Who Are We?

​Who are we?  

It's a fair question, one we can't ask too many times.  
The answer will change over time, but are we a welcoming country that believes in compassion, the rule of law, and in keeping our word?  

Are we all on our own with each country a gated, exclusive community, or do we have a moral responsibility to look out for each other?  Are we our brother's keepers?
Should we give until it hurts or not give at all?  Do we owe anyone anything?   Are those who once helped us just suckers?  Is there nothing more to human existence than carving out a little plot of dirt for yourself and your family then spending the rest of your life trying to keep everyone else off it?  

​I ask these questions because my government did something this weekend that I only read about in history books, conjuring up shameful chapters of our dusty past, ships turned away, some American citizens not really citizens at all, some rounded up and put into camps, sent away, their property redistributed among neighbors who looked more European, less… suspicious.  

Any door to sanctuary in the US has been indefinitely slammed in the face of desperate Syrians fleeing a horrific civil war with no end in sight.  

Those from Iraq, a country we invaded and whose citizens risked their lives to help us, cannot now find refuge in this country.  

An Iraqi translator who worked with the 101st Airborne division during the early years of our invasion of his country was illegally held, his valid visa he took 2 years to obtain not recognized until a lawyer was able to successfully get a judge to order his release.   This is shameful and cowardly behavior.  The poor man had received death threats, 2 of his colleagues had been murdered at work, and his wife and 3 children were already settled in Texas.  

A family of 6 - Christians, by the way, not that that should make any difference (by law, it can't) - were turned away to be sent back, separated from the greeting family and any possibility of contacting an attorney (an equal protection Fifth Amendment violation, not to mention country of origin discrimination which is prohibited).  

Most Americans have no idea how incredibly difficult our immigration procedures are.  They can't really be blamed with the oval office occupant blathering on as though no vetting existed, as if we "have no idea who these people are."  
These people.  

Our airports are some of the hardest to fly into and out of.  We're just not a very welcoming place and it's not because Europe hasn't had its share of terrorism.  I always dreaded flying back here from Europe, where passport checkpoints (if there were any at all) were a breeze.  They simply aren't as hysterical or mean-spirited or scared or whatever as we are (and they have much more experience rapidly and humanely processing people from many countries who speak many different languages with cultural sensitivity).  

Trump claims falsely that we exclude Christians at the expense of Muslims, that our immigration policy ignores some victims of persecution and genocide while favoring others (and that he, with his extensive knowledge of history, geography, and anthropology, can correct this injustice by barring over 200 million people from 7 arbitrarily-selected countries from entering the United States, even if they were issued valid visas, even if they are permanent legal residents).  

There are many victims of genocide around the world to whom we are oblivious.   I remember when the Reagan Administration sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld on December 20, 1983 to meet with our ally at the time in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, to pass on the message that a victory for Hussein against the Iranians (whom we were also arming in violation of United States law, as we now know) would be considered a victory for the West.  A million people died in that war.  

More importantly, Rumsfeld didn't raise any of the concerns some western powers had about Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons - the only reliable antidote to human wave attacks for the losing Iraqi army.  

​

This was to have fatal consequences when a few years later on March 16, 1988, he pounded the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq with mustard gas and the deadly nerve agent sarin.   About 5,000 were killed then - mostly women and children - and another 12,000 died over the subsequent days and weeks.  

​

Saddam Hussein followed up these attacks with a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, called the Anfal, against its rebellious Kurds.  An estimated 100,000 Kurds were killed.  

The United States, aware that the Iraqis had carried out the attack, as we now know, initially obfuscated, blaming Iran, then dragging their feet at the UNSC, getting a watered-down resolution condemning "continued use of chemical weapons in the conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq" and asking "both sides [!] to refrain from the future use of chemical weapons."  

And of course we can look at massacres we carried out, such as at My Lai or against the indigenous people of this country, or the hundreds of thousands we killed in our invasion of Iraq and the hundreds of thousands killed from the secondary collapse of infrastructure and order in Iraq and neighboring Syria.  

​My Lai.  No one went to prison for this, by the way.

We can review the manifest of the S.S. St. Louis, turned away from Cuba and the United States despite direct appeals to FDR to lift the strict quotas - since outlawed - against Jewish refugees seeking sanctuary in the United States.  Of the 900 turned away, 254 were killed by the Nazis, many in Auschwitz.  

5-year-old Michael Fink, a Jewish refugee on board the SS St. Louis, was turned back by the United States.  He survived but his mother was killed at Auschwitz.  

If we really want to stop genocide and help refugees, it makes no sense whatsoever to de-fund the UN or NATO, whose forces eventually stopped the genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, respectively, and whose UNHCR resettlement camps decrease the urge to make the dangerous, potentially destabilizing Mediterranean crossing into Europe and beyond.  

​

We have accepted only a trickle of refugees compared to Europe but have far more space for resettlement and a stronger economy at the moment (that can absorb more immigrants).

Our vetting process is extremely rigorous and by invitation only.  

We can and should do better for all victims of ongoing genocide and all victims of war.

And at the very least we should not ally ourselves with brutal regimes that are perpetuating genocide or massacres, such as the Assad/Putin regime, or start tragically unnecessary wars in a region, plunging them into decades of bloodshed, instability, and the rise of extremists to fill the vacuum.  

I think instead of shaming ourselves with what we didn't do in the past about events we are powerless to change now, we should dedicate ourselves going forward to learn from those events and not be such cowards.   

If we are going to learn from the past, we should recognize that we made our worst decisions when afraid, and our fears were almost always ridiculously overblown and politicized at the time.  We should mistrust that impulse to exclude Others who don't look like us or believe differently than we do about some things.  Diversity is a wonderful thing.   Every study shows that receiving countries benefit economically from accepting immigrants.  

So even though history seems to indicate otherwise, we are better than this.  Our future must be better than the worst moments of our past.   Hand-wringing guilt and self-flagellation gets us nowhere.  

If it's helpful to remember, there isn't really a We and a They.  We are all the same species with the most trivial of differences.  And every American today is descended from an ancestor who arrived here as an immigrant, mostly in the past few centuries, a few earlier when the first peoples crossed the Bering Strait from Asia into the Americas.  

We are all each other's cousins.  We were all once persecuted and persecutor, pursuer and refugee.  

When we turn away Syrians or Iraqis or Iranians, we turn away family.

Let's be compassionate and kind to our family.

Because we are our brother's keeper.  

"Unparalleled Resistance Looms for Trump After Inauguration" Reports the Wall Street Journal

Although the article "Unparalleled Resistance Looms for Trump After Inauguration" (Janet Hook, January 10, 2017) is from the Wall Street Journal, pay attention to the language used:

Remember, back in the day, when newly elected presidents enjoyed a honeymoon?

Donald Trump wasn't elected.  He never gave President Obama - who was elected -twice! - a honeymoon, calling him illegitimate and Not One of Us until a few months ago. 

Donald Trump isn’t getting one. His adversaries are in combat mode, as if the campaign never ended. Demonstrations are planned. Money is pouring into the coffers of liberal groups. Activists are calling for an ongoing 'resistance' movement.

Although empirically true, framing opposition to Trump as a "liberal" issue would be like framing opposition to Hitler as a "Jewish" issue.   Resistance to Trump (no air quotes needed) rests on a bedrock of universal principles such as law, transparency, ethics, mutual respect, access to healthcare, and national sovereignty (do foreign leaders such as Putin have a right to choose for us who our president should be or do we just act like nothing happened?). 

Mr. Trump is getting a taste of his own medicine because he, too, is behaving as if the campaign never ended. For weeks, he has continued to lob provocative tweets about his critics and the media, derided people who supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, reveled in his election victory and took a victory lap of 'thank you' rallies across the country in December.

No, he impugned a civil rights icon, calling getting beaten unconscious on a bridge in Selma and organizing a successful campaign of peaceful resistance throughout the country "all talk, no action." 

He attacked Meryl Streep not on the content of what she said (that he was a bully mocking a disabled reporter and giving others permission to do the same) but based on an unsolicited rating of her acting ability (he called her an "overrated actress" …  and that is relevant… how?).

Now, when he takes office Jan. 20, Mr. Trump will be facing some of the most virulent opposition ever to confront a new president. His approval ratings, while on the rise, are still the lowest of any president-elect in recent polling history.

Virulent?  Really?  That's the word you had to go for?  How about determined, committed, principled, fierce.  Would you call John Lewis's civil rights marchers "virulent"?  Wait, this is the Wall Street Journal - perhaps you would. 

Mark Meckler, a conservative activist involved in the founding of the tea-party movement, believes that Mr. Trump’s detractors are trying to delegitimize his presidency, not just oppose his policies.  'It’s disgusting, and is only serving to solidify the support that Trump and Republicans have garnered,' he said.

Oh, PUH-LEEEZE!  A movement that showed up with poorly-spelled posters of Obama with Hitler moustaches demanding "their" country back, whose supporters ran that birther racist lie as far down the field as they could get, who shouted "YOU LIE!" during a State of the Union address by our first African-American president now finds delegitimizing a (white) president "disgusting"? 

Do you know what I find disgusting?  Lying, cheating, and stealing and tolerating those who do.  Or working your ass off to try to steal healthcare from hardworking Americans.  Or stripping women of their access to legal reproductive health services.   Or calling President Obama a "racist with a deep-seated hatred of white people." 
And spare me the "support that Trump and Republicans have garnered" crap.   If you define "support" as having 27% of registered voters choose your man who lost by 3 million votes to our woman, losing seats in the House and Senate to Democrats, and having a president-elect with the lowest approval rating since we've been measuring these things, then you need a new dictionary. 

But I do love these numbers (although I reject the idea that women's health is a "liberal" cause - if it is this not an admission that Republicans want women to die of undiagnosed breast and cervical cancer?): 

Other critics of Mr. Trump are registering their anger and disappointment with a flood of donations to liberal causes. Planned Parenthood received 315,000 donations from across the country in the month after the election, 70% of which were new donors. The American Civil Liberties Union received $35.3 million in post-election donations as of Jan. 4 — up from $3.6 million over the same period a year ago."

And we have only just begun. 

#NotMyPresident

The text of the article: 

"President Barack Obama in 2009 faced resistance from the fledgling tea-party movement, but polls suggested that many opponents were cutting him slack as he was inaugurated: 67% viewed Mr. Obama positively in December 2008, compared to 41% who viewed Mr. Trump favorably in December 2016, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls.

"Even former President George W. Bush was viewed favorably by more voters — 49% — in December 2000, amid the bitter, unprecedented legal battle over that year’s presidential election.

"Neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. Bush saw their first days shadowed by the sorts of organized protests that are expected to assemble against Mr. Trump. The day after his inauguration, the 'Women’s March on Washington' is expected to draw more than 100,000 protesters to the nation’s capital and other cities will be hosting related events.

"Celebrities like John Oliver, in his late-night comedy show, and Meryl Streep, in her recent Golden Globe awards speech, have been urging people to keep up the fight against the new president. Mr. Trump dismissed Ms. Streep as an “overrated actress” and has derided other “so-called A-list celebrities” who supported Mrs. Clinton.

"Michael Moore, a filmmaking rabble-rouser, and Robert Reich, former Labor secretary under President Bill Clinton, are calling for “100 Days of Resistance” to Mr. Trump.

"A group of former congressional aides in mid-December posted the manifesto “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda,” which went viral in progressive circles. The authors argued that Democrats should take a page from the tea-party’s playbook and focus on grassroots, local organizing to fight the Trump agenda.

“Their tactics weren’t fancy: They just showed up on their own home turf, and they just said no,” they said in a column last week in the New York Times. “Here’s the crazy thing: It worked.”

"Mark Meckler, a conservative activist involved in the founding of the tea-party movement, believes that Mr. Trump’s detractors are trying to delegitimize his presidency, not just oppose his policies.

“It’s disgusting, and is only serving to solidify the support that Trump and Republicans have garnered,” he said.

"Other critics of Mr. Trump are registering their anger and disappointment with a flood of donations to liberal causes. Planned Parenthood received 315,000 donations from across the country in the month after the election, 70% of which were new donors. The American Civil Liberties Union received $35.3 million in post-election donations as of Jan. 4 — up from $3.6 million over the same period a year ago.

Some people have been moved to jump into the fray of elective politics. Amanda Crabb, a college professor in Quincy, Mass., responded to the 2016 election by participating in a candidate-training webinar with VoteRunLead, a nonpartisan group that encourages women to run for office.

Ms. Crabb had toyed with the idea of running for a post on the local school committee in 2015, but backed down in part because she lacked confidence in her qualifications, she said in an interview. Now that a political novice has been elected president, she is feeling emboldened to step out.

“It’s hard for me to see him in office,” Ms. Crabb said. “He stands for so many things I don’t stand for.”

Erin Vilardi, head of VoteRunLead, said that the group has seen a surge of interest in their webinar candidate training sessions: 1,100 women signed up for the December training; another 1,200 participated in another last Saturday.

“Looking at Trump, women are saying, ‘What am I waiting for? If that guy can do it, I can,’” Ms. Vilardi said.

President Obama's Farewell Address

January 11, 2017 

I am going to miss this man.  I am going to miss this family. 

If you didn't get a chance to see it, I highly recommend watching President Obama's farewell address.  It was one of his best speeches. 

Whenever Obama speaks, I always have a feeling that an adult is in the room, that someone much wiser and calmer and with greater foresight is encouraging me to see beyond the daily noise to the long-term pattern, to move from tactics to strategy, from noisy, divisive political debate to the fundamental principles on which we all agree. 

As someone who was pretty cynical before President Obama and who didn't really get involved in campaigning, registering voters, or writing checks (then bigger checks) much before he inspired me to, I always feel that he is speaking directly to me.  Cynicism at some level is a cop-out.  Engaging in our system - because it is our system and is only as good or bad as we make it - makes us vulnerable to disappointment, to being let down, even worse to appearing naïve and foolish. 

I still remember one of Sarah Palin's snarkier lines back when people cared what Sarah Palin had to say:  "How's that hopey-change thing working out?"

Well, for your information, Ms. Palin, pretty damn well.

Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  It's a constant struggle not to join the cynics of the world, to sit back in the peanut gallery with the Palins and Gingriches and Ryans and Trumps, sneering and mocking and tearing down without any appreciation or understanding of what it is we are destroying or what we might replace it with. 

Obama reminded us that "change only happens when ordinary people get involved, and they get engaged, and they come together to demand it."  After 8 years as president, he said, "I still believe that. And it’s not just my belief. It’s the beating heart of our American idea — our bold experiment in self-government.  It’s the conviction that we are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It’s the insistence that these rights, while self-evident, have never been self-executing." 

Powerful stuff.  "What a radical idea, the great gift that our Founders gave to us. The freedom to chase our individual dreams through our sweat, and toil, and imagination… For 240 years, our nation’s call to citizenship has given work and purpose to each new generation. It’s what led patriots to choose republic over tyranny, pioneers to trek west, slaves to brave that makeshift railroad to freedom… It's what powered workers to organize. It’s why GIs gave their lives at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima; Iraq and Afghanistan — and why men and women from Selma to Stonewall were prepared to give theirs as well."

We are a work in progress, he reminded us.  We're not perfect and never will be, but we have shown again and again the "capacity to change, and make life better for those who follow." 

There were particularly loud cheers when he mentioned those crossing the Rio Grande looking for a better life here, drawing them into the sweep of our continental history (something he wrote about with particular poignancy in Dreams of My Father). 

"Yes, our progress has been uneven. The work of democracy has always been hard. It has been contentious. Sometimes it has been bloody. For every two steps forward, it often feels we take one step back. But the long sweep of America has been defined by forward motion, a constant widening of our founding creed to embrace all, and not just some.

What really made me understand what a once-in-a-generation leader he is was his ability to put into words things I didn't even realize I knew until he articulated them so clearly.   That, by the way, is my definition of a great teacher. 

He began with humor, laughing at an extended ovation that seemed it would never end.  "We’re on live TV here, I’ve got to move," he said, then adding, "You can tell that I’m a lame duck, because nobody is following instructions."

He talked about coming to Chicago as a young man "trying to figure out who I was; still searching for a purpose to my life… It was on these streets where I witnessed the power of faith, and the quiet dignity of working people in the face of struggle and loss." 

When the crowd started changing "FOUR MORE YEARS," he laughed.  "I can’t do that."

He rattled off the accomplishments of his administration which in saner, more honest times would be recognized as remarkable, as I am confident historians will characterize them: 

If I had told you eight years ago that America would reverse a great recession, reboot our auto industry, and unleash the longest stretch of job creation in our history — if I had told you that we would open up a new chapter with the Cuban people, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot, take out the mastermind of 9-11 — if I had told you that we would win marriage equality and secure the right to health insurance for another 20 million of our fellow citizens — if I had told you all that, you might have said our sights were set a little too high.

But that’s what we did. That’s what you did. You were the change. The answer to people’s hopes and, because of you, by almost every measure, America is a better, stronger place than it was when we started.

Later he added:

The economy is growing again. Wages, incomes, home values and retirement accounts are all rising again. Poverty is falling again. 
The wealthy are paying a fair share of taxes. Even as the stock market shatters records, the unemployment rate is near a 10-year low. The uninsured rate has never, ever been lower.
Health care costs are rising at the slowest rate in 50 years. And I’ve said, and I mean it, anyone can put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we’ve made to our health care system, that covers as many people at less cost, I will publicly support it.

And considering how this millennium and century started, this was no small accomplishment: 

No foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland these past eight years… We have taken out tens of thousands of terrorists, including Bin Laden.

The only disagreement I have with President Obama is in his insistence that we accept the results of the electoral college vote and ignore the will of the people as expressed overwhelmingly in the popular vote.

I can't go that far.  I do not believe in accepting the peaceful transfer of power just for the sake of looking at ourselves and patting ourselves on the back for not being more disruptive.  At times a little disruption is called for.  The Trump phenomenon transcends politics, left or right, and although President Obama has his legacy to protect - perhaps he still believes despite everything that if he is reasonable, his opponents one day might be as well - I don't.  I can say the things he can't.

And I say that a crazy incompetent narcissistic serial lying asshole with an impulse control problem is soon to be 4 minutes from plunging us all into nuclear Armageddon.  I refuse to accept that and will do everything I can to resist.

I agree that our politics must "better reflect the decency of our people" but we cannot pretend that the future president of the United States bragged about sexually assaulting women and grabbing women and girls "by the pussy." 

I agree fully that our government doesn't require unanimity but it does "require a basic sense of solidarity."  We are "all in this together" and forget it sometimes.  "We can argue about how" to achieve our societal goals but "we can’t be complacent about the goals themselves."

Income inequality is a threat to any thriving democracy.   "Our economy doesn’t work as well or grow as fast when a few prosper at the expense of a growing middle class, and ladders for folks who want to get into the middle class… Stark inequality is also corrosive to our democratic idea. While the top 1 percent has amassed a bigger share of wealth and income, too many of our families in inner cities and in rural counties have been left behind."

Trade should be "fair and not just free" but automation will likely make many "good middle class jobs obsolete."

He addressed racism with the same balanced on one hand, on the other hand approach I wish more of our public leaders would use.  "Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society" but "I've lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, no matter what some folks say."  But "all of us have more work to do."

One of his most powerful lines came in the middle of his speech: 

If every economic issue is framed as a struggle between a hardworking white middle class and an undeserving minority, then workers of all shades are going to be left fighting for scraps while the wealthy withdraw further into their private enclaves.

Absolutely!  A false dichotomy has been created between looking out for poor working class whites on one hand or helping African-Americans, Latinos, and newly arrived immigrants on the other.  While those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder fight among themselves, they are distracted at the massive theft going on at the very top.  The genius of Trump is that he got poor whites to get angry at the wrong people, to believe that they have more in common with a wealthy real estate developer - who really cares about them, just as he cares about women, believe you me - than they do with other economic and societal victims who should be their allies, not enemies. 

If we’re unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don’t look like us, we will diminish the prospects of our own children — because those brown kids will represent a larger and larger share of America’s workforce.

Yes, we must take seriously the suffering and dislocation of white Americans, but it's not an either-or proposition.  Besides, "the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn’t suddenly vanish in the ’60s; that when minority groups voice discontent, they’re not just engaging in reverse racism or practicing political correctness; when they wage peaceful protest, they’re not demanding special treatment, but the equal treatment that our founders promised."

Each generation believed that immigrants "were going to destroy the fundamental character of America" but immigrants "embraced this nation’s creed, and this nation was strengthened."

The third threat to our democracy came from the balkanization of our media and social media into splinter groups and the profound mistrust of science and reality among some.

Politics is a battle of ideas. That’s how our democracy was designed. In the course of a healthy debate, we prioritize different goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information and concede that your opponent might be making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, then we’re going to keep talking past each other.  And we’ll make common ground and compromise impossible.

Not too many people talk much about the Enlightenment these days, but Obama gave a shout out to the spirit of Voltaire and Franklin:  "It is that spirit … born of the enlightenment that made us an economic powerhouse. The spirit that took flight at Kitty Hawk and Cape Canaveral, the spirit that cures disease and put a computer in every pocket, it’s that spirit. A faith in reason and enterprise, and the primacy of right over might, that allowed us to resist the lure of fascism and tyranny during the Great Depression, that allowed us to build a post-World War II order with other democracies."

The postwar order "based not just on military power or national affiliations, but built on principles, the rule of law, human rights, freedom of religion and speech and assembly and an independent press" is being challenged as never before, by religious fanatics and brutal autocrats abroad, but also by forces here at home. 

And that’s why for the past eight years I’ve worked to put the fight against terrorism on a firmer legal footing. That’s why we’ve ended torture, worked to close Gitmo, reformed our laws governing surveillance to protect privacy and civil liberties.

That’s why I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans who are just as patriotic as we are.

That’s why we cannot withdraw from big global fights to expand democracy and human rights and women’s rights and LGBT rights.

No matter how imperfect our efforts, no matter how expedient ignoring such values may seem, that’s part of defending America. For the fight against extremism and intolerance and sectarianism and chauvinism are of a piece with the fight against authoritarianism and nationalist aggression. If the scope of freedom and respect for the rule of law shrinks around the world, the likelihood of war within and between nations increases, and our own freedoms will eventually be threatened.

So let’s be vigilant, but not afraid. ISIL will try to kill innocent people. But they cannot defeat America unless we betray our Constitution and our principles in the fight.

The final threat he saw to democracy is complacency. 

 Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted… When voting rates in America are some of the lowest among advanced democracies, we should be making it easier, not harder, to vote.

He gave one of the most eloquent cases for a dynamic Constitutional interpretation (which strangely had echoes of some things that Scalia once wrote about the virtues of a "dead" Constitution):

Our Constitution is a remarkable, beautiful gift. But it’s really just a piece of parchment. It has no power on its own. We, the people, give it power. We, the people, give it meaning — with our participation, and with the choices that we make and the alliances that we forge.

Whether or not we stand up for our freedoms. Whether or not we respect and enforce the rule of law, that’s up to us. America is no fragile thing. But the gains of our long journey to freedom are not assured.

Every member of my family looked at me and pointed when he said this: 

If you’re tired of arguing with strangers on the Internet, try talking with one of them in real life.

Then added:

If something needs fixing, then lace up your shoes and do some organizing.

If you’re disappointed by your elected officials, grab a clip board, get some signatures, and run for office yourself.

Show up, dive in, stay at it.

Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes you’ll lose…. There will be times when the process will disappoint you. But for those of us fortunate enough to have been part of this one and to see it up close, let me tell you, it can energize and inspire. And more often than not, your faith in America and in Americans will be confirmed. Mine sure has been.

He then turned to his wife as he said, "Maybe you still can’t believe we pulled this whole thing off.  Let me tell you, you’re not the only ones…"  Then he turned to his wife and daughter and made them both cry while he cried himself.

Michelle...

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson of the South Side... for the past 25 years you have not only been my wife and mother of my children, you have been my best friend.

You took on a role you didn’t ask for. And you made it your own with grace and with grit and with style, and good humor.

You made the White House a place that belongs to everybody.

And a new generation sets its sights higher because it has you as a role model.

You have made me proud, and you have made the country proud.

Malia and Sasha...

Under the strangest of circumstances, you have become two amazing young women.

You are smart and you are beautiful. But more importantly, you are kind and you are thoughtful and you are full of passion.

And you wore the burden of years in the spotlight so easily. Of all that I have done in my life, I am most proud to be your dad.

My fellow Americans, it has been the honor of my life to serve you. I won’t stop; in fact, I will be right there with you, as a citizen, for all my remaining days. But for now, whether you are young or whether you’re young at heart, I do have one final ask of you as your president — the same thing I asked when you took a chance on me eight years ago.

I am asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change — but in yours.

I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written:

Yes, we can.

Yes, we did.

Yes, we can.

"Tell Them I'm Coming!" - Go See the Movie "Hidden Figures" Today!

Mike Victor  January 2, 2017

Happy New Year! 

Three pieces of advice to start the new year off right:

1.) Go see the movie Hidden Figures. 

2.) Go see the movie Hidden Figures.

3.) Go see the movie Hidden Figures.

Repeat as desired. There is no maximum dose.

I saw this film yesterday with my wife and younger daughter and her friend and must tell you - had I three thumbs, all would be solidly up. One of the best films I have ever seen, no question.

If you don't know the setup, it's based on a set of true stories about a pioneering group of African American women in segregated 1961 Virginia who managed to challenge, overcome, and eventually change institutional and cultural racism that said that they could not do what they were in fact doing. The central character - whose real life details are even more amazing than the film had a chance to portray - is an African American math whiz named Katherine Johnson whose parents recognized her extraordinary aptitude when she was in the 4th grade, pulling her out of the segregated school that only went to 6th grade (whose material she already mastered) and putting her into one of the few African-American private schools in West Virginia. She entered high school at age 10 and graduated from college at age 18 (summa cum laude in 1937, with degrees in math and French), then pursued graduate work in mathematics.
At NASA,John Glenn was so impressed with her that he personally insisted that she double-check all of the numbers as part of any pre-flight checklist. "If she says the numbers are good," Glenn said. "I'm ready to go." It would take her a day and a half to double-check the computer's numbers but when they were the same, Glenn was ready to launch. 

Katherine Johnson literally wrote the book on the complex math of space travel and orbital trajectories.

Earlier, she had calculated the trajectory of Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 May 1961 flight from liftoff from splashdown, creating a new mathematics in the process. She did the same for the Apollo 11 moon shot and the start of the Space Shuttle program before retiring. 

"I computed the path that would get you there," she said of the moon shot. "You determine where you were on Earth, when you started out. We told them how fast you would be going and the moon would be there by the time you got there." [IBD]

NASA recently commemorated her with a new building built in her honor, saying that she "literally wrote the textbook on rocket science... Few Americans have impacted the cause of human exploration so extensively." 

 One of the critical problems she solved was calculating the exact time that the lunar landed needed to take off from the moon in order to dock with the orbiting command and service module. 

 On November 24, 2015, President Obama awarded her the highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Today she is 98 years old.[IBD, NASA]  

This movie hit on every issue near and dear to my heart: 

• social justice and progress; 
• the fight against racism; 
• the fight against sexism; 
• the fight against ignorance;
• mathematical and scientific triumph; 
• the ability of a society to do anything it puts its mind to when it comes together and is willing to fund the effort;
• the wisdom of children.

Sure, the movie sticks to a well-trodden formula, but does so with such deftness and understatement - it always pulls back before getting intolerably maudlin or heavy-handed - that it really, really works. It portrays in a very visceral way the extraordinary, mind-numbingly stupid racial desegregation laws and mindset in a Virginia whose state laws ignored the recent Brown v. Board of Education ruling, a "states right" anti-federal government mindset sadly very much alive today in the South. Everything is segregated from library books to water fountains to coffee pots to restrooms - that last leading to a fantastic scene with an infuriated Kevin Costner character taking a sledgehammer to the Colored Restroom sign. 

I know this history but to see it so graphically portrayed on screen is breathtaking in its shock effect. I kept shaking my head with real shame that this happened almost in my lifetime (I was born just a couple years after the events in the film). There was nothing preachy about the director's approach, which was perfect, just laying it out there as part of the backdrop with the principal characters arguing among themselves about how much to fight and how much to accept, with all going through a certain learning process (as per the formula for this sort of film).
My response in seeing the movie was the same as that of Taraji Henson, the actress who portrayed Johnson when she first read the script:  "I just remember initially being angry," she told NBC News.  "Here we have these women who changed the course of America, the history of this nation and we don't know about them." 

As an added plus, a cute crop of kids - the children of the protagonist - cheer along a budding romance that is done with such tenderness that it really gets you. I usually roll my eyes at such parallel plots, understanding their necessary role in the genre while wishing the film would just get on with the main story, but this romance was well-thought-through and beautifully-executed. I am no sap, in other words, but it worked for me.

The movie also reminds us that our federal government - so maligned by the right - actually does many things pretty damn well. NASA has to be Exhibit A (with the CDC and NIH not far behind) but close behind is the pioneering role the feds - starting with the military during the Eisenhower administration - played in leading the charge against segregation (as an added bonus, we are also reminded that not all things private are good, as when the boneheads sent over from IBM to get their massively over-budget and behind schedule mainframe computer to work can't even anticipate the size of the door needed to install the machine, much less actually get it to function.

I had only three minor disappointments with the film.

Only one mathematician was in the credits (10 NASA consultants were) which was perhaps why the math shown was not always convincing in its authenticity. Certainly, she would have used a slide rule at least in a scene where she wows an audience with a calculation that goes from position to displacement to re-entry velocity to splash down latitude and longitude; this could not have been done in the limited space allotted or without consulting some additional source - latitude and longitude mathematics are quite complex, involving sines and cosines and a correction for the bulge in the Earth around the equator and you cannot just do these things in your head. Would it have hurt to have her sneak a peek at a slide rule, a book of logarithmic values, or some other reference? I always feel a bit cheated when a movie-maker assumes that no one in the audience knows enough to know what is possible and impossible to do unaided. But I will withhold this criticism if the purpose was to make mathematics look cool.
Katherine Johnson was no wallflower, hesitant and deferential as portrayed in the film.  Instead, she peppered engineers with questions, always insisting that she understood the why of any problem, something the (white male) engineers reportedly respected and welcomed, not shot down as in the movie:

Katherine once remarked that while many of her colleagues refrained from asking questions or taking tasks further than merely ‘what they were told to do,’ she chose instead to ask questions because she ‘wanted to know why.’

For Katherine, finding the ‘why’ meant enrolling in high school at the age of 10; calculating the trajectory of Alan Shepard’s trip to space and the Apollo 11’s mission to the moon; and providing the foundation that will someday allow NASA to send our astronauts to Mars. She literally wrote the textbook on rocket science. 

We are all so fortunate that Katherine insisted on asking questions, and insisted on relentlessly pursing the answers. We are fortunate that when faced with the adversity of racial and gender barriers, she found the courage to say ‘tell them I’m coming.

  - NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman

The other disappointment had nothing to do with the film itself but with the audience. In the limited release screening I saw on a rainy New Year's Day, the theater was only half full and the audience was predominantly African-American, a group that doesn't need to see this film to be reminded of what is at stake if we pretend we live in some post-racial, color-blind, merit-based society, of what we have to go back to if Trump lives up to his promise to Make America White Again. I hope every young black girl (and boy) sees this movie and is inspired, but I also hope the rust belt blue collar whites chanting All Lives Matter! see this film and understand how recent and cruel institutionalized racism is in America and how maybe, just maybe the stereotypes reinforced by centuries of such thinking might persist today (and therefore require active federal oversight of the former states of the Confederate States of America as they draw up voting districts and impose voter ID barriers to voting).

But the audience cheered and clapped - when was the last time you saw that? - and at times I felt more that I was in church than a movie theater. It's that kind of movie.

Take a friend. Take a child struggling in mathematics or who thinks that science is only for boys. But go. And enjoy!