JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 5, 2017

The Self-Sovereign and Politics

I’m so sorry that Saul Bellow is dead. The 1976 Nobel Prize winning author of Herzog and Henderson the Rain King would have been the perfect writer for Trump: The Novel. Cited at the Nobel ceremony for his “human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture,” he might have used the 45^th President’s antics to give us another great picaresque novel.

After all, Bellow’s protagonist, Moses E. Herzog, is a lot like Donald J. Trump. Unhinged and lonely, he tries to connect with and make sense of the world by writing letters to anyone and everyone. If the novel had been written in 2016, Herzog would have Tweeted. It’s much simpler and easier. 140 characters. No stamps. No trips to the Post Office.

I have the first scene of Trump: The Novel etched clearly in my mind:

It’s 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. The White House is quiet. Melania, the fairy princess, is 226 miles to the north in The Tower. Ivanka and Jared departed the White House just before sunset to observe Shabbat at their DC pied-‘a-terre.

Donald has been up since 3 a.m. The Secret Service is on alert. He’s roaming the empty halls with his unsecured Android at the ready, and contrary to what Sean Spicer reported, he does have a bathrobe – and he’s wearing it. It’s a blue velour job with the bogus, Trump coat-of-arms covering the entire breast pocket. The hair net he wears to bed is carefully stowed in the bedside table.

As he wanders the hallways of “the residence,” he checks and rechecks the television monitors. Is Fox and Friends Weekend reporting anything important or salacious he can Tweet about. His Twitter finger is itchy and the normal gatekeepers, Ivanka and Jared, aren’t around to monitor his output. He loves Saturday. It can be lonely and boring, but he’s liberated from oversight and free to Tweet. The kids just don’t understand. They’re looking over his shoulder Monday through Friday. They’re suffocating him when they’re around, but this is Saturday – his day to roam freely.

It’s tempting to go on, but the fantasy novel is too close to reality. Saturday Night Live does it better, but even they stretch to satirize. Real life is interfering with late night comedy.

_____

My cousin, Russ, is an executive coach. He’s been working with the 777 leadership group at Boeing, helping them create effective teams and communication skills. In response to my last blog post, he sent me his analysis of DJT based on Jean Piaget’s work and follow up research done on adult mental development.

Piaget

Russ’ assessment is that Trump “is still operating at a pre-adolescent form of mind called ‘self-sovereign.’ The self-sovereign sees others as tools and extensions of his own ego. Others are there to be manipulated, not treated as individuals with their own wants, needs, and points of view.” The self-sovereign is a case of arrested development. Trump, by this analysis, lacks the ability to think at a level sufficient to the challenges of the presidency and at age 70 his prospect for further development is slim… especially under the stress conditions of his role.

I think Russ is correct and it’s alarming. Trump is such an easy target, a soft, flabby one for liberal democrats (small “d”), but he is a scary cog in the worldwide tectonic shift toward autocracy. The question, perhaps raised seriously for the first time since the early days of the republic, is can our institutions withstand this assault on its democratic underpinnings. Will it survive Steve Bannon and the anti-globalists. Will it endure or cave under pressure to reorganize and realign with a new world order?

Words matter, and some, like “liberal” and “conservative” raise hackles from those who assign pejorative connotations to the one they don’t align with. But, at the risk of raising hackles it’s worth noting that there is a difference between “liberal democracy” and “democracy.” Russia, Hungary, and Turkey are “democracies.” They have “popularly” elected leaders, elected legislative bodies, and are ostensibly ruled by a set of laws. But, they’re hollow democratic shells that don’t tolerate dissent or opposition political parties.

The Road Ahead

Ironically, as recently as 1991 the Deputy Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, Francis Fukuyama, wrote that “a true global culture has emerged centering around technologically driven economic growth and the capitalist social relations necessary to produce and sustain it.” Fukuyama envisioned a positive direction to its then current history, demonstrated by the collapse of authoritarian regimes of right and left and their replacement (in many but not all cases) by liberal governments. He saw global movement in a positive direction. (See Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, reissue edition 2006)

He was dead wrong. He was encouraged by the demise of the Soviet empire and changes in the Chinese economic system, but the vacuum created by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet state is now filled with anti-globalists. Putin in Russia. Orban in Hungary. Erdogan in Turkey. El-Sisi in Egypt and strong autocratic, anti-globalist, movements in France (Marine Le Pen), Netherlands (Geert Wilders), and Angela Merkel’s challengers in Germany.

Arnold Toynbee, in his seminal Study of History cautioned that historians should be “chary of forecasting the outcome of the Western civilization’s latter-day attempts to devour its contemporaries.” Fukuyama should have paid more attention to Toynbee.

What to make of Donald Trump? Is he a tool? Is he Steve Bannon’s dupe? Did he think he was running for student body president only to wake up on November 9, 2016 to find himself the most powerful person in the world? All of the above may be true. I just know that he isn’t up to the job, and like the drift toward autocracy it doesn’t bode well for real democrats – Americans on both sides of the divide that believe in good faith, respect for institutions, a belief in civic participation, tolerance, and the rule of law. This fight isn’t about policy differences; it’s about character, republican ideals, and human dignity.

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Categories : Books, Personal/Family, Politics, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 31, 2017

· 3 Comments

Critical Thinking and Politics

Like many Americans I am struggling with how to think about politics in the Age of Trump. I know my own mind – the policies I favor and the personalities I respect – but I’m bewildered by the otherness of the whole situation, the new president, his cabinet, and most of all the American electorate.

Is this, as many have said, categorically different than the political landscape of the past 241 years? Are we going from a proscenium stage to guerrilla street theater? Maybe that’s not the right metaphor. Is this war? Is this a game? Is this reality television? How can we best frame what’s happening to our body politic in the Age of Trump.

I like to keep it simple – not simplistic – but simple, and when I think about politics in America today. I’m convinced the problem, and the answer, can be boiled down to something as simple as basic education.

Eighteen years ago when I got involved with policy at Seattle Public Schools, I told M that “knowledge” was going to be less important in the future than knowing where to get it. Critical thinking has always been the goal of education, but things changed with the advent of the information age. I told her that it would no longer be possible to get by with a knowledge of history, science, mathematics, and language, that the core elements of a broad based education would still be important, but education’s role in the future would be to teach students to select their sources of information, evaluate their credibility, and use that vetted information to guide them in their choices.

Marine Major General James Mattis, our new Secretary of Defense, has a personal library of more than 7,000 volumes. He is a student of history. He has been in combat. He has led men in battle. He is quiet, informed, and well spoken. I trust him. I don’t know if I will agree with his decisions as Secretary of Defense, but I know those decisions will be reasoned and in accordance with a considered world view.

Donald J. Trump does not read, and his ability to explain what he means is limited by a small adjective-heavy vocabulary. He has difficulty expressing himself in words. His favorites are “tremendous,” “huge,” “disastrous,” “very, very good,” and “incredible.” He watches television and has made it clear that cable news, Fox News in particular, is a credible, reliable source of information on which to base his decisions as Commander in Chief.

This is crazy. With all the resources and expertise of the government at his disposal, the 45^th President of the United States uses a cable news outlet as his go-to source for information. Based on my assessment of his critical thinking skills combined with a hair trigger for impulsive behavior, I don’t trust him to make good decisions for me or the country. Mattis, yes. Trump no. I’m using Mattis and Trump as surrogates (America’s favorite new word) to make a larger point about what’s happened to our political and electoral process.

____

Here’s the problem: a large segment of our electorate, on both the right and left, have lost the ability to evaluate the credibility of their sources and make decisions based on rational, evidence-based material. Scientists are guided by their research, data, and the evidence it produces. Why is that not the standard in the murky world of politics?

In days of yore, pre-Internet, pre-cable news, pre-demise of local newspapers, the majority of the electorate got its news from a few primary sources – broadcast television and radio news (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR), daily newspapers, Time, Newsweek, and some vetted political magazines like National Review and Weekly Standard (conservative) or The Nation and New York Review of Books (liberal).

We all read pretty much the same sources and found support for our positions somewhere within the boundaries of the established norms of those sources. The political parties had core differences – small government and lower taxes (GOP) vs. big government and share the wealth programs (Dems). That paradigm has passed away in the information age.

Now, political rhetoric frames our condition in apocalyptic terms; “the end of the American experiment,” “the demise of Madisonian democracy,” “deconstruct the administrative state,” “lock her up,” “build a wall,” “in bed with the Russians,” “Putin’s stooge,” “rid the country of radical Islamic terrorists,” etc.

Immigrants are not the problem. Fear of immigrants might be. Fake news is not news you disagree with; it’s a manufactured lie that’s disseminated as the truth. Turning back the clock on energy policy will not bring back coal mining jobs but education probably will create opportunities for new jobs.

There is room for disagreement over facts. We might disagree about when the world will become uninhabitable because of greenhouse gases, but when 97% of all scientists agree that it will happen if we don’t do something, the facts are not in dispute. Johan Norberg, in his book Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, challenges us to review the evidence of positive change with an open mind and adopt a more optimistic, less apocalyptic, viewpoint.

Though Norberg is a Swedish journalist, my conservative friends can rest easy in knowing he is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank founded by the Koch brothers. In Progress, he urges us to moderate our fears, temper our hysteria, and acknowledge the monumental accomplishments that have made this a better world in the last 100 years.

Step by step, in 10 data-packed chapters, Norberg shows us how much improvement has been made in Food, Sanitation, Life Expectancy, Poverty, Violence, Environment, Literacy, Freedom, and Equality in the past 100 years. The evidence is impressive. We all agree that America can be better, but we don’t need draconian measures to “Make America Great Again.” America is great. If we all get out of our silos and read broadly across the “credible” spectrum of information sources, we can see that and we will all make better choices – liberal, conservative, or libertarian – in the future.

My friend, Deryl, abhors the “nanny state.” I’ve told him I think the nanny state is a myth; Americans are hardworking, more than all the other developed democracies in the world. Look at the productivity numbers (fact). Look at the number of hours worked (fact). We work our asses off but get less vacation time (fact), maternity leave (fact), family time (fact), and sick leave (fact) than any other developed country. I don’t see these productivity numbers as all positive but the numbers tell us the facts. And, yes, there are those among us who need help, but we have the resources to help them if needed. It makes all of us better when we lend a hand to those in need. If there is such a thing as a nanny state it’s the one that allows the rich to get richer while the poor among us struggle to pay for food, shelter, and healthcare.

When only 51% of the eligible voters show up to elect our president, we get a president elected by only 25% of the people. We deserve better than someone who only has the support of a quarter of its citizens.

Read the paper. Talk to your friends. Argue with those who disagree with you. Watch Fox News and CNN. Walk a picket line. Attend a protest march. Write your congressman or congesswoman. Challenge yourself to be an informed person. M and I gave our kids subscriptions to the Sunday New York Times for Christmas. They were getting their news online. It’s not the same. It’s important to see all the news – politics, sports, arts, financial – if you want to be an informed citizen. Trust traditional vetted sources – right or left.

As Nike says: Just Do It.

We deserve better than to be led by someone who doesn’t read and trusts Fox News more than his own CIA or FBI experts.

Categories : Books, Film/Television, Friendship, Personal/Family, Politics, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 21, 2017

· 4 Comments

Friendship and Politics

Political conversations can be tricky, and even trickier when friendships are involved and tested. This seems a particularly tricky time as the Trump administration takes office and moves to implement its agenda. As this completely new kind of political force takes over, friendships are straining, families are quarreling and the country’s divisions are hardening.

I’m as partisan as the next guy, maybe more, and last week an old friend called me out when I posted a snarky anti-Trump picture and caption on Facebook. His exact words were, “Hey Jack, you’ve forgotten what the former president (Barack Obama) said… ‘Elections have consequences.’ You lost. I won. Get over it.”

He was right… not about getting over it, I don’t think I will, but about elections having consequences. He also narrowed my attention and helped me think more clearly about civil discourse when it comes to friendship and politics.

After his “get over it” rebuff, he continued with, “Well, Jack, even though we haven’t seen each other for some time, I’ve always considered you a friend. We just have a few minor differences of opinion. If you ever venture south you’ve always got a place to stay. Cheers, Deryl.”

This is that Deryl. We’re exactly the same age and grew up in Seattle but went to different high schools. Later, we became military pilots, served our time, and then were hired by Pan Am. We were based in San Francisco for a few years, and during those years flew together several times. I especially remember a memorable crew layover and dinner at an outdoor bar in Tahiti. We haven’t seen each other in years, but we keep up through the Pan Am grapevine and FB.

Today, Deryl lives near the Pacific Ocean in Carmel, California and I live on Lake Washington in Seattle. The similarities would seem to outweigh the differences, but not all. How did those differences come about, I wondered? It’s a bit of a mystery to me, but there are clearly two viewpoints in play. In the spirit of civil discourse, here’s my side.

As far as background goes, I was born into a middle class white family, educated in public schools and attended two state universities. I’ve practiced law, flown commercial airplanes, owned a small restaurant, worked for a public school’s foundation, and managed an international NGO office in Saigon before taking up freelance journalism. Over the course of my life I lived and worked in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami, Salt Lake City, St. Tropez, Berlin, Saigon, and Ketchum, Idaho.

I’ve had a life full of adventure and opportunity, but here’s where my politics come into play: I doubt that anything President Donald J. Trump does in the next four to eight years will affect how I live my life, but I care about what his policies will do to the lives of millions of other Americans, immigrants, visa applicants, refugees, and low wage workers.

I believe Americans deserve better than what Donald Trump is offering.

As a small business owner with a history of cancer and neurological disease I wasn’t able to buy an individual health insurance policy for several years following the Pan Am bankruptcy. It was not until I was employed by a large NGO that I could obtain coverage. Under the Affordable Care Act I would have had access as every American should. Ryan and Trump are trying to move the clock back. I believe universal healthcare should be a right. We pay more per capita in medical costs but are the only developed nation without a comprehensive single payer system.

As a former Marine whose two sons also served in uniform, one in Afghanistan just after 9/11, I know how good our military is. I don’t believe the richest most powerful nation on the planet, needs to increase spending on its military when it already spends more than the next seven nations combined.

Neither do I believe we need to cut spending for important cultural programs like the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. These are programs that promote positive human values. We need them to give us balance in an increasingly technocratic world and send a message to the world that our strength doesn’t depend solely on the military industrial complex.

The new Trump budget proposes cuts to domestic spending though the candidate promised a trillion-dollar infrastructure program during the campaign. I agree, we need to spend money on infrastructure and education. We need those jobs, roads, and bridges. In addition, we need to ramp up training to prepare Americans for the jobs of the 21^st century. I’m just returning from a 2500-mile road trip and I can tell you our roads and bridges are in serious decay, and we are falling further behind the other developed nations in educational achievement and job training. When our own President can’t spell it’s a clear sign that the country’s education system needs improvement.

Immigration is one of the most contentious and polarizing topics of conversation. President Trump has promised to build a wall along our southern border and deport all undocumented foreigners. I’m sure a wall is feasible at enormous cost, but I doubt that it will solve the problem of undocumented immigrants. Deportation of 11 million illegal immigrants seems both impossible and unwise. Those 11 million people, undocumented and vulnerable, are the ones who currently pick our fruit and vegetables, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, sweep the halls of our office buildings and schools, change the sheets and clean the rooms in our hotels – jobs Americans don’t seem to want. I’ve spoken to many and know some of their children. Those that are working pay taxes but will never see the Social Security benefits they are paying for. I support legal immigration and agree that we need to seek a sound an fair immigration policy. My hope is that a new immigration law can be enacted that will clarify the status of those currently in the US – perhaps a work-permitted legal status with an eventual path to full citizenship – but I don’t believe in criminalizing 11 million people who came to America hoping to find a better life.

I’m not sure which of these things Deryl would agree with, maybe none. I agree with him that the party in power has the right to develop its own policies – but I disagree if it undermines the basic tenets of our democratic heritage. I have no confidence that President Trump understands those principles or has any allegiance to them. He seems singularly uninterested in policy unless it affects his popularity or enhances his self-esteem.

The levers of government are now in the hands of Steve Bannon in the executive branch, Ryan and McConnell in the legislative. So far, neither of the latter two seems concerned with the direction the executive branch is taking them. At the CPAC conference two weeks ago Bannon articulated his vision of “deconstructing the administrative state,” which sounds like code for a move toward autocracy – favoring the rich and letting the poor eat cake.

I don’t normally broadcast my patriotism although I do have a Marine Corps decal on the rear window of my Jeep Cherokee. On the other side of the same window is a UC Berkeley decal. It’s honest. It’s where I went to law school. My wife always comments on the apparent contradiction of the Marine fighter pilot/Berkeley lawyer intersection, but it seems pretty normal to me. Where’s the contradiction? Both institutions are very American.

Maybe Deryl has similar contradictions; but our political differences and the conversations that grow out of them are examples of what I think of as a good model for civil discourse. Thanks, my friend.

Categories : Aviation, Friendship, Personal/Family, Politics, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 9, 2017

· No Comments

Presidential Advisor is a Fraud…

Take a good look at this face. Remember it. Tell me if you think his history and bio would withstand the extreme vetting called for by the Trump White House.

His name is Sebastian Gorka. Born in London of Hungarian refugee parents, he was educated in London and Budapest. In Budapest he began cultivating a reputation as a counter-terrorism expert though his only military service was a three-year stint in a British Territorial Army reserve unit.

Mr. Gorka moved to Hungary in 1992 and remained there until 2007. While there he aligned himself with Viktor Orbán, the current president, who has been widely criticized for his autocratic removal of democratic checks and balances in the supervision of elections, the judiciary, and the media. While in Hungary, Mr. Gorka married Katherine Cornell, an American steel heiress known for her conservative views. During this 16 year-long tenure in Hungary he was a member of or associated with several anti-Semitic organizations (including Vitez Rend, named for the WWII Nazi-allied leader). In 2007 he was awarded a PhD. from Corvinus University in Budapest (known primarily for its agricultural curriculum and ranked 701 by topuniversities.com.)

One year later, Mr. and Mrs. Gorka moved to the US on the strength of his wife’s citizenship. He was awarded a Green Card and four years later (2012) became a naturalized American. On arrival in the US, the Gorkas associated themselves with ultra-conservative institutions while he padded his resume with a questionable online professorship at Marine Corps University. In 2014 he became National Security Editor at Breitbart News as well as a regular contributor to Fox News.

Sebastian Gorka is an Alt-Right ideologue with no experience in counter-terrorism. His bogus credentials raise serious questions related to the vetting and staffing of the national security apparatus of the White House.

But, to really understand Gorka and his role it is important to understand the rise in autocratic rule in Hungary. This is where Mr. Gorka learned his craft and honed his ideology. It is also the model for what could happen in America under Donald Trump. David Frum’s article How to Build an Autocracy in the March 2017 Atlantic details the methods and outcomes in Hungary and what Steve Bannon envisions when he talks about “deconstructing the administrative state.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872

Here’s what else you need to know about Sebastian Gorka: His official title is Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States. He is in a position to influence the most uninformed president in American history. His elevation is unprecedented especially when the Trump administration is calling for the “extreme vetting” of immigrants, visa applicants, and refugees.f

In addition to his ultra-conservative activities in the nationalist politics of Hungary, Mr. Gorka has comported himself in a questionable manner since arriving in the US. In December of 2016, notably after the Trump victory, Mr. Gorka was detained at Ronald Reagan International Airport as he tried to carry a 9mm handgun on a commercial flight. One month later was arrested on a charge of reckless driving. He was found guilty when he failed to appear in court on the charge and it was revealed that he had a prior arrest for reckless driving in 2014. So, what was the outcome? Incredulously, in February all charges related to the handgun incident were dismissed. The judge cited Gorka’s six months of good behavior for his decision to dismiss the gun charge.

Two uncontested reckless driving arrests and one attempt to carry a handgun aboard a US airliner in the past 3 years. Charges dismissed? Would another immigrant pass the “extreme vetting” procedures with this record? What about a Syrian doctor who survived the pounding of Aleppo, escaped with his family, walked through Turkey, bought passage to Lesbos on a smuggler’s unseaworthy boat, and now seeks political asylum in the US? We’re told that under the Obama protocol it would take the doctor three years to be approved for a visa. Under Trump’s flawed travel bans, he would be denied the opportunity to even apply.

The story is vintage Trump. The Breitbart connection linked Gorka to Bannon. Bannon was looking for an alt-right voice to include in the administration. Gorka had bogus but high sounding credentials and a rich conservative wife. Bingo! Charges dismissed and the gift of a promotion to Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States. Yes, that’s right, Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States.

Today, two Democratic lawmakers from New York, Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey, both Jewish, sent a letter to President Trump asking him to fire Gorka based on his history and affiliations with anti-Semitic associations. I doubt that the president will be moved. My guess is that this is the message Gorka, Bannon, and Trump will send back to the lawmakers and the American people.

Categories : Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 1, 2017

· 1 Comment

We’ll Never Get Over Slavery…

This is Stephan Blanford – Ph.D., elected member of the Seattle School Board, father, husband, co-worker, athlete, and friend. I met Stephan 11 years ago when we were working at Seattle’s Alliance for Education, a non-profit supporting Seattle Public Schools.

At the time, this handsome, dark-skinned, black male, sported thick stylish dreadlocks, a statement about who he was – a strong, independent, black man who had earned the right to be himself. My wife thought the “dreads” were beautiful but provocative and worried that they would stand in the way of his success professionally. My question to her was always would she say the same if a white friend had the same dreads?

In the day, Stephan and I frequently discussed racial issues. Addressing the racial divide, achievement gap, and racial composition of Seattle Public Schools’ were important elements of the work we were doing. One day as we were entering an elevator I was conscious that others in the uncrowded elevator moved away as we stepped in. Later, Stephan told me how common that experience was. He told me that it didn’t matter if he was in jeans, running gear, or a business suit; white people edged away from him in an elevator or just passing on the sidewalk. I’ve never forgotten the experience or his awareness of it.

I consider myself a long range optimist, nevertheless long before I knew Stephan I was convinced that America would never get over slavery. I shared that dark insight with M 15 years ago. As the beneficiary of white privilege I think about my own prejudice and bias every day, and I’ve come to believe that no matter how many times we remind ourselves, no matter how many cultural awareness seminars or sensitivity trainings we attend, no matter how outraged we become at examples of racial profiling or police brutality we, as a nation, will never get over slavery.

With an increasingly polarized America, an alarming number of black deaths at the hands of white police officers, the ascendancy of the alt-right and questionable white-supremacist, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, fake news rhetoric coming from the Trump administration I, as a patriotic ex-Marine/American, am alarmed at the direction my country is taking.

Over this past weekend, two Indian-American software engineers were shot in a Kansas bar by a zealot who cried out “Get out of my country” just before he killed one and wounded the other. During the same period Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis and Philadelphia were vandalized while, since the beginning of the year, more than 100 Jewish community centers across the country have been targeted with bomb threats.

As an older white male, I’m the beneficiary of unearned advantages; I was born white, male, and middle class in the richest, most powerful country in the world. I don’t envy white privilege because I have it. I’m not afraid I’ll be pulled over by the police because of the color of my skin. I don’t worry that my pay will be less simply because I’m a woman. I’m not afraid to pray in public, because I’m not a Muslim. I don’t think much about anti-Semitism because I don’t have a long beard or wear a yarmulke. These are some of the advantages of my unearned white privilege.

_____

Last weekend, M and I saw the James Baldwin documentary, I Am Not Your Negro where Baldwin’s words concerning the deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King make a chilling statement about the disparity between the American myth and the nation’s failure to reconcile the myth with reality. It helped me see the extent of my own privilege.

James Baldwin, for those who don’t know his work, was an American poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, and activist who, at age 24, moved to Europe to escape racism and homophobia. He returned to the US in 1957, recognized as an important literary figure. Disillusioned by the murders of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy, he returned to France in 1970 where he lived until his death in 1987.

The documentary chronicles his observations and disillusionment. In Baldwin’s own words, the filmmaker looks at the lives and deaths of three black Americans – Medgar Evers, the mild mannered field secretary of the NAACP, Malcolm X, the firebrand, success by any means, activist and MLK, the non-violent civil rights leader – three examples of distinctly different social justice approaches, Baldwin shows how all three were thwarted and ruthlessly assassinated in their quest of equality and justice.

When I was in the 3rd grade at Issac I. Stevens Elementary in Seattle, I had a black classmate named Corky White (ironic?). One day after school I took Corky home with me to play. When my father came home, he and my mother huddled in the kitchen for a while before summoning me for a “talk,” the gist of which was that I was not to invite Corky home ever again. I complied though I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now. Corky was a friend but my own parents deprived me of his friendship. I knew they were wrong and, just like standing in the elevator with Stephan, I have never forgotten what it was like to feel racism at work.

Stephan’s “dreads” are gone now. I question whether that makes him look more professional. M and I can disagree about that, but the important thing is that he’s a hard working member of the Seattle School Board and considering a run for Seattle City Council. I wish him well.

I don’t know what happened to Corky. We moved to another part of the city, and I lost contact. I really liked him. I hope he’s doing well, but it’s a good bet that he’s had a harder road than I have. I wish I knew, but right now I’m more concerned about the direction the Trump administration is taking us. I’m not an alarmist, but I am alarmed. I value the diversity of my friendships, my freedom from oppression, and my right to speak freely. It feels like all three are under siege.

I resist poking fun at DJT. He’s a soft target, but we underestimated him too often on his way to the White House. During the election cycle he was blowing hot air but had no power. Now, he has the power to affect lives, and some of his senior advisors have significantly darker visions for America. We’re in dangerous territory. It’s time to wake up, take a stand, and let our voices and votes be counted. Those of us who are unhappy with the election need to accept responsibility for the result and see that it doesn’t happen again. If only 51% of eligible voters show up at the polls we can only blame ourselves.

Categories : Art, Books, Film/Television, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure