The World and Everything in It - July 15, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The western United States is in a severe drought. Nobody is exempt.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also possible revolution in Cuba. What’s happening and how can the United States help?

Plus a conversation with two Christian counselors to help each of us be better comforters and friends.

And commentator Cal Thomas on the lessons we didn’t learn from history and the mistakes we repeat now.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, July 15th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden meets with Democrats at Capitol on new spending plans » President Biden held a lunch meeting at the Capitol Wednesday with Senate Democrats as he looks to firm up support for trillions in new spending.

BIDEN: Great to be home, great to be back with all my colleagues, and I think we’re going to get a lot done.

The meeting came one day after party leaders announced that Democrats had agreed amongst themselves on an enormous new spending blueprint.

The budget agreement envisions spending $3.5 trillion over the coming decade on Democratic priorities like climate change, health care and family-service programs.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer…

SCHUMER: This budget resolution will allow us to pass the most significant legislation to expand support and help American families since the New Deal.

Many Republicans have signed onto a bipartisan infrastructure plan in the neighborhood of $1 trillion. But GOP Sen. John Barrasso warned that trillions in spending on top of that is a bad idea.

BARRASSO: They’re acting like this is Monopoly money. Look, this is about the green bad deal. This is about a massive expansion of the government’s role in our healthcare. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Democrats hope to push the resolution through the Senate and House before the August recess. The plan still needs buy-in from moderate Democrats to secure the 50 votes needed to pass in the Senate.

New report reveals inflation in wholesale prices » News of the new spending deal came as the Labor Department issued another report on Wednesday showing inflation taking a bite out of the U.S. economy.

Inflation at the wholesale level jumped 1 percent in June, pushing price gains over the past 12 months up by 7.3 percent. That is the largest 12-month increase on record.

That news followed a Tuesday report showing consumer prices are also surging.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told lawmakers Wednesday it’s a simple matter of supply and demand.

POWELL: Strong demand in sectors where production bottlenecks has led to especially rapid price increases for some goods and services, which should partially reverse as effects of the bottlenecks unwind.

Powell said once again that he’s confident the inflation surge is temporary.

Some economists aren’t quite as sure and are growing increasingly uneasy.

But the Fed and the White House insist there is little risk of inflation spiraling out of control as it did in the 1970s.

U.S. to begin evacuating Afghans who aided American military » The Biden administration is preparing to evacuate Afghan interpreters and translators who aided the U.S. military.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki…

PSAKI: We’re launching what we are calling Operation Allies Refuge to support relocation flights for interested and eligible Afghan nationals and their families who have supported the United states and our partners...

President Biden has faced pressure from lawmakers in both parties to come up with a plan to help evacuate Afghan military helpers.

Meantime, former President George W. Bush spoke out on the withdrawal Wednesday. Bush has typically declined to comment on policy decisions by his successors. But with regard to the troop pullout in Afghanistan, he told German public broadcaster DW News...

BUSH: I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad and I’m sad.

The U.S. military is expected to complete its troop pullout next month.

COVID-19 cases on the rise in the U.S. » COVID-19 cases are back on the rise in the United States, doubling over the past three weeks. That as the ulta-contagious delta variant continues to spread.

The 7-day rolling average of new daily cases now stands at about 24,000—up from 12,000 in late June.

New cases were rising slowly around the first of July, but spiked after July 4th holiday gatherings.

The five states with the biggest two-week jump in cases per capita all had COVID-19 vaccination rates lower than the national level.

While new cases have surged in some areas, deaths from COVID-19 have risen only slightly, about 8 percent over the past week.

Overdose deaths hit record high last year » More Americans died of drug overdoses last year than ever before. That according to a new government report. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 in 2020 in the grip of the pandemic.

That estimate far eclipses the high of about 72,000 drug overdose deaths reached the previous year and amounts to a 29% increase.

The country was already struggling with its worst overdose epidemic heading into last year. But researchers say clearly COVID-19 poured fuel on the fire.

That as lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get.

Prescription painkillers once drove the nation's overdose epidemic. But heroin and fentanyl deaths have surpassed painkillers in recent years.

CDC data suggests fentanyl was involved in more than 60% of the overdose deaths last year.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: drought in the West.

Plus, Cal Thomas questions the consequences of leaving Afghanistan.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 15th of July, 2021.

You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you are! Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up on The World and Everything in It: drought.

The Western United States is in one. Fifty-seven million people are living under drier-than-usual conditions.

That’s making life harder for everyone living there. WORLD’S Sarah Schweinsberg reports.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: California farmers are used to drought. The state’s precipitation has always been up and down—very wet years followed by very dry ones.

But for the past two decades, the dry years have gotten more and more common. Still, Ryan Talley has soldiered on. He grows fruit and veggies on 1,500 acres.

TALLEY: Here at Talley Farms we grow lemons, avocados, bell peppers, Napa spinach, cilantro. We grow celery, we grow broccoli, and parsley.

The farm on California’s central coast depends on rainfall to replenish underground wells. Wells that Talley Farms uses to irrigate fields.

TALLEY: We do intensively irrigate with drip irrigation, or with sprinkler irrigation all of our crops.

But last fall and this winter, the region got one-third of its usual rainfall. Just eight inches. That means the wells are low. Lower than Ryan Talley has ever seen them.

TALLEY: We've already been proactive on some of our ranches and actually dropped our pumps down further as far as we can into our wells. And, and a lot of our ranches have reached the bottom of our wells.

So Talley Farms has to make the limited water stretch. To do that, in some places, Ryan Talley is planting half as much as he normally would.

TALLEY: We've really had to cut our planting schedule and not plant what we typically do in those ranches, just due to the fact that we don't have the water to irrigate those fields.

More than half of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada are in an exceptional drought—the most severe rating—along with a third of California.

Across the West, that has farmers and ranchers hurting, and city water planners tightening their belts.

Zach Renstrom manages water for Washington County in southwest Utah… home of Zion National Park.

RENSTROM: We only have actually one source of water in our county, and it comes from the Virgin River Basin.

The county collects water from the river into several reservoirs. Renstrom says that water is used for drinking, irrigating fields, and watering lawns.

This year, city officials are trying to cut water use by 10 percent by limiting irrigation at parks and golf courses and asking residents to cut back on landscape watering. The county is also tacking on a surcharge for people who use more than 1,000 gallons of water a month.

Zach Renstrom says the county’s population just keeps growing, even as drought conditions continue. So officials are looking at whether some of these policies need to be permanent in the desert climate.

RENSTROM: We're going through that evaluation process to look at what is ornamental or decorative grass versus effective grass. How can we just think forward when the drought is over? How can we still be using water efficiently?

Andrea Lopez works with the Ute Water Conservancy District in Western Colorado around Grand Junction. It provides water for 90,000 people.

LOPEZ: Our primary watersheds are the Grand Mesa, specifically the plateau Creek watershed.

Typically, the Grand Mesa’s snowpack fills reservoirs to meet the region’s needs. But this year, for the first time ever, Ute Water officials began pumping water from the Colorado River to keep reservoirs full.

Lopez says once reservoirs get too low, it’s hard to fill them up again.

LOPEZ: If you think of your reservoirs, like your savings account, you know, it's a lot harder to recover anything when it takes a big hit all at once.

The Colorado River is one of the most important water sources West of the Rockies with 30 million people relying on it. And the drought is stretching its supply.

It fills two key reservoirs: Lake Mead in Nevada and Arizona and Lake Powell in Utah. Over the 4th of July, water levels at Lake Mead reached a historic low—at just 35 percent of its capacity. Lake Mead is just 34 percent full.

Lower water levels mean lower electricity production at hydroelectric plants along the river. In June, Lake Mead’s Hoover Dam dropped production by a quarter.

The drought is also affecting important ecosystems. In Northern Utah, the Great Salt Lake could reach a 170 year low.

Jaimi Butler is with the Great Salt Lake Institute at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. She says the shrinking lake affects wildlife. Millions of birds migrate there to nest and feed on brine shrimp. But if the water gets too low, the lake will get too salty, and the shrimp will die.

BUTLER: We're approaching a very important level of salinity. The optimal salinity for Great Salt Lake is between 12 and 16 percent salinity, right now we're at 15.5 percent salinity, and it's going to go above that 16 percent salinity by the end of the summer.

Despite the high heat and drought conditions, cities in the West, like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City, keep growing.

And while conditions are dire, some scientists say water conservation has come a long way and will continue to improve… especially as drought conditions become the usual.

Kathryn Sorenson directs the Kyle Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

SORENSON: In the state of Arizona as a whole, we use about the same amount of water today, as we did in the 1950s. But our population has grown by 5 million people. We have become so much more efficient with our water use, that we've continued to grow, while essentially using the same amount of water.

Back in California, farmer Ryan Talley says droughts present many unknowns. But he knows, it’s out of his hands and in someone else's.

TALLEY: I definitely pray for rain. I give it to the Lord. Our faith is what gets us through in times like that. And I'm confident he will always provide a way.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a possible revolution against the communist regime in Cuba.

AUDIO: [Protest]

Thousands of protesters have flooded the streets in cities across Cuba in recent days.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Demonstrators are lashing out over food and medicine shortages, rising consumer prices, and power outages. But they’re also unleashing decades of pent up anger and frustration over government oppression. They demand freedom from the communist regime. The protests are the largest and loudest in 60 years.

So could this be the start of a new Cuban revolution against the communist rule?

Here to help answer that question and help us better understand what’s happening in Cuba is Mike Gonzalez. He and his family fled Cuba when he was 12 years old. He is now a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation. Mike, good morning!

MIKE GONZALEZ, GUEST: Hi. How are you? Thanks for having me on.

REICHARD: Mike, tell us about your journey from Cuba as a child. How did you get to the United States?

GONZALEZ: Well, as you said, I left at the age of 12. We had asked to leave much earlier. I think my father first put in a request for us to leave when I was seven in 1967. And then they really didn't want people to leave when and especially if you were professionals—both my parents were lawyers, so they didn't want them to leave and it took forever. It took five years for the communist government to note its magnanimity to allow us the freedom to leave the country. My father died in the meantime. So he died when I was 11. And about four months later, the notice finally arrived on our doorstep that said we could leave. We left for Spain. So I can say that I have lived under communism and also fascism, because Francisco Franco was the leader of Spain at the moment.

REICHARD: Mike, help us walk in the shoes of the Cuban people here right now. What has life been like for them in recent months with the pressures of pandemic on top of all the normal hardships?

GONZALEZ: Well, we haven't had any freedom for the last 62 years. Zero. President Biden was wrong to call it an authoritarian state. It's totalitarian, and there's a big difference. Jean Kirkpatrick wrote a very good essay on this in the 1970s and caught Reagan's eye and that's the reason she became an ambassador to the United Nations. Totalitarian systems tried to control every aspect of your life. It tries to control how you think. This thought crime in Cuba. They try to control your faith. You're not supposed to have any. After a certain time they banned Christmas. So when we cooked a Christmas meal, we had to close all the windows to make sure that the neighborhood snitches did not smell the pork. It's a society gripped with fear. And the fear is well grounded. They can really take you away and we're seeing Cubans being taken away—men and women being dragged out of the house kicking and screaming - because of the marches on Sunday. And they're being thrown into dungeons without a cot to sleep on with excrement, with rats. So, the fear of reprisal is what causes Cubans to just live a quiet life. And another aspect of communism is doublethink. You doublethink. You think one thing to yourself and then you think it again in the words of the revolution, because that's what you have to say. But then you have your own inner thoughts and you know that nothing works. The economy doesn't work. The healthcare system doesn't work. In fact, these protests, if you hear the chants of the people that say “libertad, libertad.” Liberty. They want freedom. And so another thing is that this gives a lie to this trope by Bernie Sanders and his squad on the rest of the left that Cuba's universal health care system is good. No. It's awful. It kills people.

REICHARD: The half century of Castro rule ended this year and Miguel Díaz-Canel took the reins in Cuba. Has anything changed? Is Díaz-Canel at least somewhat less oppressive or is it more of the same?

GONZALEZ: No, he's not in charge. He's a puppet. The Castro family remains in charge. Alejandro Castro Espin, Mariela Castro Espin and their children for old Castro. Raul Castro himself, he really is still the power, the political power there. The whole island is a Castro plantation. His former son-in-law is the man on top of guyesa—guyesa is an umbrella, kind of a company that owns about 80% of the economy. So economically, politically, the Castro family is very much in charge.

REICHARD: Mike, why haven’t we seen protests quite like what’s going on now in recent decades?

GONZALEZ: Because terror works. Terror works. There were no protests against Hitler. There were no protests against Stalin. If a totalitarian state is able to, through the means of a police state, control the totality of your life, every aspect. Anybody who's read 1984 will understand instantly how this world is achieved.

REICHARD: Mike, where do you see this going and what do you wish Americans understood about it?

GONZALEZ: I am not optimistic. I think that the repression will just tighten. People will suffer as a result of their courage. They will pay a price for their courage. I don't see the communist government yielding to people's demands. It never does.

What should Americans do? Two things. One is voice support for the people of Cuba. Obviously, that is very important. We know from the example of the Soviet refuseniks that our full-throated support of their cause will give them great nourishment.

But ultimately, what Americans can do is remain free. We must remain free ourselves. We cannot help anybody, we're not going to be the symbol of anything if we don't ourselves remain free. There are committed Marxists inside our society that want to change our system, who despise capitalism. They cannot be allowed to gain power either by the spread of critical race theory in our schools and our companies, or by any other means. America must continue to be the beacon of freedom. We have an exceptional attachment to liberty that has been remarked upon by foreign visitors and by social scientists. We should be very aware of that. And so I'm really heartened by the fact that parents seem to have woken up across America to the threat of this latent Marxism that uses critical race theory to try to undermine our institutions and our traditions and our capitalist system. So, I am much more optimistic that the battle against Marxism can be won here in the United States.

REICHARD: So instructive to talk to someone like you. Mike Gonzalez with the Heritage Foundation has been our guest. Mike, thanks very much!

GONZALEZ: Thank you very much.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: A man in Michigan made a striking discovery under his house when he went to demolish his back stairs.

David Olsen said he found a hard spherical object buried in the sand behind cinder blocks. It looked almost exactly like a bowling ball, but it didn’t have finger holes.

Then he found another. And another. And then about 160 more.

Olsen told WZZM-TV:

OLSEN: It became mind blowing. It kind of felt like a paleontologist where you see it where they’ve got the little brush and their dusting the bones off.

Well, the objects looked a lot like bowling balls because that’s exactly what they were. Turns out, Brunswick Bowling Products used to have a plant near his town. Olsen learned its employees used to take scrapped bowling balls to use as an alternative to gravel or concrete blocks.

Olsen’s happy he found bowling balls instead of blocks. Easier to roll out of the way!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 15th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Experts are just beginning to understand the impact of the pandemic on mental health. A handful of studies suggest that problems like depression, anxiety, and sexual abuse may have all increased over the past year.

REICHARD: Christian counselors Justin Holcomb and Sissy Goff have each published books to help with these struggles. World’s Emily Whitten called them up to learn how we as Christians can lend a helping hand.

EMILY WHITTEN, REPORTER: Sissy Goff has worked as a licensed counselor for more than 30 years. She’s also director of child and adolescent counseling at Daystar Counseling Ministries in Nashville. Her latest book, Brave, helps teen girls address anxiety from a Christian perspective.

GOFF: I hope our literature steps in to be able to say, you know, here's some practical things along the way based on what we're seeing in kids right now because it's entirely different in 2021.

Anglican minister Justin Holcomb regularly counsels people in his Florida diocese—often on the topic of sexual abuse. His recent book for kids is part of a series that began with God Made All of Me, a book that helps families protect kids from sexual abuse.

HOLCOMB: That book just sold 100,000 copies. And the idea that there's 100,000 families going around having this conversation, man, that's what you work hard for is something like that.

Both Holcomb and Goff didn’t start out knowing how to be good counselors. So, how did God shape them to run to the fire in terms of mental health? First, He made His Word dwell richly in their hearts and minds.

After Sissy Goff met Christ at a summer camp, several verses from 1 John became anchor verses for her.

GOFF: A verse that I use all the time with kids when I'm counseling—but it's, “My dear children, let's not just talk about love. Let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality. It's also the way to shut down debilitating self criticism, even when there's something to it.” I love that. God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

Justin Holcomb first learned what Christian love looked like from his parents. Today, in his ministry to abuse survivors, he constantly comes back to the Biblical picture of Christ’s redemptive work.

HOLCOMB: There's sickness, there's death, there's betrayal, there's gossip, there's abuse. There's all these different things. [cut words] And that's what Jesus is doing is undoing sin and its effects by His life, death, resurrection, ascension.

Goff says a prayerful dependence on God is also foundational.

GOFF: I never feel equipped. [cut words] So often I sit in counseling sessions and think, I don't know what to say to you. I have no idea how to help you in this moment. And I pray like crazy. And sometimes it's not even that I'm just in the moment, like literally saying the words, but I think there's just this dependence that hopefully, translates to prayer.

Both Holcomb and Goff see the ability to listen well as critical to counseling. Holcomb says that’s especially important for abuse survivors.

HOLCOMB: I love telling people when they go, man, what what do we do with parenting and abuse survivors? Like, what am I supposed to say? Well, the good news is, you don't have to say very much, because they're happy that they're actually being listened to and believed and you're sharing the load with them, just by hearing of the darkness they've experienced and the burden they're carrying.

It can be intimidating to hear about such deep pain. But Goff points out that you don’t need special credentials or training to be a good listener.

GOFF: Sometimes the panic comes from pressure of feeling like, I've got to have the right answer. I've got to know how to help them fix it. And I find the more I talk to people, the more that what they really want is just to be heard and seen in that moment. And any of us can do that with no training.

If you or someone you love struggles, Holcomb and Goff say it can be overwhelming to go it alone. Both suggest reaching out to others [in the body of Christ] for help. That might mean talking to a trusted pastor or a medical professional.

GOFF: I really think every parent needs a couple of trusted people that can be on your team helping you figure out what is blocking you, and how do you get there to kind of be free to be who God made you to be with your kids. Justin, what do you think?

HOLCOMB: Yeah. I love it. I love it. I like the team approach. In my denomination, a minister can't meet with someone about an issue more than three times without referring them to someone else. And that's only in recognition that you're not slotting out, you're adding people to the team.

To close our conversation, Goff and Holcomb summed up how we can become better counselors. Goff emphasized the willingness to give others our time and attention.

GOFF: The two things that I think about immediately are one that we got to slow down. And we've got to simplify life to some degree where it makes room to see people and engage with people in deeper places. And to just that we need to be curious.

Holcomb’s final statement focused on showing others God’s love.

HOLCOMB: You have been a recipient of God's good, caring, gracious love, both directly by God, and indirectly by God through other people, and reflect on being a recipient of that care. Because that is a great picture of you being an agent of that same type of care from God and others to other people.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emily Whitten.

BROWN: Today’s feature comes from a much longer conversation with Emily. This weekend, we’re going to release their complete roundtable discussion online and on our podcast feed.

We’ll also include links in today’s transcript to WORLD’s book reviews of Brave, and God Made All of Me.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 15th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s commentator Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: Retirement plans warn of a “penalty for early withdrawal.” Might that also apply to the withdrawal of American and NATO forces from Afghanistan?

If you set aside the victory by coalition forces that expelled Saddam Hussein's overmatched troops from Kuwait in 1991, the United States has not won a war since World War II. Not in Korea. Not in Vietnam. And President Biden now says Afghanistan is another war we cannot win.

Osama bin Laden predicted this would happen. He said we didn't have the staying power and would ultimately tire of the conflict.

Our longest war may be ending. At least, that’s how President Biden put it. But it may only get worse from here. Terrorism knows no state boundaries. And it doesn’t adhere to classic rules of warfare.

U.S. air power largely kept the Taliban at bay. Without it they are re-capturing territories they once held before 9/11.

President Biden and former President Trump, who first announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces, say America cannot engage in “nation building.” Even recent history has proved that true. But the larger question is whether we can defend ourselves against further attacks on this country if Al-Qaeda regroups. What if, with the help of Iran, it stages another 9/11-type attack? What if it’s worse this time? What if it involves nuclear devices?

All wars cost money, lives, and limbs. We just have to decide whether that investment was worth it. Did it produce the outcome we wanted, or needed?

Brown University’s Cost of War project offers some data to help answer that question. It found that the combined cost of our involvement in Afghanistan is over $2 trillion dollars. That doesn’t include lifetime care for veterans or future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the fighting.

It also counts the human cost: 241,000 lives lost. That includes 24-00 U.S. service members, nearly 4,000 contractors, and more than 71,000 civilians.

Will we build a "wall" to commemorate those U.S. deaths? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial still haunts me when I visit it in Washington, D.C. I knew some of the people whose names are carved into the black granite. My name might have been one of them. As an Army enlisted man, I received orders for Vietnam. I ultimately got re-assigned, due to my position at Armed Forces Radio in New York. More than 58,300 others were not as fortunate.

What did we learn from Vietnam? Obviously nothing because we have repeated history in Afghanistan. We had no “end game,” except to hold off the Taliban, a terror group motivated by religious fervor that has no intention of quitting.

If Al-Qaeda regroups under the Taliban’s watch and launches another terror attack against the United States, how will we respond? And who will take the blame?

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow, more on Cuba and also what’s happening with the Southern Baptist Convention. World board member Albert Mohler joins us for Culture Friday.

And, we’ll tell you about a new streaming series based on a popular children’s book.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Psalmist says: the [Lord’s] testimonies are wonderful; therefore my soul keeps them.

Go now in grace and peace.

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