The best and worst of my US of A

First the good news. Lacking leadership, guidance and resources, most of my fellow Americans are stepping in, wearing those masks and practicing social distancing. Here in Texas, Governor Abbot abandoned pretending that he is a blind fool, and ordered mandatory masks, $250 fines for not wearing them (including a text message on my phone from the Texas disaster warning system), and bar closures. The Houston Medical Center, where I recently went, looked like a ghost town. We need to think a lot harder about reopening schools, rather than bars. In my Hayes county, practically everyone wears masks in stores, even in Home Depot, whose pro-Trump CEO does not seem to get this simple message: if you care about the economy, wear a bloody mask and make sure that together we will not be overwhelmed by the fear of the virus, and will resume sending our children to school, visiting doctors and dentists, start flying, visit hotels and  frequent outdoor restaurants. Right now, this broad attitude is not accepted by most of the mentally exhausted Americans under ever more stress.

In other states, like Florida, with zero leadership from a sycophantic governor who habitually licks the inside of his boss's asshole, city mayors and county officials are trying in vain to rein in the masses of suntanned, beer-drinking young people in search of self-gratification. These people think they are invincible, and their parents and grandparents don't count. Sad.

My beautiful country has never been under so much onslaught from enemies domestic and foreign. We now have a corrupter-in-chief, who is infecting with moral gangrene most vile almost every institution of our civil society, while purging anyone and everyone who is decent and thinks independently. The president is doing this dirty bidding for his own nefarious goals, mostly to ensure his reelection and profit his family businesses.  Of course when it comes to being subservient to his Kremlin boss and handler, Trump will not stop from any treachery. For Trump, obstruction of justice and treason are the way of life, but some 20-30 million of my terminally aggrieved white fellow citizens, many of them self-proclaimed "Christians" (?!),  seem to be following him to the very hell, where he and they will end up.

Please remember my good people, as Jesus would say, that Trump will use you as stage props to get reelected, and if he does, he will immediately abandon and betray you.  Why? Because that's what he does. To everyone. Always. But don't worry, he'll tweet you. Also please note that you have been left behind by 40 years of the systematic looting of our country by the likes of Trump, his entire family, and most of the criminal gang that works for him. You are the sheep who entrusted a wolf to improve their lot.

To gain a free reign, the looters hand-picked an empty-headed charming figurehead, the eternally clueless conservative by the name of Ronald Reagan. I know you revere that platinum-encrusted idol of conservatism, but please come to your senses my good people. You were fucked on January 21, 1981, but you didn't see it coming. Later, the same looters have fucked you over and over again for 40 years, no matter which administration was in power. I know you're hurting badly, but now is the time to rebuild our country by eliminating first the failed economic neo-liberalism that served me so well, but allowed the top 0.1% to stomp you into the hollowed out, burned ground that was our thriving society 40 years ago.

In the previous two posts, I have commented on the US hellholes, into which we dump our old to die. We call these profitable hellholes affectionately, "nursing homes." Thus far, more than 51,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died, representing more than 40 percent of the total death toll in the United States. But this was in late March, April and May. Now let's fast forward to June 21, 2020, and we learn that the same nursing homes across the country are kicking out old and disabled residents (dumping them like trash) and sending them to homeless shelters and rundown motels. These residents are now replaced with the much more lucrative recovering COVID-19 patients. While the popular conception of nursing homes is of places where elderly people live, much of their business is caring for patients of all ages and income levels who are recovering from surgery or acute illnesses like strokes. Medicare often pays for short-term rehabilitation stints; Medicaid covers longer-term stays for poor people.  From this point of view, the poor, old people on Medicaid must be kicked out first. Such is the nature of the American brand of predatory neo-liberal capitalism. And what really scares me is that most Americans think that they live in heaven and have best social services available to them, including healthcare. Well, the corona virus took care of that delusion.

Now on to the racism in America. Tons of ink have been spilled on the discussion of this unpleasant subject, and I will only add the curious case of one Amy Cooper (see the 60 second video that went viral, with 40 million views within a few days from being posted).

 

May 26, 2020. Ms Amy Cooper, born and educated in Canada, was filmed in Central Park calling 911 to unleash the cops on a black man she wanted to hurt badly. The black man challenged her white superiority and white incompetence. She cannot even handle her little unleashed dog, while holding the leash in her right hand. Unleashing dogs is illegal in Central Park, and the black man simply asked her to put the dog on a leash. Amy is seen here exploding with violent rage and lounging towards the man.

If you met her on the street, you'd peg Ms Cooper as a college-educated, independent young woman with a great professional career (she lives in Manhattan after all). You'd think that Ms Cooper represented the enlightened Canadians and Americans, who have put racism behind them.  Well, you'd be wrong. Ms Cooper may hold all of these characteristics until she doesn't, like most of us.  The moment someone black challenges her white supremacy (yes, white supremacy as in the old white slave owner times), she turns on her latent racism. Ms Cooper knows everything about the hidden racism that permeates the American society. She also knows how racist the police are. Enraged, she does not hesitate to push all of these racist buttons in her 911 call.  She is calling the cops as a white woman being attacked by a black man in a park, suggesting hysterically that she thinks her life is in danger. In short, she wants the cops to come and shoot the black attacker as they almost always do.  She wishes violent death on a black man, because he dared to tell her to put a dog on a leash.

Ms Amy Cooper gives us the purest, unedited insight into the essence of human racism anywhere. The way she allows us to glance at the dark side of  human soul is worthy of Dostoevsky or Conrad-Korzeniowski. To see her at that naked moment of truth is to witness the gate of hell open and slam shut, like in Dante's Inferno. You could not make it up. More generally, this video of her Mr. Cooper (no relationship) shot in Central Park is an invaluable comment on our society today, in the cosmopolitan Manhattan, in New York, 52 years after Dr. Martin Luther King was shot by another white person, who did not like them blacks pretending they are just like us, the snow-white whites.

I almost vomited watching this video, because it made me realize that most people drink racism with their mother's milk here in the US, in Canada, in Poland and in any other country around the world. Later, our racism is polished and hidden behind a thin veneer of kindness and understanding, until it is not. The second thought that made me almost puke is that our dear Amy knew exactly that the white American cops would come to her rescue guns blazing, and she used the coded racist language to make sure they would. And what if instead of Ontario, Canada, we went to Alabama, Georgia, or Texas? How much worse this pervasive racism is among the people who wear t-shirts with the Confederate flag?

For those of you who reside outside of the USA, that is for most of my readers, here is a closing footnote on that unfortunate Canadian woman with a college degree from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Ms Amy Cooper:

"Amy Cooper was terminated “effective immediately” on Tuesday from her job at investment firm Franklin Templeton, following a storm of criticism over a video posted online that showed Cooper calling the police on a black man who asked her to keep her dog leashed in Central Park and filmed her reaction to his politely phrased request." Forbes.

By the way, if you live outside of the US of A, please don't feel superior.  At least here we stumble along trying to change this dark part of human nature. Chances are high that in your country racism runs unchecked, and slavery, especially child slavery and young women slavery thrive. So don't be smug, please, and give us credit for trying to resolve our deep darkness. How is yours?

In my country, "Black Lives Matter" has been the largest social movement in our history, with up to 25 million people, black, brown and white participating, Something good will come out of this energy of mostly young people, as it did in Poland when Solidarity won. We will become a better society in the end, and we will - again - give a good example and leadership to the world.  Count on us!

P.S. All the cartoons in this blog came from my unflappable British friend, Mike Haywood.  I do thank him for keeping me smiling during this terrible time.

P.S.² (07/05/2020) According to my friend, Rex Wyler, today, some 40 million human slaves exist, including 10 million children. An additional 15 million girls suffer forced marriages, and some 150 million children work as trapped child-laborers. The Guardian estimates that slavery is a $150 billion annual industry. In North Korea, Eritrea, and Burundi, some 10 percent of all citizens are slaves, and even in the UK an estimated 13,000 people serve as enslaved laborers. Twelve US presidents owned slaves, including presumed humanitarian, Thomas Jefferson, and Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson.

What follows came from Prof. Bill Rees, courtesy of Prof. Paul Ehrlich: On June 23, 2020, Republican Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's 2008 campaign for president, was interviewed on MSNBC. In response to a very general question regarding the Trump Presidency, Mr. Schmidt spoke for two solid minutes and gave the most insightful and brutally honest response of what the Trump Presidency has done to our great country.

 “Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And, I don't say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And, he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And, there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.” "When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.” "It's just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he's the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he's brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale." "And, let's be clear. This isn't happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you're the most likely to die from this disease. We're the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are, because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk."

I have been pretty brutal, but Steve Schmidt is as brutal.  He only shies away from the plausible deduction based on the available evidence that in destroying America with such passion, Trump has acted as a Russian asset controlled directly by Vladimir Putin. Trump must be thoroughly blackmailed by the FSB, who must have him on video and on tape.  And that's just from Trump's Moscow times. His obstruction of justice when it comes to the Russian intervention into the 2016 election and the sales of arms to Ukraine are added elements.  The Special Prosecutor, Rober Mueller, failed monumentally in his report by not ever dotting the is and crossing the ts, and informing others about what he knew.  In the end, Mueller showed himself to be a card-carrying Republican, who had more loyalty to his party than to his country. Barr stole and distorted Mueller's narrative and Mueller did nothing about it. Barr is a cunning enabler of a traitor president, and hopefuly will be behind bars soon. And what about another traitor, Michael Flynn?


P.S.³ (07/06/2020) Speaking about Raskolnikov's Dream in the context of this blog:
"He had dreamed that the whole world was doomed to fall victim to some terrible, as yet unknown and unseen pestilence spreading to Europe from the depths of Asia. Everyone was to perish, except for certain, very few, chosen ones. Some new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in men’s bodies. But these creatures were spirits, endowed with reason and will. Those who received them into themselves immediately became possessed and mad. But never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and unshakable in the truth as did these infected ones. Never had they thought their judgments, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakable. Entire settlements, entire cities and nations would be infected and go mad. Everyone became anxious, and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone, and suffered looking at others, beat his breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good. They did not know whom to accuse, whom to vindicate." 
 --Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866) (Flagged by Art Berman)

P.S.⁴ (07/09/2020)   This essay is from my close friend in Spain, a brilliant electrical engineer and thinker, who installed telecom systems in about a dozen countries, moved around the world for the last four decades, and lived permanently in five countries.  In particular, he was responsible for Poland jumping from its antiquated copper wire telephony to wireless in a few years.  He lived in Poland for nine years, and his children went to school there. His essay is longer that the 4096 characters allowed by Google.  Hence, I post it here with great pleasure.

Thanks to all. Interesting points of view.

Let me explain my own experience, having traveled and worked around the world for 4 decades and lived with my family in five different countries on a permanent basis.

My name and personal look goes unnoticed in a wide strip that covers all Latin America, Southern Europe and Northern Africa, all Middle East and some parts of Asia up to Pakistan. So, I have taken advantage of my "camouflage" body, to live well adapted in most of the world during my trips or stays.

I have had to take a strong position, only in few cases. My children and wife have also learnt to defend themselves from few brainless mates in few occasions. When necessary, I have tried to do it with dignity, learning from Gandhi during his stay in the racist South Africa, and in his clashes with the British authorities.

One of my main efforts, due to my privileged position when traveling, was to teach my children to treat others with utmost respect and be attentive and over all, to listen their reasons, because they may learn things from them and from their way of living; learn to understand some behaviors that, in a first sight, may appear nonsense for a Western hardwired mind, educated in a false sense of superiority, but may be the most usual in their own circumstances and environment.

Traveling, if you do with an open spirit, is one of the best cures for racism and xenophobia.

Now, few examples of my personal experience:

• Landing in Frankfurt from Karachi, I was pushed by a German policeman with a dog automatically into the queue of Pakistanis. I took my EU passport in my mouth and he realized his mistake and told me to move to the EU citizen queue. Then, I decided to stay with Pakistanis.

• The first time I visited our office in Miami for an audit, there was a Puerto Rican secretary with an obvious Latin (and beautiful) looks. I talked to the people on my mission, took a company car and she was very diligent. Few days later, I asked her if she spoke Spanish. Of course, she did speak Spanish, but her obsession to integrate was to strong that she said to me she preferred to speak only in English. She had blind herself to speak fluently two languages.

• The first time I arrived to Iraq (1979) lo lead a telecom project to modernize the Iraqi telecom network, I noticed that this country had more women in important positions in the Ministry of Transports and Telecommunications, and in all institutions in general, than in my own country. The 40 engineers I hired (some of them woman), had much more knowledge and command of languages and in some cases general telecom, than my own Spanish engineers and technicians, that, however, I had noticed treat them like third-worlders, and I had several clashes with my own Spanish engineers for that reason.

• An Argentinean friend, top level genetic researcher, was working in Lausanne in a very sophisticated program. He came with his family for holidays to Madrid, and said he was kind of desperate to spend some days in a culture much closer to his. He told me that after a couple of years of living there he had been convinced and assumed the right of Swiss people, to enter into a restaurant with his/her dogs and that maîtres could give him ugly looks when he entered alone with his two children. The reasons, he admitted, was not as much racism, but that he had checked that Swiss dogs never bark in a restaurant, but that his children usually speak loud or even shout.

• My Palestinian friend, born in Nablus in the West Bank, a urologist. living in Spain, with Spanish nationality and married with a Spanish woman, both of them close friends, have told me the horrible humiliating measures he has to suffer when he has to travel to visit his family. The Palestinians are today the Jews, sacrificed by Israelis and confined in what we could straightforwardly call concentration camps. Nobody protests in the Western world for those terrible abuses.

• The first year my small son went into the American school in Warsaw, he started to be intimidated (bullied we would say today) by a Dutch colleague, so proud of his own country (always the Polders as an example of industriousness), that he considered Spain as a shitty and backward country. I have always taught my children to respect everybody and their life and culture and to love the many good things we have, without giving a sensation of superiority, because everyone, has their own beauties and good things, and we are not superior to anybody else. But it seems, as a general rule from which no country escapes, that his own is praised high over the rest (the Uber Alles or America First concept), something that I will delete in all history books. In this case, I explained to my son how to proceed, and next time he was despised, he should make understand his Dutch colleague that his country was a poor one, because they had condemned themselves to a Sisyphus dilemma: to be pumping out water to the sea for the rest of the eternity or let one third of his country disappear under the sea if they one day stop pumping for a while and try to have a siesta. No more bullying to my son.

• Back to this common education principle I have noticed every country, including mine, has, many things have to be changed to reduce the level of hype and to increase the level of respect to others. In the same American School in Warsaw, the first year one of my sons arrived the first day with a History book. I was surprised that the book on the history of the United States of America had 350 pages, when we summarize our much longer written history in about 150 pages. Trying to help him, I discovered something surprising: Lesson one: The Three Discoveries of America. This would have been a huge scandal if it appeared in the Spanish history books. So, I went to ask for a meeting with the director and the History teacher. They were very attentive and kind. I told them:

1. The Asians crossing the Bering Strait and populating the American continent, some 20,000 years ago, in my opinion, should not be taught in History books, but in prehistory and/or anthropology books.
 2. The remains of the Viking huts appeared in Newfoundland, that when traced with Carbon14 were dated circa year 1,000 do not prove any discovery, if not properly documented and generating further regular contacts between continents.
 3. The third one, Columbus, being presented, more or less, as an absent minded Genoese navigator that arrived there in search for India and its spices does not seem the best example of teaching history.

They listened to me, very respectful, but like if I were a Martian and of course the history of the discoveries (from Europe) of the American continent continue to be taught in the USA minimizing the Spanish presence and highlighting the English big feats. Basically, for the US, the epic of the conquest started with the Mayflower and the “Go West” motto, when it rather happened from South to North and about 200 years before. In Hollywood, we can see thousands of Westerns, where Amerindians are depicted many times as “uncontacted” tribes, seeing a “white man” (of course a cowboy, speaking English) for the first time in their registers, but these Indians were all….riding horses that were taken for the first time to America from Europe by Spaniards. The non-contacted Amerindians in the US were basically nomadic hunter gatherers, traveling by feet behind herds of animals. But Amerindians riding horses is the classic standard of the Western films even when they claim they had never seen before a “white man”. These are the typical dominant views of our world.

• I could have thousand examples more. We have also plenty of racism and xenophobia in our own country that these, corona virus days have been untapped, when we needed. Immigration labor forced to harvest, the crops and we saw how African and East European workers are being treated like slaves or animals. Travel helps a lot to understand other points of views.