Turning (to what?)

      I see us, a big us, turning.
     A few weeks ago, I returned to my home and home country from a long trip to my first country, my country of origin. While away, I didn’t follow the news in any significant or detailed way. Returning to cold and snow and more cold, I saw day after day both the US Federal Government’s escalated caprice and cruelty as well as Minnesotans’ amazingly brave and steadfast opposition to that caprice and cruelty. Sometimes achieving ninja agility, sometimes flailing, this opposition tried to stand firm on legality and Constitution as well as community and kindness, despite being repeatedly attacked with brazen lawlessness, horrifying callousness of actions and speech, as well as blithe misrepresentations and outright lies. 
     Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti were killed by ICE agents. 
     Plunged into this dystopian winter, I got respite once in a while by watching and listening to the Mayor of my city speak with transparency and steadfastness based on his values, but without abrasion or rancor; also with pragmatism and humor, somehow managing to stay refreshingly sane, regardless of whether or not one agrees with his premises and policies. But mostly, yes, I’ve come back to ICE going even more destructively haywire, operationalizing the willful ignorance and viciousness that used “garbage” to describe Somali Americans. Increasingly wanton grabbing and detentions of primarily people of color, of all ages, including US citizens, culminated in the execution of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, with ICE agents themselves as well as the highest-level officials of the Federal Government claiming immunity for such actions against non-violent protestors, calling Good and Pretti “domestic terrorists.” 
     The Federal Government made such absurd claims about actions that were fully recorded that even many of the Federal Government’s strongest supporters were appalled. The killing of Pretti after Good, one quite soon after the other, in the midst of extraordinary Minnesotan actions of protection and care, in which both Good and Pretti participated, shocked many who have otherwise casually fallen back on and parroted assumptions of paid protestors, violent Antifa, leftist domestic terrorism, and so on. 
    The killings of Good and Pretti were appalling and tragic, no matter the color of their skin, but because they were both pleasant European-American Minnesotans, the outrage was more widespread than if they had been of color; it wasn’t as easy for the American public to acquiesce to noxious narratives of, “they must have done.,” “they did…,” and “what do they expect?” In the United States, color is a pernicious foundation for double standards in moral judgements and law enforcement, but narratives of “they must have done… they did… what do they expect?” are common ways majority/dominant populations explain unfair discrimination and outright injustice, including violence, against minority/subordinated populations. This bears noticing and saying over and over.
     Over the last few years in the US, the extent and depth of willful or acquiescent ignorance, always grievous, has become more widespread and open. In a relatively mild example for this time, I recently watched an Instagram video showing a young, European-American woman questioning a passerby with variations on “do you think my and my fiancé’s tax dollars should pay for free healthcare for illegals?” The question is unanswerable because it is premised on information and assumptions that range from inaccurate to untrue. The young woman asking the question looked like she could be a kind and gentle person. With her parroting of a challenge that is based on the inaccurate to the untrue, her ignorant convictions become a support for harsh callousness and cruelty. Here’s the thing. I am sure she and I would find it easy to chat. If she were my neighbor I might well invite her for stew and she would bring a cake and we could talk about how we both look forward to this spring flower or that. 
     Could she and I have a conversation about her politics and mine?
​    Perhaps the young woman’s question came from her genuine interest in how immigration laws, taxation policies, and healthcare systems interact and affect her and her fiancé. From my perspective, all these are critically important topics for genuine and informed attention, debate, and collaboration in democratic process. Instead I heard her ask an unanswerable question with dubious assumptions about the connections between her and her fiancé’s taxes (which taxes? Federal? What state? local?), free health care (where and what?!), and “illegals” (who, where, how, what?). Could she and I have a conversation about her assumptions and mine?
     Don’t get me wrong. I think it is very likely that she and I would never vote for the same political platforms. Could we talk about the rules that would make our society — pluralistic in so many dimensions — sustainably functional? Rules such as the separation of powers; the rule of law and due process; and information-based policies and political discourse, with verified information. With such rules undergirding political, judicial, and administrative process, we — with passionate advocacy arising from our different worldviews — could go back to coexistence and democratic process, rather than decline, as we have, into miasmas of misrepresentations, lies, and violence. Our Constitution inclines towards fairness though the founding and development of this country has often relied on gross unfairness. Intellectually and emotionally, I have struggled with the failures of democracy, and I still arrive at the conclusion that a strong democracy is our best way to more rather than less fairness.
      So what about the turning?
      In January, in the bitter cold of northern winter, Minnesotans in Minneapolis, and Mark Carney in, of all places, Davos, accelerated what I sense as a wide-ranging turn, and by turn I mean the increased emboldening of the doubtful-but-acquiescent majority, as well as renewed interest in verified information among the willfully misinformed. In the Minnesotans’ case by actions and in Carney’s case by words, they modeled a turn from dread and defense in response to the US Government’s destructive words and actions to moral courage and a pragmatic ethos of honest and collaborative renewal. Of course, it wasn’t and isn’t just Minnesotans and Carney. Many voices and actions came before them, and happened around and beyond them, but, under duress, they seized and expressed moral leadership in full view of people across the world. Minnesotans’ extensive and sustained efforts to protect their neighbors despite the freezing conditions and the unrestrained violence of ICE agents jolted and inspired people across the United States, indeed the world, and their moral impact was amplified by the egregiously violent ICE reactions as well as lies from ICE agents and their bosses at every level up to the President.
    Mark Carney’s speech was different. Measured and rational, deftly using high-cultural language of the Western World, including in his references to economic systems and the geopolitics of post-WWII multilateralism, and soberly invoking Vaclav Havel’s poetic voice that incited solidarity against a corrupted and autocratic Communism, his speech baldly enjoined the political elites and moneymakers at Davos to take their submissive placards out of their windows. Carney didn’t quote Havel in an expedient way, as part of a demagogic complaint about the United States or in a glib defense of Canada. A remarkable moment of his speech is when — in Davos! — he acknowledges the flaws and fictions of the “international rules-based order” that is breaking down. Now, Carney suggests, it’s no longer in our interest — “our” being, in the first place, the political leaders, powerbrokers, and money-makers he addressed in Davos, but more generally all of us — to pretend we see and like the Emperor’s clothes. 
     "We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality."
     While the Minnesotans who protest and protect their neighbors hold up as real the possibility of an everyday, sane, community-based morality, Carney provided guidelines — a blueprint even — for rebuilding institutional integrity, functional collaboration, and stability whether at a community, provincial, national, or international level. The phrases below from Carney’s speech are building blocks for the road forward:

• Name reality
• The old order is not coming back
• Diversify; build plurilateral relationships and coalitions that work issues by issues with partners who share enough common ground to act together
• Take the sign out of the window
• The power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong, if we choose to wield them together
• Build what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored
• Values-based realism; principled and pragmatic; recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values
• Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.

Carney, a European-Canadian “establishment” man, is more technocrat than prophet, but his speech describes a politics that is both morally lucid (including acknowledgement of gaps) and pragmatic (necessarily working across different interests). Most importantly, he took the placard out of his window. As Prime Minister of Canada and speaking at Davos, he had a BIG window, and his removing the placard from his window was observed by many, many people, including powerful and wealthy people who thus far have left the placard in their windows to protect their interests, their power, and their wealth. The actions of ordinary residents of Minneapolis and Carney’s speech have pushed people to at least question what is going on, and sometimes to speak their questions and “name reality” out loud. Therein lies the turn. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, more Republicans have spoken up about the violent chaos of the Federal Government’s immigration policies and actions, and more business people are modestly calling for de-escalation. Not much, but offering signs of social responsibility, accountability, and sanity. 
    This is not a 180° turn!  This is a wide, shallow turn, and I don’t know how long it will take us to see a significant curve, and what perils still lie ahead of us, but, meanwhile, we will continue pushing in our different ways for sharper turns to both socio-economic justice and political probity.
    At this time I believe that political probity is critically important. There will always be 45 to 55 percent of the population in the United States — and indeed probably in any country — who would disagree with the policies I would seek. I need to, want to, and have to live with them. Given this, I believe that probity in a fair and modifiable rules-based system — in other words a renewed and stronger democracy with public discourse that prioritizes more rather than less accuracy of information as well as more rather than less fairness — is the way to go. Mark Carney’s speech relates to political probity. 
     From the Minnesotans we are reminded of neighborliness and in-real-life interactions and relationships in public spaces, ideally across socioeconomic-political-cultural differences; in other words, community as lived in real life. Most people, whatever their politics, enjoy community when they find it, but “finding it” takes the work of engagement in shared activities and public spaces to foster mutual familiarity, engagement, and trust.
    The work of rebuilding political probity and community is already underway. The turn is not the future, it is the present.
 [The following is also in the newsletter I wrote to accompany this piece.]
     We are in the midst of a very, very substantial generational and world-changing shift, perhaps epochal, in the United States and other parts of the world. No shift is permanent and future generations will have to deal with their shifts. What are we building now, individually and together, will shape what comes next. Luckily a chap called Howard Zinn, quoted very recently by some young woman on Instagram, offered a us a way to start thinking, feeling, and doing the present-future:
     “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.
     If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” (emphasis added) Zinn (1922-2010), a historian, is well known on the left, but his words are relevant for anyone, wherever they are on the political spectrum.
     To amplify Howard Zinn’s message, I will close with one last story and quotation from a very different source. Last week I got a campaign fundraising email from Bushra Amiwala, a young woman whom I had never heard of. I, and many of you, get an infuriating number of these emails, most of them nonsense to the degree of tempting me not to have anything to do with politics anymore! Typically I delete them on auto-pilot. Once in a while something engages my curiosity and I start reading the message. 
     The subject line of Amiwala’s campaign email — “Cracked Eggs in Karachi, Big Dreams” — caught my eye. She tells her father’s American Dream story:
   “My dad, Shabbir Amiwala, grew up poor in Karachi, Pakistan. … He dreamt of a better life, so he came to America to chase the American Dream. … 
     When I was born, he took on debt so our family could move just three miles north, so I could attend better schools in Skokie. …
     From him, I learned three important lessons:

• Gratitude — for every meal, every chance.
• Faith — what’s meant for you won’t miss you. (Like the Urdu-speaking taxi driver who helped him land his first job in Chicago.)
• The notion that you can build a foundation as you walk on it.”

I know nothing about Bushra Amiwala as a candidate. If you are interested in her as a candidate, research her yourself. I draw from her story here because of her punchline. 
                                                     We are building a foundation as we walk on it.