Miscellaneous Ruminations

Or As They Name It On Jeopardy: Potpourri!

As I “listen to the whisper,” there are a number of subjects that I have been thinking about lately.

Immigrants

According to the UN Refugee Agency

As of the end of 2024, the most recent reporting period, 123.2 million people had been forced to flee their homes globally due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order.

Among them were nearly 42.7 million refugees. In addition, there were 73.5 million people displaced within the borders of their own countries (IDPs) and 8.4 million asylum-seekers.

There are also 4.4 million stateless people, who have been denied a nationality and lack access to basic rights such as education, health care, employment and freedom of movement.

….More than 1 in every 67 people on Earth has been forced to flee….

I write about immigrants often in my blog. It is a subject that perplexes me for a number of reasons. Over the past decades, immigrants and immigration policy (or the lack thereof!) has become a hyper-politicized subject. I don’t understand that. It shouldn’t be because the precepts of the major world religions teach us that we are supposed to welcome the stranger. The solution to the challenge of immigration policy seems relatively easy, and yet, as a nation, we can’t seem to figure it out. Consequently, there is needless suffering and division. Allow me to pontificate on a solution.

Two days ago in my blog post, I mentioned the ICE raids in Los Angeles. Subsequently, President Trump announced exemptions for immigrants who are working in farming, hospitality, and food service industries because they are, “good, longtime workers who are hard to replace.” While that comment was motivated by economic reasons, I will choose to look at the glass half full and give thanks for our president’s epiphany, even if it was based on economics and not human decency. I wonder how long it might be before he adds construction workers, meat processing employees, and essential workers in other service industries to the list! Clearly, immigrants (documented and undocumented) are part of the fabric of our culture. They are essential to our economy. They are fellow neighbors and residents in our communities.

Friends, this subject is not complicated! We all agree that undocumented immigrants (just like American citizens) who commit crimes should be prosecuted and brought to justice…with due process. We agree that immigrant labor is needed for the wellbeing of our economy and for services that we depend on. All we need to do is welcome immigrants at our border, screen them, and give them “a number.” Their number serves the same function as a Social Security number or a green card number. It helps our government to keep track of them…for their good and for our nation’s need for good order. A system could be devised in which employers apply for immigrant labor help and they are matched to potential employees at the border. The immigrants’ “number” enables them to become legally part of the social service net; health benefits, Social Security, income taxes, licenses, and employee benefits provided by their employers.

Developing a system to support this is not rocket science. It only requires the political will to do so. In this way, our politicians have failed us miserably. President Bush (who was a border-state governor first) wanted to enact comprehensive immigration reform and a Democratic congress would not cooperate. The same is true for President Obama and a Republican congress. The Biden administration took years to recognize that opening the southern border without any controls was a disaster. When the Senate finally introduced comprehensive immigration reform in 2024, the House voted it down for fear of candidate Trump’s threats.

I understand that “the devil is in the details” but common sense immigration reform should not be this hard when there is bi-partisan agreement on the fundamentals; the mandate of biblical welcome of the stranger, the need to prosecute criminals, the economic benefit of immigrant labor, and the fact that it is not indicative of good order to have tens of millions of immigrants in our country whose fate hangs in limbo each day.

Speaking of immigrants, I have mentioned my friends, Peggy and Larry Magnesen, who volunteer to assist immigrants in Chicago to obtain citizenship. This is their latest “feel good” photo of the Dawood family from Sudan. All eight of them are now US citizens and making America great:

I am not a big supporter of professional sports franchises, but the Los Angeles Dodgers announced on Friday that they were committing $1 million toward assistance for families impacted by recent threats to immigrants in the city, a day after the team said it denied federal agents access to parking lots around its stadium. Kudos Dodgers!

Space X

A SpaceX megarocket blew up on the launch pad on Wednesday. It was reported as an “anomaly.” It seems to me that SpaceX rockets are blowing up routinely. Who is regulating this? What are the consequences? If SpaceX rocket debris (who knows what toxins it might contain) blew up over my house, your house, the Capitol, or the White House, don’t you think there would be some consequences and great public outcry? Elon Musk said it was “just a scratch.” Before imagining a trip to Mars, I think SpaceX might want to first figure out how to exit Earth’s atmosphere successfully. Visionaries and entrepreneurs have changed the world for the better, but I can’t imagine astronauts waving to the moon on their way to Mars when SpaceX can’t even get a rocket off the launchpad!

The Israel-Iran War and America’s Role

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a federal law that limits the president's power to commit the U.S. to an armed conflict without congressional approval. Since the enactment of the law, US presidents have found ways to circumvent it and make military strikes or take our nation into war.

President Trump is currently considering whether to enjoin Israel in its war with Iran. He said that he may take two weeks to make a decision. Why hasn’t anybody in Congress spoken up against this? Why such silence on a matter of such grave seriousness with potentially cataclysmic consequences? Why is our president mulling this highly sensitive matter over in the public sphere as if it were reality television?

The Bush administration immersed our nation in allegations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that threatened our nation’s safety. Shielded by that threat, he bypassed the War Powers Act and unilaterally took our nation into war against Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction! Our soldiers and many innocent Iraqis paid a big price!

Israel and the United States have alleged, at least as far back as 2012, that Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon. We have had monitors in Iran. Granted, their oversight was likely not foolproof. However, war should always be a last resort…after all negotiation has failed. Who will be courageous enough to prevent our nation from a repeat of 2003?

My Running Passion

Okay, thank you for reading this far. Time for a little levity! I have been running for about 45 years, about 29,000 miles in total. It is my passion. As I age, I am grateful for my passion because it has contributed to my relatively good physical and mental health. (Okay, maybe you want to debate the mental health part!) I ran eight miles yesterday. June 20 is my favorite day of the year to run. It is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. On June 20, the sun is directly overhead. That means that we make no shadow. (Okay, astrophysicists, humor me, that may not be technically correct, but it is as close as we get!) Most of the time when I run, I am a Clydesdale. When I run on June 20, I am a thoroughbred. I run so fast that I make no shadow!

Earlier last week, I had a running first. There was a bird that was flying mysteriously overhead. I did not look up to see the bird, but I did see its shadow (because it was not June 20!) buzzing around me. After a short while, the bird swooped and struck the back of my head! My presumption is that I must have been running near its nest. Most times, running is a totally safe activity. Every once in a while, not so much!

Gratitude

I read an insightful and deeply meaningful Guest Column in the New York Times yesterday. It meant so much to me that I want to gift it to you. The writer is Russell C. Ball III. I googled him. He is an entrepreneur and financial investor, apparently quite wealthy. His thoughts are worthy of our consideration:

We live in the most materially prosperous era in human history. Over the past half-century, child mortality has fallen by two-thirds in the United States, medical advances have made lives longer and more comfortable, education rates have soared, and material comforts like air-conditioning, plumbing and internet access abound. Although our country faces many challenges, the progress of the past decades has ushered in conveniences and opportunities that previous generations could scarcely imagine.

Yet we are anxious, restless and often enraged. Why?

It’s not only about our circumstances. It is about how we perceive our lives. Although technology has elevated our standard of living, it has created a warped lens of comparison. Americans’ many anxieties — about the state of our democracy, among other pressing worries — are increasingly born out of envy. Rarely has envy been so easily provoked, profitably spread or deeply embedded in daily life. This collective envy runs the risk of cutting the threads that hold our democratic system and civil society together.

In his “Divine Comedy,” Dante Alighieri described envy not just as a personal sin but also as a societal toxin. In “Purgatorio” the envious are punished by having their eyes sewn shut — blinded to their own blessings, tormented by the success of others, which they can still hear about. That poem was written more than seven centuries ago. Today our punishment is the inverse: Our eyes are forced open, flooded with curated illusions of friends and strangers alike on social media. We scroll through images of other people’s vacations, seemingly perfect families, luxury homes and effortless success, and we start to feel that we’re falling behind, even if we are objectively thriving. There is a strong argument that social media can provide access to important information and a sense of community. However, the consequences of this technology and the slow drip of dopamine it administers present massive dangers to the well-being of our society.

Social media didn’t invent envy, but it industrialized it. It turned comparison into a business model. The average teenager spends almost five hours per day on platforms whose algorithms are finely tuned to monetize discontent. We have handed over the emotional development of an entire generation to corporations with an incentive to keep them scrolling and feeling less and less content.

Into this fragile emotional landscape stepped Donald Trump. His genius was not policy but narrative. He told millions of Americans what they already felt: You are losing. Someone else is winning. And it is not your fault. Others are to blame. He named villains — immigrants, China, coastal elites. He successfully rebranded envy as righteous anger. His political project was never about making America great again. It was about explaining why other people seemed to be doing better.

Ironically, essentially no one is taking advantage of America. The United States built the postwar order and wrote the rules of the global game. Our government designed the trade agreements and a financial system that benefited Americans. That’s why the U.S. gross domestic product is almost 60 percent larger than that of its nearest rival, China. American companies have historically dominated in science, technology, aerospace and defense. They lead the way in banking and capital markets, media and entertainment, biotech and pharmaceuticals, professional services and higher education.

But politics is emotional. It thrives not on facts but on feelings. When you live in a world where everyone’s life — viewed through the screens in front of you — looks better than yours, feelings of resentment abound. And they are easy to manipulate.

There is a real problem that fuels much of this envy, of course. America’s widening wealth gap is a major threat to our prosperity. That wealth gap, though, is not the result of foreign exploitation, government inefficiency or generous entitlement programs. First and foremost, it is a consequence of asset inflation. Over the past two decades, those who held real estate and stocks watched their net worth explode. Those who didn’t didn’t. Trump-era policies — tax cuts, deregulation, capital gains preferences — further widened this chasm under the false promise of economic populism. As those tax cuts are extended and expanded, the wealth gap — and the envy it inspires — will grow.

Americans are angry not because America is failing but because our current system does not feel fair. We are measuring our lives against an algorithmically amplified social media elite. Today we are less grateful for what we have and more bitter about what we think we lack. Out of this bitterness we are exposed constantly to hostile and tribal political discourse in which any notion of the common good has been lost. Compromise is now framed as a failure. We are left feeling as if the fabric that once bound us together is being irreconcilably pulled apart.

As in Dante’s vision of purgatory, our only path out begins with humility and an appreciation for the good fortune we do have. We must teach our children — and remind ourselves — that life’s meaning is not found in someone else’s social media posts. There will always be someone smarter, richer, more athletic or more attractive. Life is short and uncertain. Happiness and satisfaction are the most precious commodities. We cannot turn over the stewardship of our emotional well-being to companies that seek to make each of us feel inadequate in order to sell more advertising and boost profit margins.

We don’t need to make America great again. Instead, we must remember to be grateful for the many gifts bestowed on each of us who are fortunate enough to be the citizens of this great country.

Disaster Response

Tomorrow, a team of thirteen volunteers from our congregation will travel to Roan Mountain, TN, for a week of disaster response work after Hurricane Helene devastated that area in September 2024. As personal preparation for our trip, I have been reading a book that caught my attention with its curious title, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. The book, written by Rebecca Solnit, focuses principally on five disasters since the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, including 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

The premise of the book is that in the wake of disaster, most people respond altruistically and sacrifice self for the common good. But often the worst behavior in the wake of a calamity is on the part of those who believe that others will behave savagely and that they themselves are taking defensive measures against barbarism. Sinister people often take advantage of the vulnerability of disaster victims. The media often tends to focus on the worst behavior of people than on the best behavior.

Having participated in many disaster relief trips and heard the stories of the victims of disaster, my wife once made a profound observation, “Disasters bring out the best in people and the worst in people.” We go on disaster relief trips because we almost always meet Jesus in the ruins…and we want to be on the side of the “best” of people. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, we almost always receive more than we give!

Please hold our team in prayer next week. Even though we know that Jesus is already there waiting to greet us, a little extra prayer can only help!