The Washington Post National Weekly - December 23, 2018

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2018

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As societal standards of manhood loom, a father wants his son to

Break expectations PAGE 12

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THE FIXTHE FIX

Effect of Trump’s unpredictability Effect of Trump’s unpredictability D AN B ALZ

roiled relationships, he has gotten roiledbut relationships, but the he has gotten the attention of China, whose of policies been attention China,have whose policies have been criticized by pastcriticized presidents in and leaders in resident Trump resident pledged in his camby and past leaders presidents Trump pledged in his camother nations for other years.nations For that,for other nations paign that he would notthat be predictable. years.

For that, other nations paign he would not be predictable. are no doubt grateful, if no one is certain He’s more than lived to that promise are noeven doubt grateful, even if no one is certain He’sup more than lived up to that promise how the ongoinghow dispute will be resolved or be resolved or this week, and along the way, has the way, he has the ongoing dispute will this week, andhe along when. made a hash out made of theaway is being when. hashbusiness out of the way business is being But the turmoil that goesturmoil along with done in Washington.

But the that those goes along with those done in Washington. successes has badly strained system, and the system, and Three times this week, abruptly successes hasthe badly strained Three Trump times this week,and Trump abruptly and the past few daysthe have highlighted that reality unexpectedly changed course,changed lending course, crepast few days have highlighted that reality unexpectedly lending creonce again. The path has followed pursuit dence to perceptions of to a presidency onceheagain.

The pathinhe has followed in pursuit dence perceptionsinofchaos. a presidency in chaos. of $5 billion in funding for a border wall in The biggest bombshell came bombshell Thursday afterof $5 billion in funding forthe a border wall in the The biggest came Thursday afterlatest spending bill is emblematic of is hisemblematic unornoon, when Trump announced that announced Defense latest spending bill of his unornoon, when Trump that Defense JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON thodox — POST some thodox would call it destructive — it destructive — Secretary Jim Mattis wouldJim leave the adminis— some would call Secretary Mattis would leave the administration at the end of February, andofMattis’s Trump announced that Defense tration at the end February, President and Mattis’s President Trump announced thatgoverning Defense style. governing style. president’s explanation for the decision for the decision resignation letterresignation explicitly stated he and Secretary Jim Mattis would Jim leave in February.

The president’s explanation letterthat explicitly stated that he and Secretary Mattis would leave inThe February. to withdraw troops from Syriatroops went through a went through a the president were in alignment on major to withdraw from Syria thenot president were not in alignment on major of rewritings.

Trump’s initial tweet stat-initial tweet statthose whose advice he whose has spurned policy issues or on America’s in America’s the world.roleincluding series of rewritings.

Trump’s including those advice heseries has spurned policy issuesrole or on in the world. ed thatby thehis Islamic also knownState, as ISIS, words or have beenwords shredded his shredded The Mattis news The rattled nerves in Washinged State, that the Islamic also known as ISIS, whose have by been Mattis news rattled nervesorinwhose Washinghad been defeated in Syria and that that wasand that that was actions.

In this case, it appeared to have cost ton and no doubtton in capitals around the world. had been defeated in Syria actions. In this case, it appeared to have cost and no doubt in capitals around the world. why the troops could home.

In doing him the services histhe defense secretary.

It came at the endItofcame another roller-coaster dayroller-coaster why come the troops could comeso, home. In doing so, him services of his defense secretary. at the end of another day of he ignored statements over months from oth-months from othGive the some Hissome goalscredit. that began with Trump, for the second time a second he ignored statements over Give the credit. president His goals that began with Trump, forinthe time in president a ers U.S.-Mexiin his administration offered contrary remain fixed. He wants a wall the U.S.-Mexiweek, reversing course fundingcourse for a border ers in histhat administration that offered contrary remain fixed.on He wants a wall on the week, on reversing on funding for a border analysis andofcommitments.

While the IslamicWhile the Islamic co border, or at co least he wants issue of wall. He demanded Congress include analysis and commitments. border, or at the least he wants the issue wall. that He demanded that Congress include State has who sufferedState significant losses significant of territorylosses of territory demanding one todemanding use againstone Democrats, who Democrats, funds for the wall, justfor as the a compromise has suffered to use against funds wall, just asbill a compromise bill Syria, other administration say, it officials say, it oppose theitswall.oppose He wants robust the in without the money he wants was making its was in Syria, otherofficials administration the the wall.most He wants most robust without the money he wants making has not beentodefeated. military in the butinhethe doesn’t to doesn’t way through Congress in an effort to avert a effort has not been defeated. military world,seem but he seem way through Congress in an to avert a world,

By Thursday, asked, “Does the asked, USA “Does the USA want to use it. want He has in consistent government shutdown.

By Thursday, Trump to been use it.consistent He has been in Trump government shutdown. to be the of the Eastof. .the . Middle East . . . questioning of U.S. forces in of want Trump’s allies were already reeling from the reeling want to be the Middle Policeman questioning the commitment U.S. forces in Policeman Trump’s allies were already from thethe commitment we want to be there for forever? others Time for others trouble spots such as Syria andsuch Afghanistan. announcement Wednesday that he was orderDo weforever? want to Time be there trouble spots as Syria and Do Afghanistan. announcement Wednesday that he was orderto finally Onfrom national policy, hesecurity remains a rhe-he remains ing the withdrawal U.S. troops from Syria. to finally fight.”

On national policy, a fight.” rheingof the withdrawal of U.S. troops Syria.security Mattis made clear in hismade resignation torically muscular noninterventionist.

On this announcement, was no warning Mattis clear inletter his resignation letter torically muscular noninterventionist.

On thisthere announcement, there was no warning thatinhe and the president do not see eye to eye However consistent he hasconsistent been in enuncito U.S. allies or to members of Congress, includthat he and the president do not see eye to eye However he has been enuncito U.S. allies or to members of Congress, includrising threats on from Russia and from ChinaRussia or on and China or on ating goals,—though, has not shown ing many in his party who opposed the who moveopposed — rising threats atinghegoals, though, hemuch has not on shown much ing many in his party the move the process importance maintaining solidarity “the solidarity mastery of navigating the legislative process or no warning even to in his administration. importance“the of maintaining mastery of navigating the legislative or ofthe nosome warning even to some in his administration. of for ourhis alliances.” a from allies for his for-allies Trump is, by hisTrump own words, dealmaker ofHis ourdeparture alliances.”will Hisleave departure will leave a of developing support from foris, by ahis own words, of a developing dealmaker support sizable voidbyin the administration’s national eign policyhis objectives.

He leads by impulse, by by without peer, butwithout his volatility his overwhelms sizable void in the administration’s national eign policy objectives.

He leads impulse, peer,overwhelms but his volatility and, apparatus more significantly, upending the status quo, leaving friends reliability. He demonstrated this week anew security and, more significantly, upending the status quo,and leavingsecurity friends apparatus and reliability. Heanew demonstrated this week point to the potential forthe more chaos in to scramble. that he can change at any moment. point to potential forthe more chaos in the adversaries to scramble. thathis hemind can change his mind at adversaries any moment. months ahead. is up not an This entirely unsuccessful ap-unsuccessful Those around him are left to adapt, is not an entirely ap- n months ahead. n Those around him to arepick left up to adapt,This to pick His—tradeproach. policies, example, have the pieces, to explain as best they canas —best proach. ©The Washington Post Hisfortrade policies, for example, have the pieces, to explain they can ©The Washington Post BY

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OPINIONS

The Zinke legacy: Failing his main responsibilities COLLIN O’MARA is president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation. This was written for The Washington Post.

Secretaries of the interior have a sacred obligation to stew­ ard America’s public lands, tribal commitments, wildlife heritage and natural resources to ensure they endure for future generations — responsibilities more important than ever in the face of cascading climate impacts.

Most of the articles about Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s resignation have focused on investigations and alleged improprieties, rather than his failure to fulfill these essential duties. But Zinke’s most lasting legacy will be the millions of acres of public lands degraded, the climate pollution increased, the outdoor recreational opportunities forsaken, the national monuments decimated and the wildlife species imperiled by an all-consuming energy-dominance agenda that irreparably violated President Theodore Roosevelt’s “great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.”

It didn’t have to be this way.

When Zinke rode to the Interior Department on a crisp March morning last year wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots atop a horse named Tonto, he evoked Roosevelt’s conservation legacy in pledging “to ensure our public lands are managed and preserved in a way that benefits all Americans for generations to come.” It was a bold promise, and we felt he had some conservation credentials to back it up.

The National Wildlife Federation worked with Zinke both when he was a Montana state senator and a member of Congress. As a legislator, he actively opposed insidious efforts to sell public lands and advocated for important conservation programs such as the Land and Water

Conservation Fund. Despite grave concerns about the president’s resource extraction predilections, we encouraged the choice of Zinke over other potential nominees, because we hoped his background prepared him to balance the diverse, and sometimes competing, uses for our public lands and defend America’s treasured public lands from short-term exploitation.

Unfortunately, commitments to adhere to the sustainable-use principles of Roosevelt and fellow conservationist Gifford Pinchot were immediately cast aside in narrow pursuit of President Trump’s energy dominance executive order.

The balancing of conservation, recreation and cultural values with resource use “in the combination that will best meet the present and future needs of the American people,” as required by law, was virtually ignored, as the department proposed oil and gas drilling in nearly all federal waters and held a rapid and reckless number of lease sales on lands owned by the American public, many in treasured landscapes such as Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

Common-sense standards for planning and siting energy development, reducing methane pollution, protecting migratory birds and conducting offshore drilling safely were gutted.

World-class scientists and natural resource professionals were reassigned or marginalized.

Conservation plans developed

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Secretary Ryan Zinke arrives for his first day of work at the Interior Department aboard Tonto, a 17-year-old Irish sport horse.

collaboratively by Western governors and stakeholders to recover the imperiled greater sage grouse were gravely weakened. And the voices of Native Americans and other local stakeholders were consistently silenced in decision-making, most notably in the significant, unprecedented reduction of the Bears Ears and Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monuments to allow greater resource extraction.

Recognizing this massive chasm between his conservation rhetoric and his first-year reality, Zinke announced a “grand pivot” toward conservation this past May. He increased his attention on reconnecting fragmented wildlife migration corridors, expanding recreational access for hunting and fishing, and improving collaboration among federal and state wildlife agencies. He championed fixing the crumbling infrastructure of our national parks, national wildlife refuges and other public lands. He strongly promoted offshore wind energy. These were important conservation pursuits, but as Zinke’s tenure comes to an end, most remain unfinished and woefully underresourced, compared to the precisely executed energy dominance

agenda.

Theodore Roosevelt once said of a successor, “He means well, but he means well feebly.” No one expected an appointee of this administration to emulate conservation giants such as former interior secretaries Stewart Udall or Harold Ickes, but Zinke’s dogged pursuit of unfettered fossil-fuel extraction makes James Watt’s disastrous tenure look timid. Zinke never lived up to the Rooseveltian conservation standard he set for himself on his first day in office.

Of all the positions in the Cabinet, the secretary of the interior has the broadest responsibility to think holistically and act intergenerationally.

Striking the right balance among competing equities demands that decision-making actively engage all people, reflecting the faces of our country and respecting all cultures. The interests of the many must take precedence over special interests. After Zinke’s abrupt exit, it will be incumbent upon future secretaries to triage the damage done and restore the balance necessary to ensure that America’s public lands are managed “for the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” n

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OPINIONS

OPINIONS

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TOM TOLES

BY SACK FOR THE STAR TRIBUNE

AThe wake-up gun lobby’s call from power Russia weakens DAVID E.J. IGNATIUS DIONNE JR. writes is a Washington a twice-a-week Post foreign opinions affairs columnist. column in The Washington Post.

Imagine Sometimes, American dramatic politics shiftsfor inaAmerican moment as politics a lab experiment. go unnoticed.

A They foreign are buried adversary under other (let’s call news it “Russia”) or dismissed begins because to play they with represent the subjects, such using a sharp carrots breakand from sticks long-standing to condition assumptions behavior. The and adversary expectations. develops tools Soto please dial up open anger your and mind resentment to this: Taken insidetogether, the lab bubble, the events and of even 2016 recruits and the unwitting results of the accomplices 2018 election to perform will be specific remembered tasks.as the beginning This 21st-century of the endpolitical of the gun dystopia lobby’sisn’t power. drawn from a “spec script” that just landed in Hollywood. It’s a summary of two reports on the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency published this week by the As investigations into Russian Senate Intelligence Committee. describe a sophisticated, Supporters of reasonable gunThe studies interference multilevel effort to use every tool in of the our 2016 openelection society regulationRussian have been so cowed by available continue, the NRA has had to to create resentment, mistrust and social disorder.

National Rifle Association answer for its relationship with propaganda over the past Russian figures and a 2015 visit quarter-century that we are by the group’s leaders to Moscow. information-war battlespace, as reluctant For a century, even toRussian imagine such a Rosalind Helderman, Tom conceived byS.Moscow: a wideintelligence thing. No matter agentshow have many been Hamburger Michelle Ye Hee open United and States (and Europe) brilliant innocents at are creating slaughtered, false fronts no Lee reported in The Washington that can be manipulated by and matter manipulating how many opposition Americans Post that thecampaigns guilty pleathat entered propaganda groups. organize, Now, demonstrate thanks to the and into byevery Mariaracial, Butina, a Russian exploit ethnic and Internet, protest, we they assume seem to thebeNRA and agent who courted NRA leaders, political division; and a closed-off perfecting its allies will these eventually dark arts. “has intensified about Russia, where thequestions authorities can overpower Even as itus. meddles abroad, the what the gun rights group knew muzzle any hint of dissent.

Kremlin And let’s hasconcede just introduced up frontnew that of The the Russian effort of to the shape U.S. machinations legislation the vast overrepresentation to block its own of policy, and whether it faces Internet Research Agency were information rural states in space the Senate from foreign tilts the ongoing legalinscrutiny.” first detailed a February penetration. system, undemocratically, Under the newtoward law, One of the we need to indictment of things 13 Russian reported those who last claim week, that Russia government could know morebyabout: why “NRA operatives special counsel control is powerless all Internet to takeand meaningful message spending on the 2016 elections Robert S. Mueller III. Now, we traffic steps against into themass country, killings. block any surged in everynarrative category.”ofThe have a detailed the anonymous Nonetheless, websites we are and, in aduring new bulk of this went breadth andmoney depth of the to effort. aand crisis, better manage worldthe onRussian guns, Web supporting Donald Trump.

As it But, please, let’s stop calling from organizationally a central command and electorally. point.

The Post journalists the “meddling.”

This waswrote, a covertThis Putconclusion the two halves is compelled of Russian not key question — which is being action campaign, bringing behavior by wishful together thinking and but you byhave the a posed openly

by Democrats but Russia’s intelligence skills into a is portrait evidence. of the modern

BY OHMAN FOR THE SACRAMENTO BEE

no doubt also of interest to is laid new millennium.

The story prosecutors is “whether theby out in chilling—detail in a study group’s spending spike . . . was the Oxford University tied to its Russian connections.”

Computational Propaganda The article alsoand noted that, by in a Research Project a report 2018, the NRA’s politicalcalled cybersecurity company spending “plummeted.”

While New Knowledge, both commissthe organization has denied ioned by the Senate committee. wrongdoing in 2016,campaign it is clearly The IRA influence in disarray, and some suburban began in 2013 using Twitter, with Republican candidates this year trial runs in Eastern Europe, and werebroadened. fearful of cashing its2015 checks. then Between theIRA NRA’s troubles are only andBut 2017, posts on Facebook partInstagram of the story.

What may by and were shared matter more that 2018’s more than 30 is million users,voters changed the political calculus according to the Oxford study. on theThe gun issue. pushed every Russians Consider history. button.

Theythe sought to tap Democratic terroranger over the NRA’s African American with power took hold in earnest after “Blacktivist” and “Black Matters” the 1994 midterm elections, Facebook pages. They reached when Republicans picked up 54 conservatives through pages seats and gained control of the called “Army of Jesus,” “Heart of Houseand for the first time since the Texas” “Secured Borders.” earlylist 1950s.

The of theMany IRA’sfactors top-20 explainedpages the outcome, including Facebook is a catalogue of a backlashrage. against President Bill American Clinton, opposition to tax The New Knowledge report increases passed balance the blows the cover offtothese Internet budget andItthe failure of Hillary the operations. shows how administration’s healthwere plan.

Clinton and Tim Kaine But forasmany Democrats, depicted the “Satan Team.”itThe was politically convenient researchers found an imagetoof focuswearing the blame for “Make their losses in Jesus a red rural andGreat Southern districts America Again” hat. on gun-control Instagramlegislation provided aenacted useful not long before the election. The platform for manipulating gun lobby’s claims toThe influence younger Americans.

IRA’s were enhanced account when it helped “Blackstagram” had

George W. Bush move heavily 303,663 followers; “American rural states his215,680; way six “Sincerely years later.

Veterans” had In 2018, by contrast, Black” had 196,754; andthe “Rainbow battleground districts Nation” had 156,465, towhere name the Democrats defeated Republicans top four Instagram pages cited in were largely in suburbs where the New Knowledge study. most voters are tired of Russia’s Internet activity politicians who capitulate wasn’t just about fomentingto gun extremists. division.

TheDemocrats IRA was also trying campaigned enthusiastically to develop assets who could befor sanein regulation, and it helped used later operations.

The them win. pitches “included recruitment Votersto who told exit pollsters attempts drive people to the that they ballots on thetobasis streets forcast events, attempts get of gun to policy votedjobs, for Democrats people perform and more overwhelmingly, insidious attempts70topercent connectto 29 percent.

Thearound exit poll (conducted with people very personal

by Edison Research and reported challenges.” byOnline CNN) offered evidence pitchesother included of which side was most energized invitations to those “struggling by the issue.

For example, among with the addiction to voters in households masturbation,” to “anywithout gay/ guns, Democrats in House races lesbian/transgender teenagers prevailed 72 percent to to” or [who] needbyanyone to talk 26 percent.

Those in households Black Matters followers who with guns voted Republican, might be “authors,” “creative but by a narrower margin, 61 percent people,” “designers,” or “lawyers to 36legal percent. and advocates.” The The 2018 elections should be Russians wanted to hook unwittas empowering ing participants for those futurewho use. want end ourisnation’s Theto Internet a Russian spy’s shameful in dream.

Theimmobility West’s open, confrontingculture mass shootings as democratic makes it an the 1994 upheaval was foras the easy online target, so long its gun lobby. more citizens areThere asleepis—much especially work Russia’s to do, but those who space when own Internet undertake it can know that they is closed. These frightening now have the wind at their studies should be a wake-up backs. call. n n

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The GOP’s pivot on criminal justice Attitudes toward addiction have softened as opioid crisis rages

B Y K ATIE Z EZIMA AND S EAN S ULLIVAN

T

he criminal justice bill that was approved by Congress and sent to President Trump this past week is the culmination of a major pivot by the Republican Party from the punitive, law-and-order stance of the 1980s to policies that include cutting prison sentences for some offenders.

The political and ideological shift comes as crime rates have dropped, the opioid crisis has ravaged the country and prison populations, after reaching record highs, are now on the decline.

Many Republicans are also embracing the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana, which is legal in 10 states and the District.

Most prominently, former House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) joined the board of a cannabis company earlier this year and favors legalization.

Republicans say the change is a way to right the wrongs of the 1980s — a decade marked by first lady Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug mantra of “Just Say No” — by restoring basic fairness to the criminal justice system. It also has a financial component: Republicans said revising the criminal justice system will save money by moving people convicted of lowlevel offenses out of prison and into programs that will help reduce the recidivism rate. It is also a response to moves on the local level, where similar changes passed in some of the nation’s reddest states, including Oklahoma and Texas.

The Republican-led House approved the First Step Act on a 358 to 36 vote on Thursday, two days after it was passed by the Senate on a vote of 87 to 12.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) once opposed the bill but faced pressure to move ahead with a vote, most notably from the White House. On the final, overwhelming bipartisan vote, McConnell joined 37 Republicans in backing the legislation.

The bill changes the way the federal prison system operates by

Support for criminal justice bill spanned ideology The bill’s co-sponsors included liberals and conservatives, according to a measure of ideology based on congressional votes called DW-Nominate.

MORE LIBERAL

MORE CONSERVATIVE

Doug Jones (D-Ala.)

Cory Booker (D-N.J.)

Senate Democrats

Co-sponsor of bill Source: Voteview

Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa)

Mike Lee (R-Utah)

Republicans

Not a co-sponsor KEVIN SCHAUL/THE WASHINGTON POST

Few inmates are in federal prisons, limiting the First Step Act’s impact Breakdown of where 2.3 million U.S. inmates are incarcerated. The First Step Act applies only to federally incarcerated people and will most benefit those with drug offenses.

Federal prisons and jails 10%

Non-drug offenses

State prisons 57%

Drug offenses

Local jails 27%

Other 6%

Note: The federal category includes the U.S. Marshals Service, which places some inmates in state and local prisons and jails.

Source: Prison Policy Initiative

helping inmates earn reduced sentences and attempts to lower the number of offenders who return to prison. It overhauls several sentencing laws, including decreasing the “three strikes” penalty for drug offenders to 25 years in prison from life behind bars. The changes only apply to federal inmates, not those in state or local prisons or jails.

It also retroactively reduces the sentencing disparities for people convicted of crimes involving crack and powder cocaine, a

KATE RABINOWITZ/THE WASHINGTON POST

change that will affect about 2,000 federal inmates. The discrepancies in penalties for the two drugs fueled the war on drugs and led to a major racial disparity in how drug offenders were sentenced, with primarily young black men serving long sentences for nonviolent crack cocaine crimes, and mostly white people receiving light penalties for powder cocaine offenses.

Many Republicans have also embraced treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather

than one for the criminal justice system, with a realization that authorities cannot arrest their way out of the opioid epidemic. Drug overdoses killed more than 70,000 people last year.

All twelve senators who voted against the criminal justice bill are Republican. The bill’s critics voiced concerns about public safety. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who has made fighting opioid addiction one of his biggest issues, said the changes do not mean the party is going soft on crime.

“I think Republicans are still law and order — but the question is, you know, with crack cocaine and powder cocaine in particular, how do you level the degree of consequence? And I think that’s the common-sense thing. And on other drugs, the idea is to get people into treatment and not lock them up,” Portman said.

Those who work with people who use drugs or to reform drug laws praised the bill as a step in the right direction.

“I think that it is heartening to see bipartisan action in an era when there’s so little that goes across the aisle,” said Leo Beletsky, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University.

Michael Collins, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, said both parties supported harsh sentences in the 1980s and 1990s, but that Democrats have been quicker and more willing to embrace criminal justice reform. Collins said Republicans have made both progress and been inconsistent on their revamped approach to drug sentencing. Collins is heartened that the party recognizes that mandatory minimums and harsh sentencing laws went too far and is moving to change them.

But he is concerned that there is a push by some in the party to create new mandatory minimum sentences for people arrested for crimes involving fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has driven the overdose death rate to record levels. Doing that, Collins said, would be akin to restarting the war on drugs. n ©The Washington Post

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POLITICS

DELIL SOULEIMAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Syria withdrawal startles aides, allies BY

K AREN D E Y OUNG

I

n April, President Trump repeated his campaign promise to end U.S. military involvement in Syria. “I want to get out,” he said. “I want to bring our troops back home.”

In September, senior administration aides said at the time, the president was persuaded to change course. Some 2,000 U.S. troops would stay in Syria indefinitely, not only until the Islamic State was defeated, but also until a political solution to the overall Syria conflict was in place and, in a key part of Trump’s newly announced Iran policy, all Iranian forces and their proxies aiding

Lawmakers say move benefits Russia and Iran, weakens U.N. efforts Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had left the country.

This week, Trump set heads spinning within his own government and around the world by apparently reversing himself again. His decision was made on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the issue, following a small meeting attended only by senior White House aides and the secretaries of defense and state, most of whom, if not all, sharply disagreed.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump announced in a Twitter post early the next morning.

Stunned defense and diplomatic officials were left to confirm that Trump had ordered the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces.

Just recently, senior officials — including the administration’s special envoys to Syria and the counter-Islamic State coalition — had said that defeating the last

U.S. Army vehicles supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces patrol in Syria last week as part of a years-long effort in the country.

organized Islamic State pockets, in southern Syria near the Iraqi border, could be months away and that thousands of militants remained underground throughout Syria, waiting to reemerge.

The officials reiterated that the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-dominated group of U.S.-trained and -equipped ground fighters, remained valued American allies who would not be deserted.

More broadly, they repeated in

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POLITICS recent speeches and briefings, the ongoing U.S. troop presence was crucial leverage to assist U.N. efforts and to make the Iranians leave.

The multipronged new policy had been born after extensive criticism of the lack of a coherent administration strategy in Syria.

While Trump was hailed early in his term for a cruise-missile strike in response to Assad’s suspected use of chemical weapons, his administration was frequently mired in debate over how to treat Russia’s support for the Syrian leader — whom Trump at one point reportedly suggested assassinating — and the president’s nagging public repetition of his desire to bring the troops home.

But the strategy had seemed to take hold, even with a skeptical Congress, with the final elimination of Islamic State strongholds and movement on the political front seen as just over the horizon.

Iran, officials said, was being squeezed by U.S. sanctions and eventually would have no choice but to capitulate to U.S. demands in Syria.

The only potential upset in recent days was a threat by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — who spoke with Trump at the Group of 20 summit three weeks ago and again by telephone December 14 — to send troops across the border to attack the U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.

Officials familiar with the call said that Erdogan, among other things, had stressed to Trump that the Syrian Kurds were terrorists — allied with Kurdish separatists in his own country — and asked why the United States was supporting them rather than its NATO ally.

He noted that the Islamic State had been vanquished and questioned the need for an ongoing U.S. troop presence, saying that Turkish troops already massed on the Syrian border could handle any problem there.

The Erdogan call, many concluded as they tried to understand the reasoning behind a decision widely considered rash and unwise, was the only thing that could have provoked Trump. A senior congressional aide speculated that the call, and the withdrawal, were “definitely related.”

On Thursday, Turkey’s defense minister, Hulusi Akar, speaking from the Qatari capital, Doha,

ALICE MARTINS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Area controlled by: Assad regime Armed opposition groups Kurdish groups Islamic State Feb. 2017 Manbij Aleppo Raqqa Hama

SYRIA

Deir al-Zour

Bukamal Damascus Daraa

Dec. 2018 Manbij Aleppo Raqqa Hama

SYRIA

Deir al-Zour

Bukamal Damascus Daraa

Source: IHS Jane’s Conflict Monitor THE WASHINGTON POST

said Turkey was preparing “intensely” for a military offensive east of the Euphrates River in Syria, where Kurdish-led forces have battled Islamic State militants.

The fighters have dug trenches and tunnels in the area in anticipation of the operation, Akar said, according to Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency.

“But whatever they dig . . . when the time comes they will be buried in the trenches,” he said.

“Of this there should no doubt.”

On Wednesday, Jonathan Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that the Syria decision also coincided with the administration’s notification to Congress late Tuesday that Turkey’s long-sought purchase of U.S.-produced Patriot missile defense batteries had been approved after a years-long battle over the terms of a deal between Ankara and Washington.

“It would be disturbing if a strategic gesture was made for commercial reasons,” Alterman said.

A senior administration official, made available to brief reporters on the Syria decision Tuesday, mentioned only Turkey among U.S. allies that Trump had informed of the decision in advance. “He informed President Erdogan as a neighbor of Syria,” the official said.

The Turkish government did not respond to a request for comment, although Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reported a Wednesday telephone call with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Members of a militia formed to fight the Islamic State stand guard Oct. 12 in Syria’s Hasakah province.

“It was the president’s decision to make, and he made it.”

Trump administration official, in a news briefing to reporters

KLMNO WEEKLY

Trump’s Syria announcement came amid other major news in Ankara — a Turkish victory at the World Trade Organization in a ruling against expanded U.S. aluminum and steel tariffs and the arrival there of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani for a visit with Erdogan.

Trump himself made no public appearances after the announcement. Instead, he communicated via Twitter, where he posted a late-afternoon video of himself standing outside the Oval Office, saying that “it’s time for our U.S. troops to come home.” Fallen American warriors, he said, pointing at the sky, were “looking down” in approval.

But outside the confines of the White House, there was confusion and trepidation.

The administration official who spoke to reporters insisted that no one should be surprised at Trump’s decision because the president has been saying the same thing ever since the campaign. Asked about contradictions with statements from Trump’s own advisers in recent weeks and months, the official challenged “the notion that anyone within the administration was caught unaware.”

“It was the president’s decision to make, and he made it,” said the official, who indicated that Trump was never really behind the longer-term strategy announced in his name in September. “The president’s statements on this topic have been 100 percent consistent.”

Senior lawmakers of both parties said they had no warning the decision was coming. Many were sharply critical, saying it left the door open for Assad allies Iran and Russia, abandoned Kurdish allies, and undercut U.N. efforts.

A number of close U.S. allies who are members of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State said they were not consulted and were given no prior warning. One European defense secretary put in a call Tuesday to Jim Mattis after hearing rumors of the decision and received a late-night call back from the defense secretary with confirmation. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not participate in the meeting with Trump and was in the dark until after it took place, according to several people familiar with the situation. ©The Washington Post n

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NATION

Latino wave reshapes universities N ICK A NDERSON in Riverside, Calif.

BY

M

ore Latino students than ever are moving through high school to the doorstep of college, challenging higher education to adapt to a new demographic reality.

Striving to climb the social ladder, these young Americans are rapidly reshaping the marketplace for college recruiting. They are less affluent than others and less likely to have parents with college degrees.

And they are finding the gates to college open unevenly.

Hundreds of colleges and universities in recent years have become magnets for Latino students. Others, including the most prestigious, appear ill-equipped to find and serve a population that often needs significant support in the long journey from application to graduation. But educators say it is perilous to overlook a vast pool of potential students that will shape the nation’s economic future.

Two University of California campuses illustrate that divide.

Here at UC-Riverside in Southern California, 40 percent of the 20,000 undergraduates are Latino. They are earning bachelor’s degrees at a rate equal to white classmates and well above the national average. Most come from low-income homes and are among the first in their families to attend college. Many are children of immigrants.

Teresa Cortazo, a hotel housekeeping supervisor, fought back tears one fall day as she dropped off her daughter Emily at UC-Riverside. “She’s achieved what I haven’t,” the mother said. Her own formal education ended at secondary school in Mexico.

Stories like this abound on this campus in the arid Inland Empire.

“There’s just as many smart kids in the poor high schools as the rich high schools,” said UCRiverside Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox. Too often, he said, those from poor families are overlooked.

“We’ve got to give them that

STUART W. PALLEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

But the surge bypasses elite schools, which struggle to find and serve those students chance.”

The renowned UC flagship in Berkeley, on the other hand, has struggled to enroll a student body that reflects the state population.

More than half of public schoolchildren in California are Latino, but the share at UC-Berkeley in 2016-2017 was 14 percent. That was 8 points lower than the share at rival UCLA, and lower than the other seven undergraduate campuses in the UC system.

“Berkeley is really an outlier in a way that concerns me,” UCBerkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ said. Within the next decade, she said, she wants the university to raise its Latino share to at least 25 percent.

Racial diversity in enrollment is a highly charged topic. Affirmative action faces a legal challenge in a federal lawsuit against Harvard University, and some Asian Americans criticize Christ’s goal as potentially discriminatory.

Under California law, public

universities may not consider race or ethnicity in admissions decisions. However, Christ said, UCBerkeley can broaden its outreach to high schools, push harder for Latino students to accept admission offers and take other steps to help those with disadvantages feel welcome.

“Berkeley’s a fabulous university,” Christ said. “But not everybody experiences it that way. If you are a first-generation student, this is a hard place to navigate.”

The challenge extends well beyond California. The number of Latino students graduating from public high schools nationwide rose more than 60 percent over the past decade, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education estimates, and that surge is projected to continue through 2025. The total for most other groups, meanwhile, is stagnating.

Higher education leaders have long known of the Latino wave.

UC-Riverside students attend opening convocation in September. Forty percent of the university’s undergraduates are Latino.

Since the outset of the century, Latino undergraduate enrollment more than doubled, to 3 million in 2015. There are now 492 colleges and universities known as “Hispanic-serving institutions” because at least a quarter of their undergraduate populations are Hispanic. The total of such schools, according to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, has doubled since 2005.

The designation can help them obtain federal grants.

Most of the 492 are community colleges and regional universities.

Experts say that reflects, in part, the preference of many Latino students to stay close to home.

Some national colleges and universities are making inroads.

Schools in the Midwest and the Northeast, where the college-age population is ebbing, have intensified recruiting in faster-growing regions of the South and West with a major Latino presence.

At MIT, 15 percent of undergraduates in 2016 were Latino.

That was higher than at Duke, Princeton, Harvard and Yale universities.

“We look for the most talented students from everywhere,” said Stuart Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions. He said the school puts “considerable effort” into recruiting students underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and math. “We are really pleased that we have such a thriving Latin American and Hispanic community.”

Among top-ranked schools, Hispanic-serving institutions are rare. There are four on the U.S. News & World Report list of top 100 national universities — all UC campuses. There are none on the U.S. News list of top 50 liberal arts colleges.

The magazine this year revised its ranking formula to give more credit for upward social mobility.

UC-Riverside leaped 39 places to 85th among national universities.

It had never before placed in the top 100.

Opened in 1954, the campus for decades was a modest UC outpost in Southern California’s citrus belt next to the Box Springs Moun-

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NATION tains. In the 1990s, it went on a building boom coinciding with the growth of Riverside County.

The vast county, stretching from greater Los Angeles to the Colorado River, is home to 2.4 million people.

Less exclusive in admissions than most other UC campuses, UC-Riverside draws a racial and ethnic mosaic. Asian Americans form the second-largest undergraduate bloc (34 percent), followed by white (12 percent) and black students (4 percent). Most of the rest are multiracial or international students.

Achievement gaps are minimal. The six-year graduation rate for Latino students is 73 percent, up 15 points compared with five years ago. The rate for white students is 72 percent. For black students, it is 75 percent, and for Asian Americans, 79 percent.

The national average is 60 percent — and for Latinos, 54 percent.

The typical Latino student has overcome multiple hurdles just to get here. Hundreds are undocumented immigrants. Others are children or grandchildren of immigrants. Nearly two-thirds qualify for Pell Grants. More than 80 percent would be among the first in their families to get a college degree.

Abrianna DeLay, 18, from Palmdale in Los Angeles County, traces roots to Mexico through her mother’s side of the family. “She’s the first one in our family to go to college,” said Regina DeLay, Abrianna’s mother. “So everything’s totally new to us.”

What sets UC-Riverside apart, students and educators say, is a culture of support. Financial aid and peer mentoring are cornerstones. Professors take time to learn how to pronounce names.

Latino activism, rooted in the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, runs deep here.

Faculty say it’s inspiring to teach students with high potential who might lack the academic advantages of those from affluent high schools.

“We have a lot more to overcome in four to five years in terms of preparing them and getting them up to speed,” said Guillermo Aguilar, chair of mechanical engineering. “But by the time they graduate, they’re as competitive as any Berkeley or UCLA graduate.” n ©The Washington Post

KLMNO WEEKLY

ACA ruling injects anxiety into health-care system BY

A MY G OLDSTEIN

T

he ruling by a federal judge in Texas striking down the Affordable Care Act has injected a powerful wave of uncertainty about recent changes woven into the U.S. health-care system that touch nearly all Americans and an industry that makes up onesixth of the economy.

The opinion, if upheld on appeal, would upend the health insurance industry, the way doctors and hospitals function, and the ability of millions of Americans to access treatments they

MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has promised to make Democrats part of an appeal of the ruling.

need to combat serious diseases.

Parts of the law that would need to be unwound include no-charge preventive services for older Americans on Medicare, allowing parents to keep children on their plans through age 26, and a variety of efforts to rein in prescription drug costs.

“It affects almost everyone in America,” said Tim Jost, a specialist in health law and a professor emeritus at Washington and Lee University.

The court decision also sets up an awkward juggling act for the Republican Party, balancing President Trump’s gleeful tweets over the court’s decision against a perception that the GOP is threatening insurance that

covers nearly 20 million Americans through new private health plans and an expansion of Medicaid — a perception that Democrats successfully employed in last month’s elections that gave them control of the House.

While the ruling last weekend

by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor invalidated the law, it did not enjoin any of its provisions. The Trump administration immediately announced that the law the president sought to dismantle would stay in place for now.

Republicans and Democrats alike predicted that after the ruling, it could take a year or more before the true significance of the opinion is known. Echoing the Trump administration, they said the ruling would begin a long path through the appellate courts, probably bringing the question of the ACA’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court for a third time.

Last Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined Nancy Pelosi, who is expected to be the next speaker of the House, in promising to make Democrats part of an appeal. Schumer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “the first thing we’re going to do when we get back there in the Senate is . . . put a vote on the floor, urging an intervention in the case.” Unlike the House, the Senate will remain in Republican control.

Nevertheless, the ruling, with its sweeping breadth, unsettles what had at least seemed a greater calm this year for the sprawling law, which has been challenged by its own shortcomings and its Republican political nemeses ever since Democrats pushed it through Congress in 2010. O’Connor’s ruling came out of the most recent Republican challenge, brought by nearly 20 state attorneys general from red states.

If it stands, the most politically delicate part of the law at stake is its rule forbidding insurers

from charging more to people with preexisting medical conditions or refusing to cover them at all.

“This can’t happen!” was Christine Nelson’s first thought when she saw reports of the ruling on the news in Phoenix.

Nelson has metastasized melanoma. Without the ACA, she feared, insurers could return to placing yearly and lifetime limits on the cost of her treatment, which has run up more than $1 million in the past dozen years for eight surgeries, radiation on four parts of her body, eight different immunotherapies and so many scans and biopsies that she has lost count. And she and her husband, who runs a small heating and air conditioning business and has Type II diabetes, could be frozen out of health plans without the law’s protections.

“Without any type of government regulation or anything, I would be dead,” said Nelson, 56, a registered Republican who left her job as an economics teacher six years ago because she is too ill to work.

For the insurance industry, the ruling brings new confusion just as years of political turmoil, major insurers withdrawing from marketplaces and spiking rates had finally given way to some sort of stability.

“This year we got back to some semblance of normal,” said Kristine Grow, spokeswoman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s main trade group. Despite the ruling, “nothing is changing with the law today. We are going to continue business as usual,” she said.

Justine Handelman, senior vice president at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, whose members play a large role in the individual marketplaces, said, “I don’t think it will have an impact on 2019. . . . But certainly, as you do look to the future, it does bring in uncertainty. n ©The Washington Post

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COVER STORY

Raising boys to be themselves Can parents free their sons from society’s rules on gender roles?

BY

A MY J OYCE

E

liot Campbell can burp the alphabet one letter at a time. He turns his eyelids inside out when he wants to show off. And when his neighborhood buddy comes to play, the boys grab toy guns, build a fort in Eliot’s bunk bed, then run outside for a stick fight under the canopy of their favorite tree.

Eliot is a boy. At age 8, he exists in that golden hour when life is about freedom and wildness and innocence — “just fun,” he says.

His parents, Brian Campbell and Bonnie Melton, would love to hold on to that magic a little while longer, but they know it soon will end. They worry when they hear the phrase “toxic masculinity.” They reflect on the violent proclivities of the male sex. They wonder what people think when Eliot grabs a Nerf gun or wears his Fortnite video game T-shirt.

They want to counter the elements that can so easily pull a boy off track. They are their child’s greatest influence at

this young age, the most integral force in guiding Eliot, but freely admit that doesn’t mean they have it all figured out.

Brian and Bonnie, who live in Raleigh, N.C., are raising their son at a turbulent time, when the boy next door could be exposed as the next perpetrator of a Me Too moment, or grow into the bully in the C-suite. How, in the words of Bonnie, can they make sure to “not raise a jerk?”

Such questions are close at hand but not always solvable.

Brian Campbell plays with his eight-year-oldson, Eliot. “If my kids find something they’re interested in, I want to encourage them in that,” he said.

PHOTOS BY CALLA KESSLER/THE WASHINGTON POST

SUNDAY, December, 23, 2018 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2018

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Especially at a time when the problems facing boys are mounting.

Girls are doing better in school from the earliest grades onward; they are graduating from college at higher rates than male counterparts. They have, with generations of effort, broken through the stereotypes that define girls.

Statistics show that girls have pulled ahead in the race for gaining societal encouragement and recognition, for self-esteem. Over recent decades, doors have opened for them: Girls can play sports, create art, win at science competitions, try to be anything they want to be. “The future is female,” their shirts declare.

Of course, women have not achieved equality in the workplace, in Congress, on college campuses. They still face discrimination, harassment, life-changing assaults. But girls increasingly are being groomed to form their own destiny.

What has not really changed over time is the image of boys. They are expected to be strong and stoic. They’re labeled as goof-offs in school. They can’t show interest in pink, nail polish or dance class. They are told to man up, be the financial provider, not walk away from a fight. When the country summons its citizenry to war, it’s still mainly the men who march off.

Boys have been raised in a culture that puts them into a very distinct box, based on stereotypes that have persisted for hundreds of years, says Michael Reichert, a psychologist at the all-boys Haverford school in Philadelphia.

“The boys are not the problem,” he says. “It’s the model.” Society ignores the fact that boys have complex emotions and a desire to live their own way, just as girls do.

“Boys can have battles and want to jump off of things and light things on fire, and still be emotionally complex and need to be held when they are upset,” says Rosalind Wiseman, a parenting educator and author of “Masterminds and Wingmen.” “Those are not mutually exclusive.”

It’s a chilly night in Avon, Conn., nearly 30 years ago. Brian Campbell is on the football field, a freshman in high school. His dad, Alan Campbell, is on the sidelines with the coaches.

As Brian lurches for the ball, his finger gets stuck in a jersey and his hand twists. His hand swells and he can’t close his fingers. He runs to the sidelines and struggles to tell his father.

“What are you doing? Get back out there!” his dad barks. “The play’s not over!”

Brian tries to tell him he thinks his hand is broken, but his dad is telling him to go. Brian runs back onto the field and continues to play until his coaches realize he can’t tackle anyone — his hand won’t close. Sure enough, his hand

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

is broken.

Brian has countless memories of a childhood built around meeting his dad’s expectations of masculinity. His father had dreams of professional sports careers for all three of his sons, and today, when asked about the broken hand from long ago, Alan’s response is simply “that’s what happens when you play football.”

Alan worked long hours as a nuclear engineer, and he expected his boys to have reliable jobs, like he did, believing being an engineer (or having a steady, high-earning profession like it) was a good way to provide for their families. That was the primary role he saw for fathers such as himself. It was an understandable way of thinking for a man of his generation, Brian now con-

cedes.

“I wanted to go to, like, film camp,” he recalls. “But I had to go to football camp and wrestling camp and stuff. If my kids find something they’re interested in, I want to encourage them in that.”

When Brian finally told his dad he wanted to major in art or English, there was no conversation. There was yelling.

Brian studied English at Central Connecticut State University.

He went on to get a degree in animation through a certificate program.

Today, Alan says he is proud of Brian and considers him a success. But Brian doesn’t hesitate to say it was his mother who loved him in a way that allowed him to be the sensitive, thoughtful man he is now. His father agrees.

Bonnie and Brian met in 2001, when they worked together in book publishing. Both had volunteered for Take Your Child to Work Day, and Brian was one of the few male volunteers who didn’t have kids. Bonnie noticed.

And Brian noticed Bonnie’s intelligence, her drive, her desire for a career.

They married in 2008 and started a family, deciding that one parent would take the lead at home and the other would focus more on work, depending on what their lives were like at the moment. Brian knows it was different for him than it was for his father. He was lucky enough to have paid paternity leave with two of the three kids, something of which his father couldn’t have dreamed. And one of his brothers

In parenting Eliot Campbell, at left with friend Junius Shannon, Brian Campbell and Bonnie Melton are wrestling with how they can make sure to “not raise a jerk.”

is a stay-at-home-dad with a law degree, despite “the stigma,” Brian says.

With each generation, he sees men and boys breaking out of their box just a little more.

At a time when more kids and teens are raising questions about the meaning of gender, Bonnie and Brian made a point of bringing up their children — Eliot and his sisters Toni, now 10, and Lena, 7 — in relatively gender-neutral ways. “It irked me when people said you can’t play with that because it’s a boy toy, or you can’t play with that because it’s a girl toy,” Bonnie says. They didn’t dress the girls in fancy pink baby clothes, for instance.

But no matter what Bonnie and Brian did, what happened looked a lot to them like nature taking

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COVER STORY over. The first time the family went to the local children’s museum, the parents laughed as 3-year-old Toni discovered princess dresses for the first time. She pulled them on with astonishment, as if to say, “Can you believe this?” Eliot, not yet able to talk, toddled away from her and right over to the train table.

“It’s funny,” Brian says. “I feel like I read stuff and listen to interviews with people that are like ‘Disney executives are driving little girls to want princess dresses!’ And I’m like, ‘Nope, little girls love this, and Disney’s making money off it.” He laughs. “They just gravitated toward those things. They like what they like.”

Still, when the girls tell Eliot he can’t wear something because it’s a girl color, Bonnie reminds them “colors have no gender!” When Toni’s friend comes for a play date, the girls tell Eliot they’ll pay him $10 if he lets them dress him up and put makeup on him. He takes the cash.

Eliot’s home is the chaotic, exuberant mess that a home with three kids should be. Eliot chooses to share a bedroom with his sisters, in which a half-naked Barbie and stuffed animals lie next to a toy gun on one of the beds. On this summer morning, the three kids are running through the dining room and into the kitchen, attacking their father with pillows in a game they made up with him called “Bed Fight.”

Brian, a 6-foot-2 former high school football player with graying hair, is laughing and panting and needs to sit down.

He has been working overtime lately, in his job as a video game lead animator, so it’s a rare precious moment at home with the whole family. He remains at the table amid calls for him to continue playing. “I can’t, guys. I need a break,” he says.

As much as he has tried to break out of the man box, Brian, 42, is aware of the parallels between him and his father. He recalls an evening about 30 years earlier, at another dinner table, when his dad called the family together.

Alan was up for another job, one with more pay and more prestige. But it would require even more hours away from home and a move from Connecticut to Houston. He had realized that he didn’t know his children very

well, not like Brian’s mother did, and he struggled with the decision. If he took the Houston job, “they could have gone to the best colleges and do whatever they wanted to do because it was a lot of money,” Alan, 74, says today, but “I really wanted to get close to them.”

And so, that night around the table, he took a vote. They all wanted him to accept a job offer close to home. “He felt bad about it a little bit, not knowing us as well,” Brian says, mumbling with a smile: “I’m just guessing, I guess.”

Brian still works long hours and knows time spent at the office is important. There is a difference

Brian Campbell, bottom right, has been working overtime lately in his job as a video game lead animator, leaving him less time with his three children.

Women’s college enrollment outpaces that of men Women 71.9%

60 percent

Men 67.5%

54 40

37.9 20

0

1960

2016

Note: Chart shows percentage of recent high school/GED completers and their enrollment in college as of the following October.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics,” 2017.

SHELLY TAN/THE WASHINGTON POST

from his parents, though: Bonnie has multiple graduate degrees and works, too. That gives Brian the opportunity to consider this: “Am I money for my family or am I dad and husband for my family?”

Brian thinks about this when he drives to Cary, N.C., for another 12-hour day and reflects on his own boyhood. His conclusion: “I want it to be better” for Eliot.

“Okay, guys. Let’s play outside,” Bonnie says on another hot summer day. “Let’s play ‘fling the baby.’ We can take the Cabbage Patch Kid.” She looks at Eliot, clad in his Fortnite T-shirt, hair already sweaty around the edges, and his neighborhood friend as they walk out the door. “You can bring your guns.”

They head to the patch of grass with the tree they love and start tossing the baby into the tree, a game with rules only the children understand.

Bonnie, 47, who grew up in Baltimore and went to St. John’s in Annapolis before getting master’s degrees in English and education, is spending the summer at home with the kids, between two jobs in instructional design.

Bonnie supports Moms Demand Action, which advocates for gun regulations. As for playing with toy guns, “That’s just what boys do. I have no issues with that whatsoever,” she says. Eliot “knows the difference between playing that something’s a gun and actually hurting someone.”

KLMNO WEEKLY

The girls play just as hard as Eliot, but they don’t bother with toy guns. Bonnie gives all three children leeway to get dirty and fight with one another so they can figure out how to “work it out,” as she says to them. The girls have been spotted, she says, sledding in sequin dresses, and on this day, it’s Toni’s idea to bury the doll in mud.

Brian’s a leader in Y Guides, a YMCA program similar to scouting, but formed to strengthen father-child relationships. At the spring outing, Brian and the other dads were setting up camp. The boys in Eliot’s group picked up sticks and started sword fighting.

As other groups showed up, the boys ran to the woods, formed two sides, and started a giant game of war.

For Brian, it’s like watching a kitten stalking something. It’s just natural boy behavior. “I think some people see that as an unnatural behavior in boys, that it’s somehow dangerous, especially with school shootings,” he said.

Are boys naturally boys? Are girls naturally girls? Will the aggressive parts of boys forever dominate their personalities? According to Judy Y. Chu, a Stanford human biology professor who has studied boys extensively, “They are capable of knowing and doing way more than we give them credit for.”

“We tend to overcredit nature, when what we assume is nature is their adaptation to society’s rules,” she said.

As much as experts plumb the questions of what makes boys boys — and how to raise them — parents will grasp for answers.

“We don’t know if we’re doing it right,” Brian says one summer afternoon at the local pool after playing games with the kids.

“But we’re going to keep trying,” Bonnie adds.

For now, Eliot is simply part of an American family, during a summer afternoon before school starts. Before Bonnie begins her new job. Before Brian finishes working overtime until the next big push. Before Eliot becomes a third-grader and turns 9.

Before this sweet child discovers what the rest of the world sees when they see a boy with a toy gun or a stick or wearing makeup, even if it was only to earn $10 from his sister.n ©The Washington Post

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BOOKS

The one about the rabbi and Aristotle N ONFICTION

l

REVIEWED BY

M ICHAEL D IRDA

W

WIT’S END What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It.

By James Geary Norton. 226 pp. $23.95

hat book about wit doesn’t contain a single quotation from either Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde? The answer, of course, is this one. For James Geary hasn’t produced a compendium of quips, comebacks, ripostes, zingers or verbal firecrackers, but rather a serious, even philosophical study of — as his subtitle declares — “what wit is, how it works, and why we need it.”

This doesn’t mean, however, that “Wit’s End” could ever be mistaken for an earnest, academic tract. Far from it. In a chapter titled “Wisdom of the Sages,” Geary relates a story about Hershele Ostropoler, an 18th-century Eastern European butcher who became a kind of jester to a melancholy Rabbi Barukh. Once when the rabbi was too depressed to eat, “Hershele sat down across from him and slipped a silver tea spoon into his pocket. Before Barukh could rebuke him for the theft, Hershele said, ‘Doctor’s orders: Take a teaspoon with every meal.’ ” The rabbi, smiling, recovered his appetite.

“Wit’s End” juggles scholarship, humorous anecdote and critical insight with a diabolical, almost sinister dexterity. No shrinking violet, Geary fully intends to strut his stuff, to glitter and beguile, and he does so with remarkable ingenuity and chutzpah.

As Geary explains in a prefatory poem, composed in 18th-century heroic couplets, his book’s various chapters exemplify what they describe: “Each theme matched to the style in which it’s writ,/ Thus to show, not tell, the story of Wit.”As a result, the advancing text kaleidoscopes from philosophical dialogue to sermon to scholarly paper to ode to an over-the-top emulation of 1920s African American jive. The book’s designer even complements this narrative jazziness by varying the typefaces and page layouts.

Geary’s intellectual reach is just as dizzying. He parses both enigmatic Buddhist koans and the put-

ISTOCKPHOTO

downs used in playing the Dozens, the African American game of competitive insults: “You’re so dumb you think the Supreme Court is where Diana Ross plays tennis.” He probes the grammatical shifts in that classic truism, “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana,”as well as the levels of meaning in Stanislaw Lec’s haunting aphorism: “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.” There are jokes about Irishmen in bars, and anecdotes about Buster Keaton and Harpo Marx, and even some deliberately groan-inducing phrases such as “puns about German sausage are generally considered the worst.”

Still, Geary’s aim isn’t to make you laugh (or grimace), it’s to make you think. To begin with, he grants the pun a kind of foundational primacy, viewing it as the template for every sort of wit, here loosely defined as “the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time.” As Geary points out, even Jesus — no ordinary jokester — employed wordplay when he declared that he would build his

church upon Peter “whose name in Aramaic and in Greek means ‘rock.’ ” From this meditation on punmanship, Geary next proceeds to a philosophical dialogue between Denis Diderot and Germaine de Staël. The duo starts by looking at wit’s relationship to fencing (wellaimed thrusts, bold sallies), then considers the importance of sprezzatura — the studied nonchalance that conceals mastery — and finally affirms that “to ‘get’ a witticism you must take the same mental path as the person who said it.”

Geary subsequently shows that wit thrives best when the brain’s policeman-like rationality lets down its guard and allows free association to run wild, releasing our inner Robin Williams. Improvisational comedy, in particular, requires mental nimbleness, a trait that Aristotle extolled as eutrapelia and that John Donne and other metaphysical poets regularly demonstrate in their intricate analogies and sometimes salacious double-meanings.

Like metaphor, the subject of Geary’s previous book “I Is an Other,” wit often yokes together dis-

similar entities to achieve a sudden illumination. Geary devotes several pages to the Russian formalist theory of art as “defamiliarization”: By making the habitual and familiar seem strange, great works open our eyes, blinded by routine, and allow us to see the world afresh.

In a related chapter on visual wit, Geary naturally begins with psychology’s favorite critter, the duck-rabbit — a drawing that alternately resembles one animal or the other, depending on how you focus your eyes. From here, he deconstructs some contemporary artworks cleverly based on trompe l’oeil effects. To see clearly, Geary concludes, look askance.

Geary’s scholarship, supported by 30 pages of endnotes identifying his sources, could easily be heart-sinking, if his own prose wasn’t so frisky. As the playwright Sacha Guitry so shrewdly observed, “you can pretend to be serious, but you can’t pretend to be witty.” Happily, Geary manages to be both. n Dirda writes about books for The Washington Post.

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f you want to learn a language before your next international trip, there are new ways to learn key words and phrases before your departure.

“The ability to communicate basically can be done pretty quickly with almost any language,” says Marc Greenberg, who directs the School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures at the University of Kansas. “Acquiring literacy — writing, speaking in all circumstances, comprehension of all types of communication — takes a lot longer.”

So why bother? Because not everyone speaks English. Knowing the difference between “Ja” and “Nein” can help you get around, and people generally are more receptive when you try to speak their language.

Besides immersion, the best way to learn a language used to be in a classroom.

My parents used the Berlitz method when we moved to Europe. Today, there are all kinds of options that use technology to give you a linguistic edge, and perhaps even a cultural one.

The last few years have seen a proliferation of language-learning software. These programs — many of which have popular mobile apps — use such techniques as gamification, crowdsourcing and adaptive algorithms to help beginners learn language basics.

For example, Memrise, a usergenerated language-learning platform that uses flashcards as memory aids, can help you nail the basics. Memrise offers instruction in 25 languages, and its basic level is free, with some advanced features like progress statistics available at $4.99 per month.

Duolingo, another program with free and premium levels, offers courses in 37 languages. It’s one of my 16-year-old son’s favorite language-learning tools, probably because it treats the process like a video game, allowing him to collect points for scoring well on the evaluations.

Mango Languages, another

SUDOWOODO/GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

Speaking like a native may not come quickly, but everyone can learn a few key words and phrases well-regarded program, includes notes on cultural context and language. Many of its best features are available only to subscribers, at $19.99 per month.

Rosetta Stone is perhaps the best-known language program and one of the most expensive.

You can buy its classes — which focus on developing spoken fluency — through an online subscription or on a CD. There’s also Babbel. With more than 1 million active, paying subscribers, it’s among the largest language programs. It costs $6.95 to $12.95 per month, depending on your level of use. According to the company, 73 percent of its users could have a short, simple conversation in a new language within five hours of using the app.

There are so many language apps, all claiming to be the best, that there are even sites to help you sort it out.

You can find detailed reports on these programs on Compare Language Apps, an independent testing site run by Roumen Vesselinov, a professor at Queens College in New York.

Vesselinov told me that he’s skeptical of some claims made about apps, particularly claims

that you can learn a language quickly. “Language app users need to study, on average, 20 to 30 hours in a two-month period in order to cover the requirements” for the first semester of college Spanish, he says.

I have had access to most of these apps over the years, but found that they were either too complicated or too time-consuming to help me learn a language before an international trip. Maybe my experience of acquiring a language early in life (German) and then trying to acquire another in a classroom (three years of French, which didn’t really stick) contributed to my skepticism.

I’m not alone. Dane Kolbaba, who owns a pest-control company in Roselle, Ill., also has reservations about the programs, both in the classroom and online. He spent two years preparing for a move to Venezuela, which included intensive language classes.

“When I got to Venezuela, I was in for a rude awakening,” he says.

“I had no idea what people were saying to me and no idea how to respond. The accent was just too different for me than my American teachers’. It took me about six months to really understand ev-

Saying “hi” in different languages.

Experts agree that there is no substitute for on-theground experience practicing and speaking a new language.

erything being said to me — and only after speaking Spanish 24 hours a day.”

Martha Merritt, the dean of international education at the University of Richmond, uses Duolingo to build her vocabulary and to fine-tune a language she already knows. But learning Russian took her five years in a classroom and a year in Moscow.

“That isn’t always a realistic expectation for language learning,” she says.

The language experts I spoke with say you shouldn’t allow the promises of a course or an app to fool you into thinking that you will easily learn a language before your next international trip.

Greenberg, the University of Kansas professor, says that having already learned at least a second language helps a lot, “so that language-learning isn’t mysterious.” And experts agree that there’s no substitute for on-theground experience practicing and speaking a new language.

“Think of learning a foreign language like learning to drive or playing an instrument,” says Maureen Linden, a retired French and Spanish teacher from Miami. “Be satisfied with the basics for a long time and work slowly forward.”

What if you don’t have the time? You can always cut corners and let the app do the talking. A real-time translation program like Google Translate can quickly, and reasonably accurately, translate simple English words and phrases into another language — and translate into English what someone is saying to you. Be sure to download the language so you are not reliant on cellular service.

Michele Frolla, a Londoner who writes a blog about travel and language, called the Intrepid Guide, says she recently turned to the Google Translate app while visiting Ostrava in the Czech Republic.

“I couldn’t understand the staff at the train station, and needed to get a train to the airport,” she says. “It worked like a charm.” n ©The Washington Post

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