#120 / Worth Repeating

I enjoyed a "Weekend Confidential" article in the April 22nd-23rd edition of The Wall Street Journal. The article was all about Samsung's new Galaxy S8 smartphone, about Samsung's recent marketing efforts, and about Marc Mathieu (pictured above), who is Samsung's Chief Marketing Officer. If you are interested in these topics, click the links!

I mention this article because in his discussion with Wall Street Journal reporter Alexandra Wolfe,  Mathieu quoted George Bernard Shaw, and I thought Shaw's words were worth repeating. I am betting that many who may read this blog posting do not, very often, spend their Saturday mornings browsing through the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Such folks will have missed a little dose of satire by Shaw that contains an important truth.

Incidentally, in the same paper, columnist Peggy Noonan urged Republicans to "learn the limits of loyalty," and to stop defending the often crazy tweets fired off by our current president (good advice, in my opinion). In the course of dishing out that advice to Republicans, Noonan made the case for those who do browse The Journal's news and opinion columns, suggesting that The Wall Street Journal is the nation's best newspaper, since Noonan referred to The New York Times, the Journal's "chief competitor," as "the second-greatest newspaper in America."

Marketing claims aside, let me quote Marc Mathieu quoting Shaw (from Man and Superman):

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Slightly modified (to account for the "individuality" bias that has crept into Shaw's phrasing), these remarks certainly echo my own thoughts about political possibility (and John Lennon's, too, if any reader wants to think of John Lennon as a political advisor). 

Any politics worth pursuing rejects the idea that the purpose of politics is to adapt our collective actions to the world as it currently presents itself to us. Any worthwhile politics makes "unreasonable demands."

Shaw's observation is worth remembering. It's worth repeating. Considered as "advisory," it's advice worth taking!

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/samsungs-big-marketing-challenge-1492807963

#119 / That Dawa Danger

It appears that Ayaan Hirsi Ali (pictured above), like President Trump and his "Strategic Advisor," Steve Bannon, believes that Western Civilization is engaged in a life or death struggle against "radical Islam." Let's compare and contrast: 

WHAT BANNON AND TRUMP SAY ABOUT ISLAM

Here is what Bannon said, in January of this year, ridiculing a statement by former President George W. Bush, who was quoted as saying that Islam is a religion of peace: 

Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission. Islam means submission. I mean, the whole thing is just, he is the epitome, he's a Republican version--not a conservative--he's a Republican establishment, country club version of the Clintons. That's all they are. It's the baby boomer, narcissistic, he wants to feel loved.

This next-to-incoherent statement makes clear to me why Bannon and his boss (our current president) are so close. They "speak the same language," as it were, if you want to call that farrago of strung-together words a language. 

Focusing on what Bannon is clearly trying to say, though, and his critique of former President Bush, it seems to me that our current president is right up there where narcissism and wanting to feel loved is concerned. Trump is not, in other words, all that different from Bannon's characterization of Bush. And our current president also spends a lot of time at country clubs (and particularly when he owns them). Again, Trump tracks pretty closely with what Bannon says is bad about Bush. 

Bannon is undoubtedly right, however, to say that our current president is quite a bit different from former President Bush with respect to what President Trump thinks about Islam. The BBC News, for instance, outlines various statements, some of them contradictory, made by the president and his advisors: 

Mr Trump has repeatedly warned of the dangers of "radical Islamic terrorism" - a line viewed as a direct rebuke of Barack Obama, who while president had pointedly refused to use the term. 

He slammed Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton for being "founders" of the so-called Islamic State. He publicly feuded with the parents of a Muslim US soldier killed in Iraq. He has, at times, advocated a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US and instituted a "watch list" for those already in the US.  

These policies and actions, critics say, reveal an anti-Islamic animus that lies at the heart of Mr Trump's politics. 

"From start to finish, the 2016 presidential election vividly revealed that Islamaphobia is alive, and potent and politically resonant as ever," writes University of Detroit Professor Khaled Baydoun. "Scapegoating Islam and vilifying Muslims was far more than merely campaign messaging; for Donald Trump it was a winning strategy." 

"I think Islam hates us," [Trump] said during an interview in March 2016.

At other moments, [Trump] struck a more measured tone, drawing a distinction between the more than 1.6 billion who follow the Islamic faith and the smaller subset of "bad and dangerous people" who happen to be Muslims. "I love the Muslims," Mr Trump said in September 2015. "I think they're great people." 

THE CLAIMS OF HIRSI ALI

While Trump, Bannon, and Hirsi Ali all share a powerful antagonism towards Islam, I think Hirsi Ali makes Bannon and Trump look "moderate." 

As described in a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Hirsi Ali is a former Somalian refugee, now a U.S. citizen, who is the author of a powerful 2006 memoir, Infidel, in which Hirsi Ali detailed her experiences of female genital mutilation and forced marriage. The Morning Herald calls Infidel "a forceful polemic which argues Islam is a misogynistic religion with war at its heart." The Morning Herald article also suggests that Hirsi Ali cancelled out a scheduled appearance in Australia to avoid confronting her critics.

Hirsi Ali is now affiliated with the Hoover Institution, and, as the Morning Herald says, "makes a living as a public intellectual ... and has made many controversial claims about her former faith, including that Muslim women are 'slaves' and that Islam – as opposed to Islamic terrorism – is a 'destructive nihilistic cult of death [which] legitimates murder.'"

I read Infidel long ago, and I seem to recall having had a pretty positive reaction to the book. Now, though, I am incredibly uncomfortable with what Hirsi Ali is proposing, having read about her current views in  the April 8, 2017, edition of The Wall Street Journal. Her colleague, Tunku Varadarajan, wrote about "Islam's Most Eloquent Apostate," and outlined a dire warning by Hirsi Ali, who wants to alert the American people to "Dawa."

"Dawa," says Hirsi Ali, is not a "religion," but "the ceaseless, world-wide ideological campaign waged by Islamists as a complement to jihad." "Dawa" is integral with Islam, and because of that, Islam must be seen "not just as a religion, but also as a political ideology."

Hirsi Ali says that "the West has made a colossal mistake by its obsession with 'terror' in the years since 9/11." The error, in her eyes, is "overconfidence." 

According to what The Wall Street Journal article says about Hirsi Ali's views, she thinks that the West erroneously believes that terrorism is "the way of the weak." We tell ourselves that once we take out the leaders, and "bring down al Qaeda or ISIS," the followers of these organizations will "stop their jihad." Not true, says Hirsi Ali. Dawa is “conducted right under our noses in Europe, and in America. It aims to convert non-Muslims to political Islam and also to push existing Muslims in a more extreme direction.” The ultimate goal is “to destroy the political institutions of a free society and replace them with Shariah.” It is a “never-ending process,” she says. “It ends when an Islamic utopia is achieved. Shariah everywhere!”

WHAT HIRSI ALI WANTS TO DO ABOUT DAWA

Hirsi Ali's view of Islam, combined with the "Dawa" she warns us of, is breathtakingly extreme. According to Hirsi Ali, the religion is a "nihilistic cult of death," which "legitimates murder." It is a "misogynistic religion with war at its heart," and it is coupled with a "political ideology" (Dawa) that is "never-ending" in its commitment to the destruction of everyone who does not conform. As Varadarajan tells it, it is Hirsi Ali's contention that "when we say the Islamists are homophobic, we don't mean that they don't like gay marriage. We mean that they want gays put to death."

As I say, Hirsi Ali makes our current president look "moderate" in his opposition to Islam. It is her suggestion for what we ought to do about Islam, though, that most concerns me. 

Hirsi Ali believes that we should meet "the danger of Dawa" by denying tolerance to the intolerant, and this means we need to "give the president - this year, because there is no time to lose - the tools he needs to dismantle the infrastructure of dawa in the U.S."

Islam is really only "pretending" to be a religion, in Hirsi Ali's view, so it should receive no protection from those constitutional provisions that guarantee "freedom of worship." Apparently, the constitutional protections that are also provided to political action and advocacy should be summarily swept aside. The danger is too real! There "is no time to lose."

THAT DAWA DANGER

I do not want to minimize the claim that certain political/religious programs can be dangerous to our civil life. They can. The danger I see, however, is that our current president might decide that he should step forward to implement the kind of steps that Hirsi Ali wants. This could well lead, as we know from the example of Germany in the 1930's and 1940's, to a genuine totalitarianism that will prosper, most effectively, when there is some ethnic enemy to extirpate.

Hysteria and the Hoover Institution have always been friends. It used to be, according to the "public intellectuals" for which Hoover Tower provides a home, that "international communism" was the life-threatening challenge to our civilization. Now, it's "Dawa." 

My advice? Let's send Hirsi Ali back to the Hoover Tower, and continue on with the approach provided in our Constitution. The Constitution recommends that we deal with dangerous political programs by focusing on deeds, not words.

And for those who do see a genuine "Dawa Danger," here is a link to a website that presents some evidence that Islam is a lot more like the religion that George W. Bush talked about than the religion that Hirsi Ali is describing. 

Image Credit:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-islams-most-eloquent-apostate-1491590469

#118 / Which One Is The Billionaire?

On April 19, 2017, the "Business Report" section in the San Francisco Chronicle carried an article by Benny Evangelista and Marissa Lang that explored Facebook's new plan to "shift to virtual worlds [and] artificial intelligence." 

The plan was unveiled at Facebook's annual conference for software developers, called F8. That's "Fate" when you speak it out, and arrogant tech types do seem to believe that they can put fate under their personal control.

Since the Chronicle tends to block out online information if you are a non-subscriber, the link above may or may not work for you. Here is an excerpt from the article I have linked, quoting a part of the article that I thought was of particular interest: 

Facebook will test a program using the camera function in mobile apps like Messenger to create augmented reality images. “If your daughter is a big Harry Potter fan, on her birthday, you can turn your home into Hogwarts,” Zuckerberg said.... 

World Lenses will act as an interactive and responsive filter that can be superimposed on a camera view. Filters will add 3-D objects into a scene that Snapchat users can interact with. Facebook’s camera will have similar capabilities, according to Zuckerberg’s keynote address. 

Snapchat’s new filters will allow users to scatter virtual seeds and watch flowers sprout or spread a bright rainbow over a scene. Words like “love” can be added and animated by moving them on the screen or putting your hand out and grabbing hold of them, virtually, in the camera’s view. 

Zuckerberg showed a photo of himself wearing an augmented-reality Nike headband. 

“As silly as these effects may seem, they give us the ability to share what really matters on a daily basis,” he said.

I do NOT believe that it's my fate to experience the world, in the future, by donning goggles, a new kind of eye glasses, or even to be wired directly to a computer (brain to computer without additional hardware), as Mark Zuckerberg says is coming.

Check out that picture. Who is walking around in "real" reality? Who is experiencing that "augmented reality" that Facebook wants to promulgate, to "share what really matters on a daily basis?"

Can you spot the billionaire? Does that tell you anything?

"Real" reality is where we have to live, because that is where we really are!

Image Credit:

http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/facebook-results-augmented-reality-on-mobile-is-the-future-says-zuckerberg-2939976/

#117 / Power Is Good

Eric Liu, pictured above, has written a book called, You're More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizen's Guide to Making Change Happen. 

Liu's book was favorably mentioned in a column in the April 19, 2017, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. Self-described "cynical journalist" Ruben Navarrette, Jr. gave Liu's book a thumbs-up review. 

The premise of Liu's book, and his claim that "you're more powerful than you think," is that we are powerful not so much "individually," but when we operate together. 

In other words, the kind of power that is most useful, and that is available to us, is the "political" power we develop through cooperation with others who share our goals and hopes. That kind of power is not something to be shunned, but sought. Our collective power to change the world, to meet the challenges of our times, and to accomplish our highest aspirations, is exactly the kind of power we need to seek, and to embrace.

Here are Liu's thoughts about power, from one of his TED talks:

Far too many Americans are illiterate in power — what it is, how it operates and why some people have it. As a result, those few who do understand power wield disproportionate influence over everyone else. We need to make civics sexy again. As sexy as it was during the American Revolution or the Civil Rights Movement.

Sexy, huh?

Me? I'm ready for a fling!

Image Credit:

https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_why_ordinary_people_need_to_understand_power

#116 / Trump And Truman - Compare And Contrast

What do Harry S. Truman and Donald J. Trump have in common? 

For one thing, they both won presidential elections that "everyone" thought would be won by their opponents. In addition, as noted by David Ignatius in his April 18, 2017, column in The Washington Post, both Truman and Trump entered upon the presidency "with little knowledge of the international problems they were about to face, and with worries at home and abroad that they weren’t up to the job."

That comparison made, Ignatius says that that President Trump could learn a lot from Truman. Ignatius' column, as published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on April 19th, carried this headline: "Trump could learn from Harry Truman on trust." In the online edition, found on The Washington Post website, the column's headline reads: "Trump needs a dose of 'manly virtues.'" 

I have some thoughts about this Trump-Truman comparison.

First, I do NOT look forward to the idea that Donald J. Trump should learn from Harry S. Truman that it is "OK" to drop an atom bomb on an asian nation that has defied the United States.

Second, I think the Washington Post headline sends exactly the wrong message to our current president. A guy who felt compelled to make clear to the public that his "small hands" didn't mean that other parts of his anatomy were similarly sized, might have some suppressed concerns about just how "manly" he really is. Getting into wars with Korea, and dropping atom bombs (both accomplishments of President Truman), are NOT the kind of "manly virtues" that Trump should be seeking to emulate. At least, that's my opinion!

Here is the statement in the Ignatius' column that most immediately attracted my attention: 

In one of those curious rhymes of history, Trump faces a similar challenge to Truman’s in confronting North Korea. Truman went to war in 1950 to reverse a North Korean invasion of the South. Trump is now perilously close to conflict in his attempt to halt North Korea’s defiant nuclear program (emphasis added).

Ignatius seems to condone the idea that Truman could (himself) "go to war," and that Trump, following his example, could (himself) enter into a conflict with North Korea. Just to reacquaint the columnist with the Constitution, that is not the way it is "spozed to be." 

Congress declares war, not the President:

War Powers. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. The President, meanwhile, derives the power to direct the military after a Congressional declaration of war from Article II, Section 2, which names the President Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.

Truman did not, in fact, obtain a Declaration of War in the case of the conflict with Korea. The Korean conflict is one of those many examples in which the United States has gone to war without following the procedures set out in the Constitution. Here is a comment from a helpful article in The Atlantic, "All  the Previous Declarations of War":

The United States Congress has not formally declared war since World War II. All of our wars in the Middle East have been authorized using other means, which rather goes to the heart of the nature of those different conflicts. U.S. entry into World War I and World War II took place through joint congressional resolutions stating "a state of war exists between the Government of Country X and the Government and People of the United States," where country X was, variously, Germany, Japan, Italy, and so on. 

It would be impossible to write such a sentence about Syria today. In what meaningful way does a state of war exist between the United States and Syria? None. That's why Congress, if it approves anything, will approve an authorization for the use of force. And if history is any guide, that's going to be a rather open-ended commitment, as fuzzy on the back-end as on the front. 

[Furthermore], America has done a better job of winning its declared wars in the last century than achieving clear-cut victories in ventures authorized under legislative measures that fell short of a formal declaration of war.

I agree with David Ignatius that Donald J. Trump should seek to develop the following qualities that Ignatius attributes to President Truman: "quiet leadership, fidelity to his beliefs, [and] a disdain for public braggadocio. [Truman] never took credit for things he hadn’t accomplished. He never blamed others for his mistakes."

I think calling these "manly" virtues may steer Trump wrong, but there is a definite "contrast" between Truman and Trump, and I think Ignatius is correct that Truman comes off as having the better temperament for the presidency. It would be great if Trump were to model his temperament on Truman.

But let's not get carried away. It is imperative that American citizens make clear, in every way we possibly can, that following Truman's lead into an undeclared war with North Korea, and in his use of nuclear weapons, is NOT a model for our current president. 

And maybe, just maybe, we could get our members of Congress to do their job? No war without a declaration? How about that? I'd like to propose that we stop allowing "the president" to "go to war." 

When "the president" goes to war, it is "we" who go to war. It is we who are put at risk. We, through our elected representatives, are the ones who are supposed to decide whether or not we want our nation to unleash the destruction of war on others and ourselves. So far, in our history, the nation has only voted to do that eleven times.

Our presidents have not felt so constrained. Let's not give any clearance to Trump to follow Truman in that extremely bad example!

Image Credit:

http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/harry-truman

#115 / Just The Facts, Ma'am

Jack Webb, pictured above, was an American actor, television producer, director, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his role as Sgt. Joe Friday in Dragnet, a television series that Webb created, and that was "perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in media history." 

The way I remember it (and I definitely watched Dragnet), Joe Friday was always turning up at an attractive woman's doorway, and saying, "just the facts, ma'am." 

Snopes, the website that does accuracy checking on claims and assertions made on the Internet, says that my recollection is off the mark, and that the phrase, "just the facts, ma'am," is not really what Joe Friday said. He did say something similar, though, according to Snopes: He said, “All we want are the facts, ma’am” (and sometimes “All we know are the facts ma’am"), as he questioned women in the course of police investigations. I'm OK with that, though I do like my mis-remembered phrasing somewhat better. 

I was reminded of Sgt. Friday's commitment to "just the facts" as I read an article in the Tuesday, April 18, 2017, edition of The New York Times. Steven Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, has been spending his retirement (and his  own money) on setting up a new website that, like Snopes, aims to make "truth" accessible to the ordinary person.

In Ballmer's case, the effort is not to debunk bad memories, like my memory of what Joe Friday said on Dragnet. Ballmer wants to let people know what all levels of government actually do with our money. 

Ballmer's new website, USAFacts, provides access to a huge database on governmental spending at the federal, state, and local level. 

Andrew Ross Sorkin's article, describing this new website, is titled, "Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove." Sorkin's article is a very helpful introduction to the USAFacts website.  

As for that website itself, my preliminary review indicates that USAFacts is definitely a "go to" place for anyone who wants "just the facts" about what's going on in the United States of America.

Image Credit:

http://pscelebrityhomes.com/celebrity-index-u-z/jack-webb/

#114 / The Genius Of Theory

National Geographic has announced a new series, "Genius." It appears that this series will be a kind of Einstein soap opera. Anyway, that's how I read the review in Newsday, which dubs "Genius" a "brainless Einstein bio." Here's Newsday's take: 

WHAT IT’S ABOUT National Geographic Channel’s first scripted series — 10 hours — is an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s “Einstein: His Life and Universe” (2007), starring Geoffrey Rush as Albert Einstein. The first two hours toggle between the life of the younger Einstein (Johnny Flynn) and Einstein in 1922, just after the assassination of his friend Walther Rathenau, foreign minister of the Weimar Republic, murdered by right-wing proto-Nazi terrorists. Also starring Emily Watson as Einstein’s second wife (and first cousin), Elsa Löwenthal. This is a Brian Grazer and Ron Howard production. 

MY SAY You know you’re in for a bumpy 10-hour ride through the space-time continuum of Einstein’s life when one of the first scenes reveals him grinding against his secretary. 

Bumpier still when, as a callow lothario, he blandly dismisses the affections of a potential spouse with this line: “I’m not sure I want to spend life with someone who can’t carry on a compelling conversation on the nature of things.” 

Ah, what nature of things would that be, Albert? We find out soon enough: “I’m head over heels in love with your mind,” he tells future wife Mileva Maric (Samantha Colley), while both are under the sheets.

I have always venerated Einstein because his famous equation has always symbolized, for me, the power of "theory." As a theoretical physicist, Einstein published that very consequential equation: 

E = MC²

This equation tells us, theoretically, that a very small amount of mass contains an almost unimaginable amount of energy: 

Nobody really knew that, until Einstein's "theory" said it was true. Turns out (as everyone now knows) that Einstein's "theory" was correct. Finding out how to go from "theory" to reality was not that easy (a lot of work was involved), but until there was a "theory," no one would even have tried. To me, that is the most important point, and that is why it is important to maintain a "theoretical" perspective on the world we inhabit, instead of succumbing to the mistaken belief that what currently exists is an inevitable and limited reality. 

It is my theory that, within our "political world," the world that humans create, "anything is possible."  That brief "anything is possible" phrase is equivalent to Einstein's E = MC² equation. As is true in the case of the Einstein equation, my "theoretical" statement suggests that almost unimaginable power and energy is available to us. However, as in the case of E = MC², it is not all that easy to turn the "anything is possible" theory into a practical and existing reality (a lot of work is involved). 

If the theory is right, however, such a transformation can be accomplished. Human action can release incredible energy, and can transform the world that "is" into something else. 

Such a transformation can be for good or ill, of course (as in the case of Einstein's equation). The possibilities range from Utopia to the Holocaust, which means that the revelation that "anything is possible" may or may not be good news, depending on who finds out how to release the power of human possibility, and what they choose to do with it.

We can change the shape and character of our human world through the choices we make and the actions we take. Theoretically speaking, "anything is possible" within the human world. We live not in the world of theory, though; we live in an actual and existing world that is the result of our past choices and actions, and theory tells us that within this "political world," we can chose to act differently, and can transform, and create it anew, for good or ill.

Given that we can release incredible and transformative energy by our choices and our actions (that's what the theory tells us), it is about time for a Manhattan Project aimed at Utopia.

We don't have much time left, I think, to choose and to act, and we know, already, what happens if we don't move towards Utopia. Another Holocaust is possible, too. In fact, it is in the wings!

Image Credits:

(1) - http://variety.com/t/genius/

(2) - https://www.tumblr.com/search/atom%20bomb%20explosion

#113 / Red For Resistance

Carmen Perez, pictured, graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2001. She is now the Executive Director of The Gathering for Justice, a nonprofit founded by legendary artist and activist Harry Belafonte. 

Perez served as a national co-chair of the incredibly successful Women’s March on Washington on January 21st, the day after the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. The March drew half a million people to the capital. An estimated five million people participated worldwide. 

Perez will be speaking in Santa Cruz during the upcoming UCSC Alumni Weekend. She will be presenting the keynote address at the Cocoanut Grove at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, April 28th. Click this link if you would like to register.

The Santa Cruz Good Times has published an article about Perez that is well worth reading, and that I have been referencing and relying on here. I was particularly struck by the following quote, which contains a kind of hidden message: 

What we launched immediately after the march were 10 actions in 100 days, and so we are now on our seventh action. You can go to our website [womensmarch.com] to see what actions we put together ... to elevate our partners, to ensure that people know that the work just didn’t start on January 21st, but there have been so many organizations doing this work for so many years that we need to support. 

We were able to bring together so many people for A Day Without a Woman [strike], where we created three entry points. One was for women and men and families to wear red in solidarity if they cared about women’s issues. The second was if you have to buy anything, purchase from local and women-owned businesses. The third was not to go to work. There were so many people that participated. 

And to this day the color red has been a symbolism of resistance. And it comes from our elders—Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez … (emphasis added).

Perez tells us that the color red is the symbol of resistance, and of course it is. But in Spanish, the word "red" means "net" or "network," the very thing that Perez describes in the quotation above, as she talks of the many organizations, over time, that have been struggling for justice, everywhere. 

We resist, and we win, when we are connected. When we work together. 

"Red" [English] is a symbol of resistance. "Red" [Spanish] is the collaboration and connection that is the resistance itself. 

Red is for resistance.

Image Credit:
http://goodtimes.sc/cover-stories/ucsc-grads-social-justice-activism-carmen-perez/

#112 / We Can No Longer Allow...

I consider Jeremy Scahill to be an extremely reliable reporter. He is the author of the international bestselling books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has also served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now!

On April 19, 2017, posting in The Intercept, Scahill quoted CIA director Mike Pompeo. Pompeo has accused WikiLeaks of being a “hostile nonstate intelligence agency.” For Pompeo, this apparently means that WikiLeaks is "operating outside of the protections of the First Amendment." Click right here for Scahill's full article.

“We can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us," said Pompeo. "To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for.” Scahill's article notes that Pompeo went on to add this ominous assertion: “It ends now.”

Pompeo's claim that the Constitution of the United States would permit the government to cut off free speech by government critics is a prima facie demonstration that Pompeo does not really understand what "our great Constitution stands for," to use his own words. 

Since the head of the CIA doesn't understand our Constitutionally protected right to free speech, let's be sure that the rest of us do!

Image Credit:

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/assange-strikes-back-at-cia-and-talks-trump-russia-and-hillary-clinton/

#111 / May I Politely Disagree?

Brent Lewellen, pictured above, wrote a letter to the San Franciso Chronicle addressing the forcible removal of Dr. David Dao from United Airlines Flight 3411 on April 9, 2017. Lewellen's letter was published on Saturday, April 15, 2017, and is reproduced below.

The forcible removal of Dr. Dao from the airplane resulted in significant physical injuries to him, and the incident generated a great deal of public discussion (including several of my own postings on this blog, the latest of which was yesterday). Wikipedia now has a page devoted to the incident on United Flight 3411.

Here is Lewellen's letter:

Listen to authority next time

I believe the most important aspect of the United Airlines story is being overlooked. It’s not about overbooked flights or whether airlines should have the right to compel passengers to give up their seats (currently they do). 

The most important question this regrettable confrontation raises is what, as a society, we believe citizens should do when persons of authority, such as a security guard or a police officer, direct us to do something. Is it really OK now to simply disregard what a cop or security guard asks (then tells) us to do because we don’t want to? 

You can reasonably argue whether United Airlines should have brought in airport security, but once it did, a citizen in a free society has a duty to comply with its instructions. You are certainly free to complain (loudly) as that authority figure escorts you from the plane; threaten to sue, demand to see a manager. But you must comply with those instructions, or you violate the social contract. One reason United called airport security is that people have decided they don’t have to listen to airplane personnel anymore. We can’t continue down this path.

Brent Lewellen, San Francisco

It is Mr. Lewellen's contention that "a citizen in a free society" has a duty to "comply" with the instructions of a "security guard or a police officer" when such an official issues a direct order to the citizen to do something, and that this duty to "comply" applies without any reference, whatsoever, to how justified, or not, the order might be. In other words, it is Mr. Lewellen's belief that our duty as citizens is to "comply" first, and to complain later. This is how citizens must uphold "the social contract," according to the way Lewellen sees the world. This is, to repeat, what Mr. Lewellen contends is the obligation of "a citizen in a free society."

I want to disagree with Mr. Lewellen. Politely, I hope, but emphatically. 

My first posting about this United Airlines incident noted how much the series of events that occurred on Flight 3411 duplicated what we know about how totalitarian societies operate, how they seize control, and how they transform what has been a "free society" into something quite the opposite. 

Far from going along with what appears to be an abuse of official authority, I suggested nonviolent resistance, not only on the part of the passenger (Dr. Dao in this case), but also by everyone else, precisely so "citizens in a free society" could maintain that quality of freedom. If governmental authority has the right to act in apparently arbitrary ways, with the duty of the citizens being to "comply," no matter how arbitrary or legally unsupported the orders might be, then the chance to challenge the unjustified order at a subsequent time counts for very little. 

If the security officers had told all the Jews on the plane to stand up, and get off, we know that this would have been wrong, but as Lewellen sees it, anyone subjected to this kind of an order, and anyone watching it happen, should simply "comply," and then take up their objections later, in a different forum.

Again, I politely disagree.

My second posting about the United Airlines incident was about "adhesion contracts," and raised a legal question. Is it actually true that the airlines have a legal right to kick ticketed passengers off their planes, just because there is a 46-page contract that the passenger never read, but that the passenger supposedly agreed to? Lewellen thinks that these are the current rules. I am not quite so sure this is true. While I do think legislation to eliminate this possibility is appropriate,  as I argued in my blog posting, such an adhesion contract, in the circumstances in which Dr. Dao was kicked off Flight 3411, is quite possibly not a legally enforceable obligation to which he had a legal duty to "comply."

I would have no disagreement with Lewellen if he had said that he thinks that Dr. Dao made a very bad choice, in attempting to employ the tactics of passive resistance to oppose what the doctor thought was an improper order. In other words, had Lewellen been trying to give his personal advice about how it would be best to handle such a situation in the future - "comply" now, and take up the legalities later - he would have been making a responsible suggestion (thought I might politely disagree with that conclusion, too).

But Lewellen didn't say that he thought citizens should consider the "compliance and complain later" strategy as the best strategy to pursue, in cases like that in which Dr. Dao found himself. Lewellen said that it is the duty of citizens to "comply" with the orders of governmental officials (whether legal, justifiable, or not), and that this is what "citizens in a free society" are required to do.

I can't emphasize enough how much I disagree with Lewellen's approach to citizenship. It will be much better for all of us if every one of us refuses to "comply" with apparently arbitrary orders, and we need to refuse to comply at the time these orders are issued, not months or years later, in some completely different forum. 

A "free society" can only remain free if governmental authorities are required to demonstrate their legal right to issue orders, and to carry them out, in advance of executing them, rather than demanding immediate "compliance" with what appear to be arbitrary demands, backed up by the potential and actual use of violence for those who don't "comply" with those demands immediately. 

In my opinion, whether he really intended this or not, Lewellen comes down on the side of a totalitarian approach to government by saying that "compliance" is always the first duty of a "citizen in a free society."

In my view, the opposite is the case. 

Image Credit:

http://radaris.com/p/Brent/Lewellen/