This will be a plan where you can choose your doctor, and this will be a plan where you can choose your plan. And you know what the plan is. This is the plan. It’s a complicated process, but actually it’s very simple, it’s called good health care.
– Donald Trump, “explaining” the new American Health Care Act.
When you are dead, you do not know that you are dead. All of the pain is felt by others. The same thing happens when you are stupid.
I follow political news pretty closely these days, and though I primarily stick to US press, I also make an effort to regularly read sources abroad – The Economist, The Guardian, Haaretz, etc. – for the sometimes jarring insights that can only come from an outside perspective.
So, hat-tip to my father (who follows world press closely due to his nonprofit medical work) for pointing me towards this amazing international TV satire meme:
It kicked off when the Dutch equivalent of The Daily Show, Zondag Met Lubach, ran a video pitching a simple idea to President Trump: “America First; the Netherlands Second.”
Shortly thereafter, and not to be outdone, Switzerland’s Deville Late-Night responded with their own similar pitch:
Then Belgium’s De Ideale Wereld got in on the action:
And things just kind of kept rolling from there.
Portugal’s 5 Meia Noite:
Australia’s The Weekly:
Germany’s Neo Magazin Royale:
Denmark’s Natholdet:
And even Lithuania’s Laisvės TV:
All of them are worth watching, and I’m sure we haven’t yet seen the end of this trend. So, for the moment: America first, second TBD?
This past weekend, I was proud to take part in the NYC Women’s March. Had I been alive at the time, I know I would have wanted to join the 1963 March on Washington, and I suspect we’ll look back on this weekend’s event similarly from decades in the future.
Because I fell behind on podcast listening over the weekend, I got to hear, in a single day, several politically-focused shows covering the inauguration, some recorded before the march, and others recorded after. From that juxtaposition, the power of the protest was immediately clear: before, anyone opposing Trump sounded despondent, somewhat in shock, unable to do anything but mope; after, anti-Trump’ers seemed buoyed up with hope and enthusiasm, ready to make change happen.
But while the march clearly rallied the troops, I don’t think it will make change in and of itself. We now need to channel that renewed energy into concrete action, in ways that are likely to create real and meaningful change.
To that end, I was heartened to discover recently two excellent websites that provide specific guidance moving forward.
The first is Swing Left, which seeks to shift control of the House in 2018 by focusing national Democratic attention on a handful of swing districts, where the last election was decided by a thin margin. Put in your zip code, and the site will point you towards your nearest swing district – in my case, New Jersey's 5th, just across the Hudson River. Then pop in your email address, and you’ll be intermittently pinged (not more than once weekly) with opportunities to fundraise / donate, spread the word on social media, phone bank, canvas, etc., in ways that will help take that district in 2018.
Even nearer-term is 10 Actions / 100 Days, which comes from the organizers of the Women’s March. Each ten days, the site posts a new action you can take right now (the first: “Write a postcard to your Senators about what matters most to you – and how you’re going to continue to fight for it in the days, weeks and months ahead.”), along with step-by-step instructions and tools. For the first week, for example, they provide printable postcards, senators’ addresses, and inspiration for what issues you might want to address.
And finally, a bonus site that’s not directly about action, but is still a hugely valuable way to say well-informed: Track Trump, which summarizes daily the Trump administration’s actual political actions (ignoring crazy tweets / distractions / media circus / etc.), and tracks the degree to which Trump fulfills his “Contract with the American Voter” promises for his first 100 days.
From just the past week, it’s already clear that any hopes of Trump surprising us all positively when he actually got into office were badly misplaced. Things are getting ugly already, and we need to move quickly in response.
Swing Left, 10 Actions / 100 Days, and Track Trump. Visit all three, and get to work.
Grand Central Station, NYC.
I was listening this morning to a podcast interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger, in which he discussed his very successful track record of environmental activism (including his bipartisan push to defeat Prop 23, a Califronia anti-regulation proposition heavily funded by oil and gas companies, back in 2010).
Arnold pointed out that, currently, the vast majority of environmental lobbying and debate focuses on climate change – obviously, a huge and extremely serious issue, though one where we need to change current actions to address seemingly distant future outcomes.
At the same time, the pollution that’s driving up global temperatures is having huge impact, today, on global health. The WHO estimates that more than 7 million people will die in 2017 due to air pollution, at least 250,000 of them here in the United States.
Despite my support for environmental causes, and my general interest in the policy world, I had absolutely no idea that the current numbers were that high. Indeed, this year, more people will die from air pollution than from war, terrorism, homicide, suicide, and car accidents, combined. That’s a huge clear-and-present danger, though one that environmental activists and lobbyists don’t seem to be effectively communicating.
Sure, we should be focusing on climate change, on the security benefits of energy independence, and the economic and jobs potential of green energy. But we’re killing millions of people around the world – and hundreds of thousands here in the US – every single year with our current environmental policies. That’s something that should be front and center in the push for tighter regulations and smarter investments.
Messaging matters, and it appears, in the push for a cleaner world, that’s where we’re falling short.
Earlier today, I re-stumbled across the excellent and exceedingly timely “The True History Of The Hare And The Tortoise,” Lord Dunsany’s 1915 retelling of the well-worn story.
In Dunsany’s version, the race between the two is organized by the other animals, equally split in their beliefs that the Hare (“the swifter of the two because he had such long ears”) or the Tortoise (“anyone whose shell was so hard as that should be able to run hard too”) might prevail.
The Tortoise, in particular, draws an enthusiastically supportive crowd:
And “run hard” became a kind of catch-phrase which everybody repeated to one another. “Hard shell and hard living. That’s what the country wants. Run hard,” they said.
Indeed, run hard the Tortoise does. Whereas the Hare, struck by the overwhelming idiocy of the entire competition, simply bows out:
The Hare ran on for nearly three hundred yards, nearly in fact as far as the winning-post, when it suddenly struck him what a fool he looked running races with a Tortoise who was nowhere in sight, and he sat down again and scratched.
“Run hard. Run hard,” said the crowd, and “Let him rest.”
“Whatever is the use of it?” said the Hare, and this time he stopped for good. Some say he slept.
There was desperate excitement for an hour or two, and then the Tortoise won.
Which, of course, is exactly the vindication the Tortoise’s vigorous supporters had hoped for:
“Hard shell and hard living: that’s what has done it.” And then they asked the Tortoise what his achievement signified, and he went and asked the Turtle. And the Turtle said, “It is a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness.” And then the Tortoise repeated it to his friends. And all the beasts said nothing else for years. And even to this day, “a glorious victory for the forces of swiftness” is a catch-phrase in the house of the snail.
Touche.
Though, as Dunsany concludes, this true version of the tale isn’t widely known, because “very few of those that witnessed it survived the great forest-fire that happened shortly after.”
It came up over the weald by night with a great wind. The Hare and the Tortoise and a very few of the beasts saw it far off from a high bare hill that was at the edge of the trees, and they hurriedly called a meeting to decide what messenger they should send to warn the beasts in the forest.
They sent the Tortoise.
It could be a long four years.
“Sometimes I talk to CEOs, they come in and they start telling me about leadership, and here’s how we do things. And I say, well, if all I was doing was making a widget or producing an app, and I didn’t have to worry about whether poor people could afford the widget, or I didn’t have to worry about whether the app had some unintended consequences … then I think those suggestions are terrific.”
– Barack Obama
Recently, I started re-reading Ray Bradbury's inimitable Fahrenheit 451. I hadn't read it since high school, and though I remembered much of the plot, I had apparently forgotten one of the most crucial – and relevant to our current world – details.
As I recalled it previous to picking up the book again, the Firemen burn books on the order of some dystopian dictatorial government. But Bradbury's point is the exact opposite: the Fireman burn books by populist democratic will, because Americans have become concerned that those books contain content that some minority of society might find offensive.
In a world of micro-aggressions and Social Justice Warriors, a world where our best comedians no longer want to play college campuses because the student bodies are literally too sensitive to take a joke, Fahrenheit 451 seems prescient indeed.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” And if we wish to be a first-rate country, our polity must similarly be willing to hold – or, at least, to hear – opposing ideas.
If you similarly haven't read Fahrenheit 451 for years or decades, I'd highly recommend picking it back up.
American journalist Sebastian Junger recently pointed out that soldiers, by their very nature, take on a remarkably selfless task:
For very little money, and often very little public recognition, they agree to go do whatever it is that our society decides is in our national interest.
Often, when we talk about the military, we talk at a very high level. We oppose the war in Afghanistan, or we support sending troops into Syria. But those aren’t just military decisions, they’re political ones. We elect officials – a president, members of congress – who make strategic choices on our behalf about what is valuable for our troops to do.
The people we elect could send soldiers to plant trees in Canada, or they could send them to invade Canada. Either way, it’s ultimately in our collective hands, the outcome of our national democratic process.
Many of us (myself included) have real concerns about that process, and about the wisdom of some of the strategic decisions that result. But that just makes the work of individual soldiers, and their decision to enlist, even more admirable.
A solider says, I don’t know what we will collectively decide our national priorities to be over the next four years, but I feel such a strong sense of duty to our country that I’ll agree to take those priorities on, whatever we choose.
So, on this day, it’s worth stopping to think about that commitment, to really give thanks to those who serve our country.
You may not agree with our military policy. But that’s exactly what it is: policy. And it’s a whole world removed from the choice and sacrifice made by our nearly 1.4 million Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coast Guards and Marines.
Which is to say, I support our troops. I admire them immensely, regardless of my broader political opinions. And I think you should, too.
