The Big Ball-Drop

As much time as I’ve been given to do it, I’ve never quite been able to get my head around this New Year thing.

I’m old enough to have been alive when Guy Lombardo was, which will give you a clue as to how long I’ve been around. Even when I was a small child, my mother would let me stay up till midnight New Year’s Eve, and I was allowed one sip of champagne while we heard the all-too-familiar rendition of Auld Lang Syne and watched the Times Square festivities on TV, including the famous dropping ball.

Later on, I would meet one of the early loves of my life at a New Year’s Eve party. Unfortunately, I was not one of hers, which was a familiar pattern for a while. My mom used to say, “Be careful who you’re with on New Year’s Eve, you’ll never forget it!” Well, yeah, you will, but I wasn’t about to forget THAT one.

I was raised Catholic, so New Year’s Day was also a “holy day of obligation,” and we had to go to church in observance of what was then called “the Circumcision of our Lord.” Seems like kind of an odd thing to observe, but Jesus started out as Jew, and this was a ceremonial ritual for male babies in ancient times. Anyway, the rest of the day was about football, of which I wasn’t a fan.

A friend from South Carolina used to invite me to a Hoppin’ John party on New Year’s Day. Hoppin’ John is a peas-and-rice dish – not my favorite either, but it’s a Southern thing, as is politeness, so I pretended to like it.

But what about the Big Picture here? A favorite author of mine once wrote: “Each year I have felt more keenly the unimportance of time and dates...Another year? What of it?..Do we not in a moment sometimes age years through an experience? Do we not in a year sometimes move not a step further than where we were before?” Another author wrote, rather bluntly: “The measurement of life by solar years robs youth and gives ugliness to age.”

Great concepts, except they don’t quite represent how we work. We have a finite lifespan, only given so much, so we’re constantly measuring it and evaluating it, through birthdays, anniversaries, seasons, and if all else fails, the New Year. It’s a time for stock-taking and resolution-making, which are necessities for the wise allocation of the time we’re allotted on this planet.

We often like to think of the New Year as a clean slate, but it’s only partly that. Most of the baggage we carry on 12/31 is still with us on 1/1.  We’d rather not have the bad follow us as the ball drops, but we still like to bring the good stuff along, so it’s the price we pay.

If you’re excited about what’s unfolding in your life, may your dreams come true in the coming year – at least some of them will, and perhaps some you don’t even know you have yet. If 2014 was a slog, well, if you’re reading this, at least there’s a reasonable chance you’ll make it intact into 2015 (if you haven’t already done so). If the good Lord’s willin’ and the crick don’t rise, you’ll be going through this process again almost before you know it, many more times.

Waving the Red Flag

 It has always interested me that when we have lofty debates about free speech, the debate itself is often a lot loftier than the speech.

I shouldn’t review a movie I haven’t seen – and now may never see – but just on the face of it, Sony was going to release, on Christmas Day no less, a comedy involving reporters recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. That sounds like a real hoot, right?

Talk about waving red flags in front of bulls. The North Koreans, as you might expect, didn’t care for the movie plot, so it appears they hacked into Sony Pictures’ operations and then threatened some 9/11-style attack. Our own President is encouraging us to “go to the movies,” but Sony pulled the film anyway for safety reasons.

Kim’s minions probably don’t have the bandwidth – yet – to mount such an attack, but already the airwaves are full of free-speech discussions and how we shouldn’t let ourselves be intimidated. All this to preserve the right of filmmakers to produce, and the public to consume, what just might be crap. Somehow I don’t think “The Interview” was going to be quite up there with “Dr. Strangelove” or “The Great Dictator” in terms of sharp geopolitical satire.

I love free speech too, but I have always held that we are not freed from the consequences of that speech. Do we expect the powers-that-be in North Korea to be good sports and laugh along with us, or as another example, extreme Islamists to chuckle at a cartoon of The Prophet? Or do we expect satire to melt the adamance (is that a word?) of those who hold the beliefs being made fun of, or cause people under the heel of such regimes or beliefs to be laughing so hard that they  rise up and overthrow their oppressors? What exactly is the point here?

When it comes to free speech, I wish the speakers would, at least some of the time, do a better job of picking their battles.

Under the Myth-el-toe

There are some beliefs you embrace in your life that just take all kinds of work before you un-believe them. I had particular problems with Santa Claus.

A lot of my early life was spent growing up in an apartment in Manhattan. We lived on the second floor. Every Christmas Eve, after supposedly going to bed, I would open my bedroom window (letting in the cold air in the dead of winter) twist my neck around, and look up in the sky to see if there were a sleigh, reindeer, etc. Yes, I did worry about the logistical difficulties of how Santa was going to noiselessly deliver the toys, especially when there were nine floors of apartments above.

I didn’t usually get what I wanted for Christmas – not because we were especially poor or I had mean parents – it’s just that I wanted impossible things most of the time.

There was not nearly as much trouble un-believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy – the latter in particular. When I was in bed but still awake, a family member would walk into the bedroom and slip a quarter under the pillow. If an older brother did this, he sometimes didn’t take care to tiptoe or consider how gently to shove the pillow aside to deposit the quarter, but I feigned sleep anyway. (What’s the fairy ponying up these days, $5?)

But Santa Claus – that was a tough one. I was at a rather advanced age (I won’t admit to the number here) before the breaking news was given to me about his reality. I did not take it well. I think most precious but erroneous beliefs are like that. We have to go through a mourning period when they die, just as we do when a real person close to us passes.

Yes, reality does indeed bite! But it occurs to me that those discarded fantasies leave their traces behind, and they will always be a part of us, evolving as we age, often materializing in forms other than the ones we outlined. Some of our dreams will actually come true, when the time is right. I think when all is said and done, Santa figures out how to deliver the goods.

"There Is Nothing Covered...."

 These are not good times for myth-writers and icon-polishers. Bill Cosby, beloved comedian and TV dad, appears to be a serial rapist. My premium TV channel has been repeatedly running that documentary about cyclist Lance Armstrong’s years of illegal doping. And now, a report that took years to produce concludes that the CIA tortured people to obtain information about possible attacks on U.S. interests. Not entirely news, but the report says it was much more extensive than we thought.

We thought we were the good guys. We’d never do what the Nazis or the Stasi or the Russians would do. Until 9/11. Until it was hard not to.

The debate is still ongoing about whether torture to get information “works,” – whether it coerces people with info to spill it, resulting in the saving of American lives. Actually, I’m open to hearing more about this issue. I don’t think it’s been 100 percent settled yet, though it’s not looking good for the pro-torture folks so far.

But what bothers me most is that in many cases, our CIA people didn’t even have to look the people being tortured in the eye. This is America, we even contracted THAT out, and the private contractors weren’t supervised much of the time. Now, I know many of them may be patriots, but I’m sure they liked being paid. And I’ll be willing to betcha that at least some of them enjoyed their work. Even in the TV world, while you were being tortured, at least you got to deal directly with Jack Bauer, Carrie Mathison or Saul Berenson.

Many of us may have enjoyed seeing Saddam Hussein’s statue being pulled down in the streets of Baghdad in 2003, but how many of our own idols have fallen? Why can’t things be what they seem to be, what we’ve been told for so long that they are?

In the Bible, Jesus is quoted as saying, “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and nothing hidden that shall not be known.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m suffering from revelation fatigue. I’d like to have a month or two go by when a myth isn’t busted, when my idol is still supported by its feet of clay. Just for a while.

Make My Day

There are times when my inner right-wing nutcase, the one I hate to admit is there, comes out. Last night, watching the destruction in Ferguson, MO, was one of them.

The authorities there had a long time to prepare for the release of the grand jury’s decision on whether to indict Ferguson cop Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown last summer. We heard all about their plans, including the activation of the National Guard, amid complaints about the militarization of American law enforcement. A lot of good that militarization did, as rioters burned police cars and buildings and looted stores -- and responding firefighters were shot at. This trained force couldn’t – or wouldn’t – stop them.

I’ve heard some of my friends say of last night’s destruction, “Well, it’s only property, it can be replaced.”  No, it’s more than that. In some cases, livelihoods were involved. It’s one thing to trash a chain auto parts store, perhaps, but it’s another to destroy a locally owned business. Both are wrong. Most of us can intuit the difference between real protesters and those who take advantage of situations. The cops should be able to do that as well.

We can certainly debate the wisdom of the decision to take this case to the grand jury in the first place. But the prosecutor was right when he said this group of people took their time and weighed their decision carefully. It could have taken hours. It took weeks. Maybe they came down the wrong way, but that’s part of the system we have agreed as a civilized society to go by.

If I were in charge, I might have waited until the next blizzard or other spate of bad weather enveloped the Midwest before releasing the decision, assuming that were legal. But where was law enforcement when it was needed? What kind of a message is sent when it seems to stand by and do nothing? And in many cases, get paid overtime for it?

Maybe the police train for the wrong things in these cases, dispersing huge crowds instead of dealing with a few crazies, I don’t know. But please forgive me if my right-wing demon wants to see something bad happen to those who take advantage of situations like this.  Just once.

Living in America

The immigration debate is a story about recognizing reality. Tonight in his television address, President Obama laid out his plan for dealing with it. The major effect of his executive order will be to allow some five million people now living in this country illegally (I’ve never understood this “undocumented” stuff – useless euphemism IMHO), to remain, without fear of being deported, and be able to get work permits.

That’s a lot of people. And the reality is, they’re HERE. Can you make them all disappear? Mr. Obama isn’t stupid. This order is also about keeping families together, and it’s being issued as we approach the biggest family time of the year.

The Congress can’t discuss this matter civilly and resolve it, and the President is trying to move things forward. When the quarterback can’t find anyone to pass to, sometimes he decides to run with ball himself. Usually he doesn’t get very far, but he tries anyway.

Look, here’s some more reality. This issue is complicated, but fixable, maybe only piece by piece. The immigration regulations we have now are tweaked all the time to fit our needs. Congress has done it before. There’s a program called EB-5, which gives foreign investors special immigration status here if they open a large business in this country that creates jobs. And if it were determined that the U.S. suddenly needed left-handed widget-twisters from Indonesia, the rules would be adjusted to let them in. All countries do things like this.

Certainly we have to secure the borders. But as porous as they may be in some places, they’re impregnable in others. How many horror stories have there been of Americans trying to return to this country after traveling to Canada and being detained on this side of the border for six hours or more for no stated reason? It happened to a friend of mine who is white, and whose name doesn’t sound remotely Hispanic – or Middle Eastern.

What would be the impact on our economy if the five million people in question were forced to leave? First of all, it would likely be a much more expensive prospect to make them disappear than to keep them. And what jobs wouldn’t be done, what consumer prices would skyrocket, if these folks weren’t among us?

Did the President exceed his authority? Did he sour relations with Congress (like they’re any good now)? Very likely, yes to both. Pity the poor immigrants in the middle, whose heads must be spinning, wondering where they stand. But instead of simply trying to knock down what the President has done and prolong the torture, can the current members of Congress actually take steps to deal with this issue, as their predecessors did? It doesn’t have to be perfect. But it does have to be realistic. Just pass a bill.

Following Through

This is one of those topics I don’t really have the standing to write about, because I’m not one: a veteran.

But here’s a story. Last week I had a temporary job observing a trial in federal court. I was not the only one. There was another fellow, who happened to be retired from the Air Force on disability. It wasn’t a typical combat injury. His job was to load those big military cargo planes – the ones so big that getting them off the ground seems to defy the laws of physics. Eventually, he threw his back out.

He loaded the planes both at domestic AFBs and in Iraq. At one point, I was moved to ask him if he ever had to load the planes with the caskets of those who died in combat, and if it bothered him. He said he got used to it. But the caskets had labels on them, and on more than one occasion, he found himself loading the remains of people he knew. He didn’t get used to that.

As for his injury, he said the VA was taking care of him, and so far at least, he was pretty happy with the medical attention he was getting. Of course, this isn’t true of many veterans suffering mental and emotional as well as physical wounds.

The original name of this holiday was Armistice Day, marking the official end of World War I on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918. So the day is about peace, not war. But the damage done in war remains, long after peace treaties are signed or troops are pulled out of a combat theater. General Colin Powell once said that our invasion of Iraq invoked the Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you own it. This applies not only to countries, but to the veterans who come home in less than one physical or mental piece. This is what “supporting the troops” really means, and it doesn’t matter whether the war was a “good one” or not.  Hopefully, the proposed reform of the VA will see us following through on our responsibility to care for them.

Not all veterans, of course, see combat. These days, it’s mostly a voluntary duty. But often, I wish we had more veterans to honor on this day. There is actually a very good argument for mandatory military service. If more people were subject to it, I think we’d do a lot better job of picking our battles: going where we need to go and ignoring the places we don’t, because more of us would be paying attention. But that’s another subject entirely.

Clocking In

I never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but I’m beginning to think our twice-a-year time shifting in and out of Daylight Saving Time is useless. This year, it fell on Halloween weekend, so I joked that vampires get an extra nighttime hour to suck blood, but in practice, they don’t: the number of hours of darkness and daylight before we set our clocks behind remains the same afterward. We “give up” an hour in the spring and we “get it back” in the fall, and when we “get it back,” it seems like a gift of some sort. Sorry, but this sounds an awful lot like taxes.

Animals, of course, do not recognize our artificial time shifts. Our pets tend to show up in the morning at their food dishes according to when daylight happens, expecting us to perform for them. It may be harder for human beings, as our fixed schedules don’t adjust for daylight: you either get up in darkness to go to work or drive home in darkness. Which is better? In the modern world, most people do both.

The winter months don’t help much with this process, simply because there are fewer hours of daylight on both ends. I have long loved DST because it says “spring,” and because those long summer evenings are delightful. But because there are so many hours of daylight in temperate latitudes, aren’t those summer evenings long anyway?

We can get into fistfights about how much energy DST actually saves, the necessity for children to wait for school buses in the dark, or the number of traffic accidents that occur because of the abrupt change in light conditions caused by the one-hour shift. But there are so many differences in workstyles and lifestyles that these time shifts will cause pain for some people and pleasure for others. So it all comes out in the wash, which is an argument for just leaving the clocks alone.

The other problem is, the whole DST thing is all subject to the whims of legislators. Arizona might secede from the Union if it were told it had to make the time shifts (and don’t ask, “Would we miss it?”). Plus, when Congress changed the dates of DST some years ago, many of my older electronic devices, which had DST built into them, didn’t get the memo, and choosing “automatic” for the time-set feature on these things is unreliable. So I have to reset them four times a year instead of twice.

We actually do have control over the amount of daylight we enjoy, but it’s expensive. We have to change latitudes. You can have the Endless Summer promised by the movie title just by having homes in two different hemispheres. Or, if you prefer, endless winter. Which means if you’re vampire, you’d better like it cold.

I’ll be back in about an hour, I have to run around the house and reset about 27 things. See ya.

The D Word

I had a friend tell me recently that one of the things that attracted her to a particular man was that he made it clear from the start that with him, there would be “no drama.” As perhaps you have already guessed, their relationship turned out to be full of it.

One of the definitions of “drama” is that it’s a representation of life – for performance purposes, of course, which means that it has to be enhanced for effect and ideally should end in about two hours. But can we really do without it?

Drama, in its broadest sense, is a trillion-dollar industry. We go to the movies to escape relatively dull lives or at least trade our own drama in for someone else’s for a short period. If you put movies and TV together with books and the music industry, you can see how important it is to us. You may be tired of break-up songs on the radio, but if human beings weren’t attracted to them, what would be singing all day? Hymns?

The news media have figured this out very well. They inject drama into everything, usually employing fear or outrage, often packaged in the same show with obligatory feel-good stories. Interesting how news items have always been called “stories.”

Face it. There’s a part of us that just has to be MOVED. We are constantly told to be living out our dreams, to do what we’re passionate about – a luxury not available to absolutely everyone. “Passion” itself was once a major bad word. But it’s true that if we’re getting paid for doing what we’re passionate about, it’s not a job.

I have always admired those whose dominant note is calmness and serenity. Some people achieve this with religion, or even diet; others may be just temperamentally gifted that way. Me, I’m a drama king, full of visible ups and downs, expressing myself where and when it’s probably not welcome. I have come to the conclusion that I am just one of those people who need more spice in their Chinese food, so to speak, than others. I believe one of our challenges in life is finding out how much spice we need, and accepting it.

People who insist on “no drama” usually don’t mean that. What they’re really interested in is balance. That’s a good thing. Even those who like spice can get too much of it. But can you force yourself to like bland food, just because someone told you it’s normal, or even good for you? Or be serene when you’re just not at that moment?

Which brings up another bad word: control. We give ourselves the illusion that we have it, and in the end, we don’t. No matter how hard we struggle to order our lives, s**t is going to happen. But so do miracles.

Time to take your seat. The curtain is going up for the next act.

Plus Ca Change

The French have an expression: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.” (You will forgive me for leaving off the accents, etc., I’m too lazy to look the function up in the “help” section). Anyway, loosely translated, it means, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Except, well, they don’t.

A little reminder came this week, when a ball-point pen I was fond of finally ran out of ink. It was great for writing checks (remember those?) and writing in the check register, because it had a nice fine point on it. But this particular pen, which you could buy zillions of just a few years ago, is no longer in production. Sure, there are other pens, and I’ll get used to one of them. But I have no choice. There isn’t THAT one.

In my audio tape recorder bag (isn’t it interesting how people still talk about “tape,” when it basically went away a couple decades ago?) I still have a little 2-by-3-inch white portable amplified speaker, sold by Radio Shack about 25 years ago. It runs on a 9-volt battery. You can plug weak audio into it and it makes it loud. It was indispensable in my work. But they stopped making it, and I haven’t run across anything quite like it since. I have to take good care of it. It only cost about 10 bucks, but it’s precious.

When the price of flat-screen HDTVs finally fell into the reasonable range, I bought one (no choice, as the old TV died). I tried to set it up with some other equipment, but couldn’t get a signal input. After about 45 minutes, I was convinced that either the thing was defective or that my other devices weren’t compatible with it, and I prepared to put it back in the box to return it to the store, when I finally saw something on the screen. It was working. The only problem is, I have no clue what I did to make it function. TVs used to turn on and off; you could easily change channels without the machine scanning or seeking for you, and there were no menus, just separate controls for different functions. I’m used to it now. But it took me a while to stop missing the old TV.

Don’t get me started on rental cars. They don’t even leave the manuals in them now, so you drive off thinking you know what you’re doing, until...

It’s not just stuff. It’s places. A few years ago, my wife and I visited the East Coast city where I was born and spent a few years as a child. “For dinner tonight,” I said, “we’re going to the finest place in town!” My parents and grandparents had gone there many times, so I knew the name and looked it up in the phone book (remember those?) It wasn’t listed. I asked people around town where it was. Nobody had even heard of it -- until we visited a 90-year-old friend of my late mother’s who observed that the place had closed down decades earlier. Well, that night we did go to a perfectly nice place for dinner. It just wasn’t THAT place.

There is an age we reach when we finally give up and realize that all the things we assume to be permanent, or to always function a certain way,  just aren’t or don’t. It has all been upgraded or is under new management. What was that age for you, or are you there yet? I’d like to be able to embrace change, but first I have to shake its hand.

Not Like in the Movies

 A deadly disease spreads from Africa to the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and the military swoop in and take complete charge of the situation to protect the homeland. Teams of folks in hazmat suits descend from helicopters. Active carriers of the disease are immediately isolated behind plastic sheets. It’s all buttoned down neatly, seemingly within a few minutes.

But despite its reputation, Ebola doesn’t make for a good movie monster. First of all, it’s not airborne; it requires transmission by bodily fluids. Second, it doesn’t show up right away, it takes several weeks before symptoms appear. And third, when they do, it’s almost impossible at first to distinguish the disease from the flu – no instant horrible disfigurement. And the CDC, the crack federal agency that we assume will run the show, doesn’t really have that authority, at least automatically. In reality, that’s left up to local government and health officials -- and mistakes are made.

We wonder: Should we be afraid? The news outlets have learned that if fear doesn’t motivate us to stay glued to the TV or whatever screen we spend the most time with, then outrage is a good substitute. When the Ebola carrier from Liberia showed up in the U.S., the Texas hospital screwed up and sent him back out into the community. The family members who were hosting him were quarantined, but not immediately removed from the crowded apartment building where they lived, and left to deal with contaminated bedding the carrier had used. The system basically collapsed.

Not very satisfying, movie-plot-wise. But life is like that. The villains among us are too subtle. Rescuers move ineptly, or get there too late. And because we’re conditioned to look for big villains, we miss the smaller or slower ones. The enterovirus has spread through many states, only fractionally as fatal as Ebola, but equally baffling. Measles and other childhood diseases are rampant again, it’s said, because many educated, affluent parents in some places are distrustful of vaccinations for their children. But where’s the high drama, or the instant fright? Then, in another sphere, there’s climate change. The scientists keep moving up the date when catastrophe is supposed to occur. Hollywood even took a whack at it (”The Day After Tomorrow”) But it just doesn’t happen that way. These kinds of catastrophes occur bit by bit, and like the frog in the slowly boiling water, we don’t react until it’s too late, or almost too late.

And we have to cut ourselves a little slack. Human beings don’t always behave like movie heroes. Balls get dropped. Whizbang technology fails. It’s always tempting to point fingers and make heads roll, but can’t we simply focus on not making the same mistakes again? The best practices and the solutions to problems sometimes take a long time to develop, and the mistakes happen to teach them to us.

It’s really the smaller and slower stuff we should be sweating: the stuff that creeps up on us. The stuff that doesn’t appear and disappear in two hours, like in the movies.

This Sporting Life

A prominent NPR morning host said something over the weekend that brought me up short. The big topic under discussion on his radio show, as one would expect, was domestic violence in the NFL and how slow the league was to deal with it. Finally, when they got to talking about the weekend schedule, the host, who is something of a sports fan, said he couldn’t watch NFL games anymore. The domestic violence issue was the final straw. Earlier straws for him included the NFL neglect of players after they leave the sport, suffering from often-debilitating injuries acquired during their careers, which have led some to suicide.

Wow, I thought, could I adhere to such a strict moral standard as that radio host?  I have a running joke intro that goes, “I’m not a sports fan, but…” I am surrounded by sports fans in life, and will watch at least part of an NFL contest if there’s some emotional connection, like a home team in the playoffs. Most important for me is that I can at least understand the game and speak the language with those who really do care about it.

I must confess I actually like boxing, often called the “sweet science.” Of course, there is very little about it that’s sweet. The object is to hurt another human being. Clearly, I don’t want to see anyone maimed or killed – I think most of us who are fans are attracted to the boxers who display the skill,  “science” in that phrase, to win. And modern referees are trained to call fights when one competitor is obviously losing and unable to effectively respond to the punishment he is taking. But maiming and even death can still occur.

You could apply this principle to other things, and many of us have. Many drink only fair-trade coffee. They refuse to buy an athletic shoe or a smartphone if they’re told it’s made with child labor. They eat organic, not only for health reasons, but because the farmworkers who picked the crops aren’t exposed to pesticides. Or they stop eating beef because its production uses precious resources and contributes to climate change. They don’t shop at store chains known for underpaying their staff.

So what’s the matter with me? If I consume any of the things above, does my moral compass need to be sent back to the shop for repair?

I have nothing to say that will provide much of a defense, except this: I think most of us make compromises in these areas all the time. If we didn’t, a lot of babies would be going out with a lot of bathwater (which we have to be careful of here in drought-stricken California). In the case of the NFL, the league leadership is responding to public pressure by implementing policies to deal with the domestic violence issue. These pressures do work. If a sport or an industry or a public institution is at least making an effort to clean up its act, is that good enough, or do we have to stop buying tickets to the act altogether?

I think I’m going to have to get back to you on this one.

Choose Your Virus

It’s very interesting where we choose to put boots on the ground. Without what seems to be much hesitation, President Obama has called for sending 3,000 troops to West Africa to build local treatment centers in the fight against the deadly Ebola virus. Even though it seems we are responding quickly, the experts are saying we are only leaping into the firefight when the house has almost burned down – and with the number of those infected doubling every few weeks, the urgency seems warranted. Will Ebola make it to the United States? Probably not, those same experts say, but if the population infected is allowed to explode, that likelihood increases. Without flinching, one expert said this disease had the potential to rival a Black Death that ravaged Italy in the 1300s.

I am probably by no means the first to draw a parallel to the situation in Iraq and Syria, with the spreading virus of ISIS. We have no prickly political issues at the moment keeping boots off of West African ground, it seems, but the weariness created by two less-than-popular wars kept us from involvement in Syria while its unrest morphed into civil war, and we couldn’t seem to get out of Iraq fast enough. Is there something the West could have done to prevent the loss of some 200,000 lives and the displacement of millions? We of course will never know – and what good would it do us at this moment if we did?

Now the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, says we may indeed have to put boots on the desert sand again in the form of advisors embedded with local forces taking on ISIS. This road should seem very familiar, as we’ve been on and off it for the past 50 years. In 2003, the reasons for entering Iraq may have been manufactured. But are they this time? It’s unlikely that ISIS would strike the United States in our homeland – perhaps equally as unlikely as Ebola spreading here, for the moment at least. But will that remain the case if we do nothing?

The troops we are sending to West Africa are no less in harm’s way than those who will be heading to Iraq and possibly, Syria. But there simply may be no alternative to getting our boots dirty.

The Foreign and the Domestic

This week a friend sparked a bit of a debate when she expressed criticism of the term “domestic violence.” Violence is violence, she said, and should be recognized as such. The word “domestic,” she argued, tends to minimize the awful things that sometimes happen in families or relationships, as if the violence was protected in some way.

It has often been protected by a tradition of silence, and the notion that family affairs should remain in the family and that they are nobody else’s business. There are religious traditions about wives being subservient to husbands, or social notions about a man’s home being his castle.

Making the headlines this week were the video of Baltimore Ravens running back – or should we say ex-Ravens running back Ray Rice -- beating up his girlfriend in an elevator, and South African “blade runner” Oscar Pistorius skating clear of a murder charge in the shooting death of his girlfriend. And today, as it happens, is the 20^th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act.

Personally, I don’t quite understand any man physically abusing a woman, especially in what started out as a love relationship. I just don’t think I was shipped with that software. I tend to swing the other way, more in the direction of worship of women, which has its own set of issues. But does it all make me a good guy, or am I just lucky? Conversely, I don’t understand why some women tolerate an abusive domestic relationship, and even defend a husband or boyfriend when criticism comes from the outside.

My friend is right. There are no special circumstances or settings that make physical abuse OK, and it needs to be punished. But we also have to understand the dynamics of these things on a deeper level. The man who abuses a woman tries to rule by fear, because he is ruled by it himself: the fear of loss of a precious or needed thing. The fear that if absolute control isn’t exercised, a static situation may change – the woman may leave, or simply want to breathe, to have joy in her life that he is not the agent of. Are we allowed to have compassion for a man driven by such feelings or explore where they come from? Compassion in these situations is difficult, because seeking to understand is construed as seeking excuses for awful behavior. There are no excuses for it.

But do we have to at least talk about it? Absolutely. It’s about literacy. We hear often about financial literacy. But there is also relationship literacy. It means being able to discuss things it just isn’t nice or easy to discuss, turning over the rug under which things have been hidden for a long time, challenging the models some of us were raised with or have embedded in us for some other reason.

There is a notion of TMI – sharing unnecessary details about intimate things with others. But I have always had a suspicion that a bigger problem these days is TLI – too LITTLE information, about things we desperately need to talk about.

Ignorance Isn't Bliss

When most of us hear the word “ignorance,” we might think of someone living in a remote cabin in the woods with no electricity, no smart-phone, no Internet (gasp!), maybe an outhouse with a half moon on the door in the backyard.

But ignorance is a lot more than being uninformed. The root of the word is “ignore,” the definition of which is “REFUSE to take notice of,” according to Webster. Heck, you could even be somewhat informed, and still refuse to take notice of something. So it’s not about being stupid, it’s a deliberate choice.

Officially, we have tried to ignore the human tragedy in the Middle East for years. It’s none of our business, we can’t afford it, Bush screwed everything up, let’s get out of there. Fine. But in Syria, almost 200,000 people have been killed and several million displaced. The civil war there isn’t news anymore. It’s a failed state, a vacuum. And it is being filled by ISIS.

Who’s that? The dog on Downton Abbey?  Where were they six months ago? Well,  they are the latest scourge of the Earth. The heads of Messrs. Foley and Sotloff were by no means the first to roll at the hands of ISIS, but all of a sudden, we are paying attention, thanks to some nasty videos. They were OUR heads.

I have heard analysts say, “It’s not about religion, it’s about power.” Really? Power is like money: worthless until used. And what do the goals of ISIS appear to be? The establishment of a great Islamic caliphate, with everyone in it subject to Sharia law. Not the first time in history this has happened, of course. These human impulses aren’t always religiously driven, but when they are, it’s real trouble.

Now it looks like we’re going to have to do something about this, though we have no taste for involvement in it. The symbolism of the President telling us what he plans to do on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary cannot be ignored. The case is going to be made that ISIS really is our business.

But I hope the President will minimize discussion of what we’re NOT going to do. I say, leave everything on the table. That doesn’t mean we have to serve everything on every plate, but we should leave the table set.

We have already learned the hard way that massive military invasions in these cases don’t work very well, but yes, we may have to put small numbers of well-trained boots on the ground (in whatever form those may be) with very specific, targeted missions, along with the usual droning and bombing. It’s all going to cost us something – but now we are seeing what the price of doing nothing – our refusal to take notice – has been.

A Tale of Three Heroes

Journalism, as we are often told, can be dangerous work. The latest reminder has come in the beheading of Jim Foley, held by ISIS in Syria. While it’s sad that some military personnel have to die in combat, we expect that consequence in war. But when it happens to a reporter, especially in the form portrayed in an awful video designed to send a message, we are shocked, because it’s not supposed to happen to journalists, whose only weapons are newsgathering equipment. It’s safe to say, though, that Foley was no stranger to the risk he was taking, a risk that hundreds of journalists around the world take on a daily basis.

The U.S. rejected a huge ransom demand and put “boots on the ground” to rescue Foley and other hostages held by ISIS in Syria -- another great risk, not only physically, but politically. The mission failed, because the hostages had been moved. I’m reminded of the failed attempt to rescue hostages in Iran back in the 1970s. I’ve always believed that Jimmy Carter would have been re-elected President had that attempt succeeded.

Whether we like it or not, we are now at war with ISIS. The only sensible response is for us to “behead” the organization. We know who many of the leaders are, and we may have to send elite military teams in to get them. Simple bombing, droning, and even a massive invasion won’t work, but a targeted effort just might.

On a considerably happier note, there are two other heroes to celebrate: the American doctors who are said to have recovered from a disease that has heretofore been almost exclusively fatal: Ebola. Like Foley, Drs. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol knew the risk they would be taking on the ground in Africa to help deal with an epidemic. They had to take a second risk: submitting to the use of a largely experimental drug. The favorable outcome holds promise for its future use.

When bad things happen to such people, maybe we shouldn’t be too shocked. The perils they face come with their respective territories. They are no less heroes of war than those who carry guns. We do need reminding, though, that wars of many kinds go on all the time, and the warriors involved aren’t always wearing the uniforms and carrying the weapons we expect.

"Failyuh...to Communicate"

You may remember the words of actor Strother Martin, who played a sadistic Southern prison warden in the movie “Cool Hand Luke.” They apply very well to the situation in Ferguson, MO, where an unpleasant bit of Kabuki continues to unfold. It didn’t have to be that way.

It started earlier in the month, when a young, unarmed black man was shot to death by a white police officer in that St. Louis suburb -- a tragedy, but not the first time such a thing has happened in this country, nor will it be the last. It’s all about what happens immediately after such an incident that can either keep things calm (if tense), or devolve into a Ferguson.

Police shootings happen often enough that Police Chief Magazine has a whole section on how to handle these incidents, and a couple of paragraphs on communication, “48-Hour Release Policy,” spoke to me:

“With any law enforcement shooting comes intense media scrutiny. The best policy for all parties involved in a shooting is a 48-hour release policy. Neither the officer’s name nor the name of the individual shot should be released for 48 hours. This gives the involved officers time to notify their families and arrange for temporary secure accommodations if they fear threats or retaliation may follow. The 48-hour release policy also provides the department sufficient time to properly notify the family of the individual who was shot. A professional, timely media release issued by the head of the agency sends the message that this is a serious incident that will be handled with expertise and professionalism.

It will further benefit the law enforcement agency to send personalized copies of this release to stakeholders in the community to avoid dissemination of misinformation, and to provide the community the names and phone numbers of contact persons for questions or concerns.”

You might debate the propriety of a 48-hour time frame in a modern news cycle. But do you think any of this was followed in Ferguson?  The police chief, Col. Thomas Jackson, after about a week, finally released the name of the officer involved, along with a curious video showing that the shooting victim had just stolen items from a convenience store. The chief did not coordinate this release with the Missouri state police captain who had been put in charge of security in town. And the only messages that were sent to the community involved a militarized police presence, stun grenades, and tear gas. The state’s governor did not ease any tension by calling out the National Guard, either.

Certainly, there are realistic issues that must be considered. While the family of the victim is demanding that the shooting officer be arrested, police do have a special status in our society. They are allowed to carry, and fire, their weapons under certain circumstances. They are also entitled to due process, and there are procedures in place for investigating such incidents. The community, though, must be persuaded that such investigations are impartial – which many argue is a rare occurrence.

Second, the authorities do have to maintain order. There was no excuse for stores being looted or burned or livelihoods destroyed. Those who take advantage of these situations should have books thrown at them.

Third: Yes, there are “outside agitators” who show up at these scenes because of the media attention – people who have no stake in the local community or who are under the illusion that violent protest will bring justice.

And fourth, there are long-range issues involving the racial balance of the police department in the city it’s serving, and the culture of that department.

But I think Ferguson would be just another town in Missouri dealing with a tragedy today if the simple communications strategies listed above were followed. I have always believed that effective communication calms almost any situation – in families, at work, in domestic politics, or even in international relations. Communication is the oil that makes things run better.

I would be happy to send Col. Jackson a gift subscription to Police Chief Magazine. Hopefully, though, he will be asked to “retire” soon, and may not need it.

Chickens, Eggs, and a Robin

It’s been days now since Robin Williams’ suicide, and we’re still talking about it. I think this is my third post on this – and if you pull the plug here, I’ll certainly understand – but it’s a clear indication that many of us have been affected at a very deep level. This fellow was not a head of state or a religious leader or a military hero. He was a comedian and a movie star. Are we overdoing it? Some of us still have to talk about it.

Not all the talk, IMHO, has been useful. The other day, one of the cable channels had some expert on with two graphics: one of a “normal” brain and the other of an addict, showing the areas of damage in the addict’s brain. No, the news anchor hastened to add, the damaged-brain graphic was not Robin’s.

Still others have posted Robin’s astrological chart to show why this was a rough time for him. Now, his widow has revealed that he was in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, and the docs are on TV again, telling us about the statistical relationship between Parkinson’s and depression. If someone diagnosed me with that, I think I might be a little depressed. Even the medical expert said that while there is a relationship, we don’t quite know exactly what it is, which is the chicken and which the egg.

The one that bothers me most is the attempt to link genius or extraordinary artistic talent with mental illness. We know what genius is when we encounter it. “Mental illness” is something we have to define, with experts telling us what’s normal and abnormal and whether we need to take pills for it. Yes, clinical depression and bipolarity are real things, but reducing genius to a chemical imbalance is offensive, at least to me.

Is Williams’ suicide a wake-up call about the prevalence of mental illness? One former actress actually called on Congress to do something about it. Ah, now THERE’S a bastion of sanity for you. And don’t we always say the same thing after a wacko shoots up a school?

It’s interesting that we refer to artistic talents as “gifts” – maybe a bad word, since they usually come with a price, and for whatever reason you want to plug in here, Robin Williams just couldn’t pay it. Should it be left there?

I guess, though, we have to cut ourselves a little slack. Trying to arrive at a conclusion won’t make us feel much better about Robin Williams’ death, but it’s our coping mechanism to avoid feeling too much grief. Are we learning something about the human experience from all this discussion? Yes, but explanation’s chief benefit is that it allows us eventually to put this tragedy on the shelf so we can go on with our own lives. It’s that awful word “closure.”

At some point, however, we’re going to have to admit to ourselves that we’re just not qualified to dissect souls.

The S Word

A friend who used to listen to me on the radio reminded me that there was once a code in the broadcast business to the effect that when people committed suicide, you didn’t mention that particular cause of death on the air. My friend wished we could go back to it. I disagree. The facts, even the unpleasant ones, have the virtue of ending speculation, at least most of the time.

The practice of never saying the S word wasn’t a question of just being “nice.” Suicide has had a long tradition of being unspeakable. If you offed yourself, you were not entitled to burial in the consecrated part of the cemetery. It was a mortal sin, and you were going to hell. You slammed the door on the way out, a major no-no.

Suicide is just one of several things that we once had a tradition, or a convention, of not discussing. Sex, of course, is another. Now, it seems, we discuss everything. Dr. Oz did a whole segment about human waste products on a daytime show not long ago. On his daily nationwide radio program, Dr. Dean Edell used to talk about every physical condition imaginable. You would be surprised (or would have been in the early days of the show) at the subjects people raised.

Talking or not talking, showing or not showing, may actually be cultural. News stations in this country generally did not show the bodies falling out of the burning World Trade Center towers on 9/11, but many foreign news outlets had no such compunction.

As a reporter, I used to have to interview people after disasters. I began to notice a pattern. When white people’s houses burned down, the last thing they wanted to do was talk to the media. But it seemed that homeowners from other ethnic groups actually sought us out to talk to us. I hated to do this particular part of my job – but maybe my own reluctance was cultural. I simply thought I was feeling “respectful.”

While we are more open-minded now, we remain sensitive to the notion that there is an appropriate time and place for raising certain issues. In the case of death, we of course have to be mindful in some measure of the departed’s survivors.

But making nice all the time, or categorically shutting down the discussion of any form of human experience, in the end accomplishes nothing beyond prettifying the scenery. All kinds of things happen to us all the time, pleasant and unpleasant, and the more we learn about them by discussion, the better we can process them – and find out about how Human Being 1.0 actually works.

Robin et al

I really didn’t need to hear this today about Robin Williams committing suicide (or so it is suspected at this writing). It was only a few days ago that I was asked to read a blog draft for a former colleague before she posted about the suicide of one of her closest friends. So I have been thinking about this topic.

One of these things happens, and we tend to fall into two camps: Judgers or Explainers. The Judgers go on about how offing yourself is giving up, that it’s the ultimate act of selfishness, that it’s unfair to those left behind. The Explainers review the departed’s life, the events leading up to the act, or start talking about chemical imbalances or clinical depression or bipolarism. I talked very glibly about a sense of humor requiring the sense of its opposite, and how that applied in Robin Williams’ case. Shouldn't a sense of humor be the very antidote to depression that keeps comedians alive, we might ask.

But what do you do about this feeling in the pit of your stomach that won't go away after the shock?

Suicide comes in many forms. It could be from a sudden feeling of despair. In the case of my friend’s friend, a debilitating disease caused many circumstances to go south in her life over time, Antartically so. She stepped in front of a train. Not an “approved” method of self-destruction, as it traumatized others, including, of course, the train engineer, as you might hear from the Judgers.

A distant relative committed suicide because he didn’t think other family members could take care of themselves financially. He couldn’t do it alive, so he figured his life insurance policy would do it for him. He left no note, so the family will never know. Still another, a woman I know, left town, went to a dumpy hotel in another city, and took an overdose of pills. She did leave a goodbye note. In it, she said she was dying of cancer and didn’t want to be a burden on her family.

Is there anyone among us who has never considered suicide? I was raised Catholic, and suicide is a mortal sin in that faith. Even after "lapsing," I often joked that I would never kill myself, simply because the Catholics might be right about what might come after, and I didn’t want to take the risk. I guess I figured whatever doo-doo I was in here would be a lot deeper on the other side. That’s only half a joke, because it’s a powerful argument when you’re a child, and it lingers. We don’t know what’s on the other side, and of all the decisions we make, this is the one absolutely that cannot be undone, so we better get it right.

And then there is the discussion about whether suicide should be legalized and facilitated by the medical profession.

But all that’s for another day. We can neither judge nor explain these events satisfactorily, at least not immediately -- and perhaps never. But we try anyway, because otherwise, we might have to fully embrace that pain in the pit of the stomach that many of us are feeling at this moment.

Give Me Your Tired, Etc....

I have often said that if I ran for Congress and were elected, I would introduce two bills. The first would reduce the tax code to a single 8.5-by-11-inch sheet of paper (assuming for the moment that some of us still think in terms of sheets of paper) Anyway, Bill No. 2 would reduce the immigration code to three sheets. That involves live human beings, and it’s a little more complicated.

Immigration is back to being the top issue in our border states, and the crisis we’re dealing with now is the flood of those fleeing from Central American countries whose governments have apparently lost control over organized criminal elements – if they ever had it in the first place. These violent gangs have taken to targeting children – using them as bargaining chips in their deadly games. Naturally, their parents feel the need to ship them to a safer place. If there were ever a case for asylum, this would seem to be it. Except that if we automatically welcome these kids, how many adults might be using this issue to get them, or themselves, a free pass here?

One of the biggest headaches is adjudicating each case to see who is a legitimate asylum candidate. This flood of border crossers wasn’t anticipated, so there’s a shortage of judges who can deal with them?  What do you do with these immigrants in the meantime? Angry NIMBY crowds have shown up wherever the buses full of these people roll, demanding they be sent home.

It’s important to note that the U.S. is not the only country affected by this. Residents of dangerous places tired of living in a constant state of fear are also seeking entrance to countries to the south, even in South America.

Some perspective might be useful. What we’re calling a border crisis is a joke compared with what is happening in the Middle East. What would we do if we lived next to Syria, and a million people showed up at our doorstep?

In spite of my three-page fantasy, I have no solutions, but when it comes to immigration, there are two principles to keep in mind. First, immigration law is not set in stone. If government decided there was a critical need for one-armed cello players, the laws would be adjusted to solve the problem. One real-world exception in the code has been offering foreign capitalists special immigration status if they start a company in this country, or relocate one here, that creates jobs. Countries make these kinds of adjustments all the time.

The second principle is, since immigration law seems to require flexibility to fill a need, the rules are often going to be changed in the middle of the game. There is going to be an unavoidable element of unfairness which has to be accepted.

And there is a third principle. If we want to continue in the notion of American exceptionalism, we can’t blame those in dire circumstances in their home countries for wanting to come here, right now. Many of these people are getting here at great expense or great personal peril, as did the ancestors of many in the NIMBY crowds wherever those buses arrive. All that a substantial number in those crowds had to do was be born here. They were just lucky. Where is the fairness in that?

Deportation seems like a quick fix, but there are no quick fixes to this problem. The best we can do is engineer a system that is as fair as possible while being as flexible as possible. And we need to elect people capable of such a task. If we can’t find them here, maybe we should import some.

Facebook Apps I Think We Need

On the way down to the Ferrari showroom, I sez to myself, “Self, get ready for Easy Street! You’ll make a fortune designing Facebook apps – ones that are really necessary, to block certain things at those times that we’re just tired of seeing them. I even have names for the apps:

QuizBlock: Haven’t we all had enough of these blessed quizzes? I don’t care what kind of Downton Abbey character or Renaissance figure you “got,” what your governing emotion is, what breed of dog you’d like to be, or where you’re supposed to live that you don’t. Heck, I’m not even sure it’s you taking the quiz.

ListBlock: 10 Characteristics of a Good Boss; 10 Decisions You Should Have Made 10 Years Ago, But Didn’t; Five Most Common Deathbed Regrets, do I need to go on here?

FoodBlock: Why is it that I’m never hungry when you post what you ate at the fancy restaurant in your city that I’ll never get to?

NewsoftheWeirdBlock: I get it! The world is full of not-very-smart criminals, or people who insist on nakedness or sex in inappropriate places.

A few others, included in the deluxe software package: CatBlock, DogBlock, ToddlerBlock, and, of course, FlowerBlock.

But here’s one everybody needs: BS-Block, to shield you from pithy, quasi-spiritual philosophical sayings, usually posted in the morning, with calligraphic fonts, sometimes over puffy clouds, or flowers (but FlowerBlock may handle those).

But hey, never say never! I’d have to put a toggle button in most of these apps, because moods change, and like me, you might find yourself not only wanting to see these things occasionally, but becoming an “offender” yourself in one or more of the categories shown. (Guilty as charged!)

I wonder if they’ll let me have the Ferrari on a really long-term installment plan?

Lines in the Sand

Iraq AGAIN? Didn’t we just FIX that place?

One of the reasons we in America have trouble caring about the Middle East is that we have something quite a few other places in the world don’t: stable borders. When’s the last time a map of this hemisphere actually changed? When was our last real border dispute? “54-40 or fight?” The Confederacy tried to create a new country, but that failed. We still can’t rule out Texas seceding from the Union, I suppose, but it’s unlikely. Our best security feature is the oceans on either side of us.

The irony is that while we’re called the New World and the Middle East is considered the cradle of civilization, most of the countries we see on the map there today haven’t been there all that long. The most stable of them, Israel, has only been a country since 1948. Syria, Iraq and Lebanon were places, but they weren’t really countries until occupying Western powers created borders for them in the early 20^th century. Is Iraq behaving like it’s really a country right now? I think it was Joseph Biden who said some time ago that Iraq could actually be three countries – and some thought he was nuts.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the Turks controlled everything in that area. It was called the Ottoman Empire. A friend of mine jokes that these days, the Ottoman Empire is just a furniture store in New Jersey.

Now we have an extremist Islamic faction that wants to create a new state encompassing Syria and Iraq (not a new idea, BTW), at which they could very easily succeed. Then there are the Kurds, who control portions of Iraq, Syria, and even Turkey. I’d be willing to bet that they’re going to end up, when all is said and done, with their own country.

The human cost of all this instability is beyond belief. Aside from the deaths and injuries, millions have been displaced from their homes in Syria. Now, Iraqis who are on the wrong side of the religious factional fence are fleeing theirs in large numbers. These folks may not even be sure what country “home” is now. This is literally a very foreign concept to us on this side of the pond.

It is my belief that whether we like it our not, the West is going to have to get involved in this mess in some way (As an aside, it’s very interesting that we’re jumping up and down because the ISIS group is beheading people, while we didn’t say boo when the Syrian government turned a mechanized army on civilians). I don’t know what form that involvement will take, but we’re going to find we can’t just stand by and let the region shatter.

Yet it seems clear that the map is going to be changing pretty radically again in a short period of time, and the cartographers at the National Geographic better keep their digital paintbrushes wet.

Gender Wars, Take 2?

This is a subject about which I may have some unwelcome things to say, and how many friends I will have at the end may be slightly in question.

There has been much talk since the Isla Vista shooting about misogyny, the prevalence of rape on college campuses, and similar topics. #YesAllWomen, says the hashtag, will be sexually harassed, if not assaulted outright, by a man at some point. Men counter, but not all men are like that (which usually means “I’M not like that!”). But enough are.

Among the most debated issues is dress. Rape victims are naturally offended when the cops ask them what they were wearing. Of course, it shouldn’t matter what a woman was wearing, there is NO excuse for sexual assault of any kind. But can it be a factor?

Taking up a different crime for a moment: The same cops often tell us around the holidays not to leave a wrapped gift in the back seat while we’re away from the car. Someone may break in and steal it. Of course, it’s a crime, and most wouldn’t do it. But the temptation may prove too much for somebody, who may even feel entitled to steal.

When it comes to dress, most women in my experience, especially the attractive ones, know that dress sends a message, and they usually know exactly what message they want to send, especially if it’s a first date – or a job interview. They want to be attractive, of course, but there are degrees and intentions. I’m not talking about wearing short skirts or showing cleavage here. Sometimes it’s the exact opposite: a beautiful woman may dress down somewhat and cover more, because she wants her beauty to be just an a-ttraction, not a dis-traction. Or, she wants to send the right socioeconomic message.

Hugh Hefner and others succeeded in liberating Americans from sexual repression, but he also opened the door wide to the fetishization (don’t make me say that fast) of women. The media, including music and games as well as TV, print, film and the Web, create strong impressions in young straight men’s brains, often long before flesh-and-blood females do. The sad part is that men and women usually learn to be gender warriors long before they learn to be friends.

We go on and on about how human civilization is speeding up global warming, and the steps we must take to protect the planet. What is modern culture doing to our souls? Why is it all of a sudden so much more dangerous for women? Why do some men feel such sexual entitlement in what seems like an otherwise free and equitable country?

Am I saying here that women should be walking around in burkas and men in black suits? Or that men who assault shouldn’t be held accountable? Not at all! What I am saying is that just as things are way out of balance in our physical environment, they are similarly out of balance in our cultural one. What can we do to restore that balance? And in the meantime, don’t parents have the responsibility to raise both male and female children to respect others -- and how to navigate safely through what can sometimes be a dangerous world?