A Delicate Balance

I received a question from a friend recently as a comment to a previous blog. It was a good question, and it deserved a longer answer than a simple reply in the comments section. The question was:

“I respect your insight, just wondering what you think of all these executive orders, especially the XL pipeline that cost thousands of union  jobs?  Another one that really bothers me is boys in girls sports! I know you were a coach, what are your thoughts on this?”

Political questions are always more complicated than we would like. These are not simple yes-or-no, thumbs-up-or-thumbs-down issues. Among my favorite poems is one written by Stephen Crane about 120 years ago:

When the prophet, a complacent fat man, Arrived at the mountain top, He cried, “Woe to my knowledge! I intended to see good white lands and bad black lands—But the scene is grey.”

That’s what we have to understand; there are no black-and-white answers to these issues. We may not like it, but the solutions are often grey. This stark reality might make us uncomfortable, but we have to accept the fact that this complex, modern world requires solutions that satisfy no one completely, but are the product of compromises that seek the middle ground.

Okay. Simply put, Executive Orders (EO) are directives by the President that help manage the federal government. This basic description has received a wide range of interpretations by different leaders over the years, leading to a diverse variety of these directives, some of them controversial. There have been over 13,000 of these since the days of George Washington, and every president except William Henry Harrison (who died a short time after his inauguration) has signed at least one. The most famous EO is Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which freed the slaves held by rebellious states. Some of these directives have been challenged in court and overturned by the Supreme Court. In fact, Lincoln was so doubtful about the constitutionality of his Proclamation, that he immediately started the ball rolling on an amendment to the Constitution that would permanently outlaw slavery. This, of course, became the 13^th Amendment in 1865. FDR signed the highest number of these things, but that makes sense, as he was elected four times and dealt with crises such as the Great Depression and World War II that required immediate action, without congressional delays. Many EOs, especially when the presidency changed hands, have been used to reverse the EOs of previous presidents from the opposition party. Thus, the flurry of Executive Orders we have seen in recent days, is slightly unusual, but not dramatically so. As of today, President Biden has signed 42 of these orders, about half of which deal with the Coronavirus and the economic fallout that resulted. This health disaster is worse than any situation inherited by an incoming president since FDR, and thus qualifies as a legitimate crisis. Another handful of the new orders reversed policies established by Trump, who, in turn, used EOs to reverse policies established by Obama. In the immortal words of Sonny Bono, “and the beat goes on.”

The Keystone XL Pipeline is a complex issue that has been the subject of political wrangling, protests, lawsuits, and heated debate since at least 2008. Without going into excruciating detail, the 1200-mile pipeline would carry crude oil from Canada, where it is pumped from the ground, to Nebraska, where it would join another pipeline that would take the crude oil to the refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. A Canadian company, Trans-Canada Energy, would be the main beneficiary from this project, but British, Dutch, and American oil corporations would also share in the profits. Right wing tweeters, such as that intellectual giant Ted Nugent, have claimed that as many as 28,000 to 83,000 jobs will be lost. The truth is, that 1,000 jobs will be lost now, and a potential 10,000 more temporary jobs building the pipeline will be lost down the road. These are good, well-paying jobs, but they are temporary, lasting only until the pipeline is completed.

On the other hand, the pipeline presents a genuine threat to the environment on a huge scale. This is not just a matter of a small leak killing a few birds or animals, as it is often portrayed. At issue is an underground reservoir called the Ogallala Aquafer, over which the pipeline would run. This is a massive water table that stretches under eight states from South Dakota to Texas. I happen to be reading a novel right now that is set in the Texas Panhandle (That Old Ace in the Hole, by Annie Proulx), so I have only recently become aware of this water source and its importance to people of the Great Plains. Over 2.3 million people depend on this supply for all of their water needs. More important, each year, $20 Billion worth of agriculture, livestock, and ranching products are dependent on the water that is pumped from the Ogallala. Experts believe that a pipeline leak that contaminated the aquafer is a question of “when” rather than “if.” Many leaks of such pipelines involve millions of gallons of crude oil. Even a small leak could make that entire body of water unusable for human or agricultural needs. If that arid region was deprived of water, the livelihoods of those 2.3 million people would be put at risk, and the economy of the entire nation would be negatively affected by the loss of that $20 Billion. Thus, the loss of from 1 to 11 thousand jobs must be weighed against the potential impact on the whole country. Further, the land through which the pipe would run must be confiscated from private owners through the law of eminent domain; the government would compensate the owners, but often for less than it is actually worth. If you have seen the Kevin Costner series Yellowstone, you understand how rugged individuals such as John Dutton view the loss of their land to eminent domain laws. That is why farmers and ranchers have often led the opposition to XL.

The question of the XL Pipeline gets at the crux of all issues that pit environmentalists versus corporations and economic concerns. Even the issue of climate change, in many ways can be reduced to this equation. On the left extreme, you have the tree huggers that want to save every tree and every earthworm. On the right extreme, you have those who view things in a very short-sighted way based on one question: “Can I make more money today?” and to hell with the future. In most of these issues, there is a huge middle ground that is often ignored. What we have to do is find ways to use the environment and its resources in responsible ways that don’t destroy the planet. Think of logging contracts that require lumber companies to plant several trees for each one they cut down. Most political issues have lots of room in the middle and we need to get back to reasonable, moderate politicians who will negotiate to find that centrist position. More than that, our leaders have to look at the long-term effects, as well as considering what will help us in the immediate future.

This question reminds me of a folk song by a Chicago guy, Tom Dundee. It says, “It’s all such a delicate balance; takes away just as much as it gives.” The fact is that most political questions are complicated and multi-sided. As I used to tell my students, any time you hear a politician tell you that an issue is “very simple,” and he or she reduces it to a cut-and-dried solution, as Hitler (and now Trump) did, they are either lying, or they’re not intelligent enough to understand the question. Often, they are just telling people what they want to hear, rather than the truth.

This whole issue of gender or gender identity, has been around for a long time, but has gained more attention in recent years due to the availability of more information and the increasing willingness of people to speak up about it. There are an incredible number of gender terms out there, many of which overlap, and even more definitions that seem to shift over time. Something like 1% of all people are born with chromosomes from both genders to greater or lesser degrees, they have excessive hormones from the opposite gender, or they identify as one sex when they have been assigned the other at birth. To a non-science guy like myself, it is far too complicated to understand. I am completely ill-equipped to deal with this question, but I can give a few insights from track and field.

This question has been a track issue since at least the 1930s, when the International Olympic Committee instituted the “sex test” to determine an athlete’s gender. A Polish athlete, Stella Walsh, won the gold medal in the women’s 100 meters in 1932. When she died in Cleveland years later, an autopsy revealed the she had no uterus and an undeveloped penis. She was labeled “hermaphrodidic,” as a person who was born with sex organs and characteristics of both genders. Today, she might be called “intersex.” Intersex people are individuals born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, hormones, or genitals that do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies. More recently, South African runner Caster Semenya made waves by winning several major competitions while appearing to be more male than female. One source explained, “Semenya is an intersex woman, assigned female at birth, with XY chromosomes and naturally elevated testosterone levels.” Does that make her a male or a female? She had a natural, albeit unusual, condition, and unlike the Russians and East Germans during the Cold War Years, she did nothing to alter the cards that God or nature dealt her. Sports competitions have been legislating gender for nearly a century, but as our understanding of gender and sexual identity evolves, it has become more difficult for sports to exist within a neat, gender division.

Nature seems to have a sense of humor in this regard that messes with our normal expectations for human life. I guess the big thing to remember here is that these people did not choose to be different or unusual. Some wrestle with this issue for their entire lives. I think of Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn. I was in a track meet against him when we were both in college, and he was an impressive athlete even before his Olympic fame. He was married three times and had six children. Then came his bombshell announcement in 2015 that he identified as a woman and planned to undergo a sex-change operation. Apparently, the question of gender identity tormented her for her entire life. I taught several girls/boys over the years in an all-female school who struggled with this problem, and they were usually miserable, not sure of who they were or where they belonged. I have painful memories of one particular student in tears in my empty classroom, crying because she felt completely out of place with the other students. I later discovered that she identified as a male, but she didn’t fit in with either gender group. These people are not seeking advantages, although some will probably game the system for that purpose. Most, however, simply want to be treated equally, without discrimination, and that is what Biden’s EO addresses.

Am I comfortable with all of this ambiguity? Of course not, but I’m trying to understand it. At times, I find myself relating to Archie Bunker, who, at the start of each episode of All in the Family, sang about the good ol’ days, saying “And you knew where you were then; girls were girls and men were men.” But nature isn’t perfect and there are all sorts of permutations of the conventional idea of binary genders.

As I’ve said before, I don’t have any answers, only more questions. For me, these issues are just more reminders that the modern world is incredibly complicated and there are no simple solutions to the multi-faceted problems we face. We may not like it, but we have to become more comfortable with the ambiguity and the lack of easy, clear-cut solutions. When I was a kid, I saw things in terms of black-and-white. The world was simple and easy to understand. As I grew older, though, read more, moved around the country, and experienced a lot of different things, I began to realize that the world was much more complex than I imagined.

I had climbed the mountain, but, like Stephen Crane’s “complacent fat man,” I had discovered that “the scene is grey.”