs are picked up. City sanitation crews have collected our debris and appear to be back on a normal schedule.

Getting the deck furniture, the bird feeders, the wind chimes, the whirligigs and all the rest put away or lashed down was easier this time, the first hurricane since we both were retired. Two can do more than one. I made a quick (but crowded) run to the supermarket for non-perishable food, and we ate well last week as we finished off food from the freezer. We froze water bottles, repurposed juice jars, and food storage bags filled with water. They were never needed.

In 1996 (Fran) and 1999 (Floyd), we had lost hundreds of dollars worth of food when we were without power for more than a week each time. From Fran's devastation and the difficulty of cooking our own food and taking showers, we decided to switch to a natural gas hot water heater and a gas stove. Floyd was more tolerable three years later because we could cook and take showers, even though we had to do it all by battery-powered lights.

Nothing frustrated us more during those '90s hurricanes than being unable to read once the sun went down. A friend offered us a battery-powered lantern that gave off enough light for two people to sit close together and read from the same light source. This year, we invested in book lights — LED lights powered by a watch battery that clip onto a book. I was looking forward to using the book lights, but we never had a need.

The electricity NEVER FAILED. We waited, we worried, we fretted, but the worst never happened. We never lost power, no trees fell on our home. We could see flooded streets a block or more away, but floodwaters never reached our property. We feel incredibly blessed to get through this first major storm this year with so little damage or inconvenience.

Over the weekend, we unhitched the deck furniture and put the pieces in their places; we rehung the bird feeders, and we removed the collection of flashlights and battery-powered lanterns from the kitchen counter.

We're back to normal, but we're mindful of the thousands of others, not so far away, who are dealing with felled trees, loss of power, and flooded homes. We hope and pray that they will recover soon and that government agencies, nonprofits and individual donors will be sufficient to allow them to recover and be happy again.

Each time a hurricane strikes, some will warn that the weather is getting worse because of climate change resulting from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels. I don't know enough about it to blame fossil fuels for these hurricanes, but I can confidently see that man-made activities are causing increased flooding. Just look at the acres and acres of paved blacktop that we have added to our world in the past decade. While older shopping centers sit empty, newer, bigger shopping centers with even more blacktop parking areas are built.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust, the Bible says, but all of the rain that falls has to go somewhere, and all of the rain that falls on blacktop parking areas and on multi-lane highways runs off the blacktop, ultimately reaching small streams that feed mighty rivers. Waterways that could handle the runoff 20 years ago cannot handle the vastly increased runoff of today. The stream beds and creek banks that used to channel the water away can't handle the increased volume.

You don't need a degree in environmental science to see this happening, and to see that we need to find new strategies for reducing runoff before it ends up in somebody's home.

 

If you know about a hurricane, thank the news media

My wife and I have been closely monitoring Hurricane Florence the past several days. We have prepared ourselves and our home as best we could for the winds and rain that are forecast. I've used the weather app on my phone, the Weather Channel and a Raleigh TV station to keep informed about the storm.

During this time, I have heard two people tell me how "newspapers" or "the media" have exaggerated the dangers of the storm. They were both hard-core conservatives who blame "the mainstream media" for most everything they don't like and suspect government officials are deceitful. 

I wasn't going to argue with either of them, but it made me wonder what they thought they would do if there were no "mainstream media" to hire meteorologists, send reporters to impact areas, and provide maps and satellite photos showing where the storm is expected to go and when it is expected to arrive at various locations. Who would warn them of the approach of a dangerous storm so that they could prepare for threatening conditions, such as 100 mph winds or punishing rainfall that causes widespread flooding?

Demagogic politicians create a straw man and whipping boy of the news media, blaming them for misinformation, bias, conspiracy and even, yes, being an "enemy of the people." These critics had better hope they don't succeed in destroying the news media that use their revenue (mostly from advertising) to inform the public about things they need to know. Hurricanes are just one example of things the public needs to know.

Some news media-hating people say they'd still know all about hurricanes, tornadoes, elections, governmental decisions (from the courthouse to Congress), court decisions, crimes, new products and treatments for illnesses, and the availability of inoculations or low-cost medical care. But I doubt they've really looked into that.

News organizations are created to collect information such as this and distribute it to the public. A lot of work goes into just finding that information. Yes, there are governmental websites and some independent websites that post information about some government activities, but it takes a lot of work, especially for the untrained and unfamiliar, to find that information, understand it and pass it along.

I used to tell journalism students that one responsibility of news reporters is to be at the meetings, press conferences and events that voters, most of whom have full-time jobs, do not have the time to follow every meeting, conference or event. Reporters, who work full-time at collecting news, go where subscribers/voters don't have the time or inclination to go. Informing the public is the key responsibility of any news organization. It is what motivates newspaper people.

You don't like the "mainstream media"? OK. Unplug the TV, ignore the news websites on your computer or phone, don't heed the warnings, originated by government officials and passed along by the news media, to evacuate or prepare for the next storm on the horizon. See how that works out.

Anonymity is rare in newspaper columns

The New York Times last week published an op-ed criticizing the Trump administration. Nothing new there. Two factors set this one apart: It was published anonymously by the New York Times, and (2) the author claims to be a member of the Trump administration and a member of a secret subset of administration employees who are doing what they can to counter Trump's worst decisions.

The anonymous author claims to be doing right by the country by resisting Trump's bad behavior, but if anonymous thought the op-ed would change Trump, anonymous was wrong. If anything, the op-ed bolstered Trump's paranoid illusions about a "deep state" of career federal employees who "really" run foreign and domestic policy. Trump is well-known for punishing disloyalty in any form and for lashing out at even the slightest criticism.

As a former newspaper editor who spent years battling with people who wanted to write letters to the editor or op-ed columns anonymously, I am having a hard time getting over the fact that the sainted New York Times allowed someone to use its opinion pages without identifying himself or herself. I've read that an anonymous column is not unprecedented, but it surely is among the rarest of exceptions.

On a national scale, I can think of only one one exception to the generally accepted rule that opinion columns should be signed and usually include a brief bio of the author. The exception I recall came in March 1975, when a writer using the pseudonym of "Miles Ignotus" suggested in a Harper's article that the problem of the rising cost of oil and the growing power of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, could be solved by a quick, precise military strike on the Saudi Arabian oil fields. Miles suggested that Americans could produce oil at a cost of five cents a barrel (as best I remember), sell it at $5 a barrel, and give away the excess profit to the Saudis and others to placate Arab interests. Everybody would be happy except the Saudis!

Fortunately, no one followed Miles' advice, and it was another 28 years before the United States decided to invade another oil-producing Arab country, producing a hopeless war, thousands of deaths, a debacle aptly described in the book by Tom Ricks titled "Fiasco."

During my career as an editor, I encountered many people who wanted to run anonymous letters or columns, but my fading memory can recall just two extraordinary incidents in which I relented and ran an anonymous letter. One was written by a domestic violence victim who was commenting on the local effort to stem domestic abuse. The writer had been recently divorced from her abusive husband and was living somewhere that he was unaware of. To publish her name and address would have endangered her life, but what she had to say was worth reading. The second incident involved a letter from a college faculty member who was critical of the college administration (I don't remember the issue involved). I agreed to run the letter anonymously because to run the writer's name would have resulted in an immediate dismissal.

Would I have run Anonymous' op-ed about Trump if I were in the opinion editor's cubicle last week? I think not, but it's hard to say what one might decide in a theoretical case. I would have feared the column would have infuriated Trump and made him more paranoid, more unpredictable and more angry.

I'm confident that the New York Times knows the identity of Anonymous, just as nearly every American newspaper expects a verifiable name on every letter to the editor. I knew the identity of the writers of the two letters I can remember from a 33-year career that I agreed to publish anonymously. With all others, I would explain that the letters column was a public forum, and participants in that forum should be willing to stand behind their opinions, as they would in a public meeting. If you are ashamed of your opinion, don't send it to the newspaper editor.

 

Commanders in Chief without military experience

The Constitution sets relatively few requirements for holding the office of president of the United States: One must be a "natural born citizen" of the United States and must be 35 years old or older and must have resided in the United States for 14 years.

Few jobs in America have such a short list of job requirements, yet the country has survived for these 229 years since the adoption of the Constitution with presidents meeting only minimal job requirements. A college education is not required. Many of our most admired presidents — Lincoln, Washington, Truman, for example — would have been disqualified by such a requirement. No job experience is required, and the way we choose a president has little application to the overwhelming difficulty of managing a federal workforce in the millions, dealing with foreign countries, both friendly and adversarial, dealing with Congress, and serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. That's far different from traveling around the country asking people to vote for him/her.

A week of mourning for Sen. John McCain has brought to mind that last responsibility of the president. If military experience counted, McCain might have reached his dream of being elected president. He was the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals and had served with distinction as a Navy aviator.

For much of American history, service in the armed forces was a common trait among presidents. Washington, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Harrison, U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt and others served in combat. In my own lifetime, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush — every president until Clinton's election in 1992 — served in the military either in combat or stateside. Voters have not elected a military veteran, with the exception of George W. Bush, who only served in the Reserves and was never deployed, since the first President Bush lost the 1992 election to Clinton.

Although it's not a requirement for office, it's fair to ask what presidents without military experience are missing in their resumes. Military service teaches discipline, motivation, management, service, sacrifice and patriotism. It also exposes Americans to people with different backgrounds, advantages or disadvantages. In the years of a military draft, well-bred, well-connected college graduates rubbed shoulders with high school dropouts, and they learned to depend on these soldiers or sailors who were very different from themselves.

That experience would certainly enlighten the resident of the White House faced with a decision on military intervention or troop deployment. Presidents such as Washington, Jackson, Grant and others, who had experienced war up close and had been responsible for orders that resulted in deaths of brave, obedient soldiers, certainly would recognize the gravity of their actions in a way that someone without military experience would not.

In today's America, with only a small percentage of Americans voluntarily choosing a military career, it is difficult to find presidential aspirants with a military background. Veterans dominated the White House and congressional leadership from 1945 to the end of the century, but veterans are much rarer now in the halls of power.

Military experience does not inoculate presidents from bad decisions. George W. Bush foolishly ordered U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 2003 in search of non-existent "weapons of mass destruction." But President Kennedy, still scarred by injuries suffered when a Japanese ship sank his PT boat, rejected the advice of his generals and chose a successful blockade of Cuba in 1962 instead of an invasion to destroy Russian missiles there, a strategy that would result in high casualties and could escalate into nuclear war. Unlike the younger Bush, Kennedy had experienced combat and seen good men die all around him.

This solitary man is an introvert

"I'll be what I am, a solitary man."
                         — Neil Diamond

Since I took a Myers-Briggs personality test about 20-25 years ago, I have often thought myself fortunate to be judged an INTJ — Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging. The person who administered the tests to the department managers where I worked said an INTJ like me would be happiest as a researcher in a think-tank or academic setting. I would love sitting in a library carrel every day doing research, learning something new. And I thought, "Yeah! You nailed it!"

Other personality types need human interaction. Some extroverts can't start their day without checking in first with their co-workers. Human contact is essential for them. Not so much for me.

After a traumatic layoff 10 years ago, I worked at two jobs at which I was the only employee in the office. It was not exactly the library carrel I subconsciously yearned for, but it was a job where I could work at my own pace, concentrate on tasks without fear of interruption, and enjoy the solitude.

Retirement a year ago, as you might imagine, continued my solitary ways. With my wife still working, the only "person" I had to talk to was our dog. It has been a retirement that has suited my personality and my working style. And the dog seems to have enjoyed our conversations and long walks.

It's not that I purposely avoided human contact, either in my career or in retirement. I have sought out old friends and former co-workers for conversations. While conversation is not a "need" for me as it is for other personality types, I do enjoy seeing people, catching up and sharing thoughts.

In another week, my wife will retire, and we will test the plans we have dreamed of for years. We will have time — to read, to write, to revive old hobbies, to nourish friendships and family relationships, to develop new skills, to reconnect with people from the past, to travel, to walk together and practice good exercise and good diet, to see our children and grandchildren more.

This new reality will give us the opportunity we have only rarely had — to be together without other people for extended periods of time. In the past few years, our longest uninterrupted times together have come on long drives. While neither of us is extroverted or dependent upon contact with other people, we do cherish our time together, especially now as we face what are, no doubt, our final years together. 

This opportunity reminds me of the wisdom from Ecclesiastes Chapter 4, which was read at our younger daughter's wedding:

"Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?" 

I eagerly anticipate the warmth of our final years together. 

Those who litter shirk responsibility

I was walking in our neighborhood when I came across an eyesore on the tree-shaded street flanked by well-maintained single-family homes. It was a fast-food bag, still partly filled with food or paper or foam wrappings. The bag was obviously tossed out a car window and had been run over by some unsuspecting driver. The nearest fast-food restaurant is about a mile away, but the food may have traveled farther.

It's an eyesore I see more and more these days.

I was walking my dog, as I do nearly every day. I understand that it's my responsibility to clean up after him, so I keep a couple of plastic bags in my pocket to handle such emergencies. 

The fast-food bag makes a bigger mess than my dog does. Its contents get ripped open by passing cars, and small animals check the contents. Wind or rain might move the bag up or down the street. I usually think about picking up the bag and finding a trash can for it — doing what the offending litterer should have done, but I am leery of what might be in the bag. A person lazy or thoughtless enough to toss a food onto a city street might also be sick enough to put a rattlesnake or poison in the bag.

I have to assume that the litterer does not feel guilty about his offense. Someone will clean it up, he thinks, as he callously speeds away. The street is a public entity, so the city will clean it up, he thinks. The city might, but not before other motorists, walkers, nearby homeowners and the weather take their turns at the bag.

The litterer must think, "It's not my responsibility," but of course it is. Roadside litter is a multi-million-dollar problem for state and local governments, all because way too many people think they should be able to use public thoroughfares as their personal trash dumps. Tossing litter onto the street or roadside is against the law, but prosecution is rare.

This problem gets worse. Before I retired, at least once a week in the parking lot of the office building where I work, there would be a disgusting sight of a disposable diaper that had been tossed out of the car after a diaper change. People parking in the lot had to dodge these reeking land mines as they exited their cars and headed to the building. Those who failed to be extra-careful could end up ruining their shoes or sandals, thanks to some irresponsible mother or care-giver who couldn't be bothered to dispose of a disposable diaper in a responsible manner. Knowing a diaper change would likely be necessary, couldn't they put a trash bag in the car to take care of the problem responsibly?

Society depends on people to be responsible for their actions. Criminal courts punish those who fail to be responsible in the most egregious ways, but the daily skirting of responsibility for little things also threatens society.

Mob triumphs over silent statue

The mob rules. Long live the mob.

Last night, 200 or more people gathered around the "Silent Sam" statue in Chapel Hill and succeeded in toppling and destroying the statue memorializing the University of North Carolina students who served and died in the Civil War.

For several years, the statue had been a rallying point for protesters who claimed the statue was not a memorial to former students who died in America's most tragic war, disregarding the inscription on the statue's pedestal and the clear intent of the United Daughters of the Confederacy who funded the memorial. Protesters asserted that the statue was intended to perpetuate white supremacy, although white supremacy was not at issue in the Civil War. White supremacy was part of the culture of 19th century America and Europe. Although a speaker at the monument's dedication added inappropriate racist comments, his words did not change the reason for the memorial.

I addressed the historical background of the statue in a blog post from a year ago.

What happened last night on a once-peaceful quadrangle of the historic UNC campus had been brewing for at least a year. A year ago, another, smaller mob attacked a Confederate memorial in Durham. While law enforcement officers watched disinterestedly, vandals climbed the statue of an anonymous soldier, attached ropes and pulled it to the ground. Although numerous witnesses, including the do-nothing law officers, and video of the event would have made prosecution an open-and-shut case, Durham prosecutors, through malfeasance or incompetence, failed to get even one conviction. That non-prosecution has provided a green light for vandals, socialists and anarchists.

Monday night's mob was well-equipped with banners that would shield their vandalism from view and with smoke bombs to obscure illegal acts. This was a well-planned operation in clear violation of numerous laws, including destruction of public property. Police mostly watched from a distance.

Silent Sam stood for a century without doing harm to anyone (see Andrew Young's comments from my Aug. 23, 2017, post), but protesters assigned to this inanimate object the burdens of centuries of immorality and wrongdoing. Toppling this statue will not put an end to injustice or unfairness in society. It will jeopardize the rule of law.

What traditional artifact will be next? Chapel Hill's cemetery contains the graves of slave owners, white supremacists and unenlightened Euro-Americans. Their gravestones will be easier to knock down than Silent Sam's statue. The town of Carrboro is named for Julian Carr, who made the offensive racist remarks at the statue's dedication. Should all town signs be removed? Must the town's name be changed?

Who's next? Most American presidents prior to the Civil War owned slaves. Most who didn't own slaves did not consider African Americans their equals. Must all those public officials be disparaged and stricken because 21st century morality differs from the morality as they understood it?

Long before Silent Sam became a flashpoint for civil rights and racial equality, his bronze visage was a remembrance of UNC students who died in the Civil War. His statue was erected by descendants still mourning the deaths of their loved ones and the economic devastation of their entire region. If that memorial is to be removed or hidden, the decision to take that action should be made in an open, rational and democratic process.

The door to mob rule, once opened, is not easily closed.

Un-Real Reality Show at White House

One thing you can say about the Trump administration: It's never dull.

The latest episode of this "reality TV" series involves a "tell-all" (or tell more-than-all) book by Omarosa Manigault Newman. In the book and in a series of announcements and interviews hyping her book, Newman claims President Trump said all sorts of sordid things, including, allegedly, using the N-word.

Don't just take her word for it. She has tapes, and she's played some for the public's consumption (but not — so far — the president using the N-word in conversations). Some debate has arisen in the media over whether Newman has any credibility, despite the tapes supporting some of her claims. An interview early in her book-hyping blitz revealed a contradiction in her account of whether she had heard a damning tape of the president or had only heard of it. This thing isn't over, but news media (including the "mainstream media" Trump hates so much) are looking on the former White House aide with more than the usual skepticism.

What is particularly alarming to the news media gatekeepers is Newman's apparent total disregard for personal honesty and integrity and even for national security. One of her tapes was allegedly made in the White House Situation Room, a tightly controlled and closely monitored secure room that requires a high security clearance for entry. Sneaking a recording device into the room is a breach of national security and may even be a criminal act. Newman doesn't seem to care about national security and has offered no regrets over her extraordinary action.

Trump has reacted in his usual way, attacking his former trusted aide, calling her names and threatening legal action against her. But this is a crisis of his own making. Newman got the job, it seems, because she had appeared on Trump's television show, "The Apprentice," and she lavished praise on him as she sought a White House job following his election. The president was shocked that she would "go rogue" and turn out to be a threat to national security and (more important to Trump) his presidency. After all, the president said, "she said great things about me."

You would think that Trump, if he were the astute, brilliant businessman he claims to be, would know that hiring employees on the basis of how well they lick your boots is not a sound policy.

My experience as a manager who hires employees proved to me that hiring is the hardest part of any management job. A good hire can make your life easier. A bad hire can be a lingering nightmare. It's the most important thing a manager does and the most difficult.

As president, Trump has a pretty crummy record in hiring staff. He has put his daughter and son-in-law on the payroll as advisers. His son runs the family business. In most corporations, this would be forbidden nepotism. The list of Cabinet secretaries and other high officials who have had to resign is long. Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator is just the latest embarrassment of ethical lapses and luxury spending that included HHS secretary Tom Price. The departures began with Michael Flynn, caught lying about contacts with Russians. That kind of turnover, including several people Trump has fired, would raise red flags in any business.

"Ordinary Grace" is an extraordinary novel

Usually, I'm not one to re-read books. I can count the number of novels I've re-read and barely get to double digits. There are exceptions, of course. I read Hemingway's "A Movable Feast" at least three times and "Catch 22," "Cold Mountain" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" (and others) twice. But it's not my habit.

I've just finished a re-read of "Ordinary Grace" by William Kent Krueger. I can't remember how I stumbled across this novel, but I'm so glad that I did. When I first read it, I was enthralled at how the author captured the world of a young boy in 1961. This narrator deals with issues no 13-year-old should have to contend with: marital conflict, bullies, deceit, sexuality, senseless deaths, love, arrogance, faith, sibling relationships and more. You could say this is a "coming of age" novel, but it's more than that. Young Frank is in many ways as mature and beguiling as Scout in "Mockingbird," but the plot is very different.

The bottom line in this narrative is the prevalence of spiritual grace — the concept of divine love embodied in undeserved reward. Frank's father is a minister, a tortured man whose wife is drifting away from him, whose life is darkened by wartime memories and guilt but who finds solace in religion and serves three small churches at once.

I loved the title of this novel because it shows that grace, the divine expression of God's love, can be found in ordinary things, and in extraordinary things. It is grace that helps the Drum family and other characters recover from deep emotional wounds and from tragedies that unexpectedly befall them. Although "Ordinary Grace" certainly carries a Christian message, it is not a fundamentalist or sin-and-damnation message. Krueger inserts his religious messages in the uncertainties of life and the pain of living in an imperfect world filled with free will and wrong decisions.

It was not until my second reading of this book that I noticed the term "ordinary grace" used near the end of the book to describe the "miracle" of Frank's younger brother, Jake, offering a public prayer without stuttering — a feat he had never been able to accomplish before. His clearly enunciated prayer was just an "ordinary grace" before a meal for scores of people, but it was also a manifestation of divine grace, a miracle cure for his speech defect.

Krueger offers no glimpses of heaven, no voice of God on some dusty road, no suddenly transformed lives. He does provide numerous examples of ordinary grace in the changes in relationships and lives and in the triumph of love over hatred and spite. More than 30 years ago, I took a college course titled "Theology in Modern Literature." The texts included Flannery O'Connor short stories and novels by Albert Camus and others. "Ordinary Grace" would be an excellent addition should this class ever be offered again.

This is an affirming book, affirming the importance of faith and love and affirming the subtle, unexpected grace of God.

One person brings more effective change than thousands of protesters

Last night, I watched a documentary on the life of George C. Marshall, a man many consider the most important American of the 20th century. Without Marshall, the Allies might not have defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Without Marshall, Europe might not have fully recovered from the destruction and devastation of World War II, even now. Marshall, who was Army chief of staff, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, and key advisor to presidents Roosevelt and Truman, was responsible for success in war and in peace as his Marshall Plan laid the foresighted plans for Europe's recovery from war and its nurturing of democratic institutions and attitudes.

Even so, few Americans under the age of 60 know much about Marshall, if they know the name at all, and that's a shame. Marshall embodied the high principles and self-sacrifice of "public servants." Reared on the principles of democracy, civic involvement and personal honor in 19th century Virginia and tempered by his education at Virginia Military Institute, Marshall offered, a clear, knowledgeable, sincere voice to political debate without ever following the path of political partisanship.

Today, news accounts tell the story of clashing street demonstrations in California and Oregon, where belligerent and (sometimes) armed advocates fought each other on the streets as protests degenerated into chaotic clashes. These are just the sorts of things that Marshall opposed throughout his career. He argued for increases in defense spending to oppose threats from Germany, Italy and Japan. He argued for American generosity to salvage the collapsed governments and wretched lives of Europe. Isolationists vehemently opposed him, but his persuasive logic won the votes in Congress to pass his strategic plans.

Massive marches and demonstrations have only rarely succeeded in bringing about significant political change. Civil rights demonstrations of the 1950s and 1960s ultimately prevailed, but only after John F. Kennedy's assassination and Lyndon Johnson consummate political skills pushed through the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1968 Voting Rights Act and other landmark legislation.

Massive demonstrations during the Vietnam War did not persuade Congress to stop funding the war or force a unilateral withdrawal. President Nixon's decision to switch to an all-volunteer army in 1973 sucked the life out of anti-war and anti-draft movements.

In a democracy, the surest way of effecting change comes at the ballot box, and this is how it should be. Changing Congress and changing the occupant of the White House are the means to political change in this country. Woe to us if we allow our political future to be determined by mobs in the street.

Looking back on Vietnam War draft

"Random Destiny" by Wesley Abney provides a compact history of one of the most tumultuous times in U.S. history, the era of the Vietnam War draft policy and protests, 1964-73. Those of us who lived through those years of war, defiance, domestic violence and uncertainty will never forget them, but a younger audience might find Abney's book informative and, at times, intriguing.

Abney breaks down the history of U.S. military drafts since World War I, focusing on the years of the draft to supply troops for the Vietnam War in the final years of Lyndon Johnson's presidency and Richard Nixon's first term.

As anyone who was affected by military draft policy will tell you, the regulations and laws were complicated and sometimes irrational. Abney provides explanations of the draft laws and deferments with individual chapters on medical, moral and mental deferments; conscientious objectors; deferred occupations; college deferments; sole surviving son and other family deferments.

He also has chapters on the various military services that some potential draftees turned to in order to avoid the much greater risk of ground combat in Vietnam and on the fundamental dissent and disobedience of some draftees who refused to participate in the Selective Service system, which could lead to criminal charges.

He concludes the book with the amnesties for draft resisters and AWOL soldiers offered by President Ford and expanded by President Carter after the draft ended in 1973 and America began fielding an all-volunteer army.

The Dec. 1, 1969, draft lottery is the nexus of this review of U.S. military draft policy. Implemented to reduce uncertainty about the draft and opposition to the draft, the lottery affected all males of draft age, a span of several years. By night's end, 366 numbers had been drawn, and men's futures were determined by where their birth date fell in the numbers. The certainty that those with numbers below 100 would almost certainly be drafted and those with numbers above 300 almost certainly would not changed the lives of millions.

The stories of those lives, collected over a period of years on a website that invited Vietnam-era men to share their experiences with the draft and the war, are the heart of this book. The review of the various draft laws, deferments and exceptions are thorough but can be rather dry. The personal narratives are poignant and powerful.

Abney has organized these fervent narratives to follow each chapter on the laws and regulations that sparked these personal accounts. The vast majority of stories are about the many ways young men of the late 1960s through 1973 sought to avoid the draft. Those with low draft numbers were left in limbo, unable to complete their college degrees or to get long-term employment. Some were married (not a deferment — but an excused absence early in the war), and some had dependent children (a deferment that ended in 1967). The impact of draft deferments is cited in the rise in marriage rates when marital status could get you a deferment and a rise in the birth rate when babies could get a man out of the draft.

After setting up a website to collect draft lottery stories in 2007. The website collected 840 narratives by 2017. One-hundred-sixty of these stories are included in the book, and all of the collected stories are still available on the website, www.vietnamwardraftlottery.com.

These stories show the diversity of experiences and personal opinions about the war and the draft. Some of the young men were adamantly opposed to the Vietnam War or to war in general. Others went willingly to their "random destiny," a fate they saw as their duty. Most fell somewhere in between the few who would resort to deceit or violence to avoid the draft and those who were already in military service or who were willing to comply with the government's induction orders.

I found the stories of those who entered the military service (most of them electing to enlist in a "safer" branch of service) especially interesting. Many found their military experience positive and constructive. It changed their lives. They are proud of their service in uniform. Those who returned from Vietnam combat were deeply angered by the reception they received coming home. Some protesters shouted insults ("baby killer!") and threw rocks or pig's blood at the returning soldiers. Some of the most earnest protesters of the war disapproved of such behavior.

"I would not have volunteered to serve, but having been drafted, I am proud of being a veteran," one contributor wrote. Another wrote, "I didn't want to go, but it sure changed my life. It was the best thing that ever happened to me." Don wrote, "My Navy service was one of the highlights of my life. Without the draft, I would not have done it." John, who served in the National Guard, wrote, "In retrospect, the experience made me a better person and a better student."

"Random Destiny" would make a great textbook for a college-level course on the Vietnam War's impact on the home front. The book is thoroughly footnoted and has an extensive bibliography. Still, the personal narratives are the most compelling aspect of the book. Today's generation of college students, 45 years removed from the war and the draft, could learn a lot from such a course.


Hal Tarleton