All U.S. officers know government papers must be preserved

 The uproar over an FBI raid on ex-president Donald Trump's home and club in Florida has riled the loyal Trump fans, who sound apoplectic in their in their defense of Trump's removal of documents from the White House in violation of various federal laws. Presidential paperwork is the property of the United States government, not of any current or former occupant of the Oval Office. 

    As a former U.S. Coast Guard officer, I was made painfully aware of the importance of keeping confidential documents secured behind lock and key. The Officer Candidate School that I attended made sure that all of my classmates and I knew better than to leave a classified file on your desktop, or in your car or in your home. Confidential documents must be kept secure at all times.

    Failure to follow security  protocol could result in taking a seat at "the long, green table, as one colorful OCS instructor would remind every class. That table is a courts martial before a group of senior editors who would enforce the rules and the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Most offices had a designated safe for the keeping of confidential records. 

    According to news reports and judicial documents, Trump took dozens of boxes of government paperwork from the White House and dropped them in various places in Trump's Mare Lago resort. Many of the documents The U.S. Archives asked for were classified or secret documents, which should have been taken directly to the Archives, which every president since Nixon has done obediently in accordance with the law. But Trump has again shown that he sees himself as more of a king than a president, as someone who is above the law. The Archives quietly reminded Trump and his staff that he was required to turn in any documents he had from his presidency. When he didn't respond to these reminders, the Justice Department followed up with a subpoena for the absconded records. 

    Although Trump and his mouthpieces tried to cast the FBI raid to retrieve the property as a Gestapo-style invasion of privacy. But the raid was approved, per ordinary practice, with a summary paperwork to justify taking the records that belonged to the government. A federal judge approved the search warrant, following the Fourth Amendment, which also applies to Trump, whether as president or as private citizen.

    Every U.S. officer, military or civilian, is bound by these laws, and, whether he likes it or not, so is Trump.

 

Journalists must publish the truth

 

I have followed and read James Fallows’ work as a reporter and a critic since at least the Carter administration. He has written for The Atlantic magazine for most of that period, but he has also served as a foreign correspondent, trying to understand China, and as a researcher looking for commonalities and conflicts among Americans from different regions and with different life experiences

In recent years, he has offered his perspectives at his own online subscription service, “Breaking the News.” He has recently written about the problems in America’s deeply divided electorate and elected officials. Politics has long been heated, but it has recently dissolved into insults, threats and violence. Fallows offered a number of reforms in government and at the individual level to calm the political storm and preserve America’s democracy.

America has become less democratic as restrictions on voting, including reducing the numbers and accessibility of polling stations, and gerrymandered election districts. The no-compromise, hate the other side attitude of many politicians and the willingness to dissemble and lie about issues makes already volatile political campaigns a witches’ brew that threatens the survival of American democracy.

I was surprised but shouldn’t have been that Fallows includes the news media among those institutions that need reform in order to salvage democracy.

His complaint is not about “fake news” or the demise of local newspapers. Fallows thinks journalists need to rethink the way they report the news. For most of the 20^th century, most reporters and editors followed an unofficial code of ethics that demanded absolute neutrality. Throughout my career as an editor, as I followed the ethics code, I demanded that reporters not participate in politics, beyond voting in elections. Journalists could not remain neutral if they ran for public office or if they worked on or advised political campaigns. This neutrality served journalism well for nearly 100 years, defeating the 19^th century system in which newspapers were openly partisan, even adopting a party’s name, such as the Arkansas Democrat.

The result, Fallows says, is a system that allows misconduct and outright lies to be used without any correction by the Fourth Estate. Reporters have been taught to report “both sides of the story.” This process has been extended to television interviews, where a panel of four or more commentators discuss an issue; the panel will be balanced, two on one side of an issue and two on the other.

But not all news stories come with two convenient sides. If a man is charged with kidnapping and child molesting and is convicted by a jury, would you need to call a psychiatrist to explain why the man is not really responsible? Similarly, if a political candidate declares before election day that if he doesn’t win, he will not concede and will accuse his opponent of voter fraud. If he then rejects the legitimacy of his opponent’s certified win and continues to claim his opponent cheated, even though a series of court decisions, in response to the aggrieved candidate’s claims, found no evidence of election fraud, journalists should point out the legitimate facts of election fairness.

With certainty that the aggrieved candidate has lied about election fraud, shouldn’t news outlets deny the suing candidate an implicit legitimacy by giving him/her an opportunity to tout his/her debunked claims?

Lax laws, powerful lobbyists make massacres frequent

How long, O Lord, how long?

The latest American mass shooting, which killed 19 children and two teachers in a school in Uvalde, Texas, has parents wondering and worrying over the safety of their children and the inability of our political system to do anything about it.

The May 24 Texas shooting followed by ten days the shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. that killed ten. Less than halfway through 2022, America has recorded 213 mass shootings. America leads the world in mass shootings, which is a perverse way of "making America great again." Yeah, we lead the world in slaughtering children.

The usual hand wringing can be heard throughout Congress, but nearly all predictions show that the 90+ percent of the public who favor reasonable gun legislation, such as requiring background checks on persons purchasing a deadly firearm, but Congress can't seem to find enough members to even bring such legislation to the floor. 

The so-called Gun Lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, opposes any infringement on the Second Amendment, which was passed by our forebears in order to ensure the future of "a well-regulated militia." A gun lobby that allows mass shootings to continue is NOT a "well-regulated militia." Gun enthusiasts oppose all forms of restrictions or regulations on firearms. Even a simple registration and licensing system, such as is required nationwide for automobile purchases and use. Deaths by firearms have recently surpassed deaths by car crashes. Federal safety efforts have reduced the frequency of traffic deaths, but firearm deaths can't be considered by our "Congress For Sale" system as the NRA and other advocacy groups send millions of dollars to members of Congress who are willing to ignore the slaughter of American children.

Two years ago, I wrote about a proposal for a "We  the People Amendment," the gist of which is that America's sacred freedoms and rights should be reserved for America's people, not the corporations, associations, advocacy groups, or clubs. This simple amendment would put an immediate stop to the buying of Congress. Spoiler Alert: Congress will not pass a new amendment that hinders members' cash flow.

The First Amendment ensures a person's right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, but that right should not extend to labor unions, fraternal organizations, corporations, partnerships or clubs, only to living, breathing humans. Implementation of this amendment would stop lobbyists from controlling legislation. It would require individuals from both the left and right to do their own lobbying. And it would no longer allow members of Congress to ignore the will of the people in favor of lobbyists, the Gun Lobby, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and all the other pressure groups that have adjusted to the current system. The attack ads that take over television, Internet and social media each election cycle would rapidly wither away, banned from supporting the interests of organizations that are not human beings.

The "We The People Act" would not solve all the problems we face, but it would at least put the people on a level with the deep-pocketed organizations that oppose actions the general public — the humans — favor.

Politicians would have less reason to cuddle with the Gun Lobby and more reason to aid the grieving parents whose children have been sacrificed to the well-heeled Gun Lobby and other, similar non-human forces perverting the First Amendment.

Elephants, in memory and literature

Three days after the funeral for Ron Taylor, the New York Times posted an article that made me think of Ron, a church musician, amateur actor and playwright and fiction writer, who had helped establish the Wilson Writers Group. Perhaps the most significant accomplishment in the few years that Ron was part of the writers’ group was the publication of his children’s book, titled “The Day Buttercup Played Hooky From the Circus.” He said the idea of the book simply came to him, unbidden, one day, and he wrote it down. Often humorous, the book can appeal to adults as well as children.

My introduction to the Writers Group in 2017 included a presentation by  Dawn Reno Langley, a successful N.C. writer who offered advice to the aspiring authors in the public library’s assembly room. Ms. Langley’s book, “The Mourning Parade,” focuses on elephants in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. Natalie DeAngelo packs up her life and heads to Thailand as a volunteer veterinarian, hoping to assuage her anguish over the senseless deaths of her two sons back in the United States. The novel portrays elephants as sensate, emotional creatures with highly developed social and familial organization.

The New York Times on Wednesday published an article about a video showing a group of elephants joining together in the wild to mourn with members of their herd, going so far as lifting up a deceased calf to carry to a place for burial.

The newspaper article certainly validates Ms. Langley’s view of elephants as sentient, wise creatures with principles of caring and group mourning similar to humans’ practices.

Ron’s children’s book is simpler than either Ms. Langley’s novel or the N.Y. Times’ fascinating report on elephant behavior. “Buttercup” is about a circus elephant who slips away from his handler. The little boy standing nearby becomes the elephant’s handler, and the two go on a mid-morning hike through town with hilarious results.

Ron would love to know that even the N.Y. Times agrees that elephants are intelligent, thinking, loving animals who have emotions much like our own. “The Mourning Parade” in Langley’s book title refers to the reaction of sanctuary elephants when an elephant died. Ron’s book was not based on hours or years of research; it was based on love and humor that came from his creative imagination.

As elephants disappear from circuses and zoos, leave it to writers like Dawn Langley and Ron Taylor, and the NY Times, to remind the world that these endangered, intelligent, and loving animals are sharing this earth with us.

        

Don't hesitate to share bad news

 

Let me make this clear: If you are seriously ill, particularly with a terminal illness, do not hesitate. Let people know. Especially let your family know. Don’t be shy. Don’t assume they would not care or would only have their lives disrupted.

 

Tell them. Don’t procrastinate. If the news is too painful to talk about, send an email or a text. Send a hand-written letter. Ask a family member to spread the news. Do whatever you must, but Let People Know.

 

I mention this because an unexpected phone call this week informed my wife and me that my brother-in-law was terminally ill with cancer. His caregiver said he’d been diagnosed a few months ago. We were not informed. Now he’s in unbearable pain most of the day and cannot receive visitors. His caregiver expects his death in a few days, maybe only hours. He lives a four-hour drive away.

 

We appreciate the call; we are glad someone remembered to let us know. We deeply regret that, because of his condition, we cannot offer comfort or sympathy with an in-person visit. We cannot reminisce with him. We cannot share a funny story with him, although our relationship over nearly 50 years has always been light-hearted as we shared jokes and humorous observations.

 

This pattern of not telling family members sad news, especially about illnesses, has a long history in my family. A dozen years ago, my sister-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We found out about it through a Facebook post, which was vague and unrevealing. Should we go to visit her (a day’s drive away) or not? We never got an answer to the question we were reluctant to ask. Only when she died did I receive a call from my grief-stricken brother.

 

Another branch of the family adhered to our mother’s family’s tradition: Be stoic, don’t complain, don’t tell people outside the family. When my sister received a frightening diagnosis eight years ago, she swore her husband and daughters to silence about her condition. They didn’t break the code, but one niece sent a message to my brother, saying only, “Call your sister.” When he made that call (and then I made a similar call), we learned that she had terminal cancer. As a result, we had few opportunities to talk to her, reminisce, and express love and thankfulness for her life. She died one month after diagnosis.

 

So, please, if your news is bad, that’s all the more reason to share it. There is nothing to hide and everything to gain. No one likes being the bearer of bad news, but bad news is better than no news at all.

 

This article was written June 9, 2021. I spoke by telephone to my brother-in-law three times and had "just like old times" conversations about music (he was an avid collector of record albums), our lives, times we spent together, and our mutual feeling of helplessness against illness. They were good conversations, and he told me twice, "you don't know how much this means to  me."

 

To both of us.
 

He died in October, and we attended a somber, empty-feeling funeral.
Let people know!

 

 

I've awakened in the wrong year

 

Ever wake up in the morning not able to remember what day it is?

It happened to me this morning, only I couldn’t remember what YEAR it is. Is this September 1939 or is it October 1962?

 

            The Russian invasion of Ukraine with images of long lines of tanks and other military weaponry brings memories of the black-and-white photos of German tanks carrying out the blitzkrieg that would end with the obliteration of Poland and the world’s most destructive war ever. The excuses of 1939 ("living room" for Germans and international acceptance of Germany's expansions) are similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s revisions of history in a speech earlier this week, when he claimed Ukraine wasn’t really a sovereign nation, only a benevolent creation by the Kremlin and “Mother Russia.” Ukrainians don’t exist, Putin was claiming; they are all Russians or Russian cousins, who should be glad to be defended by Russia’s cultural, historical, economic and legal protections.

 

            Sanctions levied by the United States, the UK and the European Union are imposing painful costs on Russia’s government, military and population. Russia appears to be behind cyber attacks on western countries and Ukraine’s government. Meanwhile, Russian tanks and weaponry remain in Ukraine, leaving me with the feeling I’ve awakened in the fall of 1939.

 

Or is it 1962, when all Americans feared for their lives and for the survival of their country. Russian ballistic missiles stationed in Cuba were capable of dropping nuclear bombs on the lower half of the United States. I was 13 years old at the time, and I can still feel the fear and anxiety I and my eighth grade classmates felt. “This is a day we will always remember,” one classmate told me over our lunch table. He was right.

 

In the case of 1962, President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union’s Premier Nikita Khruschev came to their senses and stepped away from a nuclear war that would destroy both countries and most of the rest of Planet Earth. In one sense, the 1962 crisis was more dangerous than the current one. Two nuclear-armed countries threatened to destroy the other in the 1960s term for hair’s breadth safety built on fear: MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction.

 

In 2022, we’re only concerned about one country, Ukraine, which Russia now asserts is not a country at all, as its tanks and other weapons shred Ukraine’s claim of sovereignty.

 

But it’s not just one country. All countries in Europe know the history of frequent wars on the continent for centuries. After World War II, Europeans, with assistance from the United States, put together strategies for avoiding future ground wars in Europe: NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with each member nation pledging to come to the aid of any member nation that is attacked from outside NATO; and the European Union, which aimed to make European nations’ economies dependent on other European countries.

 

Putin despises NATO and the E.U. and would love to see both organizations collapse. Invading Ukraine and demanding that Ukraine would never join NATO feeds Putin’s long-term strategy: A weak, divided Europe that can be easily emasculated by Putin or easily invaded and annexed — a ploy that cannot be allowed in a civilized world.

E Pluribus Get Lost

 "E Pluribus Unum" was adopted as the motto of the United States in 1776 by a few men whose name you might remember: Franklin, Adams and Jefferson. The Latin translates as "From many, one." It's on money and on the Great Seal of the United States.

But is it still a true statement? These "United" States are anything but united, anything but one great nation "with liberty for all." The member states, spread "from sea to shining sea" are different in many ways — in population numbers, in racial and ethnic origins, in political affiliation, in wealth and natural resources, in religious beliefs or non-beliefs, in how they define key words such as liberty, justice, fairness, equality, personal responsibility, international relations, and so on.

Instead of speaking with one voice and belief in certain basic principles of government, the USA is not unified, it is as divided as it has ever been in its history. The founders of 1776 would expect today's leaders, the members of Congress and the executive branch, should be focusing their interests and time on reuniting the nation, making it Unum again.

But that is not going to happen. Both parties (George Washington warned us in his farewell address against the dangers of political parties) are pushing agendas to increase the power of their own parties.

Members of Congress hold great power, and the presidency is often described as the "most powerful office in the world." They should all be focused not on power for their partisan interests but for unity and common cause for all Americans.

This country is so divided that some citizens think the last presidential election is still undetermined a year after voting ended in that race. A former president keeps his divisive, disproven, litigated and found false claim of a "stolen" election. His constant repetition of his lies about election results endangers all future elections as segments of the electorate have come to doubt the honesty of all elections. Trust in elections is the beating heart of democracy, and this democracy can die if we let it.

 It can be argued that the political office holders, the public officials of this singular nation, are not the real power brokers. The 535 members of Congress (including the Senate) are not as powerful, some would say, as the hundreds of ultra-wealthy individuals and large corporations who "buy" influence on Capitol Hill. Their money makes possible the power of the members of Congress, who may spend half their time asking for money from donors. This makes the United States beholden not to the common good but to the narrow interests. On the most important of issues, elected officials willingly vote against the interests of the people who elected them and vote for the narrow interests of individuals and corporations who accept gun violence on the nation's streets, permit the spoiling of nature and ruining of our water and our atmosphere, and look away when huge numbers of Americans are addicted to drugs being distributed by giant corporations with full knowledge that the pain killers they manufacture are addictive and ultimately fatal.

E Pluribus Unum can only have meaning if Congress, legislatures and voters focus on what is best for everyone, not just the few who have grown wealthy from ignoring what is best for everyone.