#424 – Dick Bernard: The 9-11-01 anniversary and the change we desperately need….

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Nine days from now is the Anniversary-Impossible-to-Forget: 9-11-01.
I have been preparing my own reflection that I’ll publish next Thursday in this space. It is basically complete, and I doubt it will change, much, in the next few days.
But it has been a real struggle to compose.
Next weeks post will begin with two photographs I took of the World Trade Centers at the end of June, 1972.
I was in a new job, enroute to my first Convention in then-seedy Atlantic City NJ, and we made it into a family trip from Minnesota which took us to places like Montreal, coastal Maine, Boston, Old Sturbridge Village, New York and, finally, Philadelphia. We saw much of American history in that trip. The family flew west from Philly, and I went to my Convention, and on to a 27 year career with my new employer.
The World Trade Center Twin Towers that June looked essentially identical to how they looked for the next 28 years. The complex itself was not yet complete. Wikipedia: “Ground-breaking for the World Trade Center took place on August 5, 1966. The North Tower was completed in December, 1972, and the South Tower was finished in July, 1973.”
Twenty-eight years elapsed.
Then came September 11, 2001 and the ten long years that have followed…years where we compounded their destruction thousands of times over. The World Trade Center became a symbol of and justification for never-ending-War.
I’ll talk more about those ten years next week, but in the interim it seems worthwhile to reflect on what has happened to us as a people between WTC ground-breaking in 1966, and today, 45 years later.
In my opinion, there has been a profound change in “we, the people”, and it is a very negative and self-destructive one.
In so many ways we have dis-honored the memory of those who died September 11, 2001.
We have been killing ourselves.
In following days there will be endless news about 9-11.
On September 11, on the site of the former towers, a new Place of Peace is to be dedicated. Let’s work to make what was turned into a symbol for War 10 years ago into what it is now said to symbolize: a Place of Peace.
I’d suggest we individually reflect on what has happened to us as a people since those Twin Towers began to take shape 45 years ago, and even more important what has happened since they were destroyed 10 years ago. I’d suggest we each become the change we wish to see in this world.
More on this topic at this space, including the photos, on September 9, 2011.

#416 – Dick Bernard: The Downside of Belief.

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune accompanied us enroute to our vacation on July 23. The front page headline said it all, “TERROR IN NORWAY“, recounting the heinous attack by a lone Norwegian which included over 90 deaths, mostly young people at a youth camp and in Oslo itself. I had read the entire article early that morning, and on page A4, in a sidebar, was a note that “A Twitter account for [the killer] also surfaced, with just one post from July 17, which was a quote from philosopher John Stuart Mill: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests.”
The gunman survived, and seemed rather proud of his accomplishment – often that is how an eruption of anger feels: “they got what they deserved”. He now has a lifetime, short or long, to consider the wisdom of his actions. Thankfully, most likely his role modelling will not encourage others.
Thankfully, the Norwegian responses, officially, and through the public, seems not to be to exact revenge and thus compound the problem.
I bring this incident up as we are a society that has become more and more prone to substitute a dangerous combination of belief and supposedly righteous anger for reason.
“I don’t believe that human behavior has anything to do with climate change”; “I don’t believe that our country is collapsing due to our own actions, personal and collective”….
“I just believe [whatever it is]. I don’t want to hear any other view.”
Of course, there are pesky things called “facts” which sooner or later come calling, interfering with those beliefs of ours:
The credit card gets maxed out and the clerk says “sorry”; after a lifetime of smoking, that pesky cough turns into something far worse; the job we thought we’d have as long as we wanted it disappears….
That law we didn’t think we’d need, and got rid of, becomes personally very important…after its been repealed.
The government itself, which represents stability, is cast as the enemy of the people, because government is bad, or so we’re convinced to believe.
We forget that that awful U.S. Congress that we all hate, or our State Legislature, is really a creature of our own making. We forget to consider that not one single one of those Congressmen or women would be in office were it not for our vote, whether informed, uninformed or not voting at all….
They are, in fact, representatives of us, individually and collectively.
We are, it seems, a bunch of people who have trouble thinking beyond the immediate; and we are notoriously unwilling to be accountable for our cause in the matter of the huge problems we have brought upon ourselves over the past years. We’d like to have the fantasy that what is bad will be fixed, and we don’t need to exert any effort or make any sacrifices to do the fixing.
The guy in Norway bought the argument that the enemy was “them” – people who weren’t Norwegian – and went on a killing spree where all of the victims, to the best of my knowledge, were his fellow countrymen. Rather than solving his fantasy problem, he simply damaged his own people.
Like our ‘armed and dangerous’ society, he felt he was a law unto himself.
The Norwegian (who purposely remains nameless in this post) may well be one of those isolated nut-cases that do these heinous things, but he and others like him are just visible indicators of our lack of a greater and longer term vision, and our own inhumanity towards each other.
Just a thought.

#409 – Dick Bernard: 4 days to Default of the U.S. A highly recommended book to read (or re-read): The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

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RELATED, the post for August 1, 2011, here.
For some years we’ve had week 30 at a time-share in the Breezy Point complex on Pelican Lake in north central Minnesota. It is ordinarily a quiet and relaxing week, away from computer and the normal hubbub of life. Excepting 2007, when the evening news on August 1 brought us news of the collapse of the I-35W Bridge into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, one can escape.
Relaxation was not as much an option this year.
We left home with the stark newspaper headlines on July 23 (click on photo to enlarge).

July 23, 2011 Minneapolis Star Tribune


The entire week was dominated by the not-funny circus in Washington D.C. which is near impossible to miss. We read about it in the daily paper, and saw the play-by-play on TV news.
I made one excellent choice this vacation week:

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein


I had purchased Shock Doctrine a long while ago – it was published in 2007 long before the name “Barack Obama” was much known outside of Illinois. I thought I knew what it was about, and it languished among the many unread books I own…until this week when I read every one of its heavily foot-noted 587 pages “up at the lake”.
The book covers LOTS of ground – at least 24 countries* in all, including the U.S. (Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, 2005). Succinctly it is the life history of a particularly vicious brand of unfettered free market capitalism.
I read it with the background noise of the looming Default of the U.S. on our debts; the recently ended Shutdown of Minnesota due to a budget impasse; the pending recall elections in neighboring Wisconsin….
The more I read, the more I became convinced that what is happening right now in our own country is directly out of the Disaster Capitalism playbook. Given the experience in the other situations outlined, beginning with Chile (Allende/Pinochet) in 1973, there is no good end for the vast majority of Americans IF the current campaign in Disaster Capitalism succeeds here.
There are many reviews of this book, which was a New York Times bestseller, and it no doubt remains in print. I was particularly taken by this review by Paul B. Farrell, Dow Jones Business News, certainly not a left wing publication: “To more fully grasp this new economy, you must read what may be the most important book on economics in the twenty-first century…The Shock Doctrine is one of the best economic books of the twenty-first century because it reveals in one place the confluence of cultural forces, the restructuring of a world economy as growing populations fight over depleting natural resources, and the drifting away of America from representative democracy to a government controlled by multiple, competing, well-finances, and shadowy special interests.”
Make no mistake, the cabal described in this book is real and still very powerful and United States based. Disaster Capitalism’s fingerprints are all over the present day political shenanigans in the United States, though the original architect is dead (2006), its major proponents are no longer in office and exposed, and the long-term results of its efforts have been proven to be destructive to the societies it has successfully infected.
But Disaster Capitalism’s power can be blunted by persons of good will who use Shock Doctrine to shine a light on a campaign whose only beneficiaries are the already super wealthy.
Do purchase the book. And help spread the word.
* – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Maldives, Nepal, Nicaragua, Poland, Salvador, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Thailand, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Uruguay,

#400 – Dick Bernard: Day 12 of the Minnesota Shutdown; Day 21 to Default in Washington D.C. Whazzup in Minnesota?

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One of the e-mails in my in-box on return from the family reunion in Iowa was this, from someone I’ve known for many years, who lives in a state far away from Minnesota: “I see the belt tightening as a positive but think I might not be in the majority…did you blog on this yet?? I was listening to Pawlenty this morning, more impressed with him than Bachmann.”
To this, I responded as follows: “Pawlenty is a very major cause of the current Minnesota problem.”
I had noticed that, in next door neighbor Iowa, the local Dubuque paper had no coverage (at least none I could find) of the Minnesota situation. Unique as we are, we aren’t on Iowa’s interest radar, apparently.
At coffee this morning, a good friend was commenting about his fairly new neighbor, who has been laid off by the state due to the shutdown. Later in the morning came an out of office reply from someone on a family list of mine: “Due to the shutdown of state government, I am away from work indefinitely. I will return to work when the Legislative funding for the continued operation of the Minnesota Department of _________ is enacted into law. For more information, please monitor news reports or see our website at www._____.state.mn.us.” I don’t know this individual personally, so I didn’t know who she worked for, until the e-mail.
These are the stories, one by one. So goes ‘death by a thousand cuts’…one neighbor, one relative, one working here, one there. That is what the shutdown looks like.
Overnight came this online newspaper article about the “non-essential” State Historical Society library by my good friend and former work colleague Judy Berglund, outlining another one of the cuts due to the inability to settle the issues. I’ve used the History Center Library many times over the years. I’m a dues paying member of the History Center, but it’s still closed.
Of course, these days of message control, it is not hard to assess blame, and assess it convincingly.
But it is hard to find credible sources of information…that are accepted as credible.
In the same in-box with three days worth of e-mails came this editorial from the Winona MN newspaper. Winona is a Mississippi River small city, and I drove by it both coming and going to Dubuque. I don’t know the papers political slant, or that of Winona itself. The fact that it was written locally did impress me. Not only do they get what’s going on, but they’re willing to take a stand on it, publicly, in their town.
Then, yesterday afternoon came a new video from the Governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton. It was apparently just freshly released as it had only 100 views. Here is the video, about three minutes and worth watching, especially if not from Minnesota. Dayton comes from wealth: think Dayton’s Department Stores, later Dayton-Hudson; later Marshall-Fields, then Macy’s too, and Target stores. Depending on point of view, he’s ridiculed; or as a highly principled and committed Governor. I subscribe to the latter view of our Governor.
I don’t know where this will all end up.
What I do know from a long career in negotiations is that “compromise” does not mean that one side must cave in. One side demanding and refusing to budge, is not compromise.
I hope Gov. Dayton sticks with important principles for us all.

#398 – Dick Bernard: Day 8 of the Minnesota Shutdown; 25 days to D-Day in Washington D.C. Going to a Family Reunion

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At 7 a.m. I leave home in my trusty 2003 Toyota Corolla, enroute to a family reunion in the Dubuque Iowa area. I’ve decided to do the trip on the slower but much more scenic and interesting Mississippi River Road. Weather is supposed to be good, and this is always a beautiful trip. I’ll be traveling alone, which gives lots of thought time. I never travel with computer, so there will be a hiatus at this space. I return Sunday night.
I’ve done this route before, several times in fact. The Mississippi was rolling long before there were humans around this place, and its done its work carving and molding the beautiful countryside for eons before there were towns and roads and such.
Human encroachment, in the way the history of our planet is mentioned, hardly merits a nanosecond, if that. But in that nanosecond we’ve unalterably changed the landscape and the resources which feed our voracious appetite for things like the gasoline that will make it possible for me to make this trip in relative comfort.
My people have been in the Mississippi Valley since, most likely, the 1700s (the French-Canadian side); and the 1840s (the southwest Wisconsin German side). Some of them were already there, farming, when the Grand Excursion of 1854 gave well to do tourists their first view of the upper Mississippi Valley, ending at later to be St. Paul and Minneapolis and the settlement floodgates began to open. It was not until the late 1860s that railroad would actually reach the new twin cities of, then, St. Paul and St. Anthony/Minneapolis.
As I drive, I’ll likely be shielded from the current hubbub and insanity in Washington and St. Paul. I have a few favorite CDs along to keep me company, from Mozart to folks songs. Life is too short to seek out the local radio stations which too often feature national talk radio.
In Viroqua, if I’m lucky, I’ll have coffee with a good friend who went to prison during the white hot times of Vietnam War protesting in 1970, but that may be the only contact with politics as such. Family reunions are no place to get into arguments about national policy. In fact, I won’t invite these encroachments. Just me. Life is a bit too short. There are other times to do that.
Most likely, typical for me, I’ll catch up on the news through the local newspapers in places like LaCrosse, Prairie du Chien, Dubuque…. It is always interesting to get the local perspective, at least such as it is printed in the local journals. Also, typically, I won’t watch much television. I don’t do that at home, either, but even less on the road.
(Click on photos to enlarge them. The entire set, from early 1900s postcards, can be seen here.)

The bridge at Dubuque in the early 1900s - a postcard rendition


Julien Hotel, Dubuque, 1908 - postcard


1933 on the Mississippi at Davenport IA - a postcard


I’ll deliver a couple volumes of my family history to the Dubuque Public Library later today. The most recent one I just had printed a few days ago: 475 pages largely of letters and postcards written from Wisconsin farm to North Dakota farm between 1905-13 or so. A story and pictures introducing the postcard section of the book is here. The longer, and in my view more fascinating, section of the book is over 100 handwritten letters found in a container at the old deserted farm house in 2000, Mostly they were sister-to-sister, talking about ordinary rural life near Dubuque from April, 1905, to June, 1906. They are literate and they are fascinating, from a time when people actually put pencil to paper.

Dubuque Carnegie Library in 1910 - from a postcard


In the course of these letters came the first telephone to the rural folk of Grant County Wisconsin. A description of an encounter of a horse carriage with an unexpected automobile is hilarious. The letters were oft-written by candlelight in the farmhouses of that day and occasionally brought news of tragedies too, such as the distraught young housewife in rural Kieler WI who in 1905 killed her four young children, ages 1 to 4, with a butcher knife, and then used the same instrument to kill herself. I’ll see if I can find their common grave – the name is Klaas – which is supposed to be in the churchyard at Kieler, near where a relative of mine lives. Oh, the stories.
Back at this space on Monday.
Have a great weekend.
NOTE: This is part of a continuing series of commentaries on the political problems we’re now facing in this state and nation. The first was published on June 23. Each hi-lited date on the calendar at upper right has a column behind it. By placing the cursor on the date, you can read the title of the particular column.

#389 – Dick Bernard: Killing the President, and all of us.

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On frequent occasions, something in a news source catches my eye, as did this one, on Saturday. Most of us won’t all get to see these attack ads. They’re carefully targeted to certain places in the country where they are likely to do the most good (translated “bad”) against Democrats and the President of the United States.
And most of the funding will not come from small donors: it will come from people with a lot of money to invest in their special interest – keeping and increasing their personal wealth and power.
Early this morning came this always well done compilation on another side of the supposedly evil and inept government story. (The commentary is fairly long but an appropriate headline might well be: “attacking government is attacking ourselves, particularly in these troubled economic times”.) It’s worth your time.
The business of attack ads has become “as American as Apple Pie”.
The worst thing that could happen for the Republican party would be for the Democrats, especially the President, to be perceived as succeeding, so their goal remains to enhance failure. It is a cynical and effective strategy.
The only differences between now and, say, 40 years ago, is that political lying is now more accepted, and the sophistication of delivering the lies is immeasurably greater. These are dangerous times for any semblance of “the truth”.
It is killing us all, and we’re the only antidote, by refusing to buy the garbage called political advertising that is passed off as informing us.
There are endless examples…I see them most every day.
A few weeks ago I had an interesting exchange with a good and valued friend of mine in a neighboring state.
It began with one of those ubiquitous internet “Fwd’s” trashing someone I’d never heard of with text and a selected group of 13 photographs of protest signs seen at a demonstration in the recent past.
The “Fwd” had come from a younger relative of hers, who figures he knows me as a “liberal”, and he said: “Why don’t you send this to Dick Bernard and have him apply his liberal spin on it to tell us how this is all made up and these are all good righteous peaceful people.”
I took the bait.
The photos in the “Fwd” were of signs carried by (apparent) union members at a large demonstration in Los Angeles.
I’ve been in lots of demonstrations in my life and, while I rarely carry signs, it is inevitable that you’ll see signs – and people – which seem sort of out on the edge. Usually, their intention is to attract attention, and these 13 signmakers had succeeded.
The text accompanying the photos blasted a particular Union, specifically the former President of that Union, and was intended to portray the President of the United States as this union leaders lackey, and this union – of low-paid service workers – to be dragging the President around by the nose by spending an outrageous sum to get him elected.
I did the best I could to dig through to the “facts” (which is almost impossible with these kinds of things), and shared this with my correspondent. At minimum the “Fwd” was unfair and dishonest, but that was its intent. Further, it was intended to spread virally across the country, and get people outraged at the President and Unions.
Ironically, the total amount apparently contributed by over 2 million members of this union to helping elect president Obama was about the same ($28 M, about $13 per union member) as what Karl Rove will spend in the first round of attack ads against the President in the next few months ($20 M, mostly from a tiny group of very wealthy donors – see lead article) and that is just the down payment – the election is, in political terms, light years away.
My friend and I closed our conversation: “I JUST DON’T LIKE ALL THESE PROTESTS, PERIOD“, my correspondent said, and that was our last contact about it.
I made a final comment:
“I have been in lots of protests, though rarely with signs. They are part of freedom of speech, like units in parades in general are (watch your 4th of July parade this year, if you have one).
Going back to what started this particular conversation – the 13 signs at the [union] protests – I got to thinking of it in this way: Surely in [your town of about 2000] there must be one person you know (or know of) that the townspeople wish would just leave (hopefully it’s not you!) Most towns I’ve lived in I can think of such a ‘character’…
The way I think of those signs and the people who made and carried them is sort of similar to the above example: what if the symbol of [your town] became the town character.
Or, as importantly, what if that town character actually had a valid story that needed to be told – even if the townspeople didn’t like the story?
That’s how the ‘networking’ of these demonstrations goes. It is what demonstrations are covered, and what parts of the demonstrations are emphasized by the person(s) covering them.”
We – all of us – are the “Government” we like, or despise.
There are facts in there somewhere. You aren’t going to get them from political attack ads this coming year.
It is work to get informed. But worth the effort.

#388 – Dick Bernard: Gay Marriage in New York State

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Early last evening I was watching my usual news program and a guest was talking about how New York Legislature was about to pass a law authorizing same sex marriage in the state of New York. I’ve been around political decision making for long enough, and closely enough, to question the judgment of a premature announcement of a bill which would be, but had not yet, passed and was still questionable…one doesn’t announce a victory with ten minutes left in, say, a basketball game.
But announced it was. And it happened. And it apparently has already been signed into law by its architect, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
There will be countless opinions flooding the news on this issue. Here is my small ‘squeak’.
This is great news, long overdue. As I understand the law, my Catholic Church doesn’t have to marry Gays; neither can it block Gays from getting married.
This is a very big deal on a great many levels. To me, it is one more piece of evidence that sanity is beginning to return to the political conversation – and by “politics” I mean “people”, generally.
I’m straight, and I thus have no direct personal “frame” to understand the Gay perspective. But that’s the most important reason why such a Law as this is good.
Even most religious leaders who despise what they consider the Gay lifestyle seem to agree that God approves of Gays – at least they admit this on paper. But they don’t understand how it is to be Gay, thus they attempt to throw the theological “Book” – their interpretation of the Bible – at it. “Belief” is made to reign.
I really don’t care if my local Archbishop doesn’t like this new Law, or if my local legislator recently went with the majority to deliberately bypass Minnesota’s Governor and authorize an initiative on the 2012 election ballot to enshrine into our Constitution a provision making gay marriage unconstitutional.
New York went with common sense last night.
(I wonder if our Legislature rules are similar to those in Roberts Rules: where decisions made can be reversed if people who voted on the prevailing side move and second to rescind their previous action. If so, maybe this is still a possibility. In fact, I had this as one of my possible questions at a Forum with Legislators a couple of Mondays ago.)
What happened in New York State overnight was a huge big deal. It won’t make the issue go away in other places. But it will be instructive; and it will empower people like ourselves to speak more confidently and informed about this issue.
I think of two evenings ago, at our annual suburban political party picnic.
This years event was in relative terms lightly attended, largely due to chilly and uncertain weather. We had the usual political speakers, but the first one was very unusual for us. Teresa Nelson, Legal Counsel of the Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, addressed us about two issues she felt were absolutely critical for basic civil rights in the upcoming year.

Teresa Nelson, June 23, 2011


The first issue was the proposed constitutional amendment on marriage; the second was another proposed constitutional amendment on a voter id bill whose only purpose is to suppress citizen right and ability to vote. Both are, among many others, national initiatives appearing in many places in slightly different forms.
We citizens have work to do in the coming months. Too many of us have not been engaged. If this applies to you, now is the time.
I offer one last thought on the marriage issue:
My hobby for 30 years has been family history.
In the course of researching my French-Canadian side I came across the marriage contract between my first Bernard ancestors in Quebec, in the year 1730. The translation of this contract is Quebec Marriage Cont001
It is worth taking the time to really analyze this contract: who it was with, what it says, etc. (Here’s the summary: the 1730 document was a civil contract, between the parties and the State, to be followed, two weeks later, by the religious Matrimony….)
Of course, Quebec then was an exclusively Catholic country, so the marriage ultimately had to be finalized in the Catholic Church.
But the U.S. is not Quebec. And the Catholic Church in today’s Quebec is, I’m told, all but completely irrelevant….
UPDATE: This over nite blog post does a good job of defining what’s going on with the political decision making on this and other issues as well.

#387 – Dick Bernard: Politics, the business of talking and listening and seeking agreement when agreement doesn't seem possible.

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Last night I watched President Obama’s thirteen minute address to the nation on Afghanistan.
I felt it was a thoughtful speech, and it takes no long leap to state that every word, every inflection, everything, was very, very carefully put together for presentation to a diverse and immense world-wide audience including friends and enemies alike. This was not some soapbox kind of oration. Words do matter. Even its brevity fit within YouTube standards (which, in turn, fit within our national attention span, which is, regrettably, very short.)
We watched the address within our usual news show, and a 13 minute speech doesn’t do much damage to an hour program, so, of course, the end of the speech was followed by the grave analysis of what the President said, or didn’t say, or should have said, etc. All of this was to be expected. Ditto the commentaries that will flood the internet, etc., etc., etc.
I respected the analysts last night, but I didn’t stick around to hear their very predictable analysis. They were there to buttress their ‘truth’ as they perceive it to be. If only every one felt the same.
The speech came after a rather significant ten or so days for this individual blogger.
Included was a very respectful hour on a recent Saturday with Sen. Al Franken, his aide, and 20 of us, sharing views on critical issues like Israel/Palestine; Afghanistan draw-down; military spending. Sen. Franken gave us an hour of his time – a rather precious commodity when his constituency is 5 million people. You learn quickly that a focused hour is a very short period of time, and about the best you can expect – which is the best of all – is an opportunity to take the measure of each others feelings, thoughts and perhaps, even, gaps in information, including in one’s own information. Twenty different sets of ears, even if ideologically in general agreement, hear the exact same thing in twenty different ways. Imagine how complex it becomes at President Obama’s level, or at Senator Franken’s.
(click on photo to enlarge)

MN Sen. Al Franken, June 11, 2011


A couple of days later I listened to a briefing by three Minnesota State Legislators giving their views of the intense negotiations now taking place to avoid a government shutdown on June 30. Again, these were ‘birds of a feather’ – people I would ideologically agree with, though not from my district. In assorted ways they conveyed the complexities of the issues to be addressed.
“Reform” is an oft-bandied about term, and one gets the sense that most of us are in favor of reform only if it makes our position stronger; we rail against it if we fear it will weaken our relative position. Of course, politics enters in to these conversations, and negotiations of differences in a fishbowl is a contemporary reality that (even coming from a proponent of open government) leaves something to be desired.
There is something to be said for being forced to sit together, privately, until something is resolved that both sides can own.

Legislators briefing citizens June 13, 2011


There were several more meetings on substantive things these past ten days. At each, the result was the same: if you sit with others of different views, you can learn something. But you can’t isolate yourself with ‘birds of a feather’ and expect to either possess the ‘truth’ or to prevail in your argument within a larger society.
The day before President Obama’s speech, two of us met with a young woman, a Senior this fall at Swarthmore College, who has taken on a most interesting task for a senior thesis: to talk to people about how they talk about our involvement in Iraq, past and present. Allison is a young person from both conservative and liberal roots in a rural midwestern state, going to a College in a major eastern city. She is involved in what I believe is a major project of major importance to us all.
If we can’t listen to and value and learn from each others opinions, how can we expect to resolve anything, politically or otherwise?

#382 – Dick Bernard: Lying our way to mediocrity, and perhaps worse….

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In two years and 381 blog posts, I can think of only one other posting in which I emphasized a single piece of writing I had seen elsewhere.
Today is the second.
I’d highly recommend a reading of this lengthy item, “The fascinating story of how shameless right-wing lies came to rule our politics” by Rick Perlstein in Mother Jones magazine. (There are endless self-righteous and always anonymous comments on this article, as with most articles. I never waste much time reading these arguments back and forth.)
OK, you’ve already tuned out because you’re conservative and you align with the right wing, and you’ve heard Mother Jones magazine is lefty or worse, and you think you know how biased I must be…. (On the final point, you don’t know, but no matter.)
Fine.
Bill Clinton’s famous 1998 lie is in this article. Democrats don’t get a pass*.
But as Perlstein points out, for sheer volume and gall, there is no contest between the right-wing disinformation machine and the left.
To speak truth in politics in this age is to be a loser, and the more lies you can convincingly tell, the better. This goes for high profile clergy, as well as everyone. You’re taught to lie with gravitas. “The ends justify the means.”
My favorite political lie, recently, is not in the article. Recently former vice-president Dick Cheney was quoted famously, about Paul Ryan’s crusade in Congress. The May 26 quote can be read and seen here, plus an earlier statement on the same general topic by the exact same person, taking precisely the opposite public position.
The simple response to this business of political lying, which I have heard with my own ears, is “they all lie”, which gives the person making this claim the permission to lazily vote for the individual he/she prefers (or not vote at all), without getting into the fine points of whether their candidate has any grasp of the truth, or even cares.
It is rationalized that in politics, the truth really doesn’t matter: “they all lie”.
But it definitely does matter.
As most all of us learned when we were kids, what goes around comes around.
What happens to us individually, when we lie and finally get caught, is no different than what will happen to our entire society, if we don’t start paying attention to facts versus fiction*.
We the people are the government of the United States, not the Legislators we elect (and who we seem to loathe as a group as they do battle against each other.
We have asked for, indeed demanded, what we detest.
We get exactly what we deserve.
* As I was writing this, Rep. Anthony Weiner of NY (Dem) admitted, after days of denial, that he indeed did the infamous Twitter and several others in past years. He becomes only the most recent in a long list of politicians caught in personal lying about sex – his Twitter caper will dominate “news” for the next few days…to be followed by someone else. (Re Weiner, I didn’t think he did the deed – it was too stupid. But, he did do it, and so be it. His voters will decide his fate next year.) I differentiate between what he did, and what this column is about: official lying for the purpose of moving political agendas. Politics being politics, what Weiner did, personally, will be mixed into the political agenda and beget more lies, by extending and implicating…. Sad but true.
Also, yesterday, it was revealed that the staff of Sarah Palin had attempted to revise the history of Paul Revere’s ride on Wikipedia, to cover for Palin’s historical gaffe about his action. “History” is fair game for liars too….

#381 – Dick Bernard: Detente, June 3, 1990: the Gorbachevs come to Minnesota for a visit

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June 3, 1990, was a chilly, somewhat blustery and threatening rain day in Minnesota.
It was also the day that USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, came to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit. It was a ‘coup’ of sorts for we in the hinterlands of the U.S., as outlined in this New York Times news article preceding the visit.
Then, as now, I considered such events worth following so, since it was Sunday, I got a general idea of the time schedule and route, and decided to try to get a few amateur snapshots (click on photos to enlarge).
The Gorbachev motorcade came down I-94, from Minneapolis, through the stretch that is now under reconstruction, exiting at Lexington Avenue in St.Paul.
I was, then and now, an amateur photographer, running around with an old Nikkormat, using ordinary and relatively slow film and a couple of different lenses. These were the days long before digital photography. Taking pictures was work.
I photo’ed a welcome sign in English and Russian along the freeway, and managed to get rank amateur photos of the Gorbachev’s car at the exit ramp to Lexington, then later, of his arm waving to the crowds on John Ireland Boulevard near the Minnesota Transportation Building near the State Capitol. I passed on trying to join the throng at the Governors Mansion in St. Paul, where the Gorbachevs were hosted by then-Governor Rudy Perpich and his wife Lola. One street over, if I recall, was the always crowded Grand Old Days on Grand Avenue.

June 3, 1990, on I-94 eastbound near Snelling Avenue, St. Paul


Gorbachev, June 3, 1990


I decided to wait out the afternoon and see if I could see the Gorbachev’s plane take off at our International Airport.
While the weather continued overcast, and the time was getting late, once again I got lucky. There was no oppressive security along Post Road paralleling the south runway at the airport, and about the time the Gorbachev’s were scheduled to depart, the last rays of the days sun peaked out from behind the clouds to the west, giving me sufficient light to take my snapshots.
There were people there with me, watching, but relatively few.
The Gorbachevs plane, I believe it was an Ilyushin, was followed in short order by a United States of America plane.

Gorbachevs leave the Twin Cities June 3, 1990


June 3, 1990, early evening, Twin Cities International Airport


Today is 21 years since that memorable Sunday in June, 1990.
A great deal of history has passed us by in those 21 years, recorded and interpreted in many ways by many people: fact mixed with mythology, and all shades in between. “History” is an interpretation; never exactly as it is portrayed by its teller.
It is not my intention to try to write my version of those 21 years since June 3, 1990, and the time preceding; nor to speculate on the years to come in international or domestic relations. But the passage of history does give much food for thought. Today’s politicians and others, particularly those who view politics and other matters as war, pure and simple, might learn something from that time of detente. Winners and Losers both lose in the long run.
This day I remember two people, Lynn Elling and Professor Emeritus Joseph Schwartzberg, still living, who and were and are committed to making a positive difference for a peaceful future on this planet earth.
Two contributions, one each from Lynn and Joe, to our world community are highlighted here.
Each day I draw inspiration from them to try to do my part to contribute to a sustainable and peaceful future of our planet.
I invite you to do the same.

Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev from the front page of Minneapolis Star-Tribune June 4, 1990


UPDATE, 3:35 p.m. same day: Retired newspaper columnist and current blogger Nick Coleman gives his take on the Gorbachev visit here.