It is always personal

In 1950, on the 26th of January, India kicked out the colonizers for ever. 

The new constitution was adopted and went into effect, the Bastard Raj ended, and the old colonizer was to become an island increasingly irrelevant in the world as it had always been for the most part of human existence!

Even as an Indian, I never cared for the Republic Day celebrations, however.  Because, it was less about the spirit of independence and more about jingoism and the military spectacle.  Exactly the kind that trump wants to see happen here in the US for the Fourth of July!

Decades later, my brother has another reason to mark the 26th of January.  It is the official national day of his adopted country, which continues to have the crown as its figurehead, for reasons beyond my understanding.  Maybe it is a white thing!

January 26th is complicated.

But, those are political. Not personal.

On a strictly personal level, January 26th is a day to celebrate.  I owe my existence, my male chromosome, to an event that happened on the 26th.

It is the day that my father was born in 1930.

Paal paayasam for the 90-year old and for everybody! ;)

Like father, like sons ;)

It was a dark and stormy day

The sky was dark as if it was night though it was day time.  Like the last days of Pompeii.

I switched the lights on.

Even inside the home, leaves and twigs all over the floor as if the wind had blown through the house.

And then it suddenly hit me: I hadn't fed my dog for more than a day. I hadn't even let him out.

I called his name.  He came with his tail wagging.  I gave him a hug. I opened the door by the kitchen for him to go to the side yard.

He rushed out.

There was a puppy--all black--sitting right outside the door.  I shooed the pup away.

I remembered that there was no dog food at home.  I hadn't bought any.

I hurriedly tore a few pieces of bread.  I called out for my dog.  He came in slowly with a stick across his mouth.

It struck me that my dog had died a long time ago. Twenty years ago!

I woke up.

How old is the temple? Does it matter?

"Please share the Srivaikuntam photos with Girija also--she said she has never been there," I wrote to my sister.  Girija was at a loss when trying to understand how she had never been there, when the distance from Pattamadai to Srivaikuntam is not even 30 miles.

I told her I would send some of my favorite photos from Srivaikuntam.

The temple at Srivaikuntam is at least 1,100 years old.  But then, it could be older, too.

To the locals and the faithful, the age of the temple is immaterial--to them, it has always been there.  But, to an insanely curious person like me, this is a simple question for which detailed answers ought to be there on display boards, in printed materials, ... Could this temple be 1,500 years old? 2,000?  You see what I mean?

Of course, as a confirmed atheist, my interest in this is simply for a better understanding of the world around me and not for any religious salvation. Therefore, it is all the more an irony that here I am as an atheist trying to get the simplest of questions answered, while the true believers don't seem to be interested at all.  Faith doesn't require answers to questions about age.

I was blown away by the complexity of the engineering and art at the temple.  I am one hell of a moron when it comes to anything related to the arts, and even more so when we talk art history.  Yet, yes, mind-blowing!

Lengthy corridors supported by stone columns, each from a single piece. Delicate carving of the stone to produce finely detailed sculptures.

All these done so many years ago.

The temple sculptures have a lot of secular art too--not mere religious ones.

I loved the piece below, which appears to depict a hunter who has returned with a heck of a prize, and perhaps an annoying thorn in the sole of his foot, which the woman is removing.   Simply beautiful.



It seemed that there has been extensive damage to quite a bit of the art in the areas exposed to the harshness that the sun, wind, and rain over the thousand-plus years.  The displays noted that an industrialist/philanthropic family had spent quite some money on renovating the temple.

And then there were art pieces that would make middle school students giggle, and people like me wish that somebody would explain the significance of such wonderful art from so many centuries ago.

In the carving below, there is no doubt about the intention of the bearded male (no, not me!) who seems to be a hermit (no, not me!)



If Pinocchio's nose grew because of lying, well, this hermit's penis appears to reflect his thoughts of sex.

The fingers of the woman's left hand are also strategically placed.

I so wish I had taken art history!

There was a lot more to see, and there is a limit to how much I can take photos too.  If only I had been informed and alert about such fantastic art at temples even when I was way younger!  Youth is certainly wasted on the young :(

One interpretation is that depiction of sex in the art in the outer areas of the temple was to remind the believers to leave their dirty thoughts outside, and enter the holy areas with a mind that was focused only on god.  Maybe.

Another interpretation is that temples were also the local art exhibits where the sculptors displayed their talents. Maybe.

Fascinating fodder for curious minds in a 1,100- or 1,500-year old temple!

The truth is that the GOP cannot live forever with lies

Back when the Bush/Cheney/Faux News collaborative venture called the Republican administration created their own reality and assured themselves that they were creating heaven on earth, Stephen Colbert made us laugh our way out by the news that he reconstructed in his show.  In this reconstruction, Colbert invented a word that has also entered popular culture: truthiness.

American television comedian Stephen Colbert coined the word in this meaning^[2] as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd" during the pilot episode of his political satire program The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005. By using this as part of his routine, Colbert satirized the misuse of appeal to emotion and "gut feeling" as a rhetorical device in contemporaneous socio-political discourse

So, where from did Colbert get the word?

 Colbert explained the origin of his word as: "Truthiness is a word I pulled right out of my keister".

We all laughed.  It was funny.

Except that it is not funny anymore. In this rapid descent to hell, facts no longer matter.

Facts and truths are fundamental to democracy.

Fights over truth claims are simply the price we have to pay for living in a democracy. By this way of thinking, we are just in a particularly rough patch.

But, the challenge to truth leading to the conclusion that "anything goes" as truth and that any interpretation is as good as another, is a freaky way to live.

Some kinds of truth—think of physics or other “pure” sciences—might be able to survive quite adequately without democracy. However, the best aspects of liberal democracy cannot survive without any commitment to finding some common way of seeing and talking about the world that takes on the imprimatur of truth, at least provisionally.
Truth matters as the foundation for interpersonal trust. It matters because we cannot talk to one another, much less conduct a serious debate, until we share some principles and facts about the world at large, not to mention a consensus on how to generate them. How, for example, can we ever decide on a serious labor policy if we can’t agree on whether the unemployment rate has gone up or down or even on how to figure out how many people are out there looking for work? 

Exactly.  Collective decision making in a democracy, like about unemployment and census, depends on truth.

Recent political developments have made it abundantly clear that 63 million, which includes quite a few "god-fearing" white people, have decided to wage a war on truth itself!

But, history shows that we have been engaged in such a battle like forever.  And, with every new battle, truth always prevails.  So, fight we shall, and win we will.

[NO] matter how treacherous the terrain, we cannot give up on trying, within the framework of pluralism, to find some elemental convictions about the nature of reality that we can hold in common. Our future depends on seeing, as well as living in, a shared world.

South of the Sahel

When reading this essay, I was reminded yet again on how much a typical understanding of sub-Saharan Africa begins only with European colonialism and white supremacy.

For a long time, historians in the West have seen the Atlantic slave trade as shaping the beginnings of West Africa’s engagement with Europe. There is no question that the slave trade exerted a profound influence in many parts of Africa. However, to look at African history as the history of slavery and the slave trade is no more accurate than to study the history of the Nazis as the sum of the German past.

That's how I was taught about Africa in world history more than four decades ago, and it continues even today. I often remind students to scratch the surface and discover the plenty that there is to learn.

At least we know something about Egypt, the Pharaohs, and the pyramids.  But the rest?

Take a look at this map of the part of Africa that is south of the Sahara:

No, I am not going to ask you to name the countries--after all, I too would surely miss more than one.  Take a moment to scan the map. The size. The number of countries.

Now, think about American Presidents making trips to African countries.  Since the LBJ years, which is when most of the countries were finally able to shake their colonial masters off, how many of those countries have been visited by American Presidents?

It is a fair enough question, right?

Let's consider the two-term Presidents first.  Nixon was nearly a two-termer.  Yes?  How many of those countries did he visit?  How about Reagan?  From 1968 through 1988.

Here's what Wiki tells us: Neither Nixon nor Reagan visited even one sub-Saharan country when they were Presidents.  Not one.

I am sure there were geopolitical reasons during the Cold War era.  But, still ... not even one country?

Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama have made a number of trips to Africa.  But, the countries they visited?  It feels like they were all on the same beat. Going to the same countries.

I don't care about what they do when they visit.  But, when the President visits a country, Americans at least hear about it, perhaps for the first time ever.  Imagine a President going to Congo--it does not matter which Congo it is.  Or Gabon. Or Mozambique.  At least for those couple of days, those countries will be "trending" in social media, and Wolf Blitzer will cover those countries nonstop on CNN.

But, it does not happen.

Now, we have a (P)resident in the White House who just knows only as shitholes, where people live in huts. He thinks there is a country called Nambia.  No wonder he has steered clear of the continent when making his international trips as the President, including four to France.  Maybe Macron can take him along to visit the old colonies on an apology tour!

President tRump's 17 international trips to 23 countries
Source

But then, maybe it will #BeBest if he does not go anywhere near Africa!

Actions and reactions

My first semester in graduate school was also my urban economics professor's first at the university.  I think "urban economics" was the name of the course.  One of the readings that he--a recent transplant from Canada--had for us was about Monterey Park.

Most of the natives were familiar with the place but a couple of us foreigners and out-of-staters had no idea where Monterey Park was.  This essay was all about how the city's population had dramatically changed--seemingly overnight--so much so that even the signage in front of commercial establishments were appearing in Chinese.  And the local whites were upset.

I, as a foreigner, couldn't understand what the big deal was.  Why were the whites so upset?  Yes, there was a time in America's history when the immigrant Chinese were ill-treated.  But, wasn't that history?

Thus, in fall 1987, as a foreign student in Los Angeles, I was introduced to a rapidly changing America, starting with a community that was only a few miles east of the university where I was engaged in intellectual discussions.

What I didn't know then was this: It had been just about two decades since the US had gotten rid of its racist immigration laws.  In 1965, LBJ and the Democrats passed a sweeping immigration reform that followed the Civil Rights Act.  A new immigration regime allowed non-whites to come to the country.  The initial trickles quickly became a stream and then a wave of non-whites.  Monterey Park had become Chinese majority, with a Chinese-American mayor to boot.  And quite a few white folk were angry.

I didn't know then that I was in the relatively early part of the gushing stream of immigrants from India.

Source

I was in an international setting--on campus and in the city. A bubble that normalized my status.  From my first day, I didn't know anything other than believing all these were the norm!

Almost 30 years after the LBJ-led immigration reform, in 1994, the reactionaries struck.  An anti-immigrant hateful rhetoric clinched a second-term for a Republican governor in California!

But, immigrants continued to move to California.  Silicon technology was altering the economic landscape at warped speeds, and the population from India kept up with this pace.  The stream from India became a huge wave.

All thanks to the reform that was passed by Congress and signed into law by LBJ on October 3, 1965.

But, LBJ had no idea that his immigration reform would lead to the browning of America.

Source

Fifty years later, in June 2015, the reaction to LBJ opening the immigration gates to non-whites came in the form of tRump.

The hateful rhetoric that helped a Republican win the governor's office in 1994 was also the reason why the party lost California.  It is now a state where Republicans are an endangered species, who mostly yell and scream from its inland valleys.  I cannot imagine the hateful rhetoric that has made a success out of tRump and the Republicans having a lasting effect beyond another election cycle.

Better days are ahead.

Selling graduate degrees

History/news repeating itself means that I can easily copy/paste from my old posts. It is as simple as that.

Consider this Washington Monthly piece, for instance, which argues that "Teachers across the country earn grad degrees to get raises. Turns out those degrees don’t improve student learning—they just fatten universities’ bottom lines."

Ah, yes, an old issue here at this blog!

Back in September 2011, I warned readers: "Two words to keep in mind: graduate degrees."  I wrote there:

Look at yourself at the mirror and ask this question: "Does one really need a master's degree to teach at the elementary school level?
And then, follow it up with this: "Do instructors at community colleges need doctorates to teach the classes?"
There is a good possibility that your instinct says that a master's degree is not needed for elementary school teachers, and that community college faculty don't need to have the "PhD" tag either.
It is also highly probable that you think it might be a good idea if teachers have those respective advanced degrees.
Now, ask yourself, this: will student learning be increased just because it is an elementary school teacher with a master's degree, or a community college instructor with a PhD?

That was in 2011.

Here is the Washington Monthly in its January/February 2020 issue:

“Most of the research is that there’s either no statistically significant difference, or small significant differences, in teachers with master’s degrees,” said Thomas Kane, an economist and professor of education at Harvard. Matthew Chingos, an education-policy expert at the Urban Institute, has described it as “one of the most consistent findings in education research.” Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, put it more bluntly: “It’s as conclusive as research that finds smoking causes lung cancer. It’s as conclusive as the research on climate change.”

Compare with what I wrote here in 2011:

There is nothing in the literature that shows that student learning is enhanced merely because the teachers have those higher credentials.  In fact, the higher credentials by themselves do not make good teachers.  The advanced degrees are neither necessary, nor sufficient, conditions for improved student learning.  These are simply distractions!

So, why then the push for graduate degrees?  I will quote from my own post first:

The problem comes up because teachers, their unions, and the schools have set up a system in which teachers get a salary bump if they have advanced degrees. ...
Now, think about higher education as an industry.  If you are a higher education professional, you realize that there is an economic incentive for second grade teachers also to get master's degrees.  You then expand into offering those programs

And what does the Washington Monthly say?

Nixing the automatic master’s pay bump, which many experts advocate, would likely face intense resistance from teachers’ unions. It would also draw quiet resistance from a less obvious source: the universities awarding degrees. Data from the Department of Education shows that education master’s degrees are the second most commonly awarded master’s degrees in the country, after MBAs. That makes them an important and reliable source of tuition revenue—as long as teachers feel the need to get them.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with us?!

My bottom-line was:

Taxpayers subsidize the public universities that offer those graduate degree programs.  That is right: we pay for the generation of most of those advanced degrees.  These graduates then earn more because of the very degrees, when those degrees are not even required!

That is no different from this argument that teachers ought to be paid more:

 This money should still go to teachers—it just shouldn’t be tied to an expensive, time-consuming degree with no tangible benefit. Simply giving all teachers higher salaries, says Roza, would be better than having teachers go into debt to get degrees.

Make teaching great again, dammit, instead of wasting money on unnecessary diplomas!

"We may have come on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now."

MLK said that.

MLK was born on January 15th, way back in 1929.  It is strange to think that while there is a feeling of a contemporariness about his life, his centenary is coming up in nine years!

It is beyond my wildest imagination how MLK could have been optimistic during the short years that he lived.  To be that optimistic, even while fully knowing the horrors and horrible people all around, makes him an extraordinary human being--warts and all.

I, on the other hand, in an immensely more comfortable setting in 2020, am always way more pessimistic than MLK could have ever been, it seems like.

As I look around, I don't see people with significant standing encouraging us with "we shall overcome."  They are not reassuring us that the moral arc of the universe does indeed bend towards justice.

"We may have come on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now."

The first time I listened to MLK's "Mountaintop" speech, and when he built up the "if I had sneezed," it was a combination of tears and joy.  No shame in admitting to it.  The man literally moved me to tears.

I was ready to act on his “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

After listening to his "we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago," I was ready to go and punch a few people, despite my pacifism.

His words, his oration, his cadence, his tone, moved me even though I came to his words decades after he was assassinated.

We're all in the same boat now.  But, heading where?

Why this binge drinking?

I used to take my water bottle to the classroom.  I figured that if I am going to be participating in talking for almost two hours, well, I better have water by my side in case my throat became dry or if I had to clear my throat.

Extremely rare was the day when I actually sipped from it though.  Evidence-based practitioner that I am, well, it has been a long time since I carried my water bottle to classes.

And that was only for my classes.  I couldn't be bothered walking around with a water bottle in my hand, as if I was a toddler in need of a comforting milk-bottle and pacifier close by.  Unlike most of my fellow Americans, I don't carry coffee or soda or whatever in my hand wherever I go.  Practically paraphilic infantilism all that to-go behavior is! ;)

These days, it is all about water.  Soda and sugar are increasingly treated like cigarette and nicotine.  "Hydrate" is considered as the Eleventh Commandment!  "Hydration is now marketed as a cure for nearly all of life’s woes."

“There’s no evidence that a little bit of dehydration really impacts anybody’s performance,” said Dr. Mitchell Rosner, a kidney specialist at the University of Virginia

Exactly.

And then there is the possibility--however small that is--that one could over-hydrate; if that happens, water is practically poison, as I blogged just a few months ago.  Further, people seem to think that the only way one can hydrate is through water.  But, hey, what about coffee? Fruits like oranges?  Ah, yes, it is not about critical thinking and evidence ;)

We have been brainwashed:

We think of water as so good for us that the bottled water industry doesn’t need to spend much money on convincing us to buy it, compared with marketing budgets for other beverages.

Even if we decide that we all need access to drinking water all the time, well, there are other ways to accomplish that.  The public spaces that we use could have drinking water fountains/faucets.  But, oh yeah, the commercial water industry made sure that we would even get rid of them so that they can sell more packaged water at exorbitant prices!

I am getting angry now; have to douse that fire inside with cold water ;)

What's the point of this work?

The lines were long at the gate.  The US had just assassinated an Iranian general and, we had to go through additional security protocols.

I heard a man excitedly calling out a woman.  "Long time," he said.  "How are you?"

"Doing well," she said and added something in Hindi.

I wanted to turn towards them and suggest that they speak only in English if they wanted me to listen in, because my Hindi is no good.  But, I didn't.  I didn't have to either--the rest of their chat was all in English.

They talked about the places and peoples they visited during their respective vacations in two different parts of India.  And then came the job talk.

"So, who do you work for now?"

"It has been more than four years with Microsoft," she replied.

"How are things going?"

"I have a great team. Pay is great, and the benefits are good."

I thought to myself that it was a strange response.  It was not adding up well.

"Sometimes, I wonder why I am doing all that.  What's the point of this work?"

Aha, that explained the strange response.

I wish people sincerely engaged with such questions.  What's the point of the work that they might be doing?

"So, how do you answer that question?"

I was delighted that the man was a good conversationalist.  He wasn't being the stereotypical male by any means.

"I wish I knew," she said and laughed.

He didn't let her off that easily. "I am sure you have thought about it.  How you deal with that question?"

"Art is my savior."

"You mean like painting and sketching?"

"Yes.  As an undergrad, I had taken an art class.  Now, I am building on that."

People often spin their wheels doing pointless work in order to earn what they consider to be a good salary.  But, those high earnings do not fill the emptiness within.

A long, long time ago, I was convinced that the salary and benefits that engineering promised me would never come anywhere close to being the answers to same question this woman was pondering: What's the point of this work? 

I took a different path that has led me to where I never have to worry about the point of it all.  I lucked out.

Is there anybody going to listen to my story?

No, it is not about "Ah, girl, girl, girl."

I wanted some poetry in my life and I turned to one of my usual sources.  I was in for a treat.

It was a poem that I had never heard about, and by a poet whose name is new to me.  Uncovering my ignorance is a humbling experience every single day.  When there is very little that any one of us knows, how could one ever be arrogant enough to exclaim "I alone can fix it" is beyond me!

Walter de la Mare.  Perhaps you know that name.  I hadn't until I visited this site for a dose of poetry.

I pulled up his poem so that I could read the words as the voice read aloud The Listeners.

                     The Listeners

By Walter de La Mare

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,   

   Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses   

   Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,   

   Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;   

   ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;   

   No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,   

   Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners   

   That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight   

   To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,   

   That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken   

   By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,   

   Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,   

   ’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even   

   Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,   

   That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,   

   Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house   

   From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,   

   And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,   

   When the plunging hoofs were gone.

If I didn't know anything about the poet, which I didn't until I looked up his entry in Wikipedia, I would have easily thought that this was a poem that had a great deal of subtext.  After reading about de la Mare, I can't but help wonder if it was intended as nothing but a poem for kids to enjoy getting scared about in the night as their parents or grandparents recited the lines.

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, | That I kept my word,’

That's the best most of us can do day in and day out.

Tamarind History

When looking for Perumal Murugan's books, I came across a title that was absolutely fascinating: Tamarind History.  With a tastefully-designed cover too:

Source

I have a fondness for tamarind and mango trees that were in plenty in the "compound" back in Neyveli.  As I wrote here almost a decade ago, by the gate to our home was a giant tamarind tree.  It was huge.  Even in the best of the lighting, the compound was in semi-darkness at best, and some of the trees were in utter darkness.  Most of this old tamarind tree by the gate was in the dark.  It is, therefore, easy to imagine that some of the school friends coming over wanted to get past the tree as fast as they could--kids were brought up with ghost stories in which tamarind trees were almost always the favorite "hang out" for the spirits.

But, we were never afraid of that tamarind tree.  After all, we did not know any better.  The tree was always there from the time we remembered the world.

I picked up a copy.

As soon as I reached home, I followed up on my curiosity about the translator, Blake Wentworth.  The book described him as a professor at UC Berkeley, and I was damn impressed that here was another guy from the West who was a fan and a scholar of the Tamil language.

I googled for Blake Wentworth.

The results were not what I imagined though.

UC Berkeley professor fired nearly two years after sexual harassment claims substantiated
Dismissal of Blake Wentworth – who sued the women who filed the harassment complaints – marks a rare instance of termination for sexual misconduct

Oh my!

I started reading the book.  A fantastic tale it is, and set in the familiar areas that straddle Kerala and Tamil Nadu near Nagercoil and Kanyakumari.  The people, the customs, the tensions, and more that the author--Sundara Ramaswamy--had written about more than 50 years ago are not only highly relatable but also feel contemporary.  A story that has truly withstood the test of time.  A classic, indeed.

Bomb,bomb, bomb | Bomb, bomb Iran

Ever since tRump started campaigning, I have been blogging here and telling anybody who wanted to listen to me that he merely crudely distills the same message that most of the Republicans have always expressed more euphemistically.  Every once in a while, even those "statesmen" let their guard down and adopted a tell-it-as-it-is, which is tRump's winning electoral approach.  One of those was about Iran.

Unlike President Obama and the Democrats who wanted to to work a way out of the hostilities, most Republicans were hell bent on bombing Iran back into the stone age.  It was such a sentiment that then candidate Senator John McCain expressed when he sang about bombing Iran.  Recall that campaign moment?

tRump is making that Beach Boys cover song come true!

As a wimp, a wuss, a pacifist, war is never on my mind.

Of course, as most young boys are, I too was once fascinated by wars and battles.  Back in grandma's village, I eagerly listened to what later turned out to be exaggerated accounts of an extended family elder's service in the military during the Indo-Pak war that birthed Bangladesh.  As a teenager, I read books and watched movies that were set in the context of WW II.

And then I grew up.

It started with the excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front that was required reading in school.  Suddenly, war began to make no sense.  Mohandas Gandhi's pacifism appealed a lot more to me.  But, it was not any immediate Damascene Conversion to pacifism.  I continued to oscillate back and forth through my late teens and early twenties.

By the time of the Iraq War during the first Bush presidency, I was a committed anti-war nutcase.  And have been since.

Reading Ernest Hemingway and re-reading Joseph Heller and others cemented my pacifism.  War is hell. So much so that even movies that featured violence appealed less and less to me.

But, wars continue. Wars are good for business and politics.  There are now new chants for yet another war against yet another country in the Middle East that has been in the Republican radar for a long time.  That context compels me to blog about war and peace.  There are others who tweet about their direct experiences, like this lengthy thread (and the comments there that I urge you to read.)

19/
They thank us, but they bite for war-hawks that want to put us in harms way for various, often very murky reasons. Before you get hung ho for war, consider that the human costs aren’t only tallied in death or injury but also in destroyed families and the theft of joy.

— JAFERD, MD (@Supermansings) January 4, 2020