6/12/2024
My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,
Should I add this new maxim to my list, “It's better to trust & be betrayed than not to trust at all.” It’s from a group of Stoics on reddit.
Trust is on my mind after reading that “the trust spiral continues downwards” in Burma, where leaders have been coercing citizens to snitch on each other since the Ne Win regime (1962-1988). The Interpreter calls it the “war within a war” noting, “in a country thick with spies & informers, suspicion can be crippling. History shows that confidence is hard to win back.”
We heard about this kind of thing when visiting Russia in 2007 & our guide said she always assumes someone is listening in on her phone calls. I heard about it yesterday when one of my Chinese students explained his parents would not tell him about the Tiananmen Square Massacre to protect him so he wouldn’t say the wrong thing at the wrong time & be incarcerated. Being a full disclosure kind of gal I can’t fathom living in this kind of environment.
Do you trust Hunter (RHB) these days? Psychology Todays says, “You can be compassionate without trusting.” Please thank RHB for focusing on staying clean rather than worrying about tomorrow. I especially appreciated his observation that, “Recovery is possible by the grace of God, & I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time.”
Are you worried about H5N1? The media suggests it could lead to the next pandemic because we’ve got too many dairy cows in mega-herds. David Quammen opines, “If a bird flu & a human flu happened to infect the same udder cell at the same time, they could swap sections of their genomes & emerge as a hybrid capable of causing a pandemic.” My faith in the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is wavering. Please do what you can to restore it.
I wish you & Jill would stop flying back & forth across the Atlantic. It’s not good for the planet.
Enjoy your visit with your G7 buds in Apulia. Please ask them for help with the junta.
BYBS,
