The Boston Globe - 30.08.2019

A8 Editorial The Boston Globe FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019

Opinion

BOSTONGLOBE.COM/OPINION

Editorial

By Joan Wickersham

I

t is 4:30 in the morning

and we’re due to catch a 6

a.m. flight. We know the

drill: Call the cab compa-

ny; a grumpy-sounding

man or woman will answer and

bark, “Ten minutes”; and the cab

willpullupinfrontofourhouse.

But this morning, no one an-

swers at the cab company. The

phone rings and rings. We call an-

other cab company. Same thing.

Luckily there’s a hotel only a few

blocks away from where we live.

We grab our bags, walk over there,

and pick up the single cab that’s

waiting in the taxi stand outside.

It’s one of those little moments

when I can feel myself not keeping

pace, and not wanting to keep pace,

with the culture.

My grownup kids would have

gotten an Uber.

But my husband and I don’t

have and don’t want smartphones.

I like privacy and silence. “So

just turn it off,” people have said to

me; but I don’t want to have to turn

it off. I don’t want to have phone

conversations while I’m walking on

the street or picking out vegetables

in the grocery store. I don’t want a

device to know where I am or offer

helpful suggestions. I know myself

well enough to know that if I had a

phone I’d check it constantly, be-

come more anxious than I already

am, succumb to all its glittery

temptations. I’m comfortable with

my choice not to have this kind of

device.

But an incident like this morn-

ing’s taxi scramble makes me think

about how the texture of daily life

evolves over time. You notice this

kind of cultural shift at the junc-

tures when you yourself are unwill-

ing to make the shift. Not having a

smartphone makes me an oddball.

The culture assumes that I’ll use a

phone to pay for my parking meter,

to arrange for an Uber, to find my

way from Point A to Point B. There

are still alternatives — quarters to

drop into most parking meters,

cabdrivers struggling to survive in a

difficult and declining livelihood,

maps and guidebooks for the cities

I visit — but the tide is coming in,

and my paper- and cash-based is-

land is getting smaller.

History is made up of big head-

line events, ongoing conflicts, and

disasters both natural and man-

made, but it’s also composed of

these gradual, almost impercepti-

ble shifts in the texture of our daily

lives — the mystery of how each

generation succeeds the one before.

Things seep in, things fade out.

When our older son was 10 we

moved to a house that had an old

rotary phone hanging on the wall.

“How do I work it?” he asked,

wanting to call a friend.

“You just dial,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked;

and I had to show him how to put a

finger into the little hole next to the

numbers, drag the dial around in a

circle, and then let go.

I think about my grandmothers,

one born in 1888 and the other in

1900, and all the changes they wit-

nessed. I imagine that if they could

come back now, they’d see things

they wouldn’t recognize, and they’d

miss some essential items that ar-

en’t around anymore (typewriters,

which were important to them

both). They would still recognize,

in my kitchen, a few of their own

belongings, some pots and dishes

and linens, and an old potato

masher that passed to my parents

and then to me.

Also in my kitchen, in a bowl

where miscellaneous things end

up, there is a wristwatch. I found it

a few months ago while I was

cleaning, and brought it downstairs

so I’d remember to ask our friends

if they might have lost a watch. No

one claimed it. Finally I showed it

to my younger son, who said it had

been his, when he was a kid. The

watch had stopped at 2:35, some-

time after he took it off and started

using a phone to tell time.

That was years ago, more than a

decade. The kids have grown up,

moved out and into their own lives.

But in my kitchen, according to

the watch, it is still 2:35.

Joan Wickersham’s column

appears regularly in the Globe.

When the

watch stopped

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Younoticethiskindofculturalshiftatthejunctureswhenyouyourselfare

unwillingtomaketheshift.Nothavingasmartphonemakesmean

oddball.ThecultureassumesthatI’lluseaphonetopayformyparking

meter,toarrangeforanUber,tofindmywayfromPointAtoPointB.

I

t’s not just that President Trump seems to rel-

ish his recurring role as skunk at the G7 gar-

den party. The American public has grown

used to that.

It’s just that it will likely take years to undo

the damage Trump has done to this nation’s relation-

ship to its closest democratic allies and to the place the

United States has always had on the world stage.

During one mercifully brief weekend at the seaside

French resort town of Biarritz, he managed to relin-

quish global leadership to France’s President Emmanu-

el Macron on the issue of a $20 million aid package to

help Brazil fight the fire consuming the Amazon, con-

fuse the living daylights out of everyone on China trade

policy, and launch yet another misguided effort to get

Russia’s Vladimir Putin back into the elite club of the

world’s leading industrialized nations.

It was the latter effort — reportedly pursued with

some vigor at the summit’s opening night dinner —

that left a lingering sour note to the event. After all,

nearly all of the other nations represented around that

table — certainly Britain, France, and Germany — have

been subjected to the same kind of Russian-generated

disinformation campaign waged in the United States

to Trump’s benefit during the 2016 election.

Russia was ousted from the group — it had been the

G8 — back in 2014 for annexing Crimea and, therefore,

violating the sovereignty of Ukraine and international

law in the process. Nothing has changed since then.

Russia continues to eye Eastern Ukraine and make as

much mischief there as possible.

Much of the response from others at the summit

was either behind the scenes or couched in the lan-

guage of diplomacy. Macron noted that there had been

no “consensus” on bringing Russia back into the

group, adding that that could only be done with a

unanimous vote.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was per-

haps the most candid, saying, “Russia has yet to

change the behavior that led to its expulsion in 2014,

and therefore should not be allowed back into the G7.”

Back in Washington four Democratic senators —

minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York; Jack

Reed of Rhode Island, ranking member on the Armed

Services Committee; Bob Menendez of New Jersey;

and Mark Warner of Virginia — expressed their opposi-

tion in a letter to the White House.

“The G7 nations are unified by both economic sta-

tus and a shared commitment to democratic values,

human rights, and the rule of law,” they wrote.

“Readmitting Putin’s Russia to the G7 would be con-

trary to our values and a clear abdication of the United

States’ responsibilities as the world’s leading democra-

cy.”

They are certainly on target, but then if a half dozen

world leaders can’t convince Trump he’s going down a

bad path, four Democratic senators won’t change the

thinking of this lover of autocrats everywhere.

Trump insists that as host of next summer’s G7, “I

would certainly invite him [Putin].” And he could cer-

tainly do that, if Putin didn’t mind his status as a guest

on the sidelines.

The president also wants to hold that summit at his

own luxury golf resort in Doral, Fla. — the ethics of

forcing foreign governments to make payments to a

Trump property notwithstanding.

Of course, the summit would be in the midst of the

2020 presidential contest. And there’s nothing like a

photo op with the Russian leader whose interference

in the 2016 election has been well documented to re-

mind voters of how we got to this moment in the first

place.

Another G7 summit, another embarrassment