On men and institutions

It has been said that the office can change a man – that he will rise to his responsibilities, earn the respect that comes with the emblem of the institution, as he learns to inspire and deliver like a true leader should. So we wish, on this cold, rainy January day.

There are however behaviors and virtues that are easier to acquire earlier than later in life – like self -control and empathy. Yes, we can and should learn new skills throughout our lives, and I am thankful to Steve Pinker for pointing out that good institutions can bring out the better angels of our nature, while making the evil lurking in us unacceptable.

My father was a man from a humble background, but worked hard all his life in public service. He was also an avid student of world history. Here is a pearl of wisdom I remember from him: “Tant vaut l’homme, tant vaut l’institution”. Succinctly translated, it muses that an institution is only as good as the individuals who run it. Libraries are only as good as their librarians; good schools have good principals and teachers; banks and corporations are only as trustworthy as their CEOs and employees. The US presidency is forever imaged after Washington and Lincoln, men of integrity, humility and courage.

We laughed hard when a man of 70 years of age was told to “grow up”. We should now pray that the institution of the US presidency will not be tarnished by egomania.

(Published in the Gazette Times, Corvallis, on Jan 30, 2017)

My Yellow Submarine

“We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine…”

Alerted by Ben, I got on line last week and ordered the Beatles Yellow Submarine Lego set when it first became available. A FedEx truck drove up and delivered it the day before the election. So excited and thrilled to show off my new possession, I fired this e-mail to a few friends and relatives: “Election escape: I got this Yellow Submarine to escape, in case a wall is built on the Mexican border, and Canada builds its own wall to keep us out. Do you have yours?” Little did I know what was intended to be a piece of humor turned out to be an ill-fated prophesy !

The election results of course took everyone by surprise, and left me in sorrow and shame for the country I love. The next day, Jeri and I took a drive to Yachats, where we quietly ate our picnic lunch and watched the ocean crashing on the rocky shore. Above us, thin clouds of grey and white raced across a sky of blue. Seagulls flew over and landed near by our van, unaware and certainly unconcerned about the follies and the karma of humans. 

 

Back in our cozy home made much quieter by the silence of grief, my next escape from the prospect of a Trump presidency and a Republican Congress was to build my Yellow Submarine. The small colorful bricks fitted so well into a fantastic, beautifully designed vessel – and yes, I use here the word “fantastic” because as I locked the pieces together, I felt the power of fantasy of the Lego toy and the Beatles song, piece by piece, note by note. “We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine.”The tune danced in my head, as I sank in the calm, deep ocean, safely cocooned in my marvelous toy, and far away from the stormy clouds, the crashing waves and the rocky shore. When I raised the colorful periscopes of my vessel, peeking through their lenses, I saw thousands of faces and crowds that make up the fabric of our society of the wake of this fateful election.

But first came the questions. How could a man so egocentric, narcissistic and inexperienced about global issues speak for us in the world? But worse, what does it say about us, as a nation, for electing a person whose campaign trail was littered with insults, threats and slogans? Of course, expert commentators in the media have their own answers, filled with analyses of failed strategic political algorithms, demographic profiles, polls and predictions based on statistical science. They classified voters into categories – angry white males, blue collar workers, college-educated women, marginalized minorities, silent majorities, unmotivated millennials, we’ve heard them all by now. Yet, from the periscope lenses of my Yellow Submarine, people did not seem to neatly fit into categories. I saw shapes and colors, faces and body languages thrown together in a turbulent crowd of discontents.

All these faces were carved under the same guiding principles. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Beautifully written words by our Founding Fathers that all school children come to learn in their first civic class. Idealistic as they should be in a Declaration of Independence, albeit a bit utopian they would sound over the course of our history, for sadly we now know that these truthsare not so self-evident, that some men are more equalthan others, and that too often, when we claim our unalienable rights, we are likely stepping on someone else’s rights. Some lives seem to matter more than others. For many, liberty and happiness remain elusive in the daily struggle for survival.

Through my periscopes, I saw the faces of righteous and empowered evangelicals who forgave the three-time married playboy who had said everything to shock the Christian morality – but they voted for him because he would nominate a “pro-life” Supreme Court judge. I saw the powdered faces of women, looking confident under their neat hairdos, who said they were disgusted by blatant chauvinistic comments, but voted for him anyway – and I wondered whether they would be the type of women who would marry a partner with an unpredictable temper, hoping that marriage would somehow turn him into a respectable mate no longer chasing 50 shades of grey. 

I saw the faces of angry ranchers and fossil-fuel supporters for whom liberty means the right to use public parks and Native American sacred lands and waters for their own business interests. They knew that Donald Trump - who had claimed that climate changes and global warming are a hoax - would be on their side.

I saw the faces of law-and-order citizens, beaming with triumph, and the faces of gun lovers for whom liberty needs to mean nothing more than the liberty to carry guns and fully loaded semi-automatic weapons for self-defense. From now on, their streets will be safe, since all immigrants will be severely vetted, and more privately-managed, government-paid prisons will be built, and the Great and Beautiful Wall will be erected with Mexican pesos to keep drug traffickers and rapists away. From now on, their homes will be safe, and how sweet it would be to live and be surrounded only by one’s own kind! Are these populist patriots finally able to reclaim their tribal identity and reject the rainbow coalition? So what if Donald Trump is inspired by Mr. Putin, who he admires as a “strong leader”! Perhaps governing the US like the former KGB is doing in his own fatherland may not be a bad idea. Macho men at least can be trusted to bring law and order, something “nasty women” can’t do. 

I saw the faces of disenfranchised workers, worried fathers and mothers, anxious seniors and frustrated high school dropouts who felt that their boats were left behind with the rising tide – the same “the forgotten men and women” for who FDR focused his program in his 1932 New Deal. This time, they took their chance believing that a billionaire living in a brass-plated skyscraper in Manhattan and who has built his fortune on Wall Street with tax shelters and shady businesses would now suddenly care for the little guys on the Main Streets of the Rust Belt. Would these patriotic citizens now stop buying cheap Chinese imports at Walmart to bring back American jobs? Are they willing to pay 35% more for Mexican avocados, now that trade wars are the answer to trade deficits? Would they be able to sell their own products, proudly stamped with the label “Made in America”, in oversea markets when slapped with tit-for-tat tariffs? When will they realize that the proposed tax changes - from estate holdings to health saving accounts – would benefit the wealth autocracy much more than the rest of us? Haven’t they realized that trickle-down economics have only widened the income gap?

I saw the faces of patriots waving the Stars and Stripes, tired of the Vietnam syndrome, believing again that increasing American military dominance and threatening to “bomb the sh.t” out of Muslim terrorists and their families will be enough to secure peace in the world. They heard it from a man who received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War and claimed he knows more about the Islamic State than current American generals. And they believed him.

A mass always needs a hero, especially in times of many uncertainty and insecurity, and for many people living in red states and counties, I suspect that Donald Trump personifies the ultimate image of American hero: he has reached the top of our collective cult of individualism and the American exceptionalism, he is the outsider who will drain the swampand stand up against the rigged establishment. He has promised to fight for the little guys, and he does it alone, for he alone can fix our disastrous problems. He has now emerged even a greater hero as he won the battle against all odds. 

I even read the faces of all who found in Donald Trump a model of the American pursuit of happiness. If this billionaire can achieve happiness by having any woman he chooses, and say whatever crosses his mind now; if he can reap success by trumping “the system” he so convincingly denounced as rigged, and measure his triumphs by the size and glitter of his towers - perhaps so can we, we the common folks who have always believed in this land of opportunities. Perhaps he has shown us how to do it, how to exercise our inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. He’s even blessed by the Prosperity Gospel.

Now that the nation has voted for changes and prepares for a new world order, both sides of the electorate voice their hopes and fears. Some defend that to the victor goes the spoil, and the man should be given a chance to bring out the changes he promised during the campaign. For others, questions multiply: How does one move beyond a victory that was achieved by harnessing popular anger and fear, by fanning the flames of chauvinism?  How much of the civil rights of minorities will be lost? Will the bite be as painful as the bark was loud? Will Big T govern this huge country as “Twitter-in-Chief”, leaving the management to a team of advisors and staff known for their conspiracy theories and their xenophobic tendencies? If businessman Donald Trump can just walk away from ventures that go sour and claim them as tax-deductible losses, would world leader Donald Trump be able to walk away from global crises that he has no interests in or solutions for? 

But no sooner have I re-read what I wrote above, I felt that it was just a bunch of hubris on my part. From the bubble that was my Yellow Submarine, an echo chamber for my questions, was I not just projecting my own liberal, progressive values and fears on those I set out to understand? Why must I assume that my John Lennonian Utopia of “No Heaven, No Country, and No Religion”,and my Nirvana of “No Possessions”would be, should be, theirs too? I should remind myself – who am I to judge others? What do I know about others’ hopes and fears?

How do I really understand America? How badly are Americans divided? After all, we are not divided over our common aspirations: red or blue, don’t we aspire to the same goals in life: enjoying our family bonds, living in a prosperous and safe community, and working for a better future for our children and grandchildren? Don’t we all cherish the Four Freedoms articulated by FDR in 1941: Freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and from fear? Yet, it is not our aspirations that separate us; it is how we frame our values; it is what we fear, and how we deal with our fears, that sows the seeds of our divisions and sends us on different paths.

We humans are condemned to make simple choices when given the most complex hand of cards. We will always have to make decisions on the basis of imperfect data and limited knowledge, trying to sort out the real from the fake, the lies from the half-truths. Even in the fantasy of my Yellow Submarine, there are so many ways to read maps and survey the horizons through the prisms of its periscope, just as on earth there are so many ways to interpret the Bible, the Koran, or the US Constitution. So we need priests and preachers, lawyers and politicians to tell us what path to take, and we follow them because they provide the simplest answer we want to hear, and because they reinforce our own mindset.. But our own lives remain rich in paradoxes, competing priorities, and conflicting emotions. Our hearts are full of contradictions, and our minds full of unchallenged assumptions. But in the end, the choices in front of us come down to an “up or down”, “Yes or No”, a “This” or “That”, with nothing in between. As incurable Polly Anna’s, we close our minds, shut our eyes and pray to the stars. Bewildered and confused, we pick one most important issue, and vote with our guts. Jobs, abortion, changes, law and order, distrust or hate – how have we reduced our complicated world into so few a word?

Yes, we voted on November 9^th, and the rest is Karma – not fate. Yes, Karma: what we do now will impact what we will become.

Life will go on though, and so it is time for me to emerge from my Yellow Submarine. The world of Lego is a wonderful one, where all mini-figures are truly created equal, with interchangeable body parts, hairdos and hats, to become whatever they want to be; where building blocks come in all colors, shapes and functions, but they become something only when interlocked; where sets are built, taken down and rebuilt - with creativity, fantasy, and above all, with meditation as a refuge and a path of mindfulness.

I have my Yellow Submarine Lego. Do you have yours?

Corvallis, OR

November 10-11, 2016

"God Bless America - Whose America?"

“I settled, but admit no wrong doing”.

Not long ago, a real estate tycoon would not rent to black families. To avoid an embarrassing lawsuit, he settled, but admitted no wrong doing. Even now, he bragged it was a good business practice, no apology needed.

This month, a company which increased the price of a common, life-saving drug by more than 400% settled to avoid a lawsuit for cheating Medicaid. Its CEO smirked our elected representatives, but admitted no wrong doing.

Years ago in Viet Nam, I asked a CDC public health colleague why the US have done nothing to help the victims of Agent Orange. The answer: “We did not apologize, nor pay reparations for Hiroshima, why should we for Agent Orange?” But finally, in his recent visit to Laos, President Obama admitted mistakes done in that lost, forgotten land, where millions of bombs were dropped in a secret war some 50 years ago, and he promised funding to help clear unexploded bombs.

It takes courage, empathy and humility, those core ingredients of a moral conscience, to admit that one has done wrong. Unfortunately they are not common virtues of the powerful. Despite being a nation supposedly founded on Christian morality, we turn our eyes away from the poor and disfranchised who rot in jail for petty crimes; we burst in outrage when scandals surface, then allow profiteers with highly paid lawyers to trump our justice system and walk away, proudly “admitting no wrong doing”.

God Bless America. Which America?

Chinh Le,

(Published in the Gazette Times, October 20, 2016)

On gun safety

Our approach to curbing gun violence, beyond exhortations to prayers, has come down to using simplistic, politically correct, self-evident propositions. From gun-control advocates: “More background checks”; and from gun-right defenders: “Focus on mental health”. Both approaches seem right and proper, but would miss the goal of making America safer.

Why? Because many guns used in criminal acts were either stolen or acquired from friends or family relatives; 95% of gun crimes are committed by people with no mental illness diagnosis, and we do not have a reliable psychiatric screen for psychopaths, nor can predict when an otherwise “normal person” suddenly turns to destructive violence.

I am often reminded by gun enthusiasts that restricting gun ownership is as absurd as banning cars: “Many Americans die in car accidents, but we do not ban cars.” Agree. So let’s take this parallel one step further. To operate a car, one has to pass a driver education class and test, pay for license and bi-yearly registration, and buy insurance. All car sales and re-sales are registered. Stolen cars are reported. Car manufacturers, kicking and screaming, eventually comply with federal safety and other regulations. Results: these laws have brought us safer and better cars, and made us socially conscious, responsible drivers.

I realize and accept that America’s love affair with guns and cars, more than with mother and apple pie, defines a great deal of our culture and psyche. Now, can we agree to apply the lessons learned from car safety to gun safety?

(Published in the Gazette Times, January 29, 2016)

Rolling the statin dice

Here we go again. On TV, a 60-second breaking news: the use of cholesterol-lowering drug statin would cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes by more than 25% in older individuals who have some, but not a particularly high, risk for cardio-vascular disease. After comments from experts, viewers are left with the impression that it’s a good thing to consider.

Here are the results of the study cited, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 2, 2016): Over the 5 year-duration of the study, the group who took rosuvastatin had a disease rate of 3.7 - 4.4%, compared to 4.8 - 5.7% among those who received a placebo drug. This means, approximately, that if 100 patients take a statin for 5 years, we would see a beneficial effect of the drug in 1 patient.  The study found no difference in the rate of fatal heart attacks.

The art and science of medicine is complicated, and I am not writing to dispute expert recommendations. I just want all of us to be aware of how medical statistics should be understood. It sounds good that a drug can cut the relative risk of illness by 25%. The other side of the coin, however, is the number of individuals needed to treat to achieve that statistical result. Rolling the statin dice, 99 out of 100 would have no benefit taking the drug. Add to the equation the cost and side effects of the medication, then, consumers, beware.

Chinh Le, MD

(Published in the Gazette Times, Corvallis, OR, April 8, 2016)