#I have everything against the plague it���s become on the culture of america

[robert-c]

The ‘Culture War’

I am an early ‘Baby Boomer’, born late in 1947. I grew up in that fabled “utopia” of the 1950’s and came of age in the turbulent 1960’s. I was a sophomore in high school when JFK was assassinated and graduated college in the middle of a recession that preceded our final exit from Viet Nam.

Just the same, as most people, I have fond memories of those years when I was 18 to 25. It is that magical part of one’s life where we are at last old enough to pursue whatever dreams we want, and at the same time still young enough to imagine that we will actually achieve them.

It has long been an idea of mine that many conservatives are simply trying to preserve or restore the world they lived in at that time in their lives. Some perhaps are even trying to restore the world they believe their parents or grandparents lived in at that time in their lives, because they have heard so much about it. This is completely understandable. Unless your personal life is a complete tragedy in that period, those years will likely always hold a special appeal in your memories. It is a time in our lives when we are old enough to do pretty much anything and where we still have the energy and optimism to believe that we will achieve what we want.

However, I must be honest, and admit that while those were good years for me (a white male in America) those were far from ‘perfect’ times. Imagining that period as one in which “America Was Great” is at the least dishonest, and at the worst a betrayal of the greatest principles this country stands for. I now also believe a lot of conservative sentiment is simply fear of change.

I understand, change is fearful. Everything in our evolution, our history, tells us that the common and the familiar is the safest. And yet, it was fearful to leave the trees and survive on the plains, or if you prefer, it was fearful to leave the Garden of Eden. Yet, all of what we have become, all of what we are, is due to facing the fear of something new and moving forward in spite of it.

I remember that each day our first grade class began with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Recall with me the last lines of that pledge…“with liberty and justice for all.” Now that was and is important, because I bought (and still do) the idea that this was the place where that was true, or at least where we sought to make it true.

A lot gets made of the “generation gap” of the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s between my generation and my parents (the “greatest generation”). The Viet Nam War usually takes the “credit” for this gap, but my take on it is that the gap began when we realized that as a nation we weren’t living up to the creed our parents told us it stood for. That felt like betrayal, compounded by the fact that so many of our parents couldn’t see that underneath the unconventional clothes and hair, the principles we were espousing were essentially the ones they had taught us.

Nevertheless, change is difficult for people to accept. It is always easier to stick with the familiar, hence the old saying “better the Devil you know”. Not that any of this should be an excuse for not making things better, let alone for tolerating injustice. The core of the problem is rather than see ourselves as merely holding onto the familiar because the unfamiliar is scary, we make that fear about something else. “These changes will undermine the fabric of our society.” “It will lead to lawlessness and disintegration of the family.” And similar exaggerated and baseless claims. Few of us are going to admit to being tolerant of wrongs, so we tell ourselves stories to justify our feelings. “Those people are all criminals, you can’t trust them.” “They are inherently lazy, just doing the minimum to get by.” “They are all perverts and deviants.”

Sadly we have entered a period where too many do not trust facts, and look only for the “evidence” that supports our preconceived ideas. I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said “for every problem there is a simple solution, and it is wrong.” This is where we have gone astray, we lazily latch on to simple, even simplistic, solutions and explanations, and then invest them with the absolutism of moral certainty so we don’t have to doubt or question ourselves again.

This thinking pervades everything from repeating the failed experiment of prohibition with drugs, to imagining that preventing women from having abortions will somehow make them financially and emotionally capable of being good mothers (up to and after the birth), to thinking that a wall is a solution to any real immigration problems.

Underneath it all, I think, is a simple fear that the world is changing and we don’t know what the new one will look like, or what place we can make for ourselves in it. This fear then gets covered by anger, because anger feels strong and invigorating, and fear feels helpless. Of course the anger has to find a target, a scapegoat, and these are always easy to find if you are looking for them. Then we justify the anger and the scapegoating with simple, “it stands to reason” sort of “made to order logic”.

It is the same fear of change that spurred many whites who weren’t ardent racists to support the separate lunch counters, restrooms, etc. Because there was simply no real reason to see harm in this sort of mixing, incredibly vicious lies had to be created – stories of diseases, uncleanliness etc. were common. No one could produce a single piece of proof that any of it was real or common, but it was a “safe” excuse for the anger that covered a simple fear that the world will be different than we were used to seeing. Typically these fears have to present themselves as if they are the ones being victimized unfairly, while in fact it is they themselves who will be the victimizers of others.

I remember a lot of negative comments when commercials and even some TV shows began to show attractive and educated black women. But those were important steps because it showed us that the stereotypes were wrong. Until I saw Nichelle Nichols portraying Lt Uhura on Star Trek I didn’t know that there were any black women who didn’t look like “Mammie” (from Gone With the Wind) or Aunt Jemima (the 1950’s version, not her updated image). That visual alone, helped undo a lot of the underpinnings of racist stereotypes and gave us a hint of a world that was more than just equal opportunities for all. We must first be able to imagine a different future before we can achieve it. Again as George Bernard Shaw said (and was quoted by both Jack and Robert Kennedy) “I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”

If there is to be a single culture in the US it can only be one of inclusiveness and diversity or else we aren’t different or special, and certainly more likely than not to devolve into either neighborhood against neighborhood civil war or a tyranny of conformity. I know that sounds good to those who expect to be in the majority, in control; but I ask those people to be brutally honest and ask what if they weren’t the ones in control; now which culture do you want?

An official culture of “tolerance” and diversity doesn’t mean you personally have to agree with everyone’s point of view, only that you don’t get to punish them for it. But then that’s back to why some people’s insecurities make them feel threatened when others don’t agree with them.

I don’t have a “crystal ball”, I am not sure what the future holds. I don’t know what a multicultural, diverse America looks like at the end of the 21st century. Maybe it means a dual language world, maybe it means that there are as many stores selling cards and gifts for Eid Al-Adha as for Christmas or Easter. I don’t know, and I don’t care, because as long as one group does not have the power to force its beliefs on the rest, then America is what it always promised itself to be; a place …“with liberty and justice for all.”

I do know that when America works like it should we end up incorporating the good from other cultures into our own with our own flavor. This is true of food, traditions and celebrations. It’s why people with no Hispanic ancestry at all will celebrate Cinco de Mayo and those with no Irish background will celebrate St Patty’s Day with green beer. And when we give into the fear of change and demonize the new, we bring out our darkest and worst aspects – things we eventually (but not soon enough) recognize as shameful and unworthy of the lofty ideals on which this country was founded.

America is always at her best and greatest when we respect and embrace our different segments and work together. I always thought of it as true capstone to our way of life – a real life demonstration that all kinds of people with different beliefs could get along, be free and prosperous together. It made me think of us as an example to the world of a better way to live, to organize a society and government. I even thought that our diverse ethnic and cultural segments might give us some advantage in finding ways to communicate those values to other countries who have been plagued with religious or other internal strife. Look at those movies made during and immediately after the second world war; while they didn’t go far enough in showing diversity, you can see that they were showing a group of American fighting men from different ethnic and social backgrounds, all united in defending the American way of life, and against those who would impose a single vision of what it meant to be a worthwhile person.

Writing that all out now it almost seems naïve and idealistic, especially in a world filled with cynicism and hate, but I still believe it. I still think it is the only way out. Yes, we have never consistently or completely lived up to those ideals in the past. But that is no excuse for giving up on them altogether; especially when the alternative is so bleak.

Our nation’s founders set up a system where essentially rich, property owning men would be the most likely holders of public office; for Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency. They thought this system would prevent demagogues from preying upon the public’s irrational fears and biases. Right motive, wrong and ultimately unsuccessful methodology.

While I think our Founders could never have anticipated the America of today, I do think they understood and anticipated that the unfounded fears of a mob could be easily exploited by some for personal gain. Whether these “leaders” actually share the fears and concerns of their followers, or merely exploit them makes little difference, the damage they can do to the rule of law, to due process, and ultimately to liberty is immense.

My plea to my fellow countrymen is simple. Before this goes too far, let’s set aside our fears, and find the whole truth (not just the facts that support our fears) and see what will truly support freedom of belief and liberty for all. Let’s not forget that we are involved in an experiment that is still in progress. No where in the history of the world has there ever been a place that more fully embraced the ideal of “liberty and justice for all” than the United States of America. I would like to see us continue to be that unique example to the world for the future.

[interportant]

I Bet You Never Heard This One In School

(Image is from a map of the year 1754)

The vast empire of Tartary is a country that appears on ancient maps.

It had worldwide influence and once covered North and South America, Australia, New Zealand most of Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India and Korea. For the most part the citizens of this country were led by their own guidance of natural law honoring truth and integrity. They enjoyed a high standard of living and dwelt in harmony with nature. They built amazing edifices all over the world. The wonderous cathedrals of Europe and the enormous aqueducts in southern Europe and in Mexico. The Grand Canal in China and the Erie Canal in America. The fabulous outside arenas around the Mediterranean Sea. The Coliseum in Rome and the magnificent temples in St. Petersburg Russia. They lived in luxuriant villas. They made ziggurats, star forts, dolmens and earthen mounds all of which utilized Etheric natural energy. They created exquisite statues and crafted golden ornaments. They built the Great Wall in what is now China. Marco Polo wrote an extensive and detailed account of Asia in the 13th and 14th centuries and did not even mention a wall. The Great Wall is not seen on any maps pre-dating the late 1600’s. So most of it’s construction occurred in 1700’s and it was built to keep the encroaching Chinese out of Tartaria. The openings on the wall are on the north side towards the former Tartary not on the south China facing side. It should be called the Great Wall of Tartaria. The further back in time you go the more advanced it gets. There are many pyramids of different kinds. Megalithic temples hewn out of solid rock. The Ellora Caves in India. The colossal underground monolithic churches of Lalibela Ethiopia. Extensive underground tunnel systems. The astonishing Serapeum of Saqqara in Egypt. The earlier the monolithic stone the bigger it is and the more precision it is cut with. The earlier the structure the more incapable we are of replicating it. Never was mortar used. In past ages the world was more diverse. Skeletons of giants are found on all continents. And remains of beings with elongated skulls. Graveyards of little people and horned human like entities have been unearthed. Now it is as if these beings have never existed. Like the Tartarians they are never mentioned. We live in a virtual reality where true history is ignored and covered up. A totally false narrative is taught. Fantasies have replaced truth and everything is pushed way back to the remote past. Older advanced structures are credited to local people who came later who have no idea how to build them. Deception has been utilized to push history back a thousand years and create an artificial dark age. The time of Jesus was less than 1000 years ago. In the Middle Ages the i and J before numbers designated Jesus. Not the number one. For example i346 is 346 years after the time of Jesus. It is not 1346. Way back in the Old Testament at the time immediately following the Exodus it states that the Israelites used the Arc of the Covenant as a weapon of war. Against the Amorites, Midianites and Philistines. So the use of energy weapons has been going on for over a thousand years. It was perfected to the point where it was able to take out many millions of Tartarians. The energy weapons melted cities and destroyed the civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome which were approximately of the same time period as Jesus and were heavily influenced by Tartaria. Not only are they pushed way back into remote history, the extent of their empires have been fabricated. Destroying the pyramid complex was the first objective of the Israelites. Puma Punku which is part of the Tiahuanacu complex in Bolivia had interlocking megaliths of andesite and diorite. These are types of granite only surpassed in hardness by diamonds but they were somehow carved with laser like flatness. Now they are broken and shattered and blown to bits. Tiahuanaco and Puma Punku is said to have been built by a simple local migrating tribe. This idea is used all over the world to dismiss and cover-up the ancient advanced cultures. Energy weaponized from the Arc of the Covenant is what brought down the Walls of Jericho. The Arc was an electrical capacitor composed of silver and brass alloys and gilded with gold. It’s true purpose was to store and direct energy from the Earth to outside sources. But transporting it around was very dangerous and it caused people to become sick and die. It had a constant radiation but it also sent out intermittent electrical surges where many people were killed instantly. The ones who carried it had to wear protective clothing. The electrical capacity of such an apparatus would be over 500 volts. Opposing armies would be defenseless against such a weapon. The volume or cubic capacity of the empty coffer inside the Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza is exactly the same volume as the Arc of the Covenant. According to Egyptian tradition the Israelites plundered Egypt during the upheaval at the time of the Exodus. They took the Arc out of the so called Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramid of Giza at this time. The tribe of Israel also used religion as a means to get their foot in the door in the ruling affairs of foreign countries. A religious leader holds great power able to influence many simple minds who believe the leader’s edicts are from God. The Druids who held such sway in England were Jewish. So were the Jesuits. So have been all the Popes and the Mormon leaders. The reason why Jewish people look down upon Christians is because they know they invented the Christian religion. Jewish beliefs are just a rendition of the former appearances and interactions of planetary Gods. Books written in Tartary were rewritten and sold as Jewish history. Much of the content was fabricated and interfused with traditional local beliefs. This is how they sold their religion. They used Monks to write what they wanted making them think they were doing God’s work. The burning of old books and the rewriting of them in order to change history is the real Reformation. The Library of Alexandria in Egypt was purposely destroyed to limit knowledge. Making deals with kings was a way they were able to get control of a country’s financial system. Once one controls the money supply and its allotments then they control the country. In this way righteous kings were replaced by insurgent kings who defrauded the people to take part in unjust wars. Just fake an event such as a murder, blame it on another country, add some patriotic and religious slogans, demonize the other country and you have created a war. In the Middle Ages the spraying of viruses not only eliminated entire villages it caused the Black Plague which killed off over 70 million people in Europe. Disease was a favorite weapon used against the Tartarian kingdom. In 1346 at the Siege of Kaffa in the Ukraine the Tartarians suffered an epidemic of plague brought on by the catapulting of viruses into the city. Fire was used to burn crops and create famine. The 1490’s saw the first signs of collapse of the Tartary Empire. In 1666 the city of London was intentionally burned. Tartaria was severely weakened in 1775. But it remained until the early 1800’s. When Napoleon attacked Russia, Moscow was hit by an energy weapon. So was Washington DC in the War of 1812. These wars were actually wars against Tartarians. The first two world wars were to wipe out remaining Tartarian influences. Genghis Khan was said to be a Mogul. Mogul is just a made-up name which is then associated with Mongolia. Genghis Khan fought to restore the kingdom of Tartary and reclaim their land. His mounted warriors were called Tartars. Now Tartary is associated with hell. Many buildings in America demolished or still standing, said to be built by early pioneers or native people in America were in fact built by the Tartars. Disease was also used against the native people in the Americas. It is estimated that 95% of them perished from disease. Mostly smallpox. The Aztecs looked upon the Spaniards as the returning of their light colored god. Their beliefs harkened back to the events in the ancient sky when a light colored god came down from the heavens to save them. But these light colored people came to kill them. The Old World Order was replaced by the New World Order. And the Gregorian Calendar was instituted. To force the common people to accept a new false chronology. Peace and freedom was been replaced by being fenced up in strict borders. The suppression of Tartary coincides with the new teaching of evolution. We just think we are evolving. We have become disconnected with nature and disconnected with reality. It was not always like that. The farther back in time you go the more connected and at peace we were. With ourselves, with the animals and with the land we lived on.

We were fluttering longing creatures a thousand thousand years before the sea and the wind gave us words. How can we express the ancient of days in us with only the sounds of our yesterdays?

Source: https://bennettleeross.com/history/the-lost-empire-of-tartary-the-arc-of-the-covenant-and-the-new-world-order/

More reading: https://www.stolenhistory.org/forums/tartary-a-k-a-tartaria.69/

Also plenty of vids from independent researchers on YT

[rhetorician-meeks-blog]

*Contextual Leadership and Exceptionalism*

In my post, I will review the critical questions: how does this artifact define what it means to be an exceptional nation? What does it mean that they are defining it that way? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this definition? To thoroughly understand these questions, I reviewed the lyrics of the song Land of the Free by the band The Killers. In this song, the Killers attempt to persuade the audience to question and redefine “the land of the free” and what makes America exceptional. This song spreads the message that there is not complete equality. Which in turn could help improve the lives of others if this message were to be given the proper attention it deserves. The Killers are an alternative rock band that has gained popularity and maintained it throughout the 2000’s up until today. This song, released recently on January 10th of 2019, is a critique of the political problems plaguing America today. The song addresses problems such as racism, mass incarceration, gun control, border patrol and the wall, and all while reiterating that we are the “land of the free.” The singer, Brandon Flowers, highlights that all these people “want the same things we do.” The video for this song depicts emotional images of children who are hungry, families fighting for safety, the Mexico border and what is taking place there, and everyday people who are fighting to survive. It is hard not to assume the direct political connections this artifact is making with the current political situation going on in America. Although the music video itself is an interesting artifact, I chose to focus on the lyrics behind this song and how that defines American exceptionalism.

This video is the irony of what some people define American exceptionalism to be. The song is directed to those who think it is the land of the free, however there are clearly problems that speak against this. This video is meant to highlight that irony that takes place between society’s idea of the freedom people have, versus the reality of lack of freedom most people endure on a daily basis. In class discussion about American exceptionalism, we defined it as being strongly held values of unique aspects of American culture such as the political system. There are a lot of people who stand behind the argument that America is exceptional in the way that there are budding opportunities for the rich and privileged. However, in the lyrics of their song, the killers reject the idea of American exceptionalism due to the amount of injustice happening in the country. For example, in the lyrics, “we got more people. Locked up than the rest of the world/Right here in red, white, and blue/Incarceration’s become big business,” the Killers explicitly state the problem with America being the land of the free. Most people see America in the view of all people being equal and having fair opportunity. However, as the Killers point out, having the wrong color skin changes all of that. He also enunciated how we are the land of the free, yet we have the most people in prison than any other country. Prison is the opposite of freedom. Once again, they are candid about the irony. Towards the end of the song, Flowers sings about the wall at the border of Mexico, stating that it is “high enough to keep all those filthy hands off of our hopes and our dreams/People who just want the same things we do.” The irony in this portion of the song is examining the intense border control that people in America are demanding. Flowers is quick to call America out, saying that they are people who are the same as us and want the same things in life as us, but we push them out of the land of the free. How can a country be exceptional because of its freedom, yet that same country is willing to tear down the chances of somebody else’s dreams or opportunities for selfishness.

With that being said, an exceptional America to The Killers is a world with no racism, sexism, that helps other nations, and does not let big businesses take advantage of the people. In this song, Brandon Flowers essentially says that the while some people may consider America the land of the free and think there’s equality, but the reality is much different. The Killers want a world where people are not locked up or judged by their skin color. It is as simple as that the Killers want a world where everyone is treated fairly and equally. That is what would make America exceptional. The Killers are suggesting that American exceptionalism should be everything America isn’t today. He gives specific examples, such as mass incarceration and racism, but insists on a rethinking of America being the “land of the free.” Rethinking social injustice and how it affects America exceptionalism would be beneficial to minorities of America. Re-examining the ways the justice system and society functions based upon race will produce more a positive effect than a negative. One disadvantage to The Killers’ idea of rethinking what making America exceptional is the potential motivation American exceptionalism gives to the population. In his article, Cha discusses several viewpoints on American exceptionalism and the implications. In one specific example, Cha uses Ronald Reagan’s entire political campaign revolved around the tactic of using American exceptionalism to keep the nation happy and motivated during hard times. Cha states that Reagan’s administration had “compatriots of the unique American identity and ‘American greatness’ in order to overcome the reality of another great crisis” (2015, pg. 353). Simply put, Reagan helped the nation get through tough times by using national pride to keep the nation motivated through hard times. Rethinking what American exceptionalism is could possibly affect the positive affects strategies such as Reagan’s produced.

In summary, American exceptionalism is a point of view that varies from person to person on what makes the nation better than other nations. On a large scale, people think the freedom and opportunity in America is what makes it exceptional. The song Land of the Free by the band The Killers calls out the problems with America being the land of the free. While changing the definition of what makes America exceptional has advantages and disadvantages, it is overall better to question the stereotype of America having equal opportunity. This is exactly what The Killers highlight in their song, and the message of this song could produce mass societal change if people choose to reexamine ‘the land of the free’ such as The Killers have.

References:

Cha, T. (2015). American Exceptionalism at the Crossroads: Three Responses. Political Studies Review, 13(3), 351–362. https://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12091

Kunde, Margarette. (2018). Contextual Leadership and Exceptionalism [in class lecture].

The Killers. [TheKillersMusic]. (2019, January 14). Land of the Free. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIT0ucf_gys

[jonjost]

Cara Clarinha

The days now pass in a dense fog, one of mis- and dys-information, a tidal wave of news from around the world, of how many infected, how many dead.  Each day the numbers leap, each day the social responses become harsher.  Now it seems half the world is ordered to stay at home (if you have one).  Highways are empty, hospitals are full.  In Italy corpses line the corridors of some places.  A plague is upon us.  Not only that of this virus, but of our own ill behavior.  One feels the sense of dread thickening in the air, the fear of change, drastic change, casting across the sky like a leaden cloud.  While some suffocate literally, which is how one dies from the coronavirus, metaphorically we are all suffocating, choking on a blunt reminder of what we have actually done to our globe and ourselves.  The skies clear.  And somewhere deep inside some clarity begins to come into focus, and those suddenly not working 8 to 14 hours a day, frantically going to and from, buying things of habit, find time to think a moment.  And other things become clear: that the frantic world in which your job, your life, your imagined future were all invested may just vanish.  And it may.

Reading tea leaves is a nice mystical thing, like Tarot cards and astrology charts.  Some like to do these things and some take them seriously.  I instead read other things – hard, often unpleasant facts, social, political, and physical realities.  I do not come to conclusions because I like them, but because that is what I see, piecing one thing and another together.  For now many decades I saw this kind of conjunction of realities coming together to produce something like what is going on now; that at some point the stresses constructed into our society and our way of living – our “life-style” would become too great, and it would all quickly collapse.  Not long ago there was a period when catastrophe theory was academically popular.

While I was long ago familiar with this theory, though I had hardly “studied” it, I had an interesting experience which took the theory out of the sterile world of academia, and put it right in front of me.  Back in 1975 or so, I had driven all the way from Montana in a VW van, to San Diego and on all the way to the East Coast.  It was for my first screening at the Museum of Modern Art.  The van had no brakes, and it is a long, interesting story, but best told another time.  At all events I went for a screening in New England, meeting for the first time Peter Hutton (who died 4 years ago, come June), and saw his wonderful films the first time.  And he saw my Speaking Directly, which he liked and he wondered how I could like his films, so very different.  Some people seem to think one can only like work that is the same as one’s own.

From Speaking Directly

Where he lived there was a Porsche garage, and since they are VW’s underneath, I traded them a lid of the world’s worst grass I’d grown in Montana, to fix my brakes.  At the time the Tet offensive was going on in Vietnam – that was the last military action by the Vietcong against America – and they were moving into Saigon and American troops were fleeing, taking helicopters from the roof of the US Embassy.  That was on the radio while the mechanic was taking the wheels off my van to fix the brakes.  The wheel drums were rusted onto the spindle, and he explained rust was a crystalline structure and when the tool he was using applied enough pressure the structure would suddenly collapse, and the 30 kilo piece of steel would just pop off.  He advised me to step back as I wouldn’t like that landing on my foot.  A few days before the US government had assured the public that in Vietnam all was stable and not to be concerned.  Standing in that garage I put the two together, the rusted corroded matter of my van, and the corrupted, corroded social/political matter in Vietnam.  The same.

Peter Hutton and New York Portrait 1

And so today as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the world, it is quite similar.  The economic system which we have built under the rubric “globalism” under “neo- liberal” ideology, which is really just capitalism unrestrained from its own tendencies and unchecked by regional forces, has, in combination with modern medical practices – meaning from the last 100 years – and other factors, including our methods of agriculture and manufacturing, all come together to make this rupture.  It is an unsustainable system and finally the stresses on it have caused it to stumble, and fall, just as did the rusted structure on my van’s wheel, and Saigon, when there was enough stress to break the seemingly stable system.

Whether this virus will accomplish such a rupture or not in the long run, it has certainly in a very short period caused a great disruption in our “life as usual.”  While there are now, of course, various conspiracy theories as to just how, who, what, why all this has happened (that the US did it, China did it, etc. etc.), my sense is that while it was not deliberate, it is a consequence of our cumulative actions and abuse of the natural world in which we live.

Philip Guston

I would hope this great break in what we thought of as “normal” would give us pause about resuming things as usual once this has passed.  That we would, globally, and locally sit down and seriously think about what it is that we have done so terribly wrong – not just to produce this virus, but to produce the ultimately deeply damaging and unhappy world we have created.  For this to actually happen I think this current crisis must last into the summer or autumn, enough of a shock to our sense of “normal” to settle in deep enough for us to stop and consider everything.  So I hope.  The hard-nosed observer of our cultures, though, has his doubts.

Matilde, in Portrait

The other day, my “other” Italian family, with Tilde being the messenger, sent me word that so far they are all OK (the older of them are in their 80’s so this is very risky for them, and they live in Lombardia where the virus has hit hardest to now).  And she sent me photos of her grandchildren, writing she hope it would make me smile.  Which it did, though also it brought tears to my eyes, thinking of the possible world they may grow up in.  Unless, as I suggested above, we seriously and deeply change our societies, their values and behaviors.

Famiglia Rebosio

And as the world has indeed changed, so has the little modest and really not very important world of cinema.  Festivals are cancelled around the world, including Cannes.  Productions have come to a halt (a big animation feature my friend here in Portland, Mark, was working on has stopped for two weeks, for now, but I imagine it will be at least two months and perhaps more, or perhaps it will simply be stopped despite its Oscar winning director).

With the changed circumstances I have decided to post Pequenos Milagres on-line, for the moment for free.  Aside from the last minutes of it, it is a joyous and beautiful work, so perhaps in these hard times around the globe it might make some joy for people to see it. I hope so.  And for you.  Preferably see on a good screen and with a good sound system or headphones.   It is here.

From Pequenos Milagres

I assume you are, like many others, staying at home.  I hope things go well for you, Tiago, and your friends.  I am staying as best I can in, avoiding other people and trying as best I can to not contract the coronavirus.  And if I do I hope my body can deal with it.  I have no medical insurance so I don’t really know what would be done with me if I required hospitalization – though I would I think try to refuse it.  We shall see.

Amo-te, Clarinha.  Be safe and be well.

I love you

Teu pai,

jon

  Uma Lettera para Clara: O Contágio 3 Cara Clarinha The days now pass in a dense fog, one of mis- and dys-information, a tidal wave of news from around the world, of how many infected, how many dead. 

[dweemeister]

Frozen II (2019)

Six years ago, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee directed Frozen, a film that became a pop culture phenomenon destined to induce musical madness for anyone who needed to babysit a child. I contended in 2013, as I do now, that Frozen had the best-looking CGI for a Walt Disney Animation Studios film at that point in Disney history and its musical score by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez a great asset. Let me get a few other unpopular opinions (at least, on tumblr) out of the way now. As the 2010s close, Frozen still has the best musical score and original song (“Let it Go”) of any Walt Disney Animation Studios film released in the twenty-first century (the century is still young). Due to overexposure and criticisms borne out of bad faith, social media turned on Frozen quickly. But I think one thing yours truly and Frozen’s harshest critics can agree upon is how little did we know that Frozen would be as successful as it has become, how it crossed cultural and linguistic barriers that other films in the recent Disney animated canon could not.

When its sequel was announced by now-disgraced John Lasseter (Lasseter served as producer but is uncredited on Frozen II), the weight of expectations hoisted upon Buck and Lee (who wrote the screenplay) must have been tremendous. As Lasseter often said in the mid-2010s when announcing a Disney or Pixar sequel, he claimed that a Disney or Pixar sequel only comes to fruition when, “the filmmakers who created the original have created an idea that is so good that it’s worthy of [the] characters.” Frozen II is a gorgeously-animated film that misfires on its characterizations and plotting, but deserves partial credit for attempting to communicate a worthy message to those children – some who are just now navigating the confusing years of teenagehood – who fell in love with and have repeatedly watched the 2013 original.

Time has passed since we last saw our heroes, Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) of Arendelle. Little has changed in Arendelle in those years, with Kristoff and his reindeer Sven (Jonathan Groff as both) presumably still harvesting ice and Olaf (Josh Gad) basking in the fact he has a magical coat of permafrost. One evening, Elsa (and only Elsa) hears a siren in the distance, emanating from the north’s Enchanted Forest – which is surrounded by an impassable mist. A substantial but manageable disaster disrupts life in Arendelle shortly after the mysterious call, forcing the protagonists towards the Enchanted Forest. There, they meet a lost Arendellian military unit that has been in constant warfare with the Northuldra tribe since around the time Elsa and Anna’s parents have been missing. Elsa and Anna help the factions agree to an armistice. Amid this peace, Elsa travels even further north to confront her family’s past to understand her unsettling present.

Frozen II’s greatest failing is, surprisingly, not Jennifer Lee’s tiresome insistence on impossibly frequent humor and dialogue that sounds as if the characters have been airlifted from contemporary America – though there is plenty of both in this film. Instead, it is an elementary building block to any art that attempts a narrative: understandable, meaningful motivations. With Elsa, she journeys northward on little else but a hunch and bedtime stories imparted to her during her childhood – flimsy reasoning at best. For Anna, she apparently has become paralyzed in the fear of disrupting how she and her sister have been interacting with each other and their lives in Arendelle. Lee needs to imbue Anna with depth here, as it is unclear exactly what Anna fears losing most. Kristoff accompanies Anna and Elsa because he wants to offer marriage to the former, doing so with the competency of a Sous-chef asked to perform a coronary artery bypass. My apologies to any Sous-chefs with medical experience. And, oh yes, Olaf goes along because Disney needs to make that sweet green.

Lee also cannot help but pack her screenplays with exposition. If this is any indication of how intelligent she thinks moviegoers are, the results are not flattering to anybody. There are worthy ideas in this screenplay, yet they are obscured by plot contrivances needed to position characters in certain spots that reeks of narrative convenience or thematic cold feet. An idea that seems to have been inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender does not inspire additional confidence, but perhaps a few guffaws and rolled eyes. The Northuldra tribe are inspired by the Sámi people, an indigenous people native to northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as far northwestern Russia. Frozen II dances around the idea of having something to say about imperialism – in terms of cultural/racial supremacy, coercive diplomacy by gun barrel or bayonet, environmental exploitation – but declines to do so.

Elsewhere, Olaf’s characterization is still that of the buck-toothed, boisterous goofball that he is. But unlike the first Frozen where Olaf exuded childish silliness, he is spouting philosophical claptrap that will pass over the heads of children. Frozen II is preening here: “Hey, parents showing your children Frozen II! You’re smarter than your grade schooler; isn’t that hilarious!?”

This contempt extends to a late scene where Lee’s screenplay has Elsa scoff at a reference to “Let It Go”. The moment, brief as it is, is as perplexing as it is infuriating. Assuming that it is supposed to be played for laughs, why would Chris Buck and Lee think that those who despise 2013′s Frozen care to watch this sequel? Why would they think that, for the children who adored Frozen upon its original release and since then (while probably encountering few people bashing on the film), that moment would be the slightest bit humorous? Considering the number of people – even if it is only one person in the world (I’d wager everything including the kitchen sink that the actual number is higher) – who found inspiration in “Let It Go” and its use in narrative and character development context, how could they be so disrespectful to those individuals as well as Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez? Perhaps this is rabblerousing over something insignificant, but it seems to exemplify a level of contempt the filmmakers have for elements from the previous film and, potentially, the audience willing to watch the sequel.

Every Walt Disney Animation Studios film released since Winnie the Pooh (2011) has treated tropes introduced in the older Disney animated canon in similar fashion. Disney history, even for a film made six years ago, is a punchline, not to be celebrated or engaged with critically. The Walt Disney Company of 2019 is one preferring to bury its past (this also includes the companies it has acquired). If there, like in the early 2000s, is a war for the animation studio’s soul, it is playing out in how these films are being made.

Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez’s sufficient musical score is worse, title-by-title, when compared against the 2013 original. “All Is Found” feels out of place in this film because of its orchestration – this is the only song in either Frozen film using Nordic instruments and inspired by Nordic folk music. As interesting as this song is lyrically (and for how those lyrics play into what eventually occurs in this film), it suffers from the same problem plaguing “Frozen Heart” from the first film in that they are just too musically detached from the showtune style that the Lopezes bring to Frozen II. “Some Things Never Change” lays out the subtext and the film’s dramatic irony too obviously, and Groff’s silly vocals to imitate what Sven would sound like is a juvenile decision. Shortly after, “Into the Unknown” – which features the voice of AURORA as the mysterious Dies Irae-like voice that only Elsa can hear – is sung by Elsa with bombast. As talented as Menzel is, “Into the Unknown” is overproduced, contains an excessive amount of vocalizations, and has no business being the third song sung within the opening twenty or twenty-five minutes of a film. The early placement of “Into the Unknown” creates pacing issues in the film’s first half from which it almost does not recover.

In the film’s second half, we find Kristoff a frustrated figure, unable to find a moment to pop Anna the question. In the film’s acid trip of a musical number, Jonathan Groff, as Kristoff, is given a 1980s power ballad named “Lost in the Woods” for curious reasons. “Lost in the Woods”, for reindeer-related reasons, is the most entertaining number in Frozen II, but, like “All Is Found”, makes no musical sense – it is framed as a homage to multiple 1980s power ballad music videos that one could have found on MTV in that decade. Maybe the part of me that is irritated by the swathe of 1980s nostalgia sweeping American popular culture right now is being hypercritical, but I will acknowledge that – when listened to divorced of narrative context – “Lost in the Woods” is a fantastic musical homage. Frozen II’s thematic parallel to “Let It Go” is actually “Show Yourself”, not “Into the Unknown”. It is yet another song demanding much from Menzel and has been subordinated by, presumably, Disney marketers and executives.

Before mentioning the film’s final song, the Lopezes should be praised for steering the plot away from stormy waters, lending a needed course correction to an otherwise hapless screenplay. “All Is Found”, “Some Things Never Change”, and “Show Yourself” provide a necessary musical boost that might otherwise have contained even more tedious exposition. To Frozen II’s credit, the story’s second half is unexpectedly, but never unjustifiably, melancholic. The best song on this soundtrack just so happens to provide the greatest narrative boost to Frozen II in the film’s darkest moments. “The Next Right Thing”, echoing a line repeated a few times from different characters, is a musical and thematic triumph. The song, eschewing lyrical/poetic meter (this is a radical decision; very few songwriters in the history of Broadway musicals and Hollywood would dare to even compose one song with no identifiable lyrical meter), literalizes how one carries on in the midst of depression and loss. Bell cries rather than sings some of the song’s lines, but, given the lyrics, it is deserved.

Through "The Next Right Thing” and what transpires to the film’s conclusion, Anna and Elsa – in their distinct ways – learn how to answer the most baffling questions children and adults will ever face. How does one regain their bearings when one’s peers and loved ones all seem to be changing into something unrecognizable? How can the tragic decisions of the past be resolved depending on who made those decisions? I’m not saying Frozen II is an articulately-crafted drama examining the human condition, rising to the heights reached by cinema’s most celebrated auteurs. but it is at least attempting to pose difficult questions to its audience – and yes, to the children and teenagers that have and will grow up with Anna and Elsa and company – that numerous other animation films from other major American studios would dare not attempt. The bar may not be high, but the filmmakers – and yes, the Lopezes – provide a small, yet necessary, lift.

For the Walt Disney Animation Studios, what has been deemed the “Disney Revival” in some quarters has been predicated on the company’s financial strength over the 2010s, ignoring how distractingly metatextual and behaviorally contemporary these recent films have been. If one is looking for 2010s animated films reflecting and extolling humanity’s goodness and/or affirming cultural and ideological empathy, do not look to the major American animation studios for these qualities. In some future year, may those audiences looking back on the films that they cherished as children take inspiration in Anna and Elsa’s courage when facing life’s uncertainties. May they teach a few grizzled movie fans to see something that only they could because of their youth.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[ivoryandbonerpg-blog]

CONGRATULATIONS, Ace!

You have joined the ranks of the second Wizarding War as your original character SARIA YOUNG under the Freya Mavor faceclaim. In order to fully prepare for what the Dark Lord has in store for you, it is advised that you read through the new member playbook, create your account within the next 48 hours (as this is a secondary character for you, a sideblog to your main character is acceptable), notify the headmistresses, and immerse yourself into the world of a war-torn wizarding world.

Your journey awaits you--in the darkness, in the light, or somewhere in-between.

OOC INFO

1. NAME: Ace

2. AGE: 18

3. TIMEZONE / ACTIVITY: EST - - I like to think I am a 6 or 7 with activity. I’m starting in my first semester of uni so activity may lag from time to time, but I’ll be around most nights!  

4. PREFERRED PRONOUN(S): She/her

5. TRIGGER WARNING(S): omitted for applicant privacy

6. HAVE YOU READ THE RULES?: omitted for admin use

7. HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT IVORY AND BONE?: Idk…I guess I know the admins somehow and ask them constant questions about everything.  

8. FAMILIARITY WITH RPING?: I’ve been an acitive role player for about six years! I’ve been on tumblr for almost two, and have had the pleasure of being a member of La Lune! I now also play Fenrir Greyback and Ginny Weasley here :)

9. HOW DOES YOUR CHARACTER FIT?: Saria, in short, is a very earnest sort of girl who truly wishes she can do everything she can to help The Order. She provides a window into what the innocent side of the war looks - she is one of many who have not been directly targeted. She has no qualms, no history, and next to no knowledge of just what exactly is going on - just like many of the younger generation involved in the war does. The whole thing was simply thrust upon her in a way that resembled the countless other refugees, yet just like many, Saria is a civilian forced to take a stand, but stands with what she  believes is right. In addition to providing this look at the ‘normal’ people in a war, Saria is a Seer who wants to do anything and everything she can to help. Though her abilities are confusing and she can’t always figure out what her visions mean, she simply wants to do good and help those who want the same. I think this could make her a valuable member of the group over all, as she can provide some otherwise impossible to obtain information about the Inner Circle and their Death Eaters without risking loss of life. She’s also a lil bug and just wants a family, and I think The Order can provide that for her.

IC INFO

1. CHARACTER NAME: Saria Young

2. CHARACTER AGE: 18

3. CHARACTER BASICS: Pronouns: She/her

Blood-Status: Half-blood

School: Ilvermorny

House: Pukwudgie

Allegiance: The Order

4. TOP THREE FACECLAIMS:

1) Freya Mavor

2) Sarah Bolger

3) Anna Popplewell

5. CHARACTER SEXUALITY: Heterosexual

6. PERSONALITY TRAITS: friendly, shy, clumsy, earnest, clairvoyant

7. BIOGRAPHY: 

 The Wizarding World was one full of magic; one where beings gifted with extraordinary abilities could flourish and grow. Creatures straight from one’s imagination filled the air and roamed the earth, and the humans who could tame them could grow flowers with a flick of one’s wrist or a wave of their wand. The world of magic was straight out of a fairy tale. Yet, not every fairy tale has a happy ending, and this magical world is not always bright. Treachery still lives, and little girls are still abandoned by families who do not want them. Once upon a time, a young woman — a witch born of pure blood — fell in love with a man who had once been clueless of the magic around him. This man came with a reputation for charming women into his bed.  There wasn’t a woman who didn’t fall victim to his charms. The witch thought she might change him, thought she might entice him with her love, her magic, and her powerful family. Her advances seemed to work, and with her heart filled with joy, the two slipped between silk sheets. Yet, come morning, the freckled young woman was no different than all of his other triumphs. He was gone, leaving nothing but the memory of his skin against her own. Once upon a time, a pureblood witch would become pregnant with the child of a no-maj. It would be Rappaport’s Law that would doom the unborn child. Despite that the law had been repealed in 1965, the pureblood families who controlled the southern region of the United States still followed its rules religiously. A wizard, under no circumstances, could marry a no-maj, let alone have a child with one. Worst still, the child would be a half-blood, something despised by the people of the society she lived in. Try as she might to hide the growing swell of her stomach, her parents would discover her secret, and sweep her into hiding until the child was born. The young woman grew ill as the date grew closer, and by the time her daughter was born, the freckled young woman had lost her life. The child was a demon in her grandparents’ eyes. A murderer, spawn of the man who’d killed their daughter, and a half blood with the piercing blue eyes of her father. From the moment she’d come into this world - red faced and wailing for her mother — Saria Young had been destined to be abandoned by a family she would never know. The only reason Saria found her way into the system was her resemblance to her dead mother. Freckled cheeks and a mop of blonde curls, it was what ultimately saved her life, for her grandmother was consumed by guilt. She couldn’t dispose of the small bundle, for it resembled her own daughter as a babe…she found the nearest hospital and left her upon its steps. It was the only kindness her grandparents would ever show her— they couldn’t love a child who had her father’s blue eyes and no-maj blood. From that moment on, Saria would bounce from foster home to foster home - a total of twelve in her life - a ward of the state of Louisiana, a witch who never knew she wielded the magic of her mother. Her magic showed itself early in life, though the no-maj she’d been raised as didn’t have a clue as to what it was. Instead, her strange episodes and dreams were dismissed as a medical disorder. Epilepsy: that’s what she’d been diagnosed with, no doubt given to her by her birth parents. It was hard to make friends when you constantly moved between foster homes, and harder when your eyes would roll into the back of your head and you could collapse at a moment’s notice. Harder still to find a family, when they wanted an undamaged child, one who was normal. We just can’t handle her, they’d say. She’s too much. It became a painful, sickening routine. Each time she thought she’d found a mother and father to call her own, they’d bring her back, too afraid of her episodes to sign the papers and make her their daughter. It caused her to close in on herself; alone and afraid, the little witch would soon become as fragile as glass. As time went on, Saria accepted this fact, and found herself becoming content in the group homes of New Orleans, where she didn’t have to feel bad about her condition and could spend her days cooking and mastering the unique foods found in the French Quarter instead of pursuing relationships. She would age out of the system one day, open a restaurant, and be happy with her life. She was content, that is, up until an owl perched itself in the window of her shared bedroom. She was content, up until she read the letter clasped in its beak. She was content, up until the moment she discovered the world she’d been destined to be apart of. Dear Miss Young, we are pleased to invite you to attend Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Those were the words that would change her life forever. From that moment on, Saria’s place in the world seemed a little more clear, though shy and timid she stayed. It would be only a week before she was sailing towards a new world, away from live oaks blanketed by Spanish moss and the swamps of Louisiana. The Big Easy faded behind her, replaced by the towering mountains of the north. Ilvermorny welcomed her with open arms, and when the Pukwudgie raised its arrow, and the Thunderbird splayed its wings, Saria followed the arrow and shot into her new life. Here, Saria thrived under the colors of pink and white. Shy and docile, yes, and particularly clumsy with her wand, the young half-blood was accepted without a second thought. Her peers found her episodes normal, her predictions amazing and other-worldly — her classmates insisted that she was a Seer, a witch who could see the what others could not. She flourished like a flower in spring in Divination classes, and when she returned home each summer, she discovered others of her kind walking Bourbon Street. Tucked away in the touristic voodoo and physic shops of the Crescent City was the very magic that flowed in her veins. All her life, her culture and her heritage had been right under her nose. Finally, Saria Young had found where she was meant to be. That all changed at the end of her sixth year. Saria collapsed in the middle of the dining hall, her body spasming, her eyes a milky white as images of war and death tore through her mind.  When she woke, it was too late. The news had already reached Ilvermorny. She couldn’t warn them, for The Dark Lord had truly returned, and North America was finally plunged into the horrors that had plagued Europe for months. She had no choice but to flee with her peers, for even a half-blood could be seen as worms in the eyes of his followers — especially one raised in the No-maj world, one who could not prove her suspected line f. To the Death Eaters, she would be no better than what they called a Mudblood. Now, she remains in the safe arms of The Order, where her abilities might be of some use. But what can a Seer do, when everybody alreadyknows the future is as dark as it is terrifying? CONNECTIONS: TATIANA VALENTINA: Tatiana is the sister she never had. Saria couldn’t have possibly found a better friend than the fellow mop of golden curls — the two instantly fell in with one another, forming a bond that was sure to remain until their curls turn gray. When Saria arrived in Europe, it was Tatiana who saw her panic and her fear through the frenzy of refugees, took her hand and told her it would be alright. Without that horrible grasp of English, Saria would have been hopelessly lost. She considers the expressive yet soft girl to be closest friends, and has developed a fierce protectiveness of her. VIKTOR KRUM: Saria’s visions have come and gone her entire life— but one thing that stayed constant was the image of a dark haired boy and his stunning smile through the watery view of the Sight. Each time she’d collapse, she would see him. It began as glimpses — several seconds, at most — but as the rise of the Dark Lord grew closer, they grew longer and clearer. She considered him something of a guardian angel, smiling each time her gift brought a glimpse of the future as if to tell her everything would be alright. But that day — almost a year ago now — she and the Ilvermorny half-bloods stumbled into the waiting arms of The Order, he was there. Ragged looking, and that smile was gone, but it was him. She’s gone a whole year at Grimmauld Place with saying little more than a few sentences to him when he greets Tatiana. A whole year of freezing and dashing from rooms as soon as he walks in, her heart pounding in her chest. The Second Sight is a confusing force, and she doesn’t know why she sees him in her visions, but one thing is certain: Viktor Krum is the man of her dreams.

8. WRITING SAMPLE: omitted for applicant privacy

[thisdaynews]

The Border Patrol Hits a Breaking Point

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-border-patrol-hits-a-breaking-point/

The Border Patrol Hits a Breaking Point

Vice President Pence’s Friday visit to a Border Patrol detention facility in Texas didn’t go according to plan. Meant to pressure Democrats to address the migrant crisis at the southern border, the visit instead appeared to horrify those who accompanied Pence and raised pointed questions about Customs and Border Protection, America’s most troubled law enforcement agency.

Nearly 400 migrants were crammed into a converted vehicle sallyport; many hadn’t showered in weeks, and space was so tight there was no room for cots for them to sleep. “The stench was horrendous,” theWashington Post’sJosh Dawsey wrote, noting that Border Patrol agents were wearing face masks and saying, “Pence appeared to scrunch his nose when entering the facility, stayed for a moment and left.”

Story Continued Below

“It’s tough stuff,” Pence said. “I was not surprised by what I saw,” the vice president told reporters. “I knew we’d see a system that was overwhelmed.”

The visit capped one of the worst weeks for the CBP and the Border Patrol’sin modern memory, as the agency tasked with meeting record-setting numbers of migrants seeking asylum from violence in Central America reeled from personnel scandals, leadership scandals and the scandal of its treatment of those asylum-seekers. Agents were caught making racist comments in a Facebook group—a group that the chief of the Border Patrol evidently was a member of herself—and minting a commemorative coin mocking the idea of taking care of children and migrants.

Last week’s scandals followed months of worrisome headlines concerning CBP: At least 12 migrants have died in the agency’s custody since September, and its agents have been accused of everything from sexual abuse of migrant children, to trafficking firearms, to running down a border crosser with a truck. One Border Patrol agent was arrested and charged with being a serial killer. (Both Border Patrol union President Brandon Judd and CBP did not respond to requests for comment for this piece.)

Now it will be Mark Morgan’s job to clean up these problems. He was appointed to be the agency’s new acting head last Sunday after a short stint asacting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where he spent much of his tenureadvocating for a series of dramatic, publicly telegraphed immigration raids that ended up playing out more quietly than expected over the weekend.

But CBP’s 16-year track record suggests the problems run deeper than one commissioner—especially a temporary acting one—will be able to fix, and it’s even less clear whether Morgan is the man to fix it.

The problems underlying CPB’s almost theatrical failures trace all the way back to its creation amid the post-9/11 reorganization of the Department of Homeland Security and have been exacerbated by a longstanding failure of leadership that extends up to both Congress and the White House and has lasted through three administrations. Both the modern Border Patrol and its parent CBP have been plagued by poor leadership and management at all levels, and by recruiting challenges that have left them with a subpar, overstressed workforce and a long-running toxic culture. Most deeply, however, they are plagued today by a huge and unresolved mismatch between the agency’s founding identity and its current mission.

Most Border Patrol agents serving today signed up for a tough job in a quasi-military agency protecting the country against terrorists and drug dealers. They’ve found themselves instead serving as a more mundane humanitarian agency—the nation’s front-line greeter for families of migrants all too happy to surrender themselves after crossing the border. CPB doesn’t have the culture to meet this challenge, nor does it have the manpower or support from the rest of government. The latest bad headlines have come even as the promises made by candidate Donald Trump to invest in the Border Patrol have not been fulfilled; far from an increase of thousands of agents, the agency is actually now smaller than it was under Barack Obama. As one former Border Patrol union official told me, “Trump is not delivering.”

It’s unclear how willing or able Morgan will be to bring the agency’s culture and resources in line with its actual responsibilities. In 2016, the former FBI agent was appointed chief of the Border Patrol amid the agency’s lone period of serious reform, and was actually been fired by Donald Trump as one of the president’s first actions in office. But he has unexpectedly earned his way back into the president’s favor by appearing repeatedly on Fox News as a pro-Trump, anti-immigration pundit. In his most infamous turn on TV, he told Fox host Tucker Carlson in January that he could tell whether a kid would become a member of the violent MS-13 gang just by looking in his eyes.

The ferocity of Morgan’s pro-Trump conversion has puzzled former CBP colleagues, who remember him as a reasonable, reform-minded—even progressive—officer and agent who had been originally lent to the agency by then-FBI Director Jim Comey. “Many of the opinions he’s voiced in the last two years were never said when he was at internal affairs and at the Border Patrol,” one former colleague told me. “It’s a bit of a surprise.” They were similarly surprised when the president appointed Morgan as acting ICE director in May as Trump sought leaders at DHS who would execute his harsh immigration plans—and even more so when Trump now returned him to the agency Trump himself had originally fired Morgan from.

Even if Morgan does try to bring much needed reform to CBP in the spirit of reform, though, he won’t find patching things up so easy. Congressional leaders might express shock at today’s most recent crisis, and paint the trouble as a symptom of Trump’s heartless policies, but in fact the agency’s problems are deep-seated, and they have lingered in plain view for years.

***

Being a Border Patrol agent is often hard,grinding work—outdoors, in cold northern winter nights and searing southern desert summer days, confronting high-stress, volatile situations, where you never know whether the next person you encounter could be an armed drug smuggler or a family searching for safety. The pay isn’t great and duty stations are often in remote areas, where it’s hard to house spouses or children.

For decades, patrolling the border had been highly lonely work, too, as agents often patrolled alone with backup sometimes hours away. The agency was comparatively tiny, and amid the security reckoning that took place in the wake of 9/11, its own studies concluded the Border Patrol did not have “operational control” over 97 percent of the border. It had money to handle just 60 detainees a night nationwide—fewer detainees than are today often crammed into a single cell inside the overstretched facilities along the southern border.

That all changed after al-Qaeda’s terror attacks. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge was brought to Washington to serve as George W. Bush’s first homeland security adviser and later the first secretary of the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security, and he recalled to one interviewer that he faced a seemingly unending onslaught of federal funding: “People just wanted to give me unlimited amounts of money.”

DHS’s newly created Customs and Border Protection agency, created out of the merger of multiple other agencies from across government, was primarily comprised of two distinct units: The blue-uniformed officers known as the “Office of Field Operations” who police the nation’s legal ports of entry and border crossings, and the green-uniformed Border Patrol agents who patrol areas in between legal crossings and conduct interior enforcement efforts within 100 miles of an international border or seacoast, an area that comprises two-thirds of the U.S. population. (Other smaller divisions of CBP focus on more specific tasks, like intelligence and the brown-uniformed Air and Marine Operations, which houses CBP’s helicopter and boat units.)

The money pouring into Ridge’s hands paid for a more than doubling of the Border Patrol, which surged from 9,200 agents in 2001 to ultimately more than 21,000 during its peak in the first term of the Obama administration, and similarly rapid expansion at CBP’s OFO, a rate of growth that completely outstripped CBP’s systems to manage its employees. When in 2014 I wrote the first comprehensive history of that ill-considered hiring surge, the rise of what CBP called “the Green Monster,” one DHS official told me, “[Congress’s] view was, ‘We’re going to field a small army and make up for decades of neglect by previous administrations.’ Almost any body in the field was better than no body.”

CBP recruited that new army by lowering its hiring standards—already the lowest among top federal law enforcement agencies—and shoveling agents through the academy and into the field before even completing background checks. “We weren’t prepared,” one former training officer told me. Agents called it “No Trainee Left Behind.” Management structures and processes failed, oversight lessened, and by the end of the Bush administration, more than half of the Border Patrol had been in the field for less than two years. Already at that point, agent misconduct and criminality were on the rise—the lax hiring standards and background checks had populated the new border army with the wrong sort of person. “We made some mistakes,” Bush’s CBP commissioner Ralph Basham told me in 2014. “We found out later that we did, in fact, hire cartel members.”

Corruption among CBP’s ranks got so bad that in Obama’s first year, CBP and DHS leadership ordered the agency to change its definition of “corruption” to downplay the number of total incidents; sexually assaulting detainees was no longer considered “corruption” worthy of reporting to Congress.

The situation continued to deteriorate as the Obama administration went on. A CATO Institute study found that from 2006 to 2016, CBP and the Border Patrol’s misconduct and disciplinary infractions outstripped all other federal law enforcement. Border Patrol agents were 6 times as likely as FBI agents to be fired for disciplinary infractions or poor performance and “12.9 times as likely as Secret Service agents.” Moreover, CATO found “it is virtually impossible to assess the extent of corruption or misconduct in U.S. Customs and Border Protection … because most publicly available information is incomplete or inconsistent.” As I totaled up in 2014, there were 2,170 misconduct arrests of CBP officers and agents—ranging from corruption to domestic violence from 2005 through 2012—meaning that one CBP officer or agent was arrested every single day for seven years.

There were so many examples of corruption that CBP created its own internal website, called “Trust Betrayed,” featuring the stories of turncoat CBP officers and Border Patrol agents, as a cautionary warning to others. Examples from the site, released to BuzzFeed’s Jason Leopold earlier this year, show agents who colluded with cartels, who were bribed to wave certain individuals through immigration lanes, who provided documents to smugglers, and even smuggled aliens themselves.

Addressing that epidemic of misconduct—and worse—proved all but bureaucratically impossible. CBP’s crime and corruption epidemic collided with the institutional trade-offs made to create DHS; obscure government job descriptions and law enforcement responsibilities, negotiated in the abstract when DHS was being created, meant that Congress didn’t grant CBP the ability or authority to investigate its own employees. Whereas any even moderately sized local police department has an internal affairs department, the nation’s largest law enforcement agency had to refer all misconduct allegations to either the DHS inspector general, the FBI or ICE—all of which soon found themselves overwhelmed by the flood of CBP problems.

Ronald Hosko, a former FBI assistant director who headed the bureau’s criminal division, told me that at one CBP meeting he attended in 2012, top agency officials estimated that perhaps as much as 20 percent of CBP’s agent and officer corps needed to be removed from the force. In response, the FBI declared border corruption—e.g., investigating another federal law enforcement agency—as its top priority in combatting public corruption.

The flood continued, such that in 2013 the head of the DHS office investigating CBP misconduct in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley had fallen so far behind in investigating the rampant misconduct allegations that he began falsifying records—and ended up being indicted himself, along with another agent.

Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano left CBP rudderless, with a revolving door of non-Senate confirmed, acting leaders. At one point, CBP’s top post was vacant, with various officials “acting” as commissioner, for 26 months.

Amid that leadership vacuum, CBP shootings and use-of-force complaints started to rise, too. Between 2007 and 2012, more than 1,700 allegations of excessive force were leveled against CBP officers and Border Patrol agents, though the exact number is impossible to reconstruct because the agency’s record-keeping is so poor. There were more than a hundred shootings, leaving dozens dead, and CBP’s standard operation procedure—unlike nearly every other law enforcement agency in the country—was to keep silent about any officer-involved shootings unless specifically asked about them by the media.

Many of those shootings fell far outside the norms of modern policing; an internal report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), concluded, “Too many cases do not appear to meet the test of objective reasonableness with regard to the use of deadly force.” CBP fought releasing the report, refusing to even provide it to Congress, and it was only made public later by theLos Angeles Times. Even after the report, the Border Patrol refused to change its rules of engagement.

Similarly, standard hiring practices for other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, like candidate polygraphs, were only implemented after the surge. The polygraph exams immediately began to raise questions about the quality of CBP’s hiring; some 65 percent of applicants failed, and more than 200 candidates, who would have been hired in the pre-exam hiring surge, admitted to criminal conduct ranging from drug smuggling to kidnapping and ransoming hostages in the Ivory Coast. One candidate even admitted to wanting to assassinate Obama.

***

Obama’s lone Senate-confirmed CBP commissioner,Gil Kerlikowske—who was in office only for the administration’s final two years—represented a rare bright spot in its leadership, a progressive, reform-oriented visionary brought in to confront CBP’s by-then legendary corruption and mismanagement. “We had a history of not addressing things as directly as we should,” Kerlikowske told me when he was in office.

Kerlikowske arrived at CBP in the spring of 2014 amid a particularly troubling pattern of CBP-led violence that saw three CBP agents and officers in the Rio Grande Valley charged with murder and attempted murder in separate incidents in just a matter of weeks, including one who kidnapped and raped three Honduran women who surrendered to him while on duty. All three men had been joined CBP during the hiring surge, when standards were low and oversight lax.

Kerlikowske—who had previously helped clean up troubled police departments in places like Seattle and Buffalo and served as Obama’s drug czar—allied with the then-similarly new DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to address the mess at CBP. Johnson finally pushed through the oversight changes that allowed CBP to begin to police its own workforce, and Kerlikowske tried to bring new transparency and good policing practices to CBP.

One of his first moves as commissioner was to ask then-FBI Director Jim Comey for a top agent to be lent to CBP to help setup a real internal affairs capability; Comey sent over Mark Morgan. At the FBI, Morgan had been the special agent in charge of its El Paso Field Office and so was deeply familiar with border issues. “If you wanted someone to take on the challenges outlined in the PERF report, he had all the right credentials,” Kerlikowske says. “Well-established and well thought of, an understanding of the border, plus he’s an attorney.”

In May 2014, Kerlikowske released a new use-of-force manual for CBP that brought CBP more in line with other professional police departments around the country; that night, Border Patrol agents in Arizona shot and killed a fleeing, suspected smuggler. The suspect was shot from behind and unarmed.

Then, in July 2016—almost exactly three years ago—Kerlikowske brought Morgan back from the FBI to be chief of the Border Patrol. He was a controversial appointment, the first outsider to run the proud, green-uniformed agency, but Kerlikowske thought it important to signal a fresh start and passed over the Border Patrol’s two top deputies, Ron Vitiello and Carla Provost, who now currently holds the role.

“Ron Vitiello or Carla Provost could have easily fit the bill. There’s a time and a place to bring in a set of eyes and ears from outside,” he recalls. “Ron was hugely successful in reducing use of force problems, but for the Border Patrol’s relationship with Congress, the media and some of the advocacy groups, [appointing Morgan] was a clear signal that change would continue. We’d already been successful on internal affairs and the reduction of use of force, you needed to keep moving forward.”

Morgan hit the ground running, traveling to meet agents and see as much as he could along the border, but time and the administration quickly ran out on Kerlikowske and Morgan’s reform agenda. (The use-of-force reforms put into place by Vitello, Morgan and Kerlikowske seem to have stuck: In 2012, CBP was involved in 55 shootings, whereas last year there were just 15.)

Morgan’s outsider status and the reform agenda had so angered the Border Patrol union that axing him was No. 1 on its wish list when Trump came into office, swept into the White House in part because of his harsh anti-immigrant, pro-wall rhetoric.

Just days into his presidency, Trump visited DHS—and warmly greeted union president Brandon Judd. Morgan was nowhere to be seen and was gone days later. (Morgan, as Axios has reported, was none too pleased to be cast to the curb. “The fact they are pushing for me to leave immediately is heartless and void of any decency and compassion,” Morgan wrote to McAleenan, then the No. 2 at CBP. “I am being removed in the name of politics—and politics at its worst.”)

Over the last two years, with the reformers out and the revolving door at CBP spinning again, transparency has regressed under Trump.

While most misconduct allegations dropped in FY2017, criminal allegations against CBP agents and officers actually jumped seven percent, according to the most recent statistics available. There were 245 CBP agents and officers arrested in FY2017—meaning that an agent or officer was arrested every 36 hours—including seven employees arrested twice and one employee arrested three times in that single year; as a sign of just how much CBP continues to struggle with the legacy left it by the Bush and Obama administrations, most of those arrested had been brought on during the hiring surge. (Ironically, one agent last year even pleaded guilty to being an undocumented immigrant.)

More recently, there was the Texas Border Patrol agent arrested and charged last year with being a serial killer, responsible, prosecutors say, for the deaths of at least four women, all sex workers, around Laredo, Texas. That agent, Juan David Ortiz, appears to have shot the women with his CBP-issued handgun, a .40-caliber HK P2000.

That an alleged serial killer lurked amid the ranks of the Border Patrol should appear shocking, yet crime and corruption remains so rampant in CBP that Ortiz wasn’t even the first agent from his own sector charged with murder that year. Months before, another Border Patrol agent, Ronald Anthony Burgos Aviles, was arrested and charged with a double homicide, accused of killing his lover and their one-year-old son; he allegedly stabbed the mother nearly 30 times. Like the three agents and officers arrested in that spring 2014 violence spree, both of the Laredo agents charged with murder last year had joined CBP during the Bush and Obama administration hiring surge.

Use of force issues on the job continue to worry critics, too. Even today, it’s still not clear today how many people have died in encounters with CBP officers and agents; anArizona Republicinvestigation uncovered at least four people who died in incidents with the Border Patrol that the agency’s own records didn’t include; more recently, an April investigation this year by ProPublica and theLos Angeles Timesfound 22 people have died and more than 250 people have been injured in recent years in high-speed vehicle pursuits by the Border Patrol, which refused to release those numbers and which continues to have vehicle pursuit policies at odds with the standards of progressive police departments across the country.

The union, meanwhile, has often resisted efforts to modernize and update use of force policies and bring more transparency to officer-involved shootings. When CBP announced it would recognize officers and agents who de-escalate confrontations and avoid using deadly force, the union called the new award “despicable” and said it “will get Border Patrol agents killed.”

***

That bellicose attitude is propped upby a longstanding damaging insular culture that tolerates and protects wrongdoers. In 2016 an outside advisory group headed by NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton concluded, “The CBP discipline system is broken.” It noted, among other problems, that CBP doesn’t have any systems to monitor or suspend employees arrested for domestic violence or alcohol abuse, standard good practice for police departments nationwide. Bratton’s advisory group noted that CBP’s discipline system was less rigorous, in fact, for itsarmedofficers and agents than TSA’s system for itsunarmedairport screeners.

ProPublica’s bombshell revelations this month of a secret CBP Facebook group with some 9,500 members where current and former Border Patrol agents and CBP officers traded racist memes and misogynistic jokes prompted quick condemnation by leaders like Acting DHS Secretary McAleenan and Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost. Yet CBP’s protestations of outrage about the unprofessional conduct quickly were undermined, first by reporting by POLITICO that DHS officials knew about and monitored racist social media posts, perhaps even for as long as three years, and thenThe Intercept’sreporting that Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost appeared to participate in the Facebook group herself.

That CBP’s internal culture had real problems would hardly have been a surprise to agency leaders, right down to the routine dehumanization of the very people they’re tasked with helping.

Prosecutors have revealed that the Border Patrol agent set to go on trial next month for running down a border crosser referred to immigrants as “mindless, murdering savages.” Border Patrol agents routinely call migrants or detainees “tonks,” a moniker that agents joke stems from the sound a detainee’s head makes when hit with a flashlight, and such racist terms even surface in the agency’s academy.

In 2014, the ACLU filed a complaint with DHS on behalf of 116 children who reported abuse in CBP custody; DHS closed the investigation after just four months, with no outcome. Last year, the ACLU and University of Chicago followed up with a report called “Neglect and Abuse of Unaccompanied Immigrant Children by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” One child reported being told by a CBP officer, “I am going to take you back to the river so that you can die.” Others reported physical and sexual abuse at the hands of CBP employees.

CBP’s culture can be so toxic that its own agents and officers speak out, which is what happened in 2017 when employees reported CBP officers at the Newark Airport had set up a “rape table” at the Newark airport where officers would sexually assault other officers. In an incident reported last week by CNN, one Border Patrol agent documented an incident where agents attempted to humiliate a Honduran migrant by forcing him to hold a sign that read, in Spanish, “I like men.” The senior agent on site took no action, so the whistleblower agent reported it to more senior officials.

Following the reports earlier this month about the Border Patrol’s secret social media group, former agent Jenn Budd posted on Twitter about her disgust with the false outrage mustered by CBP’s leadership and the Border Patrol’s chief, Provost, the first woman to head the Border Patrol: “they are shocked to discover a FB page with horrible pics and quotes. My ass!”

As Budd wrote in her thread, “Carla Provost graduated the academy 1month before I entered. We likely had the same instructors. I know she knows the same things I do. Like how some instructors forced female agents to have sex, or they would be fired on their subjective Spanish exams.” Her Twitter thread continued with allegations of sexual harassment and assault and of how “agents often set up dates with migrants they’ve apprehended after they get off duty and meet them in Mexico.”

***

The years of poor managementand leadership from DHS, three presidents and Congress itself have only been exacerbated by CBP’s unwillingness to reckon with its modern role. Its culture and duties seem part-police force, part-occupying army and part-frontier cavalry. None of those pieces of institutional DNA have equipped agents and management for what has become the Border Patrol’s main role over the last five years: Humanitarian relief organization.

Back during the hiring surge, the recruiting campaign and CBP’s mission emphasized fighting terrorists and the all-American nature of its work—the Border Patrol sponsored a NASCAR team, and recruited at bull-riding competitions and country music concerts. CBP spent that first decade after 9/11 recruiting and equipping what it touted would be an elite counterterrorism force—the first line of defense against Islamic terrorists and drug cartels. But this only perpetuated a message and culture that has left the agency ill-suited to confront what it actually has to do in the second decade after 9/11: Provide humanitarian aid for women, children and families amid global instability that has strained border forces worldwide.

CBP went out and recruited Rambo, when it turned out the agency needed Mother Theresa.

There is little sign that DHS leadership, particularly under the Trump administration, is willing to consider the depth of agency realignment and reinvestment necessary to match CBP and the Border Patrol with what it finds its current mission to be—nor does there seem to be any appetite inside the Trump administration to address what officials would call the “whole of government” failure to meet the migrant crisis.

Even today, recruiting ads continue to make the Border Patrol look like an action movie, with stirring music and fancy toys, from helicopters to canines to ATVs, and lots and lots of weapons. On CBP’s website, “counterterrorism” is listed first under the agency’s mission—ahead of “customs” and “immigration,” and the first item on the agency’s own job description for CBP officers states a “typical assignment” is “detecting and preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the United States.” In its first sentence of the agency’s “About” listing, CBP says it “is charged with keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S.” Nowhere in its recruiting material does it list anything having to do with “providing humanitarian assistance,” “rescuing migrants,” or “aiding families and children fleeing drug violence,” the tasks that has over the last ten years have consumed more and more of the Border Patrol’s time.

The photo last month of a drowned migrant father and daughter in the Rio Grande drew global attention to the human toll of the migrant surge, but to agents along the border such drama is a near-daily occurrence. Just days later, one of CBP’s Twitter accounts posted video of agents performing CPR aboard a boat on a teen pulled from the Rio Grande. In fact, today, its most elite unit, the agency’s equivalent of the SEALs or Delta Force, primarily is tasked with rescuing migrants in medical distress.

On July 11, 2016—Mark Morgan’s first day as chief of the Border Patrol, almost three years to the day before he’d be back leading all of CBP—I went out on patrol with agents in the Rio Grande Valley, the epicenter of the migrant flood from Central America’s Northern Triangle countries—Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala—that have been beset by gangs and drug-fueled violence and caused hundreds of thousands to flee north.

Back then, in 2016, the challenge was so-called “unaccompanied minors,” UACs in CBP parlance, children fleeing by themselves; even in 2016, the trend was years old. The Rio Grande Valley (RGV) alone in 2014 had seen more than a quarter-million migrants. In 2016, the 1,100 or so Border Patrol agents in the RGV sector were stopping upwards of 500 a day. That night out on patrol, we detained 37 migrants ourselves in 30 minutes, handing ultimately four successive groups of crossers over to other agents. It was all very low-drama and routine—agents reaching for clipboards rather than weapons. “It’s gonna be a 600, 700 day,” the agent I was accompanying said.

The migrant situation has only gotten worse—and the numbers larger—since. In recent years, the flood has been fewer “UACs” and more “family units,” with fathers, mothers and children—even grandparents—all crossing together, often turning themselves in at legal crossing points. This spring saw 100,000 plus migrants stopped by CBP each month, dwarfing its capabilities to house the detainees, provide food or medical care. Press and congressional leaders have swarmed to the border to cover this “emergency crisis,” except that while it’s certainly a crisis, it isn’t really an emergency: It’s been happening every day for years—and Kevin McAleenan has been warning about the numbers throughout the Trump presidency.

“Kevin and others have said for months that these numbers are a crisis. It is a crisis,” says Kerlikowske, who had McAleenan as a top deputy as CBP. “They weren’t crying wolf. Kevin isn’t one to do that.”

Indeed, in recent days, official CBP social media accounts have been posting past videos of CBP leaders trying to raise the alarm on the humanitarian crisis. There’s clear frustration that CBP is bearing the brunt of the bad press, when it’s just the start of the problem. ICE and the Department of Health & Human Services are supposed to be responsible for long-term detention and asylum and refugee help, but both agencies are also overwhelmed and unable to accept new migrants or detainees—leaving them to linger and suffer in the overcrowded Border Patrol and CBP facilities like what Vice President Pence toured Friday. Meanwhile, the agencies are all led by a president who governs in sound bites rather than through informed policy processes.

“This is a mess. The men and women in the CBP are being treated absolutely unfairly,” one former Border Patrol leader told me last week, requesting anonymity because of the partisan rancor surrounding his former agency. “The Border Patrol and CBP overall have been warning of what is coming. Nobody listened.” He added: “Do we have children being detained past 72 hours in places they shouldn’t be? That’s not the Border Patrol’s fault.”

The commemorative coin, touting the “New Patrol” focused on feeding children and providing medical care, recognizes what agents fear their lot has become: An exhausted agency, unable to focus on what it think it should be doing, arresting drug-smuggling and human trafficking.

Agents who signed up to work outdoors, chasing smugglers through the brush and desert, instead spend long shifts sitting on stools processing paperwork, providing medical care or watching over children and families amid squalid conditions.

The failure to recognize where the Border Patrol’s work was heading represents a systemic failure of imagination and indictment of national leadership—not just at CBP, DHS and the Trump administration but also the Obama administration, and Congress too. Even as the House and Senate have rushed to negotiate a high-stakes border aid package in recent weeks, it’s worth asking: Why, years after it became apparent that migrants was the biggest challenge facing CBP and the southern border, did it take a father and daughter drowning in the Rio Grande before Congress would begin providing CBP the resources to meet its critical needs? Why hasn’t CBP done more to transform itself on the southern border—to retrain officers and agents, to rebuild facilities, to reform supply chains, to expand medical capabilities? And why aren’t leaders more focused on ensuring that ICE and HHS are fulfilling their jobs too? This should be HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s scandal as much as it is DHS’s scandal.

These looming problems were apparent even in 2016 to the hard-nosed leaders of the union. Sitting in his office in McAllen, local union leader Chris Cabrera told me then how many lives agents saved everyday. “You won’t find anyone who rescues more people, saves more aliens’ lives, aids more drowning victims or recovers more dead bodies than the Border Patrol,” Cabrera said. “If you look at the Border Patrol, we’re the largest humanitarian organization on the southwest border.”

It was a remarkable statement then—coming amid Trump’s heated, racist anti-Mexico campaign rhetoric, as the Border Patrol union became the first union to endorse his candidacy, followed later by ICE’s union. Yet that statement today captures the myriad complexities and contradictions rolled into the Trump administration’s modern immigration policy.

On the one hand, surely the Border Patrol saves more lives of migrants crossing than any other organization—yet its own inability and failure of leadership and resources to respond to the flood of asylum seekers means that migrants’ lives remain in deadly jeopardy even after crossing the border. At least 12 migrants have died in CBP custody since September, including a Nicaraguan last week. In the decade before, not a single migrant died in CBP custody.

Kerlikowske, who led CBP through that UAC crisis in the Rio Grande Valley, says it’s worth considering a wholesale shift in CBP’s workforce—one that enlists a civilian workforce alongside the agents to aid and process migrants, leaving the armed law enforcement to focus on the Border Patrol’s mission of combating drugs and human trafficking—what patrol parlance calls the “run-aways,” rather than the “give-ups.”

“Over these last number of years, it’s people turning themselves and looking for someone in a green uniform,” Kerlikowske says. “Is that something you need an armed, trained Border Patrol agent? Could you hire a civilian workforce to do the majority of that review and processing?”

Yet it’s proved impossible over the last decade for CBP and DHS to have the long-term leadership able to push through such big changes and reimagining. Morgan is the third CBP leader in just over two years, and the tenth in the agency’s 13 years of existence, and the polarization that surrounds immigration and the border under Trump has made Democrats reluctant to support even common-sense changes, investments and improvements along the border.

Today, the Border Patrol has made zero progress toward hiring the 5,000 new agents promised by Trump. One bungled hiring experiment over the last year cost the government $2 million per recruit and yielded only 33 new agents before it was canceled in April. Because of those recruiting and retention challenges, the Border Patrol is actuallysmallerthan it was under Obama, and its pilot ranks specifically are so depleted that it was unable to meet four out of every five requests for helicopter assistance during the Trump presidency. At lower-ranks recruiting and retention remains a critical problem; CBP recently began offering retention bonuses to stem its attrition rates. Workforce morale too is suffering in the Trump era—and it’s never been strong at DHS and CBP, which routinely comes out at the bottom of government workforce surveys.

“The results haven’t held up to the hope,” one former Border Patrol union official told me, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about sensitive internal political dynamics. “The agents thought they were going to the belles at the ball [under the Trump administration]. Trump is not delivering.”

In one of his final appearances before Congress before he too departed this spring, DHS Inspector General John Kelly—not to be confused with the DHS secretary and White House chief of staff of the same name—told lawmakers, “[CBP] will be challenged to achieve their goals. They have not achieved their goals in the past.”

When he departed ICE to make room for Morgan, Ron Vitiello was no less blunt: “The system is in a meltdown,” he said.

And there’s McAleenan himself, who during a March visit to the El Paso border, said: “The breaking point has arrived.”

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[celestius]

Black Panther

As a former movie critic, I have a theory about reviewers: much like the rest of us, they easily fall victim to peer pressure and have a natural tendency to avoid standing out. For this reason, reviews tend to be as much an expression of their honest opinion as an attempt to gauge the future public reception of the reviewed work. After all, while a regular rating on imdb or the Czech Film Database is anonymous, and people therefore don´t have to be afraid that their opinion will be perceived as "wrong", reviewers know that their works will forever be associated with them, and need to sort of guess what the "correct" opinion will be later on. This opinion might seem very dismissive towards critics, but it is also the only explanation for how sometimes after a couple years pass, everyone "remembers" that a particular movie or game was or wasn´t shitty. Sometimes I feel like it would be a very interesting experiment to review things retrospectively and see how the numbers would correlate. There are good examples of both extremes: sometimes we have a work of art that is received poorly (Dark Souls 3), only for people to start saying how good it was two years later, or works that get raving reviews when they come out, but later on, after the dust settles, everyone readjusts their excitement. Black Panther, I feel, is one of those works. The discrepancy between its metacritic score based on reviews (88) and regular moviegoers (6.8) is quite telling. While the 6.8 from moviegoers might be a bit reactionary (after all, 88 would place it above all the other MCU movies (!!!!!) which even its fans would probably admit is absolutely ludicrous), it garnered 7.something on both imdb and the Czech database - a far cry from the raving reviews by movie critics. It would be absurd not to see that the movie´s (perceived) "racial" significance had a lot to do with its initial reception by critics. This by itself poses a very difficult question - should a movie´s "external" significance be incorporated in our assessment of it as a stand-alone work of art? I myself am undecided and it would probably depend on many determining factors: let´s say we have an artistically shitty movie about the holocaust, but it would be the first movie of its kind covering the plight of the Jewish people. How should we rate it as a movie? Do we laud it for its subject matter or do we condemn it because it´s poorly executed? Interestingly, choosing the middle ground and giving it a 5 out of 10 would probably be the worst approach, because art/message has no middle, it´s two completely different scales of assessment. I recently read a great response to the craze around the Black Panther by some art critic (whose name I can´t recall :)) who basically said that evaluating art based on its social/political/external importance (or even acceptability) is a very poor way of perceiving it and it absolutely diminishes its inherent value. Art is not here to confirm our beliefs about the world, or at the very least, sending the right message (and I absolutely agree that equality is the right message) does not automatically make it good. But does Black Panther actually do that much for the portrayal of black people? I´m unsure. My personal feeling is that it completely ignores the question of race. On the surface, the movie seems to be "about" black people. However, everything about Wakandans is basically white: a position of a privileged culture, accepting or not accepting refugees, interfering or not interfering with other countries, technological superiority etc etc. It could not in fact be more distant from actual problems in Africa, which it completely ignores. Now, I am not saying there is a "correct way" to portray people of (any) color but at the same time, making a movie about a privileged, isolationist, smart and technologically advanced black country in Africa borders on escapism dangerously ignoring the fact that it´s not like that for most people on that continent. Which, I admit, is a pretty stupid argument to make about a comicbook movie :))) But consider this: if we make a movie about the second world war where a happy Jewish family lives a life of comfort, safety and privilege, I shouldn´t really be applauded for that portrayal, cause it´s technically not a portrayal at all. That is to say, I in no way think that the Black Panther is responsible for portraying Africa a certain way, and I think the way it does it is perfectly fine, just as long as it doesn´t get praised for it.

 I have absolutely nothing against the way the movie portrays black people, because it simply portrays them as people. If everyone in the movie was green, it would have been the same and made as much sense. I simply don´t see the praise - to me it´s like praising Avengers for being about white people - which it isn´t about at all. Simply put, I think the movie pretty much skips the question of race and should therefore be neither praised nor criticized for it.

 Of course, this very argument is for some people the reason why they applaud its portrayal of black people (i.e. that their "blackness" has little to do with the content) which I can understand and respect.

 However, the moment this infringes on the critical reception of the movie, which I feel it absolutely did (again, 88 would make it the BEST Marvel movie to date, whole points above the others; look me in the eye and say that Black Panther is the best Marvel movie…) we have to reassess whether it´s deserved and whether it should even be a factor!

 So let´s look at the movie itself: as you can tell, I was fairly disappointed. The action was not very unique or memorable (except the car chase, but that was already in the trailer), especially considering how well done the Panther´s fighting style was in the Civil War (!) – while here the fight scenes look like the most run-of-the-mill series of lame punches and stabs from the 90s. The plot was quite uninspired as well (all of this is highly subjective of course) and the finale was sort of... strange. Even the direction was much too grounded and didn´t seem to have a “signature” (like the Russo brothers do with their close combat scenes, or the comicbook-ness of Joss Whedon).

 There were many things I did like: namely the Black Panther :) and Shuri. It also had one of the best Marvel bad guys to date - I just regretted they didn´t go with a less obvious way: I would have loved for Killmonger to JUST want the throne (since he did technically have the right to challenge it), kick the Panther´s ass and not do anything crazy evil like try to start a race war and take over the world, just sit on the throne. And Panther would be plagued with doubt whether he has any inherent right to it, maybe it could even end up with him relinquishing it.

 Instead, Killmonger is portrayed as an unreasonably violent psychopath. This in itself I actually find troubling: it makes it seem like the movie is saying that the moment a black person becomes a bit radical (for example because they are objectively not represented by the system and have no support in it) they are automatically a violent psycho. Now, I don´t actually think the movie is intentionally saying that (i.e. that being black and radical automatically means uncontrollably violent) - I think that the answer is much simpler - Marvel just wanted to make him into a fairly typical comicbook bad guy so muhahahahaha! Wakandan empire, race war!!1!.... I just feel like it could have been so much more with the (great) set up they had.

I think that the Black Panther mainly suffers from its position in the MCU – Marvel has simply done too many origin/character stories that they somewhat pale in comparison to the larger-scale interconnected ones (Thor: Ragnarok being an unbelievable exception, and an amazing one at that).

While I loved the final message (setting up support centers around the world), the movie itself wasn´t really about that at all - most of it was the Black Panther coming to terms with being a king and taking back the throne.

 As I said, it´s all about the company, really - the MCU produced so many great movies that BP would rank very low on my list simply because it´s not exceptionally good. Off the top of my head the only worse movies would´ve been GotG 2, Captain America 1 and Iron Man 2. It was probably the same level of good as the first or second Thor, maybe slightly below Dr. Strange.

 Ultimately, projecting its perceived impact on the portrayal of race on its aggregate score is an unfortunate misstep that might very well turn against a movie that is not as bad as 6.8, but MOST DEFINITELY not 88. A valuable racial message should not constitute a free pass into the notional Hall of fame.

[pcurrytravels]

Las Vegas: A Love-Hate Thang (Chapter I)

Ah, Las Vegas. Sin City. The City of Lights. The so-called Entertainment Capital of The World. America’s Playground. Oh, and also my hometown.

Well, I wasn’t born there. I happen to be a first-generation migrant born to Midwestern parents by way of Chicago. Alas, I was little AF when we moved. All I know of Chicago is what I’ve experienced on past trips and the stories my family tell me (although my past self would insist otherwise). Aside from my infancy and terrible twos, all of my childhood was spent right here in Vegas. 

Now, as you all know, this city has grown and changed A LOT over the years. In terms of my personal perspective, I’ve seen it morph from the place I loved as a child, to the place I hated as a teen, to the place I had an ambivalent “tolerant” relationship with in my college years/early 20′s, to the place I really just don’t know how to feel about anymore now as a mid-late twentysomething. If there’s one thing that’s true about this city, it’s that nothing ever stays the same, including my relationship with it. 

There’s something so strange and unusual about having this place as a hometown. On one hand, it really doesn’t feel like it’s “yours,” if that makes sense. Nearly everything revolves around what outsiders want; be it new attractions for tourists, new boring, ugly and cheaply-built tract housing for potential Cali transplants or new business opportunities for foreign investors, at times it feels that this place is super warm and welcoming to everyone except the people that have already been living there for years. 

Oh, and speaking of that “new” thing......

Newness. Las Vegas is obsessed with newness. No, let me rephrase that: it’s ADDICTED to newness. This place legitimately cannot function if there’s not a bunch of “new” stuff at all times, especially if it got rid of some terrible “old” thing in the process. See that building in the picture above? The Riviera? Yeah, they got rid of this nasty, old building to pave way for *wait for it* a bright, shiny, cutting-edge and innovative, brand, spanking-new PARKING LOT. Seriously. 

Vegas is fixated on newness and stuck in the future to the point of being almost completely nonsensical. There’s this disturbing determination to get rid of anything built before the 1990s, regardless of whether or not it will even be replaced by anything useful. Not at all to suggest I’m against progress, change or new things in the slightest but.....is some practicality in regards to how it’s executed a little bit too much to ask for? 

Going beyond physical structures, it stands to reflect a culture where things aren’t expected, or even intended, to last. This ties back into the aforementioned phenomena of feeling like your hometown isn’t really yours. 

You all know how most places around the world have these sorts of “institutions” in a variety of areas (be it dining, retail, nightlife, entertainment and so on) that are considered integral to the locale’s culture and character? In Las Vegas, this is a bit of a rarity. Well, there used to be quite a few of them, but thanks to the apathy and/or cultural shift seen in the Millennial generation of Vegas natives and post-1980s transplants, they’re likely on their last legs, if they haven’t already gone out of business.

We do, however, have lots and lots of NEW stuff to choose from at all times. In a strange bit of reverse psychology, once a year or two passes, and it looks like said “new” thing is becoming a pillar of the local community, the people of Vegas stop being interested and move on to something even newer. Some places manage to survive this state of flux, but eight times out of ten, it goes out of business. There have been many businesses all around town which were very close to my heart that have become casualties thanks to this annoying mentality. 

Silly rabbit, the buildings and the businesses aren’t what make Las Vegas what it is, it’s the PEOPLE! :D

And here we have the argument that’s made (usually from a Millennial generation native or a post-1980s transplant I should add) whenever I bring up these points, and it never stops sounding like the ultimate cop out whenever I hear it. Yes, it is people.....and it takes people to make a culture. It takes people to build and use a building. It takes people to open, run and support a business. It takes people to make a community. 

Let’s see now: As it stands, our local culture is very flimsy, flaky, unstable, materialistic and revolves almost entirely around trends. 

An intense disdain for anything “old” (which in this context means the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and sometimes even the early 90s. Yeah, Vegas locals will whine about something built in 1992 while quite literally the rest of the world uses buildings far older than that with little fuss on a daily basis. It’s......interesting, to say the least) leads to the waste and/or destruction of perfectly useful resources all in the vain hope of something more modern coming along, which sometimes never even happens. 

That perfectly good grocery store/movie theater/pizza place/barber shop/hell, even national chain business you’ve been patronizing for the past two or three years? Expect it to be tossed to the side and start crumbling away before it eventually closes down as soon as a new one shows up. 

Also, a self-absorbed, apathetic populace with a severe lack of civic pride and an excessively libertarian “every man for himself” outlook makes it pretty hard to take any claims of “community” seriously, don’t you think? 

But it’s like they say, it’s the people, right? Well, seeing the end results, one can’t help but to wonder about the integrity of such people, yes? 

Ugh, Las Vegans. Okay, okay, there are a select handful of individuals whom I do love and care for, they know who they are. I do encounter some cool people from time to time, and I usually love the old-timers, but as for the overwhelming majority of this city’s population? Um, let’s just say that I have enough thoughts and feelings about the collective citizenry of Las Vegas to write volumes, and most of it wouldn’t be very nice. For the sake of keeping this blog as positive and professional as possible, it’s for the best that I don’t share any of that here. 

Okay, okay, we aren’t all bad: After the events of October 1st, 2017, I received the shock of my life over two things. The first was being up close and personal with a mass shooting. You always hear about that type of thing in the news, but still hold onto the hope that you’re never in THAT close of contact with it (My place of work is literally three or four blocks away from where it happened, and I’m still thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t at work that night......doesn’t change the fact that I live less than a mile away from Mandalay Bay tho). 

The second was this: The community came together. I was truly amazed. There were lines down the block to give blood. Candlelight vigils sprung up all over the place. The “Welcome To Fabulous Las Vegas” sign became a makeshift memorial, giving way to a memorial garden that was planted almost overnight in our local Arts District. In the aftermath of these unfortunate events, I honestly did feel proud to be a Las Vegan for once. #VegasStrong indeed. 

Another thing that’s really brought the community together is the debut of our very first major league sports franchise: The Vegas Golden Knights. Not gonna lie, I was a bit cynical at first. Some of my reasons were petty (To have a team with the name “Golden” anything in the Silver State is a bit confusing, don’t you think?), but others were legitimate. The only people who seem to give a damn about the UNLV Rebels basketball and football teams are UNLV students. We’ve had two minor league hockey teams in the past (the Wranglers and the Thunder) that flopped. We have a minor league baseball team (the 51s) that people don’t even remember exists. Don’t get me wrong, I was excited for the arrival of the Golden Knights, but I honestly had some pretty low expectations. 

Alas, this turned out not to be the case in the slightest. The team has been a runaway hit! Their season passes sold out a year before their first season even began. People can be found all over the city wearing Golden Knights merchandise. Numerous bars have nights dedicated to their games. The support for them has been overwhelming. All of that support has been a good luck charm too; what with an eight game winning streak that’s only been recently broken. Oh, and need I remind you all that this is only their first season? 

Usually, the major sports leagues avoid Vegas like the plague. They claim it’s because of legal sports betting, but I personally feel that it honestly just seemed like too hard a market to break into. Between the transplants and the natives who haven’t had anything local to support anyway, most people already had teams they were loyal to (Yours truly has always been a fan of Chicago teams such as the Bulls, Bears, Cubs, White Sox and Blackhawks), in addition to the low turnouts and/or failures of the college and minor league teams that already exist here. For these reasons, I certainly don’t blame the big leagues for being weary.

But that’s about to change. The Raiders will be relocating here for 2020 NFL season (still not too sure how I feel about that personally but that’s a different story entirely), and 2018 will mark the debut of the Las Vegas Lights, playing soccer for the USL and the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces (formerly the San Antonio Stars). It should only be a matter of time before the NBA and MLB also make expansion moves, and given the success enjoyed by the Golden Knights and how well received the Raiders move has been, they really should have nothing to worry about. 

Although I still have my gripes, it’s stuff like this that gives me hope. The outpouring of love and support that occurred after the events of October 1st as well as all the community unity that’s come into play since The Golden Knights have hit the ice are things I couldn’t even dream of a mere five years ago. I’ve heard empty claims of this alleged “community” for years, to which I simply rolled my eyes and kept it movin’. I mean, honestly, aside from a select few pockets (which are very cliquish, incestuous and low-key xenophobic anyway but I’ll save that topic for another day), I legitimately did not understand what it was they were seeing that I didn’t. 

Until recently. Vegas always changes, but for once, I’m seeing a change that’s productive, fundamental and positive. As unfortunate it may be for a mass shooting to spur this change, the community actually IS acting like a community for once, and with the cries for #VegasStrong still continuing, it doesn’t seem like that’s going away. 

Granted, we still have a long way to go here. Personally, I think the local community would be far more evolved and mature by now if it weren’t for an overtly-trendy culture perpetually stuck in a state of flux. The lack of stability definitely makes for a challenging situation going forward. Thankfully, there have been some good signs recently. A lot of the past wasted potential is slowly returning, so yes, I am optimistic for this city’s future. 

You see? I’m not a total grouch! Til’ Chapter II then. 

[caredogstips]

If College Football Teams Were National Soccer Clubs, Which Ones Would They Be?

If there’sone thing that followers who love all the popular American plays and soccer wantit’s obvious: We want ournon-futbol-loving peers and favorite plays media personalities to come around, too.

So, you could imagine any football fan’s amusement when an ESPN radio hostsaid he could eventually get down with soccer once he figured out that it was just like college football, but for the world.

ppl reading england is more like notre madam. i see it. #TheRightTime

— El Flaco (@ bomani_jones) June 28, 2016

And, yes, college football is definitelythe perfect analogy in American boasts to compare to soccer. No other athletic emphasizes institution and culture in the same way college football does.

No other play stressesthe importanceof home-field advantage like college football does. And no other athletic stimulates till-death-do-us-part love like college football does.

But, actually ?!

Is that all you guys needed to hear is capable of being jump on board the bandwagon? Why didn’t you just say so?

Here’s what the top football programs would be if they were national teams.

Miami Brazil

Both of these programsdominated the ’9 0s and the early 2000 s. Both of them have the most memorable empires in their respective plays since they are did it with flair.

Now, both are in a slump that has no definite tip in sight.

Michigan Argentina

Both make up one-half of the greatest struggle in their respected boasts. Both too have done simply enough winning and have made exactly enough top actors that they can still look down upon other programs.

Still, it’s been multiple decades since either has acquired a entitle, which means they’re “-A” platforms, for now.

Oregon Belgium

Despite neither having given aprecedent as afootball powerhouse, Belgium and Oregon have become two of the trendier appoints in their arenas.

Both fell upon a goldmine of physically talented promises within the past five years, but you get the sense that, like Oregon, if Belgium doesn’t win soon, their opening won’t bide open forever.

Arizona USA

On their day, either of these squads can beat anyone in the game. Realistically though, both programs are from places in the world where endowment is scarce, and that fact will always keep them from rising above a certain ceiling.

In the same way that AU can brag that its campus is better than anyone else’s when they lose, America can basically do the same to whatever country it loses to.

Texas The Netherlands

Like the Netherlands, Texas has created some of the bestplayers ever and is just a degree below Miami, all things considered, when it comes to the coolest program to support, the same way Holland is just behindBrazil.

Both programs, though, havefailed to keep up with the ways their peers have grown, and it demo in how they’ve dramatically fallen off. Holland’s didn’t even qualify for the Euros. And Texas? Well, who know when we’ll ever recognize them in the college football playoff.

USC France

France and USC are the perfect composites for platforms that give cool units to corroborate from cool targets to live. Still, their refer and its own history far outweightheir capabilities at this point.

And , not to mention, dumb arguings keep coming up for both.USC having a manager get into drinking trouble and a player stirring up a imitation floor about saving a drowning toddler is almost as wacky as French participates being arrested forblackmailing teammates over a sex tape.

Ohio State Germany

The influence of both Germany and Ohio State is prevalent of all the countries. The rise of both of their programs has provided a divulge from the tyranny of Spain and Alabama over their respective sports.

The question is, are able to keep the momentum going from the championship each triumphed during the 2014 season and squeeze out another trophy from their current grades?

Alabama Spain

Spain had a span success that was similar to Bama’s in that it won three entitles in six years old, which led to everyone was intended to do stuffs the Spanish way.

People wanted to use Spanish playing forms. Parties wanted to develop potentials the course Spanish people do. And the worst component? Precisely when you thought they were done reign, a brand-new class of amazing talents rose behind to change veterans. Throw in the egotistical devotees that expect to win everything and you have Bama.

Notre Dame England

Like Notre Dame, English football is known for having lucrative Tv contracts and unending cachet to its game.

Like ND, England’s name is much more valuable than its actual team.

Once in a while, they’ll do well enough to earn their space to the big game( see ND vs. Bama, circa 2012) and when they do, it becomes clear that they’re not even in the same conference as the top dogs.

Oklahoma Mexico

You can never count either curriculum out ever. They’re part of a select group of crews that will exactly ever be good.

Still, compared to the rest of the teams in that group, they’re actually simply the best of a bad cluster( Mexico in CONCACAF and OU in the BIG 12 ).

Stanford Switzerland

Stanford is like Switzerland in that you don’t certainly is looking forward to to acquire. You’re only surprised that their programs have formed it to a point that they can consistently win.

And it’s also recreation pointing out when these two programs grow enormous musicians.( Did you know that Andrew Luck is really smart and went to Stanford ?) Who knew such enormous concoctions could come from such prissy places.

LSU Italy

If we’re going to be honest, neither of these crews have been rendering enormous class of endowment lately.

Still, getting a profession coaching either of these squads feels like it will always be a top-five gig in video games. And, despite the aptitude lack, you wouldn’t be surprised if either procured its way to a trophy any devoted time because you can always count on them to have good defenses.

Clemson Colombia

Clemson is one of those schools that has enough history to make it a respected brand name in football, hadn’t been much of a serious contender lately. That is, until the past two years.

Now, these two programs are the ones you look to as units that any neutral devotee can root for, especially those looking for a change at the top.

Baylor Chile

Like Baylor, Chile comes from an area where it’s very easy to fall behind the shade of the conventional supremacies( reckon Texas and now suppose Brazil ).

But while those conventional powers have passed, these two programs have taken full advantage. Baylor has proven itself on multiple reasons to be best available program in Texas the mode Chile has in South America.

Houston Wales

You don’t know how either is supplanting, you just know that they are.

Boise State Iceland

Both hail from situates you’re not sure you can pinpoint on the map and have been very stealthilygaining force before having their large-scale moment.

No matter whereIceland get from here, they’ll always have a win overEngland on their resume, the same way Boise State will ever have that 2007 Fiesta Bowl win against Oklahoma.

Florida Portugal

Both have a deceptive reputation in that when you look at their biographies, you’ll discover they’re not nearly as good historically as the other curricula we compare them to.

Both had been plagued by an inabilityto get their hands on the right coach-and-fours nor the right young players.Because of that, it hasn’t been much fun following either for the better part of the past five years.

Turkey Penn State

Neither has done anything for us lately. At this degree, the most valuable resource that either has to its refer is maybe the craziest crowd in their respective sports.

Tennessee Croatia

They have the endowment to do damage every couple of years and before tournaments embark, looking at their listing clears it seducing to choice them as a dark horse.

And they might be able to draw away a startle once in awhile if their disposal wasn’t in shambles.

TCU Uruguay

Like Uruguay, the post-2 010 surge that TCU has suffered feels like it comes down “out of nowhere.” But there was a stage in time when TCU reigned; it’s only that no one recollects it.

TCU’s two national entitles between 1935 and 1938 are just as sneaky of accomplishments as Uruguay’s 1930 and 1950 World Cups.

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[wander---woman]

This is a story about whiteness. Set against the backdrop of a Caribbean island featuring idyllic beaches, palm tree-dotted, rolling hills, and endemic poverty resulting from centuries of slavery and colonization, this story centers around the whiteness of its protagonist (mine). Occasional glimpses into the lived realities of some minor characters are offered by its author, but, by and large, it does not deviate from its first person limited point of view. The object of this vignette is neither to entertain nor inform. Its chief purpose lies in the preservation of an event in the memory of its author.

We begin our tale with a young woman firmly in the grips of adulthood, yet still grasping at straws when it comes to the Big Questions of Life: Who am I? Why am I here? Will I ever grow into a C cup or am I destined to a life filled with preposterously unsupportive bralettes, with no real need for underwire in sight? Despite these haunting queries floating around in the maelstrom of her mind, plaguing her every waking hour, the young woman has survived 1 heartbreak, 2 broken bones, 3 months backpacking around Latin America, 24 consecutive years of life, and countless rejection letters from literary journals. It should also be mentioned that this young woman is queer, cis, and white.

This young woman is, of course, me.

I had just gotten back from my year in Chile, followed by some solo wandering around Ecuador and Colombia, when I applied for a summer abroad program leader position in the Dominican Republic. The title of the program was “Service and Leadership,” so I was initially wary of the ways in which the concept of “service” would be handled. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded. I was pleasantly surprised to find that concepts like the white savior complex were actually addressed in the curriculum provided us. During the program, my wonderful co-leader and I led daily reflections on developing intercultural skills and tried to broaden students’ definitions of “service” to include mutually-beneficial, reciprocal relationships with community members. The students’ final project was to incorporate what they learned from the Dominican NGO and to implement solutions to problems that their local communities face back home. That is, students were prompted to realize that members of the community are the ones best equipped to address the issues they face. It is not the place of outsiders to swoop in and “civilize,” “educate,” or otherwise alter a community so that it mirrors their own.

It is also worth noting that the students did, in fact, acknowledge and integrate these ideas, ultimately coming up with thoughtful final presentations that delved into those very issues.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s set the stage: A tropical island, bachata music lingers in the air, intermingles between palm fronds lazily swaying in the breeze… as mosquitoes penetrate your flesh through shorts, underwear, socks, shoes, leeching off your lifeblood like the One Percent.

Enter fifteen kids – modern teens of the Snapchat era, oblivious to the musical stylings of MC Hammer, Destiny’s Child and (fortunately) Nickelback – conceived, incubated, and brought to life on Facebook timelines and Instagram filters. [In the distance, the angry voice of a retiree on a golf course in Florida shaking his fist at the sky, “These youngster ingrates will never know what Reagan did for this nation!”]

But I digress.

Of these fifteen kids who signed up for a summer service program abroad, two are Asian-American and two are Black. The other eleven are white. The Language and Culture program, which runs concurrently, consists of roughly 80% young women of color. “It’s that white savior thing,” comments one of their program leaders on why my kids are predominantly white.

The first week of orientation goes well. We visit a cacao plantation, learn about the NGO we’ll be working with, and check out one too many colonial fortresses for my taste. The kids are cool, I love my co-leader (shout out to Chrissy for being a strong, independent woman and overall #goals), and I’m enjoying the seminar we are teaching, which even includes activities on privilege and respecting cultural differences. One student expresses some concerns about homesickness, but then she does a 180 and it’s all good.

Then, about a week and a half in, some shit goes down. This socially-awkward girl from California – we’ll call her Emily – starts saying stuff like, “Rappers and all those people do drugs and encourage violence. The only two genres of music I can’t stand are jazz and hip-hop.” At which point, I let her know where all the music she listens to comes from.

Emily starts to get buddy-buddy with one of the students of color, all the while spewing comments like the above and some even more colorful ones like, “How come your hair looks like that? Are those braids real? Where did you get them?” The person on the receiving end of this dumbassery is a super chill, gender-nonconforming individual who draws and listens to music all the time, and is clearly adept at handling such wildly invasive comments. Imagine the coolness factor of Willow and Jaden Smith combined, but with fewer alien conspiracy theories and even better fashion sense.

Now, at this point, I decide to sit this awesome human down – let’s call them Syd – and remind them that it’s never their responsibility to educate ignorant white folks and that Black safety and comfort come before white feelings. Naturally, it’s awkward coming from a white person, especially from a white person in a position of perceived authority, but I’m working with what I got here. I offer to fill out an incident report regarding the comments, but Syd declines.

My co-leader and I then have a talk with Emily about her remarks, to no avail. We even unpacked the knapsack of white privilege together, for @#$!’s sake! [Link below] But you can’t dismantle the white supremacist heteropatriarchy in half an hour. Or, at least, that’s a tall order and one that I couldn’t fulfill.

https://nationalseedproject.org/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack

Even though I realized that going into it, it was difficult for me to accept that I couldn’t help much. That is, even on a highly-structured, supervised academic program with teachers and chaperones present, I couldn’t make this one kid feel safe. It would be doing a disservice to the historical record if I didn’t admit my white feelings were hurt that I couldn’t protect this student from the effects of systemic racism. The absurdity doesn’t escape me. But, on the other hand, I wasn’t feeling guilty for the privilege I enjoyed as a white person that Syd did not; I was mad. Specifically, I was mad that not only a young person of color, but a young queer person of color was the target of such ignorant remarks – especially during a trip focused on accepting differences. I have taken pride in my identity as a member of the LGBTQ community and I have found strength in standing with others in solidarity, but in this instance my actions were as good as useless. That feeling of impotence gutted me.

When I spoke to one of the Language and Culture program leaders about the situation, who happened to be a queer woman of color, she reminded me that, of course, Syd would encounter bigotry and ignorance the rest of their life and, in her opinion, they needed to learn how to handle those attitudes now as opposed to later. While I understood where she was coming from, I couldn’t help but feel that if I could make this kid feel safe, valid, and comfortable for just this summer – or this week, – just an hour, even – that that would be something.

And I couldn’t.

For Syd’s final presentation, I let them know they could present to just Chrissy and me, instead of the whole group, since the project required a very personal reflection. They opted to present to the whole class anyway, sharing a hand-drawn picture of a mirror with a single eye peeking through, representing the process of introspection and reflection they went through during the program. Syd proceeded to address everything I hoped my students would glean from this experience: that service is a process of exchange, that the white savior complex is deeply problematic and to be avoided at all costs, that introspection is key, and that human connection is at the crux of anything we can deem “service.” Furthermore, they called out the casually racist comments they received during the program in front of the entire group, including Emily. I couldn’t have been prouder.

The outcome of this experience was (hopefully) not the creation of a self-indulgent white guilt fixation. Instead, it’s led me to further educate myself and to (hopefully) become a better ally. It should also be noted that Syd is not to be treated as a mere plot device in this story, enlightening our white protagonist through their very presence. [Although they did teach me more than I ever could have taught them in a million years – about resilience, courage, and the importance of self-expression. And I am indebted to them for that.] Moreover, there is no redemption arc in this story – just a constant process of learning and unlearning.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but I would like to end this story on a positive note.

On our last day in the DR, I went around asking kids what their favorite activity was. One of the more reticent young men who initially refused to try anything outside his comfort zone leaned in and whispered to me, “Don’t tell anyone, but I really liked dancing.” This coming from the kid who sat out during the first twenty minutes of our dance lesson because “salsa is dumb.” This coming from the kid who was attached to his PlayStation console by an electronic umbilical cord only days before, disconnecting only to go to school and struggling to make friends. This same kid was suddenly having a blast getting weird on the dance floor.

So here’s to that kid for trying something new, for leaving me gobsmacked with joy at the sight of a gangly 15 year-old busting a move to some merengue music. Here’s to everyone else around the world stepping outside their comfort zones into the unknown.

*Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” only semi-ironically plays in the distance*

  Fiercely,

J

Wayward Whiteness in Paradise [Santiago, Dominican Republic] This is a story about whiteness. Set against the backdrop of a Caribbean island featuring idyllic beaches, palm tree-dotted, rolling hills, and endemic poverty resulting from centuries of slavery and colonization, this story centers around the whiteness of its protagonist (mine).