Personal Winter

Personal Winter

by Marco M. Pardi

“An inability to stay quiet…is one of the most conspicuous failures of Mankind.” Walter Bagehot. Physics and Politics. 1869

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As Tonio walked into the dark forest in knee deep snow, his parachute buried, his M2 carbine with folding metal stock slung outside his insulated jumpsuit, four extra 30 round “banana” magazines pouched in his inner vest and a Beretta with two extra magazines in a tilted cross-draw on his waist, he heard it. Utter silence. He chuckled to himself; ‘ How does one hear utter silence? Or does one hear that it is utterly silent?’ He despised the .30 caliber M2. More than a pistol, but less than a rifle, it had a selector switch for semi or full automatic fire. From experience he knew unless one’s first shots included a kill shot one practically had to walk up to one’s target and ask him to lie down and die. He thought about what people said about Winter. That things died. But he knew that wasn’t true, as he pictured the buds of Spring emerging and noisy life bursting forth everywhere. Life was merely waiting, planning its next moves. Just as he was as he caught the first whiffs of chimney smoke from the chalet. Tonio was aware of his surroundings.

Winter is here. And perhaps Tonio was wrong. Some things do die in winter. Some plants and animals die. Some trees we assumed would always be there die. And in our personal winters ideas die, assumptions that life would go on as we have known it die.

Okay, here’s the point where some readers groan that I’m going off on another political rant. Yes. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Politics: The social contract composed of agreed rules and procedures for protecting the defined rights of members, the duties of members, and their relationship to non-members. While some readers in other countries may be inclined to pass on this entry as irrelevant to them, I hasten to differ. How a society (let’s call it a country) decides its rights is not merely an internal function. The framers (presumably members of the society) of the original social contract, “The Constitution”, of the United States designed a government consisting of three co-equal branches. They did so specifically in reaction to and in rejection of the monarchies which had long ruled the societies from which they came. The Bill of Rights, augmented by later Amendments to the Constitution, spelled out the rights of citizens, or fully vested members of the society. But although “freedom” was a fundamental concept and catchword inherent throughout these documents, it was poorly defined and not well regulated. Thus, individual States define and limit freedom differently, sometimes contravening federal law such as now regarding the possession and use of marijuana.

What I am sensing now is the deepening silence, the falling of Winter, in the presence of what might be the most fundamental betrayal of founding principles the world has yet seen: The refusal on the part of the “Republican” dominated Senate to hear witnesses and/or to examine evidentiary documents during what developed as the blatantly sham Senate impeachment “trial” of a president, who is from the Republican Party. Our Arabic speaking readers may recognize it as, al-nakba, the catastrophe.

At first this Party claimed the acts, bribery of a foreign government to interfere in an upcoming election, and obstruction of the House of Congress by ordering all Executive Branch employees to ignore legal testimony requests from the House investigators and by withholding all documents across government did not happen. Then we were told they did happen but were not impeachable offenses. And, we the public have been told to “get over it”. Finally, the White House has claimed that a relevant forthcoming book by the former National Security Advisor, John Bolton contained classified material and could therefore not be published.

The general public, as indicated by polls, seemed well aware of the actions of this regime and had registered a consistent 70% in favor of hearing from all potential witnesses and seeing all relevant documents. The Republican dominated Senate shut that down. But more interesting than the Senate’s move, which was expected, is the current absence of outcry that the elected Senators (and the Republican members of the House) betrayed their constituents and their oath. This is a “Representative Democracy”, which means the general population elects individuals to represent their views and values in the House of Representatives and in the Senate of the United States. A 70% demand as reflected in the polls means people of all political views, including Republican, wanted to hear witnesses and see documents. The Republican senators said No. Furthermore, each and every senator took a solemn oath to serve impartially in the impeachment hearings and render a decision on the basis of the arguments introduced therein. However, several Republican senators came out beforehand on national broadcasts saying they had no intention of being impartial and had made up their minds before hearing the opening words. Thus, they perjured themselves in taking the oath.

All right. Enough said about the mechanics of the U.S. political system.

The Republican Party has been trying to shut down radio and television programs on National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) practically since their inception. In their minds, programs such as Sesame Street, which teaches children essential skills along with love and tolerance, are subversive, socialist, probably even communist. The topical discussions on other programs, airing views from all sides, risk enabling thought to break out among the population. And if the population is honestly informed, and thinks about what they are learning, what happens to a regime which is setting itself up as the Ministry of Truth, the antidote to “fake news”, the people’s champion against the free press – “the enemy of the people”?

But why is this descent into Fascism of importance to readers in other countries? Several reasons. Anyone who has been awake for the past few years is aware of Climate Change and the fact that over 97% of the world’s scientists are alarmed by it and Man’s role in it. To those who tout the remaining 3% of scientists as some kind of counter-proof I would suggest a review of the number of doctors and scientists who accepted fees to throw doubt on the effects of tobacco. The current U.S. administration is now acting on a long standing Republican agenda about the environment. (I related in an earlier piece how I stood next to a major Republican Senatorial official and listened to him crow about Trump’s election: “Now we can do whatever we want!”) Years later, Trump himself has claimed he can “do whatever (he) wants” and is overturning the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, is gutting the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, the USDA food inspectors, the FDA drug approvals process, and the Endangered Species Act. When I spent five years combating the cholera epidemic in Latin America I was reminded that water knows no national boundaries. The same holds true for air. What the United States does to the water and the air does not stop at its borders. Nor do ideas. With the United States leading the Cult of Climate Deniers, how many countries will be willing to adopt the admittedly hard measures needed to mitigate the accelerating climate crisis?

With the election of Trump the United States pulled out of the Nuclear Agreement with Iran and several other nuclear armed countries, an agreement which all parties agreed was working. How long before other countries in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, decide development of nuclear weapons is in their best interest as well? The Obama administration imposed serious sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and its incursions into Eastern Ukraine. The Trump administration is softening and/or slow-walking those sanctions, albeit while delivering token lethal aid to Ukraine. (Such aid is never gratuitous; American taxpayer money is handed out on condition it be returned through the purchase of materials from select American companies, enriching the few while taking from the many. My years with USAID clarified that for me.) In order to support its narrowly based economy, sinking due to reduced oil and gas values, Russia covets the energy rich regions of Eastern Ukraine and the monopoly it would gain on the European energy market. Are the long standing Trump family efforts toward building hotels in Moscow an influence in our government’s response to Russian aggression?

The United States looks the other way while China provides North Korea with hard currency – devoted to its nuclear program, through the purchase of dirty coal from North Korea; coal mined by hundreds of thousands of political prisoners literally worked to death in the mines. Trump boasts that he and Kim are “in love”. The rainforests of Brazil and Indonesia, the “lungs of the planet” are disappearing, along with the indigenous people who try to protect them, in order to feed the gluttonous maw of the American agricultural and meat industry. What other countries will refuse the short term monetary gains achieved thereby?

Ideas live on. An impeached American president has joined with an indicted Israeli head of state to tout a “peace plan”. Objective analysis indicates this plan would effectively be the imposition of apartheid on the Palestinians still living in what is now Israel, placing them on tiny strips of unproductive land under the complete control of the Israeli military. Sound familiar? It’s a rerun of the American Reservation system imposed on the Native Americans who were in America thousands of years before the European invaders. Seeing this example placed before the world with smiles and handshakes, what countries will resist the opportunities to treat their minorities and their refugees in similar fashion?

Already I’ve heard people say this winter will pass as they always do, things will return to normal once this aberration has passed. Life will resume and go on. But the regime dominated Senate, while admitting that Trump’s attempt to extort a nation in desperate need of military assistance was wrong, is about to acquit him of this crime against the Constitution and acquit him of obstructing Congress. In doing so they are shifting unconstitutional power to the Executive Branch and completely dismantling the founding principle of three co-equal Branches; they are establishing a dictatorship. Is this the stellar example of democracy to which aspiring democracies around the world should look?

The iconic Tree of Liberty is not hidden in a silent forest. It lives within each of us who understands that liberty carries with it responsibility, the responsibility to relentlessly search for the answers which are right for the nation and the courage to bring those answers into bloom. Its branches and its leaves are those ideas which arise and develop as we search.

Winter is here. But when it passes, will we recognize the Tree? Are we aware of our surroundings, or are we just resolved to accept what greets us as we awaken?