Another December Day that Will Live in Infamy

On Monday, December 8, 1941, President Roosevelt addressed the nation after Japan launched an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7. The United States entered World War II by declaring war on Japan on that fateful day but what we most remember from that famous address is how the president labeled December 7: “A date which will live in infamy.”

Seventy-nine years later, in a traumatic twist of history, we experienced yet another December Day which will live in infamy in our nation's history.

On December 8, 2020, the state of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court to bar the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin from casting their electoral voted for Joe Biden. Biden had won these states in the November presidential election. The Texas lawsuit essentially asked the Supreme Court to declare Trump the winner in those four states and hand over the presidency to him for a second term.

That the Supreme Court threw out the absurd lawsuit three days later is not the point. It was expected and was obviously the right thing to do, even though Trump had packed the court with his hand-picked nominees.

No, the reason why this date will live in infamy, 79 years after the first one, is because 126 Republican Members of Congress (more than 60 percent) and 17 Republican Attorneys General signed the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Think about that for a moment! People who swore to uphold the law and the constitution chose instead to support the baseless claims of a demagogue that the election was stolen from him, even though more than 7 million Americans voted for Biden than Trump, the largest difference in U.S. history.

For four years, Trump had assaulted the foundational values of America, aided and abetted by his sycophants, Republican Congressmen, Senators, Attorneys Generals and white supremacists. Trump’s criminal negligence in combating the lethal coronavirus has so far resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Americans, more than the number of Americans who lost their lives - 291,557 - fighting in the four years of WWII after Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan following its deadly attack on Pearl harbor.

The difference between the two infamous dates couldn’t be starker. A foreign nation attacked America in December, 1941, forcing America to declare war. The cause was just, the right to defend the country moral and the nation united.

Seventy-nine years later, majority of the Republican Members of Congress and Attorneys General of 17 states declared war on America from within, threatening secession and evoking the specter of a Civil War.

These “By Hook or by Crook” Americans who so brazenly betrayed our democracy must not be forgotten for their treachery. We the people have the power to vote them out of office when it is their time for reelection.

Here are the names of the traitors, the quislings, the domestic terrorists, who have betrayed their oaths by supporting the unholy and undemocratic demands of a rogue president:

First, the attorneys general, supposedly the chief law enforcement officers of their states, who joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in their treacherous lawsuit:

Eric Schmitt, Missouri; Steve Marshall, Alabama; Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas; Ashley Moody, Florida; Curtis Hill, Indiana; Derek Schmidt, Kansas; Jeff Landry, Louisiana; Lynn Fitch, Mississippi; Tim Fox, Montana; Doug Peterson, Nebraska; Wayne Stenehjem, North Dakota; Mike Hunter, Oklahoma; Alan Wilson, South Carolina; Jason Ravnsborg, South Dakota; Herbert H. Slatery III, Tennessee; Sean Reyes, Utah; Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia.

 

Second, the House members, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Whip Steve Scalise (La.); Jim Jordan (Ohio), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee; Kevin Brady (Tex.), ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee; Rep. Gary Palmer (Ala.), head of the Republican Policy Committee; and Mike Johnson (La.), who organized this betrayal of the U.S. Constitution.

 

The rest, in alphabetical order of their home state, are:

Alabama (Robert B. Aderholt, Mo Brooks, Bradley Byrne), Arizona (Andy Biggs, Debbie Lesko), Arkansas (Eric A. “Rick” Crawford, Bruce Westerman), California (Ken Calvert, Doug LaMalfa, Tom McClintock), Colorado (Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn), Florida (Gus M. Bilirakis, Mario Diaz-Balart, Neal Dunn, Matt Gaetz, Bill Posey, John Rutherford, Ross Spano, Michael Waltz, Daniel Webster, Ted Yoho), Georgia (Rick Allen, Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, Douglas A. Collins, Drew Ferguson, Jody Hice, Barry Loudermilk, Austin Scott), Idaho (Russ Fulcher, Mike Simpson), Illinois (Mike Bost, Darin LaHood), Indiana (Jim Baird, Jim Banks, Trey Hollingsworth, Greg Pence, Jackie Walorski), Iowa (Steve King), Kansas (Ron Estes, Roger Marshall), Louisiana (Ralph Abraham, Clay Higgins), Maryland (Andy Harris), Michigan (Jack Bergman, Bill Huizenga, John Moolenaar, Tim Walberg), Minnesota (Tom Emmer, Jim Hagedorn, Pete Stauber), Mississippi (Michael Guest, Trent Kelly, Steven M. Palazzo), Missouri (Sam Graves, Billy Long, Vicky Hartzler, Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jason T. Smith, Ann Wagner), Montana (Greg Gianforte), Nebraska (Jeff Fortenberry, Adrian Smith), New Jersey (Gregory Steube, Jeff Van Drew), New York (Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin), North Carolina (Dan Bishop, Ted Budd, Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, Greg Murphy, David Rouzer, Mark Walker), Ohio (Bob Gibbs, Bill Johnson, Robert E. Latta, Brad Wenstrup), Oklahoma (Kevin Hern, Markwayne Mullin), Pennsylvania (John Joyce, Frederick B. Keller, Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Glenn Thompson), South Carolina (Jeff Duncan, Ralph Norman, Tom Rice, William Timmons, Joe Wilson), Tennessee (Tim Burchett, Scott DesJarlais, Charles J. “Chuck” Fleischmann, Mark Green, David Kustoff, John Rose), Texas (Jodey Arrington, Brian Babin, Michael C. Burgess, Michael Cloud, K. Michael Conaway, Dan Crenshaw, Bill Flores, Louie Gohmert, Lance Gooden, Kenny Marchant, Randy Weber, Roger Williams, Ron Wright), Virginia (Ben Cline, H. Morgan Griffith, Rob Wittman, Ron Wright), Washington (Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Dan Newhouse), West Virginia (Carol Miller, Alex Mooney), Wisconsin (Tom Tiffany).

Don’t forget these traitors who put politics and party above country. We have the power to give them the boot through our voting power.

We are counting on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to restore decency, civility, Rule of Law, justice and democracy to a traumatized nation after four years of nonstop misrule by Donald Trump. It won’t be easy, and it certainly will not be accomplished overnight. But given their experience, expertise and sincerity of intention, we know that Joe and Kamal can accomplish these goals with our continued support and activism.

Biden's Victory Brings Our National Nightmare to an End

I spent four of my happiest years as a graduate student at Temple University in Philadelphia in the early ‘70s. One source of inspiration for me on that urban campus was an engraving on the ivy-covered walls of Sullivan Hall that housed the counseling services of the university. It was a quote from Russell H. Conwell (1843-1925), the founder of Temple University: “Greatness really consists in doing some great deed with little means.”

That Joe Biden has become the 46^th President of the United States, bringing an end to four years of national nightmare under the venal, vile and vindictive Trump, is in no small measure due to hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians, particularly African-American women and men, who came together to do a great deed with little means. Many of the Philadelphians whose votes carried Biden across the finish line were Americans with little material means, some at risk of not being able to even breathe from systemic racism, but their sense of justice and fair play and decency and empathy was bigger than the wide-open sky shining down on America today.

Philadelphia, you have made us all proud. I live in Northern California now, happily I may add, but in a very real sense, I left my heart in Philadelphia - Fairmount Park, Robinhood Dell, Philadelphia Orchestra, steps leading up to the Art Museum, and so much more - four decades ago.

A Quaker named William Penn founded the “City of Brotherly Love” in 1682, a place where anyone could worship freely. Three hundred and thirty-eight years later, this cosmopolitan and resilient city of almost 2 million people have given us a gift, a gift that rescued us from the most severe existential danger our nation faced since the American Civil War. That War lasted 4 years too, from 1861 to 1865. And now, after 4 years of Trump, from 2016-2020, the most ignoble years in American History will slide into the dustbin of history.

Yet let us not forget that over 70 million Americans voted for Trump. Will Trumpism, aka white nationalism, slide into the dustbin of history as well?

No, it will not. White Nationalism is here to stay. Even though they see the handwriting on the faux golden façade of their hero, they will not go gently into the night. Trump was their last best hope on earth to save the supposed superiority of their race. To give up on that will be to give up on life.

They will organize and prepare and agitate and threaten and commit violence. Joe Biden has said that he will govern as an American president, not as a Democratic president. It’s a noble sentiment and it is surely the moral high ground to take. But the 46^th president will be living in a fool’s paradise if he thinks he can placate Trump supporters and convince them of the possibilities of a united country, at least anytime soon.

Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” But the house will be divided for the foreseeable future. That’s the reality. So, while Biden seeks compromise and consensus, he must also steel himself to fight for his principles and priorities. If Trump supporters and spineless Republicans stand in the way of his priorities, he must use the power of his presidency to achieve his major goals – defeat the pandemic, restore the economy, confront the climate crisis - that he promised during his campaign. Compromise and consensus can go only so far in these difficult times. Timidity must never become a substitute for bold action.

Joe Biden is a man of abiding faith. It is his faith that saw him through the darkest days of his life when he lost his wife, daughter and son.

Mr. President-elect, here’s praying for you to heal and unite America to the best of your ability. At the same time, do not allow anything to get in the way of achieving the goals you so eloquently and powerfully articulated during your campaign. Your faith in God and in the basic goodness of the American people will see you through as certainly as it saw you through your incalculable personal losses.

Nature Telling Us Time's Running Out

The land is shrouded inn a ash-laden haze: a winter evening filled with gloom and foreboding. Scene from an English countryside, perhaps, where “The Hounds of the Baskervilles” is about to unfold.

Only it is not. This is San Jose in Northern California. The clock says it’s 9 in the morning, but the sun lies hidden behind wildfire smoke so thick that stepping outside poses serious breathing problems. Earlier, in the predawn sky where Venus used to glow brightly, I saw a pale tangerine planet barely able to hold its own.

Wildfires are on a tear in Western United States. Idyllic, pastoral towns are aflame and burnt out. People and trees are being uprooted at a scale never seen before. The ravaged, desolate landscape tells tales of nature’s sound and fury signifying everything.

In California, hundreds of freakish lightnings, utterly unanticipated by meteorologists - so much for our hubris of predicting and controlling the weather, far less the climate - started the terrifying fires, carried relentlessly forward, backward and sideways by hot winds that devoured everything in its way. We suffered long periods of blackouts but that was nothing compared to those who lost everything - homes, possessions. No accurate counting of lives lost is yet possible, but it will be tragic when the final tally is in, each death diminishing us all.

This, on top of the killer pandemic that has so far claimed more than 200,000 American lives. Misfortunes, as the saying goes, never comes singly.

The worst nightmare, of course, is the malevolent president who denies climate change, who calls those who made the ultimate sacrifice for America “losers” and “suckers.” Americans must surely know by now the existential threat this president poses to America and its values, to its standing in the world. We hope  this grievous wrong will be righted in the November 3^rd election this year.

For now, though, we must turn our attention to nature. It is telling us that time is fast running out. Burning fossil fuels to sustain our "quality of life" is unsustainable. Droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, famines, even civil wars are only another climate catastrophe away.

Yet we also know that given half a chance, nature will spring back. But for that to happen, we need a quantum leap in our thinking about consumption, development, and all the quotidian things we do that needs to be suffused with an awareness of their impact on the environment. Impractical? The alternate is fiery death.

In the air opaque with wildfire smoke and without birdsong, I risk a walk along the wooded trail that works its magic every time I am on it. Giant eucalyptus and pine trees stand like ghosts just a few feet away from me, hardly visible.

And then I see it and I stand rooted to the earth. A bluebird is resting on a pine cone, calm and poised. An ineffable sense of hope surges in me. Give me a chance, a small, tiny chance, nature seems to be saying, and I will make the air breathable, the water potable, and the birds transcendent again. 

We are Counting on You, Kamala

Unsolicited advice is a bane of life. Still, as a Californian and a concerned American, I take the liberty of giving some advice to the democratic VP nominee Kamala Harris, born in Oakland 55 years ago to biracial parents.

The first concerns the presidential campaign.

Go for broke, Kamala. Take the gloves off because Trump sure as hell will. You must be proactive, not reactive. Take the fight to him by anticipating his foul tweets, his misogynistic and racist remarks, his attempts to suppress the vote and confiscate mail-in ballots. But complement that by invoking the better angels of our nature, by convincing Americans that we are that “shining city upon a hill” and not the dystopia Trump has wrought. You nailed it when you said this election is a battle for the soul of our nation. Bring your prosecutorial chops to expose the existential threat Trump poses for America.

Trump will likely contest the election if defeated but ultimately the law of the land will prevail, and he will have to leave if Biden wins.

What then?

Your priority should be to help President Biden rebuild America from within. To that end, your first task should be to restore normalcy to our lives. Four years of nonstop hysteria and hypocrisy, of magical thinking and mendacity by the President have left us dazed and depressed. We crave a return to decency and decorum. We want to breathe the fresh air of democracy, not the fetid air of authoritarianism.

Next, help President Biden treat the Covid-19 catastrophe with the seriousness it deserves, with doctors and scientists dictating policies. Despite the economic hardship and the horrifying death toll, Americans will make the necessary sacrifices if convinced that the administration is using dependable data and sound science to stop the killer pathogen. You persuasive powers will be instrumental in making this happen.

Finally, help the more than 160 million Americans out of work with meaningful financial assistance. I teach at a community college and have observed firsthand how students, some of them first in their family to attend college and some who are essential workers, are struggling to survive the health care, economic and educational crises brought on by the abject failure of Trump to contain the coronavirus. While a few students had to drop out to care for loved ones or take on risky jobs, most forged on. As one student wrote in a chat during a Zoom session: “Soon I hope to see light at the end of the tunnel.”

There are many, many more urgent issues that need to be addressed but for now, and for the first 100 days of the Joe Biden Presidency, these will do.

When you were campaigning for the Senate, Kamala, your motto was, “Fearless for the People.” Your scope has now widened but your motto should remain the same. As attorney general of California, you showed your mettle taking on big banks, pharmaceutical companies and transnational criminal organizations preying on vulnerable Americans. That battle must continue.

It’s time to clean house, the White House, through the agency of truth, accountability, justice and the rule of law. You have it what it takes to get the job done. Two literary figures who grew up in Oakland in early 20^th century – Gertrude Stein and Jack London - were also known for their feistiness, organization skills and social activism. Knowingly or unknowingly, you are continuing that legacy, honed by your grandmother, a skilled organizer, and your grandfather, an active member of the movement to win India’s independence from the British in the 1940s.

As a woman of color, born of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, you represent the cosmopolitan interracial democracy of America. Your story, as Joe Biden said, is America’s story. If elected, we are counting on you, Kamala, to take us from four years of darkness to the light of grace and good governance.

Memories of My Pilgrimage to Makkah in 2002

Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia, is one of the five pillars of Islam. Muslims who are physically and financially able must make the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. The annual event that draws close to 3 million Muslims from around the world has been scaled back this year due to the global coronavirus pandemic. No more than 10,000 people already residing in Saudi Arabia will be permitted to perform the Hajj, which begins on July 29 this year and lasts for five intense, demanding days of rituals, prayers and devotional acts. I performed the Hajj in February in 2002. The previous September, fanatics claiming Islam as their faith forced jetliners to crash into the World trade Center in New York, claiming close to three thousand lives. As an American-Muslim, I was shaken to the core by this horrific act of terrorism. I felt a desperate need to travel to the birthplace of Islam, to reflect on what my faith meant to me and what lessons it had for me to navigate through a world that had changed overnight. As member of an already-maligned minority, I was unsure how my fellow-Americans would act toward me, how much their opinion of Islam would influence their perception of me. This is an account of my Hajj, published in the San Jose Mercury News on Saturday, February 8, 2003. --- About 2.5 million Muslims from around the world - 45 percent of them women - are expected to congregate in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, this month to perform the Hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime obligation for Muslims. Approximately 10,000 American Muslims will be among the pilgrims seeking to turn over a new leaf in their lives through the demanding rites of the Hajj. During Hajj, Muslims affirm the centrality of God in their life. Hajj rituals include wearing special clothing, standing in the Plain of Arafat seeking forgiveness and renewal from the Creator, and walking around the Ka'ba. I performed the Hajj in 2002. I had meant to perform it earlier, but one thing or the other always came up, suggesting that my intention was perhaps flawed. In the summer of 2001, however, I made up my mind that I would be Makkah-bound the following February, no matter what. Then came Sept. 11, 2001. Terrorists claiming Islam as guidance struck the United States, taking 3,000 innocent lives. The attacks brought rage, resolve and a vivid sense of mortality. Life, we learned anew, was fleeting. Be grateful for what you have - health, family, freedom. Fulfill your obligations before it's too late. The events of Sept. 11 injected an extra dose of urgency into my planned pilgrimage. I had to travel to the birthplace of Islam to understand what my faith meant to me and how I, as a moderate Muslim, could help reclaim it from my radical co-religionists. Nothing less than the soul of Islam was at stake. On Feb. 9, 2002, I was among about 70 American Muslims at the Jeddah airport on the coast of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. We had changed into ihram (Arabic for purification), two pieces of unstitched white cloth, one wrapped at the waist and the other draped over the left shoulder. The women wore simple white dresses with head coverings but no veils. The modest clothing, one of the requirements of Hajj, signifies our equality before God and the leaving behind of all worldly ties. The formal pilgrimage was still 10 days away but we arrived early for familiarity with the ancient rites and extra time for reflection and remembrance of God in the hope that we would be at the peak of our spirituality during the Hajj. (The Hajj takes place on the same five days of the Islamic lunar calendar, from the eighth through the 12th of Dhul-Hijjah, the last month of the year. Because the lunar year is shorter than the solar year, each year the Hajj occurs about 11 days earlier than the previous year in the solar calendar). A new day literally dawned by the time we cleared customs and boarded the buses to take us to Makkah, 50 miles away. Approaching the holy city, we began to recite the unique talbiyah (invocation) of pilgrimage: Here I am at Your command, O God, here I am. Here I am at Your command. You are without partner. Yours is all praise and grace and dominion. You are without partner. We were to chant this refrain throughout the pilgrimage. After checking into the hotel, I made ablution and, still in ihram, headed for Masjid al-Haraam (the Grand Mosque) nearby. Skirting a teeming sidewalk bazaar, I soon stood at one of its many entrances. A few more steps and suddenly there it was before me, the Ka'ba (cube), a 40-foot high cubical structure of stone covered with black brocade in the center of an open courtyard inside the mosque. For over 40 years and from thousands of miles away, I had oriented myself toward this symbol of monotheism and bowed in prayers to God. Now I was no more than a hundred feet away from it and was overcome with emotion. Surging forward on a human wave and buoyed by a sense of transcendence, I joined a circle moving counterclockwise around the Ka'ba. This was the tawaf (circumambulation), another requirement of Hajj. The reflection of the blazing sun off the marble floor was blinding, but no one faltered as we went round and round murmuring supplications; men and women, young and old, firm and infirm, fast and slow, a river of humanity charged by the palpable presence of the Divine. Aerial view of the empty pilgrimage site prior to Hajj in 2020 With every completed circle, as I affirmed the centrality of God in my life, I felt a longing so deep that I thought my heart would burst. It was not until I was in my seventh, and last, circumambulation (seven implies infinity) that I dimly understood the origin of my longing: Without the physical presence of the Ka'ba and the demands and distractions of normal life pulling me this way and that, could I still hope for God to dwell in my heart always? Could an inner Ka'ba from this moment on become the focal point of my life? Only a desperate yearning for God's grace could bridge the gap between my hope and an assurance of its fulfillment. The tawaf completed, I walked to a covered arcade at the eastern edge of the mosque and walked briskly between the hills of Safa and Marwah seven times, commemorating the frantic search for water by Prophet Ibrahim's wife Hajar for her newborn son Ismail. The 1,300-foot distance between the hills was dense with pilgrims. I was surprised by the large number of Hajis in their 70s and 80s in wheelchairs performing this ritual called sa'y (effort). Looking at their radiant, tear-stained faces, it was easy to understand the significance of sa'y: Never despair of God's mercy and never stop striving, even when life appears at its bleakest. Entering a marble chamber near the Ka'ba, I drank from the cool waters of Zamzam, the spring that God brought forth for Hajar and her son, and which continues to flow to this day. Then I sought out a secluded cloister and made the supplication that was pent-up in me: I prayed for the souls of the 3,000 people who had perished on Sept. 11, 2001, and for God to grant them paradise, and I prayed for the well-being of the families they had left behind. Then I prayed for my loved ones and for all those who had asked me to remember them during my pilgrimage. After four days, we left for Medina, about 300 miles north of Makkah. It is not a requirement of Hajj to visit Medina, but most pilgrims do because of its historical association with Islam: It was the city that welcomed the prophet Muhammad when he was being persecuted by the Makkans for preaching monotheism. After a week, we left Medina for the valley of Mina, a few miles east of Makkah. We arrived the following day - Feb. 20 and the first day of Hajj - and spend the night praying and meditating in our tents. The following morning we set out for the plain of Arafat, six miles east. It is slow going as the roads are choked with traffic and many pilgrims are on foot. The wuquf (standing) in Arafat from noon until sunset represents the high point of Hajj, its emotional and spiritual climax. Two-and-a-half million pilgrims have massed here for a foretaste of the Day of Judgment. From where I stand, I can see the Jabal Rahmah (Mount of Mercy) in the distance, from which the prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon over 1,400 years ago. Standing in ihram under a fierce sun, I reflect on my life, thanking God for all the undeserved blessings, asking for forgiveness for my sins and praying for renewal, particularly renewal in Muslim thinking. Another mass movement begins after sunset, this time for a place called Muzdalifa, midway between Arafat and Mina. We offered our evening prayers there and collected pebbles from the roadside to use on the following days. Drained physically and emotionally, I fall asleep in the open over uneven terrain under a first-quarter moon. When we reached our tent in Mina the next morning, it was time to pelt Satan with pebbles, a repudiation of evil commemorating Prophet Ibrahim's rejection of the devil when God asked him to sacrifice his son. We walk to a nearby place called Jamarat (which means stoning) where the crush of massed pilgrims around the symbolic Satan - a stone pillar - is physically daunting. I barely manage to throw seven pebbles at it, one after another, before hastily retreating. This is also the day of Eid al-Adha (feast of sacrifice) when Muslims all over the world commemorate Ibrahim's faith by sacrificing a sheep. Like most pilgrims, I had earlier paid $100 to a local organization to sacrifice a sheep on my behalf and distribute its meat among the less fortunate. On the flight home, I try to reflect on the most spiritually absorbing two weeks of my life, but my mind is blank, and I can only think of my wife and children and returning to them. But slowly the thoughts drift away, and in my mind's eye I see the Ka'ba and the concentric circles that I trace around it and realize that while my pilgrimage has ended, my journey into renewal has only begun.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

From 1957 to 1971, “Papa Doc” Duvalier ruled Haiti with an iron fist. His dreaded Tontons Macoutes (“bogeyman” in Haitian Creole) were sunglass-wearing killers who slit the throats of thousands of Haitians deemed insufficiently loyal to Duvalier The dead were often left hanging in marketplaces as "examples" for anti-Duvaliers. Abducted Haitians simply disappeared under the Duvalier regime.

Under Argentina’s brutal military junta in the 1970s, over 30,000 Argentinians were kidnapped and killed during the “Dirty War.” The junta used its military might against its own people. The state-backed torture and terrorism was supported at the time by the United States. Years later, mothers and grandmothers demanded answers to the fates of their children and grandchildren but the answers never came. The dead could not speak.

Almost half-a-century later, under president Trump in 2020, sunglass-wearing federal forces, nameless, faceless storm-troopers in the style of Nazi Germany, have descended on the streets of Portland, Chicago, Seattle, Oakland and other cities across the United States, tear-gassing and abducting American citizens exercising their constitutional right to protest. War veterans - Americans who fought to defend American values in distant lands - are being mercilessly beaten. The abducted are being hauled away in unmarked cars. When mothers tried to act as buffers between the protesters and the storm troopers, they were beaten and bloodied.

We Americans have gotten used to scenes of carnage in what we call Third-World countries, lawless dictatorships where people gathering to protest inhuman conditions are mowed down with machine guns. We watch these carnage and feel superior because of the durability of our democracy, the checks and balances that temper executive power.

Surely it cannot happen here, we tell ourselves, as we sip on our morning coffee. This can never be Haiti or Argentina. We can never turn into a fascist nation.

Well, think again. Our streets are turning into war zones. Why? Because Trump, badly trailing Biden in the polls for the November 3^rd election, is determined to hang onto power by any and all means. So this most lawless president is trying to pass himself off as the law and order president by sending federal troops to kidnap and kill Americans racial and systemic injustices.

A monster is bent on destroying America. It is up to us, the voters, to reject Trump on November 3^rd, and put a stop to the murderous madness he has unleashed across the nation.

But after Trump is defeated, we have to ensure that no American president can flout the rule of law with such impunity as he did, no matter how many sycophants he managed to surround himself with. Our vaunted “Checks and Balances” type of government came up short when confronting a sadistic president. One of the first things President Biden must do is to ensure that such murderous transgressions can never happen again without immediate accountability.

The Joys of Observing Feisty and Playful Hummingbirds

I make it a point to keep the hummingbird feeder in my porch filled with bright-red nectar. I am not sure how much it helps the intended recipients who nest in the shrubs around my home. There are plenty of myrtles, oleanders and honeysuckles to offer an unending source of energy to these hyper avians.

No, the reason I frequently replenish the feeder springs from a selfish motive: I find the hummingbirds an unending source of joy. Never a dull moment when they are around.

In this time of house arrest forced by the coronavirus, I find more time than usual to observe Anna’s hummingbirds. These birds are a common sight in the Bay Area, particularly during Spring and Summer.

And what I find during the hours of the day surprises me. Pleasantly, I must add. These little bundles of energy are fierce, feisty, and territorial, ready to go to war at a moment’s notice when others intrude into what they think belongs rightfully to them. Opinionated, unpredictable birds are clearly more fun to watch than the meek and predictable kind.

There is this one male Anna that seems to dominate the brood. I see its iridescent pink throat patch (a “gorget” for purists) as it looks up and around stretching its neck. It sits on a perch next to the feeder and looks for intruders tempted to alight on the feeder for a quick sip. There is no mistaking its intention, in the way this neighborhood bully surveys its domain with a glare: “Thou Shalt Not Drink From My Well!” It makes high-frequency chirps – chik, chik, chik - designed to strike terror into the hearts of other Annas. The perch is a loop I wove from wires stringing together decorative holiday lights from the past.

So this is what I see as the sun climbs the sky and then slowly, languorously, begins to descend in the lingering summer days.

The aggressive (but with a benign side as well, as I was to find out later) Anna surveys its surrounding from its perch. Suddenly it takes off in a blur and attacks two Annas hovering near the feeder. Its “do or die” aggression is too much and the two beat a hasty retreat.

Just as suddenly and inexplicably, there is peace and three, sometimes even four, hummingbirds sip nectar from their slots, their long sword-like bills deep inside the feeder.

Within seconds the truce is broken, and a war erupts, with astounding acrobatics and aerial assaults and piercing sounds livening the show.

And so it continues throughout the day, friendship and enmity alternating between Anna’s hummingbirds for reasons hidden from me, and I suspect, from bona fide ornithologists as well.

Why do birds do what they do? It is a profound question to ask, even though the answer will always remain elusive. It is perhaps wiser to observe birds for the sheer pleasure of them, to listen to them, whether singing their hearts out or warning interlopers with high-frequency threats.

In time, some patterns will emerge – some avian variation of Fibonacci Numbers, perhaps - and we will experience a thrilling sense of discovery. 

I can see a pattern emerging for the Anna’s hummingbirds that I am lucky to observe, although I cannot articulate it yet.

No matter. Birds make the earth more hospitable and life more livable. That’s a gift that’s a source of gratitude and grace.

We Must Be Free of Fear and Full of Hope

A pandemic more lethal than Covid-19 is convulsing America now. It is the pandemic of weaponized racism. 

We have all been traumatized by the video of life seeping out of George Floyd in real time as a Minneapolis policeman pressed his knee on his neck and cuts off his air supply. “I can’t breathe,” Floyd pleaded in his dying moments. In response, the white police office casually put his left hand in his pocket, adjusted his knee for maximum force, and kept the pressure on until George Floyd literally breathed his last.

In just the last few years we have seen several African-Americans paying the ultimate price at the hands of police and vigilantes for no fault other than having the ‘wrong’ shade of skin. Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Botham Jean, Amadou Diallo, Freddie Gray, Sam Dubose, Terence Crutcher, Jamar Clark ... the list goes on and on.

Tommie Smith (won the gold medal in the 200-meter sprint finals in 19.83 seconds, first time the 20-seconds barrier was broken) and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists during the medal ceremony in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics as symbols of Black Power and Human Dignity.

Statues of Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the Campus of
San Jose State University, their alma mater. Photo by Hasan Z Rahim

Fifty two years later, not only has nothing changed, it has become worse for African-Americans, particularly after Trump's rise to power.

How many of us can really feel in our guts the existential threat African-Americans experience every time they venture out to go the grocery store, to the local Starbucks, or to watch birds in a park, wondering, "Will I return alive from this outing?"

We have regressed to the extent that we keep asking ourselves, Is this America?

Police and vigilante brutality against minorities, particularly African-Americans, has reached par with the Apartheid at its worst in South Africa six decades or so ago, even though white supremacy was written into the South African constitution, not in the U.S. Constitution.

But words are cheap. What happens on the ground is reality; hallowed words are not.

Will Gandhi's non-violence work in America? Will Martin Luther King's? Will Thoreau be our guide?

That we are forced to raise these questions show the depth to which America has fallen under Trump and his enablers. The status quo has got to change.

The knee against the neck, against the jugular veins of an entire race, cutting off oxygen, surely cannot continue indefinitely. Something's gotta give. George Floyd was not an anomaly. He was the normal.

Fear has gripped us all. But fear can only create flimsy institutions. If whites band together for Trump because they fear "others" will become majority and take over everything, well, almost everything, that was "rightfully" theirs, then we will end up with a fractured country so stark that it will consist of nothing but bits and pieces, shards that are easily weaponized.

I am brown and Muslim and I say, along with millions of my fellow-Americans irrespective of color or faith, that we must be free of fear and full of hope for America not just to survive but thrive.

If we can aspire to that, we can say George Floyd did not die in vain.

May we all wake up to the light of decency and good governance on 4^th November, 2020. 

Trees and Birds are Antidotes to the Pandemic

Yes: No doubt confinement can lead to a renewal in our relationship with nature. Covid-19 has brought the world to its knee, true, but bright people are working night and day to unlock the killer’s secret, to strip it of its corona, to defang and defeat it.

In the meantime, what do we do? Social distancing is the norm but we can go out to bask in the spring sunshine alone or in pairs, walk the edge of wilderness to, as Thoreau put it, revive ourselves with “the tonic of wildness … at the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

Suddenly we are rediscovering our primal origin simply by putting one foot in front of the other and … walking. And seeing. And observing. And wondering how we could have overlooked the wonders just beyond our doorsteps!

Well, there’s an obvious answer: For far too long we have been living by keeping our nose on the grindstone, day in and day out. Even the change of seasons did not register on our senses. Work, work, work, money, money, money. Muddle through life with blinders on.

The coronavirus pandemic has enforced isolation but it has also taken down the barrier we erected between ourselves and nature. Whether absorbing sunlight in car-free roads and pathways or simply sitting and letting nature’s pageantry pass by in slow time, we are discovering that, as Shakespeare put it, “One Touch of Nature Makes the Whole World Kin."

With the shelter-in-place, I go out walking twice daily. There are plenty of quiet trails, empty roads and acres of rolling greens near where I live. Golfers used to dominate this pastoral slice of the earth, but their swings have fallen silent and now walkers have taken over.

Lyrical Oak - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

For the first time in years, I find myself soaking in plentiful sunshine filtered by oaks, maples, willows and eucalyptuses. I lie in their seductive shadows, looking up at the clouds moving ever so slowly and the lyrical limbs of the trees creating a forest of myth and songs. By and by I become aware of the grass I am lying on and the earth beneath it. I feel my veins and nerves growing into the ground and communicating with the roots beneath me. I am woven into the roots and the leaves. I am one with the universe.

Eventually I get up and enter the realm of birds.

Robin in action - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

A robin – rotund, well-fed - lands in front of me. It begins pecking at the earth with purpose and lo and behold! a worm is wriggling in its bill. One gulp and the worm is history! I observe it from a respectful distance. Soon I realize that it has not wasted a single peck at the earth: Every time it probes, it brings out a worm. It’s as if it knows exactly where the insect is crawling underneath the ground, invisible to the human eye. How does the robin know its location with such precision, correct 100% of the time! Apparently, as I learned later from the Internet, it is mostly through its exceptional vision. A robin can see small changes in soil and grass as worms move just below the surface and locate it with pin-point precision. It also relies on its acute hearing. As worms move about, they disrupt the soil, causing small particles of dirt to rub together. While it is too faint for humans to hear, it is audible to migratory songbirds like robins. I kept thinking: If we could somehow harness the collective intelligence of the robins, we could banish or destroy this deadly coronavirus for good.

Phoebe - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

What symbol of freedom birds are! There are the phoebes snapping insects right out of the air. Sparrows and finches flit about with no cars and humans to disrupt their carefree flights. I catch a finch feeding its baby. An oak titmouse tilts its head, surrounded by dense clusters of pink trumpet flowers.

Finches feeding - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Oak Titmouse - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Suddenly my eye is drawn to a splash of bright red pecking away at the bark of a pine: an acorn woodpecker! It angles its bill precariously to probe a cavity in the pine, no doubt devouring whatever is crawling inside. It then rights itself and starts climbing up the tree in short bursts, circling around the trunk with a balance and an agility beyond world-class gymnasts. And then suddenly it’s a blur as it flies away.

Acorn woodpecker - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

And what about the pied-billed greb coolly appraising the strange humans at the edge of the pond gawking at it? Or the ducklings getting their first swimming lessons (alright, maybe the fourth or the fifth) from their parents?

Pied-billed Greb - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Ducklings get swimming lessons - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

For the Anna’s hummingbird nesting in the trees around my house, I only have to open my front door and there it is, sipping nectar from the pink flowers in the hedge directly across. Occasionally I see a pair and hear their high-pitched calls. These tiny fearless restless bundles of energy with metabolism that can put any human to shame are heavy drinkers, so I make sure my feeder is always brimming with nectar.

Anna's Hummingbird - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Northern flicker - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

On another day during my morning walk a bird alights in front of me literally out of the blue. I cannot believe the exotic nature of this bird, speckled with black dots on a pinkish body, with a dark, almost heart-shaped image on its chest, or is it a map of the United States, as if a graphics designer had imprinted it there. Before I could savor its beauty to my heart’s content, it flew away, but I was grateful for those few moments of wonder. I looked it up and learned that I had seen a northern flicker.

Thereafter, I began to see Northern flickers more and more. It’s like those words we sometimes look up in the dictionary and then we begin to see the words more frequently in everything we read. Flickers have long, sharp bills that allow them to dig deep into the earth for their meals.

Goslings - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

Another day, I saw the last rays of the sun lighting up the fur finery of goslings, watched over by their serene mother. The goslings were gallantly trying to walk, stumbling, falling, regaining balance and moving on. We use the word ‘cute’ far too often and have diminished its meaning but if the word were to describe just one type of living being on earth, it has to be goslings.

Bluebird - (c) by Hasan Z Rahim

But the bird that takes my breath away is the blue bird, part sky, part sunrise and sunset, and all beauty. The blue of the male is so pure it glistens. The females are not as showy, while fledglings are grayish with spots on them. Two pairs of bluebirds that nest in maples, oaks and beech are just a few yards from my doorstep. Sometimes I see a bluebird on a pink trumpet tree, the flowers in gorgeous contrast to its blue. Sometimes I see one with a worm dangling from its bill. These birds are alone worth losing oneself in the outdoors, particularly during this enforced isolation.

Bluebirds - (c) Hasan Z Rahim

“All of humanity’s problems,” wrote Pascal, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Well, I have a perfect excuse for feeling restless sitting in a room. At a certain hour of the day, when the sun hasn’t crossed the meridian yet and a light breeze is blowing, the bluebird beauties beckon, and I no longer sit quietly in a room alone.