The Washington Post - 22.08.2019

THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

F

irst you get yourself invited to

a state visit in a friendly allied

country. Not just a visit of the

usual sort: a state visit with a

banquet by the queen and all the

pomp and the ceremony that can be

mustered. Hundreds of people start

working on all the elaborate prepara-

tions necessary for these grand occa-

sions. Monarchies take these things

seriously. The palace is properly pre-

pared to receive the dignified guest.

Everyone starts polishing.

Then you suddenly launch the idea

that it might be fun to acquire parts of

the territory under that particular

monarch. Just a simple property deal,

really. You don’t actually inquire dis-

creetly whether this idea would ever

fly. Instead, you launch it straight out

in public without any warning. Per-

haps that’s the way property deals are

done.

The authorities of the country in

question are slightly taken aback.

Losing territory wasn’t really on their

agenda, and in these days, it’s not

normally part of the concept of

friendly state visits. They say in no

uncertain terms that the land is not

for sale.

Up until this point, it’s all pretty

absurd, as was pointed out.

But then it goes beyond the absurd.

The self-invited guest suddenly can-

cels everything and says if he can’t get

his property deal and the territory he

wants, he sees no purpose for the

state visit. Everything is off. Tons and

tons of preparations are just

scrapped.

One could have thought this was

something out of some saga from the

Middle Ages. Whether it actually ever

happened in those dark centuries I

don’t know, but it is not entirely

inconceivable. At least in the world of

the sagas.

But it wasn’t a saga from a distant

and bizarre past, but the present

reality of the president of the United

States and the queen of Denmark.

And in the modern world, I’m

rather certain it is unique for one

head of state to make an official visit

to another head of state conditional

on the latter being prepared to hand

over some territory. It wasn’t just

absurd — it was beyond the absurd.

Rest assured that people all over the

world have been shaking their heads

in disbelief.

Apart from the surreal theater of

the entire thing, and the profoundly

insulting behavior toward a long-

standing and loyal ally, the issues of

Greenland and the Arctic are serious

indeed.

But it’s certainly not exchanging

territories that is the way forward.

Greenland is not for sale, and neither

is Svalbard or Iceland. Instead, the

necessary way forward is developing

cooperation between all the stake-

holders of this vast and challenging

region to address challenges that are

common to all of them. And climate

change and its effects are by far the

most serious of them.

When the United States in the

form of Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo turned up at the ministerial

meeting of the Arctic Council in Ro-

vaniemi, Finland, he spent most of

his energy attacking China and ended

up vetoing the communique that had

been agreed upon by everyone else.

The reason? It mentioned climate

change, and that was not acceptable

to the Trump administration. All oth-

ers had been discussing little but the

rising temperatures, which are hap-

pening two or three times faster here

than anywhere else on Earth.

All the others issued the paper

agreed between them anyhow.

Pompeo flew away, saying he was on

his way to Greenland. He didn’t show

up — he canceled the visit.

Canceling visits now seems to be

what remains of Arctic policy for the

United States. Perhaps just as well.

All other countries are keen to try to

prevent Greenland from turning

green again. We would all suffer the

consequences.

Carl Bildt is a former prime minister of

Sweden and a contributing columnist for

The Post.

CARL BILDT

An Arctic saga

of absurdity

B

ecause of the investigation led

by three University of South

Florida researchers, and be-

cause of exemplary journalism

by the Tampa Bay Times, we now have

an intensely discomforting but wel-

come enrichment of American litera-

ture. It requires artistry to write beauti-

fully about children suffering at the

hands of evil men, and from the rivet-

ing first sentence of his slender new

novel “The Nickel Boys” — “Even in

death the boys were trouble” — Colson

Whitehead’s prose unfurls with con-

trolled fury as he reimagines life at

what was the Arthur G. Dozier School

for Boys in Marianna, Fla. The fact that

Whitehead never raises his authorial

voice enhances its wallop.

The boys were trouble even as corps-

es because, in Whitehead’s reimagin-

ing, the Nickel Academy had been

closed after many decades and develop-

ers had plans for an office park on part

of the land. The plans were, however,

impeded by the discovery of “bones and

belt buckles,” all those “fractures and

cratered skulls, the rib cages riddled

with buckshot” and other residue of

boys who died at the hands of sadists,

sexual predators and others who ran

the school for their private fun and

profit. Fifty-one bodies had been un-

earthed by the time Whitehead’s novel

was published, more are probably yet to

be found, and the final count will not

provide finality about how many were

dumped in what the boys called Boot

Hill.

In Whitehead’s novel, Elwood, an

African American boy abandoned in

Tallahassee by his mother, is being

raised by his grandmother, whose own

father died in jail, arrested for “bump-

tious contact” after a white woman

accused him of not getting out of her

way on a downtown sidewalk. Elwood

is bound for college until he is falsely

accused of stealing a car and is con-

signed to Nickel, leaving behind his

treasured possession, a record of “Mar-

tin Luther King at Zion Hill.” He is

driven to the “reform” school by “a good

old boy with a meaty backwoods beard

and a hungover wobble to his step. He’d

outgrown his shirt and the pressure

against the buttons made him look

upholstered.”

The Dozier School opened in 1900

and, at times, took children as young as

5. On most nights at the Nickel school,
   “the only sounds were tears and in-
   sects,” but on other nights an industrial
   fan was turned on to muffle the boys’
   screams when they were beaten by
   Black Beauty, a three-foot leather strap
   with embedded sheet metal that
   “slapped across the ceiling before it
   came down on your legs.” There was
   “splatter on the walls where the fan had
   whipped up blood in its gusting.” “The
   white boys bruised differently than the
   black boys and called it the Ice Cream
   Factory because you came out with
   bruises of every color.”
   Whitehead, a Pulitzer Prize winner
   for his 2016 novel “The Underground
   Railroad,” jumps ahead to life after a
   Nickel boy leaves at age 18. And in his
   novel’s prologue, he writes of Nickel
   boys’ reunions featuring “shared dark-
   ness.”
   America, however imperfect —
   Americans do not want to know what
   goes on in their prisons, where a not-
   insignificant portion of the nation’s
   rapes happen — is much better now.
   More people — public-interest lawyers,
   journalists — are alert and watching.
   And perhaps more will be because of
   Whitehead’s searing reminder that
   what happened not long ago, and here,
   was not unthinkable.
   Nothing — no cruelty — is. Yet still we
   need reminding. When Primo Levi ar-
   rived in Auschwitz parched after a bru-
   tal train journey, he reached for an icicle
   to slake his thirst. When a guard yanked
   it away from him, Levi asked, “Why?”
   The guard replied, “Hier ist kein war-
   um.” (Here there is no why.) The death
   camps were an extreme form of — per-
   haps the logical culmination of — what
   Whitehead calls a “culture of impunity.”
   When some people have unrestricted
   and unreviewable power over others —
   when no one can be compelled to an-
   swer for his actions when asked:
   “Why?” — some of those with power will
   behave like beasts simply because they
   can. And because absolute power cor-
   rupts absolutely. This melancholy fact
   about the human species was under-
   scored last year in a nonfiction book
   about a lawless sheriff who bestrode
   Florida’s Lake County in the 1950s (“Be-
   neath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story of
   Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and
   Found,” by Gilbert King).
   Do you wonder how the Nazis man-
   aged to find people willing to work as
   concentration-camp personnel? It was
   not that difficult.
   [email protected]

GEORGE F. WILL

A searing

reminder

of what’s not

unthinkable

W

hat the hell is wrong with us?
Less than a month after a
white supremacist allegedly
killed 51 people in
Christchurch on March 15, New Zealand’s
Parliament voted, 119 to 1, to make posses-
sion of assault weapons illegal. Gun own-
ers there have until the end of September
to turn in their weapons as part of a
buyback program, or face five years in
prison. More than 10,000 firearms have
already been handed in.
By contrast, at least 59 people have
been killed in mass shootings this year
(and more than 9,000 in other shootings,
not counting suicides), yet the United
States is no closer to banning assault-style
weapons. These were the weapons of
choice of mass murderers in Newtown,
Conn.; Aurora, Colo.; San Bernardino,
Calif.; Sutherland Springs, Tex.; Las Ve-
gas; Parkland, Fla.; Pittsburgh; Poway,
Calif.; El Paso; and Dayton, Ohio. Seventy
percent of voters and 54 percent of Repub-
licans surveyed by Morning Consult-
Politico support banning these weapons
of war. Yet President Trump claims there
is no “political appetite” for such action,
meaning there is no appetite in the
Republican Party to challenge the Nation-
al Rifle Association.
Because of Republican pusillanimity,
Congress hasn’t passed any restrictions
on firearms in a quarter-century: The ban
on selling assault weapons was approved
in 1994 and expired in 2004. The last
major federal firearms legislation actually
made the problem worse: In 2005, Con-
gress granted gunmakers immunity from
being sued when their products are used
to kill.
After every mass shooting, Republicans
offer lame excuses and tawdry evasions in
lieu of action. They claim it’s too soon to
talk about political solutions right after a
shooting — and, then, it’s too late. They
blame video games and mental illness,
even though every other Western country
has video games and mental illness, and
none has the same problem with shoot-
ings. The rate of violent gun deaths in the
United States is nine times higher than in
Canada, 73 times higher than in Britain,
88 times higher than in South Korea,
110 times higher than in Japan. The rate is
even higher in the United States than in
Iraq or Afghanistan. This isn’t because the
United States has a disproportionate share
of the world’s video games. It’s because we
have a disproportionate share of the guns:
4.27 percent of the world’s population
owns more than more than 40 percent of
all the world’s guns in civilian hands.
Under public pressure, Republicans
and Trump are now talking about, per-
haps, expanding background checks or

passing a “red flag” law that would allow

courts to temporarily take away guns

from individuals who are judged a danger

to themselves or others. Of course, Trump

has talked the talk before without backing

it up; he has already abandoned his earlier

support for universal background checks.

But even if the Senate does pass a broader

background check or a red-flag law, these

would be incremental improvements

wholly inadequate to the magnitude of

the crisis we face. Federal background

checks already exist, but most mass shoot-

ers were able to acquire their weapons

legally. Red-flag laws already exist in

17 states and the District, but they have

been primarily effective in reducing sui-

cides rather than homicides.

Much more ambitious gun controls are

needed. We should treat guns the way we

treat cars, requiring gun owners to pass

gun safety courses, get a new license at

regular intervals and carry liability insur-

ance that would force insurance compa-

nies to investigate their background. We

need federally funded research into im-

proving gun safety with “smart guns” and

other technologies. We need to end gun

manufacturers’ immunity from lawsuits.

And we need to outlaw an entire class of

weapons — assault rifles — that has no

place outside of combat.

Louis Klarevas, a researcher at Colum-

bia University, found that during the

10 years when the assault weapon ban was

in effect, “the number of gun massacres

... fell by 37 percent, and the number of
people dying from mass shootings fell by
43 percent.” The effect would have been
even greater if the 1994 law had fewer
loopholes and if it had banned the posses-
sion, not merely the sale, of assault weap-
ons and large-capacity magazines. That’s
essentially what Australia did in 1996
after a gunman slaughtered 35 people.
Australia has had only one shooting since
then that killed more than four people —
and that was the slaughter of a single
family carried out by a relative.
New Zealand and Australia have had
sensible responses to mass shootings. Our
nonresponse is suicidal — and it’s due
entirely to Republican lawmakers and a
Republican president putting loyalty to
the NRA above their loyalty to the Ameri-
can people. Republicans claim to be tough
on defense, but when it comes to what is,
along with global warming, arguably our
top national security threat (more Ameri-
cans have died from gun violence in the
past 50 years than in all of our wars
combined), they are a profile in coward-
ice. In their dealings with the gun lobby,
Republicans are Neville Chamberlain, not
Winston Churchill.
Twitter: @MaxBoot

MAX BOOT

A profile in cowardice

A

re the dominant voices of white
evangelical Christianity in the
United States destined to be
angry and defensive? Is Presi-
dent Trump making sure they stay that
way?
I found myself asking these questions
after I read my Post colleague Elizabeth
Bruenig’s revealing and deeply reported
essay about her journey to Texas to probe
why evangelicals have been so loyal to
Trump and are likely to remain so.
Hers was a venture in sympathetic
understanding and empathetic listen-
ing. What she heard was a great desire to
push back against liberals, to defend a
world that sees itself under siege and to
embrace Trump — not as a particularly
good man but as a fighter against all of
the things and people and causes that
they cannot abide. Even more, they
believe liberals and secularists are utter-
ly hostile to the culture they have built
and the worldview they embrace.
“I think conservatives for decades
have felt bullied by the left, and the
default response was to roll over and take
it,” said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of
Dallas’s First Baptist church and one of
the very earliest and most vocal leaders
of Trump’s evangelical bloc.
I confess I don’t really see the “roll
over” part. Conservative politicians, Fox
News commentators and talk-radio
hosts have engaged in plenty of bullying
of their own. But I have no doubt that
Jeffress was telling the truth about how
he and like-minded folks feel.
This means that the nastiness that
makes Trump so odious to many of us
comes off to his evangelical Christian
supporters (even when it makes them
uneasy) as a hallowed form of militancy
against what one evangelical whom Bru-
enig interviewed called “a den of vipers”
engaged in what another called “spirit-
ual warfare.”
Bruenig summarized the approach to
politics she kept running into as “focused
on achieving protective accommodations
against a broader, more liberal national
culture.” She wondered whether con-
servative evangelical Christians will
“continue to favor the rise of figures such
as Trump, who are willing to dispense
with any hint of personal Christian virtue
while promising to pause the decline of
evangelical fortunes — whatever it takes.”
What struck me in reading Bruenig’s
chronicle is that the undoubtedly serious
faith of those she encountered was less
central to their embrace of Trump than a
tribal feeling of beleaguerment — re-
member: Defending a culture is not the
same as standing up for beliefs about

God. Their deeply conservative views are

not far removed from those of non-

evangelical conservatives.

Above all, there was a Republican

partisanship that has been around for a

long time. In some cases, it goes back to

1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson’s em-

brace of civil rights incited many white

Southerners, including evangelicals, to

bolt the Democratic Party. In other cases,

Republican loyalties were cemented by

Ronald Reagan in 1980.

We keep coming back to Trump’s white

evangelical base because it seems so

strange that religious people with strong

moral convictions could embrace some-

one whose behavior violates so many of

the norms they uphold. But party is a big

deal these days, and there was nothing

extraordinary about Trump’s share of the

white evangelical vote. He won what

Republican presidential candidates typi-

cally win. His 80 percent among white

evangelicals in 2016 was hardly a surge

from Mitt Romney’s 78 percent in 2012.

In the end, party triumphed over any

qualms evangelicals may have felt about

the “Access Hollywood” candidate. Long-

standing conservative desires (for sym-

pathetic Supreme Court justices) and

inclinations (a deep dislike of Hillary

Clinton) reinforced what partisanship

recommended.

I get why those with strongly held

traditional religious views feel hostility

from centers of intellectual life and the

arts. More secular liberals should consid-

er Yale philosopher Nicholas Wolter-

storff ’s suggestion in “Religion in the

University” that religious voices be wel-

comed at institutions of higher learning

in much the same way the once-excluded

perspectives of feminists and African

Americans are now welcomed. One of

the academy’s purposes is to bring those

with different backgrounds and experi-

ences into reasoned dialogue. Religious

people must be part of that conversation.

But reasoned dialogue is far removed

from what’s happening in our politics

now, and the irony is that the Trumpifica-

tion of the evangelicals will only widen

the gaps they mourn between them-

selves and other parts of our society. In

her recent book “America’s Religious

Wars: The Embattled Heart of Our Public

Life,” Kathleen M. Sands, a University of

Hawaii professor, writes of a long-stand-

ing conflict between “anti-modernist re-

ligion and anti-religious modernism.”

Trump has every interest in aggravating

and weaponizing mistrust that is already

there. And judging from Bruenig’s ac-

count, he’s succeeding brilliantly.

Twitter: @EJDionne

E.J. DIONNE JR.

Trump is the

evangelicals’ enforcer

JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

An iceberg floats behind the town of Kulusuk in Greenland on Monday.

Some of those with power

will behave like beasts

simply because they can.

BY CHRIS STEWART

AND SETH MOULTON

N

early 1 in 5 American adults live

with a mental-health condition;

nearly half of those afflicted re-

port having an unmet need for

services. The suicide rate is increasing,

too. In 2014, about 10 million Americans

seriously considered suicide, and more

than 1 million attempted it. These are our

neighbors, our co-workers, family mem-

bers, friends and loved ones.

Suicide will also kill an average of

20 American veterans daily. Even though

veterans represent just 7 percent of the

population, they are about 1½ times more

likely to die from suicide than nonveter-

ans. We are both veterans, so this hits

especially close to home.

It is time to treat suicide like any other

life-threatening emergency, and Congress

should take the lead. We have joined

forces across the aisle to start that conver-

sation, and we believe this issue can unite

Congress at a time when it is deeply

divided.

We have made it our mission to secure a

three-digit dialing code for the National

Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Right now,

when an American is experiencing suicid-

al thoughts, help is more than just a

three-digit phone call away. In many

states, multiple government and nonprof-

it agencies provide overlapping services,

and each entity has its own phone num-

ber. For example, people can call the

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, but

callers must search for and then dial

1-800-273-8255. That is one step too many

in a crisis.

In August 2018, we took the first step.

Congress passed the National Suicide

Hotline Improvement Act, which called

for a study to determine the best dialing

code for this purpose. Last week, the

Federal Communications Commission re-

leased the report, recommending 988.

Armed with the facts, it is time for

Congress to get to work. This week, we

introduced the National Suicide Hotline

Designation Act, which would let Ameri-

cans experiencing a mental-health emer-

gency dial 988 to immediately receive

help.

Nothing haunts us more than the

thought of someone dialing 988 only to

hear endless ringing or an answering

machine. Our bill empowers states to

collect a small fee, similar to what is

already in place for 911, to enhance and

support local crisis call centers affiliated

within the 988 national network. Last

year, only 79 percent of all lifeline calls

were answered in the state in which they

were placed. In most cases, unanswered

calls are rolled over to a neighboring state.

But with an ever-rising call volume, this

patchwork system is not sustainable.

We recognize that this legislation alone

is not a panacea. We must also start

talking to each other about mental-health

care so that seeking help for everything

from suicidal thoughts to addiction to

depression is as routine as going to the

doctor for a broken arm or an annual

checkup.

In the meantime, this legislation could

save lives. We stand united in joining our

neighbors, co-workers, family members,

friends and loved ones in doing our part to

provide support and to restore hope to our

communities.

Chris Stewart, a Republican, represents Utah

in the U.S. House of Representatives. Seth

Moulton, a Democrat, represents

Massachusetts in the House.

Let’s call 988 for

suicide prevention