20 years ago today – it was a Saturday – Cathy and I married.  Most folks who read this post know us in person or various aspects of us from references here.  There is no need to go into detail.

Like for most everyone else, COVID-19 has changed our routine.  Our anniversary dinner will be takeout, probably from our friend Ruhel’s temporary restaurant, Curry in a Hurry.  It’s a long trip for takeout, but he deserves our support.  His restaurant, GandhiMahal, was burned to the ground in the aftermath of George Floyd murder.  I most recently wrote about the former restaurant here.  The perpetrator(s) are not yet in custody.  Here’s my most recent photo at the restaurant site, of the one section that survived…it was where we used to hold meetings.

A sad reminder of what used to be.  Where we hope a Phoenix arises.  (The interim restaurant is less that two miles away, at the corner of 31st Ave and Franklin.  Curry in a Hurry.  Try it.)

Portion of Gandhi Mahal Oct 22, 2020

Back to 2000, and the present and future:

Our wedding trip in 2000 was about a week, to Washington DC and Concord MA.  I saved the newspapers from the days of the trip, and they’ll be an anniversary surprise – Minneapolis Star Tribune, Washington Post and Boston Globe.

We came home on November 6, and two days later was the 2000 Election that lasted until mid-December when Al Gore accepted the Supreme Court ruling that George W. Bush was to be President.  There was a peaceful transition, however emotional this event was.  I kept all of those newspapers as well – it is a big box.  Within the box I found my 20-page summary of the daily post-election news.  Self-serving: I think it is a good primer of what happened, then.  It can be read here:U.S. President Election 2000 (click to enlarge).

Our time in Washington and Concord in 2000 was interesting.  We scored a visit to the White House, and on Halloween eve we were in the Gallery of the House of Representatives for an evening session.  My dominant memory from that evening was the Republican Congressman from Illinois who came up to meet the few of us in the gallery and to apologize for what we were seeing on the floor – two clumps of competing legislators, no one paying attention to even the speaker who was talking about workplace safety.  Somewhere I have the Congressional Record for that evening and the speech is probably in there if I’m interested.

We did the other tourist kinds of things one would expect in the two places, and flew back home to begin a life in the same place where I am writing this post.  Two days after we landed, it was Election Day, 2000.  Everything was normal till it wasn’t….

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It’s a chilly, sunny, basically very nice day in suburban St. Paul.  A week from today is the election. What more can I say?

Less than a year later 9-11-01….

Here’s the most recent photo of the two of us, Sep 14, 2020, taken by our friend Don, 91 years young.

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POSTNOTE Oct 25: Today’s Minneapolis paper had two 16 page advertising inserts about a major exhibit on fascism in Minnesota at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of the Minnesota.  This includes an online talk Oct 28 7-8:30 p.m. and an exhibit beginning Oct 25 through January 2021.  Here’s the link with details.

POSTNOTE Oct 30: I watched the on-line talk on Oct 28, and visited the museum on Oct. 29.  The talk was very interesting and will be available on-line probably by Saturday.  Watch this space for the link.  November 18, 7-9 p.m. there will be an on-line panel.  Detail here.  The only exhibit at the Weisman is the newspapers, which are free for the taking.  I took 25, for distribution to anyone who might be interested.   “Fascism MN Weisman” (click to enlarge) is the 4-page folder about the project at Weisman.  Parking at Weisman is easily accessible – it has its own lot.  Its address is 333 E. River Parkway Mpls 55455.

POSTNOTE Oct 31: My “White Nationalist” post, just published, directly relates to this.  It includes 15 comments from individuals on the topic.

portion of covers of two 16-page advertising inserts to the Oct. 25 Minneapolis Star Tribune, topic fascism in Minnesota.

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Oct. 23: I listened to the final Biden-Trump debate on Thursday night.  There will be endless commentary elsewhere today.  Compared with the previous two debates (I listened, also, to the first; the second didn’t occur as we all know); last nights was relatively civil.  For more on the final debate: here.

A few days to go to the election itself.

I title this post “Antifa” because it’s one of Trumps favorite words to label people like me.  It’s short for anti-fascist, I guess.  A code word from the dark web.  Sometimes I feel I’m part of an evil cabal: “Democrat”, “liberal”, “left”, “progressive”.  You know….

Yesterday an insight – something I hadn’t thought of before: Trump fancies himself as a Fascist leader: thus, to be antifa is to be against him.  Just an opinion, off the cuff.

Earlier this week on public television we saw Rick Steve’s travel film entitled “Fascism in Europe”.  It is an excellent primer, produced by Steves in 2018, about the Europe of Mussolini, Hitler and Francisco Franco in those “good old days”.  It seems a primer for anyone who wants a United States of Trump.

Check your local public television station.

Trump admires Strong Men; and his cadre, his base, seems largely of similar inclination.

Pretenders to power tend to study how others achieved power, and work the program.

Of course, power is temporary.

Mussolini (dead at 61, firing squad) is described as “charismatic personality and consummate rhetorician” (Britannica).  Italy was the first Fascist country – he was in power 1922-43).

Hitler (dead at 56, suicide in his bunker) was a passionate nationalist and orator and his book made him wealthy.  He needs no further description.  What became his thousand year Nazi Germany Third Reich lasted a dozen years.  He caught a wave at the beginning, and crashed at the end, taking down his entire country.

Francisco Franco (dead at 82, illness) was a military man, and ran Spain from 1936-73.  He, too, has his own brutal story.  But he didn’t have a violent end.  Of the three, maybe he was a success?

This trio is the basis of  Steves travelogue.  Personal opinion: All of them, and all others like them, have very large opinions about themselves, and thrive only because their subjects (voters) don’t pay attention to what they have done and are doing their own countries.  The People, writ very large, ultimately lose if they don’t take action.  The longer they wait, the worse and more difficult it gets.  Ask the Germans, the Italians, the Spaniards….

Of the thousands of images I’ve seen of Hitler, et al, the one most telling comes very near Hitler’s death, when he comes up out of the bunker to meet with the children and old men who have volunteered to save the Reich.  Hitler is a truly pathetic figure, and as I mention he was only in his 50s at the time.

There are infinite numbers of other pretenders or aspirers to the status of Supreme Leader.  Trump is only the most recent.

The end for all of them is always the same, as it is for all of us.

The antidote, always, everywhere, is “we, the people” who refuse to succumb to the lies and deception and promise of glory.

We, the people, are the solution, especially in a democracy, as fragile as ours can be.

Vote.  Exercise your voice.

POSTNOTE: In a recent post I added an article from US News and World Report Sep 24, 2000.  It’s on White Nationalists.  Here it is: USNews 9-25-2000001.  (I’ll post comments on this article on or near Nov. 4.)

Sunday night watch 60 Minutes and Lesley Stahl’s interview of Donald Trump (the interview he walked out on, and then released in violation of previous agreement with CBS.)

COMMENTS (more at end of post):

from Jay: I am glad you are well and keeping at it. I am sorry but I have felt fascism is getting stronger in US and some other countries for several years now. Specially with Trump in power. And it is not by only “white” people. India and Philippines are moving that direction. I can only hope the violence will be minimal.

response from Dick:  My main issue in this election was the “tone” of the country which is set by the President.  Hopefully, Biden will be elected, and will set about the very, very difficult task of changing the tone of all of us.  It will be very, very hard.  (The same applies to the other countries you mention.  People are sloppy at electing leaders, especially in democracies.  There are consequences.  Thanks for feeding in.

from Glenn:  “The rise of Fascism in 1930’s Minnesota” is being repeated by “The rise of Antifa in 2020’s Minnesota”.  Thanks to the Democrat party, this time it has infested most of the country!  Today, of course, the term is Orwellian.  Like in most liberal left propaganda, word meanings are changed at will.  When you have an obviously fascist, anarchist organization, call it Antifa (for anti-fascist).  That way the “deplorable uneducated masses”, which include everyone but the left, won’t catch on.

The first Presidential debate I can recall was the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960.  It was the first televised presidential debate in history.  I was in college, not yet 21, the then-voting age, but I do remember that it was a college event in a time of only black and white television and small screen TVs.

We now have the spectacle of the 2020 Presidential ‘debates’.  The first one was held, sort of; the second was cancelled, there is supposed to be a third, and there was one vice-presidential debate.  It has been a very odd year.

Tonight was to be a town-hall format involving both candidates.  For reasons all readers now know, tonight one network carried Biden; another carried Trump.  There was no debate.

Here’s what the Commission on Presidential Debates has to say about debates.

I may add more to this post later, commenting on a fascinating series of debates from the year 1927, which I learned about in 2001, involving three young Englishmen, debating at 31 American colleges and universities in the fall of 1927.

October 12, 2020

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A look back to the ‘good old days’.

In 2001, in the wake of 9-11-01, I had the unexpected honor of meeting Alan King-Hamilton in person, in London.  There is a story, not relevant to this piece, about how I came to meet him, and later to be honored with a copy of his notes taken during a 1927 debate tour with two Cambridge University colleagues of 31  U.S. colleges and universities in the midwest and western U.S.

Later, I augmented his notes with contemporary college and other newspaper accounts of the actual debates.  The entire collection is worth a book, which I hope someone will write – perhaps in connection with the centennial of the trip coming up in a few years.

Where the debates occurred can be seen here: King-Hamilton et al 1927001.  A 1927 photo including King-Hamilton, and his colleagues Elvin and Foot, is here: Alan King Hamilton 1927001.

Debate has a very long and honorable history, especially for making and interpretation of Law, which is the essence of government.  It is disappearing.

Alan King-Hamilton, 1927

World Food Day is October 16.  An on-line program is Monday (see next paragraph).  The Food and Agriculture Organization is one of the many offshoots of the United Nations, whose 75th anniversary is Oct. 24, 2020.

The organization Global Minnesota has all information for World Food Day and other events here.  In the calendar, at the website, is announcement of a virtual event at noon on Monday, October 12.  Check out the calendar.

The October 10 Minneapolis Star Tribune had this excellent editorial on the topic.  This is an essential topic of conversation at this point in our history as a nation.  The U.S. remains by far the wealthiest country in the world (note Wealth of UN Countries), within which our country has by far the greatest inequity in personal wealth of the haves versus have nots.  And the gap is growing, and the tension intensifying.  We ignore this inequity at our great peril.

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This year is the 75th anniversary of the United Nations.

Take time to learn more about the history of the UN, founded in 1945 to help solve problems through means other than war.

There will be many programs and many sources of information about this anniversary and assorted events.  Global Minnesota lists several of these events.  An organization in which I’m active, Citizens for Global Solutions MN, is also a useful source, as is United Nations Associations of Minnesota.

Check these out.

snapshot of UN headquarters, New York City, late June 1972, by Dick Bernard

COMMENTS (more at end of post):

from a long-time friend: I provide monthly contributions for five organizations that are addressing local hunger with 45% going to the elderly.  On a national and world level, as I may have indicated before, the answer is “contraceptives, contraceptives, contraceptives”!!! The majority of my philanthropic funding goes to organization focused on promoting women to give them the independence to decide to not be child bearers in order to have a husband to supported them. But I can only do so much.

from Chuck: Thank you!
I did!.

And have issues with it.
Since 1980…here’s the facts.

“In the final analysis, unless Americans — as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world — place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar.  Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or
emergency financing… The hour is late.  Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world.  Our humanity  demands that we act upon these challenges now…”    Presidential Commission on World Hunger, 1980.

Today we are experiencing these consequences.  The Commission warned about “diseases”, “international terrorism”, “war”, “environmental problems” and  “other human rights problems” (refugees, genocide, human trafficking.).
Each threatening our lives, our freedoms and our prosperity.   Our failure to deal with them has fueled fear and generated populist movements. Movements that are only making things worse.

The 1980 commission specifically warned that “The most potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The anger, despair and often hatred that result represent real and persistent threats to international order.  Neither the
cost to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical global threats. Calculable or not, however, this
combination of problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”

It also stated “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons most Americans have been conditioned to equate
national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion.  Armed might represents merely the physical aspect of national security.  Military force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”

Our failure to take a universal human rights approach after 9-11 has cost the US twice as many lives lost that day and as much as 6 trillion US tax dollars so far.  The Covid-19 crisis has been estimate to cost us that much in just 4 months, not to mention that in those same 4 months we lost approximately 6 times the number American lives lost during the last 19 years fighting terrorism predominately with military force.

It should be a self-evident truth that Covid-19 and most other threats we face today are largely the result of ignoring this reports recommendations.  Dozens of other prodigious, bipartisan studies and reports have followed since then.   Each clearly documents the direct and indirect links between world hunger, human rights violations, global instability, and the growing array of other threats to our national security.    Affordable and achievable targets with a comprehensive action plan can be found in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals today.  They offer an action agenda to tackle  the root causes of the growing chaos.

What’s missing is the political will.  The will to do what’s right  — and make an adequate  local, national and global investment in everyone’s health, freedom, security, and prosperity.

Time is not on our side.  The evolution of pathogens, weapons, and war is outpacing our will to voluntarily change.   This is literally.unsustainable.

Last night I listened to the entire presidential debate; I only watched the first and last five minutes or so.  I will leave my personal comments at that.  For an excellent summary of commentaries overnight: “The New Cleveland Show“.

There have been several comments and suggestions left at my Opinions blog from a couple of days ago, here, and yesterday’s blog was about a recent visit to Gandhi Mahal area devastated in late May.  Take a look.

This post is head-lined Haiti.  I will write about a learning about Democracy as viewed by Haitians perhaps later today.  I had two very powerful visits to Haiti in 2003 and 2006.  We have some things to learn from them.

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HAITI: In my life I have come to believe that there is no such thing as a “coincidence”.  Even supposedly random occurrences have meaning.

So it came to be, in 2002, that I met a fellow resident of Woodbury at a meeting in Minneapolis, and that led to an extraordinarily rich experience in learning about our impoverished neighbor, Haiti, including two study trips to the Caribbean island country in 2003 and 2006.

These were my first dives into how it was to be desperately poor.  We cannot imagine….

Both trips were facilitated by persons who were advocates for the poor.  My contribution to the Haiti literature, such as they are, can still be read here and relate my impressions after the trips.  The photo at the end of this paragraph is from Newsweek of March, 2004, less than three months after our visit, and right after the coup which removed the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Haiti Coup Feb. 2004 (click to enlarge the image).

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The remaining words are about Haiti and voting, and are motivated by the danger of American nonchalance at who to vote for, or even what the vote means, not only this year, but always.

Haiti has always had an intimate but very uncomfortable relationship with the U.S.  It was born of a slave revolt against the French in 1804, 17 years after the United States officially came into existence.  Being we were a slave nation, there was no interest in recognizing a neighbor created by slaves who cast off their chains.  President Thomas Jefferson had no interest in recognizing the new country of Haiti. I have heard it said that one of the first resolutions of the new Congress was to not recognize the new leadership of the new country of Haiti.  Haitians were no longer slaves; but their country was not treated as a partner in any sense of the word.

In my era, the Duvalier family were the dictators of Haiti for near 30 years.  A populist Catholic Priest, a proponent of liberation theology, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, took on the system, and engineered the first free elections in the country in 1990.

This was no easy task: the populists were enemies of the entrenched state; the peasants were largely uneducated, and the official written language of the country was French, not the community language, Kreyol, which was mostly verbal.

So when it came time to vote, there were immense impediments to voting, far, far worse than anything we experience in today’s United States, including threats and acts of violence.

Nonetheless, when finally given their opportunity, the peasants walked long distances, they stood in long lines, and they cast their votes.  Ask anyone who knows something about Haiti, and they likely will have stories they can share.

Of course, there are ways to put poor people like these in their place, and it was done.

I think of these wonderful Haitian folks this year in this election in our country, where an optimist will predict only 60% of those eligible will even bother to vote, and then only for a single person, the president of the country, then go into hibernation for another four years.

Those poor Haitians, some of whom I had the privilege to meet in 2003 and 2006, knew and know the value of democracy.  We should to.  We shall see how it all turns out.

Can we lose Democracy here in the U.S.?  Absolutely.

If one follows the political history of Haiti, you’ll find only brief moments of Democracy, one of which was largely the creation of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

But Democracy is fragile, and in Haiti’s case an unusual coalition of the U.S., France and Canada, effectively killed the dream of Democracy by all of the means available to richer and more powerful people and countries.

Here we have a current President who wishes to be an autocrat, indeed, whose models are autocrats…and whose base is the wealthiest, and those with the most to lose if he wins, including those wealthy folks.

Haiti remains impoverished and under the thumb of the U.S., with all of its tentacles.

We deceive ourselves if we think it can’t happen here.