I Don't Like...

So I’m watching this young woman, probably in her late 20s or early 30s, walking into a house and saying; “well (a shake of her head)…I don’t like THAT!” She’s looking at wallpaper.  Then she spies a small light fixture hanging from the ceiling and shakes her head again. “This has GOT to go”. Later she’s looking at an obviously updated, granite kitchen counter and casually remarks; “I can’t live with this.” 

She’s looking to buy a home for herself (plus spouse), maybe her first.  It’s another episode of House Hunters which occupies significant space on the cable network HGTV, the network which acts as pornography for women.

My wife Jan doesn’t just watch HGTV, she lives HGTV. If, like the little girl in Poltergeist, she was sucked into the TV by nefarious and super natural forces…I’d know where to tune her in. Unlike in Poltergeist however, my problem would not be in how to get her out, it would be how to talk her into leaving. “Walk toward the Tiny Houses”, I might wail (she hates the Tiny House craze –“why don’t they just buy an RV?”).

As such, I find myself inadvertently watching various episodes of real estate marketing and home improvement as it exists in the alternate universe known as reality television.  It is often the price I have to pay for eating ice cream in an immobile yet comfortable body position.  

I spend some of this HGTV emersion making wise comments about what I observe (much to the chagrin of my wife): “Oh, look how surprised they are peeking into that bonus room and turning on the light.  I wonder if they’re equally surprised to find a camera crew in there as well”. However, sometimes I can regard many of these HGTV players who are not professional actors and, even with careful editing, those aspects of their personalities spilling forth on the screen.

Our neighbor’s daughter was featured on an episode of House Hunters International.  A perfectly lovely young woman, her thoughtful and engaging persona shown through, even though the search for the ideal apartment in Brussels was compete horse-poopie.  She had been living in the apartment she “finally chose” even before being picked for the show.  The search was, in the words of the Bard, much ado about nothing.  My neighbor’s daughter, on the other hand, was genuine.

So it is reasonable to ponder on these characters that lay out their lives and temperament to a national audience.  The personality traits they demonstrate, by virtue of their amateur status, may be the only reality in this particular corner of “reality” television.

What I’ve been pondering are the two distinct types that walk through these staged buildings passing judgment on such important items as electrical outlet covers and doggie doors. 

There are those who make the vast majority of their observations as a testimony to why they enjoy life.  They’ll go into a room that looks like the archangel of the 1970s threw up on the walls and say, “Ooo…there’s so much potential”, or squeeze by a partially collapsed floor that looks down into the depths of Hell and remark; “Well…that looks like an easy fix.”  I don’t think these are the people HGTV wants.

The producers of HGTV probably want the type of person I was watching who, while trying to decide on a $748,000 California bungalow, are appalled at the sight of a crooked lamp on a night table or the crimson velour grandma drapes in the spare bedroom. As these observations have nothing to say about the quality of the house, they have oodles to say about the observer and that’s what the producers love.

There are people who go through life who simply don’t like.  Don’t like what, you ask?  They just don’t like…you fill in the blank.  They base their world view not on what they enjoy or value, but rather on that which they find annoying and distasteful.  They also feel some sense of individual superiority to pass judgment critically.  Even on things they like they can find some small shortfall to comment on; “…boy that was a great dessert, except for the odd way the raspberry sauce was streuseled on the plate”.  They focus first on what they don’t like; what they see, what they eat, what they encounter.  Whether weather is naturally produced or has inside conditioning it is an endless search for improvement.

Okay…okay, everyone is like that to some extent and realistically no one is a pure Pollyanna.  I don’t like 4 out of every 5 movies I see…oh dear. Still the bell curve on this is not tall and the distinction between those individuals who heavily lean positive and those negative are pretty easy to flesh out.  On HGTV it’s a snap! 

Most of the viewers actually enjoy disliking those obnoxious house hunters and home renovators.  I’m not like them, you think.  But take a listen in your reality and see how often you hear “I don’t like” verses “I like” (or their verbal equivalent).  If people are truly interested in changing their lives for the better then they need to focus on all those little things they find they don’t like and…well…shut up.  Because this isn’t reality TV and, frankly, no one really gives a damn about what you don’t like.

Evolutionary Ethics and the Conservative Mind

In last month’s news one possible conclusion emerged; that people in Minnesota are paying entirely too much for dental care.  Walter J. Palmer, the Bloomington, MN dentist who also fashions himself a big game hunter (emphasis on the word ‘big’) can now be internationally known as Dr. Shameless.  Still, the fact that he and others like him exist at all is far more a revelation to the general public than the fact that root canals and crowns can allow a relative nobody to spend $50,000 to shoot a big cat.

Throughout most of recorded history killing big animals would rarely raise an eyebrow, if at all.  Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, when the need to hunt for food and clothing was effectively eliminated and wealth could be produced remotely, the killing of big animals somehow became sport. Few found a problem with it. From Theodore Roosevelt to Ernest Hemingway, to the capturers of King Kong, generations viewed such “sport” Romantically rather than repulsively.  That’s not the case anymore, we love our buffalos. So what happened?

As there has been social evolution for human beings generally throughout our history, so have ethics evolved.  Quite different from sluggish biological evolution, evolutionary ethics over the past few centuries appear to be changing at increasingly faster rates. The changes seem to coincide with both the expansion in human population and speed of communication. There is hardly a youth introduced to history who isn’t amazed by what we considered ethically correct only two hundred, one hundred, or even fifty years ago. In fact, one only needs to read the Bible and observe how long people have adhered to its archaic rhetoric.

Yet in the present, behavior that can seem so blatantly unethical on its face can also feel painfully slow to change. One primary reason is an irrational fear of change and blind self-interest which, most often, lays deep in the Conservative psyche. 

Perhaps one day I’ll meet a poor, old, black lesbian with cancer.  She will be a very special person, indeed, for she embodies most major human traits that over the past one hundred years or so Conservative America has fought tooth and nail from being ethically acceptable.  You won’t see a statue of her on Monument Avenue, but you should.  On it would be carved: Once I Wasn’t You, but Now I Am.

Let’s briefly take a look at what this lady has had to endure in her struggle to become one of us.

First she’s black.  Forget the Civil War, in which the entrenched Conservative South was more than willing to sacrifice everything to preserve ethically acceptable slavery. Instead, start with Jim Crow laws that most of the Nation didn’t have a problem with for decades after the Civil War ended. The segregation that existed up to the civil rights laws of the 60s was, by in large, accepted social order, even sometimes by those who were repressed by it. 

Segregation and prejudice still exist today, whether by choice or economics, but only on the fringes would anyone say or feel they are ethically correct today. That same Conservative mind fought the legislation that codified the new ethic, not just in the Conservative South, but also nationwide (think government institutions and the military). It took generations to change the ethic.  Even today foolish symbols of supremacy and ego, such as flags, cannot resist the changed ethics on race as they might have 25 years ago.

Second, she is a woman. She is one of a class of human beings that have been essentially the chattel of men since Homo sapiens wiped out the competition.  She made little progress toward full human status for the first 160,000 years or so.  The ethic that condemns the idea of women as the possessions of men didn’t finally change until the first half of the 20^th century, yet Conservatives fought that ethical evolution for centuries.

The 19^th Amendment (woman’s suffrage in the US passed in 1920) refused to be ratified by most states of the old Confederacy until decades after it had passed, as late as 1984. In many cases women’s equal status was fought with overt discrimination, violence, and personal abuse. It often still is. However, it is hard to argue the correctness of such inequity, even as Conservatives continue to oppose equal rights legislation for women and conservative religious zealots practice scriptural female exploitation in the US and around the world.

My lady is also poor, old, and sick.  Perhaps because the over 65 population is so large, the ethic that it is socially and morally wrong to let the poor and aged rot in the streets once they can no longer work has gone mainstream with Conservatives. Still, we only have to go back 100 years or so to see how Conservatives fought vehemently, up through the 1930s, what became Social Security, or what led to Medicare in the 1960s.


The patron saint of Conservatism, Ronny Reagan, campaigned as a spokesperson across the country that Medicare would destroy Capitalism in America.  How far would he have gotten in the 1980s with his gray patriots if he advocated the repeal of Medicare? Today self interest drives the opposition for means testing, but the ethic is fully adopted and the solutions to solvency for SS and Medicare won’t turn against it.

The Affordable Health Care act (aka Obamacare) is in the midst of the same battle.  The ethic that supports a reality in which everyone in the US would have adequate access to health care and that no one should be made bankrupt simply because they got sick is not shared by Conservatives.  Not yet. They will lose the fight, possibly at great cost to everyone by delaying the control of medical expenses. When they do finally lose they will embrace the new reality as if it was always theirs, just as they have with racial ethics, women’s ethics, and elder ethics.

Finally, she is gay. The acceptance of her sexual orientation still awaits the death of the current senior generation of Conservatives.  Once they are gone, a marriage of a same sex couple will garner less notice than a change in hair style.

If my extraordinary lady lived in say 1914 and I proclaimed she was free to go where ever she wanted to, she could vote without restriction, after she stopped working she would be given an income for life on which she could survive, if she got sick her medical care would be covered in full, and she could have all that while married to another woman with whom she has sex, I would have been vilified (if not shot) as a Socialist-atheist-anarchist-Satanist, anti-American hybrid. Yet all those social benefits are accepted today as ethically sound and many a diehard Conservative would defend most of them as such.

A fear laden, Fox watching, Reagan loving Conservative mind would run a Republican out of town for suggestions of eliminating Social Security and Medicare and scoff at calls to repeal a woman’s right to vote or an African-American’s right to equality. Yet, they continue to support those that benefit from the status quo.  Limited health care, unrestricted access to handguns and assault rifles, restrictions on gays, a woman’s right over her own body, institutional executions, to name a few, are issues to which Conservatives will ultimately relent as they take up arms to delay the next evolving ethic.

How someone who has even a rudimentary knowledge (and understanding) of history can proudly call themselves a Conservative is a befuddlement.  The evolution of ethics in modern America is mostly our attempt to modify our behavior to deal with the numbers in which we populate this planet and share information and resources.  The post-enlightenment social Conservative wants to ignore both.  More likely that Conservative mind sees their social ethics supported on a three legged stool.  One leg is fear, one is ignorance, and the third is greed or (more kindly) self interest.  Pull out just one leg and the whole thing falls… none too soon

Bad at Math

On August 11, 2011 the Republican candidates for President, eight at the time, met in Iowa for one of the early debates.  Notable in that debate was a question given to all eight to be answered by the simple raising of hands. 

The question was: with Democrats insisting on tax increases to go along with any spending cuts, would you (candidates) “walk away from a 10 to 1 deal”, ten dollars in spending cuts for every one dollar of tax increases.  They all raised their hands without question or qualification.  A Politburo couldn’t want for a better response.

Jon Huntsman, arguably the most moderate candidate in race that year, would much later lament that the choice to raise his hand was the major mistake of his brief campaign.  But why should he regret his choice? It was Republican solidarity, right? Moreover, why should he consider it a mistake?

Huntsman insists his response was a knee-jerk salute to the Republican mantra of “no taxes”, consistent with Republican mania in the era of Tea-Party politics.  He felt it was not a reflection of him, what he would do, and therefore something less than honest.

The fact that the group response was ridiculous on its face didn’t seem to be part of his regret.  It should have.  He, along with any other candidate, had been given a unique opportunity.  He had the chance to separate himself from the crowd on a point which would have made the rest of the field look like lemmings. 

I say that because it would have taken just one candidate to provide contrast and make the question stand out as absurd.  He could have simply pointed to the rest of them and said ‘these people are nuts…I’m running to govern’ and he would have been off to the races…literally.

Now the Republicans are doing it again, at least by their individual responses.  I suspect we may have a similar moment in their first debate as well.

This week the Supreme Court threw out the last challenge to the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) on the grounds that a single uncorrected line couldn’t change the obvious intent of the law. There is nothing left to prevent the AHCA from continuing,  barring a Republican President, a super Republican majority in the Senate, a Republican majority in the House, and probably a Scalia led decision in the Supreme Court.

Before those stars line up, the AHCA will be part of the American fabric, unable to be removed without causing an ugly tear in our social structure.  The same was true for those dreaded Democrat boogie-plans of Social Security and Medicare. So how is the Republican leadership reacting to this latest reality check?

Aside from imitating the act of puking, they have all (all that were reported) essentially called for a redoubling of efforts to have the AHCA repealed.  After “repealed”, they often include the words “and replaced”, but in a much, much smaller font size.

How can they not see that the reality of the situation? How can they not do the math?  Isn’t there a smart one in the bunch?  One of them who might break away and say ‘…it’s law; I’m going to work with what’s there and make it better’. 

Sure, he/she would probably lose the semi-lunatic fringe, but those tea-cozies would have to be divided up by the rest. However, he/she would be out of the chorus line and under the spotlight.  A spotlight viewed favorably by an expanding majority of Americans.

In an early debate this year I can almost expect the question: ‘If you as President could repeal Obamacare would you do it? Just raise your hands’. It is more likely than not that they would all go up.  They won’t be able to perceive that it is a 10 for 1 question.  They will again be so blindly stupid not to see that the need for healthcare is no less required than the need for taxes in a functioning society. 

Maybe Chris Christie, who is both savvy and desperate, will dance to apron of the stage.  However, will we see an actual contender take that brass ring on the carousel?  Not likely.  They’re simply no good at math… just good at going ‘round and ‘round.

Robbing Peter...

It is gratifying for me to see the hit the ol’Confederacy is taking nationally in the wake of the Charleston killings.  As a Virginia resident for 34 years I’m tired of seeing that war continued to be fought, not just in race relations, but also against the notion of achieving most any kind of improvement on a national scale.

Such things as healthcare, infrastructure, poverty, safety, environment, or education (to name a few) are somehow viewed as an assault on individual freedom and states’ rights to the Rebel faithful.  Reality plays no part. The Johnny Reb of today would never believe a Confederate States of America would ever have any socialist mechanisms such as, say…taxes.

That said, I am dismayed to see such media debate at this time and with this tragedy.  The major problem that surrounds this shooting is not racism or hate, it is the tools with which people can act out their unhinged fears and the acceptability we, as a culture, tacitly give to their actions.

 The way the Charleston shooting is playing out feels like a script written by the NRA.  At this point the Confederate battle flag will be partially vilified, removed from some (maybe all) public places and folks will walk away saying ‘job well done’. It may feel good, but frankly, nothing substantive will have been accomplished.  We will have robbed a starving Peter and fed a growing Paul.

There is nothing illegal about racism, prejudice, or hate in the United States.  We can, do, and should create laws to restrict how people act on those attitudes, just as our social ethics (laws) seek to protect us one from another for any reason.  Those laws create trends like social antibiotics in a sick nation. We actually begin to change.

The great defeat for the dilatory effects of racism occurred in the late 1950s to early 1970s.  Manifested racism, especially for African Americans, was given a mortal blow and has been dying ever since. That may not be comforting to those blacks that still feel the effect, but it is true. 

We won’t see racism fully replaced by essentially an historical aberration until the baby boomer generation has finally died off.  The reason is that the boomers are the last generation to have lived in and been influenced by people who lived (their entire lives) in an era when racism and the segregationist realities that came with it was more than okay, it was normal.

The Millennials (those born between 1981 and 2000) will take over this country with the knowledge and attitude that no matter how they feel about racism, they know it is ethically wrong.  It will change everything.  The same is playing out with the discrimination of homosexuals.  Women are finally now starting to feel the effects of being unchained.

What’s not happening is even the beginning of an attitude adjustment toward the use of guns in the US. That is not to say that a majority of American citizens don’t want these guns (more specifically handguns) under serious control uniformly across the country.  They do.  It does say that the nation as a whole does not have the political will to begin to take the first steps to change the future. Given the same political will applied to those aforementioned issues, all aspects of this nation would today be exclusively run by straight, white guys. Mad Men wouldn’t have made it past the first season it would have been so mundane.

The major problem to deal with is not the racism of the 21 year old perpetrator of the Charleston church shooting, or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Muslim religion, or James Eagan Holme’s psychosis, or Adam Lanza’s undiagnosed behavioral problems, or Seung-Hui Cho’s being bullied, or any other reason why the deranged run amok.  The problem is that our American society feels it is okay to give them the means to act out their shocking unbalanced mania. 

This doesn’t even address the over 6000 lives taken each year in the US by the use of handguns. All this carnage is because this nation and its leaders lack the political will to find it abnormal and unacceptable.

Okay, stick a fork in the Confederacy, it’s done and way overcooked.  But in the process don’t close your eyes to the war that actually rages around you.  Don’t let Peter be a victim, just to feel good about Paul.

Obama, You Just Don't Get It...

In the wake of the latest mass killing in Charleston, SC I watched a cable news program play a litany of Obama reaction speeches he has made after similar events over his term as President.  They were eerily alike, in both content and tenor, with a little more emphasis this time on differentiating the US with the rest of the world.  They also broadcast comments from other political and social leaders regarding this attack and they too sounded similar with lots of; “we must never let this happen again” and “it’s not how we fall, but how we get up” and “love and faith will conquer evil” and so forth.


If there were creatures viewing this from Space they would find it humorous, just as we might laugh watching a dog chase his tail. However on planet earth and, more specifically, Homeland America, we feel real pain, yet wallow in tragedy more like it is a ritual than any kind of lesson.  When 21 six year old children can be gunned down and murdered in a horrific fashion, in a benign location, and the society they lived in does absolutely nothing to react to it other than to provide sympathy, then we shouldn’t expect that the killing of 9 adults in a church will tomorrow be anything more than yesterday’s news.

President Obama is as responsible as any group or individual for his failure to understand the problem we, as Americans, face as a society, which he so blithely points out doesn’t exist in most other nations.  He has the pulpit but doesn’t use it.  He talks to the nation like a retired college professor might speak to a Senior Center preceding the beginning of bingo night.  I am so tired of it, Mr. Obama. This is the speech I want to hear:

For six years as your President I have misunderstood what we refer to as the “gun debate” and the proliferation of gun violence that we have now routinely addressed with this month’s or that month’s mass killing.  I have also failed to adequately communicate the connection between these mass tragedies and the small ones that occur daily, if not hourly, around the Nation.  I have less than two years left and I will not make this same mistake again, even if my efforts only end up tossed on desert air.

I and other political and social leaders have stood before you and said we need to act so that whatever mass killing du jour was examined such would never happen again.  That was a lie. It was always a lie, even to those like me who were foolish enough to believe it might be true. These killings will happen again and there is nothing we can do to stop it. 


A volcano with all its fury and devastation only spews a fraction of the molten lava that exists beneath the surface.  We have too many guns that can be concealed and, like any society, we have a lunatic fringe. However with 320 million people, that fringe, however small the percentage, is huge in numbers.  There is much that we can do socially to deal with psychotic individuals, those with criminal intent, or poisoned with hate, but we cannot make it “never happen again”.  I am far more fearful that I will see in my life another Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech than hopeful I will not.

However, I am referring to my life.  What about the lives of my children and my grandchildren or yours? Can we make it “never happen again” for them or at least make it the exception rather than the rule? What is it we can do now that will make a difference in the future?

There is a lot we can do, and to the extent we don’t we only push the problem to the next generation and irrationally compound the agony these weapons create among us.

The destruction that high capacity guns that can be readily hidden from public view goes far beyond the mass killings that brings so many of us to our knees.  They allow crime of all kinds, both overt and coercive to thrive.  It is so hard to control that law enforcement across the nation has begun to react offensively, like warriors proactive in their own defense instead of being the stewards of our safety.
  
A clear majority of the Nation does not feel more secure because there is a proliferation of these weapons, quite the opposite.  We need to decide as a Nation, as a Society, and as a culture that these weapons should not be part of the American fabric and begin taking the steps that will ultimately impact the next generation or certainly the generation after that, not simply with the reduction of handguns, but a fundamental change in what they will view as right and normal. No one views today the restriction of smoking in public places as abnormal, while fifty years ago it would have been unthinkable. Why should guns be different? 

How do we do make that change?  Four steps; we propose aggressive laws, we emphatically point out who opposes those laws, we overcome them politically, and we pass those laws. As our children grow to take over this country they will see what we started and, I believe, tend and nurture the seeds we have planted. They will see the commitment that will lead to the new normal.

These are the first laws I feel are essential:  First, that there can be no concealed handguns carried by any individual in the United States unless that individual is in public law enforcement or has been licensed by the Federal Government, second, the magazine capacity of all existing and manufactured handguns be regulated by the Federal Government, third, that a Federal background check must be completed and accepted for the transfer of any handgun, public or private, and fourth, all handguns must be registered with the Federal Government. Violation of these laws and subsequent regulations would be a felony under Federal statute and subject to harsh penalties.

It is no mystery that states with powerful Conservative minorities would fight such laws. They would do so primarily through Republican representatives in Congress and the funding by national interests such as the NRA.  They would wage a dirty fight, manipulating citizens through use of conspiratorial fears and false claims of patriotism, just as they always have. They would evoke the word “freedom” to their own ends.  Perhaps freedom to them is a metal detector at every door of every school, church, pizza parlor, dry cleaner…you name it. Maybe freedom to them is the fear of being shot by a traffic cop as you pull your wallet out of your pants pocket.

The Republican Party will take the shameless position of advancing their political control at the expense of innocent and precious lives.  They too will argue that freedom is in jeopardy, but I for one will no longer be passive to their hypocrisy.  Let them fight; I’m ready to do battle. I have no more elections to win and if my own Party does not back me, so be it.

I ask every American who feels the same as me to commit time and money to make vocal their position and to support those in public office who hold the same.  Even if in a given state a majority is persuaded by the powerbrokers to support Republican opponents of gun control, I will not abandon those who suffer in those states for lack of national commitment.  Anyone who loses their life because we, as a nation, have failed to act is a minority of one.  In this country everyone counts, not just those who feel threatened because they no longer have uncontrolled use of handguns. Join me.

Get real Obama.  What do you have to lose?

I Am

This week a news piece regarding a Caucasian woman claiming to be African-American got national attention.  My first reaction was questioning why this rose to such a level. Sure, the woman (Rachel) was an activist for African-American issues and a spokesperson for the NAACP, but really…with what’s going on in the world – why this?  Outed by her white, estranged biological parents, she was interviewed and edited to look tongue-tied, sounding both evasive and dishonest.  

However, the more I considered the news story the more relevance I found to fundamental problems that our social norms have difficulty surmounting.  It goes beyond race and spotlights at least part of the reason communications and cooperation have been unable to keep up with demographic and technological changes. 

This should have been her response: 

Am I black, am I white? The question itself underlies the reason why our culture remains so divided, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Is President Obama black or is he white? He has identified with and been lauded as the first African-American president, yet his mother was Caucasian. Is he black because of the way he looks?  Is Catlin Jenner a woman or a man? He looks like a woman, his physiology is male.  Which is it? It should make little or no difference how the question is answered, but in our society the question itself evokes amusement, hostile emotions, and/or, for some, an unhealthy need for retribution. 

Like it or not we now physically live in an integrated world. There are just too many of us with communication far too rapid and mobility never more available.  Yet we still apply the historical social and religious mindsets that believe the differences we see need to have us separated, closeted, or protected one from another. This has been fostered by hate, perceived good intention, religious dogma, or simply inertia. 

My biological parents are white, my family is black. How I view myself has meaning for me in a variety of ways, but how does that have meaning to anyone else? Yet that view is somehow considered such a violation that it warrants national attention.  Can anyone else not see where the real problem is here? 

The Nazis killed millions of people because they were born into families that prescribed to a particular religion or chose to be, biology played no part. That is unlikely to happen again, but the mindset survives and atrocities of all kinds continue to flourish because of that mindset. The fact of the matter was; those Jews were just people, fundamentally the same as anyone else. Skin color is no different. Before anyone criticizes me or judges my life with prejudice, whether they be black or white, they need to ask themselves why they are asking the question in the first place. 

This story deserves national attention, but not in the way it has been presented.  It has been reported like a titillating sex story, not dissimilar to the Bruce/Catlin Jennings saga.  The fact that interviewed whites (which interestingly include her biological parents) view Rachel as being a nut case (her parents actually stated in an interview that they believed she was mentally ill) or that interviewed blacks viewed her as a fraud or opportunist shows how the news media places priority on reporting only that which they believe will increase viewership and, therefore, ratings and income.  The real and important news story requires a mirror.  While this young lady has the spotlight I hope she has the ability to pull one out of her purse and point it at the camera.

Bushwhacked

Step back and take a look.  Maybe 20 or so notable Republicans either already announced candidates or actively campaigning for the Republican Presidential Nomination and still the overwhelming likely winner will be Jeb Bush. At least I think so:

Sure the Conservative, Evangelical, Conspiracy-“Patriot” Nutjobs, who are regrettably more numerous than acorns in the fall, don’t care for him much – him with his un-American compassion for south-of-the-border aliens and a Latino wife to boot – but at this point they have plenty of alternative choices.  Hell, Ted Cruz (a US Senator mind you) is ready to stand guard at the Texas border (shoulder to shoulder with Chuck Norris), not to keep out the Mexicalis, but to stop the Federal Government from an armed takeover of the Texas citizenry with the US Military’s Jade-Helm 15 Liberal coup. What’s not to love about Ted? 

Of course at this point in the election process four years ago they hated Romney as well, even as he flopped like a freshly caught bass.  Dear Jesus, the man belonged to a religious cult and wore the underwear to prove it.  Still, that didn’t nix Romney and Jeb should feel the same confidence, even as he undoubtedly chooses to begin his own gyrations on the bottom of the boat.

Why will Jeb win?  There is the money, for one thing.  Jeb may not have all the billionaires sewed up.  The Koch brothers have reportedly been winking at Scott Walker (although I feel their Libertarian bent will have them backing Rand Paul in the primaries), but they all know the Koch’s hundreds of millions of primary money is really just to adjust the lines on the playing field. In the general election they will enthusiastically stuff Jeb’s pockets with greenbacks.  Even without them now, Jeb is quietly securing the quiet big money. By the beginning of the hot season (January 2016) he will have lapped his opponents on fundraising.  That fact has been a bell weather in Republican Presidential politics to indicate the prospective winner (with the exception of 2008, when no one wanted to place a bet on a Republican victory).

Why else will Jeb win the nomination?  I believe the rest of the field will so violently vie for the Nutjobs (with plenty of in-fighting) that Jeb will be able to take his fortune and run an intense but relatively positive campaign.  That will garner him the great majority of confused Republicans and, with just a few Nutjobs in his camp; he’ll be able to stay at or near the top of every delegate count.

So what do I say to this seeming inevitability?  Oh dear preposterously naïve and gullible electorate, don’t let us be Bushwhacked again.

I’ll be perfectly honest.  I was a moderate independent the first half of my life, but as the playing field moved under my feet ever so Right while I was standing still, I now find the same attitudes I previously had place me as a Progressive Liberal.  I liked George H. W. Bush…in fact…I still do. He was bright, reasonably articulate, pragmatic, internationally experienced, a good administrator, and deserved a second term.  He made judicial use of the US Military and bent on his Party’s fiscal myopia when he had to. Best of all he was politically non-religious, despite his display of personal faith. I disagreed with him as much as not, but he didn’t lose my respect and his four years set the stage for the Clinton economic miracle by starting the repair to the damage Lord Reagan had done the previous eight.  Who could believe he would father an imbecile who would be used, because of his name, by powerbrokers and Christian fanatics to squeeze into the White House; only the fourth President in American history to win office with a minority of the popular vote.

 
Jeb Bush may be more like his father than his brother.  I don’t know and I don’t care.  It isn’t worth the debate.  What I do know is that ‘W’ Bush and the cronies that gave him his foundation will never be unconnected to Jeb.  Jeb Bush has had to actually and publically claim “I am my own man”. The fact that he has to pronounce such has the same disingenuous irony as Fox News having to proclaim that it is “fair and balanced”.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

The George W. Bush years have not been fairing well as scrutiny evolves into history, and the starting point was at an historic low for modern times.  A Jeb Bush Presidency might not be as bad as his brother’s, but the age of the Rockefeller Republicans took a mortal blow with Ronald Reagan and effectively ended with the Right-wing Republican abandonment of George H. W. Bush in 1992.  The sad thing is that Jeb Bush might be elected; while it seems likely his opponents could not. The few steps forward that Obama managed to take regarding healthcare, immigration, the environment, among others, would either be stopped or thwarted as Jeb spends four years prepping for his next election.  I can only hope that in the general election of 2016 we see pictures of his brother’s face as much as his.

Who knows, maybe Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee might pull off their own miracle and snag the nomination.  Hey…how about a Cruz-Huckabee ticket, or would that be the Cruz-Huckabee-Jesus ticket?  Then we could all have some real fun next year and maybe even realign Congress. Go Cruz!!

Yes, You Are a Racist

Steve, a reasonably intelligent, well educated client I work with on occasion made an unsolicited statement I recently overheard.  He forcefully said, “Obama is the worst President in the history of this country. The man is repulsive”.  I didn’t catch the origin of his conversation and it would be nice to think it was an isolated comment.  Unfortunately, I have heard the same remarks (either literally or in essence) from other Conservative friends and individuals on more occasions than I can recall.  I work in a Conservative environment, so I’d expect to hear observations that didn’t favor the Obama Administration, but…”the worst”?? 

 Admittedly, I felt something close to the same about George W.  Still, with ‘W’ you had a President who entered office with a Nation experiencing an extended period of economic prosperity, budget surpluses, and international sanity.  His initial banal leadership exposed the Country to cataclysmic terrorism.  He then proceeded to turn over the budget surpluses (and more) to the top 5% of the Country’s wealthy with tax cuts, ran up the National Debt to historic levels primarily by those tax cuts while waging two unfunded wars (one incompetently - one unnecessarily),  and officiated the largest financial crisis in the Nation’s history as he stepped off the podium.  That doesn’t even include his sitcom quality communications skills and endless gaffes.

 My son, in the National Guard before the Iraq War began, was sucked in for two years of deployment in Iraq and was wounded in a conflict that Bush, Chaney, and Company virtually concocted in their attempt to control oil markets…needless to say I have personal reasons to despise George W. Bush.

Obama, on the other hand, came into to office in the depths of the havoc George Bush’s leadership created and has had the helm of the Nation during a steady recovery, one that brought us from financial collapse to pre-Bush prosperity, as well as making the US the current economic engine for a still struggling World.  For the first time since the Clinton years the deficit (as % of GDP) has been substantially cut (70%). He has orchestrated the end to both wars and, to his credit or not, avoided any internationally based terrorism on US soil (which Bush couldn’t manage for 10 months).  His administration introduced the first steps to get the US out of the healthcare hole it had dug itself into (using a Conservative Republican plan), and forced open the dysfunctional immigration issue to public view, among many other things.  

There is plenty Obama has done or failed to do with which I disagree or take issue with and I’m hardly Conservative, but…the “worst” President?  How does Steve or anyone else come up with that?  Even setting aside George W… I mean Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, James Buchanan, Richard Nixon, Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding???? There is obviously something else going on, something that feeds the likes of Steve, or Rush Limbaugh, or a host of Fox News pundits.

Many of my progressively minded friends have, without hesitation, assigned the vitriol leveled at Obama to one simple fact; the man is black.  For years this explanation seemed too simplistic to me. Combining the knowledge I have of Conservative friends and acquaintances who are good people I’m confident they would take immediate issue if not downright offense at being labeled as prejudice against African Americans.  However, as time has passed and the hatred for Barack Obama has only escalated, primarily among Caucasian men, I’ve needed to re-think the source.  At this point I’ve concluded that the reason for this loathing is not because Obama is black…it’s because he is not white.

 The inherent need we have as social creatures to find like associations between ourselves and others as a mean of mitigating the fear of being isolated and, therefore, vulnerable has manifested itself with historical relevance ten thousand fold.  Nobody is exempt from harboring prejudice thoughts.  As a matter of course, it is one of the ways ordinary people ease the fears that they create themselves or are bombarded with from a variety of sources.  I have reason enough to believe Steve, and others like him, have personally done quite well during Obama’s term in office.  Steve’s job has been secure, inflation low, his children remain in private schools, and I suspect his investments have soared.  In fact, the wealthy and Corporate American have been far and away the largest beneficiaries in the Obama years, yet they are the ones who vilify him the most.  Obama does not represent what they want, but more importantly he does not represent who they are.

I believe these folks could take nearly everything Obama (that which he has done and that which he proposes) if you could only wrap him up in a package that looked like Mitt Romney.  When all is said and done, the uninhibited hate these folks find growing from every orifice in their bodies is because Obama is not one of them.  It isn’t a matter of disagreement.  It is because Obama’s policies have been so bending Right (not the least of which has been his adoption of the Heritage Foundation’s health plan without a public option) that makes this gut opposition look so obvious. I can’t even get my Conservative friends to discuss issues championed by the Obama administration because, I believe, their fear of agreement might contradict their fundamental revulsion.

Prejudice and racism manifest themselves in both overt and subtle ways. Religions have historically excelled at it. Even as any of us might recognize the fear in ourselves we properly suppress it relying on and having confidence in evolving ethics.  However, when Barack Obama is labeled “the worst”, it’s clear that there is no suppression going on, and that the tirade of fear that has thwarted attempts to eliminate prejudice of race is still strong and allowing itself to be manifest under a banner of politics.

Lacking Trust

A comment President Obama made near the very beginning of his 9/10/14 speech to the nation on ISIL/ISIS/Islamic State so distracted me I found it difficult to keep my thoughts from wandering through the remainder of his address.  He said: Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not “Islamic”.  No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL victims have been Muslim.  And ISIL is certainly not a “state”. As I listened to this pronouncement it occurred to me the fact of our Government and Nation being unable to even decide on a name for this group is a metaphor for the pitiful lack of understanding we bring to foreign relations. This inability is as if we were caught in a pit and, for five decades, have concluded the best solution to getting out is to keep digging.

Now let me be clear, Mr. President: this group (I shall call ISIS for the sake of brevity), as a whole, is absolutely motivated by religious ideology.  What might motivate any particular, psychologically deranged individual in ISIS is not relevant.  That ISIS uses and interprets the scriptures of Islamic doctrine is also irrelevant.  That they happen to be killing people in an area which is primarily Muslim is irrelevant, too. What is quite relevant is our government that chooses to create foreign policy as if that religious ideological element didn’t exist.  And, Mr. President, the notion that religions do not condone the killing of innocents would be laughable if it weren’t so inane.  Human beings have been slaughtered in vast numbers under the righteous interpretation of religions since…well, since there have been religions.  Christians have been particularly good at it over the centuries.  The existence of any one individual’s interpretation of religion that argues against the killing of innocents doesn’t change the fact that it has occurred in abundance.  Finally, the fact that ISIS is proclaiming that their intention is to create a theological state or theocracy is important and should not be discounted.

Why do I feel this misunderstanding or intentional misleading about ISIS is important?  I do because since the end of the Second World War the United States, the World’s leading economic and military juggernaut,  has been unable to understand how to apply its strengths in a world that increasingly doesn’t use or need World War II vintage armies.  With Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now possibly Syria, all countries which posed no direct threat, the US has failed at every adventure, if failure is defined as the inability to effect positive change.  With the exception of securing the boarders of South Korea, it could be argued that each major conflict could have been better off if the United States was not engaged as it was.  We simply don’t get it, and Obama’s comments lead me to believe we don’t get it this time either.

The differences between ideological fanaticism and terrorism are quite indistinguishable, except the makers of US foreign policy don’t seem to understand that.  Our government has and continues to treat both as verbs, i.e., what bad people do.  Like roaches scampering across the kitchen floor, our policy has been to merely provide a heavy shoe to squish those pesky roaches and, presumably, affect the behavior of those remaining in the wall.  We can’t change them to be us, and if higher oil prices are the net result then it is with less oil we need to deal with. 

The fact that there are large numbers of people who view western nations (particularly the US) as Terrorist nations, with their fundamentalist Christian exclusivity combined with Capitalist ethics, nation building, smart bombs, and drone strikes, seems incomprehensible to both the US populous and our leaders.  The reality is that ideological (often religious) fanaticism and terrorism are nouns; they define a state of being and we will never be able to deal with those who view us as terrorists without recognizing the fanaticism that is part of what we are as well.

Okay, you ask what the hell does that mean and what would you do Mr. It’s-all-our-fault camel jockey?  I don’t know exactly what to do, but I feel all foreign policies we enact and follow relating to security should be consistent with these things I’d like to see happen:

• That we once again recognize that the unique characteristic that made this incredible country we live in possible was its adherence to secular principals and ethics.  History is extraordinarily clear on this point and to see this current 50 year swing toward a US theocracy under the guise of patriotism is just so much flung horse crap.
• That we make nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear weapon reduction the number one objective of foreign policy by taking the lead to unite the nations of the world to this common goal.
• That we employ a new, clear doctrine to replace the ambiguous so called Bush Doctrine, (which simply ramps up military solutions and promotes nation building). The doctrine should be that we will not recognize the sovereignty of any nation that either harbors individuals or groups who actively plot against the United States, or does not have the ability to evict them and, therefore, we reserve the right to enter that country to do what they will not or cannot do to eradicate the problem … and nothing more.
• That the use of our military in foreign lands be dependent on the establishment of a direct threat to the United States which has been recognized and validated by a 2/3 vote in Congress, combined House and Senate.

It seems most Conservative pundits, politicians or otherwise, feel leadership is defined by the use of military clout.  At least that’s one thing they have in common with the leaders of ISIS.  When they say (including President Obama) that our goal for “peace” is to encourage, by our bombing, various nations in the Middle East to destroy ISIS, I don’t believe them and I don’t trust them.  In order for that to happen you must expect young Islamic men willing to give up their lives to kill other men who are fanatically Islamic.  You must also expect that when American pilots are killed or perhaps publically murdered that our Government will withhold the use of the military foot soldier.  Forget it…it’s not happening.  I’d sooner expect an abortion clinic to open up at Liberty University.

Do nothing? No, but without a direct threat to the United States all efforts should be diplomatic and based on an objective to unify a coalition of like minded nations.  I’d like to see the American people out of this hole…not just be handed another shovel.

Aiming at the Wrong Target

In the public discussion on the tragedy at Newtown, Ct. I’ve heard a phrase delivered several times, and it makes me grimace.  It’s not new, used after similar, albeit less horrific, heartbreaking events.  It calls for action so this “will never happen again”. This goal or target not only holds within it instant and prolong failure, it causes the corrective action, whatever that might be, to point us in the wrong direction.  It does more harm than good. I use a target or shooting metaphor here because this particular problem is a paradoxical truth about guns in America: that the collective ownership of these weapons is not bad, but how we as a society feel about them is.

Once again the argument that guns don’t kill, people kill is trotted out.  On a national evening radio talk show I even heard, to my astonished ears, the featured guest suggest the massacre was part of an ongoing left-wing conspiracy (without challenge from the radio host).  We will also hear the proposed solution that if most everybody was “packing” such nut cases as (the now temporarily infamous) Adam Lanza could not have carried out his plans, or at least not with the same carnage. The fact that there are countries that have higher per capita gun ownership than the US yet effectively no such large scale incidents (such as Canada or Switzerland) are also given to bolster the only people kill argument.  There are parts to many such arguments which are valid, but it is also a fact that it is bullets, not ill will, which are passing through the bodies of the victims.

What is different about today regarding mass gun killings than in prior generations?  Conservative columnist David Brooks argues in the New York Times that at least since the beginning of the 1900s such gun killing sprees have appeared with regularity worldwide, if not in some cyclical fashion. He essentially says that we might be experiencing an uptick in such events now, but such variations have precedent going back a century or more.  Given that the US population today is 4 times that of 1900 there is argument to be made for consistency, even if the raw numbers have accelerated. What Brooks doesn’t clearly address is the nature of the shootings, which with the death of 20 children under the age of 7 is so devastatingly demonstrated.  It also doesn’t address the bigger issues, which are 1) the countless smaller gun killings which make news, but quickly vanish from the public memory, and 2) that in recent decades the vast majority of such major massacres in the world, almost 2/3, occur in the United States.

A 101 years ago last March, 143 women were killed in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City.  This was a pivotal event, which is why it has retained its historical significance.  It tipped the scale on what had been an ongoing problem; workplace conditions.  There had been many incidents of injury and death in the workplace throughout the Nation over many decades but little accomplished as a society to deal with it. There was a high level of resigned acceptance. The “injury” from workplace regulations, such as restricted freedom of the employer or compromising free and competitive enterprise kept even common sensible actions from taking place.  The Triangle fire altered the landscape.  The changes, which included new regulations, didn’t eliminate workplace disasters small or large. It did start something new though; a change in attitude on a national scale regarding working conditions by employees and employers alike.  The impact was far reaching even if the actual number of people whose lives were saved or improved over the years cannot be known.

The target in trying to curb wholesale gun violence is our national attitude about it and our inability to address it in a demonstrable way.  This nation, federally and locally, needs to enact a series of gun regulations, not because we expect that the inhabitants of the lunatic fringe will no longer unleash their insanity from time to time on the innocent, with guns or other means.  We need to do it to generate a different national consensus about guns that will affect new generations and subsequently shrink the size of the lunatic fringe - at least as it relates to gun violence.  Unfortunately, not only will the full extent of such regulations not immediately be felt, but the positive impact (how many killings avoided) will never be known. However, that is no excuse for not beginning the process. Perhaps these 20 children, like the women of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, will help start it.

The wrong course is to aim at the tragedy itself by elevating national fear, fear which is grossly disproportionate to the actual danger - thank our new informational age for that. We cannot build walls high enough, alarms loud enough, guards numerous enough, or personal intrusion deep enough to stop all Adam Lanzas from carrying out their sadistic fantasies or frustrations.  Those efforts only create a different, more invasive insanity for many, many more people.  We can only attempt to produce less Adam Lanzas by making the use of guns less acceptable to subsequent generations. If Adam and his mother had grown up with different attitudes toward guns, how might things have been different? We start by restricting gun availability, which is simply a social statement of where we want to be.