KICK RUSSIA OUT OF THE U.N.?

With the unrelenting assault by Russian troops on innocent and largely defenseless civilians in Ukraine, short of starting World War III, many of us are contemplating what more we can do to further isolate and punish Putin and his inner circle. According to a recently completed poll by Monmouth University in New Jersey, 81% of Americans support the economic sanctions imposed on Russia thus far. A follow-up survey done by the Pew Research Center suggests that this endorsement is increasing in popularity. Although, surprisingly and regrettably, survey results also indicate that 7% of Americans still appear to think that Russia is justified in its actions in Ukraine. While this show of support remains overwhelming, 52% still think that our response to the Russian invasion has thus far not been strong enough. Seventy-five percent of us back imposing greater pressure on Putin's regime, but stay well short of recommending military confrontation. The suggestion that has recently gained momentum among a growing number of politicians and even some academics is to kick Russia out of the United Nations, or, at a minimum, off the Security Council. Nine Republican senators are currently already drafting a resolution to that effect, which they hope will put the entire Congress on record saying so. While this approach may be tempting, the questions that emerge are: "can we?" and, perhaps more importantly, "should we?" Iryna Zaverukha, an associate professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, reiterated President Volodymyr Zelensky's call on the U.N. to expel Russia from the Security Council. In an impassioned op-ed, published in the Los Angeles Times, she charged that "the U.N.'s main purpose is to maintain international peace and security, but it did not prevent the full-scale brutal war now happening in Ukraine, nor did it prevent or punish Russia's unlawful seizure of Crimea and its occupancy of Donbas in 2014." Under Article 6 of the U.N. charter, members who persistently violate U.N. principles, upon recommendation of the Security Council, can be expelled by a 2/3 majority vote of the General Assembly. According to Article 5 of the charter, the offending country could have its rights and privileges of membership suspended. In either case, the Security Council would need to initiate these actions. Russia, which has veto power, actually presided over the Council when its troops invaded Ukraine on February 24. Needless to suggest that either action would likely face a Russian veto. No country has been expelled from the U.N. since its founding in 1945. There is, however, a potential path forward that does not require consensus on the Security Council. In emergency session, the General Assembly could follow what is called the "Uniting for Peace" resolution model which was first adopted in 1950. This resolution states that, in any cases where the Security Council, because of a lack of unanimity among its five permanent members, fails to act as required to maintain international security and peace, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately and may issue appropriate recommendations to U.N. members for collective measures, including the use of armed forces when necessary, in order to maintain or restore international security and peace. This resolution was first put in place when we were on the brink of the Korean War, after the Soviet Union vetoed U.N. action four times. It has been invoked 11 times since. Nevertheless, it would still not get rid of Russia. Relative options are few. Diplomats could vote to suspend Russia from participation in the General Assembly, which does not require Security Council buy-in. This move would strip Russia of its right to speak or vote, but would allow it to retain membership. This was done in 1974 when South Africa was suspended for its "apartheid" system. Members could also remove Russia from the Human Rights Council, or refuse to recognize a Russian backed government in Ukraine.There is even an argument emerging that suggests that Russia is not a legitimate member of the organization, since there has never been a formal decision to admit it as a member after the demise of the USSR. However, the same goes for Ukraine after it transitioned from a Soviet Socialist Republic to the current independent state. Professor Zaverukha and others are proposing that the Ukraine crisis offers an opportunity for the U.N. to preserve its relevance and reshape itself in a way that would provide security for the entire global community. No matter how tempting some of these recommendations are, the simple fact is that it is not possible to expel Russia from the organization, nor would it be wise to shut down a communication channel during this time of high tension. Theo Wierdsma

UKRAINIANS AT THE GATES OF HELL

In September of 1938, former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain concluded an appeasement pact with Adolph Hitler, proclaiming "Peace for our time." A year later, the Nazis invaded Poland, facing no military opposition from either Britain or France, both of which previously "guaranteed" the integrity of the Polish state. Nazi Germany's invasion triggered World War II, leading to years of Fascist domination, killing 15-20 million in Europe alone and affecting millions more for generations to come. Today, in Ukraine, we again stand at the precipice of a world war. But this time our weapons are considerably more lethal, capable of potentially erasing all of civilization as we know it. Taking a page from Chamberlain's book, French president Emanuel Macron and Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett each spent hours at the Kremlin unsuccessfully negotiating for a peaceful solution to a military conflict manufactured by Russia's criminally deranged, malignantly narcissistic autocrat Vladimir Putin. Claiming that Ukraine in fact does not exist, Putin is exhibiting his appetite for wholesale genocide as his troops attempt to annihilate all of Ukraine to counter unexpectedly strong opposition. This is a strategy he has used before, when, while subduing a separatist uprising in Chechnya in 1994, he flattened its capital Grozny, and again, a decade ago, when he did the same to Aleppo in Syria. The daily, often hourly, graphic depiction of the deterioration of the situation on the ground in Ukraine, and the unending plight of close to two million evacuees to date, are giving my tear ducts a workout. To secure my sanity, I have been advised to limit watching the news. However, I can't erase from my mind that, even when I turn off social media, entire families, including women, children and the elderly, are being slaughtered slightly more than 6,000 miles from here. It is difficult to wrap your mind around what has happened in the short period of time during which a democratic country of 44 million people transitioned from a relatively peaceful existence to facing total annihilation at the gates of hell. Feeling helplessly overwhelmed by emotion, the tendency is to try to make sense of all of this and to figure out how this catastrophe might end. It is pointless to focus on the Russian political system. We are dealing with a consummate autocracy. And virtually all analytical models used by political scientists assume they are working with rational actors. Putin defies rational analysis. Although some descriptions of him may make us feel better, they won't help us. Senator Mitt Romney describes him as "a small, evil, feral-eyed man who is trying to shape the world in the image where once again Russia would be an empire." Others have already branded him a "war criminal." Alex Konanykhin, a Russian businessman based in California, has offered a million dollar bounty for anyone who arrests Putin as a "war criminal" under Russian and international law. Mincing even fewer words, Senator Lindsey Graham openly suggested that "the only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take him out." Malignant narcissists tend to be unpredictable, irrational, ruthless, sadistic and paranoid. If cornered, or when they don't get what they want, they tend to destroy whatever gets in their way - essentially what Putin appears to be doing already today. Emotions are running high and the concern that he won't stop with Ukraine are growing by the day. Vladimir Sorokin, writer in residence at Stanford University, who is intimately familiar with the Russian dictator, cautions that Putin's end goal isn't Ukraine - it's Western civilization - which he hates. Patrick Mulroy, national security analyst for ABC, agrees that the risk of this conflict escalating beyond Ukraine is very high. It could morph into World War III, especially because multiple NATO members surround the current theater. President Biden has been adamant that "the United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power." Since Putin has already defined the sanctions imposed on his country as "acts of war," he probably won't need much more to convince him to venture out. His seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, could also easily develop into a continent-wide cataclysmic event. While most of his western European supporters are now either recanting their pro-Putin stance or laying low, in our country some vocal admirers have regrettably not changed their tune. Fox News host Tucker Carlson openly continues to side with Putin, suggesting that "only a war-mongering liberal obsessive would fuss over Mr. Putin's prosecution of the faraway conflict." As expected, former president Donald Trump also chimed in, praising Putin, calling him "smart" and suggesting "he is playing [President] Biden like a drum." For the sake of all who are brutally led to the brink of extinction in Ukraine and for the sake of very brave people who are not only fighting for their own survival, but who are putting their lives on the line for all of us, for our way of life, for the democratic principles most of us grew up with, we must stop this calamity at all cost. Our empathy alone won't stop this assault. We must go beyond economic sanctions. They do have an effect and could possibly generate revolutionary pressure within his circle of oligarchs, but they won't stop a cornered madman who feels threatened and is known to employ anything and everything to get his way. The consequences of appeasement as employed by 1939 European governments ought to be compelling. We have no time to waste. Tomorrow could be too late. SLAVA UKRAINI Theo Wierdsma

THE FALSE FLAG FACADE

Recently Western media outlets have adamantly suggested that Russia plans to employ a "false flag" operation intended as an excuse to invade Ukraine, which is now almost entirely encircled by upward of 190,000 of its troops ready to attack. To the uninitiated and for current purposes, a "false flag" event or action (typically political or military in nature) intentionally organized against Russian interests and made to appear as having been perpetrated by opposing forces or terrorists, would give President Vladimir Putin a pretext for military action. Indicators have been that the Russian media has already been laying the groundwork for such a move by trying to convince its public that Ukrainian forces are ready to attack in East Ukraine, the "Donbas," an unrecognized pro-Russian breakaway region, largely controlled by Russian-backed separatist militia units. To raise the stakes, the "Duma," the lower chamber of the Russian parliament recently approved a resolution asking President Putin to recognize the two terrorist controlled territories as independent, pro-Russian, states. The concern has been raised that if he signs this resolution the chances for a provocation will be significantly elevated. Putin has promised in the past that Moscow is ready to protect Russians outside of its borders, many of which live in the area. "False flag" operations, used to justify the initiation of military conflict, are not new. The practice dates back to a time when pirates and privateers used the tactic - flying the flag of a neutral country - to deceive other ships into allowing them to move closer before attacking. Subsequent to the "golden age of piracy" - generally accepted to have been somewhere between 1650 and 1720 - rules of naval warfare were adopted. It remained perfectly legal under Maritime Law to fly a "false flag" to chase an enemy ship or to try to escape. However, it was universally agreed that immediately before an attack a vessel had to fly its national flag. Over time, while the descriptive term stuck and the political necessity to justify aggressive actions grew, the concept morphed into a military tactic. Russia has made use of this method numerous times, most prominently when it secured control over the South Ossetia region in Georgia in 2008, and when it annexed Crimea in 2014. In 2014 masked soldiers in unmarked green army uniforms, carrying modern Russian weapons, occupied and blocked the Simferopol International Airport, most Ukrainian military bases on the Crimean Peninsula and the region's parliament. While Putin claimed that these were local militia, spontaneous self-defense groups, a Russian general soon after confessed that these were actually Russian Spetsnaz troops preparing the area for annexation. The recent media focus on potential "false flag" operations in Ukraine may have given the impression that the practice is typically Russian. Nothing could be further from the truth. The technique has been employed by multiple countries throughout history. Many people still insist that the explosion that destroyed the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898 was in fact a "false flag" operation to give the United States a pretext for the Spanish-American War. The armor plates inside the battleship were blown outward, not inward. Sadly, 255 crew members died. On August 2, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox was fired upon by three Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea. Two days later, our National Security Agency fabricated a second, "false flag," attack. Subsequently Congress passed the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which led to the deployment of ground troops in what would become the Vietnam War. Twenty-five years earlier, covert Nazi operatives, dressed as Polish soldiers, stormed the Gleiwitz radio tower on the German-Polish border. They broadcast a short anti-German message and left behind the bodies of a pro-Polish German farmer and several Dachau concentration camp inmates dressed up in German uniforms. The Nazis used this fabricated "attack" to justify Germany's invasion of Poland the next day. The most famous "false flag" operation was the burning of the Reichstag on the night of February 27, 1933. A lone communist sympathizer, Marinus van de Lubbe, was arrested, charged and executed for setting fire to the German parliament building. Adolph Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels used this excuse to purge Germany of opposition, especially the communists. The sweeping emergency powers Hitler and the Nazis seized after the fire convinced many people that the Reichstag was burned by the Nazis themselves. And between 1979 and 1983, the Israeli secret service instigated a series of car bomb attacks in Lebanon, claimed by the terrorist organization "The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon." Later an Israeli general admitted that the bombings were carried out by his country to justify invading Lebanon. These days most mainstream sites prefer using "conspiracy theories" to "false flags." To many on-line conspiracy theorists the biggest "false flag" operation of all times was the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many believe that these attacks were deliberately carried out by the U.S. government to justify the subsequent attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq. (see: "The Truth About "False Flags" from Nazi Germany and the Vietnam War," Sky History TV Channel). Given the volatile situation surrounding Ukraine, the activity on the ground may well have changed by the time this column is published. But, no matter what happens, the Biden administration's apparent strategy to release intelligence information as it becomes available could keep Putin from employing surprise justifications for a more aggressive posture. If the Russian strongman is at all interested in maintaining any measure of international credibility, he should drop the facade and negotiate for peace. Theo Wierdsma

BELIEVE IT! OUR DEMOCRACY IS IN TROUBLE

Thirty-plus years ago, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared that totalitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy had won the great ideological battle of the 20th century. Today, observers are beginning to express the believe that the defining struggle of our time, again, is between the forces of democracy and authoritarianism. Historically, the United States maintained a commitment to promoting and supporting democracy across the globe. The American people and their leaders generally understood that standing up for the rights of others was both a moral imperative and beneficial to ourselves. However, two long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a global recession, and the negative effects of economic globalization soured the public's appetite for extensive international engagements and the perceived link between the promotion of democracy on one hand and military intervention and financial costs on the other has had a lasting impact. Enter Donald Trump. His nativist "America first" administration accelerated the U.S. withdrawal from international entanglements and abdication from its traditional role. Our disengagement served to not only put a strain on our alliances, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and anti-establishment sentiment encouraged at home were copied by others and helped support the flourishing of far-right populist parties taking parliamentary seats in countries like France, The Netherlands, Germany and Austria, while cementing their influence in Hungary and Poland. At the same time, the world's leading autocracies, China and Russia, seized the opportunity to step up internal repression and export their influence to an increasingly receptive audience abroad. All of this evolved while, domestically, the tentacles of autocracy were creeping in, if not undetected, substantially and recklessly unchallenged. As the Trump administration took hold, many became aghast at the disturbing approach to governing it displayed, but few recognized initially what effect "America first" had on civil discourse, established values and international norms and institutions. For many it took years to acknowledge that we were descending unapologetically down a slippery slope to autocracy. Justice Stephen Breyer's remarks at his retirement announcement seem to acknowledge the predicament we are in. He said: "I'll tell you what Lincoln thought, what Washington thought and what people still think: it's an experiment. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought a country that was dedicated to liberty and the proposition that "all men are created equal and conceived in liberty." However, he acknowledged that, today we are "engaged in a civil war to determine whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." Donald Trump's election took place the same year the U.K. selected "Brexit" as its way out of the E.U., and coincided with the time that a wave of right-leaning populist parties in Europe began to fragment traditional party systems. In the U.S. President Trump's undisciplined narcissistic approach to governance began to gradually undermine democratic norms and institutions, four years later culminating in his multi-faceted attempt to steal the 2020 election from newly elected Joe Biden. Mr. Trump's continued dominance in the Republican Party and his stranglehold on the Republican National Committee not only reflects his position as past president, it emanates from a carefully developed personality cult, which allows his demagoguery to still convince 70% of his party that the last election was stolen from him. Ultimately, leading Democrats, many academics and liberal commentators began to assert that "by cozying up to dictators, casting aside allies abroad, and mimicking strongmen while undermining institutions at home, Trump is making the world safe for autocracy. It is challenging to analyze an administration's performance when it lacks structure or a consistent ideology. We tend to revert to historical comparisons to suggest a potential endgame. Irish statesman Edmund Burke, Spanish philosopher George Santayana and Winston Churchill all uttered a version of the aphorism "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." While acknowledging that critics have a tendency to paint a mustache or swastika on any politician they dislike, it remains tempting to compare Donald Trump's influence and continued involvement in national politics to the upsurge of autocracy in post World War I Germany. They are too similar, too important, too destructive, and we are still in the middle of its evolution. Hitler was a demagogue who tapped into the anger and helplessness felt by a large number of voters. He attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised to pull Germany out of the recession, restore cultural values, turn back the perceived threat of the Communist uprising, put Germany back to work and directed the population's anger against Jews, Marxists and immigrants. In the process Hitler managed to delegitimize core democratic institutions and established autocratic leadership. Trump pretty much did the same thing. He sought to invalidate institutions that did not serve his political goals: the courts, the electoral process, the democratic opposition. He considered the mainstream news media, decried as "Lugenpresse" (press of lies) in 1930 Germany, "fake news." He scapegoated minorities and stirred up hostile emotions against adversaries as did Hitler. And while Hitler affiliated S.A. and S.S. militias, Trump cozied up to allied extremist groups like "Oath Keepers," "Proud Boys," Neo Nazis," and others. It is difficult to imagine a better historical fit than this one, and the end game is all too familiar. Anyone believing that our institutions are too strong to succumb to these autocratic influences should read "It Can't Happen Here," a dystopian 1935 political novel by Sinclair Lewis, describing the rise of a U.S. dictator similar to how Adolph Hitler gained power. Bob and Ruth Schultz, in 1989, produced the reader: "It Did Happen Here." Recently, in January of this year, Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director and CEO of the Anti Defamation League, published: "It Could Happen Here - Why America is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable." And for a highly readable academic treatise doubters could consult "How Democracies Die," by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. (2018). Ultimately we need to answer the question whether we actually want our democracy to survive, and what happens when, in a two party system, one of the coalitions is not fully committed to that ideal. Theo Wierdsma

IGNORANCE KILLS

"Oh no, not again!" I can hear it now. Another column covering the Covid-19 pandemic. We are over it. We are sick of it. Understandably, but exactly the point. Given newly published "remedies" to combat the virus, and given the endless predisposition by a significant segment of true believers to oppose vaccination and trust charlatans on social media, the topic remains pertinent. "Ignorance," some would say "stupidity," kills. Numerous studies have concluded that during the past six months at least 200,000 Covid related deaths were entirely preventable. This number correlates to the fact that 99.5% of those killed by the virus were not vaccinated. The results of a study published by the "Commonwealth Fund," (Dec. 14, 2021), projected that due to vaccination programs, between Dec. 12, 2020 and Nov. 30, 2021, 1,087,191 deaths were averted. While this information is readily available, most of those unwilling to lend credence to these statistics continue to be corrupted by "confirmation bias," a national, if not international, disease which compels them to only absorb information from sources confirming what they already believe. After the early discussion about the origin of the virus, which included the suggestion that it was a bio-weapon deliberately designed by China or by Barack Obama, ran its course, the focus shifted to how to combat it. Some of the so-called cures obviously predated the development of a vaccine, but a number of them persisted and evolved into a movement. Eating sea lettuce; holding your breath for 10 seconds; smelling sesame and other plant oils; or cleaning your nostrils with salty water to kill the virus before it can reach your lungs, had a relatively short shelf life. Scientists stayed predominantly in their own lane, rather than spending a lot of time debunking these relatively mundane suggestions. Some extraordinarily freakish ones struck a persistent and dangerous cord, however. Take the recent suggestion by Christopher Key, leader of an anti-Covid-19 vaccine group, the "Vaccine Police." advocating followers drink their own urine to combat the virus. According to him there is "tons and tons of research .... peer reviewed published papers on urine." He calls it "God's own antidote to Covid-19." He also suggests that pharmacists should be executed for administering coronavirus vaccines. His recommendation likely originated in India, where its Hindu majority population adopted the widespread practice of consuming cow dung and urine, branded as "cow dung therapy" for a Covid cure. The Hindu religion places an emphasis on "purifying qualities" of cow products, proclaiming that "eating cow dung will help purify mind, body and soul." The CDC suspects that there is a relationship between the surge of cow-dung therapy and black fungal disease, and that the use of cow dung and urine might actually accelerate the transmission of coronavirus along with other diseases. And who can forget former president Donald Trump's epiphany during a widely viewed public broadcast proposing bodies be injected with bleach and other disinfectants to knock out the virus - "in a minute. One minute!" Of course, bleach is a poison which will make you sick. Nevertheless, the gullible complied, and within a week after he made his suggestion poisonings with household disinfectants increased by 121%. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. remarked: "This the most dangerous and idiotic suggestion made so far in how one might treat Covid-19. Drinking or injecting disinfectant is more likely to kill humans than the virus." The use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria and lupus drug, was more readily accepted by those looking for an alternative to vaccines, probably because it resonated as a medical solution. And even though the World Health Organization debunked its efficacy, and warned that administering it to Covid could even increase the risk of death, its use went viral. In Brazil, materially supported by members of the Trump administration, President Jair Bolsonaro elevated its use to be the primary antidote for the virus. Pushed by his Health Ministry and supporters controlling the manufacture of the drug, and contrary to recommendations from the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases, he relegated funds earmarked for combating Covid to purchase more chloroquine. The result was a national disaster, giving Brazil the 2nd highest Covid related death rate in the world, just below the U.S. and slightly ahead of India. Ivermectin, another so-called medical alternative to vaccination, a drug meant to control parasites in farm animals, also made its appearance among those adamantly opposed to anything proposed by legitimate epidemiologists. These dangerous deviations from scientifically prescribed protocols are relentlessly advocated by those in search of profit, notoriety or political advantage. The opposition to scientific evidence and government mandates has organized and is supported by unfettered access to social media. Some media savvy public figures seize every available opportunity to indoctrinate their followers by spewing venom in attempts to discredit the professionals. "Fox News" host Tucker Carlson publicly compares vaccine mandates to "Nazi experiments." "Fox Nation" host Lara Logan claims that "people all across the world" are comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to Joseph Mengele, the Nazi "Angel of Death." Senator Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist with questionable credentials, posturing as an epidemiologist, takes every opportunity to viciously attack Dr. Fauci and what he stands for. School boards are being confronted by parents threatening to bring loaded guns into a meeting if mask mandates are adopted. And governors in multiple "red states" are doing everything in their power to thwart attempts by the federal government to bring the pandemic under control. The result has been that 36% of adults are still not fully vaccinated. Fifteen percent are not vaccinated at all. Most of them have been convinced to not trust the vaccine, to be weary about side effects, to resort to bogus remedies, and to rely on fake news irrespective of its source. The people in this category maintain a false sense of security and won't follow health safety guidelines unless forced to. They also tend to influence others and spread the disease. Anecdotal evidence emerging out of multiple ICU units indicates that many unvaccinated Covid patients on their death bed confess that they wished they had listened to the science and trusted the vaccine. Theo Wierdsma

2021 RELEASED A GLUT OF NEW VOCABULARY

The assertion that English is a dynamic language, which is constantly changing, may be an understatement when applied to the lexical evolution experienced during the past few years. No surprise that many of us emerged entirely bewildered, lost in a new linguistic jungle we did not know existed. What was genuinely unprecedented this past year was the hyperspeed at which the English speaking world amassed a new collective vocabulary relating to the Coronavirus, the social justice movement and elements of political and cultural militancy, and how quickly it became a core part of the language. In the words of Oxford Dictionaries President Casper Grathwohl: "I've never witnessed a year in language like the one we just had." According to the "Global Language Monitor," which collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, around 5,400 new words are created each year. About 1,000 of these end up in written form. From these we have been used to identify what words or expressions are recognized as "words of the year." This tradition began in Germany in 1971, and was picked up by the "American Dialect Society" in 1990. Their selection uses any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year. This year the group chose "insurrection" as its word of the year. This followed "Covid" in 2020, "Fake News" - disinformation of falsehoods presented as real news; "Gaslight" - psychologically manipulating a person into questioning their own sanity; and "They" - a gender neutral singular pronoun for a person as a non-binary identifier, in some previous years. Oxford University selected "Vax" for 2021, after choosing "Post Truth" a few years ago. Cambridge entered the fray with "Quarantine" and "Perseverance." Merriam Webster used "Pandemic" and "Malarkey" in 2020, and ended up with "Vaccine" for last year. And so it goes. Most established institutions tend to select expressions that are already commonly used, generally uncontroversial, and not designed to evoke anything other than recognition within general parlance. Finalists that might have been considered include: "Lock-down," "Asymptomatic," "P.P.E.," "Essential Workers," "Superspreaders," "Staycation," and others, none of which would have raised an eyebrow. However, we also experienced a vocabulary expansion, introduced by those pushing for cultural changes in our society, that was designed to change the ways we identify people and describe situations. Their word choices are expressly designed to affect how we think about these. The idea is essentially that you can't change what you can't name, evolving into a language which identifies symbolic progress on the liberal end of the political spectrum, placating people, but inviting a backlash from those who want to maintain the status quo. Examples are plentiful. Some have already become politically incendiary. Most of us are familiar with expressions like: "Systemic Racism," "Critical Race Theory," "Cancel Culture," "Black Lives Matter," and "Woke Speak" - a term used by conservatives to identify some of the language coming out of left-leaning think-tanks. But, whether we agree with their usage or not, we can't escape their presence and every-day usage by a significant subset of our population. Consider: "Implicit Bias: - the subconscious associations that cause people to harbor stereotypes; "Non-Binary" - an umbrella term for gender identities that are neither male nor female - leading to a new set of gender pronouns like He/Him or She/Her. We also introduced clarifying language for terms long embedded in our culture, like "enslaved people" instead of "slaves;" "birthing parent" instead of "mother," and "unhoused" instead of homeless. In addition, we were confronted by a never ending series of acronyms. No sooner became "LGBTQ," - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer- a fairly common expression, the acronym expanded to "LGBTQIA2S+," adding "intersex," "asexual," "two spirit," and a "+" to indicate that the term should not be considered comprehensive. For those of us whose minds stop absorbing after five or six initials, we might be more comfortable absorbing "BIPOC"-Black, Indigenous, or other people of color, or "LATINX"-adults of Latin American descent, inclusive of people who identify as neither male or female. While some of these vocabulary expansions only resonate with a relatively small group of true believers, changing the way in which we describe cultural identifiers can accomplish practical changes. To erase references to our history of slavery, Rhode Island chose to remove "and Providence Plantations" from the state's original name; Twitter and Apple stopped using the terms "master," "slave," "blacklist," and "white list" from their programming codes; "Lady Antebellum" changed its name to "Lady A;" and the "Dixie Chicks" dropped "Dixie" from their name. Comprehension improves when you know what the words mean. A robust and dynamic vocabulary should help clarify and facilitate this process. But the infusion of too many value-laden expressions in a single years might amount to information overload. Nevertheless, our politicians will probably continue to fastidiously select, articulate, weaponize and gaslight their cherry-picked concepts for their own purposes, while some of us continue to wonder what happened to simply identifying everybody's word of the year. Theo Wierdsma

MOVEMENT TO BAN OR BURN BOOKS GAINS MOMENTUM

Although we just barely survived our hangover from the previous election, we are again ready to embark on a new electoral journey in 2022. Primaries around the middle of the year, and a hotly contested midterm election scheduled for November. The issues are being developed while many of us are still asleep. In most states, aggressive gerrymandering set the parameters, and political action committees are digging in in support of a set of policy concerns sold as essential values for the survival of the country. The current focus is on a renewed interest in public education. What began as a misplaced concern with Critical Race Theory (CRT) (see my blog entry of July 13, 2021) morphed into opposition to mask mandates and other Covid-19 measures, and presently into a movement to ban "objectionable books" from school libraries and curricula, including social justice, gender, race and related history. We have even reached the point when newly elected school board members openly suggest that, in addition to removing dozens of books from library shelves, literature they reject as reprehensible ought to be burned. By essentially promoting thought control, we are slowly beginning to descent further into the quicksand of authoritarianism. Calls for book burning came from two school board members in Spotsylvania county, Virginia, following the election of Glenn Youngkin to governor. The election turned on parental control of school curricula after former governor Terry McAuliffe declared: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." Youngkin retorted that he would ban CRT on his first day in office. He also ran an ad featuring a local mother who tried to get "Beloved," the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Toni Morrison, removed from her son's A.P. English curriculum, claiming the book contained "some of the most explicit material you can imagine." This, of course, is true because the book depicts the horrors of slavery, which some parents would rather their children don't learn about. School board member Rabih Abuismail, supported by another member, Kirk Twigg, exclaimed that just removing books like this was not enough - "We should throw those books in a fire." The emergence of traditionally a-political school boards into the election year dialogue grew out of contentious, sometimes venomous, meetings dominated by parents opposed to regulations generated by the Covid-19 pandemic. School board members were routinely targeted, and ultimately threatened to be tried for treason for "poisoning the minds of children," when the discussion mutated into full-scale parental control issues. Unsupportive existing board members were being recalled in multiple states, while replacements appeared ready to take over, winning across the board, financially supported by national organizations like the "1776 Project PAC," which opposes CRT in education and which favors a more "patriotic curriculum." One of their slogans read: "The left is coming for our kids." It is not terribly surprising that in the heat of the moment, or for political expediency, the topic of book burning tends to emerge. In state after state books are being removed from circulation in response to parental objections. In Texas a school district even demanded that teachers using a book on the Holocaust must provide books with "an opposing perspective." At a time when burning books might appear as ignorant symbolic activities, since their content is usually still available on social media, the act itself sets a dangerous precedent. History is replete with similar acts designed to eradicate unwanted information or instigate unmistakable attempts at rewriting history. Book burning has a long and dark history, tied to censorship and oppressive regimes, most famously the one in Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler. On May 10, 1933, Fascist university students burned upward of 25,000 books on the Opern Platz in Berlin.These included works by Jewish authors like Albert Einstein, and those "corrupting influences" like Ernest Hemingway. Goebbels spoke at the event, telling the students: "You do well at this late hour to entrust to the flames the intellectual garbage of the past." (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.) More recently, in 2006, "The Diary of Anne Frank" was burned in Pretzien, Germany, at a far-right summer festival. In this country, in 1956, on two occasions, books by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich were burned, overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In Drake, North Dakota, its school board had objectionable books thrown into the school furnace, including 32 copies of "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut and 60 copies of "Deliverance" by James Dickey. And in 2001, Harry Potter books were targets at of at least six book burnings. Parents occupying positions on local school boards want to control what their kids are being taught. Sometimes this desire leads to a contortion of history, as it did in Texas when, in 2010, textbooks were essentially rewritten using a new set of standards: "The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies." These standards were adopted in the printing of 48 million textbooks, insuring that students in that state would receive a vastly different view of history than those in most other states. Sometimes entire nations rewrite their own history, and destroy materials depicting their verifiable past. China is doing that right now. Hungary and Poland are beginning that process incrementally. They can, because revisionists are in control. As George Orwell wrote in "1984": "Who controls the past controls the future, and who controls the present controls the past." As historical content is being "reinterpreted" or "sanitized" to eliminate uncomfortable historic truths from adoption in our curricula, we are wasting significant teaching opportunities. In the words of one observer: "We should learn to get past our discomfiture and use the warts of our past as tools for a less blemished future." (Michael Rosenbaum, "Rewriting history and the pursuit of ignorance," The Hill, Feb. 26, 2015). Parents should certainly have control over the quality of their kids' education. However, they should not be empowered to erase or sanitize factual content and turn the process into a partisan political agenda item. Politicizing curricula and attempts at erasing unwanted information, be it by burning books or replacing their subject matter, are historically precursors to an autocratic future. Theo Wierdsma