JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· February 14, 2020

The Way of the Dodo?

Here’s what’s happening in the world – natural and unnatural.

Planet earth is losing flora and fauna species at an alarming rate. Extinction is a phenomenon that occurs naturally, but the main cause of the current extinctions is the destruction of natural habitats by human activities, such as cutting down forests and converting land into fields for farming.
Scientists estimate we are currently losing species 1,000-10,000 times faster than normal attrition, which means that literally tens of species are vanishing from the face of the Earth every day. (worldanimalfoundation.com)
Across Africa, the U.N. estimates that 23.6 million people are facing food shortages due to the worst locust infestation in 70 years followed by torrential rains. (WSJ, Jan 31, 2020)
Australia is, after a month of wildfires that burned 12.35 million acres and killed as many as one billion animals, experiencing unprecedented rains and floods – 15.4” in 4 days. (AP)
Worldwide, 65.6 million individuals have been forcibly displaced because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations, per the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR 2017).
Arctic and Antarctic ice caps are melting at an astonishing rate. On June 13, 2019 Greenland lost more than two billion tons of ice in one day. (nationalgeographic.com)
In Brazil, between 15 and 17 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been lost, and if the amount of cleared forest land reaches 25 percent, there won’t be enough trees cycling moisture through the rainforest. (vox.com)

Why? Well, it’s complicated…but at its root it’s because we, as humans, haven’t been good stewards of each other’s welfare or the planet’s. It’s clear now; we have hard evidence that if we are to survive – if the planet is to survive – we need to make an urgent course correction. Instead, America has gone tribal, ignoring the evidence and doubling down on fossil fuels, extractive industries, unsustainable agribusiness, military industrial power, and isolationism.

Elizabeth Kolbert describes the crisis in her bestseller, The Sixth Extinction. She explains that the five prior extinction events, such as the extinction of the dinosaurs, were the result of extreme natural events like an asteroid striking the earth or massive volcanic eruptions but that human behavior is on the verge of causing another mass-extinction—the sixth in the history of the planet.

I’ve always thought of myself as a short-term pessimist and long-term optimist, but it’s hard to see any silver lining as we hurtle toward our own extinction. As Nathaniel Rich pointed out in a series of articles in the New York Times in 2018.

“Nearly everything we understand about global warming was understood in 1979. By that year, data collected since 1957 confirmed what had been known since before the turn of the 20^th century: Human beings have altered Earth’s atmosphere through the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels. The main scientific questions were settled beyond debate, and as the 1980s began, attention turned from diagnosis of the problem to refinement of the predicted consequences. Compared with string theory and genetic engineering, the “greenhouse effect: – a metaphor dating to the early 1900s – was ancient history, described in any Introduction to Biology textbook. Nor was the basic science especially complicated. It could be reduced to a simple axiom: The more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the warmer the planet. And every year, by burning coal, oil and gas, humankind belched increasingly obscene quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

There is a part of me that would like to blame the current White House for the whole thing. After all, of the 175 signatories the United States is the only one to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords. We may only have been nibbling around the edges, but in the last three years this president has rolled back whatever gains we made in recent years. There’s an echo of Nero fiddling while Rome burns in almost everything Trump does, but we’re all complicit. We’re burning up the planet.

I want to believe in evolution. Silly me. I should have known when we began designing nuclear bombs that evolution was a hoax. But, Iike my climate denier friends, I kept thinking this and other human foibles were anomalies–until a set of recessive genes took over the White House and showed us how wrong we were.

Still, there must be a soupçon of hope in human DNA that keeps the dream alive. I know we can do better. I want to die believing my children and grandchildren will be part of a grand turn-around. “Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.” (Wikipedia)

Count me in for the positive outcome, but first we need to rid ourselves of The Denier-in-Chief and his 40 Thieves. They’re driving the bus that’s hurtling us toward the Sixth Extinction, so let’s take the steering wheel back and turn this thing around. We may be beyond the point of no return environmentally, but let’s leave a positive note for the next iteration of human life so they won’t judge us too harshly.

Isn’t it a lovely ride?
Sliding down
Gliding down
Try not to try too hard
It’s just a lovely ride
Now the thing about time is that time
Isn’t really real
It’s just your point of view

The Secret of Life – James Taylor

Remember him? Are we next?

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Categories : Art, Books, Ethics, Friendship, News and Media, Personal/Family, Politics, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· February 6, 2020

· No Comments

Gaming the System…

The foundation of the American system of criminal justice is the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and the best defense available… but justice is not always blind. Race, wealth, age, prior history, and the integrity of the lawyers can all skew those principles and affect the outcome.

Standard 4-1.2 of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Standards for the Defense Function, paragraph (b) states:

Defense counsel have the difficult task of serving both as officers of the court and as loyal and zealous advocates for their clients. The primary duties that defense counsel owe to their clients, to the administration of justice, and as officers of the court, are to serve as their clients’ counselor and advocate with courage and devotion; to ensure that constitutional and other legal rights of their clients are protected; and to render effective, high-quality legal representation with integrity.

Last week, the United States Senate sat as a jury to hear House managers present the case for Donald John Trump’s impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Yesterday he was acquitted by a narrow 52 – 48 margin.

To defend himself, Mr. Trump had assembled a made-for-TV legal defense team. None were established criminal defense standouts but two were TV courtroom veterans. The first, Kenneth Starr, was Special Counsel and prosecutor in the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton and the second, Alan Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law professor famous for representing such unsavory characters as OJ Simpson, Claus von Bulow, and Jeffrey Epstein.

Starr, it would seem, was window dressing at the impeachment trial, there to pronounce that “we are living in the age of impeachment”and to ask, “How did we get here, with presidential impeachment invoked frequently in its inherently destabilizing as well as acrimonious way?” As Vanity Fair noted, “For those of you who synthesize information best through historical antecedents, this is like Jeffrey Dahmer lecturing his peers for eating people. Or Adolf Hitler asking, “How did we get into this predicament where people don’t care for the Jews?” His Starr-turn was disingenuous, and he was quickly replaced in the lineup by the much more nefarious spin-ster, Mr. Dershowitz.

It was performance art on a grand scale. First, he introduced himself not as friend of the president, but as a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton–appearing for the president only to clarify the constitutional imperatives in question. But, if he’s a Democrat who voted for Mrs. Clinton, isn’t it odd he was invited to Christmas Eve dinner at Mar-a-Lago by a president famous for his hatred of Crooked Hillary?

Regardless, the Dershowitz spin went like this: “A president cannot be impeached unless he has committed a crime and no crime is alleged in Impeachment Article #1” and “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

Incongurously, during the 1999 Clinton impeachment both Starr and Dershowitz argued that it was not necessary to allege or prove a crime. What’s different? Well, this time it’s not a cringe-worthy sexual act in the White House–it’s the president requesting a foreign government to interfere in our 2020 presidential election. Big difference.

The chutzpah is astonishing and legal scholars, including Lawrence Tribe, the Harvard Law School professor and foremost constitutional law scholar in America, were quick to point out that almost no one accepts the Dershowitz argument. As a lawyer, I read the testimony several times and couldn’t understand the circular, Byzantine reasoning or how he arrived at his conclusions. But I’m not alone; when real scholars challenged him he walked it back by claiming his remarks were misrepresented and throwing up a barrage of legal chaff based on “motives”, “mixed motives,” “matters of degree,” “preposterous examples,” and “complex issues the framers did not intend for impeachment.”

It was dazzling judicial theater, intended to conflate and confuse rather than convince, and I was reminded me of an article by Molly Roberts of the Washington Post written just after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and jailed in 2019. What Alan Dershowitz Taught Me About Morality is her retelling of an experience as a Harvard student in a Dershowitz seminar in which he asked her the question “Where does your morality come from?”

Dershowitz has made a name for himself as an “intellectual provocateur.” In her article Ms. Roberts suggests that he has lost sight of the principles he originally championed, i.e. safeguarding civil liberties. Rather, he has made a name for himself gaming the system.

As Ms. Roberts points out, “Principles are important, but they can also be a distancing mechanism that permits us to maintain an aura of rectitude even as we go around behaving in ways that aren’t right at all. They can allow us to absolve ourselves for our actions by claiming they’re in service ot some metaphysical lodestar that supersedes any effect on real people in real life. Sometimes, we’re simply wrong—not just constitutionally, or legally, but ethically, too.”

Yes, every defendant is entitled to the best defense available, but as the professional standards state “Defense counsel have the difficult task of serving both as officers of the court and as loyal and zealous advocates for their clients…with integrity.” Given Mr. Dershowitz’s history, particularly his recent history as an advocate for Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, it is arguable that principles have been sidelined and, like President Trump, gaming the system to win no matter the consequences is now his “lodestar.” Dershowitz once told The New York Times he regretted taking the Epstein case but told Ms. Roberts “I would do it again.”

Harking back to her seminar at Harvard, the Roberts Op-Ed ends with the following sentence, “There’s an answer to the question none of us students could reach all those years ago: Your morality comes from what you do.

Categories : Ethics, Film/Television, News and Media, Politics, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· February 1, 2020

· 3 Comments

We’re All Human…

My friend, Roger, lives in Calabasas, California a mile and half from where Kobe Bryant and eight others died in a helicopter crash last Sunday. There’s a trail there, on the ocean side of the Santa Monica mountains, that we have hiked together.

Helicopter Debris Field

The world continues in a state of shock at the loss of Kobe, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and two other families with girls that were members of Gianna’s youth basketball team. At Staples Center, often referred to as “the house that Kobe built” the mourners outside numbered more than the crowd inside at Sunday night’s Grammy Awards – but all were subdued and grieving the loss of their larger than life 41-year-old basketball hero.

The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) is investigating but in the opinion of most aviation experts Kobe’s helicopter was flown into the ground or in the words of investigators “controlled flight into terrain.” There is little doubt that the accident was due to a combination of weather and pilot error (poor judgment and disorientation). I’m not helicopter rated nor am I a certified investigator, but as a former military and commercial pilot I have an informed opinion about what happened and feel heartsick about an accident I think could have been prevented. We won’t know the details for some time. The NTSB does a thorough job, and despite the fact that the Sikorsky S-76 helicopter had neither voice nor flight recorder (required on all commercial aircraft) it won’t be hard to determine the causes.

On Sunday morning, weather in the LA Basin included low clouds and limited visibility. Conditions were sufficiently compromised that all LA Police and LA County Sheriff helicopters were grounded. Nevertheless, operating under VFR (Visual Flight Rules), Kobe’s pilot took off from Long Beach Airport where the helicopter was kept and flew to Orange County Airport where his passengers were waiting. Flying VFR, he used visual references and remained clear of all clouds. All normal and acceptable.

This was where judgment came into the equation. Kobe was a strong charismatic personality, used to getting what he wanted or needed. He owned or leased the helicopter and frequently used it to commute to Staples Center and other locations in the LA Basin. The youth basketball game Gianna’s team was scheduled to play was in Thousand Oaks 82 miles from his home in Newport Beach (2hrs and 45 min by car according to Google Maps), but normally less than an hour by helicopter.

It’s difficult to reconstruct the conversations and decisions that took place when Ara Zobayan, the pilot, and Kobe conferred on the tarmac at Orange County Airport, but several possibilities present themselves:

Captain Zobayan could have briefed Kobe on the weather and advised him to cancel the trip. (safest alternative)
He could have suggested they takeoff and make a decision enroute, hoping the weather would clear before they had to turn back. This could be risky, because they might get boxed in if the clouds and fog remained and turning around in mountainous terrain and low visibility is dangerous. (but still a legitimate alternative)
He might have suggested they file an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan but in this instance, even though the helicopter was instrument capable and the pilot instrument qualified – the FAA had not certified this company to fly its helicopters IFR. (FAA violation)
He could have assured Kobe that this weather was not unusual in the LA Basin and they should proceed normally (overconfident)
Captain Zobayan, an employee, probably felt pressure to do what the boss wanted. (normal)
Kobe might have told his pilot that his daughter and her friends would be disappointed if they had to cancel and couldn’t play. (emotional)
Kobe might have pointed out that the team would have to cancel without the three girls. (guilty)
Kobe might have felt responsible for getting the other families to the game. After all, he had invited them to fly with him. (responsible)
Kobe might have consulted with the other families about proceeding and asked them to help with the decision. (possible)

We don’t know what the interactions were between Kobe and his pilot, but I know what pressure feels like under similar circumstances. As a Pan Am co-pilot, I remember a cargo flight from Guam to San Francisco where the preflight paperwork showed the aircraft weight and balance outside of normal limits. The other three cockpit crew members were anxious to get home. They were willing to take the aircraft despite the calculations. I objected and the flight was rerouted through Honolulu which meant we had to layover in HNL and our return to SFO would be delayed by a day. On the flight to HNL I was shunned by the other three who refused to talk to me – in spite of the fact that there had been three fatal pilot error accidents by SFO crews in recent years. Decisions are sometimes made for personal reasons that conflict with good judgment. Often there is no harm, but in this case nine lives were lost.

Kobe’s helicopter had dual controls and could accommodate a second pilot. Under the circumstances a second pilot might have prevented the accident. Four eyes are better than two, but though a second set of eyes might have helped, flying IFR violated the company’s certification. This S-76 was not approved for instrument flight. The pilot was required to fly only in visual flight conditions… but of course we know he didn’t. He got boxed in by a lowering ceiling and hills he tried to climb over.

I’m touched by the loss of Kobe, his daughter and their friends. The accident was preventable. It shouldn’t have happened but sometimes, in the moment, because we are human we act emotionally. As a pilot I was guilty of bad judgment at times – but without serious consequences. We know Kobe was very involved with and proud of his daughter who was following his footsteps and carrying on his basketball legacy. We know he wouldn’t have done anything to harm her or their friends. But, we are all human… with needs and desires that often cloud our judgment. The same holds true for the pilot. I’m sure he was capable in ordinary circumstances and most likely capable in difficult conditions, but like my own Guam to San Francisco flight there were other considerations clouding his judgment.

Kobe was just beginning a new phase in his remarkable life. We can only hope that his family and friends will carry on his good works and legacy.

RIP Kobe et al

Categories : Aviation, Ethics, Friendship, News and Media, Uncategorized, Weather

Posted by jdbernard743

· January 24, 2020

· 2 Comments

Why We Needed Donald Trump…

When confronting difficult or unusual situations we are often advised to “think outside the box.” Jasper Johns, the iconic American painter, was thinking outside the box when he broke with tradition and painted these versions of the American flag.

Johns shook up the art world by challenging it to think differently. He was a disrupter. Sometimes art imitates life and sometimes, it seems, life imitates art. Like Jasper Johns, Donald Trump is a disrupter, the Disrupter in Chief, and the ways he has disrupted our government challenges us to think differently about it. My friends may disagree with me, but as contrarian as it sounds, Mr. Trump may be just what we needed to wake us up. From his descent on the escalator at Trump Tower and his remarks about Mexican rapists he has challenged us, begged us, to say “no more.” His presence alone is a provocation.

In just three years as the nation’s chief executive, his actions have taken us so far outside the box that we, and Congress, have stopped thinking in normal categories. We have been thrown outside the box. We need to get back in and think about what kind of America we want. In this remarkable existential moment, with the president impeached and on trial in the US Senate we, the American people, are also on trial. We can no longer dither about transgender bathrooms and kneeling during the national anthem. We have to decide what kind of country we want and who we want included in it. Will we choose Donald Trump’s America, or something more democratic and traditional?

America has never been perfect, but it has re-invented itself many times. We began as a slave nation and were “legally” segregated by race until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. America’s indigenous people were stripped of their land and forcibly relocated to make way for westward expansion. Women were not “granted” the right to vote until passage of the 19^th Amendment in 1920. We turned European Jews away when they sought refuge at the beginning of WWII and Japanese Americans, though they were US citizens, were placed in concentration camps and had their property confiscated. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee purged the nation’s university and film communities of “free thinking” communists and socialists in the 1950s. We declared war on North Vietnam on the basis of false information in the Gulf of Tonkin, and invaded Iraq on the basis of fabricated intelligence. Under President Trump immigrant children were separated from their families and held in cages.

It’s not a pretty picture, but Americans have always embraced an aspirational myth that provides an alternative to this darkness. In 1931 a historian named James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American dream” in his history, The Epic of America, and our disenfranchised, our racially and ethnically diverse, and our immigrant strivers have long held on to that dream in spite of our failures along the way. The United States has always been aspirational. Madison, Jefferson and Franklin studied the great philosophers as they drafted the founding documents, and though some were slaveholders they were also dreamers. They were conflicted. They proclaimed equality but counted their slaves as only 3/5 of a person for census purposes.

From the beginning, historians tried to nail down the American experience. Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager held sway when I was a student, but it was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States published in 1980 that deflowered the myth of the American dream and replaced it with a darker story of entrenched forces and counter movements, of oppressors and oppressed.

Zinn’s history was written in the wake of the Vietnam War when the nation was defeated and its demographics changing rapidly. That period was followed by 9/11, the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, and George W. Bush’s senseless unrelated invasion of Iraq. In spite of this folly, the global economy was humming along until the new economy’s technology-based “paradigm” collapsed and the global economy came undone in 2007. Americans were at war, losing jobs and pensions. They were looking for a silver bullet. They thought they had one when they elected their first black president, but as the economy slowly recovered racism and an uncompromising cadre of Republican Senators stonewalled the new president’s inclusionary vision for the country. There was little agreement on how to unify the American electorate and move forward. The pendulum was swinging, the ground fertile and the situation ripe for a savior.

Enter Donald Trump…

Like lovers on the rebound, and with the help of an archaic electoral system and Russian intervention, the American voters put Donald Trump in the White House in 2016. Ironically, he is the beneficiary of the financial recovery engineered by his predecessor. With the benefit of a great economy and a devoted following he’s been able to maintain weather the storm. He knows how to excite his followers and they know what kind of America they want. It isn’t the America I want.

In her one volume history, These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore writes about “the case for the nation,” in which she argues that as diverse as we are racially, ethnically, and sociologically, we can find a unified vision for the country. I hope she’s right. I’m counting on it for my children and grandchildren. The alternative, the Donald Trump vision, is too dark to contemplate. We the People… are optimistic, aspirational, generous, and tolerant, but our vision will not prevail unless we find a candidate who can unify us and work with us to bring it about.

I know it’s contrarian, but I’m not surprised Donald Trump was elected. He may be just what we needed to shock us into rethinking our priorities. He has shown me that his vision of and for America is one I don’t recognize or accept. We can do better. That, with all due respect to Jasper Johns, is how I think about it from inside the box.

Categories : Art, Books, Ethics, News and Media, Politics, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· January 19, 2020

· 1 Comment

Our Existential Moment…

As a college undergraduate I was enamored of Existentialism, that most romantic and nihilistic of French philosophies. I wore black turtleneck sweaters, smoked Lucky Strikes, and channeled Albert Camus, but my senior thesis, a derivative sophomoric critique of Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, drew a disappointing response from Louise Gould, my tiny, intense, chain-smoking, comparative literature advisor.

Professor Gould was absolutely right, and I still blush when I think of it. She was simply pointing out that quoting established critics is not the same as rigorous analysis based on personal research. My thesis did not reflect the critical thinking skills required and expected of a college senior.

That painful memory came back today as I thought about a different kind of existentialism. In aviation the point of no return is the point along the planned flight path beyond which an aircraft will no longer be capable of returning to the airfield of origin or a chosen alternate. Today’s existentialism is not an exercise in academic philosophy. It is not romantic though it may be nihilistic. Today’s existential moment turns on whether America is at or near its point of no return. If we can’t return to our base, what does our future look like? Where will our current course take us?

Several friends have asked me to leave the politics of Donald Trump outside these margins, and I understand how they feel. I’d rather not write about him but find it impossible to write about the country without commenting on current affairs. But, this existential moment is not about Donald Trump. He is a symptom of something bigger and more perilous – the collective lack of consensus, will, and imagination that has taken us, in less than 60 years, from being the most successful nation on earth to one that is a polarized, rundown, dysfunctional, and almost feudal in its current system of privilege and poverty.

When I write about anything, I try to find a positive note even when the subject is dark, but I find it increasingly difficult when writing about what’s happening in America today. During my short lifespan, I have seen the country rise to the pinnacle of modern nation-states and fall just as precipitously to its present status as a rudderless, degraded, and disrespected power–still feared but lacking in moral authority. We are no longer the admired and trusted leader of the free world. The reasons are many and complicated. The solutions, if there are any, will demand discipline, cooperation, and vast amounts of money.

Reclaiming our place among elite nations will require trillions of dollars and a national commitment greater than what was needed to put Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969.

The US Treasury has been drained and needs to be replenished. Giant corporations and America’s richest individuals pay little or no tax. The richest among us are getting richer. More than half of all income growth since 1976 has ended up in the pockets of the top 1%. If we want quality services and policies to support them, we need to do a cost benefit analysis and make adjustments to the tax laws in order to raise the money needed to repair the damage caused by years of neglect and self-dealing.

If we are sincere in our desire to reclaim our place among nations we need solid, inspiring, leadership. We need to find a leader who will unify not divide us. We are better than identity politics. We are not an anti-Semitic, racist, white supremacist, or bigoted nation, but those voices will continue to be heard until there is a leader who brings Americans together and appeals to “our better angels.” I don’t see that leader yet, but I’m not giving up on finding him or her.

I’m positive a leader will emerge, but we can’t wait for inspiration. We must get to work now. America is literally coming apart at the seams. Think, if you will, about how these items have been degraded in your lifetime:

Climate change: This is our biggest challenge. Time is of the essence. We are the only developed nation not a signatory to the Paris Climate Accords. As the world’s #2 contributor to greenhouse gas emissions we must rejoin the 175 signatories, reduce our emissions, and seek other solutions to remedy the situation. This is a survival problem.
Infrastructure: America’s roads, bridges, rail lines, and airports are falling apart and need repair.
Education: Early childhood, elementary and secondary education, vocational training, teacher salaries, and school infrastructure need to be improved.
Healthcare: We spend more per capita than any other nation but rank 32^nd in terms of healthcare outcomes.
Immigration: Immigration reform is Congress’ responsibility. Properly drafted it can be humane and enhance national productivity. It is not an insoluble problem but it requires men and women of good will coming together to craft a policy that best serves the country.
Gun ownership: the 2^nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, but there are more than 300,000,000 guns on the streets and in the homes of Americans. We can and need to regulate the purchase, ownership, and categories of firearms in order to reduce the number of gun related deaths and mass shootings.

It’s not a giant leap to find a metaphor for America’s situation in my long-ago love affair with Camus “existentialism.” Camus used the Greek legend of Sisyphus as a metaphor for the individual’s struggle against the absurdity of life. Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again once he gets it to the top.

Today, we are at the bottom of the hill. If we gather together to push the boulder up the hill we may regain our former status. If we get there the boulder may roll down again. Life and governments move in cycles. Maybe Sisyphus is a metaphor for our cyclical lives. It’s possible we are not yet at the point of no return.

Camus acknowledged the absurdity of the situation but saw Sisyphus as the master of his own life. Perhaps that’s how we should see our situation. We can’t predict the outcome but it seems better to be the master than the slave, to make the effort rather than allow darker forces to divide us.

“I leave Sisyphus at the bottom of the mountain! His burden is always there. But Sisyphus teaches the higher loyalty which denies the gods and moves boulders. It is his judgment also that all is well. This universe, henceforth without master, appears neither sterile nor futile to him. Every grain of this stone, every glistening mineral of this night-filled mountain forms a world for him alone. The struggle itself toward the summit is enough to fill the heart of a man. We must imagine Sisyphus as happy.”

Jill Lepore in her book This America notes that “The United States began, not as a nation but as a confederation of thirteen states and before that a collection of colonies. The land had for tens of thousands of years been inhabited by people originally from Asia. It had been seized conquered and settled by people from Europe who brought with them people from Africa held in bondage. The thirteen colonies they established had little in common, so little that in 1775 John Adams remarked that they differed ‘almost as much as several distinct nations.’ The devising of an American ‘nation’ out of that past is pushing a cart uphill.” Definitely a Sisyphean challenge.

Categories : Books, Ethics, News and Media, Personal/Family, Politics, Uncategorized