Standing on the Precipice

So, the United States has elected a man who has a documented history of sexual assault, a con artist who earlier this week had to pay out $25 million to those he had defrauded in his phony university, who cheats those to whom he contracts business, who mocks the disabled, who has ties to Russian interests and has almost certainly benefitted from Kremlin interference in the U.S. election, who would ban an entire religion from entering our country, who will use his office as President to make money off his business interests, who is placing his family into prominent roles in the United States in an unprecedented display of nepotism, who defames entire ethnic groups, who refuses to disavow the use of nuclear weapons, who displays an unstable temperament and an inability to even handle basic criticisms, who advocates illegal torture of prisoners, who has demonstrated virtually no knowledge of crucial issues and has constantly lied in most of his public statements, and who has never shown an ounce of kindness or decency in his public life. 

This is the person to whom we have granted custodianship of our government and who will take over power today.

A few points.  To those who voted for Donald Trump: the next four years rest on your shoulders.  You have created this, you own this, you are responsible for this. The rest of us do not wish to hear about how Trump has violated your trust when things go badly.  The signs of untrustworthiness and dishonesty were plain to see, so you can't tell us later you were shocked by what has transpired.

To those of you who didn't bother to vote at all:  the next four years rest on your shoulders too.  Apathy is no excuse, nor can you say you didn't have any good choices.  Abdicating your responsibility is a choice and it is a choice that enabled the coming storm.

To those of you who, like me, are dismayed by what has happened: the next four years also rest on our shoulders.  We must not hide, overwhelmed by our depression.  We must not give up.  We must raise our voices, take action, and support the right and the good.  If we surreneder now, then we too are responsible for what comes.  Only a miniscule number of Germans resisted in the 1930s and evil prevailed.  If we do not stand up for what we believe, then we become enablers of evil as surely as those who support it actively.  Giving up is something we must never do, even if our odds of success seem daunting.  We must move forward with purpose and resolve no matter what, for that is what people who support the cause of justice always do.

We are standing on the precipice. When we look over the edge and contemplate the abyss our stomachs churn with fear and horror.  Even so, we must keep our eyes wide open and work to defend the higher ground with all our heart and all our might.

Our nation's metaphorical position at the moment



You know it's really cold in Naryn when...

...even the locals are complaining about how frigid the weather is
...the best way to stop a runny nose is to stand outside for three seconds
...you stick to car door handles, even when you are wearing mittens
...you open the door of your refrigerator to warm your apartment
...you wash your dinner dishes five seconds after finishing your meal because the water is so wonderfully hot
...you take the pots out of the oven without potholders, because white-hot ceramic feels kind of pleasant
...the majority of the conversations you engage in are about fleece, wool, down, and fur
...your body temperature actually increases ever so slightly simply by thinking a warm thought
...you look at travel brochures advertising summer holidays in the Sahara Desert
...people are enjoying having hot flashes
...you calculate a conversion and discover that the temperature in celsius is exactly the same as the temperature in fahrenheit (-40 is where the two scales converge, by the way)
...even the PETA activists are wearing fur hats

Greetings from frigid Naryn...two nights ago workers from town said it reached -42. After a couple of forays outside, I don't doubt that at all.

Being Vulnerable

On my way back to Kyrgyzstan I ended up being stranded in the Istanbul Airport for about 36 hours.  Because of terrible snows earlier in the week and the resulting traffic backup, thousands of passengers were stuck in the terminal with no place to go.  On almost every available seat was someone trying to catch even a hint of sleep.

I spent my time in limbo reading, writing, and walking with my luggage cart in a gigantic circle, circumnavigating the transit terminal in order to get a little exercise.  As I trudged around the terminal, I noticed the multitude of sleeping passengers strewn across the airport furniture almost as though they had been struck down by a mysterious ailment, frozen on the grey upholstery, unable to proceed any further. Only a person desperate with exhaustion allows themselves to become so vulnerable as to sleep in such an open, unprotected place.

Being vulnerable--it's something humans fear almost more than anything. Stranded travelers, the homeless, refugees, infants, sufferers of illness, the blind, those in poverty, and the bedridden are among those on the list of the most vulnerable of the world and few of us clamor to join this forlorn group. Pushing my cart, I scanned the sea of travelers spread prostrate along the concourses and marveled at how powerful fatigue can be, a force so strong it makes us abandon our defenses and expose our vulnerability to ten thousand strangers, far away from home. Sometimes we will do almost anything to avoid being vulnerable: in my case I abandoned my pride and my firm principle to always avoid being overcharged for any service and booked a few hours in the exorbitantly priced transit terminal hotel, so I could gather just enough rest to avoid sprawling across the airport furniture myself.

In extreme cases like airports stuffed with stranded travelers, it is easy to spot the vulnerable and to accept it as an unavoidable consequence of an extraordinary circumstance.  But, in reality, the fear of being vulnerable has a grip on our daily lives as well: we often let our vulnerabilities define who we are and how we live.  What is insurance, if not a hedge against vulnerability?  And every time I watch commercials for cosmetic dentistry or plastic surgery as they point out each of our potential personal flaws and blemishes and how these vulnerabilities can tarnish our lives, I realize that these appeals are no less powerful than the exhaustion suffered by the stranded traveler.  Even higher education is often sold as a tool that will keep a person employed, protected from the vulnerabilities presented in a competitive modern economy.  We have lost focus on much of what of gives life joy and satisfaction and instead obsess on achieving invulnerability, a task which, if not impossible, edges as close to the border of impossibility as any human endeavor can.

Even some religion is framed primarily as a fight against being vulnerable.  Many Christian churches I have visited talk endlessly about becoming saved, because without a person's action of acceptance of Jesus needed to become saved, one is vulnerable to an eternal damnation. According to this appeal to the fear of vulnerability, without proper action, one's soul will be condemned to an eternal wandering through a cosmic airport terminal without a boarding pass, no destination in sight. Invulnerability through salvation is the goal of this religion; no wonder vulnerability is so difficult for us to cope with.

Perhaps because of this aversion to vulnerability, it seems, our society has less and less sympathy for the vulnerable.  If you have become vulnerable, perhaps you have failed in some way.  One could ask: "Why did you book an airline ticket through Istanbul in winter where they clearly can't handle snow, when you could have traveled through Moscow where any winter weather can be defeated and all flights can be boarded?  It's all your fault you became stranded."

It is that same kind of attitude that permeates America today.  People blame the uninsured and the vulnerable for not having health insurance.  "If only you worked hard like us, you could purchase good insurance and we wouldn't need Obamacare.  How dare you be vulnerable?"  Our incoming President mocks the disabled, the vulnerable, plans to cut programs to help them, even spent his campaign viciously attacking any vulnerability his fellow candidates might have had with his harsh rhetoric and name calling.  What other societies in past history, I wonder, have had leaders, who have had similar distaste for the vulnerable? And I also wonder what childhood vulnerabilities some cruel person exploited to cause the next President to act this way as a raging defense against his own weaknesses. Sadly, for some people, their vulnerabilities do define them rather than those attributes they possess that demonstrate courage and strength.

I grew tired of walking with my cart around the Istanbul Airport and sat in a chair next to a sleeping passenger.  I watched him as he clutched a small bag that I guessed might contain essential documents, money, and perhaps every important worldly possession he might have owned.  At that moment he shifted his weight and the bag fell from his hands on the floor. Vulnerability squared.

"Sir, Sir!" I shouted loudly.  After a moment, he woke up startled and a bit dazed.  "Sir," I said, pointing at his bag, "you have dropped your bag on the floor."  It took him a second to comprehend what had happened, but then he realized, picked up his bag, and thanked me. The only way we can survive our vulnerability is if we watch out for each other, no matter how different we all are, or so it seems to me.

You don't have to be sleeping on an ugly grey chair in the Istanbul Airport to be vulnerable. We all are. In the coming era, more us will be in some acute vulnerable state, like permanent lodgers in a random, unnamed airport.  Will we as a culture be defined by our weakness and our vulnerabilities as we fail to do what is right and good?  Or will we rise above our frailty and take those things which have been our traditional strengths--a sense of fair play, adherence to the rule of law, willingness to help our neighbor--and accentuate those in an effort to overcome our culture's vulnerabilities in a spirit of mutual aid?  The omens do not currently seem auspicious.

What is to be done?  One person usually cannot change a culture.  But one person can change their own life and someone else's, who can change another's, and perhaps like a stream growing into a river, we can divert the flow and re-direct the channel. This can happen when we realize that when we demonstrate a preference for the vulnerable, and act accordingly, we are doing the work that fulfills our destiny as humans and helps us transcend our own vulnerabilities.

Finally, as more flights departed, the number of sleeping passengers diminished, life returning to normal. Eventually it was time for my own departure. I do not know if, moving forward, I will be able to transcend my own vulnerabilities and summon the courage to stand up for what is right and to do the essential work of helping each other overcome our vulnerabilities. None of us know if we'll be able. But let us try.

Deciphering America: Inside a Cracker Barrel

When I was in the States, I flew to Washington D.C., landed in the afternoon, rented a car, got stuck in a four-hour traffic jam, drove to the coast, and checked into my motel late in the evening.  Tired, I didn't really feel like searching for a restaurant, so I gave up and simply ate at the Cracker Barrel adjacent to my motel.

I chose the Cracker Barrel, because it was safe and would be a quick meal for a tired traveler:  I knew exactly what the menu would have on it, exactly the moderately-priced mid-level quality of food, even exactly what the food would taste like.  There would be no soaring, unexpected culinary delights, but no frightening surprises either.

After I ordered my catfish, I looked around me, at the restaurant, at the wait staff, at the customers, at the two identical cornbread muffins my waiter had brought me, at the displays of antiques affixed to the walls.  That's when I realized:  to understand America and everything that had happened there in the past year all you need to do is go eat at a Cracker Barrel.

For those of you from Canada or Central Asia who don't know what a Cracker Barrel is: it's a giant chain of restaurants headquartered in the South that have a theme of nostalgia, delivering a version of country living to all people who enter.  The menu features "old-fashioned" Southern cooking, every restaurant has antique relics as part of the decor, and to get to your table you have to walk through a giant gift shop filled with new versions of products of yesteryear designed to recall a past era in America.

The Cracker Barrel in...wherever...it doesn't matter as this is how all Cracker Barrels look.

The first thing that struck me was that every single customer in the restaurant was white.  And a millisecond later I realized that every server and staff person was either Hispanic or African American.  Yes, it could have been random coincidence, but I have been in a few Cracker Barrels in my day and this sort of dynamic isn't particularly unusual in what I have witnessed over the years. It was as though I had entered a bygone era of segregated living.  Don't think I'm overstating things:  in 2004, Cracker Barrel settled a multi-million dollar law suit brought by African-Americans who alleged that they had been discriminated against by being seated only in smoking areas of Cracker Barrels or by being provided no service at all.  How comforting it must be, even on a subconscious level, for the white customers in the Cracker Barrel I was visiting, to eat in a place where the social order fits their mental picture of how life in America was and how life should be.

The distinctive Cracker Barrel interior, no variation among the thousands of restaurants across America.

The displays of old advertising signs and antiquated objects like butter churns and hand-powered machines for washing clothes are another element that romanticizes this longing for nostalgia and a yearning for a distant, cherished past where life was blissfully simple. I am not longing for the days where I have to churn my butter by hand, so this retro decor doesn't appeal to me particularly, but it serves as a marketing tool to draw people into Cracker Barrels.  More importantly, it also represents a powerful reinforcement to the ideology that suggests that America was best in some past era where old-fashioned ways were prevalent.

Even the gift shop attached to each Cracker Barrel is a monument to this romanticized version of the past.  DVDs of old television shows aired long before most of the customers were born fill the display racks. Antiquated soda pops like Grape Nehi are crammed on the shelves and acres of scented candles tempt all who love the aroma of smoldering artificial vanilla. Memorabilia depicting patriotic scenes and featuring the American flag are also prominent. Country music blares over the sound system. Nostalgia can also be a valuable commodity: it is a wish for simpler times, being exploited for profit.

My catfish was OK, neither bad nor great, served on the same nondescript beige plates found in every Cracker Barrel.  Yes, my macaroni and cheese and green beans were acceptable, not particularly distinguishable from any food you might get in a college cafeteria, nursing home, or other large institutional dining facility.  What most impressed me was the lack of spice or seasoning in any dish I received there--salt was the dominant flavor I could detect.  There is no sriracha, fish sauce, or chutney in a Cracker Barrel, thank you very much, and I could not imagine the commotion that would be caused if any such item found its way upon a Cracker Barrel table. Nothing spicy, alien, avant-garde, or progressive is allowed anywhere within the boundaries of this tightly-controlled world. Is it any surprise that many Cracker Barrel diners face the outside world, beyond the Cracker Barrel, with the same aversion to difference and unfamiliarity?

I finished my meal and ambled outside to sit in one of the old-style rocking chairs that can be found on the "front porch" of every Cracker Barrel--each chair 25% off for a limited time, the tag on my chair informed me.  As I slowly rocked, trying to rock the excess of nostalgia out of my system, I understood completely what happened on a bleak November Tuesday in 2016.  Yes there was hatred present on that day, but just as powerful was that slogan "Make America Great Again."  It's also been the unstated credo at every Cracker Barrel for decades.  Uncertain and complicated lives, futures that are not easily deciphered, a world that is compressing more rapidly by the day, boundaries between nations that are less clear, and rapid technological change in a world where the rich and powerful pay little heed to average folks--these frightening realities are easily erased once you step foot inside a Cracker Barrel.  Might they also be similarly erased when a candidate marketing the same nostalgia comes along? That is the conclusion, perhaps not even consciously considered, that drove so many Cracker Barrel diners and helped propel them to casting their fateful votes.

Yes, everything you need to know to decipher America, at least one half of it, can be found inside your nearest Cracker Barrel.  No matter how strongly one might hope, however, the past can never be reproduced, whether it be in a Cracker Barrel or by an unscrupulous politician skilled at manipulating human desires and yearnings. It is a lesson many Americans will soon learn the hard way, in the very near future.

Report from America: Random Observations

Spent almost a month in the United States. A few things I observed.

Saw lots of cars with Trump bumperstickers when I was in the coastal area of Virginia.  All of them were driven by white people.  Mostly old white people.  Lots of old white men. Driving alone.

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Whenever I was in a restaurant or public place, I spent much of my time obsessing over the people around me, trying to figure out who was an ally and who was not. I was in a Wendy's off Interstate 95 in Virginia and everyone in the place was white.  "Which of you voted for Trump?" I asked myself. "All of them," I replied after scanning the camouflage-dressed, bearded men and tattooed women, many also in camouflage. What invader are they camouflaging themselves from and do they realize that their choice of cover actually has an identifying, rather than disguising, effect?

I ate my burger and fries quickly and left as fast as I could as these folks were no longer random strangers, but representatives of all the worst impulses of my country.  Am I guilty of stereotyping?  You wouldn't accuse me of that offense if you had overheard a few of the conversations and utterances emanating from the people in that Wendy's.

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When I was dropping off my rental car at National Airport in Washington an older couple from West Virginia was yelling at the employees, all African Americans.  "Where's our rental car?" they demanded.

One of the employees tried to explain that they could just pick any car out of one particular aisle, but for some reason the couple couldn't comprehend and kept angrily demanding their car.

"You can go pick up any damn car in that aisle over there," I growled.  "The keys are in the ignition." Only then did they drop their anger and comprehend, when I, the fellow bearded white guy intervened.

"You both voted for Trump, didn't you?"  I asked them as they left for their car.

"Yes, how did you know?" they replied, visibly surprised by my insight.

"Because you are being very unpleasant and angry for no good reason," I said.

Scowling, they scurried toward their car.  It was the only time I made any anti-Trump statements to strangers, despite the many temptations.  Good thing I'm headed back to Kyrgyzstan because eventually I would have made a comment to the wrong Trumpian and I would have ended up, sooner or later, getting punched in the face. Or worse.

I really need to get over the election, but I know I can't.

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I used to travel the road from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Selinsgrove, PA quite frequently and I had to make this drive again earlier this month.  There are seven large flagpoles in yards along the way.  In the past all of them displayed American flags.  This trip I noticed one empty flagpole, four with American flags, and two with Confederate flags proudly unfurled.

Question:  when has Pennsylvania ever been a Confederate state? I would expect this sort of nonsense in the backwoods of Arkansas, but Pennsylvania?

Concern:  next time I make this trip will all the flagpoles be displaying Confederate flags? Who knows, maybe someday someone will be bold enough to fly a swastika? Yes, the sample size is quite small, but the trend line is still rather worrying.

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I had forgotten how bad traffic can be on the roadways Back East.  One 30-mile stretch of I-95 was so congested in took me almost four hours to navigate.

To pass the time stuck in this stalled traffic, my car at a complete standstill, I put a mental picture of my daily Kyrgyz commute in my mind.  In my head, I literally calculated the distance and counted how many steps it takes me to walk from my apartment to my office. 175 steps taking two minutes to traverse.  That knowledge comforted and soothed me as I sat in that horrific traffic jam--remembering the life I would return to.

No wonder everyone in America is so angry.  Going nowhere very slowly.  It's not a good way to live.

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Why are my random observations so bleak?  Have I cherry-picked all the bad moments of my trip?  Am I by nature a pessimist?  A cynic?  I don't know, probably, definitely, and sometimes (but I prefer to call it realism).

Yet somehow something feels different to me today in America, and it doesn't feel good. Certainly, America is not the place it was when I was a child.  There was something a little more carefree, it seemed like things were progressing, people weren't so stressed and uptight, not nearly so angry, and we all were less fearful back then. Maybe the shock of Trump is influencing my perceptions. Yes, it is influencing my perceptions.  But Trump wouldn't be about to enter the White House if something wasn't profoundly troubling and so completely wrong in America.  And the antidote that's been chosen by the angry whites seems as though it will be the worst medicine ever devised.

As my plane took off from Los Angeles, leaving the country, I realized that what I viewed over the landscape during my month in America was a vision of sorrow and a premonition of disaster. We're now a completely divided country where one side is angry and the other side now very depressed.

I can only hope that I am mistaken, thrown off by misperceptions and a mournful disposition. Yes, let us hope.