America as a Developing Country
Both Senate races are winnable. What we can do.
Despite the stakes, most news outlets and Americans are paying relatively little heed to the most important non-presidential U.S. elections in our lifetimes: the two Georgia Senate runoff races, which will be decided on January 5.
[Continue Reading]We started this week.
Bruce Springsteen’s 2006 song, “Long Walk Home,” offered a stark metaphor for George W. Bush’s America. The protagonist returns to a hometown peopled by friends who, having abandoned their ideals, have become strangers to him.
Since 2016, that feeling has rung true for many of us, arguably to an even greater extent.
But the song is also resolute and hopeful about the long walk back to enduring ideals, a better town and a better country. Its most memorable lines are:
[Continue Reading]You know that flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t
Grief, giving, ambivalence and blessings, all at once.
For many Americans, this Thanksgiving arrives with pain, loss, isolation and hardship. Covid cases and deaths are skyrocketing. One in eight adults report not having enough to eat in the past week; the figure is one in six for households with children in them. The situation in numerous other nations is yet worse.
For folks much more fortunate, Covid and Trump’s legacy (even in defeat) still make this a time of grief and ambivalence. In view of the unprecedented plight of so many in 2020, it might be particularly appropriate for the more fortunate to mark Thanksgiving with giving to worthy causes this year. So, for those able and interested…
[Continue Reading]We've been warned.
I first witnessed a coup attempt in the Philippines on the morning of August 28, 1987, a couple of months after I arrived in Manila to work for the democracy-promoting, San Francisco-based Asia Foundation. On that day, a well-armed group of military dissidents nearly toppled the duly elected government of President Corazon Aquino. As tanks and armed personnel carriers rumbled by our office, my colleagues and I had no idea whose side they were on.
Just weeks earlier, a Filipino co-worker had proudly told me about joining the massive “People Power” demonstration that helped depose the country’s dictator in February of 1986. Now he and his fellow Filipinos began to look broken. How had so much turned so bad so fast for their democracy?
[Continue Reading]The pandemic and about 45,000 votes saved U.S. democracy.
The 1997-98 Asian financial crisis caused economic havoc across much of the globe, with Indonesia one of the hardest hit nations. But it triggered a chain of events that discredited the country’s corrupt, repressive ruler, Suharto, and led to his 1998 resignation after over 31 years as president. His downfall signifies a lesson America learned this month: how even a disastrous development can rescue a nation from dictatorship.
Suharto oversaw significant economic reforms and growth while in power. In other regards, his record was repugnant.
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