Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 153

Robert Reich: Why the common good disappeared (and how we get it back)

People protest outside the Phoenix Convention Center, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2017. (Credit: AP/Matt York)

This article was originally published by RobertReich.org.

In 1963 over 70 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing all or most of the time; nowadays only 16 percent do.

There has been a similar decline in trust for corporations. In the late 1970s, 32 percent trusted big business, by 2016, only 18 percent did.

Trust in banks has dropped from 60 percent to 27 percent. Trust in newspapers, from 51 percent to 20 percent. Public trust has also plummeted for nonprofits, universities, charities, and religious institutions.

Why this distrust? As economic inequality has widened, the moneyed interests have spent more and more of their ever-expanding wealth to alter the rules of the game to their own advantage.

Too many leaders in business and politics have been willing to do anything to make more money or to gain more power – regardless of the consequences for our society.

We see this everywhere – in the new tax giveaway to big corporations, in gun manufacturer’s use of the NRA to block gun controls, in the Koch Brother’s push to roll back environmental regulations, in Donald Trump’s profiting off his presidency.

No wonder much of the public no longer believes that America’s major institutions are working for the many. Increasingly, they have become vessels for the few.

The question is whether we can restore the common good. Can the system be made to work for the good of all?

Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. The era we are living in offers too many illustrations of greed, narcissism, and hatefulness. But I don’t believe it hopeless.

Almost every day I witness or hear of the compassion of ordinary Americans – like the thousands who helped people displaced by the wildfires in California and floods in Louisiana; like the two men in Seattle who gave their lives trying to protect a young Muslim woman from a hate-filled assault; like the coach who lost his life in Parkland, Florida, trying to shield students from a gunman; like the teenagers who are demanding that Florida legislators take action on guns.

The challenge is to turn all this into a new public spiritedness extending to the highest reaches in the land – a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the major institutions of America.

We have never been a perfect union; our finest moments have been when we sought to become more perfect than we had been. We can help restore the common good by striving for it and showing others it’s worth the effort.

I started my career a half-century ago in the Senate office of Robert F. Kennedy, when the common good was well understood, and I’ve watched it unravel over the last half-century.

Resurrecting it may take another half century, or more. But as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.“

Harry Potter and the surprisingly poignant literary theme

(Credit: AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Harry Potter is the literary phenomenon of the past century, and while our society has had no difficulty celebrating J.K. Rowling’s work, the literary community has been somewhat slower in figuring out exactly what the series has to say.

We tend to think of Harry Potter as an escapist delight, but Rowling’s work also expertly constructs a poignant extended theme that has more in common with King Lear than most English professors might care to admit. This theme at the core of Rowling’s wizarding world speaks directly to a universal human reality: The struggle to come to terms with our mortality.

Death is obviously big in Harry Potter. Death initiates the core conflict of the series; death escalates in each text; death creates the tool by which Harry can defeat Voldemort; and death resolves the conflict in the end, since Voldemort’s death is the end of the war itself. Death recurs throughout the series, but recurrence is not enough to constitute a theme.

Literary theorist Roger Fowler notes that: “A theme is always a subject, but a subject is not always a theme: a theme is not usually thought of as the occasion of a work of art, but rather a branch of the subject which is indirectly expressed through the recurrence of certain events, images or symbols. We apprehend the theme by inference — it is the rationale of the images and symbols, not their quantity.”

Thus, a theme is a comprehensible viewpoint that emerges from a pattern of recurrence — a statement, if you will, that we perceive through progressive repetition and associated symbolism. Without that statement, a pattern is just a motif. If the author is using that pattern to say something, however, the pattern becomes a theme.

So what role does all this death play in the Harry Potter franchise?

Death in Potter

In his first adventure, Harry is tempted by the life-prolonging “philosopher’s stone” of legend.

At the end of that story, Harry is only able to obtain the stone from the Mirror of Erised because he does not want to use it. In this, he immediately establishes his contrast to Voldemort, who desperately seeks the stone in order to extend what the centaur Firenze calls “but a half life, a cursed life.”

Upon hearing this, Harry wonders “If you’re going to be cursed forever, death’s better, isn’t it?” thus showing us Harry’s internal perspective on Voldemort’s choice.

Dumbledore himself confirms Harry’s viewpoint at the end of the novel by telling Harry that “to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” If we put these pieces together, the death theme Rowling uses is all laid out within the very first book.

As the series progresses, it is death that defines Harry’s character development. Cedric’s death leaves Harry traumatized. Sirius’s death shows Harry the high cost of Harry’s mistakes and the extent to which death can alter his future. Dumbledore’s death, of course, leaves Harry rudderless and vulnerable, forcing him to mature to a new level of personal responsibility.

By Book Seven, Harry’s own death represents the ultimate boon that bestows upon him the power to at last defeat Voldemort, whose vulnerability is created by horcruxes, dark magic used to protect him at the expense of his living soul.

As Harry marches to his death, “Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious.” In this moment, as Harry accepts death, life itself becomes sweet, even beautiful — a sharp contrast to the cursed life that Voldemort cannot escape from.

This contrast is again the pivot-point of the mortality theme that Rowling develops. Voldemort looks like death, he brings death wherever he goes, his army are the “Death-Eaters,” and several aspects of his iconography associate him with the Grim Reaper of legend.

It would be easy to conclude that Harry is simply fighting death in the series, but that role is actually reserved for Voldemort himself, whose name can be translated from the French to mean “flight from death,” not death itself.

The entire series is then the story of an antagonist struggling to deny death, matched against a protagonist who is maturing toward accepting it. If this sounds cynical, Severus Snap agrees with you when he laments that Dumbledore has “been raising him like a pig for slaughter.”

In spite of this objection, Snape is willing to die for the cause of righteousness, just as James and Lilly were, just as Sirius was, just as Dumbledore was, and just as all the casualties of the Battle of Hogwarts were. Even Harry’s poor owl, Hedwig, chooses to die to protect something she loves.

When perceived as a pattern, heroism in Harry Potter means accepting death. In contrast, fighting against death is analogous to raging against the storm for Shakespeare’s King Lear, who, like Voldemort, is reduced to a cursed existence in consequence.

Esteemed precedent

The notion of death in fantasy literature might seem counter-intuitive for a genre that’s commonly associated with escapism. The reality, however, runs contrary, and Rowling’s theme is well within the norms of the genre.

J.R.R. Tolkien, for example, once wrote an essay called “On Faerie Stories,” in which he describes the prominent role of death within the fantasy genre. Tolkien writes that:

“Few lessons are taught more clearly in [fantasy] than the burden of that kind of immortality, or rather endless serial living, to which the ‘fugitive’ would fly. For the fairy-story is specially apt to teach such things, of old and still today.”

For Tolkien, fantasy is a genre that frequently engages with themes of mortality and provides us with “consolation” for our universal fear of death. He refers to his own example, the elves of Middle Earth, to show how he portrays immortality as undesirable.

Tolkien’s elves don’t ever have to die — and their lives are miserable as a result. Though less evil than Voldemort, the nature of their immortal existence is actually quite similar to that of Rowling’s villain — again, a cursed existence.

The Tale of the Three Brothers

The strongest encapsulation of the mortality theme in Harry Potter is the story within the story, “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” which is told in the final Harry Potter book. Three brothers face death and respond in three different ways. Only the one who ultimately accepts death is spared a brutal and humiliating end. “And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.”

That “the boy who lived” is also the boy who died is not a paradox. Indeed, Rowling’s argument is that only by accepting our inevitable passing can we truly live a life of meaning and purpose.

To fly from death is to relinquish all the things that make life worth living. This is more than just a clever little message buried in a whimsical boy wizard story —indeed the resonance of this theme within all human beings may in fact be a huge part of the novel’s ubiquitous appeal. Harry Potter, you see, has something to say.

J. Andrew Deman,, Professor, University of Waterloo

Planned Parenthood, youth groups sue government for teen pregnancy cuts

Activists with Planned Parenthood demonstrate in support of a pregnant 17-year-old being held in a Texas facility for unaccompanied immigrant children to obtain an abortion, outside of the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. (Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

A coalition of Planned Parenthood groups, youth organizations and a local government in Washington state sued the Trump administration today, alleging that pulling the plug on the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program violated federal law.

Last summer, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suddenly cut off $213.6 million in federal funds for about 80 institutions that were developing scientifically valid ways to prevent teenage pregnancy. The programs, including ones at Johns Hopkins University, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the Chicago Department of Public Health, were designed to reach 1.2 million teens in 39 states.

The surprise decision to eliminate the programs two years into their five-year federal grants was first reported by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

In President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget proposal unveiled Monday, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program would be replaced with abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

The four lawsuits, filed in federal courts by eight nonprofit groups and Washington’s King County, assert multiple violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, including that the funding cuts didn’t comply with Department of Health and Human Services contracting regulations. The nine plaintiffs were grant recipients that had lost their funding.

The department “is attempting to unlawfully terminate these grants, two years early, based on an ideologically driven crusade to eliminate a successful congressionally mandated program that has broad bipartisan support,” lead attorney Sean Sherman, who works for the Public Citizen Litigation Group, said in a statement. “The termination of these grants in the middle of their five-year programs violates the Administrative Procedure Act and will cause substantial unnecessary harm to the communities these organizations serve.”

Among the programs eliminated were grants to schools in West Virginia to prevent pregnancy, to schools in Miami to teach sex education, to the University of Southern California and Los Angeles Public Health Department to support classes in public and charter schools and to a Baltimore youth group that provided reproductive health information to young Latinas and African Americans.

Overall, nearly 230,000 babies were born to U.S. teens in 2015. Over the past 10 years, the adolescent birth rate dropped by half.

“We have experienced incredible positive outcomes, thanks to proven-effective programs and services,” Pat Paluzzi, president and CEO of the Healthy Teen Network in Baltimore, said in statement. “Science and research — not radical ideology — must guide the funding of programs and services.”

Health and human services officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Top Trump appointees in the agency have been outspoken opponents of federal funding for comprehensive sex education, advocating abstinence rather than contraceptives to reduce teen pregnancies. Research, however, has shown that abstinence-only programs are ineffective.

In November, one of the advocacy groups, the Democracy Forward Foundation, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, seeking documents on political involvement that may have led to the termination of the grants.

Twenty-seven senators sent a letter to the agency’s acting secretary, Eric Hargan, in November objecting to the move toward spending money on abstinence-only programs, called “sexual risk avoidance.” The senators called it “an attempt to promote a single ideological approach that betrays the congressional intent” of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, which encompasses a wide range of strategies to reach adolescents based on evidence of what works.

Among the groups that sued the agency in separate lawsuits are Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Sexual Health Initiatives for Teens North Carolina, the Project Vida Health Center in Texas and the Policy & Research Group in New Orleans.

African-American GIs of WWII: Fighting for democracy abroad and at home

(Credit: AP Photo/U.S. Army Signal Corps)

Until this century, the contributions of African-American soldiers in World War II barely registered in America’s collective memory of that war.

The “tan soldiers,” as the black press affectionately called them, were also for the most part left out of the triumphant narrative of America’s “Greatest Generation.” In order to tell their story of helping defeat Nazi Germany in my 2010 book, “Breath of Freedom,” I had to conduct research in more than 40 different archives in the U.S. and Germany.

When a German TV production company, together with Smithsonian TV, turned that book into a documentary, the filmmakers searched U.S. media and military archives for two years for footage of black GIs in the final push into Germany and during the occupation of post-war Germany.

They watched hundreds of hours of film and discovered less than 10 minutes of footage. This despite the fact that among the 16 million U.S. soldiers who fought in World War II, there were about one million African-American soldiers.

They fought in the Pacific, and they were part of the victorious army that liberated Europe from Nazi rule. Black soldiers were also part of the U.S. Army of occupation in Germany after the war. Still serving in strictly segregated units, they were sent to democratize the Germans and expunge all forms of racism.

It was that experience that convinced many of these veterans to continue their struggle for equality when they returned home to the U.S. They were to become the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement — a movement that changed the face of our nation and inspired millions of repressed people across the globe.

As a scholar of German history and of the more than 70-year U.S. military presence in Germany, I have marveled at the men and women of that generation. They were willing to fight for democracy abroad, while being denied democratic rights at home in the U.S. Because of their belief in America’s “democratic promise” and their sacrifices on behalf of those ideals, I was born into a free and democratic West Germany, just 10 years after that horrific war.

Fighting racism at home and abroad

By deploying troops abroad as warriors for and emissaries of American democracy, the military literally exported the African-American freedom struggle.

Beginning in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power, African-American activists and the black press used white America’s condemnation of Nazi racism to expose and indict the abuses of Jim Crow at home. America’s entry into the war and the struggle against Nazi Germany allowed civil rights activists to significantly step up their rhetoric.

Langston Hughes’ 1943 poem, “From Beaumont to Detroit,” addressed to America, eloquently expressed that sentiment:

“You jim crowed me / Before hitler rose to power- / And you are still jim crowing me- / Right now this very hour.”

Believing that fighting for American democracy abroad would finally grant African-Americans full citizenship at home, civil rights activists put pressure on the U.S. government to allow African-American soldiers to “fight like men,” side by side with white troops.

The military brass, disproportionately dominated by white Southern officers, refused. They argued that such a step would undermine military efficiency and negatively impact the morale of white soldiers. In an integrated military, black officers or NCOs might also end up commanding white troops. Such a challenge to the Jim Crow racial order based on white supremacy was seen as unacceptable.

The manpower of black soldiers was needed in order to win the war, but the military brass got its way; America’s Jim Crow order was to be upheld. African-Americans were allowed to train as pilots in the segregated Tuskeegee Airmen. The 92nd Buffalo Soldiers and 93rd Blue Helmets all-black divisions were activated and sent abroad under the command of white officers.

Despite these concessions, 90 percent of black troops were forced to serve in labor and supply units, rather than the more prestigious combat units. Except for a few short weeks during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944 when commanders were desperate for manpower, all U.S. soldiers served in strictly segregated units. Even the blood banks were segregated.

‘A Breath of Freedom’

After the defeat of the Nazi regime, an Army manual instructed U.S. occupation soldiers that America was the “living denial of Hitler’s absurd theories of a superior race,” and that it was up to them to teach the Germans “that the whole concept of superiority and intolerance of others is evil.” There was an obvious, deep gulf between this soaring rhetoric of democracy and racial harmony, and the stark reality of the Jim Crow army of occupation. It was also not lost on the black soldiers.

Post-Nazi Germany was hardly a country free of racism. But for the black soldiers, it was their first experience of a society without a formal Jim Crow color line. Their uniform identified them as victorious warriors and as Americans, rather than “Negroes.”

Serving in labor and supply units, they had access to all the goods and provisions starving Germans living in the ruins of their country yearned for. African-American cultural expressions such as jazz, defamed and banned by the Nazis, were another reason so many Germans were drawn to their black liberators. White America was stunned to see how much black GIs enjoyed their time abroad, and how much they dreaded their return home to the U.S.

By 1947, when the Cold War was heating up, the reality of the segregated Jim Crow Army in Germany was becoming a major embarrassment for the U.S. government. The Soviet Union and East German communist propaganda relentlessly attacked the U.S. and challenged its claim to be the leader of the “free world.” Again and again, they would point to the segregated military in West Germany, and to Jim Crow segregation in the U.S. to make their case.

Coming ‘home’

Newly returned veterans, civil rights advocates and the black press took advantage of that Cold War constellation. They evoked America’s mission of democracy in Germany to push for change at home. Responding to that pressure, the first institution of the U.S. to integrate was the U.S. military, made possible by Truman’s 1948 Executive Order 9981. That monumental step, in turn, paved the way for the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The veterans who had been abroad electrified and energized the larger struggle to make America live up to its promise of democracy and justice. They joined the NAACP in record numbers and founded new chapters of that organization in the South, despite a wave of violence against returning veterans. The veterans of World War II and the Korean War became the foot soldiers of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Medgar Evers, Amzie Moore, Hosea Williams and Aaron Henry are some of the better-known names, but countless others helped advance the struggle.

About one-third of the leaders in the civil rights movement were veterans of World War II.

They fought for a better America in the streets of the South, at their workplaces in the North, as leaders in the NAACP, as plaintiffs before the Supreme Court and also within the U.S. military to make it a more inclusive institution. They were also the men of the hour at the 1963 March on Washington, when their military training and expertise was crucial to ensure that the day would not be marred by agitators opposed to civil rights.

“We structured the March on Washington like an army formation,” recalled veteran Joe Hairston.

For these veterans, the 2009 and 2013 inaugurations of President Barack Obama were triumphant moments in their long struggle for a better America and a more just world. Many never thought they would live to see the day that an African-American would lead their country.

To learn more about the contributions of African-American GIs, visit “The Civil Rights Struggle, African-American GIs, and Germany” digital archive.

Maria Höhn, Professor and Chair of History, Vassar College

The case for the “self-driven child”

(Credit: Getty/sturti)

We are raising the anxious generation, and the conversation about the causes, and the potential cures, has just begun. In The Self-Driven Child, authors William Stixrud and Ned Johnson focus on the ways that children today are being denied a sense of controlling their own lives — doing what they find meaningful, and succeeding, or failing, on their own. Screen time, the authors say, is part of the problem, but so are well-meaning parents and schools, who are unwittingly taking from children the opportunities they need to grown stronger, more confident, and more themselves. Stixrud and Johnson answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

What makes you think that children do not have enough control over their live?

Stixrud: We know that a low sense of control is highly associated with anxiety, depression, and virtually all mental health problems. Researchers have found that a low sense of control is one of the most stressful things that people can experience. And since the 1960’s, we’ve seen a marked rise in stress-related mental health problems in children and adolescents, including anxiety, depression, and self-harm. Just in the last six or seven years, there has been an unprecedented spike in the incidence of anxiety and depression in young people.

From a neurological perspective, when we experience a healthy sense of control, our prefrontal cortex (the executive functioning part of our brain) regulates the amygdala (a part of the brain’s threat detection system that initiates the fight or flight response). When the prefrontal cortex is in charge, we are in our right minds. We feel in control and not anxious. So, the fact that kids are feeling more anxiety, by definition, suggests that their amygdalas are more active, which indicates that they are more likely to feel overwhelmed, stuck, or helpless.

Research on motivation has suggested that a strong sense of autonomy is the key to developing the healthy self-motivation that allows children and teens to pursue their goals with passion and to enjoy their achievements. But what we see in many of the kids we test or tutor is motivational patterns that are at the extremes of one, an obsessive drive to succeed and two, seeing little point in working hard. Many of these clients say that they feel overwhelmed by the demands placed on them, that they feel tired all the time, and that they don’t have enough downtime in their lives (related, in part, to the increasing presence of technology). Many talk about the expectations that they feel they have to live up to, and many complain about the fact that they have little “say” over their own lives.

Is this a new problem?

Stixrud: It’s one that has progressed over several decades. When psychologist Dr. Jean Twenge compared college students from the 1960’s to college students in 2002, the latter reported a dramatically lower sense of control over their lives. Changes in our culture in the last 10 or 15 years appear to have contributed to an even sharper decline in a sense of control. For one, kids play much less than they did even a decade ago, as their time is taken up by more school hours, more scheduled activities, and more screen time than ever before. Researcher Peter Gray was one of the first to connect fewer opportunities to play to a decline in a sense of control. When kids could spend most of their Saturday playing, they could choose their own games and how to play them. They had a lot more autonomy and a lot more agency than kids do today. A typical Saturday now is often packed with homework and organized sports events.

Also, for a whole host of reasons, ranging from technology to packed schedules to anxiety, kids today sleep much less than they did even a few years ago. Fifty percent of teenagers fifteen years and older now sleep less than seven hours a night, whereas adolescents on average require 9 ¼ hours of sleep not to feel tired. When we don’t get enough sleep, the connections between our prefrontal cortex and our amygdala are weakened, resulting in lower ability of the former to regulate the latter. When children are tired, they invariably experience a lowered sense of control, as they are more easily stressed, have reduced coping skills, and are more apt to experience frustration and discouragement.

Then there’s technology, which obviously has grown ubiquitous. More kids are reliant on social media, and there may be nothing more externalizing or control-lowering than posting a photo of yourself on the internet and waiting for people to judge you. A recent article by Dr. Twenge actually suggested that the smartphone and social media have likely contributed enormously to the dramatic increase in mental health problems seen in adolescents since 2012. And studies have found that at least 10% of boys have an addictive relationship to video games. Kids who are addicted to things often tell themselves, “I know I shouldn’t be doing this but I can’t stop,” which is a pretty clear indictor that they lack a sense of control.

We agree with Dr. Twenge that this problem has been increasing since the 1960’s because our culture has increasingly valued extrinsic and self-centered goals such as money, status, and physical attractiveness, and devalued community, affiliation, and the pursuit of meaning in life. Also, with technology driving an increasingly fast pace of life, it will only get worse unless we recognize how important having a sense of control is and make some changes.

How do attempts at controlling a child backfire?

Johnson: In addition to the physical and emotional consequences (more stress, anxiety, and depression), trying to control a child has really negative effects on motivation. According to one of the best supported theories in psychology, self-determination theory, humans have three basic needs: a sense of autonomy, a sense of competence, and a sense of relatedness. Autonomy is built in to our wiring, so to speak, in the same way hunger or thirst. When we lack this basic need, we experience decreased motivation, or the motivation we do have becomes fear-based. (“I’d better do this, or else!”) Both are terribly unhealthy. You can’t become a self-driven person if you don’t have a sense that your life is your own. We think the phenomenon of “failure to launch” — the preponderance of people in their twenties and thirties living at home — is in part attributable to the idea that young adults don’t have the same drive for independence they used to have. They want to sit at home and play on their phones. They don’t want to drive as much, date as much, have sex as much. They are accustomed to someone else being in charge of their life, and their internal motivation system is stymied.

There’s another way to look at it, too. Evaluate what you gain when you try to control a child. Let’s say you think your son — who struggles in math — should see a tutor all summer, and he disagrees. But you insist. It’s possible that tutoring would help some, but the truth is that kids benefit very little from academic help they resist and don’t feel they want or need. Even if it does help him, it comes at a great cost. It causes strain in your relationship with him. His competency might be improved, but his relatedness (his relationship with you) and his autonomy are lowered.  Think of a three-legged stool where you make one leg longer and the other two shorter.  You cannot reach higher on that stool.  The most likely outcome is that it will tip over.  And, you have signaled to him that you know better than he does, that his opinion doesn’t matter. He also misses out on seeing what it’s like to make decisions for himself. Kids need experience checking in with themselves and their decisions, and they can’t do that if you’re making each one.

Can you please explain the idea of home as a “safe base”? 

Johnson: Just as in baseball, when you reach home base, you’re in a place where you can catch your breath and not have to worry about being pegged with the ball or being called out, home should be a place for kids to rest and recover. They are facing stressors each day, from school demands to social dynamics. You want home to be the place they can go to seek a respite from it all, where they feel safe and loved unconditionally, where they can fully relax, so that they can gather the energy to go back out. But if home is a stressful environment — if parents are an anxious or controlling presence — kids will seek that respite somewhere — or somehow — else. And most of the time, it’s a place you don’t want them to go. Or, if nowhere can be that safe base, they are really in trouble, as being chronically stressed is about the worst thing imaginable for brains, especially developing ones. That’s why we tell parents that one of the most important things they can say to their kids is, “I love you too much to fight with you about your homework,” and why we want them to move in the direction of being a non-anxious presence for their kids.

What else can we do to give children more of a sense of self control?

Johnson: We can give kids opportunities to learn to handle as much as they can, without being overwhelmed. Children thrive and grow when they feel challenged but not threatened. Personal pastimes (especially when kids can turn up or down the pace or intensity themselves) are great for this. Think of how video games work: the better you can play and the further you advance, the harder the game gets. You don’t actually die; you just have to try again. It’s fantastic! Games can be incredibly frustrating but almost no one wants a “cheat code” to get ahead. It just doesn’t offer the same satisfaction. In life, kids want to feel that their successes were earned. Give your kid every opportunity to stretch himself through music, sports, coding, after school jobs, hiking, martial arts, whatever inspires his passion. That sense of mastery and autonomy in an activity he loves can cascade into other facets of his life.

You can nurture habits and a lifestyle that support healthy minds: Above all, promote rest. Encourage sleep, meditation if they’re interested, and downtime. Many of the students I see complain that the moment they have a free hour, their parent rushes in to fill it. Rest is not laziness. It is the basis of all activity. Foster what we call Radical Digital Downtime. No phones. No screens. Those times of mind-wandering (some call it boredom) activate neural circuits in the Default Mode Network, a system that involves reflecting on the past and projecting into the future, processing life. Radical downtime increases the control that the prefrontal cortex exerts over the amygdala, keeping you in your “right mind.”

Lastly, make it your highest priority to simply enjoy your kids. As they are. Right now. Flaws and all.  For the development of babies, one of the most important inputs is parents who are warm and responsive.  When do you think kids outgrow that need? We think, never.

Before hitting the road, self-driving cars should have to pass a driving test

(Credit: Photo by Steve Fecht for General Motors)

What should a self-driving car do when a nearby vehicle is swerving unpredictably back and forth on the road, as if its driver were drunk? What about encountering a vehicle driving the wrong way? Before autonomous cars are on the road, everyone should know how they’ll respond in unexpected situations.

I develop, test and deploy autonomous shuttles, identifying methods to ensure self-driving vehicles are safe and reliable. But there’s no testing track like the country’s actual roads, and no way to test these new machines as thoroughly as modern human-driven cars have been, with trillions of miles driven every year for decades. When self-driving cars do hit the road, they crash in ways both serious and minor. Yet all their decisions are made electronically, so how can people be confident they’re driving safely?

Fortunately, there’s a common, popular and well-studied method to ensure new technologies are safe and effective for public use: The testing system for new medications. The basic approach involves ensuring these systems do what they’re intended to, without any serious negative side effects — even if researchers don’t fully understand how they work.

Wide-ranging effects

Self-driving cars are expected to improve road safety, freeing up drivers’ time and attention and transforming cities and even societies.

The regulations that are created for self-driving cars will have massive effects that ripple throughout the economy and society. The rules are likely to come from some combination of the two current automotive regulators, the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and state departments of transportation.

Federal rules focus primarily on safety standards for structural, mechanical and electrical components of the vehicles, like airbags and seat belts. States can enforce their own safety rules — for example, regulating emissions and handling driver licensing and vehicle registration, which often also includes requiring insurance coverage.

Current regulations

Today’s state and federal rules treat drivers and cars as separate entities. But self-driving cars, by definition, combine the two. Without consistency between those regulations, confusion will reign.

The Obama administration came up with 116 pages of regulations with lots of details, but little understanding of how self-driving cars worked. For example, they called for each car to have human-readable permanent labels listing its specific self-driving capabilities, including limits on speeds, specific highways and weather conditions, all of which would be extremely confusing for users. The regulations also called for ethical decisions to be made “consciously and intentionally” — which is questionable, if not impossible, for a machine.

The Trump administration pared down the rules to 26 pages, but have not yet addressed the important issue of testing self-driving cars.

Examining algorithms

Testing algorithms is very like testing medications. In both cases, researchers can’t always tell exactly why something works (especially in the case of machine learning algorithms), but it is nevertheless possible to evaluate the outcome: Does a sick person get well after taking a medication?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires medicines be tested not for their mechanisms of treatment, but for the results. The two main criteria are effectiveness — how well the medicine treats the condition it’s intended to — and safety — how severe any side effects or other problems are. With this method, it’s possible to prove a medication is safe and effective without knowing how it works.

Similarly, federal regulations could — and should — require testing for self-driving cars’ algorithms. To date, governments have tested cars as machines, ensuring steering, brakes and other functions work properly. Of course, there are also government tests for human drivers.

A machine that does both should have to pass both types of tests — particularly for vehicles that don’t allow for human drivers.

Evaluating judgment

In my view, before allowing any specific self-driving car on the road, NHTSA should require test results from the car and its driving algorithms to demonstrate they are safe and reliable. The closest standard at the moment is California’s requirement that all manufacturers of self-driving cars submit annual reports of how many times a human driver had to take control of its vehicles when the algorithms failed to function properly.

That’s a good first step, but it doesn’t tell regulators or the public anything about what the vehicles were doing or what was happening around them when the humans took over. Tests should examine what the algorithms direct the car to do on freeways with trucks, and in neighborhoods with animals, kids, pedestrians and cyclists. Testing should also look at what the algorithms do when both vehicle performances and sensors’ input is compromised by rain, snow or other weather conditions. Cars should run through scenarios with temporary construction zones, four-way intersections, wrong-way vehicles and police officers giving directions that contradict traffic lights and other situations.

Human driving tests include some evaluations of a driver’s judgment and decision-making, but tests for self-driving cars should be more rigorous because there’s no way to rely on human-centered concepts like instinct, reflex or self-preservation. Any action a machine takes is a choice, and the public should be clear on how likely it is that those choices will be safe ones.

Comparing with humans

Self-driving cars’ algorithms constantly calculate probabilities. How likely is it that a particular shape is a person? How likely is it that the sensor data means the person is walking toward the road? How likely is it that the person will step into the street? How likely is it that the car can stop before hitting her? This is in fact similar to how the human brain works.

That presents a straightforward opportunity for testing autonomous cars and any software updates a manufacturer might distribute to vehicles already on the road: They could present human test drivers and self-driving algorithms with the same scenarios and monitor their performance over many trials. Any self-driving car that does as well as, or better than, people, can be certified as safe for the road. This is very much like the method used in drug testing, in which a new medication’s performance is rated against existing therapies and methods known to be ineffective, like the typical placebo sugar pill.

Companies should be free to test any innovations they want on their closed tracks, and even on public roads with human safety drivers ready to take the wheel. But before self-driving cars become regular products available for anyone to purchase, the public should be shown clear proof of their safety, reliability and effectiveness.

Srikanth Saripalli, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University

How to survive prison: New documentary tackles horrors of wrongful conviction

(Credit: Getty/sakhorn38)

“The criminal justice system is broken,” Jeffrey Deskovic, an executive producer of the new documentary “Survivor’s Guide to Prison,” told AlterNet in a phone interview. He should know. At the age of 17, Deskovic was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl and sentenced to 15 years in prison — despite the fact that his DNA didn’t match the perpetrator’s. After his release, Deskovic founded the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation and dedicated his life to exonerating and preventing wrongful convictions.

Producing and participating in the film complements the foundation’s work, and is “an opportunity to start a national dialogue around what needs to change in the criminal justice system,” he says. The film focuses on the stories of wrongly convicted men and women, with additional context from criminal justice experts and commentary from actors like Susan Sarandon, Danny Trejo and co-executive producer Adrian Grenier.

Deskovic hopes that the celebrity connections will help spark discussion and meaningful policy change. There’s a lot riding on it.

Every day, thousands of Americans languish in prison due to wrongful convictions. Advocacy group the Innocence Project estimates that anywhere from 40,000 to over 100,000 people in U.S. prisons have never actually committed a crime. According to the National Registry for Wrongful Convictions, the average time served for the people in the registry is more than nine years.

So far, those connections are starting to pay off. The Los Angeles and New York premieres are sold out, and more screenings are planned around the country. The documentary will be available on iTunes February 23.

Look for an upcoming screening in your area, and learn more about the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice.

Ego-tourism and Mt. Everest: The hidden costs of the highest climb

This picture taken on May 23, 2010 shows a Nepalese sherpa collecting garbage, left by climbers, at an altitude of 8,000 metres during the Everest clean-up expedition at Mount Everest. A group of 20 Nepalese climbers, including some top summiteers collected 1,800 kilograms of garbage in a high-risk expedition to clean up the world's highest peak. Led by seven-time summiteer Namgyal Sherpa, the team braved thin air and below freezing temperatures to clear around two tonnes of rubbish left behind by mountaineers, that included empty oxygen cylinders and corpses. Since 1953, there have been some 300 deaths on Everest. Many bodies have been brought down, but those above 8,000 metres have generally been left to the elements -- their bodies preserved by the freezing temperatures. The priority of the sherpas had been to clear rubbish just below the summit area, but coordinator Karki said large quantities of refuse was collected from 8,000 meters and below. AFP PHOTO/Namgyal SHERPA (Photo credit should read NAMGYAL SHERPA/AFP/Getty Images) (Credit: Afp/getty Images)

In January, Polish hiker Tomek Mackiewicz and his French climbing partner Elisabeth Revol set off to climb Nanga Parbat, the Pakistani mountain known as the “killer mountain.” In the middle of winter. It wasn’t until descending from the 8,126 meter summit that the two climbers fell gravely ill with acute mountain sickness, snow blindness and frostbite. Revol was rescued the next day, but conditions prevented Mackiewicz’s rescue and he remains on the mountain, presumed dead. Much of the media coverage of the event questioned the Pakistani government for requiring full payment of the helicopter rescue mission and included a link to a Go Fund Me page set up by the climbing community for people to donate to the rescue.

Cold-weather climbing is a form of extreme climbing. Like free climbing, or climbing without oxygen, it is another way of making the challenge harder and more admirable. With temperatures reaching below negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, treacherous winds and limited visibility, high-altitude climbing in winter is ludicrously dangerous.

Globalization and technology have created new opportunities for adventurers to take on new extremes. We can heli-ski or tow-in surf or deep sea dive. We can seek to go faster, higher, deeper and further. And we can be the first to do it in extreme heat or extreme cold, or as the first snapchatter. Soon, for enough money, we will be able to go to the moon or Mars.

But what are the consequences of these extreme adventures?

As the highest peak in the world, the impact of the ever-increasing number of tourists attempting to ascend Mount Everest gives insight into the challenges of this type of tourism. What used to be the domain of a handful of professional climbers has now been commodified and made accessible to a much bigger group of people.

The Everest conga line raises the question – in democratizing the mountain, has the industry birthed a type of neocolonial tourism in which any experience can be purchased, regardless of the consequences? Or are the motivations and repercussions irrelevant, if the industry is fueling much needed development and opportunity for a region? How can the tourism industry reconcile these issues as it strives to be bolder, higher, more Instagramable?

While encouraged, no actual climbing experience is required to attempt to summit Mount Everest.

Every climbing season, commercial tour operators hire local climbers to fix ropes from base camp to the summit along the two main routes on the mountain — one on the Nepalese south side and the other on the Tibetan north side. Climbers can clip onto these ropes and pull themselves along the route using a clamping device called a jumar. “During the acclimatization period at Base Camp, Nepali guides teach clients how to use the fixed ropes and how to react in an emergency,” said Gokul Sapkota, the owner of trekking company Outshine Adventures.

In addition to the fixed-rope system, climbers are usually accompanied by a team of local guides and porters (commonly known as Sherpas, even though only some actually belong to the Sherpa family) who carry their gear and supplemental oxygen and set up camp prior to the climbers’ arrival. Drugs such as dexamethasone, which minimize the risk of lethal high-altitude illnesses, are now widely available (although it can also be argued that their use creates a false sense of security and encourages greater risk-taking behavior).

Combined, these measures effectively mean, as Sapkota explains, that “anyone can climb Mount Everest.” And tourists are taking up the challenge. The New York Times reports that in a typical year, about 1,200 people attempt to summit the mountain from both sides. In 2017, the Nepali government issued 371 permits to scale the mountain. At $11,000 a permit, tour operators usually work together to form groups of six to eight per permit, to share the price. With only a short window of opportunity between April and May to make the trek, that’s a lot of people on the mountain.

A mountain of multitudes of trekkers with varying degrees of skill and ability is incredibly dangerous. “I have had clients who summited Mount Everest who could not climb Mera Peak [8,000 feet lower],” said Ang Tendi Sherpa, a guide with Outshine Adventures. “Inexperienced climbers get into trouble if another climber falls, or is ill, or they have to spend longer in the cold or in the altitude,” said Sherpa, all of which become more likely on a crowded mountain.

There are also serious environmental consequences of an over-crowded mountain. Used oxygen tanks, trash and even dead bodies line the trail. Some climbers have argued that the foot traffic, combined with the damage from the 2015 earthquake, has caused irreparable damage to the mountain.

Although “anyone” can try, climbing Mount Everest is a very dangerous expedition.

It is 29,029 feet high, making oxygen levels 33 percent of those of sea level. It is below freezing and climbers are at the mercy of the elements. There are crags and crevices and opportunities to fall. It is not a foolproof adventure, and every year the mountain claims a new set of victims of all levels of experience.

In 2017, ten people died on the mountain. Roland Yearwood, a doctor from Alabama who had survived the 2015 earthquake on the mountain, died from unknown causes in his second attempt. Both Yearwood and Australian climber Francesco Enrico Marchetti, who died of altitude sickness as he approached the summit, were reported to be experienced climbers.

Later in the season, four bodies were found in tents at Camp IV, in the area known as the “death zone,” where there is very little oxygen or atmospheric pressure. It was speculated that the two Nepalese and two unidentified foreign climbers died from carbon monoxide poisoning by using their stoves in the tent without proper ventilation. The dead were not claimed by any of the expeditions on the mountain and the head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said they may have been climbing on their own with inadequate safety measures to save costs.

In his seminal article for Outside Magazine, “Into Thin Air,” Jon Krakauer claimed that the 11 dead in the 1996 season was an number unprecedented since 1982. While overall ratios of climbers to deaths has decreased since then, hard numbers remain the same, or higher. In 2014, an avalanche killed 16, while the earthquake in 2015 killed 19. Six died in 2016. Over 265 people have died on the mountain since 1922. The last year without any fatalities was 1977.

According to the law of Nepal, anyone can try to climb Mount Everest.

Tourism is the third largest contributor to the Nepalese economy. For context, the largest sector of the economy is agriculture, and yet the country no longer produces enough food to feed its own population, let alone export. The second largest sector is remittances from overseas workers. The lowest paid workers in the Persian Gulf are amongst the highest paid in Nepal. Tourism is vital to the economy and the industry has suffered greatly from the 2015 earthquake.

This does not mean the government is blind to the dangers of the industry. In January of this year, the Nepali government announced that it will now be mandatory for foreign climbers to be accompanied by a local guide when climbing high-altitude mountains. The government claims the move is both a safety measure and a means of ensuring that the industry benefits the local economies.

For their part, companies need various registrations to operate tours in the region, but the requirements are business-related and there are no safety provisions. Whether or not a company accepts a client is entirely up to them. It is not even compulsory for climbers to have insurance.

“When a potential client contacts me about climbing a 7,000 meter-plus peak, I start by asking them about their climbing experience,” said Sapkota. “If they have no experience, I encourage them to start with a smaller peak.” Before each climb, Sapkota’s guides (all of whom are certified guides, and where needed, certified climbers) provide safety training to all climbers regardless of their skill level. He tries to build buffer days into all trips to allow for weather restrictions and to prevent poor decision-making because of an overeager desire to make it to the top. Perhaps most importantly, Sapkota supports his guides’ decision-making. He tells clients before they embark on any trek that the guide makes the final decisions.

But these measures are for Sapkota’s peace of mind and are not enshrined in any form. “I don’t think you can legislate safety measures for Everest,” he said. “Even the most experienced climber can have a bad day,” Sapkota said, pointing to Min Bahadur Sherchan, an 85-year-old Nepali who died on Everest this year trying to reclaim his title as the oldest person to summit the mountain. Sherchan was a highly experienced climber and had summited Everest and multiple high-altitude mountains before. This just wasn’t his trip.

“Even if you were to restrict who can try to climb the mountain, how do you assess judgment and morality?” asked Dr. Dave Ohlson, who summited Everest in 2016 to film an expedition organized by U.S. Expeditions and Explorations (USX) to shed light on the uphill battle that veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress and suicidal thoughts face each day.

Perhaps the most important part of mountaineering is an ability to recognize the needs and limitations of yourself and others on the mountain. Almost every description of an Everest trip gone wrong recounts a situation where a healthy climber fails to help a struggling climber, ultimately costing a life. Ohlson’s 2012 documentary “K2: Siren of the Himalayas” clearly illustrates these dilemmas. The famed climber Fabrizio Zangrilli describes being within shooting distance of the summit on a previous trip, when encountering a climber in need of rescue and making the decision to help him down. On Ohlson’s trip, Zangrelli’s entire climbing crew was forced to turn back as they recognized they had lost the battle against the elements. Experienced climbers know how to effectively weigh their desire to reach the summit with the threat to their safety.

Less experienced climbers, and in particular climbers who take to the mountain as a means to prove something, are not as equipped to make adequate life and death decisions. Not only are they less able to recognize signs of their own fatigue or illness, they have paid $30,000 to $70,000 and given up two months of their lives for their one chance at the top. This may be the greatest paradox of opening Everest to amateur climbers — in the desire to get to the top, less experienced people will take more risks. 

Behind the scores of adventurers whose dreams of climbing Everest have been opened by the fixed ropes and the oxygen are thousands of Nepali guides and porters risking their lives for a small portion of t­­he fee.  

A job in the trekking industry in Nepal is highly sought-after. A job on Everest is the most lucrative of these roles. The Nepali Government estimates that most guides earn about US$6,000 per expedition, but the range is broad, from camp cooks (perhaps US$2,500) to lead guides (US$10,000). In a country where the GDP per capita is US$729.53, these wages are lucrative. Most guides and porters only have an income during trekking season. Outshine Adventures is one of less than 50 out of more than 1,500 tour companies to provide a year-round salary for employees.

Tourism is also a rare means for social mobility in Nepal. Sapkota started his career as a porter in remote mountain regions, worked his way up to a guide, a manager and ultimately started his own profitable business. After two successful Everest Summit trips, Ang Dendi Sherpa of Om Sherpa Treks built a company and a reputation that now sees him traveling around the world as a trekking guide. I asked him why he no longer takes trips up Everest and he answered without hesitation: “It is too dangerous.”

The dangers of being an Everest Sherpa have been well documented. Sixteen Sherpas died during the 2014 avalanche, and 16 of the 19 people who died during the earthquake were Sherpas. In an article on Outside Online, Jonah Ogles postulated that the death rate for climbing Sherpas on Everest from 2004 until 2014 was twelve times higher than the death rate for U.S. military personnel deployed in Iraq from 2003–2007.

The key issue is that Sherpas are sent to do the hardest parts of the climb before and after foreign climbers. Sherpas are on the mountain fixing ropes for longer durations and in more dangerous conditions. Sherpas aren’t provided with as much bottled oxygen as foreign climbers, and they almost never have access to the same anti-altitude drugs as foreign climbers. They literally carry a far greater load (25 kilogram weight restrictions appear to be loosely, if ever, enforced), spend more time in the elements (erecting tents and catering to clients’ needs) and are the first ones up and last ones down from the mountain. Perhaps most importantly, for many Sherpas, the client is the boss. Their advice on weather, conditions and overall safety is secondary to the clients’ wishes. Abandoning a client, even when the client is making potentially lethal decisions, is a reputation-ruining decision.

It is important not to deemphasize Sherpa’s own agency in the process. Many can, like Ang Tendi Sherpa or Ang Dendi Sherpa, weigh the costs and benefits of Everest treks and decide the risks are too high. Conversely, like foreign climbers, many Sherpas are passionate about climbing and using their incredible skills on the mountain. Sherpas who regularly lay the ropes on Khumbu Icefall (the most dangerous part of the climb) are so skilled they are known as the “Icefall Doctors.”

Some climbers are sensitive to the risks they are asking their Sherpas to take in the name of their quest. Ohlson notes that in attempting K2, climb leader Fabrizio Zangrilli made the decision that no high altitude porter would be asked to go above Camp 3 (7,100 m) because to go to Camp 4 (8,050 m) or above was asking them to accept too much risk. As noted above, less experienced climbers need their guides and porters to make it to the summit. Others will be more forceful in their demands, particularly where reaching the summit is involved.

But there will always be a tension when there is such great inequality between those paying for the climb and those being paid to administer the climb. “Sherpas are very aware that a client that makes the summit is going to give a much bigger tip than one that didn’t,” said Ohlson. “You’re talking about someone’s livelihood, and a higher tolerance for risk means more money.” Culturally, many Nepalese are gracious hosts with a genuine concern for their clients’ – or any tourists’ – happiness. It’s impolite to push back.

There’s something very alluring about Mount Everest.

It sits over the Himalayas, often with a cloud halo around its tip. Views from the top are of only air. “From the moment it was identified as the highest mountain, it became an object of fascination,” Maurice Isserman, a historian at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, told LiveScience. It is not hard to see why many consider it the ultimate challenge.

Even professional climbers who dismiss Everest as easy and commercial still want to get to the top. Famed Swiss climber Ueli Steck claimed to be done with the mountain after a brawl with a group of Nepali guides on the mountain in 2013, but last year he died in Nepal while preparing for another Everest attempt. It’s human nature that if there is a highest peak we want to be on top of it. Not the second highest, not the more skilled mountain: our egos crave the top.

It’s not only our egos. In our world, where we are contactable 24-7, where our eyes are glued to screens, where our lives are dictated by schedules and to-do lists, we are all looking for moments of purity. For moments of joy. Because as George Mallory said, “joy is, after all, the end of life.”

Ohlson was asked to climb Everest; it wasn’t something he sought out. But when the opportunity presented itself, he wanted to do it. Why? “It is the excitement of exploration,” he said, “to see what lies beyond the next ridge, to peer down upon the valleys below, to see the sky a darker shade of blue, and the clouds below you. It is a personal exploration as well, an inner exploration. The physical feeling of your body pushed to its limit, the outside world falls away as you exist only in the moment, focused wholly on the moment and each step onward. In our struggle for meaning it at least lets you know what it is to be alive when your existence is thrown into such sharp contrast with your surroundings.”

These are not bad motivations. The issue is that as our technological capabilities grow, and our adventures become more extreme, there has to be a way to protect against abuses — of people, the environment and the magic of adventure.

There is an increasingly urgent need to assess the limits of these adventures. If an American guide or rescuer was killed servicing a tourist, or the American government was asked to pay US$150,000 to rescue a tourist who willingly put him or herself in a dangerous position, our attitudes may shift. So why should it be OK when it is a Nepali, or the Pakistani government? It should not.

Ultimately, as Ohlson notes, “you can’t regulate human decency.” But there are measures that can be taken to protect those more vulnerable. Governments could require insurance, tourists could be required to pay a mandatory rescue deposit, rescuing bodies at high-altitudes could be banned. Governments can put in place rules simply banning rescue missions in extreme conditions. Perhaps more importantly, we can reassess the value we place on these feats and “unlike” the ego-tourist.

When service for the country isn’t enough to satisfy immigration officials

(Credit: Getty/Bryan Cox)

The only way deported Vietnam veteran Manuel de Jesus Castano was able to get back in the country he had considered his home was to die.

He was buried with full military honors at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas.

The American Civil Liberties Union has documented at least 200 cases of deported veterans who aren’t American citizens. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) has sponsored H.R. 3429, to bring home deported veterans or prevent them from being deported.

“These veterans served our nation honorably,” Gonzalez said. “This legislation is our chance to bring back our deported veterans and make sure that the federal government takes better care of all those who put their lives on the line for our freedom.”

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t track how many veterans are deported, but deportation arrests have soared since Trump took office. Trump signed an executive order to expand those who can be deported to noncitizens who have committed a chargeable criminal offense.

Army veteran Miguel Perez Jr., who served two tours in Afghanistan has been ordered to return to Mexico where he hasn’t lived since he was 8. Perez, who has PTSD, is appealing and started a hunger strike.

“If it comes down to me being deported, I would rather leave this world in the country I gave my heart for,” Perez said.

Perez became a permanent resident in 1989 and said he mistakenly thought he became a citizen because of his military service. He served half of a 15-year prison sentence after he was pleaded guilty to distributing less than 100 grams of cocaine. After his release from prison in September 2016, he was turned over to ICE and sent to a Wisconsin detention center to await deportation.

Perez’s attorney said his life would be in danger if he is deported to Mexico where drug cartels target veterans with combat experience to work on their behalf.

Noncitizen soldiers have fought for our country since the Revolutionary War. Polish noble Casimir Pulaski died of injuries in 1779 from a battle in Savannah, Ga. During World War II, thousands of immigrants fought overseas and became citizens.

Immigrants once were able to apply for citizenship during basic training. In October, the Trump administration reversed the expedited path to citizenship, citing concerns about potential spies.

Perez unsuccessfully sought a pardon from Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. A former Marine, Marco Chavez Medina, was able to re-enter the U.S. in December after 15 years in Mexico because he was pardoned in an animal cruelty case by California Gov. Jerry Brown.

Honorably discharged veterans, even those who have been deported, like Castano who died in 2012, are entitled to burial at a U.S. military ceremony. They also get American flags laid over their caskets and engraved headstones.

“When they die, we bring their dead bodies back across the border and give them full military honors,” said Nathan Fletcher, a Marine veteran and former California assemblyman. “It’s absurd that we don’t allow them to come back alive.”

NRA’s Dana Loesch pitched ‘NCIS’ producer a sitcom show: report

NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch speaks during CPAC 2018. (Credit: Getty/Alex Wong)

Dana Loesch made headlines this week for reportedly blaming mainstream media for mass shootings at the Conservative Political Action Conference–but once upon a time, she allegedly had a dream of becoming a sitcom star.

Paul Guyot, whose includes credits from NCIS: New Orleans, The Librarians, and Leverage, shared on Twitter that Loesch, an NRA spokeswoman and conservative commentator, allegedly approached him with a sitcom idea.

Guyot tweeted:

“Dana Loesch came to me 10yrs ago pitching a sitcom starring herself: ‘A hot young mom who does far right radio show.’ Said her age & looks would make 1 side hate her & 1 love her so everyone would watch. Was obsessed w the potential fame & money. I turned her down.”

Dana Loesch came to me 10yrs ago pitching a sitcom starring herself: “A hot young mom who does far right radio show.” Said her age & looks would make 1 side hate her & 1 love her so everyone would watch. Was obsessed w the potential fame & money. I turned her down.

— Paul Guyot (@Fizzhogg) February 22, 2018

Guyot shared more details with followers on Twitter, explaining the Loesch was allegedly pushing to pitch the “super hot,” and a conservative, angle.

“My memory is she was consumed with the idea that she was super hot & right wing, so that rare combo (her words) HAD to mean she could get rich & famous. Guess she found another way to her goal,” he explained on Twitter.

My memory is she was consumed with the idea that she was super hot & right wing, so that rare combo (her words) HAD to mean she could get rich & famous. Guess she found another way to her goal.

— Paul Guyot (@Fizzhogg) February 22, 2018

Deadline has reached out to Loesch regarding Guyot’s claim.

Loesch has been making headlines a lot as of late. On Friday, Loesch got defensive with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota who pointed out that the NRA shares some responsibility to try to fix America’s gun violence epidemic.

“No, we absolutely do not,” Loesch told Camerota. “We’re parents too. We want to be able to make sure that our kids are also safe.”

On Thursday, according to CNN, Loesch blamed the mass media for mass shootings at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it. Now I’m not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media in the back (of the room),” Loesch said, according to CNN.

She added, “And notice I said ‘crying white mothers’ because there are thousands of grieving black mothers in Chicago every weekend, and you don’t see town halls for them, do you? Where’s the CNN town hall for Chicago? Where’s the CNN town hall for sanctuary cities?”