I find myself reluctant to write this article. The material is distressing and complicated. Many people I love will be horrified. Yet this is a true account by a common person doing a humble project.
​ 
I come at the world of international politics from a weird angle-developmental disabilities and foreign adoption. Also, I have readers in remote countries that I’ve had to look up on my globe.
 
Many, many years ago, my programmer son in-law said, “You should put up a web site about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.”
 
“A what?”
 
“An informational site on the world wide web.”
 
“The what?” I’d never heard of a world wide web. Neither had anybody else outside of university librarians, the pentagon and a few programmers.
 
The result of this discussion became the first ever web site on the planet earth dedicated to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Since I was in direct contact with the primary researchers on the topic at the University of Washington, I was in a great position to distribute information globally. I began communicating with government officials from all over the world.  Yes, I had to look up some of those places in my atlas. I not only gave out information, I learned a great deal about the countries I communicated with and their lawmaking systems and how they approached solving problems like prenatal exposure to alcohol.
 
Meanwhile, my local projects placed me in contact with children adopted internationally. When you talk international adoption coupled with prenatal exposure to alcohol, you are talking about Russia among several other countries.  The adoptions of children prenatally exposed to alcohol in Russia seemed to be particularly challenging for the adoptive parents. Thus began my study of Russia. Remember, my study started back in the early nineties just as Gorbachev was on his way out and Yeltsin became the new president.
 
After I’d spent years reading, studying, and interacting, Putin came to power and surprised me when he stated that Russia is a European country. Part of the country is in Europe, but the culture is heavily influenced by Eastern thought processes. They have much in common with their neighbor, China. Their system works. However, for us, it is important to remember that events related in time, space, or theme may be considered related through spiritual/mystical forces in Russia.  A child who has learned the unique Russian thought pattern will indeed look illogical to the adoptive family, and that child will find his new parents insane. It is okay for a culture to function using a combination of western logic and eastern mysticism. It helps for adoptive parents to realize they may encounter something that looks like an illogical little blip from their adopted child.
 
From my concern about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, I saw both Putin and Medvedev as assets to their country because of their support of healthy living practices and moderation in alcohol consumption. Under them, some excellent legislation was passed to help lower the incidence of alcoholism especially in pregnant women. They both pushed for internal solutions for their orphan population. As far as my interest in alcohol related birth defects went, Russian leadership seemed to be on the right track.
 
Now, with Putin, I am well aware of his reputation outside the realm of alcoholism and international adoption. I’ve read several books about him, including his biography. Do I think he has ordered political assassinations? Certainly. Have US presidents ordered political assassinations? Certainly. It happens. It’s wrong, but it happens wherever there is power and corruption.
 
So where does this background lead in relationship to the 2016 election? First, we have to understand that US foreign policy is dominated by our weapons industry. Any and every problem must be bombed. We tend to interpret foreign disputes through bomb colored glasses. Russians don’t think the same way we do. On top of the different thought processes involved in solving a problem, Putin is a master in martial arts. He will use violence as a last resort, and he knows how to exploit other’s weaknesses, using his opponent’s own power against them. So this brings us up to the issues of conflict in Syria and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Putin stated very clearly that if we sanctioned Russia for annexing Crimea there would be consequences. I believed him.
 
Our national response to Putin’s promise of consequences seemed to be interpreted as a bomb threat. I shuddered at the threat and wondered what form those consequences would take. Putin is not a man to be messed with. He is ruthless. He will follow through, and he is probably the best strategist we’ve seen in at least a hundred years.
 
The US, in response to Putin’s promise of consequences, beefed  up our military presence in the Baltic Sea. Here is where our whole military/industrial thinking failed us. We should have beefed up our internet security and vetting of political candidates.
 
I wonder now at how deeply Russian influence had penetrated into our systems long before the election came along.
 
When the first hints of Russian hacking surfaced in the news, I didn’t pay much attention. Anybody who’d read Putin’s official biography would simply nod and think this was very consistent with his KGB training and something he’d do. Yes, hacking is illegal. We don’t enforce those laws among the elite in the US, so why should Russia obey them? Putin has mentioned repeatedly that the internet is an excellent tool for the CIA to spy on our citizens. He has also demonstrated an excellent understanding of how the internet can be used to spread propaganda and manipulate the citizenry. He has spoken to the Russian public about the risks of social media exposing the population to espionage. He never used email. Pundits told us it was because he didn’t understand. It has become apparent that he understood the potential for email security breaches all too well.
 
Using 20/20 hindsight, I look at our policies toward Russia over the last two decades and wonder how many of our mistakes are the result of thinking in only military terms. How many of our mistakes are the result of influence from corrupt oligarchs and how many of our mistakes are the result of compromised public advisors.
 
With this background, I had wondered about the possibility of Russian influence on our last election. Is the investigation of Russian influence just a smoke screen and distraction from issues we should be thinking about? Is this the most serious question our country needs to answer? If it is true that Russia influenced the election how deeply does the corruption run and who is compromised? With these thoughts in mind, I read the transcript of the Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
 
The transcript is long and involved. I had to reread sections to keep straight who is talking and to comprehend the import of what this testimony means for our country. I now have more questions than I started with. The transcript can be found here http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/senate-democrats-just-released-the-full-fusion-gps-testimony/ I highly recommend that everybody read this with an open mind and mull over the implications and inconsistencies that came to light. We do need to ask, how deep does the influence run, who is compromised, and what this means for justice in this country.
 
Coming away from the transcript, I believe we’ve been subject to Russian propaganda for years. I believe that some of our oligarchs do cooperated with Russia to destroy the United States. I believe it is very feasible that Putin’s goal is to break the US into several smaller countries. Did Russia through operatives in Russia and in the US influence the 2016 election? I am certain they did.
 
The problem I see isn’t so much the Russian influence as it is our response to it. Again we have to deal with Putin’s superior abilities to strategize. He’s happy to have us shake our fists and blame him for the influence. He will get that wry little half smile on his face and deny role in the election. The only way we can defeat Putin, is to take responsibility for ourselves. We must set aside our addictions to feel-good propaganda and learn to love our neighbors. We must remember that Russian propaganda may purport to be anti-Russian while haranguing against either liberals or conservative.
Folks we are just people. We are not members of one evil fantasy group or the other. We are just people with different ideas of how to do a job. We absolutely must work together to save this country or we will become seven different countries and some of those countries will be very, very poor.
 
 
 
 
 

Today's article is from my novel Power and Circumstance. My heroine Celia wrote an article for her blog on the importance of professionals in the human services field who do their job well.

Her step-son Kyle has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and is at this time incarcerated in a group home. His probation officer allowed him a home visit because of his father's declining health and his step-mom Celia had a broken foot.

***
Dear Caregivers, 

What a difference a professional who “gets it” can make in our lives.  Today’s visit with Kyle turned into a joy and blessing.  Apparently, Kyle’s new probation officer had a serious talk with Kyle on the way down here because Kyle said a few things I’ve never heard before. I doubt that they came from his counseling sessions or his own damaged brain. 

“Mum, I’m an adult now.  I can take my father for a walk around the farm. I can help him get dressed.” Oh how I love this dutiful, helpful son! I know today may never happen again, but I am so thankful to have spent a day with the person Kyle could have been!!!

When it was time for Kevin’s nap, Kyle said, “What needs to be done in the gardens? They’re not ready for summer yet. Can’t you work with that boot on your foot?”

Kyle did some hauling and shoveling.  Next, we got the bean trellises up then we tied up more peas.  We got the squash bed ready, and we planted a whole row of dahlias.  I was a little surprised that Kyle remembered how to do the farm chores. I will get my farm planted on time.  Praise God!

Kyle even thanked me for making oven fried chicken for dinner and remembered when he was eight how he burned down the chicken house. “Boy was I scared, especially when the gas cans blew up. I thought you’d kill me for sure.” Kyle stopped in his memories and stared into his plate while pushing the food around. He looked up and grinned.  “You didn’t kill me.  You just looked at me and started to cry.  I’d rather have been sent to my room.”

I guess the point of this ramble is that the right professional can make a huge difference.  If one therapist isn’t right, find another.  If your doctors make you feel like a failure find another.  This probation officer knew how to bring out the best in Kyle.  Surely, there must be other professionals out there who know how to encourage and bring out the best in others. I wish we could find someone willing to train volunteers and respite workers in how to bring out the best in our loved ones.

Hang in there.  Great days happen.


Celia Jones McKinsey 

​
In the Star Trek culture, a Kobayashi Maru is a no win scenario, often computer generated. In the movie, Captain Kirk as a cadet snuck into the computer lab after hours and reprogrammed the computer simulation so that when he took his test on the Kobayashi Maru, he could win. He reasoned that no situation is unwinnable.
My writer’s group discovered a Kobayashi Maru when attempting to have scenes in a story that reflect the diversity of our culture. It is okay to have a child with red hair and freckles. The porcelain doll child with blond ringlets is okay. Including an overweight child is acceptable, but mentioning that one child in this group is black got the author into trouble. Some members of the group felt it was a micro-aggression--identifying one child by race rather than some other detail. The author may try to communicate diversity by including children with ethnically-distinctive names, but J K Rowling was criticized for doing that with Cho Chen the Patil sisters.
Now, if the author never mentions anything alluding to race, the white reader—and even many non-white readers—will read the story as if all the children are white, which is really rather creepy and sad. Our culture simply is not at a point where an author can say “the children ran to the park,” and the reader will imagine a culturally and racially diverse group of children.
Because of discriminatory practices in the US, many white children never encountered a black child until they left home and went to college or served in the military. To these readers, a group of children will always appear white in their imagination. It isn’t a deliberate choice or a preference. It’s just conditioning. Children’s books reinforced the image of an all-white culture. Laura Ingalls Wilder very possibly never encountered a black child, and if she did, that child may very well have been an outsider who wasn’t enough of a part of her life to be included in her books.
The problem got started because of oppression, discrimination, and isolation, and the authors in previous generations reflected what they experienced in their communities. The problem for the current author becomes one of reflecting the composition of contemporary communities without appearing to resort to tokenism, cultural appropriation or racism. What is the solution?
The author can avoid mentioning the diversity in any community. Remaining silent perpetuates the image of all white communities where nobody has disabilities or is too skinny or too fat. Only beautiful white people are worth mentioning. This is not acceptable. Silence is a form of segregation in itself. This should not be the case, but we don’t live in a world of what should be. We live in a world of what is. For too many years, our communities have been segregated. Some communities are still segregated, but where I live, most communities are integrated enough to reflect the proportion of each ethnic group in our larger society. Silence on that subject doesn’t reflect the world the writer experiences.
J. K. Rowling integrated Hogwarts in several ways. The students reflected the ethnic diversity of England, but she got soundly criticized because the minority characters weren’t among the three main heroes. Note that although Rowling never said so, everybody assumed Hermione was white. They were outraged when a black girl was cast to play Hermione in a stage production of the book. Not necessarily because the actress was black but merely because it wasn’t how the readers had pictured the character. This is a great example of the literary segregation that occurs when the author is silent on the race of a character.
Rowling was criticized because her minority characters were not given bigger roles in the story. They did play significant and dignified roles. I loved Lee Jordan’s Quidditch commentary and his role in the resistance was vitally important. The Patil sisters were good people, and they stood with the resistance. Yet Rowling was criticized because their roles weren’t bigger.
To further complicate the issue, although Parvati’s race is never mentioned and she receives exactly the same degree of description as her best friend Lavender Brown, she is considered a “token” for no other reason than that her name is Indian in origin, which suggests that any minority character in a small role is by definition a “token.”
The most common suggestion seems to be that the writer should describe the character without mentioning race. This brings us back to the audience interpretation problems we saw with Hermione. Mentioning a physical characteristic can raise more problems. Talking about a person’s skin is intimate. The protagonist might observe that his romantic interest has fair skin, but if he mentions that a child at the playground has fair skin, that is an indication of something creepy, unless the comment is accompanied by a mention raging sunburn. Yet the argument remains that it is okay to talk about minorities in a way that would be improper when applied to white people. For many writers, that’s not an acceptable solution.
Some people suggest you simply say that a character is “dark,” but “dark” has been used for centuries to mean a Caucasian with dark-colored hair, so it doesn’t clarify the race issue. It has the additional disadvantage of connoting “sinister,” which may not in any way fit the character, and a writer might recoil from the implication that having dark skin makes a person scary.
It seems that the only acceptable solution is for the hero to be a member of a minority. This creates a problem for the white author trying to be inside the head of a minority character. For a white person to attempt to be in the head of someone who has a very different interface with the community raises issues of cultural appropriation and cultural dishonesty. I have no idea what it may be like to get pulled over by a cop for driving while black. I have no idea what living with the daily grind of subtle discrimination is like. I have no idea what goes on inside the head of someone who is snubbed while being black. Sure, some people are rude to me. I can wonder if I did something wrong or if they are just having a bad day. The color of my skin is not a factor in interpreting my interactions with my environment. Thus, I run the risk of misrepresentation.
So our options become literary segregation, “tokenism,” or dishonesty. The contemporary author is left without any acceptable solution--a Kobayashi Maru. I really don’t know of any acceptable solutions to our Kobayashi Maru. I do think it is the role of writers, actors, poets, and visual artists to sneak into the computer lab and reprogram the game so we all can win.