By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM — Years ago the Kingston Trio sang to my generation about rioting in Africa, starvation in Spain, strife in Iran, drought, hatreds, and the likelihood that we’d all be blown away in a mushroom shaped cloud. The song was the Merry Minuet, released in 1959.
You can go back in time and listen above.
Africa is still a mess. Spain no longer. There is high unemployment, but the term crisis seems extreme. Iran is a problem to the rest of us as well as to its own dissidents, no matter was Barack says. Here and there is a shortage or excess of rain, but there has been no mushroom shaped cloud.
The Economist writes that 2016 has so far been a hectic year, with an emphasis on Brexit and Donald Trump..
Should anyone be inclined to revise the Merry Minuet, they might feature Islamic fanatics in Europe and the US as well as their homelands, Turkey moving to greater repression by Erdogon after avoiding the repression of a military coup, Britain dithering about leaving the European Union while remaining European, Americans caught in an uptick of White and Black racism, as well as stuck with two presidential candidates that most people of both parties do not like.
Erdogon is talking about reinstating the death penalty. He has rounded up what are said to be 50,000 soldiers, police, judges, and academics, presumably to be tried by judges acceptable to him. The Foreign Minister of the European Union has warned that Turkey would not be considered for membership if it imposed the death penalty. Turkey has never been seriously considered for membership in the EU, so we can wonder about the utility of her threat.
The concept of an insoluble problem is itself problematic. There may be no solution apparent on the horizon, but who knows when someone will devise a strategy, or the problem may diminish beneath the level of the intolerable, seemingly of its own accord.
Israel’s problems with the Palestinians have gone through several cycles of intensity and relative quiet, perhaps due to a combination of repression as well as benefits (sticks and carrots), along with Palestinian fatigue and frustration at their meager accomplishments at high costs to themselves.
Palestinians remain unhappy, and there are frequent efforts at violence. Much of the time, however, the casualties are far lower than those from traffic accidents.
Something similar may occur with respect to White and Black racism in the US. There is no shortage of voices calling for calm. Enough police forces may improve their training and discipline, and limit the provocations that have led Black military veterans to kill cops.
More resistant will be the Black (and other) underclass, mired in a seeming insoluble morass of poverty, schools that teach hopelessness more than anything else, drugs, teenage sex, and violence.
The British who once ruled much of the world and equally civilized Europeans may figure out a way for the Brits to adhere to their referendum without doing too much damage to themselves or the idea of European cooperation.
The British are also rocked by a government report chastising their entry to Iraq as George W. Bush’s puppy dog.
Those capable of laughing about such things should listen to this.
Americans will choose someone to be their next President. It’s tempting, but unproductive to go on at length about the few pluses and many minuses of both candidates, and what might happen. The commotion at the Republican convention suggests that Donald will suffer from a sharply divided party. But racial trouble on American streets and continued indications at home and abroad about Muslim fanatics may challenge Hillary enough to make up for Donald’s limitations.
Charges that Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama may bother the chattering classes to the left of Fox News, but hardly seem likely to penetrate the inclinations of Rust Belt Whites and other Trump enthusiasts.
Melania claims that she wrote the speech by herself. If so, she’s as much a fake as her husband, claiming to be a successful man of business who can do what experienced politicians have been unable to do in making the US a better and safer place.
It’s more probable that Melania and Michelle used the same speech writer, or that Melania’s is the one who should be thrown out of school for copying.
Neither of their speeches rose above the same platitudes, and many of the same words about being raised with the values of hard work, honesty, respect and morality, and the need to pass on all those virtues to the children.
Despite the Kingston Trio’s certainty about a mushroom shaped cloud, we’ve survived the Cold War and the Indian-Pakistani stand-off, so far with nothing worse than the industrial devastation around Cherobyl. Optimists see Iranians as rational as well as fanatical, and calculate that Israel’s second strike capacity will keep both countries from using whatever they have or develop. North Korea may be a different story, but there, too, there may be enough countervailing threats to keep things going.
Parts of the world are clearly better than when the Kingston Trio began singing about widespread festering in 1959. Vietnam is behind us. The US may have learned from Bush II’s follies in Iraq and maybe Obama’s destructive aspirations about democracy expressed in Cairo. Eastern Europe and Russia are, as wholes, more productive economically. India and China are far beyond where they were in 1959. Israel, too, and certainly Western Europe.
Here and there are locales that have fallen behind, most notably American and European cities whose industrial jobs have been lost to international competition coming from China and more recently even lower-wage places in Africa and Asia. We enjoy clothes, cell phones, other gadgets and auto parts made by people also living better than in the past, many of them with cars and eating quantities of meat their parents could not dream of, but earning wages below what Americans and Europeans used to get.
Those seeking to rank worries may begin with Africa, the Muslim Middle East, North Korea, ethnic-religious problems in Europe and the US,plus racial problems in the US with the latter made worse by lots of guns available to the wrong kind of people.
Tackling the American gun lobby and its happy warriors seems beyond the capacity of Barack Obama or anyone else.
For those with solutions about that and other matters not apparent to me, please write.
*
Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted via ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com. Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)
*