Always trust your cape
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Kenyan and Chinese officials last Wednesday inaugurated a 290-mile-long railway built and largely financed by the Chinese between Kenya’s and East Africa’s busiest port, Mombasa, and Kenya’s capital and financial and commercial center, Nairobi.
The Chinese also recently opened another important railway line between Djibouti, further up the East African coast, a country with America’s only military base in Africa, and another key African country, Ethiopia. Ethiopia is landlocked and, thus, the link to Djibouti is critical to the advancement of its economy.
There is a slight tendency on the part of Americans to weep and moan about the increasingly large role that China is playing in Africa. Its activities are also growing in Latin America, the U.S. backyard. There is also a slight tendency to suggest that the active Chinese economic, financial and commercial role in these areas is somehow unfair. At the same time, there is virtually nothing that prevents American firms and banks from competing actively for these markets, for these opportunities.
One might suggest that what is missing now is the old, admired “Yankee trader” mentality, whatever it was that drove Americans across the centuries to push hard to build and to be active in pursuit of markets. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is a still not particularly exploited market of 1 billion people. Its infrastructure needs are virtually limitless.
The railroad itself responds to a profound need for infrastructure on the part not only of Kenyans, but also of the people of some five neighboring countries, to which plans indicate that the railway, the Madaraka Express, will eventually be extended. These include Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda, linking all of them to financial center Nairobi and port Mombasa.
The railroad is criticized as expensive at $3.2 billion, more than 80 percent loaned to Kenya, including by China’s export-import bank. The Chinese were also accused of using too many Chinese to build it and to run it for the first five years, while Kenyans are being trained as engineers and managers. On the other hand, it took only 2½ years to build, some over rough country. It is hard to imagine how many years Americans would take to build a 290-mile rail line.
TDave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com he firm and defiant yet calm and reasoned response of British leaders to Saturday night’s terrorist attack on London Bridge, which involved three men who steered a rented van into pedestrians and then got out and began stabbing people, was pitch perfect. The response by Donald Trump, on the other hand, has surely set a new low in statesmanship (or perhaps anti-statesmanship) by an American president as he lashed out at London’s mayor, used the death of seven Brits to promote his travel ban and generally embraced his customary hysteria and hyperbole after any attack he can connect to Muslims.
Americans may have grown accustomed to President Donald Trump’s embarrassing Twitter forays, but how awful to mock London’s mayor for attempting to keep his city calm after the attack and telling people not to be alarmed by the increased presence of police. “Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. There’s no reason to be alarmed. One of the things the police and all of us need to do is ensure that we’re as safe as we possibly can be,” Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a released statement.
Here’s how the president responded to the mayor’s words: “We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don’t get smart it will only get worse,” Trump tweeted. “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”
But that was only the beginning. Trump threw his own administration under the bus (and presumably himself) by tweeting Monday that his travel ban (and yes, he’s now calling what Sean Spicer once insisted was “not a travel ban” a travel ban) should not have been the “watered down, politically correct version” now under review by the Supreme Court. So much for only needing a 90-day “temporary pause” in travel to the United States from certain majorityMuslim countries while the administration could formulate an “extreme vetting” process. As Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., quickly pointed out to reporters, the president sabotaged his own court case, once again making it clear he seeks to discriminate based on religion.
Scaring people is not leadership. Making the London attack all about your own political interests and criticizing London’s mayor on misleading grounds isn’t presidential either. Why not stand by our allies? Why not express support for the victims? Why not take this moment to show compassion or offer hope? It appears in Trump’s world view, it’s always about him alone having the solution, when, in fact, he has no broad, consistent or functional counter-terrorism policy to offer whatsoever.
The British know adversity. In 1939, the best-selling song was the rousing “There’ll Always Be An England,” which makes no mention of Germans or bombs or the coming war. It was an uplifting celebration of a country’s fierce pride and determination. “Never, never, never give in,” said Winston Churchill. Nearly 80 years later, Prime Minister Theresa May said “Enough is enough” referring not only to Saturday’s attack but to the May 22 suicide bombing at Manchester Arena that killed the attacker and 22 concert-goers.
And what is Trump doing? He doubled down on his criticism of Mayor Khan, tweeting Monday that the mayor had to “think fast” to come up with a “pathetic excuse” to explain his earlier statement. What is truly pathetic is choosing such a moment, hours after a terrorist attack, to criticize an ally before the city can even bury its dead.
Such childishness is the opposite of what’s already evident in the United Kingdom, a return to the “keep calm and carry on” mantra of World War II.
That doesn’t make Londoners weak, that suggests they are capable of keeping their balance in more ways than one — and retaining a bit of humor while doing so. “It’s called ‘leadership,’ Donald,” was how Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling responded to President Trump’s criticism of London’s mayor on Twitter, “… if we need an alarmist blowhard, we’ll call.”
Have you ever found yourself on a razor’s edge, afraid to leap but knowing it is the right thing to do?
OK, probably not literally, but surely you have found yourself in such a place mentally, teetering on the brink of a life-changing decision, balanced between crippling fear and liberating truth.
I have had this happen many times in my life and find myself in that precarious spot, even recently.
So often do I find myself there, that the proverbial “leap of faith” has become a mainstay in my internal language.
Nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard first coined the phrase in describing a commitment to an objective uncertainty in relationship to God. His philosophy looked at the importance of individual choices in embracing the unknown. Nowadays, people use the term to refer to any choice that involves acceptance of the unknown potential outcome.
Guy Clark, one of the greatest songwriters of all time, wrote a song about the idea titled “The Cape.” The song chronicles a man at various stages in life, always believing that he can fly if he jumps off the garage and only trusts his cape. What a wonderful way to go through life, always believing that your cape will protect you in noble yet risky endeavors.
Granted, he probably never actually flew, just as many of us may never achieve our most shocking and noble goals, but what would it feel like to go through life always trying, always believing that anything is possible when you try, while nothing is possible if you don’t.
Eight years ago, I took myself to task in the most literal way and decided to jump out of an airplane for a fundraising event that we organized for the Sexual Assault Center of Northwest Georgia called Jumpin’ for Justice.
The idea behind the event was that jumping out of a plane is actually much safer than simply existing for the average woman. At the time, the risk of injury in a tandem skydive was only 1:250,000, while the risk a woman faces of being sexually assaulted in her lifetime is currently 1:5. Yeah, jumping out of an airplane is a veritable piece of cake in comparison.
My dad learned to skydive when he joined the 82nd Airborne division at Fort Bragg in 1961. He followed that with serving two years as a Green Beret in the 10th Special Forces division in Bad Tölz, Germany.
While there, he earned his senior parachutist MONICA SHEPPARD Jim Powell of Young Harris Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press badge for a total of 38 jumps, one of which included landing on a fence post. My sister and I decided it was the least we could do to jump out of a plane together just once to honor his service and recognize the women around the world who have experienced sexual violence.
In spite of the very convincing statistics, I have never felt such terror in my life as I experienced while hanging on the edge of a fast-moving plane, strapped to a very capable man that I barely knew, ready to hurl myself toward the very solid ground below and trusting him to pull our cape. What could possibly go wrong? That intensely visceral real-life experience of “trusting my cape” really solidified the leap of faith ideology for me.
My sister and I, along with all the other folks who jumped that day, thankfully survived, heck even had fun. I even went back numerous times, developing lifelong friendships with some of the crazy people who jump out of planes every weekend, and I tandem jumped a couple of more times in the process. Thus proving that I could leap fearlessly (OK, really quite fearfully) into the unknown and have unforeseen and positive things come out of it.
Imagine how different this story would sound if I had chickened out and ran screaming to the front of the plane, refusing to release my fingers from the nearest solid hold? That would not be a story worth telling, now would it? It would not have honored my brave father and his service and risks taken in preparation to be a top-notch defender of our country. I would not have been able to use that experience as a tool to inspire my daughter to take chances in life for a higher and greater good. I had no choice but to jump! As I currently consider some potentially lifechanging choices, I must turn again to that leap of faith outlook and consider what amazing things may come from taking the risks. Yes, there is the chance that I will fall on my face, but at least it will be from less than 6 feet rather than 12,000+. Besides, even if what I end up with are simply the valuable lessons learned from failure, that is still a good addition to the life story that will take me further along the path.
I can only hope, and always trust my cape.