Having already taken a jab at governance earlier this morning, I feel a bit cautious when it involves going further out on that limb. Nevertheless, prevailing conditions are such that I find it difficult to ignore them. By way of disclaimer, I should let readers know that, when I read the news every morning, one of my primary feeds comes from the Al Jazeera Web site. I was not surprised that my cable service did not provide me with a channel for this television network. However, that service offers an abundance of “Apps,” one of which happens to be YouTube; and YouTube has no trouble directing me to a livestream from Al Jazeera English.
When I began writing this, my first source was an Al Jazeera’s Web page. It presented a video approximately twenty minutes in duration about Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The final sentence of the text summary describes Hegseth’s professional efforts as “part of a long-running mission to end diversity measures and push forward a Christian nationalist agenda in the US armed forces.”
As an atheist, this disturbs me. Mind you, I have only been an atheist for about the last 40 years, roughly half of my life. Before that, I was Jewish, which is probably just as well, since the only job I could land after completing my doctoral degree was at the Technion in Israel! I lasted about two years, after which I moved on to teach computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. However, it was after I moved over to the private sector to work at Schlumberger-Doll Research in Ridgefield, Connecticut, that I first acknowledged my commitment to atheism!
It is that commitment that rubs even the least suggestion of “a Christian nationalist agenda” the wrong way. As a secondary student, I was taught to appreciate the virtues of the “melting pot” metaphor for the United States. To be fair, however, it has been decades since I have encountered that epithet. So I would not be surprised if Secretary Hegseth was not familiar with it!
Of course, things were not going that all smoothly when I completed my doctoral studies in 1967. Many of my friends talked about leaving the country, and some of them actually did! As I observed, I ended up being one of them. In retrospect I would say that the Technion helped me cultivate my teaching skills, which I could deploy with greater confidence when I took my first job in the United States.
Police and emergency services deployed after today’s attack in Manchester, England (photograph by Peter Byrne of the Press Association, provided by Associated Press, included in the New York Times account of the event)
Ironically, as I am writing this, BBC News is broadcasting an account of an attack on a synagogue in Manchester, England. The entire half-hour was focused only on that city. My guess is that, as I am writing this, the White House staff is scrambling to put together a response by our President. Ironically, our Federal government is in the midst of a shutdown, leading me wonder whether there is much that the Executive branch (or, for that matter, the Legislative one) can do, or even say, that would be productive.
Having now gotten this state of affairs off my chest, I must remind myself that my skillset for dealing with such affairs is sparse unto an extreme. I am at my most productive when I focus on writing about music. Regardless of how things currently are, I should sign off on other speculations!
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