Category: Blogs

A Blast from the Past

A few weeks back, someone asked if Putin’s nuclear threats over Ukraine scare me. No, I said, it feels like a throwback. I grew up in the Cold War 1950s, hid under school desks in bomb drills. One National Civil Defense Day, my younger sister, sick at home and watching on TV, hid under her favorite blanket, made by my mother and printed with tiny black-and-white pandas. Later, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, I walked down a high school corridor, lights dimmed, but still just bright enough to glint a little off the buffed linoleum floor. And I wondered, could we actually be closing in on the end of the human story. Now you see us, now you don’t? And how crazy was that? Pile up enough such incidents and the only viable option is to stop worrying and just live.

Lessons Unlearned

I emphasize human and physical memory details as anchors. The idea we might have to worry about “the bomb” again feels like something from another, more primitive, age. And it is. I’m exasperated. Not this again! Haven’t we learned anything? Could it be we never “got over” the shocking flash that dropped us unawares into the nuclear age? No one likes to think about what happened to the people under the mushroom clouds. But even back then it was known hiding under desks wouldn’t protect from fallout, burns, radiation sickness. And then there were the attempts to dial back and normalize. Yes, it’s a weapon we mostly don’t ever want to use. But it can also be a source of unlimited power, all the power we’ll ever need. What good news! As if we’d found the alchemists’ philosopher’s stone. As my dad used to say, everything has its plusses and minuses.

Science, Sin, and Secrecy

The 1981 documentary Day After Trinity featured interviews with scientists on the team that developed the bomb. They worried the first test might catch the whole atmosphere on fire. And they went ahead anyway. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who ran the team, famously said, “Science has known sin.” Knowledge may be power but knowing “too much” can be dangerous. Oppenheimer tried to restrain nuclear fervor, but had his security clearance yanked, based on suspicions he was too left leaning, maybe even a covert Communist, and therefore a security risk. He died in his mid-50s and looks haunted in last photos. Andrei Sakharov, a leader in developing the USSR’s thermonuclear bomb, lived longer and turned dissident and activist for disarmament. Awarded the Nobel Prize, but not allowed to travel to collect it, he spent his final years under virtual house arrest.

Political Opportunism and Layers of Punishment

In this country, after the scientists came politicians, who knew much less but applied a boosterish zeal to the US having a power the rest of the world didn’t. Then the USSR set off its own bomb, which prompted a search for people to blame and punish. Who gave them our secrets? Were we harboring subversives? And the times became hugely punishing—House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC), Army-McCarthy hearings, blacklists, loyalty oaths. Too young to be aware, but I did once see Senator McCarthy on TV. We didn’t yet have one and I’d stopped next door to walk to school with the McCarthy girls (no relation). And there he was, arm in a sling. I only put his identity together later and realized the arm was the result of hepatitis, due to his alcoholism, which caused liver cirrhosis and eventually killed him at age 48. So political opportunism is only the most visible of multiple layers. It’s important to remember that in these days of internet trolling.

Kubrick’s Satirical Reflection

Stanley Kubrick caught the spirit of the age when he attached a subtitle to his film Dr. Strangelove (1964).  How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb captures paranoia, hysteria, anxiety and surreal yet weirdly optimistic qualities of those times, when love was often in short supply. Not surprising, when you consider we’d recently come through the biggest war ever, then learned of the horrific holocaust genocide that brutalized and then murdered millions just for being who they were, and of this brand-new technology, capable of destroying everything. It was as if the world had been torn off its axis. But people didn’t talk much about trauma back then. Perhaps Slim Pickens enacted a weird kind of self-destructive love at the end of Kubrick’s film, when he leapt onto the warhead just as it was released from the bomb bay, wrapped himself around it and rode it down toward earth.

From MAD to Putin’s Taboos

Eventually, after the raw wore off, the world calmed down some and went back to old geopolitical “balance of power” and “spheres of influence.” And the confrontation devolved into the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) policy, recognizing that full-scale use of nuclear weapons by the opposing sides would cause complete annihilation of both. And how crazy is that? But it allowed us to walk along the edge and make do the best we can, to live. Now, Putin has reintroduced what had been treated as taboo. A New York Times story described a new generation of nukes that is “smaller, less destructive, and less unthinkable.” And Russian troops are trained to transition from conventional to nuclear, to regain the upper hand when they may be losing. Now, that does scare me. Cross a taboo once and it’s too easy to do it again. We are human, prone to losing humility, to overreaching. Oppenheimer, at that first test, quoted the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Let’s hope we can find another way yet again before this goes too far.

A Parallel Journey

As the country witnesses/undergoes/suffers through yet another contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearing, I recognize parallels with another era and arena, going back 75 years. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has become the first Black woman who will serve on the US Supreme Court. Jackie Robinson was the first Black player allowed into major league baseball, breaking in with the old Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. That happens to be the year I was born, after which I grew up in baseball. Later, my dad managed Black players in the South in the 1950s, when non-white fans still had to sit in separate, but definitely not equal, unroofed bleachers rather than the whites-only roofed grandstands.

The Symbolic Role of Sports

Some scoff at taking sports seriously. No more than modern bread and circuses, they say. But I have another view, based on personal experience and observation. Sports often play a symbolic role. International too, forcing us to behave better than we would at home, knowing the rest of the world is watching. Consider Jesse Owens showing up Hitler’s “Master Race” at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. And sports offer us a leading, less risky, cultural edge. They serve up multi-ethnic test cases, enacting/acting out/modeling what will later become central to our shared national life and identity, as in the progression from baseball to the Supreme Court. And yet, all these years later, it still takes a lot of fighting and to-and-froing to grudgingly take next inclusive steps.

The Courageous Pioneers

Consider two courageous pioneers, both highly talented and qualified, eminently worthy to belong, except for resistance to the color of their skins. There’s an interesting semi-convergence with the names. Reaching the “eye on the prize” goal requires willingly offering themselves up to brutal hazing, all the while maintaining their own poise and cool. A line from a Malvina Reynolds’ tune comes to mind: “It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice. You’ve told us once, you’ve told us twice, but if that is freedom’s price, we don’t mind.” And of course, even what Robinson went through represented a vast improvement over earlier, more perilous times, when attracting attention and/or acting “uppity” were so often matters of life and death. Details differ, of course. Judge Jackson, operating in a highly verbal world, has been subjected to verbal attacks. Though chosen because she’s a centrist, some Senators on the Judiciary Committee sought to portray her as super-liberal. This included inaccurate claims that she’s been soft on pornographers, when in fact Congress established the sentencing guidelines. There’s the old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Not exactly, especially considering aspersions were cast in the presence of her husband and young daughters. It had to come as a huge relief—one of the few times she teared up—when Senator Corey Booker addressed her to say she deserved and earned the appointment.

Denying and Admitting Racism

Robinson also earned his place, a star in the Negro Leagues and the first to cross over from them. He’d been handpicked as a man who could handle the pressure. He heard all the ugly words, back when tongues were far less restrained. And, as an athlete, he faced actual threats of bodily harm. Baseball players come with weapons if they choose to use them that way. Metal spikes on their feet at that time. Bats and hard balls in their hands. Roger Kahn in The Boys of Summer (1971) described “bean balls” that in the Robinson years opposing pitchers often intentionally threw at Dodgers’ heads for playing with him. Robinson’s own head was the target even more frequently, with potential to maim or even kill. This is no theory; a friend of my dad’s, hit in the head with a ball, spent months recovering speech and coordination. Not safe on the base paths either, where some opposing players tried to spike Robinson’s Achilles’ Tendons, potentially crippling him and wrecking his career. But he was too quick, known for blazing speed. It must have been a great comfort for him that he had the unwavering support and friendship of Peewee Reese, Dodger shortstop and team captain.

Polarization in American Society

Three-quarters of a century on, we do seem to have arrived at a time when racial animus can no longer be overtly expressed on a political stage. As Isabel Wilkerson wrote in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020), “Defensiveness about anti-black sentiment in particular, makes it literally unspeakable to many in the dominant caste.” But she noted a downside: “You cannot solve anything that you do not admit exists, which could be why some people may not want to talk about it: it might get solved.” And, of course, denying and not talking about it doesn’t mean that different, encoded versions cease to exist and operate and, when revealed, are often denied. Wilkerson described “Caste [as] the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank of standing in the hierarchy.” So, questions of belonging and competence persist.

Ezra Klein, in Why We’re Polarized (c2020), cited other thinkers who had addressed related topics. Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University’s Political Communication Laboratory found that “partisan animosity is one of the few forms of discrimination that contemporary American society not only permits but actively encourages.” And so, Democrats and Republicans simmer in mutual mistrust, each considering the other an existential threat to the country’s future. And we’ve built “a world in which we’re not going to listen to politicians on the other side of emotional and controversial issues, even if they are making good arguments that are backed by facts.” Henri Tajfel, in his 1970 paper Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination, noted “classification of groups as ‘we’ and ‘they’ and once someone has become a ‘they,’ we are used to dismissing them, competing against them, discriminating against them, even if there is no reason for it in terms of our [own] interests.” No surprise then, that the Judiciary Committee tied on Judge Jackson’s nomination along party lines, which threw confirmation to the full Senate. No surprise either that Senator Lindsey Graham threatened to block any future Supreme Court nominations during Biden’s term.

Identity, Contradictions, and Pushback

Breaking down barriers takes revising our sense of national identity and working through our contradictions. Knowing not everybody’s going to be happy about it but going ahead anyway and understanding there will be pushback. As Klein stated, there’s “nothing that makes us identify with our groups as the feeling that the power we took for granted may soon be lost or the injustices we’ve long borne may soon be rectified.” The Supreme Court Judge Jackson aspires to join is part of a “white city” of buildings often constructed using slave labor. Many viewed Robinson’s presence on the field as defiling the pure, pristine white temple of “the American Pastime,” with its fairytale origin story that Civil War General Abner Doubleday invented the game during his boyhood in pastoral Cooperstown, NY. Thus, it made silly sense to further extend the fantasy and choose that little town as the location for the Baseball Hall of Fame. There’s a Negro Leagues display, but it’s only a footnote. Wilkerson features a vignette on Satchell Paige, recognized as one of the greatest pitchers ever, who only made it to the majors at age 40, his best years behind him.

I go back and read Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. That image of “Mute inglorious Miltons,” prevented by their circumstances from adding their voices. What do we lose as a country by not including? And what does it cost the pioneers who go up against the system? Judge Jackson apologized to her daughters for time spent away from them. Wilkerson noted the toll of the enormous stress on pioneers who directly confront the system. Robinson suffered heart attacks and diabetes, went blind near the end of his life. I recall a moment from A League of Their Own, about women playing baseball during WWII. Another marginalized group kept out, which has also merited a footnote display at Cooperstown. The ball gets away from the catcher, Geena Davis, and lands in a Black churchyard. A woman dressed in Sunday best picks up the ball. Davis calls to throw it to her. And, as he makes the catch, we see in her eyes that she realizes this woman could do what she was doing and maybe even do it better, if given the chance.

Out of the Ashes

My love of stories goes way back. Sunday afternoons, age 3 and not reading yet, I’d herd my mother to the sofa, lean against her and insist she read to me. Pregnant with my younger sister, she’d often drowse off before finishing. But she never explained. And I wanted the rest of the story. So, I’d punch her in the side to wake her. Still getting a handle on pronouncing “R’s,” I’d shout, “Wead, wead, wead” at her. Tiny hands, so I probably didn’t hit very hard. But children can be relentless, and my determination also goes way back. When my mother died, over 60 years later, my brother and I schlepped her ashes in rental cars across western and central New York State. Last family road trip, we called it. Growing up, we spent a lot of time in cars, getting from Point A to Point B and not dawdling to sightsee. These were never vacations. Summers were my dad’s primary baseball work time. And I started making up stories around what I spied out the car window.

The Burned Over District’s Unconventional Flame

Much of the territory we traversed was in what’s known as “the Burned Over District,” between the Finger Lakes and Lake Erie. Sounds like it goes back to a catastrophic fire. Right? Wrong. This refers to a different kind of heat, intense evangelizing fervor that washed over the area in the 1830s and 1840s. Frances Fitzgerald, in Cities on a Hill(c1982,1983) compared what happened in that small corner of the very new nation (Constitution only adopted in 1789) to the 1960s, when people/folks in my generation stripped away previous identities, reinvented ourselves, experimented to varying degrees with “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” and took the culture along for the ride. Fitting then that we’d have the maternal ashes strapped in the backseat.

The Tapestry of Reform Movements

I know that area well, grew up on the threshold, later lived in various communities there before moving south. And I still can’t fathom how a region that now appears bland, white-bread, and economically left behind could once have flamed that incandescently. Even more surprising that it could erupt into an astonishing array of religious/spiritual/social/sexual improvisations, adventures, experimentation and creativity. If Buzz Feed put together one of its lists ranking most fertile locales for generating new religions, the deserts of the Middle East would have to be on top, with three world faiths—Judaism, Christianity, Islam. But the rolling green hills of Western New York State wouldn’t be far behind, as shown by the lengthy roster below, along with their non-standard permutations: Mormons(polygamy); Millerites/Adventists (awaiting Second Coming in 1844, which failed to come off); the Spiritualist Fox Sisters (table knocking seances); Shakers (celibacy) who ran a communal farm and workshop-based small manufacturing; the Utopian Oneida Movement (free love, group marriage) who ran workshop-based small manufacturing; the Ebenezer Colonies, another Utopian group, that later moved to Iowa and became the Amana Colony, with workshop-based manufacturing. And, as if those weren’t enough, the area also gave rise to all the major reform movements of the 19th century: Abolition, Temperance, Feminism (the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention), Missionary Bible Societies (domestic and eventually reaching as far as China).

The Art of Storytelling and Collective Imagination

Starting a religion in the desert makes sense, plenty of space to go off to into the void to contemplate timeless mysteries. But was there an equivalent in pastoral New York State? And where did all the energy come from back then and how, where, and when did it go? Was it like a switch flipped? I’ve worked in economic development and given lots of thought to community motivation, will and morale. In his book Sapiens (c2015), Yuval Noah Harari described how “Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths…that exist only in people’s collective imagination….” My mother’s small city addressed contentious labor relations by developing a collective-bargaining method that became a national best-practice model, but then the issue turned moot as manufacturing jobs moved offshore. And because there weren’t many well-paid jobs, we had access to good, affordable, assisted living in her final year. Cascade effects ripple through local economies and change communities and the people in them.

Anthropological Perspectives on Cultural Distortions

Harari says the trick is to tell a compelling story people can believe and commit to. The founding fathers believed a new country into being, and infused it with visionary, utopian elements—something new and special in the world. Fitzgerald took her title from Pilgrim leader John Winthrop’s words to his community on their way to Plymouth Rock. And the founding prophets continued in that vein, believing whole new faiths into being and convincing others to join. They often favored isolating and keeping separate from the rest of the world, saved versus unsaved. These days, we lack such common/shared language. So, is there anything to learn from the district, as we strive to understand and navigate our own unsettled times?

The Dynamics of Transition in the 1830s and 1840s

The 1830s and 1840s were transitional times for the new country. It was the Age of [President Andrew] Jackson, as universal male suffrage toppled eastern elites from national leadership, and of the Second Great Awakening of ecstatic and emotional evangelical revivals and camp meetings swept across the almost entirely white and Protestant nation. The Burned Over District, still at the trailing edge of the frontier, had gone from self-sufficient family farms to boom economy as the new Erie Canal (Albany to Buffalo) connected and made it a breadbasket for coastal cities. That left a population of young men, displaced when farms specialized, often prone to drinking and “ruffianly” behavior. Local leaders, seeking to assert social control, brought in revival preachers to reach out to young people. New Light Theology proclaimed the reformed/reborn could attain godliness in this world, then join together to save others. With demand high and ordained, professional clergy still scarce, self-taught, lay evangelists like the prophets stepped forward.

Reimagining Beginnings in Contemporary Times

Fitzgerald applied anthropologists’ theories on social change that still resonate 40 years later. Anthony F.C. Wallace recognized the stress placed on individuals and communities by “disruption or disintegration of a more or less stable cultural system.” And he found “cultural distortions” arising when people’s mental images of society and culture also fall apart. Victor Turner coined the term “liminal or threshold states,” for times when existing systems may seem unworkable, broken, and individuals living within them consequently lose a strong sense of identity. Call it a kind of vertigo and consider those young men who lost their places on family farms. Important to remember too that the district had recently been a frontier area. And frontiers represent borders between known and unknown. Robert J. Kaiser described borderlands as performative “spaces of becoming” through which “socio-spatial categories or signifiers (e.g., identity, place, scale) materialize as things in the world, as essences ‘out there.’“ I picture the new prophets, beginning to find their voices, converting family members first, gathering other followers, materializing their creations in the world. And being a prophet could be risky. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, was murdered on the way west. The Millerite founder was excommunicated, the Oneida founder prevented from preaching.

Fitzgerald questioned “why certain ideas that now seem bizarre or eccentric might have had equal weight with ideas that now seem to be truly prophetic or mainstream.” By prophetic and mainstream, she meant those serious reforms that started in the district and changed the country forever and for better. But 40 years later, it strikes me that bizarre and eccentric are in the eyes of the beholder and the times. So, much once considered outlandish has become mainstream, like vegetarianism, yoga, Buddhist practices. And to tell the truth, I find many of the details far less interesting than the district’s remarkable energy and confidence, that intrepid spirit of exploration, invention, beginner mind. We could use some of that in these times when so many of our existing systems are tired and dysfunctional. And perhaps we might begin with something like a “buzz session” approach, just letting ideas flow from anyone who wants to join in. Some might stick, others may not. And, judging by what happened in the district, who knows where new beginnings might take us?

Introduction: A Nation on the Brink

Over the past few weeks, the country has seemed poised on a steep precipice and about to step off. The Supreme Court has seldom taken away a right once granted. But now, after 50 years, based on Justice Alito’s leaked draft Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion, it seems likely Roe v. Wade will soon be history. And, if and when that happens, some 26 states, including mine, have trigger laws ready to declare abortion illegal within their borders. Perspectives vary. For some Americans, abortion has been a national sin, murder, slaughter of innocents. Others eagerly seize on the issue for political advantage. Count me in the group worried about erosion of women’s freedom, autonomy, and agency if such a fundamental and very personal decision is taken out of their/our hands.

Personal Perspective: A Staunch Defender of Women’s Autonomy

In high school, I wrote my senior paper on Chief Justice John Marshall and Supreme Court judicial review. So, I have an interest in the process. In my 30s, people kept telling me I ought to be a lawyer. I finally took the LSAT to explore the possibility. Always thought I have a fairly logical mind, so I went in without much prep, just took a few pre-tests. When I didn’t score well, I wondered if the law used a different kind of logic. So perhaps I’m missing something, but reading Alito’s draft, I kept thinking of the old saying about statistics, that you can bend them to “prove” whatever answer you prefer. And, though I never became a lawyer, I recall my mother’s response, when I asked about her continued adherence to the troubled Catholic Church, “I have as much right as the Pope to decide what’s right and wrong.” And I have as much right as a Supreme Court Justice. And I read Alito in the context of my gender’s ongoing marginal status. Despite repeatedly focusing on national “history and traditions,” he fails to acknowledge that, for much of this country’s history, women had no say, because we couldn’t vote (suffrage only achieved 100 years back, by Constitutional amendment in 1920). And in earlier days, some of us were burned as witches, often for reputedly having sex with the devil. Bodily functions and our attitudes to them can get very messy.

Judicial Dynamics: The Tension of Originalism vs. Living Document

Before starting my high school research, I naively assumed the justices made decisions solely on principles of law. Then I learned Marshall and President Jefferson were cousins, in opposing political parties, and loathed each other. And judicial review was about carving out a big role for the previously puny Court as the nation’s final arbiter. Mission accomplished! And so here we are, with Alito writing that the Court, “must exercise the utmost care whenever we are asked to break new ground in this field, lest the liberty protected by the due process clause [of the 14th Amendment] be subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the members of this Court.” But we’re human, so the personal always creeps in one way or another. And Alito certainly displays his originalist bias, seeing the Constitution, as amended, not as a living document, subject to reinterpretation as social norms shift, but to be taken as written. That the founding fathers meant exactly what they said/wrote and what they didn’t state explicitly isn’t covered. And since they made no mention of abortion…. But I have to wonder what room/space that judicial philosophy/ideology leaves us to improve, to learn, to grow, to expand and adjust our vision to attain a truly more perfect, inclusive and just union? Think of all the many elements of current reality the founders couldn’t have imagined.

Ordered Liberty: Alito’s Perspective on Constitutional Rights

In his draft, Alito prioritizes “ordered liberty,” which according to Merriam-Webster is “freedom limited by the need for order in society.” M-W adds a note: the concept “was the initial standard for determining what provisions of the Bill of Rights were to be upheld by the states through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. Today the 14th Amendment is generally seen as encompassing all of the guarantees bearing on fundamental fairness that are included in or that arose from the Bill of Rights rather than a small class of provisions essential to ordered liberty.” Alito does admit that the due process clause guarantees some rights not mentioned in the Constitution, but only if those rights are “deeply rooted in our history and traditions.” He insists abortion never was, that it has consistently been viewed as morally different, even repugnant. He glides over contradictions with English common law: “The fetus has no legal right of its own until it is born alive and separated from its mother. The right to life of the unborn fetus is restricted or limited subject to the right to life of the mother.”

Legal Philosophy: Challenging the Foundations of Roe v. Wade

Even at the extremes, no one would argue that abortion is a best-case scenario, but then neither is 9 to 10 months of unwanted pregnancy. We’ve known that Roe has been vulnerable to challenge, because it anchored in women’s right to privacy, rather than to equal protection under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. Apparently, in 1973, that was the only way to convince enough Justices to sign on. Not surprising, when you remember that this country has never managed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which I worked for with my League of Women Voters chapter back in the 1970s. Roe and the later Casey decision identified a right to privacy, described as freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” that are “central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Casey elaborated: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Alito counters that while individuals may have the right to define, they are not always free to act on those thoughts. He asserts that license to act on such beliefs may correspond to one of the many understandings of “liberty,” but it is certainly not “ordered liberty.”

Roe v. Wade: A Questionable Foundation?

Alito describes Roe as “muddled and wrong” from the beginning, an error by the Court that it’s time to correct. “When one of our constitutional decisions goes astray, the country is usually stuck with the bad decision unless we correct our own mistake…. Therefore, in appropriate circumstances we must be willing to reconsider and if necessary overrule constitutional decisions.” He cites the “infamous” Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling. But then, he seems to apply similar hair-splitting arguments, asserting that State regulation of abortion is “not a sex-based classification.” That “the regulation of a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny” unless the regulation is a “mere pretext designed to effect an invidious discrimination against members of one sex or the other.” Now really. I am not a lawyer, but I am a woman. And I am not convinced.

Alito’s Call for Correction: Reconsidering Constitutional Decisions

And so here we are. And I hope the anticipated majority opinion will be ringed by resounding dissents from other Justices. And that those will help establish a baseline of counter arguments to make it clear this story is not finished. I recently learned of Justice John Marshall Harlan, lone dissenter in the 7 to 1 Plessy decision (1896), which installed the shameful “separate but equal” doctrine for the next 70 years. The majority in that case held that, although the 14th Amendment established the legal equality of whites and blacks, it did not and could not require the elimination of all “distinctions based upon color.” But Harlan rose above his times and fellow Justices. Known thereafter as “the Great Dissenter,” he wrote that, “In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.” He referred to black citizens, but we can extrapolate to women as full citizens.

Hope Amidst Uncertainty: Shifting Public Opinion

Harlan also correctly predicted that Plessy would eventually become as infamous as the Dred Scott decision (1857), in which the Court ruled that black Americans could not be citizens under the U.S. Constitution, and that its legal protections and privileges could never apply to them, and so they could continue to be enslaved. I envision a future in which the current case will be recognized as another Court error.

Looking Ahead: A Potential Turning Point

And I do find reason for hope. Attitudes among younger citizens have been shifting, as shown by a recent Pew Research Center survey (Hannah Hartig. Wide partisan gaps in abortion attitudes, but opinions in both parties are complicated. May 6, 2022). Some 74% of Americans under 30 now say abortion should be legal in all or most cases (up from 67% in 2021). This includes nearly half (47%) of Republicans under 30. Those numbers suggest that, even as it’s happening, the move to overturn Roe may already be out of step with American hearts and minds. I think of the Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage movements, struggling for years in the wilderness. And I hope this too will be another narrative that circles back for the Court and lawmakers to revisit. Alito claims the Court and the rule of law should be above the influence of public opinion. But, as with Plessy, historically and traditionally they seldom have been.

Introduction to Money and Influence

On my public radio station, a law firm’s underwriting pitch offers “help in all matters where money exerts an influence.” I can’t think of any matters where it doesn’t. Experience is our lens for seeing the world and ourselves in it. And I’ve spent most of my working life around political arenas where money and power go hand in hand—how to spend, where to spend, and who gets to decide. Who wins? Who loses? The effects grow even more intense when budgets are tight.

City Hall Chronicles

I started down this career path because someone at the state employment office remembered I had a library degree. So, I was hired to organize documents for the staff of Buffalo’s governing Common Council. I can’t talk about that job without describing the setting. City Hall was and is a gorgeous, art deco, marvel. Tan sandstone topped off with decorative tiles outside, it faces the obelisk of the McKinley Monument, commemorating the president assassinated in the city. It opened in 1929, just in time for the great Depression. The city always has been plagued by poor timing. Inside, the lobby had shades of dark marble, stone, gilding, carvings, murals. On my way to the elevators, I admired the alliterative “Frontiers Unfettered by Frowning Fortresses,” recognizing friendly relations with Canada. The elevator doors were “golden,” embossed metal. Upstairs offices were a let-down, unremarkable. The room I was meant to whip into shape held reports, plans, and other random materials stacked, piled up, scattered across the floor. There was information here Council staff could use, but not without sifting through the stacks and piles. No shelves, I noticed. A carpenter would build, I was told.

Political Dynamics in Buffalo

This was the 1980s tech dark ages, and the few desktop computers were reserved for key staff working on the budget and other critical issues. My job was useful, but peripheral. Except for the carpenter, no one offered any help or direction. Standing in the middle of the room, I felt like a character out of Rumpelstiltskin, tasked with, if not spinning straw into gold, at least imposing some degree of order. A challenge, since I’m not, by nature, all that organized. I had no choice but to improvise, using rudimentary tools. Appropriating an old typewriter, I got started: reorganizing piles into broad categories, coming up with a basic alpha-numeric coding system, entering it in a big looseleaf binder, labelling documents and shelves.

Educational Turn in Local Government

For me, the high point of every day was walking into the building, a public temple way too beautiful and incongruous with what went on inside. But the sight lifted my spirits before I headed upstairs for another day of schlepping, shelving, and typing. My first experience with local government and a cash-strapped one at that. The place teemed with intriguing personalities and stories. And I listened and watched and sensed important stuff happening out of my sight and earshot, behind closed doors. A few times, I went down to watch Council meetings, in the gorgeous chamber topped by a half-sunburst stained-glass skylight. But the meetings were pro forma, the real decisions made in the Democratic caucus. The single Republican Councilman sued to be included and won. I wonder if that prompted an additional layer of secret meetings. Political animals are ingenious and, as Winston Churchill noted, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

There were bright spots. We held a not all that grand library opening once I got things organized, with punch and cookies and coverage and interviews by local news radio. Later, I was asked to coordinate a showing of the film Taking Back Detroit. The chief of the Council staff had seen it on public TV and thought we might pick up pointers from another beleaguered city. He was nicknamed “the 16th Councilman” (I believe there were 15 at the time), and later became one in his own right after redistricting. But even his urging couldn’t convince many of the actual elected ones to attend. Perhaps they thought Buffalo was fine as it was or too far gone to take back.

Campaigning for At-Large Seats

The job turned truly “educational” when the Council’s five at-large seats went on the chopping block. Good-government groups probably considered them superfluous legacies from more prosperous times the city could no longer afford. And if I didn’t have a front-row seat, I was positioned close enough. Where did the money to bankroll the campaign to defend the threatened seats come from? Part of it came from Council staff. I remember the moment I was informed that I too, like all the others, would have to contribute. My part was prorated based on my already puny, part-time, salary. We also had to help with campaign mailings after hours. I found the ethnic appeals in the flier problematic, a bit distasteful, as step backward. “Save our [name–Black, Polish, Irish] Councilman.” So much for being one city, but I suppose you go to your base and old-time politics in a crisis. The phrase “how the sausage gets made” comes to mind. As defined by the Free Dictionary, it refers to “The process by which something is created or conducted away from public view,” because the average person would find the reality “unpleasant or unsavory” And they likely “don’t really want to know.” Not the kind of thing, if you worked in these settings, that you were supposed to talk about outside, but it was long ago and mostly public record, except for what you might call the ambience.

Shifting Political Narratives

As I remember, our efforts failed, and all five at-large seats were eliminated. But Wikipedia tells a different story, that only two seats went at that time, while the other three and the elected Council President lasted till 2002. Perhaps that was a compromise. When I can’t find additional details or even the names of the five embattled Council members, I’m struck by how very short political memories can be and that only big events like major scandals leave significant traces. And a few years later, even those are very soon forgotten, unless someone writes a book.

Comparative Perspectives: Louisiana and Buffalo

I live in Louisiana now, which, of course, has a reputation expressed in sayings like, “the best politicians that money can buy.” But to tell the truth, I don’t see much difference. What I’ve witnessed in both locations could easily be interchangeable. In Buffalo, Wikipedia reports on a current move to further shrink the Council, with redistricting after the latest US Census to match the drop in population and, of course, tax revenues. I suspect it may happen by administrative adjustment this time, redrawing of lines without so much as a whimper. But years since I’ve been in the city, so I can’t know for sure.

Impact of Citizens United Decision

I do know that the Supreme Court’s Citizens United Decision has changed the rules around money in politics. The Brennan Center for Justice recently issued a report examining the influence on state and local elections of the unlimited outside spending that’s now allowed. The Justices narrowly defined political corruption as only direct giving and receiving of bribes, but, as I’ve described, there can be so many possible nuances, so many ways to fiddle around the edges. But perhaps the Justices didn’t want to know. Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said, “When it comes to local contests, if you are just your run-of-the-mill millionaire, you could be the only person in a race that is contributing big dollars.” So, potentially, “You can fund the takeover of a state legislature.” Or a city’s Common Council, if the prize seems worth the investment? Norden added, “You would be crazy to think someone who entirely funded a campaign might not have more access or influence.” So, money is the constant, the given. Power, on the other hand, may be fleeting, but it’s so very tempting and with a kind of “cult of personality” around certain political figures while it lasts. And I find it worrisome that we could see new model money-bags political bosses not so very unlike the old time, “politics as usual,” variety.

Influence of Money in Legislative Processes

Moving to a national perspective, there are questions around input into the drafting of legislation. Amy McKay is a political scientist who studies ways companies and interest groups influence policymaking. Serving as an American Political Science Association Congressional Research Fellow on the Senate Finance Committee staff, she did want to know and was in perfect position to research the uniquely transparent bill-crafting process for the Affordable Care Act. (Maggie Koerth. Everyone Knows Money Influences Politics….Except Scientists: Why is it so hard to prove something that’s common knowledge? And why try to do it in the first place? FiveThirtyEight – ABC News Published Jun. 4, 2019). McKay applied plagiarism-detection software to trace how comments from big donors, corporations, and lobbyists “shaped proposed amendments to the bill.” Checking what she found against the non-profit Sunlight Foundation’s fundraising database, she discovered a trail from fundraising to fundraisers’ suggestions for the bill to amendments based on those suggestions. Senator Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was not surprised to find that text from lobbyists ended up in the bill. “But so what? It’s not illegal.” Shouldn’t it, however, raise at least some concerns about the integrity of the process?

Challenges to Representative Democracy

And this leads me to wonder about ongoing erosion of representative democracy. Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor whose work focuses on campaign finance law, says the kind of information McKay presented won’t change things. “The problem is philosophical. It’s in the heart, not the head.” But “the value of evidence is in the way it helps craft new philosophical appeals.” This may happen, he continued, by demonstrating that money has a subtle influence, over the whole of government. “A world where you [the elected official] have to spend half your time raising money means there’s this small number of people on whom you’re dependent and they have a huge influence.…. While the evidence doesn’t win the argument over whether we need stricter campaign finance laws, it does help build a philosophical case that maybe we should be thinking about influence in a different way.” Based on my experience, that sounds like an excellent place to begin.

Introduction: The Endless Cycle of Tragedy

So here we are back on the continuous American hamster wheel of mass shootings. And lip-service platitudes about loss of innocent lives immediately segue into claims there’s no way to stop “crazy people.” And then denials follow, that guns and easy access to them aren’t the problem, that mental health is, though without providing sufficient resources to make such services at least as accessible.

Personal Reflections: A Small Town’s Nightmare (1974)

For me, every event throws up a twist/twinge of memory. Nearly 50 years ago, I lived in a small town shocked, appalled, trying to make sense after a school shooting. That was 1974, years before the term was even coined. I was an elementary-school librarian in Olean, NY. The job wasn’t a good fit for me, so Christmas holidays came as a relief, till a 17-year-old honor student walked into the high school with a rifle equipped with a telescopic site. Before police got to him, he shot and killed a janitor inside and then sniped at passing traffic, killing another man and a pregnant woman and her unborn. Townsfolk considered this a one-off—a disturbed kid gone off the rails. Lucky, everyone agreed, that he didn’t wait till the following week, when, with school back in session, he’d have had so many more targets.

The Evolving Weaponry: From Telescopic Sights to Assault Rifles

Back then, we had no idea such assaults would become a recurrent national trope. Still, the town fell into what’s now become a familiar pattern of focusing more on the shooter than on the victims. He was the subject/actor, while they were the objects/acted upon, props in his drama. They’d done nothing to attract the violence, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so, we only learned their names and single-sentence bios, and they quickly faded from view, except in memories of grieving loved ones. Weapons of choice, on the other hand, have morphed from telescopic sites to high-caliber assault rifles that liquify organs and create large cavities in bodily tissues (Emma Bowman, Ayana Archer. This is how handguns and assault weapons affect the human body. NPR. June 6, 2022). The Uvalde shooter bought his gun, a Daniel Defense model featured in a single-shooter online game, just after his 18th birthday. How horrific that injuries to children, like the 4th graders he shot and killed, are even more severe, because their organs and arteries are so much smaller.

The Significance of Social Dynamics: Peer Profiling

Now, I only remember details about the Olean shooter. He was on the school gun team, which had a practice firing range in the high-school basement. Considering what had just happened, I wondered if those were the best choices. He was a loner, known for wearing a camouflage jacket and called “GI Joe” by other kids. Similarly, even before, peers had already nicknamed the young man in Texas “School Shooter.” I find social/police profiling problematic and understand how cruel kids can be to each other. But shouldn’t someone in authority pay more attention to such interactions?

Personal Connections: A Mother’s Hope Shattered

In Olean, a woman I knew had become friends with the shooter’s mother when their sons were born the same day, and they shared a hospital room. I didn’t notice then that she never said what she thought of the son. She pitied the mother for clinging to the illusion he could somehow be rehabilitated back to regular life. In the end, it all became moot, because he hanged himself in jail without going to trial. For the best, a mercy, everyone agreed. Researching to write this, I actually found a Wikipedia page. Should I have been surprised? Not really, given the fascination with shooters’ whys and wherefores. I read text from one of his three (?!) suicide notes. “ ‘Why?’ I don’t know — no one will. What has been, can’t be changed. I’m sorry. It ends like it began….someone might think it selfish or cowardly to take one’s own life. Maybe so, but it’s the only free choice I have. The way I figure, I lose either way. If I’m found not guilty, I won’t survive the pain I’ve caused — my guilt. If I’m convicted, I won’t survive the mental and physical punishment of my life in prison.”

Understanding Motives: From Compulsion to Crisis

Almost 50 years later, we’ve sadly learned much more about motives, if you can call them that. They seem much closer to compulsions. Jillian Peterson and James Densley have identified “a consistent pathway” (Melanie Warner. Politico interview Two Professors Found What Creates a Mass Shooter. Will Politicians Pay Attention? May 27, 2022). “Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation, whether violence in the home, sexual assault, parental suicides, extreme bullying. Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers. That turns into a really identifiable crisis point where they’re acting differently. Sometimes they have previous suicide attempts.” I have no additional details on the Olean shooter, but what I do know suggests he was likely alienated and bullied. On his way to the high school, he told his brother he was going out to shoot at targets.

Suicide as a Final Act: The Dark Intentions of Mass Shooters

Suicide is the whole point, according to Patterson and Densley. “Mass shooters design these to be their final acts. When you realize this, it completely flips the idea that someone with a gun on the scene is going to deter this. If anything, that’s an incentive for these individuals. They are going in to be killed…. What’s different from traditional suicide is that the self-hate turns against a group. They start asking themselves, ‘Whose fault is this?’ Is it a racial group or women or a religious group, or is it my classmates? The hate turns outward. There’s also this quest for fame and notoriety.” The Buffalo shooter posted a racist, anti-Semitic, manifesto online, tried to kill himself but failed. Charged with hate crimes, he’s plead not guilty. No idea what defense he can mount since he also streamed live video of the shootings online.

The Diversity of Faces: White Shooters and Mental Health

In photos, the Olean, Buffalo and Texas shooters are all white. They appear boyish, because they were/are only 17 or 18. Can these be the “faces of pure evil” a’ la Texas Governor Abbot? This as Mental Health America ranks his state last in the nation for access to mental care. As Densley stated, “these individuals have done horrific, monstrous things. But three days earlier, that school shooter was somebody’s son, grandson, neighbor, colleague or classmate. We have to recognize them as the troubled human being earlier if we want to intervene before they become the monster.” Peterson added, “The Buffalo shooter told his teacher that he was going to commit a murder-suicide after he graduated.” But, “People aren’t used to thinking that this kind of thing could be real because the people who do mass shootings are evil, psychopathic monsters and this is a kid in my class. There’s a disconnect.” In 2019, Texas did take positive action, starting a program to identify and provide counseling and guidance to at risk youth, but sadly, with limited staff and funding, the program hadn’t reached Uvalde yet. Now, of course, that previously underserved community has jumped to the top of the list, though too little, too late (Texas was building a program to find troubled students and prevent school shootings. It hadn’t reached Uvalde yet. Karen Brooks Harper. Texas Tribune. June 2, 2022).

Community Responses: From Inaction to Legal Battles

The recent cacophony of mass shootings indicates that a relatively high percentage of young(ish) white men with fault lines in their psyches can easily get hold of assault rifles. On the other side of the equation, actual and potential victims are no longer remaining passive, voiceless. Since their elders seem incapable of taking effective action, school children are again walking out and staging demonstrations to save their own lives. Sandy Hook parents have won lawsuits against Remington Arms, maker of the gun used there, for marketing in violation of state law, and against a promoter of “false flag” claims they faked the brutal murder of their own children. Buffalo and Uvalde survivors and families will testify before Congress and some among them appear ready to take legal action against Daniel Defense for marketing practices that target adolescents and children. Admittedly, that will be harder in Texas than in Connecticut.

Hope for Change: Listening to Survivors and Learning

I think of Warren Zevon’s line “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money” and hope we might finally be nearing a tipping point, where at least a degree of reason and sanity could actually prevail. After all, survivors and families are the only ones among us who’ve gone through the fire, can report on “near death” experiences. Ghislane Boulanger, in The Continuing and Unfinished Present (in Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis. edited by Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan. c2014), referenced French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He described survivors of massive trauma as living “between two deaths.” Although the biological end has not happened, “they are outsiders; intimate knowledge of mortality has robbed them of their citizenship within the ranks of the living.” Speaking from that in-between space, they have much to teach us, if we’re willing to learn. But Lacan issued a warning too. If we continue to let “biological death occur without symbolic closure for the dead, without the proper settling of accounts…then the dead will haunt the living.” Trauma always has consequences, prices to pay, even for those who try to deny.

Unveiling Industrial Calamities

Big calamities like derailing of the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, OH create shock waves. They are spectacular—toxic spills, fires, explosions, billowing smoke, fish kills, community evacuations. But rather than unpredictable, they’re more what my dad used to call “accidents waiting to happen.” Yet government agencies wait to react till afterward. Department of Justice and EPA now sue NS. National Transportation Safety Board now investigates. The State of Ohio also now sues NS for projected years-long cleanup, health, and environmental monitoring costs. And I ponder the intersection of corporate decision making and risk tolerance. And why it always seems to take a stunning failure to finally spark action. And whether the impulse can last long enough to lead to meaningful change.

Childhood in the “Asbestos Capital”

My first experience of industrial risk came early, only age 8, and on the receiving end, though I didn’t know then. I mix memory with research here. Thetford Mines, QE, Canada, not even a city, but as per Wikipedia crowned with booster titles “Asbestos Capital of the World,” aka “City of White Gold.” A grainy old b & w photo depicts the reality of miserable work: miners chip away in an open pit. They blasted too. Back then, nobody mentioned the environment, let alone public health. I don’t remember air thick with floating fibers but do recall dust clogging mesh of screen doors. Not a long enough stay to damage family lungs, but I still carry embedded the French public-address spiel circulated to promote games. “Baseball, baseball ce soir. League Provincial.” And culture shock when volatile fans threw things if they disagreed with umpires. They probably needed relief and release. Language differences and neo-colonialism can sour labor relations: mining companies mostly American like Johns Manville, miners Francophone. A few years earlier, they’d struck for a modest raise and elimination of asbestos dust in mines and processing plants. So, they already understood the threats—asbestosis, chronic lung disease. They lost, stonewalled by companies with a vested interest in denying and delaying. Safety costs money, though this was after what had to be boom years, fire-retardant asbestos installed in every “Liberty Ship” the US built during WWII. Later came the pile on of lawsuits over mesothelioma and lung cancer among sailors and shipyard workers that forced JM into bankruptcy. So, there was a kind of limited justice after the fact, but not for the place now tagged by Canadian Mortgages, Inc. as the country’s worst place to live. Residents though live in denial common to areas reliant on extractive industries.

Family and Railroad Memories

Thoughts of trains summon memories of my grandfather, a line crew foreman for the B&O Railroad. Two photos bracket his career. Early 20th century, young, in company uniform with cap at a jaunty angle, he and a partner ride a pump car to check track. In the 1940s, over 50 and in charge, in overalls and slouch hat, he stands with his team. I imagine him in the rail yard I observe across a chain link fence from the park where I walk, though it’s a late machine-age, rather than steam punk, scene. Engines darkened by diesel fumes hulk like panting beasts. Uncoupled tank cars marked with colorful, but undecipherable, graffiti skim along tracks, as if on their own power or by magic. But it’s gravity, choreographed by dwarfed humans like those inserted to give photos a sense of scale. Nonchalant pros, they hang off the sides, stand what strikes me as far too close. I wonder how long it takes to ease nerves. I spot some NS engines. Is it my imagination or are they dirtier, more neglected, than others? An electronic sign shows the number of days without incident. But no details, so not sure I feel reassured.

Statistics on Train Derailments and Hazardous Materials

Every era has dominant industries, with pop cultures, language, metaphors. Grandpa theme song: “I’ve been working on the railroad?” On a less sunny note, “train wreck” means a chaotic or disastrous situation. Data show real thing(s) are not uncommon. The Federal Railroad Administration reports an average 3 trains a day jump the tracks, a total of 1,164 in 2022. Most happen in rail yards and aren’t classed “serious.” I haven’t witnessed so far, but wonder what criteria apply. Neither is derailing while hauling hazardous materials rare. The industry’s American Association of Railroads reports “trains move about 2.2M cars of hazardous chemicals a year.” That’s around 6% of annual traffic. USA Today (February 23, 2023) reports release of “hazardous materials….in 172 train derailments over the last decade, or roughly 17 each year.”

Warren Buffet’s Involvement and Asbestos Legacy

Warren Buffet, who owns BNSF railroad, criticized NS’s handling of the situation. (Noah Sheidlower. Warren Buffett says Norfolk Southern handled train derailment ‘terribly.’ CNBC. April 12, 2023). But only the following month, two of “his” trains derailed, one with diesel fuel, the other with ethanol, on a “section of track with…a history of defects that led to employee complaints, million-dollar lawsuits, and federal safety violations.” Nearly 2,000 “red tag defects” (the most serious) were reported on that section from 2000 to 2011. (Ryan Raiche. ‘That’s a lot of defects’: BNSF safety record under scrutiny after derailment in Minnesota. ABC KTSB-TV. May 15, 2023). And in circular “follow the money” and “everything connects” logic, Buffet now also owns what’s left of JM. And Canada has banned new products containing asbestos, but still ships raw material out of country, including to the US. My state of Louisiana is a major user—in oil refineries, offshore rigs, power plants—with a legal industry actively recruiting mesothelioma and lung cancer plaintiffs.

Risk Perception and Decision Making

No life without risk, but I still feel a slight “what if” frisson hearing train whistles blow at night. “How, then, do people decide which risks to take and which to ignore?” And “Can we know the risks we face, now or in the future? No, we cannot; but yes, we must act as if we do.” Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky raised those questions way back in the 1980s. (Risk and Culture. University of California Press. c1982). Decision making in large corporations is typically “path dependent,” another kind of “follow the money” risk aversion that tends to “base expected outcomes on prior habits, decisions, and actions rather than current circumstances, even when better options are available.” So apt with rail lines that only allow for limited routes and options. OSHA defines accidents as “unplanned events that result in personal injury or property damage.” Consulting online legal dictionaries, I find “…calling something an ‘accident’ implies that it happened randomly, by chance and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.” And the action that causes “…is not typically deemed dangerous and is usually done without serious consequences.” The bolded words and phrases seem like weasel attempts to distance and separate outcomes from decisions that sometimes prove short-sighted. And that raises questions: Who decides? Who takes the risk?

Rail Reality: Worker Challenges and Advocacy

Managers operate in command-and-control fiction that it’s possible to “reduce…chaotic phenomena… to a system of essentials sufficiently few for an ordered mind to bend to its purpose….” (John Keegan. The Mask of Command. Viking. 1987). Big and messy failures like toxic train derailments and oil rig explosions (33 from 2007 to 2018) debunk myths of infallibility. But willingness to accept human limits often lags. Douglas and Wildavsky cited “A Harris survey [which] showed that “….In regard to danger from the chemicals in use….almost 3 times as many executives (38%) as the general public and the regulators (13%) think there is less risk today than 20 years before.” Another 40 years on, the gap has probably widened in this era of superhero/celebrity CEOs, given to very public, performative, risk taking and buying into their own PR. Can we call theirs “ordered minds?” Buffet, “sage of Omaha,” seems a closer approximation. But even he goes passive, rationalizes, treats train wrecks like disembodied “forces of nature.” Can’t guarantee no derailments, he says. And railroads would rather not carry hazmat, but as “common carriers,” they have no choice. So, is anybody responsible? Do “accidents just happen?”

Rail workers and their union live with physical reality, up close every day to huge machines and systems they barely tame. Any labor action would call down sanctions for threatening national supply chains. But they continuously raise concerns over practices like deferred rail maintenance and upkeep. Wonder if my grandfather had to splice together lines long past expected useful life? He wouldn’t have encountered “precision scheduled railroading,” only standard after his time. A long train makes in one trip what a short one would in two or more, and with fewer employees. So, trains keep growing longer and run on lines often in chancy condition. The one in East Palestine stretched 150 tankers, the fire “three or four city blocks!” (Jesse Marx and Nicolas Niarchos. Testing the Toxic Train. The Nation. May 29-June 5, 2023). Experts agree length increases risk of going off track on curves and/or losing control and brakes on downgrades. But till now, railroads and regulators claimed evidence was inconclusive. (Dan Schwartz, et al. The True Dangers of Long Trains. ProPublica. April 3, 2023). The current failure has stirred government action, so expect movement toward regulation, though what emerges will likely be watered down through industry lobbying, negotiating, lawsuits.

Proposed Solutions: Management Engagement and Union Action

A classic question asks, “Is this any way to run a railroad?” Updates: “Is this any way to keep running railroads?” Or to let railroads keep running? John Kay said irrationality “…lies in persisting with methods and actions that plainly do not work—including the methods and actions that commonly masquerade as rationality.” (Obliquity: Why our goals are best achieved indirectly. Penguin Books. C2010). And yet, old habits die hard. And any change seen as likely to reduce profits would be perceived as “going off the rails.” So, is there a way to move toward more truly reasonable decision making? Looking from outside and without direct experience, I offer options from the corporate and labor sides I’m thinking these might merit consideration—and might even meet somewhere in the middle.

1) “Management by walking [or riding] around:” Given their distance and mobility, railroads seem well suited to having managers “actively get out into the trenches [in yards like the one I observe, on trains] and listen to and engage with… employees…[as] a way of keeping [an] ear to the ground to understand what’s really going on.” Over three years ago (April 6, 2020), Joe McKendrick wrote a Forbes article titled Is ‘Management by Walking Around’ Still Possible When Everything Is Digital and Remote? He answered yes, with adjustments. But has anyone listened yet? Taken preventive measures? Like, say, fixing busted tracks, shortening tank trains?

2) Continued union action: The rail union, already leading on safety and public health, could keep pushing and borrow and adapt models from other sectors of the reenergizing labor movement. The Amalgamated Transit Union local in Louisville, KY recently used a new “open and transparent collective bargaining” framework “to fully involve rank-and-file members in negotiations.” (Jane McAlevey. Framing the Choice: A Win Against All Odds. The Nation. May 1-8, 2023).

My grandfather again comes to mind. Don’t know if he was a union man, but I know three of his sons were, one a shop steward. So, I’m suspect he’d be on board. And why shouldn’t workers have seats at decision tables? Don’t “They understand the job [and the risks] better than anyone?”

Legacy and Deception

“He who will lie will cheat, and he who will cheat will steal.” As the George Santos saga unravels, my inner mother’s voice repeats her father’s words. I never knew him but have a sense of a man of his time and place, a small business owner/storekeeper, deeply rooted in his tiny rural community. In a family photo, surrounded by a raft of children, though small in size, he’s the solid centering presence, satisfied with what he’s made in all parts of his life. Almost a century later, in very different times, Santos is a very kind of different kind of self-made man (literally). In photos he’s usually alone. Hard to sink roots, if you’re dissatisfied with who and where you are. Harder still to maintain connections, if you keep changing your story, shifting your identity, betraying people along the way. And now in this latest incarnation, he’s a Congressman!

The Enigma of George Santos

Santos’ remarkably nondescript face probably lends itself to amateur psych profiling. What’s behind the ordinary exterior? Pathological liar? Fabulist? Fantasist? But is the implication that he can’t stop himself or that he’s calculating, a man with a plan? His lies have mostly been smallish, to serve his own purposes, improve his standing. But could he have pulled it off (aka gotten away with it) in more, can we call them “authentic,” times?

Post-Truth Influencers: GOP’s Greek Chorus

As is it, he’s emerged as a small-time bit player at the edge of the GOP/right Greek chorus of post-truth influencers, busily churning out miasmas of paranoid conspiracy theories, political/social/cultural attacks, and relentless self-promotion. In their hands, out of their mouths, “free speech” often seems to decouple from responsibility. There’s a sense that, “Since [much of it has been] primarily an online movement made up of people who don’t use their real names, there’s no accountability….” (Chris Lehman. Deja Q. The Nation. February 20-27, 2023). But we’re also in a post-shame “attention economy.” And whether on TV, radio, or online, these folks do use their real names because, for them, that’s the whole point.

The Evolving Landscape of Shame

Back in my grandfather’s day, “….shame was a powerful force in American politics [and life]. That time is not now.” (Tamara Keith. When politicians have no shame, the old rules don’t apply. NPR. February 15, 2023). Nowadays, “it’s more important to be noticed than to be liked.” (Danielle Lee Thompson. The Real Reasons Santos Won’t Resign. Politico. February 2, 2023). Or respected or trusted. And media personalities become like performance artists, acting out, disrupting, shaking things up “yelling and screaming and denying.” (Shirin Ali. The House’s Four Options for Punishing George Santos. Slate. March 16, 2023). Jesus, quoted by St. John, said that truth will set you free. (John 8:31-32). But, in these times, falsehoods often seem to pay much better. (Philip Bump. Sean Hannity: Actually, it’s all the other media that are dishonest.Washington Post. March 2, 2023). And in that business model and marketplace, Santos has leverage on GOP leadership who need him to maintain their slim House majority.

Media: Performance Artists or Truth Seekers?

Of course, bigger actors get to tell bigger lies. Fox News has wholesaled baseless “stop the steal” narratives and claims that voting machines and software could be/had been(?) rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden. (David Folkenflik. Off the air, Fox News stars blasted the election fraud claims they peddled. NPR. February 16, 2023). And QAnon, born on the “dark web” and still mostly online, has created its own echo-chamber world, while inching closer to mainstream. Building on the country’s long and familiar “paranoid, apocalyptic, millennial” tradition, it’s attracted roughly 20% of Americans—about 30M of us! And “disinformation” is considered a “necessary” strategy “to throw off the media and the researchers looking into the movement.” (Lehman).

The Rise of Disinformation Movements

Polarized as we are, the “other side”—mainstream media, Saturday Night Live, late night talk show host monologues—retaliates with ridicule. Can anybody really believe this stuff?! And our heads spin, and we go numb, and sometimes a bit crazed/off kilter under the constant bombardment. Recall Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, with John Tenniel’s illustration of playing cards dancing around her in a head-to-toe whirlwind. And there’s the conversation about believing impossible things. Alice laughs and insists it’s impossible, but the Queen of Hearts replies, “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” George Orwell, like my grandfather, understood that there are no little lies. He reflected on the start of the Fascists’ Big Lie era. “This kind of thing is frightening to me because it often gives the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. After all, the chances are those lies, or similar lies, will pass into history….So, for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth.” (Looking Back on the Spanish War. 1942). Too bad Orwell isn’t still here to offer his scorching insights.

Polarization, Disinformation, and the Battle of Belief

Most disturbing is the violence, hard words often leading to hard, though often inept, deeds. Q prophesies a coming “storm” of brutal reckoning for “evil, child-violating, [and blood drinking] liberals.” (Lehman). Of course, this recycles the evangelical/fundamentalist Rapture revenge fantasy. “The elect imagined themselves gazing down upon the sufferings of those who jeered at their beliefs, ignored, ridiculed, and marginalized their faith, and now, too late, realized their error.” And “the reality it purports to present is cruel, divisive, and tragic.” (Karen Armstrong. The Battle for God. Alfred A. Knopf. 2000). Think Marjorie Taylor Green advocating a new civil war, “divorce” of red from blue states. And Evangelicals’ calls for the US to become a “white nationalist Christian” country. Apparently, they missed the part of American history when the founding fathers established “separation of church and state” to avoid a repeat of Europe’s centuries of bloody sectarian violence and religious wars. Not to mention the carnage of the Civil War that almost tore this country apart. Another Lewis Carroll memory: the Queen shouting “off with their heads” of those who displease and disagree.

Legal Battles in the Post-Truth Era

Fortunately, despite recent Supreme Court decisions, the law has not yet gone full post-truth. More than 1,000 January 6 participants have been charged. Alex Jones (no relation) of InfoWars has lost two defamation suits to parents of murdered Sandy Hook children he’d spent years falsely accusing of fraud. When his defense that he believed his words failed to meet the burden of proof, he tried to duck out of paying large settlements by filing for bankruptcy. Fox News will try a freedom of the press defense in two defamation suits brought by voting machine and software companies. But discovery documents that prove Fox “talent” did not believe their unproven claims may rise to the level of “malice” required to prove defamation. (Folkenflik). No mirror in this case, but shades of Wizard of Oz, the man behind the “voting machine” curtain?

Political Scandal: Fading Out or Lingering On?

But political scandal isn’t what it used to be. Political outrage can quickly lose force, turn anti-climactic, then fade away. This may happen for Santos, though not if his fellow first-term New York Republican “colleagues” have anything to say about it. Feeling tarnished by association, they want him gone asap. But good luck, as they too come up against the same circular political logic of that slim majority. Meanwhile, he plays the injured party and accuses them of lying about him! (Olivia Beavers. New York Republicans go to all-out war against Santos. Politico. March7, 2023).

Santos: Con Man or Politician?

More con man/hustler than politician, Santos bears resembles recent “regular,” old-school, scammers. Perhaps he sees Congress as only another steppingstone to greater fame and fortune? Consider Elizabeth Holmes of the fake blood testing tech company Theranos; Sam Bankman-Fried and his celebrity shills of FTX Exchange crypto; Anna Sorokin (aka Anna Delvey), ersatz socialite and entrepreneur. They’ve all faced or will face criminal charges for “selling” fake stories to venture capitalists, other big investors, and ripping off “friends,” while diverting a significant portion of funds to luxe lifestyles. I can imagine the trio watching Santos (on TV in jail/prison common room?) and wishing they too had chosen politics, where it seems possible to “hide in plain sight.” At least for now, though ethics investigations are underway. I recall Lewis’s other title, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. In Tenniel’s drawings, our heroine passes through the mirror, and then emerges on the other side. And “what fun it’ll be, when they see me through the glass in here, but can’t get at me!” And the new Congressman, similarly untouchable for now, can safely cavort and taunt. And for him, being at the center of controversy, rather than just another first-term Congressman, is probably the cherry on top.

Scammers and the Allure of Trickster Tales

Why do people get taken in by scammers? And not just Q followers either. The web of course is full of them. But even those of us “…who never expected to be victims…often…are among the most vulnerable.” (Bob Carlson. Why Sophisticated People Are More Likely to Be Scammed. Forbes. July 25, 2022). Believing“themselves too smart and well-informed to be tricked….made them less careful.” We seem drawn to trickster tales that read like the plots of movies. And, fiction imitating life, movies have been and will be made—about Holmes and Sorokin/Delvey already. Bankman-Fried will probably soon have his moment. Trickster POV is so much sexier than tales of downtrodden victims fleeced of life savings. But Santos, though perhaps prepping for his closeup, may be stymied. His NYS Congressional “colleagues” mean to take revenge with a bill to prevent him from profiting from books or films on his exploits.

Background Checks and Political Memory

So, what can we learn here? Clearly, we need better checking of candidates’ backstories. But will that happen? A NYC screening company recently launched a “Don’t get SANTOS’D” social-media marketing campaign. “We would have known in minutes that [he] was a fraud.” (Carl Campanile. NYC vetting firm eyes silver lining to George Santos lying scandal. New York Post. February 12, 2023). But more robust checking would likely step on toes already in place and require special authorization from Congress, which can’t manage to pass universal background checks for gun purchasers. So, this may be another problem recognized, yet avoided as unsolvable.

And that brings us back to short political memories. Outrage has a very limited shelf life. So, Santos has been shoved out of his much-desired spotlight by the bank failures and calls from the ex-President for violent protests when and if he’s ever indicated. (Ayman Ismail. What’s Worse for Donald Trump Than Getting Indicted? Slate. March21, 2023). A small timer doesn’t stand a chance against the Disrupter in Chief, master at “setting the terms of a media frenzy.” (Susan B. Glasser. Trolled By Trump, Again. The New Yorker. March 23, 2023). “You’d think we would know better by now, but here we are, being rolled by Donald Trump.”

I ask myself what my grandfather and Orwell would think. I answer that truth is the only way out of the current national malaise. And that would take, at long last, prioritizing “skills at governing” over “disruptive approach[es] to politics.” (Julian Zelizer. Opinion: The one political priority that could unite a divided America. CNN. March 16, 2023.) But only time will tell if enough of us are ready and willing.

The Complexity of Climate Change

Climate change is a tangle, not just science and politics, but human dislocation and loss, national boundaries and finances, history, race, neo-colonialism. Oh, and pile on war, ethnic/religious conflicts, drug-cartel violence, along with ingrained tribal sense of who belongs and who does not. Are these “our people?” Is this “our problem?” Meanwhile, this country may or may not be on the cusp of being forced to admit big, bad, dislocating, weather patterns—drought, floods, wildfires, desertification, tsunamis—don’t just happen elsewhere, but hit us too.

Human Crisis by the Numbers

The human crisis comes with staggering numbers, and they rule. By mid-2022, some 103 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced. That included 52.3 million internally displaced in their own countries, 32.5 million refugees outside their home countries, 4.9 million seeking asylum, and 5.3 million “in need of international protection.” (UN Refugee Agency). The UN also estimates that 345 million people live in acute food insecurity (famine at the most extreme) in 82 countries. Easy in the crush to forget each represents a living, breathing, feeling, human being, around half of them children. World Vision, modern evangelical missionaries, offers a heartbreaking estimate of very young migrants. “[A]bout 1.5 million were born as refugees between 2018 and 2021. Many….are likely to remain in exile, some potentially for the rest of their lives.” In online photos, my eyes go to the smallest exiles, carried, hauled, led, by mothers, fathers, older siblings, away from all they’ve known and into the unknown, with no guarantee of safety or survival. Children, smaller, less physically able to get out of the way, are always at greater risk.

Childhood Memories and Dislocation

These images resonate with memories of my road-trip childhood. Not as near the edge: my family rode rather than walked, albeit in an increasingly unreliable Ford. And we had a known destination, routes drawn on gas station roadmaps in pencil or crayon. Highway junctions we were tasked to watch for. We also had the buffering of American immunity, and a home to go back to. But aren’t all children dragged along by their parents’ choices? We could only strap on for the ride to whatever town with a baseball team my dad was managing each summer. In hindsight, I appreciate the chance to sample different communities, to meet folks both alike and different in close-up sharp focus. But getting there often felt confusing, dislocating, made me suspect the adults didn’t have a clue. No motel reservations meant repeat “no room at the inn” nights, with neon “No Vacancy” signs flashing and floating by in what felt like endless darkness. On the positive side, uncertainty may have fueled invention. My sister later described half anticipating that we might sail off into nothingness as the car crested hills. I, in the same car, anchored in wondering about folks who lived in houses and towns we passed. She became an artist; I became a writer/storyteller.

Forced Displacement: A Global Perspective

Causes of war and climate change differ, but both can lead to dislocation, which etches deep into lives new to this world. The documentary film The Mexican Suitcase (2011) “debriefed” adults who’d been very young during the Spanish Civil War. They spoke of constant gnawing hunger and fear, of running and trying to hide when bombs fell—Nazis’ test run for WWII, a la Picasso’s Guernica. And when the cause was lost, exile parents, expecting no mercy, carried and led them across the cold and snow of the Pyrenees to France. Little mercy there either, as emigrants were confined to a bone-chilling, windswept beach, without shelter or facilities, where many died. No wonder desperate families accepted the offer of another crossing, this time over the Atlantic to start again, reinvent and reframe, make “new lives in the new world” of Mexico. The film raises an existential question: Where do exiles belong, if the country they left has ceased to exist [or become unlivable]? And how much of yourself do you leave behind and need to reinvent?

Historical Exile and Endless Roads

Human refugee stories go way back. Consider the Bible and Moses and the Israelites, who escaped the Egyptians and then wandered the desert for 40 years. As for the road itself, the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno devised his Paradoxes to prove that motion was an illusion. Constantly dividing distances in half meant travelers never arrived/reached their goal. Do refugee children ask, “Are we there yet?”

Limbo: Life in Waiting

But how does that apply when “there” typically means refugee camps, where bodies in motion morph into bodies in stasis, not allowed to leave, or work [at least formally] or become citizens of host countries? Sheer numbers make the displaced a problem the world, with UN funding, prefers to shove “out of sight and out of mind.” So, though temporary in theory, in practice, camps look and function as if permanent, can grow to the size of cities, and all the while never appear on official maps.

The Invisible Lives of Child Refugees

For child exiles, these places can become a kind of low-horizon limbo, “open air prisons,” where they grow up, and may become parents, then even grandparents, while they wait, hope, then lose hope. Limbo is a Christian/Catholic concept, a vestibule to heaven, where unbaptized babies were sent. Innocent, but not “washed clean” of original sin, they couldn’t cross the threshold. The idea has always struck me as heartless/heedless cruelty. And who had the authority to say? Refugee’s lives run in harsh parallel. “I hear you knocking, but you can’t come in?” Even harder on those displaced by climate, who still fall into a legal void if they cross national borders. Without standing under international law, they don’t qualify to request asylum. Are these “our people?” Are these “our children?” Are they anybody’s people, anybody’s children?

The World’s Failure to Share Responsibility

Thomas Gray might have referred to child refugees, when he wrote, in his famed Gray’s Elegy [Written in a Country Churchyard] (1750), of “mute inglorious Miltons,” who were “born to blush unseen, And waste… sweetness on the desert air.” The Whitney Houston song The Greatest Love of All comes to mind. “I believe the children are our future; Teach them well and let them lead the way; Show them all the beauty they possess inside; Give them a sense of pride to make it easier; Let the children’s laughter remind us of how we used to be.” But at best, the world offers these children a deferred future. And I think not only of what they themselves lose, but of what we in the world lose by keeping them outside the circle. Consider too the pent-up negative energy created by excluding them. Belonging nowhere, the only way “…[to] survive…[a refugee camp is] imagining a life elsewhere….neither the past, nor the present, nor the future is a safe place for a mind to linger for long….trapped mentally, as well as physically….thoughts constantly flicker…between impossible dreams and a nightmarish reality. In short, to come here you must be completely desperate.” (Ben Rawlence. City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp.Picador. c2016).

Overcrowded Borders and Collapsing Systems

Amnesty International faults the world community, and “in particular wealthy nations [for] failing to meaningfully share the responsibility for protecting people who have fled their homes in search of safety…[for] failing to agree on and support a fair and predictable system for protecting people forced to leave everything behind because of violence and persecution [and increasingly climate risks].” And again, climate refugees continue to face special challenges even as their numbers increase. In contrast to governments’ delay and denial, big reinsurers, like Zurich Re, which back insurance companies, take a more practical view of climate trends that could cost them billions. In the wake of Hurricane Ida (2021), the premium for my wind and hail policy, through the “only game in town” state insurer, doubled. And, with severe weather events on the rise, that’s happening nationwide. Consequences are even more severe on the “frontlines of the climate crisis” in less resourced parts of the world. “Imagine losing your home or livelihood due to a devastating flood. Going hungry because of a failed harvest or drought. Or being forced to flee your home due to rampant desertification, rising sea levels or a lack of clean drinking water. This is [becoming] reality for millions and millions of climate refugees, for [whom] climate change is real, and… is happening now. And as the threat of climate change increases globally, their numbers will grow exponentially.” (Sean McAllister. There could be 1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050. Zurich Climate Change. January 13, 2023).

Detention Centers and Climate Risks

The US has our own refugee detention centers, many privately run. Countries do try to fend off , shove “out of sight and mind,” the burden massed desperate and destitute people. As of 2020, ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) held detainees in 128 facilities, often in isolated rural areas. Of these, 72 were “identified as facing significant climate-related risks” likely to grow more severe as climate woes worsen. (Aleen Brown. Migrants fleeing hurricanes and drought face new climate disasters in ICE detention. The Intercept. March 31, 2022). Overcrowding and climate intersect with infrastructure breakdown of water, sanitary, heat and cooling systems, to put desperate people into even greater misery. And the whole rickety system will likely be overwhelmed, even collapse/break down as numbers climb, with the expected surge of some 680,000 peoples across the US-Mexico border between 2021 and 2050 (ProPublica and New York Times analysis. 2021).

Remembering Names, Telling Stories

Circling back to refugee children, I wonder how many in US detention centers house those separated from deported parents or detained after they crossed the border on their own. Countries even leerier of taking on children, who can’t support themselves. So important to say at least some of the names, to tell some of their stories, to not leave all nameless, mere numbers.

· Abdul Sharifu, who froze to death in a Buffalo blizzard, started his refugee journey in 2022 at around age 6, after he lost his parents to war. He then spent 15 years in a refugee camp. Known for his willingness to help, he’d gone out to try to buy milk for a neighbor’s baby. Perhaps, with all he’d survived, he understimated the danger. So, not a happy ending: there are no guarantees on the refugee road. But his child will have been born by now and have the chance to make a life in this country.

· Deborah Veach, a Jewish child Holocaust survivor, spent an extra five years in a displaced persons’ camp waiting to enter this country. A happier ending, and she knows and has lived the refugee’s plight. “…[H]istory keeps repeating itself…Basically we have DPs on our border with Mexico, you have DPs from Ukraine. I don’t think people realize the repercussions for these people who are trying to find a place to live. These are good people who are just placed where they are by history.” (Andrew Sillow-Carroll. UN Exhibit remembers when the world turns its back on stateless Jewish refugees. Times of Israel. January 10, 2023). Amen.

Loneliness in Modern Society

Earlier this year, the US Surgeon General issued a public health advisory titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. (2023). This comes almost 40 years after Ray Oldenburg the growing problem and suggested a remedy (Great Third Places. 1989). “[I]n modern suburban societies time is primarily spent in isolated first (home) and second (work) places. In contrast, third places offer a neutral public space for a community to connect and establish bonds.” Such spots “host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals.” And that promotes “social equality by leveling the status of guests [to] provide a setting for grassroots politics, create habits of public association, and offer psychological support to individuals and communities.”

Coffee Shops as Social Hubs

The advisory also appears some 50 years after Starbucks piloted the coffee-connoisseur market few had suspected we’d develop a taste for. And then, starting from a single kiosk, paired coffee with the sit-down café, explicitly styled a third place, which it exported around the world. And meanwhile sparked local and regional variants nationwide. Since then, cafes have become their own market niche, part of America’s social infrastructure, drop-in, work, meet up. And the only rent is the price of a caffeinated beverage—and maybe a pastry.

The Profound Impact of Loneliness

Surprised the SG, on a nationwide listening tour, to discover the depth and extent of American’s dislocation. People “felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. Even when they couldn’t put their finger on the word ‘lonely,’… all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, from every corner of the country, would tell me, ‘I have to shoulder all of life’s burdens by myself,’ or ‘if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice.’ Had he missed the news on how we can no longer seem to talk to each other?

Far more than “just a bad feeling,” our embedded “loneliness harms both individual and societal health. It is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death….Given the profound consequences…we have an opportunity, and an obligation, to make the same investments in addressing social connection that we have made in addressing tobacco use, obesity, and the addiction crisis…..If we fail to do so, we will pay an ever-increasing price in the form of our individual and collective health and well-being. And we will continue to splinter and divide until we can no longer stand as a community or a country. Instead of coming together to take on the great challenges before us, we will further retreat to our corners—angry, sick, and alone.”

Unveiling Starbucks’ Social Mission

All about coffee and human connection, Starbucks mission statement says. So, have cafes become pockets of civility and sociability surrounded by general alienation, even hostility? Not quite. From where I often sit, they’re active in selling coffee, etc., which is, of course, the point. But the connecting part’s fuzzier, passive, “talking the talk but not walking the walk,” with a “build it [or open it] and they will come” assumption. Many of us do, but once inside, we’re on our own, unless we get rowdy. Not like the old TV show Cheers, “Where everybody knows your name.” If not already acquainted, we stick to separate bubbles, in parallel-play proximity. Perhaps Americans require something stronger than caffeine.

Community Challenges and Martin Buber’s Wisdom

Martin Buber, of I-Thou fame, had a more realistic, yet still mysterious, appreciation. “Can one really want community in the same way one makes plans, sets goals…?” No, he answered. But “[w]hen people really engage with each other and respond to the experience with their own lives, when people have a ‘living middle’ at their center, then community can arise among them….” (How Can Community Happen? (1930). from The Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings. Edited by Asher D. Biemann. Palgrave MacMillan. 2002).

Shifting Perspectives on Social Issues

View the advisory as aspirational. Put the idea “out there.” Let it marinate. See if it gains traction. That’s the way public policy works. A decade from the initial attempt before the majority of Americans accepted tobacco’s health risks (Wikipedia). And loneliness and isolation are qualitatively different, far more complex, not something(s) we can touch, slap a warning label on. Declare a “war” on. The Overton Window is a political frame for looking at how attitudes and opinions change over time. “The range of acceptable ideas or window of actual possibilities is always in motion. This means that what was once unthinkable can, and often does, become acceptable, normalized, eventually standard policy.”

·Podcasts and Controversies on Loneliness

That process has already begun in small ways. Cite efforts like the Atlantic’s podcast series How To Talk to People, hosted by Julie Beck and Rebecca Rashid. The episode How Not Go It Alone (June 26, 2023) featured Mia Birdsong, author of How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community (Hachette Books. 2020). For Americans, ideas of self-reliance can work counter to making connections, asking for and offering help. But as Beck noted, we all share a universal longing for “the sense that you are part of a rich, interconnected community. That you have an extended network of support and love, full of many different kinds of relationships that serve many different purposes.” And expect controversy along the way. More pricey government, “nanny state,” silliness? Or even worse, a “deep state” bureaucratic conspiracy? If “mere” emotions can pose genuine threats, have we become a nation of wimpy cry-baby whiners? And even if there’s some truth, doesn’t that only prove science and progress narratives took a wrong turn and left us empty and stranded, uprooted from small “home” communities.

Small-Town Nostalgia vs. Modern Reality

Mayberry and “white picket fence” nostalgia remain enduring tropes. How many movies use plotlines of high-flying cosmopolites who return to discover what really matters? But I reflect on my own family, four generations and counting away from a tiny, “home” village. Everybody knew everybody else, and they told stories, gossiped, as easy as breathing. No need to think about connecting; they couldn’t get away from each other. I suspect my dad could hardly breathe there, had to leave. Women didn’t go on their own, but my mother hitched a ride and so did we. And we’re enduringly grateful. And never felt those “down home” revelatioms. And those who left became kind of legendary. My dad’s vehicle was baseball. A cousin once confided they saw our lives as glamorous. Really?! An uncle on Dad’s side, “a railroad man,” settled in Florida and supposedly had a town named after him. My brother once visited and found the place laid out in anticipation it would grow bigger than it actually had. Stories seldom match reality. And now, demographics show small places shrinking, losing their own “living middles.” Nowhere to go back to, even if we wanted to.

The Surgeon General’s Call to Action

The SG calls for a “movement to mend the social fabric.” And a start to “destigmatize loneliness and change our cultural and policy response…by reimagining the structures, policies, and programs that shape a community to best support the development of healthy relationships.” In a bottom-up commitment, “It will take all of us—individuals and families, schools and workplaces, health care and public health systems, technology companies, governments, faith organizations, and communities—working together.” Reminds of George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light” slogan, leaning on community organizations to take the heavy lifting and costs off government. That was 1988, around the time Oldenburg was working up his ideas. They do tend to cluster, cross influence with ideological differences, come back around. Does that suggest this might become a bipartisan cause? Probably expecting too much in these polarized times.

Crafting an Advisory on Loneliness

Probably intentional the advisory implies but does not directly link loneliness and political polarization. Deep in national malaise, our only point of agreement, from different perspectives, is that the country’s in a bad way. And the issues seem fundamental, systemic, go clear back “to the writing of the Constitution — debates and compromises that resulted in representation in the House based on population and in the Senate based on equal standing for the states; the odd system by which we elect presidents; and lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices. In general, the founders often distrusted the masses and sought to create structural protections against them.” (Dan Balz and Clara Ence Morse. American democracy is cracking. These forces help explain why. Washington Post. August 18, 2023).

Existential Risks and American Democracy

If we mean to rebuild community, start with more detail on the advisory-crafting process. First draft of a template for moving forward? Not naming names, but what kinds of folks contributed, shared their personal anguish? How large was the population? Let’s not call them a “sample.” Did they self-select in response to an announcement/invitation, were they identified by state and local agencies, were they picked at random in standard survey methods? Was contact made by phone, door-to-door, in public meetings? How many refused to talk, hung up, slammed the door? Did some regions show up lonelier than others? Were urban, suburban, or rural areas loneliest? And how, given levels of polarization, were interactions managed to reduce potential for angry confrontations a la school and library board meetings around efforts to censor curricula and ban books? Anger can feel so much more powerful than pain/hurt. But then, and most important of all, perhaps some among us have reached such states of desperation it can spill out in a kind of social Tourette’s Syndrome.

Active Citizenship in a Divided Nation

As the advisory notes, we face huge existential risks. Balz and Morse cite Jill Lepore, director of Harvard’s Amendments Project. “There is value to a written constitution, but only if it can be changed. The danger is that it becomes brittle and fixed — and then the only way to change your system of government or to reform a part of it is through an insurrection.” Distressing to think we may lack the imagination and good will to find a better, less destructive, way. Appalling to hear reckless and thoughtless talk of “a new Civil War.” Have those folks looked at ongoing death, destruction, trauma in Ukraine? Better heed the advisory’s message: “it will take all of us.” And that raises questions of who today merits trust. If current leaders can’t navigate out of gridlock, perhaps we can only trust ourselves. Become another, more active, kind of citizen, as we try to refashion a new “living middle.”

Starbucks’ Mission Evolution

And that will take talking together. And cafes, even though not as advertised, may be the very places. Starbucks’ current mission statement reads, “With every cup, with every conversation, with every community—we nurture the limitless possibilities of human connection.” But I read reports of shifts behind the scene, like a pivot back to kiosks for new locations. Bricks and mortar retail is expensive. Standing connections though seem like a contradiction. And there’s a sense of other reinventions, following image slippage, crying over spilled coffee(?). There was the push back when workers tried to unionize, and accusations of punitive action against organizers, which the company denies. (Alina Selyukh. REI fostered a progressive reputation. Then its workers began to unionize. NPR. July 6, 2023). The company did better handling a racial profiling crisis—apologized, closed a bunch of cafes, shut down for a day to conduct nationwide staff sensitivity training. The strategy’s been featured in case studies on how to properly handle controversy. But in a more cynical view, it was all an elaborate PR maneuver. Perhaps, the way narratives layer, it was all of the above.

Cafe Connections: DIY Possibilities

Can’t stop thinking of, even wax a bit visionary over, those “limitless possibilities”. Café connections have always has been DIY, without direct company intervention. And in a way, that can be an advantage, allows the spaces to be whatever we like. I’ve seen folks come in to wrap Christmas presents, talk over business deals, do job interviews, hash out insurance options. Not exactly eavesdropping, but can’t help hearing, unless you use earphones. So, why not, rather than shrinking spaces, another kind of reinvention hosting conversations? The business case would be a chance to sell more “product.” And perhaps the most useful part the SG and his minions could offer would be to develop DIY manuals or kits to help support and give these efforts some semi-official standing. And Starbucks and other café proprietors could become partners, simply agree, or just not object if folks took the initiative. Say asked to take over for a weekly hour or so to hold regular, informal, DIY talk sessions. And, as per Birdsong, the only rule would be mutual respect. And what if these small, but substantive, connections could help seed something gradually trending toward non-violent reunion?