The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-27)

FRIDAY, MAY 27 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A25

T

he World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is usually fixated on the future. Most years, the attendees are dazzled by some country, company or technology promising to burst forward, force change and dominate the next decade. This year, the focus has not been on the future but the past. People delved into history to debate what caused Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Swed- ish finance minister explained why his country, which hasn’t been at war since the Napoleonic era, was breaking its more than 200-year tradition of neutral- ity with its bid to join NATO. The Finnish foreign minister recalled Finland’s resis- tance to Moscow’s aggression in the Winter War of 1939 to 1940. In past years in Davos, companies plastered storefronts and buildings with jubilant signs cheering on dynamism, acceleration and disruption. This time, there were far fewer placards and slo- gans (some of them meekly promising sustainability or progress on climate change). The one genuinely cheerful sign I saw said, “Will the Saudi GDP now be fuelled by YOLO, FOMO and WYWH?” With oil at over $100 a barrel, the Saudi regime has much to be excited about. The storefront that dominated attention was one that used to be booked for years by Russians, who hosted lavish cocktail parties and caviar tastings there. Now it has a sign in the window that reads in small, clear type, “This used to be the Russian House in Davos. Now it’s the Russian War Crimes House in Davos.” Sponsored by Ukrainian busi- nessman Victor Pinchuk, the new look includes rooms filled with striking images and stories of Russia’s barbaric actions in its campaign against Ukraine. Ukraine dominated Davos this year, and most people I spoke to were quite unsure how this war would end. That played into a larger sense of uncertainty about the world that we are heading into, a world of multiplying risks. “We know the risks that are out there are large,” Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Sin- gapore’s senior minister, told me. “They are not about black swan events, coming out of the blue. A pandemic was predict- ed; Russia’s invasion was a known possibility. Another pandemic, more fre- quent climate crises, these are not just possible but likely. We can’t keep expect- ing and planning for a return to calm, untroubled times.” A former central banker told me that economic policymakers felt that they were in uncharted territory: “The old model — where inflation moves up ever so slightly, and then you raised rates a tiny bit and all was well — that’s dead. We’re in a new world, and we’re all just experimenting.” There is a broader foreboding, a sense that the period we have just lived through — the three decades since 1990 — might have been an unusual, perhaps even unique era, one in which the great-power politics and geopolitical tensions that normally dominate and define international life were absent. The giddy trends of recent times — globalization, the information revolution, democratization — were trends built on an edifice of power, the United States’ superpower status. But that strength has been waning for some years — following Iraq, the global financial crisis, covid-19 — and now is being challenged, first by China and then Russia. In all this gloom, there is one distinct- ly hopeful sign. Europe is acting with a greater sense of unity and purpose than I have ever seen before. Every European leader I spoke with believed that Russia’s aggression has sparked a revolution of sorts across the continent. The Euro- pean Union has shown remarkable unity on sanctions and is slowly but steadily coming together on energy policy. These successes could evolve into greater coordination on foreign and even defense policy. Europeans have realized, at a fundamental level, that they were taking peace and stability for granted, and that it might now have to be created and sustained by hard work and commitment, in part by building hard power of their own and deploying it strategically. There are serious de- bates about ending the slow, consensual process of E.U. decision-making that allows one country, such as Hungary, to veto its efforts. The most lasting legacy of this crisis could be a new role for Europe as a more purposeful strategic actor on the world stage. But for that to happen, this experience in uniting against Russia has to work. Only success can breed more success. Failure will doom this experiment. The founding fathers of the European Union — like Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet — were steeped in history and determined to ensure that war did not break out again in Europe. Today’s European leaders need to infuse their day-to-day decisions with a similar sense of history. Fifty years from now, no one will remember whether growth slowed on the continent for a couple of quarters in 2022 or if Brussels had to pay extra for natural gas from the United States. What they will recall is the answer to one question: Who won the war in Ukraine — Vladimir Putin or the West?

FAREED ZAKARIA

The one

hopeful sign

coming out

of Davos

T

he culture war — intent on leaving no human emotion un- soiled — has even invaded our grief. Some mock “thoughts and prayers” in response to a school shooting as the expression of pious impotence. Why doesn’t someone actually do something to prevent the mass murder of children? Why waste our efforts appealing to a silent or absent God? But the closer you get to inexplicable tragedy, the more prayer takes on a sad salience. After the massacre this week in Uvalde, Tex., the Getty Street Church of Christ welcomed people who came to pray. One local pastor, Marcela Cabralez, first made sure her two grandchildren were safe before offering comfort at the Hillcrest Memorial funeral home, where parents and surviving children had gath- ered. Some children were screaming; others seemed catatonic. “Cabralez said she started to pray,” The Post reported, “with some of the children repeating after her.” It is an honor to join in such prayers. Yet it is deeply frustrating that case after case of mass murder passes without meaningful public response. The reaction of a working political system to the Buffalo and Uvalde murders would be to exhaust the most promising policy approaches. What principle of constitutional self- government requires that the permissible age to purchase an AR-15 should be 18 rather than 21? A recent ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Cir- cuit affirmed the right of 18-year-olds to buy what most of us would call “assault weapons.” Its reasoning? “America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army.” In fact, the enlistment age for the Continental Army was 16 — just 15 with parental consent. Some served at age 14. Is this a sufficient legal and historical basis to allow young teens to purchase nearly military-grade weapons in 2022? This type of “originalism” is indistin- guishable from idiocy. Why should one of the rites of passage for every 18-year-old include access to tremendous firepower? While we’re at it, why not strengthen and tighten federal background-check laws? We know these measures have kept millions of guns out of potentially dan- gerous hands. But other massacres have revealed loopholes in the law that Con- gress has every reason to close. A nd why not pass national “red flag” legislation, which would allow law en- forcement officers to confiscate weapons from people whom a court deems dan- gerous to themselves or others? Nine- teen states and the District of Columbia already have such laws, with varied degrees of success among them. But they are being used. Florida has invoked its law more than 5,800 times since passing it in 2018. We don’t have enough information to know whether this type of law would have prevented the Uvalde murders. But it seems possible that a bullied, socially isolated dropout with increasingly errat- ic and violent behavior and a disturbing social media presence could have been noticed as a threat. Honestly, I don’t know how effective any of these three ideas — reducing the permissible age for gun sales, strength- ening background checks and passing a national red-flag law — would be in the prevention of mass shootings. But I know that none of them is remotely unconstitutional. And I know that a healthy legislative process would pass these laws, closely monitor their effec- tiveness, consider improvements to strengthen them and then examine other promising ideas that emerge and pass other legislation. This process would certainly be more useful and humane than placing impossible burdens on parents (left to consider faddish foolishness such as bulletproof backpacks) and children (subjected to terrifying active-shooter drills in which flashing sneakers are supposed to attract deadly attention). What we face is a public policy problem. It demands origi- nality, boldness and perseverance from legislators. And they are currently being watched and judged. The most difficult aspect of this difficult problem is a dark myth that lies at its heart. There is a plausible (but not, to me, compelling) argument that serious, semiautomatic firepower is useful for hunting — leaving your elk, I suppose, pre-tenderized. Others make the case that the protection of hearth and home from invading criminals requires rapidly fired munitions that seem more suited to the Donbas battlefield. Others argue that any regulation of guns amounts to an elitist attack on their unique culture. Still others assert that high-powered weapons must be kept in the hands of American citizens — weapons that can easily depopulate a classroom, a church, a synagogue, a movie theater or a grocery store — to be used against the American government when the moment for revolution arrives. In this argument, the protection of children and minorities from harm takes a back seat to the treasonous insanity of ersatz patriots. This could be a prodigious source of American bloodshed. And it is truly frightening.

MICHAEL GERSON

I pray with

the grieving —

and for bold

action on guns

O

n Tuesday, a gunman target- ed a fourth-grade classroom at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., killing 21 people, 19 of them children. On May 14, a gunman shot and killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo. On April 12, a gunman shot 10 people in a Brooklyn subway station. We’re 145 days into the year, and there have already been 213 mass shootings in the United States. The problem is mental illness. The problem is lone-wolf gunmen. The problem is soft targets. The problem is evil. The problem is them, over there; it’s their fault that the kids keep getting killed. Wrong. The problem is you. Way back in 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama was casti- gated for saying that some Americans “cling to guns” and for suggesting that this was unreasonable or un- healthy. The evidence — which is to say the pileup of bodies year after year — suggests he was correct. But other politicians, seeing the backlash, learned what not to say. They learned not to point fingers, because they knew that they, too, would be accused of hating freedom, loving tyranny, overreaching in pur- suit of control. They understood that they would be shouted down and then perhaps voted out. They learned not to say the obvious: These mass shootings aren’t acts of God. The status quo is bad. Our lack of action on guns is killing people, and someone is to blame. But who?

You. It’s your fault. You, the gun-obsessed minority who lord over our politics and prevent change from being made. You, who mumble “thoughts and prayers” but balk at action. You, the constitutional absolutist who believes that “the right to bear arms” — written in the late 1700s, when a state-of-the-art weapon was the flintlock musket — should be expanded to include modern-day, high-capacity automatic rifles, at the cost of children’s lives. You, the “shooting hobbyist” or “gun enthusiast” who rails against gun control because you think any- thing that makes your weekend amusement even the slightest bit more difficult to participate in is not to be borne. You, the performative patriot who believes that background checks, age limitations, training requirements — any reasonable regulations that could help keep people safe — are insuffer- able limitations on your freedom. You, the sophist who says “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” as if those people weren’t killing others using guns, as if it weren’t obvious that the havoc they wreak would be much reduced had they not been given easy access to weapons of mass murder. You, the pundit who sneers that your opponents “don’t want a solu- tion” and then refuses to provide your own, preferring to use a tragedy to build your brand. You, who would rather forget about the children murdered and the families broken, because if we thought about them too much, you’d

feel bad and might have to give something up. Lest I be accused of being one-sid- ed, let’s not stop the finger-pointing there. If it’s a “you” problem, it’s an “us” problem, too — the United States and its culture writ large, right and left included. A country that defines itself by its freedom — and has, over decades, fetishized a misguided ideal of “liber- ty” that values the individual over everyone and everything else. A country that touts its dynamism yet dithers, its leaders wringing their hands and offering empty platitudes — “we have to find solutions,” “we must take action” — as if the solutions aren’t obvious, as if the actions one could take haven’t been modeled for us by other countries for decades. A country that exports democracy but whose politicians pretend that their jobs are meaningless, who believe that when it comes to gun control, “legislation doesn’t work” — despite the fact that they were elected to write it. It’s easy to find excuses for why this keeps happening. We’ve done it for decades. But the comforting fictions have worn thin, to the point of transparency. It’s time to stop feigning helpless- ness. To stop pretending we are the ones under attack. To stop gaslighting the real victims, who have already suffered tragedy enough. It’s time to admit that we — we Americans, and the rationalizations we tolerate — are to blame. Only then can we shoulder the responsibility to act.

CHRISTINE EMBA

You. This is your fault.

SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST Crosses mark the deaths at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on Thursday.

tracks to close your eyes and just take in the aroma. Raise your hand if you are struck by how this annual explosion comes as both a reassurance and a shock to your senses. I know I’m not alone. But I also know that we tend to forget the splendor of lilacs when the delicate flowers fade and then fall. Out of sight, out of mind — until they return once again to overload our circuitry. In that sense, the season of lilacs and the never-ending cycle of violence have something in common. We react to what we see. Our disbelief at the horror of Minneapolis or Buffalo or Uvalde seems all-consuming until its urgency fades or is focused on the next outrage. This is natural. We can’t expect our anger and grief to stay dialed up on high in perpetuity. But we as a nation need to figure out how to meet this constant tempo of gun violence with an even more constant drumbeat of demands for something better. With the current makeup of the Sen- ate, this is a bit like asking a dark and ugly cloud to turn and retreat. Rage won’t help. Negotiations are laughable. The GOP is more interested in protecting the right to bear arms than the right to live in peace. But isn’t that the nature of faith? To believe in that thing that might seem impossible and act as if the combination of prayer and perseverance could make a difference? Isn’t that what you do when lives are on the line? Isn’t that what you do to protect the babies who cannot protect themselves against the sad and pathetic men who buy assault rifles when

I

visited my hometown of Minneapo- lis this past week and was reminded that the last days of May, when the calendar leans toward the Memorial Day weekend, are unofficially the season of lilacs. The big, showy, aromatic pompoms of purple signal the promise of warm days ahead after the long Minnesota winter. But lilac season will also be marked as a season of mourning, with the anniversa- ry of the day when a rogue Minneapolis cop put his knee on a Black man’s neck and kept it there for nine minutes and 29 seconds until George Floyd had the life squeezed out of him, as a gaggle of neighbors watched in horror in front of a convenience store. This season of purple fragrance will now also forever be marked by the memory of 19 schoolchildren and two of their teachers gunned down by a mania- cal teenager in Texas just days after an 18-year-old gunned down Saturday shop- pers at a grocery store in Buffalo. The season of lilacs is now a season of violence and tears, a season of funerals scheduled in grim succession, a season of “not this all over again” when the only thing that really makes sense is a collec- tive promise of “not this, not ever again.” But that’s not the America we live in. The unthinkable is now expected. The unbearable is now routine. If, like me, you love lilacs, you swoon through the brief moment when the woody plants show off their delicate blooms. Raise your hand if you have snuck into a neighbor’s yard to clip a cluster for your breakfast table. Raise your hand if you’ve ever stopped in your

they turn 18? Isn’t that what you do when you desperately hope that the people who are sworn to protect and to serve will look at your Black and Brown children and see possibility instead of menace? Isn’t that what you do when the majority of people who live in the land you call home actually support sensible gun laws and some kind of police reform? So, whatever you are feeling this week — don’t run from it. Don’t shove it into a hidden space. Sit with it, because the universe is telling you that this kind of violence — against children, against un- armed Black men, against the psyche of a nation — is unacceptable. Figure out how to hold on to that righteous anger over senseless death when the stories of lost lives and the images of little coffins start to subside. Fifteen years after the massacre at Virginia Tech, 10 years after the Sandy Hook rampage, four years after the carnage in Parkland, Fla., we have yet to see serious bipartisan efforts at gun reform. It is easy to think that nothing will change. I fight this sentiment myself, and claim as a mantra something I spotted during lilac season last year, when I visited what is now called George Floyd Square in Minneapolis with my young adult children. Posted on a pole near the spot where Floyd was murdered, a sign read: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world and you have to do it all the time. If not now, when? If not me, then who?” The GOP lawmakers and the gun rights crowd are counting on our exhaus- tion. Let’s surprise them.

MICHELE L. NORRIS

The unbearable is now routine

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-27)

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