Do We Really Cause Earthquakes?

It has been over two weeks since the great West Sumatran earthquake.  Bricks, stones and mortars are piling up the ghosts of roads and streets; official death toll is closing in a thousand.   As aids are rushing into the region and rescue workers are still working around the clock, whispers, text messages and sermons are spreading that somehow we—and “we” can mean all Indonesians, West Sumatrans, Padangese, or even just the president, depending on which version you subscribe to—are to blame for the natural disaster.

An understandably grief-stricken and confused chicken-feed factory worker in Padang believed that the quake occurred because many Padangese youths had been engaging in sinful activities by the beach during Ramadan.  A less grief-stricken yet apparently equally confused senior member of a prominent political party blamed the president for being born on his ominous birth date, which “invited” natural disasters.  Chain text messages imply that the disaster was a demonstration of the wrath of a vengeful God.  Chairman of the North Sumatran Indonesian Council of Ulemmas (MUI) declared that the earthquake was a divine warning for the government to eradicate immorality.

It wouldn’t take long for a relatively reasonable person to point out that Indonesia has arguably become more religiously conservative than in the past, or that in the last few years some of the deadliest earthquakes occurred in religiously pious areas, like the 2003 earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam and the 2004 big one off the coast of Aceh, while “places of sin and immorality” like Las Vegas, the island of Ibiza, and even Jakarta, have been spared from any major natural catastrophe.  So either we’ve been misrepresenting God’s warnings, or—here’s a crazy idea—we’re not the reason the earth’s crust trembles.

However, we’re really looking at this the wrong way.  We may not be the reason the earth shook in West Sumatra, but we did cause the disaster.  Bear with me; it’s really not that confusing.

The very term “natural disaster” is truly anthropocentric—it is an entirely human-centered notion.  For hundreds of millions of years this planet has gone through literally countless earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, meteor impacts, lightning storms, and massive volcanic eruptions.  For hundreds of millions of years, nobody ever called them “natural disaster;” they were simply “natural events.”  It was always business as usual for Mother Nature.

Then enter modern humans.  Upon seeing how natural events might occasionally destroy our homes and take away our lives, we began to see said events as disastrous.  As time passed by, self-centered creatures as humans are, we started to believe that a powerful entity—either nature or an even more powerful being—was deliberately causing disasters because of us.  As such, throughout history we’ve been trying hard to decipher the divine warning and appease whoever causes the disaster appropriately: slaughter a pig, sacrifice a virgin, stop playing at the beach, or elect a president with a better birth date.

Yet the cold hard truth is that were there no humans, there would be no disaster.  The flipside of this truth is that while we may not be able to stop an earthquake, we can take measures to prevent a disaster.  In December 2003, both California and southern Iran were hit by 6.5 Richter-scale earthquakes, separated by only a week.  The death toll in California was 3; in Iran, it was 30,000.  Some might thus conclude that Californians were more pious and God-fearing than the Iranians.  A likelier explanation is the worlds of difference in building codes and constructions in the two areas.

What we do to our environment also matters significantly.  The roots of large trees can strengthen the ground’s structure, decreasing its likelihood to slide even during earthquake.  Take those trees away, and nothing holds back the earth from crumbling down the slope.

Earthquakes are not the only natural event we should be concerned about.  Climate change has led to higher concentrated rainfall in a shorter period of time in Indonesia.  Yet we’re still clogging our rivers with garbage and destroy large patches of our forest.  60 percent of the forest area in Mt. Muria, Central Java, is destroyed.  That’s a disaster waiting to happen; just don’t blame God or Mother Nature when it does.  While we’re at it, let’s keep an eye on those volcanic mountains in our backyard.

So at the end of the day, our actions do matter, but not the way some people like the North Sumatran MUI’s chairman would like to believe.  It has got more to do with our vigilance, preparedness and planning, rather than a certain set of moral virtues.  It’s more pressing for district administrations to impose better building codes than to close down pubs and lounges.  Lawmakers need to extend the role, build the capacity, and provide more funding for the national disaster response agency, instead of wasting public funds on legislating morality.  And it’s more important for parents to teach their children to protect the environment than to forbid them from having fun at the beach.

This is Indonesia.  The meeting point of the mighty tectonic plates.  A proud member of the ring of fire.  Depository of the monsoon rain.  Our earth, mountains and seas can be as deadly as they are life-giving.  We’ve known this for millennia; yet we, as had our ancestors, have chosen to live here and call this place home.  Unfortunately, we often forget that as we reap the bounty of this land, we must also be weary of its occasional fury.  Our land demands—and deserves—our respect.  We can’t control nature, but we can choose, through the actions we take and the decisions we make, how nature impacts us.  But to say that we cause the earth to move is not only delusional, it is utter and complete arrogance.

And edited version of this article is featured in Jakarta Globe, 20 October 2009

 

Unfinished Readers and Burnt Fingers: Experiencing language to bridge classroom and field

This post is written by a guest writer, Sherria Ayuandini.  It’s an unabridged account of her experience participating in the International Summer School on Pluralism and Development in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, followed directly by her involvement in a field research where she experienced living for a couple of days with a poor family in a small rural area near Jakarta.

What would be THE litmus test that you just experienced something quite remarkable? Easy. You simply can’t stop blabbering about the incident to the other people around you. Family and friends, colleagues and acquaintances, even strangers and bystanders don’t get to be spared of the story. You can be even more sure of it as you didn’t yet stop yourself even when you received that special look from your friends. A look that if put into verbal expression would fall somewhere along the line of “Puh-leez, enough already!” or “Kill me! Kill me now!”

I lost count of how many times my friends bestowed me of such look that early August, or they, in return, of how many times I went on and on and on about this awesome one month Yogyakartan experience. I grew to be very good at finding whatever obscure connections there was between everything my friends and I talked about with what I then succinctly referred to as “Summer School”. “I don’t feel like having pizza” could be easily followed by me saying “Speaking of pizza, at Summer School…” or “speaking of not feeling like having something, at Summer School…” or simply “yeah, okay, at Summer School…” Seriously, try me. I can connect ANYTHING to Summer School. Even the “don’t” part of the sentence. Well… scrap that; especially the “don’t” part of the sentence…

So to say that I was a bit hung up on the experience of Summer School would be an understatement. Hung over would be a better phrase, I suppose. And it didn’t help my case the fact that merely 3 days after setting foot back in Jakarta again, I had to go back to work immediately. It was this research project that I was on board on as one of the researchers. The project started with a 2 day worth of a workshop, spread over 3 days in total. The set-up of the workshop jogged a very recent, very fond memory of mine. Any takers on what memory? Yeap… if you happened to be part of my circle of friends, insert special look right aboooouuuut…. now.

I was sitting on the right hand side of a U-shape class set-up, half expecting that at any point then someone would walk into the room, sit next to me and asked whether or not I have read the readers intended for the day. But of course, there was no reader and there was no one to ask that question. Instead, there were unfamiliar faces, holding out hands to shake and cards to keep. Here we go again…

And instead of a screen and a projector, there were flipcharts and whiteboard. On the latter three very simple questions were posed: What are the differences between… (1) interview and conversation, (2) visiting and living with and (3) finding out and learning. I smiled as I noticed the questions. “This should be fun,” I thought.

Right then and there the lady that was the head of the research opened the workshop. She next continued on explaining what the intention of the research was all about. To boil it down to one simple sentence: we were to live with the poorest of the poor in a chosen village, learning how they live as some sort of a reality check process. The very first question popped into my mind: whose reality? which was followed closely by the next one: who is checking who? But I kept my mouth shut and paid attention to what the lady was saying next. “We’re using an Anthropological approach,” she said. My heart leaped. Home… finally… “So it is important that we all understand what an Anthropological approach is.” I nodded. Very important of course. So I guess that’s what the workshop is for. Let’s start the lecture! She then pointed to the three questions on the whiteboard. “Let’s divide everybody to three groups. And each can discuss the differences in practice of one of these pairs. We’ll reconvene again in 20 minutes.” I nodded again. Discuss practi… wait what? I did a double take. Did she just say practice?

My group mates were already assembling at that time. And the discussion followed suit. All along the process I couldn’t stop smiling. Such a stark difference! Just a short 3 days ago, in a class set-up uncannily similar, I would have entertained the approach of Anthropology, shall that issue ever come up, from a very different angle. There will be ideas to look at, concepts to delve into, theories to consider and thinkers to heed. But there that day, there were ‘only’ a bunch of practitioners, drawing from past experiences, and knowledge of course, to provide a practical outlook at the questions at hand. To have an opportunity to experience both explorations! I considered myself blessed. My group mates, on the other hand, considered me distracted. “You really like smiling, don’t you?” inquired one of them. I laughed. “Life has been good,” I retorted.

So that was how it went for the rest of the day: me going back and forth from practicality to a more fundamental concept in my head, sometimes, even out loud. At one time when we were discussing the differences between finding out and learning, I pointed out how we as researchers need to be careful. I mentioned that learning would entail us seeing ourselves as the point of reference hence putting the Other as a utility for our growth. As soon as that sentence was out of my mouth, silence enveloped the room. Blank faces greeted me. I thought, “Ah well… at least it’s better than the ‘puh-leez’ look.” So I inhaled and tried again, “we should remember that we are not there so that we can personally increase our knowledge or come in contact with something new, but we’re there simply to experience their life first hand. It is new to us, but for them, it’s just regular life. We should remember that.” Ahhs and ohhs filled the room. Then people started to talk about attitude and behavior in encountering something that is different than what we are used to. I reprimanded myself silently, “Language Sherria Ayuandini! Fit it with the context already!”

But isn’t that what pluralism is all about? It’s about language. It’s about engagement and reciprocity, hence the use of language to create such arbitration. And for me, that’s what Summer School has really taught me: to be aware of the language you use. You can understand pluralism from many angles, as a theoretical construct, as practical implication, as you sit in the classroom or a reality on the field. But unless we start to realize that the language that we use sometimes separate us from one another, pluralism would remain an ideal. Language is the bridge that we all have been looking for, the one that would connect two differences and create an engagement.

So, when I finally set my backpack down on the plywood floor of my host family’s house in the village by the end of that first week away from Summer School, I was ready to let go of my language and immerse myself in the ones the villagers are accustomed to. Language in all kind of sense, verbally as strings of words and sentences, as well as everything else: gesture, posture, expression or impression—the whole nine yards: the entire experience. A woman singing and dancing seductively while at the same time being handed out money bill by bill embodied respect and independence. Babysitting and cooking traditional cakes to be sold at the local market constituted holiday and spare time. And fitting in? Burnt fingers from packaging snacks and a sore arm from heaving a bucket full of water to use at the outside semi open latrine. Pluralism indeed…

Now, what to take from all of this? Well… it has always been the duality of theory and practice that was seen as the biggest challenge for Summer School. Then, why not allow the participants to experience both, to be conversant in both languages? Let the practitioners study a more conceptual idea of what pluralism is in the classroom and at the same time, let the academicians learn how the concept plays in reality by actually going to the field. Both would undoubtedly feel uncomfortable: the first restless from sitting too long, the second awkward from the close encounter. But the discomfort would allow them to experience the language of the other, with a lowercase ‘o’ this time. And as they start to speak each other’s language, that’s when the first stake of the bridge is planted. The rest… are just stones falling into places.

An edited version of this article will be featured in one of Hivos’ publications.  Hivos is the Dutch donor agency that sponsored Sherria’s participation in the summer school.

 

The Root Cause of Terrorism? Not Poverty or Lack of Education

Special thanks to my best friend, Sherria Ayuandini, who gave me some great insights on the issue and provided one of the major arguments for this piece.

When it comes to identifying the root cause of terrorism, many are compelled to point fingers on poverty and lack of education.  The argument, in a nutshell, goes somewhat as follows: Poor, uneducated people are easily lured to promises of heaven and blowing other people up to attain them.

However, such theory does not stand its ground when confronted with facts.  Marc Sageman of Foreign Policy Research Institute compiled the background data of around 400 Al-Qaeda members and discovered that three quarters of his sample belonged to the middle or upper class.  He further noted that, “[T]he vast majority –90 percent—came from caring, intact families.  Sixty-three percent had gone to college, as compared with the 5-6 percent that’s usual for the third world.  These are the best and brightest of their societies in many ways.”

Economists Efraim Benmelech of Harvard University and Claude Berrebi of RAND Corporation also came to the same conclusion when they gathered data on Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel from 2000 to 2005.  They discovered that education is very much valued in the “terrorism market.”  Better educated individuals are more likely to be successful in carrying out large-scale terrorist attacks and have lower chances of getting caught.

It should also be noted that the alleged leader of the 9/11 attack, Mohammed Atta, had a graduate degree, while both Azahari and Noordin Top, masterminds of the major terrorist attacks in the last decade in Indonesia, were skilled engineers and scientists.  None of them were poor; all three came from affluent families.

Obviously, the majority of terrorists in the world don’t fit the poor and uneducated profile.  As such, simply expanding education and eradicating poverty would unlikely affect terrorist recruitment.  We need to look deeper.  In that light, there are at least three issues that are often overlooked, each bearing a consequence in how public policies should be shaped and how we as the community should act in countering the seeds of terrorism.

First, it’s not a coincidence that many terrorist masterminds come from countries with repressive government, like the Arab states and, arguably, Malaysia.  Repressive governments tend to bar legal venues of voicing dissent, thus making extreme demonstration of opposition more attractive.  When the cost of legal dissent increases—due to threat of legal repercussions—the relative cost of illegal dissent is lowered.  Hence terrorism becomes a viable venue.

Therefore, it’s within our interest to allow dissent.  Specifically for Indonesia, we need to allow organizations like Hizbut Tahrir and the Islamic Defenders Front to exist.  It doesn’t mean we should let them do whatever they want.  They still have to be legally accountable for their actions; if and when they employ violence or thuggery, they have to pay for their actions to the fullest extent of the law.  We should also continue voicing opposition to their radical stances and gospel of hatred.  However, their right to association and voicing dissent should be recognized and upheld.  Perhaps it’s worth to remind ourselves that virtually none of the major Indonesian terrorists are affiliated to these legal organizations.

Second, acts of terrorism and suicide bombing require the breaking of the fear of the pain involved in the act and the reservation of hurting other people.  An effective way of doing this is by psychological enforcement, most notably by an authority or peers.  A common trait shared by terrorists is that they have a figure of authority that they fully and unquestionably respect. It’s also very common for prospective terrorists to join a perverse cause through preexisting social bonds with people who are already terrorists or had decided to join.

So here’s what we need to understand: An education system that puts a very high premium on respect for authority and discourage freethinking would produce individuals that are highly susceptible to psychological enforcement.  So while simply more education may not be effective in countering the roots of terrorism, how we educate matters significantly.  We need to push, not discourage, our children to question the authorities—their teachers and parents—and the majority—their friends.  We need to make them comfortable to be different and to disagree.  This will make them significantly less vulnerable to “brainwashing” by radicalism.

Lastly, we should heed the statistics found by Mr. Sageman in his research: An overwhelming majority of the educated individuals in his sample of Al-Qaeda members are engineers, architects, civil engineers, and scientists.  People with backgrounds in humanities are grossly underrepresented.  Is there anything in humanities that make its students less susceptible to radical, narrow-minded, chauvinistic ideas?  In short, the answer is yes.

Students of humanities make a conscious effort to learn different cultures, religions, and values.  This leads them to respect people of all walks of life, even if they don’t necessarily agree with the values those other people hold.  It’s this spirit of humanities that should be integrated in our education system.  Indonesian youth needs to learn, and perhaps even experience, different values.  The many live-in programs already conducted by various local NGOs, bringing in students of different religious and cultural backgrounds to stay with families in Aceh, Lombok and Papua, should be expanded.  It’s high time for us to not only tolerate diversity, but embrace it.

At the end of the day, it’s really more complex than simply poverty and lack of education.  If we’re really serious about addressing the root of terrorism, we need to uphold civil liberty, teach our children that it’s alright to question the authority, and expose them to different values.  That’s going to be a challenge not only for the government, but for all of us—parents, teachers, and the community.  But nobody ever said addressing the roots of terrorism is easy.

An edited version of this article (with some colorful comments, I might add) is available at Jakarta Globe.

 

On the Externalities of Ied Exodus

This is the third in a series of articles on the economics of Ramadan.  The other two are on Ramadan-induced inflation and how charity can hurt the poor.

When I was little, Ied Al-Fitri was always one of the most fun days of the year, mostly because my entire extended family would all gather in one place to celebrate it.  The minimum set would be eighteen cousins, brothers and sisters, eight adults, and the matriarch, my grandmother.  As with a typical West Sumatran family, mine was all over the place and it always took quite an effort to move ourselves to a designated place.

That was about twenty years ago, when the Indonesian population was around three-quarters of today’s and urbanization was relatively limited.  At the time, while the traffic might increase during the ritual homebound exodus of Ied, it never reached the extent of what we experience today, where cars line up bumper to bumper, with swarms of motorcycles zigzagging wildly, mortally threatening everything in their paths, and where the length of a trip can quadruple that of any other given day.

Yet these days, under such excursion nightmare, hundreds of thousands still mobilize themselves every single year.  They are willing to wait in line for hours to get tickets; get cramped in busses, trains and ships, many without air conditioning; get completely stuck on the road; and literally risk serious injuries—and even death—due to accidents.

Irrational?  Actually we are observing quite a rational behavior.

Individuals take action after considering the personal cost and benefit.  For many of us, the cost of the annual homebound trip—which includes not only the actual fare but also the long hours, exhaustion, and risks—is worth the benefit of celebrating Ied with family.   When said individuals bear all the cost and reap all the benefit themselves, then whatever they decide is their own business.  The thing is, as we shall see, this is not the case with the annual homebound exodus.

Every time an individual decides to take the long trip home, they contribute to the traffic jam, which in turn put tremendous strain on the roads, which are built and maintained by our tax money, and inject tons of toxins and carbon into the atmosphere, poisoning the air and increasing global temperature.  Said individual would also significantly increase the risk of accidents happening, since with each additional bus, car or motorcycle on the street, the probability of collisions increases proportionately.  In 2008, the exodus saw over 1,300 road accidents with more than 600 fatalities, all occurred within a week, which constitutes about 100 deaths per day—had this been due to terrorist attack, drastic measures would’ve been taken.  These costs are not incurred on the individual deciding to join the exodus bandwagon, but on innocent bystanders.  And this is where the problem starts.

The additional costs of the Ied exodus that are borne on other people are more commonly known as negative externalities.  Exodus travelers only cover for the cost of tickets, fares, gas, personal time and physical exhaustion; while the rest of us cover for the cost of traffic jams, road damages, poisonous air, increased global temperature, and risk of fatalities.  These externalities should have been accounted for by the respective individuals when they weigh the cost and benefits of taking the homebound exodus; unfortunately, they are not.

In order to address the problem, the real cost incurred on the individuals taking the exodus must be increased, taking into account all the externalities.  This can mean taxing tickets and fares, setting up temporary toll booths on major roads, and even temporarily increasing gas price for several days before, during and after Ied.  The additional revenue should then be channeled to road maintenance, clean air campaigns, and deployment of additional police personnel.

Now you might protest because some people would then not be able to afford taking the trip home.  Well actually that’s the entire point.  Many people should decide that the cost—the true cost—of going home outweighs the benefit and choose to stay put.  Thus we would have less poison in the air and fewer deaths.  What is truly scandalous is the fact that not only the government—with our support—decides not to increase the personal cost of Ied exodus, it actually decreases it, by minimizing hikes in tickets and fares.  Since the cost of exodus is set considerably lower than it should be, there are significantly more people than it should be out there on the road.

The idea that there should be less people taking the Ied exodus is actually quite popular, especially if you’re one of the unfortunate ones who have ever experienced accidents on what is supposed to be a joyous occasion.  In 2008, the Indonesian Council of Ulemmas (MUI) considered making the exodus makruh—an action that is divinely discouraged.  Unfortunately, most people respond better to worldly incentive than divine sanctions.

I will not downplay the benefit of celebrating Ied with our loved ones.  Being able to share the love, joy, and a sense of triumph after a month fasting with the people you call home is truly a blessing.  But then again, is it worth 600 lives?

My extended family now numbers more than fifty.  Today we’ve made a conscious decision not to make it necessary anymore to have a big gathering during Ied.  Again, this is a rational decision—the cost, and risk, of having such familial exodus during the traffic peak of the year outweighs its benefit for us.  So we celebrate Ied in different places, making use of the wonder of today’s information technology to share our love and happiness with each other.  We do, however, agree to have a family gathering four times a year, scheduled deliberately outside Ied.  And we always have as much fun as we did twenty years ago.

An edited version of this article is featured in Jakarta Globe

 

Jilbab Politics: Between Perennial Ties and Modern Needs

A mere few days before the presidential campaign officially started, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) made claims, based on their internal survey, that some voters are gravitating away from SBY-Boediono and towards JK-Wiranto simply because the wives of the latter wear the Muslim headscarf or jilbab.

Putting aside questions of validity and sampling method of PKS’ survey, it’s hard to deny that indeed some of our fellow citizens in Indonesia do base their voting decisions less on the merits of the candidates running for office and more on their personal, mostly observable, traits.

A personal survey I conducted, though it may be slightly less credible than that of PKS’, discovered that many of my acquaintances based their vote in the last parliamentary election on how cute the candidates were, whether they looked like a family member, whether they looked fatherly, or whether their names sounded “either too Muslim or too Christian”—whatever that means.

Apparently for some people, perennial ties trump modern needs; and as a fledgling democracy, the conflict between the two takes center stage in Indonesia’s general elections.

To a certain extent, we all cling to our perennial ties; we are instinctively drawn to people who share the same traits as we do, be it race, ethnicity, religion, political view, laptop brand, or American Idol favorites.  The drive is ancient and instinctive, ingrained in us by millions of years of evolution.  Communities—humans and animals alike—with strong perennial ties are more likely to co-operate to find food and fend off predators, and thus survive.

This instinct can easily kick in when we choose a leader: we lean towards those whose personal, observable traits most resemble what we perceive as the ideal member of the community.

In the context of today’s democratic election, however, the instinctive perennial ties become at odds with modern needs.

A modern society—and we’d all like to think that Indonesia is a modern society—has complex needs.  Even the latest incarnation of finding hunting grounds and repelling tigers or rival tribes, in the form of food security and military might, has become increasingly complex.  On top of that, we also need job security, affordable housing, access to quality education, a growing economy, protection of basic human rights, and a whole bunch of other things.

Quite obviously, as electorates we would do well to put stronger importance on the candidates’ track record, merit, and capability, as well as the soundness of their programs, than on their or their spouses’ ethnicity, religion, or religious practices.  However, the ancient drive of perennial ties is difficult to abolish completely.  So the real question is, should the presidential tickets and political parties exploit that drive or instead take an active role to educate the voters not to succumb to it?

At first sight, it seems that politicians have an interest to take advantage of their electorates’ perennial ties.  After all, it is a lot easier to display one’s ethnicity and religious practices than to stand against scrutiny over track record and development program.  Closer inspection may reveal that exploiting perennial ties in this era is extremely risky and unpredictable.

Ten thousand years ago the definition of an ideal member of the community is pretty clear cut: strong physique, good fighting and hunting skills, and perhaps a good coat of body hair.  Highlight those traits, and you can easily become the President of the Neanderthal nation.

Today, however, different members of the society have different ideas of what makes an ideal member of the community.  For some, observable religious piety is of high value; for others, that may imply tendency of exclusiveness, which is not entirely desirable.

It would be virtually impossible for anyone to map out these diverse individual perceptions; the fact that such perceptions are very fluid and can change in a matter of days makes it even more difficult to record.  The bottom line is politicians who exploit perennial ties really have no way of predicting the outcome of their strategy.

During the last US presidential campaign, Obama’s association with Muslims—his childhood in Indonesia, his Muslim family members, even rumors that he was a Muslim—was used by several McCain supporters in the hope that it would alienate Obama from the American population.  In Turkey, opponents of Prime Minister Erdogan and President Gul are making a huge fuss about their wives wearing headscarves—the other face of the same coin of Indonesia’s situation.

In both cases, the strategy either failed or backfired.  Many Americans became determined to prove to the world that they are an inclusive, non-discriminatory society; and for some, that alone was enough to give their votes for Obama.  Meanwhile, the negative campaign against Erdogan and Gul drove their supporters to become resolute in securing their positions.

If exploited, the outcome of jilbab politics in Indonesia’s presidential election is completely unpredictable.  Yielding to perennial ties, conservative Muslims may be drawn to JK-Wiranto; but then again moderate, progressive Muslims may gravitate towards SBY-Boediono.  Nobody can know for sure.  All things considered, it is well within the interest of the presidential hopefuls and their supporting political parties to shy away from garnering votes based on perennial ties, and just focus on what really matters: what direction this great nation is going to take.