When Truth Takes a Holiday

The following is the latest column by my wife, Rabbi Rose Lyn Jacob, from The Culpeper Star-Exponent:

There is a kind of immunity that can’t be put into a syringe to keep us safe. I call it “Heard Immunity” – as in that Motown 70’s hit, “I heard it through the grapevine.” Heard immunity works to make you sensitive to the hearsay, misinformation, rumors, lies and gossip and the unsubstantiated “truths” that spread faster than any variant of Covid. As Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on!”

You probably played the game “Telephone” as a child, the game where you whisper a phrase or story into the ear of the person next to you, and they pass it along. By the time it makes it to the end of the line, it bears little resemblance to the original, true message. Today, we no longer spread information in hushed tones. News outlets, political pundits, internet sources, political groups, and fundamentalists blast it twenty-four hours a day. “Pizzagate,” “Q-anon,” unfounded accusations of the trafficking children and reports of thousands of criminals pouring over our southern border, and the ever popular “Jews control the media, banks and government,” are just a few examples of the kind of hearsay, rumors or gossip that spread like wildfire.

I place the blame for today’s fascination with the conundrum of WHY Americans are having trouble with the truth, squarely on the shoulders of a young George Washington, who, rumor has it, said, “I cannot tell a lie, ‘twas I who chopped down the cherry tree!” No doubt he set the bar too high. Others set the bar lower, or as they ask in the dance, The Limbo, “How low can you go”? Let’s see.

Celebrity Lies; Lance Armstrong – “I never took enhancement drugs”, Pete Rose – “I have never gambled”, Tiger Woods – “I’m faithful,” Paris Hilton – “I don’t do drugs.”

President Richard Nixon; “Truth is America’s most potent weapon. We cannot enlarge upon the truth. But we can and must intensify our efforts to make that truth more shining.”

President Bill Clinton; “But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never.”

Vladimir Putin on Ukraine; “It's our land, it's our country, we don't have any other option.”

President Donald Trump Tweet; "I WON THE ELECTION!”

To quote Mark Twain, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”

As we’ve seen, through this week’s coverage of the January 6 insurrection, the nation's “conspiracy versus truth problem” fomented the attack on Congress, shook the foundations of Democracy and got good people killed.

Conspiracy theories, that is to say rumors, hearsay, and misinformation, arise when people become worried or threatened; when there is a crisis or when important things happen that they want to make sense of. They take root and thrive in conditions of uncertainty.

So how do we keep sort through the massive amount of information thrown at us on a daily basis? I’m not sure, but we have a moral obligation to believe only what we have researched and for which we have gleaned sufficient evidence. As the Special Committee for the Investigation of January 6 clearly shows, in testimony after testimony, our beliefs influence our actions. That is, we behave based on what we believe to be true. And careless believing based on un-truths, leads to poor actions, and may ensnare others who “believe” because of you. Once that happens, it is just a hop, skip and a jump to conspiracy theories, “fake news” -one of my least favorite expressions, and being used and manipulated at great cost to our Democracy and our fellow Americans.

There is a a Jewish value that we try to instill in our children, to inoculate them against the fear of inaction in times of difficult moral decisions. We start early, and never stop saying it, no matter how old “the child” is. It is the admonishment to be a Mensch. The best translation I can give you is: “In a place or time where there are no persons of moral character, YOU need to be that person of character.”

Truth. It is our moral obligation to pursue it. It is our moral obligation as Americans because, in the words of George Orwell, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Cats and Traps

The Sad Case of Woodward Hollow

I’m a trapper. I trap cats, get them neutered, and return them to wherever I got ‘em. It’s unethical, and generally unlawful to not return a cat to the place where it was trapped. Either the cat is owned by someone, or it’s feral, in which case it falls under the Virginia prohibition on relocating wildlife.

My group has been trapping in Woodward hollow for weeks. When the Woodwards see us coming, they bring as many of their cats inside as they can. Their cats are scrawny, and survive on scraps and dead animal carcasses that Mrs. Woodward dumps on the porch. The cats have to get by on what the dogs leave behind.

When we spay a cat, we keep her overnight to make sure she’s OK, then release her the next morning. I hadn’t done the hollow in a while, but last Friday I took two females back for release. Rather than get too close to these crazy people’s house, I parked in the cul-de-sac, and unloaded my two traps. When the doors were opened, the cats weren’t especially interested in leaving, but eventually they walked out into the street, but went no further. One cat, a pretty light gray lady, turned around to look into the other trap. Spotting a half full food dish, she went back, cleaned it out, then walked back into her original trap.

Having a cat walk back into its trap is very unusual. It’s most common for all released cats to run away immediately. Neither were so inclined. I coaxed them both out and put the traps back in the truck, expecting the cats to head on up their driveway. But they tried to follow me into the truck. The light gray one put her front legs around my right leg and looked up at me.

I talk to cats: “You need to go home now.” She wasn’t impressed. “You can’t come home with me. I have no place for you, and you belong to someone else.” She wouldn’t let go. I freed myself and brought out more cat food from the back seat. Both cats sucked it all down. One ran off, but the gray cat stayed, her front legs again wrapped around my leg.

Freeing myself, I headed for the cab; the gray cat followed. “They treat their cats like trash.” An older lady had stepped into the cul-de-sac. “That cat doesn’t want to go home,” she said. “I see. But they have to.” “They don’t know that.” “I have no other home for them.” The gray cat had wrapped her legs around my leg again; she was trying to climb my leg.

The lady shook her head and led the gray cat away, guiding her up the dirt driveway to her home. A few feet up the driveway the cat looked back at me, but the lady nudged her back in the direction of home.

Later on, I thought, shame on you. Shouldn’t have done it, but too late. Maybe. I told the story to another trapper. She’s hitting that place next week. Just maybe . . . Undoing sins of omission aren’t easy.

“JUST LIKE A FATHER” Day

This is the Fathers Day Column from the Culpeper Star-Exponent, written by my Wife,
Rabbi Rose Lyn Jacob

Father’s Day is upon us once again. Since our lives have been turned topsy-turvy by the pandemic, Father’s Day gift giving has been a challenge. Traditional “go-to,” tried and true Father’s Day gifts from the “before times” seem out of place, if not totally useless. Neckties, long the staple of Father’s Day gifting have gone the way of the dinosaur. So have fanciful cuff-links and their raison d’êtra, the dress shirt. Today’s Father’s Day gift is more likely to be a T-“message shirt” stating how awesome dad is, or a state-of-the art barbeque meat thermometer, or, my personal favorite for the new dad, a camo-diaper bag!

I think it is fair to say that Fatherhood is a bit more challenging these days. Gone is the 1950’s television fatherhood model. It went the way of the last Edsel rolling off Ford’s production line in 1959. Dads, in general, may be harder to find these days. He might be on military deployment on the other side of the world or “doing time,” in another state. There are dads who would give anything to be healthy enough to do “dad stuff” with their kids. There are invisible sperm donor dads, and deadbeat dads. There are men who have fathered children, but didn’t stay around to be an actual father to them. Then there is the most heartbreaking category; dads who die before they’ve had the chance to raise their children, pass on values, give guidance through life’s bumpy roads, and be there for the joyous moments.

How do you honor those men who can and are willing to step in and fill the void of fathers who are unable to father? A few years back, those artistic and inspired folks at Hallmark found a “new” niche category for marketing their product. You can find these cards just below the “Father’s Day” section, with its own little tab; “You’ve Been Just Like A Father To Me.” Now, not everyone who has been helped in their path to adulthood feels comfortable expressing that emotion with a greeting card; even if they feel it. Still others would need a roll of stamps to mail the cumulative number of cards to all the men who took the time to help with “dad” things over the years, who shared “dad” values and taught life skills by example.

I’ve met many people men and women who share with me stories about these caring men and the impact they’ve had on their young lives. Like Dad’s friend who subbed for her father at the middle school Father-Daughter Dance, and made certain he was there years later to walk her down the aisle. Or the fella who made sure his neighbor’s sons and daughters knew how to change a tire, check the oil, fill the wiper fluid and parallel park, even though the DMV says they won’t test you on it. There were stories about learning how to use power tools, or a screw driver. There were stories about learning to hunt or fish. There was the guy who taught you chord progressions on the guitar and how to tie a Windsor knot. The one the one who showed you how tie a bowtie, ‘cause big boys don’t wear clip on ties to the prom! And the ones who reminded you to hold the car door open for your date, even if that has gone out of style.

Some were lessons to last a lifetime. How to look someone in the eye and give a firm handshake. How to make a budget and save for the future. And the important things to look for when choosing a partner in life. Those of you who are fortunate to be able to celebrate Father’s Day with your father, or your Hallmark “Just Like a Father,”, know how special this man; these men, have been in building the person are today.

Much has happened leading up to this Father’s Day. Covid continues in its many iterations. Natural and man-made disasters have increased in number and duration. We have grown numb or even indifferent to news coverage of mass murders, gun violence, targeted hate crimes, political divisiveness, and the war in Ukraine. And these stories have highjacked what should be an enjoyable holiday with friends and family.

Each Father’s Day, there are those who observe but not celebrate. For them it is a day to remember; a quiet contemplative day. Those who have been cut off from their fathers, for whatever reasons, will pick up the phone and exchange a few awkward words, and a few awkward silences, with a dad who is physically or emotionally distant. Unlike the past few years, sons and daughters can visit with their elderly parents. It will be a day to sit beside the once strong, now fragile man who raised you, softly recounting for him memories that once were his; knowing he no longer knows who you are.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve grown accustomed to news sources labeling all sorts of people as “heroes.” So here is a ‘shout out’ to those who come to bat and rise to the occasion when fathers are can’t be there for their kids. They may not make the evening news, but they are heroes none the less.

Written in memory of my father and role model, Michael Jacob.

Goodbye New World Order — It Never Was

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, President George H. W. Bush, never a great man with words, awkwardly dubbed the post-Soviet era as one framed by a “New World Order.” Aside from the general feeling of well-being the term evoked, there was no clear understanding of what it meant. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama suggested we were witnessing “the end of history” as we had known it. Being the short sighted, instant gratification culture that we are, we couldn’t wait a moment to see if it really was, and what it all meant.

If the modern nation state stemmed from the mid seventeenth century Peace of Westphalia, much of modern international law began with the 1899 Hague Convention that presumed to find a way to define certain “laws of warfare.” This international foolishness continued through the founding of the League of Nations, that stillborn creature that essentially broke the British Empire while accomplishing little, and the United Nations, an equally futile organization that “kept everyone talking” in order to avoid another world war, while tens of millions more were killed in genocidal wars of national liberation, from Afghanistan to Kosovo, Biafra to Vietnam, Croatia to Syria, Iran to . . . you get the idea. Still, all those agreements and organizations did give the nation states they nurtured a structurer to rest on, talk across, and fight with.

Through all that, rebellions were put down, and national integrity was mostly preserved. Where new nation states emerged, they did so from the framework of colonial systems. As bad as those colonial systems may have been, they gave initial structure and infrastructure to the emerging nations. All this happened with the backdrop of the super power nuclear balance of terror. Though the United States and the Soviet Union never fought each other, they fought proxy wars on every inhabited continent. For the longest time, the Soviets seemed to be winning; the forces of socialism appeared more appealing, especially to the leadership of the new nations. Then, suddenly, it was over. The Soviet Union fell of its own weight in 1991, proof of its own ineptitude, collapsing back into nothing but Mother Russia, and ushering in that new world order that Bush and Fukuyama both thought would fundamentally change the world.

The new order held together for seventeen years. Then in 2008 Russia sponsored a conflict between Georgia and its ethnic Russian-sympathetic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Not only did the Russian clients win, but in the following years, the South Ossetians continued to surreptitiously to move the border, a few hundred meters at a time, shrinking Georgian farm land as they went. This process continues to this day. The entire Georgia war was close to being completely under the western press radar, but it was a watershed moment. For the first time a modern nation-state was losing its borders in the post-World War II era. This wasn’t a temporary adjustment, it was permanent.

In 2014 Russia invaded Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and in the presence of invading troops, conducted a rapid election that called for the unification of Crimea with Russia.

In 2022 Russia declared that Ukraine was not a legitimate country, but rather a natural historic part of Russia. Shortly thereafter Russia conducted a multi-axis invasion of Ukraine with the intent of incorporating it into the Russian Federation. We can’t prove those orange clouds that have begun to support the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine are chemical weapons, but it does appear Russia has once again shown its disdain for both the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Well, when they were signatories, they had little use for those documents.

These activities, taken together, tell us we are in a post Westphalian world. National boundaries no longer exist, except as they can be maintained by force of arms. It should be no surprise that Russia is offended by the expansion of NATO. She has serious plans for the domination, and possible absorption of her neighbors. The question isn’t whether the United Nations will be up to the task of preserving the world order. It clearly is not. The UN is even more hollow and futile than was the League of Nations in the 1930s. The question is: Will NATO be up to the task of keeping the modern western world order from collapsing? The ‘N’ in NATO may stand for North Atlantic, but South Korea has expressed interest in a relationship with it. NATO is the gold standard. But the presence of an adequately firm leadership at the NATO helm is not guaranteed. Much of the free world is wringing its hands and wondering.

Those of us in the west think Eurocentrically, but there is a similar, multi-threaded issue to that of Ukraine brewing in the far east. China is a nation nursing many grudges, both actual and perceived, concerning historic wrongs. While everyone is familiar with the Chinese claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, all Chinese grow up with a firm understanding of the historic Chinese claims to at least some territory of all her neighbors. In 1969 China and the Soviet Union fought a bitter seven-month war over borders that made a strong enough impression on the Soviets that they moved the Baikal-Amur Railway several hundred miles north to distance it from what might become a frequently violent border region.

In 1979 China launched attacks against Vietnam, ostensibly due to Vietnam’s interference in Cambodia. But once again, the dispute seems to have centered on China’s theory of the border’s placement.

All Chinese geography text books have maps emphasizing Chinese sovereignty claims, not only to land areas, but also to adjacent seas and even traditional fishing grounds far from China, some abutting distant countries.

In the absence of a strong hand by united democracies, it is likely that the near future will see increasing violent acts by claimants to adjacent nations’ territories, with the danger that open war as we knew it in much of the 20th century may resume, with all the risks it entails.

My Memorial Day Post

Eternal Patrol — An Elegy for Memorial Day, 2022

We sleep beneath the sea,

Unread last letters home,

Clutched forever

To our hearts,

Though the sea is cold,

Brotherhood,

Keeps us warm,

Don’t look for us,

We’re out here,

On patrol,

Keeping watch,

Forever.

Of Cats and Traps — 5

The barn is still there; the colony has been reduced to five cats, but not just through attrition. Three of the cats came out of their shells sufficiently to charm people and got themselves adopted. I say 'got themselves adopted' because we didn’t have to place them, they managed to worm themselves into the hearts of nearby folks, and we were approached with requests to adopt. The one exception was Little Gray Kitty. One winter afternoon when I went to feed the colony, she clearly had an upper respiratory infection. I had no trouble getting her into a carrier — we had been good buddies for years. The vet prescribed a course of treatment that required me to bring her home, and she’s never left. That’s how homes accumulate cats. It just happens. Another cat, the Katzenjammer Kitty, was the big male of the colony. He decided that he wasn’t getting enough food, so he took to crossing the street each day to sit on the picnic table outside the Syria Store. There he’d get extra rations. One of the ladies decided that was unsafe; she took him home, where he has ready access to his own TV remote and a choice seat on the couch.

Of Cats and Traps — Part 4

Dora the Therapy Cat showed up on the barn’s loading dock one afternoon. She’d either wandered in from who-knows-where, or more likely was dumped by some out of towner. That happens quite a bit in Syria. Dora was unusual. I fed her with rest of the cats, and figured to trap her ASAP to get her fixed. When I finished and headed back to the truck Dora followed me. I tried to shoo her back, but of course cats no more understand that than they understand calculus. I figured she’d go back to the colony when I drove away, but she tried to get into the truck with me. I closed the door; as I drove away, she ran about in the street, completely confused, so I came back and slipped her into the front seat, bringing her home.

No one on local social media answered my missing kitty call. Dora was young and petite, pretty, friendly, but timid. She liked to sit up on my desk, next to my ham radio gear, while I made contacts. When she got off the desk she would often look at her image in puzzlement in a floor length mirror. I would love to have kept her, but our house is small; we can’t keep every cat who comes our way. We placed her with a family that has a daughter with a chronic illness. Dora will make an excellent therapy cat. She is as sweet as they come, but not demanding.