#36 – Dick Bernard: President Obama builds a wall behind U.S. (and everyone else)

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For previous posts mentioning President Obama, see Categories.
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Today President Obama is at Normandy; yesterday at Buchenwald; Thursday at Cairo….
The analysis of the Presidents words is and will be unending, but one particular piece of analysis by a single “special interest” group, and some more general articles about what the speech meant have most caught my attention:
At Cairo, the President, glaringly,  seems to have not used the “T” word, not once.  This has caused great distress in certain circles in our country and elsewhere.  Symbolically, I felt, with his speech he seemed to deliberately end the War on T, the war on a word and the war on everybody, everywhere….
Also, in more than a few instances in that speech, he had made promises – commitments – such as closing Guantanamo, which are politically extremely difficult.  And he challenged others in other countries to figure out  how to solve their problems, with our help.
President Obama’s rhetoric is solutions driven, not problem centered.  Solutions by their nature require cooperation, working together towards a common goal.  They do not presume delegation to someone else or defending the status quo.
The more I think of his words during, and the symbolism of, this most important trip to Europe and the Middle East, the more I am convinced that his administration is consciously and deliberately building “a wall behind” all of us, to at minimum make it more difficult for each and every one of us to retreat back to the familiar, of what was, however dismal that past might have been.
For those whose reputation was made, and whose future relies, on the war on “T” , that “wall behind” has a certain meaning.
For those who railed against that mindset, the same “wall” is as certainly built behind them.  They can choose to take the risk of moving forward into an uncertain future, learning new ways of engagement; or to turn around and try to tear down that wall to go back to the comfort of what was.
Likely each of us can remember some time or circumstance when we built a “wall” of some kind behind us which forced us to go forward, doing something we didn’t want to do.  (Sometimes this is also referred to as “burning bridges behind us”).  This is a good time to reflect on what our “wall” (or “bridge”) might have been, and how we grew when forced to move forward rather than able to go back.
George Santayana was correct in his famous statement “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it“, but there are certainly equally persuasive arguments about the folly of becoming mired in the past and refusing to move on.   It is hard to move forward while always looking back.
We need to look forward, and personally own the future we’re all creating.  The future for ourselves and our fellow world citizens is a future that we build, together.  We depend on this forward looking and acting; even more so, the future of the generations which follow us depend on us.

#35 – Dick Bernard: President Obama speaks from Cairo

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Yesterday afternoon I made a spur of the moment visit to an administrator at a Minneapolis college.  I found his office.  Luckily he was in.  I knocked.  “Come in”, he said.  He was looking at his computer screen, watching a replay of the President Obama speech in Cairo from some hours earlier.
My visit to this college office was not to talk about Obama or the Middle East or such.  I did the business I planned to do, and departed.  We didn’t even mention the speech.  He and I have never talked politics.  I don’t know what his politics is. 
But one of my enduring memories of Obama’s speech in Cairo will definitely be walking into that office, and seeing Tom watching the President speak on his computer screen.  It will remind me of those iconic photographs of families sitting around their radio listening to President Roosevelt address the nation on some critical issue or another in the 1930s or 1940s.  Roosevelt, too, was a master of the art of communications with a distant public. 
My guess is that the scene I witnessed yesterday was repeated  in countless and varied settings here and around the world, particularly in the Muslim world.
As is predictable, every word, every facial expression, every single nuance of the Presidents long speech will be dissected, analyzed and interpreted for its meaning.   The interpreters will focus on their own particular favorite issue, whether he said the right or wrong thing about it, and then “spin” it to their particular preference.
It was an international speech, to the Muslim world in particular, and because of the miracle of technology it can be watched and re-watched over and over and over again.  What Obama said, yesterday, he knows he will be held to.  This was not a campaign speech; rather it was the leader of a powerful country speaking to the entire world. 
Personally, I think the key facets of this speech, yesterday in Cairo at about this time of day U.S. time, were its symbolic aspects:
A.  that it was specifically addressed to the Muslim world;
B.  that it was given in the Muslim world, in Cairo;
C. that it specifically acknowledged and honored the Muslim tradition and the people who are part of that major world religion;
D. that he chose specifically to publicly acknowledge the role of the United States in the overthrow of the elected government of Iran in 1953.
Yesterday, today and beyond there will be endless analysis of the Presidents speech. 
While there are endless and immense problems which no speech can pretend to solve, my own prediction is that President Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, is historically very significant, and can give impetus to a major shift in global relationships.  It provides a floor for new conversations; an opportunity to think in different ways.
He was speaking to world leaders, yes; but he was speaking even more to those ordinary people who in many settings throughout the Muslim world were watching his image on television and listening to his words, perhaps much like common Americans listened to Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II, and then went out and contributed to the necessary effort to accomplish the tasks at hand.
My hope is that all of us will use this speech as an opportunity to move forward, rather than to get mired in the “same old, same old” of focusing on what was or wasn’t said, and how precisely the administration follows through on the text, or not.  Certainly it is important to be vigilant, and to even be critical, but this speech was an entire “book”, more than simply a chapter or a few paragraphs.   
http://www.whitehouse.gov to access a video or transcript of the entire speech

#34 – Bruce Fisher, Carol Ashley: The Conversation about Climate Change

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A reader comment follows this post.
Note from Moderator: On the local evening news on June 1, the weatherman noted that May, 2009, was one of the driest on record, exceeded only by May, 1934, a year of great drought.  Is May, 2009, just an unusual month of weather, or a looming manifestation of serious climate change problems to come?  Are those concerned about climate change simply worry-warts, or are those unconcerned denying an unpleasant reality?  Do we live in the moment, or act for the long term?
In early April, I publicized a website that features a 20+ section “Crash Course” to help understand the possibilities of the future, and by understanding help deal with those possibilities.  The website is http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse for those interested.  In my opinion it’s well worth the three hours it takes to view the sections. 
Carol Ashley took the time to view the series, and commented on it in #19 on this blog, May 11, 2009.
Bruce Fisher also took the time and on May 25 posted the following, to which Carol filed her own response.
Bruce Fisher: I’ve been thinking about the “Crash Course” and the significance of its concepts for our environment and economy.  A few days ago, [an] article by George Lakoff appeared in the Huffington Post and it struck me that framing is understanding and the environment and economy need to be framed together (the [political] right has done this for years with the emphasis on the environment as material resource for the economy).  As a cognitive scientist, Lakoff knows this best.  For those who have taken the “Crash Course”, [the Lakoff commentary at http://tinyurl.com/08pwon] is an especially relevant article.  [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/why-environmental-underst_b_205477.html ]
Carol Ashley:  From Lakoff’s article “…one of the things Westen and Lake get right is in an incomprehensible diagram on the back page: an explanation of why discussions of climate fail.  It is hidden in a discussion of “associations,” an inadequate way of discussing the public’s frame-based logic.  Climate and weather are usually understood as beyond immediate causation, something you are subject to, but can’t just go out and change right away.  Climate is not directly and causally connected to the values that underlie our concerns about our planet’s future: empathy, responsibility, freedom, and our ability to thrive.  They try to say that in the diagram, but the arrows and lines don’t communicate it.”
What I see in my rural area is that people are prone to see the weather as a daily event: at the most, a weekly or seasonally based phenomena.  It’s kind of the same problem in government…no long range vision.  So people are prone not to see the effects of short term actions, not to see the actuality of broader patterns and rather base assumptions on climate on a cooler than usual spring season, for example.
Rural people and those in small towns often value community and their particular environment.  (Their community tends to be very small comprising only their extended family, church and friends.)  They don’t value getting rich.  They also don’t trust government and haven’t for years. They vote and expect who they voted for to do the work of politics.  They tend not to stay informed.  They don’t have the time and the access to information.  And their lives are often a struggle to survive.  They, therefore, don’t make policy so these observations may not apply to others, but I think some applies to just being human and there are plenty of poor people in cities who for racial reasons are also mistrustful of others and rely on their communities.
There is also an issue of “delayed gratification” here, I think.  That ability to do what needs to be done, sacrificing what one wants for what one will have in the future and even forgoing what one wants for the sake of one’s children and grandchildren.  It’s easier to do that for one’s own children than to consider the world’s children.  I think, in order for delayed gratification to be possible for an individual, one has to have some basic needs met, like food, shelter and some measure of health.  Long-term poverty undermines that.
The reason this may be important is that those on the extreme right are often rural and poor.  People in cities who live in poverty are often focused on basic needs, too, and need framing that applies to them more immediately and practically.  The difference between the rural and city poor, I think, is the very fierce independence of the rural and their valuing of that independence and the rural environment over the desire for wealth.  Either way, the best way to reach these people is through major media and through churches.  (Even then they tend to be pretty independent minded and hold to what they have always believed.)  The framing has to reach them that way.  So the first step is back to square one, in my opinion.  Get corporations out of government and create an avenue for non-profit media.  Is that even possible any more?  Like most rural people, I doubt it.  The super rich are in control and will be.  Haven’t they always been?  Even in the beginnings of our country?
I suppose my pessimism comes partly from being rural and poor.  I have little ability to be an activist.  The poor and rural always seem to be at the mercy of others.
Note from Moderator: Essays from others on this topic are solicited.  Watch future entries.

#33 – Dick Bernard: Susan Boyle goes back to her village

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A reader comment follows this post.
Saturday night, May 30, 2009, Susan Boyle’s dream ended…or did it just begin?
In blogpost #8, published April 16,2009, I wrote about the astonishing clip I saw of this lady singing on Britain’s Got Talent competition in mid-April.  “The rest of the story” of that happening is accessible there.  Here’s the performance that led to the post:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
The particular clip I reference has now been viewed over 65,000,000 times, the fifth most popular YouTube video ever.  There are people, like myself, who have watched it on numerous occasions.  I continue to watch it.
Now the dream has ended for Susan Boyle, or so goes the story.  Saturday night she came in second in the finals of the competition in England.  There will be a narrative that the clock has struck midnight on Cinderella, and she will fade into obscurity.  In our western society, which is trained from birth to revere winners and competition, Susan, while certainly not a loser, will now become an also ran, replaced by the inevitable next surprise sensation who will, for a time, capture the publics imagination.
Personally, I think that Susan really won by losing on Saturday night.  She really had nothing more to prove, and like most of us she was not accustomed to the life of celebrity into which she was thrust.
She had always wanted to perform on a big stage in front of a large audience, and she did, and she performed superbly.
For me, she will always be a winner, and I will go back to that clip of her on that English stage often, any time I need to be encouraged to keep on.
Back home she can (and I hope she will) attempt to resume a semblance of her former life, which was perhaps (as for most of us) not “exciting”, but manageable.  I hope she finds the job that she was looking for, something she likes, where she can come home to her cottage each evening.  I don’t wish for her a life on the road, as a performer.
It is said that we all deserve our fifteen minutes of fame.
Susan got far more than that, and likely far more than she expected.
Last evening, in a post-mortem of her loss in the finals, CBS evening news played a clip of the end of Susan’s dream.  They showed a young man holding a note written to him by Susan Boyle sometime in these last few weeks.  He had apparently written her, saying he liked her, and her short note said, apparently, that no one had told her they liked her before….
When it comes down to the end, this is where it’s at: we all need someone to like us, hopefully for who we are.  May we all be so blessed.
And may her Scottish village, and all villages, learn from her experience in the spotlight.  We are all parts of our own villages, but all of our villages are tied together in today’s world.  We are no longer and will never again be islands in isolation or independent from other communities.
Congratulations, Susan.
And a final note before I sign off on this “thread”: I found myself respecting Simon Cowall, and his fellow judges Piers and Amanda, as time went on.   No doubt Simon and the others are very astute business people and celebrities, but their warmth and humanity showed through in substantial bits and pieces I came across in following days and weeks.  Had I stuck with my initial sense of them, closing my book on their character after watching them judge Susan harshly when she came on stage that first evening, I would have missed another much more positive side of each of them.

#32 – Dick Bernard: Health Care Reform ("Good Morning Vietnam")

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Yesterday was spent with a group of about twenty persons.  We were having our annual meeting.  It could be fairly said that with very few exceptions, we all knew each other reasonably well.
Someone observing us from the outside would quickly note that we were about the same age.  We would appear to be homogeneous in composition,  of roughly the same economic status, all accustomed to being leaders in one context or another.  And we would even agree  on the major issue facing our constituency, and that issue was Health Care Reform.
Near the end of our meeting the group was presented with a proposed statement of position on Health Care Reform.  The draft was very brief and general: two paragraphs, one-half page.  
Rather than simply approve the draft and go home, there ensued a vigorous debate and a number of amendments to the contents of the fifteen lines of text.  What two pairs of eyes had thought would be a relatively simple action statement became considerably more complicated when 20 pairs of eyes looked at the same sentences.
And we were all basically similar in our points of view on the general issue.
It took about a half hour of vigorous discussion, but finally a generally acceptable draft was approved and we went home.
It occurred to me that if our little group had so much trouble agreeing on a general framework, how much more difficult it is when the constituency is over 300 million, as is our U.S. population.  Change does not come easily.
But change does happen, and that’s why the “Good Morning Vietnam” addition to the subject line of this post.
I was in the Army in 1962-63, the beginning of the Vietnam era.  So I saw the entirety of the Vietnam conflict as an adult American. 
Vietnam was a long, destructive, contentious and divisive war among the American people.  Wounds still fester 35 years after the conflicts official end.  
But there is a lesson from that era that is directly applicable to today’s debate about Healthcare reform.
Years ago, very slowly but very surely the national conversation about Vietnam changed.  People can key in on different events which led to the change – there were many such events – but that part of history is less relevant than the ultimate fact that at some point a tipping point was reached, where the status quo of continuing the War became politically unacceptable, and the politicians sensed the change, and the war ended.
In my view the same general dynamic is in play today regarding health care reform.  The tipping point either has or soon will be reached in the debate.  Unlike the unfortunate end to the Clinton initiative in 1993-94, today’s efforts are not as clouded by public rigidity to change in the inefficient status quo.  People know that something needs to be done.
But as evidenced by the debate over a small statement of position by a small organization yesterday, the process of moving from the status quo to a new standard will be extraordinarily messy, and the initial outcome will be unsatisfactory to most who will legitimately see this defect or that in the resulting creation.
The very least we can do as individuals is to make certain that our personal positions are made known to our elected leaders at state and national level.  And, in addition, to enter into the debates in our organizations – as we did on Saturday afternoon – to take organizational positions on the abundant issues as well.
At the same time, we need to acknowledge the reality that this will be an extraordinarily difficult and imperfect process. 
As we enter this debate, I offer my favorite song from “Good Morning Vietnam”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc.  Louis Armstrong went up against long odds.  He was not a quitter.

#29 – Dick Bernard: Memorial Day 2009: A snapshot of the last year of WWII as experienced by two ND farm families

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Taps:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn_iz8z2AGw

Today is Memorial Day, with all the varied meanings attached to it, all of which are deemed by their interpreters to be the proper meaning, all of which commemorate the tragedy of war. 

An e-mail from Mel in California on Friday, May 23, led me back to a treasure trove of copies of old letters I’ve had for years.  Most of them were written on my grandparents kitchen table, which would have been within the grove of trees included in the photo on the cover page of this blog.  The others would have been written on another kitchen table on a farm about three-fourths of a mile to the right of Sam and his photographer, myself. 

These letters were all written in 1944-45, and provide a snapshot of the impact of one war on one tiny community in the United States.  The quotes were interspersed among mundane bits of news: harvesting, cold weather, going to town and church.  I could have included more than these, but they suffice.  Grammatical and punctuation errors are as they were.  No editor was looking over the shoulder of these writers.  They wrote from the heart to their son, brother, cousin….

My correspondent, Mel, my mother’s first cousin who grew up on the neighboring farm in North Dakota, wrote about “Francis [Long] (marine killed in Tarawa)”.  I knew of Francis; Tarawa particularly interested me, as my friend, Minneapolis businessman Lynn Elling, was a young Navy officer, early in his tour, when his LST arrived at the gosh-awful remains of the Tarawa campaign in late 1943.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa  His experiences there, and later, seared into his memory, led him to a life long and still continuing quest for peace. http://www.amillioncopies.info .

Mel had his facts slightly wrong: his Aunt, my Grandma Rosa, wrote her son, George, an Officer on the USS Woodworth in the Pacific Theatre, on August 20, 1944: “Fri we had a Memorial Mass for Francis Long killed July 2 on Saipan…”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan

George kept letters he received in WWII, and a few years ago I incorporated all of the letters from home into a family history of two neighboring farm families, the Buschs and Bernings, rural Berlin, ND.

Deadly World War II comes alive simply from pull quotes from a few of the letters written to George from the kitchen tables.  Following are a few samples:

Grandma, September 22, 1944: “I must give Francis Long a spiritual bouquet yet in a Mass they feel so badly.”

September 22, 1944, Uncle Vince writes his brother: “Threshing is coming along fine…[one hired man], a ex-marine from Guadacanal.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Guadalcanal

October 22, 1944, Aunt Edith: “[our sister Florence] wrote they were afraid they were loosing their hired man to the Army.  He got his 1-A….”

Also October 22, Grandma Rosa “[my neighbor and sister-in-law Tina and her daughter Agnes] are going out to Whyoming… to see [their daughter and sister] Rose as Pinkey [Rose’s husband George Molitor] has to go across now too she expects a baby in Nov. so its to bad he has to go at this time.  Mrs. Heim says Elmer is in Holland now was in England & Belgium driving a tank so is in the front too at times Delores is in Italy….”

October 30, Grandma writes “[Vincent] got a card from the draft board saying he was in class II-C till Feb… How I wish it were all over.”  (II-C was likely a military deferment for essential work at home.  Vincent was needed on the farm.)

November 5, Grandma: “The Bernings are well Aug[ust] is still at camp LaJeune NoCar…  Ruby is in cadet nurse training in [Rockford] IL.  Rufina is in training at Iowa City.”

January 1, 1945, Grandma writes “[three] are leaving for the service soon…[another Long] is in Class A 1 now too….”

There is “radio silence” on the letters until June, 1945.  Doubtless letters continued, but don’t remain for posterity. 

June 11, 1945, Aunt Tina, Rose’s mother, writes “[daughter] Ruby has gone on to Montana to cheer up Rose a bit as her hubby is missing now for a month or so.  I hope…that he turns up liveing.”  (George Molitor KIA over Italy April 4, 1945, leaving Rose with two daughters, aged two and six months.)

July 25, 1945, Grandma: “…had a letter from [Marine Captain] August [Berning] is on Okinawa he had a bad battle there got shot through his jacket…The boys were to a show last night in LaMoure “30 seconds over Tokyo”….”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

August 8, 1945, Grandma: “Lorin H____ is at home now again they say he is nervous and has some shrapnel in his body but I bet he is glad to be home and will soon mend.”

August 26, 1945, Grandma:  “Hurrah! The old war is over I can’t say what that means to me….”

The surrender documents were signed by the Germans on May 7; and by the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945.

War continues.  “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

#28 – Mary Ellen Weller: French-Canadians in the American Civil War: A Book Review

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Note from Moderator: Mary Ellen filed this review of a book about the Civil War over a year ago.  It seems particulary pertinent as a memory for Memorial Day, 2009.  A companion to this article might be a recent talk by Howard Zinn on America’s “Three Holy Wars” at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Progressive magazine.  The Civil War is one of those wars.  His 35 minute talk can be viewed at http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/05/18-0

Mary Ellen Weller: Riding the bus was an essential part of the French Heritage Tour sponsored by the IF Midwest May 2, 2008 [http://www.IFMidwest.org] . Essential because of who was sitting in those seats. Some were on the program and many were authors of books related to French-Canadian heritage in the US. What follows is a review of one of those books, a fascinating look at the US Civil War as an engine of French-Canadian immigration. It is not yet available in English.

Les Canadiens Français et la Guerre de Sécession, 1861-1865, une autre dimension de leur migration aux Etats-Unis

(French Canadians and the War of Secession, 1861-1865, another dimension of their migration to the United States)

by Jean Lamarre, Professor of History, Royal Military College of Kingston, Ontario

Quebec: VLB Editeur, 2006.

Americans of French-Canadian descent are likely to find their first immigrant ancestor arrived here between 1840 and 1930. In those 90 years more than a million French-Canadians came south of the border. The numbers are especially high during the time of the American Civil War. Exactly why young men of 15 to 49 (average age 25.2) (p. 51) would choose to fight in a neighbor’s civil war is addressed in Mr. Lamarre’s intriguing book and the answers are surprising.

The facts and evidence on which this work is based represent months of often tedious research in the National Archives in Washington D.C. where military records for each and every enlisted man are found. Lamarre used Record Group 94: the Adjutant General’s Office, Civil War (Union) Compiled Military Service Records. “The researcher who wants to consult the personal file of a soldier must fill out, for each one, a form on which he indicates the name of the soldier and his regiment.” (p.26)* Using such a laborious process Lamarre gathered a sample of 1320 Union soldiers of French-Canadian origin, of whom 1142 were born in French-Canada and 178 in the US. He concludes that they represent about 10% of the total French-Canadian participation in the Union Army.

In addition to the challenge of submitting the necessary forms one by one to establish this sample, was the challenge of recognizing French surnames from approximate homonymic spellings in English. The recruits often could not spell their own names. More than 90% of these men could not sign their contracts and simply made a cross at the bottom of the page (p. 53). Check Mr. Lamarre’s appendix for the name Duquette and you will get a quick lesson in the challenges he faced. Remember, he had to order each record individually by name.

Once accessed, the record shows the soldier’s age at enlistment, his home, his place of enrollment, date of enrollment, and assigned regiment. The appendix which lists this information for the entire sample of 1320 French-Canadian Union soldiers will certainly be useful to anyone doing a family history. Thirty regiments from Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island are represented. Additionally, the record might note injury, hospitalization, discharge at the end of his contract, re-enlistment, or status as a prisoner of war. Lamarre has re-created the stories of many individual soldiers and tells them with great care within the body of the text.

The first wave of (over-)confidence and patriotism that brought volunteers to the Northern Army swept many French-Canadians with it. An early victory was expected. Some joined for adventure, some for patriotism, some to combat slavery and some for the security of food, shelter, and a small salary. Those French-Canadians already living in the US were often pressured to show their allegiance to their new country by enlisting. In some communities there was violence against immigrants.

The situation at the border echoes the years of the Revolution. Just as Loyalists headed north to avoid the Revolutionary War, many, many French-Canadians returned to Canada alongside Americans seeking shelter from the conflict.

Lamarre notes that seasonal employment in both logging and farming, from New England to Michigan, had become a way of life for many French-Canadians. Some were motivated to enlist to protect these very personal economic interests. They reasoned that if the South won the war, they could lose these jobs.

That very line of reasoning reveals a lack of employment opportunities in French-Canada. Between 12,000 and 20,000 French-Canadians enrolled in the Union Army and Lamarre states that “it is above all the financial advantages accompanying enlistment that attracted the French-Canadians”(p. 49). At first, the “assurance of a monthly salary of $13” seemed “preferable to the idleness and poverty that awaited them on returning home” p. (48). As this most deadly of all American conflicts dragged on, with tens of thousands of Union soldiers dying in battle after battle, and few enlistments to replace them, Congress voted signing bonuses as part of the Militia Act of 1862. French-Canadian enlistments went up again. In 1863 a draft was established and “enlistment became even more profitable”. (p. 49)

Lamarre brings out three very important aspects of recruitment and enlistment that were new to me. One, under the draft it was legally possible to pay a substitute to enlist in your place. 14% of the French-Canadians who enrolled, did so as substitutes (p. 58) Two, recruiters for the Union Army operated in French-Canada openly before the British enforced the Foreign Enlistment Act (which forbade British subjects from fighting in foreign wars), and clandestinely as ‘job recruiters’ even after Britain’s declaration of neutrality. Three, the payment of Bounties to new recruits after 1862 led to a pattern of desertion and ‘bounty jumping’. 

Enlisting as a Substitute was dazzlingly attractive. “The sums paid varied between $100 and $300 in 1863 but they later reached $600 and even $1000. These amounts represented the equivalent of one to two year’s wages in Eastern Canada, a regular small fortune” (p.59).

The British and their colonies north of the border were understandably nervous at the assembly of large armies in the States. Among their fears was possible invasion by a victorious Northern Army. It was thought that the army would be used to pick off territory or whole colonies and annex them to the US. Among the results was the British North American Act of 1867. Huge territories recently opened by the ending of the charter of the Hudson Bay Company in 1860 were indeed causing comment and machinations in the US. Eastern and Western Canada (French and English) pulled together and became a confederation and a country rather than a collection of colonies. Many other factors led to confederation, but the American Civil War had its influence.

With Bounties at amazing levels, the fraud that was called Bounty Jumping is no surprise. Despite the risk of court martial and possible execution, some individuals signed up in several different regiments and collected several bounties, deserting each time, or simply not reporting for duty. Amazing as it seems, the recruits were paid their Bounty and then given time to put their affairs in order at home before reporting for duty. How much temptation does a poor man need? The number who reported honorably for duty is all the more impressive.

The individual stories that Jean Lamarre has reconstructed for this fascinating account of Civil War experiences are a great treasure. Alongside the important facts related to French-Canadian Union Army soldiers as a whole, each individual story humanizes and verifies those facts.

With illegal immigration ever before us as a 2008 campaign issue, with a fence going up between the US and Mexico, consider just this one fact: 25% of the Union Army were immigrants. At that time, if you were here and you were not born here, you were an immigrant. Simple as that. At the end of the war Union soldiers were granted a free homestead of 180 acres in remote places like Minnesota and Dakota Territory. It solved two problems at once: what to do with thousands of men seeking work, and how to populate a continent.

*All translations are mine, mew.

Note: This book is not yet available in English translation, but the valuable appendix is easily accessible with a minimal knowledge of French. An earlier work by Professor Lamarre, The French Canadians of Michigan: Their Contribution to the Development of the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula, 1840-1914 is available in English from Wayne State University Press.

Mary Ellen Weller is retired instructor of French at Mesabi Range Community and Technical College, Virginia MN.  maryellenwellerATaolDOTcom 

#27 – Dick Bernard: The Webinar on Fear, and related happenings, May 21, 2009

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 In #26, May 21, 2009, I mentioned an adventure on which I was about to embark: hooking into something called a webinar on “The Fear Factor: A briefing on communication and messaging from U.S. in the World”.   This session was taking place in some conference room in Washington D.C.

Apparently at roughly the same time, in the same city, President Obama was making a major speech on essentially the same topic relating to Guantanamo; and former Vice-President Cheney was trying to blunt the Presidents case in yet another speech at the American Enterprise Institute.  It was an interesting day, yesterday. 

 I am of the doofus generation, at least in a technological sense: a Webinar was something novel and largely incomprehensible to me.

 

 Nonetheless, I managed to follow the appropriate instructions, figured out how to put my cell phone on speaker mode, and got my computer linked so that I could watch the speakers power-point, including her occasional small errors in going to the wrong slide, or such.

 

(The power-point, with captions, can be accessed here http://www.connectusfund.org/resources/managing-fear-factor-briefing-us-world) 

 

That the speaker and in-house audience was invisible to me and sounded somewhat tinny was a relatively small problem.  I got the gist of it.

 

 The time on the webinar was well spent, though there are only so many new ways to make a presentation about Fear.

 

Fear is obviously a saleable commodity, and a dominant emotion in homo sapiens (and other vertebrates) brains.  It is survival mode, the bare basics on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. 

 

The speaker described as the “stone age brain”, and it is tempting to ascribe to the others whose views I oppose the inferior intellectual status of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

 

But I have seen plenty of fear-based behavior amongst the good (and intellectually superior, of course) people with whom I most often associate.  And I’m in the same kettle as everyone else….  We’re all susceptible to Fear.  We just fear different things in different ways.

 

So, the speaker talked about “fears world view”, a view in which the “stone age brain” assesses situations as it would if its owner was in a schoolyard tussle with a bully; in a rough and tumble “wild west” scenario; or as it sees or imagines things out there in the “urban jungle”.  These are all examples of places “where the normal rules don’t apply” and where everyone has to watch out for him or her self.

 

In these kinds of situations, the sense of community is very restricted: trusting even the good next door neighbor might be a stretch.  “Me against the world” might be a good phrase.

 

The message I picked up from the Webinar is that the best course is simply to acknowledge that fear is a reality for all of us, and it is nothing to lecture or belittle people about.  People who are fearful are not stupid or crazy.  Fear just is.  And other tactics need to be explored to deal with the political tendency to rachet fear up as a useful “us vs them” tactic.

 

There is plenty of good material available about the topic, beginning with those references noted in #26 for May 21.  Do take the time to take a look at these references.   

#26 – Dick Bernard: NIMBY – Are we killing ourselves through "fear itself"?

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Shortly I will join a webinar sponsored by the Connect US Fund (www.connectusfund.org).  The title of the session “The Fear Factor: A briefing on communication and messaging from U.S. In The World”.   The  suggested readings are listed at the end of this posting.  They are very interesting.

 

I write intentionally before that session convenes.  Somehow it seems that the title is missing something when it says “from U.S. In The World”.  Might it better be, rather, “among us”?

 

The internal use of Fear to manipulate us is perhaps our most deadly enemy as a nation.  As I suggest in the title, we buy this Fear and, I contend, we are accepting the role of “killing ourselves”.

 

Examples are abundant.  Two on the national and international level occurred for me in the past 24 hours

 

1.  Yesterday, May 20, the United States Senate voted 90-6 against a small budget allocation directed towards the closing of Guantanamo Prison in Cuba.  The vote is not because there is serious disagreement with the data about the prisoners long held there, their possible guilt or innocence, the implications of their release, whether they can get a fair trial, etc.  Neither is it about the need to close this institution which has come to represent the worst of what we are as a nation.  We know we have to do this.  But none of this is terribly relevant.

 

The sole question seems to be “where should these prisoners go?”  And the stated and unstated answer is, “not in my backyard” (NIMBY).  We are afraid of these people, and legislators are afraid to face down this fear and do what is right.  They are afraid of the political consequences in the next election.

 

Some of these prisoners, (Many?  Most?), were innocent when they were thrown in jail without any rights, and left to rot there, tortured for information they did not have.  In the tragic irony of such situations, their very false incarceration leads to the near certainty of their continued incarceration in Cuba.  Nobody wants them in their state.

 

Fear is at work.  Politicians know the value of fear as a motivator.  Nobody wants them, even in the most secure facilities in the United States.   

 

If only this were the only example of fear run amuck….

 

2.  The same day the Senate voted I received the draft of a long carefully written letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations questioning the conduct of a recent election in the country of Haiti.  It seems that a major political party was denied placement on the ballot there because its designated leader had not properly signed the required form: a fax’ed signature was deemed improper.  Because this party wasn’t on the ballot, apparently great numbers of people boycotted the election in question, rendering the results invalid: there was no free election.

 

Since the designated leader of the party “is half a world away, exiled to another continent under international pressure” he could not sign in person the form required.

 

I have come to know a bit about this country and the sordid long term U.S. relationship with it.  Most Americans likely know little or nothing about Haiti, which makes it irrelevant and invisible to them.  But what we do reflects negatively on us, in relationship much as we impact negatively on it.

 

The leaders name is Jean-Bertrand Aristide, twice democratically elected president of Haiti, forced into exile by a coup engineered by the U.S., France and Canada in 2004.  Aristide, native born and till 2004 a life-long resident of Haiti, cannot even return to the country of his birth.  He is in another Guantanamo of our making, South Africa, even though he has not been found guilty of anything other than being someone the United States didn’t want to hold office in the desperately poor sovereign nation of Haiti.

 

For a particular reason, his popularity with the people of Haiti, the United States apparently fears Aristide’s return to his home country.   We fear any sense of empowerment of his constituency, the poor, for whose interests he advocated. 

 

Unlike the prisoners at Guantanamo, most Americans have probably never heard of Aristide; in fact, during a period of exile after another coup (1991) he lived several years in the United States.  One wonders if he would even be allowed to come to the United States at this point.

 

We seem mired in a swamp of our own making.  If there is anything we need to fear, it is that we are destroying ourselves.

 

Here are the readings suggested for today’s web-based session.  They are worth the time.

Resources
Detecting Intentions, Managing Fear: How Americans Think about National Security
Produced by the Topos Partnership for the National Security Network
http://www.connectusfund.org/resources/detecting-intentions-managing-fear-how-americans-think-about-national-security-0
Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush’s Ghastly Success
By John J. Judis, in The New Republic, August 27, 2007
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9e9af105-6745-497a-b5f8-4f304749eed4&p=1
“Cheney’s Fear Mongering”
Political Cartoon by Morin, in The Miami Herald, April 5-11, 2009
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/politicalcartoons/ig/Political-Cartoons/Cheneyu-Fear-Mongering.htm
“A Nuclear 9/11?”
By Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND Corporation
http://www.rand.org/commentary/2008/09/11/CNN.html
“Clark blasts GOP terror video”
Alex Isenstadt, in Politico, May 8, 2009
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22268.html

 

 

#24 – Bob Barkley: Power vs Force

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As the transition from Bush to Obama continues, the differences between the reliance of power versus force, while subtle, are still quite substantive. I believe it is best explained in a piece I wrote in the midst of the Bush incompetence.
The tension between power and force is great and often misunderstood. Much of the problem here is the western worlds—or at least most Bush sympathizers—misunderstanding of the differences between these two dynamics.
And when it comes to which of these two will win in the long-term, power will eat force for lunch.
Power is about influence, persuasion, example, compassion, civility, modeling, pacifism, peacefulness, humility, and is intrinsic by nature; it is a ‘pull’ action.
Force is about bullying, brashness, greed, militarism, war, arrogance, hubris, brutishness, and is extrinsic by nature; it is a ‘push’ action. We have just escaped a US leadership that revered force, and, while not yet complete, the shift is apparent to at least a balance of the use of power and force.
Gandhi, M. L. King, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Reinhold Niehbuhr, and Jesus exemplify power. Its essence is in ideas rather than things, and it is transmitted through words, serenity, calmness, and trust. Use of this model generates eager followers rather than reluctant servants.
King George III, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, bin Ladin, Saddam, Caesar, Herod, and, some would argue, to an increasing extent the US and British leadership for the past 8 years in particular, exemplify force. It is transmitted through fear, intimidation, coercion, dishonesty, and violence. It generates obedience and subservience rather than voluntary and enthusiastic acceptance.
The world has had its share of force, but force has never sustained a society in the way that power has. Martin Luther King captured the concept with the following: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” It will always take the power of some new and more reasoned influence to rectify the damage done by the wrong-headedness of using force.
A friend has offered that recently, “We have at work a strange version of the force/power distinction that operates as if force is the measure of power. Those holding this belief think that a bigger force will inevitably win, and they dread that others will conquer them if they don’t achieve total domination first. The only thing that can be won in such a paradigm is more control. And to maintain such control requires an ever-increasing ruthlessness and creates a world that responds only to force – a world that is driven by extrinsic reward or consequences rather than by an intrinsic sense of hope and of true community.” A study of history—Rome, Hitler, Napoleon, on and on, take your pick—shows that force is always trumped and is never sustainable long term.
A tweaking of this power vs. force discussion might well lead to what Reinhold Niebuhr would have referenced as “power and humility.” This comment about Reinhold Niebuhr recently came to my attention*, “Niebuhr understood that the exercise of power can be shocking and, at times, corrupting. But he also understood that power is absolutely necessary to fight the battles that must be fought. The trick is to fight these battles with humility and constant introspection, knowing that there is no monopoly on virtue. Moreover, this combination is simply more effective. For power untethered from humility is certain to eventually fail.”
And in the wake of World War II, Niebuhr warned us “we are so deluded by the concept of our innocence that we are ill-prepared to deal with the temptations of power which now assail us.” I can’t think of a better bit of advice to those that today control our government.
Finally, Niebuhr wrote, “If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.” Or quoting an old adage, “Hubris is terminal.” And there couldn’t be a better description of where Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, et al, had been leading this nation.
In my manuscript titled “Progressive Thoughts from a Liberal Mind: Creating a More Perfect World,” this section has received the most attention by occasional readers. It is also the one I seem to refer to most often as I reflect upon today’s international climate.
Undoubtedly we must guide our nation to the use of power as here defined and to avoiding a reliance on force. Ultimately, particularly in the long term, all models based upon force will fail. But quite unfortunately, the failure of these models falls upon the children of the perpetrators rather than upon them. This means that it is most often the shortsighted and selfish – those lacking “humility” – who most rely on force to settle their grievances and frustrations or satisfy their greed.
It will serve us well to reflect upon this dynamic of power v. force as we evaluate efforts by the Obama administration to make the transition as it is apparent they wish to.
* Quotations by Rienhold Niebuhr are from his book Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics
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Robert Barkley, Jr., Worthington, Ohio. Email at RBarkle@columbus.rr.com. Retired Executive Director, Ohio Education Association, served as Interim Executive Director, Maine Education Association, thirty-five year veteran of National Education Association and NEA affiliate staff work, long-term Consultant to the KnowledgeWorks Foundation of Cincinnati, Ohio [www.kwfdn.org], author of: Quality in Education: A Primer for Collaborative Visionary Educational Leaders, Leadership In Education: A Handbook for School Superintendents and Teacher Union Presidents, Principles and Actions: A Framework for Systemic Change (unpublished), and Progressive Thoughts from a Liberal Mind: Creating a More Perfect World (unpublished and available online upon request).