A GLIMPSE INTO OUR INNER BEINGS: WHAT WE READ

In this space over the last 3 ½ years, we’ve acknowledged drawing on books we’ve read for ideas on matters we see as worth writing

about. We’ve pointed readers to books (The Half Has Never Been Told, The Color of Law, and The Warmth of Other Suns) we regard as essential for understanding race in America. We reviewed one of them (The Color of Law) in explaining America’s chronic housing discrimination problem. And, we drew on Madeline Albright’s Fascism: A Warning, in sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s dangerous affinity for dictators.

                      

Reading books defines each of our lives, beyond the utility of their content. We find

solace in the books strewn around our homes and offices and packed onto our shelves. None of us can contemplate a life without books. But, what do we read and why? With each of us, there’s a story offering insight into who we are and how we’ve evolved.   

Henry: Diversity, Diversity, Diversity

Many books I’ve read have taken me places I

couldn’t have imagined and offered context for the jumbled exploration of my own thoughts. From my earliest years, reading provided a spiritual experience in which I could join others in exploring humanity and personal relationships. Even in childhood, I read many

different things in many different areas.  I still do: science fiction like Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; physics, like The Great  Unknown by Marcus Du Sautoy

and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams; religion, including The Bible and A History of God by Karen Armstrong; fiction,including mysteries like Walter Mosley’s Down the River Unto the Sea and classics like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Rabbit Run, and The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. In keeping current on events of the day (and in step with my co-authors) I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

                    

Each of these works, and many others I’ve read, remain part of my fabric. This approach

has a drawback. Sometimes, when I go into a bookstore, I find myself happy and sad at the same time – happy because I’m amidst so much knowledge I’d hope I can absorb and sad because I can’t read it all.    

Rob: A Change is Gonna Come

If 25 years ago I’d been asked for an explanation of what I read and why, the answer would have been quite different than what I offer today. Before the late ‘90s, with the exception of trashy

“airport novels” I occupied  myself with on cross country flights, I read nonfiction. My bookshelf included volumes on elections (Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President series), analyses of World War II

(Richard Overy’s Why  the Allies Won), political memoirs (Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect), and biographies of major historical figures (Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series).

These books brought  me considerable knowledge about a few subjects and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. But, as I see now, I was missing something. A change was coming.   

In 1999, a friend invited my wife and me into a couples book club. Under its rules, each

person took a turn at picking the book for quarterly dinner meetings. Book club membership changed my reading habits (and my life). During the ensuing 21 years, we’ve read 90 books, about half fiction. I found myself reading, and enjoying, A Confederacy of Dunces, John K. Toole’s wonderful, Pulitzer Prize winning novel  set in

New Orleans, where I once lived, and Stephen King’s 11/22/63,  a time travel novel that presented an entirely different perspective on the JFK assassination. 

My book club experience confirmed the wisdom in the old adage some writers live by: if you want facts, write nonfiction. If you want truth, write fiction. l took that to heart. My

book club experience in hand, and after my wife’s death, I  decided I’d try my hand at writing fiction. I began grabbing more and more novels. I still read lots of nonfiction, but I’m now a confirmed, dedicated fiction reader too.

Woodson: Choices and Goals

My book choices are influenced largely by my life choices and goals. With fewer days left to live than I’ve already lived and with goals remaining, I concentrate my reading on what furthers achievement of my goals.

                        

Because I am a property manager and real estate investor, I read a lot on real estate and economic matters (books like Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chris Hogan’s Everyday Millionaires, Joseph

Stiglitz’s People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, and  Property Management Kit for Dummies by  Robert Griswold).  My interest in political and racial issues is satisfied by reading books like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterful Team of Rivals and the critically  important That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World and How We Can Comeback by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Meltz, and

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Finally, because I participate in several Christian ministries, I read books

on religion, including Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive by T.D. Jakes, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, and The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. Then there’s the Holy Bible. I read that too.

                         

As with Henry and Rob, my reading focus developed over time. It reflects life choices

I’ve  made because of my evolution as a person and as a professional, and through recognizing the limitations we all face as humans. Reading remains an essential part of my life.   

            

  

A VERY CLEAR AND VERY PRESENT DANGER: Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

Bad things are happening in the world right now.  Americans wake up every day more concerned than the day before about preserving democratic institutions and the country’s dedication to the rule of law. Daily news reporting brings word of new attacks on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference of the 2016 Presidential election.  Assaults continue on the courts and the very idea of an independent judiciary.  The President’s lawyer says the chief executive can’t obstruct justice, could pardon even himself, and suggests he doesn’t have to respond to a subpoena for his testimony. This is the United States of America?

As if all that weren’t enough, images flood the media of children being torn apart from their parents and hustled off to

detention center cages.  Those children suffer that terror because their parents dared come to the United States seeking refuge from unspeakable violence and abuse in their home countries.  The picture suggests a modification of the inscription on the Statute of Liberty from:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled mases yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

To:

“We dare you give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled mases yearning to breathe free,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

And we will make you wish you never had,

I lift my lamp besides the golden door, so that ICE can see to apprehend you!”

Polls say a majority of Americans recoil at this picture of their

country.  Indeed, the pushback grows daily, as last week’s nationwide protests of President Trump’s immigration policies demonstrates.  Unfortunately, what we’ve witnessed in the Russia investigation and at the southwestern border, symbolize something larger and more dangerous.  That something is FASCISM and it is a worldwide threat. 

Madam Secretary

Madeleine Albright served America as United Nations

Ambassador, then as Secretary of State.  She’s now a professor at Georgetown University, teaching graduate students the ins and outs of diplomacy and world affairs.  To see how her seminars work , read her wonderful new book Fascism: A Warning.  The book takes on so much significance now because it clearly and succinctly lays out, in historical and contemporary terms, the danger the world faces from the fascist threat brewing around the globe.  Yes, that includes the United States. 

Secretary Albright understands fascism first hand, having fled Nazi occupation of her native Czechoslovakia as a child.  She followed in her father’s academic and diplomatic footsteps and became a major player in world affairs, culminating in her service as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State between 1997 and 2001.  Ministers around the world she knew and still confers with are sometimes called “Madeleine’s Exes.” She knows of what she speaks.

What’s Fascism?

The Secretary defines a fascist as “someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.”  This definition covers a wide swath of potentially abhorrent political behavior and governmental mischief.  By showing how fascists have operated in history and what they’re doing today, Secretary Albright makes clear just how much danger the world now faces.  From Turkey to North Korea to Venezuela, the book traces how today’s would-be fascists mimic the classic fascists of history, like Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

The book makes clear most fascists, both historically and those currently on the rise, first come to power through elections.  This book will disabuse readers of the notion fascists always take power through military coups or armed rebellion.  That happens from time to time, but it’s the exception, not the rule, and has been in history.  Hitler, for example, got his nose under the tent as his party, through electoral success and coalitions, gained control of Germany’s parliament in 1933.  The fascist - looking leaders who’ve worked their way to greater and greater power in recent years - Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Viktor Orban in Hungary -- all won elections of some kind.  Once in office, they solidified control by eroding democratic institutions, taking advantage of nativist instincts in their populations, or exploiting economic dislocations enabling concentration of executive power.  They co-opted the courts by appointing cronies (or ideological soul mates).  The legislative branches rubber stamped their programs.  They silenced criticism from the media.

Trump’s Playbook

Capitulation to the executive by legislators, appeals to nativism, and attacks on democratic institutions, including the media, characterize the first 18 months of Trump’s tenure.  Secretary Albright writes of the 45^th President, “Trump’s view of the United States is dark.  Among his favorite mantras are that U.S. courts are biased, the FBI is corrupt, the press almost always lies, and elections are rigged.  The domestic impact of these condemnations is to demoralize and divide.”  As Secretary Albright contends, Trump’s actions resemble those of the authoritarian figures, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, he so admires.

Trump’s opportunity to replace semi-moderate Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy  first drew alarm because the court vacancy means Trump could appoint someone to the Supreme Court who would dangerously expand executive power and appoint someone who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and make abortion illegal in many American states.  His choice of appellate judge Brett Kavanaugh has inflamed, not calmed

those fears. Now, Democrats are sounding the alarm because a fifth vote for the conservative block on the Supreme Court might serve as Trump’s get-out-of-jail-free card in connection with the Russia investigation.  That’s the kind of fascist action really at stake in the coming battle over a Supreme Court nominee and the kind that lurks in the pages of Secretary Albright’s essential book.