The Washington Post National Weekly - August 20, 2017

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20, 2017

. IN COLLABORATION WITH

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‘It’s manufactured death’ Thousands of urban overdose fatalities linked to staggering rise of fentanyl in drug supply PAGE 12

Politics Trump strains more alliances 4

Science Nation unites for solar eclipse 16

5 Myths Golf 23

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KLMNO WEEKLY

WORLDVIEWS

Making European streets safer BY

B RIAN M URPHY

L

ast summer, the French seaside city of Nice counted its dead after a truck mowed through crowds marking Bastille Day. Thirteen months later, it was Barcelona’s famed Las Ramblas that was turned into a killing field as a driver used a delivery van as a tool of terrorism.

In between, other streets in Stockholm, London and Berlin were strewn with dead and injured after vehicles were used in terrorist assaults — an emerging and troubling front for security forces as the normal flow of urban life and traffic has quickly become the source of potential threats.

The mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, told reporters Friday he plans to bring together leaders from cities across Europe next month to study ways to better safeguard against vehicle attacks.

“We won’t win the war with the rules of peace,” Estrosi said during a memorial event to honor the Barcelona victims.

Estrosi said his city has allocated nearly $35 million seeking better traffic monitoring and protection measures after the carnage in July 2016 when 86 people were killed in the truck rampage along the Mediterranean corniche.

Other cities have taken steps such as pedestrian-only zones sealed off by trafficblocking barriers. In Las Vegas, hundreds of bollards were installed along the Strip in what officials called “a matter of life and death” to protect people from those who could use vehicles as weapons. New Orleans has put in plans to tighten controls on vehicles entering the crowded Bourbon Street area.

Police across the United States, meanwhile, have reassessed security precautions for dem-

KLMNO WEEKLY

MANU FERNANDEZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Police stand next to the van involved in a terrorist attack in the historic Las Ramblas district of Barcelona on Thursday. The van plowed into pedestrians, killing at least 13 people.

onstrations and other marches after a driver plowed into counterprotesters opposing a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

“I am convinced that life will prevail over death and that we will triumph over barbarism and terror,” Estrosi said.

But security experts note that city planners need to move away from standard traffic barriers — such as large planters or decorative posts — to far-stronger blockades designed to stop even speeding vehicles.

Charles G. Oakes, an urban traffic security

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2017 The Washington Post / Year 3, No. 45

engineer, wrote in a design journal in April that city officials need to reconsider the “expectation of civility” in traffic-control measures, and move toward barriers built to “withstand deliberate wanton acts of destruction and death.”

Estrosi said the planned Sept. 28-29 meeting would include Julian King, the European Union commissioner in charge of security issues.

“We can’t ignore the risk that exists. There can never be ‘zero risk,’” King said in December. n

© The Washington Post

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY SCIENCE BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

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ON THE COVER Art Gutierrez, 42, holds a container filled with heroin powder that he bought in Philadelphia. Fentanyl is getting added to heroin, increasing overdoses. Photograph by SALWAN GEORGES, The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

The increasingly isolated president

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Trump’s response to violence in Charlottesville has further divided him from his party BY

A BBY P HILLIP

P

resident Trump now finds himself more isolated than ever from his own party, world leaders and the business community that once cautiously embraced him — a fissure that was growing for weeks but turned into a chasm after his response to the racist violence in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend.

Trump had to disband two corporate advisory councils after a slew of chief executives resigned from the panels while criticizing the president for a day earlier blaming both white supremacists and counterprotesters for the melees that led to the death of a 32-year-old woman. Republicans distanced themselves as they called on the president to more forcefully condemn the racist groups that gathered for the

“Unite the Right” rally. And foreign officials lined up this past week to make clear they strongly disagree with Trump’s view of the events in Charlottesville.

Trump had already stoked tensions in recent weeks as he repeatedly attacked congressional GOP leaders for his stalled legislative agenda and alarmed allies at home and abroad with threats of military force against North Korea and Venezuela.

President Trump has been criticized by fellow Republicans, chief executives and foreign leaders in the past week, and many fear his comments have further sidetracked the White House’s agenda.

But his reaction to last weekend’s violence, which roiled the nation at a time when a president is typically leaned on for comfort and guidance, has created deep uncertainty about whether he can effectively lead his party and focus on urgent tasks looming in the fall, including avoiding a government debt default and moving forward on the tax cuts he promised during the campaign.

“This has done irreparable

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POLITICS damage in some ways,” said Joshua Holmes, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who remains close to him. “There have been lingering tension between the president and Capitol Hill here for months.

This clearly made it significantly worse. I don’t know of any Republican who is comfortable with where we’re at right now based on the president’s comments.”

Trump’s troubles began Saturday when he delivered a statement condemning hatred and bigotry following the chaos in Charlottesville, but he faced criticism for saying it comes from “many sides” while failing to specifically call out the white supremacists and neoNazis. Then on Monday he issued a new, more forceful statement, which eased the controversy even if it didn’t satisfy his critics.

But by Tuesday, after returning to New York and Trump Tower for the first time since becoming president, Trump reverted back to his original posture. In a freewheeling, heated news conference that was supposed to highlight a new infrastructure proposal, Trump again condemned white supremacists but defended some “fine people” who gathered at their rally in Charlottesville and questioned why the “alt-left” had not been similarly criticized for the violent confrontations.

As his aides watched silently, Trump appeared to be in his element: shutting down questions from the “fake news” media, touting the praise he had received from the mother of a young woman killed in the violence and pitching his winery located near the scene of the weekend’s chaos.

Among Republicans in Washington, the spectacle seemed to confirm a growing feeling that Trump’s presidency is unlikely to ever get back on track, leaving the party’s leadership in Congress feeling “demoralized,” according to one Republican with close ties to the party’s leadership.

“It think it’s fair to say that many of my colleagues are frustrated by the lack of focus on the issues at hand,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) “To the extent that we’re all having to answer questions on these other matters is unhelpful and is distracting, frustrating, and it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to the American people, too.”

Trump had already been picking fights with party leaders, criti-

“We’ve seen his poll numbers at low levels in the campaign and during his time as president. I don’t think conventional rules and analysis fit this president.”

Jeff Kaufmann, Iowa GOP Chairman

cizing McConnell for the Senate’s failure to pass health-care legislation in sharply worded tweets. But even if health-care reform is no longer likely to pass, Trump still needs to work closely with Congress if he is to have any hope of advancing legislative priorities on issues such as taxes or infrastructure.

“His agenda was put at tremendous risk by being critical of Senator McConnell and alienating McConnell and McConnell’s entire operation,” said one Republican operative in frequent touch with the White House. “He’s now alienated a majority of rank-and-file members in the House and Senate.”

World leaders, many of whom were already wary of Trump, also sought to distance themselves from the president’s comments.

“I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them,” British Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement, without naming Trump. “I think it is important for all those in positions of responsibility to condemn far-right views wherever we hear them.”

As Trump’s standing with voters sank lower this past week, reaching a nadir of 34 percent, according to a new Gallup survey, he has increasingly turned inward to his base. His allies have followed his lead in blaming the media for ginning up controversy and holding Trump to a higher standard after Charlottesville.

“What I have seen sharply increase is a sense that he is not being treated fairly,” said Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Re-

CHARLIE LITCHFIELD/AP

publican Party of Iowa.

Kaufmann said he is not very concerned that Trump’s sinking approval ratings will be a problem for him.

“If you would have asked me this question two years ago, I would have answered an unequivocal yes,” Kauffman said. “On the other hand, we’ve seen his poll numbers at low levels in the campaign and during his time as president. I don’t think conventional rules and analysis fit this president.”

Other Republican officials said there is frustration over the lack of progress in Washington but that much of that anger is being directed at Congress, with the president’s supporters more willing to give him some leeway — for now.

“I think people are generally displeased, and they tend to be focused on the lack of progress on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act,” noted Jeff Hays, chairman of the Republican Party of Colorado. “A lot of the people I talk to, they wish they would have gotten this right in the beginning of January, but they’re tolerant and they understand.”

He added that Trump has created problems for himself.

“He does give his detractors and he gives the larger media ample opportunities to focus on things that really are not governance-related,” Hayes added.

Trump has yet to see any member of his administration quit in protest over his remarks on the violence in Charlottesville, a move that could escalate his problems quickly, even while some in his Cabinet have gone out of their way to more forcefully condemn

white-supremacist groups.

“The racism, bigotry, and hate perpetrated by violent white supremacist groups has no place in America. It does not represent what I spent 23 years defending in the United States military and what millions of people around the globe have died for,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. “We must respond to hate with love, unity and justice. I fully support President Trump and Attorney General Sessions in uniting our communities and prosecuting the criminals to the fullest extent of the law.”

But on an issue that Trump had previously been given a wide berth — the economy — there are wide cracks appearing in his coalition.

Corporate executives who once felt it was in their best interest to stay close to the White House to help shape the president’s agenda condemned Trump’s comments on Charlottesville this past week, and eight corporate leaders quit his advisory councils.

Walmart’s chief executive called Trump out for missing an opportunity to unite the country.

“As we watched the events and the response from President Trump over the weekend, we too felt that he missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists,” wrote Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon.

The business world had been optimistic that a Republican president and Congress would produce comprehensive tax reform.

But their exodus from the president’s circle signals they are unwilling to associate their brands with Trump.

“It’s going to be treated as a blow because it is a blow,” said David Gergen, a former White House adviser to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. “It darkens the shadows over his legislative agenda.”

He noted that Trump’s remarks Tuesday came at an event meant to highlight a proposal to make it easier to complete infrastructure projects, a top priority for the business community.

“It’s not lost on anybody that they were trying to push through infrastructure and they wandered over into the swamp of racial division,” Gergen said. n © The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

34% As Trump’s standing with voters sank lower this past week, reaching a nadir of 34 percent, according to a new Gallup survey, he has increasingly turned inward to his base.

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POLITICS

Justice, DEA at odds on pot research

BY M ATT Z APOTOSKY AND D EVLIN B ARRETT

T

he Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has effectively blocked the Drug Enforcement Administration from taking action on more than two dozen requests to grow marijuana to use in research, one of a number of areas in which the anti-drug agency is at odds with the Trump administration, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.

A year ago, the DEA began accepting applications to grow more marijuana for research, and as of this month, had 25 proposals to consider. But DEA officials said they need the Justice Department’s sign-off to move forward.

So far, the department has not been willing to provide it.

“They’re sitting on it,” said one law enforcement official familiar with the matter. “They just will not act on these things.”

As a result, said one senior DEA official, “the Justice Department has effectively shut down this program to increase research registrations.’’

DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said the agency “has always been in favor of enhanced research for controlled substances such as marijuana.’’

Lauren Ehrsam, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment.

The standoff is the latest example of the nation’s premier narcotics enforcement agency finding itself in disagreement with the new administration. While President Trump and Sessions have vowed a crackdown on drugs and violent crime, DEA officials have publicly and privately questioned some of the administration’s statements and goals.

Late last month, acting DEA administrator Chuck Rosenberg wrote in an email to staff members that Trump had “condoned police misconduct” in remarking to officers in Long Island that they need not protect suspects’ heads when putting them into police vehicles.

The acting administrator said he was writing his employees “be-

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Officials say the attorney general has still not signed off on marijuana research proposals cause we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong.” After public criticism, White House officials said the president was joking.

DEA officials say Sessions and his Justice Department have pressed the agency for action specifically on MS-13 despite warnings from Rosenberg and others at the DEA that the gang, which draws Central American teenagers for most of its recruits, is not one of the biggest players when it comes to distributing and selling narcotics. Mexican cartels, DEA officials have warned, will use any gang to sell their drugs, and DEA leaders have directed those in their field offices to focus on the biggest threat in their particular geographic area. In many parts of the country, MS-13 simply does not pose a major criminal or drugdealing threat compared with other groups, these officials said.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they could face professional consequences for candidly describing the internal disputes.

Sessions frequently speaks harshly about marijuana use, and Justice Department officials have been reviewing the policy of his predecessor when it comes to enforcing federal laws on marijuana in states where the drug is legal.

“Dosages can be constructed in a way that might be beneficial, I acknowledge that, but if you smoke marijuana, for example, where you have no idea how much THC you’re getting, it’s probably not a good way to administer a medicinal amount. So forgive me if I’m a bit dubious about that,” Sessions said this year.

The DEA is no shrinking violet when it comes to marijuana enforcement. Last year, Rosenberg declined to lessen restrictions on its use, maintaining its classification as a Schedule 1 controlled substance — which means it has no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

But Rosenberg wrote at the time that the DEA would “support and promote legitimate research regarding marijuana and its constituent parts.” The DEA, he

Chuck Rosenberg, the acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said he stands by his assertion that the DEA would support more research of marijuana.

wrote, already had approved such research, registering 354 people and institutions to study marijuana and related components, including the effects of smoked marijuana on humans.

The DEA indicated at the time it was willing to see those studies expand, asking for applications from people who wanted to grow marijuana to be used for research.

The only source of marijuana for researchers then was — and is — the University of Mississippi, which has permission to grow and distribute the drug for research.

One still-waiting applicant is Lyle Craker, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Craker has spent years seeking approval to do research into whether other parts of marijuana plants have medicinal value.

“I’ve filled out the forms, but I haven’t heard back from them. I assume they don’t want to answer,’’ Craker said. “They need to think about why they are holding this up when there are products that could be used to improve people’s health. I think marijuana has some bad effects, but there can be some good, and without investigation we really don’t know.’’

Craker submitted his latest application Feb. 14; after getting additional questions from the DEA in March, he supplied additional information in April.

Tension between Rosenberg and Trump is perhaps unsurprising. Rosenberg was appointed during the Obama administration, and he had served as chief of staff and senior counselor to James B. Comey, who was the FBI director until Trump fired him this year.

The Justice Department has not rejected any of the 25 people whose applications to grow marijuana the DEA is considering.

Rather, the department is not taking any action at all, officials said.

Before approving such applications, DEA officials have to assess each applicant and determine whether their facility is secure and whether they had previously been complying with federal law. n ©The Washington Post

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GOP seeks unity to pass tax overhaul K ELSEY S NELL Santa Barbara, Calif.

BY

P

resident Trump’s increasing alienation from fellow Republicans and the business community is further imperiling the party’s top priority for the remainder of the year: cutting taxes and simplifying the byzantine tax code.

Congressional GOP leaders are hoping to recover from their failed effort to replace the Affordable Care Act and salvage their legislative agenda by unifying the party around tax reform, but Trump has spent recent weeks publicly antagonizing key lawmakers and fanning controversy with his response to last weekend’s racist violence in Charlottesville.

Several key lawmakers said Trump will need to focus on selling the GOP’s tax plan when Congress returns in September, and they worried that the difficult job of passing a massive tax package will be nearly impossible without the president playing a key role.

“At the end of the day, President Trump will be incredibly crucial to the success of this,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) told reporters Wednesday. “Tax reform is the signature issue of this presidency.”

Brady traveled to the Santa Ynez Mountains near Santa Barbara this past week to borrow some inspiration from the last president to rewrite the nation’s tax laws, Ronald Reagan. He and other Republican Congress members stood in front of Reagan’s Rancho del Cielo property and promised to finish their own legislation by year’s end — a pledge Brady said can succeed only if Trump gets on board and stays on board.

But the call for presidential support comes at a nadir of trust and cooperation between Trump and GOP members in Congress. In the hours leading up to Wednesday’s event, corporate executives and Republican lawmakers were publicly distancing themselves from the president because of his controversial statements assigning blame for violent clashes at a rally

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Key members of Congress want the president to focus efforts on legislative priority, not controversy in Charlottesville to both the white supremacists who organized the event and those who showed up to protest their presence.

The rush of criticism was the latest in a series of increasingly tense standoffs between Trump and his GOP colleagues. One week earlier, the president launched a multiday assault on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for failing to pass legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. In recent weeks, Republican members have been forced to decide whether they can separate the parts of Trump’s presidency that offend them and their constituents from the reality that his support is likely to be key to achieving their long-sought legislative goals.

While some Republicans say they have grown accustomed to Trump’s often erratic approach to politics, many others are frustrated.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who along with Reps. Peter J.

Roskam (R-Ill.) and David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) accompanied Brady on the trip, said that while lawmakers were used to working in “a very distracting environment,” the push for tax reform would require Trump to help refocus attention away from day-today scandal and back to policy details in a way he never did during the health-care debate.

“This is on a whole different scale,” Curbelo said. “The committees are still going to do their work, and it’s not like we’re just going to sit around and talk about issues like this all of the time, but it certainly makes it harder to make a strong case for tax reform to the public because nobody is talking about it.”

Some outside groups have attempted to step into the void left

by Trump on tax reform. A number of conservative organizations, including the American Action Network, have launched public relations campaigns touting the benefits of tax reform to voters. The groups are spending millions on

Rep. Kevin Brady (RTex.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will play an important role in Republican efforts to overhaul the tax code. But he points to the centrality of someone else: “At the end of the day, President Trump will be incredibly crucial to the success of this.”

advertising, public polling and lobbying to help create momentum for a tax package.

But congressional Republicans and the White House have yet to agree on much other than the broad strokes of a tax plan.

Brady said Wednesday that he personally could separate Trump’s controversies from the GOP-wide goal of passing a tax bill. “I still think the president has the ability to refocus on tax reform,” he said.

“I look to see him pivot to tax reform and jobs and make this case nationwide.”

Business leaders are distancing themselves from Trump, making their role in advancing his agenda awkward at best. They are now likely to focus even more of their efforts on working with Congress in hopes they can enact tax cuts — a desire lawmakers said could help the debate transcend the hard feelings between CEOs and the White House.

Congressional leaders also are holding out hope that the outside pressure will help keep rank-andfile Republicans focused on taxes and eager to avoid mistakes that led to the dramatic failure of their promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. “I’m of the mind of the stumbles on health care put a lot of pressure on members to get to ‘yes,’ ” Roskam said, arguing Republican lawmakers see the necessity of nailing down a victory.

“I think most members of Congress are going to say to themselves, ‘I need to go back to a constituency and I’ve got to deliver on health care or taxes,’ ” Roskam said. “The notion of not getting either one of those things done is not a pleasant prospect.”

Brady and his colleagues who assembled in the California mountains this past week said they believed the party would unite on taxes in the coming months.

“We’ve got a responsibility as leaders to say, ‘Okay, let’s rub some dirt on our problems and move forward and figure this out,’ ” Roskam said. “It’s bigger than any president.” n © The Washington Post

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KLMNO WEEKLY

NATION

Fighting fire, then FEMA in Montana T IM C RAIG Sand Springs, Mont.

BY

I

n this part of Montana’s rugged eastern prairie, Erwin Weder and the other ranchers and cowboys are not used to feeling kicked around. But as Weder drives his pickup truck onto a bluff to gaze out over “Big Sky Country,” he feels a bit defeated.

Hundreds of miles of meadows and scrub grass that feed tens of thousands of beef cattle are gone, replaced by the charred soil and smoldering prairie dog burrows that the state’s largest wildfire in nearly three decades has left behind. But after the massive multimillion-dollar firefight, another battle has emerged in the wide open spaces where there is often distrust of the government: What should the federal role be in helping Montana’s livestock industry respond to, and recover from, the blaze?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) originally rejected Montana’s request for assistance, a process that ranchers say left them feeling forgotten and misunderstood by Washington. Now, many in this deeply conservative region are weighing their wariness about bureaucrats against their need for help.

“We lost 70 percent of our grass, which means 70 percent of our revenue,” said Weder, 41, who is trying to locate hundreds of cattle that scattered as the flames tore across his 65,000-acre ranch. “I don’t think people truly understand what an acre of grass is worth to us . . . and the millions of dollars that will be lost over the next few years.”

Local officials across the United States worry that it is becoming more difficult to secure help from FEMA for all sorts of natural disasters.

The Trump administration has been hinting that it might limit federal spending on disaster relief and preparation, and FEMA is considering whether to draft regulations to shift more responsibility for rebuilding to the states. The creation of “disaster deductibles”

REUTERS

Denial of aid ‘was like a slap in the face that we don’t matter’ in rural America, residents said — which states would have to exhaust before FEMA offers federal assistance — was first proposed under the Obama administration.

The new administration says it is following established criteria for responding to disasters, and it has not indicated clear standards for when it plans to step in with disaster assistance, especially in cases that affect relatively localized areas. President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget includes more money for disaster assistance but reduces preparedness grants by $667 million, something that has sparked dismay among state officials. In March, Trump also proposed an 11 percent cut to FEMA’s 2017 budget to help fund construction of his proposed border wall. But after denying a wave of disaster assistance requests earlier this year, FEMA has recently begun reversing some of those initial findings.

FEMA Administrator William B. “Brock” Long said in a recent interview that agency grant fund-

ing for disaster preparedness has been trending down since 2010, reflecting a philosophical question: Should the federal government fully sustain programs at the state level or should the federal funding “serve as a catalyst”?

Long said he believes that preparedness, response and recovery are a shared responsibility and that states should have “rainy day funds to support their localities when the federal government support’s not coming to town.”

In Sand Springs, FEMA faces new conflicts over the value of the grass that nurtures the nation’s food supply. After a lightning storm sparked the blaze July 19, FEMA’s initial denial of the state’s general request for disaster assistance while the fire was raging angered local officials, who viewed it as another disconnect between Washington and the heartland.

“The federal government needs to understand, not everything comes from the city,” said Teddy

Firefighters in Mosby, Mont., battle the Lodgepole Complex fire, which scorched an area about twice the size of Chicago.

Robertson, a commissioner in Garfield County, which includes Sand Springs and has the thirdlowest population density of any county in the continental United States. “To have FEMA turn us down, it was like a slap in the face that we don’t matter.”

Montana’s congressional delegation pressured FEMA to reverse its decision, and the agency says it agreed to compensate the state through its Fire Management Assistance Program four days later. The federal agency said in a statement that “there have not been changes to FEMA policy in regards to federal assistance or reimbursement for disaster related expenses.”

FEMA’s fire assistance program reimburses states for 75 percent of the costs associated with battling wildfires. State and county officials estimate they’ve spent about $9 million extinguishing the Lodgepole blaze, which was brought under control July 29.

Now that the firefighting funding has been sorted out, it is unclear what the federal government will do in terms of helping to restore the grasslands and assisting the businesses and people that rely on them. Local ranchers here say they could face an especially dire situation if the drought persists into next year because the scorched prairie can only rejuvenate if it gets much-needed rain.

When there’s a major fire in Garfield County, residents respond with their own water and pumper trucks to battle it, making it difficult to track expenses. Residents say it could take weeks or months to determine how many cattle were killed in a fire so large it took helicopters three hours to fly around its perimeter.

“It’s hard to assess value, with boots on the ground, when you have more cows than homes,” said Anne Miller, a Garfield County official who is helping to coordinate relief efforts.

Relying on the federal government is at odds with the culture here. As Weder put it, “Most here would rather starve than be on welfare.” n ©The Washington Post

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NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

Cities dread being next flash point

BY J ANELL R OSS, M ARK B ERMAN AND J OEL A CHENBACH

C

ity officials across the country are nervously trying to figure out how to avoid becoming the next Charlottesville as alt-right leaders and white nationalist groups vow to stage more rallies.

A rally scheduled for Aug. 26 in San Francisco has prompted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) and several California lawmakers to urge the National Park Service to rescind the permit to gather on federal park land there.

Cities also are grappling with what to do about their Confederate monuments, an issue that has suddenly become much more urgent. Some are taking preemptive measures under the cover of night: Four Confederate monuments in Baltimore were hauled away in the early morning darkness Wednesday, and one in Birmingham, Ala., was covered in plywood.

In the wake of the violent public clashes in Charlottesville last weekend, mayors, governors and other civic leaders are taking steps that earlier might not have seemed necessary. But they also are facing uncertain challenges, not knowing whether the white nationalist movement will attract a larger following or where the most turbulent demonstrations may occur.

Violence is at the center of the concerns, and the Charlottesville rally showed law enforcement authorities that they need to be better prepared.

Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, noted that many of the people who came to Charlottesville wore helmets and carried shields.

“These guys, the shields that they showed up with . . . you don’t bring that stuff to a demonstration to just express a view,” Stephens said. “You bring that there prepared for violence. Why else would you have them?”

Richard Spencer, an alt-right leader, said Wednesday in a text to

JERRY JACKSON/BALTIMORE SUN

Officials grapple with rallies and Confederate monuments amid fears of more violence The Washington Post that his movement will return to Charlottesville, where Heather Heyer, 32, was killed and many people seriously injured when a driver plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters.

“This car accident or attack — we’re going to find out — was horrible, but the idea that it will destroy the identitarian movement is ridiculous,” Spencer said this week in a news conference at his office in Northern Virginia.

Identitarian is Spencer’s preferred term, however, most experts who study the alt-right consider it a growing wing of the white supremacist movement.

To head off potentially violent rallies, Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh (D) stayed up Tuesday night into Wednesday morning to observe contract workers hauling away four Confederate monuments. She said she told herself: “There’s enough grandstanding

speeches being made. Get it done.”

In Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy, Mayor Levar Stoney (D) announced a dramatic change of heart about the statues lining Monument Avenue. He had favored adding interpretive material to put the Confederate statues in context. But he said Charlottesville’s violence led him to a new conclusion — that the statues must go.

“While we had hoped to use this process to educate Virginians about the history behind these monuments, the events of the last week may have fundamentally changed our ability to do so by revealing their power to serve as a rallying point for division and intolerance and violence,” Stoney said in a statement. “These monuments should be part of our dark past and not of our bright future. I personally believe they are offensive and need to be removed.”

In Birmingham, Ala., city offi-

Baltimore officials had workers remove four Confederate monuments early Wednesday morning, including this one, which honors women of the Confederacy.

cials covered a Confederate monument in a city park with plywood and tarps while lawyers studied the city’s options, as Alabama state law penalizes cities with a $25,000 fine if they violate a prohibition against removing monuments.

Mayor William Bell (D) said the city has been looking into removing the monument for two years.

The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville made him worry, he said, that the monument would be “a lightning rod for organizations and individuals preaching hatred.” But the city is facing legal action from Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who said that hiding the statue from public view “altered” or “otherwise disturbed” the memorial “in violation of the letter and spirit” of the law, leaving him no choice but to sue.

Bell said he believes he will succeed in removal, but if not, he hopes the city can place markers nearby that describe the horrors of slavery. “There are two forces at work here: Whether or not we will continue to glorify an action that sought to end these United States of America as we know it today, and whether or not the state has the right to protect monuments that really speak to the suppression of human beings,” Bell said.

Colleges have been resisting attempts to have rallies on their campuses, and in the days after the Charlottesville violence, schools including Texas A&M and the University of Florida canceled events tied to white nationalist groups that were scheduled for the week of Sept. 11.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) directed the Louisville Commission on Public Art to develop a list of works that “can be interpreted to be honoring bigotry, racism and/or slavery,” so he can consider whether to add more art, move some of them around or add markers to better explain the artworks.

“The situation is complicated, and we need to meet that challenge,” Fischer said. “And anyone who wants to engage in peaceful conversation is welcome to the table. Anyone who wants to engage in violence or hate speech is not.” n © The Washington Post

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WORLD

Gaza’s wasted generation

BY W ILLIAM B OOTH AND H AZEM B ALOUSHA

Gaza City

T

hey are the Hamas generation, raised under the firm hand of an Islamist militant movement. They are the survivors of three wars with Israel and a siege, who find themselves as young adults going absolutely nowhere.

In many circles in Gaza, it is hard to find anyone in their 20s with real employment, with a monthly salary.

They call themselves a wasted generation.

Ten years after Hamas seized control of Gaza, the economy in the seaside strip of 2 million has been strangled by incompetence, war and blockade.

Gaza today lives off its wits and the recycled scraps donated by foreign governments. Seven in 10 people rely on humanitarian aid.

Young people say they are bored out of their minds.

They worry that too many of their friends are gobbling drugs, not drugs to experience ecstasy but pills used to tranquilize animals, smuggled across Sinai.

They dose on Tramadol and smoke hashish. They numb.

Hamas has recently stepped up executions of drug traffickers.

Freedoms to express oneself are circumscribed. But the young people speak, a little bit. They say their leaders have failed them — and that the Israelis and Egyptians are crushing them.

Why not revolt? They laugh. It is very hard to vote the current government out — there are no elections.

“To be honest with you, we do nothing,” said Bilal Abusalah, 24, who trained to be a nurse but sometimes sells women’s clothing.

He has cool jeans, a Facebook page, a mobile phone and no money.

He and his friends get by with odd jobs, a few hours here and there. They worked at cafes during the busy evenings of Ramadan in June. They will help an

WISSAM NASSAR FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Young people say Hamas leaders have failed them and Israel and Egypt are crushing them uncle in his shoe shop as the school year approaches in August. They make $10 a day at these kinds of jobs, a few coins for coffee and cigarettes.

Abusalah said, “We are the generation that waits.”

We asked a 25-year-old college graduate, who got his degree in public relations, what he did for a living.

He answered, “I stare into space.”

Raw sewage washes onto the beaches. The water looks blue at the horizon, where Israeli gunboats lurk, enforcing a six-mile blockade. But the surf line is a foamy brown.

The rappers of Gaza see this as a metaphor. They are literally trapped in their own excrement.

Most young people in Gaza have not been out, either through Israel, which is almost impossible, or through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which has been mostly closed for the past four years.

Electricity is now down to four hours per day. The young activists in the refugee camps who dared in January to protest power cuts? They were hustled off to jail.

In the dusty gray cement-colored world of Gaza, now sputtering along on Chinese solar panels and Egyptian diesel, young people spend their days, day after day, playing with their phones, their worlds reduced to palmsized screens, to YouTube videos and endless chat.

Unemployment for Gaza’s young adults hovers around 60 percent. This is not just a dull World Bank number. This is a stunning number, the highest in the Middle East and among the worst rates in the world.

Think-tank scholars warn that Egypt’s youth unemployment rate of 30 percent is “a ticking time bomb.” In Gaza, the jobless rate for young people is double that.

The Israeli government under

Ahmed Abu Duhair, 25, left, smokes with Mahmoud al-Sweasi, center, and Iyad Abu Heweila, 24, on a rooftop in Gaza City. “We’re not lazy guys,” says Duhair, who admits that he sleeps until late afternoon.

Unemployment for Gaza’s young adults hovers around 60 percent.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says what happens in Gaza is all the fault of Hamas, a terrorist organization. Hamas leaders traditionally blame the Israeli blockade for their problems. Gaza is allowed no seaport, no airport and limited exports, mostly fruits and vegetables, alongside some furniture and textiles. Lately the pressure on the strip has only gotten worse, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently slashed payments for Gaza’s electricity, to squeeze people to reject Hamas.

Gaza young people describe their lives as a kind of sick experiment.

The literacy rate in Gaza is 96.8 percent, higher than the West Bank. The “Palestinian engineer” was once the gold standard in the Middle East. In the past, immigration was the door to life. That door has slammed shut. Few get out of Gaza these days.

Yet the universities of Gaza are still pumping out graduates by the thousands, even though the least likely person to find work in Gaza today is a college graduate, especially a woman.

The most recent surveys reveal that half of the Gaza population would leave the enclave if given the chance.

“I don’t believe it,” said Mohammad Humaed, 24, who studied cinema at a university but works a couple of nights a week at a coffee shop in a refugee camp. “All the young people would leave.”

Economists use the term “dedevelopment” to describe what is happening.

Young people in Gaza have a joke to say the same thing.

They say their unemployed friends “are driving the mattress,” meaning they spend their daylight hours sprawled in bed.

Two years ago, the United Nations warned that Gaza could become “unlivable” by 2020. U.N. officials recently said they had been overly optimistic: The place could collapse next year. n ©The Washington Post

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WORLD

KLMNO WEEKLY

Venezuela’s large threat: Insolvency

BY A NTHONY F AIOLA AND R ACHELLE K RYGIER

Caracas, Venezuela

T

he autocratic government of President Nicolás Maduro is sharply intensifying its crackdown on dissent, issuing arrest warrants for rebellious mayors, targeting unfriendly politicians and menacing average citizens who speak their minds. Yet if it’s enemies of the state Maduro is after, one threat looms larger than any other.

That would be the flatlining Venezuelan economy.

This South American nation is edging toward the economic brink after an internationally condemned election last month created an all-powerful congress loyal to Maduro. Since the July 30 vote, the value of the local currency, the bolívar, has fluctuated more wildly than ever, a significant feat for a country saddled with the world’s highest inflation rate.

New estimates from the large Venezuelan data firm Ecoanalítica suggest that the economy could shrink 10.4 percent this year, exacerbating a four-year nosedive that some economists already call worse than the United States’ Great Depression. Potentially more dangerous, analysts say, is the prospect of a sovereign debt crisis that could bring the country to a whole new level of economic pain.

President Trump said recently that he would not exclude a “military” option in Venezuela. The spiraling economic crisis is sending a fresh jolt of panic through crisishardened Venezuelans, who are increasingly blaming Maduro.

“It was after the vote that things went out of control,” said Miguel Gonzalez, a 94-year-old retiree in sticker shock this past week while shopping at a Caracas grocery store.

Venezuela has sunk into financial malaise on the back of a socialist experiment launched by Hugo Chávez, the leftist firebrand who died in 2013 after nationalizing gold mines and rice mills, among other enterprises, and bringing more of the energy sector under

ARIANA CUBILLOS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Maduro cements power, but a looming debt crisis could be the tipping point for his government state control. Since then, the economy has suffered a far more profound collapse under Maduro, Chávez’s anointed successor, the result of plummeting oil prices, mismanagement and failed economic policies including price and currency controls.

Yet after a four-month street uprising in which more than 100 people were killed and thousands arrested, the opposition appears fractured and in disarray. Analysts say Maduro’s longevity in office may now depend less on surviving an opposition challenge than on his ability to sidestep a catastrophic debt crisis. A default on the national debt could generate even harsher domestic conditions, potentially damaging Maduro’s support within the armed forces, his ultimate line of defense.

Signs of discontent among lowand mid-ranking officers have begun to surface. Earlier this month, a group of civilians and soldiers, apparently led by a former commander, attacked a military base in the city of Valencia after releas-

ing a video pledging rebellion against the government.

The crumbling economy, experts say, could fan such flames.

And in the wake of last month’s vote, some analysts increasingly see default as not only possible but likely.

“Default is inevitable. The question is timing,” said Siobhan Morden, managing director and Latin America expert at Nomura Holdings. “Do they run out of money [on their own]? Or do U.S.-sector sanctions force them to run out of money sooner?”

Venezuela has managed to avoid a default largely for two reasons. First, it is a huge exporter of oil. And second, Maduro’s hardleft government has, ironically, been willing to work with Wall Street capitalists on creative bond deals that have kept it afloat.

But Maduro’s decision to proceed with last month’s vote could prove a game changer. Critics decried the election as a sham meant to bring all branches of government under his control, and the

Anti-government demonstrators hold a poster that says “Democracy” in Spanish during a protest in Caracas, Venezuela.

United States, along with countries in Europe and Latin America, have refused to recognize the new Constituent Assembly.

It will also be harder, meanwhile, for Venezuela to cover its foreign debts using cash. National reserves have hit a 15-year low of about $10 billion, most of it in gold bars, not cash. Any U.S. action to target the country’s oil industry through sanctions — a step the Trump administration is considering after a string of sanctions on individual officials — could force a default-triggering cash crunch.

Even if the U.S. government stops short of that, Venezuela’s oil industry, battered by corruption, mismanagement and disrepair, has already seen its output drop by 20 percent in two years.

Analysts suggest a default is likely within 18 months, possibly much sooner. This year, Venezuela’s big test will be in October and November, when it must scrape together $3.8 billion in payments. Some observers argue that ceasing to pay the debt could actually give the government more to spend on desperately needed imports of food and medicine, although any windfall would probably be short-lived, given that foreign investors are poised to quickly seize Venezuelan assets across the globe.

As a model for the future, Maduro may look to Cuba during its “special period” in the late 1980s and 1990s, when Fidel Castro survived a years-long hunger crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“His regime, like [Robert] Mugabe in Zimbabwe and [Bashar al-] Assad in Syria, has already managed to survive an imploding economy, and I don’t know that a worse economic performance will do him in,” said Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister who is director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University.

“The thing is, the Venezuelan people are now so poor and so hungry that many of them don’t have the bandwidth to mobilize in opposition,” he said. n ©The Washington Post

COVER STORY

‘It’s a new epidemic’

BY NICOLE LEWIS, EMMA OCKERMAN, JOEL ACHENBACH AND WESLEY LOWERY in Philadelphia

A

rt Gutierrez comes to the corner of Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street every morning to buy heroin.

What he’s actually getting in Philadelphia’s notorious open-air drug market is heroin laced with an even more potent additive, often in unpredictable amounts that even antidotes can’t stop from being deadly. That narcotic, increasingly spliced into the nation’s illicit drug supply, is fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller exacerbating heroin’s deadly trap. In cities across America, it is fueling deeper addiction and has become one of the most prominent killers linked to the nation’s drug crisis.

“It’s a new epidemic,” said Gutierrez, 42, who shoots up on the sidewalks here in Kensington by day and ducks into abandoned buildings to sleep at night as he copes with crippling addiction. He has watched his friends die and says, “If you catch a pure bag of fentanyl, that Narcan ain’t bringing you back.”

This city, like many others across the United States long mired in a battle against opioid addiction, is seeing the precipitous rise of illicit fentanyl. Once a minor player in the drug crisis, the man-made narcotic — about 50 times stronger than heroin — is directly linked to thousands of overdoses and a shocking rise in fatalities nationwide, a trend that is particularly noticeable in the nation’s urban areas.

In 24 of the nation’s largest cities and the counties that surround them, fentanyl-related overdose deaths increased nearly 600 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to county health departments nationwide. According to overcontinues on next page SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST

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COVER STORY

PHOTOS BY SALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POST

from previous page

dose records in those cities reviewed by The Washington Post, there were 582 fatal overdoses linked to fentanyl in 2014, a number that soared to 3,946 last year. Officials estimate there will be a much higher number of fatal fentanyl-related overdoses in 2017.

Cook County, Ill., (Chicago) recorded a 2,700 percent increase in fatal fentanylrelated overdoses, jumping from 20 in 2014 to 562 in 2016. Orange County, Fla., (Orlando) saw its 34 fatal fentanyl overdoses in 2014 triple to 105 in 2016. And Franklin County, Ohio, (Columbus) went from 13 such overdoses two years ago to 111 in 2016.

Law enforcement and public health officials say they are alarmed by the rate at which fentanyl has infiltrated the illicit drug market and how it is transforming the face of the drug crisis, which resulted in 60,000 fatal overdoses in 2016, more than half of which were from opioids.

“If anything can be likened to a weapon of mass destruction in what it can do to a community, it’s fentanyl,” said Michael Ferguson, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New England division. “It’s manufactured death.”

The spike in fatal fentanyl overdoses in greater Philadelphia has been among the steepest. In 2012, the drug was linked to nine fatal overdoses, according to the health department. By 2014, that number had grown to 100. Pennsylvania law enforcement officials just announced last year’s totals: Fentanyl was responsible for more than 400 overdose deaths in Philadelphia last year and more than 2,000 fatal overdoses statewide — marking the first time in recent state history that heroin was not the most deadly overdose drug.

“The trend is not going to change, unfortunately,” said Patrick Trainor, a DEA special agent in Philadelphia. “Not anytime soon.”

Philadelphia Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the city is averaging 100 over-

dose deaths per month in 2017, noting that fentanyl “has thrown gasoline onto a fire that was already raging.”

“This is a health crisis that’s worse than we’ve ever seen,” Farley said. “This will kill more people than the AIDS epidemic. You’d have to go back to the influenza pandemic of 1918 if you even wanted to start making comparisons.”

Officials note that in some places, medical examiners did not test overdose victims for fentanyl — which does not show up on all standard drug screenings — until 2015, probably causing an undercount in its lethality until then. But they say the raw number of fentanylrelated deaths last year was staggering.

“It cuts across all demographics, race, gender, socioeconomic status,” said Chuck Rosenberg, acting administrator of the DEA. “It’s everywhere all the time.”

President Trump recently agreed, saying that the opioid crisis is a national emergency, pledging more money and attention to the problem.

“It is a serious problem, the likes of which we’ve never had. You know, when I was growing up, they had the LSD, and they had certain generations of drugs,” Trump said. “There’s never been anything like what’s happened to this country over the last four or five years.”

Fentanyl’s rise The U.S. opioid epidemic can be traced to the 1990s, when the pharmaceutical industry began producing new opioid painkillers, such as OxyContin, that were marketed as safer and less prone to abuse than prior medications. At the same time, the medical establishment seized on the notion that freedom from pain is a human right and a “vital sign,” much like blood pressure or heart rate.

Suddenly, opioid painkillers were prescribed for a wide range of ailments. In some communities already ravaged by joblessness and substance abuse, unscrupulous doctors dispensed the painkillers in bulk via “pill mills.” As officials

Previous page: People gather outside the Last Stop, a Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous group at Kensington Avenue and Somerset Street — the heart of drug use and sales in Philadelphia.

Above left, Art Gutierrez injects a dose of heroin.

He recently watched a friend die after taking a lethal dose of fentanyl. Right, trash left by drug users under a bridge near train tracks in Philadelphia.

sought to reduce illegitimate prescriptions, the street price of the painkillers soared, sending many users to relatively cheaper heroin, mostly imported from Mexico.

As users developed tolerances for the heroin, dealers in search of something cheaper and even stronger began mixing in illicit fentanyl — a synthetic drug that in its legal form is sometimes used in anesthesia to prevent surgical pain. Soon, even as overdoses spiked, countless drug abusers sought out the more powerful fentanyl-laced heroin, and thousands of users became hooked on the drug.

Amanda Bennett, 26, of Baltimore became addicted to opioids after she was prescribed oxycodone while recovering from an emergency C-section. Her addiction transitioned from pills to heroin, which then escalated to fentanyl-laced heroin.

“If there’s no fentanyl in it, I don’t want it at all.

I’m addicted to the fentanyl. If there’s no fentanyl in it, it doesn’t get me well at all,” Bennett said, using a phrase common to heroin users for how the drugs make them feel.

Bennett, whose two children, ages 7 and 4, live with their godmother, said she tried a 14-day rehab stay, but the pull of the drug was too strong. The first thing she did after getting out was get high.

“I made ’em bring me some. . . . I wasn’t ready,” she said. “This is all I know anymore. It’s all I know.”

Miami’s fentanyl problem came into stark view in July, when authorities released preliminary toxicology results showing that 10-yearold Alton Banks died in June from a combination of heroin and fentanyl. The state attorney there raised the possibility that Alton came into contact with the drugs at a community pool or on his walk home through a neighborhood known to be an illicit drug marketplace.

Because any contact with fentanyl can be deadly, some police departments send doctors with police on raids so they can treat officers if necessary. An officer in East Liverpool, Ohio,

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COVER STORY said he accidentally overdosed in May after a traffic stop when he used his hand to brush powdered fentanyl off his uniform.

While many of those overdosing on fentanyl specifically sought to use the drug, health providers and police officials say overdoses also occur among users who don’t know the powerful opioid was cut into their heroin — or even their cocaine.

Amber Snyder, 29, recalled a change in her father’s behavior during the last months of his life. Ray Snyder’s speech was slow and slurred, he wanted to sleep all day, his memory was shaky. Her father had been a substance abuser for as long as she could remember: alcohol, crack cocaine, heroin. But something this time was different.

The last night she saw him, she and her parents had ordered takeout from a Chicago Mediterranean restaurant, their Friday tradition. After dinner, Ray Snyder retreated to the basement, where he would often go to use drugs.

He was found dead several hours later.

An autopsy report from the Cook County medical examiner’s office revealed the truth to her: Ray Snyder, 46, died on Jan. 17, 2016, with cocaine and possibly heroin in his system. Also present: fentanyl.

“I expected to see cocaine. I expected perhaps to see heroin,” she said. “But I did not expect, at all, to see fentanyl.”

A hospital in New Haven, Conn., treated 12 overdoses, three of them fatal, in just an eighthour period in June 2016 among people who thought they were using cocaine they purchased on the city’s streets. The white powder turned out to be fentanyl. Overdose records in Philadelphia show that at least 162 people died there last year from a combination of fentanyl and cocaine, one such death almost every other day. In New York, which recorded more than 600 fentanyl-related fatal overdoses last year, at least 115 were due to cocaine and fentanyl combinations.

Authorities and experts believe the migration of fentanyl into other drug supplies portends major problems. Daniel Raymond, policy director for the Harm Reduction Coalition, said the fact that fentanyl is showing up in cocaine in New York means it almost certainly will be in suburban and rural areas, too.

“Fentanyl ending up in a lot of the cocaine supply and reaching relatively naive users would be a super dangerous thing,” Raymond said.

The illicit fentanyl often is imported directly from Chinese sources by mail or comes from Mexico, where the drug is manufactured using chemical compounds, experts and authorities said. Dealers then mix the powder into other drugs, making for imprecise potency in sometimes-lethal doses.

In Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, the medical examiner has raised concerns about overdose trends, blaming fentanyl-laced cocaine for a doubling of African American fentanyl deaths in the county last year. Cocaine users often aren’t aware they could encounter a dangerous opioid when they use.

Records show there were 10 fatal overdoses in Cleveland that included a combination of co-

Fatal fentanyl overdoses, by county New York City, N.Y.

600

Cook County, Ill.

500

Allegheny County, Pa. Philadelphia County, Pa. Cuyahoga County, Ohio Baltimore City, Md.

400

300

Miami-Dade County, Fla.

200

100

0

2014

2015

2016

Middlesex, Mass.

Washington D.C. Franklin County, Ohio Orange County, Fla. Maricopa County, Ariz.

Fairfax County, Va. Orange County, Calif.

Hennepin County, Minn.

San Diego County, Calif.

Clark County, Nev. Harris County, Tex. King County, Wash.

Dallas County, Tex. Tarrant County, Tex. Hillsborough County, Fla. Bexar County, Tex. Santa Clara, Calif.

Source: The Post requested fatal drug overdose data from 40 of the nation’s most populated counties and received data from 24 of them, shown above.

THE WASHINGTON POST

caine and fentanyl in 2014. Two years later, there were 141.

“You’d have to have been living under a rock to be using heroin and not know it might be tainted with fentanyl,” said Joseph Pinjuh, an assistant U.S. attorney in Cleveland, where he has run the office’s organized crime and drug enforcement task force since 1998. “The average cocaine user is totally unprepared for this.”

‘Don’t let me die’ Tyrone Tavasci kicked his 18-year-old daughter Emma out of his Orange County, Calif., home after finding out that she was using drugs, sending the teen to live with her boyfriend.

KLMNO WEEKLY

“I just said I was scared for her and didn’t want to see her going down the same path I went down,” said Tavasci, 45, who works in recovery services after his own battle with substance use. Just a month later, his daughter was begging him for help, and he got her into a rehabilitation center.

It didn’t work. Six months later, on July 22, 2016, the teenager was pronounced dead, her autopsy citing a cocktail of substances including cocaine, chemical traces of marijuana, two prescription drugs and fentanyl.

“She was aware of the risk of opiates,” he said. “She very much had an ‘I’m indestructible’ point of view, and when it comes to that stuff, it doesn’t discriminate.”

In Philadelphia, there are an estimated 70,000 heroin users, according to a mayoral task force working to combat the opioid epidemic. As fentanyl kills more drug users, the number of people seeking training on how to use naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug sold under the name Narcan, has increased, according to Elvis Rosado, who facilitates training in Kensington. Many want to use Narcan as a lifeline, knowing they might need it when they get high.

“You get individuals who come in, and the first thing they say is, ‘I want to be trained for Narcan,’ ” Rosado said. “And they will go and say to their friends before they use, ‘If anything happens, I have Narcan in my pocket.

Don’t let me die.’ ” ‘Why am I still alive?’

Most days, in the early mornings, Gutierrez gets his first hit of heroin free. Heroin has been sold in Kensington for decades, and the neighborhood, known colloquially as the Badlands, has a reputation for offering the purest kind.

The introduction of fentanyl has led to increased competition, and dealers now aim for the best price and the highest potency.

Some give away a little product as an enticement, but the samples come with a deadly catch, Gutierrez said. One bag out of the batch usually contains a lethal dose of fentanyl. If word of an overdose from the lethal bag spreads, drug users seek out the dealer — because they know that dealer has the strongest product, the best fix for the money.

Gutierrez said his friend overdosed and died in an abandoned building earlier this year from a lethal sample.

“They hit him with a hotshot,” he said. “The boy died instantly. He took his last breath sliding down the wall.”

Gutierrez returns here because he has to.

The pain of withdrawal is unbearable.

“Every bone in your body hurts,” he said. “You get hot and cold sweats. It is 90 degrees out here, but you’d be freezing with goose bumps. There is no middle ground.”

But as people die around him, he wonders why he survives.

“Some of the best kids come out here and do one bag and die. They don’t deserve it,” he said.

“Why am I still alive?” n © The Washington Post

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SCIENCE

United in a state of darkness BY

M ICHAEL E . R UANE

T

he centerline of Monday’s total solar eclipse comes ashore about 10 a.m. Pacific time on the rugged coast of Oregon near a place called Depoe Bay, where 40-ton gray whales spout and feed in the shallow water.

At 2,000 mph, the line, like one down the middle of a highway, streaks inland south of Salem.

It goes over an extinct volcano in Idaho, a Stonehenge-like sculpture of junked cars in Nebraska, and crosses the Missouri River blocks from where Jesse James was killed.

Weather permitting, the center of the 70-mile-wide band of totality will deliver the most seconds of complete eclipse, experts say, as it links a fractured country for one day on a path of history, geography and the racing shadow of the moon.

“When the Earth reminds us that there are tremendous forces out there beyond our control, it helps us to remember who we are,” said Cheri Ward, 56, who has a blueberry farm outside McClellanville, S.C., near the path’s center.

Along its 2,500-mile journey, the line crosses the winding Missouri River eight times.

It traverses the old steamboat port of Arrow Rock, Mo., home of painter George Caleb Bingham, who portrayed life on the river in the mid-1800s.

The line crosses the Cumberland River twice, and the Mississippi once at a coal terminal on the Illinois side, not far from where Elzie Crisler Segar, creator of the cartoon character Popeye, was born.

It passes Mantle Rock, Ky., where in 1836 hundreds of starving Cherokees waited to cross the Ohio River during their forced migration west on the “Trail of Tears.”

And it crosses the Oregon Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, the Appalachian Trail and the route of the Pony Express.

In Tennessee, it goes over Rome but skirts Athens, Sparta, Carthage, Lebanon and Macedonia.

In western North Carolina, it passes just south of the ancient oaks and poplars of the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, named

PHOTOS BY JANE ROSS/REUTERS

The eclipse’s path links a fractured nation along the trail of its story for the man who wrote the poem “Trees” and was killed in battle during World War I. I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree . . .

And it exits the country just before 3 p.m. Eastern time over Five Fathom Creek, in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, with its two aged lighthouses, northeast of Charleston, S.C. The line crosses baseball fields, golf courses, tennis courts, interstate highways, parking lots, driveways and cemeteries, including one in Hopkinsville, Ky., where the 20th-century mega-psychic CAN. Salem U.S. St. Louis Kansas City Nashville Charleston MEX. Source: NASA

THE WASHINGTON POST

Edgar Cayce is buried.

It passes places such as Massacre Mountain and Hell Canyon, Mosquito Creek and Tadpole Island, Dawg Patch Trail and Hound Dog Drive.

While the band of totality is miles wide, “it really matters how close you are to the center,” said Geneviève de Messières of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

“Along that centerline you have a better chance of experiencing the full glory of the eclipse,” she said.

One place that will see maximum time of totality, according to data complied on the website Eclipse-chasers.com, is the old railroad hamlet of Makanda, in southern Illinois.

Totality: more than 2 minutes 40 seconds.

The event has “taken a little town that’s not on anybody’s map to . . . the center of national conversation,” said Jeremy Schumacher, who works at the Eclipse Kitchen restaurant there.

Depoe Bay, Ore., will be the first city to experience Monday’s total solar eclipse.

Parking prices are set to match the demand of all the visitors who are expected, and T-shirts are for sale to commemorate the day.

Makanda, population about 600, now seems like “the center of the sun, and moon and Earth and everything,” he said.

This is the first coast-to-coast eclipse in the United States since 1918, the Smithsonian Institution said.

Millions of Americans are expected to converge on totality to observe, clog traffic and munch pancakes, barbecue and pizza.

Amtrak is running an Eclipse Express from Chicago south to Carbondale, Ill. Commemorative T-shirts and eclipse glasses by the thousands have been made.

Many schools will be closed, including at least one that has declared Aug. 21 “a snow day.”

Some locales are wary of the hordes of eclipsers, fearful that small communities and infrastructures will be overwhelmed by hungry people who also have to go to the bathroom.

Others see an opportunity to preach, make money or welcome visitors to forgotten waypoints of

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PETS Framing a town In 1852, renowned artist Bingham painted a picture titled “The County Election,” which is believed to be a portrait of Arrow Rock, Mo., where he had lived a decade before.

It’s a bustling scene outside a small-town polling place in Middle America in the mid-1800s, with politicking, inebriation and children playing in the dirt street.

It was one of many Bingham paintings of those times that portrayed a bygone world of stump speakers, fur traders and flatboatmen on the river.

Arrow Rock was then a thriving port of about 1,000 people on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River, and one of the first stops on what would become the Santa Fe Trail for settlers heading west.

“People would come across the river by ferry to Arrow Rock and rendezvous with the rest of their party, get supplied and head out,” said Sandy Selby, executive director of Friends of Arrow Rock.

(The centerline of the eclipse goes right over the friends’ headquarters on Main Street, netting 2 minutes and 39 seconds of totality.)

The town saw heavy river traffic, and Selby said that there is at least one steamboat wreck just offshore.

She said that experts have identified many local figures in “The County Election,” plus the white dog in the foreground, Scamp.

Then the Missouri moved.

“Every time it would flood, the river would change course a bit, and eventually it moved about a mile away,” she said.

Then came the railroads, but not to Arrow Rock, she said. The Civil War further hampered trade, and two big fires wrecked the business district. Many residents left.

Today, Arrow Rock’s population is 56, “on a good day,” she said.

But 13 of its buildings have been restored. The cottage that Bingham built in 1837 is part of the Arrow Rock State Historic Site.

And the whole village is a National Historic Landmark.

“We’ve found a new life as an historic venue . . . that really was unexpected and wonderful,” Selby said.

And now the eclipse.

“We’ve got someone coming in from Ireland,” she said. “We’ve got some people coming in from Cana-

Cosmic Carhenge On the high plains of northwest Nebraska, north of Alliance, where Army pilots trained in World War II, a mysterious circle of gray objects rises from the flat expanse of farmland.

The objects closely resemble Britain’s 4,000-year-old Stonehenge, a mystical place of pilgrimage for neo-druids, solstice watchers, and legions of tourists.

But this monument is made of 39 junked cars.

It’s Carhenge, perhaps the most cosmic spot in the country to watch the eclipse. And it has an impressive 2 minutes and 28 seconds of totality.

Carhenge was assembled in 1987 by Jim Reinders, the son of a Nebraska tenant farmer, to honor his late father, Hermann.

Reinders, 89, a retired oil industry engineer now living in Texas, resided in London in the 1970s and was fascinated by Stonehenge.

After his father died, he came up with the idea of Carhenge, and in June 1987, members of his family convened on land he had inherited from his father.

“With about 30 of us working at it, why, in one week later, we had Carhenge up and running,” he said.

A year later, he hired a painter to spray paint everything “Stonehenge gray,” he said.

Reinders plans to be at Carhenge on Monday, reportedly along with Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts and thousands of others.

But the creator of “Stonehenge west,” as he calls it, sees no mystical aspect to the eclipse.

“It’s an astronomical fact that’s been predicted for hundreds of years, and they know when the next one will be,” he said.

“I don’t see any significance to it whatsoever,” he said. “. . . Let’s enjoy it.” n © The Washington Post

WEEKLY

Does your pet need that quick-fix diet?

da. . . . We’ve had people calling from all over. They want to be here.

Or they want to be somewhere on the line.”

“If you’re coming from Ireland, you don’t want to be a mile away from the line,” she said. “You want to be on the line.

“My hope is that when it happens, that people will be quiet,” she said. “That for 2 minutes and 39 seconds we’ll have silence, and we’ll take that time to just reflect on how special this is.”

BY

J ENNA G ALLEGOS

T “Claims like no gluten, no grains and no soy generally mean no science.”

Cailin R. Heinze, Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine

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American history and landscape.

KLMNO

he majority of pet cats and dogs in the United States are overweight or obese.

As with our own dieting woes, the unpleasant but simple solution — feeding pets less — makes a lot of people reach for alternative, quick-fix strategies.

Many pet owners have turned to radically new menus. These grainfree, all-meat or raw-food diets are inspired by meals eaten by wild relatives of pet Fidos and Felixes.

But are these diets really better for pets? Veterinarians and pet researchers say probably not.

According to clinical veterinary nutritionists at Tufts University, grain-free foods were one of the fastest-growing sectors of the pet food market in 2016. “All I ever hear is, oh, on a good diet, it’s grain-free,” said Dena Lock, a veterinarian in Texas. The majority of her pet patients are overweight.

Why have these pet diets become so popular?

“Grain-free is marketing. It’s only marketing,” said Cailin R. Heinze, a small-animal nutritionist at Tufts’ Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.

People think that if they pay a lot for food and there are a lot of exclusions on the bag, the food is healthier, but “they’re buying an idea,” said Jennifer A. Larsen, a clinical nutritionist at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, “not necessarily a superior product.”

There is absolutely no data to support the idea that grain-free diets are better for pets, Heinze and Larsen noted.

Some owners have a false impression that grains are more likely to cause an allergic reaction, but “it’s much more common for dogs to have allergies to meat than to grain,” Heinze said.

Chicken, beef, eggs, dairy and wheat are the most common allergies in dogs. And it’s not that there is anything particularly allergenic about these foods, she said — they are just the most

frequently used ingredients.

Some marketing campaigns claim grain-free, meat-forward formulations better reflect the ancestral diets of dogs’ and cats’ evolutionary predecessors, but veterinarians question this logic.

For one, pets’ wild cousins are not all that healthy. “People believe that nature is best,” Larsen said, but “animals in the wild don’t live that long, and they don’t lead very healthy lives.”

Dogs have diverged from ancestral wolves genetically in their ability to digest starches. “Dogs aren’t wolves,” said Robert Wayne, a canine geneticist at UCLA. “They have adapted to a human diet.”

Research in Wayne’s lab showed that most wolves carry two copies of a gene involved in starch digestion, while dogs have between three and 29 copies. According to Heinze, the average dog can easily handle 50 percent of its diet as carbs.

For cats, the argument against carbohydrate consumption makes a little more sense. Cats are carnivores rather than omnivores, so they have higher protein requirements than dogs. But “cats can digest and utilize carbohydrates quite well,” said Andrea Fascetti of the UC Davis veterinary school.

People want their pets to enjoy what they’re eating, so many foods and especially treats are formulated to be high in fat, Larsen said. A milk bone has about as many calories as a candy bar, Lock said.

But studies have found that feeding dogs to maintain a lean body weight has positive effects on their overall health and can even increase life span. “We believe that these findings apply to cats, as well,” Fascetti said.

When it comes to navigating marketing claims in the pet food aisle, Lock suggests finding a company that employs a veterinary nutritionist and does feeding trials. Try not to get too hung up on “the no list,” Heinze said. “Claims like no gluten, no grains and no soy generally mean no science.” n © The Washington Post

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BOOKS

Why humans do what they do N ONFICTION l REVIEWED

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BEHAVE The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

By Robert M. Sapolsky Penguin Press. 790 pp. $35

BY

D INA T EMPLE- R ASTON

have a weakness for science made simple. This could be because I am just finishing up the first season of a podcast that explores how adolescents make decisions and how parts of their developing brains may play an outsize role in those choices. For three years now I have been struggling through medical research and wrestling with complicated readings only to find out that what I really needed was Robert M. Sapolsky and his latest book, “Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.”

If you ever thought that neuroscience was deathly boring or too complicated for pleasurable reading, “Behave” will change your mind. Sapolsky is so immensely comfortable explaining complicated things in accessible ways, more than once you’ll feel he’s pulling you aside to whisper, “Don’t worry, this isn’t as difficult to understand as you thought.” (It is, by the way, as difficult as you thought; it is only in Sapolsky’s capable hands that you’ll allow yourself to be temporarily convinced otherwise.)

A professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, Sapolsky brings together a basket of scientific disciplines to tackle a fundamental mystery: What drives humans to harm each other or help each other? He finds the answers in our biology and takes readers on a journey through the nervous system, hormones, evolution and environment to make his argument.

“On a certain level the biology underlying the teenaged mugger is similar to that of the teen who joins the Ecology Club and donates his allowance to help save the mountain gorillas,” Sapolsky writes. “It’s the usual — heightened emotional intensity, craving for peer approval, novelty seeking, and oh, that frontal

cortex. But that’s where similarities end.”

In a chapter titled “Adolescence; or Dude, Where’s My Frontal Cortex?” — that title alone should assure you that this is not your mother’s neuroscience — Sapolsky moves briskly from the changing frontal cortex (it is, by the way, fully developed in adolescence, it just isn’t very efficient) to the neurological and environmental underpinnings of adolescent behavior in all its forms.

“Every hiccup of experience has an effect, albeit usually a miniscule one, on that brain,” he writes. “Violent criminals are more likely than nonviolent ones to have witnessed violence as kids,” and “exposing children to a violent TV or film clip increases their odds of aggression soon after. Interestingly, the effect is stronger in girls.”

Those kinds of experiences, Sapolsky writes, aren’t universal but rather make the strongest impression on kids who are already prone toward violence.

The book is filled with geeky anecdotes that Sapolsky clearly

derives pleasure in telling. He tell us that culture shapes our attitudes about success, morality and even love — no surprise there — but then he adds that research shows culture also has an effect on sensory perception.

All interesting stuff, but the book’s greatest contribution may be in laying to rest many assumptions we’d made about why we do what we do. Consider the muchballyhooed “warrior gene,” the one that allegedly predisposes those who carry it to violence.

Sapolsky explains that the supposed links between aggression and the MAO-A “warrior” gene are far from proven, and he muses that “amazingly, prison sentences for murders have now been lessened in at least two cases because it was argued that the criminal having the ‘warrior gene’ variant of MAO-A was inevitably fated to be uncontrollably violent. OMG.” (Yes, the OMG is Sapolsky’s, not mine.)

Sapolsky also leaves little surprises for his readers in the footnotes, which read like injokes from the lab.

“By the way, what does mouse

anxiety look like?” Sapolsky writes in one. “Mice dislike bright lights and open spaces — go figure, for a nocturnal animal that lots of species like to eat. So one measure of mouse anxiety is how long it takes for a mouse to go into the center of a brightly lit area to get some food.”

The only hesitation is that science, by its very nature, is provisional and Sapolsky is depending on research that may already be overcome by events.

The fields of psychology and neuroscience have been in upheaval in the past five years as new discoveries begin to cast doubt on what was once thought to be irrefutable.

That said, for any layperson trying to understand why we behave the way we do, Sapolsky has created an immensely readable, often hilarious romp through the multiple worlds of psychology, primatology, sociology and neurobiology. n Temple-Raston has been NPR’s counterterrorism correspondent for a decade. This was written for The Washington Post.

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AWOL in Baghdad to pay last respects

Soldier, aristocrat and great dancer

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REVIEWED BY

B RIAN C ASTNER

n the deluge of Iraq Warthemed books that appeared in 2012, David Abrams’s “Fobbit” was known as the funny one. Drawn from his experience as an Army public affairs officer, it tells the story of the “marshmallow” soldiers confined to base, writing news releases about a war they never see.

But funny was always the wrong word for that novel. “Fobbit” is clever and absurd, but too earnest for carefree guffaws, full of biting if-you-don’t-laugh-you-cry satire. In interviews, Abrams often said that he was not primarily a humorist and that “Fobbit” was an outlier.

He has proved that in his new novel, which is only rarely funny, though still plenty earnest and affecting. Set at the height of the Iraq War, “Brave Deeds” is the story of six soldiers sneaking across the suburbs of Baghdad to attend the memorial service of their beloved platoon sergeant, Rafe Morgan, who was killed by a car bomb. Assigned to quick reaction force (QRF) duty during the ceremony, they go AWOL instead and steal a Humvee to drive across town to the base where the service will be held.

The war is just happening to these young men, who serve on the lowest rung in the Army hierarchy, and, as implausible as it might be, this quest is their chance to regain some agency.

The whole novel is written in collective first-personal plural.

The six members of the unit are all screw-ups in their own way — a porn addict, an adulterer, a semisuicidal Piggy from “Lord of the Flies” — but together, they add up to more than the sum of their parts. “Our breath slows until we are, without realizing it, inhaling and exhaling as one twelve-legged animal,” the squad says. The “we” of the squad is the union of their better selves, capable of acts of physical courage and emotional truth that none of them could achieve individually. They imag-

ine how it will be when they finally get to the memorial service: a dramatic entrance, “standing at the back of a church, all heads swiveling.” They’ll “march down the aisle, smelling of dust,” they say, and “there will be gasps of surprise, of admiration, of anger.” The squad is a pack of Tom Sawyers, going to their own funeral, which is right, because without Sgt. Morgan, part of the “we” will forever be dead.

“Brave Deeds” takes place in a single afternoon, a five-hour sprint across enemy territory, though with regular and often momentum-sapping flashbacks to flesh out each squad member’s backstory.

The soldiers are foulmouthed, sex-obsessed and fiercely loyal for reasons they can’t quite articulate — in other words, packed with young American male authenticity. Abrams’s prose is relaxed and conversational, with a few scattered literary nuggets that add heft, like chunks of beef in a vegetable soup. The mash-up works, and Abrams’s voice is clear and strong.

In the climactic final scene, though, Abrams attempts to braid thematic strands of death and rebirth and religious communion, never quite attaining the emotional heights to which he aspires. But the central irony — that this funeral is more important to them than any mission their squad has undertaken — remains front and center.

In the Iraq War, we veterans eventually realized that they were killing us mostly because we were killing them, and the reverse as well. It’s a cycle cruelly laid bare in “Brave Deeds,” where Abrams reminds us that death always begets more death. n Castner, a former Air Force officer, is the author of three books, including “The Long Walk.” His new book, “Disappointment River,” will be published in the spring. This was published for The Washington Post.

T BRAVE DEEDS

By David Abrams.

Black Cat. 256 pp. Paperback, $16

RIDING WITH GEORGE Sportsmanship & Chivalry in the Making of America’s First President

By Philip G. Smucker Chicago Review Press.

362 pp. $26.99

BY

D AVID S TEWART

he book “Riding With George” gently confronts the marble, ossified immensity of the historical George Washington and strives to reveal the human side of America’s most legendary figure. Author Philip G. Smucker’s affable tour of the haunts of our first president succeeds rather well at this daunting task.

Smucker, a journalist and a (very) distant relative of the great George, deftly sprinkles modernday encounters through an often thoughtful consideration of who Washington actually was. By emphasizing the social and recreational pastimes at which Washington excelled — notably, dancing and horsemanship (and its relative, fox-hunting) — the book connects those activities with his astonishing career. In those public displays, Washington modestly yet unmistakably showcased his mastery and sheer physical grace, which reinforced his leadership as a general and a politician.

To hone his historical insights, Smucker turned to many experts, including a genealogist in Virginia’s Westmoreland County, where Washington was born, archaeologists at Washington’s boyhood home in Fredericksburg and scholars at Virginia’s restored colonial capital at Williamsburg.

The author also visited a reenactment of the Battle of the Monongahela, where British Gen. Edward Braddock led some 1,300 soldiers (including Washington) into a brutal slaughter inflicted largely by Indian fighters.

Not every attempt to connect the past to the present works out.

The book’s title promises a horseback tour of Washingtonrelated places, but the author was rarely mounted. Twenty-firstcentury land development patterns in the East offered no opportunity for intense horseback travel of the sort favored by Washington, who could cover 100 miles in two days.

Smucker brings his own insights to Washington’s story, connecting Mary Washington’s apparent love of horses with her famous son’s equestrian excellence, while shrewdly stressing the importance to his success of Washington’s aristocratic neighbors, the Fairfax family. Through their invaluable sponsorship, plus their tutelage in the fine points of deportment, Washington hauled himself out of the third rank of Virginia landowners and into continental prominence.

Smucker even offers a sympathetic explanation of the young Washington’s cringe-inducing report from his first battle that he found something “charming” in the sound of bullets whistling through the air.

Based on his own experiences covering combat zones, Smucker defends his illustrious forebear’s remark, insisting that the adrenaline rush of war can produce responses like Washington’s.

Smucker is not a slavish apologist. He acknowledges that the young Washington could be bumptious, unwise or disrespectful, and that there was an increasing gap at the end of Washington’s life between his aristocratic ways and the emerging egalitarian manners of the American republic.

Yet, unlike some who undertake literary tours through historical landmarks, Smucker maintains an affectionate attitude toward his subject, not a mocking or ironic one. That attitude is all the more remarkable for a man whose parents sometimes chastised him to “start acting a little more like George Washington.”

Such remarks could have soured a person on George Washington for life. n Stewart is the author of “Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America” and “The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution.” This was written for The Washington Post.

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OPINIONS

Permanent peace treaty may solve N. Korea crisis DAVID IGNATIUS writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

After weeks of belligerent rhetoric, North Korea took a pause Tuesday. But where is the mercurial Kim Jong Un headed next? U.S. officials are debating whether he may want direct talks with Washington about a formal treaty to replace the 1953 armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. The United States has been pursuing a dual path, threatening military conflict (semi­believably because of President Trump’s verbal thunderbolts) while also urging stabilization of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. The diplomatic trick here is simultaneously reassuring North Korea, China, South Korea and Japan that their vital interests would be protected.

This process of negotiation was hinted at last Sunday by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, they warned North Korea to “take a new path toward peace, prosperity and international acceptance,” or face increased isolation.

Tillerson’s one, fuzzy condition for negotiations has been that Pyongyang demonstrate its seriousness by halting missile and nuclear tests.

Arguably, Kim took a grudging step in that direction Tuesday, when the Korean Central News Agency announced that he had decided to “watch a little more the foolish and stupid conduct of the Yankees,” rather than carry out his threat to launch four ballistic missiles toward Guam.

Kim’s problem in the escalating crisis has been that he faces a united front from the United States and China — backed by South Korea, Japan and Russia. Beijing has joined Washington in calling for denuclearization and supporting additional U.N. sanctions, including a ban on new Chinese imports of North Korean coal,

iron ore and lead.

Grateful for Chinese help, the Trump administration appears to have backed off its threat to sharply limit Chinese steel exports and to have shelved measures that could affect Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent. Instead, the administration on Monday called for an investigation of China’s alleged theft of technology and trade secrets — a serious problem for U.S. companies but not one that requires an immediate penalty.

Trump’s rhetoric has been almost as volatile as Kim’s, ranging from his statement in May that he would be “honored” to meet the dictator to his warning the other week of “fire and fury.” But the centerline of this crisis is the same question that has vexed U.S. policy for decades — how to deal with a rogue nation that delights in defying international norms and now does so with nuclear weapons.

One approach to the North Korea riddle is the possibility of a peace agreement. The armistice specified that it was only a “cessation of hostilities . . . until a

KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY/REUTERS

North Koreans visit the statues of former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il on the 72nd anniversary of national liberation.

final peaceful settlement is achieved.” North Korean propaganda describes the document as “an abject declaration of surrender.” But the regime understands that it’s a hinge point, too. Pyongyang announced suspension of the armistice at least three times, in 2003, 2009 and 2013 — only to return to observing its precepts.

As U.S. officials ponder the path of negotiation that might lead to a permanent treaty, they have signaled several basic American positions: First, the United States would offer assurances to North Korea that its regime wouldn’t be toppled; second, it would guarantee the security of South Korea, a close U.S. ally; third, Washington would pledge not to seek any quick reunification of the Korean Peninsula, reassuring China and Japan, which fear a unified, resurgent Korea; and finally, the United States would express willingness to discuss the future status of its military presence in South Korea, if a peace agreement proved durable.

Tillerson has already publicly offered the first three assurances.

The fourth is the most delicate, because all parties recognize

that, for now, U.S. troops are an essential stabilizing force, curbing not just Pyongyang but also greater militarization in Seoul and Tokyo.

Though North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program is often seen as a matter of regime survival, some U.S. officials are skeptical of that rationale. After all, conventional deterrence — in the form of hundreds of North Korean artillery and rocket launchers that target Seoul — has checked any attack on Pyongyang for three generations of Kims.

B.R. Myers, whose 2010 book “The Cleanest Race” is being closely read by U.S. officials, argues that North Korea isn’t really a communist regime but one propelled by right-wing talk of Korean racial purity. Its goal may be the “victory” and unification it failed to achieve in 1953.

A Chinese-American partnership has helped move this crisis back from the brink.

But that’s a sideshow for Kim. The encounter he may truly want is with the dealmaker himself, President Trump. For that showdown, you could sell tickets. n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Engage with radicalized youths SCOTT ATRAN is co-founder of Artis International, author of “Talking to the Enemy” and an anthropologist who holds positions at the University of Michigan, University of Oxford and France’s National Center for Scientific Research.

He wrote this for The Washington Post.

The violence in Charlottesville last weekend may seem new to some Americans: A white supremacist terrorizing protesters with his car, killing and maiming nearly at random. But in fact, the scene is painfully familiar, recalling recent attacks by vehicles in London, Nice and Berlin — all inspired by the Islamic State.

In the days since, members of the Charlottesville community have grappled with what could have been done to prevent the incident. As the attacker’s former high school teacher said: “I admit I failed. I tried my best. But this is definitely a teachable moment and something we need to be vigilant about, because this stuff is tearing up our country.”

Indeed, the values of liberal and open democracy appear to be losing ground around the world to those of narrow, xenophobic ethno-nationalisms and radical Islam — similar to attacks on republican values by fascists and communists in the 1920s and 1930s.

But this is not a “clash of civilizations”; it’s a collapse of communities. Ethno-nationalist violent extremism — as well as jihadi terrorism — represent not the resurgence of traditional cultures but their unraveling.

Young people unmoored from millennial traditions flail about in search of a social identity that gives personal significance.

This is the dark side of globalization. Individuals radicalize while seeking identity

in an increasingly flattened world. We have replaced vertical lines of communication between generations with horizontal peerto-peer attachments that can span the globe, but paradoxically within ever-narrower channels for information. Without broad awareness and serious effort at guidance, we risk fanning violent passions to our likely detriment and that of others.

The “creative destruction” of our market-based economy, which forces people to gamble on innovation and change, often comes at steep social cost, especially for communities and regions that have little time to adapt. New institutions eclipse spiritual values of traditional communities, long-standing cultures and religions. Anxiety

and alienation along prevailing political fault lines often erupt in the form of redemptive violence.

Humanist philosopher Erich Fromm argued that social disruption leads people to seek stability in authoritarian systems, such as fascism, Nazism and Stalinism.

My research team’s ongoing work on radicalization among young people seems to confirm this. In Hungary, we find that youths today strongly support the government’s call for restoring the “national cohesion” of the country’s former fascist, pro-Nazi regime. And in Iraq, we find nearly all young people we interview who are coming out from under Islamic State rule in Mosul initially welcomed it for stability and security amid the chaos after the U.S. invasion.

In the West, left-leaning working-class communities disadvantaged by economic globalization and right-leaning defenders of cultural ideals threatened by multicultural globalism have joined populist movements that reaffirm the primacy of the nation-state. They reject international alliances and abhor political correctness and the push for cultural diversity. In other parts of the world, transnational terrorist movements have enabled violent

groups to reach increasingly marginalized immigrant communities.

Fearful of the chauvinism and xenophobia that fed two world wars, many Western leaders and members of the media simply denounce as “bigoted” or “racist” the concern with national identity or cultural preference.

But across cultures, the strongest forms of primary group identity are bounded by sacred values, such as an unwillingness to sell out one’s religion or one’s country at any cost. Such devotion leads some groups to prevail despite having considerably less firepower and manpower than the state armies and police forces they oppose.

The resolution of these seemingly intractable conflicts requires intimate and long-term commitment to exploring the limits of one’s own tolerance and respect. As one imam who formerly recruited for the Islamic State told me: “The young who came to us were not to be lectured at like witless children; we have to give them a better, positive message.”

We need a strategy to redirect radicalized youth by engaging with their passions, rather than simply ignoring or fearing or satisfying ourselves by denouncing them. n

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OPINIONS

BY WASSERMAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Honest talk on race is not allowed GARY ABERNATHY is publisher and editor of the Times-Gazette in Hillsboro, Ohio, and is a regular contributor to The Washington Post.

We’ve all heard commentators and pundits through the years claim that what the United States needs is “an honest conversation about race.”

But whenever those conversations happen, they quickly devolve into accusations of racism — a word with a definition that has expanded to cover any expression that veers from left-wing dogma on the issue.

Racism — the belief that an entire race of people is inherently inferior, or superior, to another race of people — is abhorrent.

That is the kind of racism represented by the white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville last weekend, drawing crowds of counterprotesters, leading to violent confrontations and, eventually, a murderous assault with a vehicle and a tragic helicopter accident.

By contrast, simply disagreeing with affirmative action programs, or supporting a crackdown on crime, or wanting to rein in government spending on domestic programs, or opposing sanctuary cities, is not racism.

You can argue that these positions are wrong, but they are not inherently racist.

When the news broke about the Charlottesville violence, everyone knew what was coming next. The Blame Trump Brigade,

always at the ready, would spring forth, predictable as April dandelions. The president didn’t respond on Saturday within the prescribed time limit, and he then didn’t use the right words, critics said. But if his detractors were being honest, they would admit that if Trump had read a statement saying exactly what they wanted — as he basically did Monday — they would still lay the events at his feet.

When we try to have conversations about race that veer from the approved talking points, conservatives are accused of using “dog whistles” — words or phrases designed to appeal to white bigotry. I had to look up some websites to find examples, because I missed dog-whistle class. Among common dog whistles allegedly used by Republicans are: “states’ rights,” apparently designed to oppose federal civil rights initiatives; “law and order,” a secret signal to

BY DANA SUMMERS

crack down on low-income or minority neighborhoods; and “family values,” a phrase determined by the left to be an attack on gays and lesbians. I won’t, for instance, deny that the concept of states’ rights has been a rationale used in the past by people with ill intent, but the concept can be a legitimate one, too, for issues such as education.

I was visited recently by a professor of anthropology who mentioned that he had, in his travels though the Midwest, encountered a handful of people who displayed the Confederate battle flag. He told me, with a sense of surprise, “They really don’t see it as a racist thing. They see it as a sign of independence.”

I understand why the Confederate flag is offensive, and I don’t think anyone should display it. No matter what else it once stood for, it stood for the right to own slaves. I agree with its removal from public buildings and grounds, along with other memorials that seem to celebrate a time when owning slaves was acceptable.

Further, I don’t agree with the idea of the Justice Department investigating affirmative action programs at universities under the theory that they might discriminate against whites. But many on the left would define me

as racist because I’m a Trump supporter — even though, like anyone who supports any politician, I don’t support everything he says or does.

The white supremacists who gathered in Charlottesville last weekend understood completely the offensive nature of the symbols they were fighting to maintain and proudly spouted their usual venom. There’s no apology for their hate.

But an honest conversation about race, if we could have it, would differentiate between the small, fringe groups of racists in this country and others who have no malice toward anyone but hold different points of view on various race-related issues.

An honest conversation about race might help the left understand that many of the people they call racists are not that at all, even if they don’t prescribe to all the standard liberal solutions. And it might help the right to understand why some of their ambivalence or insensitivities — including some of the president’s remarks — are seen as offensive by many.

But with no such discussion allowed, everyone retreats to their corners, and the entrenched accusations continue and amplify, with no progress toward bridging the gulf that divides us. n

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FIVE MYTHS

Golf BY

L EONARD S HAPIRO

Many Americans could take golf or leave it. With the president in the midst of a vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., it seems a good moment to debunk some of the myths about this game.

MYTH NO. 1 Trump is the best and most passionate presidential golfer.

Judging from Trump’s first six months in office, when he spent about 20 percent of his time at one of his golf clubs, he could set the record for total rounds played by a president if he manages to serve two terms.

Then again, there’s no official Trump tally, because the White House press office won’t say when he plays.

As for his skill level, his claim of having a 2.8 handicap index — meaning he’d generally shoot in the mid-70s on a par 72 course — surely qualifies as serious fake news. According to a recent story in Sports Illustrated, Trump’s handicap index is artificially low, mostly because he doesn’t always play by the rules. “Trump will sometimes respond to a shot he duffed [hit poorly] by simply playing a second ball and carrying on as if the first shot never happened,” according to SI writer Alan Shipnuck. In the same article, four-time major championship winner Ernie Els, who has known Trump for many years, estimated that he’s closer to an 8- or 9-handicapper, usually shooting in the respectable low 80s. By comparison, John F. Kennedy shot in the high 70s and low 80s, despite back problems that limited his swing and participation.

Dwight Eisenhower, may have been the most passionate presidential golfer. He scored in the high 80s, played an estimated 800 rounds, was a member of Augusta National Golf Club and frequently teed it up with his friend Arnold Palmer.

MYTH NO. 2 Golf is a sport for white elites.

According to the National Golf Foundation, 75 percent of the courses in the United States are public, and the average peakseason fee at those courses is $38.

Annual memberships at private clubs can run in the four and five digits, with initiation fees going even higher. But the vast majority of private clubs also have nondiscrimination policies.

A major shift began in 1990, when civil rights groups protested the hosting of the PGA Championship at Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., because it didn’t have any black members. In the wake of that controversy, the PGA of America (which conducts the PGA Championship), the separate PGA Tour and the U.S. Golf Association let it be known that no club that discriminated on the basis of race, religion or gender would be allowed to host their tournaments.

When Tiger Woods turned pro in 1996, Nike released its iconic “Hello World” ad, which included the line: “There are still courses in the U.S. I am not allowed to play because of the color of my skin.” Twenty years later, those places are truly few and far between.

MYTH NO. 3 Tiger Woods is golf ’s all-time greatest player.

Comparing players from different eras is always dicey, although a case could certainly be made that Woods took his sport into its greatest era of popularity with his stunning play over the first dozen years of his brilliant career.

Woods has won 14 major championships and 79 tournaments. He first reached No. 1 in the world rankings in

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

From left, Reps. Herbert Taylor (N.J.), Albert Vestal (Ind.) and William Coyle (Pa.) at the Chevy Chase Club in 1926.

June 1997, less than a year after he turned pro. He claims the most total weeks and most consecutive weeks in that position, including from August 1999 to September 2004 (264 weeks) and from June 2005 to October 2010 (281 weeks).

But Woods, now 41, hasn’t won a major since 2008 and hasn’t won on the PGA Tour since 2013.

The debate over the greatest golfer of all time always centers on the number of major championships won. Jack Nicklaus has 18, the last at age 46 in the 1986 Masters.

MYTH NO. 4 Golf takes too long to play.

Yes, an 18-hole round usually averages four hours, but there are plenty of ways to enjoy the game in about the same amount of time as other leisurely pursuits — the gym, a movie, a couple of sets of tennis. Instead of 18 holes, just play nine. Go to a shorter executive or par-3 course and be done in a couple of hours. Hitting a bucket of balls at a driving range, then spending a half-hour on the practice putting green,

will do wonders for your game.

Miniature golf might help your putting stroke. And for a fun night, some high-tech practice facilities include target games for all ages and skill levels using microchipped balls.

MYTH NO. 5 Golf is inherently bad for the environment.

The major golfing bodies have established partnerships with leading national and local environmental groups. They have worked to cultivate disease and pest-resistant turf grasses, establish organic-turf courses, develop water conservation strategies, and protect habitat for native plant and wildlife species.

It still may not be a great idea to place a golf course in a drought-prone area. But golf and the environment don’t have to be in conflict. n Shapiro retired from The Washington Post in 2011 after 41 years as a sports reporter, editor and columnist. He covered professional golf for 20 years and is a past president of the Golf Writers Association of America.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 20, 2017

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