Terrorists terrorize. That’s their job description. Those terrorizing terrorists terrify people. The only question they ask themselves when they go to bed at night is: Did I terrorize enough people today?
So, boys and girls, how do the terrorists win? They win when people are terrorized. Conversely, they do not win when people are not terrorized. They do not win when people go about their daily lives, basking in the freedom they have been vouchsafed, cherishing their parents and embracing their children, demonstrating the civic virtues of tolerance, patience, love.
So are the terrorists winning?
Our police have been so militarized that they resemble occupying armies. The government increasingly insists on overriding privacy rights in the name of tenuous national security concerns. Our schools are fortresses, our children are armed, our Muslims are harassed, jailed, beaten.
We are terrified. The terrorists have won.
Fear is useful in presidential politics. Republican candidates are outdoing themselves in outlining the immense dimensions of the threat. Every woman in a head scarf is a potential suicide bomber; every man in a turban is likely to shoot up a church. (Even though the guy is probably a Sikh and thus: Not a Muslim). Also, black people are prowling the streets looking for your credit cards. Better not let them vote.
With all due respect to the the victims of terrorism in New York and San Bernardino, Islamic Jihadists are not a large threat in this country. There are many things threatening Americans, including gun violence, poverty and sugar. Alas, fighting those things is not popular, so let’s fight Islamic terrorists instead.
ISIS is grotesque, but it’s not the only grotesque entity occupying the Middle East. It’s a foreign policy nightmare, and it’s going to end real badly, and we should help our allies — if we can find any. We should also continue to grapple with our national legacy of genocide and slavery. But, you know, turn off the TV. Prune your Facebook and Twitter lists. Find someone in need and give them money, shelter, succor.
And vote like someone who isn’t afraid. Because then the terrorists will lose.
The most heartbreaking moment in “Where to Invade Next”, Michael Moore’s new movie, occurs in an interview with a Norwegian prison warden. The film, as you may have heard, is about Moore “claiming” various good ideas from other countries for the United States. He even carries a flag that he pretends to plant on sundry sovereign soils.
He’s in Norway to look at the prison system there. It is, as you might expect, dedicated to rehabilitation, which means granting human dignity to every prisoner. The inmates have separate rooms, with TVs, normal beds, windows that look out on rolling farmlands, and private showers. Moore even interviewed a murderer in a prison kitchen, where he brandished a cleaver while laughing self-consciously.
And crime rates in Norway are way below the U.S.’s, even proportionally speaking. Recidivism is way below ours too, even though the prisons are nicer. So, Moore asks the warden, where did you guys get the idea for this kind of prison?
“From you,” he said. “Your Constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment.” And he spread his hands impatiently, as if to say, “you invented this stuff. We’re sorry you’re so misguided right now; nevertheless, we’re grateful for your principles.”
The movie paints an overly simplistic view of the countries it visits. In the wake of increasing immigration pressures, Norway and Germany and France have stopped being quite so touchie-feelie. The pressures of civic debt in all European countries have made social services perilous. And Tunisia is under fierce assault from Islamic extremists.
But here’s the thing: Michael Moore is right. He’s right about what ails this country; he’s right that money has corrupted and distorted everything. He’s right the way Bernie Sanders is right. Other candidates may be more qualified, more competent, more electable, but Bernie Sanders is right.
America invented a functioning democracy; it just forgot to read the owner’s manual.
There are some big laughs in Michael Moore’s pursuit of being right, and some useful reminders of our own morally ambivalent history, but it all goes down like smoothly, like good flan.
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Kevin Fagan of the Chronicle has long written wonderful, incisive pieces about the homeless. He won the national James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting. Lately, he’s been on something of a roll, saving two very nice nuns from eviction and later, maybe doing the same thing for a 97-year-old woman. He uses the stories to make subtle points about the nature of power in our very affluent bio-region, and also to comfort the afflicted.
On the other hand, the Chronicle revealed its naked institutional bias by assigning noted dog sympathizer Steve Rubenstein to cover the conflict over unfettered doggie access to various GGNRA properties. The story contained not a single quote from a cat owner. Do we not matter, Steve? Are we just dust under the heels of history, Steve? Would you want cats to run free attacking babies and stealing their breath, Steve?
The thing I like about that link above: It’s entirely theatrical. Things go along normally, and someone acts out, and all hell breaks lose. True chaos is hard to capture.
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I am reading “The Invention of Nature” by Andrea Wulf. It’s a biography of Alexander von Humboldt, who is probably unknown to you, but who was in the first half of the 19th Century the most famous man in Europe. He was an explorer, geologist, botanist, vulcanist, author, artist, meteorologist and bon vivant. Wulf calls him the last great polymath.
He went to school with Goethe, attended swanky salons with Simon Bolivar, sat in the White House with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison discussing science and politics — they violently disagreed about slavery. Lord Byron wrote a poem about him, Coleridge used his theories in his nature poetry, and Darwin said he’d memorized one of his books.
Also, Humboldt spent three years exploring South America, mostly on foot. He took a train trip across Russia in 1829, a daunting prospect for a 60-year-old man. He inspired John Muir in his life’s work; hence Humboldt County and a few other Humboldts . And he invented isotherms and proposed the notion of a canal across Panama.
Everywhere he went, he poked and prodded and took measurements and collected samples of everything he found, from mosses to rocks to bird skeletons. He drew pictures of the great Inca calendars that combined art and science in a densely-packed circular matrix. He was careless about money, and he never married nor, as far as is known, had any carnal relationships. He believed that everything in nature is connected, part of a living breathing organism called life.
That seems like an obvious idea now; it’s just that he was the first one to think it.
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Since Jon Carroll Prose has turned into something of a Mom and Pop store, I thought it would be good to feature photos from the Tracy Johnston portfolio, together with her very own words. As follows:
“I took this photo in 2010 at a huge grain market just outside Kano, Nigeria. The worker was taking a break from milling casava flour in a small sheet-metal shed, and I thought he looked both tired and beautiful. When I got home, I realized my image was the reverse of those iconic American photographs of white miners covered by coal dust.”
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I know the new Bay Bridge is made of old Starbucks cups and insect spittle, but until it falls down, we should take advantage of the pleasures it provides. There is one, and I think it should be in the guidebooks. Call it the Eastern Display.
You’re driving east along the cramped, noisy industrial wasteland of the lower deck. You enter a tunnel — not the cool domed tunnel above, but a kind of flattened tube. You emerge into the flooding sun and move towards the sky, the day opening out before you. And in the center of your vision is the tower of the new bridge, slender and elegant and ascending rapidly toward ineffability.
Besides, you know you want to go to Oakland. It’s the new Brooklyn.
Jon Carroll Prose 