A Promised Land

America as a Developing Country

Bring on Your Wrecking Ball: Americans Defy Election Deniers

They'll be back. And so will we.

Not all it’s cracked up to be.

A tale of two summers

In the summer of 1983, I visited an old friend who was a young foreign service officer in Manila. Sitting in his living room, sharing beers and shooting the breeze with a few of his colleagues, we discussed the Philippines’ future. One colleague granted that its then-dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, was a repressive ruler. But he insisted that the dictator was “the only game in town.”

Less than three years later, Filipinos’ “People Power” ousted Marcos.

Pro-democracy Americans’ summer of discontent in 2022 obviously differed from that of Manila in 1983. But there was something similar in the despair in the air here.

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Ukraine: It’s the End of the World as We Know It. Here’s Why I Feel (Kinda Sorta) Fine.

Yes, despair at Ukrainians' suffering. But their struggles, and ours, do not end here.

Tough, horrifying, unprecedented times indeed. Especially for Ukraine, but also for the world. But not all is lost.

Through my international development consulting and research, I’ve had sporadic contact with Ukraine and a smattering of its citizens over the years. Here are a few scattered recollections and impressions, followed by some speculation on where we go from here.

Bling and blandness in a newly independent state

First visiting the country in 1996, when it was still a newly independent state in the wake of the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, I joined a U.S. Government-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI) delegation looking to build contacts with and democracy-oriented training for political party personnel there. I was just an observer, along for the ride to learn about how the NDI operates and to advise it on how to evaluate those operations.

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Bar Him

A lesson from Cambodia about striking when the iron is hot.

“He’s Like a King”

I once shook a dictator’s hand.

Flying from Bangkok to Cambodia about 15 years ago for a consultancy, I ended up seated in the plane’s front row. A well-attired man boarded with his wife and large entourage, and sat across the aisle from me. He was the country’s autocratic prime minister, Hun Sen.

As we stood up and our eyes met after landing, he spontaneously shook my hand, said “Welcome to Cambodia” and turned to go. The Thai Airways flight attendant, unaware that I knew who he was, politely told me to wait until he and his scurrying travel party disembarked, because “he’s like a king.”

Which brings me to the point of this post: For all of the ways in that small Southeast Asian nation differs from America, we can learn from its brave democratic forces’ failure to topple Hun Sen when they possibly had him on the ropes several years later. In the coming days, Congress must bar Donald Trump from ever holding public office again.

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A Damaged Culture

That's what a famous journalist once labeled the Philippines. But what about America?

“…I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

 – Donald Trump, 2016

Even if President Donald Trump shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, New York authorities could not punish him while he is in office…

– Trump attorneys, 2019

Study links Trump rallies to more than 700 Covid deaths

 – Stanford University economists, 2020

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Borat the Feminist?

No, but...

A Village Mediation

While reviewing a legal aid program in Bangladesh 25 years ago, I visited a mediation between two families in the middle of a small town’s evening market. The issue in dispute was whether and how much the 17-year-old husband’s clan should compensate that of the 16-year-old wife for throwing her out of its household.

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