Letter #165 to friends et familiares: Good bye, John Lewis

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
-- Abraham Lincoln 

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

John Robert Lewis never commanded my attention during his life-time. Yes, I admired what he said. But John Lewis was short, plain, quiet, and Black. My unreflective judgements never mattered to John Lewis or anybody else. 

So, who lost with such unthinking prejudice? 

Representative Lewis's pilgrimage from preaching to chickens as a toddler, to surviving Bloody Sunday in 1965, and on to triumphing in later life made an average man a great American. That greatness lay not in John Lewis alone, but in others, too.

In a fitting funeral yesterday, the nation celebrated that greatness and tasted the ingredients of John Lewis's "secret sauce":

• consideration reflexive enough to care; 
• faith tough enough to persevere; 
• humility profound enough to forgive;
• love rich enough to find the good in others; as well as,
• courage gritty enough to pursue righteousness.

Two presidents did not attend that funeral -- one frail in body, the other failed in spirit. The absence of the latter eased the bereavement, sharpened the moment, and reminded us of the peril of being small-minded. That President's absence, ironically, started our renewal.

Representative Lewis laid the foundation of that renewal by showing us that, notwithstanding the accidents of birth or measures of ability, the questions -- the big questions -- in our lives remain simple and apparent to us all.

The answers, too, are evident, if crushing. We saw, in the men and women who spoke yesterday at the funeral of John Lewis, leaders who had made mistakes, big mistakes. Bitterness, sacrifice, and imposed penance had followed those miscalculations. 

Representative Lewis's undefinable grace, an irreducible content of character, left him no alternative but to find the good, along with its possibilities, in those leaders. In that charity lay the way through those crushing answers, not for Presidents but for us. 

By John Lewis noticing the best in those leaders who spoke yesterday, they could see the best in us. Accordingly, this simple man, with his simple grace, not only reminded us of what American greatness should be, but also made most of us a little greater, too. 

Letter #164 to friends and familiares: CHINA

"We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events in Indochina. But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world . . . We can and we should help others to help themselves. But the fate of responsible men and women everywhere, in the final decision, rests in their own hands, not in ours."

-- President Gerald Ford, Tulane University, April 1975

Originally in the Sydney Morning Herald: 
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/300060332/multiple-battlefronts-as-china-takes-on-the-world

"At what point then is the approach of danger [of the collapse of the Republic] to be expected [from an outside invader]? . . .  If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

-- President Abraham Lincoln, Springfield (IL) Lyceum, 1838

B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up front): time for a great power switcheroo between the United States and China.

INTRODUCTION

This paper does not analyse the state of the contentious rivalry between the U.S. and China. The essay reviews the current American-Chinese relationship and the state of play for the United States herself, reflecting themes in the popular press. The balance of the essay suggests a new foreign policy for the United States and her allies toward China.

OVERVIEW

As a Yank, I have to say that it is time for us to admit that the American Century is over. The United States is insolvent; debt levels in all borrowing sectors imply an eight-to-fourteen year payback. To achieve re-payment in eight years, all social programmes would be zeroed out and taxes high. Being the world’s sole super-power has led to a loss of the deep reservoir of goodwill built up by American missionaries and aid societies over the first 175 years of the Republic.

ln actuality, we are ten or fifteen years into the Chinese Century. Chinese economic growth rates have been the envy of the whole world for decades. This mighty expansion has also come at a shameful cost of:

• Tiananmen Square;
• Hong Kong;
• misappropriation of technologies and industrial secrets;
• widespread repression;
• deepening corruption sustained by zombie financial institutions;
• dubious data released on national health and other statitsics;
• aggressive claims in the South China Sea;
• aggression toward a democratic neighbour (i.e., India);
• neo-colonialist development policies, etc.

Secondary sources (e.g., The Economist and Foreign Policy) have documented these draw-backs. Nonetheless, Chinese dominance and influence continues to expand, with mega-currency swaps carving out pockets of the renminbi being the store value currency with the rapidly developing nations (e.g., Brazil and Argentina). 

According to the Central Intelligence Agency, after rendering the yuan equal in purchasing power to the dollar, China’s adjusted G.D.P. is already 25% higher than that of the United States. Meanwhile, back in the States, the coronavirus contagion has brought out into bold relief the impoverishment of American middle classes over the past forty years amplified by a deepening inequality between the races. Simply said, it is time for the American Republic to:

• detach from the crushing expense of global dominance;
• reform trade policies to re-tool to the extent that comparative advantages permit;
• rebuild the educational system, especially for under-privileged children; as well as,
• reverse the declining health profile, through attrition of benefits and addiction to opioids, of the nation over the previous half-century.

FOREIGN POLICY POST-AMERICAN CENTURY

My (quixotic) recommendations for consideration in the face of the loss of American power vis à vis China? Make a virtue of necessity by high profile initiatives including, but not limited to, the following:

• hand off the global hegemon / policeman function to China, as the U.K. did to the U.S.A. in 1945;
• in contrast to the discretion exercised at Potsdam, seventy-five years ago, by British Prime Minister Attlee and Foreign Secretary Bevin, announce the hand-off publicly;
• in that announcement, openly welcome China's leadership in her century and count on her as the guarantor of peace in much the same way the U.S., the U.K., JAPAN, the E.U., Australia, SOUTH KOREA, Canada, New Zealand, TAIWAN, INDIA, South Africa, et al. have for many years;
• work quietly with these sister democracies to strengthen the W.T.O., the United Nations, U.N.E.S.C.O. et al.;
• pronounce what the U.S. and her sister democracies stand for by "appreciating" China's continuing ‘commitment’ to honour the common values in the current world order; as well as,
• scale back U.S. war-building efforts due to the country's insolvency and stake out -- with our allies -- key interests, including the South China Sea, FORMOSA, the Persian Gulf, etc.

These ideas sound cowardly to those of us used to equating American exceptionalism with military power. American exceptionalism is real and was never about the power of weapons but of ideas; that exceptionalism ceased being unique generations ago. Fellow democracies and other nations aspiring to popular governance across the world share that exceptionalism today.

RATIONALE (i.e., best-case outcome)

These ('out-there') ideas may confer upon the many nations alarmed by the excesses of Peking, consistently enumerated by the popular press, certain advantages.

1. Such a dramatic shift will force China rapidly to clarify her intentions about her role.
2. As the global cop stalking the street, China will be so bizzy that imperial aggression should become more difficult to pursue.
3. With no more bickering about who is number-one among the democracies or the degree of asserted primacy of American interests, the U.S. can get on with her business as a stalwart supporter of human rights and republican governance, along with dozens of other nations.
4. By crowning China as the 'king of the mountain', avenues of secondary attack open up easing and empowering the ability of N.A.T.O., Japan, Australia, South Korea et al. to chip away at China’s geo-political position and dissipate her power incrementally.
5. As China eventually faces collapse -- as has the U.S. after more than a generation of being a 'hyper-power' -- strengthened international institutions rather than contentious nation states will be better positioned to mend the breach.

Letter-162 to Friends et Familiares: Race in America -- ¿Reckoning & Reconciliation?

A view of Black Lives Matter by an ageing White Conservative

NOTE: all embedded links indicated by bold green-font italics.

“’Racialism’ is racism with a triple-digit I.Q.”          -- Anonymous

« Qu’est-ce-que c’est un symbole phallus encore? »
« It’s your dick, idiot!”
“Oh . . . oops.”

-- A Midwestern Republican high schooler (i.e., me) in French Literature class discussing the poetry of Aimé Césaire, October 1974

  “Of course, all lives matter. Right now, Black lives matter a bit more.”

 -- Anonymous

Update as at 04mar24: as a control for the calculation of reparations -- stated as $10.3 TRILLION (roughly $12.6 TRILLION, inflation adjusted since July 2020) below -- I applied a weighted average of current hourly wages for four occupations construction workers, farm workers, domestic servants, and tradesman to an estimated 410 billion labor hours performed by slaves from 1619 to 1861. At an estimated average wage of $18.19, that reparations figure falls to $7.8 TRILLION, some 30% lower than the estimate stated below. I stand by the higher estimate as more comprehensive through scenario-testing based upon wealth rather than wages only.

B.L.U.F. (bottom-line, up-front). the protests following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd are at an inflection point: failure through justifying violence for short-term gains versus the hard work toward success over the next two generations.

INTRODUCTION.
As I remain a conservative by nature, current reports of looting and destruction of small businesses unsettle me, deeply. “Conservative by nature” means that my politics are centre-right and, more importantly, I tend toward prudence, probabilities, contingencies, and exit ramps. The United States has already failed twice to attain a full racial reconciliation and equality by setting things right for African Americans; hopefully, this third time will be our charm.

THE CURRENT STATE of FRAY. 
We live in the midst of a full-blown Black rebellion, one that is overdue. Hispanics, many Asian Americans and Muslims, as well as, for now, sympathetic Whites support this uprising following the police murders of George Floyd, pre-meditated, in Minneapolis six weeks ago and of Breonna Taylor, reckless, in Louisville before that. Ironically, the white supremacists and the gangster régime that coddles them also spark the impetus of the Black Lives Matter (i.e., B.L.M.) movement to act.

America is not in danger of B.L.M.-inspired anarchy, or facing a Trump-instigated reign of terror. Nevertheless, for the B.L.M.-led revolution to succeed, it will need to sustain the stalwart support of at least forty per cent of American Whites. That support will need to remain steadfast not only for today or tomorrow. Not just this week, month, year or even this decade. White support will have to continue for two generations — the time required to change a culture.

WHAT the BLACK REBELLION REALLY MEANS.
First, this rebellion will not degenerate into a race war since the economic disparity fuelling this resistance involves class as much as race. Many Whites now share the same economic interests as Blacks in the B.L.M. movement. Most other Whites outside of Black Lives Matter remain sufficiently decent not to force their Black brethren into a corner thus precipitating an existential struggle for survival.

While elements of the protest display some of the street politics of traditional anarchy, this movement does not yet impress me as an enduring concoction of socialism and anarchy led by a violent vanguard to usher in an illusory peace never realised. The principal elements catalysing and sustaining the B.L.M. movement appear to be:

• autonomy assumed by more Blacks to reach a cultural and economic self-reliance for and by all African Americans;
• an energetic push for justice  for Blacks — meaning justice in fact, life, law, and system — too long deferred and, therefore, denied; as well as,
• final realisation of reparations due to the descendants of enslaved Black Americans to recover not only the value of labour stolen during 250 years of involuntary servitude, but also by 150 years systematic under-valuation of said labour.

SELF-RELIANCE.

Louis Farrakhan, the divisive leader of the Nation of Islam in the United States, the religious group known as the Black Muslims, remains a mystery to me. From what I have heard about him, the man strikes me as dangerous and prone to violence. Yet, in his long and discursive speech at “The Million Man March” a quarter of a century ago, Mr Farrakhan said one thing that has stuck with me all these years as absolutely valid: that Whites can not care enough for Blacks voluntarily to lift them into freedom in equality.

This call to self-reliance represents the long-term phase of the B.L.M. movement. Why would Moses march the Hebrews through a desert for forty long years in The Book of Shemot (a / k / a The Exodus)? To wean the newly liberated slaves from the Pharaoh’s certain but hard-earned lentils and grow into a culture of individual virtue and innovation. That required forty years, or two generations.

The long-term commitment contemplated here applies not only to Blacks and a critical mass of Whites, but also to Muslims as well as to Asian, Native and Spanish Americans. This long march of progress will be every bit as taxing and liberating for all Americans as it was for the Exodus or the Great Civil War from 1861–65 by:

• breaking the chains of an underclass, the enculturated dependency of which systematically deprives millions of Black men and women from assuming their properly ordained statures in the eyes of G-D;
• Blacks setting an example of the de-segregation of the heart and the hard work of breaking a cyclical culture of violence as defined by a scourge of Black-on-Black crime attendant to easy guns and drugs quietly condoned by too many Whites as “not our problem”; as well as, somehow,
• cultivating the renewal of the nuclear family and an emphasis on meaningfully provisioned education across African Americana.

Along with millions of other fellow Americans, I have my ideas on how the larger society should redress these systemic shortcomings of our culture and political economy. All such ideas, save one, lie beyond the scope of this essay; the one exception being that every White, beginning with me, needs to embrace these challenges as ‘our’ problem, not ‘their’ problem. Shrugging my shoulders in indifference becomes complicity with white supremacists.

These practitioners of ‘eliminationist racism’ comprise the number-one terror threat within the United States according to the F.B.I. In short, for Whites to place sole responsibility of remedial action and initiative onto Blacks is to blame the victim. More resources for programmes in place are not enough; affirmative action alone was not enough. To reach a just society requires de-segregation of the heart, or a concerted commitment of will by each and every American. To do what? Not necessarily never to feel racism, but never to act on, or give voice to, that racism when it arises within each of us.

RE-MASCULATION of BLACK MEN. 
My thinking here comes from studying the Black revolutionary poetry of Aimé Césaire in a French Literature course in high school and my later reading of The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. The take-away from these two writers is the necessity of violence for the reprise of Black male autonomy. Obviously, this kinetic road to one’s re-humanisation has its pitfalls.

Most delicate of these tensions remains the fact that many or most Americans in general, and Whites in particular, take a dim view of looting and what looks like wanton property damage and vandalism unrelated to the struggle for justice itself. There may be more latitude toward pulling down monuments or torching unoccupied police cars. These are common enough objects and replaceable, after all.

Nevertheless, busting up people’s shops and ruining their livelihoods, though almost certainly less frequent than anti-B.L.M. partisans assert, does not play well in the suburbs quickly wearing down the formidable and sustained level of commitment required of Whites (i.e., 40% for two generations). More Whites may acquiesce to looking the other way on police violence against Blacks in the face of such gratuitous violence, thus undermining the painful process of racial reparations and national conciliation.

In another respect, however, limited and highly visible destruction can catalyse the Black rebellion to sustain radical change and impress the message of that rebellion upon Whites. As Lawrence of Arabia noted that, for people in revolutionary ferment, looting often is less about opportunistic plunder and more an agitprop to confirm and inspire the bottom-up repudiation of a corrupted, unjust régime.

And, American Blacks have suffered long and hard under an unjust order. The question now arises, from my conservative world-view, of when to stop the current violence; indeed, anecdotally, the violence appears to be abating and its extent is overplayed. That is: ¿how close is the current street crime to the invisible line before it flashes red to less sympathetic Whites? Put simply: ¿when is enough, enough?

The brittle balance required to maintain the pro-B.L.M. coalition prescribes a switching point from violent to non-violent resistance. For me, at least, the protestors are fast approaching that limit. Now would be the ideal time for many repeats of what occurred in Louisville when protestors protected a policeman surrounded by a volatile mob.

B.L.M. participants may not be able to prevent looting or vandalism, but they can photograph or film the people leading it and report the looting to police. As the police arrive to the area B.L.M. coordinators then open a lane of approach for the police through the protestors. Above all, the great majority of protestors must practice zero-tolerance for the taking of any life, including those of policemen. Coöperation with police will more likely consolidate the necessary support among Whites of goodwill.

In the meantime, law enforcement needs to stop battering reporters and other innocents. Instead, police and crime detection professionals should investigate who is actually committing these crimes. Descriptions of recent ‘Anti-fa terrorists’ depict people whose behaviours correspond more closely with those of white supremacists (i.e., the number-one domestic source of terror per F.B.I. Director Wray).

THE CHALLENGE of REPARATIONS. 
If one is oblivious to history, as I was for many years when I was complaisant with my own racism, (s)he will likely dismiss the whole notion of Black reparations as reverse discrimination conferred upon Blacks for doing nothing. This dismissal is at best false and most likely racist. Reparations seek to restore to the descendants of slaves the value of the labour looted from their ancestors during 250 years of involuntary servitude.

In fact, additional largesse may well be in order to recover the amount of labour not fairly compensated during days of debtor prisons, share-cropping, Jim Crow laws, segregation, and a near-universal discrimination against African Americans. While affirmative action and civil rights laws have addressed these issues, segregation remains deeply entrenched; moreover, since 2013, numerous states have been undermining voting rights for Blacks and voting-age students, two core segments of B.L.M. and, coincidentally, segments of the population not known for an affinity toward the Republican Party as it now stands.

President Grant tried to monetise reparations for slaves in the 1870s but failed. A hundred years later, President Johnson made as strong an effort as President Grant had with the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act as well as programmes including Model Cities and Affirmative Action. The current round of demands for reparations indicates that, fifty years later, one can see that the Great Society has also failed. Both efforts tried hard enough, but not long enough.

Reparations calculations vary widely due to the sensitivities of assumptions and values assigned to parameters. The redemption value of Dr King’s defaulted promissory note ranges from $500 billion to four trillion dollars on the lower end all the way up to fourteen trillion dollars on the higher end; values seem to settle in the $10–12 TRILLION range. My particular calculations integrate the following five scenarioes into a composite reparations bill of $10,865,616,290,109:

1. best case based on full and fair value of labour starting with the boom after the Civil War;
2. worst case of permanently depressed agricultural economies but full and fair employment;
3. the odious price of each slave in 1860 restated in today’s dollars;
4. the historical valuation of forty acres and a mule in 1869 re-stated in today’s dollars; as well as, 
5. earnings power from an up-dated version of forty acres and a mule (e.g., small tractor).

There is the question of costs of affirmative action of $590+ billion and cumulative losses from race riots, conservatively estimated at $10 billion by assuming a $2 billion worst case for the George Floyd protests. These total, conservatively, $600,394,566,141. Deducted from the gross bill of reparations, the net payable due to Blacks is $10,265,221,723,968.

CONCLUSION.
Victor Hugo observed that nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. To realise that idea in the case of Black Lives Matter, however, one must recall and heed Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louis Farrakhan that envy is ignorance, imitation suicide. These thoughts delineate the opportunity and dilemma facing the Black Lives Matter movement.

Indeed, realisation through beneficial use of the $10.3 TRILLION net reparations bill, if collected, rests on profound changes with the hearts of Blacks and Whites alike:

• switching to non-violent resistance as exemplary citizens;
• restoring the full and just esteem of Black men and Black families;
• educational opportunities for Black children renewed; and,
• the final strides toward freedom taken by Whites intent upon, and with a steadfast patience toward, a new and better America.