A Tale of Three Scandals

 Posted by  2012 Election, Abuse of Power, Book Related, Middle East, Obama Administration, U.S. Politics  2 Responses »
May 162013
 

There are three “scandals” supposedly “rocking” the White House this week.  Really, I think it just goes to show how silly we all are.

The first, and oldest, of these scandals is Benghazi.  Four Americans were killed, including the Ambassador to Libya, when an Al Qaeda affiliate attacked a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya in September, 2012.  Since then, the conservative media has been pushing two separate lines of inquiry, seemingly in the hopes of embarrassing the president.  The first, and the legitimate one, is whether or not those lives could have been saved.  There have been numerous hearings on this, focusing on why various troops or planes were not called into Benghazi to assist that outpost during the attack; and while questions remain, it seems that the worst story that can be told is one of a lack of communication between the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon.

The second line of inquiry regarding Benghazi, and this one is just plain silly, is about the evolution of a set of talking points that UN Ambassador Susan Rice and others used in the days after the attacks to describe what was happening in public interviews to the American people.  The first version of those talking points speculated that while there might have been some connection to the ongoing protests in Cairo and Yemen over an anti-Muslim YouTube video, that it was likely that the attack in Benghazi was carried out by an Al Qaeda affiliate.  By the 12th and final version, all mention of Al Qaeda had been dropped–but not the mention of the ongoing protests.  And of course, it eventually turned out that the Cairo protests had nothing to do with it, and that Al Qaeda had been planning the attack for months–which means that Susan Rice and others gave wrong information in those first few post-attack interviews.

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Buried Racism

 Posted by  Crime, Disasters and Tragedies, Immigration, Racism  No Responses »
May 062013
 

I keep hoping that we’re better than this.

By “this”, I’m referring to the ‘controversy’ surrounding where to bury Tamerlan Tsarnev, the oldest of the two Boston Marathon bombers.  Tsarnev’s uncle came to Massachusetts to oversee the burial for the family.  A funeral home in Worcester, MA (a small city about 90 mins west of Boston) agreed to handle the arrangements–and have faced public criticism for doing so, including protesters outside the funeral home.  Finding a cemetery is proving a bit more problematic.  The Uncle is trying to find one in the Boston area, although the Cambridge City Manager (think “mayor”) has preemptively denied permission to bury him in any of the city-owned cemeteries, supposedly in the interests of “peace within the city”.

The man is dead, people.  Loved ones can’t get cooties from being buried next to a dead terrorist–any more than by being buried next to a dead black man or a dead Jew.

I don’t really care about Tamerlane.  But funerals, cemeteries, and other burial rites aren’t about the corpse.  They are about bringing closure to the families and friends of the deceased.  They are about trying to find solace and healing.  And right now, the Tsarnev family needs healing.  Not only did they lose a family member–a son, a father, a husband, a brother, and a nephew–they are also struggling to deal with how their boy could have done something so terrible.  This is a time of confusion, sadness, and guilty, for all of them.

And now protesters, the media, and local politicians are piling onto the family–trying to deny them the ability to bury their son and start the healing process?  That’s downright cruel.

Besides, let’s call a spade a spade.  I don’t recall any such controversies when we’ve buried serial killers and terrorists in the past.  Did people protest Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, being buried on American soil?  What about the DC sniper?  The Unibomber?  The Newtowne shooter, Adam Lanza?  All of those killed many more people than did Tamerlan Tsarnev.

The difference is that Tsarnev is a Muslim immigrant.  The attempts to deny burial rites for his family stems not from some greater feeling that terrorists shouldn’t be buried on American soil.  It’s a reflection of anti-Muslim hatred.   It’s racism, pure and simple.

Seriously, people, we’re better than that.  Or at least we ought to be.

Sympathy for the Dzhokhar

 Posted by  Book Related, Disasters and Tragedies, Terrorism  No Responses »
Apr 232013
 

Apparently I have something in common with the nation’s latest terrorist; we both love going to the Midwest Grill, a Brazilian BBQ Restaurant in my (our?) neighborhood.  We were also both captains of our respective high school wrestling teams and members of the National Honor Society.  His friends from high school talked about him going out of his way to help out, giving rides home, and coming back to his high school to help out for wrestling practice after he had graduated–all things I can relate to.  For all those reasons–not to mention the fact that he only lived about a quarter mile from me–it’s really hard for me not to relate to him.

Which makes the events of the last week all that much more baffling for me.  How could this kid get so twisted that he placed two bombs in a crowd of people, shot a police officer in cold blood, and hijacked a car at gun-point?

I have nothing but sympathy for the friends and families of the victims.  The eight year old boy whose life was ended just as it was beginning.  The graduate student from China who loved living in Boston.  The  restaurant manager from the suburbs who never missed a marathon.  And the MIT officer who was the consummate policeman.

But it’s the bomber, suspect number two, the one who was just arraigned on federal charges from a hospital room yesterday… he’s the one whose story seems most familiar to me.  And yet he’s the one who maybe I will never understand.  Because for all the similarity, how could I understand what drove him to commit such an act of evil–an act that is so viscerally repellent to me I have trouble even watching the footage of it?

Understanding is especially difficult because human motives are never easily understood.  They are never so simple as we would like them to be.  It would be nice if there were a simple, clean, explanation for why he did it.  His evil brother made him do it.  His felt abandoned by his family.  He felt abandoned by his friends.  He fell in with a bad crowd.  He started listening to the wrong preachers.  He was depressed.  He was angry.  He was on drugs.  He was crazy.

But the truth is always more complicated.  The truth is some combination of some or all of those things–and more.  The truth is that human beings are extraordinarily intricate creatures who usually don’t fully know why we do what we do, and who rationalize our behavior after the fact to make ourselves feel better about what we’ve done.

The best we can do is to understand his actions and associations.  Did anyone help him or fund him or advise him?  What else were they planning on doing?  Did they commit any other crimes before the marathon?  Those are all important questions.

As for motive?  Why he did it?  As much as I would love to know… it’s a fool’s errand.

Finally, let me end by quoting Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of the Boston Archdiocese: “Forgiveness does not mean that we do not realize the heinousness of the crime.  But, in our hearts, when we are unable to forgive, we make ourselves a victim of our own hatred.”

Voter Control

 Posted by  Book Related, The Media, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Apr 112013
 

In a blog post today, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen says that the problem with former Congressman Anthony Weiner is that he’s not more like Margaret Thatcher.  Actually, I would say he has that backwards; the problem with modern politics is that too many people want Margaret Thatcher, when they should want Anthony Weiner.

Weiner is the subject of a fascinating New York Times Magazine piece, along with his wife, Huma Abedin, who was Hillary Clinton’s right-hand woman during her time as Secretary of State.  The piece describes Weiner’s fall from grace two years ago, which largely happened because he sent out pictures of his penis (mostly, but not entirely, clothed) to some women he “met” on Twitter.  In the piece, Weiner is clearly looking for some kind of public forgiveness and political redemption.

And, according to Cohen, this is a mistake.  Cohen clearly believes that politicians should be more like Margaret Thatcher, who was famous for not really caring what people thought about her.

Now, that picture of Thatcher is a caricature–of course she cared what people thought about her.  First, because she’s human and humans are social animals, whether we like to admit it or not.  And second, because you don’t win elections without trying to convince people that you are doing the right thing.  If you truly didn’t care about the public’s opinion, you wouldn’t bother campaigning–and Thatcher most certainly campaigned.

Still, the image of the politician who does what they think is best, public-opinion-be-damned, is a powerful one in American politics.  Many reporters and pundits hold it up as the ideal.

And I want nothing to do with it.  The heart of democracy is elections.  We are democratic because we hold regular, meaningful elections for the highest offices in the land.  Our leaders must stand for election–which means that they must strive to be liked by the public.

Ultimately, that’s the public’s only leash on our leadership.  If our leaders stop care about being liked–if they truly stop care about whether the public will support them or not–then there is nothing to stop our leaders from enacting whatever outrageous policies they want to.  There is nothing to stop them from openly taking bribes or ordering their subordinates to have sex with them at every opportunity.

Democracy works in large part because our leaders want to be liked.  It’s that desire to be liked–to want to run in future elections, and win those elections–that keeps our politicians in line.  When politicians lose that fear–that’s when they get dangerous.

So if I have a choice between an Anothony Weiner-type, who cares what the people think, or a Margaret Thatcher-type, who doesn’t–well, give me the Anthony Weiner every time.  Because as a voter, I can control the Weiner-type politician.  The Thatcher-type politician may have “political courage”, but I have no control over them once they are in office.   And as a country, we’re all better off if the voters remain in control.

A eulogy for John Brelsford

 Posted by  Uncategorized  6 Responses »
Apr 082013
 

The year was 1996, and I was a freshman in college. It was just weeks since I’d arrived on campus, and I was very excited about getting involved in research in what I thought was my passion: bio-chemistry. I met with some professors and offered to clean test tubes, enter data, make photocopies – anything to be involved in the lab. I was told to come back when I’d taken organic chemistry at the end of my sophomore year. I was crushed; I didn’t want to wait two years to start doing research. As I sat, downcast in the dining hall pondering my future, a cheery older gentleman asked me what was wrong. When I told him what had happened, he said “Well, I have a lab in the psychology department, and if you’d like you can start working with me today”. 17 years, a PhD in psychology, and a tenured faculty position later, I look back on that day as one that changed my life forever. That gentleman was John Brelsford, and today I, along with so many other students whose lives he enriched and changed for the better, mourn his passing.

I have so many fond memories of John. One story comes to mind in particular. When taking an independent study at Rice, students and mentors filled out contracts to ensure that they were on the same page about workload and expectations. John and I had been working together for several semesters, and had always used the same contract. So he didn’t even read the contract with me anymore before signing them. So as a prank, one year I modified the contract to include the phrase “the professor will bake the student brownies twice during the course of the term”. Sure enough, John signed it, at which point I asked for my brownies. Ever the good sport, he actually delivered. And being John, he also allowed me to include that phrase (and gave me brownies) in subsequent semesters as an inside joke that we shared.

Between classes, I’d often stop by his office – his door was always open if he wasn’t teaching. We’d chat about psychology and the latest project I was running, of course. But we’d also talk about life in general. He was a mentor in the truest sense of the word: he cared not just about my growth as a scholar, but also my growth as a person. And he mentored not just through his words, but through his example. John’s health was never good, but he’d never complain. Even in my senior year when he had heart surgery and I visited him in the hospital, he focused the discussion around my research, how grad school applications were going, and generally kept on mentoring even from the hospital bed.

So John, thank you. Thank you for helping me find my passion and a career that I love. Thank you for all the guidance, for all the support, for all the laughs, and for all the time you spent with me. Thank you for giving me the confidence to pursue research questions that aren’t popular (yet). Thank you for treating me like a colleague even from the getgo. Thank you for teaching me how to be a mentor to the many students that I have worked with in my career (and the many more who will come). Thank you for being a role model. Thank you for being my friend. I will miss you. Rest in peace.

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