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

SEASONAL NOSTALGIA, A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

Each holiday season, the period following Thanksgiving, culminating in Christmas and New Year, including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, becomes for many of us a time for nostalgic reflection. What triggers a multitude of sentimental recollections for me every year is the erection and trimming of our Christmas tree. Each ornament seems to elicit its own story, evoking its own set of wistful memories. There is the first ornament my wife and I displayed the year we got married, 41 years ago; pictures of past pets; commemorative decorations; sweeping collections of travel related items accumulated over the years; miniaturized exhibits of short-lived interests and hobbies; and some relics passed on by generations of ornament hoarders. In some ways, our annual Christmas tree reflects our accumulated history, and seems to remind us of our disposition at multiple intervals over time. It provides us with the sense that life has roots and continuity, awakening nostalgic feelings, usually invoking pleasant associations, although simultaneously regretting the passage of time. One of the downsides of retirement is that you have a lot of time on your hands to think about things. While caught up in bouts of nostalgia, it is not difficult to wonder whether it is actually healthy to reconnect with your past. Neither can you escape pondering how others process memories accentuated by seasonal sentiments. For centuries, nostalgia was treated as a "neurological disease." The noun "nostalgia" was first used in 1688 by a Swiss physician, Johannes Hofer, to describe a medical diagnosis for mercenary soldiers. He equated it to the German word "heimweh," or "homesickness," and attributed soldiers' mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home. By the 18th century, nostalgia was no longer considered a provincial disease. Physicians across Europe studied the nostalgic condition, often advancing different theories about evolving forms of homesickness. Nostalgia became an established pathology, a mental disorder that continued to afflict soldiers separated from home, or people displaced by the onset of modernity. Nostalgia was very familiar to Union and Confederate army doctors and surgeons during the Civil War as well. They recognized the condition as a legitimate mental disorder. Terminally ill soldiers were frequently diagnosed as dying from nostalgia. It was not until relatively recently that nostalgia as a condition became a field of study with a broader focus. Students now believe that nostalgia occurs universally, appears to be common around the world, and has positive qualities. It has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom and anxiety. It tends to make people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. It seems to be more prevalent on cold days, and can be induced through music. Some of which may suggest why the holiday season seems to be prime time for nostalgic reflection. (John Tierney, "What is Nostalgia Good For? Quite a Bit Research Shows," NY Times, July 8, 2013). It should be reassuring to recognize that people reflecting on memories this holiday season are no longer considered to be suffering from some type of pathological condition, and that for many the consequences tend to be positive. However, we should also acknowledge that nostalgic reminiscences are not necessarily the result of a deliberate act, but a process involuntarily evoked by the trappings of the season. For a growing number of individuals and families the contrast between their current condition and sentimental past experiences can be devastatingly painful. Hundreds, if not thousands, of families affected by the result of the disastrous tornadoes ripping through five states a week ago lost everything they held dear. Well over a hundred family members were killed, and entire communities were destroyed. Calamitous events of this magnitude are often amplified by seasonal sentiments for years to come. Close to 800,000 Covid related deaths are leaving voids at family gatherings, and more than 1,165 teens and children killed this year alone by never-ending gun violence won't take their seat at the dinner table this season. More than 553,000 homeless individuals may have their memories, but nothing to celebrate. And about 38 million Americans, including 12 million children, will go hungry. Countless others are struggling with their personal demons. Chances are that, unless impaired, most of these will experience their own nostalgic feelings, wondering "What could have been? What would have been? What if...? If only..." Those of us who are able and comfortable with our own nostalgic recollections ought to consider trying to make nostalgia work for some of those who are unable to reconcile their current situation with their past. This would be an excellent time to help those who need it create new memories. Theo Wierdsma

ARE MASS MIGRATIONS THE NEW NORMAL?

Few recent international developments have been as contentious and politically charged as the response to mass migration and the plight of refugees. Politicians and actual policy makers on all sides of the ideological spectrum have chimed in on the issue, and multiple administrations in the U.S. and the E.U. have been forced to include the subject in their respective agendas. From the very beginning of his election campaign, past President Donald Trump made clear that opposing uncontrolled migration was a prominent element of his electoral program. Most of us will remember his descent from the escalator chastising Mexico for bringing people to our border that were bringing drugs, crime, were rapists, and some were assumed to be good people. His obsession with building a wall on our Southern border continued to dominate his political objectives. President Biden's administration was forced to respond quickly when a flood of migrants, mostly Haitian nationals, began sheltering near Del Rio, Texas. The numbers were overwhelming. Ultimately, 30,000 were apprehended or expelled. About 8,000 willingly returned to Mexico, and 12,000 were allowed to enter to have their request for asylum evaluated. Meanwhile another 19,000 were waiting to cross the border into Panama. And few interested observers will forget the European refugee crisis, which began around 2011, and peaked in 2015 when more than 1.3 million refugees, mostly Syrians, entered Europe and destabilized the E.U. in the process. While much of this may be new to the casual observer, mass migration has gone on for centuries. The current movement of people is minuscule by comparison. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, during the slave trade, 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic. Beginning in the 1840s, the so-called "Great Atlantic Migration," brought in more than 3 million immigrants from Ireland and Germany. And between 1880 and 1910 an additional 17 million Europeans, mostly from Eastern Europe, followed. All in all, between 1820 and 1980, 37 million Europeans reached our shores. Over a period of 400 years, from the late 1600s through the 20th century, the northern half of Asia and parts of Africa were colonized by European migrants. The overseas migration of Europeans during this period exceeded 60 million people. Within recorded history, human migration transformed the entire aspects of lands and continents, and the racial, ethnic, and linguistic composition of their populations. Until fairly recently, there was a consensus among target countries that migration was a good thing - a central value to Western society. It was a given that letting immigrants in was beneficial for the society and the economy. Proponents saw increased economic growth, more flexible labor markets, filling vacancies in unpopular jobs. However, during the past decade or so, these principles are now being questioned - especially in the U.S. and Europe. New cultures, languages and economic demands of immigrants have roiled western societies during the past decade, making migration a new focus of international concern. Much of this seems to stem from a growing identity crisis among native born populations which are beginning to see dramatic shifts in their cultural composition as a result of an influx of non-white groups into their demographic make-up. Recent election results, dominated by populist candidates, reflect a growing reaction of predominantly white majorities in the U.S., France, the U.K. and Germany to their own demographic demise. While migration is a complex story, many are beginning to see it in simplistic terms. There are "natives" who belong, and "foreigners" who don't. In the U.S. and Europe we are now seeing the rise of openly anti-immigrant parties that are willing to pay fairly high costs in order to "regain control of their borders." Brexit in the U.K., Lega-Nord in Italy, Alternative for Germany (AFD), and the Party for Freedom in The Netherlands are just a few. In the mean time, autocrats are attempting to weaponize migrant movements, organizing or threatening to organize a sudden influx of refugees into another country with the intent of overwhelming its borders or causing political discomfort. Belarus dictator Aleksander Lukashenko is doing just that on the country's border with Poland. And almost daily we are confronted with the human tragedy of hundreds of desperate migrants drowning in the Mediterranean or languishing in detention camps. The current global estimate is that, in 2020, there were around 281 million international migrants in the world. This amounts to 3.6% of the global population. While this may be the culmination of what could be considered the new normal, it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that, at some point, we could foresee a substantial turnaround in popular attitudes. The western world is getting older. The replacement fertility rate is dropping, especially in developed countries. Populations are not being replaced as needed. Soon we will be looking again for younger, skilled workers to keep our economies healthy. Multiple countries are already revising their immigration policies. We may have to come to grips with our identity problems out of necessity. Theo Wierdsma