Tom's Musings

We essentially are circling Iceland in a clockwise direction making several stops on the way. Each stop is at an unpronouncible town ranging in size from a high of 20,000 folk to today’s stop which contains only 700 souls … the population on our ship (1,400 passengers and crew) comes to twice that size.

Each stop so far involves smallish settlements located deep within large fjords. The mountains that soar above the waters edge provide both shelter from the elements along with  magnificent visual tableaus. When they coined the term God’s country, this is what they had in mind.

Ironically, 80 percent of Greenland is covered with a permanent (more or less) ice cap. The glaciers on Iceland, on the other hand, cover about 10 percent of the land.  Still, the elements can be demanding. Even summer temps struggle to get into the 60s, even while being assisted by near 24 hour daylight.

For the earlier settlers, life was harsh. Rugged men went out in small boats in dangerous conditions to fish for food, or for the whales and seals from which fuel for kerosene lamps might be obtained. People huddled together in rough abodes covered with turf as protection against savage winds and storms. In winter conditions, an overturned iceberg might spell death for the crew of six that manned the small oar-powered craft. Tough men indeed. I would not have lasted a week. Hell, I would not have lasted an hour.

Actually, the first immigrants we know much about were the 8th century Irish monks who stumbled on this land of fire and ice. The fire comes from active volcanic activity while the ice is self explanatory. The first thing the monks did was to erect an Irish pub (just kidding, I think). The Vikings next found this enchanted land in the 9th century. The first Parliament almost anywhere, the Althing, was established in the year 930. They instinctively were a democratic lot. In 1262, the 1st Norwegian king gained titular control of the Island. For a long time, Denmark and Norway competed for control. Slowly, though, the Icelanders moved toward independence. In 1848, Denmark began to give up some daily control. By 1874, they had gained some degree of home rule, something that was further extended during the chaos of WWI. Full independence was achieved toward the end of WWII when the island was in the hands of the Allies and Denmark remained in control of the Nazis. The 800,000 sheep on the island were ecstatic at the news. Iceland joined NATO in 1949 and is a member on the EU.

Today, Iceland is a modern, cosmopolitan nation. Some 20 percent of all Icelanders come from non-Scandinavian ancestry. They even have Indian restaurants and eateries that focus on kebabs of various kinds … much preferable to whale and seal meat of earlier diets..

What marks Icelandic government today is the strong role played by females. In the early 1970s, the women of Iceland went on strike for equal rights under the law. They succeeded! At the same time, the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) movement in the States stalled and then floundered. In 2008, during the finance and housing crisis that resulted in a near global credit collapse, Iceland was particularly hard hit. The male dominated banking and finance systems came under extreme criticism. This economic crisis served to finalize the feminist revolution of recent years with women asserting greater control even of the nation’s financing systems. Today, the Island basically is run by women who hold virtually all the top positions of power. 

From what I see, the women must be doing something right.

The pic below is not from Iceland. No, it is a final shot from Nuuk Greenland. As you know, Eric the Red first colonized this then unknown and barren land in the 10th century. He had been banished from Iceland for some indiscretion that remains debated to this day. Clearly, though, he did not want to live alone, so he came up with an early bait and switch tactic … he called this new paradise Greenland. Since most of the island lay above the Arctic Circle, people were not fooled for long.

As we set sail again toward the high seas, I lingered over what we were leaving behind. There was natural beauty everywhere. One did not have to obscure reality to sell the virtues of this magnificent place. It really is one of God’s better works of art … even if survival could be harsh at times. Too often, it would appear, the beauty was offset by the challenges to mere survival.

We learned that Inuit children have an exceptionally high suicide rate, perhaps the highest in the world. This tragedy is most common in the small, isolated communities that dot the coastline of this massive island. Each settlement is detached and utterly isolated from the others, the human connections severed by miles upon miles of rugged terrain and inhospitable waters. In the long winters, absent sunlight, the loneliness must be overwhelming, even oppressive. Or perhaps that’s my own preferences speaking.

Our current course on the high seas takes us down the west coast, around the land’s south tip, then up straight to the to a port on the northwest coast of Iceland. The west coast is the more sanguine for human habitation since the ice cap is less dominant here. Still,  outcroppings of ice gliding along the water’s surface were omnipresent, generating unwanted memories of the Titanic’s horrific fate. But modern ships have much better ways of detecting disaster, or that is what I prefer to believe.

Apparently, these floating ice islands get blown into the southernmost communities at the lower tip of the land mass, the ones we originally were scheduled to visit. So much ice apparently piled up in these harbors that it was deemed too dangerous for the tenders that were to ferry us to land to operate. Thus, the last minute switch to Nuuk and more time at sea. Apparently, Viking had never stopped at Nuuk before. My guess is that it may become a regular stop in the future.

We have the option of attending several lectures today. This is the aspect of the sea going Viking experience that surprised me. The level of available expertise in various arenas (history,  nature, culture, anthropology, etc) exceeded my expectations. The river cruise was good in that respect, but then we were doing shore excursions every day. There was less time for preparatory learning experiences. Our educational experience here can  only be described as exceptional. The backgrounds and levels of expertise among speakers is beyond impressive.

A Brief Preview. The current stock of Icelanders began to arrive over a millenia ago, primarily Norse explorers from Scandinavia. Today, some 390,000 people call Iceland their home,  the second largest island in Europe (remember that Greenland is considered part of North America). That gives us same population density as Australia. As in Greenland, most residents live in or around the capital … Reykjavik.

What sets Iceland apart is its active underbelly. Even before seeing it, I think of our destination as a huge Yellowstone National Park on steroids. The place is a bubbling thermos bottle of hot gases, geo-thermal baths, and lava flows punctuated by mountain peaks and icy glaciers. There are 30 volcanoes still considered active, even if they haven’t erupted in some time. Perhaps the source of all this subterranean activity can be found in the nation’s unique geological situation. Iceland is divided by two continental plates (North American and Eurasion). They are moving away from one another at an amazing rate of one inch per year. These perpetually grinding plates result in a land heated by geo-thermal sources and an active shaping of the land’s surface. 

The other dominating fact explaining Iceland’s uniqueness is found in its proximity to the Arctic circle. The top of the island touches this hypothetical line that circles our globe some two thirds of the way between the equator and the north pole. In practical terms,  this means that anyone on this line will experience a full 24 hours of sunlight on the summer solstice. Conversely the sun will not appear on the winter solstice. For reasons I don’t fully understand, that line is moving. Perhaps that has something to do with a slowing of our global rotation. Just like my long ago student days, I tend to doze off during lectures.

Before moving on, I wanted to share this t-shirt I saw today. I sense that the clear majority of fellow travelers share my disgust with our impossibly incompetent American leadership.

Next time I write, I should have actually experiences on the island. 😁

https://toms-musings.com/?p=3225

The best laid plans of mice and men … . This line from the Scottish bard, Robert Burns, contains a universal truth. Our cruise on the oceans blue has not exactly gone as planned. Three stops were canceled because ice buildups at their harbor entrances made them too risky. So, we have spent more time on the open seas on our Viking cruise as we have ventured further and further north. I realized that when it was yet light out at 1 AM last night.

Our new destination was Nuuk, the capital city of Greenland. That may sound impressive but we are talking about a metropolitan area of some 20,000 hardy souls, a milestone just reached this past year. By the way, the word Nuuk means the tip of  as in the tip of land jutting toward the sea. It was also apparent that we had ventured into wilder, northern waters. Navigating around even this large ship proved challenging as the seas became increasingly tempestuous.

The community of Nuuk can trace its history back to Eric the Red who, after being chased out of Iceland by his Norse brethren, founded several colonies in the land he called Greenland as a clumsy marketing tool. It worked for a while as the Vikings prospered in several communities that clung to the shore of this mostly ice packed island, the 2nd largest island in the world (after Australia). One of these colonies was in the very fiord in which Nuuk is situated. By the way, if the ice pack that covers some 80 percent if Greenland were to melt away (which it is doing at an ever faster rate) the global sea levels would rise by over 20 feet. Goodbye Florida!

Leif Erickson, one of Eric’s sons, ventured further west and south. He stumbled across what we now know as Canada, which he called Vineland after grapes he found growing wild. That is, Leif discovered North America 500 years before Columbus. Eventually, though, the Vikings retreated from Vineland and Greenland as another climactic fluctuation made farming virtually impossible. They were gone by sometime in the 1400s.

Today’s, the most common stock in Nuuk, and Greenland as a whole, are the Inuits. They are a hardy, resilient people who probably migrated out of Mongolia at one time in the past when a prior ice age made it possible to walk from Eastern Russia into what is now Alaska and Canada. They yet retain an Asian countenance. At the same time, Nuuk is growing with an influx of immigrants, especially from the Phillipines and Thailand.  One attraction may be the very low unemployment rate.

Greenland has evolved into a semi-independent jurisdiction, and sees itself as a completely independent nation someday. Older residents can recall when it was a mere colony of Denmark. That began to change a while back and home rule was granted earlier this century. Denmark remains in control of a few areas … security and foreign relations being the most important. It is through that remaining connection with the Danes that Greenland enjoys the benefits of EU and NATO membership.

That brings us to the elephant in the room. Donald Trump has said he would absorb Greenland as an American controlled jurisdiction one way or another. Visits by J.D. Vance (and wife) and Donald Jr. were ignored by Greenland officials. It has been reported that 86 percent of Greenlanders reject the prospect of becoming part of the U.S. partly because Trump is viewed as a clown. Only 6 percent support this possibility, probably because they misunderstood the question. Apparently, only Americans are backward enough to fall for this con man’s obvious BS.

Though small, Nuuk has the feel of a growing and vibrant metropolis. The buildings are new and modern. Moreover, it is an area that might be helped by climate change. The summers already are longer, the winters less severe. Who knows, perhaps this would be a place to set down roots if one were younger. The air is pure, there is low crime, and a promising future lies ahead. At least one wouldn’t have to put up with the nonsense that passes for rational politics in the States.

And there is the beauty of the place. That cannot be denied … it is all about you.

Just a short note on the eve of my 81st year. We left New York harbor on Sunday.

On the way out, we passed the Statue of Liberty. How far we have fallen from the ideals chiseled on this monument. We no longer are the beacon of hope and liberty. We are a mockery of such noble sentiments. A tear formed in my eyes at the sight of this forelorn lady, and the memory of what we have lost recently.

Today was spent on the high seas. I marvel at the North Atlantic … cold, grey, and somewhat angry. I marvel at the thought of how many Mariners risked their lives confronting all the possible dangers and challenges imposed by the eternal seas. So many found watery graves as final resting places.

Our journey will be marked by learning experiences and over indulgence at the dinner table. All has been prepared to provide for our hedonistic comforts. Good thing, I am not one to face mortal dangers nor minor inconveniences for that matter.

After another stop in Newfoundland, it is off to Greenland and then Iceland. Trump has asked me to claim these lands on behalf of the United States. I think not. As I understand it, they are civilized peoples, unlike what Americans appear to be. Better that these good folk remain in charge of their own destinies and their lands.

I recently finished a so-called Plato course on a seminal period in American history … the period from 1960 to 1975. I might note that Plato courses are designed for adults from the Madison Wisconsin community who wish to pursue topics of interest to them. They are taught by knowledgeable volunteers with expertise in that substantive area. This particular course was led by an engaging octogenerian who taught at the university level throughout his career. Virtually all the students were old enough to have experienced the 1960s up close and personal.

No question. This tutorial of sorts was a personal tour through the most significant period of my life. Similarly, it appeared to be seminal to most course participants who are approaching (or have reached) their dotage. By the end of our tour through the past, the intimate and personal impact of those years became clearer to all of us.

In 1960, I was 16 years old. America was a largely conservative and settled society marked by homogeneous beliefs and an abiding  faith in government and in our essential institutions. In that year, I pretty much was an unthinking Catholic, working class kid who embraced the conventional beliefs of my religion, my class, and its associated (if suffocating) culture. At that time, some 75 to 77 percent of survey responders expressed  confidence in our elected leaders. We believed that government institutions could be trusted to do the right thing. 

I was different back then. For example, I seriously considered leaving my studies for the Priesthood to join the military during the height of the Cuban Missile crisis. I was, by any measure, a patriot. By 1975, all that had changed radically both at the societal and on a personal level. By then, the proportion of Americans expressing trust in our government had fallen to about 35 percent. Over the intervening decades, this erosion of faith has worsened. In recent years, the level of trust has bottomed out … to slightly over one-in-five Americans.

What happened during that period from 1960 to 1975? Why such a galactic shift in public confidence and personal dispositions? Perhaps the more cogent question is what didn’t happen? Below is a brief rundown of key events:

Key political assassinations. There were a few assassinations that we all remember well… John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King. They shocked our senses and disrupted our complacency. Other tragedies sometimes intruded on our peaceful outlook. Civil rights activists Medgar Evers and Malcom X, the three civil rights workers in Mississippi, and President Diem (our Authoritarian ally) in Vietnam come to mind.

The Violent End of Legal Apartheid. Though slavery had ended formally in a violent civil conflict that cost over 600,000 American lives, the legal oppression of Blacks continued for another century. The civil rights to enslaved African-Americans granted through the 13th amendment to the constitution (ratified in 1865) were soon thwarted by intimidation, violence, and segregation enforced by Jim Crow laws. Between 1960 and 1965, a series of blows against racial oppression finally erupted, often punctuated by outbursts of horrific resistance to integration by intransigent whites. The scars from this social turmoil would remain, never to be  completely erased from the country’s soul.

An Ill-considered Foreign War that We Lost. Our national obsession with Communism led the country to replace France’s role in southeast Asia after Ho Chi Min and the Vietnam nationalists successfully expelled their former colonial oppressors by the early to mid 1950s. Though a series of miscalculations and deceptions, the U.S. turned that civil conflict in SE Asia into America’s war premised on irrational fears about the inexorable march of the Red Menace. That insanity resulted in 2 to 3 million Vietnamese deaths, the killing fields of Cambodia, and some 58,000 American deaths. In the end, what likely would have happened at the beginning came to pass. The country was reunited in 1975 as US forces beat an embarrassing and humiliating retreat. More scars remained on the American soul.

An Explosion of Additional ‘Rights’ Movements. The racial civil rights movement was replicated by several other similar revolutions over the succeeding decades or so. Gay rights, LGBT rights, women’s rights, Native American rights, disability rights were just a few to explode on the scene. Each social revolution challenged the existing social order, leaving a detritus of anger and uncertainty to be dealt with in the future. As a background to these challenges to conventional norms, the counter-cultural movement explicitly mocked middle-class norms and values. A deep generational divide emerged.

Violence at the Community Level. The 60s started peacefully enough but was marked by rising community violence. Who can forget the beating of civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettis bridge, the fire hoses and snarling police dogs attacking Blacks trying to register to vote in Alabama. Who could ignore the burning of dozens of Black churches and later, the emotional bursts of rage in Watts, Detroit, and scores of other cities after MLK had been gunned down. And who, during those years, can forget the rage expressed in reaction to this inexplicable war halfway around the globe that dragged on and on while consuming so many lives. I was in Wisconsin when the UW Physics building on campus was blown up one night. The widow of a researcher killed in that terrorist attack later worked at my research unit on campus. We forget now, but bombings, riots, and assassinations were commonplace during these tempestuous years.

A Restructuring of Our Political Landscape. Another monumental political shift took place during this era. The South had been rabidly Democratic since our Civil War. After all, it was the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln that ended slavery through military power and then attempted to integrate southern society through federal force in the immediate post-civil war period. Even as the Democratic Party shifted to the left during the New Deal of the 1930s, southern conservatives hung in with the party that had rationalized slavery in the past, though the cracks in that devotion began to show by the 1948 presidential election. When Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Bills, the old emotional political ties were shattered. Former southern Democrats and racially motivated conservatives flocked to an increasingly hard-right Republican Party. While bipartisanship had permitted (in fact, proved indispensable) to passage of the civil rights and anti-poverty measures of the Great Society, the two parties were soon organized around radically different normative dispositions and national visions. The cultural divisions at the basis of our sectional discord increasingly were embedded in our political apparati. The era of hyper- polarization had begun and, decades later, would get much worse. Remember Richard Nixon’s southern strategy?

A Presidential Scandal of the Highest Magnitude. Unless you are in the flower of youth or were living under a rock in the early 70s, you must remember the Watergate scandal. Minions working to reelect Richard Nixon broke into the Democratic National Committee offices located in the Watergate office building in D.C. They were looking for political dirt on Nixon’s likely political opponents. Unfortunately, for them, they got caught while trying to bug the Dem’s national offices. In retrospect, this seemed like the theater of the absurd since the leading Dem candidate, George McGovern, had no chance of unseating the incumbent. (In the 1970s, I worked with one of George’s daughters … Susan).

The evolving drama slowly unwound as two low-level reporters from the Washington Post never let up on the story, eventually tracking the bread crumbs directly to the heart of the White House and the President. Nixon did himself in by trying to cover up the nefarious deeds of his rabid followers. Back then, however, there remained standards in the Republican Party. Nixon had to resign when his impeachment became a virtual certainty.

Today, we look back on those times with a sense of disbelief, if not shock. Sometimes, our national agony appeared unreal in retrospect. I was in rural India  from 1967 to 69. In that era, without internet and cell phones, I might as well have been on the other side of the moon. The news that reached us isolated Peace Corps volunteers seemed unreal at the time, like the police riots at the 1968 Democratic presidential convention in Chicago. I can recall talking with my fellow volunteers as we wondered if the country was falling apart, literally disintegrating. What would be left upon our return?

In 1975, I would be starting my career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I was nothing like the young man who got on a Greyhound bus in 1962 to enter the Maryknoll Semimary in Glen Ellyn Illinois. In those dozen or so years, I had evolved from an unquestioning believer in America and her moral superiority to being an unapologetic liberal, if not an outright leftist. I even joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) while in college (before those idealistic kids  descended into nihilistic insanity). I also formed and led the student group in college that opposed the Vietnam War. We called ourselves the Student Action Committee (SAC). That cleverly was like the Strategic Air Command (SAC) … those guys who flew 24-7 to respond to any Russkie attack on us.

All this led to one of my more humorous early experiences. The draft caught up with me in the early 1970s when I was required to take my physical exam in Milwaukee. During that fun day, I encountered a question on some paperwork that asked if I had ever belonged to an organization that advocated the overthrow of the American government. I asked the sergeant overseeing this part of the process if SDS qualified as such a nefarious group. ‘You bet your ass it does,’ was his reply. So, I put YES in response to that query.

That got me grilled for several hours by three uniformed guys from military intelligence. In my view, this entire drama was hysterical. At one point, I recall one asking if I would fight any and all enemies of the United States. I gazed at the ceiling (as if I were taking this nonsense seriously) before suggesting the following in return … first, I believe we should define what we mean by the term ‘enemy.’ Alas, I’ve always been a bit of a wise ass but, all in all, it proved to be a most enjoyable afternoon.

How did this dramatic personal metamorphosis in perspective come about in the first instance? In part, it emerged via endless conversations with my fellow students along with voracious readings to satisfy my inquisitive mind. Beyond those analytical dissections of the world about us, I was consumed with an insatiable curiosity about things. I realized I needed to figure things out for myself. Merely absorbing input and beliefs absent rigorous inquiry seemed insufficient, if not lazy. I could no longer simply accept the givens of my youth.

I don’t recall any authority figures (professors) attempting to influence my thinking. Certainly, no one brainwashed me. When I was on the other side of the podium as a university academic, I recall trying to be rigorously fair. I wanted to refine my student’s ability to think critically, not shape how or what they thought about things. That is precisely why MAGA types hate our research universities so much. They help our youth to think for themselves.

During my critical college tears, I recall learning facts that shook my naivete to the core. I learned that our leaders overthrew elected regines elsewhere merely because we found them inconvenient (like the government in Iran in 1953). In my head, our government slowly lost its innocent glow as I read about the authoritarian dictators we supported simply because they were on our side. Slowly, then with a rush, the patina of unquestioning devotion to what had become a tarnished set of ideals fell away. The answer to my military intelligence inquisitors during my draft physical was clear. No, I would not fight any and all so-called enemies. I first would decide for myself who the enemy was. My wise-ass response to their query turned out, indeed, to be a heartfelt conviction.

On a macro scale, a similar process was happening across the land. Slowly, more people realized that we were dragged into a horrific conflict in Vietnam based on distortions and fabrications by our leaders in Washington. People could see that we paid homage to high ideals like equality and opportunity for all while, at the same time, beating and lynching minorities for simply trying to vote. People came to realize that even the highest officials in the land, those in the Oval Office, betrayed the public trust merely to secure and maintain power. These were devastating epiphanies to so many raised in the penumbra of patriotic illusions during the years after WWII. These indeed were painful realizations. For many in my generation, for me personally, it was as if a band aide had been ripped off, leaving behind a deep and ugly scar.

Today, so many decades later, we all have retreated to our own truths. We absorb what we believe from our own boutique information sources that comport  closely to our normative priors. There is little to unify us in a common culture or set of beliefs … should I say illusions? In the end, I’m not totally certain if this new world is better or worse than the vanilla, illusory world of my youth. All I can say is that the process of getting here was, indeed, painful. Still, I am desperately glad I had the ability and opportunity to make that journey. It was worth it.

Soon, I will be focusing on my next trip abroad. Be forewarned, therefore, that my political rants may slow down for a while, which I am sure will devastate many of you 💔 🙂.  This upcoming ocean trip will take me to several stops in Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. Let me assure you, however, there is no truth to the widespread rumor that I will be claiming these lands in the name of King Donald I. While he asked for this small favor, I turned him down flat. I’m more worried that our friendly Canadians and Greenlanders will recognize my American accent and stone me upon stepping ashore. The term ugly American has taken on an entirely new meaning since last fall.

Our plummeting reputation around the globe does reflect one positive note stemming directly from the Trump Presidency. Yes, I’ve actually stumbled upon something positive about the Donald. His behavior and policies are so awful that other nations are turning away from extreme right-wing candidates. In effect, Donald is a walking advertisement for an authoritarian disaster. In both Canada and Australia, heavily favored conservative candidates suddenly and inexplicably suffered easy defeats. Thank you, Donald.

The heavy hand of MAGA extremists may well turn the tide in the U.S. as well. The most significant bell weather election in the early reign of Donald the First took place a little more than a month ago in Wisconsin. A pivotal state Supreme Court race wound up costing almost $100 million dollars, with Elon Musk throwing in some $20 to $25 million behind the hard-right candidate. The election took place one day before Prince Donald announced his liberation day tariffs, an ill-considered policy thrust that wrought immediate havoc across the economy and in the equity markets. Still, what had been considered a toss-up election in a decidedly purple state became a route for the liberal candidate. This is quite surprising given that the Donald had won in the Dairy State just 5 months earlier. Thank you again, Donald

We all have our favorite theories to explain such unexpected reversals of fortunes. It is, however, hard to ignore the possibility that our wannabe King/Dictator (or is it now Pope) has ruled with such capricious incompetence that parts of his base now are appalled. Consider the furious turnouts of furious residents in Congressional Republican town hall sessions. Can you imagine what soy bean farmers in Wisconsin are thinking now that their hero is tanking their livelihood with tariffs that are drying up their foreign markets and that virtually all mainstream economists consider to counterproductive at best and likely ruinous in the extreme.

More recently, his minions are threatening to arrest Wisconsin’s popular twice elected Democratic governor simply for suggesting that state officials check with lawyers before cooperating with demands by ICE (the American Gestapo). I mean, the man at the top, Prince Donald, explicitly stated that he was not sure whether he was required to uphold the Constitution. Think about it! The presidential oath of office explicitly calls for the chief executive to uphold the Constitution. But Donald remains unsure about this. It seems reasonable that the chief executive of a state guarantee that standard constitutional protections are applied to his state’s citizens. Apparently, the whims of an authoritarian are sacrosanct.

Let me move on to the topic crowding in on my beleaguered brain … budgets and what they ultimately mean. In discussing the most recent GOP budget proposal, Public Policy professor Don Moynihan (University of Michigan) noted that all budget documents are morality tales. What we support as public goods including how much we are willing to pay, whom we tax to finance these expenditures, and how costs are allocated across programmatic areas ultimately reflect our collective values. Every policy wonk knows this core truth in an intimate way. That is one of the inescapable facts that make the doing of public policy so consequential, so compelling, and ultimately so fractious. I know! I was intimately involved in the welfare debates of the 80s and 90s. Few public policy issues were as normatively contentious as that one.

Budgets also reflect our fundamental world views in stark ways. Simplifying everything to the extreme, there are three dimensions to the budget process. As suggested above, these are (1) how much to spend, (2) how resources are allocated across competing interests, and (3) who will foot the bill. Like I said, this is really a simplified discussion.

How much to spend? The optics of MAGA’S early days suggest that federal outlays will be down substantially. Elon Musk’s DOGE effort promised at least $2 trillion in savings. Ron Johnson, my Republican Senator (and prime candidate for the dumbest member in the Senate, though the competition for that honor is fierce) asserts that we will need $5 trillion in savings to fund the aggregate tax cuts the MAGA crowd desires. As with all previous Republican tax initiatives, this one is highly schewed to the uber-wealthy. Moreover, conservatives love programs that kill people. They are willing to spend big bucks to see that happen. The defense budget will soon exceed $1 trillion for the first time. Moreover, the Donald has other whims. He wants to expand and refurbish the former Alcatraz Prison (now tourist site) which was closed in the 1960s for being too expensive to operate. Apparently, cost is no object when you are erecting new concentration camps.

Alas, when all is said and done, it is likely that more will be promised than delivered. Musk and the DOGE operatives never defined waste and fraud. MAGA cult members erroneously thought waste and fraud meant cuts in prograns they did not use. Oops, not true! Thus, all those outraged attendees at town hall meetings even in red political jurisdictions.

Moeover, other reversals are emerging to these wholesale budget cuts. Initial reductions are being quietly reversed; the courts are applying legal brakes; and some staff cuts (e.g., IRS) will cost plenty down the road. Moreover, we see Donald the First employing the usual misdirection ploys to obfuscate any expected bad news. Negative economic outcomes suddenly are Biden’s fault even though he left us with an economy that The Economist, a centrists and highly respected publication, stated was the ‘envy of the world.’

Who will pay the bills? In a prior blog, I waxed eloquent about the notion of fairness in deciding how to allocate the tax burden among various population groups defined by income and wealth status. I won’t repeat that entire discussion here. Let us simply say that the MAGA crowd (the leaders, not the slavish cult followers) remain true to several core Republican principles of the past six or seven decades.

The wealthy, either because they have the power to do so or because it comforts with their view of fairness, should pay less than working folk, at least according to the GOP braintrust. Less usually means being exposed to a proportimally smaller tax burden than those who actually work for a living … those who labor for their wages (thus Warren Buffet’s common observation that his secretary had a higher tax rate than he). This is called a regressive tax strategy.

In recent years, their greed is unbounded, marked by systemic efforts to pay less even in absolute terms. Thus, the GOP dream of expanding and extending Trump’s earlier tax cuts is a classic example of their twisted logic. It would add $5.8 trillion to our deficit while giving those at the top of the wealth pyramid at least a $180,000 annual windfall (on average) and virtually nothing to the bottom two quintiles.

The bottom line is this. Working class stiffs will continue to carry a proportionally larger tax burden while receiving fewer public benefits for their outsized contribution. And, the elite will continue to work assiduously to enhance their privileged position. It was estimated that 100 top billionaire families invested $2.6 billion dollars toward federal campaigns in 2024. That is up some 160 times since the Citizens United decision opened up our elections to an unlimited flow of money. The future role of ordinary folk in our political process is dim indeed.

The allocation exercise … where morality plays out in defining the PUBLIC GOOD.

If anything clearly defines our moral stands in the budget process, it can be found in which programs win and which will lose. That is, comparative outcomes are very illuminating with respect to our dominant values. Let us look at how various federal agencies fare under Trump’s most recent GOP budget document (note, this is a reconciliation bill and not a law):

The big losers are international assistance programs … down a whopping 84 percent. This reflects a retreat from global concerns and the return to extreme isolationism. One consequence, some 25 million more deaths (many children) in the next few years when medical outreach disappears as America retreats from its former international role

The National Science Foundation are on the block for a 54 percent cut. America became the preeminent scientific center in the world in the 1930s as Fascism destroyed Europe’s intellectual community. Post-war federal investments then made U.S. universities the envy across the globe. We attracted the best and the brightest to our shores. These and related cuts will reverse all that. Already, the EU is investing over a half billion dollars to lure top scientists from our universities to their institutions of higher learning across the pond.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to see a 54 percent cut in support. Think about this. The globe is poised on the brink of no return as we face a climate apocalypse. Yet, America is turning its back on one of the existential crises of our time … a kind of environmental Armageddon.

The Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and the Small Business Administration are on the block for cuts ranging from 33 to 44 percent. Many of these programs serve average people, smaller entrepreneurs, workers, and those looking for housing in increasingly expensive markets. This directly attacks the very people who flocked to Trump for support and who looked to him as their savior. (In retrospect, a foolish decision to depend upon a pathological narcissist.)

The Department of the Interior will see budget reductions in the neighborhood of some 30 percent. This includes drastic cuts to what has been called America’s greatest idea … our national parks. What is ironic about this is that the park service, like most federal programs, is run on a shoestring. In recent years, total personnel fell from 22,000 to about 19,000 while park attendance increased by 17 percent. Despite DOGE claims, there was little waste here nor in many other programs being slashed.

The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to face a budget cut of some 26 percent. Major cuts are anticipated in both the provision of health care and the prevention of disease and infections. The CDC and the FDA are prime targets here. As old diseases like measles spread and the world yet recovers from the Covid catastrophe, the MAGA crowd simply wants to ignore dire threats to the public’s safety and well-being. Bill Gates has listed future pandemics as a leading apocalyptic possibility, an eventuality for which we are increasingly unprepared.

Finally, NASA faces a 24 percent cut in federal support. Again, science and technology are to be sacrificed. So many technological breakthroughs have been made as we explored our universe. But no more. America risks becoming an intellectual backwater since the MAGA crowd harbors deep suspicions of intellectuals and the institions that train them.

Who will be the winners …

The Department of Defense will see a 13 percent increase. The military budget will see increased support, pushing total funding past the $1 trillion dollar mark. This will happen even while America shrinks from its historic support for Western values and democratic principles as it abandons the Ukraine and NATO.

The Department of Homeland Security is on tap for a whopping 65 percent increase in support. Are we facing new terrorist threats from Islamic extremists? No! This expansion will be the cost of riling up the MAGA base toward imagined threats from GOP created political scapegoats … illegal aliens from Central and South America or, more generally, people who don’t look like us. This will be the cost associated with the MAGA attempt to initiate a modern era of the American ethnic cleansing policy.

So, how do we sum up our moral scorecard?

The winners and losers are clear. Investments in human capital, in the health and wellness of most Americans, in the infrastructure we all depend upon, in science, in children (and thus our future) are all losers. Some projections put the nation’s total debt at $50 trillion in about a decade or less. And, since the pressure in Republican politicians is to come up with the next tax break favoring the super rich, that may be an underestimate. Who will ultimately bear these enhanced fiscal burdens … our children.

We can only guess at the economic instability being introduced by a sociopathic leader who has few restraints and absolutely no moral compass. Of one thing can we be certain … our collective destiny will pay a huge price for today’s greed and profligacy.

Intead of a rational political debate about critical global issues like climate change and the socio-economic consequences of the AI revolution, we focus on whether our wannabe dictator will honor his oath to abide by the Constitution. We look on in dismay as he insists on a military parade to honor his birthday … an over-the-top extravaganza that will include 6,600 soldiers, 7 bands, 150 vehicles, and 50 helicopters. The anticipated cost of this glitzy show is close to $100 million. We look on in horror as the institutions upon which democracy rests and upon which a free people rely come under increasing attack and persecution. The bad news continues with an unending urgency.

There is a new work titled Peak Human by Johan Norberg. While Donald Trump essentially argues that the way to make America great again is to erect big, beautiful barriers to keep out foreign goods and people. Donalds vision, after all, is fortress America … a self- contained island floating supremely and independently in a hostile and competitive globe. Norberg argues the opposite. The historical great powers became such precisely because they opened themselves up to foreign ideas and people. They became petri-dishes in which ideas and innovation were spawned through exchange and intense interactions.

He notes many examples. The ancient Song dynasty in China exploded with growth and new ideas as Europe stagnated. For example, the movable-type printing press was introduced in the eastern kingdom several centuries before Gutenberg stumbled across the same concept. The subsequent Ming dynasty turned inward, and China inevitably declined as a world power.

America needs to do some serious soul searching. It is on the cusp of losing its preeminent position in the world. Much more importantly, it is on the cusp of forfeiting its moral center. That may well be a defeat from which recovery can not be assured. Empathy, after all, is a key moral attribute, the core of any civilization worth sustaining over time.

The ‘I didn’t know‘ phenomenon is a curious thing. As I matured and became increasingly  curious about my world, especially the larger political issues of the 1960s, two questions that persistently bothered me were: First, how could a sophisticated nation like Germany fall for an obvious clown like Adolf Hitler? Second, how could so many Germans claim ignorance about Nazi atrocities after the regime finally had been smashed?

The answer to the first query is now very apparent to me. Simply look at the cult of Trump movement in the U.S. Here we have a totally despicable and degenerate human being, a pathological narcissist with observable traits that mark him as a sick sociopath. At a minimum, he has a borderline personality disorder that, without his wealth and notoriety, would find him sequestered in a mental institution and not the Oval Office. And yet, he has been twice elected to the highest office in the land and reigns, without observable opposition, over one of our major political parties.

Therein lies one of life’s confounding conundrums. If you are poor and nuts, you might get put away in an institution if deemed crazy and a danger to the public. If you are rich and nuts, you can rise to the highest office in the land. That fact reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s elegant quip … steal a loaf of bread and go to prison; steal a railroad and go to Parliament. Even if you are a degenerate pedophile, you can become a savior-like figure of adoration to those both gullible and looking for permission from on high to hate the others of their choosing while avoiding much guilt. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

For example, during Germany’s economic struggles in the midst of a global depression, Hitler gained just enough electoral support to enter mainstream politics. Germany’s economic plutocrats, top military brass, and center-right politicians suddenly saw him as a useful tool, a clown without substance who could be manipulated for their own purposes. Three months after being appointed Chancellor, he had crushed democracy and created the 3rd Reich. They thought they had the tiger by the tail, and the tiger devoured them. Given the right circumstances, the inmates can be put in charge of the asylum. For Herr Hitler, the key was vague promises of glory (Make Germany Great Again) and specific vows against an easy scapegoat (mostly the Jews and Communists).

The second question is more puzzling for me. Remember post-WWII Germans claiming they were unaware of the regimes crimes against humanity based on sheer ignorance. REALLY? What do they think happened to all those Jews, leftists, Gypsies, Slavs, and handicapped people? Some 10 million cannot be exterminated (including 6 million Jews) absent clear evidence of such atrocities. You would have to be willfully blind when so many people began disappearing. People didn’t know because they did not want to know. They did not see because they chose not to see.

In today’s context, we see a growing number of Americans expressing buyers’ remorse for their support of Trump in the last election. As suggested by the meme above, Trump’s support has plummeted (at least temporarily) as Elon Musk ran wild and the Donald’s absurd tariff plans have resulted in the expected equity market chaos. Realty has sunk in for even the most gullible that the wizard behind the curtain promising a new utopia was just another conman. Initially, Musk promised $2 trillion in savings. That goal evaporated over time to $150 billion. But some cuts by DOGE are now seen to cost money (e.g., IRS staff cuts might result in the loss of $500 billion over time). In any case, the Republican controlled Congress is struggling to codify a measly $9 billion in DOGE cuts. The MAGA utopia has become a delusion, if not a nightmare.

The common response by disenchanted supporters runs along these lines: ‘I thought he’d lower the price of eggs.’🙄 Or, I thought he would understand my concerns better than the Democrats.’ Of course, these may be classic obfuscations to hide underlying beliefs that are socially frowned upon. ‘While I’m talking about inflation, I’m really freaked out by the growing diversity in our society.’ Put another way, I’m just your garden variety racist. Therein lies the core truth of political discourse. There is the veneer put on our public positions. Then, there are the primitive passions governing our darkest choices. For MAGA extremists, hate for the other dominates all else, especially rational thought.

Now, my guess is that some 30 to 33 percent of the population are hard core Trumpers. Basically, they don’t care what he does or how he does it as long as he attacks ‘those‘ people that his cult followers hate with a passion … those that look and believe differently. They would have been the good Nazis in 1930’s Germany, and they are the devoted MAGA types in America, 2025. Hate, when primed by unreasoning fear, is a primal motivator. For today’s GOP, they would easily sacrifice our government of laws, an experiment some 250 years in the making, to preserve the illusion of a white, nativist, Christian America … our version of an Aryan Supremacy.

I recall an incident that took place just before the election last fall. (Note: I’m apologizing in advance if I’m repeating myself here.) My good female friend was preparing the sailboat used at her summer lake cabin for winter storage. As we approached the place of business in rural Wisconsin where the work would be done, she told me not to drive on to his property. Why? I asked. She responded as follows: If the owner saw my Harris-Waltz sticker, he would go ballistic. This rural Wisconsin resident, like many of his neighbors, really believed that a Democratic victory would bring Communism to America. As with so many others, he had lost touch with reality. His fears and prejudices drove out any ability to see his own self interests, never mind objective reality.

When my female friend and I would drive through rural Wisconsin to her lake house, virtually all the farms had Republican signs out. Forget the fact that it was Democratic administrations starting with the New Deal of FDR that virtually lifted agricultural from deaths door to make it what it is today. The Dems are now seen as WOKE … catering to urban minorities and educated elites while looking down on hard working Americans.

It matters not what reality is. It matters not that Democratic administrations have a superb economic record in recent decades … more job and wage growth, fewer economic downturns, lower poverty rates, and so forth. Reality across the American landscape is shaped by the propoganda spewed forth by right-wing and increasingly by mainstream outlets. As a result, we have a new Orwellian dystopia… black is white, up is down, and the GOP are the defenders of workers and farmers. Wow! As Joseph Goebbels popularized in the 1930s, lies told often enough become accepted truth.

We have all heard the rationalization about why rural and working class citizens vote against their self-interests. They feel threatened by the pace of change. They see an uncertain future for themselves and their offspring. They are struck by primitive fears about changing demographics where their tribe (e.g., white, Christian, nativists) lose their dominant place in society. When fear displaces reason, rational thought tends to evaporate. We see working class and rural families rushing to conservative, MAGA candidates as saviors for their way of life. The absurdity of this reaction is beyond calculation. You might decide that Democrats don’t talk your language, but why in the world would you rush to a party which consistently has favored the interests of the top 1 percent, really the top one-tenth of 1 percent over your legitimate concerns. Why not just shoot yourself in the head if you want to commit suicide. It would be quicker. One answer … the right is far better at telling people what and who they should fear and, of course, at offering themselves as saviors.

Again, we now see responses from those same demographics claiming they are surprised at how Trump and his minions are governing. They are shocked that they may pay a price merely to enable a further redistribution of more income and wealth from the bottom 90 percent of the population to the top of the pyramid. Again, this is no secret. It is calculated that some $50 trillion dollars has been redistributed from real people (the bottom 90 percent) to the elite (top 1 percent) since the Reagan revolution in 1981. The proposed GOP tax bill would further this redistributive imbalance while adding some $5.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next several years. The GOP has been the masters of duplicity and misdirection. They use emotional questions (transgender issues that impact a tiny few people) to mask massive thefts from huge portions of the American Public.

In truth, the public never should have been surprised by what is going on today. Virtually all of my acquaintances and colleagues could see what was coming with total clarity. It was no secret at all to us. It was laid out in the Project 2025 plan in great detail. Beyond that, all the tell-all books from Trump’s first administration focused on how much time and effort it took by the common-sense people in the WH to keep Donald from destroying the country. His proclivities and instincts were totally at odds with good government and the well-being of the public good. But, that first time around, he was sufficiently unsure of himself to keep some mainstream officials in his orbit. That saved us.

It was also clear that Donald would be much worse this time around. This time around he would NOT surround himself, as he did in 2016, with enough real experts to keep his worst instincts at bay. Trump never forgave those who kept him from joining the mob attacking the Capitol on January 20 when the election results were being certified. This time, he has surrounded himself with sycophants and toadies. His cabinet meetings resemble obsequious displays of adoration of the supreme leader. He will spend perhaps $100 million on a military birthday parade for himself while trying to kill needed spending in health care to keep people alive.

No one should be shocked by this. NO ONE! It was clear to me and to everyone I know. It was clear to U.S. Grant almost a century ago. If anyone did not see this disaster coming, they chose not to look, not to see. Like the good Germans in 1945, they will pretend to be shocked. Like those Germans pretending ignorance, they will pretend innocence.

Our political landscape is a disaster. We have a mentally and morally challenged executive who, enabled by a spineless majority party, is a walking disaster. Trump is tearing apart almost 250 years of the American experiment … democratic governance under the rule of law. He is attacking historic allies while courting the worst authoritarian rulers around the globe. His economic policies demonstrate an astounding combination of avarice coupled with unimaginable ignorance. He has peppered the Civil Service and his cabinet with incompetent toadies whose only redeeming quality is obsequious loyalty to himself. He has purged the Pentagon and other federal agencies of competent leadership on grounds that only make sense in his warped mind. He uses the Office of the President to push products for personal gain and to seek revenge on an ever expanding list of enemies. He has permitted an unelected outsider to dismantle federal institutions and eviscerate the civil service without any real thought to longer-term consequences. He is systemically attacking science and the (to date) best higher education system in the world. He has attempted to bully key institutions and individuals into total compliance, wesponizing the nation’s law enforcement organizations for this nefarious purpose. He has advanced a key principle inherent in all totalitarian regimes … attacking a defenseless scapegoat group to stir up negative and irrational passions. He has waged unceasing war on the poor and the vulnerable while seeking to further enrich the top tenth of one percent of the income and wealth pyramid. In the latest GOP budget bill, that elite group would see another $180,000 in federal benefits while the bottom 40 percent of all Americans would come out losers.

It is hard to imagine a more horrific scenario than the one we are in. It is like living in a Steven King novel of unending terror with a plot that suggests no easy escape from the enveloping pain. The resulting hopelessness arises, in part at least, from the knowledge that we have done this to ourselves. No one invaded us. No one imposed tyranny from without. This was evil willingly and knowingly embraced by Americans themselves. They did so eagerly, with some apparently believing that Trump has been divinely sent to save us. And therein lies the ultimate horror. Even though our wannabe dictator is experiencing short-term declines in favorability polls, I have no faith that the electorate will not be fooled again. Or worse, perhaps this is what they ultimately want from our government.

However, I do have a source of comfort amidst all the pain. Virtually everyone in my circle of friends and associates (with at least one obvious exception) shares my views and concerns. Every conversation I have quickly descends into a corrosive discussion of the dire state of our public affairs. The highly educated members in my collegial orbit are stunned and depressed by what they see. We all express disbelief that our fellow citizens, who often appear normal on furst glance, apparently suffer from a debilitating form of cognitive decline. How tragic. How depressing.

While discussions with like-minded associates afford some relief, they often result in further agitation. We tend to feed into each other’s senses of despair and anger. Not good! Not good at all!!! Fortunately, there is a more soothing form of relief. Oddly enough, it comes from an unexpected place … a place one might not suspect. It comes from out there. Not just out there, but in places where our poor capacities for apprehension typically fail us. I am soothed by the incredible majesty of our magnificent cosmos.

When I look at the night sky above, all I can see are a few scattered stars. There’s just too much light pollution. Perhaps, if I get out into the country I can catch a bit of the Milky Way Galaxy … which is our celestial neighborhood. But that’s little more than looking at the ground around me. I can still recall seeing a canopy stars when I spent two years in rural India. That was the one time in my life when I fully appreciated the visible heavens above. Still, even that was a mere taste of what exists out there.

In truth, there is no way to fully embrace what is out there directly. That is beyond our meager powers. No, we have become creatures of technology. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors started with the simplest tools … clubs and flint sharpened with rocks into tools for both conflict and domestic use. Now, we send incredibly sophisticated machines with highly calibrated, digitally controlled telescopes to penetrate the edges of the known universe and the origins of time. These are toys of incredible sophistication and possibility.

The pictures that have been sent back by our amazing new technologies have reimagined our universe in ways no one would have conceived a mere century ago. Then, the limits of the cosmos were contained within our own galaxy. Soon, however, as we could peer deeper into space and farther back into time, unimaginable worlds and spectacles opened up to us. There were black holes and giant stars and novas and super novas and billows of interstellar gases whose dimensions defy understanding. But mostly, the known universe kept expanding and expanding as we looked in wonder at someone’s (or something’s) creative masterpiece.

How does this affect me? Well, today we have identified somewhere between two and three trillion galaxies out there. Each of these has billions or trillions of stars. Who knows how many earths or earth-like planets are out there. Who knows how many life forms exist in this vast cosmos or even how close we have come to calculating its boundaries. Perhaps we have only touched upon a corner of what exists. And then, of course, there are those theories, articulated by the advanced mathematics of brains far superior to mine, that postulate many parallel universes. Perhaps what we can see, or measure, is merely one of a multitude of possibilities that defy our meager intellects.

How might we think about all this? I can not speak to what others think or how they might react. For me, the awareness of these otherworldly dimensions of time and space is extraordinarily humbling. We are nothing in this vast tapestry of cosmic wonders. We are one planet orbiting a very ordinary sun that is situated in a remote spiral arm of one galaxy among billions and billions of such. Homo-sapiens, our species, has been around for maybe 100,000 years. Seems like a long time, but that’s a blink of an eye over the 14.5 billion years since the initial big bang (or is it the latest big bang). Of those 100,000 years, settled humans have existed for 10 percent of that period; urban societies perhaps 5 percent; our industrial world perhaps two-tenths of one percent; our modern, technological society has been around for a mere nanosecond in the history of the species and much less in the history of life and even less in the duration of the cosmos as we know it.

I am totally humbled as I think on such things.

Is there any meaning in contemplating our magnificent and mysterious cosmos? If so, perhaps it lies in the miracle of consciousness. Think about this. I once had a friendly debate with a scholar who also happens to be my neighbor. He argued that the probability that life formed anywhere was the product of an almost infinite number of serendipitous and highly unlikely events. He thought we were probably the only advanced life form around. I countered that with so many galaxies, stars, and planets out there, the prospect of multiple life forms is more than reasonable. There are countless potential petri dishes out there for endless experimentation.

Even if we are the only game in town (or the cosmos), we have no idea where evolution can take us. Look how far we have progressed since the emergence of deductive scientific methods and the industrial revolution. And just consider how fast the pace of evolution and change is occurring. Can we even imagine the possibilities when human creativity is merged with advanced technologies. It could be mind-bending. Then again, it might also be Armageddon.

Is there a bottom line? For me, contemplating the cosmos and the broad sweep of evolution leaves me with a sense of wonder. It helps me put our petty problems into perspective. Small minds like Trump and the MAGA minions cannot see the bigger picture. Their lives are circumscribed by petty goals and limited ambitions. They seek power and money as if such things mean much in the broader scheme of things. I feel bad for them.

If there is a divine presence out there, the cosmos being unfolded before us is His or Her masterpiece, an ultimate work of art. And if the struggling species of homo-sapiens manages to survive, perhaps our primitive consciousness might evolve into some higher form that we can not possibly envision. At some point, perhaps we can shift our sights from irrelevant earthly issues and petty political squabbles to the bigger questions out there.

There is so much more to understand. And it is so much fun speculating about the possibilities.

I started this message Easter morning, then got distracted by other things … a rather typical occurrence. While it has been many decades since I’ve believed in the Easter bunny or that the Son of God miraculously rose from the dead, this celebration yet strikes me as a good moment to reflect on more elevated matters. What counts in life? What matters? Where is meaning found? Whether or not we are judged by some divine arbiter at the end of our days, how will we judge ourselves in the final analysis?

I came of age in an era when college age youth routinely asserted that developing a coherent personal philosophy was the most critical challenge they faced. (Today, a similar cohort of young people stress a need to make a lot of money).

Personally, I believe we were fortunate. My parents were grounded in the harsh realities of the great depression. Economic survival was critical to them. While I was raised in near poverty, what I saw about me was confidence and hope in the future. For some reason, making the world a better place was more important than merely making money. Perhaps we were fortunate to come of age during what economists called the great compression … that three decade period after WWII when income and wealth inequality narrowed and the vaunted American middle class expanded. This occurred despite top income tax rates of 90 percent. Even we poor kids saw opportunity before us. That might partially explain why the youth of the 60s responded to President Kennedy’s call to do something for your country with such intense fervor.

That inherent sense of possibility, perhaps better thought of as optimism, was reflected in how I approached my higher education. To me, getting a degree had little to do with a future career. It had everything to do learning more about the world. I studied what interested me in school, which largely focused on how our political and social world worked. I explored such macro-issues such as peace, justice, and fairness as opposed to mastering technical skills in order to make money. I examined issues, including our own history, both critically and with an objective eye. Finally, I focused on that central challenge that captured the attention of so many of my peers … formulating a core moral center upon which to ground a personal philosophy. Many of us struggled to understand our world rather than merely accept what we were told.

Those interests, that perspective, was far different from what I saw in my university students several decades later. They were hyper-anxious about the future, the debt they had accumulated, the uncertainties that clouded their confidence. They seemed dominated by a sense of angst … a feeling that the future was full of peril. Too many were hemmed in by an inchoate sense of dread that I felt limited their vision and freedom. It certainly added to their overall feelings of anxiety.

I came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, graduating from high school in 1962. In some ways, those few years were an inflection point in U.S. history. At the beginning of the 60s, most of us kids were quiet and submissive. True, the Port Huron statement had been penned by future radical Tom Hayden. It was a call for a questioning of society by the young, a call that led to the creation of Students for A Democratic Society (SDS). Moreover, the first Southern lunch counter sit-ins to oppose American apartheid were reigniting the civil rights movements that Rosa Parks had sparked a few years earlier. Still, it would take some time, including Kennedy’s assassination and the making of the conflict in Vietnam America’s war, for these early rumblings to emerge into outright rage and then revolution.

By the time I had finished college and took off for India as a Peace Corps Volunteer, the quiescent 50s seemed like a distant dream. I had gone from a good working-class boy who entered a Catholic seminary to become a missionary priest to being the leader of the leftist anti-war movement in college … Clark University in my hometown town of Worcester Mass. But that transformation was not casual or easily accomplished. It was the result of endless dialogue, study, and debate among my peers. It was the result of a deep process of self- examination and personal questioning. Moreover, it could be painful since it involves first questioning and sometimes rejecting long-held truths and ingrained ethical precepts.

On the morality and wisdom of Vietnam, perhaps the seminal issue of my young world, there was an identifiable and specific turning point in my personal views. I remember it this way. I had been selected as one of several top students to do summer research with a National Science Foundation grant. Another one of those selected (who would go on to get his doctorate at Harvard) and I spent one whole day discussing the war rather than working on our projects. I remember trying my best to cling to my childhood script that we Americans were in the right, that the domino theory was real, and that our efforts were entirely defensible. After all, just a couple of years or so earlier, I had contemplated leaving the seminary and joining the military during the height of the Cuban Missile crisis. The correctness and righteousness of America was the myth in which I had been raised. It was deeply embedded within my psyche … a belief system that was extremely difficult to question and harder to repudiate. Discarding it was like excising part of my being.

I did not admit it in the moment, but I knew that the other student had bested me that day. The doubts that had been creeping into my worldview soon overwhelmed me … replacing my naive beliefs with a new and more questioning framework. That transition was assisted by many endless debates about policy issues and ethical dilemmas that often went deep into the night. Perhaps I should have studied more but, in hindsight, this seemingly endless dialogue proved to be my real education. This is where I sharpened my analytical and debating skills on which my later career rested.

Why was this transition all so important? That is, why was this period of self-examination and change so critical to whom I became. I will answer that query with a story about what I saw coming back from India in 1969. Upon my return, I was in a masters program in Wisconsin. The anti-war fever still raged. However, when I attended my first protest since returning to campus, there was something off. It was as if the students were largely repeating slogans they had been programmed to utter. I had no evidence that they were not sincere. But I felt somehow that they had not earned the right to resist. It was not clear to me that they knew why they were protesting. It seemed more like they were doing the in thing rather than the right thing. Silly, perhaps, but that is how I felt. Protest ought not to be mere parroting of socially acceptable scripts. It should emanate from one’s core set of beliefs.

Perhaps it does not matter how and why one arrives at their personal moral position. Perhaps the actuality of opposition, of taking a stand, is all that counts. In the end, though, I can’t accept that. How we arrive at our moral positions does matter. Beliefs arrived at without effort, absent some pain, appear somewhat shallow to me.

I often considered my reactions during those turbulent years of my youth over the succeeding decades. In truth, those of us who rose up in protest were always a minority. Despite our rosy recollections of that era, most kids ignored all the righteous uprisings that erupted on campuses and in the streets. Most of my peers saw the protests, the tear gas, the shutting down of campuses as mere inconveniences. Why did only some of us take it so seriously when most went on with their lives without much, if any, reflection?

To this day, I can not answer that simple question fully. There are, however, hints in my distant memory. As I’ve written about before, my early years were spent in the suffocating confines of rigid Catholicism, ethnic tribalism, and working class orthodoxy. Prejudices and this feeling of superiority surrounded me in childhood. The WASPS were our social and political enemies. Anyone of a different color or religion or cultural background was deemed inferior. Even those in my environment who differed slightly were suspicious.

There were five Catholic churches nearby. Two catered to the Irish; one to the Polish; one to the Lithuanians; and one to the French living in the general area. People would walk past the nearest Catholic church to get to their Catholic church. In short, I lived in a Balkanized and divided world. Imaginary hierarchies and artificial divisions were everywhere.

The first question you might be asked on meeting someone new was what are you? I would say half Irish and half Polish … a child of a mixed marriage in this strange world. Then, the questioner would know where to situate me in the mosaic of religion, ethnicity, race, and class. Of course, there was that moment when, as a toddler, I was confused by the question and said I’m English … because that’s the language I spoke. My father immediately gave me the lecture on why we Irish hated the English. I never made that error again.

As I grew up in this rigid society, and despite my dad’s diatribe on our hatred of the Limeys, I started to think differently about things early on. I rebelled against the stereotypes prevalent in my world. I rejected the ethnic prejudices and casual racism so easily embraced by those around me. I surely dismissed what I saw as religious arrogance that assigned non-believers in the Catholic faith to limbo or purgatory or even Hell. That was a non-starter for me. Early on, I even questioned why we were divided into all these distinct countries. Were we not all residents on this one fragile globe? From afar, in space, there were no visible dividing lines. Why all the fighting? It made no sense to my young mind. And why, when we had such surplus crops, we’re we not feeding a suffering world. That made even less sense to me. Sharing with those in need is what my image of Christ would have demanded.

I can recall so many moments in my youth when I felt things (or expressed ideas and opinions) that were at odds with my environment. It was only later, with years of experience and perspective, that these anomalies struck me as odd. Why, for example, did I argue in defense of the Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court decision as a preteen? No one I knew felt that way. Where did these strange notions come from. Few, if any, in my young world had such beliefs, at least not that I recall. It strikes me that the seeds of my future rebellion had been planted early on. They resided within me from the start.

Of course, one can not discount nurture or our environmental inputs. In that regard, one vignette that I’ve shared before involves an article that I read many, many years ago. Obviously, it struck a deep nerve in me since I keep retelling it. A justice of the New York Supreme Court recalled his college years growing up in the 1930s. As with many of his peers, he dabbled in leftist politics during the horrendous economic sufferings associated with the great depression. He even flirted with Communism for a while. That youthful experiment didn’t last long. Still, he considered himself lucky to have come of age when he did. The challenges of that decade forced him to question everything about him. In desperation, he had to formulate his own personal worldview … not merely embrace something off the shelf. He had to forge a moral code unique to him. That personal journey made him a stronger adult. I felt the same about my trail by fire during the 60s.

There it was. I am a product of nature and nurture. There always was something inside pushing me to see beyond artificial barriers. In part, it probably was some inherent accident of biology, some structuring of my brain, that drove me inexorably beyond the strictures and limitations of tribal codes. It was a byproduct of the intense exloration that I, with the help of close college peers, experienced as we tried to make sense of our changing world. Is there a label for that byproduct, that personal attribute? Well, we might call it empathy.

Like the New York Justice, I came of age in a tumultuous decade and feel so very lucky that I did. It was not economic necessity that drove me (us) but the inexorable winds of change. The old codes were challenged, sometimes radically. Racial injustice, gay rights, Native American exploitation, women’s emancipation, and environmental degradation all became subject to intense scrutiny and change. And there was the elephant in the room, an ill-advised war half a world away that sapped our sense of moral superiority.

At the end of the day, one either dug in and ignored those winds of change or confronted what was going on about them. Today, over five decades later, we are in another turbulent era. Everyone must either bury their heads in the sand or confront the moral and ethical challenges about them. Will each of us retreat into our tribal shells (i.e., Make America Great Again) or will we think and act with sensitivity, understanding, and empathy.

And there it is. In the end, all the self-examination and moral questioning come down to simple choices. Do we only consider our own needs? Or, conversely, do we see each of us as connected to a complex matrix we call mankind? Do we only think about today, or can we look into the indefinite future? Do we have that basic attribute essential to our longer-term survival … empathy.

I remember a moment in college when I was probably attempting to seduce a young lady. The effort, like most of them, probably failed. Nor can I recall her identity. However, I recalled one moment in that conversation. I said something like the following: “Life is hard. We are born and then, after many years, we pass. The best we can do during those intervening years is not cause much harm to others. If fortunate, we might even pass along a few smiles to those we touch on our journey.”

My guess is that the words are approximated. The meaning, though, is rather exact. All these years later, oddly enough, I could not improve upon them. They still capture whom I wanted to be.