Letter #70: on the road in México

The only criticism that sticks is self-criticism.  Not that criticism from others does not matter; it often does.  Nevertheless, one has to open himself to at least the possibility of that external criticism’s validity.  At that point, the mere ‘mulling over’ of the criticism, if short of outright admission, appropriates it into one’s conscience.  Then the salutary effect of self-criticism begins its drill.  A colleague of mine chastised me recently for having no sense of Mexican culture.

Now, my personality is one sensitive to slights with a propensity to fights.  That leaves little room for an open mind, unless that person who makes that criticism does something to prove his character (i.e., something beneficial to me that shows the ability of the other to rise above a contest of wills).  No need for details here as it became clear, on even cursory examination, that my colleague was on-the-mark.  Her good-will not only displayed her enlightenment, it inspired a little more in me.

Hopefully, and God-willing (given my lazy ass), I will take better advantage of what Mexico has to offer in the time remaining to me here.  This week-end, I got off to a marvelous start.  There are seven volunteers in my class whom I have admired greatly.  They really are worth my emulation, not of behavior (for that is Emersonian suicide), but of refinement, conscience and vision.  I had wanted to visit all seven. 

This week-end, I visited numbers four and five in Puebla.  The two out west I will never get to, and what regret I have for rationalizing my leaden posterior.  To be sure, they were quite open and even suggestive of a week-end visit.  Simply said, I lost an opportunity of a life-time; perhaps not a critical opportunity, but one that shall not come my way again.  The bus ride from Puebla is four hours long, often a deterrent in itself.  The week-end was charmed right from the bus ride.

It is two weeks since Día de Muertos here in México.  It is, as I wrote recently, a holy day not to be summarily dismissed as a pleasant uniqueness worth chatting about when discussing Frida Kahlo or the symbology of the Grateful Dead to prove my sophistication (even though I am thirty years late in these inferences).  It goes far deeper than my worldly images within, and the other-worldly images around, me that are made all the more so by a profusion of colors lighting up scattered skulls.  Well, that haunting image of the verdancy and verity of death in our everyday life did not happen on the bus ride.

What did happen is that the sun set, not in the opalescent sky of Fitzgerald (which I have yet to see on any of the five continents in which I have travelled).  The sky was cloudy, hinting of a rain yet but never to come.  It was melancholy, to which I am more accustomed as it splits the middle of the Mexican life-and-death paradox.  The colors blended various shades of sulfur and grey into a sublime, subdued majesty.  I was listening to music that was heavy 'moog' but not heavy 'boge' (for once); it, too, had a certain sweet sadness. 

The skyline, sinking into night and losing itself on the high peaks of the central highlands, swished by, displaying the silhouettes of the squat trees of Mexico atop some hill, with slopes of nopales (cactuses that look like a Kalderesque agglomeration of green, prickly basset hound ears), emptying into harvested fields, that looked wasted by drought, with the refuse swept into witches’ broom bottoms.  It was not hard to get that there was something silently extraordinary about this random collision of sight and sound.  I had last seen it more than thirty years before driving in the early winter back to Washington after a week-end in Pittsburgh with parents who loved me so. 

The trees, in the grey, almost nocturnal, February sky, bereft of life as they had been for months, still reached into high, whispering something I could not quite hear.  In truth, I felt it first shortly after arriving to high school, when I crept desperately alone into the least popular place on campus (i.e., the chapel) to read and later sing privately, hymn 507 (1940 Hymnal).  Ten years later – after the death of my erstwhile sweet-heart, the suicide of two close friends and many opportunities already forfeited – I had decided that life goes on and it was time to fill in and pave over the piss-puddle and move on.  That felt like the right thing to do.

Only now, thirty years after making that decision, on a bus in the middle of Mexico, was I willing to open that door again; or, more properly said, was I given the chance to open that door again.  This time, I had some reference of time and a preference of place.  Mexico’s forever mystical culture girded me on that bus.  Beyond, the simple matter of my own mortality, I began to feel a deeper presence of God, one that I had not felt for thirty years, save for the death of my parents, my uncle and my brother-in-law’s father.  Those came out of necessity of blood-ties severed and the departure of a great man whom I’d like to be. 

It was also fitting because I was on that bus out of a choice to visit two of the best Peace Corps volunteers, both bird watchers (explanation forthcoming in the next essay).  As I listened to that synthetic melancholy paired with the sublime sadness of the dying horizon, I realized that paving over the cesspool perhaps had not been meet and right so to do.  Nonetheless, I could not – and still can not – imagine what would happen were I surrender my life to wandering between slices of the past ricocheting through my future while standing arrested in the present, undoing, enveloped by the chaos so truly at the core of our universe.  Life is better left to others to figure out. 

That Mexican culture of death in life brings to focus the strength of her mysticism: the necessity of focusing on fun today, on children today, on celebrating the quiet ascendancy of indigenous beliefs to bring Catholicism back to life.  There is a humility in this alien culture that may defeat its becoming another Silicon Valley of innovation, as I so often argue, as this country's destiny.  Yet that grand vision, as well and intellectually argued it may or may not be, implies that Silicon Valley is something to which all BRICS and TMIMBIs alike ought properly to aspire to.  Mexican culture, often so backward to my untrained and culturally vacuous eye, offers so much more. 

In actuality, I still do not know what that 'more' is, but I keep trying to find out, one day at a time.  Truth is, I will know that gold standard when first I see its gleam.  Hopefully, I will get more into the deep-water swing of things Mexican to pass along better information.

Letter-68: another ridiculous exercise in self-importance

Now that the election is thankfully over, I have a confession to make before I return to normal. After watching, from afar, the performance of President Obama during Hurricane Sandy, I have come to believe that I would have voted for him, changing over from voting for Governor Romney on election day. As it is, I was content with my third-party vote because I sense that many of the things percolating through these ‘fringe’ elements today will be the mainstay of our discourse tomorrow. And we need fresh discourse.

There are other reasons, besides being a Pisces, why I would have so brazenly undecided my way into the Democrats. (Get a clue, Ned, no one cares.) As a conservative and as a Republican, two elements of this election were offensive to me. And they came from my own party. First, I cannot recall an election in my lifetime, at least one that I followed, where an anti-democratic élite tried so brazenly to finance an outcome. It made me shudder.

This second ‘doozie’ may have occurred at some other time and I was simply too out-to-lunch to get it. Nevertheless, I found the concerted effort to intimidate and disenfranchise minorities to be, well, disgusting. It was something beneath the dignity of our people. What perhaps frightened me the most was how quickly I acclimated myself to this racism.

For example, in the third debate (during the one intemperate moment that I recall the President displaying through months of grueling work and astounding pressure), I found myself thinking, “Well aren’t you uppity?” Trust me when I say that, had Vice President Biden or Governor Romney or Representative Ryan said the same, I might have been irate but not thinking he was uppity. Strange thing is that I do not recall feeling that ever in 2008.

Race was an issue, at least for me, I regret to admit.

Since his election the first time, President Obama has impressed me as among the best America can produce. His policies? Way, way different story. You all know well that I am unsure of many things and often insecure these days. Yet President Obama – unimaginative and dangerous as some of his policies are – remains one of the finest people we have elected to the Presidency.

As I said to a Peace Corp bud, President Obama – from my Republican view – is a great, great man with terrible policies. Unfortunately, though I felt sorry for the savagery of political attacks against him since many seemed to be based on his being very wealthy, Governor Romney lost my vote for certain things he said or did that led me question his fitness for the oval office.

First and by far foremost, he politicized the Libya murders and the protests in Cairo from Day-1. Governor Romney and Representative Ryan showed two unsavory elements of their personalities. Namely, these guys were willing to say anything or disregard the grievous loss of anybody to get elected. They vastly under-estimated the common sense of the people they had asked to vote for them. Most Americans instinctively knew that, frustrating and outrageous as this terror attack was, it was unfair to blame the president for it.

Second, both Governor Romney and Representative Ryan never answered questions transparently asked on how they could balance the budget and cut tax-rates when eliminated deductions could not close the budget-breach likely to ensue. To re-name that old rock song from the Chicago Transit Authority (‘25 or 6 to 4’), this was 59 or five to zero.

Third, Governor Romney’s incessant opposition to defense cuts under sequestration and to ObamaCare indicated to me that he would rather sustain an over-extended military force on a war-time procurement footing than strive to secure the right to at least minimal health care. The latter is a thorny question and I dislike health-care reform as it currently stands because I do not think we can afford it. Nevertheless, when intelligent analysis demonstrates that the mandatory defense cuts under sequestration amount to levels seen in past post-war demobilizations, this rhetoric displays a deeply ingrained preference of guns over butter.

http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2012/08/analysis-of-the-fy2013-defense-budget-and-sequestration/  

So, much as I prefer not to see Republicans lose, there are reasons why I am happy with the vote a week ago for proving, at least for now, the following precarious principles:

1. An election can not be bought.
2. Poor voters can not be disenfranchised or intimidated.
3. Fear and anger need not dominate the national discourse.
4. A political party can not undermine a President and get away with it..

We do not need to attack Iran or anybody else.
I am sure I will have my problems with the President over the next four years (like anybody really cares) but these things I have mentioned were attacks on values that mean a lot to me. The Republicans are defending other important values, as I have written. Sadly, I was so focussed on finding things wrong with President Obama that I overlooked equally corrosive, if not more subversive, thinking from my side.

Día de Muertos; Night and day

Well, I have voted for Governor Gary Johnson and the Libertarians while President Obama is headed toward re-election by six to twelve percentage points; that is to say that I am done with politics for now. To be sure, if I were given a dinner to dine with the President, I would step back and let Representative Ron Paul to take my place and talk some sense to a good man about why the Constitution matters. Representative Paul is brave enough to say what needs to be said, and the President is big enough to listen.

In any case, other parts of life are important besides politics. One of those is sometimes cluing into the Mexican culture. November the 2nd is the day to do it. El Día de Muertos is an important holiday, likely the second or third most important of the festival calendar that Mexico follows. In Mexico, you see, it is about process, about the journey. In some ways this idea may reach back not only to Spain but to the Muslim influence of a wandering worship, never quite settled anywhere.

Halloween is the closest day – both in spirit and in imagination – that we Americans have got to Día de Muertos. And it is not so close. For most of us up North, Halloween is that one night when otherwise demure women dress in tight-fitting witch’s outfits. For this one night, at least, these women get to flout everything that keeps them proper. The men are no better, running around in tights trying to entice the witches in rhe same way they already find themselves seduced.

With this frame of reference, I assumed that my Mexican counterparts, far more elaborate with the make-up, were after something else than the chill of an autumn’s breath that so often brought the moistened lips together, together enough to cover up the moon the for others in the back-seat. All this is to say, I qualify as an unashamed cultural dunderhead, becoming curious as to what the Mexicans actually do with all of this ‘dead’ stuff anyway.

So what do dunderheads do on the afternoon of this obviously important day? They go out to check out the Día de Muertos to find where their alienated minds can dissolve, at least momentarily, into the muffled, rumbling energy of the trickling crowd. This they cannot do alone as foreigners, since such heavy-tipping guttural beings would not last in the activities, extended beyond normal times through soft gaits and averted eyes. So they get a guide, usually a local friend, who understands dead people.

At the suggestion of a dear and dearly Mexican friend, I went into Querétaro this evening. This city, where I serve in the Peace Corps, is steeped in history; over-packed with legend; teeming with old-looking churches that create a sense of proper Catholic gloom. As I approached the chore, I recalled some forgotten elements of the past to right-size this mysterious dimension that remains so very confusing to me.

Years ago, I went to a Halloween Party where the men were dressed for success and women to excess. Before going to what I suspected might just be a wild party, I pulled down from the book-shelf a heavily hi-lited and disgustingly dog-eared Golden Bough by Malcolm Fraser (I think his name was) and tried to track down the family roots of Halloween. As usual, the day or night had been a pagan ritual in Europe, complete with bonfires, which the Roman Church had integrated into its body of belief. I read on. The witch’s and ugly monster costumes were worn to scare off the real witches, goblins and evil spirits.

In other parts of Europe, others dressed up in the clothes reminiscent of certain dearly departed relatives to try to reach back and invite their ghosts back to the home for just one more family dinner…like Eurydice’s humid whisper and then be gone. Still other Europeans dressed like people of whom they knew and from whom they needed help from beyond. That one doesn’t work; that I know. For several years I went as Jimmy Hoffa and my pension is still underwater.

My friend and I visited three altars before dinner. She explained to me what the Día de Muertos meant. I figured it was all about what Fraser said so long ago, but properly British anthropology for once was only tangentially related. The costumes, I think, represent the dead coming back, not by posing as a ‘fabric’-ated invitation for the departed, but to act in the stead of the dead themselves. Funny, it’s the Muertos who are desperate to return, if only for a moment – at least on that night (though, again like Islam or Judaism, after sun-down of All Saints Day).

During the day itself, much time is spent at the cemetery praising the family and openly mourning the dust-to-dust crowd. Happily, I have witnessed these truly moving rituals – which represent, after all, a wise and lovely integration of death into the continuity of life. Little brat that I was in college, I still marvel at the accidental wisdom of one of my favorite lines from those days: you have to understand death to live life.  Yet, the darker, questioning and hissy-fit side of me wonders how few of my loved ones will show up at my grave, ever.

We did see three altars. The native art, for which I have little abiding fondness (I am a Luddite in process), is amazingly precise. On a temporary mural, there were many ‘concheros’ (native dancers with percussion shells wrapped around the lower legs to make a lot of rhythm) and other 'indígenas' hunting, dancing and maybe even looking for an Oxxo (i.e., the Mexican equivalent of a 7-11). The interesting thing was none of these otherwise admirably painted figures had eyes. 

My friend, a sweet Mexican lady, felt a little creeped out by the no-eyes thing.  Always the Prince Charmless, I pointed out that they had no eyes because the mural went up in a day and did not permit time for a detailed and time consuming task like painting eyes. Her big Mexican eyes, brown like the soil that gives her kin life, took one hell of a long time, in her case, to go around in a fool circle. Wupps…soy norteamericano; I know, I know…presumed ugly until proven dead.

The other side of the altar had elaborate flower arrangements, two shaped like doves. I wondered if these ‘florid’ displays were patches of Heaven. Then it also occurred to me that the Muslim influence was at work again.  Mexican women I know remind very much of the women I have met across Arabia; that is, exquisite, sombrously sensual, quick and hinting of something else…too refined for my more mundane or simply secular tastes. 

Of course, this was not an altar, nor a garden in the human sense, not even Heaven, or at least as I might bother to conceive it.  This altar broings to life those riveting descriptions of the gardens of Eden in The Holy Qur’an, flowing with colors, drenched in fruit, served by the dark, mysterious women who excite ideas and intuitions of things eternal and divine, even in the dullest of dullards. No wonder I fall in love every week.

We went to the altar in the government building. It had more of a traditional Mexican feel with its ponderous, if colorful, geometry. As we walked around that altar, each of the four sides celebrated the life of a Queretanos worthy of respect, worthy of a visit this one night through a historically simulated, town-sponsored memory that beckons emulation by lesser mortals (e.g., me).

One was a British lady who had emigrated to Mexico at an advanced age as a botanist who always had preferred planting to bantering. She lived until the age of ninety, being recognized by her gracious hosts, not only as one with Queretaro but one for Queretaro, too.  The others featured were social activists in education, fighting poverty and journalism. Queretaro is rather political in its down-time.

The neat part was that these four were honoured under the view of the founding fathers – and mother – painted larger than life on a permanent mural as if to remind all of us that these people, not so famous as those who fought for the Independencia, were worthy of the same veneration, at least this one day, this 2nd day of November.

The last altar was a makeshift remembrance of the great crime of our time, as the altar would have it, of some 85,000 people killed by the narco-violence. For every sign that called out President Calderon (whom I admire deeply) as a mass-murderer for trying to restore a rule of law, there were others reminding people that the soon to be inaugurated president, , would be dishonest dictator, a madman, a homicidal homosexual, or matinee idol in beach movies.

Worst of all, this President Peña-Nieto would be a mere political plaything for, and puppet of a former President from the 1990s who, amazingly, remains a power-player notwithstanding his small problem of bankrupting the country as he vied for the Presidency of the W.T.O. That number of 85,000 right above the Guy Fawkes mask (like the one from the movie ‘V’) shows that, while the many children who died were unknown, unnamed, unimportant, ‘Anonymous’ was anything but and was not about to let that any shroud of cold indifference snuff out their tragically truncated relevance.

The evening closed with a pleasant dinner at an inexpensive but yummy family restaurant. We talked about the Day of the Dead and what it meant. Then my friend remembered how a plant she had from her ex-boyfriend had died when he had left her. She had put the plant aside to keep it out of her sight because it reminded her of him; nonetheless, she was diligent in taking care of the plant. Yet it died.

My friend went on to say she felt like she had withdrawn her affection from the plant and that is what it made it die. And every day she waters that plant, trying to talk to it, coax it back to life; alas, to no effect. Then and there I realized that, once again, God has blessed me with special friends, not because they think I am great but because I know how great they are.

We went onto talk about the Dead who return on this November 2nd. I was curious, as a typically flabby-assed agnostic (one class of Zumba-hasta-la-Tumba, notwithstanding). So do they come back because we miss them or they miss us or both? Particularly, those who were and are important to us. Do these people return to mend us so we can put one-foot-in-front-of-the-other? In this day of defiance and death, are we celebrating that quality of life that is even unhindered by death? Of course, I do not know.

Well one thing led to another and, with our clothes still on, we started talking about angels and guardian angels that just flutter around happily, far out of the very limited world of my mind, though some 70% of Americans surveyed believe in angels; I think they are idiots who confuse drones with angels. That begged the question about the after-life.

Mexicans love talking about the after-life, in general because this is a naturally mystical people.  They also do it with me more to probe the depth of my faith or the degree of apostasy. My standard answer is, “Is there an after-life? I will be sure to sne da post-card when I get there…” My friend, a devout Catholic, turned serious about this. So my question to her is my question to you this day of the dead.

If we are created in God’s image and we evolve to His perfection upon our death, how do we ever hook-up with anyone in Heaven? It is our imperfections that make us different from (and place us firmly below) God, at least in this vale of tears. Flaws make us different from each other; hell, they make us distinctive so we recognize each other as separate. Once we get to heaven, and the dark sides of our loved ones are now removed as they participate in the pure light of God’s love, how can we hope to distinguish one from another?

That being of pure light – yes that one over there – that might be dad; shoot, turns out to be Mr Waverly, the prick who cut me from the track team. Hmmm. Since I am stuck here, I really no longer have to worry about the customary scorn of the politically correct when I say, “Jeez, which one is dad? You all look the same to me….”

My friend, however, had an even-tempered response, beyond, “Oh, you gringos…” to reflect that maybe it did not matter. After all, would we be selfish enough to desire the pain of our loved ones of being separated from perfection so that we could recognize them? Well my dad still owes me twenty bucks from when I was a kid.

Perhaps that was the lesson of the Día de Muertos for me today: that bereavement of knowing that I may never be able to make the apologies owed to certain friends died young for things I did or failed to say. With grief taken to such an unchanging, eternal level, perhaps a day dedicated to these ‘honoured dead’ can be that critical half-measure that makes us closer to whole….

Letter #67 to friends and familiares: why I went third-party this year

Like most people, I suspect, I am counting the minutes until the day after the election, when FaceBook returns to normality. In truth, I have voted and cast my ballot for Governor Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party. Had I been in a contested state – and with a 60%-to-36% lead for President Obama in Maryland, I am not – I would likely have voted for Governor Romney.

That admitted, I do not hold the President in contempt; he is one of the finest men to occupy the White House. Even the best of people have their flaws. Both men are essentially decent and subject to extraordinary pressures; the President more so as the incumbent.

Nevertheless, President Obama’s usurpation of Constitutional powers at our expense and in the name of security as well as his arrogation of decision-making to pick out assassination targets leave me bewildered. His economic policies have proven to be as unsustainable as they are unimaginative. Finally, the President has at times resorted to demagoguery, plainly playing on the politics of envy.

Like it or not, Governor Romney’s proposed budget numbers do not add up; his condemnation of sequestration leading to cuts in defense spending, together with his curiously furious attack of Obama-Care (apparently modeled after his plan in Massachusetts) make clear his preference for empire over welfare (not the policy but the commonweal).

On the positive side, President Obama has kept us from widening the conflict in the Middle East with an attack on Iran and has, apparently, been able to persuade restraint on the part of Israel. Governor Romney has shown a lot more courage by not retracting the ‘47%’ comment, which he wishes he had better articulated (and likely would have if someone had not taped a private conversation without the Governor’s consent).

Not retracting this remark took a great deal of courage because Governor Romney had stumbled onto the REAL third-rail of American politics: a growing underclass and a culture of conditioned response to poverty strengthening over several generations. Ironically, only President Clinton, a Democrat, had been willing to take on this issue. Pretending this under-class does not exist condemns millions to lives of welfare.

In other times, I would not be sympathetic with the views of many Republicans of minimizing resources to the poor. Distributive justice will always have its proper place in my heart – it is the consequences of the actual policies that count; whether resources redistributed foster human dignity (i.e., working, focusing on a family unit, etc.) or reinforce a behavior of dependence through generations of it. Of course now, the question is becoming moot with our country’s impending insolvency.

Normally, I would have gutted it all out and voted for Governor Romney based on some overlap of politics or, perhaps, President Obama based on the overwhelming decency of the man himself. For many years, I have believed in our two party system because it does a better job of providing stability of leadership in times of crisis.

Under the parliamentary systems in Europe, political parties depend upon coalitions, which means consensus, which often is exactly what is (and, perhaps, should be) absent in times of crisis. Thus cabinets fall right when the cabinets ought to be strong, except in those rare cases where humanity is blessed with a statesman for all time (e.g., Prime Minister Churchill).

In the United States, on the other hand, coalitions largely depend on the political parties. That invites but does not require consensus. That means the same leadership is in place even if a certain voting bloc in the coalition is displeased; we call these coalition members ‘constituencies’. In times of national perplexity – like 1856 and 1860 – the two party system falls apart and realignments (i.e., new pre-election coalitions) come into place, amid widespread anomy, conflict and/or political turbulence.

My vote manifests my belief that the United States is in or damn near to another time of national perplexity, when old beliefs seem hollow, traditional allegiances obsolete. Running to the middle is what people did in the 1850s and eventually there was no middle left to woo, at least in the terms of the time. That is why we are seeing these days what seems like a clearer choice that seems to evoke more poison than passion.

My essay is not to show inventiveness of my thinking but the simplicity of my voting. Governor Johnson is neither as bright as President Obama nor as enormously successful as Governor Romney. Governor Johnson has something the other two lack: a certain humility to place principles ahead of personalities or popularity. 

The Libertarian Party, for of all its ‘lunatic fringe-binge’ associations, is the only group to address seriously what I sense are the key questions facing the Republic that, like slavery, do not lend themselves to enduring compromise:

1. a disturbing drift toward tyranny;
2. a brutalization of American culture; as well as,
3. an unsustainable fiscal, defense procurement and monetary policy.

Beyond the stasis of craziness in which we drift in dread, there is something far more important going on in this election. It is a pervasive climate of fear and increasing despair. At home the middle class wonders who hijacked their dreams; overseas, Pax Americana is nearing its end.

Our citizen soldiers have been ground down and, all too often, out; they have been on battlefields two-to-three times more than their grandfathers of the greatest generation were. In what seems like a menacing world, we see potential adversaries – many of our own making – everywhere, delighting in the coming end of the American Century. In short, fear is making people do and say ugly things.

An uneasy sense that the American Century is not only concluding but is already history is, for now, more damaging than the more obvious political toxins of excess monies from the wealthy in political action committees, voter restrictions devised and applied as well as partisan vitriol that erases distinctions between ethics and tactics, between inspiration and innuendo.

Certainly, near term poisons require redress and yet, I suspect, this larger perplexity will not leave us. Only Governor Johnson (that I know of, since I have not looked at the Green Party or the Constitutional Party or others) gets it.

We are in a time of profound change and our beloved America is acting like the kid at the top, in that childhood game of ‘King of the Mountain’, kicking, pulling hair, punching, resorting to almost anything to remain on top. That guarantees a harsher fall. So, as a people, I submit that we are perplexed. Pax Americana is no longer sustainable. Simply said, we lack not will but the infinite resources to keep 5% of the world in the driver’s seat.

Our growing pains are not unique. Other empires have had their difficulties adjusting to their post-peak worlds. Most empires adjust either because they lose a war aimed at keeping their position intact; win a pyrrhic victory and limp away from world war, exhausted; or, implode due to internal convulsion. Perhaps we are perplexed because we are exhausted from trying to control outcomes we cannot and failing to restrict our behavior to where we can, within the limits set by our rule of law (i.e., a contemporary way of saying an “empire of laws, not men”).

As such, the two leading candidates really are not schnooks here. They are all of us writ large. Again, Governor Johnson ‘gets’ this and so does Representative Ron Paul. Besides ‘King of the Mountain’, I am reminded of another struggle, reading E.F. Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed. Someday I will read the original by Maimonides. I would refer me and other perplexed Americans to a third 'Guide for the Perplexed', one the proceeded the great rabbi by seven centuries and preceded the great economist by two.

That is the U.S. Constitution. Without the Bill of Rights, the Constitution is just another contract that can – and is being – manipulated into tyranny. Without the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is a recipe for anarchy for man is truly “neither angel nor brute…and he who would act the one becomes the other….” Together, however, they create a living, breathing document, one that can adapt to changing times and deserves our respect and allegiance.

Even the most successful of many imperial presidents, President James K. Polk, did all that he did with Texas, Oregon and Northwestern Mexico while conforming to the Constitution. It was such a pain in the neck that President Polk likely met his early grave at least in part because of it. Yet he understood the necessity we no longer seem to. (A great book that Charlie Goldsmith, former Peace Corps bud, gave me describes that ‘near-great’ president well, A Country of Vast Designs; thank you Charlie!)

The reason I revere the Constitution is not because it is larger than life, but its entire body of obligations, limits and rights that capture human life so wisely. The contractual part was an instrument born of the folly of too much human power or too little. It was designed to curb man’s inhumanity to man. The Bill of Rights celebrated the dignity of man’s community with man. If we follow the Constitution closely during this time of apparent national decline, I firmly believe that we will have the inner fortitude to grow through this painful transition, this necessary loss.

Our emergence need not be into the chronic grief of an imperial 'has-been' but with a far more fulfilling – a far more exceptionally American – role in the kindly courage that long underlay the idea of America as the land for the free, the home of the brave and a haven for hard-working immigrants from the world over. Ironically, we will return to the greatness of character and national aspiration that ‘winning above all else’ has seduced away from us.

Besides, life will be easier without the crushing responsibility that keeps us in a torpor of unaccountability excused as national security and humanity cheapened to hit-lists and baseball cards. Let a Pax de China keep the emerging super power super busy.  We have some re-tooling to do, right here, right now. We can live and prosper in peace without such burdens, contributing to the harmonious progress of the planet toward a better life, as we have in the past. 

And so I close with Vince Lombardi’s famous quote: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Were that Iron Horseman alive today, I am sure he would shake his head wistfully and say to me, “Listen, son, I was talking about something like fifty or sixty fellows, fighting over an acre and change of land for two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon…Get some perspective!”

Route-66 to friends & familiares; The you-tube fuss & Benghazi

This letter home responds to an interesting article that I encountered on FaceBook and an interesting e-mail I received a month ago from a friend of almost five decades. In that e-mail, my friend said, eloquently:

In all the coverage and noise surrounding the tragedy in Benghazi, I haven't heard an answer to one question. I'd like to ask you, as someone with personal experience in Islamic nations. (I know Iraq isn't exactly close to Libya, but you're my expert.) Do people in countries like Libya and Iraq understand that (a), the government can't stop Americans from publishing anything, including hateful crap, and (b), that the idiots who created this mess haven't broken the law in the U.S.?

The article, from a lovely F.B. friend, living in the Middle East, is sympathetic to the Muslim view.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/22092012-freedom-of-speech-insults-incitement-and-islam-oped/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29
In this note, I would rather focus on the dis-connect between the U.S. right to free speech and the seeming disregard that these protests imply for that freedom. Now that we know that the attack was a pre-meditated murder does not change the heart of this thought.    

This discussion is difficult to keep concise since these initial questions raise other, deeper topics. Please excuse the superficial treatment of these answers. Justifying every point I make would take a series of books – one for each topic. Lastly, I am surely no expert and my perspective is that of a U.S. citizen angered by the murder of an unusually gifted diplomat and, more painful, four fine human beings. The ‘you-tube’ video, thought to have sparked this crime, was repugnant.

The Middle East is a misnomer for an ‘Islamic belt’ that stretches from Morocco across to Pakistan, up to Turkey and down to Somalia (as Michael B. Oren hints in Power, Faith and Fantasy). While differences – often murderous ones – exist between peoples within this expanse of different ethnicities or variants of Islam, there are certain concepts that Islam instills in each of its faithful. These tenets, as I perceive them, answer the dis-connect perceived by my friend.

Nevertheless, at the very least, educated people from this ‘belt’ understand this distinction of secular freedom and religious belief since either they or relatives have travelled to, or lived in, the West (i.e., much of the Americas and Europe plus parts of Africa and Oceana) and are exposed to these concepts underlying human rights and, as detailed in the article, codified globally.

Additionally, with the diffusion of Western film and television (principally from the United States) and inter-net connectivity throughout the world as well as the profusion of satellite dishes everywhere, I have difficulty believing that less cosmopolitan Muslims are completely unaware of these concepts. With the evidence of assassination, not mob violence, being central to the murders of Benghazi, one can view these demonstrations across all Islam as spontaneous expressions of that right for free expression and speech.

The problem is that Muslims, at least in a large part of that Islamic belt, do not buy that separation of church and state. Derived from the Holy Qur’an and the recorded thoughts of the Prophet, Sharia Law makes no such distinction as Western democracies do. In fact, the article linked to this essay, though penned by an Englishman, displays that Islamic cultural tension between reason and obedience.

Starting out with a logical argument about international law and human rights, the author seems to revert to type by articulating standard grievances and apologies of frustrated Muslims. Here is my take on why the distinction between legally permitted versus personally approved forms of speech may not work among many Muslims, educated and unschooled, good and malicious alike.

The worst, literally mortal, sin among Muslims is apostasy, as most frequently expressed through blasphemy.  Sharia Law makes no distinction between secular and canon law.

Taking this doctrine to a rigid extreme, one can argue that tolerance of a blasphemer is a tacit form of apostasy; thus, the Western societies are not perceived merely as anti-Islam but also rejecting faith in, and obedience to, God.

Most Muslims obviously do not believe in mass killings of Westerners for this asserted collective, tacit apostasy. Yet a very few extremists (as few as 5,000 around the world) do practice this rigid application that makes their ‘jihad’ a ‘just war’.

Sharia Law, while apparently simple is actually unclear since Islam has had no central religious authority after the Mongols shattered a civilization seven centuries ago by trashing the caliphate of Baghdad.

That decentralization ends up creating a thousand different divergent versions of Sharia Law. Put starkly: if our parish priest, local rabbi or lay deacon instructed us to kill Muslims for whatever theologically explained reason, would we do it? No.

Then again, we have not grown up in, and cannot grasp, this truly alien culture. Trying to “think” like a Muslim only goes so far and, when done by Western policy-makers, often leads to duplicity, disaster or both.

The Arab Spring has been here for seven years and will persist for another generation or two. In this case, liberty is being taken to heart by violent peoples long suppressed by cultures of power. The transition will not be easy but should prove, in the end, to be worth the effort. We are not engaged in a clash of civilizations but one of values, with an unfortunate license to kill.

What the West needs to do, especially as we now know that Ambassador Stevens was assassinated by Al Qaeda or some other cell with easy access to very lethal weaponry, is to empower moderate Muslims. These people are as decent, perhaps better, than most of us outside the faithful. While they understand the complaints animating the militants in their midst, there is no reason to believe that they endorse any and all means.

America started the Arab Spring, which was the right thing to do after 9-11 and will, with time, prove to be of enormous benefit to all peoples. With time. Until then, try as the West might, these moderate Muslims will have to make the first step toward outright repudiation of these bullies. That repudiation, as one can imagine, will not be easy to do and will require great courage. So progress will be incremental.

Which brings us right back to the demonstrations and tragedy in Benghazi. There are signs of hope that such a consensus is beginning to enter the minds of our higher-minded counterparts across the Islamic belt. Widespread demonstrations in Libya against these attacks may plant the seed for similar acts of courage by other Muslims to repudiate terror and the murderers who practice it. Only time and, perhaps, more Western blood will tell.

Until then, a policy of aggressively pursuing energy independence and progressive detachment from the region may induce these moderates to reach out to us. During that time, I would recommend that the U.S. appeal to the core of any of these societies: the women. That appeal would complement a mixture of our absence from meddling with a steady stream of information asking women if they have buried enough sons, brothers and fathers and if they are ready to make their own empowerment a catalyst of the Arab Spring across Islamic countries.  

Letter #65 to friends and family

Security Cooperation: a ‘Plan Colombia’ for Iraq?

Introduction: current situation.
The current rush-to-consensus on applying Plan Colombia may prove over time to be pre-mature and a product of group-think.1 In working with the Iraqi government (GOI) to create a secure, stable and sovereign nation, the U.S. government (USG) must assist and support the GOI in avoiding three national catastrophes:

• a regional war between Arabs and Persians fought on Iraqi soil;
• a civil war between the Arabs and Kurds; and,
• a continuing relapse into civil conflict creating a culture of chronic conflict.2

The danger of the third point is clear: half of the failed states that emerge from civil war relapse into (often-times bloodier) conflict within ten years. Iraq may be starting to relapse. Why?

1. Iraq’s contentious factions remain trapped in a "security dilemma", complicating the prospects of long-term conciliation. (A security dilemma indicates that paramilitary and other armed groups outside the law tend not to surrender their weapons during programs of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, or “DDR”.)3

Specifically, in Iraq, we do not know whether or not the Ministry of Interior really did weed out the death squads brought in during Bayan Jabr's tenure of 2005 and 2006 or thought to be lingering in the Ministry of Defence.4

The Norwegian government and the Iraqi Ministry of Planning have documented an absolute surfeit of weaponry dispersed throughout the extra-legal fighting elements. Any actual surrender of arms is likely to be nominal.

The Maliki government has squandered the substantial progress of "DDR" afforded by the U.S. program of funding the Sunni ‘Awareness Movement’ with concerned local citizens (a/k/a CLCs). This surge-related program protected the Sunni population from possible sectarian genocide and, more importantly, began bringing disaffected elements into the political mainstream while establishing the fundaments of community policing.

Community policing re-frames the current insurgency as a crime wave -- not as an insurgency -- effectively to cut these murderers off at the source. Whether the rationale is ethno-sectarian or economic, people who kill people are still criminals. Neighborhood residents are the best eyes-and-ears for the police as demonstrated in the Kurdish cities.

Perhaps most important, there are too many guns with too much ammunition combusting with pervasive poverty throughout Iraq.

Review of Plan Colombia as a Template.
Colombia and Iraq share compelling similarities -- high numbers of internally displaced people; drug (or illegal oil) trafficking as a source of funding primarily for government coddled militias; widespread corruption; human rights abuses; vulnerable oil infrastructure in need of protection; and, widespread homicide. A few crucial differences, however, trump these circumstantial parallels. Additionally, tactical gains against revolutionary groups aside, the ultimate success of Plan Colombia remains contested.5

Plan Colombia was basically a de-novo militarization by the USG of the counter-insurgency in Colombia. Over six years, the United States invested $5-6 billion in military aid, a significant portion of which funded fumigation of millions of acres of arable lands producing illicit cash crops; not so in Iraq. Over a six year period, the USG allocated $18 billion to the Iraq Security Forces Fund. Thus, Iraq’s equivalent to Plan Colombia has likely taken place already.

With the funding and equipping to date of the Ministries of Interior and Defence (MOI and MOD) as well as the 100,000 CLCs exceeding $18 billion, $3-3.5 billion (60% equivalent of the Colombian aid since Iraq has 60% of Colombia’s population) of funding over six years should prove to be superfluous. Such a situation would be like Noah, on the thirty-ninth day of rains, walking top-side with a pitcher of water to tend to some plants on deck. Instead, such a USG posture would more likely spoil the prospects for long-term stability as U.S. policies would be perceived – as they are already – as taking sides in a civil conflict.

Training more men to kill other men, as suggested by using Plan Colombia, will not enhance the rule of law in Iraq. The police force exceeds reasonable levels already; current infrastructure can not handle the levels of security forces using it. One of every 25-30 Iraqis is in the security forces (i.e., the military and police; or, ISF), meaning more police per population than any of the world's five most dangerous countries. At the height of Plan Colombia, there were -- at least -- one hundred people for every member of the security forces.

Iraq lacks the extra-governmental institutions reaching all levels of its society. Colombia has the Catholic Church and many mature peace-oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs), allied with wealthier benefactors in the U.S. and Europe, to build a climate of reconciliation that can supplant a culture of conflict.6  Lastly, U.S. interests (i.e., the war on drugs and “narcorruption” sweeping Northward from Colombia) were more immediate and vital with respect to Colombia than they are with Iraq.7

A (Not-So) New Way for a New Day.
The ideal end-state toward which U.S. can point Iraq includes the following elements:

• police primacy through democratic, communally-based law enforcement;
• an end to ISF-sponsored violence against prisoners and detainees including torture, false arrest and neglect during custody;
• widespread enforcement for the protection of fundamental human rights; and,
• ethno-sectarian tolerance strengthened through mutual support.

These elements define President Obama's idea of a stable, secure and self-sustaining Iraq (or the words actually used in briefings). It may be prudent not to assume an eventual stay-behind U.S. force. Such a residual force would be unwelcome and, given its small number and attenuated lines of communication (LOC), far more vulnerable. A possible exception might be small U.S. Army training contingents in Kirkuk, Baghdad and Basra. These units would prevent potential regional peace-keepers -- about 20,000 in all (if requested) -- from a land-grab of Iraq. NATO or U.N. troops might be better suited than the U.S. Army for this dual-purpose exception. Such a training and oversight force would tap into the peace-keepers’ LOC.

This alternative approach addresses the constraints mentioned earlier to culminate in a post-kinetic partnership between Iraq and the U.S. starting in 2012. This alliance will aim for peaceful co-existence within Iraqi society to address poverty and essential service shortages that would tend to undermine the GOI's legitimacy and rule of law. The security cooperation office, then, would ideally consist of a security assistance component (8-13 people) supplemented by liaisons with civilian agencies (27-32 people) harnessing USG and NGO-sponsored resources.

The Legacy Issue.
For example, for every uniformed military personnel deployed as trainers in Iraq from the U.S., NATO or the U.N. (i.e., up to 3,000), there would be at least five field-workers drawn from the Peace Corps and NGOs as well as from the Iraqi population. These volunteers and the uniformed military would cross-train each other in grass-roots economic development and civil-military operations.

Iraqis could then re-build their villages and their lives in practical ways that they would begin to associate with the United States or the West over the long-term.8 The USG would strive, through this radically different OSC sponsored by the U.S. Embassy, to impart a legacy of democratic policing, law-&-order, human rights and communal self-improvement.9 The annual cost of this legacy-building would total less than 10% of the average ISFF burden.

REFERENCES
1. Irving Janis; Yale & Berkeley; 1972
Dr Janis did extensive work on the subject, defined it as: A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation realistically to appraise alternative courses of action.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink)

2. Paul Collier; Oxford University 2004
“Around half of all civil wars are due to post-conflict relapses…The risks of conflict relapse are very high during the first post-conflict decade – typically around 50%.”
(http://www.un.org/esa/documents/Development.and.Conflict2.pdf)

Matthew Kirwin; Michigan State, 2006

“There are several factors that have led to the conflagration of a security dilemma in Cote d’Ivoire. First, a weak state and economic crisis compelled certain groups to revert to a primordial attachment to ethnic and religious background, which supersedes national identity and creates intense power struggles. This reversion to ethnic identity caused the parties to identify each other as offensive threats. Due to the dire economic situation in states such as Cote d’Ivoire, the struggle for the control of resources has become intense. “Any economic improvement by one ethnic group is frequently perceived as an example by the center: the ethnic security dilemma has an economic component, as all sorts of motives and fears are read into any change in the economic status of each ethnic group (Saideman 1998: 135).” Therefore the distribution of resources to one ethnic group and not another decreases the security of latter and increases the security of the former. Control and distribution of resources is primarily the responsibility of the government. Political appointments therefore confer power to the appointee and his entourage, which in turn can be interpreted as a security threat to certain groups. At one point other ethnic groups assumed that the government of Gbagbo and his ethnic group had a stranglehold on the means of entry into the police and gendarmerie.”
(http://www.njas.helsinki.fi/pdf-files/vol15num1/kirwin.pdf)

4. James C. Jones; U.S. Institute of Peace 2009; Colombia: Building Peace in a Time of War (page-365)
“Indeed doubts exist about the degree of real paramilitary [i.e., ‘government coddled militias’] demobilization. Recent reports the emergence of new groups, or reemergence of old ones, throughout the country. Moreover, investigations as well as informed testimony under the controversial Justice and Peace Law have revealed disturbing links between lawmakers – most of them [President] Uribe supporters [in favor of Plan Colombia’s militarized program] – and paramilitaries. And there is strong evidence of widespread paramilitary penetration of governmental institutions.”
Please note that the writing of Dr Jones is likely to be biased against the government of Colombia (GOC); he was under investigation by the GOC for possible ties with leftist guerillas opposing the rightist paramilitaries.
The Department of State gives the GOC higher marks but states in its 2009 narcotics report:

“The GOC does not, as a matter of government policy, encourage or facilitate the illicit production or distribution of narcotic or psychotropic drugs or other controlled substances, or the laundering of proceeds from illegal drug transactions. While criminal organizations are greatly weakened, concerns remain over their corrupting influences. In September 2008, two CNP [i.e., Colombian National Police] generals, Antonio Gomez Mendez and Marco Pedreros, were fired as a result of alleged ties to narco-paramilitary leader, Daniel “El Loco” Barrera. Separately, several members of the GOC were found to have supported right-wing paramilitary groups. Seventy members of the 2006-2010 Congress and 15 current and former governors have been investigated in the “para-political” scandal, with 34 congressmen and eight governors jailed as a result of the aggressive investigations.”
(http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2009/vol1/116520.htm)
Deborah Haynes; The Times of London, 2009
“….in January the human rights office of the Defence Ministry found more than 1,000 detainees at three centres in Ninevah, northern Iraq, including about 550 who had orders issued for their release…Many prisoners were held in cramped and unhygienic conditions. More than 700 were eventually freed.”
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6737870.ece)  

5. Associated Content News; “Top 5 Nations Where Safety is Last” 2007

“Colombia. Infamous for its guerillas, illegal cocaine "industry", and corrupt government, no wonder Colombia ranks as ‘The Most Dangerous Country in the World’. Bombings targeting civilians are common and terrorism is a way of life for most citizens who have grown accustomed to the chaos. It has a high rating for kidnappings with ransoms, with businesspeople, tourists, journalists, and scientists being frequent targets, though no one is actually excluded from kidnappings. Hot spots include ATMs, taxis, restaurants, and simply walking down the street. Those who try to resist robberies usually get shot and killed. Bogota, Baranquilla, Cartagena, and Medellin are statistically categorized as the most dangerous cities, with Medellin holding the title of the Drug Capital and ‘Most Dangerous City in the World’. With 11 murders a day in a city of merely 2 million, its murder rates is quintupled that of New York City. In recent years, murders rates in Colombia have dropped, but not enough to pass the title to South Africa. Though what was previously mentioned [falling homicide rates] may be misinformation, as critics have accused President Uribe of manipulating the crime [rate], making Colombia seem safer than it really is. What is behind all the heinous crimes? An expanding drug market and a plethora of terrorist groups, and a government that does nothing about it. Colombia averages 47 murders a day in a nation of 45 million, giving it the crown of ‘Most Dangerous’.”
(http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/159175/top_5_most_dangerous_countries_in_the.html?cat=9)  
U.S. Office on Colombia; 2009

“The…Working Group on Extrajudicial Executions has identified new modalities of extrajudicial executions where killings are no longer publicly reported, as happened in the case of false positives, but rather hidden, with measures taken to conceal the identity of those responsible. One example is the increase in cases of forced disappearances of human rights defenders and social leaders, with the person being subsequently killed and put into unidentified graves in the majority of these cases. In many of these cases members of the armed forces are alleged to have been involved either directly, through cooperation, or at the least through acquiescence with paramilitaries. According to a recent report by the National Commission for the Search for Disappeared People, between January 1 2007 and October 21 2008 alone, there was a total of 1,686 people forcefully disappeared.”

(http://www.usofficeoncolombia.com/uploads/application-pdf/2009-%20June%20EJE%20memo.pdf)

6. Arturo Carrillo; U.S. Institute of Peace 2009; Colombia: Building Peace in a Time of War (pages 148-149)

“As a result, by 2000, the Colombian non-governmental human rights movement was a critical player…Colombian NGOs had powerful allies in the Colombian Congress as well as among foreign governments, intergovernmental organizations…[e.g., U.N.]…and, of course, international NGOs….”

7. Bruce Bagley University of Miami; 2001
“During most of the 1980s the Medellin cartel dominated the Colombian drug trade and its principal trafficking routes passed through (or over) the Caribbean into the United States via south Florida and elsewhere along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard. As these "traditional" smuggling routes came under increasing pressure from U.S. drug enforcement over the second half of the decade, a gradual shift away from the Caribbean routes to new ones passing through Central America and Mexico and across the U.S. southwest border took place. By the early 1990s 70 to 80 percent of the cocaine smuggled out of Colombia entered the United States from Mexico while only 20 to 30 percent continued to come in via the Caribbean.”
(http://clas.berkeley.edu/Events/conferences/Colombia/workingpapers/working_paper_bagley.html)

8. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer; The Ugly American; 1958
“But despite the dual meaning, the ‘ugly American’ of the book title fundamentally does refer to the plain-looking engineer Atkins, who lives with the local people, comes to understand their needs, and offers genuinely useful assistance with small-scale projects such as the development of a simple bicycle-powered water pump. It is argued in the book that the Communists are successful because they practice tactics similar to Atkins'. According to an article published in Newsweek in May 1959, the ‘real’ Ugly American was identified as an ICA technician named Otto Hunerwadel, who served in Burma from 1949 until his death in 1952.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American)

9. Bonnie Bucqueroux; Michigan State, 2004
“By embracing strategies that decentralize and personalize police service, police departments that have adopted the community policing philosophy have been able to engage communities in comprehensive, collaborative, community-based problem-solving aimed at crime, fear of crime, and disorder. Many efforts involve assigning individual officers or teams to specific beat areas, to foster a sense of ownership and responsibility. The marriage of police and community brings together the power of the formal criminal justice system with the informal social control that communities can exert. Police departments have also been a catalyst in forging new partnerships with other professional and civic institutions (municipal agencies, non-profit groups, the business community, schools, and the faith community).“
(http://www.policing.com/articles/rcj.html)
Ned McDonnell; Letter to President George W. Bush, 2006
“The three themes of this rationale – crime prevention, national sovereignty and economic development – are based on precedents in Afghanistan and New York City…The Ministry of Interior has been infiltrated by militias backed by Iran...Trustworthy policemen, vetted and approved by local inhabitants, will empower Iraqi citizens to turn over the insurgents who are nothing more than people enjoying the blood-sport of – and financial gain from – killing, destruction, kidnapping and mayhem. This plan will save time, energy and money which can then be better allocated to Afghanistan to complete Operation Enduring Freedom in support of a tenuous democratic government….”

Letter #64: typical week, waning

Dear everyone,

Fortunately for me, I serve with many fine people as Peace Corps volunteers.  Truthfully, each has honoured me – improved me – in his or her unique manner.  Many of us face the anxiety choking at our throats about what will follow.  Sincerely, I have always believed a disjointed path makes for a creative path; needless or heedless to say, I will surely test that notion soon.  This essay is to submit to you what a typical week is like for me.  Submitting openly to the judgement and criticism of others is not an easy task, especially as the value of my service remains uncertain and accountable to the starkest judge of all, time.  So, here is a brief journal of my last week to give you an idea of what I have really been up to down here in México.

Sunday, August 26th.  I enjoyed a nice luncheon with my former fiancée.  Hers is truly a beautiful soul.  The stresses she faces are consuming and yet she soldiers on, almost manly in her stoicism.  That we will not marry says more about me, little of which I want to dwell on here.  I then went out for a run for about two miles; damn, I am getting old and am out of shape.  That nano-second of stillness in motion hung like minutes and then my body slapped against the ground, hard.  Getting up, I noticed a curlicue of red migrating down my forearm, pain setting in.  “Shoot, mister, you have a run to complete…”  And so I did: this is the Neddy McDonnell I always knew, for better or, more often, for worse.  Stayed up until two in the morning working on a project to define the steps toward a financial structure to carry a new invention to market.  Felt like the old days in Manhattan.  Except that I was a financial structuring wannabe; truth is, I never really understood the whole ‘art’ of financial engineering; damn, neither did they, in retrospect.

Monday, August 27th.  A wasted day to be gotten through.  Having been through this drill before, I focussed on the collection of Spanish articles I distribute through my center each week on aeronautics, Querétaro, science, technology, energy and innovation.  In that mindless chamber of intellect and truth, I suspect that precious few people actually read these articles; damn, I wouldn’t either, in retrospect. Quickly, I reviewed the presentation once but did not present it as my counterpart was swamped, as always.  Finally, I sent out eight e-mails to professional contacts.  People love hearing from me, until I ask them for assistance and then they do not; not much different from me in the past, I have to admit.  That damn retrospect will eat me up and spit me out, I tell you.  I went for a run for the third day in a row, very slow.  It is a re-start if not refreshing.

Tuesday, August 28th.  Did a lot of revision of the presentation on this top-secret, compartmentalized, work for a counterpart with an invention.  I am plugging away at this project for two reasons.  Like so many other activities here at this national science center, it is new to me and I am learning.  While I feel inadequate and guilty for having neither answers nor experience, my counterpart likes what I am doing and so I keep on doing it.  Stubbornness about making some kind of difference persists; it keeps me working.  Today I analyzed carefully two key laws in technology transfer – besides the obvious two on intellectual property and on promoting science and technology – about forming corporations and promoting small businesses.  Mexican law is a lot like the bible: so many inner-contradictions that one can justify just about anything.  And so I piece together the bread crumbs of solemn paragraphs -to plot a way out the thickets of bureaucratic legalisms toward the wide and sunny market.  Only time will tell if that sun is the optimism key to the three out of a thousand who succeed with new things or if it is that of the blazing, coursing inferno of the desert, devoid of promise and happiness, consuming the forgotten 997.  

Enjoyed a dinner with one of the volunteers in a supposedly unsafe state.  Interestingly, the stress that has weighed him down is not what I felt in Afghanistan of that unacknowledged possibility that, on any given day, one might be killed.  No, while that possibility exists, his difficulty was the uncertainty of whether he would be pulled from that state, thereby undercutting his work.  Like the others, he has worked hard.  Frankly, I admire these young volunteers in the countryside, living in poor communities without comforts we take for granted and being alone.  I salute them for I am not sure I could do what they do.  In particular, I found this volunteer’s gratitude toward the Peace Corps management in Mexico to be refreshing.

Wednesday, August 29th.  Did a lot of research on how other states are faring in the automotive industry and engineering-related direct foreign investments in general.  It seems that Querétaro is losing out.  Such a fate is unsurprising for two reasons.  First, the state has only two million people.  Second, the advantage of the state’s investment clime has been its relative freedom from violence.  This advantage has lain, it is widely thought, in the many rival narco-families placing their wives and children here.  The honor among gangsters seems to be: hey, pal, we can blow each other’s head off but the mujer and niños are off limits, okay?  That advantage is fading fast as international investors get it that organized crime is having its private under-world war here in Mexico; for everything else there is Mastercard.  

I finally made the one-on-one presentation on the tech commercialization ideas.  So far so good.  Lots of revisions but lying in those critiques is not an indictment of my ability but guidance on where we need to go.  Had an interesting dinner with friends about the role of conscience.  PRI disdain for seven decades or no, Mexico is an intensely Catholic country, even for those who no longer believe.  One old fellow pointed out that a man of conscience, real conscience, is not the one who refrains from action when he espies a despised ulterior motive; he is the fellow who sees that motive but takes the right action in any case.  How like Blaise Pascal that notion is.  It is when I believe my own bullsh*t – or in contemporary slingo, ‘drink my own kool-aid’ – that I am likely to stumble.

Thursday, August 30th.  Wrote an essay about the corporation and small business laws for the book-let I am putting together for CIDESI (i.e., my host country agency) on technology transfer, my only physical legacy.  That book-let will be some sixty-five pages with three volumes of annexes of readings totalling 125-150 pages, with 65-75% being articles germane to the various subjects of tech transfer that I have translated plus my vision of what transferring technology with entail for a far-seeing Centro with a highly hierarchical structure.  Felt sad about the death of Neil Armstrong.  I wish we had a way of knighting our finest heroes.  

Such secular sainthood would befit that MidWesterner well, not so much for his walk on the moon or his timeless tribute to the mission – “one small step for man, a giant leap for mankind” – but for the virtues of humility, modesty, excellence and decency this man exhibited for the forty three years he remained on earth after returning from the moon.  How like the namesake of the university where he taught, Cincinnatus.  True heroes rise to the occasion when the situation calls for it and then recede quietly afterward, if fortunate enough not to be assassinated.

That latter action of public quiescence and private humility that proves who they really are.  It also reminds me of how Massachusetts led the intellectual ferment for abolition while three Generals from Ohio preserved the union.  A century later another, another fellow from Massachusetts threw down the gauntlet for space and getting to the moon.  And two astronauts from Ohio did more than any of the others to realize that murdered man’s mission.  

How fortunate I am to be a MidWesterner, notwithstanding excellent schooling in New England and the South.  That’s it: the essay will be deferred a week in favor of a tribute to Neil Armstrong – if this is not Peace Corps II, then nothing is.  Caught most of Governor Romney’s speech at my party’s national nominating convention.  Great speech, if he had just ended it with his biography.  Going negative on President Obama is unstatesmanlike and with pit-bull-sh*tters like Governor Sununu around, Governor Romney can take the high-road. 

Friday, August 31st.  Got the weekly articles out after I had goofed and lost the leaders.  Damn, what a pain in the pizats.  Nothing like bogus time pressure.  I quickly translated an abridged version of the speech by President Kennedy at Rice University when he threw the gauntlet down for the space program.  Did the rarity of including to illustrations in the weekly e-mail: one of the National Geographic cover with Neil Armstrong on the moon and the other of a map of how effective I believe my Centro’s strategy might be.  

Another meeting on the invention – again, more revisions; I was not getting it.  Stinging to the ego as these comentarios are, they do guide me toward the more important goal of the mission.  My counterpart is a typical engineer in that his patience for my liberal arts loftiness is limited and yet he is a far more sensitive scientist than people realize. 

At the end of the session, after we drew out another diagram of what the immediate tasks are, he patted me on the shoulder and said he would like me to extend my service because of my intelligence which, he believes, no one else has; he implied that the Director of the Center agrees.  Such a rarely given and gratefully received compliment fired my engines up – I will figure out a way to get there, dammit…before retrospect.  I have done it before and I shall do it again.  

Closed out the day with the second evening in a row of teaching conversational English, this week being ‘letra-libre’, a fight to the death or suicide between Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson.  Honestly, I picked these two for two very selfish reasons.  For a while now, I have wanted to sample a little of the poetry of these two women but would never do it any other way. Second, I want to go around saying I have been reading Plath and Dickinson – though I have read 1-2% of the poems of each. 

The classes came off really well.  Emily Dickinson, at least the little I read, is majestic – so clear with the big questions.  By the same 2% token, Sylvia Plath’s command of the language is unbeatable but the self-absorption is a little much.  It is like suicide was the logical and timely terminus of her analyzing an endlessly inward but illusory fractal geometry of her humanly limited personality.  The fun part was collaborating on the interpretation with my mexican friends; there was so much more ‘there’ there than I could have imagined.

We switched rather quickly out of Plath and into a beautiful poem by Ramon Lopez Velarde.  He seemed to strike a profound balance in his discussion of death between the breathtakingly detached veracity of Dickinson and the breathlessly dispatched tenacity of Plath.  That makes sense since Lopez Velarde was born in the middle of the century intervening between the lives of the two estadounidenses.

We also talked about many other things like Mexican culture and the place of her traditions in the winner-take-all new economy that appeals to old sins like greed. Of course, we debated whether an after-life exists to which I graced my interlocuteurs with my customary response, "I'll let you know when I get there." We laughed and now my students want to marry me off -- this is a bloody rebellion...Refreshing evening; home at one.  

Saturday, September 1st. Anxiety quite a lot today as my networking is proceeding slowly and the dread of my service ending sets in.  I went for a 2.5 mile run and felt it every step of the way.  I was worried I would quit and was whining inwardly about the all too real decline of my physical strength, speculating that running on an empty stomach was the cause.  I finally looked at the sweat shining in the sun on my arm and said, “Oh, shut-up and glisten!!!”  I kept going, slowly, but trying.  

The first one did not really hurt much; the second sure did.  It was May of 1972 and a bunch of us from Saint Edmund’s Academy -- an idyllic episcopal grade school reserved for the smart or well-born (and, then, me) -- had gone to a garden fair in our uniforms before heading home and getting ready for dancing school later that evening.  The slicks had been giving us a hard time for at least half an hour. 

Finally, it came to a head when some little urchin walked close by me and shrank back, feigning that I had elbowed him.  Picking on a punk was not in my repertoire; the slicks now had their Gulf of Tonkin.  My classmates – one now dead for ten years – split in holy terror.  I started to flee, too, for about five strides.  But the big invisible hand of manliness caught me and turned me around. So, I walked right back to the most overtly menacing slick, a good two years older (and many more wiser) than I, and looked him in the eye. 

Now I had a dilemma: I knew I could not fight worth a sh*t, especially with two other slicks standing nearby, ready to put a whuss in his pusillanimous little place; nor would I run away.  My big dancing school crush – whose great uncle had contributed three buildings, including what turned out to be I.M. Pei’s prototype for the east wing of the national gallery, at my imminent high school – might be watching all of this; I had really spazzed that year in showing her my poorly expressed, if sickeningly polite, desire. 

Yes, I was delicate but I would not be cowardly; this reaction to bullies has not changed much over the years. So I looked at the slick in the eye and said, “So are you going to hit me?”  The slick hit me in the chin, maybe even in the dimple.  Though I lost my balance a little, I quickly steadied myself and looked at him in the eye.  In fairness to the slick, I left him with little choice.  My slight frame and recognizable blazer established my bona fides as a card-carrying whimp. 

Now, in the real world, slicks – or most men for that matter – can’t afford to be upstaged by a self-evident cissy, like me, lest they be castrated publicly.  Now, the slick could have broken my nose or damaged my eye.  He kept his aim to the least harmful part, the chin.  Seeing that I was not moving, the slick wound one up and hit me 'but good' in the same spot.  I winced in pain autonomically, without choice.  Though unsteady, still I would not cut and run.  The slick, really not a bad fellow, knew enough was enough and led his friends away.  

Later that afternoon, we crossed paths again and the same guttural noises ensued, at which I said, with what little moxxy I could muster up, “Oh for sh*t’s sake, not THIS again…”  The slick instead smiled and punched me, not hard, in the shoulder which, in slick etiquette, meant a sign of respect and acceptance and said in the harsh but friendly Pittsburgh accent, “You’re a pussy, alright, but you’re a HARD pussy…” 

Elated, I felt like a debutante being presented; like my sister would feel just five years later on her big night and like my darling niece will be feeling just after I return to the States, which brought me back to why I was subjecting myself to this puritan torture of running in the first place – to fit into my full dress not worn since a winter’s ball put on by the Blue Hill Troupe in Manhattan fifteen years ago.  So, I kept running: this is Neddy McDonnell.  

Got home and watched hours worth of the Republican convention on C-Span.  What an uplift to hear the sheer intellectual majesty of Secretary Condoleezza Rice.  Nevertheless, I am getting tired of people pulling quotes out of context. And I am smiting, smokin' peeved that Representative Ron Paul was blitzkrieged by the "party establishment" like Governor Sununu.

On the misquotes, if we conservatives cannot make our case honestly and triumph, then we should re-think our case.  Another line that annoyed me was this notion that President Obama somehow took credit away from small business owners by saying “we built it”; what rubbish – the President simply stated that thought so well put centuries ago by that great Christian philosopher, John Donne, that no man is an island.