Democrats Must Maintain Momentum to 2020

The tide against Donald Trump continues to run strong as evidenced by the third Women’s March against the President around the country today (Saturday, January 19, 2018) . In my city of San Jose, California, the turnout, contrary to what some had feared because of internal rifts in the leadership, was large, vocal and inspiring.

Over 20,000 San Joseans began gathering in front of City Hall as early as 10 AM and later marched to Arena Green East, demanding an end to Trump’s misrule, sheer incompetence and misogyny. “Stop the War on Women,” we shouted in unison. “Love Trumps Hate.” “Here’s to Strong Women: Be Them. Know Them. Raise Them.” “We Are Here To Stay.”

Yet there was also an undercurrent of anxiety, for it is beginning to dawn on us that there is only one constant in American politics today: Trump loyalists and Republican sycophants will not budge in their support for the president, even if he blows up the whole world and America with it. The unthinkable – a Trump win in 2020 – isn’t as unthinkable as it seemed a year or two ago, even as millions of Americans find themselves a paycheck or two away from homelessness.

Which makes it all the more imperative for democrats to get their act together where it matters – in the corridors of power. Yes, we have the majority in the House, with a record 117 women elected to Congress last November, but that does not automatically translate to a Democrat winning the White House in 2020. Unless a viable Democrat takes on Trump in the presidential race, after the inevitable bruising nomination battle, Trump may very well return for a second term, perpetuating our national nightmare. Democrats must maintain their momentum to 2020. We cannot afford to be divided among ourselves and we must not be distracted by peripheral issues. There is one and only goal: Remove Trump from office by the power of the ballot in 2020.

Bangladesh: Land of Pathos, Paradox and Natural Beauty

(All photos by Hasan Z. Rahim)

In my previous post, I had written of a dear cousin, a physician from Connecticut, who I was hoping to meet up with in Bangladesh this winter. He had arrived in the country of our birth in mid-December, two weeks before I was scheduled to arrive from San Jose, California.

But the transience of life and the absurdity of human planning cruelly manifested themselves. Suddenly he became ill and in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, he breathed his last. His body was taken by road from Dhaka, the capital, to Chittagong, the port-city by the Bay of Bengal, about 150 miles south. From there it was taken to our ancestral village 15 miles further south. He was buried in the family graveyard, 8000 miles away from Connecticut to which he had booked his flight to return in the third week of January.

And so it happened that I found myself on the 2^nd of January standing by my cousin’s grave, still bearing the evidence freshly dug earth, surrounded by ancient mango trees loud with birds. I prayed for his soul and wept.

*

Modernity has come to Bangladeshi villages. City folks arrive by car to visit relatives, unlike the boats and the steamers we relied on few decades ago. There are shopping centers and banquet halls and the hustle and bustle of the marketplace, more than agriculture, has become the norm. Farmers still carry hay on their head but instead of wearing the traditional lungi, they now wear jeans.

*

I visit Bangladesh every winter to see my mother. She is in her mid-80s and is rapidly sliding downward. She cannot talk. The guttural sound she makes to express herself is indecipherable to me. But it doesn’t matter, for my sister, a leading pediatrician of Bangladesh and our mother’s principal care-giver, understands her perfectly. Mother is literally and metaphorically in the best possible hands. There are round-the-clock nurses and maids but it is my sister’s sublime touch that sustains and nourishes her. I am a side show, but mother is still thrilled to see me and asks if I have been served food to my liking. "You know I can't cook anymore for you," she says with a wan smile. I look away to hide my tears. Then I look at her and see the tireless woman who raised six boisterous, often rowdy and difficult children, while father, a doctor, was mostly busy earning to support the family. Father had passed away almost two decades ago. Mother’s eyes well up when I recall the things father used to say, a funny man, and her shoulder sinks into the wheel chair. “Sit up straight,” mocks my sister. “Stop being mischievous,” she tells her with a twinkle in her eye. We all share in the laughter. Another day followed by another unchanging night. Only time marks the passage of sorrow and a generation with a grace that I can only sense but cannot explain.

*

I take a stroll along the shore by the Bay of Bengal. It is the Patenga beach of my childhood, as timeless as ever, boatmen plying the Karnafuli river and ship slowly moving toward the Bay. A
3-mile long tunnel under the Karnafuli is being built. When it’s completed in about 2 years, Chittagong and the outlying villages will be linked, and commerce will flourish, particularly the garment industry, and the economy will undoubtedly boom. Yet I can feel that something is being lost, that what was once unique is giving way to the commonplace and the mundane, that villages that were once a haven for restless city souls will be no more. The path forward is relentless, trampling beauty and peace in its wake.

*

Inequality is stark in Bangladesh. With a population of about 165 million and a per capita income of $2000, there are 10 billionaires and over 23,000 millionaires, most of whom got wealthy through graft and political shenanigans. There are very few beggars but frustration and repressed anger among the general population are palpable. Who can exploit whom to get ahead seems to occupy the waking (and sometimes the sleeping) hours of many Bangladeshis. But I have also seen a proliferation of philanthropic organizations managed by the locals - young and old – whose only aim in life is to serve the poor and the destitute. My own family operates a hospital in our village in Chittagong where every Friday, my sister operates on about a dozen children afflicted with life-threatening illnesses. On the outskirts of Dhaka, I visited a
self-sustaining and sprawling experimental “Park” that serve the local village population with everything from schools and clinics to groceries and theaters.

*

The natural beauty of Bangladesh is taking a hit from rapid industrialization, particularly from brick fields that continuously spew out harmful chemicals in the air to only partially meet the insatiable demands of the booming construction industry. But if you make the effort, and not worry about time, you can still discover the breathtaking beauty Bangladesh used to be known for.

Before bidding mother and my siblings good-bye, I save a day to do nothing but seek beauty even as it becomes more elusive by the year.

A Season of Grace

What exactly is grace? It is not a single, easily-identifiable quality but a combination of many, with some elusive prerequisites that make it even more ineffable. We cannot experience grace when our hearts are anxious or stressed, as they often are in these troubled times. For grace to suffuse our soul, we must be at peace with ourselves and with the world around us as is, even if partially. That, and be open to new ideas and insights, be humble and patient, and have an instinct for the sacred and the transcendent.

I speak only for myself when I say that I find grace difficult to come by, either from others or from me. Yet when I experience it, I know I am having a transcendent experience. Recently I experienced it when a dear cousin passed away. I announced his passing to the congregation at my local mosque and sought their prayers for the departed. The way they opened up to me in sympathy afterwards, the way they consoled me and shed tears with me, told me that none of us need be alone, that when we express our vulnerability and seek solace from our fellow-beings, irrespective of race and religion, we have a chance to be touched by the Divine. We have a chance to experience grace.

Grace can originate from the natural world as much as it can from humanity. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it is easier to summon grace from birdsongs, from the way the wind ripples the surface of a pond, from the wonder of stars blooming like flowers in the garden of the night sky, from the way an agave leaf holds drops of rain.

Photo by Hasan Z. Rahim

But for this to happen, we need to be attuned to the natural world, to its rhythms and patterns, to its strangeness and, well, to its grace. It will never happen when we waste our time consumed by the small screen of our devices, when social media and smartphones, to paraphrase Wordsworth, are too much with us, awake and asleep, buying and selling, wasting our powers, seeing hardly anything in Nature that is ours.

So, for a change, take a walk in the woods. Behold the magic of the sprouting tulip or the first appearance of butterflies in your backyard. Stroll along the shore and hear the song and sigh of wind and water in the waves that break at your feet. Listen to a towhee singing its heart out in the rain!

Photo by Hasan Z. Rahim

As the year draws to a close, and as the times threaten to become even more trying, each of us need to find our North Star, to focus on that which matters in our lives, be it love, friendship, living with less stuff, curbing cruel desires, revealing the power of humility to the arrogant, filling the despairing with hope.

In other words, we need to experience grace in our lives, whether summoned or unbidden, and know in the depth of our hearts, as the prophets of olden times knew, that beauty, truth, empathy, humility and unconditional love will set us free.

Allow me to end with a poem by Wendell Berry that I find myself reciting more frequently than ever before in a world that seems to have gone awry in a hurry - “The Peace of Wild Things:”

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 

Kinder, Gentler America of George H.W. Bush Being Obliterated by Trump

In April of 1991, a devastating cyclone struck Bangladesh that left over 140,000 people dead and 10 million homeless. In a country frequently ravaged by natural disasters, this was still in a category all its own. A United States amphibious task force comprising 15 ships and 2,500 men was returning to the US in May after the Gulf War. The then-president George H.W. Bush diverted this force as part of Operation Sea Angel to provide relief to millions of Bangladeshis. It eventually swelled to 4,600 marines and 3,000 sailors who were credited with saving about 200,000 lives.

Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh

Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh

Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh

As a Bangladeshi American, I remember being moved to tears by the generosity driving Operation Sea Angel. Here was America fulfilling its destiny as a “shining city upon a hill,” with president Bush acting on his personal philosophy that integral to any successful life was serving the needy.

When the 41^st president passed away at 94, I found myself wondering about America’s descent into cruelty in the two years since Donald Trump took office. Trump recently deployed American troops at the Mexican border, not for any humanitarian reason but to prevent the caravan of migrants from Central America fleeing murder and mayhem for a decent shot at life in the U.S.

We daily hear about Trump undermining America’s alliances and giving autocrats free rein in pursuing their illiberal ideologies. What is often overlooked is the naked cruelty seeping into our national psyche that is slowly but steadily changing us as a people. Considering others as less than human is becoming as blasé as posting a cat video on Instagram. If MAGA requires firing tear gas and bullets at women and children dying of thirst and hunger, why not? If coddling killers help grease the wheels of economy, what’s to complain? If demeaning women and encouraging anti-Semitism and Islamophobia can strengthen the base, what’s not to like?

People who knew George Bush used words like grace and kindness to describe him. He had his darker side, of course. He was eager to appease China’s leaders than in demanding justice for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He used his power to discredit Anita Hill to defend his Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. He appeared aloof from the daily challenges faced by ordinary Americans. But even his detractors agreed that he was a fundamentally decent human being who tried to do right and focus on what was best for America’s long-term interests. It is difficult to imagine Donald Trump writing a letter of apology to anyone, or to Japanese Americans, as Bush did, containing these sentences: “A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.”

Time and again Bush transcended partisan politics when he felt America’s future was at stake. That’s why he was able to leave this note for his successor Bill Clinton in the White House: “There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course … Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.”

It’s useless speculating if Trump will leave a similar note for his successor when he leaves office but there are hints. When pipe bombs were recently mailed to former presidents Clinton and Obama, among others, Trump condemned the act as ‘despicable.’ When asked, however, if he will call the former presidents, he said, “I’ll pass.”

Cruelty, aided by social media, is coming down in such torrent that unless we are on guard, we are in danger of normalizing it. No one – not democrats, republicans, independents or the indifferent - is immune from cruelty and its attendant vice of greed. As we mourn the passing of George H.W. Bush, we should review the state of our hearts so that we don’t end up subscribing to Gordon Gekko’s modified mantra for Trump’s time: “Cruelty and greed are good. Cruelty and greed work.”

The kinder, gentler America of George H.W. Bush will disappear unless we demand accountability from our leaders and make our republic ‘a government of law and not of men.’

Hold Trump Accountable

Organized by Indivisible East San Jose, over 500 of us gathered in front of City Hall in downtown San Jose on a busy Thursday evening to proclaim that no one, not you, not me, and certainly not president Trump, is above the law.

We were part of over 1,000 emergency protests across cities and towns in all fifty states of America, a day after Trump replaced the spineless and robotic attorney general Jeff Sessions with a lackey and a certified hack and fraud named Matthew Whitaker to oversee the Department of Justice and the ongoing investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

"Nobody is above the law" was the unifying theme, protection of the Mueller investigation the focus.

Trump made his preemptive move just two days after Democrats regained majority in the House in the midterm elections. In his crude and demagogic way, he threatened democrats with "war" if they dared to investigate him for his complicity in the Russian meddling in the 2016 election and for his nefarious financial dealings. By appointing a crony, whose appointment as acting AG was unanimously declared unconstitutional by legal experts, Trump thought he could bend the law to his will and make the Mueller investigation disappear.

Before politicians could respond, people responded. From sea to shining sea, in sunshine, rain and snow, Americans of all ages and from all walks of life came together to tell Trump that his days of holding truth and law captive to his ego was over. There was going to be accountability. The Mueller investigation will continue and when its findings are revealed, the chips will fall where they must.

On August 9, 1974, at 8:35 am PST, Richard Nixon resigned as president of the United States to avoid imminent impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Thirty minutes later, Republican Gerald Ford was sworn in as president. “My fellow Americans,” he said, “our long national nightmare is over." He added, “Our Constitution works. Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”

Forty-four years later, we find our ourselves also confronting a terrifying truth: Our two-year-long national nightmare is still with us. But with people speaking boldly to power, and with Democrats claiming the House, we are filled with hope that our current nightmare will soon be over. And people power will again prove for generations to come that ours is, and will remain, a government of laws and not of men.