Tag Archives: Living with the Consequences

Out of Balance

Day after day, I have hesitated to write here because the onslaught of news has kept me off-balance.  There have been few times in my life when the matters of politics, social upheaval, public health and dysfunctional economics have all come together with such overwhelming force.  Every one of the issues is daunting.  Facing them all  together is nearly beyond our imaginations.  But here we are, and the national nightmare will not be gone when we awaken tomorrow.

We are living within a perfect storm of challenges.  It’s as if the crises before us conspired to come together at the same moment to test our individual and national resolve.  In the past we have demonstrated strength and resilience and prided ourselves in the effort.  But what about our capacities to triumph over all of this?  Surely it seems that we are being tested.  It’s a little bit like recovering from a physical injury: we nurse ourselves and rest and rehabilitate, and then we’re whole again.  But facing an injury, an illness, an emotional strain and loss of eyesight is an entirely different proposition; recovery is not so simple, nor so assured. That’s when looking at our circumstances requires a more holistic diagnosis, because often the presence of one infirmity causes others.

Over the past year, I have faced a multitude of physical challenges, a sequence of oddities that have offended (and physically hurt) my beloved sense of fitness and well-being.  First it was my hip.  Then my lower back and joints.  This rheumatological malaise was followed by a spinal matter.  The adjustments I had to make for that gave rise to tendonitis in the left ankle.  And, of course, favoring the left ankle caused bruising of my right heel.  Add in a first-ever bout with kidney stones and the picture becomes rather self-explanatory: where one part of the whole is ill, the rest of the parts are not far behind.

Nationally, we are ill.  We have a political system that is failing us, exacerbated by a president whose sole objective is narcissistic self-service.  That dysfunction has amplified a malaise of polarization which prevents even a pretext of collaborative problem-solving.  Those fixed contrapositions have laid a fertile groundwork for a Covid-19 pandemic in which to gestate, taking more than 100,000 lives in our country so far.  The resultant unemployment, loss of stability and economic collapse have fostered a hopelessness not experienced since the Great Depression.  And that despair is the powder keg which the murder of George Floyd ignited, now into our seventh day of dystopian unraveling.  We are loathe to wonder what the next pain might be, what disablement is yet to come.

While I have no single diagnosis for all of the symptoms of our current disease, I do know how some of our best organizations go about the process of problem-solving.  The process is intended to “drill down” to the root cause of the ailment, to identify the most underlying base of pain.  In the present instance, I submit that we know what that root cause is.

Underlying our national malady is a persistent and growing inequality- racial, social and economic- that has been the bedrock for growth and power in our country since its founding.  There is no disputing the foundation upon which the U.S. grew to unparalleled prominence in the world: the lands we control today were territories inhabited by Native Americans long before the presence of the first Caucasian.  The labor upon which the “new” landowners relied for expansion and wealth creation was provided substantially by black slaves imported from other lands.  Inequality is a cornerstone of this nation’s history, whether we feel justification for it or not.  And it persists.

From obscene pay equity issues within our economy (Really?  A CEO is really worth 500 times the compensation of his her workers?) to the knee of a white police officer on the neck of his black suspect (for maybe passing a counterfeit $20 bill?), hostile inequality remains at the forefront of national policy, practice and preference.  It’s there because we allow it.  We prefer it.  In the aftermath of daily upheavals, we hear elected officials or neighborhood residents making the claim, “This is not who we are.”  But it is.  Otherwise, neither the inequality which spawns it nor the  rioting in response to it would be happening.

That is not to say that it must be this way, only that it is this way.  The central mantra of our economic system says that if one works hard and applies creativity and motivation to opportunity, financial and social success can be had.  What is not made clear in that proposition is that in today’s culture of winner-take-all, that achievement will be at an often dangerous expense of others.  This isn’t an argument against free enterprise or the promises of risk-reward.  Rather, it’s simply the underlying truth, the underlying cause, of the inequalities that are driving many of the awful symptoms witnessed this summer so far.

Holistic well-being exists when the body is in synch with itself, when the systems and appendages are well and complementing one another.  A nation’s health is exactly the same: no individual can achieve  maximum well-being as long as others are not well.  As a result, we’ll have some decisions to be made in the months ahead, once the smoke clears and political actions have been promised.  We’ll either have interventions that we’re willing to embrace, or we won’t.  We’ll actually deliver the systemic change promised over decades of disparity, or we won’t.  At the end of the day, it will be up to us to determine whether the level of inequality has finally become intolerable, or whether a knee to the neck is just something we prefer to live with….

 

When A Man

When a man acts, he pronounces himself to the world.

When a man who has become a leader enriches himself and his family at the expense of his followers, he is a syphon;

When a man speaks words that betray reality, he is a liar;

When a man sees himself as the only answer to every question, he is a fool;

When a man is willing to sacrifice the good name of another to protect his reputation, he is a traitor;

When a man berates and belittles others to make himself appear strong, he is a bully;

When a man delights in the death of another- any other- he is a tin man;

When a man professes his innocence in the face of his guilt, he is a coward;

When a man must sing his own praises in order to be noticed, he is a braggart;

When a man has dealt away his dignity and his morality, he is without a soul….

 

Bleak House

“It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up.”                                                    Bleak House, by Charles Dickens

It’s an image that is haunting, and daunting, this observation from 1852 Victorian England:  the idea that some children- many children, in fact- in the very prime of their learning and forming years were forced to find their way to young adulthood through the hauling  and heaving of desperate poverty and abuse.  It was a reality distinctly at odds with the Victorians’ self-proclaimed progressive era of reform and improved societal standards.  Author Charles Dickens made his mark, in part, chronicling the sad realities of the time.

That was a long time ago.  The pokes at our collective conscience by Dickens have persisted since his time, as his works are among the most revered and widely-read in the English language.  As a result, we should have every reason to expect that, with the passage of time and a presumed greater enlightenment about healthy societies, our nurture of children might have changed since 1852.

Not so.

Dickens would find endless fuel for his anger today.  Even a short visit to the Mexico-U.S. border would engender sufficient affront for him to create two volumes the size of Bleak House.  The experiences of border children is little better than those endured in the streets of London more than 150 years ago.  The realities of the War in Yemen have claimed 85,000 children under the age of 5 since 2015,  more than enough to flame Dickens’ sense of outrage.  The outlook there suggests the potential demise of another 14 million people over the next several years.  And if the well-known writer deigned to travel to the U.S., he would be dismayed to learn that the British progeny has fostered more than 16 million hungry children in 2018.  If Dickens took a side trip down to Nicaragua, he would encounter children facing family upheavals, disappeared parents, and poverty that is among the worst in the entire Western Hemisphere.  He might begin to wonder whether his famous works really made any impact at all.

I’ve re-read a number of Dickens’ classics in recent years, including Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities.  I’m drawn to his characters and the ambience of the times in his writings.  But I also find myself distracted by the conditions encountered by many of his characters, especially the children.  The stories are uncomfortable.  The children’s circumstances are often abhorrent, to the point occasionally when I think that Dickens has likely exaggerated the realities faced by his young protagonists.  But I read on in the certain hope that things will get better by the tale’s end.

Dickens’ hopes for any kind of empathetic reforms or changed sensitivities as a result of his works would be shattered in the face of today’s world.  The travesties of Victorian England are comparatively small compared to the cold calculations of despots today. Reading fictional accounts of treachery and evil pales in comparison to the very real atrocities that we tolerate repeatedly on the world stage today.

A Christmas Carol delights audiences because of its ability to take us from the depths of human greed to the pinnacle of generosity and redemption.  It makes us feel good in the hope that it creates for eventual justice.  I wonder if Dickens would be inclined to write very different conclusions to his stories today….

 

 

 

 

The Pain That Will Not Go Away

Coincidental or not, ever since my official departure from Winds of Peace as its leader, I’ve been afflicted by a worsening hip pain.  The discomfort did not stop me from my daily workout routines, however, until two weeks ago.  The ache in my hip and back became both chronic and intense, resulting in an inability to sleep for more than about 60 minutes at a time.  Then I need to get up and walk around for a while before going back to bed for another hour.  Multiple medical consults have failed to achieve any relief; I’ll have another intervention later this week.  Will this be the initiative to end what, for me, has been a painful nightmare?  Time will tell.

I’ve been fortunate throughout my life to have suffered few physical difficulties.  I knew that the ravages of age were undoubtedly compounding within me, but I have worked hard to keep them at bay.  That likely makes me less patient in light of my current malaise.  I don’t have a sense of its rhythm or its source.  Medical folks have massaged, medicated, probed and examined  X-rays, without reaching conclusion.  My pain seemingly worsens every day and I grow a bit panicky.

But it’s not the intensity or even the constancy of the pain that bothers me the most.  Rather, it’s the uncertainty about whether it will eventually come to an end.  And more importantly, whether that end will be a positive one.  It’s the uncertainty that is disabling.

Living with this reality for the past two weeks and analyzing my temperament about it has engulfed me with self-pity from time to time, as I have wondered whether this is the way my life will be from now on, whether the days of freedom of movement and happy expressions of physical capacities are suddenly things of the past.   I continue to push myself to the limits of pain tolerance, but that has not been much help.

Then, at 2:14 A.M. last night, as I crawled back into bed after a 10-minute stretch, filled with a self-centered sadness for my plight, I was struck with a sudden clarity of understanding about an event totally unrelated to my own pains.  My epiphany concerned the impasse unfolding in Nicaragua over the past twelve months and a new perspective on what I have regarded as  my own personal calamity.

For Nicaraguans the pains of death and detention have been intense and continuing; the grief of loss has been compounded by the surprise eruption following long-simmering pains within the civil body.  Even as Nicaraguans recognized the country’s issues, they felt, or hoped,  that eventual remedies would be peaceful and democratic.  But quite suddenly there was this great pain, this great stain, that fell upon Nicaraguan society.  It hurt.  Relief has been unattainable, no matter what position the ailing have taken.  And they wonder whether this is the new normal, the way that future society will function.

As painful as the losses are, it’s the uncertainty of the future that festers in the hearts of Nicaraguans today.  They know how they want to feel.  They know how they wish to live and move within society.  But the current uncertainty robs them of an essential component of well-being: hope.  Without faith in some actions or initiatives on which to focus, the future becomes an unknown, dark place.  This has been the day-to-day suffering of not just a retired yankee but of an entire Central American population.

That’s perspective.  The chances are pretty good that the discomfort that I have experienced for the past several weeks will go away; one way or the other, I’ll likely get over it.  For most North Americans, most of our daily aches are inconveniences at worst.  But 2:14 A.M. is a good time of the day to reflect upon the source of real pain….

 

 

Deja Vu

Conditions in the country we serve, Nicaragua, continue to hearken back to a generation ago, when the administration in power faced enormous protests and demands for a new government.  The confrontations continue today, just as they did all those years ago,  leading to violence and deaths, denials, accusations, reprisals and lots of pain.  It’s tough to watch in a country of such charm and character.

Two recent documents, written by The University of Central America and the Episcopal Church, provide both a news update as well as perspectives about how at least part of the population places its support.  The following is a statement provided by the UCA following a Wednesday night demonstration:

The University of Central America (UCA) reports that this Wednesday, May 30, at around 4:30 PM, there was an attack by the “shock troops” against the defenseless population participating in a civic march that had the UCA as its final destination.

The attacks took place in the vicinity of the gate closest to the National University of Engineering (UNI). In support of the people, the UCA security guards opened the gates so that the protesters could take refuge in the campus. Fleeing the attacks, more than 5,000 people managed to enter, while many fled in other directions. Countless injured people were treated by volunteers immediately on campus and ambulances took all of the injured to medical centers.

After 8:30 PM, volunteers and drivers from the UCA had managed to evacuate the majority of the refugees to different parts of the capital and, at the time of publication of this message, continue in this process. Despite the shooting, the refugees did not want to stay on campus because of threats received about attacks on the university.

The UCA, which stands on the side of the people in their struggle for justice, denounces this new criminal attack and demands from the authorities the immediate cessation of the repression that uses shock troops to assassinate with impunity, protected by the current misrule.

We urge human rights organizations, national and foreign, to take note of this situation that seriously affects the lives of citizens and to use mechanisms for the protection of human rights such as the Inter-American Human Rights System and the United Nations.

We urge the international community to stand in solidarity with the people of Nicaragua and to apply mechanisms which can help resolve this crisis, which has reached the level of a massacre against a defenseless population.”

The document quoted below was generated by the Bishops Conference of the Episcopal Church in Nicaragua:

PRESS RELEASE

To the People of God and men and women of good will:

  1. We the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua have experienced with profound pain the violent events carried out last night by armed groups allied with the government against the civilian population. We energetically condemn all these violent acts against the exercise of peaceful free demonstrations and we absolutely reject this organized and systemic aggression against the people, which has left dozens of wounded and some people dead.
  2. We cannot continue allowig this inhumane violence “that destroys the lives of the innocent, that teaches to kill and equally disrupts the lives of those who kill, that leaves behind a trail of resentment and hate, and makes more difficult the just solution of the very problems that caused it” (Centesimus Annus, 52).
  3. We the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference condemn these acts of repression on the part of groups close to the government, and we want to leave clear that the National Dialogue cannot be renewed as long as the people of Nicaragua continue being denied the right to freely demonstrate and continue being repressed and murdered.
  4. At this moment in which the history of our country continues being stained with blood, we cry out to Jesus Crucified, who on resurrecting from the dead conquered evil and death with the strength of his infinite love. “Oh, Cross of Christ, we teach that the dawn of the sun is stronger than the darkness of night. Oh Cross of Christ, we teach that the apparent victory of evil fades in the face of the empty tomb and in the face of the certainty of the Resurrection and the love of God, which nothing can defeat or darken or weaken” (Pope Francis, Holy Friday 2016). That Mary, the grieving Virgin, whose heart was pierced by a sword in the face of the pain of her Son on the Cross (Lk 2:35), consoles so many Nicaraguan mothers who suffer over the murder of their sons and watch over all our people with maternal love.

Issued in the city of Managua on the thirty first day of the month of May of the the two thousand eighteenth year of the Lord.

 Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua

This communique was signed by the ten bishops of the conference.

(For those interested in tracking developments in Nicaragua, one source is La Prensa.  The daily newspaper provides very current coverage of events in Nicaragua, as well as perspective on events elsewhere in the world.)

For those who know and love Nicaragua and the people there, this is a painful and sad time.  It’s made even more so by how little the U.S. news media writes about it.  Their lack of attention does not diminish the anguish and tragedy of what is occurring in the land of our neighbor to the south….

                                                   

 

 

 

Do All Lives Matter?

Black lives matter.  Police lives matter.  Latino lives matter.  Gay lives matter.

We live in an age of proclaiming that _______ lives matter.  (Fill in the blank with whatever ethnic, racial, gender, vocational or religious designation is important to you.)  Over the past several years, the U.S. has witnessed countless marches, protests and demonstrations which demand and plead for human mercies in the face of injustice and bias.  These are events which are both troubling and hopeful. Troubling, because they invariably follow an incident of hatred and/or hurt.  Hopeful, because they affirm the expectation that we have for fairness and compassion.

I encountered the following article by writer Nick McDonell, writing for The Los Angeles Times.  It casts a somewhat broader view of whether all lives matter to us.  It invites the question, “Is any life of less value than another?”

Civilian war casualties: Truth is, we value others’ lives less than our own

Iraqi officials report that a U.S. airstrike killed nearly 200 civilians in West Mosul in mid-March. The U.S. military acknowledged that it had carried out a mission in the area and is now investigating this strike as well as another in March, said to have killed dozens of civilians near the Syrian city of Raqqah.

When a missile meets its target, chemicals inside the weapon combine, causing gases to expand and exert pressure on the warhead, which shatters outward, turning it into shrapnel behind a blast wave. This wave, faster than the speed of sound, compresses the surrounding air, pulverizes any nearby concrete, plaster, or bone, and creates a vacuum, sucking debris back to the zero point. The chemical interaction also produces heat, causing fire.

Although the ensuing civilian casualties may seem like unstoppable tragedies, they are not. Civilian casualties are not inevitable. They are a choice.

The U.S. military predicts how many people will die in its airstrikes by surveilling and estimating the population within a proposed blast radius. It also sets a limit on the number of innocent people each command is authorized to kill incidentally. This limit, called the Non-Combatant Cutoff Value, or NCV, is perhaps our starkest rule of engagement, and it varies region-by-region for political reasons.

In Afghanistan, civilian casualties caused by U.S. airstrikes are considered a liability in our relationship with that country’s government. The NCV for Afghanistan is therefore zero.

In Iraq and Syria, the calculus is different. The Pentagon believes the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a greater threat than the Taliban; the Iraqis have been requesting more aggressive support; the fighting is more urban.

Last year in Baghdad, I asked then-U.S. Army spokesman Col. Steve Warren what the NCV was for Iraq. That is: How many innocent Iraqis was his command authorized to kill incidentally in an airstrike?

“There are numbers — we don’t put those numbers out,” he told me, “and here’s why we don’t put ‘em out: Because if the enemy understand, ‘Oh if I have X number of civilians around a thing,’ its gonna be harder for [the U.S. to arrack] right? So that’s a piece of information that we protect.”

The number, however, came out. It was first reported by Buzzfeed, and then the Associated Press, in December, when the Army issued its latest Rules of War Manual.

“According to senior defense officials,” the AP story ran, “military leaders planning operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria may authorize strikes where up to 10 civilians may be killed, if it is deemed necessary in order to get a critical military target.” 

That number yields some grim math. Last year, the coalition acknowledged 4,589 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. If the NCV was 10 throughout, then U.S. policy in 2016 was to tolerate the incidental killing of a maximum of 45,890 innocent Iraqis and Syrians in order to destroy ISIS.

The common estimate for ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria is 40,000, and between Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the attacks on the Twin Towers, and 2016, foreign terrorists killed a total of 411 American civilians, worldwide.

Our policy for last year, then, was to tolerate the death of 112 Iraqi or Syrian civilians per American civilian.

That’s on paper. In practice, the military does not typically expect civilian casualties, and it engineers strikes to avoid them. I doubt the military anticipated, specifically, those 200 civilians who died in Mosul. We have killed far fewer noncombatant Iraqis than the NCV permits — a minimum of 2,831, according to Airwars, the preeminent independent monitoring group. (The U.S. has confirmed only 220 as of March). And in dozens of interviews with men and women responsible for such strikes, no one expressed a desire to kill civilians or the opinion that it is ever strategically advisable to do so.

Recently embedded in a tactical operations center to observe airstrikes, I met targeteers and commanding officers who were mostly conscientious, within the parameters of their bloody business.

But what’s on paper matters. The math, then, is troubling — especially under a president who, unlike the men and women he leads, has endorsed the intentional, rather than incidental, killing of noncombatants.

“The other thing with terrorists,” then-candidate Donald Trump said on “Fox and Friends” in December 2015, “is that you have to take out their families.”

To do so would be a war crime. Whether or not the Trump administration has relaxed the rules of engagement, as some suspect, Airwars reported in March that we are, for the first time, causing more civilian casualties in the fight against ISIS than our Russian counterparts. 

This monstrous fact will disturb the troops I met in December, who believe that we are always the good guys when it comes to civilian casualties. Or at least the better guys. But there are no good guys in this process. That we have an NCV greater than zero implies something ugly, if unsurprising, about the way we see ourselves in the world, how we value a foreign life against an American one. We value it less.

It is reasonable to care more for countrymen than foreigners. Devotion to family, neighbors and friends defines a life, and one does not love a stranger, a little girl in Mosul, as much as a daughter.

But neither should we be willing to kill that little girl to achieve our aims. Arguably legal, our utilitarian position is neither brave nor morally ambitious for a superpower dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Nick McDonell’s most recent book, “The Civilization of Perpetual Movement,” was published in 2016. He wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times (TNS).

It’s a sobering article.  To know that some human beings are simply counted in the calculation of something called NCV is horrifying, even if nothing really new.  The process begs for examination and reflection.  Maybe we start with the premise that one must “love a stranger, a little girl in Mosul, as much as a daughter.”  For these are our daughters.  And our sons.  Our national global strategies have no place for the notion of “taking out their families,” as our president proclaims.  Life is precious in whatever the context.  To deny that is to deny our very humanity….

Step Lightly

I recently took the opportunity to travel to some places I had never been before.  Specifically, my wife and I visited for the first time the jewels of the Southwest United States:  Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.  Such an experience is many things: renewing, educational, inspiring, humbling, a privilege and even existential in nature.  Especially at this time of great upheaval within our country, the opportunity to “pull back,” even for a short time, provided a welcome relief.  And an important lesson.

Most of the sites we visited are well-known to those who have visited the Parks, and the trails leading to these vantage points are well-marked and well-trod by millions of visitors before us.  And at each of those trailheads, the Park Service feels obligated to post a message to its visitors, one which might seem unnecessary in the shadows of majestic peaks and rims of jaw-dropping chasms, but which is offered nonetheless.  It’s a small sign which reads, “Your Steps Matter.”                                                

The sign is simply a reminder of the transience of these landscapes and our impacts upon them.  They are fragile.  People too often have the desire to leave their own imprints on these monuments of creation, as if to satisfy a need to make a statement of existence, to leave their own modern-day petroglyphs about which future visitors might wonder.   Perhaps it was the reflective nature of our trip or my tendency to look for hidden meanings where none may be intended, but the words on the sign prompted other thoughts for me.

Our steps do matter, whether for the health of ground vegetation, rock formations or water quality in the parks.   Trees that have withstood the extremes of nature for more than 100 years are nonetheless dependent upon “breathing space” from the hordes of human visitors who come to these sites constantly to witness the immense majesty of the natural world.  It’s among the places where it’s not OK to take “the road less traveled,” as Frost suggested, and where we’re discouraged to blaze our own trails, in deference to the survival of other life.

In light of the signage, I felt a certain pride at keeping to the paths, as though I was contributing something good to the welfare and sustainability of the parks.  I know that the notion is ridiculous, but staying on the trails was perhaps the one act of preservation that I could make.  But that same sense of self-righteousness led me to consider other steps in my life.

Steps everywhere in our lives matter.  Every stride taken in our journey makes an imprint, leaves a trace, impacts our surroundings. Like the proverbial beating of butterfly wings that affects weather patterns on the other side of the world, we are part of a global tapestry wherein all of us are inextricably dependent upon and impacted by each other.  Choices we make in the U.S. have an impact in Nicaragua.  We might elect to trespass over someone else’s space, and might even be able to “get away with it,” and to do so without detection.  But the space will be changed forever, in ways that we may never know. How and where we walk are matters of choice: we can elect to tread lightly and with respect, or to trample according to our own narrow wills.  Either way, we leave a story for those who follow.  Like our children.  Or our grandchildren.  Or our children’s children’s children.

Our steps are our legacies, like those artifacts we covet from millennia past.  They are the messages we leave behind that attempt to declare our existence and portray the kinds of lives we led.  What a pity if, in our wakes, all that remains are traces of once-resplendent times and places….

 

All I Really Need to Know About Immigration I Learned in Kindergarten

With apologies to author Robert Fulgham, I couldn’t help but recall his enormously successful book as I’ve listened to the heating debate about immigration among Republican presidential candidates.  Insofar as every one of those leaders is a product of immigration to this country, I thought it might be of some value to recall at least some of the admonitions for wisdom that Fulgham offered in his classic book.

Share Everything-  We’re taught at an early age that it’s important to ensure everyone has enough: toys, cookies, rewards, being loved and respected.  By and large, we haven’t done very well with this as adults, especially with basic life necessities.  We’ve heard many times how something like 80 individuals in the world own as many resources as half (or more) of the rest of the people on the planet. That’s not a very convincing example of sharing, particularly when so many of the have-not’s are living day-to-day in sub-human conditions.   History and reality both suggest that a primary motivation for many immigrants is the need to improve their economic status.  Most don’t wish to leave their homeland for another spot in the world; they simply must go to where the opportunity is.  Sometimes it’s good to give up our place in the lunch line for somebody else.

Play Fair-  A corollary to the above, playing fair suggests that in a competitive world where people should expect to be rewarded according to their efforts, a rigged game signals to the players that there are no rules anymore, that everyone is subject only to what he/she can gain for him/herself and that creative sidestepping of the rules is not only permissible but oftentimes heavily rewarded.   If CEOs and investment bankers and even nations are immune from penalty for violating rules, the signal is clear for someone considering a cross of the nation’s border.  What is there to lose?  If the teacher is a cheater, the lesson to be learned is that fairness is for fools.

Don’t Hit People-  Especially not with clubs or tasers or fists or bullets. Regardless of where any candidate might stand on the immigration issue, the matter resides at a level of importance somewhere far below the sanctity of human life.  As complex and persistent as the immigration problem has become, its solutions won’t be found in the  box of punitive punishment.  Not even death itself has proven to be a deterrent for the desperate.  Hitting just hurts, and not only the victims.

Clean Up Your Own Mess-  A push in kindergarten is almost always preceded by an instigating act by someone else, whether seen or not.  The push is merely the response that happens to be observed. Illegal immigration is most often motivated by untenable economic circumstances.  And those circumstances have been magnified by treaties, agreements and accords that favored our country and its own economic interests in exaggerated ways.  As a result, the option of remaining in Mexico or Nicaragua or Honduras evaporates in the wake of the social and economic consequences of messy agreements.  Our political candidates claim that illegal immigrants cross the U.S. borders knowing what the consequences are likely to be.  But those same candidates must also recognize the likely consequences of economic repression, one of which is desperation-fueled immigration.  It’s easier to serve as a model for international behavior if our own cubbyhole is clean.

Don’t Take Things That Aren’t Yours-  For every crayon pilfered in kindergarten, there are at least an equal number of excuses for the theft offered up by the filching felon: “it’s my turn, he doesn’t need it, she’s had it long enough,” or “I need it to finish my own work.” While any of them may be true, none excuse the behavior.  It’s no different in the competition for resources across the globe.  Whether oil, agriculture resources, water, geographic access or any other motive, taking what belongs to someone else is wrong, even when we’re the ones doing the taking.

Keep Your Hands (and arms) to Yourself-  If economic desperation is one of the prime motivations for immigration, then flight from the ravages of war is the other.  When physical danger from bombs and gunfire threatens life, then there is nothing to lose in trying to flee to a safer zone, even when such flight violates law.  Too often, the manufacturer’s label on those ammunitions contains the words “Made in U.S.A.”  Even when our nation is not engaged in confrontation with one of our national neighbors, our fingerprints are curiously omnipresent in the horrors of many homelands.

Say You’re Sorry When You Hurt Somebody-  Apology and forgiveness. They are the cornerstones of any relationship, because we live in an imperfect world with fellow humans who are as imperfect as we ourselves.  No individual, no nation, is without fault.  But the offering of forgiveness is a response to apology; it works best when the apology comes first.  The immigration conundrum might be less divisive, less of a political “cause celebre” and even less complex when our nation acknowledges a system that is misleading and unfair to all the kids on the playground.

Well, Fulgham’s treatise on living life well has been panned by many as being too simplistic for the sophisticated and complicated world of today.  It might be too simpleminded for immigration analysis, as well.   Perhaps.  But it also offers an alternative to the process in which we find ourselves today, where political rhetoric includes demonizing an entire ethnic class, building higher walls between nations, and minimizing the desperate realities of other human beings.  Maybe there’s one more Fulgham idea worth contemplating: hold hands and stick together….