The Audacity of Nope

This was published in the August 7, 2011 Trenton Times under the title, " We must unite to solve our nation's problems"

I’m disappointed...and so are many other Americans. When Barack Obama was elected, we had the audacity to hope that the tendency to deadlock in Washington would be reversed – that there would truly be non-partisan cooperation, and there would truly be harmony. But the struggle for superiority continues to work against such an elusive goal, and we continue to hurtle toward the abyss. The total lack of cooperation, and indeed the rampant obstructionism – the ubiquitous use of “no,” is frightening. It seems that Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” slogan has been co-opted for far less noble purposes.

The behavior of our elected officials, particularly in our nation’s capitol, is very disheartening. We entrust these people with our lives and our livelihoods, only to see them gamble away our limited wealth in games of brinksmanship, wars of attrition, and schemes of Ponzi. And most recently, with our country tetering on the edge of bankruptcy, we’ve seen them at their worst – pointing fingers, issuing ultimatums, wasting time while other major issues are burgeoning, and each waiting for the other to blink. What seems to be lost on them is that compromise is not necessarily a bad thing, and doesn’t have to be a zero sum proposition. A rising tide can lift all boats, but not if they’re too firmly tied to their moorings.

The games being played by our elected officials are extremely dangerous. With a refusal to agree on anything meaningful, not only are we losing our credit standing, and with it, much of our economic value. We’re losing our place as leader of the free world, which desperately needs a strong leader. We’re also losing the momentum we’ve built with growing prosperity, where each generation is better off than the last. We owe it to our children and their children to keep their dreams alive.

Wars of attrition are being waged in many ways, both domestically and internationally. On the inside, with our elected officials’ parties sniping at each other and refusing to cooperate, with actions bordering on extortion, they’re gaining nothing for themselves, and by their intransigence, continuing to sink our economy. On the outside, our involvement in the Middle East continues to be a swirling vortex, and the more we spend, the less we seem to achieve. By squandering our treasure against unseen and often duplicitous enemies, we fulfill the very goals of terrorists – to destroy our financial foundation, and in doing so, rob us of the desire to interfere with their plans for domination.

Charles Ponzi would be proud to see how our government has adopted his financial strategies. We’ve built pension plans, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, bond issues and other programs that have morphed into financially ruinous schemes that count on tomorrow’s revenue to pay today’s bills. We talk of many of these programs as “entitlements,” and lose sight of the fact that for many of us, they are investments that we have faithfully made, while our government hasn’t kept its side of the bargain. The very idea that we can continue to raise the debt ceiling with no viable plan to pay off the debt should be ringing loud and clear in the heads of every ethically-minded individual.

Our great nation is in danger of collapsing under its own weight and our experiment in democracy may not survive. The debt we’ve run up, the regulations we’ve entangled ourselves with, the underfunded entitlements and subsidies we’ve created with incentives to game the system, are all piling up on top of us. Our government seems to be good at placing more burden on its citizens, especially in good times, but seldom takes any of it away, even after it’s proven to be a failure or its usefulness is diminished. In addition, the Baby Boomers (of which I am one), who are responsible for much of this dysfunction, are causing a surge in expense and a shortfall in revenue as they leave the workforce and move into retirement.

It is clear that our problems didn’t materialize overnight. Expecting them to disintegrate overnight is pure folly. Similarly, expecting reduced expense alone, or increased revenue by itself, to solve our problems in the short term is not realistic either. We need a comprehensive balanced approach to move the country in the right direction, and we need it now. Revenue increases need not be permanent, while spending cuts can and should be. We have to realize that a plan of such import will take some time to implement, and even longer to have the desired effects. So we’ll have to be patient, and we’ll probably have to do without for a while. And we must all be willing to share the pain and sacrifice.

But we must have a plan, and we must have the resolve to see it through. In the meantime, the increased debt ceiling will provide some necessary breathing room. It’s long past time for our elected officials to get serious about reducing our debt and living within our means. Time is running out for them to find some common high ground, before the rising tide drowns us all.

Japan - Resourceful and Resilient

Barely a week after the devastating earthquake hit northeast Japan, and despite advice from friends and warnings from the US State Department and the Tokyo Consulate, my wife and I kept our vacation plans and went to Japan on March 19, 2011. It wasn’t that we couldn’t have rescheduled – the airlines made it easy and attractive to do so. What we couldn’t reschedule was our son’s graduation from Kumamoto Gakuen University in southern Japan.

The morning the earthquake hit, my wife, Chris, awoke to the following words on NPR: “...magnitude 8.9 earthquake hit Japan...” To a mother whose firstborn is a half a world away, and to whom Japan seems only as big as a postage stamp, she was very concerned. Quickly, though, she made contact with Jason through the internet, and he was fine. It turned out that he was about 700 miles from the earthquake and its aftermath, the tsunami and the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima.

Every day after the earthquake, the prognosis became more dire, and Chris and I did not dare to discuss the trip. Our flight arrangements had us flying into Tokyo, whose airports had been shut down immediately after the earthquake, and then on to the southernmost island of Kyushu, where Jason lives. She’s a white-knuckle flyer as it is, and the thought of flying into a serious danger zone was best to avoid. So we talked about it obliquely until the day before departure, when it came time to print the boarding passes. To my mild surprise, she agreed with me that we should go.

The flights were uneventful, and although we were on a jumbo jet heading into Tokyo, I think we were the only Americans (other than the flight crew) aboard. The plane was only about a third full, and there were several passengers who were visibly upset. We assumed that they were heading home to deal with personal disasters, and felt their pain in some small way. Tokyo – Narita Airport seemed like a ghost town when we landed, but the people who were there were going about their business as if nothing had happened. After a several hour layover, we flew from there to Fukuoka, on the west side of Kyushu. Jason picked us up at the airport and took us to our hotel.

His graduation ceremony was one to be remembered. Not for its pomp and circumstance, but for its simplicity and irony. The entire graduating class included about a thousand undergraduates and a handful of graduate students. Jason was in the graduate program, and his particular class numbered four students. Each class had one representative who accepted the graduation honor on stage for the class. Since all four students in his class had straight As, they needed a tie-breaker to choose their representative; Jason had taken an extra class, so he won!

We followed the directions into a large auditorium and found some seats, and waited patiently for the ceremony to begin. Curiously, there was a large projection screen on the stage, and it soon became apparent that we would be viewing the ceremony on it. The students were all in another auditorium, and the professors and speakers were on that stage. The ceremony began, and we tried to follow its progression, in a language that we could not understand. I videotaped some of it, and was able to record Jason’s performance. So Chris and I travelled halfway around the world, braving earthquakes, tsunamis and radioactive fallout, to videotape our son’s graduation on a projection screen!

After the ceremony, the students adjourned to various classrooms and other venues to meet with their professors and receive their degrees. Jason led me into the room, and his professor approached me and began speaking to me, presumably about the amazing son I had. Soon my blank stare betrayed my utter ignorance of the language, and the professor smiled and returned to the front of the room. He then addressed each of the students, presumably talking about their wonderful performance and their bright futures. He then turned to me (he wasn’t through with me yet), and told me to stand up and speak. Obediently, I stood, and made an brief, impromptu fool of myself and sat down. Actually, according to my wife and son, I did pretty well.

For the rest of the week, Chris and I kept watching Japanese TV, with its occasional flashes of English-speaking broadcasts, to find out what was happening in the Fukushima and Tokyo areas, since we had to return through Narita Airport in Tokyo. We watched one particular broadcast, all in Japanese, while the scientist-narrator described the latest developments with the failing reactors in Fukushima. At one point, his monotone took on an air of excitement, and he splayed his arms and uttered the word, “BOOM!” Now it was hard to tell if “BOOM!” was what just happened, or what was about to happen, or what might happen if control wasn’t restored. But “BOOM!” was not a reassuring word.

We also endured a small earthquake in generally stable Kumamoto, where Jason lives. It was about mid-week, and I was taking a shower. My wife told me that she thought we’d just had an earthquake, and I thought it was her imagination. It turned out that it was a 3.0, right there in our hotel!

The rest of our trip was equally memorable. Kumamoto, where Jason lives, is a fishing village with mountains on three sides. We visited the tops of the mountains, and got to see a simmering volcano up close. The drive to the mountaintops was invigorating, as the roads were steep, loaded with switchbacks, and dotted with mirrors so that you could see traffic coming around the bend. This was important because the roads are barely wide enough for cars to pass, and guard rails are a luxury.

The food in Japan is amazing, and the Japanese people love their food (and alcoholic beverages). In the areas we visited, rice and fish were the main staples. I’m not big on fish, especially for breakfast, but there was no getting away from it. Rice was in virtually every meal, so one morning at a Japanese style hotel, I loaded up on a bowl of rice, thinking it was the Japanese version of oatmeal. I then sprinkled a large tablespoonful of white crystalline powder on top for sweetness, and poured on a brown syrup for texture. It turned out that the white stuff was salt, and the syrup was teriyaki sauce! I was too embarrassed to leave it, so I wolfed it down.

At another meal at an authentic Japanese resort, I ate what I thought were bean sprouts (on top of rice, of course), only to find out that they were raw fish (baby eels, perhaps?). I also ate what I thought was a block of raw salmon, which I normally would have avoided anyway, but felt obligated to try. After I swallowed it, I was informed that it was a fish egg sack! Nothing goes to waste, I guess.

We also visited Nagasaki, the site of the dropping of the second atomic bomb during World War II. A memorial and museum there are somber and sobering. One striking thing about the museum was its frank and balanced view of the history leading up to the bombing, but I couldn’t help but feel more than a little disbelief that we, of all people, could use such a weapon in such a way. Near the end of the museum tour, there was a photograph of a boy with a story that moved me like few other things have. Here’s a link to the photo and a brief story about its photographer: http://www.societypolitics.com/?p=620. The story accompanying the picture in the museum describes how the boy stood at attention for a long time, biting his lip until it bled, and then watching as his baby brother’s body was cremated.

Nagasaki has fully recovered, and is a thriving seaport. Due to its strategic location, it is influenced by many foreign traders who have made their home there. While Japan has a tense relationship with neighboring China, its Chinatown area is bustling. Also striking is the Dutch influence, since, for a period of Japanese isolationism, the Dutch were the only foreign traders welcome. There’s a large Dutch village stacked up the mountainside like boughs on a cedar tree.

Throughout our trip, we were struck by the stoicism of the Japanese people. While they all expressed concern about the earthquake and its aftermath, nobody expressed selfish emotions, even those closest to the disaster. TV coverage showed multitudes of people helping out, and no disorder or looting. In fact, some coverage showed people waiting in line for hours for supplies, and when they ran out, merely turning and walking away.

We returned home a week after we arrived, and in that second week after the earthquake, much had returned to normal in the Tokyo area. Things continued to worsen in the Fukushima area, but the threat to Tokyo and areas south seemed to stabilize. Our visit to Japan showed us that the Japanese people are a proud and honorable lot, and they have a unique way of accepting the way things are (shikata ga nai) and immediately taking steps to rebuild. If only that were a universal human trait.