+ + + Sign of the Crossing + + +

It’s my impression that American embassies around the world have become very unfriendly places.  I’m ignorant: maybe they always were.  Or maybe they aren’t really that bad now.  But I have heard one horror story after another for several years now, without any counter-balancing stories of pride.  We have been turning the embassies into fortresses, because we have a growing number of very angry and violent enemies.  Step one building a new embassy: dig a moat.  For real.  But that’s not the whole explanation.  Embassies are set up to maintain government to government communication; they aren’t tourist agencies.  But that’s not the whole explanation. We are rejecting visa applications at a very high rate, and maybe that sets a tone.  Take a look at some websites giving advice to people from India who want to visit America; they are preparing for very unpleasant encounters.  But I don’t really understand. Everyone in ...

Catherine Rampell asks plaintively , “Why should women need to be seen as daughters before we can ever be recognized as human beings?”  I understand her point: she is a proud and independent woman, not just a decoration in some male’s life – and it almost doesn’t matter whether the male is a good guy or not.  Independent.  Got it.  But … You have no idea who I am if you don’t understand that I’m Roy’s little brother (Special Forces medic, killed in the Tet offensive).  My sister’s Kathie’s thought and experience is woven inextricably into all my writing about nonviolence and eugenics.  Your picture of me is pretty stunted if you don’t know about my astrophysicist father and my mystical-lit-crit mom.  You can’t get at the motives that drive me if you don’t know about my relatives in the CIA, my pro-labor great-grandfather, my royal peace-making great-great-grandfather, my mayor aunt, my drunken uncle.  I am hugely proud of my second cousin, on...

Michael Gerson wrote a fascinating article about Ferguson and Selma , that included an insight into a more general truth.  “But the situation in Ferguson also reveals something broader: How people who do not regard themselves as biased can be part of a system that inevitably results in bias. How men and women who view themselves as moral can compose an immoral society.” (Washington Post, 2/10/2015) What he said about racism is interesting, and has application to immigration.  I often wonder how people – who are truly good people (as far as I can tell) – can pour out inexcusable vitriol about the children of Guadalupe.  That is, how can a person simultaneously get excited about the Virgin Mary’s appearance in Mexico City in 1521, and then still post hate-filled pictures of Latino immigrants, one ugly picture after another?  One picture of violence, or three, or even five in a row – I guess that could be a way to explain a worry.  But 30?  Without any be...