Tag Archives: America

Make America Mature Again

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What follows is an adapted, re-edited version of a Facebook post from today that seems to have struck a nerve, attracting dozens of likes, comments, and shares. As a result, I concluded that perhaps I should add it to this blog.

 

No pictures here, just observations:

We as a nation come from ancestors who nearly starved to death at Valley Forge but stuck it out to ensure the success of a revolution that created a new nation built on liberty, imperfectly at first, but expanding its range over centuries.

Some of the toughest Americans come from ancestors who endured slavery over centuries to help build upon that legacy of liberty when they finally won their freedom.

We come from ancestors who endured four grueling years of civil war to ensure that liberty and equality retained a fighting chance to become this nation’s hallmark.

We come from ancestors who endured long passages across sometimes rough seas to reach a land that promised them a better life, and when they arrived, many endured hard work and, often, discrimination to assert their role in building our democracy.

We come from ancestors who, toward the end of World War I, endured endless months of influenza pandemic, with shutdowns and deaths and illness comparable to those we are experiencing now, until the danger passed and lives could be rebuilt.

We come from ancestors who, just a decade later, underwent the grueling agony of the Great Depression. We elected a president who, riddled with polio, understood the virtues of patience and perseverance in solving problems that seemed daunting by any measure, then entered World War II to help save the world from some of its most vicious tyrannies in modern times.

I could go on. But . . . .

Someone forgot to teach these lessons to a narcissistic president with the attention span of a fruit fly, a spoiled upper-class brat who has never faced serious challenges in life until now, a man who never learned much history, judging from the evidence of his comments.

Someone forgot to teach those lessons to protesters who, after a single month of one of the greatest public health challenges in anyone’s lifetime, refuse to learn that life never promised them that everything would turn up roses at the flick of a finger, and who never learned to analyze and understand a problem to find out whether the reopening they say they want might produce more harm than good, that a temper tantrum never solved anything.

Millions of Americans, probably most, of course, despite everything, understand that sacrifice will be part of the solution. But others have never, apparently, been steeled by a personal Valley Forge and just want what they want. Isn’t it time for a little maturity to settle in? Thank God for some governors and mayors out there with common sense and fortitude.

This is America. We’re supposed to be tougher than just throwing temper tantrums. Let’s prove it, people.

 

Jim Schwab

 

Standards of Public Behavior

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Like John McCain’s assuredly final book, The Restless Wave, I read Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, by James R. Clapper, in large part because my wife bought it for me. The usual pathway to my desk for books I discuss in this blog is that they get sent as review copies from a publisher.

Not so in this case. Jean follows much more news in her retirement, hears about books by current and former public officials, and occasionally chooses to bring one to my attention by buying it. She knows that I am likely to read it, though it may take a while if I get bogged down with other business. I am also unlikely to read the entire spate of such books in this age of Trump because I don’t have enough time. They seem to be multiplying like rabbits.

Clapper is quite clear that he never envisioned writing such a book until he retired, in large part because, as a largely nonpolitical intelligence officer, his accustomed role was to lie low and avoid publicity. At the peak of his career, as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under President Barack Obama, he says, he saw his mission as “speaking truth to power.” Like any other high-ranking administration official, Clapper had better and worse days, agreements and disagreements, with the President, but retained a deep respect for the occupant of the office both because of the importance of that office and the dignity of the individual performing the job. Any individual who has ever held a responsible position in business or in public life knows well the profound difference between disagreement and disrespect. In the end, the boss calls the shots. Moreover, Clapper makes clear that, as first a military officer, and then a civilian intelligence professional following his retirement from the Air Force, he served under successive administrations of both parties and retained the same respect for those above him.

He spends most of the book laying the groundwork for the final chapters about life at or near the top of the system. He details his childhood, in which he once managed inadvertently to hack through his family’s television into the communications system of the Philadelphia police, into college and the Air Force and training as a military intelligence officer. Like most public servants, he did not perform his job in his early years with any expectation of someday becoming the nation’s chief intelligence officer. He simply grew into a role that eventually put him repeatedly in front of congressional committees, testifying at hearings about everything from Benghazi to budgets to Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The time he invests in illuminating a background that has otherwise been largely out of the limelight helps us to understand the journey he has made from a lowly son of another itinerant military professional to someone with deep insights into where the nation has lately gone astray.

It is almost surely the unnerving experience of watching Donald Trump become president, even as the evidence of Russian meddling in the U.S. election system was mushrooming—much of which he was at times unable to discuss because the information was classified, or the investigation was underway and under the purview of the FBI, not the DNI—that seems to have dislodged any reservations he once had about sharing this story in a memoir. Like McCain, he uses the aid of a speechwriter, but neither man ever set out to be a professional writer. Still, it is perfectly clear that it is Clapper who assembled the facts for this intriguing book. The insights are clearly his own.

What troubles Clapper is hardly surprising, once one understands the philosophy that has guided his career, one commonly shared among lifelong public servants. There are certain expectations of loyalty to the nation, of the dignity of public service, and of public decency that seem to drive Clapper. No doubt, these motivations also affect many others on the growing list of critics whom President Donald Trump has recently targeted for loss of their security clearances. The sheer amateurishness of this dangerously autocratic move on Trump’s part, already applied to former CIA Director John Brennan, is apparent from the fact that several people on the announced list of those targeted for such scrutiny no longer have security clearances anyway. Would someone explain to Trump the Petulant that you can’t strip a security clearance that does not exist?

This appalling ignorance of history, law, and policy, and the consistent refusal to listen to advisers, certainly the refusal to accept the value of truth spoken to power, all appear to have played a role in driving Clapper, who is on Trump’s list, to construct his memoir and share his fears of the direction in which current events are leading the nation. There is a moment when respect for the office of the presidency is overshadowed by concerns about the abuse of power, as was the case under Richard Nixon. But this week’s events are beginning to suggest that even Watergate may not stand as the worst abuse of presidential power in American history. We cannot be afraid to say so. Clapper, who has made the round of news shows in recent months, states frankly near the end of his book:

I don’t believe our democracy can function for long on lies, particularly when inconvenient and difficult facts spoken by the practitioners of truth are dismissed as “fake news.” I know that the Intelligence Community cannot serve our nation if facts are negotiable. Just in the past few years, I’ve seen our country become polarized because people live in separate realities in which everyone has his or her own set of facts—some of which are lies knowingly distributed by a foreign adversary. This was not something I could idly stand by and watch happen to the country I love.

And so, he quotes General George Patton about how to move forward:

                “The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.”

And hence the book’s title. It is an intelligent choice. Like Clapper with the presidents and superior officers he served in a five-decade career, I could probably question or object to some points he makes, but his larger points are impeccable. They are about honor and truth and service and honesty. Either you believe these ideals exist and matter, or you don’t. America must decide.

Jim Schwab