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