Having been prepared to discuss American politics, but not receiving any openings, I finally brought the topic up myself at an informal dinner.  But even then the responses were subdued, the comments and questions circumspect.  It felt like everyone was struggling with something they could not yet fully comprehend.  Or unable to say anything at all positive or hopeful, they remained on the edge of things.  I had raised the topic, but found myself embarking on a detailed discussion of the electoral college.  This was safer territory.  Even though everyone at the table seemed genuinely interested, prodding me with questions, it had the feel of a less threatening diversion.  I did my best to explain the technical aspects of how this all had happened, while avoiding the reality of why it actually did happen.

After exhausting all I knew regarding the historical basis and current intricacies of the US electoral system, I leaned back in my chair and said, “Well, we’ll see what happens.”  As I leaned back, Lorenzo, the clown coach, took it as a sign to lean forward.  Then he asked, “You say that “you’ll see,” but what does that mean?”  He proceeded to tell me what he thought it might mean.  “It’s just like Berlusconi,” he said, “Trump will win again.”  Lorenzo wasn’t the first person to draw a comparison between Trump and Berlusconi, but since Lorenzo was Italian his comments had added credibility.  I was still trying to accept eight months of Trump, but Lorenzo was making a very compelling argument for eight years.  I think he sensed my denial.

I had never quite understood the popularity of Berlusconi, but Lorenzo was educating me.  “It didn’t matter the corruption or what he did,” Lorenzo explained, “Berlusconi had his supporters and they loved him.”  The answer as to how any leader stays in power is simple, Lorenzo seemed to by saying, even if the deeper understanding is elusive.  Leaders stay in power, because they have enough supporters who love them – and continue to vote for them.  As much as it was somewhat of a shock, everything Lorenzo said had a straightforward logic.  It also doesn’t necessarily matter how outraged the opposition is.  In fact, the more outraged the better, because it reinforces division and disorientation.  By keeping everyone unbalanced, opposition is fragmented, disorganized, and can’t coalesce around a viable alternative.  A relatively small group of intensely loyal and highly motivated supports can be enough to retain power.

I had been clinging to a belief that things would somehow correct themselves, but Lorenzo had laid out a more likely, if sobering, scenario.  A scenario based on facts, simply stated, even if those facts were difficult to accept.  It took a clown expert, well schooled in nonsense, to help me begin to see reality.  Trump got elected by winning the election.  It may have been by electoral votes and not the popular vote, that’s a quirk of the American system.  The fact is Trump won, because he had enough voters who supported him.  And he’ll win again unless someone emerges who can win more electoral votes.  A whole range of unpredictable things may ensue before the next election, but right now one very plausible scenario is that Trump wins reelection.  And his reelection in 2020 would be less of a surprise than his election was in 2016.  I’d like to say, “we’ll see,” but after my conversation with Lorenzo that now just sounds like denial.

Time Portends: A Halloween Sonnet

Though gloomy and grave it may be to say,
No choice the end brings, surely we concede;
We are all merely tenants of the day,
The rent we pay, for we don’t hold the deed.
 
May we remain as young, the virile, strong;
Yet worn and faded photos do remind,
For every person, summer’s not for long;
Despite warm doubts, cold terms severely bind.
 
It all sounds dismal, murky, and too bleak;
Life’s prime torment, do we endure alone?
Or can a sober truth we bravely seek,
To know our lease will be inscribed on stone?
 
There’s freedom in accepting time portends,
Our lives demand untimely, certain, ends.
 

Without credit everything shrinks: wealth, material well-being, education, health, security, and most all other opportunities.  Access to funds that can be invested now, but paid back over time is a key factor in increasing living standards around the world.  Modern society itself could not exist without a cushion of credit – a colossal air mattress keeping us above the cold, hard ground of a more brutal existence.  It’s pumped up by confidence and our hope in the future.  The trick has always been to keep a reasonable amount of air in the mattress appropriately correlated to the actual physical economy.

Since we all depend on the integrity of our collective system of credit, we all have an interest in how it’s managed.  This means ensuring that those who get paid to pump air in don’t simply inflate for their own profits and burst the mattress.  This also means that in correcting for over inflation too much air doesn’t get sucked out too quickly bringing us crashing back down to earth.  We aren’t literally sleeping together, but we do share a bed of sorts; and it’s made of credit.  Even if we sometimes resent our bedmates, especially those that trash the mattress, we always have to remember the importance of the bed.

Given that approximately one in four women and one in seven men were sexually abused as children and that children today are facing these same startling statistics, we are clearly not doing enough to stop pedophiles.  There are over half a million registered sex offenders in the US and the majority of these have sexually molested children.  These are known offenders.  It is estimated, however, that there are millions more who continue to specifically target children with impunity.  It sounds alarmist, but unfortunately the number of victims, who often remain silent out of shame and fear, sadly supports these estimates.  This isn’t simply an institutional problem of the Catholic Church or Penn State University; it is a pervasive social problem in America and throughout the world.

To encounter a pedophile for many people, unless they have specific experience in dealing with pedophiles, is to confront an aberration.  It is not uncommon for it to create varying levels of cognitive dissonance where things simply do not make sense.  How can this person people think they know, who is sometimes respected and trusted by many, be capable of such horrible crimes?  This is not to excuse the actions and inactions of those who knew or should have known, but an attempt to place it in the context of our current social environment.  It will be a travesty if we only focus on the present scandal and then eventually move on, rather than provide lasting compassion for the victims of sexual abuse, try to understand the traumas they have experienced, and work to prevent new and continued instances of abuse from occurring.  It is time that the pervasive ignorance that surrounds this issue, and which pedophiles so cleverly use to their advantage, is finally replaced by a sober assessment of reality and the courage to act.  Pedophiles count on the common tendency of people to turn away in confusion and denial, but it is up to all of us not to turn away.

We must address this multi-dimensional problem at every level, whether it is the prevalence of sexual abuse itself, the social stigmas surrounding victimization, or the long-term impact abuse has on victims, families, and society.  There are many personal, institutional, and cultural reasons that contribute to the widespread inability of people to even acknowledge, let alone stop sexual abuse.  In addition, our criminal justice and legal systems are often not adequately equipped to deal with crimes against children that continue to be rarely reported and if reported at all often done so years later.  As a university, Penn State has the inter-disciplinary resources to actively work toward creating solutions in all these areas.  It would be truly inspiring if Penn State would set the goal to become a premier center for the study of sexual abuse in all its forms and take a leadership role in changing society’s perceptions and prejudices, reducing the prevalence of abuse, and championing the cause of victims.  This could be one positive legacy of this tragedy that would help make it a catalyst for change, not just for Penn State, but for all of us.  It is also a way to truly honor and validate the courage of all victims of sexual abuse.  We should require no less from Penn State – and demand no less from ourselves.

Prior to last year, we had to look all the way back to 1986 when President Reagan ordered the bombing of Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli.  The strike was in response to Libyan agents detonating a bomb inside the La Belle discotheque in Berlin, which killed two American soldiers, Sergeant Kenneth Ford and Sergeant James Goins, and Nermin Hannay, a Turkish woman, along with wounding more than two hundred others.  There had also been a foiled plot in Berlin linked to Libya that involved blowing up a bus filled with the children of US diplomats.  These events had been preceded by the shooting of Yvonne Fletcher, a British policewoman, who was killed by someone firing from inside the Libyan embassy in London during a protest in April 1984.  Amazingly, no one was ever charged for the policewoman’s murder or the injury of ten others in the incident.  Libya was also directly linked to shootings at the Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985 in which nineteen people were killed and more than one hundred wounded.

Back in 1986, France, Spain, and Italy refused to grant the US access to their airspace, so the US Air Force jets, which were based in Britain, had to fly a long, circuitous route in order to attack Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli.  Incidentally, the US pilots accidentally dropped a bomb on the French embassy in Tripoli during the raid (there were no French injuries).  Lacking support of allies and the world community in general, the token US strike against Qaddafi along with continued confrontations between US and Libyan forces in the Mediterranean did little.  The Qaddafi regime continued to carry out the murder of numerous Libyan exiles living abroad and to be a lead promoter of terrorism around the world.

Qaddafi’s worst international act of terrorism came in 1988 with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, which killed 270 people, including 190 Americans (many of them college students) and 11 on the ground in Scotland.  Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan security and intelligence operative went to prison for the bombing, but he was later released and others who were implicated in the conspiracy either received immunity or were acquitted.  What had been Qaddafi’s punishment for Lockerbie?  Nearly fifteen years later in 2002 Qaddafi agreed to pay $2.7 billion in reparations to families of the victims ($10M per family).  This was part of a grand deal that was carried out between the West and Qaddafi.  In exchange for renouncing international terrorism (after thirty years of killing), giving up on developing weapons of mass destruction, and paying reparations (a small amount of oil revenue), Qaddafi got access to Western technology and capital to further develop his oil wealth.  Because of Libya’s oil and his ability to potentially help in the fight against Al Qaeda, he got a pass for mass murder.

That may have been the final chapter; Qaddafi reinventing himself as a “friend” to the West, helping in the fight against terrorism, and having him and his family become even more wealthy and powerful.  The missing piece in the equation, of course, was the Libyan people themselves.  Even if Qaddafi had given up supporting external terrorism, he remained a despotic, murderous ruler to his own people.  When the Libyan people finally rose up, the West was granted one last chance to do the right thing.  In helping Libyans rid themselves of Qaddafi, NATO also finally achieved some justice for our murdered citizens.

Unfortunately, we may never know all the details behind what actually happened in Lockerbie or the identities of everyone who conspired to commit the bombing and many other killings over the years, but the individual primarily responsible for setting it all in motion is now dead.  Qaddafi’s death certainly does nothing to diminish the pain of his many victims and their families, but at least he will never hurt anyone else ever again.  It may have been a loose end tied up with rough justice or loose justice resulting in a rough end, but Qaddafi is no more and sometimes imperfect justice is better than none at all.

Like much of the current political dialogue, the health care debate is rife with hypocrisy.  When George W. Bush instituted prescription drug coverage under the Medicare Modernization Act in 2003, a costly social health program we can ill afford then, now, and in the future, there not only wasn’t much criticism from Republicans – many of them actually voted for it.  A recent estimate has projected the tab for prescription drug coverage to be over $500 billion for the period 2006 to 2015, some of which isn’t a projection, but actual money American taxpayers have already paid out in benefits.  This isn’t as much as Health Care Reform has been estimated to cost, which recently was projected to be in excess of $850 Billion over ten years.  In fact, like most things, it’s very likely Health Care Reform is going to eventually cost more, probably over a trillion dollars.  There’s no doubt it will be expensive; but to say that it is an “outrageous, socialist experiment”, while rolling over and accepting prescription drug coverage as perfectly reasonable, is simply not credible.  Even though one was put in place by the Republicans and the other by the Democrats, neither program can make a claim of fiscally responsibility.

Why did the likes of Dick Cheney and Karl Rove whose conservative street cred is unassailable by many, go along with the kind of “socialism” exemplified by adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare?  Because paying for grandma’s meds not only seems like a nice thing to do, it also just happens to grease the voting leaver and is a nice windfall for pharmaceutical companies.  Always in the minority on the right, left, and center, the few who are truly fiscally responsible stand dumbfounded – wondering how it all gets paid.  Prescription drug coverage under Medicare is now almost impossible to control with an aging population and ever more drugs being prescribed for ever more things.  What politician is ever going to be able to even discuss potentially reducing or eliminating this benefit, which is now fully entrenched?  Certainly nobody who wants to get reelected – and in politics that’s everything.  If conservatives are convinced that repealing Health Care Reform is the right thing to do, then they should at least show some ideological consistency and also set about repealing the Medicare Modernization Act.  This would take integrity and courage; but it would also be “politically unwise” to eliminate a benefit already in place, so we can be sure it will not happen.

A citizen’s uncritical love for their country is a lot like a young child’s unquestioning love for their parents.  It may be comforting, endearing, and pure, but it is by its nature immature.  As the child grows and develops through adolescence and early adulthood, the flaws and contradictions of their parents will slowly, but inevitably become apparent.  It is through processing the difference between the ideal and the reality that the child comes to a deeper appreciation of their parents and a more mature love and respect.  If the child is rational and honest, they will also come to recognize their own imperfections and hypocrisies, which will further their understanding of and compassion for not only their parents, but for others as well.  The same is true for a citizen’s love of country.

America has always depended on critical thinking citizens of varied political persuasions who can see beyond ideology, point out their own and the country’s shortcomings, and work to find ways to help America live up to its promise.  America needs a nation of adults, not a nation of children unable or unwilling to confront reality.  America will remain worthy of admiration only if the majority of its citizens continually measure stated beliefs against existing conditions and then take the responsibility to bring things into better alignment.  It’s what adults do; and true patriotism demands it.

Maybe it’s partly nostalgia, because my grandmother was also handed a pack of smokes before her flight, which was not so pleasant for non-smokers; but in general air travel used to be more civilized.  Now we are treated like a burden, a nameless lump that has to be fed, watered, and transported.  Many who fly regularly have become resigned to the minor humilities and major inconveniences of air travel.  Along with this resignation, passenger’s attitudes and behaviors have also deteriorated.  When people expect bad service they tend to act accordingly, which can range from mild irritation to open hostility.

I find airplane toilets to be particularly symbolic of passenger contempt and airline indifference.  The toilets start out clean (usually), but within a brief period of use they are a disaster.  Most people try not to be messy and some even make an attempt to clean up after themselves, but a small number of people invariably trash the place.  It seems it has become this way for many things today (airplane toilets, litter on the streets, mortgage-backed securities, political discourse, and even terrorism); all it takes is a few to ruin it for the many.

To be considered civilized used to be a noble aspiration, now it’s at best quaint and at worst something to be attacked.  We live in a time where being cordial, gracious, and considerate is ridiculed as weak or elitist.  With its failing economic calculus, crowded environments, over-scheduling of resources, and consistently high stress levels, the airline industry has become a crucible for what modern life can do to our collective civility – even when politics and religion aren’t involved.  The creeping incivility we experience on airplanes portends a future where public life in general increasingly feels like a delayed flight where a disgruntled few can make everyone miserable.  This means that the rest of us, like any experienced traveler knows, will all have to make an extra effort to remain calm.

A people mover was brought out to take us off the plane, which might not have been so bad except this one looked like it had been hastily recommissioned after being long abandoned in some forgotten corner of the airport.  The seats were cracked blue vinyl covered in black mildew; and out of fear of staining one’s clothes only the truly exhausted actually sat in them.  Most just crowded in as best they could and stood in the wide middle aisle.  As the people mover started to make its way to the terminal I heard a few subdued titters from the mainly European passengers around me.  I laughed too, but it was a nervous laugh tinged by embarrassment.  Is this really the first impression we give foreign visitors to what some of us like to think is the world’s greatest city in the world’s most powerful country?

The people mover swayed slightly as it tacked a listing course to the gate like a battle-scarred frigate.  A safety door slammed erratically due to a faulty latch.  We hit a bump (are there potholes on the JFK tarmac?) making us lurch precariously, which initiated an aimless rattle somewhere in the belly of our land ship.  It was a slow, shameful procession to the terminal.  When we finally made it to the gate, through the cattle chutes of passport control and customs, and out to the curb it was the middle of the afternoon.  A group of airport employees stood around and loudly complained about their manager for more than half an hour while dozens of people waited for cabs that did not materialize.  Was this airport purgatory?  Or had time slowed – turning a New York minute into a New York hour?

The disgruntled workers finally moved on.  A few people waiting in line wandered away looking for better transportation prospects elsewhere.  Others began a migration to the Sky Train.  After some more time passed a few cabs began to trickle in and take away the remaining passengers.  I finally got a cab, but by then it was rush hour, so I spent another hour stuck in traffic.  I had left Berlin Tegel, an old airport already set to be closed down when a new and larger airport opens, but Tegel remains well-organized and is still properly maintained.  I had arrived at JFK, a critical international hub that is certainly not slated for closure and is in fact forever dealing with increased air traffic, but a place, however storied, that is allowed to slowly collapse before our eyes.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is responsible for maintaining JFK struggles with limited resources to keep nearly fifty million passengers and over one million tons of air cargo moving every year.  Dependent on the revenue generated from fees, tolls, and rents, the Port Authority is tied to the unreliable economics of the long struggling airline industry.  Impressively, the Port Authority recently completed a four month total rebuild and expansion of the longest and busiest runway at JFK to help reduce delays and maintenance costs.  Despite the complete shut down of this main runway, the total number of flight delays did not increase significantly during the course of construction and the work was even completed slightly ahead of schedule.  A take-off reservation system to allocate departure slots, which was put in place during construction, was so successful that it remains in place.  Departure metering has not eliminated delays, but it does allow passengers to wait in the terminal rather than being stuck on the tarmac; and it also reduces fuel and maintenance costs for the airlines.

Flight delays at JFK before the runway upgrade and implementation of metering averaged more than an hour with one in five planes being late.  Hopefully things will now improve, but delays will likely remain unacceptably high simply do to the volume of traffic.  Another relatively minor, but still inexcusable example of JFK’s overstressed infrastructure is the partial flooding of the international terminal that occurred during a recent heavy downpour.  More obviously needs to be done.  Proving that a major upgrade can be completed without significantly impacting current passenger and cargo transportation, the current management of the Port Authority should be rewarded with more funding to not only repair or replace those things that desperately need it, but to undertake strategic improvements to transform JFK into a world-class gateway now and into the future.

It’s worth noting that of the more than $350 million spent on the runway project a meager $15 million was from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009.  Since the airlines are not generating enough revenue and input from taxes scarce, where might the money come from for executing long-term projects that can significantly improve both the aesthetics and efficiency of JFK?  The Port Authority and the airlines can not do it alone.  It will require commitments in the form of public-private partnerships specifically set-up to revolutionize JFK.  Political, business, and community leaders as well as the public all have an interest and should all be involved, because JFK is not just an airport that generates revenue and jobs locally, regionally, and nationally; it is a catalyst for the interchange of people and ideas that benefits everyone.  As a symbol of a proud nation and one that commemorates a slain president, JFK Airport should receive the care and vision it deserves.  JFK should once again be what it once was – an inviting and dynamic entry through which we greet the world.