The United States' bumbling, stumbling withdrawal from Kabul in the wake of the Afghan government's house-of-cards-like collapse seems to have awakened the American public, at least momentarily, from its 20 year nap regarding our involvement in Afghanistan.
Fortunately, some observers have been keeping an eye on what we've done and what we've failed to do in Afghanistan over the last two decades. Now they're weighing in with some perspective. Can we stay awake long enough to learn any lessons?
Well the CDC really messed things up when it first said the the vaccinated no longer needed to mask and be socially distant, then reversed itself and said that the Delta surge required everyone to mask and socially distant. Politicians and pundits are all over the place on these issues. Only bishops can set policy for their own dioceses; they are making all sorts of choices most often in the form of advice. That leaves it up to pastors who are also making all sorts of decisions. So naturally the laity are making all sorts of decisions for themselves. A lot of those decisions are to return to livestream Mass.
I am glad I never went back. What does community mean when you cannot trust your fellow parishioners to get vaccinated, or wear masks or be socially distant? What does pastoring mean if you cannot trust your bishop and your pastor to be very clear to everyone in the parish that they need to be vaccinated, mask and be socially distant?
Many people but not all were coming back after our first year of Covid. I think that parishes are going to have far fewer in the pews after the second year of Covid.
This article argues that the Taliban succeeded mainly because it was for resistance to foreign occupiers. With the US gone it has to fall back on its clerical command and control structure which raises the possibly of internal civil war among all its the various tribal, linguistic and communal identities not all of which have the same religious views as the Taliban clerics.
Like this author I have a great deal of skepticism about the reality of the Afghan "nation state" beyond the few people who cooperated with Western allies. Once we pulled out and the phantom national army evaporated, there is little left to the "national state" other than a bunch of Westernized people whom most Afghans view as collaborators.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post in this article praises some unrecognized heroes of the State Department, and pushes back against the prevailing hyperbolic narrative.
And an article in The Week by Ryan Cooper takes the press to task.
There seems to be plenty of blame and finger-pointing to go around about the US exit from Afghanistan. One recurring theme has been that the Afghan soldiers don't care enough to fight for their own country. It turns out that things aren't that simple. There is an interesting article from Politico by Anatol Leiven explaining why Afghan forces quickly laid down their arms.
From the article:
Farming is a very important question.
Obviously trucking products from a farm half way around the world cost a lot in energy demands. There is also the very important question of exploitation of the land, e.g. some crops make land infertile. Also the importance of taking carbon dioxide out of the air and putting it into the ground. There is also the importance of replacing animal protein with vegetable protein in our diets.
All this seems to me to imply that we have to not let what is going on be up to the market place. Perhaps it is easier to endorse the last idea if we look at China as an actor in the marketplace who may not have our best interests at heart. Obviously they are not the only potential bad actors. So I am interested in the larger question. How do we get an American Policy on these issues. Obviously the Chinese Communist Party has a policy.
This is my homily for today, Sunday, August 15, 2021, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today's readings are here.
This coming Sunday, August 15, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The numbers in this bar chart are from a July Gallup survey (h/t Axios).
Perhaps the difference in height for the set of bars farthest to the right, measuring partisan confidence in the presidency, isn't surprising; if Trump was still in office, perhaps the height of those respective bars would be reversed.
But some of these numbers do surprise me: how few liberals trust the police and how many of them trust organized labor; and how few conservatives trust the medical system. Conservatives trust the police and the military considerably more than they trust the medical system; not sure how to understand that.
There are some other wide disparities: cf the bar heights for trust in public schools and television news.
Neither tribe can muster 50% of their respective members when it comes to confidence in the Supreme Court, large technology companies and newspapers.
Take this chart as just one more piece of evidence that we are two countries who happen to share a common geography; and that, on the whole, we are a suspicious and cynical lot.
Update 8/12/2021 8:30 am CDT: I've added a section to the post, describing my own family's financial history, to reflect on the notion of intergenerational wealth accumulation.
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This little nugget was presented as trivia in a PBS News Hour enewsletter that showed up in my inbox today:
On this day in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which included a formal apology for the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and offered $20,000 payments to survivors. However, it took another 30 years for the Supreme Court to reverse its decision upholding Japanese internment, Korematsu v. United States.
I don't have a memory of this bill. But it's an interesting precedent for the US government paying reparations.
A glimpsed sign at a demonstration suggests a need for further thought and discussion.
Today there was a timely article by Mona Charen on the importance of securing vote counting. Though vote casting and countering voter suppression has (deservedly) occupied a lot of bandwidth in the news, I have long thought that the thing which could do the most damage to democracy was the threat of partisan officials on the state level being able to reverse the will of the voters and name their own slate of electors.
From the Charen article:
This has always been my theory. At last some evidence.
In the last couple of months I have come across several articles or references to "deconstruction" as related to faith. Many have written about how corruption, or rot, or simply looking at faith claims and seeing that they don't match up to the world they see and experience has caused them to begin deconstructing their faith.
This columnist is affiliated with the Southern Baptists, a denomination which has been losing members for years, a trend which is accelerating.
Deconstruction essentially describes “what happens when a person asks questions that lead to the careful dismantling of their previous beliefs.”
I have found that Google Scholar is helpful to get past the media and journalistic fog on a topic.
When I chose "critical race theory an introduction" I got a list of mainly textbooks on the topic, however I did get at near the top of the list a highly referenced article that included a downloadable pdf.
by Athena D. Mutua (University at Buffalo School of Law)
Below you will find the contents. I have not read the whole thing but it is well organized, and so I have figured out what I need to know which I have summarized below. Some of you may be interested enough in the whole topic to read the whole thing.
I think I've mentioned before that one of my kids is a teacher. When she graduated from college a few years ago, she took a teaching job at a local Catholic school. She seemed to enjoy it, but teaching at a Catholic school never has been the long-term career plan. So last spring, she declined to sign a contract for this coming school year. That was the equivalent of submitting her resignation. Her intention is to jump to one of the many suburban public school districts in this area. As a public school teacher, she'd make more money, get better benefits, and have better support for aspects of the job such as educating students with special needs.
In the corporate world in which I swim all day, it's considered prudent not to resign one's job unless/until one has the successor job lined up. But my daughter tells me that's not how it works in education. Frequently, schools or school districts don't know which teachers are coming back the following fall until after a school year ends - sometimes, not until the next school year is on the verge of beginning.
So when she left her job last spring, she didn't have another teaching job lined up. It was a roll of the dice - or, if you prefer, an act of faith. Public school teaching jobs in this area are highly desirable, and it's not a no-brainer for a teacher to get hired by one of the local school districts. Teachers who manage to wrangle a job around here often will stay in the district for their entire careers, so there are few openings, and the open positions generate a blizzard of applications.
So as May ticked into June, and then June rolled into July, my wife and I watched with mounting anxiety as a new job didn't materialize. Our daughter seemed to be diligent in sending her resume around, and she tried to work her network. Earlier this summer, she had a handful of first interviews, mostly via Zoom. One of those opportunities, with a school district in a neighboring suburb, seemed perfect - and she got to a second and then a third interview. She was one of the finalists for the position - but, alas, the job offer went to another teacher.
Meanwhile, my wife and I talked with teachers we knew - we were trying to find her a job, okay? yes, we're as much helicopter parents as any other suburban parents - and they told us she may have to settle for substitute teaching for a year or two. Apparently, that is a common teaching career strategy: be a sub, perhaps for a long assignment while a regular teacher is on maternity leave, and develop a good reputation around the district.
Anyway, not to unnecessarily prolong this post: last week, while we were on vacation, her phone finally began to ring. She actually did a Zoom interview from her hotel room last week. And then it rang some more. And then some more. She's had a raft of first interviews the last couple of weeks, and three or four second interviews. And as of yesterday, she has a job offer in hand. It's not her first choice of a district, and she wouldn't be teaching her desired grade level. So she asked them to give her a few days to respond, and they agreed. This week, she'll see if she can coax a job offer from the district in which she really wants to teach. But one way or another, she'll have steady work this fall.
Whew! Now my wife and I can worry about the other kids for a while.
There was a good column by Jonah Goldberg today: from the article:.
'If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
"I’ve long argued that this exhortation is a soft form of totalitarianism. It’s rhetorical bullying. The speaker assumes he or she has authoritative knowledge of not just the problem but the solution. And if you disagree, you’re a problem."
